Living Theory: Embracing a Slow Curriculum in an Age of Speed

• In Event: Speed, Sound, and Spirits: Curriculum Cross Conversations

Proposal Description

In the age of expediency fostered by the growth of technology, we are reminded by Lao Tzu that “Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.” Returning to nature and ridding ourselves of the need for speed, we (re)embrace the measured and deliberate pace of being. Utilizing Ulmer’s (2016) musings on writing a slow ontology, we examine what it might mean to live theory as a slow curriculum of being.

Living is complicated, contradictory, and contemporaneous. Like Pinar’s (2011) assertion of curriculum as complicated conversation, we engage in theory-in-the-making through an engagement in this complicated conversation regarding how to be–slowly–when everything around us––society, the academy–is hastening us to quicken.

To do so, it is imperative that we (re)engage theory as a living phenomenon. By what we refer to as ‘living theory,’ curriculum theorists (in all capacities) might be enabled to visualize, feel, and question the onto-epistemological implications and hesitations lurking at every turn. Curriculum theorists might consider turning to theory as a (r)evolutionary act, but more broadly conduct research as an act of freedom (hooks, 1994) through being-doing-theorizing curriculum slowly.

This paper will examine an embrace a slowness of curriculum and living curriculum from the perspectives of early childhood education, teacher education, and higher education. More pointedly, we theorize what a slow ontology might mean in each of these areas. We inquire:
What does fast/slow mean? Depending on how one conceptualizes time, the meaning of slow and fast are intertwined within a transformative relationship.
In an age of speed, how might slowness or slowing down enrich our being?
What might it mean for education, curriculum theory, in particular, to do, be, and live theory in the very act of its making?

Expediency like slowness has its place; however, a constant dilemma between the present and the future is our love of speed, our obsession to do more and more in (and with) less and less time. Like currere, this inquiry promises no fast fixes, no quick solutions, but “asks us to slow down, to remember even re-enter the past, and to meditatively imagine the future” (Pinar, 2011, p. 4) or what is not yet (Greene, 1995). We anticipate that living theory as a slow verb affords rich possibility for time/space to imagine and wonder what might be(come), as opposed to reinscribing a ‘sense of urgency’ in education. Instead of pursuing the movement, we suggest dwelling in the mo(ve)ment.


References:

Greene, M. (1995). Releasing the imagination: Essays on education, the arts, and social change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

hooks, B. (1994). Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom. New York: Routledge.

Lao Tzu. (n.a.). The Tao Te Ching. verse 37. Retrieved from http://www.positivityblog.com/the-wisdom-of-lao-tzu-a-taoist-guide-to-getting-things-done/.

Pinar, W. (2011). What is curriculum theory? New York: Routledge.

Ulmer, J. B. (2016). Writing slow ontology. Qualitative Inquiry, 23(3), 201-211.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800416643994

Authors

• Shaofei Han, Louisiana State University

• David W. Robinson-Morris, Xavier University of Louisiana/University of New Orleans

• Maria F.G. Wallace, Millsaps College