Division B Pre-Conference Seminar: Invigorating Historical Work in Curriculum Studies: Past, Present, and Future (Day 1 of 2)

Session Type: Invited Speaker Session

Abstract

The purpose of this seminar is to recognize and amplify the idea that doing good
curriculum work requires curriculum workers to be grounded in curriculum history. We
need to understand and appreciate the past, realize its value for the present and future,
and contribute to ideas and practices that have been left out. The question of what it
means to be well-grounded in curriculum history is one that will be put on the table for
serious consideration in the seminar.

The facilitators, who participated in a range of eras in curriculum studies since the
1960s, will present briefly about the kinds of curriculum history they have contributed,
studied, and advocated. They will encourage discussion with participants who will be
invited to share dimensions of curriculum history that they are pursuing or studying.
One of the strategies facilitators will use to stimulate dialogue is to raise questions
about similarities and differences in curriculum studies over the decades.

Although the curriculum field has been criticized as ahistorical, there is a robust history
available ranging from studies of noted scholars, institutions, conferences, policies, and
practices from the late 1890s to the present. Surely, one problem is that it is
infrequently tapped for insight. Facilitators will briefly discuss major contributions of
such early work and focus significant attention on work from the 1960s through the
1980s that challenged limitations of early focus on curriculum development, often
neglecting broad perspectives on race, gender, class, ability/disability, culture, language,
ethnicity, religion or belief, and more. Discussions will deal with questions raised over
the years about whose vision of what is worth knowing, needing, experiencing, doing,
being, becoming, overcoming, contributing, sharing, imagining, and wondering were
privileged and what could be done to make curriculum more just and worthwhile.
Discussions will also address implications of various current theories that interrupt
linear, successive, often Western, versions of history . The continued evolution of
curriculum studies in the 21 st Century will be given ample time. The expansion,
inclusion, exclusion, and criticism of epistemological, metaphysical, axiological, ethical,
aesthetic, and political orientations to curriculum studies will be a major focus. So will
be advocacy for diverse populations (nationalities and cultures) around the globe,
including indigenous groups and all who have suffered from nationalistic, neo-liberal,
neo-conservative, imperialistic, and related agents of conquerors in the historical and
contemporary world.

Facilitators

Janet L. Miller is Professor in the Department of Arts & Humanities–English, Teachers
College, Columbia University as well as Faculty-At-Large, Columbia University. Elected
AERA Vice President for Division B--Curriculum Studies (1997-2000) and Division B’s
Secretary (1990-92), she was honored with Division B’s Lifetime Achievement Award in
2008. In 2010, Janet was elected an AERA “Fellow” for “sustained achievement in
education research,” and received the Society of Professors of Education (founded in
1902 by Charles DeGarmo and John Dewey) Mary Anne Raywid Award in 2015 for
“outstanding contributions to the study of education.” Elected President of the
American Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies (AAACS) for two
terms (2001-2007), she also served, from1978 through 1998, as Founding Managing
Editor of JCT: The Journal of Curriculum Theorizing and Director or Co-Director of its
Bergamo Annual Conferences on Curriculum Theory & Classroom Practice. Her
forthcoming books: Curriculum and Disunities of Collaboration: Communities without
Consensus (Routledge) and Maxine Greene and Education , a volume in the Routledge
Invitational “Key Ideas in Education Series.” Other single-authored books include
Sounds of Silence Breaking: Women, Autobiography, Curriculum (2005) and Creating
Spaces and Finding Voices: Teachers Collaborating for Empowerment (1990), which in
1991 received the James N. Britton Award from the National Council of Teachers of
English and The Stessin Prize for Outstanding Faculty Scholarly Publication, Hofstra
University. She co-edited, with Bill Ayers, A Light in Dark Times: Maxine Greene and the
Unfinished Conversation (1998). Her published as well as forthcoming journal articles
and book chapters focus on junctures and discontinuities among conceptions of
curriculum, feminisms, collaboration, autobiography, trans-generational curriculum
inquiries, and qualitative research.
William H. Schubert was a professor for 36 years at the University of Illinois at Chicago
(UIC), following his receipt of a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign in 1975, and after teaching in elementary schools for eight years. At
UIC he was named a University Scholar, and received several awards for teaching and
mentoring, where he also served as Coordinator of the Ph.D. Program in Curriculum
Studies, Chair of Curriculum & Instruction, and Director of Graduate Studies. Schubert
has published 17 books, over 200 articles or chapters, and has presented at many
conferences, colloquia, and public events. His books include: Love, justice, and
education (2009); Curriculum: Perspective, Paradigm, and Possibility (1986); Reflections
from the Heart of Educational Inquiry (Willis & Schubert, 1991); Teacher Lore (Schubert &
Ayers, 1992); The American Curriculum (Willis, Schubert, Bullough, Kridel, & Holton,
1993); Turning Points in Curriculum (Sears, Marshall, Allen, Roberts, & Schubert, 2007);
Curriculum Books: The First Hundred Years (Schubert, Lopez Schubert, Thomas, &
Carroll, 2002); and The Sage Guide to Curriculum in Education (He, Schultz, & Schubert,
2015). He was a founding member of The Society for the Study of Curriculum History
and served as one of its early presidents, as well as president of the John Dewey
Society, Society of Professors of Education, and vice president of Division B of AERA.
Schubert is a Fellow of the International Academy of Education. In 2004 he received the
Lifetime Achievement Award in Curriculum Studies (Division B) from AERA. His
publications, collected files, and over 2000 books have been archived as the William H.
Schubert Curriculum Studies Collection at the Zach S. Henderson Library at Georgia
Southern University.

