microsoft word sellers_intro_6-2.doc to cite this article please include all of the following details: sellers, warren. (2009). bringing difference to learning. transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> bringing difference to using-learning warren sellers la trobe university, australia when noel invited me to edit this issue and i read the following articles, two thoughts came to me: china and the english language; and transnational communication. there is talk of china becoming the world’s largest english language population, which yang (2006)1 contextualises by alerting us to differences between ‘users and learners’. he notes that nativization of english requires performance of four functions: the instrumental, the regulative, the interpersonal, and the imaginative/innovative, and adds: for english to perform any such functions, there needs to be a large number of proficient bilingual users of the language – which seems not to be the case in china, where english is primarily learned in the classroom as a foreign language. this means that college graduates should have learned the most english, but some constraining factors have prevented the majority of them from obtaining an advanced level of proficiency. (p. 3) in australia, where 150,000 chinese students represent sixty percent of the international student cohort2, this learner/user difference and ‘level of proficiency’ is a challenge not only for students. for higher education curricularists it brings a challenge to consider ways towards bridging difference in learning-using english for many students with less-thanadvanced proficiency. alongside this first thought, i have become interested in the recently announced apple ipad, which i have no difficulty in seeing another generation learning with and using as a ‘post-keyboard’ utility for transnational communication. as the ipad is foreshadowing an increasing evolution of hand-gestural tools in its use, similarly using gestures to facilitate transnational language learning-using hardly seems far-fetched, especially for such gestural calligraphic languages as chinese. with the articles that follow i attempted to foster my thoughts about bridging difference by reading these texts in the author’s personal idiomatic context and not rewriting expressions that read ‘differently’. my view of the current widespread outrage at purported poor literacy is to think beyond the rules that delineate what is ‘poor’ or ‘proper’ and work towards ‘finding’3 otherwise. doing this caused me to wonder how each of the authors would regard the two others’ texts. with noel’s agreement i sent the following message: we very much like your submission. having looked at what we have in hand, we think that your article, together with two others would work well together, so we are sending each of you the others’ papers for you to respond to not to ‘review’ them, but just to 1 yang, j. (2006) learners and users of english in china. english today. 22(2) 3-10. 2 asian correspondent. (2010). education: australia, china look to the future. http://us.asiancorrespondent.com/australiatop10/education-australia-china-look-to-the-future 3 in the sense that hongyu prefers in this volume, where ‘seeking means: to have a goal; but finding means: to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal’ sellers: bringing difference to using-learning transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 2 engage them in a bit of conversation. we are very keen to promote multiple conversations rather than ‘editorialising’ and this seems an excellent opportunity to experiment. we do hope you agree. what proved interesting was how this suggestion to ‘respond’ was interpreted. hongyu and nicholas each generated a separate text – which is what i expected – but jie chose another way. she incorporated her response into her original text and generated another zen journey iteration with additions and ‘foot-notes’ referring to the other authors. so we see the conversations move not only between and across the texts but also within. i attended a seminar recently where an interdisciplinary group of academics, interested in the scholarship of teaching and learning, discussed conceptions of teaching. after explaining that conceptions encourage reflection and contrast with observations, the question was asked: where are conceptions taking teaching practice? my response resonates with a comment i heard about the forthcoming apple ipad, which advised those who wondered what it was for to give it to their children and watch what they do with it. conceptions, whether they are about teaching or learning or ipads, are not so much about determining what for, but more about findings for doing. in this issue you will learn of findings about a curriculum of hospitality, curriculum as a zen journey and an intercultural curriculum. more significantly, for me, you will learn about these matters through the conversations of scholars who bring quite a different culture and voice to readers of, and thinkers in, english. i recommend finding the differences these texts bring: like watching children using-learning with ipads, there is always-already learning happening. author warren sellers is the faculty of humanities and social sciences faculty project manager for the design for learning curriculum renewal program at la trobe university, melbourne australia. email: w.sellers@latrobe.edu.au o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: lopes, alice casimiro (2016). what are we meaning by curriculum? transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> what are we meaning by curriculum? alice casimiro lopes1 state university of rio de janeiro, brazil with the incorporation of the post-structural studies in the field of curriculum, any attempt of full representation of what the curriculum is, any attempt to identify once and for all the meaning of the curriculum, any attempt to answer definitively to the question “what does curriculum mean?” is questioned. in the policy, it is deconstructed the claim of an accurate correlation or correspondence between enunciated proposal and the school curriculum. there is not reference (as outside presence) to the language that guarantees the possibility to stop the floating of meaning. there is not one final meaning for the curriculum (or for any identity). thus, it is argued the thesis of the failure of all curricular prescription and of all normativity (lopes, 2015). this normative emptiness is comprised of the impossibility of fullness, of foundation. there is no foundation for the curriculum: a theory, a sense of common content, a fixed curricular community. such impossibility refers to the possible dispute in relation to the attempt to reach the absent fullness, and to the defense of a radical investment in the curriculum, simultaneously theoretical and political. in this direction, the curriculum theory is not the producer of the rationality that constitutes the norm to be followed or to guide the policy, for example, to guide the choices of contents/curricular values and identities in the schools. the theory refers to the risk of investigating the unexpected, the contingent, to deconstruct hegemonies, to unsettle certanties, to reactivate disregarded possibilities. the articles of this tci issue particularly reaffirm the unsettled nature of what it is understood to be the curriculum. from the question “what are the tasks of curriculum scholars for the 21st century?”, theme posed for the 5th iaacs (international association for the advancement of curriculum studies) triennial conference held in ottawa canada in may 2015, peter cole questions the very rules of traditional grammar to present us an intriguing text. in this way, the author tries to express the orality of his st' át' imc culture and how he signifies himself as an indigenous scholar. janete carvalho, sandra silva and tânia delboni present a research by which they defend that “teachers and students bring experience you school life, they create the possibility of relying on life relationships woven from different lines that connect you each to other, creating to other possible areas will be curriculum development”. the authors make use methodologies of the school life studies, a significant curricular field in brazil, and cross such methodologies with the studies of spinoza and foucault. myriam southwell, in turn, in a study developed in argentina, incorporates the relations between universal and particular from the discourse theory of laclau, crossing education history and the curriculum. in the words of the author, she seeks to question “the most outstanding elements on which the discourse of inclusion in our region was lopes. what are we meaning by curriculum? ‘ 2 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci built”. simultaneously she argues that, nowadays, the school expansion reconfigures the “school format”. silvia moraes and ludmila freire present the results of a research on the global citizenship. this study focuses on a brazilian university, a british university and a third one in portugal. the authors find ground in the ecology of knowledges of boaventura de souza santos, a critic response to the presentism of pinar and the notion of floating signifier of laclau. they argue that the university stands as a discursive context for building citizenship e why they conceives citizenship as a floating signifier. mei wu hoyt tries to answer the questions: what forces mobilize or sustain the process of the internationalization of curriculum studies in this local context? when local cultural and curricular efforts meet the international, how do they work with, through, and around the process of “complicated conversation”? what is the nature of such a process? in order to do that, she studies the curriculum studies center at south central normal university in china. her study is based on the works of pinar and the notion of rhizomic matrix. in different ways, the texts provoke us, destabilize certainties and operate with distinct notions of curriculum. as in other works of tci, the field seems to seek to build other ways to investigate, that can account for the complexity, of the fluid, floating, contingent nature of the curriculum. in this movement, we cease to ask what curriculum means, and start to ask what we are meaning by curriculum. we hope that other authors present themselves to participate in the attempt to respond to this issue. notes 1 alicecasimirolopes@gmail.com references lopes, a. c. (2015) normatividade e intervenção política: em defesa de um investimento radical (normativity and political intervention: in defense of a radical investment). in: alice casimiro lopes; daniel de mendonça. (org.). a teoria do discurso de ernesto laclau: ensaios críticos e entrevistas. são paulo: annablume, p. 117-147. mailto:alicecasimirolopes@gmail.com o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: lopes, alice casimiro. (2013). curriculum and meaning. transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> curriculum and meaning alice casimiro lopes 1 state university of rio de janeiro, brazil upon answering certain questions of zizek, laclau (laclau, ernesto; butler, judith; zizek, slavoj, 2000) affirms that gradualism implies a belief in a neutral administrative center, capable of solving social issues in a non-political manner. those who bet on gradualism, believe they are participating in a social step that will necessarily evolve into a more advanced one, compared to the step in which they live, assuming the possibility of a progressive movement with a rational bias that confers a certain reassuring aspect to the desired goals. it is a logical way to think about the social that seems to assure a foundation for our policy options. it gives us the certainty of being on the "bright side". i reckon that throughout the history of curriculum, the gradualist perspective is propagated in our discourses. we tend to seek both the accuracy of purposes via goals or even via a telos of social change or the subject's identity formation (lopes & macedo, 2013) as well as the accuracy of decision making criteria. these signifiers accuracy, purpose, criteria articulated to others, such as principle, foundation, project and planning, are used in the perspective of safeguarding quality, or democracy and social justice, or even the model of a desired society, in the many different theoretical perspectives and policies. in the most particular case of critical perspectives, such signifiers are also subjected to the idea that, through them, the curriculum can be made political. the accuracy, the purpose, criteria, principles and projects are no longer seen as neutral and technical, but rather subsumed to political deliberation. policy, however, is subjected to a historical rationality and a project of social change, only able to be developed with a simultaneous transformation of the subject. this transformation is equally connected to the project of the desired change. with this, a utopian telos begins an attempt to direct the curriculum towards the desired future. every theoretical, practical, financial and emotional, personal and collective effort happens to be developed in this direction. curricular proposals, projects for practice, guidelines and standards, as well as teaching models and social agreements are developed with the assumption of ensuring that future. incorporating post-foundational contributions into the field of curriculum has played a role in challenging such perspectives. with post-foundationalism, we react to the pure dispersion of post-modernity, to the fragmentation of pure differing, to antifoundationalism that only leads to a position reflexively opposed to modernist foundationalism (laclau, 1993; marchart, 2007). post-foundationalism leads us to work with contingent foundations, even assuming some level of temporary fixation of unstable foundations. policy direction changes and is disassociated from the teleological perspective, incorporating the dynamics of language, its flows, playfulness and unpredictability. lopes, alice. curriculum and meaning 2 transnational curriculum inquiry10(2) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci in this sense, the ideas of precision, purpose, criteria, objective, foundation, project and guideline acquire blurred outlines and shades of gray, becoming vague and imprecise. to be vague and imprecise is not to be wrong or misguided, but to admit to living with ambiguity. and thus one tries to avoid a mystifying certainty that may refer to essentialism in its meaning. one also tries to avoid the mandatory rationality that is supposed to overcome the acts of power. in my view, such perspective opens up interesting possibilities for our field, by working with the curriculum as a struggle for meaning. it deepens the connection between curriculum and power, between curriculum and policy: this process of struggle, there are no mandatory rules, criteria established outside the political dispute, of a supposedly unquestionable place.not a center that emanates or sustains certainty. we participate in this process in all contexts in which we operate and we create such contexts through our actions: as teachers in schools, as professors at universities, as researchers, as producers of academic and school texts, as editors of journals. other research issues are organized and may become the object of our attention. this journal transnational curriculum inquiry aims to be an open channel for such issues and this editorial strives to be an invitation for curriculum researchers to submit their texts aimed at understanding the dynamics of curriculum. texts aimed at questioning the discourses we produce. here is our invitation. notes: 1 e-mail: alicecasimirolopes@gmail.com references laclau, e. (1993). power and representation. in: poster, m. politics, theory and contemporary culture. new york: columbia university press, p. 277-297. laclau, e.; butler, j.; zizek, s. (2000). contingency, hegemony, universality. london:verso. lopes, a. c.; macedo, e. (2013). the curriculum field in brazil since the 1990's. in: william pinar. (org.). international handbook of curriculum studies-2nd. new york: routledge, v. 1, pp. 86-100. marchart, oliver (2007). post-foundational political thought: political difference in nancy, lefort, badiou and laclau. edinburgh: edinburgh university press. mailto:alicecasimirolopes@gmail.com transnational curriculum inquiry 2 (1) 2005 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci review of awakening-struggle: towards a buddhist critical social theory by robert hattam reviewer: heesoon bai simon fraser university, canada what do critical social theory and buddhism have in common? how could they mutually illuminate and strengthen each other theoretically and practicewise? if you are interested in these questions, robert hattam’s recent book awakening-struggle: towards a buddhist critical social theory is a must read. that there are no major publications to date that address these questions make hattam’s book a groundbreaking work. and i am happy to report that, unlike many ground-breaking, cutting-edge works that tend to lack the depth and maturity of scholarship that the more established academic works tend to embody, hattam’s work displays both virtues. indeed, his work presents excellent scholarship in critical social theory and buddhism. also, the reader is, most likely for the first time, introduced to the not too well-known lam-rim teaching from the gelugpa tradition of tibetan buddhism. the common ground on which critical social theory (or, more accurately, a cluster of critical social theories) and buddhism stand is a commitment to human liberation, although we are looking at rather different pictures of liberation. hattam summarizes the difference as follows: “liberation, for buddhism, is about awakening the mind to its nondual nature, whilst liberation for critical theory is about struggling over the social arrangements.” roughly put, buddhism is about enlightenment (another name for liberation) within, while critical theory is about enlightenment without. that the inner and outer liberation should come together and complement each other to form a more complete enlightenment project for humankind makes total sense! why have not more people engaged in this kind of undertaking? in reading hattam’s work, we come to see why this is the case. critical social theory, like many other theories that are taken up in academic discourse, has been increasingly mired in intellectual wrangles and debates, thus becoming less of a political action call and more of a theoretical inquiry. in the words of hattam, “the criticalist discourse community has become inward looking and somewhat disconnected from the http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci review of awakening-struggle transnational curriculum inquiry 2 (1) 2005 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 50 concerns of everyday life” (p. 82). but what precipitated this apathetic reaction of the criticalist community is its encounter with the postmodern deconstructivist critique of the modernist subjectivity. hattam explains that despite its intellectual criticism of the modernist worldview, critical social theory has not been able to let go of the modernist subjectivity because of its inability to conceive of the ethical and political agency outside the modernist subjectivity. as hattam puts it: “ [a] key problem is how a theory of decentered subjectivity [of postmodernism] can be linked to a notion of human agency in which self-reflexive, politically capable (rather than merely discursive) selves become possible” (pp. 91-92). while some may dismiss the above problem as merely a theoretical conundrum (and likewise altogether dismiss deconstructivism), those who do take it seriously find it a challenging koan. and the same can be a formidable challenge for buddhism as well in that the latter, with its foundational view of annata (egolessness), similar to the deconstructivist notion of the decentered subjectivity, may easily succumb to the same agentic malaise. but, as hattam sees it, and rightly so, buddhism has a resource that postmodern decontructivism does not: meditation. hattam states: “i propose that buddhism, and especially its meditation practices, be read as ‘technologies of self’ (foucault 1988a) that deconstructs a reified self, and enables the development of an altruistic mind as a basis for living an ethico-political life in an unjust world” (p. 110). can meditation be a technology of self that resists technologies of domination and power? with a positive answer to this question, we enter the heart of buddhist psychology: understanding, not just intellectually but existentially and experientially, the origin or source of human aggression/violence and exploitation that has been turning life on earth into a literal hell experience for all too many beings for the past few millennia. locating this source and liberating oneself from its tenacious grip is buddhism’s supreme and singular practice that, when understood properly, coincides with the fundamental objective of critical social theory. buddhist meditation is nothing other than the practice of uncovering the source of human existential malaise and exposing it so unambiguously and compellingly to oneself that one has but to change one’s whole outlook and consciousness, which is known as enlightenment or great liberation. the historical buddha taught people that what lies behind the whole façade of human malaise is human suffering. it is the suffering, afflicted mind, not an at-ease, loving and compassionate mind, that manifests greed, anger, hatred, jealousy, violence, domination, exploitation, and so on. but we can go one step further and ask what causes the suffering mind. again, according to buddha’s teaching, it is the dualistic, egoic consciousness that oppositionally separates self from other, the subject from the object, the seer from the seen, and that is the ultimate cause of the whole phenomenology of human suffering. buddhist meditation is the tool and process for seeing in oneself the operations of the dualistic consciousness, and, simultaneously, for the undoing of these intractable operations. while buddhist meditation has been traditionally practiced by individuals for the sole purpose of individual spiritual liberation, its fundamental aim being the deconstruction of the egoconsciousness that gives rise to all forms and degrees of dominance, violence and exploitation, it is in fact a perfect tool for the social transformation that critical theory also seeks. hence hattam’s suggestion that “socially-engaged buddhism can be considered as a resistance narrative for critical theory and, as such, provides a conceptual bridge between critical theory and buddhism” (p. 164). hattam quotes kraft’s (1999, p. 10) working definition of engaged buddhism that perfectly captures the essence: “engaged buddhism entails both inner and outer work. we must change the world, we must change ourselves, and we must change ourselves in order to change the world” (p. 165). thus the engaged buddhist simultaneously works with meditation and activism. http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci review of awakening-struggle transnational curriculum inquiry 2 (1) 2005 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 51 but is socially engaged buddhism something new in our post/modern times? while it can justifiably be argued that the need for it is greater today, buddhism has been from its historical beginning socially engaged. down through the centuries, there has been no lack of strong examples of socially engaged buddhist practitioners and practices. in fact, the whole mahayana tradition with its bodhisattva vow is a clear example. the dalai lama, thich nhat hanh, and sulak sivaraksa are three outstanding contemporary examples, and hattam explores and discusses each one in some detail. specific social, political, and cultural contexts of different times and places give rise to specific challenges and needs, to which engaged buddhism must respond with apropos sensibility, priorities, methods, and practices. the dalai lama, thich nhat hanh, and sulak sivarakso, have each initiated a unique social movement. just what are today’s intractable social conditions that we have to struggle against and work with in order to fully realize our humanity, which is the ultimate goal of enlightenment, east and west? drawing on marx’s analysis of capitalism, critical social theory shows the human condition in modernity to be irrevocably alienated due to the production-oriented mode of life. individuals participating in the capitalist production oriented life face two-fold alienation: alienation from one’s inner life and alienation from fellow human beings and nature. the result of this two-fold alienation is a society that “defines life in terms of greed and collapses the human being to passive consumer, a cog in the machine, to cliché thinking and conformity, a ‘new obedience’” (p. 229). hattam sees that the aim of buddhist critical theory would be to equip us with a clear intellectual understanding of the social process of alienation and, at the same time, ways to psychologically deconstruct the alienated psyche. it is a theory that addresses both the inner, psychological work and outer socio-political work. in erich fromm’s work that triangulates psychoanalysis, marxism, and zen buddhism, hattam finds a rare and accomplished example of this kind of dialectical inner-outer work. however, he also finds weaknesses in fromm’s work. he criticizes fromm’s failure to discuss in detail the zen meditation that fromm adopted for his own practice. ironically, hattam himself neglects to discuss the details of meditation in his work, which i find somewhat unfathomable, given his impassioned argument for the need for a discursive theory of social activism to be experientially supported by such “technologies of self” as meditation. as a whole, hattam’s book, awakening-struggle, is a worthwhile read for anyone interested in contemporary critical social theory. of particular note is his struggle to go beyond discursive social critique and work out the self-society dialectic through a process of personal transformation. it should also be an eye-opening read for students of buddhism, and more generally anyone following a spiritual path, who wants an articulation of the interconnected possibilities of spirituality, social activism, and social revitalization. reference hattam, robert. (2004). awakening-struggle: towards a buddhist critical social theory. flaxton: postpressed. reviewer heesoon bai is an associate professor in the faculty of education at simon fraser university, vancouver, canada. her current research interests include ‘psycho-ontology’, perception and attention, pedagogy of mindfulness, ecological philosophy and education, moral and spiritual education, ethic of care, and democracy and education. she also researches buddhist and daoist philosophy and applies their insights to education. correspondence: heesoon_bai@sfu.ca http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci microsoft word wang_response_6-2.doc       to cite this article please include all of the following details: wang, hongyu (2009). a language of the other and a zen journey: a response. transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date>     a language of the other and a zen journey: a response h o n g y u w a n g oklahoma state university when i was invited to respond to nicholas a-fook’s and jie yu’s respective papers, i was on a sabbatical leave and staying in xiamen, a city in the southern china, where my youngest sister lives. xiamen is a port city with the beautiful landscape of mountain and water— important themes in traditional chinese painting and poetry—and i had been exercising along the mountain trail right behind my sister’s apartment building. the coincidence of dwelling in the mountain and reading nicholas’ poetics of “deconstructing a postcolonial curriculum of being inhabited and inhabiting a language of the other” and jie’s playful “zen journey in the living map of curriculum” provides a unique timing and context for writing this response. it was a time period when i experienced intensely the interconnectedness of life and as a result reached another level of integrity in a jungian sense (rosen, 1996). it felt like everything i had gone through in my life was preparing me for such a wondrous encounter, although this coming together was threaded through “a certain amount of biographical alienation,” as nicholas is so acutely aware, both in a foreign country and in my own native land. this response is also situated in the layers of connections between me and these two authors and their authoring to which i am responding. the intersection between and among the three of us is not only through the intellectual landscape of louisiana state university but also in our separate yet echoing currere of cross-cultural pathways. while nicholas has had multiple, complicated experiences of migration, including a partial chinese heritage passed down from older generations in his family, jie and i both graduated from east china normal university in shanghai as master’s students. the editorial decision to put our papers in conversation already spins the wheel of connection in the background of the collective experience of migration in a globalized society. thus my response to their papers is mediated through my four-month stay in china, where i lectured at various universities and finished interviews with four life historians who told tales of their cross-cultural experiences and teaching for a research project following my cross-cultural thought paper published in this volume. a language of the other while i frequently heard the bilingual (chinese and english) announcements in the public transportation facilities such as airports, subways, and city buses in various chinese cities, travelling from the north to the south during this china trip, i also heard the public announcements in three tongues in southern china: mandarin standard chinese, local chinese dialects, and english. the standard chinese language in its current spoken and written form has, roughly, only a half century of history compared to the thousands of years of chinese history. the official status of mandarin chinese, together with a simplified version of the written chinese language, was a result of an effort to unify the language for national unity and to make literacy in its written form more available to common people. it is a double-edged sword, since the official language suppresses the local dialects at the same time as its purpose of providing formal education to the majority chinese rather than only the wang: a language of the other     transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci   55   elite is also served through language reform. i have lost my parents’ fujian mother tongue as i grew up in the north, and they speak in their local dialect only when they return to their hometown, close to xiamen. along with derrida, nicholas asserts that “we only ever speak one language (english), and we never only speak or perform one language.” derrida’s alienation from his mother tongue (french) is echoed in the lyrics of kristeva’s (kristeva, 2000) “bulgaria, my suffering.” algeria was a colony of france, so even as a child derrida already sensed that his native language was actually not his own but a language of the other. for kristeva, bulgarian as a language is no longer alive, but its rhythm and intonations still surface in kristeva’s dreams, and in her emotions when the logic of the french language fails her. kristeva’s return to the semiotic maternal memory, however, is not for the purity of language since language is always already heterogeneous, coexistent with “the split subject.” the negotiation within language between the semiotic and the symbolic is crucial for the kristevian subject. nicholas’s own difficulty with his mother tongue—english—and his school language— french—as he inhabits and is inhabited by “the international, philosophical, curricular, disciplinary, and autobiographical language of the other” unfolds the complexity within and across language and thus with/in/against the post-colonial, migrate subject. along the way, nicholas has lost the chinese language which had been the language of some of his extended family members. nicholas’s song of language and culture is more poignant, with a stronger sense of struggle, than are jie’s and my papers for this volume. jie and i, as native chinese although from different generations, came to the us to start our doctoral studies after we had established our respective chinese identities situated in the larger historical context of a rising china in the international scene in the 1990s and the 21st century. at least for me, the assumption of cultural equality is the basis of my experiencing of “learning from the other” (todd, 2003). the depth of racism in its entangled ways in which nicholas’ family and he suffered is beyond the reach of jie’s and my cross-cultural difficulty. it is more painful to be an alien in one’s own home, a home that is simultaneously foreign due to the history of colonization. a zen journey as jie renders it, on the other hand, requires the wisdom that comes from seeing through suffering and playing with difficulty (i will return to this point later) so that pain leads to enlightenment rather than an over-emphasis on struggles. in the universe of language, both the juxtaposition of differences (miller, 2005), as the simultaneous use of different languages displays, and translation in an in-between space offer a migrant subject co-creative and creative opportunities—opportunities, as kristeva sings, layered through suffering—in his or her trajectory of encountering the other, living biographical alienation, and transforming the potentiality of history into the present of multiple possibilities. a zen journey jie’s zen journey came my way at a time when a taoist and zenlike approach is emerging in my own life and teaching, as a result of cultivating a sense of flow in a third space (wang, 2009) to reach a zero space that hosts the all-inclusive energy of life. and the life history project i am currently engaging brought moments of revelation as i interviewed chinese and american life historians in china. a chinese (american) professor1, song (an anonymous                                                                                                                           1  song has obtained american citizenship during his 20 years in the us, so officially he is a chinese-american. however, his cultural identity is evidently chinese in his current stage of life. thus, i use the term chinese (american) to indicate the ambiguity of identity.   wang: a language of the other     transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci   56   name), who lived and taught in the us for two decades and recently returned to china, described how his engaging “a language of other” from the west—immersed in scientific reason—has helped him to reach a zenlike enlightenment which connects light with emptiness (the chinese character 光has the double meanings of light and emptiness) in his homecoming. at the meantime, this zenlike approach is not only “a language of other” to the west, but also as a somewhat lost language within china during the modernization and westernization of china in the past century as china struggled to deal with the invasion of the west in various forms. song felt like returning to china now was to return to his spiritual home and get in touch with a lost language of his own. my work with him has touched a part of me usually not visible in the busy routine of everyday life, also existing long before i was born, and in being touched, i have sensed a deeper integration of a cross-cultural subject in the context of a collective unconsciousness and consciousness. such timing makes me deeply appreciate jie’s zen rendering of cultivating a different consciousness to engage daily lives through meditative imagination and “to find cracks for alternatives,” alternatives to those to which we have become attached in the taken-for-granted assumptions and practices. yoshiharu nakagawa (2008) points out that eastern thought has a multidimensional view of reality, including phenomenal reality, the intermediate realm of imagination, and infinite reality that is the deepest dimension. he also argues that the two folds of a meditative movement in its seeking mode towards the infinite and its returning mode to enlighten daily routine make the infinite permeate the phenomenal and the imaginative in eastern spirituality. zen is an exemplar for this double movement. thus the task of an educator is to lead students to go deeper (or to reach higher, using the metaphor of mountain climbing) towards the ultimate reality and to come out to live life in a full awareness of the infinite. jie’s journey into achieving a zen emptiness which is pregnant with all possibilities, in her refusal to occupy the land, plays “the stingless lute of curriculum to get a new key beyond in the living map of the curriculum,” a new key that lingers both upwards and downwards. jie asks us, “how can we discriminate among different directions in specific situations without drifting through free flows of information and choices in the living map of curriculum as nomads?” this is an important question. just as alan watts’ abandoning of the discipline of zen leads to his unfinished project of dissolving the lonely ego into the interconnectedness of life, a zen journey is not a free flowing walk but a labor of emptying what is already deeply rooted in one’s mind in order to nurture nonaggression. listening to “the calling of the world,” as jie phrases it so nicely, does not give travelers a free will to go wherever they choose, but requires an attentiveness to the world as it is, emptying out our pre-set conceptions and our desire to impose a man-made order upon the world. zen is a highly disciplined exercise for reaching an ultimate reality, and the purpose of unlearning daily routine in its given assumptions is to get in touch with the ultimate in which the illusionary nature of the individual ego or separate object is revealed. while the connection between zen and poststructural discourses and practices has been made in the academic literature, i remain skeptical about putting the two on the same plane, since poststructural theories question the foundation of any absolute or ultimate reality. alan watts interprets buddhism and zen in a more freelance style, but as my essay implies, such a style did not help watts to eventually live a zen-enlightened life. the promise of liberation from social constraints and individual biases was deeply appealing to the american youth in the 1960s and 1970s, but if such a liberation stays on the surface of allowing desire to flow without going deeper to illuminate the essence of nonduality, it cannot be truly liberating. a zen journey of curriculum in the living map offers vibrant opportunities to get in touch with wang: a language of the other     transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci   57   the pulse of life, and revitalizing requires the devotion of mindfulness and contemplation toward awakening. a curriculum of hospitality through a zen emptiness: a playful inteaching song comments: “if there is indeed a god that created the world, the reason for such a creation, as i think about it again and again, can be only one reason: that is play. just look at young children: all they want is to play.” he is not a believer in god, but he believes in the vital breath of life, the spirit as william doll (1998) depicts it in his three s curriculum (science, story, and spirit). song prefers a sense of play seen in the messiness of chinese life, which does not consistently stick to regulations over the orderly structure of the american life that follows certain rules more coherently. this sense of play can be strangled by the deadly seriousness of scientific reason, which has had its overwhelming triumph for the last several centuries in the west, and moral reason, which controlled china for a thousand years. derrida’s project to deconstruct modern western philosophy and thought is to see through the fragility of its foundation to deconstruct “the apparent firmness, hardness, durability, or resistance” of systems and institutions, a hardness that is forged by the logocentrism of scientific reason, a hardness song sees as the problem of the west in its desire for only yang (without yin). in nicholas’ play with language and culture, he breathes life into the movement of a post-colonial subject in time and place, and across time and space, and subsequently disrupts the seriousness of clear-cut boundaries in both traditional curricula and some social justice curricula. in jie’s father’s humor and her own poetic play, the metaphor of a living map empties out the deadly rigidity of a preset map. nicholas tells us, “derrida asks us to learn how to listen carefully, and open ourselves toward hosting unconditionally, the language of the other as both a potential host and enemy.” if the derridian hospitality hosts both unconditional generosity and a hostile tendency, then a zen of emptiness opens up an all-inclusive energy that does not set up any dualistic camp for friend versus enemy. the endless possibility of a zero space hosts the generativeness of one, the tensionality of two (like yin and yang are open to each other through tensionality but not hostility as yin is within yang while yang is within yin), and the creativity of three (the dynamics of yin and yang giving birth to something new), and in such a space hostility is already integrated into an inclusive breath that does not generate aggression but compassion. a zenlike nonaggression is more appealing to me than the overemphasis on struggle in much contemporary literature, including some postmodern discourses. in this sense, a zen journey becomes “a language of the other” to overusing “post” in its anxiety to overcome its opposite, a language of the other from the other horizon to which nicholas alludes in his footnote and which is, paradoxically, made visible in the west through a post-logic including post-colonial and post-structural intellectual and cultural movements. i would argue that a deconstructed post-colonial curriculum can benefit from a zenlike approach to cultivate nonviolence through nonviolence. at the same time, the influence of derridian deconstruction also leads me to question the underlying foundation of an ultimate reality in zen. here living with the aporia between a zen devotion to the final enlightenment and a questioning spirit of deconstructing metanarratives becomes important for playing a derridian curriculum of hospitality with a zen emptiness of inclusive generosity. jie’s notion of inteaching is particularly illuminating for educators. there are three aspects of such an inteaching, which she elaborates: first, inteaching requires the teacher’s attentive listening to students and reflecting on “how our teaching affects our students in their wang: a language of the other     transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci   58   learning” as a healing for to the effects of aggressive teaching, which is so common in the classroom. second, to get away from an impositional mode of teaching, teachers need to be aware when they have said enough so as to leave room for students’ own awareness. third, the role of the teacher is to enable learning to happen and not to be the dictator. such teaching is indeed an art of enabling, although i think in this mode the teacher is more than a helper or facilitator, as if the student is innocent and free from aggression, but is a playful teacher of wisdom and compassion who enlightens students without forcing their change. jie’s inteaching echoes nicholas’ “double movement of teaching and learning” that “involves a listening, a curricular movement of heading unconditionally and conditionally toward each other.” to infuse the spirit of inteaching, we open up the teaching space of hospitality and emptiness. in my last time of climbing the mountain in xiamen, a ten-year-old girl jumped ahead of me and called to her mother behind: “hurry up, mom! it is a most beautiful scene to watch the sunrise or sunset on the top of the mountain!” it was a sunset time and the girl was eager to lead her mother to the most beautiful scene. while the younger one was eager to get to the top, i was lingering in the midst of the mountain anticipating and experiencing the vital energy of a zero space from the top. it is in the middle of the mountain that one can admire the fuller shapes of other mountains and can see in more detail the beauty of the valleys. the mountain trail is winding and leads in various directions, and if one is willing, one can follow different pathways each time, and one can walk out one’s own pathway without following the existing paths, as jie calls upon us to do. while the top of the mountain alludes to an allinclusive energy, the dwelling within the mountain unfolds various complicated and tangled pathways to different scenery. in different ways, all my life historians tell me: “my past prepared me for the present in such a way that has been beyond what i could have anticipated.” to reach a different consciousness is the motif of currere, unfolding the pathways of each teacher in being educated and educating others. this motif permeates three papers published in this volume in their ongoing projects without definite endings—jie’s nonconclusion to “what is not yet,” nicholas’s unfinished farewell, and my own continuous engagement with cross-cultural studies and teaching. along a similar vein, this response ends as a prelude that invites and inspires other projects of subjectivity and education. references: doll, jr., william e. (1998). the spirit of education. early childhood education, 31, 3-7. kristeva, julia (2000). the crisis of the european subject. trans. from the french by susan fairfield. new york: columbia university press. miller, janet (2005). sounds of silence breaking: autobiography, women, curriculum. new york: peter lang. nakagawa, yoshiharu (2008). eastern wisdom and holistic education: multidimensional reality and the way of awareness. in claudia eppert & hongyu wang (eds.), crosscultural studies in curriculum: eastern thought, educational insights (pp. 227-245). new york: lea/taylor & francis. rosen, david (1996). the tao of jung: the way of integrity. new york: penguin. todd, sharon (2003). learning from the other. new york: suny. wang, hongyu (2009). the chronotopes of encounter and emergence. journal of curriculum theorizing, 25 (1), 1-5. to cite this report please include all of the following details: transnational curriculum inquiry http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> peer review process 2013 stats and reports issues published: 02 total submissions: 22 reviewed: 17 accepted (with revisions or not): 12 papers in review 05 declined: 23% reviewers ana maria monteiro federal university of rio de janeiro brazil audrey msimanga university of the witwatersrand south africa claudia eppert university of alberta canada claudia matus pontifical catholic university of chile chile francisco sousa açores university portugal frida diaz barriga arceo autonomous university of mexico mexico hongyu wang oklahoma state university usa maria inês marcondes pontifical catholic university of rio de janeiro brazil raquel goulart barreto state university of rio de janeiro brazil rita frangella state university of rio de janeiro brazil tero autio tallinn university estonia todd price national louis university usa ursula hoadley university of cape town south africa wenjun zhang zhejiang university china william e. doll, jr british columbia university canada transnational curriculum inquiry 2 (1) 2005 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci commentaries and conversations on mika yoshimoto’s ‘late-blooming student’ editor: noel gough university of canberra, australia introduction transnational curriculum inquiry (tci) is both a site for transnational scholarly conversations and a site for inquiry into the ways that electronic publishing procedures facilitate and/or constrain inclusive knowledge work in global virtual spaces. one of the ways in which we hope to produce such conversations is by keeping tci’s editorial policies and procedures flexible and refraining from imposing arbitrary standards and styles. for example, tci does not have a fixed publication schedule: articles and book/media reviews will be published as soon as they are accepted for publication. each issue will normally consist of one article or one book/media review but (as was the case in volume 1, issue 1), articles that we believe might be complementary will be reviewed together and, if accepted, published as a single issue. we will also be flexible in matters of layout and style. if authors go to the trouble of formatting their articles in a particular way then we will not change them to fit our templates. similarly, we do not prescribe one single citation style. authors are free to use whatever style they see as most appropriate for their work, provided that they use a style consistently and provide all of the bibliographic information we require. tci’s review policies and procedures will also be flexible. for example, although all articles published in tci will be peer reviewed, they will not necessarily be ‘blind’ reviews. authors may choose to anonymise their manuscripts, and the editors will respect their choice, but we will not impose anonymity on authors. each manuscript is normally reviewed by at least three referees, two of whom, in most circumstances, will be of different nationalities from the author(s) and from each other. in addition, the editor may assign a consulting editor to liaise with the referees and the editor in reaching a decision about publication (in this issue i have taken this role myself). each referee’s signed review will be circulated to the other referees. my experience, like that of many other journal editors, is that signed reviews are generally of a higher quality than unsigned reviews. however, the names of referees will not be divulged to authors of rejected manuscripts. at the editor’s discretion, manuscripts accepted for publication may be published together with some or all of the referees’ reports and the author’s response, as is the case in this issue. the major difference between yoshimoto’s submitted paper and the published version is her addition of an autobiographical entry and “a lingering note”. i wish to thank mika yoshimoto for her patience, and also thank susan talburt, yen yen woo, and sumiko nishizawa for their thoughtful and engaging commentaries and questions. http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci transnational curriculum inquiry 2 (1) 2005 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci �late-blooming student, roots of loneliness run deep, as i return home mika yoshimoto reviewed by susan talburt georgia state university, usa this is an enjoyable, at times provocative, evocation of transnational cosmopolitanism that moves within and across locations. it depicts both comfort and discomfort with the familiar and the different, as well as their relations. to offer an experiential response, the manuscript brought me to think not only of my own languages, in-betweens, insides, and outsides, but also of short stories and essays, ranging from pico iyer�’s the global soul to the short stories of mary yukari waters and to the novels of ishiguro. by taking curriculum theorists� calls for a sort of currere into the context of transnational living, the author dramatizes significant questions about contact, context, language, and the everyday. a strength of the manuscript lies in its reminder to readers of tci to include not only abstract theorizing about postcolonial and transnational contact and globalization but also multiple forms of representation in their their teaching and thinking. these forms of representation should include the everyday lived curriculum. where i find the manuscript less compelling is in what i deem to be its reliance on readers to make educational connections. in other words, in order to have the effect espoused in the abstract of encouraging transnational curriculum to account for the everyday, this manuscript must be read by readers with such a predisposition or in a context that calls for such readings and makes such connections. i add a few specific comments, none major, but, i hope, worthy of consideration: 1. the first part of the manuscript�’s title, �’late-blooming student’,� is somewhat opaque. i learn from the author’�s abstract that she is not young, or a �traditional student,� as we say in the us. and i learn from the acknowledgments and author bio (at the end) that the author is a phd student, but it strikes me that the title shouldn’ �t depend on these locations. or does the author mean to tell us that she has become of late a student of the everyday? 2. at times the references to writers such as bakhtin or derrida flow quite artfully in the writing. at other times, however, they seem forced (e.g. see pp. 7-8, with ivanič, citing fairclough et al.) or rote (e.g. p. 12, ‘i think of derrida’�s argument…’ �� or p. 16 with derrida and then keller and hooks). these references are useful guides to inform readers of the languages that constitute the writer’�s world and should remain in the text. however, at times, they do not flow easily with the text. 3. it is interesting to me that the author does not embed in her manuscript any covertly didactic curricular implications. for example, a reference to curricularists such as pinar and aoki (as in the abstract) that might jog readers to think about what prepares or doesn’ �t prepare the author to live across these contexts and contradictions could help to allow this manuscript to make an overt curricular argument (even while done covertly). reviewer susan talburt is associate professor of educational policy studies at georgia state university. correspondence to stalburt@gsu.edu 43 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci transnational curriculum inquiry 2 (1) 2005 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci �late-blooming student, roots of loneliness run deep, as i return home mika yoshimoto reviewed by yen yen joyceln woo long island university, new york, usa dear mika, i enjoyed reading this article very much. the attention that you paid to the practices of everyday life from the perspective of someone who has �returned�, such as gift-giving and language-usage, reveals a lot about the cultural landscape through which japanese citizens are educated. there is a lot of rich data in this article about ways in which you feel called to perform the role of a japanese woman because of your attention to the embodied senses of regret, embarrassment, or anger. this article was also intriguing in its use of haiku, which in itself conveys the moments quite powerfully. however, i found presenting the entire article in the form of diary entries with no metaanalysis problematic. an entry in a diary is written in a moment, in a particular time and place, and remembers that moment. it was difficult for me as a reviewer for a few reasons. first, how do i provide feedback on a diary? how could i, as a reviewer, ask someone to change his/her diary entries? should diary entries not remain as they are? second, it appears that there has been some level of rewriting beyond just the translation of the diary entries. for instance, there have been citations added with quotes and page numbers (although citations were not used consistently throughout the article). yet, there were no indications, in the background section, of the process of editing. i felt that as a reader, i needed you to tell me what was done to the diary entries after they were completed. were they edited? were there entries that you chose not to include? were quotations added later on? third, using a diary form for the entire article does not seem to allow much space for connecting your observations and thoughts to a broader scholarly context. how have international scholars written about �the japanese curriculum �? how does this present account challenge or extend the conversation about curriculum or transnational curriculum inquiry? fourth, i felt there was not enough analysis to articulate the fresh perspectives you arrived at by your attention to the �experiences and knowledge of everyday lives� that you describe in the abstract. for instance, what were the threads of inquiry, or questions raised, that you feel would not have been articulated if attention had not been paid to everyday life? recommendations for revision: 1. the process of rewriting and editing could be more clearly articulated. 2. articulate a clearer theoretical framework that emerges from your diary entries. what fresh perspectives did you glean by using your particular approach that you wouldn’�t have been able to see otherwise? 3. you might wish to consider selecting specific moments from the diary entries for a more in-depth analysis outside of the diary form. in other words, use your diary entries as data rather than the entirety of the article. for instance, the linguistic terms that are used to describe different categories of women, absence of the male equivalents, and the feelings these terms evoke in you, are in themselves rich enough for an article on socio-cultural images of the roles of women. 44 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci transnational curriculum inquiry 2 (1) 2005 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 4. consider more critically how canada is represented in your diary entries. you begin the abstract by situating your work as �postcolonial, transnational � curriculum inquiry yet somehow, while you critique your experience of japanese practices, the figure of canada gets presented as unitary and uncomplicated. what does it mean for a transnational to see through a postcolonial lens? how might your experience of canada be related to your privileged status in a school of higher learning? 5. consider more critically your use of �western� theories/images to describe your own experience. one moment in the entry dated july 10, for instance, was especially jarring. the statement reads: �’if i had become close to them, i cannot be sure how i would have felt, because clearly i am experiencing vygotsy�’s (1962) cultural historical theory of psychological development and development of the personality’�. this neat capturing of what you are experiencing using vygotsy�s framework seems to contradict your focus on �that language which is unspeakable or untranslatable� which you mention in your abstract. i think this journal entry is very elucidative in terms of how transnational educational experiences shape and categorize our thinking. related literature that you might be interested in reading: benedict anderson talks about the �spectre of comparisons� in a book by the same name as a feeling of vertigo, where �here� and �there� gets mixed up when you are transnational. this is a sense of seeing places and things simultaneously �up close up and from afar�. crafting selves� by dorrine kondo might be useful to you as she uses events of everyday life in a japanese factory to trouble notions of identity. dorothy smith and her work on �everyday life as problematic� should provide a good articulation of using everyday life to ask questions of a broader cultural-political landscape. thoughts/observations that this submission evoked: this is a very evocative article, and it evoked a few thoughts for me, which might or might not be interesting to you. reading this together with the article in the inaugural tci issue by lixin luo made me think of the question of what �curriculum work� means for transnational curriculum scholars. it appears that �curriculum work�, for those of us who have lived and work within and across different national boundaries, is the re-evaluation of the ways that we have been educated and the communication of our changing perspectives. in both your article and in luo�’s article, the story of curriculum work is also the story of discovering new strengths and capacities. i am intrigued by what transnational curriculum work does to transnational women and our understandings of how, when, and what we can speak. whose voices do we speak through? who do our heroes become? again, i enjoyed reading this very much and think that there is a lot of value in the type of reflection that you have engaged in on you trip back to japan. i sincerely hope that what you have written here can be developed further into several articles. with best regards, yen yen joyceln woo reviewer yen yen joyceln woo is assistant professor in the school of education at the c.w.post campus of long island university. correspondence to yenyen.woo@liu.edu 45 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci transnational curriculum inquiry 2 (1) 2005 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci �late-blooming student, roots of loneliness run deep, as i return home mika yoshimoto reviewed by sumiko nishizawa kwantlen university college, british columbia, canada yoshimoto’s article titled in the form of haiku is an inspirational inquiry into her experience of living between languages and cultures and the struggle for understanding self. as laurel richardson writes, the narrative of the self is a powerful means of inquiry, inviting readers to experience different events, times and spaces beyond their own. not only does yoshimoto provide detailed analysis of aspects of japanese people and society, but she also helps us appreciate the value of sharing a space with people of different cultures and languages, as she portrays how our values and norms are constructed through social frameworks, and how the values and norms can be shifted when these social frameworks shift. since i have lived in a similar space between languages and cultures, i am intrigued by how similar our experiences are, even though our social environments are very different. but at the same time, i notice how different life experiences have shaped us to perceive and interpret issues and aspects of the everyday lives of japanese people differently. even though yoshimoto and i are both “insiders,” our perspectives and understandings sometimes differ. as interested as i am by her extraordinary journey, however, the purpose of her narrative kept evading my grasp. it seems at times as if she expects the reader to read and interpret a space between words in her haiku and writing. such ambiguity may be what she intends to portray; nevertheless, i would prefer to see her epistemic stance better articulated. 1. in the abstract, yoshimoto writes that “post-colonial, transnational curriculum should value the experiences and knowledge of everyday lives,” but does not clarify how. although she portrayed her experiences and thoughts on education, curriculum issues are not discussed fully, and i would like to see how her lived experience of “unspeakable or untranslatable” language can be brought into curriculum. she discusses ideas of thinkers such as derrida, foucault, and vygotsky, but some of her discussions are not developed adequately to convey her points. 2. she occasionally presents her views in rather an essentialist way, which may mislead the reader to perceive japan and japanese culture as static. this seems particularly evident in her discussion of the japanese education system and japanese women’s status. i do not think such generalizations are her intention, as she is aware of her own transformation brought about by living in between spaces and is generally critical of essentialist representations. a. she asks why it is “impossible for japanese people to break the ice on these taboo topics,” but there have been many works of educators and post-colonial scholars dealing with “taboo topics” such as “burakumin” and indigenous peoples in japan. changes are happening. b. she is critical of the japanese education system as being standardized and competitive. while this may be true compared with the north american education system, it is not the whole story. i would like her to give a little more credit to japanese educators’ endeavors to transform education, even during the time i was a school teacher in japan from 1978 to 1992. japanese educators have been trying to transform curriculum, providing students with more time to engage in activities they 46 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci transnational curriculum inquiry 2 (1) 2005 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci are interested in, and nurturing their creativity, and critical thinking skills. 3. she points out crucial issues regarding how values and beliefs are fluid and can be negotiated and transformed when one’s language and cultural framework shift. however, she writes about them rather arbitrarily, instead of developing them into more solid argument. some comments she makes seem contradictory. for example: a. she writes that her son-in-law is becoming more japanese, and she is becoming more “foreigner.” what does she make of this? b. her views of the generation gap in japan are contradictory as well. she is disappointed by the young japanese exchange student she meets on the plane, and yet she feels happy at the way another group of japanese exchange students handles a delay at the airport. aren’t both experiences the result of intercultural exchanges and shifting cultures and peoples? c. she comments on the older couple who repaired shoes and writes that she is happy “knowing about these old people that live in today’s rapidly changing individualistic society.” but i sense that this “individualistic society” is in fact what she values, and that in her opinion japanese society is not changing rapidly enough. 4. she suggests that living in canada has helped her think critically, which has provided her with perspectives to analyze japanese society and culture. she does so by analyzing japan in contrast with canadian society and culture, resulting in portraying the two societies as though in binary opposition (e.g. canada/japan; western logic/oriental thinking; canadian women/japanese women). i do not think that was her intention. i also could not help wondering whether any of her experiences in canadian society and culture had helped her appreciate japan and japanese culture. a. for example, she is critical of gift-giving in japan and values “christianity’s free-gift concept.” but japanese gift-giving is rooted in caring about others, which i think she values. after reading her article, i had the impression that she is completely content being in canada. i wonder whether her struggle continues here in canada. certainly, that has been my case, and because of the fact that i belong to neither here nor there (a kind of homelessness), i have been able to see a third space between cultures and languages. dwelling in such a third space is the possibility offered by post-colonial and transnational curriculum for which she intends to argue. b. she uses haiku because she cannot convey deep-felt emotions otherwise, yet she criticizes japanese language as illogical and requiring deconstruction. i think what she wanted to point out is how the meaning of language tends to be understood vertically, and what is required is seeking horizontal possibilities. reviewer sumiko nishizawa is an instructor of japanese at kwantlen university college, british columbia, canada. correspondence to sumiko@interchange.ubc.ca 47 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci transnational curriculum inquiry 2 (1) 2005 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci late-blooming student, roots of loneliness run deep, as i return home a response to the reviewers’ comments mika yoshimoto i would like to thank those people who spent the time to review my paper and wrote both warm-hearted encouragement and useful criticisms. first to susan talburt, i am really honoured by your comments and would just like to mention that pico iyer, mary yukari waters and kazuo ishiguro are among my favorite authors. i read much of iyer’s work during my master’s thesis. i especially appreciated when you wrote, “these forms of representation should include the everyday lived curriculum.” to explain my title, i would refer you to the autobiographical entry i included entitled “a brief autobiography explaining my title”. to explain my curricular argument, i have drawn from pinar and aoki’s words, “a lingering note”. next, to yen yen joyceln woo i particularly appreciate your discussion regarding articulating the process of writing that went into my diary. i appreciate the thought-provoking question, “how do i provide feedback on a diary?” because it is something i too thought about. as you said, “an entry in a diary is written in a moment, in a particular time and place, and remembers that moment.” for that reason, i didn’t change any of my diary entries. i also appreciate your reference to three authors, benedict anderson, dorrine kondo and dorothy smith. i enjoyed your comment, “in both your article and in luo’s article, the story of curriculum work is also the story of discovering new strengths and capacities.” in response to your suggestions, i have attempted to better articulate a theoretical framework related to curriculum in “a lingering note”. finally, thanks to sumiko nishizawa whose article “translating literature/transforming lives: an exploration of the third space” truly opened my eyes to the problem of the unspeakable, untranslatable nature of language. my inability to articulate my situation may have created the impression that i am completely content being in canada. this, however, is not the case. therefore, i have attempted to, in “a lingering note” and in my autobiographical notes, more clearly articulate both my epistemic stance and the nature of my existence in canada and how i feel about it. among your comments, i particularly enjoyed the following. “not only does yoshimoto provide detailed analysis of aspects of japanese people and society, but she also helps us appreciate the value of sharing a space with people of different cultures and languages, as she portrays how our values and norms are constructed through social frameworks, and how the values and norms can be shifted when these social frameworks shift.” your comment regarding the contradictions in my everyday experiences guided me towards new understanding of my in-between space that is filled with these contradictions. it is my style to embrace these contradictions and ambiguities in my writing as it reflects my in-between space. 48 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: cossa, josé de inocencio narciso. (2015). ethnographies of schooling in contemporary india by meenakshi thapan (editor). transnational curriculum inquiry volume 12 (1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> ethnographies of schooling in contemporary india by meenakshi thapan (editor) josé de inocêncio narciso cossa 1 phd student, state university of rio de janeiro, brazil the book ethnographies of schooling in contemporary india, organized by meenakshi thapan, presents ethnographies made in private, government and non-aided schools in india. this work is divided into eight chapters by different authors, which present the operation, personal relationships, differences, difficulties and limits of the school that was the location fortheir research. the various texts analyze how purportsare produced in the surveyed schools and discuss the management of the student who questions, claims and goes against the rules imposed by the school.it highlights the influence of popular culture, the media and the aggressiveness of the consumer goods market in the school arena, elements that compete with theschool’s formal ones. the work argues for the importance of the student’s voice in the construction of purports in the school environment. in addition to the focus given to the student´s culture, it seeks to understand the role of the teacher and hisor her expectations in the construction of the school as a whole. the construction of the indian citizen is another aspect present in the chapters of this book, as well as the role of religion, gender and social and political relations. in chapter i, anuradha sharma discusses the theme ethnographies of schooling in contemporary, focusing on a survey carried out at the pratyantarschool. the author used butler (1990), davies (2004) and marcus (1995) as theoretical support. the text is presented from the post-structuralist perspective, with the understanding that individuals are not fixed products of a socially constructed exercise, but rather constructed from the discursive practices through which identities emerge in the school environment. images, metaphors, narrative structures and teaching practices are important in the creation of several lines of thinking. in this manner, the students are not passive recipients with respect to what the school offers them, but already carry the baggage of images, metaphors and myths that conflict with the school’sdeas. another fact brought up in this chapter is the issue of peer relations stating that, while not totally beyond the control of school authorities, this is an informal aspect where students apply their criteria and rules of interaction. it also analyzes the construction of gender identities, supported with studies by judith butler (1990). in this context, teacher’s behavior that unconsciously prioritized male activities was observed, as well as stereotypical images that students brought from home. the school dynamic emphasized the studious and obedient person, virtues and values that were reiterated by the students. cossa. ethnographies of schooling in contemporary india by meenakshi thapan (editor) 57 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (1) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci in conclusion, it stated that group relations acted as intermediaries for socialization in the school’s culture. it further emphasizes that the group culture of a school is an informal aspect of its experience and an integral part of the teaching and learning process. this dimension reveals the understanding of students as social actors not only in school but also outside of it. chapter ii entitled “schooling and the production of student culture: principles and practice”, written by maitrayeedeka, presents an ethnography made in an erudite public school using lucas (2002); seidler (1998); dumont (1980), among others as theoretical support. a fact that stands out was the observation of the absence of some teachers on some school days and another teacher would keep students busy with some activity. in addition to homework every day, students also have weekly evaluations of different school subjects, without questioning evaluations and curriculum content.the school's senior students gave greater prestige to science classes, considering the possibility of becoming engineers or doctors.these students mentioned that this pressure came from their parents. the school gave higher priority to indian culture, heritage, tradition and rational scientific knowledge through various activities such as ceremonies, competitions and special celebrations, which echoed off the nation's project to develop and industrialize.there was a lack of dialogue to communicate to students the school´s principles and they only saw the need to follow them as an empty ritual and did not see such acts as allowing for their development. the body and the mind were regulatory objects in school ideals and disobedience was sanctioned.the training of the mindwas conducted in meetings that took place on tuesdays, led by religious leaders of different religious institutions.students were experiencing multiple negotiation methods to interpret the school’s ideals.they were not homogeneous in their views regarding the cultural ideals of being indian.this construction hybridized several elements including western belief systems. in conclusion, there is the claim that the school was a paradoxical space wherethe students obeyed the rules in the educational and sports contexts, but at the normative level, negotiated as much as possible. another accentuated aspect is that the cultural universe of the students was the bricolage of the local cultural elements along with the global ones. the 3rd chapter, written by anannyagogoi and entitled “the sociological narrative of a government school”, is the result of ethnographic research done in the government school of kiranjyotividyalaya, where the means of communication amongst students as well as teachers was hindi.the theoretical basis of this research are the following authors:durkheim (1961); bernstein, elvin and peters (1966); giddens (1984); goffman (1959). inside the school, there was the painting of the goddess saraswati on one wall, ads posted on other walls containing messages on environmental protection, work and discipline and photographs of school functions and outings. the walls of the science laboratory contained diagrams and formulas of science and economics and collages with pictures of female social activists. the celebration of all the holidays belonging to different religions was striking; however, hindi festivals were the most celebrated in the school. in relation to school fees, students belonging to the schedule castes, schedule tribes and other backward classes recognized by the indian constitution paid less. cossa. ethnographies of schooling in contemporary india by meenakshi thapan (editor) 58 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (1) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the school dynamic, in addition to giving priority to quality and uniform education for the students,also conveyed academic and moral education, with the latter including loyalty, honesty and scientific attitudes or perspectives.it was clear that the intentions and objectives of this school included learning and adhering to moral values and maintaining discipline.in this context, the organizational structure emphasized as fundamental the performance of the activities required to achieve the school´s academic and vocational intentions. the students saw the school as the temple and the teacher as a priest who transmits knowledge.the holy aspect of the school emerged, as well as the consideration of the school environment and the teachers as ideal models.thus, the school and its sacred organization were distanced from the outside world. in addition to other rituals such as the annual examination and formal and informal celebrations such as independence day and diwali festival, a ritual that was a manifestation of institutionalized authority also stood out: the discipline. the school had closed circuit cameras, through which the director controlled the teaching environment and the entry of strangers. the camera's presence in the school strengthened the structure of the institutionalized authority, a fact that limited the students´ freedom of expression. in conclusion, it is emphasized that the school seen from a distance appears to be a formal institution with impersonal relationships among the students and teachers. because of the above, the school project had many aspects that were organizing school life beyond what was effectively academic.however, when viewed from the inside, the school offered a space/time for teachers and students to express themselves and build relationships that worked as support in times of stress.this understanding of formal duties and informal interaction can be considered as the main driving force that helped the school function. therefore, there was a great difference between the ideals that were set forth in school and the practiced culture. there were also varying degrees of approval and practices of ideals derived from the social order. so teachers and students rationalized values /ideals according to their beliefs and situational needs. this can be considered as a means of creating their own unwritten and individual culture that distinguished them from other schools with the same written and formal guidelines. the 4th chapter, written by meenakshi thapan and entitled “schooling, identity and citizenship education”, presents an ethnography carried out in three schools. the study used delanty (2009), hennessey (2006); piper and garratt (2004) as theoretical support and examines the relationships between education, citizenship and identity within pluralistic and complex processes and of environments that characterize education in contemporary times. it also examines the notion of citizenship instilled using civic education and the ways the struggles and communication processes take place in the classroom. it is understood that citizenship is not a legal statute, but a social process that leads to the production of values related to freedom and autonomy, as well as those that build the students’ perceptions from their relationship with society. it also states that school culture is not only constructed by the school´s official line of thinking, but it is simultaneously created and subverted by the students, teachers and administration, which seek to bring their ownpurports to school. the public school, government boys senior secondary school in delhi, values patriotism and respect for national borders and the emergence of the ego with respect to the cossa. ethnographies of schooling in contemporary india by meenakshi thapan (editor) 59 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (1) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci identity defined in assemblies where patriotic and religious songs and the national anthem are sung. the other two schools are private schools. the english medium private school gave priority to the instilment of values related to good behavior, discipline and good manners. a culture of discipline on the dress code was not restricted to students, but also teachers. the third school, privateunaided english medium school, gave priority to communicative discipline, good manners and good behavior.the moral space of the morning meeting was replaced by photographic exhibition and quotes written on the walls of the hallways and classrooms.the school buildings were named after national heroes in different spheres. the 5th chapter entitled "in quest of identity: student culture in a religious minority institution", by parul bhandari, presents an ethnography done at the non-aided st. margaret school, attended by girls in new delhi, using benei (2005), willis (1997) and bourdieu (1977) as theoretical support. through this ethnography, various aspects of the school culture were analyzed, such as the school as an organization, the student culture and the various forms in which students take ownership and negotiate with the school. it also analyzes citizenship ideas as they are embraced by the school and received by the students and finally the role of religious identity.this ethnography also explains and explores the dynamics of group relationships and identity formation. the emphasis of the school is given to christian identity and the transmission of values and compliance with the rules through christian ways. the dynamics and the construction of christian identity in the school were analyzed, their citizenship values and their distinct cultures as a result of the interplay between education and religion. however, there was a gap between the aspirations and goals of the school and those of the students. therefore, the study states that they are not docile bodies, for they have their own means of resistance to authority and discipline.the presence of a statue of jesus christ and mother mary was also noted in the classrooms and the hallways. the paintings showed texts that communicated moral values from biblical passages.there were also photos of famous freedom fighters and political leaders of the country. in terms of rituals, st. margaret had a morning assembly and celebrated the day of the republic, independence day, teacher’s day, children’s day, christmas and its own founding. the school emphasized the full development of the student, with a focus on sports, dance and debates. however, the teaching structure was most prominent. in addition to the duties and functions officially set, the school also defined its own forits teachers via the school diary, which praised the transmission of knowledge without prejudice. however, due to its religious affiliation, the school faced many obstacles and struggles in the transmission of civic ideals and citizenship. chapter vi of authors matthan, t., anusha, c., thapan, m., entitled being muslims, becoming citizens: the muslim girls' school in post-riot ahmedabad, used jaffrelot & thomas (2012) and jasani (2010) as theoretical support and presents the ethnography made at a school attended by muslim girls in the state of gujarat. this chapter examines discourses on citizenship within a minority space in order to understand the representations and the ideas of a "good citizen". the effort to create a "good citizen" is performed by the pedagogical instruction language and its meaning is related to the turbulent past and through the preservation of culture and assertion of differences. the priority of the school was to teach the girls to speak little and softly and learn how to talk to boys. cossa. ethnographies of schooling in contemporary india by meenakshi thapan (editor) 60 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (1) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci in conclusion, the study makes the claim that, through an exploration of various aspects, the unstable nature of being and simultaneously becoming a citizen and a muslim in gujarati stood out. it is a project that is still worked on by various actors within and outside the school, to reconcile the apparently conflicting aspects between being muslim and becoming a citizen. chapter 7, written by bhavya dore and entitled "living in the bubble: rishi valley school and the sense of community", used the following authors as theoretical support: durkheim (1956); anderson (1983); bidwell (1965) and mclaren (1999). it is an ethnography done at rishi valley school. what was observed was that the school was marked by considerable lowness in terms of hosting events, of technologies, of cultural importation and of the diverse movements within school spaces. the school sought to enforce discipline, instrumental teaching practices and to prepare students to have high grades and for the so-called real world. it was understood that this was accomplished by following schedules and through a set of activities. this school did not observe other religious holidays, only dispensed students on sundays and two national holidays.it was also found that the culture of a rishi valley student involved a negotiation between the city's values and those of the school. chapter 8 by meenakshi thapan, entitled "school experience: an autobiographical approach" used ellis (1999); clifford (1986); pinar (2004/2011); willis (1977); bourdieu and foucault (1977) as theoretical support and makes an attack on the ethnographies presented throughout the chapters. in this context, she presents her autobiography and brings several other biographies with different testimonies relating school experiences. it is then stated that the autobiographical method reduces the distance between the researcher and the location of the research. then there is the story of the author’s school experience, who was bitter because she lived in a boarding school far from her family and so, in her opinion, the school should fill the void created by the absence of her family. the author then notes that at the school where she studied had disciplinary rules aimed at making them "good girls" so that later they would be good wives and mothers. however, the author points out that the students always found ways of expressing themselves against the rules and discipline imposed. in conclusion, she points out that for the sociologist of education, the study of schools is submersed in the experience of a similar sense of "strangeness". familiarity emerges from the experience of having been a student somewhere in the past and this is what makes the task of the school sociologist a unique experience. therefore, ethnographic studies are presented in this review from private, government and non-aided schools in different regions of india like delhi, ahmedabad, gujarat, andhra pradeshi's chittoor district, sarvodaya vidyalaya, pratyantar, which have different forms of operation. we could observe, for instance, that in some schools, the type of activities and opportunities designed for boys were different from those proposed for the girls, as noted at the pratyantarschool. there were also schools that valued the regulation and control of body and mind as well as academic and moral education, as was the case of erudite public school and kiranjyoti vidyalaya school, respectively. it can also be noted that there are schools that give centrality to religious aspects and these are basic in the transmission of values and compliance with rules and conform to the ways of christian life. this is the case, for example, of the non-aided st. margaret school in new delhi. another aspect that drew attention was the issue of education for citizenship, the formation of an indian identity and the idea of the sense of community in goverment cossa. ethnographies of schooling in contemporary india by meenakshi thapan (editor) 61 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (1) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci boys senior secondary school; private unaided english medium school; erudite public school; school of gujarat; and the rishi valley boarding school. finally, the organizer of the texts, meenakshi thapan, presents the various ethnographies reported in the book and also from her own autobiography, which is the account of the difficulties that students faced at boarding school and her experience as a student, and from this experience, she suggests that school should make up for the absence of parents. the book, reviewed in terms of its methodological approach, used the accounts of several ethnographic surveys and several authors as theoretical support. on one hand, based on such research, we can then draw attention to the importance of this study in terms of curriculum, since these ethnographic studies, throughout the texts, analyzed research conducted in different schools from different regions of india and, within such school spaces, different educational practices and different ways of evaluating the work of teachers and students. on the other hand, it also analyzes the ways in which students within the school environment communicated and interacted with each other and with the teachers and school administrators, as well as what was being presented and discussed at schoolwith respect to school subject content. another contribution of this ethnographic research for the curriculum field is that, besides having allowed researchers to observe in schools the way in which the disciplinary contentwas presented and the evaluation of learning, it equally allowed for the observation of the behavior and attitudes required from male and female students in the context of producing a school curriculum. notes 1 josecossa81@gmail.com references anderson, b. (1983). imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. london: verse. benei, v. (2008). schooling passions: nation, history, and language in contemporary western india. stanford, ca: stanford university press. bernstein, b., elvin, h. and peters, r. (1996). ritual in education, philosophical transactions of the royal society of london, series b, 251 (772): 429-439. bidwell, c. (1965). the school as a formal organization. in: march, james g. (ed), handbook of organizations.chicago il: rand mcnally. bourdieu, p. (1979/2010). distinction: a social critique of the judgment of taste. london: routledge. bourdieu, p. (1977). cultural reproduction and social reproduction. in: karabel, j. and ahhalsey (eds), power and ideology in education. new york, ny: oxford university press, pp.487-511. butler, j. (1990). gender trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity. new york, ny: routledge. mailto:josecossa81@gmail.com cossa. ethnographies of schooling in contemporary india by meenakshi thapan (editor) 62 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (1) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci davies, b. & harre, r. (2001). positioning the discursive production of selves. in: wetherell, m., taylor, s. and yates, s. j. (eds), discourse theory and practice: a reader. london, thousand oaks, ca; new delhi: sage publications, pp.261-283. delanty, g. (2009). the cosmopolitan imagination: the renewal of critical social theory. cambridge: cambridge university press. dumont, l. (1980). homo hierarchicus: the caste system and its implication. chicago, il: university of chicago press. durkheim, e. (1961). moral education: a study in the theory and application of the sociology of education. new york, ny: the free press. durkheim, e. (1956). education and sociology (trans. and intro. sherwood d. fox). new york, ny: free press. ellis, c. (1999). heartful anthropolgy, qualitative health research, 9 (5): 669-683. foucault, m. (1977). discipline and punish: the birth of the prison (trans.alan sheridan). new york, ny: vintage books, random house. giddens, a. (1984). the constitution of society outline of theory of structuration. berkeley, ca; los angeles, ca: university of california press. goffman, e. (1959). the presentation of self in everyday life. new york, ny: anchor books. hennessey, p. h. (2006). from student to citizen: the community-based vision for democracy. toronto: white knight books. jaffrelot, c. and charlotte, t. (2002). facing ghettoisation in riot-city: old ahmadabad and juhapura between victimisation and self-help. in: gayer, l. and jaffrelot, c. (eds), muslims in indian cities: trajectories of marginalisation, london: c. hurst &co.ltd, pp.43-80. jasani, r. (2008). violence, reconstruction and islamic reformstories from the muslim “ghetto”, modern asian studies, 42 (23): 431-456. lucas, p. (2002). mind-forged manacles and habits of the soul: foucault's debt to heidegger. philosophy of the social sciences, 32 (3): 310-328. macleod, j. (1997). ain’t no making it: leveled aspirations in a low-income neighbourhood. london: westview press. mclaren, p. (1999). schooling as a ritual performance: towards a political economy of educational symbols and gestures. new york, ny: routledge. marcus, g. e. (1995). ethnography through thick and thin. princeton, nj: princeton university press. pinar, w. (2004/2011). what is curriculum theory? routledge. taylor and francis. sarkar. piper, h. and dean, g. (2004). identity and citizenship: some contradictions in practice, british journal of educational studies, 52 (3): 276-292. seidler, v. (1998). embodied knowledge and virtual space. in: wood, j. (ed). the virtual embodied, london: routledge, pp.17-20. tanika. (1996). educating the children of the hindu rashtra: notes on rss schools. in: bidwai, p., mukhia, h. and vanaik, a. (eds). religion, reliogiosity and communalism. new delhi: manohar publishers. meenakshi, t. (2014). ethnographies of schooling in contemporary india. new delhi: sage publications. cossa. ethnographies of schooling in contemporary india by meenakshi thapan (editor) 63 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (1) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci willis, p. (1977). learning to labour: how working class kids get working class jobs. london: gower. submitted: november, 30th, 2014 approved: july, 12th, 2015 o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: johnson-mardones, daniel f. (2015). freire and the u.s reconceptualization: remembering curriculum as international conversation. transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> freire and the u.s reconceptualization: remembering curriculum as international conversation1 daniel f. johnson-mardones 2 university of illinois at urbana champaign, united states introduction i see the windows, the wall, the chairs in the room. i cannot remember any specific anecdote; but i do remember the feeling of the intellectual revolution happening in that classroom. in was the fall of 19693. the whole semester was just one book: pedagogy of the oppressed. william f. pinar, conversation in chicago, il, april 18th 2015. in this text i present an in-progress interpretation of curriculum studies as an international conversation. i went back to the seminal texts of the reconceptualization of the field of curriculum studies in the united states in the 1970’s, hoping that a close reading of them would provide some connections between the main authors of that movement and the work of paulo freire. my intention is to show that these writers engaged in intellectual conversation with freire’s work at the time, although the field may now have forgotten how important this influence was for those early involved in reconceptualizing curriculum. freire’s concept such as conscientização, humanizing education, liberating education are important concepts in which these scholars elaborate to talk back to the mainstream of the field conceived exclusively as curriculum development. freire’s work was also a taking back to that rationale that had arrived in latin america in the 1960’s as a new educational technology. freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed appeared strongly influencing the us reconceptualization of the field in the 1970’s. the reconceptualized field of curriculum was also international from the very first moment. recovering the past is part of the “evolution in consciousness” (pinar, 1974) that is called for by that reconceptualization. for this, i use the concept of consciousness, curriculum consciousness4, as a cultural device to follow and provoke an international conversation in curriculum studies: a sort of “forum for exchange for –in freire’s still useful notion –“dialogical encounter.” (pinar, 1978a, p. 65) what follows is what i have learned so far. johnson-mardones. freire and the u.s reconceptualization… 4 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (1) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci heightened consciousness and conscientização liberating education consists of acts of cognition greene, 1974, p.825 i begin with heightened consciousness, cultural revolution, and curriculum theory (pinar, 1974); pinar’s collection of the proceedings of the 1973 curriculum conference held at the university of rochester. this conference is important since it “may be cited as the starting point” (pinar, 1976a, p. 23) of the reconceptualization of curriculum studies in the united states in the 1970’s, a sign of what was underway. some of those now regarded as major curriculum scholars were present in rochester in 1973, among them maxine greene, dwayne huebner, james macdonald, and william pinar; among the attendees were madeleine grumet and janet miller, then graduate students. in the preface of the proceedings, pinar says that if the field of curriculum is “to survive these strange times, then it must evolve morally and intellectually; it must evolve in consciousness.” (p. ix) these strange times in which “man is partially unaware of himself; he is not himself; he is dehumanized,” (pinar, 1974, p. 3); strange times when is required conscientização to restore humanness. the freirean language resonates among the seven conference papers and is quoted, rather extensively in four of them, especially in donald bateman’s6. in his introduction, pinar (1974) informs us, that bateman, in his “the politics of curriculum,” draws “on the work of freire to support his belief in the need to ‘demythologize’ curriculum” (p. ix). to demythologize is the task of a pedagogy of liberation, bateman argues. “the pedagogy of domination mythologizes reality; the pedagogy of liberation demythologizes it” (p. 60), bateman (1974) continuous. schooling, he concludes, is not neutral neither it is its curriculum. the idea of curriculum reform must also be demythologized if it wants to contribute to the liberation of people. freire appears explicitly and strongly in maxine greene’s presentation “cognition, consciousness, and curriculum.” in the first sentence, she says my “theme derives in part from paulo freire, particularly from his notion that ‘liberating education consists in acts of cognition’.”7(greene, 1974, p. 69) that act of cognition makes possible to “change the given.” (greene, 1974, p. 69) as freire, greene is drawing on sartre in this idea. seeking implications for the field needed to ‘evolve in consciousness,’ we may remember, greene continues i find freire’s phenomenological approach to education suggesting new vantage points when i ask myself whether anything can be done in schools and what curriculum ought to signify in a world so dominated by bureaucracies and inhuman technological controls8, when i considered the inequities and corruptions surrounding us today, and when i ponder ways of arousing students to choose themselves as persons who are committed, responsible, involved. (greene, 1974, p. 69) curriculum, greene argues, must provide students opportunities “for them to see that they themselves, whoever they are, constitute those worlds as self-determining human beings existing with others in intersubjective community.” (1974, p. 69) in other words, curriculum must offer students opportunities to become aware of themselves as historical beings. however, she cautions us, that “becoming aware cannot happen if what freire calls the ‘banking’ approach is maintained, or if teachers talk about ‘reality as if it were motionless, static, compartmentalized, and predictable’9.” (p. 75) school under the banking johnson-mardones. freire and the u.s reconceptualization… 5 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (1) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci principle prevents students from becoming conscious of their historicity, making it particularly difficult for students “to break with the given later on” and to identify the themes in their “biography that are truly significant –the kind likely to generate cognitive quest.” she remarks, “freire talks of such themes in connection with human aspirations, motives, and objectives, which are as historical as men themselves” (p. 75). this process of conscientização allows us to restore human beings’ humanity; that is “freire’s notion of ‘man’s vocation and the struggle to recover a lost humanity.” (p. 77). then, greene concludes, we discover “how to present learning as integral to the struggle freire describes, and curriculum as a resource for transforming what exists;” (p. 77) to surpass what has been given. greene also referred to freire in his famous essay “curriculum and consciousness” (1971) when in opening it she uttered her intention of talking about curriculum from the learner’s standpoint. from that point of view, meaning must be constituted through “cognitive action,” which cannot be done while students are “as freire puts it, submerged in a ‘dense, enveloping reality or tormenting blind alley’ and will be so unless they can ‘perceive it as an objective-problematic situation’10” (p. 310). provided with the opportunity to take distance from that reality, to move away from “‘the silence of primary consciousness’ (…) what freire calls ‘background consciousness’,11” (p. 303) the student can become an ‘epistemic subject’; a subject capable of consciously naming and expressing the world. thus, greene’s 1973 essay elaborates in her initial, and better known, work curriculum and consciousness (1971); a foundational writing in curriculum studies. this writing was re-published in curriculum theorizing: the reconceptualists (1975); a book edited by william pinar and considered a major work of the reconceptualization of the field underway in the 1970’s. in pinar’s own writings in curriculum theorizing (1975), we find again an explicit and strong freirean influence. pinar begins his “sanity, madness, and the school” (1975) by pointing to the then pervasive criticism of schooling experience as a dehumanizing one12. his paper focuses on “the impact of teachers on students, the impact of the oppressor on the oppressed” (p. 360) in order to study the ‘unexamined effects’ of schooling. schooling that, he claims, is informed by a ‘banking’ or ‘digestive’ concept of education, referring to freire and sartre. under that conceptualization education is an ‘act of depositing,’ or an act of ‘filling out,’ knowledge into students. “for apart from inquiry, apart from praxis, men cannot be truly human. knowledge emerges only through invention and re-invention, through the restless, impatient, continuing, hopeful inquiry men pursue in the world, with the world and with each other;” after quoting freire (1971, p. ) pinar argues that teacher-bankers “deposit rather than inquire” (p. 361). pinar quotes freire (1970): the central problem is this: how can the oppressed, as divided, unauthentic beings, participate in developing the pedagogy of their liberation? only as they discover themselves to be the ‘hosts’ of the oppressor can they contribute to the midwifery of their liberating pedagogy. as long as they live in the duality in which to be is to be like, and to be like is to be like the oppressor, this contribution is impossible (pinar, 1975, p. 365). based on this duality, pinar explains why horizontal violence replaces vertical violence in the oppressed. quoting freire again, pinar13 elaborates: “b[b]ecause the oppressor exists within their oppressed comrades, when they attack those comrades they are indirectly attacking the oppressor as well.” (p. 365) in that dynamic, schooling atrophies us, and its cumulative effect “is devastating. we graduate, credentialed but crazed, erudite but johnson-mardones. freire and the u.s reconceptualization… 6 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (1) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci fragmented shells of the human possibility.” (p. 381) that is pinar’s conclusion in his “sanity, madness, and the school”; an essay published, after its inclusion in curriculum theorizing (1975), in the new school of education journal with the subtitle a phenomenological analysis of the psychological effects of ‘banking’ education14. as we see, reconceptualizing the field is also a freirean theme from the beginning. now, going back to pinar’s 1973 statement about the need for curriculum to ‘evolve in consciousness’, he opens his “currere: toward reconceptualization” (1975) claiming that “the field has forgotten what existence is” (p. 396); it is unaware of itself, “uprooted from geographical, social, and psychological ambience” (p. 399). in order to overcome that situation, we “require a strategy that will allow us to ‘bracket’ educational aspects of our taken-for-granted world” (p. 406). that enabling experience can be described as “expanding and losing what then feel like constraints in my mind’s structure, what freire might in part mean by ‘limit situation’” (p. 407). that can lead, pinar continues, to a “change in consciousness”; a process of raising awareness, a process of conscientização. in a later text (1979) he will say: “in one sense i am speaking of freire’s conscientização or learning to perceive social, political, and economic considerations and to take action against oppressive elements of the reality.” (p. 110) pinar closes his essay affirming that “c[c]urrere is thus experience in educational context” and it is “the kernel of a reconceived and revitalized curriculum theory field” (p. 413), a field conceptualized. freire and the reconceptualization the thematic characteristics of american reconceptualization were not limited to the north american continent … freire’s (1968) radical pedagogical work in brazil a decade earlier would inspire hundreds of scholars worldwide to link literacy, culture, and politics. pinar et al, 1995, p. 230. the freirean influence on the us reconceptualization of curriculum, is not surprising, given that both intellectual projects are built on similar philosophical roots. existentialism, phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and marxism are european traditions that both endeavors draw upon. this must have been a factor that facilitated the us reception of freire at that such early moment. besides the above, the common emphasis on process is certainly something that cannot go unnoticed. as we have seen, freire’s concept of conscientização, becoming conscious, is a central topic in times of reconceptualization15, a time of both ethical and intellectual challenge. it is worth noticing that this last word replaces the word reconceptualists in the second edition of curriculum theorizing in 2000. reconceptualization is a word pinar used “to inform the mainstream of the field what might be expected from the few of us i saw working honestly in ways that would indeed reconceptualize the field mainstream curricularists knew.” (pinar, 1978a, p. 63) the substitution in the second edition is consistent with the idea of the book as “a transitional statement” (pinar, 2000, p. x) from a field in crisis to a field revitalized. in that manner, pinar rectified one of his mistake in the first edition (1975) when using the word reconceptualists he focused on the scholars rather that in the process of reconceptualization. this emphasis on the process it is also present in freire’s use of the word conscientização instead of consciousness. same thing can be said about the use of the word theorizing instead of theory. pinar’s second self-acknowledged mistake was the use of the distinction between critical and post-critical scholars within the reconceptualists, following mcdonald’s, which johnson-mardones. freire and the u.s reconceptualization… 7 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (1) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci he used to organize the book on the reconceptualization. this mistake, pinar reports, “irritated the marxists in the field. the distinction was accurate but it did provoke a continuing rift between various figures in the new field.” (pinar, 2000, p. xi) what it is interesting regarding our topic is that it was not the scholars labeled in that book as ‘critical’ (apple, mann, molnar, and mooney) who referred to and quoted freire but some of the labeled as ‘post-critical’(greene, mcdonald, pinar). therefore, freire’s influence in the field of curriculum studies came from those working on existential, phenomenological, and psychoanalytical streams and not from those working on marxist perspectives. from another point of view, certainly related to the previous one, it can be said that freire’s influence came from those working on curriculum from humanities fields rather that from those more oriented to social sciences. in a broader sense, regarding freire’s influence on the reconceptualization, pinar et al (1995) have pointed out that freire’s work “brought the social crisis of contemporary latin america very much to the heart of the international curriculum dialogue.” (p. 827) following on freire’s belief that ideas are part of broader social practices, it is interesting to remember that freire, like every writer, writes within a tradition. that tradition, i argue, is liberation theology, and the widely conceived latin american thought of liberation. liberation theology is a “movement associated with –some would say indebted to –paulo freire and other educators working in latin america” (pinar et al, 1995, p. 643) and one of whose main representative is the peruvian priest gustavo gutierrez. in this sense, slattery’s (1992) claim that “pinar, like gutierrez, begins his commentary on currere paraphrasing freire’s (1968) pedagogy of the oppressed.” (quoted in pinar et al, 1995, p. 645) is quite intriguing. personally, i found this train of thought extremely suggestive in the attempt to develop an actual international conversation in curriculum studies. and, i think, i have proved that this conversation started from the very beginning of the reconceptualization. freire and currere: the autobiographical talking about freire: not sure what i can provide in addition to the references to freire in understanding curriculum as to his influence on the reconceptualization – their number gestures toward his pervasive influence – except to speak autobiographically. pinar, personal communication, april 8th 2015 i accept with freire that the ontological vocation of the human species is humanization… the fundamental assumption of currere. pinar, 1976b, p. 93 i have suggested thet there are at least references and resonances regarding freire’s influence on pinar’s currere, whose main turn is biographical. can it be fairly claimed then that freire’s work also informed the reconceptualization in that regard? in this section, i address that question. i begin by claiming that there are several references to freire’s influence in curriculum understanding (pinar et al, 1995), the book that mapped the field after its reconceptualization. now, i would like to go further and see how freire influenced the development of the concept and method of currere. this of course entails the arrival of the autobiographical turn in curriculum studies, a turn fundamental to the field’s reconceptualization. the main reference will be here toward a poor curriculum (1976) a book co-authored by william pinar and madeleine grumet, which is the main text on the initial stage of currere. johnson-mardones. freire and the u.s reconceptualization… 8 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (1) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the same comment i made already regarding common sources in the two intellectual projects is pertinent here. currere has phenomenological, existentialist, and psychoanalytical foundations, as pinar and grumet extensively explain in their book. freire shared these influences. therefore, it is not surprising to find conceptual correspondences in currere and freire’s pedagogy. moreover, giving an account of the initial project, grumet says that “phenomenology and psychoanalysis had provided language and evidence to justify the place of currere in educational theory and research. the previous year we had taught the seminar in the theoretical voice, reading husserl and merleau-ponty, maxine green and freire" (grumet, 1976d, p. 149). as we see, freire’s influence seems having gone further than mere correspondences in the sources of that project. he was part of the readings in the pedagogical deployment of currere as a research method. in this sense pinar writes, from one perspective currere starts with freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed and with the major themes in that book. the first is that human vocation, ontologically, is humanization; the second is, that to pedagogically act in accord with this meaning of the human endeavor is to dialogically encounter one’s students; the third is, to so encounter our students as to cultivate thought and action, a sort of praxis freire terms “concientizao.” (pinar, 1976b, p. 93) conceptually, we are situated in the political dimension of currere. this political dimension requires political work, its thought and action “is [to] be conducted selfrememberedly…, ordinarily in some dialogical fashion” that “can help raise the specific (say intellectual) and general (ontological) level of his students (or students-teachers to use freire’s term).”16(pinar, 1976b, p. 103) but, how does one work to become on an ontologically higher level? pinar asks. such work is and can be social in nature, but it is also (…) fundamentally individual. at least, it becomes individual at some biographicdevelopmental point, as it became a few years ago for me. this self-work is work to become more fully human and is fundamentally consonant with freire’s intention, his affirmation that man’s ontological vocation is humanization. (pinar, 1976b, p. 104) freire’s pedagogy, pinar will say later, “demonstrates [that] praxis can occur only as these contradictions are understood in the context of immediate individual and social life17.” (pinar, 1979, p. 110) in his “search for a method” (1976), grumet (1976a) adds “william pinar proposes to study both the individual’s subjectivity and the impact of his social milieu upon it.” (p. 45) objective constitution is the life of the subject and it is constituted as subject in and through this life. and we have heard echoes of this theory in freire’s assertion that “authentic reflection considers neither abstract man nor the man without men, but men in relations with the world.” (grumet, 1976b, p. 68) the kind of education freire proposes requires working in context, but not being immersed in that context, in order to become aware of one’s historical situation and act upon it. this is “a sort of praxis freire terms conscientização”, in pinar’s words. according to him, this work is, in some measure, autobiographical. it aspires to assist the student to return from submersion in reality to a distanced, self-reflective comprehension of his life in relation to cultural and economic life. such work may initially occur by didactic instruction but only initially. in didactic instruction the student remain johnson-mardones. freire and the u.s reconceptualization… 9 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (1) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci passive. in freire’s term, the procedure is ‘banking education.’ it is extreme indoctrination. extrication from reality, from unconscious, conditioned participation in oppressive political reality to self-reflexive, active movement in order to alter that reality is an important function of the autobiographic work that is the method of currere. (pinar, 1979, pp. 110-111) this autobiographical work had been usually regarded as elitist, as if only upper classes had the right to tell and write their lives. the blame put on the biographical before was also put onto currere since the beginning. in that sense, freire provided an example of a work that without forget the political and the collective was indeed also individual. for freire, biography is a human capacity; “things neither communicate nor recount,” (1973), “but this cannot be the case of people, who are historical beings, able to give an autobiography of themselves” (p. 110). freire’s work to awake critical consciousness among the illiterates in brazil supports our conviction that self-awareness is not confined to an elaborate code, that language is not our relationship to the world but merely a system of signs devised to talk about experience that is always prior to and more that what words can say. (grumet, 1976b, p. 84) methodologically speaking, the method of currere proposes to look into one’s own experiences, looking for images of our past, present, and future. pinar sees that work connected to what freire calls ‘limit situations.’ therefore, freire’s work was also used to develop the method devised to study one’s educational experience. even more, the emphasis in self-reflection in freire’s work, led pinar to think in the work that the researcher should conduct from within. currere enables that process. he elaborates, (…) fundamental to our view is the sense that curriculum research must emancipate the researcher if it is to authentically offer such a possibility to others. we have devised a method by means of which the researcher can examine his or her ‘limits situations,’ in freire’s sense, his or her own participation in frozen social and psychological structures. (pinar, 1978b) if every academic field is also an intellectual community, then, a field needing to evolve in consciousness requires from those who profess it to evolve in consciousness, too. currere provides that opportunity for those involved in curriculum work. freire was also inspiring in that way. final remark if every consciousness is a consciousness of something, what should the field of curriculum be conscious of? i think, the field of curriculum studies must be aware of that the international conversation that it started a long time ago. internationalization was a dimension of a reconceptualized/zing field decades before internationalization was institutionalized at the turn of the century with the founding of the international association for the advancement of curriculum studies. in the 1970’s, freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed appeared strongly influencing an inspiring the us reconceptualization of the field. the reconceptualized field of curriculum was also international from the start, not just given to european but also latin american influences. in our current concerns about internationalization, freire (1965) still resonates: “a society [field] that decolonizes itself more and more... is the basic dilemma. (p.13)” this is the dilemma when academic fields become international conversations. in that process, uneven relations are certainly at play and may always be reproduced. to conceive a field, johnson-mardones. freire and the u.s reconceptualization… 10 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (1) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci say curriculum studies, as an international conversation, a place of dialogical encounters, entails an effort of decolonization. the international field needs still “evolve in consciousness.” in dialogue both voice and silence, speaking and listening, are required. freire’s, greene’s, and pinar’s conversation offer a great example of that kind of scholarship. notes 1 an early version of this paper was presented at the 5th triennial conference of the international association for the advancement of curriculum studies, held at the university of ottawa in may 26-29 2015, under the title of “what is curriculum consciousness? an international perspective.” 2 dfjohns2@illinois.edu 3 46 years later, pinar writes: “in my senior year –fall 1969 –i enjoyed an opportunity to believe again in meaningful public service, thanks to professor donald r. bateman, who permitted me to join his experimental urban program. there i was introduced to freire while working in the inner city of columbus.” (pinar, 2015, p. 3) 4 it was in the title of the international conference on curriculum consciousness, curriculum construction and curriculum capacity building held in zhejiang university in hangzhou in november 2014 where i saw this concept of ‘curriculum consciousness’ for the first time. i was intrigued by the formulation and its possible meanings. paulo freire, maxine greene, and william pinar came to mind immediately. 5 maxine greene writes this sentence in quotation marks, referring to freire’s statement quoted at the beginning of her paper. 6“bateman taught freire” (pinar et al, 1995, p. xviii) he “employed freirean language to assess the political role of schools.” (pinar, 1995, p. 221) 7 greene is quoting freire, 1970, p. 67. 8 pinar would add, “given the assessment–political oppression, psychic estrangement, in short, madness –was there a way out? in 1972, jung, maslow, and freire pointed a way.” (pinar, 1976a, p. 12) 9 greene is quoting freire, 1970, p.113. 10 greene is quoting freire, 1970, p.108. 11 greene is quoting freire, 1970, p.100. 12 this view of the student’s role in contemporary education is similar to that of freire’s (1968), in which the student is viewed as the repository of banking deposits (i.e. information). pinar, 1995, p. 781 mailto:dfjohns2@illinois.edu johnson-mardones. freire and the u.s reconceptualization… 11 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (1) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 13 pinar draws here on his previous analogy between the teacher-student and the oppressoroppressed relationships. in a later work he states: reminds us such a duality is always characteristic of the oppressed, and it explains why horizontal violence, (i.e., violence across class lines, say among black americans or among public school students) is more frequent that horizontal violence, which is violence that aims at the oppressors. this is so because the oppressor dwells in the oppressed; a duality he must attack himself. (pinar, 1976a, p. 12) 14 referenced in pinar’s essay “the analysis of educational experience”, also included in the 1975 book. 15 reconceptualization “describes what is underway in the curriculum field in the 1970’s.” (pinar, 1978a, p. 71) 16 nevertheless, pinar continues “this view does not disparage traditional political strategies, such as organizing workers, strikes, legal and administrative efforts. to those committed to social justice, to perform such actions self-rememberedly means, in freire’s terms, that such workers do not fall victim to oppressors by resorting to their humanizing strategies to achieve political superiority.” (pinar, 1976b, p. 103) 17 freire alludes, for instance, to analysis of peasants’ afternoon drinking. what is necessary is that these students analytically grasp the political meaning of this drinking; that it is born in frustration that has not yet been politically expressed or materially remediated. the necessity of matching such as ‘oppression’ to concrete incidents (such a compulsive drinking or incidents of ‘horizontal violence’) is clear. references bateman, d. (1974). the politics of curriculum. in w. f. pinar (ed.) heightened consciousness, cultural revolution, and curriculum theory: the proceedings of the rochester conference. berkeley, ca: mccutchan pub. corp. freire, p. (1973). education for critical consciousness. new york, ny: seabury press. freire, p. (1970). pedagogy of the oppressed. new york, ny: herder & herder. greene, m. (1974). curriculum, consciousness and cognition. in w. f. pinar (ed.) heightened consciousness, cultural revolution, and curriculum theory: the proceedings of the rochester conference. berkeley, ca: mccutchan pub. corp. greene, m. (1971). curriculum and consciousness. in w. pinar (ed.) (2000 [1975]). curriculum theorizing: the reconceptualization. troy, ny: educator’s international press. grumet, m. (1976a). existential and phenomenological foundations. in w. f. pinar and m. r. grumet. toward a poor curriculum. dubuque, ia: kendall/hunt. grumet, m. (1976b). toward a poor curriculum. in w. f. pinar and m. r. grumet. toward a poor curriculum. dubuque, ia: kendall/hunt. grumet, m. (1976c). psychoanalytic foundations. in w. f. pinar and m. r. grumet. toward a poor curriculum. dubuque, ia: kendall/hunt. pinar, w. (2011). the character of curriculum studies: bildung, currere, and the recurring question of the subject. new york, ny: palgrave macmillan. johnson-mardones. freire and the u.s reconceptualization… 12 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (1) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci pinar, w. (1979). the abstract and the concrete in curriculum theorizing. in w. pinar (1994) autobiography. in w. f. pinar (1994). autobiography, politics, and sexuality: essays in curriculum theory 1972-1992. new york, ny: peter lang pinar, w. (1978a). what is the reconceptualization? in w. f. pinar (1994). autobiography, politics, and sexuality: essays in curriculum theory 1972-1992. new york, ny: peter lang. pinar, w. (1978b). notes on the curriculum field. in w. f. pinar (1994). autobiography, politics, and sexuality: essays in curriculum theory 1972-1992. new york, ny: peter lang. pinar, w. (ed.) (2000 [1975]). curriculum theorizing: the reconceptualization. troy, ny: educator’s international press. pinar, w. (1976a). self and others. in w. f. pinar and m. r. grumet. toward a poor curriculum. dubuque, ia: kendall/hunt. pinar, w. (1976b). political-spiritual dimensions. in w. f. pinar and m. r. grumet. toward a poor curriculum. dubuque, ia: kendall/hunt. pinar, w. (ed.) (1974). heightened consciousness, cultural revolution, and curriculum theory: the proceedings of the rochester conference. berkeley, ca: mccutchanpub. corp. pinar, w. f., reynolds, w. m, slattery, p., & taubman, p. m. (eds.) (1995). understanding curriculum: an introduction to the study of historical and contemporary curriculum discourses. new york, ny: peter lang. submitted: june, 16th, 2015 approved: july, 14th, 2015 microsoft word fook_response_6-2.doc to cite this article please include all of the following details: nicholas ng-a-fook (2009). bridging a response within the watercoursings of empty places. transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> such opening to the stranger has carried me to see both the world and the self in a different way, but is also has thrown me into an unexpected world of ambivalency, uncertainty, and perplexity. what does it mean for a woman to leave her/land for a father/foreign land? (wang, 2004, p. 4). my father has always divided maps into two kinds, dead and living: if one follows every marker on the map, this is a dead map for the traveller; if one can find exciting unmarked and empty places besides those marked ones on the map, that is living map. of course my father always boasts that he only uses living maps. i wonder, are there also dead and living maps in the area of curriculum? (yu, 2009). bridging a response within the watercoursings of empty places nicholas ng-a-fook university of ottawa if we want to sustain a vital and meaningful educational life that we share, we as educators have to find openings for the watercourse of cross-cultural interplay to erode the constraining line of the official boundary (wang, 2009). it is from the empty space on the map that extreme possibilities emerge in the process of becoming and happening (yu, 2009). we three authors have been brought together to bridge and provoke our international experiences as an aesthetic narrative performance of curriculum theorizing. and standing on this narrative bridge, “we are in no hurry to cross over” (aoki, 1996/2005, p. 316). instead we linger, contemplating the curricular complexities of living a cross-cultural curriculum as both friends and strangers. in a sense our individual and collective theorizing calls forth our capacity to imagine the unexpected watercoursings of cross-cultural flows and transnational mobilities. to a large extent, the narrative coursings we offer readers and each other have become visceral and perplexing through our embodied autobiographical accounts of what miller (2006) aptly calls the “shifting and rapidly changing discursive and material effects of globalization” (p. 31). at one point in time our biographical and intellectual histories, their respective narrative em-plot-ments, crisscrossed each other as international graduate students studying within the empty spaces of the curriculum theory project at louisiana state university. consequently, the absent presences of its curricular ghosts, their discursive genealogies, haunt the materiality our writings. and yet each us remain unfaithfully faithful toward studying (bridging) the verticality and horizontality of such curricular ghosts. now some time later, within the “official boundary” of my office walls, at this canadian capital institution, protected from the bone chilling dampness of today’s northern wind, i sit here mapping out a reader response. here, its respective currere inhabits the hyphenated spaces between alienation and appropriation, becoming and happening, and east and west. in a sense, such a response always experiences a certain amount of life and death, of who we were yesterday as public intellectuals and as writers. and yet it is here within the silence of this meditative space, i/eye wonder, “who will each ng-a-fook: bridging a response transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 52 of us live to be tomorrow?” how will each of our intellectual works live for others as “action in thought and thought in action?” wang (2009) and yu (2009) have helped me to re/conceptualize the thoughtful and playful spaces between cross-cultural hyphe-nations, of curricular doublings, taking place within the intellectual theorizing of our works. lingering within the poetics of these hyphenated spaces is where the hyphen, both binds and divides (wah, 2000). but even when it is notated, wah (2004) reminds us, the hyphen “is often silent and transparent” (p. 73). therefore, in our work within such cross-cultural hyph-e-nations, we attune ourselves toward curricular possibilities that break through such silences toward a new key. much like the bio-texts of wah (2000, 2004), our auto/biographical writings make the interstices at the margins of the hyphen more audible and their cross-cultural pigmentations more visible. here the transparency of the hyphen itself becomes a thorn—an aporia, a perpetual deferral of signs, signifiers, and signified—in the side of “predetermined” colonial configurations (aoki, 1996/2005; hall, 1997; stanley, 2009; wah, 2000). and within this hybrid borderland of infinite discursive possibilities we in turn bring to life our collective genealogical (or vertical) and inter-textual (or horizontal) mappings of the international topography we call curriculum studies. in a sense, we collectively surf the interstitial constellations of hyph-e-nations. we migrate auto/biographically in-between and a/cross the backslashes of our individual cross-cultural inquiries. and surfing the hyphen a/cross the backslashes of such conjunctive spaces, we perform the aesthetics of curriculum theorizing. for example, surfing the empty places in-between east and west wang (2009) offers a generous discursive cross-cultural rereading of yulang and watts’ life histories with eastern thought. pinar (2007) refers to such genealogical work as the verticality of intellectual study. during her zen journey, yu deconstructs the dead and living maps of curricular terrains like power, disciplinary policy objectives, myths of political neutrality, technocratic rationality, and curricularists as rude surveyors, in relation to walking the watercoursings of vulnerability, cultivating a curriculum of peace, playing with stringless uncertainty, and wandering as a troubadour painting meaning at the margins of empty space. at the edges of these empty places, wang asks us to attune our cross-cultural narrative em-plot-ments to a new key that plays a/cross and beyond the backslashes of our respective conceptual boundaries. in turn, such creative dwellings and crossings can disrupt the televised national narrative images teachers and students have of east-west and north-south. drawing on the generative possibilities of such discursive disruptions, wang and yu complicate the dynamic relationships among place, cultural production, life narratives, and concomitantly the curricular chronotopes we as public intellectuals now put forth within the aesthetics of our curriculum theorizing. moreover, attuning ourselves to alter/native approaches to personhood, personal transformation in relation to global transformation, and organic forms of curriculum study, pushes us to reconsider how inter-national dynamics inform our experiential and intellectual processes for cross-cultural meaning making. such meditative attuning to the crosscultural curricular and pedagogical processes of meaning making provides an empty place where we can perhaps midwife and give birth to the limitless educational possibilities of curriculum theorizing. with the variety of thoughts present both within faculty and students, the clash between traditional chinese culture and western culture was evident at all levels, and the efforts to mediate between the two gave birth to new intellectual and cultural movements (wang, 2009). ng-a-fook: bridging a response transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 53 however, during our nomadic cross-cultural inquiries toward and within the international and interdisciplinary languages of the other, wang (2009) cautions us, not to fall into the trap of romanticizing our conceptualizations of alienation and appropriation as yet again another ethnographic and/or definitive bureaucratic prescription for curing our individual curricular and pedagogical problems. the processes of cultural meaning making, as yu (2009) makes clear, would then be reduced to the instrumental mode of producing dead curricular maps. instead, how might we dwell within and a/cross the slippery signifiers of such hyphenated spaces, between appropriation and alienation, east and west, the dead and living curriculum? and as curriculum theorists, how might we continue to criticize the rude surveyors, producers, and consumers of cross-cultural meanings? like wang and yu, i wonder how we might advocate our provocations of cross-cultural watercoursings, which flow into and beyond the not yet openings of the living map we all call curriculum studies. references: aoki, t. (1996/2005). imaginaries of “east and west”: slippery curricular signifiers in education. in william f. pinar & rita irwin (eds.), curriculum in a new key, pp. 313-319. mahway, new jersey: lawrence erlbaum associates. hall, s. (1997). the work of representation. in hall, s. (ed.), representation: cultural representations and signifying practices, pp. 1-74. london: sage. miller, j. (2006). curriculum studies and transnational flows and mobilities: feminist autobiographical perspectives. transnational curriculum inquiry, 3 (2), pp. 31-50. pinar, w. (2007). intellectual advancement through disciplinarity: verticality and horizontality in curriculum studies. rotterdam, netherlands: sense publishers. stanley, t. (2009). the banality of colonialism: encountering artifacts of genocide and white supremacy in vancouver today. in shirley steinberg (ed.), diversity and multiculturalism, pp. 143-159. new york, new york: peter lang. wah, f. (2000). faking it: poetics and hybridity. edmonton, alberta: newest press wah, f. (2006). diamond grill. edmonton, alberta: newest press. wang, h. (2004). the call from the stranger on a journey home: curriculum in a third space. new york, new york: peter lang. without crossing into another world (and coming back), an inter-space does not embody what exists on the other side; without dwelling on the bridge, crossing pushes away the interactive potentiality of an in-between space. to allow newness to emerge, both crossing and dwelling are necessary…in today’s mobile society in which migration, immigration, and globalization continue to disrupt the homogenous picture of locality, crossing can be imminent within the border, and dwelling gestures to what is beyond the landscape (wang, 2009). o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: pereira, talita; costa, hugo. (2015). challenges to curriculum theory in the 21st century. transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) http://nitinat. library.ubc.ca/ojs/index. php/tc i <access date> challenges to curriculum theory in the 21st century: thinking the school beyond the basics 1 talita vidal pereira2, hugo heleno camilo costa3 state university of rio de janeiro, brazil introduction inspired by the theme of the 5th triennial international association for the advancement of curriculum studies conference, we proposed to develop this article, having in mind the reflections made during this conference, which took place in may 2015, in ottawa, canada. here, we intend to reflect on the challenges imposed to curriculum theory in our century. among them, we are interested in analyzing how the uncertainties we face in the contemporary world have intensified movements to search and/or reaffirm basic principles which are seen as capable of minimizing our angst with what we cannot control. it is about discussing these principles and their ability to give us control, and, in doing so, build up to a deconstructed perspective to problematize the logics that hold up our basic principles. our analytical perspective seek to "evidentiate otherness, the impossibility of positivity and even the attempts to fix meanings" (lopes, 2013, p. 11). an alternative movement to the trend that has been highlighted globally and locally in education discourses, characterized, basically, by the affirmation of curriculum as the local of change. this is expressed in projects aimed towards getting rid of uncertainties, betting in organized and coordinated effo rts as the possibility of making what is signified be capable of stabilizing society, giving it an ultimate meaning. thus, as lopes (2004) reminds us, the curriculum ends up centered on educational policies. the curriculum is thought of as an identity project, taken for granted as the place where change happens. a perspective view of curriculum, it works as a mechanism of control and regulation of identities, of ways to be in the world. we question this perspective, starting with problematizing the principles that make it ground. we perceive the focus on knowledge as one of the principles that the appropriation of post-structuralism and post-foundational theory has allowed us to deconstruct. we argue that this focus is supported by realist and essentialist arguments, which, in the discourse, give an universal dimension to a particular knowledge, presented as a guarantee of the quality of education (macedo, 2009), or as a starting point to think in the terms of what that quality could be. with laclau (1996), we think the universal as an empty place, filled, temporarily, by hegemonic articulations. with derrida (1981; 1982; 1985), we propose the thought of translation as political, which gives us the opportunity to intervene in it, but not to have ultimate c ontrol over signification. we call attention to this theory in the following. translation and involvement pereira & costa. challenges to curriculum theory in 21st century: thinking the school beyond… transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 4 deconstructing the perspective of writing/textualization, to derrida (1981;1982), comes down to his interest in criticizing the role of second fiddle the spoken word, and thought, play to the writing. to him (derrida, 1997), that is what he calls logocentrism (a privilege of western reason, philosophical ideas, intention, the metaphysics of presence). with that, derrida (1981; 1997) proposes that we think of writing as a betrayal, a promise to replace the speaker, the spoken father, as a supposed origin of discourse. the writing, thought of as a replacement, works as a game of traces (derrida, 1982) and a supplement for the lack of presence, it is the order of pure signified, and no external reality or signifier can control, touch or surround it (derrida, 1981). to the philosopher, the writing word betrays the intention, the attempt at sending a thought, a reasoning, a presence, corrupting, and, therefore, supporting his critics to the "metaphysics of presence". writing, as a symptom of the differánce, gives itself to the infinite substitution, and the substitution of that substitution. in derrida (1981), the writing leads speech and thoughts to say what they never intended to. his idea of writing dispenses an original thought, a logos, because it always translates and simulates. extrapolating the supposed original thought, the writing, as intended translation, with violence, with breaking and entering, unfolds continually and subversively. writing is, therefore, repetition as well as addition, it has no property by itself, it is the indetermination in its fluctuation which makes the game of substitution possible (derrida, 1981). in plato’s pharmacy, derrida (1981) goes in on writing, pointing to its dynamics, or autonomy, not just as related to a supposed origin thought, but also its relationship with the listeners. he punctuates that, even if you try to resist communication, the translation does not realize that, does not allow access to the origin, which makes it possible to disseminate the meanings of a text regardless of what is done in the interaction between speaker/translator. in this case, the listener, even in the place of the signifier, can never fix it, cannot make the text unchangeable or stop the leaking of meanings. this is, therefore, the condition put to all involvement with life, with the world, with politics: translate/write. it is this the concept of translating/writing that we turn to, seeking to place it in derrida's philosophy as a way of highlighting the political understanding and the subjectivities involved. we understand that, in derrida, it is possible to read that every product (a product of the self, of politics, of life) is limited to the negotiation between signified and signifier. there is no transparency in language, and it is much less possible that we can access the essence or origin of the social aspect. more, the idea that interaction and negotiation can only be established through translation is supported. an attempt to understand the other escapes us, the search for access, to give meaning to politics. thinking, therefore, of this translation movement as the endless spread of discourse, and, then, as a support of the equivalencies produced by difference, we think it is important to problematize it as a contagious operation, and a strong proposer of policy. to think of that process, let us stick to jacques derrida discussion of translation. from the ideas developed by derrida (1985), in des tours de babel, we call attention to the concept of translation as an unconscious performance. it’s basically means thinking of it not as an option of the individual when face with the text where the world and i ts politics are made, but as the only possibility of extracting meaning from them, and existing in them. according to the philosopher, translation imposes insurmountable limits, which make it impossible for the translator/agent/individual to maintain and reproduce the "original" intention of a text. to derrida pereira & costa. challenges to curriculum theory in 21st century: thinking the school beyond… transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 5 (1982), said performance is an act of communication not limited to transmitting information of semantic content. when derrida (1985) thinks of "babel" as possessing a name, while at the same time questioning if we know what we are naming when we say "babel", he inserts the critic of western concepts and metaphysics as a transparent and conscious option. thus, he highlights his opposition to logocentric ideas that, in translation, we have speakers and listeners acting in full intentional control. quite the contrary, derrida (1982) says that leftovers, a remainder, are always there, there is always a dissemination that escapes any attempt to fixate a text, or politics, or rules, or boundaries to any signifier. the author considers writing/translation as an attempt to conciliate the intent, but there are nothing more than traces, traces which make their own asymmetry and the break up with the intent, with the possibility of total understanding and with the conscience of the individual as an organizing center. the inability of accessing the original meaning lies in intent and iterability, stopping any full presence or conscience. derrida (1982), therefore, ponders on the place of writer and reading, concluding that, when it comes to the writing, their position is the same: they are both translators/writers, since neither possesses absolute knowledge, both are susceptible to the writing as a changing structure. there is, in this insert by derrida (1982) with his idea of traces, the perspective that we are endlessly doing the job of corroding through asymmetry, of leftovers that escape to the meaning. we argue that these leftovers do not derive from an intentional desire to cause a rupture, but are the result of an excess of language, through which the real leads to traces. this reinforces the reading of asymmetry as a rupture of a conscious intent. this affirmation allows us to highlight that only through this excess of language, though these traces and leftovers, we can think of an unconscious subjectivity, an individual made in the translation of politics, of the text where politics are made. the trace (derrida, 1982), as this evidence of dissemination, exposes the spread of a supposed intent of the speaker, and highlight the idea that the process is the result of the articulation with a context, the result of an interaction produced by language. the trace is an event, it is the result of a given context, and it is impossible to think of it outside of this context. to the author, it is interesting to think of these ruptures as starting the very possibility of this language game. a context product which, because it is a result of the singularity of the trace, does not possess any other meaning, does not carry content and does not follow any order; does not refer to any intent or origin other than its own having happened and being new. it is considering this that we focus on the translation as an event, as a supplementation, as an unique production, the writing. the context here is not a neutral space with characteristics that can be objectively identified, but as a structure built on supposition. according to fish (1982), derrida punctuates his idea of context by distancing it from the traditional vision, which conceives it as a given, but instead pointing to the context as a product of the world. still according to fish (1982), derrida considered that only through supposing that we are interacting with something, or that a common ground exists, can we deduce certain characteristics. it is from deducing, from something's meaning, that we can read and build a context. to derrida (1982), a context is an interpretative construct, based on the assumption of a consensus, yet structurally vague, tending to attempt to coordinate what its limits should be, to pereira & costa. challenges to curriculum theory in 21st century: thinking the school beyond… transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 6 create rules or general agreements. to the philosopher, a context is never completely determined, and it can never be saturated. this structural incompleteness is a result of the dynamic of rupture inside the context itself. this is because, according to derrida (1982), the iterability (repetition and citation of what we supposedly refer to) ends up making it so that, for as much as we se ek to faithfully contextualize a citation, we will never keep intact the meaning of what we are merely attempting to reproduce. in this that we emphasize the singular and intense aspect of translation as repetition/writing, thinking both of what it produces and how it defeats any attempt to make it homogenous. thinking of iteration/translation as a means of articulation and irresistible, permanent betrayal (in which all and nothing ever stay) is to punctuate that contexts are fragile, built on the faith (derrida, 2002) that they are dealing with the same thing as a given signifier. they are fractured at the core, as the repetition of the différance leads to the failure of any intent or even mentions of the original. at this point, the origin or the common space of the context has been destroyed by the wide range or the nameless accents and spreading meanings. and so, by mentioning the context, we are already outside of it nor are we accessing it, but betraying its idea, creating other contexts. the reference is, therefore, a rupture, a disagreement, iterating a meaning of otherness, it is another context. to derrida (1982), the iteration is marked by difference, changes and creates something new. it contaminates the intention and makes the act of performing/speaking/writing/translating be something different that what was intended. in this perspective, we maintain that every statement is open to contextual ruptures. the author says that iterability, even though it authorizes this, corrupting the rules and codes that make itself, also spreads the changes through repetition, the spreading through citation. in this reading, derrida (1982) thinks the context as the place of impossible completeness and control, since in the iterability/writing/translation there is already a game, a gap, an independence from its origin, from the living intent or the production. he highlights, with this, the impossibility to determinate the context in which something was produced, the intent behind a statement of meaning, given the supplementary character which, from the start, changes the intent. for as much as it is necessary to delimitate a context, that delimitation suffers an intervention by différance, especially if we consider the fluctuation that motivates every sign (derrida, 1982). the author argues that any mark thought as writing, and writing as a separate function, as capable of operating beyond the intended meaning, primarily conceived as a disrupting, can be mentioned, cited, quoted. when doing it, the structure is made dynamic, generating countless other contexts which, as mentioned, are themselves impossible to saturate. the iterability of a mark (a term, a name), its citation possibilities or its duplication possibilities are not an accident, but what a mark cannot do without in order to operate "normally" (derrida, 1982). from this assertion, derrida questions, then, what could make a mark impossible to quote. writing as iteration, intervening in communication by exceeding it, unfolding in dissemination that is never reduced to multiple meanings, cannot be thought as an object of hermeneutical decoding, or unveiling of an original truth or meaning. the betrayal, as conceived by derrida, lies in the writing that, on one hand, does not want to neglect the existence of the intent or the conscience. intent has its place, but from that place it can no longer control all derived meaning. pereira & costa. challenges to curriculum theory in 21st century: thinking the school beyond… transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 7 intent, to derrida (1982), cannot even be present to itself and the content. it is essentially empty, and that emptiness, or its structural unconsciousness, is what the french-algerian philosopher will put as the reason why it is impossible to saturate or completely comprehend a context. in opposition to austin, the author considers that, for a context to be completely saturated, the intent would have to be its main point, making it necessary that said intent would be transparent and absolutely present to itself and everyone. in derrida’s perspective (1981;1982;1985) the translation may be supplementation, betrayal, a promise to represent what is missing or a transformation of a meaning that cannot be transported or comprehended. this unfinished aspect is the mark of babel (derrida, 1985). from this notion, he makes us think of translation as the subjectification by the other, a nod to the concept that translating/writing/iterating is the possibility of accessing the signifying of the world itself. derrida (1985) argues that the babelian performance consists in making it so that an element can at the same time mean and be untranslatable, belongs without belonging to a specific language, and is capable of creating unsolvable doubts to the translator. the acting of individuals/translators never stops, making the spreading of a political text, of politics themselves, operate continuously, coming back to the impossibility of translating a text which is produced in multiple languages simultaneously. he states that a translator never stops his/her personal work, even if under the council and inspiration of a preceding work, and so the translator starts the act of creation by co-opting, combining, and adapting, making the text not the same by the influence of their personality, even if the translator believes him or herself to be working towards a careful transmission of something has not even reached. this is the one and only, and unreachable, possibility for the existence of an original. every translation is, therefore, an original product when it is made, it always corrupts a preceding meaning. so we agree with derrida (1985) when he concludes that the text is alive and under context regeneration through translation, which is nothing but a promise. this impossible task blames the translator, but also acquits the translator, who cannot do more or less than what is done. the fluid foundations supporting curriculum keeping in mind the notions discussed above, we focus on the education field, looking to build lenses that may help us put the unstable character of the truths which support it in perspective. in order to do that, we look to the idea that education was built as a key cultural project in the process of the hegemonic constitution of modernity, made possible by repackaging social life itself, from a movement of rupture with the past and the establishment of new forms of thinking how the social works (peter & burbules, 2004). having no intention to deepen, in this text, the characteristics of this wide and diverse movement we have here named modernity, it is fitting to highlight that the importance education has in this movement can be expressed in the way different metanarratives have bet on its redeeming possibilities. this bet is that, with education, we could build a just and equal society, as long as we knew how to select the basic contents of curriculum which would be capable of guaranteeing that societal project, and, with them, develop precise projects to form individuals. a project that biesta (2006) defines as the intersection of subjects in a rational community, assumed as a condition for emancipation. pereira & costa. challenges to curriculum theory in 21st century: thinking the school beyond… transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 8 the certainties that characterize the discourse may, as lopes (2013) warns, be mystifying, and also remind us of essentialism, leading to a direct association between clarity and "the idea of a single voice, and, even more arguable, of a single unquestionable authority in meaning" (p. 10) these are the certainties which the "post" perspectives have problematized, criticizing the ways how modern thought tend to conceive the social. still with lopes (2013), we have to highlight that the prefix “post” refers to abandoning essentialist axioms. being “post” a movement or school of thought (structuralism, colonialism, modernism, foundationalism, marxism) implies to problematize that same movement or school of thought, to question its bases, its possibilities and impossibilities. it is not a liner advancement, not an evolution or an overcoming where the traces of the movement or school of thought are erased (p. 10). from this definition, we take a perspective of post-structuralist and post-foundationalist analysis, which allows us to leave behind objectivist, essencialist and realist axioms, to then state that what we call reality is a product of discourse, and therefore we must question any pretense of objectivity. the goal is to radicalize the understanding of reality, restating it as being mediated by language, through the defense of a fluidity of signified and signifier and by un-building the unity of the sign. in other words, a radical defense of the claim that reality can only be accessed through language. a radical critique to the idea of a transparent language, direct expression of "reality", supported by the understanding that language is always about the relationship between signifier and signified. in our studies, we have highlighted the contributions of laclau (1996), an author who understands the social as a discursive production, to think about the attempts to give a definite and closed meaning to names in curriculum policy. laclau develops a concept of discourse as a theoretical and analytical category, allowing us to investigate the mechanisms through which meanings are produced and how they happen in producing the social. the author conceives discourse as a practice of signification. therefore, to laclau, speech, texts, practices, institutions, as everything else that can produce meaning, are discourses. nothing exists beyond the discursive surface (laclau & mouffe, 2001). the authors here take discourse as a mean of articulation which is precariously and temporarily structured. it is impossible to shut down any attempts of creating meaning. based on this definition, we incorporated in our reflections, also thanks to laclau (1996), the idea of translation proposed by derrida (1997) to question the idea that texts, among them the curricular text, are charged with a priori meanings. for us, it consists in a structural idea of text that is based on the idea that meanings are fixed into a system, and also organizes arguments in defense of any projects that may determinate how individuals will be. with derrida (1997) we understand that translations is the only possibility of relationship in the language, in the interactions with the other, in the field of curricular discourse. so we problematize all the discourse that organize itself based on the idea that reality, and the phenomena we experience in it, can be completely represented by language, like in a transparent road which allows access to the "true" meanings of the text the world is made of. to this understanding, we add the statement that an opaque language does not give out direct meanings, neither does it give conscience or wholeness, but we operate in a world made understandable by different and multiple meanings (derrida, 1985). the intelligibility of a text is not related to a choice by the individual, but to the possibilities he/she has of giving the text meaning. we emphasize, however, that this cannot be pereira & costa. challenges to curriculum theory in 21st century: thinking the school beyond… transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 9 taken as limiting meanings, but it is just a possibility among others, and is always exposed to other’s view (laclau, 1996; derrida, 1981; 1985; 1992). intelligibil ity is simply a way of creating meanings on the world, a way of operating, as one can, in the language games (laclau, 1996). accepting the idea of translating implies recognizing that there is not a truth that can be accessed. there is not an original locus where meaning is created, or even a way to control it. every signification, according do derrida, is original, since it cannot be a copy (derrida, 1985). from these contributions, we want to understand the traditional concepts of curriculum as a project of identity construction, as discourse sewn on the foundation of a whole identity. attempts to stabilize and control the subjectivations, through schooling, through a perspective of the world that does not admit any other. this control is justified by the pretense of the existence of a ground below certainties. here, from a post-foundationalist point of view, we are not opposed to the need of a foundation, or betting in dispersive differences and isolated contexts. we are questioning the idea of fixated foundations capable of organizing society from outside society. we operate on the idea of contingent foundations, temporary and precariously built, in discursive articulations. we problematize the idea of control, since we understand control is only justified by acts of power, guide by contingent truths (short or long lived), without anything fixed or immune to corrections. we question the productivity of continuing to operate like anything ultimate on reality exists, anything capable of sustaining the pretense of fixed control. based on modern principles, curriculum has molded itself as an emancipator in the production of individuals, and its realization assumes a basic handle on subjects that are considered the most adequate. as biesta (2006) puts, a project which reduces the right to education to the right to learn. the right to learn specific content that have been selected as the proper ones. a project which either ignores or subordinates, seeking control over the processes of subjectivity by blocking differential fluxes that consist on the making of the individual, or on giving exclusive meanings to the unexpected (macedo, 2012). a logic which reduces emancipation to a teaching project "in which acquiring specific knowledge would make it possible to build an identity previously defined as the most adequate, limiting, or trying to limit, manifestations of otherness, of difference" (tura & pereira, 2013, p. 120). a logic that is justified while that knowledge is given as an expression of reality (young & muller, 2007). so the appropriation of a given subject would give the individuals (emancipated) the opportunity of intervening in a world, trying to build a fully realized society. in our view, this discourse articulates realism-based meanings, opposed to the antirealism approach we defend. a discourse that articulates realistic senses of knowledge and culture which support ways of classification and exclusion in several works in curriculum field (lopes, 2012; macedo, 2012). acts of power capable of signifying, creating and combating meanings (lopes & macedo, 2011), benefiting an education that is reduced to the pedagogical, centered on the methodological, in transmitting a given knowledge, in knowing how to teach. acts of power based in realistic concepts of knowledge and culture, which underpin attempts to control senses that laclau and mouffe (2001) assume as necessary and impossible to completely fulfilled. since we assume not be able to operate a foundational or structural reading of the world, but we bet in translators performances and therefore betraying a certain sense, we propose as a strategical possibility two arguments for reflection on curriculum thinking, that is produced politically, that produces curriculum policies: caution and possibility of intervening. pereira & costa. challenges to curriculum theory in 21st century: thinking the school beyond… transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 10 strategically, caution would show us the impossibility of making any final remarks on whatever it may be on the curricular sphere, since, on defending that there are not ultimate readings or even ultimate meanings, we cannot accept any such final statements. such acceptance relates also to the way we deal in policy, considering that the impossibility to access a given knowledge or identification, including that perspective we aim to combat, is to interpret that, in the same movement, it is blocked the possibility to achieve, “in fact”, such truth, and also that it is not be able to saturate the discourse, the experience, cannot encompass the full curricular horizon. at the same time, in relation to the idea of intervention, is worth emphasizing that it is impossible to access a transparent reading of reality, constructed discursively, whi ch empowers us is precisely this incompleteness or non-closure of the social, in its continuous discursive construction. this means that, like caution stops us from making any statements on reality as it should be, the possibility of intervention is given by the ways we translate and consider possible to operate in language. in other words, if we cannot deal with language transparently, and this condition is valid to all involvement (and it limits us), all we can do to intervene is to translate these knowle dge meanings, in education, in the curriculum, in every different power spheres. accepting the idea of education as incomplete and acting in it, accepting it is impossible to completely stop the construction of meanings through which the world becomes understandable. as laclau (1996), we state that in this being unfinished the potential for democracy resides. taking these marks as our limits to what comes to be a perspective on curricular thought in the 21st century means calling attention to the impossible when it comes to the ways to control or ultimately state what is the individual, what is education or what is society. it means recognizing that the potential to intervene is boundless, but the domination of the discourse is not viable, as there always leaks and translations, and they may or may not agree with the statement, but they will always betray. so it is possible to think the curriculum as a practice of enunciation, an endless flux of meanings that cannot be locked up, which rupture with any idea of curriculum as an identity conditioner that are, in our view, not productive if we aim towards a democratic educational project. a project negotiated from recognizing that we live in a time without certainties and without ultimate truths. a project that needs incorporate the differences expressed in particular demands. we understand that this is a great challenge to curricular theory in the current century. a century that lives the constant regeneration of its signification, by the same processes in which we defend not be possible to ensure a fixed place in the discourse, to say who is the subject or what is the society in curriculum policy. taking these arguments in the direction of curricular thought is a continuous bet to leave them incomplete, as a discourse through which different ideas can be built, here or anywhere else, looking to find a horizon, a democratic one, but not through affirming any properties of democracy, but through struggles around the curriculum meaning. a vision of democracy residing in the possibility of reaching a fixed horizon, emphasizing the opportunities for new articulations to leads us to new ideas, to new meanings, in this that we call the 21st century. we propose to accept that, while we criticize new ways of control, we al so seek to control certain perspectives, because we want a homogenous world view. it is fitting to highlight, however, that the moment that encourages a political affirmation, an identification process, is the same that leads to its criticism. this does not mean to think of every request as pereira & costa. challenges to curriculum theory in 21st century: thinking the school beyond… transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 11 valid, but that, in a certain context, even though we cannot control truth, we can contaminate the discourse as long as it is always something else. references biesta, g. j. (2006). beyond learning: democratic education for a human future. boulder: paradigm. derrida, j. (1981). plato’s pharmacy. london: athlone press. derrida, j. (1982). margins of philosophy. chicago: university of chicago press. derrida, j. (1985). des tours de babel. in: j. f. graham (ed.), difference in translation (pp. 209-248). new york: cornell university press. derrida, j. (1997). of gramatology. baltimore: john hopkins university press. derrida, j. (1992). the gift of death. chicago: ucp. derrida, j. (2002). force of law. london: routledge. fish, s. e. (1982). with the compliments of the author: reflections on austin and derrida. in: critical inquiry, 8, p. 693-721. laclau, e. (1996). emancipation(s). london: verso. laclau, e. (1998). deconstruction, pragmatism, hegemony. in: mouffe, c. (edit.). deconstruction and pragmatism (pp. 49-70). london: routledge. laclau, e. & mouffe, c. (2001). hegemony and socialist strategy. towards a radical democratic politics. 2sc ed. london: verso. lopes, a. c. (2004). políticas curriculares: continuidade ou mudança de rumos? rev. bras. educ, 26, 415434. doi:10.1590/s1413-24782004000200009. lopes, a. c. (2012). a qualidade da escola pública: uma questão de currículo? in: oliveira, m. a. t. de et al. a qualidade da escola pública no brasil (pp. 13-29). belo horizonte: mazza. lopes, a. c. (2013). teorias pós-críticas, política e currículo. educação, sociedades e culturas, 39, 7 -23. http://www.fpce.up.pt/ciie/sites/default/files/02.alicelopes.pdf. lopes, a. c. & macedo, e. (2011). teorias de currículo. são paulo: cortez. macedo, e. (2009). currículo e hibridismo: para politizar o currículo como cultura. educação em foco – questões contemporâneas de currículo, (8) (1 – 2), 13-30. macedo, e. (2012). currículo e conhecimento: aproximações entre educação e ensino. cadernos de pesquisa, 42(147), 716-737. doi:10.1590/s0100-15742012000300004 peters, m. & burbules, n. c. (2004). poststructuralism and educational research. rowman littlefield, united states. tura, m. de l. r. & pereira, t. v. (2013). políticas curriculares, sistemas de avaliação e conhecimentos escolares. in tura, m. de l. r. & garcia, m. m. a. (orgs.). currículo, políticas e ação docente (pp. 333-349). são paulo: cortez. young, m. & muller, j. (2007).truth and truthfulness in the sociology educational knowledge. educ. rev. [online], n.45, pp. 159-196. doi: 10.1590/s010246982007000100010. pereira & costa. challenges to curriculum theory in 21st century: thinking the school beyond… transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 12 notes 1 an early version of this paper was presented at the 5th triennial conference of the international association for the advancement of curriculum studies, held at the university of ottawa in may 26-29 2015. 2p.talitavidal@gmail.com 3hugoguimel@yahoo.com.br submitted: september, 28th, 2015. approved: december, 19th, 2015. mailto:p.talitavidal@gmail.com mailto:hugoguimel@yahoo.com.br o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: carvalho, janete magalhães; silva, sandra kretli da; delboni, tânia m.z.g.frizzera (2016). the power of affections in the curriculum discursive practices: possibilities of the development of a relationshipcurriculum. transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> the power of affections in the curriculum discursive practices: possibilities of the development of a relationship-curriculum1 janete magalhães carvalho2 federal university of espírito santo (ufes), brazil sandra kretli da silva3 federal university of espírito santo (ufes), brazil tânia mara zanotti guerra frizzera delboni4 federal university of espírito santo (ufes), brazil designing paths the desire that drives the writing this paper is on the motions, flows and intensities of life lived in school everyday life, involved in micro politics in the affects and affections, desires, relationships, encounters, in which the processes and modes of subjectivation are related to the political, social and cultural processes. through such processes reality outlines are generated in a motion of collective life creation, that vibrates in body encounters that affect and are affected. encounter is seen an event, with different intensities and drive of life. it assumes difference, divergence, dissonance, that is, encounter as politics. political power is on the making of possibilities, of motions that enable to produce an ethical-political ethos, in the creation of other ways of life, in the creation of life as a work of art, of life at/about school. thus, this paper aims at thinking how the curriculum generates flows and mobilities, beyond the one materialized by the school syllabus and curricular designs. thinking about a “relationship-curriculum”, wishing to articulate “[…] a knowledge about life, a touching one, that moves minds” (garcia, 2007, p. 104.) a curriculum that moves, dislocates concepts, ideas and knowledge making them “[…] dance rather than march axioms full of certainty” (garcia, 2007, p. 104). the methodology of cartographical research has allowed to follow up the moves of students’ (both boys and girls) desire lines, from different grades at a public elementary school that dares to show a view full of intensities and flows. and why not to say, full of life? motions of male and female students’ bodies that vibrate and cause resonance as they make up connections, relationships, encounters and unique, unstable, changeable and pulsing existences. this way, the cartographical research in this study searched to capture and register how, in collective assemblages of enunciates and modes of powers and actions, the school reproduces or makes up pedagogical practices considered to be “true” themselves. in order to do that, the cartographical research focused on the follow up of processes of the productions of encounters, and affects/affections between bodies carvalho, silva & delboni. the power of affections in the curriculum discursive practices 15 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci spinoza (2008), as well as the local discursivity (foucault, 1983), expressed in conversation network seen as discursive practices. school involves, besides the paperwork emanated from the institutions and education managers, documents produced by the school, projects, plans, textbooks, media, everything that crosses the school space-time, as well as everything that is experienced, felt, practiced. thus, everything that is registered in the documents, conversations, feelings and actions experienced by the subjects of the school everyday life, and beyond it, assume motions and rhythms that, as a whole, turn out to be different and wild, in spite of the attempt to straighten then, and make them similar. strange is the view that territorializes and derritorializes in a few minutes, and in which different dimensions get to entangle themselves. strange is the view in which in the name of established truths, it castrates creative motions. such a complex view, since it connects physical and virtual spaces, showing to be open to the sensitive and interactional occupation, and maximizing networks of affects/affections throughout conversations. as theoretical intercessors that enabled affect assemblages through bodies encounters in discursive practical networks and/or conversations, we refer to spinoza (2008) as to affects, approaching them to foucault’s existence aesthetics (1983) in order to problematize school everyday life as a possible field to the power of a relationshipcurriculum. some motions are thus presented, that have been experienced from the assemblage created with spinoza, foucault and the students’ life production, and from some techniques. such techniques aimed at establishing some kind of relationship with students, such as sessions involving movies, storytelling, drawings, songs, paintings, jokes and games. the aim in using such techniques is to enable/motivate/trigger conversation networks in which it is possible to make encounters/relationships and also to get into the networks created by students to experience the power of affects and affections experienced in school everyday life. motion one: body, power and affects sometimes, in class, the teacher says something and i daydream […] it seems that i’m in a different world […] it is really cool! (3rd grade student) how can school everyday life be problematized as a possible field for micropolitical power produced in encounters, affects and affections? which motions from students’ bodies increase life power, influencing the development of a curriculum that comes from the relationship with someone else? according to spinoza (2008), what should be acknowledged by men are human affects, and his proposition of a knowledge ethics means knowing to be affected, and being affected so that we can live happily. human affects explain human beings’ behaviors, their sadness and happiness. ethics implies getting to know/learn what our affects are, how we affect and how we are affected, that is, what it is to know/learn what constitutes us, what affects us, increases or decreases our power. spinoza defines “affect” showing that it is indissolubly a bodily affection: “by emotion i mean modifications of the body, whereby the active power of the said body is increased or diminished, aided or constrained, and also the ideas of such modifications” (spinoza, 2008, p. 163). therefore, even joy itself is on the body an affection that increases or motivates its acting power, and on the mind it is an idea that increases or motivates its thinking power. carvalho, silva & delboni. the power of affections in the curriculum discursive practices 16 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci to spinoza, the human body is made of many individuals (of different nature), each one of them is constituted of and affected by other bodies in several ways: “the individuals that make up the human body, and that, consequently, the human body itself, are affected by external bodies in many ways” (spinoza, 2008, p. 105). therefore, the body is designed as a plurality, through a series of exchanges with the environment, that is, the body pulses from and at the encounters with other bodies that affect and are affected. “in order to preserve itself, the human body needs many other bodies, through which it is as continually regenerated” (spinoza, 2008, p. 5). a body is defined by everything that distinguishes it from other bodies ( motion and rest, speed and slowness) and by the affects produced by other bodies, where the ability of a body to be affected by another body is due the complexity level of its internal composition. the pupil’s speech used as epigraph in this “movement one” leads us to discuss what enables students to “daydream”, to “be in a different world”, as dislocations, as crossings, deterritorializations produced by vibration, by the relationships of bodies that vibrate and, in this motion, increase their power of action. how to think the power of affects from bodies’ relationships, understanding relationships as the different lines that produce, create, invent, intersect multiple possibilities produced in the field of possibilities? how to think the relationship that takes place “among” students’ vibrating bodies, which does not imply something that is “inside” and “outside”, but from the events? what does this encounter with vibrating bodies produce as power in school everyday life concerning the curriculum? is it possible to think in a “relationship-curriculum”? “relationship-curriculum” that makes sense of networks woven from different languages, knowledge, action and power, in short, from different expressions in a bodily crossing route, for a body crosses concepts, invades them, trespass them, makes sense of them, uses them, re-creates them, invents them. a “relationship-curriculum” that is written as we experience the spaces created by school. a “relationship-curriculum” that is made from the increasing on the power of affecting and being affected, which implies in coexistence of other vibrating bodies, making the other bodies which affect us, move us, take us from our places, alarm us, make us create. a “relationship-curriculum” that is crossing, dislocation, assemblage. motion two: knowledge, affectivity and existential aesthetics according to spinoza, there is no detachment between knowledge and affectivity. there are, however, different types of knowledge that correspond to different emotional regimes. knowledge and affect, combined, constitute a way of living, which opens to us a possibility of interlacing spinoza and foucault (carvalho, 2012). thinking about the possibility of an existential aesthetics from foucault – in which life becomes a work of art – means the deconstruction of ordinary concepts of work and art, usually associated to visual arts, music or literature. thus one can understand how such concepts might build the way of being, the way of living. to abbagnano (1982), it was nietzsche who insisted on the practical nature of art, seeing on it as a manifestation of power willingness, subject to a feeling of power and fullness, as one can see in the case of drunkenness, for instance. art is willingness, intensity. to nietzsche, the concept of work of art is associated to the whole power-toproduce and, this way, nature itself is an artist as well: “the world as a work of art which gives birth to itself” (nietzsche, 2008, p. 397), which bears itself. carvalho, silva & delboni. the power of affections in the curriculum discursive practices 17 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci how is it possible to build and understand life as a work of art? to what extent ethics and aesthetics come across each other, giving birth to life, making up ways of living, of living in the world, forming an ethos (ways of acting, accomplishing, thinking, and knowing)? making life a work of art consists in the willingness to engage an attitude. nietzsche (2001, p. 132) presents a close connection between art and life: “as an aesthetic phenomenon, existence is still bearable to us, and through art eyes and hands are given to us, and, above all, good consciousness as to make ourselves part of such phenomenon”. in the work “will and force”, there is the connection among will, power and life, in which [...] willingness mentions spontaneity of life outbreak, of its free motion of selfexposure or apparition. spontaneously, freely, life is an event to come to light, to make it visible and then grow, that is, worsen, intensify itself. and this is power, as it is achievement, and then it imposes, rules, governs, it is worth it […] such growth, such intensification of life itself is characterized by doing or becoming even more simple and this is superbly conveyed in art, in artistic creation, ultimately, in a work of art. (fogel, 2008, p. 11-10) according to foucault, in the greek-hellenistic period there is no distinction between worldly things and human nature things. the distinction is in the way to know and what we know about the gods, men and the world will have an effect on the nature of the individual, in his/her way of acting, in his/her “êthos”: […] making “ethos”, is modifying, transforming the way of being; one’s mode of existence. it is “ethopoiós” what might change an individual’s way of being (foucault, 2006a, p. 291). one of the practical functions of the self practices is the “ethopoietical” function. the transformation of truth in ethos. ethics would be a mode of existence, since there is a connection between the art of existence and self care. art in the sense of form which presents itself to its own existence, as life expansion. access to self is associated to certain practices, to certain techniques and to a series of concepts and notions that integrate a way of knowing. “practice of itself identifies and incorporates with the art of living itself (a “tékhne toû bíou”). the art of living, art of oneself are identical, they become identical or, at least tend to be” (foucault, 2006a, p. 253). ethics, as it is understood by this author, is the relationship that is settled to oneself, which determines the way through which an individual exerts a transformation on him/herself, aiming at inventing more beautiful ways of being and living. thus, ethics differs from moral, whose coercive rules lead to the judgment of actions and intentions, when taking as reference values such as being the “right” and “wrong”, the “good” and “evil”, and so on. “this is what i have tried to rebuild: the formation and the development of a practice of self, that aims at building oneself as the artisan of beauty of his/ her own life” (foucault, 2006b, p. 244). self-practice as the art of freedom, as practice of freedom, which opens possibilities to new self-relationships, new selfpractices, as self-art: art reminds us of animal vigor conditions: it is, on one hand, an exceedance and an overflow of corporeity flourishing towards the world of images and desires; on the other hand, an excitement of animal function by images and desires in life at its potential – an elevation of the sensation of living, a stimulus of it. (nietzsche, 2008, p. 400) to milovic (2004, p. 114) “[...] we have to create ourselves, to affirm life itself as a work of art. self-care, as in the last part of the history of sexuality, ends with a new aesthetic of life. the ethical question on the norms ends in aesthetics”. ethics presently must not be elaborated with the idea of reasoning, but with the idea of carvalho, silva & delboni. the power of affections in the curriculum discursive practices 18 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci sensitivity. “ethics is new sensitivity to others. subjectivity is founded in this heteronomy. subjectivity and other in itself” (milovic, 2004, p. 119). and isn’t it what foucault invites us to find other modes of generating subjectivity, other possibilities of the individual background, other ways of thinking the relationship itself and with others? merçon (2009, p. 28) approaches the becoming of ethics relating it to the concept of “affective learning”, pointing out that learning is essentially affective: it is about a “learning that is an understanding and intensification of our power of affecting and being affected”. thus, the meaning of affect refers to the notion of encounter; affective learning being an art of encounter “learning about what decreases our power or about what maximizes us.” therefore, which encounters have been engendered in school everyday life that will strengthen knowledge? how is it possible to enable/ intensify an affective learning from the art of students’ encounters in school everyday life? which knowledge has strengthened students’ lives? some students’ motions were chosen as an attempt to capture the existing vibration in what affects them relating to what they like at school: i like school because i have many friends – classmates and colleagues; because i learn a lot every day; because we learn inside here; because it is cool; because i learn a lot; because it is a way of succeeding in life; because i really like studying, i like learning, in order to be successful and also because we have lots of friends here; because at school i learn things, i learn cool things; because it is cool and it is going to be important for my future career; because some teachers are good; because education is free of charge, you don’t have to pay for anything, teachers, and so on; because everything is clean here, the meal is top-quality and the teachers are great; because it helps me behave better than ever; because it is very important for the people who study and it will be good for the future; because it is a place where we can learn lots of things. school is really good, and if we don’t study we won’t get anywhere. we can notice in students’ speeches both males and females that school apparently produces an increase in the power as it means a learning possibility, in which education is pointed as the possibility of being successful in life. however, we see these expressions as “joy-products”, that is, as clichés that permeate the school ideology. much importance is attributed to school concerning teaching and learning. another motion that occurs refers to the relationship between the self and the other: friends, teachers, meals, cleaning. thus, we could question: does the increase in power from the affections produced in the relationships between different bodies imply the possibility of thinking knowledge as the most powerful affect in the creation of life as a work of art? motion three: knowledge as the most powerful affect does knowledge occur producing affects, or do affects produce knowledge? if getting to know oneself means to affect and to be affected, what is the relationship between knowledge and affect? what are the intensities and possibilities for the creation of life that pulses and that makes the invention of processes possible in which knowledge is the most powerful affect? spinoza claims that the way we think, the way we know implies the way we live, that is to say, to spinoza whatever the way of knowledge, this reflects the way of living. the ethical path suggested by spinoza leads us to think in the dignity of living what we are, facing our problems, expectations, desires, what would lead us to create carvalho, silva & delboni. the power of affections in the curriculum discursive practices 19 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci one’s own lifestyle. the solutions for the problems found throughout life often imply one invention. if the existence of human body, in spinoza, is defined by a proportion between the characteristics of motion and rest, and by its constant relationship to other bodies, it can be said that the power of a body is defined by its aptitude in affecting and being affected. in this conception of power there is not only the beginning of action (affecting), but also of affection (being affected). the bigger the affective aptitude, the more powerful and complex the bodies will be. thus, an active body is one whose affective sensibility is strong and, being affected does not mean suffer, on the contrary, “the more the body’s aptitude to be affected is reduced, the more the body lives in a restricted way, insensitive to a great number of things […]” (sévérac, 2009, p. 24). becoming active corresponds to an opening to the human sensitivity, to an increase in his/her aptitude to be affected or to affect. we possess rational knowledge, according to spinoza, sharing it and, in order to do so, we need to expand it. the ethical aim is understood by the active desire for knowledge. the bigger the emotional ability, the bigger the mind’s ability to think about several things simultaneously, and, therefore, understand the convenience, difference and opposition relationships. which motions, encounters, affects, affections, and desires have been lived by students, enabling the development a “relationship-curriculum”? how can we think about a “relationship-curriculum” from the flows, connections, relationships, encounters, unique existences? what do students express from their conversations, bodies and motions? how can we think of knowledge from experiences, from what increases acting power, that maximizes curricular flows? when they were inquired if what they experienced outside the school had any connection to what the school teaches, students pointed out to what is studied in different areas of knowledge and their relationship with everyday life: school teaches us several things that are part of our daily life; it teaches us that we are supposed to use condoms in order not to get infected by aids; we learn how to read, write, respect…; here at school we learn that education is very important…; discipline, behavior; we learn about the environment; we learn everything… we don’t learn how to curse; to read; to respect our parents; we learn the cardinal points, which teach us where we are; in science we learn about sex, about how to avoid diseases; it teaches mostly math and portuguese, which i use for everything; math, for instance, helps me differ prices, portuguese helps me to speak and express myself and in english i learn different kinds of things; in the supermarket, for example, i go there and it says that something costs r$10,00 and you give r$100,00 and if you get the 78,00 out of 100,00, you get the wrong change and you don’t realize it; we can analyze, from the students’ opinions, that there is a curriculum that has as its core speaking, writing and mathematical logic based on notions of numbers and problem solving, besides science with natural world interfaces, from a physical world in which the human being relates to another individual. however, in other speeches some motions will be presented, which are inter-related with life lived, with experience they had at and beyond school. motion four: flow intensities, affects and affections... how can school everyday life be problematized as a probable field for micropolitical power, engendered in the encounters, affects and affections? what are the intensities and possibilities for the making of life that vibrates and that enables the invention of processes in which knowledge is the most powerful affect? carvalho, silva & delboni. the power of affections in the curriculum discursive practices 20 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci students both males and females have shown through their bodies’ motions that there is another possibility of life meant to be generated in school everyday life, establishing unique existential experiences through what affects and maximizes them. when they were inquired about why the school teaches some particular contents and about what they would like to learn at school, there is a belief that what is taught at school is something relevant: [...]because the school wants us to be successful in life; school teaches many things; because school is teaching me much more, it teaches me how to read and write, to be intelligent and polite, because we will be able to know what to accomplish in the world; to learn how to read and write, and not to get my classmates’ stuff; i think school is teaching us to go to a better course; school is teaching me how to be polite; to be intelligent, polite and to be successful in life; i would like to learn how to read faster; so we can get a good job and learn more. but i what i would like was to play soccer; for us to get a good job in the future, but i wanted to learn crafting; so i could be successful in life […]. however, there is always a “but...”. and this “but” comes from what affects them, from the unique motions produced through will, interest, desire, which registers some marks on their bodies and where power is for the making of knowledge as the most powerful affect. i wish there were more jokes; i wish i could learn how to play the guitar, the drums and music; i wish i could learn how to play volleyball and basketball, because i like those sports a lot; i wish i could learn how to swim; i want to learn how to play basketball because i am very tall and i like it; soccer, volleyball, basketball and dodgeball; learn how to play a musical instrument; i want to learn more things such as soccer and indoor soccer; i wish i could learn how to play indoor soccer, drama and video-making; i wish i could learn spanish and volleyball; i wish i could learn how to speak chinese, spanish, italian and english; practice sports and arts; swimming; yes, many things such as swimming; i like arts [...]. it is noteworthy noticing that the students, in the conversation networks, present affects that increase or decrease the power of life at school, without disqualifying the knowledge present at the several areas of knowledge. however, there is a desire of creating motions, in boosting knowledge, in setting free the pulsing life that there is and vibrates in their bodies. this desire means to expand pulsing life to beyond classrooms, experiencing other school spaces-time: the school courts, the kitchen garden, the library, the video lab. even being in the classroom, there is also the need to (impelled by students) create other ways of organization (or disorganization?), in which students invent different ways of grouping, of getting together, establishing relationships, dislocations, experiencing affects and affections. knowledge, then, is conceived all the time through the experience lived and felt, whose immanency is on the motions, in the relationships, in the inventions. learning, for students is not only representing a certain reality, but it implies the co-engendering of life experienced, felt, created. many times, in school everyday life, students’ search to lend visibility to life that pulses in their bodies, which are not present in textbooks, in programs, contents of several disciplines, but that are pulsing, vibrating and intense. the power of students’ motions and of what affects them, and that allows thinking school in a way that makes sense and that is connected to life. before this framework a question emerges: does school talk about things that make sense for students, both male and females? how do students build knowledge? what is the relationship between knowledge and affect? and between knowledge and life? carvalho, silva & delboni. the power of affections in the curriculum discursive practices 21 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci at last, in never-ending motions... the attempt in this paper was to transform emotions in writing, from several crossings of immanence plans with students. these have shown in a unique way that encounters are probable to happen in the school everyday life and that the production of good encounters involves the ethical-political issue from all those that are part of school in their daily lives. the research aimed, then, at opening the school territory to the world, to the life immanence plan, to a relationship-curriculum that procedurally allows teaching and learning of an active life maximized by an affect policy. but where do affects come from? which ones make us active or passive? spinoza (2008) describes affect as an affection of the body through which its existing and acting power is increased or diminished. according to him, the soul is the body’s idea, and an emotion is the idea, in the soul, of body affection. in other words, an emotion is a simultaneous body and psychic event. thus, between body and soul there is no hierarchical relationship, there is no command, there is no subordination, that is, to mental passivity corresponds to body passivity and to mental activity corresponds a body activity. according to spinoza (2008), there are three primary emotions: desire, pleasure and pain. to him, pleasure and pain are not states of the soul, they are ways of being or existing. pleasure is the transition of a man from a less to a greater perfect, a feeling that our capacity or aptitude for existing and acting increase due to an external cause, in passion, or an internal cause, in action. thus, pain is the passage from a major perfection to a minor one, creating a diminishing feeling of our aptitude for existing and acting. thus, pleasure triggers action. spinoza (2008) develops the passion and action theory according to levels of force or intensity. thus, a passion is stronger than another when it increases our body and mind’s capacity to exist, the force not confusing with our states of psychic or body excitement, with the violence of emotions. stronger passions (conatus strengthening) will come from joy, whereas the weaker ones will come from sadness. actions, being perfection or bigger realities, will always be stronger than stronger passions. freedom springs from this and in this motion of sad passions to happy ones and the joy passions to the actions aroused from the desire and the joy as adequate or internal causes. we understand, therefore, a relationship-curriculum as one managed by pleasure that, as revolutionary force, maximizes the good encounter and thinking. in a scape for reflection about image, the disciplined, domesticated knowledge, from traditional curricula a relationship-curriculum suggests a relationship of promotion of pleasure understood and a good and social right. a production of revolutionary life, since pleasure and desire are revolutionary, considering that they don’t go through imitation, but through motion of thought. moving the thought is creation, it is not imitation, it is becoming. and becoming is what is to come. it is something i will invent and the possibility of invention is always the result of an encounter that is not a case of thinking, production, of “cliché”, for it is a case of a body that thinks and transforms, and affects through and within encounters. in a relationship-curriculum, in teaching and learning, there is no more “me” or “him/her”, but there are affect and affectivity groups, always communities, always a collective and/or a group. joy does not search individual and/or focused singularity, it does not search learning standardized by comparative rates (a feature of curricula that carvalho, silva & delboni. the power of affections in the curriculum discursive practices 22 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci are based on sadness, and, therefore, in passivity), but always a collective-individual, a community-individual. and then, there is always learning and teaching that involve political power. thus, relationship-curriculum seeks a learning life that is an invention of itself and of life, since it goes beyond the field of the organic body of an individual through encounter, through living, through corporeity experience in school everyday life. beyond it, we hug each other, meet, coexist, live together, relate to one another, in the sense of the production of political life, of life that recovers its political power. being conatus the vital principle that leads us to develop more and more our power intensity throughout our existence, as we are made of the intrinsic power of qualitative perseverance in existence, we should take part in interactions that enable the elaboration of emotions associated to the assertion power of values based on love and expansion of life within social interaction. they are relationships, and thus, the increase of our acting power comes straight from a good encounter at the heart of a traditional curriculum. due to that, a relationship-curriculum should search the development of interaction networks aiming at mutual use of what is excellent in the creative potential of the parties that interact to each other. students have shown, from desire, possible paths for the creation of an ethical becoming, which strengthens school everyday life. “it is in active desiring, in the line with powerful thinking, that ethical becoming is claimed, that it might be impelled by our desire, it is built as unrepeatable, non-transferable, unique path” (merçon, 2009, p. 20). the affect experience, affecting and being affected, allows the invention of ways of living, in which life insists in persevering. they are motions, therefore, processes, never-ending, periodic. when students bring their own life experience to school, they open the possibility of taking a chance in life relations, woven from different lines which intersect, creating other possible fields to think of the curriculum development, for instance. the conversation networks, seen as networks of different relationships are powerful for the creation of knowledge as the most powerful affection, in which knowledge is considered a result of bodies’ encounters. therefore, the “relationshipcurriculum” concept was thought bearing in mind the power of the networks that are created all the time, undone, re-created, indicating an opening to human sensitivity, to the aptitude of affecting and being affected in which, the relations to other bodies, different types of knowledge are produced. students’ motions are powerful for thinking school as it is, pulsing and intense. at all times, students are, in their own ways, creating ways so that educational action is possible, even if it is not visible to some people, but visible for those who in their motions, in their bodies there is some vibration, causing resonance as they invent connections, relations, encounters; unique, unstable, changing and pulsing existences. at last, they open a path to emotions and to the possibility of making a work of art out of life, even if it is in a latent state and/or as a collective-individual possibility. carvalho, silva & delboni. the power of affections in the curriculum discursive practices 23 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci notes 1 a version of this paper was approved and presented in the 18th annual international conference on education, in may 2016, in athens, greece, on the topic of “the power of affects on school everyday life”. 2 janetemc@terra.com.br 3 sandra.kretli@hotmail.com 4 taniadelboni@terra.com.br references abbagnano, n. (1982). dicionário de filosofia. são paulo: mestre jou. carvalho. j. m. (2012). espinosa: por um currículo político-ético e afetivo no cotidiano escolar. in: ferraço, c. e.; gabriel, c. t.; amorim, a. c. teóricos e o campo do currículo. campinas: fe/unicamp, 120-140. foucault, m. (1983). sobre a genealogia da ética: uma revisão do trabalho. in: dreyfus, h; rabinow, p. (org.). michel foucault: uma trajetória filosófica. rio de janeiro: forense universitária. foucault, m. (2006a). a hermenêutica do sujeito. são paulo: martins fontes. foucault, m. (2006b). o cuidado da verdade. in: motta, m. b. da. (org.). ditos e escritos. rio de janeiro: forense universitária, v. 5. 240-251. garcia, w. a. c. (2007). entre paisagens. in: dossiê: em multiplicidades, nomeia-se currículo. pro-posições, vol. 18, n. 2 (53), 103-114, maio/ago. merçon, j. (2009). aprendizagem ético-afetivo: uma leitura spinozana da educação. campinas, sp: editora alínea. milovic, m. (2004). comunidade da diferença. rio de janeiro: relume dumará; ijuí, rs: unijuí. nietzsche, f. w. (2001). a gaia ciência. são paulo: companhia das letras. nietzsche, f. w. (2008). a vontade de poder. rio de janeiro: contraponto. sévérac, p. (2009). conhecimento e afetividade em spinoza. in: martins, a. (org.). o mais potente dos afetos: spinoza e nietzsche. são paulo: editora wmf martins fontes. 17-58. spinoza, b. (2008). ética. belo horizonte: autêntica editora. submitted: april 14th 2016 approved: june 22nd 2016 mailto:janetemc@terra.com.br mailto:sandra.kretli@hotmail.com mailto:taniadelboni@terra.com.br microsoft word commentary kameniar.doc transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (3) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci commentaries and conversations on barbara kameniar’s ‘dilemmas in providing hospitality to others in the classroom’ editor: noel gough la trobe university, australia introduction transnational curriculum inquiry (tci) is both a site for transnational scholarly conversations and a site for inquiry into the ways that electronic publishing procedures facilitate and/or constrain inclusive knowledge work in global virtual spaces. one of the ways in which we try to produce such conversations is by keeping tci’s editorial policies and procedures flexible and refraining from imposing arbitrary standards and styles. for example, tci does not have a fixed publication schedule: articles and book/media reviews will usually be published as soon as they are accepted for publication. some issues might consist of just one article or one book/media review, other issues might contain several articles that we believe might be complementary. we will also be flexible in matters of layout and style. if authors go to the trouble of formatting their articles in a particular way, we will not change them to fit our templates. similarly, we do not prescribe one single citation style. authors are free to use whatever style they see as most appropriate for their work, provided that they use a style consistently and provide all of the bibliographic information we require. tci’s review policies and procedures are also flexible. for example, although all articles published in tci will be peer reviewed, they will not necessarily be ‘blind’ reviews. authors can choose to anonymise their manuscripts, and the editors will respect their choice, but we will not impose anonymity on authors. each manuscript is normally reviewed by three referees, two of whom, in most circumstances, will be of different nationalities from the author(s) and from each other (in this instance, the third referee did not deliver a review, despite constant promises that it was ‘on its way’; however, i judged that the convergence of the two reviews i received clearly warranted the manuscript’s acceptance for publication). in addition, the editor may assign a consulting editor to liaise with the referees and the editor in reaching a decision about publication. each referee’s signed review will be circulated to the other referees. my experience, like that of many other journal editors, is that signed reviews are generally of a higher quality than unsigned reviews. however, the names of referees will not be divulged to authors of rejected manuscripts. at the editor’s discretion, manuscripts accepted for publication may be published together with some or all of the referees’ reports and the author’s response, as is the case with barbara kameniar’s article. i thank heesoon bai and robert hattam for their thoughtful and engaging commentaries and questions. kameniar writes: ‘i would like to thank the reviewers for their comments. i found all of the comments very useful in restructuring the paper’. kameniar quotes from bai’s and hattam’s reviews below and provides her responses in the right hand column. i have deleted some comments concerned chiefly with technical and stylistic issues. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci commentaries and conversations on barbara kameniar’s ‘dilemmas in providing hospitality to others’ transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (3) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 13 comments by heesoon bai recommendation: accept with revisions. this paper treats an important topic, and the paper does a good job of theoretically framing the case study. the use of derrida’s work on hospitality and that of other writers (hooks, foucault) is apropos and illuminating. heesoon bai’s comments barbara kameniar’s responses on page 5, the author states ‘in the next section of this paper i provide further detail on the complexities that exist between a foreigner and a host. i then illustrate some of the ways …’. this is good, except that the next section (‘foreigners and hosts’) does not contain the promised illustration as it does not contain the case study/story. it turns out that this next section is most/all about derrida’s notion of hospitality. the section after this, ‘restless negotiations’, does contain the case study/story. given this, it seems that the latter section ‘restless …’ should come before ‘foreigners and hosts’. i reversed the order as suggested by this reviewer. however, the section ‘foreigners and hosts’ then appeared to provide the theory for analysis ‘after the event’. a colleague provided me with feedback on the revision which suggested i needed to rethink the ordering once again. as a result the section ‘foreigners and hosts’ is now located directly after the ‘introduction’. in this way it provides the reader with an introduction to the theory used in analysing caroline’s negotiations. the section on page 5 referred to by the reviewer now appears later in the paper as the final part of a new section. ‘dangerous visitations’. another suggestion: i think that the case study/story section could start out with a more straightforward, descriptive account of the school, programs, caroline’s class, what she teaches, what the issues and problems are that rose in her class, etc. after giving this account, the section can then evolve to contain more analytic and interpretive accounts. this way, the reader can have a clearer picture of what’s going on in this school for religious education. also perhaps some accounts given in ‘conclusion’ could be moved to the aforementioned descriptive section. in tact, i thought that ‘conclusion’ was the clearest part of the paper, and i thought that if i could have read this part earlier in the paper, i would have had a better time comprehending it. at least, that’s my experience in reading this paper! more detail about the social, cultural and economic context of the class has been provided. a brief description of the rationale behind teaching about buddhism in this context has been given. the conclusion included a ‘postscript’ entitled: ‘implications of this study in changing religio-political times’ which attempted to outline the importance of this work. this section was removed and placed in the new section ‘dangerous visitations’. comments by robert hattam recommendation: accept submission. we urgently need more papers that attempt to theorise the nature of (anti)racism in australia, and especially in the field of education. this paper makes an innovative contribution to our thinking about that issue. i think the paper is innovative in a number of ways. firstly, the author sensitively introduces derrida’s notion of http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci commentaries and conversations on barbara kameniar’s ‘dilemmas in providing hospitality to others’ transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (3) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 14 infinite hospitality and its (im)possibility as an horizon for thinking about the role of the religion teacher. the opening paragraphs provide a very insightful imagining of the ‘teacher’ in general: all teachers have to negotiate in that space between ‘host’ and ‘hostage’ but then the aporia is more intense for those whose curriculum involves cultural/religious difference. secondly, the author engages her reading of derrida with actual empirical ‘data’, which provides a case in which to apply/develop her theorising. i think this bit was courageous but i’m not convinced the author actually succeeded in using the case in question to make the point. robert hattam’s comments barbara kameniar’s responses i had trouble finding the exemplar of a teacher struggling with the aporia outlined in the opening move of the paper. having said that, i’m not sure that would be possible in a paper of this length. i’m not sure how the example was a case of a teacher struggling with/against ‘white colonial tropes’. i revisited the ‘case’ and incorporated a more explicit discussion of the ways in which caroline’s struggles could be understood in terms of the aporia of hospitality. the example had a lot of complexity and i would have appreciated a bit more contextual information (what’s a ‘co-educational denominational school’? and what year level is she teaching? … not sure who the ‘others’ are in her class .. this seems quite important given the opening move in this paper. see above, more detail about the social, cultural and economic context of the class has been provided. a brief description of the rationale behind teaching about buddhism in this context has been given. the paper was arguing for a particular complex form of reflexivity; maybe this could have been fore-grounded as the main theme of the paper. although i do not use the term ‘reflexivity’, i do argue for teachers to ‘restlessly negotiate’ the ‘two contradictory and equally justified imperatives’ that being positioned as ‘host’ and ‘agents of the host/s’ demands. i argue this throughout the paper. however, in re-writing the abstract i have included a note to this effect in the last sentence. this should signal to readers that this is a key argument of the paper. reviewers heesoon bai is an associate professor in the faculty of education at simon fraser university, vancouver, canada. email: heesoon_bai@sfu.ca robert hattam is an associate professor in the school of education at the university of south australia. email: robert.hattam@unisa.edu.au http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci mailto:bai@sfu.ca mailto:hattam@unisa.edu.au o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: carvalho, janete magalhães. (2013).the journal transnational curriculum inquiry and the space-time of cosmopolitan hospitality and of curriculum field studies’ deconstruction.transnational curriculum inquiry10 (1). http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> the journal transnational curriculum inquiry and the space-time of cosmopolitan hospitality and of curriculum field studies’ deconstruction janete magalhães carvalho 1 federal university of espírito santo, brazil introduction the study 2 aimed at analyzing how the journal transnational curriculum inquiry (tci, 2004-2009) 3 discourse expressed the internationalization and transnationalization process of the curriculum field studies on the first decade of the 21 st century. tci’s history shows connections to the internationalization movement of curriculum studies that are expressed by the international association for the advancement of curriculum studies (iaacs)’s objectives, as one of the most reputable entities in the curriculum field, founded in 2001, which has been promoting conferences every three years, in china in 2003, in finland in 2006, and in south africa in 2009 4 . the last conference happened in july 2012, in brazil (rio de janeiro). this way, tci sets out to be a vehicle for the establishment of transnational webs in which curriculum researchers from different places collaborate to decentralization of knowledge by sharing work. the analysis upholders of this study were: the representativity of articles shown in tci mapping, the themes approached, the places where the articles authors speak from and sections that comprise the editions, the theoretical support and/or the most quoted references and the way by which, in the journal, they are expressed, the auto-affirming position of “transcultural” and “post-colonial”, from the epistemological perspective. we used the bibliographic-documental method by selecting and analyzing, as study sources, 11 editions of the journal, adding up to 54 articles and/or sections and 71 authors (sometimes recurrent), identifying the attempt to compose the journals by themes, and some editions by more than one. as theoretical support, the categories of hospitality in the ethical-political context of a “democracy to come” and of deconstruction, both elaborated by derrida (1996, 2002, 2003, 2007), were used. the first category, of hospitality, is discussed in this text by considering the intention of the journal that, by means of internationalization proposal, comprises the matter from field of possibilities of a cosmopolitan hospitality. as the object of the cosmopolitan hospitality has as horizon the ethical-political context of a “democracy to come”, always pursued, never concrete, in other words, always a promise we ought to search for immediately. the second one (deconstruction) is included for it affirms the carvalho. the journal transnational curriculum inquiry and the space-time of cosmopolitan 2 transnational curriculum inquiry 10(1)2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci signification process to be subordinate to power relations, but also as an opening to creativity and previous indefinition which escapes the aporias and ambivalences, such as the hospitality/hostility one. this aporia crosses the tci constitution matter in its intention to host and compose different cultural perspectives and, therefore, set in the context of possibility/impossibility of deconstruction. it is appropriate, accordingly, to highlight that the perspective of derrida’s deconstruction has nothing to do with negativity or destruction. it emphasizes an affirmative thought, the reason why deconstruction of cosmopolitan hospitality is neither its negation nor its celebration, but, and more extremely, its reinvention. deconstruction has been approached throughout the last decades as a philosophical, ethical and political alternative to the homogenizing and totalizing conditions imposed to the culture field by western thought general centrality because, with logocentric hierarchization (prevalence of logos, of reason, of intelligible over sensitive, of essence over appearance, of truth over false, etc.), the western metaphysics did not limit itself to establishing the differences between phenomena, but created options among them. the deconstruction strategy was, then, to subvert this logic of opposites. by analyzing the binary conceptual pairs, present in western metaphysics, deconstruction will question exactly the hegemony of one of the terms in relation to the other. it will criticize the hierarchical opposition that privileges unity and identity to the prejudice of diversity and difference. however, the critics to hierarchy and to reason do not intend to destroy, but to change them (soares, 2010). another important aspect to deconstruction refers to the opening to the other. the theme of alterity will be one of the deconstruction marks by questioning the identity and western metaphysics’ logic. this way, one asks: how has the other been themed and by whom? that is because the journal, when it invites the other to compose transcultural scenery, postulates the need to dignity and a “new ethics” awake, looking for a profile of hospitality that is able to lessen the violence that is trigged in a world scale. by considering hospitality a word that, in its literality, admits hosting and antagonizing, derrida (2003) theorizes about the movement that can be thought among the host and the guest, in the movement in which hospitality may appear as the unconditional, conditional or hostile welcoming. this way, a highlighting impasse lies in the language, the hybridism and negotiation matter. asking for “shelter” in a foreign language puts the demanding one in a disadvantage situation, as well as on the moments of accepting, respecting, trespassing the laws and being judged in the other’s language. then, a gap regarding the mater language and the polis opens up, when the biggest pact between the subject with his political, economical and sociocultural position in tension with the spacetime occupied (both geographic and historically). the reading of platonic texts by derrida shows us, on one hand, the foreigner welcoming, the one which comes from a good family, which has a name, social status, entrance visa. on the other hand, it also shows the barbarian coming, the one whose speech is funny, which has a strange accent, who does not understand us well, whom we do not understand well, without status, without documents. one is the foreigner who is recognized on whatever i can be as far as i am subject to the legislation. the other is the unrecognizable foreigner, the deported one, the one that, carvalho. the journal transnational curriculum inquiry and the space-time of cosmopolitan 3 transnational curriculum inquiry 10(1)2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci [...] clumsy as speaks the language, always risks being defenseless in front of the country that hosts or sends him off; the foreigner is, first of all, stranger to the language of right in which the duty of hospitality is elaborated, the right to asylum, its limits, its rules, its policy, etc. (derrida, 2003, p. 15). who is the guest in the tci journal? it is certainly not the barbarian, but which are its credentials? in general, is the guest expected to have a good command of the language and the culture of the place that receives him? the guest which does not talk the same idiom, which does not have the same language of the one which hosts him, is frequently not respected. this way, we ask, in this study, if the journal configuration allowed a space-time, in the curriculum studies field, to the reinvention of hospitality and, in that sense, we question the sources on: where do the authorships talk from? are these places set asymmetrically in relation to the powers and to the languages? do they consist of a studies field in a reinvention (deconstruction) process that welcomes the other? does it overcome a colonial perspective? tci editions configuration throughout the first decade of the 21st century throughout the period of 2004-2009, the transnational curriculum inquiry journal published 11 issues, distributed in the following way: in 2004, v. 1, one issue; in 2005, v. 2, one issue; in 2006, v. 3, two issues; in 2007, v. 4, three issues; in 2008, v. 5, two issues; and, in 2009, v. 6, two issues. regarding the authorship, we have observed an excessive prevalence of authors from australia/oceania (57%) and from the usa and canada/north america (32%), adding up to, approximately, 90%. it was noticeable that the authors talk from a place they do not inhabit but that inhabits them, as they are from other countries and study or work in reference universities in those countries. following, there is the authorship description by articles and origin and/or location of universities or research centers in which authors work as professors and researchers, as well as the major themes of each issue of the journal and the articles themes in each number of the magazine: table 1 – frames and themes of articles by issue number, authors and origin issue number/year: themes of articles 5 and authors volume 1, n. 1 (2004) relevance of transnational studies in the curriculum area: • investigation of transnational curriculum studies – noel gough – australia • interstitial power space between different languages, english as affirmation of colonial sovereignty marilyn low – usa pat palulis – canada • complexity curriculum perspective based on w. doll’s 4rs proposal carvalho. the journal transnational curriculum inquiry and the space-time of cosmopolitan 4 transnational curriculum inquiry 10(1)2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci -lixin liao –canada volume 2, n. 1 (2005) cultural relation between western and asian countries, especially china and japan: • relations between chinese and american curriculum studies, considering the possible contribution of buddhism theory -william pinar –canada • transnational, post-colonial curriculum, focusing on different languages in different spaces and cultures -mika yakamoto – canada volume 3, n. 1 (2006) curriculum and changes in globalization times: • functions of students preparation for the global world, society changes and the school curriculum lyn yates – australia. • democratic perspective of john dewey as a chinese society reference wu mei hoyt – usa. volume 3, n. 2 (2006) trans and internationalization of curriculum studies: • construction of curriculum studies internationalization and the power of international meetings in this process -william pinar – canada • decline of civilization represented by nazism, a democratic education, non-alienating, in a curriculum that empowers collectivity heinz sienker – germany • multiculturalism, gender and curriculum studies, transnational flows and feminist autobiographic identities -janet miller –usa volume 4, n. 1 (2007) investigation on how asian and australian educators perceive the globalization movement and the capitalism as world westernization: • globalization, westernization, power relations and the educational sino-reformin australia -loshimi naidoo; michael silva and sanagavarapv prathyusha –australia. • refugees as peripheral marginal subjects: carvalho. the journal transnational curriculum inquiry and the space-time of cosmopolitan 5 transnational curriculum inquiry 10(1)2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci globalization, refugees and education ravider shadu and christie pam – australia • impact of globalization over cultural identity and education in indian immigrant families in australia – loshini naidoo – australia • aspirations of young people for education and employability in australia’s rural communities -charlotte fabiansson and healy lousie – australia • changes in teachers practices using asian arts and literature -anne power – australia • changes in practices of asian southeast teachers using the australian tertiary mathematics educator (atme) -allan leslie white – australia • world english spelling (wes), curriculum matters, transnational mobility, the bologna process and the access difficulties to the teaching career for asia and oceania students jinghe han and michael singh – australia. • china’s policies for minor languages and english dissemination -xiluan zuo –china • teaching english as a foreign language, curriculum and the impact of globalization and computer mediated communication li wu and tingjun cao – china volume 4, n. 2 (2007) culture and both local and global spacetimes: • curriculum construction in a peripheral region in europe, azores, in globalization time francisco rodrigues souza – portugal • transforming practices’ promotion: implementing social justice course in teachers formation syllabuses in universities loshini naidoo – australia • reflecting on work and early childhood, considering the high number of children from ethnical minorities and teachers from cultural majorities jeanette rhedding jones – norway volume 4, n. 3 (2007) the question of hospitality in the classroom: • dilemmas on hospitality offering to others in the classroom, considering the guest/host relation among religion, races and cultures barbara maia kameniar – australia carvalho. the journal transnational curriculum inquiry and the space-time of cosmopolitan 6 transnational curriculum inquiry 10(1)2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci volume 5, n. 1 (2008) ecology, environmental education and curriculum implications of this theme: • issue based on eight works presented at “australian colloquium: ecology, apprenticeship and ecology education”. all authors are austral ian universities professors. they are: lyn carter, catherine pratt camden and julie white –australia catherine pratt camden – australia lyn carter – australia arran gare – australia annette gough – australia athena vongalis-macrow – australia julie white – australia noel gough – australia volume 5, n. 2 (2008) culturally constituted identities that cross school curriculum dimension: • curriculum conceptualization as threshold spaces of rhizomatic complexity and transversal knowledge pauline sameshima –usa and rita irwin –canada • reflection on violence and peace narrations in teaching-learning processes making hybrid spaces for side by side living that encourages ethical relations monica waterhouse – canada • importance of complexity theory and transdisciplinary mastery for curriculum development brent davis and sumara dennis – canada • nüshuas phonetical writing invented by women in jiangyong/china and the power of autobiographic narrations of women in a group identity formation julia brossard – usa volume 6, n. 1 (2009) curriculum pedagogical reconstruction: • proposition of “causal layered pedagogy” to think education differently, trying to go over the colonization mentality of “educational empire” marcus bussey – australia • affirming the need for sustainability literacy of higher education undergraduates alison lugg –australia carvalho. the journal transnational curriculum inquiry and the space-time of cosmopolitan 7 transnational curriculum inquiry 10(1)2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci volume 6, n. 2 (2009) curriculum as hospitality, zen trip and intercultural approach: the articles that comprise this issue refer to transnational communication, especially, to the relation between english language and china. • analysis of the need for understanding a curriculum to be inhabited by the other’s language nicholas ng-a-fook – canada • proposal of curriculum as a zen journey, without predetermined objectives, preestablished times, patterned tests and meditation practices on daily routines, looking for other possibilities in curriculum achievement • jie yu – usa • considering curriculum as transcultural living, western and eastern, so that the transnational thought involves education praxis nicholas ng-a-fook – canada • “the other’s language and a zen voyage: an answer”, affirms the intersection, in this issue, of articles by authors with migration experiences ad intercultural curriculum hongyu wang – usa up to the 2007 edition, the articles did not show key words. the following graphic is an attempt to illustrate the key-terms expressed on titles and abstracts configuration. carvalho. the journal transnational curriculum inquiry and the space-time of cosmopolitan 8 transnational curriculum inquiry 10(1)2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci graphic 1 – distribution of the most frequent key-terms according to tci’s founding editor, noel gough, the journal is born, on its first edition in 2004, under post-colonial theories inspiration on its connections to french poststructuralism, with the goal of internationalizing and transnationalizing the curriculum studies field, understood as complex, rhizomatic and established on webs connections between languages and power. in general, on tci articles, a curriculum that does not serve domination is advocated, but to make a major opening to difference learning and to the ability of living with ambiguity and the unknown possible for the students. therefore, they point that the transcultural contact living consideration demands that the curriculum makers become transnational thinkers, involving the intercultural thought in the educational theory and practice. by establishing a relation between the themes and the authors, we observed as said, the prevalence of authors that work in universities in australia, new zealand/oceania (57%), followed by the authors from the usa and canada (32%), adding up to almost 90% of authorship. 9 8 7 6 5 4 4 4 3 2 2 most frequent key-terms curriculum, ecology, sustainability and education curriculum transnational/international investigation impact of globalization on curricular processes hospitality to the others john dewey and democratic education interculturality and curriculum relation between chinese and north american curricular studies english as dominant language curriculum as rhizomatic multiplicity female question curriculum and complexity theory carvalho. the journal transnational curriculum inquiry and the space-time of cosmopolitan 9 transnational curriculum inquiry 10(1)2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci graphic 2 – authors distribution per countries in which they work it is appropriate to highlight, however, that, although almost 90% of the articles authors work in western universities, as seen above, a meaningful number of these university professors, doctorate and master’s students are immigrant (34% of all the authors), coming from china (50%), from india (29%), from japan (8%) and from asian non identified countries (13%). it is appropriate to question, therefore, the significant incidence of authors from emerging countries, such as china and india, as well as the absolute absence of authors from african and latin american countries until 2012. that is, because, in 2012, elizabeth macedo (treasurer of iaacs and president of the committee that organized “the fourth world curriculum studies conference”)took on the editorial office of tci journal, having alice casimiro lopes as associate editor, both from universidade do estado do rio de janeiro, in brazil, opening room for publishing, in 2011’s issue (released in september 2012), of an article by two brazilian authors, as well as formulating in the editorial an invitation to all the interested ones to forward articles as a means to promote a bigger and most productive debate on curricular studies in a transnational perspective. regarding the articles quoting processes, we observed in the set of articles, 337 bibliographic references, standing out, with more than five quotations and/or references: w. pinar (14), n. gough (13), g. deleuze e f. guattari (10), h. wang (9), w. doll (9), j. derrida (8), t. aoki (8), m. foucault (7), j. butler (6), m. castells (6), r. robertson (5), s. hall (5). there was reference to only one brazilian author: paulo freire, who, among the listed ones, was referenced four times. the authors’ distribution is expressed on graphic 3. 57% 32% 11% australia/oceania usa/canada/north america other locations carvalho. the journal transnational curriculum inquiry and the space-time of cosmopolitan 10 transnational curriculum inquiry 10(1)2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci graphic 3 – authors referenced on tci articles (2004-2009) distribution this way, the bibliographic references presented converge with the presupposition and/or key-concepts that stand out on the articles analysis, in other words, are consonants with the perspectives adopted by the authors, in the sense of looking for the instauration of a differential transcultural view. they are based on theoretical-philosophical approaches, considered without meaning or classification intentions, as prevailing perspective converging with the anti foundational movement 6 , which involves theories, such as the difference philosophy one, the one of the post-colonial studies, the one of complexity, the naturalist knowledge one, the one of knowledge in webs, among others. such theoretical discourses are very diverse among themselves, however, the disbelief in the self-centered subject as locus of truth or certainty as a common place and, in that sense, against any kind of essentialism, as supporting the belief that we constitute ourselves in and by the relations. resuming for final considerations tci’s creation and promotion presents the transculturalization and transinternationalization of curriculum field studies as objective. such pretention holds within the alterity meeting question, without homogenizing intentionality, which addresses the hospitality and deconstruction concepts as reinvention not only of the means of producing knowledge, but, fundamentally, of the question imbricated with hospitality. would tci be speaking of the hospitality need when the culture discomfort points at borders rupture? which are the existing limits between the other and me, in the times of communicative webs? which are the demands requested to the stranger or foreigner that report to this contract? would tci be looking for reinvention, in the field of curriculum studies, of cosmopolitan hospitality? we would say no! william pinar (2009), one of the tci journal`s founders, affirms that the cosmopolitism has to be problematized in its universalizing pretention. reasoning on worldliness and cosmopolitism, pinar (2009) points that the cosmopolitan justice rules constitution, even when negotiated by means of treaties between nations, act over “people” and in concrete ways of existence. he affirms that, nowadays, “cosmopolitism”, as well as 14 13 9 9 8 8 7 6 6 6 5 5 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 155 1 w ill ia m p in ar no el g ou gh ho ng yu w an g w ill ia n do ll jr . ja cq ue s d er rid a te d. t. a ok i m ic he l f ou ca ul t gi lle s d el eu ze e f el ix gu at ta ri j. bu tle r m . c as te lls r. r ob er ts on s. h al l a. a pp ad ur ai al la n lu ke da vi d ge of fr ey s m ith da vi d w . j ar di ne fr itj of c ap ra gi lle s d el eu ze h. b ha bh a h. g iro ux e p . m cl ar en j. rh ed di ng -jo ne s jo nh c ap ut o m in hha t . t rin h pa ul o fr ei re w ill ia m f . p in ar e w ill ia m m . r ey no ld s z. b au m an a. g id de ns d. s m ith hu a zh an g e qi qu an z ho ng ju rg en h ab er m as m . s in gh p. s in gh s. n ie to w ar re n se lle rs xi n li al la n w . w at ts o ut ro s carvalho. the journal transnational curriculum inquiry and the space-time of cosmopolitan 11 transnational curriculum inquiry 10(1)2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the “empire” and the “globalization”, has become a key word introducing, however, a series of meanings that are distinguished by their high level of abstraction and transcendence. pinar (2009) agrees with benhabib (2006, p. 175) as he points out as contemporary characteristic “[...] the high level of commercial, technological and functional interdependence among sovereign nations that still define the legal status of the individual”. between the two ideal that support cosmopolitism: the worrying about kant universalism and the respect for the difference, pinar (2006) points the difficulty of their conciliation. he sees, this way, cosmopolitism not as a solution, but as an enormous challenge that will demand conversation and negotiation as central for its improvement. pinar (2009) visualizes, this way, cosmopolitism as a philosophical project that cannot be based on reductions or totalizations, but on mediations by multiple processes of democratic coming. in this way, in 2003 pinar organized an international publication on curriculum studies and affirms the defense of the iaacs, aiming at internationalizing the curricular studies around the world, by understanding that internationalization “[…] captures the collective entities complexity – nationally distinct fields of curricular studies” (pinar, 2009, p. 156), in conversations with other entities by mediation of specific individuals, associating the local and the global. pinar (2009), as well as derrida (2002b), expresses the fear that the cosmopolitism, vertically oriented, based on universal truths, laws, nations, institutions, erase our already scarce solidarity and humanity. there is no ideal imposed from above, the worldliness assumes endless landforms; it contradicts the universalism and the cosmopolitism of kant for being particularistic in spite of its ubiquity. worldly-wise, sensual, even, voluptuous, should we, as appiah suggests, grow up used to one another? (pinar, 2009, p. 162) derrida (2002b) points that the cosmopolitism question surrounds the globalization’s, the man’s rights on his différance’s, the human’s humanity denial’s horizons, being necessary the organization of this more than critical worldliness, because it needs to be deconstructive (reinventing the self). for derrida (2002a), the difference is opposition, and the différance is heterogeneity. the first one is rigid, as the second is movement that drives towards the, always hybrid and foreigner, other. the concept of strange or foreigner, in derrida (2003), is constituted in a broad and metaphorical way; by understanding it does not necessarily comprise an immigrant’s situation, but a marginal condition of an individual or group that is politically and/or socially misplaced in his/its living space. this concept questions whether tci is promoting a cosmopolitan hospitality. and there are two interweaved reasons for that: the formal legal-political matter of the foreigner; the authorship’s geographical and power composition and their themes. in the first case-reason, the foreigner would be the matter itself, as he brings with him a question that comes in and interrupts the homogeneity established within the frontiers. this way, he puts us in check as he puts the local law in question because he announces oneself as coming from the outside to register that outside inside. then, the foreigner image is always that theoretical, legal and political one. carvalho. the journal transnational curriculum inquiry and the space-time of cosmopolitan 12 transnational curriculum inquiry 10(1)2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci thus, the foreigner (xenos) is that one with whom establishing a contract or alliance is possible, because he is as much of “a guest” (to whom we offer hospitality), as he is of the foreigner thought of as “an another citizen”, in other words, that one that belongs to another legal order, liable to be translated in the welcoming place, because, even if the foreigner brings the question to put the local law in question, he will always do it from within the law and the language of the law. this way, the foreigner brigs the question, but already formulated in the hosting language. it is expected from the guest to adapt to the language and culture, in general, of the place that welcomes him. the guest who does not speak the same language, who does not own the same language of the host is not, usually, respected. derrida puts the question of the language as a matter of duty, a matter of justice, a legal-ethical-political one. he says: [...] i must speak english because a kind of obligations or condition is imposed to me as type of symbolic force, or law, in a situation that i do not control. a kind of pólemos concerns, immediately, to the language appropriation: if i oblige myself to listen to the same desire, i need to speak your language, i must do it, i have to do it. i have to speak your language, because the thing that i will say then will be fairer or judged more fairly, and more fairly appreciated, that means, in this case, in the fairness sense, of adequacy between what is and what is said or thought, between what is said and what is understood, or between what is thought and said or heard by most of those who are here and that, manifestly, make the law […] i must speak a language that is not mine because it will be fairer, in another sense of the word fair, in the sense of justice a sense, say, less legal-ethical-political: it is fairer to speak the language of the majority, especially when, for hospitality, it gives the word to the foreigner(derrida, 2007, p. 5-6). for the understanding of a curriculum to be inhabited by the language of the other, a curriculum that involves temporary migrations of educational experiences in teaching of the other’s language, it becomes necessary for the tci to problematize the colonial policy of language appropriation. questioning, with derrida, any institutionalized language that predicates as a foundation a universal system of exclusion logic, does tci propose the deconstruction of linguistic corporations of an official culture, by pointing the need for attentive hearing the other’s language in the curricular production movement? we would say so, as it seems that the tci journal intends to question, also, the one who disposes the question, the one who subverts the homogenizing order, as it is self introduced as alternative speech, misplaced and different from the other, maybe from its metropolis, to use the colonization term. enunciating oneself as other, standing out from the same is to unfold as a foreigner of his own world, and be foreigner is to put oneself as a question, questioning and, especially, subverting and being dissident of political oppression and cultural repression systems. finally, taking chances on also being questioned by the other, attacked by the other. and this is a risk the intellectuals, authors of tci, take as an epistemic and ethical duty by reaffirming and reinventing the curriculum studies field. however, regarding the other which is talked about, as pointed out, there is an excessive predominance of authors from australia, the usa and canada. these authors talk, in some cases, about a place they do not live in, but which inhabits them on their colonization deconstruction and life reinvention processes. on the other hand, the carvalho. the journal transnational curriculum inquiry and the space-time of cosmopolitan 13 transnational curriculum inquiry 10(1)2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci significant number of immigrant authors, all of them asian, as seen, with economically and politically emerging countries’ noticeable prevalence, such as china, india, japan, puts in question both the cosmopolitan hospitality, welcoming of the foreigner by legal-politicalmoral hospitality, and the unconditional hospitality, absolute welcoming of the other. it is appropriate, this way, to problematize, regarding the tci authorship, whether the foreigner welcoming legal-political-moral order would adjust only to those who come from countries which have growing influence on the global scenery, as well as if the hospitality of welcoming the other is not denied by the absence of latin-american and african authors on this debate, understanding that hybridization that occurs among entities set asymmetrically in relation to the power, somehow, also affects power, as the “third space” which results from hybridization is not determined, ever, unilaterally, by the hegemonic identity: it introduces a difference which constitutes the possibility of its questioning. therefore, a central question for the debate presented on this article refers to the problematization above, in other words, to the necessary increase of the number of authors from the most varied nationalities, as it is possible to ask: when presupposing the identities not to be static, would nationality be a false matter? in that sense, it is appropriate to highlight that, for derrida (2002a), obviously, the identities are not static or stable, however, as hybrids the spatialities and temporalities in which they are produced, interpreted and mediated and, ultimately, produced in and by power relations which cross them. among such power relations, the “hosting” power of a nation is subscribed and the legal-formal dimension of welcoming the other which is selfconstituted and made up within the hegemony scope of some countries over others. this way, for derrida, searching for deconstruction matters, by supposing that the right to do so affirmatively and performatively, however by considering the forces game and the necessary opposition to a great number of powers – of state, economical, media, religious, cultural – synthesizing, to all the powers that, as derrida affirms (2002c), limit the “democracy to come”. as stated, there is an excessive prevalence of authors from australia/oceania (57%) and from the usa and canada/north america (32%), adding up to, approximately, 90%, and such authors speak from a place they do not inhabit, but which inhabits them, either for being from other countries or working in reference universities, or because of the contacts promoted by field researches and/or by the media. thus, we ask: would this process not be invigorated by the higher representativity of authors who inhabit other spaces? will the journal editor change, on the second decade of the 21 st century, set in brazil and inviting to participate within the editorial, increase the representativity of authorship from latin-american, african and asian countries that are not in the economical-cultural power sphere? therefore, recognizing the highly stimulating and deconstructing tci potential for the curricular field, we out in check, as problematization hypothesis: up to which point does the restrict circle of authorship’s interchanges, changes and sharing, of geopolitical areas, of language and culture conditioned hospitality favors the transnationalization process of speech in the curriculum field, in the recent 21 st century history, expressed on transnational curriculum inquiry? in the end, we receive the tci publisher`s invitation in 2012 as a renovation wind that we need, as we only know of the walking in which we are always retracing the paths by having as ethical-political horizon a “democracy to come”. carvalho. the journal transnational curriculum inquiry and the space-time of cosmopolitan 14 transnational curriculum inquiry 10(1)2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci notes 1 janetemc@terra.com.br 2 the data production process for this article had the contribution of suzany goulart lourenço, pedagogy undergraduate and scientific initiation scholarship holder at the federal university of espírito santo. 3 after 2009, other three tci issues have been published: v. 8, n. 1 in 2011; v. 7, n. 1 and n. 2 in 2010. however, the analysis developed here refers to the first decade of the 21st century, from 2001 to 2009. however, we must highlight that after the 4th iaacs conference in rio de janeiro, professor dr. elizabeth macedo, treasurer of international association for the advancement of curriculum studies (iaacs), took on the editorship of tci, having as associate editor professor dr. alice casimiro lopes, both brazilian and working for state university of rio de janeiro (proped/uerj). 5 table 1 presents only the articles and its authors. because of the length of this article, all the sections “commentaries and conversations”, as well as reviews and opinions on books were not included. 6 according to heuser (2005, p. 88-9), “it is possible to find in this thought movement, which has the difference as a link, some common characteristics [...]. there are no pure philosophies of difference, not contaminated by other authors, because, according to derrida, the contemporary theory is a field constituted of plural forces”. references benhabib, s. (2006). another cosmopolitanism: ethics in a world of strangers. new york: norton. derrida, j. (2007). força de lei: o fundamento místico da autoridade. são paulo: martins fontes. derrida, j. (2003). da hospitalidade. são paulo: escuta. derrida, j. (2003). anne dufourmantelle convida jacques derrida a falar da hospitalidade. são paulo: escuta. derrida, j. (2002a). a escritura e a diferença. são paulo: editora perspectiva. derrida, j. (2002b). universidad sin condición. madrid: editorial trotta. derrida, j. (2002c). torres de babel. belo horizonte: editora ufmg. derrida, j. (1996). o monolinguismo do outro ou a prótese de origem. porto: campo das letras. heuser, e. m. d. (2005). no rastro da filosofia da diferença. in: skliar, c. (org.). derrida & a educação. belo horizonte: autêntica. pinar, w. (2009). multiculturalismo malicioso. currículo sem fronteiras, v. 9, n. 2, p. 149168, jul./dec. mailto:janetemc@terra.com.br carvalho. the journal transnational curriculum inquiry and the space-time of cosmopolitan 15 transnational curriculum inquiry 10(1)2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci pinar, w. (2003). international handbook of curriculum research. new jersey: lawrence erlbaum. soares, v. d. m. (2010). hospitalidade e democracia por vir a partir de jacques derrida. ensaios filosóficos, v. 2, p. 162-179, oct. submitted: may, 11th, 2013 approved: june, 15th, 2013 o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: torres, manuel & leite, carlinda. (2014). assessment of and for learning in higher education. transnational curriculum inquiry volume (1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> assessment of and for learning in higher education: from the traditional summative assessment to the more emancipatory formative and educative assessment in two faculties of the university of porto manuel firmino torres1 and carlinda leite2 university of porto, portugal theoretical framework higher education has become one of the most prominent topics of research in recent years, especially since it has been considered a strategic factor for economic development in which accessed new social and cultural groups as well as an increased number of students (altbach & engberg, 2006). the implementation of the bologna process has contributed to this situation, particularly in portugal, forcing universities to face significant changes and challenges, which imply the need to rethink and renew the existing concepts of teaching, learning and assessment (cedefop, 2009; boud & associates, 2010). this transition scenario justifies studies that contribute to more in-depth knowledge about the changes that occurred in higher education, particularly regarding assessment and its association with learning. since the early 1970s, the link between assessment and learning has been studied. now it is widely accepted that assessment is probably the single biggest influence on how students approach their learning (ramsden, 1992; gibbs, 1992; brown, bull, & pendlebury, 1997) and clearly indicates that assessment has an impact in student learning (boud & falchikov, 2007). in this perspective, several authors argue that assessment has a significant impact on all aspects of students’ experiences, satisfaction, outcomes and success (ramsden, 2003; richardson, 2005) and that both good and bad practices affect student engagement with learning (prosser, ramsden, trigwell, & martin, 2003; coates, 2005). therefore, assessment is significant to students’ experience and engagement with the course (george, cowan, hewitt & cannell, 2004) and is a key component of the learning process (levia & quiring, 2008). from the conceptual point of view, we accept “assessment is probably the most important thing we can do to help our students learn” (brown, 2004, p. 81). we also assume that there is a strong relationship between the way teachers assess learning and the way students organize themselves, get involved in their training and finally learn. thus, it seems that it is necessary to use assessment methods appropriate to the aims and objectives and to the contexts in which the teaching-learning process occurs. torres & leite. assessment of and for learning in higher education: from the traditional… 15 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (1) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci in that sense, as underlined by levia and quiring (2008), “adopting an appropriate method for the assessment of student learning is critically important because it impacts on how students learn and it helps to motivate students to focus on those knowledge and skill objectives that are deemed to be the most important”. although research on assessment has intensified, the concepts utilized or the effects generated by assessment are not always consensual. it is suggested “facing assessment as a learning process, to be able to improve, opens other perspectives” (le boterf, 2005, p. 69). however, there are always warnings about the risk that may arise from the fact “the practice of assessment has moved from assessment of learning, through assessment for learning, to assessment as learning, with assessment procedures and practices coming completely to dominate the learning experience and ‘criteria compliance’ replacing ‘learning’” (torrance, 2007, p. 281). this shift from a testing culture to an assessment culture is marked by a “trend for greater transparency and explicitness in all aspects of student assessment” (elander, harrington, norton, robinson & reddy, 2006, p. 71), which may constitute an important advancement in this approach “of” and “for” learning. though, as stated above, within this perspective it should be also recognized that transparency encourages instrumentalism (torrance, 2007). however, “internationally over the past two decades, higher education institutions and educators have become increasingly committed to making assessment and grading more effective in promoting student learning (that is, in fulfilling a significant formative function) and to making less mysterious, more open and more explicit the grounds upon which student productions are graded” (sadler, 2005, p. 193). in a theoretical context there seems to be a transition from an assessment “of” learning to an assessment “for” learning. it is also possible to recognize that, although there is a clear conceptual distinction between summative assessment and formative assessment, some confusion remains regarding the procedures that can be included in the formative assessment. regarding summative assessment, most of the literature generally defines it as that which is used to assign grades and classifications and also to determine the student’s academic development at the end of a specific time period. in this case, the learning assessment (stiggins, 2002) would measure the mastery of a particular set of norms or contents (perie, marion, gong, & wurtzel, 2007), or verify the level achieved by students in relation to the learning objectives (kealey, 2010). in relation to formative assessment, several authors have examined this concept in order to contradict the exclusive use of summative assessment procedures. for example, at the end of the 1990s, black (1999) showed some of the difficulties that characterize the traditional assessment practiced in higher education and pointed to the importance of selfassessment to allow students to assume responsibility for their own learning. this position defends the idea that a theory of formative assessment has been developed to establish a unifying basis for the diverse practices in this area (black & william, 2009). however, in this field, according to pinchok and brandt (2009), the literature offers multiple (sometimes conflicting) definitions and it may be referred as a process to adjust teaching based on feedback about student performance (popham, 2006) or as a set of tools to monitor student progress throughout learning (stiggins, 2002; dunn & mulvenon, 2009). according to its objective, any assessment activity or tool can be classified as formative as long as it allows for informed and adapted teaching (black & wiliam, 1998; perie et al., 2007). regarding these two ideas, there has been a debate for several years about whether assessment should be primarily summative, reporting on what has been achieved, or torres & leite. assessment of and for learning in higher education: from the traditional… 16 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (1) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci formative, assisting in the learning process by providing information about the strengths and weaknesses of students. however, “assessment always had to contend with these competing purposes and probably always will” (torrance, 1993, p. 333). in this sense, sadler (1989, p. 120) argues “the primary difference between formative and summative assessment relates to purpose and effect, not to timing”. we adopt this difference, between these two types of assessment as basic concepts in the design of the empirical study and for the data interpretation. a deeper theory of formative assessment arose in the 80s, with francophone origin (evaluation formatrice), designated in this paper as educative assessment. first proposed by g. scallon and later taken by other authors such as bonniol (1986), vial (1987) and nunziati (1990), this idea was presented with distinctive formative characteristics, making the assessment process more emancipatory, which focuses on the view of the ‘student’s ensured regulation’ (abrecht, 1994, p. 49). therefore, educative assessment “implies [the students’] conscious, systematic and reflected engagement in planning, organizing and evaluating their own learning” (abrecht, 1994, p. 49). in this perspective, “the assessment methods express conditions of effective responsibility and emancipation”; thus “self-assessment practices are organized and implemented in situations of high student involvement” that are “defined by the teachers and students” (leite & fernandes, 2002, p. 65). according to this approach, it is important to highlight that educative assessment presupposes the creation of circumstances in which the student co-participates in the definition of the assessment methods and in negotiation, with the teacher, regarding the configuration of the assessment tools. hence, in logic of assessment “for” (and not “of”) learning, there is also the concept of self-assessment practices. it is associated with “ideas of democratic education, with a formative and interactive orientation in which the students, themselves, are involved as authors of their own assessment” (leite & fernandes, 2002, p. 66). in order to contribute to a formative assessment theory, fernandes (2006) established a division between perspectives that derive from the francophone research traditions – where regulation of the learning process is the key concept (the author suggests: bonniol, 1984; cardinet, 1991; gregoire, 1996; perrenoud, 1998) – and the anglo-saxon research – where feedback has a primary role (the author suggests black & william, 1998, 2006; gipps, 1994, 1999; gipps & stobart, 2003; shepard, 2001; stiggies, 2004). faced with this duality, fernandes (2006) considered the “alternative assessment” as a process that is participative, transparent, integrated in teaching and learning, and aimed at regulating and improving. it is a procedure that focuses mainly on processes, without ignoring the products. in this perspective, designated as alternative formative assessment, the author highlights the improvement and regulation of learning and teaching processes (formative assessment) and, simultaneously, pointing out an alternative to formative assessment inspired within a behaviorist approach (alternative assessment) (fernandes, 2006). this point of view is different from the traditional concept of formative assessment. in a behaviorist perspective, formative assessment involves short-term goals, clear assessment objectives, and detailed feedback to students on what they have or have not achieved and what they must improve. on the contrary, in the social constructivist perspective, formative assessment (and what we are calling alternative assessment) includes a role for the teacher in assisting the student to comprehend and be engaged with new ideas and problems (torrance, 1993). this perspective looks forward rather than backwards and implies “that the teacher/tester and student collaborate actively to produce a best performance” (wood, 1987, p. 242). as stated by torrance (1993, p. 336), “such an torres & leite. assessment of and for learning in higher education: from the traditional… 17 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (1) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci interpretation of formative assessment takes us into a much more dynamic and challenging territory, and has the merit of identifying an integrated role for assessment in the process of teaching and learning itself, rather than at one remove from it, as a more behaviorist or graded test approach would seem to imply”. in summary, the concept of alternative formative assessment implies an integrated resource of the two perspectives that, as noted, emphasized “regulation” and “feedback”. this position seems to go in the direction of what sadler (1989, p. 122) argues when he states “formative assessment includes both feedback and self-monitoring. the goal of many instructional systems is to facilitate the transition from feedback to self-monitoring”. the position that guides us combines these last two learning assessment concepts. we assume that conditions should be created so that procedures evolve from a formative assessment initially with more feedback to a formative and educative assessment, more focused on self-regulation of learning, making students progressively responsible for the evolution of their training programs. following this perspective, we support cambell, künnemeyer, and prinsep’s (2008, p. 289) idea when they state that “teaching staff aimed to help students become progressively more independent in their learning (…) through a decrease in the amount of support and guidance offered as students progressed through their studies”. at the same time, we also agree that the “assessment has most effect when (…) students progressively take responsibility for assessment and feedback processes” (boud & associates, 2010, p. 2). what we argue is that as the learning develops it becomes possible to shift from an external assessment, with a greater role give to the teacher (through assessment feedback), to a more internal assessment (students’ self-assessment). this internal assessment requires great responsibility and self-control from the student and facilitates their appropriation of the learning assessment devices, promoting a particular transition from regulation logic to emancipation logic. in sum, we adhere to the idea of combining an “alternative formative assessment” that assigns to the teacher a catalyst action over the teaching-learning-assessment process, with an “educative assessment” that allows the student a more emancipatory action. having these concepts as a base, we conducted a study that tried to understand the pedagogical work models and the learning assessment most used in higher education in the transition context of the bologna process. the method in order to collect data about the types of assessment in use in higher education at the university of porto, we developed a survey based on a questionnaire that sought to identify teacher and student perceptions regarding assessment. this questionnaire, validated by experts, contained 16 items, 4 for each assessment concept under review: summative assessment (sa), formative assessment (fa), formative and educative assessment (fea) and alternative formative and educative assessment (afea). a 7-point likert scale was utilized for responses, with 1 representing “never”, 4 “sometimes” and 7 “always”. the sample was composed of teachers and students from two disciplines from the 1st year and two others from 4th year of two integrated master’s programs: informatics and computing engineering (mieic) and psychology (mip), aiming to determine the influence of these variables in the assessment processes. these two integrated master’s programs were selected for our study because they represent two distinct areas of knowledge (technological and social sciences). the eight disciplines were also selected according to the following criteria: number of students (many and few) and average grades (high and low). the first criterion (number torres & leite. assessment of and for learning in higher education: from the traditional… 18 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (1) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci of students) was chosen to allow verification of whether this condition has a notable role, facilitating or constraining, the implementation of assessment procedures. moreover, the second criterion (average grades) was selected to enable an analysis to confirm if these results are associated with a major resource of formative assessment that, theoretically, is conceived to favor and support the learning process, intending to foster better learning outcomes. a questionnaire (online and in person) was given to 21 teachers and 253 students and 274 surveys obtained. this questionnaire was created and developed by an extended analysis of the already existing and validated questionnaires in this area of study and, moreover, was also validated by experts. furthermore, the validation of this questionnaire also included a previous application to some teachers and students to verify the clarity of the items and the medium time of response. likewise, it was not applied a pretest because through the statistical package for social sciences resource we could realize an exhaustive statistical analysis to ensure the psychometric qualities of the items, allowing us to exclude items less stringent. thus, the data was corrected in relation to the existence of excess missing values and for “uni and multi varied” outliers. in the end, we obtained a convenience sample of 261 respondents, appropriate for the population studied; 100% of teachers and 20% or more of students for all selected disciplines. in the end, we obtained a convenience sample of 261 respondents, appropriate for the population studied; 100% of teachers and 20% or more of students for all selected disciplines. the items were subjected to a principal components analysis with a varimax orthogonal rotation. all items presented communality values over .40. the analysis extracted 3 components with eigenvalues above 1, with a kaiser-meyer-olkin value of sampling adequacy of .88. the identified components were:  1st component (35.04% of variance) is made up of items such as: the assessment methods respect the different learning styles and rhythms, allowing students to choose assessment periods. the assessment is co-participated, integrated in the teaching-learning process, aimed at improving learning and focused on the process without ignoring the content matter. these items are part of the proposed dimensions a priori fa-fea-afea (cronbach’s alpha = .863).  2nd component (17.01%) consists of items including: the content and interactive resources available encourage self-assessment. the assessment procedures create conditions for teachers to improve their teaching methods and students to self-regulate their learning. these items are part of the proposed dimensions a priori fa-fea-afea (cronbach’s alpha = .799).  3rd component (9.38%) is constituted of items such as: the grades are assigned based only on tests or exams after completing the content program or the academic term (semester). knowledge is checked quantitatively and assessed just by the teacher. these items are part of the proposed dimension a priori sa (cronbach’s alpha = .665). the first component was designated as formative assessment i (fa-i), the second as formative ii (fa-ii) and the third as summative assessment (sa); with the first two correlated. this option proved to be adjusted since the obtained correlations were the following: fa-i*fa-ii (r = 0.628, p = .000); sa*fa-ii (r = -0.225, p = .000); sa*fa-i (r = -0.049, p = .428). torres & leite. assessment of and for learning in higher education: from the traditional… 19 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (1) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the fact that respondents aggregated items of three types of non summative assessment proposed a priori within two different components may prove difficult in distinguishing those assessment modalities (fa-fea-afea). this could also be a problem because formative assessment is included in those three types of assessment and, therefore, constitutes a kind of element/concept that is common or aggregator of the representations of the respondents. the differences in obtained results between fa-i and fa-ii, comparing and analyzing their items, can be explained by the fact that half of the items of fa-i are focused on afea, which focuses more on this type of assessment. indeed, the content of those items reflects a more emancipatory perspective as can be verified by the mentioned examples. in conclusion, although the items of these two components assess the same dimensions, they do not analyse it in the same way or with the same depth, making it clear that the complementarity of different components (i and ii) of fa may contribute to the clarification of the transition situation experienced by teachers and students in terms of these assessment procedures. the results multivariate analyses were performed, initially having compared the previously identified components (fa-fea-afea), to obtain a global characterization of the students’ and teachers’ perceptions. a repeated measures variance analysis revealed a principal effect for assessment (f(2, 520) = 24.412, p< .001, partial ɳ2 = .086). the post-hoc analysis with bonferroni correction revealed significantly higher values for the dimension fa-ii (m = 4.44; sd = 1.24), followed by the sa (m = 4.06; sd = 1.56) and fa-i (m = 3.63; sd = 1.34) torres & leite. assessment of and for learning in higher education: from the traditional… 20 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (1) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci dimensions. figure 1: general perspective of the assessment results. comparison per year: there was a main effect of year (f (2, 259) = 64.058, p< .001,partial ɳ2 = .198) and an interaction year*assessment3 (f(2, 259) = 9.363, p = .001, partial ɳ2 = .035). decomposing the interaction through variance analyses for both groups as well as through post-hoc comparisons with correction for multiple comparisons, we verified that although the main assessment effect is maintained in both groups (f(2, 332) = 23.445, p = .001 for the 1st year and f(2, 186) = 9.661, p = .001 for the 4th year) whilst in the 1st year, the values are significantly lower for the dimension fa-i in comparison to the dimensions fa-ii and sa, that do not differ, for the 4th year the values are higher for fa-ii, not differing for the dimensions fa-i and sa. torres & leite. assessment of and for learning in higher education: from the traditional… 21 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (1) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci figure 2: comparison of the assessments by year of degree programs. comparison by degree programs: onlythe main effect already described for this variable is evident; that is, the values for the dimensions of assessment do not differ within the two degree programs (in other words between the two integrated master’s programs – mieic/mip). teachers vs. students: we verified the described effect of assessment and the interaction between respondent and assessment (f(2, 518) = 9.076, p = .001, partial ɳ2 = .034). decomposing the interaction, we confirmed that the assessment effect remains significant in both groups (teachers f(2, 40) = 11.002, p = .002; students f(2, 478) = 22.593, p< .001). however, while the asfor teachersis significantly lower than others, for students it appears that theaf-i is significantly lower, not differing in the remaining dimensions. torres & leite. assessment of and for learning in higher education: from the traditional… 22 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (1) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci figure 3: comparison between teachers and students on assessment. number of students and average grades: through the variance analysis with a number of students (many vs. few) and average grades (high vs. low) considered as an inter-subjects factor, we confirmed the effect of assessment (already described), an effect of the number of students (f(1, 257) = 6.486, p = .011, partial ɳ2 = .025), an effect of the average grades (f(1, 257) = 4.427, p = .036, partial ɳ2 = .017), an interaction between a number of students* average grades (f(1, 257) = 45.008, p < .001, partial ɳ2 = .149), an interaction between assessment*number of students (f(2, 514) = 61.252, p < .001, partial ɳ2 = .192) and also an interaction between assessment*number of student* average grades (f(2, 514) = 5.365, p = .010, partial ɳ2 = .020). with the purpose of decomposing the second-order interaction, the disciplines with high and low numbers of students were analyzed separately. in the disciplines with few students, there is a main effect of assessment (f(2, 206) = 50.787, p < .001), and an effect of average grades (f(1, 103) = 29.462, p < .001), but without an interaction between assessment* average grades. the dimension af-ii (m = 4.68, sd = 1.25) has significantly higher values, followed by the dimensions af-i, (m = 4.07, sd = 1.26) and as (m = 3.06, sd = 1.44). in the disciplines with many students, there was an assessment effect, (f(2, 308) = 33.207, p < .001), an average grades effect (f(1, 154) = 14.143, p < .001) and an interaction between assessment*average grades (f(2, 308) = 5.641, p = .008). torres & leite. assessment of and for learning in higher education: from the traditional… 23 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (1) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the analysis of this interaction reveals that the respondents of disciplines with high and low grades do not differ in the dimension fa-i (t(154) = 0.020, ns), but the respondents of disciplines with low grades confer higher values to the dimension fa-ii (m = 4.44, sd = 1.21) and to the dimension sa (m = 5.01, sd = 1.24) than the respondents of disciplines with high grades (fa-ii m = 3.87, sd = 1.17; sa m = 4.02, sd = 0.95) (fa-ii t(154) = 2.657, p = .009; sa t(154) = 4.725, p < .001). figure 4: comparison between high and low grades in disciplines with few students. torres & leite. assessment of and for learning in higher education: from the traditional… 24 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (1) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci figure 5: comparison between high and low grades in disciplines with many students. discussion of results globally, assessment practices experienced are perceived by teachers and students as the following type (in decreasing order): 1st) formative assessment-ii; 2nd) summative assessment; 3rd) formative assessment-i. this data most likely suggests a transition phase, not very distinct nor clear, in which different assessment methods co-exist, and the summative modality does not constitute the only or, in some cases, the main resource used. the observed difference among formative assessment components that are more or less used may contribute to identifying a change that seems to be happening at distinct rates in relation to different procedures of formative assessment that are more or less emancipatory. this may also constitute an indicator of the multi-dimensionality of this concept, which includes formative assessment (fa), formative and educative assessment (fea) and alternative formative and educative assessment (afea). however, comparative analysis by class year revealed that in the 1st year (in which pedagogical work is focused on more introductory skills for higher education) sa and fa-ii co-exist with the same intensity with fa-i less used. on the other hand, in the 4th year (in which pedagogical work is focused on more professional skills) fa-ii is clearly the most used. in synthesis, at this level, the greater or lesser maturity of the students and the type of skills, initial or advanced seem to be aspects to consider relative to the assessment procedures adopted. regarding the perceptions of students and teachers while for teachers, sa is the least used and instead there is greater existence of procedures characteristic of fa-i and especially fa-ii, for students sa it is the most used (along with fa-ii) and fa-i the least used. given torres & leite. assessment of and for learning in higher education: from the traditional… 25 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (1) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci this difference in perceptions, it may be admissible to consider a possible influence of teachers’ higher expectations for change, in relation to an area that traditionally has been their responsibility. however, it is necessary to highlight that desired effects do not seem to correspond to what is experienced by students. in this sense, for example, goos, gannaway, and hughes (2011) conclude that there are differences in the perception about what teachers and students consider as relevant issues in assessment and how they should be approached. this author even states that given the apparent tensions between the assessment expectations of university students, their teachers, and senior academic staff responsible for quality assurance in teaching and learning, there is a need to investigate perceptions of the role of assessment held by each of these stakeholder groups. (goos et al., 2011, p. 96) finally, the comparative analysis between disciplines with different characteristics (high or low number of students and high and low grades) allowed us to identify two very distinct situations: with low number of students, the type of assessment that is most clearly used is the formative (more fa-ii than fa-i), with sa always recognized as the perspective with less applied procedures. contrasting the former case, higher number of students results in major employment of sa, followed by fa-ii (with a noticeable effect in the disciplines with low grades) and finally fa-i. it is worth highlight that this is the only situation in which sa appears as the most used assessment procedure, which leads to the consideration that the existence of a high number of students seems to constitute a limiting condition in executing procedures inherent to fa (especially fa-i, more emancipatory). due to this difficulty, the assessment strategies focus mainly on methods that aim to control the learning outcomes (and an effect of selection/grading of students), rather than an assessment of the processes used to generate those results and utilization of assessment to improve the teaching-learning situation. much research has been conducted on class size and its effects on learning (lindsay & patonsalzberg, 1987; mahler, neumann, &tamir, 1986; raimondo, esposito, &gershenberg, 1990; mckeachie, 1999). large classes are often seen as a negative feature of modern day higher education, and there is some evidence that they can reduce students’ learning outcomes (raimondo et al., 1990; mckeachie, 1999). biggs (2003) acknowledges that conditions such as class size and student diversity make good teaching more difficult than ever. campbell et al. (2008) found that class sizes were identified as having considerable impact on student learning and lectures offer little opportunity for active student engagement. moulding (2010, p. 151) shows that “research into the effects of large classes demonstrates that students are disadvantaged in terms of higher order learning because interactions between teachers and students occur at lower cognitive levels”. given these perspectives arising from the literature about disciplines with many students and its effects on learning, the data presented in this paper seems to emphasize the need to study also the effects on assessment. linking these perspectives with average grades, we verify that there is the same tendency. in this sense, within low number of students, fa-ii is the assessment type more utilized, independently of the average grades, but with more intensity in high average grades. further, summative assessment is mostly used in situations with a high number of students and low average grades, which can indicate that there is a need for formative assessment to improve better learning outcomes. in summary relative to the transition context that takes place in higher education, it is worth noting that, in almost all analysis modalities, the results prove that the assessment torres & leite. assessment of and for learning in higher education: from the traditional… 26 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (1) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci procedures utilized are already perceived as more of the fa-ii type, although with different intensities. however, sa is still perceived as predominant in disciplines with many students and has a similar use to the af-ii both within the 1st year and in the perspective of students. as for the assessment methods least used, sa was identified from the perspective of the teachers and in the disciplines with few students as the least used in the 4th year. in these situations there seems to exist facilitating factors or/and a more favorable vision in relation to more formative assessment. with the exception of the former cases, the fact that fa-i is always presented as the less used form of assessment seems to show the perception of constraint factors or/and a less favorable view in relation to the possibility of adopting fa procedures with stronger emancipatory characteristics. conclusions according to the obtained data, it is possible to claim that we are still faced with a certain continuity of the dominant pedagogical culture in which the teacher assesses with the objective of grading. hence, even when the assessment type being utilized is summative, we can observe the co-existence of formative components of assessment in the disciplines that were studied. however, the use of more emancipatory methods of assessment does not become apparent. in this situation, which seems to be natural and typical of a transition context in higher education under the bologna process, there seems to be some difficulty in enacting some of the formative assessment methods, mainly the ones with more emancipatory character, and particularly when the number of students is too high. although, considering the transnationality of the bologna process it should be noted that this transition could be emerging in most of the 47 countries, what would indicates that these study results might be similar in other nations and/or universities. this assertion justifies the necessity of conducting this type of studies in a transnational context, to better identify the impact of this transition in the assessment procedures and, furthermore, to realize if these modifications are the reflection of an emerging transnational curriculum. indeed, it seems to be of major importance to question if the transnational change implicated by the bologna process brought more homogeneity or, by the contrary, reinforce the existing heterogeneity between assessment practices in different countries and higher education institutions. on the other hand, this study allows us to conclude that the type of degree program does not interfere significantly in the respondents’ perceptions because the values for the dimensions relative to assessment do not differ according to this variable. this fact lends itself for the hypothesis that the nature of the degree programs and the specificities that may exist in each of these faculties at the university of porto do not constitute relevant aspects for the type of assessment used. furthermore, it seems possible to admit that in a curricular perspective, a more emancipatory formative assessment could contribute for the development of the students’ autonomy, transversely to the different areas of study, almost as if it was a component of the “hidden curriculum” within the universities’ degree programs. to conclude, we can infer that the evolution of the current situation, which aims to articulate summative and formative perspectives in order to provide a more integrated assessment “with” learning and more productive “for” learning depends, among other things, on the adoption of new assessment procedures by teachers as well as the presence of conditions that benefit the use of self-assessment modalities by students. torres & leite. assessment of and for learning in higher education: from the traditional… 27 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (1) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci in agreement with rieg and wilson (2009), we argue “given the link between instruction and assessment, it can be assumed that these same teachers lack knowledge of assessment strategies as well as instructional pedagogy” (rieg& wilson, 2009, p. 281) and found that “sadly as the researchers found in this study, even faculty members who are aware of effective instructional and assessment techniques are not always using them in their university classrooms” (rieg & wilson, 2009, p. 292). finally, this study provides relevant contributions in order to deepen the awareness of the types of learning assessments that are in practice within the bologna process. however, it will remain unclear what kinds of links between summative and formative assessment may help to foster better learning conditions in higher education, which justifies future research that also considers the specificities of more and less emancipatory components that this study identified at the formative assessment level. notes 1manuel@firmino.pt 2carlinda@fpce.up.pt 3 in this presentation of statistical analysis results, we use the symbol (*) as “and” to designate an interaction between two variables. references abrecht, r. 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(1987). measurement and assessment in education and psychology. london: falmer press. submitted: june, 6th, 2013 approved: may, 24th, 2014 o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: cole, peter (2016). education in an era of climate change: conversing with ten thousand voices. transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> education in an era of climate change: conversing with ten thousand voices1 peter cole university of british columbia, canada2 before the triumph of modernity – sealed in western europe of the seventeenth century by the advent of the scientific revolution – people lived in constant interaction with a host of beings, powers, spirits who tricked us, protected us, quarreled with us, guided us, taught us, punished us, and conversed with us. we were wealthy in our human and other-than-human communities. (apffel-marglin, 2011) the only kinds of knowledge that are taken seriously by the euro-american academy are those that conform to its own particular formats of writing, citation, and history. (jazeel & mcfarlane, 2007) prologue —please note that i have written this article in a narrative format without following punctuation or other conventional grammatical syntactic orthographic and linguistic standards of western academic prose this is how i reflect the orality of my st’át’imc culture and how i think feel speak write as an indigenous scholar i have written the majority of my academic work using this format _____________________ what are the tasks of curriculum scholars for the 21st century? this was the theme posed for the 5th iaacs (international association for the advancement of curriculum studies) triennial conference held in ottawa canada in may 2015 i pause and ask what are our tasks and responsibilities as curriculum scholars in addressing the ecological crisis facing life on the planet? is there any possibility for post-imperialist post-development post-progress education in the prevailing schooling systems that are grounded in euro-centric anthropocentric neoliberal knowledge systems? how might traditional ecological knowings of indigenous peoples worldwide contribute to holistic education that values human non-human and more-than-human intelligences and agencies? i consider these questions with my partner and research collaborator pat o'riley with my st’át’imc relatives and research partners from the interior plateau of british columbia (bc) canada with my ancestors and those-to-come we push our canoe into the muddied effluence of the progress narrative of schooling and its associated modern postmodern and other post-xxx curriculum theorizing we enter the curriculum conversation back eddies and whitewater at the outside bend in the river of mindbodyheartspirit traverse the cartesian-newtonian turbulence that privileges reason we sing laugh cry paddle paddle paddle whoooosh cole. education in an era of climate change: conversing with ten thousand voices 4 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci there is a growing realization that addressing the global ecological crisis requires widening the circle of knowledges by bringing the rational knowledge of scientific empiricism together with other knowledge systems including indigenous traditional ecological knowledges (apffel-marglin, 2011) wade davis (2009) discusses the critical importance of the vast archive of indigenous wisdom in addressing current ecological challenges while the intergovernmental panel on climate change (ipcc, 2104) recognizes the value of indigenous knowledges for the mitigation of climate change meanwhile indigenous peoples struggle to have their rights and lands protected to regenerate their traditional ecological knowledges that have been disappearing since the introduction of compulsory eurocentric schooling and to have their voices heard (wipc, 2014) indigenous knowledges are sophisticated complex and based on millennia of observation and lived experience they are holistic landbased ceremonial and ritualistic practices that bring together the interdependencies of human non-human and more-than-human (spiritual) intelligences and agencies for two decades we have been conducting research with the st’át’imc in the regeneration of traditional languages knowledges and practices while participating in the ucwalmicwts language class in 1996 our elders spoke of the urgency of recording our ancestral knowledges and practices renewing them for the next generations and sharing them with the larger society thereby contributing to the narratives needed for what gerald vizenor (2008) refers to as “survivance” – survival and continuance of the diversity of lifeforms on earth we refer to our research as tcwusems ti ucwalmicwas ti cwil’enas to amas gvlgvls nt’ak’men (the people looking forward working together on the return of our strong healthy culture) regeneration is cyclic renewal making pastpresentfuture affiliations with the diversity of human and morethan-human entitities as apffel-marglin (2011) writes “[t]here are continuities and some perennial facets … but these continuities are incessantly remade, in flux, regenerated” (p. 40) for the next phase of the research we have joined hands with the kichwalamista of the high amazon of peru we met the kichwa-lamista communities in 2011 through a colleague and friend who has worked with the communities for two decades the kichwa-lamista elders invited us to bring our university students to the high amazon so that they might share with the students how climate change and resource extraction are affecting their way of life and for the students to learn about their cosmology and the thousands of years of land-based kichwa-lamista cultural knowings and practices so that they might bring these teachings back to their universities and communities we have since offered two immersion learning summer institutes with the kichwa-lamista communities and are planning a third the kichwa-lamista expressed an interest in working in solidarity with the st’át’imc to explore strategies for regenerating their respective traditional ecological knowledges including ceremonial ritual practices that evoke human non-human and more-than-human interdependences entanglements of humans and other lifeforms and lifeways for walking lightly on the earth and re-learning together how to “dance a new world into existence” (simpson, 2012, p. 149) the focus of the research project is to examine the ongoing regeneration of st’át’imc and kichwa-lamista human and morethan-human (spiritual) interdependencies that inform and enhance st’át’imc and kichwa-lamista cultural and ecological sustainability the communities hope to contribute to a widening knowledge-base of ecological sustainability by sharing cosmologies epistemologies and practices with each other as well as other indigenous communities the academy and the general public cole. education in an era of climate change: conversing with ten thousand voices 5 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the st’át’imc and kichwa-lamista have had very different historical encounters with colonization and global economics for millennia the former have relied on fishing hunting and gathering the latter have been agriculture-based each has different cosmologies and traditional ecological knowings each is situated in different histories geographies languages and socio-political contexts as they work to regain their cultural economic and ecological sustainability each community faces different struggles in regenerating their language ancestral knowings and practices while protecting their lands from expropriation and resource extraction that have wreaked havoc with their lives ravaged their lands and polluted their waters meanwhile indigenous peoples struggle to protect their rights and lands ironically and tragically indigenous peoples are the most affected by climate change with minimal participation in the industrial activity that is causing it “greenwashing” and “faux-conservation” efforts by corporations governments and ngos deny indigenous peoples access to their lands (dickens, 2015) each of the indigenous communities has its own complex interrelationships with the more-than-human including syncretism of ritual practices and settler religions although there is an official policy in peru of bilingual bicultural education at the primary education levels there is a lack of implementation there are few ‘qualified’ teachers from the communities who know the culture and speak quechua (cachique, 2015; sangama, 2015) what is offered as bilingual and bicultural education is predominantly western education in the spanish language an elder periodically shares stories in quechua with the children in school education for the st’át’imc is similar to that of the kichwa-lamista there is the first peoples principles of learning by the ministry of education (n.d.) however the curriculum is western-centric with st’át’imc knowledges as add-ons there are few ucwalmicwts speakers left in the st’át’imc communities the kichwa-lamista say that some of the difficulties regenerating indigenous knowings languages and practices come from the communities themselves because they see assimilation as the only way for their children to succeed and have economic opportunities (cueto, guerrero, león, seguin & muñoz, 2009) as we paddle pat and i speak of the myriad voices needed for nonanthropocentric learning and teaching including non-human and more-than-human voices pat nearly capsizes the canoe as she gestures to feminist posthumanist and poststructural theorists sitting on the shore with their deconstructed laptops i recover with a sculling stroke wave to quantum mechanics trying to repair their fishfinder we strain to hear the voices of the powers and spirits and beings of our ancestors and those to come who are with us on this journey the sun is setting as we pull our canoe up to the shore near lima set up our camp light a fire and make tea in anticipation of a multi-day trek across the desert and the andes to the kichwalamista communities after arriving in the high amazon and getting settled in our tambo we put on our sunhats cover ourselves with mosquito repellant and join in the preparation of the evening meal made over a wood fire – corn beans rice fried bananas and chicha that the women have made especially for our visit we look out at the nearby cordillera escalera range knowing they have been demarcated for resource extraction agreements between the peruvian government and canadian mining companies that threaten to destroy the way of life for the kichwalamista and the habitat for the animals who depend on and the forests and rivers back homethe st’át’imc territories have been carved into tiny parcels by generations of settler governments and decimated by logging mining and hydro generation projects cole. education in an era of climate change: conversing with ten thousand voices 6 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci sounds of children’s laughter coming from the soccer field we talk together about the current historical-geological epoch the “anthropocene” (whitehead, 2014) marked by anthropogenic pollution mass extinction and climate change the apus [community leaders] raise concerns about the disruption in their communities created not only by national economic policies and international mining and oil and gas extraction on their lands but also by the mandated colonial education they worry about their children’s disengagement from the land schooling teaches them that those who grow food on the chacras are uneducated and that the wisdom of their parents grandparents and ancestors is immaterial to their ‘success’ in the global economy that their cultural knowings are of little or no value outside of their local communities i share how the national (peru) and provincial (bc) curricula are increasingly influenced by lobbyists to benefit the 0.1% how institutionalized education is primarily for creating job-ready students to fit into the production line perpetuating the unequal valuing of labour and being/becoming in bc the ministry of education has teamed up with the ministry of jobs, tourism and skills training to create b.c’s skills for jobs blueprint: re-engineering education and training (workbc, 2014) to train and funnel high school students into jobs in the lng (liquefied natural gas) industry rural and indigenous students in northern bc communities are particularly targeted by this curriculum along similar lines in his historical analysis of peru’s education system myers (2014) points out that foreign corporations have had a heavy influence in peru’s curriculum development targeting rural and indigenous students this is made more complex with the large population of quechua and aymara speakers in rural communities the dearth of teachers fluent in local indigenous languages (unesco, 2010) under-funding of the ibe (intercultural bilingual education) program (garcia, 2010) and mistrust by the indigenous communities of the ibe agenda (garcia, 2005) we watch the film schooling the world: the white man’s last burden (black, 2010) and see across the screen the words “if you wanted to change a culture in a generation, how would you do it? you would change the way it educates its children” the film “questions our very definitions of wealth and poverty – and of knowledge and ignorance – as it uncovers the role of schools and schooling in the destruction of traditional sustainable agricultural and ecological knowledge, in the breakup of extended families and communities, and in the devaluation of elders and ancient spiritual traditions” (stw, 2010, p. 5) i share the story of a recent phd oral defense in ethiopia for which i was the external examiner the doctoral candidate and professors were ethiopian but most of the theory was western the references too yet we were located in the bosom of humankind's earliest ancestors according to western science across the street is a 3.2 million-year old skeleton of our elder sister nicknamed lucy and her much older sisters millennia of millenia of knowings of the human beings of that place dismissed as not worthy of attention in favour of the near-sighted vision of western knowledge kichwa-lamista community members wonder if prevailing curriculum discourses can be transformed considering the huge historical asymmetry over 500 hundred years of western “epistemic hegemony” (mignolo, 2014) the assumption that non-western land-based knowledges are primitive and inferior while western education is advanced and superior is a notion brokered by reason and analysis santos (2014) referring specifically to the global south writes of “epistemicide” – epistemological blindness that dismisses or silences indigenous voices drowning them out to the euro-american articulations of what counts as knowledge devaluing indigenous knowledges is cognitive injustice that underpins social and ecological cole. education in an era of climate change: conversing with ten thousand voices 7 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci injustice de sousa (2012) writes that for all the academic talk of multi-cultural and inter-cultural understandings it is indigenous and other/ed peoples who have had to become multi-cultural and inter-cultural while mainstream culture carries on its monocultural curriculum and pedagogy as the campesinos in the pratec (proyecto andino de tecnologias campesinas) film say andean children need to know both andean and western knowledges (salas, 2010) we discuss how “the world bank has probably been the most important contributor around the globe in education over the past 50 years….rooted in the postwar reconstruction (and development) of the capitalist economies according to the dominant western/eurocentric paradigms of scientific knowledge” (de siqueira, 2012, p. 73) the guiding assumptions of the world bank include dominance over nature endless linear growth and belief in western educational discourses as education ‘for all’ we talk of how recent strata of colonialism manifest as the internationalization of western education the myth that this will lift everyone up has already been refuted climate change is telling us that the ‘progress narrative’ is in its terminal phase (hedges, 2014) and that there needs to be a broader deeper intellectual conversation current curriculum theorizing including at the iaacs ottawa conference has included the reemerging conversation on “cosmopolitanism” that dates back to fourth century bc (appiah, 2006) braidotti (2012) has given much critical thought to the discourse on cosmopolitanism and suggests that there needs to be a de-centring of anthropocentrism and a “recognition of trans-species awareness of ‘our’ being in this together, that is to say environmentally-based, -embodied and -embedded and in symbiosis with each other” (p. 20) santos (2007) suggests that cosmopolitanism needs to be bottom-up emanating from the people of the land rather than the academy taking this further in his discussion on itinerant curriculum theory paraskeva (2011) raises concerns that the curriculum internationalization project has been largely articulated in western academic institutions anwaruddin (2013) drawing on the work of santos and paraskeva troubles the english linguistic imperialism and the geopolitics of academic writing as well as western academic capitalism and commodification of knowledge in education’s internationalization project when we are presenters at conferences we preface our conference presentations with “i wish to acknowledge the xxxx indigenous peoples on whose traditional occupied unceded territory we are speaking” but how do i/we do this in practice? black (2014) suggests that we need to “[e]xplore the thousand other ways of learning that still exist all over the planet” “[e]very ecosystem in the world at one time had a people who knew it with the knowledge that only comes with thousands of years of living in place …. it’s a human intelligence honed over millennia, through unimaginably vast numbers of individual observations, experiments, reflections, intuitions, refinements of art and experience and communication” (black, 2012) there is a growing call from academics citizens around the world indigenous peoples and international civil society and ecojustice organizations (e.g. klein, 2014; ipcc, 2014; shiva, 2008; unesco, n.d; wcip, 2014) for compelling new narratives to reshape the progress narrative of modernity that privileges mind over body heart and spirit as well as human over non-human and more-than-human there is increasing awareness that dismissing indigenous knowledges and practices has created an imbalance a vacuum that impacts the ethnosphere and the biosphere with the loss of indigenous knowledges comes the loss of “ten thousand different voices” (davis, 2009) a diversity of ecological knowledges and practices for dealing with the challenges facing life on (and with) earth indigenous traditional cole. education in an era of climate change: conversing with ten thousand voices 8 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci ecological knowledges are dynamic and holistic often involving ceremony and ritual practices that bring together human non-human and more-than-human intelligences and agencies mutual reciprocating conversations with the environment de la cadena (2010) writes that more-than-human entities are viewed as contentious in modernist thinking because their presence disrupts the nature/culture separation that is a key pillar of post-enlightenment thinking acting and being solutions for dealing with climate change by governments and industry have been largely addressed by creating technological fixes however the “optimism in technology” often ignores “the high consumption levels in so-called developed countries or the epistemological basis for the global architecture of education” (breidlid, 2013) goleman (2009) suggests that what is needed is to fix our “ecological intelligence” by becoming whole again reconnecting mindbodyheartspirit proactive proposals have been put forward such as no-growth economies (victor, 2008) economies that live within the earth’s budget of energy and resources (heinberg, 2010) walking lightly carefully and gracefully on the earth (mckibben, 2010) there has been a growing “economics of localization” movement a shift from global economics to more human economies of scale that emulate how indigenous peoples have lived since time immemorial (de souza, 2012; norberg-hodge, 2011; schumacher, 2011) indigenous peoples have long known the value of traditional ecological knowledges for environmental stewardship (mcgregor, 2004) environmental justice (agyeman, cole, haluza de lay & o’riley, 2009) and biodiversity (laduke, 2008) an emerging convergence is taking place between ecological and social justice and indigenous movements worldwide concerned over the loss of diversity of the world’s wisdom and biodiversity they are multistoried “minorizing of the majority discourse” (deleuze & guattari, 1987) pushing against the “abyssal thinking” (santos, 2007) of the thinking-as-knowing paradigm in which ‘other/ed’ cosmologies and knowledge systems are dismissed they deterritorialize the missing terrain people and signs “the geography and the people are not missing, except in the majority language” (o’riley, 2003, p. 31) this resonates with grillo’s (1998) notion of “equivalency of epistemologies” that recognizes the role of non-western non-human and more-than human intelligences and agencies in maintaining ecological harmony and balance it is important to note that advancing indigenous ecological wisdom and practices as “equivalent” is not about transplanting indigenous knowledge systems into western systems rather it is companion planting cultivars with wild types regenerating more complex possibilities for the global ecological sustainability conversation that includes more-than-human intelligences and agencies for the st’át’imc and kichwa-lamista the anthropocentric worldview is not valid because we are members of one earth community as kumar (2013) says “we need to take care of the soul, as we take care of the soil. but we can only take care of the soul when we slow down. take time for ourselves. meditate on the fact that you represent the totality of the universe. there is nothing in the universe that is not in you, and there is nothing in you that is not in the universe. the universe is the macrocosm and you are the microcosm. you are earth, air, fire, water, imagination, creativity, consciousness, time and space – you have all this in your soul, in your genes and in your cells. you are billions of years old”. we turn our discussion to the re-awakening of human spirituality and ecological interdependencies in mainstream literature and the responses to the externalized values of materiality and consumerism that drown out intuition and connections to the land the sacred and more-than-human worlds ritual practice has been common to humanity cole. education in an era of climate change: conversing with ten thousand voices 9 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci throughout history in buddhism christianity hinduism islam judaism as well as druidism shamanism songlines we talk about different articulations of ecologyspirituality interfaces such as those enacted through aesthetics sensuality religion spiritual ecology ecofeminism posthuman discourses and human-animal bonds i share how in the early 20th century the groundwork for quantum physics thinking led to radical revisioning of classical notions of physics and other sciences niels bohr’s principle of “complementarity” (1937/1958) put forward the revolutionary theory that a quantum of energy cannot be separated from the apparatus and system in other words all of life is connected for evolutionary biologist richard lewontin (1993) organism and environment create each other pat shares how karen barad’s “agential realism” (2003, 2007) grounded in bohr’s work as well as haraway’s “posthumanist performativity” (1991) acknowledges the interdependent entanglements of mindbody/heartspirit knowing and being/becoming without borders we discuss the next steps in our exploration of “non-anthropocentric collective actions … bring[ing] about not just a common world, but a livable common world” for all (apffel-marglin, 2011, p. 162) our research teams comprised of community research assistants and university research assistants have started to document the interactive kichwa-lamista stories and film the peanut planting ceremony that is an enactment of performed intra-actions between human and more-than-humans weaving each other into continuous regeneration of the world the ceremonies and rituals being documented are in the context of their everyday activities such as living with the forests and rivers in good ways (st’át’imc) and re-creating terra preta (amazonian dark earth) to replenish degraded agricultural lands (kichwa-lamista) an ancient technology that helped to create large parts of the amazon rainforest (apffel-marglin, 2011; mann, 2007) interested youth work in apprenticeship role with elders apus and other knowledge keepers encouraging an intergenerational flow of knowledge that supports self-esteem self-empowerment and cultural sustainability within the research team we have much to learn from our kichwa-lamista partners including about buen viver (good living) that is rooted in their worldview and centred on community cultural sustainability and ecological sustainability buen vivir resonates with what the st’at’imc refer to as n’t’ákmen buen vivir has become the basis of the revised constitutions of ecuador and bolivia it offers constructive critique of western development theory and alternatives emerging from indigenous traditions in particular the aymara quechua and kichwa “the richness of the term is difficult to translate into english. it includes the classical ideas of quality of life, but with the specific idea that well-being is only possible within a community. furthermore, in most approaches the community concept is understood in an expanded sense, to include nature.” (gudynas, 2011, p. 441) my partner and i stuff our laptops and gortex raingear into our backpacks unfold our map as we anticipate possible chartings for the next steps on our journey we see challenges and incredible opportunities and wonder if it is possible to re-learn the sounds and rhythms of our bodies our spirits within the “cognitive manifest destiny” of eurocentric schooling “that assumes that one way of thinking, of learning, of being in the world is destined to overwhelm and replace all others?” (black, 2014) moving forward sideways crossand extra-territorially would mean genuine curriculum provocation requiring a rhizomatic/radical reshaping to include indigenous knowledges beyond today's prevalent tokenism having mindbodyheartspirit as integral to creating culturally inclusive and meaningful curriculum theorizing and educational practices might provoke the uni-versity toward becoming pluri-versities and multi-versities cole. education in an era of climate change: conversing with ten thousand voices 10 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci noel gough (2012) asks “what would educational policy, curriculum innovation and global education look like if we assumed that ‘the people’ meant ‘everybody/ humanity’?” (p. 182) we add that regenerating collective curriculum visions would need to include “not merely those ‘visible’ because their differences are seen as minor in relation to the dominant centre” (de souza, 2012, p. 81) but also non-human and more-than-human entities intelligences and agencies “theory isn’t just for academics; it’s for everyone …. theory…is generated from the ground up and its power stems from its living resonance with individuals and collectives” (simpson, 2014, p. 7) at this time of climate change and intensifying global social and ecological inequities a conversation of ten thousand voices is already underway across the global south and global north “giant whispers” (reinsborough, 2010) working to “slow down reason” (stengers, 2005) in the “performance of survivance” (vizenor, 2008) and re-imagining a more equitable compassionate just and ecologically sustainable future for all working multi-directionally with a diversity of worlds and views including the sentient more-than-human education might be able to say something very different notes 1 a version of this paper was approved and presented at the 5th iaacs (international association for the advancement of curriculum studies) triennial conference held in ottawa, canada, in may 2015. 2 coyoteandraven@mac.com references agyeman, j., cole, p., haluza-delay, r. & o’riley, p. 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(2012). curricular studies and their relation with the political agenda for education. transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> curricular studies and their relation with the political agenda for education carlinda leite 1 & preciosa fernandes 2 university of porto, portugal since the end of the 20th century portugal has witnessed the rise of a movement promoting curriculum changes. in basic and secondary education this has meant the adoption of policies seeking the equality of opportunities to school access and success. this was first stated in the law 46 of 1986. since then (predominantly between 1997 and 2008), a number of political measures have been taken to achieve this goal. however, few studies establish a relation between scientific production and curricular policies. this paper aims to answer the question: what is the relationship between educational politicies and the foci of curricular studies?. accordingly, this paper begins by situating the main features of the curricular policies that have characterised this period, while also considering international policies influences. this constitutes the basis of empirical research developed in three consecutive phases: i) systematisation of the curricular studies produced in portugal between 1997 and 2008; ii) identification of the studies’ foci; iii) establishment of relationships between those foci and curricular political measures. the analysis allowed concluding that the production of studies focusing on the curriculum in portugal was determined by the curricular political agenda and that the international agenda significantly influences the curricular political agenda. 1. educational and curricular policies in portugal in a time of globalization: from the 20th century towards the 21st century the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century were marked in portugal by curricular policies that introduced changes in the ways of conceiving and developing the curriculum, from pre-school to secondary education (k to 12). significant changes also occurred in higher education due to the bologna process and the statute of the teaching career. ideologically, these policies aimed to introduce necessary changes for achieving a system of inclusive schooling. the principles that constituted the guidelines in the period that followed the april 1974 revolution were first stated in the basic law of the portuguese educational system blpes – law 46/86 of 14th october. in higher education, from a curricular perspective, the need for a paradigm change was expressed, replacing the traditional paradigm focused on teaching for one focused on learning (leite, 2007, fernandes, 2009). the changes made in basic and secondary education during the transition from one century to another assigned more decision-making power to schools and teachers. both political and academic discourses stated that the curriculum that is prescribed nationally is a project that needs to be contextualised locally. this can be achieved through school and class curricular projects designed to adapt the national curriculum to leite & fernandes. curricular studies and their relation with the political agenda for education 36 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the local context (bernstein, 1980, 1990; roldão, 1999; leite, 1998; fernandes, 2011). in portugal, this scheme corresponded to a break with a strongly centralised curricular tradition that conceived the national curriculum as a recipe to be prescribed equally to all schools and teachers throughout the country. dispensing with this practice, it was acknowledged that each team of teachers should plan and develop curricular projects taking into account the students’ interests, cultural experiences, previous knowledge, learning modes, difficulties and achievements. in short, it was decided that each school should have a curricular project that was able to recontextualise (bernstein, 1990) the national curriculum. it seems clear that this curricular procedure resulted in a rewriting of teachers’ roles. teachers started to be seen as curriculum co-developers (shkedi, 2006), engaging in the collective construction of curricular innovation processes. in other words there was a commitment for change, not only in teachers’ curricular thinking, but also in schools and in the organisation and development of curricular processes. as stated by shkedi (2006, p. 719), curricular innovation means to change “teachers, classrooms and schools cultures”, meaning that teachers see themselves as “curricular constructors” and that the schools see themselves as “curricularly intelligent” institutions (leite, 2003). thus schools are acknowledged as institutions able to set strategic plans to meet their particular needs, and teachers are able to develop their roles within an “interactive professionalism” (fullan & hargreaves, 1996) framework. alongside these ideas is what, in portugal, was named “the territorialisation of education” (leite, 2005). this political movement was based on the belief that assigning responsibilities to ‘local territories’ (schools, teachers and local communities) creates opportunities for an educational management to promote a curriculum that takes into account real situations and is built on the basis of “reflexivity”, therefore becoming “richer” and “stricter” (doll, 1993). this understanding of a school education that pays attention to real needs was also linked with political measures concerning learning assessment. such measures advocate a concept of assessment using formative logic (abrecht, 1991; black & william, 2009). this concept, seen as a tool to promote learning (dunn & mulvenon, 2009) – and therefore a tool not only for selection but for school achievement – was influenced by discourses defending the need to develop students’ skills of involvement and responsibility (beane, 2000). in brief, this concept assigns mandates to schools that go beyond the transmission and acquisition of discipline-based knowledge. in portugal, the legal documents guiding the learning assessment began expressing this concept, stating as a goal: a) to support the educative process, in order to sustain all students’ success, enabling the readjustment of school and class curricular projects, namely in what concerns to the selection of methods and resources, taking into account students’ educational needs (normative dispatch no. 1/2005, 5th january, item 3). the analysis of these curricular measures and their relation with international policies, reveals that the “territorialisation of education” movement was not oblivious to the transformative challenges that had arisen in several educational systems around the world (ball, 2001; bolívar, 2007; dale, 2000; dale & robertson, 2008; lawn, 2000; lopes, 2002; meyer, 2000). as stated by meyer (2000, p. 18), “educational curricula (and the) curricula from specific disciplines, in different nations, show patterns of a relative isomorphism and convergent change”. in the globalised world there is a strong international influence with regards to defining educational discourses and setting leite & fernandes. curricular studies and their relation with the political agenda for education 37 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci homogeneous curricula (dale & robertson, 2008). this perspective is supported in the document education at a glance 2010: oecd indicators, in which countries are shown how to “see themselves in the light of other countries’ performances” and provide a “comparable and up-to-date array of indicators on systems and represent the consensus of professional thinking on how to measure the current state of education internationally” (oecd, 2010, p. 1). as an example, we can draw upon the european recommendations for education in the 21st century (delors et al., 1996) and their impact in portugal with regards to multiculturalism (stoer & cortesão, 2001). the european recommendations resulted in proposals for pedagogical diversity and processes of curricular articulation (leite, 2002). at the same time, these proposals achieved the goals expressed in the 1990s, in the declaration of salamanca (1994), of an inclusive education based on the attention to students’ special needs. they also influenced teachers’ lifetime training and the assessment of schools intervention projects in portugal. the end of 90s and beginning of 2000 was marked in portugal and around the world by the appearance of “hybrid” policies (garcia canclini, 2001; lopes, 2005). policies emphasising the value of place, professional development (hargreaves & goodson, 1996) and school autonomy in curricular management, were supplemented with “accountability” procedures (elmore, 2003) such as teachers’ performance assessments, school assessments and the comparison of international schools’ results, as practiced in the programme for international student assessment (pisa). the characterisation of the influence of the political measures on the portuguese educative system would not be complete without mentioning the lisbon strategy (2000), the technological plan for training and it improvements in schools. following the introduction of these measures in portugal – the concept of education, curriculum and schools’ and teachers’ roles – a discourse began a on school autonomy. since the portuguese educational system is traditionally centralised (barroso, 1996; formosinho, 2005), this discourse experienced some difficulties in moving from statement to action. although the concept of school autonomy was expressed in a legal document in 1989, only in 1998 (decree law 115 a of 1998) was it clearly stated and, in 2008, reinforced (decree law 75), with the aim of achieving quality in public education. the concept of autonomous schools as institutions belonging to a social community, assumed the involvement of families and other local partners and was realised through the “full-time school” project. this project aimed to respond to the needs of working families by increasing the school day beyond the traditional five class hours. such a social response can be seen as what some authors call the “education moral mission” (cummings et al., 2001). this “moral mission” was also felt by teachers who began to spend more time in school and engaged in a range of new duties. to fulfill those duties, the “curriculum enrichment activities” were created to be developed in extracurricular hours, ensuring a longer school day (dispatch no. 12 590 of 2006). table 1 systematises political measures that have been the focus of curricular studies developed in portugal and that have challenged schools and teachers with new duties. those new duties have motivated the desire for training. on the other hand, as shown in chart 1, these political measures are linked with international policies by a process called “policies transfer” (dolowitz et al., 2000) or “policies borrowing” (ball, 2001). leite & fernandes. curricular studies and their relation with the political agenda for education 38 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci table 1 curricular measures implemented in the portuguese educative system between 1997 and 2008 political measures principles international influences dispatch no. 484897, of 30th july flexible curricular management dispatch no. 9590/99, of 29th april (revoke of the dispatch nº 4848/97) conception of the nationally prescribed curriculum as a project to be recontextualised by schools valuation of curricular management principles salamanca declaration (1996) unesco’s report for education in the 21st century – the four pillars of education for the 21st century: learn to know, learn to do, learn to live together, learn to be and the statement of the principle of lifelong learning. lisbon strategy, march 2000 european union answer to the challenges of global economical competitiveness in the 21st century dissemination of ict technologies, namely internet in schools. teachers’ training. lisbon strategy, march 2000 european report on the quality of basic and secondary education (2000) decree law 6/2001, of 18th january (regulating basic education curriculum – 1st to 9th grade) decree law 7/2001, of 18th january (regulating secondary education curriculum 10th, 11th and 12th grade) revoked by decree law no. 74/2004 of 26th march conception of teacher as a curriculum manager/decision maker conception of curriculum as a global training project student as active leader in his own learning and learning regulation education and training 2010 (european council, 2000) oecd report. analysis of the educational policies (2001) six scenarios for the future of the school (2003). paris: ceri/ocde. law nº 31/2002, of 20th december, that approved the assessment system for learning and non superior education (selfassessment and external assessment) acknowledgement that an assessment culture in schools promotes better quality in education oecd report. analysis of the educational policy 3 (2003) education and training 2010 (european council, 2000) normative dispatch no. 1/2005, of 5th january establishes the principles and procedures for learning and students’ skills assessment normative dispatch 50/2005 of 20th october internal summative assessment affirmation of principles for an inclusive education conception of assessment as a tool for promoting learning principles for acting and guiding rules for the implementation, monitoring and assessment of recovery plans as an intervention strategy towards educative success in basic education european agency report for the development of special education (2003) focused on the promotion of an inclusive education and classroom practices education and training 2010 (european council, 2000) ocde (2005). teachers matter – attracting, developing and retaining effective teachers. paris: ocde decree law nº 74/2006, of 24th march joint dispatch nº adequacy of higher education courses to the organisations and principles of the bologna process bologna declaration 19th june 1999 oecd report. analysis of http://www.spn.pt/?aba=27&cat=6&doc=1009&mid=115 http://www.spn.pt/?aba=27&cat=6&doc=1009&mid=115 leite & fernandes. curricular studies and their relation with the political agenda for education 39 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 2. methodological procedures as previously stated, to answer the question posed by this paper there was a need to characterise the political measures undertaken in portugal between 1997 and 2008. additionally, it was necessary to collect curricular studies developed in portugal in the same period. this collection was based on academic studies (masters and phd theses) and books and articles published in portuguese. these studies were chosen because they constitute privileged channels for knowledge divulgation and diffusion in the field of curriculum. concerning masters and phd theses, the collection was made through an on-line search in the portuguese national library and in the observatory for science and higher education (oshe). these are databases with which higher education institutions are required to be registered in order to deposit their completed theses. the studies were organised and characterised by type – masters (m) or phd (d) –, title and year of publication. following this, a selection was made based on the titles, identifying the ones containing the words: curriculum, basic education, secondary education, higher education, assessment. these words were chosen because they are widely and frequently used in portuguese literature. the next step is the categorisation of the studies by date (see graphic 1). regarding the articles published in journals, the collection was based on five well known journals in portugal in the fields of education and curriculum: 1) revista portuguesa da educação; 2) revista sísifo; 3) revista educação, sociedade & culturas; 4) revista de educação; 5) revista portuguesa de pedagogia. to select the appropriate articles, all indexes from every number published between 1997 and 2008 were consulted in order to identify the ones that contained in their titles the words referred to above. similarly, for the procedure followed with the academic studies, 370/2006, of 3rd may constitutes a group to study and proposing models for pre-schools, basic and secondary education selfassessment and external assessment, and define the necessary procedures and conditions for its generalisation, aiming to improve the quality of education and to create conditions for increasing schools’ autonomy. the educational policies (2006) reports (2005, 2006) about the progress of education and training 2010 dispatch no. 12 590/2006, of 16th june (full-time school) assigning to schools the responsibility of supporting families (enlargement of pre-school network) oecd report. analysis of the educational policies (2006) decree law 3/2008, of 7th january regulating special education conception of inclusive education (realisation of inter-culturality principles) report special education in europe educative responses after the basic education 1st level (2006) oecd report. education at a glance (2007) regulatory decree no. 2/2008 of 10th january regulating the system for assessment of teachers’ performance in pre-school and basic and secondary education education and training 2020 (european council, 2009) decree law 75/2008, of 22nd april school autonomy regime reinforcement of schools’ autonomy aiming to improve education public service. more autonomy is equal to more responsibility (accountability) oecd report. education at a glance (2008) decree law no. 205/2009 of 31st august teaching statutes in higher education oecd report. education at a glance (2008) leite & fernandes. curricular studies and their relation with the political agenda for education 40 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci graphics were constructed to organise the information and enable the identification of the volume of articles published per year (see graphic 3). concerning book publications, the search was conducted through the national library following the same procedure described above: title registration and publication date. this procedure also informed us of the number of books published in the period between 1997 and 2008 (see graphic 3). the final step in this process was to give us an overall view of the variety of collected publications concerning curricular studies (see graphic 4). this enabled the construction of a map on the publications’ foci and its organisation into 12 categories, namely: 1) teachers/training conception/parts; 2) curriculum/curricular management; 3) intercultural/inclusive education; 4) school education/pedagogy; 5) ict/multimedia; 6) learning assessment; 7) higher education/teaching; 8) school-family/pre-school education; 9) educational administration/autonomy; 10) special education/learning difficulties; 11) curricular and educational policies; 12) alternative training pathways. the mapping enabled the identification of the volume of publications per category. based on the mapping, two graphics were constructed (graphics 2 and 4) supporting the data analysis. it is interesting to note that the use of maps, as in geography, was brought to comparative education by rolland paulston (1994) and paulston and lieban (2000), and seen as a useful tool for the analysis of sociopolitical organisations aiming to define models for educational systems. as stated by stromquist (2000, p. 224), “mapping borrows some notions from geography, such as place, space and situation (…)”. according to paulston (1994, p. 224), mapping is “a spatial tool developed specifically to enlighten the growing complexity of knowledge approaches”. therefore it is a process of representing the knowledge produced in a certain area or domain in which the act of representation (cartography) consists in translating and interpreting that knowledge. in the case presented in this paper, the mapping enabled the systematisation of thematic foci in curricular studies (academic research, and journal and book publications) produced in portugal between 1997 and 2008. using this systematisation it was possible to establish relations with the political-educational contexts where they were produced. 3. data presentation and interpretation and its relation with educational political measures the collected studies – the focus of the analysis presented in this paper – are masters and phd theses awarded in portuguese universities, and journal and book publications in portuguese. data concerning those studies will be presented in this section. 3.1. masters and phd theses in the search for theses produced between 1997 and 2008, 820 studies were identified – 458 masters theses and 362 phd theses. graphic 1 shows the distribution of academic studies per year. leite & fernandes. curricular studies and their relation with the political agenda for education 41 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci graphic 1: masters and phd theses produced in portugal between 1997 and 2008. by analysing the distribution of studies, it is possible to see a regular production of masters over the considered period of time. however, there is a production peak in 2000 and 2001, and between 2004 and 2006. in phds, the publication peak is from 2006 onwards. this situation supports the need to determine whether or not there is a relation between the publication peaks and the political and curricular educational measures implemented in the previous years. for this purpose the 12 categories listed above, identified in the mapping of general studies, were taken as a reference. for establishing subsequent relations between the foci and political measures, the masters and phd thesis analysis was performed concurrently. the first step comprised analysing the relation between the number of publications and their foci. after this, potential correspondences between those numbers and educational policies’ foci and measures were identified. graphic 2 shows the major foci in the academic studies. leite & fernandes. curricular studies and their relation with the political agenda for education 42 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci graphic 2: academic studies (ma and phd) – most studied thematic foci 1997-2008. by analysing graphic 2 it is possible to see that the major focus on masters and phd theses is teachers’ training and their roles in the curriculum. a slightly lower number can be found in studies focused on curriculum and curricular management. also significantly represented are the studies focusing on intercultural/inclusive education. school education and its relation with the family and pre-school education are the foci of a number of studies (close to the number of theses) on general aspects of school education and pedagogy. learning assessment and ict also show a high number of studies. the lowest number are the studies focusing on: higher education; autonomy and educational administration; special education; curricular and educational policies; and alternative training. it is possible to establish a relation between the peaks of academic production – taking into account that 2000 and 2001 were the years with the highest number of studies – the identified foci and the educational political measures undertaken in portugal in the years that preceded the studies. in those years, challenges for change in educational systems were felt throughout europe (ball, 2001; bolívar, 2007; dale, 2000; leite, 2005) and portugal was no exception. since 1997, with the project for flexible curricula management, schools and teachers have been challenged to undertake the recontextualisation (bernstein, 1990) of the curriculum prescribed nationally by the ministry of education. this project led to the basic education curricular reorganisation and to the secondary education curricular review in 2001. as previously noted, these situations directly influenced teachers’ familiar work modes and demanded new knowledge and new learning, which led to a search for training. for instance, the requirement for all schools to have school and class curricular projects influenced teachers to search for practical and theoretical referential. some returned to post-graduate training (masters and phd) leite & fernandes. curricular studies and their relation with the political agenda for education 43 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci and some chose continuous, on-the-job training. besides these technical aspects, the concept of a curriculum that accompanied the educational political measures, demanded the resources to differentiate between dynamics in curricular and pedagogical processes. it led to teachers searching for knowledge so as to be able to meet the professional challenge and it also explains the high volume of academic studies produced focusing on teachers’ parts in curriculum, curriculum/curricular management, intercultural/inclusive education, school education/pedagogy and special education. this is a demonstration of the teachers’ search for knowledge and their aim to better understand the challenges put to them. it also represents a consequence of international policies, such as: unesco’s report towards education for the 21st century. the report highlights the need for educational systems to strive for equity in education. this means that “students who present different needs should be offered learning experiences that are adequate to them” (delors et al., 1996, pp. 185-186), without neglecting the most gifted students and depriving them of adequate learning opportunities. the guidelines from unesco on education in the 21st century reinforced the foundations of the curricular flexibility movement, which emerged in countries such as spain and portugal in the second half of the 1990s. this project sought to foster curriculum development processes adequate for real situations and contexts, and to promote curricular equity and justice (connell, 1997). the conception of an inclusive school was also influenced by the salamanca declaration, as well as by the recommendations given by, for example, european agency reports for special education development. the lisbon strategy, pointing towards lifelong learning and the european report for the quality of basic and secondary education, were other great influences. in the same time period, the portuguese educative system witnessed the rise of a discourse concerning schools’ autonomy (decree law 115 a/98). the autonomy discourse brought changes in schools’ governance styles that in turn required from teachers specialised training in educational management and curriculum development. this may explain the increase of academic studies registered between 2000 and 2006, focusing on schools’ autonomy and educational administration, as well as those focusing on curricular and educational policies. regarding phd theses, the significant increase from 2006 may be connected with the bologna process and the changes that came with it (2004), especially the ones concerning teachers’ career development. the publication of the ‘statute of the teaching career’ (stc) influenced assistant teachers to quickly finish their phds, fearing the loss of privileges. this may explain the 41 flagged studies concerning higher education, teaching and pedagogy, when, traditionally, this level of education did not constitute a focus of study in portugal. another possible explanation for the increase of phd theses may be that, after finishing their masters degrees, some teachers expected to work in higher education and chose, therefore, to continue their training with a phd. the european council recommendations (2000) expressed in education and training 2010 work programme, also influenced the search for post-graduate training. graphic 1 shows this relation of international influences. in summary, the thesis listing constituted a successful tool for understanding the level of relations between academic production and educational and curricular policies, which is of some importance when considering the part played by research as a generator of influences in educational and curricular options. 3.2. book and journal publications leite & fernandes. curricular studies and their relation with the political agenda for education 44 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci as already stated, the book and journal mapping followed the same procedure used with academic studies (masters and phds). thus, the procedure consisted of a joint analysis of articles published in journals and articles published in books. the choice for this approach was based on the belief that it could facilitate the understanding of possible relations between production peaks, articles foci and curricular and educational political measures. the results were organised in graphics, allowing for a general comparative representation of the publications in the considered time period (1997 to 2008), both in volume of production (graphic 3), and in most-studied subjects (graphic 4). the analysis of these data can be found below. graphic 3: total portuguese books and articles published between 1997 and 2008. graphic 3 shows that 909 studies were inventoried (539 books and 370 articles). it may be observed that there is an even production of articles and books over the range of the years, even though there was an increase in 1998, 2005 and 2008. the analysis aimed to answer the question: what is the relation between the production peaks and the political context?. similar to the case of academic studies, the 12 categories identified in the overall academic studies mapping were also taken into account. the first step consisted in analysing the relation between the number of publications and their subjects in order to later identify possible relations between that number, the subjects and educational political measures. graphic 4 shows the overall representation of the foci and the production volume. leite & fernandes. curricular studies and their relation with the political agenda for education 45 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci graphic 4: portuguese books and articles published in the period between 1997 and 2998 and their subjects. the graphic shows a higher volume of article publications and a lower number of book publications. a comparison between the volume of each type of publication and their subjects revealed that: i) the largest number of books are in the subjects of learning assessment (346) and curriculum and curricular management (84); and ii) that the largest number of articles are in the subjects of teachers’ training conception and parts (93) and higher education (44). a close relation between the category of teachers’ training conception and parts was found. this is similar with the foci of masters and phd theses, even though theses presented a higher number. by establishing a relation between these publication subjects and educational and curricular policies in portugal, it is possible to conclude that the schools external assessment policy, implemented in portugal in 2006, exerts a considerable influence. this political measure, undertaken by the general inspectorate for education – a principal body of the ministry of education – facilitated the development of selfassessment processes that, in their turn, promoted the development and publication of studies. alongside are measures concerning the learning assessment that, following the principles of formative assessment, foresees the implementation of programmes for students’ recovery, monitoring and development (dispatch no. 50/2005, of 9th november). this led schools to pay more attention to learning assessments and raised researchers’ interest in conceptualising and analysing the subject (leite & fernandes, 2002). this may explain why the category of learning assessment represents the higher volume of publications (346 books and 25 articles). although it has been a subject regularly studied over the years, there has been a change since 2005. it is also important leite & fernandes. curricular studies and their relation with the political agenda for education 46 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci to consider that the number of book publications is a result of the book market’s interest in such publications, given that they are, alongside theoretical conceptualisation, a significant aid for national exam preparation for students, or support material for learning assessment instruments preparation for teachers. related to this aspect – and establishing another link between book and article publications and masters and phd theses – is the policy of the foundation for science and technology (a body that funds research in higher education in portugal) regarding the definition of the priorities for granting publications in the area of educational sciences. the fact that in portugal, in the early years of the 21st century, special attention was given to issues concerning pedagogy in higher education, is connected to the number of publications focusing on higher education. the analysis of this situation – namely concerning the adequacy to the bologna process and its consequences in curricular organisation and pedagogical work modes – encouraged some educational and curricular researchers to publish on the subject. the significant number of books and articles concerning higher education (45/44) is representative of the interest that these subjects trigger in researchers and teachers at this level of education. in summary, it was possible to identify a strong relation between the national and international political-educational agenda and the subjects focused on in publications, books and journals, and curricular studies (see graphic 1). 4. final remarks this paper, as initially stated, aimed to relate the thematic foci of curriculum studies developed in portugal between 1997 and 2008 with political-educational measures. to do so, a characterisation of the political discourse from that time period was made. the analysis of that discourse, national and international, revealed that this period was marked by changes in the ways of conceiving education and the school curriculum – promotion of equity and inclusion (delors et al., 1996; leite, 2002; stoer & cortesão, 2001) – and teachers’ roles as curriculum developers (leite & fernandes, 2002, shkedi, 2006). this justifies the assertion that these changes challenged teachers and researchers to study and produce new ideas and ways of doing things. recalling the starting question, the mapping of the academic studies and publications developed in portugal over the specified time period reveals a strong relation between the thematic foci and the meanings expressed in educational and curricular policy discourses. furthermore, the analysis shows that those meanings are expressed in the studies, and that the foci is on teachers’ training, curricular management, educational policy, intercultural education, learning assessment, higher education, among others. it also reveals that the number of studies is slightly higher after the implementation of those measures. in addition the analysis made clear that the academic studies and publications produced in this period of time arose from international political influences that have been drawing new paths for education, both in portugal and in europe as a whole. this supports the thesis of the europeanisation of education (dale & robertson, 2008), that is, the idea of the existence of a supranational force upon education and school curriculum, strongly influencing “not only the nature of challenges that educational systems face, but also the possibility of developing an ‘european’ response to those challenges” (dale, 2008, p. 14). in fact, international guidelines have standardised school dynamics and teachers’ actions and influenced studies produced about them. nevertheless, the formulation of educational and curricular policies cannot be defined by a dichotomic approach between the global and the local. as stated by santos leite & fernandes. curricular studies and their relation with the political agenda for education 47 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci (2005, p. 7), it is important to defend a counter-hegemonic globalisation “against the economical, social and political consequences of the hegemonic globalization”. therefore, ball (2001, p. 101) is also supported when he warns that the “analysis of flow and policies influence among nations, in particular, needs to be carefully handled” assuming that globalisation reaches the local context without annihilating it. in fact, the opposite occurs. globalisation provokes the emergence of forms of identity and cultural representations, even when connected with the globalisation process (giddens, 1996). it is this contention that is the basis of the study presented in this paper. notes 1 carlinda@fpce.up.pt 2 preciosa@fpce.up.pt 3 the “publication of education and training 2010” was launched by the oecd in 1996 and since then it has become an annual publication. it is part of the work programme for the oecd education committee and is a response to the priority policies established by the oecd 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(2000). mapping gendered spaces third world educational interventions. in r. paulston, social cartography: mapping ways seeing social and educational change (pp. 223-247). london: garland publishing. submitted: november, 8 th , 2012. approved: december, 18 th , 2012. http://dre.pt/pdf1s/2005/01/003b00/00710076.pdf http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/45/39/45926093.pdf o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: fu, guopeng (2015). dewey’s trip to china: a rejuvenation of his democratic spirit transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> dewey’s trip to china: a rejuvenation of his democratic spirit1 guopeng fu2 university of british columbia, canada dewey and his wife alice decided to visit the far east in 1919 to recover from the political frustrations they had with the “defeat” of president wilson’s proposed league of nations after the end of world war i as well as their personal grief upon the death of their son from the trip in europe. although visiting the far east had flitted through their minds before, it was more or less a spontaneous trip in terms that the couple did not have a detailed plan of where or how long they were going to stay. they were teaching at the university of california in berkeley in late 1918 and in dewey’s words, we “may never again get as near japan as we are now and that as the years are passing, it is now or never with us” (john dewey 2008, 185). the expected short respite from the us, however, turned out to be a three months stay in japan and a two year extended stay in china. what intrigued dewey to stay so long in china? when dewey’s former columbia student, hu shih, learned dewey was in japan in early 1919, he invited the couple to visit china. they joyfully accepted the invitation but were not certain how long they were going to stay. even though columbia had granted him a year of sabbatical leave three weeks before their visit to china, dewey still kept open the plan of returning to the us in the summer of 1919. on the one hand, staying in china for a year was an appealing plan for dewey as he “could begin to learn something of the east” (quote of dewey in wang 2008, 3). on the other hand, many people warned him about making contact with the chinese (j. c.-s. wang 2008). however, once dewey arrived in china, he not only spent a full year sabbatical, but also extended the sabbatical into two years. coincident with the may fourth movement, he became a fad in china. as a figure of democracy and liberalism, dewey received a “warm, enthusiastic welcome and was hailed as the philosopher of democracy” (westbrook 1991, 240). he was invited to different places throughout the country giving countless lectures. such a welcome recharged his political energies as “the change from the united states to an environment of the oldest culture in the world struggling to adjust itself to new conditions was so great as to act as a rebirth of intellectual enthusiasms” (p. 241). he addressed china as “the country nearest his heart after his own” (jane dewey 1939, 42) and returned to the us with a changed political propositions and philosophy, which he brought forth in his book, the public and its problems (john dewey 1927).what attracted dewey to stay in china for two years? what elements in china recharged his political energies and nourished his philosophical ideas? and what made china “the country nearest his heart after his own”? many scholars have suggested the coincidence of his arriving with the may fourth student movement as the reason dewey stayed so long (hoyt 2006; j. c.-s. wang 2008; westbrook 1991). however, i would like to depict a comprehensive picture by locating dewey in the historical context to re-analyze his extended staying. therefore, this paper examines 1. the political frustrations he felt before his trip to the far east; 2. how his time in japan influenced his ideas about the may fourth movement which was triggered by the conflicts between japan and china; 3. how the may fourth fu. dewey’s trip to china 14 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci movement and dewey’s engagements with chinese students, intellectuals, government officials, soldiers, and merchants in china shaped his views upon the east as well as the west; 4. how dewey’s encounters with chinese history and traditional philosophies promoted his philosophical ideas. although i arbitrarily divide dewey’s far east journey into four aspects, the four aspects are all interrelated. please consider the four aspects as four dimensions of one whole entity covering the length (time) as well as depth (social and intellectual) of how the experience in china shaped dewey’s political and philosophical ideas. i offer my reflections upon how dewey’s trip to china shed lights on the internationalization of curriculum studies (pinar 2011) today to conclude this essay. before going to the far east dewey endeavored to end world war i on american terms, which was an opportunity to “turn the war to democratic ends” (westbrook 1991, 232). he embodied his idea into woodrow wilson’s proposal for a league of nations which should be “a world federation, a concert of nations, a supreme tribunal, a league of nations to enforce peace…” (john dewey 2008, 70–71). he predicted two consequences of forging an international league of nations “we shall have either a world federation in the sense of a genuine concert of nations, or a few large imperialistic organizations, standing in chronic hostility to one another” (128). in order to promote his visions, dewey published a large number of articles in the political magazine dial as well as endorsing the work of the league of free nations association (lfna) which advocated security and equality of economic opportunity for all the nations of the world. the equal opportunity required a “mutual exchange with its resulting economic interdependence” (westbrook 1991, 235). such statements were condemned by conservatives as a marxist critique of capitalistic imperialism. in fact, dewey’s vision of international equity was more radical than the lfna. he proposed a more regulated free trade which would take a nation’s power inequity into account. a democratically controlled international body should be created in order to eliminate imperialism and provide opportunities for less powerful counties in their economy development. in other words, wealthy nations needed to give up their power and bargaining advantages in international trading. the “equality of trade conditions means equalization of conditions” (john dewey 2008, 142). obviously, such proposals were opposed by the nation’s ruling class who intended to protect their interests. in the fall of 1918, wilson and lfna’s diplomacy as well as dewey’s more radical version of free trade were threatened by a powerful movement stating that dewey and others were “american enemies of democracy who are allied with imperialistic and unreconstructed” (john dewey 2008, 109). such fears were confirmed by the news from paris. wilson secured the league of nations but sacrificed “self-determination, freedom of the seas, disarmament, racial equality, anti-colonialism, and equality of economic opportunities among nations.” (westbrook 1991, 238). dewey’s enthusiasm for his political ideals were depleted by wilson’s hypocritical “victory” at versailles. this event frustrated dewey and forced him to grow politically and to rethink his commitment to the war---a commitment which split dewey from his pacifist friends. his frustration with wilson, himself a noted university scholar prior to his us presidency, extinguished dewey’s fire in politics. on the other hand, it also planted seeds for a more mature political vision in his mind. later on, when wilson and the other peacemakers made secret treaties to grant shandong province, a german territorial holding in china, to japan, such a blatant contract ignited the may fourth movement in china and also nurtured the political seeds in dewey. fu. dewey’s trip to china 15 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci trip to japan dewey and his wife alice’s trip to japan started in january 1919 when he was teaching at the university of california in berkeley. the geographic vicinity encouraged the couple to visit japan. two japanese business men learned about dewey’s trip and funded him to give lectures at tokyo imperial university. the couple were at first impressed by the polite treatments from almost everybody in japan as well as the exotic settings of shops and hotels. “politeness is so universal here that when we get back we shall either be so civil that you won’t know us, or else we shall be so irritated that nobody is sufficiently civil that you won’t know us either” (john dewey and alice chipman dewey 1920, 31). later, they reported several cases of gender division in japanese society in the letters to their daughter. for example, dewey was granted a first class ticket in a japanese train by a japanese official. the first class cabin, however, did not allow woman to be on board so that alice could not stay in the same cabin with him. in addition, dewey’s lectures seemed not very successful in japan: “his boring delivery made for a dwindling audience, and his unflinching allegiance to democracy made him unwelcome to the authorities” (ryan 1995, 205). the room for liberal democracy was little even though he reported a few signs of democratic activity in japan. as he says: all japan is talking democracy now, which is to be taken in the sense of representative government rather than in the sense of tearing down the present form of government. the representation in elections here now does not seem to extend much further, if any, than to include these large taxpayers who would under any system be a force in forming policy. (38) interestingly, the expected “tearing down the present form of government” actually happened, not in japan but in china. the may fourth movement greatly shattered the chinese government. in japan, though, dewey’s liberal democracy was distasteful to japan’s feudal militarism which was deeply embedded in the traditional values of bushido. dewey’s pragmatism seemed not appealing to most japanese audiences as japanese society was “marked by deep class divisions, held together by the mythology of the emperor cult and the repression of a military state” (westbrook 1991, 241). before dewey came to japan, he was under the impression that japan was allied with the us because of their common enemy, german. when he arrived to japan, he found such impression was totally misguided. to quote dewey: for i found that intellectually, morally, and politically an active german propaganda had been carried on during the war by japanese officials. i learned that in the army the conscript recruits had been systematically got together and taught the superiority of german institutions to those of the allies, and especially the superiority of german militarism and the fact that it could not be defeated. (john dewey 2007, 151) although japan and germany were foes in the war, the two countries were more intimated in terms of ideologies and political beliefs (and later allies in wwii). the defeat of germany only brought a superficial changes to japan---japanese liberals talked more explicitly about democracy. however, deep down, militarism and bureaucracy were still rooted in japan. the distance created by imperialism and the strict social hierarchy made dewey realize that his ideas were not in fertile soil. to quote dewey: fu. dewey’s trip to china 16 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci there is a great anti-american drive on now; seems to be largely confined to newspapers, but also stimulated artificially somewhat, presumably by the militaristic faction, which has lost more prestige in the last few months than in years, with a corresponding gain in liberal sentiment. … criticism of the united states is the easiest way to arrest the spread of liberal sentiments and strengthen the arguments for a big militaristic party. (john dewey and alice chipman dewey 1920, 74) after spending four months in japan, the couple left for china. the engagements with japanese intellectuals, military officers, school teachers and students, government officials, merchants, and even hotel maids blended and formed dewey’s interpretations of japanese history, culture and society. such interpretations, later, impacted his views on the conflicts between japan and china upon the shandong problem. people and events three days after dewey arrived in china, he made comparisons between chinese people and japanese people: the chinese are noisy, not to say boisterous, easy-going and dirty-and quite human in general effect. …the japanese impressions are gradually sinking into perspective with distance, and it is easy to see that the same qualities that make them [the japanese] admirable are also the ones that irritate you. …there seems to be a rule for everything, and admiring their artistic effects one also sees how near art and the artificial are together. so it is something of a relaxation to get among the easy-going [chinese] once more. their slouchiness, however, will in the end get on one’s nerves quite as much as the “eternal” attention of the japanese. (john dewey and alice chipman dewey 1920, 156–157) it seems that, for dewey, he never really got to know japanese people, the human underneath the politeness, the thoughts without any rules and articulations. interestingly, such impressions of two countries’ ordinary people accidentally echoed the encounters with their leaders. dewey saw the japanese emperor on the street when the emperor was heading for a university commencement. dewey, along with other japanese people on the street, standing on both sides of the street, watched and saluted as the emperor passed by with reverence. the emperor was up on a horse carriage, sitting in the middle with “perfect breeding”. on the other hand, the meeting with ex-president sun yat-sen was at dinner where they discussed the weakness of chinese people as well as china’s current condition under the international backdrop. in addition, dewey heard from the meeting that a secret treaty has been made in paris to turn over shangdong province from germany’s possessions to japan as concessions, which he completely opposed to. for one thing, it was made secretly. for another, he still believed the league of nation was the only salvation of the eastern situation. otherwise china would be either under japanese-militarized or under russian bolshevikized (john dewey and alice chipman dewey 1920). the secret treaty, as mentioned before, triggered the may fourth movement. with great compassion to china and his political ideal of the league of nation, dewey actively embraced the movement with students and criticized japanese militarism. on the other hand, chinese students and patriots were eager to see an international figure who was along their side and with theoretical and philosophical support. fu. dewey’s trip to china 17 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the may fourth movement the may fourth movement was an anti-imperialism, cultural, and political movement that initiated by students in beijing on may 4th, 1919. the movement was to protest current chinese government’s weak response to the shandong problem in the treaty of versailles. as one of the victorious countries, china was hoping that shandong province, a germany concession during wwi, would be returned to china. however, the western allies dominated the meeting and the chinese representative’s voice was neglected. as a result, shandong province was turned over to japan. the treaty over the shandong problem provoked the anger of the chinese people and triggered the may fourth movement. on the morning of may 4th, college student representatives from thirteen universities met in beijing and on the afternoon, over 3000 students from peking universities along with other school protested in tiananmen square against the secret treaty and condemned the weakness of the chinese government. they required to struggle for the external sovereignty and asked the government to be strong in international affairs. domestically, they demanded the government to punish the traitors, i.e. the weak delegates who agreed to sign the versailles treaty. students hoped to draw the awareness of the public in china regarding the shandong problem and called for a boycott of japanese products. the may fourth movement emerged from a larger context of the new cultural movement. the new cultural movement, simply put, was a movement in which a group of intellectuals advocated the idea that traditional confucian values were responsible for the political weakness of the nation and china needed to selectively adopt western ideals of science and democracy in order to strengthen the new nation (spence 1981). two points are worth mentioning: 1, dewey’s former student, hu shih, was one of the major intellectual leaders in the new cultural movement; 2, science and democracy were the two themes of the new cultural movement. the may fourth movement has shifted the new cultural movement from cultural activities towards political mobilization. meanwhile, it also moved the new cultural movement from intellectual elites to a broader population. dewey’s arrival, catered to several needs of the may fourth movement. as the movement aimed to denunciate the traditional confucius ideas and adopted modern western ideas, dewey was portrayed as a modern sage representing western thoughts. the chancellor of peking university addressed dewey as a modern-day confucius because both are “educators of the common people, shared the same faith in education as a vehicle for social change, and insisted on the unity of thought and action” (j. c.-s. wang 2008, 14). in addition, dewey’s experimental theory of inquiry as well as his beliefs in democracy, equality, and creativity made him “mr. science” and “mr. democracy” in china. hu shih was a passionate proponent of abandoning traditional confucius value and embracing western democracy. dewey’s arrival boosted hu’s zeal to pragmatism. he elaborately planned dewey’s receptions all over china and promoted dewey’s pragmatism among chinese audiences. dewey held the political standing of liberalism and anti-imperialism which resonated with the may fourth movement sentiment. while in the paris peace conference, neither chinese representatives’ demands were paid attention to, nor woodrow wilson’s fourteen points and the ideals of self-determinations in the league of nations were convincing enough to the great britain and france as well as the us congress. chinese intellectuals were advocates of wilson’s fourteen points and self-determinations proposal as such proposal would return shandong province back to china from german sovereignty. dewey, as a radical proponent of wilson’s proposal, thus drew supports from chinese people. moreover, his trip in japan consolidated dewey’s anti-imperialism belief, which encouraged dewey to not only show explicitly his sympathy of china over shandong problem in his lectures, but fu. dewey’s trip to china 18 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci also granted him deeper understanding over shandong problem from the japanese perspectives: …the japanese liberals who wish to tell the truth about conditions in china --and there are a good number of them---at the same time temporarily handicap the liberal cause because they seem to be identified with an unpatriotic and anti-nationalistic cause. if the situation can develop in a reasonable normal way, there is no doubt as to where ultimate triumph will lie. it was european imperialism that taught japan that the only way in which it could be respected was to be strong in military and naval force. not its art nor the exquisite courtesy of its people nor its eager curiosity gave japan the rank of one the big five at paris. (john dewey 2007, 153–154) in addition, dewey wrote reports for us journals in order to call for international attentions of the justice upon shandong problem. in a report in the new republic, he wrote: and now japan has, with the blessing of the great powers at paris, become also the heir of german concessions, intrigues and ambitions, with added concessions, wrung (or bought) from incompetent and corrupt officials by secret agreements when the world was busy with war. if all the great powers are so afraid of japan that they give way to her every wish, what is china that she can escape the prepared for her? that is the cry of helplessness going up all over china. (john dewey 2007, 175) embodied mr. science, mr. democracy, modern figure of western ideas, educator of common people and supporter of china over the shandong problem, dewey instantly became a fad in the may fourth movement. wherever he went his lectures attracted hundreds, if not thousands of audience. many of the lectures were published by local newspapers. his educational beliefs were valued and admired. china’s educational conference in 1922 was themed by dewey’s educational philosophies (hoyt 2006). his books were translated in chinese and published in the early 1920s (j. c.-s. wang 2008). on the one hand, dewey met the cravings of chinese people for an international figure who could stand behind their back to provide philosophical, theoretical, and political support to the may fourth movement, the new cultural movement as well as the shandong problem. on the other hand, the may fourth movement also created a platform for dewey to realize his political ideals both in china and internationally, promote his philosophical beliefs, and apply his educational creeds. adopting hu shi’s suggestion, dewey started his series of lectures with social and political philosophy which was a topic of interest for most chinese people (j. c.-s. wang 2008). he attempted to “formulate a coherent statement of social and political philosophy based in pragmatism and sketch out some of implications for the reform of chinese society” (westbrook 1991, 244). he positioned himself a guide on the side rather than a sage on the stage. instead of infuse his own or other western democratic ideas, he reminded chinese people that democracy cannot be transplanted and every nation should develop her identical democracy based on the specific history, culture and traditions. he suggested pragmatic social theory and guild socialism as antidotes to the social issues in china: chinese society needed “particular kinds of solutions by particular methods for particular problems which arise on particular occasions” (john dewey 1973, 53). the social progression should be neither radical nor conservative. “it is cumulative, a step forward here, a bit of improvement there. it takes fu. dewey’s trip to china 19 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci place day by day, and results from the ways in which individual persons deal with particular situations” (62). although dewey had a distaste for state socialism and marxism due to their narrow categorization of social economic status, he was very positive about guild socialism which emphasized community, and thus could avoid the entrepreneurial minority gaining control of the country’s resources (westbrook 1991). dewey suggested the chinese guild system should center on the welfare of the total society instead of individual or small group profits: we must teach ourselves one inescapable fact: any real advantage to one group is shared by all groups; and when one group suffers disadvantage, all are hurt. social groups are so intimately interrelated that what happens to one of them ultimately affects the well-being of all of them. (john dewey 1973, 71) such proposition resonated with dewey’s beliefs in establishing a league of nation which aimed to mediate the economic inequity internationally. his political beliefs of economic equity found a new land in which they could grow. in addition, his position which rejected both radical and conservative views came out of the reflections upon his war experience. he had witnessed how grand theories made people sacrifice their properties and lives in the war time because such theories offered people beliefs during crisis. and such beliefs were easily manipulated by politicians and militarism. dewey hoped china could achieve equality by using its own social foundations and philosophical traditions (j. c.-s. wang 2008). he passionately conveyed his message to his chinese audience and thereby his political energies were recharged. dewey was invigorated by the students’ deeds and achievements. with uncertainties and frustrations, he saw more hope in china from the movement of students who were young, motivating, patriotic, and longing for equality, democracy, and freedom. dewey, not only read about or heard about the movement from newspapers and colleagues in china, he actually lived into this movement. he was in beijing, the center of the movement from the beginning of the may fourth movement. he witnessed student’s protests in beijing. students gave speeches about the shandong problem and encouraged chinese people to boycott japanese goods. the protests spread like wildfire and almost every school and college was having a strike. at the same time, he also saw the corrupted and traitorous officials, weak and useless soldiers, and banditti like police. the rotten and the hope confronted between students and school administrators as well as with government officials. a specific event reported in dewey’s letters is worth noting. the government ordered the solders to imprison students who gave speeches on the streets in beijing. peking university was turned into a temporary prison with military tents all around it for students who “disturb the peace by making speeches” (john dewey and alice chipman dewey 1920, 210). the government thought the arrests would frighten the students from making speeches. however, dewey saw “a few hundred girls march away from the american board mission school to go to see the president to ask him to release the boy students who are in prison for making speeches on the street” (209). later, more students were arrested, from two hundred at the beginning on june 1st to one thousand on june 5th 1919 and several university buildings were full as prisons with no food provided. then the government realized that they should not intimidate the students because the merchants around china had joined the students to boycott japanese goods and they feared that the soldiers might be compromised as well. as reported by dewey: fu. dewey’s trip to china 20 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci i think this is the first time the merchants and guilds have really been actively stirred to try to improve industrial methods. and if so, it is a real awakening---that and the combination with the students. (john dewey and alice chipman dewey 1920, 262– 3) at the same time, there were twice as many students as before the arrest giving speeches in the streets. two days later, students were released and some students refused to walk out of the prison because they required an apology as well as assurance of free speech from the government. then, the government sent a formal apology and assured student’s rights of making free speech. dewey commented as: there seems to be no country in the world where students are so unanimously and eagerly interested as in china in what is modern and new in thought, especially about social and economic matters, nor where the arguments which can be brought in favor of the established order and the status quo have so little weight---indeed, are so unuttered. (john dewey 2007, 178) astonished and provoked by the student movement in china, dewey’s political passion was once again ignited as he not only saw how china suffered from the illiberal and militarism international politics, but he also envisioned that his beliefs in democracy, freedom, and equality would bring a promising future to china. to quote dewey, “to say that life in china is exciting is to put it fairly. we are witnessing the birth of a nation, and birth always comes hard” (209). the process of breaking cocoon is certainly full of pain, the emerging of a new life always disperse the pain and create hope. touched by both the suffering and the hope, dewey was recharged and found there were lots of things he could do for china, for peace, for a better future of human beings, and for his own political ideals. if it was the student’s passion and rebellion that aroused dewey’s enthusiasm in politics, it was dewey’s sympathy to china and the chinese people surged in up his engagement into international affairs. over the shandong problem, the japanese government was trying to shift the anti-japanese sentiment in china and made the chinese believe that the americans and english were responsible for china not getting shandong back (john dewey and alice chipman dewey 1920). the suffering of china also consolidated, even pressed into dewey’s awareness of the importance and urgency of justice through a league of nation, in other words, the realization of his political ideals. he was often asked by chinese students during his lecture, “all of our hopes of permanent peace and internationalism having been disappointed at paris, which has shown that might still makes right, and that the strong nations get what they want at the expense of the weak, should not china adopt militarism as part of her educational system? ” (181). therefore, on the one hand, dewey delivered his lectures in china and discussed his beliefs of proper social reconstruction for china; on the other hand, he called for international attentions on the shandong problem in his report to american journals: japan has one mode of diplomacy for the east and another for the west, and that what is said in the west must be read in reverse in the east (john dewey 2007, 171)…and japanese propagandists take advantage of the situation, pointing to the action of the peace conference as proof that the allies care nothing for china, and china must throw herself into the arms of japan if she is to have any protection at all…if the economic straits of japan are alluded to, it is only as a reason why japan fu. dewey’s trip to china 21 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci has hurried her diplomatic coercion, her corrupt and secret bargainings with chinese traitors and her industrial invasion. (175) on june 29th, 1919, the chinese delegates refused to sign the paris treaty. it was a temporary but huge triumph of the may fourth movement not only for the college students, intellectuals, merchants, and all patriots, but also for dewey and his beliefs in liberalism, equality, and democracy. dewey was overjoyed for china and in the letters to his daughters, he wrote: you can’t imagine what it means here for china not to have signed. the entire government has been for it---the president up to ten days before the signing said it was necessary. it was a victory for public opinion, and all set going by these little schoolboys and girls. certainly the united states ought to be ashamed when china can do a thing of this sort. (john dewey and alice chipman dewey 1920, 266) having witnessed the passion, the struggle, the suffering, and the victory of may fourth movement led by a group of young people who had just reached their twenties, dewey saw the rebirth of a nation as well as the hope for his political ideals. even though frustrated by the wilson administration before visiting the far east, he found his political beliefs in a new land to grow and flourish. never losing faith in democracy, liberal, equality, and public welfare, dewey, a man with tremendous courage, morals, and creativity, picked up his beliefs in justice, human being, and the possibility for a world built upon ethics rather than economy. the two-year stay in china offered dewey rests physically, mentally, and intellectually that he had been longing for. the change of environment helped dewey gather breath from the confrontations with his political opponents in america. the life china is easy and comfortable (j. c.-s. wang 2008). preparing and delivering lectures in china motivated him to summarize and reflect upon his ideas and knowledge. he left china with refreshing mind and ready to “begin anew” (martin 2003, 327). encounter history/intellectual traditions of china several dewey scholars have claimed that dewey possessed more mature political and philosophical ideas after his two year visit in the far east (rockefeller 1991; j. c.-s. wang 2008; westbrook 1991). such shifts are partly attributed to his experience with the people and political events in china, and are partly gained from his engagements with traditional chinese philosophies. dewey was “quite impressed by the confucian social system”. scholars have compared the similarities between dewey’s democracy and confucian beliefs and analyzed the possibilities to develop a confucian democracy (grange 2004; hall and ames 1999; tan 2003). the chancellor of peking university addressed him as a modern-day confucius. however, dewey himself seemed to be more congenial to taoism rather than confucianism. although dewey put a lot of work into developing his beliefs in economic equality among nations, he deemed that the difficulties between nations were not just economy. one needed to dig the deep-seated reasons of such difficulties, namely the origin in different philosophies of life. in the light of honest understanding of another nation’s philosophy of life, dewey learned from the seemingly weird reactions of the chinese people to international situations and to the refusal of modern industry to be dominated in their lives. he pondered on these questions, “is their attitude one of callous indifference, of stupid ignorance? or is it a sign of faith in deep-seated realities that western people neglect in their hurry to get results?” fu. dewey’s trip to china 22 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci (john dewey 2007, 202). he then further asked “is her course stupid inertia, a dull obstinate clinging to the old just because it is old? or does it show something more profound, a wise even if largely unconscious, aversion to admitting forces that are hostile to the whole spirit of her civilization?” (203). with these questions, dewey examined the two philosophies of life, taoism and confucianism. confucian school spread among elites and officials in china. it is a school of classic and authority. however, based on dewey’s observation, taoism was the foundation of chinese people’s way of life and had greater influence than confucianism. dewey highly appreciated the doctrine of non-doing as well as the superiority of nature to man in taoism. he commented, “it is a kind of rule of moral doing, a doctrine of active patience, endurance, persistence while nature has time to do her work. conquering by yielding is its motto” (205). he further suggested to the west, to adopt the value of such philosophy because, the result (of international diplomacy upon china) may easily be rash and inconsiderate action. an adoption of chinese calm and patience, a willingness to take only the steps…[that] are immediately necessary, and to wait till time has adjusted the present troubled condition, would have a wonderfully healing effect…the philosophy of the east was never more needed by the west than in the present crisis. (210) originating in the west and now immersed in the east, dewey, while in china, wrote a conception of the spiritual ideal that includes both the western ethical ideal of service and the eastern ideal of esthetic appreciation and meditation (rockefeller 1991). the calm, quiet appreciation of the beauties of nature and a peaceful meditation and contemplation, to dewey, are much needed by the hurried activism of the west. although dewey did not explicitly develop taoism philosophy in his writing of natural piety, his mature idea of dependence on nature was consistent with taoism (rockefeller 1991). conclusion what dewey brought to china was hope, a path to modernity, and democratic seeds. what china offered dewey was a shelter in the war, a stage to revive his beliefs, and an unknown sphere to explore. arriving with depleted passion in politics, dewey’s political energy was recharged by the passionate, courageous, but helpless students. dewey saw hope from the rebirth of the nation and was moved by the crying of a nearly extinct china. to chinese people, dewey was the teacher. he was the mr. science and mr. democracy. he had the key to modernity and a strong china. to dewey, he was a student. he learned from the people, the events, and the philosophies from the far east. the war year left him some scares. and he also learned from it. once again, to quote rockefeller (1991), when he sat down after the war to write his big books, he was a wiser man for having lived through those turbulent times. his vision of the interrelationship of the ideal and the actual was becoming more comprehensive, and he would in time endeavor to integrate into his philosophy of experimental intelligence a more sensitive and complete understanding of moral feeling and of aesthetic and religious experience. (355) what are the significance of study dewey’s far east trip to the internationalization of curriculum studies? gough (2003) reminded us that “internationalizing curriculum inquiry fu. dewey’s trip to china 23 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci might best be understood as a process of creating transnational ‘spaces’”(68). dewey’s trip created a transnational space where he deeply engaged with another country’s people, politics, culture, social changes, history, and philosophies. at the same time, the trip allowed him to reflect upon his previous engagement in the us and in japan from a geographical, social, and cultural distance. his experience echoes hongyu wang’s (2010) argument of crossing and dwelling in cross-cultural and intercultural curriculum. both crossing and dwelling are needed for the internationalization of curriculum studies. newness emerges from tensionality of conjunction and disjuncture. dewey’s political beliefs were ignited and undermined when he was dwelling in the us context. the trip to china reinvigorate his political passion when he crossed geographic and cultural boundaries. the crossing and dwelling created an “interspace” for dewey to re-examine and transcend his political beliefs. the notion of “distance” is important in creating the inter-space for cross-cultural engagement in curriculum studies. while cross-cultural engagement often brings excitement of novel experience, it also creates distance from one’s previous assumptions and dispositions. such distance, i argue, is the space to re-examine and re-discover one’s own beliefs and the stepping stone for creativity and newness. standing from a distance to examine one’s intellectual history while exposing to novel situations in a different culture, the intertwining of distance from the past and intimacy with the present produces transcendence of naiveté and provincialism. the internationalization requires new languages and new publics which allow distinctive national culture to embed in (pinar 2008). the new languages and publics can be created from critical examination of one’s assumptions and engagement with different environment. i further argue that engagement in another distinctive national culture leverage the creation of new languages and publics. pinar (2011) proposed verticality and horizontality as the structure of disciplinarity in the internationalization of curriculum studies. verticality refers to intellectual history of a discipline. horizontality refers to not only the field’s present intellectual circumstances but also the social and political milieu. i argue that the simultaneous presentation of both verticality and horizontality is a necessary condition for the advancement of disciplinarity in the internationalization of curriculum studies. dewey’s political ideals were marginalized in the us because the political circumstances represented the interests of nation’s ruling class (lack of horizontality). his political beliefs did not grow in japan because of the deep roots of militarism and imperialism (lack of verticality). however, people in china hailed dewey as mr. science and mr. democracy. the intellectual history, present circumstances, and social and political milieu together generated welcoming soil for dewey’s beliefs. to china, dewey left his invaluable legacy in chinese history, politics, philosophy, and education (zhang 2014; hoyt 2006; j. c.-s. wang 2008). to dewey, china rejuvenated his democratic spirits and crafted his political stand. the trip to china allowed dewey’s ideas and beliefs to sink into perspectives. he reflected upon his political frustrations, philosophical beliefs, and educational creeds while dwelling in a different context. the similarities and differences in chinese context informed the advancement of his intellectual development. dewey’s engagement with otherness might inspire curriculum scholars to further ponder the notions of distance, verticality and horizontality in the internationalization of curriculum studies. notes 1 acknowledgement: i thank dr. william e. doll’s inspiring guidance in his graduate course as well as in generating this paper. fu. dewey’s trip to china 24 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 2 guopeng.fu@ubc.ca references dewey, j. and dewey, a. c. (1920). letters from china and japan. edited by evelyn dewey. new york, ny: e.p. dutton & company. dewey, j. (1927). the public and its problems, new york: h. holt and company. dewey, j. 1939. biography of john dewey. in the philosophy of john dewey, edited by schilpp, 3–45. new york: tudor publishing co. dewey, j. (1973). lectures in china, 1919-1920. translated by roberts w. clopton and tsuin-chen ou. honolulu: university of hawaii press. dewey, j. (2007). characters and events: popular essays in social and political philosophy -. chicago, il: read books. dewey, j. (2008). the middle works of john dewey, volume 11, 1899 1924: journal articles, essays, and miscellany published in the 1918-1919 period. edited by jo ann boydston. carbondale: southern illinois university press. gough, n. (2003). thinking globally in environmental education. in international handbook of curriculum research, edited by william f. pinar, 1st ed., 53–72. mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum associates. grange, j. (2004). john dewey, confucius, and global philosophy. albany, ny, suny press. hall, d. l., and ames, r. t. (1999). the democracy of the dead: dewey, confucius, and the hope for democracy in china. chicago, open court. hoyt, m. w. (2006). john dewey’s legacy to china and the problems in chinese society. transnational curriculum inquiry. 3 (1): 12–25. http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/article/view/22 martin, j. (2003). the education of john dewey. new york: columbia university press. pinar, w. f. (2008). curriculum theory since 1950: crisis, reconceptualization, internationalization. in the sage handbook of curriculum and instruction, edited by f. michael connelly, ming fang he, and joann phillion, 491–514. thousand oaks, sage. pinar, w. f. (2011). disciplinarity and internationalization of curriculum studies. paper presentation, university of british columbia, vancouver, canada, september 23. rockefeller, s. (1991). john dewey: religious faith and democratic humanism. new york: columbia university press. ryan, a. (1995). john dewey and the high tide of american liberalism. new york: w. w. norton & company. spence, j. d. (1981). the gate of heavenly peace: 2the chinese and their revolution, 18951980. new york, ny: the viking press. tan, s. (2003). confucian democracy: a deweyan reconstruction. albany, ny, suny press. wang, h. (2010). life history and cross-cultural thought: engaging an intercultural curriculum. transnational curriculum inquiry, 6 (2): 37–50. http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/article/view/301 wang, j. c. (2008). john dewey in china: to teach and to learn. albany: state university of new york press. mailto:guopeng.fu@ubc.ca http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/article/view/22 http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/article/view/301 fu. dewey’s trip to china 25 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci westbrook, r. b. (1991). john dewey and american democracy. cornell university press. zhang, h. (2014). curriculum studies and curriculum reform in china: 1922-2012. in curriculum studies in china: intellectual histories, present circumstances, edited by william f. pinar. new york, ny: palgrave macmillan submitted: july, 3rd, 2015. approved: december, 3rd, 2015. o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: southwell, myriam. (2013).teaching work and social demands: research cases from the political discourse analysis.transnational curriculum inquiry 10(1). http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> teaching work and social demands: research cases from the political discourse analysis 1 myriam southwell 2 conicet/la plata national university, argentina the aim of this presentation is to introduce certain uses of some conceptual categories developed within the political discourse analysis so as to examine several aspects of the education policy. the political analysis of the discourse is developed on a post-structuralist conception of the social, the ontological nature of the political, a discursive perspective of the gramscian conception of hegemony and a socio-political incorporation of the psychoanalysis developments on subjectivity. we intend to introduce the conceptual use adopted in two case studies on teaching work. teacher professionalization the concept of teacher professionalization was subjected to countless theoretical discussions and practical disputes in the last decades of the twentieth century, especially in latin america. in a recent research, we wanted to analyze some of the ways in which teachers were interpellated as professionals in the latin american background since the beginning of the reform processes mainly the 1990's reforms and from then on to analyze the tensions arising between different pronouncements and meanings under dispute in the framework of education policies. the peculiarity of these policies, as social processes of meaning, is that they are intended to set forth the notion of “education professional”, as subject position. 3 at first glance and beyond the differences between countries, the latest reforms of the 20th century revealed a common identity not only as regards the purposes, principles and contemporaneity of their proposals, but also concerning the discourse that enabled them (minimal state, focalization, competitiveness, etc.). the reform movements accounted for the incorporation of a rhetoric on teaching professionalization (popkewitz and pereyra, 1994). there, the use of the term “professional” to interpellate teachers accounts for a certain reasoning style and presentation mode, which shaped the subject as bearer of certain qualities and conditions. at this point, it is necessary to emphasize that the concept of professionalization, as well as other concepts, does not have a fixed meaning, but that on the contrary, it is discursively constructed in specific institutional historical contexts (popkewitz, 1995). against this background, international organizations became remarkably important when accompanying the mentioned educational reforms by funding the programs to implement them or advising the countries of the region. southwell. teaching work and social demands: research cases from the political discourse analysis 68 transnational curriculum inquiry10(1) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci we have also been interested in tracing the distinctive features of the aspects to which reference is made through teaching policies. by teaching policies we mean rules, laws, programs, practices and institutions which can be analyzed as discourses when social processes of meaning are involved 4 . in that sense, we explore how these discourses tried to set the notion of teacher in different ways as subject position, which interpellated a group of agents of the education systems assigning them a position in the discursive formations and also a particular history that constituted them as subjects. those discourses strongly modeled the normative and organizational aspects of the training proposed for the sector. the notion of teacher professionalization is placed in this discursive horizon as the signifier by means of which teachers were interpelled within the framework of education reforms; thus, we understand professionalization as a signifier in dispute involving different subjects struggling to join that wide notion with particular meanings. it was a hegemonic dispute through their discursive acts around that notion. in connection with the use of the signifier category, we refer to certain terms that are the subject of a very strong ideological struggle in society and that, thus, will tend to be empty signifiers though never completely empty by the fact that given the plurality of conflicts that occur around them, they cannot be fixed to a unique discursive articulation. likewise, this vacuity is what enables them to be articulated to different meanings and, therefore, they are a powerful source of dispute. background of the discussion about the professional considering teachers as professionals and the debate related to such nomination did not come with the educational reforms of the twentieth century. the reassertion of this status has a long and intense history during the twentieth century, even though its beginnings date back to previous centuries. in this regard, dominique julia (2001) highlights how a body of teachers was delimited as the state replaced the church and municipal corporations in control of education by defining the minimum base of professional culture that teachers should have. as a complement to these proposals, antonio viñao frago (2002) indicates steps or stages in the professionalization process involving a legal framework on the performance of that task, the demand for specialized training and the establishment of professional associations. even though it was governed by norms and values coming from public authorities, it did not completely abandon a clerical model. in this context, the meaning of teacher professionalization was linked to the legal regulation of training, access and working conditions of teachers, the creation of special training institutions and the development of a system of incorporation to public teaching. the consideration of a historical perspective allows us to support the fact that the number of senses historically constituted around the teacher eventually made the operation of constituting him/her insufficient; thus, there was a tendency to look for another signifier retaining more stable senses: the professional teacher. disputes about the professional at the end of the twentieth century also inherited senses that had been granted to the teacher both in the initial phase of the establishment of public schools in latin america (last decades of the nineteenth century and first half of the twentieth century) and after the educational expansion. as in any reading of the past, in this heritage, the past is interpreted by the codes of the present. thus, in most recent expressions when new senses are granted to teaching, both the recreated view of the teacher-priest-apostle and that of the teacher-unionized worker persist. southwell. teaching work and social demands: research cases from the political discourse analysis 69 transnational curriculum inquiry10(1) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci for instance, with normalism the construction of teachers' identity resulted from the confluence of 1) the condition of the teacher as a public officer who carries a social mandate, 2) the condition of professional, owner of expert knowledge for the development of a specific and socially differentiated activity and 3) the condition of intellectual as carrier of a theoretical and doctrinal body to the extent normalism organized the sense of its practice. this therefore suggests the displacement of meanings produced one hundred years after normal schools were opened. it also coexisted with other interpellations arising from fissures of that social mandate and from the state as their guarantor. teacher professionalization in the discourse of international bodies. essays on the fixation of meaning the terms "teaching profession", "teaching professional", "professionalism", "professionalize", "professionalization" are commonly found in documents extensively developed in the last years of the twentieth century both in the statements of the mentioned bodies and in the discourse of scholars. beyond specificities, these terms referred to a qualification of work in teaching. this common sense idea does not meet univocal references in the specialized discourse and occasionally it was developed as a semantic field that by evading a definition presupposed its meaning and, thus, lent itself to different interpretations. in this way, professionalism emerged as a signifier that functioned as a surface to record different meanings. did teacher professionalization mean the same in the different national contexts? did it mean the same in the enunciable environment produced by each of the actors who contested at each national level? these questions invite us to consider the comparison and the interpretation of different modes of significance. the ways in which teachers' unions positioned themselves around the professionalization policies were diverse and were characterized by their own traditions, their greater continuity among party leaders and trade union leaders, their political participation and interference in education administration, corporate negotiation autonomy and by state guardianship, among other aspects. another meaningful feature is the centralized or more decentralized character of each organization of the education systems and the ways in which teachers' unions were interpelled by new demands and interests of civil society. the perspective from which this exploration has been developed begins with the recognition of the teacher through the set of positions of subject, interpelled with varying intensities, and set in different situations in the discourses which place him/her as object. it should be remarked that debates about teaching professionalization can refer to different aspects of the several stages involved in teaching. on the one hand, in the dimensions of teacher training, i.e. the characteristics implied in the initial instruction, modalities for career advancement, accreditations, updating in service, etc. on the other hand, those aspects related to working conditions, the ways in which tasks were regulated and work performance. it could be said that unions had not traditionally taken this notion as a central point of their claims until just before the second half of the twentieth century. conversely, the debates arising from this topic had been largely resisted by the unions by setting the need to review and improve working conditions, wages deterioration and in general state investment in education against the "professional" agenda on issues such as autonomy, southwell. teaching work and social demands: research cases from the political discourse analysis 70 transnational curriculum inquiry10(1) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci responsibility for the results and competitiveness. however, in recent years, unions have had the need, or have found it productive to dispute about the senses that such a notion entails, rather than resisting it. we have talked about disputes on a signifier given the fact that there are very different approaches to this problematic field; similarly, it must be noted that it is a signifier that contains a great ability to perform around ideas of educational quality and teaching task and thus due to its ability to function as a prolific surface to record broad meanings that exceed it works as a major interpellation to different sectors within the education field and also society in general. our analysis focused on its positioning around the professionalism signifier and its ways to participate in the hegemonic dispute through its discursive acts around that notion. another point to mention is that policies aimed at professionalization are statements intended for individual performance, for the updating of each teacher, strengthening their autonomy and managing their own risks. given these statements, some unions have responded to this interpellation by taking that demand and reshaping it as a collective issue in terms of working conditions. we may add another element to this one. earlier on we said that the consolidation of the magisterial careers in modern educational systems did not imply that they had to be accountable to their immediate communities; but nowadays, as novoa (2002) suggests, there is the need for teachers to be strongly linked to the community. on the other hand, the education policies that have sought to promote professionalization activities have tended to encourage certain features of training, management and accountability for results. a central feature that is not taken into account when speaking of professionalization is to regard the teacher as the interlocutor of education policies. in this context, trade unions have strongly participated in the debate about professionalization placing working conditions at the center of the debate; in this operation the scope of teachers' work to which teacher professionalization proposals seem most directly linked is loaded with new components that add up to the question of training or updating of teachers in service. it has been fruitful to describe what are the senses that the professionalizationsignifier adopts in the discourse of teacher unions; i.e., how this notion is loaded with special contents as a way to intervene in the context of disputes for the construction of social significances, and thus, operate in public perception about the ways in which teacher work is stated and how it is shaped through specific policies for the sector. it is a field of meanings that in turn functions as a regulatory mechanism. insofar as the perspective of professionalization is being predominantly associated to one or some of the possible meanings, the policies adopted accordingly set a standard, a desirable course, a series of ideal conditions that characterize the professional teacher. thus, a variety of practices, trajectories, experiences are matrixed by a perspective of training, recruitment, promotion, incentive, etc. the establishment of a professional teaching career has a certain stability of the meaning of teacher professionalism as a prerequisite. the concept of teaching position teaching has been conceived as a vocation, work, career and condition (alliaud, 1993; alliaud y antelo, 2009; birgin, 1999; tenti fanfani, 1988, 2005), concepts from which it has been attempted to account for the problems mentioned above. in this section we intend to develop the way in which it would be possible to approach it from a category that we southwell. teaching work and social demands: research cases from the political discourse analysis 71 transnational curriculum inquiry10(1) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci have elaborated as a result of the research: "teaching position". we will also present a series of theoretical movements and paths that support this option. to do so, we will stop at the contributions that post-foundational prospects and particularly the political discourse analysishave made with theoretical and methodological consequences for the study of teacher work regulations. especially, we will consider the discursive, open and contingent configuration of the social relationships and identities and the identifications as temporary suture and fixation processes, trying to account for the way in which the notion of subject positions enables other ways of thinking about such configurations and allows us to raise the category of "teaching position". as part of a line of work which is being developed and from a series of previous studies on the subject, we have approached the way teachers and professors subjects build teaching positions in the daily work with situations of social and educational inequality, which imply a particular reading of those problems and the configuration of identities that organize relationships, dynamics and strategies for their resolution, from specific conceptions regarding the sense of their task, the presence of historical elements of the profession, the appropriation of the circulation of meanings set by the official discourse and other agents, and the presence of utopian and democratizing senses that hybridize and articulate precariously and, paradoxically with other authoritarian, paternalistic and normalizing senses. the notion of teaching position is built on the idea that education implies establishing a relationship with culture that is not situated at predefined, fixed and final coordinates. this relationship involves links with the knowledges and the ways of teaching that are never fully stabilized since they suffer changes driven by the search and invention of responses in the context of the schooling processes (southwell, 2009). on the other hand, it involves a relationship with others 5 expressed by establishing links of authority and founded on conceptions regarding what to do with future generations 6 as they have the right to receive culture from past generations which also have a dynamic and historic character articulated with more general notions concerning the role schooling can and should play in our societies and their relationships with the world of labor and politics. the idea of position as relationship also involves the historical and social construction of insights on education problems facing teachers and the role education could play in their possible resolution. over time, it implies sedimentations of various elements that are re-articulated in the present, configuring new hegemonic formations. it includes temporary and dynamic definitions about what situations imply inequality, injustice and exclusion and what elements would make up more egalitarian, fair or inclusive scenarios. senses concerning notions of equality, justice and inclusion have the same open and unstable character than that of teaching position, being its fixation the object of broader disputes for hegemony. the idea of teaching position gathers a set of reviews that the “cultural turn” or “hermeneutic” movements included in the field of social and educational research. particularly, it is founded on the need to consider the construction of meanings by subjects from a central point and to overcome the aprioristic analysis of subjectivity, detaching it from a mere reflection of economic determinations. at the same time, those movements enabled perspectives that were determined to abandon the claim to elaborate ahistorical and transcendent laws as a way to approach an understanding of the social and, specifically, the regulations of teaching: the idea of teaching position refers to a construction which is given in the relationship, being impossible to define it, set it and hold it in advance and detached southwell. teaching work and social demands: research cases from the political discourse analysis 72 transnational curriculum inquiry10(1) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci from the historical construction of such work as we will discuss later. in addition, the construction of a teaching position involves the production and circulation of discourses on the task of teaching, in the framework of which the analysis of the meanings which actions, provisions and institutions have for those who live them becomes crucial. as we have tried to show, the category of teaching position is closely related to that of discourse. for popkewitz (2000), the discourses that structure schooling processes and configure directions for teaching work are part of the process of social regulation, asthey are active elements of power for the production of capacities and provisions of subjects and the way in which they judge what is considered good and bad, reasonable and unreasonable, normal and abnormal. this positioning has a series of theoretical and methodological consequences. firstly, it implies that practices, as activities carried out on a regular basis, are formed by sets of connected and overlapping rules that organize them and give them coherence. in this sense, practices do not exist without rules, and it is not possible to talk about rules without considering practices, as long as knowledge of the first ones means knowing how to proceed (cherryholmes, 1998). the social practices developed by subjects that apparently use their freedom are supported by powerful provisions and regulations. within this framework, popkewitz incorporates the foucault's conceptualizations (2002) as regards the notion of power, referring to relationships between individuals or groups, based on social, political, and material asymmetries that pleased and reward certain people and negatively punish others. this implies the need to focus on the provisions of power and in their effects, which lead us to the question of how certain discourses about the work of teaching arose and were possible and what relationships and processes produced them. in this context, the ideology is intertwined with power in the processes through which individuals accept, believe and internalize explanations and reasons about the social world in which they live. ideology and power provisions shape our subjectivities as they prefigure how and what we think about ourselves and how we act accordingly. for the analysis of teaching positions, another consequence related to the above is the assumption that discourse is action and, therefore, it is not possible to tell the difference between discursive practices which would only imply talking and non-discursive that would only imply action. when a subject says he/she is doing something, and its meaning depends on the rules and the context of enunciation. what is performed with an expression is then something material, and thus it is not possible to distinguish specifically between discourse and practice: the discourse is a particular kind of practice and practice is largely discursive (cherryholmes, 1998). in this way, discourses do not imply a mere intermingling of things and words, nor a surface where “language” can be distinguished from 'reality', or a lexicon from an experience. discourses are not sets of signs even though they are formed by them-, but practices that systematically form the objects of those who speak. in this line, using the concept of “discursive formation” foucault (2002) has helped to account for the way in which the discourse builds reality, gathering the heterogeneous that was not apparently able to come together. such category refers to a set of rules of formation, emergence and dispersion of objects that operate as modalities of statements and conceptual architectures. these practices occur in the context of discursive formations that can be understood as sets of differential positions which do not express any transcendent principle, but that may be meant as a wholeness from certain contexts of exteriority (laclau and mouffe, 1985; southwell, 2003). in this context, the aim is to find regularities in the dispersion of southwell. teaching work and social demands: research cases from the political discourse analysis 73 transnational curriculum inquiry10(1) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci educational discourses and also to analyze the set of conditions governing in a given moment and in a given society, the emergence of statements, their preservation, the bonds established between them and the way in which they are grouped in statutory groups (foucault, 2002). some post-marxism developments based on the political discourse analysis (pda) have deepened a priori this idea of scattering discourses and differential positions that account for the absence of a transcendent fixation 7 that are crucial in the construction of the category of teaching position. the discourse is one of the pda central concepts to account for the configuration of social identities. this notion is rooted in the transcendental turn of modern philosophy, which postulated that the possibility of perception, thought and action depends on the structuring of a certain significant field which pre-exists the factual (laclau, 1990). if the essentialist approaches are discarded, the notion of discourse becomes a meaningful and open totality that transcends the distinction between the linguistic and the extralinguistic. thereby, the distinction between action and structure remains in a secondary position within the broader category of meaningful totalities (laclau and mouffe, 1985; buenfil burgos, 2007). this idea of discourse is detached from the trivial and negative notions of the term that associate it to demagogy or exclusively verbal and linguistic acts to include in it both linguistic and extralinguistic meaningful sets. the sense of discourse is built on the relationship (of difference, equivalence, antagonism, opposition, etc.) that it engages with other discourses. as a meaningful "totality" that is never completely fixed, fulfilled or sutured, it is always exposed to the action of displacement produced by exteriority. it does not go against reality since this is not an extra-social materiality but a discursive construction, which implies that the discourse forms part of the reality as a social construction and builds it as an intelligible object. that does not imply the denial of the empiricity of objects but the possibility of identifying their existence in discursive terms and never away from a socially shared meaningful configuration (buenfil burgos, 2007). the teaching position is made up of articulations of elements, translations of other discourses and of new interrelationships and plots that happen in the context of mechanisms "of hybridization" -as they have been called (garcía canclini, 1990), which operate mobilizing and articulating different traditions and discourses within a particular scope, such as the regulation of teaching work, thus promoting the configuration of new senses through discursive series and equivalences (buenfil burgos,1993; dussel, tiramonti and birgin, 2001). this display is always performed in particular historical conditions which involve limits and possibilities to the articulation of senses around the task of teaching. the hybridization develops from a translation process that links certain experiences, meanings and directions to those that were already available. in this process which williams (2000) called “selective tradition” certain discourses are acknowledged, recovered and updated around teaching work while at the same time others are suppressed and silenced, as part of the mechanisms of hegemonic construction. in this sense, the changes designed and promoted by educational policies never overprint on an emptiness; they must negotiate with traditions and institutional cultures and with practices that may generate dissension and new hybrids. the construction of teaching positions within the framework of disputes for hegemony southwell. teaching work and social demands: research cases from the political discourse analysis 74 transnational curriculum inquiry10(1) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci in society there are struggles to partially fix certain signifiers to certain meanings. these disputes make hegemony, which proves to be a process that is always active and needs permanent renewal, while discursive configurations are contingent and unstable. conceptually, hegemony implies a theoretical field dominated by the articulation category, which implies the possibility to separately specify the identity of the elements that the practice of articulation recomposes or articulates (laclau and mouffe, 1985). the hegemony as a discursive practice is not limited to the linguistic forms of consensusbuilding; however, the operations involved in a hegemonic practice are framed by socially shared meaningful networks (buenfil burgos, 2007). in this context, the construction of a teaching position as every social actionturns into an action to produce sense. discourse is then that structured totality resulting from articulatory practice that establishes such a relationship between elements that their identity, far from being natural, is consequently established and modified. it is now necessary to specify what elements enter the articulatory relationship in the disputes over the "teaching work" signifier concerning the definitions of education policy, how subjects receive them, and that constitute the teaching positions. this is possible as long as the discursive structure is a practice that constitutes and organizes the differential social identities and relationships never achieving the last suture, that is, the final closure of meaning around the mentioned notion. the failure of this ultimate fixation of senses implies that there will always be partial fixations and that the social exists as an effort to produce that impossible total object. the discourse is here the attempt to dominate the field of discursiveness and it refers back to the meaningful totality which produces sense and structures the social life of which subjects are not fully aware. discursive practices are productive as long as they produce the specific semantics of the words in use and relate them to objects and strategies of acting and thinking about things and people. the discourse produces a perception and representation of the social reality that forms part of the hegemonic strategies of the establishment of dominant interpretations of that reality (bührmann et al., 2007). this perspective on hegemony allows us to consider the way in which a regulation policy on teaching as a job becomes possible and the disputes between various proposals on education policy concerning what should be the discursive articulation that has to be enforced. each initiative to regulate teaching work displays a series of elements and a certain articulation between them as regards the senses that this articulation gives to itself and that it intends to assign to the task of teaching. that possibility of articulation is feasible because there is never a complete fixation of elements and because a discursive formation is never a sutured totality. the possibility of contingency and dispute is always open and it is the object of a central analysis to the whole perspective of pedagogical analysis that wonders about the political and assumes the constitutive character of the hegemonic articulations it produces (mouffe, 2007). in this context, it is possible to consider the public policies in education as an articulation of meanings linked to a value or a sense assigned by the state. from the point of view of discursiveness, every policy is an instrument of regulation and a referential model of the social, and thus an attempt to temporarily articulate the meaning system, which is weakly structured, with cracks, and that will allow the incorporation of meanings in the frames of that institutional design, what makes it impossible to think about it as a total and final representation (juárez nemer, 2007). then, the educational policy can be considered as an articulation of signifiers that attempts to identify a specific social field, but that joint by not fully representing the object (in this case, teaching work in the schooling southwell. teaching work and social demands: research cases from the political discourse analysis 75 transnational curriculum inquiry10(1) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci processes) allows the incorporation of loads of sense by its designers and also by teachers as recipients. as mentioned before, in the framework of the pda, the empty signifier category alludes to certain terms that are under a strong ideological struggle in society and therefore tend to be empty signifiers but never completely empty since by virtue of the plurality of conflicts around them, they never end up fixed to a unique and last discursive articulation (laclau and mouffe1985). this trace of vacuity is what makes those signifiers possible to be articulated to different meanings and, therefore, a powerful space for dispute, accounting for their social and political influence. vacuity is the result of struggles to dominate the field of discursiveness through signifiers seeking to absorb a totality that exceeds them. teaching positions and subject positions: polysemy and incompleteness of discursive identities the category of teaching position is closely linked to the position of subject and its construction derives theoretically and methodologically from it. from the conceptual framework of the pda, every subject position is a discursive position as it participates in the open character of every discourse and fails to be completely fixed in a closed system of differences. accordingly, the subject category cannot be established either by absolutizing a dispersion of “subject position”, or by the absolutist unification around a "transcendental subject" (laclau and mouffe, 1985). the subject category is permeated by the same incomplete, ambiguous and polysemous character than in every discursive identity, so the subjectivity of the agent is permeated by the same precariousness and absence of suture it holds. this lack of suture and the impossibility of a total dispersion of subject positions is what make the hegemonic articulation possible. as can be seen, from this perspective the teaching positions and social identities in general lose their necessary character, as they are purely relational and never fully constituted. while the relational logic is incomplete and crossed by contingency, the concept of subject as rational agent and transparent to itself, the alleged unity and homogeneity between the set of their positions and the idea of subject as the origin and basis of social relations are seriously questioned. for laclau, the notion of “subject position” becomes possible as consciences are not absolute and subjectivities become something constitutively strange and are always a void impossible to be filled. in this context, subjects' identities are constituted as differentials, penetrated by the constitutive lack of the universal and crossed by a partial failure at the time of their configuration. teaching positions “are” never in a closed and final state, but they “are always being” in a relational way, by virtue of the equivalences and temporary differences established with others. from here and the fragmented nature of identities it becomes possible to speak of subject positions and teaching positions. conclusion the different approaches that have analyzed teaching work have taken other relevant topics: the characteristics of the initial training, the professionalization, the professional socialization, regulation of work by the state, membership associations and unions, etc. the concepts that we have explored here, seek to activate notions inner to postfoundational, non-essentialist thinking, where subjects are not determined by their class, training and profession nor are subjects whose ways of being in the different dimensions of the social world, respond to a unified, predicted and classifiable pattern. within the frame southwell. teaching work and social demands: research cases from the political discourse analysis 76 transnational curriculum inquiry10(1) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci of discourse analysis -mainly through the work of laclau and mouffe (1985) any given identity is an effect of differential and contingent relations and the notion of subject positions is preferably used. for example, we have mentioned how diverse discourses try to set the notion of teacher in different ways as subject position, interpellating a set of agents of the education systems, assigning them a position in the discursive formations and also a particular history that constitutes them as subjects. we have considered the case of how the requirements of educational policies tried to set certain senses to the idea of teacher and thus, strongly modeled the normative and organizational aspects of training that was proposed for the sector. in this way, we try to analyze the position teachers build in view of situations and subjects in an active, contingent, not previously “surveyed” or stable way, which occurs in the relationship and not before it, and that also generates a position (contingent, neither stable, nor previously established) in those with whom it is linked. from that perspective, we can include an analysis about on how teachers borrow, dispute, reformulate and negotiate senses of public policies, leaving behind prospects that assumed that the regulations of teaching work are very defining and that state provisions on them sufficiently account for what happens in the school world. in that sense, the idea of teaching position implies considering teaching subjects in their plurality, heterogeneity and complexity, ruling out the possibility of raising them as a homogeneous entity anchored in linear, ahistorical foundations that have a transcendent validity. thus, our idea of teaching position consists of the circulation of the senses and discourses that regulate and organize the teaching work, and specifically refers to the multiple ways in which in this framework teaching subjects take, live and think their tasks, problems, challenges and utopias around it. notes 1aversionofthisarticlewaspresentedatthe fourth world curriculum studiesconference iv iaacs in rio de janéiro, brazil (2012). 