Theorizing a Non-Canonical Curriculum

• In Event: Saturday Roundtable Session 3:05 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Fugitive Modes of Curricular Production: Attending to the Forces of Mind, Body, and Spirit (Table 32)

Abstract

Within this paper I present a Non-Canonical Curriculum (NCC) that is based on ideas from non-Western philosophy, and which values affect and emotion just as much as reasoning and argumentation. The paper draws on a two-year research study in one Toronto, Canada elementary school at which children’s relationships to the Ontario, Canada provincial curriculum are examined, and the integration of non-canonical philosophy in pedagogical activities is explored. I argue that the exclusion of non-Western sources of knowledge from curricula is pedagogical and epistemically unjustified, and further articulate the many ways that a Non-Canonical Curriculum impacts learning in a Toronto, Ontario school.

Author

• Nikki Rotas, Western University