Curriculum Studies and the Practice of Living

• In Event: Curriculum History as Lived Practices

Abstract

Through the story of the Curriculum Theory Project (CTP) at Louisiana State University (LSU) from 1991 to 1997, in its conceptualization, establishment and early years, this paper seeks to advance fresh understandings of the contemporary history of the curriculum field as drawn from examining the practices of those involved in the founding of this influential curriculum organization still active in the field today. Such work not only contributes to documentation and development in the area of curriculum history, but also to consideration of generative CTP practices by which its beginnings were characterized that might be contemporaneously renewed and taken up for similarly fostering the vitality and sustainability of curriculum theory wherever it is engaged.

Initially inspired by de Certeau’s (2011) study of culture as theorized at the site of everyday practice, this research articulates an interpretive history of the field through examination of the activities of those who participated in the Curriculum Theory Project from 1991-1997. This paper draws from personal essays of CTP faculty and students during this period (Slattery and Edgerton, in press; Kirshner, in press; Daspit and Riley-Taylor, in press), our own autobiographical experiences as participants herein also in the 90s, and artifacts from the CTP archives at LSU. In situating such within broader histories of the field and of education in the US, we offer specific accounts that offer nuances and counterpoints to those narratives writ large as well as hone in on the practices of particular people in particular places constitutive of such histories, in lieu of discourses or ideologies so typically engaged in histories of the field (Hamilton, 1990; Watkins, 2001; Kliebard, 2004; Taubman et al, 2006; Baker, 2009).

In identifying the theme we call the practice of living curriculum theory, we reference something of an all-encompassing ethos—a particularly phenomenological, hermeneutical, existentialist and autobiographical moment—characterizing CTP’s conceptions and beginnings. Entailing “a[n aesthetic] pathos for the mystery of life that always transcends our normal sensibilities” (Van Manen, 2016, p. 17), yet grounds and gives depth to our being, gravitating “to meaning and reflectivity” (p. 17); faculty and students were influenced by traditions of inquiry and thought that served “to foster and strengthen an embodied ontology, epistemology and axiology of thoughtful and tactful action” (p. 15), as well as understanding. Herein was an attentiveness to lived experiences and meanings, and their significance, as temporally engaged and reflected upon; and in critical response to the existential threat of such having been reduced or dismissed in dominant educational thought and practice directed by behaviorism, scientism, ahistoricism, modernist ideas of reason, causality, progress; and reliant upon standardization, quantification, and objectivity (e.g., Tyler, 1949). Rather, education was life, and life was education. Illumined to be integral to a time described as intellectually vibrant, generative and transformative were practices oriented around CTP’s interdisciplinarity, collaboration, and institutionalization as well.

Author

• Molly Quinn, Louisiana State University
  Presenting Author