2 islaesmeralda@gmail.com 3we refer to laclau's conceptualization considering that "...talking about a 'subject' refers back to the 'subject positions' within a discursive structure. subjects cannot be the source of social relationships, not even in the limited sense of being endowed with powers that enable an experience, given the fact that every "experience" depends on precise discursive conditions of possibility" (laclau and mouffe, 1985) 132-133). the authors note that the totalizing essentialism of the subject should not be replaced by the essentialism of the parties which is inherent to the subject positions. they point out that it is essential to bear in mind that subject positions are set in a series of differential positions. none of them can be constituted as a separate position. notes mailto:islaesmeralda@gmail.com southwell. teaching work and social demands: research cases from the political discourse analysis 77 transnational curriculum inquiry10(1) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 4 our framework to approach education policies has been a notion of the social as discursive space, understanding social relations as relations of meaning where disputes occur due to the fields of meaning. 5 this idea of teaching position as a relationship with culture and the others also includes a series of dimensions and problems extensively dealt with by specialized literature, as the way in which teaching built and builds a profession "of state" and the multiple links held with the latter the different meanings around "vocation" and the way in which it was possible to be thought of as a job (alliaud, 1993; birgin, 1999; diker and terigi, 1997; feldfeber, 1990; morgade, 1992; pineau, 1997; southwell, 2006; suárez, 1995). 6some recent studies have pointed out the advantage of the notion of "trade" to approach these problems (alliaud and antelo, 2009) highlighting that it is more appropriate to account for the task of teaching than that of job, profession or vocation, as it would be more appropriate to account for its specificity. in this sense, the notion of trade is associated with the know-how or production of something in particular, while implying different meanings concerning occupation, position and profession, bringing them together and avoiding the need to use any of these components to refer to teaching. 7as an introduction, we could point out that the political discourse analysis (pda) developed by ernesto laclau and chantal mouffe unfolds as a "post-marxist" perspective, which outdistances from any approach based on the concept of class to explain social and political identities, but in turn rescues the need to overcome a petrified notion of social relations after the centrality of social antagonisms (laclau, 2006). references alliaud, a. 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(2014). oral history and living memory in cyprus: performance and curricular considerations. transnational curriculum inquiry volume (1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> oral history and living memory in cyprus: performance and curricular considerations nicoletta christodoulou1 frederick university, cyprus introduction oral history has gained significant interest in the past few decades in the social sciences and humanities, including education. established toward the end of the 1940’s, today it is undertaken by many qualitatively inclined researchers who work with human subjects. also, many oral history projects are being implemented in schools, as scientists and teachers recognize the direct educational benefits of oral history. the mid-twentieth century is considered to be a landmark for oral history (perks & thomson, 1997; caunce, 1994; yow, 1994), especially with the work of the american historian and journalist at columbia university, alan nevins, in 1948. nevins was established for his extensive work on the history of the civil war and his biographies of politicians and industrialists (north american oral history association, as quoted by thomson, 1998, p. 581). oral history is a way of collecting and interpreting human memories to foster knowledge and human dignity. “[it] is a field of study and a method of gathering, preserving and interpreting the voices and memories of people, communities, and participants in past events” (oral history association, 2012). “[it] collects memories and personal commentaries of historical significance through recorded interviews” (ritchie, 2003, p. 19). an oral history interview normally consists of a well-prepared interviewer questioning an interviewee and recording their exchange in audio or video format. recordings of the interview are transcribed, summarized, or indexed and then placed in a library or archives. clearly, oral history refers both to the method of recording and preserving oral testimony and to the product of that process (oral history association, 2009). a critical approach to the oral testimony and a variety of interpretations are necessary for the practice of oral history. the cyprus oral history and living memory project2 the cyprus oral history project (cohp) took place between 2010 and 2012 and is the first of its kind in cyprus. its aim was to audio or videorecord the voices and words of cypriots of all communities, to capture their memories and to understand their individual meanings and perspectives regarding the 1960 1974 events, thus shedding light on their lives. the project sought to record first-hand or vicarious experiences of greek-cypriots, turkishcypriots, maronites, armenians and latins. the opening statement was: “tell me your experience and memories of the events of 1960-1974.” each interview aimed at creating an open-ended conversation between the interviewer and the interviewee, and at following the lead of the interviewee in describing and discussing events. christodoulou. oral history and living memory in cyprus: performance and curricular… 31 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (1) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci fifty interviews were recorded, with a wide range of people of different capacities who experienced the events from varying perspectives: inhabitants, soldiers, refugees, students, relatives, friends who experienced the events vicariously, adults—women and men—and youngsters—girls and boys back in the 1960’s—as well as people from the younger generation who experienced the events and their aftermath through the memories and stories of others. the interviews were conducted in a single year, each lasting for one to one-and-a-half hours, each transcribed and minimally edited using the q and a model, each posted on the project’s website3. the context cyprus, one of the smallest countries in the european union, is also the last divided country in europe and nicosia its last divided city. winning its independence from great britain in 1960, cyprus has been roiled in ethnic conflict, violence, and division almost from the start; everyone of a certain age remembers the troubles of 1963-1967. the 1974 turkish invasion and subsequent occupation sealed the fate of cyprus for decades. the troubles of the last 50 years are not unrelated to cyprus’ strategic location at the eastern edge of the mediterranean sea, a place that has long attracted and continues to draw the great world powers. rome ruled, as did istanbul and england. richard the lion hearted took a piece of the island on his way to the crusades, paul the apostle was given 39 strokes with a lash by the romans for preaching the gospel, othello’s castle is on the southern coast, and lazarus died on the island. cyprus has always been a storied jewel of the mediterranean. today un peace keepers patrol the buffer zone between north and south, and england maintains a massive presence, tens of thousands of military personnel, and two air bases constituting 10% of the land mass. some cypriots complain that the great powers see cyprus as little more than a huge, unsinkable aircraft carrier. while there has not been a shot fired since 1999, and while the border between the north and the south opened in 2003, for the generation now in its sixties, memories of the early days are both vivid and raw, and, indeed, for most cypriots of every age, cyprus still bleeds. for turkish cypriots the bleeding started with the events of 1963 and ended with the “peace operation” of turkey on the island in 1974. for greek cypriots the bleeding started with the events of 1974 when turkey invaded the island, and still occupies the northern third of the island. that bleeding—its interpretative meaning and its pervasive imaginative power today—was the focus of cohp. although tensions between the greek cypriot and the turkish cypriot side are low because of the partition, both sides remain pervaded by antagonistic biases, histories, and myths. each community represents the other as the villain, and descriptions regarding the events surrounding the turkish invasion of cyprus in 1974 differ. in reality both communities have suffered losses in human lives and property. currently, different political opinions exist as to what an “ideal” solution to the cyprus situation would be, with strong disagreements emerging amongst the opposing parties on the island. in addition, there are different interpretations based primarily on personal experiences, upbringing, schooling and socio-political assumptions, about how the cyprus problem began, the history of 1963-1974, and the events that led to the 1974 turkish invasion. inclusion, democratic practices, trust, and authority two alterations were made to the initial cohp plan; the first regarded the inclusion of known political persons, instead of just collecting stories randomly from “ordinary” people who had an interesting story to share. following the nature of oral history and the needs of the project, christodoulou. oral history and living memory in cyprus: performance and curricular… 32 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (1) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci we used snowball sampling (atkinson & flint, 2004), combined with selection based on individuals’ experiential backgrounds and capacities in order to ensure diversity of opinions and experiences. in this way participants often referred us to other potential interviewees. thus, we included people who expressed their interest, and who consented, to share their story even if they were political persons. every single story was important and valuable, and the contribution of each one, the known and the unknown, mattered. the stories of the known participants, their perceptions and interpretations of the events were as important and interesting as those of the “common people”, the poor and the marginal. additionally, people’s different responses and oral performances regarding a particular question allowed us to compare, contrast and better examine a wide range of stories, thus refining historical knowledge. the inclusion and diversity of personal stories, social and political, were vital, especially in the case of the 1960-1974 events in cyprus, which changed the course of a whole country and the lives of its people. oral history is an epitome of inclusion, voice and democratic practice. it values the life and story of all people, promoting “the equal rights and importance of every individual” (portelli, 1997, p. 58). “each interview is important, because each interview is different from all the others” (p. 58). oral history also champions “everybody’s right to autobiography”, which coincides with many contemporary societies’ struggle for democracy as well as with the shift toward subjectivity. it is an “opportunity to narrate oneself, to give a meaning to one’s life and one’s narrative” (passerini as cited in portelli, 1997, p. 58). it can work with elites, and also with “those who had gone unheard” (portelli, 1997, p. 58). it concerns both the art of listening that results to the “awareness that we gain something of importance from virtually every person we meet” (p. 58), and the art of reciting owned by the individual that leads to the acknowledgement of difference and equality. the second alteration was that we broadened our initial question to include a longer time span; instead of focusing solely on the events of 1974, we also asked about the period before 1960, during 1960-1974, and after 1974. the whole of that period, after the establishment of the cyprus republic in 1960 up to the turkish invasion in 1974, is considered critical in the contemporary history of cyprus. the decision to broaden the time span was related to “power and attitude” (portelli, 1997, p. 62). focusing on one year alone would mean that we perceived as a single, isolated event what many participants saw as a sequence, an interconnection of events that took place across many years. hence, we broadened the time span in order to prevent confining the performative reaction of the participants to the events of 1960-1974. additionally, that the interviewer did not prescribe the time span of the narration moderated her power over the interviewee, allowing the narrator to discuss what was important to him/her. as portelli (1997) argues, people are helpful, friendly and approachable when the interviewer is “not from where power comes from” (p. 63). the interviewee’s sense of freedom was crucial in the cohp since our aim was not to seek the historical truth but rather to learn what was important to whom and why during that period on the island. the two cases below show how the broadening, or lack of it, reflected power relations between the interviewer and the narrator and affected the narrators’ performance. in the first case, when the interviewer allowed a broader time span, sophia, the interviewee, felt that she could go further back, earlier than 1960, to talk about the 1958 events in cyprus. she talked about the injustice she felt because people who were forced out of their properties and villages by the turks in 1958 were not considered refugees and accordingly were not granted the refugee status, unlike people in 1974: christodoulou. oral history and living memory in cyprus: performance and curricular… 33 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (1) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci sophia: i am not considered a refugee, but turkish-inflicted. since 1958... that’s how they called us ... and it was somewhat “contagious”, [the idea] that we were turkish-inflicted. other people did not want us... [her husband, costas, intervenes] costas: yes, turkish-inflicted… because they were chased away by turks in 1958. sophia: about 6-7 years ago…or maybe more[?]…we had written a letter to the government saying that… because we, as turkish-inflicted, although we were only few families, we received no help whereas the others—although those of 1963 i cannot argue that anyone helped them either—but those of 1974 received help. they offered help…foreign countries and everyone. whereas us, then, nobody. nothing. interviewer: even though you had also lost everything. sophia: of course we had lost everything; we abandoned our homes at 10 o’clock at night. the young man to whom we were renting the house [a neighbor] was a policeman and he left the station and he came at night driving the turkish police land rover. he was turkish cypriot and he drove us from our area to the area where my uncle, my mother’s brother was, so that we could stay there at night. we stayed there for a few days, then we [went] to my mother’s village… we stayed there for a few years, eight years… but our first night there...when we found a house to stay… i will never forget it. my mother went to the convenience store. she bought three plates—because our father had passed away—three forks, three knives and a small pot. she cooked pilaf on a petrol engine and we sat on the ground, on the carpet, to eat. i will never forget that. we had that pot until recently [laughs] as a memento. the freedom sophia was given to talk about an expanded time span was important to her, as it enabled her to talk about the events of 1958, which was the period that concerned her the most, and of which she had strong memories. viewing the interviewer as a person of power— as researchers and academics may be perceived—sophia wanted to express the injustice and pain she felt about the event. although the interviewer could not really do anything about the situation, she still needed to share her story knowing that it was her chance to be heard. in the second case, the interviewer visited her mother’s house, which had been abandoned in 1974 during the bombing of the village, in order to interview the turkish cypriot woman who now lives there. the interviewer posed the question “what do you know about 1974?” which offended the potential interviewee since to her, the most important era of the modern history of cyprus was 1963. the following quote is from the interviewer’s field notes: we arrived at the village and then at my mother’s house… i started calling to see if someone was in… we rang [the bell]… ‘welcome,’ the woman said with a smile. she seemed as if she was waiting for us. we greeted her in greek. ‘i am the daughter of the woman who owns the house,’ i said. ‘yes, i know,’ she said… she wanted to show us the house… she talked to us about her family… about the parts of the house she fixed because there were damages… [she said] she was given the house legally…after the invasion… i said i am conducting this research and i am collecting people’s stories about 1974. i immediately noticed the change in her look. ‘what do you mean?’ she said. i said, ‘i want to find out what people know about 1974 and christodoulou. oral history and living memory in cyprus: performance and curricular… 34 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (1) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci how they experienced it and i collect stories from a wide range of people, different ages, turkish cypriots, greek cypriots...’ ‘but you are illegal,’ she said…‘you are asking about a politically sensitive issue.’ ‘i am … doing research,’ i said… ‘and from whom did you get permission?’ she asked… she picked up the phone ostentatiously saying, ‘i can call the police right now and put you in jail… [t]his is just a warning to stop’… the daughter, tülin, said, ‘how do we know that you will write the stories the way we narrated them?’ i said, ‘i can send them to you to take a look before i publish them.’ ‘no,’ she said, ‘i do not trust you.’ ‘no, no,’ the mother, şenay, said, “do you want to know the truth? i will tell you the truth. greeks were very bad and they were killing and torturing turkish cypriots. they were more and [they were] the strong ones. then turkey came to save us. now we are the strong and more [in numbers]”… i emphasized that it is not the truth that i want to know, but rather i am interested in the story itself. tülin said, ‘i like things the way they are now. before i wasn’t safe. i had to go through three security checks to go from one point to the other’… [şenay] told me she is a politician. tülin asked me why i only gather stories about 1974… issues of trust and authority arise here. firstly, the potential interviewee felt threatened because she perceived the interviewer to be a person of power who came from the greek cypriot side, possibly to gather information to reclaim her mother’s house and property. when the interviewer mentioned 1974 the potential interviewee perceived power to be favoring the interviewer. she then attempted to reverse the power relation through the warning “you should stop your research immediately”, a threat of imprisonment and by announcing that she is a politician, a person of power. secondly, the woman perceived the current situation in cyprus to be ideal, because she now feels safe. storytelling as a performance storytelling in oral history is a “spoken performance” (portelli, 2011). how things are told and what is told adds to the meaning of the narrative. the performance of the narrator— enabled by the interviewer’s listening and the narrator’s talking—and the transferring of the performance on paper—the scholarly practice of oral history—are of critical importance. exemplifying ignorance on the matter and the desire to learn on behalf of the interviewer are also important, as the interviewer is not there to study the narrators, but “to learn from and about them” (portelli, 2011, p. 7). in order to obtain meaning from the interviewees’ perspective, “we must become nonjudgmental and open listeners” (hesse-biber & leavy, 2006, p. 161). the statuses and capacities of the cohp narrators varied: refugees, soldiers, captives, mothers, activists, students, to name a few, each with a different story and performance, and a unique narrative style (how they told things and what they chose to tell); each performance and style bore its own importance; each fashioned by both the listening and the talking. in cohp the idea was to attain meaning from the narrator’s viewpoint; thus, we listened for the interviewee’s “moral language” (anderson & jack, 1991, p. 19), for “metastatements” (p. 21), for the “logic of the narrative,” paying particular attention to consistencies, contradictions and “recurring” themes (p. 22). we also listened for patterns: whether people used a unified, a segmented, a conversational (etter-lewis, 1991) or an episodic (kohlerreissman, 1987) narrative style to tell their stories. christodoulou. oral history and living memory in cyprus: performance and curricular… 35 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (1) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci in regard to the transferring of the spoken performance on paper we followed two general rules of thumb: “never putting into people’s mouths words they did not actually say… and striving to retain on the written page some of the impact of the spoken performance” (portelli, 2011, p. 10). proper punctuation was used to structure the sentences and suggest the rhythm of speech: each comma was viewed as “an act of interpretation” (p. 10). the performance of a soldier socrates menelaou: the turkish airplanes…were bombing… and i was afraid of airplanes[!] since i was young. i tried…to fit into an opening between the rocks while attacking…and…[while] only my hand fit inside [laughs]…i was trying to squeeze my whole body [laughs]… in 1964…my father went to the morgue because they showed on tv that they were throwing napalm… they knew that…commandos were killed. and he went to the hospital alone to see… [most of the soldiers] were burnt… he looked if anyone was hairy [laughs] [and] looked at their finger [laughs]…like this [laughs]. i broke it when i was young… in '77…i asked permission to go to england. ‘you don’t exist,’ they said. they noted that i was buried… the performance of a wife maria menelaou: …on the street where we lived…there were many greek officers. the night before the invasion, around 11-12 at night, we were sitting on the porch… we saw them…loading their cars with electrical items, radios, hi-fi, televisions…one could tell they were leaving… i called a colleague who was…renting a house to a british commission diplomat…and she told me that ‘he is packing, he is leaving. and he said nothing. he will leave us here for the turks to get us’… i had many calls from the [british] embassy [as a british citizen] to go to the hilton… there would be a bus [to] take us to dhekelia [british overseas territory in cyprus]… and i said, 'but my husband will be here, why should i go?’ the performance of captives theodora giorkadji: [while i] was talking to my grandfather he looked out…he got up and put his hands up… and immediately i saw two soldiers… in our house. we had not realized that they got in…no one had realized. then these two soldiers began shouting, in turkish, of course, ‘out, out!’ they all began to cry and shout… they had the turkish flag on them… when…we were released by the turks…we were taken to an orphanage… [i thought my parents were dead and i was sad]…[until] my mother came… she thought she had heard the previous night…that they released prisoners, [and] a neighbor who had tv confirmed that… tony liatsos: i was captured by the turks in 1974 in famagusta, and my experiences [of] that period were very intense. [i experienced]…the execution process, twice at execution row, where…they ended up executing the first four… i was imprisoned in various camps in turkey…from august 14 until october 28, 1974. my personal experience was much worse than many others’, because the turkish officers believed that i…was the brother of the ‘revolutionary’ president of the republic of cyprus… for a whole month i was questioned…i was badly beaten christodoulou. oral history and living memory in cyprus: performance and curricular… 36 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (1) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci by officers and finally…luckily, my name was in the un files and that's why i got back unharmed… the performance of those experienced death or missing of loved ones giorgoula pantechi-pandouri: …every afternoon…[t]he buses…brought captives from the turkish occupied area, based on some agreements of the government. and the agony was to ‘go today to see if our loved ones will come.’ and it was very heartbreaking…both for those coming and for those waiting. some wept, others fainted, very…tragic. i was going every night, but the last time we went and we had no [news], not even in the last [bus]…the situation was…very bad. and then…you enter another process. because every night you would think ‘okay, tomorrow.’ upon the last tomorrow, when there were no news…the climate became too heavy. and then you start experiencing another torment… it was that situation where…nobody could tell you for sure ‘this is how things are,’ so that you could start accepting it… huseyin akansoy: …my mother, two sisters, two brothers were sent to the villages. we were taken to…a military camp. and then on the day of the second invasion…august14th, we were taken to limassol. on that day, a big catastrophe was experienced in our village… i heard it in limassol. two people were talking to each other…and very soon…we learned that yes, some nasty things had happened. they killed people, children. how many? they killed everyone? are there still people who are living? and i spent 72 days in the limassol camp… i kept thinking who is living, who has died without knowing exactly what had happened… and when i got back here, of course my father hugged me. and he burst in cries, tears, and i understood that everything is gone… the performance of a refugee canan oztoprak: we left our home in 1963… so i spent the first seven years of my life in paphos. and the very first memory i have was an [english policeman] knocking on the door… it was a curfew, and everybody had to be in their homes… so they were knocking, and, even now i can remember my heartbeat. i was so frightened until my mother opened the door. and later, there were troubles with turkish cypriots and greek cypriots in paphos district… and, some of the turkish cypriot homes were burnt… i have a memory of all this, since some of my childhood photographs were burnt, and which we managed to keep. but they have the burnt edges… the performance of a non-refugee fatma azgin: nicosia was divided in the ‘50s… most people think…that nicosia was divided after 1974… and there used to be every year a [funfair] at ae-louca church, it was in the center of [the] turkish part in the old city. and we used to go there, and suddenly they evacuated the houses and left, before ’63 and ’74. so i lived in that condition… in villages there were tragic things, you know. the turkish cypriots left their villages, most greek cypriots were not aware that turkish cypriots left their homes, they were always saying in ’74 they lost their houses, but since i was in the conflict resolution group in the 1990’s, 10 years i was there christodoulou. oral history and living memory in cyprus: performance and curricular… 37 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (1) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci working, and people started to know that in ’63 there was a similar story for turkish cypriots… the performance of people who were kids at the time george demosthenous: so, what was memorable about the first invasion were the airplanes. and…one of the things that we were experiencing at the age of 10, [were the] bombings. one could hear from a distance…other weapons, too, but what was most prominent was the sound of airplanes crossing over cyprus…and the bombs that were falling… it was such an intense noise. what was…causing more terror…was the deafening sound of airplanes when they crossed over… the other…memorable thing was when they were trying to teach us…some basic things, [such as] lying face down…[how] to hold our head under tables or…under trees… salih oztoprak: unfortunately…like everybody those days, i was influenced by the nationalist stories. and, uh, we all believed what our only radio station was saying. and we believed, unfortunately… so, i remember, for example, in ’58, people gathering in the street. they were speaking about…what we would do if the greeks attacked. and i remember they were preparing sticks and knives. something like that… and, those days, the people who were admired were the ones who were doing more against greeks. and i remember…in the beginning of ’63… a taxi had brought an ill person to the doctor in our neighborhood. the doctor was turkish, and the patient was greek cypriot… i must have been nine or ten, i think. and, while the taxi was waiting for the patient, i tried to…puncture the car tire... [t]he driver…saw me from the window… of course he understood what i was doing. and thank god he was a very…calm man… he started telling me that that was ‘not right. you shouldn’t do this. i’m here for a patient.’ and at that moment, i was actually really sorry for this event. and i said sorry to him. not because i was afraid…since i was in my neighborhood… but i really felt sorry. when he spoke to me, i was embarrassed and i felt sorry… the performance of a teacher stella spyrou: …we stayed about twelve months at dome [hotel], trapped. a city…in a hotel… it functioned as a small community… right before many left, two teachers…[started] a small school at dome and taught the young students… meanwhile we heard on the radio that there were thoughts to operate schools in kyrenia, middle school, they said… i thought, since i was a teacher and i hadn’t yet been appointed at a school, [and] i wrote a message and sent it via the red cross, that ‘i intend to work…if schools operate in occupied kyrenia.’ and…at the end of september, i got…a message from the ministry of education saying, ‘you are appointed at the bellapais gymnasium’… the performance of people of a younger generation nasia avraam: my uncle, my father’s brother… he was missing… he was 21… he received a call to join the army… meanwhile…he was engaged and about to get married on august 14… he had left 4-5 days before [the wedding] and he was supposed to return. he was together with others…and…on their way back…we don’t know what happened, but they disappeared. since that day he did not contact christodoulou. oral history and living memory in cyprus: performance and curricular… 38 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (1) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci anyone…and he was missing for 33 years… until one day in the summer they went to my father's family house and asked to take a dna test to see if the bones that were found were my uncle's… they were in shock... ali sahin: …so, we grew up in a situation where everybody was telling us these stories about how the greeks were bad, and how they did bad things relating to the cyprus problem, that they were trying to kill all the turkish cypriots, and these kinds of things. and turkey came here and saved us. this is the official story that everybody would tell us, in the schools, on the streets… slowly, slowly, when you grow up you realize that the reality is a little bit different…especially the relationship between turkey and turkish cypriots. turkish cypriots started questioning this… faika deniz pasha: the meaning of ’74, both in my family and society, has changed over the years. when i was a little girl, it was the day that we were saved. as i became older, and as people became much more politicized and they could talk, and they could see what’s really going on... in the above narrations we witness the testimonies of people in relation to the manner in which they experienced the period between 1960 and 1974 in cyprus. sophia’s testimony concentrates on 1958, while the people from the younger generation, nasia, ali and faika, referred to dimensions that extend to their own era. socrates’ episodic storytelling is centered on the theme of life and death as experienced by the soldiers and the agony of their families about their fate. maria and salih used moral language. maria focused on the fact that foreigners were leaving, not telling cypriots that the turks were coming to get them, and also on her decision to stay with her husband, ignoring the embassy’s phone calls to leave. salih, who used an episodic frame to share his story, described his plan to puncture the car tires, that in the car there was a patient going to the doctor, and how bad he felt for his action. salih recounted his experience as a thematically driven—rather than chronologically ordered—episode to talk about their naive actions against greek cypriots at the time, blindly following nationalistic leaders. fatma, in a segmented narrative style, emphasized the events before 1974, which greek cypriots either do not acknowledge or are unaware of: that nicosia was divided before 1974 and that turkish cypriots were forced out of their houses, too. in theodora’s and tony’s narrations we pay attention to the logic of the narrative. both of them are consistent in telling their captivity story, how it happened, what they experienced and what they were thinking at those moments. theodora was thinking that they would be killed and that her parents were dead, and tony that he managed not to be executed and he was tortured more than others. theodora used conversational elements to represent different speakers and emotions, and portray the happenings. tony, like giorgoula and huseyin, used a unified style to narrate the devastating events in their lives in a slow, almost monotonous pace revealing deep pain and sadness, devastation and calmness, numbness and deep thought, providing in-depth examples to convey their experience. canan, george and stella combined a unified and episodic narrative style to narrate experiences with particular recurring themes: the bad things that happened to the turkish cypriots, the characteristic sound of the airplanes, and the efforts to teach the students in captivity, respectively. fourteen individuals performed in a distinct way, all of them in response to the same question, with a variety of voices and in differing narrative styles. their stories illustrate the christodoulou. oral history and living memory in cyprus: performance and curricular… 39 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (1) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci performative aspects of storytelling, its diversity, the many capacities of individuals who participated, and the multitude of political perspectives. aside from the personal dimension, the stories also provided us with a glimpse into the cultural and sociopolitical context of the era: an abundance of hate, excitement over guns and conflict; following naive, nationalist leaders, lack of education, political dogmatism and blindness; and that international involvement led to the worsening of the situation. oral history research and curriculum the oral history method and the knowledge we gather through it are useful tools in school curriculum and in curriculum studies, a field that focuses on the study of the school curriculum and its various dimensions. firstly, oral history is a research method particularly useful for gathering rich data from the point of view of the traditionally marginalized and the excluded from self-representation (hesse-biber & leavy, 2006). voice, the reclaiming of authority, empowerment, and the recognition of life experiences as an important source of knowledge are issues of ethical, methodological and epistemological concern in curriculum studies, both at a theoretical and a practical level. secondly, oral history allows us to situate life experiences within a cultural context. collective memory, political culture, and social power are illuminated via the people’s personal stories, which are narrated through “culturally available stories” (jack in hessebiber & leavy, 2006, p. 160). studying the interplay between the individual and society is a tenet of curriculum studies. thirdly, truth and objectivity may be problematic concepts in oral history research, yet this concern is eliminated by shifting the focus towards the performative aspect, rather than emphasizing on the truthfulness of the story. having understood that in some cases we may never find out “what really happened,” we accept that “even errors, inventions, or lies are in their own way forms of truth” (portelli, 1997, p. 64) and an integral and important part of a performance, which only confirms that “a great deal happened inside people’s minds in terms of feelings, emotions, beliefs, and interpretation” (p. 64). the field of curriculum studies sees oral history research as the art and science of producing a narrative and a performance, a form of aesthetic, arts-based inquiry, which portrays a view of reality. this is the reality that students and researchers are called to study and understand. given the shared characteristics of oral history and curriculum studies—i.e. the educational process and the notion of experience—the two fields can benefit each other through the interaction of their historical, social and methodological aspects. oral history gives us “a little knowledge” (portelli, 1997, p. 63) that can prove to be tremendously useful in the field of curriculum studies. it can be a useful source of information for curriculum studies theorists and researchers in the studying of the various dimensions of school curriculum, as it can inform their work; when thinking about what knowledge is of most worth, where it comes from and how to illuminate it; and the art of producing that knowledge itself. implications for curriculum this kind of research has several implications for curriculum memory, particularly in the way that memory could constitute curriculum. memory and history are present in the work of many important curriculum studies scholars who have worked in fields such as autobiography (i.e. pinar, 1994; miller, 2006), biography (i.e. kridel, 1998), narrative inquiry (i.e. clandinin & connelly, 2000), and in commemorating the journey of curriculum itself christodoulou. oral history and living memory in cyprus: performance and curricular… 40 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (1) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci (marshal, sears, allen, roberts, & schubert, 2006; schubert, lopez-schubert, & thomas, 2002). studies such as these bring into focus the idea of memory as curriculum, illustrating the way the various differing perceptions of history, acted out as performances, affect the official ‘narrative of this period. for example, the younger participants in the study expressed that as they grew up they realized that “the reality is a little bit different” (faika, ali, nasia). such realizations has implications for both the manifest curriculum and the latent curriculum. for example, consider salih’s confession, “we all believed what our only radio station was saying…and we believed, unfortunately…” (salih). the influence of the “nationalist stories” on people at the time, who acting out of enthusiasm, spontaneity and naïveté versus using rational thought, and the realization, years later, of the impact of all these, reveal the possible twists in reality that add to our understanding of memory as curriculum. as such, ‘curriculum memory’ can provide a window into the way these events are repeated through the years. what people say, how they say it and why, and what they mean by it and why, are of great importance in understanding the past, but also the current situation. also, finding ways to overcome how individuals are trained to think, hear, and learn is important. in the related literature this is described as formalization and institutionalization (taylor & de laat, 2013), which can affect younger generations’ perceptions of what it means to be politically active. whereas institutionalization can depress understanding of the kind of social change or challenges that are possible, the tenets of such possibility can be revealed as individuals examine the impact of formalization in relation to the various social changes that have occurred (taylor & de laat, 2013). the stories in this study teach us about individuals and the context of the era: the way individuals participated in the cultural and sociopolitical context, and the way one’s personal narrative is intertwined with, distinguishes itself from, and is in conflict with other larger narratives. the various perceptions of historical reality can help unravel what is manifested and what is latent, what is institutionalized and what is challenged. as pinar (2010) puts it, some things are not as divided as they are presented, but they go “hand in hand,” and in order to make sense of reality in this way, and the official narrative of a period, it must be presented spherically, including the different perceptions and performances that surround it. there is a great volume of work on culture and identity that informs curriculum studies. one important strand of research in this area is work about and with persons who have lived through oppressive conditions (he & phillion, 2008) and on exile pedagogy (he, 2010). there is also work concerning historic trauma, testimony, memory and relevant questions arising in literature. historic trauma is not just “an event encapsulated in the past, but…a history which is essentially not over, a history whose repercussions are not simply omnipresent…in all our cultural activities, but whose traumatic consequences are still actively evolving…in today’s political, historical, cultural and artistic scene” (felman & laub, 1992, p. xiv). the consequences of historic trauma are further evolving in curriculum studies and in teaching. this type of research that examines the perceptions and beliefs of the survivors of trauma is valuable, especially in understanding collective consciousness around people and their assumed identity. this examination entails a particular kind of pedagogy; one that is connected with understanding the reality lived, witnessed and narrated. wiesel (2006), in discussing the auschwitz experience, states that “the witness knew then…that his testimony would not be received… only those who experienced…know what it was. others will never know. but would they at least understand?” (p. ix). christodoulou. oral history and living memory in cyprus: performance and curricular… 41 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (1) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci this type of research and the focus on a person’s ‘performance’ can offer a view of the individual in relation to a historical period. the period examined in the case of cyprus, 1960-1974, defines the current society as one filled with dislocation, uprooting and posttraumatic stress syndrome. these themes come up again and again in the narrations of the fourteen individuals who participated in the study. apart from compelling stories, what we extract from the performative aspect of storytelling and the various perspectives adopted, is information about the individual, the culture and politics of the time. all this is of course, rich curriculum material, that adds to the basic and conventional history teachings, which reveal aspects of latent curriculum. this essay could be the start of a broader sociological study, which would pose a challenge to the formation of the cypriot curriculum. the study would tackle the issue of reconciling different interpretations of alienation and anomie, and pose significant challenges connected with issues of reconciliation and identity formation. this essay is a contribution to the field of curriculum studies as it illustrates how we can consider oral history, not only as a source of information about ordinary people’s lives but also for the role it can play in the construction of a historical context that is based upon people’s narratives. thus it can help us understand how the ‘everyday’ person was affected by the events, as we hear directly from the person who has lived them, rather than the official, institutionalized version of the story. hearing all the different points of views that are often encountered through the practice of oral history can enable students to understand history in a broader context and as a contradictory field of possibilities. it can also enable them to see history as not limited to what is written and official but also as something produced by people who experience it and, in another sense, by those who study and write about it. notes 1 n.christodoulou@frederick.ac.cy 2 the project was hosted by the frederick research center at frederick university and was funded by the cyprus research promotion foundation (proselkysh/0609, 2010-2012). 3 www.frederick.ac.cy/research/oralhistory references anderson, k., & jack, d. (1991). learning to listen: interview techniques and analysis. in s. b. gluck, & d. patai (eds.), women’s words: the feminist practice of oral history (pp. 11-26). new york: routledge. atkinson, r., & flint, j. (2004). snowball sampling. in m. lewis-beck, a. bryman, & t. liao (eds.), encyclopedia of social science research methods (pp. 1044-1045). thousand oaks, ca: sage publications, inc. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781412950589.n931 caunce, s. (1994). oral history and the local historian. london: longman. clandinin, d. j., & connelly, f. m. (2000). narrative inquiry: experience and story in qualitative research. san francisco, ca: jossey-bass. mailto:n.christodoulou@frederick.ac.cy http://www.frederick.ac.cy/research/oralhistory christodoulou. oral history and living memory in cyprus: performance and curricular… 42 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (1) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci etter-lewis, g. (1991). black women’s life stories: reclaiming self in narrative texts. in s. b. gluck, & d. patai (eds.), women’s words: the feminist practice of oral history (pp. 43-58). new york: routledge. felman, s., & laub, d. (1992). testimony: crises of witnessing in literature, psychoanalysis, and history. new york, ny: routledge. he, m. f. (2010). exile pedagogy: teaching in-between. in j. a. sandlin, b. d. schultz, & j. burdick (eds.), handbook of public pedagogy: education and learning beyond schooling (pp. 469-482). new york: routledge. he, m. f., & phillion, j. (eds.). (2008). personal, passionate, participatory inquiry into social justice in education. greenwich, ct: information age. hesse-biber, s. n., & leavy, p. (2006). the practice of qualitative research. thousand oaks, ca: sage. kohler-reissman, c. (1987). when gender is not enough: women interviewing women. gender and society, 1, 172–207. kridel, c. (ed.). 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(1994). recording oral history: a practical guide for social scientists. london: sage. http://www.oralhistory.org/about/principles-and-practices/#best http://www.oralhistory.org/about/do-oral-history/ christodoulou. oral history and living memory in cyprus: performance and curricular… 43 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (1) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci submitted: september, 24th, 2013 approved: may, 15th, 2014 to cite this article please include all of the following details: tura, maria de lourdes rangel. (2011). curricular and educational practice policies. transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> curricular and educational practice policies maria de lourdes rangel tura 1 state university of rio de janeiro, brazil this text discusses an ethnographical study made in a primary education school of the municipal public system of rio de janeiro, referred to here by the fictitious name “rio school”. its purpose is to analyze the impact of the current curricular policies in that school. in my portrayal of the scenario where rio school’s pedagogic activities take place, it should be borne in mind that everyday school life has been undergoing transformations. they result from changes that took place outside the school and that developed into a reconfiguration of the sociocultural, economic and political structures of contemporary social organizations. in this context, afonso (2001) talks about the emergence of an evaluator-state based on a regulatory body that wants to foster “a competitive ethos that is now becoming more explicit when, for example, pressures exerted on schools are noted … through an outside evaluation …” (p.26) and hold teachers and administrators of scholastic education responsible for the results achieved. thus, contradictorily, schools have been allowed autonomy to attain goals proposed by organizations outside the pedagogic environment, giving rise to a homogenizing scholastic education through the imposition of standardization of pedagogic practices, in spite of the widely declared discourse of catering to specific local features (rosar & krawczyk, 2001). they are standards i have used as a basis to say that, in my first contacts at rio school, what surprised me were the significant changes in implementing pedagogic work and in the style of conducting educative action. to determine the effect of those changes – accompanying afonso’s analysis – one must consider the complex system of evaluating the learning process, which was being introduced during the 1990s, and which is based, at a regional level, on the reform of the evaluation system of rio de janeiro municipality – which began with resolution 606 of 03/15/1996 – and, at a national level, on the national system of evaluation of basic education (saeb). associating what was proposed by the new curricular policies – which in rio de janeiro municipality can be narrowed down to the proposals of multieducation and to the national curricular standards (ncs) – that mechanism of the evaluator-state’s action, as a regulator and centralizer, made it possible to implement very perceptive changes in the pedagogic practices of rio school. multieducation was introduced in 1996 as the basic curricular nucleus for public system schools of rio de janeiro municipality. it has the constructivist appearance of curricular organization and is based on the thinking of vygostsky. the text published in 1996 professes interest in “preserving the system’s unity and guaranteeing to all its students access to the same knowledges without any kind of privilege or discrimination” (p.217). it talks about interdisciplinarity, based on the association of four educative principles (environment, work, culture and language) with four conceptual nuclei (identity, time, space and tura. curricular and educational practice policies 41 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci transformation), which are, however, organized around the scholastic disciplines that traditionally form the basic curriculum of primary education. it also emphasizes the democratization of access to the means and languages that construct thought, subject and the citizen” (p. 133) and, in that context, focuses on the new information, communication and media technologies, indicating interaction among the different languages. therefore it seeks to associate interdisciplinarity, unity of the system, homogeneity of behaviors, access to the new technologies, participation of students and teachers around the classical disciplines of the curriculum, in a proposal of dynamic articulation, which accompanies the time and the space experienced in the school environment, making the traditional interact with the product of a new pedagogic discourse, based on constructivist conceptions and on the new school education requirements. in 1996, at the same time as multieducation was announced – the preliminary version of the national curricular standards (ncs) circulated at a national level. they were prepared by experts related to the federal government. at that moment, a “national curriculum” was being produced, despite the affirmation – in the introductory text – that it was not compulsory to adopt those standards. hence, in reality, the curricular issues became more complex and lopes (2004a) draws attention – based on the discourse of several authors – to the centrality of the curriculum in educational policies in the globalized world. let us then examine the impact of those policies in the everyday life of a school. the investigation work the choice of the school as the locus of my investigation was based on previous criteria that i chose – good functioning conditions, easy access, a complete staff of teachers, and recognition by the regional education coordination (rec) of the good quality pedagogic work done. with those criteria, i approached the municipal education department (med) for authorization to do systematic observation work – of an ethnographic nature – at a public school of the municipal system and on that occasion, reciprocal negotiations began regarding my activity in the field of research. i then chose rio school where i was following up the development of pedagogic activities conducted during 2004 and in the first half of 2005. in that pedagogic environment i was welcomed warmly by the various school staff members and enjoyed good moments of companionship, as well as moments of tension and difficulties, as was to be expected. i took part in teachers’ meetings and in different activities of the various pedagogic projects implemented by the school and also talked to the students about school life and participated in meetings – both formal and informal – of teachers in their free time. i interviewed teachers of different stages of the school course and of different scholastic disciplines. i was also able to accompany the pedagogic coordinator’s attendance to students that needed special attention for recovering some delay in assimilating school knowledges. similarly, i witnessed conversations of parents or persons responsible for the students, who sought out the school’s director to attend to their interests or when called by teachers. in the many moments and places where i went, i increased my knowledge of rio school, clarifying some analyses, updating my attitudes and reviewing old interpretations. life at rio school rio school has – as i learned – a good reputation in the region and in the regional education coordination (rec). i noticed that some parents wanted to have their children tura. curricular and educational practice policies 42 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci study at that school and found, while participating in its pedagogic activities, that this evaluation is coherent with the work done. a number of studies have pointed to differences between schools of a same teaching system (bourdieu, 1999 & yair, 1996). they are schools that combine the situation of having recognized quality – meaning that there is no very regular distribution of funds made available for scholastic education – and that even so they are also “chosen” by those parents who are able to look for a school with a better reputation, which includes – very particularly in rio de janeiro – its distance from regions where urban violence is more visible. rio school is large and spacious, it is built in the middle of a plot of land and at the rear there is a larger space used for physical education, recreation and commemorations. the ground floor is used for recreational activities and also houses the teachers’ room, director’s room, dining hall, washrooms, etc. additionally, there are 3 more floors used for the school’s different pedagogic activities in classrooms, reading room, computer laboratory, auditorium etc. around 800 students were enrolled in two class periods – one in the morning and the other in the evening. it also housed various activities of the education for work hub of the municipal education department, which offers good contributions in its communication with teachers and pupils that attend the school 2 . rio school was, also, a space for a cordial relationship between teachers, students, the management staff and employees. this helped to make the different teaching conceptions clearer regarding pedagogic processes, expectations regarding the students’ learning process, concepts of school evaluation, greater or lesser possibilities for participating in pedagogic activities and cultural differences – more apparent among the group of students. at this point – or before going on to describe the characteristics of rio school – it would be worth considering the matter of the difference, which was very clear among the subjects of that educative environment and is very visible in the various manifestations of the cultural life of rio de janeiro city. based on bhabha (1998), i have noted that “the cultural difference cannot be understood as a free game of polarities and pluralities in the homogenous and empty time of the national community” (p.227). in other words, what is being problematized are perceptions based on an anthropological tradition which sees – in the context of totalized cultures – the confrontations between cultures as orientated in dichotomies that articulate the dispute between symbolic contents and hegemonic and non-hegemonic traditions. what i have designated, then, as cultural difference particularly denotes the situation of living in “liminal spaces”, as bhabha calls them, or on the “slippery banks of cultural displacement” (p.46), which eliminates the idea of a “national culture”, or of a totalized culture and its universalizing presuppositions and turns toward that which is constituted as a cultural and historic hybridism, accompanying the constitution of a postcolonial world. the difference, therefore, portrays a movable context in which meanings and values are appropriated in very specific ways of translation, transfer of meaning, negotiation and ambivalence that eliminate the possibility of thinking in a stable system of reference and representation. in that perspective, the difference lies in a process of negotiation surrounded by discontinuous temporalities, experienced in spaces of intertextuality or in between-places of race, class and gender. a difference marked by the silence of repressed stories, by cultural displacements, by the emergence of other meanings, by the desire to be named. these situations are part of our nation’s history, of the silences of our people, of the surprise that many of their gestures, languages and values provoke, of what cannot be understood in the attitudes of the students, in their “muddled” ways of asserting themselves. in that environment, riddled with ambivalences created by cultural pluralism, the management staff (the school director, the assistant director and the pedagogic coordinator) tura. curricular and educational practice policies 43 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci and their few and insufficient assistants, redoubled their efforts to fulfill the many tasks entrusted to them, making such work at times very wearying. it was the effect of the new policies for running municipal schools that kept that team bound to goals established at regional and central levels of the scholastic education administration which, sustaining its discourse of autonomy of pedagogic institutions, delegated to those professionals an immense load of activities, reports, planning and time limits to be fulfilled in scanty time, with insufficient funding and human resources and the fervent desire of rio school’s management staff to achieve their aims because of the consequent advantages. those requirements delimited the “rendering of accounts” regarding the implementation of the new curricular proposals, which should be in progress in the school and which involved transformations in the teachers’ and students’ work. watching the development of pedagogic activities in rio school, i saw, also, the many strategies the teachers introduced for accompanying the different curricular proposals. that is said on the basis of multieducation texts and of the national curricular standards (ncs) and, in a pragmatic sense, what was contained in the textbook which, more specifically, incorporated the ncs proposals. the textbooks are distributed by the med to primary school students and represent an important indication of what the teachers understood to be specific contents of their scholastic discipline. however, one must not disregard the different styles of work, personal experiences and attitudes to the social functions of the school specifically of the teaching staff. what i found was that regarding the proposals, the teachers – in a continuum that ranged between accepting the new curricular proposals and remaining attached to their personal styles and conceptions about pedagogic practice – sought to associate the different curricular proposals with the characteristics of that pedagogic environment and of their students and also with their personal beliefs and working styles. as apple (2004) said, it was easy to see that it is in the dynamism of educative action that the scholastic disciplines – introduced, standardized, evaluated and made official – become something concrete, alive and active. at another point, the pedagogic coordinator mobilized the teaching staff and student body to participate in different pedagogic projects she had prepared with the help of some teachers closer to the coordination. the construction of pedagogic projects was included among the goals of the pedagogic policy project of rio school, called “the citizen”, and in the multieducation recommendations. consequently, in 2004, in the first two-month period work was done on the pedagogic project “saber cuidar” (know how to care), which implemented a series of activities focused on ecology. in the 2 nd two-month period, the school took on the pedagogic project “olympiad: myth and mythology” which, taking advantage of the motivation of the olympic games in greece, worked with students on a group of knowledges related both to sport and to historical facts and to the group of narratives of greek mythology, using the wealth of traditions adapted to the geographical space of the sporting event and which were being widely disclosed in the different medias. in the 3 rd twomonth period, the school carried out the project “o folclore” (folklore), which culminated in a party which all the class divisions attended, presenting dances, games and various aspects of folklore of the different regions of brazil. in the 4 th two-month period, the project “o brasil plural” (plural brazil) had as its climax culture week. in that two-month period there was also a sciences fair involving all the class divisions showing their work to fellow students from the different school grades. on that occasion, i observed a 6th grade class 3 preparing with the teacher the work they were to present. the sciences fair was to take place in the following week and the teacher had already arranged beforehand what the students should bring from home to make models showing different types of terrain and plants. materials provided by the students’ families were also used. among them was a small set of gears that moved water from a tank tura. curricular and educational practice policies 44 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci to sprinkle it on planted soil. it was made by one of the student’s uncle. the teacher reminded the children to bring what had been agreed and had also brought to the classroom earth and other materials necessary for the work. what i realized was that the time for preparing the project was very short and that while one group of students actively participated in the work, another group just watched. when the work was presented to a 3 rd grade division, i found that those that had done the work were also its presenters. that type of situation reflects the multiplicity of tasks entrusted to the teachers, who had to meet the multieducation requirements, fulfill the textbook’s directions and the pedagogic projects and what they also considered important to be done by the group of students of the scholastic stage they taught. this characterizes exactly the associations made to fulfill the different curricular proposals and the teacher’s purposes. apart from that, they had to cope with a numerous group of children or teenagers and live with their cultural differences, placing them far from the standards of students that the teachers had introjected. it was in that context of situations that i heard the director of the rio school comment that a problem had come to her attention related to a certain “loss” of teaching authority. she said that the students – because of the way they behave or address the teachers, due to the expectations they show they have regarding their schoolmasters – seem to no longer consider the standards traditionally established for the teacher/student relationship. in short, work with pedagogic projects was very much encouraged by the rec and the pedagogic coordinator, who took part in weekly continued training meetings in the regional coordination, brought from those contacts the incentive to continue conducting such projects, which could associate the educative principles of the curricular proposal of multieducation with the contents of the different disciplines of the school curriculum. the med has made efforts to introduce multieducation in rio de janeiro municipality and it is to that effect that one can see some continued teacher training actions and the production of technological resources, supported by multirio, a multimeans enterprise of rio de janeiro municipality. nonetheless, those efforts have not made the med deviate from what was produced on a national scale and, corroborating this affirmation, multirio in 2004 published the book “o mundo cabe na sala de aula” (the world in a classroom), which disclosed to 40 thousand teachers of the municipal system the national curricular guidelines (ncg) for infant education and for primary education and explanations about those guidelines, suggestions of subjects for consideration and activities to be carried out. 4 the teaching staff by and large the teaching staff had good experience in their work area and, at times, a long career in the teaching profession. there were teachers who had even held direction and coordination positions in other schools and some who had worked in activities of the education for work hub, or in other municipal projects. several had also worked in other public and private system schools. it was a very assiduous and active team. in view of those characteristics, i am not talking about homogeneity of practices or consensuses on the ways of handling the school curriculum. the methodological alternatives and the solutions found for teaching and learning problems were part of the singularity of the practice of those teachers. in other words, however inflexible pedagogic activity may be, condensed in it are personal trajectories and traits of everyday school life – seen as a cultural environment that mobilizes a network of meanings – that impart sense to individual actions and produce a multiplicity of ways of being inserted in the school’s educative project, according to clarke (1994). tura. curricular and educational practice policies 45 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci thus, i was able to observe, in contact with the teachers, some strategies that were implemented to impart more dynamism to classes or better assimilation by the students. i saw teachers who brought materials from home – from newspapers and magazines, for example – to motivate or make pedagogic work possible, using more up-to-date texts or working with issues disclosed by the media. i noted teachers guiding the students’ research work, using computers. that is, i found that there were many ways of “fixing things” to work with the many discontinuities of that school environment. i also saw the sameness of the teaching activities, the rigidity of teacher/student relationships, when following standards as old as the teacher’s working career. in that case, i saw that the teachers were very concerned about making their students organize themselves in a more disciplined way and in adapting the homogeneity of the proposals to the prevailing heterogeneity, without paying attention to the need to forge closer ties with student cultures and with the multiple needs resulting from their cultural and linguistic differences, as valli, cooper & frankes (1997) observed in another educational context. when i was invited by teachers to participate in some of their classes, to observe aspects that they had already talked about earlier with me – aspects that were always associated to the difficulties they had in motivating students or to understand better what they were working on with the students – or to participate in presenting group work, i witnessed major issues that are currently arising for teachers regarding pedagogic processes. those issues are particularly related to cultural differences in social and family environments and, also, to shortage of money, insufficient time, the need to accelerate pedagogic activities; problems relating to the sense given to implementing curricular proposals and the disbeliefs of parents and teachers about the real possibilities of attaining the sought-after “scholastic success”. in the middle of all that, external pressures appeared, coming from the med and the rec, to the effect of achieving previously programmed academic results and of imparting more visibility to pedagogic activities. as a way of further disclosing the educative action implemented by the rio de janeiro municipality, the med has organized exhibitions of work done by the students of the municipal public system in convention centers. the media popularizes those events in articles published in newspapers and on tv. rio school always sent some of the students’ works to such exhibitions. in that case, what i noted is that it was always the same students that participated in these projects that involved help from the pedagogic coordination and the teachers. it was much preparation and many efforts to give prominence to the work done at the school. while life at rio school maintained its routine and customary everyday life, outside it that small group of students and teachers were experiencing the brilliance of the “excellences”. in short, when i mention what i observed as outside pressures on the teaching work and the interest – also external – in disclosing the “good performance of the public school students”, i am also seeing what is currently reported as the search for performativity, which represents a new standard for ways of legitimating the knowledges that are being taught in schools and their ways of appropriation. that is a process that interacts with what is presented as the results of the evaluation of pedagogic practice (the saeb, for example), and which consequently makes teaching work very controlled by criteria of efficiency, constructed in spaces of management of pedagogic activity outside the school (macedo, 2002). ball (2004) maintains that the performativity standard permits remote control of teaching work. the state is, then, through its discourse on quality and efficiency, reflected in the results and levels of performance observed – imposing a new institutional culture, new action profiles and new subjectivities. tura. curricular and educational practice policies 46 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci santos (2004), following the same line of analysis, talks about a performance culture, governed by a new logic – technicist and utilitarist – of school administration which uses auditing technologies centered on a system of tests and inspection. these, therefore, are the new ways of controlling teaching action that i saw happening in rio school and which made standardized performance indicators delimit its teachers’ pedagogic activity. i found that the effectiveness of those actions and their impacts on the school curriculum are included in what i perceived to be a set of innovations that emerged in the everyday life of rio school, in 2004 and 2005. the students as for the students, what drew more attention – as i pointed out above – were their cultural differences. those differences contained the milestones of our colonial history, of the many diasporic movements that revealed the displacement of different african peoples to the americas – in the degrading state of slavery -, the migrations from the country to the city, from the northeast to the southeast, from european and asiatic countries to the americas, in pursuit of work and survival. what led hall (2003) to affirm the hybrid result of our american cultures or of cultures that were irremediably “impure”, anthropologically speaking. prominent in that group were the residents of the neighboring shanty-towns, who represented an excluded segment from the social point of view (low income, low educational level, little access to goods and urban services). there were also students residing in the district and others who were children of service providers in the region where the school was located and who brought their children to rio school, especially motivated by its good reputation. accordingly, some students said they lived in places far from the school. the students ranged from those in a very adverse social situation to those belonging to middle class persons who due to some circumstance – usually related to an employment crisis, prevailing in different world spaces these days – had opted to enroll their children in that school 5 . the latter had better chances of widening the opportunities offered by the school and presenting work using new resources of information and communication technologies. of course there were some students from other social groups that used some of these new technologies, taking the opportunities offered by the school or by the areas of the education for work hub. thinking of the opportunities offered by rio school, i recall a physical education teacher who also worked in the education for work hub and had already been the director of a public school. he was always about to make an evaluation of the results of the school’s pedagogic work, which annoyed the other teachers because of the vehemence of what he said. he used to say: “here we are preparing only 10% of the students to continue with primary education. the rest of us are teaching them to be nail hammerers.” nail hammerers! was that lack of respect for the students, disregard for teaching work, a disappointment over what he observed or excess realism? well, there it was, at any rate, an evaluation of what could be understood as being detached from the many cultural differences in that school environment and which, in our social organization, walks side by side with inequalities of socioeconomic opportunities. at this point, i want to point out that the evident inequalities among the students were reflected in a great difference of school performance and were also related to the inequality of opportunities to participate in the school’s various activities. the group that had the greatest opportunities was small and, as the above-mentioned teacher said, the mass of students produced only fair school work, marked by many deficiencies in certain areas of the tura. curricular and educational practice policies 47 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci curriculum, by backwardness and failure to attend classes and by very mediocre behavior – although always noisy – in the context of the school life. still about the students, i saw domestic and neighborhood solutions adopted to bring the children to and from the school, or to heed some requirement from the school management. as a whole, an immense array of problems was noted, resulting on one side from the actual school organization or from the limits of school organization and, on the other, from the times in which we are living, from city violence etc. pedagogic practice at this point, based on the contributions of stephen ball (1997), who maintains that the educational policies document is a “true intervention in educative practices” (p.18), because it raises problems that will have to be resolved in the context of school life, i confirmed the impact of the new curricular proposals for teaching work and the profound changes in the ways of educating, as well as the effort made by the school management and the pedagogic coordination to account for the results of the students’ performance and of the administration of human resources and funds managed by rio school. the great help and great complicator of pedagogic activities was the textbook. on one hand it was good quality pedagogic material, distributed by the municipality and all – or almost all – could accompany pedagogic activities using this teaching resource as their focal point. on the other hand, there was all the rigidity and sameness of that list of contents, of that language, of those illustrations that cater to a small group of students and cramp the teachers’ style. at the class councils 6 meetings first there was a moment of reflection on a text or a pedagogic topic. afterward, an evaluation of the two-month period was made class division by class division, pointing out the characteristics of the group and personal issues. there were many consensuses in the discussion, especially regarding some students who stood out because of their insufficiencies, who participated little, who were often absent, who systematically arrived late and lost the first classes. there was also dissension about other students who were accompanying well some disciplines and were bad in others. it was the moment to take attitudes, to seek solutions, always bearing in mind the importance of recovering arrears to achieve success at the end of the school period. the great problem for those finalizations was time, always short. in view of that situation, i should mention the new proposals in relation to the evaluation. for example, i was able to verify the pedagogic coordinator’s effort to emphasize the importance of considering the “qualitative aspects” of the evaluation, which pointed to a growing flexibilization of the school results, to meet the standards proposed by the med’s evaluation system. among those standards there was always concern about attaining the pass rates goal. it is ideal not to exceed 10% of the total students. to that effect, my attention was drawn – compared with another opportunity i had to observe the daily life of a school of rio de janeiro’s municipal system (tura, 2000) – by the observation that the teachers, by and large, accepted to negotiate with the pedagogic coordination modifications in the results achieved by the students, so as not to be very far from the desired rates. as for the teachers, i noted specially the difficulties arising from implementing the new pedagogic projects which, at times, entered into conflict with the values they attributed to teaching activities. i also found an increase in interest in the exhibition/disclosure of the school work done, as i commented above. in this context, there were conflicts between different teaching subjectivities. these were very often expressed in distinctions among those that adhered more easily to the new curricular proposals and those that opposed such changes because of their beliefs and earlier experiences. in this group, i could also see the multiple tura. curricular and educational practice policies 48 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci ways of recontextualizing the new curricular proposals. i saw the pedagogic coordinator’s attempts to articulate the different disciplinary contents with the pedagogic projects. underlying the efforts made by the school community to attain the objectives proposed by those managing municipal education, were methods of regulating the pedagogic work, which had a perceptible effectiveness on teaching activities and were redimensioning the ways of dealing with the disciplinary contents and leading the teachers to take care to show their productivity. on the other hand, to get an idea of the tangle of situations that had just been revealed regarding those new curricular proposals and the concern over showing productivity, one fact became very clear to me. in order to adhere to the school’s pedagogic project at the time of the olympiads, a 7th grade teacher suggested to the students that they prepare an individual work. they should produce a poster on the olympiads with texts and images. that teacher was very interested in sports and this, at that moment, made it easier for him to dialogue with the students. one girl student produced a poster that surprised everyone. its images were very evocative, it was very well done and its text was very well written… in french! the teachers looked at it and there was a perplexed silence. rio school’s students had no contact with french. they only had english lessons at the school. what could that mean? why did the student not care about not understanding what she had copied and copied so correctly? how did that student assimilate the contents of the school disciplines? what meaning did the things she had been learning at the school have for her? what odd ways out are found by those who live on the “slippery banks of cultural displacement”, as bhabha (1998) said! this other curriculum was not part of the proposals that reached rio school and there were no parameter to measure its productivity. the school curriculum in my work of observing pedagogic practices in the everyday life of rio school, i picked out some aspects that seem to me fundamental for outlining the scenario in which its school curriculum or curricula are structured. those aspects can be grouped around three constructs: school culture; hybridism of conceptions and pedagogic practices, and external control of teaching work. first i must establish the clear relationship between school culture and pedagogic practice and in that context the profound cultural changes occurring at the moment are clear. another point was the discovery of new ways of communication of the group of students relating to the new ways of thinking and acting of the different cultures existing in the school’s neighborhood. at rio school the teachers were working with a much differentiated student body, with new demographic and community profiles, which curtailed the old pedagogic practices and administrative rules. they were situations linked to a complex of meanings and senses being produced in the sociocultural relations experienced by the teachers and students and which would have to dialogue with the multiple proposals presented to the schools by the med and the many conceptions about teaching work and pedagogic theories circulating in that school environment. that is, what could be observed was the existence of a set of cultural changes that interacted with traditions strongly rooted in pedagogic practice. those traditions were directed to maintaining processes of homogenization of conducts, knowledges, working rhythms and construction of specific skills, according to the standards of tura. curricular and educational practice policies 49 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci organization of a school culture which, at the present moment, finds itself faced with many technological innovations, new language codes and the various ethos of the different social groups. it was in that context that the rigid normalizing of the pedagogic environment became conspicuous and the expectation of a certain homogeneity of learning, which has been the subject of supervision and control by the rec, although the med has multieducation as a reference, which proposes the school’s relationship with the multiplicity of referents and languages that produce the richness of cultural life in the city environment. at this point, i also want to point out that while observing events at rio school, the dissonances between the student culture and the school culture became clear and, for that reason, there was an evident need to adapt the instructional and curricular models to the new groups of students. these affirmations lead the analysis to something very remarkable about the educative action, i.e. a hybridism of conceptions and practices that were organized like a blend of postures that overlapped the ambivalence between more traditional positions and the search for new contents and methodologies that could incorporate, for example, the transformations of the present scientific-technological development and, as a result, the new ways of producing knowledge. they were positions that marked both the work of different teachers and the forms of pedagogic action of a same teacher. that hybridism of conceptions and practices i was able to observe very closely when i was accompanying, for example, the progress of a history program unit, which was being conducted by a 6th grade teacher who invited me to sit in on her classes. the reason for the teacher’s invitation was her perplexity at the students’ behavior who, she said, were increasingly changeable and agitated and what she had acquired from experience in dealing with students already seemed not to produce results. nonetheless, i cannot say that the attitudes, beliefs or values of the teachers of rio school with regard to the transmission/assimilation of the school knowledges are either one or the other, but that, before all else, those teachers bring to their professional practice elements from different thought matrixes and cultural practices and what is perceived is a mixture of conceptions, values, expectations and practices, in a hybridism peculiar to the time in which we are living. in other words, in the dynamics of implementing the curricular proposals, teaching actions overlap with old ways of management and pedagogic practices, as well as with the product – dynamic – of the school culture, of the culture of rio school. that mixture was produced in a hybridation of meanings or, as lopes (2004b) pointed out, in a recontextualization through hybrid processes. we are, therefore, seeing fusions that represent an amalgam of the new and the old, negotiation strategies, transitory moments, marked by ambiguity of senses and hybrid meanings that are being incorporated by the subjects of the school community, as noted by garcia canclini (1998). it was in that context that i observed situations – different from the most usual in everyday school life – when students visited internet sites and coupled the use of the textbook with information found in internet consultations. i found the results of that type of pedagogic practice in a presentation of works on the functions of the digestive system, in a 7 th grade science class. in that work, the students divided into groups – presented to their fellow students research done on the internet. in this case, it was possible to identify those students that had done the work more actively, and also that there were two groups that said they had not managed to do the research, maintaining the perspective of the included and the “excluded from the interior”, as bourdieu & champagne (1999) defined and as the above-mentioned teacher pointed out. tura. curricular and educational practice policies 50 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci finally as i said above, rio school had a very good reputation in the rec and wanted to maintain that rating, because it had brought benefits to the school. among them, the possibility of being in a privileged position when funds are allocated, school equipment and human resources. thus, through a discourse on quality and efficiency – reflected in the results observed – the med was imposing a new institutional culture, new profiles of activity and new subjectivities. it was in the context of that discourse that the prospect emerged of developing a performance culture, as santos (2004) said. here the impact of large-scale evaluations should be underscored – such as the saeb – in the school’s everyday life. here, it was not a case of an initiative that originated in the med, albeit there was much interest in the municipality being classified well in those exams and, for that reason, there was much concern over the fulfillment of the school programs, which were or seemed to be condensed in the textbooks distributed by the med. that was why they had to be the focal point of the pedagogic work and were also the object of a control that began in the supervisory action of the pedagogic coordination – strictly supervised by the rec – and expanded into the various ways of accounting to the different levels of the scholastic education administration. i noticed that the presence of rec personnel at rio school – particularly the presence of the school supervisor – was always a threatening event. it entailed the possibility of finding something that was not going well and of demanding changes in the conduct of the teachers. the school direction then had to negotiate those changes and already there was a mixture of tensions and conflicts they had to discuss considering its interest in continuing to be well rated by the rec. in other words, what i found was that the teaching work was being controlled by criteria of efficiency, constructed in management spaces of school activity outside the school. that impact left the teaching autonomy considerably shaken, much upsetting the teachers of rio school. it is, therefore, important to consider the effectiveness of that control by the rec and med and, in that sense, i noted the change of discourse of various teachers, who sought to adapt their practices to what was wanted by the central and regional education administrative bodies. that was not, however, the whole story. the teachers also found ways of conducting their teaching activity following their own criteria, values, beliefs and conceptions, while the rec’s demands went on adding new standards to the hybrid formations of the teaching activity. consequently, an entire scholastic community was involved by subtle political technologies regulating academic work and in this aspect a discourse was being perfected about the evaluation of academic results, of great interest to the municipal education administrators. on the other hand, it is important to emphasize – as giroux (2003) helps us to think – the effects of that school curriculum that i saw happen and that revealed a variety of possibilities for the students. it is worth mentioning the various opportunities presented to the students of rio school, who were involved with different learning and cohabitation situations and, among them, the opportunity to use new electronic technologies and new cultural texts, even those who were not the most active players in the pedagogic activities of the school’s everyday life. affirming these inter-relationships and their dynamism, ball (1997) recalls that an official document cannot be considered the curricular policy per se. first, because it is unable to encompass all the group of problems and issues existing in the educational field. second, tura. curricular and educational practice policies 51 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci because the curricular policies can be perceived as being inserted in a process that associates different historical times and contexts or arenas in dispute. in that sense, a curricular proposal will always be dialoguing with other texts and discourses already produced, or that are circulating in other spheres of the public authority and of civil society, as well as at the same time a recontextualization will be made of the political text inside the pedagogic practice where that text is going. that is what i saw at rio school. the pedagogic projects – adjusted to multieducation – appeared as a curricular proposal that would have to involve all the disciplines of the curriculum, which, in its turn, would have to meet the requirements of the national curricular guidelines. on the other hand, i also saw many kinds of recontextualization of those proposals in the school’s everyday life. that recontextualization appeared very frequently in the discourses of the teachers who associated those projects with their beliefs, their teachers’ habitus, the understanding of what it is feasible to do and interest in finding in the new cultural texts ways out for mobilizing the learning process of the students. the different educative subjects of rio school were thus involved in those conflicts. notes 1 ltura@centroin.com.br 2 the education for work hub is a program of the education department that enables students of the municipal public system to participate in workshops for producing artistic or technical work, outside their school hours. the education for work hub attends students of both sexes from different schools of a same region. 3 with students aged between 12 and 14 years. 4 cf.: http://www.multirio.rj.gov.br 5 by and large or more frequently, in brazil the public school is frequented by the low income population. the more privileged groups tend to enroll their children in private schools. 6 class councils are periodical meetings of teachers and of the pedagogic coordination of a certain grade or stage of school organization, whose purpose is to evaluate the pedagogic work and the students’ performance in that period. references afonso, a. reforma do estado e políticas educacionais: entre a crise do estado-nação e a emergência da regulação supranacional. educação e sociedade, campinas, v. 22, no.75, p. 15-32, aug., 2001 apple, m. cultural politics and the text. in: ball, s.j. (edit.) the routledge falmer reader in sociology of education. london/new york: routledge falmer, 2004, p. 179-195. ball, s. j. performatividade, privatização e o pós-estado do bem estar. educação e sociedade, campinas, v. 25, no. 89, p. 1105-1126, sep/dec., 2004. ______. education reform: a critical and post-structural approach. buckingham/ philadelphia: open university press, 1997. mailto:ltura@centroin.com.br http://www.multirio.rj.gov.br/ tura. curricular and educational practice policies 52 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci bhabha, h. o local da cultura. belo horizonte: ed. ufmg, 1998. bourdieu, p. a escola conservadora: as desigualdades frente à escola e à cultura. in. nogueira, maria alice & catani, afrânio. escritos de educação. petrópolis: vozes, 1999, p. 3964 ______ & champagne, p. os excluídos do interior. in. _____(coord.) a miséria do mundo, 3rd ed. petrópolis: vozes, 1999, p. 481-486. brasil, ministério da educação e do desporto mec. parâmetros curriculares nacionais: documento introdutório. versão preliminar. brasília, nov. 1995. _____. parâmetros curriculares nacionais, brasília, 1997. castro, m. h. g. de. sistemas nacionais de avaliação e de informações educacionais. são paulo em perspectiva, são paulo, v.14, no.1, jan/mar., p. 121-128, 2000. clarke, a. student-teacher reflection: developing and defining a practice that is uniquely one’s own. international journal of science education, london v.16, no.5, p. 497-500, 1994. garcia-canclini, n. a globalização imaginada. são paulo: iluminuras, 2003. ______. culturas híbridas. são paulo: edusp, 1998. giroux, h. atos impuros: a prática política dos estudos culturais. porto alegre: artmed, 2003. hall, s. da diáspora: identidades e mediações culturais. belo horizonte: editora ufmg/ brasília: representation of unesco in brazil, 2003. lopes, a. c. políticas curriculares: continuidade ou mudança de rumos? revista brasileira de educação, rio de janeiro, no. 26, p. 109-118, may/jun/jul/aug. 2004a. ______. políticas de currículo: mediação por grupos disciplinares de ensino de ciências e matemática. in. ____ e macedo, elizabeth (org.) currículo de ciências em debate. são paulo: papirus, 2004b, p. 45-75. macedo, e. currículo e competência. in: lopes, a. c. & ____. (org.) disciplinas e integração curricular: história e políticas. rio de janeiro: dp&a, 2002, p. 115-143. rosar, m. f. & krawczyk, n. diferenças da homogeneidade: elementos para o estudo da política educacional em alguns países da américa latina. educação e sociedade, campinas, v.22, n.75, p. 33-43, aug. 2001. santos, l. formação de professores na cultura do desempenho. educação e sociedade, campinas, v.25, n.89, p.1145-1157, sep/dec. 2004. secretaria municipal de educação do rio de janeiro. multieducação: núcleo curricular básico. rio de janeiro, 1996. tura, m. de l. o olhar que não quer ver: histórias da escola. petrópolis: vozes, 2000. valli, l., cooper, d. & frankes, l. professional development schools and equity. review of research in education, washington, d.c.: american educational research association, v. 22, p.251304, 1997. yair, g. school organization and market ecology: a realist sociological look at the infrastructure of school choice. british journal of sociology of education, v. 17, no. 4, p. 37-59, 1996. submitted: august, 3 rd , 2011 approved: september, 20 th , 2011 to cite this article please include all of the following details: cole, peter & o’riley, pat. (2012). coyote and raven put the ‘digital’ in technology – hands up and down to earth. transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> coyote and raven put the ‘digital’ in technology – hands up and down to earth peter cole 1 & pat o’riley 2 university of british columbia, canada education...makes a straight-cut ditch of a free, meandering brook. (henry david thoreau) real freedom will come only when we free ourselves of the domination of western education, western culture, and the western way of living. (mahatma gandhi) the colonists strained to tame the wild, the tribes and the environment. now high technologies overbear postcolonial promises and transvaluations; the tragic mode is in ruin. (gerald vizenor) raven and coyote are not robbing a bank or playing cowboys and ‘indians’ or bad guys and good guys these ubiquitous tricksters 3 are inviting the reader to engage in a virtual/actual retelling of the contemporary ‘digital native’ storylines being offered in mainstream education the wingéd one and the fourleggéd ask the human beings to consider renarrativizing the current privileging of digital technology as the predominant technology storyline in education and western education as the predominant educational storyline of knowing/doing/being/becoming this conversation is an invocation to “trickster discourse” 3 with the hope of encouraging “narrative chance, comic holotropes and dissident narratives” (vizenor, 1993, p. 10) as potentialities for restorying and remapping technology discourses in education as vizenor writes “trickster narratives are … an ironic survivance; trickster metaphors are contradictions not presentations of culture.” (p. 174) coyote and raven believe that sharing the tech time/space in education with indigenous and other other/ed technological knowledges and practices might support a more robust and complex technological literacy in education needed in our rapidly changing world cole & o’riley. coyote and raven put the ‘digital’ in technology – hands up and down to earth 19 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci ama 7 sqit greetings i am raven called corvus corax by ornithologists my form is avian but i am a member of the bird people transformers shapeshifters tricksters transformers from the natural world were our earliest teachers on my human being side i am from the grizzly bear clan my community is xa’xtsa also called douglas first nation at the head of harrison lake located in southwestern british columbia canada in the high snow-capped coastal mountains i am related to most of the original peoples of the lower mainland each of whom is a miracle all of whom are survivors of genocidal epidemics residential schools and ministry of education curriculum visions my ancestors were also welsh from carmarthenshire and scots from banffshire se:kon i am coyote otherwise designated canis latrans coyotes like indigenous peoples are survivors i am of donegal (irish) mohawk and french heritage from québec canada married into the stl’atl’imx community of xa’xtsa as we enter this conversation at this bend in the river of words body spirit experience we push our canoe into the current enter it with our ancestors and those to come we hope that a few of you might join the conversation and help to paddle why are you taking my pulse raven? i'm counting your heartbeats using digital technology index and middle fingers no thumbs no bar spacing just touch ing in front of all these people hmm systolic or diastolic are you sure you're not looking for vital signs or maybe it's some kind of truth detection test digital polygraph aren't you supposed to look at my irises too measure my temperature basal metabolic rate yes using two fingers low tech slow tech no tech lt st nt lt st nt that's my motto lt st nt aretha franklin would like that nice rhythm raven i know you have an iphone in your pocket filled with frivvy apps and when you work out you wear a heart-rate monitor watch and chest strap you have a sphygmo-manometer to check your blood pressure a pedometer a digital camera and even a portable alternating gradient synchrocyclotron particle accelerator in the basement those are just for backup i prefer technologies that do not have a big ecological or ethical footprint raven your prescription glasses and your clothes are made using socalled ‘high’ tech machinery and processes so is your toothpaste your skin cream shampoo deodorant hairbrush nail clippers food your home is a techno-palace the bus you took here your bicycle your car were all made using high tech tools and machinery all requiring hi tech lubrication gasoline oil fractionated distilled refined purified even your low tech is high tech if you factor in all of the complexities the machines that make the machines that make the tools and technologies cole & o’riley. coyote and raven put the ‘digital’ in technology – hands up and down to earth 20 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci coyote i make a conscious effort to stay away from acquiring things that require batteries i use a handcrank flashlight and radio and most times i use a hand fan rather than the air conditioner well raven the things that produce and transport your tech-toys or support them require the expenditure of hydro energy atomic energy coal-burning energy transportation energy communication energy that's not cool which is why it's hot i can't just quit everything cold turkey or whatever the term is for vegans the trouble is we have so many modern conveniences that are not convenient for the rest of the world their manufacture the processes the tools the infrastructure are hazardous to the health and wellbeing and survival of tens of thousands of species including billions of human beings your tech at least from your talk is to stay off the grid but how offgrid can you be when everything you own is suffused with power and fuel consumption footprints you have internalized the grid you are the grid the petroleum coal hydro nuclear footprints are subductions of the consumerist tectonic plate which causes untold transverse faults in everything from good intentions and philosophy to shade-grown fair-trade coffee cocoa and green tea green doesn't mean green there's a spectrum disorder operating or wearing of tinted spectacles well coyote to put some positives into the negativity simplex i cancelled my data plan now it's strictly wifi no roaming charges hold back the dam and resuscitate those raccoons with my environmentally sustainable technologies i am not so much off the grid as not on it as a lifeline i'm not sure what you mean by 'environmentally sustainable' are you saying you are giving back more to the earth than you take retiring to offgrid does not mean you are not dragging with you a huge ecological and ethical footprint handprint pawprint coyote the tsunami of climate change and its effects are happening especially to the those in the margins mainly indigenous peoples who are being displaced from their lands for resource extraction the 1% take up the whole of centre if we don’t act soon we’ll all be swept away we saw it in southwestern british columbia at the end of the last ice age the old ones up in plateau country talk about using the retreating glaciers as refrigerators but you had to keep your eye on those craveny canids raiding the icebox hah raven more like the ravening ravens my friend vicki tauli-corpuz (2012) an indigenous filippino woman says you can't separate indigenous rights and culture from climate change as the intergovernmental panel on climate change (ipcc) seems to we are our technologies our pedagogies and literacies they are not simply byproducts of our activities we are our pollution our waste our wanton disregard we are digging the mass graves of tens of thousands of species every year with innovations that are fueling out of cole & o’riley. coyote and raven put the ‘digital’ in technology – hands up and down to earth 21 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci control capitalism-consumerism because we are addicted to buying stuff we don't need and probably don't want but coyote we desire things because we lack as my old friend jacques lacan (2007) used to say the stuff is filler because we are empty we have a lack of being if you're lonely or sad or suffering from anomie you buy you consume creating r-value between you and the environment and your responsibilities and original instructions raven what you might be missing out on is becoming as gilles deleuze & félix guattari (1972) say they have a different take on desire than lacan they see desire as a productive force in the real like indigenous ways of knowing engaging the complexities the interrelationalities and interconnectivities rather than collecting the empties and refunding them at the conceptual space depot so you can buy more of the same [coyote sings] “bye bye love bye bye happiness hello loneliness i think i’m-a gonna cry-y” 4 loss of love becomes emptiness or obsession as love disguised as loneliness and as a simulacrum that fuels the 'entertainment' industry happy days are here again with maurice blanchot and the fonz on slide trombone marguerite duras on standup bass sartre on percussion and kierkegaard dostoyevsky and nietzsche on lead guitar and vocals get yer yayas out get yer techno-gizmos here come one come all they'll satisfy your desire fill up the terra nullius inside the corpus vacuus [raven holds up a piece of rock] microcrystalline chert i found this in the parking lot the neanderthals fashioned an entire living in europe for 600 thousand years lithic reductionism depending on your strike angle it fractures into a hertzian cone cleavage planes conchoidal fractures you can make tools or weapons start a fire skin an auroch sling down a flyer scale a fish the modern toolkit for 600 thousand years included flint jasper chalcedony agate opal siliceous sinter obsidian quartzite onyx firestone silica stone and flint stone technologies past can be technologies present and future raven did you hear vicki tauli-corpuz (2012) talk about the importance of including indigenous knowledges within the redd (reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation) frameworks indigenous peoples are saying ‘no’ to corporations that are buying/selling carbon credits on tribal territories so that they can keep on polluting for example the munduruku tribe of the brazilian rainforest just cancelled their deal with an irish company (teixeira, 2012) yes coyote not quite the ‘red’ power we were talking about in indian country back in the 60s and 70s interesting how the ipcc organized the workshop fitted out with and made using every techno-device known to personkind anyway she said that "dealing with climate change means changing the current economic system that was created to cole & o’riley. coyote and raven put the ‘digital’ in technology – hands up and down to earth 22 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci dominate and extract resources from nature" vicki talked about the implications the implicatedness of education in the global economic system by teaching students how to better dominate nature rather than living harmoniously with/as nature i was talking to stuart pimm a conservation biologist at duke university good to hear i was a bit worried about becoming extinct or at least endangered pimm talked about each american putting "seven tons of carbon into the atmosphere per year through fossil fuel consumption" (osterman, 2011) he has this idea of selling "indulgences to carbon sinners" offsetting their carbon sin to help his ngo buy land to reforest the more carbon sinning the more money his ngo gets he talked about norway giving brazil a hundred times more money per capita to slow the deforestation rate than the usa has promised but not delivered it's all green coyote as long as accountants with spraypaint are in charge raven how does this translate into technology talk in education pimm doesn't know what the appropriate toolkit might be for his work he talks about conservation being a "mission-driven science" just what we need more missionaries coyote if we honour all of creation including the natural world the three sisters eco-pedagogy eco-literacy and eco-technology can be our teachers ah here comes frédérique apffel-marglin with her llama and her market wares olà frédérica que tal mi hermana you were telling us before breakfast of signs and how some in the renaissance were church-authorized and some were not “the wise women and men in the countryside had always existed but only then did they become the abject other and the persecuted witches and sorcerers.” (apffel-marglin, 2012, p. 30) you were commenting too on hylozoism tell us more “the category of hylozoism gathers together this motley group of renaissance movements, occult philosophies, and peasant practices. what they all have in common is a non-dualist view that matter could move itself, that humans were part of nature and part of the cosmos, and that god pervaded the material world as well as the souls of humans.” (p. 31) ah the glorious renaissance shakespeare marlowe kydd bacon drama as life as drama science becoming the new religion reason taking over from mystical compassion “during the course of the seventeenth century, the view of a substantivized nature, agency-less, mechanical, made up of separate entities that could not move themselves, and totally estranged from the world of humans, successfully displaced the hylozoist view.” (p. 33) cole & o’riley. coyote and raven put the ‘digital’ in technology – hands up and down to earth 23 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci frédérique this brings me back to the role western education plays in continuing this way of thinking even more so with the huge emphasis and expenditures on virtual learning removing us from each other from sensory connections with one another and the land and other-than-and-more-than-humans entities raven sherry turkle (2011) the founder and director of the mit initiative on technology and one of the best known proponents of virtual learning has just published a book entitled alone together: why we expect more from technology and less from each other it is based on 15 years of research on digital learning she does a surprising turnaround from her earlier stances in the second self and life in the screen turkle is concerned about what we are losing of our ourselves especially children the loss of privacy and community emotional dislocation yes coyote education has been spending huge amounts of money so that students become “digital natives” but there is little “native” about cyberspace do you notice the more we become “digital natives” the busier we become our “busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness [lacan’s lack]; obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day” (kreider, 2012). there are many valuable aspects to digital learning including providing students with unprecedented connectivity and access to information however much has been left out of technology discourses including technologies associated with the majority of the world technologies that have been used for thousands of years multinational agribusiness and pharmaceutical companies realize the importance of indigenous technologies and have been exploiting and patenting indigenous intellectual properties and territories for decades just ask vandana shiva (1997) look over there coyote there’s sam jim relaxing on the patio at jj bean coffee house in north vancouver i remember sam jim telling us up home last summer that the written word and computer are dulling our memories he said that oral traditions sharpen recollection and open communication and dialogue with the natural world ama 7 sqit sam jim we’re wondering if you might want to share any more thoughts on computers in education promoting visual learning as a primary way of learning “first place i don’t see it at all seeing isn’t the word i’d use i reckon there’s been a whole lot of seeing going on you’re not going to last very long in the bush standing around looking and talking you got to use all your givens including your hunches being bush smart is different from city knowing” (cole & o'riley, 2002, p.132133) sam jim i will always remember you telling us that “lifelong education for us has always been contiguous cole & o’riley. coyote and raven put the ‘digital’ in technology – hands up and down to earth 24 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci with the process of life and survival before the coming of churches residential schools prisons before we knew how we knew we knew” (p.148) coyote i recently read canadian anthropologist/ethnobotanist wade davis’ book the wayfinders: why ancient wisdom matters in the modern world (davis, 2009) he talks about the loss of the living archive of world knowledges technological practices and imagination by mainstream dismissal and downplaying of traditional wisdom of the indigenous peoples and those nepalese scholar pramod parajuli (2001) refers to as “ecological ethnicities.” remember our last two treks to machu picchu through the high andes of peru the salkantay trek 88 kilometres up to 5000 metres the lares trek near ollantaytambo the pachacutec pass at 4400 metres the apus the chacras the allyu meeting with local quechua communities then moving geographically from the altiplano to the high amazon our meetings with the kichwa-lamista communities near lamas and tarapoto happy healthy without a monetary system living in reciprocity they shared with us their incredibly sophisticated technologies astronomy agriculture architecture engineering medicine quipu that were rooted in inca and pre-inca sacred geography aligned with the movement of the constellations the moon the sun the precision measuring cutting and relocating of massive granite rocks to build cities such as machu picchu cusco and ollantaytambo high the andes their agriculture more than 10,000 years old corn quinoa squash beans thousands of varieties of potatoes so there could be nourishment in times of drought flood insect infestation the coca plant ayahuasca and other medicinal teacher plants for healing and ceremony there was no digging into pachamama (mother earth) with implements without ceremony everything has spirit is sacred is to be respected and nurtured raven i see many similarities with the traditional ecotechnologies we are researching in our own communities that are being lost through the imposition of western schooling knowledges that are etched into and reside in our languages but few elders can speak ucwalmicwts today half of the original voices of humanity have been silenced within our lifetimes and with that waning silencing and displacing of the diversities of wisdom and technological know-how modernity has failed and even the reframings of postermodernity and poststructuralism are shakily refounded but it seems that western education is still stuck in the progress narrative i sat on the window sill of your class last term coyote when you were in your human form you showed a controversial award-winning documentary to the graduate students schooling the world: the white mans’s last burden (black, 2010) shot on location in the himalayan region of ladakh in india it reminds me of many projects cole & o’riley. coyote and raven put the ‘digital’ in technology – hands up and down to earth 25 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci worldwide to bring western education to non-western peoples indigenous peoples and ecological ethnicities have been referred to as “developing” peoples as though we were lower on the evolutionary scale bring on the phrenological psychometricians the assumption being that everyone everywhere needs western education and modernity dismissing millennia of indigenous wisdom of ecotechnological and spiritual practices for what ronald wright refers to as a “short history of progress” (wright, 2004) as the director carol black points out “the larger fiction which goes unquestioned is [the] romanticized portrayal of education as a panacea for all the world’s ills, a silver bullet that in one clean shot can end poverty, terrorism, and the oppression of girls and women around the world. the reality is that the modern school is no silver bullet, but an extremely problematic institution which has proven highly resistant to fundamental reform. no system that discards millions of normal, healthy kids as failures – many of them extremely smart will ever provide a lasting or universal solution to anything.” (black, 2010) in this same film wade davis talks about westerners having the notion the everyone else buys into the capitalist economic paradigm and that somehow they will magically achieve the financial wealth that we in the west 'enjoy' this needs some discussion coyote because as helena norberg-hodge says “[t]his model isn’t even working in america 51% of boys and 49% of girls aged 13-19 have a mood, behavior, anxiety or substance use disorder. 15,500,000 american children live in poverty; 16,000,000 suffer from depression and other emotional problems; 120,000 have tried to kill themselves within the past 12 months 46.6% of students fail to graduate from high school in new orleans; 78.3% in detroit; 61.1% in new york city” (black, 2010) and on and on and on it's their numbers buried under success stories the assumption appears to be that the knowledges and practices of indigenous peoples and ecological ethnicities are inferior and that western education is superior because it is brokered by reason and analysis the monozygotal twins cultured in a petri dish called the enlightenment forged in the renaissance and the reformation i absolutely put my paw down on that raven indigenous peoples and ecological ethnicities and are not failed peoples with unsophisticated cosmologies epistemologies practices and technologies in order to have a renaissance one needs a naissance something has to have died in order to be re-born i'm not sure what was born or reborn but i know what was buried and what or who was destroyed with respect to the reformation what was re-formed and for whose benefit one hegemonic genocidal imperializing vision for another what tools were used and who was included who had agency and whose agency was annulled or vapourized as the elders say in the film the majority of these children who receive western education feel they have to leave their communities to be “successful” they have learned cole & o’riley. coyote and raven put the ‘digital’ in technology – hands up and down to earth 26 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci to feel ashamed of their traditional ways and families many end up living in the slums of large urban centres eking out a living doing menial jobs and picking through garbage dumps the elders speak about the children being needed in their communities to help with healthy subsistence living that has been the norm for thousands of years this is happening right here in canada in my own first nations community and in the indigenous communities with whom we are currently conducting research in peru australia kenya nepal and we’re all paying a very high price with our loss of languages and cultural knowings as gustavo esteva (2010) writes that western education cannot be separated from the capitalist project wade davis suggests that if societies were ranked not on technological prowess but on “the capacity to thrive in a truly sustainable manner, with a true reverence and appreciation of the earth, the western paradigm would fail” (black, 2010) he says it would require four planets to support western levels of consumption throughout the world coyote i’ve heard you talk with graduate students about the social cultural and environmental impacts of electronic technologies including electromagnetic fields being largely ignored in education at all levels the silences about who makes these digital technologies whose lands are mined and flooded to produce and use our computers and cellphones where the millions of tons of toxic waste is shipped and dumped the tens of billions spent on digital technologies in schools the downplaying or dismissal of sustainable technologies tokenizing green technologies and uttering platitudes about place-based technologies and indigenous technological ecoliteracies that have worked for millennia present progressive raven students are thirsty for such conversations t hey want to know how they are becoming integral components in the global marketplace buy-upgrade-trash-forget buy-upgrade-trash-forget buying technologies that are obsolete before they ever enter the marketplace no wonder san francisco put the kibosh on apple procurement flash april 2012 apple doubles quarterly profits to $11.6 billion while trying to polish its china image of child labour building ipads june 2012 apple moves all of its macbooks and desktops from the epeat (electronic product environmental assessment tool) july 2012 san francisco blocks municipal purchases of apple desktops laptops (smith, 2012) sir ken robinson (2010) suggests that education needs a revolution not merely an evolution countries based on capitalist economies might have the best quality of life but they have the worst quality of air the earth is reaching a tipping point where humans are about to push the earth over the brink (roberts, 2012) the time to turn this around is quickly running out of eco-space cole & o’riley. coyote and raven put the ‘digital’ in technology – hands up and down to earth 27 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci coyote what about that non-indigenous australian scholar and trickster noel gough (2006) and his work to engage science fiction cyborgs rhizomantics and more recently the ~ (tilde) as a signaling of “generative potentialities” for performing posthuman pedagogies and “inventing possible~impossible futures” (gough, 2010) gough suggests that complexity theorizing offers emergent potentialities to rethink education in what patti lather (1991) refers to as “post-paradigmatic diaspora” raven okanagan author and activist jeannette armstrong (armstrong, 1997) suggests that any educational paradigm shifting will need to position indigeneity centrally and this also goes for any post-paradigmatic refiguring of the progress narrative yes our elders and indigenous scholars such as jo-ann archibald (2008) marie battiste (2008) russell bishop (2011) peter cole (2006) george sefa dei (2011) sandy grande (2004) michael marker (2006) have been requesting that indigenous knowings and practices take their rightful place in education our learnings no longer placed in the margins but part of the majoritarianstream infixed minorized indigenous portfolios conversations between and amongst equals learning as “comunalidad” and “interculturalidad” (meyer, kirwin & tooher, 2010) i heard richard kahn (2010) arguing for “robustly critical forms of media, computer, and multimedia literacies” as a way to engage students in political activism suggesting that the traditional ecological knowledges of the “multitude” are crucial to resist “empire’s technocapitalist machinery” (p. 72) hmmm i wonder how this might work coyote not all the stl’atl’imx (canada) and kichwa-lamista (peru) communities we are researching with have electricity let alone computers and with respect to reciprocity how will the ethics and protocols of traditional ecological knowledge inclusion be negotiated how might this “sharing” work considering the unequal coercive power relations coyote i like what andean agronomist and member of pratec (proyecto andino de tecnologias campesinas/andean project for peasant technologies) eduardo grillo fernandez (1998) says about irreverence to the primacy of western science and technology as not being denial of the foreign but affirmation of the knowings of all peoples let’s ask about his notion of “equivalency of epistemologies” imanallatac canqui raven and coyote good to see you again equivalency for me is that “everyone (be it man, tree, stone) is a person, complete and indispensible, with its own inalienable way of being with its specific responsibility in the keeping of the harmony of the world. it is in such condition of equivalence that this living world relates with each one and the other” (p. 224) raven this might require what deleuze and guattari (1986) talk about as “minorizing the majority discourse” this is more complex than simply deconstructing cole & o’riley. coyote and raven put the ‘digital’ in technology – hands up and down to earth 28 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci destabilizing the predominant technology discourses in education or unproblematically mixing or adding indigenous and other othered technological literacies it requires a mapping process of deand re-territorializating constantly negotiating a shifting equilibrium deleuze & guattari (1987) offer the concept of “rhizome” as a mapping strategy rhizomes “[a]ffirm what is excluded from western thought and reintroduce reality as dynamic, heterogeneous, and nondichotomous; they implicate rather than replicate; the propagate, displace, join, circle back, fold” (o’riley, 2003, p. 27) sounds like a mix of trickster discourse anarcho-origami and guerilla horticulture or something like cole & o’riley’s (2002) response to william e. doll, jr.’s (2002) notion of the ghosts of john dewey in the curriculum if memory serves me well they did a “pleasurable misreading” (vizenor, 1993) and mishearing back to the time when father otis o’dewey went up to their communities to ‘educate’ them all the time o’dewey was talking about “curriculum” with his lisp irish accent and imperfect ucwalmicwts enunciation they thought that he was talking about “kr 7 xlhm” a rogue mountain goat now extinct in their territories the community members would nod their heads as he spoke and father o’dewey believed that they all understood and were in agreement this reminds me of the recent interest in hybridity such as donna haraway’s (1997) modest_witness@second_millennium.femaleman © _meets_ oncomouse™ i had great fun with this mutated bio-textual-techno figuration however we need to keep in mind frédérique apffel-marglin’s (1998) caution about hybrid power relations talking about new varieties of corn she writes that these new hybrids make visible the disparate origins of various traits while rendering invisible tens of thousands of years of the inventiveness and work of the indigenous peoples who nurtured the seeds the "centre" having the privilege to define the hybrid articulations and according to vanessa andreotti cash ahenakew & garrick cooper (2011) this “creates an awkward situation for the introduction of indigenous knowledges in academic contexts: scholars and educators working with indigenous ways of knowing are called to translate these into the dominant language, logic and technology in ways that are intelligible and coherent (and, very often, acceptable or palatable) to readers and interpreters in the dominant culture” raven what you think about boaventura de souza santos (2007) notions of “ecologies of knowledges” and “inter-knowledges” as a way of moving beyond what he refers to as “epistemic blindness” and “abyssal thinking” coyote negotiating the abyss in academia has not been easy for indigenous educators it’s not like the fiscal cliff in canada and the usa that economists are cole & o’riley. coyote and raven put the ‘digital’ in technology – hands up and down to earth 29 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci talking about santos is referring to an abyssal cliff where indigenous peoples are not anywhere in the sightlines but over the edge invisible santos is talking about exploring pluralities of knowings/practices as well as their possible interactions and interdependence interdependence as articulated by tewa scholar gregory cajete (2000) as well as canadian environmentalists tara cullis & david suzuki (2010) requires an ongoing commitment to caring for the land and creating and nurturing just and equitable crosscultural relationships using reciprocity and equivalency as measures of success coyote isn’t that indigenous brazilian scholar vanessa andreotti walking along the seawall with her dog at kits beach olá kwe kwe skennenko:wa ken vanessa would you mind sharing your thoughts on cultural difference and interdependence oi que saudade “difference must be not merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark… only then does the necessity for interdependency become unthreatening. only within that interdependency of different strengths, acknowledged and equal, can the power to seek new ways of being in the world generate, as well as the courage and sustenance to act where there are no charters.” (andreotti, 2011, p. 178) this would profoundly change how technology discourses are enacted within and beyond education there is much to be learned about living in more ecologically sustainable ways from indigenous peoples and indigenous knowledges (leahy, 2012) look at the work of australian scholars kurt seemann & dora marinova (2010) with remote desert communities their research demonstrates the benefits of “mutuality of influence” and “scale-free networks” engaging both indigenous and non-indigenous technological knowledge systems across communities ecologies and built systems coyote an excellent example of this work on the ground is the cat (centre for appropriate technologies) 5 project with australian aboriginal communities in the alice springs area of the northern territory exploring synergies between indigenous technological ecoliteracies and digital technologies to support the communities in their cultural renewal and educational economic and ecological initiatives also frédérique apffel-marglin’s (2012) work with the kichwa-lamista communities and schools in the high amazon area of peru to create pre-columbia anthropogenic bio-char soil drawing on millennia of kichwa-lamista traditional ecotechnological knowledges this project supports food security by replacing slash and burn agriculture in an area of intense deforestation and because the technology is adaptable to many ecosystems it has global significance and consequences cole & o’riley. coyote and raven put the ‘digital’ in technology – hands up and down to earth 30 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci raven on our recent visit to two of the kichwa-lamista communities we saw that ritual and spirituality play a central role in the technological ecoliteracies similar to stl'atl'imx communities back home frédérique refers to this as “subversive spiritualities” ritual ceremonies and festivals enacted as a collectivity of both humans and other-thanhumans working toward “a livable common world” ( p. 162) that “must be constantly reiterated through intra-actions” (p. 163) coyote can you imagine restorying and remapping of technology discourses in education to include the technological practices and know-how of indigenous peoples and other ecological ethnicities as well as the interdependence of humans and more-thanhumans that nurtures not only mind and body but also the heart and spirit [voice-over] “imagine there's no heaven it's easy if you try no hell below us above us only sky imagine all the people living for today you may say i’m a dreamer, but i’m not the only one i hope some day you’ll join us and the world will be as one” 6 raven for alannah young leon (2012) "the stories that the mountains contain remind us to listen to our elders. the stories, ceremonies, and languages are held within the land, and along with them are the teachings" (p. 52) and tina ngaroimata fraser (2012) writes "maori traditional performing arts lie at the core of maori development and are inextricably linked to language, culture and community" (p. 122) thus we see the connection between elders stories ceremonies land language and culture within the context of community and performativity it is through these that we are able to move forward in a good way coyote i hold out hope that others might join this conversation as we work to figure out together how we want to live and to tell our stories with respect thoughtfulness luminosity and compassion in these uncertain times kukwstum'c nia:wen notes 1 peter.cole@ubc.ca cole & o’riley. coyote and raven put the ‘digital’ in technology – hands up and down to earth 31 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 2 pat.oriley@ubc.ca 3 the coyote and raven trickster figurations we are writing with/through in this paper are affiliated with our particular cultural histories and locations. they were our earliest teachers as they travelled up through the lakes, rivers, plateaux, wetlands, meadows and mountains of our territories. we can only write from those places/spaces. we acknowledge the plethora of tricksters associated with indigenous and non-indigenous peoples worldwide (e.g. anishinaabe—nanabozho; ashanti—anansi; celtic—puck; french—rénert the fox; greek—hermes; japanese—kitsune; norse—loki) that also work to interrupt hegemonic discourses through humour, pranks, paradox, clowning, irony and humility. 4 everly brothers. bye, bye love. retrieved from http://www.metrolyrics.com/bye-byelove-lyrics-everly-brothers.html 5 centre for appropriate technology. retrieved from http://www.icat.org.au/ 6 lennon, j. & mccarney, p. the beatles – revolution lyrics. retrieved from http://www.lyrics007.com/the%20beatles%20lyrics/revolution%20lyrics.html references andreotti, v. (2011). actionable postcolonial theory in education. new york, ny: palgrave macmillan. andreotti, v., ahenekew, c., & cooper, g. (2011). epistemological pluralism: ethical and pedagogical challenges in higher education. retrieved from: http://academia.edu/764583/epistemological_pluralism_challenges_for_higher_educa tion apffel-marglin, f. (2012). subversive spiritualities: how rituals enact the world. new york, ny: oxford university press. apffel-marglin, f. (ed.) (1998). spirit of regeneration: andean cultures confronting western notions of development. new york, ny: zed books. archibald, j. (2008). indigenous storywork: educating the heart, mind, body, and spirit. vancouver, bc: ubc press. armstrong, j. (1997). sharing one’s skin: native canadian jeanette armstrong explains how the global economy robs us of our full humanity. new internationalist. retrieved from: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0jqp/is_287/ai_30411447/?tag=content;col1 battiste, m. (2008). the decolonization of aboriginal education: dialogue, reflection and action in canada. in educational theories and practices from the majority world, http://www.metrolyrics.com/bye-bye-love-lyrics-everly-brothers.html http://www.metrolyrics.com/bye-bye-love-lyrics-everly-brothers.html http://www.icat.org.au/ http://www.lyrics007.com/the%20beatles%20lyrics/revolution%20lyrics.html http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0jqp/is_287/ai_30411447/?tag=content;col1 http://www.sagepub.in/browse/book.asp?bookid=1300&subject_name=&mode=1 cole & o’riley. coyote and raven put the ‘digital’ in technology – hands up and down to earth 32 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci ed. p. r. dasen & a. akkari. new dehli, india: sage publications. bishop, r. (2011). freeing ourselves. rotterdam: sense publishers. cajete, g. (2000). native science: natural laws of interdependence. santa fe, nm: clearlight publishers. cole, p. & o'riley, p. 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(1987). a thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia. trans. brian massumi. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. doll jr., w. (2002). ghosts and the curriculum. in w. e. doll, jr. & n. gough (eds.) curriculum visions, pp. 23-70. new york, ny: peter lang publishing. esteva, g. (2010). beyond education. in l. meyer and b. m. alvarado (eds.), new world of indigenous resistance: noam chomsky and voices from north, south, and central america, pp. 115-131. san francisco, ca: city lights books. grillo, e. f. (1998). development or cultural affirmation in the andes. in f. apffelmarglin (with pratec) (ed.), spirit of regeneration: andean cultures confronting western notions of development, pp. 124-145. new york, ny: zed books. fraser, t. (2012). legacy of leadership: from grandmothers’ stories to kapa haka. in c. kenny & t. n. fraser, living indigenous leadership: native narratives on building strong communities, pp. vancouver, bc: ubc press. gough, n. (2006) rhizosemiotic play and the generativity of fiction. in complicity: an international journal of complexity and education, 3 (1), 119–124. gough, n. (2010). can we escape the program? inventing possible~impossible futures in/for australian educational research. the australian educational researcher, 37 (4), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/f%c3%a9lix_guattari cole & o’riley. coyote and raven put the ‘digital’ in technology – hands up and down to earth 33 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 9-42. grande, s. (2004). red pedagogy: native american social and political thought. new york, ny: rowman & littlefield. haraway, d. (1997). modest_witness@second_millennium.femaleman© _meets_ oncomouse™. new york, ny: routledge. kahn, r. (2010). critical pedagogy, ecoliteracy & planetary crisis. new york, ny: peter lang publishing. kreider, t. (2012). the ‘busy’ trap. in the new york times the opinion pages. retrieved from: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/30/the-busytrap/?smid=fb-share lacan, j. (2007). écrits: the first completed edition in english. new york, ny: w. w. norton & company. lather, p. (1991). getting smart: feminist research and pedagogy with/in the postmodern. new york, ny: routledge. leon, a. (2012). young, “elders’ teachings on leadership: leadership as gift. in c. kenny & t. n. fraser (eds.), living indigenous leadership: native narratives on building strong communities. vancouver, bc: ubc press. marlen, n., hurst, j., & grossman, m. (producers). (2010). schooling the world: the white man’s last burden. [film]. telluride, co: lost people films. marker, m. (2006). after the makah whalehunt: indigenous knowledge and limits to multicultural discourse. urban education, 41 (5), 482-505. meyer, l., kirwin, j. & tooher, e. (2010). an open-ended closing. in l. meyer & b. m. alvarado (eds.), new world of indigenous resistance: noam chomsky and voices from north, south, and central america, pp. 383-399. san francisco, ca: city lights books. o’riley, p. (2003). technology, culture and socioeconomics: a rhizoanalysis of educational discourses. new york, ny: peter lang publishing. osterman, julia. (2011). a conservation conversation with dr. stuart pimm. retreived from http://www.izilwane.org/a-conservation-conversation-with-dr.-stuart-pimm.html parajuli, p. (2001). learning from ecological ethnicities: toward a plural political ecology of knowledge. in indigenous traditions and ecology: the interbeing of cosmology and community, ed. john a. grim, 559 – 589. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. roberts, d. (2012). we’re about to push the earth over the brink, new study finds,” retrieved from http://grist.org/climate-energy/were-about-to-push-the-earth-over-thebrink-new-study-finds/ http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/30/the-busy-trap/?smid=fb-share http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/30/the-busy-trap/?smid=fb-share http://www.izilwane.org/a-conservation-conversation-with-dr.-stuart-pimm.html http://grist.org/climate-energy/were-about-to-push-the-earth-over-the-brink-new-study-finds/ http://grist.org/climate-energy/were-about-to-push-the-earth-over-the-brink-new-study-finds/ cole & o’riley. coyote and raven put the ‘digital’ in technology – hands up and down to earth 34 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci robinson, sir, k. (2010). bring on the revolution! ted: ideas worth spreading. http://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_bring_on_the_revolution.html santos, b. (2007). beyond abyssal thinking: from global lines to ecologies of knowledges. retrieved from: http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-29-santos-en.html seemann, k. & marinova, d. (2010). desert settlements: towards understanding the mutuality of influence and scale-free network concepts. journal of economic and social policy 13 (2). retrieved from: http://epubs.scu.edu.au/jesp/vol13/iss2/2 shiva, v. (1997). biopiracy: the plunder of nature and knowledge. cambridge, ma: south end press. smith, g. (2012). san francisco bans city workers from buying apple computers after tech giant pulls out of green certification scheme. retrieved from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2171902/san-francisco-bans-cityworkers-buying-apple-computers-tech-giant-pulls-green-certification-scheme.html stephen l. (2012). indigenous peoples can show the path to low-carbon living if their land rights are recognized. in national geographic website. accessed july 19, 2012: http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2012/04/04/indigenous-peoples-can-showthe-path-to-low-carbon-living-if-their-land-rights-are-recognized/ teixeira, m. (2012). amazon tribe scraps carbon credit deal with irish firm. retrieved from: http://climate-connections.org/2012/11/16/amazon-tribe-scraps-carbon-creditdeal-with-irish-firm/ turkle, s. (2011). alone together: why we expect more from technology and less from each other. new york, ny: basic books. vizenor, g. (ed.). (1993). narrative chance: postmodern discourse on native american indian literature. norman, ok: university of oklahoma press. wright, r. (2004). a short history of progress. toronto, on: house of anansi press. submitted: november, 22 nd , 2012. approved: december, 16 th , 2012. http://www.ted.com/talks/sir_ken_robinson_bring_on_the_revolution.html http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2007-06-29-santos-en.html http://epubs.scu.edu.au/jesp/vol13/iss2/2 http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2012/04/04/indigenous-peoples-can-show-the-path-to-low-carbon-living-if-their-land-rights-are-recognized/ http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2012/04/04/indigenous-peoples-can-show-the-path-to-low-carbon-living-if-their-land-rights-are-recognized/ http://climate-connections.org/2012/11/16/amazon-tribe-scraps-carbon-credit-deal-with-irish-firm/ http://climate-connections.org/2012/11/16/amazon-tribe-scraps-carbon-credit-deal-with-irish-firm/ to cite this article please include all of the following details: pinar, william f. (2005). a bridge between chinese and north american curriculum studies. transnational curriculum inquiry, 2(1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> presidential address a bridge between chinese and north american curriculum studies william f. pinar university of british columbia, canada abstract in this paper, the presidential address given to the first triennial meeting of the international association for the advancement of curriculum studies (iaacs) held at east china normal university in shanghai, china, william pinar details certain resonances between the chinese curriculum studies tradition and the work of the legendary canadian curriculum theorist ted aoki. in so doing, pinar hopes to contribute to the creation of “dialogue between chinese curriculum wisdom and western curriculum theories,” to help “form a dynamic relationship between the two” (zhong and zhang 2003, p. 260). ••••••••••••••• how can we create possibilities of dialogue between chinese curriculum wisdom and western curriculum theories and form a dynamic relationship between the two? (zhang hua and zhong quiquan 2003, p. 260) [o]n this bridge, we are in no hurry to cross over; in fact, such bridges lure us to linger. (ted t. aoki, quoted in pinar and irwin, 2004) to contribute to our conversation concerning the important question (quoted above) posed by zhang hua and zhong quiquan, i will discuss the life’s work of the great canadian curriculum scholar ted aoki. i do so in hopes of helping create a bridge on which we might gather – and linger – in conversation during these days of the historic first world curriculum studies conference. as aoki employs this metaphor, it is a bridge enabling us to converse across culture, enabling us, perhaps, to hear curriculum in a new key. who is ted aoki? positioned on the north american side of the pacific rim, aoki is the only scholar in north american curriculum studies – or in the broader field of education for that matter – whose lifetime of scholarly and pedagogical achievement has been recognized by the awarding of honorary doctorates from four universities. the universities of alberta, british columbia, lethbridge and western ontario have each conferred upon aoki honorary doctoral degrees. the canadian association for curriculum studies honored aoki with its distinguished service award in 1985; also in that year the canadian education association presented him with its whitworth award for research in education, and two years later the american educational research association awarded him its “distinguished service award.” on saturday evening, april 29, 2000, in baton rouge, louisiana – professors zhong and zhang were present – it was my privilege and pleasure to present aoki with yet another award. it read: “the curriculum theory project of louisiana state university honors ted aoki for a lifetime of achievement in the internationalization of curriculum studies.” it is a http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci william f. pinar (2005) a bridge between chinese and north american curriculum studies transnational curriculum inquiry 2 (1) 2005 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 2 minor trophy in aoki’s collection, but i was delighted to acknowledge him in front of colleagues assembled from around the world. today i wish to discuss briefly that lifetime of scholarly and pedagogical achievement, as i believe aoki’s work can provide a “bridge” on which we might converse across culture, specifically, help build a bridge between north american and chinese curriculum studies. aoki was deeply concerned with dialogue across cultures, dialogue in the service of supporting dynamic relationships between and among cultures and nations. “if east-west conversation in curriculum is to be authentically east-west dialogue, if north-south conversation is to be authentically north-south dialogue,” aoki wrote, then “such conversation must be guided by an interest in understanding more fully what is not said by going beyond what is said.” certainly such conversation is complicated, but it holds the possibility of hearing curriculum in a new key. “[t]o be in quest of curriculum wisdom and curriculum theory,” zhang and zhong (2003, p. 253) write, “is our vocation.” it is significant that zhang and zhong link wisdom and theory with a conjunction, for in the work of ted aoki they are linked conjunctively as well. the wisdom that can accrue from the lived experience of professional practice tends to be expressed as “theory.” for aoki, i would suggest, “theory” is in the service of cultivating wisdom. “curriculum wisdom,” zhang and zhong (2003, p. 253) write, “is an in-the-world being.” in north american (and european) terms, such wisdom emphasizes “lived experience,” “being” rather than “doing” in any narrow behavioral sense. such “being” suggests “dwelling” in “place” (see zhang and zhong 2003, p. 253; pinar 2004). as zhang and zhong (2003, p. 253) explain, “curriculum wisdom” has a “local character.” they point out that in this era of globalization it is crucial to “understand the locality of curriculum wisdom.” to understand “locality” zhang and zhong emphasize the idea of “place,” suggesting a geographical – in its cultural as well as physical sense – conception of “locality.” they appreciate, significantly i think, that “place” is also in “time,” so that, as zhang and zhong observe, “the concept of historicity becomes also important” (2003, p. 253). “place” and “historicity” structure aoki’s pedagogy, evident by his employment of historical events in specific settings. moreover, his emphasis upon the scholarly conference as an educational event underscores the local and the temporal. as we gather in shanghai on this historic occasion – the first world conference on curriculum studies, the first triennial conference of the international association for the advancement of curriculum studies (www.iaacs.org) – i hope to contribute to our conversation by offering you an introduction to the life’s work of ted t. aoki. first, allow me to acknowledge that there is a problem with an american doing this work. aoki is a canadian scholar, uniquely canadian. to be grasped in terms of canadian intellectual life, his work must be situated within canadian history and culture, specifically, within canadian curriculum studies. i lack the expertise for such a project, nor am i appropriately situated to undertake it. (i am not reiterating the view, held by some in cultural studies in the u.s., that “subject position” is a prerequisite for expertise. but, of course, it matters.) aoki’s work is extraordinarily important for american as well as canadian curriculum studies, as i trust the attention i gave to it in understanding curriculum (pinar et al. 1995) testifies. in that textbook, i focused on aoki’s intellectual leadership in the effort to understand curriculum phenomenologically (see chapter 8). while acknowledging there the movement in his work from phenomenology toward poststructuralism, i confess that i did not grasp the full extent of it. why? i attribute this lapse in judgment to the fact that, while i had access to a number of ted’s essays, i did not have access to them all. a number were in fact unpublished; and many were published in journals not readily accessible in the u.s., let alone in china. several of the http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci william f. pinar (2005) a bridge between chinese and north american curriculum studies transnational curriculum inquiry 2 (1) 2005 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 3 most brilliant, i had not yet read when i composed the passages on aoki’s work for understanding curriculum. now, thanks to ted and to rita l. irwin, i have (and you will have) access to the entire body of aoki’s life work, to be published in 2004 in a book entitled curriculum in a new key. aoki’s leadership in the effort to understand curriculum phenomenologically is legendary in north america. but after having read everything he has written, i conclude that it is only part of the story. aoki’s scholarly work cannot adequately be described as phenomenological, despite the strong and enduring influence that philosophical tradition exhibits in these collected essays. aoki is enormously erudite; he is not only well-read in phenomenology, but in poststructuralism, critical theory and cultural criticism as well. even these four complex intellectual traditions fail to depict the range and depth of his study and his intellectual achievement. in my introduction to the collected essays of the man who taught us to “hear” curriculum in a “new key,” i emphasize the range and depth of the work. i focus too on the deft pedagogical moves aoki makes in these essays, most of which were speeches. i know of no other scholar who took as seriously as aoki did the scholarly conference as an educational event. often working from conference themes, aoki takes these opportunities to teach, and with great savvy and subtlety. of someone we might say that s/he is a fine scholar and a superb teacher. of aoki we must say that his brilliance as a pedagogue is inextricably interwoven with his brilliance as scholar and theoretician. it is the unique and powerful combination of the three that makes aoki’s work absolutely distinctive. in taking seriously the conference and, thereby, construing our coming together as an educational event, aoki acknowledges the centrality of the social in intellectual – and academic – life. in a time in which, in the u.s. at least, careerist self-interest and selfpromotion animate and, for many, define professional practice, aoki’s generosity in acknowledging the presence of others is exceptional. it discloses not only his utter intellectual honesty, but his profound sense of the ethical as well. “there are new curriculum researchers,” he tells his fellow conference goers in 1973, “with whose ventures i can strike a vibrant and resonant chord. although not too long ago this chord sounded strange deep inside me, that strangeness is fading. i think it is partly because in being at a conference such as this, i feel a sense of emergent becoming.” already, in this early essay (the title essay of the collection), we hear the auditory characterization of education as “resonance.” the last phrase – and its notion of “emergent becoming” – underscores the dynamic, developmental, and dialectical character of aoki’s intellectual formation. i intend my introduction to aoki collected essays to function in two ways. first, i hope it inaugurates a series of scholarly studies of aoki’s oeuvre. to situate aoki’s achievement within canadian curriculum studies is a project i trust will be undertaken by several; to those of you listening today, please know there is at least one (but, no doubt, not only one) book series editor committed to supporting such an effort. there should be comparative studies as well, such as of the intersections (and differences) between aoki’s work and scholarship in china, for instance. as well, there need to be studies of aoki’s influence on generations of younger scholars, and not only in north america. i would like to see extended studies of aoki’s intellectual life history. and certainly there is reason for a biography of this uniquely canadian intellectual and public pedagogue. especially in this time when the academic field of education is under savage attack by north american politicians (aoki once described it as “open hunting season for education”), it is incumbent upon us to maintain our professional dignity by reasserting our commitment to the intellectual life of our field. such a reassertion of our intellectual commitment includes, perhaps most of all, the study and teaching of curriculum theory and history. study in neither domain can proceed far without the careful consideration of the work of ted t. aoki. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci william f. pinar (2005) a bridge between chinese and north american curriculum studies transnational curriculum inquiry 2 (1) 2005 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 4 second, i trust my introduction will function as both teaching aid and study guide. this ambition may seem redundant, given how brilliantly aoki himself teaches in his essays. while that is the case, it is also true that aoki’s work is complex, nuanced, and profound, and students without backgrounds in phenomenology, poststructuralism and critical theory may well benefit from my sketching of the thematic and pedagogical movements in aoki’s work. i hope that my long and “lingering note” will stimulate students to engage aoki’s essays more actively than they otherwise might. as students of aoki’s work know, the title of the collection derives from an early essay that was widely read, including in the u.s. but its visibility and familiarity were not the only reasons why rita irwin and i proposed it to ted as the title of the entire collection. the concept of “key” is an auditory rather than visual one, and it is the primacy of the auditory in aoki’s work that constitutes one of his most important and unique contributions to the field. it is aoki’s critique of ocularcentrism in western epistemology and his honoring of the auditory, and specifically the musical, that enable us to hear curriculum in a new key. almost alone among curriculum theorists, aoki appreciated that after the “linguistic turn” comes an auditory one (see levin 1993). in the foreword to voices of teaching, published by the british columbia teachers’ federation, aoki appreciates teaching as a calling (he notes that “vocation” derives from the latin vocare, to call), and he characterizes the “voices of teaching” in this collection as having “sought ways of attunement that will allow them to hear, even faintly, the call of the calling.” speaking of those who contributed to the collection, aoki is also, it seems to me, speaking about himself when he writes: “the authors of voices of teaching offer us narratives of some moments in their experiences of teaching, thereby opening themselves to the lived meanings of teaching.” aoki’s theorizing is always profoundly pedagogical, deeply grounded in concrete and specific educational events, occasions for experiencing the lived meanings of teaching. disengaging himself from teaching as a bureaucratized profession, aoki opened himself to his own lived experience of teaching, at first in the hutterite school east of calgary (his first teaching job after “relocation” during world war ii), then in the public schools of southern alberta, nineteen years in all as teacher and assistant principal. after accepting a professorship at the university of alberta, aoki understood immediately (as we learn in chapter 13) that his “job” was not narrowly vocational, but profoundly theoretical, and that there was no unbridgeable divide between theory and practice. in characterizing these “voices of teaching,” aoki describes the work of finding themes in others’ work as “theming,” disclosing his fondness for gerunds rather than nouns, emphasizing the live in lived experience. “theming,” he writes, “is understood as a lingering intimately in embedded thoughtfulness in the story – as thoughtful listening in the nearness of the calling. such theming is, as some would say, reflective thoughtfulness.” the labor of “theming,” aoki concludes, involves what we might call a hermeneutic returning to the lived ground of human experience within the story – a place wherein inhabits a tensionality of both distance and nearing. it understands such a place as a resonant place where emerging from the silence may be heard the movement of melody and rhythm – polyphonic voices of teaching. where might such a place be? paradoxically, the place is where we already are – a place so near yet so far that we have forgotten its whereabouts. reflecting theming may allow us to come to know how sufficiently as humans we inhabit where we already are as teachers. this paragraph expresses several of the major themes of aoki’s remarkable career, among them the primacy of “lived experience,” a distant but near “place” of “resonance,” sounding http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci william f. pinar (2005) a bridge between chinese and north american curriculum studies transnational curriculum inquiry 2 (1) 2005 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 5 in unmistakable if silent rhythms the “polyphonic voices of teaching.” where is this “lived experience,” this “place” where we can hear the call of teaching? it is where we are “already.” these are deeply evocative themes, recalling phenomenology’s critique of contemporary life in the west as estranged from its ground, lost in the chimera of the mundane everyday world. nowhere is that inauthentic social world more “suffocating” (to use another gerund of aoki’s) than in those classrooms regulated by proliferating bureaucratic protocols, institutionalizations of western (mis)conceptions of “individualism” and “competence.” it is aoki’s voice – no unitary sound, indeed, polyphonic – that sounds the call of our vocation, that calls us back to its lived ground where we are already, if muffled by the distractions and obsessions of the maelstrom that structures inauthenticity. there, where we are already, we can dwell in a conjunctive space, not one splintered by binaries, a lived space marked by generative tensions which we can incorporate, embody, and personify in our dialogical encounters with students and colleagues. this “third space” within which we can dwell both incorporates and leads us to the world outside. it is the space between political and bureaucratic stipulation and the classroom reenactment of those contractual obligations, the space between what aoki so usefully characterizes as “curriculum-as-plan” and “curriculum-as-lived.” it is the space where we work (and play) to understand the educational meaning of our being together, in classrooms, at conferences, in seminars, engaged in improvisation, that disciplined and creative reconstitution of the past in anticipation of a future waiting to be heard in the present. “it is,” aoki explains, “a space of doubling, where we slip into the language of ‘both this and that, but neither this nor that.’ … the space moves and is alive.” it is to this profoundly spatial, temporal and vibrant character of curriculum to which aoki’s work testifies. significantly, it is not temporality severed from history. aoki’s narratives of his own schooling (the story of mr. ncnab in chapter 7), the family’s “evacuation” during world war ii and his encounters with ignorance and prejudice,1 his mention of specific events (such as the challenger disaster and the columbine murders2) keep “time” grounded in “history,” but never collapsing the two. there is always in aoki’s work an attunement to time that exceeds historicity, an attunement that renders aoki not only a philosopher, but a historian, an autobiographer, always the sophisticated theoretician, in each instance answering the call of pedagogy, speaking in the voice(s) of teaching. ted is always teaching. nearly all of these essays are speeches; they are, in a profound sense of the word, “lessons.” and even though the lessons he teaches are complex, never does he seem distracted by that complexity. indeed, he is always attentive to the concreteness and singularity of the situation at hand. invariably he acknowledges (respectfully) the occasion on which he is speaking, often referring to the conference title or theme, and organizing his lesson around those signifiers. he proceeds with the sophistication and savvy of the veteran classroom teacher he is, sometimes disarming his listeners with a folksy story, sometimes taking on their own incomprehension as his own, embodying in himself their struggles to understand the lesson he is presenting, to bridge the distance between where they are and where he invites them to visit. aoki’s pedagogical movements from the concrete to the abstract and back again, and into the spaces among and between them, dazzles me, enables me to linger longer, listening to this master “musician” play. 1 like japanese americans, japanese canadians were forcibly relocated from their homes to “camps” in the nations’ interior, an abridgement of fundamental civil rights fueled by (unfounded) fears of their complicity with japanese military aggression in world war ii. 2 the challenger disaster occurred on january 28, 1986; seven crew members perished in the accident. the columbine murders were committed by students in littleton, colorado on april 20, 1999 (see webber 2003). http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci william f. pinar (2005) a bridge between chinese and north american curriculum studies transnational curriculum inquiry 2 (1) 2005 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 6 in that “music” we hear echoes of pieces he has played before, but there is never simple repetition. as in jazz (in chapter 23 a visiting trumpeter makes this point explicit), the narratives aoki reiterates sound differently each time he speaks them, each time in a new context, serving a different purpose, while reconceptualizing an enduring theme. there is in aoki’s oeuvre a robust recursive movement, as aoki returns to lessons past in making points present, anticipating ideas yet to come. it is this temporal enactment of his pedagogy – organizing these speeches into “moments” and “echoes” – that enables listeners to understand the lessons he has to teach. i had suggested to ted that he organize these essays chronologically so students could see how his thought evolved over time. too linear, i could hear him say in that familiar twinkling of his eye. after rereading the foreword to the voices of teaching i know why; he was “theming,” reflecting the gatherings that stimulated his thought, the clustering of concepts, the reconfiguring of melodies, creating new sounds of dissonance and difference out of juxtapositions a simple chronology would have silenced. i am grateful that he declined my suggestions and stayed his course, a course, like the one he taught in montreal, without foundations, in this instance, temporal foundations. “foundations” would be too reductionistic, too binary. aoki is, by his own admission, a “bridge,” both a noun and a verb. this theme shows up in the chapters on “conversation” on the pacific rim. he is “a person,” as he puts it, who is “both self and other.” “it is my wish,” aoki offers in 1988, “to serve as a bridge over the pacific ocean.” aoki lives on the pacific rim, he is japanese and canadian (as he makes clear, a slippery set of signifiers), he is well aware of western individualism (the limitations of which he has insistently pointed out), well aware of the eastern side of the rim (specifically japan). at one point aoki quotes roshin, a taoist teacher, to make his point: “humanity’s greatest delusion is that i am here and you are there.” there is no american-style narcissism here, in which the “other” disappears into the “self.” aoki invokes levinas (1969) to ensure that western listeners and readers do not mistake the profoundly ethical, relational, indeed, ecological character of “self and other.” it is aoki’s enduring sense of the ethical that enables him to occupy a space between history and time, between continents, between the public school classroom and the university seminar room, between a north american field in collapse in the 1960s and a field experiencing intellectual rejuvenation today. aoki’s career started in the tylerian past, but he never seems to have been seduced by the apparently commonsensical purposes to which tyler’s work was put, namely the conversion of the school into a factory.3 over and over again aoki points out that education is not a business, that a school principal is not an administrative manager (but, rather, a principal teacher). somehow aoki knew that we needed not to see a new curriculum model, but to hear curriculum in a new key. and the new key he has composed is breathtaking beautiful in its sonorous poeticity, powerfully and provocatively multiplying in its concepts. because the concept is central in the u.s., i would like to focus on aoki’s use of the notion of “conversation.” in the collection it shows up first in chapter 4, where aoki revisits his experience during the 1970s evaluating the british columbia social studies curriculum. in what he characterizes as the “situational interpretative evaluation orientation,” the primary interests are those meanings ascribed to the situation by those engaged in teaching and studying the curriculum. in order to represent those meanings, aoki and his b.c. social studies assessment team employed “conversational analysis.” in contrast to many evaluation schemes that test the match between curriculum as planned and curriculum as lived, aoki has 3 ralph tyler’s four principles of curriculum and instruction have (to some extent inadvertently) been employed to reduce if not eradicate academic, i.e. intellectual, freedom in the u.s. school. for a description of tyler’s principles, see tyler (1949) and pinar et al. (1995), chapters 1 and 3. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci william f. pinar (2005) a bridge between chinese and north american curriculum studies transnational curriculum inquiry 2 (1) 2005 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 7 shifted the meaning of evaluation by pointing away from bureaucrats’ preconceived ideas to teachers and students experience of the curriculum in the classroom, disclosed in aoki’s analysis of their conversation. disclosing the primacy of phenomenology in his thinking even at this early stage, aoki notes that the conversation he has in mind is not “chit-chat,” nor is it the simple exchange of messages or only the communication of information. none of these, he suggests, requires “true human presence.” nor is language only a tool by means of which thoughts are recoded into words. curriculum as conversation, in this formulation, is no conveyor belt of “representational knowledge.” it is a matter of attunement, an auditory rather than visual conception. later (in chapter 10), aoki brings this phenomenological critique of “conversation” to bear on issues of intercultural education, specifically as these surfaced in the internationallyattended graduate program in curriculum studies at the university of alberta. revealing his characteristic pedagogical movement from the abstract to the concrete, from the theoretical to the anecdotal, here from the local to the global, aoki conceives of graduate study as “a conversation of mankind” in a “trans-national situation.” speaking with students who have come to alberta from beyond north america, aoki is reminded of the instrumentality of his assignment as an administrator and of the centrality of conversation in the process of education. in this intercultural educational experience, aoki worries about the erasure of originary identities: “to remind ourselves of who we are in conversation,” he suggests to these students, “i ask that we turn the conversation to ourselves.” he poses to them what might be the central curriculum question in an era of globalization: “how will you know that what we consider ‘good’ here is ‘good’ in your homeland’?” in this same essay, aoki employs “conversation” to think about what might comprise an “authentic dialogue” among scholars worldwide, a topic most apropos to us assembling in shanghai. “if east-west conversation in curriculum is to be authentically east-west dialogue, if north-south conversation is to be authentically north-south dialogue,” he suggests, then “such conversation must be guided by an interest in understanding more fully what is not said by going beyond what is said.” here aoki is using a phenomenology of language – and specifically its depth imagery – to remind us that the social surface of speech is precisely that. authentic conversation requires “going beyond” the surface to take into account “unspoken” and “taken-for-granted” assumptions, including “ideology,” what aoki characterizes as “the cultural crucible and context that make possible what is said by each in the conversational situation.” with the inclusion of the concept of “ideology,” aoki is disclosing a complication of his initial phenomenological formulation, here by critical theory, specifically the work of habermas. aoki reminds us that “authentic conversation is open conversation,” never “empty,” always one in which the participants engage in a “reciprocity of perspectives.” invoking one of his favorite metaphors, he tells us: “i understand conversation as a bridging of two worlds by a bridge, which is not a bridge.” conversation is a passage from here to there and elsewhere, but it is not “here” or “there” or “elsewhere,” but in the conjunctive spaces inbetween. aoki employs “bridge” in both literal and metaphoric senses; the idea seems to foreshadow the bridging movements in his own work. that movement is evident in a 1992 speech to the association for supervision and curriculum development (ascd; see chapter 9). it is, in my judgment, a most remarkable paper in which aoki moves deftly between high abstraction and amusing anecdote. among the abstractions he introduces to this audience of school personnel is interdisciplinarity, specifically, the teaching of science as one of the humanities. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci william f. pinar (2005) a bridge between chinese and north american curriculum studies transnational curriculum inquiry 2 (1) 2005 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 8 lest he run off his audience of administrators by such talk, aoki creates a scenario on bourbon street (given that this conference was being held in new orleans, he is enabling his audience to “run off” while remaining seated). in this scenario, a scientist and a novelist are engaged in conversation, yes, about science taught as one of the humanities. here he seems to be using “conversation” commonsensically, but this seems to me strategic, and it doesn’t last long. quickly this concrete sense of conversation becomes abstract “under the influence,” not of drink (as one might suspect, being on bourbon street), but of the philosophy of gilles deleuze.4 for in this encounter between the scientist and novelist, aoki imagines, as he puts it, “improvised lines of movement growing from the middle of their conversation.” such improvisation in conversation requires, he says, “a new language,” still a phenomenological theme, but now emitting a decidedly poststructuralist sound. the language aoki hears in this interdisciplinary conversation on bourbon street has, he tells us, “a grammar in which a noun is not always a noun, in which conjoining words like between and and are no mere joining words, a new language that might allow a transformative resonance of the words paradigms, practices, and possibilities” (a reference to the subtitle of william schubert’s widely-read 1986 study). “if that be so,” he concludes, returning us from the abstract to the concrete with humor, “we should all move to the french quarter, so that we can not only listen, but also join them right in the middle of their conversation.” conversation understood as authentic attunement to “true human presence” was, let us remember, a radical idea in the 1970s; for many trapped in the school-as-a-business it remains so today. by characterizing the exchange of “information” as “chit-chat,” aoki was, in the 1973 essay, calling to us to rethink not only what we mean by “evaluation,” but, as we reflect on his later (in chapter 5) questionings of technology, to rethink the so-called age of information in which we presumably live. in 1992, not blocks from bourbon street, he is employing poststructuralism to disperse disciplinary identities and to create interdisciplinary spaces between the humanities and the sciences, spaces that include both sets of disciplines. twenty years after his initial and important formulation of the concept of “conversation” as evocative of and attuned to “true human presence,” aoki (presumably retired, mind you) is speaking of conversation in less somber tones. by the early 1990s aoki is speaking of conversation as a version of jazz, a notion which first shows up in the 1991 bobby shew anecdote (see chapter 23) and a discussion of improvisation, although the language he employs in the new orleans speech to ascd is deleuzean. rather than returning to something lost or at least in jeopardy (“true human presence”), aoki now focuses on something futural, something to be created, a “new language,” and through improvisation. there is no question for aoki of working from either phenomenology or from poststructuralism. the interest in language and, more specifically, the analysis of the conjunctions of apparently mutually exclusive binaries through deconstruction is present in heidegger (if in the service of retrieving “true human presence”), as john caputo (1987) and others have made clear (see pinar et al. 1995, chapter 8). aoki never abandons phenomenology, but he follows it to its edge where conversation as hermeneutics becomes conversation as “improvisation.” this is, i submit, a powerful notion that allows us to emphasize not only the creativity of teaching, but an idea that enables us to “hear” the relation between theory and practice. as aoki notes in the title essay (if in visual terms): “rather than seeing theory as leading into practice, we need now more than ever to see it as a reflective moment in praxis.” in the 4 deleuze has becoming increasingly important in north american curriculum studies: see especially the work of jacques daignault, whose deleuzean elements are explicated in hwu (1993), pinar et al. (1995), roy (2003), and reynolds (2003). http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci william f. pinar (2005) a bridge between chinese and north american curriculum studies transnational curriculum inquiry 2 (1) 2005 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 9 sounds of our conversation we honor the past by self-reflectively reformulating it in the present, animated by our own and others’ self-reflexive and “true human presence.” that is the jazz of praxis. if we focus on the auditory character of aoki’s metaphors, we see continuity as well as change in the essays. from the beginning, aoki is critical of scientistic observation (and its uncritical privileging of the visual), emphasizing instead the sound of conversation (and its privileging of the auditory). he makes this critique explicit in a 1991 speech to the british columbia music educators’ association, where he points out that conversation is primarily an auditory experience. in this important paper, aoki quotes derrida, kierkegaard, and heidegger to emphasize the significance of the ear and of listening in educational experience. he writes: i pause [a musical term as well] to reflect. lingering in the reflection, i confess that, over the years of schooling and teaching, i have become beholden to the metaphor of the i/eye – the i that sees…. for myself, i too had become enamored of the metaphor of videre (to see, thinking and speaking of what eyes can see). this formulation represents a major theoretical advance in our understanding of curriculum as conversation. in creating a “new language” in which sonare becomes as least as important as videre, aoki has changed everything. gone are decades of behaviorism and its residues in observational analysis. questioned is the very subject-object binary in western epistemology, imprinted as that is throughout the school curriculum and mainstream educational research. questioned is the relegation of classroom teaching to “implementation,” a bureaucratic bridge between objectives and assessment. present are the sounds of complicated conversation in which teachers are bridges between curriculum-as-plan and curriculum-as-lived, between the state and the multitude, between history and culture: “conversation,” aoki explains, “is a bridging of two worlds by a bridge, which is not a bridge.” “bridge” here is both noun and verb; it is both literal and metaphoric. it is both spatial and temporal. as webster’s dictionary points out, “bridge” is defined as “time, place, or means of connection or transition.” aoki himself performs, indeed personifies, such temporal and spatial connections and transitions: between the traditional and reconceptualized fields, between phenomenology and poststructuralism, between theory and pedagogy, between the west coast and the prairies, between canada and the united states, between east and west. to bridge east and west, aoki moves away from a focus on the separate identities of the binary and into the spaces between them. as he puts it, he is “trying to undo the instrumental sense of ‘bridge’.” such a nuanced sense of “bridge” is implied by the conjunction “and” in the binary. by focusing on the conjunctive space between “east and west,” and by understanding “and” as “both ‘and’ and ‘not-and’,” aoki proposes a bridging space of “both conjunction and disjunction.” this is, aoki explains, a space of tension, both “and/not-and,” a space “of conjoining and disrupting, indeed, a generative space of possibilities, a space wherein in tensioned ambiguity newness emerges.” that last phrase describes, i think, the space aoki created in his own work, wherein we can now listen as if with new ears to conversation across terrains of difference, a complicated conversation in which both separation and belonging together exist in generative tension. the latter phrase is explicated in a 1990 paper, beautifully entitled “the sound of pedagogy in the silence of the morning calm” (chapter 25), in which he privileges the gerund “belonging” over the noun “together”: “belonging” takes precedence over “together,” he explains, thereby revealing the “being” of “belonging.” in his subtle and sophisticated conceptualization, http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci william f. pinar (2005) a bridge between chinese and north american curriculum studies transnational curriculum inquiry 2 (1) 2005 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 10 “being” vibrates like a violin string, and in its sound, honors the complexity and integrity of individual identity and social relationality. “bridge” is a musical term as well, defined by webster’s dictionary as “an arch serving to raise the strings of a musical instrument.” i submit that ted aoki has raised us, the individual strings of the field, attuning us to our calling as educators. he has ennobled us by his labor, he has enabled us to “be” in our belonging together, engaged in creative and disciplined “improvisation” as we traverse the terrain of our lived differences as educators. “there are other bridges,” aoki notes, such as those found in japanese gardens, including nitobe’s garden on the university of british columbia campus (where aoki also taught). in his bridging movements from the abstract to the concrete, from the metaphoric to the literal, from history to culture, aoki has advanced, as he has complicated, our understanding of our pedagogical and scholarly calling as curriculum theorists. his work is a bridge, and like the bridge he describes in chapter 18, “we are in no hurry to cross over; in fact, such bridges lure us to linger.” this metaphoric bridge is “a site or clearing in which earth, sky, mortals and divine, long to be together, belong together.” aoki’s work has created that clearing. conclusion a “great connection” (quoted in zhang and zhong 2003, p. 254) by discussing here the work of the great north american scholar ted aoki, i hope to contribute to the creation of “dialogue between chinese curriculum wisdom and western curriculum theories,” to help “form a dynamic relationship between the two” (zhang and zhong 2003, p. 260). like aoki, zhang and zhong (2003, p. 253) employ “hermeneutics, not positivism” to understand curriculum. they point out that curriculum (ke-cheng) “originally pointed to temple, signifying ‘great cause,’ ‘great connection’” (zhang and zhong 2003, p. 254). during the tang dynasty, they report, “curriculum was not limited to school curriculum; it included all the great undertakings in society” (zhang and zhong 2003, p. 254). can there be a greater undertaking than the education of the young? professors zhang and zhong explain succinctly how the three great chinese cultural traditions – confucianism, taoism, and buddhism – inform chinese “curriculum wisdom” (2003, p. 253): “according to confucianism,” zhang and zhong (2003, p. 256) report, “curriculum is a moral event.” they suggest that it is also a “sociopolitical text” (p. 255) but, “finally,” it is a moral one: “confucianism understands the educated man as a moral man” (p. 260). “[w]hat taoist curriculum wisdom provides for us,” they continue, “is a teleological meaning of nature…. the educated man, according to taoist curriculum wisdom, is authentic mean (natural man)” (zhang and zhong 2003,p. 258). the third great chinese cultural tradition is buddhism: “in the view of buddhist curriculum wisdom,” zhang and zhong (2003, p. 259) explain, “the educated man is the enlightened man.” in language deeply resonant with aoki’s, they point out: the enlightened man is not a knowledge cabinet, but a man of spirituality. wonder, awe, reverence, imagination, transcendence, quietude, empathy and caring are essential elements of spirituality. can we find them in our curriculum? our curriculum is so disenchanted. both curriculum theory and curriculum practice need to be re-enchanted if we do not want to produce one-dimensional persons and dull souls. (zhang and zhong 2003, p. 259) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci william f. pinar (2005) a bridge between chinese and north american curriculum studies transnational curriculum inquiry 2 (1) 2005 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 11 this powerful statement of chinese curriculum wisdom intersects with aoki’s to “bridge” north american and chinese curriculum traditions and to make possible “a great connection” between the two. the notion of “wisdom” is quite strong in chinese culture, hongyu wang (2003; 2004) reports, and “it is indeed related to the sense of both place and time,” two themes prominent in the work of aoki, zhang and zhong. not only a matter of meditation and insight but also of spontaneity and playfulness, wang (2003) points out that such wisdom “can be a practical wisdom,” but “not procedural or behaviorist.” “it is much more than intellect or intelligence,” she adds, “definitely more than activity-oriented worksheet way of teaching.” indeed, wang continues, “doing” is not a major concept in chinese education, as it tends to be in north american schools. in this regard, as for aoki, teaching is more a mode of being than a matter of “doing,” in which “complicated conversation” can create bridges across place and time. on behalf of the international association for the advancement of curriculum studies, i wish to thank professors zhong and zhang and their colleagues serving on the preparatory committee for hosting this first world conference on curriculum studies. it is on behalf of a “great cause,” and it has been, i trust, for many of you in attendance, a “great connection” with curriculum scholarship worldwide. inspired by canadian and chinese curriculum wisdom, may our conference become, above all, a profoundly educational event. may the “complicated conversation” that is the emerging worldwide field of curriculum be advanced by this important and historical event. thank you very much. references caputo, john (1987). radical hermeneutics: repetition, deconstruction and the hermeneutic project. bloomington: indiana university press. daignault, jacques (1992a). traces at work from different places. in william f. pinar and william m. reynolds (eds.), understanding curriculum as phenomenological and deconstructed text (195-215). new york: teachers college press. deleuze, gilles (1986). foucault. [foreword by paul a. bové. translated and edited by sean hand.] minneapolis: university of minnesota press. deleuze, gilles (1993). the fold: leibniz and the baroque. [forward and translation by t. conley.] minneapolis & london: university of minnesota press. deleuze, gilles and guattari, félix (1977). anti-oedipus: capitalism and schizophrenia. new york: viking. deleuze, gilles & guattari, félix (1987). a thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia. [trans. and foreword by brian massumi.] minneapolis: university of minnesota press. derrida, jacques (1976). of grammatology. [trans. by g. spivak.] baltimore, md: johns hopkins university press. [originally published in paris, 1967.] habermas, jurgen (1970). knowledge and human interests. boston, ma: beacon press. habermas, jurgen (1979). communication and the evolution of society. [t. mccarthy, trans.] boston, ma: beacon press. heidegger, martin (1962). being and time. [trans. j. macquarrie & e. robinson.] new york: harper & row. hwu, wen-song (1993). toward understanding poststructuralism and curriculum. baton rouge, la: louisiana state university, department of curriculum and instruction, unpublished ph.d. dissertation. kierkegaard, soren (1957). the concept of dread. [trans. w. lowrie.] princeton: princeton university press. levinas, emmanuel (1969). totality and infinity: an essay on exteriority. [trans. by alphonso lingis.] pittsburgh, pa: duquensne university press. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci william f. pinar (2005) a bridge between chinese and north american curriculum studies transnational curriculum inquiry 2 (1) 2005 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 12 levin, david michael (ed.) (1993). modernity and the hegemony of vision (1-29). berkeley: university of california press. pinar, william f. (2004). what is curriculum theory? mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum. pinar, william f. and irwin, rita l. (eds.) (2oo4). the collected works of ted t. aoki. mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum. pinar, william f., reynolds, william m., slattery, patrick, taubman, peter m. (1995). understanding curriculum: an introduction to historical and contemporary curriculum discourses. new york: peter lang. reynolds, william m. (2003). curriculum: a river runs through it. new york: peter lang. roy, kaustuv (2003). teachers in nomadic spaces: deleuze and curriculum. new york: peter lang. schubert, william h. (1986). curriculum: perspective, paradigm, and possibility. new york: macmillan. tyler, ralph w. (1949). basic principles of curriculum and instruction. chicago, il: university of chicago press. wang, honyu (2003). personal communication. wang, honyu (2004). the call from the stranger on a journey home: curriculum in a third space. new york: peter lang. webber, julie a. (2003). failure to hold: the politics of school violence. lanham, md: roman & littlefield. zhang, hua and zhong, qiquan (2003). curriculum studies in china: retrospect and prospect. in william f. pinar (ed.), international handbook of curriculum research. mawah, nj: lawrence erlbaum. author william f. pinar is founding president of the international association for the advancement of curriculum studies and canada research chair at the university of british columbia, canada, where he directs the internationalization of curriculum studies project. he taught at the university of rochester from 1972-1985 and from 1987-2005 he taught curriculum theory at louisiana state university, where he served as the st. bernard parish alumni endowed professor. he has also served as the frank talbott professor at the university of virginia and the a. lindsay o'connor professor of american institutions at colgate university. correspondence to: william.pinar@ubc.ca http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: anwaruddin, sardar. (2013). can an itinerant curriculum theory travel? transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (1). http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> can an itinerant curriculum theory travel? sardar m. anwaruddin 1 university of toronto, canada introduction initiatives to internationalize the field of curriculum studies are relatively recent. before proceeding to a discussion of curriculum studies as an international field, i should clarify that “there has long been a well established field of international and comparative education, but curriculum studies is customarily contained within national and local boundaries in the form of educational practices that are embedded in local and national histories and cultures” (carson, 2009, p. 145). curriculum inquiry has traditionally occurred within national borders and has been shaped by the national policies and priorities. moreover, efforts to understand curriculum inquiry from an international perspective have been influenced by the curricular methods and concepts available in economically and technologically dominant nations. only the previous decade has witnessed a growing movement toward a true internationalization of curriculum studies. among the earliest attempts to internationalize the field was the oslo meeting under the leadership of professor bjorg gundem. this meeting called for a conversation between european and north american traditions of curriculum inquiry. william pinar (2003) believes that “if there develops someday a worldwide field of curriculum studies, it can be said to have been conceived in oslo in august 1995” (p. 3). the next breakthrough meeting to internationalize the field took place in 2000 at the louisiana state university (lsu). in his presidential address to the attendees of this meeting, pinar (2003) emphasized that the internationalization project “need[ed] to be constructed from the ground up” and the participants of the lsu conference were “on the ground floor” (p. 3). in this conference of scholars from all continents and twenty seven countries, pinar proposed a worldwide field of curriculum studies, which was not supposed to simply mirror the north american traditions of curriculum inquiry. pinar also made clear that the goal of this project was not to look “for new ‘markets’ for american conceptual products” (p. 5). rather, he warned everybody of the “unbelievable narcissism of american curriculum studies” (p. 4). while defining the character of this internationalization project, noel gough (2003) succinctly describes what it means to contest this narcissism: internationalizing curriculum inquiry might best be understood as a process of creating transnational ‘spaces’ in which scholars from different localities collaborate in reframing and decentering their own knowledge traditions and negotiate trust in each other’s contributions to their collective work. for those of us who work in western knowledge traditions, a first step must be to represent and perform our distinctive approaches to curriculum inquiry in ways that authentically demonstrate their localness. this may include drawing attention to the anwaruddin. can an itinerant curriculum theory travel? 53 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (1) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci characteristic ways in which western genres of academic textual production invite readers to interpret local knowledge as universal discourse. (p. 68) thus, at the heart of this project is to build transnational and transcultural solidarities which “requires a rethinking of the ways in which we perform and represent curriculum inquiry, so that curriculum work within a global knowledge economy does not merely assimilate national (local) curriculum discourses-practices into an imperial (global) archive” (gough, 2004, p. 1). since the lsu conference and the establishment of the international association for the advancement of curriculum studies (iaacs) in 2000, many scholars (see, for example, huber, 2010) have taken up the idea of internationalizing curriculum inquiry. in his recent book, paraskeva (2011) looks at the field of curriculum studies from a historical perspective. he uses the metaphor of a river to offer an understanding of how the field has evolved and how different theorists fought to control the flow of this river. referring to the current tensions in the field, paraskeva proposes an itinerant curriculum theory to fight against epistemicide. he emphasizes that curriculum theorists shift their focus and “deterritorialize their approaches and assume a critical itinerant position” (p. 3). this is necessary because he believes that the knowledges of western male scholars have dominated the field and that any other knowledges have been silenced or marginalized. paraskeva’s argument is grounded to a large extent in boaventura de sousa santos’s (2008) claim that there will be no global social justice without global cognitive justice. santos (2008) brings together social scientists from latin america, africa, and asia to show how another world of knowledge exists beyond the northern epistemic boundaries. one of santos’s key purposes is to respond to different forms of oppression stemming from the coloniality of knowledge and power. he focuses attention on how colonial epistemic monoculture affects our understanding of such concepts as modernity and development. santos, nunes, and meneses (2008) present nine theses in order to contribute to the opening of a different cannon of knowledge. among them, the following thesis is particularly relevant to this article as well as to paraskeva’s notion of an itinerant curriculum theory: “the decolonization of science is based on the idea that there is no global social justice without global cognitive justice. the logic of the monoculture of scientific knowledge and rigor must be confronted with the identification of other knowledges and criteria of rigor that operate credibly in other social practices regarded as subaltern” (p. xlix, emphasis added). history is filled with accounts of how hegemonic forms of knowledge are produced, distributed, and consumed. the domination of northern epistemologies has remained ascendant with the rapid spread of the notion of “modernization” and the recent technological and economic globalization. a question that critical scholars, e.g., apple (1990) and giroux (1991) often ask is: whose knowledge is being globalized? they argue that forms of knowledge that do not fit in the western traditions are generally suppressed and ignored. scholars such as bennett (2007) call it epistemicide, in which “other” knowledges are skillfully rendered invisible or swallowed up. santos (2004) argues that the knowledges that do not exist are also produced, but they are produced as non-existent. in order to resist the hegemony of the northern epistemologies, these scholars demand for epistemological diversity and cognitive pluralism. along this line, paraskeva (2011) makes a strong argument for such diversity and pluralism and recommends that we “assume consciously that (an)other knowledge is possible,” and that we “go beyond the western anwaruddin. can an itinerant curriculum theory travel? 54 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (1) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci epistemological platform, paying attention to other forms of knowledge and respecting indigenous knowledge within and beyond the western space” (p. 152). an itinerant curriculum theory paraskeva (2011) argues for democratization of knowledges as a way of achieving social justice and cultural relevance in the curriculum. he proposes an itinerant curriculum theory to describe the struggle for this democratic and socially just curriculum. in the first 172 pages of his book conflicts in curriculum theory: challenging hegemonic epistemologies, paraskeva presents an extensive review of the history and development of curriculum studies as a field. it is only the final 16 pages of the book where he describes his proposed itinerant theory. although it is not my primary purpose in this article to thoroughly critique paraskeva’s itinerant curriculum theory, i briefly focus on some issues that arise from his proposal. in this paragraph, i deliberately use many quotations from paraskeva to capture the essence of his argument. borrowing from deleuze and guattari’s (1988) conception of deterritorialization, he emphasizes that “in essence, curriculum theory should give voice to an engineering of differences by deterritorializing itself and looking for new ways of thinking and feeling about education” (p. 174). he presents his theory as “a commitment to fight for a different research platform” (p. 176). quoting edward said, he says that the purpose of his curriculum theory “is to travel, to go beyond the limits, to move, and stay in a kind of permanent exile” (p. 177). then he moves on to a discussion of epistemology and argues that “western epistemological views need to pay attention and learn from other nonwestern epistemological views in and beyond the west” (p. 179). then he brings in linda smith (1999) and talks about decolonization of methodological frameworks. without digging much deeper into smith’s arguments, he presents boaventura de sousa santos and contends that his itinerant curriculum theory “challenges modern/post modern western thinking, which is abyssal thinking in which the knowledge of the other is produced as non-existent” (p. 185). paraskeva also believes that as “deliberate disrespect of the canon” (p. 184), his itinerant curriculum theory should celebrate differences by deterritorializing itself. in the final paragraph of his book, he claims that his itinerant curriculum theory “is the best path for critical progressive curriculum scholars” (p. 188). this snapshot view of paraskeva’s itinerant curriculum theory raises a number of concerns, some of which i briefly describe below. first, deleuze and guattari’s inspiration is obvious from paraskeva’s reference to the concept of deterritorialization. deleuze and guattari (1988) use the metaphor of a rhizome as a theoretical lens to describe concepts such as deterritorialization and multiplicity. a rhizome is a plant stem, often underground, that is capable of producing new plants. it “allows the parent plant to propagate vegetatively (asexually) and also enables a plant to perennate (survive an annual unfavorable season) underground” (rhizome, 2012, para. 1). if a rhizome is broken into pieces, each piece may produce a new plant. the metaphor of a rhizome becomes meaningful for us because it “spreads from horizontal, bulbous underground shoots and flourishes in unforeseen and unpredictable directions” (hagood, 2009, p. 39, emphasis added). for deleuze and guattari (1988), each rhizome contains lines of territorialisation as well as lines of deterritorialization. however, “there is a rupture in the rhizome whenever segmentary lines explode into a line of flight, but the line of flight is part of the rhizome” (p. 9). the rhizome is characteristically different from trees and their roots because it anwaruddin. can an itinerant curriculum theory travel? 55 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (1) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci “connects any point to any other point,” and therefore, it “is reducible neither to the one nor the multiple” (p. 21). it is not possible to understand the rhizome in terms of units or specific points or positions. it does not have binary relations between any two points. it “is made only of lines: lines of segmentarity and stratification as its dimensions, and the line of flight or deterritorialization as the maximum dimension after which the multiplicity undergoes metamorphosis, changes in nature” (p. 21). because the rhizome is only directions in motion, which are irreducible, and its lines are always tied to one another, deleuze and guattari do not want to “posit a dualism or a dichotomy, even in the rudimentary form of the good and the bad” (p. 9). though paraskeva acknowledges his inspiration from deleuze and guattari, he takes binary logic to present his itinerant curriculum theory, which portrays west as the oppressor and non-west as the oppressed. his unwarranted and dichotomous claims—such as modern western thinking is abyssal and western knowledge system makes non-western knowledge invisible—are incongruent with deleuze and guattari’s concept of deterritorialization and multiplicity. this dichotomy leads to the second concern, i.e., an essentialist position that the proposed itinerant theory suggests. for deleuze and guattari, multiplicities are rhizomatic. unlike a tree or a root, a rhizome does not have any points or positions; it only has lines. these lines are not reducible to any one or many. in this sense, deleuze and guattari are resolutely anti-essentialist, but paraskeva’s emphasis on binary logic runs counter to their thought. in fact, the concept of rhizome has been used in post-colonial studies “to contest the binary, centre/margin view of reality that is maintained by colonial discourse. the key value of the term is to demonstrate that the repressive structures of imperial power themselves operate rhizomically rather than monolithically” (ashcroft, griffiths, & tiffin, 2000, p. 207). since power does not always operate in a simple vertical way, it is problematic to create essentialist political and cultural categories. colonial discourse theorists such as said (1979) and bhabha (1994) argue that these categories are fundamentally flawed because they constantly diffuse and intersect within the rhizomic networks of imperialism. additionally, in the concluding paragraph of his book, paraskeva claims that his itinerant curriculum theory “is the best path for critical progressive curriculum scholars” not only to understand concepts such as hegemony, power and ideology but also to address broader questions about schooling, curriculum, and social order (p. 188). by self-claiming the “best” position for his proposed theory, paraskeva follows a binary logic of dichotomy which is far away from deleuze and guattari’s concept of multiplicity. the third concern that arises from paraskeva’s proposal is his choice of the term “itinerant.” he does not provide an explanation of why he chose to call his theory “itinerant.” nonetheless, the use of this term implies that the journey of his curriculum theory is predictable and unidirectional—from west to non-west. this unidirectional journey/movement contradicts with deleuze and guattari’s (1988) theory of deterritorialization. the concept of nomad is of particular importance here, and it occupies an important place in deleuze and guattari’s philosophy. it is a powerful tool for understanding concepts such as state apparatus, smooth space, war machine, art, and religion. however, for our purpose here, i.e., to understand the notion of deterritorialization, let’s contrast the nomad with the migrant. although migrants go from one place to another and their destinations may be uncertain, their trajectory is different from that of nomads. the nomadic trajectory “does not fulfill the function of the sedentary road;” rather, “it distributes people (or animals) in an open space, one that is indefinite and anwaruddin. can an itinerant curriculum theory travel? 56 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (1) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci non communicating” (deleuze & guattari, 1988, p. 380, original emphasis). both the nomad and the migrant move, but deleuze and guattari believe that there are qualitative differences between their movements. the migrant reterritorializes after moving to a new place. for this, deleuze and guattari believe that only “the nomad can be called the deterritorialized par excellence…because there is no reterritorialization afterward as with the migrant” (p. 381, original emphasis). in this sense, when paraskeva recommends that curriculum theory travel and “stay in a kind of permanent exile” (p. 177), he reinforces the unidirectional movement of the migrant. therefore, from the perspectives of deleuze and guattari, the term “nomadic” seems to be a better choice than “itinerant” to signify the multiplicity of a curriculum theory inspired by the concept of deterritorialization. in summary, the three concerns—a binary logic of domination, an essentialist categorization of west and non-west, and a unidirectional movement of his theory— obscure our understanding of an itinerant curriculum theory which, according to paraskeva, is supposed to facilitate global cognitive justice and the internationalization of curriculum studies. although “deleuze and guattari’s geophilosophy is particularly helpful in thinking about the unavoidable concept of difference (within and between nations/regions/cultures) and the opportunities and dilemmas for curriculum scholars that difference produces” (gough, 2007, p. 284), paraskeva’s interpretation and application of deleuze and guattari’s concept of deterritorialization does not enable us to sufficiently understand how his proposed theory will be helpful for curriculum scholars. in spite of paraskeva’s references to many scholars, including deleuze and guattari, i believe that his arguments are based primarily on the works of santos (2004; 2008), who argues strongly for global cognitive justice. paraskeva urges that the curriculum workers fight against the coloniality of knowledge and thus prevent epistemicide by embracing the cognitive pluralism and epistemological diversity of the world. building on santos’s arguments, he believes that an itinerant theory “will challenge one of the fundamental characteristic[s] of abyssal thinking: the impossibility of co-presence of the two sides of the line; it will challenge the cultural politics of denial, that produces a radical absence, the absence of humanity, the modern sub-humanity” (p. 188). again, in light of a rhizomic understanding of (neo)colonialism, hegemony—cultural, economic, or epistemic—operates through blurry, sometimes invisible, networks in which each line has many sides and intersecting points, not just two. though i find paraskeva’s binary logic problematic, i accept his call for freeing the curriculum from the western epistemological boundary. i also add that curriculum needs to be free from all epistemological boundaries, not just from the western boundary. we need to be mindful “of the dangers of simply reversing the categories of oppressed and oppressor” and “of the dangers of creating a new indigenous elite who would act merely as neo-colonial puppets” (ashcroft, griffiths, & tiffin, 2000, p. 78). therefore, we need to abolish all boundaries and resist any forms of epistemological domination if we want to create transnational spaces in which scholars from different geographic locations may collaboratively engage in curriculum inquiry (gough, 2004). these transnational spaces may play an important role “to initiate a vigorous debate/dialogue among scholars of all races” and thus to fight against epistemological racism (scheurich & young, 1997, p. 11). i believe that the concept of deterritorialization—which is not adequately fleshed out in paraskeva’s proposal for an itinerant curriculum theory—is crucial to global cognitive justice and the internationalization of curriculum studies. however, i argue that we need to ask: what are the challenges that an itinerant curriculum theory based on the anwaruddin. can an itinerant curriculum theory travel? 57 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (1) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci concept of deterritorialization is likely to face? paraskeva does not tell us the challenges and obstacles that his theory will have to overcome. while i accept paraskeva’s call for deterritorializing curriculum theory, i am afraid that his proposal for an itinerant curriculum theory may remain an unattainable goal if it fails to overcome the challenges of english linguistic imperialism (phillipson, 1992, 2009), geopolitics of academic writing (canagarajah, 2002), and academic capitalism (slaughter & leslie, 1997). simply put, my argument is that an itinerant curriculum theory—or any similar proposal for internationalizing the field—has to challenge and overcome these three obstacles; otherwise, the vision of a worldwide field of curriculum studies may remain unfulfilled. linguistic imperialism i argue that the first obstacle for an itinerant curriculum theory is english linguistic imperialism. since the early days of british colonialism, the english language has played crucial roles in creating a class of natives who collaborate with the colonizers. for example, english education in british india was intended “to form a class who may be interpreters between us [colonizers] and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, indian in blood and color, but english in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect” (macaulay, 1995, p. 430). in the present neo-colonial time, the english language is being used as a tool of colonizing the minds of those who do not speak english as a mother tongue. phillipson’s (1992) thesis of linguistic imperialism helps us understand how “the dominance of english is asserted and maintained by the establishment and continuous reconstitution of structural and cultural inequalities between english and other languages” (p. 47). in this argument, “structural” refers to material properties such as institutions and financial allocations, and “cultural” means immaterial and ideological properties, e.g., pedagogic principles and beliefs. for phillipson (1992), linguistic imperialism is “a distinct type of imperialism,” and it “permeates all the types of imperialism” for two main reasons: the first is concerned with form and the second with content (p. 53). an interesting example of how english is used as an imperial language is robinson crusoe’s teaching of it to man friday. in most colonized territories, english was considered a language for success, and “was regarded as a force for the ‘modernizing’ of the country” (phillipson, 1992, p. 110). nowadays, many countries place heavy emphasis on teaching and learning of english as a means to “modernization” and “development.” neo-imperial organizations such as the british council seize this opportunity to teach english and make huge economic profits. we see such exploitive attitudes in the british council’s commonly used slogans, e.g., english for success and bridge to success (british council, 2012). in this age of economic globalization, english is being used as a hegemonic language that serves the interests of most western corporations and the u.s.-led neoempire. although many people around the world switch between two or more languages, this multilingualism is rarely observed in this neo-empire and its international affairs— political, business, or academic. thus, “where multilingualism characterizes the bottom of the world’s societies, monolingualism seems to be the rule at the top” (van dijk, 1997, p. 292). states around the world are imposing the english language not only on international business and politics, but also on internal affairs. this elimination of linguistic diversity and imposition of monolingualism have been described as linguicide which, for instance, was evident in “the internal colonization of the british isles, with the attempted extermination of welsh and gaelic, and in north america and hawai’ at the expense of first nations languages” (phillipson, 2009, p. 149). anwaruddin. can an itinerant curriculum theory travel? 58 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (1) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci some scholars take a rather naïve approach to english as a lingua franca, which generally refers to a common language used as a tool of communication between groups who do not share a common mother tongue. however, phillipson (2009) argues that lingua franca, as a culturally neutral term, is misleading and false. in many societies, english is used as a language of social inclusion and exclusion, and for formation of elite status. thus, the linguistic imperialism of english entails unequal rights of communication between diverse groups who speak different languages. the hegemonic status of english tries to legitimize such exploitation and social injustice. even more crucial than the fact that english is being used as a hegemonic language is the question of why people choose to use english (pennycook, 2001). what are the factors that affect people’s choice? in this sense, linguistic diversity is not an isolated matter; it is an integral part of fundamental human rights. according to unesco (2013), “it is estimated that, if nothing is done, half of 6000 plus languages spoken today will disappear by the end of this century. with the disappearance of unwritten and undocumented languages, humanity would lose not only a cultural wealth but also important ancestral knowledge embedded, in particular, in indigenous languages” (para. 1). if this estimate is correct, then we are losing one language in every 11 days. this is alarming! in the countries where english is the language of the dominant group, other languages are constantly under pressure. in places where english is not the language of the dominant group, the neo-imperial countries and corporations are pushing for more use of english. inter-governmental organizations, e.g., the world bank, also prioritize teaching and learning of english in the countries where it is not widely used. today, english is being used for different purposes in different contexts. phillipson (2009) discusses various purposes of using english. some examples include english as a lingua economica, as a lingua academica, as a lingua emotive, as a lingua cultura, as a lingua bellica, and as a lingua divina. english as a lingua academica is of particular relevance to the purpose of this article. it refers to the use of english in scholarly publications, at international academic conferences, and as a medium of teaching and learning at educational institutions. this transnational use of english as a lingua academica feeds into what altbach (1995) describes as educational neocolonialism. thus, phillipson’s (1992; 2009) thesis of linguistic imperialism is a major barrier to paraskeva’s itinerant curriculum theory. drawing on macedo (2000), paraskeva touches briefly on the hegemony of the english language and how it devalues the knowledges of those who speak other languages. for this, he stresses the need to initiate conversations of curriculum in languages other than english. however, i believe that conversations have been occurring in other languages, but they are not being adequately heard by the englishspeaking curriculum scholars in the global north. the ability to speak does not guarantee equality; the act of speaking becomes meaningful only when the speaker is seriously listened to. as spivak (1990) succinctly puts: for me, the question ‘who should speak?’ is less crucial than ‘who will listen?’ ‘i will speak for myself as a third world person’ is an important position for political mobilization today. but the real demand is that, when i speak from that position, i should be listened to seriously; not with that kind of benevolent imperialism, really, which simply says that because i happen to be an indian or whatever…a hundred years ago it was impossible for me to speak, for the precise anwaruddin. can an itinerant curriculum theory travel? 59 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (1) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci reason that makes it only too possible for me to speak in certain circles now. (pp. 59-60) therefore, it is important that the english-speaking scholars listen to the curriculum conversations taking place in other languages. we need to keep in mind that ability to use the english language is not only a matter of international communication, but it is also related to the colonial legacy of cultural and racial discriminations. for many people around the world, an inability to speak and write in english has become a scholarly burden (van dijk, 1997). because of english linguistic imperialism and its role as an inclusion/exclusion mechanism, i am afraid that the deterritorialization of curriculum theory proposed by paraskeva will be very difficult, especially if the curriculum scholars writing in languages other than english are excluded from the curriculum conversations. geopolitics of academic writing i argue that the second obstacle for paraskeva’s itinerant curriculum theory is what canagarajah (2002) calls geopolitics of academic writing. the written medium has tremendous power to transmit information to the global audience. those who have resources and ability to control the written medium get the advantages of generating and disseminating knowledge. the abilities of the dominant groups in this respect include not only printing presses but also cost-effective technologies and global networks of marketing and distribution. canagarajah (2002) contends that these advantages have enabled most western communities to disseminate their knowledge and information and, at the same time, to appropriate the knowledges of other communities. canagarajah’s (2002) central argument consists of the following components: academic writing holds a central place in the process of constructing, disseminating, and legitimizing knowledge; however, for discursive and material reasons, third world scholars experience exclusion from academic publishing and communication; therefore the knowledge of third world communities is marginalized or appropriated by the west, while the knowledge of western communities is legitimated and reproduced; and as part of this process, academic writing/publishing plays a role in the material and ideological hegemony of the west. (p. 6) due to this geopolitics of academic writing, it will be very difficult for the critical curriculum river (paraskeva, 2011) to travel beyond the western epistemic harbor. in addition to the linguistic barrier for scholars who speak languages other than english, a lack of resources in the global south make it harder for them to undertake research projects and publish their academic writings. for example, if we analyze the global expenditures in research, we see that the united states has invested more than any other country in research. as lillis and curry (2010) report, “in 2005 the us share of global research expenditures was approximately 35%” (p. 11). thus, geographic locations of scholars and the language they speak greatly influence their ability to publish research findings and to contribute to the theorization in the field. unfortunately, scholars from all communities do not get equal rights to participate in this theorization. for many years, “research publications remain highly concentrated in a few countries, with more than 80% anwaruddin. can an itinerant curriculum theory travel? 60 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (1) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci of world scientific articles coming from the oecd area, nearly two-thirds of them g8 countries” (lillis & curry, 2010, p. 11). let’s take the field of curriculum studies as an example. as paraskeva (2011) has discussed, scholars from the united states have heavily dominated the field. recently, we have noticed some efforts to internationalize the field, for example, in the initiatives of organizations such as the international association for the advancement of curriculum studies. however, despite some gains in the internationalization project, “there is also strong evidence that the field remains steadily ensconced in the work of scholars located primarily in academic institutions in the united states, canada, britain, and, to a lesser extent, australia. this is perhaps most evident in the work being published in leading curriculum journals” (gaztambide-fernández & thiessen, 2012, p. 1). in this way, many western english-speaking scholars are controlling the projects of knowledge creation and distribution by publishing their academic writings and also by grounding their inquiries in the works of other western scholars. this politics of academic text production is central to santos’s (2008) notion of global cognitive justice. leaving out the vast majority of scholars who use languages other than english makes it impossible to achieve global cognitive justice. english linguistic imperialism discussed above has close connections with this politics of academic text production. for example, drawing on the data available on ulrich’s periodicals directory in 2009, lillis and curry (2010) show that 67% of the academic periodicals were published using some or all english. furthermore, there is an issue of prestige and academic rigor attached to the journals published in english. even though isi indexes claim to be international, they are extremely biased toward journals published in english in anglophone geographic contexts. most journals that are not published in english are excluded from various international indexes, and this exclusion means that the journals published in english enjoy higher impact factors (ifs). for this reason, many people arguably consider english as the language of knowledge and research. the institute of science index (2013) states on its website that “english is the universal language of science at this time in history. it is for this reason that we focus on journals that publish full text in english” (para. 8). this status of english in academic text production means that scholars around the world are always under pressure to write and publish their findings in english. this phenomenon puts the anglophone scholars in a privileged position, but many of them often seem to be unaware of their position and privileges (lillis & curry, 2010). hence, the geopolitics of academic writing is central to an understanding of whose knowledge is being globalized. as canagarajah (2012) believes: the knowledge of minority, remote, and under-resourced communities is marginalized or appropriated by the more developed communities. also the knowledge of wealthy communities is legitimated as established knowledge and spread to other communities. implicated in this process, academic writing/publishing plays a significant role in the material and ideological hegemony of certain privileged communities. (para. 4) we need to address this politics of academic writing and publishing if we want to have a successful itinerant curriculum theory. if the critical curriculum river travels beyond the western harbor and carries only the knowledges of western english-speakers in its anwaruddin. can an itinerant curriculum theory travel? 61 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (1) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci current, then we will not be able to achieve the global cognitive justice that santos (2008) advocates for. generating one-sided knowledge is not only unethical, but also impoverishing for all of us. citing several examples, canagarajah (2002) shows how the “periphery” scholars face great difficulty in publishing their writings in the “center” journals. in addition to the scholars’ identity, the geographical locations in which they live are also vital. as an example, he cites kailasapathy who, immediately after finishing his doctoral research at birmingham, published his work on classical tamil poetry with the oxford university press. however, after returning to sri lanka he was not able to publish his works with western publishers. in the meantime, his scholarship on classical tamil poetry was overshadowed by some western scholars who undertook research years after he had done so. canagarajah believes that a lack of resources is the key factor for why “periphery” scholars are unable to compete with the “center” scholars in terms of academic publishing. physical and financial resources as well as infrastructure for publishing and marketing journals and books are more readily available to “center” scholars than to the “periphery” ones. thus, canagarajah’s argument of geopolitics of academic writing provides insights for us to understand how knowledge is generated and disseminated at the global level. this geopolitics is a potential barrier for an itinerant curriculum theory (paraskeva, 2011) and consequently for the internationalization of curriculum studies (gough, 2003). academic capitalism the third major obstacle for an itinerant curriculum theory is academic capitalism. in last couple of decades, much discussion has been centered on the marketization of higher education (e.g., lynch, 2006). opinions regarding this issue are polarized. the pro-market group argues that universities are part of a competitive market; therefore, they must effectively showcase and sell their products for their own survival. financial gains and reputation of universities are dependent on how effectively they market their products— packages of knowledge as human capital—in a worldwide competitive marketplace. there is another group of scholars, educators, and students who believe that marketization devalues education, commodifies knowledge, and treats students as customers. members of this camp are also “concerned about the university as a social institution” and argue that “marketization is corrupting the university as an embodiment of public goods” (barnett, 2011, p. 39). due to this marketization, money values control and dictate universitycentered intellectual activities (inglis, 2004), and what is often ignored is the value of higher education as a public good (nixon, 2011). nevertheless, the proponents of marketmodel of education contend that the market is the best “means of social coordination whereby the supply and demand for a good or service are balanced through the price mechanism” (brown, 2011, p. 11). while much discussion is focused on the marketing of degree programs and maximizing profits from student tuition and other fees, little has been said about marketing and selling research findings. i argue that marketing of research findings has far-reaching impacts on the global scholarly community in terms of global cognitive and epistemological justice. in addition to english linguistic imperialism and geopolitics of academic writing, the west’s ability to sell research findings in the global market provides the western scholars with a monopoly of producing and distributing knowledge. as a consequence, the knowledges of the economically-weak communities are often marginalized or ignored. therefore, i argue that paraskeva’s itinerant curriculum theory anwaruddin. can an itinerant curriculum theory travel? 62 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (1) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci will be successful if the non-west can resist what slaughter and leslie (1997) call academic capitalism. although we can approach academic capitalism from the human capital perspective, for the purpose of this article, i look at academic capitalism through the lens of marketlike and market behaviors. according to slaughter and leslie (1997): marketlike behaviors refer to institutional and faculty competition for moneys, whether these are from external grants and contracts, endowment funds, university-industry partnerships, institutional investment in professors’ spinoff companies, or student tuition and fees. what makes these activities marketlike is that they involve competition from funds from external resource providers…market behaviors refer to for-profit activity on the part of institutions, activity such as patenting and subsequent royalty and licensing agreements, spinoff companies, arm’s-length corporations, and university-industry partnerships, when these have a profit component. (p. 11) i argue that through this academic capitalism, universities and other research institutes not only make money by selling research findings, but they also export their selfacclaimed scholastic superiority. a rising academic capitalism is evident in the policies of higher education in most western countries. scholars use various words/phrases to describe the changes that are taking place in the institutions of higher education. some terms that are currently being used include the commercialization of higher education, the corporate university, the marketization of higher education, the entrepreneurial university, and the like. at the heart of these changes is “the shift from earlier knowledge regimes to an academic capitalist knowledge/learning regime” (slaughter & rhoades, 2008, p. 20). under this new regime, universities and research institutes are competing with each other to enter the global marketplace to sell their research knowledge. one of the tenets of this academic capitalism, i argue, is the commodification of research. radder (2010) defines commodification in two ways: “in a narrow sense commodification is identified with commercialization, that is, the pursuit of profit by academic institutions through selling the expertise of their researchers and the results of their inquiries” (p. 4). in a broader sense, it refers to the economization of all human activities. from this perspective, “academic commodification means that all kinds of scientific activities and their results are predominantly interpreted and assessed on the basis of economic criteria” (p. 4). in the light of this definition, it seems that the western universities have been very successful in selling their research findings and thus maximizing their economic profits. while economic profit-making is on the very surface of this enterprise, i contend that there are multiple layers of benefits associated with this marketization. by distributing thousands of academic texts across the world, the english-speaking west assumes the role of the producer of “authentic” and “objective” knowledge. many non-english speaking local communities cannot but accept the scholastic superiority of the west. in this way, the market for the western knowledge is constantly expanding. the west is reaping economic benefits and, at the same time, creating an inferiority complex in the psyche of many nonwestern consumers of western knowledge. the non-west is remaining dependent on the west for “reliable and authentic” knowledge. thus, the west maintains an unequal relationship with rest of the world by means of its already established networks of anwaruddin. can an itinerant curriculum theory travel? 63 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (1) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci economic, social, and cultural capital (bourdieu, 1985). for example, there is a great demand of “native-speaker” teachers of english all over the world. organizations such as the british council provide these teachers with necessary connections (social capital) to teach english, which creates opportunities for earning money (economic capital) and for spreading western cultures and epistemologies (cultural capital). moreover, while travelling abroad, the western teachers can use their own language (linguistic capital) and do not have to learn other languages. this hierarchical relationship of giver and taker of knowledge severely harms the epistemological diversity of the world. for these reasons, the western academic capitalism is a major obstacle for an itinerant curriculum theory. concluding thoughts paraskeva (2011) claims that “non-western scholars know a lot more, in some cases in precise detail, about what has been called western epistemology than those in the west know, or care to know, about non-western epistemologies” (p. 186). if true, this claim has profound consequences for curriculum studies because the non-western scholars—by knowing less about their own epistemologies—remain dependent on the west. this situation resonates with alatas (2006) thesis of academic dependency, and may be understood from his discussion of problems that are plaguing the asian social sciences. alatas (2006) maintains that most theories and concepts that dominate the asian social sciences “originated from a greco-roman, latin-christian and european tradition” (p. 15). this fact in itself is not a problem, but he argues that it becomes problematic as “the concepts are passed off as universal when in fact they derive their characteristics from a particular cultural tradition” (p. 15). similarly, many current practices of curriculum inquiry invite the global audiences to interpret western knowledges as universal discourses (gough, 2003). this epistemological problem dates back to the beginning of colonialism since when the west has ignored, silenced, or appropriated the knowledges of other communities. in this way, the west has been able to establish and maintain its role as “giver” of knowledges. in the field of curriculum studies, this relationship of domination is evident in the fact that the western curricular artifacts and practices are being imported, institutionalized, and reproduced in most parts of the non-western world. being concerned about this epistemic hegemony of the english-speaking west, paraskeva (2011) proposes his itinerant curriculum theory which, he believes, will be a respectable way to tackle the crisis of epistemic violence. however, i would like to add that we also need to critically examine why the non-west consumes and reproduces the western curricular practices. is it only the west that deserves all the blames? or, are there any other factors that feed into the global cognitive injustice? if we look at these questions from the perspectives of deleuze and guattari (1988), we see that paraskeva’s theory suggests a binary position when it blames the west and idealizes the non-western epistemologies by claiming that curriculum theory will be free from domination once it crosses the western epistemic boundary. contrary to deleuze and guattari’s notion of multiplicity, the proposed itinerant theory conceptualizes deterritorialization as a unidirectional movement. thus, paraskeva’s delineation of his itinerant curriculum theory does not fully capture the idea of deterritorialization that makes a strong case for us to understand and respond to any form of hegemony in curriculum studies. deterritorialization of curriculum inquiry is of paramount importance to the internationalization of curriculum studies, which appears to be impossible if a monoculture of knowledge continues. many scholars have discussed how a monoculture of knowledge is being promoted and how other anwaruddin. can an itinerant curriculum theory travel? 64 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (1) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci knolwedges that do not fit this monoculture are being silenced or swallowed up. santos (2004) calls it a sociology of absences, and bennett (2007) describes it as epistemicide. similarly, many feminist and post-colonial scholars have protested against this monoculture of knowledge production and distribution (robertson, 2006). yet, the field of curriculum studies seems to have made little progress toward deterritorialization (deleuze & guattari, 1988) as a way of achieving global cognitive and epistemological justice. in conclusion, although paraskeva’s formulation and presentation of an itinerant curriculum theory suffers from conceptual and methodological confusions, the core of his argument, i.e., deterritorialization of curriculum inquiry, is a timely contribution to the debate of and struggle for freeing curriculum studies from western domination. however, it should be noted that a true rhizomic deterritorialization of the field requires freedom from all forms of hegemony and relations of domination—not just the western domination. a simple and essentialist category of west and non-west may blur our understanding of hegemony that operates in hazy, often invisible, networks of relationships based on power, control, and self-interest. in short, deleuze and guattari’s conception of deterritorialization may be a very powerful and inspiring methodological tool for those who work for the internationalization of curriculum studies. yet, as i argued in this article, deterritorialization as a means of fighting against epistemicide might remain an unattainable goal if we fail to address the issues of english linguistic imperialism, geopolitics of academic writing, and the western academic capitalism. i also believe that these three are the main obstacles for paraskeva’s itinerant curriculum theory, or any other similar proposals. while i welcome paraskeva’s call for an itinerant curriculum theory, i want to put a cautionary note that without overcoming these three obstacles, this theory may not be able to contribute much to what pinar (2003) envisioned as a worldwide field of curriculum studies. notes 1 s.anwaruddin@mail.utoronto.ca references alatas, s. f. 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(2008). the academic capitalist knowledge/learning regime. in a. s. chan & d. fisher (eds.), the exchange university: corporatization of academic culture (pp. 19-48). vancouver, bc: ubc press. smith, l. (1999). decolonizing methodologies: research and indigenous peoples. london: zed books. spivak, g. c. (1990). the post-colonial critic: interviews, strategies, dialogues. s. harasym (ed.). new york: routledge. unesco. (2013). endangered languages. retrieved may 15, 2013 from http://www.unesco.org/new/en/culture/themes/endangered-languages/ van dijk, t. a. (1997). editorial: the imperialism of english. discourse and society, 8(3), 291-292. submitted: may, 16th, 2013 approved: june, 15th, 2013 http://www.britannica.com/ebchecked/topic/501483/rhizome running head: malcolm’s moment to cite this article please include all of the following details: glithero, lisa & ibrahim, awad. (2012). pedagogy of the moment: a journey on becoming wide-awake. transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> pedagogy of the moment: a journey on becoming wide-awake lisa glithero 1 & awad ibrahim 2 university of ottawa, canada experientially framed around malcolm’s learning experience in antarctica, the paper seeks to understand elements that are central to educational moments where a high student becomes wide-awake. to become wide-awake, we are arguing, is to become ontologically open to the possibility, imagining, and potentiality of radical transformation through one’s acknowledged agency. exploring the convergence of four pedagogical tributaries—cosmological, place, relational, and hermeneutic—we unpack how this moment makes malcolm see the world anew. the paper concludes that a pedagogy of the moment—a ‘moment’ not in its momentary-time-sense, that is, as an in passing moment, but a performative moment that is deeply situated in time, history and place—is a necessary aim of education in a world thrust into unknowns by global sustainability challenges. an opening at the bottom of the world as i near the ridge summit, i see malcolm and morgan standing side-by-side staring out over the edge. they are both 16 and tall. before i reach them, i make a full stop. i could hear my heart beat, and for the first time: i could hear silence. the white continent stretched out beyond and before them. mesmerized by the whole scene(ry), i continue quietly walking over to a rock metres behind from where they stand and grab a seat. silence. these are the moments i love as an educator. what are the students thinking, feeling, becoming? another fifteen minutes pass. silence continues. there is movement. malcolm turns around. he has tears rolling down his cheeks. comfortable in catching each other’s gaze i ask, “malcolm, what’s up?” his reply remains vivid nearly a decade later. “this is the first time in my life that i’ve ever heard silence.” he went on to share the sounds (and ways) of his new york city existence. malcolm (m): there is around-the-clock noise. everyone’s moving fast. the place never sleeps. people plugged in, doing their thing. lisa (l): why the tears malcolm? m. a part of me feels so small and insignificant, like i could be flicked off this ridge… this planet and it would not matter. yet at the same time, standing here, i feel a part of something so much bigger. l. overwhelming? m. yeah, but also really empowering. l. that’s what i love about this place. it makes you wonder how one person can possibly be pertinent to the world. and yet we are. every living being, human or otherwise, matters. glithero & ibrahim. pedagogy of the moment: a journey on becoming wide-awake 4 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci m. it’s a wild feeling. life, it seems, interferes in the most inappropriate way. malcolm and i realized the ship was leaving. in total silence we walked. john muir’s (1911) words echoed through my mind as i descended from the ridge following in malcolm’s footsteps: "when we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe" (p. 110). 3 this is not an introduction: this is malcolm’s moment language fails us; it cheats us. malcolm’s moment is beyond language. it is about hearing silence. malcolm’s moment is beyond the pedagogical. it is an ontological moment—a moment of becoming. a moment where malcolm realizes that stillness can move us as human beings. photo © lisa glithero in the vast stillness, void of human abstraction, malcolm awoke; a breakthrough of consciousness thrusting him into this world anew. disruption often stirs consciousness. was malcolm’s catapult to the literal ends of the earth, a disruption from familiar lived new york city patterns, what aroused consciousness? in other words, arousal stirred by the ‘stepping out’ of a living history; distance offering perspective. or was something more afoot? unplugged from the human induced isolation of a technology crazed urban existence (franklin, 1990, p. 46), an awareness of the more-than-human world surfaced for malcolm. in moments like these, one can only think of henry david thoreau (1862) address to the earth, this “mother of ours”: here is this vast, savage howling mother of ours, nature, lying all around, with such beauty, and such affection for her children, as the leopard; and yet we are so early weaned malcolm stands atop baily head, the eastern point of deception island, a sub-antarctic island found at latitude of 62’80s. ocean, sky and the antarctic continent to the south become blurred. a world of blue and white hues stretches out before him. depth, distance, and space seem inconceivable; a limitless expanse. there’s a gentle breeze coming up off the water carrying with it the smells of the sea, the ice and the ripeness of guano that only half a million chinstrap penguins can produce. it is -2 degrees c—hard to believe this is the place once described by early 20 th c explorers as a “god forsaken land.” malcolm, an athletic, spirited, 16 year old ‘new yorker’ is one of 60 students from a dozen different countries on a two-week learning journey—the students on ice 2003 antarctic youth expedition. together with a team of scientists, historians and educators the team sets out to foster new understanding and respect for the polar regions as cornerstones of the global ecosystem. through experience and dialogue the ideas of a generation of global citizens are explored. glithero & ibrahim. pedagogy of the moment: a journey on becoming wide-awake 5 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci from her breast to society, to that culture which is exclusively an interaction of man on man. (p. 4) in antarctica’s wilderness, malcolm awoke to what had always been within him: a (re)union of human and nature. he has become in that landscape, only to be overwhelmed by what it means to become full and fully human, to become wide-awake. maybe it is the overwhelming of nature that makes us human; but only in a loving heart will the sky, the ice, the sea and light find their (true) meaning. when they do, significant to note, they are no longer objects to be named but a thou that commands us to respond. malcolm finds himself in a dialogical life where the sky and the gaze of the vastness of the space open him up to the “abyss beneath the concepts,” which makes possible “rational intercourse with that which is beyond concepts” (buber, 1970, p. 62). imprinted within these notions, clearly, sit buber’s (1970) work on i-thou. here, buber contends, the relation between human and nature or human and non-human things is so close to the threshold of mutuality that he finds himself in an i-thou relation(ship). “if i am to explain it now,” buber writes about his stroke of his broad dapple-grey horse, “beginning from the still very fresh memory of my hand, i must say that what i experienced in touch with the animal was the other, the immense otherness of the other, which, however, did not remain strange… but rather let me draw near and touch it.” in this sense, buber continues, “it let me approach [it], confided itself to me, placed itself elementally in the relation of thou and thou with me” (pp. 22-23, original emphasis). one is never ready for these moments, buber argues, the i-thou moments. they simply happen, but for their happening to be meaningful, they require readiness and, as a result, a response. this is why what maxine greene (1995) calls ‘wide-awakeness.’ it is not a moment per se but a journey. what we are calling ‘malcolm’s moment’ is not in reference to his experience with thou but a time-moment that needed us, as educators and educational researchers, to stop and think. in fact, we are arguing, the experience is not even between malcolm and nature but rather is within. according to buber, this union of i and thou is not a dissolving of the two distinct but rather a communion, “a reciprocity of being itself” (p. 173). put otherwise, malcolm recognizes the being in nature and in turn, acknowledges the nature within him. buber suggests that in such cases “something is awakened by our attitude and flashes toward us from that which has being” (p. 173). in becoming wideawake of this communion we open up to the actuality before us and for malcolm it was the realization of being and becoming “a part of something so much bigger.” we do not abandon “what is actual,” buber contends, but we do “step out of our habits of thought” and be open to that which “acts on us” (p. 177). malcolm had witnessed this, and his tears were a performative moment of becoming wide-awake, of opening oneself to “receiving the spirit” of being (buber, 1947, p. 106). becoming awake: “teaching for openings” empowerment engagement active citizenship agency transformation social change glithero & ibrahim. pedagogy of the moment: a journey on becoming wide-awake 6 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci among so many others, these terms are deeply embedded in our daily vocabulary as educators. we understand semantically and maybe philosophically their significance and place in educational discourse. it is our experience as educators and researchers however that it is in the pedagogical translation of such terms do their ambiguity and complexity emerge. william ayers (2001) speaks of teaching as “spectacularly unlimited” (p. 5). maxine greene (1995) speaks of “teaching for openings” (p. 109) and uses the term wideawakeness—“awareness of what it is to be in the world” (p. 35). paulo freire (1973) speaks of conscientizacao, education as a “revolutionary practice”: an empowering process towards liberation, viewing students (and humans) as “makers of their way” (p. 97; see also freire, 1994). on her part, bell hooks (1994) celebrates teaching that “enables transgression—a movement against and beyond boundaries” (p. 12). brent davis (2004), on the other hand, speaks of teaching as “mindful participation” (p. 176) towards “expanding the space of the possible” (p. 179). although freire and hooks offer a more emancipatory interpretation of education, collectively these educational theorists (and others) equate education as possibility, (re)creating, imagining, opening up and going beyond. inspired and moved to act by the visionary work of the above authors, we interpret pedagogy in a reflexive and ontological sense, much like van manen (1990)— as educators, we are “oriented to the world in a pedagogic way” (p.151)—and similar to freire’s notion of praxis—“reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it” (freire, 1970, p. 36). nonetheless, as teacher educators we are mindful of the limiting perception in the field of pedagogy as equated to the “act of teaching, instructional methodology, curriculum approach, or education in general” (van manen, 1990, p. 142). in an act of reclamation, pedagogy for us resides in questioning—in the epiphanies, breakthroughs, awakenings, openings, imaginings, and possibilities of which ayers, freire, hooks, greene, davis, and others speak. however to truly own such a pedagogical orientation as educators, we feel two sequential steps are critical. first we must understand what elements are central to educational moments where a student becomes awakened. for us, it is the accumulative nature of these educational moments that made malcolm’s tears possible; these moments produce and at the same time are products of the journey of becoming wide-awake. here, we are naming awakeness as becoming open to possibility, imagining, and the potentiality to transform the world through one’s acknowledged agency. secondly, we must have the capacity to situate pedagogy within our own practice. this essay will examine the first step only—unpacking educational moments of becoming awake. using the opening vignette as a backdrop, we are exploring the following questions in this essay: what elements intersected to create and make malcolm’s awakening possible? how can we as educators be mindful of “teaching for openings,” (greene, 1995, p. 109) creating space for students to enter a “field of possibles” (p. 111)? in theorizing the vignette, we propose four elements we see as central to what we are calling pedagogy of the moment. in our introduction and initial unpacking of malcolm’s moment, which was experientially narrated by the first author of this article, we touched on the first element. we call this first element cosmological pedagogy, which we discuss further below. malcolm’s moment, meant being awakened to the i-thou communion, that is, “being a part of something so much bigger.” the remaining three elements of equal significance include: place pedagogy; relational pedagogy; and hermeneutic pedagogy. the intersection of the glithero & ibrahim. pedagogy of the moment: a journey on becoming wide-awake 7 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci four elements—cosmological, place, relational and hermeneutic pedagogy—is where, we propose, one becomes awakened; the pedagogy of the moment. becoming wide-awake: cosmological pedagogy interestingly, it took malcolm a detachment from the cosmos he knew (new york city) to relate to that cosmos. when he did, that is, when he realized he was a part of “something so much bigger,” neither him nor new york city was ever the same. in this pedagogy of the moment, malcolm was awakened to the i-thou communion, that is to say, he recognized the “being-sense” in the world itself; the result of which he became mindful of the “self-sense.” …there are i and you, there is dialogue, there is language, and spirit whose primal deed language is, and there is, in eternity, the word. (buber, 1947, p. 143) if, however, dialogue and language are so central to existence, as buber seems to argue, we are left with an anthropocentric worldview which, at minimum, does not account for (not to say diminishes) the “historical moment in which we live” (rautins & ibrahim, 2011, p. 29) where the biotic community and natural world are in ever increasing danger of disappearing. it is here where we introduce the notion of a cosmological pedagogy. a cosmological pedagogy begins with the premise that the universe—“an interacting and genetically related community of beings” (o’sullivan, 1999, p. 72)—exists; and by naming it “interacting community,” it “can only be understood in the context of relationships” (p. 72). in the case of malcolm, for instance, it was in coming face-to-face with nature that he came face-to-face with and felt a part of “something so much bigger.” in recognizing the natural world and the broader cosmology as a living being, an entity perpetually in the process of becoming based on the interactions of all parts, malcolm awoke to his own agency. it is the idea that “i am part of something big, a grand living and breathing, ever-becoming narrative.” a visceral moment of potentiality stirred within him as he stood face-to-face with nature. it is precisely at moments like malcolm’s when an educator, oriented towards a critical and transformative pedagogy rejoices. as “makers of our way” (freire, 1994, p. 97) educational moments that “provoke the young to be free” (greene, 1995, p. 121) are continually, relentlessly and excitingly pursued. yet at the same time, critical theory’s generalized focus on culture (human world) and its social-justice approach to inter-human problems such as class struggle, racism and oppression, need to be “fused into wider biocentric concerns” (o’sullivan, 1999, p. 64). noteworthy to this discussion is freire’s emerging work at the time of his death in 1997 on developing an ‘ecopedagogy’: a now well developed movement taken up internationally by scholars including gadotti (2004), kahn (2008) as well as further supporters of the earth charter initiative (www.earthcharterinaction.org ). an ecopedagogy embodies the relationship-oriented, ecological thinking to which we speak above and advocates for a broader planetary and biophilia-centric worldview of which we fully support. furthermore, the critical and transformative nature of ecopedagogy also aligns with our interpretation of a performative moment, in this case malcolm’s moment, that is deeply situated in time, history and place; as kahn (2008) insists “to think and live historically is to be ecological, to move in a bed of context” (p. 522). although we find ourselves supportive of kahn’s (2008) attempt “to provide the beginnings of a theoretical and historical foundation for a planetary ecopedagogy movement” (p. 526), his simultaneous call for a “radical ecopedagogy” (p. 537) –an action plan that radically glithero & ibrahim. pedagogy of the moment: a journey on becoming wide-awake 8 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci opposes “transnational technocapitalism” (p. 523) and the globalization of neoliberal ideologies—is seemingly too radical an orientation to utilize within our current pedagogy of the moment framework. highly oppositional and rooted in an ‘us-them’ binary, much like bowers work on an eco-justice pedagogy (2002, 2003, 2009), we are more drawn to focusing on a narrative visioning of ‘what could be’ rather than an oppositional narrative dwelling on ‘what must not be.’ although in relationship with and borrowing from the ecopedagogy movement, what we are naming a cosmological pedagogy also draws from stephen sterling’s (2001) work in sustainable education and the underpinnings of an ecological participatory worldview. sterling’s process-oriented paradigm, rooted in systems thinking and influenced largely by frijtof capra’s systems-oriented work on ecoliteracy (2005), moves beyond the binaries commonplace to critical (eco)pedagogy and creates spaces for participatory dialogue on enacting and sustaining socio-ecological change. of further inspiration, edmund o’sullivan’s (1999) call for the rise of what he calls “ecozoic age.” articulated first by thomas berry, ecozaic age is an earth-centered grand narrative that speaks to the biocentric approach to transformative pedagogical experience, which is central to our discussion here. put simply, in conclusion, a critical pedagogy of beyond humanism and an ecopedagogy of beyond radical binaries is required—a cosmological pedagogy. becoming wide-awake: place pedagogy it’s the following day; malcolm and i (lisa) are up on deck, aboard our vessel, sailing to our next landing. l: hey malcolm. can i ask you a few questions? m: sure diz [lisa’s nick name]. l: what do you think of when i say the word ‘nature?’ m: trees. birds. squirrels. things that aren’t human. l: what about the ‘natural world?’ m: all the things that aren’t human. a collection. l: and what about the word ‘wilderness?’ m: i think of this place. antarctica. it’s wild. untouched by humans. l: last one, i promise. what about ‘place?’ m: a place? like school, my house, yankee stadium, central park? l: yup, those are all places. interestingly you picked places from your life at home in new york. do you feel connected to your homeplace? m: never really thought about it. i mean, i like living there. l: remember yesterday on top of baily head [opening vignette], we questioned how one person can possibly be pertinent in the world. yet standing there we were both moved by the beauty, silence and realization of feeling part of something bigger. we both felt empowered, believers in possibilities, people able to create change. have you ever felt that way back home? m: no. we have come to understand in our practice as educators that we will not protect, conserve, serve, (deeply) understand nor dwell well in place unless we feel a sense of belonging to place. bell hooks (2009) put it best: glithero & ibrahim. pedagogy of the moment: a journey on becoming wide-awake 9 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci talking about place, where we belong, is a constant subject for many of us. we want to know if it is possible to live on earth peacefully. is it possible to sustain life? can we embrace an ethos of sustainability that is not solely about the appropriate care of the world’s resources, but it is also about the creation of meaning– the making of lives that we feel are worth living (p. 1). following critical theory tradition – a field “profoundly concerned with who we are, how we got this way, and where we might go from here” (kincheloe, 2005, p. 309) – hooks conception of place is built around an emergent notion of a citizenry lost. in our living history, it seems, a world thrust into unknowns by global sustainability challenges, both socio-political and environmental, a sense of one’s rootedness, direction and pertinence are too challenged. abundance-scarcity dichotomies, diasporas—both voluntary and involuntary—and intense individualism are but a few factors that we would suggest uproot a sense of place. to “live fully” and “well,” words that hooks uses often, requires a conscious belonging to place. within such a conception of place one finds pertinence and agency. for malcolm, his homeplace of new york city was a place of the familiar, a place of routines and assumptions, patterns within bustling noise. yet pertinence and agency were not part of his self-sense. freire spoke of humans as “history makers” and the “dialectical interplay between the way in which history and culture make people even while people are making that very history and culture” (as discussed in glass, 2001, p. 16). greenwood (2009), a renowned place-conscious educator, refers to humans as “place-makers” (p. 275). how do history makers and place-makers differ? freire’s ontology focused on the cultural (human world) and little on how culture is shaped by place—something greenwood defines as “the nexus of culture and environment” (p. 276). by shifting to place-makers and thus acknowledging that places are where “people and other beings live their lives” (p. 274, emphasis added) we become oriented within a cosmological pedagogy. greenwood’s critical pedagogy of place offers a theory that aligns well with hooks notions of belonging. together they frame what we are calling a place pedagogy that we identify as the second critical element to our proposed pedagogy of the moment: a wideawakeness pedagogy of place, time, people and things. greenwood’s (2009) critical pedagogy of place combines the decolonization and deconstruction traditions of critical theory with the notion of reinhabitation. deconstruction refers to the unpacking of cultural ideologies causing degradation and oppression. reinhabitation refers to “living well together in a place without doing damage to others, human and nonhuman” (p. 279). ultimately, a critical pedagogy of place challenges educators to question our “theories of knowing and being” (p. 275) and to recognize our pertinence and agency as place-makers. unpacking the cultural and historical conditions of our enacted assumptions, and in doing so, becoming mindful of the “floating signifiers” (hall, 1997) of culturally generated meaning, is an essential first step towards a place pedagogy. in unhinging that which gives meaning in culture we recognize the “privileging of the discourse of difference” (greenwood, 2009, p. 278) and the widespread (not universal) anthropocentric stance of the historical moment in which we live. it is at this moment we believe a cosmological pedagogy – “one that can only be understood in the context of relationships” (o’sullivan, 1999, p. 72) – intersects with our notion of place pedagogy largely informed by greenwood and his critical pedagogy of place. glithero & ibrahim. pedagogy of the moment: a journey on becoming wide-awake 10 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci shifting away from a discourse of difference towards that of relationship does not dismiss the necessary condition and celebration of (cultural, ecological, biological) diversity. rather this conceptual migration prioritizes interdependence. it creates an opening to re-think, re-imagine and re-make our places mindful that “we are part of something bigger” as malcolm reminds us. in the process of re-making our places, cosmologically connected by the understanding that we are “diverse people living together in one finite world” (greenwood, 2009, p. 278), we become subjects in leaving our mark on the flesh of the human and more-than-human world. this transformative place-making act—or living agency—gives relevance, pertinence, and the essence of belonging of which hooks so poetically speaks, to one’s life. we become a living history that is “critical, sensory, active and alive” (greenwood & mckenzie, 2009, p. 5). we became awake to where we came from, where we are and where we are going. a citizenry no longer lost. becoming wide-awake: relational pedagogy having bid farewell to antarctica, we are now sailing back across the southern ocean to ushuaia and eventually onwards to our respective homes around the globe. two weeks, and several thousand miles later, new relationships, new perspectives, new experiences, and new questions are stirring. what has changed—within, around, between? m: hey diz. can i ask you a question? l: i’m all yours. m: now that we are heading home, we are talking a lot about what we can each do in our personal lives, at home, at school, in our communities, and in the world at large. when i think of my own personal life and home, there are changes i can see doing, and will do, that will help make a difference i hope. but when i think about school…it gets trickier. the vibe of my school is not really in tune with some of the things we’ve been talking about and seeing on this expedition. like the bricks of the building, the school system seems impossible to move. you’re a teacher. how do you change things? l: working with people like you who are asking questions. m: are enough people enough to change things? l: in your initial question you used an interesting word… ‘system.’ what is this thing we call the (school) system? m: it’s everything—buildings, teachers, students, administrators, government, rules and regulations, even the exams and the uncomfortable chairs we write them in. l: the system is comprised of structural phenomena like you said—buildings, chairs as well as decision and policy making structures. there are also historical phenomena to the system… why things are the way they are. but more importantly, the system is us! we collectively produce the system. however at the same time, the system produces us. what do you think of that notion? m: if we are the system, then we have power to change it. if the system produces us then what is it that the system is producing? freire urges us to “understand the world in relational terms” rather than in “dichotomous and fragmented ways” (as discussed in darder, 2002, p. 65). let us use this as a starting place for our notion of relational pedagogy. for freire relational meant praxis oriented — “the relational interaction between reflection, naming of the world, action, and glithero & ibrahim. pedagogy of the moment: a journey on becoming wide-awake 11 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the return to reflection once more” (darder, 2002, p. 82). freire’s notion of praxis has pedagogical parallels with the field of experiential education as outlined in figure 2 below: the experiential learning cycle how we process h o w w e p e r c e iv e concrete experience abstract conceptualization active experimentation concrete experience reflective observation this diagram schematically represents the cyclical process of experiential learning that dewey (1938) – a pioneer of the experiential education movement – articulated. this experiential education is defined by 12 principles, which were approved in 1994 by the association for experiential education’s board of directors (luckmann, 1996, p. 49). among others, learners are active participants in the social construction of knowledge. here, significant to note, the importance of “reflection, critical analysis, and synthesis” in experiential education, according to luckmann (1996, p. 49), mirrors freire’s praxis of “reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it” (freire, 1970, p. 36). in our own respective teaching approaches we believe and strive to continually model such praxis. malcolm’s moment, teased out in the vignettes throughout this essay, also moves through a similar learning cycle. from his experience on top of baily head (opening vignette) to conversations displaying critical reflection and analysis (second and third vignettes) to action and application (fourth vignette) malcolm demonstrates “working through intersubjective experience and thought to make change where it’s needed” (greenwood & mckenzie, 2009, p. 5). in the previous sections we identified relationships as cornerstone of cosmological pedagogy and place pedagogy to which we speak. it is our reciprocal relationship with all things being and our mindful participation as place-makers that open spaces for an awakened orientation to the world. as noted earlier, a more than humanist ontology is essential in our historical time as complex questions of future sustainability spill into this figure was shared from a presentation prepared by dr. james raffan in ottawa, canada, on august 3, 2009. the figure was modeled after kolb’s (1984) cycle of learning based on experience and is used with permission from the author. glithero & ibrahim. pedagogy of the moment: a journey on becoming wide-awake 12 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci commonplace dialogue. relationships prioritize interdependence. interdependence as concept must be foundational to our time’s living narrative. however there is a further layer to what we are calling relational pedagogy. relationships, inherent to ecological discourses, are similarly central to complex systems theory. these two fields “share a worldview” (davis, 2004, p.173). malcolm speaks of the challenges he feels when pondering system change. what is it about the schooling system (broader educational systems in general) that impedes change? how do systems work? is “enough people [i.e. critical mass] enough to change things?” ultimately it seems what malcolm was asking, after years of reflection: “where are the places where i as a young person can intervene in the system” (meadow, 1997)? systems thinking 4 as a theoretical field represents ideas that have been around for some time (e.g. merleau ponty’s notion of coupling in 1962; the work of c. weick on organizational theory and d. meadows work on the limits of growth in the 1970’s, etc.) and is a fascinatingly complex field that we do not intend to explore in this paper. however, a capacity for systems thinking, as displayed by malcolm, rudimentary as it may be, is a necessary element of becoming awake. understanding that “i as an agent, a subject, and a constituent element within a system have agency” is critical in order to imagine new and renewed systems more relevant to today’s challenges. we must know the system in order to transform it, and as franklin (2010) suggests, we must “scruple” together on structural impediments to democratic life; collective dialogue for clarity and possibility. a relational pedagogy thus melds reciprocity of being, a beyond human ontology, and experience-reflection-action praxis with disciplined thinking on system change. just as malcolm understood himself as “part of something so much bigger” referring to the wider biotic community, he too recognized himself as part of social constructions (e.g. schooling system). in being face to face with the system, malcolm considers his own agency while at the same time knows he is a product of the system. what then becomes essential is mindfulness around the ways in which we produce the system. once understood we can then make a conscious decision of producing the system differently. this is what freire’s legacy (1994) and the pedagogy of hope and greene’s notion of wide-awakeness are about. becoming wide-awake to this thinking is central to our interpretation of relational pedagogy—the third critical element to what we are naming the pedagogy of the moment, a full and wide-awakeness pedagogy of human possibility. understanding how relationships, interactions and intersubjective experiences make possible the emergence of new behaviours, new essences, and new momentum is the turn of hermeneutic pedagogy. becoming wide-awake: hermeneutic pedagogy 2007—four years after our shared learning journey in antarctica… l: how inspiring it has been to follow your story malcolm. m: well you were there for the start of it—antarctica 2003 expedition. l: your story started long before that malcolm. m: yah… i guess (said with his characteristic wide-dancing eyed grin). but that certainly represented a significant moment in my life. l: in what ways? m: i look at my work now with at risk, marginalized youth. everyday i learn and grow. it never really feels like work but rather who i am, what i do. through communitycentered education projects i work side by side with youth trying to make the community glithero & ibrahim. pedagogy of the moment: a journey on becoming wide-awake 13 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci better, more relevant, more hopeful. through listening to kids’ stories, their situations, their frustrations, so many of which i can see myself as a kid, we explore why things are the way they are and how things could change. there’s a lot of buy in by the kids. once they realize that they are part of the very systems they are frustrated by (school, institutions, laws), there’s a shift. last fall a group of youth wanted to see an old abandoned building site which was routinely used for partying and vandalizing get turned into a skate park. together we explored how to make their idea reality. and they are doing it. the park is almost complete. it’s inspiring. l: it seems more often than not today’s youth are publicly perceived as ‘disengaged’ and ‘apathetic.’ i think youth, anyone for that matter, become disengaged by inaction. when their voices are continually not heard or their ideas not acted upon, they step away from traditional forms of engagement. but engaged they most certainly are. from community-based activism like your skate park example to social networking, creative expression (spoken word, hip hop, dance) or social entrepreneurship… youth are engaged, moving, raising voice, taking action, making change. they are just going about it in ways that are more reflective of the times in which we live. m: i agree. it is not cynicism, nor apathy but more a crisis of relevancy. sure the kids talk about getting rich, having ‘stuff’ – after all it’s the ‘american dream’ we created—but the kids talk a lot about community, wanting to feel like they belong, that they matter, that their lives are worth living, that they have something to give to the world, and that the world needs to become a more peaceful, just and healthier place. l: it’s funny eh. it seems you and i have gone full circle. our notion of hermeneutic pedagogy is interpreted through the lens of brent davis’s (1997) work on what he calls hermeneutic listening. although written in the context of teaching mathematics, davis describes hermeneutic listening as “an imaginative participation in the formation and the transformation of experience” (p. 369). unlike “evaluative listening” where teacher is “listening for something in particular” (p. 359) hermeneutic listening reclaims the experience of listening – something for which western culture has no epistemology (see hendry, 2007, p. 495). although supportive of “interpretive listening,” a “sort of reaching out” to access “the subjective sense being made,” davis embraces its constructivist orientation but sees the focus on individual sensemaking and on individual cognizing agents as a limitation (davis, 1997, pp. 364-365). he put it thus: “it makes little sense to study the emergence of an individual’s understanding without considering the social and political contexts in which such understanding arise.” (p. 374). by proposing hermeneutic listening davis (1997) shifts the focus to “the dynamic interdependence of agent and setting, thought and action, knowledge and knower, self and other, individual and collective” (p. 370). learners’ particular context and backgrounds become central as does the notion that through their (individual agents) interactions, ideas and possibilities emerge that move us beyond what can be obtained in individual sensemaking. a breakthrough towards “expanding the space of the possible” (davis, 2004, p. 179) or as greene suggests, “teaching for openings” (1995, p. 109). davis’s work on hermeneutic listening challenges teachers to “reinterpret practice” (1997, p. 355) by positioning themselves as willing participants in the learning community. vulnerable, fallible and open, the teacher listens, questions, scruples with the same authority she demands of her fellow learners. teaching “without guarantees” (hall, 1997). glithero & ibrahim. pedagogy of the moment: a journey on becoming wide-awake 14 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci davis’s interpretation of pedagogy as a thoughtful act of hermeneutic listening has links to van manen’s (1990) work on hermeneutic phenomenology in which pedagogy is presented as “pedagogic thoughtfulness” (p. 154). hermeneutics as tradition is a field of inquiry that seeks to unhinge the social and historical conditions that inform our assumptions and presuppositions. what makes davis’s work so pertinent to this essay is his bridging of a critical pedagogy mindfulness of how our historically-made situation informs our teaching location with his coupling of a deep ecologically informed “participatory epistemology” (1997, p. 160) and a complexity-based ontology. in drawing links between embodied knowledge and enacted knowledge, and mindful participation and empowered action, davis proposes that society can be remade through the joint action that emerges from teaching practice informed by hermeneutic listening. that is individual and collective identities are being shaped by the unimagined trajectories emergent from a negotiated, participatory, and open space of learning. we are calling this approach hermeneutic pedagogy. in the final vignette malcolm, and the first author’s relationship with malcolm, had come full circle. from a teenager moved by an experience of standing face to face with “something” big amidst the silence of antarctica, malcolm now stood in the world as a community educator engendering a sense of belonging, pertinence and agency in inner city youth—the very things malcolm was awakened to (and thus questioning) at the ends of the earth. through reflection, analysis and mindful participation malcolm came to understand systems and constructions. he learned to recognize how meaning is generated in culture and structures and often unknowingly reproduced. without knowing the work of hooks (2009), malcolm understood the “creation of meaning—the making of lives that we feel are worth living” of which she spoke (p. 1). malcolm became the history-maker, the placemaker and the maker of his way of which freire and greenwood speak. the joint action of malcolm and his students—acted upon ideas cultivated in a negotiated space of listening and possibility—are transforming the world in personally relevant and significant ways. this is not a conclusion: this is still malcolm’s moment the convergence of these four pedagogical tributaries—cosmological, place, relational, and hermeneutic—created an opening for malcolm to see the world anew. we chose pedagogy of the moment with much intention. we conceive the ‘moment’ here not in its momentary-time-sense, that is, as an in passing moment, but a performative moment that is deeply situated in time, history and place. malcolm’s tears were both a performative gesture to/of everything that is malcolm’s life history and an expression of experience of coming face-to-face with “something so much bigger.” to become wide-awake(ned) of and ready for this moment, we are contending, one has to be at the intersection of cosmology, place, relation and hermeneutic. oriented to the world as educators, it seems, the act of becoming represents the source of much wonder, inspiration and hope. there is no method to becoming. there is however – after years of reflecting on malcolm and so many other stories of our students, “acts of becoming” – elements to learning and teaching for “imagination, openings and possibilities” (greene, 1995, p. 17). we, the authors, stand at the confluence of four ever-fluid, ever-changing pedagogies—cosmological, place, relational and hermeneutic—that are moving us at this time, in this space. our best may be here, in malcolm’s moment, but our absolute best is yet to come. it will happen when and if we are ready for it. we hope we will be ready for it, and at that point, we will follow khalil gibran (1966, p. 121) and say: glithero & ibrahim. pedagogy of the moment: a journey on becoming wide-awake 15 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci love’s procession is moving; beauty is waving her banner; youth is sounding the trumpet of joy; disturb not my contrition, my blamer. let me walk, for the path is rich with roses and mint, and the air is scented with cleanliness. notes 1 diz@eyesproject.com 2 aibrahim@uottawa.ca 3 throughout the article, vignettes are personal notes made by the first author while serving as education director for students on ice expeditions (www.studentsonice.com) from 2004 to 2008. malcolm is a fictitious name given to the student to respect anonymity. 4 with roots in the traditions of physics, chemistry, biology and economics (mason, 2008), complex systems can be described most simply as a theory that “concerns itself with environments, organizations, or systems” and the nature of the interactions and relationships “among their constituent elements or agents” (p. 36). references ayers, w. (2001). beginning: the challenge of teaching & liberating the curriculum. in to teach: the journey of a teacher (pp. 1-24 & 85-108). new york: teachers college press. bowers, c. (2009). educating for a revitalization of the cultural commons. canadian journal of environmental education 14, 196-200. bowers, c. (2003). can critical pedagogy be greened? educational studies, 11-21. bowers, c. (2002). toward an eco-justice pedagogy. environmental education research 8(1), 21-34. buber, m. (1970). i and thou. new york: charles scribner. buber, m. (1947). between man and man. new york & london: routledge. capra, f. (2005). speaking nature’s language: principles for sustainability. in ecological literacy: educating our children for a sustainable world (pp.18-29). san francisco: sierra club books. darder, a. (2002). the passion of paulo freire and restoring our humanity. in reinventing paulo freire: a pedagogy of love (pp. 33-51 & 53-89). boulder: westview. davis, b. (2004). inventions of teaching: a genealogy. new york & london: lawrence erlbaum. davis, b. (1997). listening for differences: an evolving conception of mathematics teaching. journal for research in mathematics education, 28(3), 355-376. dewey, j. (1938). experience and education. new york: simon & schuster. franklin, u. (2010). the erosion of democracy. cbc: the current. [online] retrieved may 6, 2012, from http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/2010/05/may-06-2010. file:///c:/users/alice/documents/tci/2012%202/downloads/diz@eyesproject.com file:///c:/users/alice/documents/tci/2012%202/downloads/aibrahim@uottawa.ca http://www.studentsonice.com/ glithero & ibrahim. pedagogy of the moment: a journey on becoming wide-awake 16 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci franklin, u. (1990). the real world of technology. toronto, on: anansi. freire, p. (1994). pedagogy of hope: reliving pedagogy of the oppressed. new york: continuum. freire, p. (1973). education for critical consciousness. new york: seabury. freire, p. (1970). the pedagogy of the oppressed. new york: seabury. gadotti, m. (2004). education for sustainable development: what we need to learn to save the planet? [online] retrieved september 28, 2012, from: http://www.earthcharterinaction.org/invent/details.php?id=368 gibran, k. (1966). the prophet. new york: knopf. glass, r. (2001). on paulo freire’s philosophy of praxis and the foundations of liberation education. educational researcher 30(2), 15-25. greene, m. (2008). commentary: education and the arts: the windows of imagination. learning landscapes 1, 17-21. greene, m. (1995). releasing the imagination. san francisco: jossey-bass. greenwood, d. (2009). place: the nexus of geography and culture. in m. mckenzie, p. hart, h. bai, & b. jickling (eds.), fields of green (pp. 271-281). new jersey: hampton press. hall, s. (1997). representation, meaning and language. in stuart hall (ed.), representation: cultural representations and signifying practices (pp. 15-64). london: sage. hendry, p. m. (2007). the future of narrative. qualitative inquiry, 13(4), 487-498. hooks, b. (2009). belonging: a culture of place. new york & london: routledge. hooks, b. (1994). teaching to transgress: education as the practice of freedom. new york & london: routledge. kahn, r. (2008). towards ecopedagogy: weaving a broad-based pedagogy of liberation for animals, nature, and the oppressed people of the earth. in darder, a., baltodano, m. & torres, r. (eds.), the critical pedagogy reader (pp. 522-540). new york: routledge. kincheloe, j. & mclaren, p. (2005). rethinking critical theory and qualitative research. in denzin, n. & lincoln, y. (eds.) the sage handbook of qualitative research (pp. 303342). thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. luckman, c. (1996). defining experiential education. journal of experiential education 3, 43-44. mason, m. (2008). what is complexity theory and what are its implications for educational change? educational philosophy, 40(1), 35-49. mckenzie, m. & greenwood, d. (eds.). (2009). context, experience, and the socioecological: inquiries into practice [special issue]. canadian journal of environmental education 4(14), 5-14. meadows, d. (1997). places to intervene in a system. whole earth magazine 5, 5-9. merleau-ponty, m. (1962). phenomenology of perception. new york: routledge. muir, j. (1911/1988). my first summer in the sierra. boston: houghton mifflin/san francisco: sierra club books. o’sullivan, e. 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(2001). sustainable education: re-visioning learning and change. devon, uk: green books. thoreau, h.d. (1862). walking. atlantic monthly. van manen, m. (1997). researching lived experience: human science for an action sensitive pedagogy. albany, ny: state university of new york press. submitted: october, 25 th , 2012. approved: november, 20 th , 2012. o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: smythe, jon l. (2015). from telescope to kaleidoscope: post-structural strategies for bringing multiplic ity to light in teaching and research. transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) http://nitinat. library.ubc.ca/ojs/index. php/tc i <access date> from telescope to kaleidoscope: poststructural strategies for bringing multiplicity to light in teaching and research jon l. smythe1 oklahoma state university, united states out beyond our ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing, there is a field. i’ll meet you there. when the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. (rumi, 1995, p. 36) in the above quote, the 13th century persian poet, rumi, imaginatively expresses the poststructural ethos i hope to convey in this paper: that beyond the dualistic thinking that separates us in opposition, there is a space where differences may meet and multiplicity may thrive. aoki (1993) envisions the space that lies beyond the bounded limits of dualistic “either/or” thinking as a landscape of “both this and that and more” (p. 299). by entreating the “soul to lie down in the grass” that extends beyond oppositional thinking, one gains a “world too full to talk about” in a deeper, more spiritual and embodied sense. yet, gai ning access to this landscape proves no easy task for students and educators who are often unaware of how dualistic thought and language shapes western society and curriculum. perhaps this lack of awareness is understandable. language is often taken for granted as expressing a clear and uniform reality, yet it is bound up in history and carries multiple associations of which we remain largely unaware. cixous (1994) writes that the language we speak today is “of yesterday and elsewhere” and further that “even if we do not remember, our language remembers, and what we say began to be said three thousand years ago” (p. xx). the insistence that our language remembers even if we do not suggests that we operate in a state of forgetfulness — a kind of “linguistic auto-pilot” in which we repeat what is culturally fashionable without fully understanding the implications behind the words we use. bringing the multiple layers, histories, and interrelationships of meaning into awareness therefore becomes an invaluable educational pursuit. this is especially true in a time of widespread transnational travel, study, and teaching as cultural differences intermingle and at times painfully collide — both in and outside the classroom. in my experience, post-structural theory and practice can be used to tap into this seemingly hidden world of multiplicity both in the classroom and in research. poststructuralism works to show that meaning is shaped by “dominant social and political institutions…through the more or less arbitrary exclusion of other possibilities” and the “suppression of alternate realties” (newman, 2007, p. 1). in reclaiming the excluded possibilities and the suppressed realities, post-structuralism opens a space for a deeper and more complex understanding of the world in which we live. it invites multiple ways of knowing and experiencing. certainly, there are many different lines of inquiry within poststructuralist theory. for this paper, i follow the line forged largely by the philosopher jacques derrida, whose method smythe. from telescope to kaleidoscope 32 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci of deconstructive reading “attends to suppressed tensions or conflicts within a text, and treats all ‘natural’ categories, essentialist oppositions and representational claims with suspicion” (gough & price, 2014, p. 5). while this type of deconstructive reading may sound like a straightforward endeavor, it seems to be a somewhat elusive and ambiguous project. some have criticized post-structuralism as “willfully and irretrievably difficult,” “marginal, inconsistent and impossible,” “dissenting” from science and “established moral values,” “strange,” “controversial,” disruptive, and “radical” (williams, 2005/2014, p. 1 -5). in many ways, i agree with this characterization and, at the same time, do not see it as a negative one. my concern however is that such labels may hide the ways in which post-structuralism can also be imaginative, playful, sustainable and relevant to everyday practice. i am also concerned that such a characterization may dissuade educators from utilizing post-structural theory out of fear that it is too complicated and impractical. colleagues have also suggested that post-structuralism is too violent in the way it seeks to disrupt language and a secure sense of reality. further that, although it calls into question “the sometimes overt, sometimes hidden, violence of established values” (williams, 2005/2014, p. 4), post-structuralism inadvertently creates its own violent oppositions through the radicalization of difference. while i agree that the potential for re -inscribing essentialist dualisms is always there, since post-structuralism is also embedded in language and culture, i would argue that when utilized in a more organic, non-judgmental way to “realize that opposite forces are not enemies but part of the web of relationships,” post-structuralism can promote critical ethical and nonviolent understandings (wang, 2014, p. 138). as an educator, i have used a variety of “post-structural strategies” to bring multiplicity to light in my pedagogical practices and my resear ch. i have found this journey to be enriching as i explore the multidimensional layers of meaning dialogically with students and other educators. i have also found this journey to be healing in the sense that through the process of reclaiming the fragments of words that have been cut out or silenced through dualistic structuring, one may learn to reclaim the fractured parts of the self that have been likewise cut away or suppressed. in this way, i find that the process of recovering word meanings and parts of the self that have been “othered” to be not only an intellectual pursuit, but embodied and spiritual as well. along these lines, it is my contention that post-structural reflection can help sensitize students and educators to inequitable social and educ ational relationships. for example, reflecting on her research concerning male privilege, mcintosh notes, “i found myself going back and forth in my mind over the question, are these nice men, or are they oppressive? i thought i had to choose. it hadn’t occurred to me that you could be both” (in rothman, 2014, online). she also recalls that she had reacted negatively to the suggestion by black women that “white women were oppressive to work with” (in rothman, 2014, online). disrupting the nice/oppressive dualism allowed mcintosh to recognize that people could be both nice and oppressive. this in turn changed the way she began to view the world and her relationships to others in it. she began looking for ways that she, as a white woman, had been given certain unearned privileges in her daily life. this exercise allowed her to see how white people were taught (consciously and unconsciously) to expect certain privileges and how this expectation, at the expense of others, could make them unwittingly oppressive. although not claiming a post-structural perspective per se, the way in which mcintosh deconstructs language and meaning to consider other, more equitable possibilities, represents an important theme within post-structuralism: that in understanding the way that language masks meaning, it can also be used to bring other previously hidden meanings to light that can lead to improved relationships with ourselves and others. smythe. from telescope to kaleidoscope 33 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci as a teacher, i have found students’ work to be replete with dualisms and that opening up those dualisms to other ways of thinking can be challenging but beneficial. for example, during a discussion about illegal immigration in a college level cultural geography course, a male student stated that illegal immigration should be appr oached with “logic” rather than “emotion”. i understood the student’s perspective, having had experiences in which i became so angry or upset on a particular issue that i was unable to see the bigger picture. in those instances, one could argue that my emotions did not serve me well. on the other hand, noting aoki’s (1993) belief that dualisms implicate “both this and that and more” (p. 299), i began to question why the student employed the logic/emotion dualism in the context of our discussion on illegal immigration. i also began to wonder why cutting out emotion was so necessary for him. was adam expressing a gendered point of view that logic = male/masculine and emotion = female/feminine? was he echoing the beliefs of his political party? was it too painful to think about the suffering of real people caught between the politics of the u.s. and other countries? does pointing to others’ behavior as “illegal” make one feel more powerful over them? was he concerned about cultural and economic self-interests? when i offered these questions for further reflection, he cheerfully explained that he had gotten really good at “compartmentalizing” and that he was really good at keeping things “separate.” i assume he was referring to his perceived logic and his emotions. even so, i suggest that emotion is always still there, whether one recognizes it or not. even if one claims to be using logic alone in their decision-making, it is often the underlying emotion (anger, fear, sadness, joy, jealousy, etc.) that guides the so-called logical response. emotion expresses our deepest embodied beliefs. it creates the possibility for connecting with others more humanly. logic can help organize and express our multiple and at times conflicting emotions to others. both can be used together in understanding social issues (such as immigration) in a deeper, more complex way by recognizing the ways in which culture, history, gender, economics, politics, and power shape our perspectives. connecting emotion and logic suggests taking a more holistic approach to social understanding in a way that many students who come from cultures that promote an image of individualism have difficulty grasping. yet in helping those students make those critical connections, we invite them to participate in a larger transnational dialogue that seeks a more generous, equitable, and ethical response in the encounter with those who are seen as culturally different. in this paper, i offer examples of some of the post-structural strategies i have used as a way of making post-structuralism more accessible to a wider audience in the field of education. in keeping with derrida’s insistence that deconstruction functions “by means of a double gesture, a double science, a double writing” (in reynolds, n.d., section a.), i propose a two–step process for deconstructing texts. in the first step or “reading,” i acknowledge and support the dualism or categorization implicated in the text. then, in a second “reading,” i posit other meanings that can be drawn from within the logic of the same text. at the same time, i hope to “peel back the layers of judgment” as in wang’s (2014) taoist approach to deconstruction. in this way, i hope to show how post-structural thought moves beyond the limit established by the dualism or label in order to promote more complex and critical thinking. additionally, in preserving the original dualism/category as one way of thinking about the topic and offering alternatives to that perspective, my goal is not to create other dualisms that get caught up in judgments of which interpretation is right/wrong. my hope is to show that in participating in the deconstructive process, multiplicity can be revealed and given greater consideration when contemplating educational policies, pedagogical practices, and others’ perspectives, both in the classroom and through research. smythe. from telescope to kaleidoscope 34 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the strategies while post-structural writers share a common goal of opening up foundational structures (linguistic, architectural, artistic, etc.) to other ways of thinking and experie ncing, post-structuralism eschews so-called grand narratives and makes no prescriptions about how to arrive at this goal. for me, this type of ambiguity and openness allows for imagination, inventiveness, and learning from one’s lived experiences in relati on to others. i have generated the following list of post-structural deconstructive strategies based on my work as a transnational secondary school teacher with the u.s. peace corps in cameroon, africa and as a college instructor and university professor in the united states. i also present, give a name to, and expand upon some of the post-structural strategies i used to deconstruct the narratives of other transnational peace corps educators for the book, shifting the kaleidoscope: returned peace corps volunteer educators’ insights on culture shock, identity, and pedagogy (smythe, 2015). in the process, i incorporate the work of other writers and theorists where noted. certainly, this is not an exclusive, exhaustive, or definitive list. it developed through reflection, research, dialogue with others, and attending to the subtleties of lived experience. strategy 1: making the feminine visible she’d be making enchiladas, putting them on my plate, mopping, sweeping, taking care of children, people coming, people going, but i was welcome there and she wanted me to eat with her, and she wanted to talk with me, but not just me, anyone, anyone who was there; her family, her friends, her neighbors. there was an openness there. it was the same in kenya…there was something really affirming about that…it was just being woven into the fabric of somebody else’s life…american culture is different. (hyacinth in smythe, 2015, p. 168) in this passage, hyacinth shared her experience as a guest in a mexican friend’s home which reminded her of kenya, but not of the united states. she felt a sense of openness in those other cultures—of being fluidly woven in the fabric of other people’s lives without feeling like a burden. having been a teacher in cameroon, africa i could relate to this sense of being woven into others’ lives and welcome (without invitation or fuss) into others’ homes. almost every night, one was expected to walk around the village to stop in on friends for a visit where one might be invited to a meal or a snack and lots of conversation. there was something comforting about those visits and i felt connected and welcome to be there. still, as i reflect on both the passage above and my own experience, i notice that there is a woman who is doing the cooking, cleaning, taking care of the children, and making sure that everyone is welcome. my point here is that focusing on experience as purely cultural may hide the ways in which they are also gendered. wang (2004) writes of the “cultural demand for feminine invisibility” and i find that this demand is expressed through language, for example, using the term “man” to refer to “humanity,” promoting the usage of masculinized terms to describe experience (e.g. as warriors, soldiers, fighters, etc.), denigrating the feminine as something weak, and failing to recognize the capacity and the gifts that the feminine has to offer. along these lines, a student mentioned in class that after preparing dinner she called out to her husband and daughter, “dinner is ready you guys” to which her young daughter replied, “mommy, i’m not a guy!” her daughter understood that the term was a masculine one and in proclaiming that she was “not a guy” she was making her feminine “self” visible. smythe. from telescope to kaleidoscope 35 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci it is interesting that a child made this observation. the adults in my class said that they had also used the term ‘guys’ when referring to women, yet would not refer to men or boys in the same way as ‘gals.’ this allowed us as a class to discuss the ways in which children may lose this perceptiveness and unconsciously “learn” to follow linguistic rules that work to hide the feminine. this is not to posit masculine and feminine in opposition against each other, or to value one above the other, but to question language practices that work to silenc e the feminine. it also opens a space to think about how feminine and masculine each informs the other to create a beautiful and dynamic whole. strategy 2: mining the metaphors the whole experience there was sort of like walking on ice…you didn’t know w hen you were going to give way because…you weren’t prepared. (joe in smythe, 2015, p. 46) metaphors (and similes from which metaphors can be inferred) work to create understanding by describing unshared experience in terms of another experience which may be more relatable. in this case, joe describes the experience of living and teaching in another culture in terms of walking on ice. when i think about walking on ice, i imagine something slippery and dangerous. i feel cautious, tentative, and vulnerable. for me, joe’s use of this metaphor highlights the feelings of danger and vulnerability in the intercultural and transnational teaching experience. as an intercultural and transnational teacher myself, i can readily recognize those feelings of vulnerability, but there are other feelings—feelings of connectedness and achievement. how can i account for those other feelings within the same metaphor? utilizing post-structural theory, koro-ljungberg (2004) suggests drawing out the various meanings of metaphors to generatively acknowledge the multiple messages that the metaphor carries. in thinking about the vulnerability expressed in joe’s metaphor, i began to look more deeply into research on vulnerability. i found that acknowledging one’s vulnerability without over-valorizing it, can lead to enlisting help from others and can lead to feelings of connectedness and understanding of others’ pain (murphy & moriarity, 1976; updegraff & taylor, 2000; jordan, 2008). i also, reflected on this idea of not being prepared. how can one be completely prepared for any new experience? is there a way to rethink this expectation to always be prepared? can one be prepared to feel unprepared in order to live spontaneously in the moment? when i consider these reflections on vulnerability and preparedness, i reimagine joe’s metaphor as “intercultural experience is learning to ice skate.” when first learning to ice skate, one may feel tentative and unprepared. one may even slip and fall. in working through, however, one may learn smoother, more fluid movements. one can learn to see the slips and falls as part of the learning process. further, feelings of vulnerability and unpreparedness are not seen as negative personal failings, but as positive insights into what it means to be human. strategy 3: recognizing identity and reality as fluid and relational [joe:] i think that that experience made me a different human being because you had to be a different human being there. and i didn’t realize that i had made this transformation that i wasn’t thinking about, “oh, when do we get paid?”…i had to smythe. from telescope to kaleidoscope 36 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci become a moldovan…and i think it was extraordinary enough that it felt awful to be here. as soon as i got back [to the u.s.] i had to start selling myself so that i could get a job…i instantly went from being appreciated and being totally involved in [my] work, to going back and sharpening [myself] so [i] can be the guy who gets the next job. competitive as hell. in this passage, joe suggests that he took on a new identity by becoming a “moldovan”. certainly being immersed in another culture for a long period of time can make one feel that way. it can challenge one’s sense of self and focus one’s attention in new directions. it can foster a sense of transformation. wang (2004), however, questions the ability to become someone completely different than before and suggests the need to think of identity in terms of “unsettled fluidity” that shifts in relation to the context (p. 127). it is not so much that joe’s identity has changed, but his relationship with each culture changes as he juxtaposes the two on this particular topic at this particular time. in claiming to have become “moldovan,” joe is identifying more with the sense of connection and appreciation he felt in moldova and less so with the sense of competition and “selling” himself he experienced when he returned to the united states. in another context, he may identify with what he sees as american values and/or hispanic cultural values. this suggests the fluid nature of identity/identification as “socially dynamic, open, plural, conflicting” and “contingent” (edwards, 2005, p. 60). i think this concept of “unsettled fluidity” also works well when thinking about the notion of “reality.” so many times, i hear friends, colleagues, and students talk about reality as if it were a singular, unified, solid state. invoking william james’ psychological perspective on reality, schuetz (1945), argued that “whatever excites and stimulates our interest is real. to call a thing real means that this thing stands in a certain relation to ourselves” (p. 533). he also draws on james to suggest that we simultaneously inhabit various “sub-worlds” including: the world of sense or physical things…the world of science, the world of ideal relations, the world of "idols of the tribe", the various supernatural worlds of mythology and religion, the various worlds of individual opinion, the worlds of sheer madness and vagary. (p. 533) the challenge is in recognizing our multiple identities and realities as fluidly shifting relationships when cultural and social institutions attempt to fix identity and reality into mutually exclusive categories. understanding reality and identity as multiple, fluid, and relational has been useful in exploring my own identity — especially in the area of religion and spirituality. i have traces of the religious tradition that i grew up with, traces of the religious traditions of the different cultures i have lived among, and traces of spiritual beliefs that i have sought out myself. i have been touched and influenced by all of these — to say that i am this or that would be problematic. why do i need to claim anything? whose purpose does that serve? strategy 4: shifting the focus from there (other) to here (self) smythe. from telescope to kaleidoscope 37 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci my values are very american…i feel men and women have equal rights. (hyacinth in smythe, 2015, p. 158) for hyacinth, the ways in which gender roles were enacted and embodied in kenya made her realize how american she was. some of the things she noted were that women were expected to carry everything, because “men don’t carry”. after a boy was circumcised at the age of 13 or 14 years old, he could not be chastised by a female — not his mother or a teacher, and that a father would not hold his child until the child was 4 years old. having witnessed these gender role assignments and the way male privilege was constructed in kenya made her appreciate that she did not experience gender roles and male privilege in the same manner in american culture. however, in thinking about gender and male privilege, i would argue that although privilege takes a different form in the u.s., it still exists. using mcintosh’s (1988) method of reflecting on privilege in her own life, i can observe that as a white male i have certain unearned privileges. for example, i live in a country where all men are created equal and the laws of the land (indeed our constitution) were fashioned by white men. i live in a culture where god, although formless and shapeless, is father, son, and holy ghost. i live in a culture where femininity and feminine knowing is derided as over -emotional and less than. i can open any history textbook and find the contributions of men (especially white men) offered throughout. in education, funding sports often takes precedence over funding the arts and academics itself. in academics, male-oriented rational-scientific understanding is the current status quo with a focus on stem. these are only a few examples and when i have presented these in class, students are quite able to add their own. the larger point i am trying to make with this strategy is that even though cultures do things differently such as gender, religion, education, etc. there are correlations that one might not see, because they have been by between “hidden” and “one’s” culture. for example, it is easier to see gender inequality in making women carry everything; it is perhaps less obvious when male logic shapes the very structure (the legal system, education, religion, etc.) of a culture. another example i can readily think of is that of “corruption”. pointing out the corruption in other countries sometimes leaves us blind to our own long history of corruption in the u.s. or the ways in which corruption functions in our current society. this is not to suggest that corruption is okay because everyone is doing it, but a call to take off our own blinders when it comes to understanding ourselves and our relationships with others. strategy 5: locating the aporias the experience of kenyan generosity made [ryder] feel “shame” for american “avarice”. (smythe, 2015, p. 125) again, as someone who has lived and taught in africa, i can cer tainly relate to ryder’s experience. i felt this sense of african generosity at a very deep level —a sense that no matter how little people had, they were willing to share practically everything. it also goes beyond a sense of the material to include a generosity of spirit in which everyone was welcomed and included. still, one might argue that in terms of material generosity, the u.s. donates more money in charitable aid to developing countries than any other country in the world (adelman, spantchak, & marano, 2012). in a sense, one could argue that both kenya and the u.s. are generous in different ways. smythe. from telescope to kaleidoscope 38 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci one could also argue that neither kenya nor the u.s. is generous. according to derrida’s “aporia of the gift” generosity is (im)possible which i interpret as both possible and not possible (barnett, 2005, p. 10). derrida argues that when one gives a gift there is always a return of some sort that one expects — a thank you of some kind, a gift in return, a political favor, strengthened social bonds, a feeling, etc. in a sense, giving a gift is as much about “getting” as it is about “giving.” recognizing this doubled meaning of generosity, allows for another way of understanding claims of generosity. strategy 6: disrupting the connections joe argued that being a teacher in the peace corps meant that you “really have to care.” he asked rhetorically if it were possible to spend two years teaching in another country, especially a poorer one, if one didn’t care. (smythe, 2015, p. 60) for joe, caring was connected to the notion of sacrifice—that in thinking of others, he needed to forget about his own needs. caring meant giving up his own sense of comfort in order to demonstrate that he cared. however, in other passages not included here, joe also fel t cared for in moldova. he gained so much from his experience he claimed that “it’s not bad being poor” (p. 55). this suggests that caring can be both about sacrifice and gain. in letting go of the comforts of his american lifestyle, joe gained both international experience and a greater appreciation for other people in the world. he also found that the care he gave others could be reciprocated and flow back to him. strategy 7: embracing ambiguity ryder was …surprised to discover homosexual behavior in saudi arabia…because he “thought people would be more afraid to be a homosexual in saudi arabia than they are in the west.” yet since he has returned to the u.s., he has a different perspective. he argued, “my concept of america was that it was more liberal and tolerant than what it actually is. we are very “puritanical” and “very conservative.” (smythe, 2015, p. 131) in this passage, ryder points out the paradox of finding homosexual practices tolerated in saudi arabia despite harsh cultural prescriptions against it and likewise condemned in the u.s. despite being considered a country of liberty and equality. this suggests there are mismatches in the ways cultures portray themselves politically and the actual experiences of everyday people within those cultures. it also implies that cultures are interested in the sex lives of their citizens—often in a controlling way—and that sexuality is not only personal but also social, cultural, and political. in reflecting more deeply on this topic, i note that a male/female and/or heterosexual/homosexual dualism often shapes discussions of sexuality, yet there are multiple modes of identification and behaviors in the spaces between these dualisms that sometimes go unnoticed. for example, mcintosh (1968) noted that the term bisexual was created to account for people who did not fit the gay/straight binary (p. 182-183). more recently, the term lgbt (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) has come into popular use to recognize other identities. and even more recently, terms such as amherst college’s (n.d.) “lgbtqqiap” which stands for “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, asexual and pansexual” have replaced lgbt as too simplistic. professor jack halberstam (in smythe. from telescope to kaleidoscope 39 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci schulman, 2013) notes that these newer acronyms are popping up “because people are seeing all the things that fall out of the binary, and demanding that a name come into being” (online). i am concerned, however, that in this naming, one might feel the need to maintain the boundaries of the category in which one finds oneself. to me, the importance lies not in getting hung up on the acronyms or the categories, but in recognizing that sexuality and gender identity may take on different shapes and move in different directions that may defy categorization. that in focusing on what is—the trait that created the category, we may forget about what is not—the hidden traits that may also come into play. surely, one may fluctuate between, within, and among categories. claiming and naming identities seems like an act of political belonging. can one feel equally whole when embracing the nothing-ness of ambiguity as the freedom to create and recreate the self in the moment? strategy 8: looking beneath labels harley said she “would always get into trouble in the philippines” because she wanted to do things by herself but that the filipinos were a more “collectivist society.”…at home, in america, she “would always have a little more freedom.” (smythe, 2015, p. 80) harley, whose parents were from the philippines, was born and raised in the united states but began travelling back to the philippines on vacation when she was about 10 years old. she noticed that in the philippines she always seemed to have to do things with others and wasn’t really allowed to spend time doing things on her own. in the u.s. however, there were times when she was allowed to do things by her herself. along these lines she labeled the philippines as a collectivist culture and implied that the u.s. was an individualist culture that offered more freedom. i hear teachers using this individualist/collectivist designation (or something along these lines) fairly regularly, especially if they teach classes with a large number of immigrant students whom they label as collectivistic. sometimes this may mask the ways in which those students express their individuality, especially if one continually looks for confirmation that students function as a collective. likewise, when a person is praised for their individuality, the ways in which they are part of the collective may go unseen. educators and others use the individualist/collectivist categorization as if it is fixed and solid but in looking beneath the construction of these labels, a slightly different picture emer ges—one that points to other meanings within the labels. for example, simmel (2007) notes that there are different expressions of individuality. according to simmel, the “germanic” type is suggestive of uniqueness. another type —the “latinate”—is more closely related to similarity with others. i can express this as the feeling i get when i buy mass produced products (clothes, computers, cars, etc.). i feel special even though i bought something that millions of other people also own. i feel unique and simil ar to others in the same instant! additionally, takano and sogon (2008), point out that japan, which has been labelled a collectivist culture, shows no significant differences in “in-group conformity rates” as the united states which has been labelled an individualist culture. kulkarni et al. (2010) also note that depending on the measure, india has been sometimes labelled individualist and sometimes collectivist. further, that the u.s., which is touted as an individualist culture, demonstrates collectivist tendencies on some measures (kulkarni et al., 2010). this is not to smythe. from telescope to kaleidoscope 40 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci suggest that all cultures are the same, yet that they may manifest collectivist and individualist characteristics in different ways. rather than categorizing people from different cultures solely in terms of cultural labels, bell & das (2011) argue that culture is no longer monolithic, as in individualistic or collectivistic. the person– culture relationship is no longer one that can be captured by independent and dependent variables. instead, identities are both social and personal. dynamic processes take the place of static states. questions of how identities emerge and are maintained come to the fore. (p. 242) as a transnational teacher, i certainly have seen how students’ lived e xperiences shaped their “person-culture relationship” to the extent that they embraced some cultural values and rejected others in endless and not necessarily predictable combinations. further, that this person-culture relationship changed over time as new experiences shaped their awareness. why then continue to use cultural labels to describe people? what other factors come into play when these labels are utilized? strategy 9: rethinking positives and negatives [joe] felt that teaching the moldovan students to be creative was “the most amazing part because [he] got to open up their minds to other possibilities.” joe also added that he translated the technique to his students in the u.s. because “they have the same problem,” especially when it came to answering open-ended essay questions on the year end state-wide exam.” (smythe, 2015, p. 64) during my talks with joe, he circled around the topic of creativity several times, suggesting the need for me to take a closer look. creativity, it has been noted, is a popular term in western culture that symbolizes “success, the modern, trends for novelty and excitement” and “establishes immediate empathy, and conveys and image of dynamism” (european commission, 2009, p. 2). yet in its continual use, it risks becoming a “hurrah word”—a rallying slogan, a type of cultural shorthand, in which meaning has become statically reduced into a singularly instrumental form (gibson, 2005, p. 149). other words i would place in this category are “democracy” and “freedom.” why is it problematic to be framed in solely positive terms? when a word, concept, or person becomes synonymous as something entirely positive (or entirely negative for that matter), it becomes off limits for questioning the ways in which it is not what it claims to be. thinking becomes limited by what is culturally acceptable. to seek meaning beyond the limits is taboo. some of the ways in which creativity also holds negative connotations includes the ways in which it is employed to create weapons of war and torture, to deny people their civil rights through creative political and legal wrangling, and to creatively distract citizens from actively participating in democratic discourse by immersing them in media, technology, and economic self-interest. some of the most creative artists, actors, and comedians draw inspiration from extremely negative life experiences. in the classroom, a student’s behavior — when out of step with the teacher’s wishes—may be viewed as negative and nonconformist. can this behavior also be considered creative? conclusions and continuations smythe. from telescope to kaleidoscope 41 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci in my view, these and other post-structural strategies can be used to draw out the multiplicity and complexity within texts, can remind us how language is used to shape and reshape our senses of “reality,” and can urge us to dynamically play with the structure so that we may extend our understanding beyond established limits. i also firmly believe that these strategies can help us read students’ (and our own) writings with a more critical eye and add depth to our research. acknowledging the paradoxes, conflicts, ambiguities, and the many fluid layers of meaning gives voice to lived experience. it provides a starting point for classroom and public dialogue and gives direction to research. it can engender a shift in thinking from a singular, exclusionary, and telescopic perspective to one that is more inclusive, pluralistic, and kaleidoscopic. it can also lead to more ethical approaches to the processes of education by working to explore the relationships among meaning, power, and perceived differences. this is especially important in the continually diversifying education systems in which educators currently find themselves, where varying cultural, linguistic, and socioeconomic factors come into play. i am continually encouraged by students’ struggles to deconstruct the words, cultural labels and categories that shape their lives. for instance, after watching an episode of the twilight zone (1964) in which all citizens have their appearance altered at the age of 19 so that they may look alike, students in a graduate level diversity class spontaneously related the program to the theme of gender conformity. through their discussions, they identified the surveillance, maintenance, and oftentimes violence involved in enforcing the gender dualism of male/female with all of the social prescriptions assigned to each category. they noted that through social institutions such as schools and churches, through mass media, and through their families and other social relationships, they learned both the rules of gender and the punishments for not following the rules. based on our discussions —certain questions emerged that may be useful in considering other dualisms that work to structure people within static, oppositional categories: what if one does not fit the side of the dualism that was constructed for them? what if one fits the other side of the dualism that wasn’t meant for them? what if one doesn’t fit either side of the dualism or fits both sides? what if one wants to choose a different category because it is ascribed a certain amount of privilege and power? is it even possible to categorize one’s identity and give it a label? still, some of the dualisms slip by unnoticed. in another example from a graduate level diversity course, a student (herself a teacher) wrote that schools can either hurt children or they can choose to help them. again, this kind of help/hurt dualism appears to limit thinking rather than promote thinking in more complex, connected, and contextual ways. i would argue that schools both help and hurt students in ways that educators don’t always see or understand. being vigilant and open to the ways in which schools not only help but can also hurt, is imperative for educators who are often called upon to enforce cultural dualisms in ways that are damaging for students and society. recognizing and bringing these dualisms under scrutiny in our students’ writing and our own research opens up possibilities for healing the fractures and broadening our thinking. it creates a path toward self-awareness and an ethical awareness of other cultural and transnational perspectives. referring back to the opening quote, it also leads to a “world too full to talk about.” yet, paradoxically, to fully embody this world of multiplicity calls for emptying ourselves of the dualisms, oppositions, and categorizations which work to structure it. in other words, we gain so much by letting go. notes 1 jon.smythe@okstate.edu smythe. from telescope to kaleidoscope 42 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci references adelman, c., spantchak, y. & marano, k. (2012). the index of global philanthropy and remittances 2012. retrieved from http://www.hudson.org/research/8841-the-index-ofglobal-philanthropy-and-remittances-2012 amherst college (n.d.). lgbtqqiap resources. retrieved from https://www.amherst.edu/campuslife/deanstudents/handbook/campuslife/resourcesgayle sbianstudents aoki, t. (1993). humiliating the cartesian ego. in w. f. pinar & r. irwin (eds.) curriculum in a new key: the collected works of ted aoki (pp. 291-301). mahwah, nj: lawrence earlbaum. barnett, c. (2005). ways of relating: hospitality and the acknowledgement of otherness. progress in human geography, 29(1), 5–21. bell, n. j. & das, a. (2011). emergent organization in the dialogical self: evolution of a ''both'' ethnic identity position. culture psychology, 17(2), 241-262. cixous, h. (1994). the hélène cixous reader. s. sellers (ed.). new york, ny: routledge. edwards, t. (2005). queering the pitch? gay masculinities. in m.s. kimmel, j. hearn, & r.w. connell (eds.), handbook of studies on men and masculinities, 51-68, thousand oaks, ca: sage. european commission. (2009). the impact of culture on creativity. retrieved from http://www.keanet.eu/docs/execsum_creativity_english%20.pdf gibson, h. (2005). what creativity isn’t: the presumptions of instrumental and individual justifications for creativity. british journal of educational studies, 53(2), 148–167. gough, n. & price, l. (2004). rewording the world: poststructuralism, deconstruction and the ‘real’ in environmental education. southern african journal of environmental education, 21, 23-36. howarth, d.r. (2013). poststructuralism and after: structure, subjectivity and power . new york, ny: palgrave macmillan. jordan, j. (2008). learning at the margin: new models of strength. women & therapy, 31(24), 189-208. koro-ljungberg, m. 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(2014). understanding poststructuralism. new york, ny: routledge (original work published 2005) submitted: november, 17th, 2015. approved: december, 19th, 2015. o legado de paulo freire para as polã�ticas de currã�culo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: wu, jinting. (2013). towards a curriculum of vulnerability and blandness: insights from levinas and classical chinese thoughts. transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> towards a curriculum of vulnerability and blandness: insights from levinas and classical chinese thoughts jinting wu 1 university of macau, macau introduction the 2011 french feature film the intouchables offers an inspiring account of a rare encounter, not only of bodies and minds, but also tangled class and racial politics. in an unmistakably simple plot, directors and film writers olivier nakache and érictoledano take the audience to an unlikely relationship between philippe, a french aristocrat paralyzed from neck down, and driss, a black ex-con from the projects, who is hired as his live-in caretaker. as the film begins, philippe and his assistant are interviewing candidates in his luxurious parisian mansion. driss, recently released from incarceration, has no intention of being hired. he only wants a signature to prove his failure of job search so that he can continue receiving unemployment benefits. extremely casual and flirtatious, he manages to annoy everyone yet raises philipp’s eyebrows. the next day, driss comes back to collect the signature and finds to his astonishment that phillip has decided to give him a trial. among all applicants, philippe chooses driss, the frivolous and even crime-prone, and allows him into the inner chamber of his life. thus an unexpected journey awaits both. one of the most critically acclaimed french-language films in recent years, the movie depicts the exiles of two troubled and vulnerable souls. as the film unfolds, we see the evolution of a heartwarming relationship where interpersonal encounters and discursive forces, hospitality and vulnerability infuse each other. like philippe’s physical paralysis, driss is socially “disabled” and utterly vulnerable to life’s fickle comings and goings. from an immigrant senegalese family, driss lives the everyday realities of drugs and gangs, and becomes homeless after his foster-parent, who is exasperated for not seeing him for six months, orders him to leave. through the care encounter, both protagonists discover an entirely new dimension of their own existence, and recast an unlikely relationship into one of mutual enrichment. their sociability emerges when another human being is in crisis. taking up the feature film the intouchables, this article will first explore the fruitful notion of “vulnerability” through a levinasian lens to rethink how human relationship generates its own gravity even in most unlikely circumstances. secondly, i will explore the moral and philosophical visions expressed in chinese classical thoughts, especially the motif of blandness, to provide another “witnessing lens” to vulnerability. by reading wu. towards a curriculum of vulnerability and blandness: insights from levinas and classical 50 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (2) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci emanuel levinas and classical chinese thoughts, i suggest that an ethos of vulnerability and blandness could open up a nurturing space for potentials and renewals, so that the necessary conditions of justice and ethics may emerge across social differences and in educational practices. lastly, i will discuss the curriculum implications gained through a positive appraisal of the motif of vulnerability and blandness—not as deficiency but the path to unimpeded growth and potentials. a difficult cosmopolitan project: vulnerability in levinasian ethics it seems almost commonplace for humanitarian (including educational) projects to speak of vulnerability as the central target of elimination. vulnerability is intuitively conceived as a synonym for weakness, impotence, and victimhood, as the consequence of various institutional and social oppressions. i propose, however, to consider vulnerability not as one of the limits of human existence, but as the very condition of how to live as humans. put it psychoanalytically, vulnerability is experienced as one experiences the insuppressible presence of the self; and vulnerability binds us in moral obligations towards one another. however, the path to the other is not always self-evident in our daily spontaneous acts. for instance, when we condemn the exclusion from history of the minoritized others—the women, the jews, the black, the homosexual, etc.—our cosmopolitan narrative often inadvertently “incarcerates” them as a constitutive outside against which humanity has defined itself. such is the striking doubleness of the enlightenment project that seeks to include the others in an expanded cosmopolitan utopia but never completely of it. the cosmopolitan project, as gilroy (2000) contends, becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that concerns itself with the forms of universal humanism yet strips away all histories of social violence in most embodied ways. as kennedy (2011, p. 375) also asks, “[o]f what use is the ideal of common humanity when injustice and atrocity is very much experienced in the particular—on my body, or against my family, my community and those others i recognize as like me?” mindful of the danger of the cosmopolitan rhetoric, which is often construed in a self-referential system of abstraction and identity politics, levinas starts instead with the most tangible and bodily—the face. the greek word for face, prosopon, means also a mask, something more than what is revealed to the eyes. to levinas, the path to the other is frequently blocked in our reducing the face of the other to that which meets our gaze—the expression of the eyes, the wrinkles on the forehead, the color of the skin, etc.—and by our stripping away the fullness of the face via categories, concepts, and descriptors. what is at stake for him is to take “face” as a point of anchorage and to re-open the question of ethics against the universal humanism of enlightenment. the philosophical and ethical preeminence of the face—beyond representation and irreducible to the naming of the women, the jews, the black, the homosexual, the disabled, etc.—gives rise to the singular affirmation of the existence of the other. built on husserlian phenomenology, levinas revives ethics in the most sensuous and concrete, rather than through metaphysical and logo-categorical abstraction. he gives an account of ethical sensibility in which goodness is irreducible to knowledge of the sovereign cartesian subject, but awakened by the vulnerability of the other, as the suffering for the other’s suffering (1991). levinas seeks to understand vulnerability as a mode of relating to others prior to consciousness, will, or intention, by offering oneself to be “bound to others before being tied to my body” (levinas, 1998a, p. 76). in other words, the alterity of the other “animates” the ethical senses through a pre-reflective intentionality, in the very wu. towards a curriculum of vulnerability and blandness: insights from levinas and classical 51 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (2) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci immediacy that precedes conscious reflection (drabinski, 1999). that is to say, ethics is born as an affection rather than a reflection, without reducing the other to comprehension and representation in the i’s intentional efforts. thus ethics is beyond sovereignty, beyond the torsion of language where “sovereignty is operative” and where “the saying of ethics, as for the other, necessarily lapses into the said of cognition” (young, 2009, p. 222). now, if we recall, we can hardly characterize driss as intentionally good-willed. his deeds, if anything, derive from his self-interested effort to simply—exist. however, this effort at existing has covered something up, something unstable and always already at work, something like a pebble in one’s shoe that makes one unable to stand still and propels one to always take another step. the pebble in the shoe captures levinas’s observation of the paradox of being human: a self-interested effort at existing, and at the same time, a discomfort with oneself in the effort of existing (burggraeve, 1999). such a discomfort, levinas calls the miracle of the human, opens up the ethical care for the other, who is always under the menacing annihilation of the face encounter that reduces it to what “the face” gives us “to see.” ethics, put in a double negative, is the discomfort and “the inability to remain indifferent to those who suffer” (joldersma, 2009, p. 207). this returns us to the difficult educational task to nurture the humbleness of putting oneself in another’s place and allowing within oneself the other’s distress and pain. too often our curricular text is cluttered with matters of conscious will, the sovereign subject, and abstract ideal of humanity and justice. while the juridical concept of justice remains within the bounds of metaphysics, the levinasian ethics calls the subject outside the ontological framework and identity politics. whereas metaphysical ethics is understood as a reasoned duty and thought-out principle that collapse the other into the same, levinas “identified one’s response to the other as initiating the ethical moment—a movement that takes ethics outside and away from the thought-out self” (tarc, 2006, p. 289). it teaches us ethics does not begin with what we make of the other; it begins with the other. it is the sensible embodiment of vulnerability that fuels the “memory of servitude” to others (levinas, 1998b, p.149) and ignites the subject’s relation to alterity beyond its identity. many philosophers have spilled ink on the problematic of otherness/alterity/ethics, in the larger movement seeking to trouble the universal humanism exercised in language, social programs, and state laws. levinas certainly has his place in this movement, yet his critique of the imperialism of universality is neither through the deconstruction of language nor the promotion of incommensurable singularity. his originality lies in his speaking of otherness as infinitely vulnerable, as the ethical anchor through which the claims of universal can be called into question (goux, 2011, p.387). to encounter alterity, levinas (1991) contends, is to encounter the other whose vulnerability demands ethical care without the exercise of the i’s cognitive and representational impulses, such that “[e]thics is the awakening of subjectivity in the absence of interpretational consciousness (nortvedt, 2003, p. 227). ethics takes place precisely when the “i” loses her/his grips on the world—affected by cogito—and is being appealed to by the other in the concrete experience of vulnerability. ethics is experienced bodily, through which the vulnerable other is elevated to a status of height and takes precedence over thinking. the height of the other orders us to approach her/him with humbling proximity, with incomplete knowledge that retains the other’s unknowability and sacredness, and with a suffering upon the other’s destitute call. this is not intended as the good will within human reason, for the other encountered is wu. towards a curriculum of vulnerability and blandness: insights from levinas and classical 52 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (2) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci always already a trace of what has never been present in the consciousness or reason (nortvedt, 2003, p.228). judith butler’s moral philosophy, describing vulnerability as constitutive of the human, gives us a different entry to levinasian ethics. in her more recent works, giving an account of oneself (2005) and precarious life (2006), butler elaborates vulnerability as a starting point for ethical relations, for the appellation or naming of, say, the women, the jews, the black, the homosexual, etc. categorically renders one’s social existence dependent upon and bonded to others through linguistic normalization (mills, 2007). for butler, norms are inherently violent and the subject is effectively constrained yet dependent on such violent normalizations—or the “exclusionary matrix”—for its own emergence and existence (1993, p.3). the repetition of norms and normalization is part of a regulatory force that produces the bodies it governs, through which one both establishes oneself as abjected being in complicity with norms, and effects a disindentification from the norms through performative politics. 2 vulnerability per butler is discursive ambivalence of the subject in its dependency on normative violence for its constitution, such that “[o]ne comes to ‘exist’ by virtue of this fundamental dependency on the address of the other” (ibid. p.5). what for butler is linguistic vulnerability inherent in the subject’s coming-intonoticeability, is, for levinas, an extra-linguistic responsibility that summons one to embracing the face of the other phenomenologically. for butler, normative violence in speech is a mode by which vulnerability is made apparent and which gives rise to ethical responsibility. as such, the “face” cannot simply appear as a face without the intervention of normative intelligibility that establishes what is to be seen from the face. in other words, the face of the other depends on normative violence to enter into ethical relationship. while for butler it is the dependency on language, for levinas it is the categorical responsibility to vulnerability—a response before the order is pronounced and understood via language— that the subject is hailed into being. certainly, butler’s conception of vulnerability deviates from levinas’s in a number of ways. one important point of conjunction, however, is this: while butler speaks of social death, or “abjection” that the subject suffers as a result of its dependency on linguistic violence, she converges with levinas’s reading of the face encounter as a failure to fully allow the subject to appear more than what the skin and flesh gives the eyes to see, more than, say, a black, a woman, a homosexual. the world-making and reality-conferring capacity of the norm, which for butler (inspired by foucault) is a repetitive violence of language, 3 for levinas (inspired by husserl) necessitates the interconnectedness of one human being to another, the incompleteness of such relation, and the “re-saying of the saying of the said—infinite, as ethics” (levinas, 1998b, p. xv). in the intouchables, both philippe and driss are vulnerable—one physically and the other socially, economically, and racially—and to varying degrees, struggle with their own plights. as a caretaker, driss does not act out of the abstract ideal of sympathy or hospitality. in fact, it is in his lack of sympathy toward the paralyzed that he recognizes the other’s “face” more fully. in philippe’s conversation with his friend, he reveals deep dismay at the impersonal sympathy leveled at his disability by his previous caretakers, and instead, cherishes driss’s bold ignorance of this vital element of his identity. despite the “incivility” of driss, phillip finds an unchecked sentiment that enables him to surrender to his own pain and paranoia, and surprisingly, to discover something new. driss is irrepressibly outspoken, mischievous, and quarrelsome: his arrival is nothing but strange to philippe’s world. yet that strangeness summons philippe to respond to its claims, and at the wu. towards a curriculum of vulnerability and blandness: insights from levinas and classical 53 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (2) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci same time, to be ready to be claimed in new and strange ways. in that rupture there is a warm embrace, an intimate crossing of social, cultural, and racial thresholds that philippe finds wonderfully refreshing. he is led by driss to put some order to his life, opening to the latter his troubled existence and at the same time putting himself in the care of the latter. in their ongoing interplays, both recognize each other as accomplices and allies; their vulnerability communicates strength and inspires faith in each to be at ease in another’s care and to inhabit a scene of their own making. driss and philippe exist in an aporetic relationship to one another, through irreconcilable differences as well as shared commonalities of inhabiting the zone of intouchability. in every respect of social status, wealth, prestige, and temperament, they are strikingly unequal. yet in a very real sense, both are living outside the social or corporeal norms. their relationship is hardly characterizable as hierarchical: despite the extreme wealth and status differences, philippe, with his natural faculties almost nil, relies on driss in every minutia of daily living: from medical matters to letter writing to phone conversation, from eating to undressing to excretion, from the most refined sociality to the most rudimentary animal needs. in such a relationship of undecidability, ethics becomes an aporetic encounter that “bears the contradiction of deciding with undecidability, of speaking to the other’s unspeakable experience” (tarc, 2006, p. 297). it beckons one to pass through non-passable edges of language and non/reason in metaphysics. ethics thus is the movement through irresolvable aporia where the knowing of the other has to be (re)learned over and again, in a position of infinite waiting and becoming. pedagogy of blandness: vulnerability in classical chinese thoughts following the discussion of vulnerability as levinasian ethics, this section will explore the moral and philosophical visions expressed in chinese classical texts to provide another “witnessing lens” to vulnerability. in ancient chinese thought, i argue, the image of the vulnerable is expressed through the motif of blandness—as in the lingering sound of music and in the spartan landscape painting, which assumes an aesthetic elegance. vulnerability is approached as a natural state of things in which all partakes in the flux of transformation, as the meditative flow of the inexorably passing world. as much as vulnerability, blandness is a notion of indirect signification and can be a useful analytical tool in recasting the kind of questions that philosophy of education and ethics write large can pose. why china? as jullien and marchaisse (1994: 247) remark, china stands as an elsewhere beyond the framework of western thought, yet the elsewhere must not be confused with difference, as china is no more different from the european sphere than it is similar to it. by reading levinas and chinese classical texts together, i hope, offers a productive dialogue between two distinct systems of thought to see what opens up for education and ethics in our time. if the encounter with alterity is what animates the levinasian ethics, ancient chinese thought may lead us to question the binary of self and alterity altogether, for it is not a philosophy that concerns with dualist ontology or metaphysics, but honors the presence of absence, flux within stability, stability within flux, and metaphorically, the lingering flavor of blandness. french sinologist francios jullien, in his widely acclaimed essay in praise of blandness: proceeding from chinese thought and aesthetics (2008), charts an exceptionally rich journey in exploring an unusual notion in chinese thought and aesthetics, i.e. the motif of blandness. blandness, commonly referring to the absence of flavor, character, or color, is often considered a negative quality in anglo-francophone wu. towards a curriculum of vulnerability and blandness: insights from levinas and classical 54 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (2) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci contexts. a deceptively simple concept, however, blandness, or dan淡 in mandarin, possesses a special significance in the development of chinese culture. associated with water (as suggested by the radical 氵on the left), dan淡takes up a felicitous overtone as the fecundity of the ordinary and the elemental capacity of renewal from which all flavors derive. just as water is transitory without form and malleable by the force of every obstacle it encounters, blandness preserves an elusive value and propensity of things by avoiding the fixity of meanings in particular flavors, characters, and colors, and by nurturing the potentiality for immanence. blandness, at first sight, is not an easy value to embrace, as it is contrary to the pleasure of the taste and our inclination towards indulgence in such pleasure. yet according to jullien, blandness is a positive quality where all currents of chinese thought— confucianism, taoism, and buddhism—converge, as the undifferentiated foundation of all things and their fullness of potentials. in landscape paintings, blandness is a motif that artists in as early as the tang and song dynasties strove for to depict concrete experiences without reducing them to particular signs or meanings. a classical chinese landscape is usually no more than sketchy brushstrokes of airy mountains, expanse of water, sparse vegetation and rocks, and thatched roof as hints of human presence, in diluted ink and with narrow range of colors. playing with the limit of our perception, the bland unburdens the artist from differentiation, from having to compel attention with elaborate details, to achieve a state when “all landscapes blend together and assimilate each other” (37) in expansive movements of meanings. in a landscape of great simplicity and sparseness, nothing forces itself onto the gaze, and the gaze is not frontal but sideway glance of what is fleeting and on the verge of disappearing. in the quiet fascination of blandness, more is preserved, unsaid, and undone. the open-ended dynamism of blandness is the embodiment of both the confucian mean (中庸) and the taoist way (道), and reflects the chinese philosophical striving for plenitude, rather than abstraction (versano, preface to jullien 2008, pp.13). the taoists and confucians pursue the roots of all existence—or the foundation of heaven and earth (天地之本)—not through inquiring into what truly is (the being-in-itself or pure idea as in the greek thought). rather, their approach is a celebration of the original nature, as inhered in change, where all things flourish and through which the world unfolds in unceasing renewals. this detachment of ancient chinese thought from the abstract concept of truth and truth-based reasoning—which underscores the entire foundation of west philosophy— is nontrivial. it reflects the inclination of the chinese philosophers and laymen to shun abstract theorizing in favor of the practicality and plenitude of the everyday (hansen 1985: 491; munro 1969:55). the perceptible dimension of reality is never superable by metaphysical paradigms of rationality. instead of seeking transcendental meaning from the day-to-day empirical flux, the programmatic orientation of the chinese thought opens directly onto flux itself, “[bestowing] on becoming the logic of its own transpiring” (jullien 2008: 49). the origin of the flux is the flux (the nature) itself, and as such, the concept of truth is unnecessary and discordant with flux’s polyvalence and indeterminacy. as the taoists claim, no tao is constant as no name is constant, and there is no constant way, or tao, to be constructed (see lao tzu 2002). what is real is wu无 (i.e. nothingness) that, paradoxically, preserves the fecundity of actions. consequently, what is truly flavorful is the bland that preserves the fullness of tastes by not fixating on any particular flavor. wu. towards a curriculum of vulnerability and blandness: insights from levinas and classical 55 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (2) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the dualistic framework that underpins much of western philosophical tradition, what derrida (1976: 22-73) calls “the metaphysics of presence,” 4 is unthinkable in ancient chinese thought, in which essence, presence, and absence are not discrete realms but an organic whole mutually generating and co-emerging. in such ex-linguistic realm, the sign is an absolute violence, rather than a signification, of presence, as every sign actualizes by excluding one another, thus “fixes” and “strangles” the infinite possible. to taoists such as chuang tzu (1968), to valorize binary oppositions of signs is to see reality partially, as binaries are constructed to explain the world in particular (oppositional) way and fail to recognize that oppositions are often accomplices and supplementarity. as chuang tzu commented, “he [the sage] too recognizes a ‘this,’ but a ‘this’ which is also a ‘that,’ a ‘that’ which is also a ‘this.’…a state in which ‘this’ and ‘that’ no longer find their opposites is called the hinge of the tao” (1968, chapter 2, cited in yeh 1983:104). in such ex-linguistic realm of the tao, presence is undifferented and vulnerable flux, where the notyet, the becoming, and the extinguishing are all but the same great matrix. while the derridian differance punctuates the boundaries of alterity and sameness by allowing the movement of traces, while the levinasian ethics undoes the cartesian subject by offering itself up to the others before being bound to itself, the taoists depend on the way for deliverance from dualism. in the way, the elusive value of blandness casts into doubt the dualistic logic by the simultaneous presence and absence of taste, the fullness and vacancy of flavors, and the simplicity and abundance of motifs. through the lingering flavor, the dualism of self-alterity disintegrates, as difference and sameness no longer stand in opposition to each other, but rather abide within the plenitude of the co-producing yin and yang, which enables an infinite opening onto the richness of human experience and togetherness. it is through the bland that the vulnerability of immanence is preserved, rather than eliminated, as vulnerability inhered in flux is subject to indeterminacy and can never affirm its ever-changing presence. to illustrate this point, a bland sound is vulnerable in the sense that it does not seek to project an acoustic sign to declare its presence; it retreats into diminishing traces, dying out over the longest possible time. as such, the dualism of presence and absence is effectively challenged. we hear it still, but just barely; and as it diminishes, it makes all the more audible that soundless beyond into which it is about to extinguish itself. we are listening, then, to its extinction, to its return to the great undifferentiated matrix (jullien 2008: 79). the disturbances of the acoustic signs only fluctuate momentarily, until the threshold of silence is obtained and inner equilibrium of harmony is reached. the moment before the sound exerts its particularities, the process of the sound’s own fading, and the soundless beyond are stages when flux of existence is unified in the “great matrix,” when the real, the absencing presence, the emptying essence are overlapping and synchronic for yin and yang to communicate spontaneously. the taoists achieve a state of harmony by being attuned to silence, blandness, and nonsaying, rather than to emphatic, contrastive, definitive signs and discourses. as such, the metaphysical hierarchy of being-nonbeing, presence-absence is undone. the system of signs and saying/seeing as presencing is actively suppressed in chinese philosophical enterprise, especially that of tao, which seeks to refrain from saying and avoid the fragmenting of plenitude in actualization. as much as the “face” for levinas is vulnerable to the predicative discourse—for instance, to the linguistic demarcation of a wu. towards a curriculum of vulnerability and blandness: insights from levinas and classical 56 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (2) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci black, a jew, a disabled—the ancient chinese philosophers were wary of the artificial rupture of the transitory plenitude by the violence of signs. as each actualization is a negation of other possibilities, the plenitude is vulnerable to such actualizing rupture. in the context of both levinasian and classical chinese thought, vulnerability is not something to dispel, but a rich link with the world, intimate involvement with the great process of things, and the potentiality of the world’s unending renewal. the possibility of renewal is articulated by levinas as vulnerability in the face of the other, which, by upholding the other in a dimension of height, both disrupts what the face gives us to “see” and sparks the renewed presence of others in each encounter. in classical chinese thought, the potentiality lies in the great mean (中庸) that nurtures the full capacity of things to come about and ensures that heaven and earth are in their proper place—the place of centrality (正)rather than waywardness and partiality. the great mean has little to do with humility or mediocrity, to hide out in the middle road so to speak, with which it is often characterized, unduly, as the banal virtue. the virtue of the sage and the heaven lies in not deviating from the potential of the world and of man, as it is the source and efficacy of change. the virtue of the great mean recognizes the universal immanence through which change is diffused and nonspectacular in the longue durée of history, identical with itself and not corresponding to a distant will of god, and blending in as the normal state of affairs without extraordinary markers or flavors. in other words, the virtue of the great mean is in tune with the most subtle becomings manifest in the day-to-day, rather than seeking abrupt, substantial transformation. thus the taoist principle of human relations is one of spontaneous guilelessness where the dignity of the person lies not in him/her being autonomous and rational agents, but as part of human togetherness uncluttered by intentions, unburdened from any specific flavor, and unimpeded by any intervention. importantly, vulnerability is not an inert quality trapped in fragility and incapacity to act. it does not accept passively the world as it is, that which we might not have chosen but nonetheless thrown into, but welcomes the other’s arrival with amazement and awe by putting oneself into a position of unknowingness, in an almost sacred sense. such vulnerability counteracts the gesture of closure that “no sooner have we arrived than we are told that the world is tired of us; it has seen the likes of us before” (levinson, 1997, p. 441). similarly, the motif of blandness does not indicate an inability to distinguish or appreciate flavors. the whatness of the bland is the very indeterminacy, the very lingering that keeps the overdetermined flavors at bay so that the fullness of flavors may flourish. as such, vulnerability and blandness opens subjectivity onto inderdependence, presents us from slipping into particularity and partiality, and provokes a deep moral tenor both through the levinasian “awe” with which we approach the others and through the taoist “blandness” with which we strive for the true flavor. as much as the “face” resists being inserted into abstract categories of identities, the bland resists the taxonomy of particular flavors or seasonings. as much as vulnerability, blandness expresses our being in the world at its most radical by rendering the world less determined, with the presence already ruptured by absencing, signs already imbued with nondistinction (jullien 2008: 140). vulnerability and blandness does not lead us to a transcendental beyond in another world as the beyond is always already contained within the flows of things. wu. towards a curriculum of vulnerability and blandness: insights from levinas and classical 57 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (2) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci curriculum implications: vulnerability as subjectivity, blandness as nonaction what is to be gained by reading levinas and classical chinese thought together? as curricular texts, they provide an insight that education is a deeply philosophical and ethical matter. both call for a different conceptualization of social progress, one that takes issue with the teleological view of the “indefinite perfectibility” of human world (arendt, 1977, p. 176), and takes into account the human conditions of flux and indeterminancy. while levinas redirects philosophy from the essence of being to the crisis of being, from the question of what-is-being to the question of how to respond to being-in-crisis, ancient chinese thought further distablizes the boundaries of self-alterity, self-world to open up capacious movements and potentialities in human relations and experiences. as much as the chinese embrace blandness—a quality neither partial nor artificial—as a virtue in generating genuine, holistic social relations, levinas meditates upon vulnerability as undeniable responsibility for the crisis and suffering of the other, as a fundamental virtue that dons human encounters a sacred aura. on this common ground of the bland and the vulnerable, one encounters the paradox: that to praise the bland and the vulnerable runs against one’s most spontaneous judgment. the english incarnation of blandness and vulnerability is unmistakably repellent, indicating that something is missing and the lack thus renders the person/thing weak and fragile. in the last section of this article, i will explore what can be learned through a positive reading and appraisal of the motif of vulnerability and blandness to enrich our curriculum practices. it is impossible to “translate” or “apply” levinas or classical chinese thought to a curricular agenda, as both have questioned the very foundation of our current framework of education, and turned away from the predetermined guidelines and mandates that order the contour of school reforms. the bland and the vulnerable evoke the existential/aesthetic dimension of our curriculum because the vulnerable and bland is always there within us, and binds us to the intimate togetherness with the world and the others in a subtle manner. the bland and the vulnerable does not try to paint the world through signs, but give reign to the signs’ intensity, sensitivity, and perpetual (dif)fusion. in them, we find a theoretical rigor that is as efficient as it is subtle, and that lends much food for thoughts to current curriculum reforms in the u.s. and worldwide. vulnerability as subjectivity the notion of vulnerability is alarmingly salient in our time when racial slurs, ethnic violence, religious conflicts, homophobia, and labor exploitation crowd the news headlines, indicating that our disconnection from each other (and from ourselves) has reached tragic proportions. even in schools, children often report being unfairly judged, misunderstood, and rank-tracked, and not infrequently, suffer from bullying and gunfire. meanwhile, selfcentered individualism seems to be an epidemic that prevents the young from connecting to each other in meaningful ways. the question to ask is what educational responses would be appropriate in our time. in the market spirit of competition, it is commonsense to advocate for a curriculum oriented towards the cultivation of strength, power, and advantage, all antonyms to vulnerability. after all, who would desire their own selves and nations to be vulnerable? the vulnerability at issue here, however, is a misnomer, having little in common with the conventional definition as susceptibility to harms and attacks. it is a radical pedagogy that vows to hold open a space that might otherwise to be stifled with racial, wu. towards a curriculum of vulnerability and blandness: insights from levinas and classical 58 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (2) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci cultural, national, gendered, and able-ist norms. to endeavor for a curriculum of vulnerability is a daunting task that carries political risks given the racial-ethnic-religiousideological impasse we daily encounter in the global order. to teach vulnerability inescapably buttheads with nationalistic sentiments basing the strength of the nation on conquest and victory, in a world dominated by paranoia of the others through discourses of security, immigration, and terrorism, and in a globalizing market that upholds competitiveness and survival of the fittest. it is the other, the sine qua non of difference and aberration, that we have been conditioned to fear. indeed, a curriculum of vulnerability is unthinkable within the ontological structure of western historiography. to teach vulnerability is going against the grain, thinking with the unthinkable, and venturing into realm unexpected in curriculum studies canon. yet the concept of vulnerability allows us to speak differently about education, as it invites the teacher and the student to tap all circuits of intuitive/imaginative faculties, to hear what is muffled, to notice what is obscured, to overcome the inability to see others in the world of appearance (“faces”). a curriculum of vulnerability is mindful of the collective history of victimization, oppression, and marginalization, yet does not let the weight of the past foreclose the possibilities of the future. such a curriculum of vulnerability is complex, not to say aporetic, that encourages us to keep alive a sense of awe, so as to nurture a plurality of our common world without being lured into the comfort of essence and identity politics. yet to teach vulnerability provides little comfort to the teacher, for it opens up a space of suspended authority and certainty. the fleeting fear of exposing to and not knowing in the face of others may trigger loss, disorientation, and melancholia, yet the difficulties take us to the heart of the pedagogies of difference. indeed, to many, the classroom is a quintessential public space where one “appears” before one’s fellows and comes to terms with others whose backgrounds bring different possibilities of existence. these might be uncomfortable engagements, yet they are educative in an important way, as they constitute a relational and ethical moment of pedagogies, and renew the condition for being-with each other more justly and coming into being as moral subjects (säfström, 2003). it is not to romanticize vulnerability, which is likely deemed as an irrational threat to a hyper-nationalistic, individualistic, and competitive sentiment so pervasive in our time. learning to inhabit the loss, expiating for the other, and being its willing hostage echoes a bare life that requires one to forgo a language of thinking, to be answerable for the other, to dwell in kinships—what wittgenstein calls “family resemblance” (1968, p. 32)—which makes possible the true wonder of enigmatic humanity. the politics of vulnerability is a bold gesture of nonviolent movement toward the other that reorients ontology. as levinas puts, “it is then not without importance to know if the egalitarian and just state in which man if fulfilled… proceeds from a war of all against all, or from the irreducible responsibility of the one for all, and if it can do without friendships and faces” (1998b, p. 160). to teach a curriculum of vulnerability is to be answerable to the students and to participate in a time of risk and give up the safe position as guarantor of knowledge. blandness as nonaction the ideal of rational, autonomous subject seeking self-realization and progress has long infused curricular assumptions and pedagogical practices. teaching is conceived as a means through which to impart knowledge, and knowledge a foundation upon which subjects obtain rationality and enter into ethical relationship with one another. ironically, wu. towards a curriculum of vulnerability and blandness: insights from levinas and classical 59 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (2) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci with such an enduring framework, especially the outcome-based curriculum, the educational system has increasingly become not part of the solution but part of the problem. consider the current school reform in the u.s. that seizes the techniques of accountability, standardization, and evaluation as the solution for “failing” schools. the outcome of preparing the 21 st -century learner, worker, and citizen in the global competition dictates a strikingly similar laundry-list of reform measures circulating in educational systems around the world: high-stake testing, merit-pay teacher competency evaluation, school choice, child-centered pedagogy, evidence-based research, to name a few. these monolithic, topdown strategies often produce tensions, controversies, and new forms of inequality and exclusion (noddings 2007; taubman 2009; watkins 2012). we live in an age of standardization and differentiation, where competence, ability, aptitude are measured over and again in school tests and evaluations. standardization is made possible by classifications and differentiations that unrelentingly define pupils in comparison with, and in hierarchical order of, each other. whether it is grade, score, race, ethnicity, or gender, students are sequestered in their exclusive individuality and can hardly be anything more than this compartmentalized and insuperable particularity. how can our curriculum and pedagogy allow for an infusion of meanings, rather than close off meanings, and embark on a perpetually renewed journey of possibilities? rather than being fastened to a model of banking (freire 2006), how can the bank of the curriculum be overflown with its own contingency so that schooling becomes all the more flavorful for un-naming any particular category and flavor? perhaps we can glimpse from the wisdom of the chinese sage who, counterintuitively, savors the bland and engages in “nonaction” (wuwei无为). nonaction, as the virtue of blandness, is by no means the forfeiture of actions tout court. it is a nonteleological way of conceptualizing action, as the openness of actions through which potentialities are fully present and outcomes are mutually engendering, rather than predetermined. blandness as nonaction preserves immanence, spontaneousness, and detachment in human relations. as the famous opening statement of tao te ching goes, “the tao that can be said/known is not the invariable tao; the name that can be named is not the invariable name” (lao tzu, 2002). the cosmic image of tao calls for the active forgetfulness of concepts, of names, of dualism, and urges unlearning or undoing knowledge, for knowledge, just like presence, is always already split, multiplied, incapable of appearing to itself except in its own disappearance. such a space keeps open to the inevitable fluctuating and frees itself from the ends-focused approach that frames problems and solutions as oppositional. the intense appeal to reforms and actions in our current educational sphere, contrary to the motif of tao, attempts to achieve drastic and far-reaching results, yet often exhausts the potential, and neglects the mundane propensity of becoming. in the reform paranoia, the vibrancy and inconsistency that moves through the everyday classroom lives is increasingly lost as well as the picture of the whole. for instance, i have argued that the lofty sounding goal of child-centered pedagogy does not always bring about empowerment, but acts like a forked tongue that speaks different languages in front-stage and back-stage practices. based on ethnographic research in ethnic minority villages in southwest china, the study illustrates that this cookie-cutter model of “best practice” and “quality education” obscures other potentials of learning and other understandings of “the educated person,” and drives village teachers and students into disenchantment and maneuvers (see wu 2012). while taking child-centeredness as the deliverable “universal good,” the formulaic wu. towards a curriculum of vulnerability and blandness: insights from levinas and classical 60 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (2) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci reform guidelines leave us with nothing to anticipate or imagine, and erase other possibilities and educative dimensions. once a stylized package of action is produced, it presents only a partial, particular externalization and loses sight of the complicated whole. what “ends” is oftentimes amplified tensions and divisions, and diminishing insights. to disrupt an overdetermined world and to speak/act in the immanent space requires a difficult undertaking so as to begin, over and again, in the middle of things. suspending the quick, concrete measures of success by test scores puts the teacher in a vulnerable position of undecidability. yet it is a necessary uncertainty of entering into and engaging with a pedagogical relationship that does not reduce plenitude to abstract sameness. instead of pushing the circumstances to a singular direction, as seen in the marketdictated accountability movement in the u.s. schools and elsewhere, the lesson of the bland and the virtue of the great mean opens up an alternative curriculum space. in this space, it is understood that situations can never be fully manifested or eternalized, but exist in a motif of “lingering” that evokes the inexhaustible potential, the presence of absence, the generative multiplicity. in this space, no stance is overdeveloped, for as soon as we are predisposed to a particular solution, we limit its own field of action to produce fixations and divisions, ossify our subjectivity, and block the energy of other eventualities. the curriculum space of blandness brings us back to the sentiment of tao where meanings are not presented definitively but appear only to be withdrawn, where we rid ourselves of the differentiating nature of curriculum and are invited to a “beyond”—a beyond only accessible by an inward journey towards the profundity of signs and their own relinquishing. the virtue of blandness as nonaction is succinctly articulated by jullien not as an indicator of deficiency, but as a path to unimpeded growth: [o]ne must not seek flavor in flavor itself, since it is, in its very essence, relative, ceasing to be detectable as soon as it is identified. one must allow oneself to be brought to true flavor from that phase which is its opposite: blandness. blandness, as it evolves, tends naturally toward flavor, which, in turn, far from remaining in barren isolation, opens itself to its own superseding, revealing itself as an infinite progression (2008: 43). in a similar vein, nonaction, far from remaining in barren non-doing and abandonment, tends naturally towards actions, which, freed from ensnarement in fixations and overdetermined goals, opens up to potentialities and initiatives. nonaction is nondifferentiation and the base from which all originates and to which all returns. the wuwei of blandness ensures the polyvalence of paths and trajectories and prevents any particular aspect of a situation to affirm itself to the detriment of other potentialities. blandness and nonaction is certainly not the only pedagogy to approach the curriculum of vulnerability. other models, most noteworthy the autobiographical approach, also provide powerful alternatives to the dominant curriculum studies canon committed to quantification, generalization, prediction, and typology. the efforts to understand curriculum as autobiographical and biographical texts, initiated by pioneers such as william pinar and madeleine grumet in the 1970s and later elaborated by curriculum scholars such as janet miller, f. michael connelly and d. jean clandinin, william schubert and william ayers, have become a major contemporary curriculum discourse (see pinar et al 2008). the (auto)biographical approach explores the existential dimensions of teaching and learning through creating a space for life histories, memories, imaginations. wu. towards a curriculum of vulnerability and blandness: insights from levinas and classical 61 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (2) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci similar to a curriculum of blandness and nonaction, the narrative, reflexive, and interpretive characters of (auto)biography allows for playful rendition of curriculum as an open field of discovery and recovery, consciousness and unconsciousness, fluxes and potentials. now the question is that how can curriculum express itself in concrete terms by way of signs while maintaining the momentum of nonaction? in this contradiction, it is not to obtain a state of complete detachment and indifference in our pedagogy, but to live the very contradiction of signs that are at once signifying and deconstructing, accumulating and declining, emerging and fading. blandness and vulnerability, prompting one to perpetual discovery, is a rich and meditative pedagogical mode. just as the bland sound does not strike the ear directly, but suffuses the air with fugitive traces en route back to the undifferentiated, the curriculum will never be a complete or complete-able project. such is the impossibility of education (biesta, 1998, p. 503-505) whose indeterminacy and contingency demands us to live with aporia when facing the complicated ethical issues/tensions that arise within the parameters of the classroom life. notes 1 e-mail: jintingw@gmail.com 2 butler uses the notion of abjection to describe bodies that fail to qualify as subjects, and how they nonetheless provide a necessary outside for normalizing the bodies which matter. normative regime that sets the boundary of which body is natural and intelligible and which is not is sustained over time by repetition and reiteration of norms. reiteration solidifies the system of norms and conventions, yet at the same time is subjective to resignification through the subject’s performative acts. that is to say, rather than assuming a stable subjectivity prior to its acts, butler argues that it is the very act of performing gender and various gendered roles that constitutes who we are. and such repeated performances of presumed roles contest, reshape, and reconfigure the norms that govern the society. 3 for derrida (1978), the metaphysical traces levinas tries to do away with are still the founding base where his arguments and writing rest, as writing ethics nonviolently is an impossible oxymoron (117). the impossibility marks the limits that inhere in language, through suspending, effacing, and obliterating what cannot be brought into intelligibility in thought. derrida undertakes the “hesitant” writing of ethics in which ethics is a double movement that has to work half way in and half way out of the being-shaping, communicative-linguistic structure, yet at the same time negotiate and deconstruct the violent tendencies of the structuring logos. the responsibility of deconstruction lies in the questioning of the very ground of which our ethico-just decisions are conditioned with an appeal to language, and re-reading how the other is made in the texts of metaphysics. 4 the metaphysics of presence depends on the grammatical structure of language to function, founded on the concepts of being as presence and nonbeing as absence—with the former representing the superior essence, and the latter the inferior non-entity. mailto:jintingw@gmail.com wu. towards a curriculum of vulnerability and blandness: insights from levinas and classical 62 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (2) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci references arendt, h. 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(2011). the impossibility of representation: a semiotic museological reading of aboriginal cultural diversity. transnational curriculum inquiry 8(1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> the impossibility of representation: a semiotic museological reading of aboriginal cultural diversity annette furo 1 & awad ibrahim 2 university of ottawa, canada welcome to the museum: confronting the impossible to semiotically read – especially reading a (post)colonial cultural context like the vast aboriginal cultural landscape in canada – is to come face-to-face with the impossible. the impossibility of re/presentation, the impossibility of language and the impossibility of speaking as an insider. so we come clean: we are outsiders to aboriginal culture. the first author is a young, middle-class, white woman and the second is a working-class, black man of african descent. what we are attempting to do here is not a “cultural voyeurism” (clifford & marcus, 2010), but a reading wrapped with humility. it is actually not a ‘reading’ in the lyotardian (1993) sense of “infinite language game,” where what melanie klein (1964) calls “the real” becomes another language, where there is nothing but language. our contention is: there are no ‘games’ in (post)colonial contexts; “the real” is too excruciating to be simply a “language game.” fully conscious of this ethics of impossibility, therefore, we can only attempt to pay homage to that which is overwhelmingly humanizing when read with humility. yet, language is all we have. in this context, genuinely we want to ask: doesn’t language cheat us? does it really say what we want to say? that is, as soon as we start a description of the first peoples hall of the canadian museum of civilization (ottawa, canada’s national capital), as we do later, at exactly that moment, isn’t there something “left-over” (kristeva, 1982; lacan, 1977)? are we not in a never-ending moment of slippage? that is, are we not “almost-there” in our (full?) description of what lacan (1977) calls “das ding” (the ‘object’ of description), but as soon we start describing it, something of and about it slips away? so, we are left not necessarily frustrated, but humbly in a constant state of puzzlement, with a desire to simply describe and pedagogically learn from that description. this, we hope, will be our attempt here. but the nagging and ever present voice in our heads stays: what business do you have here, and what do you really know about that which you speak? in truth, we know very little, but at the same time, very much. in this paper we step into a museum gallery that celebrates the diversity of aboriginal cultures in canada. it is filled with colour and texture, image and sound, word and artifacts – all of which convey messages in and of themselves, and together as a whole. every element of this gallery would seem to represent aboriginal cultural diversity. but, we are asking, can it really? while we may not know the furo & awad. the impossibility of representation transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 23 stories weaved intricately into beaded fabrics, the techniques used to stretch and stitch animal hides into useful items, or the reasons for crafting and carving in particular ways and patterns, we write about what we do know: through a semiotic analysis of this museum gallery we can identify key messages that encourage us-visitors to attach the notion of aboriginal diversity to the texts therein. in other words, we hope to show how the selection of objects and images in this gallery take on a connoted meaning which enables them to stand in for or represent an abstract concept of diversity. whether or not we know a detailed cultural history of each cultural art-e-fact, we argue that a true representation of aboriginal cultural diversity in this way is impossible, and that attending to those processes of representation and impossibility is a crucial task for curriculum studies and educators to take up. the site of our research is more than a collection of objects or ‘objectively’ written texts. it is a museum. at least in its modernist formation and conception, museums, bourdieu (1984) argues, are about ‘distinction’: that which is to be seen and not touched, that which is to be looked at from afar. museums, bourdieu adds, are also about ‘taste’: that which is insidiously cultivated, thus making us-museum-viewers predisposed to certain likings and dislikings. in many cases, these predispositions, these psychic events guide and make us ‘read’ a museum exhibition with “disgust,” “love” or “indifference.” in other words, it is our mostly unconscious internalized preferences for objects (be it representations or otherwise) that ‘govern’ (foucault, 1977) our ‘relation’ with an object (or the lack thereof). museums, stuart hall (1997) expounds further, do not simply re-present (in its structuralist sense), where representations are a mirror of reality. in a poststructural sense, representations “produce” and “create” the object they assume to represent. that is, objects gain their meaning in and within representations. this is why, for foucault (1977), “there is nothing outside language.” here, foucault is not referring us back go a lyotardian ‘language game’; instead, he is referring us to the notion of ‘gaining meaning’ or ‘becoming meaningful.’ without being a zero-sum game, foucault argues, of course objects do exist outside language, but they ‘become meaningful’ only within discourses or discursive frameworks. it is therefore hard to talk about what we do not have a language for yet. for example, as we shall see later, aboriginal culture is not simply re-presented in the canadian museum of civilization (which we sometimes refer to as the ‘museum’), thus creating a faithful correspondence between ‘representation’ and ‘reality.’ there, we are arguing, aboriginal culture is framed and discursively produced and introduced in particular ways, and it is this framing that gives it a particular semiotic meaning. aboriginal culture is a living entity, of course, and does not live in a museum, and its meaning is infinite. however, museums intervene and close that infinite meaning in framing it in a particular discursive way. in a very complex and complicated way, much like language and identity (ibrahim, 2011), we are arguing, the canadian museum of civilization both forms and performs aboriginal culture. when entering the museum, the space is historically constituted and motivated to guide viewers towards an interpretation through carefully chosen representations and classifications (see also lidchi, 1997, in a different context). pedagogically learning in this space, we are contending, is guided by the messages and materials encountered (ibrahim, 2004), and what we encounter is a collection of messages that come to represent the exhibited cultures. a coherent story is told about aboriginal cultural diversity – a story that becomes representative of all that is present and all that is absent. ultimately, stuart furo & awad. the impossibility of representation transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 24 hall (1997) would have argued, ‘representation’ is turned into a process that produces culturally shared meanings. semiotically framed (barthes, 1967), representations use ‘signifiers’ (words and images) and ‘signified’ (the meaning that is made out these words and images). roland barthes (1967) refers to the code that combines these two as ‘signs.’ we thus have a semiotic ‘language’ of fashion, traffic and, in our case, museum. our attempt in this article is to see which signifiers (texts and images) are used and for what purpose, the intended meaning (signified). henrietta lidchi (1997) had shown that, in museums, especially ethnographic museums, the process of representation is the manner in which meaning is constructed and conveyed through signifiers (re. actual objects). in a given exhibition, she continues, there are likely to be several systems of representation (language) can be observed communicating messages to visitors. we interpret the messages in ways that are meaningful to us based on our cultural understandings (re. ‘taste’ and ‘distinction’). in other words, museums “construct spaces or slots of meaning inside which other cultures can be made intelligible to the museum visitor” (sturge, 2007, p. 129). thus, we concur, encountering something culturally unfamiliar in a museum exhibition can make it seem more familiar to the visitor through the process of representation, i.e., framing. 3 moreover, if all readings are historically, socially, culturally and linguistically located and situated, as barthes (1977) and bourdieu (1984) have argued, then a visitor’s reading is dependent on the reader’s knowledge, predisposition, taste, distinction and cultural situation. stuart hall (1997) refers to this as “preferred reading.” in a preferred reading a visitor interprets messages within a dominant discursive frame and accepts the meanings according to dominant codes and definitions, which both conceal and reproduce hegemony. of course, the suggestion of a ‘preferred reading’ or ‘intended meaning’ may not correspond with every visitor’s reading which, for hall (1997), grow from personal biography as well as from sharing in communities of meaning or communities of practice (wenger, 1998). the ethnographic museum: (re)creating (re)presentations the exhibition in which we situate our study can be considered ethnographic, in that it “seek[s] to describe nations of people with their customs, habits and points of difference” through cultural objects and artifacts (lidchi, 1997, p. 160). more than a place of description, the museum is a places of the ethnographic translation of cultures, where meanings are re-framed from one set of cultural categories to another (sturge, 2007). we must keep in mind that the meanings produced in ethnographic museum representations of another culture are “complex, unstable and hybrid; they are born of the contingencies of the receiving system rather than those of the source” (sturge, 2007, p. 2). as the “author and circumscriber of meaning” (lidchi, 1997, p. 183) the museum maintains a powerful role as collector, categorizer and exhibitor – doing the representing while other cultures are being represented, willingly or not. with such authority comes the perception of creating authentic cultural representations, which in the context of canadian aboriginal cultures, is extremely problematic. in the ethnographic museum, the way a museum’s collection is made accessible to visitors influences how cultural texts are encountered. as hendry (2002) reminds us, the appropriation of cultural objects and aboriginal histories (sometimes by force) by ‘flagship’ colonial museums has left a legacy of distrust in indigenous peoples and presented colonized peoples as curiosities to be displayed and discovered, rather than as people with their own stories to tell. moreover, the objects that are chosen for display furo & awad. the impossibility of representation transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 25 become necessarily decontextualized, translated across time and space only to be recontextualized in museum galleries in ways that can essentialize and legitimize representations of the cultural other (sturge, 2007; mcloughlin, 1999). from their placement in often static displays, cultural artifacts are organized and classified in ways that reflect the cultural values and themes underpinning the creation of an exhibition, thus creating cultural distinctions rather than reflecting natural ones (lidchi, 1997). the values, ideas and purposes of the cultural group who created the object must compete with the added/omitted/shifting/overwritten meanings bound up in the process of exhibiting such that only the object’s physical presence remains constant (jonaitis, 2002). so we enter a space of (re)created (re)presentations where there are different layers of meaning to read and interpret. the first peoples hall at the canadian museum of civilization in ottawa was formally opened in january 2003. as a permanent exhibition, it “occupies several galleries and presents more than 2,000 artifacts and images illustrating the history of aboriginal peoples in canada (canadian museum of civilization, 2008). it depicts a history of cultural contributions, beliefs and ways of life, as well as the impact of european settlers, economic change and colonial policies. our case study will focus on the first gallery in particular, titled an aboriginal presence, which welcomes visitors by introducing them to a diversity of aboriginal cultures. analysis of the gallery, an aboriginal presence, was undertaken on two different occasions. the first visit was brief, resembling as much as possible a visit to the museum for pure enjoyment. the second visit was more in depth and looked carefully at how the parts of this exhibition made a whole that contributed to the initial impression. photos were taken and notes made throughout this process. the paper’s ultimate contention is that a true representation of aboriginal cultures is impossible. we thus ask: if the museum is not representing aboriginal cultures, overall, what is it doing?; and when it comes to history, which history did it choose to ‘frame’ and how? a history of aboriginal representation: confronting what we thought we knew if we recall our early memories of learning history as students who went through the canadian school system, we can probably recall who the victors and founding nations were, and how they were portrayed. we can probably tell whether our recollections reflect a dominant version of history when we consider the ways various groups represented or not represented. narratives of canadian history have been shown to under-represent marginalized groups, particularly aboriginal peoples in canada (schick & st. denis, 2005; strong-boag, 2004; mcloughlin, 1999; cruikshank, 1994). in a ‘banal’ (billing, 1995) yet calculated way, canadian history has been presented in unified (white, eurocentric) narratives, which ignore the ‘contingent’ (rorty, 1989), complex histories of aboriginal people in particular, and marginalized groups in general (stanley, 2000, 2011; mcloughlin, 1999; schick & st. denis, 2005; cruikshank, 1992, 1994). it has certainly excluded alternate views or interpretations (donald, 2010; montgomery, 2005; werner, 2000). such an approach does not account for the significance of social categories (be it gender, race, class, among many others) that are central to peoples’ history, cultural and linguistic formation, and it fails to address power relations, oppression and injustice (strong-boag, 2004; schick & st. denis, 2005). historical discourses of cultural difference, multiculturalism and nationalism, michael billing (1995) has shown, tend to celebrate role furo & awad. the impossibility of representation transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 26 models and heroism while masking the power relations that promote continued racial privilege and inequality, and ignoring the salience of race between aboriginal and white canadians (see especially haig-brown, 2003; schick & st. denis, 2005). the effect of such accounts has constructed a national mythology of innocence, egalitarianism and diversity that depends on forgetting that relations of racial inequality exist in the past and present (stanley, 2000). there is widespread recognition that indigenous voices (globally) have been marginalized, knowledge has been ignored, and oral histories devalued in comparison to written accounts (cruikshank, 1994; battiste, 2004). taking canada as an example, for marie battiste (2004), the privileging of written historical accounts overshadows ideographic and symbolic indigenous literacies, which comes at the expense of rich spiritual and practical value in these ways of knowing. this, for julie cruiksbank (1994), limits opportunities for indigenous voices to author their own histories and control their publicly recorded images and representations in museums. this is problematic as meaning, for celia haig-brown (2003), is constructed through dominant worldviews that stand outside indigenous ways of knowing. these notions are directly relevant to our study in that the gallery we analyze claims (in writing) to exhibit aboriginal cultural diversity among historically marginalized cultural groups in canada. as dwayne donald (2010) notes, however, representations of aboriginal groups that focus on culture can heighten the idea of difference by making these groups look intensely saturated in culture by comparison with seemingly cultureless or culture-neutral white canadians. when we see such representations in the museum, as a curriculum site, educators must think about how representations of intensely cultured aboriginal peoples are connected to the way current social and political relationships between aboriginals and the rest of canadians are conceptualized. how do such representations fit into the logic and the narratives we do or do not buy into? as others have noted (notably, ng-a-fook, 2007; hendry, 2002; smith, 1999), the tension of writing about aboriginal cultures, without writing and speaking ‘for’ is always of a delicate concern, given the privileged position from which the writing occurs and the history of silencing and marginalizing aboriginal accounts and knowledge. with this in mind, we move forward attempting not to reproduce that which we critique, but rather to open up the ways we approach learning about aboriginal cultures. inside the gallery: an aboriginal presence welcome (in)to the frame! “typically canadian,” to use sharmaine nelson’s (2010) terms, we-visitors are invited to enter into an ‘economy of conditional hospitality’ (ibrahim, 2005); where one is hospitably invited into the space, peacefully welcomed, but where meanings were written and signs were set. these signs are there to be consumed not struggled over, and the infinite possibilities of meaning are ‘framed’ in such a way that their meaning is explained in text. one is actually told what they mean. as a ‘frame,’ the canadian museum of civilization is an architecturally massive building (a ‘socius,’ to use deleuze and guattari’s (1987) term) 4 that dominates the riverbank in gatineau, quebec, directly across the ottawa river from canada's parliament building in ottawa, ontario. the unique design of canadian architect douglas cardinal curves majestically and fluidly, intended to depict canada’s natural and cultural landscape through clean lines that reflect cardinal’s aboriginal heritage (cmc, 2010). furo & awad. the impossibility of representation transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 27 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/canadian_museum_of_civilization its history, dating back to 1856, makes the museum one of the oldest museums in north america and one of the most visited in canada (see vodden & dyck, 2006). what began as an exhibit for archaeological and ethnological collections of the geological survey of canada grew to include several branches for natural history, human history and technology. it is the human history branch, known until the 1980s as the museum of man, that would become the present day canadian museum of civilization. since the opening of its present location in 1989 the museum houses the canadian postal museum, the canadian children’s museum and an ever-changing program of temporary exhibitions. in addition, there are several permanent exhibitions, boasting more than 3.75 million artifacts and, which explore 20,000 years of canada’s human history: ancient archaeological collections (housed in from time immemorial: tsimshian prehistory hall), an indigenous cultural history of the northwest pacific coast (in grand hall), the cultural and social highlights of aboriginal peoples in canada (in first peoples hall), early european presence in canada (in canada hall), and a close up of 27 influential individuals who are “behind canadian history” (in face to face: canadian personalities hall). practicing “museological excellence,” the mission of the museum is to promote “a greater understanding of canadian identity, history and culture” and disseminate “its knowledge throughout canada and the world” (www.civilization.ca). put otherwise, the museum's primary purpose is to collect, research and study, preserve and present these artifacts and material objects that shed lights on the human history of canada and the cultural diversity of its people. entering through the museum’s main entrance, we-visitors are invited into the massive tranquility of the grand hall, the architectural centerpiece of the interior and the permanent exhibition that introduces visitors to the first inhabitants of what is now known as canada. the hall is a juxtaposition of the modern and the postmodern. the modern is accentuated through the artifacts’ original shape and form in which they are preserved, tilting to being dusty, crumbling, and cloths that are more reminiscence of oliver twist than the 21 st century. the postmodern is mirrored in the container, the very hall itself, which brings natural sunlight indoors through a dramatic glass wall and illuminates a recreated setting: a quiet seaside village, wooden houses lined up to face the shore and a lush forest canopy towering skyward in behind. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/canadian_museum_of_civilization http://www.civilization.ca/ furo & awad. the impossibility of representation transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 28 we-visitors are immersed in this majestic expanse until the grand hall curves and gives way to a transition space where there are minimal objects and artifacts. then lying ahead is a collection of photographs that show people young and old, smiling and serious, some in casual clothing, many traditional dress. with that iconic (photographic) language comes indexical (written) language. the written words state the name and starting point of the upcoming exhibition: “first peoples hall” “entrance.” these words tell visitors how to read the accompanying visual component of the text, the photos. visitors can assume that each person fits into the category of ‘first peoples’ and that their smiles bear invitation. ahead, there is another mural comprised of written and visual signs. in trilingual large bold lettering the title sets a personal tone for the exhibition: “welco me.” the rest of the writing states: you have arrived on algonquin land. the creator put the algonquin people here to occupy this land. the creator also gave the algonquin a language to communicate with. it was told to our ancestors that: “as long as the sun will shine, as long as the rivers will flow, as long as the grass will grow” the anishinabe way of life would continue forever. this is what was given to the anishinabe. and this is as it should be. circle of elders. kitigan zibi anishinab the mural on which the words are printed presents a curious picture of the ottawa river. the present day parliament buildings and city skyline are shown high on a cliff and in the foreground several traditionally dressed aboriginal people are seen at an encampment near the shore. we pass through a doorway and into the actual gallery: a burst of colour and texture, filled from floor to ceiling with artifacts, photos and panels of written text. displays of artifacts are set on each side. a broad, meandering path leads down the centre and is bordered on each side by hip level panels on which written texts are printed ‘indexing’ different information to visitors about first nations peoples and histories. 5 in the distance a wall of narrow trees stand together marking the end of the space. above the artifacts the gallery is draped with colourful banners. some banners are covered in photographs, old and more recent, of people sitting, working, many of them outdoors. other banners contain a phrase that can be read in sequence as we move along: an aboriginal presence we celebrate our long history in this land; we celebrate our work, our creativity and our contributions; we celebrate our differences, similarities and our survival as aboriginal people; we have not forgotten the land; we have an ancient bond with the land; furo & awad. the impossibility of representation transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 29 www.civilization.ca/cmc/plan-your-visit/planning-your-visit/what-to-see-and-do/first-peoples-hall as we take in this scene (shown in the picture above) we become aware that someone is speaking to us. we-visitors-to-this-land are addressed by a voice, a collective we-belonging-to-this-land. this address leaves us we-visitors either belonging (or not) to the land or testing our knowledge (or the lack thereof) of canadian first nations peoples and histories. as part of this address, looking immediately to our left is a large video screen that plays on a loop so at any given time one of several aboriginal people is saying hello, introducing themselves, talking about where they come from, what they do for a living and why their cultural heritage is important. apart from the sound, gesture and movement in the video everything else is completely still in the gallery. as we look more closely at the displays we see that objects are displayed at staggered heights with large objects at the back, smaller ones toward the front. those within reaching distance are protected inside glass cases. all of the objects are set behind the reading panel at hip level where the written descriptions of each item are located. this reading panel borders the entire walking path like a wide railing and makes a distinct separation between visitors and the actual objects. moving several paces forward, we find ourselves in front of the nearest display. there are two types of text: visual texts in the form of objects, and written texts in the form of words on the reading panel. the panels have two types of indexical text: headings, which are the largest, and labels, which are smaller. not by chance, one of two headings is located immediately in front of us after simply moving forward from the entrance. the heading is raised above the rest of the panel and the font is printed in vibrant green. it states, “we are diverse” and in smaller print, “we inscribe our creativity, our histories and our identities through the work of our hands, and the work of our minds.” as we look up, we-visitors see a collection of various objects: rough ulus, a child’s one piece suit, a bonnet, moccasins, masks and a wooden chest. a small-scale image of each artifact is found next to its description on the reading panel so visitors can look straight up and view the corresponding artifact. for each artifact we learn the object name, date of origin, place of origin, catalog number. as we cross to the opposite display area, objects are interspersed with short biographies of notable aboriginal people whose contributions in areas such as art, sport, media and literature are highlighted. and finally, as we near the end of the gallery, the biographies give way to short quotes – stories or explanations? – that tell us a few sentences more about some of the objects we see, what the materials are made from, and how they are used. then the reading panel and display cases end at the row of narrow trees, marking the end of this section in the gallery. the lazy, soft blue light from overhead fades into the intermittent glow of yellow bulbs that would draw us-visitors onward toward areas in the exhibition that tell us of naming the land and origin stories. http://goog_1766952019/ http://goog_1766952019/ http://goog_1766952019/ http://goog_1766952019/ furo & awad. the impossibility of representation transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 30 a semiotic reading of origin: interpreting the gallery semiotics provides us-visitors and scholars with terminology that is useful for analyzing the production of meaning through the arrangement (classification and display) and relation of the various components of an exhibition (lidchi, 1997). the analysis of these components, or texts, will begin with a description of the sign systems (language) used and then identify how the different sign systems are ordered together, which ones are predominant, and how written sign systems provide (or do not provide) groundwork for interpreting other sign systems in the display. because this gallery uses written (indexical) and visual (iconic) sign systems most heavily, we identify a literal denoted meaning of a visual text before considering how that text is encoded through the accompanying written text or label, and in order to decipher the intended message(s) which guide(s) visitors toward in a preferred reading. creating a presence the exhibition entrance is crucial to the framing of the gallery and establishes the themes that will guide visitors toward a preferred reading. this is accomplished through a series of iconic and indexical texts – the words serving to interpret the photographs. the first photographs we see are the collection of photos of aboriginal people, young and old, in traditional and/or non-traditional clothes, and before we realize that continuity is an underpinning theme, we see it. through its close proximity, the first text is necessarily read with the adjacent text – the mural of an urban skyline featuring canada’s parliament perched high on a cliff contrasted with a small first peoples encampment in the foreground. when we read this image it could mean several things: sharing of the land between two different cultures, urban and colonial encroachment, among others. these readings are not incorrect, however, they are not the preferred reading. to grasp the intended meaning of the photos we turn to the accompanying written words, which are most prominently an anishinabe welcome to algonquin land. to the side of the mural is an explanation of this curious photo: “as if to tell us of the ongoing importance of this artist’s perch to first nations, he included a small native encampment at the very spot where similar dwellings had stood centuries before and where the canadian museum of civilization would eventually be located.” this panel of written text encourages visitors to read the image in terms of continuity and change and indicates that the digital editing of this photo is intended to convey a message about the continued presence of aboriginal peoples today. hence, the title of the whole exhibition: an aboriginal presence. http://www.algonquinsofpikwakanagan.com/history%20introduction%202004.htm http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/file:canada-ottawa-panorama.jpg furo & awad. the impossibility of representation transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 31 in this text we-as-anishinabe-speakers address you-as-guests (visitors) drawing on the authority of ‘our’ long anishinabe presence on “this land” and ‘our’ position as cultural insiders, which legitimizes the introduction on behalf of many aboriginal groups. the seemingly ‘natural(ized)’ anishinabe presence encourages visitors, in fact does it purposefully, to forget that the exhibition is a carefully constructed space where words are edited and photos cropped (if not photoshopped), and seduces visitors in reading the exhibition as a truthful account of aboriginal culture. let us not forget the video which, of the texts in this space, is the pinnacle of how the museum creates an aboriginal presence. without a single human being required in the gallery, this moving picture brings aboriginal people to life, speaking to us, moving, gesturing and smiling. semiotically, these iconic and indexical texts serve as technologies of forgetting, forgetting that we are in a space of hyper-representation, where nothing is left for chance and everything is meant to authenticate. we-visitors are told, authentically: weaboriginal-peoples will tell you-visitors about ourselves. in the context of aboriginal peoples whose histories have been underrepresented, first person accounts, or collections of quotations and accounts easily become the solution to underrepresentation. it is a brilliant yet exceptionally problematic solution and strategy. the voice(s) represented are perceived as authentic voice(s), revealing a history that has been previously unaccounted for in public institutions, and at once liberating a group of people who have been suppressed by unequal power relations (mazzei & jackson, 2009). we-visitors are drawn in by the impression these introductory texts create about what kind of people aboriginal people are. they are young and old, smiling and serious ‘everyday nice folks’ that a visitor would feel comfortable getting to know. reading the texts in this way, as the preferred reading, compels visitors to forget that the exhibition has cropped, constructed and created a reality as it attempts to represent it (hall, 1997); a reality (not of but) about aboriginal cultural identity through its choices of texts and editing, its decisions of inclusion and exclusion. representation, roland barthes (1967) has shown, absents, inscribes and creates as it attempts to represent; and romanticizing aboriginal peoples as ‘nice people’ does no justice to the diversity of their humanity. inscribing diversity: a semiotic reading of we are diverse the prominence of the indexical text ‘we are diverse’ is particularly effective in communicating the intended message of this particular display and guiding our interpretation of the objects therein. as the words stand out in large font, we read these words and in turn read the objects in the display: rough ulus, the child’s one piece suit, the bonnet, the moccasins, mask and a wooden chest. their cropping (framing), leaves an undoubted feeling that they are handcraft and handmade pieces. we-visitors see this collection of objects as corresponding, first, with the written text immediately in front of it because each item is handcrafted and, second, with the previous thematic messages of continuity and change. the gloves that are so intricately embroidered are a mosaic of beaded creativity, and the colourful patterns on the bonnet circa 1982 next to the colourfully patterned moccasins circa 1865-1940 are evidence of the overarching narrative continuity of histories, people and traditions. when we read the handcrafted (iconic) objects in connection with the written (indexical) texts they take on connoted meaning. it is not what the traditional looking objects denote or the function of the object that is most important. it is what they connote, which are themes of aboriginal cultural diversity, and more subtly, continuity and change. furo & awad. the impossibility of representation transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 32 in a preferred reading of this display the objects become pieces of evidence attesting to the diversity of aboriginal cultures, rather than having their own cultural meanings and histories. moreover, aboriginal diversity becomes exemplified through handmade craft. diversity is less exemplified through the habits, customs, and social communities that characterize the contexts in which these items were made and used. as such there is limited substantiation for diversity beyond the physical presence of the objects. it is worth, at this point, to look more closely at one object described by its label as: “chest haida british columbia before 1910 cedar wood, metal, iron and paint cmcc, vii-v-1284.” as an indexical text, the label provides 6 pieces of information, which serve to classify it based on age, materials and origin. for a visitor that has no further background knowledge about this chest and its significance to the haida people, the museum provides the six presumably most important things one should know about this object. it is not explained that the sides were crafted and painted in ways rich with meaning and story. this raises a philosophical and an essential cultural studies question: for those who do not have more background knowledge, what story and history does the chest invoke? how does the museum encourage visitors to draw meaning from this chest? to explain: the indexical text on the label reads as “chest.” the corresponding iconic text, a six-sided hollow object denotes ‘chest’ but as an object it remains static. however, seeing the chest as a mere object is not the preferred reading of this ‘chest.’ the preferred reading is drawn from the central message of the exhibition “we are diverse.” the “chest” is encoded with a general meaning of aboriginal cultural identity and diversity, even though there is nothing to explain what makes this object diverse. as such, the museum uses this object to create a representation of aboriginal cultural diversity. unfortunately, the ‘diversity’ represented, in our judgment, can only be described as superficial because that which makes the chest or the haida ‘diverse’ is missing from the description – unless it is possible to reduce diversity to the information on the label. having limited knowledge of aboriginal cultures makes it difficult for the reader to decode or read these objects in ways other than the ‘intended’ or preferred reading. limited knowledge is here compounded by years of marginalization of aboriginal voices in dominant accounts of canadian history. for us, this can only serve as an assertion confirming our contention of the impossibility of representation of the complexity and diversity of aboriginal peoples, histories and traditions; an impossibility heighted by/in a context of historical domination and marginalization. moreover, there is very little else these objects are able to convey, in and of themselves, from their static positions in the display and as such they become representations of an abstract idea of aboriginal culture. each artifact is placed in an aesthetically pleasing manner to maximize its visibility. this arrangement is a rearrangement that decontextualizes the objects from their historical setting and their use. they become re-presented, numbered evidence of cultural diversity. the display as a whole becomes an act of encoding that has over/written some existing meanings and re-inscribed these objects with new meaning. reading the haida chest as something more than a marker of aboriginal diversity is not wrong per se, but it moves beyond what the central messages in this display intend to convey. the labels in this display support barthes’ (1977) suggestion that the closeness of a label to its object makes the label ‘innocent’ by appearing more in line with the denoted meaning in the object. each label gives a brief name for its object: chest, necklace, moccasins. the only other information is a date and place or group of origin, name of the furo & awad. the impossibility of representation transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 33 person who made it, and a cataloguing number. from their labels alone objects are read without diverging far from their denoted meanings. however, the innocence of the labels is short-lived given an oppositional reading (hall, 1996) that sees them as a mark of colonization produced by a particular system of knowledge. two pieces of information on the labels give this away: the geographic place of origin is named according to present day political boundaries, and the cataloguing number of each item is prominent. if labels tell visitors a maximum of six things about each aboriginal object in a gallery that showcases aboriginal culture, why is the inclusion of a series of numbers and letters that is unintelligible to many visitors so important? this is not such a mystifying question if one considers the superiority of western knowledge to be built around systems of organizing, classifying and storing knowledge (smith, 1999). the cataloguing numbers remind us that it is important for the objects of ‘another’ culture to be catalogued, classified and numbered in the ways of the dominant culture. when the entire display is read as one large text these readers see the labels attached to each item as a sign of colonialism that lurks throughout the processes of exhibiting collecting, recontextualizing, categorizing, arranging, numbering and labeling. it is worth noting the display opposite the chest. unlike the objects in the previous display, these ones have a story that is told through the written text. their arrangement in a static display is still decontextualizing, but here they are encoded with more than just messages of cultural diversity. these objects appear to keep their original, cultural meanings because they are explained with quotes from named aboriginal people. this naturalizes an object’s presence in the display because the message is coming from aboriginal narrators as though the objects were not there by a choice of the museum, as though the processes of exhibiting have not re-arranged or re-inscribed the objects with new meaning(s). a semiotic pedagogy: concluding remarks one might point out the obvious and note that a museum cannot possibly fit all information about all aboriginal cultures into the space of one exhibition. we would not expect it to, nor would we wish to be charged with the task of deciding which details to include in a limited space. we analyze the process of meaning making in the museum as more than accepting a preferred reading in the hopes that it will reinvigorate the fluidity of our interpretations, just as the curves of the museum building itself remind us of the fluidity in our natural and cultural landscape. given the historical context in which we write, the marginalization of aboriginal histories in canada, and we submit in most countries where aboriginal people are present, and the limited background knowledge visitors might have about aboriginal cultures, it is ever more important to read these spaces not as accurate representations, but as spaces in which the museum produces and performs that which it exhibits. when we think of museums as sites of curriculum it is important for educators consider how these spaces are approached. we believe our semiotic approach to reading ethnographic museum galleries in this respect, is quite useful. visitors have an opportunity to ask themselves how the representations they encounter do or do not fit in with their previously held notions of the culture being depicted. this is a question about attentiveness to one’s own expectations, taste and predispositions, which invites further contemplation of the narratives that influence one’s own perspectives. at the same time it invites one to consider perspectives furo & awad. the impossibility of representation transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 34 that are unexpected and explore different marginalized perspectives and alternative ways of narrating cultural histories. a place to start is by reading the museum on different levels as we read the haida chest that wants to contextualize its presence in the display but cannot, as the woman who is quoted briefly but has a lifetime of knowledge of share, or as the visitor who is unfamiliar with the cultural representations they glimpse and is aware of their own susceptibility to be taken in by the beauty of the space and the persuasive logic of its key messages. there are insights to be taken from the way galleries are arranged, made to include certain pieces of information and follow certain narratives. visitors will find that a gallery reveals much about the exhibiting culture and the exhibited culture, and the relationship between. we are calling the pedagogical approach we took in this article ‘semiotic pedagogy.’ for us, semiotic pedagogy is a pedagogy that doesn’t seek ‘authentic’ or ‘full’ representation of aboriginal peoples, histories and traditions. they are too complex to be ‘re-presented.’ so, to answer our own question of ‘what is the museum doing?’ we are suggesting this as a pedagogical approach. the first premise of this pedagogy is that, representations are not there to be consumed as ‘truth’ but as a technology that frames, accentuates and crops certain realities usually at the expense of others. second, our role as educators is precisely to highlight, work through and wonder about that which is here-andpresent and that which is there-and-absent. ultimately, finally, the canadian museum of civilization left us-visitors with an on-going, never ending series of interpretations of first nations peoples, histories and traditions. here, even though we-visitors were enriched by our visit, this is the only thing that we are left with: interpretation. a semiotic pedagogy, therefore, is deeply historical, contingent and meaning and interpretation are never ending, always in-process and on-going. when we-teachers take our students to the museum, we should emphasize not ‘truth’ but semiotic interpretation, not easy reading but socius, where contingent of meaning is the essence of what it means to visit a museum. we desperately need to decolonize ourselves and our students from machines of truth, where meaning is closed and told; and celebrate with them, and in turn with aboriginal peoples, the contingency of life, history, tradition, culture, meaning and interpretation. our visit to the museum should not be another hegemonic moment of imposition, colonization and silencing. it should, instead, be a humbling moment of understanding of both the contingency and the complexity of aboriginal peoples, histories and traditions. only in moments like these can we talk about a transformative (semiotic) pedagogy and pay homage to that which is deeply humanizing when ‘read’ with humility. notes 1 afuro@cbie.ca 2 aibrahim@uottawa.ca 3 in frames of war: when is life grievable?, judith butler (2009) contends that how an event is ‘framed’ determines its meaning and thus our reaction to it. she gives the example of abu ghraib’s horrid pictures, among others, and argues, first, by ‘framing’ those bodies within a ‘war zone’ and, second, by envisioning the violence at abu ghraib as torture tailored for muslims, the media not only caricatured them as members of a backward culture, their lives as non-grievable, but they are thus zoned for war. this, for butler, might mailto:afuro@cbie.ca mailto:aibrahim@uottawa.ca furo & awad. the impossibility of representation transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 35 explain the west’s different reaction (at best, quiet outrage, if at all) as opposed to the muslim world (at minimum, visceral and violent reaction). 4 a socius is a metaphor of/for a machine or society where attractors and opposites can and do co-exist. their co-existence means a permanent presence of tension, a tug of war and on-going struggle. there are no simple resolutions with the socius, so we are left with the peace of living (with)in tension. 5 we use ‘aboriginals,’ ‘indigenous’ and ‘first nations’ interchangeably. in canada, first nations refers to the original people of the land. this was invoked because in 1970s, the then prime minister pierre elliot trudeau talked about english and french as the ‘founding nations’ of canada, that is, the people who ‘discovered’ and built canada. in protest, our indigenous and aboriginals proposed ‘first nations’ in the plural. references battiste, m. 