Bearing Witness: Toward an Ontology and Epistemology of Experiential Curriculum

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

The four papers in this session present work from emerging curriculum scholars drawing on experiential ways of knowing and being pushing against the margins of the field of curriculum studies in specific, (inter)connected ways. The authors draw from their embodied experiences, and those of co-researchers, to re-ground curriculum studies with perspectives often decentralized or left outside of the academy. Drawing on the concept of bearing witness (Pillow, 2019; Villenas, 2019; Wynter, 1989), the authors foreground their shared ontological and epistemological commitments to experiential narratives as a form of resistance to the dominant curricula within academia and beyond. In doing so, they demonstrate the ongoing need to re-imagine the field of curriculum studies.

Sub Unit

• Division B - Curriculum Studies / Division B - Section 3: Theories, Methodologies, and Philosophies of Curriculum Studies

Chair

• Tommy Ender, Rhode Island College

Papers

• Living an (Intergenerational) Curriculum of Rahma: Re/Telling De/Humanizing Stories - Muna Saleh, Concordia University - Edmonton

• A Little Strange Looking Picture in These Anti-Browness Times - Ligia L. López López, Universidad de Antioquia

• "What de Good a Education if Him Got No Sense?" Gaining a Sense of Self Through Grandma Epistemologies - Tianna Dowie-Chin, University of Georgia

• Why So Few: The Seen and Unseen Afterlives of Black Women and Girls in STEM - ReAnna S. Roby, Vanderbilt University

Discussant

• Veena Vasudevan, University of Pittsburgh