Anthony Brown is Associate Professor of Curriculum & Instruction at the University of
Texas at Austin. He also is an affiliated faculty with the John Warfield Center for African
and African American Studies and the department of African and African Diaspora
Studies. He received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin Madison in Curriculum &
Instruction in 2006. His research agenda falls into two interconnected strands of
research, related broadly to the education of African Americans. His first strand of
research examines how educational stakeholders make sense of and respond to the
educational needs of African American male students. The second strand examines
how school curriculum depicts the historical experiences of African Americans in
official school knowledge (e.g. standards and textbooks) and within popular discourse.
Dr. Brown has published over 25 journal articles, 9 book chapters, 1 edited book and 2
full-length books. His most recent publication is Black Intellectual Thought in Education:
The Missing Traditions of Ann Julia Cooper, Carter G. Woodson and Alain LeRoy Brown
(with Carl A. Grant and Keffrelyn D. Brown) and Reclaiming the Multicultural Roots of the
U.S. Curriculum: Communities of Color and Official Knowledge in Education (with Wayne
Au and Lola Calderon).

Christopher B. Crowley is an Assistant Professor of Teacher Education at Wayne State
University in Detroit, Michigan. His primary area of research is in the field of curriculum
studies and focuses on issues of privatization in teacher education. His research
critically examines how various stakeholders—including nonprofit organizations,
philanthropic foundations, the for-profit sector, education management corporations,
and charter school networks—are becoming increasingly involved in multiple aspects of
teacher education. Crowley received his Ph.D. in Curriculum & Instruction from the
University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2015. His research has appeared in journals such
as Teaching and Teacher Education , Review of Research in Education , Teachers College
Record , and Schools: Studies in Education , as well as the edited books The Strong State
and Curriculum Reform (Routledge, 2016) and International Struggles for Critical
Democratic Education (Peter Lang, 2012).

Where to Send Applications:
Christopher B. Crowley (cbcrowley@wayne.edu), Wayne State University

Sub Unit

• Division B - Curriculum Studies

Chair

• Denise M. Taliaferro Baszile, Miami University

Participants

• Janet L. Miller, Teachers College, Columbia University

• William (Bill) H. Schubert, University of Illinois at Chicago

• Anthony L. Brown, The University of Texas - Austin

• Christopher B. Crowley, Wayne State University