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(1994). presidential address: contested space: the politics of canadian memory, journal of the canadian historical association 5(1), 3-17. sturge, k. (2007). representing others: translation, ethnography and the museum. manchester: st. jerome publishing. wenger, e. (1998). communities of practice: learning, meaning, and identity. cambridge: cambridge university press. submitted: january, 12 nd , 2011 approved: june, 01 st , 2011 educational reform & public engagement seen through a “complexity” lens to cite this article please include all of the following details: davis, brenda. (2012). educational reform and public engagement seen through a “complexity” lens. transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> educational reform and public engagement seen through a “complexity” lens brenda davis 1 phd student at university of british columbia, canada what the best and wisest parent wants for his own child that must the community want for all its children. (john dewey, school and society, 1971, 7) to any student in alberta schools – when i think of learning in 20 years, i hope our education and learning systems allow you to achieve your fullest potential in all areas of life. (red deer inspiring education participant, 2009) introduction: educational reform is a political reality in north america. unfortunately in recent years ‘reform’ has become synonymous with an increased focus on system-wide standards and accountability measures. such developments continue a trajectory initiated by bobbitt (1918) and tyler (1949) although contemporary curriculum discourse is also significantly grounded in a neoliberal political and a neo-classical economic agenda. the most prevalent model of educational reform is a hierarchical ‘top-down’ approach where politicians and government bureaucrats dictate policies, pre-determined curricular objectives and mandatory assessment criteria. these educational ‘reforms’ are then implemented throughout the system, with a trickle-down impact determined by classical, bureaucratic models of governance. mandated changes are executed by school boards and principals (middle management) and subsequently by teachers as the classroom ‘managers’. these attempts at educational reform rely implicitly on applying business management principles to public institutions. this approach, known as ‘managerialism’, has permeated educational administration and dictated educational reform attempts for several decades (goldspink, 2007) with the negative result of significant educational ‘deform’ (pinar, 2011). “inspiring education: a dialogue with albertans” (inspiring education) provides a contrast to this top-down, managerial approach towards educational reform. this initiative expanded and enhanced public engagement to foster greater commitment to public education and to consider a future that better meets the needs of learners. inspiring education (2009-2010) offers one concrete example of how conversations about ‘curriculum visions’ can be significantly improved by expanding “who” is asked to participate in educational reform, as well as addressing “how” these individuals engage. new approaches are necessary to positively transform the conversation about education as there have been too many lost opportunities and failed efforts to genuinely reform the education davis. educational reform and public engagement seen through a “complexity” lens 51 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci system. while the general public has historically been allotted a limited role in educational reform, it is a recent development to similarly disenfranchise the education community. this lack of engagement with those outside the political hierarchy is symptomatic of a serious systemic malaise. according to pinar, it is unlikely that this failure will be addressed in the foreseeable future, “… as five decades of school “reform” have side-lined curriculum specialists as major players in us school curriculum improvement” (pinar, 2011, xi). there is a similar problem of an increasingly exclusionary approach being adopted in australia (goldspink, 2007) paralleled in canada by a trend towards neo-conservative administrative control and implementation (tomkins, 2007). so what steps can be taken to address educational reform? by decentralizing decisionmaking and encouraging greater support for a self-organizing dynamic system, two key concepts at the heart of complexity thinking, it is possible to envision an alternative. using doll’s 5 c’s (complexity, community, conversation, currere, and cosmology) as set out in “curriculum visions” (doll & gough, 2002) as a framework, i consider how inspiring education was able to broaden the inquiry and engage a larger community. the 5 c’s provide a theoretical framework to explore two questions: how should one build relationships? and why is it important to foster a network of inquirers and connect key stakeholders to the general public with the overall aim of expanding the curriculum conversation to a larger community? in addition to the lens of the 5 c’s, the article “rethinking educational reform” (goldspink, 2007) provides a dynamical systems perspective as well as a critique of ‘managerialism’ in traditional educational reform. this is contrasted with an alternative systems approach, more aligned with complexity theory, which emphasizes the need for a focus on people, relationships, and learning rather than on hierarchical structures and centrally determined standards and conformity. the “5 c” frame posited by doll, is used throughout the paper as a both a lens and as a scaffold for analysis so as to explore inspiring education and demonstrate how educational reform initiatives can be based upon more inclusive and authentic public engagement. “c” for complexity: when i think of learning in 20 years … i hope that the wonder, mystery, curiosity, creativity, innovation and critical thinking and enjoyment about the world and life will still be central to learning. (fort mcmurray participant, may 13, 2009) complexity theory offers an alternate and more effective way to contemplate educational reform than referencing market analysis. while education is necessary for a growth economy, it also serves a more significant societal aim. education is a public good where benefits are intended to accrue to the whole community and not just to the individuals who directly receive such services. this quality of education, in being a public good, was explicitly acknowledged by the premier when he directed the creation of inspiring education to “heighten appreciation of the importance of education in the life of albertans and its increasing contribution to a prosperous society and economy …” (inspiring education steering committee report, 2010, 5) however, it is difficult to garner a broad-base of public support for education if educational reforms are undertaken solely by politicians who seek only limited input from invited stakeholders. although this is a common practice in a world of politicized education, it demonstrates a minimal level of connectivity. combined with centralized decision-making and davis. educational reform and public engagement seen through a “complexity” lens 52 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci communications restricted to top-down pronouncements within the education hierarchy, the lines of connection are few and input is severely restricted by such inadequate consultation processes. a full democratic engagement of the public in educational reform requires much greater ‘connectivity’ and strengthened relationships. systemic change of a complex system needs more than a limited and linear network. educational reform must also move beyond the technical/rational agenda set by ‘managerialism’ that aims only to improve the efficiency of organizations. when the goal of reform is narrowed to monitoring and attempting to control all aspects of the education system, targets are necessarily reduced to elements that are concrete and controllable. complexities and questions of wider significance are avoided in such a reductionist analysis as they are impossible to submit to ‘command and control’ mechanisms. this vigorous pursuit of accountability reduces education to measureable ‘items’ and as a result the entire system, and particularly the interaction of teacher-student, becomes ‘industrialized’. this reduces, rather than enhances, the overall quality of education. traditional efforts at educational reform de-emphasize adaptation within the local context and disregard the needs of particular learners in order to privilege the emphasis on institutional requirements. a rigid, hierarchical systems’ perspective, narrows the discourse concerning education. in particular the over-arching social purpose is displaced by a limited debate about accountability. thus managerialism becomes a quintessentially modernist endeavor rife with assumptions that de-professionalize education and attack teacher/school autonomy. what is particularly egregious is the lack of any evidence of corresponding positive changes occurring in the education system under a ‘managerialist’ model. the increasing focus on tangible and measureable deliverables does not result in positive outcomes. why? well there is often no established or rational connection between an output that can be measured and the actual desired outcomes in education. secondly, the emphasis on accountability destroys trust within the education system. by expending valuable resources to ‘police’ performance, ensure compliance or invoke punitive measures, the overarching societal aims for education which are broad and idealistic, are ultimately frustrated. the education system is notoriously complicated and challenging and legitimate accountability, in terms of education meeting the needs of society as a ‘social good’, requires a rich set of information. this is not be satisfied by the data from a handful of ‘output’ measures. top-down decision-making, centralized policy control, close monitoring of implementation through reductionist accountability measures and the deprofessionalization of educators, ultimately constricts institutional and systemic capacity to learn and adapt. this latter outcome is the result of stymieing information flow within the system and by restricting the number and quality of connections or functional networks that might help to foster flexibility and adaptability from within. “c” for community: the whale is the biggest animal. a school of sardines is the same size as the whale. when four or five sardines change direction, the whole school will change. if we continue to talk about this, sooner or later we can change the direction of education too. (aboriginal elder: red deer participant, june 10, 2009) “community” is essential to the other 4 c’s of the ‘curriculum vision’ for a robust community network is the foundation of adaptive potential. requiring an emergent and complex web of interactions is a feature aligned with complexity theory as establishing more intricate davis. educational reform and public engagement seen through a “complexity” lens 53 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci networks of inter-connected relationships promotes system responsiveness and adaptability. thus the “community” is vitally important to ensure broader access to information and divergent perspectives. this provides greater responsiveness within the entire system to environmental inputs. in fact, the relational aspect of community and the degree of connectivity are key indicators of a more robust and resilient complex system. john dewey’s thoughts on the interaction of an organism and the environment are equally applicable to the education systems connection to its community. arguably the praxis of experience, reflection and further action (dewey, 2004) are the fundamental basis of the development of all human knowledge both from an individual as well as systems perspective. dewey perceived all knowledge to be an essentially adaptive response to the ‘environment. when considering educational reform, one can envision interactions taking place between the education system as a whole and the larger contemporary world environment and nested within that context, one’s immediate community. jayne fleener, references the inquiry-based approach of dewey to emphasize this dynamic relationship with the environment and how it readily fits within complexity theory (in doll & gough (eds), 2006). reforming an education system therefore requires addressing the question of how best to utilize community inputs so as to respond to challenges within an ever-changing environment. by applying complexity theory to the consideration of communications within the education system, it is possible to move the conversation beyond the traditional view of consultations wedded to newtonian mechanics. for example, in explaining how the inspiring education initiative differed from the more conventional consultation processes the metaphor of cooking was used: government often presents education proposals to stakeholders as if it was presenting ‘three cakes’ to the public with a minimal variation of flavor and appearance (chocolate, vanilla and a swirl of both) and then individuals are simply asked which cake they want to receive the icing (‘to be sanctioned’). in contrast, the inspiring education dialogic process was intended to be an invitation for participants to come into the kitchen where they would help choose the ingredients, find the recipes and plan the menu with everyone engaging in a collaborative way. embracing a ‘complexity’ paradigm requires extending an authentic invitation to the community to engage. and to be meaningful, the aim of such public engagement must be to connect deeply with others in a respectful conversation about curriculum and educational reform. so what does such an extensive community engagement look like? in 2009, when the honorable david hancock, minister of education in alberta provided some insight into this question by establishing inspiring education as a dialogue with albertans about the future of education. broad participation was encouraged by utilizing a variety of accessible venues and offering the public many ways to interact including social media. the cross-provincial public dialogue on education represented a pronounced rupture from traditional modes of engagement: inspiring education: a dialogue with albertans … represents a new way for alberta education to engage with its stakeholders, partners and all albertans. it was established as an interactive conversation with albertans and designed around the question of what characteristics an educated albertan should possess twenty years from now. (inspiring action discussion paper, 2010, appendix i, 25) as community was considered fundamental to systemic change, participatory democracy was fostered through widespread public engagement. the government actively encouraged the davis. educational reform and public engagement seen through a “complexity” lens 54 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci development of partnerships between various stakeholders as a basis for achieving change within the education system. greater complexity of linkages was supported throughout the system based on the assessment that, “… complex problems need complex solutions and these can come from those who are confronting them at the local level (goldspink, 2007) as sustainable change requires responsibility at the local level, and not through imposition from above. informing this approach was the recognition that a diversity of perspectives was important. this requires valuing everyone’s personal experiences respecting the education system and reform. a focus on the particular, and the seeking of personal narratives rather than generalities nurtured greater complexity by providing a breadth of perspectives. the key to educational reform fostered by inspiring education was the emphasis on a model of codevelopment, rather than top-down. a collaborative approach acknowledges there is no one ‘expert’ whose knowledge base is sufficient to grasp the complexity of the education system. nor is it possible to address the concerns about education expressed across diverse communities without the government establishing legitimate connectivity between, and with, stakeholders and the general public. the government began establishing such linkages between communities across the province by inviting all participants to engage in an authentic curriculum conversation. the dialogue, to generate novel perspectives, needed new ways of thinking about how to engage. in fostering greater connectivity, it was recognized that an historic ‘lack of trust’ had to be overcome in establishing relations between the government, stakeholders and members of the public. therefore, much thought was devoted to the preparation of these community conversations and how they would be structured as significant challenges exist in our ‘usual’ manner of conversing and the existing power imbalances between participants. according to davis & sumara (2006) many of the words and phrases we use in everyday conversation are based on mathematical concepts and have become an intrinsic part of our ‘modernist’ worldview. our common discourse, with words ‘tangled in a web of euclidean linearity’, creates a restrictive and non-neutral language of ‘of regularity and oddness’ which limits our thinking about educational reform. the linear metaphors used in daily speech lead to a linearity of thinking that constrains a more fulsome conversation and can privilege narratives of control, predictability, efficiency, and hierarchy (davis & sumara, 2006). therefore for complexity to flourish, such discourses must be disrupted and challenged. engagement processes that encourage creative and dynamic thinking require the creation of novel linkages and a willingness to be open and receptive to more organic and egalitarian narratives. inspiring education therefore utilized both widespread engagement (broadening the outreach) and creative dialogic processes (new ways of communicating) to create a public ‘space’ where a vision of ‘transformational’ educational reform could occur. doll identified that in a multifaceted world we need new understandings based on innovative ways of communicating, “in the complex, diversified, globalized, technologically-oriented society in which we live, we believe a new set of discursive practices are needed, ones which develop, embrace, work with, related to the complexity we find” (in pinar, 2012). in answer to the question: how must alberta’s education system shift to make this vision possible? the steering committee identified broad-based community outreach as their first recommendation: first, our concept of education should expand beyond the school and make the community a true partner. the community can be a source of leadership, teaching, and support through the participation of experts, mentors, and elders. leadership can be davis. educational reform and public engagement seen through a “complexity” lens 55 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci found in a variety of organizations including the business community, postsecondary institutions, not-for-profit organizations, and cultural groups. (inspiring education steering committee, 2010, 6) this is quite revolutionary as it recommends the dispersal of power throughout the system. while education, as a complex system would operate more adaptively if this was implemented, it would also be a remarkable departure from the centralized government control that currently exists. when partnerships are preferred, the existing ‘managerialism’ and top down decision-making are both dealt a significant blow! targeting the industrialized model of instruction, where students are seen as an end ‘product’, was seen as urgently in need of reform according to both inspiring education participants and to committee members, as the following comments exemplify: most adults today grew up with an industrial model of education: this is especially true in high schools, where school systems base education on the principles of the assembly line and the efficient division of labour. schools divide the curriculum into specialist segments: some teachers install math in the students; and others install history. they arrange the day into standard units of time, marked out by the ringing of bells, much like a factory announcing the beginning of the workday and the end of breaks. students are educated in batches, according to age, as if the most important thing they have in common is their date of manufacture. they are given standardized tests at set points and are compared with each other before being sent out onto the market. (inspiring education steering committee report, 2010, 10-11) the school system is based on the factory... here we are in 50 minute blocks, just like in the past. we need to change... it’s mind boggling that this (structure) came from the industrial revolution. (community conversation, grande prairie) the words of inspiring education participants, transcribed by from the conversations have been interspersed throughout the paper to illustrate the clarity and sophistication of the dialogue. the next two sections review the 2 c’s of ‘conversation’ and ‘currere’ and details of the processes used in spring conversations demonstrate how dialogue was used to create ‘communications that matter’. “c” – conversation as indicated, in order to establish vibrant ‘connectivity’ within the community, one needs to expand ‘who’ is invited. in addition, those who participate must be engaged in a meaningfully way. otherwise the traditional modes of educational reform remain unchallenged and become the ‘default’. in terms of inviting the broader community to participate in the dialogue, inspiring education, targeted students, teachers, parents, members of non-profit societies and for-profit business people, government bureaucrats, school leaders, elected officials, university professors, trades-people and professions as well as any person who had recently contacted the government on education issues. to highlight the importance of their involvement, individuals were provided with a direct invitation by letter whenever possible. all other members of a community were invited through extensive advertising in major (and local) newspapers. outreach included “cold calls’ to members of the public, to help ensure greater diversity so that participants would be davis. educational reform and public engagement seen through a “complexity” lens 56 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci representative of the local community. unique dialogic processes had to be developed to realize the aim of the creating a ‘curriculum vision’ encompassing the ‘hopes, dreams and aspirations’ of society in respect to the education of our children in the next 20 years. the question of “why did the minister initiate a dialogue with albertans?” was considered in my blog on the inspiring education web-site: in previous blogs i wrote about how albertans were asked to enter a meaningful exchange where multiple perspectives were respected. the intention was to start a shift in the conversation from the certainty of top-down authority to an exploration of collaborative co-creation. to shape education in the future for alberta’s children, everyone needs to engage in conversations that matter. so the answer to “why dialogue?” has to do with intention and expectations in these conversations. (davis, 2009) adam kahane’s article entitled “changing the world by changing how we talk and listen” was posted on the inspiring education website to inform the public about dialogic processes. to engage in authentic ‘conversations that matter’, it is not only necessary to ‘cast the net widely’, and to bring the public, stakeholders and the government together but it is also essential to foster ‘reflective and generative dialogue’. reflective dialogue calls on us to be empathetic—to see the world through the eyes of others and also to be self-reflective so we can better understand how we influence the world around us. generative dialogue is an opportunity for groups to discover a shared purpose vital to the success of deep change initiatives (kahane, 2009 3). where conversations seek “new directions” for the common good, and when people are invited to work together on what truly matters to them, than there is a greater likelihood they will take ownership and responsibility in moving the issues identified, and the ideas developed, forward. inherent in the process was a fundamental respect for the contribution individual participants could make to creating future-oriented action. there also had to be trust in an education vision built upon the collective ‘wisdom of the crowds’ (suroweicki, 2004). people are engaging in ‘conversations that matter’ when their interactions demonstrate an authentic opportunity to: • share perspectives and connect in a meaningful way with others • take advantage of creative potential to develop great ideas • inspire increased commitment and collaborative leadership • ensure shared understanding before seeking a plan to move forward why is this important? “from my observations, the quality of the conversations people have is the most important indicator of whether they will succeed in effecting deep change" (kahane, 2009, 1). as the minister of education recognized that neither he nor the ministry had all the answers, guidance was sought from citizens in respect to the future of education. there was an authentic commitment to discover possibilities together so, based on kahane (2009), the following elements guided a deliberative approach to the community conversations, aimed at sparking engagement, deepening understanding and ensuring the emergence of community leadership: • focus on questions that matter; • go into conversation by listening deeply to each other; • allow all voices to be heard so the collective intelligence can surface; • develop a collaborative process where everyone learns about themselves each davis. educational reform and public engagement seen through a “complexity” lens 57 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci other and the purpose(s) of education; and • co-create the solutions we seek. inspiring education posted a second article: “a case study in deliberative democracy: dialogue with the city” as it provided a recent example of participatory democracy. the case study set out details about a dialogic process used in australia to engage government officials, stakeholders and members of the public, all sitting as equal partners at the table. by posting this article as a pdf document on-line at the inspiring education website, it served as an example for the public to better understand and anticipate the aims and possibilities of the dialogue. participatory or deliberative democratic processes are “…described as a nascent social movement (in) response to the perceived inadequacies of representative democracy” (hartz-karp, 2005, 1). participants acknowledged and appreciated the difference between the approach taken in ‘community conversations’ and other consultation processes previously offered by government: i think openness and dialogue in any society is a foundation that strengthens a society that is democratic. the more we discuss and hear different aspects, the more we encourage change through the generations and have a more “honest” brokering of policy. (provincial forum participant, 2009) by connecting in a different ways, both laterally (with a broad range of people) and by pushing beyond superficial levels of conversation and deepening the dialogue, complexity can result. such conversations can help move people beyond their ‘habits’ of the copied, and facilitate a focus on the creative. to this end, the new sciences of chaos and complexity may indeed provide an entrée into a world of possibility (doll, 2006). yet, this world of possibility is often precluded by limiting such conversations to education academics in theory and to government officials in practice. the result of such limitations has been the hierarchical setting of curricula, and the reform of education, with minimal community connections. despite such common practices inquiry into what is desirable within the education system is not only a task for the educational researcher and practitioner, but extends to society at large (biesta, 2007). in inspiring education, the deepening of community dialogue respecting the future of education was made possible through a process similar to “currere” pinar (2004) and the following section explores this in greater detail. “c” for currere: while curriculum as complicated conversation in the service of social and self-reflective understanding will transform the present, it will not do so in predictable ways, certainly not according to politicians’ often self-serving and ideology-laden agendas. (pinar, 2012) design the education system to be more relationship-centred, taking children to deeper places of self-realization … (calgary participant, may 23, 2009) pinar states that the spontaneity of conversation and the dialogic encounter invite selfreflexivity. the method of currere can assist in re-invigorating the oral tradition of sharing with others through an autobiographical review of one’s past and imagined future (pinar, 2012). inspiring education used processes that mirrored the method of currere, and similarly found davis. educational reform and public engagement seen through a “complexity” lens 58 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci public participants were thereby engaged in a way that deepened self-reflexivity. it created an atmosphere of trust and rapport between participants essential to fostering meaningful and generative discourse. questions asked of participants in the community conversations helped participants ‘tap into’ their personal perceptions of the education system by connecting their own past experiences with a future focus and then integrating their personal stories with other participant’s in a shared group narrative. the result was a positive experience of working with others to create a vision of hope for educational reform. participants were able through reflecting upon the following questions to connect their personal and local experiences to larger cultural, economic, global and even ‘cosmic’ visions of education. the inspiring education process used a number of photographs at the community conversations and a facilitator, working with groups of 4-8 individuals, asked the following questions. for the purpose of enabling the reader to consider how these processes fostered a deeper engagement in educational reform initiatives, explicit connections are drawn been the questions posed and the 4-step method of currere. 1. regressive: the currere method begins with the ‘regressive’, where one considers past “lived” experience. the individual is encouraged to use ‘free association’ in order to re-enter the past, and to thereby enlarge—and transform—ones’ memory. the purpose, according to pinar is that ‘reactivating the past reconstructs the present so we can find the future’ (2012). consider the similarly with the first question in the inspiring education process:  take a moment to think about your past learning experiences. choose one picture that best reflects your thoughts and feelings towards your past learning experiences. (participants are asked to share with others why they choose the photo—to share one story from their past that illustrates their choice). 2. progressive: in the next step, an individual is asked to consider the future, “in the second or progressive step one looks toward what is not yet the case, what is not yet present … meditatively, the student of currere images possible futures” (pinar, 2004, 36). once again the connection to the inspiring education process is immediately apparent based on the second question asked of participants in the spring conversations:  if you were born today, what hopes, dreams and aspirations would you have for your learning in the next 20 years? (sharing narratives as to why they choose a particular photograph to ‘best’ represent their hopes, dreams and aspirations for future learning experiences, assuming they were born today). 3. analytic: the next step of currere is the ‘analytical’ stage where an individual examines both the past (regressive) and the future (progressive) in order to create a subjective space of freedom. “the analysis of currere is akin to phenomenological bracketing; one’s distantiation from past and future functions to create a subjective space of freedom in the present. this occurs in the analytic moment: how is the future present in the past, the past in the future, and the present in both? (pinar, 2004, 36-37). there are strong parallels with the activity engaged in by inspiring education participants, where after being asked to explore their personal past experiences in education and their future ‘hopes, dreams, and aspirations’, they were asked to essentially davis. educational reform and public engagement seen through a “complexity” lens 59 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci ‘disentangle’ from their personal narratives and consider collectively a new narrative about education: creating and sharing a collective story about education. the facilitator encourages table participants to combine all of the individual stories into a group story that represents their collective hopes for future learning and then to share that story. the conversation on learning: community conversations deepened the conversation by re-considering the photos selected and the ‘new collective narrative’, by using questions based on the “orid” focused conversation method (stansfield, 2000). facilitator questions to participants:  what words, phrases or images do you remember hearing or seeing?  where did you hear a sense of sadness, frustration, anger or regret?  where did you hear a sense of hope, joy or satisfaction?  what images might be missing from the group story you created?  what did you hear that we had in common? 4. synthetical: in the final step of currere, the individual is asked to engage in the ‘synthetical’. at this point, the autobiographical stories are brought together with one’s personal understanding as was discovered by reflecting upon and analyzing the experience. this is an opportunity to re-enter the lived present and to ask the question, “what is the meaning of the present?” again, the similarity is evident, as inspiring education participants were asked, as their final ‘step’ to create their own personal “i message”. this was a way to ‘synthesize’ their experience in a letter directed at ‘whomever’ they choose. some addressed their personal message to the minister of education, while others ‘spoke’ to their children, grandchildren, teachers or fellow community members. some even directed their personal message to themselves: facilitator directions to participants table activity: “i-mail”: you have an opportunity to send an “i-mail” (“i” for inspiring) message to someone of your choice about what is really important to you about learning in 20 years. participants may write their message on an index card to be collected upon completion. to the minister of education i hope that we can proudly say that we continued the journey we have started. that our students are global citizens with knowledge, critical thinking skills and wisdom grounded in a deep sense of social justice and responsibility. (edmonton participant, april 29, 2009) to curriculum developers – in 20 years, i hope learning will be more holistic… that education will more tangibly recognize the inter-connectedness of learning experiences. to: ... when i think of learning in 20 years, i hope... davis. educational reform and public engagement seen through a “complexity” lens 60 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci (edmonton participant, april 29/2009) according to wang (2010) the autobiographical exploration of one’s educational experience in currere is more than mere ‘storytelling’. currere is effective as a process by opening up space for self-reflection and transformative change. when engaging the public, the questions used in inspiring education were purposefully open-ended to unleash the inherent creativity of individuals. mirroring of the currere method expanded participants’ imagination and ‘inspired’ thinking. there was no pre-determined limitation on the discourse. the serendipitous similarity with currere, gave inspiring education a bond with autobiography and narrative, where the telling of one’s own personal story interrupted the habitual linear, modernist, hierarchical and positional paths of thinking. there were a number of other noteworthy aspects to the inspiring education processes. first, the establishment of trusting relationships between participants seemed to be fostered by the sharing of personal experiences and stories. as participants encountered each other in the sharing of their education narratives they forged deeper connections with each other and these links did not occur “in spite of the particularities of their lives but rather through them” (pinar, 2012, 5-6). second, the process seemed to encourage individuals to be more in touch with their ‘holistic’ self, in that they were more open about sharing feelings as well as thoughts about education. finally, there was greater ‘creativity’ that emerged, along with a distinct willingness (and ability) to engage in expansive visioning. the centrality of using pictures and currere-like questions was effective in evoking personal narratives and it became a particularly generative process where participants drew meaning from their stories and the many paths they had travelled in their own personal learning. this enabled individuals to envision their ‘hopes dreams and aspirations’ for the future. collectively participants imagined a transformation of education that was truly ‘visionary’ in nature. inspiring education, by utilizing a currere-like process, may have been the first large-scale initiative to encourage engagement of the public in a ‘complicated curriculum conversation’ as envisioned by pinar (2004). the perspective of complexity highlights how the processes utilized, as well as the connectivity in terms of the forming of relationships of those engaged in the dialogue will have long-term and unforeseen consequences. by adopting a new approach to public engagement in the course of educational reform, the next section on doll’s final “c”—cosmology, explores the discoveries of inspiring education and speculates where this initiative may lead in the future. no program can be evaluated in its entirety. but we can increase our vision of whatever we are viewing through the employment of as many perspectives as we can find appropriate and utilize for our purposes. (aoki, 1989, 7) when i think of learning in 20 years, i hope that education will have responded to children in a whole way including their physical, emotional and spiritual well-being as well as their academic needs. (community conversation participant, edmonton) “c” for cosmology: “cosmology” is defined as the discipline that deals with the nature of the universe as a whole. philosophically it encompasses the world as the totality of space, time and all davis. educational reform and public engagement seen through a “complexity” lens 61 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci phenomena. this “c” provides the broadest scope in considering educational reform. albertans expressed the naissance of a cosmological perspective in a broad ‘curriculum vision’ based on their hopes, dreams, and aspirations for education in twenty years. this is illustrated by their comments and also in the culmination of themes drawn from their words as represented in a “word cloud”: (community conversations summary, spring 2009) [to all students] i hope you will love it! i hope learning takes you places, inspires you to ask questions, allows you to try many things, touch, taste, smell the world (globally & locally).i hope learning will engage & involve you. (lethbridge participant, may 20, 2009) to all our politicians – i hope that schools of the future would have no walls and be able to reach out to students from other cultures, communities, cities, countries, continents. (red deer participant, june 10, 2009) to everyone – when i think of learning in 20 years i hope school is the place where families and the entire community live together to celebrate wonder, wisdom and responsibility in a global context. (calgary participant, june 17, 2009) a cosmological perspective in educational reform requires adopting a holistic perspective and engaging in big picture thinking. this is essential when the reform of a complex system like education is proposed. complexity thinking encompasses a shift from trial and error thinking to ‘meta-thinking’ (bennet, 2006). whereas in simple systems, such as problem solving under a mechanical paradigm, one learns to think through a trial and error process in a linear path, until ‘the’ solution is arrived at and is considered ‘error free’. dewey (2004) expanded this paradigm by focusing on relationships and advanced the idea that knowledge was produced through active manipulation of the environment. one learns through a ‘method of inquiry’. reform of educational systems is particularly challenging as like other complex systems, it is subject to a multiplying of demands in recent years. the idea of trying one thing to see if it works, and if it does not then trying something else is simply ill-suited to present-day complexity. multiple, simultaneous actions are often needed, recognizing that the outcome of such an approach is likely to be unpredictable as these multiple actions will entangle causality and complicate praxis by separating actions from consequences. however, despite these risks, and the possibility of unintended consequences, there is a need to engage in such action. this is davis. educational reform and public engagement seen through a “complexity” lens 62 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci both the challenge and the difficulty for complexity thinking and ‘cosmology’: not surprisingly, complex systems are often insensitive to a single action … single point solutions to problems work fairly well in a deterministic, complicated system. in a complex system the understanding needed to deal with complex problems is nonlinear and context dependent. one may not be sure what the problem is in a complex situation, much less what the solution should be. thus, different ways of learning must be available to the problem solver … (bennet, 2006, 176). the only way to address educational reform from a ‘cosmological’ perspective in a complex system is to remain open to non-linear possibilities and to ensure there is input from multiple of perspectives as was evident in inspiring education. this is important as groups can contribute a breadth of information and draw upon sources of knowledge far beyond what a single individual is capable of doing. this broader information and knowledge source becomes particularly relevant, as when coupled with a collaborative and dialogue oriented environment that enables the sharing of diverse perspectives, better insights and solutions are created to address complex challenges (bennet, 2006). in the introduction to “curriculum vision” (doll & gough, 2006) doll articulates the challenge of adopting new approaches which break free from the roots of authoritarian control. this is complicated as both ‘control’ and a linear approach “…permeate our society and our culture, reaching deep into our metaphysical, cosmological, and theological beliefs. it has become paradigmatic”. so, if educational reform is to succeed in addressing complexities, it is imperative to realize “dewey’s vision, one which integrates education, schooling, curriculum and community into a seamless whole, centers around … emergent control … in a sense, it emerges from the interactions happening within an event or set of experiences (2002, 18)”. thus the final “c”—‘cosmology’ returns us full circle to an awareness of our need for the other 4 c’s. conclusion: i can embrace change. i can model a positive attitude towards new and innovative practices. i can encourage others to challenge their thinking about change. (fort mcmurray participant, may 13, 2009) to everyone–when i think of learning in 20 years i hope school is the place where families and the entire community live together to celebrate wonder, wisdom and responsibility in a global context. (calgary participant, june 17, 2009) doll’s 5 c’s provided a ‘complexity lens’ to organize and analyze the inspiring education initiative and contextualize its importance in terms of public engagement and educational reform. complexity requires greater interconnectivity with the community in terms of information flow and the generation of options by drawing upon a diversity of perspectives. this in turn creates greater resilience and adaptability within the system. the quality of connection and the development of trusting relationships are both of utmost importance. this is evidenced by the excellence of vision participants created when their conversation was deepened and the breadth of the engagement was expanded. educational reform, similar to any endeavor where systemic change is sought, must include a future focus and a ‘utopian belief’. in the dialogue around inspiring education both davis. educational reform and public engagement seen through a “complexity” lens 63 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci aspects were invoked, as people were asked to imagine education in 20 years (future focus) and then invited to share what their ‘hopes, dreams and aspirations were’ for this future (a utopian vision). winter (2006) sets out that ‘utopian discourse’ includes inherent contradictions: utopia is a discourse in two contradictory parts. first it is a narrative about discontinuity. it is a story though which men and women imagine a radical act of disjunction, enabling people, acting freely and in concert with others, to realize the creative potential imprisoned by the way we live now. but secondly, since the narrative is written by men and women rooted in contemporary conditions and language, it inevitably shows where they are, even as it describes where they want to be …. (winter, 2006, 3) inspiring education is a dialogue that could, under winter’s definition, be considered a ‘utopian discourse’ as it explored both the personal and systemic past and envisioned the future. it was both “… haunted by our past; (and) ... our imaginings of what curriculum could be” (doll, 2002). arguably all educational reform efforts are utopian, so what distinguishes inspiring education? as an approach it rejected the rampant modernist fascination with ‘managerialism’ of our current age and embraced doll’s 5 c’s: complexity, community, conversation, currere and cosmology. inspiring education sought greater breadth and depth of public engagement in educational reform and in the creation of a new ‘curriculum vision’. most participants agreed that transformation is necessary, for in the words of one alberta cabinet minister, “if the classroom of 2030 looks the same as it does today, we will know we have failed” (inspiring education steering committee report, 2010, 16). it has become very clear that the paradigm that has dominated the past century of school education has to be transformed. we are not tinkering, we are creating a system that will have some fundamentally different assumptions. (inspiring education online conversation) the need for, and the possibility of, change, was confirmed upon completion of the local community conversations. at the province-wide gathering in the fall of 2009, the vast majority of participants polled, agreed that a transformation of education was both required and possible. these sentiments were reflected in the steering committee report (inspiring education, 2010) delivered to the alberta government in 2010. inspiring education is transformational in nature. it provides direction for new practices, institutional arrangements and human interactions … inspiring education transforms the way we think about possible learning experiences and the way we davis. educational reform and public engagement seen through a “complexity” lens 64 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci address the learning needs of tomorrow. (inspiring education steering committee report, 2010, 14) in conclusion, the need to expand engagement of the public in educational reform initiatives is essential. the change required is so necessary and profound that we need to look at a whole different way of doing things. the way we are going—we will never get the change we need in the time we have without big changes now. (fall forum participant, 2009) complexity thinking and the 5 c’s have provided a means to analyze a recent initiative, inspiring education, in a way that challenges old ways of thinking about educational reform and the often politicized, managerial control that is typical in such processes. this initiative provides one example of a new way forward in terms of engaging the public in curriculum conversations. the results are significant, although the long-term impact of the dialogue is yet to be determined as it is still a ‘work in progress’. i viewed this initiative as an opportunity to be part of history in the making. i will be 80 years old in 2029. i hope i will (a) be alive, (b) remember this event, and (c) have seen the fruits of the labour. (fall forum participant, 2009) in the words of the minister of education while it is important to acknowledge our accomplishments, we must continue to move forward … to a new and better place. we have an excellent education system today where people come from all over the world to take a look at what we’re doing now, but we cannot rest on our laurels. we need to build the education system for tomorrow. (education minister dave hancock) the alberta government is currently considering ‘next steps’ arising out of the dialogue, now with the added support of jeff johnson, the co-chair of inspiring education, who was recently appointed the minister of education in may, 2012. so the conversation continues… note inspiring education: a dialogue with albertans phase one began in early 2009 and included personal conversations in small groups, regional and community conversations and online discussions. during the spring of 2009, approximately 2,000 people shared their vision of what an educated albertan might look like in 20 years. phase two was the provincial forum held in the fall of 2009. the forum enabled more than 1,400 additional participants, both present and online, to contribute their voice to the dialogue and be challenged by internationally-renowned speakers. the participants examined 6 key values as well as themes related to policy and governance that had emerged in the spring conversations. notes 1 brendad@athabascau.ca mailto:brendad@athabascau.ca davis. educational reform and public engagement seen through a “complexity” lens 65 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci references alberta education, ministry of education. 2009. inspiring education: a dialogue with albertans—community conversation kit. aoki, t. 1989. toward curriculum inquiry in a new key. occasional paper no. 2, curriculum praxis, department of secondary education, university of alberta. barrow, j. 2007. new theories of everything. oxford university press. bennet, d. 2006. expanding the knowledge paradigm. vine (the journal of information and knowledge management systems), 36, 2, 175-181. biesta, g. 2007. why “what works” won’t work: evidence-based practice and the democratic deficit in educational research. educational theory, 57, 1, 1-22. bobbitt, f. 1918. the curriculum. accessed on march 22, 2012 at http://archive.org/details/curriculum008619mbp davis, b., d. sumara & l. d’amour. 2012. understanding school districts as learning systems: some lessons from three cases of complex transformation. 2012. springer science and business media b.v. published online 28 february 2012. davis, b. & d. sumara. 2006. complexity and education: inquiries into learning, teaching, and research. new jersey: lawrence erlbaum. davis, b. april 16, 2010. inspiring education blog (brenda davis) accessed february 20, 2012 at http://www.inspiringeducation.alberta.ca/blog/contributors/brenda/tabid/116/default.a spx dewey, j. 2004/1916. democracy and education. new york: dover dewey, j. 1971/1900. school and society. l. carmichael intro. university of chicago press. dewey, j. 1938. logic: the theory of inquiry. new york: henry holt. doll, w. jr. 1993. a post-modern perspective on curriculum. new york: teachers college press. doll, w. jr. 2008. complexity and the culture of curriculum. educational philosophy and theory, 40, 1, 190-212. doll, w.jr. 1989. foundations for a post-modern curriculum. journal of curriculum studies, 21, 1, 243-253. doll, w. jr. 2006. method and its culture: an historical approach. complicity: an international journal of complexity and education, 3, 1, 85–89. doll, w. jr. 2008. the four r’s: an alternative to the tyler rationale. in d.j. flinders & s. j. thorton (eds.), the curriculum studies reader. london: routledge. doll, w. jr. & n. gough (eds.). 2006. curriculum visions. new york: peter lang doll, w. jr., fleener, m., trueit, d., st. julien, j. 2005. chaos, complexity, curriculum and culture. new york: peter lang. goldspink, c. 2007. rethinking educational reform. educational management administration and leadership, 35, 1, 27-50. hartz-karp, j. 2005. a case study in deliberative democracy: dialogue with the city. article submitted to journal of public deliberation, manuscript 1002. available in the documents at the inspiring education website and accessed on april 1, 2012 at http://www.inspiringeducation.alberta.ca/documents/tabid/124/default.aspx “inspiring education: a dialogue with albertans” steering committee. 2010. steering committee report to the honorable dave hancock, minister of education, government of alberta, april 2010. http://archive.org/details/curriculum008619mbp http://www.inspiringeducation.alberta.ca/blog/contributors/brenda/tabid/116/default.aspx http://www.inspiringeducation.alberta.ca/blog/contributors/brenda/tabid/116/default.aspx http://www.inspiringeducation.alberta.ca/documents/tabid/124/default.aspx davis. educational reform and public engagement seen through a “complexity” lens 66 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci “inspiring education: a dialogue with albertans” website accessed february 20, 2012 at http://www.inspiringeducation.alberta.ca/ kahane, a. 2002.changing the world by changing how we talk and listen. (originally available on inspiring education website) accessed on april 2, 2012 at http://www.c2d2.ca/sites/default/files/kahane%20on%20talking%20and%20listening.pdf palmer, j. (ed.) 2001. fifty major thinkers on education: from confucius to dewey. new york: routledge. pinar, w. 2011. allegories of the present: curriculum development in a culture of narcissism and presentism. paper presented at the pinar lecture series at the university of british columbia on november 18, 2011. (no page numbers). pinar, w. 2012. pragmatism, post-modernism, and complexity theory: an introduction to the “fascinating, imaginative realm” of william e. doll, jr. paper presented at the pinar lecture series at university of british columbia on march 9, 2012. pinar, w. (2004) what is curriculum theory? new jersey: lawrence erlbaum. sharmer, o. 2009. theory u: leading from the future as it emerges. san francisco: berrettkoehler. stanfield, r. 2000. the art of focused conversation. the canadian institute of cultural affairs. strong-wilson, t. 2012. phantom traces: contiguity, coincidences, autobiography and currere in w. g. sebald’s paul bereyter and canadian curriculum studies. paper presented at the pinar lecture series at university of british columbia on january 27, 2012. surowiecki, j. 2004. the wisdom of crowds: why the many are smarter than the few and how collective wisdom shapes business, economies, societies and nations. new york: doubleday. tomkins, g. 2008. a common countenance: stability and change in the canadian curriculum. vancouver: pacific educational press. tyler, r. 1949. basic principles of curriculum and instruction. university of chicago press. wang, h. 2010. the temporality of currere, change and teacher education. pedagogies: an international journal, 5, 4, 275-285. winter, j. 2006. dreams of peace and freedom: utopian moments in the 20 th century. yale university press: new haven. submitted: september, 27 th , 2012. approved: november, 6 th , 2012. http://www.inspiringeducation.alberta.ca/ http://www.c2d2.ca/sites/default/files/kahane%20on%20talking%20and%20listening.pdf transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci commentaries and conversations on ‘laboured breathing’ (low and palulis) and ‘letter to my sister’ (luo) editor: noel gough introduction as i have already indicated in this issue’s editorial, transnational curriculum inquiry (tci) is both a site for transnational scholarly conversations and a site for inquiry into the ways that electronic publishing procedures facilitate and/or constrain inclusive knowledge work in global virtual spaces. one of the ways in which we hope to produce such conversations is by keeping tci’s editorial policies and procedures flexible and refraining from imposing arbitrary standards and styles. for example, tci does not have a fixed publication schedule: articles and book/media reviews will be published as soon as they are accepted for publication. each issue will normally consist of one article or one book/media review but, as is the case with this first issue, articles that we believe might be complementary will be reviewed together and, if accepted, published as a single issue. we will also be flexible in matters of layout and style. if authors go to the trouble of formatting their articles in a particular way (as marylin low and pat palulis have done in this issue) we will not change them to fit our templates. similarly, we do not prescribe one single citation style. authors are free to use whatever style they see as most appropriate for their work, provided that they use a style consistently and provide all of the bibliographic information we require. tci’s review policies and procedures will also be flexible. for example, although all articles published in tci will be peer reviewed, they will not necessarily be ‘blind’ reviews. authors may choose to anonymise their manuscripts, and the editors will respect their choice, but we will not impose anonymity on authors. each manuscript will normally be reviewed by at least three referees, two of whom, in most circumstances, will be of different nationalities from the author(s) and from each other. in addition, the editor may assign a consulting editor to liaise with the referees and the editor in reaching a decision about publication (in this issue i have taken this role myself). each referee’s signed review will be circulated to the other referees. my experience, like that of many other journal editors, is that signed reviews are generally of a higher quality than unsigned reviews. however, the names of referees will not be divulged to authors of rejected manuscripts. at the editor’s discretion, manuscripts accepted for publication may be published together with some or all of the referees’ reports and the author’s response, as is the case in this issue. the story of how the two articles that constitute this first issue of tci came to be reviewed together – and then published with the following four commentaries and an author’s rejoinder – is complex, even chaotic. suffice it to say that serendipity, coincidence, and my desire for this first issue to exemplify at least some aspects of my editorial vision for tci all played a part, but the final result owes more to improvisation than orchestration. i wish to thank marylin low, pat palulis and lixin luo for their patience, and also thank john chi-kin lee, julianne moss, warren sellers, marg sellers, and francisco sousa for their thoughtful and engaging commentaries and questions. http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci laboured breathing: running with and against internationalising texts of currere marylin low and pat palulis letter to my sister about doll’s 4 r’s lixin luo reviewed by warren sellers with marg sellers, deakin university, australia how can we create possibilities of dialogue between chinese curriculum wisdom and western curriculum theories and form a dynamic relationship between the two? (zhang hua and zhong quiquan, 2003, p. 260). [o]n this bridge we are in no hurry to cross over; in fact, such bridges lure us to linger (ted aoki, in pinar and irwin, in press). lixin’s ‘letter’ is awe inspiring –takes my breath away! it exudes ‘postmodernisms’ for understanding curriculum simplexities... transnational transliteration, interdisciplinary indeterminacies, chaotic complexities, sage simplicity. the clarity of conversational voice(s) transliterate oriental pictographic aesthetics towards occidental ideographic constructs in ways showing how emergence matters. text brimming with words letting me see chinese paintings... curlying willow trees beside waterfalling amongst crinkling landscaping... myst-erious perspectives unfolding understandings. i prefer to read the ‘web’ metaphor as ‘rhizome’, and i read ‘autopoiesis’ more often than it is written. otherwise, this exemplifies for me generativity for deconstructing curriculum in ways i want to keep on rehearsing to(o). low’s & palulis’s ‘...breathing...currere’ – breathing currere emerges through currere breathing – is other storying and just as stimulating... marg and i are (re)reading this conjointly and would like to send you our conversational respondings... now it’s enough to say there are beginnings towards maddening middlings of ‘differancings’... which we (all) and both papers bring to unfolding gatherings... interliterality of language(s)... forking tongues... (sellers, 2004, personal communication). i’ve attached your first paper to review... normally this will be done online but i want to start getting a couple of papers in the works... in fact, i’ll attach two, both of which i think will be of interest for rather different reasons... i have letter to my sister in chinese too... i won’t tell you anymore about them until you’ve had a chance to read them... (noel gough, 2004, personal communication). commentaries and conversations on low & palulis and luo 65 http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci mi youren (1076-1151) shitao (1642-1718) shanghai museum, p r china. http://flmc.fll.purdue.edu/chns594/song.html fantastic mountains charts the development of mountain landscape painting over 500 years, from the displacement of the tang dynasty by invading manchu in the mid-15th century. ‘people come in here and look at the earliest works and the latest and say, ‘oh yeah, what’s the difference?’ capon 1 says with a demonstrative shrug. using a european yardstick, comparing landscape painting from the renaissance to impressionism, say, is pointless. ‘all the motifs – the rocks, the trees, the streams – are like letters of a visual alphabet and are transposed into paragraphs which the viewer can read.’ indeed, chinese scrolls are not decorative works hung on walls. instead they are stored, to be taken out, examined, considered and appreciated in a deliberate act of reading, before being rolled again and carefully put away (miriam cosic, 2004). contexts the preceding page is a way of contextualising what follows, which adopts a rhizomatic (deleuze and guattari, 1987) approach to the papers being reviewed. rhizomatics concerns ways of engaging with reading~writing2 that disturb the usual linear, hierarchical, dualistic, polarising method, which deleuze and guattari characterise as arboreal. so, the opening pages quote william pinar’s (2003) epigraph in his paper to the inaugural iaacs conference, then rehearse the emails opening this reviewing process, and reproduce (above) some co-responding images and accompanying text gough sent separately. bringing together these items exhibits, for us, a conjoining interrelatedness that characterises rhizomatic inquiry, and distinguishes it from conventional analysis. to make this plainer, our reviewing of these texts reads~writes them poststructurally, as complexly interrelated, or, inextricably intertwining each other. such ways of reading~writing call for disturbing approaches, which involve disordering conventions. thus, i (warren) took the arrival of the two papers as inviting a rhizomatic approach to their review, and prompting the suggestion that marg contribute her writing~reading to the intertextual recursion. commentaries and conversations on low & palulis and luo 66 http://flmc.fll.purdue.edu/chns594/song.html http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci contents we commend these papers for experiencing embodied reading~writing concerning transnational conceptualisings of currere. what do we mean by ‘embodied reading~writing? ‘embodied’ calls attention to bodily mindedness ways in which reading is always already complexly co-emergent with writing, or ‘writing~reading’. this emphasises how a reader’s interpretations and understandings become involutionary with a writer’s in reflexive, recursive conversations. for us, this involves postlogographic conceptions. that is, exploring ways of conceiving and conversing ideas beyond (post) the conventions of structuralist signs; hence the references to chinese scrolls, and pinar’s concern for cross-cultural philosophies. in these two papers we recognise qualities that resonate with postlogographic conceptions: the deconstructed texting and layout of ‘laboured breathing’, and lixin lou’s personalising epistolary. thus our respondings attempt to ‘recurse’ with those qualities. with this in mind, marg presents her writing~reading: laboured breathing… soundings a/rhythmically re-cording conversations about im/possibilities of speaking only one language (yes but) never speaking only one language. the ‘inter’ of spaces breathing life into academic text as it grows from a middle constantly re/appearing elsewhere, always already, the parts unfolding from the whole and the whole enfolded in the parts. not only is this text alive for me, i am also alive in the text, living currere. the texture of its soundings keep me moving, without pause to analyse. an enacting of a synthesising emerging as i read. from above and below, first one then the other, re-turning (to) pages, then the other comes first. there is no stopping, not even at the ‘end’. the soundings disrupt any academic authority; finality becomes illusory. these words are alive and dance on in my mind as i re-live my reading and am anxious to re-choreograph writings of my own to the sound of a tune of word pictures freed by marylin and pat…breathing living into the academic word…enacting currere… and warren presents some of what he calls sketch-notings, made in the margins of low and palulis’ texts. commentaries and conversations on low & palulis and luo 67 http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci do you sense our interpreting meanings for reading~writing understandings of low and palulis? it’s not so much, as bruno latour (2004) writes, a matter of fact it’s more matters for concern. …writing~reading… involves concerning conversations, within which learning is immanent and full of potentialities for ted aoki’s ‘bridges’ and open to zhang hua and zhong quiquan’s, ‘dynamic relationships’. commentaries and conversations on low & palulis and luo 68 http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci and, so to lixin luo. why is lixin writing to her sister about william doll? lixin generously shares her synthesis of dolls 4 r’s – ‘richness, recursion, relations, rigor’ – with us too. however, be aware that lixin is writing to her sister in their first language, and we are reading an english translation. again, here are some of warrens’ sketch-notings of reading~writing lixin: commentaries and conversations on low & palulis and luo 69 http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci marg participates in the conversations with this letter: commentaries and conversations on low & palulis and luo 70 http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci dear lixin, i have read your letter to your sister and i want to lay it out in a web, to play with your ideas and let them play with each other, to embrace any ambiguities as they appear. i want to write to my daughter about her (my) 7 month old (grand)son and converse with her about his becoming-being-becoming… and about how she is co-constructing en-rich-ing environments with him as she follows his play. i want to write to the practicing teachers i work alongside about how recursive reflection values (personal) silence while using private and public and communal space(s) in which everyone may be understood; and converse with them about how we might rehearse interdependence by reflecting recursively together. i want to write to my students about how apparent (their) learning becomes when we share (our) stories and connect theoretical understandings to (our) living experiences in differing and meaningful ways; and query what these relations might mean in their work with young children. i want to write to noel about rigor, interpretation and indeterminacy and talk about how i might do my researching with more probing and less proving. i may even write to dr doll one day about (little and gradual) changes in boundaries i (may yet) happen upon. and perhaps i will also write to the rocks and trees… i look forward to more of these reading~writing conversations. marg closings noel gough’s email, which appears on the first page, mentions that the two papers ‘will be of interest for rather different reasons’. what might the reasons be? the two papers differently engage approaches to interpreting and explaining concepts that enact complexity. marylin low and pat palulis experiment with their intertwining texts (intertextualising) in ways that enact recursive doubling3, to demonstrate inspirational working (laboured breathing) across international texts of currere. and, lixin lou rehearses her learning conversations with william doll, through conversing with her sister, towards her niece, to explicate her hermeneutic reflections on the ‘4 r’s’ and their transnational transl-iter-ation. both papers present, for both of us, stimulating interactions of currereist complexity, exemplifying william pinar’s desires for ‘“complicated conversations” [to] create bridges across place and time’ (2003, p. 18). commentaries and conversations on low & palulis and luo 71 http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci notes 1 edmund capon, director of the art gallery of new south wales, australia, which is exhibiting ‘fantastic mountains: chinese landscape painting from the shanghai museum’ from 12 march 9 may 2004. 2 we use the expression writing~reading and reading~writing throughout to show that reading and writing are inextricably intertwined, hence the use of the tilde symbol, which indicates complementary alternation. 3 varela, thompson and rosch, (1993) draw on merleau-ponty’s discussion of ‘double embodiment’ as a way of introducing their ‘enactive’ approach to cognition (pp. xv-xx). references cosic, miriam. (2004), ‘heights of achievement’, the australian, 11 march, pp. 016 deleuze, gilles and félix guattari. (1987), a thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia, athlone press, london. latour, bruno. (2004), ‘why has critique run out of steam? from matters of fact to matters of concern’, critical inquiry, 30, pp. 225-247 pinar, william. (2003), a bridge between chinese and north american curriculum studies, paper presented at the first triennial meeting of the international association for the advancement of curriculum studies, shanghai, p. r. china, october 26-29, 2003. pinar, william f. and rita l. irwin. (eds.) (in press), curriculum in a new key: the collected works of ted t. aoki, lawrence erlbaum associates, mahwah, nj. varela, francisco, evan thompson and eleanor rosch. (1993), the embodied mind: cognitive science and human experience, mit press, cambridge, ma & london. zhang, hua and qiquan zhong. (2003), ‘curriculum studies in china: retrospect and prospect’, in william f. pinar (ed.) international handbook of curriculum research, lawrence erlbaum associates, mahwah, nj. reviewers warren and marg sellers are partners who reside in aotearoa-new zealand. both are doctoral candidates at deakin university. correspondence to w.sellers@paradise.net.nz, m.sellers@paradise.net.nz commentaries and conversations on low & palulis and luo 72 http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci laboured breathing: running with and against internationalising texts of currere marylin low and pat palulis letter to my sister about doll’s 4 r’s lixin luo reviewed by julianne moss, university of melbourne, australia reviewing these two works simultaneously places the past, present and future of curriculum discourses inside and outside of historical truth, representation and interpretations of the field. as a reviewer i have to own up to my slippages between the writers, their assumed identities and their audiences. as patti lather (2000) writes: no matter how much we think we are reading voice, we are reading a text. acts of transcription have taken place. editorial decisions have been made. the text is never free of the contamination of language. given this, what is knowledge in the testimony? (p. 155) the two texts enacted in the space of transnational curriculum inquiry should be made available to the scholarly community. in considering lixin luo’s paper i would however like to hear more from the writer, the learner, the discursive readings of curriculum experiences and contexts – teacher, postgraduate student, membership of the community of curriculum scholars. further i would encourage some more reading against the text, to seek what lather (2000) describes as to ‘focus on what is “becoming” in the data: discontinuities, ruptures the unexpected, the contingent, the stabilized configurations and the beginnings of the possible…’ (p. 158). after all, our work is to seek a reflexive account of the field even if it is a possibility we have come to embrace. marylin low and pat palulis’s article provides the deconstructive act through textual form. i am very comfortable as a reader in these spaces, but i find narratives that are smoothed over and seamless more troubling, as curriculum texts have an historical weight much like the curriculum imaginings i have appropriated at left. i am immediately taken inside low and palulis’s text, however i admit my familiarity and preference for reading the visual and text types. owning up to my past as a secondary visual art teacher, and now preferring to research in this way, i understand how through the electronic revolution our culture is witnessing a shift where the visual medium, traditionally the ‘illustration of text’, is becoming the dominant medium of thought. but this way of knowing is used less often in education and curriculum thinking and, as gustavo commentaries and conversations on low & palulis and luo 73 http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci fischman (2001), states: ‘the reliance on words and numbers among educational researchers and the general tendency of dismissing images is generalised across academic traditions, theoretical traditions, and research methods’ (p.28). this leads me to consider whether [chiasm(us)] as the entry point for low and palulis’s textwork is sufficient for our readers, even though we aim in this journal to embody readers in the transnational space. i read and run with the text, across, up and (in)between. in short, ‘laboured breathing’ is textwork that i find very accessible and inspiring, but perhaps others may not. references lather, patti. (2000). reading the image of rigoberta menchú: undecidability and language lessons. international journal of qualitative studies in education, vol. 13, no.2, pp. 153162. fischman, gustavo e. (2001). reflections about images, visual culture and educational research, educational researcher, vol. 30, no. 8, pp. 28-33. reviewer julianne moss is head, curriculum teaching and learning unit, department of learning and educational development, faculty of education, university of melbourne. correspondence to j.moss@unimelb.edu.au commentaries and conversations on low & palulis and luo 74 http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci letter to my sister about doll’s 4 r’s lixin luo reviewed by john chi-kin lee chinese university of hong kong, china [editor’s note: john chi-kin lee reviewed the chinese language version of lixin luo’s essay and has provided his review in both english and chinese] the letter written by lixin luo to her sister is very readable and interesting. it echoes william doll’s (1993, p. 169) remarks that ‘a good story, a great story, endures, encourages, challenges the reader to interpret, to enter into dialogue with the text’. i particularly like the last part of her letter, where she emphasizes the important meaning of doll’s lessons for her. she writes: ‘choice cannot be realized. it is because we decide on that direction rather than choosing a particular direction’ (my translation). while the letter stimulates me to appreciate further doll’s theories, i would like ms luo to echo some of my concerns. at the beginning of the letter, she mentions that her sister’s daughter, dongdong, is studying in a kindergarten in shenzhen, which adopts the montessori and multiple intelligences programs. it might be better if luo could explain the context of dongdong’s learning (and the kindergarten) in connection (or disconnection) with doll’s postmodern view of curriculum. with regard to the richness criteria, luo uses an example of discriminating between trousers and a skirt. she suggests asking: ‘why does grandfather not wear a skirt?’ to facilitate dongdong’s exploration of the relationship between humans and their clothes. doll (1993, p. 176) defines richness as ‘multiple possibilities or interpretations’. while dongdong’s grandfather living in mainland cities would not wear skirts, i wonder if luo had considered showing a picture of a man from one of the chinese minorities and another of a scotsman wearing a traditional ‘skirt’. luo further comments that, with regard to the profession of education, even those students with a non-relevant background who have the enthusiasm to teach or to learn (my translations) should be admitted for study. i do not have any strong objections to luo’s viewpoint. while i do not wish to use doll’s quotation as the metanarrative, we should consider his view that in a ‘self-organizing, open system framework, teachers need student challenges in order to perform their role in the interactive process… the question of teacher attitudes, then reflecting fundamental world-view assumptions, is crucial’ (doll, 1993, p. 159). the successful implementation of doll’s vision of curriculum perhaps needs teachers who not only have an enthusiasm to act as active listeners and facilitators but also have a broad knowledge base and open-mindedness with a postmodern worldview. with regard to recursion, luo writes about history and inspires students to think ‘why things happen in this way?’ (my translation), which may imply serial causality. in recursion, there is ‘no fixed beginning or ending’ (doll, 1993, p. 178). i am not sure if we might ask, ‘how and why things happen and have not happened in these ways?’ with respect to the criteria of relations, luo refers to the japanese experience and suggests the use of ‘appropriate’ negative experiences such as conflict to make children strong. i do not like the use of the term ‘negative experience’, which may not encourage a reflective relationship between teacher and student. rather, i would prefer doll’s (2002, p. 50) use of the concept of community as an ‘emphasis on both care and critique – an emphasis that requires a high degree of trust’. as a chinese reader who has grown up in hong kong, where there is an interaction between eastern and western cultures, i am uncertain whether luo’s experience of writing ‘review letters’ in which she makes mistakes could be transferable, for enhancing reflection, commentaries and conversations on low & palulis and luo 75 http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci to other persons. some examples given by luo seem to be brief but conclusive, such as the appreciation of chinese painting for young students to celebrate ambiguity (p. 17) and the remark on building post-secondary colleges instead of universities in backward areas in china (p. 14). with my limited knowledge of chinese culture, the appreciation of chinese fine arts needs to be substantiated, possibly with a photo showing a chinese landscape painting and guidelines on how to facilitate students’ understanding of ambiguity. the notion of localization of the curriculum and relevance to the local context is well respected. the remark by the teacher working in a backward area in china, however, needs to be carefully and contextually interpreted as ‘localization’ of teaching might impart further social/regional and economic inequality. in addition, the use of the great wall when teaching english in beijing appears to be very brief. referral to the historical and cultural context and the personal meaning of the great wall for the students could be considered. another point i would like to share with luo relates to the use of metaphors of teacher and student. the former is referred to as a candle and a gardener and the latter as a sponge and a flower. i totally agree with her view that these analogies tend to be modernist. it would have been helpful if she had proposed some metaphors of teachers and students in the letter (luo refers to learning metaphorically as ‘cooking dishes’). i am looking forward to reading her responses in a revised version of the paper. references doll, w.e., jr. (1993). a post-modern perspective on curriculum. new york: teachers college press. doll, w.e. jr. (2002). ghosts and the curriculum. in w.e. doll, jr., & n. gough (eds.), curriculum visions (pp. 23-70). new york: peter lang. reviewer professor john chi-kin lee is dean of the faculty of education, chinese university of hong kong. correspondence to jcklee@cuhk.edu.hk commentaries and conversations on low & palulis and luo 76 http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 對〈㆒封給姐姐的信――論威廉姆•多爾的㆕ r 理論〉的回應 羅麗新女士寫給姐姐的信，可讀性十分高，內容亦見有趣。信件回應威爾姆•多 爾（王紅宇譯，2001，頁 2401）所言：「㆒個好的故事，㆒個偉大的故事，誘發、 鼓勵、鞭策讀者去闡釋，與文本進行對話。」我尤其喜歡信㆗尾末部分――她強 調㆖威廉姆•多爾教授的課對她來說具有重要的意義。她寫道：「選擇本身本來 就是不可能實現的，因為我們是在決定那個方向，而不是要選擇㆒個方向。」 羅女士的信促使我進㆒步欣賞威廉姆•多爾的理論，我更期望她能回應我的㆒些 關注點。在信件的起始部分，她提及姐姐的女兒東東在深圳㆒所幼稚園㆖學，那 所學校採用了蒙台梭利教學法和多元智力教育方案。如果羅女士能解釋東東的學 習，以至幼稚園的脈絡背景，與多爾的後現代課程觀有關（或沒有關聯）的㆞方 則更為理想。就豐富性的準則而言，羅女士用了區別褲子和裙子的例子。她建議 提出「為甚麼公公不穿裙子？」的問題來引導東東探索㆟類與服飾的關係。多爾 （王紅宇譯，2001，頁 250）界定豐富性為「多種可能性或多重解釋。」雖然東 東的公公住在㆗國大城巿，不會穿著裙子，但是我想羅女士亦可考慮展示㆒幅來 自㆗國少數民族男士的圖畫，以及另㆒幅蘇格蘭穿著傳統蘇格蘭裙的男士的圖 畫。 羅女士進㆒步認為，就教育的專業來說，即使學生沒有相關的背景，只要學生有 教書或者學習的熱情，就應該有資格被取錄。我對羅女士的觀點沒有太強烈的反 對。雖然我不希望引用多爾的說話作為後設敘述，但是他的意見――「自組織的 開放系統的框架，其㆗教師需要學生的挑戰以便在互動過程㆗發揮作用……於是 反映世界觀基本假設的教師態度成為關鍵的問題」（頁 227）仍然值得考慮。多 爾課程觀要成功㆞實施，也許需要教師不只要具備熱誠去扮演主動聆聽者和輔導 者的角色，也要具有寬廣的知識基礎，以及具有後現代世界觀的開放胸襟。 至於回歸性，羅女士觸及歷史和啟發學生去思考「為甚麼事情會這樣發生？」， 然而這種問題方式可能引含系列性因果論的思考。就回歸性來說，它是「沒有固 定的起點和終點」（頁 253）。我不肯定我們能否提問：「事情如何和為甚麼會這 樣發生，以及事情為甚麼沒有這樣發生？」 就關聯性的準則來說，羅女士提及日本㆟的經驗和建議利用「適量」的負面經驗 （例如衡突）去使兒童堅強。我不喜歡「負面經驗」這個用詞，因為它未必能鼓 勵師生之間建立㆒種反思性關係。反而，我較喜歡採用多爾（poll, 2002, p.50） 利用社區的觀念作為「同時強調關懷和批判――強調需要㆒種高度的信任」。 1 王紅宇譯，小威廉姆•e•多爾著（2000）。《後現代課程觀》。北京：教育科學出版社。 commentaries and conversations on low & palulis and luo 77 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 作為㆒位在東西方文化互動的香港長大的㆗國讀者，我不肯定羅女士所寫「檢討 書」內犯錯的經驗能否轉移，使他㆟藉以反思自己的狀況。另外，羅女士所提及 的部分例子雖然簡短但是具總結性，例如 年幼的學生透過欣賞㆗國畫去慶賀模 糊；對需要在㆗國偏遠落後㆞區建立大專而非大學的意見等。以我對㆗國文化的 有限知識，欣賞㆗國藝術作品有待進㆒步強化，例如通過展示㆗國山水畫和提供 指引以輔助學生去理解模糊概念。課程的「本土化」和與本㆞脈絡相關的觀念是 得到肯定的（受到尊重的）。不過，要解讀那位在㆗國偏遠山區工作的教師所提 出的觀點，必須要很小心並要配合脈絡，這是由於教學的「本土化」可能導致進 ㆒步的社會／區域性和經濟㆖的不平等。再者，在北京教英文時用長城作例子顯 得十分簡單。參考長城的歷史和文化脈絡，以及長城對學生的個㆟意義也許值得 考慮。 我也想與羅女士分享另㆒觀點，那就是有關教師與學生的隱喻運用。前者比作蠟 燭和園㆜，後者則比作海綿和花朵。我完全同意她的觀點，這些類比偏向現代主 義方式，如果羅女士能在信㆗建議㆒些教師和學生的隱喻（她把學習比喻為做 菜），則對讀者更有幫助。我期望能閱讀羅女士的回應。 李子建 香港㆗文大學教育學院 commentaries and conversations on low & palulis and luo 78 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci letter to my sister about doll’s 4 r’s lixin luo reviewed by francisco sousa university of the azores, portugal assuming that tci has been designed to facilitate transnational conversations in curriculum inquiry and that peer reviewers should, accordingly, discuss the extent to which the manuscripts contribute to that aim, let me start by looking at luo’s purpose in writing the submitted text – a letter to her sister. the author begins the letter by saying that she will introduce her postmodernist views of curriculum to her sister and implicitly suggests that her sister functions as a proxy for the chinese. according to luo, the chinese use modern metaphors about teachers and students and should rethink them in the light of postmodernist thought. if the author’s purpose is really to inform a chinese audience – perhaps an eastern audience at large about postmodernist curriculum theory that is constructed in the west, i am not able to judge on the relevance of her paper for transnational conversations in curriculum inquiry, for i do not know enough about eastern curriculum work. from my geographical position in the atlantic, i can only state that the manuscript does not add much to what curriculum scholars on the eastern margin of this ocean already know about postmodernist curriculum theory. what i would like to learn from this east-west dialogue is how eastern thought might contribute to transnational curriculum work. i have counted fifteen references to china, three references to japan, and two references to tibet in luo’s text. those references consist of sayings, excerpts from poems, and general statements, all of them being very brief. in my ignorance of eastern culture, i even suspect that some of the statements might also be too simplistic. do people in china always view model classes as teachers’ shows? is learning always bitter for the chinese? i wonder if some of the references to eastern culture that are made in the text might be expanded, in order to eventually provide the international community of curriculum workers with new sources of inspiration for curriculum theory and practice. it would be interesting, for example, to deepen the discussion of the importance of chinese painting in curricula that celebrate ambiguity (p. 20) and to further explore the relationships between buddhism and curricula that go beyond categorical thinking. given these comments, i suggest that the editor’s decision on whether to accept or reject the manuscript be based on the following positions: 1. from the perspective of a north-america–europe dialogue, the text is too redundant to be published. 2. from the perspective of an east–west dialogue, the text should be published under certain conditions (if at least one of the following conditions occurs): • other reviewers consider the text important for informing audiences outside europe and north-america – especially eastern audiences about postmodernist curriculum theory • the author develops a reflection on how might eastern thought – or, at least, certain aspects of eastern thought contribute to transnational curriculum work. reviewer francisco sousa is a doctoral student in curriculum studies at the university of the azores, portugal. correspondence to sousafrancisco@hotmail.com commentaries and conversations on low & palulis and luo 79 http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci letter to my sister about doll’s 4 r’s: a response to the reviewers’ comments lixin luo first i wish to thank all of the reviewers for their thoughtful comments and questions (and, in warren and marg sellers case, for their pictures and ‘sketch-notings’ – and yet another letter!). i am especially grateful to john chi-kin lee for providing his comments in both chinese and english, because different languages have different hidden discourses, thus i can understand better professor lee’s ideas by reading versions of his comments in both languages; and also, sometimes i find it easier to think in chinese and write in english (and sometimes the reverse). i will focus my response chiefly on addressing lee’s review because, as i think francisco sousa understands, my letter to my sister may be more interesting to chinese readers than to western curriculum scholars. lee writes: at the beginning of the letter, [luo] mentions that her sister’s daughter, dongdong, is studying in a kindergarten in shenzhen, which adopts the montessori and multiple intelligences program. it might be better if luo could explain the context of dongdong’s learning (and the kindergarten) in connection (or disconnection) with doll’s postmodern view of curriculum. lotus kindergarten is an experimental base for the montessori and multiple intelligences programs of the international and comparative education research institute at beijing normal university. these programs are chinese national education research projects. in 2001, lotus kindergarten also joined the china-canada collaborative english immersion program (a three year project). the researchers do field research in the kindergarten several times every year. the supervisor of the lotus kindergarten, weili wang, is very open minded and strives to combine educational theory with teaching practice. every time the researchers visit, she organizes many workshops and seminars to train the teachers more about theory and discuss their practical problems. she also invited the researchers to give lectures to parents. the kindergarten has a total of 10 classes. in 2001, there were four montessori classes in the kindergarten. by 2004, the number had increased to six. dongdong is in one of the montessori classes. these classes organize their curricula based on the montessori education method and multiple intelligences theory. in addition, every class has an english teacher who teaches children english using the immersion method – the english teacher only speaks english with the children. normally children spend a half day in montessori work and a half day in english activities. generally, all activities in the montessori classes are theme activities (zhu ti huo dong) in which teachers select a theme and organize some initial activities related to it. in the course of doing these activities, new theme-related activities emerge from children’s interests, needs or requests. for example, the montessori b class’s teachers selected a theme – paper – then they organized children to learn the history of paper, watch videotapes about paper production, and to make paper themselves. while doing these activities, some children noticed that some paper is coarse and some is smooth; some children showed interest in the transparency of different papers. the teachers then organized another two activities in which children could explore more attributes of paper. after a theme has already been explored for a while, teachers will change it to another topic. in this way, children’s interests and needs are valued and their creative abilities are encouraged. teachers in the montessori classes are required to spend a lot of time observing children and perceiving their development stages and personal commentaries and conversations on low & palulis and luo 80 http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci interests or needs, according to which teachers try to give every child individualized learning support. however, although these montessori classes value students’ diversity and selforganization to some degree, this is still not enough to facilitate children’s creativity. based on my observations while i was doing volunteer work in the kindergarten during 2001, my sister’s messages about dongdong’s education and the communication between the kindergarten’s supervisor and i from 2001 to 2003, i conclude that teachers still impose preset educational goals on children and that they still aspire to conceptions of ‘universal truth’. children are led to understand existing ‘truths’ not to construct new ones. additionally, teachers feel stressed because so many educational programs are going on at the kindergarten at once. if they can understand the same pattern inside different programs, they will be free from the superficial imitation of teaching methods and be more creative. also, children could be encouraged to reflect more on their behaviours and draw the connections between diverse things. moreover, many children’s parents are like my sister. my sister always thinks about what she needs to teach dongdong and how she can teach in the ‘right’ way. she is designing and deciding dongdong’s education. without realizing and encouraging dongdong’s selfmaking ability, she is nervous about her ability to ‘teach’ well. within this context (kindergarten and family), i think children like dongdong are still educated in modernist boxes. thus i feel a need to share my understandings of postmodernism with my sister and chinese teachers in order to open their minds to the possibilities of empowering children to co-construct their learning with educators (for further information about the lotus kindergarten go to http://www.szlotus.net/) lee writes: with regard to the richness criteria, ms luo uses an example of discriminating between trousers and a skirt. she suggests asking: ‘why does grandfather not wear a skirt?’ to facilitate dongdong’s exploration of the relationship between humans and their clothes. doll (1993, p. 176) defines richness as ‘multiple possibilities or interpretations’. while dongdong’s grandfather living in mainland cities would not wear skirts, i wonder if ms luo had considered showing a picture of a man from one of the chinese minorities and another of a scotsman wearing a traditional ‘skirt’. i had thought about scotsmen’s kilts, and i agree that it is necessary to introduce ‘multiple possibilities or interpretations’ to students. but, i wanted to draw my audience’s attention to the relationships between different items. i thought that it might not be wise to expect my audiences to attend to (and perhaps confuse) two points in one paragraph, namely, that we should guide students to find the relationships in richness and we should explore the multiple interpretations within richness. i thought that might blur my point – but perhaps i was guilty of underestimating my audience. lee writes: with respect to the criteria of relations, luo refers to the japanese experience and suggests the use of ‘appropriate’ negative experiences such as conflict to make children strong. i do not like the use of the term ‘negative experience’, which may not encourage a reflective relationship between teacher and student. rather, i would prefer doll’s (2002, p. 50) use of the concept of community as an ‘emphasis on both care and critique – an emphasis that requires a high degree of trust’. i agree with a number of lee’s implicit and explicit suggestions for rewording, and here i should perhaps have written ‘so called “negative” experience’, because any experience might be viewed as positive or negative or both. i perhaps took for granted that using negative commentaries and conversations on low & palulis and luo 81 http://www.szlotus.net/ http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci experiences would only be appropriate in the context of a caring community, as doll advocates (and to which i referred in discussing how to make diversity possible). lee writes: with my limited knowledge of chinese culture, the appreciation of chinese fine arts needs to be substantiated, possibly with a photo showing a chinese landscape painting and guidelines on how to facilitate students’ understanding of ambiguity. the notion of localization of the curriculum and relevance to the local context is well respected. the remark by the teacher working in a backward area in china, however, needs to be carefully and contextually interpreted as ‘localization’ of teaching might impart further social/regional and economic inequality. in addition, the use of the great wall when teaching english in beijing appears to be very brief. referral to the historical and cultural context and the personal meaning of the great wall for the students could be considered. all these suggestions are very reasonable. but my paper was not intended to teach teachers detailed ways to teach but, rather, to trigger teachers’ thinking, to open their minds to alternative possibilities. actually, in doll’s classes, he seldom told us any detailed ways to teach, but i gradually understood that he was purposefully guiding us to free ourselves from thinking about concrete teaching methods and instead to consider patterns within different ways of teaching. i want to emphasize that my prime purpose in writing my paper is to present a postmodern view about education, life and the world to a chinese audience. my experience in china tells me that chinese people privilege modernist western science and thought. they too readily (in my view) take foreign theories as new strict rules to obey, to measure with and to judge against. i feel that we need to remind people that any theory or perspective is merely useful within limited contexts. doll’s view of a postmodern curriculum is also just a perspective and it is not the only one. many other views of curriculum exist or are emerging. chinese educators are presently enthusiastic about learning ‘how the west is done’ but i fear that many of them may be vulnerable to taking up the worst that the west has to offer rather than the best if they don’t try to ferret out the hidden contexts of what they learn. turning to francisco sousa’s comments, i think that the feedback i got from the first world curriculum studies conference and my talks in shenzhen, china, demonstrate that my paper might have some positive value in informing my chinese colleagues about the possibilities of postmodern curriculum theorizing. after my presentation at the conference, a chinese professor who is using doll’s (1993) book as a textbook told me that i had helped her to clarify some of her understandings of doll’s theory. another chinese professor told me that he would distribute my paper in his class. after the conference, i gave two talks in my hometown (shenzhen). one talk was to an architecture design company (about postmodern worldviews) and the other was for teachers and parents at the lotus kindergarten. one parent commented on my talk as follows: tonight i attended a lecture titled ‘an introduction of a new curriculum – a postmodern perspective’ by a guest speaker, lixin luo. i learned a lot. [luo argued] that we should help children to achieve success in different ways rather than to cultivate one hundred uniform engineers; and that what is true? – what the child thinks is true. [she argued that] people succeed through play; [that we should] teach children to treat all creatures in the world as equal members; [and that we should] learn about children through their behaviours at different times. it’s really a great talk. different educators can have such different views about early childhood education. she presented a new world to me. (a parent of bentai huang, montessori class-e, nov 6, 2003) commentaries and conversations on low & palulis and luo 82 http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci i am aware that my paper might not facilitate transnational conversations in curriculum inquiry because my paper is purposefully written for a chinese audience. i agree with sousa that more clarification of eastern educational thought is needed if it is to contribute to transnational curriculum work. but i think that is beyond the scope of my paper. however, i hope that western readers might be able to get some ideas about how chinese education can change from modernist to postmodernist, and indeed how chinese thinking might already embody some immanent postmodern thought. many chinese intellectuals value ambiguity, webbing, and play – attributes that should facilitate a more postmodern curriculum. finally, julianne moss writes that she would like to hear more from me as writer, learner, teacher, postgraduate student, etc. i agree that if i was (re)writing this paper for a western audience of curriculum scholars i would be likely to include a little more currere. but i did not think that this was needed in a letter to my sister. presenting this letter as a conference paper was an experiment for me – an experiment that i thought was consistent with what i have learned with william doll. moss, like sousa, also suggests that much of what i wrote in my letter is well-known in the west, but i also interpret her as suggesting that western readers should read my paper with curiosity rather than complacence, and for that i thank her very sincerely. commentaries and conversations on low & palulis and luo 83 http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 一封给姐姐的信 – 论威廉姆.多尔的四 r 理论: 对有关此文章评论的回应 罗丽新 首先，我想感谢所有的评论者给予我的极富思想性的评论和提 出的问题（同时，对 warren 和 marg sellers，我要谢谢他们的图 片和草图注释 还有 marg 给我的信）。我尤其感谢李子建教授给 我提供了他的评论的中英文两个版本，因为不同的语言有不同的隐 含话语 — 阅读同一评论的不同语言版本帮助我更好地理解李教授 的意见；同时我发现有的时候用中文思考和用英文写作比较容易， 有时候则相反。以下我将主要就李教授的评论做出回复，因为我 想，正如 francisco sousa 所理解的那样，我给姐姐的信对中国读 者来说，兴许要比对西方课程界学者来得有趣些。 李教授写道： 在信件的起始部分，她提及姐姐的女兒東東在深圳一所幼稚園上學， 那所學校採用了蒙台梭利教學法和多元智力教育方案。如果羅女士能解釋 東東的學習，以至幼稚園的脈絡背景，與多爾的後現代課程觀有關（或沒 有關聯）的地方則更為理想。 深圳莲花二村幼儿园是北京师范大学国际比较教育研究所的蒙台 梭利和多元智力课题的实验基地，而这些课题都是中国国家教育部 的研究项目。在 2001 年，莲花二村幼儿园还加入了一个中国-加拿 大教育合作项目-英语浸入式教学研究。这个项目是一个为期三年 的研究课题。上述这些课题的研究者每年都到幼儿园做若干次的实 地研究。莲花二村幼儿园园长王薇丽有着极为开放的思想，她致力 于将教育理论与教学实际相结合。每次园内有研究者到访，她都组 织许多研讨会，让教师学习更多理论知识以及能够和研究者讨论他 们实际教学中遇到的问题。同时，她也邀请研究者给园内的家长们 讲课。 莲花二村幼儿园总共有 10 个班级。在 2001 年，园内有 4 个蒙 班。到了 2004 年，蒙班数量增加到 6 个。东东就读于其中的一个 蒙班。这些蒙班根据蒙台梭利教学法和多元智力理论来组织教学。 同时，每个蒙班都配有一个英语教师实行浸入式英语教学 此英 语老师只对孩子们说英语。通常，孩子们半天时间做蒙式工作，半 天时间做英语活动。 一般来说，蒙班的活动都是主题活动 – 教师们先选择一个主题 并组织一些初始的与主题相关的活动，然后，新的与主题相关的活 动会从孩子们在这些初始活动中表现出的兴趣、需要和提出的请求 中产生。举例来说，蒙ｂ班的老师选择了一个主题 – 纸，然后他们 组织孩子们学习纸的历史，看有关造纸的录像，以及自己动手造 纸。在进行这些活动的过程中，有些孩子注意到有的纸粗糙，有的 纸光滑，而另外一些孩子则对不同纸的透光性产生了兴趣。于是老 师们就组织了另外两个活动让孩子们探究纸的特性。当一个主题被 transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci commentaries and conversations on low & palulis and luo 84 http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 探究了一段时间之后，老师们会改变主题。在这种教学方式下，孩 子们的兴趣和需要受到重视，并且他们的创造力受到鼓励。蒙班的 老师需要花大量的时间观察孩子们，感知他们的发展阶段以及个人 的兴趣或者需要，然后据此给予每个孩子个别帮助。 然而，虽然在一定程度上这些蒙班重视孩子们的多样性和自我 组织的能力，可是这些对促进孩子们的创造力还是不够的。根据我 2001 年在园内做志愿者时的观察，和在 2001 年到 2003 年期间我姐 姐有关东东教育的信息以及我与园长的交流，我认为园内的老师还 是在强加预设的教学目标给孩子，还是在追求“普遍真理”。孩子 们被引导着去理解既存的“真理”而不是建构新的。除外，由于园 内进行着多种教学项目，老师感到压力非常大。如果他们能够明白 不同项目中的相同模式，他们就可以从表面地模仿中解脱出来，从 而更具有创造性。同时，孩子们可以更多地被鼓励对自己行为进行 反思以及在不同的事物中寻找联系。此外，许多孩子的家长和我姐 姐一样 我姐总是在想她需要教东东什么，怎样教才“对”。她在 设计和决定东东的未来。在没有意识到，也没有鼓励东东的自我生 成的能力的情况下，她很担心自己能否教好东东。我认为，像东东 一样生活在这种环境（包括幼儿园和家庭）里的孩子还是被关在现 代主义的盒子里教育着。因此，我感到非常有必要把我对后现代主 义的理解和我的姐姐以及中国教师们分享，借以打开他们的思路， 从而让孩子们有可能和教育者一起建构他们自己的教育。（关于莲 花二村幼儿园的详细资料请看：http://www.szlotus.net/） 李教授写道： 就豐富性的準則而言，羅女士用了區別褲子和裙子的例子。她建議提 出「為甚麼公公不穿裙子？」的問題來引導東東探索人類與服飾的關係。 多爾（王紅宇譯，2001，頁250）界定豐富性為「多種可能性或多重解 釋。」雖然東東的公公住在中國大城巿，不會穿著裙子，但是我想羅女士 亦可考慮展示一幅來自中國少數民族男士的圖畫，以及另一幅蘇格蘭穿著 傳統蘇格蘭裙的男士的圖畫。 我想到过苏格兰男人的裙子，我也同意有必要介绍“多种可能性 和多重解释”给学生，但是，当时我写关于裙子的段落意在提醒读 者注意不同事物间的关系。我认为，让读者在一个段落里同时关注 （或者困惑于）两个论点是不明智的（这两个论点是，“我们需要 引导学生在丰富中寻找关系”，和“我们需要在丰富中探寻多种解 释”）。我想这样做可能会令我的观点模糊 – 不过现在看来，很抱 歉，我可能小看了我读者的领悟力。 李教授又写道： 就關聯性的準則來說，羅女士提及日本人的經驗和建議利用適量」的 負面經驗（例如衡突）去使兒童堅強。我不喜歡「負面經驗」這個用詞， 因為它未必能鼓勵師生之間建立一種反思性關係。反而，我較喜歡採用多 爾（poll, 2002, p.50）利用社區的觀念作為「同時強調關懷和批判――強 調需要一種高度的信任」。 transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci commentaries and conversations on low & palulis and luo 85 http://www.szlotus.net/ http://www.szlotus.net/ http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 我同意许多李教授关于修改用词的直接或间接的建议。在这个 段落里，我也许需要写成“所谓‘负面的’经验”，因为任何经验 都可以被看成是正面的，也可以是负面的，还可以两者都是。也许 我当时想当然地认为，负面经验只适于在一个多尔倡导的（我在关 于如何使多样性成为可能的章节中也提到的）有关怀的社区里使 用。 李教授还写道： 以我對中國文化的有限知識，欣賞中國藝術作品有待進一步強化，例 如通過展示中國山水畫和提供指引以輔助學生去理解模糊概念。課程的 「本土化」和與本地脈絡相關的觀念是得到肯定的（受到尊重的）。不 過，要解讀那位在中國偏遠山區工作的教師所提出的觀點，必須要很小心 並要配合脈絡，這是由於教學的「本土化」可能導致進一步的社會／區域 性和經濟上的不平等。再者，在北京教英文時用長城作例子顯得十分簡 單。參考長城的歷史和文化脈絡，以及長城對學生的個人意義也許值得考 慮。 以上李教授所有的建议都很有道理，但是我文章的目的不是为 了教老师具体怎么教，而是为了激发老师的思想，让他们打开思 路，对多种可能性开放。事实上，在多尔教授的课上，他极少告诉 我们具体的教学方式。我逐渐地领悟到他是在有目的地引导我们从 对具体教学方式的思考中释放出来，而开始考虑不同教学方式中的 模式。 这里我想强调我写这篇文章的主要目的是为了向中国读者呈现 一种对教育，对人生，以及对世界的后现代主义观。我个人在中国 的经验告诉我，中国人很崇拜西方现代科学和思想，他们很容易 （在我看来）将外国的理论当成一个新的准则来遵从、来测量和评 估事物。我觉得有必要提醒人们，任何理论或者见解都只是在有限 的情况下有效的。多尔的后现代课程观也只是一种见解，而不是唯 一的一种，还有许多其它的课程观存在或正在形成。目前中国教育 者正在满怀热情地学习“西方如何做”，但是我担心如果没有努力探 寻所学内容的潜在背景，他们中的许多人可能会很容易吸收到西方 的糟粕而不是精华。 至于 francisco sousa 的评论，我想，我在第一届世界课程大会以 及我在深圳的讲话后得到的反响，已经证明了我的文章对告知我的 中国同行后现代课程观系统理论化的可能性有着积极的意义。在 世界课程大会上，一个使用多尔（1993）的书作为教材的中国教授 听完我的发言之后告诉我，我帮助她澄清了一些对多尔理论的认 识。另外一个中国教授则说他将把我的文章分发给他班上的学生。 课程大会之后，我在我的家乡（深圳）做了两次讲话。一次是给一 个建筑设计公司的成员（关于后现代世界观）, 另一次是给莲花二 村幼儿园的老师和家长。以下是一位家长给我的评论： 今晚听了学校邀请嘉宾罗丽新老师讲的《新课程观介绍—— “后现代主义》，收获很大。 希望孩子以不同的方式成功，而不是造就一 ” “ ” “ ”百个工程师 、 何为真实？孩子的心里就是真实 、 人类在游戏中成功 “ ” “、 让孩子平等看待世界万物 、 以不同时间段的表现了解孩子情况。可 transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci commentaries and conversations on low & palulis and luo 86 http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci ” “ ”以疑问，不必忧虑 、 多玩文字游戏 。真是妙语连珠！同为教育者，幼 e 20儿教育却是一个新的世界。（蒙 班黄本泰家长， 03 11 6年 月 日） 我意识到我的文章可能不能促进课程探究的跨国对话，因为我 的文章是专门为中国读者写的。我同意 sousa 的观点 如果我的文 章是要对跨国课程工作有所贡献的话，我需要更多地解释东方的教 育思想。但是我想这就超越了我文章的范围了。 然而，我希望西方读者能够从我的文章中了解到中国教育如何 能够从现代主义转向后现代主义，以及中国思想如何已经蕴含了一 些内在的后现代思想。许多中国的学者重视模糊，网络和游戏 – 这 些都是能推动一个更后现代的课程观的品质。 最后，julianne moss 写到，她希望能够从我这里听到更多的，我 从一个作者、学生、老师和研究生的角度出发的想法，我同意如果 我是为了一个西方课程界的读者而写（或重写）这篇文章的话，我 很可能会包括更多一点的存在体验课程（注：currere 是课程的拉丁 词根，派纳将之引发建立了课程的自传理论。关于 currere 与课程 的自传理论的中文解释，请参看张华等翻译的派纳的《理解课程》 一书） 。但是我不认为这是我给我姐姐的信中所需要的。以信件方 式来写会议文章对我是一次实验 – 一个我认为和我从多尔教授所学 一致的实验。和 sousa 一样，moss 也认为我所写的大部分都是西方 世界众所周知的内容。但是，我同时也诠释她的评论为，她在建议 西方读者带着好奇而不是自满来阅读我的文章。在此，我对她表示 诚挚的谢意。 参考文献： 张华 等译：《理解课程：历史与当代课程话语研究导论》 （美） 派纳等著，教育科学出版社，2003 年。 transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci commentaries and conversations on low & palulis and luo 87 http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci commentaries and conversations on low & palulis and luo 88 transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci laboured breathing: running with and against internationalising texts of currere a response to the reviewers’ comments marylin low the work of the mountain does not lie just with the mountain, but with its quiescence…the work of the water does not lie just with the water, but with its movement. moreover, the work of antiquity does not lie just with antiquity, but with its freedom from error. the work of the present does not lie with just the present, but with its freedom. (shih-t’ao in trinh, 1991, p.166). since receiving noel gough’s message and assembling the two tci texts with and against commentaries and conversations of this first issue, i have traveled transnationally from vancouver, canada to honolulu, hawai’i to majuro in the republic of the marshall islands. i sit in a thatched roof bungalow overlooking the lagoon as i contemplate the responses to laboured breathing, including my own. i am here to assist the ministry of education in curriculum and professional development as they boldly risk introducing kindergarten into a public ‘colonial’ school system under repair. nowhere more powerfully and obviously is there laboured breathing in internationalizing texts of currere. the opening citation comments on the labour involved in setting the work of the present free. perhaps this is what lixin luo was in the middle of in ‘letter to my sister.’ i am reminded of the labour pat palulis and i worked through in the writing of this manuscript. both therapeutic and alarming, our stories were not smoothed over as julianne moss suggests, but written from the gut – raw, troubled and troubling, always uncertain, never resolved. i wonder how we could have written these stories differently to bring more radically to life, the difficulty of those lived experiences. visceral images were written in a textual form with aesthetic framings, evoking for earlier viewers of this text formidable hospitable powerful mysterious ambiguous readings. an arche-text visually displayed, worked to stay open to interpretation and impression, calling for a response. the comments iterate openings for warren and marg sellers, and julianne, as they say, up and down and in-between. writing pedagogic life as it is understood in its flow and in its temporary pauses is difficult. we read the commentaries, wondering where readers had lingered, where they had nestled in (dis)comfort with a word here and there, where they had freed themselves from the constraints of the text, where they had traveled with the word. conversations emphasized the form and its multiple openings for readers. we wonder if our stories evoked difficult stories of their own that their commentaries did not share. as i re-read the commentaries, i am reminded of a citation from althusser found in wolfreys (2000, p. 3): there is no such thing as an innocent reading, we must say what reading we are guilty of. http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci commentaries and conversations on low & palulis and luo transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 89 i am grateful to noel gough and for the design of tci, creating spaces for transnational exchanges of ‘guilty’ readings. references trinh, minh-ha, t. (1991). when the moon waxes red. new york: routledge. wolfreys, j. (2000). readings: acts of close reading in literary theory. edinburgh: edinburgh university press. http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci commentaries and conversations on low & palulis and luo transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 90 laboured breathing: running with and against internationalising texts of currere a response to the reviewers’ comments pat palulis response to julianne moss: further to the subject of images, imaginings … the text runs on … bringing china home. chinese graduate students here at-home draw me into the high-tech splendor that dazzled us in shanghai. the shanghai conference1 proceedings are seldom sedentary in our readings. as our discourse leaked beyond the deadlines of a graduate course, we worked with digital images of our conversations juxtaposed with citational gems and storied fragments for a conference presentation at the university of ottawa. we invited our audience to engage in marginalia around and about our textual citations. so i do appreciate your comments (and warren sellers’ marginalia) and i did follow your trackings to fischman. i read images as text, reading with patricia ticineto clough who draws from donna haraway on her notion of a ‘diffracted’ gaze – diffraction as a ‘rhizomatic writing, a composing and recomposing that cuts into and cuts away from genres, technologies, images, and scenes so that the movement is never simply narrative or life story’ (2000, p. 184-5). julianne, your image of the children’s book was uncanny. how could you have known that this time last year i was a primary teacher in a red brick schoolhouse in vancouver on the pacific coast … messing with letters and numbers and colours and cultures with parents peeking furtively through the classroom doorway … wondering what we were up to. the work of reconceptualizing was alive and almost always in trouble in our messy classroom. when i read about the early work of the reconceptualists, introduced to us by ted aoki, it was painful not to have been there with them. where was i? spinning around the globe with curriculum in/as my baggage. and now it’s time to do some internationalizing work at-home … and the work is difficult. transnational conversations with marylin become increasingly complicated as we work the text at home/not-home. response to marg and warren sellers: it was rather exciting to have two at-work in a text that was written by two – a doubling of doublings. i have often wondered what readers do in our hybrid texts. ted aoki at baton rouge2 told us that the text required at least three readings; he read the two texts separately and then a third time as a doubling. i think he said that he liked what we were trying to do. i liked that someone thought we were trying to do something. i recently acquired jackson’s (2001) marginalia and was ecstatic to read warren’s marginalia and then realized that there was no marginalia for the bottom dwelling text … at which point my author ‘ego’ relocated itself in a derridean equation ‘ego=ghost’ (1994, p. 133). i am spooked. but i do appreciate marg’s live(d) experiences à pied in the corridors of the text and i like warren’s ‘road’work and would hope now that a reader might need a ‘road’ stop at a bracketed bottom-dwelling word … in a pied à terre … that a reader might take a 1 the first triennial meeting of the international association for the advancement of curriculum studies, shanghai, p. r. china, october 26–29, 2003. 2 editor’s note: selected proceedings from this conference have been published as trueit, donna, doll, william e., wang, hongyu, & pinar, william f. (eds.). (2003). the internationalization of curriculum studies: selected proceedings from the lsu [louisiana state university] conference 2000. new york: peter lang. http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci commentaries and conversations on low & palulis and luo transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 91 deconstructive bite into a word to release it and give it another chance to make some trouble up-and-down and in-between. gregory ulmer reading derrida contends that a deconstructive reading starts with entamer – a biting into: ‘the first step of decomposition is the bite … the effect is that of releasing the grasp or hold of a controlling context’ (1985, p. 57). response to noel gough: delighted to be in the first edition of tci as a paper ghost from the conference in baton rouge. ghosts do get around. i see this new journal as an invocation for doing ‘home’work as well as ‘road’work … in-flight and at-sea in the labo(u)ring of internationalizing texts. i read marylin in a line-of-flight reading under repair in majuro while i have been on the road to wawa doing ‘home’work. i have just returned from a high school reunion in a small town in northern ontario. during the course of the visit, i took a detour in disrepair to a log cabin on hawk lake … a habitat now overgrown with the surrounding wilderness … ownership changing hands from my family to an american teaching couple who spent summers there and, recently, purchased by a european who comes to visit once a year. the global village coming home as i arrive at no-home to call home. the windows of a cabin boarded up denying the nostalgic longing of my voyeuristic gaze. the international arrival in fear of the other-at-home. a warning notice against intruders posted by the provincial police and tagged to the door. the global in fear of the local. why are we so afraid of each other? where does fear locate itself in discourse? i linger in the text in fear of releasing a response. the bracketed words in the bottom of our hybrid text represent just a few of the words labouring in the currere of everyday life. studying with ted aoki means learning to crack-the-words so that another textual event might happen. and i am back at-home in ottawa now to re-articulate a future for a few words at-work in a text. polyvocal conversations … reading julianne … reading marg and warren … reading noel … reading lixin nearby … readers atwork in the text … readings working the text … the text guilty of derridean hospitality and/as hostility as it writes its readers. and the remains of a text not-read wanting to be consumed. and so i offer another morsel … a further enticement for the reader to labour in the text … a text hungering for conversation … ‘labour’ denotes not merely one of the more fertile concepts within the marxist tradition, but it is also the lietmotiv of the cultural social sciences. cultura or cultivare always imply an element of labour for a future to be constructed. (ulf strohmayer 1997, p. 390) noel gough has opened conversation as a virtual polyglossia … i cannot stop writing … but for the pressure of a deadline … noel wanting to remove the under construction sign on tci’s homepage … and ‘i’ hungering for a conversation to carry on …and when you read with aoki, the conversations are never easy … and always unfinished … and reading with marylin, i confess to guilty readings of wolfreys’ glossalalia as words arrive … in alphabetical (dis)order … wanting to be released … waiting for another event to happen … references clough, p.t. (2000). autoaffection: unconscious thought in the age of teletechnology. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci commentaries and conversations on low & palulis and luo transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 92 derrida, j. (1994). specters of marx. (p. kamuf, trans.). new york and london: routledge. jackson, h.j. (2001). marginalia: readers writing in books. new haven and london: yale university press. strohmayer, u. (1997). forget the delivery, or, what post are we talking about? in g. benko and u. strohmayer (eds.), space and social theory: interpreting modernity and postmodernity (pp. 383-392). cambridge, ma, and oxford, uk: blackwell. ulmer, g. (1985). applied grammatology: post(e)-pedagogy from jacques derrida to joseph beuys. baltimore: the john hopkins university press. wolfreys, j. (2004). event. in j. wolfreys (ed.), glossalalia: an alphabet of critical keywords (pp. 77-88). new york: routledge. http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci luo_response_chinese.pdf ò»·â¸ø½ã½ãµäðå ¨c âûíþá®ä·.¶à¶ûµ� o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: hoyt, mei wu (2016). understanding the process of internationalization of curriculum studies in china: a case study. transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> understanding the process of internationalization of curriculum studies in china: a case study mei wu hoyt1 university of north texas, usa introduction internationalization has been considered not a uniform stance on what we think curriculum is or may become, rather, a ground work that each of us, across the nations, with our own intellectual histories, sources, and influences, can construct our own understanding of curriculum studies; this ongoing conversation is based upon each nation’s curriculum issues, ideas, and traditions as they relate to reconceptualization of curriculum (pinar, 2003). indeed, international conferences on curriculum studies, publications of curriculum works of international scholars in this field, and the ongoing dialogue and interaction between and among international curriculum scholars have engendered a worldwide “complicated conversation” (pinar, 2004a) that cannot be reduced to a globalized vision or position. book series on curriculum studies have introduced the unique intellectual histories, cultures, and commitments of countries such as south africa, mexico, brazil, and china (pinar, 2010, 2011b, 2011c, 2014; kumar, 2012). in addition, individual works have presented multifaceted views on how curriculums are understood by different cultures and nations (aoki, 1986, 2005; moon, 2013; wang, 2014). while a number of scholars have articulated their vision of a worldwide curriculum that includes works from different countries and in which content and context are actively engaged, how such internationalization functions in different contexts has yet to be explored, especially with regards to the aspiration or direction of such works, and in what ways they might serve to influence the formalization of the field. in the international handbook of curriculum research, pinar (2003) explained the interconnected nature of intellectualization and institutionalization with regards to curriculum work; an institution, in his regard, involves our professional and scholarly engagement and includes associations, societies, journals, and conferences. thus, when examining process in a local context, one must consider how local intellectual work serves to constitute and functions within the process of institutionalization. many of us in the field of curriculum studies have consented to the method of currere, and embrace the notions of fluidity, continuity, and relationality in curriculum work; such characteristics can also be applied to the nature of process. in examining such process, i ask the following questions: what forces mobilize or sustain the process of the internationalization of curriculum studies in this local context? when local cultural and curricular efforts meet the international, how do they work with, through, and around the process of “complicated conversation”? what is the nature of such a process? to explore such questions, i chose the curriculum studies center at south central normal university in china; this institution is now at the forefront of chinese hoyt. understanding the process of internationalization of curriculum studies in china 57 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci curriculum studies and has a unique and noticeable presence in the field. i adopted a basic qualitative research method, including 10 semi-structured interviews with participants at this center, field notes, and online data collection. the overall themes of this research include the political forces, social realities, and intellectual works that serve to mobilize the internationalization of curriculum studies; traditional chinese cultural wisdom and curriculum consciousness serving equally as dialogue capital; and the nature and structure of the process of the internationalization of curriculum studies in china as unbounded and democratic. the internationalization and curriculum studies: a review of the literature internationalization is not a uniform stance on what a curriculum is or may become; rather, it is a complex interweaving of what each of us, across the nations, with our own intellectual histories, sources, and influences, brings about our own understandings of the concept of curriculum and curriculum studies; it is an ongoing conversation grounded in each nation’s curriculum issues, ideas, and traditions (pinar, 2003). the primary goal of this complicated conversation is to construct our field worth of schoolteachers and students who labor to understand themselves and the world they inhabit (pinar, 2002, referenced in trueit, 2003). it has also been argued that the internationalization of curriculum inquiry is a collaborative effort among scholars of different locales in which they negotiate trust and contribute to the field by reframing and decentering their own knowledge traditions (gough, 2002). however, i would argue that decentering requires an acknowledgment of what the center is; this, for emerging fields in non-western curriculum studies, may pose a challenge and result in deferred development or a focus on local wisdom and traditions. what is important about this decentering is that curriculum practitioners from different traditions not only must recognize – but also honor – difference, and engage in a continuous dialogue and back-and-forth interplay (trueit, 2003). for example, paulo freire’s notion of conscientização (e.g., critical consciousness), has been linked to the reconceptualization movement in the us and its thought-provoking questions about the consciousness of self and restoration of humanness (johnson-mardones, 2015); such consciousness delimits us from the oppressive social, political, and economic elements of reality (pinar, 1979). conversely, such back-and-forth interplay is also reflected in research on everyday life in brazil, a concept imported from the us (kumar, 2012), in terms of their responses to technocratic curriculum issues. this international interplay of ideas, conceptions, and questions is set on the global landscape but locally grounded; each conception cannot be directly translated into the new context. no one can remain untouched once the internationalization movement has been set motion. as lopes (2015) has argued “we cannot escape of it…. if we read, the translation happens. if we are read, we are translated, and this process allows us to exist as producers of texts and as the authors of curriculum field” (p. 1). translation cannot be taken merely as a literal term, because we cannot evade the social, political, and cultural circumstances in each context. in china, such translation in curriculum studies must consider curriculum reform and its intellectual history (zhang, 2014). in the process of understanding the other, one must also be cautious of simplistic explanations of particular nation-state’s curriculums, culture, and education; they should not be considered to be universalized or a collective form of curriculum. (moon, 2013). hoyt. understanding the process of internationalization of curriculum studies in china 58 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci also in this context of interplay and understanding, we need to recognize that certain forms of curriculum-related wisdom are still nascent, not already there to be found but in the process of becoming. curriculum scholars may have to unpack their own cultures and intellectual histories, and renew their own visons of culture and tradition, especially when such traditions are marginalized within their own national curriculums. in addition, such interplay does not suggest that different forms of knowledge share a comparable significance or an equal exchange. we need to ground the internationalization of curriculums within the larger context of the internationalization of education, and in the even larger and more widely accepted concept of globalization. one cannot ignore the complications globalization engenders, which reflect nothing of univocality and instead highlight global interconnectedness and its unpredictability (smith, 2003). for example, paraskeva (2013) underscored the waves of internationalization serving to engineer non-western epistemic forms to cease to exist, even though this was not the intent of the internationalization movement. thus, articulating one’s voice, culture, history, and practice, and endeavoring to share them through conversations, becomes even more complicated, with no agreed-upon ends in the next phase of the process. rather than seizing upon these unpredictable goals, we should instead embrace a field of becoming. it will be particularly beneficial to examine the process by which one might truly articulate the intellectual and epistemic forms of various traditions and wisdom in their unique contexts as they see in the interplay between intellectualization and institutionalization (pinar, 2013). internationalization and curriculum studies in china: background international influence on chinese curriculums can be traced to the turn of the 20th century; at this time, the impact of western thought on chinese curriculum reform was recognizable. for example, john dewey’s pragmatism and democratic education, william kilpatrick’s project method of the 1920s, and russian educator ivan kairov’s formal stages of instruction pedagogy of the 1950s were all incorporated into chinese education. the early internationalization of chinese curriculums was intertwined with the idea of modernization (zhang, 2014) and reflected early on in china’s aspirations regarding science and democracy, which were usually viewed through the lens of western rationality and objectivism. this internationalization was mostly a top-down or centralized practice in that the government assumed a major role in promoting these educational beliefs and practices. since the chinese government began the policy of “going-out and brining-in” in the early 1980s, the strength, breadth, and variety of influences has become much stronger and more comprehensive. the chinese government not only provides financial support for chinese scholars attending overseas academic institutions, it also supports a large number of international educational events, projects, and activities within chinese borders. from elementary school to college, chinese education has been actively engaging by participating in exchange student programs, hiring foreign teachers, inviting international speakers, and translating international books. the traditional public school model has also been interrupted and diversified through homeschooling, international education, and private academic institutions. chinese education is now diversified in content, format, funding, and goals. the field of curriculum studies began to take shape in response to efforts at curriculum reform in 2001. the chinese government launched a comprehensive curriculum reform effort aimed at transforming the nation’s curriculums, systems of pedagogy, and understanding of the nature of learning, which has engendered a new hoyt. understanding the process of internationalization of curriculum studies in china 59 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci round of internationalization with regards to curriculum work. what is notable this time around is the more comprehensive and continuous work of the curriculum scholars at east china normal university (ecnu). led and heavily influenced by professor zhong qiquan, a substantial number of graduate students from ecnu have become prominent leaders and made considerable contributions to the field. ecnu also hosted the first international curriculum conference of the international association for the advancement of curriculum studies (iaacs). the close and continuous exchange between north america and ecnu, as well as with other curriculum scholars in other chinese universities, has been accomplished through conferences, seminars, lectures, and cross-cultural cooperative research. these scholars have had a considerable impact on the shape and direction of chinese curriculum studies. for example, they have introduced to the cannon subjects such as a post-modern perspective on curriculum studies, currere research, and feminist and autobiographical research methods (doll, 1994; miller, 2006; pinar, 1976; 2004); all have been embraced by emerging chinese curriculum scholars. china enjoys an atmosphere of embracing the new, the modern, and the “international,” which historically has mostly meant the western. for example, since 2000, chinese scholars and students have studied and translated a wide range of foreign curriculum-related works, and published a significant body of research on concepts related to postmodern curriculum theory, constructivism, multiple intelligence theories, and phenomenological curriculum models (zhang, 2014). as a result, the field of curriculum studies in china is considered distinctive and dynamic, even by its own curriculum workers (pinar, 2014). what is unclear, however, is how, in this mixed environment of dynamic internationalization, the field of curriculum studies can mobilize and take shape. if the early 20th century’s internationalization is characterized by modernization in that sociopolitical, economic, and cultural context, what are the forms and nature of this new internationalization of education in general, and in curriculum studies in particular? as the internationalization of curriculum studies is aimed at bringing more cultural and intellectual history to this complicated conversation, one also needs to be mindful of the circumstances that prevent deeper curriculum-related dialogue and exchange. one such circumstance is created by curriculum scholars themselves, as zhang (2014) has argued: “most curriculum scholars and students are busy providing prescription to schools and show little interest in understating curriculum as an academic field with [a] long intellectual history” (p. 17) in china. for those who have moved from the “how” to the “what,” in what ways can they contribute to internationalization in terms of both wisdom and intellectual history, and what kinds of interplay can they create? south central normal university is now at the forefront of curriculum studies in china; this is the result of the chinese government’s “going-out and bringing-in” policy, curriculum reform, the intellectual work of their scholars, and interactions with the international curriculum studies community. their aspiration is to promote internationalization through cross-cultural cooperative research and introduce cultural wisdom to the world (zhang, zhang, & pinar, 2014), over the years, this university’s research team has played a central role in the following: initiating complicated conversations about curriculum studies both within and outside of china by introducing international curriculum works into chinese curriculum studies, organizing emerging curriculum scholars to venture out of china, involving graduate students in international work, inviting local school teachers to participate in international dialogues, and voicing their own visions of chinese curriculum reform. hoyt. understanding the process of internationalization of curriculum studies in china 60 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci method research participants i used purposive sampling to identify participants involved in the internationalization of curriculum studies at south central normal university. an email containing the recruitment letter and consent form was sent to potential participants; 10 agreed to be interviewed. these participants, including graduate students and faculty members, had all interacted with the content, context, and process of curriculum internationalization in one way or another. there were six males and four females. nine were graduate faculty with ranks including lecturer, assistant professor, associate professor, and professor; one was a doctoral student. their time at the university ranged from two to 20 years. eight participants had either studied or researched as visiting scholars at universities in north america and australia. most could comfortably use academic english in written communications and conversation; nine preferred to use chinese in their interviews, and one chose english. though most conversations were in chinese, english terms were used intermittently, especially for key concepts employed by the international community, such as “understanding curriculum” and “discourse.” all individuals had actively participated in conferences, seminars, or workshops that comprise the internationalization process of curriculum studies in china. research design a basic qualitative research method focusing on inductive reasoning was adopted for this study as a means of understanding how the participants made sense of their experiences, and how they constructed meaning related to the process of internationalization. my major research questions included: what forces mobilize or sustain the process of internationalizing curriculum studies at this university and in china? when local cultural and curricular projects meet international studies, how do they work with, through, and around the process of “complicated conversation,” and what is the nature of such a progress? in the course of this study, i interviewed professors and graduate students involved in the process of internationalizing curriculum studies at this university, observed classes and an elementary school that is part of the university’s internationalization effort, and participated in courses and other curricular activities. the data collected, including interview transcripts, field notes, online data, and documents, were triangulated to assess the relationships among and credibility of the results. field notes and online data provided contextual confirmation useful for documenting the salient points emerging from the interview, and facilitated the data analysis. the interviews served as my major data source, because interviews are “direct quotations from people about their experiences, opinions, feelings, and knowledge” (patton, 2015, p. 14); they are essential “when we are interested in the past events that are impossible to replicate” (merriam & tisdell, 2016, p. 108) and thus were important to my research on this phenomenon. i conducted 10 semi-structured face-to-face interviews, all of which were audiotaped. nine interviews were in chinese, and one was in english (which was the interviewee’s choice). the data analysis began concurrently with my conducting and transcribing the interviews; notes and thoughts were jotted down as they occurred to me. such hoyt. understanding the process of internationalization of curriculum studies in china 61 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci rudimentary analysis occurring while the researcher is in the process of collecting data is both important and necessary (merriam & tisdell, 2016). after all of the transcriptions were completed, i read and reread them and identified key words. i employed an analytical coding for the meanings and interpretations of meaning derived from these examinations (richards, 2015). i also considered issues of interpretation and translation related to cross-language qualitative research such as language differences, barriers, or the use of third parties in cross-language interviews (squires, 2009; temple, 1997; temple & edwards, 2002). however, since my participants were insiders in the world of curriculum studies and were fully aware of the languages used, and i am fluent in both chinese and english and can comfortably switch between the two, such crosslanguage concerns made no noticeable differences in communication or meaning making. in addition, because i used multiple sources of data collection (triangulation) to increase credibility, the codes identified in the interviews were checked against the field notes and online data. after i located the codes in chinese, i translated into english the entire sentence containing that code in order to contextualize the meaning. the recurring patterns and themes across the interviews were then uncovered, and the themes gleaned from the codes were constructed. findings after the preliminary coding of the interviews, the codes that most directly addressed my research questions were selected and grouped together as categories. an inductive approach of exploring and confirming strategies was adopted to analyze the meanings, patterns, and interrelationships. themes were identified based upon the participants’ particular voices and perspectives (patton, 2002). below, i discuss the central themes that resulted from the thematic analysis. these themes are categorized as forces mobilizing the internationalization of curriculum studies, the local response to the internationalization process, and the nature of that process. forces driving internationalization government policy and support serve as the political force. government policies driving internationalization can be seen from multiple perspectives. first, curriculum reform policy drives k-12 teachers to seek international wisdom. second, the chinese government provides funding to support young scholars’ international academic activities. the curriculum reform of basic education issued by the national ministry of education in 2001 (national ministry of education, 2001) specifically called for schoolbased and localized curriculums, a topic that the participants linked to several other issues arising from the internationalization process. a school-based curriculum was perceived as a driving force for k-12 teachers, administrators, and curriculum scholars, motivating them to design and develop curriculums that are situated within local contexts. however, in many ways, because of a lack of curriculum consciousness, such practices devolve into worksheet practice or the mere addition of contents. for example, wei pointed out: the school principals are concerned more about classroom instruction; they lack … curriculum development leadership. together with teachers, they gradually turn curriculum development into worksheets, or merely add content and texts hoyt. understanding the process of internationalization of curriculum studies in china 62 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci however, there were some teachers who, while developing their own schoolbased curriculums, began to explore outside of their particular school. they attended conferences or professional development workshops, seeking new ideas and teaching strategies from the international community. the curriculum conferences hosted by south central normal university offered one of such avenue for their exploration. lan, who had facilitated these conferences for several years, said: quite often, you have teachers who really want to learn something new about curriculum studies, too. i think this has something to do with … curriculum reform. after 14 years, we launched this reform. i feel lots of teachers are quite familiar with all those theories, but they may have trouble … integrating these theories into their own practice. so when they feel confused, they [see] this chance [the conference]. ‘oh, look at those speakers.’ they may already know some of [the keynote speakers], so they … may learn something new. policies on school-based curriculums have not only driven teachers and school leaders to explore new possibilities to enrich their own teaching, especially those from the international curriculum community. such policies have also awakened teachers’ curriculum-related consciousness, though they still focus much of their effort on how to teach. since the turn of last century, the chinese government has sent thousands of young scholars to visit and study at overseas universities, mainly in the us and canada. this was reflected in the participants’ experiences. of the nine participants, eight had visited american, canadian, or australian universities for one to two years. as a result of learning about what their international counterparts’ research and practice processes involved, they began examining their own work and practices through a different lens. what philosophies and scholarship these scholars were exposed to during their visits to the west had a great deal to do with the scholarly work their sponsor universities conducted. for example, qing visited a university in the midwestern part of the united states; the professor she collaborated with had a research interest in homeschooling, which had a significant impact on qing. after she returned to china, she began to investigate homeschooling there. to her surprise, there were thousands of chinese students being homeschooled. she noticed that many chinese students were homeschooled due to religious beliefs, which was similar to many households in the us. however, in many other cases, the reasons for homeschooling in china were more complicated. she explained: there are many many christians [voice lowered] in china; about 60% [of the] homeschooling population are christians. others include some exceptional kids whose parents are highly successful business leaders or highly educated; another kind … are those with learning difficulties or those kids whose parents themselves did not have a good educational experience at school so they decided to opt their kids out. chinese curriculum reform and “going-out” policy have encouraged scholars and teachers to explore within and without their individual experiences by researching others. however, while this policy may advance international exchange, it could also restrict it. wen was concerned about the sustainability of international work. she said, “if some conditions change, the sustainability of internationalization is unknown.” hoyt. understanding the process of internationalization of curriculum studies in china 63 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci although qing, lan, and wen had all visited international universities and attended international conferences overseas, the new 2015 funding policy placed a tighter control on their international activities. passport and reimbursement regulations now restrict scholars from active international engagement. luckily, beyond the government, there are existential realities that mobilize scholars to engage in the work of internationalization. an increasingly international society serves as a social force. blooming chinese economic development due to worldwide economic globalization has made china increasingly international and diversified. the 2010 chinese census reported nearly 600,000 foreigners residing in china from more than 190 countries; they are attracted by employment opportunities and a low cost of living (song, 2015). the growing number of international students and workers have contributed to the linguistic, cultural, and ideological diversity of chinese society. this has, though, posed certain challenges for chinese schools and education policies. jun, a scholar studying such educational policies, made note of the phenomenon: migrants from other countries reside in many cities in china. china is gradually becoming internationalized. china is a big country, with plenty of opportunities. for example, there are many migrant workers in the city of yiwu, [in the] zhejiang province. one of my students had studied the educational experiences of the migrants’ children, including people from africa, [the] middle east, and india. another perspective concerning the examination of the internationalized nature of chinese society is the growing number of religious groups; this, too, has posed ideological challenges. qing lowered her voice when she mentioned the term “christians,” indicating that religious beliefs are not openly discussed. as seen in qing’s research, many christian families have opted out of china’s basic education system, choosing their own curriculums to educate their children: there are different homeschooling approaches. some of them teach the children at their own home. some are helping each other. some even receive international help and use international curriculums…. they also have … regular conferences on homeschooling. qing called this phenomenon a grey area. that is, according to chinese law, children must receive a basic education; however, this has not been enacted. the chinese government may not have given enough thought to how they would deal with the growing trend of internationalization. the process of internationalization, interexchange, intercultural communication, and dialogue leads unavoidably to my second research question: when local cultural and curricular processes meet international systems, how do they work with, around, and through the “complicated conversation” that results, and what is the nature of that process? complicated conversations within and beyond there are quite a few findings that address the research questions. “complicated conversation” is based upon equal dialogue and the development of cultural and curriculum consciousnesses as the basis of dialogue capital, the crucial role of hoyt. understanding the process of internationalization of curriculum studies in china 64 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci curriculum scholars in the interexchange, and the critical importance of theory in practice. complicated conversations lead to an equal dialogue for mutual benefit and acceptance. “complicated conversations” are highlighted by the vision of an equal dialogue between chinese wisdom and international scholarship related to curriculum studies. the main goal of chinese scholars is to have an equal voice in this international discussion. however, their “voices” are still developing, as is the process itself. the participants in this research shared strong opinions on an equal exchange between the local and the international, which they believed should not be limited to format; content and two-way communication are of primary importance. qing observed: i found many times that internationalization is simply understood in a superficial way. for example, equating hosting an international conference with internationalization by inviting international scholars … however, such communication is an important model; that is, what we think they brought to us. i think the curriculum studies team led by tao is beyond this stage, because they have the capacity to internationally interexchange, and such interexchange is mutually beneficial. wei, who had conducted multiple studies locally and collaborated internationally, believed that the value of an such international dialogue was not as a means of comparison, but rather as a platform for embracing each other’s views. “i am not saying confucianism is better than nel noddings, but the purpose is to find a dialogue platform, let conversations … take shape, and accept each other.” jun, a scholar studying educational policy, also emphasized equal dialogue as the primary purpose of the “going out” policy. he noted: the international exchange between china and the international community has been inclined toward sending students and money overseas, or supporting international students by providing funds for them. i think for a truly equal dialogue, foreign students should come here to study, even if that means they have to fund themselves. the financial support for foreign students that jun discussed comes from programs sponsored by the chinese government and administered by the china scholarship council. their website lists different kinds of scholarships that foreign students can apply for if they hope to study at a top chinese university (http://www.csc.edu.cn/laihua/scholarshipen.aspx). a student can apply for a scholarship even if he or she has not yet been admitted to a university. developing cultural and curriculum consciousnesses as dialogue capital. curriculum and cultural consciousnesses are viewed as dialogue capital; thus, chinese traditional culture should be one source of such consciousness. feng expressed the following: if a country does not have curriculum capital, how can one join the dialogue? what we need most is to establish our own cultural capital. where is the capital? it is located in the traditional cultural wisdom. http://www.csc.edu.cn/laihua/scholarshipen.aspx) hoyt. understanding the process of internationalization of curriculum studies in china 65 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci traditional cultural wisdom in china is reflected in different schools of thought. for example, the most well-known are confucianism, taoism, and buddhism. of these three, confucianism has been the primary source for scholars engaging in curriculumrelated conversations. deng, a scholar whose research interest is citizenship education, realized that he must involve confucianism, which he believed to be a foreign concept, in his effort to introduce the concept of citizenship: i chose confucianism because it is widely accepted by common people. for a cultivation of virtue, if we use western discourse to explain, it is easy for intellectuals to understand but laymen will not. only using the language that they are familiar with will cause them to accept [it]. for example, if we emphasize virtue, if we do not stress filial duty, it will be very difficult for them to accept [it]. wei, a scholar studying ethics, viewed curriculum development and design as an ethical system of decision making. he frankly admitted that he did not begin from a point within chinese traditional culture. rather, he began his research on ethics using nel noddings’s theory of caring. later, when he realized that teachers’ classroom practices were reflections of cultural values, he began to incorporate noddings’s framework of caring into exiting confucian classroom values in order to rethink and explain the daily ethical decisions made by teachers. he noted: because in chinese history the united cultural vision is confucianism … ethics is confucian ethics. the ethics of teaching is consistent with this national and cultural ethics. there was no conflict between social and educational ethics. in the attempt to create a dialogue and in the actual international dialogue process, scholars have acknowledged a deeper understanding of how traditional culture requires careful and objective examinations of the meanings and flux of traditional chinese culture. tao, as the leader of the team, pointed out: we need to recognize the advantages, characters, and shortcomings of chinese culture. overly emphasizing traditional culture will likely … induce populism. for a country where there is no [authoritative] religion, populism easily incites national sentiment. nationalism will lead a country to conservatism, and eventually it becomes a closed society. we have to objectively treat traditional culture as centering around confucianism and working with taoism and/or other schools of thought. chinese culture is never fixed; it is always changing. its meaning is diversified over time. it is scholars who make conscious cultural and curricular choices when they face different traditional wisdoms. the role of curriculum scholars. curriculum scholars as dialogue executors and cultural and curriculum consciousness articulators are regarded as those who advance chinese curriculum consciousness and cultural enlightenment. tao called them pioneers whose research framework is located in constructive and postmodern theoretical foundations; they constitute and bear the mission of a collective cultural enlightenment. their interaction and intercultural communication with the international audience actually contributes to their own formation as curriculum scholars. tao stated: hoyt. understanding the process of internationalization of curriculum studies in china 66 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci we need overall cultural consciousness. in the field of curriculum studies, the scholars whose works are situated in the constructivism and postmodernism frameworks are the curriculum pioneers. they proposed their own understanding of what a curriculum could be. they broke through the notion of curriculum as regulations or as a universal principle. as a result, they liberated culture, made people realize that curriculums can be related to psychology, to age, and to culture. in the international interexchange, we become more aware of our own cultural consciousness, and we articulate our own understanding, i think this is the value of internationalization. the role of the curriculum scholar can be seen in their participation in government policies, which have a significant impact on classroom practice. qing noted: i think scholars have great impact on policy. many influential policies are drafted by these scholars, with chinese features. but i think they are progressive. it depends on the scholar, not the government officials or some other beneficiary groups with special interest. scholars share their research with the international community, but also closely connect with school teachers because of their involvement in government policies. theory-into-practice was emphasized by many of my participants. theory-into-practice. integrating theory-into-practice requires a shared vision. theory includes international educational theories and concepts, and traditional chinese wisdom. in lan’s account, one major reason that many k-12 teachers attend curriculum conferences is they are interested in how to “translate theories into practice.” theories need to be practical and useful. according to xiao, the sole graduate student interviewed in this study, this is a concern that many graduate students share. she explained: as a student involved in curriculum conferences where international scholars share their research and perspectives, i felt they really opened my eyes. many questions i had not thought about before. i also want to know how teachers teach in other countries, but bill [the invited speaker] does not like us to ask … questions. integrating theory-into-practice for scholars taking a deeper look at international perspectives and traditional chinese wisdom means “having one’s own stuff” and “critiquing actions.” wei considered internationalization to be beyond the direct translation of others’ theories. he stated: completely adopting western perspectives for local realities will not work out very well; completely using taoist perspectives may not meet today’s needs since china is closely related to the international community. at this time, as chinese curriculum researchers, how we can develop local cultural consciousness, our knowledge about these local issues, and knowledge about international related researches that are important for us to dialogue [about hoyt. understanding the process of internationalization of curriculum studies in china 67 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci and] integrate, and then [use them to] propose our new stuff? for jun, practice is action, especially with regards to other scholars’ intellectual activities and projects. he gave the example of pisa (the program for international student assessment). students in shanghai have topped tests in mathematics, reading, and science, among thousands of secondary school students around the world. jun stated: i think a researcher is a person who records and critiques. but it starts from action. i can criticize pisa, for shanghai cannot represent china. but because they are doing so, i have the opportunity to critique their doings. the goal is to see the changes of policy, describe its process, and share with other researchers. tao, as the leader of this group, took the idea of theory-into-practice as one of his missions and a major part of internationalizing curriculum studies. he noted: our work is a highly open. we dialogue on theory, practice, and internationalism. there are dialogues between teachers, students, and the curriculum, and we also provide a theoretical framework for such dialogues. i visited one of the local schools in which tao was conducting research projects. a school mottochildren inquiry stood out when i entered the school building. the school’s principal, ms. chen, happily met me. she discussed the history of their collaboration with south central normal university, and it seemed to me that the relationship was very positive and productive. she informed me that children at this school had the opportunity to explore topics that interested them and that went beyond their regular classes. i had observed a third grade classroom. in my field notes, i described the following: when i entered the classroom, there were about 12 students in the classroom; they were attentively watching a video on marine animals. they looked very involved and some of them did not even know i walked in. after the video, a group of four students shared their knowledge and research with their classmates. integrating theory-into-practice is highly appreciated by school teachers. in this process, they are not the receivers of knowledge, but the co-creators of new curriculum possibilities. practice is multifaceted; it involves policy, reform, curriculum making, teacher research, and student inquiry. after examining the forces driving their work to internationalize curriculum studies, the participants also shared their views on the nature of the process. a free, flexible, and democratic process the last major research question of this study addressed the nature of the internationalization process. what are the characteristics of this process? what kinds of processes make “curriculum studies” internationalized? upon reflection, the participants shared ideas regarding concepts such as “free” and “unstructured,” “democratic,” and even ambiguity to describe the flow of the process. hoyt. understanding the process of internationalization of curriculum studies in china 68 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci for several years prior to this research, lan was actively involved in organizing conferences and working with keynote speakers. her observations of the process included that it was: quite free. it is not like we have to organize this way or that way. we tried to do it constantly, given the condition of each year. for example, because of [a] conference in ottawa [the iaacs conference], we [had] two conferences in the same month, so we had to be flexible and … skip th[at] year. the flexibility is also reflected in moving conferences to different locations, collaborating with other interested partners, and reaching out to potential participants not in the curriculum studies group. we just had another conference in zhejiang university [in] october … i remember the classroom was quite full, 50 or 60 interested people, most of them … teachers. we can tell from the discussions after. jian also shared his view, which was motivated by the pursuit and result of the ongoing process of internationalization. “our involvement in the process takes a democratic nature. tao encourages everyone to present and share their research, but he does not force you.” for wei, however, the process involved ambiguity. “but how we develop and operate the internationalization of curriculum studies is not clear for the time being.” perhaps it is the democratic quality and inherent ambiguity that make the impossible possible. the question is: who is obligated or authorized to participate in this internationalization dialogue? given the academic culture, worldwide rankings, and unique areas of specialization, breaking down boundaries and hierarchies might animate more exchange and prompt further ventures. this is not a clear-cut structure that linearly defines who belongs or who should leave. there is a thread that participants mentioned, but they did not explicitly connect it to the process in terms of who can be a part of this internationalization, including both institutions and individuals. discussion if mere conversations about others’ histories, cultures, and intellectual wisdom can be complicated, certainly the process of internationalization is far from straightforward or linear. the fluid platform of internationalization has been shaped on this moving globe by driving political and social forces, increasing cultural and curriculum consciousnesses expanded during interexchanges, the role of scholars, aspirations for an equal dialogue and enunciation of individual voices, and the free and flexible structure. such a platform is enmeshed in a robust matrix rather than a duet of intellectualism and institutionalization. all things in this flux impact the direction, function, and meaning of this internationalization, while simultaneously constituting one another. to unpack the intricacies of this process, a nondual vision if we are to study this matrix. i will elaborate on this claim below. hoyt. understanding the process of internationalization of curriculum studies in china 69 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci curriculum vision through the attainment of intellectual and cultural capital chinese traditional culture is seen as the capital that scholars must develop if they are to engage in an international dialogue and affect curriculum reform from within. what is noteworthy is that of the three major traditional wisdoms, confucianism has received the most recognition and is most actively engaged. reflecting chinese mainstream values, confucianism takes precedence in scholarly work; this is not surprising because scholars find it inspirational as a thought system and laymen use it as a life philosophy (zhang, 2008). it is also consistent with the chinese government’s ideology on collectivism as a morality (yu, 2003). yet traditional cultural capital is not static content to be grasped, for students in china do not lack traditional cultural knowledge. they begin learning poems, articles, and stories layered with traditional culture as early as preschool. for example, i have seen that traditional culture as content, in the format of visual story, is illustrated on the street level, such that laymen can read and ruminate on it. in the instance i recorded, an elder was reading a story on the wall. two young men were passing by on their bicycles. on the left side of the wall were two simplified chinese characters: 诚信 (honesty and trust). the middle image on the wall told the story of how an ancient reformer built trust among the people. on the right hand side were the words: “promoting traditional chinese culture.” engaging traditional culture in curriculum studies is a way of creating a curriculum vision and embodying it in intercultural exchange and dialogue on an international platform. the development of traditional chinese cultural capital cannot be separated from the current context, social order, and culture. from it, a curriculum vision will take shape while practitioners engage new problems arising from these complex situations. traditional culture is viewed as fluid and mutating over time, but it must be attended to with objectivity and open-mindedness in order to avoid populism and nationalism; this was emphasized by tao. nationalism poses the danger of “suppress[ing] difference internally and aggression internationally” (pinar, 2011, p. 51). national sentiment in china should not be viewed as an isolated concern in the process of internationalization; it may indicate the failure of equal dialogue or act a s the other side of an equal dialogue, a point the participants made. i am a chinese native, but i have lived outside of china for more than a decade. the clamor of “equal dialogue” still echoes, especially when that dialogue, interaction, or exchange is with a western partner who is usually perceived as having more control. the concept of “equal” is particularly salient in arguments made by historically marginalized countries or groups. for example, the women’s rights movement aimed for suffrage and racial desegregation. these goals reflect the historical imbalance of power and appreciation that made marginalized groups aware of their powerlessness in dialogues and exchanges with their more powerful counterparts. in academia, the concept of equality also refers to the unbalanced production of knowledge and discourse, as tishkove (1998) pointed out in his international anthropological research. “u.s. social science has a dominant position in today’s world research community in terms of the number of practitioners, the resources allocated to them, and the influence of their disciplinary methodologies” (p. 1). i would add that language can signify dominance and power. english has been the dominant, if not the only, language used in academic exchange. as participants have pointed out, the ability to have an equal dialogue includes the easy use of good academic english. cultural and curriculum hoyt. understanding the process of internationalization of curriculum studies in china 70 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci consciousnesses must acknowledge such challenges and how they contribute to an unequal dialogue. compared with the call for a complicated conversation, the emphasis on equality calls for a recognition of the existing unbalanced discursive practices in international discussions and the importance of valuing each other’s ideas. the emphasis on equal dialogue is also important for solidifying non-western epistemic forms, as paraskeva (2013) has stated, and understanding the limits of our colonized worldview, as ng-afook (2007) has argued. inter-causality and interpenetration of curriculum vision and institutionalized practices the internationalization of curriculum studies in china reflects an interpenetration of intellectualism and institutionalization that is discernable from the interplay among scholarly research and institutionalized practices such as curriculum conferences, seminars, school-based curriculum efforts, teachers’ active involvement, and theory-into-practice. i have used the concepts of interpenetration and inter-causality from chinese huayan buddhism to describe the nature of internationalization in china. the huayan worldview and metaphysics denote “mutually non-interfering phenomena: reality realm of phenomena [shi], reality realm of noumenon [li], reality realm of the non-interference between noumenon and phenomena, reality realm of the noninterference among phenomena” (park, 2008, p. 161). here, interference indicates conflict, and buddhism does not deny a temporary conflict between phenomena; however, conflict is not the nature of the relationship between phenomena. park further notes that these four realms are not ontological states; rather, they are hermeneutical devices used to describe the relationships among noumenon and phenomenon and their structures. instead of viewing noumenon and phenomenon as independent and discrete, they should instead be seen as interdependent and inter-causal. such inter-causal interdependence, as hershock (2012) argues, is not “a contingent, external relationship; it is constitutive or internal. ultimately, all things are irreducibly relational in nature” (hershock, 2012, p. 36). the huayan worldview and metaphysics developed the dharma-dhatu dependent origination (法界缘起) theory. the infinite interfusion of noumenon (li) and phenomenon (shi), and the inter-causation and dependent coorigination of the reality realm of li and the reality realm of shi make it possible to see the self and other relationships as non-dualistic, interdependent, and interpenetrating: a dynamic self-other because it has interpenetrated self into the other. government policies and forces (noumenon, li) constitute emerging curricular explorations, theoretical inquires, and various questions; curriculum conferences, seminars, and presentations (phenomenon, shi) constitute scholars’ research agendas and questions. unlike curriculum work before 2001, current curriculum studies situated in the new internationalization movement manifests a robust interpenetration of policy and practice, theory and practice, or a multifaceted interpenetration of curricular li and shi. curriculum scholars as agents constitute government reforms. the current field of curriculum studies in china does not reflect a top-down approach or linear diffusion from the government, as it has in the past; social realities and curriculum scholars’ own cross-cultural research have influenced the dynamic process of internationalization and constituted its own curriculum reform. the process is less about the goal to achieve and more about forming relations that are inter-causal and interpenetrating; gone are the days of disciplinary boundaries, ranking and size hierarchies, and school theory and practice dichotomies. hoyt. understanding the process of internationalization of curriculum studies in china 71 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci pinar (2003) viewed the first stage of internationalization as an “intellectual project of self-understanding” (p. 30). what i see in the process, the self, regardless if it is traditional culture or curriculum consciousness, does not exist to be discovered or retrieved; rather, it is temporal and co-emerges with the inquiry process itself, a function of transition and interdependence. the impermanence of self indicates that selfunderstanding must be considered contextualized in arising conditions, a heideggerian existential self of “being-in-the-world” in the process of internationalization that is probably more relevant here; a self existentially inhabits, dwells in, and forms an intercausing relationship with the process. the self co-grows with the process, and its attainment and actualization is a function of the process (nobo, 1986). that is, chinese cultural enlightenment and curriculum consciousness are not preexisting; they are actualized as the result of an ongoing inter-causative process. one particularly intriguing element of this research is that most of these participants (for example, qing, jun, deng, and wei) did not identify themselves as curriculum scholars because they had their own research interests and were in different disciplines. however, their work unavoidably reflected curricular concerns, asked curricular questions, and took on curricular challenges constituted in the process of internationalizing curriculum studies. what they investigated and were involved in, and their participation in the unstructured process of internationalization itself, made them think like curriculum scholars and perform curriculum inquires. thus, we can say that an interpenetration was at work. like many other countries, china has its own way of ranking universities and providing funding to support research productivity and programs, for example, the wellknown projects 211 and 985. universities that are members of these projects receive significant funding and other kinds of support from the government, which may have a side effect of preventing other small universities from increasing their research productivity and participating internationally. interviewees for this research saw such rankings and school sizes as posing a glass ceiling that kept schools at lower ranks from becoming involved and participating in international work. both wei and wen indicated such a challenge. wei mentioned, “we are a small university,” and wen pointed out that tao’s vision had really opened their eyes. he asked young scholars to have a dialogue directly with the international community rather than limit themselves just because they are in a regional school. later, when china cut back the 985 and 211 projects, the perishing of its process and completion of certain missions created opportunities for smaller universities. although rank, discipline, funding, and even language barriers posed challenges for south central normal university, their work on the internationalization of curriculum studies truly broadened the visions of many young scholars; many had no prior opportunities to “go out.” such a process reflects the nonlinear nature of curriculum work and the formation of the field, but south central normal university carried on the mission of internationalization in a different way. thus, institutionalized practices such as conferences and seminars have provided a platform for chinese scholars to share their research and contributed to their intellectual wisdom. conclusion this study examined the forces driving and mobilizing the internationalization of curriculum studies, how intercultural interchanges work, and the particular nature of this process in china. government policies and the reality of an increasingly internationalized chinese society have shaped the present circumstances. in order to hoyt. understanding the process of internationalization of curriculum studies in china 72 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci have an equal dialogue with various epistemic forms and traditions, chinese curriculum scholars feel an urgency to develop their own cultural and curricular capital. as a result of this international dialogue, they have developed a double lens (e.g., traditional wisdom and international vision) not for comparison, but for a deeper understanding and exploration of local curricular issues. unlike internationalization in the early 20th century, today’s internationalization, in the context of economic globalization and demand for equal dialogue, has taken many forms; it gradually but steadily assembles, folds, and unfolds. the process of internationalization in china does not reveal a sequential and linear course with a past, present, and future. these events are interrelated, but not necessarily progressive. the nonlinear nature of the internationalization of curriculum studies in china makes it difficult to see where it starts and stops, because it can start anywhere and a single cutting event cannot destruct the system. curriculum scholars’ continuous engagement with both traditional and western wisdoms, the manifold of such curriculum work, emerging international conditions in china, exchanges between local and international centers of thought, and teachers’ eagerness to learn new things have all helped to constitute the process of internationalization of curriculum studies. this fluid platform is enmeshed in a matrix where the flux of interrelated events mobilizes the substance, direction, and function of each. the ongoing process of internationalization of the field of curriculum studies in china does not delineate a clear picture of where the process is going, but it simultaneously delimits boundaries and opens up new opportunities and alternatives. although there are various challenges that scholars must overcome to express their ideas on an international platform, much more distinctively chinese curricular work is on the horizon. notes 1 may_wudl@yahoo.com references aoki, t. 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(2014). nonviolence and education: cross-cultural pathways. new york, ny: routledge. zhang, h. (2008). toward a confucian vision of curriculum. in c. expert & h. wang (eds.). cross-cultural studies in curriculum: eastern thought, educational insights (335-348). new york: lawrence erlbaum associates. zhang, h. (2014). curriculum studies and curriculum reform in china 1912-2012. in w. pinar (ed.). curriculum studies in china: intellectual histories, present circumstances (29-67). new york: palgrave macmillan. zhang, h., zhang, w., & pinar, w (2014). the hangzhou model of internationalization. european journal of curriculum studies. 1(1), 15-21. submitted: june, 11st, 2016 approved: july, 29th, 2016 ç×°®µä½ã½ã£¬ 第一届世界课程大会 国际课程研究促进协会主办 2003 年 10 月 26 日–29 日 上海，中国 一封给姐姐的信 – . r论威廉姆 多尔的四 理论 罗丽新 加拿大维多利亚大学 教育系 transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 罗丽新 一封给姐姐的信—论威廉姆.多尔的四 r 理论 背景资料： 东东是我姐姐的女儿。她今年 4 岁，在深圳莲花二村幼儿园上学。莲花二村幼儿 采用了蒙台梭利教学法和多元智力教育方案。东东的教育问题是我和我姐姐经常讨论的话题。 亲爱的姐姐， 你好！ 到目前为止，我已经在多尔教授的课上学了两个月的后现代主义。这次的学习 令人非常兴奋，因为我感觉到自己的思想越来越开阔了。在此，我想与你分享一下我 的学习成果，希望也能给你的思想带来一些触动。在这封信中，我会先解释一些重要 的概念，然后向你介绍一个后现代课程观。 区别 说到“区别“这个概念，我要先从皮亚杰讲起。按照皮亚杰的理论，认知能力 的发展是遵循“平衡—不平衡—重新平衡”的模式的。这是说一个人的智力要发展， 必须要有一定的刺激，使他的思想从一个平衡状态进入一个混乱状态，并在经历混乱 状态后，他的思想能够达到一个新的平衡状态。 那是什么激发这个过程的呢？是区别。区别可以是来自于两个不同事物之间的 比较，也可以是源于同一事物在不同时间段的变化 （bateson, 1979 / 2002）。一个区别 或变化对于一个生命系统来说就是信息。就人类而言，我们的身体需要这些信息来运 作：“[人类]大脑里不同部分的交互作用是靠这些信息激发的”（p.89）；我们的感官 系统也一样。假如你不小心把手靠近了火，你会立刻把手缩回来。这个身体反应是由 你手指的温度和火的温度之间的区别所激发的。 不是所有的区别都是重要的。例如，倘若你在水里放了很少的糖，你可能一点 甜味都不会感觉到。这个区别太小了，以至于你不能察觉到，那么对你来说，区别就 不存在了。每个人对同一个区别有不同的限值，换句话说，每个人对区别的敏感度不 一样。如果区别太大了，个体可能就会拒绝接受。比如，现在要你去学化学的研究生 课程，由于你缺乏必需的基础知识，你会发现课程很难理解。对你来说，新知识和你 已有的旧知识之间的区别太大了，超过了你可以接受的范围。理解区别对教育有很重 要的意义。为了使学习有可能发生，我们需要使学生以前的知识和当前的知识之间的 区别适当，既可以被学生感知，又属于学生可以接受的范围。这样，我们提供给学生 的学习任务就要略高于学生当前的能力，并且在老师帮助下能够完成。也就是说，这 些学习任务需要在学生的 近发展区里面。用中国话说，这些任务就好比“跳起来摘 transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci lixin luo letter to my sister about doll’s 4 r’s 44 http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 罗丽新 一封给姐姐的信—论威廉姆.多尔的四 r 理论 得到的桃子”。如果你回想你是如何教会东东说话的， 你就会明白在教育中注意孩子 的 近发展区的重要性。 另一方面，在由区别带来的信息中，“包含能产生区别的区别” （bateson, 1979/ 2002, p.92）。 不同的人可能注意到的是一则信息中不同的区别点。不是信息中 所有的区别点都是对一个人有效的。例如，面对一个蛋糕和一个海绵，你可能会注意 到它们的密度不一样，而东东则注意到一个可以吃，一个不能吃。因此，老师需要尝 试从学生的角度去体会区别。这就是为什么一些幼教工作者提倡成年人时不时地蹲下 来，从孩子的高度去看世界。这样可以帮助他们更了解孩子的视角。下次，你要是给 了什么东西或学习任务给东东，而她不感兴趣，你要想想问题是否出在你给她的东西 上面。 区别给我们带来深度。没有区别，这个世界就是平面的。多种角度看一个事物 能够令我们更深入认识它。读一个作者的两本书总是比只读一本可以使我们更好地了 解这个作者。而且，区别帮助我们理解。用图像和文字一起解释一个现象比只用其中 一种方式使人理解得快些。所以，我们应该推崇多元化。东东的幼儿园里有多元智力 教育，但是这种教育方式目前在国内的小学还是很少的。因此，作为母亲，你有必要 经常鼓励她用不同的途径或者方式来学习和表现她的学习成果，而不是只限于阅读和 写作。 模式 模式，可以理解为规律、事物的本质、类型和特点。模式具体可以表现为人的 个性、日历、日常工作时间表等等。模式是层次化的：模式可以是模式的模式。例 如，我可以说鸡和猪相同，因为他们都有一个共同的模式，那就是：“他们都有模 式”。从低层次的模式到高层次的模式，我们需要运用抽象能力，而这正是教育致力 于帮助我们提高的。比如，我们先学用数字 8 来表现 8 个具体的事物，随后，我们用 x 来表现具体的数字。模式是人们理解世界的一个关键。如果我们能够看到一个居于 更高层次的模式，我们可以更多更好地理解这个世界。 关注模式可以把我们的思想从直接的因果关系和简单的线性思维中解放出来。 例如，在中国，人们往往把样板课看作教师的“秀”—人们只注意到教师的教学方 法。然而，生搬硬套这些方法是不一定会成功的。比方说，在北京样板课上用的教学 方法对西藏的学生就不一定完全有效，因为学校的环境和学生都不一样。在北京用的 教学方法可能适用于北京那些惯于从读写的方式中学习的学生，而不适用于西藏的学 transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci lixin luo letter to my sister about doll’s 4 r’s 45 http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 罗丽新 一封给姐姐的信—论威廉姆.多尔的四 r 理论 生，因为北京学生比西藏学生有更多的机会接触文字环境。拘泥于具体的教学方法是 一种因为-所以的线性思维，它会限制我们的思想。实际上，我们应该学习的是样板课 中的模式，而且我们需要更多地意识到样板课的具体环境因素。我们应使课程更加适 用于当地情况。 上次你对我说，你没有时间教育东东。我不以为然。教育不是一件需要特别地 花时间、在某个特别的地方专门去做的事情。我们需要考虑的应该是教育是什么？知 识是什么？它们的模式或者特点是什么？社会上有许多人在正规教育里学习不好，却 能够通过非正规教育而获得成功。还有很多名人尽管出生在不识字的家庭环境中，父 母没有时间或能力来教育，他们还是能够成功。其中一个原因就是，他们从日常生活 中学会了勤勉和持之以恒，而这些就是帮助他们日后成功的利器。教育不是只有一种 特殊形式的，知识也同样。学习可以发生在任何时候、任何地方，也可以从任何人和 任何事物中获得。求知的途径和知识的形式可以是无穷的，但是他们都有一个模式— 他们都能帮助人们提高抽象思维能力和培养一种思维的习惯。我国著名教育家陶行知 说过：“生活就是教育”。教育是在生命的每一天，每一秒。教育本身就是一种习 惯。 学习的层次 贝特森的学习层次理论是一个人类和动物智力发展的模式。贝特森相信人和动 物都有三个层次的学习。第一层次的学习是你开始知道如何应对或者解决某一个特定 的问题。例如，你知道你不能碰火。第二层次的学习，是“个体发现了问题的本质， 也就是说，这个人不仅会解决某一个问题，他还会解决这个问题所属的一类问题” （berman, 1981, p. 216）。 处于第二层次的人开始理解了一类问题的模式。例如，如 果你发现你不仅不能碰火，还发现你不能碰高温的东西，你就是在学习的第二层次 了。第三层次的学习是很难达到的。在这个层次上，个体“不再停留在关注这个或那 个模式，而是理解了模式的本质。这种理解上的转变会带来一个人思想上极为深刻的 重组— 一种思维模式的转变，而不是仅仅内容上的变化”（p.217）。 下面是一个三层次学习的例子。假想你设计了一个试验来测试老鼠是否能学会 认路。你做了一个五角星型的迷宫，并在其中的一个位置上放置了食物。你把饥饿的 老鼠放在这个迷宫中。那些能记住通往食物道路的老鼠是在学习的第一层次。它们把 这些道路上的不同点联结起来形成了路。如果它们能够象你一样，知道整个迷宫是设 计成五角星型的话，它们就是在学习的第二层次了。好，现在设想它们发现了这个模 transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci lixin luo letter to my sister about doll’s 4 r’s 46 http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 罗丽新 一封给姐姐的信—论威廉姆.多尔的四 r 理论 式。它们开始将它当成一个规律去测试其他试验用的迷宫。显然，如果新迷宫不再是 五角星型，它们就不能成功找到食物了。这时如果它们象许多的、在学习的第二层次 的人类一样，拒绝放弃这个模式，它们就会变得很困惑而 后可能因为 “不正常的” 迷宫而疯掉。然而，如果它们能够意识到这些所有的迷宫都是你设计出来的，而让它 们去找食物这件事情本身就是一个实验、一个游戏而已—那些迷宫是不可能有一个固 定的模式的，那么它们就到达了第三层次的学习。它们会探索一个迷宫，然后用发现 的地图去寻找食物。一旦发现行不通，它们不会困惑而是会尝试重新探索。 我想，第三层次的学习，用中国话说，就是佛教推崇的“化”：所有的模式都 溶化在一起，成为一个模式—“所有的模式都是相对有效的”。所谓真理就是没有真 理。在学习的第三层次的人不会再执著于任何一个特定模式。这样，他就不会受限于 一个模式，或者说一个箱子里。他很灵活— 总是会到箱子外边去找其他的模式。 系统思想 从学习的一个层次跃升到另一个层次，我们需要系统思想。正如我国古诗所 云：“不知庐山真面目，只缘身在此山中”。为了看到一个居于更高层次的模式，我 们需要离开单个部分而视其全部为一个整体。根据系统思想，一个系统的本质特点 “是来自于系统内部分之间的交互关系…当系统被分割时，其特点就消失了…系统整 体的特点往往不同于系统部分的简单叠加”（capra, 1996, p.29）。系统思想着重于联 结、关系和环境。“逻辑分析的思维方式旨在通过分割整体为部分来理解，系统思想 则把物体及其环境视为一个更大的整体来理解”（p.30）。系统部分的行为是由系统整 体决定的。因此，要理解任何事物，我们需要同时探索它所在的环境或背景。 基于系统思想，“世界不再是一个孤立个体的集合，而是一个现象的网络，这 些现象本质上是相互连接、相互依存的”（capra, 1996, p.7）。网络是生命的基本形 式。正如 capra （1996）所说，无论什么时候你看见生命，你看见网络。在一个网络 里，任何单一部分的变化都可能会对整个系统产生戏剧性的影响，而且，任何时候一 个部分对网络的作用都会作用回其自身。这也是中国话里说的：“善有善报，恶有恶 报”。系统思想建议我们要将注意力从部分转向关系和模式，同时我们需要和处于同 一网络中的不同成员们合作， 否则我们自己也将灭亡。 混乱 认为混乱和秩序共存于所有生命形式中是系统思想的一个具体应用。正如 katherine hayles （1990）说的: transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci lixin luo letter to my sister about doll’s 4 r’s 47 http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 罗丽新 一封给姐姐的信—论威廉姆.多尔的四 r 理论 相异于[牛顿学说模式]，混乱理论的基本假设在于个体不再重要，重要的是系统内不同 级别相对整体的回归性对称…对系统的规律的认识不是出自对系统内单个部分的了解，而是源 于对系统各部分反映出的与整体相同的比例[注：即规律]的理解（引自 doll，1993，p.91）。 当我们把一个系统内所有部分视为一整体，并作一段时间的观察后，系统的秩 序就会呈现。对教育来说，这个理解暗示着：“重要的不是一个被视为孤立个体的个 人，而是一个存在于公共的、经验的和环境的框架中的人”（p.92）。 学生在不同场 合下的言行举止潜藏着一个看不见的模式。要理解一个学生，我们不能将此学生与其 背景、历史和环境分离，而且，我们需要一段时间来观察学生。 在混乱中，不仅有看不见的模式，还隐含了发展的种子。对于一个生命系统来 说，要转型（即模式变换），混乱是非常必要的。多尔说：“一个开放系统要转型， 必须要先有极大量的耗散发生”（p.104；着重号为原作者所加）。也就是说，人们的 平衡状态必须要显著地被干扰或被动摇，从而进入一个混乱状态。按照 stuart kauffman（1995）的复杂性法则，“居于混乱边缘的”生命系统是自然选择所喜爱和 支持的。混乱有多样性和复杂性，它们给生命系统带来生机。james lovelock 的雏菊世 界模型和 stuart kauffman 的 简计算机程序的例子都告诉我们多样性带来灵活性。雏 菊世界的自我重组随着“模型的多样性增加而变得越来越稳定”（capra, 1996, p.110）。而在一个已被极大压缩的 简程序中，“任一符号的任何改变都可能引起此 程序运算灾难性的变更” （kauffman, 1995, p.154）。这两个例子提示我们，如果我们 排挤掉生命系统内的冗余，它们将变得脆弱。生命系统必须是强壮的。此外，如 capra （1996）所说， “创造力是多样性的产物” （p.221），多样性使创造成为可能。 生命系统是如何能在保持混乱和秩序的同时，兼备创新力的呢？是自我生成和 耗散结构使之可能。根据 capra （1996）提出的生命系统的关键标准，自我生成是生 命系统的组织模式。生命系统的“秩序和行为不是由环境强加的，而是由系统自己建 立的”（p.167）。 通过系统的回归性，一个生命系统自己影响自己，从而生成自己。 怀特海 （1929/1967） 在他的过程哲学中论述到：“一个实体形成的过程构成了这个实 体现在的状态…过程决定现在” （引自 doll, 1993, p.142；着重号为原作者所加）。生 命系统通过和外界交换物质和能量，不断地和外界发生交互作用。由此，自然选择能 在生命系统的进化过程中发挥作用。但是，这种交互作用只能激发生命系统产生变 化。生命系统是自己改变自己的。如你所知，你可以领马儿到河边，但是你不能逼它 喝水。kauffman （1995） 说进化是“自然发生的秩序和自然选择的婚姻” transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci lixin luo letter to my sister about doll’s 4 r’s 48 http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 罗丽新 一封给姐姐的信—论威廉姆.多尔的四 r 理论 （p.304）。进化是受自然选择和自我生成影响的。自我生成的理论暗示我们，学生的 转型是学生自我生成的自然结果。虽然学校环境和老师不能强加学生以改变，但是他 们可以促成改变。因此，教育应该由学生和老师共同建构，而且，为了使学生转型， 学生的自治和回归（学生自己的思想回归作用于其本身）是非常重要而且必须的。 耗散结构是生命系统的组织形式。依照 ilya prigogine 的理论，通过耗散结构， 生命系统“持续地将自己保持在一个远离平衡的状态” （引自 capra, 1996, p.181）。 在这个状态下，尽管生命系统不间断地与外界交互作用，它依然可以长时间地保持一 个同样的总体结构。由于生命系统是对外界开放的，加上它们具备自我生成的能力， 所以生命系统会逐渐地远离平衡状态。 终，它们会达到一个分歧点—“一个平衡的 极限，在超越此极限后，耗散结构要么崩溃，要么突破，形成一个新秩序” （p.191）。 在这个分歧点，耗散结构表现出“一种对环境中细小波动异乎寻常的敏感 性。一个极小的随机变动…可以诱导其路向的选择” （p.191）。 这样，生命系统的新 形式就有可能产生了。因为生命系统回归和开放的特性，一个生命系统在一个分歧点 作如何改变将决定于“系统的历史和各种外界因素，从而它的变化是不可预知的” （p.183） 。而且，由于反复的轮回作用，耗散结构起初细小的区别将会在其后产生放 大性的差异。如此就使得即使在没有波动发生的情况下，耗散结构的未来也是不可预 测的。总的来说，耗散结构理论的核心是：“耗散结构是创造秩序的源泉…[同时]它们 是不可预知的” （doll, 1993, p.106）。 耗散结构理论对改变人们的世界观有极为重要的意义。首先，因为初始细小的 变化能在以后产生极大的差异，我们需要注意学生对知识的理解上、思维方式上和做 事方法中存在的微小差别。同理， 为了辅助学生的发展，我们需要帮助学生逐渐地变 化。其次，由于生命系统在长期来说是不可预测的，“我们必须要放弃远期预测的企 图” （kauffman, 1995, p.29）。 世界上没有一个绝对的、确定的未来在等待着我们。 所以，如同 capra （1997）建议的，我们的社区设计应该从基于一个可见的或者既存 的结构，转变到能结合当前和正在浮现的结构上来。在教育领域里，教育者就应当协 助设立一个能崇尚并且召唤创新的学习环境。总言之，混乱理论指明我们多样性（或 者复杂性）是生命真实的状态。在表面的混乱中，潜藏着不可见的秩序和发展的种 子。 transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci lixin luo letter to my sister about doll’s 4 r’s 49 http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 罗丽新 一封给姐姐的信—论威廉姆.多尔的四 r 理论 理解了区别、模式、混乱和系统思想后，我们现在可以打开思路，开始从现代 主义转变到后现代主义。 后现代主义和现代主义 现代主义起源于笛卡尔和牛顿的科学观， 并随着工业化的进步迅速发展起来， 如今它已主宰了现代人类的思维。现代主义者认为世界是一个静态的，有着客观不变 的真理。而科学就是真理，它也可以证明真理。总有一天，人类将 终掌握世上的一 切真理。现代主义是二元论：所有的事物都有其对立的一面，例如黑与白，好与坏， 真与假等等。现代主义者习惯了从不是 就是中选择：你可以是正常或者不正常，你 不能两者都是；你可以选择对或者错，你不能两个都选。在这种思维模式下，现代主 义的课程观就象一个箱子 （见图一）。 图一、现代课程观 标准测验 学生 学习方法 规则、价值观 在现代课程观中，学生的学习目标和内容都是由箱子外面的人提前设置好的； 学习的方法是受限制的，反常的学习方法是不允许的；规则和价值观是他人规定好然 后强加给学生的；学生在学校里刻板地学习客观真理，不需要带有任何主观色彩和个 人情绪。由此，学生被受限于这个箱子里面，他们上蹦下跳，左冲右突，就是不能突 破箱子的界限。这样，我们的学生就都一律长成箱子的形状。现代课程是一个封闭的 系统，是没有活力的。现在是改变的时候了。 学术基础 后现代课程观是随着人们知识的进步，尤其是在量子物理和相对论出现后，渐 渐地浮现出来的。它尖锐地挑战了真理的客观性和二元论。作为一个新的认识世界的 模式，后现代主义相信所有真理都是相对（于历史）的。正如贝特森 （1979/2002） 说 的：“世上没有客观的经验” （p.28）。而且，“科学是探索而不是证明” （p.27）。后现代主义者认为这个世界是动态变化的、多元的而且是相互联系的；他们 偏爱动词而不是名词来形容事物—在他们的眼中，一切都是在运动和不断变化中的； 现代主义者问“这是什么？”，而后现代主义者却倾向于问“这可以是什么？”（doll, 1993, p.163）。 后现代主义者喜爱使用“和”—他们认为多样并存是可能的；他们搜 transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci lixin luo letter to my sister about doll’s 4 r’s 50 http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 罗丽新 一封给姐姐的信—论威廉姆.多尔的四 r 理论 寻多种可能以及事物之间的关系。在这种思维模式下，后现代课程象很多的不闭合的 圆圈 （见图二）。 图二、后现代课程观 学生 在基于后现代课程观的教育体系中，学生自由地进出—所有界限都是灵活和可 移动的；多元化（例如多个视角、多种解释和多元智力）是值得庆贺的；学生敢于， 同时也拥有自由去另辟蹊径、去探究、去解释；教育的目标不是固定的、外设的，而 是在学生学习的过程中渐渐地浮现出来的，是对学生内心呼唤的响应；学习是一个由 老师和学生共同建构的过程，是一个不间断的反思和对话的过程。后现代课程观重视 当地社区和本土文化。总的来说，后现代课程是一个动词，一个运动的过程。 下面，我将向你介绍一个（不是唯一一个的）由多尔教授提出的后现代课程 观。为了培育后现代思想，多尔教授（1993） 建议我们在设计课程的时候要注重四个 准则（4r’s）：丰富性（richness）、回归性（recursion）、关联性（relations）和严 密性（rigor）。为了扩展你的思维，我将针对普遍的学校教育来解释它的应用。 丰富性 多尔 （1993） 认为，所谓丰富性指的是“课程的深度、意义的层次、多种可能 性或多重解释” （p.176）。光给学生提供多种不同—丰富的教材、大量的选择机会、 多种可能性甚至多种上课的手段和学习的方式都还是不够的。丰富性着重于质量而不 是数量。在丰富性中至少有两个特点。其一，如同怀特海（1929/1967）说的，“不要 教太多的科目…要教，就要教得透彻…教给孩子的主要内容要少而精”（p.2）。丰富 性旨在服务于教育目的—在于提高孩子的抽象能力和培养他们思考的习惯。因此，不 仅我们给学生介绍的这种丰富性要有一定模式，而且，要由教师和学生—根据学生在 处理丰富时渐渐显露的抽象思维能力—来共同建构。例如，你教东东裤子和裙子之间 的区别的时候，东东也许不是告诉你它们外形上的区别，而是说：“公公不穿裙 子”。 这时你 好顺着她提出的方向引导她，而不是再给她看更多的衣服，因为她已 transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci lixin luo letter to my sister about doll’s 4 r’s 51 http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 罗丽新 一封给姐姐的信—论威廉姆.多尔的四 r 理论 经看到了在不同事物（衣服和人）之间的关系。也许你可以问她一个问题，例如“为 什么公公不穿裙子？”来引导她探索人类和服饰的关系—一个比衣服种类更大的范 畴。 其二，丰富之中要蕴含“适量的不确定、异类、无效率、混乱、不平衡、耗散 和现实生动的体验”（doll, 1993, p.176）。 我们带给孩子的应该是“真正的问题”。 由此，丰富性是多元的或复杂的— 它强调模糊；刻意追求多种选择和模式。为了提倡 多元化，教育工作者可以强调多元智力；可以珍视和庆贺学生的个体差异；还可以根 据学生自身的进步而不是同学间的比较来评估学生等等。然而，所有这些措施都还是 远远不够的。为了使多元化成为可能，我们至少还有两件事情要做。 第一，令规则简单而灵活。复杂性可由简单规则产生。严格的（通常是复杂 的）规则是用来保证学生或者老师行动的每一步都不会发生主观上的“理解错误”。 由此，这些规则降低了模糊性（从而理解性）。在这种情况下，人不需要思考；只需 要按照他人设立的规则行事。在这种系统下教育出来的学生可能会变得要依赖规则来 做事。久而久之，他们变得不会思考，创造力也就无从说起了。从另外一个角度来 说，为了不产生浪费并使教育“高效化”，严格和复杂的规则往往很细节化。然而， 没有浪费，就没有冗余，也就没有了灵活性。这样的规则系统本身和依赖于此系统的 学生是脆弱的。所以，我们需要深思我们是在加速灭亡还是加速发展。 这里有两个例子，也许能帮助我们拓宽对规则的理解。一个是日本的小学老师 常常让一年级的新生在学期开始的几个月里，生活在一个没有任何规则的教室里 （lewis, 1995）。经过一段混乱时期之后，学生往往会自己主动要求建立规则来组织 他们的活动。这样，这个班级的规则就是当地化的。它们适应学生的需求，同时学生 拥有高度自治。这个例子提示我们，当教师非常能容忍混乱并能对学生加以适当引导 的情况下，规则是可以自动产生的。另外一个例子是关于一个中国学生。这个学生有 大学英语本科学历，但他想上电脑专业的研究生。在阐述了对英语和计算机语言拥有 共同模式的理解之后，他被一位教授录取了。 终他也成功地完成了学业。这个事例 令我想到研究生课程的入学要求。我想知道我们的课程是否可以为一些没有“合适的 学术”或者“专业”背景的“异类的”学生开放。我们可否在入学条件中加上一条 “其他”的选项？例如教育学专业，我认为，只要学生有教书或者学习的热情—这是 一个好教师必须具备的本质特点—他们就应该有资格被录取。（事实上，教育就是关 transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci lixin luo letter to my sister about doll’s 4 r’s 52 http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 罗丽新 一封给姐姐的信—论威廉姆.多尔的四 r 理论 于教与学的）。至少，我们应该让“奇怪的”人有门可入。否则，拒绝了那些热衷学 习的人，我们就限制了自己的创造性。 第二，我们需要给学生提供支持的环境。要变得不同，要成为异类，学生们需 要有一个安全且支持的氛围，这样他们才敢于冒险。从而，我们需要一种多尔 （2002）提倡的社区：在这个社区里，有关心又有批评。教师要给学生提供积极和有 建设性的反馈；要给学生充足的时间来反思；从不说“决不”或者“不可能”；多提 建议少作评断，从而令师生对话可以继续。同时，教师要注意学生的 近发展区。在 校学生如同拥有耗散结构的生命系统，他们对教师的评语和支持是很敏感的。由此， 教师 好每次轻微地激发学生。如果教师对学生表现出太高的期望，学生可能会很紧 张，导致自信心不足。更糟的是，这种高的期望可能犹如强烈的波动，会导致生命系 统崩溃而不是成功转型。 所以，一个好的老师应该是善于游戏的。他们是灵活可变的，是会根据学生的 不同而进行自我调整的。一方面，他们很友好。他们总是给你提供反馈和支持，总是 显得只是在某些领域比你水平高些，你是可以赶上他们的。但是当你以为自己做到这 点了的时候，他们又会表现出他们身上还有值得你学习的地方。另一方面，善于游戏 的老师从不让你知道他们对你在一个时期内的真实期望。他们只是引导你设置一个适 当的、居于你 近发展区内的目标。如果你成功了，他们表现出你已经超出了他们的 期望；如果你失败了，他们依然表现出对你的能力的信心。如此，这些老师令你总是 自信盈盈。在不知不觉中，你的能力逐渐地提高。 概括来说，丰富性是混乱的，但是这是生命的状态。丰富中有浪漫和游戏；丰 富性追寻模式和多样化；丰富性旨在帮助学生以多样的和创造性的方式而不是以同一 方式成功。所以，你不要预先为东东设定目标和方向，而是要和她一起创造丰富。在 丰富中，她自己的方向会逐渐显现，这样她就将能够变得独特而强壮。 回归性 回归性是指“人所具有的思想回归作用于思想的能力”（doll, 1993, p.177）。 一个人不同时期思想的不同或者其自身和他人之间思想的不同都可以激发他的认知系 统运作，从而使其智力得以发展。多尔说，“具有思想回归的能力是人类思维的特 性；人类正是通过这种方式来理解世界的…而且，在与环境、他人以及文化的反思交 互中，思想回归使自我得以产生” (p.177)。 没有回归性，生命系统的自我生成是不可 能的，系统将会死亡。 transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci lixin luo letter to my sister about doll’s 4 r’s 53 http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 罗丽新 一封给姐姐的信—论威廉姆.多尔的四 r 理论 回归性不是简单的重复；它是带有反思性的，它的架构是开放的。回归性“旨 在发展能力—一种组织、联合、问询和探索性地运用事物的能力” （p.178）。 所以， 反思不是为了更好地重复已经做过的事情，而是为了创造—为了能够做从未做过的事 情，为了发现模式，为了跃升到一个更高的学习层次。通过反思—“以某种方式远离 个人对事物的原有认识” （bruner, 1986, 引自 doll, p.177） ，我们可以深入地理解外 部世界和自身。 “‘回归的反思’ 是一个能实现思维转型的课程的核心”（p.178）。正如杜威 （1926/1964） 所说，没有反思的教育是“非常愚蠢的”（ 引自 doll, 1993, p.138）。 多尔指出，“一个尊重、重视和采用反思的课程是没有固定的开始或者结束的” （p.178）。在这种框架下，每一次的作业或者测验都应该被看作是一个新探索的开端 或者是一个新的学习机会。教师可以鼓励学生回应他们提出的意见，然后再根据这些 回应给出新的意见。如此往复，使对话和反思得以继续。反思是需要时间的。不然， 思想上就不会有不同，或者区别太小而不被感知。由此，教育者要重新思考沉默的价 值。反思需要他人的参与。通过和他人的讨论，不同人之间的思想差别得以显露，进 而反思成为可能。杜威、布鲁纳和多尔提议说，反思既可以是私人的，也可以是公开 的和共同的。（注：课堂上的对话以及人与人之间的交流就是公开的、共同的反 思。）后现代课堂是会议，是“没有人拥有真理，每个人都有权利要求被理解” （kundera, 引自 doll, 1993, p.151），都可以各抒己见的地方。在这里，对话可以继 续；在这里，“真理共同体”—这个共同体是“通过冲突而不是竞赛来增加我们的知 识” （palner, 1998, p.103）—可以被分享和分析。 回归性要求我们鼓励学生对历史进行反思。耗散结构原理告诉我们一个耗散结 构的未来是与它的过去息息相关的（capra, 1996）。人类社会的现在是由它的历史形 成的。失去了对历史的反思，人类文化知识的转型不可能发生。对个人来说，历史的 效用常常不是立竿见影的，但是它有可能在日后对一个人的思想产生巨大的影响。由 此，在教育中，我们应该重视历史而不是因为它的陈旧而忽略它。历史可以被当成故 事来分享。人们总是喜爱听故事的，只要他们能把故事和自己的生活联系起来。所 以，如何令学生看到历史和他们自身的联系是历史教育的一个关键。为了达到这个目 的，我们可以把历史和其他学科结合起来教。例如，在教科学的时候，我们可以讲述 一些有关科学家和社会历史背景的故事，同时鼓励学生去探讨历史环境对科学的影 响。此外，我们也可以让学生用不同的方式呈现他们个人对历史不同的理解。不论具 transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci lixin luo letter to my sister about doll’s 4 r’s 55 http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 罗丽新 一封给姐姐的信—论威廉姆.多尔的四 r 理论 体怎么教，我们应当强调探索历史中的模式而不是让学生简单地记忆和背诵孤立的历 史数据。我们要让他们去思考“为什么事情会这样发生”而不是“发生了什么事 情”。这样做了，历史便可照亮学生的未来。 姐姐，你应该还记得，在我们家，我是写了 多检讨书的孩子。每次我做错了 什么，妈妈总是要我自我反省。现在，我的反思能力就很强。同样地，日本的幼儿和 小学教育也通过每日课后的班级会议来加强学生的反思能力 （lewis, 1995）。在这些 会议上，老师会引导学生讨论他们当天的主要成果和遇到的问题。这个活动帮助日本 学生形成自我反省的能力。我相信，反思也是一种可以也应该在教育里培养的习惯。 关联性 关联性指的是“那些在课程里的—带来丰富性的网络”—和校外的—“一个包 含课程的更大的网络” （doll, 1993, p.179）。重视关联性，就要提倡跨学科教学，即 综合多个学科于一个课程内容中。不过，在后现代架构下的关联性指向的关系涵盖除 了教材、内容和科目之间的联系以外的更大的范畴。基于系统思想，关联性指向所有 在教育领域里不同系统级别内的关系。这里将介绍四种教育者应该考虑的关系。 其一，我们应该把学生视为一个具备智能、情感和生物特性的综合体。有别于 将认知看作是大脑的精神活动，我们应该把它看作“一个扩展到整个生物体的现象。 它是通过以一个集合了我们的智能、情绪和生物活动的错综复杂的肽化学网络来运作 的” （capra, 1996, p.285）。这就意味着我们需要给学生提供一个丰富的、有多种感 官刺激的学习环境，同时我们也需要让学生带有情感地参与学习活动。中国教育惯于 将情感排斥于学习活动以外，因为中国人认为学习从来就是苦的。可是，事实上，我 们所有的思想、知觉和身体机能都是情绪化的。若无情绪上的满足，学生的学习动力 和老师的热情都会减少。教育应该有情感的渗透：教师可以展现个性和热情，学生可 以乐在其中。为了提高学生学习的乐趣，我们应该注意教室的物理环境以及教室里各 个成员（包括教师）之间的关系。我们可以邀请学生来布置教室；鼓励他们带自己喜 爱的东西回学校来分享；给学生丰富的选择；或让他们有自选的学习内容或主题；鼓 励学生之间、师生之间多做交流等等。通过以上的方法，个人特点可以融入教育中， 学习也就变得能更加灵活地适应学生个人的兴趣和要求。 其二，我们需要鼓励学生和他人合作，向他人学习。人们应该意识到“独立是 一个政治的而不是科学的名词” （margulis & sagan, 引自 capra, 1996, p.296）。人类 社会向来都是相互依存的，尤其在世界正变成地球村的年代里。随着互联网的发展， transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci lixin luo letter to my sister about doll’s 4 r’s 55 http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 罗丽新 一封给姐姐的信—论威廉姆.多尔的四 r 理论 越来越多的知识分布在人群中。因此，要生存和发展，人们都需要尊重他人以及与他 人合作。为了培养合作的能力，我们可以让学生从合作中学习，也可以从冲突中学 习。日本幼儿园的教师常常会刻意减少给孩童玩具的数量以制造纠纷，从而孩童可以 从中学习如何解决问题（lewis, 1995）。与之形成对照的是，一些中国父母给孩子太 多的玩具了。如果我们刻意地帮孩子排斥了负面经验，那么日后这些孩子在面临现实 中的不如意时，会很脆弱。所以，为了帮助学生形成较强的适应和合作能力，我们不 应该刻意地在学校、在家庭以及在社会上排斥冲突。“适量”恰当的负面经验会令人 坚强。每次争吵和打架都可以成为学生学习如何面对和处理问题的宝贵机会。此外， 我们的课堂里应该引入更多的讨论和辩论。 其三，我们需要把课程和当地社区结合起来，以使我们的课程本土化。如多尔 所言 （1993），课本应该被看作是“用来改写的，而不是用来遵循的。它们是思想转 型可以产生的基础。后现代框架下的课程是要由具体课堂成员而不是由教科书的作者 去创造（自我重组）的”（p.180）。例如，当我们在北京教英语的时候，我们可以让 学生用英语介绍万里长城。但当我们在西藏教英语的时候，让学生介绍布达拉宫会好 得多。一方面，将课本里的要点（模式）和当地的资源结合，可以让（尤其是贫困山 村的）教师“有米下锅”。另一方面，这样做使学习和学生的生活相关。教师应当多 鼓励学生更多地用他们所学的内容去解决当地的问题。另外，要使课程本地化，除了 课本以外，我们还应重新考虑我们的教学方法和教育目标。我的一个同学，joe 说， “我们要的是 100 个成功的学生，而不是 100 个成功的工程师”。教育是为了使学生 以不同的方式成功，而不是同一化。我们需要令教育目标在当地可实现。一个在中国 偏远山村执教的教师表达了同样的观点。他说：“我们这里不需要大学而是大专—学 生在那里可以学到一些能服务于当地社区的技能”。关于教学方式的本土化，多尔甚 至建议教师将他们的教学指导书抛诸脑后，以发挥自我创造力。通过将本地特色融入 课程，我们使学习对学生来说，既有用又有意义。 其四，我们需要意识到自然界成员之间强烈的相互依存关系。从一方面来看， 我们必须认识到，具有耗散结构的自然界，“是不可预知的，并且对周遭事物非常敏 感—细小的波动都会对它造成影响” （capra, 1996, p.193）。我们人类对自然界的任 何改变，迟早都将对整个系统产生巨大的影响。所以，我们必须要慎重行事。从另一 方面看，自然界远比人类可以想象的要奇妙得多。正如 capra （1996） 说的： transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci lixin luo letter to my sister about doll’s 4 r’s 56 http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 罗丽新 一封给姐姐的信—论威廉姆.多尔的四 r 理论 类似基因工程、全球通讯网络之类的科技，我们认为它们是现代文明的巨大成就。而 实际上早在数十亿年之前，星际网络中的细菌就已经用这些手段来调节地球上的生命了 （p.229）。 如果我们人类因为无知和自大灭绝了地球上的其它物种，我们不仅限制了自己 向自然学习的能力，我们也将自取灭亡。由此，我们必须要尊重和保护自然，而且， 我们要培养和支持学生这样做。我们可以教他们如何种植和环保；可以将课堂设在自 然的环境里；可以让学生去探讨环境污染问题。不管怎么教，我们都必须注意所教内 容应该和学生的生活相联系，这样他们就可以用所学的知识去逐步改造我们的世界。 以上所述的四种关系—学生与自身、与他人、与当地社区和自然界之间的关 系，只是众多关系中的几个例子。多尔所提倡的关联性，其关键在于我们不仅需要关 注看得见的关系，也要注意那些看不见和间接的—在这些关系中，我们需要时间来获 得反馈和回应。 严密性 在后现代主义的框架里，严密性是不同于“精确性”的。它是针对个人理解的 不同性和事物的不确定性而言的。多尔 （1993） 说，“就不确定性而言，任何人永远 都不可能断言自己是完全正确的…必须不断地探索，寻找新的组合、解释和模式” （p.182）。从一个角度来看，因为世界总是在变化中的，所以人们不可能掌握世界上 所有的所谓真理。没有真理是永恒的。因此人们需要探索而不是证明真理。通过把种 种不同观点进行各种组合 （whitehead, 1929/1967），通过“与概念游戏” （dewey, 1933/1971, 引自 doll, 1993, p.182），通过不断地有目的地找寻不同的可能性以及关 系，我们接近真理。从另外一个角度看，santiago 的认知理论告诉我们，“[人类的]认 知…不是对一个客观独立存在的世界的再现，而是一个通过生命的进程，不断展示世 界的过程”。由此，不再有一个客观的现实和绝对的真理存在。不管是人的内部还是 外部，都没有一个既定的独立的世界。任何时候我们看到外部世界，我们看到一个世 界，而不是那个世界。因而，对一个事物的多种解释以及解释的不确定性总是存在 的。在这种情况下，严密性就极为必要。 多尔（1993） 说，“要把解释严格化，任何人都需要意识到所有的评价都是基 于一定的（通常是潜在的）前提和假设的”（p.183）。没有经过有意识地搜寻和了解 这些假设，我们不可能适当地理解别人。这样，对话就不能继续。nikals luhmann 指 出，人类社会是一个自我生成的、靠交流和交流的过程联结的网络： transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci lixin luo letter to my sister about doll’s 4 r’s 57 http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 罗丽新 一封给姐姐的信—论威廉姆.多尔的四 r 理论 社会系统用交流来作为它们自我生成和再造的特殊方式。它们的基本元素是交流…[交 流是]由一个交流的网络产生和再造的，而且不能存活于这样的网络之外（引自 capra, 1996, p.212）。 对于个人以及整个社会，交流都是其内耗散结构所必需的能量和物质。如果没 有了交流，对于一个个体来说，认知的转型是不可能的；对于整个社会来说，它的模 式— 一个共享的信仰和文化以及价值体系、 一个意义的环境就丧失了。人类社会的知 识，作为一个整体，也不能发展。另外，根据 humberto maturana 的说法，“交流是生 物体之间通过相互的结构耦合来实现的一种行为的协调” (引自 capra, 1996 p.287)。 没有交流，需要行动上协调的合作就不可能实现。由此，我们要让交流继续。为了实 现这点，我们以一个开放的心灵，积极地听；我们需要和别人谈而不是对别人谈；多 提建议少下结论；我们需要给别人时间和自由来叙说和表现，这样我们才可以看到他 们的模式和特点。 尽管在后现代框架下的严密性是不同于精确性的，但是它并未忽略之。严密性 包括精确性和浪漫性，因此，它同时强调操练和自由。一方面，因为世界总是在变化 中，人类对世界的探索是无穷尽的。我们需要通过做大量的练习和测试来追求精确— 对世界更深的认识。另一方面，我们有用各种不同途径和方式来探索的自由。我们可 以自由地与内容游戏、用不同的方式来组合观念。在这种情况下，学习就象是做菜— 我们总是可以通过变换材料的不同组合来创造新菜式。在可以自由游戏的情况下，如 果我们可以令我们做出来的菜可吃—让学生能够尝到成功的滋味— 精确和操练是有乐 趣可言的。 多尔（1993）写道：“创造性是由混乱和秩序之间的交互作用而产生的，是在 自由的想像和受过训练的技能之间产生的”（p.88）。严密性使创造成为可能。进一步 说，既然没有人拥有真理，严密性建议我们要尊重他人（ 包括世界上的所有事物）， 敬畏自然，以及给予他人自由。 作为一个在现代课程观下教育出来的成年人，你可能已经忘记如何游戏和如何 以一个开放的心灵来倾听了，那么，我建议你尝试让东东来指导你。让她教你可以怎 样游戏和怎样倾听。 到此为止，我已经逐个解释了多尔的 4r’s。 但是，这 4r’s 不是孤立的部分，它 们是一个整体。如果我们将这 4r’s 作为四条新的规则去衡量我们的课程，我们就完全 不得要领了。多尔的后现代课程观只是用后现代主义理解课程观的一个版本，它不是 transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci lixin luo letter to my sister about doll’s 4 r’s 58 http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 罗丽新 一封给姐姐的信—论威廉姆.多尔的四 r 理论 一个模子。在我们课上，多尔反复地提醒我们，不管用这个还是那个方式去解释后现 代主义，都只是一种方式，还有很多其他更多的方式要我们自己去发现的。他从来不 希望在带领我们走出一个旧模子的同时，又走入一个新的模子中。从多尔的课程观 中，我们需要学习的是它的模式，而这个模式是在我们把这 4r’s 看作一个整体时才浮 现的。下面，我将介绍我所看到的 4r’s 中的模式。 我相信，任何一个后现代课程都应该辅助人们在思想上产生以下三个根本的变 化。第一个变化是关于对模糊的理解。人们必须认识到模糊是生命自然的状态，而精 确是人为的。比如科学，也只是一个有限的窗口，从来不可能是客观的。科学不能证 明，只能探索。而且，既然自然是不可预知的，同时自然的演变是人类与自然共同作 用的结果，人类就不可能掌握全部自然界的知识和控制整个世界。科学不是万能的。 我们需要帮助学生习惯模糊和不确定，而不仅仅是精确和确定。为了实现这一点，我 们也许可以给学生早一点开设非线性代数和哲学课，例如在高中；在教科学的时候， 我们可以强调科学理论背后的前提假设并鼓励学生挑战它；我们可给学生提供更多的 开放式问题以及在课堂上讨论和辩论的机会；或者我们可以用多尔的方法—让学生们 自己出题去考对方。用一句话来说，在教育里引入模糊的方式可以是无穷的，它们中 的模式是鼓励学生去寻找不同的方法。对于年幼的学生来说，艺术，特别是中国画， 是很好的一个方式来引导他们庆贺模糊。 第二个变化是我们需要视这个世界为一个网络而不仅仅是层次。层次结构是 “人类的产物” （capra, 1996, p.35）。自然界里是没有层次的 （capra, 1996）。当我 们看待世界为层次时，我们寻找 高和 强。我们竞争。而且，如果层与层不直接相 连，它们就不能沟通。反之，当我们看待世界为网络时，我们视世界上的所有成员都 是平等的。每个人都可以和其他人交流。 网络观将有助于学生领悟到人类只是自然界 的一个成员而不是统治者。人类需要怀着敬意和世界上的其他成员合作，而不是压迫 和掠夺。为了帮助学生形成网络观，教师可以多以网状的方式替代层次化的方式呈现 教学内容，然后让学生自己去分层、归类。 我们也可以让学生更多地以环状的方式就 座，而不是以行列式；经常实行领导权轮换；我们还可以定期召开由学生领导的讨论 以及会议，用以分享社区知识。 第三个变化是关于游戏的理解。人类，如同那些在心理实验中跑迷宫的老鼠一 样，是在一个游戏之中的。所有的概念和事物都是由我们的认知游戏带出来的。“在 佛教看来，现代人类的痛苦源于人们执著于那些具象和由人类思想创造的类别，而不 transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci lixin luo letter to my sister about doll’s 4 r’s 59 http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 罗丽新 一封给姐姐的信—论威廉姆.多尔的四 r 理论 愿意接受所有事物无常和暂存的本质”（capra, 1996, p.294）。通过认识到这点—通过 跃升到学习的第三层次—我们应当与这个游戏嬉戏 —和类别游戏，和概念游戏。此 外，游戏是生命的自然需求。所有的生命都趋向于创造新奇。游戏就是一种推动边界 的行为，一种逃离秩序的尝试。这给生物体提供了转型到一个新的秩序、创造新奇的 可能。因此，游戏是为了生存。 改变比喻是一种游戏的方式。历史已经向我们表明，改变比喻可以带来人们世 界观上惊人的变化。例如，当我们比喻世界为一台机器时，我们以一种现代方式思 考—人类是世界的主人。反之，当我们将世界比为一个生命系统时，我们以一种后现 代方式思考—人类和整个世界相互依存。由此，改变比喻，与概念游戏，能够将人类 的想象力从看不见的束缚中解放出来，从而我们可以有创造力。因此，我们中国人需 要重新考虑一下我们关于老师和学生的比喻。我们惯于把老师比作蜡烛和园丁，把学 生比作海绵和花朵。这些比喻将我们对课程的想象都局限在现代方式里。为了培育后 现代课程观，我们要先改变这些比喻。 要游戏，我们需要使科学有趣和平易近人。在维多利亚大学，我看过一个化学 教授的表演。这个教授用魔术的方式来展现化学反应。他甚至还演示了 belousovzhabatinski 反应— prigogine 喜爱的一个展示远离平衡状态的例子。 这个教授提到，正 是他的化学老师用魔术的方式展示化学试验令他开始迷上了化学。从这个例子，我们 可以看到教师可以将科学和艺术形式结合，从而令科学好玩有趣。此外，我们的老师 在教科学时，能否给学生讲一些科学家的笑话或者故事呢？我会说，为什么不呢？中 国人常常把科学家塑造成完美的典范而不是真实的人类。这样，对学生来说，他们是 高不可攀的，因为他们离学生的生活太遥远了。从而，学生缺乏向他们学习的动力。 试想，如果我的老师告诉我 pascal 当年研究概率是因为他对赌博感兴趣，概率对我来 说就会有趣多了，因为这个故事使科学的、严肃的、枯燥的理论变得生动和平易近人 了。 总的来说，如果人们能有以上的三种思想变化—如果我们能够习惯于模糊、网 络和游戏，不仅我们的课程能促进创造力和智慧，我相信，我们也可以重新拥有梦想 和灵魂，我们可以和石头说话。 现在，亲爱的姐姐，我非常想告诉你，多尔教授的课对我个人有多么重要的意 义。首先，我原本在与人相处时总是很困惑，不知道自己应该对待别人，因为我非常 在乎别人会如何对待我。现在我明白了，我对别人做的任何事 都是作用于一个网络， transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci lixin luo letter to my sister about doll’s 4 r’s 60 http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 罗丽新 一封给姐姐的信—论威廉姆.多尔的四 r 理论 终都将作用回我自己。naess 谈到，“当‘自我’的概念扩展--人们可以认识到保护 自然就是保护我们自己的时候，[对大自然的]关心是会自然流露的”（引自 capra, 1996, p.12）。 同样地，“自我”的范畴也可以扩展到整个人类网络。正如多尔所说 的，当他在给学生做咨询的时候，他也在给自己做咨询。所以，我不用再太顾及别人 对我的反馈了。在关心他人的同时，我关心了自己。 其次，我过去以为自己是一个没有严格界限和原则的人。我很容易改变观点； 也常常为了和别人合作而改变自己。我不喜欢精确。我说话太多。因为这些特点，我 过去很不喜欢自己。由于我视自己为一个没有坚强意志和信仰的人，同时也出于对世 界的快速变化的不满，我跑到西藏去找寻一种强大的、可以永远相信、依靠和支持我 的精神力量。结果，我无功而返。现在，我发现我可以对变化、模糊和不确定感觉舒 适了，同时我也接纳了自己—我是可以善于游戏的。我需要记住的是，不管什么时候 我都要保持心灵开放：多做建议少作评断；对人们言行举止背后的前提假设保持警醒 而且持续问询；以及相信总是有很多的其他存在。 再次，我过去对社会现实非常沮丧，因为我认为一个人的力量是不足以改变这 个社会的。现在，通过对耗散结构和生命网络的理解，我开始明白每个人都是在改变 社会的，不管他自愿与否。每个人的言行举止都会对这个世界有巨大的影响，而且实 行渐变比一味追求快速转型来得明智。正如多尔所说的， 我们需要轻微地、逐渐地推 移边界。是的，我可以改变这个世界，我也正在改变这个世界。我的梦想是会实现 的。 你曾经问我：人活着为了什么？这个问题我也已经问过我自己许多年了。现 在，我找到了一个好答案：那就是，人活着，不是为了一个单一的生活目标，而是为 了不同时间段里不同的目标。这里，我不是建议我们可以终身停留在浪漫期—不停徘 徊于不同的人生目标中而不去投入地做一件事，完成一个目标。人做事都必须要有目 标，而且集中精力坚持去做，才会成功。我说的是，我反对我们必须要先选定一个人 生目标，例如一个职业或者一个专业等等，否则我们就不行动。我们担心一旦选错方 向，以后就会生存不下去。这样我们选择时压力就太大了，以至于我们根本不敢尝 试。可是，这个选择本身本来就是不可能实现的，因为我们是在决定那个方向，而不 是要选择一个方向。 找寻一个终身的方向是很现代主义的想法。人们害怕变化，他们需要一个一生 稳定的东西来相信、依靠和感到安全。可是，随着科学技术的发展，现在的 10 年可等 transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci lixin luo letter to my sister about doll’s 4 r’s 61 http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 罗丽新 一封给姐姐的信—论威廉姆.多尔的四 r 理论 于 19 世纪的 50 年，因此现代人的一生相当于前人的好几生。世界变化这么快，我们 怎么可以为我们不可预测的将来预定一个方向呢？因此，设定一个短期的（例如 10 年 或 20 年）目标，然后努力去实现它，比在那里苦恼于不知如何选择，原地踏步强。让 生活为不同的可能性开放，这就是后现代主义教会我的。你也许会担心这样做会丧失 你的风格，也害怕可能要面对混乱。其实，犯不着。因为在表面的混乱中是有模式 的。贝特森就很“乱”，他做过生物家、人类学家、病理学家和认识论学者。可是， 他是伟大而独特的。他的风格或者说模式直至他生命的终点才呈现：他总在寻找这个 世界的一个更抽象的模式。当你明了和崇尚混乱的时候，无论你怎么变化，我相信你 都会有自己的模式。 有一个朋友说过，哲学就是把废话放在一起，总结出来，还让你觉得很有道 理。我想说，关键在于是谁把他们总结出来的—谁让其中的模式呈现？好，我想现在 这些已经足够了。等待你的回信。 小新 致谢：我衷心感谢威廉姆.多尔教授的启迪以及不断的支持和鼓励。同时我要对李茨婷 给予的珍贵友谊、其对这篇文章初稿提出的意见和在翻译上的辅助致以深深的谢意。 后，我要感谢 sheilarose richardson 和 abram hindle 对我的真诚的关心和宝贵建 议。 transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci lixin luo letter to my sister about doll’s 4 r’s 62 http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 罗丽新 一封给姐姐的信—论威廉姆.多尔的四 r 理论 参考书目： bateson, g. (2002). mind and nature: a necessary unity. new jersey: hampton press. (original work published 1979) berman, m. (1981). th reenchantment of the world. london: cornel university press. capra, f. (1996). the web of life: a new scientific understanding of living systems. new york: anchor books. capra, f. (april 18, 1997). creativity and leadership in learning communities (paper presented at mill valley school district in california, america), retrieved aug 18, 2003, from http://www.ecoliteracy.org/pdf/creativity.pdf doll, w.e. jr. (1993). a post-modern perspective on curriculum. new york: teachers college. doll, w.e. jr. (2002). ghosts and the curriculum. in w.e. jr., doll & n., gough (eds.) curriculum visions. new york: peter lang. kauffman, s. (1995). at home in the universe: the search for laws of self-organization and complexity. new york: oxford university press. lewis, c.c. (1995). the roots of japanese educational achievement: helping children develop bonds to school. educational policy, 9(2), p.129-151 palner, p. j. (1998). the courage to teach: exploring the inner landscape of a teacher’s life. san francisco: jossery-bass whitehead, a. n. (1967). the aim of education and other essays. london: williams & norgate ltd. (original edition, 1929) transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci lixin luo letter to my sister about doll’s 4 r’s 63 http://www.ecoliteracy.org/pdf/creativity.pdf http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci µúò»½ìêà½ç¿î³ì´ó»á ¹ú¼ê¿î³ìñ𾿴ù½øð­»áö÷°ì ò»·â¸ø½ã½ãµäðå ¨c âûíþá®ä·.¶à¶ûµ� to cite this article please include all of the following details: spector, hanna. (2012). fukushima daiichi: a never-ending story of pain or outrage? transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> fukushima daiichi: a never-ending story of pain or outrage? hannah spector 1 doctoral candidate at the university of british columbia, canada the cosmopolitan cause of curriculum studies calls upon us to contradict the inevitable provincialism of knowing only one’s own field. (william pinar) there's been a quantum leap technologically in our age, but unless there's another quantum leap in human relations, unless we learn to live in a new way towards one another, there will be a catastrophe. (albert einstein) cosmopolitanism and education is a recent and quickly growing area of scholarship. “educational cosmopolitanism” – as hansen (2008) has coined this work – has been variously portrayed as a form of governmentality which includes some students and excludes the rest in its school reform design (popkewitz, 2008), critiqued as a top-down project for human rights education (todd, 2009), communicated as a subjective sense of worldliness that can be cultivated through education (pinar, 2009), and celebrated as an orientation in which teachers live morally and ethically, locally and globally in the world (hansen, 2011). a rich and diverse area of conceptual research, cosmopolitanism and education has, nevertheless, paid minimal attention to particular environmental concerns of global proportion. this paper aims to address this omission and will do so by taking up the fukushima daiichi nuclear disaster – and the human responses and lack thereof to the disaster – as a case of the “cosmopolitanization of reality” (beck, 2004, p. 131). such actually existing cosmopolitanism, i argue, requires a new global ethics of responsibility to humanity and the planet. due to the nature of this still unfolding news topic, over half of the sources that i draw from in this article come from mass media. while there are certain limitations that mass media offers to the work of scholarly writing, these sources – ranging in “legitimacy” from the new york times to japanese blogs which transcribe and translate news and updates devoted to the subject of fukushima – have nevertheless been important in gathering information on this topic and presenting it in a way that is recognizable to an academic audience. 2 given that my research is situated within curriculum and pedagogy, i also draw from a range of scholarly sources in and beyond this domain which help in theorizing this catastrophic environmental event. one of the problems we face with radioactive fallout from fukushima is the lack of information coming from “experts.” indeed, there has been a global media blackout, a “deadly silence on fukushima” (norris, 2011) which has to do, as i see it, with two issues. firstly, science still does not have the technological or methodological understanding to clean up the disaster (magwood, 2012) which has leaked into the pacific ocean and spread throughout the northern hemisphere by way of wind and rain. this invisible truth is so incomprehensible that it is easier to pretend it doesn’t exist. spector. fukushima daiichi: a never-ending story of pain or outrage? 81 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci secondly, the japanese government and tokyo electric power company (tepco) have not been forthcoming about the extent of the nuclear disaster, a disaster that could have been avoided if those in charge had acted more responsibly (tabuchi, 2012). in short, not knowing the extent of the problem combined with the suppression of information about the problem makes for difficult research. that said, in collecting and assembling small pieces of information on fukushima – or what arendt (1968) refers to as “thought fragments,” fragments of history that are “subject to the ruin of time” (p. 206), e.g., governmental reports, documentaries, news articles, blogs, fiction, poetry, political theory, world risk theory, and curriculum theory, i have worked to create a cohesive narrative which focuses upon ways the world has responded to the cosmopolitan catastrophe that is fukushima and one which encourages a greater sense of responsibility to humanity and the planet. there have been reports that since the fukushima daiichi nuclear plant meltdown began, many japanese citizens no longer trust what the government says or does because of the way it and tepco have responded to the nuclear disaster (see dusenberre, 2011; varma, 2012); i.e., with little empathy, displacement of responsibility, and denial toward the dangers of the ongoing radiation emissions to the extent of burning radioactive debris back up into the atmosphere (mochizuki, 2011) as if it were nothing other than firewood. in effect, this has led to “recreating fukushima all over again” (gundersen, 2011b). here is the logic: make the rubble – estimated at 22.53 million tons (varma, 2012) – disappear into thin air even if it (re)contaminates areas such as schools that were either safe to begin with or were previously decontaminated. get it out of sight so we do not have to think about it. this is a dangerous case of “presentism” (see pinar, 2012, p. 225-227): thinking short term because thinking long term does not compute economically, politically, or psychically. one might surmise that such presentism is tied not only to the government’s denial toward the present fukushima radiation emissions but also to a previous version of denial, and one which ignored warning signs that a nuclear meltdown at fukushima could happen. indeed, an independent investigating commission has declared fukushima “a profoundly man-made disaster – that could and should have been foreseen and prevented” (kurokawa as cited in tabuchi, 2012). pretending away the ongoing existence of the fukushima nuclear disaster, however, not only prolongs it but re/distributes it as in the case involving the united states government not so “secretly” continuing to buy food from japan without properly testing it for radioactive materials (dupre, 2011a). given that japan has one of the world’s largest fishing fleets, accounting for 15% of the global catch (central intelligence agency, 2012) and that 60%-80% of japanese fish catches since the fukushima daiichi fallout began have consistently been contaminated with radioactive cesium (roslin, 2012a) – some of which has been exported to canada (roslin, 2012b) – it might not be a good idea to eat fish if you do not know for certain where it was caught. but then again, place as a static, bounded concept does not make much difference given the fact that migrating bluefin tuna caught off the coast of san diego have shown elevated amounts of manmade radioactive isotopes – cesium-134 and cesium-137 – directly linked to fukushima, raising concerns for human health (amos, 2012). in effect, citizens of japan, the united states, and perhaps other countries could be buying cancer or other un/known illnesses at grocery line checkout counters. one suspects that it is a lack of concern for the health of a nation’s citizens and a great deal of concern for a nation’s economy that contributes to selling possibly radioactive foods. when nina abbott, a farmer out of newfoundland and labrador, requested that her land be tested to ensure she is selling safe products, neither private companies, the government, nor universities were interested “getting involved” (stein, 2011). indeed, the spector. fukushima daiichi: a never-ending story of pain or outrage? 82 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci canadian food inspection agency (as cited in roslin, 2012a) says “the amounts of cesium detected are small” despite the fact that health canada has recorded radioactive iodine levels 300 times higher in a suburb of victoria and 1,000 times higher in areas of nunavut (roslin, 2011) due to fukushima. no doubt, there is a conflict of interest at work given that canada is the largest producer of uranium in the world (natural resources canada, 2009) and that canadian uranium mining companies such as cameco are spreading their wings, recently acquiring yeelirrie, “one of australia’s largest undeveloped uranium deposits” (cameco, 2012). what is novel about these crimes against humanity and the planet is that if/when life threatening illnesses in the form of cancers and genetic mutations in a humanity yet to be born begin manifesting at greater rates in areas affected by fukushima – with hot particles found in places as far away as seattle (gundersen, 2011a), st. louis (dupre, 2011b), and boston, (gundersen, 2011c) – who or what is to blame? in cases such as these, notions of responsibility begin to lose their meaning. hannah arendt (2003) once wrote that society has a “fear of passing judgment, of naming names, of fixing blame—especially, alas, upon people in power and high position” (p. 21). even if society did not have this fear, in the case of fallout from fukushima, who is to judge, name, blame, and be held accountable? beck (2009) contends that when it comes to the “cosmopolitan moment of the ecological crisis…allocating responsibility – causality and blame – [is] breaking down” (p. 91). because of this breakdown “dangers grow as a result of being made anonymous.” at the one-year anniversary of 3/11, prime minister yoshihiko noda (as cited in griffith, 2012) announced: “rather than blaming any individual person i believe everyone has to share the pain of responsibility and learn this lesson.” the problem with this belief, as arendt (2003) succinctly put it, “where all are guilty, no one is” (p. 21). despite noda’s public announcement that no one in particular should be held responsible for the nuclear disaster, steps toward allocating responsibility have been taken. an independent japanese parliamentary report recently concluded that the government, in collusion with industry, attempted “to avoid responsibility by putting all the blame on the unexpected (the tsunami)” (tabuchi, 2012). yet, the aim of the parliamentary report was to tell factual truths (in the face of great lies) about why fukushima happened. as arendt (1954/2006) clarifies, however, simply reporting facts does not mean that action will be taken (p. 246). in contrast to the non-action of truthtelling, “the liar is free to fashion his ‘facts’ to fit the profit and pleasure…of his audience.” in this way, it is the teller of falsehoods more so than the teller of truths who acts upon the world. truthtelling, moreover, “offends profit and pleasure” (p. 247) as in the case of exposing ugly truths about pretty countries. ignoring, hiding, and falsifying the warning signs of a self-generated, imminent nuclear disaster led to the fukushima catastrophe. this is not to say that fukushima can be explained away through simple cause-effect accusations either. as beck (2009) makes clear, when it comes to the “organized irresponsibility” (p. 27-29) of global risks, a labyrinth of responsibility (p. 193) exists thereby making noda’s statement of non-responsibility and victimization palatable to a world audience. while a thinker like arendt devoted her life’s work to writing about detecting warning signs for the unprecedented – indeed, young-bruehl (2006) has called the origins of totalitarianism, the human condition, and the life of the mind books that teach us to “judge future totalitarianisms” (p. 35), to be mindful toward “the danger of conformism and its threat to freedom” (arendt, 1954/1994, p. 425), and to identify “a particular kind of lying and lack of judgment” (young-bruehl, 2006, p. 161), respectively – we are still a long way off from paying spector. fukushima daiichi: a never-ending story of pain or outrage? 83 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the kind of heedful attention to warning signs in the way arendt believes is vital to sustain the future of our planet. the novelty of fukushima is worth noting. a new and improved version of the original atomic plague is spreading across the planet through earth, air, fire, and water – yet it cannot be seen, heard, tasted, smelled, or touched. it has become part of the atmosphere. as japanese educator tsunesaburo makiguchi (2002) noted over one hundred years ago, because of its “gaseous substance…most people are oblivious to the atmosphere and the important role it plays in our lives” (p. 139). an environmental phenomenon that we often do not pay attention to, makiguchi also describes the importance that wind plays in sustaining human life: “wind not only moderates heat and cold, but also cleanses the air and makes it suitable for humans to breathe” (p. 148). we can forgive makigushi for not knowing in advance how the wind could one day bring with it lethal, human manufactured radioisotopes. the wind that begins off the coast of japan, no less, typically travels eastward across the pacific ocean making its way to the west coast of north america, which is what happened immediately after the fukushima daiichi reactor explosions. when those radioactive dust clouds turn into rain, the radionuclides become absorbed in the soil and, subsequently, the food chain. in writing for an endangered world, lawrence buell (2001) argues that “there never was an is without a where” (p. 55) when discussing environmental toxification. buell contends that “what gives definition, force, persuasion, embodiment to toxic concern are events happening at specific times in specific locations to specific beings.” in the case of fukushima, however, such specificity or particularity begins to lose its force of persuasion given the way that the fallout functions, drifting with the wind, migrating by way of fish and untold other processes. this is not to say that the people outside of the fukushima prefecture or japan have experienced fallout with the same visceral immediacy as those hit hardest by the facticity of the event; that said, fukushima is not only a local phenomenon. while cosmopolitan-minded educators like appiah (2006), pinar (2009), and hansen (2011) have argued for the importance of rootedness, subjectivity, and home, respectively, when speaking upon cosmopolitanism, following ulrich beck, we might also consider the ways in which cosmopolitan catastrophes like fukushima recall the unlikely specter of rootlessness cosmopolitan/ism. 3 when understood as a phenomenological reality, cosmopolitanism seems more rootless than it does rooted. what can be learned from studying the free floating phenomena – literally free floating given the massive amounts of flotsam buoying eastward across the pacific ocean, now washing ashore onto vancouver island (hopper, 2011) – of fukushima as pedagogy? in what ways might studying – and pinar (in press) puts “study” at the heart of the cosmopolitan curriculum enterprise (p. 6) – poetry of the past teach us to understand our present environmental circumstances? t. s. eliot’s (1922/2002) prophesy in the waste land: “fear death by water” (p. 39) takes on phenomenological immediacy in the case of fukushima as does his oft cited phrase: “i will show you fear in a handful of dust.” sixty years after the first nuclear test was detonated in the desert landscape of nevada, artist/educators elizabeth ellsworth and jamie kruse (2010) went on an educational tour of the nevada test site, a place of “sensational public pedagogy” (p. 268). 4 they worry about the wind and dust: “indications of the smallest of breezes trigger tinges of nausea” (p. 277). while there are many ways to interpret a poem of the waste land’s magnitude and which go well beyond the scope of my work here, it might be said that the great poem points to a particular and universal, a local and global future reality that is our present radioactive contaminated condition. spector. fukushima daiichi: a never-ending story of pain or outrage? 84 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci “of all things of thought,” says arendt (1958/1998), “poetry is closest to thought, and a poem is less a thing than any other work of art.” ironically, scientists and utilitarian philosophers “have never tired of pointing out how entirely ‘useless’ thought is” (p. 170) because thought thinks for its own sake rather than for producing verifiable results through tests and more tests. indeed, the obsession with testing that currently characterizes public education and school reforms has been around for quite some time. at the nevada test site, whose name was rechristened in 2010 to the nevada national security site for what are no doubt political and semantic reasons – and a name i choose not to use here for ethical and memorial reasons – 1,021 nuclear tests were carried out between 1951 and 1992. these tests were detonated “in the name of safety and progress” (ellsworth & kruse, 2010, p. 276). are lands where these tests were set off and the atmosphere that is shared with other lands safer now than before 1951? has humankind “progressed” since operation ranger, the first of the 45 atomic test series? what does a radioactive atmosphere mean for sensus communis, which is the “one faculty [that] extends to all objects of the five senses” (aquinas as cited in arendt, 1978, 1: p. 50)? common sense, the “mysterious ‘sixth sense’” allows us to break free from subjectivism. as such, the sixth sense provides human beings with a sense of “worldly reality” (arendt, 1978, 1: p. 52) in ways that using one or two senses or the cartesian cogito ergo sum do not. what would the world be like if using our senses no longer helped us make sense of the world? fukushima requires that we ask this question. the ongoing nuclear fallout is a paradigmatic case of the actually existing cosmopolitanism yet is cosmopolitan transformation, which opens up the possibility for new beginnings, occurring in the ways beck (2009, p. 48) thinks it might? as tabuchi (2012) notes, the very fact that there was an independent commission examining what went wrong at fukushima attests to “break[ing] with precedent in japan.” while germany plans to fully shut down their nuclear plants by 2022 (baetz, 2011), the united kingdom and canada have tried to downplay fukushima so that their plans to build nuclear power plants will not be derailed (edwards, 2011; mitsui, 2012). the united states government, moreover, has not done testing for hazardous radionuclides that have contaminated its soil since the fukushima disaster began (kaltofen, 2011). here is the paradox: as a cosmopolitan catastrophe, fukushima daiichi is simultaneously enforced and denied. it is enforced in that we cannot run away from radiation that has already crossed over the entire northern hemisphere. what about the japanese people whose homeland is a series of islands? our world, for that matter, is an island. where to run? where to hide? what to do? at the same time, official reports have denied the extent of this boundary-transgressing catastrophe in both overt and covert ways. one year after fukushima began, national public radio reported that “trauma, not radiation is [the] key concern in japan” (harris, 2012). trauma is obviously a serious issue, and one that is not being addressed sufficiently based on the few news articles being reported on this subject. at the same time, focusing upon trauma as being more worrisome than possible effects of radiation contamination deflects from the crime that created the trauma to begin with, a crime that will last days, decades, and millennia into the future depending on what type of radionuclide we are talking about. this paradox – of fukushima being at once enforced and denied – sets humanity on a course of global destruction, begging us to remember the key theme in hannah arendt’s (1958/1998) book the human condition: “think what we are doing” (p. 5). in light of the way that the japanese government has been dealing with the nuclear crisis, some citizens have taken their health into their own hands by buying geiger counters to measure radiation levels. rather than empathizing with concerned citizens about their anxieties, the japanese government has responded by calling for a stop to citizens taking radiation spector. fukushima daiichi: a never-ending story of pain or outrage? 85 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci measurements because the instruments, they say, might not show accurate readings (mochizuki, 2011). it has also been reported that the japanese government blocked 25,000 geiger counters from coming into the country (noland, 2011). in another instance, the government has attempted to quell the fears of citizens living in minamisoma, fukushima, by trimming two inches of topsoil off an elementary school baseball field. the school principal promises that the field will see sports action in april 2012 (macleod, 2012); yet citizens are not convinced that trimming topsoil will solve the problem of radiation contamination. another elementary school in ishinomaki, japan, lost 74 children and 10 teachers to the tsunami; a disaster that could have been prevented if the teachers would have taken the children up onto a nearby hill. kazutaka sato, a father of one of the children who died when the tsunami hit the school, is still waiting for a “heartfelt apology” from school officials (macleod, 2012). if the heart cannot heal, how can it move on? in yet another instance, at the japanese upper house budget committee meeting (2011), female politician akira matsu tells the story of several fukushima school children, who had already tested positive for cesium, being “treated like traitors during the war” for not drinking what might have been cesium contaminated school milk. in other words, patriotism for a child from fukushima means that s/he must be ready and willing to die for its prefecture before disgracing it. as matsu tells this story, she says to chief cabinet secretary, osamu fujimura, “chief cabinet secretary, listen to me without laughing! please listen to me carefully, this is very important. please do not laugh at me, this is no laughing matter.” beck (2009) speaks of “the planetary sense of pain” (p. 69) the world felt after the 2004 asian tsunami. the images pouring out into people’s living rooms across the world – of people drowning, of homes being wiped away, of corpses and coffins, “breaks the world’s collective heart,” beck adds. watching a massive wave wipe out entire towns and villages does shock and sadden the human heart, but the heart can heal when those same towns and villages are rebuilt and people have the freedom to return to where they and their ancestors have spent their lives. 3/11, which is an earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster wrapped up in one, is a different story. unlike the experience of watching the wave, humanity sees explosions all the time. just turn on the television. just go to the movies. just play a video game. the world has become immune to seeing explosions. herein lays the irony. the people from fukushima will not be rebuilding their homes after their explosion. they cannot start over or hit the replay button. rather, they are forced to live in other regions, some still clinging to the belief that they will be able to one day go home. in a perverse twist of circumstances, it might be safer for former fukushima residents to return to the 20 kilometer no-go zone than live out their lives in a ‘safer’ zone because these people are being victimized and criminalized by others in their new prefectures. there are reports of school children from fukushima who have since relocated to other schools being bullied by other students for being “contaminated” (jacobs, 2011; hartmann, 2011). cars with fukushima license plates are being vandalized (jacobs, 2012) and have been denied gas station service in other prefectures (jacobs, 2011). at the fukushima nuclear disaster – one year later conference, i witnessed aya marumori, the executive director of health at the japanese non-profit group called crms, stand at the front of the conference auditorium, only to begin her story with an apology for what fukushima has done to the world. “i have known the danger of nuclear power plants, but i have not acted enough to stop it. i like to apologize that this has happened, and radiation has been defusing to the world” (see radio ecoshock, 2012). her opening words broke the collective heart of everyone in that room. refugees flee places in order to seek refuge. derrida (2001) speaks upon the creation of “cities of refuge,” or safe havens, for the stateless or displaced person. what happens when fleeing spector. fukushima daiichi: a never-ending story of pain or outrage? 86 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci danger turns into more danger, but of a totally different, un/anticipated kind? where to go? what to do? how to feel safe? not only have tens of thousands of people lost their belongings, their right to belong has been left in/definitely in abeyance. the stories of the triple disaster ought to break the human heart like the 2004 asian tsunami did, but its “symbolic code” (beck, 2009, p. 67-71) makes people mad more than it does sad. when dr. helen caldicott (1978/1994) wrote her book nuclear madness, she was referring to the insanity of building and using nuclear power. the book’s title takes on new meaning in the case of fukushima where the threat of radiation contamination is making everyday people turn on each other, senselessly. this madness is being directed at the people of fukushima who are being scapegoated for criminal acts of which they are the victims. we have seen this happen before not only in fact but in fiction. in the patriarchal, environmentally hazardous world of margaret atwood’s (1985/1998) novel the handmaid’s tale, women turn on women rather than on those who oppress them. after the “exploding atomic power plants, along the san andreas fault, nobody’s fault, during the earthquakes, and the mutant strain of syphilis no mold could touch. some [women]…had themselves tied shut” (p. 112) because they were afraid of giving birth to “unbabies” (p. 113). these women are referred to by other women as “jezebels” for taking possession of their own bodies, “scorning god’s gifts!” (p. 112). when atwood’s book was published in 1985, it was read as fiction. when we read it today, alongside what we know about chernobyl’s radiation effects on human health (see busby & yablokov, 2006) and the scientifically confirmed cases of “serious mutation-related health effects in fallujah” (busby, hamden, & ariabi, 2010) after the second persian gulf war where novel chemical weapons were used by the united states military, perhaps containing depleted uranium (du), 5 fiction has become fact, and the imagined future written about in the past has become the present in hypermodern, not hyperreal, real time. the soaring rate of birth defects in children of fallujah (fisk, 2012a, 2012b), particular those of the heart are similar to those novel defects found in children from belarus and ukraine as recounted in the noted documentary film, chernobyl heart (deleo, 2003). the decision to use chemical weapons and to cut safety corners when using nuclear power for energy purposes is both thoughtless in the arendtian sense, and heartless, in the sense that spent nuclear fuel – fuel that is no longer useful for energy purposes but is highly useful when making chemical weapons – is literally giving birth to deformed hearts. “the miracle that saves the world,” says arendt (1958/1998, p. 247) is natality, “love’s own product.” yet when love becomes contaminated in the form of chromosomal abnormalities by way of human manufactured radiation (briffa, 1996) lovers can quite literally give birth to unspeakable kinds of child deform. as mentioned, it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to draw an empirical link between genetic deformities via radiation contamination and “school deform” (pinar, 2012) via back-tobasics policies and procedures which centers education on rote learning and memorization of information. that said, maxine greene (1995) reminds us of the importance that using one’s imagination plays in ethical considerations. former student of arendt whose analysis of the faculty of the imagination is well noted (see arendt, 1978), greene (1995) suggests that “the recovery of imagination lessens the social paralysis we see around us and restores the sense that something can be done in the name of what is decent and humane” (p. 35). in this way, imagination acts as a metaphoric bridge between heart deform and school deform. pinar (2012) speaks of school deform as those american educational reforms that have been in action since the soviets launched sputnik in 1957, prompting the united states to turn public education into “an instrument of military and industrial recruitment” (lasch as cited in pinar, 2012, p. 103-104), spector. fukushima daiichi: a never-ending story of pain or outrage? 87 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci a political agenda which is “anti-intellectual and undemocratic” (p. 103). we have more news on the front of federal school reforms in a letter sent to president obama by the president’s council of advisors on science and technology (2012), of which i cite the opening paragraph: dear mr. president, we are pleased to present you with this report, engage to excel: producing one million additional college graduates with degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, prepared for you by the president’s council of advisors on science and technology (pcast). this report provides a strategy for improving stem education during the first two years of college that we believe is responsive to both the challenges and the opportunities that this crucial stage in the stem education pathway presents. dramatist friedrich durrenmatt (as cited in beck, 2009) states that “[i]f you start out with a story you must think it through to its conclusion” (p. 129). following durrenmatt, the story i propose to tell is that school deforms can lead to other kinds of deforms as gruesome as those found in the children of chernobyl and fallujah. the worst case scenario of producing one million new college graduates trained under stem, which begins well before college, is to produce scientists whose main mission is not so different than mary shelley’s victor frankenstein or alfred lord tennyson’s ulysses who ends his dramatic monologue with those imposing words: “to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.” shelley understood all too well what is at stake in not yielding to the acquisition of new knowledge at any cost. working inside the most radioactive areas of chernobyl’s sarcophagus, nuclear physicist konstantin chercherov (as cited in briffa, 1996) explains the feeling he experienced when he and his team of scientists had finally discovered where the nuclear fuel (corium) was radiating from and what it looked like: maybe it is bad of me, but i must admit as a researcher, i was filled with joy – when i realized exactly what i found, it was sheer delight. it’s comparable to the excitement of a scientist studying volcanic lava. it’s incredibly interesting. inspirational. we do know one thing for certain: chercherov knows how to feel. how his heart has been formed over the course of his life’s education, nonetheless, remains uncertain. what fills the scientist’s heart with joy – the discovery of new information – can be said to stand at odds with the heart of the poet – whose joys are found in making meaningful, aesthetic objects with words. arendt (1958/1998) explains that if a poem is memorable, it will also be durable and, therefore, “permanently fixed in the recollection of humanity” (p. 170). written near the end of the 8 th century b.c., homer’s epic poetry has lasted a long time. so have the egyptian pyramids, built approximately 2,600 b.c. while we have yet to see images of what fukushima daiichi’s ruins and relics look like on the inside, chernobyl’s can be seen in the many photographs taken by scientists of the stalactite and stalagmite lava formations of corium, a material that is created from the most serious level of nuclear accidents. these highly radioactive art works, such as the prized “elephant’s foot,” nicknamed by scientists for its shape, will radiate into the future for 100,000 years. indeed, the scientist’s work has a good chance of outlasting that of even the greatest of poems, the greatest of sculptures. it is only the scientist, however, who cares to wander through the chambers of chernobyl’s sarcophagus as if it were that of king tut’s. spector. fukushima daiichi: a never-ending story of pain or outrage? 88 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the country of finland has come up with a novel way of dealing with their radioactive waste from the onkalo nuclear power plant. they are burying it in russian-doll like canisters 1,000 feet below the earth’s surface. because the material emits deadly levels of radiation for 100,000 years, the scientists involved with working on the deep geological repository are in disagreement over the ways to let future generations know to stay away from this underground site, referred to as “the chamber you must always remember to forget” (lense-møller, 2010) in the documentary film on its subject, into eternity. some want to cover up their tracks completely as if no repository exists, hoping that it will never be discovered by future generations; others want to create an ornate system of complex warning signs at the mouth of the repository and down into the different tunnels. studies show, however, that a skull and crossbones, for example, means different things to different people. and the universal symbol for radiation has also been interpreted as that of an angel, an image that exists in many world religions. moreover, human curiosity, at least since the 16 th century when archeological digging began, wants to know what secrets lay below the earth’s surface. perhaps because of human curiosity, proposals have been made “to establish a nuclear priesthood, which would hand down the sacred knowledge from generation to generation” (solnit as cited in ellsworth & kruse, 2010, p. 277). in short, there is no consensus on what to do with a problem beyond the human capacity to deal responsibly with it. despite the silence on fukushima, stories of its survivors and the crimes surrounding the nuclear disaster are being leaked, mostly in the form of indymedia (dupre, 2011b) such as blogs that transcribe and translate reports from japanese into english (e.g., ex-skf: covering fukushima i [daiichi] nuclear accident since march 11, 2011). these blogs call out to the world: please read me, think about me, feel me, and listen to me. this is happening to you, too. in her book if you love this planet: a plan to save the earth, helen caldicott (2009) states that “the only cure” to healing the planet “is love” (p. 235). at the same time, caldicott is a long time anti-nuclear activist who calls on the public and government for legislation reforms. yet the lies and complicity between the nuclear industry, japanese government, and researchers from universities – which is referred to in japan as the “nuclear power village” to connote “the nontransparent, collusive interests” (onishi & belson, 2011) of those in power whose “philosophy is economy comes first” (naka as cited in hano, 2012) – are not interested in curing the world through love or legislation. in other words, loving the planet, which includes loving our fellow human beings and other in/sentient beings and loving profit and pleasure appear to be working at counter purposes. i appreciate beck’s (2009) point that “allocating responsibility – causality and blame” (p. 91) for ecological crises is difficult. at the same time, building nuclear power plants on top of or near fault lines – which has been the case not only in japan but in the united states and china, too (see casselman and spegele, 2011) – is an outrage to common sense, an outrage that the ancient greek tragedians warned mankind against in their critiques of hubris. more outrageous is that tepco has forged documents, falsified data, and faked repairs on its nuclear plants for decades (spiegel online, 2011; suguako as cited in hano, 2012). as reed (2008) notes, japan has a “serious corruption problem” at the highest levels (p. 398) and a long history of corruption broadly speaking dating back to the heian period (mitchell as cited in pascha, 1999, p. 6). apart from the problem of national corruption, it was the united states that brought nuclear energy to japan, first by bombing hiroshima and nagasaki and then as eisenhowerian “atoms for peace” in the form of electricity. such “peaceful” uses of atomic power, however, “were pursued within a violent reality—that of a nation capable of bombing its own land and people in the name of spector. fukushima daiichi: a never-ending story of pain or outrage? 89 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci safety and progress” (ellsworth & kruse, 2010, p. 276), the nevada test site and hanford site in washington state being the most potent of places. american corporation general electric (ge), no less, built the faultily designed “mark i” reactor in fukushima daiichi which has likely contributed to the ongoing catastrophe (zeller, 2011). the same defective mark i design, by the way, has twenty-three sister reactors scattered throughout the united states (dedman, 2011). ge’s longtime trademark slogan, “we bring good things to life,” and its recent rebranding to “imagination at work” are mottos as ironic as any words ever spoken by king oedipus. such coopting of the term imagination adds yet another layer of irony to what maxine greene (1995) had in mind when writing on this subject. indeed, assigning causality and blame for ecological risks turned crises is complicated. yet, of all nations, it is australia who has acknowledged “special responsibility” (ludlam, 2012) for the fukushima disaster. on the one year anniversary, senator scott ludlam of western australia spoke these words to the public: where did the iodine come from? we know where it came from: uranium from kakadu and central south australia, shipped under humid darwin skies, refined and loaded into japanese nuclear reactors; uranium broken in fission reactors into isotopes previously unknown on the planet-cesium 137, iodine 131, strontium 90 and plutonium 29…the australian government took seven months to disclose that australian uranium was in each of the reactors at fukushima-australian fission products poisoning the ocean, the food chain and the gene pool of japan's pacific coast. that is the worst nightmare of all for the aboriginal elders and campaigners and their supporters, who have dedicated their lives to preventing precisely this kind of horror. in juxtaposition to ludlam’s speech, prime minister noda (as cited in garnaut, 2012) had these words to say at the 2012 nuclear security summit. japan was “lulled into a ‘myth of safety’,” adding, a “man-caused act of sabotage will test our imaginations far more than any natural disaster.” certainly tohoko was a natural disaster, but let us not be lulled into believing that tohoko and fukushima are one in the same thing even though noda and the japanese government have packaged it as such. in the words of former japanese prime minister naoto kan (as cited in hano, 2012), the fukushima nuclear disaster “is a mistake of those responsible. they simply did not do what was required. the cause of the catastrophe was not the earthquake and tsunami.” while kan recognizes that mistakes were made (as the political expression goes), his words do not make clear who is responsible. we know that since then, an independent investigating committee has placed collective blame on industry-government in its report. still, no individuals have been held accountable. it seems rather unlikely that politicians or scientists will form book clubs to read and contemplate together how drama, poetry, and other genres of literature could, along with legislation and scientific knowledge-acquisition, help save us from ourselves and the planet from us. broadly speaking, scientists are trained to think literally, to use the scientific method to study and experiment upon the physical world, and to continually refine these practices. moreover, the more orthodox social scientists, like james gregor (as cited in luban, 1984), contend that using metaphors in one’s work is akin to second-rate research. using narrative inquiry in political science, gregor says, cannot “predict events” (p. 247) but only helps us to understand past events. while narrative thinking certainly does allow us to reflect on the past, narrative has also helped humanity to foresee things to come whether in the form of political theorizing, dystopian fictions, greek tragedy, or modern poetry. what can be said about such narratives is that the spector. fukushima daiichi: a never-ending story of pain or outrage? 90 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci writers behind the narratives – e.g., hannah arendt, ulrich beck, margaret atwood, sophocles, and t.s. eliot to name the writers i cite in my work here – each use their minds (through the process of thinking) and hearts (through the less process-oriented experience of feeling) in writing works designed to provoke their readers to act thoughtfully and lovingly upon the world – not to dominate it or ourselves. the various narratives that might be called “field manuals” – to recall young-bruehl’s (2006) description of the origins of totalitarianism – for detecting warning signs of a future yet to come, nevertheless, do not predict the future in the same ways that science attempts to control it. reading such field manuals carefully requires not only studying the language of the texts closely but imagining the ways in which the stories recounted resonate with the concerns that sociological risk theory raises. risk theory, we are reminded, aims to predict the unpredictable. in the language of risk theory, a correlation exists between the worst case scenario and “organized irresponsibility” (beck, 2009, p. 28). under the “three pillars of the risk calculus” (p. 28): 1. “irreparable global harms…cannot be limited”; 2. “precautionary aftercare…is impossible” because outcomes cannot be gauged in advance; 3. it is “an event with a beginning but no end.” in the same way that lying leads to more lies to cover up the initial lie in ways that cannot be predicted, organized irresponsibility becomes a trap in which more organized irresponsibility ensues. kant (1785) contends that lying and telling the truth is under no condition a matter of taste or preference. in the case of the fukushima disaster, which is but a series of cover-ups, forgeries, and lies, the categorical imperative would seem to hold universal appeal. though stories about fukushima are being leaked, many are being muzzled not only by the central government who has abandoned the villagers of namie but by non-fukushima japanese citizens who see the people of fukushima as the culprits. what happens when the stories of fukushima are not told because no one is interested in listening to them? how can the world start anew? arendt via saint augustine contends that beginning the world anew occurs through acts of “friendship, forgiveness, and social bonding,” otherwise known as neighborly love (scott & stark, 1996, p. 181). sayomi (as cited in bbc, 2012), a mother of one of the children who died in the tohoko earthquake and tsunami, tells us who listen to her story: “for people in authority as long as it’s not their own child who’s dead, as long as they are not the ones living in radioactive areas, they don’t care.” the ethics of care sayomi is in/directly calling for is resonant with the kind of global ethics of responsibility i summon as part of the work of a cosmopolitan education. while i have argued that cosmopolitanism ought to also be understood as globally significant phenomenon, a cosmopolitan education centralizes ethical responsibility to our close and not-so-distant world neighbors and to our home, planet earth. there are tragic events that have brought the world together as in the case of the 2004 tsunami. moreover, stories, which are shared with people in a community, are crucial for the survival of that community. as appiah (2006) reminds, “we wouldn’t recognize a community as human if it had no stories” (p. 29). concerned that the young people of ukraine are forgetting about the story of chernobyl due to daily life demands, historian natalja baranowskaja (as cited in de halleux, 2011) states, “a man lives and remains a man as long as he remembers.” that said, in the distant future, there will be an earth-shattering story that must not be remembered; it is told to us today in the refrain found in the documentary film on finland’s nuclear waste repository: the chamber you must always remember to forget (lense-møller, 2010). if this story is not forgotten, if it gets out and is spread to all of humanity, it will be the last story humankind is to spector. fukushima daiichi: a never-ending story of pain or outrage? 91 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci tell. in this way, what it means to be a human being will be, if it is not already, totally and forever transformed. notes 1 hannah.spector@alumni.ubc.ca 2 additionally, i attended the fukushima nuclear disaster – one year later conference held at simon fraser university, march 10-12, 2012. at the conference, i spoke with a variety of presenters and participants on reliable sources of information on fukushima and have drawn from many of the recommended resources in this paper. 3 as “rooted cosmopolitan” thinker appiah (2007, p. 213) notes, it was hitler and stalin who used the code language “rootless cosmopolitans” for anti-semitism. stalin claimed that cosmopolitans were “anti-patriot[ic]” (see azadovskii & egorov, 2002, p. 67) jewish intellectuals who must be purged. 4 reputed ecopedagogue, richard kahn (2008b) has likewise written a compelling article in the domain of pedagogy on the “[t]echnoscientific marvels” (p. 4) conducted at the nevada test site. he juxtaposes the so-called “objective” and “universal” (p. 2) findings done here by atomic weapons experts with the medicinal research and practices of indigenous populations located in the same region whose aims are “community healing” (p. 1). kahn’s (2008a) ecopedagogy has its roots in freirian critical pedagogy, an orientation that goes beyond the scope of my own in this paper. nevertheless, his articulation of an ecopedagogy which is premised upon a universal ecological ethic (p. 8) is highly compelling given the factual truth of ecological and environmental devastations that have never-ending effects upon a universal-global environmental reality. 5 while the united states government has denied using du in their weapons during the war, there have been reports to suggest otherwise (see wagner & thurn, 2004). if this toxic metal was used, this would be a novel way of getting rid of a country’s radioactive waste. of course, it is never really gotten rid of given that the halflife of uranium-238 is 4.48 billion years and for uranium-235 it is 700 million years. that said, the world health organization’s (2003) most upto-date fact sheet on du indicates that there are no reproductive or development effects on human beings exposed to this metal through inhaling dust particles or otherwise. baverstock (2006), however, points out that there have been no long term studies done on uranium toxicity. moreover, his research indicates that “uranium is potentially genotoxic and therefore probably a carcinogen” (p. 5). the debates surrounding the risks associated with using and being exposed to du act as an example for what beck (2009) calls the unpredictability, uncertainty, and indeterminability of a world at risk. references amos, j. 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(2011). experts had long criticized potential weakness in design of stricken reactor. the new york times. retrieved from: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/16/world/asia/16contain.html?_r=2&hp spector. fukushima daiichi: a never-ending story of pain or outrage? 97 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci submitted: september, 12 nd , 2012. approved: november, 01 st , 2012. to cite this article please include all of the following details: smith, bryan, ng-a-fook, nicholas, berry, sara & spence, kevin. (2011). deconstructing a curriculum of dominance: teacher education, colonial frontier logics, and residential schooling. transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> deconstructing a curriculum of dominance: teacher education, colonial frontier logics, and residential schooling bryan smith 1 , nicholas ng-a-fook 2 , sara berry 3 & kevin spence 4 university of ottawa, canada the elimination of language has always been a primary stage in a process of cultural genocide. this was the primary function of the residential school. (fred, 1988) an animal bellows in the backdrop. a voice yells, “hurry up!” a car tramples the chicken wire that makes up the rabbit-proof fence . . . and colonial violence makes its entrance into this filmic scene. a mother yells. holding hands mothers and daughters run. constable riggs steps out of the car and shouts, “come for the three girls, maude!” “no!” she screams. “this is my kids! mine!” “it’s the law maude,” he says. the two mothers continue to scream, “no!” “you got no say in it,” the constable continues. he grabs the girls and throws them one by one into the back of the car. the mothers continue to yell… “no! mine!” “move one inch,” riggs tells the girls, “and i'll lock your mother up!” “neville's their legal guardian.” crying, a mother pleads, “give me back my daisy!” riggs responds, “i've got the papers, maude!” he tells the girls, “don’t move!” their grandmother tries one more time to save them. constable riggs responds, “nothing you can do old girl, nothing you can do old girl.” the scene ends with molly, daisy, and gracie staring out the rearview window at their grandmother hitting herself repeatedly to the head with a rock, mothers collapsed with grief on the red soil, wailing, disappearing in the distance alongside the rabbit proof fence, the longest colonial fence in smith, ng-a-fook, berry & spence. deconstructing a curriculum of dominance 54 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the world, keeping rabbits on one side, and the farmland on the other. the narrative plot of people occupying foreign lands, enclosing the commons within reservations and reserves, building schools, taking children from their families, implementing a curriculum of assimilation, forcibly institutionalizing a child’s residency at vocational schools, brutally violating indigenous cultures, languages, bodies, minds, spirits, hearts and indenturing their servitude to the colony, is not merely relegated to movies and their filmic narratives, nor contained historically and presently within the national borders of countries like australia. for us, we four authors, the presence of colonial frontier logics put forth in films like the rabbit proof fence, and its respective traumatic narratives, was deeply rooted and taught as a curriculum of absence at the different schools we attended (and to a large extent teach at) across canada. and, for many of us, such curricular absence continued within the curriculum presented to us during our teacher education. therefore, in this article we write collaboratively toward deconstructing how we might redress such present absences in the curriculum through our current occupations, research, and intellectual studies as a canadian curriculum theory project. as ng-a-fook (2007, 2009) suggests elsewhere such deconstructive work involves tracing genealogies, and uncovering the contextual political and historical layers from which certain narratives emerge, are promised, and made possible through the stories and respective national mythologies we tell one another in schools and its respective curricula. the province of ontario, albeit not globally alone, continues to invest in narrative capital which attempts to reproduce standardized subjects, with a common curriculum, and thus disseminate its empire through ideological apparatuses—juridical, educational, medical, religious, etc.—which makes the subject of deconstruction, and the deconstruction of a curriculum of dominance all the more pressing today. such curriculum of neo/colonial dominance—history textbooks, curriculum policies, popular films, and so on—continues to work here in ontario to create myths about the aboriginal and nonaboriginal creation stories we tell (or don’t tell) each other. moreover, such creation stories as donald (in-press) makes clear, work to represent the beliefs canadian citizens hold regarding the narrative genesis of our nation-state. in turn, the stories we (don’t) tell each other through the public school curriculum about the birth of our country, as donald writes, have a significant impact on the institutional, political, and cultural character of the country, as well as the narrative preoccupations of its future citizens. donald (2009) theorizes that canadian institutions perpetuate the colonial establishment of the fort. “universities and schools,” donald suggests, “are predicated on colonial frontier logics and have both served to enforce epistemological and social conformity to euro -western standards” (p. 4). therefore educational institutions re/imagined as academic forts helps us to better understand how they create and perpetuate certain inherent institutional barricades that in turn obstruct the engagement of aboriginal learners (or international students) and contribute to the violent pedagogical and epistemic curricular reproductions of exclusion and displacement. according to donald, the symbol of the fort perpetuates a colonial frontier logic that forces some individuals to remain outside the walls of canadian institutions. often when ‘outsiders’ attempt to enter such institutions (forts), they are asked or even forced to give up their way of life and in turn reconstruct their subjectivity as a curriculum of radical hope (lear, 2008). therefore educational forts, like residential schools, represented (at least for the colonial governments) the pinnacle of ‘civilization’ and ‘progress’ set up to bring a benevolent curriculum of civilization to the ‘uncivilized outsiders.’ in response to such colonial frontier logics, we weave our writings within the interstitial temporal margins of our lived experiences to co-produce narratives assemblages and attempt to understand how colonial frontier logics work to displace indigenous histories and epistemologies to the peripheries of what constitutes a curriculum of dominance within the ontario public schooling system (weenie, 2008). much like ng-a-fook, sheridan and noble (2011), “our narrative assemblages seek smith, ng-a-fook, berry & spence. deconstructing a curriculum of dominance 55 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci to render curriculum theorizing [...] as an aesthetic form of production” (p. 5). in turn, each author is provided a space in which they can articulate lived experiences with such curricular absences in a way that accommodates not only their preferred method of deconstructing a curriculum of dominance but also their epistemic commitments. through the assemblage of these narratives, inspired to some extent by the methodology of métissage (hasebe-ludt, chambers and leggo, 2009), we create a space for a dialectic through which we each deconstruct the colonial frontier logics that have shaped our understandings of lived experiences with a curriculum of dominance. our collective writing creates narrative assemblages in the following ways: 1. through a textual analysis, bryan smith looks at the ways in which authorized textbooks make possible the conditions through which silences are made viable and as a consequence, legitimize the continued hegemony of colonial logics. 2. using film analysis, sara berry examines how films such as the rabbit proof fence and where the spirit lives can generate a praxial space that works to deconstruct and transcend colonial frontier logics; interrogating dominant historical narratives, and revisiting those that have been silenced. 3. reflecting on educational interactions provides a space for kevin spence to re/engage his classroom practice and confront his own colonial frontier logics. 4. nicholas ng-a-fook asks us to reconsider the limit-situations that define our understandings of history. reflecting on his teaching praxis with teacher education students, he discusses some of the ways in which we can engage our limit-situations and reflect on ontological and epistemological understandings of our relationships with colonial histories. as scholars working from different professional vantage points (as a professor, graduate students, and practicing public and catholic school teachers) our writing creates a curricular space that both re-inscribes and disrupts historical narratives, while taking them apart, reassembling them, disassembling them and then starting the process again (ng-a-fook, robayo-sheridan, & noble, 2011). our disassembling and reassembling of history textbooks, films, and autobiographies is caught betwixt-and-between the margins of what we might call the narrative chronotopes of third spaces (bhabha, 1994; ng-a-fook, 2009; wang, 2009). one of the ways to engage displaced knowledge is narrative métissage (hasebe-ludt, chambers, and leggo, 2009). for us, narrative métissage as a life writing methodology provides a curricular method through which we might develop empathy with others who have experienced education as trauma. our radical hope is that such work, at least for us as educators, can begin to redress the detrimental and traumatic effects of a curriculum of colonial dominance, yet without any predetermined promise. absence and sanitization: residential schooling, textbooks, and historical narratives my interest in textbooks arises out of the experiences i had as a student. for me, the text was knowledge which perhaps isn’t all that surprising given that, “textbooks in canada have played a crucially important role in education because of their ubiquitous role in classrooms” (clark, 2006, p. 1067). apple (2004) even goes as far as to argue that in the united states (and i would argue canada), “the curriculum is the textbook” (p. 188, original emphasis). the hegemony of this particular form o f textual document creates conditions in which the textbook becomes the arbiter of truth. experiences in classroom settings both as a student and a teacher have lent credence to the belief that the text comes to constitute acceptable forms of knowledge and engagement with historical ideas. even at the postsmith, ng-a-fook, berry & spence. deconstructing a curriculum of dominance 56 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci secondary level, where ideas are subjected to greater levels of scrutiny, i found myself still fervently reading textbooks because exams were generally devised around the ideas held therein. in this sense, the textbook regulated and shaped both the curriculum as program/course outline and curriculum as an experiential endeavour with education. it is for these reasons that i commit myself epistemologically to a project of unravelling the complexities and curricular dominance enacted through textbooks. the notable absence of aboriginal residential schooling from my lived experiences serves to highlight an intellectual and curricular gap in the sharing of our individual and collective histories. such curricular gaps can be traced to curricular materials that are used as the basis for teaching history to many of the teacher candidates. in ontario, the grade ten history course, a compulsory course designed to teach students about the history of canada since the first world war, effectively serves to silence the difficulty of the residential schooling experiences through two separate mechanisms: curtailing the articulation of these experiences or, when present, sanitizing the history in what is ostensibly an attempt to make the experiences more palatable or congruent with the colonial logics put forth in the texts. as a consequence, the trauma of residential schooling and the tensions that have inhered in aboriginal/euro-canadian relations is displaced in favour of colonial narratives that privilege a history of ‘progress’ over a history of contention and violence. in terms of the official curriculum documents used to outline the course of study for ontario secondary students, the absence of residential schooling is absolute. nowhere in the canadian and world studies curriculum document (ministry of education, 2005) does the requirement to teach residential schooling experiences exist 5 . this totalized absence translates into similar (but not complete) absences in the textbooks used to teach the ontario curriculum. this is perhaps no surprise given the ministry of education’s (2006) mandate that requires textbooks to, “support at least 85 per cent of the expectations for a kindergarten learning area, an elementary subject in a specific grade, or a secondary course” (p. 7). this presents a problem – the lack of curricular requirements around residential schooling translates into a dearth of content in the textbooks themselves. the textbooks present content on residential schooling in two ways. first, they tend to minimize the importance of residential schooling in canadian history by precluding any comprehensive discussion (a consequence of the aforementioned curricular exclusion). looking through many of the texts available to educators and students, we find that numerous texts dedicate only a few pages to discussions of residential schooling. in fact, most texts dedicate less than five pages to any sort of discussion (including quick mentions and glossaries). most of these textbooks are longer than four hundred pages. yet, the texts frequently dedicate less than one percent of the potential space to a discussion of the expansive set of encounters with euro-canadians that shaped the emotional and educational experiences of the first peoples. if we compare this to the only native studies textbook approved for use in ontario, aboriginal peoples in canada (reed, beeds, elijah, lickers & mcleod, 2011), which dedicates an entire chapter to the topic, it becomes clear that ontario history texts operate to minimize the pedagogical importance of residential schools in relation to the grand narrative of canadian history thereby displacing the violence in favour of more palatable discussions. quantifying historical inclusions however only accounts for the presence or absence of narratives. this brings us to my second point: namely, the existing narratives that are present are largely sanitized for the high school student reader. this in turn creates conditions in which students are unable to contend and address the curricular violence in any great depth. in those instances in which residential schooling is discussed, i found that the texts discuss the experiences in ways that mitigate the representation of violence. in so doing, students are unable to recognize the violence, colonial logics or lasting consequences of the residential schooling tragedy in enough detail to address the difficulty that inheres in such a history. smith, ng-a-fook, berry & spence. deconstructing a curriculum of dominance 57 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci for example, many of the texts acknowledge the violence that existed in the schools but do not provide enough detail to elicit a response that may encourage the student to confront the colonial frontier logics of the narrative: frequently, students who broke the rules were severely punished (fielding, evans, haskingswinner, mewhinney, robertson, sly & terry, 2001, p. 99). students were severely punished if they were caught speaking their own languages (quinlan, baldwin, mahoney, & reed, 2008, p. 68). traditional religious practices were forbidden, and if the children spoke their own language, they were severely punished (newman, aitken, eaton, holland, montgomery & riddoch, 2000, p. 186). many aboriginal students suffered emotionally, spiritually, and mentally. some experienced physical and sexual abuse (bogle, d’orazio, & quinlan, 2006, p. 297). while we are certainly not asking authors to publish grotesque or overly disturbing representations of residential schooling experiences, we do suggest that the representations available are oversimplified and ambiguous. consequently, this understates the violence enacted against both aboriginal cultures and bodies in residential schools. unlike rabbit proof fence, these texts sanitize the historical experiences of residential school survivors, effectively inhibiting, i contend, their capacity to elicit an emotional response. if we compare this to the native studies text, we get an even better sense of how sanitized the articulations are: punishment was the main means of control used in the residential schools, and, unfort unately, it was often very harsh and cruel punishment, such as the withholding of meals, confinement, strapping, and public humiliation (reed et al., 2011, p. 350). this excerpt, in conjunction with a detailed narrative from a survivor on the same page, provides the reader with a greater sense of the forms of violence, which, in turn, makes possible a better engagement with the violence and colonial nature around common articulations of residential schooling. for example, the text offers the following from fred kelly, an elder with the ojibway of onigaming: my very first memory of my entry into the school is a painful flashback. for whatever reason, i am thrown into a kneeling position. my head is bashed against a wooden cupboard by the boys' supervisor. instant shock, the nauseating smell of ether, more spanking, then numbness; sudden fear returns at the sight of the man. (reed et al., 2011, p. 350) while each of us recognize that the existence of a native studies course may assist in bringing into consciousness the histories of aboriginal groups, we also agree with tupper and cappello (2008) who argue that, “offering native studies as a stand-alone course for students might appear to be well intentioned, [but] the reality is that this separation further marginalizes the lives and experiences of aboriginal peoples” (p. 561). as a course that is neither mandatory nor popular with high school students, we are left with a circumstance in which the few sanitized articulations of residential smith, ng-a-fook, berry & spence. deconstructing a curriculum of dominance 58 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci schooling come to be the official and accepted understandings. as a means of confronting these problems, we suggest that there are a few ways to address the colonial logics and violence that shaped the educational experiences of aboriginal students and the implications this has for teachers. viewing film as a medium for addressing traumatic histories i situate my writing, and my story from within a traumatic third space—somewhere between the grand narrative of the european colonizer and that of the colonized aboriginal. both stories are my own. however, over time, one story has collided with, discounted and superseded the other, leaving behind another displaced narrative calling itself to be re-visited and re-written. consequently, as a teacher and former graduate student, i aim to reflect upon, re-write and redress lost memories through a medium that both students and teachers can relate to very well; namely, media. film can address traumatic histories. it has the power to generate a praxial space where personal and collective identities, as well as suppressed knowledges are challenged, re-worked, and reformed in relation to curriculum. moreover, film serves as a window through which we may “read” into various curricular texts for the purpose of navigating the messages and meanings inherent in the language of curriculum. in what follows, i provide a brief deconstruction of two films and their pedagogical implications for disrupting the colonial frontier logics embedded within a curriculum of dominance. the rabbit proof fence, set in western australia in the early 1930‘s, follows the true story of three young “half-caste” aboriginal girls; molly, gracie and daisy. the film begins when a.o neville, is granted the official title of chief protector of aborigines. in fear of the unwanted creation of a “third race,” mr. neville seeks not to protect aboriginal people, but the racial purity of white australians. thus, he authorizes the seizure of all half-cast children, those with both aboriginal and white parentage, from their families, and houses them in re-educative settlements where they are to receive the training and discipline required for indentured servitude. molly, her sister daisy, and cousin gracie are taken to a settlement one thousand miles away from their rural home in jigalong. here, molly plans to escape. the three girls embark on the one thousand mile trek home, through the australian outback, following a state-long rabbit proof fence designed to keep the rabbits on one side, and the farmland on the other. the girls successfully return to jigalong. however, at the end of the film we learn that several years later molly’s daughter is seized, and the cycle of abuse continues into the 1970’s. the trauma of displacement is evident in the violent scene that depicts molly, daisy and gracie being literally pried from their mothers’ arms, and thrown into the vehicle that transports the girls from jigalong to a re-educative site thousands of miles from home. trauma also manifests itself in the anthropomorphic representations of the girls’ mothers as they propel their bodies onto the ground, and into the dirt, revealing the emotional pain and suffering inflicted upon them. trauma, as gilmore (2001) maintains, is “beyond language in some crucial way, that language fails in the face of trauma, and that trauma mocks language and confronts it with its insufficiency. and yet language, ironically, “is pressed forward as that which can heal the survivor of trauma” (p. 6). in the film, molly, daisy and gracie’s ties to home, culture and language are jeopardized when the girls are forced to speak english; a language that they do not use to describe themselves, and their encounters with the other. thus, the language of the colonizer presents itself as a source of vulnerability when it is meant to replace the girls’ native language. notions of hybridity and the third space may be used to illustrate how the girls in the rabbit proof fence might overcome forces of colonial oppression by straddling two cultures that are seemingly at odds. however, as donald (2009) warns, a postcolonial reading of the film, attentive to the significance of the third space would suggest that molly, gracie and daisy’s hybridity is placeless (p. 17). consequently, weakening the importance of place works to undermine the trauma associated with becoming displaced. smith, ng-a-fook, berry & spence. deconstructing a curriculum of dominance 59 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the rabbit proof fence puts forth a myriad of colonial attitudes that are established in the language that pervade a society’s history, its educational structures, and the lives of those “poor souls” that one hopes to save by means of exclusion. furthermore, one might suggest that a curriculum that employs streaming and testing is similar to neville’s assimilating curriculum where the objective is to weed out those individuals who do not fit society’s mould. at the end of the film mr. neville states that, “we face an uphill with these people.” similarly, educators often face an uphill battle with students that are seemingly “unreachable.” therefore, if the language of curriculum could be reimagined in colonial terms, one might become closer to recognizing, deconstructing and transcending what donald (2009) aptly calls the colonial frontier logics that, in turn, perpetuate narrative enclosure and displacement in ontario classrooms. with such curricular displacements in mind, i now turn to the film where the spirit lives for the purpose of situating the notions of trauma and curricular displacement within a post-colonial discourse here in canada. as part of a national policy mandating the forced assimilation of first nations children into british-canadian society, the children in the film, are to be transported to a boarding school on the canadian prairies. lacking the agency to choose her fate, ashtokome (the protagonist) succumbs to the tempting allure of the indian agent standing before her. his mysterious charm and kind demeanour ultimately lure ashtokome and the other children onto the plane. upon arrival to the residential school, ashtokome and her brother pita are cautioned against “talking gobbledygook” and forced to speak english. befriending her teacher, ashtokome reveals that she is capable of navigating the english language despite her unwillingness to do so. aoki (2000) maintains that language is largely associated with ways of knowing (p. 326). thus, ashtokome’s departure from her native language, signals at that point in the film a potential loss of her worldview situated within a particular indigenous metaphysical and ideological space. stuart hall (1997) might suggest that the aboriginal meaning of an apple changes when it is named apple since, “representation through language is […] central to the process by which meaning is produced” (p. 1). in the book of genesis, the apple is the forbidden fruit that symbolizes knowledge and the fall of mankind. the film suggests that by naming the apple, ashtokome gains access to the knowledge of her colonizers. however, the appropriation of knowledge that makes navigating the worldview of her oppressors possible also potentially endangers her cultural knowledge. thus, by naming the apple, ashtokome accepts the potential subjective reconstruction of her worldview. in addition to the subjection to foreign language practices, ashtokome and pita (her brother) are given the british names amelia and abraham. in the judeo-christian tradition the re-naming of an individual at baptism signals the beginning of a new (christian) self and also the attempt to erase one’s relational identity to both family and place. consequently, the re-naming of ashtokome bears a close resemblance to the christian baptismal ritual. upon her arrival to the school, the scene depicts ashtokome being re-named, bathed and clothed. we might suggest that this scene presents a certain washing away of the past, and ashtokome’s induction into civilized, white society as a pseudochristian. reading films as historical texts serve a dual purpose; it is a vehicle enabling us to critique the ways in which we continue to both reproduce and resist the colonial attitudes that displace traumatic experiences within our current history education curriculum, and a vehicle whereby we may critically engage in praxis designed to re-imagine the study of history as the study of one’s life story both internationally and here in canada. films, such as the rabbit proof fence and where the spirit lives, serve as vehicles where we might combine theory and history for the purpose of considering the curricular implications of the colonial legacy. however, a critical analysis of the ways in which the language of the historical smith, ng-a-fook, berry & spence. deconstructing a curriculum of dominance 60 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci colonizer inhabits curriculum requires an interrogation of the past; a journey many of us are hesitant to embark on. history is guilty of storying the ‘other’ in the same way ashtokome and molly’s oppressors attempt to reconstruct their subjectivities through the formal processes of schooling. similarly, generations of canada’s first nations and australia’s indigenous peoples’ lived realities are storied and scarred by history’s abuse of exclusions. in canada, the stories of first nations peoples are both affirmed and denied. apologies have been made and monetary settlements administered. however, the authority of the colonist narrative still supersedes first nations stories as the hallmark of our canadian national identity. if we are confined to the pages of our own stories, how are we to fully acknowledge our responsibility in working to foster dialectical spaces where hierarchies might be deconstructed? in both films, molly and ashtokome embark on the journey back to places that were once lost. similarly, an interrogation of history would require us to return to the repressed cognitive sites that house the traumas of the past. it is here that we might begin to repair and re-write lost stories. if the decolonization of history depends upon the de-colonization of the mind, we might use farley’s (2010) metaphor of the “reluctant pilgrim” to think about history curriculum in terms of returning to memory (p. 10). moreover, a re-configuration of history curriculum as a series of life stories woven into the fabric of the past, present and future might offer a possibility for an abandonment of the single story. re/engagements with a curriculum of colonial frontier logics looking over my class list in early september 2006, i came across a surname that i had not previously encountered. i asked the student what the origins of her last name were. she proceeded to explain to me that although she was rather fair, she was cree. laughingly she told me that she called herself ‘the whitest little indian ever’. this initial interaction was perhaps an initiation into things to come, a moment of what rey chow (1994) describes as “evidence-cum-witness”, a place where indigenous people are imagined in terms outside those of resistance against an image, a place that surpasses colonization and exists outside of the image both prior to and post european contact, and provides a space for first peoples to exist beyond imposed images of the ‘native’, ‘aboriginal’, or ‘indian’, all terms not heard prior to european contact. perhaps this student was constructing her own space as an adult aboriginal learner within the classroom. as the semester progressed, she consistently demonstrated understanding at or near the highest level of academic achievement in the class. however, i felt that she was not fully engaged and feared that she was losing interest in the course material. i spoke to her and explained that i had rarely taught a student with more potential. in turn, i felt that she was prepared for studies at the academic level. smiling, she replied that her teachers had been telling her about her ‘potential’ since elementary school. although she enjoyed school, she sometimes lost interest, and according to her this was both a gift and a curse. she often caught up quickly or just showed up for the test and performed well. in the spring of 2009 i nominated my student for a youth in science initiative. although she believed the opportunity would nurture her interests and boost her confidence in science, she disappeared from our school after returning from her march break internship. after her educational dis/engagement, i attempted to contact her and persuade her to return to her studies. i was not successful. her grandmother told me that she had moved back west. this past autumn, i taught her cousin who informed me that my previous student had since re/engaged with education, graduated from high school and gone on to university studies. the relationship between first peoples and educational systems, according to donald (2009), has been historically built upon “colonial frontier logics that have served to enforce epistemological and social conformity” (p. 4) to the dominant colonizing culture of canada. the educational dis/engagement of many aboriginal learners testifies to lasting impacts of smith, ng-a-fook, berry & spence. deconstructing a curriculum of dominance 61 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci assimilation within the dominant hegemony of what we now call the canadian public and private schooling systems. despite the consequences of colonial interactions many aboriginal people are attempting to reconcile their relationship with canada’s educational systems. nonetheless, additional supports from teachers as well as educational and aboriginal organizations are required if adult aboriginal learners are to successfully re/engage with educational systems. adult educators are well positioned to address offences of the past, educate colleagues, and ease the re/engagement of adult aboriginal learners with educational systems. therefore, adult educators as well as institutions of adult education must be made aware of the needs, sensitivities, and histories of adult aboriginal learners and must be prepared to address the symbolic and pedagogical violence of exclusion and displacement perpetuated by colonial frontier logics. the educational experiences of adult aboriginal learners often present challenges for continued participation in educational settings (wootton and stonebanks, 2010). needs for improvements to adult education have not gone unrecognized by first peoples. in haig-brown (1995), chief kelly of lacomen describes the need for expanded adult aboriginal education as: the government removal of two or three of the smart girls out of the school and to train them to be nurses so that they would be able to treat the indians who are sick…if we had one or more competent nurses, in my opinion, a great many lives could be saved which are now lost through lack of proper attention. (p. 73) here chief kelly realizes the benefit of adult aboriginal education to the wellbeing of the lacomen. through re/engagement with educational systems, many adult aboriginal learners demonstrate high levels of educational resilience. in resistance and renewal: surviving the residential school, haig-brown (1988) describes how the kamloops residential school has been reclaimed by those who were oppressed and abused within its walls. the building now houses a native indian teacher education program, a cultural centre, a day care, and a native adult basic education program. despite significant academic accomplishments, feelings of inadequacy persist. this may result in adult aboriginal learners doubting their abilities and accomplishments. in interviews with adult aboriginal learners, grant (2004) discovered that feelings of academic inferiority were so ingrained in one student that “she did not believe that ‘trash’ really deserved these accolades and felt her accomplishments were a hoax” (p. 121). yet for another, they felt that “in spite of her excellent academic record, she was not at all sure she had really ‘made it’” (p. 143). historical prejudices regarding the abilities of adult aboriginal learners have been long embedded in the educational hegemony of canada. the davin report (1879) concluded that “as far as the adult indian is concerned, little can be done with him. if anything is to be done with the indian, we must catch him very young” (p. 12). the davin report stands as one of the main documents used to support the development of the indian residential schools. with culturally sensitive supports and self-reflective methods (sargent and schlossberg, 1988), it may be possible to alleviate some of the stress associated with re/engagement, as well as mitigate feelings of inadequacy or inferiority that adult aboriginal learners may feel as they transition back into educational settings. as a result of schooling policies, barnes, josefowitz, and cole (2006) state that “most, if not all, residential school students experienced conditions that placed them at risk for potentially harmful psychological impacts, that is, separation from parents, immigration to a new culture, second-language learning, and denigration of their first language and culture" (p. 20). youth under institutionalized care often do not have parents or other compassionates to provide guidance, advocacy or the cultural teachings required during developmental periods when they are vulnerable to smith, ng-a-fook, berry & spence. deconstructing a curriculum of dominance 62 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the physical and psychological risk factors associated with childhood and adolescence. the absence of support networks may hinder continued education. this absence of support may be similar to the description provided by desroches (2005) of “a child whose early development was negatively impacted by parental neglect [that] may demonstrate resilience once they are able to access additional support from teachers and peers when they enter school” (p. 5). although the term ‘parental neglect’ may not be appropriate here, as parental absence was forced on many indigenous families, the result of parental or supportive adult absence on the educational experiences of adult aboriginal learners may be much the same. the legacy of abuse that occurred in the residential schooling system continues to affect aboriginal peoples and their interactions with educational institutions. anuik, battiste and george (2010) describe success for aboriginal people as the “self-mastery and learning about one’s special gifts and competencies” (p. 67). under this model learning is not seen as competitive, but rather as a “role model or goal to emulate” (p. 67). in faries (2004) work with aboriginal curriculum, an informant described their disengagement with education as a result of a lack of respect for “the culture and history of my people” and continued that he “wanted to learn about my people because i need to understand who i am. but that did not happen; i am now a high school dropout” (p. 1). at the michigeeng first nation adult and continuing education program, the adult learners developed their own rules of conduct based upon the seven grandfather teachings of the ojibway (jones, 2003). eileen antone (2003) advocates the framing of aboriginal literacy programs in culturally sensitive ways based on traditional teachings and respect for the teachings of elders. whereas battiste, henderson & youngblood (2009) examined rights to indigenous knowledge and the production and protection of “histories, language, oral traditions, philosophies, writing systems and literatures” (p.8) as well as the right to maintain distinct cultural and social institutions. nonetheless, there remains some debate concerning the effectiveness of methods employed to engage adult aboriginal learners. however consensus around the importance of elder teachings and the employment of commonalities such as teachings that engage the emotional, mental, spiritual, and physical aspects of the learner, do tend to emerge. although i am trying to avoid any pan-canadian indian stereotypes, certain similarities in teachings are present [i.e. circle teachings, environmental concerns and the determination of ones place in the world] and can be explored in classroom settings. through my experiences with adult aboriginal learners, i have been guided to two teachings concerning interactions that may lead to desired engagement outcomes. these were not discovered, but rather students and friends in the aboriginal community led me to them. the first of these teachings describes a need for support and reassurance without placing pressure on the learner. this was illustrated to me by an aboriginal student who i questioned concerning his plans after high school. he did not tell me to back off directly, rather he told me that when someone asked him about his plans after high school he told them he was going to be a shit truck driver. i got the point and discontinued my questioning of his future plans. as chance would have it, a short time later another teacher asked the student what his plans were after he finished school; he looked over at me and with a grin and repeated, “i’m going to be a shit truck driver.” my lesson has been learned. i can and should provide support, but must not apply pressure to long-term goals. for this student, the goal of completing high school was pressure enough and should be regarded as success on its own right. the second need demonstrated to me concerns a sense of belonging. this sense of belonging to a community who need and support each other has been explained as a vital component of re/engagement. a friend from the aboriginal community has described his interactions with people through participation in school, cultural activities, and community events as visiting his families around the city. this student does not have many close relatives in the region and found that he felt stronger smith, ng-a-fook, berry & spence. deconstructing a curriculum of dominance 63 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci and important in an acknowledged way when he made intimate connections with people. therefore, it is from my interactions with people, community, and culture that i continue as a high school teacher and educational researcher to research into the concept of educational re/engagement for the aboriginal students i in turn teach and am taught by. remembering residential school narratives within our curriculum designs as a first generation immigrant, i continue to listen and learn from the stories of those who traditionally inhabited the land here in canada since time immemorial. such stories remind me that not all inhabitants have profited, like me, from the colonial system of education. “coming to know the past,” smith (1999) writes, …has been part of the critical pedagogy of decolonization. to hold alternative histories is to hold alternative knowledges. the pedagogical implication of this access to alternative knowledges is that they can form the basis for alternative ways of doing things. transforming our colonized views of our own history (as written by the west), however, requires us to revisit, site by site, our history under western eyes. (p. 34) as curriculum theorists, we make inquiries into and critiques of past and present colonial and curricular landscapes in order to understand and improve the processes of teaching and learning. one of the main goals of the international association for the advancement of curriculum studies is to “work against the cultural and economic imperialism associated with the phenomenon known as globalization,” or in my case to work against international neocolonization (pinar, 2003, p. 1). and yet, in many ways the discursive conceptual lens of taking up history as a post-colonial strategic turn continues to invoke various theoretical limit-situations associated with appropriating indigenous historical knowledges (freire 1970). for example, tracing discursive regimes to the dialectic and material limit-situations flattened between the hyphen (-) of “post” and “colonial” fails to acknowledge the political and historical complexities of how canadian history is narrated in relation to local understandings of place, indigenous sovereignty, wisdom traditions, and respective communal utilities. indigenous communities who live within the geographical international boundaries of north america differ from other minority communities in that the canadian governments recognize first nation, inuit, and métis communities as sovereign nations. in order to enjoy the economic fruits of canada’s resources, these communities were relocated, taken away and sent to residential schools, and now situated beyond the walls of our institutional forts across canada. for many teacher candidates such communities and their respective historical narratives remain out of sight and thus for many of us still out of mind. despite such ongoing present absence within the curricula we teach here in ontario schools, in 2008 prime minister stephen harper stood up in the house of commons and offered the following apology on behalf of all canadians to former first nation, inuit, and métis, residential students: mr. speaker, i stand before you today to offer an apology to former students of indian residential schools. the treatment of children in indian residential schools is a sad chapter in our history. in the 1870's, the federal government, partly in order to meet its obligation to educate aboriginal children, began to play a role in the development and administration of these schools. two primary objectives of the residential schools system were to remove and isolate children from the influence of their homes, families, traditions and cultures, and to assimilate them into the dominant culture. these objectives were based on the assumption aboriginal smith, ng-a-fook, berry & spence. deconstructing a curriculum of dominance 64 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci cultures and spiritual beliefs were inferior and unequal. indeed, some sought, as it was infamously said, "to kill the indian in the child." today, we recognize that this policy of assimilation was wrong, has caused great harm, and has no place in our country…first nations, inuit and métis languages and cultural practices were prohibited in these schools. tragically, some of these children died while attending residential schools and others never returned home. (canadian broadcasting corporation, 2008) in a sense, for many, the apology provided an opportunity to put closure to a sad chapter of our collective history here in canada. and yet such curriculum of en/closures also function to help us forget the history of residential schooling by psychically pushing its narratives to the past, and in turn to the margins of historical forgetfulness within our minds. in fact, such curricular acts of forgetting, their colonial frontier logics, work to prevent certain historical narratives from even entering our minds (moore, 2003). during the eighteenth century, professional cadres of geologists, naturalists, astronomers, ethnographers, philosophers, historians, geographers, painters, and poets staffed the research and development arm of european empires, many of whom held day jobs as sailors, soldiers, missionaries, and bureaucrats (willinsky, 1998). most of these imperialist research positions, if not all, belonged and belong to non-indigenous scholars. the colonizers’ historical and institutional exclusion of indigenous epistemologies reproduced knowledge, which continues to support and legitimize colonialism’s culture (thomas, 1994). for indigenous peoples, “colonialism became imperialism’s outpost, the fort and the port of imperial outreach” (smith, 1999, p. 23). historians within the academy used the term “imperialism” to refer to a series of developments—discovery, conquest, exploitation, distribution, and appropriation—leading to european economic and political expansion (smith, 1999). meanwhile, indigenous ways of critiquing imperialism and the culture of colonialism and reproducing indigenous ways of knowing were and, for the most part still, are ignored within the walls of academia, including many faculties of education (kuokkanen, 2003; mihesuah & wilson, 2004). as a first generation immigrant father living in canada for more than 37 years, the possibility of government agents showing up at our door to remove our three sons remains an unimaginable act. to see them go hungry, abused, deprived of proper care and nurturance, or to die would be unbearable. it is unbearable! how might we then, as curriculum scholars, administrators, teachers, and students begin to make inquiries towards understanding the ways in which indigenous communities across the globe have experienced a curriculum of dominance and its respective colonial frontier logics? what might we learn from such unbearable curriculum inquiries about others and ourselves? how might we begin to recognize as chambers (in-press) makes clear…that here in canada our shared common countenance is that we are all treaty people? how might we begin to deconstruct the present narrative absences of residential schooling within our curriculum designs? what are our ethical responsibilities toward acknowledging such alter/native histories? how might we start to ask such questions with our students? such asking was not part of the curriculum presented to me at school. and, although the last residential school closed in canada in 1996, the first time i heard about the colonial violence that took place inside, was four years later during graduate school. therefore much of my research and teaching has sought to understand and disrupt the limit-situations of my colonized worldviews. to challenge such colonial narratives, as a university professor i try to weave indigenous histories and wisdom traditions within my curriculum designs. in 2010, students enrolled in our schooling and society course participated in a collaborative social action curriculum project with the kitigan zibi. prior to visiting this algonquin community, i invited students to utilize the course readings as a theoretical framework for understanding and challenging the various historical narratives smith, ng-a-fook, berry & spence. deconstructing a curriculum of dominance 65 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci represented in films like where the spirit lives. taking indigenous thought seriously through reading articles (battiste, 1998; brody, 2000; haig-brown, 2008; king, 2003; kirkness, 1998; taylor, 1995), textbooks (mcgregor, 2004), and pedagogical activities within indigenous communities often challenges many students to question the limit-situations of their prior narrative visions of first nation, métis, and inuit living within (or at the borders of) the territorial boundaries of what we call now canada. as the project came to an end, a student wrote the following in their final reflections: as teachers we are being trusted to guide students on a journey through the history of a land that we do not know well; things must be changed and people must take a stand, but we (as european descendants) can’t do it alone. “teachers teach what they know” (fletcher, 2000)… the meat of the curriculum has been boiled, and we are left starving without aboriginal history. without a doubt, there is a distinct lack of aboriginal content included in the ontario public curriculum… as teachers, together we need to figure out how to “decolonize canadian education” (battiste, 1998) and really start to take steps in the right direction. while beginning my journey to decolonize my future classroom, i was lucky enough to learn about the education system of the kitigan zibi people. they have been able to start to take steps in the right direction and write their own textbooks, as they realized that “it was time for the algonquins to share their story with [us]” (mcgregor, 2004). we need to follow in their footsteps to ensure that “canadian curriculum theorists can [begin to] write from this place, of this place, and for this place” (chambers, 2006). the lack of native content in the ontario curriculum is evident and we must work together to change this. as bryan smith’s section in this article stresses, if we understand curriculum as a set of governmental guidelines, aboriginal histories and knowledges will at least for the near future remain a present absence within the ontario public’s historical consciousness. since the 2008 government apology, several resources such as where are the children? have been created for use in the classroom. 6 this website was created by the legacy of hope foundation. the primary objective of this foundation is …to promote awareness among the canadian public about residential schools and try to help them to understand the ripple effect those schools have had on aboriginal life. but equally important, we want to bring about reconciliation between generations of aboriginal people, and between aboriginal and non-aboriginal people. (the legacy of hope foundation, 2009) this concern with the promotion of aboriginal experiences corresponds with the official (state) government apology to aboriginal groups in 2008 for their role in developing the residential schools (truth and reconciliation commission, n.d.). despite the public apology, it remains a mystery to many teacher candidates (mishra tarc, 2011). indeed, as mishra tarc (2011) notes about a group of teacher candidates, “since the apology’s enactment not a single student demonstrates a substantive awareness of its existence or of the long history of government denial of wrongdoing framing this gesture of reparation” (p. 358). in this rather bleak assertion about the lack of awareness of both the atrocities and the apology lies the value of the website, and films like where the spirit lives, or the rabbit proof fence, in terms of what they potential bring into our historical consciousness. and despite the difficulty that resides for teacher candidates and/or teachers to bring this particular historical narrative of residential schooling into classrooms across ontario, my curricular designs remain committed toward developing what donald calls (2009) an ethical sensibility. such ethical sensibilities, at least for smith, ng-a-fook, berry & spence. deconstructing a curriculum of dominance 66 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci me, involve learning from the past in order to re-imagine our future aboriginal-canadian relationships while also taking up alter/native historical narratives as a potential curricular site for decolonizing our worldviews. assembling inconclusive narrative conclusions the colonial dominance that defines the naturalized history of canada, in many ways, continues unabated. the reproduction of exclusions in curricular materials and the troublesome practices of (re-) presentation in filmic media highlights the ways in which dominance reproduces and manifests itself in seemingly banal and benign ways. the persistence of colonial frontier logics that subjugate and render farcical the narratives of aboriginal history only exacerbate the justifications for continued symbolic violence. yet, such a state is not one that need be viewed through fatalistic eyes. re/engagements with aboriginal knowledges provide avenues through which the colonial logics can be contested, reconfigured and made sufficiently reflective of a history that is not only infinitely more complex but marred by a violence that has been excised from the consciousness of those who inhabit the ‘eurocanadian fort.’ the importance of alter/native stories is central to effective anti-racist and emancipatory work and indeed, historical inquiry itself. the narration of these experiences through stories however necessitates equal access to the means of conveyance, which are generally regulated through access to power. as newhouse (2005) notes, “the aboriginal set of stories is one that is only starting to be told. the telling of it from our perspectives is difficult because we don’t have power to make others listen” (p. 50). despite the intellectual and curricular resistances that one might encounter when coming to hear of these histories, the tragedies and ‘forgetting’ that defines the relationship between aboriginal histories and teacher candidate conceptions of history necessitates engagement so as to come to terms with the historic and ongoing epistemic and symbolic violence that inheres in the grand narrative of canadian history. the articulation of such stories however needs to be done fro m a position of empowerment and not from one that rearticulates history as a retelling of a relationship in which aboriginal groups are repeatedly made to be victims. although the introduction of alter/native narratives which complicate grand narratives ar e essential, they are not necessarily an ultimate solution for disrupting the institutional governmental regimes that inscribe a curriculum of dominance. we don’t intend to suggest that we occupy a spot that affords us the power to make such a claim. however, we do offer up our experiences working together to create this assemblage as a way of thinking about the complexity of historical knowledges—of history. our thought processes, personal experiences, social/moral/political commitments and relationships with history all collided and melded together to demonstrate how aesthetically complex individual thoughts and knowledges are in relation to the curriculum put forth in public and catholic schools here in ontario. through this, we have come to appreciate the different ways that such dominance articulates itself through the teachings of history. by applying this to the lived colony of the classroom, educators and students can potentially work collaboratively to reread and transform a curriculum of dominance into a relational curriculum of intellectual and cultural reciprocity. notes 1 bsmit038@uottawa.ca mailto:bsmit038@uottawa.ca smith, ng-a-fook, berry & spence. deconstructing a curriculum of dominance 67 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 2 nngafook@uottawa.ca 3 mackie.sara@gmail.com 4 kevin.spence@ocdsb.ca 5 on two separate occasions, the curriculum does encourage teachers to think about education and the “pressures to assimilate” (p. 48, 59) in relation to aboriginal experiences in canada. however, this is not discussed in relation to an expectation dealing specifically with residential schooling. 6 see also the historical thinking project for its lesson plan on residential schooling (http://historicalthinking.ca/lesson/379). or, project of the heart, a collaborative, inter-generational, inter-institutional artistic endeavour that commemorates the lives of the thousands of indigenous children who died as a result of the residential school experience (http://poh.jungle.ca/). references antone, e. (2003). culturally framing aboriginal literacy and learning. canadian journal of native education, 27(1), 7-15. anuik, j., battiste, m., & george, p. (2010). learning from promising programs and applications in nourishing the learning spirit. canadian journal of native education. 33 (1), 63-82. aoki, t. (2000). language, culture and curriculum. in william f. pinar & rita irwin (eds.) curriculum in a new key. mahwah, new jersey: lawrence erlbaum associates, publishers. apple, m. w. (2004). ideology and curriculum. new york, ny: routledge. barnes, r., josefowitz, n., & cole, e. (2006). residential schools: impact on aboriginal students' academic and cognitive development. canadian journal of school psychology, 21 (1-2), 18-32. battiste m. (1998). enabling the autumn seed: toward a decolonized approach to aboriginal knowledge, language, and education. canadian journal of native education, 22 (1), pp. 16-24. battiste, m., henderson, j., & youngblood, s. (2009). naturalizing indigenous knowledge in eurocentric education. canadian journal of native education, 32 (1), 5-18. bhabha, h. (1994). the location of culture. new york: routledge. bogle, d., d’orazio, e., & quinlan, d. (2006). canada, continuity and change: a history of canada since 1914 (new ed.). markham, on: fitzhenry & whiteside limited. brody, h. (2000). the other side of eden. new york: north point press. canadian broadcasting corporation. (2008). prime minister stephen harper's statement of apology. retrieved from http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2008/06/11/pm-statement.html. chambers, c. (2006). “the land is the best teacher i ever had”: places as pedagogy for precarious times. journal of curriculum theorizing, 22 (3), 27-37. chambers, c. (in-press). “we are all treaty people”: the contemporary countenance of canadian curriculum studies. in n. ng-a-fook & j. rottmann (eds.). reconsidering canadian curriculum studies: provoking historical, present, and future perspectives. new york, ny: palgrave macmillan. chow, r. 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(2010). the backlash on “roosting chickens”: the continued atmosphere of suppressing indigenous perspectives. cultural studies critical methodologies, 10 (2), 107-117. submitted: august, 7 th , 2011 approved: september, 14 th , 2011 to cite this article please include all of the following details: lopes, alice casimiro (2015). elusive curriculum for an internationalized field. transnational curriculum inquiry volume (1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> internationalization of curriculum studies through an elusive curriculum alice casimiro lopes1 state university of rio de janeiro, brazil tci, as the journal of the international association for the advancement of curriculum studies (iaacs), supports a worldwide not uniform nor homogenized field of curriculum studies. different conceptions, different frameworks, different languages (even in english), different discourses allow to construct an elusive curriculum. portelli (1987) presented this expression in an old paper that discusses the definitions about curriculum. in his words, simplistic answers to the question “what is curriculum?” will be misleading, the answers cannot represent the complexity of curriculum, the different possibilities of understanding curriculum. nowadays, it is possible to consider that this process is deeper, especially with the internationalization of the field. the field is bigger, more complex and plural, with a diversity of countries, universities, theories, influences and subjects. however, if we consider the curriculum as discourse, such elusiveness does not refer to a plurality or a broadening of the field. the curriculum is elusive, because it has no ground to define once and all what curriculum is. curriculum is a sign that succumbs to the language games. because of the incessant translation, curriculum discourse has no origin, no end. translate, iterate, as derrida points out, is not an option, when we speak, write, produce knowledge. we cannot escape of it. we are always immersed (maybe constituted) in translation [i might add that the writing of the so-called ‘original’, in return, has continually been transformed by translation: a case of parasitic feedback, including this parenthesis (derrida, p. 101)]. if we read, the translation happens. if we are read, we are translated, and this process allows us to exist as producers of texts and as the authors of curriculum field. in this perspective of an elusive curriculum, a curriculum without ground, i understand the internationalization of the curriculum field. in this same perspective, tci stands as a vehicle for curriculum papers and insert them in the field. in this perspective, 2015.1 tci presents four papers and a review. in the text, freire and the us reconceptualization: remembering curriculum as international conversation, daniel johnson-mardones draws on the internationalization of curriculum studies as a process since the very beginning of the reconceptualization of the field in the united states. he argues that paulo freire´s work, from brazil, strongly influenced the us reconceptualization of the field. he also argues that, instead the marxist framework of this author, post-critical authors quoted his books more than critical authors. as johnson-mardones presents, freire’s curricular influence came from humanities fields rather that from those more oriented to social sciences. lopes. internationalization of curriculum studies through an elusive curriculum 2 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (1) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci hui-chuan liao, in the text what are course syllabi telling students?, works with critical discourse analysis (cda), especially fairclough, van dijk, wodak and meyer, to investigate classroom power relationships. his study analyzes course materials, specifically course syllabi, in an english-as-a-foreign-language (efl) program. in the author´s words, the objective of the study was to determine what the syllabi reveal about the curriculum and the power relationships between language teachers and learners. samira thomas, in an autobiographical framework, wrote the paper cosmopolitanism: a journey of suffering and forgiveness. samira analyses the cosmopolitanism as a deficit model. in her paper, she tries to understand the cosmopolitanism as a way not only to admit to our responsibilities to one another, but to realize our intersubjectivity, stemming from the depths of ourselves and shining through not only in our thought, but in our actions. her intention is to discuss humanity, freedom, forgiveness, optimism, misery, hope and curriculum in a different way. in the fourth text teacher education in canada and denmark in an era of ‘neutrality’, dion rüsselbæk hansen, anne m. phelan and ane qvortrup analyze the rise of welfarism and neo-liberalism in canada and in denmark. they intend to present the entanglements of teacher education (i.e. teacher subjectification) with the currently hegemonic rule of neoliberalism. based on theory of discourse, especially laclau and mouffe, they argue in favor of a radical democracy. in their words, we must abandon the idea of a neutral and finalized society from which all conflicts, antagonisms, and disagreements have disappeared. finally, we present the review of the book ethnographies of schooling in contemporary india, edited by meenakshi thapan. this review was written by josé cossa and presents the different papers of this interesting book. the four texts and the review open possibilities of translations, different theoretical approaches of understanding curriculum. they also build another language, internationalized, which highlights what i name as an elusive curriculum. for the issues of 2015, we would ask you to send your manuscripts. we would strongly like to encourage our readers to submit papers related to curriculum studies. especially for those who attended ottawa´s conference of the 2015 iaacs, i consider that the journal can be an excellent opportunity to deepen our conversations... and translations. notes 1 alicecasimirolopes@gmail.com references derrida, j. (1988). limited inc. a, b, c. limited inc. evanston, il, northwestern university press. p. 29-110. portelli, j. (1987). on defining curriculum. journal of curriculum and supervision. v. 2, n. 4, p. 354-367. mailto:alicecasimirolopes@gmail.com o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: ilieva, roumiana & waterstone, bonnie. (2013). curriculum discourses within a tesol program for international students: affording possibilities for academic and professional identities.transnational curriculum inquiry 10(1). http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> curriculum discourses within a tesol program for international students: affording possibilities for academic and professional identities roumiana ilieva 1 & bonnie waterstone 2 simon fraser university, canada introduction the research discussed here investigates the curriculum discourses circulating in a tesol masters program for international students at a canadian university. it focuses on issues around academic and professional identity constructions and language, viewed through dialogical (bakhtinian) and ecological perspectives. the authors are two teacher educators in the program. we situate our work within the field of curriculum studies that engages in crossborder and cross-disciplinary conversations and see ourselves as implicated in larger structures, discourses, and ideologies, including the trend towards a market orientation of higher education, the conditions of globalization, and neo-colonial contexts of history, culture, and power. as we investigate the curriculum discourses in the program in this article, we interrogate our own practices as educators in it in an attempt to denaturalize and historicize the discourses available in the program and in current conditions of internationalization of higher education (stier, 2004) in order to align tesol programming with ethical practice. beset by shrinking budgets and reduced government support, educational institutions have become increasingly reliant on international programs and tuition fees. as stier (2004) notes, a prominent ideology of internationalization in higher education is “instrumentalism,” with the goals to enrich the labour force and consolidate the economic prowess of a country, as well as maximize revenue for educational institutions. despite institutional dependence on their revenue, international students and the programs designed for them are often marginalized within north american universities (beck, ilieva, scholefield and waterstone, 2007; beck, 2008; liu, 1998). this marginalization seems particularly acute in a field like tesol, which has historically been “a pedagogical site and institution for educating the racial and linguistic other” (luke, 2004, p. 25). for luke (2004) and others, the tesol field is implicated in neo-colonial relations of power and the work of teacher educators in this field can be seen as securely in the service of mobilizing global capital. an important aspect of the neo-colonial relations of power in the tesol field is the dominance of a discourse of native speaker authority/native-speakerism which places non-native english speaking teachers (nnests) in a position of deficit professional competence on the basis of assumed standards of language proficiency (see ilieva & waterstone. curriculum discourses within a tesol program 17 transnational curriculum inquiry10(1) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci canagarajah, 1999; holliday, 2005; and faez, 2011, among many others). holliday and aboshiha (2009) equate this deficit discourse with an ideology of racism. native speaker ideology (holliday and aboshiha, 2009; pavlenko, 2003) not only dominates the tesol profession, but also informs identities and literacies within higher education, marginalizing those who speak/write accented english and reinstating western/centre privilege. thus, the desire for “native speaker english” seems to drive much of the internationalization of the student body in tesol programs in western countries (beck et al., 2007). this increased desire for tesol programs cannot be separated from the rise of english as a world language, a global lingua franca, alongside the privileging of native speaker dialects. in this article we maintain that the curriculum of tesol programs needs to engage head on with these powerful broader tesol discourses which impact the construction of academic and professional identities of international students in these programs. only then can such programs work to limit possibilities for perpetuating neocolonial relations of power between the west and the rest by questioning uncritical acceptance of native speaker ideology and english linguistic imperialism associated with it (phillipson, 1992). such questioning is in line with stier’s call for unpacking the internationalization of higher education as an “ideological endeavour” (stier, 2004, p. 95) where higher education has its own version of ethnocentrism: “academicentrism” or the conviction “that ‘our’ methods of teaching, research and degrees are better than those of other countries” (ibid., p.93). academicentrism is an aspect of the ideology of educationalism, which tends to “[individualize] solutions of structural and global problems” thinking that “educated and enlightened people [from wealthy nations] are considered the cure for poverty, inequality or exploitation” (ibid. p .93) at the expense of less developed countries. alongside ideologies of internationalization that echo a “west is best” perspective, the conditions within today’s globalized higher education are highly politicized: the academy can no longer “represent itself as a homogenous and unified entity, to which outsiders must seek access through learning its ways” (jones, turner & street, 1999, p. xvii). the critical views discussed briefly above motivate our investigation into the possibilities for agency for the international students we teach in a tesol program as they accommodate, negotiate, and resist identities, practices and discourses in the program inflected by broader racialized, neo-colonial, and global/local tensions (canagarajah, 2004). higher education curriculum and pedagogy are complicit in a narrative of acculturation to the practices of western educational institutions (beck et al., 2007) or, as bakhtin (1981) would say, seem to disallow possibilities for “ever new ways to mean” (p. 346). this is part of the liberal tradition bhabha (1994) speaks of that accommodates ‘others’ only within its own norms and frames, and attempts to contain difference. theoretical framework aware of the possibility that we could be considered as “technicians of empire” (luke, 2004, p. 24) in the work we do in a tesol program for international students, we expose in the two complementary longitudinal studies below the reiteration of normative discourses despite or alongside curriculum designed to raise critical awareness. in searching for ways to align internationalization and tesol with ethical practice (beck et al., 2007; ilieva, 2010; waterstone, 2008), our goal is to suggest directions for more ethical and equitable curriculum discourses that create new options for students and teachers, while also exploring broader ilieva & waterstone. curriculum discourses within a tesol program 18 transnational curriculum inquiry10(1) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci questions about the containment of difference and the tensions within higher education in these globalized times characterized by larger geopolitical, economic and institutional constraints. some of the questions around curriculum discourses in the tesol program discussed here were taken up in a previous study conducted by one of the authors (ilieva, 2010). in particular, the previous work aligned with studies critically exploring if or how tesol programs could allow nnests to construct positive professional identities and become proactive educators (brut-griffler & samimy, 1999; golombek & jordan, 2005; pavlenko, 2003) and offered a bakhtinian analysis of the negotiations of authoritative program discourses evident in the end-of-program portfolios of students in the 1 st cohort in this tesol program. drawing on views of identity as crucially related to social, cultural and political contexts (toohey, 2000), as constructed through language and discourse (weedon, 1997), and as multiple (norton, 2000), dialogical (bakhtin, 1981), and agentive (varghese et al. 2005), the study argued that tesol programs are sites of professional identity construction and rife with authoritative discourses that demand unconditional allegiance, alongside possibilities for the development of creative and productive “internally persuasive discourses” among student teachers (bakhtin, 1981). it concluded that possibilities for appropriating the tesol program discourses are quite varied with some discourses presenting openings for the students to insert their own meanings and intentions while other discourses are seemingly experienced as impositions. it recommended that tesol programs provide “curriculum and pedagogy across coursework that engage meaningfully with international students’ prior discourses and … [be] specifically geared towards allowing students to actively negotiate their needs/interests/local contexts in their academic work” (ilieva, 2010, p. 363). a question the study raised in ilieva, however, was how was it that some program discourses were experienced by students as inviting negotiation on one’s own terms while other program discourses seemed to be precluding agentive appropriation. such inquiry requires a more fine-grained examination of students’ interactions with program discourses. this brings us to an inquiry into how the curriculum is lived and enacted in this program and this is the question that this article attempts to address. here we draw on a subsequent study by ilieva examining further students’ constructions of professional identity in the program as evident in their portfolios and the study of waterstone on the program discourses that allow for the construction of an academic identity among students within the program. the studies are complementary in offering different angles through which the tesol program curriculum and its discourses could be investigated to gain some sense of how curriculum is negotiated and lived across coursework and pedagogical interventions. in order to be able to present a fuller picture of this curriculum enactment we find the need to supplement bakhtin’s dialogical lens in outlining processes of identity construction and discourse negotiation with an ecological lens. “ecology is the study of the relationships among elements in an environment …in particular the interactions between such elements” (van lier, 2010, p. 4). an ecological perspective aims to deepen our understanding of processes as opposed to products of teaching and learning and attempts to shed light on the dynamic and multifaceted sets of relationships that educational settings entail in addressing the quality of educational experiences (van lier, 2004). it allows us to see how if you “[p]ull one string, metaphorically speaking,… all the others will move in response” (van lier, 2010, p. 4).in our analysis, we use an ecological ilieva & waterstone. curriculum discourses within a tesol program 19 transnational curriculum inquiry10(1) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci framework alongside bakhtin’s concept of dialogism to analyze more fully the ideologies, discourses and identities that circulate in one tesol masters program as these become evident in the interactions between elements in the environment (i.e., curriculum discourses and students). bakhtin’s (1981) understanding of ideological becoming/identity construction points to the opening of possibilities within a heteroglossic dynamic between different types of discourses talking back to each other within one’s own consciousness. there are authoritative discourses enforced from outside, in effect, the “word[s] of a father, of adults and of teachers, etc. [demanding] our unconditional allegiance" (bakhtin, 1981, p. 343) and internally persuasive discourses that we take up as 'our own’: creative and productive, "tightly interwoven with one's own words” (p. 345). “our ideological development is just such an intense struggle within us for hegemony among various available verbal and ideological points of view, approaches, directions and values” (p.346). we are interested in exploring this interanimation of voices within one’s consciousness through an ecological lens. in discussing ecological perspectives in relation to language, kramsch and steffensen (2008) note that “a key word in ecology … is holism” (p. 18) and that a holistic starting point leads to the adoption of “a dialogical point of view on language” where dialogue is understood “in a bakhtinian sense as a relational principle” (ibid., p. 19). this speaks to the compatibility of bakhtinian and ecological perspectives which we endorse in this article. the ecological, like the dialogical, is characterized by “interconnectedness, interdependence, and interaction” (kramsch & steffensen, 2008, p.19). viewing one tesol program through an ecological lens (kramsch, 2002, 2008; van lier, 2004) focuses attention on affordances or “relations of possibility” (van lier, 2000, 2004, 2010) particular curriculum discourses open up for international students. by highlighting the notion of learners and their environment as parts of a living organism, it brings into focus the symbiotic relationship that develops between the authoritative discourses circulating in an educational setting and the internally persuasive discourses/identities that are available for uptake in this setting. van lier (2000) defines affordance as: a particular property of the environment that is relevant—for good or for ill—to an active, perceiving organism in that environment. an affordance affords further action (but does not cause or trigger it). … an affordance is a property of neither the actor nor of an object: it is a relationship between the two. (p. 252) the centrality of “interaction” in the concept of affordance allows us to ruminate in the data sections below over the constraining and agentive relations of possibility afforded by the curriculum discourses as lived in this tesol program. in addressing these we focus on the following research questions:  how is curriculum lived and enacted in this program?  “what is in this environment [tesol program] that makes things happen the way they do?” (van lier, 2004, p. 11).  how might curriculum discourses and practices of tesol programs afford possibilities for constructing positive academic and professional identities within globalized economic and institutional conditions? ilieva & waterstone. curriculum discourses within a tesol program 20 transnational curriculum inquiry10(1) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci program background and data collection the masters of education tesol program, housed within a faculty of education in a canadian university, is a 17-month program which started in 2005, each year enrolling cohorts of 22 to 24 students who are all international students. it consists of 7 required courses and a comprehensive examination, and includes observations and practical teaching experience in canadian school classrooms within a ‘fieldwork’ course. throughout the program, assistants are hired for specific, on-going academic support alongside course work. a graduate of the program is hired as a part-time cultural assistant to support students’ cultural adjustment, offer information and support for community involvement, plan cultural and social activities and assist the academic coordinator in supporting students. the academic coordinator liaises with all instructors in the program to ensure coherence across coursework and to monitor students’ progress. before the first full term starts, there is a 5-week intensive introductory orientation to graduate study, which introduces reading and writing activities and oral discussions/ presentations similar to those that will be expected in the coursework. both authors have been academic coordinators and instructors in the program. one teaches the academic literacy course, the other teaches a course focusing on issues around second language teaching. common themes across coursework are 1) critical, poststructural and sociocultural perspectives on language learning and teaching; 2) understanding the centrality of issues of equity and social justice in relation to schooling; 3) a focus on reflection and inquiry. the research interests of the academic coordinator and the faculty involved in this program reflect these 3 themes. the faculty of education itself has in its mission statement reference to social justice and equity and a strong emphasis on reflective practice in teacher education, particularly in curriculum and instruction (the broader area where this tesol program resides). these commitments shape the curriculum. the first study discussed here investigates initial encounters with these curriculum discourses in the first term, when students meet the actual demands of graduate coursework. it is based on 4 years of data from an academic literacy course designed to support beginning international graduate students, and in particular to introduce them to educational discourses and practices in north american contexts. this course continues work begun in the orientation, and runs alongside their first academic course in tesol and their first visits to classrooms in the ‘fieldwork’ course. the second study investigates the portfolios produced at the end of the degree program, where students reflect on their learning throughout their coursework, and their experiences during the program (e.g., volunteer work, community involvement) with a view to how this might inform their future teaching. these portfolios speak to how students negotiate program curriculum discourses in developing professional identities as teachers of english. in the first study, data was collected from students in 4 cohorts of the program (2007 to 2011) with a total of 43 participants. the data used here is from students in cohorts 2, 5, 6 and 7. documents analyzed included student writing, course outlines, assignment descriptions, email exchanges; for 3 of the cohorts, audio-taped one-on-one interviews and videotaped focus groups were conducted by a research assistant. analysis of transcripts was done using a grounded theory approach, letting themes emerge from the data (charmaz, 2000). investigating the initial encounter with normative expectations of graduate study in the field of education, the first study takes a wider holistic view which includes larger economic and ilieva & waterstone. curriculum discourses within a tesol program 21 transnational curriculum inquiry10(1) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci institutional conditions that impact what kinds of spaces can be created within a particular classroom and looks for possibilities that open (or foreclose) more positive identity construction within that environment. investigating the academic literacy course, the analysis focuses on beginning students’ struggles to understand new linguistic, cultural and disciplinary discourses and to negotiate entry into scholarly and disciplinary conversations. students are aware that their writing will be evaluated by criteria they are just beginning to understand, and they begin already in this initial course to grapple with academic gate-keeping regulatory practices and their own desires. this study exposes practices that work to domesticate or discipline divergent meanings and identities (foucault, 1988). in one sense, such an academic literacy course is intended to acculturate these students into a “north american” way of writing, to help them succeed in graduate study here. this course, taught by waterstone, uses an academic literacies approach, “which emphasizes the socially situated and ideological nature of student academic writing” (lillis, 2003, p.194). as benesch (2009) argues, a critical perspective on academic writing is needed even more within current global conditions. students respond to this critical perspective in various ways, and it is possible to trace how this curriculum is enacted and lived through analyzing their reflections on their learning, in writing and in interviews and focus group discussions. overall, the goal was to understand how curriculum discourses and practices (in this course in particular, the impact of new ideas of language learning and teaching in assigned readings) might open more agentive, creative possibilities, as well as foreclose those and reinforce constraints. for the second study, portfolios, produced in hard copy (and electronically) by a total of 51 students graduating from the first 3 cohorts in the program (2006-2008) were analyzed. course outlines and assignment instructions throughout courses in the program provided another set of data that complemented the students’ portfolios in allowing for a more robust examination of the curriculum discourses the students engaged with in the program. access to student portfolios was requested following students’ completion of the program. building on a study which discussed the main themes in the portfolios of the first cohort of students completing this program through a bakhtinian lens (ilieva, 2010), the study reported here attempts to engage in a more detailed manner with a question the earlier study identified: i.e., “how dialogical/internally persuasive [are] some of the authoritative discourses circulating in this program?” (p. 363). as mentioned earlier, the study concluded that dialogicality varied significantly. making sense of this variation is the main focus of the work presented here through the inquiry into: what is it in this program that makes things happen the way they do (see van lier, 2004). such questioning allows us to broaden the analysis by complementing bakhtinian perspectives (helpful in addressing identity construction though discourse appropriation) with ecological perspectives that attend holistically to the complex dynamic system that an educational endeavour represents. in order to respond to this question, ilieva went back and read cohort 1 final portfolios and then read through the portfolios of cohorts 2 and 3 following a grounded theory approach (charmaz, 2000), not imposing a particular framework on the collected data. instead, ilieva followed an inductive research process where the focus was on identifying themes salient in the data and theorizing ensued from the data. as salient themes (to be discussed below) transpired, the focus of analysis became an exploration of the relations of possibility that students’ engagements with program curriculum discourses afforded; that is, viewing the data through an ecological lens. this entailed inquiring into the ilieva & waterstone. curriculum discourses within a tesol program 22 transnational curriculum inquiry10(1) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci constraints and agentive opportunities for professional identity constructions afforded by the program. both authors analyze the nature of the curriculum discourses these students interact with in the program and use pseudonyms in the analysis of students’ quotes below. a major impetus for the studies has been to contribute to program and curriculum developments grounded in examining program impact on students. in our research reported below, we trace some processes of students’ academic and professional ideological becoming/identity construction evident in our two longitudinal studies. data analysis in answering our research questions, we were interested to find out what affordances were present within the curricular discourses reiterated in the program and what agency was possible as students accommodated, resisted, or negotiated these discourses in their processes of academic and professional identity formation. as discussed above and briefly summarized here, according to van lier (2010), “[a]ffordances are relationships of possibility, that is, they make action, interaction and joint projects possible” (p. 4). an important aspect within relations of possibility is agency presented as follows: “i define agency in the final analysis as movement, a change of state or direction, or even a lack of movement where movement is expected.… [i.e.] the organism moving in order to live and grow (p. 4). thus, affordances may open spaces for movement or constrain movement into particular directions. two major themes emerged from data analysis viewed through the lens of relations of possibility and agency within those lenses: the first characterized by constraint, the regulation of particular meanings, accepting authoritative discourses; the second demonstrated instances when participants negotiated these discourses on their own terms, with a more agentive uptake. 1. relations of possibility which constrain agentive appropriation study 1 becoming critical /reflective: one curriculum discourse circulating within this program is about being or becoming ‘critical’ and ‘reflective’ in developing an academic (writing) identity (as well as in developing a professional identity). reflection and inquiry begins in the orientation, with students asked to reflect on their own experience in relation to an excerpted reading from freire’s (1970/2000) work on critical pedagogy. writing ‘reading responses’ that require linking their own experience to the theories presented continues through most coursework and is further developed by the reflecting on practice and classroom inquiry aspects of the fieldwork courses that involve classroom observation and some practice teaching. coursework reinforces the orientation encounter with critical pedagogy by continuing with critical perspectives in the tesol field (e.g. luke, 2004; canagarajah, 2004; pennycook, 1989), and emphasizing poststructural and sociocultural perspectives with critical, poststructural and sociocultural readings (e.g. norton, 2000; pavlenko, 2003; morita, 2004). for many students in the program, this is a new view of second language education, and the requirement for successful study, involving critical reflection on their own experience, is also new. as will be shown below, the relations of possibility afforded by an expectation to be ilieva & waterstone. curriculum discourses within a tesol program 23 transnational curriculum inquiry10(1) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci critical and reflective as a writer seemed to constrain students’ appropriation of these curriculum discourses. commonly, students reported difficulties with producing a ‘reflection’ at the beginning of study. for example, after a paragraph that summarized her classes and activities for the week, one student wrote in her reflection assignment: there were so many things i have experienced. but when i am writing my reflection, i can’t recall the most impressive one that i want to write about. i felt a little lost. what i am doing? (xue, written reflection, coh2). reflecting on experience is a valued activity in educational practice (waterstone, 2003, p.139), but it is not self-evident which experiences constitute something worth reflecting on in writing for a class. similarly, in an interview, another student expressed her frustration with making sense of assignment expectations, particularly the responses to readings, which required not only summary but also a critical reflection. for my own reflection part, for this was my first writing, “critical” was a brand-new word to me. even though i remembered when i was in american university [as undergraduate exchange student], one criteria of writing paper was “critical thinking”, i couldn’t fully understand the essence meaning at that time. (mary, int, coh6) this is not to suggest that students have not been or are not ‘critical’ but that they are meeting in this environment the imperative to ‘be critical,’ and there is a particular way to be critical that is valued. commenting on what she felt was an unsatisfactory evaluation of her writing, one student said: [...] the worst part was my critique because it was not so related to the original article. [the instructor] mentioned my critique need to be more tied to the article. i think maybe i wrote too much about my personal experience about how to learn english. that is not so related to the article so i revised most part of my critique. (amber, int, coh5) within the academic discipline of education, reflective practice is valued; it has special meaning in a field that seeks to align theory and practice to effect positive change in teaching. learning to link ideas to one’s own experiences, but ‘not too much’ is a challenging process. here we see how the curriculum’s focus, both implicit and explicit, on demonstrating critique is enacted and lived within this environment. all these quotes from students suggest tensions in the lived curriculum within the tesol program in becoming academic writers. taking a critical stance in relation to established knowledge on the basis of their experience assumes some implicit cultural baggage on the part of students: reflection is motivated by visions of an independent thinker, who will come up with “questions this raises for you”—and who will be comfortable expressing such questions in writing to the teacher. it imagines a student accustomed to offering a personal critique of an established, everyday way of doing things. these tacit expectations are made ilieva & waterstone. curriculum discourses within a tesol program 24 transnational curriculum inquiry10(1) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci visible as students struggle to negotiate how to be critical and reflective—as they encounter these salient curriculum discourses within this program. pulling the “string” of critical reflection seems to entail the movement of all efforts by the students to be “successful” in the program in that particular direction. as will become evident in some data from study 2 below, critical reflection has become an internally persuasive discourse for the students by the time they write their end-of-program portfolios. alongside other curriculum discourses circulating in the program, particularly the emphasis on critical reflection, students also encounter a discourse of ‘voice’ primarily through assigned readings about multilingual writer identity (e.g., canagarajah, 2004). sometimes students respond to this idea of having one’s own ‘voice’ as an imperative, like being ‘critical.’ in the following interview excerpt, a student is asked about a word choice she made in revising her paper, and she answers that that wording sounded stronger to her: […]in the original version because i want to put myself in a lower place, i didn’t want to be too certain about my suggestion. someone said: “you should speak out your voice in your writing.” i hear that from a conference or orientation program for the whole faculty of education. i think about it and i think i should speak out my voice. (tammy, int., coh6) the sense that she ‘should’ speak out her voice can be seen as constraining. however, according to bakhtin (1981), sometimes discourses can be “simultaneously authoritative and internally persuasive” (p. 342) and when “someone else’s ideological discourse is internally persuasive for us, ….entirely different possibilitiesopen up” (p. 345) allowing the appropriation of discourses on one’s own terms. further data on “voice” discussed in the next section shows that this discourse of ‘voice’ could be “simultaneously authoritative and internally persuasive” (p. 342). this interanimation of voices can be viewed through an ecological lens to reveal a symbiotic relationship that develops between curriculum discourses dynamically interacting with human agents in this environment. students link thediscourse of ‘voice’ to their changing academic identities as graduate students in a new cultural and academic context. study 2 data in the second study also speak to constraining relations of possibility, in this case in developing professional identity as teachers of english. like in an earlier study drawing only on data from cohort 1 portfolios (ilieva, 2010), there was pronounced variability in the ways program discourses were taken up (or not) and discussed by the students in cohorts 2 and 3 in the program with respect to professional identity. of particular importance in this study, however, was the saliently different construction of future practices the graduates of cohort 2 and 3 imagined for themselves. in portfolio after portfolio, cohort 2 graduates argued for the importance of bringing critical pedagogy (cp) as a useful approach into their future teaching context and explained in much detail how they will engage with it in their professional practices. the first quote below illustrates the embracing attitude towards cp shared by all but one of the graduates in cohort 2: ilieva & waterstone. curriculum discourses within a tesol program 25 transnational curriculum inquiry10(1) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci critical pedagogywas introduced to me in [a] course … whose content and instructor were very fascinating and inspiring. (michael, cohort 2) other words students used in their portfolios to represent their relation to cp are: “exciting”, or “the right way to reform china’s education.” while students had been introduced to critical pedagogy earlier, it was in one particular course that it was expected that they engage with it on a practical level or the lived curriculum entailed grappling with it (in an assignment to be addressed further down). in addition to expressing enthusiasm vis-à-vis cp, cohort 2 graduates expressed strong commitment to apply cp in their local contexts of teaching in the future as evident in this quotation: in china… i will try my best to overcome [the structural challenges] and use the critical [pedagogy] approach to design effective curriculum for students. (sandra, cohort 2) as the above quotes indicate, cohort 2 graduates seem to be in awe with critical pedagogy. in contrast, graduates of cohort 3 felt strongly that it is very important to take constructivist teaching (ct) from the west and bring it back to their local teaching contexts and also discussed in detail ways to implement it in their future classrooms. here are a couple of quotations that attest to this: [b]ringing constructivism theory back to china is very important. … we can raise people’s awareness that every student from the school can be the resource to transfer knowledge. (david, cohort 3) with the idea of democratic classroom, i made some expectations about my own future teaching…. to be a constructivist teacher, first we should bear in mind that students are not passive vessels of knowledge. they come to class with their unique experiences, and each of them should be valued and respected. teachers should nurture students to make meanings themselves. (beatrice, cohort 3) as is evident from these quotes, cohort 3 graduates are eager to become constructivist teachers and talk with facility what this might entail. the string/thread of ct in the way cohort 3 students seemed to have lived the curriculum of this program seems to pull these students’ imagined future practices in the direction of ct. overall, it seems that both cohort 2 and cohort 3 graduates take for granted the usefulness and applicability of their chosen pedagogical model and refer to it rather uncritically. this seems at odds with the general critical approach espoused in rich detail in most end-of-program portfolios by students of all cohorts as evidenced in the illustrative quotes below: after taking … classes here, i get a better sense of the role of teacher. … i know what’s important is not getting an answer from anyone else, but developing our own ilieva & waterstone. curriculum discourses within a tesol program 26 transnational curriculum inquiry10(1) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci thinking, critical thinking. …. merely putting emphasis on subject matter will never be a good way. only when students get engaged in problem-solving activities can they know what the subject really means to them and how it is related to real life. (rhonda, cohort 1) [critical thinking] is needed everywhere.by critical thinking, we won’t become the parrot of other people’s thinking: we can understand things from new aspects and … see the world more soberly. (leila, cohort 2) we should encourage students to raise as many inquiries as possible, and also we ourselves should be able to question what we teach, not accepting them for granted. if we take everything happening in class without questioning, that means the class stops growing, eventually dying of its stiffness. (jung, cohort 3) these quotes point to the students’ overall self-reflexivity and willingness to engage with their future teaching contexts critically. the facility with which they discuss critical thinking on their own terms in explaining its value in, for example, “see[ing] the world more soberly” or allowing the class not to die “of its stiffness” and indeed in being “related to real life” speaks to how these students found in the concept “critical” newer ways to mean. thus, the contrast between the students’ facility in being reflective and critical in many instances in their end-of-program portfolios and the uncritical embrace of cp (among cohort 2 graduates) and ct (among cohort 3 graduates) makes it all the more imperative to attempt to trace what is it that is happening in the program for these students. the examination of course outlines and assignments allowed ilieva to trace the contexts in which students engaged with particular discourses quite intensely, in this case cp and ct. what transpired in this examination was the very explicit framing of some assignments in specific courses that, viewed from an ecological perspective, could give us an idea of the kinds of affordances/relations of possibility particular program configurations/curriculum discourses may provide for students attending the program, pointing to what could be seen as representing a somewhat symbiotic relationship between particular elements in this environment. thus, cohort 2 students engaged at a very practical level with critical pedagogy through an assignment in one of their courses where they had to design a critical lesson plan framed in very concrete terms: they had to “make a list of possible structural challenges” to cp design and choose activities that are “doable” and represent tenets of cpspecifically named (e.g., “equalizes power in the classroom”, “focuses on issues of power and equity”). the reference to “structural challenges” in the assignment is echoed across the students’ portfolios in their discussions of cp and was illustrated by a quote from sandra’s portfolio above. cohort 3 had a similar intense engagement with ct during their fieldwork/practicum course. their primary assignment during their observations in a canadian classroom was to: “choose 2 out of 12 explicit statementsabout constructivist classrooms (e.g. “allow student responses to drive lessons”, “seek elaboration of students’ initial responses”) and make “observations about how these are evidentin the [canadian] classroom [they] visit…[or] not present and why.” these instances which trace curriculum enactment in some of the coursework students were part of suggest that naming and explicit framing of cp and ct may have created ilieva & waterstone. curriculum discourses within a tesol program 27 transnational curriculum inquiry10(1) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci somewhat constraining relations of possibility for these students speaking to forces in the environment that the students interacted with without much possibility to grow. 2. relations of possibility which allow for more agentive appropriation of program discourses the data presented in this section represents students’ negotiations of the native speaker ideology dominant in the tesol field both in developing academic identities and in constructing professional identities through the program. the flow from one type of identity to the other in engaging with the curriculum discourse of critique on native-speakerism and celebration of linguistic multicompetence (cook, 1999), makes it helpful to present data from both studies together. as outlined in the introductory section, international students arrive to a tesol program in the west with deficit discourses of lack and limitation in place and these are also reinforced within the larger academic/institutional context. because in this particular tesol program they are asked to be critical and are introduced to respected researchers and scholars who critique the strong native speaker ideology within the tesol field and champion the strengths of multilingual second language speakers and writers, their sense of themselves as non-native speakers is disturbed. the internal struggle begins between “various available verbal and ideological points of view, approaches, directions and values” (bakhtin, 1981, p.346). as students reflect on their initial difficulties, they frame their understandings in us/them comparisons, with the privileged binary always the idealized native speaker (pavlenko, 2003). excerpts from group interviews in study 1 with some of the study participants discussing their first attempts to produce north american style academic writing attest to this. when i am writing, i am always influenced by my chinese writing style as well as i cannot express myself precisely due to my vocabulary limitation. (cindy, int. coh 5). while these international students arrive with rhetorical resources from their own academic background, these are not valued. they feel constrained to represent their understanding in a ‘westernized way;’ the readers (their ‘western’ instructors) may allow for some degree of ‘difference’ but the academic and institutional norms remain the same. however, it is not only writing that is the issue: one possible reason why nnes graduate students have such english difficulties is that they are lack of “english thinking.” (felicity, int. coh 5) this internalized deficit discourse on nnes (non-native speakers of english) becomes the default explanation for their difficulties. this view is often supported by institutional and curricular interventions which focus on “improving writing skills” to solve the “problem” (e.g., jones, turner & street, 1999; harwood & hadley, 2004). even in current higher education, which is “like a petri dish of intercultural communication, anglo/western ways of using language remain unexamined values, rather than seen as “deeply embedded in cultural history,” constrained by particular world views, and co-incident with a colonial binary that pathologizes the other” (turner, 2010, p.24). ilieva & waterstone. curriculum discourses within a tesol program 28 transnational curriculum inquiry10(1) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci students frame their struggles as deeper than surface linguistic features of writing. they seem to understand that the challenge they face is about changing a way of understanding the world more generally, and, more specifically, what counts as valued knowledge or interpretations of ideas and the ways to represent their interpretations. they meet specific discourse expectations in a north american educational field, particularly in this critical tesol program, for a style of writing they label “native-like” but which leaks beyond linguistic competence: with no doubt, most of the time native speakers’ advices can make our articles [i.e., papers] more native-like because they totally think in english way. (cindy, coh 5) as evident in the quotes above, the critical perspective on a homogeneous north american academic literacy that populates the curriculum of their introductory course is initially overwhelmed by larger discourses shaping the med program: native speaker ideologies alongside ideologies of literacy/language that privilege eurocentric epistemologies and methods of representing knowledge. students are trying to succeed and the first task is to learn these often tacit expectations. the curriculum in this course attempts to present a critical pragmatic approach (benesch, 2001) to academic writing, which involves making explicit how we frame texts and talk about texts in classrooms, how we authorize, invite and legitimate certain reading/writing practices and not others (kramer-dahl, 1996). this approach becomes one of the discourses circulating within the program, countering the myth of a native speaker and aligning with other critical perspectives. with regards to professional identity construction, the discourse of multicompetence and the critique of native-speakerism seemed to be uncritically embraced by students in cohort 1 as pointed out in ilieva (2010). the data in the portfolios of cohort 2 and 3 students speak to a more nuanced engagement with these discourses. these discourses, understandably (given the broader relations in which the tesol field is embedded as discussed at length in the beginning of this article), dominate the students’ portfolios and they, like students in cohort 1, continue to embrace them. however, there are many instances that document students’ struggles in making sense of these discourses and this allows for the tracing of relations of possibility in this program that could perhaps be termed agentive. as van lier (2010) states, “in the classroom, an agency-promoting curriculum can awaken learners’ agency through the provision of choices” (p. 5). tracing the engagement with these discourses in the students’ end-of-program portfolios presents vividly their initial desire for developing “native” english and the pressure of living with an unachievable dream as english teachers that they carried with them from their native countries to their graduate study. [i came to the program thinking that] with the quickening of chinese reforming … it’s our duty to get a good command of english (monica, cohort 1) [in china] …i compare myself to native speaker and i always see myself as failed l1 speaker… every time we learn to speak, we listen to how native speakers pronounce and talk, and if we can’t follow exactly, we feel disappointed. … all i was required to do was to … imitate the accent to try to sound like american. (zhang, cohort 3) ilieva & waterstone. curriculum discourses within a tesol program 29 transnational curriculum inquiry10(1) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci through this … med tesl … i could feel free from obsession that [as a teacher] i should become like a native speaker.(chung, cohort 2) these quotes are testament to the impact of the dominant native-speaker ideology they had been exposed to prior to coming to the program on any professional identity they imagined themselves they could develop. tracing students’ engagement with the discourse of native-speakerism in the program suggests that gaining familiarity with the discourse of multicompetence (cook, 1999) and with critical views on native speaker accents (lippigreen, 1997) allows the students to develop critical perspectives on native-speaker ideology and professional identity. i used to worry [whether] i can speak like a native english speaker and i believed it would bring me more prestige … living in canada. [here], i formed a new attitude towards the accent as it is impossible for adult chinese learners to speak “perfect” english. now i am no longer shameful about my accent and i even do not want to sound like a native speaker because it may take away my identity …. i will share my view with my future students which would give them confidence in learning english. (chloe, cohort 3) while the way students discuss cp or ct in the previous data section do not suggest creative use of these discourses, the facility with which chloe talks about her identity in relation to native english speaker accents and the well-thought-through rationale behind her intention to share these struggles with her students speak to the choices these pre-service teachers have seen in engaging with discourses critiquing native speakerism in the program. another relevant thread that allows us to make sense of the changes in these students’ views of themselves as professionals in relation to the dominant native speaker ideology comes from tracing the struggles some students went through in becoming critical of this discourse. in the past … i always naturally labeled myself…. i am an “international tesl student,” a “non-native english speaker,” a “chinese, who came from the so-called ‘third world’” …. i actually created a border between those labels and the opposite [side]… [a]fter coming to this international programin this diverse … country, i have learned that it is necessary for me to break these boundaries. without these boundaries, i could not only learn from the opposite perspectives,different cultures and languages, but also use my “peripheral” perspectives and identities to help both others and me understand the world completely.(diana, cohort 3) overcoming boundaries has been difficult for diana, but also liberating/allowing for agentive uptake of the critique of native speakerism. crossing boundaries and struggling with the disempowering native speaker ideology can be traced as well in the portfolios of other students in cohorts 2 and 3. here are two examples: one anecdote … happened in an esl lesson [during practicumwhich] aroused my awarenessof the possibility that non-native esl teachers like me may have some ilieva & waterstone. curriculum discourses within a tesol program 30 transnational curriculum inquiry10(1) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci advantages over native [english] teachers in “english-only”classroom … later on … i got the theory to support my idea.(megan, cohort 2) lippi-green’s (1997) comments on accents and “standard languages” further challenged my previous view upon “non-native” accentsin english which had been …negative. … [w]hen i read “what do esl students say about their accents” in [the first course of the program],my thoughts about l2 accents [were] already … changing. [now]my opinion on “standard languages” was more powerfully shaken. (ben, cohort 3) these quotes invoking timelines around unsettling native-speakerism speak to the many opportunities students had across courses to engage with discourses of non-native speakers of english as multicompetent second language (l2) users and legitimate teachers of the language. thus these ideas seem to have been reinforced across coursework and fieldwork. indeed, an examination of course outlines suggests that students had opportunities to engage with discourses of multicompetence and critique of native-speakerism in more than half of their courses. clearly “[c]ertain elements in the environment have been made salient, relevant to the personal experience of the learners, for whom they “afford”, i.e. yield meaning” (kramsch, 2002, p. 11). what’s more, in this case, the meaning that they seem to yield allows for a more agentive uptake of discourses critiquing native-speakerism. the discourse of multicompetence first encountered in readings by multilingual writers in the introductory course seems to offer affordances or spaces for movement (van lier, 2010, p. 4) towards more confidence in themselves, both as graduate students in tesol and as professionals in the field, as one student reports in an interview in study 1. [these readings] made me think a lot and also it gave me a lot of strengths as a nonnative speaker (kathy, int, coh6). other students’ reflections at the end of the first term index these new perspectives. […] before … i agreed that non-native english language teachers are marginalized. yet my answer to this question now is this status is an asset because i have experienced the learning difficulties so i have a better understanding … this critical thinking helps me to build my identity confidence (gayle, written reflection, coh7). one student wrote about how she changed her views on l2 users and used that idea to write one of the assignments in the course—when there was no expectation that specific engagement with the curriculum discourse of multilingual competence will be made in any of the assignments for the course: l2 users, although may have various difficulties in academic writings, can also serve as a stream of new blood who can bring new visions and different culture and values in this field. and this actually became the theme of my short paper. (april, written reflection, coh6). ilieva & waterstone. curriculum discourses within a tesol program 31 transnational curriculum inquiry10(1) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci an outspoken, mature student with prior teaching experience called for changes in academic discourse communities themselves. she speaks directly to stier’s (2004) critique of the ideology of academicentrism, which only recognizes a narrow way of ‘doing things’ in the academy. western academic communities should investigate the value of non-western writing practices and shed new light on them. (kathy, written reflection, coh6). these critical views show how some students, by the end of the academic literacy course, have gone beyond feeling that they must only bow to normative values, but rather have a more positive view of themselves as second language users and point to the need for change in academic communities and the tesol field. this agentive movement is linked to the affordances made possible by the reiteration of critical perspectives towards native-speakerism throughout the program. as mentioned briefly earlier, another discourse that seems to offer more possibilities for an agentive uptake is the discourse of “voice” in becoming an academic writer. the program seems to be a place where students can develop and produce a ‘voice’ that, while constrained by the conditions of reception (by who will hear it and how it will be heard), nevertheless provides a chance to negotiate their own understandings.in the following interview, another student shows her developing understanding of how to produce a ‘voice’ within the writing she does for her graduate study. interviewer: do you have a sense of your own voice as a writer? april: … i’m not quite sure yet. the only thing i’m sure is that when i write papers i will have my own stance on a certain topic … i want the readers to really know my stance, my understanding … interviewer: do you have any idea how to develop your voice? … april: to read more is a good way because from reading you can find others’ voice and then you know how their voice is heard when you read their papers and then when you write your own papers, then you can think about how you can make your voice heard by others (april, int, coh5) this student recognizes that one does have to think about the reader, about creating a voice that can be heard. she points to reading, as enacted in the course, as a guide to developing voice. in academic writing, this means being able to situate your work within a particular field, to join an ongoing scholarly conversation, and seeing their own writing as in a dialogical relationship with others writing about the same issues. in the following focus group discussion from the same cohort/same year, held at the end of the first term of study, students talk about their emerging appropriation of the discourse of voice, which as expressed below may be potentially traced to specific readings they engaged with. linda: i still remember that one article we read in past [course] is how to find i, i in the paper, your identities. i think maybe we can shift our intention from trying to impress the reader to just write down what you think about, just to express your ilieva & waterstone. curriculum discourses within a tesol program 32 transnational curriculum inquiry10(1) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci original ideas. i think that may be easier to write a long, to write an academic-like paper, because if you lost i, if you lost identity, you just to try to imitate others, it’s not meaningful. i think it’s not, it doesn’t make sense to me, so i think if you try to understand, if you try to write down what you think about that may be easier. amber: to create your own voice linda: yeah the idea of ‘creating’ your own voice suggests that students are seeing this as a chance to assert their own agency. while using others’ words, they have a sense of inflecting them with their own meanings (bakhtin, 1981). i kept thinking about my voice … in some ways, i kind of borrow others’ language but i think i can own english in my own way. so when i want to say something in english i just use english to represent my ideas. … i just want to make my own ideas and support my ideas using my experience while using my readings to show that how i understand it and what does it really mean to me. (jennifer, focus group, coh7) the course readings that assert the strengths of multilingual writers and that encourage ownership of english as an international language continue to have an impact. one student writes at the end of the first term how she has understood both the discourses of being ‘critical,’ of ‘voice,’ and of her rights as an l2 writer: i like reading canagajarah’s articles because i can hear his own voice through his papers. maybe i think of him as a role model of l2 writer. in english writing, l2 writers dare not claim its ownership of english. we just try to satisfy the standard form. as a l2 writer, i might start writing by imitating others. however, it’s time to go beyond ventriloquism. i also am a legitimate user of english. a language belongs to people who use it whether native or non-native, whether standard or non-standard (whose standard?) it is true that i have to make my voice heard. at the same time i should be careful not to be dominated by ‘standard’ forms. l2 users can transform standard form if it’s needed. as an educator, i think critically about the nature of language and encourage my students to have their voice with ownership.””(sharon, written reflection, coh 7). conclusion international students come to north american universities seeking a foreign graduate degree from an english-speaking country in order to augment their cultural capital (beck, ilieva, scholefield and waterstone, 2007) and bring with them an internalized ‘deficit discourse’ about their own abilities. however, with increasing internationalization, what counts as cultural capital is becoming destabilized, and higher education is a site of clashing epistemologies and increasing diversity. within this context, the question of how to engage with students in an ethical manner remains a challenge; we feel this can be illuminated if the way students and instructors inhabit program curricula is explored holistically, using an ecological lens. as van lier (2010) insists, “all the elements within an ecosystem (such as a ilieva & waterstone. curriculum discourses within a tesol program 33 transnational curriculum inquiry10(1) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci classroom) are interrelate... research [should] look at the full complexity of the entire process, over time and space, in order to capture the dynamic forces that are at work” (p. 5). our study illuminates the symbiotic relationship that develops between the discourses circulating in an educational setting and the internally persuasive discourses/identities that are available for uptake in this setting. using both a bakhtinian and an ecological lens, we have examined the program curriculum as lived and how it opens up a local space for 'taking up' available discourses in various ways. clearly, certain ideologies and discourses in the environment limit the possibilities for students to see themselves as ‘successful’ graduate students in this new academic context, or, as they complete their degree, to imagine themselves successful within the profession. other forces afford relations of possibility that yield positive academic and professional identity formation of these students. this particular program seems to create spaces or affordances that constrain possibilities for students to be creative and also, to a certain degree, allows or opens up spaces where students are able to be more active, agentive. creating opportunities for agency in a classroom setting is essential because, as van lier (2010) points out, agency is … closely connected to identity, and this emphasizes the social and dialogical side of agency: it depends not only on the individual, but also on the environment. …. learning is inseparably tied to agency. the employment of agency depends on a learning conducive environment that allows and instigates a diversity of manifestations of agency at different levels. …..” (p.5). this examination of curriculum enactment helps to unravel the thread that runs through this particular program and that may contribute to a sense of accomplishment as an academic writer and future teacher of english. we need to be critical towards the authoritative discourses we help international student teachers appropriate as particular program discourses seem to offer particular relations of possibilities. since 2006, research on the initial academic literacy course in the program has influenced curriculum design each year. one impact is that we recognize the need to scaffold and practice developing the kinds of writing expected, not only in the beginning, but throughout the program. being more aware of how these authoritative discourses may be taken up, and continuing to try to create “a learning environment for a variety of expressions of agency to flourish” (van lier, 2010, p.5) seem crucial. students continue to be exposed to readings that question some of the prevailing ideologies in tesol and in higher education, as well as to concepts in critical pedagogy and constructivism. viewing the data presented above from an ecological perspective, we can see some of the impact of the reiteration of particular curriculum discourses throughout coursework in the program. according to kramsch (2008), “[m]eaning is multiscalar and recursive” (p. 404). students encounter the ‘same’ ideas, but at different stages of their learning. the extensive, but nondirective focus on multicompetence and critique of nativespeakerism perhaps allows for “cycles of repetition, re-iteration on various levels of complexity” (p. 404) and the restructuring of old knowledge in light of the new where “new meaning emerges in the contact zone between [various] renditions of the same story” (p. 404). ilieva & waterstone. curriculum discourses within a tesol program 34 transnational curriculum inquiry10(1) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci this complex layering influences the ways students engage with the curriculum and their uptake of certain discourses may change as a result. what seems interesting to note through the data presented above is that there do not seem to be written assignments through the courses in the program framed with an explicit expectation that students critique native speaker ideology in their work. similarly, while initial writing assignments seem to expect that students develop their own critical and reflective voice, no expectations seem evident with respect to developing a particular kind of voice visà-vis discourses of native-speakerism or multicompetence. a question this analysis demands is as follows: could such non-directive continuous engagement with particular themes allow various possibilities for ongoing negotiation/agentive appropriation of program/centre discourses? could this be one way to take into account van lier’s assertion that “the creation of [the agency-rich] environment is a major task of pedagogy” (2010, p. 5)? several questions continue to haunt us: is a critique of native speaker ideology and embracing the discourse of multicompetence truly a route to disrupt existing power relations or could these be another iteration of centre domination in tesol programs? are we advancing academicentrism (stier, 2004), the view that ‘our’ way of doing higher education, our theories/practices are ‘better’? are we still caught, as teacher educators in a canadian university, in the role of technicians of the empire (luke, 2004) when promoting critical pedagogy and constructivist teaching? in this study, we interrogate our own practices as teacher educators in this international program. it is dangerous and necessary work, as we are implicated in the structures and ideologies we are critiquing. as luke (2011) reminds us: “the unmarked norm of western rationality provides a ‘naturalizing’ device for its regulation of ‘others’ of all sorts and kinds” and we need to continue pondering “who is theorizing and positioning whom, on what grounds, with what historical precedents, with what educational and material consequences …?” (p. 18). here, we study student experiences and their oral and written reflections, and interpret them through our own frames, “speaking for others” (alcott 1991). however, this critical work must be done despite its limitations, because of the consequences of not critiquing ‘business as usual’ in an increasingly commodified higher education market, where internationalization is most often viewed through the lens of educationalism, as unproblematically improving cultural communication. notes 1 rilieva@sfu.ca 2 bwaterst@sfu.ca references alcoff, l. 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(1998). ethnocentrism in tesol: teacher education and the neglected needs of international tesol students. elt journal, 52, 3–10. luke, a. (2004). two takes on the critical. in b. norton & k. toohey (eds.), critical pedagogies and language learning (pp. 21–29). cambridge: cambridge university press. luke, a. (2011, april). generalising across borders: the limits of educational science. aera distinguished lecture. annual meeting of the american educational research association, new orleans. morita, n. (2004). negotiating participation and identity in second language academic communities. tesol quarterly 38(4), 573–603. norton, b. (2000). identity and language learning: gender, ethnicity and educational change. london: longman. pavlenko, a. (2003). “i never knew i was bilingual”: reimagining teacher identities in tesol. journal of language, identity, and education, 2, 251–268. pennycook, a. (1989). the concept of method, interested knowledge and the politics of language teaching.tesol quarterly 23(4), 589–618. phillipson, r. (1992). linguistic imperialism. oxford: oxford university press. stier, j. 2004. taking a critical stance toward internationalization ideologies in higher education: idealism, instrumentalism and educationalism. globalisation, societies and education, 2(1), 1–28. toohey, k. (2000). learning english at school: identity, social relations and classroom practice.clevedon, avon, uk: multilingual matters. turner, j. (2010). language in the academy: cultural reflexivity and intercultural dynamics. north york, on: multilingual matters. van lier, l. (2000). from input to affordance: social-interactive learning from an ecological perspective. in j. p. lantolf (ed.), sociocultural theory and second language learning: recent advances (pp. 245–-259). oxford: oxford university press. van lier, l. (2004). the ecology and semiotics of language learning: a sociocultural perspective. dordrecht, nl: kluwer academic. van lier, l. (2010). telling elt tales out of school. procedia social and behavioral sciences 3, 2-6. ilieva & waterstone. curriculum discourses within a tesol program 37 transnational curriculum inquiry10(1) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci varghese, m., morgan, b., johnston, b. & johnson, k. (2005). theorizing language teacher identity: three perspectives and beyond. journal of language, identity, and education, 4, 21–44. waterstone, b. (2003). self, genre, community: negotiating the landscape of a teacher/researcher collaboration. (unpublished doctoral dissertation). simon fraser university, burnaby. waterstone, b. (2008). "i hate the esl idea!" a case study in identity and academic literacy. tesl canada journal. 26 (1), 52-67. weedon, c. (1997). feminist practice and poststructuralist theory. new york: basil blackwell. submitted: january, 25th, 2013 approved: june, 15th, 2013 to cite this article please include all of the following details: transnational curriculum inquiry http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> peer review process 2011-2012 stats and reports issues published: 04 total submissions: 25 reviewed: 25 accepted (with revisions or not): 18 declined: 28% reviewers ai chun yen national university of taiwan taiwan alice casimiro lopes state university of rio de janeiro brazil alison neilson azores university portugal ana maria saul pontifical catholic university of são paulo brazil audrey msimanga university of the witwatersrand south africa bill green charles sturt university australia denise egea-kuehne louisiana state university usa donna trueit louisiana state university usa elizabeth macedo state university of rio de janeiro brazil francisco sousa açores university portugal heesoon bai simon fraser university canada hongyu wang oklahoma state university usa joão paraskeva university of ohio usa josé maria garduno autonomous university of mexico state mexico luis fernando cruz universidad el bosque colombia maria jacqueline g. de lima federal university of rio de janeiro brazil marlene atleo university of manitoba canada nicholas nga -fook university of ottawa canada nicoletta christodoulou frederick university of cyprus cyprus noel gough la trobe university australia pat o'riley university of british columbia canada raquel goulart barreto state university of rio de janeiro brazil rosanne dias federal university of rio de janeiro brazil silvia moraes federal university of ceará brazil stavroulla philippou university of cyprus cyprus william e. doll, jr louisianna state university usa http://uac.academia.edu/alisonneilson http://www.google.com.br/search?hl=pt-pt&spell=1&q=bill+green+charles+sturt&sa=x&ei=uwsrulfwjyle9atdzodoaq&ved=0cceqvwuoaa http://www.csu.edu.au/faculty/educat/teached/staff/profiles/professor/green_bill http://www.educ.sfu.ca/faculty/faculty/dr--heesoon-bai.html http://www.educ.sfu.ca/faculty/faculty/dr--heesoon-bai.html http://www.frederick.ac.cy/dppe/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=18&itemid=27&lid=241 http://www.latrobe.edu.au/education/about/staff/profile?uname=ngough http://ucy.academia.edu/stavroulaphilippou innovación educativa y reformas curriculares en méxico to cite this article please include all of the following details: macedo, elizabeth & lopes, alice casimiro. (2012). rio curriculum conference. transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> rio curriculum conference elizabeth macedo 1 & alice casimiro lopes 2 state university of rio de janeiro, brazil in july 2012, the iv conference of the international association for the advancement of curriculum studies took place in the city of rio de janeiro. it was supported by the main brazilian research funding agencies (cnpq, finep, capes, and faperj) and by state university of rio de janeiro (uerj), a budget amounting to nearly 60 thousand us dollars. on july 02-05, 257 curriculum field researchers, coming from 20 countries and 60 different universities, have created an environment proper to conversation and discussions on (but not only) curriculum. two conferences, 4 invited panels and 34 panels for members’ presentations were held, but also relevant conversation was carried at breakfast tables, coffee breaks, lunches and dinners, not to mention in the halls. concerning the organized spaces for conversation about curriculum, in the opening ceremony, the president of abdc (brazilian curriculum association), nilda alves, representing the curriculum researchers in brazil, has presented the field in the country. the president of iaacs (international association for the advancement of curriculum studies), dr. zhang hua, was in charge of the opening conference, dealing with curriculum studies in china and its dialogue with paulo freire’s thought. the invited panels were formed by researchers from various countries and dealt with different themes: curriculum, autobiography and difference, by william pinar (university of british columbia) and nicholas ng-a-fook (university of ottawa); curriculum policy, by alicia de alba (universidad nacional de misiones) and myriam southwell (universidad nacional de la plata/facultad latinoamericana de ciencias sociales); radical pedagogy in post-structural time, by peter appelbaum (arcadia university) and wayne hugo (university of kwazulu-natal); and curriculum field in brazil, organized by abdc, composed of antonio flavio moreira (petrópolis catholic university), ana maria saul (são paulo pontifical catholic university) and carlos eduardo ferraço (federal university of espírito santo). the panels for members’ presentations were composed of 73 approved papers whose authors have confirmed their presence at the event. in total, there were 103 expanded summaries sent, of which 21 were refused, 70 immediately approved and 12 approved after summary reformulation. contrary to what normally happens, the scientific committee arrived at the decision of asking for such reformulation when it judged that the research quality was good, but the summary presentation was inadequate. the 34 sessions were organized with 2 or 3 papers each, carried out in 6 simultaneous sessions, arranged according to the languages of presentation of papers — portuguese, english, spanish, and french —, and mingling researchers from different countries. discussions after sessions were heated and, in some cases, held in different languages. william doll (university of british columbia) was in charge of the closure conference, dealing with complexity theories and curriculum, and more specifically macedo & lopes. rio curriculum conference 2 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci with the relations between moral and ethics in contemporary curriculum. the presentation of the relevant work by william doll was made by william pinar (university of british columbia) talking about pragmatism, post-modernism and complexity theory. we took advantage of the opportunity to praise william doll’s work in iaacs consolidation. as for the chats in less formal spaces, there is not a lot we could say by now. each one of the people who took part in them knows how important they were for their professional and personal life. from some of them, we will certainly hear the echoes in collective research projects, jointly written texts and other activities that are starting to appear, related to the participation of each one of us in iaacs. as the space of conversation gathering curriculum field researchers from different countries, there are lots of translations being made in our conferences. we know that we are translating traditions, that thoughts developed for the educational reality of certain places migrate to other cultures. impossible, but necessary translations, in order to constitute our field and advance its future. in an international association as ours, such translations become visible because we need to negotiate in the language used to have our conversation. in general, we have decided to use a kind of global english, in its various accents, mixed with lots of gestures. the mixture of languages in the halls between the rooms where the conferences took place remembered us of the international character of the association, in case we could forget it in certain moments. in this conference edition, we have tried to make such translation more explicit, arranging sessions in different languages and having some with various languages spoken. we have made a special request for the summaries to be sent in more than one language, even for those who have english as their mother tongue. as for we have heard in the halls, we have not lost intelligibility and have emphasized more clearly the horizontality of the relations that our association would wish to establish in curriculum studies internationalization. our next conference will be held in 2015, in the university of ottawa, canada. until then, we shall intensify our conversations in other spaces, some of them made available in previous conferences. tci (transnational curriculum inquiry) is one of the most privileged for this. a lot of what has been published in this journal was presented and debated in iaacs conferences and other forum for curriculum discussions. therefore, tci is one of the arenas where the conversations may be held between events and amplified to members who could not be present in the conferences, as well as for the public in general. in the two 2013 numbers, to be launched in june and december, we expect to publish, among other things, numerous papers debated in the iv iaacs conference. besides the call for papers for the works debated in rio conference, 2013 numbers are open for receiving other papers contributing to complicate and internationalize even more the conversation about curriculum. notes 1 bethmacedo@pobox.com 2 alicecasimirolopes@gmail.com o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: butler, jesse k., ng-a-fook, nicholas,vaudrin-charette, julie, mcfaden, ferne (2015). living between truth and reconciliation: responsibilities, colonial institutions, and settler scholars transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tc i <access date> living between truth and reconciliation: responsibilities, colonial institutions, and settler scholars jesse k. butler1, nicholas ng-a-fook2, julie vaudrin-charette3, & ferne mcfadden4 university of ottawa, canada reconciliation must become a way of life. it will take many years to repair damaged trust and relationships in aboriginal communities and between aboriginal and non-aboriginal peoples. reconciliation not only requires apologies, reparations, the relearning of canada’s national history, and public commemoration, but also needs real social, political, and economic change. ongoing public education and dialogue are essential to reconciliation. governments, churches, educational institutions, and canadians from all walks of life are responsible for taking action on reconciliation in concrete ways, working collaboratively with aboriginal peoples. reconciliation begins with each and every one of us. (the truth and reconciliation commission of canada, 2015a, pp. 240-241) we are at that crossroads in our country, the one where we face the decision of whether we strive for true reconciliation or whether we remain a country in denial. there is no more room for the politics of divisiveness. now is the time where we must all come together as a nation not to just accept but begin to reconcile with what is our darkest stain. as justice sinclair so clearly pointed out in those days in ottawa, this is not just a first nations problem or issue. it is a canadian one. (joseph boyden, 2015, paragraph 23) [jesse] the university of ottawa, along with its surrounding affluent neighbourhood of sandy hill, is curtained on its three sides by rideaux—the rideau river (east), the rideau canal (west), and rideau street (north). the word “rideau” is from the french word for “curtain,” and is just one of many european words imposed onto this landscape by canada’s settler society. in ottawa, however, this one name seems to take on particular symbolic significance, suggesting all of the “curtains” we hang around ourselves as a settler society, hiding ourselves from seeing the colonized landscape we occupy. that these rideaux surround the university of ottawa seems particularly fitting, given this institution’s complex colonial history. (it was originally founded by the oblates, who also ran most of the catholic residential schools in canada, trc, 2015a, p. 52.) the situation, however, extends beyond this one institution. the name “rideau” hangs as a curtain over this entire colonial capital, disguising our ongoing presence on unceded algonquin territory. if you follow rideau street west from campus, over the rideau canal, it becomes wellington street, and runs past some of the central institutions that govern our settler state: parliament, the supreme court, and the butler, ng-a-fook, vaudrin-charette and mcfadden. living between truth and reconciliation 45 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci national archives. to the east, past the rideau river, rideau street turns into montreal road, running through the less affluent neighbourhood of vanier, where much of ottawa’s first nations, métis, and inuit population has taken up residence. in the midst of montreal road’ s decaying architecture, the wabano centre for aboriginal health, a beautiful new edifice of glass and stone, stands out as a major landmark, and a visual sign of indigenous resurgence in these territories. residing and working among these geographical grids of signification, what are our responsibilities as settler educators and researchers? as curriculum scholars, we are particularly aware of how this colonial history has manifested itself in our educational curricula, which have historically looked elsewhere (to europe or the united states) to define who we are here in canada (tomkins, 1981). in response to this history, cynthia chambers (1999) has challenged canadian curriculum scholars to write about “the particular places and regions where we live and work” (p. 147), a theme which has since been taken up numerous times by chambers (2003, 2008, 2012) and by others (blood, chambers, donald, hasebeludt, & big head, 2012, ng-a-fook, 2007, 2014). as settler scholars, therefore, our research activities should not be directed solely to our immediate context of settler cosmopolitanism— a context that we have artificially constructed over the landscape. instead, how do we begin to look beyond the curricular curtains to the pre-existing relational landscape, and its prior “natural context” that makes all of this possible (henderson, 2000)? we live among a complex topography of relations that are “inscribed in our theorizing, as either presence or absence, whether we want them there or not” (chambers, 1999, p. 147) . in the work we have undertaken here, we have attempted to take on this challenge. the complexity of ottawa’s colonial geography became particularly clear in the spring of 2015, when two conferences hosted at the university of ottawa’s faculty of education—the international association for the advancement of curriculum studies (iaacs) and the canadian society for the study of education (csse) —coincided with the ceremonies related to the release of the truth and reconciliation commission of canada’s (trc) final report on residential schooling. while both conferences made concerted efforts to create a central place for algonquin anishinàbeg voices, there was still a disconnect between these different events taking place in the same city. some of the scholars attending the conferences took the time to join the walk for reconciliation down wellington street, or to attend the final trc ceremonies, but to do so meant missing concurrent conference sessions. there are complex curricular issues here related to the coordination of a conference for local, provincial, national, or international communities of scholars. yet if we, as canadian educational researchers, cannot mobilize to engage with canada’s shameful history of “cultural genocide” perpetuated against indigenous peoples through state sponsored educational programs like the indian residential schooling system (trc, 2015a, p. 1), how can we expect the rest of the settler population to do so? four years ago in this same journal, smith, ng-a-fook, berry, and spence (2011) reflected on their various responsibilities to take up the history of residential schooling as settler researchers and educators. with the final release of the trc report this spring, now is a good time for us to revisit their concerns, as a new group of settler curriculum scholars teaching and learning within this colonial capital. our essay mirrors this previous publication in form and content. to do so, we present a series of reflective narrative snapshots (adapted from our presentations at the 2015 iaacs and csse conferences which were hosted at the university of ottawa). in that previous publication, ng-a-fook (2011) drew on the work of paulo freire to argue that these multiple perspectives on residential school history represented the “theoretical limit-situations associated with appropriating indigenous historical butler, ng-a-fook, vaudrin-charette and mcfadden. living between truth and reconciliation 46 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci knowledges” (p. 63). a limit-situation, according to freire (1970/2005), is a situation that brings us up against the limits of our current understanding and forces us to expand our awareness. in his words: people, as beings “in a situation,” find themselves rooted in temporal -spatial conditions which mark them and which they also mark. they will tend to reflect on their own “situationality” to the extent that they are challenged by it to act upon it. human beings are because they are in a situation. and they will be more the more they not only critically reflect upon their existence but critically act upon it. (p. 109) the trc’s report calls for settler scholars and educators to revisit their past, present, and future limit-situations. as julia emberley (2013) notes, the testimonies of residential school survivors collected by the trc are provoking a shift within eurocentric epistemologies. “[o]ne important aspect of this epistemi c shift,” she contends, “involves the recognition of a speaking subject that is situated in a field of multiple subjugated and nonsubjugated interdependencies” (p. 143). the perspectives we present, therefore, are not intended to embody the authoritative voice of a single (colonial) epistemology, but four situated responses to how the trc calls us forth as non-indigenous scholars to enact reconciliation in our research and our teaching. in what follows: 1. jesse presents an analysis of the inclusion (and marginalization) of indigenous perspectives in ontario’s civics curriculum, arguing that the continuing subjugation of indigenous to eurocentric perspectives indicates the need for more radical approaches to curricular decolonization. 2. julie shares her conversation with a team of settler educators in a quebec college context trying to indigenize their institution, and suggests the types of personal, collective, and institutional transformations that this work involves. 3. ferne presents findings from her interviews with teacher candidates completing a voluntary practicum in an indigenous community, and argues for more intentional inclusion of indigenous knowledges and teaching methods in teacher education. 4. nicholas addresses the different strategic ways in which his faculty of education is attempting to respond to the recommendations put forth by the association of canadian deans of education accord on indigenous education, the 13 principles, and trc calls for action. in presenting our situated perspectives on the trc, we demonstrate how we continue to come up against limit-situations in our inherited settler epistemologies, and how these call us forth—past the curtains that hide the colonized landscape—to re/envision our future participation with indigenous communities toward reconciliation. as the trc (2015a) states: “reconciliation begins with each and every one of us” (p. 241). and so we must begin. the marginalization of indigenous perspectives in the ontario curriculum [jesse] the final report of the trc (2015a) has confirmed what indigenous scholars have long argued: that indigenous peoples’ experiences of education in canada have been shaped by a distant and colonial government that assumes it knows what children need better than their own families. battiste (1998) calls this educational model “cognitive imperialism” (p. 17). as she describes: butler, ng-a-fook, vaudrin-charette and mcfadden. living between truth and reconciliation 47 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci this fragmented accumulation of knowledge builds on eurocentric strategies that maintain their knowledge is universal, that it derives from standards of good that are universally appropriate, that the ideas and ideals are so familiar they need not be questioned, and that all questions can be posed and resolved within it. (p. 21) the specific form of cognitive imperialism has changed, but the underlying logic continues. according to weenie (2008), it currently translates into the experience of being placed on the periphery of the curriculum. indigenous cultures are included, but in simplistic and tokenistic ways—what battiste (2011) calls an “add-and-stir” approach—that in no way disrupt the central eurocentric assumptions that govern our educational system (battiste, 2013, cherubini & hodson, 2008, donald, 2009). in this section, i explore some of these issues by comparing the inclusion of indigenous content in the current and previous versions of the grade 10 civics curriculum produced by the ontario ministry of education (ome, 2005, 2013). while such analyses are necessary across the curriculum, citizenship is a particularly problematic concept for indigenous students (deer, 2009), making civics an important place to start. in analyzing this curriculum as a document, i am not assuming that policy translates into classroom practice in a simplistic way. as redwing saunders and hill (2007) have argued: “although curriculum is structured in a rigid compartmentalized plan, good teachers integrate and find fluidity in their practice” (p. 1032). nonetheless, a number of educational researchers have pointed to the powerful effects of policy documents in general (ball, maguire, br aun, & hoskin, 2011, lankshear, 1998), and curriculum policy documents in particular (apple, 2004, bergen & mclean, 2014). these authors indicate that, although the analysis of curriculum policy documents cannot give a complete picture of the effects of a policy, such analysis still provides important insights into the range of possible responses that the policy constrains or leaves open. ontario’s curriculum policy is structured by broad “overall expectations” followed by “specific expectations” that break these down into greater detail. within the possibilities and limitations of such an outcomes-based approach, therefore, the 2013 ontario civics curriculum represents a clear effort to include more indigenous content. in the 2005 policy document, only 3 out of the 33 specific expectations make any kind of explicit reference to indigenous peoples, while the 2013 document has increased them to 12 out of the 37 specific expectations. this represents a certain degree of progress. nonetheless, this simple quantitative increase does not resolve the core qualitative problem of indigenous knowledges being consigned to the periphery. as the 2013 introduction states: “the expectations in these courses provide numerous opportunities for students to break through ster eotypes and to learn about various social, religious, and ethnocultural groups, including first nation, métis, and inuit people” (ome, 2013, p. 49). the word “opportunities” here performs a dual purpose, suggesting both possibility and contingency. none of the references to indigenous peoples in either document occur within the overall expectations, which are the core outcomes teachers are asked to make reference to when evaluating students’ work. furthermore, these references do not occur in the formal explication of the specific expectations. instead, they are made reference to in the curricular and pedagogical examples. indeed, the increased number of references in the 2013 document can largely be accounted for by the significant increase in the number of examples. at no point is there stated any necessity to teach these topics in the classroom. moreover, the references often work to further marginalize indigenous histories and ways of knowing. for example, several of the 2013 references are simply the inc lusion of butler, ng-a-fook, vaudrin-charette and mcfadden. living between truth and reconciliation 48 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci indigenous governments as one of the “levels” of government in canada, paralleling it with municipal governments as a “level” below the national and provincial. in this way, the civics curriculum fails to acknowledge indigenous government as a separate order, grounded in the nation-to-nation relationships established through treaties (henderson, 2013, turner, 2013). the overall effect is that indigenous perspectives are included in the curriculum, while simultaneously being pushed to the periphery. they are included only where they fit as a subcategory to what donald (2009) calls elsewhere the existing colonial frontier logics that structure the policy document. the marginalization of indigenous peoples, and of their respective epistemologies, is perhaps most apparent in the model of human development found in the preface to the 2013 document (see figure 1). this model is a variation of a first nations medicine wheel, modified to include different concentric circles—an inner circle of “self/spirit” and an outer circle of “context” (ome, 2013, p. 4). in separating “self” from “context” in this manner, the model continues to perpetuate the long history of imposing colonial concepts, such as individuality, onto our understandings of indigenous communities (smith, 1999, pp. 47-50). these additions impose a eurocentric way of thinking onto the medicine wheel, in which the different elements relate not through a relational totality but through an analytic hierarchy that subdivides the constituent elements. figure 1: human development model (source: ontario ministry of education, 2013, p. 4) this analytic subdivision is identified by bell (2013) as an area in which the ontario curriculum conflicts with indigenous models of education. as she explains: “in the ontario curriculum guidelines there is a breaking apart of concepts without relation to the whole which reflects the socio-cultural, historical, political time period of its writing” (p. 99). bell goes on to provide an anishinaabe model of the medicine wheel, which provides a productive contrast here (see figure 2). while neither “self” nor “context” are explicitly included in bell’s model, a careful reading suggests that both are present throughout it, but in a relational rather than an analytic form. “self” is not an isolated, autonomous entity lurking in between mind, body, heart, and spirit, but a dynamic result of their relational interaction. likewise, “context” is not a reality separate from and existing beyond the boundaries of self, but is dynamically related to mind, body, heart, and spirit—as self, society, and environment mutually constitute one another. where “context” in the curriculum document is implied to be inert and objective, the four directions here are explicitly relational, for the y are not merely a field within which the self can be placed, but are orientations a person always exists in butler, ng-a-fook, vaudrin-charette and mcfadden. living between truth and reconciliation 49 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci relation to. as castellano (2000) argues, “the medicine wheel is not a model of rigid categorization . . . rather, it is a model of balance” (p. 30). figure 2: the four directions (source: bell, 2013, p. 96) the problematic nature of the analytic model becomes clear in how it is taken up in the 2013 curriculum document. because the elements are analytically defined and autonomous, they are more easily isolated, and the writers of the 2013 document deemphasize context and emphasize self. the description that immediately precedes the figure frames how it is read: its components – the cognitive, emotional, physical, and social domains – are interrelated and independent, and all are subject to the influence of a person’s environment or context. at the centre is an “enduring (yet changing) core” – a sense of self, or spirit – that connects the different aspects of development and experience. (ome, 2013, p. 4) “context” here is de-emphasized through its placement in a subordinate clause, while “self” is emphasized through a lengthier description and the hierarchically-loaded introductory phrase “at the centre.” furthermore, the 2013 document goes on to provide decidedly eurocentric descriptions of the four elements of the medicine wheel, placing them at the service of an autonomous individualistic “self.” for instance, “social development” – which by most definitions would be primarily concerned with rel ationships – is described with the following examples: “self-development (self-concept, self-efficacy, self-esteem); identity formation (gender identity, social group identity, spiritual identity); relationships (peer, family, romantic)” (p. 4). here the primary examples of “social development” are in fact forms of self-relation, with relationships to others only mentioned as an afterthought. this appropriation of the medicine wheel in order to advance a eurocentric model of the autonomous and individual self is typical of the way indigenous cultures are used while also being kept to the periphery of the ontario curriculum. we do not have time here to explore this in more detail, but we hope that we have given a glimpse of the complex limitsituations we must come up against if we want to truly advance reconciliation in our curriculum. when the trc (2015a) calls for “developing culturally appropriate curricula” as one aspect of a reformed indigenous education policy (p. 197), the task required of us is far greater than the “add-and-stir” approach of including more tokenistic references within our existing curricula (battiste, 2011). rather we must rethink the symbolic bases of meaning that butler, ng-a-fook, vaudrin-charette and mcfadden. living between truth and reconciliation 50 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci define what it means to be a “citizen” in our society, and what alterna te cultural and educational trajectories might enable a student to enter into these conversations. in an article on decolonizing canadian citizenship, woons (2013) argues: many indigenous peoples reject participating in shared institutions largely for symbolic reasons. they may feel their participation could be interpreted as legitimizing institutions that historically marginalized them. moreover, the symbolism associated with canadian institutions can seem, from an indigenous perspective, as foreign or at least as irrelevant as dutch, american, or indonesian institutions. as mentioned previously, the symbolism within canadian institutions makes the situation worse because it currently misrepresents indigenous peoples. (p. 202) woons goes on to suggest that citizenship should be understood not as a shared monolithic identity, but a common sense of belonging, grounded in mutual respect. as the preceding analysis suggests, such respect for multiplicity is difficult to achieve in a standardized and state-controlled curriculum. rather, as various scholars have contended (e.g., donald, glanfield, & sterenberg, 2011, 2012, simpson, 2014), it will likely require us to reform our traditional top-down approach to curriculum, in favour of an approach more responsive to students’ local communities and relationships with their environments. indigenizing curriculum in quebec’s colleges [julie] as part of my current doctoral research, and as a pedagogical advisor at a college in quebec, i have been documenting the emerging relationships between settler educators and indigenous people, land, language, culture. i draw on aoksisowaato’op (blood et al., 2012), a blackfoot concept used in curriculum studies, which reminds us of “the ethical importance of visiting a place as an act of ethical renewal that is life-giving and lifesustaining, both to the place and to ourselves” (p.48). in my curricular work with colleagues, we seek to understand what it means for settler scholars in quebec to develop ethical relational pedagogy in our particular time and place. our initial step, as a team of teachers from various disciplines —social sciences, arts, multimedia, etc.—was an attempt at demarginalizing our positionality as social justice educators. a pedagogical process emerged, driven by an intentionality of engagement (battiste, 2013, gorski, 2008). among us, some had a continuous, heart-felt commitment towards indigenizing the curriculum, while others wanted to know where to begin. given that there are very few indigenous students at our college, our endeavour provoked discussions on the in-between spaces of marginalization, relational pedagogy and processes of reconciliation. we wanted to reaffirm within the college that we saw first nations, métis, inuit communities, culture, and history, as a full component of what canadian education should look like (chambers, 2008, battiste, 2010). second, i observed that despite a strong intentionality towards reconciliation, most of the teachers on the team felt they did not know enough about first nations, métis and inuit peoples to bring indigenous content to their students. a primary concern was on accuracy of facts and approaches in delivering appropriate class-content to their students, meeting their disciplinary criteria. we wanted to play a role in bringing indigenous perspectives within our institution, without making cultural faux-pas. together, we imagined a multidisciplinary initiative for the following academic year, to bring more teachers on board by providing more information on/with indigenous peoples and perspectives in their curriculum. butler, ng-a-fook, vaudrin-charette and mcfadden. living between truth and reconciliation 51 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci our intention was not to perpetuate the symbolic violences of colonialism. yet, a pedagogical approach focusing on content might present a way around the tricky question of developing relationships with the specific anishnaabe nation, whose land our college occupies. in fact, wouldn’t it be easier to indigenize curriculum through a content-based, disciplinary approach? as tuck & gaztambide-fernandez (2013) indicate, these are the limitsituations of a multiculturalist paradigm: when being inclusive, whitestream curriculum begins to absorb and contain, consuming and erasing the other, by always-already positioning the accumulated knowledge as other to, less refined, more subjective and less reliable than the whitestream. the story is just a better story when there are more white people in it. (p. 82) to go beyond such narratives, we had to move into a different pedagogical space, where teachers and students could relate, in person, with members of the anishinàbeg nation. as a team, we envisioned this shift from content-based to relational pedagogy in our everyday practices. tuning into the trc’s principles of reconciliation (2015b, p.4), we reached out to an elder to assist us with our planning process. we invited elders to share stories with our students of the intergenerational impacts of residential schools, language, and broken treaties. these workshops sought to trigger students’ curiosity, reflection and desire to foster further relationships between our nations. students were welcomed to anishinàbeg language through an opening prayer song. some students were surprised by the opening prayer and practices, and wondered why these were permitted within our secular context. our team of educators experienced the limit-situations of creating cultural divides within an intercultural paradigm. this resulted in a moment where the risk of reinforcing stereotypes, or creating further sense of “us” and “them,” needed to be deconstructed. the focus on otherness needed to be transformed toward an inter-cultural relational space (pretceille, 2013, emongo & white, 2014). such divisive politics can occur on multiple layers: in our institutional positionality as “marginalized educators” engaged in social justice, in our perceptions of teaching and learning, in our hesitations and errands in finding ways to relate, in the students’ reactions to languages and cultural practices, in the very boundaries we create within ourselves. students, and teachers, within and beyond our team, needed to visit this zone of discomfort in order to realize that they were hearing for the first time the language that has been spoken across this land since time immemorial. so, how can we move beyond divisive politics in our pedagogy of reconciliation? aoksisowaato’p brought a different dimension to our teaching. we were attempting to reconcile the relational dimensions of our curriculum and pedagogy. we strove to anchor our experience within the various places we inhabit—as program teams, as an institution, and with anishinàbeg people in urban and on-reserve situations. entering into a second interdisciplinary project, we started to deconstruct our colonial discourse, questioning our identity as the descendants of settlers, immigrants, or first peoples, and reconstructing our pedagogy around relationships between teachers, with students, within our institutions and ourselves. in this fragile, third limit-situation, a shift of paradigm occurred where we became aware of the existing institutional boundaries that in turn create divisive forces, and recognized that these boundaries have shaped our experiences in becoming. we continue to work on going beyond without erasing them. our pedagogies are now enriched by the perspectives and relations established within and outside our institution—including the kitigan zibi kikinamadinan school. elders, members of the educational board, and students butler, ng-a-fook, vaudrin-charette and mcfadden. living between truth and reconciliation 52 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci are present in creating collective dialogical spaces in which a conversation on major social justice issues such as reconciliation can begin at our post-secondary institution. as elder gilbert whiteduck offered a closing prayer at the iaacs conference, i felt a tension between proximity to an indigenous voice and the cultural divide created through genocide of language and culture. my inner-voice, as a settler researcher, with all its good intentions, becomes frail. my certitudes, as a curriculum advisor, evaporate: i realise that what i haven’t learned is more crucial to my individual becoming within a collecti ve than any past experiences. i am still learning a key component, which is to be humbled, as a tiny part of a much larger ecosystem of reconciliation. in fact, the perpetuation of the symbolic violence of discourse still lives within us, in our curriculum, in our pedagogies, and sometimes in our attempts to change. as we accept to be transformed by the people on whose land we sit, we do it with the radical hope that it brings all of us closer to reconciliation. miigwetch… pre-service teachers, curriculum, and indigenous pedagogies [ferne] scholars working in the area of aboriginal education continue to stress the lack of knowledge non-indigenous teachers have in terms of the intergenerational impacts of colonizing the indigenous territories some of us now call canada (dion, 2007, kanu, 2007, 2011, maciver, 2012). consequently, indigenous scholars and communities are calling for teacher education programs to be more proactive in addressing the absence of historical and epistemological knowledge with teacher candidates before they transition to their future classrooms. during an interview, justice sinclair reminded us that: part of the misunderstanding that we see so prevalent in canadian society is young adults, and adults in positions of leadership, constantly demonstrate a total lack of understanding and misunderstanding about who aboriginal people are … and what non-aboriginal society has contributed and done to aboriginal people that has caused the situation to be what it is in aboriginal canada. (quoted in chiose, 2015, paragraph 4) as a recent graduate of a canadian bachelor of education program, coming to terms with my limit-situations as a non-indigenous teacher teaching within this contemporary context, i have been reflecting on my experiences worki ng with and learning from the kitigan zibi anishinabeg algonquin community. now during my graduate studies, i have spoken with non-indigenous student teachers who have also had the same community servicelearning opportunities to teach and learn from first nations teachers at the kitigan zibi kikinamadinan school. what follows in this section, are narrative snapshots of the limitsituations student teachers encountered through teaching at a first nations band council administered elementary school. colonial schooling: reflections entering the program, student teachers5 had a similar (lack of) experience and understanding of indigenous communities who live across the territories that we call canada. student teachers talked about the lack of representation in their lived experiences with the ontario curriculum. some student teachers acknowledge that there were indigenous students in their classes. however, their histories and cultures were either absent or at the periphery of butler, ng-a-fook, vaudrin-charette and mcfadden. living between truth and reconciliation 53 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the school curriculum (weenie, 2008). when included, they encountered the ‘stereotypical’ arts and crafts projects often taught as they approached the “thanksgiving holiday,” or in history courses where they learned about the fur trade and positive impacts of settler -first nations relationships. one student teacher, nicole, mentioned knowing that “we were on their land,” whereas another, sam, was aware that there are hidden things we don’t like to talk about as they may tarnish the canada’s historical “peacemaking” image. their lived experiences echoed within my memories of learning about the first peoples of canada. in grade 3 we did a two-week unit on the mi’kmaq of eastern canada. our teachers gave us booklets to fill out. we watched movies and read small stories. we moved unsupervised through small group stations. later, during a grade 10 school trip to the local mi’kmaq reserve i learned that this first nations community was not only a historical narrative. indeed, they still existed! taking our experiences as an example, it would s eem our bachelor of education program would have quite a ways to go in preparing us to teach indigenous histories and perspectives in our future classrooms. for the most part, such epistemologies of ignorance formed an important limit-situation for my lived experiences within the teacher education program at the university of ottawa. provoking the present absence of indigenous histories within teacher education programs during my research, several teacher candidates expressed the possibilities and limitsituations of how well the bachelor of education prepared them to redress indigenous and non-indigenous relations within their future classrooms. and yet, the overall sentiment for most teacher candidates remained that they were unprepared to take up indige nous histories and ways of knowing within the curriculum-as-planned, -implemented, and -lived with students (aoki, 1986/2004). consequently, teacher candidates frequently called for a compulsory course on indigenous histories, knowledges, and perspectives. moreover, the student teachers also wished there were more curricular and pedagogical examples throughout the program of how to bring indigenous histories, cultures, and ways of knowing into their classrooms. instead, during their schooling the curriculum placed more emphasis on the social and economic deficits of first nations communities. nicole was grateful for the learning that happened during her community service learning teaching placement at the kitigan zibi school. she did not feel the bachelor of education really prepared her for how to bring first nations into her future classes. during our interview, she stated: i feel like because it’s a concept that not everybody still to this day knows really enough about so they are doing a great job at educating us on what happened and how aboriginal students feel on and off reserves, like we do have some perspective and they’ve been really focusing on that but actually putting it into practice in a classroom is a different thing. students are sensitive ri ght and how do you expose the truth without breaking too many hearts. (nicole, april 2015) she was not alone in this thinking. sam reflected: i think the hands on learning at the reserve, at kitigan zibi, did me more a favour than learning in the classroom could. even in the program, in the classrooms i don’t think it came up all that much. we talk about socially, as the curriculum being eurocentric, it still leaves out first nations perspectives. (sam, april 2015) butler, ng-a-fook, vaudrin-charette and mcfadden. living between truth and reconciliation 54 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci an attitude of ‘not my issue, i don’t have to deal with it’ was something rebecca identified as a recurring theme in her classes when the topic of indigenous education came up. she felt the program should have focused on getting: people to start looking at it as a relationship, where it doesn’t matter if you interact with first nations people every day or never meet an aboriginal person in your life. you are part of canadian history that has since inception intertwined with aboriginal communities and it’s your responsibility as a citizen to know what happened in history and educate others so it doesn’t happen again. (rebecca, april 2015) all three of these teacher candidates participated in an additional two week teaching practicum at the kikinamadinan school. each candidate expressed that the experience at kitigan zibi was a significant influence in their preparation to teach future canadian children about indigenous histories and ways of knowing. during their teaching placement at kikinamadinan school, the candidates had opportunities to see first nation educators teaching and learning with kitigan zibi students. the teacher candidates stressed the importance of being able to experience a first nations reserve that challenged the negative representations that are so prevalent in the media. while not necessarily leaving them prepared to teach about first nations, the experience left them more willing to try, more confident to find resources to bring into the classroom, and more aware of what the intergenerational issues even are. reflecting on her learning, nicole talked about feeling as though her learning happened fluidly, or unconsciously, with ideas and concepts becoming part of her internal framework rather than things she can reference explicitly. while she doesn’t yet feel entirely prepared to bring first nations into her future classrooms, she does credit her experiences within the kitigan zibi community for enhancing her future capacity to address their absent histories in the classroom. peter—one of the few male student teachers participating in the larger project—credits having visited and seen the reserve for making him more at ease to teach a unit on first nations histories and perspectives. he tells us, “you can elaborate more having been there and worked with the people and havi ng been part of their lives.” reflecting on the common unease felt by several teacher candidates in terms of how they will incorporate indigenous perspectives and history in their classrooms in accurate and respectful ways, kevin commented that, “it just comes down to, you know, having humility. you’ve got to be humble about things. you can’t be afraid to try things or embarrassed or whatever. you can learn from your mistakes and improve upon them.” in their final report, the trc recommends for canada to “provide necessary funding to post-secondary institutions to educate teachers on how to integrate indigenous knowledge and teaching methods in classrooms” (2015, p. 294). focusing on the role of universities, justice sinclair said during the closing trc events: the commission is greatly concerned over the fact that universities continue to graduate people into important professional positions who don’t have an understanding, education, and respect of who aboriginal people are and what they have to contribute in those areas. (quoted in chiose, 2015, paragraph 10) perhaps what we can take from experiences such as those i’ve shared here is that it’s time for universities, in preparing new professionals, including in the field of education, to find new ways of having them learn about historical and contemporary issues and relationships between indigenous and non-indigenous canadians. my research suggests that butler, ng-a-fook, vaudrin-charette and mcfadden. living between truth and reconciliation 55 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci community service-learning projects with indigenous communities can address an important curricular absence that continues to exist within the teacher education program at the university of ottawa. as bell (2011) has suggested, the best way for universities to prepare teachers on how to integrate indigenous knowledge and teaching methods, and provide them with an understanding and respect of who indigenous people are, may be to invite indigenous educators or community members to do the teaching. visiting places as re-visioning like relatives, places must be fed and cared for. like family and old friends, plac es are visited and in return they care for us, they may gift us with dreams and answers to our prayers. stay awhile; sit down; tell stories; eat and drink and offer something to those who came before, those who shaped this landscape and who were shaped by it; those who made our precious and precarious life possible. (chambers, 2006, p. 34) [nicholas] many people travel to ottawa each year, the capital of canada. they take tours of parliament hill, the byward market, rideau canal, ottawa river, and our national museums. prior to our gathering at the 5th triennial international association for the advancement of curriculum studies conference, we invited fellow curriculum scholars to visit and take refuge within our capital institution while sharing their research, stories, performances, and lived experiences. our gathering took place within the institutional walls of a colonial capital, which sits at the base of the ottawa valley and overlooks the confluences and tributaries of the kichi sibi (ottawa river) that meander across and beyond the traditional territories of the anishinàbeg who have lived upon this landscape since time immemorial. to acknowledge our respect to the anishinàbeg people who came before us and shaped this landscape, some of us travelled to the kitigan zibi reserve where we ate, drank, and shared stories with elders, school administrators, and teachers at their community centre and the kikinamadinan school. elders like gilbert whiteduck, a former chief, discussed what has made and makes their precarious lives possible both on and off their reserve. here “visiting,” as chambers (2006) makes clear, “is a form of renewal, a way of renewing and recreating people, places and beings, and their relationships to one another ” (p. 35). how might we then revisit the stories of truth and reconciliation inside and outside the contexts of public education as a way of renewing and recreating our relationships with one another? during his welcoming as our opening iaacs keynote address, gilbert whiteduck reminded us that the cosmological, emotional, intellectual, physical, and spiritual topographies of this landscape have provided, and continue to provide, a place, a gift, for us to meet and revisit the contested histories of, and contemporary relations betwe en our peoples. the anishinàbeg, he stressed that night, share a language, a gift from the creator, which established their first relationships with turtle island since time immemorial. he discussed the intergenerational violence that his community has experienced and continues to experience at the hands of colonial corporate surveyors, politicians, police, and educational bureaucrats. gilbert whiteduck stressed that what we need now to move forward during these times of truth and reconciliation is not another call for small steps, but rather a radical step forward that re-en/visions our future relations as sovereign indigenous and non-indigenous peoples. in 2007, several indian residential school survivors won a class action settlement agreement worth an estimated 2 billion dollars. the canadian government officially butler, ng-a-fook, vaudrin-charette and mcfadden. living between truth and reconciliation 56 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci responded a year later with a public state apology for the violent intergenerational impacts of residential schooling. soon after, the truth and reconciliation commission travelled across canada, listening to the stories of survivors, and facilitating various public commemorative events for both indigenous and non-indigenous communities6. often forgotten within this recent sequence of events, however, is that first nation, métis and inuit communities and their leaders had been petitioning the canadian government and its people to acknowledge their constitutional treaty obligations for several decades prior to the 2008 apology. such obligations included land settlements, educational funding, and judicial and political recognition of first nations sovereignty as part of canada’s constitutional act—what henderson (2013) has termed constitutional reconciliation. despite this momentum, opportunities to study the complexities of truth and reconciliation in terms of our historical and ongoing treaty obligations are for the most part absent from our school curriculum in ontario and from the public memory of a settler nation-state (see ng-a-fook and milne, 2014). and yet, although we now have several policies in place, our public educational institutions across canada are in still caught up in the processes of implementing small steps in response to the release of the truth and reconciliation commission’s final report (see http://www.trc.ca). here within the faculty of education at the university of ottawa, we are now caught between the processes of acknowledging truth and re-visioning indigenous and nonindigenous relations as reconciliation. on the one hand, we are attempting in collaboration with organizations like project of the heart and the kitigan zibi educational sector to develop, implement, and live curriculum that addresses the intergenerational impacts of the indian residential schooling (irs) system within our teacher education program (see www.projectofheart.ca). on the other, and as we look toward the future, we have established a first nations, métis, and inuit (fmni) advisory committee comprised of different local indigenous and non-indigenous educational stakeholders, kitigan zibi elders, school administrators and teachers, university of ottawa professors, graduate students, and teacher candidates. one of the mandates of the fmni advisory committee seeks to strengthen the consultative protocols between local first nations, métis, and inuit communities and the professors who are developing and implementing curriculum within our teacher education program. elders stressed that our professors and administrators need to visit the kitigan zibi community and places that inform their teachings more frequently. in response, we facilitated a one-day retreat for all of our professors prior to the commencement of this year’s teacher education program. and yet, much more work toward re-visioning and renewing our relations still needs to be done. the fmni advisory committee has sought to develop various ways in which they can leverage existing policy documents like the association of canadian deans of education (acde) accord on indigenous education to challenge how: the processes of colonization have either outlawed or suppressed indigenous knowledge systems, especially language and culture, and have contributed significantly to the low levels of educational attainment and high r ates of social issues such as suicide, incarceration, unemployment, and family or community separation. (acde, 2010, p. 2) our teacher education program has responded to such calls to action by making first nations, inuit and métis education: historical experiences and contemporary perspectives (ped 3138) a mandatory course for all incoming 2016-2017 candidates. when compared to http://www.trc.ca/ http://www.projectofheart.ca/ butler, ng-a-fook, vaudrin-charette and mcfadden. living between truth and reconciliation 57 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci some of the other universities across canada this is a small, and long overdue, step. such programmatic re-visioning responds to the trc’s (2015c) call to action on education for reconciliation: we call upon the federal, provincial, and territorial governments, in consultation and collaboration with survivors, aboriginal peoples, and educators, to: i. make age appropriate curriculum on residential schools, treaties, and aboriginal peoples’ historical and contemporary contributions to canada a mandatory education requirement for kindergarten to grade twelve students. ii. provide the necessary funding to post-secondary institutions to educate teachers on how to integrate indigenous knowledge and teaching methods into classrooms. (p. 7) at our fmni advisory committee meetings we are now discussing the content, developing protocols for elders, and establishing the necessary expertise of course instructors. to facilitate such re-visioning and renewal, our program like the acde accord on indigenous education is now committed toward:  supporting a socially just society for indigenous peoples;  reflecting a respectful, collaborative, and consultative process with indigenous and nonindigenous knowledge holders;  promoting multiple partnerships among educational and indigenous communities; and  valuing the diversity of indigenous knowledges and ways of knowing and learning. (p. 5) and yet, the biggest obstacle that continues to create limit-situations for re-visioning and implementing the trc calls to action is often the lack of “know how” or “radical leap of faith” within our faculty of education and local school boards. for example we do not hav e any elders or indigenous scholars who are doing research or teaching as regular professors within our faculty. in turn, we are limited by the epistemological and ontological limitsituations that inform our worldviews as non-indigenous educators. therefore another small step forward for our faculty and others will be a commitment toward hiring the necessary professional expertise—either as regular professors or as consultants—who can help us develop, implement, and sustain such re-visioning toward renewal and reconciliation. our newly elected federal government has revised its policies and principles toward indigenous peoples who have inhabited turtle island since time immemorial. at the university of ottawa there is an institutional and political commitment toward enacting policies of reconciliation that move beyond pedagogical and curricular strategies that promote historical and cultural awareness. we are calling for teacher educators, teachers, and teacher candidates to become political actors, engaged citizens, within each of their particular spheres of influence. on june 29 2015, universities across canada committed to 13 different principles, which “acknowledge the unique needs of indigenous communities across canada and their goals of autonomy and self-determination” (see http://sass.uottawa.ca/en/aboriginal/principles). much like the calls to action and accord on indigenous education these principles asks universities to:  recognize the importance of indigenization of curricula through responsive a cademic programming, support programs, orientations, and pedagogies; butler, ng-a-fook, vaudrin-charette and mcfadden. living between truth and reconciliation 58 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci  recognize the importance of providing greater exposure and knowledge for nonindigenous students on the realities, histories, cultures and beliefs of indigenous people in canada; and  recognize the importance of fostering intercultural engagement among indigenous and non-indigenous students, faculty and staff. (see http://sass.uottawa.ca/en/aboriginal/principles) in our research, personal, and professional lives as non-indigenous canadian teachers and citizens jesse, julie, ferne, and myself are committed toward such principles. we continue to challenge and provoke policymakers toward re-visioning the provincial school curricula. we are collaborating with the kitigan zibi education sector and other educational stakeholders to revisit the present absence of indigenous histories, knowledges, and perspectives within our institutions and respective curricula. in light of these prop osed principles, our radical hope is that such small steps back, and forward, will create a place for us to visit, share stories, eat, drink, listen, and renew our relations as indigenous and nonindigenous canadians during such times of reconciliation. concluding between truth and reconciliation [jesse & julie] for us, as settler scholars and educators, a first step in the process of reconciliation is an acknowledgement of the land, and it’s meaning for the people that have been living across these territories since times immemorial. as we have suggested in various ways through our conference presentations at iaacs and csse, and through the resultant reflections we present here, this acknowledgement must be more than a formality. we must tear back the curricular curtains of colonialism and engage in building sustained and meaningful relationships with local indigenous communities, and with the landscape that sustains all of us. in the words of the trc (2015a): together, canadians must do more than talk about reconciliation; we must learn how to practise reconciliation in our everyday lives—within ourselves and our families, and in our communities, governments, places of worship, schools, and workplaces. to do so constructively, canadians must remain committed to the ongoing work of establishing and maintaining respectful relationships. (p. 21) from our perspectives and lived experiences, we have suggested here that this involves encountering the limit-situations of our monolithic eurocentric epistemologies, and reimagining our curriculum development, teacher education, and professional development within local and relational contexts. in this spirit, allow us to pull back the curtains one more time to look upon the landscape of ottawa, where iaacs and csse took place alongside the trc’s closing ceremonies on unceded algonquin land. we can follow the rideau river or the rideau canal north to where they empty into the ottawa river. at the centre of what is now called the national capital region, the chaudière falls are an ancient sacred site for the anishinaabe nation. for much of the last century, however, the falls have been dammed and closed off for industrial purposes (payne, 2015). the anishinaabe have maintained their claim to the area, and the late elder william commanda envisioned this site as a space for reconciliation. as described by macdougall (2014): http://sass.uottawa.ca/en/aboriginal/principles butler, ng-a-fook, vaudrin-charette and mcfadden. living between truth and reconciliation 59 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the vision for the site that commanda named “asinabka”, an anishinaabe word meaning “place of glare rock,” includes the creation of indigenous and peace centres on the downstream victoria island and the undamming of the falls, along with full public parkland on the two adjacent islands in question. the two-fold vision is based on “healing, strengthening and uniting all aboriginal peoples” and “sharing indigenous values and culture with all others.” (p.1) recently, a condominium development plan—named “zibi” from the anishnaabe word for “river” —has been put forward with the intent to build a “one of a kind world-class community” on the site, while recognizing its situation on unceded algonquin land. although the plan includes stated intentions for working “together with the algonquin-anishinabe people to raise public awareness of anishinabe culture and forge opportunities for mutually beneficial social and economic collaboration” (windmill developments, 2015, para. 3), including the collaboration of various members of the anishinàbeg nation, it has met many layers of internal and external opposition. the famous first nations architect douglas cardinal has been a vocal opponent of the plan, advocating a return to william commanda’s vision for the region (payne, 2015). meanwhile, kirby whiteduck, chief of pikwàkanagàn first nation, has defended the plan as a practical step toward reconciliation: to see zibi as simply a greedy condo project, a meagre job generator or a dubious financial transaction is to miss the bigger, more positive story of reconciliation. working in partnership with the private sector is the only option that can deliver true and lasting benefits to current and future generations. (whiteduck, 2015, para. 13) should sacred land become prime real-estate, even with cultural and economic accommodations? this question has resulted in heated debate, with various algonquin communities in the region taking both sides (payne, 2015). we are certainly not in a position to answer this complex question here, particularly given whiteduck’s (2015) warning against non-indigenous interference undermining the selfdetermination of the algonquin people. we raise this issue, however, as yet another example of the complexity of the landscape within which we are operating. the site of the contentious debate over the zibi development is a short walk from the delta ottawa, where the trc held its closing ceremonies. it is not much farther to the university of ottawa, where we hosted iaacs and csse, and attempted to engage with reconciliation—though often in very abstract ways. yet it is precisely in such practical questions of sovereignty over land and resources that ethereal concepts like decolonization and reconciliation become meaningful (tuck & yang, 2012, turner, 2013). this, in turn, points us back to the long road ahead of us if we truly want to pursue reconciliation. as the epigraphs from the trc and joseph boyden at the beginning of this paper suggest, as a nation we currently find ourselves in between truth and reconciliation. thanks in a large part to the work of the trc, we are finally beginning to recognize the magnitude of the harm we have done. yet there is a great distance between knowing this and making it right. as researchers and educators, this work calls us beyond theoretical engagement, toward building and sustaining relationships with indigenous communities. it also calls us, following cynthia chambers, toward genuine engagement with the landscape that underlies and sustains our colonial institutions—with its complex past and with its uncertain future. butler, ng-a-fook, vaudrin-charette and mcfadden. living between truth and reconciliation 60 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci notes 1 jessekbutler@gmail.com 2nngafook@uottawa.ca 3jvaudrincharette@gmail.com 4 fernemcfadden@gmail.com 5 all names used to reference the student teachers have been changed. 