38th Annual Bergamo Conference on Curriculum Theory and Classroom Practice

Bergamo Conference Center, Dayton, Ohio
October 12–14, 2017

The Bergamo Conference on Curriculum Theory and Classroom Practice has served as a gathering place for theorists/practitioners and practitioners/theorists, including teachers, students, scholars, administrators, cultural workers, from various perspectives and all walks of life, to join in dialogical and collaborative encounters since 1969. Committed to bringing different and diverse discourses into public conversations, the conference welcomes all viewpoints in forming a shared community of dissensus. The conference encourages innovative styles of presenting intellectual work in the field of curriculum theory.


THEME: The Complicated Conversation of Curriculum Theory


In addition to the categories listed above, submissions can take guidance from this year’s theme: The Complicated Conversation of Curriculum Theory. By focusing on the work of curriculum as “complicated conversation,” the theme of the 2017 Bergamo Conference on Curriculum Theory and Classroom Practice invites the continued embracing and contestation of its past, present, and future. Pinar (2011) describes this work as conversation in which interlocutors are speaking not only among themselves but to those not present, not only to historical figures and unnamed peoples and places they may be studying, but to politicians and parents dead and alive, not to mention to the selves they have been, are in the process of becoming, and someday may become (p.43).
This year’s call seeks proposals that take up a reflective and relational approach involving not only historical positioning but also concerns of the self, place, the material, and the theoretical. Proposals are encouraged to simultaneously consider the past, present, and future in relation to each other or the aforementioned concerns. Participants should see this year’s theme as an opportunity to identify, critique, and, perhaps, reject barriers to new ways of knowing, being, and doing in curriculum scholarship. Lastly, submissions can consider what has been left out of the conversation thus far and expand the imaginary of what curriculum could be in a continuing state of becoming.