6 to see a timeline on the establishment of the indian residential schooling system and ensuing truth and reconciliation commission consult the following website: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/a-timeline-of-residential-schools-the-truth-and-reconciliationcommission-1.724434. references aoki, t. t. 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(1981). foreign influences on curriculum and curriculum policy making in canada: some impressions in historical and contemporary perspective. curriculum inquiry, 11(2), 157-166. truth and reconciliation commission of canada (2015a). honouring the truth, reconciling for the future: summary of the final report of the truth and reconciliation commission of canada. retrieved from: http://www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/file/2015/findings/exec_summary_2015_05_ 31_web_o.pdf truth and reconciliation commission of canada (2015b). what we have learned: principles of truth and reconciliation. retrieved from: http://www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/file/2015/findings/principles_2015_05_31_w eb_o.pdf truth and reconciliation commission of canada (2015c). truth and reconciliation commission of canada: calls to action. retrieved from: http://www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/file/2015/findings/calls_to_action_english2. pdf tuck, e. & gaztambide-fernández, r. a. (2013). curriculum, replacement, and settler futurity. journal of curriculum theorizing, 29(1), 72-89. tuck, e., & yang, k. w. (2012). decolonization is not a metaphor. decolonization: indigeneity, education & society, 1(1), 1-40. turner, d. (2013). on the idea of reconciliation in contemporary aboriginal politics. in j. henderson & p. wakeham (eds.), reconciling canada: critical perspectives on the culture of redress (pp. 100-114). toronto, on: university of toronto press. weenie, a. (2008). curricular theorizing from the periphery. curriculum inquiry, 38(5), 545557. whiteduck, k. (2015, august 14). kirby whiteduck: the algonquin people don’t need to be saved from the zibi project. the ottawa citizen. retrieved from: http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/kirby-whiteduck-the-algonquin-people-dontneed-to-be-saved-from-the-zibi-project windmill developments (2015). zibi is more than just a name. retrieved from: http://www.zibi.ca/project/vision-and-plan/ woons, m. (2014). decolonizing canadian citizenship: shared belonging, not shared identity. settler colonial studies, 4(2), 192-208. submitted: december, 15th, 2015. approved: december, 29 th , 2015. http://www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/file/2015/findings/exec_summary_2015_05_31_web_o.pdf http://www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/file/2015/findings/exec_summary_2015_05_31_web_o.pdf http://www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/file/2015/findings/principles_2015_05_31_web_o.pdf http://www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/file/2015/findings/principles_2015_05_31_web_o.pdf http://www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/file/2015/findings/calls_to_action_english2.pdf http://www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/file/2015/findings/calls_to_action_english2.pdf http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/kirby-whiteduck-the-algonquin-people-dont-need-to-be-saved-from-the-zibi-project http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/kirby-whiteduck-the-algonquin-people-dont-need-to-be-saved-from-the-zibi-project http://www.zibi.ca/project/vision-and-plan/ curriculum and representation to cite this article please include all of the following details: lopes, alice & macedo, beth. (2011). curriculum and representation. transnational curriculum inquiry 8(1). http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> curriculum and representation alice casimiro lopes [1] & elizabeth macedo [2] state university of rio de janeiro, brazil with the publication of this issue of transnational curriculum inquiry, we bring the public three items that, in different ways, bring contributions to curriculum theory in connection with issues related to representation. in the first article, the impossibility of representation: semiotic museological reading of the aboriginal cultural diversity, the authors, annette furo and ibrahim awad, present a semiotic analysis of the canadian museum of civilization and its celebration of aboriginal cultural diversity. they question the representations of aboriginal cultural diversity and how these representations are explored as reflections of reality. in this case, they argue that museums are important sites of critical curriculum studies. through what they call 'semiotic pedagogy', they also argue that educators and learners should do critical reading about the exhibitions. the authors are thus questioning any and all pretense of an 'authentic' or 'full' representation of aboriginal peoples, histories, and traditions. in the article, the research-teaching nexus in higher education curriculum design, joanna annala and marita makinen pore over the question of representation from another perspective. with a focus in higher education, the authors bring the results of a survey on representations of the research-teaching nexus in curriculum design. the paper presents findings that indicate the split nature of representations. the view, in this case, is directed towards the tensions within the internally and externally driven curricular goals of higher education, and in the ways of understanding the role of research and teaching. around the question regarding what the representations of teachers and students are about research in curriculum design, the authors explore other dimensions of representation. but they also look to be placed within the context of interpretation and raise questions about how curriculum becomes more complex if we consider the representations of teachers and students on research and knowledge, theory and practice, discipline, society, among others. the article by ana maria saul and antonio fernando gouvêa da silva, the legacy of paulo freire for curriculum policies and teaching in brazil, discusses a distinct theme: the thinking of paulo freire and his power to analyze curriculum politics and brazilian education, and why not in other parts of the world? with a focus on categories such as totality, emancipatory rationality, social and political emptiness, and democracy, the paper analyzes the current work of paulo freire to think about the field of curriculum policy. in this sense, even if not specifically analyzing the question of representation, the text contributes to the knowledge of discussions that pervade this theme. after all, politics is now one of the fields in which one seeks to overcome the approaches that comprehend representation as the possibility of transparency between representative and represented. papers that address the question of rationalism in politics and incorporate a discursive http://translate.google.com/toolkit/content?did=00006b37yfi09vk&rid=115&hl=en#_edn1 http://translate.google.com/toolkit/content?did=00006b37yfi09vk&rid=115&hl=en#_edn2 lopes & macedo. curriculum and representation transnational curriculum inquiry 8(1) 2011.http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 2 orientation, capable of making politics an indeterminate space, marked by contingency, and therefore, the possibility of a radical democracy, are powerful to the inquiry of representation as transparency. in this way they are powerful in connecting politics and culture, and at this intersection, turning the topic of curriculum even more fertile. finnaly, in the paper daoism and feminism identity through life stories of chinese immigrant women, the author xin li inquires about a few chinese immigrant women life experiences in modern china and during their early years of immigration to canada. she also proposes a daoist gender identity. maybe, this identity is also connected with social representations. we therefore propose, through discussions of these four texts which can be read in different order and from different perspectives, the possibility of problematizing the connections between curriculum and representation. from this perspective, we risk stating very briefly, provocatively, our understanding of representation. in a post-structural and post-colonial register, we have operated with the idea that every representation involves a process of translation, in which there are negotiations of meaning and are always supplemented. as it is possible to analyze from a discursive perspective, every signifier has a character of representation, and thus, every representation has a supplement character. there are no full presences or true meanings that can be stabilized in a given representation. representations express a fullness that is always delayed, gaps we try to fill by interpretation, simultaneously constituting subjectivations and objectivations. disseminating this focus on curriculum studies, leads us to think about the possibility of deconstructing many of the fixed representations with which these studies are being understood. deconstructing, in this sense, is not an attitude of denial. deconstructing aims to potentialize displacements, reinsert the game of difference in discourses that we conceive as unitary, consolidated, definitive, always questioning our preconceptions. we think that one possibility to do this is to connect curriculum to representation never conceived as full and complete, a reflection of something that can, presumably, have real existence. to the extent that this journal transnational curriculum inquiry -, also aims to be a place where we explore the possibility of differing, we invite everyone to explore these perspectives forwarding your articles for a wider and more productive debate, always questioning curriculum theory. notes [1] alicecasimirolopes@gmail.com [2] bethmacedo@pobox.com http://translate.google.com/toolkit/content?did=00006b37yfi09vk&rid=115&hl=en#_ednref1 http://translate.google.com/toolkit/content?did=00006b37yfi09vk&rid=115&hl=en#_ednref2 o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: frangella, rita de cássia (2015). meetings, dialogs and interconnections in a theoretical-analytica l perspective design. transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) http://nitinat. library.ubc.ca/ojs/index. php/tc i <access date> meetings, dialogs and interconnections in a theoretical-analytical perspective design 1 rita de cássia prazeres frangella2 state university of rio de janeiro, brazil this study aims to present the theoretical construction that has supported the research i develop in the curriculum field, from what i assume to be its core construction: curriculum as enunciation, as discursive practice. for this purpose, i established a dialog with both homi bhabha’s ideas and ernesto laclau’s discourse theory. i therefore seek to run through the movements that led me to open up such dialog, as well as to show how such articulation resulted in the construction of a work perspective for the analysis of curriculum policies. bhabha’s emphasis on enunciation demonstrates the change he proposes – from a mimetic approach of understanding and analyzing language to a discursive one. it means it is not about an image referring to a transcendental reality, but it is actually an endless process of signification. he explains that from the rupture of a both abstract and direct view between concept and significance, a third place emerges between significant and significance, the locus of enunciation, crossed by multiple and conflicting dimensions which operate in this crisscrossed terrain neither the one nor the other – mobilizing signification processes. thus, bhabha states that this ambiguity creates a scission process, duplicity that the notion of the disjunctive time of enunciation makes clear – the tension between what he calls pedagogic and performing dimension, as dislocation and ambivalence, based on indetermination. the undecidability inherent to the political language game causes the decision-making to occur through the other, in relation with the difference. the ideas of undecidability and contingent agreements allow the articulation of bhabha’s propositions with the analysis stated by laclau, who addresses the political process from the discourse theory, based on the perspective that the latter occurs as a signification process in an undecidable terrain. placing the curriculum issue in such theoretical frame makes it possible to avoid apprehending the curriculum policy production processes as polarized contents between excluding forces – the hegemonic (prescribed by the authority power) and the counterhegemonic (school pedagogic practice) – as fixed identities. it also allows to understand that the curriculm production contexts are instituted and crisscrossed by multiple discursive significations, and that the difference proceeds inside it, identified by contingent demands which produce provisory articulations, instituting precarious agreements forged on what the authors name as work of signification. the meeting together with pinar (2011), i assume that i am involved in a compli cated conversation, an articulation of both movements and ideas that are not placed outside, in theory, like an appropriation of other people’s ideas, but that prompts us to understand curriculum as currere. so, as thinking over the construction of the theoretical frame i have sought to operate, i review my journey, firstly as a basic education teacher and, then, as a frangella. meetings, dialogs and interconnections 25 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci teacher trainer in both undergraduate and graduate courses, since the problematization emerging from such experience drives my research doing. firstly, my questioning was urged by my teacher-students’ statements which carried a hard view of the children as well as their families, many times disqualifying them, even when some of them were rather close. much of what they criticized was directly related to the position they assumed to speak: they, the teachers, and the others, the students, performatized in their failure and negativity – not knowing, not being what the school expects and aims. such view came from teachers who worked at public schools in the outskirts of an urban center like rio de janeiro, which is marked by deep and hard-hitting social differences, though it (still) idealizes students corresponding to a ‘good student’ standard. hence, there is a wide gap between him/her and me, teachers and students, causing desire/repulsion. in spite of being so close to their students concerning their background, my teacher -students needed to dissociate themselves, to determine their place as teachers, accurately demarcating such border. though they were debating how to educate in a context marked by difference, it would not outweigh the reproachful or even rejection gaze. in fact, it happened because the debate was about inequality and the possibilities of reversing it, changing the other into the same! therefore, mobilized by difference and identity issues, i engaged in the investigation of the curriculum production for teachers education in the 1990s, from the experience developed at uerj (state university of rio de janeiro), which showed that the teachers identity design not only was the curricular production point of articulation, but also the education objectives focus. on such grounds, i built up a dialog, especially with homi bhabha (1994), who discusses difference assuming alterity/otherness as a constituent element of identity, conceiving the latter as hybrid, once the alterity he refers to implies that such hybrid constitution does not work by ‘erasing’ differences. to the contrary, it irrupts in an ambivalent identification, throwing on such production the uncertainty of cultural significance; thus keeping, as he says, “confronted by its double, the untranslatable -alien and foreign” (p.51) owing to such problematization i found myself on the frontier of a journey that had been based on a definition that i now questioned – is there a teachers’ identity? what i have supported (and i still do) as argument is bhabha’s concept of ‘ neither the one nor the other’ as a possibility of identity elaboration: i understand it is a fluid construction that must allow us to avoid the “the politics of polarity (we can) and emerge as the others of our selves” (p.39). that means the debates should take place on the border, in the negotiation, and that the decisions made – even in the undecidable terrain – must be assumed as provisory in the daily political struggle. this enunciation of difference place is where the possibility of intervention is located, the third place of enunciation that through scission exposes the binarisms overcoming, though i see it from my own questioning. that is where the first meeting took place – the idea of negotiation with no a priori sense, marked by its invincibility. hence, the identity problematization arose in other terms, in the deconstruction of the ontological subject. in the wake of the reading articles prioritizing the culture issue, hall (2003) debates multiculturalism in dialog with laclau, articulating his proposition on the universalism/particularism, quoting his claim that… only a conservative identity, closed on itself, could experience hybridization as a loss. but this democratico-hegemonic possibility has to recognize the constitutive frangella. meetings, dialogs and interconnections 26 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci contextualizedldecontextualized terrain of its constitution and take fun advantage of the political possibilities that this undecidability opens.(laclau, 2007, p.65) in his the location of culture first chapter (a commitment with the theory), bhabha (1994) presents his thesis – culture as enunciation and negotiation work in interstitial places – and its supporting arguments as well. there he establishes the core concepts of his work and i now highlight the negotiation one. he argues when i talk of negotiation rather than negation, it is to convey a temporality that makes it possible to conceive of the articulation of antagonisti c or contradictory elements: a dialectic without the emergence of a teleological or transcendent history, and beyond the prescripitive form of symptomatic reading where me nervous tics on the surface of ideology reveal the ‘real materialist contraciction’ that history embodies. in such a discursive temporality, the event of theory becomes the negotiation of contradictory and antagonistic instances that open up hybrid sites and objectives of struggle, and destroy those negative polarities between knowledge and its objects, and between theory and practical-political reason. (p.25) at the end of this excerpt, he indicates a footprint note: ‘for a significant elaboration of a similar argument see e. laclau and c. mouffe, hegemony and socialist strategy (london: verso, 1985), eh, 3’. bhabha, in the same chapter, develops his argument in dialog with laclau: the work of hegemony is itself the process of iteration and differentiation. it depends on the production of alternative or antagonistic image that are alw ays produced side by side and in competition with each other. it is this side-by-side nature, this partial presence, or metonymy of antagonism, and its effective signification, that give meaning (quite literally) to a politics of struggle as the struggle of identification and the war position. (p. 29) consequently, he defends that hegemony requires both iteration and differentiation. he also claims states that negotiation creates room to the interstitial space. therefore, what he regards as articulation is an approach that refuses the emancipation/power, or culture/ideology polarization, since it is based on binarisms and pursues a stabilization of senses that takes its own political state out of itself. as laclau (2005, p.54-55) puts it: we can certainly free some social possibilities but only at the price of repressing others. the relationship between power and freedom is one of permanent renegotiations and displacement of their mutual frontiers, while the two terms of the equation always remain. even the most democratic of societies will be the expression of power relations, not of a total or gradual elimination of power. the dialog bhabha’s (1994) proposition of thinking “the limit of culture as an problem of the enunciation”(p.34), brings another perspective to the debate on identity, changing its understanding as a project to be met as determined, to a movement that, over successive and continuous articulations, negotiations, produces precarious agreements, stops the flow of frangella. meetings, dialogs and interconnections 27 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci significations that prompts us to think identity as permanently unfinished, as hybrid elaboration. the author helps thinking identity as indetermination and discourse, being the latter practice of signification. the constructed significations are produced in the field of culture and it is in such place they operate. therefore, culture as enunciation means both the subjects and signifiers of the practices are elaborated as they are discursively stated, placed and represented. thus, it is not about mimesis, or ready-made images replacement, drawn from a preestablished collection. it is about mosaics formed by intersection of tension and negotiation. from that, he infers that identity is built in an alterity process, a relational process that occurs in questioning the other, not as a past to be restaged, but as an articulation activity that carries the subjectivity to an enunciative practice. bhabha resorts to a psychoanalytic interpretation of identity from the desire dynamics. alterity therefore causes a relation of desiring the other’s position to arise, as well as an ambiguous feeling of repulsion – of not becoming the other – to irrupt. as a result, bhabha details that such ambiguity causes the scission process understanding is an articulatory action that, unlikely the totali zation notion, constitutes a provisory and contingent agreement. this process is where the subject acts, where the identity is possible, since the subject emerges at the moment of decision, even when it is impossible to make. in laclau’s words, “undecidability that needs to be constantly superseded by acts of decision. these acts are precisely what constitute the subject”(laclau, 2007, p. 92). he also argues that : thus, we are left with the paradoxical situation that what constitutes the condition of possibility of a signifying system its limits is also what constitutes its condition of impossibility a blockage of the continuous expansion of the process of signification. (laclau, 2007, p.37) based on the notion of cultural enunciation, i therefore outline the curriculum policy understanding as a discursive phenomenon. such enunciation makes contingency and liminality the space-time for the production of senses, mobilizing its i and other, as well as implies a disjunctive present where the interpretation pact is broken, the signifier is neither one nor the other, it is fruit of articulations-crossings established in interval spaces. hence, what i have assumed as my work guideline emerges – the understanding of curriculum as discursive practice, based on the prospect of ernesto laclau (1998), which defends that policies are political-discursive productions having contingency as a matrix. in other words, that implies thinking the instituting movements of a curriculum do not take place based on a priori senses – the curriculum is shaped in the field of undecidability, in the articulation of different contexts. as a political-discursive production, i defend that curriculum policies are start with the negotiations and contests in which senses and interests are hybridized in curricular development, showing its state of unfinished political process. it is in the very act of negotiating that signifiers are built through dialog, many times based on conflicting consensus, as the senses are unstable, fluid and permeated by distinct demands and interests. questions emerging from the research – dialog consequences during the recent years, i have been engaged to the analysis of curriculum policies in rio de janeiro city (rj – brazil). the city public schools are managed by the rio de janeiro city education department (sme), which establishes the city educational policy, frangella. meetings, dialogs and interconnections 28 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci coordinating its implementation as well as assessing its results, to ensure excellence in public pre-elementary and elementary schools, thus contributing to build autonomous and qualified individuals, who are enabled to develop both as professionals and as citizens. the city education department is responsible for pre-elementary education (6-month to 5-year olds), elementary education (1st to 9th grade), and also youths and adults education, in rio de janeiro city. this system has one of the largest public school networks in latin america, with 658,508 students in 1,008 schools, 247 nursery schools, 202 children development centers, and other 167 partner nursery schools. it also has over 41,600 teachers. (source: http://www.rio.rj.gov.br/web/sme/conheca-a-secretaria) its curriculum directions were established in 2010, reviewed in 2012-2013, initially for 11 school subjects physics, performing arts, geography, foreign language, music, mathematics, visual arts, history, science and portuguese language – being english language added in 2012. it also offers curriculum directions to kindergarten, elementary education as well as specific directions for youths and adults education. teaching material is distributed to all schools in the system – the pedagogical support books. elaborated by the sme, they correspond to bimonthly activities according to the system curriculum directions. the material is presented in full editions (1st to 3rd grades), and in subject related editions to the remaining grades (4th to 9th) in this context, the department develops an assessment system for the whole network. reassuring the procedural character of this system, as well as the parameters to all assessments carried out at each school, the department states that each student will be given a global concept to infer his/her learning process. such concept will consider the teachers evaluation, the bimonthly exam results and the formative aspect of the student’s development. the department creates and distributes to each school the bimonthly exams, which must be taken by all students. thus, the global concept consists of the assessments carried out by the teachers, the results of the general bimonthly exams and the formative aspects. in addition, there are annual network assessments – prova rio (rio exam) – which, as defined by resolution 1123, sme, establish the guidelines for the school assessment in rio de janeiro public network. this evaluation aims to help sme with monitoring and redesigning its actions when necessary. the result of the annual exam is one of the indicators that make the ide-rio (education development indicator of rio de janeiro city). the researches have aiming to discuss how a curriculum policy established for a public education network with over 1000 schools is articulated in the school practice, and also to find out what negotiations and conflicts impact it among the interconnections of different production contexts. it was perceived that the senses are mobile, circulating flows that are locally halted, negotiated, but not fixed in an absolute way – they may be locally fixed, but the disputes are not restricted to such fixation. therefore, the school is a l ocal context, where negotiation takes place, curriculum policies are formulated, where instead of viewing it as an implantation relationship that affects the school, i understand and therefore defend that all these relations are articulated within the school – the negotiation place. an issue that has arisen from the debates on the curriculum policy analysis is the very idea of a network, of a single project for the whole rio de janeiro city as well as the tension that defies both the articulations for the network curriculum policy and each school localisms. such tension has also turned out in the teachers’ identity: both the teacher and the network teacher constitute the collective subject i have pursued to problematize therefore, in dialog with laclau it is possible to say that the identity problem happens as political action, since it has no content established a priori, but the articulation movements frangella. meetings, dialogs and interconnections 29 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci among hegemonic relations constitute it. it reveals, as the author problematizes, the tension and ambiguity between the particular and the universal, and these terms interaction promotes both dislocations and productivity in political debate. i believe it is important to emphasize two fundamental concepts for the development of the argument here defended: dislocation and articulation. bhabha’s idea of negotiation irrupts with strength and tension that, beyond the possibility of consensus or synthesis about a common point, in defense of non-erasing difference as well as of its continuous and provoking trace, which demands negotiation, that happens as articulation. the idea of contingent agreement implies sort of a sense of victory that provokes and is provoked by dislocations in the signification process, just as laclau proposes. thus, due to the centrality of these concepts, they demand elucidation. the notion of dislocation carries the importance of the other in the subject constitution. it is not an erratic movement, based on to the psychoanalytic debate and its symbolisms, the other represents/exposes the image of the subject’s incompleteness, it is threatening since it represents the subject’s possibility/impossibility. this other/exterior, when revealing such ambiguous relation, disturbs the structure in a tension among lack/desire/completeness, dislocating this identity. such dislocation does not mean a fracture of the full identity, but the understanding that the identity takes place in the movement of dislocation effects; “therefore, the place of dislocation is the subject’s place. far from being a moment of the structure, the subject is the result of the impossibility of the first to be constituted in its self-sufficiency and unrestrictedly dominate over its elements.” (burity, 1998, p. 20 – free translation). thus, on one hand, negotiation implies the denial of an absolute agreement, of a sense of purpose; on the other hand, it presupposes the ambiguity inherent to the antagonistic relation, which is negotiated, articulated, but never actually overcome. consequently, the condition for political action is the antagonism emergency. what rules the articulation movements is the antagonistic border, since such antagonisms are not binary, contradictory poles with merely differential origin – difference as totality; but they are mutually constituted between equivalencies and differences, between logics that operate in the articulation and formulation of discursive chains. as a result, it is also political – if antagonism is condition of political action, so is the subject in his/her acts of identification/emergency. as mouffe (2005) states, “for laclau, undecidability and decision are constitutive of the tension which makes a political society possible” (p.3). therefore, when discussing identity in such terms i argue that ‘the performative introduces a temporality of the 'in-between’. (bhabha, 1994, p. 148) and, in dialog with laclau (2001, 2005, 2007), it happens as undecidability, what implies flows, unfinished discourses. so, rather than identity, there would be acts of identification which take place both in the articulation of contingent demands and in the flow of signification. identity would emerge with the subject at the moment of decision-making, which is understood as signification in contingency, instead of an a priori content to condition it. that way, the idea of undecidability associated with the comprehension of identity as performativity emphasizes a structural indetermination that displaces the constitution of the subjects from the totalization space, from the complete project to an unstable zone hidd en by the pedagogic narrative, which is the space of signification, negotiation, translation. i consider that investigating the issue in such terms makes possible to reach and discuss the political processes arisen in teachers’ routine actions, assuming that “the subject’s constitution terrain is political” (burity, 1998, p. 24 – free translation), deepening the debate on teaching as both agency and contingency. frangella. meetings, dialogs and interconnections 30 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci notes 1 an early version of this paper was presented at the 5th triennial conference of the international association for the advancement of curriculum studies, held at the unive rsity of ottawa in may 26-29 2015. 2 rcfrangella@gmail.com references bhabha, h. (1994) the location of culture. london, routledge. burity, j. (1998) psicanálise, identificação e a formação de atores coletivos. in: trabalhos para discussão. recife; fundação joaquim nabuco, 1998, 25p. hall, s. (2003) da diáspora – identidades e mediações culturais. belo horizonte: editora ufmg. laclau, e. (2005) deconstruction, pragmatism, hegemony. in: derrida, j.; rorty, r.; critchley, s.; laclau, e. deconstruction and pragmatism. edited by chantal mouffe. taylor & francis e-library. laclau, e. (2007) emancipation(s). london/new york: verso. laclau, e. & mouffe, c. (2001) hegemony and socialist strategy – towards a radical democratic politics. london: verso. mouffe, c. (2005) deconstruction, pragmatism and the politics of democracy in derrida, j.; rorty, r.; critchley, s.; laclau, e. deconstruction and pragmatism. edited by chantal mouffe. taylor & francis e-library. pinar, w. (2011) what is curriculum theory? new york: routledge. submitted: october, 25th, 2015. approved: december, 19th, 2015. mailto:rcfrangella@gmail.com curriculum, policy, practice to cite this article please include all of the following details: lopes, a. & macedo, e. (2011). curriculum, policy, practice. transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> curriculum, policy, practice alice casimiro lopes 1 & elizabeth macedo 2 state university of rio de janeiro, brazil investigations into curriculum practices have always had great prominence in the curriculum field, to the point where the notion of curriculum in action has become one of the most powerful concepts in curriculum theory. from the phenomenological approaches, through the work of paulo freire and the concept of currere by william pinar, to the most current discussions that focus on school daily life and teaching knowledge, curriculum practice is based on questioning the prescriptive approaches to curriculum. given this tradition, emblematic studies, so as not to use the word classic, in the most diverse theoretical approaches, tend to focus on curriculum in action as almost synonymous with curriculum endowed with the most meaning, the part of curriculum that really should be considered in research and in school. perhaps this is one of the reasons why policy studies have not developed a more consistent dialogue with curriculum practices, and its broader emphasis is on the education field beyond school. to the extent curriculum studies as political text assumed marxist theoretical approaches (pinar et al, 1995), they became characterized by ideas of centralized power in the state apparatus established to regulate practices. with this, policy assumed a link to institutive rationalistic concepts of a set character of policies over practices. in this way, policy would be a set of rules, in given socioeconomic relations, resulting or not from a social consensus or a hegemonic process, capable of materializing in institutions that define subjects’ way of acting or being. the instituting and even subversive dimensions would be designed in the field of social practices that would exert a counter-hegemonic action. based on this dichotomy that deepened the separation between the ontic and the ontologic, it was no wonder that curricular policies and curricular practices were interpreted as distinct and unrelated dimensions. when an eventual relationship was made in this field, it often assumed an orientation of approaches from correlating theories, in which curricular practice was a reflection of a broader framework, a space of implementation or resistance. in this regard, curricular practices had their productive and creative dimensions denied. many studies have been conducted in this perspective with a view of questioning texts and policy guidelines, but research was not always developed about the practical dimensions of policies beyond the attempt of making them a space to corroborate constituted theses based on a wider social structure. the broadening dialogue between the curriculum field and cultural studies, postcolonial and post-structural, as well as the accelerated process of changing socialcultural landscapes, with the narrowing of inter-relations between different cultures, has contributed in part to the overcoming of this interpretive model. for example, theoretical and methodological changes widespread in studies of educational and curriculum policy, with the arrival of every way with which we operate being around the signifier globalization (lingard, 2009), has helped to change the relationship between policies and curriculum practices. with global cultural flows, the deterritorializations and disjunctures (appadurai, 1996), classifications and lopes & macedo. curriculum, policy, practice 2 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci stratifications give way to a lexicon that tries to make us understand what always moves, showing itself to be fluid and indeterminate. in this way, concrete certainties, fixed and deterministic structures that sustain the arguments of separation between policies and practices are shattered. not only in recent years have we seen a significant expansion of research on policies, but we can also identify more and more studies that propose establishing further relationships to curriculum that enable us to understand their current state, noticeably more fluid and dynamic. approaches such as policy cycles by bowe, ball and gold (1992), the incorporation of discursive approaches to policy analysis (bacchi, 2000; de alba, 1999; fendler, 2006; lapping, 2005; lopes, 2007; macedo, 2011a; ruitenberg, 2010), and the very reconfiguration of rationalist senses of practice and policy have led to questioning the unproductive separation of these two curriculum dimensions. this scenario has also led us to question the usual separation between formal curriculum and curriculum in action (macedo, 2011b). curriculum is complex; it becomes a text that not only integrates levels of proposition and action, written and carried out, but proposes thinking about curriculum without these divisions that try to stabilize its multiple language games. when turning our attention to the writing of this presentation of the second issue of 2011's transnational curriculum inquiry, we are led to these reflections by virtue of the texts included in this issue, in various ways and from very different traditions, operating with the signifiers, practice and policy, on records that seem capable of contributing to this wider debate. in the text, citizenship education and curriculum policy in brazil: facing challenges and prefiguring changes, of angelica araujo de melo maia and maria zuleide costa pereira, the authors analyse the signifier citizenship and its relationship to human rights and culture, with special attention to the articulation between citizenship and multiculturalism. with focus on texts of brazilian curriculum policy, taking as an analytical sample the complementary document to the national guidelines for the teaching of sociology in secondary school (pcn +), angelica and maria zuleide propose an understanding of citizenship as an everyday practice, based on gert biesta. tasha ausman, in the text a curriculum of cultural translation: desi identities in american chai, examines narrative articulations in the film american chai. this movie is understood as a complicated conversation (pinar) in relation to the sociocultural constructions of bi/cultural-identities within indian diaspora communities. analysing the first-generation indo-canadian (desi) identities, the author discuss a way to reconsider these narratives as a curriculum of cultural translations. the author connects identity, culture, curriculum and pedagogy and he proposes us to deconstruct desi movies and to work through a curriculum of cultural translations. maria de lourdes tura, in the paper curricular and educational practice policies, presents an ethnographical study made in a primary education school of the municipal public system of rio de janeiro. in this paper, she argues that the educational practice recontextualizes different curricular proposals and then produces a hybrid culture. your focus is the municipal education department´s discourse on quality and efficiency. this discourse is considered as imposing a new institutional culture, new profiles of activity and new subjectivities. the fourth text is deconstructing a curriculum of dominance: teacher education, colonial frontier logics, and residential schooling, written by bryan smith, nicholas ng-a-fook, sarah berry and kevin spence. this paper the lived experiences and knowledges of both aboriginal and non-aboriginal individuals living lopes & macedo. curriculum, policy, practice 3 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci in ontario, canada. they focus on the present absence of certain aboriginal narratives in relation to the ‘fort’ of canadian history and argue that, as socially justice orientated teachers, we must continue to challenge the re-inscriptions of a curriculum of dominance. the four texts open up possibilities for powerful readings, distinct theoretica l perspectives, for us to examine the relationship between policy and practice. we can think in another language that contributes to our questioning of binarisms, our deconstructing of stabilized and established concepts of curriculum, and perhaps considering other possibilities, policies, and practices for curriculum. notes 1 alicecasimirolopes@gmail.com 2 bethmacedo@pobox.com references appadurai, a. (1996). modernity at large: cultural dimensions of globalization. minneapolis, university of minnesota press. bacchi, c. (2000). policy as discourse: what does it mean? where does it get us? discourse: studies in the cultural politics of education, v. 21, n. 1, 2000, p. 45-57 de alba, a. (1999) curriculum and society: rethinking the link, international review of education. 45 (5/6), 479-490. bowe, r.; ball, s. j. & gold, a. (1992). reforming education & changing school: case studies in policy sociology. londres nova iorque: routlegde. fendler, l. (2006). others and the problem of community. curriculum inquiry 36:3, p. 303-326. lapping, c. (2005). antagonism and overdetermination: the production of student positions in contrasting undergraduate disciplines and institutions in the united kingdom, british journal of sociology of education, v. 26, n. 5, nov, p. 657-671. lingard, b. (2009). researching education policy in a globalized world: theoretical and methodological considerations. in: rizvi, fazal and popkewitz, thomas. globalization and the study of education. malden, wiley-blackwell publishing in: p. 226-246. lopes, a. (2007). national curriculum for elementary school education: the common culture project. journal of curriculum studies (jcs) the journal of iranian curriculum studies association, v. 1, p. 9-26. macedo, e. curriculum policies in brazil: the citizenship discourse. in: lyn yates; madeleine grumet. (org.). world yearbook of education 2011: curriculum in today's world: configuring knowledge, identities, work and politics. new york: routledge, 2011a, v. 1, p. 44-57. macedo, e. curriculum as enunciation. in: william pinar. (org.). curriculum studies in brazil. curriculum studies in brazil. 1ed.new york: palgrave macmillan, 2011b, v. 1, p. 135-153 pinar, w.; reynolds, w.; slattery, p. & taubman, p. (1995). understanding curriculum. new york: peter lang ruitenberg, c. (2010). conflict, affect and the political: on disagreement as democratic capacity. journal of peace education and social justice. volume 4 number 1 (2010): 40-55. available in http://www.infactispax.org/journal/ mailto:alicecasimirolopes@gmail.com mailto:bethmacedo@pobox.com to cite this article please include all of the following details: yates, lyn (2006). what can schools do? knowledge, social identities and the changing world http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> what can schools do? knowledge, social identities and the changing world lyn yates inaugural professorial lecture as foundation chair of curriculum 7 june 20051 university of melbourne, australia what can schools do? in this lecture i want to talk about changing times and the research i’ve been doing and, more generally, about how i see curriculum as a field for university study. the main argument i will be making about curriculum is that it is a field that requires quite challenging intellectual work and collaborations, as well as an appreciation that very practical, pragmatic, political and personal issues are an inescapable part of the field. i want to sketch out some of the challenges facing curriculum in these changing times: in particular the changing forms of knowledge and of work, and the challenge of developing curriculum that looks forward not just back; issues of identity and social values and diversity and inequality and the need to go on looking sensitively at what we are doing in education in relation to these; and the problem of ever-changing innovations in technology and ever-changing reforms of schools and the problems these pose for teachers and for schools as a place for students to be heard. i want to talk about curriculum as a place where big questions are taken up and put into practice, not always well. and where we need to do research that brings together a range of complex issues, as well as the more familiar testing and surveys of who gets what, or what technique produces the best test scores on x. knowledge, social identities and the changing world i’m going to begin with some examples of the changing world and changing times. i recently discovered that civics and citizenship education is now, after fifty years or more in the wilderness, an australian national curriculum priority area, together with literacy, mathematics and science, and ahead of all other areas (languages, the arts, physical education, ict, etc.), a priority agreed on by all state ministers of education as well as the federal government. why are civics, citizenship and social values now important, when they didn’t seem to be for most of the past four or five decades? and how do you actually create good citizens? i also recently heard about another development, this time in science. the university of melbourne has established a multi-million dollar new building and institute, bio21, and put together in it people from different disciplines across medicine, science, engineering, professional areas, even social scientists who work on bio-technology in various ways, with the idea that new forms of collaboration and knowledge-building need to get under way. half of the old chemistry department is now in this building, and half is in the old chemistry building in a different part of this campus. it is not clear whether the previous type of chemistry department will continue many years longer in the form it has had up to now or whether some chemists at least will begin to identify in other ways, and work with other types lyn yates: what can schools do? transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (1) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 2 of people in their research, and whether new types of phds will begin to be done. this need for new cross-disciplinary work and collaborations has also been much discussed by the australian research council (arc), and by the academies of science and social science and the humanities. so what does all that mean in terms of how we divide up the school curriculum and how we think about pathways of building knowledge? or take some other recent developments. in 2001, the federal parliament set up an inquiry into the schooling of boys, named this as an area where there seems to be a problem, where different things needed to occur; and in 2003-4, it carried out another inquiry calling for new approaches to vocational education in schools. the oecd recently produced its final reports on the deseco project, a project set up to draw on international best-thinking about what are ‘key competencies for personal, social and economic well-being’ in the 21st century. it named the three key areas for personal, social and economic well being in the 21st century as ‘interacting in socially heterogeneous groups; acting autonomously; and using tools interactively’. all of these developments are, potentially, issues for curriculum. how well is schooling today dealing with the type of people young people are today? and how well is it preparing students for the more global world and changing forms of work that are the world of the future? tonight i want to talk about some of the challenges facing schools and the people who work in education in these changing times, and some of the different research projects i’ve been engaged on which relate to these. but i want to begin with a few thoughts – and whinges2 – about the context we work in today in taking up these challenges. curriculum research is not just about controlled testing as i speak two important inquiries are underway, launched by dr brendan nelson, the federal minister for education, which will directly impact on the work people like myself do. one is an inquiry into what quality research in universities looks like, and how that can best be measured every year. the second is an inquiry into teacher education and whether it is sufficiently ‘evidence-based’ and producing competent classroom-ready teachers. my talk tonight is part of a submission i would make about these things, because in both cases i’m worried about whether these inquiries are going to come up with too narrow a vision of what schools are about and of what research and scholarship is about. people who think that the only issues for people who work in university education faculties are how to produce a good teacher in their first week on the job, or who think that the only good research should look like a classic experiment or a randomised controlled trial, have got it wrong. (those, incidentally, are not some exaggerated straw man ideas i’ve plucked out of the ether. the focus on the first day in front of the class issue has dominated press coverage of the inquiry into teacher education. and the idea that the only good research is of the randomised controlled trial form was the idea behind president bush’s landmark ‘no child left behind’ legislation in the usa, and the subsequent setting up of an institute of education sciences in that country.) what i want to talk about tonight is that we need a range of good research going on, research that is appropriate to the complexity of the issues; and, even more than that, we need good quality thinking and lively conversations between all of us, inside and outside education faculties, about what we are trying to do in schools and other education institutions. the questions we need to look at include what is working and not working, but also where we are going. lyn yates: what can schools do? transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (1) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 3 curriculum is about the ‘what’ of education curriculum isn’t as obscure a word as poststructuralism, but i think many people are a bit unclear about what it means to be an academic who works in curriculum – what it means to do curriculum research. isn’t a curriculum something that is handed down by the government, or the victorian curriculum and assessment authority, or the board that runs the international baccalaureate? it is in part, but that doesn’t mean that what curriculum is about is something cut and dried, something that doesn’t warrant research, scholarship, dialogue, debate. curriculum is about conceptions of what should be in those frameworks that get handed down, and it is about how that should be done; but it also involves research on unintended effects, and on what happens in practice. curriculum questions are difficult because they involve both big picture thinking and attention to everyday pragmatics. curriculum questions look at the substance of what school does; they go beyond just seeing schooling as a black box that produces scores and outcomes patterns. curriculum asks us to think about what is being set up to be taught and learned, what is actually being taught, what is actually being learned, why agendas are taken up or not taken up, who benefits and loses, whose voice is heard and whose is silenced, what future is being formed for individuals and what future is being set in train for australia as a whole. curriculum is concerned with effectiveness, but also with expansiveness and voices, and who gets a say. asking the impossible of schools curriculum questions are complex, but they are made more difficult by a public discourse that pretends that impossible things can be achieved. the title i gave for tonight’s lecture, what can schools do? knowledge, social identities and the changing world, probably sounds a bit awkward. wouldn’t it have been better to reverse the order of the two parts of the title: knowledge, social identities and the changing world: what can schools do? i deliberately did not use that second order because it reflects the problem of seeing schools as fixers that i want to talk about first. parents, media commentators and politicians are constantly discovering new social problems (or old ones for that matter), or social issues, or new needs, and as a first knee-jerk reaction thinking that if only something simple, some x was done in schools, we could solve that problem. if you read the press, or listen to the media, or read government inquiries on different topics, you’d be truly impressed with what schools can supposedly do if only they got their act together. no adult would live in poverty; students and teachers would be on task 24/7; there would be no bad drivers, no drunk drivers, no crime, no sexism or racism or discrimination of any kind; everyone would eat healthy diets and be active and slim; every particular school would be better than all its competitors, and every student would complete year 12 and get an enter score3 over 99 so they could all go on to do medical degrees at the university of melbourne; although at the same time schools would also be producing a diverse range of enterprising young people who would fill the shortages in all the skilled trades (and in unskilled ones for that matter), and be entrepreneurs who would develop new inventions and turn around australia’s balance of trade. schools are some of the most important social institutions we have, and they do have major effects both on individuals and on the shape of the culture and country we go on living in, and i want to talk about that shortly. but we do, routinely, have impossible expectations about schools, and blame them for not fulfilling impossible and conflicting hopes. the fact that some people don’t do as well as others in schools isn’t (or isn’t just) a failing on the part of schools; it is part of what schools as a system are set up to do – to save universities and employers some of the burden of deciding for themselves who they will take on. if you don’t in principle want some people to do worse than others, you don’t set up final certificates that lyn yates: what can schools do? transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (1) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 4 decide in advance what proportions can be awarded various grades, and you don’t insist on a final tertiary entrance score that lists everyone on a relative standing from 1 to 100. there are, incidentally, some good reasons why we do have grading, and i’m not personally against it. for the last few years i’ve been doing a project on vocational education across different institutions, and part of that system in the technical and further education (tafe) sector and other places was designed to just have competency-based assessment, where people were assessed as either competent or ‘not yet competent’. but we found in that project that students, colleges and employers were all critical of that system and were calling for grading; there were good reasons why they wanted different levels of effort as well as achievement recognised. so i’m not against grading on principle, but i do object to public discussions and policies that don’t take account of that differentiated outcome as part of what schools are required to produce rather than as evidence of their failing. some parts of schooling are a zero sum game, but we are not allowed to acknowledge that. people often talk about education as if the only issue is what happens in an individual learner, or in the efficiency and effectiveness with which a particular item or skill is learned. these things are important, and a lot of my colleagues are involved in research on how to improve learning of maths or science or reading. but another important thing about schooling is not about the individual exchange but about the overall picture, about the fact that schooling is a system. as a system, schooling does two main things. first of all, it teaches people things (both intended things, like the formal curriculum that draws so much attention every time it is changed, and unintended things, like the things young people learn from how their teachers really act, and from what their fellow students value). and secondly, it sorts, selects and discriminates. this is what schooling in a democracy is set up to do: to convey the knowledge or develop the young generation in ways that the society considers important; and to do some of the preliminary sorting that decides who will get access to which courses and jobs and futures. it’s no wonder that both of these things continue to attract so much criticism. picking out what knowledge is important is no longer a simple matter of looking backwards; it is also about looking forwards, and talking about whose or which knowledge is to be valued. and the sorting is never satisfactory because we’d like everyone to get top marks and we swing back and forth between approaches like national standards and a common curriculum that put everyone on the same path and in the same competition, and approaches like the plan to revive technical colleges that decide early on who you’re going to be and set you off on that track. schooling can do terrific things – it can open your eyes to ideas and creative endeavours, can make you think you are worth something, can develop people who can competently and confidently go about their work and their lives as citizens, can produce future citizens who treat others with respect. and it can do very negative things – convince you that you are worthless and don’t know anything, produce future citizens who have not got good foundations for operating in the contemporary world; produce future citizens who don’t care if others get trampled as long as they themselves are ok. in recent times, some of the concerns of the ‘bleeding heart’ equity people, such as myself, about those who are losing out or being trampled on in the system, are being taken very seriously in the heart of the hardheaded economics camp of the oecd. in the world now, issues of what they like to refer to as ‘social cohesion’ – of how people of different religions and cultural backgrounds and gender treat each other – are real issues. talk about ‘social capital’ and ‘resilience’ is suddenly important. identities and values are on the map. it’s not much use as a nation upping your average maths performance score in the international league tables by .0001% if people stop behaving civilly to each other. and, as i will discuss a little later, the more researchers and expert committees look at the new types of lyn yates: what can schools do? transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (1) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 5 work – at what jobs are going out of existence, what kinds of competencies are needed, and how you need to be a so-called flexible, autonomous life-long learner – the more they start talking about identity issues, and that the important work of curriculum is not just about learning particular things, but coming to be a particular type of person, a person who can operate successfully in a changing world, a person who can work locally and internationally with others who are different. so part of what a curriculum researcher does is to try to keep an eye on these big pictures: what is going on in universities and in the oecd; what are sociologists, economists and others showing about the changing nature of work; what re-shaping of education systems is being set up in australia and in other countries. i think of curriculum research as a kind of conversation in which we are trying to feed in and examine different claims about what is happening now and different visions of where we might go. but these days if you work in universities you are not allowed to just read books and think and teach and write. you have to earn money for the university. to be taken seriously, it’s not good enough to have good ideas or to know a lot; you have to be seen to be winning research grants, and the bigger the better. i have a lot of qualms about this direction we’ve taken. i think it’s leading to a lot of short-term projects with quick results rather than time to digest and work with ideas and findings. but it’s a reality, and there are important things that do require empirical research in the curriculum area, and i now want to talk about the funded research i’ve been doing myself over the past 10 years or so. the types of projects i’ve taken on are ones which take up a significant issue of the changing world (new technology, changes in gender relations, new forms of work) and find ways of studying on the ground how is this situated, what is actually going on, how is this working, what are its problems. the empirical research project (the study of ‘what is going on?’) is only part of the project. overall we are trying to engage with visions of changing needs, with policy imperatives and with realistic views of how things actually work, what are real effects on the ground. curriculum research projects i’ll begin with my recent project on new technologies in schools because that’s almost an emblematic issue for the world of the 21st century. the effects project: effective learning using new technologies (hayes, yates and alexander and nsw det arc linkage project 2001-2003) few things have had as much high-flown rhetoric said about them in recent years as computers in education. we all know that technological change has transformed certain aspects of our day-to-day lives, and parents are highly anxious about the need for schools to be up to date. it is no wonder that governments for quite some time put a huge emphasis on rolling out shiny new hardware to schools, at a huge drain on their education budgets. people sense that new types of knowledge will be important in the future. it seems like every few weeks a new american guru visits us or makes a splash with what the world of the future will look like. in the effects project, carried out in nsw with debra hayes and shirley alexander in partnership with the nsw det, we set out to study what was actually happening in schools that had reputations for doing good things with computers. we wanted to take a close-up look at what was actually being taught in classrooms using computers and at whether new types of knowledge were emerging (for instance, does design knowledge and multitasking now become more important? do we need to rethink our ideas that more advanced knowledge is best described by terms like ‘deeper’ and ‘more complex’ or is it today about some other way of putting things together? how much is knowledge today appropriately seen lyn yates: what can schools do? transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (1) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 6 as a linear hierarchy? do we need to change some basic conceptions about what intellectual development actually looks like?) we also wanted in the effects project to look at inequalities and at whether some students were benefiting more than others. here is some of what we found: • there is a really enormous gap between rhetoric and reality. these schools (all government schools) were selected as ones which were known to have good teachers and practices, but what we most often observed when we went out in schools were malfunctions of the equipment, teacher frustrations with its unreliability, lack of resources, lack of training, teachers trying to scrabble around in their own time learning to use the equipment and very little going on that looked at all like transforming learning. • too much emphasis on hardware, too little on professional space to work well with it. • lack of adequate attention to inequalities and a likelihood of furthering gaps rather than reducing any (in terms of homework, children with good equipment and knowledgeable parents were very clearly advantaged and provision for those who didn’t have those conditions was rudimentary; and in the classroom itself, gender stereotyped activities that schools had spent a lot of time getting away from in the 1980s were flourishing because of a heavy emphasis on letting students choose their own activities). • schools overall were struggling with what to emphasize and how to be systematic with such a major change. classes from grade 2 to year 12 could be observed in the same year giving similar introductory lessons on powerpoint (for that matter we were doing it in diploma of education courses in universities too). often what impressed primary school parents was the technology end product rather than whether children’s learning was being advanced. • however, although the conditions in which schools and teachers were working were very difficult, in some cases the very issue of grappling with such a major set of challenges was used by principals to re-energize their focus on how their school was working, and by teachers to re-energize their thinking about both curriculum and student learning. and for students, novelty itself produced some greater involvement, even where not much different was actually happening. it would be hard to over-estimate just what a challenge new technology poses to schools (and universities for that matter). to some extent the first response of many education systems and individual schools has been to focus on impression management (shiny new equipment, fancy powerpoint presentations, school websites), and it is only now, in a second phase, that there is an attempt to regroup and work out more principles and ideas for this area through the different stages of school. but it will keep on changing, and schools and teachers (and universities and university teachers) will have to keep on grappling with the changes. the main lesson that i took from this project, in relation to my theme tonight, is that knowledge and the changing world needs attention from curriculum developers and experts and to be built into curriculum and assessment guidelines, but what it needs and tends not to get is more space in a normal school year for teachers to work on these things and how they are going to work with them. the 12 to 18 project: a qualitative longitudinal study of young people and secondary schooling (yates and mcleod, arc funded project 1993-2001) lyn yates: what can schools do? transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (1) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 7 databases now provide quite a lot of overall facts and figures about who gets what out of school, what kinds of backgrounds are successful, the retention rate and exam effectiveness of different schools. in this qualitative longitudinal project julie mcleod and i set out to take a different type of close-up and bottom-up perspective on what young people actually get out of school in these years: how they think about who they are, and the choices they make about where they are going, and how much this is impacted on by the particular school they attend. this was a long study, begun in 1993 with a final round of interviews in 2001, and with over 350 interviews, all carried out by julie mcleod and myself, and we spent quite a lot of time over 6 years visiting the four schools in the study. this kind of study let us do something that the big databases don’t: to look at what happens to particular young people with particular backgrounds in particular schools – young people from a similar background in different schools, and from different backgrounds in the same school – and to follow changes in ambitions and values as they happen. twice a year, for slightly more than seven years, we conducted lengthy interviews with young people of different backgrounds and at four different types of secondary school. we decided to do this type of study for two reasons. one was that between the 1970s and 1990s there had been a lot of upheaval about gender and equal opportunity: reforms in schools, new legislation, new words like ‘sexism’ were bandied around that hadn’t even existed twenty years earlier. so one of our interests was how young people that have grown up in this sort of world see these issues and their own futures now? we were also interested in the perennial issue of inequalities and difference over time and in relation to post-school work and education, and what difference school makes. it is notoriously difficult to separate family influence from school influence, but by close-up attention to young people from different backgrounds at a particular school, we could look at whether there was some coming together of values and aspirations over the high school years. and by looking at people from similar backgrounds in different schools, we could look at whether different types of schools were producing different possibilities for them. what is interesting about this sort of study is that it lets us get at some of the texture of how young people today build who they are becoming. what do young people take from their overall time in schools, given that schools to some extent are working with the same state curriculum? that is, what messages do school cultures convey? i could talk for a long time about this project, but just will highlight here a couple of what i think are interesting perspectives from it. • gender identities in a changing world: the first finding is in relation to our interest in gendered identities today – what young people were bringing to school, and how they interacted with school. first of all, in terms of formal thinking, the issue of gender seemed like an old-hat issue to the people in our study. they said there is now equal opportunity and they weren’t interested in special provision for boys or for girls. but there were signs of different orientations at 14 (girls’ daydreams of the future were full of images of energy and of moving forward – driving fast cars, bungy jumping, travelling around the world; boys tended to have little of this expansive projection – their focus was on the short-term of next weekend, especially about sport), and different worries about their future life for girls and boys, especially working class boys. at school now, across the spectrum, both girls and boys expected both men and women to be in paid work for most of their lives, and both had a less clear picture of what their future family life or domestic relationships would look like. the group in our study who most wanted life to be like it was in the past were some boys of disadvantaged backgrounds in a provincial town. their school was doing a lot to lyn yates: what can schools do? transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (1) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 8 provide them with work opportunities and dual accreditation subjects, but they basically just wanted to get out of school as soon as possible, to be somewhere like a factory or a worksite where they were treated as men rather than as students. the sad thing was that when we visited them at 18, they were unemployed. the factory jobs were going out of existence. and they were being put off apprenticeships as work dried up. they had at this stage little to draw on to get other sorts of jobs. the things we were finding here are highly relevant to questions that major inquiries like the ‘boys inquiry’ and ‘career education inquiries’ try to take up. young people in schools are not blank slates, there to take in whatever we tell them. and, if we are trying to do something about boys from disadvantaged backgrounds and their futures, we have to take account of the fact that they are itching to get out of places that feel like school, as well as of the fact that just giving them what they say they want is likely to set them up poorly for the way work is going in the future. • school effects on identity, pathways and social values: another fascinating thing about this study was following the impact and role of their school in these young people’s lives over quite a long period of time. the rich private school in our study was one that prided itself on valuing diversity. but what we heard from the different students we talked to here was that the diversity it valued was not social differences, but diversity in being a higher achiever, of being distinctive in some way. the school appreciated achievement in the arts and in sport as well as in academic life, but if you looked or spoke differently, if you came from a different kind of suburb, or if you had chinese features, you felt uncomfortable. over time, two of the students we followed felt ground down by the elitism and conformity of the environment, and dropped out and changed schools – this isn’t something obvious from the database statistics about this school. those who stayed gradually came to feel part of an elite community whose natural next stepping point was melbourne university, and who would go on being part of an old school network over their lifetime. (by contrast, young people from schools outside melbourne, who we followed into their university life, felt a bit alone and very strange in the new university environment.) at the most disadvantaged school in our study, despite the best efforts of the school and teachers to provide creative and useful curriculum experiences – including integrated curriculum, good use of new technologies, and dual accreditation opportunities – their achievements in database terms did not look good compared with the other schools in our study. the expectations of the students at this school, the history of the parents and their own unhappy experiences with school, and the community reputation of the school as one for losers, tended to overwhelm whatever the school did. those who made it through got a lot of support from teachers, but a lot didn’t make it, and most of that was not due to internal faults of what the school was doing, but faults of the school’s situation and history, and how it was being set up in its town school comparison. there’s a new concern with values today, and the prime minister a few years ago created a furore by saying that that was one reason there was a drift to private schools – that government schools were both values-free and too politically correct (i’m not sure how you can strictly be both). in our study we found all of the four schools did have some impact on the way those who went to them saw themselves and saw the social world. in one school, young people valued diversity and would speak out about racism even when they left school but were not highly on track with either courses or work in their first post-school year – they were still dwelling a lot on who they were lyn yates: what can schools do? transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (1) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 9 and what they should be doing in life. in another school, with a comparable intake, young people became highly instrumental over the course of school. at 18 they were on track in new courses and jobs and planning their next step, convinced that this was a dog-eat-dog world, and that where you got was the result of your own efforts. these trajectories matter in relation to the things the oecd is talking about, but they are not things captured in the hard facts and figures databases about who gets what; and they are by and large not the result of the formal curriculum, or even of what the school says in its brochures. they are the result of the school culture overall: of how the teachers act in small day-to-day interactions with students; of how the school is organized; of the history of the school culture and those who go to it. vocational pedagogies project: changing work, changing workers, changing selves (chappell, solomon, tennant, williams and yates. arc project 2002-2004) a lot of education policies look backwards. the current national inquiry into teacher education is a good example. it’s all about effectiveness, not about the changing world and whether what is being taught is right. however, if we look at another government report published only two years ago, we find a different emphasis. that was the inquiry into vocational education in schools. in this area, and in major studies by the oecd, there is a great deal of attention being given to whether schools need to be teaching or producing other types of things than the examination knowledge we are familiar with: being a lifelong learner, communication in work contexts, being able to work in teams, being flexible, etc. in this study in nsw we looked at how classrooms (in schools, tafe, universities, community colleges, private training colleges) were going about producing this new worker. again, there are a lot of things i could talk about from this project, and we are still working on our reports and analyses of it. once again, it is a project where we are trying to begin with the big story of what experts are saying about new times and work, and also look on the ground at what is actually going on – who is benefiting, what is being taken up, and so on. here i’ll just briefly mention three issues concerned with (i) inequalities, (ii) clashing assessment concepts of knowledge and (iii) industry needs versus employer needs versus student needs. firstly, the literature on generic competencies and social competencies – and all the talk of communication, and of being autonomous and working in teams – tends to blur whether this is something programs try to teach, or whether effectively the things that are actually being assessed are simply what sort of social background or gendered accomplishments you bring to the classroom. there is a potential here for continuing to reward the advantages that different groups bring to the classroom, rather than opening these issues up in the teaching. secondly, especially in school (although i think victoria has made more progress than nsw in relation to the problem i’m going to talk about), in the dual accreditation program teachers had to juggle two old and conflicting ideas of what knowledge looks like. one is the australian qualifications framework (aqf) idea that knowledge is a skill, that it is what you can do (and teachers had long booklets of skills to check off for each student). the other is the year 12 examination idea that knowledge is something you display in writing and something that can be graded to sort out who has got more intelligence and who will do better at university. neither of these ideas is much like the ideas of situated and process knowledge that a lot of the workplace literature is getting excited about. a third issue is that the study let us see some of the things that don’t get sufficiently looked at in the policies that governments and industry groups are continually putting out: the lyn yates: what can schools do? transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (1) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 10 fact that industry or economy needs, employer needs and student needs are not identical and may cut across each other. at entry level, as school teachers were very aware, the employers wanted someone who was competent and obedient. working in teams meant knowing your place. this isn’t the way curriculum documents tend to talk about what they are aiming at in year 12. from an industry perspective, we found there was an emphasis on needing workers who are flexible, who can quickly learn and do new things – who might therefore have a different sense of the industry than the employers they actually go to for their work experience, and who might need different foundations than the ones the employer is concerned with which are how competent they are today. (there is a parallel here of course to the discussions about teacher education.) and taking a student’s interest perspective on vocational education, if we are talking about people who are expected to have a number of different jobs or careers, not just one, in the course of their working lives, then what is an appropriate foundation also isn’t necessarily just training in minimal competencies and obedience that looks good for the first day on the job. (on the other hand, practical competency and skills matter a lot more than you might think if you read much of the highflown literature about the new economy.) in the school classes we studied, the teachers were teaching some students who already worked in the jobs they were being trained for, and intended to go on working in those; and other students who were aiming to go to university and into other types of careers, but who thought that a certificate 2 in hospitality or in it was a useful extra to add to their portfolio. all of these things are just tasters of issues that are highly relevant to curriculum, and that need working on both conceptually and empirically. final comments: challenges for curriculum i’ve covered a lot of ground here, and i haven’t got simple answers. in fact, part of what i’ve been trying to say is that simple solutions can be over-rated. another way of putting this is that, as a research field, curriculum is not like a disease, where you might eventually find a cure, and that’s that. for curriculum, the world keeps changing. the outcomes of research projects and the use of careful research evidence are important. but the process of engaging in the questions is important in its own right. talking about these issues and researching and reviewing them are important in producing curriculum quality, not just steps to an eventual final solution. curriculum will be better if we acknowledge that there are both complex big picture issues and also nitty gritty issues of how things have to get done in real time and with the actual limited resources of schools. it will be better if we acknowledge that there are both head office issues about how to organise and support the system, as well as issues from the perspectives of students and teachers about what they feel is important, and about what it feels like to have certain things done to them, and we shouldn’t let one of these be silenced by the other. curriculum, i would argue, is a legitimate university field of study. that is, curriculum will be better if we try to draw into the conversation about it people who work in education faculties (and indeed other parts of the university) and whose brief is not just to deal with ‘what do i do on monday?’ or ‘how do i respond to today’s political pressure?’ – but those questions do have to be dealt with too. overall i have been arguing that the curriculum field is both a highly intellectual endeavour and a necessarily practical, political and pragmatic endeavour. the changing world is difficult and pressured as well as an exciting environment for education and educators. i’d like to see more complex and powerful and interdisciplinary engagements and research on the big questions. but i’d also like room for attention to the small and local as well as the big, and for creative enquiry as well as measurement research. my own final bit of utopian hope for lyn yates: what can schools do? transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (1) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 11 present times is that i’d like us all – teachers, students, researchers – to be given a bit more time and space to think and read and investigate and discuss these things; to allow us in education, in schools and in universities, to consider the persons as well as the products, to consider where we are going as well as how well we are doing things, and to not all be pressured, in every facet of our activities, to produce performance indicators for each minute of our day. notes 1 this address was publicly advertised and given to a large and diverse audience which included university academics and students (both from education and from other fields), school teachers, school principals and people who work in education ministries and bureaucracies; and other people from the community with some general interest in the topic. further information concerning the three research projects mentioned in this lecture can be obtained from the author. 2 editor’s note: to ‘whinge’, in british and australian colloquial english, means much the same as to whine, in the sense of complaining in a peevish manner. 3 editor’s note: in victoria, australia, the equivalent national tertiary entrance rank (enter) is a tool used by the victorian tertiary admissions centre (vtac) in tertiary selection. it ranks students’ overall victorian certificate of education (vce) performance against the performance of all other students undertaking vce in the same year. author lyn yates was appointed foundation chair of curriculum at the university of melbourne in 2005. she is also associate dean research and research training in the faculty. correspondence to: l.yates@unimelb.edu.au o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: ingersoll, marcea. (2014). curriculum windows: frames of possibility. transnational curriculum inquiry volume (01) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> curriculum windows: frames of possibility marcea ingersoll1 queen’s university, canada the backstory to choose a teaching life, or to have a teaching life choose you, means entering into an intense and intimate act of relations. individuals in the profession of teaching are drawn into relationships with learners, colleagues, content, and communities. and although the way in which we engage in these relationships is deeply connected to and fed by the river of our personal selves, the emotional currents of our teaching lives run just below the surface of our professional identities. while thomas newkirk (2006) acknowledges that some may consider it self-indulgent to focus on the emotional life of teachers, he also highlights what happens when we don’t: especially when those emotions are negative, ragefilled frustrations so different from the triumphant stories of self-sacrifice and perseverance heralded by colleagues, administrators, and the media. teachers who fail to meet the unrealistic expectations celebrated in the idealized cultural discourse of teaching excellence can be overwhelmed and silenced by feelings of inadequacy. in the face of narratives that portray no class too difficult to reach, no student beyond the uplifting reach of the teachersaviour, teachers experiencing difficulty can be overwhelmed by the incongruity between their ideal and actual teaching selves. i became a teacher by coincidence. it was happenstance that landed me a teaching job at the national university of malaysia just one month after i completed my four-year undergraduate degree. while at the threshold of creating my professional identity, of striving to attain credibility without credentials, i worked tirelessly to approach the standard my tenured colleagues had already legitimately attained. of course because i was 22 years old, i thought that was actually possible. although i left that first teaching position not long after i gained it, i continued to seek out jobs as a teacher. i left the university for a malaysian state college, then a language centre, and finally an international school. for the next thirteen years i would teach on two continents, in classrooms of children brought together by the pursuit of an international education. for many years i failed to acknowledge the cracks in my own teaching. my students seemed happy, and their exam results pleased the parents. whenever i encountered difficulty i used newkirk’s (2006) version of “teaching harder” to get me through, and scripted stories of my teaching self that highlighted my successes, hid my failures, and strived to fit the normative narrative of self-less, dedicated teacher. then, after thirteen years of teaching internationally, i decided to return home. in my desire to maintain a public story that wouldn’t shatter the glass of my neatly framed professional self, i chose not to narrate to myself or anyone else the frustration i felt at school. instead, i left; returned to canada. went to graduate ingersoll. curriculum windows: frames of possibility 45 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (01) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci school. moving on promised an alternative to the incongruity that invaded my every day. later, when i encountered the work of thomas newkirk (2006), i began to understand i was not alone in this sense of incongruity, and through the work of leah fowler (2006) i found a theoretically informed methodology that not only named my “curriculum of difficulty” but showed me what to do with it. naming a curriculum of difficulty in her 2006 work, a curriculum of difficulty: narrative research in education and the practice of teaching, leah fowler shows how narrative research can lead to an ethical inner government of a teaching self. fowler suggests that we can move through difficult curricular spaces by examining our curricular relations through narrative. through a process of narration and analysis, we can move beyond difficulty by enacting intentional pedagogical movement. through our willingness to story those narratives that run below the surface, we can safely illuminate the underside of teaching, and confront those experiences that are difficult to accept or know. by examining our untold stories, we can come to know our own epistemologies, and enter a space where more productive pedagogical relations are engaged. like many beginning teachers, i had entered teaching with a naïve lack of critical consciousness, imagining that i knew what that role entailed. when i moved from the role of teacher to administrator, i experienced what fowler described as a “widening chasm between what i physically and emotionally experienced in the daily broken world of… school and the public rhetoric about our amazing successes” (2006, p. 14). the increasing contradictions unbalanced me; i felt weighted by a heavy sense of incongruity. there were many things i could not reconcile, including the failing grades of amazingly gifted students whose potential is simply not recognized by standardized exams, and whose self-esteem becomes battered by that discontinuity. according to fowler, “the common questions asked by experienced teachers straddling fault lines at the borders of self and system in their professional lives call for a radical hermeneutics along with honest narration” (p. 17). fowler’s claim that narrative work allowed her to revolutionize her teaching practices, “to experience a ‘coming home’ to myself” (p. 15) promised a way back to and through moments of difficulty, so that i could forge a path forward. to travel that path i needed to narrate and interpret my untold moments of difficulty. seven orbitals of narrative analysis form the basis of the fowler’s process of inquiry, and i explore six of them here. surfacing through silence naïve storying, the first orbital in fowler’s analytical process, involves breaking silence. fowler claims that by finding language to express a story at its elemental, pre-conscious level, we can break the barrier of silence and give voice to an experience of difficulty. reading stories of difficulty is a way of recognizing shared struggles, but of keeping them at bay, safely contained in the words of another author. after reading fowler’s introduction, and her internarrative “home run,” one of my own stories surfaced, and found its way into words. this naïve storying was an emotional surfacing: i was breaking silence on a story i had kept from my partner, my colleagues, and for many years even myself. as i finished the final paragraph of the draft that emerged and named itself pedagogy, i felt drained, exhausted, exposed. in the mid-afternoon sun i closed the lid of my computer, fell onto my bed and into a deep, immediate sleep. ingersoll. curriculum windows: frames of possibility 46 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (01) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the intense emotional response elicited by the remembering and recording of an unacknowledged and unexamined difficulty finds an analytical home in fowler’s second orbital. the psychological re/construction of difficulty involves broaching the affective and cognitive aspects of the experience. within the second orbital, fowler directs us to the aspect of affect, so that we may focus on the emotional knot in the narrative, and assess the emotions in the story. in considering affect, we must return to the draft and ask what emotions are present in and elicited by the story. the emotions must be confronted and interrogated during the next part of the process—the cognitive component—where we ask what the emotions mean. these questions lead to the third orbital, psychotherapeutic ethics, which requires that we confront our own “potential for harm in teaching” (fowler, 2006, p. 30). when read against the first three orbitals of fowler’s analytical process, i can see how even in the pre conscious breaking of silence, pedagogy reveals the intensity of emotions that are created within pedagogical relations. i begin to understand that this story remained suppressed within a vault of silence because i was afraid to give voice to my anger, frustration, and shame. the orbital of psychotherapeutic ethics requires a deeper level of engagement than i am ready for. i know that i must return to it, but only once i have a more structured understanding of the experience i have chosen to narrate. narrating a curriculum of dificulty fowler contends that by capturing our stories in narrative, we can find a home for our difficulty. and so pedagogy becomes a safe container, or “temenos” (fowler, 2006, p. 15) for the conflict i experienced but could not convey. separate from and yet a part of me, the story is held within the temenos and i can keep it long enough to study it, examine it, and find ways to re-craft it so that its power can be safely released. and so i enter the fourth orbital of fowler’s analysis, narrative craft. narrative craft **** pedagogy jalal benizi, age 16, pulled into the school driving a mercedes s-class and wearing a thin suit of badass. he and his younger brother, yassine, had passed shepherds and donkey carts as they slid in air-conditioned comfort up the mountain from fez. they arrived with the story that their father had pulled them (pulled them? i wondered later) out of their schools in holland and returned home. and here they were. yassine joined the other student in grade 7, my smallest english class. and jalal joined my largest, grade 10. our school sat at the edge of an extinct volcano in the middle atlas range, not far from the town’s centreville. the school’s peaks mimicked those of the alps, in keeping with the french colonial chalets and cafés in town, and the elite university that was the collective vision of two princes: one saudi, one moroccan. most of the day students were, like mine, children of academics at the university or the offspring of american and canadian teachers at the school. the moroccan boarders came mostly from merchant families in fez or meknes, the two cities down the mountain. in the interests of business, they had removed their children from the private french lycées to finish off their education in english. a considerable portion of our enrolment, considering that we’d just hit the one hundred mark, came from a single ingersoll. curriculum windows: frames of possibility 47 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (01) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci family with interests in vineyards and vegetables. each day drivers and maids delivered nine of their children and a flotilla of food in a convoy of toyota 4 by 4s. the school’s reluctant intakes were the handful of kids who had been expelled from everywhere else; after exhausting arabic, french, and other international schools in the country, their parents had pleaded and paid, mostly paid, for their places with us. jalal and yassine were different again. having grown up mostly in the netherlands they fell somewhere on the edges. they spoke dutch, rusty arabic, no french, and passable english. yassine’s humour and the protective ferocity of his older brother quickly found him friends. but jalal flouted a wealthy menace that kept him at the edge—circling, waiting, watching. there was no need to penetrate the pack; someone would come to him. and someone did. after a period of hostile familiarity, youssef was the first to make a move. he was a slight, bespectacled student whose fine mind had no problem housing both traditional religious sensibilities and an adolescent penchant for hash and poetic angst. the type of boy who might one day become a fundamentalist cleric or a radical academic; he could go either way. youssef had also come back to morocco from holland, but with a family story that had stayed in the suitcases. school gossip wasn’t silent on jalal’s return. the official line was jalal’s father had brought back his sons because he was reestablishing his business locally. other sources suggested that mother had not returned, and that father or sons might have been troubled by the law. as youssef and jalal became closer and words like dealer circled the air, people felt they knew what they knew, but let it go. jalal and i started out well. i’d met with him, did the right things, said i knew it would be a struggle for him to integrate into the class and find himself academically in a new environment. i felt that he was responding well, detected a trace of vulnerable appreciation that fed my desire to get through to him, to make a difference. he didn’t participate much in class, and even when his desk was pulled up to the others he still seemed distant, apart. i felt his difference, made allowances, supported his difficult transition. i read promise in the homework he submitted late and smiled that i’d been able to get him to complete it at all. he smiled too, sometimes. didn’t throw fists or bang tables in my class. i took this to be progress. six months after their arrival, jalal’s brother yassine was expelled, and i was again serving a party of one in grade 7. i hadn’t had any trouble with yassine, a goofy daredevil who seemed in need of mothering, but others had, and the final straw had been an act of attempted arson in the dorm, so off he was sent, to where i didn’t know. with his brother’s expulsion, the dark storm behind jalal’s eyes shifted and raged. he grew rigid, tensile, a steel wire pulled taut. the air around him hummed electric. but i liked jalal, just as i had liked yassine. i didn’t want jalal to meet his brother’s fate. and when the director called a meeting about what to do with jalal, who had been trying less and less and missing classes more and more, i came to his defense. during the meeting, my optimistic and impassioned plea for lenience struck a chord with mr. timms, another teacher who had seen inside this stormy boy and held out hope of calming the waters. we argued that jalal should stay, we’d try harder, and something could be done. but the harder i tried the more hardened jalal became. my hopes of inroads had been blocked and the rare smiles i’d been able to elicit had disappeared for good. the boy arrived late for class, threw his books on the desk, slouched into his seat and put his head down, on good days. on bad days he’d sail in, chin up, defiant, sit erect in his chair and pierce my ingersoll. curriculum windows: frames of possibility 48 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (01) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci attempts at pedagogy. i stopped pulling a chair in close and speaking soft encouragements. he made me nervous now. i backed away, kept my distance and shivered with the cold wind of blame that blew around him. i hadn’t done enough. and now it felt dangerous. after school one day i tried to reach him. i wanted him see that i still believed he could do this but he had to work within the system and that i could help. on the day i’d asked him to come, he entered, eyes averted. he reached for the back of the chair i’d placed next to my desk and invited him to take. in a fluid movement he flipped it around and sat leaning into the chair back, elbows out toward the walls. now he looked at me. i began as i’d intended. “how are things going?” a shrug. “i know things haven’t been that good lately, and i wanted you to know i’m here to help. you can still make this work, jalal. we can make it work. i know you’ve been having trouble with mr. porter.” still nothing. “but you know that there are other teachers who see beyond that. we know you have the capacity to see this through. we know you can do it, it’s just that we’ll need your help to get you there.” where was i going with this? i sounded ridiculous. no wonder he didn’t say anything-he didn’t need to. i could prattle on and on for the both of us. i held my breath and he raised an eyebrow to my silence. maybe he didn’t care. maybe i was just today’s entertainment. maybe… suddenly, i wanted to slap him. as he sat, mocking in his silence, my anger leaped out and tore at him. an animal unleashed. “you think i’m a bitch, don’t you? you think i don’t care. well, i do. i fought for you when others wanted to throw you out, and i said you should stay. i said you deserved to stay. but do you? do you? what are you doing to deserve to stay, jalal? tell me!” the corner of his mouth edged into a smile. “tell me, jalal. give me something.” and the smile moved into a subtle smirk. “just go. do what you want then. get out!” he rose from the chair, smoothed the creases in his jeans, and moved languidly toward the door. shaking, seething, i slammed it behind him. in the month that followed, i crept around him in the classroom; knew his sullen contempt was justified. he skimmed the edges of contact. expertly completed just enough work on our shakespeare unit to evade real interaction. by the time spring hit the mountain and the winter snows had chased themselves into the creeks that nourished the cherry blossoms in sefrou far below, jalal had received his final warning from the director. one too many chairs and rules had been broken. too many fights, not enough homework. i argued again for the boy, and we reached a compromise: no expulsion, but no attendance. jalal would have to do his work from fez and send it with a driver. he could come back for final exams but write them in the director’s office. final offer. may flew by, and i eventually stopped looking at jalal’s empty desk. the days were longer and brighter. there was laughter as we opened the windows and let the fresh air circle around us with its delicious promise of summer. ingersoll. curriculum windows: frames of possibility 49 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (01) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci on the hot june day when jalal came to write his english exam, i smiled, said i’d missed him in class and wished it hadn’t turned out this way. a smirk of stone, impenetrable. i tried again, asked him if he felt ready for the exam, hoping still that my lines and lines of positive commentary on his sparsely filled sheets of loose leaf had helped in some small way. to think that comments on syntax could be useful for us now. i left the room. he wrote the exam. we moved on. but still i can see the particular slant of sunlight in the classroom on the day that i slammed that door and sobbed. cried until i couldn’t, and sat staring through the open window, immobile. i cast my thoughts across the barren crags of rock that stretched to the muted peak behind the school. felt communion with the soft rise in the fold of the mountain-the extinct volcano--dull, lifeless, emptied of its liquid rage. **** revisiting moving the story through the fourth orbital, narrative craft, was of itself a difficulty. i had worked and re-worked it as it was being written and before i first let it go. for this telling, and in keeping with the analysis that fowler guides us through, i tried to refocus on the stylistic elements of the story and approach my experience from the angle of author-editor. in revisiting the piece, i was also reminded that “narrative includes not only the story, but also the teller, the told, the context and conditions of the story telling, and the reasons and intentions for narrating” (fowler, 2006, p. 9). i had initially considered the components of story, teller, and told during the fourth orbital, but the last pieces, the context and conditions of the story telling, and the reasons and intentions for narrating, blurred into the next realm of analysis—hermeneutics—or the fifth orbital. interpreting in the fifth orbital, fowler suggests that the interpretive exploration of what the narrative is uncovering and revealing can help us to explore the subtextual meaning of the experience. and i am reminded that for my analysis to guide me in a trustworthy manner toward an ethical inner government of a teaching self, my narration must be honest and my hermeneutics careful, attentive, informed. in interpreting the narrative pedagogy, i’m drawn to describe the process of reflective interpretation through two particular frames. the first is my own exploration of the questions the re-crafted story raises. the second brings other voices to the conversation in order to inform my questions. and through the hermeneutic process of asking and answering questions about an experience of difficulty, i move toward fowler’s sixth orbital, curriculum pedagogy, through a process of questioning and layering. questioning in writing and reading, and in re-reading and re-writing this story, many questions arose. fowler’s three guiding questions: “what is going on? now what? so what?” (fowler, 2006, p. 26) were present with me throughout the fourth orbital, narrative craft, and i found myself answering these questions as i re-worked the narrative. because i had come to know more about the orbitals than when i first broke silence, and because i had participated in the creation of the data, it was difficult to separate the writing and analysis portions of the research journey. in re-crafting the story, i was attentive to fowler’s question, “what is going on?” and ingersoll. curriculum windows: frames of possibility 50 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (01) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci to her process, derived from heidegger’s central hermeneutic task of “uncovering” that which is not immediately apparent (fowler, 2006, p. 124). i needed not to just reveal the experience but to recount it in a way that expanded on what i had uncovered by breaking silence in the first place. in going back to re-write sections of the story, i was answering the questions that surfaced. layering as i rewrote, i attempted to close gaps in understanding, so that readers wouldn’t struggle with the textual aspects of the story. but with iser (1993) in mind, i also wanted to leave space for meaning to be made rather than controlled. i also looked for opportunities to layer meaning so that a close reading (gallop, 2000) could reveal multiple interpretations. in reflecting on the process of moving the story through the fourth orbital, narrative craft, of working and reworking the story from the perspective of not merely a narrator but also an interpreter, i came to experience the process of writing itself as a hermeneutic endeavour. through writing and re-writing i was understanding, explaining, and critically assessing experience—those interconnected goals of contemporary hermeneutics (pinar, reynolds, slattery, &taubman, 1995). the storying of this experience, pedagogy, is an individual pane of pedagogical experience within the composite frames of a teaching life. i tell this story after my departure from the international school realm, and during my attempt to reconcile, ethically, my participation as an uncertified teacher of english in elite, international contexts. gaining a hermeneutic understanding of my personal role in a power dynamic insufficiently addressed in the research literature is important. by asking “what is going on” i seek answers that uncover and reveal personal and systemic difficulties. identifying and interpreting the personal can be a step toward disrupting normative discourse and to theorizing in alternative ways. in my hermeneutic re-reading and re-writing i inevitably ask fowler’s second question: now what? and i return to the writing with that question in mind. i deliberately layer hints of the school’s social-historical context into the story. i do this because there needs to be attention not merely to the consequences of me as an individual teacher caught up in the normative discourse of teacher-saviour. there must also be space to interrupt and interpret the imbalanced power structures that made my white anglo presence in that middle-atlas moroccan context possible. i interpret fowler’s radical hermeneutics as a call to craft a narrative that is honest in its unveiling of the surface level curriculum of difficulty between a student and teacher, but also in the deeper systemic and ideological tensions that run within systems of privilege. in my journey toward an ethical inner government of the teaching self, the process of writing and interpreting leads me toward a desire to participate in inquiry that interrupts the normative ideology of international education. in arguing for the ethical dimensions of pedagogy to be attended to, soltis asserts that: there is also a need for exploring the critical-normative ideological context of pedagogy, a need for bringing about its demystification and bringing to critical awareness the most fundamental embodiments of power in the historical sociocultural world we all share. (1984, p.9) ingersoll. curriculum windows: frames of possibility 51 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (01) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci to be ethical, i need to be guided by a critical consciousness that allows me to examine not only my potential for harm in relation to one student, but to address my own complicity in the reproductive systems of power that divide and marginalize our sociocultural world. incorporating other voices to inform my critical consciousness, i turn to the voices of others who have addressed the difficult issues that pedagogy contains. the issue that surfaces upon first reading of pedagogy is the conflict between the teacher and jalal. while the narrator doesn’t experience the kind of conflict that other teachers face with him, she doesn’t experience the kind of success she aspires to either. the teacher subscribes to one of the dominant cultural myths of teaching, that it is her individual mandate to control the class and students within it (britzman, 1986). in pedagogy, the interpersonal conflict originates in relations of power; the teacher’s desire to control and jalal’s lack of compliance. when the narrator argues that she and mr. timms will try harder to get jalal to comply, the reader must question whether this is a genuine plea on behalf of the student. perhaps the teachers’ unwillingness to let go is grounded in cultural notions of teachers as “dynamic, charismatic agent of change” (newkirk, 2006, p. 160). the teachers’ reluctance to admit defeat is potentially rooted in the individualist mythology which ensures that “despite the reality that teachers share collective problems, in this individual world, asking for help is viewed as a sign of weakness” (britzman, 1986, p. 445). the narrator’s feeling that she must intervene in order for jalal to succeed is an example of britzman’s assertion that a teacher’s sense of competence is closely tied to her ability to exert control and influence. within her work on cultural myths and teaching (1986), and the terrible problem of knowing thyself (britzman, 1992), britzman argues for biography as a way of eliciting critical insight into the teaching self. and van manen reminds us how individual moments of relational difficulty can potentially shatter the panes of our pedagogical frames: for many teachers their sense of self as teacher is easily called into question, especially when they encounter ‘difficult’ youths or when they become unsure whether what they teach and how they teach is still appropriate for their students. (1994, p. 140) by calling together these voices i hear both a way of and a reason for critically narrating difficult moments from a teaching biography. i am brought to fowler’s next question in this endeavour: so what? curriculum pedagogy once opened to honest narration and hermeneutic understanding, our stories reveal our selves more critically and more powerfully. a deeper reading of the story pedagogy reveals the hidden difficulty of critical consciousness—the chasm that opens when we recognize incongruity within our teaching lives. as i re-read the story, i recall how absurd it felt to be teaching julius caesar on the side of a mountain in morocco, but how easily that incongruity was elided because this was how i earned my income. what other incongruous power dynamics, other than teacher-student, are represented by this situation? how can examining the narrative point me to a deeper understanding of my own epistemology and the larger issues ingersoll. curriculum windows: frames of possibility 52 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (01) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci of curriculum? through the process of asking and answering questions about an experience of difficulty, i have entered fowler’s sixth orbital, curriculum pedagogy. in the penultimate orbital, i must address the narrative in terms of its implications. the incongruity raised in pedagogy becomes part of the complicated conversation (pinar, 2004) that curriculum compels us to engage in. as i move through and between the orbitals, i come to understand this recursive analytical process as a way of re-piecing the fragments of a shattered teaching pane, or wiping away obscuring layers of dust, or of moving to another pane in order to see vistas beyond more clearly. if each narrative becomes a translucent pane within the composite frames of a teaching self, i can come closer to seeing what lays beyond the window of a storied self. seeing ourselves in this way moves our visions forward: it recognizes that consciousness is complex and although it “cannot be pinpointed as existing at a particular location, we nevertheless continue to describe a cohesive feeling of consciousness as we develop the narrative that describes our existence” (sumara, luce-kapler, & iftody, 2008, p. 234). individual sites of consciousness, the carefully constituted panes of narrative, can help us frame an integrated critical consciousness that is simultaneously reflective and visionary. interplay naming and working through a narrative of difficulty has implications. reflecting on my storied self analytically moves me closer toward an integrated consciousness by positioning me within a research agenda that incorporates my teacher, researcher, teacher-educator, and academic selves. our personal stories are shaped by the times in which we live, and whom we live among. within individual narratives, our lives are influenced by the setting in which our characters are drawn. this sketching of self is socially mediated by the global economic and educational flows that influence the movement of families, students, and teachers. the circumstances that allowed me to engage in a profession without any formal credentials reveal a site of incongruity implicit in the sociocultural world of pedagogy. the recognition of english as a commodity for social mobility globally (lowe, 1999) and the predominantly anglo-western hiring practices of international schools positioned me within the global narrative. i became an international school teacher, like more than 215,000 others at over 5,000 international schools worldwide (international, 2008; isc, 2009). and, with time, what i did was who i had become. and i am not alone. recently, the number of canadians seeking jobs as teachers at international schools has grown (hayden & thompson, 2008). in ontario the number of new graduates seeking employment as educators abroad may reflect the constrained employment market in the province; only 36% of newly certified ontario teachers secured full-time positions in 2008 (mcintyre, 2009). limited local employment prospects indicate that for many canadian teachers, going abroad to teach may be a necessary reality. how will their own sense of who they are be shaped by what they do? who are these canadian teachers who go, have gone, or may go abroad? so far, these stories have not been told; we don’t really know. we know that literature on the experiences of international school teachers is limited, and canadian perspectives are significantly under-represented (canterford, 2003). any kind of data specific to the number or characteristics of canadian teachers abroad is difficult to obtain, as there is no specific governing body responsible for overseeing this multi-billion dollar industry (macdonald, ingersoll. curriculum windows: frames of possibility 53 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (01) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 2006). detailed information about staff nationalities is either not collected by organizations which specialize in teacher recruitment for international schools, or it categorizes teacher recruits as american, british, host national, or other (canterford, 2003). the designation of canadians as “other” is symbolic of how canadians fall outside the research categories and perhaps find themselves in places of incongruity. my individual narrative serves as an entry point for understanding my own epistemology, but it also compels me to move beyond the self, to ask questions of others so that the stories of other canadians are revealed and considered. moving my story beyond the personal and engaging my experience with the “contingent, contextual relational networks in teaching and learning” is the heart of fowler’s sixth orbital (fowler, 2006, p. 13). i understand it to be crucial for the ethical inner government of my teaching self, and for moving me toward a wider-reaching, visionary, critical consciousness. in telling my own story, i am brought to ask critically reflective questions that may reveal other instances of incongruity. how do canadian teachers see themselves, as individuals and canadians, abroad and at home? what stories do they have of the journey? what role do they have in creating the curriculum stories of others around the world, as they are sought out, hired, and transported across the globe to be conduits of curriculum? how, as well, are we perceived? these seem interesting questions to ask in light of the complex visions of schooling held by various educational stakeholders and policy makers. if curriculum is so easy to deliver, if it is simply the specification and delivery of measurable outcomes, international schools could simply import and deliver the curriculum. but they don’t. in the international school arena, teachers play a unique role in the curriculum stories of learners; they interact with other elements to characterize the curriculum they convey. in international contexts, this characterization is cultural; teachers can be perceived to be cultural representations of the curriculum they deploy. the interplay of character and context sets the mood for the curriculum story that gets told. it’s a mood affected by milieu, and attentive to the soft and subtle strains of the plots and subplots that unfold. exploring curriculum through a storied approach can bring the meaning of individual experiences to the global narratives within which we shape our lives. we will need to look through many windows of experience in order to see clearly who we are. and we should continue to ask the question who are we? since, afterall, we are always becoming. notes 1email: marcealeigh@gmail.com 2 the author gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the social sciences and humanities research council of canada. references britzman, d. p. (1986). cultural myths in the making of a teacher: biography and social structure in teacher education. harvard educational review 56(4), 442-455. mailto:marcealeigh@gmail.com ingersoll. curriculum windows: frames of possibility 54 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (01) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci britzman, d. p. (1992). the terrible problem of knowing thyself: toward a poststructural account of teacher identity. journal of curriculum theorizing 9(3), 23-46. canterford, g. (2003). segmented labour markets in international schools. journal of research in international education 2(1), 47-65. fowler, l. c. (2006).a curriculum of difficulty: narrative research in education and the practice of teaching. new york, ny: peter lang. gallop, j. (2000). the ethics of close reading: close encounters. journal of curriculum theorizing 17 (3), 7-17. hayden, m., & thompson, j. (2008). international schools: growth and influence. paris: unesco. international schools show phenomenal growth. (2008, october). the international educator xxiii(1), 1. isc research. retrieved on march 28, 2009 from http://www.iscresearch.com/ iser, w. (1993). the fictive and the imaginary: charting literary anthropology. baltimore: the johns hopkins university press. lowe, j. (1999). international examinations, national systems and the global market. compare: a journal of comparative and international education, 29(3), 317-330. mcintyre, f. (2009). a new generation of ontario teachers. professionally speaking. http://professionallyspeaking.oct.ca/march_2009/transition_new_ generation.asp newkirk, t. (2006). holding on to good ideas in a time of bad ones: six literacy principles worth fighting for. portsmouth, nh: heinemann. pinar, w. f., reynods, w., slattery, p., & taubman, p. (2004). understanding curriculum. new york, ny: peter lang. soltis, j.f. (1984). on the nature of educational research. educational researcher 13(10), 510. sumara, d., luce-kapler, r. & iftody, t. (2008). educating consciousness through literary experience. educational philosophy and theory, 40 (1), 228-241. van manen, m. (1994). pedagogy, virtue, and narrative identity in teaching. curriculum inquiry 24(2), 135-170. submitted: february, 10th, 2014 approved: june, 12th, 2014 http://www.iscresearch.com/ http://professionallyspeaking.oct.ca/march_2009/transition_new_%20generation.asp to cite this article please include all of the following details: doll jr., william. (2013). an exploration of “ethics” in a post-modern, complex, global society. transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> an exploration of “ethics” in a post-modern, complex, global society william e. doll, jr.1 university of british columbia, canada overview literature on the concept of ethics is vast; its rhizomatic roots entwined in ancient and modern societies. in this paper i wish to explore ethics from a post-modern perspective. the oxford english dictionary explains ethics in terms of moral principles we, as (rational) humans, have a duty to follow: “a set of moral principles . . . especially ones relating to a specific group, field, or form of conduct” (oxford english dictionary, 2013). in short, ethics is a guiding set of principles based on a particular culture or subculture. it is this notion of a set of principles constituting the base for moral action that the authors i have chosen find problematic. to understand ethics and its relation to moral acts from a postmodern perspective, i have selected three authors: michel serres (french), paul cilliers (south african), and francisco varela (chilean). each comes from a different continent, each with its own language, culture, and historical ethos. all three, though, are united in their belief that our current world culture needs to move beyond what might be called a “traditional” interpretation of ethics. the three are michel serres (1930 --), a french mathematician, physicist, humanist, and avowed chaos theorist; paul cilliers (1956-2011), an engineer and philosopher by training, a seminal figure in the philosophy of complexity theory and an avowed opponent of chaos theory, which he sees caught in the modernism he rejects; francisco varela (19462001), a biologist and co-founder of the santiago theory of cognition who found inspiration in “the wisdom traditions of the east: confucianism, taoism and buddhism” (varela, 1999, p. 4). different as these three are in their backgrounds, they are united in their belief that our post-modern, complex, global society needs a new way to conceive of ethics. for serres, this is a morality freed from the cultural constraints of ethics. for cilliers, it is a sophisticated awareness of the complexity inherent in our post-modern world. he advances a “provisional ethics,” one without relativism, as his alternative to traditional ethics. varela makes a distinction between “ethical deliberation” guided by reason, and “ethical expertise” guided by daily experience and practice. all three ask that the concept of ethics and its relation to moral acts be reevaluated, problematized. serres in his conversations with latour (1995), serres explores the concept of morality (pp.167204). his worry is that with the startling advances in all the sciences, including technology, since wwii, humans have acquired a power before unknown: “we have become masters of doll. an exploration of “ethics” in a post-modern, complex, global society 65 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (2) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci space, of matter, and of life” (p.169). we are acquiring control over the planet on which we live, the atmosphere that surrounds us, and our relations with both life and death. in short, we are “masters of earth and the world, but our very mastery seems to have escaped our mastery” (p.171). that is, our sense of mastery has come to master us. as our technological advances come faster and faster, as the newer emerges unexpectedly from the new, we have no way to control our speed on the path that leads from a local occurrence “to a global hell” (p.171). what appears possible, a can do event, immediately becomes a must do (p.173). can is transformed into must, with little if any sense of process (process). serres puts forth the assertion that the atomic bomb, dropped on two japanese cities—nagasaki and hiroshima—at the end of wwii, was done not as a prudent move to end the war, but as a consequence of having been built. having been built, it needed to be tested, experimentally—not on land or water but on real live people. this, serres says, represents a “madly logical, rationally tragic” mindset (1997, p.122.) in conversation with bruno latour, serres comments, “i belong to the generation that questions scientism” … that worries about “the relationship between science and violence”—a relation yet to be explored (1995, p.16; emphasis added). this rationally tragic mindset, this scientism, comes from our adopting science as the one and only beacon to follow,2 thereby turning the process of science into the ideology of scientism. says serres, knowledge is certainly excellent . . . when it remains cool. . . . science, assuredly, is just and useful but the way heat is: if it remains mild. science is good, who denies it, and even, i am sure, one thousand times better than a thousand other things that are also good. but if it claims that it is the only and whole good and behaves as if this were the case, then it enters into a dynamic of madness. science will become wise when it holds back from doing everything it can do (1997, p.122; emphasis added). acknowledging the anthropomorphic language used here, and realizing that it is we who are the wolves of science—“western man is a wolf of science” (1983, p.28)—serres’ point is that single sight, or “one-eyed” reason, will lead us to tragedy. using the metaphor of sailors needing a beacon at night, serres says that one only “is simply a position, which rapidly becomes a directive, that is imperialistic, necessary, obligatory” (1995, p.178), and our only choice is “obedience” (p.179). serres believes we need two beacons: the sciences with their sense of exactitude and experimentation, and the humanities with their “continuous cry of suffering” (p.180). the intersection of these two lights, where the objects in the beacons become clearest, is where we can construct our new morality—based on wisdom not ethics. here we can “weave the warp of the rediscovered humanities to the woof of expert exactitude” (p.184). such a weaving may well help the sciences, in their activities, acquire “a tolerant wisdom the other instances of power were never really able to learn” (1997, p.122). in advocating a morality based on wisdom not power, serres asks that we adopt a new vision and concurrent attitude: ones steeped in humility, and born from weakness— weakness that has the strength of not believing our view to be the one and only right view. traditional ethics—following a culture’s guiding principles—binds us to that culture’s values, and in this sense is relative: “ethics depend on cultures and places and are relative” (1995, p.192). they are relative in being bound to a culture, often the culture of the strongest, the one most technologically advanced and powerful. the “reason of the stronger is always the best,” asserts the wolf, as he carries off the lamb (of the humanities) “without doll. an exploration of “ethics” in a post-modern, complex, global society 66 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (2) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci any other form of procés” (1983, pp.15-16). in the process of the sciences themselves, where rightness is combined with reasonable doubt, not the metaphysics of scientism with its single beacon of reason, serres sees a moral hope. morality depends on its obverse, evil (disease, famine, injustice, pain, violence) which is always with us. these evils exist and come to fruition as we live. our traditional attitude has been to pit ethics against evil, to declare “war” on evil, and to believe we are moral in so doing. this battle, though, is futile. these “evils” cannot be eradicated, to declare war on them only strengthens them. instead we need to negotiate with them, and in so doing let the power of our weakness come forth (pp.157-204, passim). without evil there is no morality, without weakness there is no strength. adopting this insight requires a new, educated reason, a reason that is not monocular or “one-eyed,” to borrow a phrase from a. n. whitehead (1967, p.59). rather, it is a reason informed by the wisdom of the humanities. this hybrid of scientific process (with its sense of objectivity) and human virtue (with its sensitivity to the subjective) yields a morality not constrained by ethical rules, but free to be dynamic in its being, and much needed in our post-modern, complex, global society. cilliers a “morality not constrained by ethical rules” is a concept both serres and cilliers share. tragically dead of a massive brain hemorrhage, at age 54, cilliers left an indelible mark on the field of complexity thought, doing as much as anyone to map its shifting parameters and variations. his frequent cry was “ honor the complexity of the complex.” in his later work cilliers focused on issues of morals and ethics, especially the relation between them. in his seminal book, complexity and postmodernism (1998), he states that in the future he intends to deal with “ethical issues” in complexity thought. in this book, he lays out the line of thinking he wishes to pursue in the future: it was part of the dream of modernism to establish a universal set of rules that would be able to regulate our behavior in every circumstance. but, can behavior in accordance with an abstract, universal of rules be called ‘ethical’ at all? (p.137) he continues, following a universal set of rules (assuming such rules exist) does not involve decision or dilemma, it merely asks for calculation . . . can this be called ‘ethical’? what kind of human being would act like this? clearly, some kind of automaton. cilliers sees humans, particularly in a post-modern world, as decision makers, not automatons blindly following set rules. he brings forth this line of thought in a number of chapters and articles (2005, 2007, with richardson 2001 & 2007) but most forcefully in his last book, co-edited with rika preiser, complexity, difference and identity: an ethical perspective (2010). here he presents his alternative to the shallowness of traditional ethics. a traditional ethics, emphasizing the following of set rules, hence avoiding the complexity inherent in making a moral decision, is really not ethics at all; it is merely giving “practical moral advice on the contingent matters we face every day.” a study of “ethics involves more than everyday morality” (p.265). the study of ethics from a complexity perspective means understanding the complexity inherent in an event. traditional scientific thinking, the western paradigm of good thinking, makes progress by reducing the complexity of an event to make a model of it. this modeling—simple by design—means leaving out the very part of an event that doll. an exploration of “ethics” in a post-modern, complex, global society 67 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (2) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci makes it complex. there is here no “honoring of the complexity of the complex.” cilliers argues that to understand an event, in all its complexity, one “would have to fully understand life, the universe, and everything, now and forever” (2010, p.265). this logical impossibility forces us either to dismiss the complexity inherent in events, or to adopt a new, intellectual paradigm, including a new epistemology (our way of learning), and a new axiology (our way of being) and a new sense of ethics (provisional). this paradigm, while it recognizes the provisional, is not relativistic—not laissefaire. in cilliers terms, there is no “anything goes.” a metaphysics which recognizes the provisional, does honor the history present in an event. this history provides a coupling of the past and the present. such coupling is generative, allowing the new to emerge from the difficulties and dilemmas found in the past. a provisional ethics accepts uncertainty as a strategic given. it is radically different from a traditional, a priori ethics, from an ethics wherein a moral act is calculated as ethical according to its fit with a prescribed set of principles. a provisional ethics is never relativistic.3 in its focus on the relational, always changing in a complex system, itself open, a provisional ethics is one where the determination of a moral act depends on choices we make. we, personally, are responsible for the choices we make. we are thinking judging human beings, not automatons. guidelines, though, can be developed to help us in these decisions; guidelines for responsible judgment: 1. respect otherness and difference as values in themselves; 2. gather as much information on the issue as possible, notwithstanding the fact that it is impossible to gather all the information; 3. consider as many of the possible consequences of the judgment as possible, notwithstanding the fact it is impossible to gather all the consequences; 4. make sure that it is possible to revise the judgment as soon it becomes clear that it has flaws (cilliers, 2007, p.123) in this frame for “responsible judgment,” incompleteness and uncertainty are acknowledged, and with this acknowledgment the notion of our judgments having the potential of being flawed is accepted. as serres similarly points out, wisdom begins when we become fearful of the rightness of our own acts (1997, p.122). operating on this premise, exercising it, using it may help us develop a new sense of ethics. varela in his book on developing ethical know-how (1999), francisco varela begins his first lecture with the statement: “ethics is closer to wisdom than to reason, closer to understanding what is good than to correctly adjudicating particular situations” (p. 3). varela develops the power of this statement—a statement i believe serres and cilliers would appreciate—in the rest of his book. he goes on to say that traditional “moral philosophy has tended to focus on what is right to do rather than on what it is good to be . . . on obligation rather than the nature of good life” (p.3; emphasis added). advocating “ethics in a nonmoralistic framework” (p.ix), varela draws on both his view of cognitive science—a complexivist view—and “the wisdom traditions of the east” to bring forth and doll. an exploration of “ethics” in a post-modern, complex, global society 68 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (2) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci develop his notion of “what is it good to be” (p.4). rejecting jean piaget’s belief that it is “moral judgment . . . not moral behavior” that should be studied (p.4), varela advocates study of ethical acts in their complexity, and develops a frame, that of “ethical expertise” (p.23) whereby practical activities—“working, moving, talking, eating”—acquire an embedded sense of being good, or being moral. focusing on “the difference between knowhow and know-what, between spontaneous coping and rational judgment” (p.6), and, choosing the former with its emphasis on skilled behavior, he sets himself two interrelated questions to answer: 1. how can one best understand ethical know-how? 2. how does it [ethical know-how] develop and flourish in human beings? varela’s answer to his first question centers on his phrase “spontaneous coping.” varela cites a number of instances where one often acts in a seemingly spontaneous manner to help others—giving directions, helping a person up who has fallen, etc. drawing on his theory of cognition, he asserts this spontaneity has a dynamic gap in it; a gap seen easily in animals sniffing before acting. what is happening here, varela argues, is that the brain is filled with neuronal pathways—10 to logarithmic exponential powers. these pathways overlap and compete, so that when a specific region of the brain or a specific nucleus, say a, “is connected to another region b, then b is also connected to a, but by a different anatomical route” (p.46). this different route emerges from competing pathways: “emergent patterns of activity are created out of a background of incoherent or chaotic activity” (p.50). all this happens in milliseconds so as to seem spontaneous, but research varela cites shows “within the gap there is a rich dynamic involving concurrent subidentities and agents” (p.49). these emergent patterns arise from the activity going on in an “interneural network” (p.52), and challenge our common belief of an autonomous “self” guiding human actions in a purposive manner. instead these emergent neural patterns—“selfless selves” varela calls them (p.53)—operate in a manner similar to insect colonies where the individuals behave as a unit, “as if there were a coordinating agent present at its center”(p.53). he says that development of a cognitive self . . . is one of emergence through a distributed process: . . . lots of simple agents having simple properties may be brought together, even in a haphazard way, to give rise to what appears to an observer as a purposeful and integrated whole, without the need for central supervision. (p.52) in short, everyday human activities have the potential of developing into “ethical expertise.” this development occurs not through adjudicating what is right or wrong in given situations but by striving for the realm of “what it is good to be.” here, as he examines his second question of how to develop ethical know-how, varela brings in his thoughts from eastern philosophy. intrigued as i am by lao tze’s statement that “a man of the highest virtue does not keep to virtue and that is why he has virtue” (p.32), i do not have enough knowledge to follow varela on the path to “groundless compassion” (p.74). still there is much to contemplate in what varela says, even for one grounded in rationalism. the important point for me is the notion that “ethical expertise is progressive in nature” (p.63); that “what it is good to be,” comes not from adjudicating but from living—a good and compassionate life. such living emerges from everyday acts of spontaneous kindness, is progressive in nature, is akin to serres sense of having humility as part of our being, and to cilliers’ asking us to honor the provisional and utilize his guidelines for “responsible judgment,” which are really guidelines for moral behavior. doll. an exploration of “ethics” in a post-modern, complex, global society 69 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (2) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci curriculum carryovers as a curricularist and pedagogue (teacher) i have long been attracted to wm. blake’s poetic couplet about “single vision” and “newton’s sleep” (his vision of science),4 penned as the industrial revolution was acquiring steam at the turn of the 19th century. blake’s worry then, and mine now, is that single vision (or whitehead’s “one-eyed” reason) has dominated intellectual (and hence educational) thought for centuries. this vision is that of modernism. after cilliers makes his comments about “modernism’s dream to establish a universal set of rules that would be able to regulate our behavior in every circumstance” (1998, p. 137), he goes on to say “modernism’s attempt to structure our existence leads to nothing less than our imprisonment” (p.138). i fear we have in our curriculum designs and pedagogic practices been so imprisoned, in what pratt and trueit (2006) call “teaching-as-telling.” the alternative they propose, one suited to our post-modern, complex, global society is “curriculum-asconversation.” this is a powerful concept. in serious conversation, conversation for the good, each converser listens attentively to the other—indeed honoring the other’s “otherness.” each converser speaks from a position of humility, knowing full well that her or his comments may be mistaken. indeed each teacher in a post-modern frame needs to acquire the art of dealing with the uncertain, not by imposing or dictating authority, but by letting authority be dissipated. understanding in this frame emerges, is not dictated, is always provisional, and comes from our wisdom of knowing how to let learning occur. serres in his book on education, the troubadour of knowledge, (1997), states at the end that his hero, the troubadour, trained in the sciences and the humanities, is reborn, he knows, he takes pity. finally, he can teach. (p.166) and most of all, he is a moral, possibly ethical, individual. notes 1 e-mail: wdoll@tigers.lsu.edu 2 this statement of serres reminds me of wm. blake’s famous: may god us keep, from single vision and newton’s sleep. for the full poem see g. keynes (1956). “letter to thomas butt, november 1802.” in the letters of william blake. for an explanation of blake’s poem, including newton’s sleep, his view of science, see charles keil’s 2001 article, “blake’s four fold vision explained,” the path times, 06/28/2001. 3 in his 2005 paper, “knowledge, limits, and boundaries,” cilliers comments, “if relativism is maintained consistently, it becomes an absolute positive,” thus, he says wryly, “a relativist is nothing else than a disappointed fundamentalist” (p.607, ft.2) 3 newton did have visions but they were more alchemical than chemical. like many of the scientists of his day, he was an “adept,” looking for magical formulae and writing more in doll. an exploration of “ethics” in a post-modern, complex, global society 70 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (2) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci this vein (with a strong skew towards the religious) than in any other. there are many biographies of newton’s life, one i like best is richard westfall, never at rest: a biography of isaac newton (1980). references blake, w. (1956). letter to thomas butt, november 1802. in: g. keynes (ed.). the letters of william blake. new york: macmillan. cilliers, p. (1998). complexity and postmodernism. london: routledge. cilliers, p. (2005). knowledge, limits, boundaries. in: futures, vol. 37. pp. 605-613. cilliers, p. (ed.). (2007). thinking complexity. mansfield ma: isce publishing. cilliers p. & richardson, k. (2001). what is complexity science?. in: emergence. vol. 3, no.1. pp. 5-22. cilliers, p. & preiser, r. (eds.).(2010). complexity, difference, and identity. dordrecht, nv: springer. oxford english dictionary (oed). (2013). oxford: oxford university press. pratt, s & trueit, d. (2006). curriculum as conversation. talk presented at 2006 iaacs conference in tampere, finland. serres. m. (1983). knowledge in the classical age. in: hermes. (j. harari & d. bell, trans.). baltimore: the johns hopkins university press. serres, m. (1995). conversations with bruno latour. (r. lapidus, trans.). ann arbor: university of michigan press. serres, m. (1997). the troubadour of knowledge. (s. glaser trans.). ann arbor: university of michigan press. varela, f. (1999). ethical know how. palo alto: stanford university press. westfall, r. (1980). never at rest: a biography of isaac newton. cambridge: cambridge university press. whitehead, a.n. (1967). science and the modern world. new york: the free press. submitted: october, 1st, 2013 approved: october, 1st, 2013 o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: lopes, alice casimiro (2016). curriculum: different questions, different translations. transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> curriculum: different questions, different translations alice casimiro lopes1 state university of rio de janeiro, brazil he destines them to translation, he subjects them to the law of a translation both necessary and impossible; in a stroke with his translatable-untranslatable name he delivers a universal reason (it will not longer be subject to the rule of a particular nation), but he simultaneously limits its very universality: forbidden transparency, impossible univocity. jacques derrida, tower of babel nowadays, the questioning of dichotomies is increasingly accepted. we question the dichotomies: subject / object, theory / practice, denotation / connotation, truth / rhetoric, understanding / interpretation. this questioning has been based on deconstruction, on the criticism of logocentrism, the criticism of the centered subject and the immanence. to assert with derrida that there is nothing outside the text or with laclau that any meaning is discursive does not cause so much surprise, even among their critics. such approaches make questionable fixed boundaries among disciplines, while favoring increasingly contextual discussions. one has to contextualize to produce meanings. in this process, contexts are also produced. contexts, as i frequently repeat, are not fixed spaces, or nations, or cities, or schools, or territories. contextualized research leads to the simultaneous construction of subjectivations and objectivatons. when we investigate already known objects in a new discursive context, at the same time, new objects and subjects are created. this is the case of the investigations presented in this issue of tci. questions usually not addressed in the field of curriculum gain new contours when investigated by curriculum researchers. in the first article, clarissa craveiro and felipe aguiar present how the wordsmith tools can be useful in curricular research. in the second article, maria da concepción barrón tirado and frida díaz barriga focus on the relationship between management and curriculum. ronaldo linhares, caio alcântara, maria josé loureiro and fernando ramos, from an interinstitutional research, investigate the perception of brazilian and portuguese teachers about their practical experience with the use of mobile technologies. heather coe, on the other hand, discusses curriculum conceptions, aiming at the construction of the curriculum of the heart. different texts, different objects, different subjectivities, different interpretations and new conclusions. with these papers and others conversations and readings, we will produce other readings/writings, in the constant translation that constitutes the field of the curriculum. maybe in our next world curriculum studies conference (http://www.iaacs2018.info) http://www.iaacs2018.info/ lopes. curriculum 2 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (2) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci that will be held in melbourne, australia, in the early part of december 2018, we can discuss that and other conclusions about curriculum. notes 1 alicecasimirolopes@gmail.com mailto:alicecasimirolopes@gmail.com o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: thomas, samira. (2015). cosmopolitanism: a journey of suffering and forgiveness. transnational curriculum inquiry volume 12 (1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> cosmopolitanism: a journey of suffering and forgiveness samira thomas1 phd canditate, university of british columbia, canada can any beauty match this? when the sun within speaks, when love reaches out its hand and places it upon another, any power the stars and planets might have upon us, any fears you can muster can become so rightfully insignificant. what one heart can do for another heart, is there any beauty in the world that can match this? brotherhood, sisterhood, humanity becomes the joy and the emancipation. hafiz (ladinsky, 2011) cosmopolitanism is a term that does not come with a single, coherent definition. david held (2013) argues for an understanding of cosmopolitanism that is politically defined as the equality of all people, as well as the legal frameworks that protect this equality (held, 2013, p. 29). for rosi braidotti (2013), it is “becoming-world,” that is, a “radical relational model of interaction” (p. 8) that is conceived within the framework of our nomadic selves (braidotti, 2011), an idea that echoes in hongyu wang’s (2004) notions of ‘stranger’ and ‘home.’ wang’s (2004) work is reflective of the notion of the subject as a means of cosmopolitan engagement with the world, by occupying a third space, physically represented by the process of being in transit between places (p. 153). her autobiographical work is steeped in the notion of subjectively “being in the world” that william pinar (2009, p. 3) offers, and indeed, later, pinar (2011) meditates on wang’s work, drawing particular links between becoming stranger and cosmopolitanism. for kwame anthony appiah (2007), the primacy of our responsibilities to one another is paramount in understanding cosmopolitanism: “one truth we hold to… is that every human being has obligations to every other. everybody matters. that is our central idea” (appiah, 2007, pp. 166-167). thomas. cosmopolitanism: a journey of suffering and forgiveness 29 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (1) 2015. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci our relational existence presses against me, with an insistence that cannot be ignored. cosmopolitanism as a deficit model there are many ways to start a conversation about cosmopolitanism. frequently, when i have entered into conversation with others about cosmopolitanism, it very quickly descends into a sense of deficit, various present-day “phobias” and historical injustices are brought forth, and, once delineated, we are asked to find a way to “deal with” our troubles and become more tolerant of one another, to recognize that “‘we’ may all be in this together” (braidotti, 2013, p. 10), and to find ways through legal or economic means to maintain our equality. in recognizing the proclivity towards the deficit model, it is here that we may see curriculum studies informed by the conception of hilm and ilm as an avenue through which a new way of thinking of cosmopolitanism may emerge. the deficit model in education is one which william doll (2011) describes well as: (…) deficit thinking and blame continually infuse the classroom; they enter each time a grade is assigned or feedback given. both of these operate from a deficit hypothesis. every grade given (even an a) measures the distance from a desired goal. feedback is almost uniformly to show mistakes. self worth is measured on a deficit scale. (doll, 2011, p. 33) there is a particular vernacular that is used in the classroom, a dwelling on the spaces in which a student is lacking, the moments that a student did not meet expectations. doll (2011) uses the word “blame,” which draws us to moments of reproach, revile, blaspheme or evil-speech (oxford english dictionary, 2015). in the deficit model of cosmopolitanism, we begin with an enumeration of the moments of our human history to present day that have acted as challenges to the cosmopolitan ideal, we enter into the realm of blame. unfortunately, dwelling on the challenge of cosmopolitanism makes the endeavor seem to be a herculean task, impossible to achieve in ten lifetimes, let alone within my own. in essence, we each become a packmule, carrying on our already-wounded shoulders an inherited baggage of some of the worst moments in history. our subjectivities become flattened to: colonialists, terrorists, crusaders, murderers, and victims. however, it is important for us to hear the truths of our pasts and the pasts of others; these truths allow us to witness the pain of others, and in so witnessing, we are able to recognize our own subjectivity as well as that of the other. as pinar (2007) suggests, “only the individual can see the other person’s tears.” (pinar, 2007, p. 34). it opens us up to empathy. i would suggest that cosmopolitanism is shackled by considering it in terms of deficits. in this model, we are propelled into a conversation of binaries, much as the classroom is propelled into a teacher versus student situation rather than the more desired collaborative approach. similarly, in conversation about cosmopolitanism, it is all too frequent to overhear phrases like “they were not as cosmopolitan as we are today” or even “they aren’t cosmopolitan at all.” civilizations are equated with their deficiencies, and, though not outwardly, they are ‘graded’ for their achievements. surely, anyone with a critical mind would be able to look at our own news headlines and recognize the illusion that is their pedestal, if we were to limit our discussion to only the worst instances of our society. instead, we may take a holistic approach, one that mimics traditional approaches to thomas. cosmopolitanism: a journey of suffering and forgiveness 30 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (1) 2015. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci medicine. instead of focusing solely on the pain points, the approach is to look at the body as a system, in its entirety. recently, i had an interaction with a colleague which felt both surprising and unsurprising at the same time, something ted aoki (1993) describes as “both this and that, and more” (aoki, 1993, p. 295). it illustrated so clearly to me the way that the deficit model limits our ability to become cosmopolitans to the core. my colleague fundamentally disagreed with the premise of my work, citing that the ottomans were brutal rulers of the greeks, and that today the turkish government was still denying the armenian genocide. he felt my studies were based in a false view of history, one which looked too favorably upon what he viewed as a tyrannical moment in history, a view, he believed, was only bolstered only by the behaviour of the current government in turkey. he did not bring up my work to engage in a discussion, but rather as a way to inform me that i should be “careful” about the narratives i believe. the ottomans, for him, were nothing but brutal, though there are many instances in which their policies may be lauded, but that is a discussion for another time. i did quite feebly offer that i was studying the muslim empire in spain, not the ottoman empire, in what is now turkey. “the ottomans were no better in spain. what is your ethnic background, anyways?” the question came packaged as an inquiry about myself, but the real question i was being asked was: how can i explain away your bias towards these people? it seemed to him that i must have some kind of political motivation. and perhaps i do. as one who is most attune to the insecurities associated with confessing to practice islam in a post-9/11 world, i am sensitive to the difficulties that those who seek to balance identities of “islam” and “canadian” or “american” may experience. this extends to the study of so-called “muslim civilizations” as well, and in this, i reflect aoki’s (1979, p. 336) experience in balancing both japanese and canadian identities during world war ii. he sought an identity that allowed him to dwell in the space between, a space that many who are both muslim and canadian or american may struggle to dwell in today. yet, i find this challenge laughable sometimes. finding a way to reconcile two nationalities who are at war must surely be more challenging than to reconcile a religious identity and a national identity. nonetheless, there is increasing distance between these two identities, as a result of the heinous acts committed by those who claim islam as their faith, as well as the narratives we choose to construct around these acts in our news and politics. in looking to the wisdom of al-andalus, i am not seeking to idealize a moment in history. it is important to recognize first that we could easily say that the “ottomans” (substitute whichever ruling class existed in that moment) were no better in troy, mongolia, south africa, or canada. i seek to learn, for a moment, from those who were able to achieve something more than we are able to do today, who surely existed in each of these civilizations. indeed, even in nazi germany, one of the most reviled moments in our recent human history, there were individuals who did not adhere to the bigoted beliefs of their political leaders. if we continue to go back in history, all people can carry blame, and all people have been victims. it is not only perplexing but worrying that an educated individual would not only be unable to distinguish between an empire founded by oghuz turks and that of the ummayads hailing from the arabian peninsula, but also to speak so self-assuredly on a matter of which he has so little knowledge. the inability to distinguish these empires is thomas. cosmopolitanism: a journey of suffering and forgiveness 31 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (1) 2015. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci akin to being unable to distinguish between napoleon and mussolini, and in this case, it would be impossible for me to determine which would be “no better” than the other. i am discussing this situation at length because of the subtle nature of the bias that was presented. unlike an earlier classroom experience just after 9/11 in which, i, 14 years old at the time, was identified by my teacher as being “of the people” of those who committed the atrocities on september 11, 2001. it was a time when i and my classmates were expressly told that i belonged to the same community of such names as saddam hussein (following a very descriptive reading of his horrific acts upon the kurdish communities in iraq with biological weapons) and osama bin laden, who did not need an introduction at the time in class as he and our newspapers were doing an excellent job of advertising his particular brand of cruelty. the taliban, i was told, are my people. they are as much mine as they are everyone else’s, in this world. in the words of appiah, “every human being has obligations to every other” (appiah, 2007, p. 167). unfortunately, seemingly more and more often, muslims who practice a wide variety of interpretations of the faith are subtly and less-subtly pushed to either identify with the intolerable likes of isil and the taliban, or to disassociate from the faith altogether. in all honesty, a part of me is extremely reluctant to engage with matters of faith. my own faith is, and has always been, fluid. my practices have also changed throughout my lifetime. to do this work today, i realize, is to capture this moment, these complex feelings i have about religion in general, and islam in particular. i am wary that to speak of islam will anger some who disagree with my views from within the faith group, while others may dismiss this work as something that is relevant only to the world of islam and not beyond. and yet, this research is important. it has spoken my name. there exists a symbiotic relationship between the two forces of islamophobia and fundamentalism, often associated with salafism, an interpretation of islam that began in the mid-19th century (shah kazemi, 2012, p. 131). the two, on the surface, seem like unlikely sumbios, companions, and yet, a defining element of both is their inability to see nuance, their absolute clarity in the correctness of the narrative they believe (shah kazemi, 2012, p. 131). a defining characteristic of the salafi movement is the decision to negate all texts since the time of the prophet (that do not serve their political purpose), and reinterpret religious doctrines to legitimize their actions (hafez, 2010, p. 364). an equally defining characteristic of the islamophobic movement, sadly, seems to be to choose to focus only on the interpretation of islam that salafis present. this is not the moment for an extensive study of the specifics of salafism or islamophobia, but a moment to just reflect on the idea that the two have, in essence, perfected aristotle’s definition of friendship: a single soul dwelling in two bodies. diversity is an uncomplicated question in islam, despite what some may wish to suggest. cosmopolitanism as established in an islamic context emerges from the revelation. in the quranic chapter entitled “the table spread” (al-ma’ida), we find the most unequivocal celebration of diversity. the title of the chapter itself suggests the notions of companion, one with whom we break bread: for each we have appointed a law and a way. and had god willed, he could have made you one community. but in order that he might try you by that which he has given you [he has made you as you are]. so compete with one another in good works. unto god you will all return, he will disclose to you [the truth] of that which you had different opinions (5:48) (shah kazemi, 2012, p. 77) thomas. cosmopolitanism: a journey of suffering and forgiveness 32 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (1) 2015. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci we find here an unequivocal celebration of the difference amongst communities. there is a recognition that difference is not an easy reality, that it would try us, but that, in the end, each community has been given their law and their way, and that reality must be protected. if there was any doubt, the qur’an goes on: say: o you who disbelieve, i worship not that which you worship, nor do you worship that which i worship. and i shall not worship that which you worship, nor will you worship that which i worship. for you your religion, for me, mine (109:1 – 6) (shah kazemi, 2012, p. 108). ultimately, we can see that the “irreducible differences between the revealed religions of the world are vital expressions of the infinite creativity of their unique source” (shah kazemi, 2012, p. 110). this is, perhaps, ever clearer as we begin to think of the 99 names that are attributed to the beloved – diversity cannot be undervalued. while entire tomes have been written on the “lost history” of islam, those parts of history that are forgotten within the philosophical, scientific and artistic contributions of people of the east, i have chosen to focus on one moment of history that is extraordinarily significant today, many hundreds of years later: the experience of al-andalus. al-andalus in considering the time of al-andalus, the muslim rule in spain and portugal, one idea that i have held has troubled me a great deal: i, like many others, consider al-andalus a time, solidly delineated, in which a foreign community ruled in spain. looking at the history, the timeframe of the muslim rule seems to be fairly well delineated between 711 and 1492 (irwin, 2011). however, the notion that despite a rule of almost 800 years, the muslims in spain remained foreign, is one that is challenging for me to digest. in the context of canada’s recent efforts to recognize the gross injustices that were perpetrated against our indigenous communities through the truth and reconciliation commission, i have become increasingly aware of my status as part of the colonial legacy (truth and reconciliation commission, 2015). it is a complex identity – a bit more of aoki’s (1993) “both this and that, and more” in which my cultural and spiritual identity is increasingly distanced from my canadian identity, which is further complicated by the compliance i hold as a beneficiary of colonialism. however, if we were to take columbus’ arrival in the americas as the date of first contact between the european colonizers and today, what we may call the beginning of this current empire we inhabit, we have been in the americas for only 523 years. it is unfathomable that the muslims born in spain, even those born to parents who had moved to al-andalus from elsewhere as my parents did to canada, would not consider themselves deeply tied to al-andalus, as i do to vancouver. and vancouver is unceded coast salish territory (meizner, 2014). there is now evidence that much of the territory the muslims ruled in al-andalus was ceded quite willingly as a result of the deteriorating visigothic rule in the late seventh century (copestake, 2008) that had the populations eager for new leadership. if we are to simply accept that individuals of that time remained foreign, it is imperative on those in north america to examine their status as local or foreign as well. perhaps, then, we can settle in an understanding of this community from the outset, that is much like the non-indigenous in north america. those of us who are nonindigenous to canada are therefore quite analogous to the muslims in spain. thomas. cosmopolitanism: a journey of suffering and forgiveness 33 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (1) 2015. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci if we are to cast blame on the entire civilization based on certain political acts that we find reprehensible, then we must also be prepared to carry the blame of smallpox blankets, napalm, and hiroshima. however, if we can look to al-andalus and recognize that from it emerged several of the greatest philosophers, scientists, and artists within both the islamic and judaic traditions, who went on to influence many in the christian world, perhaps it is worth revisiting this moment in our history of wisdom to discover what enabled this confluence of knowledge to come about. what is different about the society of al-andalus is that, unlike our world today, the spiritual elements of our lives were not separate from the other parts of our lives. the notion of the secular did not exist, and language itself was tied to the spiritual in all aspects (nasr, 1989, p.13). today, our spiritual lives are expected to remain separate from the rest of our lives, but the reality is that no one stops being a christian just because she is not in church. our complex spiritual lives and beliefs remain with us at all times, to discount them from the complicated classroom conversation may facilitate greater ease of conversations in some instances, however in so doing, our classroom conversations can only reach so far into the reality of one’s being. intimacy is limited when certain topics, particularly those of belief, are kept off-limits. for all of our efforts in keeping public discourse secular, we have been woefully unable to prevent anti-semitism or islamophobia, and indeed, though we try not to talk about it, religion still seems to be an important player in the politics of the world. i am concerned that we continue to struggle for secularism when, as i look around, these efforts are not working. however, a conversation that engages religion and spirituality can only be conducted in a milieu of respect and kindness in which people of the full range of beliefs are enjoined to participate. perhaps in our extreme times, such a conversation may be impossible. in the time of al-andalus, however, there was no notion of the separation of spiritual and worldly lives. therefore, this society was able to achieve, in some instances, something that we are unable to achieve today in a widespread way: the added layer of spiritual complexity to the complicated conversation. it is here that we might explore the concept of hilm. as is so often the case, hilm is a challenging word to translate. it is understood as “reason and grace” (daryaee, 2012, p. 239), “extreme humility or submission” (abbas, 2010, p. 151), and “forbearance, moderation, tranquility in the face of passion” (lapidus, 2014, p. 862), amongst others. shah-kazemi (2012) offers that, along with the qualities suggested here, that the term “gentle” is often used as the translation of hilm, but that this translation must also adopt an earlier notion of “gentle” that suggests nobility. for shahkazemi (2012), hilm is a nobility of the soul: so if the word ‘gentle’ be used in the sense of nobility and aristocracy – thus, with the meaning of perfect self-mastery, together with the sense of love – thus with the meaning of tenderness, compassion and kindness – then it comes close to connoting the range of meanings implied by the single word hilm… tolerance can be seen as a natural concomitant of the attitudes of forbearance and patience towards the other.(shah-kazemi, 2012, p. 115) it is important to highlight the connection shah-kazemi draws between hilm and ilm. ilm is perhaps one of the most important concepts in islam, and is most easily translated as ‘knowledge.’ however, ilm holds an urgency that can be understood through its root, ‘alama or ‘way signs’: thomas. cosmopolitanism: a journey of suffering and forgiveness 34 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (1) 2015. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci for the bedouin… the knowledge of way signs, the characteristic marks in the desert which guided him on his travels and in the execution of his daily tasks, was the most important and immediate knowledge to be acquired. in fact, it was the kind of knowledge on which his life and well-being principally depended. (rahman, street and tahiri, 2008, p. 20) ilm, therefore, is knowledge and wisdom that sustains us. knowledge of our world, through artistic expression and scientific discovery, is a sustaining of ourselves, an uncovering of the way signs, the ayat, the signs offered to us by the beloved. this connection between hilm and ilm is drawn from the term jahl, often translated as ignorance, which serves as the antonym to both hilm and ilm (shah-kazemi, 2012, p. 115). ignorance, therefore, is also an inadequate translation. it is not only ignorance in the sense of not knowing, but ignorance that results in ignobility of the soul, harshness of action, and arrogance. the relationship is another example of aristotle’s view of friendship as one soul dwelling in two bodies: “one observes a symbiosis between hilm and ilm, so that one might define hilm as that forbearance which stems from knowledge, and ilm as that knowledge which generates forbearance” (shah-kazemi, 2012, p. 115). with this understanding of the relationship between hilm and ilm, we may reflect once again on those who seek to eliminate the intellectual and spiritual community from whence these ideas emerged. to cultivate these qualities, there is an element of both knowing the injustices that have been in this world and that are today, and growing from that wisdom to act in a loving way. the intimate connection between hilm and ilm was understood by those across the muslim world from arabia to central asia, from india to spain. in spain, this understanding led to a flourishing of thinkers including ibn arabi, the andalusian sufi master. his words describe the kind of spirituality i seek for myself: my heart has become capable of every form: it is a pasture for gazelles, and a convent for christian monks, and a temple for idols, and the pilgrim’s ka’ba, and the tables of the tora, and the book of the koran i follow the religion of love: whatever way love’s camels take, that is my religion and my faith. (junghare, 1979, pp. 69 – 70) cosmopolitanism reimagined cosmopolitanism understood in the context of hilm and its relationship to ilm is one that asks us not only to admit to our responsibilities to one another, but to realize our intersubjectivity, stemming from the depths of ourselves and shining through not only in our thought, but in our actions. this cosmopolitanism not only asks us to follow the golden rule, but to hold each other as beloved, noble souls. at this moment in history, i am consuming and am consumed by stories of what is happening in our world today. we in canada are talking about truth and reconciliation for the horrors and the legacy of residential schools (truth and reconciliation comission, 2015). we are adopting a new language of xenophobia (globe and mail editorial, 2015). in the united states, we are witness to the horrors and the legacy of slavery and racism (coates, 2015). globally, we have created the largest refugee crisis since world war ii (graham, 2015). and though, on the whole, things are not as bad as they have once been there is a palpable sense that things are taking a turn for the worse once again (delman, 2015). thomas. cosmopolitanism: a journey of suffering and forgiveness 35 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (1) 2015. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the attack upon the emanuel african methodist episcopal church in south carolina by dylan roof is one example from recent news that has brought a great deal of anguish to the united states, and indeed, the world. the subsequent african-american church burnings have been heartbreaking to witness. many have and would perhaps still argue that there is no ‘race issue’ in the united states, but incidents like this draw attention to the reality of the african american lived experience in many parts of the united states today. and yet, before i digress into the narrative of the deficit model, something incredible happened during roof’s trial. the families of the victims made their statements. instead of blame, they offered roof forgiveness (izade, 2015). where did this ability come from? perhaps it came from their faith. perhaps it came from other convictions. perhaps it came naturally, requiring little thought. i wonder, too, if some part of the ability to forgive emerged out of their ability to feel compassion towards roof. as members of a community that has suffered the pain of racism for generations upon generations, perhaps that suffering had carved out space for empathy. my experience was different from theirs in many ways. on march 20, 2014, four boys entered the hotel where my mother was staying in kabul, afghanistan and killed her and eight others in the hotel restaurant. the boys who killed my mother and the other victims that night were also killed in the ensuing gunfight. the taliban claimed these boys as their own. i don’t know their names, and i never had a chance to see their faces. forgiveness came easily to me perhaps because i could imagine these boys as the hundreds of other afghan boys i have met. perhaps they grew up in refugee camps like the ones my parents, who were providing eye care to the refugees, had taken us to during the long, hot summers we spent in pakistan. regardless of where they grew up, their lives were certainly surrounded by violence. they were angry at their situation. perhaps they were bored. these qualities i have imagined up for them have made them human, somehow less villainous. certainly, misguided. most importantly, i think of their families. i wonder whether they are proud of them or as deeply hurt as i am. i didn’t read the news reports in the early days after my mother’s passing. but in the time since, i have read several of the reports and two things have struck me significantly. the first is that it was one of the few instances in which the local casualties, that is, the afghans who were killed, were named, and were mourned by the world (rosenberg & ahmed, 2014). mum and i used to talk about the way our news carried numbers of local victims and names of the international victims. in this instance, there was more of a balance. every life was mourned, not just those with the right passports. a small victory in the face of extreme sadness. the second relates to the afghan family as well. the victims were a reporter, his wife, and their two young children (their third child miraculously survived the attack, despite being shot five times). though the taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, even they would not claim responsibility for the death of this family, particularly the children (rosenberg & ahmed, 2014). this does not redeem them for these wonton acts of murder or their policies that actively incite violence, but somehow, it suggests to me that even they have a line they do not wish to cross. perhaps, we shared in the mourning of those children. even as i write this, i can feel a battle within: can i really believe that i share anything with them, let alone the depth of emotion that mourning calls us towards? thomas. cosmopolitanism: a journey of suffering and forgiveness 36 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (1) 2015. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci at times, i have felt that my sorrow has carved hollow spaces in my body, in my psyche. and when i hear of the pain of others and offer them some kindness, i can feel these spaces being filled with nourishment. i never had the opportunity to address my mother’s killers as the families in south carolina have, but i did write a poem to those boys: oh, boys. you can’t have known the silent mystery of the wind, tousling the hair of the childish grass as if it had just made a cheeky joke. or the laughter of the birds who were eavesdropping the. whole. time. but i will continue watching. you can’t have heard the endless waves of secrets held in every shell or the delighted squeals of a child bearing witness to it all. but i will continue to press my ear close so i don’t miss a single heartbeat this world has to offer. you probably never knew the grace of the sun caressing the caterpillar assuring it that there will be light when it is reborn. you can’t have known the giddy feeling of a first picnic or the electricity of holding hands for the very first time with one who will see you through everything. you can’t have known the hilarious struggle of a very pregnant woman trying to put on socks. oh boys. you can’t have felt the undeniable mercy of kneeling, touching your forehead to earth’s lips thomas. cosmopolitanism: a journey of suffering and forgiveness 37 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (1) 2015. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci that the universe may tell you over and over and over again that it loves you. yes, i am completely enthralled by the irresistible beauty of this world. and i will stay forever in that embrace and love it back with all i have and quietly pray that though you never knew it here the peace is with you now. written on april 20, 2014 it was not until quite recently that i have thought about this idea of forgiveness and recognized its vital importance to my grief. in thinking of the attackers as humans, as just young boys, i was able to forgive them. in forgiveness, i was able to grieve my mother in a world where i had suddenly begun to notice every inch of beauty around me, not in an environment of hate and anger. i am, in a way, grateful for the hollow spaces that have been carved in me. i think they have enabled me to become more patient, more compassionate, and much more forgiving and loving to those with whom i interact. this has influenced my conception of cosmopolitanism. i struggle with the term cosmopolitanism itself. the notion of the universal, coupled with the polis suggest something about citizenship, ignoring the intimate relationship between us as living, breathing creatures. i prefer a conception of a dyad: cosmopassion and cosmocharis. cosmopassion, as the word suggests, draw us into a world of compassion, suffering with, but recognizing also the universality of suffering. this notion immediately disables blame, and it carves room for empathy. it creates a space for the individual to “see the other person’s tears” (pinar, 2007, p. 34). this is the wisdom, the thought, the ilm we require to become cosmopolitan. the hilm, the nobility of our soul, comes from the action of cosmocharis. this entails universal forgiveness. charis itself is a greek word that carries a similar meaning to hilm. it connotes grace, kindness, and graciousness of action (oxford english dictionary, 2015). forgiveness; perhaps the most gracious act of all. and perhaps in forgiveness, i have found space for optimism, for hope. and hope, really is what keeps me from falling to my knees. my mother, one who experienced the sudden loss of her father at a young age, who was born in uganda out of the anguish of the india-pakistan partition, who lived through truly difficult circumstances as she grew up in england, held a great deal of wisdom on the question of hope. it is perhaps why she chose to name the schools she started in kabul, omid-e-afghanistan, the hope of afghanistan. it is a place where our pain is given voice and heard, where deficits are destroyed, and for me, since her passing, forgiveness has been given a name. it leads us back to the wisdom of hafiz: can any beauty match this? when the sun within speaks, when love reaches out its hand and places it upon another, any power the stars and planets might have upon us, thomas. cosmopolitanism: a journey of suffering and forgiveness 38 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (1) 2015. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci any fears you can muster can become so rightfully insignificant. what one heart can do for another heart, is there any beauty in the world that can match this? brotherhood, sisterhood, humanity becomes the joy and the emancipation. hafiz (ladinsky, 2011) humanity, in our thought and our action, in our compassion and our forgiveness, can offer us hope, happiness and freedom. what one heart can do for another heart, is there any beauty in the world that can match this? notes 1 samira.thomas@alumni.ubc.ca references abbas, s. b., & fernea, e. w. (2010). the female voice in sufi ritual: devotional practices of pakistan and india: university of texas press. abrahamov, b. (2014). ibn al-'arabi and the sufis: anqa publishing. aoki, t. t. (1979). reflections of a japanese canadian teacher experiencing ethnicity in w. f. pinar & r. l. irwin (eds.), curriculum in a new key: the collected works of ted t. aoki: routledge. pp. 333 348. aoki, t. t. (1993). humiliating the cartesian ego. in w. f. pinar & r. l. irwin (eds.), curriculum in a new key: the collected works of ted t. aoki: routledge. pp. 291 302. appiah, k. a. (2010). cosmopolitanism: ethics in a world of strangers (issues of our time): w. w. norton. blame. (2015). oxford english dictionary. from www.oed.org. braidotti, r. (2011). nomadic subjects: embodiment and sexual difference in contemporary feminist theory: columbia university press. braidotti, r. (2012). becomingworld. in r. braidotti, p. hanafin & b. blaagaard (eds.), after cosmopolitanism: routledge. charis. (2015). oxford english dictionar. from www.oed.org. coates, t. (2015). there is no post-racial america, the atlantic magazine. comission, t. a. r. (2015). survivors speak. www.trc.ca. copestake, t. (2005). when the moors ruled in europe: acorn media. daryaee, t. (2012). the oxford handbook of iranian history: oxford university press, usa. mailto:samira.thomas@alumni.ubc.ca http://www.trc.ca/ thomas. cosmopolitanism: a journey of suffering and forgiveness 39 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (1) 2015. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci delman, e. (2015, june 18, 2015). the inequality of peace, the atlantic. doll, w. e. j. (2011). “enlarging the space of the possible”:(re)imagining teacher preparation complicity: an international journal of complexity and education, 8(1), 32 37. editorial. (2015, may 5, 2015). bill c-51: soon to be law, and as murky as ever, the globe and mail. graham, d. a. (2015, june 17, 2015). violence has forced 60 million people from their homes, the atlantic. hafez, m. m. (2010). the alchemy of martyrdom: jihadi salafism and debates over suicide bombings in the muslim world. asian journal of social science, 38(3), 364378. doi:10.1163/156853110x499927 held, d. (2012). cosmopolitanism in a multipolar world. in r. braidotti, p. hanafin & b. blaagaard (eds.), after cosmopolitanism: routledge. irwin, r. (2011). the alhambra: profile books. izade, e. (2015). the powerful words of forgiveness delivered to dylann roof by victims’ relatives, the washington post. junghare, i. y. (1979). topics in pali historical phonology: motilal banarsidass publishers pvt. limited. ladinsky, d. (2011). a year with hafiz: daily contemplations: penguin publishing group. lapidus, i. m. (2014). a history of islamic societies: cambridge university press. meiszner, p. (2014, june 24, 2014). city of vancouver formally declares city is on unceded aboriginal territory, global news. nasr, s. h. (1989). knowledge and the sacred: revisioning academic accountability: state university of new york press. pinar, w. f. (2009). the worldliness of a cosmopolitan education: passionate lives in public service: taylor & francis. pinar, w. f. (2011). the character of curriculum studies: bildung, currere, and the recurring question of the subject: palgrave macmillan. rahman, s., street, t., & tahiri, h. (2008). the unity of science in the arabic tradition: science, logic, epistemology and their interactions: springer netherlands. rozenberg, m., ahmed, a. (2014, march 21, 2014). illusion of safety at afghan haven is shattered, new york times. shah-kazemi, r. (2012). the spirit of tolerance in islam: i.b.tauris. wang, h. (2004). the call from the stranger on a journey home: curriculum in a third space: p. lang. submitted: june, 30th, 2015 approved: july, 5th, 2015 o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: shim, jenna min. (2013).teacher’s viewpoints about other’s actions: implications for multicultural education.transnational curriculum inquiry 10(2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> teacher’s viewpoints about other’s actions: implications for multicultural education jenna min shim 1 university of wyoming, united states introduction already some time ago, paul ernest argued how it is possible for two teachers to have similar mathematical content knowledge but very different orientations in their instructional approaches (1989). according to ernest, this is because teachers’ beliefs concerning the teaching of mathematics influence how they make sense of and teach their contents in the classroom. in other words, different orientations toward the practice of teaching influence how mathematical contents are delivered to students. more recently, other researchers have shown how different prospective school teachers encounter and interpret culturally responsive pedagogy very differently (gere, buehler, dallavis, &haviland, 2009). according to these researchers, different positions taken by different prospective teachers were largely shaped by their racial beliefs, which have long histories. there are at least two significant points depicted by these researchers (this above sentence can be deleted; it is empty). first, the bases or beliefs that teachers use to make sense of the information they encounter have a strong affective component in their pedagogical actions. second, teachers’ beliefs which largely serve as a filter for how they interpret the information they encounter in education, is most likely to have developed long before the teachers entered their classrooms. therefore, teachers’ pedagogical practices are influenced by the factors that are beyond the immediate context of classrooms. various researchers have used many different terms such as “attitudes, values, judgments, axioms, opinions, ideology, perceptions, conceptions, conceptual systems, preconceptions, dispositions, implicit theories, explicit theories, personal theories, internal mental processes, action strategies, rules of practice, practical principles, perspectives, repertories of understanding, and social strategy” (pajares, 1992, p. 309) in order to investigate how and why teachers react, interpret, understand, and translate specific information and view their students in ways they do. that such a long list of terms has been used to explore teachers’ thought processes reflects the messiness and complexity of teachers’ beliefs (pajares, 1992). as cultural, ethnic, racial, social, and linguistic diversity has become a major defining feature of schools and society in u.s and other countries in the world, several researchers have studied prospective teachers’ and in-service teachers’ perspectives toward people and cultures different from their own and how these perspectives influence those teachers ‘classroom interactions, their expectations of academic achievements of diverse student populations, and interpretations of multiculturalism, for instance (e.g., bakari, 2003; lewis, ketter, &fabos, 2001; silverman, 2010; song, 2006; tatto, 1996). lewis, ketter, &fabos in their study shim, jenna min. teacher’s viewpoints about other’s actions: implications for multicultural education 18 transnational curriculum inquiry 10(2) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci concluded that their own interpretation of multicultural literature and interactions among participants of different racial backgrounds were largely constituted within their own social and political locations. in other words, teachers’ social, cultural, historical, and educational backgrounds that are intimately linked to those teachers’ pedagogical beliefs become the implicit guidelines for how they work with diverse student populations. recognizing the significance of teachers’ beliefs, and hence assuming that “teachers’ beliefs have profound influences on their instructional judgments and actions (gay, 2010, p. 143) while also recognizing that teacher educators and teachers including those of racial minority need more interaction with each other within and across “ethnic cluster” (gay, 2010, p. 144) particularly in current diverse educational settings, this study explores how the teachers from different cultural and racial backgrounds interpret actions of the characters represented in the short stories and movie that embody intercultural and multicultural themes. the two short stories are “mother margaret & the rhinoceros café” (kaiser, 2003) and “crazy” (mccracken, 2003), and the movie is “crash” (danbury et al, 2005), and they are understood as intercultural and multicultural in this study because the characters in each stories and movie are from different racial and cultural backgrounds and the plots revolve around the conflicts and tensions arising from interactions among different characters. the questions that guided this study are: how are actions of the characters in the short stories and movie understood and represented by the participating teachers? within a thematic analysis employed to analyze the data in this study, what categories are used by these teachers to represent their beliefs? where do these categories come from and how might they relate to relevant external forces and structures of society? what are the consequences of the teachers’ beliefs about the actions of cultural others in the short stories and film with respect forging more productive forms of multicultural education? i wish to explore whether and how teachers’ responses to fictional characters in the short stories and film in this study may very well manifest in and impinge upon their teaching diverse student population. more specifically, embedded in the teachers’ responses to actions of fictional characters are their assumptions about success, failure, right, or wrong in everyday life including in multicultural education. conceptual framework according to bourdieu (e.g., 1977, 1990, 1998), all people are inescapably constituted within a variety of historically constituted social and political discourses. moreover, these discourses are not explicitly learned but implicitly learned through every day practices and deeply internalized. they thus falsely appear to be self-evident and objective facts, and they dispose people to take particular actions or make particular choices in ways that are neither entirely conscious nor intentional. in this regard, bourdieu also argued that only by investigating and making explicit the implicit meaning embedded in people’s psychologies and viewpoints can they be subject to analyses and possible change. in other words, and more in relevance to this study, although not entirely possible, understanding the constitutive forces of teachers’ viewpoints is necessary because they mediate teachers’ sense makings of the world, students, and multicultural instructional practices. notwithstanding the social fact that teachers are subjects-in-process and that they may alter their beliefs about diversity as they learn from working with their students, it is also important to understand that teachers enter classrooms with already formed beliefs about diversity which become an implicit filter through which shim, jenna min. teacher’s viewpoints about other’s actions: implications for multicultural education 19 transnational curriculum inquiry 10(2) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci those teachers work with their students. that said, if some of teachers’ beliefs have counterproductive effects in promoting students’ academic achievements and emotional growth, it seems reasonable to argue that those viewpoints must be transformed; yet, we cannot transform something that we know little or nothing about. recognizing the impossibility of tracing exact sources of teachers’ beliefs, it still seems necessary to make an effort to understand, however incomplete, the sources that shape teachers’ perspectives that inhibit their ability to serve students from all backgrounds. methods setting and participants this study is a part of a larger yearlong study of 14 teachers who live and teach in korea, china, and the united states. the three ethno-racial groups in this study were white, african american who live in the united states and asian 2 teachers who live in china and korea. – who lives where? one major premise of the study was that multicultural education is never just about what happens in classrooms in immediate face-to-face relations but it also involves interactions with long socialization histories that teachers and students bring to pedagogical events. participants of this study were middle and high school english or english as a foreign language teachers, and their teaching years of experience ranged from one to eleven years. the participants were recruited from an english teachers’ listserv, and participation was 100% voluntary. all teachers from china are from shanghai and all teachers from korea are from seoul. the context of this study was not an academic course. the researcher, who taught english as a second language for several years, also participated in the study occasionally. mainly due to the participants’ physical geographical locations, all discussions and interviews were conducted online using piccle (pedagogy for inter-cultural critical literacy education available at http://piccle.ed.psu.edu/moodle/). data and data sources three data collection strategies were employed: on-line discussions of contemporary short stories and films, life history interviews, and discourse based interviews (of content of on-line discussions). in the larger study, all participants engaged in on-line discussions of contemporary fiction and film dealing with intercultural relations (including tensions, conflicts, and resolutions) to explore how they understand and create differences. for the larger study, i chose six short stories and three movies as the subjects for online discussions. the short stories i chose were: (a) “mother margaret & the rhinoceros café” (kaiser, 2003), (b) “incident on 33” (romanow, 2003), (c) “crazy” (mccracken, 2003), (d) “circumcision through words” (foss, 2003), (e) “pancho and gary” (eidse, 2003), and (f) “welcome to mill street” (kennedy, 2003). each story is a part of an edited collection of award-winning short fiction entitled mother margaret & the rhinoceros café: 2003 canadian cross-cultural stories (symons &sekar, 2003). the three movies i chose were: (a) borat (cohen, roach, & charles, 2006), (b) crash (danbury et al., 2005), and (c) do the right thing (lee, 1998).we spent about a week discussing each story and film, and all the stories and movies chosen for the larger study have themes that involves tensions and conflicts arising from the characters who are from racially and culturally different. from the larger study, i chose the participants’ on-line discussions on the two short stories and one movie for this study. two short stories were “mother margaret & the http://piccle.ed.psu.edu/moodle/ shim, jenna min. teacher’s viewpoints about other’s actions: implications for multicultural education 20 transnational curriculum inquiry 10(2) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci rhinoceros café” (kaiser, 2003) and “crazy” (mccracken, 2003), and the movie was “crash” (danbury et al, 2005). brief descriptions of the two short stories and movie are discussed in the subsequent section, and the two short stories and movie were chosen for this study because the participating teachers’ responses to the characters in them were most prevalent in these two short stories and movie when compared to other short stories and movies chosen for the larger study. more specifically, i have chosen to closely look at the participants’ responses to the actions taken by the fictional characters in the two short stories and movie. life history interviews (odell &goswami, 1982) were conducted first in order to ensure that the participants’ responses would not be colored by the on-line discussions. then, once the on-line discussions were finished, discourse-based interviews (odell &goswami, 1982) that focused on strategically selected sections of the content of on-line discussions were conducted. these interviews were helpful in drawing out some of the assumptions and tacit knowledge embedded in the participants’ contributions to on-line discussions. data analysis participants’ contributions to on-line discussions were read several times and coded through the basic coding sequence: open, axial, and selective iteratively between primary data and the emerging theory. coding strategy of grounded theory (strauss & corbin, 1990) was used to identify and analyze the patterns and themes within the participants’ response to actions of others as they are represented in the two short stories and one film. coding is an essential and necessary phase in grounded theory method through which “the conceptual abstraction of data and its reintegration as theory takes place” (holton, 2007, p. 265). findings: participants’ responses to actions of others in this study, i analyzed participants’ responses to the main characters’ final actions in the stories “mother margaret and rhinoceros café” and “crazy” and in the movie, crash. interestingly, the participants’ coded utterances self -organized largely into three different categories with each category predominantly characteristic of one of the three ethno-racial groups in this study. before moving onto the findings, i contextualize the final actions of the characters within the larger plots of “mother margaret and rhinoceros café,” crazy, and crash. mother margaret and rhinoceros café in “mother margaret and rhinoceros café,” mother margaret, the main character, is a single woman without much education and a member of the dene (native american) community. she and her children have been living each month largely on a government check, but one day, mother margaret decides that she is going to stop depending on her government subsidy and gets permission from the elders to turn an old store into a restaurant. as the restaurant does well, rumors start to swirl that she is working her children too hard, that consequently her children are not doing well in school, and that she is not a good mother. the landlord wants to increase her rent as well. mother margaret weathers these difficulties and conflicts as best she can. however, when she decides to replace the old jukebox with a new stereo system, people (even those that she considered as friends) decide that mother margaret has gotten too big for her britches and begin to shun her, making her business almost impossible to be successful. she ultimately ends up closing her business. crazy shim, jenna min. teacher’s viewpoints about other’s actions: implications for multicultural education 21 transnational curriculum inquiry 10(2) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci in the story, crazy, kamal, a main character, is a muslim from iraq and an illegal resident living in toronto. although many details are left to the reader’s imagination in this story, what seems clear is that it is very important for kamal to stay in canada because he needs to stay away from iraq for political and personal reasons. kamal becomes very uncomfortable, distrustful and resentful of pawel, a polish immigrant who is trying to be kamal’s friend and to help him get fake citizenship papers. in his efforts to help kamal, pawel asks him a lot of questions and entices him to drink alcohol, which in kamal’s culture is a sin. misunderstandings based on cultural differences and differences in life histories abound. kamal becomes increasingly suspicious of pawel’s motives despite the fact that, to the reader, it seems clear that pawel is trying to be friendly and helpful. in their final meeting, pawel asks kamal for the personal information he needs so that his cousin can make kamal a fake canadian passport, birth certificate, and so on. kamal feels that pawel is going to use this information to turn him in as an “illegal alien” and, in fear, ends up killing pawel. crash crash is a movie about multicultural and racial conflicts set in los angeles, a city with a cultural mix of just about every nationality. the story begins when several people are involved in a multi-car accident. from that point, the audience is taken back to the day before the crash; they are shown the lives of several characters, especially the problems each encountered during that day. in one scene, officer hansen, a white police officer, shoots and kills the african american street criminal (peter) when officer hansen believes that peter is reaching into his pocket for a gun. in reality, he was reaching for a statue of st. christopher. again, these texts and movie were chosen for this study from the larger study because the participating teachers most frequently responded to the actions taken by the fictional characters in these short stories and movie. tabulations of responses shown below are tabulations of the responses by participants in each ethno-racial group to the actions taken by these characters. again, what is evident among the participants’ responses is their significant differences across the three ethno-racial groups and the similarities within each group. in my analysis, given the limited space, at least one of each participant’s responses to the actions taken by each character is linked to the participant’s response to life history interviews or discourse based interviews. in some cases, more examples are provided to support the arguments made in my analysis. numbers of responses on actions of others by ethno-racial groups mother margaret kamal officer hansen white middle-class teachers from the u.s. 6 5 6 african american teachers from the u.s. 4 5 5 asian teachers from china and south korea 3 2 0 responses to mother margaret’s final actions. shim, jenna min. teacher’s viewpoints about other’s actions: implications for multicultural education 22 transnational curriculum inquiry 10(2) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci starting with the responses by white middle-class teachers, out of the total number of six responses to the action of mother margaret closing down her restaurant, five responses placed themselves into a category that i coded as “individualistic explanation: blaming the victim.” generally, the white middle class teachers whose responses fell in this category seemed to believe that, if individuals work hard enough, they can overcome and transcend all difficulties they face. and if they do not succeed, their failure is attributed to the fact that they didn’t work hard enough. in other words, that success and failure are effects of individual autonomy and responsibility was the common theme in their responses. such views were shared consistently by five participating white teachers. here is an example of this type of response provided by a white middle-class teacher: if i was in mother margaret’s position, i would have given the restaurant a longer chance and not give up so easily. i think that she quit too soon. i would have persevered and continued to keep the café open, and i would have definitely spoken up for myself. i think that it is important to let others know how you are feeling and when they make comments about mother margaret like that, if it were me, i would have responded right back to them. i would clarify a lot for the rumors that were going around town, because i would not have sat back and just let them happen. i would have the customers excited for her when she was installing the new radio, and i would have had more customers come in because it would be a fun place with great music for people to come and eat at. i would make her café a local place where people congregated and felt comfortable. i definitely would have done things to make sure that my business succeeded. the pervasive use of “i would . . .”is notable in this participant’s response. she clearly seems to believe in the autonomy and limitless ability of individuals, asserting how she would have done things differently if she were in mother margaret’s position. throughout her response, this participant seemed to assume that mother margaret had free will, and she hinted that, if mother margaret had done what she (this participant) would have done, mother margaret’s business may have succeeded. what can be inferred from this participant’s response is that she does not consider that the options that she perceives to be open to her may not have been open to mother margaret. moreover, this participant does not seem to recognize that what individuals intentionally do may not always have the intended effect. for instance, letting others know how mother margaret felt about the townspeople’s negative comments about her may have had any effect on their behaviors (but also may not have). furthermore, as this participant suggests, even if mother margaret had attempted to make her customers excited about her new radio, the customers may not have found her restaurant more exciting, especially if the reasons that people began to shun mother margaret in the first place were rooted in something else. equally and more significantly, this participant seemed to view her own criteria as objective—something that would work in all contexts including mother margaret’s. in effect, this participant blames margaret for her inability to do things differently, and she posits her lack of capacity and enthusiasm as the apparent and sole cause of mother margaret’s failed restaurant venture. in fact, in a discourse based interview about her comments about mother margaret’s actions, this participant claimed: “i was raised to believe in myself and believe that when there is a will there is a way. i don’t think mother margaret should have given up so fast.” moreover, not a single participant in this group seemed to consider factors that may have shim, jenna min. teacher’s viewpoints about other’s actions: implications for multicultural education 23 transnational curriculum inquiry 10(2) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci made mother margaret vulnerable in the first place and that closing her restaurant may not have been simply a matter of individual choice. in other words, all five participants seemed to overlook the possibility that for some even if there is a will there isn’t always a way. while not all five participants specifically indicated that mother margaret should have given up her restaurant so fast, others showed a likewise response. in this regard, another white middleclass teacher stated: i thought this was great story to illustrate the different cultures. while reading mother margaret and the rhinoceros café, i couldn’t help but feel a sense of hope for margaret. she is a really strong-willed and determined woman who decided to go for something for herself and her family. i just wish that she would have remained strong and determined longer which may have allowed her to continue running her business. yet another white middle-class teacher stated: as i read mother margaret i was a little confused as first. i think she was an amazing woman to start a business on her own and raise a family. i was surprised by the way the community responded to her success. i was a little disappointed in the end that she just gave up her business because of what people were saying. here, this participant’s comments about just giving up and her disappointment allude that mother margaret could have made a better choice. next, all four responses by african american teachers to the action of mother margaret closing her restaurant were coded as “contextualized explanation: trapped in location.” more specifically, to varying degrees, the participants in this group offered contextualized explanations for mother margaret’s action. these participants characterized mother margaret’s context as one of severe oppression and acknowledged that one’s hard work does not always guarantee one’s success. here is an example from one of the african american teachers: i think that the native americans in this story had “barrel of crabs” mentality which probably comes from the years of oppression that the native american population has faced. i am only comparing it to our african american and african diaspora communities, but in communities where people have been severely oppressed and held down socially, economically, etc., the support in that community tends to decrease. “barrel of crabs” mentality means when a person is moving upward, people, usually the ones they know, or that are from the same race, neighborhood, economic class, are pulling them back down just like if one crab sees another climbing out of the cage (oppression), another crab will climb on top of the one trying to escape. the result, no crab ends up escaping from the cage. i see this in my community all the time, and it is very difficult and sometimes impossible to be the crab climbing up even if he tries really hard. although this participant did not talk about mother margaret or her actions explicitly, he attempted to provide a broader, more contextualized explanation of what happened to her and her restaurant. in other words, this participant offered a plausible reason for why people in mother margaret’s community were non-supportive and how that may have contributed to mother margaret decision to close her restaurant. this participant, like the other three participants in this ethno-racial group who responded to this topic, placed the issue within long histories of oppression and also used his own experience as an african american, as a member shim, jenna min. teacher’s viewpoints about other’s actions: implications for multicultural education 24 transnational curriculum inquiry 10(2) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci of oppressed group, to explain what happened to mother margaret in the story. using the metaphorical expression “barrels of crabs” mentality common within” african american and african diaspora communities,” he drew parallels between the “climbing up crab” and mother margaret. the crabs who were trying to get on the top of the climbing crab represent the people in mother margaret’s community who shunned her and tried to bring her down. implicit in his message is that mother margaret’s hard work was relatively insignificant with respect to the restaurant’s success or failure compared with the larger social forces at work here. such a view is very different from that of the white middle-class teachers in this study. whereas the white middle-class teachers seemed to be interpreting the events in this story from very individualistic, psychological stances in which they firmly believed that “if there is a will there is a way,” this participant (and others in this ethno-racial group) seemed to be interpreting it from a more systemic, sociological stance wherein because of long histories of oppression within a hierarchically organized society some individuals are often trapped or “caged,” not only by their oppressors but by their own people as well. in his discourse based interview regarding the “barrels of crab” mentality, this participant offered the following elaboration: from my experience, i know that african americans who are “left-behind” develop resentment and we normally do not go out of our ways to support others; in fact, some of us may deliberately withhold information because we do not want to see others succeed. i think this is because those who are “left-behind” feel that those who succeed will succeed in the cost of them being left-behind which is exactly what happened during the time of slavery and even now in the wider world. clearly, this participant’s perspective is rooted in general knowledge of histories of oppression of a marginalized group and individual members that belong to such a group, as well as in his own personal experience as one of those members. here, this participant’s life experience at least partially (good) colored his responses to mother margaret’s actions. what must be noted here is that while the status of social class by the white teacher in this study was self-reported, the african american teachers did not volunteer any information their social class. moreover, as none of us ever occupy one social position but we occupy many, what influenced the differences in the white teachers’ and african american teachers’ responses may also be contributed by complex intersections of social class, gender, and age. therefore, the claims made in the findings remain partial. next, all four responses by asian teachers from china and south korea to mother margaret’s decision to close her restaurant were coded as “collectivist explanation.” all of these participants explained mother margaret’s actions as inevitable due to the lack of support offered by the dene community to which mother margaret belonged. in the words of one chinese participant: what struck me the most about this story is the fact that the nature of this mother margaret’s community is so non supportive. coming from china, i believe that the only way that individuals in a society can succeed is through everyone in their society to act together and support each other. without such a support, it is no wonder that mother margaret had to close her restaurant. here, somewhat similar to the african american teachers, this participant considered the lack of support from the members of mother margaret’s community as a plausible explanation for mother margaret’s decision to close the restaurant. however, this shim, jenna min. teacher’s viewpoints about other’s actions: implications for multicultural education 25 transnational curriculum inquiry 10(2) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci participant’s response seems to be rooted in a very different source than a “barrel of crabs” mentality. instead, she seems to believe in the power and importance of interdependence amongst people who belong to a particular community or society. her belief may also be influenced by other factors such as social class, gender, and age; however, she does point to her ethnicity in discussing the importance of community support. for this participant, an individuals’ success depends on the support of the members of one’s community, and implicit in this assertion is that no matter how hard one may try, without support from the community, success cannot be achieved. thus, this participant concluded that mother margaret’s closing of her restaurant was unavoidable in a context where almost nobody was being supportive. in her life history interview, she often talked about coming from a country based on collectivism, and the effects of being socialized within this country seem to have influenced her interpretations significantly (e.g., “coming from china, i believe. . . “). once again, the analysis of the teachers’ responses remains partial and the findings reported in this study cannot be generalized since the analysis pertains only to the participating teachers. my goal here is not to reinforce racial stereotypes but to show that while people’s perspectives are always in the process of becoming as they encounter different life experiences, race and ethnicity remain an “element of social structure” and “a dimension of human representation” (omi &winant, 1994, p. 55). responses to kamal’s action in this section, i discuss the participants’ responses to kamal’s killing pawel in the end of the short story, crazy. in this section, due to the limited space, i chose one response by one participant in each ethno-racial group as an exemplar of the overall pattern of the responses for each group. of five responses posted by white middle-class teachers, four responses were coded as “rational explanation.” the pattern in which the participants in this group responded to kamal’s action is very similar to the pattern in which the participants in the same ethnoracial group responded to mother margaret’s action. specifically, they emphasized what the main characters—as individuals—could have done to have achieved different outcomes. in other words, although to varying degrees, these participants often seemed to view an individuals’ action as always rational and intentional, and they interpreted kamal for his actions based on these assumptions. for example, one participant claimed: while pawel felt he was helping kamal he was in fact insulting him. that being said, kamal also allowed his prejudices and stereotypes of pawel's culture to cloud his judgments. perhaps if these two men were both more accommodating and actually took the time to learn a little about each other, then the men could have became friends. this participant construed the two individuals in the story as someone who could have acted other than they did if they had been more “accommodating” and had taken the time to learn more about each other. furthermore, this participant seemed to view kamal’s action as intentional or conscious such as when he stated that “kamal also allowed his prejudices and stereotypes of pawel's culture to cloud his judgments.” such a stance holds kamal more accountable for his actions. he allowed his “prejudices” to cloud his judgments.” such an interpretation somewhat ignores the possibility that a host of oppressive conditions and experiences across an entire lifetime might have led kamal to be paranoid, vulnerable, and desperate in the first place. this participant also appears to have assumed that individuals are somehow able to understand diversity fully and that such understanding leads to intercultural shim, jenna min. teacher’s viewpoints about other’s actions: implications for multicultural education 26 transnational curriculum inquiry 10(2) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci harmony. however, many sociological scholars have shown us that the dispositions that motivate people’s actions are not always immediately visible, that people’s actions are not always intentional or conscious, and that their ability to perceive others is also limited by the social conditions within which they have been constituted (e.g., bourdieu &wacquant, 1992). furthermore, the emphasis placed on learning about other cultures as a solution to cultural conflict (and as a key factor that could have prevented kamal’s killing of pawel) seems also deeply rooted in this participant’s experiential and ideological locations. according to britzman (2003), there is a distinction between the two approaches of learning about and learning from. adopting britzman’s perspective, learning from the other presents an philosophical investigation into an openness to transform oneself while in contact with other which opens up a possibility to the ethical possibilities in multicultural relations as opposed to learning about the other presents a more narrow investigation into an accumulation of knowledge about others. in her life history interview, this participant discussed having experienced a crosscultural exchange program to chile when she was in college. she stated that she learned “so much” about the culture of chile and how that program emphasized the importance of “cross cultural competence” and “tolerance” of different cultures by learning about different cultures. although this take on cultural exchange programs is common, one could argue that it is also dangerous. many scholars of intercultural relations have shown that intercultural conflict is not so much about a lack of knowledge on either or both sides but a function of long histories of domination and oppression clashing and colliding in the context of interpersonal exchanges -interesting (e.g., papastergiadis, 2003; bourdieu, 1977). in other words, person-to-person relations are always constituted in and through long (and often violent) histories of relations between cultures. and if these histories have involved colonization, things become ever more complex. next, there were five responses by african american teachers to kamal’s killing of pawel, four of which were coded as “contextualized explanation” because participants attempted to speculate about the social and historical conditions that could have led kamal to kill pawel. in the words of one african american teacher: people have killed others for far less in our and other societies! kamal knew that he would be killed if he was deported back to sadam's regime. it was not simply being deported that pushed kamal over a paranoid edge; he knew that deportation ended with death. note that the reasoning embodied in this response is very different from the reasoning embodied in the majority of the responses by white middle-class teachers who held kamal entirely responsible for his actions. again, because information about african american teachers’ social class is not provided, the factors influencing the difference in responses may also be largely contributed by social class. however, interestingly, just as there were similarities among the responses of white middle-class teachers to the actions of mother margaret and kamal, there were similarities in the ways that african american teachers explained the actions of these two characters. for both mother margaret and kamal, african american teachers tried to understand the conditions that might have disposed these two characters act in the ways they did. in a discourse based interview, one african american teacher invoked the following statistics to support her explanation: shim, jenna min. teacher’s viewpoints about other’s actions: implications for multicultural education 27 transnational curriculum inquiry 10(2) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci have you read the recent statistics about the american prison system? one out of one hundred americans are in jail. however, it is direr for the black man and woman. one out of every nine black males between the ages of 18 and 34 are incarcerated. one out of every 100 black females is incarcerated. the statistic for white males?one out of 365. that is a staggering difference in statistics. this speaks volumes concerning the continued struggle for many black people in america. you know what this means? we can’t just look at the statistics. so, we must first ask why kamal had to kill pawel before judging kamal as crazy. this participant contextualized his responses to kamal’s action within statistics about criminality and the american prison system. noting significant differences in ratios between blacks and blacks in prison and whites and whites in prison, he problematized any and all explanations for kamal’s actions based on reason, free will, or intentionality alone, and he introduced the possibility that systemic or sociological explanations may have more purchase (e.g., long histories of domination/oppression, social darwinism, etc.). from the perspectives of these latter explanations, it is wrongheaded simply to blame kamal for not acting rationally because the root cause for his actions might be more sociological than psychological. just as the reasons for why a much larger percentage of the black population compared with the white population is incarcerated in american prisons are likely to be rooted in a society built on relations of domination and oppression, the most plausible reasons for kamal’s actions might also be more systemic and sociological than individual and psychological. lastly, there were two contributions by asian teachers from china and south korea that focused on kamal’s killing of pawel. both were coded as “religious/moral explanation.”one participant from china wrote the following: it’s obvious that there are many people like kamal in toronto area and just because he is in fear of being reported and deported, however strong, he cannot commit the most horrible crime in all human cultures. since the story takes place in toronto, this participant indirectly compared kamal with other illegal immigrants in toronto whom she perceived to be in the same situation as kamal but who never committed a crime because of it. if others in the same situation as kamal did not commit a crime, kamal’s action was not justifiable. what can also be inferred in her response is that she did not perceive the risk of “being reported and deported” as a justification for kamal’s action in the story. unlike the african american teacher who considered the possible consequence that kamal might be killed if deported, this participant did not seem to consider such a consequence. furthermore, for this participant, killing is “the most horrible crime in all human cultures” regardless of circumstances, and thus kamal’s killing of pawel was absolutely unacceptable. when asked to elaborate her thinking in a discourse based interview, this participant noted: my parents taught me that i should always be kind to everyone i meet in my life because they are the people whom i already met before i was born. this is buddhism philosophy in which we believe that people we encounter in our life are believed to be the people who we have already had special relationships in our previous life. this is not only limited to human beings but also animals we encounter in our life time. this is why killing is not acceptable whether it is a human being or an animal. shim, jenna min. teacher’s viewpoints about other’s actions: implications for multicultural education 28 transnational curriculum inquiry 10(2) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci from the socialization history provided by this participant, it hardly seems surprising that this participant would invoke a particular religious/moral framework to condemn kamal’s action. however, what is important to note here is that many koreans or chinese are not buddhist, and although the participant uses the pronoun we to represent more than an individual, it is also necessary to recognize that buddhism, confucianism and taoism have an intermingled history in china, and many koreans are christians. hence, the analysis of the chinese participant is very limited in its generalizability. in sum, although both the white middle-class teachers and the asian teachers in this study condemned kamal’s for killing pawel, the underlying reasons for their stances were very different. in partial contrast, the african american teachers tended to place less blame on kamal for his action because they contextualized the murder analogically within their own long, painful, and often violent history of oppression and abuse in the united states. responses to officer hansen’s action in this section i discuss the participants’ responses to officer hansen’s shooting of an african american street criminal as portrayed in the movie crash. the responses by white middle-class teachers dimensionalized themselves into two categories: (a) rational explanation and (b) statistical explanation. in what follows, i discuss one example of each type of explanation before moving onto discussing the responses by african american teachers and asian teachers in this study. out of six responses by white middle class teachers to officer hanson’s action, four responses were coded “rational explanation.” the two other responses were coded “statistical explanation.” because coding is done by an individual who bring a certain set of perspectives but not others, what i present under each coding is also perspectival. one white middle-class teacher who offered a “rational explanation” argued that: if officer hansen had given peter a chance and thought about what he was about to do, he would probably not have murdered peter. as intelligent beings, we need to use our brains more sometimes! almost identical to the patterns of white middle-class teachers’ responses to mother margaret and kamal’s actions, this participant focused on what officer hansen could have done to avoid shooting the african american street criminal, peter. within a framework where human beings are quintessentially rational beings murdering peter could have been avoided if officer hanson had thought more about his action and had used his brain. yet other explanations are certainly equally or more plausible. as i noted earlier, much sociological research has shown that person-to-person relations are never contained solely within the interactions themselves (e.g., bourdieu, 1977, 1990) but within instances of larger social forces, structures, and histories at work. from this perspective, officer hansen’s action may not have been the result of not acting rationally or using his brain but an effect of some master narrative at work. in his encounter with peter, officer hansen may not have seem him as an individual or a blank slate but as a dangerous black man like all other black men. such an alternative explanation, however, does not seem to have been part of this participant’s interpretive arsenal. another white middle-class teacher offered a “statistical explanation” for officer hansen’s action: the young police officer did not shoot the black american male because he was black but because he acted in a threatening manner. . . if crime statistics show that a shim, jenna min. teacher’s viewpoints about other’s actions: implications for multicultural education 29 transnational curriculum inquiry 10(2) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci large percent of violent crimes in the la area are committed by black american males then is it not wise to be weary of such people? you only get one life. . . . i do not believe that such actions are racist acts; they are smart acts. unlike the first white middle-class participant discussed above, this participant construed officer hansen’s killing of peter in crash as a smart act, justifying his construal with “crime statistics.” given the history of violent criminal acts committed by black men in los angeles, officer hanson’s act might well have saved his life, and “you only get one life.” contrary to the african american teacher discussed earlier—who also used criminal statistics to support his systemic, sociological argument for why kamal might have killed pawel—this participant uses statistics to justify an individualistic, psychological explanation that both justifies officer hanson’s killing of peter and vilifies black men who presumably choose—as individuals with free will—to act violently and unlawfully. absent in his explanation is any discussion of the larger historical, social, economic forces that might constitute the conditions of possibility underlying the crime statistics. interestingly, the african american teachers in this study responded very differently to officer hansen’s action and also offered quite a different take on “statistics.” unlike the white middle-class teachers discussed above, african american teachers did not consider “statistics” as objective but as symptomatic. all five responses by african american teachers embodied more or less the same content, which i coded as “historical explanation.” invoking this explanation, one participant wrote: being black in america for many, means that we have to work that much harder at what we want in life. as with anything, hard work and persistence is necessary for success. yet, some black people experience a fight that requires them to not only be excellent at what they do; but also tenacious because when you are born black in america, there are already statistics looming over you, that you are going to be this kind of person and that kind of person. peter was not an exception. according to this african american teacher, officer hansen saw peter, as many white americans do, as another dangerous black person. this participant also signaled the persistent racial inequality in america as part of the problem --being black in america (as opposed to white or other race) means that one has to work harder (than others) to achieve the same goals. he also made clear that he understands the relation between hard work and success but went on to claim that this relation plays out differently for black people compared to white people. for black people in america “there are already statistics looming over you” that essentialize black people as a particular kinds of people—people who are, among other things, both lazy and violent. thus, black people not only need to work hard to achieve success, they need to work all the harder to prove that they are not like the blacks constructed through statistics. the differences between the responses by african american teachers and white middle-class teachers to the action of officer hansen seem non-trivial indeed, and they also seem firmly located within very different social, cultural, racial, and economic histories. one final comment related to this issue is worth making. throughout the online discussions in this study, when very different—and especially contradictory—perspectives were shared by people occupying very different ethno-racial locations, almost without exception, participants tended to interact only with members of their own group and to avoid interacting with members of other groups. in a sense, they acted out exactly what they professed. shim, jenna min. teacher’s viewpoints about other’s actions: implications for multicultural education 30 transnational curriculum inquiry 10(2) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci no asian teachers responded to the scene in which officer hansen shot peter, and why this was the case is not clear. discussions, conclusions, and implications although findings showed that the responses from participants in none of the ethno-racial groups in the study were entirely homogeneous, harmonious, stable, or bounded, they revealed some significant consistencies within each ethno-racial group and some significant differences across the three groups. this does not mean that these findings can be generalized. it does not mean that a subject is determined by certain cultural rules nor does it mean that any participant’s thinking and perceiving with respect to any ethnic or racial group can be generalized. it does, however, mean that these findings are telling in some way, which i unpack below. notably, the similarities within each ethno-racial-national groupare not necessarily because groups were defined by ethnicity-race-nationality. (e.g., hall, 1999). it is not the case that four white middle-class teachers responded to mother margaret’s action in a similar pattern because they are white or middle class. rather, from their contributions in online discussions illuminate that it is because the members of each ethno-racial group were likely to have shared similar historical, cultural, political, social experiences and similar social, political, and economic contexts. the white middle class teachers’ liberal individualistic interpretive frame, the african american teachers’ contextual-historical interpretive frame, and the asian teachers’ collectivist interpretive frame raise a few pressing questions about how social positions are directly linked to power and social identity. recognizing that social class which was not provided by african american and asian teachers may very well have influenced their responses, it still seems important to ask the following questions. what life experiences (both historical and lived) shaped participants’ responses in the ways they did? did participants speak from positions of relative domination or subordination? at least partial answers to these questions were found in participants’ responses to discourse-based interviews and life history interviews. among other things, i asked participants questions such as: what life experiences could have at least partially influenced them to believe we live in a world in which one can cross any boundary one wants to cross? what life experiences could have at least partially influenced them to believe strongly that, when one is “born black in america,” not only one has to work harder than others at what one wants in life but one also has to work hard to prove what one is not? what life experiences could have at least partially influenced them to believe that america is a country free of racism? not surprisingly, many white participants explained how their own (and their family members’) life experiences pretty much showed that the motto, if there is a will, there is a way, is true, that their success resulted from hard work, and that one can cross any boundary one wants to cross meaning that one can will oneself to overcome difficulties. also, not surprisingly, most african american participants explained how they (and their family members) had encountered constant obstacles and limits in their lives and that they had to work harder than others to accomplish the same things. lastly, most asian participants, who stated that they lived in culturally and ethnically “homogeneous” countries and had mostly “heard” ideal things about america and americans, stated that they did not think that racism really exists in america. so, very different sets of life experiences and socialization histories, shim, jenna min. teacher’s viewpoints about other’s actions: implications for multicultural education 31 transnational curriculum inquiry 10(2) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci and also naivities/lack of education seemed to have appropriated very different dispositions and viewpoints through which to see and the similar basic events and issues. hence, these experiences and histories may have unfolded as they did largely because of larger constitutive social structures and conditions already in place that delimited and imposed which positions could be taken and not taken (bourdieu, 1990; bourdieu &wacquant, 1992). the white participants in this study perceived few impediments to achieving their goals. these participants also located reasons for success and failure in the individual not the social realm. since people from dominant groups seldom have to learn the perspectives of the dominated, it is easy for them to assume that their perspectives are objective, neutral, and how things ought to be (e.g., jones, 2001; jones & jenkins, 2004). also, given that whites are “unmarked” in our society (e.g., hall, 1999), the tendency in white teachers to believe that their perspectives are universal, neutral, and objective is not surprising. this, of course, is not to say that all white middle class teachers to believe that their perspectives are universal. thus, operating with and encouraging/enforcing their standard is unlikely to be seen as forced assimilation or cultural domination. yet, these largely unconscious practices justify, perpetuate, and strengthen the status quo. indeed, it is often suggested that, at least in the united states, hegemony is closely tied to liberal humanism and individualism (e.g., boler&zembylas, 2003). similarly, people from historically oppressed groups often encounter limits andobstacles that are outside of their intentional control. rosaldo’s (1989) argument that “victims of oppression. . . can provide insights into the workings of power that differ from those available to people in high positions” (p. 173) is both relevant and educative with respect to the findings in this study. indeed, the african american participants in the study seemed to have a much deeper sense of the nature and functions of power asymmetries in a stratified society than did white participants. asian participants, who felt that america is an ideal country where racism doesn’t exist, seem to have been constructed within and complicit with particular media representations of america. in their life history interview, these asian participants reported that they have had a very limited exposure to american films and novels that portray a long history of racism in america, and therefore, their limited exposure may have largely contributed to how they viewed american as an ideal country where racism does not exist. these representations index the power of those who represent america internationally and the cultural imperialism of those representations (said, 1994). the findings from all groups clearly demonstrated that participants’ viewpoints about the actions of others are never detached from constitutive political and social structures. this recognition seems crucially important in multicultural research, practice, and curricular studies because what disposes multicultural educators to act and think as well as how we translate and deliver multicultural curriculum is not always visible to us and because it is easy to believe (wrongly) that our actions and thoughts are objective, neutral, transparent, and autonomous. difficulties in multicultural relations are not so much grounded in the fact that there are many different cultures, that there are differences in the beliefs and practices of these cultures or that people from particular cultures do not have adequate knowledge of people from other cultures. rather, differences become problems because they surface complex cultural, social, and political histories that dispose people to understand, respond to and use difference strategically (albeit also tacitly) —to include or exclude, to value or devalue, to privilege or oppress (e.g., bourdieu, 1977, 1990). participants’ responses with regard to kamal’s shim, jenna min. teacher’s viewpoints about other’s actions: implications for multicultural education 32 transnational curriculum inquiry 10(2) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci action,for instance, had much more to do with their social locations and the assumptions. multicultural educators’ assumptions rooted in their social locations can often hinder students’ learning and growth. even though most of us might think that it is trivial that people from different cultural and racial backgrounds perceive the world differently, empirically demonstrating how the participating teachers responded in profoundly different ways to the actions of others in multicultural stories and movie appear critically important for thinking about the necessary starting point for multicultural/social justice education that have any chance of having some counter-hegemonic effects. after several months of discussing the stories and films, what became also noticeable was that there were almost no efforts by participants to engage in cross-talk across groups, especially when interpretations varied considerably and in contested ways. instead, the different groups engaged in parallel play, with members of each group doing their own thing and never engaging with members of other groups which may have been due to the discomfort involved in having to face conflicting views. thus, uncritically assuming that conversations across differences automatically happen when opportunities for such conversations are provided seems fundamentally flawed. at one level, what i am calling parallel play was surprising given how much multicultural research these days focuses on changing and unstable identities in the processes interactions and fluidity of cultural boundaries. however, at another level, it seemed a pretty good reflection of how most of us operate in multicultural contexts in our everyday lives. it is easy to stay within spaces that we are familiar with and it is easier to avoid conflicts. differences are said to be respected but actually putting this attitude into practice seems difficult which is a problem when the only way to move beyond the familiar framework of knowing is to go beyond respecting difference but use the difference for a foundation of new ways of thinking and knowing. although parallel play seems to be what we do naturally, it definitely is not reflexive, and it doesn’t contribute to dealing with cultural and racial differences productively. for instance, one person who feels that she is systematically and historically discriminated against on racial grounds and another person who feels that this person is not working hard enough and that her laziness contributes to her misfortune probably cannot communicate openly without a conscious effort and self-reflexivity on both sides. similarly, a teacher who finds a student’s cultural practice to be primitive and bizarre probably cannot truly respect what that student brings to a classroom. a teacher who believes his/her perspective is a universal standard probably cannot create a reciprocally productive learning environment, never mind moving toward a more just social space for all. in situations where members of different cultures must work together closely (e.g., education settings), the question of whose perspectives count and become uncontested is a thorny one because all workplaces are also unavoidably situations of power imbalance. the findings in this study showed that various historical and social structures and forces within which participants remain largely constituted constrained their viewpoints, rather than participants appropriating and choosing particular elements within those structures and forces. the unnoticed, unintentional, and unconscious dispositions and viewpoints common to people who share similar backgrounds may be the very factors that contribute the most to the perpetuation of relations of domination/oppression. the tendency to avoid talking across difference just seems to perpetuate racial and cultural inequalities. resisting or refusing to shim, jenna min. teacher’s viewpoints about other’s actions: implications for multicultural education 33 transnational curriculum inquiry 10(2) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci learn about unconscious dispositions and not resisting naturalized dispositions and viewpoints also seem to perpetuate these inequalities. notwithstanding the fact that there are many mindful and reflective teachers out there, it is also important to remind ourselves that in schools, for instance, what teachers teach students and how they interact with them get filtered through the largely unconscious viewpoints through which the teachers see and understand the world. thus, teachers cannot afford not to deconstruct these viewpoints if we are really committed in building more productive connections across differences. as demonstrated, a few teachers in this study believe that one can be all that one wants to be. such encouragement is often necessary and probably well intended for students. however, uncritically assuming that all students have equal opportunities and equal resources or that all that matters is hard work can be detrimental for some students. for example, if a teacher thinks that “you can be whatever you want to be, and that if you put your mind to it, than nothing is impossible,” then a student who is struggling in school is probably going to be judged as not having put his/her mind to it and to not have worked hard enough. what is most alarming here is that without a careful reflection, it is easy for us to overlook the fact that our thoughts and actions are mediated by dispositions that have become both very durable and quite invisible over the course of our lives. yet, these internalized ways of acting and thinking may be reinforcing unequal, hierarchical social structures without our even knowing it. because all knowledge is partial and because what motivates us at any given moment to act and think in particular ways is contingent and unpredictable, it is impossible to comprehensively trace all the forces at work in trying to understand why we think and act in the ways we do. however, this is no reason to stop and not to do anything. in fact, only if educators at all levels begin to understand, as fully as possible, the sources of the dispositions that incline us to think that some of our students’ cultural practices are primitive or not as “good” as ours , for instance, can we ever begin to work against them. this kind of work should be continuous not only because our understanding of who we are will never be complete but also because our ways of understanding the world are always situated, continually (re)constituted, and never fixed. notes 1 e-mail: jshim@uwyo.edu 2 my usage of this term is not to essentialize participants from china and south korea. because participants from china and south korea shared many ideological stances with respect to intercultural issues that are represented in the short stories and films, i represented them as one ethno-racial group in this study. there is no doubt that both the koreans and chinese are not homogeneous groups. references bakari, r. 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(1987/1971). interpretation and the science of man. in: p. rabinow& w. m. sullivan (eds.).interpretive social science: a second look (pp.33-81). berkeley: university of california press. submitted: april, 8th, 2013 approved: october, 1st, 2013 o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: lopes, alice casimiro. (2015). ottawa curriculum conference. transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) http://nitinat. library.ubc.ca/ojs/index. php/tc i <access date> ottawa curriculum conference alice casimiro lopes1 state university of rio de janeiro, brazil since its start, the international association for the advancement of curriculum studies conferences (iaacs) have inhabited several different continents and countries (china 2003, finland, 2006, south africa, 2009, and brazil, 2012). each country received us with their respective different cultures, histories, policies, climate, geography and people. in 2015, the iaacs executives were president elizabeth macedo (brazil), vice-president lesley le grange (south africa), treasurer nicholas ng-a-fook (canada) and our secretary poonam batra (india). last year our colleagues generously hosted us within their capital city ottawa, canada (from may 26 to may 29). the university of ottawa is located, as we are learned then, within the downtown of their nation’s capital, “which sits at base of the ottawa valley and overlooks the confluences and tributaries of the kichi sibi (ottawa river) that meander across and beyond the traditional territories of the anishinàbeg who have lived and migrated upon this landscape since time immemorial. the cosmological, emotional, intellectual, physical, and spiritual topographies of this landscape have provided, and continue to provide, a p lace for hosting the contested histories of, and contemporary relations between, indigenous and nonindigenous communities here in canada or elsewhere (donald, 2012)” (retrieved: https://support.skype.com/pt-br/faq/fa34612/o-que-e-a-extensao-do-skype). during the ottawa conference, the central theme was what are the tasks of the curriculum scholars for the 21st century? the chairs were our ottawa university’s colleagues awad ibrahim and nicholas ng-a-fook. the program coordinators were bryan smith (university of ottawa) and cristyne hebert (york university), who since then, have both successfully completed their doctoral studies. they were supported by generous partnerships with the american association for the advancement of curriculum studies (aaacs), canadian association for curriculum studies (cacs), european association of curriculum studies (euro-acs), canadian society for the study of education, association of canadian dean’s of education, and the faculty of education at the university of ottawa. our canadian curriculum colleagues organized their conference’s call for presentation around chambers’ (1999) four following challenges: 1. how are we experimenting with tools from different canadian intellectual traditions and incorporating them into our theorizing? 2. what kinds of languages and interpretive tools have we created to study what we know and where we want to go? 3. in what ways have, and are, curriculum theorists writing in a detailed way the topos — the particular places and regions where we live and work? https://support.skype.com/pt-br/faq/fa34612/o-que-e-a-extensao-do-skype http://www.aaacs.org/ http://www.csse-scee.ca/cacs/ http://webs.ie.uminho.pt/euroacs/ http://webs.ie.uminho.pt/euroacs/ http://www.csse-scee.ca/site/index.html http://www.csse-scee.ca/acde/welcome http://www.csse-scee.ca/acde/welcome http://education.uottawa.ca/en lopes. ottawa curriculum conference 2 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (2) ano http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 4. how are these places inscribed in our theorizing, as either presence or absence, whether we want them there or not? these four questions provoked us reconsider our tasks as international curriculum scholars in relation toward challenging the discourse of “social efficiency.” they provoked us to think about what adrienne rich (2001) has called elsewhere the arts of the impossible. indeed curriculum theory is one of the arts of the impossible. to this end, we created curricular discourses that responded to what at times might seem like impossible curricular theory tasks. the conference committee invited prominent scholars in our field like dwayne donald, eero ropo, elizabeth macedo, gilbert whiteduck, hongyu wang, janet miller, lesley le grange, paul tarc, reta ugena whitlock, vanessa de oliviera andreotti, william doll jr., and william pinar to provide their insights in response to such curricular questions. they also received over 250 proposals from different countries such as, but not limited to, argentina, brazil, canada, china, denmark, estonia, greece, finland, hungary, japan, méxico, portugal, romania, south africa, south korea, and the united states. nicholas nga-fook, awad ibrahim, their colleagues, graduate students of university of ottawa and kitigan zibi algonquin community did an excellent job with organizing the conference (see http://www.iaacs.ca/kmt-iaacs-stories/). in addition, they greeted us with care and attention in the beautiful city of ottawa. our 6th conference will be held in 2018, in australia, hosted by australian curriculum studies association and australian association for research in education. the iaacs president elizabeth macedo anticipates that we will likely meet at the university of melbourne. as she said and i agree, our colleague bill green did a terrific job in bringing those two major australian associations to work together with iaacs in organizing our next meeting. as usually, tci invites its readers and authors to collaborate in this space. tci is an important to keep our curricular conversations; it is open for receiving other papers contributing to complicate and internationalize even more the curriculum field. the 2015 2 tci issue presents us five papers that, in different ways, respond to questions were presented initially at the 5th iaacs conference. we invite our readers to reflect about the following papers and continue our complicated curricular conversations. notes 1 alicecasimirolopes@gmail.com http://www.acsa.edu.au/ http://www.acsa.edu.au/ http://www.aare.edu.au/ microsoft word carter formatted 131108.doc to cite this article please include all of the following details: carter, lyn (2008). recovering traditional ecological knowledge (tek): is it always what it seems? transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> recovering traditional ecological knowledge (tek): is it always what it seems? lyn carter australian catholic university, melbourne introduction globalisation and its attendant acknowledgment of diversity has meant that traditional ecological knowledge (tek) as a form of indigenous knowledge (ik) is becoming increasingly prominent in many educational disciplines including that of science education. snively and corsiglia (2001) define tek as the “timeless traditional knowledge and wisdom of long-resident, oral peoples’’ (p. 8), acquired over thousands of years of direct human contact with local environments. they emphasise the ecological depth of the knowledge, its persistence, consistency and reliability, its specificity, its holistic view of an interconnected world, and its moral and spiritual nature. they also describe its narrative base, where encoded metaphoric stories were often used “to compress and organise important information so that it can be readily stored and accessed” (p. 23), and “solutions to problems can be carefully preserved, refined and reapplied” (p. 13). snively and corsiglia’s (2001) take on tek comes from their article “discovering indigenous science: implications for science education” which was one of three lead articles in the special 2001 edition of the highly respected journal science education. the edition focused on tek, cultural diversity and multiculturalism within science education. responses were sought to these articles from six prominent scholars with lead authors then able to rejoin, prompting corsiglia and snively (2001) to reply with, “rejoinder: infusing indigenous science into western modern science for a sustainable future”. in essence, snively and corsiglia (2001) argue for the broadening of conceptualisations of science to include the significant contributions of indigenous cultures’ tek in ways that promote inclusivity, and provide ecological and sustainability knowledge to address the environmental devastation caused by western forms of science and development. as such, they further argue for school science to include tek and other ik alongside western science to “better serve the needs of all students, both mainstream and multicultural students, who must solve problems during times of environmental crisis” (corsiglia & snively, 2001, p. 85). their five-step process of science curriculum development includes western science and indigenous perspectives of a topic “to develop scientific thinking and to enable students to examine their own assumptions by distinguishing between the relative merits of different sciences” which can offer complimentary views of the world not available in the other knowledge system (corsiglia & snively, 2001, p. 85). while snively and corsiglia’s (2001) and others desire to promote tek as a way of broadening conceptualisations of science and science education, progress inclusivity, and to work towards ecological sustainability is admirable, not all is as it seems. this paper is in two main parts. part 1 describes and analyses snively and corsiglia’s (2001) argument for tek suggesting the picture is far more complex and that we must be vigilant to avoid new forms of imperialism that may flow from how tek is, at least textually, appropriated and represented. this critique has already begun to be developed elsewhere (see http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci carter: recovering traditional ecological knowledge transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 18 carter, 2006; 2004). here, the analysis utilises the two constructs of binaries, and translation and appropriation (after huggan, 2001), useful in postcolonial theory and discourse analysis to delve into the often unconscious assumptions underpinning theorisations of culture and difference used by multicultural science education scholars like snively and corsiglia (2001). postcolonial theory is a unique discourse or field of inquiry that describes transcultural global processes, systematically reflecting on the dominant and subordinate relations formed by encounters with hegemonic forces, and providing new tools with which to think about the present. while science education to date has been reticent to engage with powerful discourses like postcolonialism (exceptions are mckinley, 2001; ninnes, 2001), it has the potential to offer science education a different vantage point from which to investigate the questions of cultural diversity including tek used, but under explored, within the field. part 2 of this paper goes on to investigate some of the newer theorisations available within postcolonial scholarship, specifically ideas on borders, border thinking, hybridity, and border epistemologies (for example beck, bonass & lau, 2003; mignolo, 2007; shields, 2006; visvanathan, 2006), to see how they may contribute to the thorny issues of tek, ik and western science, particularly in the theoretical shortcomings of multicultural science education. borders and boundaries already feature prominently in the field, and leading theorist glen aikenhead, has developed a number of assumptions about what they are and how they function (see aikenhead, 1996, 1997, 2001; aikenhead & jegede, 1999; jegede & aikenhead, 1999). in summary, these assumptions include: (1) western science is a cultural entity itself, one of many subcultures of euro-american society; (2) people live and coexist within many subcultures identified by, for example, language, ethnicity, gender, social class, occupation, religion and geographic location; (3) people move from one subculture to another, a process called "cultural border crossing;" (6) most students experience a change in culture when moving from their life-worlds into the world of school science; therefore, (7) learning science is a cross-cultural event for these students; (8) students are more successful if they receive help negotiating their cultural border crossings; and (9) this help can come from a teacher (a culture broker) who identifies the cultural borders to be crossed, who guides students back and forth across those borders, who gets students to make sense out of cultural conflicts that might arise, (aikenhead ,2001, p. 340 my italics). in aikenhead’s terms, borders can be identified and crossed, and guides (usually the teacher) can facilitate the passage and help negotiate any cultural conflicts that might arise; in short, clear borders exist between different subcultures like tek and western science. an effective culture-broker would be highly skilled in identifying “the cultures in which students’ personal ideas are contextualized” and able to introduce “another cultural point of view, that is, the culture of western science, in the context of aboriginal knowledge (tek)” (aikenhead, 2001). unproblematised as they are, these constructs of ‘cultural border crossing’ and ‘cultural border’ have become highly influential in the multicultural science education literature including texts like snively and corsiglia’s (2001) as a type of taken-for-granted commencement point. clearly, postcolonial thinking can help reconceptualise ideas on borders within the scholarship of those like snively and corsiglia (2001) and aikenhead (2001), and hence, extend multicultural science education in ways that better honour tek. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci carter: recovering traditional ecological knowledge transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 19 part 1: analysing snively and corsiglia’s (2001) discussion of tek binary thinking the first point on which to review snively and corsiglia’s (2001) texts is their continual, if unconscious, binary representation of tek and western science. although they acknowledge and discuss the long colonising history of indigenous peoples by the west, their repetitive conceptualisations and interpellation of tek and western science suggest a more traditional, bounded and unitary view of culture and knowledge that is inwardly cohesive and outwardly delineated (welsch, 1999). there is a sense of both systems side by side so that their separation seems natural and preordained rather than the differentiated relations produced and negotiated in complex material and social fields of historical processes (see fuller, 2000; huggan, 2001). for example, snively and corsiglia (2001) “distinguish between ‘western modern science’ which is the most dominant science in the world and ‘indigenous science’ which interprets how the world works from a particular cultural perspective” (p. 8). once the boundaries and differences between tek and western science have been rhetorically normalised by texts like snively and corsiglia’s (2001), the need for aikenhead’s (2001) border-crossing strategies becomes apparent. binary thinking also emerges in the familiar nature referent snively and corsiglia (2001) use to represent tek. they define tek in spatial terms that fuller (2000) regards an extension of a location in nature wholly consistent with restricted colonial representations of natives. representing tek as nature knowledge by repeatedly invoking associations of longresident ecological understanding, places it on a timeline that precedes western science, making “the difference between ‘us’ and ‘them’ a matter of timing rather than culture” (fuller, 2000, p. 84). such descriptions are not only essentialising but form a preconstituted spatialised culture, where the “pregiven other … are construed as locked into stasis with their environment” (fuller, 2000, p. 87). fixed in nature with reference to western science on the evolutionary timeline where tek precedes western science, tek cannot help but be constructed as western science’s binary other, and consequently, inferior. this is apparent for example, when snively and corsiglia (2001) suggest that teachers recognise “indigenous knowledge or worldview in a way that creates a need to know western science” (p. 27, my italics). in other words, tek is used as the motivational device to interest students in the more ‘important’ knowledge. translation and appropriation snively and corsiglia’s (2001) texts can also be reviewed against the postcolonial idea of cultural translation. huggan (2001) describes cultural translation tethered to notions of representation and difference, as the superimposition of the dominant perspective onto the colonised, so that otherness, in this instance snively and corsiglia’s (2001) tek, is translated in ways that makes it familiar, comprehensible predictable and controllable. it configures the cultural difference as alternative forms of sameness to be appreciated as cultural pluralism by the dominant group in whose cultural forms the difference has been constructed. the desire to promote environmental sustainability both at the school level and beyond, through the inclusion of tek within science curricula, requires such a double move from snively and corsiglia (2001). they translate the difference between tek and western scientific and ecological knowledge at the same time as they attempt to establish and appropriate the scientific and ecological worth of tek. the difference allows for potential solutions to the west’s environmental problems to be found within tek, echoing huggan’s http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci carter: recovering traditional ecological knowledge transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 20 (2001) point that the other’s knowledge and cultural traditions always act as reservoirs for western needs. if tek “is not timeless, eternal, identified with space rather than time, traditional and untouched by the corruptions of western culture” (fuller, 2000, p. 88), then it would not be available as a knowledge store to help recast the west’s approach to the environmental sustainability. however, the legitimacy of these solutions can only be accepted if, paradoxically, tek’s ecological and scientific worth in western terms is established. hence, much of the rhetorical energy of snively and corsiglia’s (2001) texts is taken up with these moves of translation and appropriation. establishing the ecological worth of tek is partly achieved fuller (2000) has observed, by linking it to nature. snively and corsiglia (2001) argue that tek is “closely tied to place” (p. 16) with complex skills and a great deal of “exceptionally detailed knowledge of local plants and animals and their natural history” (p. 16). as such, it is an extension of nature, in harmony with it. yet, most of the examples snively and corsiglia (2001) give have been interpreted, translated and reported via western researchers (both scientists and anthropologists), so that a “very considerable number of scientists have “decoded”, transcribed, and interpreted significant quantities of precise indigenous science knowledge” (p. 23). huggan’s (2001) cultural translation as the superimposition of the dominant way of seeing, speaking and thinking onto the colonised is apparent in their tek configured by western researchers. tek cannot help but then be imbued with western perspectives, becoming accessible, even predictable, to the dominant group in whose cultural forms the difference is expressed. for fuller (2000), the “privileging of native science anchored in the construction of the native as a natural complement to their environment is thus a compounding of, rather than a resolution of problematic discourse” (p. 89). tek’s scientific worth must also be established within the text alongside its ecological merit if it is to be taken seriously. the rhetorical strategies snively and corsiglia (2001) use to develop tek’s scientific value include citing past contributions to western science, and its usefulness for developing new knowledge. they make several references to the way tek has helped “medicine, agriculture, engineering, pharmacology, agronomy, animal husbandry, fish and wildlife management, nautical design” and so on (p. 13), and to its contribution as “highly desired information” (p. 21) readily available that could otherwise “take years for modern researchers to assemble … using conventional means” (p. 20). they advance tek’s significance in contemporary dietary and medicinal contexts, genetic research and the development of databases for information on biodiversity. and they note the growing ‘official’ recognition by “working scientists (who) are increasingly acknowledging tek” (p. 10) “to solve important biological and ecological problems” (p. 8). moreover, snively and corsiglia (2001) go onto claim a type of scientific legitimacy for tek with its apparent ability to meet some of western science’s own epistemological tests. “large numbers of indigenous people observe, interpret, and orally report nature exhaustively” (p. 23) and “most proponents of indigenous and multicultural science would agree that objects and events occur in consistent patterns” (p. 22). but representing and justifying tek in terms of its western scientific usefulness is highly problematic in postcolonial terms as it exposes the way tek has been, and still is, assimilated and appropriated by western scientific interests. it effectively assigns some universality and generalisability to tek that take it beyond the very localness snively and corsiglia (2001) themselves paradoxically note, is its “particular cultural perspective” (p. 8). http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci carter: recovering traditional ecological knowledge transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 21 separating out western science and tek this albeit brief discussion of snively and corsiglia’s (2001) texts exposes the unconscious assumptions and subtle forms in which colonialism/imperialism can still articulate itself within multicultural science education scholarship, despite explicitly articulated intentions to the contrary. while snively and corsiglia’s (2001) desire to include tek within school science curricula not only has the potential to contribute to growing understandings of ecological sustainability at a time of environmental crisis as well as trouble the categories of western science, care must be taken. unwittingly, their texts seem to have accomplished huggan’s (2001) dialectical process of familiarisation and estrangement that maintains the boundaries between tek and western science, even as they valorise the discourses of tek. we see here the paradox of exclusion and inclusion at one and the same time, in the need to establish the scientific and ecological worth of tek just as discursive practices of binary thinking are adopted to keep them separate. these rhetorical devices work as technologies of containment and separation, regulating the borders and boundaries, making power relations invisible and keeping dominant norms in place, thus preserving the integrity and authority of western science. the other’s ecological knowledge has been effectively translated into familiar cultural forms in ways that construct it as possessing knowable characteristics able to be apprehended, and consequently controlled. for huggan (2001), this paradox also exemplifies the irreconcilable tension within western epistemology that sees all difference conceived of as particularist while the particulars of the dominant canon are taken to be universal. as we have seen, the notion of boundaries and borders of the type espoused by aikenhead (2001) is apparent within snively and corsiglia’s (2001) discussion on tek and western science. from a postcolonial perspective, borders and boundaries are deeply implicated in western thinking with the regulation of space by physical boundaries/borders a metonymy for the regulatory practices of western epistemology itself (ashcroft, 2001). once established, b/orderings (after van houtum, kramsch & zierhofer, 2005) of all types work to fix stable systems of guaranteed boundaries that differentiate not only territories but also social spheres, categories like nature and culture, the rational and the irrational, the human and technological, the civilized and uncivilized, and between the scientific and unscientific. van houtum et al. (2005) cleverly use the term ‘b/orderings’ to encode both the demarcation and delimitation purpose of borders, and their functional role of creating order. as a verb, it also alludes to the continuous processes of boundary construction. undoubtedly, there is a need to look again at borders and border thinking used implicitly or explicitly within multicultural science education scholarship, like that of snively and corsiglia’s (2001) and aikenhead’s (2001). in part 2 then, i explore postcolonial views on borders and on border epistemologies to see how they may be used to think again about tek and western science and extend ideas that have been so influential in science education. some of this thinking has been explored elsewhere (see carter, under review) but much remains to be done. part 2: exploring border thinking borders, boundaries and their study have always been of interest to social scholars for many decades. newman (2006) tells us that the discipline of border studies originated with the fields of physical and human geography, and political science, and that border scholars of the first half of the twentieth century saw borders as the physical consequences of political power. they were hence, largely concerned with their description and categorisation for purposes of http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci carter: recovering traditional ecological knowledge transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 22 security and sovereignty. from the early 1960s, the field began to focus on the functional characteristics of borders and transborder contact. in the 1990s, border studies opened up to interdisciplinary approaches, and became interested in boundary-drawing practices and discourses (berg & van houtum, 2003; paasi, 2005). the field now lies at the ‘border’ of cultural studies, ethnic studies, multicultural studies, and postmodern anthropology, and in addition to its traditional cartographic preoccupations, it is concerned with the contemporary conceptual questions of disciplinarity, identity, and cultural politics. indeed, two very recent special editions of prominent cultural studies journals have focussed on borders and border zones. they are the european journal of social theory volume 9 number 2 from 2006, and the october 2007 edition of globalizations. for many theorists (see mignolo, 2007; santos, 2007; shields, 2006; van houtum et al., 2005), the production of political and epistemological borders was essential to the occidental colonising project of constructing and signalling the european and separating out the other. borders allowed what was inside to become known, understood, ordered, controlled whereas what was constructed as outside, to be left unb/ordered, unknown, threatening, wild or chaotic. borders also allowed modernity’s subject to subsume and know the b/ordered object within the definitional bounds of foundational knowledge. while a belief in their territorial and conceptual binding power for shaping the world remains as the lingering legacy of borders, newer interpretations however, have revealed boundaries/borders, epistemological, ideological, political, physical and even biological, to be profoundly more ambivalent constructs. boundaries/borders meet at different places, they are momentary locations in transition beyond which one attempts to move, they are in-between sites that are simultaneously complex articulations of binaries, and they are able to disturb conventional thinking in traditional notions in border crossings (ashcroft, 2001; mignolo, 2007). boundaries/borders are messy and multifaceted notions consisting of, and slipping between, physical infrastructures, institutional practices and socially constructed meanings that soja (2005) suggests, are life’s spatial regulators. indeed, two themes seem to emerge out of the current scholarship on borders that are worth considering here. firstly, bauman (2001) and beck, bonass & lau (2003) are among those who point to the pluralisation and mobility of borders, and the attempts to draw them, as key characteristics of contemporaneity. while describing the attributes of reflexive modernity, beck et al. (2003 p. 19) argue that: 1. boundaries cease to be given and instead become choices. drawing boundaries becomes optional; 2. simultaneous with that, there is a multiplication of the plausible ways in which boundaries can be drawn, as well as the ways in which they can be brought into doubt; 3. the existence of multiple boundaries changes … the nature of boundaries themselves. they become not boundaries so much as a variety of attempts to draw boundaries. beck et al. (2003) apply this thesis specifically to the boundaries of the sciences, and argue that as a consequence of the critiques of science studies and the inclusion of previously excluded knowledges, the authority for scientific boundary drawing has moved beyond the scientific academy itself (also gieryn, 1999). “the boundaries of knowledge – that is, the boundaries between scientific and unscientific, between science and politics, and between experts and layman – have now been drawn in several places at the same time” (p.20) … making it “abundantly clear that every given is in fact a choice, and that at the level of fundamental propositions, such ultimate starting points can only be normatively grounded, or http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci carter: recovering traditional ecological knowledge transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 23 defended as useful a priori constructs” (p.16). “the foremost public task of science is no longer to silence controversies, but rather to enable them, that is, to enable different public voices to be heard and to make themselves count” (p. 21). hence, for beck et al. (2003), the legitimising of all knowledge, particularly science, under the messy complexities of contemporaneity only occurs when communally agreed procedures and criteria produce constantly revisable, reflexive and practical knowledge that distinguishes better solutions from worse. this means that beck et al. (2003), and bauman (2001) view contemporary “boundaries … as fluid as the power balances whose projections they are” (p. 141), while shields (2006) notes that as boundary-drawing is less taken for granted, we must be prepared to accommodate the consequent increased contestation. secondly, newer types of border studies research reconceptualises the spatiality of borders and boundaries. in this view, borders become zones or interfaces (also called hybrid, liminal and interstitial spaces) where potentially contradictory discourses overlap and discrepant kinds of meaning-making converge, encoding unpredictability at the edges of stability. the border “reveals that it is a sort of virtual and semiotic force field which translates, connecting and disconnecting the codes of adjacent systems and forms willy-nilly” (shields, 2006, p. 229). shields (2006) discusses the internal dynamism and flux with border spaces both material and abstract, concluding that it is the productive performance within the space that is generative of many possibilities. hence, borders he argues, are active translation technologies which mediate between the adjacent fields. “in other words, interfacial boundaries have their own specific rules and semiotic orders, distinct from the fields or systems which they lie between (p. 230)”. this idea of a dynamic border zone has been postulated by others, most notably by postcolonial scholar homi bhabha with his idea of hybridity and hybrid spaces (see bhabha. 1994). like shields (2006), bhabha (1994, p. 7) views border situations as “not part of the continuum of past and present,” but where identities are performed and “create a sense of the new as an insurgent act of cultural translation”. those who live border lives are empowered argues bhabha (1994), to actively intervene and transform their knowledges and practices into new and unexpected hybrids that are never total and complete, and always in the act of becoming, open to change, and desirous of pursuing errant and unpredictable paths. the recognition of the historical and social contingency of borders and boundaries, and of the limits imposed by current epistemic orders has been, argues nederveen pieterse (2000), a profound moment of postmodern reflexivity. this makes boundaries of knowledge critical, as the capacity to renegotiate and replace boundaries as epistemological limits is deeply implicated in transformative global processes now operating in a wide variety of circumstances (ashcroft, 2001) including that of snively and corsiglia’s (2001) tek and western science. summary my main purpose here has been to draw attention to the need for a more complicated view of borders, border zones and border thinking in multicultural science education discourses that wish to utilise tek to extend approaches to ecological sustainability amongst other purposes. i want to trouble the taken-for-granted construct of ‘border-crossing’ that abounds within the multicultural science education, and unintentionally keeps the dominant position of western science intact while it seems to be valorising tek. and i want to caution about the very use of tek in a simplistic manner, appealing though it may be. offering a more problematic and complicated of view of borders and tek helps us to be vigilant to the possibilities of ongoing modernity/coloniality agendas within our own scholarship as we approach complex and contentious issues of the global world. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci carter: recovering traditional ecological knowledge transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 24 references aikenhead, g.s. (2001). integrating western and aboriginal sciences: cross-cultural science teaching. research in science education, 31(3), 337-355. aikenhead, g.s. (1997). towards a first nations cross-cultural science and technology curriculum. science education, 81, 217-238. aikenhead, g.s. (1996). science education: border crossing into the subculture of science. studies in science education, 27, 1-52. aikenhead, g.s. & jegede, o.j. (1999). cross-cultural science education: a cognitive explanation for a cultural phenomenon. journal of research in science teaching, 36(3), 269-287. ashcroft, b. (2001). post-colonial transformations. london: routledge. bauman, z. (2001). the great war of recognition. theory into practice, 18(2-3), 137-150. beck, u., bonass, w. & lau, c. (2003). the theory of reflexive modernization: problematic, hypotheses and research programme. theory, culture & society, 20(2), 1-33. berg, e. & van houtum, h. (2003). routing borders between territories, discourses and practices. aldershot, uk: ashgate. bhabha, h. (1994). the location of culture. london, uk: routledge. carter, l. (under review). the messy questions of knowledges and borders: some contemporary ideas for science education. science education. carter, l. (2006). the challenges of postcolonialism to science education. educational philosophy and theory. 38(5), 677-692. carter, l. (2004). thinking differently about cultural diversity: using postcolonial theory to (re)read science education. science education, 88(6), 819-836. corsiglia, j. & snively, g. (2001). rejoinder: infusing indigenous science into western modern science for a sustainable future. science education, 85, 82-86. fuller, g. (2000). the textual politics of good intentions: critical theory and semiotics. in a. lee & c. poynton (eds.). culture and text. discourse and methodology in social research and cultural studies. (pp. 81 98) nsw, australia: allen & unwin. gieryn, t. (ed.) (1999). cultural boundaries of science: credibility on the line. chicago: university of chicago press. huggan, g. (2001). the postcolonial exotic. london, uk: routledge. jegede, o. j. & aikenhead, g. s. (1999). transcending cultural borders: implications for science teaching. journal for science and technology education, 17, 45-66. mckinley, e. (2001). cultural diversity: masking power with innocence. science education, 85, 74-76. mignolo, w.d. (2007). delinking: the rhetoric of modernity, the logic of coloniality and the grammar of de-coloniality. cultural studies. 21(2-3), 449-514. newman, d. (2006). borders and bordering towards an interdisciplinary dialogue. european journal of social theory, 9(2), 171-185. nederveen pieterse, j. (2000). globalization north and south: representations of uneven development and the interaction of modernities. theory, culture & society, 17(1), 129137. ninnes, p. (2001). representations of ways of knowing in junior high school science texts used in australia. discourse, 22(1), 81-94. paasi, a. (2005). the changing discourses on political boundaries. in h.van houtum, o. kramsch & w. zierhofer, (eds.) b/ordering space. aldershot, uk: ashgate. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci carter: recovering traditional ecological knowledge transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 25 santos, b. (2007). beyond abyssal thinking: from global lines to ecologies of knowledges. retrieved 15 august 2007, from http://www.ces.uc.pt/bss/documentos/abyssalthinking.pdf shields, r. (2006). boundary-thinking in theories of the present: the virtuality of reflexive modernization. european journal of social theory, 9(2), 223-237. snively, g. & corsiglia, j. (2001). discovering indigenous science: implications for science education. science education, 85, 6-34. soja, e. (2005). globalization, regionalism, and the postmetropolitan transition. in h.van houtum, o. kramsch & w. zierhofer, (eds.) b/ordering space. aldershot, uk: ashgate. van houtum, h., kramsch, o. & zierhofer, w. (eds.) (2005). b/ordering space. aldershot, uk: ashgate. visvanathan, s. (2006). alternative science. theory, culture & society. 23(2-3), 164-169. welsch, w. (1999). transculturality: the puzzling form of cultures today. in m. featherstone & s. lash (eds.) spaces of culture. city, nation world. london, uk: sage publications ltd. author lyn carter is a senior lecturer in science and sustainability education in the faulty of education at the australian catholic university, melbourne campus, victoria, australia. email: lyn.carter@acu.edu.au http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci http://www.ces.uc.pt/bss/documentos/abyssalthinking.pdf mailto:carter@acu.edu.au to cite this article please include all of the following details: beck, kumari. (2013). talking back: autoethnography and the contact zone.transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> talking back: autoethnography and the contact zone kumari beck1 simon fraser university, canada what is the place of unsolicited oppositional discourse, parody, resistance, critique in the imagined classroom community? are teachers supposed to feel that their teaching has been most successful when they have eliminated such things and unified the social world, probably in their own image? who wins when we do that? who loses? (pratt, 1991, p. 39) discovering imperial eyes the world may have shrunk, but ‘the international’ is still commonly associated with adventure, exploration, new horizons and romanticism about encountering the exotic other. the acceleration of globalization has brought new opportunities for the exploration of people and places, and new iterations of encounters with the other through media, travel, trade and vast scale human mobility. the focus of my present inquiry is in the new forms of educational ventures intensified through globalization: the prolific increase in international education with its stated goals of getting to know and understand people and places outside of one’s geographic boundaries, and promoted in the name of acquiring intercultural and global literacies. international education is considered the means to attain desired competencies and skills to function in a competitive global market place, and internationalization a key strategy and process to prepare graduates of higher education to become exemplary global citizens. the influence of globalization on education in general, and more specifically, on the practices of international education, continue to provide us with a rich ground for inquiry and it has been my primary area of research. i have examined a range of issues faced by educators caught up in the education of the international other and have explored conceptual pathways to understanding curriculum in this context such as bhabha’s (1990; 1994) notions of ‘third space’ and deleuze and guattari’s (1987) conceptualization of the rhizome. third space has been well discussed by aoki (2005), wang (2004) and others in terms of the tensions, the unpredictability, the incommensurability of difference, the multiplicity and the between (aoki’s analysis of ‘international’ as the ‘inter’).these have been invaluable contributions to understanding curriculum as international text and i have used these theories as frames of analyses for research on the internationalization of canadian universities. as i am becoming more immersed in the data emerging from a beck. talking back: autoethnography and the contact zone 37 transnational curriculum inquiry10 (2) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci current ethnographic study on internationalization at a canadian university, i am struck by the need for further discussion on the often subtle, sometimes hidden, power relations in international learning and teaching in the globalizing university.how do faculty address the ‘demand’ and ‘market-driven’ discourse that becomes attached to their courses resulting in meeting, sometimes, incommensurable difference in their classroom? what ideas of ‘international’ are created by students journeying to distant places in order to gain intercultural skills and competencies? and how are the students ‘from away’ who are arriving in our canadian universities and colleges in increasing numbers engaging with the curriculum of the internationalizing campus? i had to betterunderstand the positioning of those engaged in the internationalization process (students, faculty, staff, administrators) within institutional structures, how they contribute towards the discourses of international education, and more importantly, what theories could advance the conversation on curriculum as international text. it was at this juncture that i returned to a book by mary louise pratt, which had by this time been updated in a second edition. its theme of travel writing was very congruent with the materiality of the complex mobilities of international education. grounded in ananalysis of ‘centre-periphery’ relations, pratt (1992/2008) in ‘imperial eyes: travel writing and transculturation’ examines how the genre of travel writing in the imperial era influenced the shaping and construction of ‘the rest of the world’ for europe, how europe constructed itself in relation to these constructions of ‘people and places’, and how the ‘rest of the world’ constructed europe. while the book is an analysis of the travel writing genre in the domain of literary criticism, it is, more powerfully, a critique of the political and economic ideologies that drove colonialism. in considering this text, pratt’s analysis and its application to international education in the context of the political and economic ideologies of globalization became more apparent to me. furthermore, the particular usefulness of pratt’s conception of autoethnography will be the focus of this paper. as 18th and 19th century travel writing is the text that pratt examines, the contexts and practices of international education become the text that comes under my scrutiny. among the many inquiry questions pratt poses, she asks: “with what codes has travel and exploration writing produced ‘the rest of the world’ for european readerships at particular points in europe’s expansionist process? how has it produced europe’s evolving conceptions of itself in relation to something it became possible to call ‘the rest of the world’?”... (p. 4). it would be disingenuous to suggest an equivalency between colonial explorers who sought to acquire, possess, plunder, rule, and establish dominance for their nation, and internationally driven university programs and strategies. following pratt we can question, however, what role globalization plays in producing the ‘rest of the world’ for europe and north america, and further, what role international education plays in producing ‘the rest of the world’ for (mostly) western universities’ market-driven ‘expansionist processes’.in the increasing scholarship in this field, we can also see how today’s higher education institutions are seeking, perhaps, a dominance of a different kind: prestige, revenue, branding and status. in the flourishing marketplace where educational products and services are bought and sold, where desires for a particular kind of education are at once created and manipulated for profit, international education is advancing the economic agenda of globalization (brandenburg& de wit, 2011; marginson, 2006; unterhalter&carpentier, 2010). beck. talking back: autoethnography and the contact zone 38 transnational curriculum inquiry10 (2) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci pratt (1992/2008) continues by asking: “what did writers on the receiving end of european intervention do with those european codifications of their reality? how did they claim, revise, reject and transcend them? … how have europe’s subordinated others shaped europe’s construction of them and the places they inhabit?” (p. 4). thinking of the traditionally marginalized as being co-present with the dominant, shaping and influencing the representations of themselves through resistance, and participation in one’s selfproduction provides some measure of agency. although there is resistance to acknowledging that in practice we have ‘subordinated others’ in our universities, i am interested in extending the question to ask whether international students in western universities revise, reject and transcend western codifications of their reality. do they participate in western constructions of themselves, and the places they come from?more importantly, how do we include these realities in the notion of internationalized curriculum? these are questions that generate more discussion than can be addressed in this paper. i will limit the present conceptual paper to examining how pratt’s ideas can support the theorizing and framing of issues that are foundational to transnational curriculum, particularly in transcending current curricular discourses in international education. more specifically, i will argue how the notions of contact zone and related concepts can help to be a point of analysis as well as a critique of transnational curriculum that is driven by neocolonial ideologies. i am particularly interested in establishing how we can incorporate (and recognize) pratt’s notion of autoethnography and transculturation as positive and essential elementsin internationalized curriculum.pratt’s scholarship offers the possibility to see how people and knowledges are variously positioned, perhaps thwarting the very goals and outcomes of, and hopes for, the internationalization of curriculum. this latter hope was expressed in the emergence of a worldwide field of curriculum studies engaged in crossborder and cross-disciplinary conversations, exploring “theoretical and practical possibilities for building new transnational and transcultural solidarities in postcolonial curriculum inquiry” (gough, 2004, p. 1). it is in the spirit of such transnational and transcultural solidarity that i offer this introductory exploration of one pathway in postcolonial curriculum inquiry in internationalization of curriculum. i will first make a case for why a postcolonial idea such as the contact zone, is still useful in a discussion of curriculum as international text by tracing the dominant discourses of curriculum in international education through a historical overview. a brief summary of pratt’s conceptual basis in imperial eyes follows. i select key themes and concepts from pratt’s notion of the contact zone for further discussion, concluding with implications for curriculumin transnational contexts. an overview of curriculum discourses in international education the proliferation of international education in these past two decades conveys the idea that international academic mobility is a recent phenomenon. while the ‘edubusiness’ (luke, 2010) of international education may be new, the idea is not. historically, interest in and pursuit of international education appears to have emerged from the idea that a complete and well-rounded education includes transnational conversations, that is, going beyond one’s local and national borders to gain knowledge and intercultural understanding. some of the earliest historical examples include european scholars erasmus and comenius, and nalanda university in india. for both renaissance educator erasmus and 17th century comenius, the value of international exchanges was the creation of conditions for peace beck. talking back: autoethnography and the contact zone 39 transnational curriculum inquiry10 (2) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci through inter-cultural understanding, an understanding of others through the study of specific disciplines and subjects such as philosophy, history, geography, the classics and so on, and the coming together of many cultures through dialogue (gutek, 1993). nalanda university, established in 427 in bihar, india focused on buddhist studies, and also offered education in fine arts, mathematics, astronomy and politics. most importantly, nalanda attracted scholars and students from many other countries in the region, such as korea, japan, china, tibet, indonesia, persia and turkey (dutt, 1962), thus promoting the value of intercultural exchange of ideas in the overall education of the person and the community. in these historical examples of international education, becoming an educated person meant moving beyond the bounds of both geographical place and intellectual and disciplinary boundaries to encounter and engage with ideas and perspectives from those outside one’s culture and place. this focus on the mutualeducational benefits of international exchange changed from around the 18th century when the exploration of people, ideas and places moved from being an educational to a political strategy with european expansionism. this imperial project used education to maintain power and control of colonized peoples along with the missionary project of civilizing and enlightening ‘barbaric’ and ‘backward’ peoples. ‘international’ study was part of this mission, in both the export of western education to many other parts of the world, and in the sending of local elites to western universities, both carried out to ‘improve’ colonized peoples rather than a mutual exercise in intercultural exchange (willinsky, 1998) as evidenced in this classic example of the imperial curriculum: “... [w]e must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, indian in blood and colour, but english in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect” (macaulay, 1835, cited in thirumalai, 2003).these ideas have a significant legacy on education both abroad and at home (willinsky, 1998). it is in the dismantling of these colonial relations that the next phase of international education comes clearly into focus. the beginnings of international education in its contemporary form have been traced to the initiatives of 'development' soon after world war ii. through the marshall plan for the reconstruction of europe and various other projects, development aid was designed and implemented to ‘help’ the rest of the world to be restored, modernized and improved (sachs, 1992; esteva & prakash, 1998; waters, 1995). for example, educational assistance given to poorer nations in the form of technical assistance and expertise, including student and faculty exchange programs, are counted as being among the first international education activities in the post-secondary sector in canada (pengelly, 1989). the concept of internationalized curriculum in these international programs appears to be related to the goals of development: improving, helping, providing expertise and knowledge to people and institutions largely considered deficit and in need of improvement. the present wide-spread proliferation of international education is considered to be a response to, and even a product of, intensified globalization (bhandari & blumenthal, 2011; knight, 2008; unterhalter and carpentier, 2010) resulting in an intensification of the global/local flows of peoples, information, ideas, research, and capital in higher education institutions, particularly in more wealthy countries. the commercialism and neoliberal ideology that drives globalization has extended to education (rizvi, 2011; marginson, 2006) and although the university has been described as being inherently international, in the sense of knowledge and knowledge production transcending national borders, there beck. talking back: autoethnography and the contact zone 40 transnational curriculum inquiry10 (2) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci have been other ways in which the university is seeking to become explicitly global. for example, internationalization has become a key institutional strategy for canadian universities (aucc, 2007) seeking to brand and position themselves in a competitive market, and for becoming economically sustainable through the intensification of recruiting and retaining international students (e.g. marginson, 2006; wilkins and huisman, 2011; yonezawa and akiba 2009). these historical legacies implicate the international exchanges of ideas, curriculum, students and scholars, the very core of international education, in neo-colonial and economic frameworks that make the consideration of a contact zone framework both appropriate and essential in naming the points of inequity, crafting a response to them, and in understanding curriculum in the international context. imperial eyes pratt’s book begins with an account of a little known and yet remarkable historical artefact discovered in 1908 in the danish royal archive (guamonpoma website)2. it was an illustrated letter written by a peruvian aristocrat named felipe guamanpoma de ayala, to king phillip iii of spain, dated 1615. titled el primer nuevacorónica y buengobierno or the new chronicle and good governance and justice the 1200 page letter with 800 pages of text and 398 illustrations is written in the spanish literary form of the chronicle, and in a mix of quechua (the indigenous language) and rough spanish. it proposes, among other things, a ‘new view of the world’. as pratt describes, the guamanpoma letter is divided in two parts: the first a description of inca culture, and the second a critique of spanish rule followed by a proposed revisioning. it begins with a description of the christian story of adam and eve, related through imagery and narrative that reflects cultural artefacts and symbols of the inca. the letter then presents in detail an account of the andean people and culture, and it is claimed to be one of the earliest and most thorough documentations of andean life in those times. the next section is a very critical account of the spanish conquest, including a scathing indictment of the exploitation carried out by the spanish. guamanpoma appeals to the king of spain to stop the decimation and destruction of his people, and ends with a mock interview with the king, advising him of his responsibilities, and proposing a collaborative government including the elites of both the andeans and the spanish. this was his ‘new view of the world’. in analysing the material communication of the letter, pratt theorizes several concepts as an analytical framework that she applies to samples of travel writing in the rest of her book. the chapters following are case studies that illustrate the complex nature of centre-periphery relations, how these writings shaped both european thought and colonial attitudes, and the influences of the colonies on europe, evenon scientific ideas. for example, two chapters trace the evolution of natural history and the classification and coding of the natural world, demonstrating how knowledge became eurocentric. other chapters take up close analysis of travel writing texts in the tradition of literary criticism, supporting pratt’s conceptual arguments on how european subjectivities became shaped by these writings from the field. it is not my intention here to review the book and its contribution, nor to discuss the case studies in depth (a fascinating project for another time). my purposeistodraw attention tothe concepts that form the basis for this book, the contact zone, transculturation and autoethnography,and to discuss their relevance as analytical tools for the internationalization of curriculum. beck. talking back: autoethnography and the contact zone 41 transnational curriculum inquiry10 (2) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the contact zone pratt’s notion of the contact zone explains the encounter and points of contact between colonizing and native cultures. a contact zone is ‘the space of imperial encounters” (1992/2008, p.8), social spaces where disparate cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in highly asymmetrical relations of domination and subordination — like colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths as they are lived out across the globe today (p. 4). … the space in which peoples geographically and historically separated come into contact with each other and establish ongoing relations, usually involving conditions of coercion, radical inequality and intractable conflict (p.8) pratt borrows the term ‘contact’ from linguistics where the notion of contact language is used to describe an improvised language used for communication between speakers of different language, and commonly considered “chaotic, barbarous and lacking in structure” (p.8). she continues: “the term ‘contact’ foregrounds the interactive, improvisational dimension of imperial encounters so easily suppressed or ignored by accounts of conquest and domination told from the invader’s perspective” (p. 8). consistent with common analyses of colonial relationships (ashcroft, griffiths & tiffin, 2007; loomba, 1998), the contact zone serves to show how “subjects are constituted in and by their relation to each other” (pratt, 1992/2008, p. 8) and further characterized in terms of “co-presence, interaction, interlocking understandings and practices” (p. 8). the notion of the contact zone can be applied very easily to the classroom, as pratt herself has done (pratt, 1991; 1996). the globalizing campus can hardly be directly called a site of ‘coercion’, ‘intractable conflict’ in reference to the material and physical conditions of historical colonial violence. it can, however, be described as a symbolic contact zone or an educational contact zone created by globalization, where difference and radical inequality become more invisible forms, and where dominant cultural norms and ideas contain diversity and create power relations. connecting also with the work of benedict anderson (1991), pratt asserts that the academic community is an imagined one that avoids difference, a community being constructed as homogenous (with assumptions of shared language, communication, culture, rules and so on), and homogeneity serving to silence, marginalize and ‘other’. norms are established by the host institution, classrooms predicated on a homogenous body of students, and the relations between the newcomers and the host community are often marked by racial and other tensions. knowledge asymmetry is characteristic of the western university contact zone with english established as the language of international education especially in fields such as business, commerce, and applied sciences (rizvi, 2011). the university as contact zone would recognize the specificity of each person in the classroom, recognizing multiplicities of individual and group identities. while similar to bhabha’s (1990) third space, the contact zone emphasizes difference in its particularity, and recognizes the diverse forms of negotiation that occur in the contact zone. this recognition begins from the standpoint that asymmetrical and inequitable relations already exist, and seek to counter or transcend these realities through naming them, and encouraging, even inviting the kinds of improvisation and appropriation so well displayed in guamonpoma’sletter. pratt has used the contact zone in contrast to the notion of beck. talking back: autoethnography and the contact zone 42 transnational curriculum inquiry10 (2) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci community in academe, to “reconsider the models of community that many of us rely on in teaching and theorizing and that are under challenge today”(1991, p. 37), foregrounding practices of improvisation discussed later in this paper. anti-conquest in discussing the contact zone, pratt proposes several tropes to reflect the ways in which the unequal relations in the contact zone are constituted. one of these is anti-conquest, which refers to “ the strategies of representation whereby european bourgeois subjects seek to secure their innocence in the same moment as they assert their european hegemony”(p. 9). she expands on this through her detailed analysis of passages drawn from travel texts such as accounts of africa by richard burton, john speke, and paul du chaillu (pratt, 1992/2008, pp 197 – 213), identifying themes in their writing. for example, the theme ‘monarch of all i survey’, is revealed in the texts that reflect “mastery between seer and the seen” (p. 200), aesthetization (of what is seen) (p. 200, & 205), and the territorial mastery or ownership of what is seen (p. 205). the meaning that emerges of anti-conquest is that travel writers and explorers claim neutrality from the imperialist motivations and ideologies (the innocence), while representing and expressing the very ideology they are distancing from (the hegemony). applying this analysis to international education, the promotion and the market driven nature of the ‘edubusiness’ of international education is rarely if ever acknowledged by institutions at the feeding trough. innocence is maintained by distancing from any alignment with a market agenda, while participating in the very practices that reproduce them. the institutional ‘seer’ sees educational markets and sources for students, while at the same time, maintaining innocence through insisting that academic rationales are the basis for the pursuit of internationalization. this is made more complex by the fact that the desire for international education is driven by ‘the seen’, who in turn are trying to gain symbolic and cultural capital (bourdieu, 1986). aesthetization is accomplished by identifying the practices of internationalization as promoting cultural and international literacies, and, for example, in valourising the international student as the ‘exotic other’ carrying out the noble task of bringing diversity to the campus. the idea of anti-conquestcan be more frequently or visibly encountered in the area of study abroad, where domestic students of western institutions enroll in educational programs such as field schools, a semester away, exchanges and so on. without scrutiny, curriculum in the contact zone of study abroad can move in the direction of educational tourism, aesthetization of the experience, or promoting an unconscious ‘monarch of all i survey’ world view. most study-abroad programs in the west are promoted on the promise of personal transformation, ‘life-changing’ opportunities, and intercultural skills and competencies. first of all, these promises themselves are based on assumptions that ‘other’ people and places are a personal curriculum available for discovery, and lies in the mastery between the seer and the seen. the world and its people are there ‘for me’ to experience. it is also possible that superficial assignments set for students heading out into their unknown, such as requests to notice precisely those external facts and impressions of the other may lead them into aesthetizing their experience, or, at the other extreme, becoming narcissistic and self absorbed. it is from the anti-conquest stance that seemingly neutral, objective, or natural positions develop in the building of knowledge. much as the 18th century naturalists developed planetary consciousness through their categorization of the natural world, beck. talking back: autoethnography and the contact zone 43 transnational curriculum inquiry10 (2) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci sojourners from western universities today, ‘in the field’ for a semester or less, construct and create narratives and knowledge of those places. according to stier (2004) one of the problems of international educationalism is what he refers to as ‘academicentrism’, a belief that our ways of learning, teaching and research are superior to others, or that we have the solutions for solving complex, structural and systemic global issues (p. 91). curriculum for the contact zone must recognize the many ways in which the anticonquest strategies can move from self-absorption into that of vulnerability and the risk of the “interactive, improvisational dimension” (p. 8) that pratt observes of the contact zone. this requires a shift from the certainty or promise of having ‘life changing’ or ‘transformational’ experiences for the individual engaging in an international experience, to an uncertainty or unpredictability for self and others in the act of being co-present. autoethnography in analysing interactions in the contact zone, pratt identifies the practice of what she calls transculturation, the ways in which those engaged in the contact zone influence one another in representation and self-representation. for marginalized (in colonial times, the subordinated) groups, this process is one where they select and adapt from dominant cultural material. pratt theorizes transculturation in self representation as “autoethnography” or “autoethnographic expression”. autoethnography is commonly understood as a research method whose approach is to document and analyse one’s own experience and narrative as a way to understand culture (ellis, adams &bochner, 2011), but as we can see, pratt’s usage is goes further. pratt considers the guamonpoma letter to be an example of an autoethnographic text, that is “text in which people undertake to describe themselves in ways that engage with representations others have made of them” (pratt, 1991, p. 35). thus if ethnographic texts are those in which european metropolitan subjects represent to themselves their others (usually their conquered others), autoethnographic texts are representations that the so-defined others construct in response to or in dialogue with those texts (pratt, 1991, p. 35) several significant features about the guamonpoma letter have been identified by pratt and others. key among them is that guamonpoma, whose people did not have a written language, fashioned a written text by appropriating the spanish form of the chronicle, improvised with quechua, and indigenized with andean symbols and representations. he uses andean styles and images in his improvised depiction of cultural stories of the spanish colonizer, specifically, christian narratives. another notable feature is said to be his parody of spanish life and history, his denigration of spanish values (‘they brought nothing of value to the andeans to share but armor and guns’ pratt, 1991, p. 35), and his critique of the abusive administration of the spanish. these elements, including the presumption of telling the spanish king how he ought to govern, were gestures that were at once courageous, provocative and somehow changes the colonizer’s constructionof him as the powerless subordinate. furthermore, these texts, as pratt analyses, are a marginalized group’s point of entry into a dominant group’s linguistic, cultural and social domains, although the text itself speaks to both the dominant group as well as their own community. they represent forms of collaboration between these groups: albeit on the terms of the dominant group, but with important insertions from the other group. in applying these ideas to curriculum in the global campus, i consider the improvisation and “unsolicited oppositional discourse, parody, resistance, critique” (pratt, beck. talking back: autoethnography and the contact zone 44 transnational curriculum inquiry10 (2) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 1991, p. 35) as significant strategies to both recognize and invite. another point of consideration is the active seeking of moments of co-presence, whether they be speech acts or texts. if curriculum were to recognize and legitimize transculturation, we would try to understand the ways in which students may incorporate or resist their own perceptions of host culture attitudes towards them as, for example, racial or gendered or simply different ‘others’. while the act of transculturation, supreme resistance and ‘talking back’ makes the guamonpoma text remarkable in the context of colonial relations, it is also the reality that the letter may not have reached the king, or if it did, had no impact on the invitation to dialogue extended to him, nor in the unfolding of the domination of andean peoples. further, the act of initiating autoethnographic text remains with those from the marginalized group, an din the case of guamonpoma, a courageous, if naïve,gesture. pratt (1999) expands on this matter of autoethnography in relation to indigenous people under colonial rule. she observes: …being the other of a dominant culture involves living in a bifurcated universe of meaning. on the one hand, one must produce oneself as a self for oneself. that is survival. at the same time the system also requires that you produce yourself as an ‘other’ for the colonizer’ (pratt, 1999, p. 40) this constant negotiation required of ‘living in a bifurcated universe of meaning’ and the labour of producing oneself in multiple ways lays the burden yet again on the ‘other’, and has implications for our design of curriculum as international text. in inviting the lived experience of the international student, for example, how do we recognize the multiple negotiations that are the result of living in a contact zone?for the most part, it is their‘international identity’ that the student is required to produce, and which validates their presence on the campus. in taking into consideration students’ lived experience, do we unwittingly project and even invite them to produce themselves in an expected ‘international’ identity, and what aspects of their lived identity do we encourage? appropriation and improvisation, after all, could also be read as evidence of being substandard, never measuring up, instead of it being recognized as a creative act of talking back. international students in the university contact zone are constantly expected to conform, express oneself in the dominant language and abide by the cultural norms and rules of the host culture. failure to successfully integrate and assimilate into the host institution’seducational literacies as well as the disciplinary literacies may result in the loss or failure to achieve the academic credential they seek. integrating the notion of autoethnography into curricular discourses in the academy poses a challenge to the traditional consideration of cultures, literatures, texts, and disciplines as bounded, discrete, monolingual and having purity of discipline. it would require us to recognize autoethnographic texts as heterogenous, rather than backwards or chaotic. this would require a significant effort in recognizing the value of what we might term as a supportive negotiation, and a welcoming of curricular talking back. learning to talk back understanding the internationalizing university as an educational contact zoneis not simply an academic exercise. it lays bear the invisible ways in which cultural texts are created, knowledge established, multiple ideologies ‘clash’ and intertwine in the university contact zone and beyond, in the field of international education. the latter is marked by simplistic beck. talking back: autoethnography and the contact zone 45 transnational curriculum inquiry10 (2) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci definitions of the processes and practices, including curriculum, that reflect more the influence of commodification than thoughtful educational principles. this initial exploration has revealed the possibilities for both critiquing curriculum in the contact zone, and for transcending it through acts of transculturation. in this regard, new questions emerge in the conversation:can one learn autoethnographic improvisation? will the act of intentionally recognizing improvisation, kill the very act of talking back?while these questions remain key in understanding whether the notion of transculturation can further advance the internationalization of curriculum.another question that emerged for me was the points of connection between autobiography and autoethnography. although they appear to be different forms of self representation, the former as emanating from the writer/speaker, and the latter formed in response to dominant cultural expressions, there are sufficient points of convergence to merit further exploration. pinar’s (2004) summary and discussion of alterity and autobiography reflects some of these ideas: for example, the problematics of a unified self that autobiography appears to promote; that of creating a self ‘to preserve oneself’ (p. 49) and ‘the self as witness” (p. 49), and, citing gusdorf (1980), that “the point of autobiography is to reveal the autobiographer’s effort to ‘give meaning of his own mythic tale’ “ (p. 49). this latter focus on the autobiographer’s effort to give meaning, is very much what transculturation is about, in terms of the relational aspect of autobiography. pinar reviews friedman’s (1988, cited in pinar, 2004) on this matter.friedman, according to pinar, argues how the individualistic definitions of identity give rise to understandings of autobiography that ignore the “social and political configurations of oppression and colonization” (p. 54), differences in socialization, and “ the role of collective and relational identities” (p. 54), hence leading to an individualistic view of autobiography. likewise, pratt’s notions of autoethnography and transculturation are more grounded in a collective and relational rather than the traditional understanding autoethnography as an individualistic act, tracing a singular story. furthermore, autoethnography as transculturation places an emphasis on the interdependent nature of the colonial/power relationship. friedman (1988, cited in pinar, 2004, p. 56) argues of this “interdependent existence … [where] lives are so thoroughly entangled that each of them has its centre everywhere and its circumference nowhere.” the value, for me, of moving to pratt’s ideas is the unexplored possibilities relating to the improvisational alongside positive benefits of appropriation in transcultural curriculum. i look forward to following some of these theoretical conversations in the context of my research, and also in the classroom, in the former as an analytical lens, and in the latter, more importantly, as a way of understanding and incorporating a curriculum that acknowledges the need for a talking back. to conclude with pratt, autoethnography, transculturation, critique, collaboration, bilingualism, mediation, parody, denunciation, imaginary dialogue, vernacular expression: these are some of the literate arts of the contact zone. miscomprehension, incomprehension, dead letters, unread masterpieces, absolute heterogeneity of meaningthese are some of the perils of writing in the contact zone (1991, p. 37) there is much to be given up in guamonpoma’s call for ‘a new view of the world’, and as members of the western academy participating in the mass-scale ‘schooling’ of the world, pratt’s arts of the contact zone are important ideas to consider. notes beck. talking back: autoethnography and the contact zone 46 transnational curriculum inquiry10 (2) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 1 e-mail: kvbeck@sfu.ca 2this account of guamonpoma (pratt, 1992/2008) is based on an earlier article, the arts of the contact zone (pratt, 1991) and also included in an edited volume (pratt, 1996). i will be using both versions of the account in this article. references 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(1991). imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism. london & new york: verso. aoki, t. (2005). legitimating lived curriculum. toward a curricular landscape of multiplicity. in william pinar & rita irwin (eds.), curriculum in a new key: the collected works of ted aoki. mahwah, nj & london: lawrence erlbaum associates, publishers. ashcroft, b., griffiths, g., & tiffin, h. (2007). postcolonial studies: the key concepts. london & new york: routledge. association of universities and colleges of canada. (2007). internationalizing canadian campuses: report on findings of the 2006 survey on internationalization. association of universities and colleges of canada. available at http://www.aucc.ca/_pdf/english/publications/aucc-scotia_web_e.pdf beck, k. (2009). seeking the ‘inter’: contextualizing, contesting and conceptualizing the internationalization of curriculum. in nahachewksy, j. & johnston, i. 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(2010). global inequalities and highereducation: whose interests are we serving? new york: palgrave macmillan. wang, h. (2004). the call from the stranger on a journey home: curriculum in a third space. new york: peter lang. waters, m. (1995). globalization. london & new york: routledge. wilkins, s., and j. huisman. (2011). student recruitment at international branch campuses: can they compete in the global market? journal of studies in international education15, (3), 299–316. willinsky, j. (1998). learning to divide the world: education at empire’s end. minneapolis & london: university of minnesota press. yonezawa, a., &akiba, h. (2009). japanese university leaders’ perceptions of internationalization: the role of government in review and support. journal of studies in international education 13, (2), 125–142. beck. talking back: autoethnography and the contact zone 48 transnational curriculum inquiry10 (2) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci submitted: november, 13th, 2012 approved: october, 15th, 2013 o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: rüsselbæk hansen, dion, m. phelan, anne & qvortrup, ane. (2015). teacher education in canada and denmark in an era of ‘neutrality”. transnational curriculum inquiry volume 12 (1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> teacher education in canada and denmark in an era of ‘neutrality’ dion rüsselbæk hansen1, anne m. phelan2 & ane qvortrup 3 university of southern denmark, denmark & university of british columbia, canada …without conflict and division, a pluralist democratic politics would be impossible. (laclau & mouffe, 2001, p. xvii). words are never ‘only words’; they matter because they define the contours of what we can do. (zizek, 2008a, p. 3). introduction teacher education prepares teachers to fit into existing norms and structures of profession, schooling and society; it plays an integrating rather than a radicalizing role whereby dominant political sensibilities and habitual patterns of inference are reproduced (britzman, 2003; phelan, 2001; lortie, 1975). it is largely assumed that democracy takes the form of the state and that the role of state-funded schooling and teachers is the production of citizens for the state. little effort is made in initial teacher education to engage the political by complicating these assumptions or by questioning the historical significance of ideological conflict for social and educational policy (ranciere, 2010; zizek, 2009). as such, teacher education is complicit in concealing society’s differences, naturalizing political regimes of truth, and producing teachers in keeping with state interests. historically, two discourses – idealism and realism – have structured the social order, public schooling and teacher education, creating two distinct forms of “consensus democracy” in both canada and denmark (newman, 2007, p. 146). consensus democracy presents itself as post-ideological and it exists when one perspective has become so deeply entrenched that it has become orthodoxy for all on the political spectrum (newman, 2007). the discourse of idealism is associated with the social democratic welfare state while the discourse of realism underpins the neo-liberal competition state. while welfarism promotes collectivism, solidarity (briggs, 1961/2009), and equality, neo-liberalism promotes individualism, competition, and inequality (cerny, 1997). the goal of welfarism, based on the ideal of ‘all the best to all’, is to maintain the social order and promote human and social rights in the larger society (integrating educational questions with economic, social, environmental and political questions). state schooling and teachers’ colleges are positioned as “responsible for … securing the social promotion of society and eradicating the sources of evil, poverty and oppression which prevent it from corresponding to its idea” (donzelot, 1988, p. 424). the goals of neo-liberalism are concerned with maintaining the economic status quo, defending free-market capitalism by making it more effective in terms of global competition (moore, 2015; pedersen, 2011). as such, educational relations are rüsselbæk hansen, m. phelan & qvortrup. teacher education in canada and denmark an era of 41 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (1) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci cast in terms of “value, competitive individualism and market exchange” (moore, 2015, p. 209) and the production of exploitative identities for students (i.e. self-stylized, test scoredriven, entrepreneurial ‘learners’ that abuse their own talents to do well within the system) is the singular preoccupation. there is little doubt that the discourse of realism has achieved hegemony in both national contexts. as educational relations are increasingly cast in terms of commodification, their political dimension, as extensions of the power of capital, becomes increasingly obscured. the grand seductions of realism and idealism need to be understood if we are to appreciate the complicity of teacher education with political regimes of truth and the (ab)use of teacher education as a neutralizing agent of “consensus democracy” (newman, 2007, p. 150). in what follows we trace the rise of welfarism and neo-liberalism in both canada and denmark. we illustrate the entanglements of teacher education (i.e. teacher subjectification) with the currently hegemonic rule of neo-liberalism. and, we ask (we hope not naively!) if teacher education could play a radicalizing role rather than have its efforts recuperated or neutralized by the state? could teacher education provide a space for revealing and engaging political difference, for producing conditions in which different modes of teacher subjectivity are possible (other than those planned for them by the state), and for imagining new social-political worlds? we argue that if teacher education is to be more than a tool for “consensus democracy”(newman, 2007, p. 150), it has to reject an understanding of democracy as a form of the state soverneignty and promote “an ethic of contestability” that remains open to difference and division (newman, 2007, p. 139). understanding the political: beyond consensus toward radical democracy we turn to the work of ernest laclau and chantal mouffe to help us interrogate the basic assumptions of consensus democracy, and to wonder about the possibilities of embracing democracy in terms of agonistic pluralism – the necessary existence of dispute and disagreement about contested ideological views. while the political reveals a society’s difference to itself (rancière, 2010), politics is that “ensemble of practices, discourses and institutions that seeks to establish a certain order and to organize human coexistence in conditions which are always potentially conflicting, since they are affected by the dimension of the political” (mouffe, 2013, p. 23). every kind of social order is ‘hegemonic’ because it is the product of ‘hegemonic practices’ aimed at the creation of social institutions and the establishment of order “in a context of contingency” (p. 2). as such, every order (and every attempt at consensus) is the expression of a particular configuration of power relations; things could be otherwise and “every order is predicated on the exclusion of other possibilities” (p. 2). the universality that is inherent in any hegemony results from the interrelationships between “logics of difference and logics of equivalence” (laclau & mouffe, 2001, p. xiii). social actors occupy differential positions within the discourses that constitute the social fabric. as such they are all “particularities.” however, there are “social antagonisms” that create “internal frontiers” within society (p. xiii). through oppressive forces, for instance, a set of particularities establishes relations of equivalences between themselves; “the relation, by which a certain particularity assumes the representation of a universality entirely incommensurable with it,” is what laclau and mouffe call “a hegemonic relation” (p. xiii). the result is a “contaminated” universality, which “lives in this unresolvable tension between universality and particularity”; that said, the hegemonic universality does not last forever as it is always reversible (p. xiii). rüsselbæk hansen, m. phelan & qvortrup. teacher education in canada and denmark an era of 42 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (1) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci universality is a political universality and is dependent on the internal boundaries within society. the argument follows that antagonisms are not objective relations, but relations, which reveal the limits of all objectivity. society if constituted around these limits, and they are antagonistic limits … conceived literally…. this is why we conceive of the political not as a superstructure but as having the status of an ontology of the social (p. xiv) in these sense, social division is inherent to the very possibility of a (democratic) politics. all forces are fighting for hegemony and the possibility of challenge to the dominant regime is ever present. the political, according to mouffe (2013), refers to this aspect of antagonism that can take various forms and cannot be eliminated or overcome. this suggests that antagonism is inherent to all societies; it is, at the same time, the condition of possibility and the condition of impossibility of every identity. “proper political questions,” she writes, “always involve decisions that require making a choice between conflicting alternatives” (p. 3). antagonism would foreclose any possibility of “a final reconciliation, of any kind of rational consensus, of a fully inclusive ‘we’” (laclau & mouffe, 2001, p. xvii). any form of consensus is the result of a hegemonic articulation, “and that it always has an‘outside’ that impedes its full realization” (p. xviii). for us, a non-exclusive public sphere of rational argument is a conceptual impossibility. conflict and division, in our view, are neither disturbances that unfortunately cannot be eliminated nor empirical impediments that render impossible the full realization of a harmony that we cannot attain because we will never be able to leave our particularities completely aside in order to act in accordance with our rational self – a harmony which should nonetheless constitute the idea towards which we strive. indeed, we maintain that without conflict and division, a pluralist democratic politics would be impossible (p. xvii). the challenge is how to establish an us/them distinction, which for mouffe (2013) is constitutive of politics, in a way that is compatible with the recognition of pluralism. the aim of democratic politics is to transform antagonism (struggle between enemies) into agonism (struggle among adversaries) (p. 7). agonistic politics asserts that all ideas deserve to be heard and defended. so while adversaries (e.g., advocates for a welfare vs. competition state) may disagree vehemently about what constitutes a good education or the good of education, both must agree in the importance of “the agonistic struggle” as the very condition of a living democracy within and beyond the profession (clarke & phelan, forthcoming). following laclau and mouffe (2001), therefore, it seems that if democracy is to exist that conflict must be created and sustained. however, how do antagonisms emerge? what are the conditions that need to be in place or at play? a brief history of how the once hegemonic welfare state gave way to the neo-liberal hegemony of the competition state in two western states is illustrative in this regard. rüsselbæk hansen, m. phelan & qvortrup. teacher education in canada and denmark an era of 43 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (1) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci antagonistic relations: welfarism and neo-liberalism the term ‘welfare state’ is of relatively recent origin and was apparently first used in the english language in a book from 1941 written by william temple (moscovitch, 2006). from the beginning of the 1960s, the term was used more systematically to describe a range of western state activities to modify the play of the market forces by guaranteeing families and individuals a minimum income regardless of market value and by developing a social system where: “all citizens without distinction of status or class are offered the best standards available in relation to a certain agreed range of social services” (briggs, 1961/2009, p. 228). ‘all the best to all’ was the idealistic welfare state ethos. public professions, it was believed, should and could realize this ethos. within the welfare state discourse, professions are met with high expectations and are seen as a positive ‘nodal point’ of creating a welfare state with equality of opportunity for ‘all citizens’ (see parsons, 1968; 1978). the professions serve to define what is normal/right based on the values institutionalized in society (richardson, 1997, p. 635). rather than a race-to-the-top discourse, the school is understood using keywords as democracy, social community, social responsibility, public interest, solidarity, justice and equality (telhaug, mediås and aasen, 2006; arnesen and lundahl 2006; cerny, 1997). the underlying rationality behind these words is based on an assumption of social consensus and neutrality ‘free’ from antagonisms, contradictions, and ambivalences. the welfare discourse was heavily criticized during the 1970s and 1980s. the public professions were criticised for not been able live up to the increasing expectations and the accelerating world, where today’s solutions are ‘antiquated’ tomorrow and they were criticised for social and professional closure in their striving for wealth, power and status (abbot, 1988). the economic burden of the professions was also criticised. in 1981 the organization for economic co-operation and development (oecd) warned that the welfare state faced a financial crisis, which could lead to economic or moral bankruptcy of the state (fujimura, 2000; andersen, 1997). during the 1990s globalization became a central concept to describe new challenges and changes in the western welfare societies (giddens, 1990). globalization brought about major changes in society and these changes also produced changes in human relationships, which can be described as a move from community (being long lasting) to association (characterized as open and with flexible structures). within the understanding of society as community, knowledge was cultural and changed slowly, and therefore it could be regarded as truth (jarvis, 2007: 37). globalization brought about a time where no fixed social knowledge existed. confidence in what we can call idealism or in great narratives/ethos’ had declined (lyotard, 1984; rorty, 1989; telhaug; mediås and aasen, 2006). using two of tönnies central concepts, cerny argues that we can understand the above transformation as an erosion of the underlying bond/rationality (gemeinschaft) to a pragmatic association for common ends (gesellschaft). the combination of the economic institution and information technology points us to the location of global power. the welfare state project became ‘reformulated’ in terms of marketization and competitiveness terms, which are assumed to mirror the real ‘natural’ order (cerny, 1997; rorty, 1979). if neo-liberalism is understood as a doctrine or ideology it is both anti-state and anti-bureaucracy and relies on adam smith’s classic economic dictum that the ‘invisible hand’ will regulate the market without interference. if we look at neo-liberalismas a set of governmental practices, as we do here, we are not witnesses to a decline of the state (peters, 2009). instead the state is expected – in the name of necessity – to install market norms in rüsselbæk hansen, m. phelan & qvortrup. teacher education in canada and denmark an era of 44 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (1) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci public institutions (hood, 1991). the state must ensure that these institutions do market in ‘the right competitive way’. the type of neo-liberalism we are confronted with today has not abandoned the belief in reason; however, it is another type of reason that is at stake. instead of an ‘idealism’, which provided the starting point for the welfare state project, today’s competition state is based on ‘realism’. here, ‘real reason’ is essential and instrumental; it is founded on ‘objective’ facts in the form of numbers, statistics, standards, evidence-based (evaluation) methods and quantitative conclusions (lakoff, 2009; taubman, 2009; rüsselbæk hansen and qvortrup 2013). neo-liberalism as the pervasive hegemony in western societies has had a profound impact on politics generally and the identity of the left specifically. an excellent example of this is britain’s ‘third way’ that poses as a non-partisan consensus/common sense. the argument is that the demise of communism, the onset of globalization and the social transformation associated with information society has rendered right/left politics and their associated antagonisms obsolete (laclau & mouffe, 2001). this state of affairs was also evident in 2013 in denmark in the context of a teachers’ lockout where even the leftist parties sided with the government against the teachers’ organization. a politics without frontiers – a win-win politics where solutions could favour everyone in society – suggests that political problems are technical problems (e.g. crisis in literacy and numeracy; cost of education too high for the taxpayer) and no longer structured around social division. similarly, tight fiscal constraints faced by governments are the only realistic possibility in a globalized world wherein global markets disallow any deviation from neoliberal orthodoxy. the situation is posited as a historical necessity rather than the result of “a conjectural state of affairs” … “there are no more left-wing or right-wing economic policies, only good and bad ones” (laclau & mouffe, 2001, p. xvi). in education, the programme for international student assessment (pisa) scores are taken as truth – irrefutable and incontestable – an objective ground of consensus upon which educational reform can be based and justified. detached from their political dimension they become a fate and a fantasy (vs. a particular configuration of power relations) to which we must all submit (zizek 2008b). to resist the hegemony of neo-liberalism and to deepen and extend the democratic revolution, one could argue, involves the desacralization of consensus, the reassertion of frontiers between left and right, and the refusal to move to the centre. in this way, liberal democracies with their constitutive values of liberty and equality for all are maintained and “the system of power which redefines and limits the operation of those values” is overturned (laclau & mouffe, 2001, p. xv). it is clear that democracy is not a simple competition among different interests taking place on neutral terrain; the structure of power relations that configure and position those interests rendering some more potent than others cannot be ignored; neither can the possibility of establishing a new hegemony. how are the teaching profession and teacher education in canada and denmark implicated in this hegemonic neo-liberal social order? consensual politics and the teaching profession in canada and denmark both the canadian and the danish political contexts might be described in terms of a series of complex, contradictory antagonistic ideas. welfarism enforces the democratic rights of all citizens, including the protection of minorities in the spirit of pluralism, while economic neo-liberalism, emphasizing individual choice, property rights, and ‘free’governmental controlled market, is installed in our respective education systems by the state. rüsselbæk hansen, m. phelan & qvortrup. teacher education in canada and denmark an era of 45 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (1) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci british columbia, canada the battle between these two forms of liberalism at the provincial level in canada (which is where jurisdiction over education resides) is reflected in recent policy reform. on the one hand, we witness an increasing emphasis on “student and parental choice, individual freedoms, competition, and accountability” and on the other hand, “a push from teacher education institutions and the profession itself for more autonomy and respect, with a desire for greater professionalization and self-regulation” (walker & von bergmann, 2013, p. 87). in the canadian province of british columbia, for example, self-regulation takes the form of the british columbia teachers’ council, which receives its mandate from the teachers act and is responsible for establishing standards for teachers in the areas of teacher education, certification, conduct and competence (http://www.bcteacherregulation.ca/aboutus/council.aspx). however, british columbia has signed on to the agreement for internal trade (ait) a labour mobility agreement across provinces; in this regard, henley and young (2009) fear a significant surrender of provincial jurisdiction in teacher education policy due to ait, given the lack of inclusion of a cross-section of educational stakeholders and the lack of debate (walker & von bergmann, 2013). if the definition of professionalism is related to concepts like professional ‘freedom’, autonomy, codes of ethics, co-determination and self-regulation (hargreaves 2000; carr, 2000; ball 2003; pinar 2012), one can say that the rhetoric of professionalization is evident in policy. (see: british columbia’s standards for the education, competence and conduct of teachers, 2004). there is at the same time a move towards deprofessionalization by weakening teachers unions (british columbia teachers federation – bctf) and collective bargaining processes (walker & von bergmann, 2013). recently, a bill attempting to reduce the power of school boards and to mandate particular forms of professional development for teachers was introduced in british columbia. such attempts at centralization has already begun in another western canadian province, alberta, where there is far less professional self-regulation in the face of government regulation of teacher education including the promotion of a competency-based professionalism, the articulation of 17 professional standards (for beginning teachers; 11 for certified teachers), and the monitoring of teachers’ professional development activities. in both british columbia and alberta, regimes of accountability exist in the forms of standardized testing and representation in school league tables (a form of public shaming). the upshot of many of these policies is that they fuel the anxieties of prospective teachers and their teacher educators about the achievement of standards, replacing concerns about the ethical-political dimensions of teaching with strictly technical concerns. antagonistic relations at the provincial level was evident recently in the protracted teachers’ strike in the province of british columbia. neo-liberal government efforts to increase funding to private education (since 1970s), to privatize public education (via international fee-paying students) and to reduce funding to public education both in the form of teacher salaries (lower than the majority of provinces) and in the provision of working conditions related to class size and composition (refusing the supreme court of b.c. ruling that the latter must legally be part of the teachers’ collective bargaining as they constitute teachers’ work conditions) led to a four month teacher strike. the neo-liberal education agenda is clearly outlined in harris & manning’s (2005) polemic titled, “caring for canadians in a canada strong and free”. this agenda is coming increasingly into focus http://www.bcteacherregulation.ca/aboutus/council.aspx rüsselbæk hansen, m. phelan & qvortrup. teacher education in canada and denmark an era of 46 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (1) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci in british columbia with standardized testing regimes. the social liberalism of canadians was evident, however, in bc public opinion about the teachers’ strike where 2-1 members of the public supported the teachers. denmark the jurisdiction over education in denmark resides not as in canada at the provincial level, but at the national level and since 1789, it has been government-controlled. the teacher education programme for primary and lower secondary levels are institutionally situated at one of the seven university colleges in denmark and not at the universities (ministry of science, innovation and higher education, 2013). since the beginning of the 1990s, teacher education has been reformed several times. this ‘reform desire’ relates to the circumstance that the international association for educational achievement in the beginning of the 1990s revealed that the danish students in primary school did not live up to the national expectations. this was a shock for the politicians and the public and was a springboard for questioning the welfare inspired school pedagogy, which was supposed to “facilitate social equality and access unexploited intellectual reserves” and “secure the reproduction of values” (schmidt, 2011, p. 311-312). today, a neo-liberal discourse of realism has gained hegemony as evidenced in heightened managerialism and evidence-based evaluation at the school level and competency-based teacher education at the tertiary level. while the ‘traditional’ welfare state rhetoric of professionalization continues to be evident in teacher education policies in denmark, teacher education is increasingly being regarded as a nodal point for the realization of political ambitions (danish ministry of education, 2013a). the national teacher education program states that the teacher candidate must develop “fundamental teaching competences needed to ensure pupils’ learning, development and well-being”. it points out that the teacher candidate must “implement the mission statement of the danish public school system”, “develop professional ethics”, and be able “to deal with complex challenges within the teaching profession in the context of cultural, value-based and religious pluralism” (ministry of science, innovation and higher education, 2013, p. 1). educational policy continues to reflect the belief that teacher autonomy and self-regulation is needed if an open and inclusive school that creates whole persons should be realized (danish ministry of education, 2014). in recent years, however, teachers have also been positioned as enemies of the state and relegated to a passive role so as to curtail their influence; such measures have contributed to a strong sense of deprofessionalization among teachers. this state of affairs became clear with the 2013 school agreement between the danish government and all the other parties (except one) in the parliament. the agreement is directed towards improvement of educational standards, measured by pisa. this means that common educational objectives must be clarified and simplified in terms of students’ learning outcomes” (danish ministry of education 2013b, p. 10-11). the school principal is positioned as the one facilitating “the teachers’ daily work with planning, execution and evaluation of the teaching” (p. 11) and regulating teachers’ working hours, preparation time and conditions towards the end of high test scores. with the new agreement, the school principal has become a key organizing principle for how schools should be organized (serpieri and grimaldi, 2014; rüsselbæk hansen, beck & bøje, 2014). however, the teachers did not want to abandon the former principles upon which their working hours were regulated and they wished to maintain their right to a specific rüsselbæk hansen, m. phelan & qvortrup. teacher education in canada and denmark an era of 47 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (1) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci length of preparation time. the government dismissed this right. therefore, about 44,000 members of the danish union of teachers were locked out for almost four weeks in april 2013 (witcombe 2013; wandall 2013). such labour action on the part of teachers highlighted competing ideological positions and introduced antagonistic relations to the educational scene. the struggle was quickly silenced by a consensus among danish political parties to lock out the teachers; in mouffe’s (2013) terms, what could have been a struggle among adversaries was stymied by the government’saction. teacher education as neutralizing agent: ‘standardization’ and ‘learnification’ what is clear from the foregoing analysis is that in the past two decades the teaching profession has become a key policy target and a site of strategic importance for neo-liberal policy-makers in both canada and denmark. policy measures have attempted to depoliticize deep educational concerns rendering them matters of technical efficiency (clarke, 2012). the impact of policy – teaching standards, learner outcomes – at the level of teacher education programs is clear but distinct in both jurisdictions. british columbia, canada: ‘standardization’ at the policy level in british columbia themes of accountability, competition and privatization and their associated technologies – the market, managerialism, and performativity are increasingly in evidence (clarke, 2012). teaching standards continue to be impactful and teacher education programs have been compelled to induct new teachers into a “detailed mapping and scrutiny of their work” (clarke & moore, 2013, p. 488). to this end, teaching standards are offered as descriptions of the kinds of knowledge, skills, and attributes of any competent teacher. teacher educators are simply left to the management of policy implications at the programmatic level – how do institutions keep sufficient records of all students graduated in the event of periodic audits; witness, for example, the arrival of the standards-driven portfolio as a prominent feature of assessment in teacher education (wilson-strong & sanford, 2013); and, the explicit linking of course syllabi in teacher education programs to various teaching standards. understandably, teacher candidates are keen to present themselves as ‘fitting’ with the standards, thereby adopting “a stable and positive identity obtained through identification with an existing socio-political order” (biesta, 2011, p. 145). moreover, the teaching standards invite teacher candidates to individualize their difficulty in teaching rather than critique the conditions of teachers’ work. teacher educators do little to uncover the standards’ underlying political commitments (education as epiphenomenal to the economy); representations of the teacher or teaching appear natural and irrefutable rather than “the means for defining the boundaries of the educational field and for structuring relations of power within it” (nespor & barber, 1994, p. 5). there is a sense of self-evident consensus and little overt concern about how they impact the formation of teachers’ intellectual and political freedom. to counter this trend the deans of faculties of education in canada have been pro-active in creating the pan-canadian teacher education accord that outlines key principles of “effective initial teacher education” (collins & tierney, 2010, p. 74), stating that, among other things, effective teacher education:  demonstrates the transformative power of learning for individuals and communities; rüsselbæk hansen, m. phelan & qvortrup. teacher education in canada and denmark an era of 48 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (1) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci  envisions the teacher as a professional who observes, discerns, critiques, assesses, and acts accordingly;  encourages teachers to assume a social and political leadership role (p. 74). although it is difficult to assess the impact of the pan-canadian teacher education accord in real terms, it has had the effect of introducing an alternative view to provincial mandates regarding the education of teachers. denmark: ‘learnification’ “learnification” is a term coined by gert biesta (2009, p. 36) to describe a context of in which the discourse of learning trumps all other educational discourses. the emphasis, as such, is on a direct relation between what is taught and what is learned and the emphasis is on achievement of learning outcomes.the danish teacher education program is regulated through output-based areas of competence, each constituted by a number of practice oriented skills and corresponding knowledge objectives. there is no standard curriculum defining the content of the teacher education program. the overall aim in the danish program is described as a three level taxonomy of teacher competences. the graduated teacher is expected to be able 1) to reproduce and identify relevant knowledge and skills, 2) to establish connections and analyze known educational situations and challenges through the application of acquired knowledge and skills, and on the basis of this, to act in a pedagogical practice, and 3) to be capable of reflecting on and evaluating new educational situations and challenges that demand independent assessments and alternative ways of action in a pedagogical practice (ministry of science, innovation and higher education, 2013, p. 2). this triadic system demonstrates an interesting tendency: that the teacher candidate must gain qualifications related to the processes of teaching and classroom management (qualifications and competences to teach without any specificities related to subjects and content and strong pedagogical and general management competences). this is also seen in competence development programs where initiatives are set in motion to ensure that teachers and school principals all have the best qualifications and competences to teach and to manage the public school. last but not least, it manifests itself in the prioritization of engaging learning consultants in danish schools. this is a change in focus from former support arrangement comprising only subject consultant (danish ministry of education, 2013b, p. 23). the shift is an expression of the focus on general learning competences, since the goal of the learning consultants is to gather best practice examples, exemplary teaching programs, knowledge from trialand development programs, etc. (p. 24). both ‘standardization’ and ‘learnification’ are emblematic of the kind of consensus rhetoric that characterizes neo-liberal policy. each, after its own fashion, attempts to decontextualize and generalize teaching such that the particularities of time/space, subjects, and practice are rendered insignificant in the face of universal statements about the child, learning, and best practices. in a consensual world where ‘we’ all agree on what is best for our children and youth, only one of us is thinking. this brings us to the nub of the matter: that consensual policies both describe and produce a particular kind of teaching subject. it is here that the differences between denmark and canada become stark. in the canadian context the emphasis is on shaping the teacher candidate as a certain kind of ‘standard-based subject’ capable of acting ethically and competently for the sake of students’ growth, development and learning (british columbia college of teachers, rüsselbæk hansen, m. phelan & qvortrup. teacher education in canada and denmark an era of 49 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (1) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 2004). because a direct link has not yet been made between teacher education and student performance (learning outcomes), a plurality of educational ideals can still pervade teacher education, as we have witnessed in the juxtaposition of the pan-canadian teacher education accord and teaching standards. while faculty members in teacher education in british columbia are instructed to identify those teaching standards ‘covered’ in their courses, there is no direct oversight in this regard other than the vague possibility of periodic audits of archived standards-driven student e-portfolios. it continues to be unclear, for example, if all teacher education institutions in the province of british columbia ever submitted the required “standards of attainment reports” to the ministry of education, outlining how the standards were to be achieved or their achievement assessed, when the teaching standards were first introduced. institutions, such as the university of british columbia, that did, continued to assert the normative, relational quality of teaching and the importance of educating for teacher judgment. as such, the ongoing, ontological process of becoming a teacher is underscored. in british columbia the continuum of teacher development is recognized in the form of a provincial mentoring program for new teachers. discourses of reflection on practice and inquiry into one’s beliefs/values – disciplinary, socio-political – prevail and serve to sideline the standards to some degree. however, the single most impactful factor is that to date public school teachers have not embraced, actually acknowledged might be more appropriate here, the teaching standards. teacher candidates do not encounter the standards while on teaching practice and given the relative weight assigned to field experiences by teacher candidates both in terms of their learning and future employment prospects, this is not an insignificant fact. in denmark, however, the closed, instrumental relation between teaching standards and learner performance ensures that the singular focus in teacher education is on preparing teachers to produce mandated learning outcomes. moreover, the context of teacher education is essentially one of accountability rather than responsibility. as demonstrated with the terms ‘that’ as opposed to ‘what’, the danish program seems to focus on the process of learning (that the teacher candidates must get insight, training and ability), whereas the canadian program pays greater attention to the product of becoming (what the teacher candidates must become). the risk of the danish program is that learning processes in themselves become the criteria for success, and that the normativity of learning replaces the normativity of teaching. this risk corresponds to the problem biesta points at when he argues that, if learning “is indeed the only language available, then teachers end up being a kind of process-managers of empty, and in themselves, directionless learning processes” (biesta, 2012, p. 38). in summary, in denmark the teacher is increasingly viewed as the means to an end that is student learning. as such, teacher education is compelled to focus on teachers not as ends in themselves but as instruments of students’ learning. in british columbia, canada, the teacher is the end of teacher education and not yet positioned as the means to student test scores. emphasis on the knowledge, skills and disposition of the teacher candidate persists; the teacher candidate, and not the students s/he will teach, is still the end-in-view. in denmark, political interests have trumped educational interests; in canada, the battle is still being waged. both ‘standard-based’ and ‘learning-based’ teacher identities are limited and limiting. such pre-given identities leave little room for the teachers to reflect on their educational values and commitments, and the degree to which these are compromised in particular political, historical contexts. educationally speaking, an ethos of consensus rüsselbæk hansen, m. phelan & qvortrup. teacher education in canada and denmark an era of 50 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (1) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci restricts imagination about alternatives. the neo-liberal consensus and the production of specific (teacher) subjectivities has to be challenged if we want teacher education to contribute to democracy “as an ethically and constitutively open and contingent form of politics” (newman, 2007 p. 150). hegemony and agonism: towards new modes of identification within a neo-liberal hegemony, the production of subjectivity plays a crucial role as individuals learn to commodify and exploit their ‘value’ to the system in exchange for the ‘goods’ offered by the system (e.g. access to educational institutions, social status, capital) that ultimately reproduce and sustain the system. the need to embrace teacher education, in part, as a site of resistance that undermines the social imaginary necessary for capitalist reproduction seems clear. the field of educational relations, with its emphasis on the importance of individuals (in this case, teacher candidates) achieving “singularity and social commitment” (pinar, 2011: xi), could be one site in which the grasp of competitive individualism is undermined and resisted. as stated at the outset of this paper, the options for teacher education in the contemporary moment include educating teachers with a view to retrieving aspects of the social democratic welfare state; or educating teachers toward a radical democracy that embraces the existence of conflicting ideological views and promotes the idea of agonism (i.e. imagining resistance in terms of agonistic intervention into the existing common sense/status quo and foster teacher education as one agonistic public space that could contribute to the development of a counter-hegemony).the intent is to contribute to “engendering new practices of living, consuming and collective appropriation of common spaces and everyday culture (mouffe 2013, p. 87). as acknowledged earlier, the discourse of the welfare state, not unlike that of neoliberalism, is consensus-driven and serves to neutralize fundamental conflicts between ideological views such that events and their impact appear as ‘natural’ rather than political. that said, the welfare state vocabulary allows a focus on important issues related to the teaching profession such as ethics, equality, norms, values and social rights in the larger society (integrating educational questions with economic, social, environmental and political questions). within this vocabulary, however, there is a risk that the teacher is positioned as an instrument of the welfare state and expected to adopt a monolithic and consensus driven view. the upshot is the reproduction of existing norms and the capture of teaching within the normative vocabulary. instead, we would rather argue for a political vision for teacher education: teacher education as one nodal point where pluralism is generated and organized and where the idea of conflicting consensus can be lived; through a process of “imaginative rehearsal” of action (dewey, 1934, in garrison, 1997, p. 121) teacher education could become a site of disarticulation (of existing hegemony) and rearticulation (new hegemony) (see mouffe 2013, p. 74-79). as agonistic subjects, teachers have a shared project e.g. educating students but this does not mean that they must share acommon identity and the same norms. on the contrary, ongoing discussions about who they are and the ability to refuse who they ought to be can secure some sort of ‘de-subjectivation’, which can challenge the status quo, open up new ways of thinking and acting in schools (masschelein, 2007). nevertheless, an agonistic political vision for teacher education also entails problems. there is a danger of instrumentalizing teacher education with a view to constructing new forms of teacher subjectivity. “the role that affect plays in the process of rüsselbæk hansen, m. phelan & qvortrup. teacher education in canada and denmark an era of 51 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (1) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci identification and the role of passionate attachments in the constitution of political identities” (see mouffe, 2013, p. 96) means that it is only through inducing emotional responses that teacher educators could be ‘effective’ in transforming prospective teachers’ consciousness. such an approach feels a little too like ‘identity correction’ and there is a danger that teacher educators could end up conflating the political with refusal/transgression or moral condemnation rather than rendering it agonistic (based on the assumption of the hegemonic political struggle) (see mouffe 2013, p. 99). the actual question for education and teacher education is how to keep a necessary antagonism alive even while educators attempt to mediate neo-liberalism humanely in our educational institutions. the education of teachers as political adversaries, in mouffe’s (2013) terms, involves a recognition of teacher education as a form of critical educational practice that keeps agonism alive, provoking dissensus and bringing to the fore alternatives repressed by the hegemony. the preparation of teachers as “teacher citizens,” (grumet, 2010, p. 71), capable and legitimate participants in public discussion about education and policy involves revitalizing an understanding of the political – the difference between moral and political disputes, and power as constitutive of society, educational purpose and teacher identities; cultivating political emotions such as anger at injustice as well as an appreciation of the cultural politics of emotion (ahmed, 2004); and finally, developing an awareness of the historical and contemporary political projects of the “left” and “right” as they have played out in the field of education and in a range of historical contexts (ruitenberg, 2007). conclusion to resist the hegemony of neo-liberalism and to deepen and extend the democratic revolution, one could argue, involves the desacralization of consensus and the reassertion of frontiers between left and right (clark & phelan, forthcoming). as we have emphasized, we do not seek to replace neo-liberalism with welfarism. both discourses are – as we have illustrated – problematic because they seek neutrality and consensus. we must abandon the idea of a neutral and finalized society from which all conflicts, antagonisms, and disagreements have disappeared. with mouffe’s concept of agonism, we have a different starting point in teacher education. “if we understand democracy not as a form of government or a set of rules on how to live a moral life, but as a political act of subjectification” (friedrich, jaastad & popkewitz, 2011, p. 60), democratic struggles and values can be maintained in teacher education and “the system of power which redefines and limits the operation of those values” is overturned (laclau & mouffe, 2001, p. xv). that is why we have argued, that not only must teacher education constitute teacher identities within the socially accepted norm, paradoxically, they must also produce agonistic teacher subjects who are able to question who others expect them to be within this norm. in this way, it becomes possible for teachers to reflect on what the contemporary neo-liberal hegemony does to them and others and with what consequences. such reflections enable teachers to see themselves as more than a means to taming the public role of schools via performance objectives and standardized test scores. our hope is that teachers, as individuals and in a range of collectives, may learn to exchange ideas, opinions and arguments, form strategic alliances (e.g., with other professions), engage in the play of antagonism, and exercise dissent both within and beyond the profession, when they see fit (clarke & phelan, forthcoming). there are limits to agonism, however. it is not enough to merely unsettle things; there comes a moment when new institutions and forms of power need to be established – “the necessary moment of rüsselbæk hansen, m. phelan & qvortrup. teacher education in canada and denmark an era of 52 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (1) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci closure” (mouffe, 2013, p. 15). while ethical discourse (within the field of education) might be able to avoid this moment, political discourse cannot. acknowledging the constitutive character of social division, mouffe (2013) argues against the possibility of a final reconciliation between adversaries. the multiplicity that is the people, or indeed the profession, must remain divided rather than just simply multiple. notes 1 dion@sdu.dk 2 anne.phelan@ubc.ca 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(2015). what are course syllabi telling students? critical discourse analysis of classroom power relationships. transnational curriculum inquiry volume12 (1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> what are course syllabi telling students? critical discourse analysis of classroom power relationships hui-chuan liao1 national kaohsiung university of applied sciences, taiwan introduction nonnative english learners are often encouraged by their college instructors to become participants in the leaning process. however, asian students are typically quiet and restrained in class. this tendency is likely conditioned by culture (chuang, 2012; guy, 1999; marquardt, 1999) and the traditional top-down, teacher-centered pedagogies students have experienced (jung, 2012; liao, 2009, 2015; liu, 2005; ministry of education, 2006; tsou, 2012; yeh, 2009). to promote active learning, instructors, especially those who teach the productive language skills (i.e., speaking and writing) have begun to assist students in overcoming the teacher–student boundary, seeing their teacher as a facilitator rather than an authoritative figure, freely expressing their opinions, and becoming decision makers in their learning. for example, chen (2008) involved students in establishing the evaluation criteria for their classroom speaking assessments and learning to self-assess their oral performance in english. lo (2010) alternated her role of the teacher between decision maker, mentor, and resource person to facilitate the development of learner autonomy. in liao (2015), students were provided choices to determine the type and level of difficulty of speaking assessments based on their self-evaluation. after the concept of learner centeredness was developed according to the theories of prominent psychologists and educators such as piaget (1932), rogers (1951), dewey (1963), and vygotsky (1978), interest in and the development of communicative language teaching (clt) beginning in the 1970s has contributed to student-centered learning in second language acquisition (sla; hyland, 2007; savignon, 1972). many second-language (l2) pedagogies thus departed from the traditional audiolingual and grammar-translation methods of foreign language teaching and proposed the principle of learner centeredness, designing activities and curricula based on their relevance and meaningfulness to the learner. because of the development of the learner-centered approach and clt in the past two decades, discourse analysis and its application in l1 and l2 language instruction and learning has received increasing attention (fairclough, 1992a). most studies on classroom discourse have focused on in-class discourse processes, including instructional discourse, recitation, and teacher-student interactions (e.g., cazden, 1988; greenleaf & freedman, 1993; lehere, 1994; leander, 2002; nystrand & gamoran, 1991a; nystrand & gamoran, 1991b; nystrand, wu, gamoran, zeiser, & long, 2003). however, few studies have liao. what are course syllabi telling students? 14 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (1) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci investigated the teacher–student power relationship by using critical discourse analysis (cda) of course materials. this study analyzed course materials, specifically course syllabi, in an english-as-a-foreign-language (efl) program. the objective of the study was to determine what the syllabi reveal about the curriculum and the power relationships between language teachers and learners. the present study contributes to the body of knowledge by examining the implicit messages embedded in the syllabi of core l2 listening and speaking courses held by the department of english of a university in taiwan to raise efl teachers’ awareness of classroom power configurations. literature review this study is based on theories and research regarding the disciplines of cda, learner centeredness, and l2 pedagogy. critical discourse analysis cda is different from earlier discourse analyses because it does not involve merely investigating the linguistic properties of a language, but focuses on the distribution of the social power represented by the language (fairclough, 1992b, 2006; van dijk, 2009; wodak & meyer, 2009). fairclough (1989) asserted that the objective of cda is to uncover the influence of language on the “production, maintenance, and change of social relations of power” and to “help increase consciousness of how language contributes to the domination of some people by others” (p. 1). cda not only reveals how sociolinguistic conventions produce unequal power distributions but also how they reinforce and reproduce social conditions. the purpose of cda, therefore, is to identify the ideologies encoded in language that cause unequal distributions of social power to seem natural and to denaturalize these ideologies, thus enabling people to notice the unequal power distribution and, if they choose to, initiate change (fairclough, 2004). cda does not necessarily concern negative or severe social or political problems; instead, it investigates and challenges any social issue critically (wodak & meyer, 2009). cda draws on an array of analytical approaches, including the systemic functional linguistics (sfl) approach proposed by halliday (2004). halliday applied a functionally and socially situated approach to linguistic analysis because he believed that language evolves in the process of human interactions in the social environment. sfl, therefore, is a framework of analytical techniques that cda researchers can use to examine language and power relationships in society. similarly, fairclough (2004, 2006) asserted that the meanings of texts and discourses are socially constructed; all texts are parts of social events and discourses are means for representing aspects of society. discourses not only reflect the relationships between linguistic and social structures but also perpetuate existing, stable sociolinguistic practices as well as ideologies and conventions based on the people who linguistically interact within a social institution. in addition, fairclough contended that, through evaluation of individual word choices, writers’ conscious or unconscious perceptions can be identified and their personal viewpoints or collective viewpoints can be determined. various methods of textual analysis offer insight into the elements present in a text; however, fairclough (1995) stressed that scrutinizing the elements that are absent from a text (i.e., analysis of significant absences) is critical from the standpoint of sociocultural studies. analyzing significant absences facilitates discovering voices or discourses that have been excluded from the text but are as crucial as those explicitly stated (2004). one method for visualizing absences is to deconstruct nominalizations. nominalizations create liao. what are course syllabi telling students? 15 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (1) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci an impersonal style and make actions agentless. through the deconstruction of nominalizations, semantic roles (i.e., agent or patient) of the parties involved emerge (1995). in addition, analysis of the force of utterances (fairclough, 1992b) at both the lexical and grammatical levels entails a pragmatic aspect of language use and facilitates illustrating power relationships in texts. van dijk (2001) included semiotic structure as a dimension in cda and described discourse as “a communication event, including conversational interaction, written text, as well as associated gestures, face work, typographical layout, images, and other ‘semiotic’ or multimedia dimension of significance” (p. 98). van dijk’s emphasis on semiotics was supported by kress and van leeuwen (1996) and wodak and meyer (2009), who believed that the nonverbal aspects of texts are as communicative as linguistic devices even though nonverbal information conveys value systems implicitly. learner centeredness and l2 pedagogy traditionally, teachers serve as the center of knowledge and direct students’ learning process while students play a receptive role in education. in teacher-centered approaches, learning objectives are prescribed by teachers based on their experiences and prior practices; and assessments are mostly summative. in the twentieth century, theories of prominent psychologists and educators such as piaget, dewey, and vygotsky have contributed to the shift from traditional teacher-centered to student-centered approaches, which place students at the center of the learning process. piaget (1932) condemned traditional schools, which offer teacher-centered whole-class instruction. he criticized that the procedure “seems to be contrary to the most obvious requirements of intellectual and moral development” (p. 412). similarly, dewey reprehended traditional instruction for failing to “secure the active cooperation of the pupil in construction of the purposes involved in his studying” (1963, p. 67). for dewey, simply waiting passively for the instructor to hand-feed knowledge does not constitute learning; learners must gain experience through activities in which they actively participate. vygotsky, one of the most prominent social-cognitive theorists, deemed social context critical to cognitive development and regarded socialization as the foundation of cognitive development (1978). the internalization of knowledge, according to vygotsky, is a progression that begins with an interpersonal process before it proceeds into an intrapersonal process; a learner’s development first occurs on the social level (between people) before it occurs on the individual level (within a person). rogers’ (1951) person-centered approach further facilitated the development of student-centered learning. according to rogers’ theory of personality, one person is unable to teach another person directly. instead, he or she can merely facilitate another person’s learning. the learning effect is maximized only when the learner perceives relevance. thus, student roles vary considerably between student-centered and teacher-centered learning. in student-centered approaches, learners are no longer deemed empty vessels; rather, they are individual entities that have distinct perceptual frameworks based on their life experiences. learners learn in various ways (kolb, 1984; myers, 1995) and construct their distinct meanings through active learning (meyers & jones, 1993). therefore, teachers should guide and facilitate students’ learning based on the experiences and needs of the students instead of those of the teachers (entwistle, 2003; ericksen, 1984). in sla, learner-centered discourse is commonly believed to facilitate learning more effectively than teacher-led discourse because it provides more opportunities for negotiated interaction and greater autonomy to learners (lee, 2000; pica, 1987; van lier, 1996). by liao. what are course syllabi telling students? 16 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (1) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci contrast, in teacher-led discourse, disfluent exchanges between teachers and students have been observed (donato & brooks, 2004; hall, 2004; leemann-guthrie, 1984). another approach that is similar to learner centeredness is clt, which emerged in sla in the 1970s (hyland, 2007; savignon, 1972). clt emphasizes meaning and communicative competency instead of form and that language must be meaningful to the learner to facilitate l2 learning. therefore, in clt, the curriculum and learning activities are designed based on their meaningfulness and authenticity to the learner, rather than only the course objectives and materials pre-determined by the teacher (johnson, 1982; littlewood, 1981; savignon, 1972, 2001). the aforementioned development has caused “task” to become a crucial concept in l2 pedagogy and course and materials design (nunan, 1991). because task-based instruction has become more common in l2 classrooms, researchers have begun to examine practical applications and the effectiveness of the pedagogy. in examining taskbased instruction, breen (1989) distinguished “task-in-process” and “task-as-workplan” (pp. 24-25). based on this distinction, seedhouse (2004) argued that l2 teaching research should focus on what actually occurs in the classroom (i.e., task-in-process) instead of the teacher’s pre-determined goals (i.e., task-as-workplan). drawing on sociocultural theory, which is based on the premise that learners co-construct the learning activities in which they participate based on their personal backgrounds and individual goals, ellis (2000) emphasized that language teachers must view tasks as dynamic processes (i.e., task-inprocess). in these tasks, language use and learning do not follow predetermined patterns but are actively shaped through the engagement of both teachers and learners. similar to breen’s (1989) distinction between task-in-process and task-as-workplan, van lier (1991, 1996) proposed two fundamental dimensions of language teaching: planning and improvising. van lier recommended that teachers balance planning and improvising by developing a dual vision, which involves a long-term sense of direction while improvising in response to given situations. the aforementioned learning theories and l2 pedagogies are based on student centeredness. however, the implicit messages conveyed in english curricula and whether efl students are treated as participants or recipients in the l2 acquisition process remain undetermined. according to pinar and reynolds (1992), every text is embedded with “purposes and crosspurposes, motives and countermotives—what is stated and what is not” (p. 224). many aspects of curricula, such as course materials, class lectures, and class organization, can be examined to identify the roles that students play and are allowed to play in classrooms. the aspects include, but are not limited to, course materials, class lectures, and class organization. studies on classroom discourse in the past two decades, discourse analysis has been increasingly applied in language instruction and learning (fairclough, 1992a). for example, greenleaf and freedman (1993) used conversation analysis to study the teaching-learning interactions in a ninth grade english class. nystrand and gamoran (1991a) analyzed the instructional discourse of an eighth-grade english classroom and identified features of substantively engaging teaching, including authentic questions and integration of prior responses into successive questions or discussion. graff (2009) examined why the relationship between a language arts teacher and a specific seventh-grade student was particularly strained. graff applied conversation analysis, classroom discourse analysis, and goffman’s participation frameworks (1981) to analyze the teacher-student interaction in class. furthermore, liao. what are course syllabi telling students? 17 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (1) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci nystrand, wu, gamoran, zeiser, and long (2003) conducted an event-history analysis of questions raised by teachers and students in eighthand ninth-grade english and social studies classrooms to explore the structure of classroom discourse and the dynamics of its unfolding. leander (2002) studied silencing in peer interaction in a high school history classroom and determined that participants used silencing to produce, divide, and relate social spaces in which they were positioned as more or less silenced or privileged. in addition, discourse analysis has been applied in examining l2 classroom interaction. for example, goldenberg and patthey-chavez (1995) examined discourse features of instructional conversations and their possible effects on the conceptual and language development of l2 learners. mortensen (2009) investigated how learners in l2 college class settings assumed speakership and established recipiency in whole-class interaction. lerner (1995) examined the speaker turn design in l2 reading and writing classes. she focused on the uses of incomplete turn-constructional units by teachers in providing opportunities for subsequent student participation. except for leander (2002), who explored silencing and student-student social relationships in a high school history class, the aforementioned studies did not investigate power relationships. in the past two decades, most studies on classroom discourse in l1 and l2 settings have focused on in-class discourse processes, particularly instructional discourse and teacher–student interaction during class time. power relationships evident in course materials have yet to be explored. the current study addressed this gap in the literature, examining the teacher–student power relationship by conducting a cda of course syllabi. methods to explore how teacher–student relationships are textually represented in higher education, this study critically examined language functions in the syllabi of the core listening and speaking courses required for a bachelor’s degree held by the department of english of a taiwanese university. the educational mission of the english program was to enhance the language competencies of learners and prepare them for a career in english language teaching or business. to complete the degree program, students were required to complete 50 credit hours of core english courses and 30 credit hours of elective courses in language or professional (i.e., english language teaching or business) skills. the required language courses could be divided into four disciplines: listening and speaking, reading and writing, linguistics, and translation and interpretation. the core courses in the listening and speaking discipline were english listening and speaking (freshman, 4), fundamental english oral communication (sophomore, 2), intermediate english oral communication (sophomore, 2), english business communication (junior, 4), and business meetings and presentations (senior, 4). the information in parentheses denotes the academic standing and credit hours of the courses. the total number of credit hours was 16, accounting for 32% of the 50 required credit hours of language courses. a cda of the syllabi of the core listening and speaking courses was conducted to elucidate unequal power distributions at an institution of higher education and explore the syllabus writers’ identities and roles as teachers. the syllabi are denoted as syllabi 1 to 5 according to the order in which they were used in the curriculum. the theories and analytical techniques on which this study was based were van dijk's discourse semiotics and ideology (1995); fairclough’s emphasis on word choice (1989), significant absences (1995, 2004; see also van leeuwen, 1993), and analysis of the force of utterances (1992b, liao. what are course syllabi telling students? 18 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (1) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 1995); and halliday’s functional analysis of discourse (i.e., sfl), particularly his analysis of lexical connotation (2004). specifically, the research involved analyzing word choices, lexical connotations, semiotic structures, modality, quantifying adjectives, nominalizations, and semantic roles. because no studies have explored the teacher–student power relationship by examining course syllabi, the categorization guidelines for this study were developed during the initial phase of the research. in addition to the author of this study, two trained raters assessed the syllabi and five categories were determined in the initial analysis. in the second phase of the analysis, three raters re-examined the texts by considering all five categories. results of text analysis a critical analysis of the syllabi revealed indications of classroom power relationships. the intra-rater reliabilities of the three raters were .94, .94, and .92, which are considered high; and the inter-rater reliability was .87, which is considered satisfactory. the elements that indicated classroom power relationships were categorized into the following: instructor information, course policies, course empahsis, section headings, and grading. instructor information the study first examined how the faculty members presented themselves in the syllabi. out of five instructors, three added the academic title “dr.” or “ph.d.” before or after their names. although such practice seems natural in academia, deconstructing how text is read, defamiliarizing taken-for-granted perceptions, and making the familiar strange (kaomea, 2003) revealed that this practice conveys that qualification, expertise, and authority are crucial in these courses and, thus, signifies the instructors as authoritative figures. this practice implies that the status difference between students and instructors creates a hierarchical structure in which the students are subjects of rather than participants in the teaching program. it is likely that by adding the title “dr.” or “ph.d.” to their names, the instructors sought appreciation of their expertise and respect for their authority by the students, intending to establish a relationship that is conducive for knowledge transmission. course policy in three of the syllabi, the most salient element was course policy. syllabi 1, 3, and 4 listed 19, 20, and 11 class policies, which constituted more than 35%, 30%, and 25% of the entire syllabus, respectively. collectively, the semiotic structures of these three syllabi indicated that rules are an indispensable component of language courses. course emphasis in syllabus 3, the course description stated that the course was designed to facilitate inquiry into the learning process. as foreign language majors, students are often reminded during their language courses that the learning process is more vital than the product. in this syllabus, however, the learning process seemed to be less vital than the product, as indicated by the goals section of the syllabus; instead of “in the process of this course, the learner will learn x, y, and z”, the instructor wrote, “as a result of this course, the learner will. . .” (emphasis added by the author). liao. what are course syllabi telling students? 19 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (1) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci section headings although analysis of the other four syllabi indicated no such emphasis on the product, the instructor’s power over the students was evident in the syllabus headings, as shown in table 1. table 1: section headings indicating instructors’ power over students course title goals activities grade course policy 1 english listening and speaking x required activities grading procedure class rules 2 fundamental english oral communication x x x x 3 intermediate english oral communication instructor’s goals course requirements evaluation & grading course policy 4 english business communication x assignments grading class rules 5 business meetings and presentations x requirements x x the five syllabi contained seven main types of heading. the four types shown in table 1 indicate that the instructors held power over their students whereas the following three do not: “course description,” “course schedule,” and “textbooks.” in syllabus 3, the course objectives were presented as the “instructor’s goals for the course” (emphasis added by the author). the presence of the instructor’s voice and the absence of the students’ opinions and options suggested that the instructor possessed the power; the instructor set the goals, not the students, even though the students are often strongly encouraged to exhibit creativity and responsibility in the learning process. the headings “course requirement” and “evaluation and grading” of this and the other syllabi revealed the same pattern. although the nominalization of “requirement,” “assignment,” “evaluation,” and “grading” renders both the “agent” (“doer” or “actor”) and the “patient” (“doee” or “recipient”) absent, a more careful examination of the headings identified the instructor as the agent and the students as the patients. the instructor’s power over the students is clearly demonstrated once the nominalizations are transformed into complete sentences directed from the agent to the patient: requirement → the instructor requires the students to perform specific tasks. assignment → the instructor assigns tasks to the students. evaluation → the instructor will evaluate the students. grading → the instructor will grade the students according to the rubrics. once nominalizations are transformed into complete sentences, they can be transformed into passive sentences: requirement → the students are required to perform specific tasks. assignment → the students are assigned tasks. evaluation → the students are evaluated by the instructor. grading →the students are graded by the instructor according to the rubrics. liao. what are course syllabi telling students? 20 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (1) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the instructor’s authority and power are evident in these passive sentences. the students were the subjects of the teaching program rather than active participants of the process. no encouragement of the student’s creativity is observed in these sentences. grading syllabus 3 included strict rules on evaluation; the frequency and due dates of assignments were clearly defined and a rubric explicitly precluded flexibility. the use of the subjective modal verb “must” in “for a grade of a, a student must participate in all aspects of the course including written work, discussions, productions, and presentations of high quality” expresses the instructor’s authority and defines him or her as someone with power over the students instead of someone who shares the power. in addition, the use of the quantifying adjective “all” designates the instructor as the decision maker regarding the curriculum; it implies that the instructor, not the learners, knows the elements that are crucial for the students’ learning. the quantying adjective and a rubric with a fixed grading percentage seemed to deny the student any power in the decision-making process. however, the power relationships identified in the other syllabi differed. although syllabus 1 listed specific grade percentages with “each requirement,” it granted more power to the students than syllabus 3 by stating the following: “[the] approximate [weight] for each requirement is as follows. this may be altered during individual conferences as each student sets personal goals for the semester.” although the instructor still held the power by “requiring” the students to perform certain tasks, he or she provided flexibility, enabling the students to exert power as well. the instructors in the other three syllabi also seemed to allow space for students’ creativity and decision making, as stated in syllabus 4, i believe that you, as a participant in a language course, are the person [best suited] to assess the degree to which you [succeed or do not succeed] in getting the most out of this learning experience. while i will provide you with ongoing guidance, support, and feedback, i will ask you to judge what grade you deserve for the progress you have made in meeting the course expectations. although the instructor reserved the right to overturn the grade, substantial power was granted to the students through this approach. the students remained subjects of the teaching program, but they also became agents, and, therefore, participants in assessing their own level of success, attaining valuable skills and knowledge through the learning experience, evaluating their own grades, and achieving progress. “we live, daignault says, in a flattened world in which our insistence on accuracy destroys fantasy and pleasure” (pinar & reynolds, 1992, p. 11). the analysis of the grading policies of the five syllabi produced encouraging results, showing only one syllabus with a strict rubric that inflicts a “flattened world” upon the students. discussion this study explored the power relationship between instructors and language learners manifested in course syllabi. the analyses revealed two opposing findings. (1) the writers of the syllabi, except for the writer of syllabus 3, shared power with their students by affording them flexibility in determining the learning goals and assessment methods. (2) many of the linguistic elements of the syllabi, including nominalization, modality, quantifying adjective use, subject positions and agentivity, and semiotic structures, strongly indicated the authority that the instructors held over their students. these contradictory liao. what are course syllabi telling students? 21 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (1) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci findings prompt investigation regarding why language learners are urged to think critically, set goals, and make decisions and, simultaneously, are subjected to the authority of teaching staff. one possible reason for the contradiction between written text and the intended meaning is people’s orientations toward writing in certain genres (kress, 1989; swales, 1990). hoey (2001) compared writing with dancing. although dancers can be creative, any variation must be based on certain existing patterns. likewise, writers and readers who are embedded in a particular context are subject to certain schemata and write or understand text with specific structures in mind. an example is that of writing letters. people begin a letter with the word “dear” regardless of whether the recipient is a friend or a stranger. because of the formality of a certain genre, people often give little thought to the information that is communicated through a text. the principle might apply to syllabus construction. when instructors were students, they received traditional syllabi from their professors; instructors’ colleagues construct syllabi in a certain fashion; and instructors receive a prescribed format for syllabus writing from the university at which they teach. therefore, they develop syllabi based on given conventions, unaware of the type of message that might be conveyed. consequently, they are unaware that some of the text in the syllabi contradicts their intentions for the students. fairclough contended that people apply their knowledge of language and conventions not only to interpret the meanings of text but also to construct new text. through frequently reoccurring conventions, the existing social and power relationships are validated, reinforced, and perpetuated, and the possibility of change undermined (2006). genre conventions thus become a key factor in the perpetuation of institutional structures in modern society (2004). in addition, within the syllabi genre, the interaction between participants (i.e., the teacher and students) is unidirectional, or as thompson described it, “mediated quasiinteraction” (1995, p. 84). the producers of texts “exercise power over consumers in that they have the sole producing rights and therefore determine what is included and excluded, how events are represented, and . . . even the subject positions of their audience” (fairclough, 2006, p. 50). as fairclough indicated, the unidirectional nature of mediated quasi-interaction not only causes texts to seem authoritative (2004) but also causes the power relationships between the participants to be unequal (2006). the subject positions of teachers should be determined not only according to their role as knowledge providers but also according to their other roles and identities as mentors, facilitators, and members of their institution (i.e., the school). however, in the syllabi examined in this study, the “course manager” identities of teachers were overwhelmingly more evident than any of their other identities. through language, the syllabi not only created subject positions but also generalized representations of the teachers. in addition to being implicit in the language, the “course manager” identities of teachers were evident in the semiotic structures of course policies and rules. although course policies and rules are crucial to convey to students the expectations of a course, the semiotic structures overstressed the rules. this overemphasis on semiotic structure was also evident in a study by crowley (1989), who indicated that reading was overemphasized and that people spend most of the time throughout their school lives reading; students read the books and articles assigned by the teacher to learn what he or she wants them to learn, and read the syllabus carefully to ensure that they do only what is allowed. many asian students, instead of being independent thinkers who are aware of the rationale behind their behaviors, tend to be obedient and wait for the teacher’s instructions (scollon, 1999). the liao. what are course syllabi telling students? 22 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (1) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci semiotic structures of the syllabi examined in this study are consistent with crowley’s implication that independent thinking is not adequately encouraged and fostered in existing curricula. this is not surprising because unequal power relationships arise regularly and have become too natural to be challenged. because people become accustomed to unequal power relationships during their school and professional lives, they experience difficulty in initiating change. a suitable method for initiating change is to deconstruct text by making the familiar strange and the strange familiar (derrida, 1976; gee, 1990) as achieved in this study. according to kaomea (2003), familiar text and dominant appearances often must be scrutinized to reveal a broader spectrum of perspectives. exploring and disturbing mundane traditions provides useful insight. although this study provides awareness regarding the representation of authority in language programs, it does not propose that authority can completely disappear. auerbach (2000) provided valuable insight into teacher and student centeredness. she asserted that all classrooms are teacher centered because it is essentially teachers who hold the power and their beliefs shape the nature and process of a learning community. scholars agree that teachers have distinct perceptions of effective l2 pedagogies. delpit (1988) contended that the power of the teacher over the student is enacted in classrooms: “[t]o act as if power does not exist is to ensure that the power status quo remains the same” (p. 292), but “[t]hose with power are frequently least aware of—or least willing to acknowledge—its existence” (p. 282). this paper was not intended to serve as a critique of the content or construction of syllabi or to advocate the total elimination of power. conversely, the purpose was to demonstrate that examining familiar texts “with a very high level of awareness” (kaomea, 2003, p. 21) reveals the power structures conveyed in syllabi and curricula designs and facilitates implementing remedial actions. auerbach (1995, 2000) stated that teachers are pivotal in fostering a participatory learning community. regardless of whether they are aware of this, the dynamics of power are integral to daily classroom activities. even when teachers try to enhance the degree of learner participation by using dialogues and negotiations, they remain “first among equals” (doll, 1993, p. 166), and their attitudes critically influence their classroom decisions. thus, it is meaningful and important for teachers to become aware of their standpoints. if language instructors were to acknowledge the power structures embedded in text and reflect on their own syllabi to determine the teaching philosophy underlying the formal, traditional syllabus writing and their choice of words, then they may be able to provide their students with more power, enable them to become participants in their own learning process, and foster their critical thinking and creativity. conclusion and limitation how teachers speak in class affects how students perceive their academic world and their place in it. in addition, textual representations of students’ social conditions and interactions in school influence their perceptions of their roles and identities. because teachers can construct multiple copies of textual representations, they hold the power to influence students’ self-perceptions and the understanding of their relationship with the social world and events therein. the present study examined the underlying messages of course syllabi and discovered an unequal teacher–student power relationship textually represented in the discourse of syllabi within schools. as one of the writers of the syllabi analyzed in this study reported, the author’s analysis and deconstruction of her syllabus liao. what are course syllabi telling students? 23 transnational curriculum inquiry 12 (1) 2015 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci made her realize that she was not as liberal and open-minded as she thought she was. however, the process of deconstructing the syllabi enabled her to examine text more closely. the results of this study suggested that, by becoming willing to examine the overlooked aspects of their curricula and writing, instructors can improve their curricula and experience personal growth. certain limitations in this study must be acknowledged. first, the study examined the syllabi of the core listening and speaking courses of only one language program and, thus, was essentially a case study. therefore, future studies are encouraged to conduct further analysis of more written texts. they are also encouraged to compare and contrast written discourses with the more overt statements made by teachers in both interviews and classroom talks. moreover, cultural and social practices and preferences shape communication and writing (connor, 2011). because teachers are the products of their cultures (ellis, 1985), a complexity of cultures exists in the classroom (connor, 2011; holliday, 1999). differences in philosophical assumptions pertaining to communication, teaching, and learning cause variations in the way in which teachers and students in chinese and western cultures mutually negotiate roles (scollon, 1999). therefore, a curriculum can be seen as a mirror that reflects cultural beliefs (bruner, 1996; pinar, 2004). traditional whole-class teacher-centered efl classrooms emphasizing receptive over productive learning are common in taiwan (liao & oescher, 2009; liu, 2005; ministry of education, 2006; yeh, 2009). the author of this paper acknowledges that chinese culture and its impact on teachers’ beliefs might have influenced the results of this study. this consideration warrants further investigation. notes 1 hliao@kuas.edu.tw references auerbach, e. r. 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(2017). the culture and the mexican basic education curriculum. transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> the culture and the mexican basic education curriculum ana laura gallardo gutiérrez1 national autonomous university of mexico, mexico thinking about unavoidable topics for the curriculum in latin america is interpreted in this paper as the opportunity to observe some challenges that the curriculum faces within the field of knowledge, educational policy and/or school practice. particularly, this paper addresses the curriculum as an educational policy in the field of mexican basic education, exchanging a discussion on culture. in this regard, curricular policies as a whole can be understood as instances of cultural mediation between the meanings, senses, and directionality of the school's program as a device of modernity. as a consequence of the radical transformations in the political and economic landscape, in the terrain of the values, ideas, and customs that make up the social fabric of today, the sense, and character of the school are being questioned, and therefore, the curricular policies. one of the most relevant aspects of this moment of social fragmentation is related to the recovery of the interpretation of the cultural dimension of social life as an axis of understanding of human interactions. this interpretation from the cultural (echeverría, 2001) of political and social life is particularly important because it occurs precisely at a time of epochal breakdown, of radical, profound, generalized and vertiginous changes in shaping the identities of societies. the culture is present at all times as an origin, a condition of possibility that acts decisively in the collective and individual behavior of the social world, which impacts on the very march of history. the activity of society in its cultural dimension, even if it does not slow down or promote historical processes, even if it does not impose one direction or another, it is always, in any case, what it gives them meaning. (echeverría, 2001: 17). in this vein, studies on culture have a powerful force as a category of intellection and as a field of knowledge, in its close interaction with the relations between the political and the economic. in this case, it is aimed at a strong link with educational issues, because the symbolic products of the human interactions of a social group, that is, the set of meanings, expectations, and behaviors, if they take root and survive, it is because they manifest intense relationships that are effective in the sense of creating social fabric and in it, education is a constitutive dimension of such links or ties that build societies. that said, these relations cannot be considered as unilateral or dependent, as the mechanistic interpretation that historical development imposed in a large part of modern thought. however, it is also not possible to replace the category of social class, by a postmodern culturalist perspective that can relativize, from the subjective, a political issue. given all this, it makes sense because social differences have not ceased to exist by virtue of the economic level. the heart of the matter lies in locating the theoretical articulation that allows understanding, beyond economic determinism, the constitution of contemporary societies. gallardo-gutiérrez. the culture 84 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci that is to say, the problems concerning nationality, ethnicity, language or religion, as bell (1998) puts forward, have an underlying dimension to some problem related to injustice and equality in the production and distribution of goods. the articulation becomes necessary to avoid this mechanistic interpretation, but at the same time recognizing the potentiality of the categories that gave meaning to that of social class: labor, bourgeoisie, proletariat, among others. they are still valid as they are articulated to the analysis of the cultural situation. cultural phenomena cannot be considered, idealistically, as isolated entities. in order to understand them, they must be placed in the conflict of social relationships where they acquire meaning. hence, the reality is assumed to be socially and historically constructed. this recognition does not imply, then, an analytical middle ground between one perspective and another; involves the articulation of uses of the theory in the sense of investigating the tensions that produce structures such as the educational system, and warn in these tensions its contingency, precariousness and radical historicity (laclau, 1993, zizek, 1998). in the previous discussion in which this reflection is placed, its intention is to warn the existence of cultural differences that the national curriculum of mexican basic education cannot subvert. failures that cannot be sustained anymore since these lie, from this point of view, in that the curriculum itself is a social and historical construction, therefore, contingent and precarious. its current moment is resoundingly showing these traits, in particular, when facing the field of cultural, ethnic and linguistic diversity. the mexican educational system through the curriculum forges the identity that the dominant cultural referent over determines (de alba, 2002); since the curriculum is a cultural synthesis of knowledge, values, habitus, etc. (de alba, 1991) in tension about what is considered as national basic education. within this framework, it can be stated that the composition of the cultural referent of the modern mexican educational system is based on the myth of miscegenation (gallardo, 2014), generating new forms of discrimination and racism that intervene in the processes of the current educational reform, generating a paradox for the mexican educational policy: the recognition of cultural diversity vs the institutional inability to materialize a paradigmatic shift in the new proposals for basic education training. the review carried out by castellanos (2003) places miscegenation as a form of racism in our country, based on the work of gonzalo aguirre beltrán, and the thinking of justo sierra in his defense of the mixed race; at a time when some european racists spread the idea that miscegenation resulted in bastard populations, unable to create progress in the civilization. although it was a progressive position, it was not immune "from falling into the trap of an orthodox social darwinism" (castellanos, 2003). both authors place miscegenation at the top of the racial hierarchy; then the creole, and on an inferior scale the indian, who is not attributed innate incapacities but is granted the benefit of redeeming himself in the miscegenation through education and nutrition (aguirre beltrán, 1992). this assertion about the role of education is relevant to this paper. although it is not an anthropological concern in the context of the study of mexican racism, the establishment of the educational system as althusser (1988) points out, functioned as a device of the nascent state to forge a national identity. in post-revolutionary mexico, josé vasconcelos will be one of the greatest exponents of miscegenation understood as mexican racism, given that the mixture and its new products imply dis-indianization or relation of domination to those who do not undergo to the denial of real indigenous identity or imaginary. this ideology forms the cultural reference, in which the mexican educational system was forged from its constitution, ritualization, development and the current crisis. this cultural reference questions and overdetermines the identity of mexicans in training who attend basic education, in accordance with the curricular contents and textbooks that convey this ideology; specifically, the subjects of spanish, history, mathematics and, to a lesser degree, civic and ethical education, geography and arts. in this sense, miscegenation has had the function of significant emptiness by erasing ethnic differences in the representation of groups that are contending in the processes of curricular reform of basic education in the 21st century. such reforms draw attention to new gallardo-gutiérrez. the culture 85 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci ways of resignifying miscegenation as the inclusion of cultural diversity, so as a curriculum principle, or as part of the graduation profile but without concreting them in the forms of representation of other knowledge, values, and knowledge that make up the ethnic, cultural and linguistic map of the country. in a more in-depth review of the plan and syllabuses of mexican basic education and its textbooks, the findings regarding ethnic, cultural and linguistic diversity suggest that: a. there is continuity in the degrees, levels, and subjects analyzed. regarding the competence "to know and to appreciate the culture and linguistic diversity", such continuity, implies in the first place, the eradication of ethnic diversity as a signal of the power relations between cultures, particularly among those that make up mexican identities. this removal "neutralizes" diversity, which is why in second place, through this neutralization, it opens the way to the discourse of the harmonious coexistence of society. this situation conceals an exercise of essentialization of interethnic relations creating a cultural referent. this essentialization has the effect of returning to the metanarrative of miscegenation given that it is the empty signifier that essentializes mexican identity, a very sophisticated form of racism. b. textbooks as political products (torres, 1989) convey this form of racism through activities and/or illustrations that show the harmonious coexistence of differences, under the discourse of coexistence and silence indigenous cultures by the signifier diversity. on the whole, they depoliticize the contents and consequently the didactic activities. this action has the effect of another form of racism because it entails the reproduction of the current referent as something natural or given. the foregoing means that the mythical effect of miscegenation in the case of mexico tends to generate new forms of discrimination and racism. c. they also transmit contradictory messages regarding the relations of power in the construction of knowledge; while a field of knowledge is opened epistemologically, the possibility of legitimization for the underground knowledge that has been admitted as learning objects is closed, specifically to indigenous knowledge as possible national content. d. notwithstanding the above, it can be noticed in the civic and ethical education textbooks, and in the telesecundaria’s2 sciences textbook, a degree of advancement in the socio-critical formation of students, by explicitly showing the relationships of knowing power. these observations give us an account of the deep crisis of the national curriculum of mexican basic education, with respect to the way in which the nation is understood as a function significantly empty. the contents that used to give meaning to the national and the basic as hegemonic discursive chains are losing more and more ground, and with it, the impossibility of improving the quality of education received by mexican children and youth. notes 1 anag800@yahoo.com 2 telesecundaria is an educational service intended for secondary level in remote, rural and indigenous communities. classes are attended by a single teacher and supported by educational videos and textbooks. it is a cheap modality for those communities facing the hegemonic modality that is the conventional day school; 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(1991) curriculum: crisis, mito y perspectiva, méxico, unam. laclau, e. & c. mouffe (1985) hegemony and socialist strategy, londres, verso press laclau, e. & c. mouffe (1987) hegemonía y estrategia socialista. hacia una radicalización de la democracia, madrid, siglo xxi. navarrete, f. (2005) las relaciones interétnicas en méxico. méxico, unam-programa universitario méxico nación multicultural. torres, j. (1989) libros de texto y control del currículum, cuadernos de pedagogía, nº 168, p. 50-55 zizek, s. (2003) el sublime objeto de la ideología, buenos aires, siglo xxi editores. submitted: november, 20th, 2017 approved: december, 9th, 2017 http://www.infoamerica.org/documentos_pdf/althusser1.pdf o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: ferraço, carlos eduardo (2013).curriculum, culture and investigation on everyday life: or about the creation of educational policies in schools. transnational curriculum inquiry 10(1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> curriculum, culture and investigation on everyday life: or about the creation of educational policies in schools 1 carlos eduardo ferraço 2 federal university of espírito santo, brazil preface this article aims at questioning (revel, 2004) the curricula performed (ferraço, 2008a) in the everyday life of six schools 3 at vitoria, espírito santo, brazil, which are woven in theory-practice networks (alves, 2001) 4 the subjects who practice the school routine (certeau, 1994, 1996), focusing on the relationships between curriculum and culture established by these subjects. this is about the unfolding of our investigations 5 that aim at understanding the different meanings negotiated (bhabha, 1999) by teachers and students concerning curricular processes going on in our schools. at the same time, these studies rely on a theoretical-methodological-epistemological perspective that can question and understand the multiple space and time determinations of the curriculum, and thus contribute to broadening the possibilities of these actors’ knowledge and action. at that point, the highlights on the discussions about the relationships between curriculum and culture result from our own condition of practicing researchers (ferraço, 2003, 2008c). it was when we realized that even if we are engaged in projects to combat the cultural discrimination present in schools, both teachers and students keep producing other forms of exclusion and, in the anonymousness of everyday school life, they simultaneously produce survival tactics and strategies (certeau, 1994, 1996) inspired by micro resistances that ground micro liberties and thus potentialize life. therefore, our study does not suggest that understanding the networks woven between culture and curriculum simply means to analyze how actors follow current curricular prescriptions and teaching projects based on cultural aspects deriving from these prescriptions. also, it does not aim at making classroom procedure propositions, but at questioning the theory-practice devised by these actors while weaving their own networks. this is about investigating with school subjects how the art of realizing curricula works and understanding these actors’ styles of acting-thinking, that is, understand their way to make theory from practice taking the political power of these everyday actions into account. because we believe that every analysis of everyday life is an analysis of political everyday life. based on the conversations and research procedures adopted, we will deal in this article with the threads of the networks woven by the subjects, assuming that, in our condition of practicing researchers, we are always exposed to our own theoreticalmethodological limitations. these threads evoke some narratives-images of 8 th grade ferraço. curriculum, culture and investigation on everyday life 39 transnational curriculum inquiry10(1.) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci students and teachers which derive from the meaning these actors attribute to the terms culture, school, knowledge, and curriculum, and which allowed us to arrive at the questions guiding our studies. thus, the narratives-images presented along this text also helped us notice the existence of possibilities of complexification and amplification of action-knowledge networks of the subjects who inhabit schools, in a such a way that their anonymous and sneaky tactics and strategies are potentialized in their everyday school life, which subvert their own attempts to standardize the notion of curriculum and culture prescribed in the curricula. therefore, instead of trying to quantify, categorize or analyze these narrativesimages, we opted for assuming that they are an expression of the diverse meanings negotiated for culture and curriculum in the everyday life processes of curriculum execution. last but not least, it is worth highlighting that this text attempts to use fragmented writing, which aims at overcoming the causal linearity of beginning, middle and end and intends to approach the idea of conceptual/notional plateaus that are supposedly entangled. in this text-writing-essay we dared to make the fragments of the narrative-images produced by students and teachers go across, interrupt the linear sequence of the text itself, including quotations to cause reading pauses, thinking, and at the same time favor the approach to the complex meanings these subjects attribute to the themes in question in their subjectivity networks. we do not seek to represent what students and teachers know about the themes curriculum, school, culture and knowledge. we intend to cause thinking movements based on the differences and the flow of meaning towards these themes so as to favor understanding that, regardless of how much we wish, we would not be able to grasp these movements. 2 some questions that have guided our studies fragment of conversations with pedagogue alda to me, working on projects is important so that we can have a more totalizing way to operate contents. but are they projects per subject or more general projects? most times they are projects per subject. and how many projects are developed per year in this school? well, for each subject, along the year, there are about ten projects, but it depends a lot on the teacher. there are teachers who remain traditional. now, if we include the projects that are for everybody, then we will have about eighteen. is there time for all of that? to be honest, it's rush job. we have to demand from the teachers, otherwise they procrastinate and don’t finish it. but we have the project shows, so they have to meet the deadline anyway. don’t think that this notion of working on so many projects keeps compartmentalizing knowledge? but if you don’t work on projects you’re excluded from the current trend. they consider you traditionalist. projects are a synonym of progressive school today, and no one wants to be traditionalist. ferraço. curriculum, culture and investigation on everyday life 40 transnational curriculum inquiry10(1.) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci overall, in our previous study we discussed the image-narratives (alves, 2001; manguel, 2001) produced by the practicing subjects of school every day life, which derived from the use (certeau, 1994, 1996) they make of the official curricular proposal. thus, taking into account our wish for investigating with (ferraço, 2003, 2007) the school everyday life, for three years we were able to participate in a number of activities carried out in the study institutions 6 . it was then that we realized the importance the school subjects attribute to the relation between curriculum and culture. the centrality and strength in the dialogues arising between culture and curriculum led us to also focus on theories/authors that allowed us to deepen this discussion based on attempts to establish dialogues between postcolonial studies, everyday life studies and curricular studies in order to question the theory-practices performed in the schools. finally, aware of the fact that only by problematizing the multiple space and time determinations of the different municipal school settings, we will be able to understand the power of the complexity in the schools. adopting school routine as investigation setting, we chose the questions that have challenged us: a) maintenance of a curricular concept grounded on ideas of written curricular proposal and cultural project pedagogy; b) emphasis to the ideas of local culture, identity, property, originality, essence, tradition and cultural diversity strained by the processes of differentiation, negotiation, translation, hybridization that take place in the everyday school life; c) linear association of culture to folklore, characters, events, objects, behavior, customs, aesthetic preferences...; d) maintenance and broadening of tourist curriculum practice based on the calendar of holidays and festivals, highlighting the organization of events such as cultural shows/fairs, beauty contests, etc., which strengthens what we have called “shop window pedagogy”, since it values the products to be displayed to the detriment of negotiation and cultural hybridization processes that take place; e) proposition of educational actions/programs involving themes such as the environment, violence, religion, sexuality, health, racism, family, work, etc., which strengthens the image of culture as a redeemer of social ills, minimizing the discussion around inequality because of the emphasis on the idea of diversity, and also; f) anonymous and sneaky invention of tactics and strategies that subvert the attempts to standardize the notion of curriculum and culture that is present in the prescriptive curricular texts and, consequently, weave different meanings to the processes, characterizing the dimensions of complexity, political resistance and permanent indetermination/invention of everyday school life. which words do you associate to culture? africa. ancient. art. carnaval. boring. old thing. typical food. black beauty contest. creativity. different. own style. excursion trip. exhibit. facebook. favela. cultural fair. folklore. funk. gay. hanna montana. identity. indian. the environment. half-breed. mix. hill. museum. music. black people. our past. orkut. religion. theft. theater. tradition. trash. (students). which words do you associate to culture? ancestors. crafts. fine arts. civilization. celebrations. religious conflicts. belief. worship. cultivation. holidays. from cradle. roots. sexual diversity. folklore. ferraço. curriculum, culture and investigation on everyday life 41 transnational curriculum inquiry10(1.) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci galleries. identity. media. museums. works of art. standard. popular and classic. tourist spots. preservation. moral principles. curricular projects. ethnicities. social networks. religion. tradition. values. trips. (teachers) these initial inferences in terms of how the subjects in the study schools work concerning the relation between curriculum and culture are not expressed in an organized way as described here. in fact, this is always all about theoretical practices that interact in their knowledge networks therefore, the main purpose of this study was to question the curricular theory-practices featured by subjects in the schools, not to disqualify and/or judge them, but to promote action in the everyday school lives that can favor movements to broaden the knowledge networks. as alves (2005, p. 3) said, [we understand] that human beings, in their actions and to communicate, are loaded of values that reproduce, transmit, but also create [...]. thus, in the same process, they apply what is imposed to them by the dominating culture, with technical products made available for consumption and, in return, they create ways to understand and use the technical invention, giving rise to technologies and possibilities of change of both the technical artifacts and the usage techniques. we are going through a moment of discussion about the curriculum in the system. the current proposal cannot meet the school needs today. that is why i that this discussion is necessary to all of us. even to follow teachers’ work. (alda, pedagogue). but i think that it does not change much in the end, except for one or two novelties. government after government, each team has to brand their mark, their logo of curriculum. i still teach the same things, but always contextualizing them. there are no substantial changes. just the façade, to leave the party's mark. (rosemary, geography teacher). 3 about some theoretical-political-epistemological assumptions from our study on the relation between culture and curriculum. 3.1 what do we understand by curriculum? even considering that the official prescriptions are important elements of the curriculum, we question this view so as to take the focus off the idea of curriculum as official document and thus broaden it with the notion of curriculum as knowledge-action networks woven and shard in the school routines. what do you hate at school? not being allowed to wear a cap or use a cell phone. not being allowed to date and kiss. building depredation. fights. the lunch. being sent to the coordination office. having my parents called to school. having to line up and sing the national anthem. not being allowed to leave earlier if a teacher misses class. having to wear a uniform. ugly and poor people. students from slums. protestant students and teachers. having to listen to preaching and moral lessons at school. (students). what do you like most at school? friends. no class. mess. restroom. kissing. cafeteria. food. coordinator’s advice. fun. physical education. sports. studying. making mess. student’s guild. ferraço. curriculum, culture and investigation on everyday life 42 transnational curriculum inquiry10(1.) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci end time. computing. english. class breaks. playing soccer. lab. snacking. reading. dating. i like nothing. yard. trips. jokes during the classes. homework. the projects. flirting. teachers. lunch break. fans. (students). in this regard, alves et al. (2002) advocate that, by participating in the everyday curricular experience, even if supposedly following pre-established curricular material, teachers and students weave practical alternatives with the threads that they are provided by the networks they are part of, in and out of school. therefore, we can say that there are many curricula operating in school, despite the different homogenizing mechanisms. unfortunately, much of our curricular proposals have not been able to incorporate these experiences. they intend to hover over the daily practice activities of the subjects who make up the school. inverting the axis in this process means to understand the curricular weaving as a process to give rise to alternatives built in the everyday life and that already are going on (alves et al, 2002, p. 34). we have several projects approaching the question of students’ culture. especially now that including african culture in curriculum is mandatory. for example, the black beauty contest has attracted our attention in the sense of valuing black students’ beauty. another thing is the culture fair, in which each class is responsible for presenting things that are typical of a county or state, such as crafts, drinks, typical foods, dances, typical clothes, and traditions, ... once in a while there is some discussion among them when something is typical of two places. then i say, "so, it's not typical". (martha, pedagogue). 3.2 about complexity, cultural hybridization and the need of overcoming the dichotomy of “prescribed curriculum” vs. “experienced curriculum”. the research questions proposed also lead to overcoming the dichotomy between prescribed and experienced curricula because, in order to understand the cultural processes carried out in the weaving of everyday life networks, we make use of hybridization (bhabha, 1998) and complexity (morin, 1996, 2002) ideas, which break through any possibility of analysis based on dichotomous and excluding polarizations. by analyzing the questions posed by the complexity paradigm, morin (2002) warns us about the need of understanding complexity as a problem, a challenge, not a solution, a definite answer to facing these questions. by trying to characterize complexity, the author advises us that, at first glance, it is what is not simple. the ambition of complexity is accounting for the shattered interactions caused by the cuts between subjects, between cognitive categories and types of knowledge. in other words, everything that is intersected to form a complexity unit, but the unit "complexus" does not destroy the variety and diversity of the complexities that wove it (morin, 1996, p. 176). i believe that content remains important. otherwise, what are we going to teach? you must have goals to teach a class. you have to plan your work and adapt the curriculum to what is happening in the world. those who wrote the curriculum wrote it in another context, and if do not adapt it, there is no way to work. (marcia, portuguese teacher). ferraço. curriculum, culture and investigation on everyday life 43 transnational curriculum inquiry10(1.) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci here in this school we work on cultural aspects in the curriculum without worrying about whether it concerns local or general culture. especially because i often wonder about these we call local and general culture. to me, this separation does not make much sense, at least not nowadays. students are connected to the world all the time and, consequently, the separation between local and general is difficult to be accepted. (rosa, sciences teacher). therefore, it is not possible to assume a contraposition between “official curricular prescriptions” and “performed curricula”. in fact, we understand that, in the everyday school life, networked curricula are expressed as powerful possibilities of broadening and/or questioning the discursive field of curriculum, including the official proposals, among other determinants interwoven in these networks. 3.3 about curriculum policies and research on everyday school life another assumption we make in this everyday life study regards the conclusion that the curricular theory-practices invented by the practicing subjects, besides being hybrid, negotiated in the complex everyday life knowledge-action networks are also curriculum policies. this attitude has made us search for a more complex notion of policy than the one systematized by government documents. our construction and understanding of what reality is necessarily take place in a political dimension. all is a result of discursive agreements, all is political. the human being is not a biological, social economic, psychological and political being, that is, there is not a political dimension “beside” the other dimensions. politics is not an extra dimension, unless politics constantly crosses the other dimensions. this happens in a way that event the access we have to ourselves is determined by politics. i cannot be a social being without being a political individual; i cannot be an ethical individual, without being a political individual; i cannot be an epistemological individual [...] being a political individual. (veiganeto, 1996, p.170) understanding the everyday curricular theoretical-practices as curriculum policies does not only mean to question some of the dichotomies inherited by education of modern science hegemonic discourse but, above all, it means to suspect every and any proposal to make practice become political. in other words, it means to alert us for the idea (so present in schools) that people need to be politically “aware”. this attitude many times denies the fact that, regardless of our condition, options, or cultural choices, we are always political beings. in order to begin, we need to say that there is no understanding about the existence of "political practices" among the countless groups that develop studies on everyday life [...] once we understand that politics is practice, that is, actions by particular political groups about particular questions explicitly aiming at changing something that exists in a field of human expression. simply put, we necessarily see politics as collective practices within a field in which there is always struggle between different positions, even opposing positions. this way, we do not see only the most visible actions as “political”. (alves, 2010, p. 49). ferraço. curriculum, culture and investigation on everyday life 44 transnational curriculum inquiry10(1.) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 3.4 about possible meeting between postcolonial studies, curricular studies and research about school routines. which topics should be taught in schools? beauty. racecars. cinema. dance. drugs. spanish. facebook. bullying. college. pregnancy. computing. internet. fashion. motorcycling. msn. music. dating. swimming. soap operas. orkut. pornography. prejudice. prevention. religion. sex. soccer teams. twitter. college entrance examination (vestibular) (students). again alves (2005) helps us in this argumentation, when considering the importance of thinking about the relation between curricular and cultural questions: are there differences between what is produced in schools (such as knowledge) and what is produced outside schools, such as in sciences? which possibilities of inter-influences are placed between what is developed by schools and what is woven in the space-time outside them? in order to find answers to these questions, alves (2005) resorts to lopes (1999, p. 222-223) when he advocates that: it is questionable to set a knowledge and cultural hierarchy, as well as to conceive a unit in the cultural plurality. admitting cultural plurality is admitting not only plurality and discontinuity of reason, but also admitting the division of labor in the society of classes. it means conceiving dominating and dominated cultures as an ambiguous and contradictory blend of repression and liberation, reproduction and resistance. in my opinion, working on local culture is important for students to raise their selfesteem, to feel recognized in their cultural manifestation. for example, in this school many students live with congo manifestation, and this needs to be admitted as a theme, curricular content. (ana, math teacher). thus, the interaction between everyday curricular knowledge and cultures experiences by subjects who practice this routine pushes us to think about curriculum beyond official texts, involving them in the domains of knowledge-action networks of school routines, woven within a field of cultural meaning. since it is constitute in networked fields of signification, the curriculum has a dimension of cultural process that cannot be disregarded and that is performed within particular social, historical, cultural and economic contexts that penetrate one another. culture is a field of production of meanings in which different social groups, located in different positions of power, fight for imposing their meanings to the broader society. culture is, in this concept, a contested terrain of signification. (silva, 1999, p. 133-134). in the interaction and confluence of these contexts, we will try to place everyday school life as culture’s in-between (bhabha, 1998), and question the theoreticalepistemological-methodological possibilities that are created in everyday networks of use, negotiation, hybridization and translation between cultures, expressing different cultural ferraço. curriculum, culture and investigation on everyday life 45 transnational curriculum inquiry10(1.) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci struggles. according to bhabha (1998), the terms of cultural struggle, whether by antagonism or by affiliation, are performatively produced, and the social interaction of difference, from the perspective of minorities, is a complex ongoing negotiation. negotiation here means process, without necessarily having to reach a consensus. what are you curious about but you are afraid to ask? what is it like to have a child? how was my mother’s first time? does giving birth hurt? can lesbians have children? does losing virginity hurt? why are there lesbians and gays in this school? why do men become gay? why do older men like sex with younger girls? why can't we marry more than one person? why do we have to marry virgin? how big are the teacher’s breasts? (students). as everyday life researchers, this throws us at multiple networks of ephemeral negotiations, permeated by ambiguity, ambivalence of possibilities that are presented in the interstices, but that are not fixed or unchangeable. complementing this idea, we have in bhabha (1998, p. 248) the proposal of thinking culture as space of enunciation: if culture as epistemology is concentrated in function and intention, then culture as enunciation is concentrated in signification [...] enunciation is a more dialogical process that attempts to trace displacements and realignments that result from antagonisms and cultural articulations — subverting reason of hegemonic moments and replacing with hybrid, alternative spaces of cultural negotiation. according to bhabha (1998) the passage from cultural as epistemological object to the idea of culture as a space of enunciation opens possibilities of other times of cultural signification, establishing a process through which the subjects who practice the everyday life are assumed as protagonists of their story and experience. thus, the different types of enunciation and cultural translations in the use of official curricular prescriptions produce power of invention in schools and, consequently, other uses-discourses of/about curriculum among multiple space-time of cultural enunciation and hybridization. in this discussion it is important to recognize that hybrid for bhabha (1998) is not a synthesis that solves a conflict between original and essential opposites by blending them. thus, cultural hybridity is overlapping (not only syncretism), such as a poorly made copy, a dissimulation, a (partial) similarity that is not similitude, a double inscription, less than one and the double. macedo (2004), based on the notion hybridity, defends the idea of thinking curriculum as border space-time in which hybrid cultures are produced by negotiated between the many traditions that constitute it. when thinking about difference in the curriculum, the author considers the following: recently, it has been highlighted [...] in education in education the notion of hybridity, which could be defined, in a very simple way, as a blend [...] that transforms difference in the same, but that also allows the same to be seen as difference. it is about the notion that deals with difference — as well as with apparent homogeneity — and disturbs both the borders between self and other and the idea of self and other [...] i argue that curriculum as hybrid needs to be thought as border and ambivalence space-time that get along with different cultural traditions (macedo, 2004, p. 15-16). ferraço. curriculum, culture and investigation on everyday life 46 transnational curriculum inquiry10(1.) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci why do come to school? sometimes i ask myself this question. to make friends. to play ball. to play. to talk. not to hear shit from my mom. to take physical education classes and have lunch. to have fun. not to stay home doing nothing. to be able to get a job. to fuss around. to get things. because i have to. i want to have a better future. (students). thus, based on bhabha (1998), we seek to deny a view of school that thinks as imaginary museum of several cultures, as if one could collect and appreciate these cultures through holidays, characters, traditions or any other attempt of curricular prescription grounded on a multicultural classic perspective. coherent to this view, silva (1999, p. 130) claims that: in these superficial forms seen as multicultural, the other is "visited" from a perspective that could be called "tourist's perspective", which stimulates a superficial and voyeuristic approach of foreign cultures. a postcolonial perspective would question the superficially multicultural experiences stimulated in the so-called “commemorative dates” [demanding] a multicultural curriculum that does not separate questions of knowledge, culture and aesthetics from questions of power, politics and interpretation. it fundamentally calls for a decolonized curriculum. the superficial forms of multiculturalism created by silva (1999) are also pointed out by bhabha (rutherford, 1996) when he concludes that multiculturalism represented an attempt to respond to and, at the same time, control the dynamic process of articulation of cultural difference, administering the consensus based on a norm that propagates cultural diversity. what are you curious about but you are afraid to ask? why is there only the day of black consciousness but not a day of white, indian, asian consciousness? why are there white people with curly hair? why don't black boys like to date black girls? why are the queens of the spring white girls? what does my sister i never look like? does my father still love after having abandoned me? why do some mothers abandon their children? (students). 4 about the theoretical-methodological paths: research on everyday life... 4.1 about the use of conversation in action-thinking with the performing subjects during the research process: emphasizing relationships during this discussion, it is necessary to affirm that the previous questions evoke some notions that must be minimally pointed out. the first point is on the use we make of conversational practices with educators and students as attempts to approach and mobilize the relationships lived by such subjects in schools. in other words, it is an attempt to think with them, instead of thinking about them. such attitude of thinking with the other has been leading us to the clue left by certeau (1994, 1996), in terms of the use he used to make of conversations in his research works. when giard (1996) refers to that use, he emphasizes his concern to try to establish outstanding empathy while talking to ordinary subjects, without paying directive attention to them. ferraço. curriculum, culture and investigation on everyday life 47 transnational curriculum inquiry10(1.) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the rhetoric of ordinary conversations are transforming practices of ‘wordsituations’, of verbal productions where the speaking positions intercross into an oral network that is not owned by any individual. they will be communications of one piece of interaction that will not belong to anyone. the conversation is a provisory and collective effect of competences in the art of manipulating ‘commonplace’ and playing with the inevitability of the events to make them homey. (certeau, 1994, p.50). during the research, our attempts to approach the subjects privilege the meetings, the relations, whatever goes on between them-us. the attention is directed to the practices that are shared, attempting to decharacterize an approach that is centered in the individual. assessing such practices does not mean going back to the individuals. during three centuries, the social atomism has worked as a historical line for analyzing a society that presupposes that individual is an elementary unity, and the individual would make groups to which they could always be reduced to [...]. on one hand, the analysis previously shows that the relation (always social) determines its terms, not the opposite, and every individuality is a place where some incoherent pluralism (and many times contradictory) of their relational determination occurs. on the other hand, above all, the matter refers to modes of operation, or action plans, and does not refer directly to the subject that is its author or vehicle. (certeau, 1994, p.37) 4.2 about the limits of our research instruments and categories of analysis, and the need to go deeper in the complexity of school routines. in our research proposal, we have been exercised the need to go deeper in school routines, in order to discuss the processes of translation, negotiation and use, from where the subjects create narrative-images that help us understand the approximation between culture and curriculum in their practical-theories. in that sense, alves (1998b,p.2)has the following position about the possibility of going deeper in routines: “[...] ‘"[...] willing to know better, in respect to what lefèbvre calls ‘the humble reason of routine’, demands from the researcher dedicated to it, availability to feel the world, not only just gazing at it , proudly, from up high." then, we dive with all senses alert in the school routines looking for the narrativeimages produced in between the routine networks and the translations, negotiations and uses made from the official curricular proposal. as mentioned before, those narrativeimages are full of cultural, social and economic that is neither immovable, nor permanent. however, they help us understand what certeau (1996) calls “ordinary culture” and, as a consequence, and the limits in his analysis. the ordinary culture hides a fundamental diversity of situations, interests and contexts, under a supposedly repetition of objects that feed it [...]. we barely know the kinds of operations, registers and operations on the table of ordinary practices, because our assessment instruments [...] have been constituted for other objects and other purposes [...]. our categories of knowledge are still very rustic and our analysis models are too elaborated so as to let us imagine the amazing inventive ferraço. curriculum, culture and investigation on everyday life 48 transnational curriculum inquiry10(1.) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci abundance of routine practices. have been constituted for other objects and other purposes [...]. thus, a powerful alternative that we have found for realizing our research with routines has to do to the movements proposed by alves (2001). as defended by the author: there are four aspects that i find necessary to discuss in order to start understanding such complexity [...]. it is needed to dive with all the senses alert in the topic i wish to study about [...] i have been calling this movement feeling of the world [...] understanding that the group of theories [...] that we have inherited from modernity [...] is not only support and guidance to the route to be trailed, but, more and more, limitation to whatever must be weaved. in order to name such process, i am using the idea of turning upside down [...]. the third of them, by incorporating the notion of complexity, will demand some expansion from what we understand as source, and discussion about the ways of dealing with diversity [...] i believe i can call this movement “drinking from every fountain” finally, [...] assuming that, in order to communicate new concerns [...] it is imperative to write in a new way [...] maybe, such movement could be called ‘narrating life and making science literary’. (alves, 2001, p.14-16) in later texts, alves (2005) broadens her considerations about the proposal by asking: why do not we search for working a fifth movement that maybe could be named, in honor of nietzsche and foucault, ecce homo, or even ecce femina, that would be more appropriate to the routine of our schools? maybe because i am not as wise as the authors mentioned before, or for being a woman in a society in which men are supposed to have ideas, or even, because i leave my footprints in lands that are fairly known, hanging around space-times still hardly revealed what really matters in research in/from/with routines are the people, the performers, as named by certeau (1996) because they are seen in action, all the time (alves, 2005, p.17). why do people have different skin colors? due to the culture. in order for prejudice to exist. miscegenation. because of genetics. because of their nationality. because of the black people. they stain white color. because the skin color changes according to the amount of melanin in our body. because god created it in this way. because if everyone were the same, life wouldn´t be good. (students). from the movements proposed by alves (2001), working with narratives associated to images (narrative-images or image-narratives) has be showing, in our research, extremely powerful as a less structured and formal possibility to understand curricular processes that happen in schools. therefore, even if we consider the power of prescriptive curricular determinisms that intend to frame school life nowadays, it is necessary to investigate the multiplicity of worlds that coexist in them. it demands another research attitude, by diving in the universes of small talks, images and hubbubs that tell us about the ferraço. curriculum, culture and investigation on everyday life 49 transnational curriculum inquiry10(1.) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci movement of a society that, by talking, is constituting and reinventing itself on a daily basis. what are you curious about but you are afraid to ask? why are you doing research with such questions? is anybody really going to read it? why would somebody do it? what is the use of this questionnaire? do you really think someone is asking questions that are really secret? are you going to answer? if yes, is the salary good? i have no questions. my life is an open book. i have no curiosity. everything i want to know about can be answered by google. (students). notes 1 a version of this article was presented at the fourth world curriculum studies conference iv iaacs in rio de janeiro, brazil (2012). 2 ferraco@uol.com.br 3 the study schools are located in the municipality of vitoria, state of espírito santo, brazil. 4 written connecting words inspired by nilda alves in an attempt to overcome the dichotomies inherited from modernity’s hegemonic discourse and, at the same time, allow this connection to produce other meanings. 5 “curricula performed in the everyday life of public schools of the early elementary school grades” funded by cnpq. 6 our participation in the everyday life of the six schools was carried out in a systematic way at different moments and in different settings such as weekly studies, classes, informal activities, continuing education, etc. references alves, n. (2010). redes educativas ‘dentrofora’ das escolas, exemplificadas pela formação de professores. in: dalben, ângela; diniz, júlio; leal, leiva; santos; lucíola (org.). convergências e tensões no campo da formação e do trabalho docente. belo horizonte: autêntica, p. 49-66. alves, n. (2005). artefatos tecnológicos relacionados à imagem e ao som na expressão da cultura de afro-brasileiros e seu “uso” em processos curriculares de formação de professoras na educação superior: o caso do curso de pedagogia da uerj/campus maracanã. projeto incorporado ao prociência, agosto de 2005. alves, n. (2001). decifrando o pergaminho: o cotidiano das escolas nas lógicas das redes cotidianas. in: oliveira, inês barbosa de; alves, nilda (org.). pesquisa no/do cotidiano das escolas: sobre redes de saberes. rio de janeiro: dp&a, p. 13-38. alves, n. (1998a). trajetórias e redes na formação de professores. rio de janeiro: dp&a. alves, n. (1998b). o espaço escolar e suas marcas. rio de janeiro: dp&a. mailto:ferraco@uol.com.br ferraço. curriculum, culture and investigation on everyday life 50 transnational curriculum inquiry10(1.) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci alves, n. (2002). criar currículo no cotidiano. são paulo: cortez. alves, n. & garcia, r. l. (2002). a necessidade de orientação coletiva nos estudos sobre o cotidiano: duas experiências. in: bianchetti, l. & machado, a. m. n. (eds.). a bússola do escrever: desafios e estratégias na orientação de teses e dissertações. são paulo: cortez, p. 255-296. bhabha, h. (1998). o local da cultura. belo horizonte: ufmg. candau, v. (2005). sociedade multicultural e educação: tensões e desafios. in: candau, v. cultura(s) e educação: entre o crítico e o pós-crítico. rio de janeiro: dp&a, p. 15-37. certeau, m. (1996). a invenção do cotidiano 2: morar, cozinhar. petrópolis: vozes. certeau, m. (ed.) (1994). a invenção do cotidiano: as artes de fazer. petrópolis: vozes. ferraço, c. e. (ed.) (2011). currículo e educação básica: por entre redes de conhecimentos, imagens, narrativas, experiências e devires. rio de janeiro, rovelle. ferraço, c. e. (ed.) (2008a). cotidiano escolar, formação de professores(as) e currículo. são paulo: cortez. ferraço, c. e.; perez, c. l. v. & oliveira, i. b. (eds.) (2008b). aprendizagens cotidianas com a pesquisa: novas reflexões em pesquisa no/do/com os cotidianos das escolas. rio de janeiro: dp et alii. ferraço, c. e. (2009). currículos realizados nos cotidianos de escolas públicas das séries iniciais do ensino fundamental: sobre narrativas e imagens produzidas com os usos, traduções e negociações como potência para a ampliação das redes de conhecimentos dos sujeitos praticantes. projeto incorporado ao cnpq, agosto de 2009. ferraço, c. e. (2008c). ensaio de uma metodologia efêmera: ou sobre as várias maneiras de se sentir e inventar o cotidiano escolar. in: oliveira, i. b.& alves, n. (eds.). pesquisa no/do cotidiano das escolas: sobre redes de saberes. 2. ed. rio de janeiro: dp et alii. 2008c. p. 101-117. ferraço, c. e. (2008d). currículos e conhecimentos em rede. in: alves, n. & garcia, r. l. (eds.). o sentido da escola. rio de janeiro: dp et alii, p. 101-124. ferraço, c. e. (2007). pesquisa com o cotidiano. educação & sociedade: revista de ciência da educação, centro de estudos educação e sociedade, campinas, v. 28, n. 98. p. 73-95, jan./abr.. ferraço, c. e. (2003). eu, caçador de mim. in: garcia, r. l. (ed.). método: pesquisa com o cotidiano. rio de janeiro: dp&a, p. 157-175. giard, l. (1996). momentos e lugares. in: certeau, m. a invenção do cotidiano 2: morar, cozinhar. petrópolis: vozes. gros, f. (2004). foucault: a coragem da verdade. são paulo: parábola editorial. guimarães, c. (1977). imagens da memória: entre o legível e o visível. belo horizonte: ed. ufmg. guimarães, f. (2006). o ordinário e o extraordinário das narrativas. in: guimarães, c. & frança, v. (eds.). na mídia, na rua: narrativas do cotidiano. belo horizonte: autêntica, p. 8-17. lopes, a. r. c. (1999). conhecimento escolar: ciência e cotidiano. rio de janeiro: eduerj. macedo, e. (2004). currículo e hibridismo: para politizar o currículo como cultura. revista educação em foco, juiz de fora, v. 9, n. 1, p.13-30. mangel, a. (2001). lendo imagens: uma história de amor e ódio. são paulo: companhia ferraço. curriculum, culture and investigation on everyday life 51 transnational curriculum inquiry10(1.) 2013http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci das letras. morin, e. (1996). ciência com consciência. rio de janeiro: bertrand brasil. morin, e. (2002). a religação dos saberes: o desafio do século xxi. rio de janeiro: bertrand brasil. oliveira, i. b. (2003). currículos praticados: entre a regulação e a emancipação. rio de janeiro: dp&a. pacheco, j. a. (2005). escritos curriculares. são paulo: cortez. revel, j. (2004). o pensamento vertical: uma ética da problematização. in: gros, f. (org.). foucault: a coragem da verdade. são paulo: parábola editorial. rutherford, j. (1996). o terceiro espaço: uma entrevista com homi bhabha. revista do patrimônio histórico e artístico nacional, campinas, v.1, n. 24, p. 34-41. prefeitura municipal de vitória. secretaria municipal de educação. diretrizes curriculares para o ensino fundamental. http://www.vitoria.es.gov.br/seme.php?pagina=diret_ensino_fundamental>. last access: 15.4. 2010. silva, t. t.(1999). documentos de identidade: uma introdução às teorias do currículo. belo horizonte: autêntica. veiga-neto, a. (1996). a didática e as experiências de sala de aula: uma visão pósestruturalista. educação & realidade. porto alegre: faculdade de educação/ufrgs, v.21, n.2, p.161-175, jul/dec. submitted: june, 11th, 2013 approved: july, 26th, 2013 http://www.vitoria.es.gov.br/seme.php?pagina=diret_ensino_fundamental to cite this report please include all of the following details: transnational curriculum inquiry http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> peer review process 2014 a 2016 stats and reports issues published: 06 total submissions: 35 reviewed: 35 accepted (with revisions or not): 26 declined: 28% reviewers alice casimiro lopes state university of rio de janeiro brazil alicia de alba national autonomous university of mexico mexico carlinda leite university of porto portugal elizabeth macedo state university of rio de janeiro brazil francisco sousa university of açores portugal frida díaz barriga arceo national autonomous university of mexico mexico maria luiza sussekind federal university of the state of rio de janeiro brazil peter appelbaum arcadia university usa preciosa fernandes university of porto portugal maria elizabeth bianconcini de almeida pontifical catholic university of são paulo brazil myriam southwell national university of la plata argentina raquel goulart barreto state university of rio de janeiro brazil stavroula philippou university of cyprus cyprus wenjun zhang zhejiang university china to cite this article please include all of the following details: süssekind, maria luiza. (2014). why deterritorialized curriculum? transnational curriculum inquiry volume (2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> why a deterritorialized curriculum? maria luiza süssekind 1 federal university of rio de janeiro state unirio, brazil what is the role of critical theory in the field of curriculum? what is the ―relevance‖ of curricula in social transformation? those questions surround professor joão m. paraskeva‘s thinking. he is a curriculum scholar who absolutely fits with these times of internationalization. born in, maputo mozambique, where he finished his elementary and high school, he continued his studies at the portuguese catholic university in portugal and at the university of minho, braga, portugal. a professor at university of minho, he also taught in southern africa, brazil, spain, and italy before moving to the u.s. he was a visiting professor at miami university oxford. ohio and then he joined the university of massachusetts dartmouth. currently he is a full professor, founder and chair of educational leadership and policy studies at umass dartmouth. his most recent work is the curriculum: decanonizing the field. new york: peter lang. paraphrasing him, the field‘s dna is labeled by theoretical disputes, as are most of the papers of curriculum theory scholars. the book conflicts in curriculum theory: challenging hegemonic epistemologies also brings up theories as a field of disputes, as ―a critical curriculum river‖ (p. 1) in the author‘s sharp style and pointed language. as the author presents his investigation, moving back and forward in history towards an itinerary curriculum theory (hereafter ict) that flowed in the ―critical curriculum river‖, the book assigns a vast significance to the concept of curriculum and retells the history of the field with a particular inspiration: the idea of crisis. ict, paraskeva claims, is ‗a‘ future for the field of curriculum studies. as paraskeva says, he prefers ―the crisis. it is the crises that allow inclusively the silences of the debates, however it cannot allow silencing the conversation. that is a tragedy.‖ (p. 143). this short essay offers a critical overview of joão m. paraskevas book conflicts in curriculum theory: challenging hegemonic epistemologies inviting tci followers to a new reading of his theories under a different approach of the postcolonial dialogues, above all, acknowledging its contemporaneity, complexity and the uses of the idea of epistemicide to give texture to the dialogues about internationalization. the foreword to conflicts in curriculum theory: challenging hegemonic epistemologies is written by donaldo macedo and underlines paraskeva‘s contribution to curriculum theory by bringing historicity to the field‘s debates. more than answers, the book raises many thoughtprovoking questions about the theories, the field, and the multiple meanings of the concept in exploring the work of some remarkable and other not-so-famous curriculum theorists süssekind. why deterritorialized curriculum? 68 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (2) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci since the eighteenth century. professor paraskeva goes over the history of the field with neither a linear nor evolutive approach, but with the deepness of historicity and complexity of a dialectic method picturing the field of dispute with the overarching vision of a navigator and the profoundness of the scavenger. donaldo macedo, another important public intellectual and educational theorist who translated paulo freire into english, summarizes the author‘s work saying that he ―rigorously unpacks the writing of dominant ideologies and intellectuals who have proclaimed both history and ideology dead‖ (p. ix). in fact, thanks to this statement it becomes easier to understand with whom both scholars are debating. in his own words, paraskeva states that in fact, what this book aims to do is to (1) put into historical context the emergence and development of the history of the field; (2) unveil the emergence of a group of critical theorists within the curriculum field; (3) offer a new metaphor of the field as ―a critical curriculum river‖ that meanders extensively to help understand these theorists‘ complex journey, including the battles fought for control of the field; and (4) examine and lay out a critique of the reconceptualist movement. furthermore, i argue in this book that the future of critical curriculum theory needs to overcome such tensions, twists, and contradictions and engage in the creation of an itinerant curriculum theory that must be committed to the struggle against epistemicides. (p. 1) yes, the book is like a ―road map‖ for understanding the context of the field, particularly in u.s., as a socio-historical constructo. learning from the author multiples understandings of curriculum through his particular and complex vision of the field of studies as a field of disputes and conflicts, a ―self-conscious field of study‖ that actually does not owe itself exclusively to this or to that other work, to this or to that other author, but to a combination of studies, works, intellectuals, and social events that would take determining steps toward what would constitute the curriculum field in the twentieth century. (p. 51) in ―chapter i: nature of conflict‖ the author illustrates karl marx‘s historic materialism while confronting the idea that school curriculum is absent of conflict. in the author‘s analysis, the conflict was undertaken by theories and the history of the field like something not formative that should be repressed. conflict, also understood as a method, is a contend. its absence aims [t]o divorce the educator‘s educational existence from his political existence is to forget that education, as an act of influence, is inherently a political act, as has been insightfully argued by some of the major exponents of the critical curriculum river. (p. 13) theoretically explained because of the domination of positivism that framed the field and stuffed non-critical curricula, this process influenced all disciplines and contends by abducting historicity and context from them. in this sense, the author seems to agree with henry giroux in understanding schools as ―a social construct that serves to mystify rather than illuminate reality‖ (p. 22). at times in the nineteenth century in the u.s. history, the political-social project, based on controlling curricula in order to achieve uniformity, standardization, and conformity, was enacted reinforcing the disciplinarism and süssekind. why deterritorialized curriculum? 69 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (2) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the control of knowledge through the nineteenth century as the author explores in the second chapter. later, he reinforces this idea by declaring, ―the lack of consensus about what should be taught in the schools highlights the need for a serious debate about school content‖ (p. 149). to recognize ―the powerful relation of conflict that is established between the hidden curriculum and the knowledge relayed in schools‖ (p. 14) in its dialogism and tensions (p. 19) is not only to understand the role of criticism as a theory but to take critique as a tool to fight against reproduction and domination. in this direction, paraskeva argues that there is a claim by critical progressive curriculum scholars for social justice and equality embedded in this debate bringing to the forefront the concepts of ideology, hegemony, common sense, hidden curriculum, power, reproduction, resistance, transformation, emancipation, class, gender, and race, among others (p. 20), which reshaped the field in the 80s and 90s. he points to today‘s main goals for critical progressive educators as being social justice and real democracy, which are not possible without cognitive justice (p. 21). this is a towering issue in paraskeva‘s ict rationale. as he claim, the struggle for curriculum justice which is a struggle for social justice implies a struggle for cognitive justice. this is one of the pillars of paraskeva‘s deterritorialized ict. in his profound, sometimes dark—but not pessimistic—criticism, the author analyzes the present and prophesizes a close-at-hand future in which school could possibly have a powerful role in society. in our historically fabricated society: in a spaceless world (bauman, 2004) profoundly segregated by neoliberal globalization doctrine, critical pedagogy, in its different windows (kincheloe, 1991), more than ever before needs to win the battle to democratize democracy. the schools and the curriculum have a key role in such a struggle (cf. counts, 1932)—in fact, the reinvigoration of the left, as aronowitz (2001) argues, depends on this. (p. 21) wisely, paraskeva engages politically in arguments to show how curriculum is a field of conflicts in all its aspects. for him, [t]he need to fight for an education system that would challenge savage social inequalities (kozol, 1992), that would provide the proper political tools to ―read the word and the world‖ (freire, 1998), that would challenge the pedagogy of the big lies and the positivist trap that has been dominating the educational apparatus (macedo, 2006) was inevitable. (p. 14) in the third and fourth chapters and further on, the theoretical exegesis made by paraskeva evolves through the twentieth century, analyzing the scientific curriculum fever, and championed the importance of the civil rights movement, and the romantic critics in the struggle over the u.s. curriculum; he also examined the emergence and questioning of tyler‘s dominant position. while explaining the debates and ideas, the author highlights the torrential and calm currents, seeking the emergence of a ―specific critical progressive curriculum river … [that] cannot be marginalized‖ (p. 42). he illustrates his work with deep historical research and erudition. according to paraskeva, the industrialism, on one hand, and the claims for educational training and social equality, on the other, create the demand for a whole school system and feed it with permanent tension. also, sputnik and the vietnam war are issues well examined for him as a critical theorist who invested in historicity and dialogism. süssekind. why deterritorialized curriculum? 70 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (2) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci others curriculum theorists ideas about education and social equality seem to be not so democratically inspired; as paraskeva points out, this whole way of thinking is full of conflicts and came from … a movement that was, in fact, emerging as a cure for delinquent children, children of the poorer class, immigrants and racial minorities, and as the ―socially correct‖ answer for how to integrate the american indians and african-americans who continued to work for the actualization of the freedom they nominally had won in 1865. (p. 43) some scholars, understanding that education could be an effective tool to change society (shape civilization, p. 53) and improve equality, became dominant but were not in unison, so that this dominance was built over all kinds of conflicts about the role of culture and the primacy of science, among others. those multiple understandings of the relationship between education and society not only shaped the debates on curriculum for many years but as the author clearly demonstrates, one relegates all other notions of curriculum to a less important role. in one epoch, the major investment was in vocational curricula, which was then also criticized by john dewey, complex, humanist, swimming into the river of progressivism, arguing that the curriculum directed only toward technical efficiency makes education ―an instrument of perpetuating unchanged the existing order of society instead of operating as a means of its transformation‖ (pp. 48, 119–122). in the ground of the debate, the author seems to conclude that despite all the efforts to develop curricula, methods, objectives, and evaluation forms and reformulate the relationship between education and society oriented by audacious ideals (p. 69), education was taken as a simplistic tool and totally inadequate to answer what the industrialism, ―a lethal phenomenon‖ demanded. against that view and defending critical theory, torres (1998) honors the brazilian educator paulo freire as one of the main critical inspirations and references in the field and states that critical studies provide ―the necessary tools to fully understand and combat the relationship between education and unequal cultural, political and economic power‖ (torres, 1998: p. 15). navigating the same ―non-monolithic yet powerful progressive critical curriculum river,‖ paraskeva (p. 75) confronted those ideas, and the established tradition. going over u.s, curriculum reforms and debates, paraskeva teases out the strings of different tendencies and interpretations that will allow the field to canonize taylor as well as freire. for him, this is how the field‘s dna was constituted in its endemic part: conflict and dispute. chapter five goes further, analyzing the dialogues about the relationship societyeducation and emphasizing the tensions in curricular debates. paraskeva explains that the field was highly developed, not just because of the importance that the relationship societyeducation attributed to it but also because of the investments made by u.s. government to develop a field of curriculum knowledge and development—shaped by the ideas of efficiency, uniformization, and occupational training demanded by the continued industrial advance and diversification. for sure, there was also criticism, humanism, diversity, democracy, and the acknowledgement of the contents of race and others in the same context and within the same curriculum disputes generating many theoretical disputes. a not-meaningless preoccupation—does high school adequately prepare students for their future? (p. 79)—embedded the debate among the dominant form of curriculum understanding called ―life adjustment education‖ (p. 77) and others. for paraskeva, süssekind. why deterritorialized curriculum? 71 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (2) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci although the theoretical hegemony hadn‘t been really menaced, the major perception was of the lag between the demands of democracy and the schools‘ capacity to meet such demands (p. 81): [t]he years from 1947 until 1970 were the most transformative in the history of curriculum since the era of bobbitt and charters. it is important to notice the ideological umbrella that was formed, which included scientific curriculummaking, of which tyler was the major spokesperson, along with the behavioral objectives curriculum, a return to testing, discipline-centered curriculum movements (a return to the disciplines of knowledge), right-wing and reactionary sentiments to remove any progressive elements and cold war warriors (p. 92). struggling for curriculum relevance in chapter six, paraskeva mas out some of the key names of a specific radial critical curriculum river. he claims: while critical theorists come from a number of traditions, the river metaphor helps show how these traditions flow both together and individually in the history of the field. although this group of scholars has never occupied a dominant position in the field, it is undeniable how much they have contributed to the struggle for a more just curriculum. (p. 2) undoubtedly, brazilian and non-us readers will be surprised by paraskeva‘s assertion above, but this is what makes the reading even more interesting for both countries‘ scholars, teachers, students, and actually any reader who wants to problematize contemporary society and history and understands the internationalization and the localisms of the field of curriculum. the brazilian scholar alice lopes (2013) argues in a recent article that currently in brazilian curriculum studies, debates between critical and postcritical scholars persist. she remarks on the influence that tomás tadeu da silva‘s translations and articles had in establishing the canons of the field in a opposite direction that what happened in u.s.‘ field; as showed by paraskeva‘s research. silva is a curriculum theorist, translator, publisher, and an intellectual deeply concerned with politics has succeeded in tilting the field in favor of the critical theorists, as defended by lopes (2013). in fact, silva, one of the more important brazilian curriculum scholars, wrote emblematic books that became major points of references in teacher education curriculum. he pointed out the supremacy of critical theory and mapped the field‘s debates during the 1980s and 1990s. paraskeva and silva have an ongoing dialogue. according to paraskeva, [w]e cannot understand this radical critical tradition within the curriculum field specifically and education in general unless we understand the counter-hegemonic traditions both within and outside curriculum in informal struggles related to unions, civil rights, etc. (p. 130) the struggles about curriculum relevance, as presented by paraskeva, are in a way what he calls the romantic critic (surely not homogeneous) fights ―against the alienation of youth that was perpetuated by an irrelevant pedagogy‖ (p. 100) or even a more virulent understanding of students as victims of a ―punitive‖ pedagogy (p. 102). the author highlights the role of the civil rights history of fights and ideas in the main debates about education and throughout some theorists‘ work. describing, contextualizing, and analyzing decades of events and crisis in the field of curriculum, the author proves that the debates on süssekind. why deterritorialized curriculum? 72 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (2) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci critical theories as well as some reconceptualists‘ concern with the need for curriculum relevance is related to the fight for social justice and can be identified in the civil rights movement. for the author, this context ―should not be dissociated from the student activist movement, which associated itself with the black cause, finding within the human rights movement the impetus for its own demands‖ (p. 99). this also reinforces the author‘s thesis about the field‘s dynamics and composition: these crises seem to be in its very dna: permanent conflict, permanent crisis, a permanent search for meaning, permanent contradictions—in essence, a permanently unstable condition. (p. 144) again, by telling the history and analyzing and contributing to a complex understanding of the field‘s conflicts, and also by recognizing the role and plurality within critical theory, mainly this specific critical river that is thoroughly analyzed in its specificity in chapter seven, paraskeva contends that [t]o claim that we are before a non-monolithic critical curriculum river within the progressive tradition that is hooked on a political approach towards schools and curriculum, seems not only inaccurate and reductive, but also minimizes important political approaches that one could identify in other progressive perspectives. (p. 111) as a feature of the field, the practical and theoretical diversity discussion ends by engaging the field in a ―composite approach that incorporates critical and post-structural perspective,‖ (p. 115), which sums up the focus of paraskeva‘s last two chapters. he definitely valorizes the role of critical theorists and theories in struggling for curriculum relevance that propels a theoretical movement towards the undeniably and potentially infinite epistemological diversity of the world (p. 152). i could say towards curricula relevance stressing paraskeva‘s own cognitive justice perspective: ―the task is to fight for cognitive diversity‖ as ―the best way for schools to fight for a just and equal society— especially when facing the impact of neo-radical centrist policies and strategies,‖ (pp. 152, 153). concluding, i wish to say that the debates presented in the last two chapters ―the emergence and vitality of a specific critical 
 curriculum river,‖ and ―challenging epistemicides: toward an itinerant 
 curriculum theory‖ are the apex of the book, which is really a work that goes beyond american history in setting up dilemmas for curriculum internationalization. while interweaving brazilian, african, american and european authors, experiences and documents, reforms, and debates, paraskeva dialogues with distinguish critical theorists in spain, canada, and england, redirecting the field‘s discussions towards social justice and historicity awareness. he does that also giving relevance to dwayne huebner‘s materialism (p. 135) as a landmark in the field. then, he ―trace[s] the roots of this critical progressive river by digging around in the so-called socioreconstructionist movement‖ (p. 115), confronting the ―nightmare of the present, as pinar (2004) puts it‖ (p. 151) to stand up for the critical theories, theorists, and tools, rewriting the idea of power by the astute use of postcolonial arguments (p. 157) and boaventura sousa santos‘s matrices such as the epistemicide, which wonderfully fits with curriculum debates oriented towards social and cognitive justice. there is a river, paraskeva argues, a river flooded by non-monolithical radical critical perspectives whose legacy needs to be preserved. however such task implies to move the theoretical debate to a different path, one süssekind. why deterritorialized curriculum? 73 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (2) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci that is fully deterritorialized and allows the natural emergence of an itinerant theoretical path – an itinerant curriculum theory a clear challenge to the western abyssal curriculum thinking. and then, by acknowledging william pinar‘s complicated conversation, he vaticinates that [w]e must ask if this international conversation is challenging what sousa santos (2007) denounced as epistemicides. is it engaged in opening up the canon of knowledge? or, as we fear—and we hope we are wrong—is it an attempt to edify a new canon? if so, it would be a disaster. (p. 145) why a deterritorialized curriculum? weaving together postcolonial references, doing the sociology of emergence to overcome the western epistemicidal hegemony and the power of scientific thinking, paraskeva argues about the need for critical theories that challenge the representationism that, citing deleuze, ―does not capture the global scale of difference‖ (p. 173). and so, by taking advantage of ―western scientific hegemonic dominance [that] is facing a profound crisis of epistemological confidence‖ (p. 181), paraskeva‘s evaluation is that ―we need a curriculum theory and practice that re-escalate their very own territorialities, which reflects an awareness that the new order and counterorder must be seen within the framework of power relations‖ (p. 176). as we can see, paraskeva expands this idea to meet the needs of an itinerant curriculum theorist—who‘s able to speak languages other than english (p. 178, linguistic genocide p. 179). paraskeva‘s curriculum proposal decolonizes theoretical and methodological frameworks (p. 182) and also explains by [t]aking the example of teacher education, deterritorialized curriculum theory is exploring new ways of thinking and feeling and finding ways to produce new and different purposes of mind … giv[ing] voice to an engineering of differences by deterritorializing itself and looking for new ways of thinking and feeling about education. (p. 174) in one more glimpse: the point is to assume a posture that slides constantly among several epistemological frameworks, thus giving one better tools to interpret schools as social formations. such a theoretical posture might be called a ―deterritorialized‖ [curriculum theory].... conceptualizing it in this way can profoundly help one to grasp the towering concepts, such as hegemony, ideology, social emancipation, and power, more fully. (p. 151) as highlighted by donaldo macedo, paraskeva denounces the ―culture of positivism‖ that aims to control and dominate the world, currently one of the three major issues in the field. for those scholars concerned with social and cognitive justice and epistemological diversity, there are two other major issues spotlighted and confronted by paraskeva: the undeniable political role of intellectuals, and the primacy of ―power‖ as a main category to understand curriculum, education, and world context and history: one of the most powerful leitmotifs of this critical curriculum river is the struggle for curriculum relevance—that is, for a just curriculum that can foster equality, democracy, and social justice. at the forefront of this struggle are the valuable süssekind. why deterritorialized curriculum? 74 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (2) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci contributions of intellectuals such as dewey, washington, du bois, bode, counts, rugg, huebner, macdonald, wexler, aronowitz, giroux, mclaren, and apple, among others. the civil rights movement, the so-called romantic critics, and the highlander folk school also have had a profound impact. grounded in different epistemological terrains, each of these scholars and movements was able to construct sharp challenges to an obsolete and positivistic functionalist school system, despite receiving severe criticism from counter-dominant perspectives. each one was in fact quite successful in claiming the need to understand schools and curriculum within the dynamics of ideological production. (p. 2) i fully recommend the book not only to american scholars and members of the public who are interested in curriculum, but also to all readers concerned with democracy and education. being especially rich for brazilian curriculum scholars, the book is an opportunity to engage with a complex reading of marxism and a little more about cognitive justice and furthermore consider the proposal of a deterritorialized curriculum theory (p.114). it is also, an opportunity to grapple with a hard, dry and deep criticism that arises from an acknowledged erudition and profound knowledge of the field‘s theorists. professor paraskeva‘s irony and sarcasm seems to be a beautiful strategy to scape from a metatheoretical discourse, a risk of the critical approach with the ―call for the democratization of knowledges that is a commitment to an emancipatory, non-relativistic, cosmopolitan ecology of knowledges‖ (p. 154). finally, i wish to acknowledge the contemporaneity of the book by underlining that it is based on a materialistic critique of all aspects of american democracy; it revives paulo freire's legacy; and it renews the internationalization debate, pulling together all strings of critical thinking, magisterially crowned with the use of boaventura de sousa santos's idea of "epistemicide" (p. 155). also, it is undeniable that paraskeva‘s political discourse has commonalities with the thinking of noam chomsky and slavoj žižek, two of the most crucial guides for the understanding of complexity and fragmentation of the world today. paraskeva‘s theory is a dialogue with southern epistemologies—he cites specifically "some interesting and powerful curriculum research platforms emerging in brazil" (p. 150)— and is a fruitful initiative to grow the efforts to realize that the knowledge of the world, and curricula, are things that go much further than western/northern understandings of them (santos, 2013, p. 25). he concludes the book with a post-abyssal question: ―dare the schools build a new social order?‖ (p. 188). and he complements and complicates this question by saying ―the struggle against epistemicides will allow us to highlight and learn how science was powerful in what is considered pre-colonial‖ (p. 162) and thrown through the abyss of nonexistence or non-knowledge (santos, p. 23). for paraskeva, the new itinerant curriculum theory will challenge one of the fundamental characteristic of abyssal thinking: the impossibility of co-presence of the two sides of the line. (p. 188) when it comes to thinking about current policies on curriculum and belief in the ―reinvent[ion] [of] a democratized democracy‖ (p. 172) and co-presence, the contemporariness of professor paraskeva‘s thinking gains new strength by the potential power of the critical theory worldview against the epistemicide of positivism, both süssekind. why deterritorialized curriculum? 75 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (2) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci historically and in its current manifestation, a new tsunami internationalizing standardized assessments, national curricula, and the unacknowledgment of teacher‘s work. notes 1 luli551@hotmail.com references lopes, a. (2013). teorias pós-criticas, política e currículo. [post-critical theories, politics and curriculum] revista educação, sociedade e cultura, 39, 7–23. paraskeva, j. (2011). conflicts in curriculum theory: challenging hegemonic epistemologies. new york: palgrave/macmillan. torres, c. a. (ed.). (1998). education, power and personal biography. dialogues with critical educators. new york/london: routledge. santos, b. s. (2013). se deus fosse um activista dos direitos humanos. [if god were a human rights activist] coimbra: ed. almedina. submitted: november, 17th, 2014 approved: december, 31st, 2014 mailto:luli551@hotmail.com innovación educativa y reformas curriculares en méxico to cite this article please include all of the following details: díaz barriga, frida & barrón, concepción. (2012). innovation in education and curriculum reforms in mexico. transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> innovation in education and curriculum reforms in mexico 1 frida díaz barriga 2 & concepción barrón 3 national autonomous university of mexico, mexico introduction: innovation and educational reform from the beginning of the nineties started in mexico structural reforms within the different levels of the mexican educational system, changes that spanned educational models, study plans and programs and the teaching and learning methodologies as well, with as purpose to train the students depending on the globalization’s requirements. some of the main matters that emerged in this new educational agenda were the need to improve the quality of the educational processes and results; the importance of replacing the traditional schooling model, confined to a space of time to learn and study, by a new model of permanent lifelong learning, and also the search for a greater flexibility of the curriculum organization. the role of the new information and communication technologies (ict) started to be emphasized, and also the explicit boost for the development of high level intellectual abilities and of the students’ complex thinking possibilities to face the technological, economic and cultural changes, together with the search for a tighter link between the students and diverse settings of real and professional life with which they will have to cope. facing this panorama, the curriculum reforms, and above all in higher education, have been giving priority to the strenghtening of the tie between education and work, to boost continuing and distance education, to develop student mobility and interinstitutional cooperation programs, but most of favoring their flexible and competitive nature. that is why the mechanism that directs the curriculum reforms within the mexican universities during the last decades articulates around the curricular flexibility and the development of professional abilities. this makes senseful the idea of redirecting the professional training towards the flexible competency-based curriculum (barrón, 2011; martínez, 2011). for her part, torres (2003, p. 2) points out that “education that is given by means of the schooling system requires profound and comprehensive changes in all the orders, so the result is a new system and not a continuation (improved or not) of the old one” 4 . therefore the author asserts that the exhaustion of the school system that new policies try to improve and its countless problems have promoted, not as an only factor, but as a relevant one, significant educational and curriculum reform processes, understanding as “reforms” the governmental and institutional processes that have been undertaken by the ministries or departments of education designed to improve public education, although we must admit that not all the reforms have brought about significant educational changes. in order to favor educational change, torres states that it is necessary to incorporate the innovation as a dimension that is inherent in the system itself and to focus the curricular-pedagogical dimension in order to raise again profoundly the question of díaz barriga & barrón. innovation in education and curriculum reforms in mexico 68 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci what, how and wherefore we teach, learn and assess, spanning in a wide way the educational and managerial processes. at this point the author emphasizes how important it can be to create innovating educational models and to lay down premises and conditions in order to achieve the required changes. the mexican institutions do give priority to the matter of innovation, but they usually interpret educational innovation in very diverse ways, and the way to express the educational models in their concrete projects is different as well. in that way, models that can be considered as innovative, such as the increase of curriculum flexibility, competency-based education, education based on problems and cases, project methodology, academic tutorships, learner-centered curriculum, amongst others, get a new meaning facing the needs, ideologies, interests and institutional views. this can be adequate if the starting point is the need to locate knowledge and proposals in their context, but unfortunately what has been prevailing is a vision of so-called changes that consist actually in the incorporation of the educational novelties of the moment that do no lead to a change of paradigm and neither to an essential transformation of the institution itself. we also observe that frequently the main responsibility of the success of implementing the innovative educational models falls on the teacher, since in his hands is usually left the task to concrete the didactic change within the classroom, understanding this as a transfer that is rather mechanical and without appropriate support conditions, to teaching spaces that have not experienced changes by themselves (díaz barriga, 2010a). it’s a well-known fact that the long-range educational reforms give rise to new demands for what regards to the teaching practice and that they usually leave aside the material conditions and the working contexts in which teachers are performing. within the schools, the change tends to come to a standstill in view of the need of significant knowledge, contents that are linked to the social, economic, political and cultural realities, demands that are represent a hard job to put into practice. in our country the reforms related to the educational domain always generate expectations of change and progress; nevertheless within the setting of school practices these reforms are considered as governmental actions in which teachers always are left out. it is important here to point out that the reform projects do not change the school funding mechanisms and processes per se. it is not enough to introduce institutional changes nor attempts to improve the managerial abilities; neither to adopt quality measurement and learning assessment systems, to incorporate new curriculum contents nor to implement bonus programs for the teachers, since everything would seem to indicate that this measures have not been enough until now in our country and that many things are missing to improve equity, teaching quality and, broadly speaking, to increase the educational system’s internal performance. for what regards to the teacher training experiences in order to carry out the prescribed educational innovations for curriculum, these use to be shown as completely unprecedented designs, without proceeding to the recovery of the pedagogical ideas that underlied to them, without offering their foundations that belong to the learning theories or the development on which they uphold themselves, or without bringing about a critical view to the educational research corpus that back them up with regard to their scopes and limits. in this way, in short experiences with a lesser impact and scope, the teachers use to receive “anemic” versions of the innovation models that they are supposed to implement within the classrooms, since the construction of explanatory díaz barriga & barrón. innovation in education and curriculum reforms in mexico 69 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci frames, and critical and diachronic views about them are not favored. in the international domain, important scholars about educational change (carneiro, 2006; fullan, 2001; 2002; hargreaves y fink, 2006) warn that in all educational reform lies the risk to develop a practical or technocratic focus that is completely lacking in ethical commitment and that this is leading to the standardization and damage of the teaching labor’s professionalization, and to a loss of the educational priorities and the adoption without reflection of imported fashions. they particularly agree that change must be systemic and not only in the formal structures. looking in depth about these matters, the experts had already asserted since the end of the nineties that the way in which innovation was set out in public schools was inappropriate and had nothing to do with the understanding of what entails a systemic change: it is probable that the main problem in public education is not the resistance to change, but the presence of many innovations that have been ordered or uncritically and superficially adopted on a fragmented ground (fullan and hargreaves 1999, p. 23) 5 . this means that the challenge is not only for teachers and that the problem cannot be limited to the conditions of the teaching profession or to the impact of their professional exercise. according to hargreaves (1996) other factors should also be taken into account:  the teachers’ initial training and education to service.  what refers to the features of the teaching careers and their situation in the labor market.  the wages, together with the remuneration and bonus structure, and the retirement policies.  the subject of generation change.  the teacher’s work and professional exercise organization modes.  the confrontation processes between the labor unions and the educational authorities (wich generally involve serious conflicts between the unions and the governments). generally speaking we can point out that all those problems are a constant feature within the educational and curricular reform processes. the official discourse, however, reduce them to a single supposition: the possibility to raise the quality of education if the teacher training’s quality is improved, a supposition that is overruled by all the elements that are generated by any attempt of a reform. it has been said that innovation involves “a process of creative destruction” 6 (unesco, 2005, p. 62). but the very uncritical adoption of this premise makes impossible to recover the value of cumulative knowledge and to harmonise the innovation culture with some vision of educational change within a reasonable time and with the conviction that what we require are systemic transformations. since “the innovation in history uses to be linked to research for technological development, conditioned to a great extent by the development of economy” 7 (martínez, toledo y román, 2009, p. 2), the discourse about innovation emerges from the pressure to translate the tenets of the new market economy into training strategies within the education institutions, above all in higher education. in this case, our universities do not respond to the “innovating business university” model, but, according to these authors, díaz barriga & barrón. innovation in education and curriculum reforms in mexico 70 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci they have been directing massively towards the technical and instrumental abilities at the expense of a sound general training. on the contrary, lugo (2008) suggests that the notion of innovation in the educational domain must be placed into its sphere of restricted or specific scope, a qualitative one, and specially in the classroom practices, with and between the subjects, and about the development of the educational centers. on the other hand, the innovations must be dealt with not only as technical-pedagogical processes, but for what regards their political nature and their practical scope, that is why the study of its pedagogical, managerial and labor rationalities are very important (ezpeleta, 2004). we fully concur with de alba (2007) when she states that if the national and regional development indices are analyzed the results of the university or educational reforms are meagre, and sometimes even negative. she believes that the focal point is that those reforms completely lack a social project and the idea that “innovation” produces by necessity, and regardless of the project with which it is linked, produces an improvement in society and education. the author questions the hegemonic discourse of the so-called knowledge society and in any case contends that it is necessary to achieve a plural conception of “knowledge societies” 8 , adding the epithets “critical innovation” and “alternative” globalization. such an innovation will only be possible in so far as the existing strains that arise from the local and unique contexts, in the way of thinking and in the day-to-day dealing with curriculum. the importance of innovation on the curriculum actors unlike in the nineties, decade in which the mexican higher education institutions, and mainly the universities, focused on the design of innovating and flexible curricular proposals, emphasizing the matter of curriculum development, since the eighties and until now (2000-2012) what prevails is the interest to provide a detailed account of the different actors’ perspective about the practices that have been brought about from the implementation of those proposals. this concern could be considered as a part of what ruiz (2001) calls the logic of consumerism. in order to understand this statement the author lays down three levels of curricular analysis: 1) the deconstruction logic; 2) the translation logic and 3) the logic of consumerism. the first level, called deconstruction logic, includes the study of the formal and actual dimensions of curriculum. the second level intends to characterize the underlying logic that allows to translate the whole of interests, decisions and visions on which the institution leans with regard to the professional training, on a formal and actual level. and finally the third level that deals with the logic of consumerism is directed to the characterization of the ways in which the teachers and students interpret and give a meaning to the study plan within practice. this last level tries to know the curriculum practice and, therefore, to fathom the curricular reality, aiming to characterize the day-to-day life within the classroom during the follow-up of the study plan (bárcenas, 2010; bellido, 2011). in the diverse researches that have been carried out during this decade about the opinión and the daily experiencia of the curriculum actors, category that includes teachers and students, authorities, curriculum designers, amongst others, with regard to the implementation of innovating curricula (flexible, competence-based, learnercentered curriculum, etc.) we find the expression of a diversity of meanings and significances that allows to unveil how complex can be the implementation of a fardíaz barriga & barrón. innovation in education and curriculum reforms in mexico 71 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci reaching reform. the following is a quick review of some of those studies in order to illustrate the reality of innovation when an educational and curriculum reform is implemented. in a study carried out in a major public university of the veracruz state researchers achieved to detect a lack in the theoretical and conceptual understanding and in the appropriation of the innovations by a substantial part of the teachers, amongst all the professors with hourly contracts that have not been able to get involved in the collegiated training or program-designing processes. a new strain can be appended to this panorama, i. e. the adoption of the competence-based education model, for what regards to the teachers’ training and for the training of students enrolled in the different undergraduate degree courses. the teacher consider that they do not have at their disposal the appropriate infrastructure nor the minimal conditions to guarantee the transformation process of teaching within the classroom. a possible factor of resistance to change has been the diversification of the roles and academic responsibilities that subverted their working status (díaz barriga, martínez y cruz, 2011) connected with the former, some studies have oriented towards the analysis of the teacher’s new role as a guest professor in the business world, a figure that is starting to gain strenght within the academic and business communities, amongst which we can refer to the works of martínez (2006), pedroza (2004) and díaz-villa (2005). although the need for cooperation between the enterprise and the university is not new, it is essential to keep talking through the intentions of today’s and tomorrow’s university in order to be able to make proposals and to put forward alternatives to define a kind of cooperation in which none of the two parts is a subordinate of the other. part of the dilemmaan be reduced to the attempt to articulate entities with different organizational times, rythms and structures and with autonomy of their own. the universities are not going to modify radically their educational models, since as follari states, “the university should no meet mechanically the demands of markes; but it does have to accept that the notion of social criticism must be immanent to the professional practices to which the students are trained” 9 (follari, 2010, p. 1). the educational institutions should bring about a series of research options and interventions that are socially significant in view of the apparent dissociation between the academic and the labor world. other researches inform about reform processes that result complex and never really exempt from contradictions and important strains, where the actors’ social and institutional position and the institutional determinants are taken into account to explain the acceptance of or resistance against curriculum and the innovating proposals. amongst those researches we can refer to the study about curriculum in the general high school competence-based curriculum at the universidad de guadalajara carried out by andrade (2011) and rautenberg’s analysis (2009) of the subject’s and the institution’s role in the most recent curricular change processes at the universidad pedagógica nacional. a significant strain has been generated due to the association of curricular flexibility with an instrumentalist vision in which curriculum is seen as subordinated to the demands of know-how, something that results in an unresolved conflict between the theoretical and practical knowledge (barrón y gómez, 1999; barrón, 2011). this conflicto impacts particularly on the teachers, who face numerous contradictions in a curriculum oriented to know-how whereas they have been trained to teach disciplinary contents or matters. the same can be said about the competence-based curriculum díaz barriga & barrón. innovation in education and curriculum reforms in mexico 72 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci approaches, which privilege the knowledge based on the action directed to resolve problems and not the acquisition of declarative information. in several studies the emphasis is put on the factors that predetermine or hinder the change or the expected innovation. hence situations such as the resistance to change, the ineffectiveness or obsolescence of the educational legislation facing the needed innovations, the gap, contradiction or conflict in the teaching tasks and in the labor and academic administrative aspects, the lack in forecasting the ressources and infrastructure required by change amongst other, appear as important factors. rautenberg (2009), starting from an assumption that has been accepted since a few decades, asserts that “the curricular change is more than a technical construction game” 10 , since it must be conceptualized and analyzed, as a social project, from the point of view of the institutional micropolitics. the change in the curriculum structures means a “disturbing intervention” action since it mobilizes imaginaries, spaces of power, ways of participation and position within the institutions. this author identifies at least four stances: the teachers who are part of the “expert” group and who join the proactive group of change; the group of people who do not join the working team but do not offer resistance to change; the group who offers resistance to change and links up to block out the change; and finally the group who shows some willingness to the curricular reform but only accepts it from their own project and interests. on the other hand, and in line with the hegemonic discourse of the access to globalization and to the knowledge society, it seems that to innovate is equivalent to introduce cutting-edge technologies and, in the case of education, to incorporate the ict to the educational act. this entails the risk of a technocratic perception, since “curriculum innovation is not a synonym of incorporating virtual educational experiences; in any case, its objective will be to favor creativity in a society that requires alternative ways to understand and settle its major problems” 11 (herrera, 2005, p. 118). this is why for this author what should be retrieved in the project of innovating university is a humanism that puts ethics, science and culture before the market’s rules. the need for systemic changes within the curriculum structures even though during the last decades we have heard about the proliferation of the flexible and the competence-based curriculum, and also about the promotion of the cognitive abilities and the specific domain competences, the reality is that the logic that prevails in the curriculum design is still the positivist way of thinking that leads to a unidisciplinary cutback in the courses. in the reforms of basic and higher education the learning units keep being disciplinary and thematic and the adoption of interor transdisciplinary look is very infrequent. in some cases what we find is a kind of hybrid between the disciplinary curriculum structure and the inclusion of courses that suscribe the logic of the so-called transverse contents or axes or the approaches of the so-called student-centered learning focusing curriculum (díaz barriga, 2010b). and this conflicts with the logic of competence-based learning and with the possibility to carry out the acquisition of the so-called “transverse” contents of curriculum, where subjects such as environment, values, civility, digital literacy and education for life stand out. this is why a remaining issue is the rethinking of the knowledge epistemology that underlies curriculum and, in that direction, the curriculum “innovation” still has not achieved its task. but at the same time curriculum makers have not understood yet at what extent thisc change in the knowledge epistemology is needed to transcend the encyclopaedist díaz barriga & barrón. innovation in education and curriculum reforms in mexico 73 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci curriculum, and this is one of the factors that has generated more confusion amongst the curriculum program designers, and not to say amongst the teachers and students, who are used to a kind of schoolwork that follows the logic of subject matters of the concerned discipline. we start from the consideration that we need a systemic way of thinking or look in the educational processes that have as purpose innovation, since it is only in this way that we will be able to understand their complexity. otherwise it is difficult to understand the key aspects and incidences, the relations between elements and agents, the dysfunctional situations, and above all the points from which a deep transformation can be achieved. this means that the premise is that we have to change our fragmentary and slanted visions to attempt to build explanatory approaches and to achieve an intervention process based in a general overview that is necessarily holistic, social, ecological and humane. when we talk about systemic change we think about promoting processes that can lead to structural changes that may in turn have an impact on the whole system, since the ultimate goal is the transformation of the system as a whole for the benefit of the individuals and groups that are involved in it. although it is true that the origin of the systemic focus was in biology, cybernetics and cognitive science, today the notion of systemic change has expanded to other domains with a clear psycho-social, sociological and organizational character and branchings to the domain of education. according to meadows (1999), a little change can give rise to a transformation that impacts the composition of the whole system, and one of the discoveries has been that probably the best strategy to promote the changes is to work with networks, with the participation of driving groups that can be able to generate new political, social or economic structures on the basis of changes that are noticeable in the mentality and social practices of individuals. in this logic fullan (2001; 2002) studied a decade ago the dynamics of educational change and asserts that the educational changes, to achieve being put into practice, must be systemic, i. e., must take into account not only the formal structures, but also the actors and the academic and administrative processes and must have as result new ways to interact, to think and to participate. we consider that the transformation process that leads to innovation is a complex socio-cultural process that takes time and requires the willingness of the curriculum actors. this is why we assert that the educational institution is not going to change as long as the individuals who make it up do not change, and so aspects such as the culture of the educational organization can turn out to be either the main obstacle or the greatest facilitator of change. the former intends to say that one of the problems that are faced by the innovation strategies that are adopted within the curricular reform processes is that they focus the innovation itself without taking into account the understanding of culture, strategies, norms, roles, practices, etc. and the way in which the educational institution will respond to the demands of innovation. we can thus identify a set of challenges in the academic sphere and for what regards to the management of the curricular projects that claim to be “innovating”. particularly within the framework of the current institutional and curriculum practices of higher education institutions we observe the need to carry out an in-depth analysis of the participation, harmonization and decision processes that are generated around the pedagogical and curricular administration, coping domains such as the following ones: díaz barriga & barrón. innovation in education and curriculum reforms in mexico 74 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci  with regard to the legal field: the absence of a regulation at the university level able to mark the academic and administrative guidelines for the development of the benefits of curricular flexibility, competence-based education and or the implementation of tutorships, to name but a few of the innovating elements around which a real legal vacuum has been detected in the university legislation, or important contradictions when trying to put it into practice. so it will be necessary to legislate, for instance, about the structures of flexible curriculum or competence-based education or by fields of literacy, and not only about the traditional disciplinary subject areas, or it will be indispensable to welcome new teaching figures that were not taken into account in the former system. this means that it will be necessary to adapt the administrative proceedings and to define precisely the academic policies according to the innovating educational models and to count on a comprehensive institutional program that ascertains the applicable legal frameworks and the assessment and selfassessment mechanisms as well with the concerned academic units.  for what regards to the innovating models based on academic tutorships we can highlight the need to count on an institutional tutorship program that has been developed specifically for the characteristics of the flexible or competencebased curriculum structure or able to meet the demands of other ways to organize curriculum that differ from within the institutions and involve like we already said the systemic transformation processes, thus it can be reduced to offer workshops and single training courses for teachers who can act as tutors.  about the students and the flexible curriculum models we can point out that it is necessary to understand first their logic and to learn how to make decisions that help to build their own academic trajectory amongst the wide range of options that are available. nevertheless one of the main operation problem that has been documented is the overcrowding of the classgroups; therefore opening a greater spectrum of possibilities for the students increases the costs for the universities, demanding new classrooms and new teachers, a situation that can be very difficult for the increasingly scarce public budgets.  with regard to the academic organization, it is not yet clear what would be the appropriate ways of academic organization would be (of collegiate bodies, of individuals; administrative and managerial) in order to respond to the manifold feature of the flexible or competence-based curriculum approach, or other anticipated innovations (for instance the training in real settings outside the university campus or the increasing incorporation of virtual or distance educational experiences). it is important to mention here that, within the context of an institution that is still under construction, great difficulties can be faced, such as the concurrence of processes like the formation of the academicadministrative instances, the construction of identity of the different subjects, the strenghtening of the relational dynamics, amongst other.  concerning the mobility: however the students’ and academic staff’s mobility is considered by the unesco one of the most useful factors to improve the quality in higher education in this century and the international organization’s opinion is that this element is essential to the curricular flexibility, some limitations can be observed. amongt them portillo and díaz barriga & barrón. innovation in education and curriculum reforms in mexico 75 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci contreras (2009) spot: a) the lack of socialization of the diverse agreements with national and international institutions amongst the university community and in its operation; b) the fact that mobility is almost reduced to postgraduate studies and does not really help to develop institutional projects; c) for what regards to the mobility of the academic staff, the most influential factors are the institutional and personal ones. the institutional factors have to do with the administrative hurdles (related to tabs, academic profiles and the the grant of a scholarship) and with the fact that the human resources use to be limited. the main academic mobility can be observed amongst the professor-researcher category; amongst the personal limitations that impact students and members of the academic staff we can mention family problems and the fact that they could be performing other jobs than the academic one, their weakness in other languages, the fear for change and a great job or academic uncertainty. the possibilities to flexibilize academic actions also implies new regulation mechanisms for the educational practice, mechanisms that lead to a better understanding and new formulations of the university regulation, mainly for what regards to the monitoring and authorization of the actions coming from the study plans. in this sense, martínez (2006) thinks that currently the universities have entered into internationalization processes of the subjects and complete degree courses where the portability of the academic credits is an essential elements and where they are trying to achieve common organization, structure and curriculum credits calculation systems. this starts to determine the regulation of matters such as the enrollment and qualification requirements, the professional practices, the assessment and accreditation mechanisms, amongst other, towards the adoption of common global models. our opinion is that this is going to establish significant limits to the educational institutions’ possibilities to make up and operate freely their study plans and programs and, generally speaking, to the profession regulation criteria at national level. in order to conclude this section it seems important to us to reflect on the analysis carried out by casimiro lopes and macedo (2011), since they offer an interesting point of view to understand what is hindering the systemic change is our educational systems. these authors state that the concepcions about educational policies are prevailing when trying to direct the practice since the seventies, and that these use to privilege the administrative intervention, although they still defend a separation between the project and the practice. and for what regards to the curriculum policies, this brings about that the school practice always remains out of the decision making spaces. conclusions diverse experts about education agree with what we have been asserting throughout this paper: the educational reforms that have been taking place in our country during the two last decades have been backed up on the discourse of the entrance to globalization and have been subject to the “rush of change”. to this regard kumar (2011), who analyzes the evolution of curriculum studies in mexico, states that it is precisely in the nineties when a new period begins, characterized by the globalization processes of the reforms and curriculum models, and also by the neoliberal notions of innovation and accreditation. pinar (2003; 2011), on the other hand, asserts that the curriculum studies have reached a stage of internationalization díaz barriga & barrón. innovation in education and curriculum reforms in mexico 76 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci with significant strains between the global, national and local areas, and mexico in no exception about it, although the author presents a set of circumstances of its own. we personally found in our analysis of the curriculum production related to the matter of curricular innovations during the first decade of our twenty-first century (2000-2012) that when we talk about the curriculum reforms the emphasis in still puto n the curriculum planning or curriculum development processes and that the logic of projects centered on the authorities and the experts has not been overcome yet, although at the same time a greater participation of the actors in the curriculum implementation processes can be observed, and in some cases it has even been possible to document in the educational communities the occurrence resistance or even boycott bprocesses to the curriculum projects that are perceived as centralized or issued by the authorities (díaz barriga, 2012). at the same time, in the field of cirriculum studies carried out by university academic staff we can observe a significant interest in the analysis of meanings, processes and curriculum practices in which the actors (teachers and students) are involved about curriculum, a fact that has given rise to the postmodern and post-structuralist theories about curriculum (kumar, 2011). nevertheless we also find that the main interest of the conceptual construction of the curriculum field, the research work about its historical retrieval or about the construction of identities amongst the curriculum actors, are questions that can be circumscribed to the work that has been carried out in certain circles of university researchers, but that they have a poor impact on the curriculum reform projects, particularly on those that are implemented in basic education. in the analysis of the texts about curriculum and the curriculum reform projects that have been expressed in our contexts we find an important strain beween the claim to favor curriculum innovation processes as a motor for educational transformation bay means of the prescription of a series of models that orient and give sense to the curriculum reform processes and the fact that they still lack mechanisms to push forward systemic change processes within the educational institutions. we do not find enough information about the processes and conditions that make possible or obstruct these transformations. the training of teachers, a key factor in the possibility to transform curriculum and teaching, is still a pending issue. the results of our analysis reveal that, with a few small exceptions, the way to work is following a centralized curriculum logic that is designed in a “top to bottom” and “from the outside in” approach that has characterized the curriculum changes in our educational system since the seventies. many of the curriculum innovations will still emerge as a vertical implementation approach, or even as impositions of the authorities or experts on the actors (teachers and students), who often do not achieve to understand them nor to appropriate them for themselves in order to make them meaningful in their daily life. only in few cases the authors understand innovation as the need for an indepth change in social paradigms and practices of an educational community, that must be the result of the reflection and appropriation of all the people involved in the process. we thus can conclude that from the point of view of the educational authorities the discourse of curriculum innovation does not have as main focus the understanding of curriculum or its actors, and neither the implementation of advanced pedagogical models, since the most important factor is the pressure to translate the postulates of the new market economy to training strategies in the educational institutions, situation that is even more obvious in higher education. to this regard several studies like martínez’ díaz barriga & barrón. innovation in education and curriculum reforms in mexico 77 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci (2011) point out that our universities do not respond to the “innovating entrepreneurial universities” but that have on the contrary taken an unreasonable direction towards the technical and instrumental abilities or competences at the expense of a solid general training. our country, like other nations, is facing the preponderance of the rational and technological approaches, of the “entrepreneurial way of thinking” or the “corporative vision”, most of all for what regards to the long-range educational reforms and projects.although there are not enough studies about this particular matter, this global trend seems to be affecting a lot on the restructuring of the teaching function and to be leading to the hegemony of the standardized evaluations and of the accountability, competence and performance approaches. the purpose of this paper has been to describe the situation that rules in mexico, but the discussion that has been opened by pinar (2003; 2011) shows clearly that the entrance of curriculum studies to the stage of internationalization and to the policies of international organizations about curriculum reveals aspects that coincide with what happens in other countries, not only in latin america, but also in europe or in the anglo-saxon world. according to pinar, who collects the analysis of curriculum studies in 29 countries (so diverse as argentina, brazil, china, japan, mexico, france and zimbabwe, amongst others), the main concern is the increasing trend to unify and validated starting from a hegemonic perspective the way of thinking and the policies of the educational and governmental organizations. increasingly the curriculum projects are subject to the imposition of the great corporations’ or industrialized nations’ economic logic and interests. if we take as reference the authors proceeding from diverse countries who take stock of the orientation of curriculum in their countries, we can find some convergent key points:  there are relatively few studies about the history of curriculum, at least if we compare these with the works directed to the intervention or definition of curriculum policies.  in several countries the authors talk about a lack of differentiation and contradictions between the academic and intellectual field of research and curriculum theories and the activities and proposals that arise from the “official educational organizations”.  we apparently face the prevailing of the rational and technological approaches, of the “entrepreneurial way of thinking”, above all for what regards to the long-range reforms and projects, and this is a vision that pervades many educational systems, of course with due excepcions, since at the same time we can notice the presence of experiences that point to other directions.  nevertheless, diverse countries inform the increasing adoption in many of the curricular reforms of the above mentioned entrepreneurial view about education that includes the restructuring of the teaching function, the hegemony of the standardized evaluations and the approaches of accountability, competence and performance.  the strain between the what question (critical discourse) and the how (technical discourse) is still present everywhere.  nowadays, in a rather academic domain and together with important field studies, we can observe the emergence of a postmodern and post-structuralist studies and, above all, of discourses that stress the multiculturality, the gender and racial problem about curriculum, and also the proliferation of many díaz barriga & barrón. innovation in education and curriculum reforms in mexico 78 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci approaches related to the matter of construction of identities by means of the curriculum and, in a broad sense, of diverse actors’ educational experiences. notes 1 a first version of this paper was presented at the fourth world curriculum studies conference, of the international association for the advancement of curriculum studies, which took place in rio de janeiro, brazil, july 2012. 2 diazfrida@prodigy.net.mx 3 baticon3@hotmail.com 4 in the original document: “la educación que se imparte a través del sistema escolar requiere cambios profundos e integrales en todos los órdenes, no más de lo mismo ni simple mejoría de lo existente”. 5 in the original spanish version: “es probable que el mayor problema en la educación pública no sea la resistencia al cambio sino la presencia de muchas innovaciones mandadas o adoptadas acrítica y superficialmente sobre una base fragmentada”. 6 in the original spanish version: “un proceso de destrucción creadora”. 7 in the original: “dado que “la innovación en la historia se reconoce vinculada a la investigación para el desarrollo tecnológico, condicionada en gran medida al desarrollo de la economía” 8 in spanish “sociedades de conocimientos”, with double plural. 9 in the original version: “la universidad no tiene por qué responder mecánicamente a las demandas del mercado; pero sí debe asumir que la noción de crítica social debe resultar inmanente a las prácticas profesionales para las cuales se forma a los estudiantes”. 10 in the original version: “el cambio curricular es más que un armado técnico”. 11 in the original version: “la innovación curricular no es sinónimo de incorporar experiencias educativas virtuales; en todo caso, su objetivo será potenciar la creatividad en una sociedad que exige modos alternativos de comprender y resolver sus grandes problemas”. references andrade, r. a. 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(2003). sistema escolar y cambio educativo: repasando la agenda y los actores. in a. l. cárdenas, a. rodríguez y r. m. torres. el maestro, protagonista del cambio educativo. bogotá: cab/editorial magisterio nacional. unesco (2005). hacia las sociedades del conocimiento. informe mundial. parís: organización de las naciones unidas para la educación, la ciencia y la cultura. available on the website http://www.flacso.edu.mx/colaboratorio/pdf/colaboratorio_unesco.pdf submitted: october, 23 rd , 2012. approved: november, 10 th , 2012. http://www.flacso.edu.mx/colaboratorio/pdf/colaboratorio_unesco.pdf o legado de paulo freire para as polã�ticas de currã�culo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: smith, bryan. (2013). currere and critical pedagogy: think critically about self-reflective methods. transnational curriculum inquiry 10(2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> currere and critical pedagogy: thinking critically about self-reflective methods bryan smith 1 university of ottawa, canada introduction more than forty years ago, curriculum theory underwent what thomas kuhn might call a paradigm shift, with the scholarly focus shifting from an emphasis on development to one that took curriculum as something that needed to address a broader range of topics informed by multidisciplinary insights. through this came the rise of autobiographical methods of self-reflective inquiry, an approach designed to attend to the methodological and phenomenological experiences of the individual learner. more specifically came the rise of the curricular method known as 'currere', a method designed to account for the self, encouraging the learner to reflect on the past, the future and the consequences for the present. however, autobiographical methods of curricular inquiry are not without its critiques. in this paper, i explore the rise and theory of currere, address some of its critiques, and in light of some of the problematic issues, offer a discussion textured by critical pedagogical literature. in so doing, i want to suggest that effective autobiographical work needs to attend to the critical social context for without it, such work risks becoming little else but a solipsistic and self-indulgent enterprise. finally, i explore the idea of bildung, offering some suggestions about its ability to provide a theoretical lens through which the articulation of critical insights with autobiographical reflections might occur. the genesis and method of currere the growth of currere as a method of self-reflective autobiographical inquiry came about as part of the reconceptualization of curriculum. with joseph schwab suggesting that curriculum had reached the point of moribundity (pinar, reynolds, slattery and taubman, 1995, p. 187), the field experienced a shift from an emphasis on technical development to one driven by a concern for theorizing through various epistemological lenses. with this, the field of curriculum theory was to adopt ‘meaning’ and ‘experience’ as the primary epistemological lenses. as noted by charles silberman (pinar et al., 1995), “in the early 1970s the crisis was one of meaning. education was in need of a ‘remaking,’ and […] the curriculum [w]as one area in need of drastic change” (p. 188). in something akin to thomas kuhn’s notion of a paradigm shift, curriculum theorists responded to this crisis by changing the general epistemological focus and while such shift was not without controversy, the shift from asking ‘how do we develop curriculum?’ to ‘how do we understand curriculum?’ smith. currere and critical pedagogy: think critically about self-reflective methods. 4 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (2) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci occurred nonetheless (pinar et al., 1995). out of this re-conceptualization arose currere, a method of autobiographical inquiry that helped reorient the focus on ‘meaning.’ in 1972, william pinar began the process of conceptualizing a curriculum based around the self. he wrote a short article in which he reflects on an experience as a teacher wherein students used their personal experiences to discuss literature (pinar, 1972). he suggests that he and his students rarely felt the need to refer to content beyond their own subjectivity and incisively concluded that, “we work from within” (ibid., p. 331). while not addressing autobiography as a method, he does begin to lay the groundwork for a curriculum of experience and subjectivity 2 . following this, pinar published various pieces outlining his autobiographical method of intellectual reflection: currere. at a meeting of the american educational research association 3 in 1975, he continues his work to articulate how biography can be a means of elucidating one’s educational experience (pinar, 1975a). in trying to outline what characterizes educational experiences, he maintains that the self and the “existential experiences” become the methodological data source (ibid., p. 2) for eliciting meaning. through such a process, the self is the researcher (ibid.) and through researching herself, she attempts to access the “lebenswelt” or inner world (pinar, 1975a, 1975b, 1975c, 1975d). the next year, pinar, along with madeleine grumet, published the poor curriculum (1976). this book functions as a seminal text, providing the philosophical foundations of currere while exploring its methodological value (ibid.). they argue for a “poor curriculum,” one stripped of everything but experience (ibid., p. vii) and in so doing, make explicit the notion that experience is central to inquiry. with this text, currere is presented as a comprehensive method of ‘self’ for curriculum theory, sufficient in realizing the goals of the ‘reconceptualization’. it achieves the goal of not only centring the individual in investigation but also centringpersonal subjectivity and epistemology as the primary foci of a reconceptualized curriculum theory. the successful application of currere as a method is reflected in a piece two years after the poor curriculum wherein pinar (1978) discusses his own experiences in relation to a reading of jean-paul sartre’s search for a method. here, he clarifies the link between the reflective method of currere and education in stating that responses to texts makes clear the “fundamental aspects of the educational process” (ibid., p. 325). this privileging of experience is supported by grumet (1978) who argues that currere provides students with the opportunity to develop responses to texts based on their experiences engaging with it (p. 291). having worked to supersede what macdonald (1975) had previously noted as dissatisfaction with “technical” models of curriculum, pinar and grumet successfully developed a method that refocused curriculum such that the student and teacher were no longer simply objects to be molded epistemologically by a scientifically rational set of “positivistic” policies. instead of looking at how to structure the lives of students, currere emphasizes how this structuring is done, shifting the focus away from the process itself and highlighting the consequences of said process(es). consequently, currere as a method of self-reflective inquiry had drawn new lines around what constituted the realm of curricular inquiry, a set of demarcations that defined curriculum as an investigative enterprise that would occupy itself with the experience of education. by suggesting that the self and her relation with the educational world become the primary focal point of curricular work, the method of currere effectively reshaped the field, moving the focus from the document itself to those who live in relation to the planned curriculum. the field thus became more than smith. currere and critical pedagogy: think critically about self-reflective methods. 5 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (2) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci learning about regimentation and planned outcomes – it became a hermeneutic endeavour designed to relay the meanings and subjectivities of those who live between, within and outside of the technicalities of “document based” curricular work. the method and its faults in this method of not knowing and searching (pinar & grumet, 1976), there are four interrelated steps, which reconceptualize the field as a ‘complicated conversation’ (pinar, 2012). the first is the regressive, a “re-experiencing” (pinar, 2012, p.45); a “free associative remembrance of the past” (pinar & grumet, 1976, p. ix). here, one engages in understanding the self in the current situation (pinar, 2012, p. 46) and the ways in which they are a product of history. this is followed by the progressive stage, characterized by a reflection on the possibilities for the future in terms of how they manifest themselves in the present. as pinar notes, this stage involves looking at how, “the future inhabits the present” (ibid.). much like the existence of the past in the present moment, the future impresses itself on our current subjectivity (ibid.). following this is the analytic, the self-reflective analysis of the past and the future. here, one traces how the past inhabits the present and the relationship to the future (ibid.) thereby making clear how who we were, who we are and who we are to become shape each other. as pinar (1975a) contends, the analytic stage asks us to answer the following question: “how is the future present in the past, the past in the future, and the present in both?” (p. 12). finally, there is the synthetic, which obliges the methodologist to reflect on the present so as to determine its meaning. here, the researcher makes sense of the self in the present, explaining how she exists in the present moment. it is here in the final stage that the individual is able to articulate their understandings of educational experience (see also doerr, 2004; kanu & glor, 2006; pinar & grumet, 1976; pinar 1975a, 1975b; pinar et al., 1995). taken as a whole, currere is a reflective and engaging methodology of the self, demanding reflection on the individual’s experience so as to engender a more extensive understanding of how one’s personal history and aspirations for the future shape the individual in the current moment. an example of currere is provided in pinar’s (2012) book what is curriculum theory. thinking regressively, pinar discusses the weimer republic and the similarities that this has to the current and historical ‘state of emergency’ that has become a fixture of american political (and by extension educational) discourse. in the progressive stage, pinar laments the increasing pervasiveness of technology despite researchers arguing against its value and pinar’s concern that it fosters excessive individualism and a lack of engagement with alterity. analytically, pinar discusses the current state of anti-intellectualism that has come to suffuse the teaching profession courtesy of politicians who not only deprecate teachers and schools but also equate academic success with standardized testing. for the synthetic, pinar contends that there needs to be a re-engagement with the idea of “complicated conversation”, characterized by a moral intransigence, to undo the deleterious effects of what he calls “school deform.” autobiography (in some form) has also been employed in various other contexts to gain understanding including in environmental education (doerr, 2004), the fostering of critical skills in teachers (kanu & glor, 2006), feminist theory (grumet, 1988; miller, 1992, 1998) and in the questioning of belonging and national identity (chambers, 2006). each of these works demonstrates the ways in which autobiographical methods can help reorient curriculum such that it focuses on the individual (pinar, 1981) while also providing a way to enhance and explain the learning environment/experience. in doing so, the works smith. currere and critical pedagogy: think critically about self-reflective methods. 6 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (2) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci illustrate the goal of currere and autobiography in general – to demystify and explicate educational experience (grumet, 1978, 1981, 1999; pinar, 1975b, 1975c, 1978). while the notion of biography and the emphasis on the understanding of the self is not new to academic scholarship 4 , pinar’s work builds on various theoretical traditions to reorient (reconceptualize) the field of education. for instance, the concept of free association, borrowed from psychoanalysis (see pinar et al., 1995, p. 521), plays a role in the regressive stage of currere (as noted earlier). for pinar (1981), it plays a part in, “serious autobiographical work [wherein] one adopts a critical posture towards one's selfreport, scrutinizing one's free-associative account looking for the functions of one's explanations of oneself” (p. 178, original emphasis). this free-association is the “method of data generation” (pinar, 1975a, p. 2), the means through which one constructs themes for analysis. here, the mind ‘wanders’ but does so with purpose wherein there is a noting of, “the path and all its markers” (grumet, 1999, p. 26). the generative possibility of this free associative reflection is seen in doerr’s (2004) work wherein students were encouraged to think free associatively to generate pictures of the future (p. 25-26). such a method, despite its generative possibilities and support of reflexivity is not without opprobrium. apple (1999), for instance, supports autobiography and the value it has for education but is critical of the potential individualism (p. 226). he goes as far as to suggest that such a method caters to, “the white, middle-class woman’s or man’s need for self-display” (ibid., p. 227, original emphasis). as a counter argument, grumet (1978) maintains that denigration of autobiography is reflective of a subscription to the ‘banking model’ (p. 295). we can see here a tension between concerns over a racialized solipsism and the rejoinder that arguing against autobiography is akin to catering to the power relations that the critics are trying to avoid. in addition to the aforementioned critique of autobiography as a sort of ‘racialized indulgence’, doerr (2004), through her use of currere in an ecology class, discovered that the autobiographical responses were also noticeably ‘gendered’ 5 . she notes that there were, “many instances of macho behavior and language” (ibid., p. 149) coupled with articulations of masculinity designed to offset any possibility that the reflection was to be construed as feminine. this can be highly problematic if left unaddressed. one could even suggest that pinar’s (2009) criticism of critical scholarship’s reduction of “reality to the social,” 6 wherein critical scholars situate themselves as ideologically free (p. 194), may apply here if the autobiographer uncritically reduces personal experience or values to the social and neglects a connection of their ideological self with the world. if autobiography is left uncritically examined, it risks becoming the self-indulgent endeavour alluded to by apple. in response to the critiques levied against autobiography as a method in curriculum theory, it is worth considering the epistemological refocusing (undertaken to address various concerns) in the field. the journal of curriculum and pedagogy notes a shift in the field, emphasizing the need to “brown” the curriculum as part of the work required to address the dearth of racialized non-white scholars (springgay and carpenter, 2011). a recent issue highlights the need to build coalitions amongst curriculum scholars (howard, 2011), the power of television shows such as south park to confront inequalities and assist in the development of antiracist beliefs (meddaugh and richards, 2011) and the potential of arts education to address counternarratives of race (hanley, 2011). there is a call to attend to the issues of oppression, suggesting that autobiographical work will take up the cause of oppression as part of the shift in the field. given this shift in epistemological focus in curriculum theory and the inextricable link between epistemology and methodology, one smith. currere and critical pedagogy: think critically about self-reflective methods. 7 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (2) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci must consider the value of epistemological orientations focused on oppression. one such framework is critical pedagogy, to which i now turn to highlight how it may augment currere’s value as a method of inquiry and potentially address some of the issues raised here. critical pedagogy: can it offer something? as an epistemological orientation influenced by the critical theory of the frankfurt school (giroux, 2003; kincheloe, 2007, 2008; mclaren, 2007), critical pedagogy focuses primarily on the relationship of capital and class status to the production of knowledge and the enactment of hegemony. as one would imagine, the influence of marxism (in some form) bears heavily on the theoretical framework and recapitulations in the work of these scholars (see apple, 1999, 2004; mclaren, 2000a, 2007). while there is recognition of other forms of oppression such as race and gender (apple, 1993; hooks, 1994; mclaren, 2007), it largely addresses education from an abstract perspective, focusing on constraint and regulation through economic relations 7 . while this is not a flaw in and of itself, it does frame many of the assumptions made in critical pedagogical thought and limits their epistemological assumptions to particular forms of oppression (as will be made clear). for critical pedagogues, much like anti-racists (see dei, 1996; stanley, 2000), education is an inherently political act. the work of michael apple (1999, 2004) illustrates this for he commonly dwells on the rising influence of a variety of ideologies including conservatism and neoliberalism, each operating under the auspices of a “rightest agenda” (apple, 1999, p. 114). the politics of schooling plays out through discourse to which the critical pedagogues respond by advocating for the employment of a critical literacy (discussed below). as apple (1999) notes, “activities that we ask students to engage in every day, activities as ‘simple’ as reading, writing, and computing […] can at one and the same time be forms of regulation and social control and potential modes of social criticism and transformation” (p. 98). language, as apple correctly suggests, provides the means through which one can regulate and transgress the boundaries of politically determined knowledge. for critical pedagogues, the focus is on this transgressive potential of critical literacy, which deserves some attention given its potential to provide students with the tools to obviate the damaging effects of hegemonic discourse. critical literacy advocates the converse of the “banking model” of education in which the student’s mind is understood as something akin to a blank slate upon which knowledge is simply inscribed with little regard for the consequences or subjectivity of the learner (freire, 1970; hooks, 1994). as a means of countering the culturally denuding effects of such pedagogy, freire (1970) advocates for a pedagogy that facilitates ‘conscientização’, the raising of individual consciousness. key to this consciousness raising is a critical literacy, which, “becomes both a medium and a constitutive force for human agency and political action” (giroux, 1983, p. 227). the heightening of a student’s social and historical cognizance can be achieved through a critical literacy program aimed at elevating the oppressed from a status of subjugation to one in which they can name their own histories and knowledge while having them authenticated as legitimate forms of knowing. such a pedagogical approach is not easy (koh, 2002) nor will it ‘feel good’ (hooks, 1994) which we might expect when we consider that the essence of oppression is to obstruct the, “pursuit of self-affirmation as a responsible person” (freire, 1970, p. 40). to allow for this self-affirmation, to partake in a process of endorsing the views of the oppressed, requires a legitimation of the silences in texts. this is where critical literacy’s smith. currere and critical pedagogy: think critically about self-reflective methods. 8 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (2) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci engagement with the taken-for-granted (koh, 2002) and thorough questioning of articulated ‘objective’ knowledge provides a vehicle for the oppressed consciousness to ascend into the realm of legitimacy. it is through the, “ejection of the introjected subject positions of dominant groups” (mclaren, 2000a, p. 157) and the validation of individual subjectivity that critical literacy provides the means through which to disrupt the oppressed/oppressor dichotomy. critical pedagogy, as an epistemological framework focused on validating subjectivity, is not without fault. while critical pedagogy is subject to various critiques (see ellsworth, 1989; giroux, 1983; mclaren, 2007; pinar, 2009; sandlin & milam, 2008; wardekker & miedema, 1997), i want to focus on two that are pertinent and separate from the reoccurring critique that critical pedagogy and its associated concepts are largely abstract. the first concerns the inefficacy of critical pedagogy to affect the outcomes of the actions of teachers while the second concerns the largely gendered and racialized nature of those who comprise the base of canonical thinkers and their ideas. this is not to suggest that these are the only salient concerns. indeed, the epistemological contentions of critical pedagogy, in being vehemently “anti-rightist” (given the trenchant marxism that defines the field), are themselves open to sufficiently warranted critique for being over-zealously leftist and potentially unwavering. however, the two mentioned here outline two trends that appear to be threaded through discussions of critical pedagogical work and its critiques. given what could be interpreted as critical pedagogy’s disinterest in concretizing the ideals of its epistemological contentions, it is perhaps not all that surprising that some educators have difficulty applying such a framework in the classroom. take for instance the experiences of macgillivray (1997), who found that despite her best efforts to effectuate a critical pedagogy in her classroom, she resorted to familiar techniques. amidst a scholastic environment that promotes a model of the professor as, “calm, reserved, and somewhat emotionally distant” (ibid., p. 484), she found that she quickly resorted to a set of “rules” that conflicted with her understanding of what it meant to facilitate the creation of a learning environment driven by the ideals of critical pedagogy. such frustration with the inapplicability of critical pedagogy is additionally reflected in ellsworth’s (1989) oft-cited critique of critical pedagogy in which she suggests that it is comprised of a set of, “repressive myths that perpetuate relations of domination” (p. 298). such problems appear to give the impression that critical pedagogy is quixotic and suitable for nothing more than the “armchair revolution” that freire (1970, p. 52) was trying to avoid. the other aspect that is of grave concern is the gendered and racialized constitution of both the texts and the authors. hooks (1994), reflecting on her readings of freire, states that she is continually reminded of, “the way he […] constructs a phallocentric paradigm of liberation–wherein freedom and the experience of patriarchal manhood are always linked as though they are one and the same” (p. 49). while hooks (1994) does argue that this is the case, she also suggests that it should not, “overshadow anyone’s (and feminists’ in particular) capacity to learn from the insights” (p. 49), a point that mclaren (2000a) is quick to reference in his discussion of gender and race in freire. the frustrations of gender are accompanied by a discontent with the inability of critical theorists to embrace race as an equally valid oppression in analysis (hooks, 1994; ladson-billing, 1997). ladson-billings (1997) suggests that race is “muted in analysis” (p. 127) which correlates with hooks’ (1994) concern that “nonwhite voices” do not appear to be gaining any substantial grounding in terms of voice (p. 9-10). other thinkers have noted the neglect as well: giroux (1983) notes the silence of gender and race in articulations of smith. currere and critical pedagogy: think critically about self-reflective methods. 9 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (2) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci resistance theory (p. 104) while kincheloe (2007) notes the lack of voice on the part of some racialized minority groups. in fact, kincheloe (2007) suggests that, “one of the greatest failures of critical pedagogy at this juncture of its history involves the inability to engage people of african, asian, and indigenous backgrounds in our tradition” (p. 11). while this is addressed in some recent work (see for instance mclaren’s (2000b) piece on whiteness), the overarching emphasis on economic and macro-structural explanations serves as an exclusionary technique (however inadvertent), effectively eliding discussions of race and gender from critical paradigms. critical pedagogy/currere symbiosis it would seem as if the epistemological assertions of critical pedagogy and the methodological approach of currere are diametrically opposed. currere emphasizes the individual lived experience as reflected in the epistemological influence of phenomenology (doerr, 2004; kanu & glor, 2006; pinar, 1975a, 1975b, 1975d; pinar et al., 1995), existentialism (pinar, 1975d, 1981; pinar et al., 1995, p. 520-521) and psychoanalysis (kanu & glor, 2006; pinar, 1975a, 1975b, 1975d; pinar et al., 1995, p. 521-522). critical pedagogy, on the other hand, concentrates on the role of structural, political and ideological forces as the object of study. currere advocates a humanizing of education by focusing on the individual while critical pedagogy emphasizes macro level and abstract understanding as part of the humanizing effort. yet, despite being apparently diametrically opposed, some of the values and ideas of critical pedagogy are present in currere. for instance, this artificial bifurcation belies currere’s psychosocial and political advocacy (pinar, 1978) and its potential as a form of cultural criticism (pinar, 2012, p. 45). as such, i would maintain that the relationship is not one of mutual exclusivity despite pinar’s (2009) suggestion that critical work creates a subject/structure divide wherein the subject lacks any agentive capacity (p. 196). first, the future plays a role in both currere and critical pedagogy. the meditation, “on what may come, on what you wish to become” (doerr, 2004, p. 25) inherent in the process of progression is analogous to the emphasis on immanence in critical theory (kincheloe, 2007). the devotion to change in both frameworks necessitates a reflection on the potentiality of differing futures. in the critical pedagogue’s call for a ‘transformative intellectual’ (kanpol, 1996), there lies a call for a different future. this is echoed in sandlin and milam’s (2008) discussion of culture jammers in which individuals actively participate in cultural production so as, “to redefine possibilities for the future” (p. 331). attempts to shift one’s perception of their own future corresponds with pinar’s (1975a) suggestion that progression in currere should assist in helping the individual determine where their “intellectual interests are going” (p. 10). the two can operate in tandem to provide students with a criticality that shapes their own educational endeavours and desires for the future. both critical pedagogy and currere also emphasize the deleterious effects of the banking model (freire, 1970). grumet (1978) maintains that, “the instructional fallacy that denigrates students’ autobiographical writing subscribes to […] the banking model of education” (p. 295). the paternalistic essence of the banking model abrogates a student’s right to use her own experiences in the knowledge construction process. to give students the opportunity to overcome the ideological limitations of the selective tradition (see apple, 2004; trofanenko, 2006) enacted through ‘banking pedagogies,’ critical pedagogues advocate for a critical literacy (freire, 1970; mclaren, 2000a, p. 187; koh, 2002; gurn, 2011). given currere’s potential in providing critical reflection tools (grumet, 1978, p. smith. currere and critical pedagogy: think critically about self-reflective methods. 10 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (2) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 296), it becomes apparent that combining currere with a critical literacy program can assist students and teachers in engaging with pedagogies that don’t simply ‘deposit’ knowledge. using a critical pedagogical approach in the classroom may even assist educators and students contextualize their experiences by illustrating the ways in which their understandings of the world are not solely the product of their own intellectual capacities. doing this may insulate currere from critiques that it is unable to precipitate change if the understandings gleaned from it are not discussed as having been constructed within a particular political, ideological, social and economic context 8 . as noted above though, there are two flaws in critical pedagogy that problematize it as an effective epistemological base for currere as a method. first, the difficulty in practical application (ellsworth, 1989; macgillivray, 1997) is incongruous with the ways currere is effective at eliciting meaningful reflection (see doerr, 2004). macgillivray (1997) reflects on her own familial and professional experiences to explicate the reasons why her biases prevented her from effectively engaging in critical pedagogy in the classroom. while this not an autobiographical reflection (at least not in the sense of currere), it does highlight the ways in which personal reflection can help to illustrate the problems of particular epistemological approaches as applied to pedagogy. the problems of application as reflected by ellsworth (1989) are also made discernible through the articulation of her experiences teaching a class which provides the springboard for a trenchant critique of critical pedagogy as enacting an antithetical pedagogy in its reproduction of domination. the personal and pragmatic utility of currere is also unable to benefit from the largely abstract and impractical nature of critical pedagogy, which, “efface[s] subjectivity and the embodied individual, each pronounced, respectively, as only complicit with capitalism […] or, simply, ‘dead’” (pinar, 2009, p. 192). while the aforementioned statement from pinar is specific to notions of reproduction and resistance, i would suggest that it is equally salient with regards to descriptions of critical pedagogy’s relation to currere. in reference to the racialized/gendered critiques considered earlier, currere once again finds itself at odds with critical pedagogy. with regards to race, it is widely acknowledged by anti-racists that the inclusion of the narratives and subjectivities of racialized non-white individuals is an essential part in deconstructing both the we/us binary and the exclusion of racialized non-white individuals from the knowledge construction process. the importance of these racialized knowledges is acknowledged as consequential to curriculum studies. one such specific example is the notion of the literary canon (pinar et al., 1995; taubman, 1993) and the racialized politics behind its construction. while the ideas of critical pedagogy, particularly the recognition of the ‘selective tradition’ (pinar et al., 1995, p. 251; trofanenko, 2006) may be advantageous in augmenting the benefit of critical pedagogy to currere, the economic determinism inherent in this epistemological tradition may problematize any insights it may provide regarding racialized distinctions. with respect to gender, not only is critical pedagogy largely silent on gender issues but seminal texts such as freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed are noted as being androcentric (hooks, 1994). pinar (2009) even suggests that the existence of gendered statements is reflective of critical scholars employment of “a subject position somehow safely located outside ideological interpellation” (p. 193) 9 . much like the concern enunciated previously with regards to race, the ways in which critical pedagogues approach critique is best suited to an abstract realm in which economics, and not gender or race, is the main determinant in oppression. any frustration with critical pedagogy’s lack of sensitivity to gender needs to be tempered though. criticisms of freire’s work as smith. currere and critical pedagogy: think critically about self-reflective methods. 11 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (2) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci androcentric requires the juxtaposing of his work with pinar and grumet’s early work with currere (see for instance grumet, 1978; pinar, 1975a, 1975b) wherein the male subject is uncritically privileged. criticisms of the gendered nature of one from the other are unwarranted if we consider the historical context and the emphasis on rectifying this issue through each position as they are currently articulated. i would suggest then that both should work in concert to deconstruct the implicit androcentrism that saturates the theoretical bedrock of each tradition by centring gender and race in their epistemological and methodological work. conclusion both currere and critical pedagogy have a similar goal in recognizing the subjectivity of the individual but articulate drastically different means of doing so. critical pedagogy’s arguably highfalutin nature is countered by currere’s focus on centring the subject through her own words. critical pedagogy though is by its very nature ‘critical’ which would benefit the method of currere which, despite the argument that it, “provide[s] students with the tools of critical reflection that they will need to transform their situations” (grumet, 1978, p. 296), does little to lucidly articulate how this is the case. while critical pedagogy’s abstraction (and perhaps its economic determinism) risks limiting its effectiveness to nothing more than what freire called an “armchair revolution” (1970, p. 52), the ‘conscientização’ inherent as a base to critical pedagogy provides a way to expand and problematize currere to encompass critical reflection. indeed, the centrality of hermeneutics in critical theory (kincheloe, 2007) can support the analysis essential to autobiographical work. beyond this, if educational experience, as the central focus of currere, is truly designed to focus on the, “experience associated with educational institutions as they are currently conceived” (pinar, 1975c, emphasis added), one would be wise to avail oneself of the institutional focus in critical pedagogy to make sense of how the ‘institution’ shapes that experience. critical pedagogy can therefore provide background knowledge for students to use in conjunction with understandings gleaned through the autobiographies to affect change. in fact, there appears to be a convergence in focus as seen in work being done to address issues of race (mclaren, 2000b; pinar, 2000) and while this may not signify a partnership, it highlights the possibility for an engaged and critical currere informed by a critical pedagogy. beyond critical theory, other epistemological and theoretical frameworks exist as potential complements to currere. anti-racism, gendered theories, and even alternative theories of social class (to name a few) can serve to augment the understandings gleaned and generated through autobiographical reflection. by educating students about the institutional and political context in which they exist, autobiographical reflections come to be textured by more nuanced understandings of the world. what is important is not so much the epistemological lens privileged as a complement (differing contexts demand different responses) but the application of critical insights to the personal experiences of our students and indeed ourselves. consequently, although critical theory may not always serve as the most suitable complement to currere, the ways in which it and other critical paradigms unsettle and texture autobiographical work is not only worth considering but essential to future work. how then might we reconcile the two paradigms (is such a process possible)? if we take seriously for a moment the idea that currere and autobiographical work more broadly would benefit from critical social thought and vice versa, there is an interesting space smith. currere and critical pedagogy: think critically about self-reflective methods. 12 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (2) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci opened for a different language around the position of the individual in the social context. no conceptual frame will ever be sufficient and neither of the aforementioned paradigms and its proponents, i venture, would disagree. that said, there is something of curricular value in the concept of bildung that can help create a convergent line(s) of thought that can bridge some of the concerns elucidated thus far. curriculum literature (see hamilton & gudmundsdottir, 1994; pinar, 2011; vásquez-levy, 2002) has engaged with this notion of bildung, a german word broadly pointing to the formation of the individual as a subjective being. as vásquez-levy argues (2002), bildung is at once inner and outer growth, social and individual and at once a process through which seemingly disconnected experiences of individual (maturation, coming-of-age) and social development (states of freedom) come together as a, “double process of inner-developing and outer-enveloping” (p. 118). she goes on to suggest that the consequence of such a process is the development of, “a critical consciousness and of character-formation, self-discovery, knowledge in the form of contemplation or insight, an engagement with questions of truth,value, and meaning” (p. 118-119). pinar (2011) suggests something similar in presenting a definition of bildung through which, “subjective engagement with the social and the cultural for the sake of selfformation comprises one meaning” (p. xiv) of the term, a particular articulation that might possibly provide a theoretical avenue for the merging of the socio-political preoccupation of critical pedagogy with the ever inward looking nature of currere and autobiographical work more generally. ultimately, each of the aforementioned understandings of bildung corresponds to gadamer’s (2004) assertion that the concept now, “designates primarily the properly human way of developing one’s natural talents and abilities” (p. 9), itself implicitly suggesting discovery or formation. the convergence of autobiographical work with critically rich and context aware understandings of the social space can make possible the inner/outer development, one in which “properly human” and supportive education can exist in relation to and inherently against on-going elisions of specific subjectivities or abilities from particular discourses or activities (eg. women from the upper levels of politics or business). such a conceptualization appears congruent with notions of reflective praxis and at once central to conceptions of self-reflective thinking in which inner growth and nuanced understandings of the experiences of education can manifest themselves. herein lies, therefore, a potential bridge for the seemingly disparate notions of the ever present dichotomy of self/structure, two circumscribed locales of reflective thought that define the currere/critical thought divide. by embodying bildung within the classroom space, educators and students alike can broaden the prescient and forward thinking dispositions that both autobiographical and critical pedagogical work call for and engender. consequently, bildung provides a fertile theoretical ground from which critical pedagogical work can be sutured to the self-reflective curricular practices demanded by autobiographical methods such as currere. by working through this notion of articulating the social and cultural with the inner or “properly human” bildung may offer an approach to understanding curricular work that is at once self-reflective, progressive and critically cognizant. and while bildung may not, in and of itself, mend the flaws of each curricular epistemology, it offers a starting point from which to encounter, engage and reimagine the world as a place from which “i” and “we” live, love, play, imagine and create together. notes smith. currere and critical pedagogy: think critically about self-reflective methods. 13 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (2) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 1 bryan.smith@uottawa.ca 2 although he does not explicitly couple (auto)biography with a method, he does state that in reply to the students affective responses to a piece of literature, he responds by using his biography (pinar, 1981, p. 330). in pinar et al. (1995) however, the authors suggest that this 1972 article was “the earliest expression of interest in autobiographical method” (p. 518). 3 as noted by pinar & grumet (1976) in the poor curriculum, this paper formed the basis for a chapter in the book. 4 see for instance the sociological imagination (mills, 2000) wherein it is suggested that the relationship between biography and history is essential to intellectual understanding. 5 something to note is that she taught at an all boys school. while this may be the case, this does not detract from the concerns over the displays of masculinity that pervade the autobiographical reflections. 6 mclaren (2007) notes that, contrary to pinar’s argument, “neither the individual nor society is given priority in analysis” (p. 194). 7 what is of interest here is kincheloe’s assertion that in critical theory, the theoretical base for critical pedagogy, there is a “rejection of economic determinism” (2007, p. 22). 8 one might suppose that the emphasis on, “listening carefully to one’s own inner voice in the historical and natural world” (pinar, 2012, p. 46-47) in the synthesis stage of currere is sufficient in providing students with the opportunity to question their present subjectivity and the ways it was shaped. the question that remains though is whether or not “listening to” one’s historical construction is sufficient if it is divorced from other dynamics. if it does not take into account other forms of oppression (racial, gendered, economic, political, etc.), i would suggest that it is in fact insufficient by itself. 9 it is worth noting here lather’s critique (cited in pinar, 2009, p. 197) that critical pedagogy is a “boy thing,” reflected in the authority of the “masculinist voice” in critical theoretical discourse. this is evident when one considers that many of the “seminal” works are written from the male (white, middle/upper class) subject position. references apple, m. w. 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(1970). pedagogy of the oppressed. new york, ny: seabury press. gadamer, h.-g. (2004). truth and method. london, uk: continuum international publishing. giroux, h. a. (1983). theory and resistance in education: towards a pedagogy for the opposition. westport, ct: bergin & garvey. giroux, h. a. (2003). critical theory and educational practice. in m. baltodano, a. darder, & r. d. torres (eds.), the critical pedagogy reader (pp. 27-56). new york, ny: routledgefalmer. grumet, m. r. (1978). songs and situations: the figure/ground relation in a case study of currere. in g. willis (ed.), qualitative evaluation: concepts and cases in curriculum criticism (pp. 274-315). berkeley, ca: mccutchan publishing corporation. grumet, m. r. (1981). restitution and reconstruction of educational experience: an autobiographical method for curriculum theory. in l. barton & m. lawn (eds.), rethinking curriculum studies: a radical approach (p. 115-130). new york, ny: halsted press. grumet, m. r. 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(1993). canonical sins. in l. castenell & w. f. pinar (eds.), understanding curriculum as a racial text: representations of identity and difference in education (pp. 35-52). albany, ny: state university of new york press. trofanenko, b. (2006). interrupting the gaze: on reconsidering authority in the museum. journal of curriculum studies, 38(1), 49-65. vásquez-levy, d. (2002). bildung-centred didaktik: a framework for examining the educational potential of subject matter. journal of curriculum studies, 34(1), 117– 128. wardekker, w. l., & miedema, s. (1997). critical pedagogy: an evaluation and a direction for reformulation. curriculum inquiry, 27(1), 45-61. submitted: june, 6th, 2013 approved: october, 1st, 2013 o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: craveiro, clarissa & aguiar, felipe (2016). teacher training curriculum policies in brazil: possibilities of wordsmith tools. transnational curriculum inquiry 13(2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> teacher training curriculum policies in brazil: possibilities of wordsmith tools clarissa craveiro1 federal fluminense university, brazil visiting scholar (cnpq) at state university of rio de janeiro, brazil felipe aguiar2 state university of rio de janeiro, brazil introduction the purpose of this text is to contribute to the research in the curriculum field with the use of a technological tool: wordsmith tools software. nowadays, this technology is well known in the field of linguistics (cfr. scott, 2016), creating the corpus linguistics. the use of the software wordsmith tools for research is not recent (browker, pearson, 2002; baker, 2006; wodak, meyer, 2009). in brazil, studies carried through in the group of research “currículo, sujeitos, conhecimentos e cultura” (curriculum: subjects, knowledge and culture) of graduate program of education of state university of rio de janeiro, since 2012, have started to use of this program for research in the curriculum field. amongst these studies, the ones that had used a big amount of brazilian curricular documents (cfr. oliveira, 2012, matheus, 2013, craveiro, 2014) have signaled that this technological tool contributes to the selection and organization of the material making it faster and deeper, contributing in the process of document analysis. thus, our goal is to present and instigate other researchers to make use of this software or similar ones, as well as the materials already organized by the research group with that technological support. however, the use of this type of technology in the field of education has not been recurrent. for example, from the data of craveiro’s research (2014), we looked for researches in the field of curriculum and teacher's education from 2012 to 2016. we have found 656 research papers. sixty of them dealt simultaneously with two themes: curriculum and elementary school teachers’ education, because it was the educational level chosen by the researcher. these 60 papers were read in full. amongst these theses and dissertations, 21 had worked with a significant amount of materials including revision of theses and dissertations, papers published in annual meetings such as for the national association of graduate studies and research in education (anped) or the national meeting of didactics and teaching practices (endipe) (important institutions for education in brazil), because they focused on diverse aspects regarding teachers' education. only one paper had worked with the technological tool for the election of materials, which means an underuse of tools such as the wordsmith in research of this field. our argument is that the possibility of working with such technological tool, independent of the theoretical method chosen by the authors for their analyses, can make possible to extend the amount of texts and the periods of analyses and, in a larger craveiro & aguiar. teacher training curriculum policies in brazil 4 transnational curriculum inquiry volume 13 (2) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci universe of documents, to deepen these analyses. in fact, periods of extension larger than ten years with documentary analysis are difficult to work with “manual” research. the wordsmith tools software facilitates the comparison and location of texts either by means of words or by means of pieces of documents or yet by the placement of documents by period of time independent of the volume of the selected material. such proposal may lead to further deepening in the analyses, because the researcher has the possibility to test and to modify the ways chosen for the research with promptness and an easy notation of the process chosen for the study. beyond this aspect, both the papers with more data in a specific theme and papers, which accumulate long historical contexts, can contribute in uneven way in diverse academic fields. therefore, we defend the possibility to extend the research in the field of curriculum and education with the use of technological programs, mainly the ones with documents and narratives in extensive period research. what is corpus linguistics? corpus linguistics is a field of studies that deals with the creation and analysis of corpora (plural of corpus), which are sets of texts collected with criteria and formatted for computer reading. another important characteristic of corpus is to be created from authentic and natural texts, that is, texts not produced artificially, but collected from the language in use. in accordance with the criteria of collection of each corpus, we can divide them into six basic categories: 1 specialized corpus: formed by texts of a specific type, for example, the corpus organized by this research. this corpus will be used to analyze how a type of text is characterized and which are its language patterns. 2 general corpus: formed by texts of diverse types, generally used to represent and describe or study a language. 3 learner's corpus: formed by texts written or produced by learners of specific language. they analyze the way apprentices acquire a language, and the production of didactic materials. 4 parallel corpus: formed by the original text and its translated versions. it is used for studies related to translation. 5 comparable corpus: formed by aligned texts of the same type in more than a variant of the language or in different languages, and used generally to compare them. 6 monitor corpus: formed by enormous amounts of texts of a language and frequently fed, aiming at studying changes in the language and the creation of new words. an analysis of texts based in corpus needs to be empirical, that is, to analyze patterns in authentic and natural texts, according to the types of corpora already mentioned. moreover, it needs quantitative and qualitative theoretical and analytical foundations. this means that the computer does not do the analysis instead of the researcher. in accordance with berber sardinha (2006), the concept of corpus dates of old greece, when it was already referring to a set of texts. the first corpus for linguistic study, however, appeared in the decade of 1920, and had 4.5 million words, although not computerized. after the popularization of the computers in the 1960s, corpus linguistics gained space in the research centers, and since then it keeps revolutionizing the way language is investigated, providing the researcher with an unimaginable before amount of data and precision. craveiro & aguiar. teacher training curriculum policies in brazil 5 transnational curriculum inquiry volume 13 (2) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci applications that make analysis of corpus are important tools for the researcher of the area. amongst them, the application suite wordsmith tools3 stands out. created by mike scott from the university of liverpool, in the united kingdom, this software allows the researcher to make analyses of frequency and occurrence of words in a corpus, and to process the text files for the analysis itself. according to berber sardinha (2004), “the intention of the program is to serve as a tool that allows the achievement of tasks related to the analyses of corpus. this means that it was not conceived to perform by itself a definitive analysis in the place of the user”. the three main tools of the software are wordlist, concord and keywords. the first, wordlist, produces a list of all words of the file or selected files. this list of words contains important information of the corpus, for example, its size and the absolute and percentile frequency of each word. the second, concord, executes concordances, that is, listings of a specific word in which it is possible to analyze the context and list of collocates (words that appear around the searched word). the third, keywords, calculates and produces lists of keywords, that is, words whose statistics are different of those found in another corpus (reference corpus). an example of research using the intersection of corpus linguistics with other areas is aguiar (2013), in which the researcher analyzes the original and translated texts of a literary work. he investigates marks of the translator in the translated text, using parallel corpus with the original texts and its translated versions and the software wordsmith tools. in his research, aguiar analyzed a young readers work of literature in its diverse volumes (the chronicles of narnia as crônicas de nárnia of c. s. lewis), seeking to verify the adopted patterns to portray its protagonist the aslan lion in its translation to brazilian portuguese. he also aimed at establishing if the parallel, suggested for the author of the chronicles, between aslan and the figure of the christian god is captured in the brazilian portuguese version. the results pointed to a notable removing from the translated text in relation to the original text as of the construction of the aslan character, namely: changes in the semantic prosodies, changes of force, omissions or additions that modify the meaning and change in the agency of the verbal processes. although originally the software has been created and thought for the study in the field of linguistics, researchers and students around the world in various fields of study, such as discourse analysis, cultural studies and translation studies, have been using it. therefore, we suggest a greater use of this tool in the field of education, as we will discuss next. why using this technology in the field of curriculum? the corpus linguistics is directly linked to the technology and has got a great growth, while technological tools, like the personal computers and software that do collection and processing of texts, had appeared and become popular (berber sardinha, 2000). such tools not only make possible the storage of data in electronic form, but also the exploration of them. since the compilation of corpus brown, in 1964 (berber sardinha, 2000), the computers have been used for the analysis of language. however, it was from the decade of 1990 on that the use of the computer had a significant increase in some areas of knowledge. furthermore, the introduction of flexible and accessible programs to a bigger public provided that the field of corpus linguistics advanced, and with it the application of computerized technologies that have appeared as support. craveiro & aguiar. teacher training curriculum policies in brazil 6 transnational curriculum inquiry volume 13 (2) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci with these programs, it became possible the counting of signifiers, the identification of its occurrences in the texts and the statistical calculation of the data found in the texts, for example, the lexical variety of a text, and the number of occurrences of a significant word of a set of texts. starting with the sharing of this information through the field of corpus linguistics, the analysis of the language could be closer to other areas of knowledge, with the needed adjustments. oliveira (2012) reports on some issues in the transposition of the theoretical constructs of corpus linguistics for the works that make use of theory of discourse for the research. an important difference between the two theories is that the discourse analysis, field in which the corpus linguistics is traditionally inserted, presents marks of empiricism, of realism and the conception that it is possible to represent the totality of its linguistic uses. in the theory of discourse, on the second hand, the language assumes a problematic of political implications, in which it is possible to present meanings of the social in accordance with the context of the discourse. an approximation between the two theories is that the language presents itself as structure that constitutes the reality. the use of the wordsmith tools for this research was given to the fact that the empirical research of the material became more agile and powerful for the researcher. the researcher yet cites that the initial idea she had, to construct a corpus of reference in the area where its work is located was abandoned during the research, due to the low possibility of significant words appear as keywords when trying to compare two corpus of so profound similarity. differently than oliveira's work (2012), craveiro research (2016) takes the challenge that is building a corpus representative enough to serve as a reference corpus for the field of curriculum. later on, it will be possible to analyze the corpus as a whole (searching for occurrences of significants in general in the curricular texts) or separately (in its several sub-corpora that are, young and adults eja; teacher's education; primary education; national curricular proposals etc). these analyses will make possible the comparison of the main corpus with sub-corpora, or even comparing it with another corpus of study compiled by the researcher. in a similar way, matheus (2013) chose to use wordsmith tools in its research because the software “makes it possible, among other things, to map the occurrence of the signifiers and to identify links established between these and other signifiers” (p. 52). the analysis of the researcher of signifier quality in the education texts was made using the tool keyword (comparing the corpus of study with the reference corpus), as well as using the search of collocates of quality (words that appear around the signifier searched, inside of a predefined limit). through these other signifiers, it was possible in the research of matheus (2013) to analyze the relation established with these conductors of the meanings of quality. the possibilities of use of the software wordsmith tools, for matheus (2013), intersect with the theory of discourse (laclau; mouffe, 1985), since it allows a broad reconfiguration of the texts in innumerable possibilities of organization. being thus, the researcher achieved making an analysis that made possible the decentering of the texts from the sequential organization of the corpus, because the program provides the researcher with many ways to read the texts that form the corpus. the signifiers, with their provisory closure, are understood in its discursive formations, including the articulations that they make between words and meanings. craveiro (2014a) guided its research in the curriculum field using the corpus linguistics as a tool of access and organization of the compiled texts, with the aim of understanding the discourses of the curricular politics for the teacher's education. in addition, the official discourses of the pedagogical field were studied. through this craveiro & aguiar. teacher training curriculum policies in brazil 7 transnational curriculum inquiry volume 13 (2) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci study, the researcher aimed to analyze the meanings of identification of the teachers and the fluctuations of meaning throughout the temporal limit of the research in spite of changes in politics. for the researcher, then, the wordsmith tools offers a variety of options of “inputs” in the texts and different readings. amongst the tools, keywords was chosen initially, and the corpus of study is compared with the reference corpus, through the collocates bigrams and trigrams (keywords), bigrams (with two words) or trigrams (with three words). craveiro (2014a) highlights, in her thesis, that the program offers an “easiness of comparison and organization of the material” (p. 83). the research can also be extended in its possibilities because of the uncountable ways the texts can be organized by the computer in the software, without loss in the original texts. however, the software does not analyze data, and therefore the theoretical conception of the researcher is so important for the work with the selected material. some research carried through in the field of the curriculum with wordsmith tools the research made by craveiro (2014a) with the use of wordsmith tools version 5 is one of the research papers that draws near that technological tool to the field of curriculum. the author worked with curricular documents produced in the political contexts of the governments fernando henrique cardoso (fhc) and lula da silva (lula) making a search in the years of 1995 to 2011 in the thematic of teacher's education. she chose for that research the following organization of documents to be analyzed: a) for the pedagogical discourses of the period between 1995 and 2003, called fhc period, the research of estado da arte of andré, simões, carvalho and brzezinski (1999). b) the analyses of the theses and dissertations of andré (2009) and garrido and brzezinski (2008). c) analyses of the politics of teacher's education of ten years of freitas (2002). these works were selected for being considered works of reference for the academic community of researchers that work with teacher's education. in the period between 2003 and 2011, it was carried through a research of the theses and dissertations in the capes website using the keywords curriculum and teachers' education in years 2005 to 2012, in view that state of the art research had only been carried through until the year of 2004. the option of including the 2012 research aims to accumulate of studies made in the period of the government lula understanding the malleability of the period of thesis defenses and dissertations of the initiated and finished research papers yet in this period and, in this way, available for the public access. in this research, 612 registers were found from which 562 works of master's degree, 30 phd theses and 20 dissertations of professional master's degree. from this first survey, works have been selected because they presented some approximation with the thematic and the focus of the research. initially the selection was by means of the titles and, not being possible to define only by this reading, the reading of the summaries was carried through. in order to understand the addressed directions to the teaching identity in the political context of government fhc and the government lula and the processes of constitution of these social discourses in the field of curriculum, documents were analyzed and constructed a way of access to the curricular documents. initially these corpora of documents have been built with 35 documents and later (craveiro, 2014b) extended to 119 curricular documents. such documents have been accessed through the search in the websites: google, ministry of education (mec) (http://portal.mec.gov.br) craveiro & aguiar. teacher training curriculum policies in brazil 8 transnational curriculum inquiry volume 13 (2) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci and curricular documents (resolutions and reports) made by the chamber of elementary education, meetings of full council and national council of education. in addition, they have been found, in the site of the ministry of education, the referring laws and presidential decrees to the thematic of teacher's education. we yet visited the site of the national institute of studies and research (www.inep.gov.br), having accessed the link “legislation”. this way, in 2015, we aimed to select the curricular documents from 1995 to 2014, which standardize teachers’ education in brazil. in the 2014 analyses, we claimed that the thematic of the teaching identity is central in the formation of teachers and the curricular documents that serve to guide this formation in a given historical context, by means of national, international or local designation. beyond this aspect, this guidance suffers modifications in the different contexts for which it is addressed, producing other meanings. at the same time, they refer to traces of meaning of previous contexts and modify and reinterpret the orientations in a constant movement of production and interpretation of curricular politics. because of the interest in comparing the discourses defended in curricular documents of these contexts, considering the amount produced in this period, wordsmith tools was of great aid for the preparation and election of the material analyzed with the use of the tools concord and keywords. we highlighted that the research regarding this curricular politics production and the delimitation of this field of study is recent in brazil, as emphasize lopes and macedo (2011). they are placed from the 1990s in brazil and the united states and, with more time in england, since the decade of 1980s. the studies that seek to understand the curricular politics beyond the diagnostic and pragmatic perspective, related to solutions and action of local policies, are carried through in the research related to the policies in the field of social science. in the research on curriculum policies, it was highlighted the focus on teacher's education marks the teaching leading role, as “a key part” in the changes of curricular policies. it is considered as one who re-signifies the knowledge, spreads and transforms the politic-pedagogical discourse in various educational instances. this space however is signified by the omission of its performance or formation, referring to a discourse of blaming teachers, marked by a space of “divinizing” and of signifying the teacher as “partner” in the changes and curricular projects considered by the national and international agencies. this movement of continuous discursive production of meanings leads us to assume determined social status, simultaneously producing “new global identifications and new local identifications” (cfr. hall, 1997, p. 1). in this continuous production of meanings, the teacher's education is marked by a trend to naturalize certain meanings for the curriculum, establishing an interface between pedagogical discourse and the discourse of curricular policies of teacher's education. meanings circulate for what is understood “to be a teacher”, what constitutes the teaching identity, what can assess a positive qualification or not for what the teaching performance in relation to what the society assumes of it. matheus (2013) investigated the discourse of education of quality in the curricular policies for the elementary education made in brazil, in the period between 2003 and 2011, in the government of luis inácio lula da silva and at the beginning of the government dilma roussef, seeking to understand the links established between curriculum and quality. in order to do that, she investigated production of texts of the referred policy the ministry of education (mec), by the means of the reading of 57 documents signed and/or ordered by the secretaria of educação básica (seb) board of basic education, for the national council of education (cne), and for the national institute of studies and pesquisas educacionais educational researches (inep). craveiro & aguiar. teacher training curriculum policies in brazil 9 transnational curriculum inquiry volume 13 (2) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci these texts had constituted a corpus of study for her research. such documents are available in the internet in the websites of mec (http://portal.mec.gov.br) and the national institute of studies and educational research inep (http://www.inep.gov.br) and the ones that had not been found in these sites had been located by the website google (http://www.google.com). she tried to select the biggest number possible of texts, both the entitled as curricular and the broader texts about elementary education. with this segment, she aimed at understanding the process of signification of quality in its relation to the curriculum in the formulated curricular policies. the choice of the significant quality was out of an evaluation made when perceiving that this significant name a flag that goes beyond the educational specialized discourse into the common sense. this observation was confirmed when, by means of the program wordsmith tools, it was verified that quality was a keyword inside of the set of selected texts to appear in the corpus of study of the research. for that research, the following tools of the wordsmith tools have been used: concord, collocates, keywords and clusters. yet oliveira (2012) worked with the thematic of the circumscribed curricular policies to the analysis of articulatory processes in the subject field of history. starting from one of the tools of corpus linguistics, the program wordsmith tools 5, the researcher submitted to analysis, by one of its instruments concord -, the selected empirical material. this way, she identified the way these texts signify historical knowledge, highlighting the overlapping of meanings, in editions of the revista brasileira de história (brazilian magazine of history) and the história hoje (history today) magazine publications of the national association of history (anpuh), in reports, curricular guideline, orientations and curricular parameters, amongst other texts legitimized by the brazilian state in the period between the years of 1960 and 2010, and in six interviews. creating possibilities of research with wordsmith tools despite the majority of the examples of research mentioned in this text being made with the use of the technological software wordsmith tools with the theoretical foundation of the theory of discourse (laclau; mouffe, 1985), these are only one among many possibilities of investigation in the field of education and curriculum. we understand that it would be impossible to include all of the countless possibilities of analyses and theoretical references that are developing in the field of discourse. mainly the french discourse analysis, the critical discourse analysis, the content analysis and others that are close to the theory of discourse. these references do not focus in the linguistic functioning but on what happens by means of he language: relations of power, institution of social identities, processes of ideological unconsciousness and diverse human manifestations. such consideration is supported in the understanding that in these different perspectives of analysis, the wordsmith tools has the role of organizer and facilitator of ways by which the creativity and necessity of each researcher directs the movement of the research in accordance with its singularity. with modifications in the form of operation of the analyzed material and with different theoretical foundations, we saw that researchers could benefit from the corpus linguistics and its tools for their analysis. in the same way, these instruments can favor other fields of knowledge that analyze texts, with its rapidity in the processing of the data and its diverse possibilities of collection and visualization of statistical data and patterns of the studied texts. as we mentioned previously, the wordsmith tools and the instruments of the corpus linguistics can assist the researchers of diverse theoretical foundations in their analysis of texts. first, because the perception of the researchers is craveiro & aguiar. teacher training curriculum policies in brazil 10 transnational curriculum inquiry volume 13 (2) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci that the empirical research of the material becomes faster and powerful. second, because the software offers many entrances in the text and different readings. in continuity to the vast possibilities of research, we highlight corpus of reference of craveiro (2016) as a contribution to different modalities of curricular research in the field of the education and teaching. such aspect can be signaled by the vast amplitude of curricular documents that composes this corpus. such as: national common base library (biblioteca da base comum nacional); publications of secadi and the national board of education (conselho nacional da educação); curricular documents of adult's education (eja), of elementary education teaching subjects (licenciaturas), of special education, of internships; of ldb; of pro-literacy (próletramento); mec publications, seb publications; international agreements documents; the educational legislation; the elementary education publications; the middle school education; those of curriculum and others, comprising a great-sized corpus, with more than 22 million words. although the prominence of the possibilities of research with the use of texts, the wordsmith tools also can be useful to the research that uses a great amount of texts of narratives. research in the area of literature already makes use of the tool concord to analyze the construction of narratives through adjectives and verbs, and has a good history of the study of metaphors in diverse types of texts. pine (2014), for example, analyzed with the wordsmith elements of attitude in narratives of learners of spanish language, to discover how the students present its evaluations of the process of learning the language. this analysis, according to the researcher, is taken as a starting point for discussions on the context of learning, the spanish teacher's education and the policies of language teaching foreseen by the curricular orientations for the language teaching. moreover, the software still offers other tools that have not been analyzed here, for example the tool “plot”, that makes a graphic description of the occurrence of a given significant throughout the text, which can give indications on the construction of its meanings while the narrative develops. the tools “clusters” and “patterns” are also potential aids for the researcher to find repeated patterns of phraseology in the texts. while the latter shows the collocates of a given word in order of frequency before or after the searched word, the first computes words that appear around the research word in a horizon of words of distance both to the right and to the left, inside of the sentence. having said that, we consider wordsmith tools a great tool for the studies of the field of education and teaching. in addition, we hope that with the spreading of this technological tool in education and curriculum studies and the construction of the reference corpus of curriculum, many other ways get signalized so that researchers extend the articulation of research data and make use of the benefits of this tool for their research. notes 1 clacraveiro@yahoo.com.br 2 felipeaguiar2002@gmail.com 3 www.lexically.net/wordsmith. craveiro & aguiar. teacher training curriculum policies in brazil 11 transnational curriculum inquiry volume 13 (2) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci references andré, m. e. d. a. (2009). a produção acadêmica sobre formação de professores: um estudo comparativo das dissertações e teses defendidas nos anos 1990 e 2000. formação docente. 1(1), 41-56. andré, m.; simões, r. h. s.; carvalho, j. m.; brzezinski, i. (1999) estado da arte da formação de professores no brasil. educação & sociedade, campinas, 20(68), 301109. aguiar, f. (2013). traduzindo aslan: marcas de um tradutor nas crônicas de nárnia. dissertation (mestrado em linguística) – universidade do estado do rio de janeiro, rio de janeiro, rio de janeiro. baker, p. (2006). using corpora in discourse analysis. london/new york: continuum. berber sardinha, t. (2004). linguística de corpus. são paulo: manole. berber sardinha, t. (2009). pesquisa em linguística de corpus com wordsmith tools tools. campinas: mercado de letras. berber sardinha, t. (2000). lingüística de corpus: histórico e problemática, 16(2), 323367. available at http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=s010244502000000200005&lng=en&nrm=iso . accessed in 2016, may, 18. bowker, l.; pearson, j. (2002). working with specialized language – a practical guide to using corpora. new york: routledge. craveiro, clarissa b. (2014a). políticas curriculares para a formação de professores: processos de identificação docente (19952010). thesis (doutorado em educação). universidade do estado do rio de janeiro, rio de janeiro, rio de janeiro. craveiro, c. b. (2014b). identificação docente nas políticas curriculares para formação de professores. cnpq research project (available at www.curriculo-uerj.pro.br). craveiro, c. b. (org.) (2016). corpus de documentos curriculares. universidade do estado do rio de janeiro, rio de janeiro, rio de janeiro. available at www.curriculouerj.pro.br. oliveira, a, de. (2009). políticas de currículo: lutas pela significação no campo da disciplina história. thesis (doutorado em educação). universidade do estado do rio de janeiro, rio de janeiro, rio de janeiro. matheus, d. dos s. (2013). o discurso da educação de qualidade nas políticas de currículo. thesis (doutorado em educação). universidade do estado do rio de janeiro, rio de janeiro, rio de janeiro. freitas, h. c. l. de. (2002). formação de professores no brasil: 10 anos de embate entre projetos de formação. educ. soc., 23(80), 136-167. garrido, e.; brzezinski, i. (2008). a reflexão e investigação da própria prática na formação inicial e continuada: contribuição das dissertações e teses no período 19972002. rev. diálogo educ., 8(23), 153-171. hall, s. (1997). a centralidade da cultura: notas sobre as revoluções culturais do nosso tempo. edu. & realidade, 22(2), 15-46. laclau, e.; mouffe, c. (1985). hegemony and socialist strategy. towards a radical democratic politics. london, uk: verso. lopes, a. c.; macedo, e. (2011). teorias de currículo. são paulo, sp: cortez. pinho, c. (2014). os elementos de atitude em narrativas de aprendizagem de língua espanhola: uma análise sistêmico–funcional. 2014. dissertation (mestrado em linguística) – instituto de letras, universidade do estado de mato grosso, mato grosso. scott, m. (2016) wordsmith tools tools help. available at: http://lexically.net/wordsmith/support/ . access in 2016, may, 18. http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=s0102-44502000000200005&lng=en&nrm=iso http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=s0102-44502000000200005&lng=en&nrm=iso http://www.curriculo-uerj.pro.br/ craveiro & aguiar. teacher training curriculum policies in brazil 12 transnational curriculum inquiry volume 13 (2) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci wodak, r.; meyer, m. (2009). methods of critical discourse analysis. los angeles, london, new delhi, singapore, washington: sage. submitted: october, 03rd, 2016 approved: december, 18th, 2016 o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: southwell, myriam (2016) the curriculum in tension. a discussion of universalism and particularism. transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> the curriculum in tension: a discussion of universalism and particularism myriam southwell1 conicet / universidad nacional de la plata / flacso, argentina when the configuration of the school, its internal dynamics and social integration, is analyzed, it is necessary to review the history, as it provides some structural elements of school organization and its founding myths that are still current (dussel, 1997 and 2008; tenti, 2003). the central argument that i would like to take, moreover, is that some central components of the modern school device are being dislocated. thus, some modes of operation, institutional dynamics and functions of the school have begun to settle in, which disagree with some of the central premises of that school format. in this analysis will be the conceptualization developed by vincent, lahire and thin (1994) about the school format, where they refer to a socio-historical setting which results in a school socialization mode that prevailed over other modes. to speak about school format is therefore to investigate what gives unity to a particular historical configuration, which emerged in certain social formations and which is constituted and tends to prevail, taking up and modifying certain elements of previous forms.2 like any social relationship it takes place in space and time, the autonomy of the pedagogical relationship establishes a specific space, different from other places where social activities take place: the school. one aspect that has become evident in recent studies3 is that some central components of the modern school dispositif are clearly called into question. thus, new forms of operation, institutional dynamics and functions of the school are developing, which differ from some central premises of the traditional school device. in order to explore this issue, we will take some school experiences that have emerged and grown under the influence of diverse social demands; we will concentrate in two new formats: agricultural family schools and reentry schools. the curtailment of these two formats does not exclude the existence of other formats related to jobless movements, popular high schools, etc.4 the common practice as a metaphor from this confirmation, two issues arise which we would like to discuss here. the first is more inherent to the pedagogical discourse and it refers to which extent we can speak about the school as a moderately homogeneous set of features, when in fact the diversification of experiences has become much broader than in traditional formats. we seem to be facing certain "disordering" of that pattern of operation which turned out to be very effective for a long time and we are also facing certain new organizations or expressions that agree and at the same time differ from that model. we should not forget that the denomination of school reduced the plurality of experiences of southwell. the curriculum in tension: a discussion of universalism and particularism. 25 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the school from its very origin. at a certain point, the school denominationin modern logicinvolved a metaphorizing capacity which made it possible to construct a canon or model. that metaphorizing capacity seems to be shattered and the reasons for the school tend to be relocated in new formats, which defy the best known ones.5 the modern school is, then, this historical practice that was crystallized in a particular, contingent and arbitrary institutional framework, and has served multiple purposes that exceed those that were proclaimed in origin. there, equality was established in a discursive articulation that would last for centuries and in our region it meant a valuable process of inclusion and social mobility. but as we also know, equality became equivalent to indiscriminate and indistinct inclusion in a common identity, establishing discursive equivalence between inclusion and homogenization. a long time ago, sociology and educational politics researchers stated that it was the middle class which benefited the most from the school that modernity strengthened, since it has adopted ways of life, interests and productive orientationsamong other aspectsof the middle class (power et all, 2003). the new school formats that we are going to present make clear, once again, the failure of the traditional school to address the needs of the traditionally abused sectors and the own phenomena of fragmentation and growing social differentiation. disordering the canon: two new types of secondary school agricultural family schools (afs)6.the alternation as a pedagogical proposal has a history of several decades in the region, although very little coverage. in recent years, the creation of these schools has expanded, while there appeared a movement that brings together seventy-five of them in associations that promote the creation of new ones. thus, there has been a strong development of these experiences around 2000 by the creation of some of them and the consolidation of organizations that made them stronger.7 his work is characterized by proposing as a modality a system of alternation which consists in students staying a week or two at school and one or two weeks at home, encouraging young farmers to pursue secondary education while stimulating strategies of rural life, strengthening the roots and the appraisal and improvement of that rural environment.8 an essential aspect of the proposal is the concern for consolidating the roots of the youths to their land and their communities. a combination is made of classroom activities with the work of agricultural production and food processing to transform local raw materials. the school also serves as a center of cultural activities, "nonformal" training for the peasant sector and hosts meetings of the farmers fair, a venture of sustainable marketing of peasant products. the political sources of these experiences are diverse. the older ones contained proposals for popular education promoted by social movements, extensionism and grassroots social activism. more recent ones have been linked with focalizing policies and public organisms of rural development and there are also links with the catholic church and the evangelical church. school action is aimed at rural aboriginal youth and families and creole peasants who are farmers, ranchers, laborers and public employees who live in rural areas and are related to rural life. this includes aboriginal people of different ethnicities (wichi and guarani, among others) and some old colonies that were the result of immigration processes. in order to be able to attend these schools it is exclusive to belong to indigenous or creole communities and they must live and work in rural areas. families gather at the afs to reflect on specific issues of school life, with power to decide on the curriculum, and pedagogical issues. to this end, they organized a council of parents who have legal and southwell. the curriculum in tension: a discussion of universalism and particularism. 26 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci economic responsibilities, related to ensuring building and equipment conditions. their responsibilities also extend to political articulations –in order to integrate the school into the community and to link it with other institutions in the area and the regionand teaching articulations, by participating in the decision-making about the curriculum definition together with the teaching team. this single aspect would call for a profound discussion on the role of communities and the state in defining curriculum and school property. the school organization intends to appraise the varied cultural wealth left by indigenous peoples and small farmers. it also seeks to give educational value to that cultural heritage traditionally undervalued by the most widespread educational model. likewise, it proposes the commitment of teachers and students to analyze the reality in which we live, thus collaborate with community enrichment; here we taken up here some early freire pedagogy in relation to the importance of overcoming the antinomy learner-educator, lore-scientific knowledge, and so on. re-entry schools9. this modality comprises eight schools created in the city of buenos aires from 2004, aimed at a population that meets the characteristic of having spent at least a period of a year or more out of the system, i.e. without schooling. also, the age should be minimum sixteen and maximum eighteen to enroll in the first level of the subjects in the curriculum. the starting point of the proposal was an extended diagnosis about one of the reasons why young people leave school is associated with the rigidity of the academic system, with little time flexibility, and grade repetition due to pending subjects which does not recognize the knowledge that has been accredited. of course, one cannot ignore the impact of economic and social difficulties and the lack of protection and assistance which characterize the living conditions of these young people. supports the construction of several training paths, and allows students to progress according to their capabilities, even if they are unable to attend simultaneously all the subjects that traditionally come into a school year (resolution 814 / sed / 04). according to this structure, the student has the freedom to decide whether to take up optional activities, which they will be and when to do it along his/her training path. in order to achieve the construction of several training paths, the plan has a system of promotion by subjects and an entry system that recognizes past achievements, so that during the same school year a student can take and approve courses of different classes or levels of the curriculum. thus, promotion by year is void and so is the situation of grade repetition of full year for those students who do not approve more than two subjects in a course. in this way, students must not repeat any subject already approved. the plan is accompanied by a system of attendance by subjects, defining the regularity of students based on the percentage of attendance in each of the subjects. it includes a combination of annual and quarterly subjects, and optional curricular units. the latter are optional for students: arts, physical activity and practical workshop. the law adds that the plan is focused on the core subjects of the curriculum. its full development encompasses four (4) years of study, which vary according to individual rhythms and accreditation of prior knowledge (resolution 814 / sed / 04 and 4539 / sed / 06). an organizational aspect which is different is that some of these schools have southwell. the curriculum in tension: a discussion of universalism and particularism. 27 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci open enrollment and activities from august to august, which modifies the traditional pose of the school year running from march to decemberwith registration only at the beginning or at the end of that cycleand being interrupted in the months of january and february on the assumption that it is a summer holiday cycle with the family. with the features we have described, the student has more options to advance their career and get an appraisal for their achievements and not just for their failures. along with that, there is an organization linked to strengthening the autonomy of students who are often informal or formal workers or try to be, parents and / or breadwinner. this combination of factors has allowed schooling to be a part of life for a group of teenagers who had previously ruled out this option. there is a discontinuity of students that can also be interpreted in line with the need to work. generally, students often get temporary jobs which lead them to leave school for a few months but have the possibility to return to the institution, by rearranging their path, or by reenrolling in subjects in which he/she lost credit for excessive absences. as we know, following an established and inalterable sequence was the factor that consolidated modern school discipline; this and noninterchangeability of essential student places (alumni: subject of not knowing) and teacher (subject who knows) were pillars of the constitution of the dispositif. in this new scheme, the timing and sequence are disordered. this is a central aspect when it comes to analyzing the proposal, since it is one of the structural elements that involved the need to think of certain changes of the school format. in the legal instruments through which this policy is driven, the following tension arises: inclusion-universalization/ adaptation-differentiation10. this same tension can be seen when analyzing the rationale of the curriculum, as it tries at the same time, to differentiate for a particular population but still delivering a common certification, in order not to create accreditation differences with the rest of the system. you could say that it contemplates the differences as a starting point, trying to reach a similar result to the rest of the educational system. so far we have looked for ways to synthesize aspects that are challenged or revised regarding the hegemonic school dispositif; these are: school age groupings and the very idea of gradualism, sequencing, concurrency, cycling, calendar year, and families taking part in curriculum decisions, among others. a common argument is that it's about particular experiences; that will be the motive of the following sections. the particularism-universalism tension as a matrix of interpretation how do the particular and the universal dialogue in these situations? in what way does the relationship they establish with individual and / or universal claims make it possible to democratize the educational experience they produce? how are they linked to the construction of a common imaginary? to what extent do they hinder or promote the construction of the collective? is the latter necessary for the school of today? we have learned with ernesto laclau that universalism and particularism are two ineradicable dimensions in the construction of political identities, but the shape of the articulation between the two is far from obvious. laclau suggests that: it is the "globality" of these projects (illuminist) that is in crisis. whatever the sign of the new vision of politics which is emerging is going to be, it is clear that one of its basic dimensions is going to be the redefinition of the existing relation between universality and particularity (laclau, 1996, p. 8). southwell. the curriculum in tension: a discussion of universalism and particularism. 28 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci shaping the educational system included -albeit much later in high school than in primary-, a homogenization of subjects and educational policies as well as a transformation of cultural borders and a path of upward mobility and inclusion in the public space for sectors that were previously excluded. among the historical ways in which the relationship between universality and particularity is thought, are those in which either the particular realizes in itself the universal -that is, it eliminated itself as the particular and transformed itself in a transparent medium through which universality operated (the idea of teaching civilization and of school culture has enough of this); or it negates the universal by asserting its own particularism (laclau, 1996, p. 47). thus, the resistances of other cultures were viewed not as struggles between particular identities and cultures but as part of a totalizing struggle between universality and particularisms the notion of "people without history" expressed the inability of the latter to access the universal (laclau, 1996, pp. 50-51). the distance between the universal and the particular is unbridgeable, which is the same as saying that the universal is nothing other than a particular that at some moment has become dominant. therefore, our starting point has been to place the modern school format as the mode in which a contingent and arbitrary number of reasons and instrumentations became hegemonic. however, the tendency to "disorder" allows putting in evidence that those elements -particular and contingentcan be displaced by othersequally particular and contingent-also arriving to occupy a hegemonic position. this leads us to place our analysis in a look that leaves out the pure particularism. one reason why pure particularism is not possible is because if each identity is in a differential relationship with all other identities, it presupposes not only the presence of all other identities but also the global space that constitutes the differences as such. if the particularity asserts itself as mere particularity in a purely differential relation with other particularities, it is sanctioning the status quo in power relations among groups. you cannot assert a differential identity without distinguishing it from a context, and in the process of establishing the distinction you are at the same time asserting the context (laclau, 1996). this conceptual distinction allows us to interpret the tension that occurs in the development of school experiences. they fully express this paradoxical movement: to differentiate themselves disorder the format to serve a particular population, yet this differentiation is made in an attempt to ensure a universal right. there is another way to articulate with the equality, disordering the traditional format to enable possessing the same certifications-and through them the right-of what people have understood in generic terms. we might think that an operation occurs that puts equality (of right and capacity) as a starting point, which differs in the paths to go, but still provides a common point of arrival. in that search the distinction is not being placed on the subject that meets certain specific conditions, but in the educational institution that must develop different strategies to achieve a common right. we wonder if these new formats democratize school experience. we will take ernesto laclau's distinction made in la razón populista about the appeal to democracy. he takes away from the idea of democracy simply as regime and uses the notion seated on two aspects: the demands are made to the system by someone who has been excluded from it, i.e. there is an egalitarian dimension implicit, and its own emergency presupposes some kind of exclusion or deprivation (2005b, p.158). the schools described are based on unmet demands and forms of exclusion and they develop strategies aimed at particular groups to ensure a universal purpose of compliance with southwell. the curriculum in tension: a discussion of universalism and particularism. 29 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the right to education. this does not mean losing sight of the fact that the responses tested open other tensions and construct other exclusions. it does so, for example, when posing the exclusionary nature of being a peasant producer in order to be able to attend an agricultural family school, criterion by which there have been cases reported by the directors of institutions who have not admitted other youngsters for not meeting that condition. so, then, democratization is located around constructing the community. how to think of community unity -as relative as you may want itwhen any approach to it must be based on social and cultural particularities that are not only more pronounced than in the past but are also the element that defines the central imaginary of a group? does not this imaginary exclude all identification with more universal human values? and, seen from another angle, does not the very proliferation of antagonisms, the very fact that there is no exact juxtaposition between the cultural group and the global community, require a language of "rights" that should include the universal reference that is being questioned (laclau, 1996, p. 8). the afs have as a main concern to avoid uprooting and the training and experimentation in other types of knowledge and ways of life that enable students to distance themselves from their community of belonging. in this logic, the possibility that the school may expand the perspective of transiting, learning from and exploring other cultural communities and dynamics is seen as a negative trait or even as a failure of its own operation. there is a narrowing of the concept of community where the local, the surrounding, becomes the world of belonging thus disabling the transit through other cultural experiences and contacts. a community is defined as such by forging unity among a group of people that define and share a "we", the principle on which they sustain their identity. the "we" implies a "they" from which to differentiate beyond the similarities manifested by the existence of shared features. the question raised by communitarian dynamics calls into question the processes by which differencesmainly motivations associated with the process and the consequences of being part of a group "of equals"are built. in some cases, the community may involve the absence of confrontation among its members, excluding the negotiation and assuming the existence of the same motivations and values. in others, the weight placed on the differences end in confrontation and expulsion of those who look more like "other" from "them" in an operation that defines poles of security and in the opposite direction, of insecurity which must be combated. thus, the boundary around the local poses a paradox because while strengthening the subjects in their daily localizations it also ties horizons to the limits of proximity. if the local appears to be limited to the resources available in the territory, the contextual realities and unequal educational circuits -in terms of the production of social and cultural skills, are validated. when analyzing the dynamics of formation of political identities, gitlin says anatomy becomes destiny (...) what began as an effort to affirm the dignity, to overcome exclusion and denigration and obtain representation has also developed a hardening of its borders (gitlin, 2000, p.172). in the process of "localization", institutions "adapt" to and receive demands from, the surrounding reality, but they also configurate -they contribute to formthat southwell. the curriculum in tension: a discussion of universalism and particularism. 30 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci community of reference. so, they build a "map" of proximity, on what is possible and desirable, on the demands and expectations. let us also introduce some nuance in the argument that we have been presenting; we should not forget that the local scene has potential to break identities and unfair and totalizing practices in the constitution of social life. however, participation enclosed in the walls of the territory, and based solely on nearby solidarities runs the risk of limiting the problems, issues and interests of the subject to the field of micro. either way, we should emphasize another aspect. the universal is the symbol of an absent fullness, and the particular exists only in the contradictory movement of asserting a differential identity and at the same time, canceling it through inclusion in a non-differential medium. the construction of differential identities on the basis of closing up completely is not a "progressive political alternative” per se (laclau, 1996, p. 57). the right to difference has to be affirmed inside a global community, i.e. within an area in which the group in question has to live with other groups. for example, those who are engaged in a struggle for internal reform of the institutional framework, if -at the same timethey refuse to recognize the rootedness in political and cultural values of the traditional or dominant sectors, they cannot articulate their demands in any broader hegemonic operation. this condemns them to a peripheral and ambiguous relationship with existing institutions which can only have paralyzing political effects (laclau, 1996). following rosanvallon and fitoussi (2003), we could say that the weakening of collective solidarities leads to the strengthening of solidarities from the immediate environment with the risk of further deepening the logic of social fragmentation. in this context, the local space -area or neighborhoodbecomes the stage on which social differentiation and therefore the form assumed by exclusion in urban space are settled. this hinders the possibility of being part of the same social group constructing borders, now, around the immediate surroundings (fitoussi and rosanvallon, 2003). at this point, there are a number of aspects that make us think that new formats not only are the affirmation of a particularity but they put in evidence some gaps and exclusions of the traditional school model, and knock on its door with a few different tests that, of course, are not exempt from power relations and exclusions. therefore, there stand out some of the places the traditional school could not reach or the subordination and injustices it established in some cultures and lifestyles. thus, the exclusion is positioned on the characteristics adopted by the model and not in those subjects who have been removed from it. the existence of these schools may serve to question the system as it reveals the mechanisms by which schools systematically exclude some students and ways to solve them, but it can also legitimize the existence of a parallel circuit that is responsible for those the other schools ejected. many of the differences in the proposal are related to changes and flexibilizations of the traditional plans that could be designed for the whole population and which would try to address some problems of the middle school level in general (arroyo et al, 2007). if democracy is possible, it is because the universal has neither a necessary body nor content; on the contrary, various groups compete among themselves in order to give their particularities, temporarily, a function of universal representation. the society generates an entire vocabulary of empty signifiers11 whose temporary senses are the result of political competition. it is the ultimate failure of society when constituting itself as a society, which makes the distance between the universal and the particular unbridgeable and, as a result, it puts the "concrete social agents in charge of this impossible task, which is what makes democratic interaction possible" (laclau, 1996, southwell. the curriculum in tension: a discussion of universalism and particularism. 31 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci p. 68). democratization, then, is linked here with new practices that had restricted the universalism of our political ideals in our society to limited sectors of the population. it is possible to retain the universal dimension while extending its areas of application, which in turn redefines the concrete content of that universality. the universalism, as a horizon, expands while its necessary bond with all particular content breaks. the end of the school form? as we have hinted, there is a risk of deepening fragmentation, cultural impoverishment and stigmatization of individuals. the democratic challenge, as we defined aboveis to build a common space for dialogue that may contain a variety of experiences, knowledge, histories and cultural wealth, where diversification may be contained as an obligation of the system and not as a disqualification of “misfit" subjects. we are thus diminishing the borders between the particular and the universal and, therefore, the tensions these experiences have in shaping them. we must also say that the modern school format had the same tensions surrounding the particular and the universal but it built a hegemony on the basis of certain particularities that became the surface of inscription for all that was meant as school and, even more, as education. we have said that these new formats can be challenging that discursive construction, struggling for other signifiers to absorb a plurality of meanings around the plurality of the learning experience and therefore, relocating other particularities in a new hegemonic conformation. there is a struggle for the school not to remain being equivalent to urban middle class, with western european values, organized around nuclear families but to be able to accommodate young workers, both rural and urban, breadwinners. in addition, another issue that becomes evident is that the school form can be modified so that it is the school itself and not the target population the one that needs to transform its internal logic; its own efficacy and not the individuals’ should be placed under the spotlight. an issue that should be raised is the role of politics in relation to what it means to educate the entire population; the common refers to an articulation that is political, which interprets what the needs and priorities are and it must cover what is common to all. but besides expressing "interests" where they already exist, it should help to constitute them. it is thus created -as laclau saysa certain area of indeterminacy between civil society and public space in which social and political variables are constantly intertwined. thus, there appears a new type of transversality which no longer operates only in terms of the political parties but also of the social forces, because there is no democratic politics without the incorporation of new actors to the public sphere (laclau, 2005a). let us take one aspect that we have touched tangentially: to recover cultural experiences that deal with indigenous traditions and knowledge in rural areas and to incorporate them in a hierarchical form to the cultural canon is not a movement that must be thought for private groups who are so close to those experiences; on the contrary, politics should convert those experiences into heritage of the society as a whole. giving rise to new forms of inclusion may help resolve some injustices and think of mechanisms and institutions to avoid crystallizing them and converting them into an absolute otherness. thinking of politics involves thinking of postures that litigate for the space of the universal, that propose themselves as the best representatives of the common good (even if these postures must be assumed to be open and subject to constant revision), southwell. the curriculum in tension: a discussion of universalism and particularism. 32 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci and in processing differences and antagonisms. the common education designates not only what is basic for all, but it also highlights the comprehensive nature of what is put as common for all, over the individual desires and needs. currently, school is still a public institution that responds to commands and interests that include but also transcend those who make it daily. the public, clearly, does not belong only to the state or to the teachers as representatives of the public, or to families or communities. thinking of the public involves a complex space which includes the doing of each of us, but that doing of each one must become broader, more inclusive and less subject to the individual. that is precisely the mediation that politics must make, as social needs do not tend spontaneously to converge into a coherent and unified whole but depend on changing and contingent articulations, that is, essentially political ones. let us take the concerns of the beginning: to what extent can we talk about the school and refer to a fairly homogeneous set of features? to what extent can be ensured that the school forms part of the construction of the common?10 the plurality of experiences of the transmission of culture, and the need for the educational discourse to be able to accommodate heterogeneity as a way to approach a more democratic distribution have already been highlighted. the school situations that we have reviewed here should not be undervalued as particularistic, nor overvalued as a replacement for an educational discourse. both positions offer us few or no ways out, in the first place because, as we have sought to show, particularism and universalism are inseparable and -going a step furtherwhat we call universal arises from particularisms that get to consolidate as hegemonic and thus become an absent completeness horizon. we still have pending how to include these different formative experiences in a common horizon. the universal, as we have seen, does not have its own specific content (which would enclose it in itself) but it is the horizon -always more distantresulting from the expansion of an endless chain of equivalent claims. the conclusion seems to be that universality is uncontainable with any particularity, but at the same time it cannot be separated from the particular. that is why, an exercise like this should give us the chance to re-display invisibilizations, injustices and exclusions that the most widespread school form included, and encourage them to interrogate and mark the inadequacies of that school as a way to question, tense and, why not renew the school. also opening this dialogue should also give attention to the risk of circumscribing interests, practices and reasons to a restricted community. it would be a mistake to assume that the interaction between the hegemonic school format and the new emerging experiences has no effect in them. in these conditions, the school institution has certainly fallen into an awkward position. yet, we do not intend to re-establish new totalizing formats, but to show that the capacity of openness reached so as to name the exclusions and deficiencies of the school format may also be an opening to start a dialogue with other communities, and what it gets to connect may reach the forms of the plural and the collective. by focusing attention on these new school formats we are not trying to say that the school is mortally wounded by any means. in its long history the school has been absorbing changes and reorganizations which have also infringed force to it. we are far from suggesting, diagnosing and, much less, wanting the death of the school; what is certain is that new problems and answers hit its door and it can get good benefits if it opens to dialogue. it will be an occasion to question the story of inclusion we knew, the narrative that said that that school system was (and is) the only way to democratize society. southwell. the curriculum in tension: a discussion of universalism and particularism. 33 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci notes 1 islaesmeralda@gmail.com 2 according to vincent, lahire and thin (1994) the path through the modifications of the institute of the brothers schooling system to the mutual institutions and the school of the republic many things have changed, but what we have defined as the school form has certainly not changed. 3 this is the project "intersections between inequality and secondary education: an analysis of the dynamics of production and reproduction of educational and social inequality in four jurisdictions (buenos aires, province of neuquén, salta and buenos aires province)" and "impact of the restructuring of the past 20 years in educational inequality". both projects are developed in flacso, argentine academic headquarters. 4 although not explored in this paper, schools developed by picketeers or similar organizations, schools in recovered factories, etc. could be included in this list. 5 the conceptual use of the rhetoric notion of metaphor that we give here comes from different sources, from the application given by freud to characterize the processes of over-determination and its relationship with analogy to the sociological update of that interpretation to characterize the forms of symbolic redirection and plurality of meanings. the concept of over-determination is established in the field of the symbolic, and lacks any meaning outside it. in that sense, althusser's assertion that "there is nothing in the social that is not over determined" confirms that the social is established as symbolic order. the perspective we use also takes the intervention of paul de man about expanding the frontiers of theoretical disciplines with the intervention of literary ones. the symbolic nature of social relations put into play linguistic processes of condensation and dislocation, symbolization, and secondary revision. it is these considerations which justify the understanding of the metaphorizing capacity of social discourse. 6 this section refers to reports made by the team belonging to the project "intersections between inequality and secondary education: an analysis of the dynamics of production and reproduction of educational and social inequality in four jurisdictions." salta node. 7 for example, the first school of this kind was established in the province of salta in 2001. also between 2000 and 2001, such schools in misiones, corrientes and santa fe were created. 8 the afs form a national movement, with the majority located in northeastern argentina; they organize provincially and nationally in an association called apafs (association for the promotion of agricultural family schools). 9 more detailed information on such schools can be found in the report by tiramonti, (dir.), arroyo, nóbile, montes, poliak, sendón, and ziegler cited in the bibliography. this description is made on the basis of that report. mailto:islaesmeralda@gmail.com southwell. the curriculum in tension: a discussion of universalism and particularism. 34 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 10 the preamble of the resolutions that regulate the curriculum declares "that one of the purposes of the education policy of the government of the autonomous city of buenos aires is the adaptation of the educational offer to the demands of the community, something that is contemplated in the curriculum that is approved by this resolution, since it opens to students a broad base of knowledge and skills needed for insertion into academic, labor and social spheres.” 11 with the use of the category "signifier", we refer to certain terms that are subject to a strong ideological struggle in society; therefore, these terms will tend to be tendentiously empty signifiers -never completely emptyin view of the fact that given the plurality of conflicts occurring around them, they cannot be fixed to a single discursive articulation, as ernesto laclau expressed in his text: emancipation and difference. references arroyo, m.; nobile, m.; poliak, n. y sendón, m. a., (2007). "escuelas de reingreso: análisis de una política de inclusión en un contexto fragmentado", trabajo presentado en las cuartas jornadas de jóvenes investigadores, instituto de investigaciones gino germani, uba, buenos aires. carr, w. and hartnett, a., (1997). education and the struggle for democracy. the politics of educational ideas, buckingham, open university press. de man, p., "reading (proust)", en de man, p., (1979). allegories of reading. figural language in rousseau, nietzsche, rilke and proust, new haven and london, yale university press, pp.57-58. dussel, i., (2004). “inclusión y exclusión en la escuela moderna argentina: una perspectiva postestructuralista”, cadernos de pesquisa, vol. 34, nº 122, maio/ago. dussel, i., (2008) “¿qué lugar tiene la escuela media en la producción y reproducción de la desigualdad?” elementos para el debate”, en revista de política educativa, universidad de san andrés, buenos aires. fitoussi, j.p. y rosanvallon, p., (1997). la nueva era de las desigualdades, buenos aires, manantial. gitlin, t., (2000). “el auge de la política de la identidad. un examen y una crítica”, en arditi, benjamín (ed.) el reverso de la diferencia. identidad y política, caracas, nueva sociedad. laclau, e., (2005 a, 2005 b). emancipación y diferencia, buenos aires, ariel, 1996., “populismo y transformación del imaginario político”, en revista todavía, nº 12, buenos aires, diciembre. la razón populista, buenos aires, fondo de cultura económica. power, s.; edwards, t.; whitty, g. and wigfall, v., (2003). education and the middle class, buckingham, open university press. sennet, r., (2000). la corrosión del carácter. las consecuencias personales del trabajo en el nuevo capitalismo, barcelona, anagrama. southwell, m., (2003). "el emperador está desnudo. figuras de modernización y educación", en vv.aa, lo que queda de la escuela, edit. laborde centro de pedagogía crítica de rosario. southwell, m.; stagno, l.; lichtmann, v. y legarralde, m., (2007). "producción y southwell. the curriculum in tension: a discussion of universalism and particularism. 35 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci reproducción de la desigualdad educativa en la escuela media: exploraciones en la plata y zona de influencia", ponencia presentada en la i reunión nacional de investigadores en juventudes, ciudad de la plata. tenti f., e. (2003). educación media para todos. los desafíos de la democratización del acceso. buenos aires: fundación osde-iipe-unesco-editorial altamira. tyack d. y cuban l. (2000). en busca de la utopía. un siglo de reformas en las escuelas públicas. méxico: fondo de cultura económica. tiramonti, g. (dir.), arroyo, m., nóbile, m., montes, n.p., nadina, s., alejandra, m. y ziegler, s., (2007). nuevos formatos escolares para promover la inclusión educativa, flacso, disponible en: http://www.flacso.org.ar/educacion/investigacion_formatosesc.php. vincent, g., lahire, b. e thin, d. (1994) “sur l’histoire e la théorie de la forme scolaire”. in vincent, guy (dir.). l’éducation prisionnière de la forme scolaire? scolarisation et socialisation dans les sociétés indsutrielles. lyon: presses universitaires de lyon. submitted: december, 19th, 2015 approved: june, 27th, 2017 http://www.flacso.org.ar/educacion/investigacion_formatosesc.php o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: mai huynh, p. (2017). reflection on wisdom that responds to market logic of david g. smith. transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> reflection on wisdom that responds to market logic of david g. smith huynh mai phuong1 university of british columbia, canada introduction this paper illustrates the tension between market logic vs. wisdom, written about by david g. smith (2014) in “wisdom responses to globalization”. from smith’s points of views, market logic turns students into clients and teachers into accountants and managers. with the market mindset, human values thus find themselves framed into an external surface where the activities of life are commoditized, or defined as sales and purchases, rather than residing in the inner world of self-awareness. education vision has then been greatly reduced human experience to production that serves toward economic god. smith suggests us, as educators, to refuse “cheaper way” of teaching and learning that market logic leads to. meanwhile, smith calls to consider the practice of wisdom in education as to nurture and sustain humane life in its most notable, and unified sense with the true nature of the world. i find that smith’s article of “wisdom responses to globalization” is fascinating as it speaks to crisis in today’s pedagogy and opens to new possibilities of selfunderstanding and finding oneself at “home” or truth in the world. as a person who lived/learned/engaged in a mixed traditional wisdom of buddhism, taoism, and hinduism, of which smith discusses about, i find myself understand smith’s implication deeply as well as be able to interpret and extend smith’s insights with clarity. against this background, i am framing this paper as a comparison to craft the opposition between market logic and wisdom that is evident in smith’s work. i will focus on three central themes: 1) identity vs. self; 2) the object vs. the objectless; 3) success in society vs. attunement with nature. i will then bring the discussions to education and curriculum inquiry for a more relevance view. i will also include my personal thoughts about the needs of balancing internal life and external life so as to develop smith’s arguments further in the field of curriculum studies. wisdom responds to market logic intuitively, market logic and ancient wisdom both appear to present three basic principles of self-knowing, human resources and fulfilment of human aspiration. however, they hold up these notions to incompatible degrees and for apparently irreconcilable reasons. identity vs. self according to smith, market logic formulates identity as outward-oriented, whereas wisdom cultivates self-realizing in our inner world. in this condition, identity phuong. reflection on wisdom 158 ‘ transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci serves toward knowledge-economy, while the self dwells in a more-holistic reality. the following advance more detailed illustrations of smith’s arguments. market logic formulates identity: relating to his professional life, smith criticizes an educational system, which “has inspired a certain crisis of identity, since having something to profess” (p. 48) is superfluous. smith states that instead of making essential difference to the “i” that knows, the system encourages the formation of an ‘i’ that simply needs to keep in track with some predetermined criteria in order to achieve a predetermined self-identity. in this way, smith sees self-identity as an “end” or goal that stands apart from a knower. smith then argues that “preoccupations with goal-setting and objectives are not illadvised in themselves but quickly become so if they evolve into blinkered constraints against fullness of life’s beckoning” (p. 56). smith also points out that the identity then fixes itself into an external surface as some sort of public face. in order to fashion identity in a knowledge economy, one puts up a front as a seemingly “tough, self-interested, competitive and paranoid person” in public; while one might be “gentle, sweet, and supportive” at home or in the classroom (p. 46). the author considers market logic as a setting that creates new forms of behavioral conflicts or dichotomous understanding of the world. market logic tends to move people to act in the world that separates from the ‘i’. smith points out that “western tradition’s selfdefinition is nothing but a grand illusion” (p. 49). smith then suggests presenting a truer sense of self based on ancient wisdom. wisdom cultivates self-realizing: smith indicates that different traditional wisdoms have different expressions or ways to convey the real sense of self. however, they all point to commonalities. in hinduism, the self is referred-to as ‘brahma’ or ultimate consciousness. besides, smith refers to the greek concept of nous, or “knowledge of god”, as the highest of all intellectual human faculties. it follows that wisdom means “naming the wisdom of god” (p. 54). therefore, in simple words, i would translate ‘god’2 as the universal self. in eastern traditions, there is no name for ‘god’, but we see references to existence, truth, consciousness, tao or “the way”, essence, transcendence and so on. in my opinion, these ‘terms’ are not at all different in meaning. smith states that the concept of ego or identity is the highest problematic hindrance to the self-realization. as smith puts it, the awareness of our true nature of self is “possible only to the degree that each of us has relinquished our i” (p. 49). this is akin to a buddhist perspective where the notion of ego refers to “the illusory belief in a solid, concrete separate entity, that is independent and disconnected” (moacanin, 2003, p. 84). relating to identity, ancient wisdom suggests a detached approach to the temporary as commonly defined by society. rather, we should open to the possibility of a truer sense of self within the ever-lasting. therefore, smith tells us, it is wiser not to bind ourselves to ego and identity. reflection on identity vs. self: in line with smith’s discussion, i see that ‘identity’ somehow refers to an individual or a single sense of entity, whereas the ‘self’ relates to the quality of the wholeness. much different from ‘identity’ that is built up in public place, the ‘self’ is purely an essential human being within existence. as such, while ‘identity’ relies on other people to find its role, the ‘self’ has no separation between ‘i’ and ‘the other’; but, instead, ‘i’ and ‘the other’ are inter-connected as the “we”. in this relationship, phuong. reflection on wisdom 159 ‘ transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci ‘identity’ is synonymous to i – it and subject-object; while the ‘self’ is more like i thou, subject-to-subject as represented by martin buber (1958). heidegger (1962) considers identity as "they-self" which is inauthentic. the “they-self” is influenced by the crowd rather than its own unique characteristic. when directing one’s identity as an external existence, people lose their individuality and become more dependent on others. marx (1992) indicates that “by thus acting on the external world and changing it, he [the human] at the same time changes his own nature. he develops his slumbering powers and compels them to act in obedience to his sway” (p. 198). in this way, human beings gradually lose control of their lives. echoing with smith, aoki (1987/2005) advises us not to reduce ourselves to merely identity as it restraints our possibilities for experiencing a fuller life. ancient wisdom implies our comprehension of what intellectuality is most worth in curriculum inquiry. phelan (2015) states “insight always involves some self knowledge; it is something we come to as human beings” (p. 25). subjectively, it is ultimate to bring about the question of who we really are at the very core of curriculum studies. jardine (1997) notes “the self is here at the home-ground of all things. this must be a standpoint where one sees one’s own self in all things” (p. 221). by locating ourselves in situation “as a group”, we could then recover ourselves wholly, deeply and “awake from the nightmare we are living” (pinar, 2004, p. 5). in such way, curriculum studies with self-understanding gains its meaning for the fulfillment of human existence (sartre, 1973). the object vs. the objectless in contrast to market logic, which encourages a living framed in material objects, the wisdom in eastern traditions relates to objectless-ness or nothingness as this is the origin of the expressed world. smith says that, whereas the market mindset is distracting in the sense of ‘destroying’ human life-awareness, traditional wisdom is embedded into a nurturing manifestation of life. market logic thirsts material objects as stated by smith, market logic in the western tradition follows “material practices rather than more elevated work that involves mind and spirit” (p. 47). smith sees, profit taking and wealth accumulation as the very heart of western capitalism. when “economic determination is deferred as god”, everything becomes the object for sale (smith, p. 47). through the lens of capitalism, people have no relationship with humanity and a sense of a dedicated existence; but, instead, are seen as mere means of production that serves an economic god. smith tells us that within the promise of the economic paradigm, children are “invested” for future economy; education is transformed into an industrialized knowledge enterprise; and human values become subservient to one’s own material wealth. smith notes that the market logic operates by creating disturbance to people’s psychology as a crucial “requirement for product innovation and production” (p. 51). with this intention, market logic finds ways to keep people continuously dissatisfied with their lives, and in search for promised ephemeral fulfillments with “either a romantic love-object or a brute object that requires domestication, exploitation, or both” (smith, p. 57). as such, human values are formed on external layers where the activities of life are commoditized, or defined as sales and purchases. in concord with mcmurtry (2002), smith states that with the desire and greed to possess more, people become victims of the market logic, as people destroy life to gain it and lose touch of the real world. phuong. reflection on wisdom 160 ‘ transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci accordingly, smith recommends reflecting on ancient wisdom traditions as they “could be made to speak directly to the practice of education in today’s secular, materialist and technocratic environment” (p. 45). wisdom is objectless: ancient wisdom advises us not to fix ourselves to the surface form of object. in a buddhist perspective, there is no concept of prayer or ‘god’. it is said that “if you meet buddha, kill him” (smith, p. 50). the reason is that the teachings of the buddha take away the overall possibility of a spiritual object segregated from the self. the buddha also regards ego as an illusion because it is entirely made up by mind. when there is nothing to cling to, one has nothing left to stand on but self’s existence. this is the state that smith features as “losing oneself in the fullness of being” (p. 51). smith then states “being” is the “source of nourishment” from which we all arise; and that when we become forgetful of being, the ensuing states could lead to ignorance and darkness of people. in eastern yoga, the object is mobility3 and the objectless is the possibility of mobility. it is said that all possibility is hidden in the objectless or nothingness. for example, if we break a seed, we will see nothing like a “plant” in its center. still, that nothingness contains the possibility for the seed to become a beautiful plant; a beautiful and fragrant flower; and then a delicious fruit. smith explains that “emptiness does not mean void or vacuum, but indeed full potentiality, the certainties of western science notwithstanding” (p. 51). in the tao te ching, laotzu also values objectless-ness or nothingness: the usefulness of the vessel lies in the space where there is nothing. a room is created by cutting out doors and windows; the usefulness of the room lies in the space where there is nothing. therefore, the benefit of things lies in the usefulness of nothing. (kimura, 2004, p.33) reflection on the object vs. the objectless within market logic, human resources are greatly reduced to the pursuit of material objects. in this way, the market logic does not foster human resources but, instead, leads to block and exploit humankind. according to aoki (1987/2005), people that are transformed into “thing beings” or means of productivity for a market-oriented existence, are no longer human. the only humane approach regards students as “being” in the present, and “becoming” into the world of possibilities (p. 358). pinar, reynolds, slattery and taubman (2000) also argues that training students toward external, concrete objects such as material texts, objectives, technical design, standardized evaluation fragment the multi-dimensional experience of learning. so, instead of moving toward such thingness, the educational approach should cultivate students’ voices, ideas, insights, intellectual for better understanding human’s values. the notion of the objectless is also another point for reflection. eastern yoga explains that nothingness is the “pure energy” that flows through all forms of life. when we only work with objects and leave out the objectless, it is like trying to understand the workings of a lightbulb while omitting the light inside the bulb. describing the objectless as zero, wang (2014) says: phuong. reflection on wisdom 161 ‘ transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci zero is more fundamental than one in symbolizing the unity of life; zero is difficult to speak about, we designate it as nothingness, yet, from nothingness, everything is born. (p. 166) thus, in order to preserve life, we need to be mindful of the objectless hidden beneath all forms of life. in this way, we see no difference between “our nothingness” and “other’s nothingness”. bai (2006) mentions that the most-stubborn dogmatism is to view the reality that is "out there" objectively; the experience of objectless awareness can help remove separation of the subject and object (p. 19). i, thus, imagine an education that is more geared toward a meditative, peaceful and contemplative practice oriented toward genuine humanity and unity; rather than “a task” oriented toward material prospects. success in society vs. attunement with nature in direct opposition to the market logic, which strives to secure one’s interests in society, ancient wisdoms appeal to our sheltering within nature with its rhythms and mysteries. market logic aims for success in society: smith (2014) notices that the existential questions of capitalism are mainly focused on how to be rich; how to gain competitive advantage over others; how to maintain the benefits thus “earned”; and how to secure material resources before others. the market logic acts as if society is split into discrete camps of losers and winners. people tend to think that “the losers can never be allowed to win” (smith, p.47). with social darwinist’s mindset that defines society as the survival of the strongest, the market logic operates while framed in hyper-competitive attitudes that lead to success in society. smith calls this determination as “mental illness” and “a decayed worldview”. the author is thus concerned with this sense of delusion or ignorance intent on narrowing people’s understanding to the point where they could not imagine life differently. as a result, they then let the market define life as framed on a sense of success. for that reason, the market and the media find their places in orienting people toward “successful images” that only serve to grow people’s desires. for example, smith tells us that he received a magazine celebrating the “good life”, where people are seen in the finest clothes, having luxury cars, and enjoying splendid vacations. all of these are “put together as something to be desired by anyone who might wish to call themselves successful in life” (smith, p. 53). instead, smith suggests that we embrace wisdom in its relation to nature as a source for pedagogical, social and cultural insights. wisdom means being in tune with nature: traditional wisdoms have different ways to inform our attunement with nature as the true sense of life. smith figures that “to be natural means to ‘be born’, so in a sense every human being is part of nature” (p. 57). in a buddhist perspective, being “born”4 is related to wakefulness or enlightenment. in hinduism, human nature is understood in its unified sense, or a process of full recovery of “oneself in deeper unity with the essential nature of the world” (smith, p. 51). this is the state whereby self consciousness dissolves into an ultimate consciousness. the real sense of human life is then to become single self with the divine essence. based on the story of genesis, smith also alludes to the nature of experience, where life is traced back to the origin of all things. smith calls this nature of experience a “journey to return home’, or the “myth of eternal return” (p. 56). phuong. reflection on wisdom 162 ‘ transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci wisdom means cooperation with our inner nature5 and allowing life to flow through. according to eastern yoga, human beings shine in their original nature which is the constant evolution toward the infinite. the more we identify ourselves as true nature, the more possibility for self-transformation towards a supreme beatitude. it is like a caterpillar becoming a pretty butterfly. hence, a call to wisdom is the path or pilgrimage toward a “more comprehensively, more wholly, indeed holy, and more attuned to a deeper truth of things (smith, p. 46). in other words, the call to wisdom is a natural attraction to the beautiful; the natural; the inner essence; the truest sense of life. focusing on having nature as our guild, rousseau (1911) says “fix your eye on nature, follow the path traced by her" (p. 14). reflection on success in society vs. attunement with nature: the market logic favors success so that it mostly reflects values of the ‘winners’ who best fit the ideals the market designs. this “fanatic value-set” bear life destructive effects as people structure themselves to successful models and misrepresent their meanings of life (mcmurtry, 2002). in this way, people lose their sense of selfawareness in search of promised ephemeral fulfillment. when educational practice celebrates only successes, learners are spookily pushed to become participants in speedy races that are irrelevant to one’s pace, one’s dream and one’s life. educational settings might then lead to suffocating oppression, and toward achievements rather than nurturing students and assisting them to ground their values in life. it is also thought that market logic is infatuated with gaining more quantity, but less equity or quality. this could bring society to huge “risk”, as it fosters a strong sense of self-interest, greed and avarice for its own sake (beck, 1992). moreover, an education that solely engages activities that cater to the privileged excludes marginalized groups who have less opportunity to achieve success. this will lead to a widening of social-economic, cultural and educational gaps between the advantaged and the disadvantaged groups, including people with disabilities, those living in rural areas, those coming from different social backgrounds or ethnic minorities. in such market supremacy, education fail its role in building a more just, humane and sustainable world. eastern wisdom does not address the concepts of being successful. as a zen proverb tells us “when spring comes, grass grows all by itself” (watts, 1985). this means that one should find oneself within “nature” first and foremost. any attainment gained will happen naturally as a result; as part of the inner law of existence, but never become an ideal end for any effort. relating to education, egan (2007) argues that educating children with distinct ends in view is a shaping and narrowing way toward uniformity. this directs to demolish a sense of distinctiveness and uniqueness of each individual. thus, egan says, we must first understand “internal development processes”; and study the “nature of students’ development, learning, and motivation” (p. 6). this helps students develop their fullest potentials, imagination and creativity without predetermined-end. in closing for me, smith’s notions on how wisdom responds to market logic, lead onto interesting discussions that convey distinct themes between the outward and inward; the expressed and the hidden; and the mundane and the sacred. by grounding ourselves solely in material world, we gradually lose our sensitivity with the existence and mysteries of life. the article leaves a significant message for educators to contemplate the voice of wisdom regarding self-knowledge, the nature of human beings and deeper phuong. reflection on wisdom 163 ‘ transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci truth of life as a source for education insights. in this vision, school is not an enterprise that responds to social, economic interests. rather, school should embrace meditative, dedicated environment for learning events to happen, oriented toward inner development of individuals, and equity, humanity of society. working on this paper, i break the issues into dichotomous portions for the sake of more-comprehensible analysis, but i find it is hard to make such a clear line in real life as things are all interconnected. personally, i am not inclined to the market logic; but neither am i totally against the market logic as smith appears to be. indeed, we do not live off the grid of society, and everyone needs to have a healthy, sustainable, and happy life. life should be a chiasma between the inner outerness as well as the outer innerness. pinar et al. (2000) notes strong curriculum needs both import and export components. curriculum will then be represented as the process of obtaining understandings from external, cultivating internal insights for self-realization, and servicing to humanity as a circle. life could fall to one side and lack sustainability when ignoring the social factors we live in. conversely, life will lose all of its meanings, colors and poetry when it is left to others to design within a concept of the material world. i imagine that good wines need to be seasoned in good vessels. ideally, there is no reason not to reach out for the highest standards in all spheres of living. the motive is that how we can nurture our innate creativity; and how we can contribute to, rather than just consume and exploit like the process of market logic. i am thinking of a curriculum that includes skills (physical), knowledges (intellectual), love and care (compassion), and insight wisdoms (spiritual) are all integrated as grace essence for the blossom of the self. however, we cannot assume that we will always be in good physical condition, and able to do whatever we want. our physical and intellectual faculties can be withdrawn by nature at any time; even before we get old. instead of wasting our life in the service of the acquisition of the temporary, we could make better choices so as to nurture our sense of identification within the infinite at foremost. as smith notes, we cannot escape our circumstances, we need to “find new life in the middle of our circumstances” (p. 50). i am imagining a curriculum that is deeply rooted in very real life, grows far beyond mundane thinking, and immerses within the realms of the divine. lehrer (1954) illustrates, “life is like a piano. what we get out of it depends on how you play it”. in this view, wisdom is more like an art of living; something that harmonizes all sounds made with the black and white keys we activate so as to get in tune with the melody as a whole. as everyone was born and lives in a different situation, there can be no complete, uniform answers for all. rather, each person finds a different way or art to perform one’s own life. then, it is the role of education to enable students to recognize the self-awareness and to explore “new life” in daily living experience. loy (2000) tells us, “that which you seek, you already are” (p. 228). there is no way or art that is dually-separated from us because we are already within it. indeed, we are the art; and this art is our very true nature. notes 1 maiphuong@moet.edu.vn 2 i do not think smith means “god” as the shape of a man. 3 some objects seem to look immobile, but there are always electrons and protons moving inside the structure with centrifugal and centripetal force. phuong. reflection on wisdom 164 ‘ transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 4 “being born” regards to the soul, not the physical level. 5 in the discussion, “nature” means the inner force or energy, not the physical wor ld. references aoki, t. (1987/2005) inspiriting the curriculum. in w. f. pinar & r. l. irwin (eds.), curriculum in a new key: the collected works of ted t. aoki. new york, ny: routledge. (original work published 1987) bai, h. (2006) philosophy for education: towards human agency. paideusis, 15(2), 719. beck, u. (1992) from industrial society to the risk society: questions of survival, social structure and ecological enlightenment. theory, culture and society, 9, 97–123. burber, m. (1996) i and thou. trans. w. kaufmann. new york: simon and schuster. egan, k. (2007) competing voices for the curriculum. in s. e. gibson’s (ed.), canadian curriculum studies: trends, issues, and influences (pp. 45-62). vancouver, bc: pacific educational press. jardine, d.w. (1997) “to dwell with a boundless heart”: on the integrated curriculum and the recovery of the earth. in d. j. flinders and s. j. thornton (eds.), the curriculum studies reader (pp. 213-223). london, england, and new york, ny: routledge. heidegger, m. (1962) being and time. trans. p. macquarrie & e. robinson. oxford, uk: basil blackwell. kimura, y.g. (2004) the book of balance: lao tzu’s tao te ching. trans. y. g. kimura. new york, ny: paraview. lehrer, t. (1954) the tom lehrer songbook. new york, ny: crown publishers. loy, d. (2000) the spiritual origins of the west: a lack perspective. international philosophical quarterly, 40, 215–233. marx, k. (1992) the capital: a critique of political economy. moscow, ru: progress publisher. mcmurtry, j. (2002) value wars: the global market versus the life economy. london: pluto press.
 moacanin, r. (2003) the essence of jung’s psychology and tibetan buddhism: western and eastern paths to the heart. boston, ma: wisdom publications. phelan, a. (2015) curriculum theorizing and teacher education: complicating conjunctions. london, england, and new york, ny: routledge. pinar, w. f. (2004) what is curriculum theory? mahwah, n.j.: erlbaun associations publishers. pinar, w. f., reynolds, w. m., slattery, p., & taubman, p. m. (2000) understanding curriculum: a postscript for the next generation. in understanding curriculum (pp. 847-868). new york: peter lang. rousseau, j. j. (1911) émile. trans. b. foxley. london: dent. sartre, j. p. (1973) existentialism and humanism. trans. p. mairet. london: methuen. smith, d. g. (2014) teaching as the practice of wisdom. london, uk: bloomsbury academic. smith, d. g. (2014) wisdom responses to globalization. in william f. pinar (ed.), international handbook of curriculum research 2nd edition (pp. 45 – 59). new york, ny: routledge press. phuong. reflection on wisdom 165 ‘ transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci wang, h. (2014) nonviolence and education: cross cultural pathways. london: routledge press. watts, a. (1985) the way of zen. new york, ny: vintage. submitted: january, 19th, 2017 approved: august, 24th, 2017 o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: lopes, a. c. & gallardo gutiérrez, a. l. (2017) curriculum: voices, tensions and perspectives. transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> curriculum: voices, tensions and perspectives alice casimiro lopes1 state university of rio de janeiro, brazil ana laura gallardo gutiérrez2 national autonomous university of mexico, mexico in memory of bill doll in october 2016 took place the colloquium curriculum – society: voices, tensions and perspectives in mexico city as part of the ten-year commemorative activities of the institute of research on university and education of the national autonomous university of mexico. the call was promoted by 17 convening institutions from five latin american countries and one non-governmental organization: argentina, brazil, colombia, costa rica, mexico and the latin american council of social sciences (clacso). as part of the publications program derived from this colloquium, the transnational curriculum inquiry edition arises. this volume brings together more than a dozen of latin american academics, who undertook the task of reviewing and briefly expanding the papers they presented at that event with the intention of placing latin american curricular thinking as an effervescent and dynamic field of knowledge with an eminently critical political commitment. in this framework, the purpose of this edition is to problematize the latin american curriculum issue, both from a regional perspective and the search of strengthening and enrichment of ties, dialogues, projects and exchanges within it, as in its connection with other regions of the world, in particular with the anglo-saxon thought and the approach to curriculum views in central and eastern europe countries, as well as curricular studies in china. in this sense, the idea of curricular conversation (pinar, 2004) comes in this volume as a guiding thread, which allows its members to organize an urgent intercultural dialogue for curricular studies. this dialogue has the aim of internationalizing the critical views that emphasize on thinking about the relationship between the curriculum society for a plural and diverse global context, providing recognition and exercise of the right to education as a public and social good before the onslaught of current neoliberalism in education. from the perspective described above, this tci issue is organized into four major sections. the first group gathers articles by alicia de alba, alfredo furlán, lopes & gallardo gutiérrez. curriculum 2 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci daniel johnson, silvia morelli, bertha orozco and concepcion barrón. all of them are referred to an epistemic theoretical reflection in the field of curricular studies approaching the need to relocate this dimension in the field of curricular studies discussion to observe the conditions of possibility of the production of knowledge in the current neoliberal context. this group of authors is also interested in historically recovering the constitution of the field and with it, the latin american curricular thinking. they contribute with topics that introduce renewed views on the major problems facing the curriculum as a field of knowledge and political action, in addition to educational practices and processes. in a second group, the papers of myriam southwell and rita angulo are presented. they develop their ideas based on the tensions established between the prescriptive nature of the curriculum and the multiple and complex relationships involved in curricular resignification processes, focusing on students as a determining factor in these processes and as absent from curricular policies that fail to address them as subjects of the curriculum. for its part, mario yapu and ana laura gallardo’s articles make up the third section of the volume addressing the ethnic, cultural and linguistic diversity issues as inherent factors in the constitution of latin american educational systems. in these, the bolivia and mexico cases are analyzed as constitutive issues of the national curricula. finally, in a fourth section, can be found the texts of marina paulozzo, leda badilla chavarria, sugey montoya sandí, sandra zúñiga arrieta and david pérez arenas. all of them gravitate around the relationship curriculum-evaluation, addressing topics such as accreditation of curricular programs, curricular change at the graduate level, as well as the impact of assessing bodies on curricular design. as can be seen, this volume shows a broad and rich landscape in the most relevant discussions of curricular studies, which outline the guidelines of a necessary debate to rethink education in our time. this volume also shows the proclaimed hybrid character of curricular production in latin america (lopes & macedo, 2014) and also in other countries (pinar et al, 1996). we understand this hybridity, in laclau's terms (1996), as articulation among identities not fully constituted. equivalences are established by antagonisms to common enemies, such as neoliberalism, centralized and globally defined curricular policies. nevertheless, the differ remains being produced: different theoretical options, different objects and different modes of research express different curricular demands. it is worth mentioning that this difference is also expressed in the same country. this leads us to problematize what latin american curricular thinking means, as daniel johnson does in his article for this issue of tci. in addition, what it means to link curriculum production to a specific country. for this discussion, the notion of disciplinary community has theoretical possibilities. in her presentation at the colloquium, one of us (lopes, 2016) problematized the possibility of nominating latin american curricular community as a fullness identity. in her words, this imaginary construction – a latin american curricular community – is not a question of nationality or space or place (where the social actor was born, where the social actor lives, where the social actor is located in a period of time, where he or she works). this is a discursive construction of a context. every self is a sedimentation of many identifications that are impossible to establish once and for all. in this context, people are subjectified by a latin american curricular field and it is not possible to control all differences and translations in this process. if we agree with this discursive approach, the research of the curricular communities is not the research of those who assume some universities positions. it is not the research of groups linked to certain social movements, political parties, lopes & gallardo gutiérrez. curriculum 3 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci associations of all sorts and other institutions are seen as social actors. differently, it is important to identify curricular demands that create a latin american curricular community and its subjects: demands for social development; demands for inclusive education; demands for emancipation; demands for equity and so on. it is important to research the contextual demands, because they allow understanding which subjectivities are constructed (costa & lopes, 2015). there is no stable identity that allows to predict, assume, a given policy action. once a particularity is raised as a condition of threat to the fulfillment of differential demands or to the realization of projects that allow us to suppose that same fulfillment, discourses are constructed and proven able to coalesce around different actors and social institutions. in curriculum policies, we seek to construct the notion of curriculum demand: the demand in name of the curriculum field, the educational demands and those related to professional issues and career, which are not necessarily clearly separated. through their enunciation, references are made to the curriculum tradition, to well-grounded pedagogical discourses, but the policy fight itself modifies both traditions and demands, which constitute other discourses in virtue of the contextual articulations (costa & lopes, 2015). such discourses are always translations trying to contain a differ that cannot be completely contained (derrida, 1982). in this perspective, the latin american curricular community is the set of subjectivities formed in provisional operations in the discursive (always political) community named latin american. we construct what latin american curricular community is, when we constructs latin american curricular field. without essences, without a set of fixed identities. there is a contingent antagonism to neoliberalism, the idea of north, the colonizer and so on that creates an identity of latin american curricular community. as all identities, the identity of latin american curricular community is precarious, constantly dislocated. just a name that subjectify us. in this perspective, this tci issue – with its authors and readers – is also an evidence of the latin american curricular community and the possibility of its construction. 7 notes 1 alicecasimirolopes@gmail.com 2 anag800@yahoo.com references costa, h. h. & lopes, a. c. (2015) school subject community in times of death of the subject. european conference of curriculum studies. portugal, porto, universidade do porto. p. 333-340. avaiable: http://www.fpce.up.pt/eccs2015/tables/curriculumstudies_e-book.pdf derrida, j. (1982) margins of philosophy. chicago: university of chicago press. laclau, e. (1996) emancipations. london: verso. lopes, a. c. (2016) is there a latin american curricular community? colloquium curriculum – society: voices, tensions and perspectives. mexico, iisue/unam. lopes, a. c., & macedo, e. (2014) the curriculum field in brazil since the 1990's. in pinar, w. (ed.). international handbook of curriculum studies. new york: routledge. pinar, w. (ed.) (2014) international handbook of curriculum studies. new york: routledge. mailto:alicecasimirolopes@gmail.com mailto:anag800@yahoo.com http://www.fpce.up.pt/eccs2015/tables/curriculumstudies_e-book.pdf lopes & gallardo gutiérrez. curriculum 4 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci pinar, w. f.; reynolds, w.; slaterry, p. & taubman, p. (1996) understanding curriculum. new york: peter lang. o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: de alba, a. (2017). curriculum theories in the world –worlds transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> curriculum theories in the world – worlds alicia de alba1 national autonomous university of mexico, mexico introduction in the world worlds, we face the social role, impact and strength of the curriculum, to interpellating or reducing and subjecting2. according the time of the exposition, i am going to make three theoretical remarks. first. i will talk about theory. second. i will express some ideas about curriculum’s theories. third. i will have settled the inextricable relationship between curriculum identity, subjectivity ... and structurality. first remark. theory. resistance to theory and necessity of theory since my own theoretical perspective, it is difficult to express in a few words the complexity of this theoretical question. paul de man3 said that it was impossible to avoid or evade the resistance to the theory, the metaphoric character of the theory, of the language, even the used in physics and mathematics. i want to remark in this section an effort to approach to the complexity of such resistance and therefore the theoretical effort to comprehension. to work with this, it is important to note that i am working with the logic of the articulation settled up by laclau 4. crossed by the linguistic turn and by the psychoanalytical turn. the logic of the articulation is constituted by a complex interplay between differences and equivalence. in metonymy and metaphor, metonymy is like in grammar subject to syntactic standards and rules. the movement of the tropes of the metaphor is not subject to rules and then the metaphor emerges and it produces new significations, new meanings. new theoretical contributions are constructed. that is, in the logic of articulation, the differences are articulated and in particular difference is invested with the function of to signify the field of the differences through the equivalence. that moment of investment is contingent, which produces the investiture of the difference the empty signifier, would say laclau is contingent. the relationship between the particularity of the differences and the difference that has been invested naming the equivalence, the universality is the operation that makes possible the signification system, the universality but at the same time, it is impossible. here, briefly, the unveiling of the resistance to theory, while the need for theory to understand and comprehension of the processes of reality itself and in our case the complexity of the field of curriculum and curricular processes and practices. therefore, every theoretical affirmation is an effort to stop and fix the play of signification and each theoretical effort to respond to the conditions of possibility of an epochal time and its episteme. second remark. curriculum theories the theory is precarious, unstable, open, contingent5 but it is sedimented the world worlds according the interests of the different political subjects, the social-culturalpolitical project and the interplay of power between them. we are facing curriculum ́s theories that respond to a systemic and general goal of de alba. curriculum theories 6 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci capitalism of new liberalism and capitalism world – the globalization –, which is guided for consumption, inequality, injustice and the ferocity to get everything of the nature without any kind of care for the environment6. in this kind of world, the competencies for living in this way of life, signed by the american way of live guide and sustain the curriculum theories. from latin american7 – and others important points in the world – worlds8 –, it have been settled other theories which core is guided for the political and cultural character of the curriculum. these theories respond to different kind of fight conducted over five centuries to recover show and get visibility for themselves and the others of their own dignity and pleasure to live in their own form of live9. the curriculum is a complex, paradoxical and contradictory syncretic political, cultural and academic synthesis. that synthesis is get through fights negotiations, conversations, dialogues, and even impositions. the mechanisms that were deployed in the process show the character and the legitimacy of the synthesis and its probalities to be incorpored, accepted and resignified by the curriculum subjects. of course, i have made a tremendous equivalently chain to express this crucial and complex situation. third remark. subjectivity, identity ... and structurality there is a main doubt relating the absence of a wide social project, then, the curriculum has a severe difficulty in this way because that absence. nevertheless, we have voices and tensions and with these, we can – curriculum scholarships – work with the social contours that we can observe in these tensions and they respond to our desires, wishes and personal and social goals. that is because; there is an inextricable relationship between the constitution of the subjectivity in individual and cultural, political and social subjects and the imaginary and symbolic macrosocial political project. the identity is formed for the interpellations that are circulating in the social fabric about that project and the responding to them. actually, the subject is the moment of the decision between an undecidable structure and the moment of the decision. the subjectivity is linked with these interpellations. in current days, we have in the world-worlds a severe absence of interpellations in a wide social and political sense. of course, this is different in the different regions, people, families, groups and sectors. now, if there is an absence of wide social project, some elements (social movements and social fights), built by these voices and in these tensions, can be articulated in a social contour.10 these are some of the most important: overcoming poverty, facing environmental crisis, the relationship among cultures in particular cultural contact –, gender perspective, emergency and need for the articulation of mother tongues or first languages, with national languages and that are useful for fluid communication among peoples and nations (the entity respect the different ontological semiotic horizons (osh) of peoples and forms of life that they have built, to recognize, confront and propose ways to recognize the conflict and tensions, recognition of the complexity of the "normality" of the different ways of life (different sexual orientations, cultural, ethnic and religious belonging). these social contours, through struggles, conversations, discussions and dialogues have the cultural, social and political role to work, relating a latin american curriculum. this curriculum contributes to the reconfiguration of a complex latin-american identity, relating with their subjectivity and singular identity in terms of pinar. at the same time, it will be disrupted and resignfied whit the identities of the world – worlds with the aim of a better, just and inclusive world. here is the inextricable relationship between subjectivity-identity and structurality. notes 1 aliciadealba@gmail.com 2 in a world that is globalized and deeply unequal, with large sections of their populations that share a geographic territory are deeply separated both in their first nosotropic constitutive registration: cultural, as it’s become political subjects (marked by respect us or them we or they) and their agonistic loving and de alba. curriculum theories 7 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci educational enrollment (us and them we and they). therefore, the theoretical effort, located in the world worlds, from a latin american position, assumes the fragility, precariousness, polysemy and theoretical opening on a constant agonistic struggle. about the nosotropic concept see (lenkersdorf, 2008). 3 in 1998, 18 years ago, when i did my post-doctoral studies with ernesto laclau at the university of essex, i was sincerely interested in the first laclau (hegemony and socialist strategy 1985 with chantal mouffe). i was also reading the new reflections on the revolution of our time (1990) to do some tests latest printing. these two books had made me to look for the epistemic change from one to another work. from that time until now, my reading of laclau has been more theoretical and epistemological than political. in this walk in the corridors and heavy doors of the university of essex, i had continued with intellectual avidity the steps of laclau. during this time, i realized that i brought the book of paul de man the resistance to theory (1982) and it was so in the supernal consulting with him that i tried to peer over his reading. his writings on the catachrestic, rhetorical theory and the theory of tropes appeared shortly after this time. at the time of the seminars with joan copjeck (laclau, 2014), he points out the nodal point which reached the point of capiton, it could be said in the language he used in his first time (laclau & mouffe 1985). 4 “all significant structure is organized around two axes, the paradigmatic (associative saussure calls) and sintagmatic. the latter is the axis of the combinations, and is one in which the classical structuralism did particular emphasis. it is subject to strict syntax rules. in the paradigmatic axis things happen differently: the rules of substitution between the elements of a signifying chain associations are under no syntax can control. in addition, these are dominated by principles of analogy that operate at the level of signified as the signifier both. it is here that the work of the unconscious operates freely and that the psychoanalytic dimension is revealed as inherent in the process of signification "(laclau, 2014). 5 on this question, alice casimiro lopes (2016) gives us an excellent presentation yesterday. 6 as if the nature has not had limits in the possibilities of its exploitation. gonzález gaudiano (2016), point out yesterday in his presentation, a complex and informed situation about the relation education curriculum and relationship nature – society. 7 we have a compulsory reading about this theme in the book of díaz barriga y jose maría garcía garduño (2014). 8 in his paper, yesterday, willlan pinar (2016) has been pointed several points in the world – word where there are importan fhigts related with curriculum theories and its importance and impact. “curriculum studies scholars from non-latin countries (including canada, china, and south korea), scholars also struggling to think the field through their singularity”. 9 in a wittgensteinian sense. 10 "regardless of its success, social contours are efforts to recover the necessary structurality of society. have greater capacity of articulation than disruptive traits and other floating elements (which as such are differences unarticulated) emerging in the crisis, however this capability of articulation occurs to the extent that a significant allowing appears that such elements , traits or different signifiers articulate reach. social contours are formed as articulated spaces significance initial and incipient way, achieve greater discursive articulation between the imaginary and the symbolic, with a greater emphasis on the symbolic or social " (alba, 2007.114) bibliography and other sources consulted the system that has been used to present the literature and other sources references, if not consulting primary sources firsthand in its original and first edition or not consulting other primary sources of first-hand, is the indicate immediately after the author's name, the date of the first publication of the work or other source (in some cases the date on which was written the work is entered) (such as the date of an interview, a record fieldwork, etc.), provided that it has been possible to access this data. this is the date that is entered in text citations (with the exceptions of the case) in order to locate the reader chronologically. later, in the body of the cataloguing data or other reference in the traditional location, the date of the consulted edition or the date of the consultation in cyberspace it indicated. de alba, a. (2007) curriculum – sociedad. el peso de la incertidumbre, la fuerza de la de alba. curriculum theories 8 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci imaginación. méxico, iisue-unam, plaza y valdés, 2007. de man, p. (1982) “la resistencia a la teoría” en la resistencia a la teoría. editado por wlad godzich. traducción de elena elorriaga y oriol francés. visor, madrid, 1990 [yale french studies no. 63] díaz-barriga, á. & garduño, j. m. (2014) desarrollo del curriculum en américa latina. experiencia de diez países. buenos aires, miño y dávila universidad autónoma de tlaxcala, 2014. gonzález gaudiano, e. (2016) “hacia un curriculum para la resiliencia social” conferencia presentada en el coloquio curriculum – sociedad. voces, tensiones y perspectivas, realizado en el instituto de investigaciones sobre la universidad y la educación (iisue), unam, 11 a 14 de octubre de 2016, méxico. laclau, e. (2014) la función retórica de las categorías psicoanalíticas. (manuscrito no publicado) en 17, instituto de estudios críticos. [consultada el 19 de mayo de 2014] disponible en: <http://17edu.org/blog/item/767-la-funcion-retoricade-las-categorias-psicoanaliticas> laclau, e. (1990) new reflections on the revolution of our time. london, verso, 263 p. laclau, e. & mouffe, c. (1985) hegemonía y estrategia socialista. hacia una radicalización de la democracia. madrid, siglo xxi, 1987. lenkersdorf, c. (2008) aprender a escuchar. enseñanzas maya-tojolabales. méxico, plaza y valdés, 2008. lopes, a. c. (2016) ¿hay una comunidad curricular latinoamericana? conferencia presentada en el coloquio curriculum – sociedad. voces, tensiones y perspectivas, realizado en el instituto de investigaciones sobre la universidad y la educación (iisue), unam, 11 a 14 de octubre de 2016, méxico. pinar, w. (2016) thinking latin america. conferencia presentada en el coloquio curriculum – sociedad. voces, tensiones y perspectivas, realizado en el instituto de investigaciones sobre la universidad y la educación (iisue), unam, 11 a 14 de octubre de 2016, méxico. wittgenstein, l. (1953) investigaciones filosóficas. méxico, alianza/ instituto de investigaciones filosóficas–unam, 1988. submitted: november, 20th, 2017 approved: december, 9th, 2017 o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: coe, heather (2016). towards a curriculum of the heart: thinking, growing, feeling, and connecting in contemporary education. transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> towards a curriculum of the heart: thinking, growing, feeling, and connecting in contemporary education heather allison coe1 queen’s university, canada introduction over the past century, curriculum and educational scholars have presented and debated various conceptions of curriculum (schiro, 2008). while some theorists have argued for specific schools of curricular thought (e.g., tyler, 2009/1949), others have sought to identify, organize, and categorize assorted philosophies and ideologies (e.g., eisner & vallance, 1974; schiro, 2008). in addition to illuminating diverse visions for public education, curricular conversations have brought forth questions regarding the purpose of education and the role that schools play in the growth and development of students. curricular orientations such as “self-actualization” (eisner & vallance, 1974; sowell, 2005), “individual fulfillment” (pratt, 1994), “personal success” (vallance, 1986), “learner centered” (schiro, 2008), and “humanistic” (mcneil, 2006) have concentrated on the individual development of students, emphasizing personal growth and advocating that schools should provide students with the conditions in which learners can achieve their full personal potential. moving away from the individual and toward society as a whole, conceptions such as “social reconstruction” (mcneil, 2006; schiro, 2008; vallance, 1986), “social-relevance reconstruction” (sowell, 2005), and “social transformation” (pratt, 1994) have illuminated schools as instruments for social reform, where the needs of society act as a driving force for teaching and learning. moreover, academic-driven curricular stances, such as “academic rationalism” (vallance, 1986), “cumulative tradition of organized knowledge” (sowell, 2005), and “scholar academic” (schiro, 2008), have focused on cultural transmission and the need for schools to transfer knowledge and skills associated with the established academic disciplines (e.g., reading, writing, mathematics, etc.). while these and other conceptions of curriculum provide scholars, educators, and members of the general public with various educational standpoints with which to identify and relate to, they have also been and continue to be at the heart of many educational debates (pratt, 1994; schiro, 2008). currently, curricular orientations appear to divide individual-, society-, and academic-driven schools of thought, essentially presenting these notions as separate and mutually exclusive. in addition, academic-driven ideologies have historically held a dominant role within curricular conversations and remain at the forefront of contemporary education today (pinar, reynolds, slattery, & taubman, 1996; sowell, 2005). with educators operating within a single dominant curricular conception, and theorists contending with diverging curricular thought, both theorists and educators have been unable to settle on a single curricular orientation or negotiated compromise (schiro, coe. towards a curriculum of the heart 48 transnational curriculum inquiry 13(2) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 2008). the result of these intersecting dilemmas is a set of tensions that result in an unbalanced system, rather than a creative outcome. it has been said, “with every good learning experience, a place of difficulty causes us to attend to what matters” (irwin, 2003, p. 76). in this paper, i explore the tensions embedded within my own experiences as both a learner and a teacher as they relate to curriculum theory and contemporary education. i argue that students growing up today suffer from an unbalanced education system, characterized by a curriculum that is becoming increasingly standardized and impersonal. to help regain balance and to provide students with a more holistic education, i propose a conception of curriculum that strives to nurture students who are happy, healthy, and well; a curriculum that focuses on thinking, growing, feeling, and connecting. i propose a curriculum of the heart. an unbalanced system i sit at the kitchen table, colorful markers and paper scattered in front of me on the flat wooden surface. sunlight reaches through the large windows above the sink, warming the room and my body within it. i sift through the mr. sketch markers looking for the perfect color to start my drawing. i have decided to make a card for my best friend erin. she will be six soon and i want to make her something special. in the window, a long string of glass prisms hang. rainbows scatter on the opposite wall as the sun beams through the hanging crystals and into the open space. inspired by the dancing rainbows in the room, i begin to draw colorful bands across the top of the folded paper. red. orange. yellow. green. blue. purple. pink. the pink marker is my favorite, not because i like the color best but because i enjoy the fruity smell it releases when i draw with it. i know that i am not the best writer at school, but i am great at making cards at home. i have even learned how to spell “happy birthday!” without any help. when the rainbow is complete, i draw a yellow sun in the remaining space. i use a black marker to add two eyes, a nose, and a large smile to the yellow circle. with the black marker still in hand, i open the card and in the empty space write the words: “to erin, happy birthday! love heather.” … i sit at a circle table in the school library. a book about chipmunks rests open in front of me, lined paper and a pencil lay beside it. i am in the library with my class to work on a research project; we have been asked to write a report about an animal that can be found in the canadian wild. while i love visiting the city library downtown, i do not feel as comfortable in this space. i cannot relax here and constantly question my movements. am i allowed to choose this book? am i allowed to speak with my friends? am i allowed to ask for help? i know that i do not read or spell as well as some of the other students in my class. i wish i could draw a picture to help me represent my thinking but i am not allowed to because this is grade 3. i want to explain that chipmunks survive the winter by sleeping for long periods of time. hibernation is what it is called. but i don’t know how to spell that word. i try to sound it out, but really have no idea where to start. i need help. coe. towards a curriculum of the heart 49 transnational curriculum inquiry 13(2) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci i muster up the courage to ask the librarian; she does not look happy when she notices my hand raised up in the air. “how do you spell hibernation?” “look it up in a dictionary. that’s what they’re there for.” the librarian walks away. i am left feeling lost, embarrassed, and uncomfortable. how can i look up a word if i don’t know how it is spelled? as a child, home was always a creative space for me. my parents encouraged my siblings and i to engage in open-ended activities and to play in creative ways. home was a happy and safe place, a place where i felt comfortable and confident to ask questions, to try new things, and to explore the world around me. much like the early learning described by katz (2007), learning within this context was grounded within my lived experiences. similarly, these endeavors were connected to hands-on interactions with people and place (gruenewald & smith, 2008; smith, 2002). reflecting on this time, i have come to realize that the type of learning i engaged in at home was emergent and exploratory in nature. play, art, and music were at the center of many of my experiences, and my indoor and outdoor explorations were driven by curiosity, wonder, and a strong desire to learn. at home, i was supported by adults who displayed respect and care towards me. moreover, i was encouraged to develop my own personal signature (eisner, 2002a) with which to approach the world, a signature that was both supported and appreciated. i do not remember being unhappy at school as a child, but it was never a place where i felt totally comfortable. in contrast to my learning experiences at home, school had many rules and expectations to which i easily conformed. although i loved learning, school quickly became a place where i was made aware of my shortcomings: i was shy; i was quiet; i was not a good reader, writer, or speller. while i recognize today that i do not read as fast or, perhaps, as well as some of my peers and colleagues, it is not a trait that defines me. but, as a child it was. the impact of such thinking and the development of a negative self-concept with regard to my literacy abilities in childhood persisted throughout elementary school, high school, and into much of my adult life. looking back on my early school experiences, i realize that there are many similarities between my formal education and tyler’s (2009/1949) inflexible conception of curriculum. my memory of the school itself is reflective of the image painted in jackson’s (1968) “daily grind.” education in my early years was about learning the disciplines in a rigid and sterile environment. the educational aims and objectives enforced by teachers at my school were designed to fit one type of learner, with one type of learning style, and one way of displaying knowledge. while i vaguely remember being a part of an elementary school choir, artistry and creativity were more often than not limited to the rules and outlines of assignments. my teachers were not willing to stray far from the curriculum-as-plan (aoki, 2005b/1986/1991) and were seemingly unresponsive to students, like myself, who needed individualized help or, more precisely, had different ways of learning. the teachers simply adhered to what they had always done, year after year, student after student. although my experiences with formal education hold personal meaning, they are not unique and most likely mirror the experiences of many children within contemporary education. while various conceptions of curriculum have been highlighted in educational literature and implemented into schools over the years (e.g., pratt, 1994; sowell, 2005; vallance, 1986), the dominant academic rationalist paradigm so prominent in my ontario public schooling in the 1980s and 1990s is still visible in present times (sowell, 2005). in fact, tyler “remains an enormous figure, whose coe. towards a curriculum of the heart 50 transnational curriculum inquiry 13(2) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci shadow is very much cast still today” (pinar et al., 1996, p. 857). within this academicdriven conception of curriculum, education is seen as a means of transmitting cultural heritage and a way of cultivating cognitive achievement and intellect through the study of the disciplines (e.g., mathematics, language; pratt, 1994; sowell, 2005). this type of curriculum lends itself well to didactic modes of teaching and learning, where students take a more passive role in the learning process and where teachers and textbooks are the ultimate source of knowledge (pratt, 1994). pinar et al. (1996) maintain: curriculum is an extraordinarily complicated conversation. curriculum as institutional text is a formalized and abstract version of conversation, a term we usually use to refer to those open-ended, highly personal, and interest-driven events in which persons encounter each other. that curriculum has become so formalized and distant from the everyday sense of conversation is a profound indication of its institutionalization and its bureaucratization. instead of employing others’ conversations to enrich our own, we “instruct” students to participate in others’—i.e. textbook authors’—conversations, employing others’ terms to others’ ends. (p. 848) while i do not disagree that students need to acquire some important academic skills (such as reading and writing) to reach their full potential and to participate fully within society, i cannot ignore the emotional, motivational, and affective elements that contemporary education should be fostering within our students—elements that are too often ignored within academic-driven conceptions of curriculum, but undoubtedly contribute to students’ overall happiness, health, and well-being. a curriculum that accentuates academic achievement in isolation is insufficient for the development of the whole child. such a curriculum fails to include important aspects of human learning and personality (pratt, 1994), and ignores the inextricable links among academic knowledge, subjectivity, and society (pinar, 2005). within most schools and educational institutions, standards and accountability frameworks have become common practice, and implemented to ensure consistent, quality education (bredekamp, 2014). while these structures warrant responsibility and transparency among stakeholders within classrooms and schools, they also present potential barriers that may limit the creation of democratic educational spaces (e.g., mclennan, 2009) and may diminish the ability for individuals to reach their full potential (noddings, 2009/2003; pratt, 1994; sowell, 2005). eisner (2002b) echoes these concerns arguing that contemporary schooling tends to emphasize the constructs of facticity, correctness, linearity, and concreteness. consequently, by focusing on these ideas, education fails to nurture a human capacity, an element central to our cultural development (eisner, 2002b). within this rigid structure of standardization, i am left thinking about my own early learning experiences as they relate to public education today. i question: is there room for curiosity and wonder within our dominant conception of curriculum? do students feel connected to people and place? are students encouraged to take risks and do they feel supported when they step outside of their comfort zones to learn about the world? do students feel comfortable and safe? are we providing the space and time for students to develop their own personal signatures with which to approach the world? are students happy, healthy, and well? in 2016, the public health agency of canada released a report based on the most recent survey cycle of the health behaviour in school-aged children study (hbsc; freeman, king, & pickett). focusing on the health and well-being of young coe. towards a curriculum of the heart 51 transnational curriculum inquiry 13(2) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci canadians, the survey results from over 29,700 students (aged 11 to 15 years) point to several areas of concern. only 47% of grade 6 boys and 36% of grade 6 girls strongly agreed that they had confidence in themselves. these numbers substantially dropped with age with only 24% of grade 10 boys and 12% of grade 10 girls reporting confidence (morrison & peterson, 2016). at school, a substantial proportion of children reported feeling excess pressure with regards to their expected schoolwork, with over 1 in 4 students overall and more than 1 in 3 grade 10 girls reporting they had more school work than they could handle. moreover, canadian youth in the later grades were much less likely to enjoy school or report positive perceptions of school than their younger counterparts. these findings highlight the necessity for educators to create learning environments that effectively meet the needs of students throughout the grades levels (klinger, reid, & freeman, 2016). while these outcomes highlight only some of the findings from the hbsc study, they clearly point to symptoms of an unbalanced system. noticeably, the health and well-being of young canadians is an issue that requires immediate attention. the obvious challenge is how to restore an unhealthy system and, ultimately, how to create curricular balance for all students. education should not only support the development of cognitive knowledge and skills, but also take into account other aspects of human development, such as relationship building, interactions with the natural world, emotional awareness, and human thriving (e.g., benson & scales, 2009; coe, 2016; noddings, 2013; thayer-bacon, 2004). similar to pratt’s (1994) description of the individual fulfillment conception of curriculum, the education system should help support and encourage students to reach their full potential, whatever that may be. to do this, curriculum needs to be conceptualized in a more holistic way, integrating social, cognitive, affective, somatic, aesthetic, and spiritual aspects of being (pratt). noddings (2013) supports the notion of a more holistic and well-rounded approach to education: education is not simply one agency with a specific purpose within an enormous bureaucracy. education is a multi-aim enterprise, and it is time that we recognize that fact and build on it. schools must address the needs of students for satisfying lives in all three great dimensions of contemporary life: home and family, occupational, and civic, both domestic and global. (noddings, 2013, p. viii) providing students with a more balanced curriculum and a healthier education system does not require starting over. instead, efforts to rebalance and improve the system should build on established foundations (pinar et al., 1996), using ideals from the current world as a guide (noddings, 2013). regaining balance i sit on a small child-sized chair in the corner of the kindergarten classroom. from here, i can see the entire indoor space. currently, the students in my class are all engaged in activities of their own choosing; it is our daily time for exploratory play. on a table in the far corner, i can see two children with rulers measuring a stuffed shark. on the carpet beside me, blue fabric is spread out to form an imaginary ocean. within the waves, children with scuba equipment fashioned from milk containers and string swim in and among the toy sharks and fish. in the corner of the room, several children sit on pillows reading a book about sharks. on the table in front of me, two children tape together large pieces of grey paper; they are planning to make a life-sized coe. towards a curriculum of the heart 52 transnational curriculum inquiry 13(2) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci wobbegong shark. engulfed by a common interest, it is clear to me that the young children in my class are happy and motivated to learn. later this morning, we are having a shark expert from the local aquarium visit our classroom. she is bringing real shark eggs that the children will have a chance to touch and feel. i know that my students will love this experience. i can’t wait to see the smiles on their faces. in my classroom, we are learning about the world together, through our interests and in-depth projects. there is a sense of engagement, empowerment, and excitement in the classroom. you can almost feel the energy. within this space, we can do anything. … i sit on a large black chair in my office at the faculty of education. my computer rests open on my desk in front of me; a black cursor flashes on a blank page beckoning for my attention. my eyes, however, are drawn beyond my desk and into the outdoor courtyard. there is a chipmunk sitting on a large rock just outside my window; it seems fitting how he has appeared after reminiscing about the past. while this small creature was once a regular visitor to the same spot through the summer and autumn months, this is the first time i have seen him since the snow has started to melt. his appearance is a reminder of the rhythms and cycles of nature. there are many spaces in this building where i feel disconnected from the natural world, but the large window in my office provides a nice retreat. i am able to write and to be a part of the greater world simultaneously. returning to the task at hand, i bring my attention back to my computer and the papers and books scattered on my desk. i am thinking about curriculum. after reading about various conceptions of curriculum, i wonder: where do i situate myself as a scholar within the curriculum landscape? i find that i am drawn to certain words, phrases, and concepts within the current conceptions—ideas that reflect my beliefs about education that can be linked to my past experiences and the tensions embedded within them. words such as happiness, compassion, and care leap off the pages of articles and books. notions such as curriculum as lived experience and student health and well-being resonates within me. the belief that early experience can have a lifelong impact on learning and self-concept never strays far from my mind. i feel as though i am moving towards an understanding that is essentially a curriculum of the heart. as humans, the heart is a vital part of our bodies. without it, there is no life. the heart pumps and beats transporting nutrients to all parts of our body. the heart is at the center of our being both physically and emotionally. the heart represents life, health, emotions, and connections. i envision that a curriculum of the heart embraces all of these things: thinking, growing, feeling, and connecting. i have always loved working with children. i find the energy and enthusiasm with which young learners approach the world to be incredibly magical. i feel fortunate when i am able to experience new adventures through their eyes. as an international school kindergarten teacher, i witnessed connections and friendships being made as children related to one another through interests and accomplishments. i saw smiles on children’s faces and felt the excitement that is so often associated with new experiences and learning. moreover, i witnessed students grow from the beginning of the school coe. towards a curriculum of the heart 53 transnational curriculum inquiry 13(2) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci year to the end—entering the classroom as small children and leaving as empowered and motivated young learners. reflecting on my experiences as an early years educator, i have come to realize that education does not need to be as rigid and structured as my elementary school experience was. within a supportive environment, children can learn through their lived experiences and make meaningful connections with the world around them. curriculum can be flexible, emergent, and responsive to the diverse needs and interests of students (e.g., coe, 2016; eisner, 2002a, 2002b; katz, 2007). although i am not currently a classroom teacher, my experiences continue to influence how i approach and, ultimately, conceptualize teaching, learning, and curriculum. i gravitate towards an understanding that students’ interests, questions, and sense of wonder (carson, 1965) should be a driving force for learning. i am attracted to the idea that education can be student-centered and provide personally satisfying experiences for learners (sowell, 2005). additionally, i cannot argue with the notion that education should inspire a personal commitment to learning (or lifelong learning) among students (vallance, 1986). while focusing on the individual is important, the collective also demands attention (thayer-bacon, 2004; pratt, 1994). schools play an important role in the development of positive and enriching interpersonal relationships for students. some would argue that these relationships and the development of interpersonal skills are critical for both the well-being of students and society as a whole (bell, 2011; pratt, 1994). finally, i am enthralled by the idea that happiness should be an aim of education (e.g., hughes, 2013; noddings, 2004). to me, this concept not only speaks to the emotional and affective aspects of teaching and learning (as seen in aoki, 2005a/1993), but also highlights the possible need for a reconceptualization of the aims and purpose of contemporary education. with these various notions in mind, i propose a conception of curriculum that aims to embrace a more holistic perspective of education: a curriculum of the heart. towards a curriculum of the heart the human heart is made up of four chambers. each chamber serves a purpose, pumping and receiving blood to and from the body. the heart is at the center of the pulmonary system, and through its natural rhythms, this organ feeds the body with life. if there is too much pressure or damage to one part of the heart, the system cannot function properly. if balance within the heart is not maintained, the system will eventually shut down and life will cease to be. a curriculum of the heart can be conceptualized in a comparable way. similar to the four chambers in the human heart, four components are essential to a balanced curriculum, education, and life: thinking, growing, feeling, and connecting. within this conception of curriculum, each component serves an important purpose, contributing to students’ overall holistic development and learning. just as the heart is at the center of the pulmonary system, the curriculum is at the heart of the education system. if there is too much pressure or focus on one component, the system cannot function properly. if this imbalance continues, students will not receive a well-rounded education and will suffer accordingly. four components a curriculum of the heart is comprised of four interconnected components: thinking, growing, feeling, and connecting. to encourage the growth and development of happy, healthy, and well students, it can be conceptualized that each component must be kept in balance with the others. this notion mirrors an idea presented by palmer (1997) with regards to teaching: coe. towards a curriculum of the heart 54 transnational curriculum inquiry 13(2) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci reduce teaching to intellect and it becomes a cold abstraction; reduce it to emotions and it becomes narcissistic; reduce it to the spiritual and it loses its anchor to the world. intellect, emotion, and spirit depend on each other for wholeness. they are interwoven in the human self and in education at its best, and we need to interweave them in our pedagogical discourse as well. (pp. 1516) similar to the elements presented by parker, the four components within a curriculum of the heart are connected and interwoven, each component depending on the others for wholeness. if curriculum is reduced to a single component, the system becomes unbalanced. consequently, students will not be supported in a holistic way and may not have the opportunity to develop fully. while the four components are interconnected, it is necessary to explore the characteristics of each alone to better understand a curriculum of the heart. these components should not be thought of in a hierarchical order, but should be considered as part of a balanced whole. in addition, the descriptive characteristics of each component is by no means exhaustive, but aims to provide a general idea and understanding of how the four components address the different aspects of human nature and learning. first, building from the academic foundation so prominent in our public schools today, thinking incorporates the skills and knowledge that are so often highlighted within contemporary curricular frameworks and standards. these skills and knowledge should not only be appropriate for academic success, but also applicable to life outside of school. in addition, thinking embraces the diverse needs and interests of students, encouraging a flexible and responsive education system (eisner, 2002a, 2002b). furthermore, thinking involves creating, doing, and being (schubert, 2009); it embraces the learning process and the knowledge that is gained through experience. second, growing encompasses the idea that all students should be supported and encouraged to be physically healthy and well, both in body and mind. students should be provided with the time and encouragement to engage in various health promoting behaviors, such as physical activity and sport. in addition, growing also includes other aspects that contribute to an overall healthy lifestyle, such as rest, stress management, and a healthy diet. third, feeling embraces emotions and the aesthetic elements of learning that are so often forgotten in contemporary education (irwin, 2003). this idea not only includes embracing and recognizing one’s own emotions, but also learning to identify and appreciate the emotional needs of others. additionally, feeling encourages students to take the time to appreciate the experience of learning and the emotions associated with it (eisner, 2002b). moreover, this component asks educators to consider emotional literacy and happiness (noddings, 2004) as aims of education. fourth, recognizing that human beings are connected to the places and people with whom they share the world, connecting considers the development of positive relationships. this component highlights the importance of creating community, establishing positive teacher-student relationships, and attending to the school climate and physical contexts to ensure that all students feel encouraged and valued (hutchinson, 2014; thayer-bacon, 2004). additionally, connecting encourages a more appreciative stance with regards to the earth and our local environment, and that a reciprocal relationship should exist between humans and the natural world (noddings, 2013). similarly, students should have the opportunity to connect with and learn from local people, place, and ecology—a notion that does not stray far from the concept of coe. towards a curriculum of the heart 55 transnational curriculum inquiry 13(2) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci place-based education (e.g., smith, 2002). furthermore, parker (1997) defines spirituality as the “diverse ways we answer the heart’s longing to be connected with the largeness of life” (p. 16). connecting reminds us that students should be encouraged to be connect spiritually with world around them in whatever way is most meaningful to them (pratt, 1994). the beating heart the word “curriculum” is often colloquially defined as a set of courses, coursework, and content offered by an educational institution, and the subjects that comprise a course of study (merriam-webster, 2013; oxford dictionaries, 2013; wiktionary, 2013). within most definitions (like the one presented here), curriculum is a noun— static, stationary, and unmoving. in alignment with this description, many teachers have come to recognize “curriculum” as what they are required to teach, mandated by those above and outlined within curriculum documents and guides (pinar, 2012). while this understanding of curriculum is a traditional one, it fails to recognize the vibrant voices and lived experiences of students and those involved in day-to-day teaching and learning. in fact, some critics refer to this traditional view of curriculum as “disembodied,” a perspective that is oriented toward “top-down mandates and prescriptions to be carried out, repressing and controlling participation” (latta, 2013, p. 72). in contrast to the traditional and, possibly, outdated definition, pinar (2012) describes curriculum as a “complicated conversation:” a dynamic discussion that engages multiple voices, views, and experiences. within this alternate definition, the notion of curriculum is shifted from a noun to a verb—active, responsive, and ongoing. because conversations among individuals are interactive and spontaneous, curriculum, too, can be perceived as such. as a conversation, curriculum embraces complexity and is responsive to the voices of those involved in the dialogue: “[curriculum] importantly assumes that within the inquiry process lives a worthwhile direction, a medium for teaching and learning that asks teachers and students to participate through adapting, changing, building and creating meaning together” (latta, 2013, p. 2). within a curriculum of the heart, curriculum is viewed as a process, “a verb, an action, a social practice, a private meaning, and a public hope” (pinar, 2005, p. 41). this process embraces the idea that lived experience is essential to understanding (ellsworth, 2005), and that curriculum becomes embodied and alive through the daily rhythms and patterns of teaching and learning. with each beat of the balanced of the heart, students are supported holistically in the process of being and becoming (aoki, 2005a/1993). teachers are fundamental to this process. their actions are like the blood that flows through the human heart, always present and full of nutrients. to fully support learners, teachers must recognize the individuality and uniqueness of each student, an idea that diverges from a common conception of curriculum-as-plan which assumes a disembodied “fiction of sameness” (aoki, 2005b/1986/1991, p. 161). to nurture ethical attitudes, foster the development of emotional literacy, support cognitive development, and encourage positive interactions among students, teachers must strive to create environments that are welcoming, safe, caring, compassionate, and critical (conrad, 2006; klinger, mills, & chapman, 2011). essentially, “if education is to have a transformative impact in the lives of youth, our institutions must live what they hope to teach” (conrad, 2006, p. 16). a curriculum of the heart strives to bring balance to education for all students. while it may seem simple in theory, it may not be as easy in practice. to implement such a curriculum requires dedication and ongoing adjustments to ensure that a balance is maintained. noddings (2009/2003) warns, “without continual, reflective discussion of coe. towards a curriculum of the heart 56 transnational curriculum inquiry 13(2) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci aims, education may become a poor substitute for its best vision” (p. 426). similarly, without continual reflection, discussion, and appraisal of how thinking, growing, feeling, and connecting are being addressed, a curriculum of the heart may become unbalanced and fail to provide students with a holistic education. a curriculum of the heart requires dedication from teachers, administration, and support staff. eisner (2002a) argues that good teaching requires both artistry and professional judgment— qualities that are also needed to make educational policy, as well as to establish personal relationships with students and appraise student growth. to provide students with good teaching, school communities should foster these qualities among teachers, as well as provide a clear individualized vision of what a curriculum of the heart looks like within their own school context. while a curriculum of the heart is a new conceptualization, the idea of an embodied, well-balanced, and holistic education is not. aoki (2005a/1993) presents the notion of an inspirited and embodied curriculum in which the body, mind, and soul are connected and supported. within this type of curriculum, teaching is understood as a mode of being with others and relating with students. by describing curriculum in such terms, aoki recognized the interconnectedness, emotional, and affective elements of teaching and learning that are not always acknowledged within traditional curriculum views. a parallel can also be drawn between a curriculum of the heart and the ideas presented within indigenous education, in which there is a strong belief in lifelong holistic education and the development of the whole child (intellectually, physically, emotionally, and spiritually; bell, 2011, p. 377; see also battiste, 2011). within this historically situated perspective, it is believed that a “child must grow in a balanced way in order to be a healthy person and contribute to his/her life in a healthy way” (bell, 2011, p. 378). a healthy person is then better able to foster healthy families, communities, and nations. within indigenous education, the medicine wheel is often used to guide the education process and is visualized as a circle comprised of four equal sections. while the medicine wheel is used in various ways, the importance of appreciating the interconnectedness and interrelationships of all things remains a key understanding (bell). in addition, indigenous education encourages students to connect with the intergenerational teachings of people and place (ng-a-fook, 2011). a curriculum of the heart does not aim to replace these pre-existing ideas, but strives to use these structures as a foundation for future curricular and educational growth. furthermore, these ideas provide a background for and give legitimacy to this new conceptualization of curriculum through its shared understanding. while schools have the potential to provide positive and fulfilling lived experiences for students, they too have the potential to accomplish quite the opposite. a standardized and impersonal curriculum with a narrow focus on academic achievement has become disconnected from the goal of developing a well-rounded holistic education, a goal which places the happiness and health of the student at its heart. rather than limiting students to the confines of the “skill-and-knowledge factory” (pinar, 2008/2004, p. 3), it is the task of curriculum theorists, educators, and administrators to challenge the current academic-driven norms through initiating and sustaining discussions on how to best support the holistic needs of students. a curriculum of the heart provides a framework and starting point for such dialogue. pinar (2012) describes education as an opportunity offered. through thinking, growing, feeling, and connecting, a curricular space in unveiled. it is within this space that education can provide the opportunity for students to learn and grow in happy, healthy, and holistic ways. coe. towards a curriculum of the heart 57 transnational curriculum inquiry 13(2) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci notes 1 heather.coe@queensu.ca references aoki, t. (2005a/1993). inspiriting the curriculum. in w. f. pinar & r. l. irwin (eds.), curriculum in a new key: the collected works of ted t. aoki (pp. 357-365). mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum. aoki, t. (2005b/1986/1991). teaching as indwelling between two curriculum worlds. in w. f. pinar & r. l. irwin (eds.), curriculum in a new key: the collected works of ted t. aoki (pp. 159-165). mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum. battiste, m. (2011). curriculum reform through constitutional reconciliation of indigenous knowledge. in d. stanley & k. young (eds.), contemporary studies in canadian curriculum (pp. 287-312). calgary, ab: detselig enterprise, ltd. bell, n. m. (2011). creating shared understandings: meeting indigenous education needs. in d. stanley & k. young (eds.), contemporary studies in canadian curriculum (pp. 375-398). calgary, ab: detselig enterprise, ltd. benson, p. l., & scales, p. c. (2009). the definition and preliminary measurement of thriving in adolescence. journal of positive psychology, 4, 85-104. doi:10.1080/17439760802399240 bredekamp, s. (2014). effective practices in early childhood education: building a foundation. boston, ma: pearson. carson, r. (1965). the sense of wonder. new york, ny: harper & row. conrad, d. (2006). justice for youth versus a curriculum of conformity in schools and prisons. journal of the canadian association for curriculum studies, 4(2), 1-20. coe, h. (2016). from excuses to encouragements: confronting and overcoming the barriers to early childhood outdoor learning in canadian schools. journal of childhood studies, 41, 5-15. retrieved from: https://journals.uvic.ca/index.php/jcs/article/view/15461 eisner, e. w. (2002a). the kind of schools we need. phi delta kappan, 83, 576-583. eisner, e. w. (2002b). the arts and the creation of mind. new haven, ct: yale university press. eisner, e. w., & vallance, e. (1974). five conceptions of curriculum: their roots and implications for curriculum planning. in e. w. eisner & e. vallance (eds.), conflicting conceptions of curriculum (pp. 1-18). berkeley, ca: mccutchan publishing corporation. ellsworth, e. (2005). places of learning: media, architecture, pedagogy. new york, ny: routledgefalmer. freeman, j., king, m., & pickett, w. (eds.) (2016). health behaviour in school-aged children (hbsc) in canada: focus on relationships. ottawa, on: public health agency of canada. gruenewald, d. a., & smith, g. a. (eds.) (2008). place-based education in the global age: local diversity. new york, ny: routledge. hughes, s. f. (2013). romancing children into delight: promoting children’s happiness in the early primary grades (unpublished doctoral dissertation). queen’s university, kingston, ontario, canada. mailto:heather.coe@queensu.ca coe. towards a curriculum of the heart 58 transnational curriculum inquiry 13(2) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci hutchinson, n. l. (2014). inclusion of exceptional learners in canadian schools: a practical handbook for teachers (4th ed.). toronto, on: pearson canada. irwin, r. l. (2003). toward an aesthetic of unfolding in/sights through curriculum. journal for the canadian association for curriculum studies, 1, 63-78. jackson, p. w. (1968). life in classrooms. new york, ny: hold, reinhart & winston. katz, v. l. (2007). what to look for when visiting early childhood classes. gifted child today, 30(3), 34-37. klinger, d., reid, m-a., & freeman, j. (2016). school. in j. freeman, m. king, & w. pickett (eds.), health behaviour in school-aged children (hbsc) in canada: focus on relationships (pp. 25-38). ottawa, on: public health agency of canada. klinger, d., mills, a., & chapman, a. (2011). school. in j. g. freeman, m. king, w. pickett, w. craig, f. elgar, i. janssen, & d. klinger (eds.), the health of canada’s young people: a mental health focus (pp. 47-65). ottawa, on: public health agency of canada. latta, m. m. (2013). curricular conversations: play is the (missing) thing. new york, ny: routledge. mclennan, d. m. (2009). ten ways to create a more democratic classroom. young children, 64(4), 100-101. mcneil, j. d. (2006). contemporary curriculum in thought and action. hoboken, nj: john wiley & sons, inc. merriam-webster. (2014). curriculum. retrieved from: http://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/curriculum morrison, b., & peterson, p. (2016). mental health. in j. freeman, m. king, & w. pickett (eds.), health behaviour in school-aged children (hbsc) in canada: focus on relationships (pp. 115-130). ottawa, on: public health agency of canada. ng-a-fook, n. (2011). decolonizing narrative strands of our eco-civic responsibilities: curriculum, social action, and indigenous communities. in d. stanley & k. young (eds.), contemporary studies in canadian curriculum (pp. 313-341). calgary, ab: detselig enterprise, ltd. noddings, n. (2004). happiness and education [myilibrary ebook version]. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. noddings, n. (2009/2003). the aims of education. in d. j. flinders & s. j. thorton (eds.), the curriculum studies reader (3rd ed., pp. 425-438). new york, ny: routledge. noddings, n. (2013). education and democracy in the 21st century. new york, ny: teachers college press. oxford dictionary. (2013). definition of curriculum in english. retrieved from: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/curriculum?q=curriculum palmer, p. j. (1997). the heart of a teacher: identity and integrity in teaching. change, 29(6), 14-21. pinar, w. f. (2005). what is curriculum? in w. hare & j. p. portelli (eds.), key questions for educators (pp. 39-41). halifax, ns: edphil books. pinar, w. f. (2008/2004). what is curriculum theory? mahwah, nj: taylor & francis. pinar, w. f. (2012). what is curriculum theory? (2nd ed.). new york, ny: routledge. pinar, w. f., reynolds, w. m., slattery, p., & taubman, p. m. (1996). understanding curriculum: an introduction to the study of historical and contemporary curriculum discourses. new york, ny: peter lang. pratt, d. (1994). curriculum planning: a handbook for professionals. orlando, fl: harcourt brace college publishers. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/curriculum http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/curriculum coe. towards a curriculum of the heart 59 transnational curriculum inquiry 13(2) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci schiro, m. s. (2008). curriculum theory: conflicting visions and enduring concerns. los angeles, ca: sage. schubert, w. h. (2009). what is worthwhile: from knowing and needing to being and sharing. journal of curriculum and pedagogy, 6, 22-40. doi:10.1080/15505170.2009.10411721 smith, g. a. (2002). place-based education: learning to be where we are. phi delta kappan, 83, 584-594. sowell, e. j. (2005). curriculum: an integrative introduction (3rd edition). upper saddle river, nj: pearson merrill prentice hall. thayer-bacon, b. j. (2004). personal and social relations in education. in c. bingham & a. m. sidorkin (eds.), no education without relation (pp. 165-179). new york, ny: peter lang. tyler, r. w. (2009/1949). basic principles of curriculum and instruction. in d. j. flinders & s. j. thorton (eds.), the curriculum studies reader (3rd ed., pp. 69-77). new york, ny: routledge. vallance, e. (1986). a second look at conflicting conceptions of curriculum. theory into practice, 25, 24-30. wiktionary. (2014). curriculum. retrieved from: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/curriculum submitted: june, 22nd, 2016 approved: september, 18th, 2016 http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/curriculum o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: barrón, concepción (2017). chiaroscuros in curricular innovations: between desire and reality. transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> chiaroscuros in curricular innovations: between desire and reality concepción barrón1 national autonomous university of mexico, mexico introduction the purpose of this article is to reflect on curricular innovation and competencies as the dominant discourse in present-day curricular reform, as well as on the political and educational implications for educating students. in addition, we point out some of the challenges in the appropriation of innovations and competencies within the framework of cultural and ethnic diversity. curricular innovations in far-reaching curricular reforms, the term innovation has been the key factor associated with designing and applying new curricular models and with setting alternative teaching methods in motion. the incorporation of particular innovative models (curricular flexibility, education based on competencies, learning-centered curriculum, incorporating information technology into teaching, among others) derived not only from the apparent need for change and improvement in educational quality, but was based on a series of international trends in the area of educational reform, spurred by policies emanating from national and international organizations both from the educational sector as well as from the financial-business spheres. they were frankly dependent on proposals geared to evaluating the quality, certification and accreditation, or evaluation linked to financing education (barrón and valenzuela, 2013). one could state that there is no single meaning related to educational innovation, as well as recognize a lack of theoretical framework sufficiently developed and shared. not all changes and improvements necessarily mean educational innovation, so one would have to ask: under what conditions or under what circumstances should educational innovation take place? for example, there are changes that percolate up from below, from those involved in the educational system and prepared to assimilate the proposals, which contrast with changes occurring through decisions emanating from a policy adopted: a central, regional or local government authority that decides to adopt a new idea and dictates the regulations and instructions needed to carry them out. the characteristics defining an educational model as innovative in one country may not be such for another. consolidating it requires obtaining effective results in attaining its goals, in addition to enjoying social recognition and being legitimated in its field. despite the fact, we have continued researching the meaning and understanding of the concept of innovation, we continue debating the implications it has in education and society. ever since the eighties, díaz barriga a. (1988) pointed out that the meaning of curricular innovation had been trivialized by limiting it to technological changes in curriculum, leaving aside discussion on the latters’ social meaning, as well as associating it with the design and application of various curricular models. as a result of the expansion of higher education in mexico in the seventies, there was a marked interest in mexico for innovation for the purpose of responding to marketplace demand. barrón. chiaroscuros in curricular innovations 48 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci in the framework of present-day scenarios permeated by the knowledge society, globalization and interconnection, the field of curricula has been confronted when renovating the principles and methods encompassing both old problems as well as nascent ones. this requires other ways of interacting as a consequence of a series of far-reaching transformations that may affect other dimensions: cognitive, pragmatic, attitudinal, ethical and political. curricular innovation occurs in the very context of the educational situation (time and space) and becomes evident in the convergence of the knowledge, affectivity, thought and action of those intervening. the give it sense and meaning, starting from their own practices and from their culture. it is, in essence, a manifestation of the paradigmatic rupture much more evident on a small scale, that is, in the concrete practices where the ends themselves are born and consolidated. (collado, et al., 2013, p. 14) curricular innovation shows itself in the doing, from the attitude of teachers to how students interpret it in the classroom, in how students perceive their teachers, and in how teachers respond in front of students. it is like a circle, in which the protagonists of innovation are the professors and the students in the educational scenario. moreover, ayestarán warns about the need to recognize the epistemological, political and social connotations inherent in the meaning of innovation from a critical point of view, so as to make way for an approach centered on “social innovation,” the latter referring to: (…) the generation and implementation of new ideas on how people ought to organize interpersonal activities or social interactions so as to find one or more common goals. (mumford, 2002, p. 253) therefore, curricular change must be conceptualized and analyzed from the viewpoint of institutional micro-policy. the recent literature on educational change and curricular innovations tends to take into account the movements of resistance and opposition by actors in light of the changes foreseen, especially when the latter are “top-down” and “outside-inside,” threatening their position at institutions, discrediting their habitual practices without offering conditions for the expected shift or when the atmosphere for change is taken to be “threatening” from the actors’ viewpoint (díaz and barrón, 2014). similarly, one has to recognize the active role of students in curricular projects and undertaking them, not just as the recipients of them. one may state, as do didriksson and herrera (2004), that innovation in higher education has constituted the most important academic value of the past decades, defining its pertinence starting from the contribution it makes to society. in addition to the production of leading-edge knowledge, it also ensures responsible and committed social participation based on a critical reflection of historical and institutional contexts. curricular model of competences the various reforms carried out in the mexican educational system in the 21rst century, as well as the incorporation of various curricular models and, specifically, those revolving around competencies, have been subjected to a variety of criticism, theories and methodologies, all the more so in their implementation. said model responds, to a certain degree, to the two major proposals heading educational models: the tuning project put forth by the european union (eu) and, subsequently, the definition and selection of competencies (ocde, 2002). in such a scenario, we find that practically the entire mexican educational system has undergone an effervescence for competencies. we might point out that the decade of the nineties was characterized by the appearance of various proposals for professional training that tried to be in tune with workplace demands, considering the substantial modifications that the structure of trades and professions have undergone. barrón. chiaroscuros in curricular innovations 49 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci education in competencies constituted another of the axes of the curricular debate during the period cited. barrón (2000, p. 25) mentions that the three reasons underlying the educational project based on competences in the vision of the international labour organization (ilo) are: permit the centralization of economic growth and social development of human beings; make possible the creation of better job positions, in which the determining factor is the capacity of employability every human being has; and being centered on the need for change. the diverse proposals for competencies-based education suppose curricular unification or harmonization in training professionals to meet standards of quality, accredit graduates and facilitate their placement in the versatile national and international labor context. this, faced with the urgency of recognition or professional equivalency in a milieu framed by market globalization, free circulation of professionals and the recommendations of international organizations (valle, 1996). in mexico, the topic of curriculum based on competencies was, in its initial stages, oriented toward polytechnic institutions, technological ones, technical education, and technicians in secondary and higher education, as well as technological universities. this implied big challenges and it was, starting from some precepts from the ilo, that some of the criteria for educating students were defined, such as bringing them closer to real work scenarios. parallel to recognizing the processes of alternation as a possibility for students, comprising a classroom stage within industry, the major problems was how to regulate the situation: how to not let employers think students constituted cheap labor and require a series of activities of them that, in their role as students, they could not carry out, and, on the other hand, not let students think they had rights, because they were not in the role of salaried workers. we can point out that it is not possible to talk of a homogeneous curricular model for higher education vis-à-vis basic education, since each institution of higher education coins a conceptual framework around competencies. this is given meaning anew in light of the needs, mission statement, interests and vision of the institutions and, based on them, they put forth their educational model. noteworthy is the diversity of interpretations underlying, explicitly or implicitly, in the use of the term competencies, ranging from identifying it with “proper knowledge” to the more complex notion taking it to be an: (…) expression of the resources putting the individual into play when carrying out an activity and putting emphasis on how the subject ought to make use or handle what he/she knows. (malpica, 1996, p.133) in the current literature, one can find a wide range of meanings of what different authors understand by competencies. in many cases, they adopts a pragmatic, reductionist and technical vision, which, apparently, is the one proliferating today in a large number of educational and curricular projects. there, “competency” is reduced to the realm of “knowing how to do something,” procedural and technical in nature, a pathway only permitting defining lists of tasks or discrete and fragmented behavior (díaz barriga, f., 2003). in addition to the conceptual diversity of competency, we have to consider the major problems faced by curriculum designers in higher education, such as determining generic, disciplinary and socio-functional competencies according to the area of study and profession. in many cases, the notion of competency integrally remits to a list of knowledge, abilities and attitudes but, at the time of interpreting and elaborating concrete programs, goes back to favor the former to the detriment of the latter. often, they cannot be articulated. however, even more, what has been brought into question is the solid education of students at different levels. competency-based models were incorporated at varying times into the national educational system, first into the educational models for technical and technological institutions, then those of higher education (1998-2000), and then the curricular reforms of preprimary education in 2004, secondary education in 2006, basic education and high-school education in 2008. the different reforms have had an impact on the national educational system, on the one hand, ranging from the legal frameworks for new educational regulations to the political-academic implications specific to each sub-system. one must recognize that: barrón. chiaroscuros in curricular innovations 50 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci part of the studies addressing curricular design by competencies demarcate it as an educational focus centered on the student, propitiating students’ active participation and recognizing variation in the rhythm and style of learning. it is posited as a focus combining theoretical education with the application of knowledge. its aspiration is to achieve capacities to carry out a particular job, task or activity with a high level of quality and efficacy. (díaz barriga a, f and lugo 2005, p. 71) in defining different groups of competencies, be they generic, disciplinary or professional, teachers, researchers, administrators, management and employers have participated. in implementing and developing them, in some cases, workshops were held on the educational and curricular model, attended by teachers, administrators and students from a variety of academic areas. guidebooks were elaborated for developing competencies in the classroom, programs or didactic sequences, as well as the inclusion of different environments for learning, teaching and learning strategies, and evaluation. in basic education, the pedagogical model set forth in 2011 was based on the focus of education based on competencies, on the quest to go beyond the atomization of content, articulating knowledge, abilities and attitudes in the formative process. the purpose was to resolve the varying situations faced by students throughout their lives. the competencies to be developed within the framework of the integral reform of basic education (rieb) are: competencies for permanent learning, competencies for handing information, competencies for handing situations, competencies for coexistence, competencies for life in society (sep, 2011, p. 38). the latter would be done through formative fields that would be the axis of curricular organization for all basic education: language and communication, mathematical thinking, exploration and knowledge of the natural and social world, personal development and coexistence. the fields go all across study plans, from pre-school to secondary. the subjects through which competencies are tackled and developed would vary at each educational level, but their focus and articulation call for a single pedagogical and didactic treatment. it is important to point out that, in the case of basic education, in incorporating generic competencies, mexico followed the guidelines of the european union (eurydice 2002), in which basic education is assigned the commitment of developing two types of generic competencies: social and personal life, oriented toward educating the citizenry (tolerance, communication, honesty, enthusiasm, self-esteem, responsibility, initiative and perseverance), and academic life, linked to reading, writing, basic mathematical concepts, science and foreign languages. educating the citizenry, from an educational point of view, consists of educating all students with the essentials to move about and act as citizens: this comprises, at least, two dimensions: (a) habits, civic virtues or the behavior needed for citizens to live together: those “minimal ethics” that a person must have to know how to live with others; and (b) the set of knowledge and competencies needed to participate in public life, get into the job market or get on with one’s professional training. (bolívar, 2007, p. 4) such has always been posited in the pedagogical debates of the twentieth century by authors such as dewey and durkheim, who pointed out this task for schools (díaz barriga, a., 2006). insofar as higher education is concerned, some institutions assimilated generic competencies into study plans and set up general guidelines for their operation, seeking to provide autonomous learning for students, conscious and responsible decision-making, as well as recognition of their strengths and weaknesses. similarly, working as part of a team, communicating with others, and handling information through information technologies. barrón. chiaroscuros in curricular innovations 51 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the incorporation of said competencies into the curriculum is done be it in a parallel, differentiated or integrated manner. insofar as the parallel modality is concerned, one can identify a group of generic competencies for the educational institution. to that end, specific courses were designed to develop them. for the differentiated modality, generic competencies were designed as a function of the professional profile, within the framework of an educational institution, positing specific courses for developing or working on them in particular subjects. finally, the integrated modality allows articulating generic competencies with disciplinary/professional ones in real scenarios (villardon, 2015). among the challenges for this model has been that of evaluating the development of competencies, be they generic, disciplinary or job-related, in students, given their complexity and the meager theoretical, methodological and instrumental discussion in the field. cultural diversity and the right to education in recent years, incorporating an intercultural perspective into the field of education has found a place on international and national agendas. this is due to the recognition made by those countries with cultural diversity of their multi-culturalism as defining characteristics and as reason for national pride. the preceding has led to incorporating cultural diversity into the various latin american constitutions. mexico was no exception, as can be seen in the amendment to article 3 of the constitution of 1992, on the occasion of the encounter between two worlds. the thorniest problem has been breaking with a concept of multi-culturality, which makes reference to the coexistence of peoples and/or group culturally different in particular spaces or territories, as opposed to inter-culturality, which refers to the relationship between these peoples and groups based on respect and from positions of equality. inter-culturality is understood as a broad social project, philosophical position and everyday functioning in the face of life. because it is an alternative permitting rethinking and reorganizing the social order, because it insists on fair communication between cultures as figures in the world, and because it stresses that what is crucial is to leave spaces and time free so that said figures can become real worlds. (gallardo, 2004: 3) within the framework of approaches about the right to education as a constitutional guarantee and as a human right, circular policies have sprung up, emanating from educational reforms, in an attempt to incorporate an inter-cultural perspective. however, we have to be cautious since we cannot ingenuously think about an educational model that is equitable and egalitarian without the relationship domination/submission that permeates hegemonic educational projects (gasché, 2008). in the u.n. charter and, specifically, in that of its specialized agency for education, science and culture, unesco, as well as in the constitutions of many countries, the right to education has been set forth, constituting the basis for much of international effort, such as education for all (efa) (unesco, 1990, 2000), as well as the series of international conference promoted by unesco (latapí, 2009). therefore, to speak of the right to education, in this context, requires establishing a mutual commitment between the state and the people in charge of their human rights. to that end, one has to recognize the existence of persons in charge of human rights, who must be able to make use of diverse mechanisms to demand them (inee, 2015), as well as the existence of people charged with compelling such: authorities responsible for guaranteeing compliance therewith (inee, 2016). unesco has established four criteria to be followed by education provided by the state: that it be available, accessible, acceptable and adaptable. said criteria are often called the “four as” and compliance is overseen by the committee on economic, social and cultural rights (cescr), which is the agency responsible for supervising execution of the pact among participating countries. it should be remembered that the four as (tomasevski, 2006) allude to the following principles: barrón. chiaroscuros in curricular innovations 52 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci a) availability: conceived as a civil and political right in which the government is required to guarantee obligatory and gratuitous education that is available for all school-age children. as a cultural right, it means respect for diversity, in particular, through the rights of minorities and indigenous populations. b) accessibility: has different modalities at each educational level. the right to education must be carried out progressively, ensuring gratuitous, obligatory and inclusive education, at the earliest possible time, and facilitating access to postobligatory education to the extent possible. c) adaptability: implies guarantees of quality in education. this refers to factors and conditions related to the education offered, such as: professional requisites for teachers, relevance and pertinence in curricula and teaching, the availability of the proper infrastructure and equipment for learning and for teaching practices, as well as student organization. for example, the rights of indigenous groups regarding the language in which they are taught, or gender equality that seeks equal opportunities for both sexes. d) acceptability: refers to the necessity that it be the schools that adapt to those being educated. this means identifying the obstacles children may encounter in accessing school, learning, and staying in school or finishing up their studies. in this scenario, the right to education in mexico is based on two pillars: a) ensure the coverage of the service and the enrollment of those being educated and b) promote improvements in quality, which includes notions relative to equity, relevance, pertinence, effectiveness and efficiency of education. therefore, guaranteeing the right to quality education implies that all the people have real possibilities of being offered quality education, developing an educational trajectory without delay, graduating opportunely in accordance with the typical age for finishing obligatory education. all of this under flexible conditions that respond to student needs in different cultural and social contexts, as well as receiving a pertinent, acceptable and culturally-adequate education that is relevant, useful and significant for their lives (inee, 2016). in this context, indigenous and rural peoples face major disadvantages with regard to exercising their right to quality education. despite mexico’s constitutional recognition as a pluri-cultural country, the inequality of participation of these peoples in political, economic, social, cultural and educational decision-making continues to be an unresolved affair (unicefinee, 2016). recent figures show that the indigenous population in mexico totals some 11 million inhabitants, recognizing 68 indigenous populations and 364 variants, consisting of 11 indo-american families (inali, 2012). in 2015, for example, 10% of the country’s inhabitants were indigenous. of these, 3.9 million were children between the ages of 3 and 17 that should be in obligatory education, developing their capacities and aptitudes to the maximum. however, reality shows that there are still children that are not in school (unicef, 2016). in turn, of the almost 4 million indigenous youngsters and adolescents (3-17 years of age), slightly more than 1.8 million speak an indigenous language and, of these, 1.4 million live in rural areas. approximately, 312,000 live in semi-urban localities and more than 100,000 in urban ones. moreover, in 2015, nine of 10 students that speak indigenous languages attend school in localities showing high and very high marginalization (unicef, 2016). starting from these structural characteristics, the universalization of access to obligatory education continues to be an on-going task. quite particularly, one should ask, “what is the quality of learning of the indigenous and rural population? according to the examinations of quality and educational achievement barrón. chiaroscuros in curricular innovations 53 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci given to third grade of primary school during the school year 2013-2014, for example, it happens that the greatest deficiency in terms of level of academic achievement acquired in spanish occurs within the indigenous community: 52% of males and females from this sector of the population were below the basic level. in turn, just 8% of indigenous males attained at least a middle level of academic achievement in spanish, while 9% of females did so. this is relevant if one compares, for example, that 53% of males in private basic education achieved at least a middle level of educational achievement in spanish (45 percentage point higher), as did 64% of females in private basic education (55 percentage points higher) (inee, 2016). in the case of math, in the academic calendar 2013-2014, the greatest deficiency in terms of the level of academic achievement attained likewise occurred within the indigenous community: 33% of the females in this sector of the population were below the basic level, as were 29% of males. in turn, 35% of indigenous males managed at least to attain a middle level of educational achievement in math, as did 31% of females. this difference is not as radical in comparison, for example, with the percentage attained in the private basic-education system: 67% for males and 70% for females. based on the figures mentioned and in light of the criteria put forth by unesco to guarantee the right to education through recognizing cultural diversity and its full attention to school-age population, there is still quite a way to go. despite efforts to incorporate an intercultural perspective into curricula and generate a series of competencies linked to the citizenry that target reversing the asymmetry undergone by native peoples over the centuries, by imposing on them assimilation, incorporation and integration into the social life of the country, to the detriment of their own cultural and linguistic identities (gallardo, 2004), efforts made in terms of formal curriculum has not had full impact on the education of these students. given the preceding and by way of conclusion, one could state that the incorporation of an educational model based on competencies, as an innovative factor in the educational sphere, has lacked real impact that can be translated into educational quality for the varying educational types in mexico and, specifically, in the field of domestic inter-culturality and the right to education. notes 1 baticon3@gmail.com references ayestarán, i. (2011) epistemología de la innovación social y de la destrucción creativa. utopía y praxis latinoamericana, 16(54) julio-sep [on line] recovered from http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=27920007006 on march 6, 2016. barrón, c. (2000) la educación basada en competencias en el marco de los procesos de globalización. in m. a. valle (ed.). formación en competencias y certificación profesional (pp. 17-44), colección pensamiento universitario, núm. 91 méxico: cesu-unam. barrón, c. & valenzuela, g. a. (2013) flexibilidad y formación profesional in díaz-barriga, a. (ed.) la investigación curricular en méxico (2002-2011) (pp. 143-153). méxico: comieanuies. collado, l., medina, l., herrera, a. & moreno, m. (2013) innovación curricular en turismo: un campo de estudio y referentes para la formación universitaria. revista electrónica actualidades investigativas en educación, 13 (1), 1-39. recovered from http://revista.inie.ucr.ac.cr/ on september 22, 2017. díaz barriga, a. (1988) tendencias e innovaciones curriculares en la educación superior. ponencia presentada en el foro nacional de innovaciones en la educación superior llevado a cabo en monterrey, méxico. recovered from http://publicaciones.anuies.mx/pdfs/revista/revista71_s1a2es.pdf on march 15, 2016. díaz barriga, f. & barrón, c. (2014) curricular changes in higher education in mexico (20022012). journal of curriculum and teaching, 3 (2), 58-68. recovered from mailto:baticon3@gmail.com http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=27920007006 http://revista.inie.ucr.ac.cr/ http://publicaciones.anuies.mx/pdfs/revista/revista71_s1a2es.pdf barrón. chiaroscuros in curricular innovations 54 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci http://www.sciedu.ca/journal/index.php/jct/article/view/4865/3078 on august 24, 2017. díaz barriga, f. & lugo, e. (2003) desarrollo del currículo. in a. díaz barriga (coord.) la investigación curricular en méxico: la década de los noventa (pp. 63-125). méxico: comie. didrikson, a. & herrera, a. (2004) innovación crítica. una propuesta para la construcción de currículos universitarios alternativos. revista perfiles educativos, 26 (105-106), 7-40. recovered from http://www.iisue.unam.mx/perfiles/busqueda.php?indice=autor&busqueda=didriksson%20 takayanagui,%20axel on august 15, 2017. gallardo, a. l. (2004) las escuelas multigrado frente a la diversidad cultural, étnica y lingüística. horizontes de posibilidad desde la educación intercultural. ponencia presentada en la mesa redonda la educación intercultural; experiencias y propuestas, durante la reunión nacional propuesta educativa multigrado. fase extensiva. mejorar la enseñanza y el aprendizaje. ciudad de méxico. gasché, j. (2008) la motivación política de la educación intercultural indígena y sus exigencias pedagógicas ¿hasta dónde abarca la interculturalidad? in m. bertely y otros (ed.) educando en la diversidad. investigaciones y experiencias educativas interculturales y bilingües (p.p. 367400). quito, ecuador. abya-yala-ciesas. gobierno de méxico-secretaría de educación pública (sep) (2011). plan de estudios 2011 de educación básica. méxico: sep. inali (2012) indicadores demográficos sobre los hablantes de lengua indígena, basados en la información estadística del inegi y el catálogo de las lenguas indígenas nacionales elaborado por el inali. recovered from http://www.inali.gob.mx/es/transparencia/datosabiertos.html on september 22, 2017. instituto nacional para la evaluación de la educación (inee) (2016) exámenes de la calidad y el logro educativo. recovered from http://www.inee.edu.mx/index.php/bases-de-datos/basesde-datos-excale/excale-03-ciclo-2013-2014 on march 15, 2016. latapí, p. (2009) el derecho a la educación: su alcance, exigibilidad y relevancia para la política educativa. revista mexicana de investigación educativa, 14(40) 255-287. recovered from http://dww.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=14004012 on august 24, 2017. malpica, m.c. (1996) el punto de vista pedagógico. in a. argüelles (comp.), competencia laboral y educación basada en normas de competencia, (pp. 123-140), méxico: sep-cncclconalep. mumford, m.d. (2002) social innovation: ten cases from benjamin franklin. creativity research journal, 14(2), 253266. ocde (2002) proyecto deseco: définitions et sélection des compétences. fondements theóriques et conceptuels. document de strategie. deelsa/ed/ceri/cd. recovered from: http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/36/55/35693273.pdf on march 15, 2016. organización de las naciones unidas para la educación, la ciencia y la cultura (unesco) (2000) foro mundial sobre la educación. marco de acción de dakar. educación para todos: cumplir nuestros compromisos comunes, dakar, senegal, recovered from: http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/001211/121147s.pdf on march 3, 2017. organización de las naciones unidas para la educación, la ciencia y la cultura (unesco), fondo de las naciones unidas para la infancia (unicef), programa de las naciones unidas para el desarrollo (pnud) y banco mundial (1990), declaración mundial sobre educación para todos. satisfacción de las necesidades de aprendizaje básico. jomtien: unesco, unicef, pnud, banco mundial. organización de las naciones unidas para la educación, la ciencia y la cultura (unesco) (2014), reunión mundial sobre la educación para todos. declaración final de la reunión mundial sobre la ept de 2014, mascate. recovered from http://www.unesco.org/fileadmin/multimedia/field/santiago/pdf/muscat-agreementesp.pdf on march 3, 2017. secretaría de educación pública (sep) (2016) estadística del sistema educativo mexicano, ciclo escolar 2015-2016. méxico: sep. secretaría de educación pública (sep) (2017) sistema nacional de información estadística http://www.sciedu.ca/journal/index.php/jct/article/view/4865/3078 http://www.iisue.unam.mx/perfiles/busqueda.php?indice=autor&busqueda=didriksson%20takayanagui,%20axel http://www.iisue.unam.mx/perfiles/busqueda.php?indice=autor&busqueda=didriksson%20takayanagui,%20axel http://www.inali.gob.mx/es/transparencia/datos-abiertos.html http://www.inali.gob.mx/es/transparencia/datos-abiertos.html http://www.inee.edu.mx/index.php/bases-de-datos/bases-de-datos-excale/excale-03-ciclo-2013-2014 http://www.inee.edu.mx/index.php/bases-de-datos/bases-de-datos-excale/excale-03-ciclo-2013-2014 http://www.inee.edu.mx/index.php/bases-de-datos/bases-de-datos-excale/excale-03-ciclo-2013-2014 http://dww.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=14004012 http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/36/55/35693273.pdf http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/001211/121147s.pdf http://www.unesco.org/fileadmin/multimedia/field/santiago/pdf/muscat-agreement-esp.pdf http://www.unesco.org/fileadmin/multimedia/field/santiago/pdf/muscat-agreement-esp.pdf barrón. chiaroscuros in curricular innovations 55 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci educativa. serie histórica por entidad. recovered from http://www.snie.sep.gob.mx/estadisticas_educativas.html on march 3, 2017. tomasevski, k. (2006) the state of the right to education worldwide. free or fee. 2006 global report, recovered from https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/b030/9a475a608d1ea8a91c686396b46f4385358a.pdf on march 3, 2017. unicef (2016) panorama educativo de la población indígena, 2015. méxico: unicef. valle, a. (1996) la vinculación universidad-industria a través de estudios de opinión sobre la formación de los egresados universitarios. revista el cotidiano: revista de la realidad mexicana actual, 13 (79), 44-48. villardón, l. (ed.) (2015) competencias genéricas en educación superior. metodologías específicas para su desarrollo. españa: narcea. submitted: november, 5th, 2017 approved: december, 9th, 2017 http://www.snie.sep.gob.mx/estadisticas_educativas.html https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/b030/9a475a608d1ea8a91c686396b46f4385358a.pdf http://132.248.192.201/seccion/bd_iresie/iresie_busqueda.php?indice=autor&busqueda=valle%20flores,%20angeles&par=&a_inicial=&a_final=&sesion=&formato=largo http://132.248.192.201/seccion/bd_iresie/iresie_busqueda.php?indice=revista&busqueda=el%20cotidiano:%20revista%20de%20la%20realidad%20mexicana%20actual&par=&a_inicial=&a_final=&sesion=&formato=largo http://132.248.192.201/seccion/bd_iresie/iresie_busqueda.php?indice=revista&busqueda=el%20cotidiano:%20revista%20de%20la%20realidad%20mexicana%20actual&par=&a_inicial=&a_final=&sesion=&formato=largo to cite this article please include all of the following details: khan, steven k. (2014). fear and cheating in atlanta: evidence for the vulnerability thesis. transnational curriculum inquiry volume 1 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> fear and cheating in atlanta: evidence for the vulnerability thesis steven k. khan1 university of calgary, canada introduction – foreground on june 30 2011, the special investigations arm of the office of the governor of georgia delivered its report on test-tampering (cheating) in atlanta public schools (bowers, wilson & hyde, 2011). based on the analysis of over 2000 interviews and more than 800,000 documents the report offers a window into how a pervasive culture of testing – when unethically administered – can lead to actions that are not in the best interest of students’ learning. it presents an almost unbelievable drama of administrative misconduct and ethical failures that reads at times like a corporate mob-story with whistleblowers, corruption, coverups, humiliations, retaliations, (professional) terminations, interference, alteration and destruction of evidence, non-cooperation, non-compliance and a conspiracy of silence that at times bears a strong resemblance to the dystopic educational science fiction scenario presented in the perfect test (deitel, 2011) or the realist representation of some dysfunctional aspects of an educational system as portrayed, for example, in season 4 of hbo’s television series the wire. on march 29 2013, former atlanta public schools (aps) superintendent dr. beverly hall and 34 atlanta educators were indicted by a grand jury on 65 charges that include racketeering, criminal conspiracy, theft, and making false statements. when superintendent hall was given the responsibility for managing aps in 1999 she implemented a series of reforms under the banner of “data-driven systems” for assessment and accountability. annual targets were set for schools by the district based on the previous year’s performance on the state of georgia’s criterion-referenced-competency test (crct2) and bonuses for individuals were tied to meeting these targets. as the investigators note however, data can be properly used as a tool to assess academic progress. but data can also be used as an abusive and cruel weapon to embarrass and punish classroom teachers and principals or as a pretext to termination…dr. hall and her staff used data as a way to exert oppressive pressure to meet targets. (bowers et al. 2011, p.354) it is not my intent in this paper to examine the merits of these indictments or to offer personal opinion on the case. such a task is better suited to a court of law and to commentary by legal scholars (eg. schall, 2013, quoted in downey, 2013). my purpose here is to argue that what is documented as having occurred in some atlanta public schools during the decade of dr. hall’s tenure as superintendent perhaps provides some of the missing empirical evidence for what has come to be called (raymond e.) callahan’s vulnerability thesis khan. fear and cheating in atlanta: evidence for the vulnerability thesis 2 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (1)2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci (1962). in this way i want to directly connect the ideas of a half-century old text with events that recur in the present. my reason for doing so is grounded in a belief that there is value in revisiting aspects of our heritage in education and curriculum studies in order to buttress and reinvigorate under-utilized concepts with new and relevant evidence which have potential to revitalize curriculum discourses for the next moments. this is a task in which we, perhaps, engage too infrequently as we work assiduously to keep abreast of the deluge of papers on the latest ‘theories’.3 but it is a necessary task for the field going forward further into the 21st century. more speculatively i believe that the study of educators’ vulnerabilities across levels will need to be attended to by curriculum scholars in the next moment and suggest that in developing new ways to investigate, theorize, speak and write about such vulnerabilities, new frameworks and dispositions will need to be developed. raymond callahan, education and the cult of efficiency, and the vulnerability thesis raymond e. callahan (1922 – 2010) was professor of education at washington university, st. louis. he is most well-known for his historical text, education and the cult of efficiency: a study of the social forces that have shaped the administration of the public schools (1962)4. he was among the first post-sputnik scholars to comprehensively document and chart the socio-historical rise to power and prominence of business ideology in american education and to convincingly argue against some of its most pernicious effects when indiscriminately and uncritically embraced by educational administrators. however, it is the vulnerability thesis – that “the extreme vulnerability of [american] schoolmen to public criticism” (1962, p.ii) explained the “extent and degree of capitulation by administrators to whatever demands were made upon them…not on educational grounds, but as a means of appeasing their critics in order to maintain their positions in the school” (p.ii) – that has continued to generate the most debate/discussion and which i draw upon here in addressing the questions and issues stirred-up in the wake of the bowers, wilson and hyde (2011) investigative report on testtampering in atlanta public schools (aps). the cult of efficiency education and the cult of efficiency5 was the result of callahan’s attempt to understand, “the origin and development of the adoption of business values and practices in [american] educational administration” (p.i) as well as the consequences of this adoption. drawing on a careful analysis of a wide cross-section of academic, archival, and popular sources (eg. magazines), he presented an in-depth social-historical analysis of the individual personalities and socio-cultural forces that influenced the actions of educational administrators in the first three decades of the 20th century through which business values, practices and ideology had come to influence, if not dominate the culture of american educational administrators and schools. his main conclusions were that the adoption had started around 1900 reaching an apogee by the 1930s and that this phenomenon could “be explained on the basis of the extreme vulnerability of [american] schoolmen to public criticism and pressure and that [such] vulnerability is built into [the american] pattern of local support and control” (p.ii). this latter explanation is what has come to be known as the vulnerability thesis. choosing to begin in 1900 he made a connection among the visible successes and ideological prestige and influence in the american psyche of science, business and industry khan. fear and cheating in atlanta: evidence for the vulnerability thesis 3 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (1)2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci in the 19th century (p.1) together with demands for more utilitarian (p.9), vocational or practical curricula (p.8) within a context of mass immigration, semi-literacy, cultural diversity, poverty, inflation and suspicion of inefficient institutions (p.2, p.15),with the emergence of a cadre of experts who advocated for the application of “modern business methods” and “efficiency” and connected these in the public mind with progress and reform” (p.5) in achieving educational ends. his research implicated newspapers, journals, books, speeches at educational meetings, professional educators and the actions of school boards in exerting pressure to adopt business methods (pp.5-6) which together resulted in a “fairly well standardized” procedure for “bringing about a more businesslike operation of the schools” that “consisted of making unfavorable comparisons between the schools and business enterprise, of applying business-industrial criteria to education, and of suggesting that business and industrial practices be adopted by educators” (p.6). in short he took the curricula of ‘american culture’ as represented in popular as well as scholarly artifacts very seriously. finally, he demonstrated how in the period following the first world war, marketing and the science of propaganda’s potential for shaping and directing public perception of business and creating “good will” (p.223) now revealed, would give rise to the public relations expert, who, like his efficiency expert counterpart of the earlier era, would bring fresh ideas and insight gleaned from business and industry into the educational realm and cement the standardization of the operation of schools as a “businesslike organization” (callahan, 1962, p.6). in the present moment these historical reminders of how business ideology, values and methods colonized the american educational mindscape seem trite. indeed, as callahan (1996) himself reflected, “i thought that education and the cult of efficiency would be a very controversial book. surprisingly it was not. perhaps that was due to the sheer weight of the evidence” (p.9). apart from the poignant reminder of the value of careful, cautious scholarly research of socio-historical phenomena, the lasting value of the work perhaps is to be found in the at the time very tentative explanation that he gave for the emergent question, “why, why did they do it?” (callahan, 1996, p.10) – more commonly referred to as the vulnerability thesis. the vulnerability thesis in the preface to education and the cult of efficiency callahan (1962) writes, i am now convinced that very much of what has happened in american education since 1900 can be explained in the basis of the extreme vulnerability of our schoolmen to public criticism…the point is that when the schools are being criticized, vulnerable school administrators have to respond… (p.ii) in particular callahan was concerned with the developments in the superintendency during the period under consideration, noting that, “because of the nature of their position in the schools and of their vulnerability to public opinion and pressure, it was the superintendents who interpreted and applied scientific management as well as other business methods to education” (p.148) with the result that superintendents’ roles took on “more of the characteristics of a managerial job in business than it did of an educational one in the schools” (p.148). he argued that because of the way american public school systems were financed and organized, “largely through property taxes” (p.ii), superintendents, and those responsible khan. fear and cheating in atlanta: evidence for the vulnerability thesis 4 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (1)2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci for educational administration who perennially found their security of tenure vulnerable to public criticism and subsequent dismissal in order, “to keep their jobs, to survive economically…to convince their critics and their school boards that they were running the schools in a businesslike way” (callahan, 1996, p.11), subordinated “educational questions…to business considerations” (p.246). in this way, he argued they often abdicated their leadership responsibilities as educational leaders by yielding to the external demands for the application of business methods in education with neither sufficient nor appropriate considerations as to whether such methods were suited to educational goals beyond efficiency, standardization and accountability.6 similarly, he argued that teachers’ instructional focus over the same period (and since then) had shifted to student/class management as they had come to adopt and implement some of the business strategies in their classrooms in order to please their administrators and their school boards which had become dominated by businessmen. an appropriate analogy for this situation might be an epidemiological cascade. he criticized the corporeal fear of dismissal describing it as a “knife poised at their financial jugular vein each year” as undermining the possibility of their “professional autonomy” (p. iii) and recommended, “seek[ing] ways and means of reducing the extreme vulnerability” (p.iii) of superintendents that included concurrent changes in the organization and financing of school systems and improvements in the quality of the preparation of educational leaders in universities. while the vulnerability thesis is a reasonable hypothesis, callahan’s text lacked the same comprehensive and convincing empirical evidence and rigorous scholarship that he provided to explain the rapid adoption of business ideology in the us in the first decades of the 20th century. consequently, while the socio-historical dimensions of education and the cult of efficiency are widely accepted and are part of the common fund of knowledge in several fields, the psycho-social dimension of the vulnerability thesis proved and has continued to be controversial. aps as evidence for the vulnerability thesis. many principals humiliated teachers in front of their peers for failing to meet targets. for example, at fain elementary school, the principal forced a teacher to crawl under a table in a faculty meeting because that teacher’s students test scores were low. (bowers et al, 2011, p.355) pressure to meet targets and improve students’ crct scores was the single most frequent explanation given by teachers for why they cheated. most teachers, and many principals, described an oppressive environment at aps where the entire focus of the district had become achieving test scores rather than teaching children. (bowers et al, 2011, p.356) michael milstead was the principal at harper archer middle school from 2006 to 2009. he noticed a discrepancy between students’ high crct scores in elementary school and their poor academic performance. many of these students were several grade levels behind academically, and milstead suspected that some of these students had inflated crct scores…mr. milstead raised [the issue] in a may 2008 meeting…executive director tamara cotman later confronted milstead about his khan. fear and cheating in atlanta: evidence for the vulnerability thesis 5 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (1)2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci comments…after cotman informed him that his services would no longer be needed in the district, michael milstead resigned. (bowers et al, 2011, p.361) callahan’s insistent question, “why, why did they do it?” is one of the questions asked and addressed in the bowers et al. (2011) report on test-tampering (cheating) in atlanta public schools. the investigative report found “widespread cheating” and “organized and systemic misconduct” related to the state of georgia’s criterion-referenced-competency test (crct) going back almost a decade. the misconduct included: teachers and administrators erasing students’ incorrect answers after the test and filling in the correct answers (wrong-to-right erasure); arranging classroom seating so that lower performing children could cheat off the higher scoring students; teachers inflecting their voices while reading the test to identify the answer in lower grades; teachers pointing out correct answer while standing at students’ desks; and teachers looking ahead to discuss the next day’s questions. it is these stories of teachers, principals and administrators in the report (volume iii), excerpts of which i used to frame the opening of this section, that constitute the strongest direct evidence for callahan’s vulnerability thesis. the report identifies three inter-related factors which contributed to the crossing of ethical lines. firstly, the annual targets set by the district were “often unrealistic” (p.350) and “unreasonable pressure” (p.350) was put on principals and teachers to achieve these targets. secondly, “a culture of fear, intimidation and retaliation spread throughout the district” (p.350). justified fears of termination and public ridicule contributed to creating and promoting a culture and “conspiracy of silence that kept many teachers from speaking freely about misconduct” (p.2) and thirdly, the superintendent and her administration “emphasized test results and public praise to the exclusion of integrity and ethics” (p.350). as the investigators state those at the top, “accepted accolades when those below them performed well, but they wanted none of the burdens of failure” (p.3), refusing to “accept responsibility for anything other than success” (p.3) and valuing public image more than the truth (see p.401). the report concludes that atlanta public schools “became such a “data-driven” system, with unreasonable and excessive pressure to meet targets, that dr. hall and her senior cabinet lost sight of conducting tests with integrity” (p.405) and that “dr. hall failed to balance the data-driven environment she created with an equal focus on the importance of integrity in achieving these goals” (p.365). once school officials began to tamper with students’ tests – and because of the way those results were fed back into creating the next year’s targets – they created a self-amplifying complex system – an expanding bubble – which compounded their complicity annually and herded the system towards a cascading if not catastrophic failure. as the investigators describe, “to maintain the gains of the past years while achieving the target of the current year required more cheating than in prior years” (p.355), meanwhile, “the gap between where students were academically and the targets they were trying to reach grew larger” (p.355). though the vulnerability thesis is not referenced anywhere in the bowers et al. (2011) report, the details and stories in the report provide a very strong warrant for callahan’s claim. with funding, employee bonuses and rewards directly tied to meeting increasingly unrealistic district targets, unreasonable pressure on teachers and principals coupled with the establishment of “a culture of fear intimidation and retaliation” (p.350) and an over-emphasis on test results and public perception to the exclusion and detriment of integrity, ethics and individual student progress. in this district the knife poised at the financial jugular of principals, teachers and school officials likely felt very real. for example, the district khan. fear and cheating in atlanta: evidence for the vulnerability thesis 6 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (1)2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci superintendent is reported as declaring an intention to replace principals who did not meet targets within three years, and followed through by replacing 90% of principals during her tenure. the authors note that, “[t]he monetary bonus for meeting targets provided little incentive to cheat. but fear of termination and public ridicule in faculty and principals meetings drove numerous educators to cross ethical lines” (p.355, italics added). the incidents described in the report directly affected thousands of children, preventing some from accessing remedial instruction and resources in a timely fashion and feeding forward false information about the system’s health. once ‘the data’ and ‘the numbers’ begin to take priority over ‘people’ and their ‘experiences’ we ought to begin to get concerned. for leaders the report strongly suggests the importance of connecting with people in the field with most direct contact and access to the phenomenon that one wishes to positively influence in order to put a human face and link actual learner experiences with what ‘the numbers’ say. as ladd (1971, 1973, cited in wisener, 1996) suggests, the vulnerability that causes superintendents and administrators to continue to operate schools like bureaucratic corporations has, resultantly, indoctrinated the educational mentality of the judicial system to the detriment of student freedom and discipline. as such, students are often deprived of their rights and victimized by trickle-down vulnerability [and] explains why school systems have developed into sprawling and "vulnerable bureaucracies in which every significant initiative from below threatens to be disruptive” (p. 52) the vulnerability associated with superintendents ripples and moves, exerting effects throughout the educational system, especially on those most vulnerable, teachers and students who, like the superintendents, learned how to survive in such a system. a vulnerability system an appropriate description or conceptualization of the pervasive culture that existed in aps during the first decade of the 21st century is that of a “vulnerability system” as proposed by jules henry (1966), i.e. the set of social factors that make humans vulnerable. henry argued that in order for a society to survive it must “make men vulnerable” since, he reasoned, “[i]f a man is invulnerable society cannot reach him, and if society produces men who cannot be reached it cannot endure” (henry, 1966, p.135). while the concept of “too big to fail” had not yet entered the popular and educational discourses with the particular shades of emphases that exist in the present economic formulation, henry’s idea can be taken as expressing a proto-sentiment that we are perhaps only now bearing witness to in education on a more global scale7. henry suggests that beginning with the vulnerability of one’s reputation (see the earlier quote about public ridicule from the report) which leads individuals to police and conceal their thoughts, utterances and actions in order to achieve a measure of social invulnerability, the vulnerability system works by conflating one’s identity through reputation with destiny, by “degrading the inner self to second, third, or merely adventitious place, and making the social face supreme, so that every step [is] sacrificed to the façade” (henry, 1966, p.136). next henry argues that one function of the feeling of vulnerability is to make us dependent on those who are capable of protecting us and fearful of those who could wound us further. this vulnerability-dependency dyad becomes embodied in different khan. fear and cheating in atlanta: evidence for the vulnerability thesis 7 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (1)2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci images of authority figures which underlie society’s fears of its individual and collective vulnerabilities and its concomitant dependencies. in elementary education he suggests that teachers are the agents of such vulnerability who, through their power to discipline, fail and punish, begin to shape students’ reputation in relation to a mythology of success through fear. such shaping begins in early childhood and intensifies through college and graduate school according to henry in which the “fear of failure is the dark aspect of the hope and striving for success” (henry, 1966, p.137). the overall result for society, according to henry, is that in order to reduce (the perception of) vulnerability, individuals must be educated to be fearful of authority, passive, evasive of critical analysis and neutral in opinion. henry equates these attitudes with antiintellectualism and strongly denounces such as “stupidity”. such widespread “stupidity” henry proposes is at the root of “incompetence” in american culture and he finds it in every educational institution, “embalmed curriculum” (p. 138) and bureaucracy. it is stupidity and incompetence in this sense that occurred in atlanta. henry concludes that social change is prevented as “the people who are in the positions most strategic for social change are usually the most vulnerable” (henry, 1966, p.140), as were callahan’s superintendents and other educational administrators, as were the teachers, principals and administrators under dr. hall and as are teachers and students at all levels. and, as i believe, might be the case with dr. hall also. the claim that dr. hall should be considered vulnerable may be a little controversial and less appealing as the ongoing media representations work to take back the unwarranted accolades and unfounded basis for dr. hall’s reputation. she too, despite her privileged positioning can be seen as suffering from the effects of a vulnerability system in education intertwined with (north american) vulnerability compounding legal and media cultures. in writing this piece for example i have tried to enact what i have called elsewhere (khan, 2012) intervulnerable critique – an attending to the mutual vulnerabilities of dr. hall and others in aps as human beings and myself as scholar writing and representing aspects of their actions in a way that keeps these (and other unanticipated and perhaps unknowable) vulnerabilities ever at the forefront (see also gilson (2011) on ignorance and epistemic vulnerability) and as a perpetual reminder that even those in positions of power and privilege are “vulnerable subjects” (fineman, 2008). ceasing the fear and manipulation of individuals’ feelings of vulnerability is the core of henry’s proposal for bringing to a close the chapter on education for idiocy, stupidity and incompetence. in this way, according to henry, humans would not learn to fear their vulnerabilities nor would they become indifferent and complacent in thinking themselves invulnerable. it is not that humans, or to expand the concept via a more ecological framing – biological life – and perhaps even further – organically arising complex forms – should ‘forget’ that they are vulnerable, but rather, it is that fearing one’s and other’s vulnerabilities and seeking means, mechanisms and methods for (a false sense of) invulnerability should and can no longer be a basis for sound or humane curriculum or educational decision-making. again, the evidence from the report into cheating in aps supports this. learning to appreciate, actively value without commodifying relationships of mutual and coconstitutional interdependencies and intervulnerabilities (khan, 2012; see also henderson, davis & king, 2004) is perhaps one of the tasks to which curriculum studies will have to turn in the next moment8. ‘vulnerability’ as leitmotif for 21st century curriculum khan. fear and cheating in atlanta: evidence for the vulnerability thesis 8 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (1)2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci to richly theorize a concept of vulnerability is to develop a more complex subject around which to build social policy and law… (fineman, 2008, p.1) a carefully developed account of vulnerability will assist in understanding the ways in which institutions and practices…shape people’s inherent and situational resilience and vulnerabilities; and in developing respectful responses to these vulnerabilities. (rogers, mackenzie & dodd, 2012, p.32) proposing a theory of vulnerability obviously requires more than a recitation of lists of people presumed to be vulnerable…a theory of vulnerability…should be able to draw on empirical facts and circumstances in order to explain why some individuals or groups are more prone to disease, illness, injury, psychological harm, or death than other individuals or groups. (macklin, 2012, p.70) the concept of vulnerability is currently being rethought and retheorized on a number of different fronts, including the law (fineman, 2008), research on human subjects (levine et al., 2004) and nonhuman animals (thierney, 2011), public health and disease (bluhm, 2012), globalization (kirby, 2011), human trafficking (fitzgerald, 2012), and bioethics (rogers, mackenzie &dodds, 2012). many of these are grounded in feminist ethics (eg. cadwallader, 2012; knisley, 2012) and seek to move the conversation around vulnerability beyond that of risk and harm based discourses. to these are added psychologically pressing concerns and anxieties about inter-related and connected systemic vulnerabilities that permeate bodily, personal, social, political, financial, economic, ecological, and mythospiritual spheres of life and generalized fear of ruin. assuming for the moment that this trend continues and is compounded we are likely to see vulnerability emerging as a key if not strategic theme in education in this century as all of the areas to which the concept applies are addressable to varying degrees throughout the educational system. further, if callahan and henry’s descriptions and analyses are correct, then the vulnerability creating and maintaining system of education and schooling is a sensible place to work to interrupt current and historical notions of vulnerability/invulnerability and theorize new and different conceptions. as the very short and select list of references above demonstrates, the work of theorizing vulnerability and developing legal, philosophical and policy frameworks has already begun in a number of fields. education and curriculum studies are perhaps yet to engage explicitly and confidently in these conversations. but as i have demonstrated with callahan and henry, our scholarly heritage contains some dormant seeds that perhaps are only now finding the right set of conditions for germination but will require more mindful attention. perennial and emergent issues of concern to educators and education researchers such as those that arise in considering different embodiments socially located (disability, gender, race, stereotypes, sexual orientation, religious/belief orientation etc.), other concerns such as those relating to mental and physical well-being (eg. anxiety, bullying, testing, cheating, coercion, discrimination, poverty, school violence), urban and rural education etc., as well as more theoretically inclined discourses around for example cosmopolitanism, social justice, khan. fear and cheating in atlanta: evidence for the vulnerability thesis 9 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (1)2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci decolonial thinking and eco-spirituality well-being in education may well benefit from (re)considering and testing the boundaries of the concept of vulnerability. in the interest of space and within the genre of the academic journal article, i have not developed these streams of thought in this paper. while invulnerability and its fiction of independence, i would argue, emerge from a psychopathology of fear, vulnerability, its other, is constructed socially and individually as a psychopathology of power/knowledge. individuals and institutions with power/knowledge – teachers, schools, researchers etc. – through their capacity to position and enforce vulnerability and woundedness as ‘lack’ of power, knowledge, and agency, construct, and regulate deficit discourses which attempt to discipline, silence or co-opt for their own purposes, any disruptive or unruly forms of difference. educators at all levels will need to be vigilant, especially given the level of trust placed in teachers across all levels but especially at those levels where government-administered high-stakes standardized testing is used. as callahan’s analysis revealed, some of the pathology linked to henry’s vulnerability system is generated by practitioners in higher education and certified/credentialed through programmes in higher educational institutions including perhaps those in which we work. studying the vulnerabilities of educators while being vulnerable oneself in a variety of ways will likely prove a challenging but productive problematic for educational theorizing and the study of curriculum. conclusion the discourse and enactments of many educational systems around the planet have come to be oriented by a scientifically minded business ethos and ideology (giroux, 2007, welch, 1998). this is incorporated in a desire for and practices of technological solutions, managerial accountability, standardized assessment, and hyper-competition towards an end of generating a consistent and reliable ‘product’ efficiently and economically. the “data-driven” socialscientifically trained experts of today tasked with managing such school systems trace a recent common ancestry though the business-minded efficiency and educational costaccounting experts and the psychological marketing training of public-relations experts of the first half of the twentieth century. similar to callahan’s (1962) argument that no reasonable person, “can deny the advisability of applying certain business practices where they are appropriate to the work of schools” (p.177, italics added), i believe that data-rich psychological and social science methods do have a role to play in designing curriculum, working towards improved outcomes from schooling for all, and informing educational decision making today. as callahan argued, it was not the “borrowing from business and industry” that contributed to the tragedy but “in adopting values and practices indiscriminately and applying them with little or no consideration of educational values or purposes (p.244, italics added). more than 50 years later, bowers et al. (2011) echo a similar sentiment about educational targets that exemplifies both callahan’s and henry’s theses about vulnerability in education. they write that, while [w]e do not express any opinion as to the merits of targets…targets were implemented by aps in such a way that teachers and administrators believed they had to choose between cheating to meet targets or failing to meet targets and losing their jobs. (p.351) khan. fear and cheating in atlanta: evidence for the vulnerability thesis 10 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (1)2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci business, psychological science and social science, provide means not ends, and as callahan (1962) reminds “the end being to provide the best possible education for our children” (p.177). as the bowers, wilson and hyde (2011) report on cheating in aps demonstrates beginning to cheat is a sticky web from which it is not easy to extricate oneself. to use another metaphor, it can create ever expanding educational bubbles – which must eventually burst – whose very existence and eventual collapse endangers the faith and trust placed in the entire learning enterprise. notes 1st.khan@ucalgary.ca 2 the crtc is an annual multiple choice examination of five subject areas given to public school students in georgia as part of the no child left behind (nclb) policy (see bowers et al., 2011, pp. 5-6, for additional details). 3 this is grounded in complexity informed thinking and recent calls for balancing “big-data” with “long-data” as argued by arbesman (2013) for example which i take as being analogous to a call for system-level biographies. my time-scale in this paper is more moderate. 4 since its publication more than half a century ago, education and the cult of efficiency has been an oft-cited text, embraced by scholars across disciplines including anthropology, law, management, the history of medicine and incarceration in addition to educational administration and curriculum studies (see iannacconne, 1996; lutz, 1996; wisener, 1996 for extensive bibliographies). in curriculum studies more specifically, elliott eisner (1979, cited in wisener, 1996) counts callahan’s work in explaining the reluctance to integrate and address artistic and aesthetic modalities in educational administration while schubert et al. (2002) cite it as a landmark historical critique of the social efficiency movement in north american curriculum and education. in curriculum studies callahan’s text warrants passing mention for example in schubert et al. (2002) as a landmark historical critique of the social efficiency movement in curriculum and education and receives a single citational acknowledgement in the synoptic understanding curriculum (pinar et al., 1995) and no mention in the encyclopedia (kridel, 2010). its location, bridging mid-century social efficiency curriculum discourses and the first stirrings of reconceptualist theorizing is very suggestive however. 5 the book is divided into 10 chapters. the first four trace the rise of the efficiency experts in the first three decades of the twentieth century and the next three describe the entrenchment of the factory system in american education. the last three chapters, respectively, describe the establishment of a new “type of school administrator” through the work of professors of education, how the efficiency expert would be joined by his progeny, the public relations expert and concludes with several suggestions for addressing the phenomenon which callahan refers to as an ‘american tragedy in education.’ 6 we can draw a line from this point to explain the emphasis on the data-driven accountability methods that have become characteristic of the discourse in education and which were heavily deployed in aps under hall and her colleagues. mailto:st.khan@ucalgary.ca khan. fear and cheating in atlanta: evidence for the vulnerability thesis 11 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (1)2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 7 atlanta is likely not the only city with pervasive testing, unreasonable demands being placed on educators’ shoulders, fearfulness of one sort or another being used to enforce compliance, and cheating and other educationally suspect if not illegal behavior. 8see for example khan (2011). references arbesman, s. (2013). stop hyping big data and start paying attention to ‘long data’. (opinion, 29 jan) retrieved from http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/01/forget-big-data-thinklong-data/ on april 03, 2013. bluhm, r. (2012). vulnerability, health, and illness.international journal of feminist approaches to bioethics, 5(2), 147–161. bowers, m. j., wilson, r. e. & hyde, r. l. (2011). report of the overview and findings of the special investigatory committee set up to investigate cheating in atlanta public schools (vols. i – iii).office of the governor special investigations. retrieved from http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/us/volume1.pdfhttp://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/us/volume2.pdfhttp://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/us/volume-3.pdf on april 2, 2013. cadwallader, j. r. (2012). (un) expected suffering: the corporeal specificity ofvulnerability. international journal of feminist approaches to bioethics, 5(2), 105–125. callahan, r. e. (1962). education and the cult of efficiency: a study of the social forces that have shaped the administration of the public schools. the university of chicago press. callahan, r. e. (1996). foreword.peabody journal of education, 71(2), 1-14. deitel, r. (2011). the perfect test. rotterdam, the netherlands: sense publishers. downey, m. (2013). criminal indictment of beverly hall: is it illegal to be an overly demanding boss? posting retrieved from http://blogs.ajc.com/get-schooledblog/2013/04/02/criminal-indictment-of-beverly-hall-is-it-illegal-to-be-a-demandingleader/?cxntfid=blogs_get_schooled_blog on april 02, 2013. fitzgerald, s. a. (2012). vulnerable bodies, vulnerable borders: extraterritoriality and human trafficking. feminist legal studies, 20(3), 227–244. doi:10.1007/s10691-0129210-0 gilson, e. (2011). vulnerability, ignorance, and oppression. hypatia, 26(2), 308–332. giroux, h. (2007). the university in chains: confronting the military-industrial-academic complex. paradigm publishers. henderson, g. e., davis, a. m. & king, n. m. p. (2004). vulnerability to influence: a two way street. the american journal of bioethics, 4(3), 50-52. henry, j. (1966). vulnerability in education. teachers college record, 68(2), 135-145. iannacconne, l. (1996). callahan’s vulnerability thesis and dissatisfaction theory. peabody journal of education, 71(2), 110-119. khan, s.k. (2011). towards a complicated conversation among disability studies, complexity thinking, and education. journal of the canadian association of curriculum studies (jcacs), 9(2), 5-29. http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/01/forget-big-data-think-long-data/ http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/01/forget-big-data-think-long-data/ http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/us/volume-1.pdf http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/us/volume-1.pdf http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/us/volume-2.pdf http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/us/volume-2.pdf http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/us/volume-3.pdf http://blogs.ajc.com/get-schooled-blog/2013/04/02/criminal-indictment-of-beverly-hall-is-it-illegal-to-be-a-demanding-leader/?cxntfid=blogs_get_schooled_blog http://blogs.ajc.com/get-schooled-blog/2013/04/02/criminal-indictment-of-beverly-hall-is-it-illegal-to-be-a-demanding-leader/?cxntfid=blogs_get_schooled_blog http://blogs.ajc.com/get-schooled-blog/2013/04/02/criminal-indictment-of-beverly-hall-is-it-illegal-to-be-a-demanding-leader/?cxntfid=blogs_get_schooled_blog khan. fear and cheating in atlanta: evidence for the vulnerability thesis 12 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (1)2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci khan, s.k. (2012).rehearsing a maroon mythopoetics in mathematics education through consideration of an artefact of mathematics popularization (the pedagogic film all is number). unpublished doctoral dissertation, university of british columbia, vancouver, canada. available at https://circle.ubc.ca/bitstream/handle/2429/43490/ubc_2012_fall_khan_steven.pdf?se quence=1 kirby, p. (2011). vulnerability and globalization: the social impact of globalization. in bryan s. turner (ed.) the routledge international handbook of globalization studies (pp. 114 – 134). new york: routledge knisely, l. c. (2012). oppression, normative violence, and vulnerability: the ambiguous beauvoirian legacy of butler’s ethics. philosophia, 2(2), 145–166. kridel, c. (2010). encyclopedia of curriculum studies. ca: sage publications ltd. levine, c., faden, r., grady, c., hammerschmidt, d., eckenwiler, l. &sugarman, j. (2004). the limitations of vulnerability as a protection for human research participants.the american journal of bioethics, 4(3), 44-49. lutz, f. w. (1996). the best laid plans of mice and men: a note on intent. peabody journal of education, 71(2), 120-123. lutz, f. w. & wisener, b. f. (1996).vulnerability of humankind. peabody journal of education, 71(2), 86-95. macklin, r. (2012). a global ethics approach to vulnerability. international journal of feminist approaches to bioethics, 5(2), 64–81. pinar, w. f., reynolds, w. m., slattery, p. & taubman, p. m. (1995). understanding curriculum. new york: peter lang. rogers, w., mackenzie, c., & dodds, s. (2012). why bioethics needs a concept of vulnerability. international journal of feminist approaches to bioethics, 5(2), 11–38. schubert, w. h., schubert, a. l. l., thomas, t. p. & carroll, w. m. (2002). curriculum books: the first hundred years. new york: peter lang. thierman, s. (2011). the vulnerability of other animals. journal for critical animal studies, ix (1/2), 182-208. welch, a. r. (1998). the cult of efficiency in education: comparative reflections on the reality and the rhetoric. comparative education, 34(2), 157-175. wisener, b. f. (1996). influence of callahan’s vulnerability thesis on thought and practice in educational administration, 1962-1992. peabody journal of education, 71(2), 41-63. submitted: april, 4th, 2013 approved: october, 28th, 2013 https://circle.ubc.ca/bitstream/handle/2429/43490/ubc_2012_fall_khan_steven.pdf?sequence=1 https://circle.ubc.ca/bitstream/handle/2429/43490/ubc_2012_fall_khan_steven.pdf?sequence=1 to cite this article please include all of the following details: price, joanne. (2012). learning with abeyance gesturing toward worlds and the spaces around worlds. transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> learning with abeyance gesturing toward worlds and the spaces around worlds joanne price 1 doctoral student at the university of british columbia, canada just as the moon can only shine when the sun is not shining, only when the foregoing consciousness is no longer prevalent, can a fresh consciousness arise. (vigata paccayo) it is that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment which constitutes poetic faith. (samuel taylor coleridge) abeyance is often used in relation to transitory times. a sentence like, ‘her academic journey was held in abeyance’ implies a sense flux as well as “expectancy” and “suspension” (oed, 2012). it conjures images of someone waiting, lost in reverie. moments i know well: having forgotten the fastening holding the frame is un-locked, a connection arises with opening the door, feeling the breeze and allowing myself to suspend further. abeance, an old french word from which abeyance derives, brings the light of “aspiration, (and) desire” to the scene. it is a noun of the condition of abeer, “to expect, look, gape”, from ba(y)er, “to open wide” in “remembrance, expectation and contemplation” (merriam-webster, 2012). interestingly, its root, baer is also the source of “recessed space”. modern connotations of abeyant latency hold on to 1520s interpretations, when the anglo-french word abeiance emerged with particular reference to lawsuits concerning a person in hope of receiving property; implying ownership as a desired outcome. around the time of the british union with wales in 1536 and 1543, for example, there were numerous properties in a state of abeyance in y mers or the welsh marches, a place featured in this paper. 2 many cases lasted hundreds of years – a problem being the indefinable nature of the area and the difficulties in reconciling differences between welsh and english legal and social norms. its “perceived hybridity and disorder” by politicians requiring definition, “led to its isolation” being seen as neither one nor the other, “but a distinctive and problematic borderland” (morgan and power, 2009, p. 105). this has persevered into recent times, with the marches omitted from most contemporary maps, despite being widely referred to in everyday conversation. in storying my current relationship with abeyance, this paper plays with the ambiguity of the word; giving up on one right definition. in so doing, it holds back from being everything it can be, and creates possibilities for relating with the world and its “muffled middle” in intimate and ultimate ways (thomas, 1954, p. 1). by learning to suspend the self from the ego’s tendency for divisiveness, being with abeyance is receptive to life’s way – revealing projections of selfhood, acknowledgement of difference, and the reality of oneness. price. learning with abeyance gesturing toward worlds and the spaces around worlds 67 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci stories speak to moments of centred-openness in learning, from where it is possible to converse in ways that suspend disbelief. gestures of awareness accompanying these moments of difference ripple through stories with a consciousness of continuance. consequently, stories hold within them hope that the part of me that is looking for an identity defined by what has been given, will acknowledge, on a cellular level, that it is not everything; necessary, though, if i’m to work creatively with moments of fertile emptiness as a conscious teacher-learner, and to relate, through living processes of abeyance, with what may emerge. abeyance gesturing as form three gestures of abeyance give form to stories – form that is empty of itself and, therefore, full of everything else. gestures derive from natalie depraz, francisco verala and pierre vermersch’s description of the act of becoming aware, and are based on the phenomenological way of épochè (1999). the opening story, beet love, describes my phase of consciously settling the mind and suspending habitual thought. memories of learning to harvest beets in the welsh marches offer a quality of presence favourable for further suspension. this is followed with the problem of chembakolli, storying a teaching experience in southern india and describing my redirection of attention from the exterior world to an interior one. a third story brings these memories into conversation with my current situation as a doctoral student. one plus one equals three is shared through gestures of letting go and is suggestive of how learning with abeyance may emerge within the “enabling constraints” of classrooms (sumara, lucekapler & iftody, 2008, p. 238). it became clear during my writing process that the structural dynamics of depraz, verala and vermersch’s work on épochè resonates with my experiences of learning with abeyance. characterised by its enaction, épochè is itself embedded within a process whereby something comes into consciousness, “something which inhabited me in a way which was confused, opaque, affective, immanent; something which is pre-reflective, and eventually becomes part of shared, inter-subjective knowledge” (depraz et al., p. 3). epochè complements processes of currere (pinar), “mindfulness” (thich nhat hanh), a “reflective act” (heidegger), and “phenomenological reduction” or “bracketing” (husserl), to name a few. all of these processes share a contradictory nature in that they clarify phases of awareness while simultaneously dissolving distinctions through lived experience. in similar gestures, not dissimilar to the welsh marches, they at once, turn attention inward while rising to a world of their own volition. this paradox brings a sense of playfulness to stories, and perhaps, as doll suggests, “more dancing, [and] less marching” (1989, p. 4). choosing to dance also speaks to courage involved in learning with abeyance, peculiarly as it opens itself in surprising ways, involves all of our being, and is never complete. abeyance gesturing as contiguity the words of inspiring educators’, flow through stories, bringing a sense of spaciousness to experiences. they converse with the interplay of pieces and gesture toward less fear and more space for suspension in learning. stories engage with a description of experiences, as “only this allows moving forward in refining past work, and … confirm(ing) or invalidate(ing) past descriptions” (depraz et al., p. 2). this, as the following tells, has little to do with fixed identities and everything to do with cumulative cycles of openness. full immersion in the creative flow is easier said than done, and frequently meets with a fascinating array of resistances. “there’s something provocative” in these resistances, says price. learning with abeyance gesturing toward worlds and the spaces around worlds 68 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci elizabeth ellsworth, “ about learning’s proximity to discredited things such as trauma, surprise, discontinuity, tickling, the unconscious, paradox, magic, silence, obsession, invisible and unrepeatable events” (1997, p. 194). negotiating the psychic gaps that exist between the desire to learn with abeyance and “the difference between conscious and unconscious knowledges, conscious and unconscious desires” (p. 41) intensify from time to time. relating abeyance as contiguity is primarily concerned with new ways of facing and releasing energies, particularly insidious traumas associated with global inequity. consequently, difficult and distracting energies ruffle through stories, as i find myself in the uncomfortable territory of life not-on-my-terms. occasional displays of divisiveness do, in places, gesture toward a surrendering of self-protection – and the change of tone and suspension accompanying these moments inhabit qualities of stillness, further dissolving the “operational, procedural or performative” dimensions of épochè (depraz et al., p. 2). in maurice merleau-ponty words, “i cannot understand the function of the living body except by enacting it myself, and except in so far as i am a body which rises toward the world” (cited in thompson, 2004, p. 393). this, along with gregory bateson’s work, attunes theory with its surroundings by showing how the bodies of living beings, in art and science, are secreted from process, which is life. william doll’s work reveals how complexity theory may have a strong influence on teaching and learning. he considers schools as open systems and fractal in nature, like the society of which they are part. open and complex, they are “sensitive to initial conditions and have emergent properties … therefore, they are dependent on feedback” (varbelow, on doll, 2012, p. 86). story one: beet love i am a correlate of this world. (madeleine r. grumet) we should do better to fully accept the notoriously different and more difficult situation of existing in a world where no one in particular can have a claim to better understanding. (francisco varela) this is a story of beetroot harvesting in y mers, the welsh marches of the united kingdom. it draws on memories, mostly from teenage years, of working with my family after we’d arrive home from school. i remember feeling frustrated with my parents, grandparents, and their friends and neighbours’ ways of not needing to know everything, and with my insistence to find out. late summer evenings, like 3 . trying all ways to make time pass quickly, throwing the odd beet in the air and laughing as we’re asked to ‘settle down’; then, slowly giving in to the field giving in, and to my family’s ways for longer than we can say. we chat about school, what we know, who we’re going to be, and if it’s all the same to you, we learn that “being bush smart is different from city knowing”; that it has little to do with “needing filling of a lacanian lack” (cole and o’riley, cited in doll & gough, 2002, p. 147). we’re working with beet on the roundabout; an irregular shaped field, the last before mynydd troed mountain officially begins. why it’s called the roundabout, when it’s anything but round we don’t know. it’s always been like this. we’ve grown to understand the soil, where it yields a saleable crop, where knotted grasses thrive; but why there’s a strip of stony soil where nothing seems to flourish, we don’t know. ‘we planted trees along it a few years ago and they’re price. learning with abeyance gesturing toward worlds and the spaces around worlds 69 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci struggling to take root’. ‘maybe, there was a stream there once?’ ‘maybe. we’ll have to wait and see what happens’. life is like picking beet, you just have to get into the rhythm of it, they say. giving in some more to the monotony releases why’s into cans. it’s not so much about thinking. it’s something quite different, working with movements of what is. the slowing down of time and entering into flow state can represent “a break with a ‘natural’ or non-examined attitude” (depraz et al., p. 4), re-connecting ourselves with place in the very “way by which we were always there – by our own lived body” (casey, 1997, p. 21). listening to autumn gentian’s reds on how to live in doubt and come to an understanding that everything in life is gain – transforming the ‘don’t knows’ into challenging learners to find their own way. there are, after all, many ways to learning responsibility. picking and choosing which beet to save and which to discard is different again. ‘the shops only want smooth rounded ones.’ ‘put all the scraggy ones over here, we’ll eat them.’ the odd, queer looking beets are just as tasty, but people would sooner leave them on the shelves than take them home for tea. we twist the tops from beet heading for market as no one wants these either, for fear of getting poisoned by the oxalic acid in their veins. we eat them though, usually steamed with garlic and rolled with ricotta, at least during september and october. i know instinctively how the market’s fears, and school’s for that matter, don’t always play out at home and how they often do; how if school knew, we already know about life and death, it could make a world of difference … and if the pulling of beet, the twisting of their tops, their swinging into buckets and on into crates … if these movements as they’re held in our bodies were included in the curriculum, it might bring vitality to differences between paradigms. i learned from home how the attention given to the unsellable beet offers a worldview as expansive as teachings in school. we place the beet on the earth for a day or two when it’s dry; knowing that this somehow retains their purples, before layering them with straw and bringing them inside for the winter. without wanting to create an idyllic picture, practices of being with, in this way, offer nourishing and intuitive ways to live contradictions. in fact, the two call to each other. they call with “a strong internal obviousness, antecedent to and qualified by a gradual process of filling-in which is a characteristic property of suspension” at the heart of abeyance (depraz et al., p. 4). and, “whether we give this inwardness the name of feeling, receptiveness or response to stimuli, volition, or something else – it harbours, in some degree of awareness, the absolute interest of the organism in its own being and continuation” (jonas, cited in thompson, 2004, p. 383). this feeling, however, was easily interrupted by my call of difference; struggling with what i perceived to be society’s unquestioned acceptance that variations in people are not to be attended to in the same way as it is with beets. growing up in a community given to honouring the sanctity of marriage was too much juxtaposition for my growing sense of abeyance to reconcile. so, tuning in with the land helped me relate with the luscious thrum of the world even though i often made the turn in relations of co-existent dissociation. buzzard soars above, effortlessly envisioning possibilities contained in the landscape below. skylarks thrill high and clear, curving with the lilt and tilt of the land from where there inevitably arrives a peace, after a while of quiet. initiated some days by a silent withdrawal from the world, then some days the quiet arrives unnoticed, especially with the jays’ singing their gentle, “oh isn’t life a terrible thing, thank god”, call of the cosmos (thomas, p. 30). time again, jays swoosh back and forth to an oak tree – its curriculum, “rich, relational, recursive and rigorous” (doll, 2012). they bury their acorns there, along with squirrels and mice price. learning with abeyance gesturing toward worlds and the spaces around worlds 70 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci – knowing that nothing is given, everything is made together. this builds to a complex scene, a vision of oak seen within lines of tension in its bark, exposing living tissues close to the surface and a criss-cross of branches shouldering the weight of the world – its clear purpose appearing confused by multi-directional growth. grounding the “wild profusion of existing things (foucault, cited in lather, 1996, p. 36) in the propriety of “foundational knowledge” – in order we learn from our inherent fissures, failures and refusals (lather, p. 53). mynydd troed holds itself tall too. belonging neither in the black mountains nor the brecon beacons it rises with its arms apart, connecting ranges. unlike the mountains just twelve miles to the north, it escaped the attention of the anglo-normans when the wales-england border was being defined in 1536. the land was considered too rugged and so the dividing line fell east along the wye valley, leaving an extra hundred miles of hills and valleys for the native celts, who were nevertheless bought under close supervision. the notion that the border separated “civility” from “savagery” is an enduring one say rhys morgan and gerald power (p. 105). they describe the area as a “land of peace” (p. 107), a “theoretical defence … in a constant state of flux” (p. 121). however, in many histories of wales, with the act of union, the marches were declared by the english government to be “obsolete” (p. 121). the “subdued welsh principality was theoretically absorbed into the english state and should have ceased to exist” (p. 121). in response, the “expansive nature of early modern welsh identity combined to move the marches into the collective imagination” (p. 118), and although the area has been largely ignored by historians, its reputation as a “zone of interaction” (p. 122) is alive today. to francis bacon, the word “march” was flexible and could be applied to the old welsh marches, the “marches inward” and its english shires, the “marches outwarde” (p. 111). to date, the area is “perceived as different” (p. 109), and its reputation as a region of cultural “degeneracy and sexual danger” has “lingered” long since john milton noticed it in the nineteenth century (p. 117). given its history being “one of survival and transformation” (p. 120), being of curious dis-position, i look to school for questions left unanswered at home. i work hard at marching outwarde, reaching conclusions, and at eighteen, leave “all my cares and doubts to follow the homeless tide … the stranger’s call” all the way to northern sotho, southern africa (tagore, cited in doll & gough, p. 289). traveling back and forth, roundabout the road of otherness for years; searching for ways to live inclusively. gerald of wales, an author in medieval times, also left, overwhelmed by being neither english nor welsh and with “both peoples regard(ing) me as a stranger” (cited in morgan and power, p. 117). 4 unlike gerald, i eventually journeyed into inner city london schools, and on, to the relative safety of radical pressure groups – save the beets, fighting for the rights of sexual minorities in cities like bangalore. with time, while continuing to travel as r.s. peters muses “with a different view” (cited in doll, 1972, p. 318) i begin to create space for calm amidst crisis, accept limitations of self and re-settle with abeyance. as i learn to dance inward, the silence has at times, settled attention and naturally expanded “via a coupling with panoramic consciousness … characterised by the letting go of voluntary searching and the embracing of a mode of receptivity that is typically lived as openness” (depraz et al., p. 6). story two: the problem with chembakolli one listens and therefore learns, only in a state of silence, in which this whole background is in abeyance, is quiet; then, it seems to me, it is possible to communicate. (jiddu krishnamurti) price. learning with abeyance gesturing toward worlds and the spaces around worlds 71 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci i greet the divine in you, which out of my being makes an open door. (menna elfyn) the following story of abeyance is about a prolonged and unscheduled experience of waiting in an unfamiliar place. it begins with my experiences as a teacher educator guiding a professional development visit in southern india and describes events culminating in a redirection of attention from the exterior world to an interior one – a distancing from a worldly show to the mental, carrying this perceiving. half-listening to a conversation between teachers in bangalore central station, i look to mazus flowers, suspending from brickwork on the opposite platform wall, a metre from the rail tracks. as soon as a train arrives, we lose sight of its beauty as people, their luggage and animals, embark and disembark. the sounds of chai-wallahs, fruit-vendors, porters fill the space, rushing on board to sell and jumping off again, sometimes as the train’s leaving the station. the noises, smells and fears are foreign and familiar. we’ve been sitting on our luggage, waiting for a train to mysore for three hours. it’s late leaving chennai and hasn’t caught up time. the sixteen teachers i’m with are calmer now. when we first heard of the delay it was upsetting for some and i was reminded that since meeting them at the airport three days ago, our itinerary has been revised over and over, with lost luggage, the closure of a dream school we’d planned to visit, and now, a severely delayed train distracting our intended course. our goal is to reach chembakolli, an adivasi 5 village well known to teachers, many of whom have been creating lesson plans on the area aimed at eight-year-old children in the uk, for a decade. this is their first visit to india and the unexpected and inconvenient nature of the wait is heightened by its strangeness. my discomfort relates to fulfilling a separate aim – the underlying reason for this journey is to trouble teachers’ notions of development. we’re to encounter people, places and issues with different views on life in order to address a concern that many primary school teachers in the uk teach chembakolli as if it represents the whole of india. during the ten days before we reach our destination my role is to emphasise grey areas, and on arrival, to go on a long walk and an overnight stay in this remote place. with time and an acceptance that there’s little we can do about the situation, stress slowly dissipates into quiet. we reach for our cameras and notebooks with the intention of recording platform life, for people at home to see where we are. eventually, these objects return to our bags and we simply sit and observe the nuances we’re attending to –paint flaking from cement pillars, intense blues, ruby’s, golden greens, vivid whites, sounds within sound and with letting go, a lulled hum of mind. this process of tuning in with our surroundings resonates with husserl’s version of suspension as reflexive redirection referring to a switch from an object to an act; to what piaget calls “making conscious”, the redirection of attention away from aiming at a goal or from the perception of the effects of action towards the means by which such an action is performed, i.e. the psychological act which organizes and regulates the perceiving. the impetus for this conversion is multilayered and unknown, the “starting up process … obscured by the fact that this beginning has already taken place for someone who uses it to describe this very same transition” (depraz et al., p. 5). épochè can arise in many ways, of which the following speak to teachers’ experiences – through aesthetic surprise; the mediation of others (and in this situation, the mediation of events themselves), and / or through practices initiated by the individual. price. learning with abeyance gesturing toward worlds and the spaces around worlds 72 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci in the past i’ve been fascinated with teacher responses, their coping mechanisms and presentations of change. reactions to the harsh realities of poverty, to meeting countless parents whose children have been lost to trafficking, have largely been in keeping with what i need to hear – validating my sense of purpose with feedback like, “the experience was life-changing”, and offering false protection from the reality of global injustice. in waiting on the platform, i open myself slightly to question what might also be going on here. what exactly do i want to change in the teachers? am i sure they are representing the whole in an obscure way? how do i know? i shift awkwardly on my luggage, trying to get comfortable, and somehow find my way on to the floor, sandals off, feet on cool concrete. aware of my change in position, i glance around and notice a number of teachers already sitting like this. it seems we’re being guided by the waiting, what john dewey calls the “other mode of control”, where the guiding lies not unilaterally with the teacher nor with the students, but instead “resides in the nature of the situations themselves” (doll, 2000, p. 71). waiting takes on the weight of karmic intervention. being “beside itself in an empty space in which life unfolds” (irwin & springgay 2007, p. 71). what might the problem with chembakolli really be about? i shift again. someone’s squeezing past us speaking english. ‘may i help you? are you lost?’ ‘we’re ok thanks, our train is late.’ they move on and with a swish; rhythms of the station draw in. groups of porters rise from shadows with the announcement of a new train’s arrival; homing in on unsuspecting travellers who, more open than not, generously give in to their persistence. i’m wondering what the journeys mean to each passenger. a commute to or from work, a chase for wealth, family visit, re-union with a loved one, an auspicious or embarrassed return home. trains fill with possibilities; of long periods of waiting and possibly, nothing – except for the something we are seeking being the same something that is seeking us. doors open for fractals of seconds and close again, hinting of times to follow. i’m in an alephical space 6 , where everything exists in the same place at the same time. what are you doing, a stranger in this place? i’m not a stranger. i’m not praying for a safe return home, i haven’t just been imagining my le creuset, beets and lemon grass. with so many no’s and a taste of hysteria, it appears the self i’m rejecting is evolving into a more forceful ego. refusing full contact with intimacy, it’s saying it likes to fit, to see itself replicated, achieve confirmation of its existence and importance. the teacher i’ve attempted to take out into the world, despite being challenged, has changed and yet, when under pressure defends itself. from what? all that we are not? i look to the group. have i made a habit of generalising their experiences? pursuing the goal of educating them in order to avoid turning away from the world myself? there’s a way in which the perceiver is the perceived; “the observer, the observed” (krishnamurti); or as bateson interprets, something which is “responsive to the pattern which connects” (1979, p.9). acknowledging this brings attention to my breathing, core to the process of conversion. i sit and observe, engaging without doing anything other than being, creating a centering of attention so strong and immediate it feels hypnotic. experiencing the lived body as a focal centre in this way is “psychic or spiritual” and refers to leaving “the world as an extension beyond the bounds of the body” (depraz et al., p. 9). the sun rises high; its shadows falling across the platform in black and white, interrupted by the ebb and flow of porters and passengers swaying back and forth, predictably so. mazus stays still, interrupting distinctions with her subtle colours, and revealing the path to peace doesn’t have to be a fight – just the art of cleansing what’s superfluous. price. learning with abeyance gesturing toward worlds and the spaces around worlds 73 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci doors continue to open. i see truth and lies, people pushing to find seats on the same train that others calmly enter. listen. there are “movements and countries and mazes and colours and dismays and rainbows … tunes and wishes and flight and fall … despairs”, fields of beet, mazus japonicus growing in cracks along station rafters (thomas, 1954, p. 3). its delicacy radiates into the world and its translunary sentiments – an herbal infusion to tone the system. the peddlers and porters notice. an old woman with a bowl passes by, offering a nod rather than asking for help; her gestures in keeping with her thoughts, suspending disbelief. in a fleeting moment i trust in the wait; submit to its “wrenching” (depraz et al., p. 8), its mystery and let the experience speak for itself. doors open again. i’m showing teachers an old image designed to shake their assumptions. although, we’re pausing, waiting for what seems an eon. then, instead of the usual, ‘who do you think took this picture and why?’ i feel fogginess, confusion, nothingness. aware that i’m no longer experiencing the self in the old “natural” way, i “sense form emerging up until the moment of brutally clear perception” (depraz et al., p. 11). someone asks, ‘can we say this another way?’ ‘are we talking about abeyance … as it derives from ‘abeyd’, a form of abide?’ to abide means “to wait … to remain, continue, in a place. to remain or continue in some state or action, to continue to be something”; “to stand firm, to hold to, to remain true to …” (merriam-webster, 2012). out of nowhere, the station’s overhead speakers’ project – ‘shatabti 7 express is arriving’. its sky blue carriages slowly approach, revealing in bright red and green lettering, the ‘fastest train in india’. our stirring attracts the attention of porters who crowd in. since we know, now, they are nothing more than signs of where we have been, we settle in to hear what they have to say … story three: one plus one equals three a circle of sound, water and fire light on uncountable miles of mountains. (gillian clarke) a play for voices. (dylan thomas) with further suspension, the quality and tone of this story changes. learning with abeyance passes from an inward direction of receptivity or attitude of listening, through gestures of “letting come” which “eminently involve action” (depraz et al., p. 10). situated in the university of british columbia, vancouver, having arrived here by train and by plane in a roundabout 8 way, conversations, both imaginative and real, are suggestive of how receptivity to new ideas may emerge within the “enabling constraints” of classrooms (sumara, luce-kapler & iftody, 2008, p. 238), and of how suspension plays gesture toward worlds beyond. drawn to the expansive energy of the pacific west coast, after twenty years in the field of social justice education, i find myself a student in a classroom… about to encounter a fundamental paradox. the land on which the classroom is constructed is unceded musqueam territory. again, what am i, a privileged stranger, doing in this place? in class, we continue reading, “a dj named spooky juxtaposes duchamp with fanon, nietzsche with philip glass, haiku with jazz, inspired by ‘theories of excess and creative misreading’” (pinar, 2009, p. 154). this “‘strategy of juxtaposition’, janet miller and her colleagues suggest, ‘is one that invites inconsistencies, ambiguities, ambivalence, and foregrounds the fact that there will always be ‘unspoken themes’ that cannot or will not be price. learning with abeyance gesturing toward worlds and the spaces around worlds 74 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci interrogated. radhakrishnan employs juxtaposition – whether systems of thought or of individuals – to forefront the ‘complex, contradictory and unpredictable relationships between the places people inhabit and the spaces where they think. in pasolinian terms, the juxtaposition of languages where reality is differentially represented discloses the real … beyond the confines of language, so that reality is no longer symbolised but is purely itself … abrogating a simplistic narrativism that fails to appreciate narrative’s genesis in self-difference and conflict” (britzman and gilbert, quoted in pinar, 2009, p. 154). i sink into a chair. traversing empty space, trusting awareness will emerge from within this tension; between what depraz calls, a “supported act of attention and an immediate nonfilling” (depraz et al., p. 10). turning to the window, i see caitrin ferch glyndwr, calling through winter rains. osmosis between life and art can be dangerous. then, one of the students in the seminar i’m attending offers, ‘in art, we’re always juxtaposing difference. that’s what we do. letting two separates come together as paradox.’ like the alchemists motto, solve et coagula, meaning separate and come together. they’re no longer two are they? when they come together, they create a third space. where, one plus one equals three? i encountered the equation, ‘one plus one equals three’ in a different class 9 this term, where pragmatism, post modernism and complexity theory were “accented by dynamic processes of ‘equilibrium-disequilibrium-re-equilibrium’” (doll, cited by pinar in trueit, 2012); and where a focused and open curriculum emerged in fascinating ways. passages between one and one and three were met with doors, walls and borders, and concepts of threshold, pivotal in transitioning between “foreign and domestic worlds … therefore to cross the threshold is to unite oneself with a new world” (van gennep in casey, 1997, p. 39). amidst the rain, i hear someone say, ‘they like beet in red deer, alberta too’. i’m sorry? don’t be. this process is complementary. complaining and controlling equals two. they come with worrying about an outcome, and can have a deadening effect on conversations, making the end goal predictable and repetitious – giving in to the pressure of needing an answer, wrapping up a conversation, filling its empty spaces with identifications, categories and fixed solutions. whereas, minimising complaining brings out difference, creating conditions for voices within systems to rise. can you say more about red deer? if you were to draw a straight line between fort edmonton and fort calgary, red deer is about midway. sugar beet is grown intensively in man-fields besides red deer river. these wide stony marshes or shallows known as the old red deer crossing, waskasoo seepee in cree, cross an ancient trail connecting montana and northern alberta. some of the first british traders thought the wapiti elk in the area were a type of european red deer and gave the crossing its official name. the fur traders’ confusion is surprising, however, as wapiti (cervus canadensis) are different from european elk (alces alces). “a programme i’ve been working with”, adds a classmate “offers a real-life example of how to … transform the public conversation about education. participants from throughout alberta shared different perspectives on how to address educational reform. a participant from red deer recently said, ‘a school of sardines is the same size as the whale. when four or five price. learning with abeyance gesturing toward worlds and the spaces around worlds 75 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci sardines change direction, the whole school will change. if we continue to talk about this, sooner or later we can change the direction of education too’”. we’re not speaking about something explanatory here. questions about changing direction, life and death are deeply connected to questions of subjectivity and how we can be or become a subject of action and responsibility. with the death of the subject, “it is possible to speak the truth about a subject” (biesta cited in winter, 2011, p. 537). transformation is only possible through participating together in societal renewal. it’s vital to create distances between self and self, self and other, other and others, “like fire sparks” (merleau-ponty, 1962, p.xii), so when we are called to participate “it matters that i am i” (biesta cited in winter, 2011, p. 539). this arises from the new situations we find ourselves in, as “we are irreplaceable in our responsibility for the other” (p. 539). education can do little to bring this about, but it can prevent “irreplaceable uniqueness” from arising by eradicating risk, putting up fences, installing high-rises… it can be very oppressive. for free to arise, it’s necessary to “slacken the intentional threads which attach us to the world” (merleau-ponty, 1962, p.xii), disrupt fixed conceptions of self, others, plans and intentions, and create spaces for bringing lived experience into the classroom. this process is not simply a question of noticing paradoxes between oppressed and oppressor, being deep inside or existing out there. educators have a double responsibility towards individuals, including those who can’t achieve, and the maintenance of spaces, including indefinable spaces, in which free can arise. how so? we can play paradox and its sense of difference, without surrendering to the self or to the global. free is not about synthesis (britzman in pinar, 2009, p. 154). it’s connected with being in the tension of uncertainty and unpredictability; moving with and against the current. like, swimming in a wave that’s forming a crest and yielding back into darkness, lifting again, and yielding; a sense of patterning rising towards a sense of patterning, progressively moving forward. how much difference to keep dynamism? “not one, not two” (varela, 1999b). “a sense of control based on just the right amount of disturbance” (doll, 2000, p. 70). three perhaps … “three, no more no less” as de la soul sing, “is the magic number”. like the monkey climbing out of the well – three steps up, two down, three up ... what happens to the monkey? it was on the verge of falling. when it gets closer to the light, it somehow transcends itself, defies old patterning and rises out of the well. at a social level there has to be trust, working together and respect for life to arise, continual dialogue, experimentation with “every combination possible” (whitehead, 1967, p.2), a willingness to suspend disbelief, plus some provocation, playful and personalised. might tilting our heads back a little help a little? might it heighten listening and observation and create an “open or floating attention, without grasping at something”? (depraz et al., p. 12). “dancing the patterns that connect takes us ... into an erotics of life (which) i am defining quite gently and generously as the mystery and desire for life” (rose, 2003, p. 7). fear not, “proliferation … is its own containment” (lather, p. 43). price. learning with abeyance gesturing toward worlds and the spaces around worlds 76 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci juxtaposing comments and gestures in conversations, for example, creates “split spaces among contiguous, perhaps dissonant, elements of difference enabling [students] to breathe – no airtight argument here – by positioning elements in [what aoki calls] creative tensionality” (cited by pinar in pinar and irwin, 2003, p.154). interactions can emphasise each other, collapse together, imply links that may not exist … deal mixed messages with mixed messages, beautiful confusions of “message and meta-message” (bateson, 1962, p. 154). this may arise verbally and non-verbally, consciously and unconsciously, with simultaneous changes in posture, gesture, breathing – “in rhythm, amplitude and localization – mimicry, micro-movements … the epiverbal ... semantic choices and … para-verbal” variations of intonation. with too much resonance, however, it may be appropriate to tighten suspenders and experience more tension. so, they’re taut enough to hold a bridge – “a bridge which is not a bridge” (aoki, 2003, p. 228). like walking “on the rackety bridge between self and other – not the attempt to arrive at one side or the other... always suspended performance – in the classroom, in the political field, in relation to one another and to ourselves” (felman, cited in ellsworth, 1997, p. 37). tightened suspenders shatter the illusion that arriving at one side or the other of the bridge would “end the movement, solidify and fix the teacher and the student … into the selfsame” (p. 163). it’s difficult for ego to survive in the middle of bridges, on the borders of fields, thresholds of ambiguity, doubt, and fluidity. paradoxes manifest as generative here, with multiple layers of ecology unfolding simultaneously as “dawn inches up” and “owl flies home past bethseda to a chapel in an oak” (thomas, 1954, p. 22). oak also knows the strength of its weakness; its tincture, a renewal for those who keep on going, seeking responsibilities to test endurance, ignoring signs to reappraise… reposition… remembering to surrender to the vast field of not-knowing is a relational event, in between conditions of possibility and impossibility. a situation from which many voices interact – peoples, animals, plants, stones, rivers… – in language plays that bring musicality, rhythm and vitality to learning, destabilizing self as stable and transforming relations. “we help trees grow by exhaling a hundred times as much carbon dioxide as we inhale and this carbon dioxide comes from the plants’ bodies too perhaps through their spirits their communication systems the trees in turn help us by providing oxygen it’s because of plants and algae that there is usable molecular oxygen that fires life” (conversation with peter cole) “teaching [then] becomes less about transmission than it does a form of ‘journeying with others on a path of learning engagement and personal transformation’. linking knowing to listening to experience recasts teaching as feeling … to feel a situation, to ‘sense’ it at a ‘preconscious’ level, then to intuit its possibilities and parameters” (doll, cited by pinar in trueit, 2012). in ethical obligations, such as these, “to respect the absolute, unknowable other … an absolutely different other, an unrecognizable other, an other irreducibly different from myself” (readings cited in ellsworth, 1997, p. 163) it is possible to revitalize the indefinable, by naming it if you like, and by gesturing toward worlds of the unsaid and the spaces around these worlds. notes 1 joanneprice10000@gmail.com mailto:joanneprice10000@gmail.com price. learning with abeyance gesturing toward worlds and the spaces around worlds 77 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 2 “there was no real border between wales and england in the medieval period, and the marches were considered an ill-defined and contested frontier zone” (morgan and power, 2009, p. 105). 3 the preposition, ‘like’, is often used at the end of sentences as a way of creating unsaid relationships with other words. it is short for, ‘like, you know what i mean’. 4 the image of the marches as a “source of degeneracy” is demonstrated by lord mortimer’s alleged emasculation at the hands of owain glyndwr’s daughter, caitrin, in shakespeare’s henry iv part 1 (morgan and powers, 2009, p. 116). interestingly, this refers to the battle of bryn glas (referred to in english as the battle of pilleth, although bryn glas translates to green or blue hill). the battle took place on 22 june 1402 between the towns of knighton and presteigne in powys, on land, which exists today as a field on pilleth farm – where my grandmother and father were raised, until eviction in the 1950s by a returning landlord. 5 adivasi people are eight percent of india’s population. a chembakolli elder said that being considered janglis, adivasi people were left to the remote forests and hills. unlike dalit communities, they were kept away from the world and its caste system, and have been able to hold on to their dignity and ways of being (conversation, 2007). 6 alephical spaces move with traditional phenomenological conceptions of third space, as “forgotten spaces lingering within the etymology of words we hold dear” (irwin on aoki in pinar and irwin, 2003, p. xx). they also situate who we are within multiple “movements among layers of difference … in open landscape(s) of possibility” (pinar on aoki in pinar and irwin, 2003, p. 24). 7 shatabdi express travels on the south indian railway network, originally created by the british in colonial times. it returns to its station of origin the same day. 8 since writing the first draft of this paper, i’ve learned that the ‘roundabout’ field in story one, was named by my parents. they said, “it was probably never meant to be a field, but we did what we could to get by”. 9 ‘curriculum inquiry: pragmatism, post-modernism, complexity theory’ was co-taught in 2012 by dr. wm. doll & dr. donna trueit at the university of british columbia, vancouver. references aoki, t. (2003). curriculum in a new key.w. pinar and r. irwin eds. new york and london: routledge. bateson, g. (1970). form, substance and difference. general semantics bulletin no. 37 (transcribed from the nineteenth annual korzybski memorial lecture, delivered january 9, 1970 by permission of the institute of general semantics). bateson, g. (1979). mind and nature – a necessary unity. london: bantam books. bateson, g.; jackson, d., haley, j. and weakland, j. (1963). a note on the double bind. family process, 2 (1), 154-161. price. learning with abeyance gesturing toward worlds and the spaces around worlds 78 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci bateson, g., jackson, d., haley, j. and weakland, j. (1956). toward a theory of schizophrenia. behavioral science, 1, 251-264. buhner, s.h. (2004). the secret teachings of plants – in the direct perception of nature. vermont: bear and company. brinkman, s. & kvale, s. (2005). confronting the ethics of qualitative research. journal of constructivist psychology, 18, 157-181. casey, e.s. (1997). how to get from space to place in a fairly short stretch of time: phenomenological prolegomena. in feld, s. & basso, k.h. (eds.), senses of place, (pp. 1352). sante fe: school of american research press. depraz, n., varela, f. & vermersch, p. (1999). the gesture of awareness. an account of its structural dynamics. in investigating phenomenal consciousness. amsterdam: benjamin publishers. capra, f. (1996). the web of life – a new scientific understanding of living systems. new york: anchor books, doubleday. charlton, n. g. (2008). understanding gregory bateson – mind, beauty, and the sacred union. albany: university of new york press. clarke, g. (2007). selected poems. manchester: carcanet. doll, w.e. (1972). a methodology of experience: an alternative to behavioral objectives. doll, w.e. (1989). complexity in the classroom. doll, w. e. (2000). classroom management: creating ‘just the right amount’ of disturbance, in gabbard, d. (eds.) power, knowledge and education in the global economy, pp. 69-77. doll, w.e. (2006). looking forward. louisiana state university. doll, w.e. (2012). complexity and the culture of curriculum. complicity: an international journal of complexity and education, 9(1), 10-29. doll, w.e. & gough, n. (eds). (2002). curriculum visions. new york: peter lang. elfyn, m. (1996). cell angel (welsh-english bilingual edition). newcastle: bloodaxe books. ellsworth, e. (1997). teaching positions: difference, pedagogy, and the power of address. new york: teachers college press. hua, z. (2012). turning to the pedagogy of listening. complicity: an international journal of complexity and education, 9(1), 57-74. irwin, r. l., & springgay, s. (2007). a/r/tography as practice-based research. being with artography. krishnamurti, j. (1979). exploration into insight. brockwood park: krishnamurti education trust. lather, p. (2006). paradigm proliferation as a good thing to think with: teaching research in education as a wild profusion. international journal of qualitative studies in education, 19(1), 35-57. mason, m. (2000). complexity theory and the philosophy of education. educational philosophy and theory, 40(1), 4-18. merleau-ponty, m. (1962). phenomenology of perception. london: routledge and paul. merriam-webster.com (2012). http://merriam-webster.com. morgan, r. & power, g. (2009). enduring borderlands: the marches of ireland and wales in the early modern period. pisa: pisa university press. nachmanovitch, s. (1990). free play. improvisation in life and art. los angeles: jeremy p. tarcher. http://merriam-webster.com/ price. learning with abeyance gesturing toward worlds and the spaces around worlds 79 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci nachmanovitch, s. (2007). bateson and the arts. kybernetes 36 (7/8), 1122-1133. oxford university press. (2012). the concise oxford english dictionary of english etymology – online version. oxford. pinar, w. f. (2009). the worldliness of a cosmopolitan education. passionate lives in public service. new york and london: routledge. rose, d. (2005). pattern, connection, desire: in honour of gregory bateson. australian humanities review, 35. sumara, d., luce-kapler, r. & iftody, t. (2008). educating consciousness through literary experiences. educational philosophy and theory, 40(1), 228-241. thomas, d. (1954). under milk wood – a play for voices. london: j.m. dent & sons. thompson, e. (2004). life and mind: from autopoiesis to neurophenomenology. a tribute to francisco varela. phenomenology and the cognitive sciences, 3, 381–398. trueit, d. (2012) pragmatism, post-modernism, and complexity theory: the fascinating imaginative realm of wm. e. doll jr. new york: routledge. varbelow, s. (2012). instruction, curriculum and society: iterations based on the ideas of william doll. international journal of instruction, 5(1), 1308-1470. varela, f. j. (1984). the creative circle: sketches on the natural history of circularity. in watzlavick, p. (ed.). the invented reality. new york: norton publishing. varela, f. j. (1999a). ethical know-how – action, wisdom, and cognition. stanford: stanford university press. varela, f. j. & shear, j. (eds.) (1999b). the view from within. first-person approaches to the study of consciousness. thorverton: imprint academics. whitehead, a.n. (1967). the aims of education. new york: free press (original publication 1929). winter, p. (2011). coming into the world, uniqueness and the beautiful risk of education: an interview with gert biesta by philip winter. studies in philosophy and education, 30, 537-542. submitted: september, 27 th , 2012. approved: october, 31 st , 2012. to cite this article please include all of the following details: ke, i-chung (2014). the impacts of english on taiwan‟s elementary curriculum: homeroom teachers‟ perspectives. transnational curriculum inquiry volume (2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> the impacts of english on taiwan’s elementary curriculum: homeroom teachers’ perspectives i-chung ke 1 yuan ze university, taiwan introduction in the half century after world war ii, the subjects in the compulsory elementary education worldwide had remained stable (meyer, 2007), with (national) language, math, and (social) science constituting the core subjects. compulsory education at the elementary level had become a universal value. while the content, goal, and ideal of compulsory education may have adjusted according to social changes, its main purpose as equipping students with basic competence, literacy, and morality have remained unchanged until now (mceneaney & meyer, 2000). the latest change involves the rise of english as an international language as countries around the world have gradually started to include english as a compulsory subject in their elementary school curriculum. the inclusion of english in the compulsory education, on the other hand, further reconfirms the role of english as a global lingua franca, forming a reinforcing cycle that increases the value of english in the world. a recent survey (cha, 2007) showed that in the first decade of the twenty-first century, the majority of the countries in the world had much or less incorporated english into their elementary school curriculum. in the past, most countries in the expanding circle in kachru‟s (1985) three concentric model (inner circle refers to english-speaking countries like usa, uk, and australia, outer circle refers to former colonies by inner circle countries, and the rest are expanding circle) started to offer english from secondary education (middle school or junior high school or even later). as globalization intensified after the 1990s, knowledge economy has created the need of a lingua franca and english so far has served the instrumental needs. with service economy overtaking manufacture as the main sector, most governments have realized the importance of english, which consequently has been institutionalized as a school subject starting from the elementary school. as english continues to establish its role as the global language, this topic, namely english education in the elementary level in expanding circles, is supposed to draw more research and policy attention. most studies so far seem to have taken this phenomenon for granted; that is, teaching and learning english at the elementary level in these countries is totally natural and normal. under this presumption, researchers focused on what to teach, how to teach it better, how to implement better the policy and the obstacles related to the ke. the impacts of english on taiwan‟s elementary curriculum: homeroom teachers‟ perspectives. 26 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (2) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci policy. in the field of english as a foreign language (efl), the majority of researchers looked at teacher education (mikio, 2008), english teachers (butler, 2004; su, 2006), teaching content (sifakis, 2004), and motivation (gao, zhao, cheng & zhou, 2007), just to name a few. studies that approach this topic from the perspective of elementary education remain rare, as english in efl contexts is regarded as one of the school subjects. in elementary education, curriculum integration has been an important trend (fon, 1999; pepper, 2008; yu, 2000) and homeroom teachers play a critical role in students‟ learning. homeroom teachers perceive the topic differently from subject teachers (chu, 2005). unfortunately there has been insufficient attention to homeroom teachers‟ perspectives on english education at the elementary level. it is within this context that this study was conducted, aiming to fulfill the gap in the research literature by providing the views from homeroom teachers on the impact of english in the elementary schools. the research findings may also illuminate future policies concerning english education in expanding circles. english in elementary education in expanding circles since the last decade of the twentieth century, many countries in expanding circles had started to incorporate english in the elementary education in various ways. most started with small-scale trials in a few schools before enforcing the policy. david nunan (2003) investigated the impact of english on the educational policies in seven east asian countries (china, taiwan, hong kong, japan, korea, malaysia, and vietnam). policy makers, administrators, teachers, and relevant stakeholders were interviewed to probe their view on the topic. nunan found out that in all seven countries, most interviewees believed that the earlier english education starts, the better it is for the students. however, many problems still existed in most countries: for instance, insufficient qualified english teachers, messy curricular adjustments, and confusion over the goals of english education at the elementary level. nunan revealed his curiosity about the result that most interviewees were not worried about the impact of english on local languages (p.607), and seemed to have positive attitudes towards the addition of english into the elementary school curriculum. after going over the english education policies in east asia, kam (2002) found that the policy in all east asian countries “has advocated the teaching of english from the early grades in primary school” (p.13). however, the policy was seldom fully implemented due to lack of qualified teachers. the addition of english into the elementary education seemed to have depleted the qualified teachers and have caused great instabilities in educational policy. despite the adversities, the prospect suggests a brighter future, echoing graddol‟s (2006) world english project, in which a large number of bilingual cohorts would further bolster english‟s status as the global communication medium. since qualified teachers remain a key requirement in expanding circles, butler (2004) asked english teachers in elementary schools in japan, south korea, and taiwan to self-evaluate their proficiency level and the expected qualifying level. most teachers expected a higher level for qualifying english teachers, revealing their diffidence in english. the study also exposed the urgent need in english teacher education to deal with language ideology in order to build teachers‟ confidence. in sum, english should continue to play a very important role in the elementary education in non-english-speaking countries in the foreseeable future. the addition of english into the elementary curriculum marks a dramatic curricular change since the main curricular structure in the elementary education has remained stable for decades. there is ke. the impacts of english on taiwan‟s elementary curriculum: homeroom teachers‟ perspectives. 27 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (2) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci great need to study more about the impacts and consequences caused by the addition of english into the elementary curriculum. purpose of the study the research investigated the impacts from the addition of english into the curriculum that homeroom teachers in the elementary school in taiwan perceive. taiwan first brought english into elementary education as a part of a dramatic curricular reform in 2001, starting from fifth grade. in 2013, most urban schools offer english from the first grade. in the foreseeable future, english is expected to become even more important in taiwan‟s elementary education. the impact of a new school subject, particularly in the case of english, tends to be complicated and multifold, often dependent on contextual conditions. at the elementary level, almost all policies go through homeroom teachers, who to a great extent determine students‟ learning and school life. homeroom teachers‟ perceptions and opinions are crucial as far as english education is concerned at the elementary level. moreover, in taiwan, low-birth rate in recent two decades has greatly changed the ecology of elementary schools: in the past ten years, few new teachers were recruited. consequently, to bring in a new subject by hiring new teachers would not work in the context of taiwan. many existent elementary school teachers were asked to transform themselves into english teachers to fill in the need for english teachers. they acquire the certificate or qualification to teach english by taking additional courses and workshops. thus in the elementary schools, there may be two kinds of english teachers: one that graduates from the english education department in a normal university and the other that was originally a homeroom teacher, not english major. in this study, both kinds of homeroom teachers were interviewed to compare their different views. in what follows, a brief review of relevant studies precedes the sections of methodology, results, and discussions. relevant studies in taiwan while previous studies have investigated policy implementation (yu, 2003), the perceptions from principals, administrators, and english teachers (su, 2006; lin, 2010), few have considered homeroom teachers‟ perspectives. there were plenty of studies on english in the elementary education, but most seemed to assume that homeroom teachers were not relevant. on the other hand, the perceptions of english teachers were widely examined, usually through questionnaires that elicit english teachers‟ responses (e.g. lin, 2003; lin, 2010). the results of these studies are also similar, highlighting the need for qualified teachers, decreasing the number of students in a class, and other resources-related issues. english teachers also expressed concerns about access to english, teaching loads (required to teach many different classes) and mixed levels in a class. studies at the policy level provide a macro perspective to the topic. yu (2003) utilized policy analysis to speculate the potential impacts of english in the elementary school, and enunciated his concern over the issue of language imperialism. if english cultures penetrate and permeate our basic education through the teaching of english, then this would be detrimental for our future generations. the relationship between english and self-identities need to be clarified, and this clarification forms the basis of english education in the elementary schools. ke. the impacts of english on taiwan‟s elementary curriculum: homeroom teachers‟ perspectives. 28 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (2) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci su (2006) interviewed ten english teachers in the elementary school to elicit their views on the policy of including english in the elementary school. all participants agreed to the policy and voiced their perceptions of the benefits and problems of the policy. in addition to various resource constraints, one major obstacle was parents‟ expectation, which relates to the unique role of english in taiwan. overemphasis on english learning with the focus on proficiency tests as the indicators of learning outcome led to many bizarre and unusual phenomena related to english teaching and learning. an interesting study (chu, 2005) compared the differences between the beliefs and practices of a homeroom teacher and a subject english teacher. this case study found out that students performed better when homeroom teacher taught english. the homeroom teacher paid more attention to learning problems and discipline, and monitor learning more closely, though less confident in english. homeroom teachers, with their focus on character development, are able to help students‟ learning more. tensions associated with the addition of english in the elementary education the above discussions approach the issue from the perspective of efl education without considering the uniqueness of elementary education. while english has been taught in the junior high school for many decades, teaching english at the elementary level creates tensions mostly due to two conflicting ideas: (a) character education vs. cognitive development as the main goal of elementary education (b) english as a living language vs. a school subject. at the core of these tensions are the roles of english in taiwan: in the past english was seen as a foreign language, but with the rise of globalization, english has gradually taken the role of an international or global language in taiwan (ke, 2012). table 1 below derives from my earlier theoretical discussions on the curriculum in the elementary education (ke, 2008) to illustrate the conflicting forces about english in the elementary education. table 1 tensions associated with english‟s role in the elementary education knowledge-oriented/ instrumentalist value-oriented/ humanist english as a school subject english as a living language emphasis on usefulness of english extrinsic motivation emphasis on intrinsic value of english intrinsic motivation cognitive development: linguistic knowledge affective development: positive attitude realistic: focus on skills idealistic: focus on feelings and awareness summative assessment (tests) formative assessment (portfolio) specialization: english separated from other subjects, taught by professional english teachers integration: english across curriculum, taught by homeroom teachers instrumentalist views see education as a tool. in the curriculum, english is positioned as a school subject that offers students a useful tool for students‟ future. students‟ extrinsic motivation plays a key role in learning english. the english curriculum should stress cognitive development and linguistic knowledge. students are expected to master the four skills of reading, listening, speaking, and writing in using the english tool. summative assessments, particularly standardized tests, are the best evaluations for helping ke. the impacts of english on taiwan‟s elementary curriculum: homeroom teachers‟ perspectives. 29 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (2) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci students acquire the linguistic tool. professional english teacher with specialized expertise in english language knowledge are the ideal teachers of english. on the other hand, humanist views education as an end in itself. the value of education lies in helping students appreciate the value and beauty of knowledge. english is not a tool for future use but a living language that could be a part of students‟ life. children‟s curiosity in new knowledge forms the intrinsic motivation to learn english. students are expected to develop positive attitudes towards english at the elementary level. students‟ feelings toward and awareness of english is more important than whether they master the four skills. consequently, formative assessments like portfolios that document learners‟ progress serve best in english education at the elementary level. homeroom teachers teaching english may embody the idea of english as a living language. integrated curriculum that keeps knowledge intact and close to students‟ life reflects the humanist viewpoint. at the policy level, the reasons that english were added into the elementary curriculum were mostly instrumental in nature (chen, 2003). the rhetoric about teaching english at the elementary level adopted many humanistic ideas such as „fostering positive attitudes and interests with earlier contact‟ and „happy learning without stresses‟ in addition to its instrumental value. however, the lack of research on homeroom teachers‟ perspectives manifests the dominance of instrumentalist views since most studies so far have focused on the issues that instrumentalists care more about. unlike secondary education in which each subject is taught by a different teacher, in the elementary education, homeroom teachers teach the major subjects of national language and math. homeroom teachers spend much time with students and are the soul of elementary education because the main mission of elementary education is character development, of which homeroom teachers are responsible. it is thus necessary to explore homeroom teachers‟ view within the context of this tension between instrumentalist and humanist views. methodology qualitative in-depth interviews were conducted to answer the research question. to explore homeroom teachers‟ perspectives and perceptions on the impact of english on the elementary education, qualitative methodology is more suitable than quantitative questionnaires. the particular qualitative interview methodology used in this study, namely „portraiture‟ (see lawrence-lightfoot & davis, 1997), aims to provide a systematic and holistic research instrument to examine human beings‟ subjective worlds. portraiture can be quite effective in accessing data related to unobservable and immeasurable mental activities, such as cultural norms, belief, and ideological assumptions (dixson, chapman, and hill, 2005). the fundamental assumption is that contextualized and gestalt-like understanding of the participants forms the foundation for any further interpretations on any given research topic. without the foundation, the interpretations would be partial and fragmented. applied in the qualitative interview, portraiture serves as the basis on which a given research topic is explored. in the context of elementary school, this kind of holistic understanding is necessary because most issues are interconnected and the results would be superficial if they are not developed from contextualized knowledge and holistic understanding of the participants‟ subjective reality. after constructing the portrait of each participant/interviewee, the researcher utilized „grounded theory‟ (corbin & strauss, 1990) to identify common patterns and ke. the impacts of english on taiwan‟s elementary curriculum: homeroom teachers‟ perspectives. 30 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (2) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci conceptual codes when comparing answers within the same participant and by different participants. key passages that reveal the participants‟ views concerning the impact of english on the elementary school were identified; important concepts were coded, and in the process of analyzing the data, old codes may be replaced or modified by new codes that better reflect the central concepts in the data. through this recursive process, the researcher immersed himself in the data and after saturation, salient patterns naturally emerged. in-depth interview may help the interviewees, i.e. homeroom teachers in the elementary school, to engage in dialogues with their experience and ideas. most of us only pay attention to the moment of being, so the deeper feelings and thoughts tend to be buried in the corner of our mind. in the case of teachers, since they have many tasks in teaching, preparing classes and guiding students, they seldom reflect upon their feelings about their daily life experience. in-depth interview facilitates the teachers to reflect and become aware of their feelings and thoughts hidden inside. personal experience constitutes the foundation of subject realities, which further construct inter-subjective social world. qualitative research data collected this way would then be able to reflect the contextual subtlety embedded in the complex educational issues. participants targeted participants were homeroom teachers in public elementary schools with at least six years of homeroom teaching experience. six-year homeroom teaching experience was required because novice teachers would still be learning how to teach and probably not paying attention to new policies. novice teachers might also have less valuable insight related to the research topic compared to more experienced teachers since they would not have experienced the policy change process. the variety principle guided the recruiting process: the ideal pool of the participants should reflect the gender proportion and different years of teaching experience in the population. eleven homeroom teachers in five different schools were interviewed, with eight females and three males. the gender proportion reflects the overall population: according to the ministry of education, in 2012, overall 69% of elementary school teachers were female. the five chosen schools had different sizes (from the smallest, 6 classes, to the largest, 102 classes) and years of history (the newest school was founded in 2000, while the oldest one in 1917). the participants‟ background and teaching experience are shown below in table 1 and table 2. ke. the impacts of english on taiwan‟s elementary curriculum: homeroom teachers‟ perspectives. 31 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (2) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci table 1 background information of the participants and their school school area number of classes founding year participant (pseudo name) gen der years of teaching english teaching (years) suburban 42 2000 yanni f 13 2 remote 6 1917 ray f 21 6 remote 6 1917 yang m 11 0 suburban 56 1925 don f 7 2 suburban 56 1925 super m 11 0 suburban 56 1925 snow f 24 0 urban 43 1960 wu f 12 2 urban 43 1960 han m 8 8 urban 43 1960 rich f 18 1 urban 102 1954 pin f 24 0 urban 102 1954 nana f 15 0 table 2 participants‟ teaching experience participan t homeroom teaching years/grades teacher education homeroom english yanni 11, all grades post-bachelor program no, ray 16, all grades, post-bachelor program yes, 6 years yang 10, middle 2 years, high 8 years post-bachelor program no don 6, middle 2 years, low 4 years normal university yes, 1 semester super 6, middle 5 years, high 1 year normal university no snow 24, all grades, mostly low post-bachelor program no wu 8, all grades normal university no han 8, high 6 years, middle 2 years normal, english major yes, 5 years rich 17, middle 4 years, low 13 years post-bachelor program yes 1 year pin 24, all grades, mostly middle normal college no nana 14, middle 8 years, low 6 years normal university no surprisingly nearly half of the participants had their teacher education in a post-bachelor program, not normal university or college. this relates to the surging need for teachers in the 1990s. a large number of university graduates became elementary school teachers at that time. interview structure all participants were interviewed twice, each time ranging from 40 to 80 minutes. the first interview was transcribed and analyzed before the second interview because the questions for the second interviews were derived from the first interview. the structure of the interview consists of three main dimensions: a. personal background: the reason why they became a teacher, general teaching experience, teaching philosophy, and english learning experience. b. experience related to english education in the elementary school: knowledge, perceptions and involvement of the implementation, feedback or comments from parents, fellow teachers and students, and major events that lead to implications. ke. the impacts of english on taiwan‟s elementary curriculum: homeroom teachers‟ perspectives. 32 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (2) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci c. the impact of english as a new subject: the main issue was investigated from the participants‟ real experience and natural reactions to the issue. the researcher selected relevant aspects which the participants actively brought up in the first two dimensions. the topics include: resource allocation, educational policy, curriculum policy, school ecology, changes in teaching and curriculum, administrative adjustment, responses from staff, teachers, parents, students, and potential stakeholders. in most cases, the first two dimensions were the foci in the first interview, while the third dimension was probed in details in the second interview. the researcher would tell the participants before the first interview the purpose of this study, so that the participants could contemplate about this issue. brief portraits of the participants in this section a short portrait of all eleven participants serves as the basis of contextual understandings of the following results session in which issues related to the impacts of english in the elementary school in taiwan are discussed. yanni the school that yanni was teaching at the time of interview was located in an industrial area, with most parents in small businesses or factories. it had reached stability for nearly a decade, not expanding anymore. with a size of 42 classes in 2012, it was a medium-sized school. she majored in business in undergraduate. due to part-time job as tutors, she became interested in teaching and decided to make herself a teacher in a public school. at the time of the interview, she was an english subject teacher in school, teaching first to fourth graders. this was the third year that she taught english. before that, she was a homeroom teacher, having taught in all grades in the elementary school. the reason why she decided to become an english teacher was due to a contact with a research project that involves homeroom teachers teaching english. she was a little tired of being a homeroom teacher, and while not interested in administration, a subject teacher was a good option. she kept learning new things, growing and improving herself. her thoughts were clear and logical, taking most factors into consideration. for her, the most important was always students‟ learning, their growth in the long run. she hoped to bring up every child. ray ray was the supervisor of the academic office (教務主任) at the time of interview. she taught english in all grades. the school was tiny, only 6 classes in total, with a little over 100 students. she was expected to be a teacher by her family, but just missed by one point for normal college. after graduating from a general university, she started part-time teaching as a substitute teacher, and later due to lack of teachers in remote areas, after substitute teaching for 5 years and finishing the credits, she became a certified teacher. she enjoyed being with children, and most of all, enjoyed teaching, which, in her views, is supposed to be interesting and fun. she liked to have variations, diversity, and different ways of teaching. meanwhile she loved learning new things. her attitude toward english was quite positive, perhaps related to the fact that she liked new things. english and internationalization offer her students opportunities and she ke. the impacts of english on taiwan‟s elementary curriculum: homeroom teachers‟ perspectives. 33 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (2) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci herself had fun learning and using a new language. she was positive toward the policy, which provided children in remote areas more resources and a chance to learn the global language. yang yang was a fourth-grade homeroom teacher in the same school as ray at the time of interview. he became a teacher for practical reasons, to have a better and more regular job. previously an engineer in a factory, he could not stand the long hours of working, so decided to switch his career. he rode a motorcycle from city to the mountains (90 minutes) everyday. he had been a homeroom teacher mostly in higher grades, with expertise in information science. his attitude toward english and english education in the elementary education was generally positive. as an observer, he believed english should benefit students in the remote areas. don don, super and snow‟s school was located in a developing suburban center. its parenthood consisted of diverse ses background, and the school was well-known for its high-quality afterschool program. a large percentage of students were enrolled in the program. english was not the main focus in school, just a normal school subject. it was an old school, with a long history and tradition. don had only taught for 7 years in 2012, currently an administrator teaching english in the middle grades. she had been a homeroom teacher for six years, in lower and middle grades. she described her teaching style as strict but with intensive care, and most students were close to her. it was quite surprising to know that don‟s attitude toward english went beyond typical public discourse. she was aware of the language ideology, the dominance of english, and the fact that english is not the first language. consequently a different standard should be applied to taiwanese learners. few other participating teachers expressed this view, and the fact that don was the youngest participant may be related. she was more aware of the inequality in the public discourse concerning english‟s status in taiwan, and thus she approached english differently from other teachers. super super graduated from a normal university. he was interested in english since junior high school, though he later chose math education as his major. but once he became a teacher, he resumed his learning in english. he was studying in an english department in a nearby university at the time of interview. when opportunity appeared, he decided to get training in teaching english. after the training, he was about to teach english as a subject teacher. somehow he was not assigned the job, and he continued to be a homeroom teacher. at the time of the interview, he was a sixth-grade homeroom teacher while previously he also served as a homeroom teacher in the middle grades, a science subject teacher and a chief in the office of students‟ affairs. 2013 was his eleventh year as a teacher in the elementary school. he showed quite positive attitudes toward english and hoped to have more english classes in the elementary school. several trips abroad further reinforced his emphasis on english. once in the beginning year of his teaching career, he decorated his homeroom with english signs during a summer, but later could not maintain it because of too many duties ke. the impacts of english on taiwan‟s elementary curriculum: homeroom teachers‟ perspectives. 34 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (2) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci as a homeroom teacher. as a diligent student, super enjoyed learning together with his students. snow at the time of the interview, snow had already taught in the elementary school for more than twenty-four years. she was an experienced teacher, but still full of passion in teaching. she took charge of an after-school class to help those students with lower academic levels. in her teaching career, she mostly taught lower graders. throughout these years, she started to observe that recent students lacked focus and attention, low discipline, and not paying attention to learning. she had taken the credits in the english training program to become a qualified english teacher, but remained reluctant to teach english as a subject teacher because of its work load. subject teachers need to teach many classes and english classes tend to be quite burdensome. however, she had a positive attitude toward homeroom teachers teaching english. not enough exposure to english was a great concern for her in terms of english learning, and she believed that if homeroom teachers also teach english, the situation would be quite different. but perhaps due to her age and english learning experience, she still emphasized reading and writing literacy in english, not listening and speaking which has been the curriculum goal at the elementary level. wu with an easy-going personality, wu seemed to approach all the challenges in her teaching career with a positive mindset. she was greatly influenced by her friends, accepting new positions and learning new things all the time. in her first eight years of teaching, she was a homeroom teacher, having taught in all grades. then she obtained the english training credits and started to teach english not as a subject teacher, but as an administrative chief (組長). she went to the us for a year, courtesy of an exchange program offered by the ministry of education. there she observed bilingual schools and helped with the production of teaching materials for chinese as a second language. her english learning experience was not joyful, which she blamed on unsuitable teaching method. later in her life, as she started to learn english again by hiring private tutors, she found out that she became interested in english. in the process, she also changed her mindset about speaking in english: she no longer cared that much about how others perceive her. confidence developed and she had the courage to keep trying out new things. but she saw herself as anomaly among peer teachers, who seemed to be nested in their comfortable life. han han was the only participant who majored in english among all interviewees. a smartlooking youngster, he originally intended to study finance but settled for majoring in english teaching in a normal university. but so far he had been a homeroom teacher throughout his teaching career, because the school where he worked had already had enough english teachers. at least he taught the english class in his own class. han analyzed the issues rationally to take all possible factors into consideration. he understood the priority of elementary education as laying down the moral foundation and character development. he was also worried about the fact that students could not learn the two main subjects (national language and math) well. he complained about the ke. the impacts of english on taiwan‟s elementary curriculum: homeroom teachers‟ perspectives. 35 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (2) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci purposelessness and lack of coherency in taiwan‟s educational policies. the big picture had been lost among political changeovers. his concerns about educational policies are echoed by many other participants. rich rich candidly admitted that she was a so-called typical elementary school teacher, waiting for retirement to start a new life. teaching as a stable and lucrative job (compared to other occupations) was the main reason that she gave up her job in a company and transferred to teaching for the sake of raising children. she accompanied her husband to vietnam for three years and that experience fortified her belief in the importance of english. she once taught her homeroom first graders english for one semester, and this experience further convinced her that most homeroom teachers are able to teach english at lower levels. pin pin saw herself as a common teacher who had no other talents but teaching. she enjoyed teaching and being with children. in her 24 years of teaching, she had always been a homeroom teacher, mostly in the lower grades. as a homeroom teacher, she seldom paid attention to english education policy or english classes unless any disciplinary problems occurred. this is quite typical among homeroom teachers who had no particular interests in english. but she also supported more english classes in the elementary school, because it affects students‟ future. nana in high school nana wished to become a banker, sitting in the air-conditioned building and counting money. of course she did not become a banker, but rather a teacher as she studied in a normal university. she once claimed that she would never become an elementary school teacher, but the destiny just brought her there. after teaching, she started to accept the job, and feel that it is a good fit because she is an energetic and childish person, a good companion for her students. the way nana approached english was more like a parent rather than a teacher. as a typical homeroom teacher, she was seldom involved with english education in school. but as a mother, she regretted much that she did not send her son to an english cram school earlier. her son performed well in all subjects except english, because many of his classmates received additional english lessons in cram schools. based on her experience as a mother, she suggested the parents of her students to send their children to cram school from the first grade because sooner or later the students would have to go to a cram school, which would take care of the english subject and parents would no longer need to worry about it. results a major impact of english on the elementary education is that it makes the schools more unequal. english increases inequality not only between students, but also between teachers and schools. teachers may label students based on their english level, thus hurt students‟ confidence and self-esteem. in addition, among teachers, those who adopted english and received relevant training kept upgrading themselves, transforming themselves into qualified english teachers. they attend workshop, conference, in-service programs and keep growing. others just stay put. in the past, most teachers were „equally qualified‟ but ke. the impacts of english on taiwan‟s elementary curriculum: homeroom teachers‟ perspectives. 36 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (2) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci now, different qualifications make the composition of teachers in schools more diverse. the same divergence also has occurred between schools, as some schools gain the label of „stars‟ based on their additional resources spent on english education. another major impact is less conspicuous, but rather embedded in the participants‟ answers. the introduction of english at the elementary level further perpetuates english‟s role in taiwan, as if the authority endorses the importance of english in the local society. however, in reality, english in the elementary school so far has more symbolic meaning than real educational function. the time allocated is definitely far from enough to learn a language and most parents and teachers perceive private cram schools as a more significant provider of english education. the addition of english in elementary schools also brings attention to the rationales behind the allocation of class periods for each school subject. homeroom teachers complained about some subjects given too much time while they had insufficient instruction time for key subjects; that is, national language and math. they held a positive attitude toward increasing the instruction time for english because of its importance, but definitely not at the price of the two key subjects. in the following sections, these impacts are elaborated. inequality inequality has increased in many ways. besides the obvious differences in students‟ english achievements, which have been often-mentioned in previous studies on english education in taiwan, there are other types of inequality associated with the addition of english as a new school subject in elementary schools. differences in many aspects are enlarged compared to the situation in the past when english instruction started from the junior high school. low achievers as han stated worriedly, “double peak/inequality has become more serious. as for the proportions, in elementary schools, there is still a large portion of high achievers, but those who lag behind, are very far behind.” [m型化更嚴重，比例分配，國小來說，好的比例還高。但弱勢的，很差] compared to the situation in the junior high schools, the inequality was still not so serious because the english curriculum at the elementary level focuses on listening and speaking, and the content has remained relatively easy. the policy intended to amend the inequality in the access to english by including it in the elementary curriculum, but in urban areas due to high percentages of students attending after-school english cram schools, english teachers were somewhat forced to adjust to the level of the majority of their students. for students in the remote areas, this policy benefited them by providing the opportunity to learn english, but with over eighty percent of taiwanese population in urban areas, the side effects outweighed the intended effects. not only low-achievers in english suffered. another side effect of english was that teachers lost the flexible remedial teaching time for low-achievers in other school subjects. low-achievers suffered from the intrusion of english into the curriculum. if flexible time was given to english teaching, then homeroom teachers would not have time for remedial teaching, and those low-achievers would be sacrificed. when i was a homeroom teacher, i felt that due to the addition of english, some resources were deprived. this is because flexible periods in the curriculum were ke. the impacts of english on taiwan‟s elementary curriculum: homeroom teachers‟ perspectives. 37 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (2) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci assigned for english classes. i need those periods for remedial teaching in national language and math, and due to english, the time was gone…i had no time to help those low achievers. [當導師時覺得因為英文，資源被剝奪，因為彈性課程都彈到英文去了。我 想要拿來補救國語數學，就不見了…我沒時間去輔導學生落後的課業] (yanni) while most homeroom teachers acknowledge the importance of english, the priority in the elementary school is still national language and math. if the way that english is added into the curriculum is at the price of flexible periods or other time that used to be under homeroom teachers‟ control, then it would be a detrimental impact on the overall elementary education. several homeroom teachers who had taught many years in the lower grades also mentioned that those not good at learning the national language also struggled in english. “those with lower language abilities, who could not learn the phonological symbols in our national language, they also had difficulties learning english well.” [語言能力差的，國語注音符號學不好的，英語也不好](rich) a new subject in language means that those without linguistic talents have to suffer more and the differences are again magnified. high achievers high achievers, on the other hand, have received even more attention and resources. inequality increases at both ends. in the case of english, since in nature it is a living language, if parents offer their children more resources and provide the environment exposing them to the language, naturally they can acquire the linguistic knowledge. in classrooms, it is human nature for teachers to pay more attention to high achievers because they respond well and perform well. as nana lamented, “in english classes, teacher would say, this student is gifted, which means, he knows everything. in contrast, for some students this is their first contact with abc alphabets.” [上英文課的時候，老師就會說，這是資優生；意思就是，他什麼都會。有些人真的 連abc都是第一次接觸。] the implication is that high achievers become more confident, more interested in english, and thus this phenomenon further perpetuates their status as high achievers. with the inclusion of a new subject in the curriculum, new contests related to english (readaloud, story-telling, spelling, etc.) have appeared and all classes and schools would need to select good performers to participate in these contests. these contests actually draw more resources, benefiting high achievers in various ways. among all, the most worrisome for most homeroom teachers is their effect on the interests and motivation of other common students who start their english learning in public school: if everyone starts at the same place, a student may develop interests from all the learning games. there would be no problem. but if from the beginning, they were already lower than others, they may give up right away, not willing to learn, or feel it difficult since no matter how hard they learn, they would not be as good as their classmates. this is a great blow to students‟ confidence. [如果大家起跑點一樣，他可能從玩中學習，還沒問題，激發學習興趣。但 如果一來就被比下去，可能就放棄、不想學了，就一直認為很困難，因為怎 樣都贏不過同學，打擊信心。] (pin) ke. the impacts of english on taiwan‟s elementary curriculum: homeroom teachers‟ perspectives. 38 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (2) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci high achievers start earlier and receive more resources, and the current school environment favors these high achievers even though many teachers are aware of the fact that these high achievers are not more talented than their classmates. the pygmalion effect in education, namely, those labeled smarter actually perform better, inevitably creates sharper inequality in english education. inequality between teachers and schools elementary schools are a stable environment and teacher education programs have been known to cultivate conservative teachers who tend to lag behind contemporary social changes. as wu observed, “indeed the majority of elementary school teachers are rulefollowers who do not emphasize creativity, probably due to the training system.” [小學老師確實，多數，可能是培訓體系，不會著重創意，新想法，培育循規蹈矩的 人。] in many schools there are two kinds of teachers, one that avoids change and the other that embrace and enjoy changes. the former is contented to just stay in their comfort zone and teach the same things over and over. the latter keeps learning new skills and knowledge. most homeroom-teacher-turned english teachers belong to the latter. they usually also have expertise in technology because they have a positive attitude toward changes and novelties. increasingly this group of abler teachers takes more responsibility while the other group stays unchanged, thus creating more differences among teachers. newer school subjects are also more likely to be adopted earlier in newer schools because these newer schools are more likely to have younger teachers and fewer traditions. from the data, we notice that newer schools tend to emphasize more on english, since they tend to have fewer constraints from traditions. older schools are more likely to follow traditions, so new subjects and changes take more time to get into mainstream. in the current decentralized system, the school principal has great influence on the allocation of resources. consequently, unlike in the past, wherever you studied, you received similar education, nowadays many differences exist among different schools. cram schools a side effect of the policy was that it aroused parents‟ attention to english in the elementary level. when english becomes a critical subject in deciding future tracking, parents‟ reaction was to pour more extra resource by sending their kids to cram schools just to make sure that they would not lose in the arm race. according to yanni, “after the inclusion of english in the elementary curriculum, more students attend english cram schools. though not the intended outcome, but certainly what is happening.” [學校開始教英文後，補習的風氣更盛，雖然完全不是當初的用意，但是絕對會] the introduction of english at the elementary level aims to familiarize children with a new language. most homeroom teachers saw english in elementary schools as a preparation and orientation for their future english learning in the secondary level. it is supposed to be motivational and introductory, but such an intention would probably lead to unexpected results in a culture in which educational competition remains fierce. nowadays everyone has a strange belief; teaching english earlier is supposed to better prepare students for future learning. but many people push for more content at earlier stages. the earlier instruction is supposed to give learners more time to learn, letting them get used to it. but the reality seems like, the earlier the instruction, the more content, as if all the lessons previously taught in the junior high school are now taught in the elementary school. this is not right. ke. the impacts of english on taiwan‟s elementary curriculum: homeroom teachers‟ perspectives. 39 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (2) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci [現在大家的觀念很奇怪，我英文先跑，但是很多人是把英文在往下壓，不 是給他寬裕的時間，我說英文先跑是說要給他寬裕的時間，讓她去習慣這個 東西。可是好像是跑的快，東西也給的多，好像把國中的東西通通都壓下來 ，這樣不對。] (yanni) this illustrates the gap between the policy intention and the reality. good intentions are seldom implemented through proper policies, and cultural norms often exert greater influence than institutional policies. the pressure to excel in school with better test scores has always been the source that creates cram schools. english offers a conspicuous battleground. english is the only academic subject in the elementary level that most parents cannot help their children. “it is not easy to learn english by students themselves.” [英語不容易自己學] (yang) compared to other subjects like math, language, social studies and science, english in primary school is unique because most parents cannot help, and this is a major reason why the number of english cram schools have not declined amid the low-birth-rate trend. english language schools are everywhere. coupled with the situation that in most families both parents have to have a full-time job to support themselves, they have to send their children to after-school day-care centers, which provide english lessons to cater to parents‟ needs. this explains the popularity of english cram schools. the popularity in turn alters the role of english education in school. private cram schools gradually replace public school as the english education provider. teachers do not receive much expectation from parents on english education. “parents feel, also we english teachers also feel this way, that if children have good english, it is not because of us; same if they do not have good english.” [家長覺得，我們英文老師也覺得，小朋友英文好不是因為我們，英文不好也不是我 們。] (don) in short, the english classes in school, in the eyes of parents and teachers, function as a symbolic sign that marks the inclusion of an important language. perpetuation of english’s role as the global language another major impact of institutionalizing english at the elementary school level is that english‟s role as the default global language was further established or reiterated. homeroom teachers who used to pay little attention to english had to acknowledge it, if not advocate for it. most teachers recognized the role of english as a global communication tool, and they should not emphasize too much on forms and accuracy. most participants learned english smoothly, while a few struggled (yanni growing up in a rural area, wu who encountered an incompetent teacher). generally speaking, teachers usually were good students so their english tended to be above average. since they all realized that the role of english has changed from purely a school subject to global communication tool, they all hoped that students can use english to communicate, not just for tests. all homeroom teachers expressed consent to the necessity of english teaching in the elementary school, and they would like to see more time allocated to english. such view is consistent with nunan‟s (2003) findings. “homeroom teachers accept such important subject (english) to a very high degree.” [導師對於這樣的科目，接受度是很高的。] (don) but the issue is when to start teaching, the emphasis and methods of teaching. many teachers were aware of the inequality problem accompanying the inclusion of english in ke. the impacts of english on taiwan‟s elementary curriculum: homeroom teachers‟ perspectives. 40 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (2) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the elementary school curriculum, and had shown concerns over this problem. however, overall judgment was that benefits outweigh problems. all homeroom teachers except yanni, who taught in a new school (established in 2000), saw insufficient attention to english. in yanni‟s case, “i feel that the school overemphasizes english. the administration wants to see consequences, but we care more about what helps students more.” [覺得學校太過重視，上面看到的是成果。我們看到的是，怎麼對學生比較有幫助。] she felt that her school emphasized too much on seeing the achievements, winning contests, and showing the public that the school paid much attention to english. with such an orientation, students‟ learning is usually not the priority, sometimes even sacrificed. from this perspective, perhaps it was a blessing in disguise that the other schools did not label themselves as schools that emphasize english. younger teachers are more aware of the language ideology problem, the dominance of english in the public and school discourses, the detrimental effects, and older teachers tend to accept the dominance, just focusing on the instrumental uses of english, while lacking confidence (a result of the influence from the discourse). the youngest interviewee don approached english from a local perspective: as a homeroom teacher, i would also tell my students that it is very normal not knowing anything about english, because we do not learn it as our mother tongue. language is of course a school subject, an art, but more importantly, a way of life. [就導師的立場，我也會和我小朋友說，英文不會是很正常的事，因為我們 不是把它當作是母語再學習。 語言這種東西當然是個科目，也是藝術，但他更是一種生活方式。] (don) other homeroom teachers presumed the instrumental values of english, seeing it as an indispensible skill for students‟ future life, expecting them to learn it well. many of them would use a few english words or phrases in daily conversations with their students to show that they also know english and hope to encourage their students to learn english. homeroom teachers teaching english and the relationships between different school subjects homeroom teachers are supposed to be in charge of students‟ overall development, particularly their character and basic literacy. this role has rendered no direct relationship between homeroom teacher and english. they did not see english any differently than any other subjects besides national language and math. the priority in lower grades should be national language and math, which serve as the foundation for all subjects. views on homeroom teachers teaching english are ambivalent; most participants understand the advantages and disadvantages of homeroom teachers teaching english. the positive side relates to english being a language and to learn a language it is best to have exposure to it every day. in addition, homeroom teachers have more flexible time to help those low achievers. this presumes that homeroom teachers have sufficient professional knowledge and proper mentality in english teaching. the negative problems involve the role of english in the elementary school: “it (english) is a major subject, but since formal monthly exams do not include it, homeroom teachers would use its time to teach national language. meanwhile they are full aware that this is not right. so dissonance in cognition would arise, causing pain in homeroom teachers. ” ke. the impacts of english on taiwan‟s elementary curriculum: homeroom teachers‟ perspectives. 41 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (2) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci [她是主科，可是因為它沒有考試，導師會抽出來上國語。可是又知道不對 ，所以就會產生認知失衡，就會覺得痛苦。] (don) most participants acknowledged that they would be tempted to use the english class to teach national language or math because of not enough teaching time for these two main subjects. the existence of english as a school subject further reminds teachers that some other subjects should not be given so much teaching time. students are not learning what is really useful for them in their future. teachers do not blame the addition of english in the curriculum, but rather those additional activities imposed top-down from ministry of education. “homeroom teachers complain first about school activities, extra-institutional, additional class activities. secondly they complain of the subjects which should not have existed at all in the first place, such as calligraphy.” [導師第一是抱怨學校活動，體制外，插入課堂的活動。第二是根本不應該存在的科 目，比如書法。] (don) homeroom teachers who had taught lower grades for an extensive period of time stated that the school subject „life‟ (生活) and „integrated subject‟ (綜合) overlap much and were given too many periods, particularly in comparison to main subjects of national language and math. the addition of english received no complaint from homeroom teachers except when it was implemented by using a time period of another subject. overall speaking, most participants voiced discontent on the incoherent educational policies that distract the main missions of teachers, as if the government pushed for any policy prompted by any interest groups. as han insightfully indicated, resources should be concentrated. some other subjects such as integrated learning, local language; the implementation of these subjects blurred the policy focus. this leads to the helpless feeling by practicing teachers. perhaps we feel english is important, but teachers have to take care of too many subjects at the same time. [資源該更集中，有其他課，綜合、鄉土，政策把焦點模糊掉，讓現場的老 師有無力感。可能我們覺得英語很重要，可是老師必須同時兼顧太多科目。 ] in this view, english could also be regarded as one of the many policies that were enforced onto the schools and teachers. it was implemented under the stress from the parents and supporting interest groups. there were no overall clear educational aims for the policy in the eyes of homeroom teachers. though they recognized its importance, they did not see the current policy as making much difference. discussions tension between instrumentalist and humanist views as pointed out earlier, most previous research literature (e.g. butler, 2004; hoa & tuan, 2007; mikio, 2008; su, 2006) seems to assume english teaching even at the elementary level to be taught by english subject teachers, not homeroom teachers. this assumption has seldom been questioned, but most participants believed that they were qualified to teach english because the content level at the elementary level is quite easy. what prevents this to be a wise policy is that the other two main subjects, national language and math, have not been given sufficient time of instruction. consequently, homeroom teachers would be tempted to use the english class to teach the other two main subjects given the role of ke. the impacts of english on taiwan‟s elementary curriculum: homeroom teachers‟ perspectives. 42 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (2) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci english instruction as motivating rather than equipping students with hard linguistic knowledge. this illustrates the tension between instrumentalist and humanist values. the nine-year comprehensive curriculum, which introduces english in 2001, is supposed to manifest curricular integration, a humanist value, but the addition of english reinforced curricular division, an instrumentalist agenda. the connections among subjects taught by different teachers are rare in the current system in which most teachers simply take care of their respective duties, as if teaching is territorial. curricular integration would be more beneficial from learners‟ perspective, but unfortunately the implementation has been much more complicated and time-consuming, thus much less feasible. as a result, what survives is still the curricular division model, which assigns teachers into specific roles teaching specific subjects. from homeroom teachers‟ perspective, english education in the elementary school might be limited to a decorative and symbolic role because english teachers were not given enough time to teach english just like they did not have enough time to teach national language and math. while schools and teachers (both homeroom and english teachers) juggle with the tensions between prioritizing four skills and fostering positive attitudes, parents have already made their decision to put their children‟s english learning in the hands of shadow education. the addition of english in the elementary education served as a reminder for parents to start preparing for the competitions in the secondary education. private cram schools seem to be offered a golden opportunity to take over the english education at the early stage. in the next section we shift to the discussion on cram schools. shadow education one major impact of english in the elementary education is that it stimulated the need for private instruction of english by cram schools or after-school programs. several studies have shown this impact (yu, 2003; su, 2006). the mass media also noticed this phenomenon, but so far adjustments in education policies have yet to be spotted. shadow education has been a unique phenomenon in east asia (bray, 1999), and in efl settings it has played an even more important role in educating learners. in normal cases shadow education play the supplementary role to formal school education. (it is „shadow‟, after all!) but in efl countries, private english cram schools could provide something that the public school could not offer, particularly at the elementary level. traditionally, public formal schools boasted well-qualified teachers, often the best minds in taiwan due to its high salary and benefits. had it not for the low-birth rate in recent decades, elementary schools would not have any problem adding qualified english teachers. unfortunately, the timing when english was added into the elementary curriculum since 2001 coincides with the societal trend of the decreasing number of incoming students. teacher quotas were frozen or even cut, leaving new certified teachers few available teaching positions. as a result, a large portion of the source of new english teachers had to come from existing teachers who did not major in english. moreover, the constraints of english curriculum and class settings often limit what english teachers were able to achieve. thus this creates the situation described in the previous section that parents do not expect the school to teach their children english. at the current stage, the general consensus on the development of english education in the elementary school in the near future suggests that the most periods english as a subject can obtain would be two periods in lower/middle and three periods in middle/high grades. if things stay similar in the next two decades, it is expected that more and more ke. the impacts of english on taiwan‟s elementary curriculum: homeroom teachers‟ perspectives. 43 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (2) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci parents would send their children to private english cram schools to receive english education because most parents in taiwan would still believe that education will help their children move upward in social status. the consequence is the privatization of english instruction, rendering english teaching in public schools as supplementary for private lessons. this would be an interesting yet saddening development, though fitting the general neoliberal trend that comes along with globalization. inequality the last issue to be discussed also relates to neoliberalism. it is the negative by-product of free market and choices in education. while many previous studies (e.g. yu, 2003; nunan, 2003) already pointed out the issue of inequality, the current study further elaborates the details of inequality and possible ideological and discursive forces that reinforce inequality. generally, when inequality was discussed in the field of efl, it means the inequality in students‟ access, resources, and achievements. the inclusion of english as a compulsive subject in the elementary school brought ideological and discursive forces that justify the rationality and necessity of learning english at such a young age. despite the fact that the policy was intended to ameliorate the inequality by providing equal access, if practicing english teachers are not able to resonate with the policy goal and prioritize it, then often times normal teaching naturally favors those high achievers, thus enlarging the differences between students‟ proficiency and confidence levels. some homeroom teachers brought up the proposal of tracking based on proficiency level, an educational taboo during the educational reform era. tracking certainly has its instrumental value since it provides an environment in which teachers can teach more efficiently and effectively. the problem with tracking is that though its efficiency and effectiveness are well recognized, its side-effect of the damage on students‟ confidence and attitude toward academic studies is regarded as too serious to ignore from the humanist perspective. knowledge and skills always come after character development, particularly at the elementary level if humanist values remain its foundation. however, if instrumentalist values continue to ascend, in the near future we may see more schools adopting tracking in english teaching since many homeroom teachers also support it. a neoliberal approach to deal with inequality would be to focus on those low achievers. as long as „no child left behind‟, the great differences between high and low achievers can be ignored. the goal is to make sure low achievers reach the required level before they graduate. remedial programs deserve more attention, and several participants also support them. students of slow development usually lag behind in most school subjects, thus adjusting the goal of english class would be necessary. more flexibility in regulation to give practicing teachers more room to maneuver when dealing with different populations of students may also be helpful. conclusion the omnipotent role of english basically has been recognized by almost all participants. previous studies on english teachers and the current study on homeroom teachers show similar results that teachers perceive learning english as necessary and natural. no teachers questioned the policy at all, but this consensus conceals the diverse expectations on english education in the elementary school. the worrying trends identified by the current study, namely increasing inequality, perpetuation of english dominance, and the questionable ke. the impacts of english on taiwan‟s elementary curriculum: homeroom teachers‟ perspectives. 44 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (2) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci curriculum timetable that fails to reflect the new demands of the global society, pose great challenges for the government, schools, and all educators involved. in light of the findings, here some policy suggestions are offered. first, the curriculum timetable should be adjusted to increase the periods of main subjects (national language, math, and english). it has become quite clear that these main subjects do not receive sufficient instruction time. while most people agree to add more teaching time for english based on its instrumental usefulness, before this, the more critical priority is that we must ensure that our children have learned the fundamental literacy in national language and math. this prerequisite would greatly facilitate the process of increasing english instruction in the elementary school. second, if english is to become a vital school subject, then there should be more teachers able and willing to teach it. in the past elementary school teachers were required to teach almost all subjects, since delivering professional knowledge is not the goal, but rather character development. elementary school teachers are character developers first, and in terms of knowledge acquisition, they are like guiders that introduce the fascinating world to the children. they do not have to be knowledgeable in all fields, nor is it possible. therefore, this mentality is crucial in teacher education, and particularly important when transforming more homeroom teachers into qualified english teachers. a qualified english teacher at the elementary level does not require high proficiency, but rather an attitude that motivates students to be curious about a new language, which functions as a window to the world. when most homeroom teachers possess this kind of mentality, students are better prepared for further learning in english and the mission of english education at the elementary school can be achieved. in order to nurture a healthy discourse of english in taiwan and other efl countries, here post-colonialism values would be of great help. first is calling for awareness in the hidden assumptions and values in the current discourse. as can be seen in the result section, younger teachers like don were more aware of the power difference in languages and the dominance of english in various ways. teachers, particularly homeroom teachers who interact daily with children, have great discursive power over students‟ worldview. nns inferior complex (ke, 2010) seems to be common. thus the authorities or the institutions with power (like universities and research faculty) should promote the equal view on different languages, exposing the hidden connections between languages and their symbolic power. this would be a long-term process, but to break free from english linguistic imperialism, discursive approach should be the most feasible. we need more understandings, elaborations, and articulations on the discourse of english in taiwan, exposing the various symbolic meanings of english in taiwan. this has been done in korea (park, 2009) and japan (seargeant, 2009), so we can learn much from their experience. limitations of the study there are several notable limitations to be recognized for this study. first is the inherited sampling bias for the accessible interviewees. those homeroom teachers who are willing to be interviewed tended to be more open-minded. the interview methodology has inherited bias that leans more on active participants who tend to express their opinions more and more articulately. the selection and recruitment of participants also influence the findings. the researcher‟s own bias and situated experience may also play a role in the interpretation of interview data. ke. the impacts of english on taiwan‟s elementary curriculum: homeroom teachers‟ perspectives. 45 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (2) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci future studies could use quantitative survey to reach out to more homeroom teachers to examine the results of this study. other stakeholders such as parents, cram school owners, businesses, and students themselves should also be studied to compare different perspectives. acknowledgement this project was funded by the national science council, taiwan (nsc 101-2410-h-155038). notes 1 ichungke@yahoo.com references bray, m. 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(in chinese) yu, k.r. [游光銳] (2003). the policy analysis of english curriculum in elementary education. unpublished master‟s thesis, national chiao tung university, hsinchu, taiwan. (in chinese) submitted: september, 9th, 2014 approved: december, 5th, 2014 o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: lemos, guilherme (2014).on the possibility of a non narcissistic autobiography in the theory of curriculum by william pinar. transnational curriculum inquiry volume (01) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> on the possibility of a non narcissistic autobiography in the theory of curriculum by william pinar guilherme lemos1 state university of rio de janeiro, brazil william pinar´s book "what is curriculum theory?", originally published in 2004 by hardcover edition. although the modified work has been reprinted in the second half of 2011 by routledge, this review refers to the original translated into portuguese and published by porto editora. on the first page of the preface two sentences set the tone and the actuality of a research from a decade ago: 1) having lost control of the curriculum, public school teachers found themselves reduced to domestic workers, instructed by politicians to clean up the "mess" left by politics, culture and history. 2) also, "empirical" research demonstrates that teachers who were spared from education course work are more successful (than those not spared) in bringing up the scores on their students exams. the relationship, or rather the fraying of the relationship between teaching and culture in gerund sense, and the political and historical consequences that this entails, set the tone and direction of the debate proposed by william pinar. the teacher and his/her training are the central themes of the whole work. the research about what is a theory of curriculum and the demarcation of its importance is made to and from teachers´ training. it is for the "prospective and practicing" teacher that pinar´s voice addresses. merging reporting, reflection, questioning and autobiography the author confronts his own intellectual trajectory and contemporary educational policies. the obsession with gross income, typical of the "bargaining model", obtained on standardized tests, reveals the "nightmare that is the present." it is in the midst of this debate that the curriculum reform of the '60s came up in the u.s., exacerbating the boundaries between the self and the other, spreading stigmas of all sorts, including that which classifies american public school as "effeminate and black."school reform", to pinar, is no more than the materialization of genderalism and racism subsumed in the cold war. although the book is based on american public school, the issues addressed escape their boundaries, which makes its reading important to the field of curriculum in the broadest sense. the book makes us realize, although this is not the lemos. on the possibility of a non narcissistic autobiography in the theory of curriculum... 56 to cite this article please include all of the following details: lemos, guilherme (2014).on the possibility of a non narcissistic autobiography in the theory of curriculum by william pinar. transnational curriculum inquiry volume (01) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> author´s goal, that the problems of american public education, in its own way, coincide with western public education; namely, the notion of teaching understood as a merely multiplier action aimed to meet the numerical results that define the political agendas of investment, which for pinar, ultimately dismisses education of its most basic commitments to promote subjectivities. although a "comprehensive analysis of curriculum studies" is not the intention, the author thoroughly explores a theory of curriculum ranging from the "interdisciplinary study of educational experience" to "criticism of contemporary educational reform", becoming "a fragmented field largely shaped by social and behavioral sciences." it is based on the reflection on the paths taken by theories and curricular practices that pinar convene teachers, educators in general, as well as teacher trainers themselves, to the effort of intellectual autobiography, which in his opinion has a revolutionary potential. he says that "we must become 'timeless', living simultaneously in the past, in the present and in the future", and only this effort is able to awaken us from the "nightmare we're living in the present," that is, the loss of control over the curriculum. the pinar´s position in relation to education is clear: on one side, "education is an opportunity offered and not services rendered"; on the other, the mere "exchange and acquisition of information is not education"; for him, the "complex conversation that is the curriculum requires interdisciplinary intellectuality, learning and self-reflection." his political horizon is diametrically opposed to negotiating education; for him, the dismantling of teaching profession is closely linked to the actions of the rightwing side of public education, largely influenced by "reactionary whites of deep south" and supported by "misinformed parents." the problem of teaching, in view of the past, is political; but in view of the future, it is to readjust the autobiography to a screen world, where "new forms of subjectivity and sexuality come up, while the natural world threatens to become virtual". as for the present, it is a proposed mobilization around a "pedagogical commitment," namely, that teachers are no longer only experts of school subjects but rather "private and public intellectuals" comprising self-reflection, intellectuality, interdisciplinarity and scholarship as inseparable. pinar´s goal is to make "uncomprehending colleagues", administrators and parents in education understand that "creativity and individuality" are more important than "competence to take tests." to pinar, public education is "political, psychosocial and fundamentally intellectual reconstruction of the self and society", the teacher's role in this reconstruction is crucial since he/she occupies a private and public space, allowing them to associate academic disciplines and cultures of the masses, intellectual development and social commitment, scholarship and everyday knowledge. but for that to be fulfilled it is necessary that the teacher understands this individually and socially, that he and she is able to realize the local and global dimensions of each action, knowing that each of these instances is permeated by one another indiscriminately, and that he and she has a historical and future meaning of what is being professed. the deletion of these assumptions, by public policies or by everyday actions, makes public education generally understood only as a school, a rhetorical and inappropriate construct to inculcate in students 'bourgeois respectability, lemos. on the possibility of a non narcissistic autobiography in the theory of curriculum... 57 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (01) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci competition, instrumentalization and eurocentric mono-culturism", aggravating the american obsession with "practical monetary value", making american culture increasingly predatory, saturated with practical energy, separated from ideas. in this sense, it is with property that cultural studies draw the focus in curriculum theory from the question of "how to teach", which sticks to a "real" previously established knowledge, to shed light on "what is taught" , placing into question the very notion of knowledge, its truth and its intentions. this shift also involves the sliding of the notion of curriculum as "substantive" to "verbal action" (currere), as a refusal to understand educators as technicians and bureaucrats, but rather as intellectuals who constantly reflect not only on their practice, but mainly on what they teach. all this makes curriculum theorization a complex and multifaceted field that requires anyone doing it to contextualize itself historically, socially and autobiographically. life history and self-formation process of theory becomes of paramount importance and are now about knowledge in perspective, interdisciplinarized, where the clear outlining of the relationship between curriculum, individual, society and history are essential. knowledge thus reconfigures itself in view of the interests of educators, learners and the needs of topical social concerns. popular culture and academic culture are inseparable from that perspective; however pinar always indicates that, besides the fact that scholarship broadens horizons, it is the depth of intellectual reflection on the part of all teachers, especially those who are dedicated to training other teachers, which holds out the promise of education: to reconstruct the self and society politically, psychosocially, and especially intellectually. the notion of training prospective teachers and practitioners presupposes interdisciplinary study that is characterized by the detection of points of intersection between the self and society; local and global; school subjects and everyday life. moreover, prospective teachers and practitioners must be constituted from the paradox that says that the private self is necessarily public. this paradox is based on nietzsche's distinction between academic philosophers and true philosophers, where the true philosopher should remain a private thinker, as opposed to those who are at the "uncritical service of the state . the task of the private thinker is to overcome the historical self, to overcome him/herself, to overcome a self-conceived from outside to work it from the inside, reconfiguring the social perspective and, thus, becoming an intervener in the public project. every teacher should become a private-public intellectual, careful not to become that which he or she speaks, but instead a "talker", autobiographer. the notion of autobiography confronts the notion of school as a business, as a service provision, in preparation for standardized tests of any origin or purpose. hence, the current school of it function as, which lives in the wake of more immediate political needs, must be replaced by which reflects on2, more contributory to cultural motives. illustratively, at the time of the research it was possible to see that the vast majority of american schools still adopted the "factory assembly line model", but here and there began to appear what was then called the "effective school", which adopted the business model. to pinar, the "models" act both as signifiers of what intelligence they produce and stereotypes of what a teacher is. the models, focusing on the construction of students´ intelligence, are intended to constitute productive beings according to a format. the manufacturing model, for example, limits intelligence to problem solving, memorization and calculation; in this case, the teacher is an automaton to occupy a niche in the assembly line. in the business model, which pinar recognizes as an improvement over the factory one, but not less inappropriate, the teacher is between the manager and the lemos. on the possibility of a non narcissistic autobiography in the theory of curriculum... 58 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (01) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci coach, a generalized metaphor to re-masculinize school; in this system, the teachermanager, through cooperative and collaborative learning techniques, recognizes intelligence as "multiple in nature and function" and adds "aesthetic, intuitive and sensorial elements. interestingly, a supposedly hegemonic school model is not even able to keep the economy as a monolith, nor to prevent other models from imploding it. pinar makes the judgment that "in order for intelligence to be grown in a fundamental way it has to be liberated from business objectives", which again leads the problem back to the same theme: the need of teacher´s autobiography, ie a teacher that is thoughtful, active and influential in the public sphere, on account of his private action. however, why become an autobiographer and how to do it? it is no longer possible today, and by today, i mean currently indeed, to escape from identity issues. the theme of identity adheres to self-formation and subjectivity in the public sphere, attempting to answer, or at least to understand, the possibilities for public policy to interfere in our minds, our bodies, our speech, our daily lives. the notion of identity here should not be confused with the "i" understood as "bourgeois individual" as some marxisms advocate, but rather as "the apex of psychosocial and discursive relations, theorized by lacan, freud and foucault." that is why the issue of identity has become so important; stripped of the substantive self, it became discursive and psychologically multiple in one, it became the to be beings, an identity schizophrenia. the argument that pinar uses to justify the need of autobiography is the fact that identities are discursive constructions from outside to inside, as adhesion to what is external to us. autobiography thus becomes an exercise of production of its own speech, despite and in critical confrontation with constituted discourses. this should be the role of teacher to the author; every teacher should be prospective, practitioner, private and public with regard to the construction of discourses, but this cannot be confused with egocentrism nor with narcissism, it is a public commitment and society, it is a political activism. to do so, pinar operates with the currere method, latin formula meaning "walk the path"; consisting of four steps: regression, progression, analysis and synthesis; thus providing a strategy to relate academic knowledge and life history. in the book, pinar proposes the method to be used, in principle, for teacher educators. the time of regression, from psychoanalytic techniques, aims at data collection experienced in recent past by free associations, with the intention to extend and transform the memory itself. such "data experienced" extend beyond the very existence towards local and global stories, seeking the location of the thinking at the time lived. pinar, to undergo his own method, makes a real archeology of racism and genderalism in south american society, back to the moments leading up to the civil war. an excellent motto for comparison studies in the history of western education. the time of progression proposes the imagination of possible futures from the data memory raised, scars exposed. this in no way means the formulation of fantasies and utopias, but attempting to educators write and enroll their "positions outside the 'graceful submission'" to politicians and parents. hence, pinar proposes two ways or modes: the stylistic and thematic. in stylistic mode, it refers to the experimentation of writing, style, reminding us that just as literature can produce "effect" in lived experience, the curriculum proposal may take effect on education. in special areas, where topics relating to the future and future expectations are taught, pinar exercises the possible relationship between sex and technology, understanding the screen as a prosthesis. lemos. on the possibility of a non narcissistic autobiography in the theory of curriculum... 59 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (01) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci analysis, in turn, lies in the search for subjectivity and freedom spaces, capable of transforming or recreating future propositions in the present. this is a complex conversation with oneself, from the data regression and progression of propositions, which aims to uncover the points that prevent a moment of reflection go to another. finally, synthesis, moment of greatest inwardness, aims to investigate the question: "what is the meaning of the present?" making intellect, emotion and behavior a whole in the concreteness of the body. through complex conversation with himself, in an attitude of continual self understanding, the private intellectual mark is forged in the teacher, who should never separate pedagogical action committed to reconstruction from the public sphere, reconceptualizing the curriculum of objectives in a singular version, in the first person, of culture and history, "personified in the individual concretely existing in society and within a historical period"; in this sense, school subjects constitute or face a mix of academics and human affairs, becoming "the pedagogical practice of the xxi century politics "to connect the subjective to the social and vice versa. every action has its burdens and its bonus, including silence and abstention. commenting on the prospect of george gusdorf (1980) and his critics, pinar makes it possible to understand the phenomenological aspect of the proposal. not in a husserlian sense, because it is not about eidetic reductions, phenomenology here rather is much closer to an archeology of the self, the foucauldian mode. a key point that should be made clear is that the autobiographer does not ask "who am i?" but "where do i belong?" along the lines of robert graham (1991), critic of gusdorf; it is not the myth of narcissus, the desire of oneself, the most appropriate image of autobiography, but of antaeus seeking his place in the world, it is rather "a matter of place." unlike the search for an ideal and illusory world, such as in fiction writing, autobiography shows the impossibility of its own dream, a private construction, but in perspective. the contradictions of the self are well explained in the mirror stage, by lacan, who reveals the forced image, false, the unified self of the child, a self printed in the child from the outside, subject to the symbolic laws of language. therefore, according to benstock (1988), it should be understood "as a metaphor for the vision of harmony of a subject essentially in discord". it is the discord that transfigures the harmonious unity of the self. so, for lacan, the unconscious is not the depth of the conscious, but the junction line between the inside and the outside and reveals itself as language. hence, writing, speech, the need for reconstruction, distanced from oneself. in specular subjectivity there is a distancing space where the "self reflected" sutures disintegration and self division, thus forming as a supposed unified and harmonious self, but which is absence, because the suture of separate social fragments is done by that which is lacking in the projected image. to gusdorf, the autobiography "is the mirror in which the individual reflects his own image". despite the fact that the self and self-image coincide, the self disagrees with it, through the failure of coincidence, which makes it create new sutures from new absences, without implying compensation, ie, it is possible to create a self-writing that is not cohesive, continuous. therefore, it is possible to accept the privilege of difference and of discontinuity on equality and identity. the question of autobiography answers the problem of the speaking subject that can, through language, reveal the unconscious as well as to protect himself from it. thus, autobiography brings about elements of suture, fragments that met the needs, that exposes the reflected image or, even better, that exposes its fragmentary reflex condition that allows new reconfigurations and, even further, eliminates the possibility of in itself. thus the previously reported warning: the speaking subject must not become that what he speaks. lemos. on the possibility of a non narcissistic autobiography in the theory of curriculum... 60 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (01) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci as a practical example, pinar brings up virginia woolf's reflections on her own writing. virginia says when re-reading her "old volumes”, she makes sure not to do it as a sensor, thus avoiding the possibility of a truth. with that, she discovers meanings of things absolutely placed at random, meanings they had not at that point. over time, virginia realizes multiple relationships between mind and writing. benstock, from that, emphasizes that these relationships imply questioning of narrative conventions, a questioning of symbolic laws, which pinar infers as masculine. this is an action, a verb, one act at a time in constant reconceptualization which suggests the curriculum as currere, where, according to woolf, "strong emotion must leave its mark." another argument practiced by pinar lies in the fact that "if individuality were not a possibility of development, psychoanalysis would be a subfield of sociology." this argument serves to introduce two questions: first that the autobiography takes place through intense interaction with others; second, that autobiography is necessarily fictitious. the possibility of a "self" relatively authentic, even if fragmentary, is transmuted, in the regressive phase of currere, in relief of consciousness that this self is just like the effect of conditioning. just as in the progressive stage, fantasies about what "could one be" show up by free futurity. to pinar, "both our past and fantasies of the future are simultaneously 'in' the past and "in" the future. the self is deeply historical. " to go through the currere way requires effort and courage, each new step has only hope and surprise in the horizon. to become thinking is to launch oneself into the abyss of specular subjectivity, re-suturing oneself at each re-action of alterity and ushering subjective action in the direction of the reflected image of the am/am not. there is no place for narciso along this trajectory; the image you see in that mirror is not that which is supposed to be its own, but the splinters of the encounter between the inside and the outside. thus, individuality does not coincide with the individual, but with the attempt of subjectivity and it is this attempt that should be set up as an educational process aesthetic able to intuit the driving force of culture on its own motion, with only the difference in the horizon, able to report identitary policies and not let itself be attached to them. this thought corroborates the presence, in bibliography, of phenomenolgy of perception by merleau-ponty, and yet highlights the lack of phenomenology and social relations by alfred schtuz. while ponty dedicated himself to timely understanding perception according to gestalt psychology, where, it is true, perception is understood as a field and, therefore, interpretative and fictitious; schutz dedicated himself to correlates between social interpretation and individual guidance, where subjective exercise consists in trying to put on hold that which, in the world, is apparently given, naturalized. thus, schutz´s social phenomenology would also be very contributive in the constitution of autobiography, particularly as "self-interpretation of cultural community", where the apparent coherence, clarity and consistency of the knowledge system are deemed as "cultural pattern", aiming to eliminate problematic interpretations that underscore differences, and is placed under suspicion. habitual thinking becomes suspicious. this phenomenology puts under suspension the usual in order to extend the possibilities of conscious subjective intervention and thus overcome the biography determined by passive acceptance of a story apparently given. it seems to me that schutz´s thinking appears as a good tool for critical engagement with pinar´s autobiography notion. my only but lies on the idea of method; although currere enables a very individual journey, i believe construction and deconstruction are part of intellectual exercise along the lemos. on the possibility of a non narcissistic autobiography in the theory of curriculum... 61 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (01) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci trajectory, of one's own method; however, william pinar´s desire is no other but that this "complex conversation may complicate theirs and yours". notes 1 guilhermealemos@yahoo.com.br 2 author´s bold terms. reference pinar, w. f. what is curriculum theory?. adaptation to portuguese by ana paula barros and sandra pinto. porto, portugal: publisher porto ltda, 2007. 431 pages. submitted: apr, 2nd, 2014 approved: july, 15th, 2014 mailto:guilhermealemos@yahoo.com.br o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: moraes, elisabeth, freire, ludmila de almeida. (2016). the university curriculum and the ecology of knowledges towards building a planetary citizenship. transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> the university curriculum and the ecology of knowledges towards building a planetary citizenship silvia elisabeth moraes1 federal university of ceará, brazil ludmila de almeida freire 2 state university of minas gerais, brazil introduction this paper presents results of the research project global citizenship as an inter/transdisciplinary theme in the university curriculum. the first part of the study was made with student-teachers at the federal university of ceará (ufc) between 2008 and 2012 (moraes 2005, 2008, 2014; freire 2011. to broaden brazil’s perspective on the topic of global citizenship (gc), a second part of the project was dedicated to analyse how other countries deal with this issue in their university curricula. for this purpose, the authors of this paper went abroad: moraes spent the year 2013 in a estágio senior – capes at the institute of education, university of london, where the theme was expanded and contextualized in the united kingdom; freire went to the centre of social studies at the university of coimbra for a doctoral internship (capes 2013-2014) on the ecology of knowledges theory. the united kingdom (uk) was chosen for two main reasons: its long tradition of scientific institutions and the adoption of ‘global dimension’ as a transdisciplinary theme in british schools and universities. global dimension comprises global citizenship, global health, human rights, conflict resolution, values and perceptions, diversity, social justice, and interdependence. our aim was to understand the views and modes of action of academics from five uk universities that have adopted global dimension in their academic programs, namely the university of london, university college london, bournemouth university, university of oxford, and university of edinburgh. as far as the university of coimbra is concerned, it offered us the opportunity to become acquainted with boaventura de sousa santos’s ecology of knowledges theory. in portuguese we have two words for knowledge: conhecimento and saber. conhecimento may refer to a more formal knowledge, as from the academic sciences. saber is more contextualized knowledge, related to social demands, to the life-world (habermas 1992)) where all traditions, culture, and the sciences meet. institutions, such as the federal university of outro preto, university of brasília, state university of ceará are engaged in what they call an “epistemic and pedagogical experimentation” that promotes a dialogue between the academic world, centered exclusively in the knowledge derived from modern occidental universities, and, in the brazilian case, the knowledge from indigenous and african matrixes. moraes, freire & almeida. the university curriculum 37 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci as we incorporated the ecology of knowledges perspective, we figured out we were no longer talking about a global but a planetary citizenship, as it is explained further in this paper. the university stands as a discursive context for building this citizenship and the ecology of knowledges as the main category to support our reflection, since it is an attitude of dialogue and coordination between the official/western knowledge and those others that have long been excluded from the scenario. this citizenship is conceived as a floating signifier that is articulated in a variety of concrete projects proposed by different groups in accordance with their demands and aspirations. planetary citizenship is the transdisciplinary theme that gives coherence to those projects; it is their ’saber organizador’. post-colonialism and university knowledge in its broadest sense, post-colonial theory aims to discuss the vast web of power relations interwoven among nations that share a heritage from the european colonization process. the theory emphasizes that it is only possible to understand the organization of the current globalized world if we consider the power relations between nations and the various implications of the european colonial adventure, especially for those people who were colonized (silva 1999). regarding the issue of knowledge, quijano (2000) points out that modern intellectual rationality is highly connected to the knowledge of colonial, capitalist, eurocentric domination process, common referred to as eurocentrism. this category does not involve all the cognitive history throughout europe, nor in particular in western europe. in other words, it does not refer to all modes of knowledge of all europeans and in all times, but to a specific rationality or perspective that became globally hegemonic, colonizing and overlapping previous or different others, both in europe and in the rest of the world. this time, the most scathing criticism postcolonial studies offer is vindication, recognition and inclusion of a range of knowledge, traditions, culture and world views that do not conform to the european canon, being therefore discarded as vulgar, irrelevant, superstitious and primitive. this domination, still rooted and poignant on current relationships, penetrates various spheres of collective and subjective thinking, the evil triad of colonial domination by knowledge, by being and power (silva, 1999). it also promotes a profound distortion of historical self-image developed by the colonized countries, as quijano (2000) notes. the eurocentric perspective of knowledge operates as a mirror that distorts what it reflects, meaning that the image we find in that mirror is not at all chimerical, since we have so many and such important european historical features in so many ways, material and intersubjective. however, at the same time, we are deeply different. hence, when we look at our eurocentric mirror, the image we see is necessarily partial and distorted. among the important notions to act as a delegitimization instrument of identity and culture of the subjugated nations, one of the central concepts serving their mechanism is the concept of representation. the representation, in this theory, refers to the forms of expression upon which the other is represented, with the very illustrative example of the arts and literature, able to propagate an image aesthetically caricatured, derogatory and/or superficial of certain people and their culture. following this bias, the relationship between culture and aesthetics is distorted by a higher power relationship: it is through representation that we build the identity of the other and at the same time, our own identity. it was by representation that the west, along the path of its colonial expansion, built an "other" supposedly inferior and possessed by a wild and unbridled moraes, freire & almeida. the university curriculum 38 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci sexuality, seen as a form of knowledge of the other, the representation is at the heart of the connection knowledge-power (quijano, 2000). since the beginning of colonization process, knowledge was deeply tied to power. the settler, from the beginning, made the colony and its native the object of his research, realizing them from their perspective of domination and exploitation, characterizing them as exotic, picturesque regarding their own civility reference, thus strengthening their self-perception of superiority. the very scientific spirit was strongly driven by the exploration of movement and entrepreneurship that was imbued with the colonizing activity. another point to be considered in our analysis is that it was not enough to process the colonial exploitation and physical subjugation of people: it was necessary, through education and religion, the assertion of white culture european-christianpatriarchal -over "primitive and barbarian" worldview of colonized peoples. it is necessary, however, to ratify that this whole process of enculturation did not occur in a one-way street without resistance. reading the colonial and post-colonial process reveals the presence of miscegenation, of syncretism, of hybridity, revealing the presence not only of cultural domination but also of cultural resistance, "obviously, the result is favourable to power but never so crystal, never completely, never so definitely as desired. the hybrid bears the marks of power, but also the marks of resistance "(ibid, p.129). from this colonial legacy is that post-colonial theory proposes an analysis that can shed light on the knowledge and the reason that was born and raised in the university. we seek to understand to what extent the present narratives in academic curricula continue to propagate the european imperial model at the expense of their own cultural constructions, if they do not have this varnish. new forms of cultural consumer society can nowadays impose on academic projects, setting up a neo-colonialism. the issues raised by post-colonial discussion does not intend to believe that the academic or other educational institution curriculum can or should be impartial, free of bias, but rather to understand that the curriculum is a disputed territory, with a correlation of forces between knowledge, power, aesthetics and culture. postcolonial studies demystify the supposed neutrality that modern scientific knowledge has postulated and that the university, supported by its ethical commitment, needs to unveil, assuming the "why" and "who" of its educational project. postcolonial studies’ main contribution to social and educational thinking is that it creates the conditions for “the possibility of theorizing a non-coercive relationship or dialogue with the excluded ‘other’ of western humanism” (gandhi 1998, 39, in andreotti 2011). andreotti asks what aspects of western/enlightenment humanism (or other discourses) could stop or prevent a non-coercive relationship or dialogue among different ways of being in the world. the response of postcolonial theory, as presented in andreotti, is “an examination of the hostility to difference embedded in the normative teleological project of western/enlightenment humanism, which is the basis of dominant western epistemologies” (p. 1). the ecology of knowledge as an alternative to the monoculture of scientific knowledge the university has long been suffering from a mismatch between the new social practices and the knowledge that is developed within its walls. the analysis of this crisis implies putting side by side conservative issues of academic and scientific culture as moraes, freire & almeida. the university curriculum 39 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci well as a new global culture that simultaneously approximates the global and local, the real and the virtual. regarding the brazilian public university, we identify two discourses in authors who have addressed this issue: the first argument recognizes that the university is going through a crisis of legitimacy facing the new social challenges, but defends its identity, social mission and essential role in the consolidation of a political project for society. the other argument, orchestrated by neo-liberal productivism, accuses the university of an anachronism that does not allow it to adapt to "the pressing needs of the new century." the ecology of knowledge, basilar perspective of the analysis performed in this paper, should be understood in the broader context of the sociology of absences (santos, 2007). it is an investigation that aims to bring visibility to a wide range of cultural, epistemological, experiential possibilities, made invisible by a hegemonic logic that not only disqualifies and delegitimizing these other forms of social action, as makes them absent, unworthy of being considered reasonable to the rational logic in progress. sousa santos points out that there are several ways to produce this nonexistence, but that they all conform to the same logic of monoculture, where experiences are irrevocably placed outside their borders and therefore not likely to be considered important or relevant. within the sociology of absences, we refer to the concept of null curriculum in eisner (1985). according to eisner, all schools teach three curricula: the explicit, the implicit, and the null. the explicit curriculum refers to the publicly announced programs of study, the curricular grid. it is clarifying to examine, for instance, how many hours are dedicated to teaching maths, science, history, arts, and other subjects: it says a lot about the importance given to each area of knowledge and what lies underneath those choices. the implicit curriculum refer to values and expectations generally not included in the formal curriculum, but learned by students as part of their school experience. the null curriculum eisner defines as the decision of what to teach and what not to teach, “… the options students are not afforded, the perspectives they may never know about, much less be able to use, the concepts and skills that are not part of their intellectual repertoire” (1985, p. 107). all three types imply a certain agenda in curriculum design. in case of academic and traditional knowledge, the null curriculum works in either cases: for example, formal accepted western knowledge excludes/includes teaching darwin’s evolution, for religious reasons, or certain history topics that do not fit in the agenda of groups in power. during the military dictatorship (april 1, 1964 to march 15, 1985), brazilians were not allowed to approach certain topics in their history courses. in fact, history books were rewritten in order to eliminate what militaries considered “subversive”. when developing a curriculum, of course there are notions that we leave out simply because we cannot teach everything. however, the null curriculum is useful to understand what has been left out and why. it is important to mention the ethical commitment that academic and traditional knowledges must adopt within the university context. this is a territory of dispute, of confrontation between different ideas, worldviews, theories and projects. both sides carry discourses of exclusion, racism, rejection of cultural expressions and practices, of acceptance of inequality, of disrespect towards people’s rights, including women’s and other vulnerable groups’. any type of knowledge must therefore pass through the filter of critical analyses that allows the identification of its tacit and implicit meaning, its cosmovision, its contradictions, absences and exclusions. in principle, all visions of moraes, freire & almeida. the university curriculum 40 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci epistemic communities should be accepted but they should also be submitted to a scrutiny from different angles. in habermas’s opinion (1995), we should be able to question traditions, to decide which situations we want to keep and which ones we want to neglect, thus performing a selective incorporation of traditions. in countries of strong immigration – nowadays practically all countries have multicultural populations – this selectiveness on the sides of immigrants and natives is useful to make conviviality possible. the establishment of these hegemonic spaces of truth characterizes some forms of monoculture, the most powerful of them all being the monoculture of knowledge and scientific rigor that focuses on the constitution of modern science and high culture as the only possible forms of truth and beauty. from the establishment of a canon, with its own criteria of legitimacy which are not impartial nor serve indistinct groups, everything that does not conform to this canon is thrown into the limbo of ignorance. the sociology of absences then aims to demonstrate, in all social spheres that a series of plural possibilities have been left out by a hegemonic perspective that wants to establish itself as unique. sousa santos refers to various types of ecologies, respectively, that have to face every kind of monoculture. it is therefore necessary to recognize that other forms of knowledge permeate social practices, enjoying legitimacy and relevance to those who put them into practice by means of oral culture, for instance, but who demonstrate strength and social meaning in their communities. they may originate from religious beliefs, popular wisdom, tacit knowledge, which are consolidated regardless of scientific knowledge. the credibility that these other types of knowledge enjoy among its actors should be sufficient for the establishment of a dialogue with the scientific knowledge, without them being considered inferior or of a subordinate condition. this is a very compelling premise in sousa santos’s works: that there is not an ignorance in general, but that all ignorance is ignorant of certain knowledge and all knowledge overcomes a particular ignorance. this sense of incompleteness of knowledge is what makes possible a dialogical approach, especially in regard to responses to given social situations. with the concept of ecology of knowledges, sousa santos argues that reality is inaccessible to any single knowledge system. on this ground, in trying to understand and deal with reality, rather than favouring the ‘monoculture’ of a single system, it is more fruitful to recognize the plurality of knowledges that exist and work towards maintaining sustainable and dynamic interactions between them (sousa santos 2007). since the curriculum should reflect the society in which it is inserted and from which it emerges, the existence of such plurality of knowledges in the curriculum itself is fundamental. a corollary of the initial premise of the inaccessibility of reality to a single knowledge system, and a requirement for the coexistence of different systems within the curriculum, is that each one is treated, a priori at least, as equally legitimate. through the ecology of knowledges within the academic activities, we defend the understanding of broader epistemic communities where sectors of society can and should be co-producers of this knowledge. this should involve itself in the agenda of research priorities and redirect them to the needs of those who will make use of their results in an emancipatory sense, i.e., for excluded groups. in brazil, it would reach most of its population. with the concept of ecology of knowledges, sousa santos argues that reality is inaccessible to any single knowledge system. on this ground, in trying to understand and deal with reality, rather than favouring the ‘monoculture’ of a single system, it is moraes, freire & almeida. the university curriculum 41 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci more fruitful to recognize the plurality of knowledges that exist and work towards maintaining sustainable and dynamic interactions between them (sousa santos 2007). since the curriculum should reflect the society within which it is inserted and from which it emerges, the existence of such plurality of knowledges in the curriculum itself is fundamental. a corollary of the initial premise of the inaccessibility of reality to a single knowledge system, and a requirement for the coexistence of different systems within the curriculum, is that each one is treated, a priori at least, as equally legitimate. it is important to mention the ethical commitment that academic and traditional knowledges must adopt within the university context. this is a territory of dispute, of confrontation between different ideas, worldviews, theories and projects. both sides carry discourses of exclusion, racism, rejection of cultural expressions and practices, of acceptance of inequality, of disrespect towards people’s rights, including women’s and other vulnerable groups’. in any case, any type of knowledge must pass through the filter of critical analyses that allows the identification of its tacit and implicit meaning, its cosmovision, its contradictions, absences and exclusions. in principle, all visions of epistemic communities should be accepted but they should also be submitted to a scrutiny from different angles. in habermas’s opinion (1995), we should be able to question traditions, to decide which situations we want to keep and which ones we want to neglect, thus performing a selective incorporation of traditions. in countries of strong immigration – nowadays practically all countries have multicultural populations – this selectiveness on the sides of immigrants and natives is useful to make conviviality possible. as far as scientific knowledge is concerned, its weaknesses with regard to ethical issues had been brought up by theorists of the frankfurt school such as adorno, marcuse and horkheimer, pointing out in the development of modern western science the presence of a dynamic instrumentalization of reason (martinazzo, 2005). instrumental reason promotes a gap between science and ethics, given that its objective is to achieve certain ends, transforming people and objects into instruments to efficiently reach its goals. deconstruction of this kind of rationality must permeate the new epistemic proposal both with regard to science as to the contributions of traditional knowledge. in this sense, the possibility of integration between science, ethics and traditional knowledge requires a rational change, but also ontological in human society. we are experiencing a paradigm shift that allows us to establish new bases for knowledge also in its ethical dimension. race as a denial of citizenship according to quijano (2000), in america the idea of race originated in reference to the phenotypic differences between conquerors and conquered. it was built on supposed differential biological structures between those groups. the formation of social relations based on this idea produced historically new social identities indians, blacks and mestizos and redefined others. the terms that until then indicated only geographic origin or country of origin, began to include a racial connotation in new identities. since social relations that were being configured were relations of domination, such identities were associated with hierarchies, places, and corresponding social roles, as constitutive of them and, therefore, the pattern of colonial domination was imposed. in short, race and racial identity were established as instruments of basic social classification of the population. over time, the colonizers codified the phenotypic traits such as color of the colonized and assumed as the emblematic characteristic of racial category. this coding moraes, freire & almeida. the university curriculum 42 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci was probably initially established in the anglo-american area. blacks were not only the most important exploited, because the main part of the economy lay in their work. they were, above all, the most important colonized race, since indians were not part of that colonial society. the expansion of european colonialism led to the development of the eurocentric perspective of knowledge and with it the theoretical elaboration of the idea of race as a naturalization of these colonial domination relations between europeans and non-europeans. historically, this meant a new way of legitimizing the already old ideas and practices of relations of superiority / inferiority between dominant and dominated. since then it has proved itself as the most effective and lasting instrument of universal social domination: the conquered were placed in a natural position of inferiority together with their phenotypic traits as well as their mental and cultural discoveries. thus, race became the first fundamental criterion for the distribution of the world population in the ranks, places and roles in the power structure of the new society. stuart hall made a contribution to the discussion of race as he approaches it as a floating signifier in a lecture ‘race: the floating signifier’, given at goldsmiths college, university of london, in 1997. in our culture, he says, there is an urge to classify humans into different types according to their physical or intellectual characteristics. in a way, this is a positive cultural impulse, because we now understand the importance of all forms of classification to meanings: what is important for us is when the systems of classification become the objects of the disposition of power. that is to say, when the marking of difference and similarity across a human population becomes a reason why this group is to be treated in that way and get those advantages, and that group should be treated in another .(hall, 1997, p.2). once you are classified, a whole range of other things falls into place. racism as a philosophy holds that there is a natural connection between the appearance (differences of colour, hair, and bones) and what people think and do, how smart they are, whether they are good athletes, good dancers, or even ‘civilized’. racists believe that these features are the result not of the environment but of our genetics. however, all attempts to substantiate the concept of race scientifically, in biological or genetic terms, have proven unsustainable. situating citizenship: local, global and planetary as we mentioned before, the discussion on global citizenship emerged from thematic projects that ufc student-teachers developed in the discipline didactics i (2009-2012). themes such as renewable energy, amazonia, global warming, consumerism, evolution, hunger and pollution were approached interdisciplinarity and assumed an even broader dimension when their scope expanded from a national to a global perspective. the discipline program, within the scope of the national curricular guidelines (dcn) for undergraduate courses, states that students at the end of the semester must understand the curriculum as a construction that involves conflicts, interests and power relations, fostering critical thinking and contextualizing contents through interdisciplinary and transversal practices. the projects which addressed the thematic universe (paulo freire, 1970) of the participating groups were regarded as one way of promoting such curriculum. most of the students of ufc night courses, although geographically and economically far from the "global north", suffer the influences of a globalized world through their mobile phones, iphone, ipad, facebooks, twitter and television programs. moraes, freire & almeida. the university curriculum 43 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci as we went along with our thematic projects, their questions became more and more critical: what is the meaning of citizenship for us? if ethics concerns rules of conviviality, what are our rules? what is the meaning of accepting diversity when one lives in a peripheral excluded world? what are the most pressing environmental issues? what is the relationship between the problems of our peripheral communities and several other communities around the globe? how do these communities relate to the global centers of power? what is the role of science in the discussion of citizenship? in souza santos’s words (1999), all natural-scientific knowledge is social-scientific, all knowledge is local and total, all knowledge is self-knowledge. the inclusion of transversal themes in the brazilian basic school curriculum ethics, sexual orientation, environment, health, cultural plurality (pcn-national curricular parameters, 1998) – was a major step in the configuration of a more aware citizenry. transversality combines concepts and ways in which institutions, people, and modes of production, distribution and consumption control and dominate cultural life. the inclusion of transversal themes in the curriculum favors the development of a critical view on issues that affect collective life and distorts man’s view towards nature (moraes 2005). in the basic education curriculum guidelines (brazil, mec, dcneb, 2013), we find that citizenship suggests a notion of "access of individuals to goods and services of a modern society," a contemporary discourse of an era in which many brazilian social movements fought essentially to obtain, from the state, more dignified living conditions, in the dominantly material point of view. this discourse has changed for a citizenship now understood as the active participation of individuals in public decisions in order to ensure better conditions in a civilized life. in the school context, according to dcneb, the main issue around which the curriculum should be constructed is what kind of education men and women in the next 20 years need in order to participate in the construction of such a diverse world. thus, we can say that we already had our feet in the local and global scenarios, struggling to find the connections and disconnections between these two. with the inclusion of the transdisciplinary theme global dimension in british schools and universities and the need to broaden our perspective of the topic by leaving the local scenario for a while, there came this chance of finding out what was being constructed as a global citizenship in the uk. our aim was to understand the views and modes of action of academics from universities that host internationalization programmes. the interviewees were chosen for their positions as researchers, postgraduate supervisors, members of committees and councils, and/or coordinators of projects that involve students of universities in the uk and other countries. they collaborate with a wide range of organizations, such as the council of europe, unesco, the british council, the house of lords, and ngos concerned with nature conservation, human rights and humanitarian aid. the choice of respondents also took into consideration their fields of expertise, which span education, earth sciences, health, biological sciences, and social sciences. the different meanings attributed to global citizenship by the academics portray agreements that project participants engage in, and such agreements materialize the floating signifier in their particular discursive contexts. three main concepts came up in the interviews: global, international and cosmopolitan. global is directly connected to globalization where the economic aspect prevails, subjugating the cultural. “the word global is a commercial construct”, says an interviewee. “it has to do with markets, not with intellectual sensibilities. global is about how big a market we can have for our products. it is watching the same television moraes, freire & almeida. the university curriculum 44 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci program in calcutta as you might watch in texas”. it means the g8 trying to impose commercial rules, habits and "ways of being in the world” (andreotti, 2011, p.178) internationalism helps the preservation of cultural diversity. in one of the academics’ words, ‘internationalism gives you a sense of belonging to a community of minds, having a historical link, a kind of continuity of thought, which embraces different countries, a philosophy that includes western and eastern’. for internationalists, inclusion is an assumption: it is not necessary to take the initiative to include the other because, in theory, we are included just by the fact that we all see ourselves as international citizens, ‘meaning that you are in line of heritage to a whole body of intellectual traditions’ (moraes 2014). in cosmopolitanism, say the interviwees, the main concern is inclusion. it proposes overcoming the political boundaries, ignoring the configuration of the world into nation states. it is the view that all groups belong to the same community, opposing nationalism and patriotism, moving from a national perspective to a cosmopolitan perspective, of interaction with humans. “you need a cosmopolitan perspective to see that people who are not members of nation states are deserving of respect, dignity, due process”. cosmopolitans take institutional initiatives to include the other based on principles of social justice and peace, values , human rights, democracy, and citizenship (moraes 2014). as the study locus changed to brazil, and the ecology of knowledges was included in our conceptual framework, global became planetary. here, global is associated with exclusion, division, injustice; planetary came up naturally as a context that is more embracing, more connected to our concerns about sustainability and cultural inclusion. the emphasis is being given to the planet becoming a most important part of every project; every research in the university and the ecology of knowledges carries such proposal. it has made us realize that our transdisciplinary theme is indeed planetary citizenship. planetary citizenship as a floating signifier a contribution in regard to the epistemological possibilities of diverse knowledge within the university for the promotion of a broader citizenship is given by linguistics through the concept of floating signifier. the idea of floating signifier goes back to saussure (1979) who defined a linguistic sign as being composed of a 'signifier' (signifiant) -the form that has the sign-and the "meaning" (signifié) the concept it represents. the sign is the whole that results from the association of the signifier with the meaning, i.e., a recognizable combination of a signifier with a special meaning. in our analysis, we use the concept of floating signifier of ernesto laclau (2007). for laclau, there are two types of signifiers: the empty and floating. an empty signifier tries to break its relationship with any meaning in order to represent a heterogeneous field. a floating signifier is articulated in a variety of concrete projects: since it moves between projects, it is not empty, it is floating. laclau exemplified a signifier with the solidarność movement led by lech walesa in the shipyards of gdansk, poland, in the 1980s. the movement began attached to a set of precise demands of the workers of the shipbuilding industry, but eventually came to encompass many other demands in different areas. at the end, solidarność became the signifier of something much broader. the demands increased so much that the reference to a particular meaning was diluted. it became empty. a floating signifier is different. it can be connected to different contexts, so the meaning in each context is fully realized. it may even be ambiguous: an over moraes, freire & almeida. the university curriculum 45 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci determination or determination of sub-meanings prevents it from being fully resolved. however, still it does not mean it is empty. it fluctuates between different forms of articulation in different projects (moraes, 2015). democracy is a good example of a floating signifier that can become empty because it is open to contestation and articulation in radically different political projects – that is, it has one meaning for a certain group and the opposite meaning for another. we are now seeing in brazilian politics this signifier floating from one group to the other, each one suggesting projects, laws and modes of action to “fill in” the signifier democracy. in regards to a greater social intentionality that an educational institution as the university must have, which is the education of citizens, the meaning of citizenship remains open to contexts and projects. for a planetary citizenship to be articulated, it is necessary to design projects that give it its meaning. pinar (2014) criticizes the presentism and narcissism in the american culture today. presentism, says he, erases time and space, as place becomes nowhere in particular, cyberspace. citing lasch’s (1978, p. 102) pinar defines “the culture of narcissism” as “the intense subjectivity of modern world, exemplified even more clearly in the office than in the factory,” that “causes men and women to doubt the reality of the external world and to imprison themselves ... in a shell of protective irony (p. 100)”. strengthening pinar’s criticism on presentism and narcissism, we find in sousa santos the attribution of a primordial role to the present, but considering it as a possibility of expression of a plurality of experiences and heterogeneity of knowledges shared by collectives in creative arrangements. the perspective of collectivity opposes narcissism and monoculture, generating new possibilities for dialogue. planetary citizenship building with the ecology of knowledges contradicts presentism and narcissism by insisting on the inclusion of knowledges originated outside a westernbased space and time of reference. articulating planetary citizenship: jumping over the university wall there has been a movement towards overcoming barriers and prejudices between the academy and popular knowledge in the shape of projects, discussion forums and other initiatives mainly coming from the university. in this session we will briefly refer to the house of world citizenship, the group tramas (trabalho, meio ambiente e saúde para a sustentabilidade -work, environment and health for sustainability), encontro de saberes (encounter of knowledges) and encontro dos profetas da chuva (encounter of the rain prophets). in the paulo freire institute (ipf), the house of world citizenship (ccp – casa da cidadania planetária) aims to develop programs, projects, discussion forums and social mobilization, attributes itself the main challenge of contributing for the construction of a planetary citizenship, active and critical in different educational spaces, from the perspective of a culture of sustainability. the ccp acts in three main programs: o município que educa (municipality that educates) which seeks to contribute to the development of municipalities through shared, collaborative municipal management, with emphasis on the educational dimension of all local actions; the education program for planetary citizenship (cpet) whose concept has to do with the awareness that this planet is a living organism, and, like us, has a history which is also our history. we are the earth together with all that lives on it in dynamic harmony, sharing the same space and the same fate. educating for a planetary citizenship implies a reorientation of our view of education as moraes, freire & almeida. the university curriculum 46 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the individual insertion in a community that is local and global at the same time; and the social mobilization program, responsible for integrating the various actions of the paulo freire institute (ipf) regarding the participation and coordination in the discussion forums and local social movements, regional and planetary. the ccp recognizes the earth as a living organism of which humans are part therefore recognizes that the survival of the planet depends on an ongoing educational process aimed at forming a global community, conscious of our interdependence, able to recognize what is best in terms of individual (personal) and collective (public) and ensure the environmental sustainability. therefore, it seeks to contribute to the strengthening of social mobilization movements that ipf is part of, with emphasis in education for global citizenship, expanding the dialogue between freire pedagogy and the themes of each of these democratic spaces for discussion. their overall objective is to develop programs, projects and actions that promote the formation of planetary citizens committed to education processes for sustainability and participatory environmental management in different learning contexts. the group tramas at ufc (http://nucleotramas.webnode.com.br/) aims at integrating dimensions of education, research and social cooperation, focusing on the interrelations of production, work, environment and health within the present development model. it mediates environmental conflicts seeking to feed and contribute to building the field of public health. tramas’s members are graduate students in biology, geography, law, medicine, social sciences, communication, education, pharmacy, and home economics. some are social militants of the mst (movimento dos sem terra – landless workers’ movement), ngo’s of human rights, political parties, student movement, feminist movement. another project that has been very successful is the encontro de saberes (encounter of knowledges). it is an initiative of the national institute of science, technology and inclusion in higher education and research (incti), based at the university of brasilia. the project's goal is to provide an educational and epistemic space of experimentation in teaching. it is a major challenge because of the wide gap that separates the two worlds that are supposed to dialogue: the academic world, highly literate and focused exclusively on knowledge derived from modern western universities; and the world of traditional knowledge, of indigenous and african origin and other traditional communities’, which have been accumulated for centuries in brazil. moraes has recently been to an encontro dos profetas da chuva (rain prophets encounter) in the interior of ceará, brazil, in january 2016. nature gives different signals to these men and women of the hinterland that make forecasts for the rainy season which runs from february to may. antonio lima, 75, came to the 20th meeting of the rain prophets in quixadá3, 168 kilometers from the capital, fortaleza, carrying a joão-de-barro’s (furnarius rufus), house. this little bird according to antonio lima, builds its nest with the opening in the opposite direction of the wind and rain. “if we are going to have winter, joão-de-barro builds his house with material that no rain destroys," says the prophet. antonio lino renato de souza, 68, was optimistic about the rainy season in 2016. he showed the stem of embiratanha, a typical semi-arid plant with thick streaks along its trunk in the dry season. "this plant grows on stony ground and only lives to give signs that it will rain. these scratches were quite broad, but now they are healing," he describes. on saturday morning, jan 9, 2016, the skies of quixadá 1were cloudy. antonio looked at the clouds and described them as a thick veil, bringing rain from the moraes, freire & almeida. the university curriculum 47 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci south of ceará to the central hinterland. according to ceará rain calendar, published by funceme (fundação cearense de meteorologia e recursos hídricos cearense foundation for meteorology and water management), on that day it was raining in 96 of the 184 municipalities in the state. for antonio lino and many others of the 30 prophets gathered at the meeting this year, the rain of the last days shows that the "winter" has arrived in ceará. however, this is not the opinion of other rain prophets. joão américo da costa, 88, shows a banner with photos of an anthill in the bed of a dry river. "it is three years this anthill appears in the river barrier. the forecast is for a very weak winter." if there was going to be heavy rain, the ants would not build their anthill on the bed of a river because it would be washed away. paulo costa de oliveira, 70, sees beyond the clouds and says, "we will not have winter this year, we will have isolated and localized rains.” the prophets believe more in the information that nature offers than in meteorological studies. however, nature no longer responds like in the old days, they say sadly. there have been changes in the way nature behaves. some old signs are not valid anymore. however, on that day the rain prophets sat side by side with meteorologists who have a lot to learn from them. on the other hand, for larger territories, more advanced instruments are definitely necessary. one of the organizers of the encounter said he would like to keep the rain prophets’ knowledges within the territory of culture, and not to submit it to the scrutiny of scientists. as a cultural product, their predictions would not be challenged, or compared to the strictly academic/meteorological results. articulating planetary citizenship in the curriculum as far as the university is concerned, inclusion of planetary citizenship and the ecology of knowledges perspective in the curriculum has started. we will cite three initiatives/projects/modes of action that corroborate our assertion: the ufc faculty of education line of research in the post-graduate program; the project planetary citizenship and ecology of knowledges: interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity and internationalization in the university curriculum; and the international conference knowledges for a planetary citizenship to be held in fortaleza/ceará, from 24 to 27 may 2016. the faculty of education post-graduate program has as main lines of research curriculum, social movements and popular education, history of education, work and education, children development and language, evaluation, philosophy and sociology and marxism. the whole program illustrates both traditional and contemporary trends but we will make special mention to the social movements and popular education research line. its main objectives are to study the different forms of education that relate to the social movements, particularly paulo freire’s popular education. this group’s research is situated in the borders of formal education and new emerging epistemologies as well as contemporary themes – we call them thematic axis such as rural education; environmental education; spirituality; culture of peace; art; africanism and afrodescendance; youngsters in school, family and in urban and rural society; ethnicity, culture, subjectivity and gender. the line also offers important insights for contemporary debates involving intercultural studies, coloniality/descoloniality, dialogues about the new epistemological paradigms and their influence on educational processes (http://www.facedpos.ufc.br/2015). the second initiative to articulate planetary citizenship is the research project planetary citizenship and ecology of knowledges: interdisciplinarity, moraes, freire & almeida. the university curriculum 48 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci transdisciplinarity and internationalization in the university curriculum coordinated. given the natural expansion of the frontiers of knowledge and the evaluation criteria of graduate programs, universities are becoming more international. what we aim in this project is to relate the process of internationalization with the notion of planetary citizenship by including collaborators from other countries’ universities and expanding our outlook beyond national borders. planetary citizenship is transdisciplinary because it pervades all areas of the university curriculum. for its complexity, scope and subjectivity, pc is also conceived here as a floating signifier that is articulated in a variety of concrete projects proposed by different groups according to their demands and aspirations. in order to include perspectives of different areas of knowledge represented in the university, we have assembled an interdisciplinary team with members from different departments of the federal university of ceará and from national and international institutions. each participant will analyze/build, in his/her own area of expertise, projects that a) articulate the floating signifier planetary citizenship; b) promote dialogue with non-scientific knowledge, thereby introducing the prospect of the ecology of knowledges; c) contribute to the internationalization of the curriculum of participating institutions. for data collection, we are using investigative procedures in accordance with the different areas, such as ethnography, critical analysis of literature produced in the area, questionnaires (subjective and objective questions), interviews, participant observation, statistics, etc. since this project started in 2015, in august 2016 we will meet to see what has already been done by each group/participant. it is really encouraging – to say the least – the enthusiasm with which the group of participants has responded to the call for this project. in the end, we expect to write books and articles about the subject, to organize workshops and seminars and to be able to offer scholarships for graduate students. the researcher participants, their institutions and area of studies are:  three of the federal university of sergipe (ufs), visual arts and design;  eight of the federal university of ceará (ufc), geography, music, theater, fashion design, engineering, gastronomy, oceanography and education/curriculum;  one of the national institute of spatial research (inpe), ecology  one of the federal university of campina grande (ufcg): meteorology;  one researcher from the state university of minas gerais (uemg), in education/curriculum;  and one of the university of british columbia (ubc), educational studies . initial questions the researchers aim to answer:  visual arts and design, universidade federal de sergipe (ufs) a marker of contemporaneity is the "media age," in which borders disintegrate and hybridity makes real the existence of objects composed of different cultures, the period of the "media age" provides a large volume of rootless information that enhances the challenge of the designer in his/her creative action. it demands greater vocabulary references and power of ultidisciplinary interrelationship within ethical conduct or even a responsible sociocultural intention. in this perspective, this project stimulates future designers to enter socio-cultural contexts in order to be able to learn how to be autonomous in their propositions. contemporary design, more than ever, is immersed in a complex world where it needs to be closely linked to the problems of society. in this sense, the visual arts and design group of ufs has come up with the following research questions: how can the design curriculum contents be improved with non-disciplinary knowledge moraes, freire & almeida. the university curriculum 49 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci existing in cultural social practices’ scenarios. is it possible for the designer in training to strengthen the semiotic interpretation process through the exchange of experiences between collective imagination and academic methodologies of semantic analysis? how can the designer in training take ownership of aspects and constituents in socio-cultural scenarios for the production of educational material?  music/encounter of knowledges, universidade federal do cariri4 (ufcar) – the encounter of knowledges can be understood as a concrete proposal of intercultural education capable of including both the arts and traditional knowledges in the curriculum. initial question: how can transdisciplinary intervention of the encounter of knowledges contribute for the decolonization and dynamic knowledge taught in universities?  theater, universidade federal do ceará (ufc)– in a scenario that recognizes the infinite plurality of knowledges and the need to value them for the realization of a truly emancipatory curriculum, we will investigate how and what meanings have been forged in the education of artists-researchers in theatre and what place theater has in the development of a participatory and aware citizenship.  fashion and design, ufc we see a regionalization movement in trends and products that concern the brazilian identity. the state of ceará has played an important role in establishing this relationship between fashion and local products. how do we prepare students to work with artisans?  ecology, oxford university/instituto nacional de pesquisas espaciais (inpe)our study aims to critically evaluate the ecology of knowledges in the light of current knowledge in the science of ecology. we will compare notions of 'harmony' and 'balance' traditionally associated with natural systems, with the concepts of 'stability' and 'resilience', currently considered emerging patterns of cooperative, competitive and predatory processes, among others. this more modern view, whose origin is in the observation and analysis of nature, can contribute to understand why some traditional knowledge disappears while others (such as scientific) remain and thrive, how this process occurs, and how it could be avoided, minimized or, to some extent, controlled. the main idea is to expand the range of knowledge that makes up the brazilian university curriculum so that it not only enjoy the richness of scientific knowledge, but also the patrimony of existing traditional knowledge in our country and the world.  computer engineering, ufc we play a key role in scientific and technological development of a nation and the world in general, and good education for professionals becomes a key to progress. in brazil, there are few studies involving the curricular restructuring of undergraduate engineering courses that aim to prepare their students for the labor market as well as educate them as critical citizens. thus, some key questions arise as to provoke a change of this paradigm in our society: what kind of engineers do we need and how are we educating them? what kind of curriculum still prevails in engineering courses in brazil?  gastronomy, ufc food is a category not only related to the act of eating to generate the energy necessary to maintain the physical and biological body. it also refers to the culture that guides many of the relationships that people, regardless of class, color, social status, identity and nationality, establish with the world around them. it carries a universal and a particular language, at the same time. as a universal language, it helps to interpret the world, society, including the relationship of people with faith; in a particular plan, it expresses what people are identified with and tells where they are from (from brazil, mexico, england, ceará, piauí, minas gerais, the moraes, freire & almeida. the university curriculum 50 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci inhamuns cearense5, the cariri 3cearense). it also identifies whether a person is catholic, jewish, muslim, umbandist, etc. moreover, as a universal language it goes beyond the language barrier, it is mainly guided by taste, something you cannot measure. in this sense, considering the food as culture, we look into how much food can be taken as a language that expresses and allows you to know the world, your reality, including the human being in his relationship with the planet and the environment. it cannot be properly understood without taking into account its opposite, hunger. this was the motor of development of related technologies, from production to preparation and attracting the consumer fire, artifacts used to prepare, cook and preserve, what you eat, the place to eat, how to eat and with whom you eat. thus, one must question the role of hunger as a protagonist or generator theme, in the academic and social discussion, of geopolitical issues such as the wars, the hunger that affects millions of people, despite the food production be enough to feed the whole planet population, construction and maintenance of the identity of peoples, ethnic groups and populations’ food. more specifically, we intend to investigate what are the limits of the food issue as a transversal theme and a knowledge dialogue generator in politics, history, gastronomy, education, ecology, physics, chemistry, etc., currently separated by fragmentation and hierarchy of academic knowledge and power relations.  meteorology, universidade federal de campina grande (ufcg) the group of the department of natural resources of the federal university of campina grande, together with the insa (national institute for semi-arid), will investigate projects that aim to develop strategies to adapt to water scarcity and future climate change. our questions aim to answer the following: if there is use of traditional knowledge in developing strategies to cope with water scarcity and climate change; how the knowledge needed for adaptation to climate change can inspire formal research in meteorology; what strategies are being developed in other semi-arid or arid places in the world to deal with water scarcity and climate change; if these strategies make use of traditional knowledge and what type; if the traditional knowledge of these other locations help guide research in formal climate science.  education/curriculum, universidade do estado de minas gerais (uemg) given the paradigm shift process we are experiencing regarding the relationship with knowledge, permeated by the ease of access to information and the construction of new spaces for social interaction through the network, the universities are placed in a position both to rethink their bases, as to make active this paradigmatic consolidation. we believe that the path being designed passes through the acknowledgement of the epistemological diversity in the world, in particular by providing recognition that scientific knowledge and so-called traditional knowledge, popular, must write together a new dynamics in the ecology of knowledges perspective. this perspective belongs to a broader approach entitled by sousa santos as sociology of absences and emergencies and the work of translation, which deals on a sociological imagination exercise where we should expand the present, providing visibility to innovative experiences of knowledge, which often do not obey to the strict canon of modern science. our goals in this research are to discuss what contribution the sociology of absences and emergencies and the translation work have to offer in promoting the ecology of knowledges at the university nowadays; to identify and define what other theories can be considered in this perspective.  oceanography, ufc – ongoing climate changes alter the water flow, intensify drought and affect the quality of water resources. moreover, the intergovernmental panel on climate change (ipcc) shows that, as a result of global warming, sea levels moraes, freire & almeida. the university curriculum 51 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci will increase and enhance coastal erosion. in ceará, studies by ufc show that estuaries are suffering intensified salinization process that affect estuarine biogeochemistry and consequently the organisms that live in. many of these organisms and fresh water are very important resources for rural, urban and fishing populations. our questions are:  with the collaboration of experts, which questions can be applied to the institute of sea sciences (laboratório de estudos do mar labomar) and other institutions on the inclusion of social and educational aspects in the courses of oceanography so that future oceanographers become aware of the global social problems that global warming and climate change are causing the population? are the students open to questioning the resilience of populations to these environmental changes, including those where they are included either as mere citizens or as technicians? what can one learn from the experiences of students who participated in the science without borders program in reshaping the pedagogical project of the oceanography course in making it more planetary, without forgetting that national issues are relevant, and that solutions also depend on them?  educational studies, university of british columbia (ubc) – examining the historical and systemic patterns of reproduction of inequalities and how these limit possibilities of collective existence and global change, the researcher of educational studies at the university of british columbia aims to answer the following: what aspects of western enlightenment (or other narratives) may terminate or prevent a noncoercive relationship or dialogue between different ways of being in the world? a third initiative towards the inclusion of planetary citizenship in the university and the school curriculum is being given by the state university of ceará, together with the catholic university of brasilia and unesco with the sponsorship of international conference knowledges for a planetary citizenship to be held in fortaleza / ceará, from 24 to 27 may 2016.the this event will have edgar morin as its honorary president and will be chaired by prof maria cândida moraes. there will also be national and international speakers, talking about issues related to the work of edgar morin, in celebration of his 95 years and his whole life dedicated to humanity. the main goals of the conference are: 1. reflect and build knowledge contributing to the creation and dissemination of projects, programs, organizations, policies and individual or group actions of economic, technological, social, cultural and educational character that favour the emergence of a planetary civilization and / or opening and support of new "pathways to the future of humanity." 2. analyse the educational, curricular, organizational implications of the new emerging educational paradigm based on complexity in transdisciplinarity and founded on the values of responsibility and individual and social solidarity. 3. identify and analyse the needs of basic education teachers according to the actual situation in which this collective of professionals plays their skills, with reference to the requirements of the necessary knowledges of education for the future and the desired paradigmatic educational reform enunciated by the thinking of the south. 4. contribute to the formulation of strategic policies that contribute to the dignify and the recognition and appreciation of basic education teachers, as well as the selection and continuous training of more qualified candidates and vocationally gifted to the teaching function and its transcendental social responsibility mission . 5. guide the formulation of more consistent transversal lines for the construction of a curriculum and a program of educational training, pedagogical and didactics for the teaching profession, according to the characteristics and ontological, epistemological moraes, freire & almeida. the university curriculum 52 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci and methodological implications of the emerging educational paradigm based on complexity and transdisciplinarity. 6. propose initial and ongoing training strategies for basic education teachers, in order to increase the quality of the performance of their professional skills in leadership, participation and empowerment of both the teachers and the school communities and building on the real needs and the uniqueness of them. 7. contribute to the creation of an international network of teachers’ education of all educational levels, with different modalities of participation, based on the recommendations set forth in the document thinking of the south and fortaleza charter. 8. reconnect spaces for dialogue and share experiences in different fields of knowledge to enable a fluid exchange, systematized experiences in the world. among the expected results of the conference we will cite the one that has to do with the curriculum matrix: to analyse the epistemological basis of the current school curriculum and suggest new epistemological bases from a complex and transdisciplinary perspective, able to promote the necessary integration between disciplines, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary knowledge, suggesting strategies for its implementation in the schools’ pedagogical projects and consistent with the new curriculum guidelines established by the ministry of education. we have given here examples of initiatives that are directly or indirectly connected to the curriculum but there are many other educational institutions that are developing projects and curriculum reforms to adapt to/to adopt this emerging paradigm that treats inter and transdisciplinarily major themes like citizenship, giving it whatever adjective to be used after the noun or simply leaving it plain. as researchers, postgraduate supervisors, members of committees and councils, coordinators of graduate and post-graduate courses, course professors, and schoolteachers, we must put our specialities and expertise to engage in this fascinating enterprise. conclusions in this essay we defend a closer relation between the university formal knowledge and the knowledges that come from social movements and from our african and indigenous matrix. the ecology of knowledges seems more coherent and democratic not only in the epistemological sense, but as a means for citizenship building. understanding the plurality of discursive contexts where this knowledge develops is to live up to the etymology of the word university. it comprises different worldviews, and even dialectical contradictions, but it is a place of experimentation and exercise of dialogue. only through dialogue with these other social voices is that the university will establish a relationship between different elements in the discursive field. post-colonial theory gives us a broader political perspective. it helps us understand our past and our present within a scenario of power relations between the global north and global south a classification that already carries a heavy weight of an international class divide – putting together these two fascinating and useful worlds of the scientific/academic and the popular knowledges. in fact, the african and indian knowledges are in danger: the ecology of knowledges comes as an alert against their elimination. we understand that our reality implies organizational, cultural, epistemological and, above all, ideological changes in social institutions. the university is in a position both to rethink its bases and to act in the process, contributing to the consolidation of a moraes, freire & almeida. the university curriculum 53 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci new paradigm. projects that include internationalism, cosmopolitanism, sustainability, human rights, social justice, interdependence, in close relationship with the natural scientific knowledge, articulate the floating signifier planetary citizenship the postulation of another rationality, which aims to confront the supremacy of modern science, not to suppress it, but to redirect it to the complexity of life and to social emancipation, necessarily has to address other human elements, such as the body, affections, subjectivity, culture, political context, etc. none of these other spheres should be ignored. knowledge at the university in a perspective of social emancipation has to emerge from demands of groups that suffer the violation of their rights by oppression and capitalist domination. the development of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary proposals only have sense and consistency if they address real issues, strengthening interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity as categories of action to be used in concrete projects to articulate transdisciplinary themes. with the epistemological premise of the ecology of knowledges, on the understanding that academic knowledge and traditional knowledge have the same degree of legitimacy, it is the role of the academy to make use of its symbolic capital in favor of issues experienced by groups in vulnerable situations. the current model of production of scientific research results, proposed by funding and validation agencies in brazil is today one of the biggest challenges to knowledge integrating experiences since such experiences demand a longer collective construction, diverging from the productionist perspective currently imposed by the monoculture of linear time and productivity. the inclusion of undergraduate and graduate students in building and developing their interdisciplinary investigations in issues of real life reinforces the social understanding of their profession and promotes integrative knowledge perspectives. the collective construction of knowledge in the ecology of knowledges promotes the restoration of trust between the fields of research and the university. the immediate adhesion of researchers to the project of planetary citizenship and ecology of knowledges in the university curriculum shows a demand for this type of action. based on our observations and experience, we argue that another knowledge that aspires to wholeness and social emancipation is not only possible but is already being developed and moulded in dialogical, democratic, and political relations, thus possessing great emancipatory potential. notes 1 silviamoraes@ufc.br 2 ludmilafreire@yahoo.com.br 3 quixadá a city in the interior of ceará 4 inhamuns cearense – a region in the interior of ceará 5 cariri – a region in the interior of ceará mailto:silviamoraes@ufc.br mailto:ludmilafreire@yahoo.com.br moraes, freire & almeida. the university curriculum 54 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (1) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci references andreotti, v. 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(1999) documentos de identidade: uma introdução às teorias do currículo. belo horizonte: autêntica submitted: april, 6th, 2016 approved: july, 3rd, 2016 http://bibliotecavirtual/ o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: barron tirado, maria concepción, diaz barriga, frida (2016). curriculum management and the role of curriculum actors. transnational curriculum inquiry 13(2). http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> curriculum management and the role of curriculum actors1 maría concepción barrón tirado2, frida díaz barriga3, national autonomous university of méxico, méxico introduction curriculum management4 can only be approached within the framework of the educational management of the institution as a whole. its study demands a series of theoretical and methodological frameworks that recount the dynamics of the school organization, of the administrative aspects, of the didactic and pedagogical structures that support the educational proposal and the actions of the involved actors. this is why the analysis of curriculum management means identifying the interactions that are established between what belongs to the educational sphere (educational change policies and curriculum model) and the practices of participants in a living, dynamic reality in which the aspiration is to give sense and realization to curriculum. according to castro (2005, p. 14), “the inclusion of curriculum management as a new construct allows to conceive the school duty in its essence, its objective”5, since it involves a more comprehensive and systemic approach to the curriculum processes and to educational change. this article talks about curricular management from three conceptual frames of reference: educational change (fullan & hargreaves, 1999, fullan, 2001; 2002), school and system improvement (bolívar, 2007; hopkins, harris, stroll & mackay, 2011), and participation of different actors in curriculum design and management (schwab, 1970; bolívar, 2007; díaz barriga, 2010; díaz barriga & barrón, 2014). the context in which we locate this work is that of curricular policies in latin america and particularly in mexico. we have reviewed the theoretical essays and empirical studies on the aspects mentioned in relation to the issue of curricular management, and based on a discussion of their content; we offer the reader this essay. we will tackle two issues: on one hand, the diverse ways to articulate educational and curriculum policies, curriculum management and the active participation of the different actors. on the other, the way in which different mexican education institutions do incorporate the actors within the design and implementation processes of curriculum projects. the method that we have followed in the elaboration of this article includes the revision of theoretical essays and research reports on the subject of curriculum management, some of them international, but with a greater emphasis on hispanic and latin american authors, as well as in mexican bibliography. we also explored some web portals with official curricular documents that prescribe the curricular reforms and the basic contents of compulsory education. finally, some research we have conducted is mentioned, particularly in the subject of actors of the curriculum. this work of specialized literature analysis aims to approach the understanding of the importance of curricular management processes in our context and seeks to uncover the challenges faced by educational institutions in this regard, especially the mexican ones. barrón tirado & díaz barriga. curriculum management 14 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (2) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci curriculum management and educational change possibilities as the main premise of this essay, we affirm the following: the current concept of curriculum is tightly linked with the notion of school system management, since without the latter only the formal structures can be attended, and not its transition to the reality of the educational institution, and neither to the interests and necessities experienced by this institution. in this sense, we agree with one of the most outstanding latin american theorists in the field of curriculum, who emphasizes the distance between the practice of curriculum in schools in contrast with the formal documents that prescribe the educational model: one might think that the efforts that are made to rationalize the construction of a specific curriculum project trying to make prevail professionalized pedagogical criteria meets the administrative need to define projects on local basis and for each institution, in a system of negotiation and accountability towards the lobbies of the communities in which the different schools are inserted6 (furlán, 1996, p. 70). talking about negotiation and accountability means that the different participants play an important role in the definition and implementation of the curriculum project. as a matter of fact, since almost four decades schwab (1970) already set out that the participation of specific actors for the drawing up and decision making about curriculum is essential, such as teachers, experts in the different subjects or disciplines, students, experts in curriculum and those who are representative of the community. nowadays it is common acknowledgement that the decision makers, and also the directors and people who care for the academic-administrative management at several levels also play a significant role for the successful outcome of a curriculum project. all of them are (or should be) participants in the design and development of the curriculum, so they are called "curriculum actors". the starting point are schwab’s principle known as curriculum commonplaces and the notion of participatory curriculum in his 1970 book, where he asserts that, if the participants of the educational institution are left behind or marginalized from a curriculum project, what will come out from it is a “blind spot” that will eventually undermine the project considering that it there will not be any appropriation of the curriculum, less still commitment to take it to the classroom reality and to generate transformation and innovation processes. however, it is important to point out that the contemporary theoretical debates about curriculum and the systemic change that leads to its realization in a learning community have been developed in countries characterized by decentralized management that guarantee a certain autonomy for decision making. we can thus justifiably ask what happens in countries as mexico, where the educational and curriculum models are drawn up by central agencies or are taken in by educational authorities and a committee of experts specially appointed to this duty. in contrast to rigid and vertical educational models and curricula, which are created in a single central government agency (ministry or national state secretariat) in this article we assume that the educational institution plays a fundamental role for the development of curriculum. so, the educational communities understood as dynamic social organizations capable of learn and transform themselves constitute the basic units of educational change. this has provided a guideline for the approaches of efficient schools, for the improvement or restructuration of schools, in an attempt to understand that it is not enough to transform formal curriculum or to prescribe an innovating educational model, since the school itself must evolve towards a learning educational barrón tirado & díaz barriga. curriculum management 15 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (2) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci organization, around a series of complex transformations where tensions and achievements emerge. the school and system improvement research, conducted in countries such as england, finland or the united states, has made it possible to understand the stages and factors involved in the success or failure of ambitious educational projects attempting reform whole systems and effective learning environments for all their students. in accordance with hopkins, harris, stroll & mackay (2011) what is needed is a ‘grand theory’ of system change in education that results in relatively predictable increases in student learning and achievement over time. also, it is important to go beyond individual school improvement initiatives, to encourage and ensure with relative certainty that educational changes occur throughout the educational system wide changes, that is, at the level of districts, states and nations. these authors present a state of art with a broad empirical base of at least the last two and a half decades of school improvement studies. they affirm that in the early 1990’s the school improvement tradition was beginning to provide schools with guidelines and strategies for the management and implementation of change at the school level. the common aspiration of these initiatives was the ‘renewed’ or ‘self managing’ school and there was a greater focus upon organizational and classroom change reflected in approaches to staff development premised upon models of teaching. in many countries, large amount of resources have been targeted at programmes and projects aimed at improving schools and raising standards of performance. the evidence to date, however, suggests that many of these external interventions, although very well intentioned, have had patchy and variable success [...] in particular, success seemed to elude schools in large urban areas serving the most disadvantaged (harris, stroll & mackay, 2011, pp. 6-7). thus, since the beginning of this century, successive trends in research on school and system improvement research have shown that the key factors in educational change are as follows. note the importance of the participation of the actors, the management of processes and programs, the interrelationship of the school with the educational system as a whole:  a clear and comprehensive model of reform with an increasingly differentiated approach to school improvement.  transforming the organization of the school through managing change with emphasis on leadership in the quest for enhanced student achievement.  district reform and network building (including professional learning communities) need to occur side by side, and they need to be linked. this is because school improvement is largely concerned with system level changes through collaboration and networking across schools and districts.  strong leadership at the regional level is need, linked to substantive training related to the goals of the programme and implementation support at the school level. when we have to analyze or describe the way in which a school operates we generally use the term management: “the word management immediately evokes an ‘action’, has a dynamic dimension and besides demands a complementing model”7 (antúnez, 2004, p. 167) management can be understood as a) an action and effect of the school management; b) the set of actions that belong to the managerial function; and c) a task that is carried out under commission. according to antúnez (2004, p. 169) “we barrón tirado & díaz barriga. curriculum management 16 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (2) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci consider that management is the set of actions oriented towards the attainment of certain objectives that are developed in several areas of activity of the school organization and in the drawing up and assessment of which take part, to some extent, the people who are responsible to carry them out”8. the central place granted to the school and the importance accorded to management as a way to support the quality of teaching and the students’ learning and leaves behind the vision of teaching as an exclusive objective of classroom. this is due to the fact that “within the educational establishments the achievement of quality demands both curriculum renewal and new ways of carrying out the teaching duties”9 (ezpeleta, 2004, p. 410). the way to look towards educational change broadens if we assume that the school institutions, in their meaning of ever-changing learning communities, are a key factor for the curriculum policies that aim to improve the teaching-learning dynamics. hence the vital importance of an in-depth understanding of the role that is played by the institution’s participants in the educational change processes. the policies that have been established in order to improve education have followed different discursive logic and political practices, and this has produced a pedagogical logic centered on the improvement of the educational action within the classroom and beyond, and also political logic around public utility management (bolívar, 2007). for this author, the school institution is the basic unit of curriculum development and improvement of educational standards by means of diverse “waves” that have been characterizing the curriculum reforms during the last decades. the first wave attempted to standardize the teaching practices by means of a technical bureaucratic model of control, standards and legal principles. the second wave searched for alternative ways to restructure the schools and the curriculum policies oriented towards a redesign of their organization and of the teachers’ professional practice, awarding increased autonomy for management and curriculum development. the third wave considered a curriculum development centered on the school able to transform the view of a merely administrative decentralization and to make possible the teachers’ understanding and commitment, the reflection about the contents they work with and about the teaching, learning and assessment processes, the collegial work they carry out and the constant communication with parents. in general terms, this issues are coincident with the international studies revised by harris, stroll & mackay (2011), ainscow, dyson, goldrick, & west (2012). in our view, this implies to enhance the curriculum actors’ role within the school institution itself and to adopt located educational approaches in order to deal with the curriculum realization level needed in a given context (díaz barriga, 2010; díaz barriga & barrón, 2014). what we find underneath this last proposal is a no technocratic view of curriculum and the participants’ practices. this perspective refers to a practical or evolving approach of curriculum in which the teachers discuss and make decisions depending on their real conditions with a view to a possible change that meets the conditions of their institution and of their students’ specific needs and features. on this basis, the logic of a linear, little flexible, vertical and universalistic curriculum is at stake not only because of its inefficiency, but also because of the philosophical presuppositions and their ethical commitments. unfortunately, this has traditionally been the logic of the construction of the mexican curriculum in its different educational levels, mostly in basic compulsory education, which contradicts the great cultural diversity and social inequity existing in the different regions of the country, and within these, between their localities and schools (pinar, 2011). it is a fact that no curriculum model can be put into practice if we do not take into account significant aspects before implementing them. the establishment of an barrón tirado & díaz barriga. curriculum management 17 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (2) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci educational and curriculum model is not only a rhetorical question, nor a purely technical matter, but it rather “is at the core of the school’s mission and socioeducational supply”10 (bolívar, 2007, p. 49). in this sense, curriculum development goes hand in hand with institutional development; they are two sides of the same coin and articulate themselves in a systemic way with the administrative processes as far as management is concerned. on the basis of the educational and curriculum model we can prefigure a school and organizational culture that produces a series of practices for the different actors (managers, administrators, experts, teachers and students) depending on their own experience, beliefs, interests and instituted knowledge. school, as a cultural construct, adapts --more than adopts-the reforms to its own ways of seeing and doing things, and in so far as every reform entails values and views that are more or less compatible with the organizational structures and cultures in which the individuals are working, it will need a process of reconstruction-adaptation11 (bolívar, 2007, p. 205). in this regard, there is enough documentary evidence of how the elaboration of ambitious projects carried out by experts who operate beyond any kind of dialogue with the educational community can be considered as failed experience in curriculum reform processes. according to ziegler (2003), the teachers (in argentina and latin america) usually are granted the role of “readers” of the curriculum base documents, which means that they are considered as recipients of what experts on contents or curriculum know. those normative documents aim to serve as a tool to normalize educational practices, but they actually do not have a significant impact, at least not as they are expected to, neither on the mentality, neither on the educational practices that take place in the day to day school work. and when they impact, they just allow some degree of interpretation and appropriation of the reforms, but this appropriation usually remains at discursive level and uses to cause significant tensions about professional legitimization. as far as it has been studied about the educational change processes, there is clear evidence that the intention to shape or prescribe the processes of reconstructing teaching and transforming the school institution by means of those normative documents made up by experts who do not belong to the diversity and complexity of the educational institutions, since they do not express the participants’ knowledge, situation and experiences or even feelings, is doomed to have a very limited impact. the question is therefore to think up the different levels of authorship and application that curriculum involves and not to forget the lessons learned with regarding the different actors of the curriculum process. on this issue, andy hargreaves (interviewed by romero, 2007) considers that the problem must be revisited from a much wider perspective about educational change. for this author, the problem has to do with a poor joint action of schools, teachers and educational systems, since those should be reorganized in a rationale of inclusive communities able to transform their structure and culture in order to deal with the elements that concern them and thus be able to respond to the expectations about education of an ever-changing, unforeseeable and uncertain society, whose main feature is its diversity and not its uniformity. ainscow, dyson, goldrick & west (2012), also speak for inclusive schools, as well as for the return of the school system to their historical purpose: ensuring a sound education for every child. after analyzing empirical evidence from a series of studies carried out over 20 years concerning schools that are effective for all children and young people, they argue that it is necessary to complement within-school barrón tirado & díaz barriga. curriculum management 18 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (2) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci developments with efforts that link schools with one another and with their wider communities. they also conclude that national policies for tackling wider inequities in schools and in society are needed. on the other hand, it is very important to understand that in the development of a curriculum project several realization levels come into play and that the diverse social subjects who sustain curriculum and play a role within it use to do it in a differentiate way, depending on the educational project to which they subscribe. the idea of a project presupposes the existence of a subject able to define a future as an option that is objectively possible and not as a merely arbitrary projection. and drawing up those projects is how the subject relates to reality in a relationship that is supported by its ability to transform this reality into the content of a social will, which in turn will be able to determine the direction of the social processes. in this way, potential facts can be predetermined thanks to the action of a specific social will. in this context, the appropriation of present becomes a way to build the future and, conversely, a project of future, led by a subject, turns into a way to appropriate the present time. as a matter of fact, the subject only will be really active if he or she is able to make a distinction between what is viable and what just belongs to the sphere of desire, this means if his or her activity is part of a conception of future as horizon of possible actions12 (zemelman, in de alba, 1998, p. 76). the decision to implement a curriculum project concerns the whole community and its management is not only up to the managerial staff, but also includes the teachers’ practice and the intervention of the academic-administrative staff, and its appropriation by the students themselves as well. for what concerns the recent experience of the mexican curriculum reforms for basic and secondary education, several studies about the teachers’ perceptions show that those consider that they have not been taken into account for the process of drawing up the curriculum project, that they do not receive the necessary means to implement the ambitious changes that are conferred on them, not only with regard to curriculum contents but also to the innovating pedagogical models, including the necessary digital skills. thus, many teachers report the urgency with which the curriculum reforms are carried out, the total lack of awareness about classroom reality, the scarce participation of teachers in the decision-making processes, the lack of school supplies and of infrastructure able to meet the new demands, the stiffness or inclusive obsolescence of the authorities responsible for school management, but above all the lack of an adequate awareness of what the transformations mean for the educational community as a whole (díaz barriga, 2010; 2012; díaz barriga & barrón, 2014). when curriculum changes are carried out, the processes become extremely complex, because it is not enough to design a technically well thought-out study plan made up by experts and based on theoretical and methodological grounds that are consistent with the framework of the current society. the former is important, but not enough. the transition towards this curriculum model also has to be taken into account, over and above the legal and administrative arrangements that are needed for its implementation. it is also necessary to encourage the emergence of a totally new institutional culture as regards to the role of teachers and students, the change to new practices of knowledge and knowhow, and to understand that this change affects all the aspects in which the actors of the educational community have been involved at several levels. it is also important to keep in mind that every transition period that leads to a barrón tirado & díaz barriga. curriculum management 19 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (2) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci significant change entails a cognitive and emotional cost for its participants (fullan & hargreaves, 1999; gimeno, 2000). this is why the unesco itself (2005, in díaz barriga, 2010) defines innovation as a process of “creative destruction in conditions of uncertainty”13. a new curriculum proposal, and in particular if oriented to innovation and to the transformation of traditional and institutionalized practices, demands a different training for teachers that makes them able not only to understand and manage curriculum, but also to recreate it and to build it. the teachers’ professionalization component aside, from the point of view of the social sense of teaching the teacher is a key stakeholder for the promotion of understanding and coping with the current culture and the social issue for the new generations. therefore, its practice should not be conceived exclusively as a major in education or a functional practice within the educational environment, but it should be approached in a wide sociopolitical sense in order to influence the development of strategies able to take care and preserve the human life and the cultural and ideological diversity and thereby build a more fair and humanized society. in a similar way, it should be necessary to consider the students as active participants of the curriculum projects and their management, and not only as a target group. this is the claim of who defend the idea that students can be “active subjects who understand the educational environment they live in, who search a sense for their duty, who appreciate and re-evaluate their own schooling, live intensely their school career, write and rewrite their own story and build day after day their identity as students, teenagers and young adult”14 (guzmán & saucedo, 2000, p.12). it is relevant to point out that the expectations that have been conceived around the curriculum models since the nineties have be prone to defend a student-centered curriculum approach (blumberg, 2008; weimer, 2013). in the case of the university curriculum, it means that the student training has to be focused on practice in real environments, the solution to complex problems, the analysis of significant cases for the profession, the participation in situated projects, and collaborative and interdisciplinary work amongst other approaches, all of them very demanding for the future professional in training. this means that students also experience the tensions that exist between the traditional educational experiences, which position them as recipients of contents, and the growing demand of active agents, complex knowledge builders, decision-makers regarding their own curriculum careers, that need to be personalized in order to meet their needs and interests. moreover, since the beginning of this century the transformation of the learning environments was already tangible (called by coll, 2013, a new learning ecology) towards a new one were students take part to the selection and to the drawing up itself of the activities, projects and ideal learning approaches, above all at university. finally, it would be important to point out that the role played by the directors of educational institutions goes far beyond their administrative authority, since they also have to be academic leaders and experts in curriculum management, to develop pertinent strategies in order to boost its development and implementation based on a scheme that involves the whole community (hopkins, 2007). on the other hand, there should be sensitivity to the recognition and acceptance of difference and dissension within those processes, since a good disposition is essential to have an impact not only in academic aspects, but also, and not less, on the organizational, financial, occupational aspects and those that have to do with infrastructure. all those aspects play a major role for the management of curriculum innovations. barrón tirado & díaz barriga. curriculum management 20 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (2) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci because of all those elements we have been referring to plazola & rautenberg (2009) state that one of the big mistakes of mexico’s educational administrations has been to draw up centralized and vertical curricula. erroneously the trend has been to take as conceptual starting point that changing curriculum is a task of “technical assembly” of a study program, or of what we use to call currently the curriculum map. in contrast, taking into account its nature of social project materialized in a specific context, curriculum change should be regarded and analyzed from the perspective of institutional micropolitics. according to the above-mentioned authors, the change within the curriculum structures uses to represent an action belonging to the “disturbing intervention” type for the actors of the educational communities, since it puts in motion collective imaginations, spaces of power, forms of participation and, therefore, often unsettles its position within the institution or undermines its normal practices. one more thing to take into consideration is that it is not possible to talk about the curriculum actors from a unifying perspective, as if all of them would assume the same stance about the process of change. for instance, when we analyzed the curriculum reform that was implemented in a university that is responsible for the training of education professionals, we were able to identify at least four stances: the teachers who were part of the “experts” and constituted the proactive team supporting change; the collective who did not sign up for the work on curriculum but did not resist it either; the group of teachers who opposed the curriculum project and organized themselves to block it; and finally the collective who showed a certain degree of disposition to the curriculum reform but only accepted it to the extent that it needed their own project and interests (plazola & rautenberg, 2009). this allows us to conclude that the curriculum project will be able to progress or will be hindered depending on a series of events that are laid down by power relationships, the own features of the changing project, the definition of the specific tasks (assigned, assumed or postponed) that are devolved upon the actors. the current literature about educational change and curriculum reforms uses to report the resistance or opposition movements experienced by the participants towards the planned transformations, above all when those come from top to bottom and outside in, since they threaten their position within the institution or discredit their usual practices without offering conditions for the expected change, or when the environment to change becomes “menacing” from the actors’ perspective. in many cases and recently, in our academic environment several participants in education have declared themselves opposed to the different reforms and innovations, and the fact is that resistance uses to come from menaces (clear or perceived) that are in conflict with matters such as public education, laicism in education, teachers’ employment or laborunion stability, or when the new curriculum map cancels spaces for education and training, for instance when they intend to reduce the education of young students in arts and humanities, as a kind of repudiation of the neoliberal policies imposed by the international agencies for the educational system. curriculum and institutional practices curriculum is not an object, but a process where a peculiar and complex relationship between decisions and determinations occurs (beltrán-llavador, 2010). in order to point out the relevance of the curriculum management processes it is necessary to know for sure that curriculum is not only that “object” that has been before referred to as “study plan”, and currently in its extended version as “curriculum map”. prominent academics of the field have set out that in order to understand properly what curriculum implies as a project and as practice as well, it is important to situate the barrón tirado & díaz barriga. curriculum management 21 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (2) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci historic and social context and moment in which it has been established, its multidetermined nature and the different planes that lead to its eventual realization. but it is necessary primarily to identify how curriculum incarnates in its actors and how it is developed and managed in a given institution. authors such as follari (1982) understand curriculum as the set of academicoriented practices that are carried out within the higher education institutions, including the planning process of those practices, taking into account the fact that it is crossed by two planes, the formal-structural plane and the evolving-practical one. the first one refers to the legitimization of a kind of knowledge and of a culture by means of the determination of disciplinary contents, linked to an educational project within an institution and its connection with the social environment and practice of the profession. the second level, called evolving-practical, analyzes the operation of the project, where actors, teachers, students and management staff direct the curriculum development and administration. taking into account both levels, gimeno (1989, p. 19) considers that it is essential to “figure out challenge not only from a political and social perspective, but also from the point of view of its technical implementation”15. according to ruizlarraguível (1985), the selection of contents and their distribution do not derive exclusively from the universe of knowledge of a scientific discipline, but it originates in the idea the curriculum makers have about society, profession and the kind of graduate that the institution wants to train. likewise, we agree with de alba (1998, p. 75), who asserts that curriculum is above all the synthesis of cultural elements (knowledge, values, beliefs, habits) that make up together a political educational proposal, planned and driven by diverse social groups and sectors with different and contradictory interests, although some of them tend to be predominant or hegemonic, whereas other groups or sectors are prone to oppose and resist this domination or hegemony. this is why when a curriculum proposal is achieved it always will be the result of mechanisms of negotiation or, to the contrary, of social imposition for the different participants that are involved in this process. it is undeniable that each educational institution makes up curriculum in correlation to its interests and the cultural values that it wants to promote. this led apple (1979) to propose that the different kinds of codes and symbols selected by the educational institutions dialectally network to the different kinds of normative and cultural awareness of an unequal society. at the same time, furlán (1995) considers that it is necessary to take into account the participation, agreement and decision making processes linked with curriculum management, considering it as the sum of the pedagogical management (related to the training agenda) and the curriculum management (that has to do with the teaching project of the cultural segment that has been chosen in order to implement it). for all those reasons, we believe that it is necessary to conceive curriculum as something more than an isolated educational project. it is important to acknowledge that curriculum is also part of a political, social, economic and cultural framework. there is no place for the alleged neutrality of stances or groups. it is undeniable that within the curriculum process a space for struggle is produced between the diverse groups and sectors interested in fostering a specific educational project, which leads to a continuous dynamic of denial and/or resistance by the involved subjects. curriculum policy and actors nowadays, facing the bunch of neoliberal policies that aim to determine the what and how of curriculum, several social subjects, whose historic consciousness barrón tirado & díaz barriga. curriculum management 22 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (2) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci allows them to orient diverse actions towards a wider project, have generated a series of alternative points of view against the hegemony of the globalizing policies, and therefore the tensions and dissent have increased about curriculum. along the same lines, during the last years a new trend has been strengthening in latin america that considers curriculum development within the framework of policies tending to –at least theoretically— the administrative decentralization as an answer to the curriculum model “from top to bottom” and “outside in” that has been prevailing, heavily concentrated in the national secretaries and departments of education. this decentralization aims to search for new ways to draw up, operate and assess curriculum, seemingly centered on the different educational modalities, regions and communities, in order to meet the huge diversity (and iniquity) that typifies them. such a process, if correctly implemented, would bring about new ways of participation and control that include the selection of contents, the regulation of teaching practices, and also a different academic-administrative organization. with this in mind, it is important not only to pursue high graduation rates, but also to achieve that curriculum is situated, equity-oriented and recognizes diversity as a key value. in mexico, as in other countries, the construction and implementation of a curriculum project, the regulation processes of curriculum tend to lead to an expression of this administration in convergent ways oriented to shape the school practice in a certain direction. this involves important “top-down” prescriptive aspects that are at the same time academic (selection, structuring and organization of contents, methodological, didactical and evaluative orientations); administrative (for instance, registration systems, grade descriptions, school registers) and related to infrastructure (for instance, the technologies that can be used to support the teaching and learning processes, educational furniture and environment, instructional materials). often the central administration is unable to manage the diversity of educational contexts, social and educational inequality in the country, so that its policies of curricular implementation are unsuccessful. by ignoring the cultural capital of the actors and the real training needs for educational change, is not provided to the educational agents with the necessary means to undertake the project, including the qualification of the students themselves to fully apprehend the challenge that a new curriculum involves (díaz barriga & barrón, 2014). according to pinar, reynolds, slattery & taubman (2008), for the thorough understanding of curriculum it is necessary to take into account various discourses; and one of the ways to read it is as a political document. those authors point out that the analysis of curriculum as a political document started during the seventies, in the light of the marxist and neo-marxist theories and under the influence of the british sociology of education guidelines. in mexico, the study of curriculum policies has been a component of what has been called educational policies or reforms, and the study of this field can be associated to the critical and postmodern school of thought since it contains a critical analysis of curriculum. according to michael apple, one of the functions carried out by the critical analysis of curriculum is the following one: […] to enlighten the ways in which policies and practices are interwoven with the relationships of exploitation and domination --and with the struggles against those relationships— within society (apple, 2011, p. 7). the understanding of the curriculum policies and their realization within the educational institutions should be critically analyzed not only by experts of curriculum, but also by the different actors who take part in the drawing, development, management barrón tirado & díaz barriga. curriculum management 23 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (2) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci and assessment of a study plan, given that those policies actually will influence themselves. we already mentioned above that since the seventies schwab (1970) set out the need to reach a balanced participation of given persons to the prior deliberation and to decision-making about curriculum. however, in mexico the real participation of those actors, and especially of the teachers and students, is subject to interests more related to group interests and politics in accordance with institutional cultures, that eventually promote --or decide not to do so— the participation in decision-making. the curriculum policies are responsible for establishment and regulation of the rules and the political and academic decision-making bodies condition the contents and practices of curriculum development (gimeno, 1989). therefore, the educational policies determine the degree of power and autonomy of the different agents or actors and any curriculum construction becomes, at least to a certain extent, a political matter. on the other hand, the curriculum policies are objectified through the drawing of curriculum and its normativity. any curriculum proposes a selected prescription of the teaching contents, although this process cannot be reduced to the written document. this prescription of what and how is not preserved stably during the curriculum processes, but it incessantly changes according to the political, institutional and classroom administration. curriculum policy has been granted the main responsibility to decide about what students have to learn in the educational institutions and the means and conditions to achieve it as well. this includes the impact that those decisions can have on the teachers’, the students’ and the management staff’s practices. in mexico, the secretary of public education (secretaría de educación pública, sep), equivalent to a ministry of education, is responsible for compulsory basic education, regulates private and public education, and defines the curriculum policy of the national educational system, and specifies the educational degree that should be attained. by means of what is established about compulsory schooling, the sep reveals how it conceives the role of education, culture and values that it wants to communicate. in general terms, sep prescribes the type of instruction or socialization processes for the students in the mexican schools. however, there are also institutions, especially public universities, which have autonomy status, including the freedom to propose their curricular projects. even so, in all cases, there is a strong influence of international organizations and agencies (unesco, oecd, world bank, pisa, among other) in the definition of curriculum models, which obey current globalization and neoliberal tendencies. it is impossible to avoid thinking that new forms of intellectual colonialism exist through curricular policies and international assessments, modeled on economic, labor and social interests. according to terigi (1999) the transformations that are generally produced within curriculum in latin america tend to cause tensions and conflicts, both if it is considered as a normative text that regulates the institution’s training activity and if its sense is expanded to the whole of institutional practices that are build day to day within the schools (in the teaching and learning processes, in the ways to organize teachers and students, in the distributions of times and spaces, etc.). how this change is valued can be interpreted in the light of the relations that actors construct between prescriptions and concrete curriculum practices. this author points out five features that are common for the latin american curriculum policies and that could explain the rise of tensions and contradictions:  in a context of educational decentralization, curriculum appears as a recentralization device for education.  the trend is to legitimize the centralized curriculum devices based on the principle of academic knowledge. barrón tirado & díaz barriga. curriculum management 24 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (2) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci  curriculum experiences a process of homogenization of the presentation form.  there is a correlation between centralized curricula and centralized assessment.  change is promoted with the school institution as starting point. the dynamics of curriculum reforms that have been carried out during the last decades in mexico and latin america show that curriculum policy can be promoted and assumed as a mere official prescription embodied in formal documents, as a control device for the processes and actors, or as the possibility of encouraging processes of curriculum negotiation and appropriation situated within an educational community. we coincide in this way to look at the latin-american reality with several authors that we have read for this article: only from the latter perspective and taking into account different levels of curriculum implementation will allow the participation of the different actors in favor of the educational change. facing this maelstrom of economic, politic and social changes that have been implemented during the last decades, new questions and challenges to the school curriculum arise according to the different contexts that are studied. just like during the two decades the trend has been to draw up competence-centered curriculum, favoring the competences known as generic or key competences, nowadays the question deals with the curriculum content. this is why an emerging trend in several countries is the definition of national curricula for basic education, configured around a bunch of contents that are considered as basic. but the question is what are basic contents? and the answer is not simple. the exploratory review we carried out of several documents about educational policies in educational portals of latin-american countries16 allowed us to find out that in diverse curriculum projects at national level, the basic contents are part of the universe of curriculum contents and imply a selection of what can be understood as priority or essential in student education. we revised the curriculum models of mexico, chile, argentina, colombia, república dominicana, uruguay y españa. what they understand as “priority or essential”, operates in different directions. although many of the curriculum models refers to competencies and performance standards, the key contents are usually lists of knowledge specific to scientific disciplines, and to a lesser extent procedures, skills or attitudes. why they are the most important contents can be understood in different ways. in some models, this basic consideration is accompanied by criteria such as the feasibility of its assessment or the guarantee that they lead to quality education or even social equity. for other, “basic” refers to a humanizing education, or education with a sense of social responsibility. we also observed references to the contents that belong to the subjects with a higher place in curriculum hierarch (language, mathematics), or to contents related to the promotion of certain skills or knowledge that help students to manage in the current world, globalized and technologized. in other cases, the basic content is linked to the problems that worry the learner and the citizens on matters such as health, security, ecology, living together, et cetera. to a lesser extent, contents that allow a multi or interdisciplinary treatment between curricular areas. such kind of politic orientation to “basic contents” has given rise for reviving discussions about the nature of knowledge and the logic-disciplinary structure of curriculum versus the cognitive or psychological structure of the learners, adding to the discussion of what is basic the question of social and cultural relevance and transcendence of knowledge. nevertheless, the main concern is that this “back to the basic” politics eventually lead to a reductionist and impoverished curriculum that gives barrón tirado & díaz barriga. curriculum management 25 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (2) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci priority to factual contents, the decontextualized “cutbacks” of the scientific disciplines, that can be easily assessed in massively applied objective proofs. we agree that teachers are a key component to achieve “to overcome the gap between curriculum as an intention and the mechanisms to make it operational”17 (stenhouse, 2013, p. 13), since if the participation of teachers is not taken into account, the risk is that the management staff itself forsakes making of curriculum a lever for changing education. we mentioned above that when the teacher’s participation is reduced to the role of a formal curriculum operator or executor, this happens at the expense of the consideration of teacher as a thinker, and then his/her commitment to curriculum is at stake. prominent authors have stated that in the process of construction of a pedagogical order, the teacher exercises a professional sense, makes decisions, thinks and acts according to certain requirements of rationality and guided by a practical reason, in this case a pedagogical one. likewise, all teaching practice implies a moral commitment consisting on the training of the future generations, considering the nature of decisions and opinions that teachers carry out about other human beings, the learners, in situations of unavoidable uncertainty with severe conflicts of values and visions (a. díaz barriga, 2005, 2008; fullan & hargreaves, 1999; tardif & gauthier, 2005). in this regard, valdez (2013) takes as starting point the recognition that the transformations that are needed nowadays in the educational institutions must be radical, but are, at the same time, very complex and hard to take over of the educational community. this innovating effort in the educational field generates a very positive oxygenation, since as a general rule the new reforms bring with them ideas of improvement and inspiring plans that promise to resolve educational and, consequently, social and cultural issues, but they also bring along a chaotic atmosphere, since the changes imposed from an exogenous dimension represent challenges for the teacher (valdez, 2013, pp. 2-3). the main issue about teachers is that during decades they have been taking part into practices that differ a lot from what the new curriculum models and proposals expect, especially when the transformations are prescribed or imposed by the educational authorities and do not come from the needs experienced by the teacher of his/her educational community. for this author, it is unlikely that the teacher changes what m. fullan calls “his/her significant structures”, above all because the change is presented to the community by means of a discourse that conveys a series of technical and academy-oriented conceptions associated with the neoliberal discourse and because those conceptions usually do not recognize, or even deny, the meanings that teachers have been constructing throughout his/her career and that are part of his/her meaning depositories. on the other hand, the reforms use to overlook that those teachers tend to react in very different ways according to their knowledge and acceptance of the educational models that authorities want to implement in their educational institution. the knowledge they have about it varies from familiarity and clarity to opacity and little transparency; this means that the farther they consider the cultural object that authorities pretend to impose to them as coordinate for their teaching practice, the more negative the opinions will be and consequently the stronger the resistance to it (valdez, 2013). as regards the managerial staff and the experts that they use to hire or assign to the process of drawing up the educational and curriculum model they will implement, in our context we find only a few studies about curriculum management, in contrast with the wide literature about teachers. nevertheless, experts usually report that their role as representative of the opinion of the authorities (management staff) or academy (experts) barrón tirado & díaz barriga. curriculum management 26 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (2) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci does not reveal any kind of closeness to the community and that on the contrary the process takes place in a vertical and imperative way, especially in highly centralized and hierarchical educational systems. consequently, for authors as hopkins (2007), clark (2000) and fullan (2001; 2002), a new perspective on leadership is needed, because the deep transformation in an institution demands appropriated management processes (persons and groups with legitimacy and convening power) able to create conditions that encourage the community to take part in the transformation process and to make theirs the innovating culture that is implemented within the institution and, of course, able to construct optimal conditions to operate and diversify the needed funding. for those sociologists who analyze educational change, change only happen when there are agents who put forward organization and innovation initiatives that, by means of specific actions based on a negotiated participation, prompt the community to experience important dynamic transformations both in its structures and in its training processes. with regard to the students’ role within the change processes, the educational discourse uses to claim that all the recent models are oriented to focus curriculum on their learning and on their training as citizens of the knowledge society, and that the aim is their welfare, development or empowerment. however, the first thing we have to question is the background knowledge about the trainees for whom the educational policies and models are implemented, since frequently authorities and experts draw up models based on conventional socio-demographic statistics but without a full research on their identity, on the ways in which they appropriate knowledge, the kind of youth culture they belong to, their expectations and interests towards a specific profession, amongst other matters. the students use to be objects and not active subjects in the design processes of educational reforms. according to moreno (2010, p. 87), facing the educational change process, “students first play the role of observers, and only after become the guinea pig of the new curriculum that will be prescribed to them”18. if we think that university curriculum targets young adults, why should we not re-think their role in constructing it, in making decisions as regards contents, experiences or teaching methods? recently, we conducted a study about the way in which undergraduate university students experience the process of implementing a curricular reform and new educational models (díaz barriga, soto & díaz, 2015), which in terms of theory shares many of the innovations that have been mentioned in the previous paragraphs (flexibility to construct a personalized curriculum career, training to practice in real environments, inclusion of digital technologies in teaching, tutorship as accompaniment to the student in his/her training career, educational innovation, amongst others). we found that such young people, although they are not experts on curriculum and do not have an evidence a thorough knowledge of the curriculum map of the degree they are studying, can recount the ethos of the institution and what is most significant about the curriculum management processes. if students are valued and given a voice, who could better than them identify those aspects related to null curriculum and hidden curriculum within the institution and to the failures in the administrative implementation and the alleged didactic innovation around the real conditions of the teaching they receive. the most relevant contribution to this study was to find out, by means of the analysis of the students’ personal stories in their role as curriculum actors, that as for other learners enrolled in lower educational levels, curriculum reality is shaped according to the teaching mediation processes within the classroom. in fact, the teachers’ attitudes and pedagogic approach, the sense and signification they accord to curriculum contents and the way in which they induct students to the “occupational barrón tirado & díaz barriga. curriculum management 27 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (2) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci risks” of the profession they are training for can encourage (or not) the willingness to learn and the acceptation of the curriculum they are studying. amongst the most recurring issues raised by students we find the criticism to ex cathedra lecture as the only teaching method in many curriculum spaces, the lack of an effective training to competences for exercising the profession, the scarcity of technologies more appropriate for the digital era or of suitable orientation and tutorship processes, the absence of real learning environments or of well-equipped laboratories. some of the students were able to identify the ideological disputes and the power struggles between the different groups about curriculum, or show a critical attitude toward the excessive bureaucratization of the school management authorities or toward some teachers’ authoritarianism, and thus question the statement that “curriculum is student-centered”19 (díaz barriga, soto & díaz, 2015). the underlying question, expressed in the students’ discourse itself, is finally to what extent the innovating learner-centered approaches, that involve flexible curriculum management mechanisms and also a strong personalization of the learning paths, since those should be modulated according to their needs, characteristics and preferential cultural practices. final thoughts we should like to reaffirm here that the curriculum implementation is not a merely technical issue, nor can it be reduced to the development of a curriculum project or a curriculum map, no matter how innovating it can be. the realization of curriculum goes hand in hand with multiple actions at several levels within the school institutions, both for what regards management and administration and concerning the educational, cultural and political processes and practices experienced by the different actors who take part in the educational action. in this article, we have emphasized the complexity of changing the mentalities and practices that have been significant for the actors of the school institution when trying to set up a new educational model. change is desirable and possible when it is oriented to the improvement of the educational processes and to the solution of issues that are significant for the school community and the society as a whole, but it faces many obstacles when the educational policy turns into models that can be very innovating from the perspective of the expert who designs it, but that are established compulsorily by policies that turn out to be coercive for the actors. the literature we reviewed led us to the idea that if we do not take into account the levels of knowledge and participation and the subjective sense that the different actors grant to the educational model and the curriculum project that comes with as well, it will be difficult to favor the appropriation of this curriculum proposal and its approval by the community. and even more if the actors are not really involved in the design and implementation of the educational model in the institution to which they belong, of if they consider it as something alien and distant that has nothing to do with their own necessities and commitments. but if, on the contrary, we recognize that curriculum management based on negotiation and on the participation of the different actors in decision-making can motivate a collaborative work, doubt remains about what is the real impact of those processes on the school culture and on the daily work within the classroom, particularly in contexts such as our latin-american institutions, and it is in this specific aspect where we have to look for different options in order to reach the individual appropriation of a common institutional project. thus, it is not enough simply to modify regulations or to restructure the management of the educational institution, but it is necessary to develop a barrón tirado & díaz barriga. curriculum management 28 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (2) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci comprehensive project that brings together the different interests of the academic community and to prioritize a new school culture and puts the emphasis on the shared values, working methods and expectations about day-to-day work. far beyond the curriculum contents and the basis of educational model that prescribes a specific educational philosophy and a training proposal, in every school and university there is an ethos that can be read between the lines as an invisible pedagogy, and this pedagogy, according to vallaeys (2015, p. 1), “is related to the execution of routines within the institutions, intersubjective routines that legitimize, in a subtle and sometimes not so subtle way, prejudices, values that can hardly be upheld, sneaky discriminations”20. in this light, none of the school or university communal life styles can be considered totally neutral, that’s why it is so important to disclose the values that are effectively promoted by the institutions, the behaviors and attitudes that are encouraged for daily life and its possible contradictions, beyond the dynamics of strains that are caused when educational change is fostered within the institution. we therefore consider that the institutional ethos reflects to a great extent the way in which curriculum is managed and the status that is granted to its actors. in our opinion, the greatest challenge for the authorities that head transformation projects in education, is to be able to meet the external demands without neglecting the own needs and to motivate the generation of alternatives of their own. unfortunately, the educational authorities in our country, often operate according interests focused on the struggle for political power and institutional control, safeguarding more than anything else the interests of the group that brought them to power. finally, we agree with the authors who set out that the school institution itself must be seen as the basic unit of the educational action oriented to its improvement and promote its transformation as a professional learning community, so that the educational policies and the ways in which they are managed can lead to a greater autonomy, to more power of decision and to an actual adjustment to the specific situation of part of the actors who make up the community. but we do not conceive of the school as a basic unit in isolation, since this undermines its possibilities of change. in particular, we have highlighted the contributions of the school improvement tradition, which is a programme for innovation focusing on change and problem-solving in educational practice. avoiding simplistic and mechanistic solutions, schools have to design and invent their own solutions for specific problems and improvement in general. however, care must be taken that this is not interpreted as leaving the schools adrift, at their own risk, without receiving the support, resources or inputs required to bring about the changes. among the policies announced on the new mexican educational model of 2016, it is said that the central authorities will give a margin of autonomy to the schools in the content and practice of the curriculum, as well as the possibility of generating their own school improvement project. although it is stated that basic material conditions will be ensured in all public schools, but minimum procedures for this are not established. on the other hand, significant cuts have been announced to the educational and social budget in the country, one more factor that undermines improvement projects. notes 1 acknowledgments to the support provided by dgapa-unam through the project papiit in304114-3 and to laurette godinas for the translation into english of the original version of this article. barrón tirado & díaz barriga. curriculum management 29 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (2) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 2 baticon3@hotmail.com 3fdba@unam.mx 4 in spanish, management is translated as “gestión” and in this paper, concerns to the ability to organize and implement the curriculum and teaching projects in schools and universities. the biggest challenge facing educational institutions is to become selfmanaging institutions, especially in contexts such as mexico, where reigns the centralized national curriculum. 5 in spanish in the original version: “la inclusión de la gestión curricular como un nuevo constructo permite situar el quehacer de la escuela en su esencia, en su objetivo”. 6 in spanish in the original version: “se puede pensar que el esfuerzo por racionalizar la construcción del proyecto curricular bajo la preponderancia de criterios pedagógicos profesionalizados responde a la necesidad administrativa de definir proyectos a nivel local y a nivel de cada establecimiento, en un sistema de negociación y rendición de cuentas frente a los grupos de presión de las comunidades en que se encuentran las escuelas”. 7 in spanish in the original version: “la palabra gestión sugiere de inmediato una “acción”, tiene una dimensión dinámica y además necesita un referente que la complemente”. 8 in spanish in the original version: “entendemos la gestión como el conjunto de acciones orientadas hacia la consecución de ciertos objetivos que se desarrollan en las diversas áreas de actividad de la organización y en cuyo diseño y evaluación participan, en alguna medida, las personas encargadas de llevarlas a cabo”. 9 in spanish in the original version: “en los planteles, la consecución de la calidad necesita tanto la renovación curricular como de nuevas formas del trabajo docente”. 10 in spanish in the original versión: “constituye el núcleo de la misión y de la ofertasocioeducativa de la escuela”. 11 in spanish in the original version: “la escuela, como construcción cultural, adapta más que adoptalas reformas a sus propios modos de ver y hacer, en la medida en que toda reforma conlleva unos valores y visiones, que son más o menos compatibles con las estructuras organizativas y culturas en que trabajan las personas, precisará una reconstrucción-adaptación”. 12 in the spanish original version: “la idea de proyecto supone la existencia de un sujeto capaz de definir un futuro como opción objetivamente posible, y no como mera proyección arbitraria. es gracias a los proyectos que el sujeto establece una relación con la realidad que se apoya en su capacidad de transformar a esa realidad en contenido de una voluntad social, la cual, a su vez, podrá determinar la dirección de los procesos sociales. así, hechos potenciales podrán ser predeterminados, gracias a la acción de una voluntad social particular. en este contexto, la apropiación del presente deviene un modo de construir el futuro, y, a la inversa, un proyecto de futuro, protagonizado por un barrón tirado & díaz barriga. curriculum management 30 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (2) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci sujeto, se transforma en un modo de apropiación del presente…en realidad, el sujeto será realmente activo, sólo si es capaz de distinguir lo viable de los puramente deseable, es decir, si su acción se inscribe en una concepción del futuro como horizonte de acciones posibles”. 13 in the spanish original version: “destrucción creadora en condiciones de incertidumbre”. 14 in the spanish original version: “sujetos activos, que interpretan su entorno educativo, que buscan un sentido a su quehacer, que valoran y revaloran su escolarización, viven intensamente su trayectoria escolar, escriben y re–escriben su propia historia y construyen día a día su identidad como estudiantes, adolescentes y como jóvenes”. 15 in the spanish original version: “la tarea a cumplir tanto desde un nivel de análisis político-social como desde el punto de vista de su instrumentación técnica”. 16 en el mes de agosto de 2016 revisamos los siguientes sitios web para identificar qué se está concibiendo como contenidos básicos del currículo; en su mayoría, se habla de competencias y estándares de desempeño, los contenidos curriculares son conocimientos que se ordenan en asignaturas. -contenidos básicos comunes para la educación general básica en argentina. http://www.bnm.me.gov.ar/giga1/documentos/el001215.pdf -elementos curriculares, españa. http://www.mecd.gob.es/educacionmecd/mc/lomce/el-curriculo/curriculo-primaria-eso-bachillerato/elementos.html -marco legal del diseño curricular en colombia http://www.huila.gov.co/documentos/educacion/huilaensena/acompa%c3%b1amientocurricular/taller%202/marco_legal_del_curriculo_en_colombia.pdf -contenidos básicos del currículo de república dominicana. http://www.educando.edu.do/centro-de-recursos/curriculo-dominicano/los-contenidosbasicos/ -currículum nacional, chile. http://www.curriculumnacional.cl/# -documento base de análisis curricular, uruguay. http://www.ceip.edu.uy/documentos/2015/atd/documento_base_de_an%c3%a1lisis_ atd_por_escuela.pdf -nueva escuela secundaria de la ciudad de buenos aires. ciclo básico 2014-2020. http://www.buenosaires.gob.ar/areas/educacion/recursos/nescb-2014_web.pdf -propuesta curricular para la educación obligatoria 2016, méxico. https://www.gob.mx/cms/uploads/docs/propuesta-curricular-baja.pdf 17 in spanish in the original version: “superar la brecha entre el currículo como intención y los mecanismos para hacerlo operativo”. http://www.bnm.me.gov.ar/giga1/documentos/el001215.pdf http://www.mecd.gob.es/educacion-mecd/mc/lomce/el-curriculo/curriculo-primaria-eso-bachillerato/elementos.html http://www.mecd.gob.es/educacion-mecd/mc/lomce/el-curriculo/curriculo-primaria-eso-bachillerato/elementos.html http://www.huila.gov.co/documentos/educacion/huilaensena/acompa%c3%b1amiento-curricular/taller%202/marco_legal_del_curriculo_en_colombia.pdf http://www.huila.gov.co/documentos/educacion/huilaensena/acompa%c3%b1amiento-curricular/taller%202/marco_legal_del_curriculo_en_colombia.pdf http://www.educando.edu.do/centro-de-recursos/curriculo-dominicano/los-contenidos-basicos/ http://www.educando.edu.do/centro-de-recursos/curriculo-dominicano/los-contenidos-basicos/ http://www.curriculumnacional.cl/ http://www.ceip.edu.uy/documentos/2015/atd/documento_base_de_an%c3%a1lisis_atd_por_escuela.pdf http://www.ceip.edu.uy/documentos/2015/atd/documento_base_de_an%c3%a1lisis_atd_por_escuela.pdf http://www.buenosaires.gob.ar/areas/educacion/recursos/nescb-2014_web.pdf https://www.gob.mx/cms/uploads/docs/propuesta-curricular-baja.pdf barrón tirado & díaz barriga. curriculum management 31 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (2) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 18 in spanish in the original version: “los alumnos en un primer momento juegan el rol de meros espectadores para posteriormente pasar a convertirse en “conejillos de indias” del nuevo currículum que se les suministrará”. 19 in spanish in the original version: “el currículo está centrado en el alumno”. 20 in spanish in the original version: “está relacionada con la ejecución de rutinas en la institución, rutinas intersubjetivas que legitiman, de manera sutil y no tan sutil, prejuicios, valores poco defendibles, discriminaciones solapadas”. references ainscow, m., dyson, a., goldrick, s. & west, m. 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(2005) el maestro como “actor racional”: racionalidad, conocimiento, juicio. in paquay, l. et al. la formación profesional del maestro. estrategias y competencias (pp. 309354). méxico: fce. terigi, f. (1999). currículum. itinerarios para aprehender un territorio. buenos aires: santillana. valdés, m. (2013). depósitos de sentido educativo y los procesos de negociación del docente universitario frente a las reformas curriculares de una ies. sinéctica, 41, 1-15, julio-diciembre. vallaeys, f. (2015). el ethos oculto de la universidad. red de responsabilidad social universitaria (rsu), 1-5. available on the website: http://www.rsu.uninter.edu.mx/doc/herramientas_rsu/elethosocultodelauniversidad.p df weimer, m. (2013). learner-centered teaching: five key changes to practice. 2nd ed. san francisco: jossey-bass. ziegler, s. (2003). los docentes como lectores de documentos curriculares. aportes para el análisis de la recepción de la reforma curricular de los años noventa en argentina. revista mexicana de investigación educativa, 8, 653-677. submitted: may, 17th, 2016 approved: january, 8th, 2017 http://www.icsei.net/2016/icsei2011/state_of_the_art/state_of_the_art_session_c.pdf http://www.rsu.uninter.edu.mx/doc/herramientas_rsu/elethosocultodelauniversidad.pdf http://www.rsu.uninter.edu.mx/doc/herramientas_rsu/elethosocultodelauniversidad.pdf o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: morelli, silvia (2017). dialogues and circumstances as unavoidable topics in curriculum field. transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> dialogues and circumstances as unavoidable topics in curriculum field silvia morelli1 national university of rosario, argentina introduction the twenty-first century offers a new twist for curriculum field. basting its theses, may be able to put forward new ways to live the international with the particularities of the local. for this, it turns to the dialogues and conversations as articulating metaphors between different contexts. curriculum as a complicated conversation (pinar, 2006, 2011b, 2012) means a double cross into stories and politics, between the local or national and the international. it has demonstrated the constitutive tension in the field of curriculum theory. the complicated conversation is the intention to compile the curriculum state of situation in different nations, their particularities, the subjective and trends. it is important to recognize the territory as the discursive surface where curriculum over-determinates. therefore, it refers to treat emergence, identity, alterity, allegory, internationalization, decolonization, cosmopolitanism, individuality, inwardness and also bildung (pinar, 2011b, 2015), as he explains: that conversation with others is complicated by the fact of our, and their, individuality, their differing generational, genetic, and cultural locations. it seems we share experience but that experience is always inflected by these separate locations, in historical time and geographical place, and by our distinctive experience of these. the reverberating fact that we are each individual —however differently— separates us from each other, but it is also what connects us to each other. (2011b, p.5) however, taking the challenges to curriculum studies, the curriculum notion enters in discursive frame where its floating signifier (laclau, 1990; laclau and mouffe, 2010) makes an ambiguous and polysemic work. that is why, when curriculum refers to conversations2 and dialogues identifies the discourse as a main category of analysis, for understanding practices, theoretical constructions and the subjectivities of its speakers. discourse identifies curriculum like a social event, and considers it as a signifier politically and cultural involved. as a floating signifier, provides senses that printed in the language-game of the later wittgenstein3. likewise, to refer to dialogues includes culture, identity, subject, difference and antagonism. without forget discussions about hegemony and emancipation, as politics categories for the curriculum. the special feature of this scenario is evidenced by the philosophical rupture at the end of the twentieth century between modernity and postmodernism. this also sharpens intellectual scene for curricular theories but that does not mean aggravation or morelli. dialogues and circumstances 29 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci collapse. a new perspective in curriculum studies is emerging. consider the rupture between modern curriculum discourse (content by tyler rationale, the practical and critical theories) and post-critical discourses, charts the crisis of a curricular area that continues demonstrating its presence in the field of education, emphasizing the depletion of the modern perspectives. now also, the differences between modern age and the post-critical theoretical show that disagreements in the curriculum field are necessary for its intellectual growth. far from marking dissonance, it has theoretical richness and epistemological maturity. this disagreement breaks with the hegemony of its field during the twentieth century, and establishes differences, equivalences and articulations with signified in postmodern scenes. it is important to make studies that address problems, paradigms and authors who behave towards the field of curriculum today, making them visible. works of this type are manifested in international curriculum studies, by william f. pinar, with his international handbook of curriculum research (2003b, 2014) and his other collection curriculum studies … intellectual histories, present circumstances (2011a, 2011c). there are also the work by eero ropo and tero autio (2009) international conversations on curriculum studies. subject, society and curriculum. latin american curriculum studies share that concern taking place of these productions. underlining latin american specifically contributions there are two important works. first edited by alice casimiro lopes and alicia de alba (2014) diálogos curriculares entre brasil e méxico; alicia de alba and alice casimiro lopes (2015) diálogos curriculares entre méxico y brasil; and second, edited by ángel díaz barriga and josé maría garcía garduño (2014) entitled desarrollo del curriculum en américa latina. experiencia de diez países. referring to unavoidable topics is, without any question, referring to those subjects, which cannot be evaded, dodged or go unnoticed in the current situation regarding the curriculum field in latin america. i understand that the unavoidability lies in the event shapes between dialogues and circumstances which, as a meeting point, generates a change of direction. what is unavoidable then, in this case, is the academic discourse, which generates tension in the critical theories' paradigms and their postmodern evolution framed in the curriculum-society relationship (de alba, 2007a, 2009). until this moment, the latin american curriculum presents events in the dialogues between lopes and de alba (2014), de alba and lopes (2015), between díaz barriga and garcía garduño (2014) with ten latin american countries, or when pinar (2011a, 2011c) mediates in the curriculum studies in mexico or brazil. this dialogues and circumstances officiate as metaphors, which make visible the discourse markers of what happens in the curriculum field in a post-critical period. some unavoidable topics that become conceptual nubs which's patterns contain notions, genealogies and subjects are: (1) the consolidation of the field and a greater socialization of its state of arts, (2) the consideration of the tension between critical and post-critical theories, (3) the complementary relation curriculum and/or didactics and (4) political and epistemological debates about curriculum inquiry from those new perspectives. genealogy and consolidation of the field to create the latin american curriculum discourse mapping, includes academicians, productions, perspectives and institutions. foucault’s dispositive notion says that each artifact has its own regime of lightness allowing visibility for some events and hiding others. building this mapping through a dispositive is only a kind of discourse, especially when it is referring to a theoretical object as ambiguous as the curriculum is. morelli. dialogues and circumstances 30 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the unavoidable contributes to a process of consolidation of the field and simultaneously reveals an epistemological imperative towards a greater socialization and movement of the state of the art relating to the local production in the area. while seeking for meeting points, identity and differentiation is granted. in itself, placing the regional under suspicion enables the deconstruction of its meaning. what constitutes the regional in latin america? how are these regions identified? as wittgenstein (1967 [1953]) says, which is the family resemblance? what makes each region unique in the curriculum notion? in the case of brazil, it is located in the early fifties and for the rest of these states, concerned in mid-sixties and seventies. that common trait among countries, make them to share the arrival of the curriculum thought technical perspective represented by tyler mainly from his work basic principles of curriculum and instruction. in díaz barriga and garcía garduño (2014), a state of art and historical reflections on the curriculum in their countries are presented. footprints are repeated as they were traced with others that were designed in the particularities and differences. each of the ten essays reconstructs the political scenario in which income is given to curricular problems playing a game between presidents, ministers of education and academicians as political subject. there are few works about the state of affairs of the curriculum studies in latin america. studies like this are very important to make the curriculum studies perspective goes on in our continent. including every one that refers to dialogues and conversation as metaphor about the internationalization, speaks together in language-game. only from this perspective, contextualized in the tension between modernity and the postmodern, local and global, begins the field of curriculum studied as stories of hegemony, over-determination and subjects in every country. curriculum as a field of study was born in modernity. currently eludes modern ties and looks for theoretical horizons that include diversity, (auto) biographical stories, narratives and memories, but also a new definition of democracy. the theoretical curriculum mapping is assembled in the present with patches of different regions. neither obeys the imperative of coincidence, nor imports anglo-saxon-american models. with genealogical brands, each latin american country builds its own story concerning curriculum. as every author do in díaz barriga and garcía garduño work, each academician tells his or her own story about latin american curriculum discourse that takes, in the best of cases, six decades of political and cultural faith. their passage is forced to look ahead of the field producing genuine speeches that reflect latin american reality. this essential and necessary kind of study is due among intellectuals of this continent´s latitude, install alternatives educational stories to the tyler rationale. post-critical analysis must flood and fills up pages of futures essays. curriculum research in latin america should grow with the mixture of actual post-critical analysis coming back to the past. the stories, the ways of interpreting, the way of visibility events, realize the latin american kaleidoscope sharing similarities and differences from the past, to the present. latin american is a hybrid construction designed by crossbreeding that keeps tension between individual identities and common cultures. critical and postcritical theory the ethical and political commitment to ensure continuity of curriculum theory obliges us to consider the passage from critical theory, sealed corollary of modernity, to postcritical curriculum theories. as a hybrid and complementary construction, there are post-structural, postmodern, non-essential and postcolonial theories (lopes, 2013). in the case of latin america, there are noteworthy contributions from discourse theory of laclau and mouffe (2010) laclau (1990, 2008) and mouffe's political theory (2009, morelli. dialogues and circumstances 31 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 2012, 2014) in the social sciences4. in addition, there are productions of lopes (2011a, 2011b, 2013, 2014), macedo (2011, 2014) and de alba (2007a, 2007b, 2009, 2011, 2014) as the most outstanding. analyzing curricular genealogy in those texts the culture, politic, society and the subject are the main important issue. in addition, they converge into discourse like a nodal signifier that is helped by poststructuralism and deconstruction. the postcolonial studies contribute to the gender, subjectivity and cultures. while the postmodern allow study the curriculum from the philosophical discourse rupture between modernity and postmodernism. this debate occurred between habermas and lyotard in the early eighties5. these perspectives continue to regard politics as an important factor in the curriculum. it lies not only in analyzes of hegemony and power, but also hope to build a democratic horizon which contains diversity and conflict. in this analysis, mouffe (2009, 2014) provides a framework for rethinking the political that can be taken for the curriculum theory. assuming that, as an intellectual field, the curriculum should be thought as in tension between the critical theories and the postcritical theories questioning its affiliation with politics, discourse, the social conditions and minorities. in this way, it breaks away from the widespread perceptions of the modern age, of which the curriculum is an important part. having said that, the challenge of this field includes separating from the anglo-american hegemony with the purpose of creating genuine productions that highlight the curriculum's relationship with the social demands, generating discourse around the curricular policy. not to recognize an epicenter in the curriculum discourses favors the recognition of constellations of authors, topics-issues and epistemological perspectives. seeing from this perspective, the work of alice casimiro lopes and elizabeth macedo in brazil understand the curriculum as cultural enunciation (macedo, 2011) and the hybrid characteristic of the curriculum field (lopes, 2011b). they go to poststructuralism, analyzing curriculum in politics context. in their texts, the curriculum is crossing disciplinary borders, boarding its cultural and political character. they refer curriculum to a discursive perspective understanding it through derrida, laclau and mouffe contributions. dialoguing with them, alicia de alba goes to non-essential perspective analyzing tension between globalization and, as she called, generalized structural crisis (de alba, 2007a, 2011). looking at the international dialogue for curriculum field in the twenty-first century, she says: the internationalization of curriculum studies is a historical imperative linked, then, among other things, to understanding the curriculum-society relation in a significant and productive way, forefronting the strong cultural specificity that is lived out regionally in the world. especially in central europe, the united states and england, there is as well a balkanization of subjectivities and identities reflected in the curriculum field at the global, local, and the “glocal” levels, illustrated not only by the complexity of communication across national borders but also by the difficulty of achieving meaningful communication between different generations within nations. (2011, p. 59) from other point of view, díaz barriga and garcía garduño (2014) considering the curriculum in ten latin american countries as argentina, bolivia, brazil, colombia, chile, costa rica, dominican republic, venezuela, uruguay and mexico. there are stories that make the connection between the curriculum and educative system in these states. in addition, there are speeches that sometimes overlap problems and others rescue their different curriculum histories of each particular country. while they are morelli. dialogues and circumstances 32 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci making their experience, they show the constitutive hybridity of the curriculum field. every study of this subject deals with various curriculum theoretical perspectives, either as an object of educational policies or as intellectual field. in the mixture of tension between political definitions and university experiences of educational sciences courses, a common thread runs through them at the beginning: the determination of the imperatives from united states about the meaning of curriculum and its pragmatic distribution of curriculum models along the latin american countries6. this shows that curriculum was an object for the hegemony and politics determination. us strategy had been used curriculum like a dispositive of social control to latin american education. making refer to curriculum studies in mexico (pinar, 2011a, kumar, 2011, díaz barriga, 2011). kumar says: significantly, the adoption of aforementioned us scholar´s work during the 1970s which had been published in the united states between late 1940s and 1960s was also an intentional political act. it coincided with a us strategy to counteract the cuban communist revolution, which threatened to spread throughout latin america. this containment strategy was conducted through the alliance for process, president john f. kennedy´s initiative for us “cooperation” with latin america in the early 1960s. (kumar, 2011, p.31) an ethical imperative reminds us that the curriculum cannot avoid being treated as a political text. that is to say continuing the critical theories' job regarding the relationship between curriculum and power, ideology and hegemony developing new meanings for analysis categories such as emancipation, democracy, government and autonomy. the recursive neoliberal scenarios that cyclically haunt latin america show, once again, the relationship between the curriculum and the education policy. as a nodal signifier in the latin american neoliberal discourse, the assessment becomes a meeting point between the global-local tensions. there, the contributions of curricular conceptual frameworks cooperate in the genuine development in terms of assessment, while, at the same time, place its relevance under suspicion. curriculum and didaktik the recovery of its relationship with didaktik is another unavoidable task. this recovery goes back to the initial years of the 1970s, in argentinian barco's so-called “new” or “anti-didaktik” (1973) or, both argentinian too, edelstein and rodríguez debates (1974), which took account of another horizon for education and the teaching role in latin america. however, the relationship between curriculum theory and didaktik tradition reaches also the untranslatable sense of bildung as that signifier which far from becoming empty (laclau, 1996) deserves to be studied again. curriculum-didaktik as a complementary relationship. a complex relationship that generates tensions, antagonisms and disruptions, which are shared in an articulated manner by education and the teaching role as privileged objects. this complementary relationship share teaching as the main object and its relation between teachers and content. considering shulman (1986)’s questions and his missing paradigm, i formulate onether ones: why is teaching a content-free domain? if it is a problem of curriculum and didaktik, what can we do with these dissociated fields of study, which need to keep coexisting in the same environment? (morelli, 2016). moreover, i continued with other questions like what happens to the teacher when teaching? what are the sources of knowledge used by a teacher when teaching? what does a teacher know about the contents taught and how this teacher continues to acquire knowledge on that subject morelli. dialogues and circumstances 33 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci matter? moreover, what is the previous knowledge possessed by a teacher regarding the content development as a didaktik issue? (shuman, 1986, p.8). these are many questions but there are very few answers which impact in the planning and development of teaching as teachers’ professionalism. teaching and bilgung are connected in didaktik tradition and bildung helps to define teaching in its. for much of the twentieth century the anglo-american curriculum was dissociated from the german tradition of didaktik. authors such as westbury, hopmann and riquarts (2000), autio (2006, 2016), pinar (2011b) focus on this subject as a field that presents different traditions that share inseparable objects and problems from the internationalization of curriculum studies. also, uljens and ylimaki (2016, p. 19) say that “it is a dialogue moving across disciplines and fields of research, between epistemological schools and research methodologies, and between traditions in different countries and continents. needless to say, such an attempt is a challenging undertaking”. following the idea related to instruction, pinar (2011b, p. 63) retrieves from hopmann and riquarts a list of 3 elements of didaktik that “requires knowing (1) the content of instruction, (2) from where that content comes, and (3) how content is used”. in my opinion, teaching is a complex activity, guided by the teacher, which is based on creating situations in which student meets with knowledge. teaching is an intentional act that seeks specific purposes in the transmission of some knowledge to some students. that is why is so important even for curriculum and didaktik to take care of that matter where the transmission of cultures is at stake. it is important to stress that, although teaching is developed in the classroom and the teacher is the one in charge of its outline and development, it does not belong to the classroom unit exclusively, but also to the institutional one. it is at the micro-level where the selection and sequencing of the guidelines that allow defining contents take place. it denotes the retrospective and prospective nature of teaching. the retrospective nature is connected with the historicity of classes and the possibility to recognize a past that is combined with a utopian view, which is typical of the political purpose of teaching. that is to say bringing past into the present in order to think about the future. the special characteristic of teaching in the school environment is that the teacher never thinks of teaching in terms of a single student; the challenge is to make teaching compatible simultaneously between the whole group as social and their particularities. that is why among the indispensable topics in the current field of curriculum it becomes necessary to recover the didaktik´s discourse, bildung and teaching as a shared problem. curriculum research by enrolling in the social and human sciences, curriculum research results from the convergence of different disciplines and theoretical perspectives that provide qualitative approaches (morelli, 2017). it still claims to be a part of the educational research ordering to consolidate paradigms, methods and problems derived from the curriculum-society relationship. buenfil burgos (2012, p, 51) already stated that “educational research is like any other social science and humanities and, therefore, it needs the theoretical work so as to open and refine the vision, and to offer better arguments for the knowledge produced.” a field to achieve consolidation it requires that the logics regarding the knowledge production is recognized and socialized among its researchers. the curricular research forms intellectual bonds among the academic subjects and contrasts and transfers the treatment of social and epistemological problems, transformed into the objects under examination. in this regard, it is not morelli. dialogues and circumstances 34 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci possible to avoid working on the socio-educational problems such as multiple literacy, teaching practices, the school class as a social group, the professor's intellectual identity and the gender studies, along with the continuity of the curriculum studies as that great arena in which its intellectual discourse is constructed. curricular research establishes the consolidation of the curriculum field while connecting it with educational practices and recognizes that much of that world called education contains curriculum marks. in recent times, the shift towards neoliberalism is once again becoming evident where the state takes a leading role by proposing educational reforms that install outcomes, assessment and testing. this makes curricular research more political and begins to focus studies on the social and cultural effects of curricular proposals based on standardization of teaching and learning. that is why research cooperates with the re-theorizing of the field (uljens and ylimaki, 2016), studying the relationship between curriculum, politics and policy. recent neoliberal educational and accountability policies have intensified a focus on school leadership, learning results, and national curriculum standards. the increased focus on leaderships occurs as parts of a new policies pf curriculum making, leaderships as enacted practice, and evaluation as a steering vehicle, all of which are occurring amidst increasing global interdependencies among all societal sectors as well as increasing multiculturalism and rapid developments in communication technology redefining spaces for learning and teaching. (uljens and ylimaki, 2016, pp.4-5) for this, it is important to transcend the analysis between curricular levels and its interrelation as a problem of educational administration and bring it to the curricular policies analysis. emphasizing that in democratic contexts the objective is to establish agreements between the interests manifested at the different levels while incorporating the analysis of cultural differences as a political conversation. two approaches are made visible to this problem. on the one hand the study of “small narrative” and short story (goodson, 2017) and on the other cosmopolitanism emphasizing the relationship between the state and the local. however, since this is a political problem, curricular research will focus on education for citizenship and social justice in the achievement of equity, participation and comprehensive education (englund, 2016, p. xvi). non-final considerations in this essay, i have dealt with the unavoidable topics of the latin american curriculum highlighting four key points such as the consolidation of the field and its genealogy, the tension between critical and postcritical perspectives, the relationship between curriculum studies and didactic tradition and curricular research. considering that, these four denounce problems that the curriculum could not avoid to treated in the present. this analysis installs an intellectual challenge putting at stake postcritical perspective. this is reflected by discourse theory and genealogy articulation. the sphere of philosophy allows recognition of subjects and culture and the curriculum-society relation in each scenario. these are constitutive issues in the curriculum studies discourses as an event. studying the curriculum at the beginning of the twenty-first century makes visible a concern. referring to policy and the direction, that curriculum takes after the philosophical rupture with the modern thought. we are living at present time, analyzing curriculum conversations and dialogues while they are happening and arguing. we are morelli. dialogues and circumstances 35 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci suffering the instability and fragility of its theses, the diversity of views, and treating it as epistemological field. once more, the ambiguity encroaches on the curriculum. nevertheless, in this time, it is not to consider negative effects of been a polysemous and chaotic object. in diversity of the postmodern stage, many ways can be taken. by drawing common threads that weave paths for the curriculum and its connection with discourses, we get back to the political and culture. to relate the character of the curriculum, with politics and culture, is an act that link to language-game (wittgenstein, 1967[1953]), disagreements and paralogy7 (lyotard, 2004). it puts on relevant ways to relate, communicate and legitimize educative discourses. after the modern twentieth century curriculum discourse, the current problem goes to the social-included subject, the tension between the non-existent universal and the particularities, the international and the local, the subject that goes beyond the citizen. comparing nationality to citizenship, autio (2009, pp.15-16) says that citizenship is no more unequivocally definable by nationality as a result of transnational processes. that is why he refers about cultural citizenship, ecological citizenship, technological citizenship, like new ways of being a citizen with new rights and responsibilities. in the consolidation of the field of curriculum regains the theses about interdisciplinary and relative consensus and it continues to maintain its social identity and its political nature. in short, curriculum in twenty-first century consists in dispute tinged with culture and subjectivity. notes 1 silviatmorelli@gmail.com 2 after the second world curriculum studies in tampere, finland on may 2006, eero ropo synthesized enunciating the curriculum as an international conversation. see ropo, e. (2009, pp. ix-x). 3 when wittgenstein (1967 [1953], p.13) refers to language-game and argues that there is not only one relation between the significance and signifier. even, the significance is determinate by the use given for its speakers, by the way and likeness more than for its name. he says: we name things and then we can talk about them: can refer to them in talk. -as if what we did next were given with the mere act of naming. as if there were only one thing called "talking about a thing". whereas in fact we do the most various things with our sentences. think of exclamations alone, with their completely different functions. water! away! ow! help! fine! no! are you inclined still to call these words "names of objects"? 4 even though their productions are made in the field of social sciences, we should highlight this contribution to the field of curriculum. 5 on the occasion of accepting adorno prize in frankfurt on september 1980, habermas gave a speech titled “modernity_ an unfinished project”. with it, he starts answering to lyotard´s postmodern mailto:silviatmorelli@gmail.com morelli. dialogues and circumstances 36 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci condition. since, he recognizes that has not abandoned this topic. as he says: this theme, disputed and multifaceted as it is, never lost its hold on me (habermas, 2010, p.9). 6 as ashwani kumar (2011) says, díaz barriga argued that consolidated its political strategy, united states exported to mexico their pragmatist pedagogy. this educational colonization takes place across all latin american countries during the 1970s from mexico to argentina. in kumar words: in order to meet the demands of industrial modernization, the mexican state imported technicist models of curriculum development from united states. several agencies associated with the us government namely, international agency for development (aid), the department of education and culture, and the organization of american states (oas) financed spanish translations of more than 20 us books on curriculum development including the works of “traditionalist” in us curriculum studies, namely eva baker, benjamin bloom, robert gagné, james popham, hilda taba and ralph tyler. these models were to guide new curriculum policies and programs. (2011, pp. 30-31) see also díaz barriga, 2011, pp. 92-93. 7 paralogy is postmodern science that deals with the investigation of instabilities. countering to grand narrative, micro-narratives, also called small or local narratives remain the quintessential way to take the imaginative invention and science. in lyotard´s work, the language-game denotes the multiplicity of communities of meaning, the innumerable and incommensurable separate systems in which meanings are produced and rules for their circulation are created. references autio, t. (2006) subjectivity, curriculum and society. between and beyond the german didaktik and anglo-american curriculum studies. new jersey: lawrence erlbaum associates inc. publishers. autio, t. (2009) globalization, curriculum and new belongings of subjectivity. in ropo, e. and autio, t. (2009) (eds). international conversations on curriculum studies. subject, society and curriculum (pp. 1-20). rotterdam: sense publishers. autio, t. 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(2011) curriculum studies in mexico: origins, evolution, and current tendencies. in pinar (ed). curriculum studies in mexico. intellectual histories, present circumstances (pp. 91-109). new york: palgrave macmillan. díaz barriga, a. & garcía garduño, j. (ed.). (2014) desarrollo del curriculum en américa latina. buenos aires: miño y dávila. edelstein, g. & rodríguez, a. (1974) el método: factor definitorio y unificador de la instrumentación didáctica. revista de ciencias de la educación, p. 21-33. buenos aires: editorial axis. englund, t. (2016) foreword. in. uljens, m. and ylimaki, r. (eds.). (2016) bridgins educational leaderships, curriculum theory and didaktik (pp. xv-xviii). springer open. goodson, i. (2017) el ascenso de la narrativa de vidas. investigación cualitativa 2(1), pp. 27-41. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.23935/2016 habermas, j. (2010) el discurso filosófico de la modernidad. madrid: katz ediciones. kumar, a. (2011) curriculum studies in mexico: an overview. in pinar, w. (ed.). curriculum studies in mexico. intellectual histories, present circumstances (pp. 2948). new york: palgrave macmillan. laclau, e. (1990) nuevas reflexiones sobre la revolución de nuestro tiempo. buenos aires: nueva visión. laclau, e. (1996) ¿por qué los significantes vacíos son importantes para la política? in emancipación y diferencia (pp.69-86). buenos aires: ariel. laclau, e. (2008) la razón populista. buenos aires: fondo de cultura económica. laclau, e. & mouffe, c. (2010) hegemonía y estrategia socialista. argentina: fondo de cultura económica. lopes, a. c. (2011a) políticas de currículo: questões teórico-metodológicas. in lopes, a. c., dias, r., abreu, r. discursos nas políticas de currículo (pp. 19-45). rio de janeiro: faperj-quartet. lopes, a. c. (2011b) libraries and identities. in pinar, w. (ed.) curriculum studies in brazil. intellectual histories, present circumstances (pp. 115-133). new york: palgrave macmillan. lopes, a. c. (2013) teorías pós-críticas, política e currículo. educacão, sociedade & culturas. vol. 39, pp.7-23. lopes, a. c. (2014) ainda é possível um currículo político? in lopes, a. c. y de alba, a. (ed.). diálogos curriculares entre brasil e méxico (pp. 43-62). rio de janeiro: eduerj. lopes, a. c. y de alba, a. (ed.). (2014) diálogos curriculares entre brasil e méxico. rio de janeiro: eduerj. lyotard. j. (2004) la condición postmoderna. madrid: editorial cátedra. macedo, e. (2011) curriculum as enunciation. in pinar, w. (ed.) curriculum studies in brazil. intellectual histories, present circumstances (pp. 135-153). new york: palgrave macmillan. http://dx.doi.org/10.23935/2016 morelli. dialogues and circumstances 38 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci macedo, e. (2014) currículo, cultura e diferença. in lopes, a. c. y de alba, a. (ed.). diálogos curriculares entre brasil e méxico (pp. 83-101). rio de janeiro: eduerj. morelli, s. (2016) repensando la enseñanza. in morelli, s. (coordinadora). núcleos interdisciplinarios de contenidos. la educación en acontecimientos (pp.13-21). rosario: homo sapiens ediciones. morelli, s. (2017) abordajes poscríticos en investigación curricular. investigación cualitativa, 2(2) 1-5. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.23935/2016/02021 mouffe, c. (2009) en torno a lo político. argentina: fondo de cultura económica. mouffe, c. (2012) la paradoja democrática. el peligro del consenso en la política contemporánea. barcelona: gedisa. mouffe, c. (2014) agonística. pensar el mundo políticamente. buenos aires: fondo de cultura económica. pinar, w. (2003a) the internationalization of curriculum studies. louisiana state university. pinar, w. (ed.). (2003b) international handbook of curriculum research. new jersey: lawrence erlbaum associates, inc. pinar, w. (2006) the synoptic text today and other essays. new york: peter lang. pinar, w. (ed.) (2011a) curriculum studies in mexico. intelectual histories, present circumstances. new york: palgrave macmillan. pinar, w. (2011b) the character of curriculum studies. bildung, currere and the recurring question of the subject. new york: palgrave. macmillan. pinar, w. (ed.). (2011c) curriculum studies in brazil. intellectual histories, present circumstances. new york: palgrave macmillan. pinar, w. (2012) what is curriculum theory? new york: routledge. second edition. pinar, w. (2014) international handbook of curriculum research. 2nd.edition. new york: routledge. pinar, w. (2015) educational experience as lived knowledge, history, alterity. the selected works of william f. pinar. new york: routledge. ropo, e. (2009) preface. in ropo, e. and autio, t. (editors). international conversations on curriculum studies. subject, society and curriculum (pp. ix-x). rotterdam: sense publishers. ropo, e. and autio, t. (editors). (2009) international conversations on curriculum studies. subject, society and curriculum. rotterdam: sense publishers. shulman, l. (1986) those who understand: knowledge growth in teaching. educational research, 15 (2). 4-14. (feb, 1986). uljens, m. and ylimaki, r. (eds.) (2016) bridgins educational leaderships, curriculum theory and didaktik. springer open. westbury, i, hopmann, s. and riquarts, k. (ed.). (2000) teaching as a reflective practice. new jersey: lawrence erlbaum associates, inc. publisher. wittgenstein, l. (1967[1953]) philosophical investigations. oxford: basil blackwell ltd. submitted: november, 5th, 2017 approved: december, 9th, 2017 http://dx.doi.org/10.23935/2016/02021 o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: pérez arenas, d. (2017). from problematization to reconfiguration of curricular design and evaluation in mexico (postgraduate courses in education in mexico: case of isceem). transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> from problematization to reconfiguration of curricular design and evaluation in mexico (postgraduate courses in education in mexico: case of isceem) david pérez arenas1 higher institute of education sciences of the state of mexico, mexico introduction until the end of the sixties, the ruling narrative upon the configuration of the field of curriculum in latin america was based on a galilean tradition and the hypotheticaldeductive paradigm. from which there was an intention of giving a scientific validity to the theory on curriculum, pursuing a prescriptivism of the tasks that were proper to the design and evaluation of the educational programs. at the same time, the aim was to impose and legitimate the educational models in developed countries, looking forward to gaining followers and controlling their educational systems, just as it happened to the program of transference of educational technology for latin america (gaudiano, 1986). still, the effects of economical, political and social events that took place during the seventies and the beginning of the eighties in this region, lead to move from the questioning of paradigms and former models to the origin of a problematization or reconceptualization of the field of curriculum in latin america. this process was not only derived from the introduction of new theoretical paradigms, but also from the generation of alternative experiences related to the curriculum design of some higher education institutions. in mexico, for instance, the modular proposal of the autonomous university of xochimilco or that of some majors belonging to the national autonomous university of mexico (unam) meant a linguistic turn when being systematized and analyzed by researchers of the region. this linguistic turn lead to a discursive configuration of the field of curriculum, by means of methodological perspectives for its design and evaluation. this process emerged in mexico thanks to the works and investigations which were developed in an inter-institutional investigation seminar upon curriculum matters. this seminar was convened by unam (orozco, 2016) and it went over the problematization of the field, moving from there to the design and development of proposals for curricular intervention. these studies went on expanding to the many different higher education institutions to which the participants of the seminar were enrolled on. this caused the follow-up and systematization of some curricular experiences, and the reconfiguration of the field of curriculum in latin america started pérez arenas. from problematization to reconfiguration of curricular design 102 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci to be heard in those countries that had a ruling presence regarding this topic in former years. some of the most salient experiences come from the recovery of contributions related to the re-conception of the term “curriculum”, (in terms of dimensions, foregrounds and levels of signification) and also from the fields of curricular structuring (de alba, 1991), not only for the design, but also for the analysis of syllabus and curricular evaluation of the programs for higher education in mexico. in this work, the aim is to document and analyze the contributions of the experiences derived from a particular case: the design and evaluation of the curricular content of the programs for master’s degree and doctorate degree of the superior institute of education sciences of mexico state (isceem for its acronym in spanish). such experiences have permitted to shape the field of curriculum, based on the categories of significance notions and fields of curricular structuring (de alba, 1991). at the same time, the problems that were faced are pointed out together with the conflicts derived from the demands for the certification of such programs, framed by the modern educational policies and the context of globalization, neoliberalism and scientific development of these days. from the design to the evaluation of postgraduate courses in education the syllabus design for the master’s degrees in education that started to spread out in mexico in the eighties came originally from the questioning of the empiricalanalytical approaches. however, as they lacked alternative methodological approaches, they used to end up being compensated by technical or instrumental strategies that came from the same approaches. yet, within the objectives of those programs, it was possible to note that the original social targets of the higher education were actually incorporated: the social commitment and the production of knowledge, as investigation and academic instruction were two of its constitutive elements. unfortunately, by the half of the eighties, modernizing educational policies started to impact the de-structuration of social identity of postgraduate courses, as they were ruled by the ideas of the introduction of the marked-oriented logic and the condensation of the new social order. as part of the effects of such policies, there were five new characteristics: expansion, privatization, technologization, professionalization and certification, which shaped its new outline: commercialization of education. (pérez arenas, 2007). however, the last two characteristics are those that have impacted the most in the processes of design and evaluation, as well as in the need to re-conceptualize the field of curriculum. one of the first consequences of the new educational policies in the curriculum of postgraduate courses, is the necessity for them to be evaluated and re-designed, taking as a principle the necessity to train professionals of education; and also to put the principle of responding to the training necessities for the professionals of education above everything else. the problem is that, to this new context, evaluation is reduced only to the processes of validation and certification, with certain criteria in which efficiency and social pertinence make the nodal point. at the same time, the professionalization towers above a type of education which is oriented towards knowledge and social commitment just to get reduced to a pragmatism that leaves behind theoretical and disciplinary formation. all of this impacted in the demand for making an evaluation of the programs for postgraduate courses, parting from dimensions, variables and indicators but on the bias pérez arenas. from problematization to reconfiguration of curricular design 103 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci to evidencing that such programs did not respond to the social necessities or the work field. just as it happens nowadays in schools that insert most of their graduates in education degrees to the employment arena; the government promotes a pragmatic and professionalizing orientation, and it also fosters the incorporation of information and communication technologies in all formation modalities. this is how, from the nineties onwards, and especially in the first years of the xxi century, the syllabi of postgraduate courses have had to be subjected to those evaluation processes, while most of the recently-opened syllabi are underpinned by efficiency-oriented techniques. in this regard, there is a great diversity of criticism, but also a great lack of alternatives for evaluation and curriculum design for the postgraduate courses and in general, for higher education. this context set the scenario for the emergence of some alternatives and intervention proposals for such educational levels, which started to gain visibility inside the seminar called “currículum siglo xxi”. this seminar has been coordinated by bertha orozco (2016) for more than twenty years ant it is part of the program called “programa imaginarios y debates actuales en educación” ruled by alicia de alba. there, the participants have been researchers, professors, students and scholars coming from various universities and higher education institutions from mexico and some other latin american countries, but its headquarters has always been the institute of university and education research (iisue), formerly called “centro de estudios sobre la universidad y la educación (cesu) adscribed to national autonomous university of mexico (unam). the seminar currículum siglo xxi, together with other two that conformed the programa de imaginarios became training spaces for the analysis and discussion of current topics related to curriculum, education theory and environmental education. there, some collective research projects were born and they influenced the design of institutional projects which were ruled by some of the members of the seminar. this promoted the possibility of influencing other vocational training arenas. the seminar curriculum siglo xxi has set in motion many contributions that allowed to move from problematization to the definition of alternatives for curricular intervention (orozco & ángulo, 2007) which can be drawn up from analytical categories that have influenced the design, analysis and/or curricular evaluation of the programs of institutions to which the members of the seminar are adscribed. some of these categories, just to be mentioned are: scientific conceptual structures on didactics (angulo villanueva, 2007), applicant profiles (ysunza brena, 2010), conflicts in the curricular reform (díaz villa, 2007), fields of curricular conformation and structuration, and complex curriculum (díaz villa, 2007), curricular change (orozco, 2015), curricular overdetermination (pérez arenas, 2007), among other categories that have also been retaken in projects and alternative proposals of intervention. ccec in the evaluation and curricular re-structuring of postgraduate courses at isceem the superior institute of education sciences of mexico state (instituto superior de ciencias de la educación del estado de méxico [isceem]) carries out investigation and offers postgraduate courses in education since 1981, but not until the mid-nineties of the twenty-first century did the context of modernizing educational policies led the institution to be subject of an external evaluation, given the need to certify its postgraduate course in education sciences. this demanded an increase of the graduation rate, and changes in the syllabus that had the purpose of meeting its pérez arenas. from problematization to reconfiguration of curricular design 104 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci graduates’ professional training. that made the conformation of an internal commission, headed by a member of the seminar curriculum siglo xxi. one of the greatest conflicts that the commission had to face, regarding evaluation and re-structuration, was that of putting together the new training policies for the professionals of education and those associated with the production of knowledge in the field of education science, all with the social commitment to which they were oriented from the very beginning of the postgraduate courses of the institute. in order to face the previous conflicts, the commission recovered some of the contributions of the seminar curriculum siglo xxi; in the first place, alicia de alba’s proposal for curricular evaluation (1991), which was understood as a theoreticalconceptual seam between curriculum and evaluation that would put together multiple curricular analyses. curricular evaluation as a theoretical-conceptual seam, implicated the need to acknowledge the different approaches from which it is possible to understand both curriculum and evaluation. regarding evaluation, those conceptions that associated the term with following, control or inspection of the educational process were put aside, together with those that would limit evaluation to a systematic or technical task whose most important worry is how to evaluate and accomplish that such programs would respond to the social commitments on which they were based. against those stances, the original purposes associated with a more complex concept of evaluation were recovered, setting the questions “what to evaluate and what for” above “how to evaluate”. this needed a theoretical comprehension and an axiological assessment (de alba, 1991) not only of the studies of postgraduate courses in education, but also of the master’s and doctorate degrees in education offered by isceem. this evaluation involved a theoretical comprehension of the different purposes that the postgraduate courses in education gained, drawing them up from the context in which they were, together with an axiological assessment that revolved around particular and social meanings for the institutions and the subjects who promote or demand them. all of it interlocked with the social-cultural context to which they are restricted, the institutional, didactic and classroom-related dimensions that set them in motion, the implications of recovering and assuming evaluation as gearing for many curricular analyses defined as an investigation task and the goal of comprehending, assessing and transforming them into significance notions. (de alba, 1991). significance notions were defined as the array of aspects that generate a process of evaluation or curricular analysis, aspects that have relevance in a specific context. for instance, for the programs at isceem, this relevance is the original social commitment of the postgraduate course, the academic attainments, the training for investigation, the graduation rate, among others that to be analyzed need to put together various dimensions of curriculum. the meaningful aspects of the programs, resulted in analytical categories that condensed the problem areas and oriented the curricular analysis. for instance, the education policies, the syllabus, the institution, the education subjects (lecturers, students and graduates), the educational performance and the graduation rate; all of them intertwined by the training for investigation as one of the most important categories for curricular evaluation of the postgraduate courses in the institute. this process also meant to widen the sight upon the curriculum, in order not to reduce it to the syllabi and programs only, neither to the empirical-analytical approaches that used to prevail. running the risk of the lack of specificity with the widening of the perspective was not an option either. pérez arenas. from problematization to reconfiguration of curricular design 105 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci methodologically, such conceptions and strategies permitted the development of the analysis, design and evaluation tasks, underpinned by horizontal and collegiate investigation processes built on the basis of an adjustment between the given an the being given. (zemelman, 1998), which parted from the definition and development of the following stages: i. global initial analysis, embodiment of the field to be evaluated, ii. delimitation of the observation and problematization fields, iii. theoreticalconceptual aspects and empirical references of the object, iv. design and application of the instruments for curricular analysis, v. compilation and systematization of information, vi. curricular analysis and argumentation of categories, vii. conclusions and proposals; all of it derived from alicia de alba’s original proposal (1991). these processes, carried out in different moments for each of the postgraduate programs at isceem, gave information that oriented to decision-making. this information, in the nineties, led to restructuring the syllabus of the master’s degree in education sciences and, in the first decade of the new millennium, led to the design of a new program: the master in educational research, as well as the restructuration of the doctorate degree in education sciences. for the restructuration of the syllabi and the curricular design of the programs, alicia de alba’s proposal (1991) of the four fields of curricular conformation and structuration was resumed. (ccec for its acronym in spanish: cuatro campos de conformación y estructuración curricular). the four fields: i) theoreticalepistemological, ii) social-critical, iii) the professional practice and iv) scientific and technological development, permitted to base the restructuration and design of programs in the institute, and it also represents one of the most important contributions to the curricular innovations in the first decade of the xxi century. the importance of ccec i (theoretical-epistemological) and ccec ii (critical-social) as basic and immovable components for curriculum design, gave way to placing the epistemic debates and the implications of the programs in the center. specifically for the institute, those related to education sciences and the recovery of the original social function of the institutions of higher education, which were associated to production of knowledge and the social commitment (villaseñor, 2003) of the postgraduate programs. the incorporation and effect of these fields in the curricular structures of the postgraduate courses at isceem, made it possible to move from the disciplinary and multidisciplinary perspectives to the multirreferential ones (ardoino, 1991) and those related to the complexity (de alba, 2007). it also made it posible to acknowledge the importance of both knowledge derived from the disciplines and the one derived from the discourses and educational issues that have started to gain more presence in the alternative narratives that are opposed to the hegemonic ones surrounding the formation and production of knowledge in postgraduate courses in education. the incorporation of ccec iii (professional practice) with an open and flexible perspective let to meet the necessities derived from professional practice of those who enrolled to the programs and it also opened the floor to the incorporation of emergent approaches that would take place later on, without having to wait until there was another change of syllabus. in the same sense, ccec iv (scientific and technological development) introduced new contents and modalities of formation associated with the incorporation of communication and information technologies, which gave way to the latter introduction of technologization by means of virtual modalities. besides that, the fact that the academic formation and the formation for investigation became distinctive elements of the postgraduate programs in the institute pérez arenas. from problematization to reconfiguration of curricular design 106 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci contributed to their curricular re-structuration through fields and work themes. they had the intention of analyzing and meeting the problems associated with the educational system or the professional practice of the magisterium; this was promoted on the basis of thought schemata, sustained by philosophy, epistemology or educational theory; this type of formation started to be left behind by the end of the nineties in mexico. however, the master’s degree and the doctorate degree at isceem managed to keep ahead thanks to the incorporation of ccec i and ii to the postgraduate courses of the institute; but not as it regards to the majority of the programs that started to spread all over the country (pérez arenas, 2007). the incorporation of ccec’s as a curricular foundation for the new programs in the institute has permitted to keep them away from the tendencies that have lately destructured its social identity, over determined by a new social contour: the commercialization of education. notwithstanding the increasingly aggressive effects of current educational policies for postgraduate programs, in which the formation for research and the academic one have been demeaned or in the worst cases, excluded from curricular structures. (pérez arenas, limón & cortés, 2013). in this regard, it would be interesting to know how his phenomenon has taken place in other postgraduate programs in latin america. curricular evaluation and certification, one of the conflicts in postgraduate courses unfortunately, the new demands for certification and validation to which postgraduate courses need to be submitted, together with those of management and scholar organization of the programs that come from the current educational policies, do not correspond to their curricular foundations or their epistemic and methodological bases. this process has started to generate certain conflict and tensions not only in carrying them out but also in their evaluation processes; just as the most recent evaluation of the doctorate degree at isceem shows (pérez arenas et. al, 2016). in this regard, it is important to acknowledge that, even though the perspective towards the evaluation processes has widen and more-collegiate work strategies have been implemented, all of this has started to be surpassed, due to the new exigencies of certifying and validating the programs. the market-oriented logic has destructured their social identity and it has also over determined their new social environment (pérez arenas, 2007). these are the reasons why it is compulsory to insist on the recovery of the fundamental purposes of curricular evaluation: to achieve a theoretical comprehension and an axiological valuation of the programs that have to be evaluated. as for the theoretical comprehension of the postgraduate courses in education, it was important to reckon that nowadays, they face a process of destructuration of their social identity, that is to say, the elements and characteristics that some decades ago would let to have certain clarity of their purposes, orientations and strategies of formation, have started to be dislocated. this causes, among other problems, a displacement of their original function, oriented to the production of knowledge by means of a serious formation for research, and the predominance of a social function assigned by the market-oriented logic. this process can be translated into what moreno bayardo (2003) has called “the perverse effects in postgraduate degrees” when putting a commercial interest before the institutions and the subjects that demand higher education, a true academical interest that used to prevail some decades ago. pérez arenas. from problematization to reconfiguration of curricular design 107 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci as for the other component of evaluation, the axiological valuation or, in other words, the answer to the question what to evaluate for applied to the doctorate degree, it is associated to the meanings and senses that could be granted to this task. the intention is to achieve a certain knowledge and a broad explanation of the object to be evaluated, a feedback and a transformation of the object (de alba, 1991, díaz barriga 2009). it does not imply to exclude or diminish the importance of the technical approaches of evaluation, neither does it imply not to respond to the requirements for certification and validation of the programs. the point is to perform these tasks with a direction and a sense that must be defined by the subjects who carry out the curricular evaluation. this places the problem in the arena of conflict and tensions, and it takes us to ask: what to evaluate a doctorate degree for? it is important to underline that a doctorate degree in education, as well as all programs of higher education, do not have a steady identity and they have to be modified and adequated to new social contexts and educational policies that subordinate them. in this regard, if evaluation emerged from an institutional necessity with the purpose of keeping the official registration and achieving a governmental validation, it is fundamental to carry out the adequations to programs on the basis of a critical view that does not limit itself to answering mechanically to the recommendations from evaluators, it is also necessary to meet the institutional conditions and the academical logic to which these processes must be oriented. all of the foregoing must be condensed in the validation or certification processes that have overdetermined the curricular evaluation; high graduation rates have been overrated and this has taken institutions to look for strategies that are oriented to increasing the percentages of graduation for quality’s sake. however, in some cases this is just imperceptible and in some others are evidently affecting in a negative way the quality of the formation processes for investigation and the quality of the products that arise from such programs. institutions generate new graduation modalities ranging from “professional practice memories” to the so-called “zero-modality” which means it was accomplished by academic excellence. there are also those modalities that change the name of their programs in order to avoid carrying with the burden of the lags in graduation rates and they head for the instauration of new formation modalities or strategies. a paradoxical thing is that, while new curricular proposals of institutions such as isceem underline the importance of formation for research, in research and towards research, and they recover experiences of other programs or institutions as it happened with the tutorial of the postgraduate course in education at unam, the new characteristics of such programs have had a great expansion in recent years, derived from the increase of demand and the strain that the new modalities of formation and graduation mean. this pushes public institutions to work with a double logic: that of the curricular proposals and the formation projects which are oriented to research, and that other associated to the accountability, not only with regard to the increase of the graduation rate, but also with regard to evaluation, and certification of their programs, their professors or researchers and the stimuli they receive for their productivity, which is measured in terms of the number of graduates they should comply with every year. this gets translated into an increasing laxity of criteria for the acceptance of a thesis, for example, and also a progressive stepwise displacement of the formation for research, even in investigation-oriented postgraduate programs. it is important to note that even though the overdetermination of educational policies that is underpinned by the certification and validation of the postgraduate pérez arenas. from problematization to reconfiguration of curricular design 108 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci programs has had an impact in the consolidation of an academic staff and the infrastructure of some postgraduate programs (frezán, 2013:251), the effects of such policies have started to negatively affect the culture and the academic life of institutions that offer higher education. this has affected the intellectual formation and the investigation skills of those who graduate from such institutions. of course, the quality of the products like investigation projects that graduates present as a degree thesis has decreased, due to the pressure exerted on students and teachers for the quick finishing of the works. the hasty and thoughtless manner in which formation processes are pushed forward is impoverishing the academic life of the programs; that is the reason why it is urgent to have institutions analyze the way in which they can resolve the disputes generated by the exigencies to validate and certificate their programs and the necessity of keeping them with minimal conditions of quality. all of these needs to be done while some alternative research gets to emerge, in regard with new methodologies and investigation strategies such as the narrative one, strategies that show wealth of experiences and knowledge that professors have accumulated in terms of methodology and didactic of investigation (pérez arenas, atilano y condés, 2017). a diversity of topics must therefore be considered in order to account for a wider and more complete set of elements and processes that are involved in the formation processes, which are not always covered in the formal structures or in the educational practice to which design and evaluation has been reduced if seen from the more conventional perspectives. notes 1 pearenas62@gmail.com references ángulo villanueva, r. & orozco, b. (2007) (ed.) alternativas metodológicas de intervención curricular en la educación superior, méxico, conacyt, uag, iisueunam, uaslp, uach, plaza y valdés. ángulo villanueva, r. (2007) la estructura conceptual científico didáctica. méxico: coedición conacyt/ universidad autónoma de guerrero /seminario currículum y siglo xxi del iisue-unam/universidadautónoma de san luis potosí/plaza y valdés. ardoino, j. (1991). “el análisis multirreferencial”, en colección de investigación en ciencias de la educación, pp. 173-181. online: http://publicaciones.anuies.mx/pdfs/revista/revista87_s1a1es.pdf retrieved on august 16, 2016. de alba, a. (1991) evaluación curricular, conformación conceptual del campo. méxico, cesu-unam. de alba, a. (2007) currículum complejo. reconstruyendo la crisis: la complejidad de pensar y actuar en contexto, en ángulo, rita y bertha orozco (coordinadoras) alternativas metodológicas de intervención curricular en la educación superior, méxico, conacyt, uag, iisue-unam, uaslp, uach, plaza y valdés. díaz barriga, á. (2009) criterios de evaluación externa de los posgrados en méxico, un sistema de acreditación que desconoce su pertinencia social, en el posgrado en educación en méxico, méxico, iisue-unam, pp. 45-88 moreno bayardo, m. g. (2003) el posgrado para profesores de educación básica. un análisis en el marco de los posgrados en educación. cuadernos de discusión, núm. 5. méxico: sebyn-sep. mailto:pearenas62@gmail.com http://publicaciones.anuies.mx/pdfs/revista/revista87_s1a1es.pdf pérez arenas. from problematization to reconfiguration of curricular design 109 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci díaz villa, m. (2007) reforma curricular: elementos para el estudio de sus tensiones, in ángulo villanueva, r. & orozco, b. (ed.) alternativas metodológicas de intervención curricular en la educación superior, méxico, conacyt, uag, iisueunam, uaslp, uach, plaza y valdés. frezán orozco, m. (2013) acreditación del posgrado. institucionalizaciòn e impacto en argentina y méxico, méxico, uam, anuies, biblioteca de la educación superior. gaudiano gonzález, e. (1986) reseña curricular del planteamiento curricular norteamericano. in el currículum universitario méxico, in press, 1986 (pp. 7-16 y 4648), in de alba, a.; díaz barriga, a.; gaudiano gonzález, e. (ed.) el campo del currículum. antología. 1991, méxico, cesu-unam. orozco fuentes, b. (2016) seminario currículum siglo xxi, grupo de investigación, en pons bonals, l. & de alba, a. (ed.), configuraciones narrativas en el campo de la investigación. seminarios y redes académicas, españa, octaedro. orozco fuentes, b. (2015) el cambio curricular en la facultad de enfermería de la uaslp. una mirada a su historia discontinua, tesis de doctorado en pedagogía, ffylunam. méxico pérez arenas, d. (2007) filosofía, teoría e investigación en las maestrías en educación. un campo sobredeterrminado. méxico: iisueunam, uag, uaslp, plaza y valdés. pérez arenas, d.; limón, a. s. & garcía cortés, j. (2013) marginación, exclusión y/o desplazamiento de la formación relacionada con la filosofía, la epistemología y la teoría educativa en los posgrados en educación, en filosofía, teoría y campo de la educación 2002-2011, méxico, anuies, comie, 213-284. pérez arenas, d. (2016) (ed.) et. al. evaluación del programa de doctorado en ciencias de la educación del isceem, toluca, méxico, inédito. pérez arenas, d., atilano, p. & condés, f. (2017) formación para la investigación. trayectorias, experiencias y saberes. toluca, méxico, isceem. villaseñor garcía, g. (2003). la función social de la educación superior en méxico. méxico: uam-cesu-unam y uv. ysunza bresa, m. i. (2010) perfil de egreso y formación profesional, una estrategia metodológica en el diseño curricular, méxico, uam. zemelman, h. (1998) conversaciones didácticas, el conocimiento como desafío posible, argentina, edit. educo. submitted: november, 20th, 2017 approved: december, 8th, 2017 o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: orozco fuentes, bertha (2017). curricular change as a generating category, on approval, in designing or redesigning practices in educational reform contexts. transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> curricular change as a generating category, on approval, in designing or redesigning practices in educational reform contexts bertha orozco fuentes1 national autonomous university of mexico, mexico introduction this paper addresses the problem of curriculum development2, particularly with regard to the practical processes of curricular design and redesign, in higher education, in the context of reform. although the topic of methodological practicality is being addressed, we position ourselves, theoretically and epistemically, to think about the curriculum as both a project, and type of academic/political proposal in historical evolution. the proposals in which interests of the different subjects of the curriculum are played (de alba, 1991: 38-39). these subjects position themselves to look at their object of practical intervention constructing these proposals as a strategic artifact (orozco, 2015) to link university education and the university itself with society. this is how the subjects making the curricular proposal respond to graduates’ professional services needs, which such sectors demand. we also position ourselves (politically and theoretically) in a social and critical latin american perspective in terms of the way of thinking the curriculum society link (orozco, 2015, 2016) as of the needs of each country and those shared in the region at the moment of entering into the curricular intervention action (angulo and orozco, 2007: 19-38). we think these projects as a strategic and tactical mechanism to play in curricular elaboration processes, as well as in a particular institutional and temporal educational space. we assume a marked distance from the curricular intervention methodologies that reduce the elaboration construction process, both in the foundation phase, as in the curricular design3, to its merely prescriptive, instrumentalist and technical reductionist aspects. in a different position, we approach the curriculum object as a force field in which power is played in the academic field, in order to achieve proposals for higher education training. hence, the curriculum is at core an academic political issue, an angle of observation that is proposed to be discussed. this paper is structured twofold: the first part situates panoramically and synthetically the context of appearance of the imperative need for changes and development of innovative curricular models in accordance to the hegemonic discourse of educational policies enunciated from the agencies of political and financial power for education. this power is interpreted as concerned and occupied in linking the curriculum with the knowledge society, information society, and the economic market, through an educational reform that transforms schools in order to guide them towards a broad and complex educational and curricular reform effort. the second part exposes the importance of the design practice, and the methodological strategies orozco fuentes. curricular change 40 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci used assuming the premise that the phases of foundation and curricular design constitute strategic and tactical moments of the game of academic power addressing the proposals as curricular synthesis (from alba, 1991: 38). this synthesis presents the curriculum as an academic creation achieved through argumentation, counter-arguments amidst tensions, negotiations, and impositions negotiated between the commissions and academic groups in charge of preparing new proposals, or transforming and changing already existing proposals. this work concludes with some reflections to continue the discussion. elements of the curricular reform context from the nineties, the field of education moved into a process of strong and significant changes determined by the domineering educational reform on a world scale. the reform was constituted since then as a key word in the lexicon of educational policy in almost all countries of the world under the assumption that the changes prescribed by the decision-making agencies of policies at a global, regional and national level; this would allow countries to move to the new era of the knowledge and information society and towards the new knowledge economy supported by a reformed education with that social directionality. this reformist turn promoted overlaps between processes of educational decentralization, certification, assessment, and accountability among other changes. the longrange purpose was, and still remains, the radical transformation of the ways of teaching and learning under models centered on the axes of education and work, education centered on the student and not on the teacher, or only on the content in order to address the need to develop new professional profiles for work, and new designs -innovativeof flexible, comprehensive, and interdisciplinary curricula, under the focus of professional competences for the productive and service apparatus. the great purpose was complemented even with school management and reorganization as comprehensive and flexible academic units, under the pretense of leaving behind the old university away from the problems of life and the productive sphere. by these means, school education began to face enormous challenges for change and innovation, under the principles of innovation, excellence, quality, and equity. huge efforts and resources were deployed for the educational reform, both from international agencies, as well as from governments and institutions to dislodge from a stagnant academic past, according to the diagnoses and evaluations that higher education institutions were subjected since the eighties, when the educational "crisis" began to manifest and the efforts were redoubled especially in the nineties. in the last decade of the past century, the development of new curricular models and design of curricula for professional training have constituted the main focus of attention of th e curricular works in higher education, according to the results of the 2nd state of knowledge of the research curriculum (díaz barriga and lugo, 2003. 68-69). the predominant curricular tendency since then was to leave behind the traditional teaching way centered on the transmission of disciplinary and academicist contents as it were, without any anchorage for life, or to apply knowledge in contexts of productive work and for life (unesco, 1998, delors, 1997, anuies, 1999). between the last decade of the past century and the present one, the curricular activity at all levels of the educational systems and subsystems of the countries of the world has invested enormous human energy and financial resources to modify, change, reform, transform and even revolutionizing the curricular proposals. in higher education, multiple curricular proposals emerged under new conceptual and methodological orientations. for those of us who work in the field of the university curriculum, either as researchers, curricular advisors, as part of groups and curricular commissions to prepare specific curricular changes in each of the areas of knowledge and professional training, evaluators of curricula, teachers who daily are in the classrooms and laboratories with students; we all play in the arena of the curriculum and we had to solve the changes in our respective fields of work under new principles and new orientations emanating from the educational policies for the reform, at the national, regional and international level. sometimes the orozco fuentes. curricular change 41 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci interventions were successful or partially successful, in others not so much. these changes were produced through intricate slow and discontinuous processes; others hurried by the pressure of the times for the changes imposed by the institutions. based on the curricular research of the nineties, we maintain that the emphasis was on the "making" of the curricular changes (which is understandable and necessary due to the pressure of the reform), rather than on "thinking the know-how", which would imply reflective and critical care of the design and curricular redesign; that is, there was a decrease in the care of the theoretical aspects, availability of analysis tools, of intelligibility, and of proactive strategies for the innovation of the curricular design. the second state of knowledge of curricular research in the nineties shows the increase of 114 curricular models that represented 53.02% of a total of 209 productions on curricular development which together with 12 intervention reports or experiences equivalent to 5.58%. this information corroborates what has been said about the predominance of "doing" that gives a total of 57.% between proposals, models, and experiences, compared to the few works of reflection that reach only 1.85% (díaz barriga and lugo, 2002: 67-68 ). in the following decade, between 2002 and 2011, the third state of knowledge shows that conceptual reflection, what we associate with thinking about curricular know-how, remains marginal; research on curricular reforms and changes exceeds 50% -from a total of 762 investigations and productions, in contrast to only 5.9% of the conceptualizations or studies of curricular theory (díaz barriga, a., 2013: 25). these data point to an assumption: curricular development focuses on the making of new curricular models along with the traditional design of plans and study programs. this can be seen as the predominant of curricular production in mexico as a discursive response of academics groups and curricular commissions facing the reform imperatives and the changes of plans and programs of study concretely. the new designs included, among some of its components, new professional profiles, intermediary, objectives, curricular maps and areas of disciplinary training and terminals, ensuring that the latter support practical training for work. from a social and reflective critical perspective, it is possible to assume the curriculum as an academic political project; this political dimension encompasses not only the macroinstitutional level of the higher education reform but also a political installation at the micropolicy level within the group and intersubjective processes of curriculum design or redesign. hence the importance of strategies analysis and argumentative tactics of struggles, negotiations, tensions and impositions that are mobilized between the association of forces of the subjects, or what alicia de alba calls, the subjects of the formal curricular structuring ( de alba, 1991: 5253). we approach this level of curricular analysis from the curricular advisory function that accompanies our research (orozco, 2007, 2015). next, we present a theoretical cutting tool that we use to analyze the processes of curricular change in counseling experiences in the last two decades. the theoretical, conceptual and methodological framework for curricular design mexico began to test methodologies for curricular design since the seventies. this process was initially under technical-systemic approaches and based on a logic of instrumental rationality (furlan and aristi, 1982), and as part of a process of transfer of north american educational thought, along with educational technology and curriculum as a rational proposal. during the seventies and the eighties, through the international development association and the world bank group’s "help" among some of the donor "agencies" of funding, besides texts on planning and systematization of education that were translated and distributed throughout latin america with the purpose of supporting the "democratization" of our region via education, to curb the danger of the revolutionary left, as was the case of the cuban revolution (furlán, 1997: 108-126). orozco fuentes. curricular change 42 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci soon the weight of reality and its social, cultural and historical-educational features prevailed. in mexico, as in the rest of the latin american region, the curriculum has been thought from its close links with the historical, the political and its cultural complexity. we have argued as a thesis that the curriculum is intervened in its processes of formal structuring, considering these aspects as constitutive dimensions of the way of thinking the linked curriculum society (orozco, 2015). in the category of pedagogical and curricular discourses of latin american criticalsocial orientation, there have been clear studies and analytical reflections on the way of thinking about the curriculum as an object. in both the theoretical and in the practical processes, it is now understood how in the this past century, the thought and curricular language in the neoliberal era was impregnated with new operational categories for the practical processes of curricular design: flexibility, competencies, evaluation through evidence and accountability, studentcentered learning, situated learning, problem-based learning, curriculum re-engineering, training in new languages such as the second language, digital languages, among other clearly prescriptive elements guided by the imperative of change and innovation of higher education. this series of words together are the concrete expressions by which the educational reform and educational change move forward in the present century. after more than two decades of curricular changes, it is noticed that this academic political discourse is productive in a certain direction, linking the curricular proposals with the knowledge economy needs and the labor market, while being perceived from our regional interests the need to have alternative categories to those that permeate the language of the neoliberal curricular reform. concepts and categories are insufficient as operational tools to intervene and create own curricular proposals, with the force of productive imagination for curricular projects with cultural, social and educational policy orientation in the region. that is why the design space, seen as a setting and a moment of academic micropolitics, needs to be filled by the communities of lecturers, students and authorities in each school or faculty in the different areas of professional training and curricula. this approach leads us to argue that the strategic methodological moment of curriculum development is the level of practical intervention that we have to deal with strategies of deliberation, discussion, but above all, argumentation of proposals for curricular change with an academic political directionality thought and built with a regional view and from each country, because what we are and we have become, we can then relate to the global world to dialogue with other cultures. in methodological terms, academic negotiations are part of the different acting groups in designing processes or formal structuring of the curriculum in order to achieve the curricular synthesis as a complex mechanism of tensions, struggles and impositions as held by alicia de alba (1991:38). this synthesis of imagined proposals gestated on a principle of the regional reality facing the world, without marginalizing our histories, realities, and reading of cultural and educational contexts as opposed to the broad social. we require procedural categories to curriculum development, as well as we require categories to think that way in which we position ourselves facing curricular change projects (orozco, 2015; 2016), in a sense of praxis (sánchez vázquez, 1972) of curriculum development. the reform’s categories-oriented towards a hegemonic curricular language is certainly productive, but not enough. they have to be retaken with great care and under analytical scrutiny in function of the curricular legacies which are the experiences that historically have been playing since the past, by being present or mobilizing, stressing, and reconfiguring nowadays; this is the only way we can look beyond this present. the reform’s categories and methodologies can be incorporated only through conceptual and methodological scrutiny which implies re-signifying some terms such as: innovative educational model, flexibility, competences, evaluation, community learning, learning experiences, education for life , new linguistic and ict literacy, among other required, or even introduce their own curricular categories. under the pressure to adopt the imperatives of change and reform to incorporate the trends of education in the 21st century, questions are raised on the methodological level for the design of proposals based on the construction of regional curricular discourses. efforts are being made for non-adaptive development in a passive way due to global hegemonic trends. as an orozco fuentes. curricular change 43 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci attempt to intervene, processes of curricular change with alternative proposals to the hegemonic (angulo and orozco, 2007) are being made when certain margins of curricular autonomy are perceived in some public universities, or when higher education perceives the need to take distance from proposals that make education a commercial enterprise in the knowledge market. the margins of autonomy emerge or are suppressed in the very space of academic practice where the subjects of formal structuring act, among other possible ones. we propose that curricular change is possible as an alternative in terms of curriculum development micro-politics in which curricular subjects move when methodologies and the use of categories for design become methodological discourses (orozco, 2015) constructed as scaffolding, categories or operational artifacts which in our curricular advising experience have been productive for us, both for the foundation phase and for the organization of the contents and the design or redesign. these scaffolds have allowed rehearsing or at least trying a certain academic directionality to arrive at curricular syntheses negotiated between the subjects of the curriculum. this is the case of changes in the re-elaboration of professional profiles in the selection of the hierarchized contents in the design, in the school organization, in the teaching methods and evaluation, in the design phase itself in which the components are built: profiles, objectives, training areas, mapping or curricular structure, supported by the foundation phase (díaz barriga, 2015). category: complexity of curricular change, observation device from the adviser's perspective the complexity category of the curricular change is a construct that we have used in the curricular advisory processes to rebuild the problematic field of curricular change processes (orozco, 2007, 2015) as an alternative operational tool to the educational reform prescriptions. the complexity category of the curricular change as an observation device allows to take a methodological distance from the instrumental option of the curricular planning of instrumental technical cutting which undeniably is a productive methodology that leads through the instrumental and linear prescriptive path to the curricular commissions by sequential stages that indicate at what time and how to start, how to develop and how to conclude a curricular proposal. we tried a different way4. we reviewed, from a genealogical reconstruction perspective, the strengths and arguments of the professional training and the reason for it according to demands and social interests found in the formal installation of the curricula commissions’ work in public higher education institutions in mexico. through this reconstruction strategy of the problematic field, the complexity category of curricular change can read explicit and implicit arguments in the voices of the curricular subjects represented with different levels of argumentative force in the work of the commission. from the advisor’s role and working with this tool of intellection, positions are located, obvious and hidden interests come to terms with history of that curriculum which allows at a given time to find potential elements for change where they confront interests, visions and goals that the curricular policy guides or imposes, along with the interests of the academic groups that look at the curriculum as a space of academic power that must be filled in order to introduce elements of change according to the way in which it is seen linking their professional training project with the various sectors of society. that is, in the way of thinking and acting in the interstice of the curriculum society link. methodologically speaking, the advisor registers in the advisory journal certain keys or aspects in the encounter of intersubjective relationships which propose to the curricular group or curricular committee an action plan to introduce changes in tune with their manifest interests and common positions, not exempt from tensions and negotiations. this mechanism is not simple; it is about reading the produced process of the micro-politics which will help to find agreements and proposals for changing the plans and programs of study, as well as the action plan for its implementation once the proposal has been approved by the regulatory bodies for this purpose. orozco fuentes. curricular change 44 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the construction reconstruction of the problematic curricular field (orozco, 2007) is necessary in order to understand the possibilities of what needs to be changed in terms of objectives, contents, selection forms and content configuration, work with teachers, through this instrument that identifies the positions, tensions, negotiations, confrontations and agreements, configures a set of power relations where power-knowledge relationships are played, and analyzed as the tactics and movements of the subjects in a complex process that is examined from their explicit and implicit elements that must be understood, supported, and accompanied until achieving the synthesis of agreements. in this way, the micro-components of curricular design are played at the methodological level, as a practice of micro-politics. in these terms, the process of curricular change allows legitimizing the proposals and modifications from the social and power plot that are woven into the processes of curricular change. this is not simple, but necessary; otherwise, through the methodologies of linear systemic technical planning, the most that are achieved is the agreement of a few, and incomprehension and lack of commitment from the rest of the academic community, that is, students and teachers. the epistemic and conceptual scaffolding from which the category was built has been exposed in other works (orozco, 2015, 2016), which does not deepen due to the available space. suffice it to say that its productive nature makes possible the understanding of intricate curricular processes not in a linear way, but in its evolution, in its genealogy, in its historical discontinuities, because it is in this way that the low backgrounds emerge (in terms of foucault, 2000) of the processes of curricular change. thus, these can be read, as far as possible, the keys of the curricular legacy, of the knowledge and power relations of social and educational subjects which have guided their previous curricular proposals which must be changed, modified, directed or re-address to face the politics of reform and innovation in the era of globalization. work from the reconstruction of the problematic field and the positions of curricular subjects opens a field of possibilities not necessarily prescribed a priori but from a certain margin of curriculum autonomy in design which constitutive process is observed from the reading device of curricular reality that has been exposed here. reflections as a way of closure it is recognized that this is a category that opens a field of possibilities to articulate and reactivate other categories of curricular discourses still valid for their strength of ideas and creations; the way of thinking and configuring the curriculum society link from latin american perspectives is one of them. it is then, a tool that opens up possibilities, rather than closing with predetermined prescriptions that are outside the curricula in their social, historical, cultural and educational contexts. in summary, the advisory space is the place of analytical processing, information for the know-how of the curricular advising as specialized accompaniment. however, the adviser does not decide the change, supports the academics in charge of it, to understand the moments and the key elements to advance in the modification, elaboration or re-elaboration of their proposals. for this reason, in another paper, we propose the role of the advisor as a listener, prior to the intervention (orozco, 2007). notes 1 bof1950@gmail.com. 2 we continue using the term curriculum development, in the sense that hilda taba’s translators of her classic book (1979) chose to account for what this author proposed as a broad and complex process of the multireferencial practice of curricular processes and practices. 3 for those who advise curriculum development processes, it is known that these are not always processed in a linear and continuous way, but rather discontinuous. however, there are two major and significant moments that are distinguished in terms of products written by the subjects of formal structuring, which are the phase of the foundation and design itself (díaz barriga, 2015). in mexico, in public higher mailto:bof1950@gmail.com orozco fuentes. curricular change 45 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci education institutions, these groups tend to organize themselves institutionally as committees for the design of curricular proposals, for analysis and evaluation, or proposals for curricular restructuring. 4 reports of these advising experiences and their results will be reported in a subsequent publication. references angulo, r. y orozco, b. 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(1987) uso crítico de la teoría. en torno a las funciones analíticas de la totalidad. méxico: el colegio de méxico / universidad de las naciones unidas. submitted: december, 2nd, 2017 approved: december, 13rd, 2017 to cite this article please include all of the following details: maia, angélica & pereira, maria (2011). citizenship education and curriculum policy in brazil: facing challenges and prefiguring changes. transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> citizenship education and curriculum policy in brazil: facing challenges and prefiguring changes angélica a. m. maia 1 & maria zuleide da c. pereira 2 federal university of paraíba, brazil first words the relationship between education, curriculum policy and citizenship reveals itself throughout a historical set of discussions and much theoretical debate within the brazilian academic field. with the end of the military dictatorship period in the 80s, however, the articulation of those categories has become even more present in the academic debate. in fact, in the constitution of 1988 – the citizen constitution – citizenship is ratified as one of the cornerstones of the brazilian republic and we notice an amplification of civil, political, social and cultural rights. it is true that in the brazilian historical development, if we consider as milton santos that a citizen “is the person who has the capacity of understanding the world, his or her location in the world, who is capable of understanding his or her rights in order to be able to vindicate them” (1993, p.133, own translation), the exercise of citizenship has never been comprehensively achieved. although they appear in the text of the 1988 constitution, the rights of democratic citizenship are far from being a reality for the majority of the brazilian population, considering that great part of our people still live in poverty, and are economically, socially, culturally and politically excluded. in view of that context, we propose a discussion on the topic of citizenship education and we locate our discussion within the context of curriculum policies in the country. more precisely, we take as a reference the complementary guidelines of the national curriculum resources for sociology in brazilian high school (pcn+) of 2002, as we think this document conveys important meanings on the topic of citizenship education for youth within the scope of formal education and more precisely within the scope of curricular discourses in secondary education. our aim is to observe which meanings of citizenship emerge from the document and what implications such meanings bear for the construction of an educational process that might contribute with the strengthening of a democratic society. here we would like to clarify that we defend a perspective of plural and radical democracy, following the view proposed by chantal mouffe (2009), for whom difference and conflict are constitutive dimensions of social life. based on the findings of the document analysis, we propose, as an alternative for some current approaches to citizenship in the curriculum, a view of citizenship as an everyday practice (biesta, 2011). our aim is to highlight some aspects of the category that we maia & pereira. citizenship education and curriculum policy in brazil 5 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci regard as productive in order to redefine what citizenship education looks like and what it might focus on these days. citizenship: an overview nowadays, in a variety of contexts, the term citizenship appears as a signifier suffused with myriad meanings. in order to understand the historical development of that term and the meanings attributed to it throughout time, we find it necessary to establish a brief timeline, showing some historical milestones and social logics that, in some way, have played a role in building the conceptions of citizenship we currently find in our societies. it has long been stated that the first references to citizenship date back to the greekroman societies. according to alvarenga (2010), in western antiquity, “participation in political life and the exercise of public roles in the polis was made possible through the idea that everybody had equal citizenship rights” (p.99, own translation). indeed, the extension of that equality was limited to a few male individuals who had been born in the city territory. thus, the majority of the population consisted of non-citizens (women, children, foreigners, slaves and artists), whose only choice was to obey and submit themselves to the authority of the state (alvarenga, 2010). as for the content of citizenship at that time, its main focus was the exercise of politics. as brazilian philosopher chauí (1995) explains, politics …are the public affairs managed by citizens: customs, laws, public funds, organization of defense and war, management of public services […] and of the city economic activities (currency, taxes, commercial agreements, etc) (p.371, apud alvarenga, 2010, p.100, own translation) 3 . in this way, it is evident the strong relationship between citizenship and the res publica, in the origins of the term, when it referred to legal, cultural, defense, and particularly economic activities that had an effect on the public life. in addition to that, it is noticeable that citizenship had a regulatory and controlling character with an authoritarian and exclusionary aspect, what contrasts with current views of citizenship, directed to the guarantee of different kinds of rights for the totality of human beings. such exclusionary and authoritarian notion of citizenship continued along the feudal system in the middle ages and it was only challenged with the burgeoning of the capitalist system and the emergence of a new social, economical and cultural movement: liberalism. the emergence and rise of the mode of capitalist production against the former feudal mode of production, based on land ownership, brought about considerable changes in social relations and in the world views that guided life in society. free market prevails over land ownership, the bourgeoisie class triumphs against the class of the landowners and the ideological views of the bourgeoisie adds a new dimension to citizenship, bringing it closer to liberal ideals, which emphasized the individual and the ownership of material goods. at the same time, there comes into life the view of citizen as a public subject of rights, in contrast to the feudal system subject and to the subject of the absolutist regimes, who mainly had obligations and duties towards his sovereign. the principles that support citizenship in the context of liberalism and that became dominant after the bourgeoisie revolutions in the 17 th and 18 th centuries (the glorious revolution in 1689 and the french revolution in 1789) are, according to bobbio (1992) the right to freedom and the right to own property. however, those two kinds of rights, although maia & pereira. citizenship education and curriculum policy in brazil 6 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci forming the foundations of citizenship defended by the liberal state from a formal perspective, in fact serve to mask a contradiction that soon the consolidation of the capitalist society will make evident. once the ownership of property is not collective, but individual, there are individuals who own a number of goods while other individuals do not own anything, and a situation of social inequality is then established. such inequality interferes with the freedom of those who do not own property and who are forced to sell their workforce in other to survive. thus, citizenship, as proposed by the liberal state, in fact defends the human rights of the bourgeoisie class, and at the same time, it curtails the rights of those who do not have the same status of that class in terms of freedom and ownership. that underprivileged class, at the time, was formed by the employees. this contradiction is described by etienne balibar as “the contradiction between the formal autonomy and the actual subjection of the worker-proletarian” (1988, p.725). criticism to the liberal view of citizenship is further developed in marxist theory when it analyses and challenges the bourgeoisie state. actual citizenship, from a marxist point of view, refers to a process of confrontations and struggles for rights historically denied to the majority of the population, mainly social and economical rights (alvarenga, 2010). according to marshall, who is considered a major researcher on the field of citizenship, the concept evolves from the 18 th to the 19 th centuries and subsequently and progressively covers civil rights (18 th century), political rights and finally economical, social, cultural rights (20 th century) (santos, 1997). it is interesting to observe that if at first citizenship rights are compatible with the bourgeoisie society, the eventual emergence of citizenship social rights will challenge the principles of competition, the accumulation of capital, and the conditions of inequality perpetuated by the capitalist society. what we can conclude from the multiple transformations that have marked the development of the concept of citizenship is that this category has been an object of discussion in different regimes, and the partial meanings attached to it along history reflect a temporary and contingent situation and a specific relation of forces and interests (balibar, 1988). as adela cortina (2005) states, the notion of social citizenship proposed by marshall is threatened by the difficulties faced by the state nowadays. this state is increasingly retreating from acting as an institution which guarantees rights, and that indicates the need to consider other dimensions and spaces of citizenship that ought to be taken in consideration and catered for so as to achieve more social justice. that view is supported by balibar when he writes that, when the dismantling of social rights, or welfare, however limited, reaches the level of generalized ‘‘social insecurity,’’ many individuals find themselves in a double bind situation where they are at the same time interpellated as political subjects and internally excluded from the possibility of active political participation (balibar, 2008, p. 536) to these days, it is clear that the relationship between the rights covered by citizenship, civil society and the state becomes even more complex. boaventura sousa santos (1997) highlights three basic tensions that mark the relation between those three elements. the first tension refers to the processes of regulation and emancipation. when analyzing the issue of human rights, santos emphasizes that, in spite of the fact that in the past, emancipation presented itself as the “other” of regulation, that is, a revolutionary maia & pereira. citizenship education and curriculum policy in brazil 7 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci process that might lead to the overcoming of social injustice in terms of access to rights, today, the so-called emancipatory policies are actually in crisis. such crisis also involves citizenship, which is compressed between regulatory and emancipatory principles, with the regulatory processes prevailing in a strong way and encompassing (usually by means of neutralization) all the initiatives directed to emancipation. the second tension mentioned by santos is related to the conflict between the state and civil society. the sociologist states that although civil and political rights (dominant in the first versions of citizenship and to these days still important) have been established through a series of struggles between civil society and the state, the so-called rights of the second and third generations require the presence of the state as the actor who enables and provides the conditions of existence and support to those rights. in this way, how should we understand the current limits between civil society and the state? what defines in fact the role of each of these actors in the field of citizenship? santos still refers to a third tension, of great relevance in our context. citizenship, especially in its legal-political dimension, has been interwoven with the constitution of the nation-states of the world ever since its emergence. in other words, citizen rights were defined in a national scale; the rights and duties of a citizen were established with reference to his belonging (or not) to a specific nation. the question is that, with the intensification of globalization and the “selective erosion of the nation-state” (santos, 1997, p.106, own translation), we wonder what conception of citizenship might respond to the challenges of transnational citizens and contexts, without disregarding the cultural particularities of each local/national community. as for that last tension, alvarenga (2010) also highlights that the generalist dimension of citizenship has often been challenged. some criticism points out that because the subject of citizenship in the past was mainly the white, male worker, the concept tended to ignore the specific life conditions of other subjects of rights in society, and still nowadays that has a great impact on current conceptions of what a citizen should be like. other criticisms to the generalist view of citizenship refer to the fact that it tends to focus on economic rights, neglecting other kinds of rights (as the ones related to race and gender, for example). finally, there is the challenging of citizenship rights because of their western orientation and therefore their underestimation of the actual condition of citizenship of non-western populations. we understand the criticisms described above are all consistent, especially when we consider that citizenship has long been connected to the geopolitical and economical interests of hegemonic capitalist states, but we also believe that it is possible to add some possibilities of interpretation to the concept that might prove useful to enable its use within the complex framework of demands and rights to be catered for in our world. in the next section, we are going to discuss some of those possibilities. bringing together citizenship and culture, universal and particular, global and local, equality and difference as we have been discussing before, investigating citizenship requires going beyond a perspective of cultural homogenization, beyond a totalizing generalization of demands and beyond an attitude of unrestricted globalism. alternatively, citizenship ought to be conceived a complex process of articulation of ambivalent categories, which acquire specific value according to the times and spaces where they emerge. maia & pereira. citizenship education and curriculum policy in brazil 8 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci in this way, we propose a view of citizenship that is oriented towards the defense of multicultural human rights, taking as a reference the perspective suggested by santos (1997). for that author, such kind of multiculturalism …is a pre-condition of a balanced and mutually enhancing relationship between global competence and local legitimacy, which currently constitute the two attributes of a counter-hegemonic policy of human rights (santos, 1997, p.97, own translation). 4 it is clear that santos’ ideas about multiculturalism emphasize epistemologies that move away from the long-standing view of culture “as a set of all the best things that human beings have produced” (veiga-neto, 2003, p.7, own translation). in fact, such traditional view reflects an understanding of culture as something universal and unitary, and at the same time, it ignores the fact the culture which is considered legitimate is actually a set of cultural practices of a specific social group that was homogenized and acquired the status of universal. for hall (2009), the liberal conception of citizenship which prevails up to these days is based on the hegemonic universalism of the west and on an attitude of cultural neutrality. in practice, however, those two principles (universalism and cultural neutrality) could never be fully achieved or applied in an uncontested way, as hall discussed in the following passage: it is clear that the rights of citizenship have never been universally applied – neither to african americans by the hands of the founding fathers of the usa nor to colonial subjects by the imperial government. this gap between ideal and reality, between formal equality and real equality, between positive and negative freedom, has haunted the liberal conception of citizenship since the beginning. as regards the liberal state's cultural neutrality, their advances should not be lightly discarded. religious tolerance, freedom of expression, the rule of law, formal equality and procedural law, universal suffrage – although challenged – are positive achievements. however, the neutrality of the state works only when it assumes a broad cultural homogeneity among the governed. this presumption was the basis of western liberal democracies until recently. under the new multicultural conditions, however, that premise seems increasingly less valid (hall, 2009, p. 74, own translation) 5 . in line with the notion of multiculturalism proposed by santos, the multicultural conditions highlighted by hall indicate the plurality of cultures that exist in society and their struggles to conquer their political space and their right to legitimacy. multiculturalism, on the other hand, is a complex category, in the sense that the term has historically been used to refer to processes that have very different implications for society. using the terminology of candau (2008), multiculturalism can present itself in three formats: assimilationist multiculturalism, differentialist multiculturalism and interactive multiculturalism or interculturality. the first type seeks to integrate marginalised and discriminated groups into cultural hegemonic values, delegitimizing the specific knowledge of these groups as inferior. the second multiculturalism advocates the recognition of difference and the formation of homogeneous socio-cultural groups that co-exist without mixing with each other. interactive multiculturalism, in turn, is what candau regards as the maia & pereira. citizenship education and curriculum policy in brazil 9 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci most suitable mode for the building of democratic societies, insofar as it deliberately promotes the "interrelationship between different cultural groups present in society", it "breaks with an essentialist view of cultures and cultural identities", it promotes cultural hybridization processes, it reveals the mechanisms of power that pervade the cultural relations and it does not unlink "issues of difference and inequality emerging today in particularly conflicting ways both at world level and in each society "(candau, 2008, p. 2223, own translation). for our study on citizenship in the contemporary world, it is interesting to consider the three visions of multiculturalism presented above. firstly, we believe that, for a long period, citizenship has been aligned with an assimilationist type of multiculturalism. the cultures of the various groups that made up a country's society are recognized, provided there is an integration of those individuals to the hegemonic culture that defines what the duties and rights of citizens of each nation are. the existence of the second type of multiculturalism in certain nations of the globe produced and still produces oppressive social processes (such as apartheid in south africa), where cultural groups coexist in a segregated and contentious way, producing in fact citizens of first and second class, or even citizens and non-citizens. the approach of citizenship that we emphasize along that work and which has already been suggested above in the words of santos articulates an interactive multicultural view of citizenship, in an attempt to connect the competence of a global citizenship to the legitimation of citizenship rights defined in local terms. with regard to the positioning of citizenship in face of issues of equality and difference, it may be affirmed that in its historical development and even under the present liberal-democratic perspective, citizenship has been committed to the equalization of differences, once it takes as a basic assumption the fact that all individuals are free or should be. the identity of each individual, however, greatly depends on the recognition of difference, as a basic prerequisite for reaching a parity of participation in society in cultural terms. this process is what fraser (1996) called justice of recognition. the clash of demands for recognition rights with the demands related to the rights of citizenship, which minimize the differences between groups and individuals on behalf of universal rights, often lead to a dilemma. in other words, in order to arrive at an understanding of citizenship which covers differential aspects of a person’s identity, it is necessary to integrate equality and difference within the same paradigm. as arnot (2006) warns us, citizenship, from an egalitarian perspective, would have to accommodate all social divisions, such as those of religion, social class, ethnicity, race and sexuality, and be inclusive of "other" social categories, such as refugees, asylum seekers, migrants, travellers, etc. (arnot, 2006, p. 133). arnot still mentions that the recognition of differences (class, gender or race) "could mean that the concept of citizenship will lose its universalistic elements and the configuration of a community of interests" (p. 133). the discussion of this dilemma can be expanded in light of the theory of justice proposed by nancy fraser (1995, 1996). this author suggests that there are two fundamental types of injustice in the world: one related to the bad distribution of material resources (including natural resources, health, education) and another type related to disrespect or nonmaia & pereira. citizenship education and curriculum policy in brazil 10 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci recognition of the cultural resources (identities, races, genders, sexualities, and others). she argues that the two types of injustice are usually interwoven and thus should be faced with the same intensity (fraser, 1996). according to fraser, citizenship would involve not only the struggle for rights within the scope of redistribution, ensuring that equitable living conditions are offered to all members of a society, but also it must secure rights within the field of recognition, ensuring respect for oppressed cultural groups. in latest texts, fraser adds a third type of rights to be included in the establishment of social justice: the right to representation, which implies the right to be heard and considered with regard to political decisions, whether in connection with local, national or global issues (fraser, 2005). another important aspect to consider is that citizenship, by overcoming the boundaries of nation-states and covering a globalised arena, puts in check and at the same time demands a reconfiguration of who has the right to be considered a citizen and according to what criteria. in this context, one must resize the demands related to citizenship, so that this category includes not only the demands of citizens belonging to certain nations, but the citizens in a global scenario (fraser, 2005). in the preceding parts of this article, we have discussed citizenship, focusing on the historical development of the concept, highlighting how today this category relates to cultural aspects and what the implications of these relationships for a re-articulation of existing conceptions of citizenship are. now, we turn our attention to a brazilian curriculum policy document, in order to understand what meanings of citizenship are emphasized in the field of citizenship education, particularly in the brazilian scenario, and evaluating to what extent the meanings associated to citizenship in the document contribute to the strengthening of a democratic society through an educational process that is meaningful and culturally relevant to the subjects involved. by doing so, we seek to establish a connection between the general academic discussion on citizenship and the way this concept is dealt with in the field of education, taking as a reference a national curricular document that stands as a sample of the national official educational discourse concerning that topic. we expect that such analysis will shed light on how citizenship has been re-contextualized within certain social spheres so as to attend to interests and intentions of specific social groups and social logics. citizenship and culture in curriculum policy: advances and setbacks we propose an analysis of discursive constructions of citizenship present in the complementary document to the national guidelines for the teaching of sociology in secondary school (brasil/mec, pcn+, 2002), emphasizing the meanings that are dominant. our intention is to point out what worldviews are behind the more emphasized meanings and to evaluate to what extent these meanings contribute to the strengthening of a democratic society that values the rights of citizens. at the same time, we strive to clarify the contradictions, paradoxes and ambiguities between multiple renditions of citizenship, not in order to overcome them, but to show that they are in fact constitutive of a network of speeches that reflect different political interests and thus, cannot be homogenized or unified. at the beginning of the document, there is a representation of citizenship as "... one of the defining concepts of current sociology ..." (brasil, 2002, p. 88, own translation), which, as a school discipline, would have the commitment to providing a better understanding of "… the real possibilities of social transformation, in the search for a more just and caring society" (brasil, 2002, p. 88, own translation). within the assumptions that support the document, then, citizenship is a concept that relates to possibilities of social change. maia & pereira. citizenship education and curriculum policy in brazil 11 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci on the other hand, the term social change does not have further specification throughout the text, leaving to the reader the task of inferring the possible senses of the word from other cues or elements in the speech. among these, we highlight the principles that guide the definition of the concept of citizenship: "… the relationships between the individual and society; social institutions and the socialization process; the definition of social systems; the importance of political participation of individuals and groups; the systems of power and political regimes, the forms of the state; democracy; citizens ' rights; social movements "(brasil, 2002, p. 88, own translation)6. the speech above leaves undefined the notion of citizenship advocated in regard both to the knowledge to be worked within the principles mentioned and to the conception of man, society, and democracy that underpins such principles. it would fit it here to raise questions such as: how should it be the relationship between the individual and society to achieve a situation of more social justice? what are social institutions? what is meant by political participation of individuals and groups? what is the role of the citizen in face of power regimes and of different forms of state? what kind of democracy is aimed for and what is the role of social movements in the democratic regime? we are not here arguing that the curriculum document had to provide any kind of response to the issues raised, but we identified that there is a lack of direction with regard to subjects and themes that are important in the field of citizenship and that need to be part of the universe of high-school students. in sequence, the document associates citizenship to the notions of work and culture. one of the arguments to justify the connection between these three elements is that "… the pedagogical work with those concepts will allow a reasonable understanding of student's surroundings, which can generate transformative actions in society" (brasil, 2002, p. 89, own translation). that statement points out to the association between citizenship and certain cultural patterns, as well as specific understandings about what the world of work should be like. a more clear perception of the association between citizenship and work suggested in the document can be achieved by bringing to the discussion some common themes in the context of brazilian educational policy contemporarily: the emergence of the view of education as an object of the market and the managerial representation of school knowledge in terms of competence, a term that derives from the human resources field and that means the presentation of a remarkable performance in a specific area (raven & stephenson, 2001). although our focus is not to go into a detailed discussion of the market view of education, we would like to briefly mention five major goals of this logic and then reflect on their relation with the concept of citizenship. thus, we refer to the words of stephen ball (2006): improving the national economy, making strong connection between education, employment, productivity and trade; improving the results of students in job-related skills and competencies; achieving a more direct control over the content and curriculum evaluation; reducing the cost of education for the government; and maia & pereira. citizenship education and curriculum policy in brazil 12 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci increasing the community's contribution to education through more direct involvement in decision-making at school and pressure of market choice (p. 70) if we then consider that in a market view of education, employment and productivity have primacy over ethical values and political issues at school, we can understand why, in the document, citizenship is linked to work. in this sense, a liberal view of citizenship prevails, with the logics of work exploitation and capitalist accumulation being legitimized. as it might be expected, the document does not emphasize socio-political aspects of the concept, for example, what values should guide the discussion of citizenship, what perspectives of democracy and society exist and could be aimed for, and the very fact that young students are already citizens ever since they are born. in this regard, it is interesting to realize that citizenship is actually represented as a competence that young people lack and that could only be developed or acquired through schooling. on the other hand, the document does not highlight the fact that citizenship has a close relationship with social equality and that, therefore, it should be an area of contestation and challenge of all processes that hurt equality in a strong way, such as unemployment, the accumulation of capital and increasing poverty. the document discourse, then, masks the tension between democratic citizenship and the logic of the market, as if it was possible to have the two logics present without any conflict. by articulating citizenship as a competence, the document gathers ambivalent points of view about the role of a citizen, with a dimension of citizenship committed to the questioning of unjust power relationships being little emphasized in favor of the appreciation of work, without the disclosure of the fact that most of the inequalities in society, both economic and cultural, cannot be addressed just by inserting the subjects in the labour market. in our view, the attempt to hide the tension market/citizenship in the document is far from being unintentional or naive and results from the very fact that educational policy is a space of power struggles to make certain meanings hegemonic, as explains taylor (1997) explains: from the perspective of discourse theory, the production of policy is seen as an arena of struggles over meaning, or as "politics of discourse" (yeatman, 1990). emphasis is placed on political processes and politics is seen as "a struggle between opponents by competing goals, where language – or more specifically, discourse – is used tactically (fulcher, 1989, p. 7) (taylor, 1997, p. 26). considering taylor’s comment, we realize that in the curriculum document in question there are divergent and contradictory views on citizenship. there are speeches that defend the goals and projects of competing or even opponent political groups in society. the policy reflects this conflict, because it is a partial snapshot of meanings negotiated between social groups at the time of its construction. we shall now proceed to investigate the other element related to citizenship in the document: the category culture. to start our analysis, we present two excerpts of the text. one of them highlights a specific meaning of culture. the other passage of the document points out some competencies to be developed by the discipline. in both parts, it is possible to identify important assumptions involving the relationship culture/citizenship: maia & pereira. citizenship education and curriculum policy in brazil 13 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci culture is cultural diversity, cultural identity, cultural industry, media and propaganda, alienation and awareness etc. (brasil, 2002, p. 92, own translation). … understanding and appreciating the different cultural manifestations of ethnic and social segments, acting in such a way as to preserve the right to diversity, as an aesthetic, political and ethical principle that surpasses current world tensions and conflicts (brasil, 2002, p. 90, own translation) 7 . in the definition of culture suggested in document, the first remarkable aspect is the idea of diversity, which according to macedo (2006), tends to mask the difference and hide power relations between different cultural identification processes. in addition, the second sentence reveals an explicit intention to defend a concept of culture of "diversity" which seeks to overcome conflicts and tensions, as if the clashes between subjects were not constitutive of democratic social processes. together with the conception of culture mentioned above, the document frames citizenship as conductive to a political positioning of conciliating cultural difference through an attitude of understanding and appreciation of the different cultures, which somehow hides the possible cultural conflict that informs the construction of competing political perspectives of citizenship. in the end, we underline that the document presents a conception of culture as a territory that can be demarcated and ‘essentialized’, ignoring the fact that cultures and are in a constant flow and get hybridized, not only in terms of ethnic differences, but also in terms of age, gender, and other differences that influence the process of subjectivity construction. in this sense, citizenship should not be represented as a cultural process likely to be generalized, that is, as a category that can be experienced in the same way by the different cultural subjects involved in its enactment. this is because citizenship covers a multiplicity of cultural aspects, which acquire distinct values in accordance with the subject, the contexts and the times when/where they are articulated. from this perspective, we realize that the document aims at, precariously and inappropriately, representing citizenship as a set of guidelines (actually derived from specific cultural identification processes of hegemonic groups) that are organized, homogenized and to use the notion of discourse theory as articulated by laclau and mouffe (1987) – raised to the status of a universal discourse. in search of alternatives: citizenship as an everyday practice in the curriculum document investigated, we can find most of the tensions highlighted by santos when referring to the human rights’ context. and if we understand these rights also as citizenship rights, we can say that the document reveals ambiguities, paradoxes and contradictions in assigning senses to such rights. thus, for example, the tension (no longer so obvious) between emancipation/ regulation translates into the presentation of citizenship as a universal category, capable of promoting cultural homogenization, or at least, a peaceful coexistence of cultures, without challenging the issues of power that establish a hierarchy of cultures within the social context. maia & pereira. citizenship education and curriculum policy in brazil 14 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci in addition, from the point of view of the relationship between culture and citizenship, the document attests a dominant tendency towards an assimilationist type of multiculturalism, insofar as the concept of diversity leaves untouched the problem of what particular culture is made universal through the principles of citizenship and does not question who holds the power to establish what would be the concept of a good citizen. this patent flaw in the document with regard to an approach to citizenship in the curriculum in a way which might make education a tool for the strengthening of a democratic society, where the various cultures have legitimacy and space to speak and be heard, leads us to consider alternatives to address citizenship within the curriculum and in the educational context as a whole. following the theoretical line of biesta (2011), we propose an approach to citizenship which could be more inclusive and focused on the day-to-day experiences of the learners. from this point of view, emphasis is placed on how each person assigns meanings to experiences of citizenship of everyday life, engaging in various ways in social practices and reflecting his/her very own understandings of what it means to be a citizen/citizen. the students continuously have opportunities to assign meanings to what it means to be a citizen in global and local scopes, adopting an attitude of contestation and challenging unfair sociopolitical and cultural contexts (smith, lister, middleton, & cox, 2005; biesta, lawy & kelly, 2009; biesta, 2011). biesta (2011) argues that this perspective tends to be inclusive, especially if compared to visions of citizenship that value, for example, the individual's socioeconomic insertion or his dedication to social causes as conditions of citizen identification. by establishing conditions that would leave aside a large amount of people, these visions of citizenship are a movement of exclusion and do not value the ability of every human being to respond to what he perceives to be "calls" in the field of citizenship. recognizing and enhancing the perception of each individual in the action of assigning senses to citizenship, in our conception, has much more value than just investigating what requirements are set by the system to define who can be on the inside of the border or who is relegated to the exclusion zone as a citizen. after all, citizenship is not a status to be won by whoever assimilates and incorporates into his practice certain patterns of behavior, but a way of being in the world which has “always already” been part of the existence of subjects. one of the advantages of viewing citizenship as an everyday practice is the flexibility that such an approach allows. first, there is flexibility in terms of who can be considered a citizen, as it has been mentioned earlier. secondly, there is flexibility with regard to the object of the citizenship practice. in other words, citizenship as an everyday practice is able to accommodate both universal (or almost) demands or practices and demands articulated by specific groups, including experiences and meanings built individually by each practitioner. this flexibility becomes important because it accords to subject practitioners a space to negotiate their representations of rights, duties and justice through a discursive articulatory process around shared meanings or at least meanings which strategically acceptable by the various groups in the debate. within this perspective, biesta, lawy & kelly (2009) propose a classification of the various contexts where citizenship learning can occur. there are the unavoidable contexts, the compulsory contexts, the voluntary contexts and the ambiguous ones. an example of an unavoidable context provided by the authors is the family or a family arrangement that supports children in the first years of life. this example should be questioned in view of the maia & pereira. citizenship education and curriculum policy in brazil 15 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci brazilian reality, where that context is just not present in the lives of thousands of children. a compulsory context for citizenship learning pointed out by the authors is the school, because it is a space which requires a mandatory frequency, where students cannot choose whether or not to participate. again, such classification should be challenged in the brazilian situation, because there is not a tight control of the permanence of students in the school, not to mention the many students who do not have access to the educational system. voluntary learning contexts for citizenship are those "where young people have a degree of choice in respect of their commitment and participation" in the learning process (biesta, lawy and kelly, 2009, p. 18, own translation). in ambiguous contexts, such as work, there is a variation in the condition of participation of young people. for some young people, for example, working may be a personal choice, a voluntary act, or an undeniable need. in our view, what the above categorization enables us to see is that there is not a restriction of citizenship learning to spaces previously established and designed for that purpose. in fact, this learning pervades the most varied spaces of young people’s life experiences, whether those experiences are deliberately chosen or imposed by laws, obligations, or cultural schemas. a perception highlighted by the authors mentioned above is that in optional contexts, young people would have a larger space to express their ideas and construct specific understandings about citizenship. in the unavoidable and compulsory contexts, however, this ability would be constrained by institutional norms and cultural patterns of behaviour. another fundamental aspect in citizenship learning is the relational component. biesta et. al. (2009) point out that in addition to the interference of contexts with conceptions of citizenship crafted by students, relationships also play an important role. in fact, we also advocate that, even though there are restrictions on citizen attitudes within certain institutional contexts, the establishment of relations of friendship, cooperation, dialogue between subjects inside and outside the institutional context allows the development of readings of reality and of citizen action possibilities that differ, and even go beyond those valued by institutional discourses. individual dispositions are another important factor in the construction of meanings of citizenship by students, once we identify that each student has a peculiar way of positioning himself/herself in the context where he belongs and approaching people he/she relates to. this can be explained by the baggage of experience that these students accumulate throughout their lives and by the impact of relationships they have experienced. those two aspects originate feelings, perceptions and conceptions that will serve as a reference in the construction of new experiences. with biesta et. al. (2009), we argue that it is at the confluence of contexts, relationships and rules that students have the possibility to build directions for citizenship on an everyday scale, and in situations that are beyond the school environment. this is an important aspect to be considered in citizenship education, although it is not the only one which should be catered for. we need to understand that the focus of research into education for citizenship cannot be only the way citizenship is taught in educational contexts, but also the ways through which the meanings of citizenship are constituted or learned by young people in the classroom and in the multiple situations related to civic aspects that students experience in their daily lives. the shift from teaching conditions to learning contexts leads to a repositioning of students as subjects of the educational process, able to manage the knowledge of public life facts as well as to translate private issues in terms of collective demands (biesta, 2011), within or beyond the school context. in other words, the task is not only optimizing the maia & pereira. citizenship education and curriculum policy in brazil 16 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci curricula, improving teacher training, resources and methods to ensure the formation of a citizen who can play a significant role in a democratic society. more than that, it is necessary to invest in conditions that make accessible to students the informed and autonomous practice of democratic values and ensure that these learning spaces provide options and instruments of action for students to act in building a fairer society, even if it means going against the culturally established social standards. such conditions, as biesta (2011) highlights, cover “both the basic material conditions of people's lives and the wider material, social and symbolic resources needed for democratic participation and action” (p. 85). it is reasonable, in that perspective, that the change in the curricula to foster better citizenship practice should be accompanied by an increasing openness to social policy intervention led by young people, either through the appreciation of what they have to argue, protest, and question in public spaces, or by ensuring specific representation spaces for young people in the institutions of debate and decision of the government and of civil society. as for the role that practices related to citizenship play in producing subjective identifications of young people in their everyday experiences, it must be mentioned that, in certain contexts, for example, citizenship can be experienced a lack of status, to the extent that the individual cannot fit into predefined patterns than is expected from a “good” citizen. in other contexts or situations, the subject has space to deconstruct and reconstruct the meanings of citizenship which are imposed by the system and bring them closer to personal and social identificatory processes, what can provoke changes in an individual's perceptions of the conditions of belonging to social groups. one can add that citizenship, in this same line of thought, is not an identity that someone can "have". in the words of biesta (2011), citizenship is "mainly and primarily a practice of identification, specifically a practice of identification with public issues, i.e. issues that are in the public interest" (p. 13). but, in addition to identification, biesta (2011) also suggests the important concept of subjectification, going beyond the existing order of things. subjectification would lead to emergence of agency and political subjectivity of individuals and would have much to contribute to the establishment of a truly democratic society identification is about taking up an existing identity, that is, a way of being and speaking and of being identifiable and visible that is already possible within the existing order ... subjectification, on the other hand, is always "disidentification, removal from the naturalness of a place" (ranciére, 1995, p. 36; see also ruitenberg, 2010). subjectification "inscribes a subject name as being different from any identified part of the community" (ibid., p. 37) (biesta, 2011, p. 95) based on the above ideas, we argue that identification processes related to citizenship that happen on a daily basis occur both in terms of socialization of the subject, or in other words, leading them to move closer to practices and values considered desirable by the system, and also in terms of subjectification, i.e. the emergence of spaces where these subjects can dare to be different and create, through tactics and strategies, experiences of citizenship that are in disagreement with given or expected standards. in a more recent text, biesta proposes that civic learning within the perspective of everyday practice and process acquires a non-linear, recursive and cumulative character (biesta, 2011, p. 86). we understand the nonlinear character of civic learning as the fact that learning involves multiple dimensions and spaces at the same time and it covers both positive and negative experiences, i.e. those events that restrict or promote citizen action over time, in maia & pereira. citizenship education and curriculum policy in brazil 17 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci a movement that develops through advances and setbacks. this leads to the second characteristic mentioned by the author, recursion, which consists in understanding that the meanings assigned to citizenship are not merely a result of civic or democratic experiences of everyday life, but also have an impact on these experiences and are permanently reelaborated by the young subjects. finally, the cumulative character of civic learning implies that any experience faced by the subject in the field of citizenship is forever registered in the memory and will certainly influence learning situations in the future. in light of those features, some of the pedagogical resources that civic education could use in order to develop students’ socio-political awareness and provoke their involvement in public issues are suggested by ruitenberg (2010) in the text below: it is important for students to a see a range of concrete ways in which citizens and those who were denied the status of citizen have worked to bring the societies in which they lived closer to what they perceived to be a just social order. it is important for them to see that this political work, different as its context and specifics may have been in each case, has involved the naming and articulation of political demands in some form. in addition, there should be room for students to claim the voice to name and articulate a social demand, and thus to become political subjects rather than remaining objects of the existing social order. (p.379). this has a strong connection with a view of radical democracy, in which citizens always have the chance to disagree with certain rules and propose alternatives. the experience of democracy, after all, is something more than a rational experience, it goes beyond cognitive experience. so, when it comes to education for citizenship, we need to place more emphasis on the ways citizenship is experienced by young people in its most varied aspects of daily life and think about how to optimize the conditions for the exercise of citizenship to have an increasingly more democratic society (biesta, 2011). final comments in this paper, we discussed the issues of citizenship and citizenship education by focusing on brazilian policy to exemplify current meanings of citizenship in the curriculum of secondary school in that country. our findings suggested the existence of many challenges to be faced in the articulation of citizenship in the national curricula and we regarded as appropriate to point out some possible ways in which citizenship education could be approached in order to lead our students to more relevant and dynamic learning experiences in that area. the emergence of some ambivalent meanings of citizenship in the brazilian curriculum guidelines investigated reveals that, far from being a homogenous and harmonic set of ideas, the curriculum policy document conveys distinct interests which are linked to opposing and sometimes antagonistic political projects. considering the discourse elements that we have highlighted, however, the meanings that seem to prevail are those which evoke a perspective of political neutrality, strengthening of the market logic, political conservatism and cultural and social life control. of course, all these perspectives are subtly merged or hybridized with expressions that relate to more critical and progressive discursive fields, which show some appreciation of difference. such hybrid feature of a discursive formation would attend to the need to maia & pereira. citizenship education and curriculum policy in brazil 18 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci amalgamate the largest number of groups around certain demands without generating political ruptures. macedo (2006) approaches the culturally hybrid aspect of the curriculum, when she explains her understanding of school curricula, "as a space-time in which the discourses of science, the nation, the market, the ‘common knowledge’, beliefs and many others are merged, all also hybrid in their own constitutions" (p. 289, own translation). in this context, it is always difficult to predict or even to specify what vision of citizenship will prevail in the several instances in which the guidelines are redefined. under those circumstances, the school environment appears as an important place (though not exclusive), where the subject has a chance to silence conservative discourses, deconstruct topbottom political bias and suggest the meanings related to citizenship that are more representative of their experiences, their needs and their political demands. but the fact is that, in terms of citizenship education, the above-mentioned aims may be achieved only by means of pedagogical practices which make space for the subject to speak of themselves, of their experiences, their conflicts, expectations and frustrations, and especially of how they make sense of their political existence in the world, without being coerced into just assimilating senses of citizenship that are imposed on them as indisputable. such a statement implies two consequences: the first one concerns the need for making traditional dynamics of knowledge development more flexible, with the inclusion of learning processes based on readings of reality as a starting point and pedagogical methodologies that indeed motivate students to self-reflection, to debate, to participation in socio-political spaces. the second one concerns the role of the educator, who should commit himself/herself to a more integrated view of knowledge, establishing the bridge between the knowledge students bring, the knowledge from other fields, and use that knowledge to motivate active involvement with public issues from the part of students. it is also necessary that the pedagogical practice is open to possible situations of disagreement between different meanings of citizenship that arise in the educational environment, always valuing the legitimacy of any subject to articulate his or her demand and claim that it is considered a valid one. as pereira (2010) states, "the political is constituted of antagonisms (conflicts), seen as healthy and important in the process of political organization (space where institutionalized practices reveal power relations)" (p. 169, own translation). in our view, if school opens itself to that kind of political debate, then it could become a space of construction of citizen subjectivities, with its achievements being significantly reflected on other social spaces in which citizenship practices are enacted. as a final remark, we hope that the theoretical intervention we have presented here can be understood as "another" view on citizenship; at the same time we recognize the partiality of the ideas we discussed. therefore, we share our thoughts, with the intention that they find resonance in other contexts, in other modes of perceiving, doing, choosing. thus, the ideas here discussed are meant to raise questions, encourage debate and provoke other readings on the subject which would facilitate a constant movement of re-signification within the field of citizenship education in the curriculum, toward the emergence of a more creative, participative and open to difference citizen. notes 1 angelica.maia@gmail.com 2 mzul@uol.com.br mailto:angelica.maia@gmail.com mailto:mzul@uol.com.br maia & pereira. citizenship education and curriculum policy in brazil 19 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 3 original text: “são os negócios públicos dirigidos pelos cidadãos: costumes, leis, erário público, organização da defesa e da guerra, administração dos serviços públicos [...] e das atividades econômicas da cidade (moedas, impostos e tributos, tratados comerciais, etc.)” (p.371, apud alvarenga, 2010, p.100) 4 original text: “é pré-condição de uma relação equilibrada e mutuamente potenciadora entre a competência global e a legitimidade local, que constituem os do is atributos de uma política contra-hegemônica de direitos humanos no nosso tempo” (santos, 1997, p.97). 5 translated text used as a reference: “é claro que os direitos de cidadania nunca foram universalmente aplicados – nem aos afro-americanos pelas mãos dos pais fundadores dos eua nem aos sujeitos coloniais pelo governo imperial. esse vazio entre ideal e prática, entre igualdade formal e igualdade concreta, entre liberdade negativa e positiva, tem assombrado a concepção liberal de cidadania desde o início. quanto à neutralidade cultural do estado liberal, seus avanços não devem ser levianamente descartados. a tolerância religiosa, a liberdade de expressão, o estado de direito, a igualdade formal e a legalidade processual, o sufrágio universal – embora contestados – são realizações positivas. entretanto, a neutralidade do estado funciona apenas quando se pressupõe uma homogeneidade cultural ampla entre os governados. essa presunção fundamentou as democracias liberais ocidentais até recentemente. sob as novas condições multiculturais, entretanto, essa premissa parece cada vez menos válida” (hall, 2009, p.74). 6 original text: “… as relações entre indivíduo e sociedade; as instituições sociais e o processo de socialização; a definição de sistemas sociais; a importância da participação política de indivíduos e de grupos; os sistemas de poder e os regimes políticos, as formas do estado; a democracia; os direitos dos cidadãos; os movimentos sociais” (brasil, 2002, p.88). 7 original text: “cultura é diversidade cultural, identidade cultural, indústria cultural, mídia e propaganda, alienação e conscientização etc.” (brasil, 2002, p.92). “compreender e valorizar as diferentes manifestações culturais de etnias e segmentos sociais, agindo de modo a preservar o direito à diversidade, enquanto princípio estético, político e ético que supera conflitos e tensões do mundo atual" (brasil, 2002, p.90). references alvarenga, m. (2010). sentidos da cidadania: políticas de educação de jovens e adultos. rio de janeiro: eduerj. arnot, m. (2006). gender equality, pedagogy and citizenship: affirmative and transformative approaches in the uk. theory and research in education 4(2), 131-150. ball, s. (2006). big policies/ small world: an introduction to international perspectives in education policy. in stephen j. ball (ed.), education policy and social class (pp.6776). london/new york: routledge. balibar, e. (1988). propositions on citizenship (trans. s. j. critchley). ethics, v. 98, 723-730. ______. (2008). historical dilemmas of democracy and their contemporary relevance for citizenship. rethinking marxism 20 (4), 522-538. maia & pereira. citizenship education and curriculum policy in brazil 20 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci ______. antinomies of citizenship. (2010). journal of romance studies 10 (2), 1-20. biesta, g., lawy, r., & kelly, n. 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(2011). a curriculum of cultural translation: desi identities in american chai. transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> a curriculum of cultural translation: desi identities in american chai tasha ausman 1 ma student, university of ottawa, canada american born confused desi emigrated from gujurat house in jersey kids learning medicine now owning property quite reasonable salary two uncles visiting white xenophobia yet zestful now you know your abcds. (hidier, 2002, p. 108) canada prides itself on being a multicultural nation – one with policies at the federal and provincial levels to promote integration, acceptance, and diversity (minister of public works and government services canada, 2011). a vital part of canadian society in the last generation has been members of our society whose parents and relatives were part of a wave of immigration between the 1960s and early 1980s. i grew up in one such first-generation family, with an indian-born mother and racialized-white canadian father – one of many people born with what might be called a hybrid desi background in canada. in fact, i might be part of what many indo canadian adults consider a “desi-generation.” desi is a term “coined by indian nationals to describe culturally challenged second-generation indians raised in the u.s.,” and by extension, canada and britain (lahiri, 2000). it is an abbreviation of the hindi word pardesi which means foreigner. therefore, like many in my generation, i am acutely aware of my distinct place in our canadian fabric – one that renders me not quite fully canadian. despite being born in edmonton, alberta, i am often asked “where are you from?” in many ways, i feel as if i am at the heart of official canadian multiculturalism by being a visible minority yet simultaneously on the fringes of the white majority. as the result, i am attracted to most things that shed light on, or make light of, the complicated cultural position of desis in canada. and i am not alone. comedian russell peters, for example, has championed this pastime of peering simultaneously inward and outward at indo-canadian culture by bringing his commentary about the complicated terrain of being born to immigrant parents in a western milieu to comedy clubs, television specials, and movies. he capitalizes on the often humorous “disconnect” between so-called traditional indian values and canadian culture to speak to non-indians and indians alike. whether you find it funny or not, his comedy illuminates what it might be like to live as a hybrid citizen – one seemingly in limbo between india and canada, what tenuja desai hidier calls being an abcd, an american born confused desi. there are many are other forms of desi ausman. a curriculum of cultural translation: desi identities in american chai 23 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci comedy and commentary including amateur online videos featuring desi comedians making light of how hybrid cultures are seen by others. these comedians employ historical terminology to reverse the colonial gaze in a comedic context, speaking “back” to india while addressing both desi and non-desi viewers. some of the more popular examples include the stand-up club indian invasion comedy: civilizing the west, the comedy troupe bollywood shenanigans: i can’t believe it’s not butter chicken, and the online video series shit white girls say to brown girls. all of this points to a larger cultural conversation. desis explore what it might mean to be “born confused” by carving out room in canadian society for a conversation about finding and shaping a hybrid identity amidst all of the cultural chaos, politics of multiculturalism, pains and joys of immigration, and colonial histories back in india which have never left our parents’ and relatives’ minds (for example, many lived through the indian partition in 1947). the conversation often returns us to the space of a so-called motherland: india. many first-generation indo-canadians like me have only visited india as tourists but were nevertheless raised to identify with it as the location of “real” origins, values, and traditions. far from shying away from this seeming paradox, many desis seem to take their hybrid indianness into what bhabha (1994) has called elsewhere a third space, where personal journeys, translations between cultures, and cultural expressions in media such as music and film unfold. desi films in particular belong to a genre of “in-betweens” – directed by ex-pats and migrants, filmed in american, british, australian, and canadian locations, and situated between the large movie industries of bollywood and hollywood. foremost, desi films are modes of expression and explorations of ways of living as a migrant hybrid citizen – citizens who are invariably caught-up-in, contribute to, and are on a curricular journey within a third space framed by western and indian cultures (wang, 2004). these films are on the rise in numbers and popularity, and include titles such as bend it like beckham (2002), american desi (2002), american chai (2001), bhaji on the beach (1993), the guru (2002), bride and prejudice (2004), mississippi masala (1992), and sammy and rosie get laid (1987), to name a few. desi films confront representational enunciations of identity– in particular about how one learns to perform and feel desi. as a desi, i ask what it means to stake a claim to a hyphenated identity and, by extension, what the very term “identity” might mean. as such, i (re)search what constitutes hybrid indo-canadian identities within canadian communities. two research questions ground this project: first, how might we translate the cultural representations put forth in desi films of indian diasporic communities abroad and here in canada? second, in what ways do diasporic films work as a curriculum of living at the interstices of different cultural spaces? to address these questions, i examined three diasporic films in a recent research study: bend it like beckham, bhaji on the beach, and american chai. however, for this paper, i add to the cultural conversation about what it means to be, enunciate, and perform desi subjectivities in the twenty-first century by taking a closer look at just one film, american chai. i look to diasporic movies as a transnational curriculum inquiry project, a journey through third spaces, marked by what wang (2004) eloquently calls “movement simultaneously inside and outside” indian and “western” cultures. educational research has absorbed dynamic discussions taking place within cultural studies about hybridity as a productive “third space” (beyond binaries of colonizer and colonized) that is “interruptive, interrogative, and enunciative” (bhabha, 1994), where curricular questions about the pervasiveness of totalizing binaries that describe west and east civilizations can be asked (aoki, 2005). this questioning of essentializing binaries such as colonized versus ausman. a curriculum of cultural translation: desi identities in american chai 24 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci colonizer, civilized versus savage, and self versus other, has been extended beyond academic articles and discourse about academic or literary texts into the realm of popular culture. films about diasporic indo –canadians, –british, and –americans address our imagined and material boundaries between cultures, the very places where cultural differences can be seen most vividly, and where conflict has historically arisen. cultural differences at these boundaries is most pronounced as the misrecognition of meanings, values, and signs (bhabha, 1994). and desi films such as american chai exemplify how the spaces between and among cultures are sometimes viewed as an unbridgeable chasm. nevertheless, this film, and others in the genre, conclude with cultural understanding, compromises, and resolutions on the part of their first generation protagonists – and suggest as i argue in the paper, pedagogical ways of negotiating the third space (bhabha, 1994), the “cracks” (aoki, 2005), or the “interstices” (asher, 2009a, 2009b), through particular modes of translation that “ensure that the meanings and symbols of culture have no primordial unity or fixity; that even the same signs can be appropriated, translated, rehistoricized and read anew” (bhabha, 1994, p.208). in the words of henry giroux (2002), films continue to be curricular on account of being “a compelling mode of communication and form of public pedagogy…that functions as a powerful teaching machine” (p.6). therefore, i ask what desi films attempt to teach viewers who are both inside and outside this culture about the representational enunciated spaces seemingly located in/between. to answer this question, i use a methodology that involves examining the narratives put forth in american chai that depict how characters strategize the formation of their multiple identities through a common cultural language inside “multilayered lifeworlds” (new london group, 1996). more specifically, i look at how culture might be understood in the third space as language and performance that is constantly translated by desis such as myself: first generation diaspora living in the west who have transcultural knowledge. finally, i look to judith robertson’s (1995) method of screenplay pedagogy to peer inward at my engagements and re-readings of identifications with and against the films, locating narrative constructions of my identity within this space of (self)-translation. quantum (third) spaces as a conceptualization of desi identity american chai, directed by anurag mehta, is a parody of both college life and indian culture. it is about a first-generation indo-american student named sureel, a college senior who studies music despite telling his traditional, controlling father that he has been enrolled in a premed program for the previous three years. despite being plagued by the spying and over-the-top antics of his cousin raju, an “fob” indian (“fresh off the boat”) who attends the same campus, sureel tries to live freely, pursuing his dreams. he has mainstream desi friends and roommates that have such nicknames as “engineering sam” and “pharmacy bob” and who subscribe, even enthusiastically, to the career assigned to them by their parents. sureel struggles with his attraction to “white girls” and anglo-saxon white culture, dating a girl named jen – a groupie who likes sureel only for his music. moreover she fetishizes his indian roots, wearing a bindi on her forehead and hippie-style indian-influenced clothing. he is also the leader of a band named fathead that at one point in the film mutinies against him and kicks him out because of his indian family “baggage.” jen then dumps him unceremoniously because he is no longer in the band. ausman. a curriculum of cultural translation: desi identities in american chai 25 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci this is a turning point for sureel who begins to contemplate why he resists all things indian, including the university’s indian student society and its events. his mind is slowly changed about indian culture through his attraction to another indo-american student, a science major and indian dancer named maya. after forming a new band, american chai, whose musical focus is also a blend of american music styles and indian influences (but moreso than fathead), sureel finally tells his father about his music career as part of a desire to be recognized for who he really is, and also to win the support of his love interest. his father rejects his son, hitting him for lying for four years as he paid tuition for a music degree instead of a pre-med program. sureel relies on the possibility of national recognition for his music in a large competition – a typical “battle of the bands” – to aid in justifying his music career to his family. in a moment of recognition initiated by sureel’s mother, who finally speaks meaningfully in the film about wanting to see her son play and do what he loves, sureel’s father relents and attends the performance. he sees his son’s talent, and recognizes that his own life has been full of sacrificed dreams gone unfulfilled and realizes he does not want the same for sureel. sureel’s life narrative is not unique. many curriculum theorists have explained their personal journeys, others’ experiences of migration, the condition of being born hybrid, and what it might be like to live in diasporas, as part of a collectively understood experience of existing in third spaces (see works by curriculum theorists ibrahim, 2008; ng-a-fook, 2009; and wang, 2004). the vocabulary of “third spaces” and “hybridity” are common in postcolonial studies. homi bhabha originally used the term to point towards the mutable spaces between subjectpositions where disruptions in hegemonic practices of colonialism could occur. hybridity, for bhabha (1994), is a liminal third space, “the cutting edge of translation and negotiation” (p. 38). although this space is understood in different ways by different theorists within the international field of curriculum studies, in this paper i offer a perspective of third spaces that labours to unpack the experience of desis like sureel and potentially other indo-canadians growing up in a westernized milieu with similar and different familial and cultural influences. in an age of transnational self-identifications, members of diasporas construct their identities and outward self-representations without national and physical borders in the way. the popularity of diasporic movies point to the fact that hyphenated identities have currency – that “hybridity, diaspora, and post-coloniality are now fashionable and even marketable terms” (hutnyk, 2000, p.118 in giardina, 2003). public displays of hybrid identities make the representations of third spaces from the “margins,” sites of resistance (hooks, 1990) far beyond the historical desire to be allowed to move from the colonized periphery to the colonial metropole – that is, beyond a desire merely to be seen and acknowledged. these films speak to a different reality – that hybridity is about mobilizing fluid identities, demanding recognition, and making the diasporic self available to be reached-into and explored (ibrahim, 2008). many ways for understanding third spaces already exist – both in cultural studies and in education. ted aoki (2005) opens up a dialogue about the possibilities of inhabiting multiple spaces, describing the simultaneity of living in dual spaces in a philosophical rather than physical universe to ask what lies between curriculum-as-planned and curriculum-as-lived in the pedagogical space. using a technique of “cracking” words apart, aoki reveals how the split within words teaches us ways in which the graphical (writing) informs the ethnos (ethnic identity). he arrives at a formulation of identity through a mechanism of identification inseparable from the act of writing, just as bhabha (1987) did in his influential paper, “interrogating identity.” ausman. a curriculum of cultural translation: desi identities in american chai 26 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci nina asher (2003) similarly argues for us to move past binaries of “self” and “other” toward “interbeing” as a form of self-reflexive pedagogy. working in the field of multicultural education, she questions why non-western representations within the academy still remain marginal – for example, the study of post-colonial literatures versus western literatures in english departments. asher’s (2009) work with indian-american students is an effort to “decolonize” texts so that social transformation can follow. she looks at the effects of colonization in educational contexts – in texts, in self-representations, and as recursive identity formations at the boundaries between cultures. a consciousness about the self’s hybrid status extends into community spaces, where people strive to move beyond binaries of self and other towards the self-reflexive pedagogy of “interbeing” that draws upon thich nhat hanh’s concept of “mindfulness” – a way of being acutely aware of the self in the world (p. 238). also looking at the borderlands between cultures in the educational context, awad ibrahim (2008) investigates the role of third spaces in theorizing lived-experiences of students in ontario classrooms. he describes third spaces as “organic,” because they are “historically situated and partially unconsciously executed” (p. 240). the simultaneity of positions is a complicated experience of “being assigned and taking up both ‘continental and diasporic african’ identity” (p. 242). this ambivalent process leaves the diaspora with a cultural identity assigned to it, absorbing that new identity, and reproducing it in complex acts of translation. therefore, in what follows, i ask how movies might further our understanding of the concept of hybrid third spaces through the stories they tell as potential sites of cultural translations. homi bhabha’s (1994) original concept placed culture within a framework of ongoing acts of translation. each individual act of translation is an effort to create place and meaning in a continuum of experiences between/within multiple cultures. a film might be thought of as a “freeze frame” in a moment of cultural translation. the translation act is both linguistic (literal translations between languages) and cultural (the cultural reinvention of self in new spaces – like the indian who presents herself differently when abroad, bringing a translated version of “india” to others through self-representation). this translation along multiple trajectories is the ambivalence of hybridity that he explains in relation to mimicry by the colonized, the “colonial double” (p.86). as well, mimicry is historically strategic in the curricular ways it is performed as a threat to colonialism: …the excess of slippage produced by the ambivalence of mimicry (almost the same, but not quite) does not merely ‘rupture’ the discourse, but becomes transformed in an uncertainty which fixes the colonial subject as a ‘partial’ presence. by ‘partial’ i mean both ‘incomplete’ and ‘virtual’. (p. 86, original emphasis) this state of ambivalence today, for diasporas, can be seen in the occupation of multiple contradictory spaces at once by a member of the diaspora. the western milieu in which the diasporic individual lives, and the residues of a “home” culture learned in the diaspora (indians born in the west who have never seen india but still identify with it somehow) constitute these contradictory but simultaneously inhabited spaces. the diasporic subject might carry within her the histories of colonialism, the feeling of being an imposter, but not just in relation to the colonizer but all the time, since there is no “home” to go back to and no answer to that commonplace question, “where are you from?” desi films therefore necessarily call attention to ausman. a curriculum of cultural translation: desi identities in american chai 27 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci uncertain cultural futures, including possible losses and/or transformations of (m)other tongues and indian traditions as they become less recognizable over generations as indian. different theories that take up the spatial and cultural multiplicities of third spaces, specifically those which address the possibilities of inhabiting many spatial/cultural positions simultaneously, bring me to how i see third spaces (see beck 2009; soja 1996; young 2009). i would like to propose here a quantum view of third spaces. the fluidity of cultural enunciations reminds me of the increasingly theoretical and interpretive developments in the field of quantum physics over the last century. consider planck’s (1900) theory that light is emitted in packets not waves, a concept expanded upon by einstein who described light as being made up of particles in 1905. in 1926, max born attempted to resolve light’s inherent paradox by proposing that the wave function of electrons represents the probability of their presence in a particular location. these discoveries began the pervasive questioning of a causal universe. for example, heisenberg’s uncertainty principle (1927) showed that both the velocity and position of particles could never be determined at once because the act of attempting to measure position changes the velocity and vice versa. thus, we might consider an analogy here between quantum physics and the concept of third spaces as a site of enunciation. bohr’s principle of complementarity in physics puts it most clearly: an independent reality in the ordinary physical sense can neither be ascribed to the phenomenon nor the agencies of observation. there is no resolution to the fact that a causal universe is undermined completely by the fact that the involved position of an observer changes subatomic reality. similarly, one might ask if the cultural observer, like the physicist, can ever be exempt from such an involved position. so how might the idea of quantum physics be used to reread third spaces in relation to diasporic films such as american chai? foremost, it helps to structure a concept of identity transnationally – one that remains fluid on account of the influences of intergenerationality and movements across borders. for example, indio-canadians perform different acts of identification in their daily lives with and against canadian culture and indian culture simultaneously. the same applies for characters in diasporic films, for each specific scene, and for the entire film itself. the complicated terrain of multiple identifications is closely tied to the representations that precipitate from them. for example, my reading of a book about diasporic indians, or watching a film, changes the way i act in the world as an indo-canadian. this is regardless of whether i accept or reject what i read, see, or consume. each film, scene, character, or utterance might also be considered a single act of representation as well, depending on one’s perspective. the diagram below depicts some of the ways an observer (whose identity is necessarily wrapped-up in acts of viewing and subsequent self-representing) might be part of quantum (third) spaces: ausman. a curriculum of cultural translation: desi identities in american chai 28 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci identification (desire) performances leads to representations reconstitute the subject identity subject identity re/formation (third) spaces figure 1: a conceptualization of quantum (third) spaces in three dimensions. within each circle is a concept of identity in which representations are the product of constant identifications and resulting desires to re-identify, change the object of identification, or reject it. those representations are pushed to the outside, to the “shell” or the outer perimeter of the circle and it is what people see – whether as films, as writings, as pictures or any other form of representation or self-representation. ausman. a curriculum of cultural translation: desi identities in american chai 29 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci i call these spaces of identification and representation quantum (third) spaces – with the bracketing of (third) to acknowledge the original concept of third spaces while offsetting its potential reading as consecutive to possible “first” and “second” spaces (homelands of india and canada, for example). the fact that the language of this alternate space has taken the name “third spaces” is not meant to imply hierarchy nor a blending of firsts and seconds, but rather an alternate place from which to speak. the representations pushed to the outside after each moment of individual identification (shown by the arrows within each circle) are a way of thinking about the things we see and consume – whether they are youtube videos about desi culture, t-shirts, movies, books, or poetry. we can produce, recognize, and consume simultaneous representations at once. my understanding of (third) spaces includes the existence of several spaces at the same time, in varying dimensions in 3d space. this is an attempt to break free – allowing me to think of (third) spaces as both places and the spaces between places (removing the necessity of positionality). hybrid cultural identities do not volley from one space to another (india/canada, for example), emotionally or physically. being in a (third) space includes experiencing constant change within oneself, with multiple contradictory and simultaneous feelings of belonging/not belonging. the only theory to which i kept returning to explain this simultaneity of feelings and experiences was quantum theory, where it is both possible and probable for an entity to be t wo or more places at the same time. we can look at diasporic films in relation to instantaneous encounters and fleeting moments of cultural enunciation that exist only for a moment and are gone again. they can be understood as sites of fragmentation where a person’s identification results in a single representation, a single utterance within a film, pushed outward from the inner space of identification to become the “shell” of the circle that people see and consume in a single scene. diasporic films as a whole could also be understood as fragmented sites. one circle could be a whole film that includes multiple identifications and representations all put “out there” for consumption. in the process, audiences are able to see translations (some lost, some incoherent), journeys made or not made, exiles unable to return, and diasporas devoid of a motherland – all at once in a particular kind of (third) space we call a single film. we also bring our own prior experiences to the viewing, each walking away with different perspectives of what a film might be “about.” different circles imply that (third) spaces can be a number of things, all of which are evolving and shifting. they can be referential – a circle that emerges from a moment of identification to be another circle, another (third) space – and we see this in real life with fads, knock offs, movies similar to other movies, t-shirts that copy pictures logos from other cultural artifacts, etc. thus, bhabha’s concept of culture being referential, or the idea that the subject can become the “other of itself,” is not lost. the frames of reference in a quantum (third) spaces are always shifting, as well. one circle might be the translation of another (in the sense bhabha writes about – as imitation, copy, transformation). but the originary object is fleeting and gone in the next instant. unlike in bhabha’s theory, however, the originary object does exist, just in another time. in quantum theory, the past and present can co-exist, and we see this in cultures which try to hold onto values and traditions held deeply for generations, alongside change in modern society. in terms of a curriculum of cultural translation, the idea of translations between cultures linguistically as well as the movement of peoples (translations across geographies) can also be ausman. a curriculum of cultural translation: desi identities in american chai 30 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci read through the concept of particles in space. considering aoki’s attention to the spaces “between,” a whole sphere in figure 1 is free to move in all sorts of spaces – in cyberspace, in real space, across borders, and among different audiences. identifications and representations move between cultures (bicultural or multicultural); the particle lacks fixity as it translates across space and time (generations). what does not get said or represented is also key in this conceptualization of (third) spaces. trinh minh-ha (1999) talks about this in relation to the inner space of films: “what exists in a film, for example, between two images? what happens in the interval? the question mark is huge here, for every one of us would come up with a different response” (p. 201). i believe that this space of possibility is important. the gaps, spaces where no articulations have been made, are also spaces of limitless possibilities. however, i cannot attempt to account for what exists there. after all, the circles move through space and time, vacating more spaces as they move, allowing for more articulations of hybrid (third) spaces to emerge. watching american chai as stated earlier in the paper, i used robertson’s (1995) screenplay pedagogy as a methodology to observe and analyse structures and elements in the narrative of american chai. in its original use, screenplay pedagogy is a technique whereby films are used as “vehicles to provide insight into the making of knowledge and meaning in primary teaching…focused on how people learn to think as teachers” (p. 27). robertson (1995/1997) looks at how bachelor of education students become attached to, and read themselves against, particular representations of teachers they view in hollywood films. in this research, my goal was to develop understandings of the way hybrid communities are conceived in a film like american chai, and by extension in multicultural societies like canada. i asked how representations in/as films are implicated in identity formation for the characters onscreen, and of diasporic communities as a whole. i specifically looked at how the protagonist, sureel, and his journey achieved particular significance for me by remaining mindful of how the identity-building process for members of the indian diaspora onscreen is part of shaping my own, and perhaps by extension others’. when watching american chai, i collected initial observations through journaling. i watched the film several times, taking note of, and interpreting, the elements of plot and narrative, and scene-specific elements such as the characters’ dress, choices of music, set locations, and particular uses of language (hindi or english). to answer my initial research questions put forth at the start of this article, i paid particular attention to three categories of thought as i documented my interpretations: 1. how the characters’ hybrid identities are shaped in third spaces (as representations outwardly conveyed; translations and/as movements in space-time). 2. how desi and immigrant characters in diasporic communities are portrayed through these representations. 3. how i respond to being “made” as desi through representations in american chai. the third point involves a self-reflective practice of considering myself watching the films (observing myself observing a film). i am most concerned with this aspect of the analysis in its relevance to screenplay pedagogy with its attention to the way identities are formed through the film viewing process. undoubtedly, my sense of self as desi before watching the film is not the ausman. a curriculum of cultural translation: desi identities in american chai 31 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci same as after. as i identify with or against the characters in the films, i form new modes of understanding and representing myself on account of the experience of viewing the movies. my viewing notes for american chai began with a simple observation: the movie’s title is hybrid. it reminds us that this is an american film first, and a blend of indian cultures second – a chai, or tea made of mixed spices. the opening sequence of the film further reinforces this when characters are introduced. we meet sureel, whose name appears to be a double reference, first to the film (su/reel), and to the possible spaces of indian hybrid identity (sur/real) where a desi from suburban america would be able to live the fantasy of going to music school in college without his parents finding out. the concept of name-labels is carried even further, when we meet sureel’s best friend, engineering-sam, the typical indian good-girl named maya, and the ridiculous raju – a caricaturized immigrant whose knowledge about american girls is derived exclusively from american tv (bikinis and loose sexual morals). however, instead of being mere caricatures of desis and immigrant indians throughout the movie, the characters (including their names) use parody to point to some real issues. the parents are never given comedic names. sureel’s father and mother often use hindi phrases to address their son, especially when talking about arranging his marriage to a “nice gujarati girl.” as well, i am struck by the seriousness and common sense tones of the parent’s concerns. in one scene, when the parents are at an indian party, all of the other parents of medical school and engineering children describe their kids as studious and serious. we see contrasting moments of these students drinking, dancing, and making out. sureel’s parents’ fears about their son are articulated at this party when they claim he is probably out with the ladies, doing something stupid. we see, however, that sureel is at home in his dorm room alone, playing indian classical music on his sitar. sureel wishfully speculates, “if only my father knew how much his record collection influenced me.” the film thus presents a discord between the parents’ worries and assumptions about their desi children and the reality of what their children do while away at college. i feel that this movie, whose plotline is easy enough to follow, asks serious curricular questions about what it means to have a hybrid identity. on one level this is “the old story of an immigrant [sureel’s father] who has worked long and hard so that his eldest son can reap the benefits of life in america” (brussat & brussat, 2002). jeffrey anderson (2002), in combustible celluloid, points out the film’s release “right on the heels of my big fat greek wedding as another story about a youngster who longs to live his life against the wishes of his traditional parents – a fairly old story.” lawrence van gelder of the new york times, still referring to the film as a “timeless tale with an indian spin,” is more sympathetic. he points out how the film casts a “sometimes satiric eye on the elders and their ways but also on college students and their rites. mr. mehta makes merry with the sociology of the subject and has the courage and originality to let the ending grow from character rather than cinematic convention” (p. 1). indeed, the opening sequence of american chai appears to introduce a theme central to indian literature and film that is not merely a rehashing of other cultural coming-of-age tales. this theme is the concept of indians as imposters. i am reminded of a thematically different american film which came out in the same year, entitled the guru (2002) featuring a fake indian spiritualist living in america who makes a living as a sex guru. this film parodies the culture of self-help, yoga culture, and the kind of escapist solutions provided by deepak chopra in his spiritual-health books targeted at middle-aged, middle-class americans. the idea of indian as an imposter is not new. v.s. naipaul’s the mystic masseur (1957) is a similar tale of an indian who rises to fame as a fake guru and becomes wealthy. american chai’s filmic and ausman. a curriculum of cultural translation: desi identities in american chai 32 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci narrative plot works on the same premise – that the indian is an imposter – a faker of white culture and of white tastes, a modern twist on bhabha’s (1994) concept of the mimic man. sureel’s “real life” takes place away from home, at his college campus where he does not have to be indian at all. it is only his family “baggage” (in the words of his fathead band mates) that haunts him. he can discuss the merits of white girls over indian girls with his roommates, revitalizing the concept of indian male sexuality for an american audience. sureel’s efforts to go incognito begin in childhood on the playground when his friends ask him if he is jewish or christian (since everyone is one or the other in the neighborhood). they press him for details, “are you negro? what tribe are you from?” he declares as a kid, then, that all he wants to be is “like everyone else.” thus for sureel, through his youth and young adult life, the project of blending-in necessarily involves a denial of indian heritage or its use in propelling self-interests – such as the invention of the band fathead (no indian name there!) which writes and performs indian-influenced fusion music. only during sureel’s emergence as a desi – a confronting of his hybrid roots which forms the main plot device of the film, does he name his band american chai. i noted when viewing this film that “american” necessarily precedes “chai” in this formulation. the indian in the film has to self-declare, as many second-generation youth in different cultures do, saying, “i’m an american first!” the distance between his family home and college life, and the efforts sureel takes to remove one from the other (changing his dress, staging his dorm room, letting his dad fantasize about a nonexistent career) serve to amplify the imposter status of the “indian in new jersey” – the indian amongst whites. this characterization of desi indians as faking-it, combined with the common victim-hero trope of second-generation immigrant characters in films, gives this movie a sense of internal placelessness. more specifically, sureel’s life is volleyed between his attraction to jen, the hippie, indian-clothes clad groupie, and the supposedly “meaningful” attraction to maya, the “good indian.” he also swings between home and college, stage, and dorm room, and the identities of desi and imposter (including his efforts to distance himself from raju). this element of placenessness seems to capture the feeling of being lost between two worlds as a desi youth. while the disconnection became a parody of parents, their beliefs, and “fob” immigrants, the struggle to articulate the self against the trope of the “proper” immigrant emerges as the major plot device. no doubt, the film is about a minority-becoming – a finding of the “self” or emergence without a model, what educational scholar susan huddleton edgerton (1996) calls “translation without a master.” the seemingly aimless quality of the film’s spatial organization – the bouncing plot that takes place between free college life and strict home space – actually felt to me to encapsulate the very real struggle to find a hybrid identity. sureel doesn’t know what it means to be a desi with the desires he has, the feelings of rejection towards indian culture and its seemingly outdated or clumsy traditions. one of his attempts to articulate this is at the indian-american academic student conference in the film where he speaks to other desis, encouraging them to promote indian culture, not lose sight of traditions, and to remember the value of indian fine arts. he cultivates a new sense of being indian through participating in desi student events. even though the film wraps up in a predictable way – through sureel’s partial return to indian values (the most he has ever felt in his life), and acceptance on the parts of his parents – i felt that the inconsistencies, lags, and b-movie acting actually contributed to the lost feeling and guilt about rejecting some indian values and practices that many desis, including ausman. a curriculum of cultural translation: desi identities in american chai 33 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci myself, have felt directly. the sense of placelessness became a purposeful element rather than something to be critiqued as a cinematic weakness of anurag mehta’s debut film. a temporary analysis: cultural disc(h)ords and melodrama sureel’s character functions as the quintessential melodramatic victim and hero. the trope of melodrama, a common hollywood cinematic motif, is employed in this film to make a moral statement about two things: the onus of desi youth not to abandon their indian roots, and the responsibility of indian parents to become part of the american melting pot of cultures and accept their children’s career and love choices. throughout the film, sureel is portrayed as a victim of cultural circumstances: it is not his parents’ fault that they are immigrants but they just “don’t get it” about the fact t hat he is “american.” this is articulated by sureel himself in the opening lines of the film where he narrates over and above the pastoral neighborhood scene, “i was born here so i am american. my parents were born in india…” writing about american film, linda williams (1998) writes that within the mode of melodrama, characters are tested in relation to their “moral legibility” (p. 52), and that the task of protagonists is to “put forth a moral truth in gesture and to picture what could not be fully spoken in words” (ibid.). american chai makes this its primary project – to unravel the struggle of a student who is faced with moral challenges on account of circumstances beyond his control (being born desi) and who triumphs through gesture, through the ult imate act of showing his unforgiving and traditional family that his quest to become a musician has been a worthwhile life endeavor. as well, the structure of melodrama is meant to “recognize and regain a lost innocence” (p. 61) of its youthful characters. this is the case for sureel, whose life of lying and deception to his parents is juxtaposed with recurring and often elaborate ways for him to be true to himself – as a musician, as a “regular american” high school student, in his tastes in movies and friends. he is victimized by cultural circumstances but is portrayed as on a journey to reveal himself fully to the world for who he is, perhaps regaining the lost innocence he has had to give up on account of needing to lie. maya helps sureel reveal his “moral worth…to the audience and… to the other characters of the film, in the course of the narrative” (ibid.). this revelation takes on complex dimensions. instead of a shedding of indian culture and full absorption of his so-called “american” tastes – a heroic triumph over the “oppression” of indian culture – sureel instead experiences a partial return to his childhood when indian values and morals were impressed upon him by his parents. but this return is only made possible by a love interest. the film needs sureel to fall in love with a desi girl, or else the regaining of lost innocence cannot be achieved. sure enough, maya fits the bill. she is a science student, beautiful, obedient to her parents, and looking for a desi boy to date. sureel is the unconventional boyfriend, but one who needs rescuing. thus, maya lays down the groundwork for the moral legibility we seek in sureel. his character is not altogether likeable when he is a liar and defiant son, wasting his father’s money on college. his rescue by maya provides him a model upon which to lay his own newfound morals, and a character whose self-assuredness and moral strength guide him through the difficult journey of revealing his true career desires to his parents. looking at the filmic structures through screenplay pedagogy, i note that the separation of spaces (different scenes, different locations) for the parents and the college life helps to situat e sureel’s struggle within the closed family dynamic. he only has to confront one space. as well, his parents have redeeming and forgivable characteristics. the father’s concern that sureel ausman. a curriculum of cultural translation: desi identities in american chai 34 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci cannot be a “michael jackson” and that the american music scene does not have room for indian artists in the mainstream, are legitimate concerns. more profoundly, it is easy to be struck by sureel’s father’s brutal honesty about his own dreams lost on account of immigrating. he sacrificed his life to own a business and provide for his children. his revelations are part of the darker, sad parts of immigration. the father’s depth in these scenes makes sureel’s struggle to overcome the stresses of cultural hybridity more real, and more painful. he is at risk of hurting his parents legitimately by choosing a trivial music career. thus, the function of melodrama – of the victim/hero overcoming cultural restrictions to earn a new identity (that he forges anew without a model), is deeply entrenched in the process of cultural translation. in a reading of identity that takes into account representational strategies pushed outward through identification and desire, sureel occupies multiple (third) spaces profoundly. he is a different desi youth at home at his parents’ house than he is at college. and his “white” desi american identity at the beginning of the film is not the same (third) space as his newfound return to a more innocent, “true” indian-american identity at the end. his creation of complex, contradictory (third) spaces which he occupies unclearly (to himself) is the ambivalent curriculum of cultural translation in relation to his parents and to the audience. to use common social studies terms about multiculturalism, the film might champion a “melting pot” ideal for the parents (we wish them to just “get with it”!) but a “mosaic” ideal (a return to cultural “roots”) for sureel. the translation message thus works in two directions, implying that there is a cultural equilibrium to be found. the return to innocence experienced by sureel is matched by newfound progressiveness of the parents (at least from a western perspective), to achieve a happy cultural medium and resolution to the plot through the highly conventional “battle of the bands” scene. this film spoke to me most clearly and (dare i say) “authentically” in relating the cultural aimlessness often felt by desi youth in north america. sureel’s drifting identity, his clinging onto multiple ambivalent identities, is something many desi youth experience. an older, more mature sureel who returns to cultural roots (facilitated in part by his playing the sitar and enjoying fusion music already) is also an experience of desis who have made unconventional career decisions. as an adult and part of the first generation of desi youth in canada, i also often ask, “what kind of indian am i? what kind of canadian does that make me?” through the film’s pervasive sense of placenessness alongside the project of forging of a cultural path anew, american chai pays deep homage to real curricular experiences of “becoming minoritarian” in a world where there is no guide for desis about how to do so. conclusion a profound desire to cross cultural borders and yet never forget the act of crossing and what was, or might be, left behind, is what propels the characters american chai to test cultural boundaries. the film relies on cultural transgressions initiated by identifications outside the (homogenized) cultural group of “indian” foremost because sureel rejects all things indian until he meets maya. returning to the first research question introduced in this paper, we might come to understand the interstices between cultures as spaces fraught with discontent. indian culture and religion is first presented as a singular “traditional” entity against which all other dynamic identities exist. the film offers us a curriculum that necessarily homogenizes immigrant culture while presenting a multiplicity of possibilities offered to desi youth once that culture has been left behind. however, it is not that simple. there is a return to indian roots (through this filmic route) – a ausman. a curriculum of cultural translation: desi identities in american chai 35 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci translation of cultures that works in multiple directions. we see that elders are respected because sureel fears hurting the tradition of the indian family unit and his immigrant parents. in this way, indian culture interpellates the desi who has transgressed borders to become the “westernized” indian. as such, (third) spaces of desi self-identification not only amount to a separation of the self across multiple dimensions (how one might act with their “traditional” indian family versus one’s actions in front of american friends), but goes further. in the quantum concept of (third) spaces, the contradictory feelings of being american and indian at once are possible, as are simultaneous temporal and spatial representations of both. translation occurs as the possibility of “wearing” both identities simultaneously without being restricted to a description of hybridity that is necessarily linear, limited to existing “along-the-way” between indian and western cultures. from american chai, we learn that the desi person interpellated by western culture likewise brings indian values and culture to the west. cultural knowledge is shared multidirectionally and simultaneously. to add to this reading, i return to the second research question which asks how diasporic films work as a curriculum of living at the interstices of different cultural spaces. importantly, the concept of quantum (third) affords readers curricular opportunities to consider the intertextual function of analysing american chai against desi culture and other desi films. i am reminded of bakhtin’s (1986) thesis on intertextuality. he explains that “[t]he text lives only by coming into contact with another text (with context). only at the point of this contact between texts does a light flash, illuminating both the posterior and anterior, joining a different text to a dialogue” (p. 162). this assertion is based on the premise that an utterance in isolation is meaningless without other utterances to contextualize it. i would argue this for both films and the desi identities which they create and represent. diasporic films form part of a genre that creates the myth of a particular type of global citizen. the films are consumed worldwide, occupying different curricular spaces between cultures and generations. this is the terrain gillespie (1995) explores in her work studying ads that target punjabi youth in southall, england. ads are used to address the desi punjabi population, creating a particular kind of second-generation punjabi for public consumption – one who conforms to a national (british) view of citizenship but who importantly participates in a kind of aspirational “becoming” as a new kind of cultural citizen in the same space. similarly, these films ask desi viewers to contemplate their own (third) space positionality. looking intertextually between films and viewer (the kind of relationship stuart hall writes about in his explanation of encoding/decoding), my context as middle-class indo-canadian plays into my understanding of the films only decodable through my other acts of media consumption. i “get” the films because i feel they are staging a performance of a certain kind of identity formation in similar filmic vehicles i already identify with and have seen onscreen elsewhere. in terms of the intertextuality of desi identities in (third) spaces, the formation is outward from the filmic utterance itself. what this creates is a static space and identity that is “indian” and which remains somehow unchanging because it is “traditional.” american chai features desis created newly through their resistance to these “traditional” indian values. the theme of transgression necessarily implies a casting-off of home culture and assimilation into an alternate culture (with dangerous implications). sure enough, american chai puts forth these fears. sureel’s father relates his real experience of racism and loss on account of immigration. his experiences remind us of the effects of colonialism that still live inside diasporas. yet the diasporas themselves develop new identities – pushing representations outwards as stores, street signs, temples, and communities emerge in immigrant locales outside india. desi films create what appadurai (1990) calls “mediascapes” about such communities: ausman. a curriculum of cultural translation: desi identities in american chai 36 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci mediascapes…tend to be image centred, narrative-based accounts of strips of reality, and what they offer to those who experience and transform them is a series of elements (such as characters, plots, and textual forms) out of which scripts can be formed of imagined lives, their own as well as those of others living in other places. (p. 9) diasporic films are such mediascapes where carefully constructed images of indian communities abroad become the foundation for an industry which circulates the symbolic ethnicity of an entire generation. desi films in general take snippets of diasporic realities and fictionalizes them, creating stories around real events that play out in desi families everywhere, thereby universalizing and reinforcing the symbolic function of desis onscreen. american chai importantly cracks apart the concept of india as a fixed (cultural) place to offer a translation of indian cultural identities within the indo-american diaspora. seemingly frozen-in-time, sureel’s parents are part of a fictional, static, traditional india. however, the “traditional” india for which the parents have nostalgia and upon whose imagined values they base their parenting, no longer exists. moving through time and space, the work of identification with a modern india is a difficult challenge for those living in the diaspora who might not have been home for many years. not only are desi identities thus shaped against and outward from a non-existent traditional india, but we have to recognize the (third) space mobility of that india – one which identifies with and against a multitude of global/western pressures. perhaps what desi films do best is expose how india has become both an imagined and imaginary place. earlier in this paper, i contended that quantum (third) spaces take up the concept of representation on a personal level (identifying with mixed cultural influences and outward selfrepresentation) and through the filmic vehicle (representation on the big screen). they also exist on a national level – as an india (re)shaping itself for public consumption abroad. the choice of parents in this film resides in their pretence that their culture does not transform – that somehow it is immune to working “at both ends of the migration chain” (watson, 1977, p. 2). this view’s roots/routes lie in public media and research that even today writes diasporic communities as always “displaced” from a homeland. the binary of “home” and “abroad” that makes a mythical india the place where so-called “traditional” values reside, keeps diasporas on the periphery of mainstream western societies. “diasporic discourse in this context,” kirshenblatt-gimblett (1994) explains, “is strong on displacement, detachment, uprooting, and dispersion – on disarticulation. it is appealing precisely because it so easily lends itself to a strategic disaggregation of territory, people, race, language, culture, religion, history, and sovereignty” (p. 339). sureel’s immigrant parents can be read against this habit of representing immigrant communities abroad as static and unmoving in a way that confounds the real global movements in time and space of indian culture, products, and people. i look at the struggles of the indian diaspora onscreen as representations of a process of becoming through the self-representational apparatus of (third) spaces – modes of representation that lack fixity in time (across generations) and space (across countries and continents). though this might seem like an attempt to universalize the hybrid experience, to reduce it to a single trope, it is not. my response to this film – those things which struck me most, and even my personal identification with and against particular representations of desi identity, are part of what forms my self-representation in the very real diaspora in which i live. my curricular engagement with the film involved learning how i am formed by desi films through the act of ausman. a curriculum of cultural translation: desi identities in american chai 37 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci interpretation, and how i might carry new self-formations with each viewing into the world as an indo-canadian woman living in quebec. finally, let me address the following curricular question, “why study diasporic films?” these are not films whose stories reinforce allegories of nation-building, nor are they narrations of essentialist paradigms of certain “ethnic” identities. they stand in-between. even though the body of indian diasporic films is characterized by a certain racialized group (first and second generation indians), i challenge the view that the films must represent a particular form of multiculturalism – what mercer (1994) terms the “burden of representation” (p. 92). these are not films whose task is to represent minority cultures in a strictly positive light in an anti-racist struggle against (white) western presumptions. nor do i feel they are meant to speak for communities as a whole. my analysis of american chai is a responses to the act of viewing the film in a single time and place, and this makes the moment of viewing unique not only to me, but to each desi and non-desi viewer alike. these films render both their objects, and viewer subjects, heterogeneous and hybrid in our multiplicity of reactions to filmic representations. note 1 tausman@wqsb.qc.ca mailto:tausman@wqsb.qc.ca ausman. a curriculum of cultural translation: desi identities in american chai 38 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci references anderson, j. m. (2002, may 17). sweet, stale, 'chai'. retrieved march 20, 2011, from combustible celluloid: http://www.combustiblecelluloid.com/2002/amerchai.shtml aoki, t. (2005). curriculum in a new key. new york: routledge. appadurai, a. (1990). disjuncture and difference in the global economy. public culture: bulletin of the project for transnational cultural studies, 2, 2-14. asher, n. (2003). engaging difference: towards a pedagogy of interbeing. teaching education, 14(3), 235-247 asher, n. (2009). decolonization and education: locating pedagogy and self at the interstices in global times. in r. s. (ed.), postcolonial challenges in education (pp. 67-77). new york: peter lang. asher, n. (2009). writing home/decolonizing text(s). discourse: studies in the cultural politics of education, 30(1), 1-13. bakhtin, m. (1986). speech genres and other late essays. (c. emerson, m. holquist, eds., & v. w. mcgee, trans.) austin: university of texas press. beck, u. (2009). cosmopolitanization without cosmopolitans: on the distinction between normative and empirical-analytical cosmopolitanism in philosophy and social sciences. in k. ikas, & g. wagner (eds.), communicating in the third space (pp. 11-25). new york: routledge. bhabha, h. (1994). the location of culture. new york: routledge. bhabha, h. (2000). interrogating identity. in p. du gay, & j. evans (eds.), identity: a reader (pp. 94-101). london: sage. bhabha, h. k. (1987). interrogating identity. identity documents 6, 5-11. brussat, f., & brussat, m. a. (2002). film review: american chai. retrieved march 20, 2011, from spirituality & practice: www.spiritualityandpractice.com/films/films.php?id=4093 edgerton, s. h. (1996). translating the curriculum. new york: routledge. gelder, l. v. (2002, april 5). a timeless tale with an indian spin. retrieved march 20, 2011, from the new york times: www.nytimes.com/2002/04/05/movies/05chai.html?pagewanted=print giardina, m. d. (2003). "bending it like beckham" in the global popular: stylish hybridity, performativity, and the politics of representation. journal of sport and social issues, 27(1), 65-82. gillespie, m. (1995). telivision, ethnicity, and cultural change. london: routledge. giroux, h. a. (2002). breaking into the movies: film and the culture of politics. malden: blackwell publishers. hall, s. (1997). representation: cultural representations and signifying practices. thousand oaks: sage. hooks, b. (1990). marginality as a site of resistance. in r. ferguson, m. gever, m.-h. t.t., & c. west (eds.), out there: marginalization and contemporary cultures (pp. 241-43). cambridge: mit univeristy press. hooks, b. (1994). teaching to trangress: education as the practice of freedom. new york: routledge. ibrahim, a. (2008). the new flaneur. cultural studies, 22(2), 234-253. kirshenblatt-gimblett, b. (1994). spaces of dispersal. cultural anthropology, 9, 339-344. ausman. a curriculum of cultural translation: desi identities in american chai 39 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (2) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci mehta, a. (director). (2001). american chai [motion picture]. mercer, k. (1994). welcome to the jungle. new york: routledge. minister of public works and government services canada. (february 2011). annual report on the operation of the canadian multiculturalism act. retrieved from citizenship and immigration canada: http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/resources/publications/multireport2010/index.asp new london group. (1996). a pedagogy of multiliteracies: designing social futures. harvard educational review, 66(1), 60-92. ng-a-fook. (2009). toward understanding a curriculum of being inhabgited by the language of the other. transnational curriculum inquiry, 6(2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <march 20, 2011> robertson, j. (1995). screenplay pedagogy, and the interpretation of unexamined knowledge in pre-service primary teaching. taboo: the journal of culture and education, 1, 25-59. soja, e. w. (1996). thirdspace: journeys to los angeles and other real-and-imagined places. oxford: blackwell. trinh, t. m.-h. (1999). cinema interval. new york: routledge. wang, h. (2004). the call from the stranger on a journey home: curriculum in a third space. new york: peter lang. watson, j. (ed.). (1977). between two cultures. oxford: blackwell. williams, l. (1998). melodrama revised. in n. browne, refiguring american film genres: history and theory (pp. 42-88). berkley: university of california press. young, r. j. (2009). the void of misgiving. in k. ikas, & g. wagner (eds.), communicating in the third space (pp. 81-95). new york: routledge. submitted: july, 12 th , 2011 approved: september, 30 th , 2011 o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: southwell, m. (2017). school and future: failed interpellations. transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> school and future: failed interpellations myriam southwell1 university of la plata and flacso, argentina introduction the future has been a strong structuring notion of the development of the school from its origin and until today, we could say that it is an inherent notion to the very idea of school. modern school was consolidated through an articulation between education and utopia: society would be what school made of it. this notion is reactualized whenever it is argued that some social phenomena arise as a result of insufficient school education from aspects that can range from solidarity and democratic values, to traffic laws and tax education. my interest in this article is to problematize this school / future articulation by dwelling on the ways in which it is currently enunciated in our schools, as well as on the evocation usually made of how that formulation worked in the not too distant past. i am also interested in analyzing whether this is the only way with a universalist claim that the school can be linked to the future or whether it is a particular story, and thus one of several possible ways. finally, we will conclude by proposing some possibilities to recreate that relationship. perceptions about the future to begin, we will present some testimonies of principals of secondary schools of the provinces of neuquén, salta, buenos aires and buenos aires city (argentina). these testimonies were collected through a research program "intersections between inequality and secondary education: an analysis of the dynamics of production and reproduction of school and social inequality in four jurisdictions" which began in 2006 and has been continued through different projects. a conceptual aspect that should be highlighted is that the principals' perception of who the school students are and who they can be, what role the community has and what kind of links with the culture the school must lead, model, configure and establishes strong marks on the decisions that promote certain training experiences for the young people who attend them. thus, a central conceptual element for our analysis is the perfomatic character of language, that is, following austin (1962/1988), performative acts must be considered in terms of their effectiveness, success or failure, and the effects they produce. it is about the production of subjects, that is, the constitution of subjects as effects of the meaning of social discourses, which form significant frameworks that interpellate subjects through different subjective "types", constituting them (young, excluded, student, delinquent, etc). as we will explore later, interpellation as a form of nomination produces the subject by establishing the coordinates of their identification southwell. school and future 57 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci and therefore their positioning (and existence) in the network of relationships that structure the social. interpellation does not address a subject that already exists prior to this act, but produces it in its own operation. the very gesture that "places us" in the framework of social meaning, invests us with a power to be and to do. it constitutes us in the social existence and enables us to be able to do from that positioning. what perceptions do principals have about the future of their students? what links exist between these perceptions and the horizon of school action? the following testimonies arose from consulting the principals about the future they envision for their students and what is the impact of the school in relation to that future. responses significantly varied based on the social sector to which students belong: the students know that the secondary certificate serves them to be repositories of merchandise in (supermarket), they know that they arrive there, nothing more, but the objective of the school would be to achieve something else" (state school, buenos aires city that attends middle-low classes). they are students who are still pursuing progress, who expect the school to give them a degree for their job, without many aspirations, of course. the secondary school gives them certifications ... maybe, in their perspective, the university is not yet much. here, for example, many of these families are registered to be police, for the army, for the armed forces in general "(state school, province of salta, which serves the lower class). for these students? i believe that they have no insertion (...) in these cases i believe that our children are disadvantaged because they are young people who do not have facilities to access some work, much less thinking about their orientation: mercantile expert. that's something we see, our graduates are working in a supermarket, they are not working in an accounting studio, they are helping as secretaries. (...) "and, i do not know if i see them studying, i do not think most of them go to the university" (school state, province of neuquén, that attends to lower class). i think most of them do not want anything, they want social assistance and nothing else, they do not have aspirations, they have no future, they will get a taxi driver" (state school, buenos aires province, which serves low sectors). we also asked principals how they would define "being literate," and what they think their students should know to live better in the world. the responses in this case also varied significantly based on the social sector to which the students belong: p: do you think this guidance you have, does it tools to the students? if i have to be honest, i do not think so. (...) we cannot get them to read and write well; decades ago, a pupil who could not read and write well could not approve or finish primary school. now ... one day we receive them, and they finish secondary school without knowing how to read, write and understand. thus, they will not be able to understand the texts of study at the university. (state school, province of buenos aires that attends to lower class). we do not succeed, the school fails to overcome what they bring, they bring a lack of reading and writing, some grammatical errors and a lack of understanding that southwell. school and future 58 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the secondary school years can not reverse. despite all the efforts made at school when high school is over and professional studies are started ... the teachers themselves tell them that they have a very low level, and that they can’t continue ... then they fail (state school, buenos aires city that attends lowand middle-low sectors). i imagine some of the students on their land because, given the agricultural orientation of the school, the activities they have in their homes, i imagine them in their land. to other students i imagine them working in the companies because they long to work in companies. and others, quiet. (state school, province of salta that attends low sectors). students talk a little, as is customary in their homes ... and it is something that will not allow them to be able to perform in the labor market, and continue university studies. (...) what i hope is that they continue studying. and i do not know if they will be able to continue studying, i think that as things stand, it will not be possible, at least for the majority. (state school, province of neuquén, that attends lower class). let us focus on some of the highlights that leave these testimonies. there seems to be no future surplus for students, especially those belonging to the most impoverished sectors; what could be a recognition of diversity (multiculturalism and different levels of knowledge) ends up describing a situation of social inequality that disrupts the life of the school. from diversity to inequality: this is a displacement that, on many occasions, "naturalizes" the different levels of knowledge as an inexorable product of social origin. there is a school production of its own, and not just a reproduction: to the extent that origin is seen as destiny, and just like that, there is an action done by the school (dussel, 2008). there is also a general view that the school has very little impact on that future, an almost null possibility of altering inexorable destinies; the possibilities of transforming and improving conditions seem to involve not the school, but rather more general political and economic institutions away from school. frequently, the horizon is restricted to providing basic skills (associated even to primary schooling). secondary schooling would not be an extension of this basic training, but a recovery of time lost in previous years. these perspectives conspire against the formation of reflexive and critical subjects, with an impact on collective dynamics. in the testimonies included, there are references to behavior that are associated with a certain social sector (even when social class issues are not directly mentioned). in some cases, although there is not so much discontinuity in the social sectors of teachers and students, a vision of separate and opposing worlds persists (dussel, 2008). in that sense, there is a consideration of the "inferior condition" of the new social subjects who entered secondary school in the last decade and is expressed in a construction of an opposition: "they", young people, new students and a "we": the adults, who were already here. "they" have different codes, different values. expressions such as "we" receive them but "they" fail to reveal that dichotomy us-them and does not provide the best conditions to think about the incidence of what is done daily in school so that students have better tools for through a complex world. in the scenario that we have been describing, institutions are positioned in different ways based on the idea of the future that they favor for their students and different ways in which they read their own formative potential. likewise, the values raised by the principals account for a nostalgia that the school "before" contained a perspective of the future and was effective in that task, nevertheless, our present schools seem to have irretrievably lost that horizon. this can be seen in different aspects, for southwell. school and future 59 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci example, a growing "resignation" with which they understand the conditions of departure of their students, the potentiality they assign to the school or socio-cultural characteristics of the nearest environment. in short, because the school does not empower the future that used to have as a horizon, then, that strengthens the feeling that there is no future for these students. conceptions of future as we mentioned at the beginning, the notion of future structured the very idea of school from its origins. however, we would like to dwell on two aspects. on the one hand, this generalized and unquestionable notion of the future consisted of a peculiar construction that consolidated a particular set of values. secondly, in the schools where our research was carried out, there was often a conviction that "futures were those of the past", but it is necessary to examine whether the argentine school of the past decades was constructing an inclusive, promising and equalizing future for the whole population. we will begin by examining this second aspect in order to expand the argument on the former. our analysis will be maintained at the middle school level, as will the testimonies with which we have begun the same. brief history of the school model when analyzing the relationship between secondary school and the horizon it opens for young people, it is important to revisit the history of the secondary level, as it provides some structuring elements of school organization and its founding myths that are still valid (see dussel , 1997 and 2008, tenti, 2003, southwell, 2011). the history of secondary school in argentina raises substantive differences to that of primary education. while primary education was aimed at the whole population, with an institutional organization that provided massive coverage, in secondary education its role was linked to the formation of elites, a characteristic that with the expansion of the level remained as part of its internal logic. the first secondary schools even before the construction of the argentine educational system were thought of as preparatory education. this was defined by their relationship with university education, on which they depended. they shared their same characteristics, the titles conferring only made sense within the longer course by university studies. its main objectives were the formation of aristocracy and bureaucracy, colonial first and national later. to fulfill these functions, the preparatory schools had a strongly ritualistic and formalist character. in the period 1863 1890, the model of national schools (like public school) was developed in all the important cities of argentina; the national school model carried a unified model of liberal education in big cities of the country. the humanities became a sign of cultural distinction, but also a technology of the self, in terms of which involved a governing work of the individual's passions and inclinations (dussel, 1997). being able to speculate and contemplate nature, or "high culture" were part of a more general transformations in the ways in which individuals should govern themselves (hunter, 1988). it was an educational modality that covered a very low percentage of the population (less than 1%), belonging to the upper class of society. this model persisted with slight modifications throughout the 20th century, and included the existence of some educational institutions as reference models for all institutions. the expansion of secondary schooling did not take place until the late 20th century, in the first decades of which different vocational modalities were created for social sectors that would’t enter higher education. however, as gallart’ (2006) and acosta’ (2008) studies have shown, new vocational modalities had less social value than than "bachiller" (upper secondary education graduate) for upper and rising southwell. school and future 60 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci middle clases, in the first decades of the 20th century. throughout the twentieth century there was an expansion of enrollment (in 1960, 24.5% of young people and adolescents aged 13 to 18 attended secondary school). however, as the system grew more, as droped out grew up. tedesco (1986) points out in 1886-1891 period drop out in the national colleges was 68%. several recent papers indicates that the graduation rate was 50% in 1950. it achieved a positive evolution in the mid-1960s when nearly 70% of students graduated. this rate abruptly declined towards 1980s and was around 40% in the 1990s, a rate lower than 1950 (acosta, 2008). between 1960 and 1980, there were attempts to modify the traditional structure of secondary school by other more "appropriate" modalities for massification processes. at that time, most establishments continued to form programs of the late nineteenth century, only partially modified in 1957 and ideologically retouched in 1983. with the return of democracy, in 1983, there was an increase in enrollment (whereas in 1960, 24.5 per cent of young people and adolescents between the ages of 13 and 18 attended secondary school, in 1996 the figure was 67.2 per cent). also maintained an institutional model based on the rigid model of the humanist baccalaureate. the school appeared as a rigid, almost prison space that allowed confronting, opposing, and also recognizing itself in that mirror of differentiation and identification that constitutes adolescent subjectivity (kancyper, 2003). it is worth asking, how much of this matrix remains and how much has been transformed? this description does not seem to correspond with the argentine secondary schools we know today, although some schools are still attached to certain rigid rituals and disciplinary guidelines, it is not generally perceived that a school is felt as a prison institution, or that the authorities or schedules are totally inflexible. looking at historical and current perspectives, the role of secondary school as preparing for distinction and social hierarchy, has remained present even when classrooms were occupied by students who did not belong to the elite. this history constituted a persistent matrix -with slight modificationsthroughout the entire twentieth century. as dussel (2008) argues: "among the elements of this lasted grammar, we can emphasize the centralized organization, (...); the encyclopedic humanistic curriculum as the basis of the hierarchy of knowledge established by the school; the organization of classrooms, rituals and school discipline that followed rigid forms, centered on adults and designed for the elite formation; the structure of schedules that perpetuated the fragmentation of knowledge and the disarticulation of the formative proposal in small topics”. moreover, there is an aspect that defines secondary schools identity: during all that time, a sense of "belonging" to a select group, and that belonging implied a formation that gave certain identity that unified teachers and students in the perception of doing something meaningful for their lives, and for the country. the current secondary schools are the result of two tendencies in the face of the challenge of massification: the tendency towards the continuity of the institutional model of the elite humanistic schools in the face of the tendency of rupture that supposed new modalities produced in the moment of expansion of the school high school. this form of configuration of secondary level institutions functioned as a model, an image for the schooling of young people, which often constituted a limit to the principle of equality of the republican proposal (acosta, 2008). on the other hand, this model included a perspective of the future oriented to the inclusion in the administration of the state that was being formed and expanded, to dialogue with a certain hierarchy of academic knowledge where some social experiences were left out (such as manual labor and trades ), in order to fulfill already expected and scarce social roles and leaving aside other vital experiences while being a student: parenthood and work among others. southwell. school and future 61 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci perhaps the appeal to that horizon of academic formation, rigid and ritualistic in today's middle schools in another society and with broader social sectors is the basis of a failed interpellation; a mismatch between institutional and curricular organization, on the one hand, and forms of relationship, authority and expectations. interpellations about the future in the previous sections we raised a problem about the future prospects in our schools. i wrote that in these assessments operates a historical matrix of the school that is central to the adults of the institution, but that does not seem to affect the young people who study in them. we call that failure an unsuccessful interpellation. we will briefly dwell on a conceptual analysis of the notion of interpellation. the notion of interpellation was described by althuser in 1969 as a function by which individuals recognize themselves as subjects, that is, in this process the subject is articulated, constituted and subject to recognition in a specific identity. althusser refers to the ways in which subjects are called to place themselves in certain social roles, interpellated by various ideological apparatuses (family, church, school, among others). we will take the rosa n. buenfil burgos’ definition (1993) on interpellation as an educational act: what specifically concerns an educational process consists, from an interpellation practice, that the agent is constituted as an active educational agent incorporating some new content, behavioral, conceptual, etc., into this interpellation, that modifies his daily practice in terms of a more grounded reaffirmation. that is, from identification models proposed from a specific discourse (religious, family, school, mass communication), the subject is recognized in said model, feel alluded to or accept the invitation to be that which is proposed (buenfil, 1993: 18-9). following the pilar padierna’ analysis (2008), we will characterize interpellation as a process of invitation to recognize oneself in a discourse and be part of it, which involves a series of phases: 1. one related to discursive production from the issuer; this production of an interpellatory discourse is overdetermined by a series of factors that converge in its production 2. that refers to the incorporation or rejection of elements of that interpellation by the subjects 3. the resignification and enactment of the new identity configuration as well as the production of own interpellations (padierna, 2008: 109-10). zizek (2001), supported by lacanian studies, affirms that in order for the subject to be "hooked" in the identification process, interpellation is necessary (but not any) insists that a presymbolic mythical intention, present in the phantom created by the other, is necessary. that is, the hidden reference to some element that in the fantasy of the subject will fill the lack. thus, the subject identifies himself with an interpellation in a retroactive way, that is, he engages in the chain of the signifier (interpellation), and once the sense is fixed, it means retroactively. thanks to the retroversion effect, the identification is lived by the subject as full, as something that has always been there and that responds to his desires. southwell. school and future 62 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the adherence of the subject to the interpellatory discourse is not given in block, but with specific elements in which it is represented. the elements put into play through interpellation play an important role in achieving membership. no discourse can fully encompass a social space to account for all the feasible conditions to be retaken by subjects to adhere to their cause; in the same way, the subjects questioned do not accept this invitation as a whole, but rather they are inclined towards different elements that fill the fault (not rational, nor capable of being filled). through interpellation a serie of practices is developed that allow subjects to recognize themselves as members of the group and carry out actions to achieve their objectives. the subjects are constituted by identifying themselves with speeches that address them from multiple references. not only large social spaces form subjects, the identification process is also possible in small spaces, in the local community, in the intimacy of the family, etc. (padierna, 2008: 111-2). in short, interpellation is one of the factors that significantly influences the conformation of social identities. from the adhesion or rejection of various interpellations, subjects recognize themselves as members of diverse collectivities, perform actions, allow them to signify their social practice and elaborate new discourses leading transformation, to a greater or lesser extent, of the social grammar young people who attend secondary school today are not interpellated by the formative proposal, nor the notion of the future proper to the historical matrix that we have characterized, although some elements of that old discourse are resignified and relocated in new formulations. many analyzes associate this difficulty with young people’ disinterest or their difficult living conditions. in short, one of the factors that significantly influences the conformation of social identities is interpellation. from the adhesion or rejection to diverse interpellations, the subjects recognize themselves as members of diverse collectivities, perform actions that allow them to signify their social practice and elaborate new discourses that lead to the transformation, to a greater or lesser extent, of the grammar social. the young people who attend secondary school today are not questioned by the formative proposal, nor the notion of future proper to the historical matrix that we have characterized, although some elements of that old discourse are resignified and relocated in new formulations. many analyzes associate this difficulty with "disinterest" of young people or their difficult living conditions. it is necessary to attend to the heart of the problem: purpose, conception, model and organization of secondary school itself. is the secondary school merely transmitting the demands? what place does the school have in the offer of other social and cultural possibilities? can it do something to distort what is perceived as "social destinations"? what symbolic and material universe does it offer to students from different social groups? the ways in which students are understood, intergenerational bonds in which we include them or forms of estrangement with which we conceive them, generates different paths for the potential of schools and the futures that are opened. these lines can contribute to expansion of educational outlook to different social spaces where subjects are developing novel practices not only in big spaces, but also interaction with media and languages. a future for everyone? in the above explanation the question was explored whether future promised by school was democratizing. as some studies have suggested (power et al., 2003) the history of the school is the history of the middle classes, especially in secondary school, for the reasons we have outlined above. and this is true, not only because the middle class were the ones who made the most out of education system, but above all southwell. school and future 63 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci because they managed to make education system take their values, conceptions and ways of life as their own and disseminate them as values of schooling and consecrate them as the universal values to which every educated person should adhere. in this way, those certain ideas associated with schooling were shaped as the universal sense of it. this construction in argentina was articulated with academic curriculum and with a hierarchical social model. let us dwell a moment on that relationship between the universal and the particular that we outline. we have learned with ernesto laclau that universalism and particularism are two ineradicable dimensions in political identities, but the form of the articulation between the two is not evident. among historical forms in which a relationship between universality and particularity was thought of, there are those in which the individual realizes in himself the universal that is, he eliminates himself as a private individual and becomes a transparent medium in which universality opera (the idea of pedagogical civilization and school culture has enough of this); or they denied the universal affirming their own particularism (laclau, 1996: 47). the separation between the universal and the particular is ineliminable and this we are interested in emphasizing the universal is nothing other than a particular that at one point has become hegemonic. for this reason, our point of departure has been to situate school format as the way in which a contingent and arbitrary series of reasons and instrumentations became hegemonic. we must also say that modern school format had tensions around the particular and the universal but built a hegemony based on some particularisms that became an inscription surface for all that was meant as a school and, even more, as education. the best of the enlightened ideology and the educational systems that embodied it was a policy of massive distribution of knowledge; in that logic, the presence of the closest environment projected to a more universal scenario contributed to ascending social mobility and an opening towards other worlds. it must also be said that nothing indicates that these knowledge were emancipatory, nor egalitarian, nor inclusive by themselves. we have sought to put this in evidence with the description of the historical matrix of the argentine secondary school, designed to include the population considered in a position to prosper and direct. today, the inclusion of social sectors that had not had a massive presence in secondary school has posed challenges for that historical matrix that was constituted as a typical identity of "us" in front of the confusion and the problems that were posed by the arrival of "the new ones". this own force that has the historical matrix in the imaginary of those who "make" school, facilitates that young people are looked at very frequently in terms of deficits that become sometimes insurmountable. this not only happens as a consequence of social inequality but also as a result of institutionalized patterns of interpretation and evaluation that constitute someone as not deserving of respect or legitimacy to occupy a certain position. school translates social inequality with clues that reproduce hierarchies and long-standing school classification systems, especially in relation to the old elitism of secondary schools, but that are updated and renewed with other languages. what are the options? to leave out of school those who are new and whose schooling must be guaranteed by law? or revise the particular conception of the future that proposed that matrix and renew it to make it more inclusive? if the old mandates have declined in their enunciative efficacy, that is, in their power to interpellate and constitute subjects, we will have to examine what we understand by secondary school and with what future possibilities we can enrich it. examine, also, if what we recognize with the name of secondary school includes the type and multiplicity of experiences that take place today in the concrete schools. southwell. school and future 64 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci a possibility of democratization, then, is linked to new practices that in our society had restricted the universalism of our political ideals, that is, to limited sectors of the population. it is possible to retain the universal dimension at the same time as spheres of its application are expanded, which in turn redefines concrete contents of this universality. universalism, as a horizon, expands, while breaking its necessary link with all particular content. a new look on the notion of the future we want to return to the problem with which we started this article, because we continue to worry that our schools coexist with a feeling that there is no future for the students that attend and that it can not be reversed. once we affirmed that the generalized conception of the future was and is a particular construction that became generalized as universal, because it managed to be hegemonic and that we established the need for new forms of interpellation as practices for the constitution of subjects, we can and that is our proposal affirm that the notion of the future is an empty signifier. with the use of empty significant category we refer to certain terms that are the object of an ideological struggle in society. therefore, these terms tend to be tendentially empty signifiers never totally empty due to the fact that, given the plurality of conflicts that occur around them, they can not be fixed to a single discursive articulation (laclau, 1996). also, this characteristic of emptiness is what makes them liable to be articulated to different meanings and, therefore, a powerful ground for different positions. if, on the other hand, they were very fixed terms, they would not have the potential to become an inscription surface of different meanings and therefore they would lose potentiality as enunciators and articulators. futuro is an empty signifier that functioned as an inscription surface for different conceptions, models of society, notions about the insertion of young people and the integration of different social sectors. also at present, in that presupposition that the school no longer qualifies for the future, those notions sedimented around the notion of future are updated. what perspectives are open? trying to restore that future construction that accompanied the constitution of the nation-state and the slow expansion of the system? is not this failed restitution of the notion of the future that accompanied another social model? is that restitution productive to analyze contemporary society and the young people who are students today? if democracy is possible, it is because the universal has neither a necessary form nor content; on the contrary, diverse groups compete to give their particularisms a function of universal representation. society generates a whole vocabulary of empty signifiers whose temporary senses are the result of political competition. it is this final failure of society to constitute itself as a society, which makes the distance between the universal and the particular insurmountable and, as a result, puts the "concrete social agents in charge of this unrealizable task, which is what makes the democratic interaction" (laclau, 1996: 68). our proposal is then to articulate the future signifier with other notions that, instead of restoring certain social structures and hierarchies of knowledge that were consolidated on the basis of a restricted and expulsion school system, allow us to think about an approach to the future that includes in a richer way characteristics of our contemporary society and students as an expression of it. the history of designed reforms for that level is very extensive, we could say it has more than one hundred years of history. in those reforms was present the persistent question for who was a school?, whom to include and for what social place? but in addition, permanent concern about its reform or revision, realized very early on some southwell. school and future 65 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci crucial aspects were not included in classic model, the one that -in occasionsis exalted. there were necessary knowledge that the old model did not contain: preparation for the labor market (a problem that persisted throughout the 20th century), a more autonomous cultural model that was not a simple adherence to the european model, conceptions about young people they will not always imply a relationship of subordination, the incorporation of autonomous paths or local adaptations, among other aspects (dussel and southwell, 2008). we believe that analysis we have done allows us to address the key problem: purpose, conception, model and organization of the secondary school itself. examine your internal logic, your priorities, the horizon for which you educate, how it is inscribed in the culture, what selection of it teaches, what it includes and what it excludes, are some significant issues. thus, we can avoid the blaming of young people for not possessing what school does not manage to generate in them. we allude with this to the revision of the school culture. this concept, used by historians of education since the second half of the nineties, is defined as "a set of norms that define the knowledge to teach and the behaviors to inculcate, and a set of practices that allow the transmission and assimilation of said knowledge and the incorporation of these behaviors "(julià cited in viñao, 2002: 203). this category seeks to emphasize that the school is not a simple reproducer of the global culture that is intended to transmit institutionally to new generations. school culture is one that can only be acquired at school and whose production involves teachers, government officials, students, managers, parents, experts and other agents involved in the field of education. a revision of the school format can enable the production of other discursive constructions, ensuring that other future productions include a plurality of meanings around the diversity of the formative experience and, therefore, relocating other particularisms in a new hegemonic conformation. a discursive construction where notion of school does not continue to be equivalent to middle class, urban, western european values, referenced around elite education but can include young workers, with different codes and provisions, with greater openness to new knowledge and experiences. but in addition, another question that becomes evident is that school form can be modified so that it is not the target population that must transform its internal logic; it is their effectiveness and not that of the individuals that must be put under the spotlight. an exercise like this should give us the chance to redisplay invisibilizaciones, injustices and exclusions that included the most widespread form school as a way to question, tighten and, why not renew the school. this path can advance in a proposal that is not a return to a school model that has shown its limits, but rather to foster a renewed link with society and culture. i would like to end with a reflection by a manager interviewed: how do you see your students in the future, how do you imagine them as citizens, as workers? first of all, as coworkers. (private technical school, province of buenos aires, which serves the middle and lower-middle sectors). notes 1 islaesmeralda@gmail.com references acosta, f. (2008) la incorporación y expulsión simultánea como matriz de la escuela secundaria de masas en la argentina: modelos institucionales y desgranamiento en la mailto:islaesmeralda@gmail.com southwell. school and future 66 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci escuela secundaria durante el siglo xx, ii jornadas de doctorado en ciencias sociales, facultad latinoamericana de ciencias sociales. austin, j. (1988) cómo hacer cosas con palabras, barcelona, paidós, 1988. buenfil burgos, r. n. (1993) análisis del discurso y educación, méxico df: diecinvestav. dussel, i. (1997) currículum, humanismo y democracia en la enseñanza media (1863 – 1920). buenos aires: flacso/uba (oficina de publicaciones del cbc). dussel, i. (2008) ¿qué lugar tiene la escuela media en la producción y reproducción de la desigualdad? elementos para el debate, en revista de política educativa, universidad de san andrés, buenos aires. dussel, i.; southwell, m. (2008) escuela media: los desafíos de la inclusión masiva, el monitor de la educación. revista del ministerio de educación de la nación, año v quinta época, no. 19, buenos aires, noviembre 2008 gallart, m. a. (2006) la construcción social de la escuela media. una aproximación institucional. buenos aires: editorial stella/la crujía. hunter, i. (1998) repensar la escuela. subjetividad, burocracia y crítica. barcelona: pomares. kancyper, l. (2003) la confrontación generacional. estudio psicoanalítico. buenos aires: editorial lumen. laclau, e. (1996) emancipación y diferencia, buenos aires, ariel. laclau, e. (2005) la razón populista, buenos aires, fondo de cultura económica. padierna jiménez, m. p. (2008) interpelación y procesos educativos en movimientos sociales. giros teóricos en las ciencias sociales y humanidades, córdoba, edit. comunicarte. power, s.; edwards, t.; whitty, g. and wigfall, v. (2003) education and the middle class, buckingham, open university press tedesco, j. c. (1986) educación y sociedad en la argentina (1880-1945). buenos aires: ediciones del solar. tenti fanfani, e. (2003) educación media para todos. los desafíos de la democratización del acceso. buenos aires: fundación osde-iipe-unesco-editorial altamira. viñao, a. (2002) sistemas educativos, culturas escolares y reformas. continuidades y cambios. madrid: morata. zizek, s. (ed.) (2003) ideología: un mapa de la cuestión, fondo de cultura económica, buenos aires submitted: november, 20th, 2017 approved: december, 8th, 2017 o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: appelbaum, peter. (2013). tropological curriculum studies: puppets and statues of quagmires. transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (1). http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> tropological curriculum studies: puppets and statues of curriculum quagmires 1 peter appelbaum 2 arcadia university, usa there is a never-ending tension between conceiving of educational experience as enabling and as constraining. we seem locked into this dichotomy with no escape: in the character of curriculum studies, william pinar (2011) notes that the sociology of education, so dominant in the field of curriculum studies, has seemingly “won out” as the clearest interpretation of schooling: schools are institutions of social reproduction. rather than accepting this idea and moving on, we perseverate, constantly creating new research projects that reconfirm the hypothesis, which of course, in foucauldian terms, makes for a successful perpetuation of practice and guarantees a career. but what would it mean to “move on”? a psychoanalyst would define repeated behaviors with no “results” as psychosis. if reproduction studies as social change is the result sought, then yes, we would have to recommend serious therapy for curriculum studies. if the goal is to establish careers in a field that excels at critiquing schooling, then we might instead celebrate our field as fairly healthy. regarding the possibility of “therapy” for our field of research: in his introduction to the puppet and the dwarf, žižek evokes hegel’s assertion that it is folly to alter a corrupt ethical system without changing the religion, to make a revolution without a reformation. the basic tension is not so much between reason and feeling, but instead between knowledge and a disavowed belief embodied in external ritual. that is, between logical consistency and the notion that “i know what i am doing, but nevertheless i am doing it.” bildung and the bildungsroman the origins of curriculum studies are comingled with the culture of the bildungsroman, a genre of literature in which a young person becomes an adult member of society, and through which one can understand or propose a form of education of the individual as a member of society. the premise is that there is a dialectic between the education of the individual in the broadest sense of education and the ongoing creation of a good society. i claim that most if not all of our efforts in curriculum studies accepts the “theology” of bildung and enacts the bildungsroman over and over again. in doing so, curriculum studies perpetuates the assumptions, tensions, and paradoxes of the genre ad infinitum. a quick geneaology begins with goethe’s wilhelm meister books, usually considered the first of the bildungsroman literary genre. the first of two books opens with wilhelm playing for countless hours with a miniature puppet theater. later, wilhelm secretly defies his parents’ expectations of working in the family business, and instead becomes a director of a traveling theater, realizing his childhood dream with live-action, human puppets that follow his direction. still later we come to realize that wilhelm’s defiance of his parents is critical to appelbaum. tropological curriculum studies: puppets and statues of curriculum quagmires 81 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (1) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the “most appropriate” education of all. a team of adults has spent years overseeing his adventures, like puppet masters behind the scenes, making sure that life-threatening yet important learning experiences don’t actually lead to death. in this way, fulfillment is achieved through practical activity that promotes the development of one’s own individual talents and abilities, which in turn lead to the development of society. in this way, goethe’s articulation of bildung, the education of the young adult, does not simply accept the socio-political status quo, but rather includes the ability to engage in a critique of one’s society, and to ultimately challenge the society to actualize its own highest ideals. perhaps ironically, in the end, wilhelm has been prepared by such critique to accept and embrace his social role. we see, thanks to goethe, that this seemingly liberating pedagogy but conserving philosophy relies on the careful crafting of the puppet show of life by wellmeaning adults. if i am right, that the historical genealogy of bildung and the bildungsroman might be a useful exercise, then one theme of such scholarship would be the unpacking of education as social reproduction, present in the ostensibly liberating and socially ameliorative idea of bildung itself. goethe’s well-known conservative politics set such an intimate link in motion from the start. as i have written elsewhere (appelbaum 2008), the bildungsroman literature, even as recent as the harry potter novels and films, repeatedly serves the function of facilitating our perseveration with the apparent paradox of a liberating pedagogy of autonomy for a conservative, social reproduction ad infinitum. our perseveration is a critical quagmire, a stutter that never stops. goethe’s genius, which can be applied to the analysis of this quagmire, is evident in the trope of the puppets. indeed, puppets are the metaphor endemic to pretty much all educational thought, from the teacher as crafter of a classroom theater to the use of objects and stories in the classroom to represent concepts and relationships. the artifacts of classroom life take on metaphorical puppet elements all of the time: a graph in a mathematics classroom becomes a voice through which a child explains her argument for or against an interpretation of the original word problem; a beaker and a styrofoam cup in biology lab allows a student to step outside of her assumptions about heat and cold in much the same way that a storyteller might use a potato prince to try on characteristics of a benevolent despot; base-ten blocks personify place value while the number of books in one’s stack of “those i’ve read” works like money in a theatrical candy store. much theorizing, from judith butler to anthony giddens to de certeau to louis althusser to simone de beauvoir, has helped us to perfect a discourse for demonstrating the simultaneous ideological limitations and revolutionary potential of such everyday practice. the difference emphasized by the puppet trope is between an actor who embodies roles, and a puppet that externalizes a self or an idea that can be looked at, as if in a mirror, or located on a map. it’s uncanny in the freudian sense. as we play this kind of teacher of that kind of student, we see ourselves and not ourselves in the bifurcation. and when we externalize a concept via a model, we are both outside ourselves and inside ourselves at the same time. we also become ourselves as we perform a self, always becoming and re-becoming ourselves in and with everyday practices. to treat oneself as a puppet in a puppet show is not quite the same thing as performing with or through puppets, because of the uncanny bifurcation as distinct from the very embodiment of our becoming. in this sense, we might more fully capture the spirit of a classroom if we think of the actors as statues come to life. before the classroom encounter, the students and teacher are ossified, so to speak, awaiting animation off-stage. the educational appelbaum. tropological curriculum studies: puppets and statues of curriculum quagmires 82 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (1) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci encounter is a fantasy of animation, bringing the actors and the curriculum to life. terms such as motivation are stand-ins for the magic of animation, of the bringing to life of sleeping or not-yet-born “learners” and “teachers.” a curriculum – in the sense of ralph tyler, the set of concepts and skills to be learned, something made and sculpted, something that “represents” cultural traditions, legacies, fears and fantasies -is usefully understood as a statue, fossilized and ossified until a school community gives it life, dead until reborn. an educational encounter is a pygmalion kiss. puppets and statues help us recognize that knowledge is sometimes mistakenly theorized as technology. it can become a prosthesis. attached to a human being, it gives him or her super powers beyond what could be done without the knowledge. more nuanced theories understand humans as co-emerging with their technologies. cyborgs, mixtures of the biological and the machine, digital and organic, are caught in webs of signification and complexification. yet in either case, prosthetic super-powers or cyborg mutation, we are stuck unable to understand the tensions and paradoxes among the individual and the group, structure and agency, signifier and signification. whether we imagine strapping on prostheses or transforming with our technologies, we are always also using puppets, communicating through and with puppets and statues, interacting with our puppets and statues, creating puppets and statues that are “real”, imagined, still and moving, things in themselves and representations. puppets and statues, if we pay attention to them, offer a chance to think about the plurality of semiotic signifieds. this is qualitatively different from wielding tools and weapons: instead of “use” we are looking at acts of concealment, revelation, substantiation, and evocation. puppets and animated statues help us understand our dreams of a moving, non-static curriculum. enter žižek žižek offers much to this conversation, especially in his fun book, the puppet and the dwarf. žižek is re-reading walter benjamin’s (1940) essay, “on the concept of history.” benjamin told of a seemingly mechanical chess player who could win every game: inside was a dwarf chess master who guided the moves of the puppet through strings and levers. for benjamin, the dwarf behind the chess player of contemporary thought was history, which was taken to be steering and manipulating all that follows. žižek updates the story, recognizing the more current role of theology as the dwarf hidden inside contemporary theory. this dwarf might be the dwarf of a people’s theology – a set of beliefs and practices simply accepted hegemonically as the reality in which one exists; or a positive theology – dogmas and rituals imposed by an all-powerful earth-bound or divine authority; or a theology of reason, the result of subjecting belief to enlightenment rational critique. žižek suggests in the style of lacan that our contemporary theory has as its divine authority the fundamental act of representation, that is, the puppet trope! the dwarf behind the theological puppet show that we call experience is none other than the authority of semiotics, the premise that everything is a signifier for everything else. žižek helps us see that “the real” is not external to the symbolic; the “real” is the symbolic itself (p.69). to bring this back to the quagmire of curriculum studies, that the very ideas of bildung are its own contradiction, and that the very contradictions of the field are its origins or its center, it can be useful to read žižek’s spin on origins and centers. in the appendix to the puppet and the dwarf, žižek uses the theology of representation to interrogate representation, and in so doing, he models a way of working, a method, that we can use ourselves. ideas, appelbaum. tropological curriculum studies: puppets and statues of curriculum quagmires 83 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (1) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci theories, concepts, plans: these are all reified in ways that are very much like a kinder surprise egg – a thin, mediocre chocolate egg with a plastic toy surprise inside. ostensibly people buy the egg for the chocolate, which they destroy quickly in order to reveal the surprise. in this way, the egg is a perfect example of lacan’s motto, “i love you, but, inexplicably, i love in you more than yourself, and therefore i destroy you.” (p. 145) in general, the egg is the example par excellence of l’object petite a, the small object filling the central void of our desire, the hidden treasure at the center of the thing we desire. the material void at the center stands for the structural gap on account of which of which no product is “really that” – no product lives up to its expectations; in other words, the small plastic toy is not simply different from chocolate (the product we bought) – while it is materially different, it fills the gap in chocolate itself. a commodity is a mysterious entity full of theological caprices, žižek writes, a particular object satisfying a particular need, but at the same time, promising something more. what do we desire? educational experiences that are meaningful, rich, empowering, socially transformative? at the center of schooling is always a void, and what is filling that void is always promising more than itself, an unfathomable satisfaction that requires our destruction of schooling itself in order for us to achieve it. in this sense, educational studies is a traumatic experience. we act on our theology, which includes a faith in the enabling and emancipating potential of education, only to find social reproduction as the accompanying catastrophe. schooling as enabling is at once probable and impossible. there is a kind of temporality to this experience reminiscent of žižek’s discussion of dupuy, who himself retold the story of henri bergson, who experienced the conflict of emotions in 1914: “in spite of my turmoil,” he wrote, “and although a war, even a victorious one, appeared to me as a catastrophe, i experienced … a feeling of admiration for the facility of the passage from the abstract to the concrete: who would have thought that such a formidable event can emerge in reality with so little fuss?” (žižek, p. 159) žižek notes the crucial modality of the break between before and after. before the outbreak, the war appeared to be simultaneously probable and impossible, a complex and contradictory notion that persisted to the end. afterward, it suddenly became both real and possible at the same time. similarly, we imagine all sorts of fine and wonderful things that we can do with teachers and learners. we can build a whole new world! all we need to do is honor the dialectic relationship between education and democracy. and then, oh dear, what we get is social reproduction and the constraining function of schooling. the paradox lies in the retroactive appearance of probability. bergson never pretended he could insert reality into the past and work backwards in time. but he could insert there the possible, at every moment, so that the new reality finds itself having always been possible. oddly, it is only at the precise moment of its actual emergence that the reality begins to always have been; yet, this possibility, generated by its future, now becomes a historical reality itself. here is the dwarf in the machine of benjamin, history moving the puppet who always wins every contest for explanations. similarly, we always find reinserted into our explanations of educational experience the dwarf in the named theology, so that our faith in education despite its paradox reinserts itself into our stories of social reproduction no matter what. appelbaum. tropological curriculum studies: puppets and statues of curriculum quagmires 84 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (1) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci rancière and the pedagogical stance the faith in curriculum and pedagogy having potential specific affects on the “outcome,” and the ongoing layering of history and memory as well, can be interrogated through what ranciére (2009) called the problematic “pedagogical stance:” one affect of a pedagogy designed to influence the desires and future actions of an audience is to inadvertently perpetuate the passivity of that audience, and the need to be taught. curriculum studies as an academic enterprise embraces this fully, as scholars strive to enlighten others so that their ideas might have an impact on their field. what the audience does with the products of this dream is typically disappointing. we love our audience in the sense that we love something more within our audience, that potential to create our ever-lasting careers, so we destroy our audience, our colleagues, in the process. social movements expecting educational campaigns to change the world are similarly disappointing. they establish the audience as passive and in need of being taught, and hence work against their goals of creating actors who make social change. educational campaigns create consumers of campaigns rather than social change agents. so, too, can manipulative materials and curriculum content be understood as inculcating passivity and the need to be taught rather than the seemingly positive goals of autonomy and the disposition to question received information or act on one’s critique of the status quo. base-ten blocks or poetic metaphors in a classroom coexist with, and are also independent of, specific learning outcomes and goals for transforming individual desires and social relationships. they both can be traced back to making a difference, and are also both not necessarily identifiable as a cause of transformation. it is only the dream of the moving statue that evokes our fantasies of the trace while maintaining the likelihood of the non-present cause, that we can bring the curriculum to life through the “teacher’s kiss”. žižek proposes the trick is not to employ the historic strategy. analogously, since the catastrophe of education cannot be domesticated, the only option left is to posit this catrastrophe as real, to inscribe it into the future (p.163), to embrace it as unavoidable. the seduction of history is powerful: we can see the common and interwoven histories of curriculum as bildung and colonialist europe as the clear and precise “cause” of our frustrations. just as metaphor in a poem might be a representation of a concept, just as every manipulative material in a classroom is a puppet through which the learners enact a puppet theater, colonialism can make a person into a commodity to be bought and sold in slavery. here we catch a glimpse of a shared hegemony among bildung, colonialism, imperialism, and the crystallizing practices of reconceptualization the fundamental faith in representation (puppetry itself) as the dwarf behind the puppets of schooling cries out for the applause of closure. appelbaum. tropological curriculum studies: puppets and statues of curriculum quagmires 85 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (1) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci yet, why don’t we try out an alternative, in the style of žižek? one should … invert the existential common place according to which, when we are engaged in a present historical process, we perceive it as full of possibilities, and ourselves as agents free to choose among them; while, to a retrospective view, the same process appears as fully determined and necessary, with no room for alternative: on the contrary, it is the engaged agents who perceive themselves as caught in a destiny, merely reacting to it, while, retrospectively, from the standpoint of later observation, we can discern alternatives in the past, possibilities of events taking a different path.” (p. 164) one application of žižek’s ideas is retrodictive curriculum theorizing (appelbaum 2010), in which one writes the fictional history of an imagined future. žižek’s use of dupuy to suggest that we confront the catastrophe by perceiving it as fate, totally unavoidable, and then projecting ourselves into it, adopting its standpoint, and retroactively inserting into its past counterfactual possibilities upon which we act now, adds a significant orientation to this work. a fine example that žižek shares is the perpetual war on terrorism in the u.s. instead of endlessly suspended terrorist threats, postponed until they might happen, we can see that we are not merely waiting for the catastrophe to happen; the “real” catastrophe is the life we are currently leading, under the constant shadow of the permanent threat of catastrophe. žižek might have made his point more simply with the example of curriculum studies. we are not waiting for the next catastrophic imposition of standards and quantitative assessments. we experience the living hell of emotional abuse and the closing off of humane lives for the majority of children in our schools every day (block 1997). deborah britzman (2009) asks (p. 133), “can one event really lead into another? where would one locate transformation or meaningful change?” she might be writing of the surprise inside the curriculum studies chocolate egg. the “something more” that always eludes our pursuit as we destroy education is analogous to the unconscious in britzman’s discussion of psychoanalysis. the techniques in that context are not instructions, and cannot really be taught, but are themselves instructive. for example, transference is both resistance and the means to its overcoming. freud’s thoughts late in his life, in terms of fantasizing about cures, endings, and limitations, questioned the analyst’s translations of psychoanalytic education and even the nature of education. “essentially,” writes britzman, “the impossibility of the profession leads freud to the impossibility of its education, of the profession learning over time.”(britzman 2009, p. 20) can we take wisdom from the psychoanalytic discussion into the puppetry of curriculum studies? to embrace the catastrophe of education as unavoidable, and to inscribe it into the future, retroactively inscribing alternatives into its past, would be instructive rather than instructions. at the same time, we must recognize with rancière that the instructive moms demand action (2013) appelbaum. tropological curriculum studies: puppets and statues of curriculum quagmires 86 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (1) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci characteristic of these practices risks everything if they devolve into a pedagogical process. does it make sense to speak about the education of curriculum studies? it makes a lot of sense: we love you, curriculum studies, we love more in you than you, yourself; therefore, we destroy you. curriculum tropology as much as we might feel like we have “gotten somewhere” with that last statement, i returning to some thoughts on the puppetry of representation, and curriculum scholarship, which in themselves appear to re-perform the bildungsroman motif over and over: that is, curriculum studies as a field seems to be “growing up” – maybe breaking the rules of the previous generation with each crop of graduate students who become professors and who take on important work in schools and other social institutions, yet always seeming to take on its role in the broader world of educational studies again and again. often positioned in a critical stance, challenging assumptions of schooling and educational program planning, curriculum studies scholars dabble here and there as itinerant theorists, hoping that new narratives and new concepts would offer new futures and new histories of curriculum that rarely transform the dominant paradigms of those social institutions they wish to critique. a puppet show, on the other hand, is not only an act of manipulation. it is also an aesthetic experience, often a narrative performance, and, in this sense, like much art, a puppet show can often be assumed to compel us to revolt when it shows us revolting things. that is, it supposedly mobilizes when it itself is taken “outside of the workshop” or “museum”, and incites people to oppose systems of domination by denouncing its own participation in that system. and so we have the dream of the public intellectual wielding her or his scholarship of representation “in the streets,” whether expressed as a work of art or as the scholarship of a curriculum theorist. puppets and statues: these two cultural tropes are my entry into the confusing paradoxes of curriculum studies as an enterprise. while the terms are rare if ever present in curriculum studies, they are i claim present by proxy, carrying with them essential assumptions, questions, expectations, fears and fantasies. a genealogy of curriculum studies finds stand-ins for puppets and statues in most every treatise or essay, provoking the constraining and enabling characteristics of curriculum as a field of study and practice. i call for tropological study, which i believe promises a useful analysis of the ways that curriculum scholarship maintains colonialist epistemologies even as it works for post-colonial practices, undermining its professed moral and liberating aspirations that curriculum might be “good for people.” maybe we do not often stop to think about the ethics of our work, since we would all, i suppose, imagine that we are good at heart. yet, unless we take the opportunity more often, we will, i claim, continue to perpetuate fundamentally racist and oppressive practices: there is no way out, i fear, if we continue to take on the curriculum studies project; however, to recoil in passivity would be no better. we must, if we have any fantasies of productive international collaboration, find ways to embrace the paradoxical quagmires of curriculum studies itself. “trope” is a term in rhetorical studies, usually defined as the use of words to mean something other than what they would normally mean. concepts other than puppets and statues stand in for these two human forms of production and practice, carrying with them the semiotic and psychoanalytic implications of puppets and statues without making this clear to ourselves or to others. puppets and statues are thus hegemonic, since we do not realize that we are talking about puppets and statues, both literally and in more generalized, conceptual ways, appelbaum. tropological curriculum studies: puppets and statues of curriculum quagmires 87 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (1) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci as we work. “tropological” analysis of curriculum studies looks at the ways that tropes for puppets, statues, and other critical cultural concepts are used in the development of our practices. tropological study has some roots in christian biblical interpretation, emphasizing the morally edifying sense of tropes in theological scripture. one common critique of tropology is the ways that a study of tropes can hide the assumption that there is such a thing as “normal” language use, in which words are not used to mean something other than what they would “normally” mean. we certainly do not want to fall into such an additional quagmire – we have enough lacunae of our own already in curriculum studies, and i do not wish to add this to the mix! instead, we will focus on the simple idea that the words we use are always meaning something other than what we might believe we are taking them to mean. just as žižek reclaims the theology of history, curriculum studies can employ techniques of tropology in the analysis of curriculum’s faith in puppets and statues. and this method can be extended in future work to additional tropes. i find puppets a natural entry into considerations of representation, transformation in conceptual understanding, agency and identity. a puppet can be anything – a piece of paper, a scissors, a ball, a box, and yet become anything – a scissors becomes a dragon about to eat a flower, dental floss held aloft, and anything can do anything when it is a puppet – a rabbit can be reborn, an evil ghost (performed by a spotlight) held at bay by a flying eggplant (made from a toothbrush dangling from a wire), a class of shoelace 3 rd -grade children can enter the magic castle (42 stuffed animal unicorns piled high) and use it to administer first-aid to a swarm of injured humming birds (each crafted from tissue paper). a person can become a puppet, and dance with or without a mask, either making an inner sense of self more visible in the process, or taking on a wholly different persona. puppets can model utopia, or defend a “realistic” set of social practices. statues are a subset of puppets who, at least at first, do not move, and provide an opening for understanding things held outside of ourselves, bringing into consideration our conceptions of self, standpoints on things, reification, and the animation of objects. objects lead to fantasies of bringing those objects to life, the translation of ideas into objects that can be manipulated and used. they also lead to tool use and technologies, since, once we have a thing, we can use that thing. furthermore, they lead to the juxtaposition of life with inanimate non-life, perhaps the awareness of impermanence and the inevitability of death. psychoanalytic theories, often useful in curriculum studies, take advantage of the ways that the conscious and unconscious can be modeled through object relations and the animation of such virtual objects, or statues. moreover, puppets and statues are themselves stories about the history and education of desire, about our relation to what we have made or unmade, about our encounters with the dead, and our negotiations with what we call authority and tradition. i became interested in puppets while working in classrooms with teachers and students -graphs or base-ten blocks in mathematics classrooms, paraphernalia in science labs, records and symbols of accomplishment used to indicate mastery of skills. puppets might be present in educational spaces in another sense as well, as each of us performs our roles – teacher, student, bad student, and so on. we put on masks and then improvise the particular playing out of the provided scenario. before the classroom encounter, the students and teacher are ossified, so to speak, awaiting animation off-stage. the educational encounter is a fantasy of animation, bringing the actors and the curriculum to life. terms such as motivation are standins for the magic of animation, of the bringing to life of sleeping or not-yet-born “learners” appelbaum. tropological curriculum studies: puppets and statues of curriculum quagmires 88 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (1) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci and “teachers.” puppets and statues further help us recognize that knowledge is sometimes mistakenly theorized as technology. it can become a prosthesis. attached to a human being, knowledge gives him or her super powers beyond what could be done without it. more nuanced theories understand humans as co-emerging with their technologies. cyborgs, mixtures of the biological and the machine, digital and organic, are caught in webs of signification and complexification. yet in either case, prosthetic super-powers or cyborg mutation, we are stuck unable to understand the tensions and paradoxes among the individual and the group, structure and agency, signifier and signification. whether we imagine strapping on prostheses or transforming with our technologies, we are always also using puppets, communicating through and with puppets and sculptures, interacting with our puppets and sculptures, creating puppets and sculptures that are “real”, imagined, still and moving, things in themselves and representations. puppets and sculptures, if we pay attention to them, offer a chance to think about the plurality of semiotic signifieds at all times. this is qualitatively different from wielding tools and weapons: instead of “use” we are looking at acts of concealment, revelation, substantiation, and evocation. puppets and animated statues help us understand our dreams of a moving, non-static curriculum. this, we might say, implies a specific form of relationship between cause and effect, or intention and consequence. like classical theater, for example moliére or voltaire, curriculum scholarship might be taken to function like a magnifying glass, inviting spectators to view behaviors, virtues, and vices of their neighbors and others, in a truer-than-reality fiction. the logic of mimesis, rancière (2010) has suggested, consists in conferring on artwork the power of the effects it is supposed to elicit on the behavior of spectators. as long ago as rousseau, this assumption was challenged via reader-response ambiguities. the claim can be made that the puppet show should be more modest. or that it should as art avoid representation, as proposed, for example, by susan sontag. in the end, though, we do have to accept the split between the puppet show and its audience; the physical distinction between the artist and the art; and the distance across the chasm between the people and their statues. to use these distinctions and distances as representations of time, though, we learn from žižek, tossing them into a theater of history, masks in a kind of meta-puppet-show the theater of our theology. in this sense, theology of curriculum (representation, metaphor, metonomy, modeling – the dwarf in the inner void of our field of scholarship) is like a hegemony on steroids: unless we are willing to sacrifice our addiction to representation, i fear we will merely be cracking open one more chocolate egg after another, for the worthless plastic surprise inside. “other” puppets and statues it is the particular historical context of the puppet show that concerns me. taking a step back from puppets and bildung, this period of history in which they emerged together, the late 18 th and early 19 th centuries, was the height of colonization, imperialism, the raping of noneuropean lands for physical resources, and the establishment of the slave trade as a massive, commercial enterprise. by association, there is potentially greater, shared evil in the assumptions of bildung and the practices of imperialism than we might think. after all, if we can manipulate the environment that our children experience so that they might take risks and in the process integrate their critiques of society into a conservative outlook on autonomy and independence, treating people in the world as our puppets, then we can just as easily turn appelbaum. tropological curriculum studies: puppets and statues of curriculum quagmires 89 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (1) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci humans into commodities and buy and sell them in another theater, on another continent. in a puppet theater, a scissors can become a flying dragon; in africa, a person can become a “slave”. 3 in contrast, as a detached, touchable object, a statue points to the manner in which human knowledge is predicated on acts of separation, distancing and expulsion; on our making alien some part of the chaotic, formless continuum of physical and perceptual life; converting it into something readable and accusable; it is a process that makes a thing into a cause. here we see the intrinsic link between knowledge and the act of othering: the act of separation essential to consciousness, it seems, is at once also the prehistory of our presumption of strangers, gods and monsters; and this expectation that those things separate from us, strange as they are in the creation of them as separate, seem co-requisite with knowledge itself, which comes to be comprehended as knowledge of “things.” kenneth gross (2006, 2011) ties together the dream of the moving statue with its centrality in the co-creation of knowledge: if the statue is a corpse, it is also a corpus of knowledge; the idol gives birth to our ideas, our words, our very breath, even as it reminds us of their catastrophic origin. the statue indeed represents a paradoxical gift, a form of knowledge and mastery stolen from the dead. (gross 2006, p. 22 ) “it is the abstraction of sculpture from the muddled world of bodily and historical life,” writes michael north (1985, p.27), that “remains, as it were, part of that life; it is something the sculptor can both struggle against and use. nevertheless, the fact that a statue can be said to draw back from time, to stand or defend against time – this is part of what makes statues such perfect homes for those ideals, virtues, aspirations, and accomplishments that we might wish to transcend time, survive history and physical contingency.” north is writing about how the very distance is part of what makes statues appeal to us as resonant images of serious ideas, as things with the look of something meaningful – literally, as worthy of a pedestal; he is also describing the ways that statues are comforting in their generality as well as non-referential. they are at once things and images. the very lack of obvious meaning might be what draws us to them. curriculum as statue carries with it all of these cultural and psychoanalytic elements: the exteriority of statues is what lets them serve as persuasive figures of an idea, and at the same time as powerful images of literal things, images of calcified thought and fantasy. yet, their exteriority attracts us to them as the foci of troubled bearers of an interior life that is at once their own and not their own. we see this in our fantasies of the statue coming to life: if a statue is now moving, alive as it were, perhaps it was beforehand merely asleep, waiting to wake? the trope of release from death, as if the statue were a person turned to stone by an angry god, evokes connections with a fall from the grace of sleep itself. a redemptive gift or resurrection can just as easily reveal a kind of theft of peace, as if something already autonomous was forced to yield to the demands of a life not proper to it (gross 2006, p. 9). the separations that statues establish just as simply manifest a lack of identification, and so a recovery of lost objects experienced in the fantasy of bringing a curriculum to life is also an awakening of the self to its lost, murdered or abandoned objects, and a return of those objects from their alienation. the basic point is that the animation of a statue is not a purely liberating metamorphosis; it is both a transcendence and a descent into the murky world of “life.” this recovery fantasy can take political form as well, overturning appelbaum. tropological curriculum studies: puppets and statues of curriculum quagmires 90 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (1) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the fixity of statuesque forms and mystifications of tyrannical authority (“a kind of substitution for iconoclasm,” gross, 2006, p. 10); yet, even in these apparently revolutionary circumstances, the awakening of a statue can become a trial, at times even an occasion for paranoia. statues come to life can be elusive or threatening, calling into question our naively benign assumptions about animation, or about what the nature of life itself entails. a recovery can be reframed as a violation. it can perpetuate rather than salvage the lack or loss; the dream can become a nightmare; rebirth can be into something other than life, a death-in-life, a zombie. the voice-over in cocteau’s le say d’un poéte (1930) murmurs, “it is already dangerous to brush up against the furniture; is it not then mad to awaken statues so suddenly after their age-long sleep?” … might we ask the same of our students whom we seek to “educate?” the legacy of bildung might be characterized because of its puppetry as “just not a good idea:” it separates us from “things” we “play with” … it establishes the primacy of puppetry and it is not immediately clear that the pros outweigh the cons of this separation of things and puppetry. playing with things and representations of things is revered in a fundamental sense for almost every common philosophy of education, reducing those things to mere objects of manipulation. the reverse, turning people into objects that can be manipulated, as commodities or ideas, is a simple extension of puppetry. nel noddings (2003) and others have worked through a solid critique of this fundamental reverence, offering “caring” as a significantly different “order of things”. yet the dominant discourse perpetuates long-standing epistemologies of ignorance. the red blush of embarrassment and violation the statue in its paradoxical fixity, anonymity and substitutability resembles those entities that fill and constitute the hypothetical unconscious mind. internal statues, as the products or relics of an archaic process of internalization, an “introjection of images, persons, gestures, and relations derived from our early experiences of the external world” (gross, 2006, p.33), mirror those external statues we find so compelling, those sites of “projection.” we could say that the actual statues allow us to restore to things inside us something of their original exteriority, even as they keep the coloring of the interior, and it is in this way that curriculum as statue makes its affect apparent. “if statues can be mirrors of our internal objects, they can also become the places where such objects are captured, deformed, and reassembled, as it were, by the very “gravitational pull” of such statues.” (gross, p. 33) william blake once argued differently. instead of creating idols that need to be smashed, statues that are projections of our internal unconscious, which are inevitably accompanied by limitations and constraints -that is, forever sharing that world with our constructed terrors, self-defeat, and self-abasing imagination -we should instead acknowledge these fears themselves as false idols, foreshadowing much of psychoanalysis. such a critique depends on the risk of a counter invention, a fiction that bears the burden of our resistance, even if doing so brings forth yet another idol. in coming to life, a statue always bears a trace of its existence. instead of a radical change of state, some residue or un-gluable tie to its origins as a statue remains. the fiction of its life troubles the categories by which we attempt to mask differences between the living and the dead. this is the essential failure of school curriculum, which always fails us because it is always both the living experience and the trace of a dead, rigid plan. worse than this, bringing appelbaum. tropological curriculum studies: puppets and statues of curriculum quagmires 91 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (1) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci a statue to life is often a wound to the statue itself. pygmalion’s kiss turns to a red blush of embarrassment and violation. life for an animated object is often torture, as in many versions of the golem story. coming to life triggers, finally, those buried fears and fears of things buried; the inhuman, the irrational, the solid unmoving statue; coming to life brings forth a ghost, a zombie, a monster. often, in our stories about statues, bringing a statue to life leads to another life turning to stone, as if there is a careful economy of life in the universe. the literary pattern suggests that statues are a response to the crisis of fantasy and knowledge that has produced the fantasy of animation itself. curriculum as animated statue keeps alive a tension between life and death, which are tropes for wish and frustration, which in turn signify object and human. roman jakobsen (1937) wrote that transferring the life of the signified onto the dead signifier achieves a figurative cancellation of the gap between the human world of the sign and the world of inanimate objects. if closing the gap brings the inanimate object to life, it also shows us a living creature that has lost its independence of the artistic sign. that is, the semiotic opposition that constitutes the lure of the statue is resilient enough to survive the fiction that projects its disappearance or collapse. the opposition in this way not only survives but is reborn and projected into a story in which a living statue kills a human being, or at least drives him or her out of his or her humanity. here is yet one more fundamental quagmire: our critique of curriculum as statue is nothing other than a furthering of the fantasy itself. if we bring curriculum to life, it perpetuates the tension between signifier and signified in ways that make the experience of curriculum deadly. as long as we say that attempting to bring curriculum to life is destroying something human we are just as much stuck in the muck of curriculum as statue. lines of flight in the marionette theater puppets may be our alternative as much as the originating nightmare of curriculum theory. our quagmire may be that it is only a european, colonialist puppetry that we have so far performed. puppetry as a global phenomenon may help us rethink statues as much as puppetry, curriculum as much as colonialism, knowledge and authority as much as the objectification of people. in two regimes of madness, gilles deleuze (2007) reminds us of heinrich von kleist’s essay, “on the marionette theater,” describing how puppets manifest at least three lines of movement. in doing so, deleuze offers a conception of dynamic agency that is coexistent with our ages-old quagmire of structure and agency, yet opens up potentially different “lines of flight.” a puppeteer doesn’t actually move the puppets as they appear to move. instead, he or she works with a different line (a trope for agency?), and that one, combined with gravity (a trope for structure?), leads to the actual movement of the puppet as part of the story of the puppet play and its interaction with other puppets in the context of the play (a trope for action?). kleist had similarly described dancers who use their bodies in comparable ways; in that context, one can see the “soul” of the dancer in the curving line that would be the puppeteer, while the rest of his or her limbs are mere pendula, like the arms and legs of a marionette. what might once have been of interest as the puppeteer’s agency, somehow manifested in the complex interaction of these lines of movement, is replaced in this way of thinking by his or her affect on the puppet and on the play of the play. at the same time, we have shifted from the quagmire of the representation aspect of the puppet, the ways we might describe the puppet or the ways the puppet might describe other things, to the things that the puppet can do and the ways that the puppet acts. when we work with statues, a similar appelbaum. tropological curriculum studies: puppets and statues of curriculum quagmires 92 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (1) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci transition can occur, from the ways that the statue is a particular kind of puppet to the things the statue can and does do. and so i offer a new field of curriculum studies scholarship; a global, post-colonial immersion in puppetry and its metaphorical instantiations. here the undercurrent for the dream of the moving statue is the story of the puppet who dreams itself of coming to life, as in collodi’s (1883) pinocchio or the more recent the collector collector by tibor fischer (1998). in the first, the puppet pinocchio is a projection of the complexity of ethical and moral behavior; in the second, our narrator, an ancient bowl, is a sage with perfect memory. in both we also see the fascinating potential of the puppet and statue as audience: like pets, our puppets and statues know more about our secrets and desires than anyone else. yet we might further appreciate what puppets and statues have to teach us, what they demand of us, and what they desire as things in themselves. what affects do different puppets have in different cultural contexts, and how might curriculum as puppetry and curriculum as a dream of the moving statue be re-conceptualized in these contexts? albrecht-crane and slacker (2003) write of the three lines of movement in the context of pedagogy as molar, molecular and flight lines; each type has comparative, potential affects. molar lines express binary affects, and cut up bodies into categories, identifying bodies and making them identifiable within rigidly molar structures. molecular lines distribute territorial and lineal segmentations, securing segmentarity at the capillary, micropolitical level. lines of flight mutate encodings, unmaking and modifying the molarities and categories. this theory does not define individuals or position them within social structures. it instead describes potential affects that they can have. (instead of asking, “what is a body?” it asks, “what can this body do?”, or “of what affects is a body capable?” albrecht-crane & slacker, p. 192) the term “affect” articulates what happens during the educational events with larger cultural and social struggles, yet at the same time, seems to avoid the reduction of those struggles to questions of identity. bodies are instead individuated by particular affective thresholds and in this way enact variable investments in social spaces (albrecht-crane & slacker, pp.200-201). the “line of flight” manifested by a pedagogy of affect coexists with the molar binary lines, but is no longer hostage to them. molar lines fix a self as much as ideas by establishing the exhibit of statues in the unconscious as the core “self.” molecular lines describe the curation of that exhibit, the details of social reproduction. “learning” in this shifted conception is a line of flight, an opening of desire, desire’s machines, and the organization of a social field of desire; as deleuze writes in negotiations (1995, p.19), “… it is not a matter of escaping ‘personally’ from oneself, but of allowing something to escape, like bursting a pipe or a boil.” while bildung in its colonial sense reinforces the binaries that allow a flip from one representation to another, from a scissors to a dragon, a pile of ping-pong balls to an ocean above which the dragon flies, from a human being to a commodity, lines of flight that do not flip a person into a slave to be bought and sold, or that do not only flip from one representation to another, break up the reductive, molar ways of working that social organizations reproduce. lines of mutation and decoding break up points of fixity, and realize as an affect those desires that are associated with movement instead of static categories. the dream of the statue coming to life might in this way be a warm touch that works with the statue, as if with molten wax, becoming usable through the use itself. the test to see if one can bring a statue to life, kissing it or touching it in a certain way, for example, would appelbaum. tropological curriculum studies: puppets and statues of curriculum quagmires 93 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (1) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci itself be in this sense the bringing forth of the desire to bring that statue to life. the test is an enunciation of the idea of turning an idea into a molar line that constructs the demarcation between life and death. to restate this in terms of puppets, a line-of-flight epistemology makes puppets into something other than a bifurcation. we think about what a puppet can do. first, in the colonialist sense, that is, in the molar line, it defines representations as distinct categories, and it places things into one of these categories at a time. second, it unites the two categories, defining a relationship. this second affect is more like a zipper than a wall or boundary – it unites at the same time as dividing. now this unification, the bifurcation as a reified idea, follows its own line. where does it go? reconceptualization as conceptual art the south african artist william kentridge has written, i have never tried to make illustrations of apartheid, but the drawings and films are certainly spawned by and feed off the brutalized society left in its wake. i am interested in a political art, that is to say an art of ambiguity, contradiction, uncompleted gestures, and certain endings; an art (and a politics) in which optimism is kept in check and nihilism at bay. william kentridge (goldby 1993, pp. 20-23) here we see the artwork as a zipper, binding the optimism and nihilism of apartheid, its legacies, antiapartheid efforts, and post-apartheid fantasies in the coexistence and avoidance of apartheid, molar categories. similarly, the lines of movement in curriculum theory and classroom practice might share topological structures with this sort of artistic endeavor. in the case of teachers and students working with blocks to represent place value or with metaphors for justice in a poem, the teachers and students trace particular lines of affects, things they can do and make happen with blocks or metaphors – they focus attention, ignore, interpret, conceal information, make the use of the blocks or metaphors into the primary tool of a mindless task, suggest links to other representations as relevant to thinking, and so on. the blocks and metaphors move in ways that are affected by the teachers and students, but they move also in the gravitational context of their social, cultural, political and semiotic histories, so that the line that is traced is a combination of affects. in the play of the classroom, school, families, and broader cultural communities that create the social milieu, yet another line is traced, one that might only be describable after it has already been traced. we can compare this with much of kentridge’s work in animated film, where he works on a single sheet of paper, drawing and erasing, instead of adding a series of images one after the other in sequence; an effect of ahistorical “reality” is replaced in kentridge’s animations with a line of density, history and sedimenting memories. if we consider in turn the affects of this “third” line of movement, and the idea that curriculum and pedagogy can have specific affects on the “outcome,” as well as the ongoing layering of history and memory, we can see the concern of artists and educators regarding what ranciére (2009) called the problematic “pedagogical stance:” one affect of a pedagogy designed to influence the desires and future actions of an audience is to inadvertently perpetuate the passivity of that audience, and the need to be taught. social movements expecting educational campaigns to change the world are usually disappointing in this way. similarly, manipulative materials and curriculum content can be understood as inculcating appelbaum. tropological curriculum studies: puppets and statues of curriculum quagmires 94 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (1) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci passivity and the need to be taught rather than seemingly positive goals of autonomy and the disposition to question received information or act on one’s critique of the status quo. base-ten blocks or poetic metaphors in a classroom coexist with, and are also independent of, specific learning outcomes and goals for transforming individual desires and social relationships. they both can be traced back to making a difference and not necessarily identifiable as a cause of transformation. it is only the dream of the moving statue that evokes our fantasies of the trace while maintaining the likelihood of the non-present cause. the brazilian artist vik muniz (1996) writes, “knowledge is the painful longing for transparency and representation is its analgesic.” in the documentary wasteland (walker, harley & jardim 2010) we learn of muniz’s collaboration with catadores -self-designated pickers of recyclable materials in the world's largest garbage dump, jardim gramacho, located on the outskirts of rio de janeiro. muniz’s initial objective was to “paint” the catadores with collected garbage. however, his collaboration as they together recreated photographic images of themselves out of garbage revealed both the dignity and despair of the catadores as they began to re-imagine their lives. muniz’s art commanded large sums at auction, brought back into the lives of the subjects. in this work, the garbage, the collectors, the paintings with garbage, the photographs, and the documentary, did not function as colonial puppets or statues, but as post-colonial zippers that weave together while dividing more than two categories at any given time. as an educational encounter for the artist, garbage collectors and film-makers, and now for us as viewers of the documentary, the story of his work addresses muniz’s idea that “varnish is to philosophy what formica is to politics: the isolating of surface into a manageable representational meta-structure of belief” (muniz 1996). what i take from muniz here to the tropological study of curriculum is how puppets and statues as rhetoric tend to simplify dichotomies in form, content and substance into dichotomies of representation. we might say, with muniz, that puppets and statues simplify such dichotomies by reducing them to an even simpler binary of surface and form, “flattening complexity into a diagrammatic dimension.” he writes further, the fabrication of complex representational surfaces acts as a believable trompe l'oeil for depth and substance. if we consider the rhetoric of power as a quest for surface control, we will find in art especially in painting the ultimate simulacrum of this quest. art as a twisted branch of politics is simply better equipped to generate such models because time for the artist is invariably in sync with the models she or he produces. the artist is the link between the surface and the promise of the surface's own depth. 4 an earlier project, “sugar children” (magill 2000) demonstrates how muniz can become a “link between the surface and the promise of the surface's own depth:” visiting the caribbean he observed sugarcane workers’ children. they were wonderful. but their parents were so sad, really hard people. i realized they take the sweetness out of the children by making them work in the fields. it’s very hard work. all the sweetness from them ends up in our coffee. so i made drawings of them from sugar. i’m interested in that kind of transformation. (magill 2000) appelbaum. tropological curriculum studies: puppets and statues of curriculum quagmires 95 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (1) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci by making the images of the children out of the sugar that sucks the happiness out of their lives, muniz evokes a new gradient of representation, in which the children and sweetness are not reduced to the sugar itself, despite the literal, surface reduction to a flat drawing made out of sugar. a comparable contribution to curriculum re-conceptualization as conceptual art takes the work of sara felder, a solo theater artist, playwright and juggler, and applies it analogously to the performance of curriculum theorizing. while the themes of her plays and performances are serious, her form is comic, engaging, and vaudevillian. in this respect, she might be emblematic of sontag’s parody and satire. her own description of her work claims a striving to integrate personal experiences with the urgency of a given moment in history. out of that mix she creates funny and provocative theater. drawing on her sharp wit and insightful eye, felder performs virtuosic juggling, vivid monologues, sacred clowning and evocative poems (sometimes written collectively with the audience). her performances include the tossing of balls, knives, scarves, cigar boxes, barbie dolls, rubber chickens, feathers, a crystal ball, a bowling ball and a cassette player, puppet versions of a woman’s womb, and so on. often, a poem is recited in combination with an impressive feat of juggling, in a particular context of stories that set up the audience to be thinking about connections and juxtapositions at the same time, so that the combination cannot be simply teased apart in any way. in some antics/semantics, props such as balls or a cassette player become puppets while puppets become props for comic routines or serious poetic statements. in out of sight, a nearly blind mother and her lesbian daughter see each other and the world differently, using circus tricks, shadow puppets and a jewish queer sensibility to question the silences created by new frameworks for the israeli-palestinian conflict. other work explores the social complexities of melancholia, and the relationships among personal life history, art, and social change. what does it mean to say one is a “queer juggler”? to suggest that one can be defined in such a way? as a juggler, she keeps things in motion, moving in space, and moving in the development of her performance. as a queer juggler, we might say there is nothing specifically queer about her technique with the props: they fly through the air, doing things that should not be possible to do, just as the props of any juggler, queer or not. perhaps her uniqueness in making the juggling part of a solo performance piece that incorporates juggling unusual objects, for symbolic purposes, in the larger context of her stories and humor, is queer, in the sense of non-normative, defying norms, that is, as lines of flight that co-exist with molar categories and molecular systems of ascription and constraint. a curriculum theorist pondering the character of her or his work – noting how the a-historical and a-theoretical character of traditional curriculum studies disabled teachers from understanding the history of their present contexts (kliebard1986; pinar 2004); understanding the classed, gendered, raced, theologically influenced, nationed, and colonialist failures of this work; worrying about the fetishization of newness in scholarship – might take solace in the queer aspects of scholarship that do not meet the expectations of tradition, and which muddle the categories of scholarship itself (appelbaum 2002). muniz speaks proudly of his work in salvador, brazil, with children who know that people visiting museums are those who produce and show these children what they cannot have. their images, holding invisible items, inspired by a giacometti sculpture, combined with the placement of those items in a black bag, deprive these people of the knowledge of appelbaum. tropological curriculum studies: puppets and statues of curriculum quagmires 96 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (1) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci what each child is holding. “they turned the tables for once and learned to be the ones producing desire” (magill 2000). that is a lot accomplished with invisible puppets, held by children turned to statues and frozen in photographs. zippers: metonymy can trump metaphor felder’s satire and parody, and muniz’s “turning the tables” might be said to avoid the ossified statues of curriculum and the anything-goes, colonialist patriarchy of puppets. unlike the statue that demands suspension by the viewer of free thoughts or reason in order to interact with the unapproachable 5 , for the promise of a new world that cannot be possessed, carrying the spectator into a new world of utopist or dystopist imagination, these collaborations that confuse audience and performer, purpose and method, strategy and meaning, are less about the melancholic failure of the conceptual art and more about the experiences themselves. kentridge and muniz incorporate materials and tools in such a way that the material is also the carrier of symbolic meaning – the signifier and signified are the same thing. puppets and statues, tropes that define the rhetorical landscape of curriculum studies even as they themselves emerge symbiotically with curriculum studies, exist as molar entities that have (colonialist) affects and consequences; at the same time, they are lines of flight that coexist with, undermine, or ignore such affects. what would it take for us to adopt this language of curriculum? well, in a sense, we already have. some theorize that a renaissance fixation on rhetoric and the teaching of rhetoric led to a cultural dominance of metaphor over other rhetorical forms. in this way, we might see curriculum as puppetry and curriculum as statues in metaphorical terms. flipping from one representation to another carries qualities of one domain to another. the zipper notion attempts to turn a categorical border into a liminal terrain. there may be alternatives to metaphor, of course. one is metonymy, where a direct connection between two terms leads to the use of one to stand for the other (hollywood for us cinema, crown for the prince). we can imagine that a puppet would only be used to create a character metonymically if there was something about the material from which it was made that suggested a direct connection. it would be hard to imagine a sweet potato being used as a scissors in a puppet show. curriculum theorizing carries with it the legacy of renaissance teaching of rhetoric, which emphasized tactics of metaphor over metonymy and other rhetorical moves; this led to both a narrowed epistemology mutually generative of racist and colonialist practices and the accompanying presumption that language itself is a neutral technology, separable from oppressive forms of social practice. even contemporary discourse of difference and multiculturalism perpetuate this epistemological crisis. knowledge in this conception is reduced to translation from one category to another, via the metaphor, and the isometric mapping of such colonialist practices as slavery and curriculum. it is a challenge for us to work in ways that do not perpetuate harmful assumptions of bildung and the enactment of the bildungsroman. puppets and statues play key functions in this work, as tropes for representation, the fantasy of bringing people and curriculum to life, and the psychoanalytic perseveration with social reproduction. delleuzian lines of flight further extend the fantasy of the puppet, enacting movements that solidify categories, place things into the categories so as to substantiate them, and in maintaining the dream of the moving statue, the lines of flight that maintain hope. curriculum might be the puppet masters behind the scenes, or the statue come to life, or tracing the ghosts of death in the fantasy come appelbaum. tropological curriculum studies: puppets and statues of curriculum quagmires 97 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (1) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci true. in any case, flipping base-ten blocks into place value, or poetic metaphors onto justice, is epistemologically equivalent to flipping a person into a slave to be bought and sold. teaching practices that promote study of the child and surveillance of the learner make people into objects of study rather than members of communities. the ethics are seriously in crisis! yet, if puppets and statues can be understood as zippers, bringing together two sides of borderlands even as they separate them, rather than as walls of distinction, we can imagine gradients with no boundaries in borderland pedagogies, something that can be further developed through a study of metonymy (appelbaum 2011). rancière writes, “i think we can distance ourselves from the current mood if we understand that the ‘end of art’ is not ‘modernity’s mischievous destiny but the reverse side of the life of art.” (rancière 2010, p. 132) what i take from this statement, translated into curriculum studies, is that we can understand the extent that the aesthetic ties our curriculum scholarship to non-scholarship in particular ways from the start. rather than imposing upon us a polarity of scholarship becoming “mere recipes for practice” – whether the practice of pedagogy in educational contexts of the practice of theorizing in post-colonial times – or scholarship becoming some notion of “only theory,” each end of such a polarity would carry with it its own turmoil and withering soul of curriculum theorizing. life in curriculum is, to use rancière’s words, a “shuttling back and forth between a different polarity of autonomy versus heteronomy and heteronomy versus autonomy, which, fundamentally, requires playing one linkage between art and non-art against another linkage – that is, one representation of representation against another representation of representation. but to do so merely locks us in the box of puppets once more, repeating again and again the same perseveration. each possibility is a tale in a meta-political puppet show. which is why rancière believes artists cannot successfully isolate art from politics, and why those who want art to fulfill its political promise are condemned to melancholy. the implication would be that we cannot distinguish our work from practices in schools nor from colonialist epistemicides (paraskeva 2011); and that most of us are condemned to melancholic nostalgia for those moments in our early professional development when theories promised ways out of hell into nirvana. even seemingly more sophisticated or generative theoretical orientations reproduce insidious eurocentric and colonialist assumptions that educators would want to avoid. the more critical question has to do with what fantasies and fears we maintain with our perseveration on social and cultural reproduction through our work in multiculturalism, interculturalism, cosmopolitanism, and other “orientations” which, in themselves, fetishize the notion of perspective itself. perspective is a trope for puppeteer. the puppeteer brings two arbitrary things into unity via the puppet. the dream of pedagogy as the design of the design, the storyboard for the puppet theater, is both the possibility and the paradox. to place oneself in a position to resolve paradoxes of bildung in post-colonial times, or to create a new discourse that writes a new world, is to compose the script for new puppets, that is, to merely reproduce the crisis of reproduction itself. whether this new puppet show sells a project, plans and predicts, or dreams of a new fantasy, it is nothing more than a puppet show. puppet shows can incite revolution, but, we should note, “the more things change, the more things stay the same.” a puppeteer is condemned to these dualities. to be human, seems, too, to be subject to the same melancholic and joyous dualities – as long as one continues to play with puppets. what happens when we change the puppet show, so that the boundary between the audience and the puppeteers does not exist? what happens when the audience creates the appelbaum. tropological curriculum studies: puppets and statues of curriculum quagmires 98 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (1) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci puppet show for yet another audience, whose participation disrupts conceptions of boundaries and differences between audience and performer? these situations seem to offer new understandings not only of the puppet show but of the puppet show as metaphor and model for representation and theorizing. they might be a dose of žižek, who, in typical lacanian fashion, characterizes perverts, not as we would expect, as dangerous rebels, but as covert, closeted conservatives, secretly wedded to the prohibitive authority they loudly claim to heedlessly defy. for curriculum studies, our pleasures have taken on a captivating, beguiling spirit only for as long as the transgressions of the critiques are grounded in a belief in the existence of big, social systems, and symbolic “others” against which one is acting out. can we speak back to these systems, these “others”? or do they exist on some plane of eternally unapproachable power and authority? in the puppet and the dwarf, žižek (2003) writes of god as the name, not for the divinity so much as for the gap between the human and the divine. the christian notion would be that christ offered a bridge across the chasm between god and humanity; the žižek-ian turn is to name the gap itself, so that there can be a discussion of the divine in humanity and the human within divinity. analogously, in curriculum studies, we have held onto our beliefs in puppet and statue tropes in a misty haze of bildung. curriculum as the interdisciplinary study of experience, and as complicated conversations, might more aptly name the chasm between us and our puppets and statues. rather than manipulate our models, metaphors, and designs for educational encounters, we might find more rewarding the notion that our models, metaphors, and designs are names for the chasm they themselves construct, between our imagination and those externalized fetishes we call systems of reproduction and regimes of truth. life – in curriculum, in schools, and so on – has come to feel worthwhile only as long as we hold onto our desires to play with our puppets and statues; that is, only as long as our so-called desire to transgress those systems and regimes is never fulfilled, since to satisfy our desire is to end the fantasy. puppets and statues are both the things that make our work real to us and at the same time the very things that distort our relationship with that work, bringing us further from our goals even as we come closer to them. puppets and statues are both the resistance to innovation and the resources for relating to this resistance. notes 1 a version of this article was presented at the the fourth world curriculum studies conference iv iaacs in rio de janeiro, brazil (2012). 2 appelbap@arcadia.edu 3 the link is more than coincidence. many have written on the joint and mutually buttressing histories of the bildung culture and the fascist objectification of “others.” cultural theorist klaus theweleit (1987) notes how the fascist ego forms itself around the image of a statuesque, purified self-hood that is further formed through threat from both inside and outside; it is a hardened, collective ego always in danger of contamination or self-corruption by its own ambivalence. mailto:appelbap@arcadia.edu appelbaum. tropological curriculum studies: puppets and statues of curriculum quagmires 99 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (1) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 5 see friedrich schiller’s (1909-14) fifteenth letter, placing his readers in front of a greek statue. the statue is self-contained, and dwells in itself. she is free of care, duty, purpose…and also carries with her the properties of the goddess she depicts, paradoxically figuring what has not been made, what was never an object of will. meanwhile, the spectator experiences the statue must suspend random free thoughts or reason to interact with the unapproachable, noninteracting statue, and is promised in return a new world that he or she cannot possess. the goddess and the spectator are caught in a joint free play and free appearance, cancelling the oppositions of activity and passivity, will and resistance. the conclusion is that the autonomy that is present is the autonomy of the experience, not of the work of art. on the one hand, the artwork participates in the experience of autonomy only so far as it is not a work of art. and the implication is that the autonomy of art and the promise of politics are not counter posed in this relation. instead, the statue calls forth an imaginary “new world” of art as not art, that is, the appearance of a form of life in which art is not art. or, in our case, curriculum theorizing, in which theorizing is not theorizing. or, cosmopolitanism that is not cosmopolitanism. or intercultural imperialism that is not the opposition of epistemicide versus hypostasizing of cultural traditions. references albrecht-crane, c. & slack, j. d. (2003). toward a pedagogy of affect. in animations of deleuze and guattari, jennifer daryl slack (ed,), pp. 191-216. peter lang. appelbaum, p. (2002). dissconceptualizing curriculum: is there a next in the generational text? journal of curriculum theorizing, 18 (1): 7-19. appelbaum, p. (2010). retrodictive curriculum reform, or, imagination is silly: it makes you go ‘round willy nilly. journal of the american association for the advancement of curriculum studies. v. 6 (july).http://www2.uwstout.edu/content/jaaacs/appelbaum_v6.htm. last visited 5.5.2013. appelbaum, p. (2011). carnival of the uncanny. in epistemologies of ignorance and studies of limits in education, erik malewski and nathalia jaramillo (eds.), pp.22-239.information age publishing. benjamin, w. (1940/2009). on the concept of history .translation by dennis redmond.http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/benjamin/1940/history.htm. last visited 5.5.2013. block, a. (1997). i'm only bleeding: education as the practice of violence against children. peter lang. britzman, d. (2009). the very thought of education. state university of new york press. collodi, carlo. 1883. the adventures of pinocchio. http://digilander.libero.it/il_collodi/translate_english/index.html. deleuze, g. (2007). two regimes of madness. mit press. fischer, t. (1998). the collector collector. holt. http://www2.uwstout.edu/content/jaaacs/appelbaum_v6.htm http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/benjamin/1940/history.htm http://digilander.libero.it/il_collodi/translate_english/index.html appelbaum. tropological curriculum studies: puppets and statues of curriculum quagmires 100 transnational curriculum inquiry 10 (1) 2013 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci goldby, m. (1993). william kentridge, painter, revue noire no. 11, december 1993, january/february 1994, pp. 20-23. gross, k. (2006). the dream of the moving statue. pennsylvania state university press. gross, k. (2011). puppet: an essay on uncanny life. university of chicago press. kang, m. (2011). sublime dreams of living machines: the automaton in the european imagination. harvard. kliebard, h. (1986). the struggle for the american curriculum 1893-1958. routledge & kegan paul. magill, m. (2000). vik muniz. bomb. 73 (fall). http://bombsite.com/issues/73/articles/2333. moms demand action. 2013. kinder egg campaign. http://momsdemandaction.org/kinderegg/. last visited 5.5.2013. muniz, v. (1996). surface tension. parkett, no. 46. http://www.vikmuniz.net/doctools/printable.php?pg=viksurface. last visited 5.5.2013. noddings, n. (2003). caring: a feminine approach to ethics & moral education. university of california press. north, m. (1985). the final sculpture: public monuments and modern poets. cornell university press. paraskeva, j. (2011). conflicts in curriculum theory: challenging hegemonic epistemologies. palgrave macmillan. pinar, w. (2004). what is curriculum theory? lawrence erlbaum. pinar, w. (2011). the character of curriculum studies: bildung, currere, and the recurring question of the subject. palgrave. macmillan. ranciére, j. (2009). the emancipated spectator. verso. ranciére, j. (2010). dissensus/ the paradoxes of political arts. continuum. schiller, f. (1909-14). letters upon the aesthestic education of man. http://www.bartleby.com/32/501.html. last visited 5.10.2013. theweleit, k. (1987). male fantasies. university of minnesota press. walker, l., harley, k. & jardim, j. (2010). wasteland. almega projects. žižek, s. (2003).the puppet and the dwarf: the perverse core of christianity. mit press. submitted: may, 15th, 2013. approved: june, 15th, 2013. http://bombsite.com/issues/73/articles/2333 http://momsdemandaction.org/kinder-egg/ http://momsdemandaction.org/kinder-egg/ http://www.vikmuniz.net/doctools/printable.php?pg=viksurface http://www.bartleby.com/32/501.html.%20last%20visited%205.10.2013 o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: badilla chavarría, l.; montoya sandí, s.; zúñiga arrieta, s. (2017). the self-assessment processes in reacredited education careers: trends for curricular change. transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> the self-assessment processes in reacredited education careers: trends for curricular change leda badilla chavarría1 sugey montoya sandí2 sandra zúñiga arrieta3 national system of accreditation of higher education (sinaes), costa rica introduction frequently, the accreditation of careers and programs has been seen as an external imposition that exerts its power, directly or indirectly, over higher education institutions and makes them liable for the results arising from these processes. this paper analyzes the possibilities of transforming the discipline itself, from "inside", through the systematization of self-assessment speeches in accredited careers, from their curricular practice, their social contexts and academic projects. moreover, this paper shows other categories that were blurred, perhaps, with the passage from self assessment to accreditation. they constitute a series of features that acquire significance and that can lead to new discursive practices4. an accreditation agency in a central american country the economic crisis of the seventies caused modifications in the model of social change for the latin american region. this model has transited from developmentalist, neoliberalism, the globalization of the eighties and nineties, until now. the interference of financing entities in latin america on the education5 sector regarding the issues of modernization is known. the model reinforced by financial and technical policies6, gained notoriety in the definition of the social agenda of countries, by advocating on its privatization, under the “significances” of “quality”, “efficiency”, “equity”, among others (badilla, 2009. jiménez, 2011). higher education is no exception to this tendency. since the late 80s to 2000, costa rica experienced a significant increase in the supply of higher private education, rising from only one university in 1985 to 47 in 2000 (ruiz, 2001). in costa rica, the accreditation processes emerged as an initiative within the public universities7. it should be recalled that the regulation of higher education goes back to the greek illustration. the sophists examined, in light of human reason, political and social institutions. they also introduced the notion of "curriculum" in the different disciplines (abbagnano and visalberghi, 1990. brock, 2006). badilla chavarría, montoya sandí & zúñiga arrieta. the self-assessment processes 95 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci to assess the quality of higher education, different accreditation agencies arose, to which courses or programs could refer to8. there is a trend towards what has become known as quality culture9, especially in careers or programs considered a priority for the integral development of societies and curriculum. a culture, not always well understood, since the notion of quality is approached as an intellectual construction, through communication processes between subjectivities that come to objectify by agreements of the same subjects or academic communities, as in this case. this dynamic is under review, because there will always be an outside entity that prevents its final closure. unless it materializes in a discursive chain, it becomes a floating signifier (badilla, 2016). in general, in the academic field, “social risk” careers have been identified in areas such as health, applied sciences, law and education. the ministry of education of costa rica proposed an amendment of the law to the consejo nacional de educación superior privada (conesup) which pretends that “careers related to education, health and civil engineering must obtain its official certificate of accreditation through sinaes – or from an agency recognized by it10.” this meaning that the accreditación will be mandatory. the evaluation model for accreditation applied by sinaes the evaluation model of sinaes has been applied since 1993. this model is based on the cipp model (context, input, process and product). the application allows identifying some conditions given by institutional bodies within the university, however, it leaves aside a deeper analysis on academic issues and that related to the implementation of the curriculum11. the current assessment model of sinaes is rigid and uses indicators that are not particularly accurate. the application of this model has resulted in broad narrative reports with a lack of assessment criterion. for these reasons, the model is under review. the new model is designed on the basis of an agreed notion of a quality career in higher education in costa rica: structural characteristics and the conditions of implementation and integral evaluation of its processes (de alba, 1991). the model focuses on the contributions given by students, academic staff, the curriculum, universal referents of the disciplines and society. in its design, the proposal involves the participation of curricular experts, different participants such as authorities from different careers, self-evaluation commissions, evaluation experts, technical staff of sinaes and the national accreditation council, the highest level of hierarchy. the reasons set out above, among others, motivate the authors of this lecture to analyze the self-assessment speeches of the re accredited careers in the field of education, in the period from 2001 to 2015. the use of systematization of speeches that seem homogeneous allow to discover and rebuild the experience lived (barnechea et.al2009. jara, 1994. venegas, 2009) from the field of curriculum evaluation rather than accreditation12. the systematization consisted of an initial phase of review and analysis of twenty-eight self-assessment reports of careers in the field of education that wanted to be accredited or re accredited. subsequently, in a second phase, trends or senses emerged that allowed the interpretation and criticism of self-assessment speeches. in a third phase, a set of components that have a specific relevance or "significance" were determined for those particular careers13. badilla chavarría, montoya sandí & zúñiga arrieta. the self-assessment processes 96 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci this paper analyzes different aspects of curricular nature that converge in self assessment. moreover, it points out some achievements, problems, and empty spaces that took place in these careers and identify some trends toward curricular change. what did we find in this analysis?14 1. the emphasis refers to those elements that highlight, for example, the recurring concern for educational research: the unsatisfied desire of researching and developing policies and regulations to reinforce initiatives in this area. careers require more and more research projects, although, they are always insufficient and contribute little to the improvement of careers or to transformative curricular proposals. another discursive emphasis are the students, who have become participatory, in regular meetings dealing with topics of interest. they know about changes in their curriculum and participate in curriculum commissions. the procedures create a closer relationship with students proving this technique to be more effective. careers have improved communication processes with students, using mainly tics, for example, emails in virtual platforms. students advocate for improvements in the network service and access to technological resources. students express an appropriate degree of satisfaction in aspects such as information received, care, and career management, which guarantee respect of their rights. 2. absent are those relevant aspects that are identified in the speech, but are ignored in practice, as in the case of curriculum flexibility, educational tours, and the systematic dissemination of research results. according to the students, information on labor markets as well as monitoring the graduates’ working conditions, are necessary actions for strengthening the curriculum and exploring other developmental options. 3. achievements or scopes of self-evaluation processes are aimed at motivating teachers to propose research and social action projects to enhance non-formal education and strengthen the curriculum. in one way or another, didactic strategies are reinforced and teachers show permanent care and best practices in teaching and in the discipline area. changes in curriculum are reported promptly. the evaluation for learning emerges as a further achievement, overcoming the notion of measurement and incorporating other moments of evaluation such as diagnostic and formative assessment, as well as the importance of evaluation for the improvement of teaching-learning processes. 4. the concerns are linked to persistent issues related to the duration of students to graduate and stay in their career. for students as for teachers, the multimedia equipment is insufficient, although it presents optimal conditions for use. some courses have little relation to the educational reality, and not all teachers have a stable employment. 5. trends in curriculum changes are clearly identified because over time it has been observed, for example, the obvious improvements in the curriculum through the design and redesign of subjects. careers have made participatory processes led by curriculum committees that involves teachers, students, employers, and graduates for upgrades and redesigns the curriculum, which has favored its overall improvement. they have implemented flexible mechanisms such as fluid sequence of courses and few co-requisites, electives; counseling is offered to organize registration. badilla chavarría, montoya sandí & zúñiga arrieta. the self-assessment processes 97 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci graduation modalities have varied. the seminars are strengthened as an option for final requirement before graduation, because they provide the possibility to cover emerging issues of reality, and/or incorporate contributions from other disciplines in the training of the students. the interaction of students from different careers to find solutions to practical problems of educational reality is promoted. moreover, the distribution of research content from both the quantity and quality perspective has improved. in the particular case of distance education, the advancement of information and communication technologies (ict) has favored the development of applications for pedagogical mediation and collaboration platforms that integrate into the infrastructure of virtualization, with redundancy15 schemes. services are available for those in the peripheral areas. in a few cases, requisites of an entry profile and graduation profile are defined which makes it difficult to orient the curricular design. the same happens with the redundancy of the curricular objectives. the language used is very diverse which makes it difficult to understanding a better curricular design. teachers, students and graduates show a positive perception regarding the logical sequence of courses and the integration of theory and practice. this is evident in their projects, fieldwork, and classwork to solve problems, among others. ethics has been incorporated into the various curriculum in a transversal form. however, the "ownership" of this theme by students and graduates is still a significant challenge. significant progress was noted in the diversity of teaching methods. careers have strengthened actions that bring students to the analysis and study of problems related to context. there have been some few trials on curricula based on competence approach studies. finally, we would like to answer some questions: does self-assessment allow reflective processes to improve curricular practices? yes, careers allow understanding and improving of educational performance through self-assessment as a systematic process of self-reflection, confrontational and critical processes, hidden and visible powers. it should be noted that self-assessment develops autonomy and social responsibility in higher education institutions as well as the improvement of learning practices. does selfassessment help different groups to recognize their own curriculum, their articulations and implement changes? we could say, yes. it helps to systematize advances and recognize opportunities, desires and possibilities for transformation. resistances are also determined. there are points of agreement and commitments of improvement for change. does self-assessment challenge the accrediting organization? yes, it allows identifying weaknesses in: the evaluation model, the established procedures and in the work of external peers. specially, it reveals elements of inequity between the subject being evaluated and the evaluators. the accreditation agency learns to recognize the diverse contexts in which the careers are developed. badilla chavarría, montoya sandí & zúñiga arrieta. the self-assessment processes 98 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci does the pedagogy as a disciplinary field become strengthened? we consider that its absence is of significant importance. teaching skills remain weak in the learning processes as well as the analysis and criticism of the curricular experience itself. notes 1 member of the national accreditation council consejo nacional de acreditación (cna). 2 reseacher, sinaes 3 researcher, sinaes. 4 according to de alba, 1995 5 also in the health sector 6 world bank, organization for the economic co-operation and development (oecd), economic commission for latin america and the caribbean (eclac), united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization (unesco). 7 in 1999, the agreement between the rectors of four public universities and four private, for the creation of the national accreditation system of higher education (sinaes, in its english acronym) was ratified. 8 “career” refers to the degree and postgraduate program. 9 a culture that is not always well understood, since the notion of quality is approached as an intellectual construction, through communication processes between subjectivities that become objective structures by agreements of the same subjects or academic communities. it is under review, it is dynamic, because there will always be an external entity that prevents its final closure. unless it materializes in a discursive chain, it becomes a floating signifier (badilla , 2016). 10 during the 5 years after the commencement of this law (transitorio, iv). project for the amendment to the law of creation of the conesup (2016, p.31). that is, that the accreditación will be mandatory. 11 this analysis emphasizes curriculum as a practice more than as a formal curriculum (díaz, a. 2015) 12 to trascend indicators of the model. 13 with importance and theoretical and methodological potential. (de alba, 1995) 14 twenty-eight self-assessment reports for accreditation and reacreditation were reviewed. these reports are confidential because they are part of accreditation processes. 15 redundancy should be understood as the capacity to ensure virtual spaces 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. references abbagnano. n. & visalberghi, a. (1990) historia de la pedagogía. méxico: fondo de cultura económica. araya, j. et. al. (2008) informe de autoevaluación programa de enseñanza de la matemática. costa rica : universidad estatal a distancia. acceso restringido. [c4] azze, a. et. al. (2013) informe de autoevaluación. profesorado y bachillerato en la enseñanza de la matemática . costa rica: universidad estatal a distancia. acceso restringido. [c4] badilla, l. (2009) el campo de la evaluación: el contexto, lo axiológico y la prospectiva. en: orozco, b. (coord.) curriculum experiencias y configuraciones conceptuales. (191-215). méxico: editorial plaza valdés / iisue/unam. badilla, l. 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(2009) la sistematización como herramienta teórica-metodológica. in venegas, m.e y martín, a.v (ed.). investigación y formación. costa rica: agencia española de cooperación/universidad de costa rica/universidad de salamanca. submitted: november, 05th, 2017 approved: december, 9th, 2017 to cite this article please include all of the following details: lohaus, maria (2019). curricular decolonization from epistemologies of diversity. transnational curriculum inquiry 16 (1) p. 74-80 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> curricular decolonization from epistemologies of diversity1 maría francisca lohaus-reyes2 university of chile, chile curriculum, although it has an intrinsically value-based background, is has widely been thought of as an artifact, reducing it to a technical status. curriculum is spoken of as a product and its discussion and dialogue is constrained, making it into a monologue where it is intended to impose an epistemological monism. the curriculum cannot be treated just as an artifact, because it must take charge of what contents to teach and why they should be taught, the purpose and aims to be achieved in education, because otherwise its discussion or design is not admissible (null, 2016; pinar, 2014). in this scenario, there is evidence of the need to open the conversation and the exchange of the explicit and unforeseen purposes of curriculum, to move forth at a culturally sensitive understanding of the social context and the role that the curriculum plays in it, as a symbolic link between present, past and future and multidisciplinary and intercultural dialogue (pérez-gómez, 1999; pinar, 2014; popkewitz and brennan, 1998). chile has not been unaware of the social changes that mobilize the processes of curriculum and has tried to keep up with them through laws and reforms. in this sense, it is proposed for the chilean curriculum the need to move towards inclusion and equity and to recognize the multiculturalism from the perspective of learning for the enrichment and transformation of the students’ trajectories (law 20.370, 2009), but in reality, completely different phenomena manifest. this curricular decontextualization in its practical interpretation reproduces discourses and normalizing models that do not carry out a dialogue between knowledges, but the maintenance of power relations that reduce sociocultural diversity (quilaqueo et. al, 2014). those misunderstandings between the different curriculum levels appear to be subjected to a cultural racism -a colonial matrixwhich invisibilizes other knowledges and ways of conceiving the world under biased conceptions of what is considered valid as knowledge, science and history (quijano in mignolo, 2006). the colonization of this matrix is exercised through the curriculum, which is an instrument that organizes perceptions and ways of acting in the world and superimposes global and capitalist thinking as superior (dussel, 2001; popkewitz and brennan, 1998; quilaqueo et. al, 2014). in the developmental neoliberal concept, the colonial matrix demands changes from the society but also needs to maintain the status quo, and the answer for that necessity is to reform and reshape curriculum. since education is a sociohistorical and cultural process, the multiplicity of temporalities that occur in it form a constellation, where each of the involved spheres is interrelated with the others, forming a universe of significance with inherent features, with multiple subjects that have different characteristics, spaces, times, and visions from which they construct their realities. educational changes and reforms are presented in terms of cause and effect and they are reactive, because it is impossible to predict what will be needed in a country that is developing at a pace that is not in keeping with the dynamic process of change in society and their knowledges (zemelman, 2001). it is https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index lohaus-reyes. curricular decolonization 76 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> intended to change the mentality of a society through laws and reforms, but the reality is that there is a gap between the development of theories and laws and their praxis. in this futuristic and changing orientation, instrumental conceptions of the curriculum were originated and through accountability, turned the curriculum into a means to reach an end: to link it with the economy with the language of objectives and standards, instead of worrying about its content and relevance with respect to the local context, nullifying its particular characteristics and the plural composition of the countries (olivé, 2009; pinar, 2014). this self-assigned position of power obliges to implant this conception of the world to those considered inferior, denying their value by considering them incapable, ill and ignorant (mignolo, 2006). by doing this, the powerful makes the dominated to think with his rationale, managing to alienate and manipulate them with knowledges that are not connected to their natural and social context (herrera and de la paz, 2017; freire, 2008). curriculum, as connective tissue that is supposed to link diverse identities, expectations and realities is not woven by the ones who are -afterwardsheld accountable for the cohesiveness and alignment of its different levels. therefore, different discourses and practices collide between the written, taught, learned and lived curriculum. the system says to promote an educational ideal of inclusion, social mobility, personal fulfillment and liberation. the recently enacted chilean inclusion law3 (2) (mineduc, 2018; law 20.845, 2015), although it considers equitable access to education, continues to conceive it from a neoliberal perspective, with terms such as "freedom to choose". inclusion is cut and conditioned to model imaginaries and cover up these incongruities until they are tolerable, behind a rhetoric of democracy, citizenship and equality (rivera, 2010), hindering the possibilities of generating knowledge and becoming aware of the processes of power that deny diversities and their cultures (ball, 1993). as a consequence, it becomes difficult to establish a dialog when all parties involved speak different languages and have different meanings of concepts such as, for instance, inclusion and interculturality. although -graduallyintercultural and inclusive visions have become part of the chilean curriculum, colonizing dynamics are still legitimized. curriculum does not reflect a dialogue between cultures, but a process of inculturation, acculturation (garcía garduño in pinar, 2014) and the denial of the minorities, their visions and knowledge. these are the great absences of curriculum and the construction of knowledge that resides in it, expropriating and incorporating the other-different in a totalizing system that does not allow its legitimation (young in popkewitz and brennan, 1998) but rather an epistemological contempt for their knowledge (olivé, 2009).this disregard from the curriculum towards the knowledge provided by the diverse epistemologies puts at risk the full exercise of citizenship and the democratic access to a quality education, respectful for their rights and singularities. one of many examples of this are the illiteracy levels, school failure and dropouts of the deaf4 population in chile, due to a system which applies methodologies based on phonology and oralism to people who live, understand and think the world in a visual-gestural reality (herrera and de la paz, 2017). the vision and experience of the deaf is not taken into account, and the education models are ways of rehabilitation, control and discipline the body: the spoken word gains a higher value and the sign language and culture are colonized and submitted. curricular design, thought by the “hearing” society, does not listen or see to what the survivors of the epistemic genocide have to say about their ways of reaching knowledge; therefore, the curricular conversation must be a dialogue of diversities that recognize and legitimize each other, as well as learn from each other, under equal conditions (levinas, 2003) and where the difference is not pathologized, but considered as a different way of understanding and learning. the deaf and blind learn and understand the world from their reality, from the meanings that their diverse bodies bring to their https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index lohaus-reyes. curricular decolonization 77 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> experience. that same experience, the traveled path, the lived curriculum (pinar, 2014) is the contribution that these epistemologies of diversity can offer to education, which is, from their point of view, not hearing and not aware of the value of their experience. diversities can and should share their forms of access to knowledge and representation, beyond the border between experiential knowledge and science, since they allow both to be valued in order to broaden collective understanding and educational practices (robinson and henner, 2017). hence, diversity becomes a necessary step in a new and comprehensive view about what is and what could be taught and learnt. curriculum colonization is manifested in the process of configuration of its contents, the decisions made related to what contents are more valuable and who makes those decisions. the nature and constitution of what is considered as knowledge lies in the effect that it produces on institutional practices, making its idea of the true susceptible to criticism, in order to question its prevalence over other versions of reality (foucault in ball, 1993). for anglin-jaffe (2015) the ways of teaching and the language used in education and curriculum are both ideological and territorial practices, because they prioritize only the development of some contents and restrict others; in the case of the deaf, the majority spoken language is prioritized instead of promoting the use of sign languages. if the goal is to reconstruct the culture without biases, the criteria that guide the selection of contents should be contextualized (pérez-gómez, 1999) and recognize the existence of multiple forms of knowledge of life, matter, what is thought from the spheres of power and what is conceived from the others that do not belong to them (de sousa santos, 2010). social prejudices, technocracy and neoliberal ideology have placed barriers that make curricular design inaccessible by majorities and minorities (unesco, 2001). the resignification plays, therefore, a key role when collective knowledge in education is constructed from a new paradigm that considers the social and geographical context where it is developed and to include in this process the diverse actors involved. not considering the contributions that can be collected from the invisibilized epistemologies in curricular design, denies the right that all people have to reach their personal and collective fulfillment. for olivé (2009), epistemology is a discipline that analyzes cognitive-epistemic practices, which generate, apply and evaluate different forms of knowledge. such epistemic practices can only be understood if they are thought of as social practices, performed by agents who have ends determined by themselves, specific means to achieve them and their own criteria for evaluating them. this applies to curriculum in the sense that it should be understood as a social practice located in unique and specific contexts, which belongs to those who live it. the colonial metaphor serves to illuminate the inequalities generated by the curriculum and allows the possibility of decolonizing the limiting discourses in educational practices (anglin-jaffe, 2015). when each of the actors involved in the act of educating reaffirm their identities -their epistemologiesthey are capable of investigating, producing and rescuing knowledges, visualizing them and translating them into dialogical and horizontal curricular construction and pedagogical practices, consistent with their individual and community living. an example of this is the intercultural bilingual education for the deaf in chile. it is an alternative based in the dialog between cultures and active participation of the adults who are role models, educators and co-educators, where the subjects are taught in sign language and spanish is taught as a second language (herrera and de la paz, 2017), instead of the regular integration model, where the deaf student is located in a classroom where the majority is hearing and the class is spoken. in the last case, effective dialog and communication is denied and the deaf student loses his identity, instead of opening the conversation and confront curriculum as a constant process where experiences need to be seen, felt, heard, shared and criticized instead of being just heard and unquestioned. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index lohaus-reyes. curricular decolonization 78 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> in short, the possibility of decolonizing curriculum depends on the ability to decolonize actions, gestures and language with which reality is approached (rivera, 2010). that everyone exercise the right to feel and hear reality from the culture of the blind, visualize the world and express feelings and knowledge from corporeality in the deaf epistemologies, reach the deep understanding of the human being and its possibilities from a gender perspective; understand the worldviews of indigenous peoples through their knowledge, philosophy, traditions, music, dance, to reach the identity pluriversality in education, considering the intersectionality in which this multitude of facets and dimensions conform the identity of each one of these diversities (crenshaw in dunne, 2013). epistemologies of gender, disabilities, native peoples and other marginalized identities join in challenging the "dictatorships of truth" that oppress them and reinforce the dominant order (robinson and henner, 2017). this union places them in a position of equality of conditions when proposing reforms to education and making available the cultural heritage they have collected from their perspective of the world, placing diversity as an identity feature instead of a deficit or disease, that generates knowledge and is able to dialogue with other diversities and their knowledges, which coexist without merging, but complementing and reproducing themselves (rivera, 2010). this diverse knowledge develops beyond the limits and boundaries of colonization (dussel, 2005), which challenges and calls for shared responsibility and power, no longer from the perspective of an "other" but of a "we" (levinas, 2003) and redefines the assumptions that are transmitted as true knowledge to generate new points of view with which the whole society can benefit and diversify. diversity is not a characteristic belonging to others, but inherent in the individuality and uniqueness of the human being and that everybody possesses to share this nature. it may be asked if it is permissible to draw limits between one and the other instead of thinking of an "all"; this is a conscious, courageous and loving act that makes collective knowledge independent, achieves the union for cultural action from historical experience and resignifies reality completely (freire, 2005). it moves from an epistemic lobotomy to an epistemological pluralism, a space where diverse worlds can coexist (mignolo, 2006, olivé, 2009). these worlds are born from the depths of individual and collective thinking and from the meanings that each one, from their own experience, can bring (freire, 2005) and critically question what is normal and what is not in the dynamics of power that occur in the curriculum (popkewitz and brennan, 1998); creative instrument of culture that should be built by all, but disables by denying the diverse realities, experiences and bodies. including diversity as part of the criteria which guide the curricular design is a step to decolonize a curriculum that is thought with a standardized vision of human being. unesco (2001) proposes diversity as a need for exchange, innovation and creativity that should be used for the benefit of current and future generations to improve the curricular construction in this new social paradigm, to deconstruct the privileges imposed by epistemic monism (dunne, 2013). chilean curricular design invisibilizes the multiple diversities and their knowledge, because it starts from the denial of the other (johnsonmardones, 2015) instead of considering that people can appropriate all available knowledges, both those of universal and traditional value and that they are capable of generating the necessary skills to better understand their problems (olivé, 2009). in this line, deaf epistemologies pose the existence of differences in the ways of learning. it is questioned that most of the methodologies of teaching the deaf pathologize the nonhearing, instead of considering deafness a cultural and identity characteristic (herrera and de la paz, 2017). the denial of access to the deaf to the majority knowledge in the colonizing logic of the “hearing” society has been justified, leaving a large number of people without a language. only to the extent that the deaf relieved their culture and https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index lohaus-reyes. curricular decolonization 79 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> knowledge through sign languages, they have been able to engage the creation of educational systems designed for the needs of the colonized, not those of the colonizers (ladd, 2005). for there to be diversity in educational dialogue, the curriculum and teaching methods must change, as well as the contents, structures and approaches (unesco, 1994). for this reason, all members of society, in a critical and reflective spirit, must participate in the act of creatively recreate knowledge from their own epistemologies, because cultural differences are inseparable from their democratic context (unesco, 2001). decolonization, if not in the very act of educating, becomes a mere exercise of theorization isolated from reality. curriculum decolonization is not simply making the curriculum accessible to those who learn it -as a space of inclusion or exclusionbut to reconceptualize it as a space for dialogue where the voice of those who teach and learn can be seen and expressed in a permanent critical praxis at all levels of curriculum, not a mere mirroring exercise of the mainstream curriculum, which would be to fall into the acceptance of a gesture of philanthropy from the colonizers to the colonized (anglin-jaffe, 2015). curriculum decolonization must not only be a theoretical, intellectual or merely normative effort, because there cannot be a discourse of decolonization without practice (rivera, 2010) or an epistemological opening of curricular design without dialogue. it is not to demolish the established, but to mobilize the imposed limits of the colonization of thought and that curriculum offers the opportunity to debate and scrutiny the existing alternatives, in order to understand the meaning of them (pérez-gómez, 1999) and critically question the diverse realities that coexist in the world. in the challenge of relearning and thinking about education from subjects and their differences, epistemological pluralism considers the different ways of responding to the world, the conceptions of the self and the rules that order its perceptions. it is a critical, utopian and analytical alternative to see reality and understand the conditions in which knowledge is created and reproduced (mignolo, 2006; olivé, 2009; popkewitz and brennan, 1998). epistemological pluralism in curricular design favors the ability to understand others, empathy, critical thinking and creativity, possibilities that a colonized system cannot deliver. gathering ways of teaching and learning from the deaf, blind and other diversities and using them with respect from their origins helps to construct conscious educative processes with a broaden understanding of humankind. the new challenge for chilean education is, therefore, to know, consider and embrace these diverse epistemologies in order to decolonize curricular design from the classroom and school communities, project themselves to the whole society and make us all sharers in this different way of standing up against reality and thus arrive at a new understanding of the world and of the social constructions created by us. it is not just asking for consent to make changes but using our own hands and trames of mind to do so. curricular decolonization lives in the efforts of the teachers, students and communities who become conscious of the diversity, share and visibilize their education practices with others who are not familiar with their reality. the answers to the recurrent questions that are made about education are not necessarily out there, as they pretend to make us believe: they are closer to us than we think. the starting point is to accept and recognize ourselves and those who walk by our side as diverse beings, as we are, with our vices and virtues. to sum up, through the opening of the curricular dialogue to the repudiated and colonized minorities, curriculum can be mobilized and democratized (pinar, 2014) in order to decolonize itself from incapacitating and reductionist conceptions that disable the possibilities to learn the world without imposed limits. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index lohaus-reyes. curricular decolonization 80 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> notes 1 a previous version of this work was presented at the 2018 iaacs world conference. 2 mlohaus@ug.uchile.cl 3 ironically, while writing this work, the chilean right wing, supported by the government of sebastián piñera, is currently proposing a bill to undo this law, promoting selection processes instead of equitable access for all. 4 in deaf studies, there is a difference between “deaf” and “deaf”. the last one represents an identity exercise of the deaf community, which leaves behind deafness as a defect and relieves the concept of deaf gain, the value of being deaf and the inputs that deafhood offers to an audiocentric world (see ladd, 2005 and bauman & murray, 2014 in deaf gain: raising the stakes for human diversity). due to this, the word “deaf” was written in capital letters, to recognize the knowledges that deaf communities bring to the society as a whole. references anglin-jaffe, h. (2015). de-colonizing deaf education: an analysis of the claims and implications of the application of post-colonial theory to deaf education. in rethinking disability theory and practice (pp. 76-97). palgrave macmillan, london. ball, s. (1993). foucault y la educación. disciplinas y saber. madrid: ediciones morata. de sousa santos, b. (2010). descolonizar el saber, reinventar el poder. uruguay: ediciones trilce. dunne, c. (2013). deaf/lgbtq intersectional invisibility in schools: the lived experiences of deaf lesbian students of color at a school for the deaf. phd dissertation. retrieved from https://search.proquest.com/docview/1497967415?accountid=14621 dussel, e. (2001). eurocentrismo y modernidad (introducción a las lecturas de frankfurt). mignolo w.(comp.), capitalismo y geopolítica del conocimiento. el eurocentrismo y la filosofía de la liberación en el debate intelectual contemporáneo. buenos aires: ediciones del signo. dussel, e. (2005). transmodernidad e interculturalidad. interpretación desde la filosofía de la liberación. ciudad de méxico: uam. freire, p. (2008). la educación como práctica de la libertad. argentina: siglo xxi editores. freire, p. (2005). pedagogía del oprimido. argentina: siglo xxi editores. herrera, v. & de la paz, m. v. (2017). lectores sordos bilingües. un logro posible. santiago, chile: ril editores. johnson-mardones, d. f. (2015). formar ciudadanos interculturales en un mundo global: algunas notas desde los estudios curriculares. diálogo andino, (47), 7-14. ladd, p. (2005). golpes contra el imperio: culturas sordas y educación de sordos. conferencia principal del xx congreso internacional sobre educación del sordo, maastricht, holanda. 19 de julio de 2005. recuperado de http://www.culturasorda.org/golpes-contra-el-imperio-culturas-sordas-y-educacion-de-sordos/ https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index mailto:mlohaus@ug.uchile.cl https://search.proquest.com/docview/1497967415?accountid=14621 http://www.cultura-sorda.org/golpes-contra-el-imperio-culturas-sordas-y-educacion-de-sordos/ http://www.cultura-sorda.org/golpes-contra-el-imperio-culturas-sordas-y-educacion-de-sordos/ lohaus-reyes. curricular decolonization 81 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> law n° 20.845. ley de inclusión escolar. diario oficial de la república de chile. may 29th, 2015. law n° 20.370. ley general de educación. diario oficial de la república de chile. september 12th, 2009. levinas, e. 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(2001). pensar teórico y pensar epistémico: los retos de las ciencias sociales latinoamericanas. en conferencia magistral, universidad de la ciudad de méxico (vol. 10) submitted: january, 18th, 2019. approved: september, 10th, 2019. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index https://leyinclusion.mineduc.cl/#ley_inclusion http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/001271/127162s.pdf http://www.unesco.org/education/pdf/salama_s.pdf o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: yapu, m. (2017). on the subject of educational policies and curriculum transformation in bolivia. transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> on the subject of educational policies and curriculum transformation in bolivia mario yapu1 university for strategic research, bolivia introduction the purpose of this paper is to highlight some aspects of discussion about the curriculum and its political implications and practices in bolivia. since the 80’s (1987-1994), i have been researching the curriculum in a permanent tension between multiple dimensions or components and levels that builds its definition and its action. in a way, this analysis was influenced by the neo-marxist studies (young, 1971; apple, 2004; bourdieu, 1996, to name a few), and we have discussed policies of knowledge (or cultures), or more exactly political economy of knowledge. this is complemented by the contributions of foucault that allow investigating the relationship of the curriculum with issues of identity, subject, and power, which must also be associated with the works of bourdieu related to concepts such as social fields, strategies, and habitus. finally, in order to understand the curricular problem, education policies and in a broader perspective, the training of individuals and groups. it is necessary to expand the perspective of analysis into the relational and contextual nature of social phenomena, then it seems interesting to talk about the ecology of knowledge; a concept used by boaventura de sousa santos (2010). i am also inspired by gregory bateson’s work (and some works of serge moscovici and edgar morin from 1970s and 80s) who developed a complex and systemic epistemology in several of their works, for example steps to an ecology of mind (1985). bateson takes the analysis of cognitive knowledge beyond cognitive anthropocentrism; in this sense, his epistemological perspective is more akin to indigenous knowledge, ordinary knowledge, etc., which are part of the cognitive challenge facing both the traditional school knowledge and rational knowledge that the western world and science have forged over the centuries. the theoretical and practical problems of education and the school curriculum are societies’ problems in which they have been produced and reproduced. this principle, which is common, condenses various topics of discussion on the curriculum; in this brief commentary is impossible to develop them. therefore, i am highlighting some of them for the purpose of participating in the discussion. bolivian context according to unicef, bolivia is not the most diverse country in latin america and the caribbean, but it does have, along with guatemala and belize, the one that has more indigenous population than the total. according to the 2001 census, more than 62.2% of the yapu. on the subject of educational policies 78 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci bolivian population declared belonging to one of the original cultures while in the 2012 census this figure dropped to 42%. in addition this last census, already in the framework of the new political constitution of the state (cpe) of 2009, which recognizes 36 nations defined mainly by the language, shows that 69.4% speak spanish, 28.7% other language of the country and 1.9% a foreign language (ine, 2015: 31-32). finally, as in many other countries, 67.5% of the population lives in cities and 32.5% in rural areas. bolivia is one of the latin america countries (along with ecuador) which undertook a project of significant change in society for about 17 years to make a cultural and educational revolution that would speak of a “socio and community education, recovering ancestral and indigenous knowledge, "living well" as a new principle of life and coexistence, decolonization, and other features already known as a revolutionary and anti-imperialist, egalitarian, among others” (ministerio de educación, 2010). this "project" was a result of various events produced in the early 2000s in which diverse and uneven forces came together to provide a favorable context and build the discourse that allowed a transformation of the country. some of these factors were: the economic crisis with high debt of the bolivian state; traditional political parties had come to an end in the confidence of citizens; the ideology of the welfare state had shown its limitations and the educational ideology on cultural diversity, multiculturalism, and bilingualism (which was the central element of the 1994 reform) began to be criticized from readings that arrived in the late 90s such as "postcolonial studies" (barragan and rivera, 1997). in this context, the social and popular demands were endorsed by discourses of “deconstruction” (derrida, 1986), and restore the “collective memory” (halbwachs, 2004) 2. on educational and curricular policies nearly 10 years passed to achieve the new education law avelino sinani and elizardo pérez (ministerio de educación, 2010)3. within the framework of the new constitution of the state (república de bolivia, 2009), the law raises the decolonizing purpose of the school and through it to the society that would require "new men" under the criteria that we have already stated. this would be then, a sign of educational revolution for the 21st. century in which one of the conceptual focus is "living well" (different from "living better" that would designate individual welfare within capitalist society) (yapu, 2012), along with the recovery of ancestral knowledge and worldviews regarding mother earth. evidently, this educational and curricular proposal should be analyzed in relation to the complex, diverse and unequal bolivian society already referred. the recent history of bolivian education is characterized by its openness to cultural diversity, as well as both interculturality and intraculturality; it has also emphasized the idea of "decolonization". in one of its meanings, decolonization designates the struggle for justice and social equity (an old claim) that focuses on the analysis of the curriculum from the social classes, but today also highlights the cultures and ethnic groups recognized as nations, within the plurinational state. following basil bernstein’s idea4, the curriculum as a selection process, legitimacy, organization, and implementation of certain types of knowledge, skills (know-how), and practices (behaviors and demeanors), as well as moral practices forming agents or individuals and social groups. it should be also considered other elements such as cultures, languages, skills, knowledge, practices, production systems, forms of government, and moral values; yapu. on the subject of educational policies 79 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci typical of the different nations of bolivia. this situation poses huge theoretical and practical problems of current educational and curricular policies. in several previous works (yapu, 1994; 2003; 2014), we have attempted to define the curriculum in a more operatively way based on each study. in the work of 1993 and 94 we devoted a special place to discuss this issue, but it was not included the contributions of bateson since we did not have sufficient access to empirical analysis, nor did exist education policies that problematize decolonization, socio-productive and community education, recovery of ancestral knowledge, the “living well” as a life caring for the environment (mother earth), etc.; that is, elements that lead to a global perspective of the analysis. today, such conditions exist, as the curricular discussion is invited to include new concepts such as ecology of knowledge, although we still lack conceptual and methodological tools. in 1994’s educational reform, the curriculum concept was introduced and it began to be discussed between teams of technocrats and partly in universities by university professionals. while the 2010 reform has criticized this way of proceeding and has transferred the discussion to the teachers themselves, parents, indigenous wise, etc. although it is important, we still do not know whether it is sufficient to achieve the educational revolution pursued. on our side, the analysis of the curriculum within the evolution of society and people’s training policies (subjects, in foucault’s sense that was studied in the educational field by tom popkewitz) (popkewitz, 1998), that develop themselves in complex contexts has been proposed. these contexts (cf. bateson) are no longer limited to social, political, cultural and economic fields, as commonly studied, but urges to include the environmental field (such as ecosystem), the ancestral, every day or ordinary knowledge, worldviews that are not simple ideologies (used in one of the marxism senses) (eagleton, 2005; zizek, 2003). the new curricular proposal of the ministry of education (me, 2012) assumes as the core of the new development paradigm based on "living well", the intra-interculturality and decolonization, that is, respect for the environment and indigenous community life, promotion of intraculturality and interculturality in education and society itself; and for this, one of the strategies seems to be the decolonization as a complex and multidimensional process of disassembly that we cannot describe in this text5. some final thoughts to conclude and to illustrate the challenges of this multidimensionality of socioproductive and community education, we emphasize some issues that should be the subject of reflection. a) it is sometimes said that the subjects (children, indians, women or others) were absent from education policies. this is not entirely true. what happens is that these individuals have been treated (conceived and acted) very differently in the schooling history. so the "child" (in a generic sense) was not absent of educational and curricular debates (although in bolivia, curriculum always has been associated and reconfigure into study plans, therefore there was no debate). however, neither came to be the center of a hegemonic pedagogical model. at the end of the 19th century with the proposal of the concentric method of teaching, and later with the new school method, the child entered to the pedagogical scene but it was very ephemeral and confusing. until the educational reform in 1994, when, under the international influence of constructivism, the child and his learning were made visible. in yapu. on the subject of educational policies 80 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the current proposal, childhood as a concept and education subject is embedded in a broader idea of the transformation of society. b) another recurring topic of educational policies concerns the school and its context. the well-known and recurrent criticism is that "school does not respond to context," to "reality" or to "community." in this regard, we should trace its meaning in history. how has this discourse been used, and what did it mean theoretically and empirically in educational policies? what does it mean raising a pedagogy contextualized against the development of a country’s common culture and facing the school and social differentiation? at this point, the most remarkable difference was the division between rural and urban education, given the discourse of satisfying the needs of these regions, two types of education were developed quite bifurcated: a) from the beginning of the republican life (1825), the division was de facto because education for indigenous people was practically nil while urban education began to be organized; b) the reform of the liberals at the beginning of the 20th century put into debate how to educate the indigenous and what kind of knowledge to impart, taking into account the demands of modernization of national education; c) with the national revolution of 1952, the bolivian education code of 1955 clearly separated rural from urban education; that to this day has not been able to overcome. c) currently, this "context" topic, beyond the social and economic character, introduces the demand to respond to cultural and linguistic diversity, with intracultural and intercultural education in order to live well. therefore, the curriculum must take into account the linguistic, cultural, and other conditions of all the nations of the plurinational state. and further on, in the political sphere, it must also know the forms of government of the peoples and nations, the conceptions of women and children, for example, since the relations between groups and generations of these nations are not articulated directly and simple with the rules issued by the state. this is important if the new imagined society really intends to generate new alternatives to "modern democracy". d) in the productive field, the task is to reconceptualize the very idea of "production" that is often restricted to its sense of production of material goods; an issue that is not new but requires systematic work, in the light of the contributions of political or economic anthropology. for example, in the field of technical and vocational education, which is fairly strengthened at present, this education continues to be limited to the workemployment versus education relationship and the functional criterion to the "employability" labor market system has not been exceeded; a well-known discourse and heir of the industrial societies that clearly limits the global vision of the person. notes 1 angostura1958@gmail.com 2 an example that illustrates this claim by using the memory was the film, “the insurgents” (2012) by jorge sanjinés, one of the most committed filmmakers to social struggles. his film presents a recent perspective on bolivia’s main indigenous struggles. 3 these two characters were the promoters of the indigenous schools in the early 1930s. the first one is an aymara indian, and the second one an urban mestizo, trained in one of the first cohorts at the bolivia’s first national teachers’ school founded in 1909 by georges rouma, the head of the "belgian mission." 4 since the late 80s, we have been investigating the curricular subject through educational reforms (belgium and bolivia). while we start from this concept of bernstein, our vision has evolved specific nuances and mailto:angostura1958@gmail.com yapu. on the subject of educational policies 81 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci supported by readings of michael young (in most organizational and operational terms); the contributions of research on the interactions of teaching and learning courtly (supported by the trends on ethnography of communication and ethnomethodology). readings on the history of school subjects and social history, and school knowledge, for example, the work of andré chervel, ivor goodson, lucie tanguy, bernard charlot, etc.; the contribution of studies on educational micropolitical policies from authors like stephen ball; or other more structural studies such as kliebart (usa), bourdieu, foucault; without forgetting the latin american studies conducted mainly in argentina, brazil, mexico or spain, countries that have provided ideological and political trends and influence bolivian educational and curriculum policies. 5 around this topic, much has been written among scholars and latin american intellectuals. see, for example, studies on "decoloniality" walch, mignolo, quijano, etc. however, to our knowledge, this range of tests rarely discuss specific issues of educational and curricular practices, therefore little can be discussed. references apple, m. w. (2004) ideology and curriculum. new york / london: routledge-falmer. barragán, r. & rivera, s. (1997) debates postcoloniales: una introducción a los estudios sobre la subalternidad. la paz: historias/sephis/aruwiriyi. bateson, g. (1985) pasos hacia una ecología de la mente. buenos aires: carlos lohlé. bourdieu, p. (1980) le sens pratique. paris: minuit. bourdieu, p. & passeron, j. c. (1996) la reproducción. elementos para una teoría del sistema de enseñanza. méxico: fontamara. chervel, a. (1977) histoire de la grammaire scolaire. et il fallut enseigner à écrire à tous les petits français. paris: payot. choque, c. r., et al. (1992) educación indígena: ¿ciudadanía o colonización? la paz: aruwiyiri. derrida, j. (1986) de la gramatología. méxico: siglo xxi. eagleton, t. ([1995] 2005) ideología. una introducción. barcelona: paidos. halbwachs, m. (2004) los marcos sociales de la memoria. barcelona: anthropos. instituto nacional de estadística (ine) (2015) censo de población y vivienda 2012, bolivia, características de la población. la paz: ine. kliebard, h. (1995) the struggle for the american curriculum 1893-1958. new york: routledge. ministerio de educación (2010) ley de la educación avelino siñani-elizardo pérez 070. la paz: me. ministerio de educación (2012) currículum base del sistema educativo plurinacional. ministerio de educación (sep, 30, 2010). pérez, e. (1992) warisata la escuela ayllu. la paz: ceres/hisbol. popkewitz, t. s. and brennan, m. (eds.) (1998) foucault’s challenge: discourse, knowledge, and power in education. columbia: teachers college press. república de bolivia (2009) constitución política del estado. la paz: vicepresidencia y repac. santos, b. de s. (2010) para descolonizar occidente. más allá del pensamiento abismal. buenos aires: prometeo / clacso / uba. yapu, m. (1994) l´organisation des savoirs scolaires dans l´enseignement technique et professionnel en belgique francophone. louvain-la-neuve: université catholique de louvain (ucl). yapu, m. (2006) modernidad y pensamiento descolonizador. la paz: upieb – ird. http://es.scribd.com/doc/35830575/bateson-gregory-pasos-hacia-una-ecolog%c2%b0a-de-la-mente yapu. on the subject of educational policies 82 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci yapu, m. (2012) vivir bien, significados y representaciones desde la vida cotidiana. la paz: upieb-reino de los países bajos. young, m. (1971) knowledge and control: new directions in the sociology of education. london: macmillan open university. zizek, s. ([1994] 2003) ideología. un mapa de la cuestión. buenos aires: siglo xxi. submitted: december, 1st, 2017 approved: december, 8th, 2017 o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: saul, ana maria & silva, antonio fernando g. (eds.). (2011). the legacy of paulo freire for curriculum policies and teaching in brazil. transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> the legacy of paulo freire for curriculum policies and teaching in brazil ana maria saul 1 & antonio fernando gouvêa da silva 2 pontifical catholic university of são paulo, brazil & federal university of são carlos, brazil first words [...] when paulo published pedagogy of the oppressed, he did more than simply offer a disturbing book about education because we can find an education epistemology, pedagogy and sociology that are bound by a convocation in behalf of society and school democratization; an ambitious program that connects the classroom and the society power policy; it has been moving educators and students to change themselves in the history and the way they teach, giving rise to an international movement of educators who want to transform the societies they teach...[...] ira shor paulo freire (1921-1997) was born in recife, a city located in brazilian northeast region. he is recognized worldwide as one of the most important thinkers in the pedagogy's history, since he is an author of a critical pedagogy that is compromised to set the oppressed classes free through a conscientization work. although he is known as a creator of an ‘adult literacy method’, his work contributes to all education field. when the military dictatorship took place in brazil, paulo was chased and forced to be in exile during 16 years because of his adult literacy work, regarded as subversive. the current thinking of paulo freire has been attested by multiple developing experiences, and his thinking is taken as a reference in different areas of knowledge all over the world. the greatest vitality of his thinking is indicated by the growing publication of his works in various languages and the expansion of forums, cathedras and research centers created to research and discuss the legacy of freire. such projection confers the character of a universal work on his productions as a whole. in literature, the contribution of freire’s work has been stood out in the testimonials of important authors in different countries. the contribution of freire’s work has also been stood out in the growing number of researches that used freire as a reference. michael w. apple 3 stands out that various generations of critical educational work took a number of freire’s works as a reference. freire is important to all these people all saul & silva. the legacy of paulo freire for curriculum policies and teaching in brazil 39 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci over many countries, and they recognize that our mission is to “give a name to the world” and build together an education that is simultaneously anti-hegemonic and part of the greatest battleground about what literacy means (education should control literacy) and how the critical literacy (freire named it as conscientization) is connected to real fights by real people in real communities. for antônio nóvoa 4 , freire’s work and life are inscribed on the pedagogical imagination of xx century, representing a compulsory reference for various generations of educators. freire’s proposals have been used by different groups that relocated them in a number of social and political contexts. from a specific educative concept that crosses the social theory, moral commitment and political participation, paulo freire is an incontestable inheritance of the current pedagogical reflection. his work acts as a kind of critical consciousness that protects us from the depoliticization of both educative thinking and pedagogical reflection. paulo freire’s works – that comprise more than 20 books of his authorship, including books and articles of other authors on freire’s work and co-authored books – have already surpassed the mark of seven thousand publications. his most important work, pedagogy of the oppressed, has already been translated into more than 20 languages, and over 500 thousand issues of pedagogy of the oppressed have already been published only in english language. it is relevant to restate that freire – and more specifically pedagogy of the oppressed (freire, [1968] 1988) – is the recurrent reference for the practice of critical education, especially when adult education 5 is concerned. in the work “paulo freire: uma bibliografia, organizada por moacir gadotti (1995)”, there is a large and significant group of studiers of freire’s work in brazil, america and the other continents worldwide. they deliver analysis on paulo freire’s life and work, and stand out the value of his contributions. in a recent search to subsidize his dissertation for master’s degree, maurício carrara 6 found 31 titles of dissertations and theses from 1987 to 2003 in portal da capes 7 . these dissertations and theses were defended in different areas of knowledge, and freire was used as a reference. from such areas of knowledge, 90 titles are concentrated on education area. 1. confronted curriculum policies in the curriculum tome, the brazilian educational tradition is presided by the logic of technical control. the curriculum has been inspired in the technical, linear paradigm of ralph tyler (1949) as a decision question on goals to be achieved –“curricula” that define the subject matters, content topics, number of hours, teaching methods and techniques and evaluation of pre-established goals. from that understanding, curricula elaboration and reformulation have been restricted to a set of supposedly “neutral” decisions that the state and municipal secretariat of education made, especially regarding junior high school and high school, according to the legislation in force, as provided by the regulations of state and federal councils for education. these decisions start to constitute the “pedagogy of official gazettes” and the respective complementary publications, such as “curricular guides”, “curricular proposals”, “subsidies for curriculum implementation” and others, and teachers receive them as a series of measures that they should apply in their classrooms. in fact, this prescriptive level of curriculum is too far from how it is named by john goodlad (1977) as operational curriculum, which means what is “really” happening in a saul & silva. the legacy of paulo freire for curriculum policies and teaching in brazil 40 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci classroom. because of a set of multiple explanations that concern the conditions of an education worker – that are getting worse and worse by the technical and superficial qualification of teachers, by the poor, confusing and damageable conditions of school organization, by the centered, authoritarian and elite character of brazilian education, among others – the “curriculum” starts to be the knowledge transmission that the editorial market produces, advertises and sells. in his study on curricular paradigms, josé luiz domingues (1988) concludes, beside a number of international and national authors, that the “old and eroded technical, linear paradigm” reaches its maximum point of exhaustion. according to thomas kuhn, the crises indicate a situation of paradigmatic renovation. under the management of paulo freire as the secretary of education, the municipal secretariat of education of são paulo worked in the perspective of elaborating and using a new curricular paradigm. this involved in thinking about a curriculum, reading a curriculum, doing a curriculum and feeling a curriculum. there was a search for a curricular reorientation presided by the emancipatory rationality, based on the “critical theory” of horkheimer, adorno, marcuse, habermas. the emancipatory rationality is focused on the principles of criticism and action. it aims at criticizing what is restrictive and oppressive, emphasizing both questions of freedom and well-being. such rationality stands out the ability to think critically and reflect on its historical genesis, that is, to think about its own thinking. when defining this important category “critical reflection” in the body of emancipatory rationality, henry giroux (1983) says: more specifically, the ability to think about the thinking points to a way of reasoning that aims at breaking a ‘frozen’ ideology that avoids a criticism about the world and life, on which the rationalizations of dominant society are based. similarly, the emancipatory rationality increases its interest in the self-reflection with social action that aims at creating the material and ideological conditions in which there are relations not explored and not alienating. this suggests a view of education to citizenship. in this context of reference, the category “totality” is stood out in a fundamentally important way. such category is the core for the curricular organization, since it ensures that schools don’t work as if they are in a “social and political emptiness”. rather, it historically and sociologically allows and stimulates the school relationships with the other political and economic institutions. to review the curriculum in this perspective involves situating it in the social context that emphasizes the interconnections among culture, power and transformation. to work with the emancipatory rationality means to establish a dialectic relation between the cultural and political-social-historical context and the curriculum, as a whole. to elaborate/reformulate/reorientate the curriculum in the emancipatory perspective requires, above all, a new curriculum understanding, a more necessarily broadening consideration of the own concept. it involves making clear concepts of world, society, man, education, school before thinking about a curriculum. these concepts interpenetrate the curriculum and allow expressing a frequently hidden dimension of curricular question concerning ideology. consequently, to conceive a curriculum under the emancipatory rationality involves saul & silva. the legacy of paulo freire for curriculum policies and teaching in brazil 41 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci understanding it not only as a ready, finished product to be consumed, but also as a constantly elaborating process that is done and redone. fundamentally, as a way in which the participation of actors who interact in the educative process is a condition for its construction. 1.1 the curricular reorientation in the context of educational policy of the municipal secretariat of education of são paulo paulo freire took over the secretariat of education of the municipality of são paulo in 1989 8 . his administration assumed the commitment to create a popular public education whose main characteristic was “education as a freedom practice”. as a main task, it meant the democratization of education, and this involved the effort of brazil democratization. improving the quality of municipal public education also presupposed a change in the school internal relation and school/population relation. the school should be turned to t he critical and social formation in search of a democratic society; a serious school that appropriates and recreates knowledge, and is both happy and stimulator of solidarity and curiosity. the school should be open so that the population could recreate it, give it animation and other life, and mainly rebuild critically the learning, an emancipation instrument, always considering its needs. the popular participation in creating the culture and education breaks the tradition that only the elite is competent and knows the needs and interests of all society. the school should also be a spreading center of popular culture to recreate it – not to consume it; a space for political organization of popular classes and, as a space for teaching-learning process, it would be a center for discussing ideas, solutions and reflections in which the popular organization would systematize its own experience. in this school, the worker’s child should find the means of intellectual self-emancipation, and critically appropriate the knowledge of dominant class. as the new proposal is democratic because it is responsible and education is really seen as a practice of freedom, it would not be imposed in an authoritarian way; it would respect the worthy educational work, even divergent, that was being conducted. the critical education would be gradually built from experiences evaluated in pilot schools and from a major adhesion of school chain. among other aspects, the pedagogical proposal under construction presupposed the incorporation of cultural and social experience lived by the school community as an object of school reflection and elaboration. for this, it was necessary to democratize the school management with the participation of parents, students, teachers and other education workers in discussing and deciding its directions; this involved autonomy, that is, freedom for schools to make jointly decisions with the other instances of secretariat of education. besides, municipal schools elected boards in the beginning of the year. parents, students, employees and educators composed groups that held periodical meetings to discuss the school problems and show alternatives for their solution. the development process of school boards as school management bodies required a work of systematic and permanent formation in the political, pedagogical dimension. to concretize the democratic popular public school of good quality — a priority of paulo freire administration — under the direction of a transforming and critical education, it was necessary to reconsider the pedagogical proposal of municipal schools and this necessarily required the re-elaboration of the basic instrument of school organization — the saul & silva. the legacy of paulo freire for curriculum policies and teaching in brazil 42 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci curriculum — understood in an emancipatory, progressive and broadening perspective. the municipal secretariat of education developed actions that aimed at jointly building this new pedagogical proposal in the perspective to assure:  respect for the student cultural identity;  appropriation and production of relevant and significant knowledge for the student in a critical way in the perspective to understand and transform the social reality;  an understanding change concerning what is to teach and learn;  stimulation of student creativity and curiosity;  democratization of school relations;  development of collective work in school;  rescue of educator identity;  community/school integration as a space for valuing and recreating the popular culture. for this political, educational project to be feasible, the secretariat defined as actions the curricular reorientation movement and the permanent qualification of educators. the emancipatory, progressive and broadening curricular reorientation, proposed for municipal schools in 1989, comprised all the teaching modules and required a procedure that denied the “pedagogical measures” that are generally imposed to schools. there were four bases for the curricular reorientation proposal of the municipal secretariat of education of são paulo: a) the collective elaboration, characterized by a broadening participation in the decisions and actions on the curriculum; b) the respect for the autonomy principle of school, allowing the worthy practices to be rescued and, at the same time, creating and recreating curricular experiences that favor the unit diversity; c) the value of practical, theoretical unit reflected in the movement of “actionreflection-action” about curricular experiences; there was an understanding that the elaboration of new practices could initially take place in accurate situations, anticipating the gradual expansion of the new curricular elaboration process for all municipal schools; d) the permanent qualification of teaching professionals, necessarily developed from a critical analysis of the current curriculum, that is, a view of what is really happening in the school. by the right and wrong aspects, there was a search for determining the critical points requiring foundation, review and overcoming of practices. the curricular reorientation was a process of collective elaboration in which different groups participated in a constant dialogue: the school, community and experts of different knowledge areas. the first two moments of this movement were the problematization and systematization involving all municipal schools. the reorientation also ensured the stimulation and support to develop the projects proposed by the schools, reaching their own autonomy. simultaneously, the pedagogical project for interdisciplinarity was developed. the document that showed a “real situation” of the current curriculum elaborated from the view of teachers of municipal schools of são paulo was discussed in all schools, saul & silva. the legacy of paulo freire for curriculum policies and teaching in brazil 43 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci subsidizing the plan elaboration of 1990. there was also other conclusion of the “real situation” of municipal school, according to the testimonial of students, that subsidized the school planning of 1991. the “school problematization” made by the community was carried out as a result of events such as pedagogical plenary meetings, gatherings and meetings of school boards and regional boards of school representatives. the curricular reorientation 9 that was defined as the curriculum problematization involved describing and expressing the expectations of the process interlocutors, comprising teachers, students, experts and school boards. the popular participation in problematization took place in pedagogical plenary meetings in which parents and representatives of social movements also participated. the second moment of curricular reorientation process was defined as the systematization of reports derived from the first moment of problematization, rendering a critical confront of knowledge areas with the content of reports. as a curriculum policy, this confront involved the knowledge theory that bases areas and subject matters and that presiding the epistemological practices of a democratic school. the third moment was defined as the retaking of pedagogical work possibilities created in the previous moments. the three above-mentioned moments were a simultaneous process that involved two practice types: on one side, all school team working together to build and apply the new curricular proposal, through initiative and coordination of bodies of secretariat of education, in ten schools that were gradually expanded and, on the other side, the secretariat of education providing material and human resources for specific proposals (proposals of teachers or group of teachers) derived from the interest in elaborating a new curriculum under the perspective of the educational policy that was proposed. it is necessary to stand out that the “school situation” that was also described by educatees rendered a school analysis categorized in three focuses:  educatees have many things to say about school all educatees, children, teenagers and adults give their opinion about the school. clearly, their expressions are different, showing, on one side, the inherent differences concerning the development stage of students and, on the other side, the nature of school experience they live. in this evidence that is obvious for many people, there is a prominent fact that the opinions of educatees are real and accurate, especially when they say about “what is not going well in the school” and about the view of “how the school should be”. ”their conceptions are not homogeneous, and it wouldn’t be expected because the diversity is healthy. the mosaic formed by the different analyses allows working the contradictions and dimensions that haven’t been deeply studied yet. and, when breaking the “silence culture”, listening to educatees, discussing their views with them and being receptive to reflection and action, it is possible to be under the perspective to build a democratic public school”.  educatees want to improve school in their expectations, children, teenagers and adults demonstrate clear aspirations concerning the school improvement. these expectations are located in the most visible saul & silva. the legacy of paulo freire for curriculum policies and teaching in brazil 44 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci aspects, as the school physical space, and in the most hidden aspects that are not usually declared in the plans and deliberated actions of educators. these two dimensions are important when a new teaching quality is sought. for many times, the unpredictable aspects that define the “hidden curriculum” give fundamental clues to educators when they want to do a daring and serious work for improving the school quality. a fact that is a highlight and deserves attention refers to the own school conception. children that study in the first school grades have the broadest and most creative understanding of how the school should be. they clearly express that the valuing knowledge is not restricted to what is happening in the classroom and to what the teacher is transmitting. they also express the need for a non-fragmented work organization. they are paying attention to a school that incorporates nature elements and to the technology that characterizes the society of our time. at the same time, they value information and the social aspects of education, and want a school that interacts beyond their walls. throughout the schooling of students, it seems that most of these aspects disappear, lose their meaning or are minimized. this evidence may reveal the inculcation of a school model that reinforces the transmitting information aspect, the fragmentation, in which the knowledge is recognized as being worthy only when the teacher knows it very well. it is a school that reproduces the social stratification and power relations of our society. to deepen this discussion when entering into each one of the characteristics mentioned by educatees in each analysis category allowed educators to have an advance in the quality of pedagogical practice in all instances of the secretariat of education of são paulo.  educatees want to participate in the educative process all educatees – from children to adults – demonstrated a critical sense concerning the school analysis and, including their desire of a better school, they showed a set of suggestions for their desire to come true. this indicated that educatees, when required, have something to say, make good analysis and show proposals for school improvement. this diagnosis showed that the participation of educatees in the educative process needed to be worked and deepened by aiming at concretizing it as one of the marks of this “new teaching quality”, pointed as one of the bases of curricular reorientation. to deepen the work of educatee participation in the teachinglearning process involved reviewing the nature of this participation, understanding it beyond the sense of “listening to the student” in order to talk to the student. here it is emphasized the freire’s meaning of “dialogue” as a knowledge elaboration method and as a perspective to make it participate more and more in deciding the directions of pedagogical action. to assume the commitment and develop a practice that revealed the legitimate participation of educatees was a fundamental condition to “change the school face” (a colloquial expression used by paulo freire to refer to the school change when he was secretary of education). maybe the reader curiosity will put the following question: how was it possible to elaborate the curriculum from the problematization texts? saul & silva. the legacy of paulo freire for curriculum policies and teaching in brazil 45 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the answer for this question gave various directions. the first one showed a work that was done in the teacher’s daily life from the critical reflection of problematizations when the teachers started to reflect on “their pedagogical act” according to the analyses made. it could be recognized or not in the “real situations” of municipal schools, considering the reorientation of their action before the existing problems. the school problematization made by the teachers was an important indication to organize the program for permanent qualification of educators, since it pointed the needs for qualification 10 . the school problematization elaborated by educatees was an important document to be analyzed by the school teams in the sense that they could include it to study the local reality. after all, the view of educatees about school is a fundamental evaluation of how the pedagogical practice is being carried out, and it is an indication of expectations that need to be analyzed and considered. the “view of educatees” about school showed fundamental points that surpass the act “to like or dislike school” and indicated significant aspects – such as learning conception, evaluation, school-job relation, “school-life” – that made the school teams reflect on the existing practices. there was someone who found out the importance to “listen to the students” from a wealth of data contained in the text. information on the “view” of parents or persons-in-charge of educatees about school was included in the data of school problematization that educators and educatees made. the need for new actions — or redo the curriculum — and the elaboration of registration and statement documents appeared as a result of the work from this problematization. among the different actions, the work of schools in elaborating their own pedagogical projects was a highlight, concretizing the school autonomy principle. in municipal schools, over 1500 projects were registered, based on the reality of each school. it was the same regarding schools that had night courses. the problematization also identified the need for elaborating and discussing the conception of knowledge areas underlying the work of different schools. these documents were discussed with all municipal school teachers. after a critical analysis, this material started to subsidize the planning and/or deepening of the work. in this moment, a publication of notebooks was made containing the reports on the practices built in this process. through a new pedagogical practice in the brazilian reality, the municipal schools of são paulo showed the possibility to elaborate the curriculum in progress. this daring educational practice was experienced even with difficulties and apprehensions. in spite of that, it was highly positive because of the results from the so-called school performance and indicators that broaden the social quality concept of education: school democratization and appropriation of school communities of the right and duty to say when elaborating the curriculum. using all the possibilities, the municipal schools of são paulo gave a testimonial of how to do a curriculum in progress in a critical, transforming perspective, searching for a new education quality. with this, the continuation of this work was proposed to educators, since it is always needed because education is made and remade. at the same time, it bet on the possibility that other teaching networks could create their own curricular reorientation processes inspired in this experience that was not over. saul & silva. the legacy of paulo freire for curriculum policies and teaching in brazil 46 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 2. the influence of freire’s pedagogy in the brazilian state and municipal curricular policies from the 90’s from 1992, various brazilian states and municipalities that were committed to popular management decided to elaborate curricular policies with freire’s presuppositions of curricular reorientation movement that took place in são paulo (1989-1992 administration). among them, there are 11 : angra dos reis-rj (1994-2000), porto alegrers (1995-2000), chapecó-sc (1998-2003), caxias do sul-rs (1998-2003), gravataí-rs (1997-1999), vitória da conquista-ba (1998-2000), são paulo-sp (2001-2003), belém-pa (2000-2002), maceió-al (2000-2003), dourados-ms (2001-2003), goiânia-go (20012003), criciúma-sc (2001-2003), state of rio grande do sul (1998-2001) and alagoas (2001-2003). these curricular policies implemented in these administrations have presuppositions that are under the freedom educational perspective (freire, [1968] 1988) and the leading principles of these curricular policies are generally the implementation of curricular reorientation proposals that are committed to a popular education and based in the educational policy of paulo freire in são paulo-sp (1989-1992). the perspective is the feasibility of social quality teaching in public school, assuring the school access and permanence of all social classes and the school management democratization. 12 it is worth standing out that the popular education conception to which we referred is that as follows: “(...) it recognizes the presence of popular classes as a sine qua non for the real democratic practice of progressive public school as it provides the necessary learning for this practice. in this aspect, it centrally contradicts itself one more time with the right and left ideological, authoritarian conceptions that refuse this participation by different reasons” (freire, [1993] 1995d, p. 103). under this perspective, the administrations committed to these principles and presuppositions are called “popular administrations”. the most remarkable common characteristic for the processes of these popular administrations is the effective participation of community – “active participation” for lima (2001, p. 77) –through the constant dialogue among the school segments, integrating the elaboration of these policies. 13 the first aspect to be considered in implementing these educational policies is the public investment in education area. as it is a priority to meet the demand and assure the full access to school, investments are promoted to build schools, repair buildings and equipments, buy and replace pedagogical, didactic material, value educators and employees professionally, and so on, so that public schools can work properly. regarding the teaching social quality, the democratic management and curricular reorientation movements are characterized by the value of: the existing emancipatory pedagogical practices in municipal schools, the collective work of schools involving all school segments and the permanent qualification of educators. in praxis, there is the process of critical deconstruction / reconstruction of school autonomy. the privilege to follow these processes in different municipalities descried ways to overcome the difficulties and contradictions of teaching educational conception and practice. the secretariats of education mentioned try to change this educative act, conceiving school as a space for permanent action and formation. the school is effectively dedicated to social transformation under a dialectical perspective of teaching-learning saul & silva. the legacy of paulo freire for curriculum policies and teaching in brazil 47 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci process and of its commitment to the popular classes. the goal is to elaborate oppositional curricular policies deriving from the current negativity in public school and contemporary society for the dialogical transformation of these experienced realities. although there are principles, guidelines and common methods, it is important to stand out the diversity of practices and movements observed in each administration, given the contexts and local specificities that we will characterize from now on, in a historical and resumed way. angra dos reis-rj, porto alegre-rs, chapecó-sc, caxias do sul-rs, gravataí-rs, belém do pará-pa, vitória da conquista-ba, maceió-al and the state of alagoas had at least two popular administrations consecutively. in general, it is observed that, in the first administrations, there was a priority to repair the public equipments and recover the salary of education professionals who were historically damaged by the authoritarian governments in order to invest more in the curricular reorientation movements and qualification of pedagogical practices. however, the administrations in criciúma-sc, dourados-ms, vitória da conquistaba and the state of rio grande do sul (1998-2001) decided to adopt educational policies to simultaneously work in the bases of: access and permanence in public school, democratic management and social quality of education. in this way, although they initially prioritized a general survey to work in the existing poor structural conditions, they interspersed these actions with pedagogical activities in order to firstly try to divulge and legitimate advanced educational practices that have been already observed in municipal schools. in goiânia-go, although the popular management only started in 2001, there was already a work under the perspective of a generating issue. the problematization, deepening and critical curricular reorganization that are defended here took this initial experience as a reference for pedagogical reorientation. in this sense, a relevant aspect of the implemented educational policies concerns the priorities established by the different secretariats of education to transform the current educational practices and the way they performed this process. in this way, we can observe movements that started discussions involving the whole school network in the collective elaboration of school statutes from analyzing different curricular topics concerning school practice, so that a reflection is specifically made on the collective elaboration of alternative curricular proposals for the traditional curricular proposal. these alternative curricular proposals contain the collective and critical rethinking of teaching-learning process in the different knowledge areas. as an example, we can observe that the popular administrations of são paulo, angra dos reis, chapecó, criciúma, vitória da conquista, belém and caxias do sul chose the critical rescue of pedagogical practices, lectures, municipal congresses and school constituent processes in which they systematized presuppositions, principles, conceptions, methods and statutory rules compatible with the elaboration of democratic popular school, although they made movements that showed significant differences. in chapecó, caxias do sul-rs, dourados-ms, belém, vitória da conquista and criciúma, the rescue of practices was inaugurated with the dialogue between the secretariats and municipal schools from an initial problematization. the school network was asked concerning what school we have today and what school the different school segments considered suitable. from the conflicts, tensions and contradictions observed, the dialogical curricular reorientation movements occurred through the analysis of specific local problems, searching for the elaboration of transforming interdisciplinary curricular practices. saul & silva. the legacy of paulo freire for curriculum policies and teaching in brazil 48 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci taking angra dos reis as a reference from 1994 14 , we can state that, similarly to what happened in são paulo, caxias do sul and chapecó, the curricular reorientation movement started through the rescue of pedagogical practices that have already showed levels of innovation and democratic involvement of all school segments. the project plano global (global plan) that has been already developed in four schools was taken as a starting point. the movement began through the collective elaboration of a project – named as projeto interdisciplinar (interdisciplinary project) – that sought to stop the dissociation between the school knowledge and citizenship observed in the educational tradition. the following was considered: school contents, the local reality (a reflection of its respective and broad social, historical construction context) and the own teaching-learning process (proposed from the dialogue between the popular and systematized knowledge in which the knowledge assimilation occurs collectively from analyzing the contradictions experienced in the local reality). in this way, the pedagogical act starts to be the own critical, contextualized, processing, consistent and emancipatory citizenship exercise. in general, it is worth standing out that changing frequently the main administrative instances, the pedagogical teams of the secretariats and the school network educators, choosing a huge of events involving the most part of school network, losing reporting procedures, administrative and political questions, administrative and political indecision prejudicial to the pedagogical options, etc are negative factors for the pedagogical policies in school networks to be feasible. throughout the years, different contexts indicated a huge diversity of ways. let’s focus the movements that were followed. in caxias do sul-rs, in the end of 2001, we observed a most consistent retaking when the smed pedagogical team made the follow-up of schools, providing more quality for the work that has been developed. in chapecó-sc (1998-2004), the pedagogical policy and the curricular proposals have rendered the possibility to implement and deepen the curricular reorientation movement with qualitative advances in the different teaching levels and modules, which made the secretariat of education of the municipality receive a better evaluation of its municipalities and be considered as the best one in the state of santa catarina in 2002. in porto alegre-rs, the school constituent congress (october/1994 to august/1995) discussed with all the segments of school community to elaborate the school statutes for the proposal of a citizen school to municipal public school network to be feasible. based on a democratic conception of management, this proposal seeks to subsidize and give real conditions to a collective movement of curricular reorientation. the curriculum and knowledge conception is discussed and expressed in the politicalpedagogical-administrative project that is intended to be implemented, and there were no doubts about the intentions and commitment to the freedom popular education. in this sense, the school constituent congress (1995) 15 and curso verão (summer course) (1996) showed the possibility to overcome crystallized educative practices, indicating new conceptions and pedagogical actions compatible with the assumed political commitment. from the dialogue between smed/poa and school network, the group of educators that attended curso verão (summer course) (1996) identified parameters and systematized actions for the curricular reorientation movement, based on the constituent congress discussion. with this, it came up proposals for implementing the new curriculum in the municipal schools of porto alegre. after successive discussions in regional meetings and schools involving parents, students, employees and educators, the participative curriculum profile was being defined and the statute should give support to it. then the curriculum saul & silva. the legacy of paulo freire for curriculum policies and teaching in brazil 49 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci would be conceived and elaborated in an interdisciplinary way, that is, from successive summaries and analyses. the group of educators would seek the contribution of different subject matters in order to reveal the study objects. the objects and the own analysis process were regarded as contemporary historical totalizations, thus being submitted to different points-of-view according to the interests and intentions of the persons involved. 16 in this way, under the perspective to concretize a pedagogical work involving the school community in elaborating a dynamic curriculum, the process of smed of porto alegre can be compared to the movements of other secretariats of education of popular administration that were also adorned by freire’s pedagogy. the social, constructivist reference bases the conception of teaching-learning process. we can shortly state that these proposals are characterized to be constituted from a pedagogical policy committed to the popular education that takes effect through a problematizing dialogue, mediating historical subjects and knowledge on relevant social aspects of reality to overcome the contradictions experienced by the community and transform actions of the social context in which this reality is placed. until 2001, the advances observed in municipal schools of porto alegre were a reference for all public schools interested in implementing a curriculum organized by formation cycles. in gravataí, the smec discussed with municipal schools under the perspective to “provide a horizon for school relations” from a dialogue conceived as a collective effort to overcome the difficulties regarding the traditional school exclusion. when prioritizing the participation, integration, inclusion and freedom of everyone, the institutionalization of participative spaces – school boards, municipal board of education, democratization of act for director election – was aimed together with the participation of school community through i municipal congress (november/1998). 17 the 1999 year was dedicated for the schools to elaborate the school statutes from the annals approved in i municipal congress. in the municipalities of vitória da conquista–ba and belém-pa, there was a more accurate follow-up. the construction of cabana school in belém do pará – followed in 2001 and 2002 – and the curricular reorientation in vitória da conquista – under assessorship from 1999 and 2000 – had posterior changes. later, in belém and vitória da conquista, there was an option for continuing the curricular reorientation process via generating issue with the moments proposed herein for curriculum elaboration. in maceió and goiânia, the process took place only in youth and adult education. in maceió, the movement involved some school units of school network from 2001 and qualified curricular practices could be observed from the accuracy of pedagogical team of schools. in goiânia-go, the option for reorientation via generating issue was made in the end of 2002 and the process was followed sporadically. in 2003, the municipal schools of eja analyzed researches made and sought to select significant talks of community. in the municipality of criciúma, the option for curricular reorientation via generating issue in the program for youth and adult education (proeja) took place in 2001, which allowed significant advances that are currently observed in some school units. in junior high school, the movement was chosen only in the beginning of 2003 after the elaboration of political, pedagogical project of municipal schools (october 2002). in dourados-ms, the option started in 2001 – the first year of management – with the school constituent process. around 2003, we observed schools that were making researches in the community and beginning the process for thematic reduction. saul & silva. the legacy of paulo freire for curriculum policies and teaching in brazil 50 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci in the state of rio grande do sul (1998-2001), the option was to assume the curricular reorientation only after the end of school constituent process that took place in july 2000. in alagoas, the curricular policy started with the movement in some schools of state school network from implementing formation cycles via thematic complex. from 2001, the process was accurately followed by visiting two schools. pedagogical practices were implemented from the principles and guidelines of a critical curriculum and there was the perspective to broaden the curricular proposals. regarding these curricular reorientation movements, we will generally start to approach some common aspects of these educational practices that are summarized in the following pictures. saul & silva. the legacy of paulo freire for curriculum policies and teaching in brazil 51 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci educational policies of popular administrations educational policies of popular administrations access to democratic school new teaching quality management participative planning autonomy #.priority to meet the demand #.optimization of school equipments #.school boards #.construction of school units #.youth and adult literacy #.remodellings of buildings #.elections for management team #.acquisition of didactic, #.high-quality child education #.regional boards pedagogical material #.supplying the different teaching #.sexual orientation, project #.competitive examinations modules computing, environmental educ., #.laboratories, libraries human rights, etc. reading rooms, etc. # special education, languages, technical courses, etc. #.own projects of school units #.permanent qualification of educators of different modules, levels, functions #.meetings, lectures, con gresses, courses, w orkshops, report of practices, publications, etc. democratic occupation guarantee of school of public space permanence time reorientation elaboration of common statute curricular movements #.organization of curriculum and its modules curricular categories: #. legitimation of #.broad social context; collective and participative management; #. local reality; #.attributions of segments #.structure of knowledge #.emancipatory evaluation in the areas; #.thinking structure and # . collective and individual its elaboration process; workweek #. dialogicality among the # .remuneration to knowledge of citizens teacher planning; # qualification of educator statute of municipal professorship meet the demand high-quality public teaching reduction of evasion rates and school failure construction of critical citizenship saul & silva. the legacy of paulo freire for curriculum policies and teaching in brazil 52 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci conceived in a social, constructivist and interactive way, the dialogue goes beyond a democratic posture to an epistemological requirement. under this perspective, the methodological organization of dialogue starts to be fundamental to elaborating the program and preparing the classroom activities in the perspective to articulate knowledges. a knowledge consensus is not the thing that is being sought. what is being sought concerns the collective construction and reconstruction of critical knowledges (mclaren, 2000, p. 196). it is to go beyond the hermeneutical focus, contextualizing the community practices and world and man conceptions that are based on the history of social, cultural and epistemological macro organization. there is a constant search for overcoming the analytical references and characterizing the limits and possibilities of different conceptions. it is a fundamental role of teaching-learning process to search for successive changes and seek to overcome analysis references, conceiving the reality as a historical totality apprehended from different perceptions and intentions that are relativized when relating them mutually. it can be shortly said that this pedagogical proposal is methodologically based on the dialogue systematized among individuals that have different conceptions and knowledges on significant and contradictory objects of the experienced local reality. when providing community with formal knowledges and formal analytical resources, the epistemological dialogue offers new interpretations of this reality, notion and articulation of possible differential actions on their real needs. freire stands out ([1993] 1998b, p. 97), “the starting point for this understanding practice is to know, be convinced that education is a political practice. we then repeat that the educator is political. consequently, it is masterful that the educator is coherent with his/her political option. with this, the educator is scientifically more and more competent, which made him/her know how it is important to know the real world where their students live. the culture in which is found their language, their syntax, their semantics, their prosody. all of which is creating certain habits, certain preferences, certain beliefs, certain fears, certain desires that are not necessarily accepted in an easy way in the real world of teacher”. shortly, it can be stated that the cognoscibility is in the inseparable relation between reciprocally changeable objects and subjects. citizenship is not a future, idealistic perspective for some “ready” citizens that the educational system selected. they are able to define an exclusive list of relations between the school knowledges and the social complex as the traditional school wants, so that there is a constant praxis that makes sense and brings meaning to the educative activity of public school committed to set the social excluded people free. for this, the praxis of this critical curricular reorientation necessarily involves moments when there are:  problematizing analyses for the pedagogical difficulties of school daily life from a broad conception of curriculum –school/community as a reference for curricular practices committed to building humanization and effecting the right to citizenship;  qualitative researches as a participative educational practice, involving all the community as researching agents for the needs and conflicts that the community experiences;  selection of local issues that, when contextualized in the broadest social, cultural and economic reality, express and denounce the conflicts experienced as saul & silva. the legacy of paulo freire for curriculum policies and teaching in brazil 53 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci current contradictions in the community relations and social macro relations, seeking to critically theorize their reasons and articulate local knowledges and universal knowledges concerning the analyzed problem;  systematization of school contents and interdisciplinary study plans that comprise universal knowledges conflicting with the local knowledges. both knowledges are conceived as human political, epistemological constructions, social, cultural constructions and historically restricted constructions;  methodological organization of curricular and pedagogical practice from the dialogue conceived as a critical, ethical presupposition for planning the programs and systematizing the teaching/learning process committed to the social quality of a transforming education;  organic and pedagogical relations for mobilizing and sharing actions among the school community, local popular movements and social, cultural movements;  constant internal evaluation of the implemented curricular practices and policies, counting on the active participation of all the agents involved in the curricular elaboration. from the faced difficulties, external evaluations are sought so that it can be promoted a distant problematization to the school community, helping in the collective construction of school autonomy. to rescue the community identity cannot mean a contemplative position concerning the reality. rather, it requires a rigorous aspect to be a community that analyzes, elaborates and proposes alternatives and innovations for the real dehumanization conditions. from the identity to innovation, there is a way through non-identity and differentiation and criticism to real life denial, as torres (2003, p. 194) observes on freire’s epistemological position for the construction of new knowledge: when studying this relation between the subject and object, freire reaches to the following conclusion: 1. knowledge is possible and simultaneously part of a huge process for human freedom. for freire, it is possible to know the own thing, thus overcoming the simple empirical and neopositivist conceptions of experience and the relations for kantian categories. 2. the conscience – from the subject who knows – and the world – the object to be known – are mutually constituted; one involves the other, but, at the same time, they involve a difference. there is a certain distance between the subject who knows and the objective reality. 3. to overcome this distance, it is necessary to make an effort under the sense of mutual reconciliation. this effort involves an action, a sense and a result. the action is to elaborate lines of reasoning based on certain laws of logic. sense is not a mere contemplative knowledge, but it contributes to transform that objective reality, a transformation that can be only made through its humanization – that is, the identity for human beings in the world through a commitment, by means of its praxis in this world, and a result that can be a creation for new knowledge and, at the same time, be a new social practice. retaking the principles and general presuppositions for a problematizing rationality, we can understand that it is necessary the following things to concretize the dialogue as a pedagogical praxis that forms critical citizens: saul & silva. the legacy of paulo freire for curriculum policies and teaching in brazil 54 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci  to assume the real subjects as agents for curricular praxis;  to have the naive curiosity on issues, situations and significant needs experienced as a starting point for the pedagogical construction of critical knowledge that is committed to socially excluded popular strata;  the problematization of this naive curiosity starts to be a political, epistemological reference beginning in the different plans of the real and in the different dimensions of human existence, both in the axiological and social, cultural function of knowledge and the identity limits of the own gnoseological practice of conceptual construction for methodological systematization of pedagogical dialogue;  the problematization requires distance, an epistemological encirclement (freire, [1995c) that requires contents for the critical contextualization of this reality, providing challenges and overcomings when apprehending the contradictory reality;  there must be a pertinence and criticism when selecting the school contents concerning the desumanization situations and issues for life production, reproduction and development in the concrete reality that it is problematized;  to continue the dialogical reconstruction of knowledge on the real in teachinglearning process, that is, in freire’s perspective (1995c), to pass from the naive curiosity to epistemological curiosity;  to have the consciousness as a curricular planning of transforming actions on the concrete reality, not only having a consciousness retaking on the real difficulties that the society faces. in this way, the curricular reorientation proposed by the interdisciplinary curricular projects involves reorganizing the school time and place, requiring a collective work of educators in constant researches of local reality in community and public bodies to search for information on the analyzed objects. besides these sources, it is necessary to look for a deepening of the specific knowledges in different areas that do not appear in the traditional didactic books – a “thematic range” is required (freire, [1968] 1988, p. 109). therefore, the action-research and the permanent qualification of educators characterize the routine of this praxis in the elaboration of their didactic, pedagogical material. sine qua non conditions are the democratic management and statute of educational process in which community and educators, when talking permanently, successively reevaluate and define the pedagogical course of school unit. evidently, the secretariats have been facing many difficulties in implementing the proposal, but the perspective to collectively seek their overcoming from the evaluative categories that guide new decision-makings allows us to believe in the irreversibility of collective process for curricular elaboration. compatible with the curricular conception, the “emancipatory evaluation” (saul, [1988] 1995, p. 61) is regarded as a reference for the constant process to make and remake the practice. as she stands out, the emancipatory evaluation is characterized as a description process and critical analysis of a given reality, aiming at transforming it. it is destined to the evaluation of social or educational programs. it is situated in a political, pedagogical assessment whose primordial interest is emancipatory, that is, freedom, aiming at provoking the criticism so that the subject is set free from the deterministic conditions. the main commitment of this evaluation is to saul & silva. the legacy of paulo freire for curriculum policies and teaching in brazil 55 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci make people who are directly or indirectly involved in an educational action write their ‘own history’ and create their own action alternat ives. as the emancipatory evaluation is regarded as investigative, diagnostic and processing, the emancipatory evaluation would correspond to the interface moment between the critical analysis of the experienced person and the coming planning, seeking to overcome the difficulties. therefore, in the curricular elaboration movement, the overcoming of teaching traditional structure is sought in the methodological dimensions and selection of school knowledges to be taught. when conceiving the knowledge construction as the social and historical activity of individuals on significant and problematic aspects of reality, the learning process takes place from an effective cognitive demand to understand the experienced situations. admitting that a new form to conceive and act on a certain object only occurs when we overcome the previous form used to analyze it, the differentiated social action would be a summary of a new form to think about its reality. in this way, the dialogue would be a propulsive aspect of a continuous political, epistemological and cognitive movement in its critical pedagogical assessment, arousing needs for apprehending knowledges concerning the approached issues of reality, which motivates the elaboration of new analytical references. as the local reality is regarded as historical, organic, systemic and reflection of a broad social context, this interdisciplinary political, epistemological approach proposes to broaden the analytical horizons when passing by the plot of social relations, giving rise to practicable solutions for the local problem that the community has not noted yet and contributing to form participative and critical citizens. as freire stands out ([1993] 1995d, p. 108, 109), “(...) i would like to stand out a mistake: a mistake that one considers that the good popular education today – carefree to reveal the phenomena because of the fact reasons – restricts the educative practices to the real teaching of contents, understood as the act to hide the cognoscibility of educatees. this mistake is as lack of dialectic as its opposite side: it restricts the educative practice to a pure ideological exercise. (...) it is typical from a certain neoliberal speech that is also sometimes named as post-modern. such speech is a reactionary post-modernity that is cared about the purely technical teaching and is a transmission of an x set of knowledges needed for the popular classes to survive. more than a politically conservative posture, this is an epistemologically unsustainable position that hurts the own nature of human being who is ‘programmed to learn’. it is deeper and more serious than teaching oneself.” therefore, the dichotomized view between curricular conception and practice is overcome by the action that gains the accuracy of collective praxis. the new teaching social quality is the consequence of this movement, stimulating the educational networks to advance under the direction of an interdisciplinary curricular reorientation in which the social, historical context and the knowledge dialogue provide a collective construction of a popular education destined to the citizenship formation. evidently, for all this process in schools to be possible, the secretariats of education need an internal organization of their practices that are compatible with the freedom and democratic dialogue guiding their emancipatory and critical pedagogical actions. saul & silva. the legacy of paulo freire for curriculum policies and teaching in brazil 56 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci to render possible and follow the curricular reorientation process is fundamental to form multidisciplinary pedagogical teams. these teams are composed by educators who derive from schools that are able to act as organic intellectuals committed to the humanizing transformation, as they know the reality of educational networks. they are stimulators that pertinently problematize the practices and difficulties faced by the different school communities. the perspective is that, by means of a little-by-little development of critical self-consciousness, the own school community creates local leaderships (gramsci, [1999] 2001, v. 1, p. 104) and the school-group becomes the “collective stimulator” of its practices (faundez, 1993, p. 85). these pedagogical teams should seek to meet all the innovative initiatives of school network, following the different projects that are committed to the principles of popular education. in this way, in the beginning of the educational management for popular administrations, it is generally observed the formation of pedagogical teams with educators who follow different educational projects, meeting different teaching levels and modules: formation groups for specific grades; follow-up of practices for reading rooms; projects against the violence in schools; sexual orientation projects; organization of practices for learning progression classes; implementation of proposals that meet the specificities for adult and youth education, literacy movements and child education; pedagogical workshops and meetings that discuss and meet the specificities for the knowledge areas, the ethnic, gender questions and environment preservation questions, and the specific follow-up for the formation of school boards and student clubs to implement the democratic management. it is important to stand out that everybody tends to be turned to the interdisciplinary project via generating issue during the particularized projects, assuring their specificities in totalizing the educative practice that this project represents. in this way, there is a passage from the diversity of different pedagogical practices to the unit that is represented by the collective project of popular education from school. the follow-up of pedagogical fronts demands the collective organization – for multidisciplinary teams; dialogical lists for the school meetings; lectures, congresses and other events of theoretical deepening and scientific divulgation; regional meetings to define reports of experiences, exchange of information and practices – and the frequent movement evaluations in municipal schools. the collegiate management has been the most adequate way to make decisions and manage. thus, we can establish some relations between this implementation process for the curricular reorientation movement of interdisciplinary project via generating issue and the curricular practice proclaimed by it. in this way, both in the school curriculum elaboration and the practices of project implementation movement in the school units, derived from the five proposed organizational moments, the real social, cultural and historical subjects are the agents of dialectic process for elaborating the dialogical practice. we can say the same concerning the organization for classroom practices in which the three pedagogical moments seek to systematize the dialogue in the knowledge construction (delizoicov, 1991). so, in the different curricular instances, the movement is sought to be organized when always using the problematization for needs immanent in the practices, expressing social, cultural conflicts that, as epistemological tensions, show contradictions subjected to be overcome from conscientization and collective action plans that implement transformations in the initial developed practices. this internal political, pedagogical coherence of the proposal in its different organizational levels of action provides the real saul & silva. the legacy of paulo freire for curriculum policies and teaching in brazil 57 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci experience of freedom and emancipatory collective praxis from the creative time of nonidentity, collective autonomy hope and newness. the commitment to the critical curricular practice that is derived from the antihegemonic negativities demands a methodological strictness; the knowledge that the scientific communities historically systematized should not be conceived as a base and identity instrumental rationality, a technique that legitimates power relations that are entangled in the conventional school practices. the problematizing rationality arising from the negativities of system victims inverts this situation, making available the scientific collection of humanity to the critical elucidation required for the emancipation of subjects. for this, including the commitment to transforming the unfair reality, the indispensable methodological principles are as follows: the political, epistemological dialogicality, “the authenticity, the anti-dogmatism and a modest scientific practice”, 18 that ends the arrogance of traditional curriculum that seeks to dichotomize and establish power relations between theory and practice. consequently, when a critical pedagogy is chosen, the intention is to find answers – concerning the faced difficulties and conflicts – in the own school curricular praxis. in the epistemological distance, the apprehension of collective curricular praxis is sought, embodying as a principle the legitimation of speeches, the emancipatory rationality, the dialogical and participative organization of practices that create knowledges, senses and meanings capable of basing political, educational movements opposed to the different modules of current domination. without trying to deepen the issue because it is not the object for the present curricular discussion, it is still possible to stand out the differences that were observed in the cycle curriculum organization conceptions. for sme/sp (1992, p. 22), the cycle conception involves an education understood (...) as a social, humanistic, scientific, critical and freedom practice; a curriculum conception on progress that needs the participation of all people involved in the educative process; a learning conception that respects the cognitive, social and affective development of educatee, considering him/her as a agent who builds knowledge when interacting with the other and the knowledge object; a democratic management proposal in which the decisions should be made by the school community and emphasized in the collective work. while having common bases with other cycle curricular organization proposals 19 , we would say that the presented perspective is not restricted to a strictly cognitivist approach that is turned to the technical and didactic improvement of learning process, but it goes beyond it in the sense that it is contextualized in the critical, ethical plan of pedagogical and political, epistemological practice to indicate the parameters that guide the process for building and selecting the knowledges involved in the systematization of school contents. from common presuppositions that sme/sp adopted, smed/poa (1996) made a curricular restructure movement in which the perspective was to implement little by little a political, pedagogical proposal in schools from cycle formation. by focusing aspects concerning the social-anthropological, epistemological, socialpedagogical and philosophical sources, the dialogue was sought to be deepened with the approach of human development cycle (escola plural, sme/bh, 1996, apud padilha, 2001, p. 124), consubstantiating the pedagogical practice from the curriculum organization by thematic saul & silva. the legacy of paulo freire for curriculum policies and teaching in brazil 58 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci complexes. 20 from the followed policies, although the curriculum organization by thematic complex was a reference for the curricular proposals of criciúma – only for junior high school from 2002 – and for the implementation proposals of formation cycles by see/al – an experience that involves four schools of state school network –, the vertical restructure of curriculum by formation cycles implemented by smed/poa was a reference for the practices in caxias do sul-rs, chapecó-sc and criciúma (eja). in these cities, as in belém-pa, vitória da conquista-ba, goiânia-go (eja), maceió-al (eja) and dourados (ms), the curricular organization takes place from the interdisciplinary proposal via generating issue. among the difficulties observed in implementing the curricular proposals by learning cycle, formation cycle and human development cycle, there is the tendency to emphasize cognitive and psychological aspects on one side and to emphasize humanistic values for a generic and “future citizenship” on other side in non-contextualized pedagogical practices and attempts to take out the political implications of curricular practice (as if it could be possible), relegating economic and social-cultural questions, compromising the criticism of curricular act and thus assuming a supposed neutrality of education and its knowledge. in this way, the cycle curricular organization cannot be lost in proposals that are only restricted to an innovative speech but are limited in practice to select contents and study objects from the conventional reference through a motivational view or exclusively cognitivist view of educators. evidently, it is necessary to recognize the advances that, in some cases, this option may bring, but it is not enough to elaborate an effectively critical curriculum. the ethical-critical and political-epistemological principles and presuppositions, even having a lot of difficulties as organizing bases for the pedagogical practice of schools organized by cycles, need to be the base for a popular and dialogical education committed to transforming the unfair reality. therefore, it is fundamental that the educational policies are not dichotomized. it is fundamental that the educational policies are articulated, that is, the most consistent option is to provide school constituent processes and elaboration of education plans concomitantly with the development of curricular reorientation movements – inclusively seeking to make possible to implement the pedagogical practices developed by them, even before establishing a educational plan that defines principles and guidelines for all schools – under the perspective of reciprocal influences that the simultaneity of the two policies may exert in order to collectively create and build the new school act. this act comes up as a conscientization practice, and the school appears as a philosophical, political and reflective instance of democratic praxis (gramsci, apud barbier, [1985] 1996, p. 53). 3. the curricular reorientation and development of educators: on freire’s administration, “two sides of the same coin” the analysis of paulo freire’s works allows us to realize he keeps coming back to the theme of teaching, according to different points of view, emphasizing the importance of building knowledge, political education, denial of authoritarianism, democracy, dialogue, communication, theoretical and practical relationship, amongst others. but it is in the published works: "medo e ousadia o cotidiano do professor” (in a literal translation “fear and boldness – the teacher’s everyday”, 1987), “professora sim, tia não cartas a quem saul & silva. the legacy of paulo freire for curriculum policies and teaching in brazil 59 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci ousa ensinar” (“teacher yes, ma’am no – letters for those who dare to teach”, 1993), “a educação na cidade” (“education in the city” -1991) and, specially, in his last book published while he was still alive, "pedagogia da autonomiasaberes necessários à prática docente” (“autonomy pedagogy – necessary expertise for the practice of teaching” 1997), paulo freire deepens the systematization of his ideas, about education, based on the reflection on his experiences. the development of a teacher or educator, subject matter of paulo freire, is, in his works, deliberately qualified with an adjective. the adjective is permanent, and differs from the concept of continued education, of recycling and training. what does paulo freire mean when he is referring to an educator’s permanent education? permanent education, for paulo freire, implies the comprehension that the human being is an inconclusive being, and this being has always in mind the perspective of “being more”. permanent education, therefore, is not only for students in the position of school students or for young and adults who had no access to school education, but to each human being, in any stage of his/her existence. the permanent education is connected to the understanding that it happens with/on the concrete reality, on the practical reality. thus, we find the idea that a permanent education program for educators requires working on the practices the teachers have. as of the analysis of these “to-do” items, one can find which is the “theory inserted”, as says paulo freire, or which are the pieces of theory which are present on the practice of each one of the teachers or educators – even if they do not know which theory it is! it is essential to observe that the matter here is not purely an exposition of the teaching experience which the educators have, but overall, it is a reflection over such experience. according to paulo freire (1997), “the knowledge that the spontaneous teaching practice, or almost spontaneous, ‘unarmed’, undoubtedly produces, is a simple knowledge, one achieved from experience, to which lacks the methodical rigidity which is characteristic of the subject’s epistemological curiosity. (...) what we need is to enable that, back to itself, through reflection about the practice, the simple curiosity, realizing itself as it is, starts becoming critical”. in the secretary of education of são paulo, the permanent education program for educators has been improved, during paulo freire administration, overall on the modality of “education groups”, which consisted of grouping teachers for debating their practices and finding out the theory present on them, in order to, from then on, compare their theories and practices, in a constant movement of action-reflection-action, with the perspective of re-creating theory and practice. one may note that what already took place on the municipal schools of são paulo, at the field of educators development, in accordance to paulo freire’s comprehension, has begun to be present in the speech and texts of national and international writers, as an innovation in the area, as a new paradigm on educators development, which thrives over the 90’s. according to antonio nóvoa (1996), the traditional development practices have been built under the logic of technical reasoning, which emphasizes the dialogue between the knowledge of disciplines and the knowledge specialized in education. the author points out to the need of adding to these types of knowledge a third one, the teacher’s experience knowledge, so forming what he called the “triangle of knowledge”. the triangle presents in saul & silva. the legacy of paulo freire for curriculum policies and teaching in brazil 60 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci its corners the three foregoing knowledge, as points of dialogue. this new point – the teacher’s voice – implies acknowledging the experience knowledge, considered as a legitimate potential of education. thus, the permanent education of teachers, by the critical-transforming perspective, continues to be a great challenge for the educational reality in brazil and in the world. a strong action was taken in the public schools of são paulo, during the administration of paulo freire. other education public systems, since then, have been getting inspiration from the thinking of paulo freire and are re-creating the practices for educators’ development, along with the work of curricular reorientation/formation of education systems. such practices, however, have been oscillating in what concerns approval and implementation of the same, at the discretion of educational policies by public managers. 4. an academic space for studying and researching freire’s legacy: the paulo freire cathedra of puc/sp paulo freire was a professor in puc/sp (pontiff catholic university of são paulo), at the education program: curriculum, since his return from exile, for the period of 17 years (1980-1997). after his passing, on his honor, puc/sp created the paulo freire cathedra, in the 2nd semester of 1998, under direction of the education program (curriculum). the cathedra has been deemed not only as homage to a personality. at puc/sp, particularly on the education program: curriculum, we have considered the cathedra as a special space for development of studies and research about/and as of paulo freire’s work, focusing their theoretical and practical repercussion on education and its potential to develop new thoughts. in other words, we pay homage to paulo freire in a way we understand he would like it to be, studying his thoughts strictly, to understand them and re-create them. studying and researching the theories of paulo freire on puc/sp today places the education program: curriculum side by side a great number of academics and centers which elect paulo freire ideas as the object of their theoretical investigations and/or as inspiration for their practice 21 . 4.1 the “plans” assumed by paulo freire cathedra the first “plan” proposed by the program, for the cathedra well functioning, consisted of creating an academic space for discussion of important themes on freire’s ideas, during 15 school weeks, with legitimacy to grant credits equivalent to an optional discipline, for regular students of post-graduation studies. the cathedra was not bond, specifically, to any program nucleus, which qualified it as a space that trans-versed the nucleus and disciplines of the program, being able to offer contributions to researchers in different research lines. in order to coordinate this work, professors outside the program were invited, each semester, whose production was in tune with freire’s ideas. for the first two semesters were invited respectively professor ana maria araújo freire and professor miguel arroyo 22 . the program collegiate defined the following themes for each semester: “paulo freire: 30 years of pedagogy of the oppressed”, and “paulo freire: the contemporary pedagogic origins, history and process” 23 . in the evaluation of this “plan” and its functioning, during the second semester of 1999, the collegiate recognized the important contribution of the work developed by the saul & silva. the legacy of paulo freire for curriculum policies and teaching in brazil 61 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci professors invited, however, resented a more permanent presence of the academicians which conducted the cathedra work, in the sense that this work should have been more connected to what was being developed on the program. upon such evaluation, a new “plan” for the cathedra was sought, to enable a more effective integration of the work with the program’s research lines. the collegiate decided the cathedra should be coordinated by a professor who belonged to the permanent teaching faculty of the program and that he/she should have some knowledge of freire’s theories. professor ana maria saul was appointed to coordinate the works, as of the 1st semester of 2000, with the collaboration of professor yvonne khoury, also a permanent teacher of the program. since then, the cathedra has been programmed, each year, during the two school semesters. at the beginning of this new functioning phase, the main difference in relation to the previous “plan” lied on the fact that the teacher responsible for conducting the cathedra should belong to the permanent teaching faculty of the program and, in such conditions, a tighter link was established with the program proposal and routine. as a result, the theme to be developed in each semester became the cathedra coordinator’s responsibility. it was also established that special seminars would be performed, which had later turned into the form of “paulo freire cathedra dialogues”, to which teachers from outside puc/sp were invited. these events were open to all students of the program and the university, with the intention to extend the debate on paulo freire’s ideas 24 . the first theme developed was “paulo freire and the development of the educator: theory and practice”. although with a headline specifically aimed to the educator’s development, students of both nucleus of the program participated in the cathedra. the paulo freire cathedra, then, starts to be understood as a space where: a) building knowledge is done in a collective and cumulative way, so that it is not only a “space you pass by” for students, a place where one builds/seeks knowledge taking with them what is considered important, but a place where at the same time “one takes” and “one leaves” the knowledge produced, for future constructions. in order to do so, it was necessary to think about records, systematization and divulgation of experiences and productions; b) the teaching, the research and some forms of service are linked to build knowledge; c) the group of teachers are coherent with the principles of building knowledge that are characteristic of freire’s pedagogy  respect towards the students’ knowledge;  existence of dialogue;  collective construction of knowledge;  building critical-transforming knowledge; d) the teaching and research are improved, with the participation of guest professors, from outside the program, once it is not turned into a “mere space”, by where the lecturers pass, in other words, taking care to not transform it into a “display”; e) there is serious engagement to make the produced knowledge known, also considering the forms of organization to attend the intervention demands, next to educators on public schools. 4.2 the work methodology on paulo freire cathedra it is developed, in the cathedra, a work methodology which observes “multiple routes”, that is, different work points are developed simultaneously, in accordance to the saul & silva. the legacy of paulo freire for curriculum policies and teaching in brazil 62 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci interests and demands from the students’ investigation subjects, referred to by freire’s pedagogy. the first moment of the methodology is the “theme investigation”, when we get to understand the research interest from the participants, what they develop/intend to develop (subjects of their dissertations and thesis), and the reasons why they attend the cathedra. the second moment constitutes the first immersion into freire’s thinking. we propose to the students a first approach to freire’s works. at this point, the students may select a work from the bibliography indicated by the teacher, or may read again some work he/she might be familiar with. the first challenge put upon them is to find the concepts of his/her interest in the reading of one of paulo freire’s texts, having as criteria the theme/problem of research of each participant. the third moment consists of sharing and debating, in the class group, the concepts gathered by the participants of the cathedra. here is already the beginning of analysis on the understandings acquired from the readings, at the same time each participant justifies his/her choice of concepts, relating it to their investigation. the fourth moment consists of mapping the class group’s concepts, in a collective work, according to the criteria of choice, collective interest, possible approximations between the theme and concepts, aiming at defining the “research itinerary” of the group’s participants in the current semester. the fifth moment is characterized by deepening the concepts by each sub-group formed in the class, combining concepts and the major theme. at this moment, specific works from paulo freire are appointed, for each one of the class sub-groups, in order to have the concepts selected better analyzed. at this stage of the work, the goal is to prepare a written production which is shared and debated in the class. this production has presented many other destinations. one of such is the research by the post-graduate student who attends the cathedra (dissertation or thesis). another one has been the inscription/presentation of the text, produced and discussed in the cathedra, on national and/or international events. a third possibility for divulgation of this production has been its publishing in books, organized by the cathedra. in this case, the texts are submitted to a new analysis instance (also of pedagogic nature), and may be back to the author’s hands for review/complementation. the following image presents some aspects of the methodology which is developed in the cathedra, showing the theme/concepts course, which took place in one of the semesters of work. saul & silva. the legacy of paulo freire for curriculum policies and teaching in brazil 63 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 4.3 the research on paulo freire cathedra the cathedra has been developing a cumulative research about the influence of paulo freire thinking and works on the public educational systems in brazil, aiming at contributing for re-creation of policies and educational practices in an emancipatory-critical perspective. the objectives of this research are the following:  assist the “political-pedagogical” performance of public schools committed to education democratization;  identify and analyze the influence of paulo freire on public educational systems in brazil;  build a database about the different administrations of educational public chains in brazil, under the influence of paulo freire’s ideas; educational policies freire and the organization of social movements teaching / learning freire’s proposal for popular administrations democratic governing permanent education of the school community democratic administration critical curriculum e m a n c ip a t o r y c u l t u r a l a c t io n popular participation c u r r ic u l u m f o r m a t io n c u r io s it y e p is t e m o l o g y collective construction school democratization autonomy for freire ethical-critical public policy mobilization humanization paulo freire cathedra (2001): itinerary scheme conceptual plan (categories) areas of interest research fields articulation between conceptual plan and research dialogue awareness bank education inedited viable introduction nucleus:  based in freire;  works history;  cathedra perspectives saul & silva. the legacy of paulo freire for curriculum policies and teaching in brazil 64 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci  register and publish the research results and divulge them on the web site of paulo freire cathedra, so as to enable permanent consultation and constant interaction between educators interested on the matter;  connect researchers and post-graduate students from several regions of the country and abroad, who investigate the influence of freire in education, and specially, in the public educational systems;  divulge the research results in national and international events. 4.4 the productions of paulo freire cathedra during the last 8 years, the cathedra production includes books and texts prepared for presentation in national and international conferences. three books already are a result from the cathedra work, gathering texts produced by the participants. the book “paulo freire e a formação dos educadores múltiplos olhares” (in a literal translation, “paulo freire and the development of educators – multiple looks”), organized by professor ana maria saul, was released in september 2000, at evora, portugal, during the international congress "um olhar sobre paulo freire" (“a look at paulo freire”) and later on, in important locations in brazil. this book was published on mexico and spain, in catalonian. “a pedagogia da libertação em paulo freire” (“the pedagogy of emancipation in paulo freire”), book organized by professor ana maria araújo freire, was released in march 2001, at the paulo freire cathedra space, in puc/sp. the third book, “paulo freire: um pensamento atual para compreender e pesquisar questões do nosso tempo” (“paulo freire: a modern thinking to understand and research matters of our time”), organized by professor ana maria saul, was released in november 2005. during the second semester of 2000, there was a collective creation of a website – informative and interactive space about paulo freire cathedra, which is updated each semester and is part of the subject matter of studies in researches and dissertations 25 . the works elaborated in the cathedra were presented by their participants in national and/or international meetings. as highlights, with great number of works presented (8), there are the international meeting “um olhar sobre paulo freire” (“a look at paulo freire”), held in september 2000, evora – portugal; the paulo freire international colloquies, promoted by paulo freire center, in recife, each two years, (1997-2005); the performance of the cathedra in organizing the paulo freire colloquy (santo amaro educational coordination – municipal secretary of education of são paulo – 2004). the preparation of new publications, with registration of the work by the cathedra participants, is a proposal which has been originated from the actions in the class room. paulo freire thinking, therefore, continues to constitute, in this new millennium, an important matrix which shall keep inspiring the theory and practice of all those who engage in the commitment to a democratic education, and more than that, to all those who claim the right and duty to change the world, towards a social project founded in principles of social justice and of human being ethics. saul & silva. the legacy of paulo freire for curriculum policies and teaching in brazil 65 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 9. we participate in the institutionalization for the fair and fraternal latin-american unit and we know that the unit of “great homeland” needs to be born again and be consolidated in men and women of our region. 10. we, undersigned of this declaration, pay homage to paulo freire whose thinking remains alive and inspires the greatest educative proposals in the current globalized world. we are committed to following the master’s way, recreating his discoveries from our own social practice. notes 1 full professor and coordinator of cátedra paulo freire (paulo freire cathedra) of pontifícia universidade católica de são paulo (pontifical catholic university of são paulo), brazil. she worked with paulo freire during two decades in pontifical catholic university of são paulo and municipal secretariat of education of são paulo. anasaul@uol.com.br 2 professor of universidade federal de são carlos (federal university of são carlos), são paulo, brazil. he was a member of the paulo freire’s team in municipal secretariat of education of são paulo. gova@uol.com.br 3 he is professor of university of wisconsin-madison and one of the most well-known international experts in the curriculum field and analysis of educational policies. he is regarded as one of the main persons who diffused paulo freire’s work in the united states. 4 he is professor of universidade de lisboa (lisboa university), portugal, and author of various scientific works in education area. 5 when he defends the critical theory contributions to the curriculum analysis – and not to the “program” analysis – on adult education, clair (2001) uses pedagogy of the oppressed as a central reference. pedagogy of the oppressed is regarded as the theoretical basis for popular education in the introduction page of popular education in action website (pop ed, http://www.flora.org/mike/). 6 under supervision of prof. ana maria saul in his dissertation for master’s degree, maurício carrara built a technological tool to register searches about the influence of freire’s thinking on education public policies. 7 office of the coordinator of graduated personnel qualification / ministry of education / brazil 8 in november 1988, luiza erundina de sousa, a candidate for partido dos trabalhadores (workers’ party), was elected as the major of the city of são paulo. her election was a fruit of a fight from a young party (13-year-old existence) that consolidated itself as an opposition party in its trajectory. this fact created expectations, reactions and tensions in the different sectors of society, since her government program privileged the least favorable classes of population, inverting priorities. 9 the first moment of curricular reorientation process, the problematization, which took place in august 1989, was carried out from a video containing a recording in which paulo freire talked to educators about questions of daily education in municipal schools of são paulo. 10 the school problematization text made by the teachers reached schools in the end of 1989 and was a subsidy for 1990 planning. it was the object for discussion and analysis of school teams. 11 the authors followed the above-mentioned states and municipalities. 12 among others, we can mention the following documents of the respective popular administrations that demonstrate these principles: pmsp-sp/sme, são paulo (1992, p. 13-23), pmpoa-rs/smed, porto alegre (1996, p. 35 and 36), pm ar-rj/sme, angra dos reis (1996, p. 13 and 14), pmg-rs/smec, gravataí (1998), mailto:anasaul@uol.com.br mailto:gova@uol.com.br http://www.flora.org/mike/ saul & silva. the legacy of paulo freire for curriculum policies and teaching in brazil 66 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci pmc-sc/smec, chapecó (1998, 2001 and 2002), and pmcs-rs/smed, caxias do sul (1999), pmc-sc/sme, criciúma (2003), pmm-al/smed, maceió (2001). 13 it is relevant to stand out that only the influences observed in these educational policies in the studied curricular reorientation movements will be analyzed, although the school constituent processes were followed – moments of a full democratic participation of all social classes in elaborating, systematizing and implementing public policies in educational scope and moments of strategic planning of some secretariats of education. 14 see antonio f. g. da silva (1996, p. 204-236). 15 see pmpoa-rs/smed, porto alegre (1995). 16 in the same pedagogical tendency of other municipal secretariats, the smed of porto alegre implemented the proposal in junior high school from working with thematic complexes, involving a program reorganization and vertical distribution of school curriculum with the redistribution of study years in cycles. taking the cognitive development as a reference, the permanence and continuation of learning process are prioritized. the school practices and guidelines of school constituent congress provided the elaboration of a political, educational proposal as an option for the teaching organization in the other schools of the municipality, subsidizing the elaboration of a school statute which is a reference for implementing the citizen school. see pmpoars/smed, porto alegre (1996, p. 22-29) and carlos r. brandão (2003, p.111 and the following ones). 17 smec/gravataí-rs/ (1998). 18 see orlando fals borda ([1981] 1990, p. 49-56). 19 see josé augusto pacheco (1996, p. 40 and 41). 20 see josé c. de azevedo (2000), andréa krug, (2001), paulo r. padilha (2001), m. pistrak ([1924] 1981). 21 together with the professor paulo freire, ana maria saul took part of the teaching staff to conduct classes on education nucleus for school excluded people. 22 attended the special seminars and debates on paulo freire cathedra, among others, the following professors: almerindo janela afonso (university of minho portugal), carlos núñez hurtado (cathedra paulo freire of guadalajara mexico), licínio lima (university of minho portugal), lisete regina arelaro (usp), maria eliete santiago (ufpe), pedro pontual (ceaal), pillar ubilla (master in popular education uruguay). 23 on the following semesters, other themes guided the development of the cathedra: ‘paulo freire and the social movements’; ‘the influence of paulo freire on public education systems in brazil’; ‘paulo freire thinking on the brazilian public education set: politics, theory and practice’; ‘paulo freire: a reference for analysis and construction of educational policies’. 24 in these events we have also noted the presence of teachers from the education program (curriculum), who attended as lecturers or as part of the round table: alípio casalli, ana maria saul, antonio chizzotti, ivani fazenda, mário sérgio cortella and mere abramowicz. 25 the website may be accessed by clicking on www.pucsp.br/paulofreire http://www.pucsp.br/paulofreire saul & silva. the legacy of paulo freire for curriculum policies and teaching in brazil 67 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci references apple, m. w. ideologia e currículo. são paulo, brasiliense, 1982. apple, m. w. educação e poder. porto alegre, artes médicas, 1989. apple, m. w. e nóvoa, a. paulo freire: política e pedagogia. porto: porto editora, 1998. apple, m. w & beane, j. a. (orgs.). escolas democráticas. são paulo, cortez, 1997. azevedo, j. c. de. escola cidadã: desafios, diálogos e travessias. petrópolis, vozes, 2000. borda, o. f. (1981). aspectos teóricos da pesquisa participante: considerações sobre o significado e o papel da ciência na participação popular. in: brandão, c. r. (org.) pesquisa participante. são paulo, brasiliense, 1990. brandão, c. r. a pergunta a várias mãos: a experiência da partilha através da pesquisa na educação. são paulo, cortez, 2003. damke, i. r. o processo do conhecimento na pedagogia da libertação: as idéias de freire, fiori e dussel. petrópolis, vozes, 1995. domingues, j. l. o cotidiano da escola de primeiro grau: sonho e a realidade. são paulo, puc/sp, 1988. freire, p. a importância do ato de ler. são paulo: cortez editora, 1992. freire, p. cartas à guiné-bissau. rio de janeiro: paz e terra, 1978. freire, p. educação como prática da liberdade. rio de janeiro: paz e terra, 1967. freire, p. a educação na cidade. são paulo: cortez editora, 1991. freire, p. pedagogia da autonomia: saberes necessários à prática educativa. rio de janeiro: paz e terra, 1997. freire, p. pedagogia da esperança: um reencontro com a pedagogia do oprimido. rio de janeiro: paz e terra, 1994. freire, p. pedagogia do oprimido. rio de janeiro: paz e terra, 1970. freire, p. política e educação. são paulo: cortez editora, 1993. freire, p. professora sim, tia não. cartas a quem ousa ensinar. são paulo: editora olho d'água, 1993. gadotti, m. (org.) paulo freire: uma biobibliografia. são paulo: cortez editora, instituto paulo freire; df: unesco, 1996. giroux, h. a. (1983). teoria crítica e resistência em educação. petrópolis, vozes, 1986. goodson, i. f. currículo: teoria e história. petrópolis, vozes, 1995. governo do estado do rio grande do sul-rs/see. constituinte escolar: construção da escola democrática e popular. conferência estadual da educação. porto alegre, agosto, 2000a. governo do estado do rio grande do sul-rs/see. princípios e diretrizes para a educação pública estadual. porto alegre, corag, 2000b. krug, a. ciclos de formação. porto alegre, mediação, 2001. kuhn, t. s. (1962). a estrutura das revoluções científicas. são paulo, cultrix / edusp, 1989. lima, l. organização escolar e democracia radical paulo freire e a governação democrática da escola pública. são paulo: cortez editora, 2000. lima, l. c. mudando a cara da escola: paulo freire e a governação democrática da escola pública. educação, sociedade e cultura (10): 7-55. porto, afrontamento, outubro, 1998. macedo, e., oliveira, i. b., manhães, l. c. & alves, n. (org.). criar currículo no cotidiano. são paulo, cortez, 2002. saul & silva. the legacy of paulo freire for curriculum policies and teaching in brazil 68 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci pacheco, j. a. currículo: teoria e práxis. porto, porto editora, 1996. padilha, p. r. planejamento dialógico. são paulo, cortez / instituto paulo freire, 2001. pistrak, m. (1924). fundamentos da escola do trabalho. são paulo, brasiliense, 1981. prefeitura municipal de angra dos reis-rj/sme. 1º congresso municipal de educação, 1994a. prefeitura municipal de angra dos reis-rj/sme. semana do plano escolar, 1994b. prefeitura municipal de angra dos reis-rj/sme. nova qualidade do ensino, movimento de reorientação curricular, 1995. prefeitura municipal de angra dos reis-rj/sme. nova qualidade do ensino, movimento de reorientação curricular (documentos 2 e 3), 1996a. prefeitura municipal de angra dos reis-rj/sme. regimento das escolas públicas municipais, 1996b. prefeitura municipal de caxias do sul-rs/smed. plano municipal de educação: princípios gerais. 1999. prefeitura municipal de chapecó-sc/smec. educação de jovens e adultos (revista nº1), 1998. prefeitura municipal de chapecó-sc/smec. trabalhador fazendo história. 2001. prefeitura municipal de chapecó-sc/smec. educação de jovens e adultos em chapecó, junho, 2002. submitted: march, 04th, 2011 approved: may, 02nd, 2011 o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: linhares, ronaldo nunes; alcântara, caio m. g., loureiro, maria josé, ramos, fernando (2016). ict assessment in teaching: suggested indicators for brazilian and portuguese teachers. transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> ict assessment in teaching: suggested indicators for brazilian and portuguese teachers ronaldo nunes linhares1, caio m. g. alcântara2 tiradentes university, brazil maria josé loureiro 3, fernando ramos4 university of aveiro, portugal introduction discussions about the relationship between learning and communication technologies have become increasingly relevant, particularly when considering the current situation of education. nowadays we need to think the pedagogical practices in the context of information societies (unesco, 2009). the training of subjects who will develop activities in the labor market is being guided in a relentless pursuit of production growth (carvalho, 2011), technological transfer and knowledge. these are two of the factors considered to be essential for social transformation by agencies such as unesco, without, however, disregarding the need for focused training towards a reflexive use and contributes to the formation of competent individuals acting in modern societies. during the last two decades there were several attempts to consolidate public policies wich aimed to fill this gap in the training process of the relevant subjects for the use of ict and its digital inclusion. one of these policies was the program "one by one" developed in several countries, especially those with a major problem in digital inclusion. among these experiences, we highlight in brazil the uca and in portugal with the magellan project, both in order to encourage new perspectives on the relationship with the knowledge and to build new teaching practices inserted in contemporary reality. although the efforts to consolidate the use of ict as teaching devices were undertaken, it is evident there is a lack of follow-up proposals and lack of the evaluation of such use in the design of public policies, wich should present assessment instruments and assessment indicators. between 2012 and 2014 portuguese teachers of four teaching units from the city of aveiro and its sorrounding areas were interviewed. in brazil, teachers of three educational units located in state of sergipe participated in the investigation, which aimed to identify and discuss the potential and limitations of the use of “one by one” mobile computers in the teaching practice of these educators. the practical experience of these teachers with the use of computers and mobile technologies provided the basis for the understanding of the points considered successful and those that hinder the development of activities with the students, serving as a foundation to a discussion on the need to better define the indicators considered as most relevant. the perception of these teahers about their practical experience with the use of mobile technologies provided the basis for the suggestion of indicators following their linhares, alcântara, loureiro & ramos. ict assessment in teaching 35 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (2) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci opinion, which are more suitable to evaluate ict in teaching. this article presents a reflection on the set of indicators suggested by teachers and wich are seen as more appropiate in an ict evaluation in education and especially in teaching, as a result of this study between portuguese and brazilian teachers involved in the magellan project in portugal and prouca in brazil. it also compares teachers’ perception and their suggestions distinguishing the most and less relevant in an attempt to understand the place of ict in various dimensions of the teaching practice use and evaluation of ict in schools in the context of the new socio-technical arrangements, teaching practice play a role that goes beyond the mere reproduction of the contents distributed in the various existing subjects in the curriculum of compulsory education. gengnadel & nicolodi (2012) advocate the consolidation of an educational model wich leads to the education of individuals able to have critical thinking and reasoning about a lifestyle strongly influenced by science and technology. these citizens and therefore the schools that train them, must stimulated the ability to interact with the constant changes imposed by technological advances. considered by many as important allies of teachers, the ict contribute to the changes in pedagogical approaches of a model centered on talking to dictating, shifting to those which provide students with authorship, interaction and collaboration creating a stimulus for autonomous learning processes. according to silva (2006) teachers should understand the various options available when using the ict as a pedagogical device, such as: i) multiple information is available (images, sounds, texts); ii) the opportunity for different paths to connections and expressions with which students can count when manipulating information; iii) encouraging each student to contribute with new information, creating and providing more and better pathways during learning. this reality, in which the technological (r)evolution becomes an intermittent factor requires continuous training of the individuals in order to broaden perspectives regarding the capacity of meaningful use, production and sharing of information towards knowledge. castells (1999) explains that the new information technologies are not merely tools to be applied, but processes to develop. (...) for the first time in history the human mind is a direct productive force" (castells, 1999; 23). in this sense, in countries such as brazil and portugal, public policies for digital inclusion focused on the integration of ict and on the access to internet in schools, have been developed in the past 25 years in order to meet the digital agenda presented by the green paper on information society released in portugal in 1997 and brazil in the year 2000. although taking into account slight differences, overall these documents present actions to promote the consolidation of the information society in all its aspects, training of human resources, promotion of research and development, e-commerce, development of new applications in a vision where education is preceived as a driving element for the consolidation of the information society, aimed at preparing citizens for life-long learning (takahashi, 2000). taking this context into account, and based on the medialabs’ "one laptop per child"5 project developed in the massachusetts institute of technology (mit), created by the researcher nicholas negroponte, the prouca program was developed in brazil in the year 2007 and in 2008 the program e-escolinha in portugal was launched. before this program they had already been, since the 90ies, some well succeeded experiences linhares, alcântara, loureiro & ramos. ict assessment in teaching 36 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (2) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci related with ict use in elementary schools, although these schools were the ones with less investment concerning ict. these projects were a major attempt to include media devices and learning enviroments in the classrooms. by creating a new integration status of ict in education, both projects aimed at: i) creating a program that would allow continuous access to computers and to the internet with special access conditions for school community and ii) promoting the development of new learning practices to be implemented nationwide. among the positive aspects of project we highlight: the reduction of the digital divide, the democratization of access to computers, availability of good software and the possibility of introducing a technological revolution in schools (souza, 2009). once the need for use of ict for educational purposes is accepted, it is urgent to uderstand the teacher's role in this new teaching approach (cortez & lau, 2009). teachers are active elements in the educational processes, even in models that emphasize self-management of studies by the students. in other words, it is said that to stimulate the effective use of communication technologies in educational spaces the teachers’ expertise in terms of the use of ict and the use of media has to be taken into account. these are the skills that will be determinant when trying to deal with some difficulties inherent to the integration of ict as a technical instrument, such as the generation gap between teachers and students, the problems of their initial and continuous trainig, in addition to the implications present in the all to all relationships established within school communication. the studies and researches developed in brazil and portugal, which followed the experience of these two programs are responsible for proving the premise that the mere existence and use of computers in schools does not translate into improved academic performance, such as the researches developed by pereira (2014) and gomes (2015), wich argues that the results below expectations regarding the pedagogical use of technologies are linked to factors such as lack of infrastructure, low digital inclusion rates and absence of teaching and managers training. for this to occur, an integration of teaching practices with the new economic reality is needed, wich is only possible when teachers and students adopt new perspectives towards technology and through the implementation of innovative practices. this concept is also heralded by reports that account studies addressing the question of the use of ict by teachers, issued by various institutions, among which the unesco (2008a, 2008b); the oei (2008) and unesco/cepal (2006). the reports6 illustrate the impact of ict in teachers’ pratices and presents indicators based in data available for analysis. those are tools related to management (aenor, 2003) and focused on the measurement of phenomena serving as a strategie for taking decisions. machado (2014) explains that the indicators are strategies aimed at productivity analysis, almost always quantitative, but allowing qualitative assessments. the indicators are inductive, as they starts with the analysis of general guidelines to infer universal standarts and have their own characteristics, defined by sierra (2012) as: a) relevance, b) validity, c) reliability, d) feasibility and communicability, f) comparability g) handling resistance and h) link to the objectives. the use of indicators in the evaluation of teaching pratices became common in the last decade with the publication of the wisis outcome document (unesco, 2005), wich established analysis parameters of educational programs based on the use of informational technologies. since then, some researches about indicators have been verified. in brazil, there are researches such as the one developed by corradini (2008), wich analyzed the indicators that established the results achived by the studentes in the program for linhares, alcântara, loureiro & ramos. ict assessment in teaching 37 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (2) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci educational student assestment (pisa) and in the teaching and learning international survey (talis), concluding that the indicators’ nature is detrimental to setting goals and comparisons. pasinato (2011) compared the evaluation indicators of technology-mediated teaching used in the united states, the european union and australia. the researcher concluded that there is no concsensus about indicators, wich justifies the need for more research on this object. despite the progress made on issues concerning the relationship teachers/students/technology there is still a gap when considering the assessment of such use or more specifically the impact of these technologies at school. some of the reports issued bring reflections and even contributions in the form of instruments and strategies for evaluation, however, they do not meet or recognize how teachers think the construction of indicators aimed to measure the success and limitations of ict use in the teaching practices. unlike institutional reports, which are intended to be broader, academic studies are in most cases small clips of micro realities, approached with very diverse insights and methodological contributions, therefore not allowing the contruction of a broader map when it comes to the assessment of the impact of ict in education. moreover, when it comes to public policy monitoring and evaluation of the implementation and impact of these projects in the school community, translate as a great void. the state that enforces these policies, does not assess how much they have or haven´t contributed to the achievement of their objectives. the perception that is necessary to evaluate ict has become more evident from the last decade of the twentieth century, when in several countries, especially the english-speaking community, programs to verify results started to be developed (oecd, 1992). the first, and still leading, evaluation programs are centered on the analysis of students’ learning, being prepared and analyzed by the community outside the school, but there are also programs that evaluate teaching practices, these most often developed by peers or superiors in school management hierarchy (ferrer, 2006). regarding the evaluation methodologies of ict they can be different in terms of model, but share similar characteristics. generally this evaluation is pragmatic, focused on the detection of changes in practices, definition of uses, description, monitoring and legitimacy, always taking into account the objects are part of (morduchovicz, 2006). this evaluation is always based on indicators that are classified as: a) descriptive; b) explanatory; c) simple or d) built. regarding the type, they can be input; access or result. at this point it is necessary to clarify the importance of building indicators that clearly address the need to understand the impact of policies in society. the main reason for the demand for assessment indicators lies in the management of school resources, whether economic or human. it is through the application of tools that use these indicators it becomes possible to measure, compare and set (or reset) investments in the policy area. these actions will enable the improvement of educational indicators, wich means more training of individuals allowing them to become more qualified for society and for labor in the context of information. course and results to better understand the ict teaching pratices of brazilian and portuguese teachers so as to identify these teachers’ regarding evaluative indicators of ict use in the classroom, we relied on the collaboration of a group of 17 teachers from the city of linhares, alcântara, loureiro & ramos. ict assessment in teaching 38 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (2) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci aveiro and its sourrounding areas of central portugal and a group of 20 brazilian teachers who work in the cities of nossa senhora da glória, itabaiana and tobias barreto, all located in the state of sergipe, northeastern brazil. the two groups have in common the work they have developed with a series of primary school students and the participation in two projects involving technology in their respective countries (magellan/portugal and prouca/brazil). the study was divided in three stages: application of a general questionnaire, composed of three closed questions and five open questions about the use of prouca/magellan computers; application of a specific questionnaire to teachers who accepted to participate in the interviews with questions aimed at establishing the social profile and opinions on the uses of ict with the following questions: a) what teachers’ opinions about the projects (prouca and magellan)?; b) in what ways do teachers assess the impact of the use of ict in teaching and learning processes? and c) wich of the indicators do teachers consider the most important to assess their use of ict? after this process they were interviewed. the research also aimed to identify the perception of teachers on the following questions: a) what are the teachers' views on the project (magellan and prouca)? b) how do teachers evaluate the impact of the use of ict in teaching and learning processes? c) which indicators are considered by teachers as the most important when assessing the use of ict? the teachers were divided in groups of two to eight, held at their place of work, with consent and all recorded in audio and video. on avarege these interviews had a time of 50 to 60 minutes. in portugal they were asked about: i) their training for the use of ict and the magellan project; ii) when and how they use computers; iii) how they plan the daily use of the device; iv) their experience in using ict in the teaching practice; v) research, use, production and delivery of content and; vi) knowledge, mastery and use of software. it is noteworthy that the same questions were reproduced at brazilian teachers, but directed to prouca. the chart below shows the schools’ data and the number of teachers who agreed to cooperate with the survey. graph 1. schools and teachers during the second phase, based on the content of the interviews and on the analysis of national and international reporting on ict assessment in education, teachers were emailed a link to a questionnaire with 40 suggested indicators to assess the teaching dimension. teachers indicated those they regarded as more relevant and appropriate to evaluate the use of ict in their teaching practices in order of importance. linhares, alcântara, loureiro & ramos. ict assessment in teaching 39 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (2) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the questionnaires returned by 14 portuguese teachers and 11 teachers form brazil were then analyzed. first the results from the interviews with the teachers were analyzed, allowing us to create a general profile in terms of their use of ict ando n the way they perceived ict as pedagogical tool. despite some differences we have to register, responses indicate similarities in the approaches and views of both the brazilian teachers and the portuguese ones regarding the use of the devices provided by prouca and the magellan project in various stages of the educational process, from training to use of the devices in the classroom. regarding the training focused on the use of ict, the two groups said they had participated in courses and training proposals, however, they mention that such training was not enough especially if we consider the programs/softwares in question. what they claim is that there was no training to deal with computers delivered by the governments from brazil and portugal. the similarity of the answers was also verified in the questions concerning the use and the planning of the activities. in both countries it was found that schools not create a specific time to plan the activities to be developed during the year with the use of the devices. for this reason, teachers plan their work individually and at home. all schools surveyed determined one single day for the use of computers in classroom. this shows a complete lack of coordination between the teachers and the school and can set up some school resistance to the use of ict. the fact that these devices are used at a specific time, marked with date and time is against the innovation suggestions, and so, icts become nothing but a mere platform to replicate models and ancient. the lack of a coordinated planning among teachers also undermines the establishment of cross curricular/interdisciplinary projects, wich promote new approaches to learning, thus making the work developed in the classroom focused on the contents of each subject. in this respect, both in the portuguese schools and in the brazilian ones, the use of ict in projects usually happened in the portuguese subject. teachers tend to use computers to write texts and powerpoint presentation without neither producing audiovisual objects, nor providing presentations to the students. another point in common between the groups of teachers from both countries is how they think and start to use ict in their teaching practice. in brazil, the teachers reported that before prouca project they didn’t carry out activities were the ict were presented. for this reason they still show some resistance to approaches based on technological devices. in portugal, some teachers have shown some lack of knowledge when it comes to the software os these devices, and state they do not approve the use of the internet claiming it can be fertile soil for exploration of negative processes, using plagiarism as an exemple. in all cases the teachers point out that both the magellan project as well as the prouca has positive contributions in the process of widespread access to technologies, working through the steps of planning and learning. in this regard ict become allies trying to decrease the gap between generations (almeida & assisi, 2010), since, after being trained in the use of these devices, students play the role of multipliers to become common the use of these devices in their homes. the similarities between the answers given in the interview by the members of the two groups are also presented when they criticize the projects. in both cases, the teachers considered the ict projects promoted by their governments presented the following weakness: i) lack of technical support; ii) lack of continuing education, iii) the project suspension; iv) problems with internet access. linhares, alcântara, loureiro & ramos. ict assessment in teaching 40 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (2) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the questionnaire submitted to teachers aimed to stimulate positioning on the most qualified indicators to better assess the impact of ict in their teaching practice. the questionnaire showed 40 indicators. the following table shows the 10 indicators teachers considered crucial to evaluate ict in teaching. table 1. most rated indicators brazil portugal frequency in the use of technology in terms of planning, teaching practices and evaluation frequency in the use of technology in terms of planning, teaching practices and evaluation educational strategies and practices developed with the use of ict in teaching and centered in education educational strategies and practices developed with the use of ict in teaching and centered in education teaching strategies and practices developed with the use of ict and focused on learning 1. teaching strategies and practices developed with the use of ict and focused on learning ict integration in student learning acknowledgement of the positive results of ict in the students’ learning integration of ict as mediators of content integration of ict as mediators of content 1. teachers' level of familiarity with ict (the teacher links the content to the application of ict to student learning) teachers' level of familiarity with ict (the teacher links the content to the application of ict to student learning) percentage of students and teachers with electronic mail accounts, weblog, personal web page, membership in at least one social network percentage of students and teachers with electronic mail accounts, weblog, personal web page, membership in at least one social network 1. ict present in lesson plans and some types of formative assessment and summative programs 1. ict present in lesson plans and some types of formative assessment and summative programs lesson plans that include ict education: word processors, web browsers, e-mails, blogs, weaks and other emerging technologies ability to network use of virtual learning environments 1. basic skills of ict use when analyzing the ansewrs given by the teachers from both countries when it comes to the choice of the indicators they consider as most important to analyse the work of theachers, the similarities in the indicators chosen is quite evident. among the top 10 indicators, eight (80%) were the same in both cases. also, in this first analysis it is clear that in the opinion of teachers, for proper evaluation of the use of ict there are three indicators that are directly related to students’ learning and also teaching work wich is mentioned in three other indicators. this means that for them there is an inseparable relationship between teaching practices and the results with the students and that technology need to be involved in this relationship. teachers’ familiarity with the use of ict, especially when it comes to the personal use, is regarded as important for the evaluation of teaching in the other four indicators (40%). taking into accouting that the top 10 indicators can be divided into three groups centered in teaching, centered in learning and centered in personal usage linhares, alcântara, loureiro & ramos. ict assessment in teaching 41 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (2) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci – we can infer that in the educators’ opinion mastering ict use and the habits of using technological tools beyond the professional sphere is a determining factor to reflect upon the pedagogical practices wich employs ict. this result is consistent with the clear need in an information society to reflect upon teaching pratices wich integrates technologies as a cross-curricular aspect and not just a tool perspective. thus, icts are no longer a mere platform for content and begin to play the role that will enable the teacher to reflect upon their use as mediators in the teaching practice, reflecting in issues that range from the skills to use them, critical awareness about their use and their outcomes in educational planning, and also reflecting upon issues such as autonomy of production and dissemination, as well as reflecting on the role ict play in the classroom and use the results in learning. this question is linked to the indicators related to the personal use of ict. for teachers the constant use of technological devices to build knowledge about them. they understand that the level and frequency of ict use as personal devices through e-mail, access to news and entertainment is also a determinant factor of success of teaching experience that resort to ict. it is noteworthy that the personal use of technology is considered as important both by the teachers, as by the student. thus, we can infer that this teacher-student dichotomy guides all understanding teachers have about the pedagogical work. teachers also consider that the ict should be present not only in one specific moment of the educational process, but at every stage, as this is an indicator chosen by 100% of the respondents as critical to evaluation that is put forward. according to the responses to the questionnaire, they consider that the frequency of use of technology in planning, execution and evaluation of the work with the students is another determining factor for the success of the experiments wich use the technological devices used in the prouca and magellan project. there is disagreement between the choices made by brazilian and portuguese in only three of the indicators. for brazilian educators it is important to assess how icts are included and how they contribute to the learning processes of students, wich is not so much highlighted by european teachers. in contrast, the portuguese listed as important practices that result in collaborative work sharing and networking. there are also similarities and differences in indicators that were less mentioned by the two groups, as outlined in table 2. linhares, alcântara, loureiro & ramos. ict assessment in teaching 42 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (2) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci table 2. least rated indicators brazil portugal plans that include/integrate: ionline platforms; mentoring programs and iiexercises in digital form, iii-resources and electronic content plans that include/integrate: ionline platforms; mentoring programs and iiexercises in digital form, iii-resources and electronic content 1. sharing plans with peers 1. sharing plans with peers selection of specific programs (software) linked to the contents to teach 2. selection of specific programs (software) linked to the contents to teach content and learning products produced and published by teachers with the support of students content and learning products produced and published by teachers with the support of students 1. number of registered teachers who participate in educational sites 1. number of registered teachers who participate in educational sites 2. number of resources created by teachers and made available in the national education portal number of resources created by teachers and made available in the national education portal hours of lessons with ict hours of lessons with ict 2. number of resources created by teachers in relation to the total resources available for national educational websites 2. number of resources created by teachers in relation to the total resources available for national educational websites 1. number of teachers who develop and share educational content 1. number of teachers who develop and share educational content teachers involved in ict (hours of continuing education in ict) 2. teachers involved in ict (hours of continuing education in ict) when analyzing the indicators classified as less important, we immediately realize the similar perception of the two groups regarding these indicators, as all 10 less selected indicators were the same both in the perception of brazilian and portuguese teachers. despite considering network production as positive aspect for the education process mediated by ict, teachers do not think of steps such as content sharing between peers, content publishing and participation in educational sites as significant in the evaluation of ict. this result raises questions about the understanding these teachers have on collaborative work and networking. we have to reflect on how far educators understand the context and the possibilities arising from the use of ict and relate these to their own ability to authorship, production and content disclosure wich are more suitable for the reality of each classroom. another factor that emerges from the data analysis is the teachers’ perception related to online learning spaces, for example, virtual learning environments, and specific software aimed at education. although they stated in interviews that the internet can be characterized as a space that encourages dispersion and plagiarism, they reveal they believe educational sites are not very important indicators when assessing pedagogical approaches that use ict. when it comes to the amount of hours devoted to training for the use of technology or devoted to the development of activities to be used in the classroom, the results show they do not consider them very relevant indicators. according to their linhares, alcântara, loureiro & ramos. ict assessment in teaching 43 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (2) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci replies, this workload does not evaluate the achievement through technology, another important reflection we may infer from this research. in what this item is concerned we highlight most of the speech of teachers have mentioned in their interviews that the training they had was not effective and mostly they mentioned the number of hours was not enough to develop competences to use ict in schools. scores on the quality and length of training experiences is present in almost all the results of evaluation involving this dimension in academic studies in brazil. finally, the questionnaire had an open question to encourage teachers to present other indicators not covered by the questionnaire, but that they consider relevant to assess teaching practice mediated by ict. the suggest indicators can be divided into three dimensions: i) professional (training necessary to work with ict, software used in professional level, maintenance of machines and internet access); ii) personal (gender and age profile, sites accessed at home) and iii) apprenticeship (models that consider collaborative learning; models that consider self-directed learning). conclusions reflections take into account the role the ict play in today’s society, thought under the light of knowledge and information society, unanimously acknowledge that digital communication technologies play crucial roles in today’s daily lives and also in activities wich are directly or indirectly linked to lerarning processes. in this context some changes are required in pedagogical approaches, moving from repetition models to those wich favor learning practices aimed at the education of autonomous, innovative individuals, who master the skills needed to use technology. some experiments have sought to develop this perspective in schools, for example the prouca and magellan programs, but these have not produced. think about these assessment instruments means knowing how teachers relate to the ict and how they think, build, implement and evaluate methods that can assess their teaching pratices. the results of this study indicate that teachers themselves recognize the need for a more complete and continuous education to encourage the development of skills in technology use. they also consider essential that the ict are effectively used at every stage of the educational process, from lesson planning, to the planning of activities and in the measurement of students’ outcomes. yet it is perceived that teachers have little knowledge about the ict and therefore can´t recognize all the possibilities that lie in teaching practice mediated by technologies. they show little clarification regarding the networking, collaborative and still show resistance in providing their outputs on the web, outputs wich tend to be only textual, disregarding audiovisual resources common in digital devices. when it comes to the possibility of setting indicators to evaluate the use of ict in teaching practice, the teachers mentioned 27 indicators, of which we highlight in the perception of the two groups, those which deal with the dimensions of technology use in classroom, production and sharing of content and especially those related to the use of ict in times of planning lessons. the next step to be taken after analyzing the outcomes of our study is to create an instrument with these dimensions/indicators that will then be applied to brazilian teachers so that can be validate and later present results that may contribute to a better understand the use of ict use by teachers and the impact of their use in teaching pratices. linhares, alcântara, loureiro & ramos. ict assessment in teaching 44 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (2) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci notes 1 nuneslinhares.ronaldo8@gmail.com 2caiogmalcantara@gmail.com 3zzelouro@gmail.com 4 fernando.ramos@ua.pt 5 project developed by the researches nicholas negroponte and seymour papert, in the media lab of massassuchets institute of technology (mit), released in the world economic forum in 2005 (alvarez 2015) 6 the reports analyzed were: unesco (2009a); unesco (2009b); chile (2006); world bank (2005); oei (2008); cepal (2006); cgi (2010); bid (2010); kennisnet (2010); usde (2011). references almeida, m. e. b. & assis, m. p. 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(2006). los indicadores educativos y las dimensiones que los integran. buenos aires: unesco oecd (1992). high-quality education and training for all. paris, oecd. oei (2008) indicadores cualitativos de la integración de las tics en la educación: proposiciones. brasil. http://www.oeiidietics.org/img/pdf/documento_indicadores_idie_2008.pdf. pasinato, n. m. b. (2011). proposta de indicadores para avaliação dos estágios de integração das tic na prática pedagógica do professor. (master degree thesis, pontifícia universidade católica do paraná). pereira, e. g. (2014). tecnologias da informação e comunicação na formação continuada de professores: estudo de caso em escolas do brasil e de portugal com recursos e aplicação do google+. (doctoral dissertation, universidade do minho). sierra, j. m. c. (2012). sistema básico de indicadores para la educación superior de américa latina. valència: universitat politècnica de valència. silva, m. (2006). a sala de aula interativa. rio de janeiro: quartet. souza, b. (2009). magalhães, o computador, ozarfaxinars, nº 6, março, issn 16459180, http://www.cfaemotsinhos.eu/magalhaes_o_computador.pdf takahashi, t. (2000). sociedade da informação no brasil: livro verde ministério da ciência e tecnologia – brasília. unesco (2009b). medición de las tecnologías de la información y la comunicación (tic) en educación manual del usuário.. montreal: institute for statistics, http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0018/001883/188309s.pdf unesco. ( 2005). wisis outcome document. genebra: unesco. unesco. (2008 a) computador na escola – a dura realidade nas escolas, revista tics nas escolas, vol. 3, no 1. unesco. (2008 b) computador na escola – tecnologia e aprendizagem, revista tics nas escolas, vol. 3, no 3. unesco. (2009a) medición de las tecnologías de la información y la comunicación (tic) en educación manual del usuario. (doc. tecnico n2) montreal, quebec canada. (acceded 01-12-2012) http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0018/001883/188309s.pdf unesco/cepal. (2006) icts and education indicators: (suggested core indicators based on meta-analysis of selected international school. surveys), http://www.itu.int/itud/ict/partnership/material/ict_education_paper_nov_2006.pdf http://redes-cepalcala.org/inspector/documentos%20y%20libros/evaluacion/indicadores%20de%20evaluacion%20en%20educacion.doc http://redes-cepalcala.org/inspector/documentos%20y%20libros/evaluacion/indicadores%20de%20evaluacion%20en%20educacion.doc http://redes-cepalcala.org/inspector/documentos%20y%20libros/evaluacion/indicadores%20de%20evaluacion%20en%20educacion.doc http://www.portalanpedsul.com.br/2012/home http://www.portalanpedsul.com.br/2012/home http://www.oei-idietics.org/img/pdf/documento_indicadores_idie_2008.pdf http://www.oei-idietics.org/img/pdf/documento_indicadores_idie_2008.pdf http://www.cfaemotsinhos.eu/magalhaes_o_computador.pdf http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0018/001883/188309s.pdf http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0018/001883/188309s.pdf http://www.itu.int/itu-d/ict/partnership/material/ict_education_paper_nov_2006.pdf http://www.itu.int/itu-d/ict/partnership/material/ict_education_paper_nov_2006.pdf linhares, alcântara, loureiro & ramos. ict assessment in teaching 46 transnational curriculum inquiry 13 (2) 2016 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci usde (2011). international experiences with educational technology: final report.washington: usde. submitted: september, 06th, 2016 approved: december, 18th, 2016 ‘ to cite this article please include all of the following details: lopes, alice casimiro (2020). curriculum and displaced borders. transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) p. 1-2 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> curriculum and displaced borders alice casimiro lopes1 state university of rio de janeiro, brazil (…) the reference to the other is very much present as constitutive of my own identity. laclau (1996) we are delighted to present this tci issue. at this moment, we experience a pandemic that forces us to avoid agglomerations and physical contact and makes us stand at least three meters apart from each other. in brazil, the underreporting of cases of coronavirus is high due to the lack of mass testing. social isolation, in turn, has only been partially fulfilled, and there are serious political conflicts between the federal government and state governments over health policies to face the pandemic, resulting in an unprecedented political crisis in the recent past. thus, the balance of the ministry of health of august 9th, 2020, records 101,269 deaths and 3,039,349 confirmed cases. this number ranks brazil in the second place in number of confirmed cases of the disease worldwide, following only the united states. currently, brazil has the most worrying tendency in record of deaths by covid-19 as to the number of people that the new coronavirus kills per day. because of this, there is a reasonable consensus that schools and universities are institutions that should avoid classroom activities. other countries, besides brazil and the usa, also face extremely difficult situations. however, we survive and continue doing research, writing and thinking about the world. for this issue, we count on the collaboration of researchers in curriculum with birth in different countries, such as brazil, china, india, morocco, mexico, nigeria and united states, but who during their life trajectories circulate and circulated far beyond these spaces. addressing very different curricular themes, everyone somehow experiences the “journey in topographies that encourage conversations about migration and home” (hembadoon iyortyer oguanobi), present themselves as concerned with “global citizenship learning” (hajar idrissi), with a “ sense of attunement and displacement” (wanying wang), with a “ mestizx conceptualization ” (james jupp et al). they also highlight the translations throughout his “journey as an international educator” (from the book curriculum in international contexts: understanding colonial, ideological and neoliberal influences, by ashwani kumar, reviewed by hugo costa in this issue). as hugo costa points out, with reference to the book by ashwani kumar, an interpretative approach is developed, which proposes “the investment in indigenous, critical, autobiographical and meditative responses”. in a world where the borders among nations are increasingly displaced, where the very senses of nation, belonging, identity are questioned every day, the curriculum takes on new challenges. at this time of a pandemic, such questions are still increasing, as the curriculum inside schools becomes an impossibility. the notions of space, time and presence are also problematized. perhaps this is also why we invite curriculum researchers to contribute to the next number of tci in 2020 by discussing how the covid19 pandemic impacts not only the school curriculum, but our own research and experience as researchers. to what extent does this “pandemic world” expand our interpretations? lopes. curriculum and displaced borders 2 transnational curriculum inquiry, 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> for example, what do we think about our constant attempts to order the chaos of the world? how are the notions of global belonging expanded, as we are led to think that “everyone” wants a vaccine, our new flag? but how are the notions of truth, of project and of curriculum research shaken in the face of the uncertainties of the future, of the difficulties of a world marked by post-truth? the invitation remains, with the wish of health and life to all readers, reviewers and tci collaborators. notes 1 alicecasimirolopes@gmail.com references laclau, e. (1996). emancipation(s). london : verso. about:blank mailto:alicecasimirolopes@gmail.com o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: vera cruz, anne c. (2018). a framework for cross-cultural curriculum development. transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> a framework for cross-cultural curriculum development anne c. vera cruz1 boston college, united states of america introduction following the growth of a global market economy, the demand for “global” or “international” education has increased at all levels of schooling. between 2005 to 2012 alone, there was a 50% increase in international student enrollment globally at the tertiary level (oecd, 2015), and a 39.3% increase at the primary and secondary levels from 2012 to 2015 (international school consultancy, 2017). given the increases in enrollment, forbes (2016) estimates the worth of the international school sector to be $39 billion based on fee income alone, and worth $89 billion by the year 2026. because increases in enrollment are very profitable, the business of “global” and “international” education is no longer just the concern of local governments or even elite, public and/or private, non-profit educational institutions. instead, it has expanded and piqued the interest of for-profit institutions, with the potential of commodifying “global” and “international” education as a product for the global market economy. the push and pull for the dissemination of “global” or “international” education programs is affected by several factors. although private capital’s interests are clear, one of the biggest pushes for “global” or “international” education is government interest in increasing national wealth either through increased tuition fees, future economic capacity, and/or remittances (british council, 2012). meanwhile, parental concern is increasing student enrollment in an effort to increase their child’s global economic competitiveness (oecd, 2015). therefore, the push is driven by societal-level economic factors while the pull is based on the desire to obtain limited opportunities that will increase individual competitiveness. nevertheless, despite the increase in incentives and initiatives for “global” education, the underlying assumptions of what “global” is often remains implicit. for example, one of the most popular conceptualizations of “global” education is a “utopian globalism claiming to be independent of all particular national and cultural traditions” (marginson & sawir, 2011, p. 55). while this universal way of being seems questionable especially in a field where context is given importance (apple, 2000), global institutions support this universality. in particular, the united nation’s human development programme (2016) stresses the importance of universality as a means to promote growth in human development. moreover, the organisation for economic cooperation and development (oecd) similarly supports universality through international testing and benchmarking practices in order to link educational outcomes to the global market economy. in other words, the root assumption of this form of “global” or “international” education is the existence of a universal way of being and knowing that is separate from any local belief system. following the growth of the profession, educators, over time, have understood the importance of culture and context in student learning (apple, 2000). thus, while there is a push for universality in education, this “uproot and plant” model towards universality becomes problematic in practice. not vera cruz. a framework for cross-cultural curriculum development 69 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci only does it create problems in terms of student learning but it also creates questions with regards to what is being understood to be universal in education. if cultures and contexts matter in education, why is the concept of universality through “global” or “international” education being pushed forward? what is its basis? the proliferation of this conception of “global” education and its adoption in several contexts can be explained by sousa santos’s (2007) conceptualization of “globalized localisms” and “localized globalisms”. globalized localisms are knowledge and ways of being that are local to a particular context, but are diffused globally from a more dominating and powerful culture to others through hegemony. as these knowledges and ideas are distributed, other contexts localize these globalizations, albeit with a mix of adaptation, cooption, and resistance, creating localized globalisms. this framework suggests that because of power asymmetries between nation states, some cultures are more likely to adopt globalized localisms rather than provide them, which consequently and falsely projects certain knowledges and cultures as more worthy. thus, as more institutions adopt these “global” or “international” programs, much of what is considered and acknowledged as “global” education today is the result of a diffused single, dominant model (verger, novelli, & altinyelken, 2012), which is manifestly local to the west in its particularistic claims to universality (elveton, 2006). this proliferation of a single, dominant model ignores the fact that the world is full of various cultures, with correspondingly local ways of knowing and being, which collectively create an “ecology of knowledges” (sousa santos, 2007). ignoring this material fact is not harmless. rather, when what is considered to be “global” is solely based on western culture and thought, other ontologies (i.e. ways of being), epistemologies (i.e. ways of knowing), and metaphysics (fundamental assumptions underlying notions of being, time, and space), are made inferior, it results in “othering” (sousa santos, nunes, & meneses, 2007). this “othering” acts to reinforce a belief in a colonialist hierarchy of knowing and being that has and continues to justify hegemonic global structures that concretizes the belief that the unbalanced distribution of global wealth and power is a result of the superior intelligence and social and political organizations of the west (wynter, 2003). on internal, institutional, interpersonal, and idealogical levels, students and their communities, who are continuously “othered”, especially through education, are consistently disqualified, marked as inferior, and characterized as devoid of knowledge and culture (sousa santos, nunes, & meneses, 2007). needless to say, the effects of “othering” are violent. if what is understood as “global” education is predicted to increase in the next decade, then it would be worthwhile, for the dignity of the educational profession, to reflect upon what is ethical in “global” education. thus, this conceptual paper aims to provide an ethical and practical curriculum development framework based on the following questions: • what is ethical cross-cultural curriculum development? • how can practitioners engage in ethical cross-cultural curriculum development processes? what is ethical in cross-cultural curriculum development? in his text on official knowledge, michael apple (2000) asks one of curriculum’s central questions: “whose knowledge is most worth?” (p. 180). underlying this question are [1] the assumption that multiple, valid knowledge systems exist, [2] these knowledge systems are local to particular peoples and places, and as a result, [3] are inherently cultural. thus, curricular decisions of what to include and exclude remains at the center of the political vera cruz. a framework for cross-cultural curriculum development 70 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci struggle to maintain, obtain, and/or control the status accorded to particular knowledge systems. while the question may seem trivial, the implications of a response in the singular (e.g., the west’s universalistic knowledge is the most worthy) within multicultural spaces, settler colonies, and (neo)(post)colonial states can be nothing short of violent. the curriculum is typically understood as what is included (implicitly and explicitly) and what is excluded (or the null curriculum) (eisner, 1985). while most curriculum focus on the explicit, the null curriculum focuses on “the options students are not afforded, the perspectives they may never know about, much less be able to use, the concepts and skills that are not part of their intellectual repertoire” (eisner, 1985, p. 107). thus, if the null curriculum, involves the exclusion of the ontologies, metaphysics, and epistemologies of a student’s, family’s, communities’, or nation’s culture(s), violent “othering” occurs. because global education is explicitly and implicitly western, the null curriculum, especially because of its absences, inconspicuously teaches us that modernist, western culture and thought is supreme. thus, this “othering” combined with the propagative nature of education, curriculum, and its institutions, results in this violence affecting individuals internally, interpersonally, and intergenerationally. in the following sections, this article discusses the assumptions and dimensions of ethical curriculum development through: [1] translations and knowledges and [2] knowledge, power, and globalized othering. translations and knowledges the existence and validity of multiple, culturally-situated knowledges and its relation to ontology is largely evident in the process of translation. the whorfian hypothesis (hunt & agnoli, 1991) states that language influences thought by creating boundaries in thought and perception. this means that language has a unique ability to either limit or broaden the scope of meaning depending on the culture, people, and context. for example, in a cross-cultural study on science curriculum between the philippines, ghana, and the united states, “science”, while recognized in all three contexts, differs in the way locals understand and define its purposes (vera cruz, madden, & asante, 2018). specifically, in academic english within the united states, science only concerned coming to understand material phenomenon, while in both twi (ghana) and tagalog (philippines), although both contexts differed significantly in their purposes, science was conceptualized non-dualistically to include, with the material, coming to understand or honor spiritual dimensions of reality, respectively. through this distinction, we come to understand that even “science”, a subject matter purportedly objective and universal, is still conceptualized differently via languages and cultures. boroditsky (2011) explains, “the way we think influences the way we speak, but the influence also goes the other way” (p. 65). furthermore, she states that bilinguals change how they see the world depending on which language they are speaking—that their thoughts literally change based on the words that they use. the point that is being made here is that language is based on a way of being and a way of life. as such, each language is a representation of a particular people’s orientation to people, culture, and their environmental context (lopes & gutiérrez, 2017)—a “relationship between the signifier and the signified” (pereira & costa, 2015, p. 4). ricoeur (2006) further makes this point through the concept of translation. he argues that translations between languages (and therefore knowledges) must settle for linguistic hospitality and “forgo the lure of omnipotence…the illusion of a total translation which could provide a perfect replica of the original”. the reason we must settle for linguistic hospitality is vera cruz. a framework for cross-cultural curriculum development 71 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci because when languages are translated, the translated text needs to lose some of the contextual specificity and culturally-laden structure embedded within its original form in order to convey its meaning within another languages culturally-laden structures. in doing so, both languages may adequately and simultaneously hold the same meaning and yet at the same time, cannot be fully captured by each other. in many cases, “exact” translation, especially because languages do not hold the same boundaries for thoughts, is often theoretically impossible. thus, ricoeur (2006) recommends that translators aim for “adequate” translations, where meaning between both languages is conserved in the process of discourse. the leveraging of theories of language, translation (ricoeur, 2006), and discourse (lopes, 2014) for this article is to illuminate the necessity of subjectivity between languages, cultures, and thus cross-cultural interactions, while further indicating the non-universality of thoughts and knowledge. however, subjectivity in this sense, that is, the plurality of languages, is not a problem, but an asset. as boroditsky (2011) writes: “a hallmark feature of human intelligence is its adaptability, the ability to invent and rearrange conceptions of the world to suit changing goals and environments. one consequence of this flexibility is the great diversity of languages that have emerged around the globe. each provides its own cognitive toolkit and encapsulates the knowledge and worldview developed over thousands of years within a culture. each contains a way of perceiving, categorizing and making meaning in the world, an invaluable guidebook developed and honed by our ancestors.” (p. 65). therefore, given languages’, and thus cultural knowledges’ (which all knowledge is), inherent value and existential necessity, we must celebrate the differences of thoughts and languages. in humbling ourselves to the wisdom of other languages and peoples, we recognize the beauty in learning from others. the diversity of knowledge—as illuminated through language—and its relation to a particular context is a reminder to all that no knowledge is complete. however, the existence of this epistemological diversity across the globe is rarely recognized (sousa santos, nunes, & meneses, 2007). in most global platforms, a monoculture of humanity and a uniformity of what counts as knowledge is manifested in everyday life (smith, 1999). instead of having a plurality of curricula in different contexts, “global” and “international” education today has falsely directed the field towards modernist, western knowledge as the universal way of knowing and being. in other words, power asymmetries are evident in “global” education and the failure to address this foreshadows negative material and interpersonal outcomes. knowledges, power, and globalized othering the convergence of curricula on modernist, western cultural formations across the globe is directly related to cultural power asymmetries among countries and nations. despite increased engagement with modernist technology and ways of life, little has changed with regards to the ongoing ideological and material effects of colonialism and imperialism. while globalization’s notions of unity is not the problem, the dominance of some knowledges and cultures over others is. the proliferation of english as the “global language” (crystal, 2003), especially in the field of education, across international and cross-cultural contexts alone, is a testament to global power asymmetries. however, unilaterally blaming the field of education is unfair, myopic, and ahistorical. instead, these power asymmetries are the result of a much larger history of colonialist and imperial structures, of which schooling is one of several interlocking institutions that continue to evolve and adapt to exact control on the colonial other (tuck & yang, 2012). vera cruz. a framework for cross-cultural curriculum development 72 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci in the global market economy alone, the ongoing effects and the stratifying mechanizations of coloniality are made obvious through labels such as “first-world” and “developing” countries. for example, the united nations development programme’s report on human development (2016) explicitly ranks, that is, stratifies, countries on the basis of inequality, gender development, and poverty. while it is factual that, “less developed” countries often experience greater economic inequality and produces less national wealth from other nations’ exploitation of its natural wealth and labor, this fact blatantly ignores ongoing imperial relationships that enrich the very countries that dominate the united nations and sponsor its human development index. thus, and not surprisingly, the countries ranked in the “very high human development” category are mostly western and economically wealthy middle eastern and asian countries that benefit from these imperial relationships. meanwhile, countries that have survived and flourished for generations prior to colonialism and imperialism such as india and nigeria are labeled “medium and low human development” respectively, which further implies that these cultures and peoples are less developed. “developing”, as a term, implies an incompleteness that needs to be further fulfilled through some form of development. by calling countries and cultures “developing”, there is an implicit intention and description that these people are “incomplete”, and as a result, othered (elveton, 2006). take for example resource-rich “developing” countries such as the philippines and venezuela. these countries are rich in culture and knowledge. in fact, it is entirely plausible that if they were cut-off from global structures and underwent radical, internal sociopolitical changes, they would be able to readily feed all of their people because of their rich natural resources. however, because of current global asymmetries, these countries with rich natural resources are ranked very low. with equal power relations, we may observe a healthy plurality, rather than a monoculture, of shapes and forms of curricula with strong ties to community (though subjectivity is expected within communities) (lopes & costa, 2018), culture, and context and thus local validity. and yet, globalization, especially through human ranking and stratification has increased a convergence of curriculum into one universal standard. one reason behind this is the west’s quest to maintain hegemony across the global context. in creating the universal standard, the west is able to reflect its own culture as universal (elveton, 2006), while obscuring its role in justifying the organization of “third-world” energies and resources towards a version of progress that benefits its own development and wealth. for as “thirdworld” countries strive to increase their rankings in international platforms, they imitate and localize knowledge from dominant cultures, which forces curricula and socioeconomic purposes to converge. this momentum then maintains the west’s hegemony that has been rooted in colonialism and imperialism. while these issues are discussed at the international level, they are reflected locally in schools, and through hegemony, across a diversity of contexts. school curricula is typically comprised of the explicit curricula (i,e., formal curricular information that is available to various stakeholders), the implicit curricula (i.e., the hidden curriculum that is not stated but is embedded in the school culture), and the null curriculum (i.e., curriculum that was not included) (eisner, 1985). for example, secondary science courses in western countries are typically taught through textbooks (explicit curricula), enacted by a culture of objectivity (implicit currricula), and yet, little, (if any) is stated about the existence and epistemic or ontological validity of knowledge about the natural world produced by indigenous sciences (null curriculum). what a school chooses to include (explicit and implicit curricula) and exclude (null curriculum) directly affects what students learn and value. however, curricular choices are vera cruz. a framework for cross-cultural curriculum development 73 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci always subjective, that is, culturally-laden and political (apple, 2000; rizvi & lingard, 2006), and easily influenced by power. smith (1999) illustrates several examples of how western colonial power influences the curriculum. first, it is through the absence of indigenous and local knowledge through the null curriculum. in doing so, students not only learn to value a knowledge system different from their own (an admirable learning objective), but learn to value modernist, western knowledge in particular, as a replacement for their communities’ and their own local and personal knowledge. second, it is via the localization of curriculum written by the colonizers (explicit and implicit curriculum). for example, when “historical facts” are written from the point of view of the colonizers, students learn to stratify the knowledge, needs, beliefs, and creation myths of the colonizers as superior and more valid than those of their own community. pinar (2011) further explains, “children’s games, psychodramas, some folktales, and other school activities provided, [fanon] thought, forms of racial catharsis, the social expulsion of collective anxieties. in many stories written for white children, the characters symbolizing fear and evil were represented by indians or blacks. racism infiltrates everything, fanon knew.” (p. 45) thus, students, through schooling and its texts that western culture is superior and is something to be strived for. students of color in turn internalize inferiority as compared to their white counterparts internalization of superiority (helms, 1990). furthermore, assessments shape the curriculum as well. in the current neoliberal and globalized society the oecd is one of the most powerful and influential international institutions that shape curriculum through the creation and administration of assessments that produce an internationally recognized ranking system (rizvi &lingard, 2006). in fact, this measure of academic performance is not only relative/ranked, but positioned as a rare, status commodity to compete for. this form of stratification not only shapes educational institutions within nations but also affects the interpersonal behavior within them. after all, in the ranking as a concept implies that there can only one “winner”. this culture trickles into the local level within individuals within communities competing, unfairly, across class and other social stratifiers, to claim the fruits of educational achievement. thus, individuals, communities, and even entire nations, via neoliberal logic, are persuaded to compete for limited signifiers of wealth potentiality rather than challenging the very system that produces a variety of wealth inequities. in addition, as rizvi and lingard (2006) explain, because the oecd is based on america’s notion of education as a tool for economic competitiveness, countries are ranked on the basis of how well students perform western culture and thought. as a result, countries consequently localize these globalized forms local to the west (sousa santos, 2007) in an effort to remain or become competitive on comparative international tests, which then forces local curricula to converge with western standards. when this stratification through assessments is localized it allows for increased local stratification through labels of “low/high-performing schools”, “public/private schooling”, and “international” schools, with increasing perceived quality and monetary price respectively. local cities and states are recognized at a national level, and countries that perform well with respect to western standards are celebrated in global level. this positive reinforcement (bandura, 1971) not only provides further reason to participate, localize, and engage in western practices and ideologies but also maintain the hegemonic structures that exist today. given the challenges, damages, and dangers provided in having a western-based “universal” curriculum, educators must address how to create new ways of developing curriculum that not only includes other epistemologies but also engages them in the process. vera cruz. a framework for cross-cultural curriculum development 74 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci in doing so, we participate in critical reflexivity—critical, in the acknowledgement of historical and existing power asymmetries in countries, knowledges, and cultures; and reflexivity, that is, “the acknowledgement of an individual situated within a personal history within the real world” (brown & sawyer, 2016)—and linguistic humility (ricoeur, 2006). however, the challenge does not end in illuminating forms of hegemony in “global” or “international” education. rather, as implied here, it is what happens practically at the curriculum development level that also matters. curriculum development process while the discussion on ethical cross-cultural curriculum development provides perspective and new boundaries for what is possible, theories of curriculum development can practically illuminate pathways for its instantiation. in this particular study, the curriculum’s theoretical orientation is with regards to learning through critical reflexivity and linguistic humility. as a result, the praxis of cross-cultural curriculum development in this context must reflect these restraints, and must implicitly and explicitly reflect its values and purpose. while studies in curriculum theory are vast, few have written about the application of theory into practice. taba (1962) has significantly contributed to curriculum theory’s fusion with practice. her work is particularly important not only because it [1] is a practical framework for curriculum development (i.e., has specific explicit guidelines for curriculum development and alignment); [2] acknowledges the plurality of values, cultures, and subjective needs of society; [3] offers strategies for applying theories of teaching and learning; and [4] is applicable for various subject matters (compared to current, subjectspecific curriculum development frameworks). in her text, she identifies seven steps for curriculum development—of course, assuming that there is [theoretically] an order: [1] diagnosis of needs; [2] formulation of objectives; [3] selection of content; [4] organization of content; [5] selection of learning experiences; [6] organization of learning experiences; and [7] determination of what to evaluate and of the ways and means of doing it (p. 12). initially, taba (1962) writes about the diagnosis of needs with respect to the diversity of students. she writes, “because the backgrounds of students vary, it is important to diagnose the gaps, deficiencies, and variations in these backgrounds. diagnosis, then, is an important first step in determining what the curriculum should be for a given population (p. 12).” however, because people in a community, as well as its physical and economic location, determine the context, it may be assumed that the diagnosis of needs should be applied not only because of the diversity of students but also because of the context, as she writes, “curriculum is, after all, a way of preparing young people to participate as productive members of our culture. not all cultures require the same kinds of knowledge. nor does the same culture need the same kinds of capacities and skills, intellectual or otherwise, at all times.” (p. 10) lopes (2014) reflects this argument in the current context. because cultures have different orientations and knowledges, the problem or the needs of each community needs to be analyzed and interpreted using local languages, knowledges, and contexts. thus, prior to any curriculum development process, a local analysis of each partner’s particular context and desired ends are necessary. this is a critically important step with regards to the proposed ethical framework for curriculum development. from the positionality of the less powerful culture, given the inertia of “globalized” education, knowing your desired ends and needs vera cruz. a framework for cross-cultural curriculum development 75 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci gives you roots and strength needed to withstand the hegemony of neutrally worded, but culturally-restrictive decision paths. on the other hand, from the positionality of the more powerful culture, this first step allows space for critical reflexivity, which should place some well-needed breaks on a process whose standard outcome is violent and help them to maintain their intended integrity. although sometimes a needs assessment may indicate no current need for a partnership, this critical first step prevents the all too common acceptance of facially beneficial foreign partnerships that maintain hegemony. this not only preserves the local meanings in cross-cultural partnerships but also provides a good foundation for learning between cultures. the second to seventh steps in taba’s (1962) framework emphasizes classical curriculum development processes inspired by tyler (1969). the formulation of objectives, selection of content, organization of content, selection of learning experiences, and organization of learning experiences describe how the explicit curriculum (eisner, 1985) is broken down, sequenced, and organized. with regards to ethical cross-cultural curriculum development, this section can only be discussed when the partnership has decided on a focus, as dictated by the needs of both contexts. finally, the last step in taba’s (1962) framework emphasizes the importance of evaluation, as inspired by tyler’s (1969) work. in both frameworks, evaluations are not only based on a student’s behavioral performance of the learning objectives, but also as a means to evaluate the curriculum’s ability to serve students as well. however, for ethical cross-cultural partnerships, evaluations must not be quantified on mere student performance. the reason is because in doing so, forms of ranking especially based on test scores offer the same stratification that was discussed as problematic. instead, cross-cultural curriculum development partnerships should aim its evaluations on [1] the learning between both cultures, not by appropriation but by cultural humility (brown & sawyer, 2016) and linguistic hospitality (ricoeur, 2006), and [2] the quality of the partnership as relationships evolve over time. thus, while some “ends” may be determined at the beginning, others may emerge over time. while ethical cross-cultural curriculum development was discussed abstractly, taba’s (1962) framework is able to illuminate one possible pathway with how this theory may be reflected in practice. negotiating a way forward in order to perform ethical practices in cross-cultural curriculum development, we must strive for critical reflexivity (brown & sawyer, 2016) and linguistic hospitality (ricoeur, 2006). in other words, parties seeking a cross-cultural partnership must strive for humility, appreciation, and understanding of the differences in culture and meaning and use this value as a basis for learning. as mentioned earlier, the diagnostic of the context’s needs (taba, 1962) along with an initial analysis of the local curricula from the perspective of the local metaphysics and epistemologies (vera cruz, madden, & asante, 2018) is necessary prior to the partnership proper. in their article, moraes and freire (2016) differentiate “global” and “planetary” by associating current “global” education with “exclusion, division, and injustice (p. 44)” and “planetary” as “a context that is more embracing, more connected to our concerns about sustainability and cultural inclusion” (p. 44). while educational problems may be specific to a context, there are planetary issues, such as climate change, that bind us together. in confronting these challenges, we are in need of a framework that leverages local knowledge while understanding the power of true collaboration in solving planetary problems. vera cruz. a framework for cross-cultural curriculum development 76 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci while the notion of collaboration is widely celebrated across contexts and settings, the recognition of power asymmetries (lopes, 2014), as a result of historical and ongoing colonialism and imperialism (as discussed above), and how it affects collaboration is rarely discussed. instead, most collaboration frameworks (schwab, 1973; gilles & vandover,1988). assume a democratic process where there is equal power among parties. however, because of the history of the world involves colonialism and imperialism, with effects spanning generations (pinar, 2011), it is important to challenge the boundaries of collaboration and offer new frameworks. while negotiation is mostly utilized in the fields of law and business, it is a suitable framework to use for collaborations that involve power asymmetries because of its roots in dispute and conflict resolution. as menkel-meadow, love, and schneider (2006) write, “people negotiate whenever they need someone else to help them accomplish their goals. sometimes these negotiations are designed to create something new—a new relationship, partnership, entity, transaction—and other times negotiations occur because people are in conflict with each other and hope to resolve whatever dispute lies between them.” (p. 3) more specifically, the authors define the field of negotiation as “studying and analyzing the human behaviors that enable people to work together to overcome differences, explore new solutions to problems, and seek joint gains from collaboration (p. 3)”. given the momentum of hegemony that exist in “global” and “international” education, negotiations are helpful because it assumes [1] that parties would like to work together and [2] power asymmetries exist. while most negotiations utilize adversarial or accommodating strategies, integrative negotiation “can lead to ‘expanded pies’, increased resources, added value, and often, creative and new solutions to negotiation problems” (menkel-meadow, love, & schneider, 2006, p. 89). theoretically, integrative negotiations acknowledge the needs of all parties in solving a particular problem, and as a result, improve relationships between parties. what makes integrative negotiation different from other classical negotiation styles is its departure from soft and hard bargaining strategies (fisher, ury, & patton, 1991) and its focus on needsassessment as a means for problem solving (merkel-meadow, 1984). nevertheless, while integrative negotiations offers strategies where parties are able to work together for creative solutions, it does not account for hegemonic relationships between differing cultures and knowledge bases. by itself, the model risks the same dangers of material and interpersonal injustice through the maintenance of power asymmetries and othering. classical negotiations frameworks, in the first place, are inherently western, with a desire for other parties to concede in order to put one’s agenda forward. thus, without adjustments, the model does nothing to address or shift cultures and countries of power’s desire to share or decrease their dominance when there is no material reason to do so. thus, without an apriori and personal commitment to anti-racist, anti-colonial stances, and/or genuine learning, there is little hope that this model will systematically promote cultural humility, cultural reflexivity, or unbounded mutuality, which is called for in this crosscultural curriculum development process. because of this, this paper offers a critical integrative negotiation model (fig. 1). in order to reflect sousa santos’ (2007) ecology of knowledges as well as cultural humility and reflexivity, modifications to the classic integrative negotiation model are necessary. these modifications include [1] the acknowledgement of ongoing and historical effects and affects of colonialism and imperialism, vera cruz. a framework for cross-cultural curriculum development 77 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci [2] a needs assessment for cross-cultural relationships, a [3] process based on unbounded mutuality, and [4] gradual, long-term outcomes. figure 1. a comparison of integrative negotiation and critical integrative negotiation. the acknowledgement of ongoing and historical effects and affects of colonialism and imperialism is essential in order to illuminate power asymmetries that exist between cultures given the current neoliberal and globalized environment. this stage calls for both parties to acknowledge the validity and legitimacy of other cultures and knowledge bases and understand how current and historical events have shaped the current state of “global” and “international” education. inevitably, this stage also suggests that cultures and knowledges in the position of power have to make more efforts in legitimizing other cultures and knowledge bases if the desire to participate in ethical cross-cultural curriculum development, as described earlier, is present. on the other hand, cultures and knowledges that have been colonized should strive to be brave and confident in their own validity. prior to the partnership, each party must learn to practice critical reflexivity and cultural humility in order to create a strong foundation of respect that will help foreshadow a successful and ethical cross-cultural curriculum collaboration. with respect to the purposes of negotiation, integrative negotiation (menkel-meadow, love, & schneider, 2006) focuses on problem solving while critical integrative negotiation additionally focuses on cultural reflexivity and the acknowledgement of an ecology of knowledges (sousa santos, 2007). subsequently, this guides the process of problem solving through unbounded mutuality and relationship building. finally, in both frameworks, the outcomes are gradual, open-ended, and changes over time. cross-cultural curriculum development framework bridging together the importance of critical reflexivity, linguistic hospitality and negotiation in cross-cultural curriculum development, this paper presents a framework that bridges theory into vera cruz. a framework for cross-cultural curriculum development 78 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci practice. this framework offers four chronological and practical suggestions for critical integrative negotiation: pre-negotiation, initial discussions, short-term outcomes, and long-term outcomes. in each of these categories, theoretical concepts are aligned for theoretical and practical cohesion for cross-cultural curriculum development. while this framework is organized categorically, it is mainly for the purpose of clarity. one can expect that cross-cultural curriculum development partnerships have a more iterative process between the timeline/categories and it is encouraged for teams to modify the frameworks as needed or as relationships evolve over time. figure 2. an alignment of theory and practice in ethical cross-cultural curriculum development. while most frameworks do not include practices for pre-negotiation, knowing the colonial history, whether it is the colonizer or the colonized, is important in order to reflect upon the team’s positionality regarding the partnership. as mentioned earlier, this will provide a good foundation with regards to values and attitudes that are needed for a good long-term learning relationship. in this stage, practical applications of critical reflexivity and the ecology of knowledges are concretized by the acknowledgement of power asymmetries that exist between and the current and historical instantiations of colonialism and imperialism between two countries. one way that this can be embodied in the curriculum development process is a local analysis of the curriculum by people who are fluent in both culture and language of the context. this not only allows the local school/government/administration to revisit meanings and interpretations of its purposes of education while also reflecting upon the desirability of the cross-cultural relationship itself in achieving these ends. however, if the analysis indicates a lack of need for the partnership or a single-sided relationship, it is recommended that the contexts refrain from pursuing the relationship. foregoing or ignoring this analysis may contribute to creating different forms of hegemonic processes that the relationship aims to challenge. nevertheless, if the analysis shows that the goals of both parties align well with each other and team attitudes revolve around respect, learning, and understanding, initial discussions that share these findings and identify the needs of both parties are recommended. vera cruz. a framework for cross-cultural curriculum development 79 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci these initial discussions, maintaining attitudes of critical reflexivity and an acceptance of an ecology of knowledges (sousa santos, 2007), explore mutual interests with respect to local meanings as illuminated by the curriculum analysis. one way this can be achieved is to utilize the local language from both contexts in order to share, maintain, and preserve meanings. doing so not only contributes the cross-cultural partnership to understand the curriculum with respect to the local context in which the curriculum originates but also helps the partnership move forward with regards to being “bilingual” (ricoeur, 2006) within the bounds of the cross-cultural development process. thus, both contexts maintain their own local identities and yet, create opportunities to share in new ones. once respectful rapport has been established through initial discussions, a good understanding of differences in curriculum, language, and culture enables the partnership to create meaningful and mutual goals. further, it would be beneficial, in this stage, to visit the sites in which the cross-cultural curriculum development will occur in order to observe, first hand, the material embodiments of the curriculum and what is realistic with regards to tangible supports that can be provided. this enables the team to share in thinking about what is possible in both the shortand long-term and how each context can contribute in solving a particular problem. one a sufficient understanding of the problem and needs of both contexts have been identified, as a respectful learning culture within the team established, both parties can participate in the discussion of short-term outcomes. in this framework, short-term outcomes refer to the identification and discussion of a curricular focus and outcomes in both contexts. while the focus or subject matter of the curriculum does not necessarily have to be the same in each context, the discussion of how each context contributes to the other in the process of creating solutions is principal. after all, the partnership was built in the first place because the perceived or expected contribution of a context will provide support, materially or otherwise, towards solving the problem or needs of a context. as the curricular goals have been solidified, the team can now pursue the process of curriculum design. while there is no singular method in field of education for the design of curriculum, taba (1962), tyler (1969), schwab (1973), posner (2003), and (emans, 1966), among others, all provide recommendations for both thinking about the concrete embodiments of the desired outcomes as well as the processes that direct it. finally, the discussion of short-term outcomes should involve a plan for evaluation of the curriculum. this will inform the partnership of its successes and areas for further reflection and learning. while most curricular relationships have a desired “end”, this framework encourages the establishment of a long-term relationship in order to keep the cross-cultural relationship and continuously modifying the partnership with respect to the possibilities of learning and being. in doing so, we, as educators not only continuously challenge ourselves by what we think we know and understand but also serve as a role model for students, teachers, and community members who desire cross-cultural relationships. in this sense, this framework pushes the boundary from simple curricular ends in the short-term to life-long learning in the long-term. thus, long-term outcomes are defined as the relationship continues to evolve. while some partnerships may decide to end following an evaluation of the curriculum, this framework assumes that the effects of the partnership move beyond the partnership itself— affecting the lives of the participants in all levels (teachers, students, partnership members), through a shared language and experience. these effects may not be visible immediately but contributes to the larger education of an individual or community. vera cruz. a framework for cross-cultural curriculum development 80 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci to summarize, the framework offers multiple stages for cross-cultural relationship that is built on ethical grounds through cultural reflexivity, linguistic hospitality (ricoeur, 2006), the acknowledgement of an ecology of knowledges (sousa santos, 2007). using critical integrative negotiation as a guide for curriculum development practice, this framework was able to remain genuine to its purposes while offering practical suggestions and opportunities to navigate cross-cultural partnerships over time. however, it is important to note that this framework is not universal and should be adjusted to different needs, content areas, and subject matters. conclusion over the years, there have been many calls to challenge the hegemony of “global” or “international” education (apple, 2000; pinar, 2011) at the theoretical level. while the theoretical frameworks give us a robust perspectives to view planetary and local challenges from, we need practical frameworks that can give us paths forward. this cross-cultural curriculum development framework responds to this call. while this framework is expected to adapt to different contexts and knowledges, it not only fills a gap in the research with regards to practical suggestions but also and more importantly, expands our understanding of “global” and “international” education. it is the hope that in using this framework, the field of education will be able to reimagine possibilities and redefine what “global” and “international” education is—that is, a plural and robust planet with multiple knowledges and ecologies. notes 1 veracruz@bc.edu references apple, m.w. 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(2006). mediation: practice, policy, and ethics. new york: aspen publishers. moraes, s.e., & freire, l.a. (2016). the university curriculum and the ecology of knowledges towards building a planetary citizenship. transnational curriculum inquiry, 13(1), 36-55. morrison, n. (2016). international schools market to hit $89 billion by 2026. forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/nickmorrison/2016/06/29/international-schools-market-tohit-89bn-by-2026/#70e3080c70e3 accessed march 14, 2017 oecd (2015). education at a glance 2015: oecd indicators. oecd publishing. pereira, t.v., & costa, h.h.c. (2015). challenges to curriculum theory in the 21st century: thinking the school beyond the basics. transnational curriculum inquiry, 12(2), 1-12. pinar, w. f. (2011). the character of curriculum studies: bildung, currere, and the recurring question of the subject. new york: palgrave macmillan. posner, g.j. (2003). analyzing the curriculum, 3rd ed. new york: mcgraw hill. ricoeur, p. (2006). on translation. new york & london: routledge. rizvi, f., & lingard, b. (2006). globalization and the changing nature of the oecd’s educational work. education, globalization and social change, 247-260. schwab, j.j. (1973). the practical 3: translation into curriculum, the school review, 81(4), pp. 501-522. smith, l.t. (1999). decolonizing methodologies: research and indigenous peoples (2nd ed.). united kingdom: zed books. sousa santos, b. (2007). another knowledge is possible: beyond northern epistemologies. london & new york: verso. sousa santos, b. (2007). beyond abyssal thinking: from global lines to ecologies of knowledges. review, xxx (1), 45-89. http://www.iscresearch.com/news/isc-news/isc-news-details/~post/demand-for-international-school-education-continues-to-expand-globally-20170427 http://www.iscresearch.com/news/isc-news/isc-news-details/~post/demand-for-international-school-education-continues-to-expand-globally-20170427 http://www.iscresearch.com/news/isc-news/isc-news-details/~post/demand-for-international-school-education-continues-to-expand-globally-20170427 https://www.forbes.com/sites/nickmorrison/2016/06/29/international-schools-market-to-hit-89bn-by-2026/#70e3080c70e3 https://www.forbes.com/sites/nickmorrison/2016/06/29/international-schools-market-to-hit-89bn-by-2026/#70e3080c70e3 vera cruz. a framework for cross-cultural curriculum development 82 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci sousa santos, b., nunes, j.a., & meneses, m.p. (2007). opening up the canon of knowledge and recognition of difference. in sousa santos (ed.) another knowledge is possible. london & new york: verso. taba, h. (1962). curriculum development: theory and practice. new york: harcourt, brace & world. tuck, e., & yang, k. w. (2012). decolonization is not a metaphor. decolonization: indigeneity, education & society, 1(1), 1-40. tyler, r.w. (1969). basic principles of curriculum and instruction. chicago: university of chicago press. united nations development programme (2016). human development report 2016: human development for everyone. new york: un plaza. vera cruz, a.c., madden, p.e., & asante, c.k. (2018). toward cross-cultural curriculum development: an analysis of science education in the philippines, ghana, and the united states. in roofe, c. & bezzina, c. (eds.) intercultural studies of curriculum: theory, policy, and practice. switzerland: palgrave macmillan. verger, a., altinyelken, h.k., & novelli, m. (2012). global education policy and international development: new agendas, issues, and policies. new york: bloomsbury. wynter, s. (2003). unsettling the coloniality of being/power/truth/freedom: towards the human, after man, its overrepresentation--an argument. cr: the new centennial review, 3(3), 257-337. submitted: february, 18, 2018 approved: november, 3, 2018 o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil the field of curriculum studies in the journal transnational curriculum inquiry (tci) as an effect of the relations between knowledge and power: science, counter-science, anti-science? janete magalhães carvalho1 federal university of espírito santo, brazil suzany goulart lourenço2 federal university of espírito santo, brazil steferson zanoni roseiro3 federal university of espírito santo, brazil introduction the study aimed at analyzing how the journal transnational curriculum inquiry (tci) discourse expressed the internationalization and transnationalization process of curriculum field studies in the second decade4 of the 21st century. tci’s history is connected to the internationalization movement of curriculum studies that are expressed in the objectives of the international association for the advancement of curriculum studies (iaacs), one of the most respected entities in the field of curriculum, established in 2001, which has been holding triennial meetings held in china in 2003, in finland in 2006, in south africa in 2009, in brazil in 2012, in canada in 2015 and australia in 2018. thereby, as this journal's speculation involves the transnationalization of the different discourses on curriculum studies, it is understood that these studies are not uniform, since they are crossed by different discursive perspectives considered valid in certain contexts. the iaacs, through the tci, seeks to move the idea of a "narrow nationalism" in an attempt to overcome the boundaries with the decentralization of knowledge in a shared work. therefore, understanding that the tci shows a "complex volume" of the statements that question curriculum practices and policies worldwide, marked by power relations, it is possible to state that the publications of the journal tci are constituted by struggles and processes that prove the possibilities of emergence of certain types of knowledge. so, what forces emerge from the transnational curriculum inquiry in discussions about curricula? what effects of the relations between knowledge and power were apparent in the articles published in this journal? how did the published articles relate to the enunciated perspective of seeking a multi/transcultural and cosmopolitan approach? have curriculum studies predominantly manifested as a counter-science and/or anti-science in an insurrectional way? to cite this article please include all of the following details: carvalho, janete m., lourenço, suzany, roseiro, steferson (2018). the field of curriculum studies in the journal transnational curriculum inquiry (tci) as an effect of the relations between knowledge and power: science, counter-science, anti-science? transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci carvalho, lourenço, roseiro. the field of curriculum studies 51 in order to enable such a discussion, it was produced a cartographic mapping of the component elements of the articles published in the journal tci during the period from 2010 to 2016.5 table 1 – number of texts published in tci during the time analyzed volume /number edit articles letters abstract total 7 (1) 1 2 1 0 4 07 (2) 0 8 0 0 8 08 (1) 1 4 0 0 5 08 (2) 1 4 0 0 5 09 (1) 0 5 0 0 5 09 (2) 1 5 1 0 7 10 (1) 0 6 0 0 6 10 (2) 1 5 1 0 7 11 (1) 0 4 0 1 5 11 (2) 0 4 0 0 4 12 (1) 1 4 0 1 6 12 (2) 1 5 0 0 6 13 (1) 1 5 0 0 6 13 (2) 1 4 1 0 6 total 9 65 4 2 80 source: http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index thus, out of 80 texts read fully, the analysis ignored the material published in editorials, book reviews and letters/conversations thanking members of the journal's board. in this way, 66 documents were examined: 65 articles published in this period and a letter/conversation conveyed in number 1 of volume 7. this letter presents a feature in writing that makes it similar to an article, both by its shape, and by its dialogue with another article published in the same volume. read, these products were mapped from the following analysis axis: the representativeness of the articles presented in the tci, the topics focused, the place where the authors of the articles speak from and sections that compose the editions, the theoretical bases and/or the most used references and the way in which the epistemological position was expressed in the journal, as "multicultural", "transcultural" and "cosmopolitan", in order to set up curriculum studies as insurrectional. the conceptual pair of knowledge and power is discussed in this text considering the intentionality of the journal that, through the proposal of internationalization, brings with it the of the possible relationship between knowledge and power in different space-times and disciplinary fields/areas, as defined by michel foucault (1979, 2013) and william pinar (2016). the knowledge and power relation, within the different national and institutional origins of the authors of the articles and disciplinary fields/themes, is found in the iaacs proposition itself, in the following aspects: the international association for the advancement of curriculum studies (iaacs) is established to support a worldwide but not uniform field of curriculum studies. at this historical moment and for the predictable future, curriculum research occurs within national borders, often informed by government policies and priorities that respond to national situations. curriculum study is, then, nationally distinctive. the iaacs founders do not dream of a worldwide field of curriculum studies reflecting the standardization and uniformity that the greatest phenomenon of globalization threatens. nor are we unaware of the dangers of narrow nationalisms. our hope, by establishing this organization, http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci carvalho, lourenço, roseiro. the field of curriculum studies 52 is to provide support for academic conversations inside and across national and regional borders on the content, context and process of education. (iaacs, 2018, emphasis added) this is because the subject of the power-knowledge and disciplinary fields relation refers to another basic concept in this issue, that is, the constitution in different space-times of disciplinary fields as science or anti-science (foucault, 2005; bordin, 2014) when delineated as critical knowledge that is made and it is concluded on the horizon of a cosmopolitan multiculturalism (pinar, 2009, 2016; benhabib, 2006). the power-knowledge relation crosses the discussion of the journal tci constitution in its pretension to shelter and to compose different cultural perspectives and, therefore, placed in the context of the possibility/impossibility of the construction/deconstruction of the field of curriculum studies like science. according to foucault it is necessary that we detach ourselves in the most habitual and empirical way of the discourse. for him, a knowledge: [...] is what we can speak of in a discursive practice that is thus specified: the domain constituted by the different objects that will acquire or not a scientific status; [...] a knowledge is also the space in which the subject can take position to speak of the objects of which is occupied in his discourse; [...] knowledge is also the field of coordination and subordination of statements in which concepts appear, are defined, applied and transformed; [...] finally, knowledge is defined by possibilities of use and appropriation offered by discourse. (foucault, 2013, p. 220) foucault (2013), in this way, elucidates that it is necessary to go beyond superficial knowledge and to study relations with greater depth, since we must analyze the political, historical and practical relations that surround the discourses. another concept worked by foucault is episteme: the analysis of the discursive arrangements, positivities and knowledge, in their relations with the epistemological figures and the sciences, is what was called, to distinguish them from other possible forms of history of the sciences, the analysis of episteme […]. the description of the episteme thus presents several essential characteristics: it opens an inexhaustible field and can never be closed; it is not intended to reconstitute the system of postulates to which all the knowledge of an era obeys, but to go through an indefinite field of relations. (foucault, 2013, pp. 230-231) therefore, epistemology, according to the foucaultian approach, is defined by several types of knowledge, not necessarily rational and positivist (foucault, 2013), but involving relations that allow the discourse to gain form and power at a given moment. but then, what does the discourse mean to foucault? for him, discourse is nothing more than a set of thoughts that come from power relations among individuals, defending and legitimizing the dominant ideas of an era. therefore, discourse is the product of its time, of the power and knowledge of its time. then, he does not care to understand how this enunciative practice was carried out in the past, but rather seeks to evidence this approach as a current practice of the individual and as a form of power (foucault, 2013). [...] a causal analysis, on the other hand, would consist in seeking to know to what extent political changes, or economic processes, could determine the awareness of men of science the horizon and direction of his interest, his value system, his way of perceiving things, his style of its rationality [...]. (foucault, 2013, p. 199) according to foucault, science, and so, knowledge, is composed by the relations among subjects, among powers. to study a scientific field is not to reveal the philosophical presuppositions that can inhabit it; it is not to return to the foundations that made it possible and http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci carvalho, lourenço, roseiro. the field of curriculum studies 53 that legitimize it: it is to put it back into question as a discursive formation; is to study not the formal contradictions of its propositions, but the system of formation of its objects, types of enunciation, concepts and theoretical choices. it is to retake it as a practice among other practices (foucault, 2013). the discourses considered true in society are measured by means of behaviors, languages and values. they indicate power relations, and may or imprison individuals or not, for "every society has its regime of truth, its 'general policy of truth', that is, types of discourse that it embraces and behaves as true" (foucault, 1979, p.12). hence, in his inaugural lecture at the collège de france, foucault (apud bordin, 2014) already emphasized that the discursive production of all societies is at once controlled and redistributed, organized and inviting. thus, for foucault (2013), truth is historical, it is the product of its era, it is the result of the clash of knowledge, then, each society produces its truths, based on its own discourses. in such a way, it is verified that, in foucault, the constitution of knowledge is not a consequence of the episteme (from the greek, knowledge), but a result of the practices of discipline that extend over time and are analyzed, that is, it is an organization of things to produce knowledge. foucault proposes the untying of an only vertical power model (state political) and adopts the conception that power is in all relations, in its most diverse discourses. following the same author (2013, p. 16), "[...] it is a matter of knowing not what the external power impacts on science, but what effects of power circulate between scientific statements." that is, in addition to inquiring who or what, it is asked which ones and why. after all, as foucault (1979, p.15) suggests in his 1975-76 course, "[...] whether power itself is employment and the manifestation of a power-relation [...] shouldn’t analyze it first and foremost in terms of combat, confrontation, or war?" in the analysis of discursive practices, which are produced from power relations, it is possible to question: what makes possible the emergence of a "transcultural" and "cosmopolitan" position in curriculum studies? what makes possible the appearance of a statement or others that were previously ignored? if the power-relations are exercised in a diffuse way, from them it can also be possible to create other compositions, differential knowledge, in this case, in curriculum studies? similarly, pinar (2016a) contrasts with the perspective of vertically oriented knowledge. in talking about the formation of disciplinary fields, he argues that the field of education and, consequently, the field of curriculum studies is seen as dedicated to intervention and "[...] as a disciplinary demand is predominantly aimed at intervention proposals to solve specific problems related to visions of change in educational and/or school institutions" (pinar, 2016a, 51). in this sense, he suggests that the intelligence of our interventions can be improved by systematic attention to the intellectual history of the field and its current circumstances: periodically someone mourns the porous boundaries of curriculum studies, the vastness of their scope, and the multiplicity of their discourses. in a field as extensive as that of curriculum studies, what we have in common is not the present, but the past. claiming expertise in a discipline requires that the person recognizes the already existing conversation in which he or she is supposed to participate. (pinar, 2016a, 53) in this perspective, pinar (2016a) approaches the relation between verticality and horizontality as totally imbricated, approaching the foucaultian thought, when proposing a verticality referred to the intellectual history of the discipline. "what ideas formulated in past ages are present in our own ideas? concepts have histories, histories that require recognition http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci carvalho, lourenço, roseiro. the field of curriculum studies 54 and elaboration if the present use of concepts is to have a disciplinary resonance" (pinar, 2016a, 55). like the intellectual history discipline, verticality documents the ideas that constitute the complicated conversation with the field. there is, of course, no single disciplinary conversation, a unique history. in addition, disciplinary conversation is hardly kept apart "[...] in a sound-proof room" (pinar, 2016a, 56). out-of-field events national and international history, cultural changes, political events and even specific institutional settings influence what we say to one another. in this way, the author defines verticality as the intellectual history of the field, a history that demands sustained attention to the external circumstances in which these ideas were and are generated. horizontality constitutes the analysis of the current circumstances. horizontality refers not only to the current set of concepts and intellectual circumstances of the field, but also to the social and political environment that influences, and very often, organize this whole. the study of the "external" circumstances of the field complements current attention to the history that will shape the field's reaction to its current political and social circumstances. horizontality and verticality are, therefore, for pinar (2016a), disciplinary dimensions totally intertwined. such vertical and horizontal dimensions imply the interrelationship between cultural, local, global and multicultural. in this sense, pinar (2016b, pp. 161-162) questions: "[...] when managing difference, does multiculturalism threaten cultural particularity? can multiculturalism be a precursor to cosmopolitanism?" for pinar (2016b), multiculturalism is more often associated with education than a centralized state, as has been the case in both canada and australia: the canadian concept of "mosaic" in which cultural identity is, supposedly, preserved contrasts with the american concept of "miscegenation," in which cultures of different origins often disappear into homogeneous "americanism." at the conference "globalization, multicultural society and education" held in may 2009, sponsored by the korean association for multicultural education (kame) at hamyang university in seoul, it was highlighted that any respect we may have for others may come through efforts to understand difference, through study based on dialogue (especially the international one). thus, "[...] multiculturalism [...] has always had an important international dimension" (pinar, 2016b, 161). we return to the initial questions: how does the knowledge-power relation in curriculum fields is manifested as science, anti-science and/or counter-science in articles published in the journal tci, in the second decade of the 21st century (2010-2016)? this is because the journal, in calling to compose a cosmopolitan and multi/transcultural scenario, postulates the need of awakening to dignity, towards a "new ethic", seeking a discursive profile capable of reducing the violence that is unleashed on a world scale, based on knowledge and epistemes. this intentionality of the journal allowed a space-time, in the field of curriculum studies, that is intended multicultural, transnational and cosmopolitan and, in this sense, we questioned the sources about: where do authors speak from? are these places situated asymmetrically in relation to powers? are they composed as a field of studies in the process of reinvention (deconstruction) of knowledge and epistemologies? do they fit beyond a colonial perspective? configuration of the editions of tci in the second decade of the 21st century from 2010 to 2016, the transnational curriculum inquiry published 14 issue numbers, distributed as follows: in the year 2010, v. 7, two numbers; in the year 2011, v. 8, two numbers; in the year 2012, v. 9, two numbers; in the year 2013, v. 10, two numbers; in the year 2014, v. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci carvalho, lourenço, roseiro. the field of curriculum studies 55 11, two numbers; in the year 2015, v. 12, two numbers, and in the year 2016, v. 13, two numbers, totaling 14 numbers in 7 volumes, with a total of 80 texts, of which 66 articles of 96 authors were examined, as aforementioned. the distribution of the number of authors by volume obeys the following distribution: graph 1 — distribution of author’s quantitative by tci volume (2010-2016) source: http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index that is, the number of authors by volume starts the decade (2010) with 16%, remaining the same amount in the following year, 2011, slightly decreasing in the years of 2012 (15%) and, more significantly, in 2013 (11% ) and 2014 (10%). in 2015 and 2016, the percentage of authors by volume remained at 16% (as in the early years of the decade). the distribution of articles by authors’ national origin reveals a large concentration of canadian authors (46%), followed by brazilian authors (21%) and north american authors (10%), accounting for approximately 80%. the distribution of the articles by the national origin of the authors is as follows: canada, 44; brazil, 20; usa, 10; portugal, 6; mexico, 4; taiwan, 2; argentina, 2; denmark, 2; finland, 2; turkey, 1; south africa, 1; cyprus, 1; and china, 1. the sum of authors is 96, therefore, greater than 66, since the same article can present more than one authorship and the same author can have more than one article published. the distribution of the articles by the national and institutional origin of the authors can be better seen in the following table: table 1national and institutional origin/number of authors origin country university in which authors work no. of authors v. 7, n. 1, 2010 usa university of wisconsin-madison 1 columbia university 1 turkey yildiz technical university 1 south africa stellenbosch university 1 source: http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index 11% 15% 2010 (v.7) 2011 (v.8) 2012 (v.9) 2013 (v. 10) 2014 (v. 11) 2015 (v. 12) 2016 (v. 13) 10% 16% 16% 16% 16% http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci carvalho, lourenço, roseiro. the field of curriculum studies 56 table 1national and institutional origin/number of authors continuation v. 7, n. 2, 2010 university of lethbridge 2 + 16 canada university of british columbia 2 + 1 concordia university 1 simon fraser university 1 usa columbia university 1 v. 8, n. 1, 2011 brazil puc-sp 1 ufscar 1 finland university of tampere 2 canada university of ottawa 2 usa california state university long beach 1 v. 8, n. 2, 2011 brazil universidade do estado do rio de janeiro 1 universidade federal da paraíba 2 canada university of ottawa 5 v. 9, n. 1, 2012 usa oklahoma state university 1 mount saint vincent university 1 canada university of ottawa 1 university of british columbia 2 v. 9, n. 2, 2012 canada university of ottawa 2 university of british columbia 3 portugal universidade do porto 2 mexico universidade nacional autônoma do méxico 2 v. 10, n. 1, 2013 brazil universidade federal do espírito santo 2 canada simon fraser university 2 university of toronto 1 argentina universidade nacional de la plata 1 usa arcadia university 1 v. 10, n. 2, 2013 university of ottawa 1 canadá simon fraser university 1 university of british columbia 1 usa university of wyoming 1 china university of macau 1 source: http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci carvalho, lourenço, roseiro. the field of curriculum studies 57 table 1national and institutional origin/number of authors conclusion v. 11, n. 1, 2014 portugal universidade do porto 2 canada university of calgary 1 queen’s university 1 cyprus frederick university 1 v. 11, n. 2, 2014 canada university of ottawa 2 british columbia university 1 taiwan yuan ze university 1 brazil universidade federal do estado do rio de janeiro 1 v. 12, n. 1, 2015 usa university of illinois urbana champaign 1 taiwan national kaohsiung university of applied sciences 1 canada university of british columbia 2 denmark university of southern denmark 2 v. 12, n. 2, 2015 brazil universidade do estado do rio de janeiro 3 canada university of british columbia 1 university of ottawa 4 usa oklahoma state university 1 v. 13, n. 1, 2016 universidade federal do espírito santo 3 brazil universidade federal do ceará 1 universidade do estado de minas gerais 1 canada university of british columbia 1 argentina universidade nacional de la plata 1 usa university of north texas 1 v. 14, n. 2, 2016 universidade do estado do rio de janeiro 1 brazil universidade federal fluminense 1 universidade tiradentes 2 portugal universidade de aveiros 2 mexico universidade nacional autônoma do méxico 2 canada queen’s university 1 source: http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index regarding the authorship of the articles and the origin or location of the universities in which the authors act as professors and researchers, there is a local participation of authors related to institutions located in south america and africa: with a significant participation of brazil (21%) and low participation of south american countries (only argentina with 2% of http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci carvalho, lourenço, roseiro. the field of curriculum studies 58 the total authorship) and south africa (1%). likewise, asia appears low represented (china with 1% and taiwan with 2% of total authorships). europe's participation is also centered and not very significant (portugal with 6%, denmark with 2%, finland with 2%, turkey with 1%). rich north america is over-represented by canada and the usa (approximately 56%), with central america under-represented by mexico (4%). in this context, during the time analyzed, the tci presents authorships mainly related to the following institutions (graph 2): graph 2 — article distribution concerning authors’ place/institution (n>2) source: http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index observing the relation between authors and related institutions, it is possible to note that most of the publications made by tci, from 2010 to 2016, are from authors of the university of british columbia and university of ottawa, placed in canada, and the state university of rio de janeiro (uerj) and state university of espírito santo (ufes), in brazil. in this sense, it is worth to emphasize that the influence of both canadian institution and uerj in stimulating, creating, developing and managing both the iaacs and tci was due to the initiative of theorists in the field of curriculum studies,7 such as william pinar and noel gough (canada) and alice casimiro lopes and elizabeth macedo (brazil), among others. thus, we return to the question of the risk that the concentration of discourses could lead the tci to lose its efficacy with respect to the transnationalization of studies on the curriculum, by producing a centered concentration of authorships of this discursive production. thus, we emphasize the need to broaden the participation of scholars in the curriculum field and we see, as a necessity, within the horizon of possibilities, the encouragement by other associations of curriculum studies of countries beyond those already supporting tci. still in relation to the institutional origin, the authors of tci articles observe the presence of authors of national origin different from the institutional one.8 we have: four chinese authors, one in the usa, california state university long beach (no. 8, 2011), another in luxembourg at the university of luxembourg (no. 10, 2013), a third in canada at the university of british columbia (no. 12, 2015) and a quarter in the usa at the university of north texas (no. 13, 2016); two authors with korean descent in the usa, one at oklahoma state university (no. 9, 2012) and one at the university of wyoming (no. 10, 2013); an indian author in canada at mouny saint vicent university (no. 9, 2012). in this sense, it is necessary to discuss, in relation to the authorships in the tci, if the order of reception to the foreigner, legal-political-moral, would adjust only to those coming méxico (méxico) (brasil) (brasil) lethbridge (canadá) rio de janeiro espírito santo (canadá) autônoma do (portugal) do estado do federal do simon fraser nacional do porto british columbia (canadá) ottawa (canadá) university of university of universidade universidade university universidade universidade university of 18 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci carvalho, lourenço, roseiro. the field of curriculum studies 59 from countries with increasing influence in the world scene, as well as, if the unconditional hospitality to the other is not denied by the absence of authors from latin american, asian, african countries and others. in this debate, we understand that the hybridization that occurs between entities situated asymmetrically in relation to power, in some way, also affects the knowledge-power relation, since the "third space" that results from the hybridization is not determined, never, unilaterally, by the hegemonic identity: it introduces a difference that constitutes the possibility of its questioning (derrida, 2003; bhabha, 2003). these authors from china, india and south korea, working at universities in the usa, canada and europe, speak of a place that they do not inhabit, but a place that inhabits them, either because they come from other countries studying or working at universities of reference, or by the contacts provided by field research and/or by the media. in this way, we question: would not this process be reforced by the greater representativeness and thematization of authors who inhabit other space-times? throughout the seven volumes of the second decade of our century, the published articles were counted in 21 thematic axis,9 as follows: curriculum theories (11 articles), curriculum and multiculturalism (11 articles), curriculum policies (10 articles), cosmopolitanism in times of globalization (10 articles), history of lives and/or autobiography (7 articles), colonialism/post-colonialism (7 articles), teacher training (7 articles), learning (6 articles), higher education (6 articles), school: actors and practices (5 articles), internationalization of curriculum studies (5 articles), use of images (5 articles), culture and indigenous education (4 articles), affections (4 articles), gender (4 articles), citizenship (3 articles), ethics (3 articles), assessment (3 articles), teaching (3 articles), logic of competences (2 articles), tics (2 articles). in analyzing the thematic axis conveyed in the transnational curriculum inquiry, we obviously can not fail to praise the variety of themes that appear in the writings, but at the same time we must also query about their recurrences and interrogate the absences of others. some themes, such as evaluation, gender and teaching, appear occasionally, though they can still be grouped to others. however, in v. 9, one of the articles addresses, as one of the central themes, the field of study of knowledge and, in v. 10, the journal itself, tci, is the theme of one of the articles. in addition to asking about the relevance of these themes to the journal, we must put in question what compels authors to announce unusual themes in their writings and, at the same time, to inquire why these themes still have low recurrence. there is, as foucault said, a political economy of truth that produces the logics of values in what is enunciable. for the discursive field of curriculum history, for example, macedo (2008) emphasized that there is an ever more favorable account of the history of curriculum theories followed closely by a history of curriculum policies. not, as the author warns, that there were no other ways of making curriculum history, yet these two alternatives of writing in curriculum history have, for years, been the front of this historiography. percentually, the distribution of the thematic axis is placed according to graph 3. hence, it is appropriate to ask, justly, how the topics of articulation writing articulation appear to the authors. it is not, of course, to say that we must find "unpublished" themes and put them to work, but rather we must investigate why, in the field of curricula, there is also a predominance of articulation with the theme of culture in its variations. we could also ask why the student does not appear as the thematic axis, even when the texts deal with school, teaching or course programs; we could still ask why they do not come as a subject in both articles discussing gender nor in any of the six postcolonial articles. and, as machado (2006, p. 31), from his reading of foucault, highlights: "[...] knowledge modifies the subject and constructs the object at the same time." thus, in the traces http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci carvalho, lourenço, roseiro. the field of curriculum studies 60 of the supposition and speculation of william pinar, we think it necessary, in the horizontality of the knowledge and in the production of the counter-science to the approach of the genealogy of foucault, to think of an insurrection of the knowledge, of the fields, of the themat ic axis, of the curriculum activities. not that it is necessary to forsake the usual problems, but rather ask who they serve, which is sent when prioritizing what is already on rise. we must seek an insurrection of knowledge. not so much against the contents, methods or concepts of a science, but an insurrection against the centralizing effects of power (foucault, 2005). the tci is born, with its first edition in 2004, under the inspiration of postcolonial theorization in its connections with french poststructuralism, with the aim of internationalizing and transnationalizing the field of curriculum studies assumed as complex, rhizomatic and established in networks of connections between languages and power (carvalho, 2013). therefore, the journal notes that the consideration of experience in a cross-cultural context requires that curriculists become transnational thinkers, involving multicultural postcolonial thinking in curriculum theory and practice. graph 3 — percentual of articles by thematic axis source: http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index curriculum theories curriculum and multiculturalism curriculum policies cosmopolitanism in times of globalization history of lives and/or biography colonialism/post colonialism teacher training learning higher education school: actors and practices internationalization of curriculum studies use of images culture and indigenous education affection gender citizenship ethics assessment teaching logic of compentences tci others 6% 5% 6% 5% 6% 4% 4% 8% 3% 4% 8% 3% 3% 9% 2% 2% 2% 2% 2% 2% 9% 4% http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci carvalho, lourenço, roseiro. the field of curriculum studies 61 it is observed in the second decade of the tci that this perspective is present and dominant, since, among the prevailing theoretical-epistemological approaches (graph 4), according to the authors' naming and/or bibliographic references, it is set the approach of postcolonial studies (30%) and poststructuralists (21%) in more than half of the articles (51%), also highlighting the expressive presence of phenomenology (21%) and critical theory (19%). graph 4 — distribution of theoretical-epistemologic approach source: http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index the methodological approach (graph 5) is quite varied, however, it equates between bibliographic-documentary research and field research in the proportion of 53% for the first approach and 47% for the second, considering, however, that the essays were classified as bibliographic research. with regard to the specificities of the theoretical-methodological approaches, according to the authors' nomination of the articles, we have: graph 5 — articles distribution by a theoretical-methodological approach source: http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index 21% 21% postcolonial studies poststructuralism phenomenology critical theory pragmatism marxism estruturalism constructionism 18% 30% 2% 3% 3% 2% 11% 6% 13% 4% autobiography documental-bibliographical reseach inquiries by interviews analysis of an author's production others 14% essays speech analysis 36% 16% http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci carvalho, lourenço, roseiro. the field of curriculum studies 62 concerning the referral process, it is observed that, in the total number of articles, the percentage is higher than 10%: william pinar (39%, 26 articles); paulo freire (20%, 13 articles); william pinar, william reynolds, patrick slattery and peter taubman (16%, 11 articles); homi bhabha (16%, 11 articles); ted aoki (16%, 11 articles); stuart hall (15%, 10 articles); jacques derrida (14%, 9 articles); john dewey (14%, 9 articles); noel gough (14%, 9 articles); alice casimiro lopes (12%, 9 articles); william doll jr. (12%, 8 articles); alice casimiro lopes (11%, 7 articles); pierre bourdieu (11%, 7 articles); and henry giroux (11%, 7 articles). graph 6 – authors referenced on higher number of articles (n>10%) source: http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index it was verified, therefore, the predominance of the postcolonial approach and theoretical intercessors that are directly related to this approach, like homi bhabha and jacques derrida, but also a strong influence of the references of william pinar and paulo freire. in any case, the bibliographical references presented converge with the assumptions and/or key concepts that stand out in the analysis of the articles, that is, they are consonant with the perspectives adopted by the authors, in the sense of seeking to establish a cross-cultural differential view. they are based on theoretical-philosophical approaches, considered here, without meaning or classificatory intention, as a dominant perspective convergent with the anti foundational movement,10 which involves theories, such as philosophy of difference, postcolonial studies, complexity theory, naturalistic theory of knowledge, knowledge in networks, among others. such theoretical discourses are quite different from each other, keeping, as a common trait, the disbelief in the self-centered subject and/or an autonomous consciousness, as well as knowledge based on the subject as a locus of truth or certainty and, in this sense, against any kind of essentialism, since it is based on the belief that we are constituted in and by relationships. 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 quantitative of articles of the most referenced authors (n>10%) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci http://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci carvalho, lourenço, roseiro. the field of curriculum studies 63 however, we can not ignore, as we have seen, the centralization of authorship and their respective institutions of origin, as well as the predominance of some themes to the detriment of the erasure of others, which is worrying due to the transnational nature of iaacs and tci. in microfísica do poder, foucault (1979, pp. 244-245) states that a device operates by "functional overdetermination", exposing certain elements and delimiting a specific medium for them, and by "strategic fulfillment", reusing these elements and their environment. thus, the author is accurate: the device has a dominant strategy. in this sense, with regard to relations of power-knowledge, it is possible to question the journal tci and its possibility of acting as a curriculum device, when one runs the risk of a certain type of intervention in the force relations that refer to the curriculum issues. this questioning becomes important in so far as a device leads to a form of governmentality, if it is the case of the tci, of governmentality of the discursive practices on the curricula. thus, to discuss the tci as an opening to the production of a counter-science, to the expansion of the transnational networks of curriculum studies, refers to the understanding of this journal as a possibility of confronting the governmentality devices of the discursive practices on the curricula. confrontations as insurrections, as a movement that cuts the present and evidence a "disassociation" of the idea of the curriculum basis or fundament. returning to the final considerations the creation and dissemination of tci aims at transculturalizing and trans internationalizing the field of curriculum studies. this pretension carries with itself the issue of the encounter with otherness, without homogenizing intentionality, which refers to the concepts of multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism as a reinvention not only in the ways of producing knowledge but, fundamentally, in the overlapping issue of scientific production in the field of curriculum studies. returning to the questions approached here, namely: what is the field of possibilities of a multicultural, transcultural and cosmopolitan position in curriculum studies? is it possible the appearance of a new and/or other discursive enunciation? is it possible to constitute compositions and/or differential knowledge in the field of curriculum studies as science? the results obtained indicate that, in the period 2010-2016, a multicultural, transcultural and cosmopolitan position is present in the articles published in the journal tci, that is, a differential element appears in the scope of curriculum studies, situated beyond the scientific-academic tradition as science. thus, the tci seems to affirm the possibility of constituting the field of curriculum studies in a multi, transcultural way, with a cosmopolitan and insurrectional nature and/or in a deconstructive perspective of modern science. pinar (2016b) highlights as elements of multiculturalism that could impede cosmopolitanism: the primacy of culture in contemporary multiculturalism as a truly provincial anti-cosmopolitanism, closed in its own native culture; the primacy of justice in multiculturalism to promote the reinstallation of instrumentalism in educational practice. and, as a consequence: the contextual nature of justice dissolve into abstract universal qualities that seek cultural homogeneity and educational authoritarianism; the centrality of "identity" in multiculturalism presenting problems, among them, a tendency of stereotype in summarizing ethnicities and other groups, http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci carvalho, lourenço, roseiro. the field of curriculum studies 64 as well as the fragmentation of the social, for example, dissolving shared responsibilities and aspirations (pinar, 2016b). arguing about the world of cosmopolitanism, pinar (2009) points out that the constitution of cosmopolitan norms of justice, even when negotiated through treaties between nations, acts on "people" and on concrete modes of existence. among the two principles underlying cosmopolitanism: the concern with the kantian universal and the respect for difference, pinar (2016b) points out the difficulty to reconcile them. thus, cosmopolitanism is not seen as a solution, but as a huge challenge that will require conversation and negotiation as the center for its cultivation. pinar (2009) views cosmopolitanism as a philosophical project that can not be based on reductions or totalizations, but on mediations in multiple processes of democratic future. the author expresses the fear that cosmopolitanism, vertically oriented, based on universal truths, laws, states and institutions, erases our already scarce solidarity and humanity, and leads to homogenizing truths in processes of comprising individuals and populations. in the same sense and/or with this same fear, in speaking of science and counterscience, foucault (2013) affirms that sciences have the dual role of constituting and concentrating; while the counter-sciences have the role to dissolve and decentralize. hence it does not happen that all the work of the counter-sciences develop in the field of the visible and the invisible, in a way that the counter-thinking is most likely connected to the action of bringing an unexpected element, that transforms the field in which it appears or promotes another share of the visible. arguing that counter-sciences are no less rational or objective than the sciences, foucault (2005) argues that genealogies are counter-sciences and antisciences linked to an insurrection of knowledge and participate in a more general movement through different disciplines, that liberate, within them "subjected knowledges". in reality, it is unlikely that there are purely “subjected” face-to-face knowledge with purely "liberating" knowledge, and it is more likely that each discourse of knowing itself is marked by internal cleavages. genealogies are, very accurately, anti-sciences. not that they claim the lyrical right to ignorance and to non-knowledge, not that it was about the refuse of knowledge or to put at stake, to emphasize the prestige of an immediate experience, not grasped by knowledge yet. that's not what this is about. it is about the insurrection of knowledge. not so much against the contents, methods or concepts of a science, but of an insurrection especially against the centralizing effects of power that are linked to the institution and to the functioning of a scientific discourse organized within a society like ours. (foucault, 2013, page 52) thus, not the layers of knowledge with their contents, own methods and concepts taken into account, but the effects of power that exercise the socially structured sciences. consequently, we can say that insurrection occurs at the meeting point of knowledge with powers, in the precise place where the sciences exert political effects; and, in this sense, it is an epistemological-political contestation (sardinha, 2017). http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci carvalho, lourenço, roseiro. the field of curriculum studies 65 in conclusion, the counter-sciences e/or anti-sciences know two opponents, the instituted knowledges and those who, while challenging the latter, do not abandon, however, the intention to exercise an authority equally based on hierarchy and positive knowledge. to what extent does the transnational curriculum inquiry establish itself as an epistemological-political contestation? in this sense, tci is established not so much by the symmetry of the relations between knowledge and power, since the places of authorship still remain asymmetrically, but by the dominant theoretical-epistemological perspective, by the thematization generated, by the methodological approaches emphasized, in the end, by the primacy of the discursive enunciations in favor of the decolonization of subalternized powers and knowledge. thus, what under the names of heterotopia, counter-science, anti-science and insurrection, takes the form of a counter-thinking would not be constituted as a simple denial, as the insurrectional movement against a state of affairs comes in the tci followed by a proposal of another state of affairs. this is clearly what happens in the conception of an insurrection of knowledge, determined by the emergence of anti-sciences and that is produced against the effects of centralizing power exerted by the scientific discourse, by a true epistemological polyphony, that removes to the specialists the unique right to judge in favor to the dissemination of voices in presence and in conflict. questioning with foucault and pinar, if any institutionalized discourse presupposes as foundation a universal system based on the logic of exclusion, we inquire: does tci proposes the deconstruction of the epistemological discursive incorporations of an official culture, pointing out, as necessary, the listening with attention of the alterity, in the movement of production of curriculum knowledge? we would say yes, because it seems that the journal tci intends to question, also, the one that disposes the question, the one that subverts the homogenizing order, by presenting itself as an alternative, displaced and different discourse. to state itself as another, to stand out from others is to reveal itself as an alternative that opens itself to other possibilities, to be insurrectional, to put itself as a question, to inquire and, mainly, to subvert and be dissident of the epistemological and political systems of cultural homogenization. finally, to put itself in risk is also to be questioned and attacked by the other. and this is a risk that the intellectuals, authors in the journal tci, assume, in expressive proportions, as a epistemological and ethical task of reaffirmation and reinvention of the field of curriculum studies. however, in relation to the other one, as stated, there is an excessive predominance of authors from canada and the usa. these authors discourse in some cases about a place that they do not inhabit, but which inhabits them in their processes of deconstruction of colonization and reinvention of life. thus, recognizing tci's highly stimulating and deconstructive insurrection potential for the curriculum field, we put in question, as a questioning hypothesis: to what extent the restrict circle of exchanges, changes and shares of authorship, of geopolitical areas, of knowledge conditioned by language and culture favors the process of transnationalization and the creation of discourse in curriculum field in the recent history of the 21st century, expressed in the transnational curriculum inquiry? notes http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci carvalho, lourenço, roseiro. the field of curriculum studies 66 1 janetemc@terra.com.br 2 zanoniroseiro@gmail.com 3 suzany.goulart@gmail.com 4 see article published in the tci journal covering the first decade of the 21st century (2004-2009), in v. 10, n. 1 of 2013, with the title: "the journal transnational curriculum inquiry and the space-time of cosmopolitan hospitality and the deconstruction of studies in the field of curriculum”. 5 this article is part of a larger research project, coordinated by janete magalhães carvalho, approved by cnpq, entitled: "discursive practices on curriculum of the academic-scientific community linked to the associations related to the field and published in national and international journals”, focusing, in the period 2012-2016 (five years) articles published in the annual dossiers of the brazilian association of curriculum (abdc) and in the transnational curriculum inquiry (tci). the choice of tci, as an international counterpoint, was due to its innovative nature in the face of modern science and to the fact that we had mapped and discussed this production in the period 2004-2009, the first decade of the 21st century, as said. however, considering that the abdc and its publications start in the year 2012, we also took the tci analysis period, the years 20102012, that is, 2010-2016, to enable, in future studies, the broadening of analyzes by cartography of both first and second half decade of the 21st century. 6 the use of “+1” refers to the authors that wrote more than one article in the same number of the journal. 7 due to the aims of this article, whose intentionality is not directed to the historical reconstruction of iaacs and tci, the highlights, not pretending to ignore the multiplicity of scholars in the field who gave support to the iaacs and the tci, were: william pinar with his action and influence in the creation and development of iaacs; noel gough for having edited the tci in 2004; elisabeth macedo for being the current president of the iaacs; and alice casimiro lopes, tci’s current managing editor. 8 the number of authors with national origin other than institutional origin was probably underestimated due to the low frequency of evidences information in the tci articles about the authors' nationality and the high concentration of researchers in universities of developed countries in the various fields of knowledge. 9 some texts focus on more than one theme, so their number exceeds the totality of the 66 articles and they appear composing more than one thematic axis. in addition, we counted six articles as "others" because they did not connect to the thematic axes presented. 10 according to heuser (2005, p. 88-9), “it is possible to find in this thought movement, which has the difference as a link, some common characteristics [...]. there are no pure philosophies of difference, not contaminated by other authors, because, according to derrida, the contemporary theory is a field constituted of plural forces”. references benhabib, s. (2006). another cosmopolitanism: ethics in a world of strangers. new york: norton. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci mailto:janetemc@terra.com.br mailto:zanoniroseiro@gmail.com mailto:suzany.goulart@gmail.com transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci carvalho, lourenço, roseiro. the field of curriculum studies 67 bhabha, h. (2003). o local da cultura. translation by myriam ávila, eliana lourenço de lima reis and gláucia renate gonçalves. belo horizonte: editora ufmg. bordin, t. m. (2014). o saber e o poder: a contribuição de michel foucault. natal/rn, revista saberes, v. 1 (10), 225-235. carvalho, j. m. (2013). the journal transnational curriculum inquiry and the space-time of cosmopolitan hospitality and of curriculum field studies’ deconstruction. transnational curiculum inquiry, v. 10 (1), 1-15. derrida, j. (2003). da hospitalidade. translation by antonio romane. são paulo: escuta. foucault, m. (1979). microfísica do poder. rio de janeiro: edições graal. foucault, m. (2005). em defesa da sociedade: curso no collège de france (19751976). são paulo: martins fontes. foucault, m. (2013). a arqueologia do saber. rio de janeiro: forense universitária. international association for the advancement of curriculum studies (iaacs) (2018). about iaacs. available at: <www.iaacs.ca>. access on: 15 mar. 2018. heuser, e. m. d. (2005). no rastro da filosofia da diferença. in: skliar, c. (ed.). derrida & a educação (pp. 69-98). belo horizonte: autêntica. macedo, e. (2008). que queremos dizer com educação para cidadania? in: lopes, a. c. et al. políticas educativas e dinâmicas curriculares no brasil e em portugal (pp. 89-114). rio de janeiro, dp et alii / faperj. machado, r. (2006). foucault, a ciência e o saber. rio de janeiro: jorge zahar. pinar, w. (2009). multiculturalismo malicioso. in: currículo sem fronteiras, v. 9 (2), p. 149168. pinar, w. (2016a). disciplinaridade e a internacionalização dos estudos de currículo. in: pinar, w. estudos curriculares: ensaios selecionados (pp. 51-70). são paulo: cortez. pinar, w. (2016b). multiculturalismo, nacionalidade, cosmopolitismo. in: pinar, w. estudos curriculares: ensaios selecionados (pp. 159-176). são paulo: cortez. sardinha, d. (2017). foucault pró e contra: das contraciências às anticiências. in: rago, m. & gallo, s. (eds). michel foucault e as insurreições: é inútil revoltar-se? (pp. 119-132). são paulo: cnpq, capes, fapesp, intermeios. submitted: march, 24, 2018. approved: october, 15, 2018. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci http://www.iaacs.ca/ o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: nordin, andreas (2018). the idea of distance in data-driven curriculum policy making: productive critique. transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> the idea of distance in data-driven curriculum policy making: a productive critique andreas nordin1 linnaeus university, sweden introduction since the mid-1980s, neoliberalism has come to dominate the mindset of policy makers and politicians in the industrial world, advocating individual freedom, free markets, and limited state interventions. although neoliberalism as a body of thought contains many different interpretations, freedom from state intervention constitutes a core organizing principle (schmidt, 2016). this ideological agenda also has implications for the educational sector, making it more autonomous in relation to central governments and increasingly governed according to managerial principles. however, as pointed out by rose (1999), this new freedom is by no means neutral. instead, the distance created between the state and its educational institutions and the trust that follows lead to calls for new ways to monitor and measure educational progress (power, 1997). as governments must govern at a distance (cf. rose, 1999), educational systems have to be made transparent and measurable for governments to follow up on goal attainment. power (1997) referred to this phenomenon as the societal “audit explosion” because everything must be made transparent to facilitate audits. production and use of numerical data become the means to fill the gap of uncertainty perceived by governments when their authoritative power over national educational systems is decentralized and marketized. governments’ ability to make decisions based on numerical data answers modern society’s moral demand for impartiality and fairness, lending legitimacy to insecure and vulnerable politicians (porter, 1995). these politicians become insecure and vulnerable because governments now have limited control over the everyday work of their own welfare institutions and have to trust local actors and authorities to achieve the goals they set. drawing on research on data-driven education and non-affirmative education theory, this article critically examines some ways in which distance as a fundamental ideological idea underpinning neoliberal policy has come to shape and reshape all levels of contemporary curriculum policy making. here, curriculum policy making is seen as a discursive process taking place within and between different policy levels, distinguishing among the societal, institutional, and relational levels (cf. gundem, 2010). in line with the “transnational turn” in curriculum theory (cf. nordin & sundberg, 2018), the societal level refers to transnational arenas and actors as well as national policymakers and politicians. the institutional level refers to the organization, content chosen, and methods used in schooling and national curricula. finally, the relational level refers to the interplay among local curriculum actors, such as teachers and pupils. taking a discursive approach means abandoning simplified, top-down and bottom-up approaches to analyzing curriculum policy making and instead acknowledging curriculum https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index nordin. the idea of distance in data-driven curriculum policy making 27 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index policy making as a multidimensional, multidirectional process connected through discursive interactions. following schmidt (2011, 2016), discourse encompasses both the substantive content of ideas and the interactive process through which ideas are conveyed. to use the words of uljens and ylimaki (2015, p. 38), such a position focus on “discursive relationships among ideas, curriculum, agency, and structure; the interplay among societal aims translated into content, methods and planning and the social interaction around these in educational or societal institutions.” schmidt (2016) also elaborates on different kinds of ideational content. in this paper, though, the notion of idea is restricted to distance as a philosophical idea, the deepest and slowest-changing form of policy ideas carrying normative values and moral principles that structure and guide policy and politics. the focus lies on the different ways in which the philosophical idea of distance is discursively expressed within and between different levels of curriculum policy making in the context of data-driven education. data-driven education in the educational sector, organizations such as the association for the evaluation of educational achievement (iea) and the organization for economic co-operation and development (oecd) became powerful actors developing structures to monitor and measure educational systems in the late 1950s and early 1960s. at first, the organizations followed progress within specific countries, but since the late 1990s, they have increasingly focused on international comparisons. the restructuring of bureaucratic states according to the principles of new public management (npm), along with increased globalization and thus also global competition, has created demand for more and better comparative educational statistics (lingard & sellar, 2016). in a globalized world, the production and use of educational statistics have become the means to produce what gorur (2015) referred to as “calculable worlds,” a rational world where the future, however illusory, is made predictable and therefore seemingly governable. however, the globalized world contains many uncertainties and risks (cf. bauman, 2006; beck, 1992; power, 1997), so the calculated outcomes continue to turn out wrong, leaving nations in a condition of shock (cf. addey, sellar, steiner-khamsi, lingard, & verger, 2017; baroutsis & lingard, 2017; gorard, 2001; nordin, 2014, in press; slater, 2015; steiner-khamsi, 2003; takayama, 2008). as pointed out by bauman (2006), numbers “set fear afloat” through the normative power exercised when they are visualized in league tables and ranking lists, and this fear expands and thickens as distance grows, and actors and actions disappear out of sight. the spatial distance requested among policy makers to secure objectivity thus also has a productive dimension because it allows for increased complexity and thus new uncertainties, paradoxically making curriculum policy making even more irrational and unpredictable. drawing on power (1997, p. 95, italics in original), one can argue that the educational sector in effect has been “colonized by an audit process which disseminates and implants the values which underlie and support its information demands.” numerical data have become the obvious first language of education, expanding the very distance(s) they were set up to bridge (cf. nordin, in press). however, this development has not led to any epistemological shift among insecure politicians. instead, it has triggered the production and use of statistics, with ever more refined sets of indicators covering more policy areas as statistical data have become the only legitimate governing tool for politicians operating at a distance to use (addey et al., 2017; lingard & sellar, 2016). following lawn (2013, p. 9), the act of visualization appears to be viral, turning system actors into believers in “self-creating hubs of data production and flow.” this is evident in the continued development of new international large-scale assessments (ilsas) aimed at covering ever more aspects of education. for example, the oecd has followed up its programme for international student assessment (pisa) with new https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index nordin. the idea of distance in data-driven curriculum policy making 28 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index assessments, such as pisa tests for schools, pisa for development, and the programme for international assessment of adult competencies (piaac). as pointed out by lingard and sellar (2016, p. 364), the oecd also attempts to include so-called “non-cognitive skills” in its assessment structures, making them seem as comprehensive as possible. this development supports porter’s (1995) argument that numerical data are so flexible that almost anything can be made measurable and thus seemingly governable. however, this is not just a development on the societal level. ilsas are based on tests performed by school leaders, teachers, and students whose everyday work has to be arranged in such a way that they can produce reliable data for use by policy actors, such as the oecd and the iea. this means it is imperative to also insert a specific evaluative rationale into the institutional and relational levels. here, the idea of distance is imperative, a distance that is supposed to ensure the provision of reliable data. in this development promoting standardized classrooms and teaching to the test (au, 2011), the most distant (and disinterested) actor becomes the evident expert at the transnational and national policy levels as well as in the classroom (lewis, 2017). in this paper, the concept of “data-driven education,” therefore, refers to the different ways in which the production and use of numerical data shape the way education is thought and acted out within and between various (societal, institutional, and relational) levels of curriculum policy making. a productive critique in recent years, a growing amount of research has critically examined the development of data-driven education policies and practices. some researchers have focused on methodological issues and the accuracy of measurements (e.g., sivesind, 2014; wu, 2010), and others on the production and the producers of educational statistics (e.g., lawn, 2013; lingard & sellar, 2016; tröhler, 2014). important contributions have also examined the productive aspects of numerical data and their use to shape and reshape the education sector (e.g., alasuutari & rasimus, 2009; lewis & hogan, 2013; martens & niemann, 2013; mølstad, petterson, & forsberg, 2017; nordin, in press; takayama, 2010) and to promote transparency, control, and efficiency in schools (e.g., au, 2011; lewis, 2016; lingard & sellar, 2013). together, these strands of research have contributed to broadening the understanding of the societal, methodological, and relational aspects of data-driven curriculum policy making. however, gorur (2017) argued, still too little attention has been directed to the co-production of society taking place in the interplay between society and science (here understood as statistics). from a theoretical perspective, gorur (2017, p. 349) turned to science and technology (sts) to develop “a more productive critique” acknowledging fundamental questions, such as “what kind of worlds are being brought into being, and what kinds of worlds do we want to create?” however, as much as i agree on the need for a more productive critique and the usefulness of sts to further such an analysis, i argue that critical policy studies on data-driven education also need to pay more attention to the main object of inquiry, namely, education. to be productive, a critique has to have the conceptual resources to address both questions of what is reconfigured and reduced in educational institutions, practices, and knowledge and what alternative imaginaries and scenarios are at hand in terms of educational futures (cf. connell, 2013; thomson, lingard, & wrigley, 2012). the aim of this paper is to contribute to such a productive critique of the idea of distance in data-driven curriculum policy making, drawing on research on data-driven education and non-affirmative educational theory. the critique centers on three expressions of distance in data-driven curriculum policy making, which also structure the text: spatial, methodological, and relational distance. each aspect is examined in two steps. the first step is deconstructive and draws on earlier research on data-driven education, while the second https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index nordin. the idea of distance in data-driven curriculum policy making 29 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index step is reconstructive and draws on non-affirmative education theory (uljens, 2016; uljens & ylimaki, 2015, 2017). drawing on continental european philosophy, curriculum theory, and leadership research, uljens and ylimaki (2017) have outlined a non-affirmative position in education. for obvious reasons, this paper cannot do justice to the richness of such a position. here, the goal is limited to the use of three of its concepts as a possible starting point to develop a productive critique of the idea of distance in data-driven curriculum policy making. first, the non-affirmative theory assumes that educational institutions have a position of relative independence from societal and other interests (uljens, 2016). this relative independence is central to understanding education as an interactive process in which sentient agents operate within and/or between different educational levels. unlike many critical approaches (reproductive and transformative), uljens and ylimaki (2015, 2017) argues for a reflexive normative position that sees opening up to mutual, reflexive interaction as the critical task rather than pushing through certain solutions decided in advance. the non-affirmative position acknowledges the variety of interests and stakeholders in education but questions any attempt to equate education to any one of these, be it political, economic, or other. the second important concept is summons to self-activity. it draws attention to intersubjectivity as a fundamental prerequisite for reaching a position of relative independence; it is through reflexive interaction with other people carrying other experiences and visions that the future takes shape. the third and final concept is recognition, which draws attention to the profundity of the interactions advocated here. recognition of a person here means recognition of all the freedom of the other, as well as a reflexive recognition challenging one’s own position in light of the other(s). in sum, i make use of three concepts central to the nonaffirmative theory of education (relative independence, summons to self-activity, and recognition) to try to develop a productive critique. my intention is not to impose a certain understanding of education but to make productive use of concepts from educational philosophy to critically examine the idea of distance as expressed in contemporary datadriven curriculum policy making. distance in data-driven curriculum policy making the division of distance into three different expressions is made for argumentative reasons because in educational policy and in practice, these aspects are intertwined. the three expressions, therefore, are to be understood not as separate aspects but as shifts in focus while critically examining a complex, composite policy idea. fundamental to the critique developed in this paper, spatial distance is first and foremost discussed in relation to the societal policy level, while the discussions of methodological and relational distance are more explicitly related to all three levels of curriculum policy making (societal, institutional, and relational). spatial distance as pointed out by addey et al. (2017), the emergence of data-driven education has to be understood in the context of societal changes and the quest to govern the public sector according to managerial principles (npm), replacing presumably inefficient hierarchical bureaucracies with the presumed efficient market (cf. power, 1997). as noted by rose and miller (1992), npm, emphasizing local and professional freedom, embodied the neoliberal ideal of indirect, distant governmental intervention and gave a special position to the processes of audit and accounting. spatial distance became a prerequisite for institutional efficiency. as shown by power (1997), the adoption of npm by public-sector organizations gave rise to new forms of non-governmental control systems, themselves soon increasingly formalized within national governing structures. national politicians still had little or no https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index nordin. the idea of distance in data-driven curriculum policy making 30 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index control over these structures. rose (1999, p. 199) referred to this development as a “spiral of technicization of politics” that gave rise to new forms of experts and expert institutions, represented in the context of curriculum policy making by organizations such as the iea and the oecd. in this paper, the fundamental problem is seen to be this neoliberal separation between the institutions to be governed and those who govern and decide educational futures, be it national governments exercising legal power or international organizations exercising soft power through league table and ranking lists. the distance per se is not the problem but the different way(s) in which it reduces the complexity and richness inherent in the concept of education to that which can be made measurable and therefore controllable from a distance. the shift to npm has been accompanied by new forms of accountability structures focusing on learning outcomes measured by indicators and statistics (lingard & rawolle, 2011). these structures acknowledge numerical statistics as the obvious first language of education (nordin, in press). statistics, though, is a language mastered by few, so most people (including policy makers and politicians) are dependent on mediators and/or translators to be able to participate in the conversation (cf. pizmony-levy et al., 2014). introducing a language unknown to most educational actors, irrespective of policy level, alienates them from their everyday work and deprofessionalizes their context-dependent language (cf. nordin, 2016; robertson, 2013). transnational actors, such as the oecd, then offer insecure national politicians, deprived of both the tools to govern and their first language to talk about education, a scientific method to govern education through the use of numerical data. as formulated by porter (1995), p. 8), “a decision made by the numbers (or explicit rules of some other sort) has at least the appearance of being fair and impersonal. scientific objectivity thus provides an answer to the moral demand for impartiality and fairness.” however, the level of predictability in a non-linear, complex, globalized world is low, repeatedly putting nations in a condition of shock when the expected numbers do not materialize for pisa or other ilsas (cf. nordin, in press). as numerical data have become the only language available for insecure politicians to maintain pubic legitimacy, there has not been no significant epistemological shift; instead, it has led to ever-increasing, self-generating production and use of numerical data (cf. lawn, 2013). one can argue that numerical data seem to have similar effect as empty calories: they do not offer much nutrition but trigger a craving for more. trying to fill out the neoliberal distance with numerical data to make education governable, therefore, seems somewhat contradictory. numerical data are neutral, empty of educational nutrition, and so they produce more emptiness, not less. turning to the non-affirmative education theory offers a complementary approach to understand what is to be distanced from what and the reasons why. in introducing the concept of relative independence, uljens and ylimaki (2015) drew attention to the neo-marxist question of whether education has independent power (apple, 2002) or, to use habermas’s terminology, whether education has a certain (emancipatory) knowledge interest to defend. non-affirmative theory critiques both critical and positivistic answers to the question as overly normative, advocating educational and societal solutions decided in advance. the nonaffirmative answer to what is defensible then is the right to question rather than to implement already decided solutions. this is not to say that everything that exists or what people and/or organizations would like to see come into existence is negative by definition. rather, it is to say that what is educationally defensible and desirable is that these existing realities or desired futures be made subject to open, reflexive communicative interaction and that educational institutions prepare their students to participate in such complicated conversations. in a time when data-driven curriculum policy making has been given an almost hegemonic position, non-affirmative theory points to the importance of continuously questioning the very system https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index nordin. the idea of distance in data-driven curriculum policy making 31 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index (and its many stakeholders) within which one operates. non-affirmative theory reminds us that any attempt to reduce the drainage of educational content from educational discourses fueled with numerical data starts with a question. the distance advocated here, therefore, does not have so much to do with geographical distance as with maintaining critical distance from any stakeholder trying to impose a specific solution decided in advance, whether economic, juridical, evaluative, emancipatory, democratic, or other. methodological distance in the late 1960s, researchers, including torsten husén, benjamin bloom, and robert thorndike, among others, met at the iea to develop more effective methods to collect comparable data to better understand national education systems and provide curriculum policy makers with robust knowledge on how to improve student learning (hegarty, 2014). considering the world to be their laboratory for performing experiments on different aspects of schooling, such as organization, content, and instructional methods, they contributed to the establishment of what husén referred to as the “empirical-positivist paradigm” in education (lawn, 2014, p. 29). central to this scientific methodology is the assumption of objective knowledge and the possibility of producing neutral facts about educational systems and its learners. this method soon gained public legitimacy and became a clear ideal among the growing numbers of bureaucrats operating within the modern state. as stated by porter (1995, p. 8), “the appeal of numbers is especially compelling appeal to bureaucratic officials who lack the mandate of a popular election, or divine right.” numbers provide an unquestionable basis for rational decision making and thus also the legitimacy bureaucrats themselves lack while placing rival measures at a great disadvantage (porter, 1995). as shown in research on data-driven education, this phenomenon has expanded dramatically within curriculum policy making over the past couple of decades. in an uncertain, globalized world, decisions made based on numbers seemingly offer a way to produce “calculable worlds” (gorur, 2015, p. 578). they lend scientific objectivity to insecure politicians who need to believe in the possibility to produce predictable futures. this vulnerability once characteristic of bureaucrats has come to characterize national and local politicians and educational actors at all levels as the notion of expertise has been transformed. in the context of data-driven education, the one who is the most distant, the most disinterested, is seen as the obvious expert. rule-following and scientific (objective) methods have replaced the contextual knowledge upon which politicians and educators traditionally have relied. when the most distant is by definition the most reliable, global education policy actors become the evident experts on any educational matter at any level. often forgotten is that when used for political reasons, numerical data always become truth through social processes not entirely guided by scientific principles (cf. porter, 1995). even if it were possible to ensure the objectivity of numerical statistics themselves, it would be impossible to maintain that objectivity in their usage. political decisions by definition are ideological, not scientific, and therefore can never be neutral in a scientific sense. moreover, most politicians have not mastered advanced statistics and cannot check whether they are objective or not. to facilitate decontextualized comparisons, the methodological quest for objectivity has also found its way into the classroom, promoting standardized teaching and narrowing the instructional curriculum to match the test (au, 2011). although not spelled out explicitly, data-driven curriculum policy making exercises a strong normative pressure on what knowledge is desirable, namely, that which is (or can be made) measurable and therefore comparable (cf. au, 2011; nordin, in press; sivesind, 2014). in an analysis of united states classrooms, au (2011, p. 30) showed that “in the case of high-stakes testing in the us, as the content of the curriculum moves to match what the tests require, the structure of curricular https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index nordin. the idea of distance in data-driven curriculum policy making 32 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index content knowledge similarly shifts towards the fragmentation demanded by the test.” in a study on the most recent curriculum reform in sweden in 2011, wahlström and sundberg (2018, p. 9) found a similar development. the swedish curriculum reform of compulsory school in 2011 represents a denationalised and instrumental conception of education shaped by two powerful international influences: a technical-instrumental discourse on curriculum, which emphasizes learning outcome, and a neo-conservative discourse on curriculum, which emphasizes curriculum content as an uncontested body of knowledge. these international influences resulted in a standards-based curriculum. (wahlström & sundberg, 2018 p. 9) the number of standardized tests and materials for teachers’ and students’ use also tends to increase when teaching standardized curricula (e.g., mølstad & karseth, 2016; nordin, 2014), furthering the influence of the objective methodology in the classroom. despite the claims of objectivity and disinterestedness, data-driven curriculum policy making has been shown to be highly normative because it ignores many forms of knowledge, such as human experience, craft knowledge, wisdom, and tacit knowledge, to mention only a few. in the context of data-driven education, such forms of knowledge are all seen as part of the problem, polluting true knowledge with qualitative interpretations and personal judgment. non-affirmative theory shows that ranking objective and comparable knowledge as of most worth run the risk of losing aspects perhaps hard to measure but valuable to education. treating numerical data as a one-size-fits-all solution narrows the educational imagination of policy makers and politicians, as well as of teachers and students. the educational discourse is fueled with more of the same, so they are in many ways deprived of the educational power that lies in interactions with the other. the philosophical concept of recognition derives from the fundamental role of the other in human development. it is in light of the other that human development can take place when one’s own ideas and assumption are challenged and questioned. whereas data-driven curriculum policy making emphasizes the role of correct answers as drivers of educational quality, non-affirmative theory highlights the role of the question. it is the question that holds the power to transcend the present state, to move beyond what is taken for granted. inviting different forms of knowledge and human experiences is perhaps not desirable within the empirical-positivist paradigm focused on standardization, rule following, and objective assessment, but from a non-affirmative position, it is seen as a prerequisite for educational value to emerge. non-affirmative theory supports development as governments, local policy actors, principals, teachers, and student themselves “learn to make use of their productive freedom” (uljens & ylimaki, 2015, p. 37) and find their own voice. such an educational idea focuses not only on understanding national legislations and curricula per se but also on “reaching the questions and interests to which existing policies, norms or practices are seen as answers or responses” (uljens & ylimaki, 2015, p. 37). relational distance data-driven curriculum policy making rests on the assumption of harmonious relationships among nations that learn from each other and adopt best practices from countries performing well on ilsas. objective knowledge is by definition independent of context and thus transferable. as shown by steiner-khamsi (2013), there are several problems within such an assumption. first is the denial of the role of context in the way objective knowledge is interpreted and translated when recontextualized in different settings. second is the neglect of the competition inherent in data-driven curriculum policy making. ranking lists and league tables not only present objective knowledge but also exercise a power of their own, turning nations and individuals into competitors, not collaborators. as shown by addey et al. (2017), the rationales for participating in ilsas are multiple: providing evidence for education https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index nordin. the idea of distance in data-driven curriculum policy making 33 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index policy, legitimating national politics, supporting the development of national assessment systems, and strengthening international relations. although nations participate for different reasons, i argue that economic competition is a fundamental principle underpinning most other reasons, not the least because the oecd has become the global hub of data production and use within education (lingard & sellar, 2016). as shown by tröhler (2014), the initial urge to develop decontextualized indicators grew out of the highly competitive relationship between the united states and the former soviet union, particularly the u.s. crisis following the launch of the soviet satellite sputnik on october 4, 1957. losing the space race against the soviet union led to calls for the standardization, centralization, and scientification of the u.s. educational system to reclaim superiority. hyman george rickover, father of the u.s. nuclear navy, even described education as “the first line of defence” (rickover, 1959 cited in tröhler, 2014, p. 21). tröhler (2014, p. 3) explained that in the wake of sputnik, “the cold war became thoroughly educationalized,” or expressed differently, education became a means for international and national competition. over the past couple decades, the competitive discourse of the cold war has transformed into an economic slogan. the battle to be won takes place in the global economy with its flexible labor market, rather than space, but is still governed by the same competitive rationale. against this background, talk of mutual policy learning and sharing best practices seems unrealistic because competition seems to foster protectionism rather than generosity, distancing nations from each other rather than uniting them. the competitive rationale also operates at the relational level. addey et al. (2017) reported on an interview with andreas schleicher, oecd director of education and skills, who asserted that all countries need to measure the skills of their citizens because they are all competing in a global market. in the context of data-driven curriculum policy making, nations and people are placed against each other in competitive relationships expressing a “horse-race mentality” (kamens, 2013, p. 117). although claiming objectivity and disinterestedness, datadriven curriculum policy making appears to be highly normative because a limited number of powerful international organizations, such as the oecd, have the privilege of dictating the educational agenda and advocating the preferred version of education ideally to be adopted by all countries and individuals. this is a version of education designed according to an evaluative rationale, telling the truth about the past. to maintain such an illusion of objectivity, relational distance has to be advocated at all educational levels. however, as pointed out by biesta (2010, p. 500; italics in original), education can never be all about the past as “education is a teleological practice—a practice framed by a telos: an aim or purpose.” the argument raised here is that “distance,” despite claims of teleological disinterestedness, operates as such a telos within data-driven curriculum policy making. distance is simultaneously seen as a prerequisite for any educational practice to be valuable (in terms of evaluation) and a purpose for any educational practice to be meaningful (in terms of evaluation). the telos of data-driven education thus seems to be evaluative rather than educational. in these circumstances, the critical task for educational research lies not only in the challenge to develop better, more nuanced tools facilitating data-driven curriculum policy making but also in the need to introduce concepts opening up for discussions on alternative educational futures. non-affirmative education theory calls policy makers, politicians, educators, and students to self-activity that sees the qualitative aspects of education and human experience as equally important as numerical data to exploring the complex, multifaceted phenomenon of education. it is an invitation to participate, to make use of one’s own freedom. “in terms of school leadership, the act of invitation or summons is directed towards teachers’ and students’ potentiality and forces the latter to become aware of his own https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index nordin. the idea of distance in data-driven curriculum policy making 34 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index freedom as a cultural and political being and ability to realize his own aims” (uljens & ylimaki, 2015, p. 36). non-affirmative education theory thus reminds us that international organizations have no exclusive or divine right to dictate educational aims. instead, this theory argues, what is of educational value lies in the mutual exploration of such aims, not in pushing through ready-made answers. it is the question and the continued engagement with what is different and unfamiliar that invites reflexive communication and calls for educational actors at all levels to make use of their freedom to think and decide themselves what a desirable future could be. concluding remarks in this article, i have raised critical arguments about some ways in which distance as a fundamental neoliberal idea has come to influence all levels of curriculum policy making today, guided by an evaluative rationale. this development has led to the continuously expanding use of summative assessments tools and thus the production of comparable data, which i have referred to as data-driven curriculum policy making. adopting a multidimensional approach to curriculum policy making has enabled critical examination of how the idea of distance has been discursively constructed and acted out within and between different policy levels and the ways in which it has come to shape and reshape the educational imagination and the actions of the actors operating at these different levels. common to all levels of policy making is a general shift from accountability for intentions to accountability for results. the main responsibility of educational actors, irrespective of policy level, concerns what comes out of schooling, or its measurable results, and not what is put in, or the processes taking place. it is the summative outcomes, presented in ranking lists and league tables, that decide whether anything educationally valuable has taken place. this problematic development has gained a fair amount of attention among critical scholars in education, who have deconstructed the asymmetric policy discourses and their underlying power relations and have raised normative arguments for alternative perspectives and counter-discourses. however, to contribute to a more productive critique, i have argued for the need for a more reflexive position understanding educational aims as invitations, as starting points rather than as predetermined ends. being productive in this sense means that educational aims never can be entirely decided in advance but have to emanate from a communicative interaction enabling different educational aims and interests to coexist. turning to non-affirmative educational theory has offered a conceptual repertoire enabling such a reflexive position, offering direction without prescribing ready-made solutions decided in advance. developing a productive critique of data-driven curriculum policy making from this perspective, therefore, means inviting a broader discussion of what education can be all about and what alternative scenarios in terms of educational futures are at hand. doing so can enrich the educational imagination instead of replacing one narrow interpretation with another, and start replacing distance with interaction. notes 1 andreas.nordin@lnu.se 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(2010). measurement, sampling and equating errors in large-scale assessments. educational measurement: issues and practice, 29(4), 15–27. submitted: october, 30, 2018 approved: november, 16, 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index to cite this article please include all of the following details: craveiro, clarissa (2019). autobiography and the theory of discourse: deconstructing discourses of curriculum policies of teacher formation in brazil. transnational curriculum inquiry 16 (2) p. 4-31 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> autobiography and discourse theory: deconstructing discourses of curriculum policies of teacher formation in brazil clarissa craveiro1 federal fluminense university, brazil starting the conversation with discourse theory research on the production of curriculum policy and the delineation of this field of study in teacher education is recent in brazil, as highlighted by lopes and macedo (2011). studies began in the 1990s in brazil and the united states and, for an even longer time, in england, since the 1980s. the theme of teacher identity is central to teacher education as well as to curriculum documents that seek to guide this education in a given historical context through national, international or local reforms, as we have discussed in the curriculum and culture policies research group at uerj in the proped program, in the uff curriculum research group at the angra dos reis campus (gpec) as well as in publications by lopes, macedo and tura (2012). we also highlight that research on curriculum policies and teacher education showcases the leading role of teachers, as agents considered to be key players in curriculum policy changes. teachers are the ones who reframe knowledge as well as disseminate and transform the political-pedagogical discourse in educational practice. this curriculum police is sometimes signified by omission of teacher performance or formation, often as part of a discourse of teacher blaming for students’ failure in the national2 and international (common core3) assessments. conversely, the teacher may be marked by a space of "deification" and that signifies the teacher as a “partner” in the changes and curriculum projects proposed by national and international bodies. in our studies, our research group understands that this movement of continuous discursive production of meanings makes us assume certain social positions while simultaneously producing “new global identifications and new local identifications” (hall, 1997, p. 1). in previous studies4 in brazil, i have addressed teacher education policies and the meanings of such policies. the hegemonic discourse of these policies has sought to position teachers as “being” or “being able” to perform their teaching functions and thus, contribute to the learning of their students. opposed to these monocultural discourses, i have disagreed with them insofar as they are understood to be based on discursive and cultural constructions. running through them are the power mechanisms that underpin these curriculum policies. that is, there is a “system of cultural representation” (hall, 2006, p. 49) that creates meanings while building identities. curricular reforms should defend difference, intercultural dialogue and the fluidity of the processes of identification of the subjects they are intended for; this is very important, since any closure that approaches standardization ends up forging “patterns that bring the negation of the other” (lopes and macedo, 2008, p. 21). dialogic space is a continuous process of production of meaning. and, as mouffe (2003) points out, the recognition that these identification processes encompass a multiplicity of elements, https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index craveiro. autobiography and the theory of discourse 23 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> allows for a porosity of borders, contributing to plural contexts that value diversity and dissent, thus the possibilities of a democratic life to be achieved. urged to think about teacher education policies and the repercussions of curricular centralization proposals for schools and teacher education (craveiro & ribeiro, 2017), we have been considering ways to deconstruct reforms that signal the closure of plural contexts. to this end, we propose another way to think about ways of researching, changing and deconstructing discourses in the curricular policies for teacher education and for the schools. this alternative combines autobiographical discourse with discourse theory. we assume that curricular reform for teacher education seeks to establish a specific identity with the intention of defining, in advance, the ways of acting of these subjects, for example, research by freitas (2013), craveiro and freitas (2017), craveiro and oliveira (2015), and craveiro and pugas (2013) who, despite the different ways and approaches towards the teacher in curricular discourses, hold in common the teacher as protagonist. seeing the teacher as protagonist in curricular policies means that the teacher is a social agent who re-signifies knowledge, and spreads and transforms politicalpedagogical discourse into diverse educational situations, thus contributing to the learning of their students. however, we understand that this process, which for the moment we call “ressignifying of the discourse”, is uncontrollable, contingent and precarious (laclau, 2009), given the centralizing discourses of national curricular reforms. we agree with borges and lopes (2017) that curricular policies guided by the logic of control, either through centralized evaluations or through the control of interpretation via prescriptions or propositions of curriculum, seek to centralize the meanings in teacher education regarding the school knowledge to be acquired. far from promoting a “quality of teacher education,” they end up “operating in the crystallization of identities” (p. 9). however, despite operating in a logic of ‘predictability’ by supposed ‘control’ of the directing of school activities, they fall short of controlling the discursivepedagogical process of teachers. we defend this understanding by realizing that every discursive process is tied to the social meaning of its context: “discourse is a complex unit of words and actions, of explicit and implicit elements, of conscious and unconscious strategies” (laclau cited in burity, 2008, p. 42). discourse is also understood as a political construction of meaning production and therefore, as more than just speech or writing. thus, it is understood that discursive formation “is always an articulated but heterogeneous set of discourses, that is, systems of rules of meaning production” (laclau cited in burity, 2008, p. 42) that hegemonize the plurality characterizing speech at any given moment. for laclau (2009), one of the central characteristics of articulations is their contingent, precarious and provisional character, therefore subject to the different demands that disarticulate and produce new discourses. by disarticulate, we mean start a new discourse with different connections and production. from this discursive understanding, we find that curriculum productions involving teacher education and their social practices in the school context are part of a continuous production of meanings that make teachers assume certain social positions while producing “new global identifications and new local identifications” (hall, 1997, p. 1). therefore, it is possible to say that the discourses produced in the texts of curriculum policies aimed at teacher education coexist with different social and cultural discourses that are reinterpreted, recreating new discourses. in this continuous production of meanings, teacher education is marked by a tendency to naturalize certain meanings of the curriculum, establishing an interface between pedagogical discourse and teacher education curriculum policy discourse. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index craveiro. autobiography and the theory of discourse 24 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> meanings circulate for what is meant to "be a teacher”, what constitutes teaching identity, what can count as positive qualification or not for teaching performance in relation to what one supposes society expects from this performance. we argue that these meanings should not be naturalized as constituents of teaching identity. rather, they are produced discursively in the social relations of the context in which they are managed. therefore, understanding this discursive production in a given context may contribute to denaturalize them. i clarify that “we understand context as a system of provisional meaning, produced by antagonism and exclusion” (laclau, 2011b cited in lopes and cunha and costa, 2013, p.398) and provisional identifications where many processes of signification are produced in the “field of the different relations of which emerge all and every one of the particular identities” (laclau, 2011, p.38). in other words, context could mean a provisional “closing” of meanings produced by social actors. on the one hand, curriculum policy discourses addressed to teachers seek to naturalize certain senses for "being a teacher", as a social actor that reverberates certain knowledges and certain experiences in their school practice. on the other hand, and at the same time, the teacher constantly produces meanings in the context of school practice, with his/her students and with him/herself and, as a social actor, brings with him/her a repertoire of personal experiences, which are constantly re-signified in the social and subjective interactions coming from the discursive articulations in the context of their practices. in this sense, we emphasize with miller and macedo (2018) that in the discursive character of experiences: “[...] it is not individuals who have experience, but subjects who are constituted by experience” (scott, 1991, p. 779). experience is discursive; the lived only makes sense within a discursive order that produces what it speaks of (foucault 2009, p. 7). we emphasize that this continuous production of meanings is discursive in the context of school practice in which we think about the social positions and the constitutions of the teacher's experience. we understand that the social function of language “is discursive production, and discourse is the limit of all objectivity” (laclau & mouffe, 2011, p.5). we add that the professional experience of the teacher is also discursive and as such, continuously produces constructions of identity constitution of the teacher. we agree and reaffirm with laclau (2011) that it is in the processes of identification within teacher education and in the incompleteness of such identity that is constituted the discursive, provisionally, of the social context. this process is in a continuous movement of antagonism, exclusion and identification of meanings that are important in understanding the particular constitution of teachers as social actors in the school context, which we will later articulate as teachers' autobiographical discourses. the identity “incompleteness” that is part of this process is what laclau (2011) calls “the direct result of its differential emergence: no particular identity can emerge without supposing and proclaiming the exclusion of others, and this constitutive exclusion or antagonism is the same counter effect condition of every constitution of identity ”(p.38). in this research, we also believe it is interesting to think of the impossibility of control by which some curricular discourses seek to address teaching action and thinking as if it were possible to materialize the processes of teacher identification from the standardizing curriculum policies. in other words, standardized curriculum discourses drive us to think of identity incompleteness and the impossibility of control, in which exclusions and antagonisms are discursively produced by teachers in the social contexts from which they emerge in schools and their relation with centralizing curriculum proposals. these research interests are in keeping with the understanding that the narrative / autobiographical process can be considered an open process, a discursive https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index craveiro. autobiography and the theory of discourse 25 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> process of narration, excluding meanings with which it does not want to identify. this process, called metafiction, as strong-wilson (2017) identifies, is a process of selfreflection and the creation of stories that “reflects on its own process of creation as the story is being told” (p. 161). it is in this way that we understand that autobiographical discourses, in constant construction, are discourses that are not “fixed”, finished, or closed. we also agree with macedo and miller (2018) that autobiographical research can be viewed as “the main mode of inquiry and curriculum research, while rejecting the idea of a self-constituting subject” (p. 3) because of its being a research process that is built with the subject in loco. however, the searching for dialogue with ernesto laclau's discursive approach and autobiographical proposals from teachers' discourses in the context of their curricular practices, will be signaled in the later section. we highlight here the potential of autobiographical discourses to think through new ways for teacher education, towards proposals that respect freedom and difference in school. dialoging with the autobiographical approach in this section, i point out some possibilities for dialogue between my research that was already being done and autobiography, which has the power to denaturalize standardized discourses for teacher education and teachers' curriculum reforms. in disagreeing with standardized curriculum proposals for teacher education and / or the controlling of teaching activities (in borges, cunha & craveiro, 2019)5) we argue that the use of autobiographical inquiry in school can be the opposite of such standardization, insofar as autobiographies are contextual and value the self. it is in this way that we seek to approach autobiographical discourses as a possibility for understanding the processes of constitution of teachers' identity and curriculum experiences in the school context. we also highlight, with miller and macedo (2018), “that the narrative of experience may be useful for questioning the normativity that have profound implications on how the difference is established, how it operates and in what form it constitutes the subjects who see the world and act in it ” (cited in scott, 1991, pp. 777-778 & p. 954). we believe that autobiographical discourse, as an option still under construction, is one of several possibilities for “self-life writing” that, as smith (2010) admits “is not a single unitary genre or form,” rather, autobiography is “ever contingent, adaptable, fluid, and dynamic” (p.18). we understand autobiographical discourse as a story told about one's own experience, in the midst of a narrative and self-representation through a process in which, through critical insights, the "cracks" provided by the processes of reflection in the discourse shine, interrupting the usual ways of narrative (strong-wilson, 2015). in this sense, we can say that the processes of identity identification of teachers, contingent, fluid and provisional, are constituted through destabilization in autobiographical ‘journeys.’ this process is compared to a ‘journey’ because it develops from four moments of currere6 , initially proposed by william pinar and later appropriated by different authors such as madeleine grumet (1991, 2004) and teresa strong-wilson (2008, 2015). smith (2010) emphasizes an interesting aspect about identity processes, highlighting the relations of identity with the social: “subjects know themselves in languages because experience is discursive” (p. 12) day by day, in the exchange of knowledge, we connect with other social actors through language. we agree with the author that there is a discursive process in relations with the social and with social actors because “social organizations and symbolic interactions are always in flux; therefore, identities are provisional” (p. 18). it is necessary to clarify that in the discursive approach with which we identify, we do not understand identity relations with the social as producing different particular identities. returning to laclau (2011), it is in the https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index craveiro. autobiography and the theory of discourse 26 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> incompleteness of the particular identity that articulatory processes are sought, however this process does not constitute multiple identities, but multiple discursive processes of identification. in this sense, the identity of social actors isn´t suited to different contexts because of its multiple identity. there are several identification processes that happen, produced through discourse. and so, we can say that “autobiographical subjects, then, are multiply vulnerable: to their own opaqueness, to their relationality to others” (smith, 2010, p.38). in the wake of pinar and grumet (2015), strong-wilson (2008), in one of her curriculum studies, offers us the possibility to reconstruct our understanding of the curriculum from teachers' stories. the stories embark on a path of discursive autobiographical process of critique and self-analysis within a collective context of memory-work (with small groups of teachers), using children's literature known to teachers in the classroom. through their theoretical appropriation of currere, teachers build discourses based on their life histories and memories. according to strong-wilson (2008), such personal stories can be replaced (re-signified) with the “public” stories of children's literature that are told in school. this process is not immediate, as memories are narrated, recounted or 'layered' through grumet’s 'excavation method'7 in which childhood stories are confronted with teachers' current subjectivities and, in the process, can trigger the inner "monsters"8 of each teacher. in this way, the confrontations between public and personal discourses enables teachers to build difference in curriculum discourses. strong-wilson (2008) focuses on deconstructing the naturalized narratives in school that may hurt social justice. in other words, strong-wilson gives importance to autobiographical narratives that are told through the teachers' memories of their teacher education and school experiences in a process of remembering, transmitting, interpreting and criticizing the hegemonic discourses that are repeated and transmitted in the culture of the school and, often, naturalized as belonging to the school environment. we are offered the possibility, through the autobiographical process of currere, a particular way to re-experience the narrated discourses through the school curriculum. the excavation method seeks to elicit cracks or openings with teachers in the process of constructing difference in the school curriculum. strong-wilson (2017) corroborates pinar’s signifying of currere as a method of study, of intellectual and social engagement; as a possibility to open the way to learn to reflect, to open a space of agency through examining the structures of subjectivity. among grumet's studies (in pinar & grumet, 2015), we would like to highlight the author's focus on the appropriation of currere as a possibility to redefine the experiences of childhood or the family environment, understanding that these narrated experiences could be part of some disciplinary discourses in education. grumet (2004) presents us with some metaphors such as “home” 9 or “green robe” 10 (grumet, 1991), for example, in which she illustrates, from her autobiographical stories, aspects of family life that can be resymbolized or reinterpreted in the curriculum but this does not always happen. “we try to connect children to a world that refuses to hear the songs of our own connections” (grumet, 1991, p.84). thus, the author invites us to rethink dorothy smith's ideological disjunction or rupture between family knowledge and school knowledge. according to smith (1987, p.54 cited in grumet 1991, p.84), “the ideas, images and symbols in which our experiences is given social form are not as that neutral floating thing called culture but as what is actually produced by specialists and by people who are part of the apparatus by which the ruling class maintains its control over the society”. i agree with grumet (1991) on the influence of social discourses on school, understanding that social control is managed by discursive productions (laclau & mouffe 2011). https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index craveiro. autobiography and the theory of discourse 27 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> in approaching the different appropriations of currere with madaleine grumet and teresa strong-wilson, we identify different ways to understand the processes of constructing teachers’ identity as singular, provisional and contextual, which in my view brings to light the unfeasibility of the proposed standardization for a school. thus, autobiography can be a way to interrupt the habitual and to recover the teaching professional intentionality, using the past (memories), bringing the assumptions (assumptions) and future intentions of the storyteller (narrator / teacher) to bear on the spaces of the difference in the school. the challenge of deconstructing hegemonic curriculum discourses in the context of teachers' autobiography “we are responsible for the lives we lead” (willian pinar, in preface (1976) pinar & grumet (2015)). the purpose of our research was to present ways of autobiographical appropriation within our research group (gpec). although provisional (laclau, 2011), we chose to share our incompleteness in order to strengthen and join other research that also seeks to deconstruct proposals with standardized meanings for school and / or teacher education. for this, our challenge is, as one of the contexts to be researched, a municipal school of angra dos reis, located in rio de janeiro, brazil. the option for the autobiographical proposal is to go against the hegemonic logic of national curricular centralization / standardization. (in brazil, curricular centralization has been gaining strength in curriculum policies since the 1980s, with increasing emphasis in the 2000s). that is, to enable “a complicated conversation” as pinar (1995) would say, with teachers, we need to understand context “as a system of provisional meaning” (laclau, 2011b p.7). however, i also emphasize that at this moment, it is not the main intention of our research to deepen the studies of teacher identity, even though it is a central aspect of autobiographical studies in the field of teacher education. the central focus is to think of ways to bring dissonant discourses to the hegemonic discourses of curriculum standardization that fight to establish in brazilian schools. in other words, we seek, through appropriation of currere, to empower the discourses of difference in curriculum discussions rather than the discourses of curriculum standardization. we agree with and emphasize the appropriateness of pinar’s words in his 1976 preface: we must overturn the ideology (discourse)11 of environment, the ideology which says, in whatever complexity, it is environment which determines life. we must work through our circumstances: material, intellectual, psycho-social. we must claim the environment as our land; we lay claim to it brazenly. this is our land, and we will make of it what we will. (p. xv) notes 1 clacraveiro@yahoo.com.br 2 in this regard, about the curriculum, teaching work, and the school as the field of accountability see pereira, costa and cunha (2015). https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index mailto:clacraveiro@yahoo.com.br craveiro. autobiography and the theory of discourse 28 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> 3 for example, the 2010 us educational initiative that sets state standards, and details what elementary and high school students should know in english and math subjects at the end of each grade, has become a reference for brazilian policies. 4 craveiro & aguiar (2016), craveiro 2015, 2014. 5 borges, v.; cunha, v. p. & craveiro, c. (2019). curriculum centralization policy in brazil: a discursive perspective on academic researches. transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 p. 23-37. 6 the method of currere is regressive, progressive, analytical and synthetical. “regressive. the first step of the method is regressive. one returns to the past, to capture it as it was, and as it hovers over the present” (p.71); “progressive derives from pro meaning “before” and gradi meaning ‘to step, go’ (…) we look at what is not yet the case, what is not yet present” (p.75); analytical “describe the biographic present, exclusive of the past and future, but inclusive of responses to them” (p.77) and synthetical “syntogether+tithenai-to place. put them aside. (…) i conceptualize the present situation. i am placed together” (p.79). from pinar & grumet. (2015). 7 “method of excavation” (from grumet) is a story in layers; the stories come from familiar contexts and childhood memories. it is a method for producing critical consciousness. strong-wilson (2008). 8 the monsters as a metaphor, a process of currere by which a teacher could confront her imagination with the real context with which she needs to accommodate her pedagogy. the “other”, the difference or some knowledge, has traditionally been represented as monstrous. strong-wilson (2008). 9 “(...) for most of us, the location of our earliest and most poignant experiences of fear and pleasure, disgust and comfort, boredom and excitement, was home” (grumet, 1991, p.74). “now this process of selection (memory), this determination that something matters, is very heart of curriculum. (…) the practical knowledge that we bring with us from home remains trapped in memory coded in images, sensory associations, stories, and emotions. lodged in intuition, this practical knowledge is rarely extended to our work in the public world because it is rarely resymbolized through process that encode it for reflection and translation to others settings” (p.75). 10 “i avoided the personal, just as i avoided “authentic” and “sincere” as descriptors for this prose and for this process, and turned to multiple narratives to invite the range, the contradictions, and all the robes – silk, brocade, orlon, rayon (packs well), terry, seersucker, velvet, leather, feather – that students could find for this academic procession” (grumet, 2004, p. 91). 11 in our understanding, discourse. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index craveiro. autobiography and the theory of discourse 29 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> references borges, v.; cunha, v & craveiro, c. (2019) curricular centralization policy in brazil. transnational curriculum inquiry, v. 16, p. 23-37. burity, j. a. (2008) discurso, política e sujeito na teoria da hegemonia de ernesto laclau. in: mendonça, daniel de; rodrigues, léo peixoto (orgs.). pós-estruturalismo e teoria do discurso: em torno de ernesto laclau. porto alegre: edipucrs. craveiro, c.& ribeiro, w. g. (2017) precisamos de uma base nacional comum curricular? linhas críticas (online), v. 23, p. 51-69. craveiro, c. & freitas, a. v. (2017) sentidos para a formação docente nas políticas curriculares em documentos ibero-americanos e brasileiros: aproximações e distanciamentos. https://doi.org/10.15366/jospoe2017.6, v. 1, p. 110-123. craveiro, c.& aguiar, f. (2016) teacher training curriculum policies in brazil: possibilities of wordsmith tools. transnational curriculum inquiry, v.13, p. 3-12. craveiro, c. & oliveira, v. b. (2015) formação de professores nas políticas curriculares: a identidade docente em questão. in: isabel maria sabino de farias. (org.). didática e a prática de ensino na relação com a formação de professores. 1a.ed. fortaleza: eduece, v. 1, p. 6-722. craveiro, c.& pugas, m. (2013) políticas curriculares e formação de professores: uma análise a partir das diretrizes curriculares nacionais. educação e cultura contemporânea (online), v. 10, p. 1-276. craveiro, c. (2004) políticas curriculares para a formação de professores: processos de identificação docente (19952010). tese (doutorado em educação). uerj, rio de janeiro. freitas, a. (2013) reflexões sobre o currículo da eja na perspectiva da educação matemática. revista educação pública (rio de janeiro), v. 5, p. 1-3. grumet, m. (2004) in my green robe: scholae personae. counterpoints, vol. 220, not just any dress: narratives of memory, body,and identity (2004), pp. 89-98. grumet, m. (1991) in g. willis & w.h. schubert (eds.), reflections from the heart of educational inquiry: understanding curriculum and teaching through the arts. (pp.74-89). new york: state university of new york press. hall, s. (2006) a identidade cultural na pós-modernidade. rio de janeiro: dp&a. hall, s. (1997) a centralidade da cultura: notas sobre as revoluções culturais do nosso tempo. educação & realidade. campinas. laclau, ernesto & mouffe, chantal (2011) hegemony and socialist strategy. london: back. laclau, e. (2011b) emancipação e diferença; coordenação e revisão técnica geral, alice casimiro lopes e elizabeth macedo. rio de janeiro: eduerj. laclau, e. (2009) la razón populista. buenos aires: fondo de cultura económica. lopes, a. c. & borges, v. (2017) currículo, conhecimento e interpretação. currículo sem fronteiras, v. 17, pp. 555-573. lopes, a. c.; cunha, e. & costa, h. c. (2013) da recontextualização à tradução: investigando políticas de currículo. currículo sem fronteiras, v. 13, p. 392-410. lopes, a.; macedo, e. & tura, m. de l. (2012) as representações sociais e os estudos de política de currículo para formação docente. in: placco, v. m. and villa bôas, l. santos & sousa, c. p. (orgs.). representações sociais: diálogos com a educação. são paulo: champagnat/fc, v. 109-136. lopes, a. c. & macedo, e. (et al) (2008) políticas de currículo no brasil e em portugal. porto, portugal: profedições. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index http://lattes.cnpq.br/0637347272254761 http://lattes.cnpq.br/0637347272254761 http://lattes.cnpq.br/0637347272254761 http://lattes.cnpq.br/3969587952386949 http://lattes.cnpq.br/5262190522408958 http://lattes.cnpq.br/5262190522408958 http://lattes.cnpq.br/1583175347126296 http://lattes.cnpq.br/0377631022122389 craveiro. autobiography and the theory of discourse 30 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> miller, j. & macedo, e. (2018) curriculum public policies: autobiography and relational subject, práxis educativa, ponta grossa, v. 13, n. 3, p. 948-965, set./dez. mouffe, c. (2003) democracia, cidadania e a questão do pluralismo. política & sociedade. florianópolis, nº 3. pereira, t. v.; costa, h. h. c. & cunha, é. v. (2015) uma base à base: quando o currículo precisa ser tudo. revista educação pública, cuiabá, v. 24, n. 56, p. 455469, maio/ ago. pinar, w. & grumet, m. (2015) toward a poor curriculum. kingston, ny; educator's international press. pinar, w. (1995) curriculum theorizing: the reconceptualists. berkeley: mccutchan. strong-wilson, t.; ehret, c.; lewkowich, d. & chang-kredl, s. (ed.) (2020) provoking curriculum encounters across educational experience : new engagements with the curriculum theory archive. new york, new york: routledge. strong-wilson, t. (2017) following one’s nose in reading w. g. sebald allegorically: currere and invisible subjects, educational theory, volume 67 number 2., board of trustees university of illinois. strong-wilson, t. (2015) phantom traces: exploring a hermeneutical approach to autobiography in curriculum studies, journal of curriculum studies. strong-wilson, t. (2008) bringing memory forward: storied remembrance in social justice education with teachers. new york: peter lang publishing, inc. scott, j. w. (1991) the evidence of experience. critical inquiry, v. 17, n. 4, p. 773-797, jun./ago. doi: https://doi.org/10.1086/448612. smith, s. (2010) reading autobiography: a guide for interpreting life narratives, second edition, paperback – july 2. submitted: november, 20th, 2019. approved: december, 03rd, 2019. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index https://doi.org/10.1086/448612 o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: furlán, a. & rios, j. u. (2017). theorizing the curriculum. transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> theorizing the curriculum alfredo furlán1 national autonomous university of mexico, mexico julio u. rios2 national autonomous university of mexico, mexico introduction the disease of our time is undoubtedly the neoliberal rationality, which has been strongly implanted in the contemporary culture and invests new subjects at least among the officials and experts who dictate policies in the education sector. although neoliberalism encompasses many levels of culture, this paper refers exclusively to the scope it has in the educational field and specifically in the area of the curriculum. the neoliberal vision conveys an image of social reality as the sum of individuals competing with each other to belong to the sector of the winners and thus avoid falling into the group of losers. winners will have access to available material and symbolic goods, while losers will be totally excluded or will have less access to them, at least within societies that have been run on social-democratic criteria and have been saved from the integral privatization of health, education and in general, of all sectors that offer prospects of being profitable. in modern democratic societies, subjects find themselves immersed in a competition considered to be fair, based on the principle of equal opportunities. from the latter, it is assumed that by giving all competitors the same conditions, the achievements obtained by each are strictly the product of their personal effort. thus, both the academic successes and the social positions reached, are the correct result of the own merit. notably, while inequalities of birth or inheritance are considered to be unfair, social inequalities that occur within equal opportunities are legitimate to derive from a competition assumed to be fair (dubet, 2006). equality of opportunity rests on a fiction and on a statistical model which assumes that, in each generation, individuals are proportionally distributed at all levels of the social structure regardless of their origins and initial conditions (dubet, 2011, p. 54). similarly, it is argued that the initial gifts or talents are distributed proportionately among society, so it is enough to offer the same opportunities for everyone to occupy their social posts equally (dubet, 2011). indeed, this is an approach which limitations are evidenced by existing statistical data; it shows how social gaps are deepened depending on the origin of individuals. it highlights, for example, the low furlán & rios. theorizing the curriculum 10 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci representativeness that women or children of workers have in different social spheres (dubet, 2006, 2011). despite the above, the predominant idea within the neoliberal discourse is that all subjects start from the same base and the winners succeed because they have a greater capacity to manage their own trajectory, they are better entrepreneurs of themselves. that is, they manage to build themselves as a successful company. within this scenario, the deep differences that exist in the line of departure among the participants tend not to be valued by neoliberalism, which it totally bets on the abilities of the contenders. the central problem is the type of subjectivity produced by this model in individuals, who, provided with the technological resources offered in the market, tend to displace the old traditions and values that were more susceptible to solidarity behaviors. in the context of neoliberal cultures, it grows and develops individualism in which, following the logic of the market, individuals are only interested in those decisions that benefit their particular interests (tedesco, 1995, 2012). within the supposedly equitable competition between the actors, the fate of losers matters little, whose unequal but "fair" destiny exempts the rest of the individuals from responsibility. individualism linked to neoliberal rationality has an enormous potential for exclusion (tedesco, 1995), which rejects any insinuation of social responsibility. this is a perspective that goes hand in hand with a moral relativism and freedom "to do everything that makes sense to us" (beyer and liston, 2001, p.193). the extreme individualism dyes with its overwhelming consequences almost all the academic spaces, through financing policies that require the application of systems of permanent evaluation to the subjects and to the organisms that group them. they create a climate of fierce competition that collides collegiate university projects which policies do not encourage. here is where the curricular question comes in, which is the essential collegiate project that is played in institutions of higher education. in this sense, the present article offers a general analysis around the approaches that from the neoliberal discourse are realized around the curriculum. facing the specific guidelines marked by a mercantilist thinking, which has strong promoters in various international organizations; there is a need for disagreement in favor of the academic and intellectual freedom of teachers. the harassment of international organizations, the standardization of innovation the curriculum is not a product objectively disconnected from the social, political and economic events of a certain historical moment. on the contrary, it is a social object (terigi, 2016) marked by the debates that take place within the framework of broader transformations of which educational systems are part (beyer and liston, 2001), and which are accompanied by specific requirements to the school. hence, it should not be surprising that there is a tendency to turn the curriculum into "an instrument to avoid detected social dangers or to strengthen particular social initiatives" (beyer and liston, 2001, p.9). currently, as part of the neoliberal discourse, there is an instrumentalization of the curriculum, which guided by a mercantilist thought (pinar, 2014), it focuses its demands on results; in obtaining certain skills and knowledge for the 21st century that can be measured based on universal standards. in the specific case of higher education, the expectation is about the production of young people with the necessary skills for professional life (goldman and pellegrino, 2017). it is a perspective in which the furlán & rios. theorizing the curriculum 11 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci curriculum is reduced to a tool that, together with teaching and evaluation, ensures the acquisition of the learning required by the global market (pinar, 2014). naturally, the implication sketched in the previous paragraph is limited in order to better understand the importance attached to the curriculum as an instrument that allows the realization of certain aspirations. in this regard, it is necessary to ask ourselves: what is the curriculum? it can be affirmed that this question can infer several things. however, following the work of the founders of the curricular field can be stated that it is the purpose of creating; it is the creation of mechanisms and organization of the contents that are necessary in order to achieve the formative synergies in view of training the subjects towards a professional profile, particularly at undergraduate level. although it is necessary to recognize that nowadays, postgraduate studies are in man y cases the true enabling instance of the future graduates. it is important to note that, when we want to know what a (university) curriculum is, the first thing that comes out is the syllabus. they are necessary as institutional organizers of the academic-administrative instances, as a justification of the institutional meaning of the training offered by this or that entity. due to their importance, the curriculum designers have to be attentive to the existing mechanisms of certification, since they have been created to check the degree of updating of the programs. the curriculum designers are now subject to a revision based on certain standards. this is the demand of a society, in which the speed of renewal in the knowledge does not stop increasing. this standardization is strongly promoted by the governments of certain countries, business organizations, some think tanks and especially by international organizations, such as the organization for economic cooperation and development (oecd) or the world bank; their capacities to concentrate, coordinate and execute large-scale actions even exceeds some nations (croso, 2017). specifically, it highlights the role that international agencies have played in promoting an economistic conception of education, characterized by the principles of "learning to act competitively in the marketplace and measuring learning to determine the degree of adjustment between the educational system and the economic development "(croso, 2017, p.3); a stance in which it is affirmed that the establishment of standards allows assuring the educational quality. with respect to other educational levels, the standardization has even resulted in the development of international tests for the measurement of student learning. in this regard, the evidence of the oecd's program for international student assessment (pisa) is an obligatory benchmark for this process. it should be pointed out that this policy has not been extended to higher education as forcefully as in basic education. however, this does not mean the absence of educational policies that promote a standardization of higher education institutions (heis). thus, at an international and national level, the certification and accreditation of plans and study programs have become a guideline that determines homogeneous evaluation parameters that are affirmed, promote and ensure educational quality. as expected, the development of standards for higher education has been accompanied by measurement and comparison (often obscure) of educational institutions. it is enough to approach the recent international rankings to observe the continuance of a competition based on merit in which there are winners and losers; institutions of lower and higher quality which have been offered a standardized framework of criteria that, when complied with, legitimates both its educational offer and its position within the international ranking of universities. furlán & rios. theorizing the curriculum 12 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci this desire to differentiate the best universities from those that are not (being unable to meet certain requirements), is consistent with a neoliberal rationality that structures and organizes discourses, practices, and devices according to the universal principle of competition (laval and dardot, 2013). as part of this approach, the triumph or failure is presented as options, choices of individuals who have the sole responsibility for the inadequate or proper management of their destination. laval and dardot (2013) refer that the full acceptance of competition as a norm is a product of the establishment of the company as a model of subjectivation; a position that is disseminated with special care through education and the press. the previous statement points out that speaking of a standardization in higher education does not refer to a homogenization in terms of seeking to implant the factory model that for decades left its mark on how the curriculum was designed and taught in units that were added "to a logical and even disciplinary whole (like the products of an assembly line) "(pinar, 2014, p.108). on the contrary, the place of the automotive assembly line in the school is changed by one of the corporate workstations, linked to the model of the company (pinar, 2014). the latter neglects recitation and memorization to allow the use of multiple instructional strategies that facilitate the acquisition of a common minimum of knowledge. this ongoing transition is manifested in the constant criticism made from different spaces and by different actors against what is assumed as an insufficient educational innovation by the educational systems. in this sense: the imposition of new assessments and standards alone will not affect the gap between the status quo and what is needed. at present, most educational systems are unable to meet the needs of the 21st century. one important reason to explain this is the outdated perspectives on how people learn and how instruction and evaluation can be designed to be used productively in the service of learning. research on learning and instruction that has been conducted over the last 60 years provides important principles that should inform the design and evaluation of contemporary learning environments. (goldman and pellegrino, 2017, p.30) using the advances made in the field of learning, the enterprise model shows itself as flexible and innovative in allowing modifications to the curriculum in order for students and teachers to learn what is required of them (pinar, 2014). compared to the factory model, this implies a substantial change in the way the curriculum was designed. but it does not entail a transformation of the ultimate orientation that underlies its main postulates. pinar states that (2014, p.109), "profit maximization remains the end result of the company as well as its previous version of the factory." mercantilist thinking is the basis of curricular proposals that, enriched by the advances of different disciplines, are flexible to the adoption of any strategy that facilitates the achievement of better results. this translates into a scenario where, paradoxically, innovation becomes the standard to follow. thus, the company's model offers a more sophisticated design focused mainly on the quality of the final product: the training of subjects with the ability to solve problems based on their creativity and critical thinking, that is, with the skills required for a model social and economic that generates, consumes and uses the information incessantly. innovation as a standard of curriculum design requires, for example, the inclusion of peer learning, project learning or problem-based learning, as mandatory experiences. from this standpoint, universities’ plans and curricula do not strictly integrate existing innovations, these are directly responsible for the inadequate furlán & rios. theorizing the curriculum 13 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci management of their educational quality. once it has been established a standard that accurately indicates the requirements to ensure educational success, subsequent deficiencies in education are the responsibility of specific actors. on the one hand, teachers who do not adequately integrate new technologies into their teaching practice, which limits the possibilities to provide innovative experiences to their students. on the other hand, the students who, despite the enormous amount of resources that the information and knowledge society offers, are not able to relate adequately to the school contents. innovative curricular designs delimit both the most valuable knowledge and experiences as well as the characteristics that the institutional context should favor for their proper development. once all the necessary conditions for innovation have been considered, flexibility is even given to the teacher to make adjustments to the curriculum. within this scenario, the responsibility for what happens subsequently can only correspond to the teachers, who must manage the task in the best possible way. it is an approach that leaves teachers in a particularly challenging position facing educational reform failures. a condemnation that simplifies the complex relationship between the curriculum and the lived curriculum (furlán, 2014a), which reduces the intricate articulation of practices in the curriculum (remedi, cited by furlán, 2014b, gvirtz and palamidessi, 2011). in view of this –deliberateomission, it is necessary to go deeper into the heterogeneous situations in which the practice of university professors develops. teachers’ working conditions the neoliberal enterprise model influences on how the curricular proposals are structured today. in this regard, the contradictory place that the teacher has in relation to the curriculum is highlighted: he receives the freedom to innovate as long as this can be translated into the achievement of certain learning standards. what is important is the development of a minimum of fundamental competencies, clearly decided by a select group of officials and experts that suggests the knowledge and experiences that should be kept in mind in order to ensure the adequate professional qualification of students. however, the successful development of learning for the new economic and social scenarios requires innovative proposals that allow overcoming the different obstacles that appear in the transition from the thought curriculum to the lived curriculum. in this sense, the possibility that the teacher can make changes to the curriculum is a flexibility granted with the purpose of favoring the necessary development of innovative practices. in the enterprise model, the teacher is a manager with the responsibility of managing student learning (pinar, 2014). however, the teacher must not only offer the best strategies for the achievement of certain results but also must obtain the greatest possible benefit from them. in this sense, the supposed intellectual freedom that is given to teachers to innovate within the curriculum is a mandatory condition to comply with new bureaucratic parameters (pinar, 2014). the standards imposed on plans and curricula, even in their most recent versions, can lead to a subjugated teacher (pinar, 2014): subject to the fulfillment of certain criteria while being forced to present alternatives that favor learning. a teacher who, under the enterprise model, endorses this task by having been constituted as a "competing subject that must maximize its results by exposing himself to risks that it has to face by taking full responsibility for possible failures" (laval and dardo, 2013, p.333). furlán & rios. theorizing the curriculum 14 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci it is particularly interesting to specify how the teacher's full responsibility for learning is ensured by the close linkage between curriculum, teaching, and assessment. according to pinar (2014), from the beginning of the curricular field, a limited association was made between the curriculum and the process of teaching3. an approximation accompanied by a false causality between teaching and learning4. that is, the approach in which no one can learn without someone who teaches was accepted (salit, 2016). this statement turns the teacher into the perfect culprit (responsible) for educational failures. the arrival of the evaluation as an instrument to verify the achievements of the school, did nothing more than to complement the unfortunate approaches installed in the theorization of the curriculum, from which it has been sought: a mechanism for aligning curriculum, teaching, and assessment. alignment [...] means that all three functions are directed towards the same ends and reinforce each other: evaluation must measure what and how they are actually being taught to students, and what is actually being taught must be related to the curriculum that one wants students to master (goldman and pellegrino, 2017, 40). from that assumption, it would be expected that the success obtained by certain ideas in pilot experiences would be replicable by ensuring the synchronization of the curriculum related to teaching and assessment. this mechanism would provide the teacher an effective management. however, as the fate of different curricular reforms has shown, the implementation of these reforms has had diverse results depending on the context in which they take place (sargent, 2017). this heterogeneity of achievements and failures, responds to the character of the curriculum as a complex conversation; a space in which the voices of different individuals are connected, who participate in this communication based on their experiences and the present conditions in which they are located (pinar, 2014). as beyer and liston (2001) refer, the vital experience and cultural formation of individuals impinges on how they reconstruct knowledge embodied in the curriculum. nevertheless, not only the biography of individuals has influenced the results of the curriculum. similarly, institutional, political and social contexts affect students' and teachers' experience of it. thus, race, social class, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, cultural identity and other realities intervene in how the curriculum is understood and experienced (beyer and liston, 2001). the foregoing permits a better understanding why the curriculum projects that have been successful in their pilot version get so diverse results in its massive implementation: a curriculum goes through a series of adjustments until it is received by the students. there are majors or programs in which each teacher defines the contents with absolute freedom according to the title of the subject; in these cases, each student runs a unique curriculum according to the teachers and the semester in which he has taken the different courses. the absence of structure in nucleated chairs around a holder who is responsible for the teaching imparted by his team contributes to the curriculum dispersion. but even in curricula designed to be dictated in a certain way, what happens in the classes can be variable depending on how each teacher has built his academic career, the relationship with knowledge, family history, identity generational, and a set of additional processes. in this regard, remedi (cited by furlán, 2014b, p.37) refers that: furlán & rios. theorizing the curriculum 15 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the attitude of reflection allows us to think that this set of practices existing in the institution that are articulated in an unequal way and in combined processes of the curricular order, the stories of the subjects, daily tasks, etc., enable its analysis as unstable places of identification that open an approach from the institutional on different texts, trying to find in its cross-linking the place of the institutional in its intertextuality. remedi (cited by furlán, 2014b) offers specific clarifications around the curriculum. it delimits clear warnings regarding the mistaken pretension to expect homogeneous results to teachers with an extensive and deep diversity of experiences. hence, the relationship between the curriculum planned, based on teacher profiles far from reality, and the lived curriculum, built from the historical practice (furlán, 2014a) of those responsible for implementing curricular changes, has such contrasting results. around this process, remedi states the following: this new perspective led us to develop, forcefully, the concept of curriculum as a set of practices and to think about it at different moments: a first moment was related to the way in which the curriculum was explicit in the institution, that is, how a curriculum is being formalized in specific programs, etc. a second moment observed how the teachers received the curriculum, if they did it as a general plan, knowing the fundamentals and intentionalities, or the form of reception passed only through the program of matter (...). a third moment consisted of seeing how the teachers reflect on the curriculum, that is, how most academic life of teachers leads them to interpret the curriculum in a different way, and decode it according to experience and academic history (...) and lastly, to see how all that presents, becomes visible in practice under the conditions in which institutions work. according to the type of classroom, the type of students, the type of situations that the institution has, the resume is formed again. (quoted by furlán, 2014, p.39) at the same time, remedi (cited by furlán, 2014) has mentioned that the diversity of elements that influence the implementation of the curriculum also offers a precise recommendation to articulate the curriculum and the curriculum vividly. it is a question of reinforcing the necessary participation of teachers in curricular change processes, in order to grant them the academic and intellectual freedom to intervene in the design of their courses, to define the means they use for teaching and evaluating students' work (pinar, 2014). this freedom does not refer to the simple curriculum flexibility contemplated within the enterprise model; it also refers a teacher who can adapt the curriculum as long as he did not distance himself from the pre-established goals. the academic and intellectual freedom in which the teacher must be immersed within the curricular change processes is the one that allows subjects to realize that education can speak to them and that also allows them to speak (pinar, 2014). that is the sense that is expected to have the intervention of teachers around the curriculum. a historical practice that congruently gives continuity to what has been planned. in short, a curriculum assumed as its own, as teachers, together with students, consciously share "the educational project that contacts them, and regulates their activity" ( furlán, 2014, p.19). conclusions furlán & rios. theorizing the curriculum 16 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci there is no reason to refuse to get involved in the designing tasks because it will always be preferable to be in the hands of critical people than in the order promoted by neoliberal cultures, especially if there are academic groups that can transmit another worldview and give them a place to counter-hegemonic cultures. as stated by alicia de alba (2014), it is necessary to establish a set of theoretical postulates that frame and open clues to the work and struggle of pedagogues involved in these winding ways. in this regard, pinar states that: the theoretical field sector [of the curriculum] aspires to establish itself not because of the everyday pressure of the classroom but of the worlds that do not exist in schools today, in marginal ideas to the maximization of profits, and in the imaginative experience that it is not exclusively instrumental nor calculative. (pinar, 2014, p.108) as a result of curricular changes processes guided by mercantilist thinking, it is necessary to theorize the curriculum in order to delimit the underlying plots to educational proposals that place innovation as a standard. this reflection must offer the opportunity to reconstruct knowledge and experiences beyond what is provided by the neoliberal rationality that extends producing subjectivities regulated by the principle of competition; individuals to whom education, following the model of the company, must equip the required competencies to succeed in the social scenarios that the new capitalism traces. of course: no institution, which must show proof of its acts to the society that has created it and which sustains it materially and culturally, can immerse itself in a sort of entropic process without being condemned to its own destruction. (furlán, 2014, p. 18) however, as a complex conversation, the curriculum gives the possibility of deciding what to remember from the past, what to believe about the present and what to expect and fear of the future (pinar, 2014). in this way, it opens the possibility of meeting different realities at the same time which based on imaginative experience, creates others. these are precisely the possibilities that should be allowed and defended within the curriculum. therefore, within the framework of curriculum theory, remedi's position (quoted in furlán, 2014b) marks an intervention path for institutions that want to venture into complex design processes and, above all, partial modifications or totals, that is, to implement a curriculum. in neoliberal times, in which people’s subjectivity is very excited and flattened by the demand for continuous competition, what else can be offered better than an attentive and committed listening to the public education that it contains while researching? the first thing to consider is containment, an attentive listening, plus a dialoguing attitude of pedagogues interested in the curriculum can ensure that a meaningful dialogue takes place, or at least open its doors. notes 1 furlán@unam.mx 2 ripju_cnsl@hotmail.com mailto:furlán@unam.mx mailto:ripju_cnsl@hotmail.com furlán & rios. theorizing the curriculum 17 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 3 in making a historical tour of the curricular field development in the united states, pinar (2014) reports that the obscure association between curriculum and instruction was formally inaugurated with the founding in 1938 of the first department of curriculum and instruction at teachers college, columbia university. this linking would eventually strengthen from the work of tyler, particularly with his book basic principles of curriculum and instruction, which helped shaping the approach that "teachers are responsible for students' learning, a goal that is assessed through standardized exams" (pinar, 2014, p.140). however, pinar (2014) points out that such a legacy should not be exclusively attributed to the founders of the curriculum, since the proposals of the latter were influenced by pragmatists such as william james, who had a deep faith in instrumentalism and referred to the practical value of experience. 4 within everyday language teaching and learning are situated as inseparable processes that make up the same phenomenon (salit, 2016). by assuming erroneously that learning requires the prior manifestation of teaching; it gives rise to the assumption of a cause-effect relationship between both events (salit, 2016, p.1). however, as salit (2016) states: there may be teaching and no learning; even the learner-student can appropriate partial or different aspects of what was taught. that is, there is no causal relationship between teaching and learning that determines that the former necessarily leads to the latter. the representation of a supposed causality between teaching and learning often impregnates assignments of meaning in everyday life and tends to think of these two processes as if they were inseparable phases of a single phenomenon. the confusion referred to above results in the widespread denomination of teaching-learning, an approach extended even within the own theorization that scholars, researchers and other specialists carry out around education. the term teaching-learning synthesizes the idea that: the student depends on the teacher to learn, and; the teacher is responsible for his student’s learning (pinar, 2014). references beyer, l. e. & liston, d. p. (2001). el currículo en conflicto. perspectivas sociales, propuestas educativas y reforma escolar progresista. madrid: akal. croso, c. (2017). la lucha por los sentidos del derecho a la educación. más allá de los falsos consensos. el país. retrieved from https://elpais.com/elpais/2017/08/29/contrapuntos/1504017730_002317.html on august 29th. de alba, a. (2014). curriculum, crítica, conflicto e imaginación. in monique landesmann (coord.), el curriculum en la globalización. a tres décadas de el curriculum pensado y el curriculum vivido (pp. 135-167). distrito federal: universidad nacional autónoma de méxico, facultad de estudios superiores iztacala. dubet, f. (2006). la escuela de las oportunidades ¿qué es una escuela justa? barcelona: gedisa. dubet, f. (2011). repensar la justicia social. contra el mito de la igualdad de oportunidades. buenos aires: siglo xxi. furlán, a. (2014a). el curriculum pensado y el curriculum vivido. in monique landesmann (coord.), el curriculum en la globalización. a tres décadas de el curriculum pensado y el curriculum vivido (pp. 15-21). distrito federal: universidad nacional autónoma de méxico, facultad de estudios superiores iztacala. furlán, a. (2014b). circunstancias actuales de los estudios curriculares en méxico. en monique landesmann (coord.), el curriculum en la globalización. a tres décadas de el curriculum pensado y el curriculum vivido (pp. 23-64). distrito federal: universidad nacional autónoma de méxico, facultad de estudios superiores iztacala. goldman, s. r. & pellegrino, j. w. (2017). investigaciones sobre el aprendizaje y la enseñanza. implicaciones para el currículo, la enseñanza y la evaluación. reformas y políticas educativas, (2), 27-49. gvirtz, s. & palamidessi, m. (2011). el abc de la tarea docente: curriculum y enseñanza. buenos aíres: aique. laval, c. & dardot, p. (2013). la nueva razón del mundo. ensayo sobre la sociedad neoliberal. barcelona: gedisa. pinar, w. f. (2014). la teoría del curriculum. madrid: españa. https://elpais.com/elpais/2017/08/29/contrapuntos/1504017730_002317.html furlán & rios. theorizing the curriculum 18 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci salit, c. (2016). enseñanza y aprendizaje. in salmerón castro, a. m.; trujillo reyes, b.; rodríguez ousset, a. & de la torre gamboa, m. diccionario iberoamericano de filosofía de la educación. ciudad de méxico: fondo de cultura económica, facultad de filosofía y letras, universidad nacional autónoma de méxico. sargent, t. c. (2017). implementación de la reforma del nuevo currículo y la transformación de las creencias, prácticas y estructuras educativas en la provincia de gansu. reformas y políticas educativas, (2), 51-77. tedesco, j. c. (1995). el nuevo pacto educativo. educación, competitividad y ciudadanía en la sociedad moderna. madrid: anaya. tedesco, j. c. (2012). educación y justicia social en américa latina. buenos aires: fondo de cultura económica, universidad nacional de san martín. terigi, f. (2016). curriculum. in salmerón castro, a. m.; trujillo reyes, b.; rodríguez ousset, a. & de la torre gamboa, m., diccionario iberoamericano de filosofía de la educación. ciudad de méxico: fondo de cultura económica, facultad de filosofía y letras, universidad nacional autónoma de méxico. submitted: november, 20th, 2017 approved: december, 9th, 2017 o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: tahirsylaj, armend (2018). curriculum reform as a political statement in developing contexts: a discursive and non-affirmative approach, transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> curriculum reform as a political statement in developing contexts: a discursive and nonaffirmative approach armend tahirsylaj1 linnaeus university, växjö, sweden introduction powerful international organizations such as the organization for economic cooperation and development (oecd), the united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization (unesco), the world bank, and the european commission (ec) have contributed to a shift in the global educational policy arena from content-based to competency-, standards-, or skills-based curriculum/education approaches. the target of these reforms of past 20 years has been to address the issues of curriculum overload and tailoring curriculum towards specific student ‘key competencies’ or learning outcomes so that the shift happens from an input-based education (content) to output-based results (learning outcomes). these approaches are considered as “[…] pathway to employability and prosperity” (ec, 2016, p. 2), or such that will produce needed learning outcomes among students who will be able to address major global challenges such as climate change and sustainable development (oecd, 2018). this article aims to show the complexity of developing ‘learning competencies’ as one of the often-cited 21st century skill or competency. the analysis is conducted within national education system of kosovo, and within grades 6 and 10 mathematics teacher education and curriculum specifically. to do so, the article adopts from discursive institutionalism (schmidt, 2008) and bildungcentered non-affirmative theory of education (uljens & ylimaki, 2017) to theoretically frame the analysis and discussion. first, some kosovo contextual information on recent policy flows and curriculum reforms is provided. transnational policy flows in kosovo education since the end of kosovo war in 1999, kosovo has initiated two cycles of curriculum reform. the first was dubbed the new kosovo curriculum framework of 2001, and the second the curriculum framework for pre-university education in the republic of kosovo of 2011 (also revised in 2016). the international donor organizations such as unesco, united nations children’s fund (unicef), the european union, and the work bank, in collaboration and consultation with local education officials and experts contributed both in development of both core documents, as well as in the follow-up implementation of them. while the focus of this article on the second cycle of curriculum reform initiated in 2011, it is worth noting that the new kosovo curriculum framework (department of education and science [des], 2001) was the first effort to reform the ‘outdated’ curricula from the past, most often dated to 1970s and 1980s as kosovo was completely isolated from international curriculum developments due to serbia’s occupation of kosovo during 1990s. the 2001 framework aimed to shift the focus from teacher-centeredness to more learner-centered constructivist approaches to teaching and learning, however the core curriculum still remained content-focused with learning objectives defined per topic within individual subjects and no efforts were made to generate either general or specific standards or competencies (des, 2001; tahirsylaj & wahlström, under review). unicef with expertise from unesco’s geneva-based international bureau of education https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index tahirsylaj. curriculum reform as a political statement in developing contexts 39 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index (ibe) led the efforts of the ministry of education, science, and technology (mest) to write and finalize the document. after the evaluation of this first wave of curriculum reform in kosovo, the london institute of education (2005) assessed that, ‘‘the curriculum framework for the national curriculum produced by mest with the support of unicef and the technical expertise of unesco/institute of education is an excellent, modern, high quality document and an excellent model for education in kosovo’’ (p. 3). regardless, in 2009, the mest, again with support from unicef and technical expertise of unesco and the world bank, initiated the next round of curriculum reform that resulted with the new document adopted in 2011. the 2011 document was labelled the curriculum framework for pre-university education in the republic of kosovo, which was also revised in 2016 as a result of lessons learnt through piloting of the new curriculum in a select number of schools across the country. by this time, kosovo had declared its independence in 2008 and had its ministry of education in place and had control over decision-making in all key domains of the government, including economy, energy, and education. the 2011 framework departed from the previously content-based curricula and subject-based curriculum and fully embraced a competency-based approach to curriculum-making taking into consideration the 2006 european commission reference framework recommendations on the eight key competences, including 1) communication in the mother tongue; 2) communication in foreign languages; 3) mathematical competence and basic competences in science and technology; 4) digital competence; 5) learning to learn; 6) social and civic competences; 7) sense of initiative and entrepreneurship; and 8) cultural awareness and expression (ojeu, 2006, p. 13). ec has recently updated the reference framework, slightly revising the labelling of the competences, and keeping the same number of them, including 1) literacy competence; 2) multilingual competence; 3) mathematical competence and competence in science, technology and engineering; 4) digital competence; 5) personal, social and learning to learn competence; 6) citizenship competence; 7) entrepreneurship competence; and 8) cultural awareness and expression competence. (ojeu, 2018, pp. 7-8). ec uses ‘competence/competences’ in its documents when referring to educational key competences proposed to its member states, while oecd and unesco use ‘competency/competencies’ in its curriculum and educational consultative and technical work. varied and somewhat similar definitions for ‘competences’ or ‘competencies’ are found across ec, oecd, and unesco documents. ec defines key competences […] as a combination of knowledge, skills and attitudes, where: a. knowledge is composed of the facts and figures, concepts, ideas and theories which are already established and support the understanding of a certain area or subject; b. skills are defined as the ability and capacity to carry out processes and use the existing knowledge to achieve results; c. attitudes describe the disposition and mind-sets to act or react to ideas, persons or situations (ojeu, 2018, p. 7). oecd, on the other hand, uses labelling ‘transformative competencies’ to refer to competencies, and notes that “the concept of competency implies more than just the acquisition of knowledge and skills; it involves the mobilization of knowledge, skills, attitudes and values to meet complex demands” (oecd, 2018, p. 5). this conceptualization is in line with the overall approach promoted by the oecd to make education revolve around student agency. further, oecd lists three categories as relevant to ‘transformative competencies’, namely, creating new value, reconciling tensions and dilemmas, and taking responsibility, which in turn, require student agency, amongst else, to come about in students’ lived experiences. lastly, in unesco’s technical work, “‘competency’ can be defined as the capability to duly apply acquired knowledge, skills and attitudes built upon appropriate, underpinned values of the society in the real situation” (opertti, kang & magni, 2018, p. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index tahirsylaj. curriculum reform as a political statement in developing contexts 40 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index 12). recently, unesco uses designation ‘key competencies’ to refer to competencies needed to achieve sustainable development goal 4 on quality education, emphasizing that competencies are “[…] cognitive, affective, volitional and motivational elements; hence they are an interplay of knowledge, capacities and skills, motives and affective dispositions” (unesco, 2017, p. 10). overall, ‘competence’ or ‘competency’ contains a set of knowledge, skills, and attitudes within the context of basic education provision. in kosovo, after some adaptations of the 2006 ec key competences, six key competencies – the plural term ‘competencies’ here matching unesco’s designation as per unesco ibe’s consultants involvement were introduced into the 2011 curriculum framework, including 1) communication and expression competencies; 2) thinking competencies; 3) learning competencies; 4) life, work and environment-related competencies; 5) personal competencies; and 6) civic competencies (mest, 2011). since this article focuses on kosovo, in the following sections ‘competency/competencies’ is used. six key competencies in the 2011 framework were linked to producing effective communicators, creative thinkers, successful learners, productive contributors, healthy individuals, and responsible citizens respectively. this approach of linking key competencies to specific learner capacities matched with and borrowed from scottish curriculum for excellence (scottish executive, 2004). the 2011 framework defined that “competencies involve an integrated and coherent system of knowledge, skills and attitudes that are applicable and transferable. they enable students to cope with the challenges of the digital age and with the knowledge-based labour market in an interdependent world” (mest, 2011, p. 16). further, it was noted that the key competencies envisaged in the kosovo curriculum framework (kcf) derived from the general aims of pre-university education in kosovo and defined the main learning outcomes that learners need to achieve in a progressive and consistent way throughout the pre-university educational system, despite the fact that the key competencies were primarily adapted from the ec documents, and as shown above, the definition of competencies is closely aligned to ec, oecd, and unesco definitions. the 2016 revision of the framework only incorporated some slight modifications based on the piloting of curriculum in a limited number of schools and still fully maintained the focus of the curriculum on key competencies. in addition to curriculum reform, other aspects of kosovo education have also been influenced by and shaped through transnational education policy flows and intensive and consistent involvement of donor community in kosovo. as an example, kosovo introduced external standardized testing at the end of grades 5, 9 and 12 during 2000s with technical and financial support from the world bank as an initiative to increase school accountability and regularly monitor student performance. the world bank also assisted in decentralization process of kosovo education with delegation of decisionmaking from central government to municipalities. more recently, kosovo participated in the programme for international student assessment (pisa) for the first time in 2015 and performed poorly being the third from the bottom in the ranking – however, kosovo’s participation in pisa was financially and technically supported by the world bank and german international development cooperation (giz). other donor organizations have also contributed into other educational subsystems – the united states agency for international development (usaid) has been involved in reforming school-based assessment by focusing on assessment for learning instead of assessment of learning approaches, and the european commission through its european agency for reconstruction in kosovo has assisted in curriculum implementation and teacher professional development (tahirsylaj & wahlström, under review). after piloting in select schools, full implementation of 2011 competency-based curriculum started in grades 1, 6 and 10 across all schools in kosovo in 2017-2018 school-year. literature review and theoretical framing prior studies focusing on educational and curriculum policy changes within and across developing contexts have applied a multitude of theoretical and methodological lenses, including, but not limited to, those falling in the domains of sociology, political economy, policy, comparative education, culture, and anthropology. of particular interest in this area has been the influence and interrelation between local and global policy actors, where local actors primarily include national policy makers in charge of education sectors, while global actors most often including powerful https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index tahirsylaj. curriculum reform as a political statement in developing contexts 41 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index international, or supranational, organizations such as the world bank, the oecd, unesco, and so forth. irrespective of the global players involved, the educational policy solutions offered or transferred to developing countries and contexts have almost always had a western source, and primarily anglo-saxon (verger, novelli, & altinyelken, 2012). overall, two dominant research paradigms have been at the core of global education policy transfer, one developed around world society theorists who argue that a single global model of schooling has taken shape worldwide as a result of the spread of culturally-embedded model of the modern nation-state (anderson-levitt, 2003). this group of theorists has offered in-depth arguments for curriculum convergence and isomorphism of educational policies. on the other end of the spectrum stands the second approach of culturecentered theorists who argue that educational policy borrowing and travelling does not follow a linear path, instead the context in which those policies are implemented shapes what policies and to what extent they are implemented (steiner-khamsi, 2004). while the first group highlights convergence of education policies, the second highlights divergence. the backbone of intensification of diffusion of global education polices, as verger et al. (2012) argue, has been globalization. they further convincingly note that developing countries are most affected by global education policy precisely due to increased external presence of international organizations and donor agencies. this certainly was the case in kosovo as a developing country, as shown in the brief description of policy flows above, where all major international organizations and donor agencies were involved in both first (2001) and second (2011) curriculum reforms. additionally, as it will be argued later, the political landscape and climate in kosovo, in particular that associated with 2011 reform, prompted the push for competency-based curriculum as a substantial departure from previous content-based curricula. as to why certain educational policies are adopted in developing countries, in many of them aid conditionality provides for external imposition, binding international agreements set forth a reform agenda, or they are adopted voluntarily (verger, 2014). in kosovo, as it will be shown later, competency-based curriculum reform was adopted as a result of convergence of local political readiness to initiate new reforms and availability of international technical expertise through aid agencies. the present article frames the discussion on latest 2011 competency-based curriculum reform and potential of kosovo education system to develop learning competencies of students specifically relying on two theoretical underpinnings that are gaining attention in the field of curriculum change. the first is discursive institutionalism (schmidt, 2008), an import from political sciences, and the second, bildung-centered non-affirmative education theory (uljens & ylimaki, 2017), which as name suggests is homegrown within education. these two frameworks offer new and useful perspectives on better understanding educational policy-making as a battleground among various institutional policy actors, and bildung-centered non-affirmative education theory complements it with education-based discourse. discursive institutionalism concerns substantive content of ideas and interactive processes of discourse in institutional context (schmidt, 2015). schmidt differentiates among three levels of ideas, in terms of policies, programmes, and philosophies, and between cognitive and normative idea types, where “cognitive ideas elucidate “what is and what to do,” whereas normative ideas indicate “what is good or bad about what is” in light of “what one ought to do.”” (schmidt, 2008, p. 306). in turn, discourse has two forms: coordinative and communicative. as schmidt notes, in the policy sphere “[…] the coordinative discourse consists of the individuals and groups at the center of policy construction who are involved in the creation, elaboration, and justification of policy and programmatic ideas.” (p. 310), while “the communicative discourse occurs in the political sphere. it consists of the individuals and groups involved in the presentation, deliberation, and legitimation of political ideas to the general public” (schmidt, 2008, p. 310). a number of curriculum scholars have turned to discursive institutionalism recently to further build on it for developing a more precise language in describing policy change between and across institutional levels and policy actors (nordin & sundberg, 2018; wahlström & sundberg, 2018; uljens & ylimaki, 2017; uljens & rajakaltio, 2017; uljens & ylimaki, 2015). for example, wahlström and sundberg (2018) have put forth a conceptual framework integrating discursive institutionalism and curriculum theory with the aim to better understand education policy borrowing and lending transnationally, as well as nationally and https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index tahirsylaj. curriculum reform as a political statement in developing contexts 42 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index locally; nordin and sundberg (2018) turned to discursive institutionalism to build a conceptual framework to better understand curriculum change in the globalized world; while uljens and ylimaki (2017) incorporate discursive institutionalism to gain a better understanding of educational leadership, school development, and teaching through a multi-level approach. in the case of latest kosovo curriculum reform, discursive institutionalism will be primarily useful to discuss the curriculum policy from coordinative and communicative discourses perspectives. bildung-centered non-affirmative education theory, as the name suggests, is an extension of bildung tradition, first developed by dietrich benner in germany, and recently brought to the front by michael uljens and rose ylimaki (cf. uljens & ylimaki, 2017; uljens & ylimaki, 2015; uljens, 2015). uljens (2015) defines the non-affirmative position by contrasting it to the affirmative approaches to education, where “affirmative approaches typically intend to transform given values, while a non-affirmative approach allows for critical discussion on also the values lying at the foundation of democratic education” (uljens, 2015, p. 25). building on prior work of german theorists (fichte, hegel and honneth), uljens highlights three core concepts on which non-affirmative theory rests on, namely recognition, summoning to self-activity, and bildsamkeit. uljens notes that recognition […] refers to how the self is aware of the other as being indetermined or free (ontological assumption), not only as an awareness of the other’s situation or reality (epistemological relation) but also to a moral relation in terms of the self’s responsibility for the other’s worth, dignity and inviolability as person and individual (ethical relation) (uljens, 2015, p. 28). further, as uljens explains, bildsamkeit and summoning to self-activity are necessary in the process of being and becoming in the modern world, where “bildsamkeit refers to the individual’s own conscious efforts aimed at making sense of the world and his/her experiences while ‘summoning’ may be seen as the leader’s or the teacher’s invitation of the other to become engaged in a selftranscending process” (uljens, 2015, p. 28). for the kosovo curriculum reform case presented here then, it is useful to consider the non-affirmative position, as well as concepts of recognition, summoning to self-activity and bildsamkeit when discussing the competency-based curriculum approach in general and learning competencies in particular. methodological approach the article employs document discourse analysis to address three research questions: first, to what extent does 2011 curriculum framework in kosovo offer opportunities to students to develop learning competencies?; second, how do kosovo teacher education programmes preparing mathematics teachers cover learning competencies?; and third, what are opportunities for kosovo students to master learning competencies in grades 6 and 10 kosovo mathematics school curriculum? the context of the study is kosovo, a young and developing state in the balkans region that declared independence from serbia in 2008. the article primarily focuses on dissecting policies and documents related to national curriculum, teacher education, and school curriculum in the developing and evolving kosovo context. the designation of kosovo as a developing context takes into consideration its political transition from occupation to freedom at the beginning of 2000s, and from emergency development to long-term sustainable development since 2008. in addition, the world bank lists kosovo as a lower-middle income country making it a candidate among developing countries, aspiring to join the european union (the world bank, n.d.). findings as it has already been argued elsewhere, the emphasis of the ec/eu on key competencies, learning outcomes and skills-based education has influenced education policies across eu member states (pepper, 2011; gordon et al., 2009). if the first round of ec key competencies of 2006 were influential, it can be expected that the ec’s latest revision of key competences will aim at affecting national education policies further within the european context and beyond. as a result, it might be expected that next round of curriculum revision in kosovo will take into consideration the latest list of https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index tahirsylaj. curriculum reform as a political statement in developing contexts 43 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index key competences proposed by ec in 2018. next, findings from analyses of coverage of learning competencies in curriculum documents, mathematics teacher education programmes, and mathematics syllabi in kosovo are presented. learning competencies in latest kosovo national curriculum framework and educational policies the kosovo curriculum framework (kcf) for pre-university education in the republic of kosovo (mest, 2011) is an umbrella document that stipulates first, the overall role, function, and structure of the curriculum, and second, the implementation of the reforms contained therein. upfront, the kcf declares knowledge society both as an aspiration and as a challenge for kosovo, however, it is noted that schools contribute to building the knowledge society through students’ mastery of competencies. therefore, the term ‘competencies’ is central in kcf, and knowledge is understood only as a sub-component of the competencies. the emphasis on competencies and accompanying knowledge, skills and attitudes focusing on application and transferability mark the transition of kosovo curriculum approach from a content-based to competency-based curriculum. learning competencies, as noted above, is the third out of the six key competencies listed in the kcf, and it is focused on developing students’ lifelong learning skills with the final outcome of producing successful learners. kcf defines learning competencies to include the following sub-set of competencies learning to learn; knowing, selecting and making use of learning instruments and methods; mastering reading, writing, mathematics, science, and information and communication technology; identifying and processing information in an independent, effective and responsible way; learning in teams and exchanging positive experiences. (mest, 2011, p. 17). the definition clarifies that learning competencies are not only meant as generic or transversal skills associated with lifelong learning or learning to learn, but in addition, it points to mastery of content areas such as reading, mathematics, and science, as a prerequisite to identify and process information independently, effectively, and responsible. comparing the conceptualization of learning competencies with the eight key competencies as defined by ec in 2006, similarities are identified with the fifth ec key competence learning to learn, defined as follows ‘learning to learn’ is the ability to pursue and persist in learning, to organise one's own learning, including through effective management of time and information, both individually and in groups. this competence includes awareness of one's learning process and needs, identifying available opportunities, and the ability to overcome obstacles in order to learn successfully. this competence means gaining, processing and assimilating new knowledge and skills as well as seeking and making use of guidance. learning to learn engages learners to build on prior learning and life experiences in order to use and apply knowledge and skills in a variety of contexts: at home, at work, in education and training. motivation and confidence are crucial to an individual's competence. (ojeu, 2006, p. 16) comparing and contrasting the two definitions of kcf and ec above, and recognizing that the ec list of competencies was the inspiration for kcf competencies, it is clear that kcf’s definition of learning competencies is a compressed version of ec’s learning to learn competency. still, the kcf does not make any direct reference to the ec key competencies as a point of departure, but the claim is made instead that key competencies in the kcf derive from the aims of schooling for pre-university education in the republic of kosovo. however, relevant ec and oecd documents as well as scottish curriculum for excellence are listed in the bibliography reviewed during 2011 kcf development. the kcf defines six key competencies that cover and permeate entire pre-university schooling experience; the principles for curriculum development; how kcf restructures education levels by introducing key stages as intermediate phases within each primary, lower-secondary, and uppersecondary education levels; curriculum areas and subjects; hierarchy of curriculum documents from kcf to core curriculum per education level to syllabi per subject; and the internal (school-level) and https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index tahirsylaj. curriculum reform as a political statement in developing contexts 44 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index external (country-level) student assessment. the key competencies are the ground on which all learning that takes place in schools has to build on. learning competency, in particular, is promoted as the foundation through which schools will prepare students for lifelong learning, highlighting that schools should adopt a lifelong perspective through which curriculum prepares students to deal with present and future challenges. in the rest of the kcf document, learning competencies are not directly referenced, however ‘learning to learn’ is integrated in each education level as a competency that schools need to focus on progressively as a preparation of students for the next level, for example, when moving from primary to secondary education. kosovo education strategic plan (kesp) 2017-2021 (mest, 2016) is another policy document that affects provision of schooling and curricula in kosovo. it addresses seven main objectives for the education system, including 1) participation and inclusion; 2) education system management; 3) quality assurance; 4) teacher development; 5) teaching and learning; 6) vocational education and training and adult education; and 7) higher education. the document primarily focuses on challenges under each of the seven objectives and activities that could be undertaken to address them, however no reference is made to development of learning competencies specifically. instead, it refers to lifelong learning in two contexts: one as an approach to be incorporated into schooling of students under quality assurance objective, and the other, as a measure for inclusion of adults in learning opportunities. still, kesp recognizes that the shift of curriculum from content-based to competencybased approach is a major challenge for kosovo education system. next, coverage of learning competencies in mathematics teacher education is provided. learning competencies in kosovo teacher education programmes preparing mathematics teachers the ministry of education in kosovo has restructured pre-university teacher education programmes in public universities, requiring a bachelor of arts (ba) degree with 180 ects in a content/academic area, and a master of arts (ma) degree at the faculty of education as pedagogical and practice teacher training (faculty of education, 2017). as a result, those interested to become mathematics teachers first have to complete a ba programme at the department of mathematics within the faculty of mathematics-natural sciences, and an ma programme with specialization in mathematics at the faculty of education, both within university of prishtina. a review of these two programmes is provided next. unfortunately, the study plan for the ba degree in mathematics language only contains information about the titles of the specific courses, but lack any elaboration on the goals and objectives of the individual courses or programme as a whole. the brief information available indicates that almost all of the courses in offering focus on mathematics content and disciplinary knowledge, such as algebra, geometry, and functions (department of mathematics, n.d.). subsequently, no claim can be made whether learning competencies are specifically addressed and taught to mathematics student teachers in ba programmes. the catalogue of programmes of the faculty of education provides more detailed information about the contents of specific programmes offered at the faculty, including a two-year professional ma programme in teaching mathematics (faculty of education 2017). the overall goal of the ma programme is to advance modern teaching and pedagogical practice competencies in addition to academic competencies obtained in previous ba programmes. since students’ prior focus was on academic development, the professional ma in mathematics teaching is more narrowly focused on courses such as mathematics teaching and learning, curriculum and learning theory, and student assessment. learning competencies are not explicitly mentioned or addressed in the goals and expected outcomes for students who will complete the ma mathematics programme, however implicitly the key competencies set out in kcf seem to be embedded within the ma programme overall, and specific references are made to new kosovo core curriculum in a course titled mathematics teaching and learning. therefore, it may be assumed with some certainty that since the ma programme is in line with the latest kcf requirements, students in the mathematics ma programme will be exposed to learning competencies. for example, one of the outcomes for students is for them to be able to consider relationships between applicable educational policies and legislation and their teaching practice, and another highlights setting up conducive learning environments for all students based on the understanding of relationships between pedagogical theories and teaching https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index tahirsylaj. curriculum reform as a political statement in developing contexts 45 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index practice (faculty of education, 2017). overall, only in few cases references are made in course descriptions to key competencies in general and learning competencies in particular, but the underlying principles of kcf seem to have been embedded into the programme for preparing mathematics teachers who will be able to teach the new competency-based curriculum in their potential future teaching career. learning competencies in the syllabi of mathematics in grades 6 and 10 in kosovo as per the guide for new curriculum implementation 2016-2021 (mest, n.d.), the new competency-based curricula started to be implemented nation-wide from 2017 only in grades 0, 1, 6, and 10 – corresponding to the first grades for primary (0, 1), lower-secondary (6), and upper secondary (10) education respectively. also, the guide stipulates that subject syllabi was and will be developed progressively starting with grades 0, 1, 6 and 10 first in 2016, grades 2, 7, and 11 in 2017 and so on until the subject syllabi are completed for all grades in 2019 for grades 4, 5, and 9. this means that the grade 6 and grade 10 syllabi of mathematics are already developed and available for review here. grade 6 syllabus is the same across all schools, while grade 10 syllabus reviewed here is from general gymnasium tracks not vocational tracks. the new grade 6 mathematics syllabus covers the purpose, topics and learning outcomes, methodological guidelines, guidelines for implementation of cross-curricular issues, guidelines for student assessment, and guidelines for teaching and learning resources (mest, 2018a). the syllabus defines the aim of mathematics for grade six to enable students to acquire necessary knowledge and to understand quantitative and spatial relationships in the nature, society and everyday life and for them to develop logical, critical, and abstract thinking. while the syllabus does not specifically mention the learning competencies, it makes reference to lifelong learning competency, as follows “the goals of mathematics for grade six serve students in developing key competencies for lifelong learning as well as competencies associated with the mathematics curriculum area in order that students are successful citizens in the future [note: author’s translation]” (mest, 2018a, p. 80). as such, mathematics for grade six is fully in line with the new competency-based approach promoted in 2011 kcf in kosovo. however, the syllabus follows an affirmative approach in the sense that it defines specific learning outcomes associated with each of the topic area to be covered over grade 6. grade 10 mathematics syllabus follows the same structure as the one of grade 6, meaning it defines topics, and learning outcomes, as well as methodological and assessment guidelines to be followed by teachers (mest, 2018b). also, similarly to grade 6 syllabus, in grade 10 mathematics syllabus, learning competencies are not specifically addressed, however references are made to lifelong learning as a crucial competency for being successful in the future. discussion and conclusions the description and analyses of the recent national education curriculum context in kosovo show that curriculum policy has been heavily influenced by international trends, primarily through 2006 european commission reference framework, as well as through international technical expertise involved in the curriculum reform in kosovo. in this regard, and prior to addressing the three specific research questions of the article, it is worth discussing first how did the transnational policy flow occur in the kosovo context with regard to 2011 kcf development. first, the political situation was ripe for a new curriculum reform – kosovo had declared independence in 2008, and a new minister of education was in charge – hence the new 2011 kcf is primarily a political statement, signalling to international community supervising kosovo’s independence as well as to the local public that the party in charge is determined to bring kosovo education closer to western europe standards while at the same time aiming to show that the party is pro-reform and pro-european. from the global education policy perspective, the analysis of curriculum policy in kosovo shows that convergence is at play since the new competency-based curriculum approach is fully in line with the key competencies promoted in the ec reference framework of 2006. in turn, from the discursive institutionalism perspective, strong coordinative and communicative discourses have been operational. in the latest curriculum reform, same policy actors have been involved in both coordinative and communicative discourses, which included international policy actors present in kosovo education https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index tahirsylaj. curriculum reform as a political statement in developing contexts 46 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index system in form of development or aid agencies, such as unicef, unesco, ec and the world bank, as well as local policy actors, primarily political leaders within the ministry of education, and local policy-makers and technical expertise. to validate this, for example, the minister of education wrote remarks that were put upfront in the kcf document, and addressed to students, teachers, representatives of the educational community, parents and citizens of the republic of kosovo (mest, 2011). in his remarks, the minister of education in charge, amongst else, wrote “the kosovo curriculum framework reflects issues and concerns raised during public discussions organized with you: students, teachers, school directors, representatives of municipal authorities, local and international experts in education, as well as representatives of civil society” (mest, 2011, p. 5). the quote reiterates the coordinative and communicative discourses that the ministry of education has primarily been involved in parallel during the kcf development process, coordinating the process on one hand with local and international policy actors, and communicating the new reform to the general public to gain legitimation and diffuse resistance that might come up, primarily among teachers, for the radical shift from the traditional content-based curriculum to the competency-based approach. the shift in itself shows an interesting interaction between national and supra-national policy flow, where kosovo – a non-eu state – is much more in line with the eu and ec curriculum guidelines than many eu countries (tahirsylaj & wahlström, under review). still, the alignment of kosovo curriculum with the ec key competencies is somewhat externally influenced as competency-based curriculum framework of 2011 was supported with technical expertise of international donors and actors such as unicef, unesco ibe, and eu, which in addition, reflects an early-stage and emerging curriculum development expertise and tradition within kosovo context. next, turning to the findings in relation to the three specific questions raised in the article, including first, to what extent does 2011 curriculum framework in kosovo offer opportunities to students to develop learning competencies?; second, how do kosovo teacher education programmes preparing mathematics teachers cover learning competencies?; and third, what are opportunities for kosovo students to master learning competencies in grades 6 and 10 kosovo mathematics school curriculum? a nuanced story reveals itself. regarding the first question, learning competencies take centre stage as it is one of the six key competencies that serve as a foundation for curriculum development for entire pre-university education (grades 1 to 12) in kosovo. the analysis also showed that definition of the learning competencies in kosovo borrowed from and closely followed the definition of learning to learn competency as defined in the 2006 ec reference framework. there was less information and evidence that learning competencies are sufficiently or properly addressed and incorporated in the mathematics teachers education programmes within the public university of prishtina, where the bachelor programme was primarily contentand disciplinary knowledge-based, while the masters’ programme also lacked specific references to learning outcomes, but still implicitly recognizing that student teachers in the ma programme need to be trained to teach the new competency-based curricula. lastly, grade 6 and grade 10 mathematics syllabus have been developed by mest and therefore strictly follow the kcf curriculum development guidelines, however specific references are only made to lifelong learning as a sub-component of learning competency as defined in 2011 kcf. this situation poses an interesting scenario, where students taking grade 6 and grade 10 mathematics, and by extension all students taking any of the new competency-based curricula in all curriculum areas, are expected and scheduled to have opportunities to master learning competencies, however student teachers in training to become future mathematics teachers have less opportunities to do so. this raises another question about the readiness and competence of teachers already in schools to teach the new curriculum; teachers who have not had any teacher education course on competencybased approach and potentially minimal professional development training in the field. this question could be explored in a future study that might be focused on challenges in implementing competencybased curricula in kosovo schools. considering the new competency-based curriculum reform in kosovo in general, and learning competencies in particular, from the non-affirmative education theory also poses a complex scenario. on one hand, the clear and specific definition of six key competencies in 2011 kcf confirm an affirmative approach to education, however learning competency in itself is broadly defined and open enough to allow for non-affirmative position. at the end, it will depend on the professional capacities https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index tahirsylaj. curriculum reform as a political statement in developing contexts 47 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index of individual teachers how they work with the new curriculum and how it is unfolded to students exposed to the competency-based curricula. further, considering the concepts of recognition, summoning to self-activity, and bildsamkeit, it is hard to identify how recognition is addressed in kcf if at all, while it can be argued that competency-based approach and key competencies defined in kcf could serve as opportunities for students to experience summoning to self-activity and bildsamkeit, especially within learning competencies context, in the sense that students are invited to consider schooling as an open-ended project where learning has to continue beyond completion of formal education, which at the same time is an invitation to engage in a self-transcending process. critically and paradoxically, kosovo teachers seem to be limited to engage in a similar process, which in turn has the potential to hinder students’ opportunities for developing awareness for recognizing the others as free, and being summoned to self-activity and bildsamkeit. in sum, the kosovo national curriculum makes explicit references to learning competences and the entire new curriculum framework is centred on six key competencies that students need to master as they go through their pre-university education from primary to upper secondary education. with regard to teacher education programmes, the findings from kosovo show that ba degree for mathematics still relies in strong disciplinary knowledge of the academic discipline, while the ma degree has been updated to reflect the latest curriculum reform requirements. grades 6 and grade 10 mathematics syllabi are fully in line with kcf and make direct references to lifelong learning and learning to learn as sub-components of learning competencies. strong coordinative and communicative discourses have been at play to create the conditions for the shift from contentto competency-based curricula, while competency-based approach in itself is both an affirmative process, since curricula and learning outcomes are clearly defined from a top-down approach, and nonaffirmative enough to allow for opportunities for students to obtain an open and critical outlook for themselves and democratic society – now and in the future. notes 1 armend.tahirsylaj@lnu.se references anderson-levitt, k. m. 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(2018). discursive institutionalism: towards a framework for analysing the relation between policy and curriculum. journal of education policy, 33(1), 163-183. submitted: november, 8, 2018 approved: november, 16, 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index to cite this article please include all of the following details: saada, jessica (2019). a place to think. transnational curriculum inquiry 16 (2) p. 4-15 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> a place to think jessica saada1 riverside school board, canada finding truth in autobiographical research i am a teacher. my stories corroborate this. but until recently, i denied it. i am a reader, a writer and a teacher. but until recently, i had not truly listened to my stories, had not reflected on who i am in teaching. i had no place to think. palmer (2007), with his extensive work on spirituality, community, education and self, asks: “who is the self that teaches?” (p.7). for more than a quarter of a century, although i was enthusiastically and passionately involved in teaching, i never crossed paths with any form of this question. who is the self that teaches? had it been raised, i could not have answered it for my self. i was teaching but did not acknowledge that i was a teacher. my parents were both teachers in my early years (my mother retired after 41 years of working in schools). as a result, daily life and family conversations had often revolved around school, classrooms and students. i had bathed in the world of education from my earliest memories onward and i was now spending quality time with students in classrooms. but for me, this teaching i was doing was a full-time, fulfilling, sideline event occurring as i waited for my true vocation to emerge. for almost twenty-five years, with my sights clearly on the students, there was no reason for great introspection into my self as a teacher. today, i am admittedly a teacher, currently cloaked in the position of director of educational services for a school board. once a teacher, always a teacher. i am a longstanding practitioner who, for some years, straddled the world of academia as i pursued graduate studies in the form of a ph.d. i highlight this straddling as it plays a significant role in the story i wish to share, one in which heuristic inquiry, a form of autobiographical research, generously handed me a place to think and brought a necessary truth to my authenticity of being, in teaching and in learning. the disjunction between planned and lived relatively early in my educational career, i had heard of ted aoki, with his ‘curriculum-as-planned’, generated from the outside and filled with “intent and interest” (2004, p. 160), and ‘curriculum-as-lived’, experienced from within, with “face-to-face living” (p. 160). however, the two were brought to me only very briefly and only in their disjuncture. something about the distinction had provoked a tiny and very momentary bubble of self-questioning, to which i had not really paid attention, caught up as i was in the whirlwind of daily urgency that is school life. later, as a language and literacy consultant at my school board, a teacher with new responsibilities, questions began nudging me again, sometimes overtly poking and prodding, but never explicitly connecting to that initial bubble around the disconnect between curriculum-as-planned and curriculum-as-lived. these were still the early years for the quebec education program, sold as the reform. somewhere deep inside, i wondered about my place in this curriculum reform to which i had not contributed but that was directly affecting me. in https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index saada. a place to think 5 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> my milieu, i was expected to carry the torch of the educational revolution, yet no one was asking how i a still personally unavowed teacher now required to support other teachers through the upheaval considered the plans and was experiencing their implementation. no one brought me to contemplate the tension ior we might feel between the imposed theory and the concrete practice in all of its nuances. no one asked me to situate my self in the midst of what was to be done. maxine greene (1978) says of teachers: “if they are personally involved in what can be a most demanding human enterprise, those others – students, or co–investigators – may be caught up much more readily than if the teachers’ sense–making efforts have all taken place in the past” (p. 3). no one prompted me to think along these lines. there was no time, no place to think. who was i, who were we each of us in teaching? aoki (2004) states that “there is forgetfulness that what matters deeply in the situated world of the classroom is how the teachers’ “doings” flow from who they are, their beings. that is, there is a forgetfulness that teaching is fundamentally a mode of being” (pp. 159-160). i was subject to that forgetfulness, and involved in perpetuating it. were teachers and students faceless generics interacting over competency development and program expectations? in the dizzying speeds of the educational autobahn, there was no place to remember, no place to think. a critical episode with no time to think in the foreword of provoking curriculum encounters across educational experience (2020), madeleine grumet writes, “if our rhetoric in toward a poor curriculum became a bit rhapsodic in our celebration of individuality, we were desperate to make a place for persons, real students, and teachers, in the deserts of educational bureaucracy” (p. x). making a place for real others requires having a place, in space and time, for ourselves. palmer (2007) calls for the same when he defines educating as “to guide students on an inner journey towards more truthful ways of seeing and being in the world” (p. 6), and he asks “how can schools perform their mission without encouraging the guides to scout out that inner terrain?” this brings to mind a critical episode from my years as a consultant, one that significantly impacted my professional decision-making and eventually led to my embarking on an intense personal academic journey. that year, as data analysis in my school board revealed a crying student deficiency in the area of literacy, a colleague and i designed the “literacy toolbox” sessions, a four–year, bilingual professional development initiative involving over 100 english and french language teachers. this is documented in my doctoral dissertation: one incident early on in the literacy toolbox sessions changed my course of thinking and our plan of action. during the first year of implementation, the focus was on reading strategies. to launch our first session, with no purpose other than to “break the ice”, all teachers were asked to describe their earliest memory of reading. i must admit i had some subconscious expectations of what answers might emerge based on my personal experiences. and indeed, some of the teachers shared a memory of someone, usually a parent, reading to them when they were very young. these memories seemed linked to an emotional or affective moment of some kind. in contrast, however, others shared with us an academic moment, such as an imposed novel they were required to read by their elementary school teacher. as the months and years of these workshops passed, two important points dawned on us (my colleague and myself) as informal but significant observations. about:blank saada. a place to think 6 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> first, the teachers who did not have an initial emotional connection to reading reported having difficulty generating attachment to reading in their students. second, as a consequence of the first point, gradually our workshops tended towards getting to know the individuals with whom we were working and fostering the teachers’ own literacy, mainly reading and writing, rather than simply focusing on student needs. we had never before considered this in planning professional development. through our careful consideration of student needs (which were corroborated by teachers as they, too, deplored student weaknesses in literacy) and our research into relevant teaching practices, we had never given thought to the individual teachers with whom we would be working. we had never thought that obtaining significant teacher input could mean uncovering more about who these teachers were as individuals. this was a turning point in my perception and conception of professional development that actually altered the course of the project at hand: the content and delivery of the workshops i was giving. more and more, i planned with specific people in mind – a novel that would interest richard, a picture book that would appeal to marie, a topic that would resonate with caroline – rather than to a global group under the general heading of teachers. (saada, pp. 29-30) ‘more and more, i planned with people in mind…’ curriculum-as-planned, curriculum-as-lived. i was indeed making new efforts to be the right guide towards stronger teaching practice for enhanced student learning, but i was still missing the mark. as dobson (2012) states, “deep within the heart of the educational matter, there is a persistent and determined search for self, a who that is not artificially engineered (i.e., moulded by concept and constructed by will), but originally generated and authentically expressed from within”(p. 212). i believe i was blindly, instinctively involved in this search, yet i was not focused on it; i had not carved out real thinking time for my self, for my who. who almost twenty years after a master’s of education degree that had checked off the graduate studies box of academic progress without truly adding depth to my understandings (at the time, i still believed i was not a teacher), a series of coincidences led to my throwing myself into the doctoral ring. this moonlighting into academia did not occur as part of a detailed career plan or for advancement of any kind. in hindsight, i believe that it was somewhat of a bequest to myself. it had dawned on me that i was indeed a teacher (one involved in school administration by this time, as a vice-principal in a large high school). with that realization, i needed to know how, despite myself it seemed, education had chosen me. from this personal need, questions of a more universal nature emerged that would include others in an investigation: how does literacy teaching become a personal part of a definition of self? what commits us to such teaching? these shone a light on two distinct figures in my story: the who of the person doing the teaching and the what of the teaching itself, in this case literacy teaching. considering the who was pivotal: “the who is not only at the heart of the story; it is the story’s raison d’être” (saada, p. 9). indeed, as dobson (2015) points out: “if we do not know who we are, how on earth about:blank saada. a place to think 7 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> can we know what we are doing?” (p. 10). over a quarter of a century of teaching, and this had never before occurred to me... the subject was complex. literacy teaching, the what, brought to the table many ambiguities and questions. but the who, elusive and intangible, was difficult to name or define. in my initial writing, i struggled with this abstract who, at times referring to it as personal identity, and then personal dimension of identity. i was confirmed in this through the literature i was encountering. all the while, however, i felt uncomfortably that these expressions segmented what was actually a whole. arendt (1998) writes about “the unchangeable identity of the person” (p. 193). palmer (2004) underlines that “we are born with a seed of selfhood that contains the spiritual dna of our uniqueness” (p. 32). with guidance from dobson, palmer and arendt over the course of my doctoral journey, the who was understood as unique, indivisible, omnipresent, unchanging in its dna yet constantly evolving at the “moving intersection of inner and outer forces” (palmer, 2007, p. 14). but how this understanding came to be is essential to the ongoing story of finding a place to think. heuristic inquiry as the subject of my doctoral investigation was complex, so was the search for methodology. i held steadfast to very specific requirements, including the means to be both participant and researcher at once, and to allow the same for others. i also knew that the methodology would have to embrace a self-study, autobiographical dimension, while enabling the relational and the collaborative. at first, i looked to phenomenology, thinking that i was interested in the phenomenon of literacy teaching. however, i quickly realized that i was more interested in the person experiencing the phenomenon. i then found clarke moustakas’ work on heuristic inquiry, a derivative of phenomenology. despite its infrequent use in education, this method was appealing as it 1) promotes starting with a personal, internal search; 2) enables self-study within a relational, collaborative process that holds stories, first-person accounts, in high regard, and 3) focuses on bringing to light the “essence of the person in experience” (douglass & moustakas, 1985, p. 43). moustakas (1990) states that heuristic research “refers to a process of internal search through which one discovers the nature and meaning of experience and develops methods and procedures for further investigation and analysis” (p. 9). in heuristic inquiry, we cannot pass ourselves by: “the process of discovery leads investigators to new images and meanings regarding human phenomena, but also to realizations relevant to their own experiences and lives” (moustakas, 1990, p. 9; emphasis added). deeply human and transparent in its subjectivity, heuristic inquiry called to me. heuristic inquiry involves six phases: 1) the initial engagement phase, where “the question takes form and significance” (p. 27); 2) the immersion phase, where we are enabled to “come to be on intimate terms with the question – to live it and grow in the knowledge of it” (p. 28); 3) the incubation phase, where we retreat from “the intense, concentrated focus on the question” (p. 28); 4) the illumination phase, the “breakthrough into conscious awareness of qualities and a clustering of qualities into themes inherent in the question” (p. 29); 5) the explication phase, where we “fully examine what has awakened in consciousness, in order to understand its various layers of meaning” (p. 30); 6) the creative synthesis phase, where we are “challenged to put the components and core themes into a creative synthesis” (p. 31) . about:blank saada. a place to think 8 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> these phases not only guided the journey and investigation, but prompted both as well. the journey began as ‘i’, with my personal questions and preoccupations. it then grew into a collection of ‘i’s as eight participants, current and former language and literacy teachers worked collaboratively to explore the questions at the heart of the investigation. finally, the journey transformed into the larger ‘we’, extending beyond the investigation and returning me to my self. a considerable testimony to the value of the heuristic inquiry process is that, over the course of the journey, a more pertinent investigation question surfaced, presenting itself to replace my initial ones: how does our definition of self connect us and commit us to literacy teaching? crossing the heuristic gap during my doctoral years, weekdays were dedicated to schedules and department meetings, teacher evaluation and hiring, student achievement on tests, report cards and ministry exams, textbooks and outings, suspensions and detentions, parent complaints and issues with transportation. late evenings and weekends, i dove into the thinking, digging through literature, extracting what might matter, cracking the metal of my tools on sometimes immovable boulders, muscles aching, before finding new routes to explore the who. initially, it was as though i were living two lives, that of the temporary academic on the one hand, that of the more permanent educator on the other, until, as the journey progressed, the evening and weekend reflection began seeping into my days. i had leaned on heuristic inquiry as a process, my research method, never quite imagining the driving force it would be. i learned to trust it to lead me from myself to my self, while having genuinely explored the revelatory in-between, carefully listening to the stories that carry my own voice. i observed heuristic inquiry as it deftly guided the members of my research group towards thoughtful solitude and meaningful interaction, towards memories and stories, recollection and reflection, discussion and writing, recounting the what and disclosing the who. i also began to notice that thoughts provoked by my doctoral research, simmering under the surface and sometimes relatively unacknowledged, began concretely affecting my professional vision, decisions or orientations. one example of this infiltration of thinking into practice is highlighted in my dissertation: from practice to theory and back again, inevitably it seems, i went from the toolbox sessions, to heuristic inquiry, now to school success teams. these are voluntary groups, composed of teachers, principals and other staff members from a given school, focused on success for all students, whatever this might be, through professional collaboration. at the board level, in supporting this endeavour, my new understanding is that we will need to attend to the who wherever it might be, cherishing and nurturing it within the collective reflection. at the first school success team meeting, we, the board curriculum team, projected pictures of our own children onto the screens around the room, pictures of this year’s first day of school. we spoke frankly. for some of our children, this first day of school was a day of great enthusiasm and hopefulness, for others a day of unease, anxiety, dejection. we then asked the individuals in the room what they wished for the children in their lives, their own children, this school year. people turned to one another tentatively, at first. soon after, the discussions took flight, the stories began. there were names and faces about:blank saada. a place to think 9 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> in these conversations, memories, laughter, hope and discouragement. it was not so much the personal nature of the discussions that struck me in this, but more so the genuineness i was perceiving within them. when we did move on to speak of school success, it was not as faceless collective entities, nor was it about generic students; i believe it was as individuals coming together to work collaboratively, towards benefitting the individual students composing our classes. this is a work in progress, of course, but one that shows promise. collective conversation is interesting, but highlighting the individual within the collective, creating space for the who, can be empowering. (saada, 2018, p. 202) another example of the ongoing influence of my heuristic journey is the use of palmer’s “third things”. palmer (2004) explains: “we achieve intentionality… by focusing on an important topic. we achieve indirection by exploring that topic metaphorically, via a poem, a story, a piece of music, or a work of art that embodies it.” he calls these vehicles of exploration “third things” (p. 92). he says that “mediated by a third thing, truth can emerge from, and return to, our awareness at whatever pace and depth we are able to handle – sometimes inwardly in silence, sometimes aloud in community – giving the shy soul the protective cover it needs” (p. 93). prior to the start of my investigation, considering the first phases of the heuristic inquiry process for participants other than myself, for whom the present study would not have emerged as their own internal quest, i had struggled with two issues. the first was how, on an individual basis, to provoke deeper attachment and thinking connected to the questions at stake; the second was how to create a collective atmosphere of willing and authentic discussion on the connection between the who and the what. palmer (2004) underlines that the “soul is so powerful that we must allow ourselves to approach it, and it to approach us indirectly. we must invite, not command, the soul to speak” (p. 92). it was this invitation that i was seeking. i found it by way of frank mccourt’s (2005) teacher man, an autobiographical novel. as a teacher and storyteller recounting his own personal life path through a 30-year teaching career pebbled with a variety of critical incidents, mccourt seemed to be the perfect individual through whom to launch our discussions and reflection. palmer (2004) writes that “truth emerges as we tell the stories of our lives” (p. 92), and arendt (1998) underscores that “this unchangeable identity of the person…becomes tangible only in the story of the actor’s and the speaker’s life” (p. 193). in focusing on mccourt’s stories, we found the pretext to reveal ourselves through our own. some time later, in my professional milieu, i wished to provoke genuine conversations among teachers who were neither very familiar with one another, nor particularly aligned in their thinking. now equipped with the experience of using mccourt as the middle man and, perhaps more importantly, having deeply reflected on this experience of third things through the heuristic process, i reached out to find an appropriate invitation for these particular teachers to enter into genuine discussion. i had also understood that the time spent nourishing the conversation in less direct ways had the potential for great outcome. in discussing the impact of heuristic research, moustakas (1990) quotes polyani (1962) who writes: having made a discovery, i shall never see the world again as before. my eyes have become different; i have made myself into a person seeing and thinking differently. i have crossed a gap, the heuristic gap, which lies between problem and discovery. (p. 56) about:blank saada. a place to think 10 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> having crossed the heuristic gap, an irreversible voyage, my reflection on the who permeates my every day. post-heuristic reflection, in all of its implications, now trickles into my memories and past considerations as well as into my current practice, perspective and future plans, as per the following: it was the month of may. in a large conference room, more than 800 educators were gathered: teachers, consultants, in-school and boardlevel administrators. a number of us had come here reluctantly to attend an imposed three-day session on what we feared might be another proposed miracle cure for the problems of education. a panel of speakers stood on stage. i could feel my own scepticism and tried to tame it. the first speaker launched into his initial words. he began by showing us pictures of his family, recounting with humour the challenges of being married to a teacher and the hopes and aspirations he had for his children. with a mix of self-derision and a measure of pride, he spoke of the meanders of his own life. the mood shifted in the room, from a “here we are at a conference” to a “here we are”; i sensed it in myself and in the people around my table. the woman sitting next to me whispered “i really like this guy! he is real.” while this was a very public setting, he was speaking to each of us from within, and, as a result, i was – we were, it seemed – ready to listen and to hear from within. dobson (2015) states that “although who is invisible to the eye, who is nonetheless identifiable by a reason of a felt radiance”(p. 194). i felt that radiance, the real possibility of a whoto-who connection. would i have been able to identify this before my journey of heuristic inquiry? (saada, 2018, p. 194) time for the who grumet (2006) writes, “when we select a story to read to a group of children, when we choose texts for a curriculum, we are extending this process of identifying what parts of the world, what relationships, creatures and events are worthy of their notice” (p. 218). what of our own stories, then, those we may or may not yet have acknowledged or consciously encountered, those we may or may not have chosen to recount but that, in essence, reveal what is worthy of notice? muchmore (2001) indicates that “all teachers possess life stories in which their thoughts and actions are situated…” (p. 90) and palmer (2007) underscores that, “good teaching requires self–knowledge: it is a secret hidden in plain sight” (p. 3). with no one to ask me to recount my stories, no requirement to even question my self-knowledge, i had for years been forging ahead in teaching, essentially cut off from a vital source of comprehension and evolution. clandinin and connelly (2000) state that “experience is the stories people live. people live stories, and in the telling of these stories, reaffirm them, modify them, and create new ones. stories lived and told educate the self and others” (p. xxvi). until my doctoral journey, i had not consciously participated in or devoted time to the seeking out and retrieval of the stories that might help educate my self and others’. in her autobiographical article on curriculum, identity, stigmatization and exclusion, khan (2018) writes: “i wondered, ‘how do i as a mother make sense of the hybridity of my children’s identity?’ i also wondered how my children’s teachers were making sense of their multiple worlds on the school landscape. were they awake to them too?” (p.150). upon reading these words, i pondered the numerous years i spent “doing” before allotting time to my sense-making, “doing” before awakening to my self. in fact, towards the end of my doctoral adventure, a segue into the ongoing journey, i remarked about:blank saada. a place to think 11 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> the following with regard to the questions that were raised and investigated, the questions rooted in my musings: having lived with some form of these questions for so many years, i wonder at having escaped their deliberate exploration for so long. should uncovering the who, reflecting on the question of who we are, not be a priority before being entrusted with the development of students and their who? (saada, 2018, p. 200) webster (2015) states: “so much attention goes on thinking about the kids’ thinking, but we really need to invest in supporting the teacher’s thinking. because if the teachers are learning and growing, their kids will be learning and growing” (p. 45). i would purport that the teacher’s thinking, if it is expected to carry true influence, must include introspection and autobiographical stories. and thinking about the who, nurturing the who within optimal, thoughtful circumstances requires time. i have so often heard the teachers and school staffs with whom i work complain about the lack of time to think, and i can vouch for that myself. the heuristic inquiry process gave me the freedom to think, pushed me to think and developed me as a thinker. but – and this is vital – it also carved thinking time out for me, time for the stories that reveal me and keep me grounded, time for my who. a way of being, in teaching and learning through my doctoral investigation, literacy teaching appeared as the connector between inside and outside ourselves, the what through which the who could be nurtured and furthered. findings highlighted literacy teaching as a means to accomplish a vocation of self-fulfillment, rather than as an end point on a trajectory. they suggested that, for the participants, the fundamental commitment was not to literacy teaching as such, but to the who, their who, an indivisible whole evolving within various contexts. these findings emerged from heuristic inquiry. palmer (2007) writes: to become a better teacher, i must nurture a sense of self that both does and does not depend on the responses of others – and that is a true paradox. to learn that lesson well, i must take a solitary journey into my own nature and seek the help of others in seeing myself as i am – another of many paradoxes that abound in the inner terrain. (p. 76) these words deeply resonated with me following my experience of heuristic inquiry as this process of the solitary journey into my own nature through the help of others. how do we foster the who as both an individual and a collective mission? what does this imply? could research, reflection and practice in education further delve into heuristic inquiry as a means to accomplish the journey of self-study in collaboration? in my dissertation, i address the secret hidden in plain sight, that of the recognition of the who, first and foremost, in education. starr (2020) writes of encountering curriculum as “a relational experience where we connect to one another as well as the learning we encourage” (p. 112). without the who, there cannot be the what; the what of curriculum encounters; the what of creating, reflecting and innovating; the what of evolving; the what of teaching and learning. as i put the finishing touches to my dissertation, the much-anticipated annual reports by the fraser institute had just been released, ranking schools and school boards within various canadian provinces including about:blank saada. a place to think 12 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> quebec, based on academic results (https://www.fraserinstitute.org/schoolperformance). i knew that we, schools and school boards, would scramble to justify our defeat or chant our triumph with regard to these very public numbers. we would dissect the quality of examinations, student behaviours, socio-economic contexts. there would be analysis of gaps in results between boys and girls, and between students with or without special needs and intervention plans. our speeches to administrators, schools, education committees, parent committees, councils of commissioners, would be filled with statements on the what. i thought of buijs (2005), who writes: “the more we insist on standards of performance, be it on the part of the instructors or on the part of students, the less, it seems, we pay attention to the individual circumstances surrounding both the instructor and the student” (p. 339). i had first crossed these words before the onset of my heuristic journey. i read them differently following it. buijs highlights that the more we attempt to standardize both teaching and learning, the more we withdraw from an inner sense of purpose or calling. i saw in this the statement that the more performancebased we are, the less we can address the person, the who, in all its colour and light, its nuances and inflections. indeed, following the reports by the fraser institute, just as it happens following the publication of graduation rates and provincial examination results, there would be impassioned statements on the what. prompted by my heuristic journey, i, on the other hand, would long for the questions on the who, questions that would address how we consider the who, questions that would ponder how we would foster the who. on the last page of my doctoral dissertation, i write the following: i keep hearing that today’s student is being prepared for jobs that do not yet exist. how can we then continue to focus on content and constructs, the what that perhaps comforts us in its seeming measurability, when so much depends on the vital who, within us through any circumstance, evolution or revolution, through any representation or aspect of the what? examination results, marks on report cards, rankings and grades, these are all walls, statements behind which we fail to see that the who is negated by our emphasis on the what, and that the what is crippled by our lack of vision into the who. (saada, 2018, p. 204) over a year has passed since the formal end to an autobiographical doctoral journey that led me deep within myself and then outwards again. following convocation, an emotion-filled moment officially underscoring a perseverance i was not sure i would have, a tenacity that had nearly deserted me on a number of occasions, and the achievement of a title i had not sought for itself but could now proudly display, i quickly found myself in a period of mourning. throughout the four years of this doctoral journey, all the while maintaining my full-time work as an in-school administrator and then a board-level director, i had often deplored the hectic schedule and the multiple obligations pulling at me from all sides. but the truth was that the academic adventure i had imposed on myself, and in particular the methodology i had chosen for my research, had carved out for me a necessary place to think, a vital place to be. within this place, i was prompted to reflect not only on the what, the how or even the why which were previously my main considerations as an educator. the heuristic inquiry i conducted was focused on the who, with particular attention to my who. in telling the story of a teacher, miss o, aoki (2005) writes of the “significance of allowing space for stories, anecdotes, and narratives that embody the lived dimension of curriculum life” (p. 209). in a professional environment dominated by urgency, standardization, accountability and results, the investigation i conducted into the who was about:blank saada. a place to think 13 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> revelatory and self-revelatory, invigorating and deeply empowering as an educator. it offered a welcomed bridge from concept to human being, from curriculum-as-planned to curriculum-as-lived, from generic to specific. no longer just a question, ‘who is teaching’ is a statement, with stories to accompany it. palmer (2004) tells us that “truth emerges as we tell the stories of our lives” (p. 122). following my doctoral research, i mourned the leg of the journey that had gifted me with this invaluable space for stories… until it was revealed to me that once created, this place to think, this place to recount, this place to be, could and would remain. heuristic inquiry was not solely about answering my doctoral investigation questions. it was not temporary work of an autobiographical nature. it has become a permanent place for the uncovering of truth, a place in which to think, and a critical way of being, in teaching and in learning. notes 1 jessica.saada@mail.mcgill.ca references aoki, t. (2004) teaching as in-dwelling between two curriculum worlds (1986/1991). in w. f. pinar & r. l. irwin (eds.), curriculum in a new key: the collected works of ted t. aoki (pp. 159-166). new york, new york: routledge. arendt, h. (1998) the human condition. chicago, illinois: university of chicago press. buijs, j. a. (2005) teaching: profession or vocation? catholic education: a journal of inquiry and practice, 8(3). clandinin, j. d., & connelly, m. f. (2000) narrative inquiry experience and story in qualitative research. san francisco, california: jossey-bass. dobson, m. l. (2012) identity and creativity: putting two and two together. learning landscapes, 6(1), 201-214. dobson, m. l. (2015) educating for meaning: who am i, really? identity and creativity: putting two and two together. a critical analysis in-formed by poetic and narrative perspectives. unpublished dissertation. mcgill university, montreal, quebec. douglass, b. g., & moustakas, c. (1985) heuristic inquiry: the internal search to know. journal of humanistic psychology, 25(3), 39 55. greene, m. (1978) landscapes of learning. new york, new york : teachers college press. grumet, m. (2020, in press) foreword. in teresa strong-wilson, christian ehret, david lewkowich, and sandra chang-kredl (ed.), provoking curriculum encounters across educational experience: new engagements with the curriculum theory archive (pp. x-xi). new york, new york: routledge. khan, m. (2018) curriculum as planned: who is affected when difference is marginalized? journal of the canadian association for curriculum studies, 16(1), 143-161. mccourt, f. (2005) teacher man. new york, new york: scribner. moustakas, c. (1990) heuristic research: design, methodology, and applications. newbury park, california: sage publications, inc. muchmore, j. a. (2001) the story of "anna": a life history study of the literacy beliefs and teaching practices of an urban high school english teacher. teacher education quarterly, 28(3), 89-110. palmer, p. j. (2004) a hidden wholeness. san francisco, california: jossey-bass. about:blank about:blank saada. a place to think 14 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> palmer, p. j. (2007) the courage to teach : exploring the inner landscape of a teacher's life. san francisco, california: john wiley and sons. saada, j. (2018) recounting the what and disclosing the who: a heuristic inquiry into the connection between identity and literacy teaching. unpublished doctoral dissertation. mcgill university, montreal, quebec. starr, l. j. (2020) locating who (i am) in what i do : an autoethnographic encountering of relational curriculum. in teresa strong-wilson, christian ehret, david lewkowich, and sandra chang-kredl (ed.), provoking curriculum encounters across educational experience : new engagements with the curriculum theory archive (pp. 103-115). new york, new york: routledge. webster, m. (2015) teachers’ professional development: a vital lever for change. learning landscapes, 9 (1), 37-46. submitted: november, 20th, 2019. approved: december, 03rd, 2019. about:blank transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci peer review process 2017 a 2020 stats and reports issues published: 08 total submissions: 57 reviewed: 54 accepted (with revisions or not): 48 declined: 06 reviewers from 2017 2021 alice casimiro lopes state university of rio de janeiro brazil ana laura gallardo gutiérrez national autonomous university of mexico mexico elizabeth macedo state university of rio de janeiro brazil clarissa craveiro federal fluminense university brazil frida díaz barriga arceo national autonomous university of mexico mexico peter appelbaum arcadia university usa preciosa fernandes university of porto portugal michael uljens åbo akademi university finland myriam southwell national university of la plata argentina maria isabel ramalho ortigão state university of rio de janeiro brazil silvia morelli national university of rosario argentina teresa strong-wilson mcgill university canada thiago ranniery federal university of rio de janeiro brazil 74 abstracts views by month from 2017-2020 o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: paulozzo, m. (2017). the coneau and its influences on the process of curriculum design in argentine universities. transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> the coneau and its influences on the process of curriculum design in argentine universities marina paulozzo1 universidad nacional de lomas de zamora, argentina introduction in argentina, the creation of the comisión nacional de evaluación y acreditación universitaria (coneau) dating from 1995, the year of enactment of the law on higher education2. the decision to create a national accreditation agency was aimed at finding the so-called academic quality. since then the assessment process were in charge of the dirección nacional de gestión universitaria (dngu), unit of the secretaría de políticas universitarias (spu) of the ministry of education. these processes prior to coneau were limited to evaluating curricula undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate universities sent to the ministry for official recognition and national validity. these awards were not due and only allowed to be valid when the universities had another curriculum for the same career. the initiation and development of evaluation processes and university accreditation through coneau involved a series of negotiations, procedures, discussions, policy decisions, organizational, curricular and techniques that could be said; they changed the academic life of our country. coneau, since its inception, and as defined in the law, is a decentralized body whose functions are: a) coordinate and carry out institutional external evaluation (article 44) b) accredit undergraduate courses that article 43, as well as graduate programs, whatever the field they are developed in accordance with standards established by the ministry of culture and education in consultation with the university council refers to c) rule on the consistency and feasibility of the institutional project that is required for the ministry of culture and education authorized the launch of a new national university after its creation or recognition of a provincial university d) prepare reports required to grant provisional authorization and final recognition of private universities, as well as reports on the basis of which the period of temporary operation of these institutions will be evaluated the national assessment and accreditation shall be composed of twelve members, appointed by the national executive on a proposal from the following organizations: three (3) by the national inter-university council, one (1) by the council paulozzo. the coneau and its influences 88 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci of rectors private universities, one (1) by the national academy of education, three (3) for each of the houses of congress of the nation, and one (1) by the ministry of culture and education. they will remain in office for four years. perspective from the responsibility that took the argentine state with this decision it is important to consider the characteristics assumed by the various evaluation and accreditation institutional, undergraduate and graduate because the perspective taken from argentina university community allows a view on some today issues raised tensions at the regional level:  the evaluation is conducted by peer reviewers.  the standards are defined by the institutional actors.  the starting point of all is self-evaluation processes, both careers and institutions.  the directionality arises from the improvement plans that are funded by the state in the case of national universities.  the invisibility of poor performance  the absence of any kind of ranking of universities and / or performance.  the evaluation of processes, procedures and institutions rather than individuals. initiations and conflicts the first years of operation of the coneau were filled with conflict and opposition to its actions, because much of the university community did not agree with its creation. among other things, it was interpreted as an invasion or a limitation on university autonomy, and autonomy is one of the main identity argentinian notes university, with free and unrestricted income. article 43 of the ley de educación superior, already mentioned, defines the obligatory, by all the universities in argentina, to submit accreditation degree courses that compromise the public interest3, understanding by public interest those professions that may put health, safety, rights, goods or training of the students at risk inhabitants of the country. from this definition, there was a first discussion about what these careers would be. after this, it was initiated the process of defining accreditation standards that would constitute the main instrument to carry out this evaluation. the need to define standards for accreditation especially career degree of public interest brought together representatives of these careers to negotiate the minimum requirements that institutions must meet to obtain official recognition and national validity of their titles. these standards covered and cover not only the curriculum. they require institutions, regulatory frameworks, infrastructure and equipment, but also required that curriculum design includes the main requirements to the universities they face when presented to demonstrate: total hourly minimum loads, partial loads time areas and subareas, contents of each characteristic of pre-professional practice, requirements of entrance and exit, profiles of graduates and scope of titles. today in argentina, they have standard careers: paulozzo. the coneau and its influences 89 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci medicine nº535/99 anexo rm nº1314/07 certified public accountant resolución 3400-e/2017 | anexo i advocacy resolución 3401-e/2017 | anexo i licensed in genetics resolución 901-e/2017 | anexo i biotechnology in engineer resolución 903-e/2017 | anexo i licensed in biotechnology resolución 1637-e/2017 | anexo i architect res. mecyt nº 498/06 biologist, licensed in biological sciences, licensed in biology, licensed in biodiversity and licensed in basic sciences – orientation in biology | res. me nº139/11 licensed in nursery | res. me nº2721/15 lic. in biochemistry or biochemistry | res. mecyt nº565/04 lic. in pharmacy or pharmacist | res. mecyt nº566/04 licensed in computer´s science, licensed in systems/information´s systems/system´s analysis, licensed in computing, computer engeneer and informations system engeneer | res me nº 786/09 aeronautic engineer; food engineer; environmental engineer; civil engineer; electrical engineer; electromechanical engineer; electronic engineer; engineer in materials; mechanical engineer; mining engineer; nuclear engineer; oil engineer, and chemical engineer | rm nº 1232/01 surveyor engineer and industrial engineer | rm nº 1054/02 | rm nº 13/04 biomedical engineer and bioengineer | rm nº 1603/04 metallurgical engineer rm nº 1610/04 telecommunications engineer | rm nº 1456/06 agricultural engineer rm nº 334/03 | rm nº 1002/03 – modification of the rm nº 334/03 natural resources engineer |res me nº 436/09 | rm nº 476/11– modification of the rm nº 436/09 forestal engineer | res me nº 436/09 | rm nº 476/11– modification of the rm nº 436/09 zootechnicist engineer | res me nº 436/09 | rm nº 476/11– modification of the rm nº 436/09 odontologist. anexos. rm nº1413/08 and anexos psychologist | rm nº 343/09 rm nº 800/11– modification of the rm nº 343/09 licensed in chemistry rm nº 344/09 | hourly charges – clarifications (reference to the resolution me nº 344/09). veterinarian | rm nº1034/05 as an example the first career that entered grade accreditation the so-called "article 43" was medicine, and has four calls today. the start marked a 92% non-accredited career, this meant a strong policy plans for improvement and modification and training reform proposals currently that allows the percentage had turned without losing any training centre. what were the reasons that led to face these results? among the main ones could enter:  the lack of experience of the university system in standardized accreditation processes. http://www.coneau.gov.ar/archivos/resoluciones/resol3400-17.pdf http://www.coneau.gov.ar/archivos/resoluciones/anexo-res3400.pdf http://www.coneau.gov.ar/archivos/resoluciones/resol3401-17.pdf http://www.coneau.gov.ar/archivos/resoluciones/anexo-res3401.pdf http://www.coneau.gov.ar/archivos/resoluciones/resol901-17.pdf http://www.coneau.gov.ar/archivos/resoluciones/anexo-res901.pdf http://www.coneau.gov.ar/archivos/resoluciones/resol903-17.pdf http://www.coneau.gov.ar/archivos/resoluciones/anexo-res903.pdf http://www.coneau.gov.ar/archivos/resoluciones/resol1637-17.pdf http://www.coneau.gov.ar/archivos/resoluciones/anexo-res1637.pdf http://servicios.infoleg.gob.ar/infoleginternet/anexos/115000-119999/116435/norma.htm http://servicios.infoleg.gob.ar/infoleginternet/anexos/190000-194999/192387/norma.htm http://servicios.infoleg.gob.ar/infoleginternet/anexos/190000-194999/192387/norma.htm http://servicios.infoleg.gob.ar/infoleginternet/anexos/250000-254999/254741/norma.htm http://www.coneau.gob.ar/archivos/557.pdf http://www.coneau.gob.ar/archivos/558.pdf http://www.coneau.gob.ar/archivos/res786_09.pdf http://www.coneau.gob.ar/archivos/538.pdf http://www.coneau.gob.ar/archivos/540.pdf http://www.coneau.gob.ar/archivos/563.pdf http://www.coneau.gob.ar/archivos/559.pdf http://www.coneau.gob.ar/archivos/560.pdf http://www.coneau.gob.ar/archivos/1439.pdf http://www.coneau.gob.ar/archivos/541.pdf http://servicios.infoleg.gob.ar/infoleginternet/anexos/90000-94999/91684/norma.htm http://www.coneau.edu.ar/archivos/resoluciones/rm043609.pdf http://servicios.infoleg.gob.ar/infoleginternet/anexos/180000-184999/181514/norma.htm http://www.coneau.edu.ar/archivos/resoluciones/rm043609.pdf http://servicios.infoleg.gob.ar/infoleginternet/anexos/180000-184999/181514/norma.htm http://www.coneau.edu.ar/archivos/resoluciones/rm043609.pdf http://servicios.infoleg.gob.ar/infoleginternet/anexos/180000-184999/181514/norma.htm http://www.coneau.gob.ar/archivos/resolucion1413_08.pdf http://www.coneau.gob.ar/archivos/form11psico/rm034309.pdf http://servicios.infoleg.gob.ar/infoleginternet/anexos/180000-184999/182007/norma.htm http://servicios.infoleg.gob.ar/infoleginternet/anexos/155000-159999/158473/norma.htm http://www.coneau.gob.ar/archivos/561.pdf paulozzo. the coneau and its influences 90 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci  tensions in the processes of curricular transformation in institutions that involve tensions, negotiations regarding the academic trajectories of students, the conformation of academic teams, the budget and financing, among other aspects.  the organization and management coneau itself rules, procedures, tools.  a university budget up to that moment insufficient for the requirements that the same accreditation process required.  the lack of specific sources of funding for undergraduate courses in accreditation. what were the reasons that helped reverse and improve unfavorable results? among the main ones could enter: the institutionalization throughout the university community of the processes of institutional evaluation and accreditation of courses. improving the university budget occurred in the last decade. the creation of specific funding programs for the improvement plans developed from self-assessments. the creation, modification and adjustment of the regulations necessary to address the processes of evaluation and accreditation. the creation, modification and setting of tools and technical procedures for the accreditation of the coneau today argentina is going through a very strong political change that this year 2016 has shown that is not going to continue with the same educational policies developed since 2003. according to the university policies, the territorial expansion of universities, funding agreements with the ministries for studies, research and services, the creation of national universities, the university budget, have been slowed and diminished. coneau is perhaps the institution that has had fewer changes against this background, which perhaps suggests in sustaining policies evaluation and accreditation who have reached 20 years. this also suggests the continuity of the pending, pointing out absences, achievements, problems and trends in curricular changes. the pending  accreditation of technicalities as part of the degree titles (there is already a first accreditation that is included in the degree in nursing)  arcusur internationalization regional convergence  accreditation of races belonging to the social sciences and the humanities (the process of organization of the accreditation of the careers of lawyer and public accountant has begun)  evaluation of the standards in those areas that have already proved more than three times.  consistency of educational and instructional signs in the reports and resolutions of accreditation. there is no emphasis on the pedagogical or didactic paulozzo. the coneau and its influences 91 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci perspectives, the indications that appear in the processes of curriculum design and evaluation are minimal, basic and only technical: number of hours, teacher qualifications, bibliography updates, among others.  the lack of recognition of the university towards tertiary non-university institutes that result in leveling instructions when the students are not all university students (eg nursing).  the years that are taking to define the standards in the professors (although not only), are already 6 years and with little perspective in the short term (it should be clarified that the same resistance is not observed in the accreditation of postgraduate careers in humanities)  this marks another absence: the participation of pedagogues in the work of definition of standards, and not only in the careers that compromise the humanities.  the participation of institutional actors.  the technical documents of the men for the presentation of the curricular designs (in search of official recognition and national validity) do not ask for neither foundation, nor objectives or graduates' profile, although it is clear that they do request them from coneau (which could indicate a lack of consistency) the achievements  the institutionalization of accreditation and evaluation processes in all universities.  linking the self-assessment with improvement plans that have consequently guided the increase in university funding or have served to create specific improvement programs from the ministry of education (today the picture is different)  the influence this has had on the reorganization and redefinition of triangle idd-pg in private universities (although not only).  the work on the category "quality" from a model that does not stigmatize, that does not punish but tends to guarantee levels of quality expected in all institutions and that evaluates and accredits without taking the students or the teachers.  the achievement of arcusur accreditations, which are regional although not yet covered by all the countries of latin america. the problems  low graduation rates in general, and especially in so-called hard careers (engineering, experimental sciences factual, basic sciences)  the over sizing of traditional careers in argentina as advocacy and psychology (there were 11 psychologists for every 1 engineer)  the limited link of university offer linked to regional economies and local developments. paulozzo. the coneau and its influences 92 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci  the delay in the accreditation of humanities and social degree courses that is perhaps an intentional delay, a way of expressing disagreement regarding these processes (perhaps the best way would be to give the discussion)  the achievement of broader agreements that would allow the accreditation of the entire region.  the few advances in accreditation and curricular agreements for distance education. trends towards curricular changes  the restructuring of the standards in search of the possibility of including intermediate undergraduate degrees (nursing).  the redefinition of some standards that have been defined for more than 10 years (engineering, medicine) and that are beginning to think about the possibility of organizing joint training sessions, based on the standards agreed between the actors per career, that will improve the mobility of students in the national territory (especially in the degree courses)  the growth of practice hours with simulation devices, especially in careers that put people's lives at risk, which continues to bring with it discrepancy with regard to its consideration when it comes to accrediting the workload of the professional practices that are exit of the races. the perspective (retaking the idea of de alba) pedagogues in general and dedicated to curricular particular field we have the challenge and responsibility to project ideas, concepts, approaches that build a vision for the pending accreditation that achieves new levels of solution to some problems and tensions that we find today: accrediting teacher education including tertiary and university, seeking mutual recognition of training paths, surpassing the marks of colonialism, which often exerts college on teacher training institutes, especially considering that in argentina 75% of the teaching forms in isdf. deepen the model of accreditation without renouncing the theoretical and epistemological perspectives on the educational and pedagogical, but rather trying to gain relevance and depth in the judgments that peer evaluators lso emit about teaching and learning processes. find regional identity in the process of evaluation and accreditation achieve mutual recognition among latin-americans both countries and improve the mobility of professionals in our territories and then, perhaps as a bloc or region, working for even greater convergence. finally [and retaking the conception of curriculum as "... the synthesis of cultural elements, that is, knowledge, values, beliefs, customs and habits, that make up a particular political proposal educational ..." (de alba, 1995)], it is possible to consider that the evaluation processes and university accreditation that our countries are going through can promote the search for answers and new questions about the identity and direction of our universities. the common and diverse in the training of professionals, paulozzo. the coneau and its influences 93 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci scientists, technicians the allowing thinking of the constitution a territory that we share from history, from politics, from the language, from the culture. notes 1 marpaulozzo@gmail.com 2 ley 24.521 de educación superior, art. 46 /funciones) and 47 (integrantes). 3 article 43: in the case of titles corresponding to professions regulated by the state, whose exercise could compromise the public interest by directly putting the health, safety, rights, property or training of the inhabitants at risk, it will be required that they be respected, in addition to the workload referred to in the previous article, the following requirements: a) the curricula must take into account the basic curricular contents and the intensity criteria of the practical training established by the ministry of culture and education, in agreement with the council of universities: b) the respective courses must be accredited periodically by the national commission for university evaluation and accreditation or by private entities established for that purpose duly recognized. the ministry of culture and education will determine with a restrictive criteria, in agreement with the council of universities, the nomination of such titles, as well as the professional activities reserved exclusively for them. references coneau (2012) la coneau y el sistema universitario argentino. coneau. de alba, a. (1995) curriculum, crisis, mito y perspectivas. miño y dávila. argentina. ley 24.521 (1995) ley de educación superior marquina, m. (2005) la evaluación por pares en el escenario actual de aseguramiento de la calidad en la educación superior (pp. 1-40), concurso de ensayos coneau 2004-2005. riaces (2004) glosario internacional riaces de evaluación de la calidad y acreditación, elaborado en el marco de la red iberoamericana para la acreditación de la calidad de la educación superior. submitted: november, 20th, 2017 approved: december, 9th, 2017 mailto:marpaulozzo@gmail.com http://infoleg.mecon.gov.ar/infoleginternet/anexos/25000-29999/25394/texact.htm to cite this article please include all of the following details: yoshimoto, mika (2005). late-blooming student/roots of loneliness run deep/as i return home. transnational curriculum inquiry, 2(1) http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci <access date> late-blooming student roots of loneliness run deep as i return home mika yoshimoto university of ottawa, canada abstract postcolonial, transnational curriculum should value the experiences and knowledge of everyday lives, understanding the space of “interlanguage and intercultural differences” (aoki, 2003, p. 6). elsewhere in this issue, william pinar says of ted aoki, “he is questing (rather than questioning) for the ‘original ground of curriculum as a human study’”. the focus of my writing is on language in a socio-cultural context. it amazes me how much everyday life and language are interwoven, especially that language which is unspeakable or untranslatable. during the summer of 2004, i returned to japan to visit family and attend my fifty-year class reunion, which gave me the opportunity to revisit and reflect on the past and present. like hongyu wang (2004) revisiting beijing, i felt estranged from my homeland. asanuma (1999) says, “meaning is created out of the knowledge of past experiences and one’s interaction with others” (p.23). the idea that our lives are composed not only of major events but the countless little events intrigued me and i could not help but keep note of them. this paper describes my struggle from the in-between spaces of insider/outsider, in multiple re-writings of tangled memories. i recorded the day-to-day happenings in a diary. i drew on the poetic discourse of haiku as i felt that diary entries, alone, would inadequately convey the deep-felt emotions in these moments. a poetic discourse of the mundane of everyday life “seikatsu tsuzurikata” (daily diary) becomes an invocation for “questing” inbetween languages and cultures. さ “ ”(aoki,2003. p.6) よ フ ㈻ ♣ ⅴ ㎲ ゼ ┤ http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci mika yoshimoto (2005) late-blooming student roots of loneliness run deep as i return home. transnational curriculum inquiry 2 (1) 2005 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 14 ┞ り オ ├ ┊ ㎲ ヤ さ ㎲ background information this diary was originally written by hand in japanese during my trip in japan in the summer of 2004, mainly written during my stay in kasugai city. every summer, since 1994, i have returned to visit my home since moving to canada. for each journal entry, i wrote a haiku poem in japanese summarizing the day’s events. for the convenience of english readers, i also wrote an accompanying english haiku, which attempts to convey a similar feeling. as a response to the comments of the reviewers, i have included “a lingering note” and a short autobiography as an appendix to my diary, which attempts to clarify many aspects of my writing. late-blooming student roots of loneliness run deep as i return home june 26, 2004 suspended in air nausea, scent of cologne generation gap today i awoke at 5:20 and the taxi was already waiting in front of my house, even though i had intended to set my alarm clock for 5:00, but failing eyesight probably caused me to set it incorrectly; that or my clock is cursed. at the airport, i used a strange machine to enter my credit card information, flight number and baggage count, in order to get my airplane tickets for vancouver and nagoya. i felt relieved after seeing how long the other line was. after that was over with, i had time to get my favorite tim horton’s coffee and freshen up. on the airplane, the person sitting beside me was a japanese high school exchange student who came from ritsumeikan in kyoto. he had blonde hair, gold earrings, and was wearing some very strong cologne. i asked several questions, but each time he just shrugged his shoulders and said, “maa maa” (so, so). my futile attempt at communication made me think of derrida. what i mean by this is that this boy’s context is beyond my imagination. the person on the other side of the boy, a woman in her thirties who had studied in japan, also tried to communicate with him. she was singing the japanese children’s song, “arupusu ichimanjaku”, assuming he knew it too, but to my surprise, he did not know this song. i really felt a generation gap. http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci mika yoshimoto (2005) late-blooming student roots of loneliness run deep as i return home. transnational curriculum inquiry 2 (1) 2005 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 15 soon the in-flight movie, miracle, began. this movie is about the american hockey team of 1980 and how they overcame the supposedly unbeatable soviet team. the american coach said that patriotism and unwavering belief in their ability would allow them to win. i remembered my supervisor said a similar thing, “if i would not have believed it, i would not have seen it”. however, the movie was boring, because it is just like japanese training, making players perform the same motions over and over again ad nauseam. so i started reading the national post. they were commenting on the role of america in iraq as “mission not accomplished as planned” and “iraq to get handover of chaos”. i noticed a particularly shocking sentence in this article: “as her girlfriends held up a hand-printed sign in arabic that read: ‘please bring saddam back!’ ms. faoud added, “of course saddam was not a good man. our economy was bad and he oppressed us. but we had security and stability.” i can imagine how scared they are and the expense of freedom. how can i judge this war as a war for justice? is there a war for justice? i think of derrida. maybe the language of justice is open to many different interpretations and we should start thinking that we can never truly understand each other, although we are capable of dreaming that we are. another interesting article was about president clinton’s autobiography. the title is “clinton fails presidential benchmark” and it goes on to describe his book as a cheap perfume. kelly mcparland says that president grant’s autobiography, about a man who lived 120 years ago, is a well-written piece of literature and has everything that bill clinton’s doesn’t. i thought that the language of “presidential benchmark” is very misleading. clearly president clinton is unique, he engaged in a sexual affair in the white house and lied about it to everybody. however, is there a benchmark for presidents, professors, and scholars? if we consider human beings to be individually unique and valuable, this language “benchmark” seems strange to me. one other article that i found appealing was about claus schenk graf von stauffenberg who tried to kill hitler and did not become a hero for a long time. harold marcuse, a history professor at the university of california comments, “the people who lived through it did not want to acknowledge that there were people who were bold enough to take a stand.” reflecting on my life, i think that this is really true. while i was struggling in my unfortunate marriage, i did not want to acknowledge that there were women who were bold enough to take a stand. in japan, for a long time, i had this vexing and contradictory feeling of admiration whenever i heard about courageous woman. i regret that i did not have courage to think critically until late in my life. maybe, women who are struggling in japan might have the same annoying feeling towards me, because i escaped to canada to be free from a demanding husband. bell hooks (1994) says, “in our society, which is so fundamentally antiintellectual, critical thinking is not encouraged” (p.202). now i realize that to think critically is to encourage my own growth. the japanese asahi newspaper says that the japanese birth rate is 1.29, the lowest since after the war. japanese women’s decision to not have a second child is a serious one. for example, my second daughter does not want to have a second child. my first granddaughter, who is 8 years old, got a dog, instead of a brother or sister by her parents’ choice. because they have only one child, they travel a lot enjoying life more than other families who have many children. maybe because i raised 4 children and my husband did nothing except earn money, my daughter thinks that raising many children is not rewarding. there is a saying, “ko wa kasugai (a child is a pledge of affection. literal meaning: a child is a clamp). nowadays, 60% of japanese women aged twenty to forty-years old agree that marriage and having children is a different issue (according to a 2002 survey by cabinet). the word “clamp” in http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci mika yoshimoto (2005) late-blooming student roots of loneliness run deep as i return home. transnational curriculum inquiry 2 (1) 2005 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 16 this case is something of a negative connotation, suggesting that a woman’s freedom is clamped down once she has a child. i have heard that princess masako is in the hospital, feeling pressure from people working in the imperial household about the expectations for her to produce a boy to become the next emperor. i think that the current generation gap between young and old is wide. princess masako once worked at the foreign ministry and had the new image of a career woman unlike the traditional one. the pressure must be so great because the prince recently held a press conference regarding how some people in the imperial household are criticizing and insulting the princess’ personality. another eye-catching article was about the crime of a teenaged girl (13) who pushed a 5year-old boy down from the roof of an apartment building. she lived in south-east asia before and in both countries she was bullied as an outsider, called “gaikokujin (a foreigner).” the doctor who gave the psychiatric tests says that her japanese was not good enough to recognize the subtle nuances of japanese, but good enough for daily conversation and furthermore noted that her state of mind was in all likelihood, not mentally fit. my son in law (jay) is a canadian, who has lived in japan for more than 12 years and is still called “gaikokujin” (a foreigner). he used to get angry every time people called him this, but he became more and more aware of the homogeneous culture of japan and how it is so deeply group oriented. every time i see jay, i feel as if he is becoming more japanese and that i am becoming more “gaikokujin”; and to me, the japanese boy who sat beside me on the airplane this morning was more “gaikokujin” than jay. june 28,2004 home, cicadas chirr in the garden while bamboo bends low to the ground from vancouver, i sat next to a japanese man who took a two-day tour of banff. he came from the city of matsuzaka, proudly describing his town as the second city of japan whose citizens live longer, nagano being the first. as we continued to talk, he mentioned how he deplored recent changes to pensions by the government. he strongly criticized the koizumi cabinet for being cruel to people who live on their pensions. i arrived home to find bamboo leaves strewn about my front gateway, making it appear as though a jungle had grown around my house. i immediately set out to clear up all of the leaves, so that i wouldn’t make my neighbours’ houses look bad, having to live so close to my house-made jungle. to my surprise, soon after i returned home, my eldest daughter showed me a scrapbook full of newspaper clippings about old-age pension. my daughter worries about government changes to pension and my old age after my retirement. today’s asahi newspaper had a poll regarding people’s reliance on the government in their old life. in this poll china totalled 24%, india 21% and japan 0%. (american survey conducted by financial service institution during february and march of 2004) my eldest daughter’s dog of 15 years died last summer. when miwa was twenty years old, this stray dog wearing a leather collar, chased her. i imagine that some time after birth, the dog was set out on its own, and this collar was so tight that it was cutting deeply into his neck and causing a lot of bleeding. miwa took him to the vet and the doctor said that if miwa left the dog, this dog would choke to death within two days. miwa called the dog “poko” and http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci mika yoshimoto (2005) late-blooming student roots of loneliness run deep as i return home. transnational curriculum inquiry 2 (1) 2005 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 17 took care of him like her child, so poko was especially loyal to miwa until the last days of his life. her grief for poko is tremendous and since his death she has been writing a diary in his memory. she still keeps everything concerning poko, such as his food, collar, pillow, cushion and so on. she also cannot go into the garden without being reminded about him. one day miwa received a letter in the mailbox from our neighbour complaining about the cherry blossom tree branches, because this tree’s leaves fall on the roof of their garage. miwa had been trying to avoid our neighbour because she wasn’t able to go into the garden because it reminded her too much of poko. i asked my youngest son to help trim the branches, and we spent the whole day, in the brutal heat, cutting branches. i was sad, because this tree was so beautiful in the spring and while my youngest son was cutting the tree, i suddenly thought of the play “the cherry orchard” by anton chekhov. i saw this play in tokyo when i was young. it felt like a comedy describing the weakness and strength of both groups between the rising merchant class and falling aristocracy during the times of economic change in 19th century russia. everything changes; even on the personal level nothing is static. when i planted this tree, i was rich financially, but mentally i had no freedom. my family is becoming poorer and poorer, but my relationship with my children is becoming better. as we continued to trim the branches of the tree, one by one, i could hear the scream of the tree, because miwa was looking at the tree tearfully, it reminded her of how much poko loved to sit under it. today’s column in the paper, “tenseijingo” features the comments of shigeru mizuki, a cartoonist. he says, “if we go deep into the jungle of new guinea, we experience absolute darkness and silence and we might experience a chilling atmosphere that make us believe that ghosts exist. this feeling is attractive as much as it is dreadful. we are afraid to believe that human beings are inherently cruel, but if we look at the evidence, we should control this savage emotion with reason, not denying this brutal state.” i know of many massacres in the history of humanity. i felt the same courageous attitude as derrida, accepting that we cannot understand the contexts of other people, which are individually unique. other courageous citizens were featured in today’s newspaper, most notably a 75 and 76-year-old couple. over twenty years, they fixed 1300 pairs of shoes belonging to handicapped people, free of charge. they regret that they could not fix 1500 shoes, because of their bad health. such ordinary people are real heroes and i am happy knowing about these old people that live in today’s rapidly changing individualistic society. there is no ideal society, but these warm-hearted people make the society different. miwa gave me a book titled “the present” by spencer johnson m.d. this book discusses a practical philosophy that people can follow to lead a happy life. the gist of this book is to live in the present having a wonderful image of the future world. living in this world, full of war, hate and revenge, i feel difficulty imagining a peaceful world. but i was happy that she gave me this book. she also prepared lots of food including calcium for my bones. she is 35 years old and has a strong distrust of men. when men approach her; the hair on her skin stands on end. life is quite ironic; my second daughter chose the opposite type of man to my husband and she is doing well in her marriage. but miwa got hurt and i did not notice that while i was struggling in my marriage. as i was going through mail that i had received over the last year, i noticed a letter from my alma mater. sophia university holds many lectures and one of the lectures featured michiko inukai (a journalist). she was talking about japan’s unsociable closed borders to other countries and was proposing accepting more refugees. she says that in 1982 japan signed the convention relating to the status of refugees and the displaced persons act, http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci mika yoshimoto (2005) late-blooming student roots of loneliness run deep as i return home. transnational curriculum inquiry 2 (1) 2005 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 18 nearly the last country among those in the united nations to sign. during the 20 years since signing, japan has accepted only 300 refugees. i think this number is terribly small and shameful. i want to know the definition of refugees. another lecturer was hisashi inoue (a novelist) and he was speaking about the method of democratic meetings. he says that thomas jefferson, the 3rd president of the united states, wrote the manual of parliamentary practice in 1801 and this became an excellent text for the conference in the world. later in 1876, jefferson summarized rules and practices for congress based on the small book of rules made by henry martyn robert, a civic-minded engineer. hisashi says that jefferson stated that the meaning of silence is agreement. i thought that this was very informative for most japanese people, because we don’t say anything in meetings and after a decision has been made we complain a lot. i think that we (including myself) don’t know how to continue discussion, sometimes criticizing one person and sometimes showing complete silence. i usually regret not having said anything in a meeting and my silence does not mean agreement, but i understand what hisashi is trying to say. especially as a woman, i am not trained to discuss in the democratic way reflecting my life. whenever i have voiced my opinion, i was hurt, because implicitly women are expected to be quiet. june 29, 2004 っ trash mountain outside neighbours stares i can’t avoid shame, stress, sweat, and strain. today is garbage day, and so i carried many bags using a cart, which we used to take poko to the park in, after poko developed a problem with his legs. i was so embarrassed at the amount of garbage i threw out today, i felt like my neighbours were staring at me the whole time. in yesterday’s evening news it was written that president clinton’s affair exemplifies every man’s fantasy. a newspaper used the japanese proverb, “suezen kuwanu wa otoko no haji” which means “it’s a shame for men if they do not eat food which is served by women.” in this instance, food is women who are willing to be eaten by men. many japanese men use this excuse for extramarital indiscretions; there is no equivalent proverb for women. june 30, 2004 ぜ happiness above brutal heat and sudden tears happiness below i saw an interesting article in the asahi newspaper’s reader’s column. an old woman was talking about her daily life of small happiness using the japanese proverb “ue mirya kirinai, shita mirya kirinai, minotake ni atta shiawase” (looking upwards, it is limitless, looking downwards, it is limitless, the happiness that suits your height is the best). i cannot find this concept in english. i can find many such similar proverbs in japanese, such as “kani wa koura ni awasete ana wo horu” (a crab digs its hole according to the size of its shell), “bun wo wakimaeru”(to know one’s place), and so forth. when i went to my korean friend’s house, i saw, on fancy paper, written “chisoku”(to know one’s legs). i think that this concept developed in asia through confucianism and stresses modesty, and controls http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci mika yoshimoto (2005) late-blooming student roots of loneliness run deep as i return home. transnational curriculum inquiry 2 (1) 2005 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 19 people to maintain the status quo of the country. i don’t like this proverb, because there is no small or big happiness. however, if she is saying that it is always ordinary people who find happiness in life, then i agree. the national language institute announced the rephrasing of thirty-three katakana english into japanese, such as “accountability”(setsumei sekinin), “tool”(dougu), “conference”(kaigi) and so on. these are very popular katakana english words. the national language institute, however, gave up on rewording such words as “online”, “data base”, “forum” and “mesena”. mesena is a loan word from french “mécénat”, and if rephrased into japanese, it might be very long. i don’t know why they don’t just leave people to their preferences and stop trying to control language. i understand that an english invasion of japanese is happening, but the country cannot control people’s minds, by only changing language. this evening, it was extremely warm and humid – still 30 degrees outside. i was clearing away my old pictures and suddenly tears came. miwa looked at me, sighed and said that you should not only count what you lost, but enjoy the present. it’s true; i am always too stupid not to notice something until it is gone. at that point, the words of roland barthes (1975) came to mind, “thus impossible to imagine a more tenuous, a more insignificant notation than that of ‘today’s weather’” (p.53). how can we assign importance to daily events? every experience has meaning, no matter how small. july 1, 2004 violet blue rose unnatural creation quivering alone the japanese whisky company suntory, created a blue rose by implanting the gene that leads to the synthesis of blue pigments in pansies. the picture in the newspaper looks more violet than sky blue. suntory explained that the reason why they created blue roses is because they believe that they add flavours to people’s lives and help sustain spiritual health. i am not sure if i think that a blue rose is beautiful. there might be some deep meaning as to why god did not create it, even if we don’t know why. i feel as though human beings are defiant in the face of nature, embracing this unnatural rose. i once wrote a poem called “blue rose”, remarking about how it looked so unreal, but with this unnatural creation, my poem has lost its flavour. july 2, 2004 ever since my youth, wanting success but i’ve found, i chose a long road i read in a magazine, the metaphor, “makeinu onna” (literally, the woman like a defeated dog). i did not know this phrase, so i asked miwa about it. miwa explained that these days, this metaphor is very popular in japan and everyone knows it except me. she says it refers to women who are over 30 and are unmarried and childless just like her. while she may laugh about it, i feel irritated by this expression. women who are over 25 and not married are called http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci mika yoshimoto (2005) late-blooming student roots of loneliness run deep as i return home. transnational curriculum inquiry 2 (1) 2005 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 20 “christmas cake”, because it means they are leftovers. women who have divorced once are called “batsu ichi” (one strike), like teachers writing x for the wrong answer at school. this metaphor, however, is not extended to single men. i asked my son, what do you call men who are older than 30 and not married and without children? he said that they are called “dokushin kizoku” (single aristocracy), because they are rich and enjoying an elegant lifestyle. what a male-centered language! the phrase “makeinu onna” was created by a 30+ unmarried, childless female novelist but feels positive about her life-style. however this word spread so quickly and became popular, because this word reflects social ideology in japan that its meaning was quickly twisted to the ideologys of society. bakhtin (1986) said, “our thought itself—philosophical, scientific, and artistic—is born and shaped in the process of interaction and struggle with other’s thoughts, and this cannot but be reflected in the forms that verbally express our thought as well.”(p.92) ivanič (1998) describes this intertexuality citing fairclough (1992), bakhtin (1986) and wertsch (1991) saying the idea that any instance of language is “double-voiced” means that, in addition to the writer’s own, unique role in shaping the discourse, it is “interanimated” by what bakhtin calls “social languages and speech genres”. (p.49) what will be japan’s social ideology if i were to say “makeinu otoko”? (a man like a defeated dog) i know that people never say that about men in a male-dominated world, but perhaps if the man were older than 40 with no job or money, then he might actually be referred to as “makeinu otoko”, because men are expected to provide financially. this idea of “loser” and “winner” seems to be so deeply rooted in japanese education that it makes students highly competitive and leaves little room for striving for variety. concerning power structures in japan between men and women, i think that foucault’s philosophy is insightful. if we only think that dominant groups like the rich ruling class, or men, or the social elite hold power, it will mislead people because identity, like power, are not fixed. “men” are not one unified group and i have heard of many men who have committed suicide after losing face, losing their job and losing their money. the power structure between men and women is really a complex one and changes in different situations. however, i dream the impossible dream of an equal society in japan between men and women, like in canada, because nobody calls women “makeinu” (a defeated dog) and canadians are generally more accepting of a variety of different lifestyles. according to jacques derrida (1982), western paradigms are logocentric and need constant deconstruction and the possibilities of presence within any contextual language are ever changing, leaving only a “trace” of the subject/object exists. while “makeinu onna” refers to an unmarried 30+ woman, recently in japan, advertisers have begun to target this age group to increase sales. in this way, the makeinu have become powerful just as the 16-24 male is powerful, because of consumerism. japanese social norms are very much reflected by the vast amounts of contradictory language. i am hoping that oriental thinking heads in the opposite direction, learning towards western logic without losing insight into the contradictions in life. japanese illogical language also requires deconstruction. while i am walking, i notice another difference between canada and japan. in canada, when i am crossing a crosswalk, the car trying to turn right waits very patiently for people to cross its street. so today i was crossing the road, expecting the car to wait, and i was nearly hit. everything here is busy, quick and competitive. today’s reader’s column introduces a 68-year-old woman’s opinion. she has raised her grandson for ten years, whose mother died from illness when the boy was 2. she says that education is like lacquer ware, demanding many layers of lacquer. she believes that the basic http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci mika yoshimoto (2005) late-blooming student roots of loneliness run deep as i return home. transnational curriculum inquiry 2 (1) 2005 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 21 child’s personality will be formed during their elementary age, and then need lacquering through their life. she is looking at herself who needs more lacquer. japanese craft lacquer ware has a long history from the edo period (1600-1868) and it is very beautiful. i was given a miso soup lacquer ware bowl as a wedding gift and the tasteful character and sense of quality only increases with time and the beauty deepens with use. it’s interesting that this plant, harmful to people, produces such an attractive beauty. i liked her metaphor, because i believe that our identity should be formed through time. i thought of her difficult job in her lacquer-coated golden years, and what type of distinctive colouring that might create for her. july 3, 2004 god is everywhere crying while we modify his most sacred sites kumano-kodou, (sacred sites and pilgrimage routes in the kii mountain range) was announced as a world heritage site by unesco. these pilgrimage routes reflect the fusion of shinto, rooted in the ancient tradition of nature worship in japan, and buddhism. the nature god (kami) lives in stones, trees, grasses, water, mountains and so on. shinto does not consider nature in opposition to human beings. nature is not under the control of men. nature and human beings live together worshiping god in the mountains and trees, no binary thinking. i think this religion respects human ecology, even though i think that for western people, this is a difficult concept to swallow. if you live in japan, frequent earthquakes and typhoons might make you realize that you cannot control nature. july 4, 2004 trapped in a culture where i must follow customs, or be called “bad wife” today, miwa went to work early in the morning. her job is to help old people and disabled people. even though in japan these jobs earn low pay despite the hard work involved, she has always been a girl who has wanted to help others and she does so happily. i feel that i must learn a lot from her displays of altruism. this afternoon i went to the bookstore and noticed that japanese bookstores are not like canadian ones; i cannot find any chairs or benches to sit on while i read. so i just looked up some interesting titles, and later on i did an internet search for them. one eye-catching title was, “vampire bats never forget their obligations”(literal translation from japanese). i wondered why the book was so oddly titled. it turned out that english title was “cheating monkeys and citizen bees” by lee dugatkin. dugatkin explains the cooperative behaviour of animals: baby-sitting mongooses and squirrels that willingly die to save relatives: fish that switch sexes in order to share reproductive duties: and vampire bats that regurgitate blood for their hungry mates. i thought that this japanese title really reflected the japanese obsession for meeting obligations. most wives of salary men feel a heavy duty and stress because of the habitual giving and taking that occurs in japan. this gift-giving custom is a seasonal occasion called “ochuugen” in summer and “oseibo” in winter where one gives gifts to bosses, coworkers, acquaintances and http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci mika yoshimoto (2005) late-blooming student roots of loneliness run deep as i return home. transnational curriculum inquiry 2 (1) 2005 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 22 teachers, who have helped you. this is done in a hierarchical fashion from lower ranking to higher-ranking. every department has special sections for these gifts and the common gifts range between 3000 yen to 5000 yen and come specially wrapped. we don’t give “ochuugen” to close friends. i hated this custom, because if you forget, you will be called “akusai” (a bad wife) who is lacking common sense of important obligation. we have a word “akusai”(a bad wife), but we don’t have a word for a bad husband. another word we use so often is “giri”(living with unending obligations). “giri” is built up through doing unsolicited favors in one’s network of mutual obligations. it seems to me that an obligation is an actual legal rule in japan that is a never-ending circle dance. whenever i violate this rule, i felt like that i am forced to feel shame toward other people. thus the japanese translation, “vampire bats never forget obligation” really make sense to me, as it truly reflects societal norms. in canada, i like to go to the salvation army and value village to find something cheap and good and i appreciate christianity’s free-gift concept. often in the summer my best friend andi and i will spend much of a day searching for garage sales and looking for good deals on useful things we want. this concept of reusing or recycling is not popular in japan. while in canada most people will only put useless or unwanted old things out at their garage sale, in japan the idea is to only put out nice things at a garage sale to ensure that your reputation and those of your neighbors are protected. doing what your neighbors do is very common in japanese culture; there is a deep-seeded “keeping up with the jones’” ideology in place. july 5, 2004 ┊ ‘til the day i die, i would like to liberate, the woman in me miwa suggested that i read the book, “shinumadeni shitai 10 no koto” (ten things to do before you die). ten people each write one short essay about the top ten things they would do if their doctor told them that they had only two months to live. reading this book, i realize that my present life is not so bad, because i am doing what i want to do right now. i was thinking about my top ten all afternoon long. i read the book, “tetsugaku annai” (the guidance to the philosophy) by tanizawa tetsuzou. he was criticizing sartre’s existentialism as leading to nihilism and decadence citing “the word of emile brehier in france.” before i used to believe everything said by those with authority, but i am happy now that i can read critically and i think that his interpretation is not mine. the first time became interested in sartre was during my university days. at that time simone de beauvoir’s book named “onna zakari” (literally be in the prime of womanhood/ memoirs of a dutiful daughter) was translated by tomiko asabuki and published. we, university students, were all fascinated about the new love-style of emotional and professional companionship between sartre and beauvoir. for me, this relationship looked ideal rather than traditional marriage and it was eye opening, because i knew of many marriages without love. once lovers become close, they become needy and romantic love disappears, and it might have been the case that sartre and beauvoir never lived with one another. life is full of contradictions and i thought about derrida’s performative contradiction. i disagree with brehier’s criticism of sartre, because he was always certain of his own value to society. sartre positively attended politically related events and didn’t act nihilistically. in japan youko kirishima seems similar to beauvoir, sans http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci mika yoshimoto (2005) late-blooming student roots of loneliness run deep as i return home. transnational curriculum inquiry 2 (1) 2005 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 23 kirishima’s children, in that they both had the courage to defy the roles their society imposed on them. kirishima, who wrote the book “lonely americans”, had three children without marrying and she traveled with her children all over america and reported on american society. her book won the ooya souichi award for nonfiction. since i have come to canada, i have encountered many relationships that exist without marriage called “living partners”. during my university days, even though beauvoir was my idol, i did not have the courage to resist traditional marriage, likely because i grew up in a traditional family while kirishima was raised by rather liberal parents. one can see how we are socially constructed, but our social beliefs are individually distinct because of our unique interactions with others. july 9, 2004 sweet granddaughter’s face, target of a rude remark; she smirked nervously today i went to the public bath with my second daughter mio and my granddaughter mine. the japanese bathhouse is not just a place for washing your body; it’s also a place to relax socially. there is a karaoke machine and people enjoy singing while bathing, or drinking beer while getting a massage. the bathhouse also includes many different types of bath, such as bubble, jug gee, herbal, ginseng and electric. today’s herbal bath was lavender and the colour was purple. while we were enjoying the outdoor hot spa, one bossy noisy old woman came and stared at mine’s face intensely and said, “your face doesn’t resemble your mother’s”. mine ignored her comments, scowling all the while, but the noisy old woman shouted, nodding her head, “ainoko dane” (you are a mixed). when she said this arrogantly, i felt offended by her prejudicial remarks against my granddaughter implying that she was no pureblood japanese. i felt so upset as i whispered to my daughter, “what an insensitive woman she is!” but my daughter was very cool-headed and said that she is accustomed to this attitude. mine is either treated like a young flower in a greenhouse, needing careful attention or is bullied by children’s honesty and cruelty judging her as being different. mine’s reaction was also levelheaded saying “heiki” (i don’t care). i felt sad thinking about how many times they got hurt by this type of narrow-minded person. jay says that japanese people are xenophobic. it seems to me as though japanese people are one of two extremes; either unconditionally welcoming or unwaveringly rejecting of outsiders. my second daughter is planning to come to canada within the next two years, because she does not want mine to enter the japanese educational system, because it is so standardized and it puts too much emphasis on getting the highest marks or being the best at everything. mine enjoys summer camp in ottawa, because nobody cares that her mother is japanese. when i was in junior high school, my best friend was korean. she did not give her real korean name and nobody knew. she whispered to me confessing her secret and said, “please keep this secret, because most of the japanese think that we are inferior to them”. i kept it secret, but one day she disappeared completely from the school and from the town. i don’t know what happened to her, but i felt that she was stigmatized. we played anne of green gables, naming trees and rivers with our own secret words. her family was very poor like most other korean families who were living in japan at the time and their jobs were limited to being janitors or butchers and the places they were allowed to live and go to school were also restricted. my friend never took me to her house and said, “ you are so lucky being http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci mika yoshimoto (2005) late-blooming student roots of loneliness run deep as i return home. transnational curriculum inquiry 2 (1) 2005 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 24 japanese”. whenever i remember her, i feel shame as a japanese person, because when i was a child, passing through this korean village, i felt scared, feeling a deep-rooted grudge, feeling that they were different. if i had known that she was a korean from the beginning, i am not sure i would have become her best friend, because at the time prevalent social perceptions and prejudices were great, even in a small town. by stigmatizing others, certain groups of human beings feel superior to other groups and we all have this dark side inside us. without facing this inner dark side, how can we criticize others? in japan, lower-class korean people were called “burakumin”(the hamlet people). prejudice in our country is ubiquitous. when i came to canada, i made friends with another korean person. but if i had stayed in japan, i am not sure if i, personally, could have cleaned off these social prejudices towards korean people. the phrase “burakumin” was, and still is taboo to talk about and one journalist who used this word in an article resigned due to a flood of telephone calls from the burakumin liberation league. “kusaimono niwa futa” (cover up smelly things with a lid). we cover up our discriminatory language, as if it did not even exist. i think of derrida’s argument against the death penalty, that cruelty is always associated with blood, and even if they solve this problem by using drugs for euthanasia, the cruelty still exists, because the person who is to administer the death penalty has the ability to choose whether or not to follow through with the act. we cover up many taboo phrases with acceptable language, and we cover up murder with a “clean” execution – how cruel! we are becoming desensitized to the nature of discrimination by covering it up with language that no longer acknowledges the essence of the language – denying the history associated with the word – erasing the image associated with the taboo symbol. why is it impossible for japanese people to break the ice on these taboo topics? karel van wolferen also points out that the phrase “shikata ga nai” (it cannot be helped.) places japanese people in a political cage and closes the doors of democracy (p. 29). july 10, 2004 grade two reunion speaking local dialect, going back in time i decided to attend a class reunion of my former elementary school in odawara, because i wanted to see my grandchildren and odawara is located between nagoya and tokyo. my eldest son who is working as a member of financial minister by the government was promoted and moved to tokyo recently, so i can go to tokyo after attending my class reunion. for me this is a 50-year reunion. i was worried whether or not i would be able to recognize people’s faces and names. i moved to tokyo when i was in the 5th grade, but i missed this school so much. the school was in a castle surrounded by a moat, so we crossed a round red bridge every day. around the moat, there was a beautiful cherry blossom boulevard. in spring, i worked busily to make cherry blossom wreaths. after school, i gave my leftover bread from school meals to the carp, which swam in the moat. i loved this school and i hated the school in tokyo. the teacher, now 78, whom i thought extremely beautiful when i was a child also came to the reunion and delighted in finding me, because i was the teacher’s pet. everybody wondered what i was doing in canada and i wanted to know about their lives just as eagerly. some of them recovered from severe illness and most of them had children, but amazingly only a few http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci mika yoshimoto (2005) late-blooming student roots of loneliness run deep as i return home. transnational curriculum inquiry 2 (1) 2005 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 25 people had grandchildren. they asked me to think of odawara as my hometown. i lived in many towns, but odawara is very special to me because of its beautiful natural surroundings and all of my friends from there. one of them said that his mother always scolded him saying “mika chan no youni narinasai!” (behave and study like mika!) i apologized to him and was surprised about my influence on his school life. he jokingly complained that because i kept a diary while we were in the same grade, his mother forced him as well. my mother was very eager to have me keep a diary, because a well-known elementary teacher of that time, muchaku seikyou of yamagata prefecture, made his students keep diaries as a method to express their life experiences called “seikatsu tsuzurikata”. one of his students, kouichi received an award from the minister of education for producing a essay of particular quality. his essay reflected the poor lifestyle that he and his family lived on a daily basis, and demonstrated social and political awareness, concepts, which were not commonly well to the labour class in the more feudal regions of 1920’s japan. muchaku seikyou’s style inspired thousands of parents, my mother included, to notice that education was the key to success. because of muchaku, seikatsu tsuzurikata became a fashionable educational trend during the 1920’s. this is well described in shigeru asanuma’s article, “the autobiographical method in japanese education”. asanuma cites freire (1970) in his article, “freire addressed the concept of “codification” which “mediates between the concrete and theoretical contexts of reality (p.214)” going on to say in his own words, “the tsuzurikata is one authentic method of accomplish this goal of codification.”(p.154) when i wrote as a child in the second grade, i would always write to appease my mother and father because of my father’s tuberculosis and never being able to truly bond with him. this was my main way of letting him know about me, so he could be proud of me. i was always so sad, having to wear the facemask, and talk through the glass, because it kept us apart, but mostly i was sad because i could not hug him. i wouldn’t have remembered this diary if my classmate had not have reminded me today. suddenly hearing about my diary again brought back all the memories that were attached to it such as my father’s smile while reading my diary, or his reaction when he found out i was doing ballet, and remembering how eagerly he wanted me to dance for him. all i wanted was to make my father smile. i wish more japanese teachers would have their students do seikatsu tsuzurikata, because it fills in the distance between teacher and student, especially in japan where teachers just teach, and students just listen. i was very comfortable speaking the odawara dialect with friends who know me without the feeling of obligation to speak reservedly. feeling at home, i promised to see them again, even though i forgot the japanese custom of pouring drinks as being the woman’s duty, but they kindly turned a blind eye to that. one of my classmates handed out many pictures with the attached resumé of his daughter expecting soon an arranged marriage because he was worried his daughter will soon be 30 and still be unmarried. those of my generation seem to be slow to adapt to change; the fact that most young people these days do not prefer arranged marriage, for example. one of my country’s famous poets, ishikawa takuboku, wrote, “furusato wa toku ni arite omoumono”(your hometown becomes hometown, only when you are far away). if i had become close to them, i am not sure how i would have felt, because clearly i am experiencing vygotsky’s (1962) cultural historical theory of psychological development and development of the personality. culture is a learned behaviour and my culture is an ever-changing flow, like everyone else’s, but my flow seems faster than most others in japan, because of my experience mediating two cultures. i think that i have experienced many identity transitions. http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci mika yoshimoto (2005) late-blooming student roots of loneliness run deep as i return home. transnational curriculum inquiry 2 (1) 2005 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 26 july 11, 2004 elders hanging on, pensions being slashed away, japan is so cruel i had a nice time with my grandchildren in tokyo. this morning, the topic of conversation was the result of the upper house election. the popular prime minister koizumi of “jimintou” (the liberal democratic party) received only 49 seats and “minshuto” (the democratic party) got 50 seats. this means that the minshuto boom emerged while the koizumi votes crashed. my eldest son is very critical about japanese politicians as well as the mass media. he says that they have no vision of how to lead japan and their only concern is for keeping power. today’s newspaper’s title is “sabakareta shusho no ogori” (passed judgment by people to a prime minister’s conceit). however, when the koizumi boom occurred, all the mass media gave all the compliments to him. my son said, japanese proverb, “kateba kangun, makereba zokugun” (if you win, your war is the government army, if you lose, your war is a rebel army, similar to the saying, “history is written by the victors”). three years ago, when i returned to japan, tanaka makiko in the same party supported koizumi and declared, “koizumi is both strong and flexible, i act as his wife, mother and sister”. however, this time, tanaka says, “he turned out to be an unexpectedly inferior and defective product and i will recall and scrap him”. the japanese election is an image election without any vision. the recently passed pension reform plan threatened the lives of those people who depend on their pension. on the way back to japan on the airplane, i had already heard these complaints. japan is an aging country. july 15, 2004 ー cherry blossoms and chrysanthemums, nurtured by fallen soldiers’ blood i decided to go to awaji island, where my parents’ graves are. on the way to awaji, i visited osaka city where my cousin opened a hospital for children. i stayed one night and we talked late until just after midnight. mihoko is a 72-year-old female doctor and these days she travels a lot. her husband passed away when she was in her 60’s from cancer and recently north korea reminded her of how her husband hated the concept of the emperor. she says that north korea had a terrible general, and we had god. her husband was severely beaten in the training camps during world war ii. he hated cherry blossoms and chrysanthemum through out his life. in april, most of japanese people go to watch the cherry blossoms bloom and fall from the trees. no matter how many times she asked to go, he insisted that ume-blossom viewing or peach-blossom viewing was better. cherry blossoms, which are considered to be the souls of samurai, reminded him of the many japanese soldier who died as kamikaze pilots. many young duty-bound soldier were forced to die beautifully like a cherry blossom scatter and were forced to say “tennou heika banzai” (bless the emperor!) by the nation. her husband, ichiro, believed that young men’s deaths are the murder of cherry blossoms that symbolize the nation. another flower the chrysanthemum is the symbol of the imperial http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci mika yoshimoto (2005) late-blooming student roots of loneliness run deep as i return home. transnational curriculum inquiry 2 (1) 2005 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 27 household. usually we decorate funerals with many white chrysanthemums, but my cousin uniquely displayed white carnations, roses and freesias instead of chrysanthemums respecting ichiro’s will. when mihoko was a small child, every japanese school had a tiny building like a cabinet named “houanden” (respected castle). behind the locked door of this small building, there was a picture of the emperor and empress. when someone passed the building they had to bow deeply in front of it. even children who were playing tag had to bow while passing. if the school was on fire, the principal’s job was to rescue the picture of the emperor and empress from the locked cabinet. one principal who failed to do this actually committed suicide. in japan, the topic of emperor is still taboo, because if you even talk about the emperor, radical supporters of the emperor would look to do harm to you. mihoko often worries when she thinks of the dictatorial situation in north korea. furthermore she wonders how japan can be democratic, without allowing one to speak freely about the emperor. i thought about the book, “history of madness” by foucault. foucault’s analysis of history from different lenses is insightful. looking back on our history, when did the emperor become “god”? why do we not delve into the original reason for believing that “the emperor is god”? we should not stifle discussion that attempts to uncover the connection between social perceptions and the power derived from these social practices. strathern, in his book “derrida in 90 minutes”, mentions that derrida insists that the interpretation of history should be open. july 16, 2004 ㊪ awaji island near my parents’ grave, at dawn i see birds flocking when i arrived at my parents’ hometown, awaji island, the first thing i had to do was turn on the water and gas. then i opened all of the windows and aired many futons, and put clothes out to dry in the sun. soon after that i went to greet my next-door neighbour, an old woman of 78 years, with a gift i brought from canada. each year when i am about to return back to canada she drops by to give me a gift which is always double the price of the one i give to her, it’s an ever-ending routine. each time i receive a present from her, i feel guilty and so every year the presents i give to her are becoming more expensive. my daughter suggested, “what if you just said hello when we arrive, and then when we are about to leave, we drop a gift in front of her gate, not allowing her time to give you such an expensive gift?” however, the problem is not so easy as my daughter sees it. if i violate japanese customs, our neighbour will feel guilty and frustrated. good relations with neighbours are always a difficult matter in japan, even though my neighbour on awaji island is a wonderful lady. today i also went to visit my mother and father’s grave to tell them about how my life is now. they died when i was a young university student. my mother died from stomach cancer and my father died from tuberculosis, but i suspect his death was accelerated due to my mother’s sudden death and the shock it caused him. their house became my house after their death, and so it holds special meaning to me. the location of my small house on awaji island is very convenient one for swimming, being surrounded by the ocean, so every evening i go swimming to see the beautiful sunset. at night from my window, i can see a small castle on the top of the mountain, lit up by artificial lights, and i am overwhelmed by all the memories that i had with my children when i was raising them here. i was always alone with children in this house. in http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci mika yoshimoto (2005) late-blooming student roots of loneliness run deep as i return home. transnational curriculum inquiry 2 (1) 2005 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 28 japan, most of salary men of my generation are too busy to spend holidays with their family. i am glad that my eldest son spends his holidays with his family. i was so restless tonight that i could not fall asleep until dawn because i could not help but think of all the memories of my parents and how i could never return all the love they gave to me. july 17, 2004 if like a stray dog, i could do what’er i please, then i could be free i read yesterday’s newspaper, because i did not have time to read while driving. a full-page spread opinion piece about the phrase “makeinu onna” (a woman like a defeated dog) appeared in the asahi newspaper. the opinions of kitahara minori (essayist) and ushikubo megumi (marketing writer), two 30+ women and peter frankle (mathematician), a man who was born in hungary, and is now living in japan were printed. it was funny that a hungarian man’s opinion appeared instead of a japanese man’s. basically minori suggested living like a stray dog, not being afraid of what people say, and megumi proposed changing the phrase from “makeinu” to “ohitorisama” (honorable alone). peter deplores drawing a line to distinguish women as being winners or losers. he also points out that binary thinking is influenced by the japanese education system being completely standardized. to think about a postmodernist curriculum, we need to change these metaphors, such as “kachigumi” (the group of winners) and “makegumi”(the group of losers). jacques derrida (1988) says, “every concept that lays claim to any rigor whatsoever implies the alternative of “all or nothing.” even if in “reality” or in “experience” everyone believes he knows that there is never “all or nothing,” a concept determines itself only according to “all or nothing.” (p.116) i married at the age of 22, being afraid of my mother’s expectations and social pressure and in the following years had four children. in japan, the wife is expected to have at least one child within the first three years of marriage, or she will be called umazume (a barren (lit. a stone) woman) and i was not eager to be thought of as a barren woman. i relied upon my husband for all of my happiness, and it turned out to be a big mistake. i felt like a loser in my marriage, even though from the perspective of others, i seemed like a winner. helen keller managed to enter this “linguistic universe”, connecting the word “water” to the sensory experience of water itself. however, i feel that this “linguistic universe” establishes cultural concepts, which are beyond our control. bell hooks (1994) suggests thinking of education as the practice of freedom against racial, sexual and cultural boundaries. i wish that young women in japan would choose their own way of life, keeping their distance from these misguided words. july 19, 2004 like a fish on land a political ordeal tricky to survive http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci mika yoshimoto (2005) late-blooming student roots of loneliness run deep as i return home. transnational curriculum inquiry 2 (1) 2005 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 29 this morning i received a call from an old friend who is the wife of the professor of law at nagoya university. our conversation shifted from our family’s news to the news of the “soga” family who returned to japan today. there was a rumor that people were missing and that north korea had been kidnapping people. my friend says that she has never believed until recently that north korea could do such a cruel thing. hitomi soga (43-year-old) in a light gray suit held her husband’s hand firmly, an uncommon behavior among old couples in japan, reminding us that she is american now. the french kiss that she gave her husband shocked most japanese people. her husband, jenkins (64 years-old) looked frail but handsome, holding his walking cane, and wearing a dark gray suit. their two daughters in a simple white shirts and black skirts look like healthy north korean university students. when i think of their checkered life, i feel angry towards north korea for kidnapping people as hostages for the purposes of espionage. before the upper house election, soga hitomi’s story was very prominent, because prime minister koizumi expected his efforts to allow for hitomi’s return to japan in order to give his party an advantage in the upcoming election. koizumi even had an airplane chartered and waiting for them. jenkins, his wife and children might be used as diplomatic bargaining chips and their destiny lies in the hands of those who have political power. i think of hitomi’s cultural transitions from japan to north korea and as an american wife. she looks very strong with her determination to live in japan with her family and i wish that she could live in japan peacefully apart from political involvement. however, i worry about her daughters’ adaptation to japanese society and hitomi’s psychologically and culturally calculated transformation since 1978 caused by her abduction. soga hitomi is called by her maiden name instead of hitomi jenkins in order to appeal to the mass media and to the people, portraying a japanese person who needs help from the japanese government. their tearful reunion makes me think about the relationship between the nation and its citizens. july 23, 2004 that which kills most is not just one person, but is public opinion today’s newspaper amazed me, because in it i read that last year 34427 people committed suicide, the highest number on record since 1978, increasing mainly among those people in their 30’s, 4603 people and 40’s, 5419 people. a total of 8900 peoples’ motives were believed linked to debts, slow business, unemployment and other financial woes. the influence of the japanese recession on people’s lives is severe. i wondered about the suicide rate in canada and checked the internet for information. to my surprise, in 1997, 3681 canadians took their lives. although japan’s population is only 4 times larger, suicide rates are ten times higher. clearly, this number indicates there is something about japanese society and that for some reason; more people are willing to take their own lives. japanese men choose to die rather than lose face to their family, ashamed of their inability to bear the duty of earning money for their family, which is the man’s role in japanese society. i don’t think that these numbers are not suicides, but rather homicides. they are led to death by the society just like “kamikaze” pilots. prime minister koizumi is known as an admirer of “kamikaze” pilots and i understand their love of their nation, but what a dangerous society we are building and living in! on the http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci mika yoshimoto (2005) late-blooming student roots of loneliness run deep as i return home. transnational curriculum inquiry 2 (1) 2005 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 30 surface of all beautiful things, politeness, arts, technologies, dedicated responsibilities and self-sacrifices, but are we paying too high a price to establish this way of life? july 24, 2004 バ a naïve mind is more guilty than the fraud that it surrenders to i called my granddaughter who is visiting her grandparents in vancouver, because today is her 8th birthday. she was watching “the magic school bus”, a science program for children. in japan, we don’t have many good children’s program like we do in canada. science programs, in particular, are scarce. my second daughter, mio, says that the difference is probably because science is not introduced until the fifth grade in japan. but, when my granddaughter attended a second grade class in ottawa for three months, she was provided with scientific activities and loved the experience. why do we choose to hold off the study of science until the fifth grade? the target of most commercial broadcasters is to obtain a high audience rating, presenting shows of a violent nature in an effort to appeal to the viewers. the role of japan’s sole public broadcaster, nhk, is to provide appropriate programming for children, promote japanese culture, and be responsible to the people. sadly, one of today’s top newspaper articles was about fraud on the part of an nhk producer. the article explained how katsumi isono, one of nhk’s top executives, was fired for embezzling $430,000 in station funds for false production costs over the last five years. isono was a well-known producer of nhk’s annual year-end song festival called “kouhaku utagassen” (the red & white show) which nearly half of japan watches annually. from this program alone, annually, isono was accused of stealing $55,000(us) from 1996 to 2000. fees paid by every household tv owner fund nhk, and so the responsibility for ethical business practices is very important. this year in japan, there have been 38,000 cases of fraud-related crimes. (47% increase from last year) when i think about fraud, i also think about the japanese proverb, “uso mo houben” (lies are a convenient tool to make life simple) because i believe that fraud is a culturally rooted crime. i also think about the proverb, “nagaimono niwa makarero” (it’s better to be on the good side of those in power) while nhk has a responsibility to the people to do business ethically, there is always the opportunity for those in power to be corrupted, as the saying goes, “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. this year, i heard of two instances of fraud, which were of particular interest. the first one, targeting primarily elderly people, is called “ore, ore sagi”. (it’s me! – fraud) in this instance of fraud, the criminal poses as a relative of the senior citizen and says that there is some sort of emergency and that money is needed right away. in shock, the elderly person immediately brings their cash to the bank to send to their “relative”. this need to solve a problem with money is culturally rooted, and involves wanting to avoid shame, and meet cultural obligations. last year, over 2,300,000,000 yen was misappropriated in over 4000 incidents of fraud. it should be noted that “ore” is the exclusively male way of saying “me”, while “watashi” is a more female-leaning way of saying “me”. because japanese society is more male-centered, with the belief that men are more valuable, it is always “ore, ore sagi” and never “watashi, watashi sagi”. the second incident involved an “imperial family wedding”. a man claiming to be prince arisugawa of the imperial family sent out 2000 invitations to celebrities, managers, http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci mika yoshimoto (2005) late-blooming student roots of loneliness run deep as i return home. transnational curriculum inquiry 2 (1) 2005 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 31 and other people who might have money. when the day finally came, 400 guests showed up to a private club where the ceremony took place, with the bride in a beautiful kimono and the groom in traditional formal court attire. one man alone gave 300000 yen, approximately 3500 canadian dollars. in addition to other gifts they received, over seventy people had their photo taken with the “prince” and “princess” themselves, each for 10000 yen (approximately 120 dollars). in total, the couple ended up receiving $150,000 in total. the fake royals were eventually arrested in 2003. even though the royal family is just a figurehead for the japanese state, any connection to the royal family is still a prestigious honour. blind ambition drove 400 people to give money to two “royals” so that they could say that they were at a royal wedding. even though talk of the emperor is taboo, there still exists a silent respect and admiration for the royal family who, after wwii, fell from divine right, to simple human being again. one interesting phenomenon in japan that has grown in recent years, is the attention given to so-called “foreigner crimes”. when i arrived in japan this year, i had heard from many people about this and reports of a foreign crime wave have been all over print news and authorities are wondering what to do about it. in many cases, this news is leading to wild ideas and increased arrests of foreigners who happen to be near crime scenes. police investigations in japan can legally deny suspects a call to a lawyer or consulate for two days and worse still, detain them another 21 days on the approval of a judge. the us state department reported credible cases of abuse, both physical and psychological, last year, making accidental arrest in japan a very serious issue. in 2000, tokyo governor ishihara told the self defense forces of nerima that in the event of an earthquake, they should round up illegal foreigners in the event that they incite rioting. the governor did not however, mention how to identify an illegal foreigner. other such similar incidents such as tokyo metropolitan police flyers, which said, “call the police of you hear someone speaking chinese”; illustrate the racial profiling prevalent in japan today. moreover, this propaganda is very dangerous to japan in that its already existent xenophobic social traits are becoming more overt and developing into racism. japan must understand that its much of its population is aged and that foreign immigrants are essential for continued growth. august, 1, 2004 miwa’s switching roles her attentive mothering encourages tears my return flight to canada was this afternoon, so i had a lot of time to say goodbye to miwa. miwa acted like my mother, checking everything, my passport, my ticket, my souvenirs and so on. i was overwhelmed, thinking of how lonely she’d be after i left. i know that i cannot always be there with her to help her, and i’m saddened that i cannot be there to talk to her and spend time with her. i hope that my way of living teaches her life lessons for better or for worse. when i enter customs at the airport, i found myself crying, because nobody guaranteed that i would be able to return again next year in good physical health. i appreciated being able to spend this summer with her and thanked her for everything she said, and promised to live true to the philosophy of the book she gave me; to live enthusiastically in the moment with a positive outlook. through september, i will be preparing for my phd. comprehensive http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci mika yoshimoto (2005) late-blooming student roots of loneliness run deep as i return home. transnational curriculum inquiry 2 (1) 2005 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 32 examination diligently and her smile and encouragement are good enough reasons for me to do my best. as i approached the ticket gate, my mood switched from that of a mother to an independent woman again as i began my trip back to canada. suddenly, our stewardess announced that there would be a delay for an indefinite period of time due to mechanical problems with the plane. this caused considerable panic among some of the passengers. japanese tourists’ responded mostly by making call after call on their cell phones, complaining to ticket vendors, and regretting that they did not buy a ticket with jal, (japan airlines) anxious to find another flight without having to speak english. of most couples that were calling, the husband was interacting with the japanese stewardess who was talking to the canadian ticket vendor – quite a stretch to communicate. most japanese people are not fluent english speakers but they often go to canada or the u.s. on sightseeing tours. while the sightseeing company does most of the organization, if something goes wrong, they are instantly helpless. this inability to speak english causes difficulties when trying to deal with unforeseen difficulties. compared to japanese tourists, most foreigners were cool and calm, reading a book or magazine to kill the time. in another contrast to the older japanese tourists, the younger japanese exchange students sat around in a circle on the floor and started to play cards. their calm but playful attitudes, using spare time in such a manner, made me happy because the young generation seems to be more flexible and confident. three hours later the captain reported a hydraulic leak and air canada delivered snacks. another three hours later, the captain finally decided to fly. at the airport in vancouver, i waited, exhausted, another 5 hours due to a lost connecting flight. when i finally arrived at ottawa international airport, it was very cool outside and the taxi driver told me that we had a very cold summer. japan’s summer was the hottest of recent memory, so it was an interesting juxtaposition. i felt so relaxed and at home in this cool weather, being able to talk to the taxi driver (in japan taxi drivers don’t speak to their customers) that japan seemed so far away and unreal. i arrived home to find that my garden was surviving with some unknown yellow flowers growing that i did not plant. my neighbour’s mountain ash was like a decorated xmas tree with brilliant red berry-like fruits. i also noticed that many apples had been falling into my backyard. i was excited by the possibility that i would be able to make apple jam very soon. life is certainly unpredictable and life is worth living. acknowledgements i wish to thank my phd supervisor dr barbara graves for her guidance throughout my studies as well as asking me to write this diary. thanks also to dr patricia palulis who kindly lent me much reading material, and gave me many insightful ideas for which i am deeply grateful. i am also grateful to dr raymond leblanc for his guidance and suggestions. more thanks go to andi gray for her friendship and words of encouragement. finally, thanks to michael blakely for editing much of my work and being able to help convey my thoughts in a way reflecting the nature of the in-between space that i now inhabit. “a lingering note” (pinar, 2005) tuesday, may 23rd, 2005 as i look back on my summer diary from last year, i feel as though there is one more experience i want to write about, the process of writing the diary itself. this diary began as an http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci mika yoshimoto (2005) late-blooming student roots of loneliness run deep as i return home. transnational curriculum inquiry 2 (1) 2005 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 33 assignment from my phd supervisor. it involved reading a number of books, all of which are listed in the bibliography of my summer diary paper, and to write about my everyday experiences, while integrating elements of the theories i was reading. it was also my last assignment prior to my comprehensive examination of last december, and was intended to prepare me for that task. my original intention was to read one book per day, however this eventually proved impossible given the social and familial obligations during my vacation. this diary was originally written in japanese and translated into english by myself. the only change was the translation of the text from japanese to english along with any grammatical changes that were required and i would also add that no entry was excluded. deep in a dark well like a frog, i want to leap over language walls inonaka no kawazu taikai o shirazu (a proverb: a frog in a well knows nothing of the great ocean) pinar (2001) says, “it is clear that autobiography is not just about oneself but also about the other. it is, in leigh gilmore’s (1994) phrase, a technology of self-production. it is, as well, a technology of the production of other.” (p.2). when i finished this summer diary, i could see the socially constructed aspects of my personal experiences, and my “technology of the production of other” in a different way. janet l. miller (1990) says, “thus the statement ‘the personal is political’ (delauretis, 1986) is a way of understanding oneself in relation to shifting interpersonal and political context, and thus as multiple and sometimes even selfcontradictory (p.95)”. i can now see that when i write about myself, i write about the other because i can only claim i exist in relation to others in sartre’s sense of existentialism. pinar (1975) says, “sartre writes of the anthropological context in which existenz dwells. that one finds oneself, finds self-consciousness, already constituted, but existentially free to constitute the constituted, is able to remake what is already made.” (p.407). by writing my autobiography, i can free some of my socially constructed self but at the same time i find multiple selves in the in-between space that is full of tension and contradictions. my diary reflects the nature of my in-between space, filled with many contradictions. for example, while the japanese exchange student that i met on the plane ride to japan disappointed me, i was still pleased at the reaction of the japanese students who handled the delay maturely during my trip back to canada. the young generation is not a unitary group, consisting of many unique personalities, obviously all not the same. my contradictory feelings reflect the importance of a new space that is the context of transnational living. my everyday life, which is beyond my control, reflects the significance of the connection between language, context, and contact. sumiko nishizawa (2002) says that we learn the world through translation and that something is unavoidably missing. she says that the imperialistic nature of translation is unavoidable due to the existence of untranslatable words, however it’s effect can be minimalized if the translator is willing to allow elements of the original work to seep into the finished product, permitting cultural elements to remain. i also learned about the world through translation. the problem is regarding the textbooks that are used in japanese schools disregard some of the atrocities committed by the japanese military in the past against china and korea. i never heard about comfort women in korea until i came to canada, this is http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci mika yoshimoto (2005) late-blooming student roots of loneliness run deep as i return home. transnational curriculum inquiry 2 (1) 2005 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 34 another example of events being obscured from our sight. because we, japanese people, learned history through translation, there are many parts of history that i do not know about. i am interested in the missing parts, being the frog in the well, i want to know about my “blind spots”. noel gough (2003) explains this under the subheading “how can we think globally?” gough says, “in wagner’s schema(1993, p.16), what we ‘know enough to question but not answer’ are blank spots; what we ‘don’t know well enough to even ask about or care about’ are blind spots—‘areas in which existing theories, methods, and perceptions actually keep us from seeing phenomena as clearly as we might’” (p.63). his question, “how can we think globally without enacting some form of epistemological imperialism?” is an important citation for internationalizing curriculum inquiry and ‘the third place’. ぜ deep within my heart countless faces of myself staring back at me according to lemke (1995), the traditional view of seeing identity, as a biographical identity may not entirely agree with one’s temperamental characteristics. lemke refers to personalities in the plural sense and bakhtin’s (1981) concept of multiple voices supports lemke’s claim. in this genre theory, bakhtin says that when we speak, we do so in the role of one of our voices. in my diary i speak as a woman, a mother, a teacher, and a student. bakhtin calls this phenomenon, “the speaking personality” and lemke (1995) refers to it as “the social individual”. tomi suzuki (1996) says, “since the late 1960’s, western critics have attacked the assumption of the ‘self’ or ‘subject’ as an a priori, self-sufficient entry. lévi-strauss, barthes, foucault, lacan, derrida, and others have questioned the notion of the subject as a controlling consciousness and the ultimate origin of meaning” (p.3). what we may speak as depends on our cultural, language and ideological background. dorinne k kondo’s (1990) “crafting selves” describes selves that were inseparable from context. she says, “above all, my japanese friends, co-workers, and neighbours helped me to see and to appreciate the complicated tangle of ironies and ambiguities we create for ourselves, and that are created for us, as we craft our selves and our lives within shifting fields of power” (p.308). dorothy e. smith’s (1987) book “the everyday world as problematic” also explains the situation of women as problematic. she says, “we had thought that women would be treated equally in law, in business, in jobs, and so on, were it not for distortions of rational process created by men’s sexism. but the deeper our analysis, the better our knowledge of history, the longer of the experience of the sources and modes of resistance to change, the more visible also is the gender subtext of the rational and impersonal” (p.4). in my diary, linguistic terms of “makeinu onna”(a woman like a defeated dog) and equivalent terms of “dokushin kizoku” (a single man enjoying a life of aristocracy) is itself a powerful description of patriarchy. i have anger towards these metaphors, although i have both “makeinu onna” and “dokushin kizoku” in my family. trinh t. minh-ha (1989) says, "writing weaves into language the complex relations of a subject caught between the problems of race and gender and the practice of literature as the very place where social alienation is thwarted differently according to each specific context"(p.43). my writing inevitably shows my specific context. understanding each specific context and the specific language use buried within the ideology of english and japanese extracts the complexity of the shifting identity construction of the culture from http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci mika yoshimoto (2005) late-blooming student roots of loneliness run deep as i return home. transnational curriculum inquiry 2 (1) 2005 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 35 which it is derived. pinar (2004) uses the term “currere” (latin infinitive of curriculum) to describe a method of self-study through autobiography that allows one to better understand oneself which should lead to action. i hope that my diary invokes a feeling of solidarity with women worldwide who are struggling in situations of inequality. pinar (1975) comments, “before we learn to teach in such a way, we must learn how to learn in such a way. and this means that we teachers, and this has been implicit throughout, must become students, students of currere, which is to say students of ourselves, before we can truthfully say we understand teaching in this sense” (p.412). why was i so desperate in japan, unable to exist outside of my home? this sort of question serves as a guide along the road of my mental pilgrimage in the third place. through my currere, my own individuation, i want to pay attention to education that has persisting problems of gender, race, age, and class. in the same way autobiography creates an in-between space, education too has a role in creating that space that allows one to seek the contradictions and tensions of prejudice. in the dark cellar we are all bottles of wine of unknown flavour now i am drawn into the third place of which homi bhabha (1990) describes, “but for me the importance of hybridity is not to be able to trace two original moments from which the third emerges, rather hybridity to me is the ‘third space’ which enables other positions to emerge. this third space displaces the histories that constitute it, and sets up new structures of authority, new political initiatives, which are inadequately understood through received wisdom”(p.211). aoki (2005) describes this third place as an in-between space of vertical in which meaning is fixed and a horizontal space in which meaning is constantly shifting. aoki says, “as for me, it is a site of metonymy—metaphoric writing, metonymic writing” (p.429). aoki stresses the importance of theorizing about curriculum in the place between curriculumas-plan and curriculum-as-lived. from the post-modernist stance, the body and the mind are not separate, and lived experiences have value. michel de certeau (1984) explains the practice of everyday life, “this goal will be achieved if everyday practices, ‘ways of operating’ or doing things, no longer appear as merely the obscure background of social activity, and if a body of theoretical questions, methods, categories, and perspectives, by penetrating this obscurity, make it possible to articulate them”(p.xi). my everyday life and practices have become my craft, but at the same time my social background has already created them as a means for me to create. we cannot escape our social construction, the way of life that we take part in. pinar & irwin (2005) says, “the educational point is not to overcome the tension of the zone between curriculum-as-plan and curriculum-as-lived-experience; the educational point, aoki teaches us, is to dwell ‘aright within it’”(p.15). my diary is exactly that, my everyday lived curriculum, “aright” in an aokian sense in which my conflicts occur when multiple discourses confront each other in a struggle for identity. thus, the story of curriculum work might also be the story of “self”, and for myself in particular, the story of a japanese woman’s voice in my diary which assists me in my third place. i came to canada at the age of 50 and every day was a painful struggle to figure out how i might exist here. in order to live transnationally, i must live in the doubling space of “home/lessness” and being lost/gained. in zen philosophy, “emptiness is fullness”. mary yukari waters (2003) describes http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci mika yoshimoto (2005) late-blooming student roots of loneliness run deep as i return home. transnational curriculum inquiry 2 (1) 2005 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 36 the process of women losing their security and identity by citing masahide’s poem, “since my house burned down/ i now own a better view/ of the rising moon”: / / ぜ (p.21). although i did not write much criticism of canadian culture in this summer diary, i will be looking to do so in my upcoming phd thesis. marylin low and pat palulis (2004) write, “i read internationalizing texts of currere as liminal, un/translatable spaces, spaces troubled within multiple and complex losses and gains of language-in-flux (p.10). i have found that haiku is my liminal and un/translatable space. though i want to cry english tears come painfully so i cry haiku. through the window, while i am writing this, the petals of apple blossoms are floating on the wind. the color of the flower looks the same as the cherry blossom but the feeling it evokes is different, one is cheerful and the other is sad. i respect ichiro-san’s hatred of the cherry blossom and chrysanthemum. i hear the scream of the japanese soldiers who did not want to die like a cherry blossom falling to the ground. is there a sacred war for justice? who judges? pinar (2004) says, “in the concept of “private-and-public intellectual,” it is possible, even necessary, to combine the two conceptions of our pedagogical work……such autobiographical testimony required a “double consciousness” to remind oneself and others that this world was not the world, that everything could change, that someday everything will change” (p.250). my summer diary is my love and anger towards both countries with the hope that all wars will end and that we will be able to improve equality among men and women. for me, haiku is a space in which i can cry silently, that which i cannot express in english. in haiku, i dwell within the space of ambiguity. haiku might be my third space, my hybrid space. a brief autobiography explaining my title suddenly spit blood, redness permeates the floors staining it for life. born in tokyo in 1943, the first child to my parents. two years later, my younger brother was born. in 1946 my father was diagnosed with tuberculosis and was quarantined in a sanatorium. he just smiles softly never crying for mother my little brother. http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci mika yoshimoto (2005) late-blooming student roots of loneliness run deep as i return home. transnational curriculum inquiry 2 (1) 2005 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 37 my younger brother also contracted tuberculosis and died shortly after my father was put in medical isolation. much of my primary and high school life was spent enduring hardships. with my father in the hospital, the pressure of achieving well in school, and the rebirth of japan after world war ii, it was not a simple existence. my mother worked hard to be independent, running a kindergarten. my mother encouraged me to get an education and i wanted to be as independent as she was. after graduating from high school, i wrote the entrance exam for sophia university and was accepted. i was fortunate because only 7 of the 50 students selected were women. with trembling fingers she penned a sign – “gratitude” and drifted away. during my last year of studies at sophia, my mother was diagnosed with cancer and so i had to take on extra duties in addition to my studies. i visited her hospital room daily and often slept there to keep her company and take care of her needs. i was able to graduate, despite the extra responsibilities, and 1 month after graduation i got married. the reason i married so quickly after graduation is because my mother wanted to see me get married. she worried about me becoming, “ ” (unsold merchandise). at that time, the age of 25 was the limit of what was socially acceptable as far as being single went. after graduation i applied to the asahi newspaper for a job as a journalist. that year, however, they only hired men, and i felt disheartened by this gender discrimination. of all the women in my graduating class, none of us were awarded jobs with any newspaper in japan. the practice at the time was to not hire female journalists, and so i was not so much surprised when i did not receive the job, as much as i was discouraged. given this implicit disapproval of my gender, i grudgingly accepted becoming a housewife. one year into my marriage, my mother died of cancer one month before her fiftieth birthday. during that awful year, she did not complain even once about the pain. on her deathbed, even though she could not speak and her hands were trembling, she asked me to give her a pencil and paper. she wrote the word , “kansha” which means appreciation or thankfulness. the word itself is composed of the characters meaning feeling and apology. i feel as though there was a subtext to the message she wrote, apologizing to me for having to take care of her. in japanese culture, the concept of apologizing is deeply rooted in the concept of humility and modesty. even when thanking someone we often say “sumimasen” (i’m sorry). the social expectation placed upon japanese women of that era was that she should sacrifice everything she had for her family. i would be interested to see how strong that expectation is today with the latest generation of young japanese women. my child cries for help i grasp my mother’s ordeal at the crack of dawn http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci mika yoshimoto (2005) late-blooming student roots of loneliness run deep as i return home. transnational curriculum inquiry 2 (1) 2005 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 38 during the course of my marriage, i was fortunate enough to raise four children. my marriage began to crumble after 8 years. when i reached the age my mother was when she died, i began thinking to myself whether i, like her, could write “kansha” when i passed away. i felt as though, to accomplish what she accomplished, i would have to be independent like she had always encouraged me to be. during my university career, because it was an international catholic university, many of my courses were taught in english. i had a decent understanding of english so i had decided that i would teach part-time at an english-language conversation school. i had been reading the book; “eigo wa onna wo kaeru” (trans. english changes a woman) and i felt deeply influenced by what it had to say. the authors of book were simultaneous interpreters at conferences. they said that learning another language is to reveal and learn that culture’s ideology. having read this book several times and working at parttime at this english school exposed me to the cultural ideology associated with english and it began to influence how i thought. being able to make my own money, the exposure to a cultural ideology in which woman have freedom and recalling the encouragement of my mother all helped to nurture my independence. i finally decided that i needed to be independent and needed to make a big leap in my life. http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci mika yoshimoto (2005) late-blooming student roots of loneliness run deep as i return home. transnational curriculum inquiry 2 (1) 2005 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 39 tulip festival weaving a dream of friendship discarding the past. kiyomizuno butaikara tobioriru: lit. leaping off kiyomizu stage. (kiyomizu is a famous theatre in kyoto) (to gather up all of one’s courage before dashing into a new stage in one’s life.) i remember the day my pen fell down on the paper, pointing to ottawa. i had written down four canadian cities on a sheet of paper and i intended to allow my pen to fall flat onto the paper, and whichever city it pointed at, was going to be the city i would move to. i tried to imagine myself surrounded by tulips in the spring, in a strange city with no friends, no identity and no money. i hesitated and was very scared about my decision to leave japan. yet, deep inside there was a very courageous, adventurous girl who pushed me, insisting that i go. it was a very risky decision to enter a new environment, as i was one month away from turning fifty years old, the same age at which my mother died, but i listened to my heart and jumped off the stage, as it were (kiyomizuno butai kara tobioriru), without even asking myself “why?”. this year, the tulip festival will be held from may 5th to 23rd and the theme is, “a celebration of peace and friendship”. i remember that same picture of the tulips that i examined intently in the travel magazine before i came to ottawa, full of fear and anxiety. every spring i see many japanese tourists with their cameras, standing near me at the tulip festival, but at the same time, standing so distant. i walk along dow’s lake with my friend and see the same things that i saw in the travel guide, but differently now, because i have a story behind the tulips, i have a reason for being here. unlike the spider tangled in the web i spin foreign arachnid. after settling down in ottawa i enrolled in carleton university’s esl program, and would in the following years enroll in ctesl, the master’s program at carleton, become a japanese instructor and begin my phd studies. i found myself, in the class, surrounded mostly by people in their twenties from many different cultural backgrounds. in japan, i was very confident about my english, however when i moved to canada, suddenly my confidence began to wane and i found myself having more and more difficulties writing. what i thought was good quality writing in japan was not up to par here in canada. that which is valued in good writing in japan, ambiguity, passive sentence structures and subject omission are often frowned upon in western-style essays. i would frequently, in an attempt to be ambiguous, scatter hints about the subject in my english essays but my teachers would always mention that they were not able to fully grasp what i was referring to in several different contexts. this difference in approach to writing truly reflects the western tendency to be direct and the japanese style of being indirect – the language itself holds up the cultural ideology of the culture to which it belongs. uno chiyo, a female japanese novelist and kimono designer who http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci mika yoshimoto (2005) late-blooming student roots of loneliness run deep as i return home. transnational curriculum inquiry 2 (1) 2005 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 40 lived to be 98 years of age declared that the secret to living a long life is “ ”(kodawaranai), being illogically optimistic. in fact, japanese culture embraces the illogical -zen philosophy, illogical metaphors, ambiguous and passive styles of speech, but all with a purpose. one might even say it is logically illogical. these ideologies maintain a culture of politeness, collectivity and hierarchy. derrida (1982) says that western discourse is logocentric. i am desperate to meet the teachers’ expectations. many teachers say, “clarify, articulate, manipulate, spell it out…”, i am paralyzed by a tsunami of words. as i lived 50 years in ambiguous japan, this search for clarity and articulation is like an impossible mission and a painful process to create bridges in my writing. i envy the spider on my ceiling, tonight. references aoki, t. (2005). curriculum in a new key: the collected works of ted. t. aoki. pinar, w.f. & irwin, r.l. (eds.). mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum associates inc. aoki, t. (2003). locating living pedagogy in teacher research. in e. hasebe-ludt & w. hurren (eds.), curriculum intertext: place/language/pedagogy. pp. 1-9. new york: peter lang asanuma, s. (1999). the autobiographical method in japanese education. in w.f. pinar (ed.), contemporary curriculum discourses: twenty years of jct., 70, 151-167. new york: peter lang bakhtin m.m. (1986). the problem of speech genres and the problem of the text in linguistics, philology and the human sciences. austin, tx: university of texas press bakhtin m.m. (1981). the dialogic imagination: four essays by m.m. bakhtin, (ed.) m. holquist, (trans.) c. emerson and m. holquist. austin: university of texas press. barthes, r. (1975). the pleasure of the text. toronto: doubleday canada ltd. bhabha, h.k. (1990). the third space: interview with homi bhabha. in jonathan rutherford, (ed.), identity: community, culture, difference, pp. 207-221. london: lawrence & wishart. certeau, michel de. (1984). practice of everyday life. los angeles, ca: university of california press. culler, j. (1982). on deconstruction. ithaca, ny: cornell university press delauretis, t., (ed). (1986). feminist studies, critical studies. bloomington: indiana university press. derrida, j. (1982). margins of philosophy. chicago: university of chicago press derrida, j. (1988). limited inc. evanston, il: northwestern university press. ellis, c. (1997). evocative autoethnography: writing emotionally about our lives. in tierney, w.g. & lincoln, y.s. (eds.), representation and the text: re-framing the narrative voice. 115-139. albany, ny: state university of new york press fairclough, n. (1992). discourse and social change. london, england: blackwell gilmore, l. (1994). autobiographics: a feminist theory of women’s self-representation. ithaca, ny: cornel university press. gough, n. (2003). thinking globally in environmental education: implications for internationalizing curriculum inquiry. in international handbook of curriculum research (ed.) pinar, w.f. mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum associates inc. hokugou, m., et al. (2004). various articles. asahi shinbun, june 26 – aug 1 hooks, b. (1994). teaching to transgress. new york, ny: routledge. ivanic, r. (1998). writing and identity. philadelphia, pa: john benjamins publishing company http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci mika yoshimoto (2005) late-blooming student roots of loneliness run deep as i return home. transnational curriculum inquiry 2 (1) 2005 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 41 johnson, s. (2003). [present] purezento. tokyo, japan: fusousha kondo, d.k. (1990). crafting selves. chicago, il: the university of chicago press. lakoff, g. & johnson, m. (1980). metaphors we live by. chicago: the university of chicago press. lemke, j.l. (1995). textual politics. london, england: taylor & francis ltd. low, m & palulis, p (2004). laboured breathing: running with and against internationalizing tets of currere. transnational curriculum inquiry, 1 (1) http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci minh-ha, trinh t. (1989). woman, native, other. bloomington: indiana university press. miller, j.l. (1990). creating spaces and finding voices: teachers collaborating for empowerment. albany, ny: state university of new york press. miura, k. (ed.) (2003). [ten things i want to do before i die] shinu made ni shitai 10 no koto. tokyo, japan: sony magazines inc. nishizawa, s. (2002). translating literature/transforming lives: an exploration of the third space. jct: journal of curriculum theorizing, 18(3) pp. 9-40. pinar, william f. and irwin, rita l. (eds.) (2005). curriculum in a new key: the collected works of ted t. aoki. mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum. pinar, w.f. (2004). what is curriculum theory? mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum associates inc. pinar, w.f. (2001). the gender of racial politics and violence in america. new york, ny: peter lang. pinar, w.f. (ed.) (1975). curriculum theorizing. usa: mccutchan publishing corporation. smith, d.e. (1987). the everyday world as problematic. boston, ma: northeastern university press. strathern, p. (2000). derrida in 90 minutes. chicago, ivan r. dee suzuki, t. (1996). narrating the self: fictions of japanese modernity. stanford, ca: stanford university press. tanigawa, t. (1977). [guide to philosophy] tetsugaku annai. tokyo, japan: kodansha gakujutsu bunko van wolferen, k. (1996). [the japanese system that doesn’t make people happy] ningen wo koufuku ni shinai nihon to iu shisutemu. tokyo, japan: mainichi shinbunsha vygotsky, l.s. (1962). thought and language. cambridge, ma: mit press. wagner, j. (1993). ignorance in educational research: or, how can you not know that? educational researcher, 22(5), 15-23. wang, h. (2004). the call from the stranger on a journey home. new york: peter lang. waters, m.y. (2003). the laws of evening. new york: scribner wertsch, j. (1991). voice of the mind. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. yoshimoto, m. (1999). cross-cultural differences and perceptual change: a case study of five japanese students inside and outside the esl classroom. unpublished ma thesis, carleton university, canada. author mika yoshimoto is currently working on her phd studies in education at the university of ottawa, all the while working as a teaching instructor for japanese language studies at carleton university, ottawa, ontario, canada. an earlier version of this paper was presented at the fourth annual meeting of the american association for the advancement of curriculum studies at mcgill university in montreal, quebec, canada, april 8-11, 2005. correspondence: myoshimoto@sympatico.ca http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: wang, wanying (2020). toward an understanding of attunement as an autobiographical theory of education, transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) p. 3-15 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> toward an understanding of attunement as an autobiographical theory of education wanying wang1 university of british columbia, canada this paper2 begins with my story, then followed by an analysis of the story. primarily derived from my story, also informed by other scholarly work, i propose the theory of attunement – an autobiographical theory of education, which is employed to describe how one’s learning can take place in a subjective sense of intellectual labour striving for deeper understanding. in such an autobiographical theory of education learning becomes situated not only in the school-subject and specific prior knowledge, but also in one’s subjective sense of intellectual labor. my story: the three minute thesis competition (3mt) the social lounge was filled with people. it was the first time that i realized the room was quite small. as the host stood out and greeted the audience, the competition started. i was the sixth among all the competitors. from the moment it began, my attention was abruptly drawn to the front area where every competitor was supposed to give their speech. my turn came. the host said, “now let’s welcome wanying. the title of her thesis is ‘the yuanpei program in peking university—a case study of curriculum innovation’”. i walked to the front and turned around facing the audience. i heard my heart beat faster and could barely lift my arm. i thought it would be fine only if i could remember what i should say. i stood still while comforting myself. i started. i should keep my smile and posture throughout the process. gesture needed here. my brain worked excitedly, but in a negative way. i could hear a reminder whispering around my head after i commenced. however, i was only able to half control my body. i was speaking but my face muscles and my arms seemed frozen. the designed pauses and gestures slipped away. i was just there, talking. finally i finished. applause arose from the audience. twenty minutes after the last competitor finished his speech, the judges announced the result. i did not know where i was located, but i was not among the first two. i tried to suppress my unhappiness, clapping my hands to celebrate the two winners. i felt frustrated and depressed for i had not won the first place. why do i always want to be the no.1? this 3mt competition experience serves as a site for autobiographical excavation, through which i can come to recover the social, and cultural structures that formed me, how these structures have worked on me, and how lost memories still function. wang. toward an understanding of attunement 4 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index “i am from chinese society” like overcooked food, i found that i had over-prepared for the competition. i spent weeks on writing, modifying and reciting the short passage. just before the real competition, i spent five hours unceasingly practicing my speech. i felt a great loss and pain after i learned the competition result. why did i struggle so? it seems that i am still a “product” of chinese culture. confucius education communicates the notion that academic success is the most important goal for a student to achieve. i wanted to win because i deemed winning the competition central to my academic success. it is also believed that if one works hard, one can succeed finally: suffering is part of personal cultivation in chinese culture (tu, 1998). wang (2004) argues that the capacity to bear pain is essential to coming maturity in chinese culture. i even thought the pain that arose in the preparation should be a guarantee for success. in addition, my parents’ impact can explain why i have been so devoted to academic success. in chinese culture, children’s academic achievement is a family business (kim, 2006). my mother believed this and put the belief into practice. she sat beside me when i worked on my homework. my parents’ thoughts and behaviors implicitly or explicitly have had a great impact on my choice, on what to focus, and time distribution since i spent a lot of time studying after school. i was directed to study all day and gradually this demand became internalized, the only guiding principle for me. displacement (social and cultural) where i came from – the place – might be another aspect deserving consideration. place as an important concept for understanding curriculum autobiographically emerged decades ago. as pinar et al. (1995) argue, “place and human feelings are intertwined. when events take place, they achieve particularity and concreteness; they become infused with feeling. fiction—novels, short stories—express daily human experience, situated in concrete places with specific characters” (p. 533). kincheloe and pinar (1991, cited in pinar et al., 1995) say, “place is the life-force of fiction, serving as the crossroads of circumstance, the playing field on which drama evolves” (p. 533). place represents certain notions, certain social and cultural norms. i was born in a middle sized city in the northern china. living in the city at that time meant a routinized life that might never change. it was a city with 100 years of history and an industrial base where 8 huge factories operated. these factories ranged from steel production to the manufacture of train compartments; each had more than 10,000 workers. fifty percent of the population worked in these factories or in occupations related with the factories. my mother was one of them, and she worked for an affiliated middle school as a teacher. after parents retired, their children continued their job. i had heard so many stories about replacing their parents’ job upon graduation from high school or university. people lived quietly. the sky in winter was always gloomy due to serious air pollution caused by the eight factories which consumed tons of coal everyday. the dark smog cylinder rising everywhere still remains unforgettable in my mind. everyday life was the same. i escaped this dull, uncolored life by reading. reading was the only activity with which i felt fascinated. every school day, i dashed to the school library, reading for several hours. in most cases, the elementary and secondary education was so ritualized and obsessive that knowledge of the outside world was barely acknowledged in class. however, reading at the library provided me with the possibility to see the outside world, to experience different kinds of life. even nowadays, this scene always haunts me: i was reading quietly a newly published magazine or a book. i could smell the newly arrived magazine or book and ran to read it. almost no teachers or students were around. it was my own space, my place. it was years ago but the place remains in my mind. this educational experience extended my vision, bringing https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index wang. toward an understanding of attunement 5 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index me into a new “space” where i heard different “voices”. i aspired to try something i had never tried before. i wanted to leave the city. achieving an excellent score might be the only thing that could help me realize my dream. academic success became my only pursuit. my life has been centering around this pursuit since then. without turning back to my life in the city, i would not see the “lost” connection between me and my hometown city. this regressive moment helps me find the denied elements of the past and see how i had struggled to break free from the bondage of northeastern social boundaries. all these reasons prompted me to pursue no. 1 unceasingly, the desire to go to a top university, and something unidentifiable… summary this competition served as an occasion to question where i had come from, culturally and socially. by re-entering the past, i saw how i had struggled, how i had worked so hard. consequently i might re-perceive the society and culture context where i had come of age, what has structured me. autobiographical reflection offered a key to unlock the complexity of my situation. through such self-study i might recover the bridge to a lost part of “i”. from the story above, it can be seen that writing autobiographically and theoretically are not, finally, two separate processes; they are mutually intertwined. writing autobiographically allowed me to present the world as i experienced it, not obscuring that experience by representing it in singular way. i have come to realize my experience is also temporally and spatially layered: how i have been influenced by various discourses, institutional structures, political and policy agendas, teaching protocols. i have come to realize this layered dimension of lived experience as i articulated that experience autobiographically. it seems that i dwell within and among these relationships. this view of self-in-relationship acknowledges our essential connections to others, recognizes interdependence in relationships, and discloses continuity and difference (plumwood, 1998). writing autobiographically and theoretically occurs simultaneously. as such, in the following, i posit this autobiographical theory of education called attunement. it emerges from my story, also informed by other scholarly work. the remainder of this paper involves two sections. in the first i describe my sense of the concept of attunement; in the second, i summarize three elements of the concept of attunement and its characteristics. the concept of attunement attunement emphasizes the learning guided and experienced by oneself subjectively striving for deeper understanding. in such an autobiographical theory of education learning becomes situated not only in the school-subject and specific prior knowledge, but also in one’s subjective sense of intellectual labor. attunement begins with one’s own autobiography which is used as thriving center piece to extend, contemplate and write, during which one searches for meaning and begets engagement with the world (wang, 2020). attuned, it may happen anywhere at any moment. as a result, attunement allows a new or different way of understanding, way of thinking, or perspective. all of these understandings point to a different dimension, as if one were repositioned within something unknown. possibly, attunement may ‘provide the vehicle wherein the everydayness of life can be lived with reasonable comfort and reasonable freedom from anxiety and unpredictability’ (huebner, 1999, p. 345). in the following, i will further illustrate the concept of attunement using my story as an example. derived from my story, attunement is summarized from the two aspects. first, i explore how one can reveal oneself and engage in searching for meaning while writing https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index wang. toward an understanding of attunement 6 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index autobiographically. second, i address how one can beget engagement with world through referring to various discourses and theories: how these external thoughts and experiences have had impact on me and structured me. attunement as self revealing and subjective search for meaning attunement is autobiographical and private, characterized by self-revealing and subjective search for meaning. when i engage in writing my own story and describe what i have experienced and what i have been struggled with, apparently, i reveal and express myself in a certain way; second, through writing autobiographically, i can see how i have been searching for meaning subjectively in order to understand what has happened in my life. self is revealed through being attuned. attunement reveals oneself. for example, i learned about myself by writing my own story: what matters to myself, how i have allowed myself to be transformed by different ideas, and with what social and cultural determinations that i have been wrestling for so long. i discover the path to myself during the process of writing autobiographically. as heidegger (1995) had already made explicit in being and time, ‘attunements are the fundamental ways in which we find ourselves disposed in such and such a way’ (p. 67). one finds oneself through attunement. as a fundamental structural features of dasein (being), attunement ‘discovers dasein in its thrownness’ (heidegger, 1962, p. 175). this thrownness is the revealing or unfolding of self as being in the world. attunement engages one in this unfolding process, which may involve various sub-processes regarding various issues, often requiring decentering. when one tries to keep record of these unfoldings, one seems to be able to see how one has evolved. one’s thoughts have unfolded, revealing who one is. it is also a process that allows for new forms of revealing that transform the self. it is a new form of revealing that can transform oneself, and move one on to different understandings. attunement leads to subjective reconstruction. it is not about a search for a final, static self, but rather a search for how one has evolved: to find something that remains constant or enable a lifetime view during the process in which one has evolved. while writing autobiographically one can discover ignored aspects of the world in oneself through being attuned. when one focuses on oneself, everything changes. this special attentiveness brings the hidden to the surface and make the existing more prominent, helping to illuminate experience and make one more ready for self-reflective thinking. consequently, one is more able to move through one’s particularity into the general or common aspects embedded in human being. this common ground constitutes the fundamental aspects of the world (human being). thus, the world manifests itself in front of oneself in a particular often personal way. one finds the world through understanding oneself. this is why attunement is the very precondition for understanding of the self. for any individual, there might exist a specific way of attuning oneself to the world: different unfoldings as shown in autobiographical writing. we are always involved in the world, usually in situations we do not create or control. attunment, as discussed in the previous section, refers to how one strives for deeper understanding. therefore, attunement supports a search for meaning which is subjective. “the search for meaning is a question of diving below the surface and finding the deeper underlying and intentional meanings that are being born, first in the relationship between subject and phenomenon, but in research also in inter-subjective relationships” (dahlberg, 2006, p. 16). meaning does not exist without the subject, and spontaneously, it is not selfevidently or even readily present. merleau-ponty (1968) understands meaning as something that is intertwined in ‘the flesh of the world’ (p. 83), and from his epistemology dahlberg (2006) argues that the researcher, as well as other subjects involved in the research, ‘embodies’, or ‘gives body to’ the phenomenon. meaning depends on how the subject views https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index wang. toward an understanding of attunement 7 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index and understands, and how the subject makes sense of one’s experience, for different people may find different meaning in light of different cultural background, social standing and personal experience. moreover, for the particular individual, meaning regarding the same event can keep changing, if one remains open. in a certain sense, attunement occurs within the in between, an interplay of determinacy (certain aspects that do not change relatively) and indeterminacy (certain aspects that always change). attunement is never fully determinable since my understanding on my story changes over time. the search for meaning is fluid, unpredictable, which can be spontaneous or long term. how can one determine that one has found the true meaning? how can i know that my current thought is true? ergas’ discussion of a spiritual research paradigm might be relevant to this issue. ergas (2016) proposes the concept of a spiritual research paradigm which “relies on a knowing apparatus that is beyond reason and sense” (p. 24). he employs resonance principle to assess the quality and rigorousness of a spiritual research paradigm, which refers to a principle in which research is evaluated “by the extent to which it inspirits the reader/listener; by the extent to which it touches the individual’s own spirit and compels him or her to commit to further unfolding of spirit and life-meaning” (p. 24). this insight might be akin to the search for meaning in this paper. the resonance principle here denotes that one conceives the ‘meaning’ acquired that reflects or represents what one has experienced and can best explain that experience, thus making one evoked, inspired, or activate one’s inner world. as a result, one feels intellectually relieved or emotionally peaceful. for example, when one experiences something unexpected, one may feel sad or uncomfortable. one may feel relieved or gain a certain degree of comfort by referring to a new way of thinking. the new way of thinking or understanding might help one re-adjust the relationships among self, others and the world or reposition self among the magnitude of the world; therefore, it brings forth a sense of inner strength, peace, harmony, and connectedness. ‘it is a comfort that cannot be anticipated, a peace that passeth all understanding’ (huebner, 1995, p. 403). one's personal understanding is not judged by other, but rather by if it can invoke us emotionally and intellectually (in this paper it may refer to the intellectual aspect). attunement as engagement with the world attunement is also public, bridging self and world. attunement, in essence, addresses the dynamic relationship between self and world. in the following, i will illustrate how attunement allows one’s engagement with the world in combination with my story. attunement shows how one relates to the world and understands the world in my story, i articulate my life as an international student grappling with my own life history, my present preoccupations, my dreams of the future, both continuous with the present and those unprecedented in the past. the complex roles of institutional structures, political and policy agendas, teaching protocols and educational theories are threaded through the subjective experience of the individual personal-myself, articulated autobiographically. while writing autobiographically, i believe i achieved deepened self-understanding. it happened within my subjective sense of study, of sustained intellectual labor. spontaneously, this attunement shows how one takes the initiative to relate oneself to the world through engaging in conversations: in which interlocutors are speaking not only among themselves but to those not present, not only to historical figures and unnamed people and places they may be studying, but to politicians and parents alive and dead, not to mention to the selves they have been, are in the process of becoming, and someday may become. (pinar, 2011, p. 41) https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index wang. toward an understanding of attunement 8 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index during the process, one may accept, refute, or otherwise interrogate ideas that human being has ever yielded, as shown in my story how i had conversed with various emerging thoughts in my mind. as one engages in various conversations virtually (possibly through reading) and practically, it begets one’s engagement with the world. at the same time, the experience of the world as available is not only to oneself, but also to other. there might exist a gap between the personal and the shared, the self and the others. such a gap seems to create a dwelling space to receive the alterity of other and let it resonate, and allow opportunity for people to understand each other. this makes understanding each other possible. being attuned might be akin to engaging in in-depth thinking, through which one acquires a deepened understanding. it seems that attunement opens up the world to us (kuperus, 2007), making the inner world, but also the world outside accessible, through this in-depth thinking. attunement is like a mental optic, which allows one to see. through writing autobiographically, i begin to realize the inner world, the inner self that i may not have noticed before. also, attunement allows me to understand more about the world: through being attuned, one can see the world from a deepened perspective, thus more of the world. attunement manifests the dynamic relationship between self and world being attuned, one acquires heightened consciousness or in-depth understanding. so attuned, one might be more able to understand the world and more able to bring transformative change to the world in which one dwells. through writing autobiographically, i have achieved deepened understanding on myself and the world around. with this deepened understanding, i may be more likely to engage in certain thinking or initiatives. for example, i have begun to have particular attention to certain issues in the world, and taken the initiative to participate in the discussion. consequently, in specific and small ways one may transform the world. attunement prepares one intellectually to shape the world. attunement is born out of the world; however, it transcends what the world provides us with and how it situates us, which leads to social and self reconstruction. in other words, attunement is spatially, temporally, situationally, subjectively contingent, historically, culturally, and socially constrained. summary attunement emphasizes how informal forms of study (for example, learning that takes place outside classroom) contributes to understanding self and world. this theory suggests that learning occurs not only in and out of classrooms but always within a person’s life. in such a theory of education learning becomes situated in not only school-subject and specific prior knowledge, but also in one’s subjective sense of intellectual labor. attunement demonstrates how i learned from writing my own autobiography. attunement thus becomes a site in which people participate in the consciousness or act of awakening ourselves, accessing ourselves, engaging ourselves in ‘moreness’, thus becoming inspired. three elements of attunement in the following, in combination with my story, i will further analyze the three elements of the concept of attunement: contingency, boundary, and sensitivity. to make them concrete, i will employ the story (including analysis) as an example to illustrate the three elements. first, contingency refers to the particular experience identified from one’s own perspective; it corresponds to the story in the first section. it is similar to objective realities of one’s experience. boundary here refers to the difficulties or challenges perceived by oneself. sensitivity refers to how one can go beyond one’s boundary subjectively, thus being attuned to new forms of understanding or thinking. the section of the analysis demonstrates my sensitivity: how i have employed different theories and perspectives to interpret my story. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index wang. toward an understanding of attunement 9 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index apparently, i may adopt different perspectives to interpret my experience. but i subjectively tend to think that this interpretation may express myself best due to my certain sensitivity. as such, i will provide a detailed description about the three elements. contingency contingency here refers to the internal and external facets of one’s experience from one’s particular point of view. one’s experience is contingent upon internal and external facets and the combination of facets varies, depending on specific situations and one’s perspective. the internal facet refers to the how one subjectively describes one’s experience, for example, when i described my own story, the way i described it and what i focused on show the internal facet of my experience from my own particular point of view; the external facet refers to the social and cultural condition that can be seen from my story. these facets constitute the particularity of experience, identified from one’s own perspective. contingency defines and conditions what may happen. it is a combination of all situational circumstances, what is given in one’s lived situation. contingency is similar to the objective side of one’s experience, as one being attuned. however, contingency is also informed by conceptual approach and knowledge as well as by one’s social, economic and cultural locations. therefore, in a sense, it is both objective and subjective. contingency explains how diverse objective reality can be for different people. boundary in order to understand attunement, i propose using the concept of boundary to refers to the problems, difficulties or challenges that one may experience. i summarize two characteristics of boundary: first, boundary determines and thereby limits what one currently knows and understand. in this sense, it is akin to the concept of ontology. i will use pinar’s work to illustrate the concept of boundary. according to pinar (1975), ontological denotes being, including human being as the gestalt of the physical, emotional and mental dimensions. one’s ontological being is more than the totality of these aspects. pinar (1975) also mentions the ‘more’ as beyond the three aspects: physical, emotional and mental. he acknowledges that the intellectually underdeveloped can potentially benefit by working with those who are more developed. pinar (1975) transfers this idea to two interrelated undertakings: learnedness and intellectual development. ‘when the exclusive aim is learnedness in the sense of amassing information, the process is primarily technical, and may not involve a transmission of energy in the same sense that occurs when the aim is intellectual development’ (p. 101). however, the provision of information and its interrelatedness, can also be an offering of an élan vital from one to the other, especially when the mentor is emotionally involved with the information. moreover, he points out that “when one’s aim is intellectual development, one is able to glimpse underneath the manifest behavior to the pre-and unconscious dimension of inter-activity” (p. 102). one shows a higher level of élan vital in the area described/analyzed when conceptually and emotionally engaged. therefore, as argued by pinar (1975), in such an instance, we can see that ‘how one’s ontological level enables one to see certain levels, and then use the discursive mind to describe and analyze what it is one sees in certain areas from one’s ontological perspective’ (p. 102). pinar (1975) uses the example of student and teacher: ‘to see what his teacher sees in such a case, and not just mirror his teacher’s language, the student must enter commensurate ontological level’ (p. 102). this process is likened to transfusion of élan vital, a kind of transfusion. this boundary focuses on the intellectual aspect of being. boundary is inseparable from limit. limit here denotes that one becomes https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index wang. toward an understanding of attunement 10 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index aware of the difficulties and challenges that one is facing: one reaches one’s limit, if only for the time being. second, the concept of boundary mainly emphasizes an intellectual aspect and is content-specific. one may demonstrate different levels of understanding regarding different issues due to previous experience and knowledge. hence, one may have in-depth understanding in philosophy, but have limited understanding in music. however, the understanding acquired from certain issues or subjects can contribute to understanding of other issues or subjects. for example, one’s understanding on certain philosophical issues will definitely contribute to the understanding of educational issues. this synergistic potential does not only happen within the realm of intellect. as discussed by pinar (1975), one’s ontological level mainly involves three aspects: physical, mental and emotional. these three can also contribute to each other. as argued by fung (1937), not to be affected by sorrow or joy, is to have transformed emotion by means of reason (p. 237). sense can help transform emotion: one can reduce the feeling of sadness (or negative feeling) if one can know more. as spinoza argues, if there are persons of (true) knowledge, who understand the reality of the universe, and who know that the way in which things evolve is inevitable, they will be unmoved by whatever they may meet (cited in fung, 1937, p. 237). they will not be bound by emotion. one need not feel sad or depressed no matter what is encountered. fung (1937) also uses an example: a sudden gust of wind blows down a roof tile so that it hits a small child and a mature man on their heads. the child will feel intense anger against the tile, whereas the man’s emotion will not be stirred, and for this very reason, his pain will be actually less. this is because the man will understand that the falling of the tile is a physical phenomenon, and therefore he will not be affected by sorrow or joy. (p. 237) zhuangzi, an ancient chinese philosopher, argues that we have reason to transform our emotions. there is a story in zhuangzi that describes how zhuangzi responded when his wife died: when she first died, how could i help not being affected? but then on examining the matter, i saw that in the beginning she has originally been lifeless. and not only lifeless, but she had originally lacked all substance. during this first state of confused chaos, there came a change which resulted in substance. this substance changed to assume forms. the form changed and became alive. and it has changed again to reach death. in this it has been like the passing of the four seasons, spring, autumn, winter and summer. and while she is thus lying asleep in the great house (the universe), for me to go about weeping and wailing, would be to show myself ignorant of fate. therefore i refrain. (zhuangzi, pp. 223-224, cited in fung, 1937). zhuangzi understands life and death from what he imagines to be the perspective of universe; he can therefore ease his sadness about his wife’s death. this knowledge reduces the negative feeling of loss; it demonstrates the transformation of emotion by means of reason. intellectual development can contribute to emotional development. sensitivity the third element of attunement is sensitivity, which emphasizes the “subjective” side of one’s experience. combined with the story, the element of sensitivity may correspond to the section of analysis provided thereafter. the story may seem objective; however, the analysis followed might be individual specific, in which i made sense of my thoughts and behaviors. it may vary according to different individual. i call what makes this analysis accessible sensitivity. the analysis seems to be the concrete expression of sensitivity, or https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index wang. toward an understanding of attunement 11 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index sensitivity is concretized through the analysis. this sensitivity refers to the uncertain or individual-specific aspect that may vary in light of different perspectives taken. heidegger seems to equate attunement with sensitivity, as he understands attunement as a mental optic, which make things visible, through “unlocking” their phenomenality (demuth, 2012). each seeing is determined by our background and our conceptual approach. ‘to be in certain attunement means that we have sensibility to see some aspects of things, or that we are capable of understanding things in a certain way. in this way, we can – ‘unlock’ – things as phenomena so that we can grasp them’ (demuth, 2012. p. 15). sensitivity helps us see different aspects of things or understand things differently and helps achieve heightened understanding. it is one, albeit central, medium of attunement and has a number of important characteristics. first, sensitivity means openness to a new idea, or new perspective. while writing my autobiography, i kept myself open to various thoughts or perspectives, especially in the section on how i understood my story: why i had felt frustrated due to the failure in the speech competition. being open means allowing more possibilities to emerge. openness embraces the unknown and alterity. being open means receptive, open to various thoughts, particularly when being exposed to these thoughts. openness makes one more ready for study and reflection. one can be more readily informed by study and reflection which may proceed unpredictably. by being more receptive and open, the meaning of the experience may emerge as one becomes more ready for new thoughts and possibilities. being open and more receptive allows the unfolding of thoughts in which various thoughts or discourses interact, considering possible way of thinking. second, sensitivity is characterized by engagement: how one interacts with the world outside. it is enacted through how one has accepted, rejected opinions, or negotiated with ideas and events. i was engaging in this process while i consider various thoughts emerging in my mind. one is actually engaging in a lifelong complicated conversation. under certain circumstances, one may not need to act but to contemplate: conceive and understand different ways of thinking, more aware of their differences, and more reflective of how these human thoughts have evolved, with horizons widened and insights gained. one can be more aware of which thought or discourse tends to be more dominant. discern-ability implies that one can know how one has evolved, what thoughts or thinking pattern have impacted one’s development. the ability to discern shows how one navigates among various thoughts and discourses and how one finds more meaningful interpretations. third, sensitivity can render a sense of divinity to learning. how understanding can be achieved tends to be uncertain without a protocol to follow, as shown in the process of writing autobiographically. the process is not quantified or proceduralized. uncertainty gives a sense of divinity or mystery. attunements locates the learning process within what transcends human control and understanding. uncertainty creates more space for one to explore. fourth, sensitivity is content-specific: one might be sensitive to certain things or certain aspects of things only. sensitivity, based on my autobiography, mainly refers to the intellectual dimension of human being, emotional and psychological aspects being excluded though it is difficult to distinguish one from another. sensitivity can grow as one accumulates relevant knowledge or experiences. here i want to propose the concept of structural sensitivity, which means that sensitivity can be understood in smaller specific aspects or units pointing to various aspects of world. this structural sensitivity may not be structured by eight aspects of multiple intelligence proposed by gardner, but can be understood as different aspects that various academic disciplines represent. under certain circumstance, sensitivity can be further detailed as perceived by individual. it may have a different structure for each individual. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index wang. toward an understanding of attunement 12 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index given the centrality of sensitivity to attunement, are there any ways by which it could be enhanced? what becomes intellectually accessible depends upon one’s sensitivity. sensitivity makes it possible for things to appear, to ‘matter’ to an individual. heidegger (1982) believes we encounter the world through our concernful engagement with things, so this means that for us to even have a world, we must be attuned – things must come into view, become welcoming or frightening, exciting or boring, calming or infuriating, sometimes both at once. if particularities – persons, objects, events, ideas – didn’t matter, we would not bother to notice them, and we would have no directional interact with them. this statement seems to mostly focus on the emotional aspect, but it includes what make things accessible to us intellectually. in both cases sensitivity tends to be subjective. but how can one reach, through the sensitivity of attunement, certain understandings, or enhance one’s understandings? sensitivity can be enhanced by knowledge, experience, understanding and “awakening inwardness”. knowledge here mainly refers to formal type of knowledge gained from academic study. understanding tends to be more situated, and it could be acquired by the individual subject from his or her life experience, as well as from formal study. our understanding of being is manifested in our ‘comportment towards beings’ (heidegger, 1982, p. 16). comportment is activity, action or behavior. thus, the understanding that we have of the being can be manifested in our acting with them. “understanding need not be explicit, nor able to be articulate conceptually. it is often embodied in ‘know-how’(wrenn, iep). sensitivity is, then, not only informed by knowledge, conceptual approach, experience, but also awakening inwardness which mainly refers to the way one learns from, reflects on, and reacts to events. this awakening inwardness exists independently of other aspects. it is not identical with knowledge or experience, but informed by each continuously. this ‘awakening inwardness’ evolves gradually as one learns more, and is grounded in a continuing sense of self – a certain synthesis that could contain certain beliefs or sense of mission that guides how one thinks and reflects. it can be concretized into the following aspects, but not limited to them. for example, understanding that each gestalt is created by human being, and may undergo constant change; being willing to explore and accept different way of thinking; being aware that all what we have attended to, contemplated, and explored demonstrates the trajectory of self-evolving embodying the interaction of the public and the private, the self and the society. certain extant scholarly discussions might be related to this concept of awakening inwardness. contemplative inquiry proposed by ergas (2016) might be the one that deserves attention. contemplative practices include ‘the many ways human beings have found across cultures and across time to concentrate, broaden and deepen conscious awareness’ (roth, 2008, p. 19). “east-asian wisdom traditions and western monotheistic religions have been among the richest sources for these practices that include diverse forms of meditation and yoga, philosophical practices rendered in hadot's (1995) terms as ‘spiritual exercises’ and many others” (ergas, 2016, p. 24). as argued by ergas (2016), these practices are now being applied within academia as methods of inquiry. it is also associated with the concept of subjectivity. as pointed out by roth (2008), human subjectivity is the source of human being’s conceptual activities and products: human subjectivity is the source for all the conceptual models we develop to explain the underlying structures of the world in the physical sciences and the underlying structures of consciousness in the cognitive sciences. thus despite all the principles of experimental science that attempt to establish objective standards for research they all in the last analysis, are derived by h u m a n be i n g s, a n d t h e r e f o re t he y a re gr o un de d i n h um a n su bj e c t i v i t y. ( p. 2 21 ) https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index wang. toward an understanding of attunement 13 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index subjectivity might be the deepest structure – or medium – of human being. according to pinar (2010), ‘by subjectivity, i mean the inner life, the lived sense of self, non-unitary, dispersed, and fragmented—that is associated with what has been given and what one has chosen, those circumstances of everyday life, those residues of trauma and of fantasy, from which one reconstructs a life’ (p. 3). subjectivity, then, refers to the inner life, the process of becoming, which can be ongoing if one is in fact ‘becoming’ all the time. i suggest that subjectivity entails beliefs, thinking, commitments, desires, feelings that may not always be nameable (such as something between feeling and desire) but focuses on the site of experience. such lived experience and its reconstruction – i.e. educational experience – constitute the uniqueness of a person, which distinguishes a person from others, from what one was. for me, the concept of ‘awakening inwardness’ might be narrower than that of subjectivity. while one is growing, one develops a complex ‘inwardness’ that is unique and yet comprehensive; it underlies one’s thinking and behavior. this inwardness can be informed by experience and academic study, but it also exists isolated from one’s experience and conceptual knowledge. it is something that one has evolved (and vice versa), a state of subjectivity consistently working in and through self. this inwardness can be manifested through one’s way of thinking, one’s reflections on experience, crystallized perhaps in a sense of mission, but not limited to these. awakening inwardness tends to take scattered forms; it is rarely a systematic congregation or set of ideas since sense of mission may not be systematic in real life. it is a state that might trigger one’s deep thinking, awaken one’s underlying consciousness, and engage one in a socially and culturally meaningful way. it allows one to think and reflect. this concept – awakening inwardness essentially involves two aspects: reflective and anticipative. being reflective means that one identifies something that one may not be aware of and engages oneself in reconstructive thinking, thus leading to meaningful action; being anticipative means that one looks forwards to something greater than what is, which one transcends. metaphorically speaking, how sensitivity can be fostered or improved might be akin to spring rain moistening earth. spring rain (water) moisturizes soil and provides essentials for seeds to grow. this metaphor seems to illuminate the dynamics of how sensitivity can be fostered: sensitivity being fostered or improved through a secret and sacred process, the dynamics of which may not be observable, but can be felt and identified later by consequences: plants appear. if one is porous, one can be more sensitive, like a sponge absorbing water. this porousness can expand one’s knowledge system: more comprehensive; more responsive to the outside world. it echoes the concept of structural sensitivity, which means that sensitivity can be conceptualized as threaded through smaller aspects or units attuned to various aspects of world. each structural aspect does not exist totally isolated from other aspects, but rather they can mutually inform one another. recall that fung argues that as one gains more knowledge, one can better control one’s feeling. intellectual development fosters emotional development. to sum up, attunement involves contingency, boundary and sensitivity. contingency emphasizes the objective side of one’s experience: the particularity of experience, identified from one’s own perspective. boundary here means the difficulties or challenges that one may perceive and experience. sensitivity emphasizes how one can go beyond one’s boundary subjectively, thus being attuned to new form of understanding or thinking and becoming engaged with the world. awakening inwardness remains central to sensitivity. the three elements constitute the concept of attunement. overall, attunement stresses that how one’s informal form of learning (for example, learning that takes place outside classroom), can take place in a subjective sense of intellectual labour striving for deeper understanding. learning https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index wang. toward an understanding of attunement 14 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index occurs not only in but also out of classrooms, and it always seems to take place within a person’s life. conclusion this paper illuminates the concept of attunement. attunement emphasizes how informal forms of study (for example, learning that takes place outside classroom) contributes to understanding self and world. this theory suggests that learning occurs not only in and out of classrooms but always within a person’s life. in such a theory of education learning becomes situated in not only school-subject and specific prior knowledge, but also in one’s subjective sense of intellectual labor. attunement demonstrates how i learned from writing my own autobiography. the concept of attunement contributes to understanding currere as complicated conversation -how one struggles for self-understanding. attunement reveals how self-self model works. the theory of attunement enriches the understanding of currere and provides possible practice of currere. it emphasizes how one learns individually. the concept of attunement can be considered as indirect autobiography in which i, based upon my own autobiography, develop my understanding on curriculum of attunement that addresses how one can engage in understanding self and world. this indirect autobiography emphasizes how one can learn from one’s experience through engaging in complicated conversations inviting others and otherness to participate. thus, curriculum of attunement places oneself at the center of exploration, using one’s autobiography as a thriving centerpiece from which to extend, contemplate, interpret and teach. the paper of attunement is the example of such attempt. notes 1 wywang105@163.com 2 here i want to express my gratitude to prof. william pinar for his editorial assistance for this paper. references dahlberg, k. (2006). the essence of essences-the search for meaning structures in phenomenological analysis of lifeworld phenomena. international journal of qualitative studies on health and well-being. 1,11-19. delancey, c. (2014). commitment and attunement. phenonomenal cognitive science, 13, p.579-594. dordrecht: springer science+business media dordrecht. demuth, a. (2012). heidegger`s concept of „die befindlichkeit” and his role in human cognition and self-cognition. retrieved from: http://www.acarindex.com/dosyalar/makale/acarindex-1423907282.pdf ergas, o. (2016). knowing the unknown: transcending the educational narrative of the kantian paradigm through contemplative inquiry. in j. lin, r. oxford & culham, t. (eds) establishing a spiritual research paradigm. toronto: information age publishing. 1-23. fishbane, m. (2008). sacred attunement: a jewish theology. chicago and london: the university of chicago press. fung, y. (1937). the history of chinese philosophy. peiping: henri vetch. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index http://www.acarindex.com/dosyalar/makale/acarindexwang. toward an understanding of attunement 15 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index hadot, p. (1995). philosophy as a way of life. (m. case, trans.). oxford, uk: blackwell. heidegger, m. (1962). being and time. san francisco: harper. heidegger, m. (1982). the basic problems of phenomenology. trans. albert hofstadter. bloomington: indiana university press. heidegger, m. (1995). the fundamental concepts of metaphysics: world, finitude, solitude. translated by william mcneill and nicholas walker. bloomington, in: indiana university press, studies in continental thought. huebner, d. (1999). the lure of the transcendent. mahwah, nj: lwarence erlbaum. kim, s. (2006). the experience of korean parents’ educational zeal. paper presented at the annual conference of the national council on family relations, minneapolis, mn. kuperus, gerard (2007), "attunement, deprivation, and drive: heidegger and animality". philosophy. 37. retrieved on september, 13rd, 2019 , from https://repository.usfca.edu/phil/37 article originally published in in phenomenology and the non-human animal, edited by christian lotz and corinne painter, kluwer/springer, 2007. lipari, l. (2014). listening, thinking and being: toward an ethics of attunement. university park: penn state university press. merleau-ponty, m. (1968/1948). the visible and the invisible (a. lingis, trans.). evanston, il, usa: north western university press. pinar, w. f. (1975). the analysis of educational experience. in w. f. pinar (ed.), curriculum theorizing: the reconceptualists (pp. 384-395). berkeley, ca: mccutchan publishing corporation. pinar, w. f. (2009). worldliness of cosmopolitan education: a passionate life in public service. new york: routledge. pinar, w. f. (2011). the character of curriclum studies. new york: palgrave, macmillan. pinar, w. f., reynolds, w. m., slattery, p., & taubman, p. t. (1995). understanding curriculum: an introduction to the study of historical and contemporary curriculum discourses. new york, ny: peter lang. plumwood, v. (1991). nature, self and gender: feminism, environmental philosophy and the critique of rationalism. ecological feminism, 6(3), 3-27 roth, h. (2008). against cognitive imperialism. religion east & west, 8, 1-26. retrieved on may 20, 2016, from http://www.iep.utm.edu/ tu, w. m. (1998). confucius and confucianism. in w.h. slote & g.a. devos (eds.), confucianism and the family (pp. 3-36). new york: state university of new york press. wang, h. (2004). the call from the stranger on a journey home. new york: peter lang publishing. wang, w. (2020). chinese currere, subjective reconstruction and attunement – when calls my heart. new york: palgrave macmillan submitted: september, 15th, 2019. approved: june, 23rd, 2020. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index https://repository.usfca.edu/phil/37 http://www.iep.utm.edu/ o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: costa, hugo heleno camilo (2020). curriculum in international contexts: for a meditative agenda to live without fear, transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) p. 95-100 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> curriculum in international contexts: for a meditative agenda to live without fear hugo heleno camilo costai federal university of mato grosso, mato grosso, brazil kumar, a. (2019). curriculum in international contexts: understanding colonial, ideological and neoliberal influences. palgrave macmillan: new york. […] the counterposition of local and global resonates with an equation of the local with realness, with local place as earthy and meaningful, standing in opposition to a presumed abstraction of global space. massey (2005) ashwani kumar's book provides a unique approach to curriculum studies because curricular thinking is so closely associated with his academic career and because of the geographical considerations that underpin his interpretation of the topic. for him, the intertwining of such elements explains his commitment to the field of curriculum and his attention to the different dynamics that influence the production of a curricular experience that is always unique to the subjects, but that can also be read in a global context, by understanding economic, political and ideological factors. the path chosen by the author is shaped by how global forces institute directives for local curricular experiences as well as the ways in which different regional and local responses shape curriculum policies. along this path, he offers discussions of global concepts such as neoliberalism (with its corporate lexicon), based on the perspectives of competition, comparison, management, reduction of autonomy and creativity, and focus on measurement. by using a variety of experiences, case studies, and theorizations that interact with global perspectives, and using different scales, places, and worldviews, kumar helps us understand how curriculum is produced under intense political, cultural and religious conflicts, and through the ideological control of teachers, students, curricula, and communities. these tensions, according to the author, highlight the debates surrounding colonialism, racism, sexism, and gender, and emphasize the intersections and ruptures between the global and the local. the author has undertaken a presentation of a wide range of curriculum policies, enabling us to visit a variety of curricular thinking enacted in different regions and countries with him. this brings us into close contact with the way the production of theory occurs in unique and enriching ways in different parts of the world. unique, because theoretical production occurs as a continuous response to society; enriching, because exposure to global readings of the world tends to lead us to conceptualise these struggles for meaning more deeply, and to see their relationship to the varied challenges we deal with in our own reflexive tasks. costa. curriculum in international contexts 96 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index to follow kumar's itinerary is to follow a tour of what it is and what can be curriculum, through interaction with readings from around the world. this interpretative experience, marked by the relationship with otherness and momentary truths, can find resonance in doreen massey's conception (2008) that space is constituted as a “simultaneity stories-so-far", whose consequences are unpredictable and with connections that may be absent. this is an interesting view that the work offers to the reader: while general perceptions of the world may be widely spread, personal interpretations are constructed in very diverse ways. these impressions begin with chapter 1, which introduces us to kumar's journey as an international educator with twenty years of research in the field of education and leads us to approach different themes that have helped the author to develop his view of curriculum studies. the trajectory of his ways of thinking began with his entry into the field of geography, from which he began to build an integrated perspective of the world, with dynamics and disturbances that are caused by colonial perspectives of economic growth that plague indegenous cultures and the environment, causing impacts on a range of levels and scales. the contributions of geographical thinking led him to see commonality among a seeming range of perspectives which were breeding many evils within humanity. in a search for the construction of a different world view for the future, the author incorporates a consideration of spirituality and meditation in his questions relating to the vision of economic development that guides international policies. with this, he offers the opportunity for us to consider that the lack of awareness of ourselves and our relationships with each other and nature lead to a crisis of human consciousness that has caused chaos in all spheres of life, from local to global. kumar highlights the influences of freire, giroux, and krishnamurti – thinkers who have made a significant impact on him through their way of thinking about the world and of the purposes of education. like them, kumar invests in a holistic approach in which he seeks to think about the relationship of human needs and consciousness in relation to a whole set of global aspects (e.g., economic and political). in this way, kumar brings our attention to a vision that seeks to overcome the structuralist readings or fragmentary tendencies of politics using an existentialist and meditative logic. in this interpretative approach, the author ponders the impact of ideology, neoliberalism, and colonialism on curricular thinking and proposes a consideration of indigenous, critical, autobiographical, and meditative responses as means of confronting these hegemonies. the first of these implies a movement toward decolonizing education implying challenging the oppressive, colonial processes and attending to generational traumas, through the affirmation of ancestral cultural roots and histories that constitute cultural heritage. this response is characterized by a multifaceted spiritual movement of reconnection with culture and nature; this would include peace, harmony and holism as an attitude in life, and in the processes of learning and teaching. the second, a critical response, invites us to grasp an understanding of the different academic contributions that help to criticize the ideologies that guide curricular production. such response helps in the denaturalization of truths and in the fight against prejudice, injustice and discrimination in the classroom and in social life in general. a third response, autobiographical, constitutes an engagement in a psychoanalytical, phenomenological and existential approach to the curriculum, seeking to give consideration to the subjectivity at the center [core] of the curricular experience. it is an introspective process, focusing on cultural, intellectual, religious and political influences, which, according to the author, would help the researcher to connect to the deleterious influences of colonization, ideology and neoliberal logic of control. the meditative response consists of a search for deep understanding of the consciousness of human nature. this would lead to a move toward https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index costa. curriculum in international contexts 97 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index fundamental consciousness that connects us all through our shared existence and which presently is marked by conflicts and antagonisms. through this perspective, the author considers that it is possible to tap into a collective consciousness, capable of fighting prejudice, sectarianism and other negative influences in education at a deeper level within human beings. for kumar, these responses, as a platform for reflection on the curriculum, provide opportunities for new ideas and worldviews. throughout the following chapters, the author focuses on the curriculum studies of different countries. in chapter 2, entitled "curriculum studies in south africa: colonialism, constructivism, and outcomes-based education", the author notes that both india and south africa are former european colonies which marks a certain similarity in curriculum policies. one common feature is the import of european educational solutions that are dissonant with local realities and lead to increased discrimination against local knowledge and identities. high rates of illiteracy, malnutrition, poor teacher training, and lack of infrastructure, are also common to both countries. the first section addresses the historical colonial roots that mark south africa's educational history. influences are highlighted that harken back to visions of education related to slavery and also to those linked to the apartheid period; however, the author points out various conflicts that have led to changes in the curriculum policy, in a movement to critique eurocentric conceptions of education and what it means to be educated in south africa. in the second part, he draws attention to a post-apartheid scenario, with internal tensions that are defined by the struggle of different segments of society to overcome the social injustices constructed by historical segregationism. this period is informed by progressive, constructivist and outcomes-based theorizations. the chapter also addresses how recent curricular reforms are guided by a drive toward outcomes, instrumentalism and managerialism in education, leading to a dissonant construction of the contemporary reality of the country which demonstrates the permanence of a colonial logic in curricular politics, updated by neoliberal senses. along with these dynamics, a critical and democratic movement is emphasized that reiterates the importance of valuing local culture, daily knowledge, and the affirmation of a pedagogy constituted from and for south african values. the third chapter, "curriculum studies in brazil: marxism, postmodernism, and multiculturalism," addresses the development of curriculum studies in brazil, emphasizing three main moments of brazilian thought: a pre-marxist, marxist, and a post-marxist. for kumar, the first moment was marked by the strong influence of tyler’s and bruner's thinking, with intense instrumentalist and psychological/cognitivist appeal. the period of greatest influence of karl marx's thinking was characterized by studies that sought to directly connect education with the processes of social development. concepts such as power, ideology, and hegemony gained strength as interpretative instruments of the curriculum, and educators applied sociological approaches to study curriculum. such theorizations were constituted as criticisms of the instrumental reading of the curriculum and, consequently, of the processes of exclusion caused by traditional and behaviorist views. the centrality of the debate on the processes of selection and legitimization of knowledge in the curriculum characterizes a significant portion of intellectual efforts in the period. it is also emphasized that the movements related to marxist thought had different forms and approaches, mixing theorizations of phenomenology and existentialism, for example. the post-marxist time period has been influenced by post-critical, post-structuralist, and post-colonial discourses. such worldviews brought themes such as subjectivity, difference, gender, race, everyday life and identity to the curricular debate, mainly from the mid-1990s. for the author, the actuality of brazilian curricular thinking signals a coexistence of different theoretical approaches, revealing, through the conception of hybridity, a key for different visions that highlight the curriculum as cultural production. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index costa. curriculum in international contexts 98 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index in the chapter “curriculum studies in mexico: technical rationality, curriculum communities, and neoliberal globalization”, the author constructs a vision of the development of mexican curriculum thinking with attention to three main phases, the first of which is characterized by the importation of technicist and behaviorist logic of curriculum modeling. in this first phase, the author highlights the significant volume of translations of north american works into spanish; this would signal an american imperialist movement with regard to the formulation of curriculum policies in the country. from the 1970s onwards, with the influence of european and latin american critical thinkers, the number of studies grew that criticize the import of solutions and curricular programs from the united states, under the accusations of the lack of attention to the context mexican reality. during this period, critical, constructivist, and interpretative theorizations and the discussion on professional development began to form part of the curricular debate in the country. critical curricular studies in mexico constituted a dialogue with different theories such as the new sociology of education, reconceptualization, reproduction theory, pedagogy of freedom, among others—producing a multifaceted field of studies focused on different mexican social issues. despite this, economic crises and the consequent dependence on foreign capital led the country to undergo strong curricular reforms focused on the defense of education for market in the logic of global capitalism. for kumar, the current state of school curriculum in the country is significantly oriented towards instrumental and behavioralist views of education, guided largely by global educational reforms and related conceptions of innovation, skills, flexibility and outcomes. in chapter 5, kumar gives consideration to curriculum studies in asia. entitled “curriculum as a process of conditioning in asia: ideology, politics, and religion”, the chapter draws attention to different case studies, demonstrating distinct processes involved in curriculum production of countries in the region. based on these studies, he outlines three focal points that mark the influence of religious, cultural, ideological and political aspects of curriculum reforms in these countries. from an ideological point of view, the author highlights the cases of japan, hong kong, afghanistan, malaysia, south korea, as being emblematic. he points out how different political movements fight for greater influence in educational policy, seeking to control curricular proposals, the preparation of textbooks, and teacher education; this reiterates the description of curriculum field as being characterized by continuous conflicts over the definition of the purposes of education. the second focus, which encompasses the tension between nationalism, globalization and moral values, includes the cases of moral education in china, the inclusion of kokoro education in japan, the ideological debate on the incorporation of moral values in singapore, and the defense of values such as harmony and docilization in macau, as well as the debate on national identities in educational reforms in vietnam and the philippines. the author points to the exploration of moral education as an instrument of hegemonic ideologies in each country as being at the heart of the matter, to justify repression, educational control focused on the market and/or, with the expectation of valuing pride and national culture in readings on globalization. the third focus points to the religious influence on curriculum reforms in pakistan, india and malaysia. such reforms led to a setback with regard to human rights, the way knowledge is conceived of, and the objectives of national education. within these movements, there has been significant influence from fundamentalist and non-fundamentalist religious groups which advocate fighting against westernization and other religious views. throughout the chapter, the impacts of political and religious ideologies on national curriculum production are outlined. in this sense, there is a recurrent sense of reaffirmation of west-east binarism, with criticisms of foreign values, and strong opposition to critical freedom in some countries. on the other hand, a globalization of opportunities for participation in the world economy is https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index costa. curriculum in international contexts 99 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index reiterated, with support for educational policies for internationalization. the chapter provides a heterogeneous panorama of how different discourses are articulated in different countries, building unique policies. in the following chapter, “indian social studies curriculum in transition: effects of a paradigm shift in curriculum discourse”, the case of social studies in the indian curriculum is highlighted. kumar focuses on the conflict of different discourses on the teaching of social studies, drawing attention to the changes in the conceptions of this field of knowledge between the reforms of 2000 and 2005. for the author, in the last reforms there was a change of perspective, from a traditional view of instruction in social studies to a vision of critical social studies. specifically, the author uses data from research conducted with schoolteachers to reflect on how such changes are related to their professional practices. throughout the investigation, he highlights the difficulties and successes of teachers during the most recent reforms which provided more critical and experiential perspectives of teaching and learning, creating better conditions for critical thinking and questioning in the educational experience. despite this, it points to problems that are gaining momentum in the educational system, such as: the idea that the role of social studies is to transmit defined concepts about citizenship and society that reiterates a transmission-based logic; the lack of adequate education for teachers; and the lack of infrastructure for teaching based on constructivist principles in schools. in addition, kumar points to the strong influence of the perspective of seeing education as preparation for outcomes and exams, in a behaviorist-positivist logic of the curriculum, with the consequent support for the reiteration of apolitical and atheoretical readings on the process of schooling. for the author, despite the improvements that have been made, it is necessary to seek to overcome the difficulties mentioned, so the project of social justice and democracy through the indian educational system can be strengthened. the seventh chapter, called “postmodern turn in north american social studies education: considering identities, contexts, and discourses”, is a discussion about the contribution of post-structural and post-modern thinking to research and teaching in the usa and canada. the author discusses concepts that make up postmodern thought, emphasizing the contributions of such theories in the field of social studies and highlighting the significance of reflective, critical and democratic engagement. themes such as the truth, the family, normativity, the individual, subjectivity and the power relations involved in the production of knowledge are investigated through various case studies. for kumar, the contributions of post-structural and post-modern studies have repositioned concerns in social studies, moving them from a transmission-centered view to a critical and reflective one which takes into account the need to criticize the modern and western assumptions that guide the messianism of critical theory readings. at the end of the discussion, he concludes by highlighting the possibilities that post-perspectives bring to research and the teaching of social studies, as well as by highlighting proposals and questions about the inclusion of post-modern views in educational research, taking into account their conflicting and necessary interactions with the thoughts and perspectives of modernism. in the last chapter, “the menace of neoliberal education reforms: where capitalism, behaviorism, and positivism meet”, a conclusive discussion is presented on the ramifications of neoliberalism in different dimensions of social life, with special attention to how this logic impacts the field of education. as a core of his approach, kumar points to the worsening inequalities between people and nations caused by neoliberalism, with its discourses of privatization, free markets and a reduction in the role of the state. in the political field, he points out that under this view, citizens have a reduced role and agency, which tends to make the citizen a mere spectator of political production. in the field of education, this logic leads to the formulation of policies based on corporate visions of education, with their defense of https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index costa. curriculum in international contexts 100 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index standardized tests based on comparison, and more prescriptive and alienating curricular proposals. for kumar, such political dynamics tend to undermine the creativity of teachers and students and control teaching and learning in schools. he points out that this can be challenged through theoretical investment in a critical educational agenda, the core of which is social justice; autobiographical attention to human consciousness and subjectivity; and a meditative conception of curriculum, which could link contributions from critical pedagogy and autobiographical studies in a quest to query the psychological roots of capitalism. the author argues that fear lies at the heart of the dynamics of competition, comparison and accumulation. meditative questioning would call attention to the oppressive, subjective, and social relations based on competition; this movement would bring the possibility of revolution, from inner-consciousness to the external context (including economic and political structures). i conclude with the thought that kumar's international meditative approach offers us a variety of different impressions, such as the consideration of a broader context of economic and politicalideological influences, and an essential understanding of multiscale tensions in the production of curriculum policies. as a curriculum theorist, kumar’s unique perspective is to emphasize critical and post-critical curriculum perspectives in a quest for reflection on the impacts of global educational policies around the world. but, more than that, he proposes a deeper study of oneself and one’s relationship to the educational, social, and political structures through autobiography and meditative inquiry in order to develop a holistic awareness which can allow us to be and to live without fear in the educational and the broader context. acknowledgements i wish to sincerely thank bonnie petersen for providing generous help in editing this manuscript. notes i hugoguimel@yahoo.com.br references massey, d. (2005). for space. london: sage. submitted: june, 15th, 2020. approved: july, 27rd, 2020. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index mailto:hugoguimel@yahoo.com.br o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: hernández hernández, carola; benítez restrepo, milena; flores hinojos, irma alícia (2017). transformation of teachers as active agents in curriculum building. transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> transformation of teachers as active agents in curriculum building carola hernández hernández1 los andes university, colombia milena benítez restrepo2 pontifical catholic university of chile, chile irma alicia flores hinojos3 los andes university, colombia struggles in relation to the curriculum in colombia in colombia, the general law of education (law 115 of 1994) established curricular autonomy for institutions in all educative levels. hence, every school and educative institution has decentralized administrative and pedagogical autonomy to define their own curriculum by means of the institutional educative project (iep). the ministry of education approves standards and guidelines for the actions and decisions of institutions and their advisors. nonetheless, these principles do not replace teachers in decision making in relation to contents, teaching and evaluation methods. before that, the view of the curriculum introduced in colombia in the 70’s was grounded on the idea of “planning” –very similar to the one developed in usa at the beginning of the xx century where the curricular theory was born (pinar, 2014). such view generated an important resistance in colombian educators and educative researchers who rejected the notion of curriculum centered on planning as opposed to pedagogy, centered in the knowledge of teachers regarding what to teach, how to teach it and the purpose of teaching it (montoya, 2014). such resistance gave place to several movements aimed at repositioning teachers and pedagogy as the core of the educative field: intellectual field of education (campo intelectual de la educación – cie), the field of pedagogy (campo de la pedagogía – cp) and the colombian pedagogical movement (movimiento pedagógico colombiano –mpc). these movements had a great impact on the change proposed in the general law of education. according to montoya (2014), in two decades said movements failed to sort the challenge of curricular autonomy, because most of them continued to build a view that undermined curricular studies rather than generating a deep comprehension of the meaning of the curriculum and its relation to pedagogy. this understanding of the curriculum as a factor that weakens pedagogy had two consequences in colombia (montoya, 2014). first, the exclusion of the study of the curriculum from the study plan in the initial training of teachers both for normal schools there are institutions where hernández, benítez & flores. transformation of teachers 143 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci youngsters are trained to be teachers while they complete their basic education -, and for university teacher programs in which the concept is only mentioned as an operational organization of contents and activities. second, other curricular perspectives, as the procedural or practical (in which teachers are the ones who make decisions about the curriculum and use formative evaluation to research the effectiveness of their designs) or the critical perspective (in which the curriculum is seen in turn as a device for social reproduction and a tool for social change in the hands of the teachers) are not recognized by colombian teachers, restraining their action in relation to curricular autonomy. then again, despite curricular autonomy, most schools have adopted curricula from editorials, consultants and other institutions, doing exactly what they did before they had the power to design their own curricula. this has resulted in de-contextualized curricula in which teachers have almost no power (molano, 2011), and which do not contribute to the objective of improving the quality of education in the country. 40x40 curriculum for academic excellence and comprehensive education: policy of bogota as stated by weber (1919), the concept of policy is broad enough as to include any type of autonomous directive activity. he defines policy as the aspiration to participate in power or influence the distribution of power among the different groups that comprise a single state. within this perspective, crick (1962) suggests that policy is the result of accepting difference in social groups, and hence there are diverse traditions and interests within a territorial unit depending on a single government. from this view, public policies are understood as actions linked to problems and associated to specific solutions to address public affairs; curricular reforms are one example of this. in the particular context of the district educational institutions of bogota, the policy of bogota humana (2012-2014) gave birth to a priority project to reduce segregation and discrimination, and make people the main concern of development (sed, orientaciones generales, 2014). in this sense, increasing the number of school hours by means of the unique school journey of 40 hours was meant to rise learning opportunities for children and youngsters. hence, the curriculum for excellence and comprehensive education was conceived as the proper framework to design and implement programs to offer quality education in bogota. by the end of 2013, the district education secretariat (secretaría de educación distrital -sed) asked the specialization program on curriculum and pedagogy from the education training research center –cife of los andes university to advise them in the writing of the guidelines of this district policy. accordingly, a team of cife researchers, officers from sed and public teachers worked collaboratively for one year in the production of the policy documents. the policy documents include guidelines about quality of education, the concept of human development, lessons for a good living, comprehensive curriculum, evaluation, responsibilities of the different social actors and pedagogical strategy guiding the required curricular reform (sed, orientaciones generales, 2014). the policy has four transverse pillars: education for citizen connivance and coexistence, differential approach, gender-based approach and education supported on technology. these pillars are meant to underpin all cycles and areas of the curriculum, enabling a more comprehensive approach of education in district schools. subsequently, these documents were shared with other teachers and actors from the schools. nevertheless, aware of the resistance mentioned in the previous in relation to curricular studies in colombia, the members of cife considered necessary to design a teacher training for the re-signification of the concept of curriculum and the hernández, benítez & flores. transformation of teachers 144 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci empowerment of teachers in building curricula in line with the proposals of the policy and responding to their particular contexts. hence, a course was designed based on the curricular view of cife, involving a critical perspective in which teachers are designers, promoters and evaluators of their curriculum (posner, 1995; stenhouse, 1984). cife adheres to the position of posner (1995), suggesting that the curriculum encompasses all the educative experiences planned by the institutions for their students. they also use the author’s view of concurrent curriculum for the curricular analysis. concurrent curriculum means that there is not a unique curriculum but five coexisting dimensions of it: the official curriculum, the operative curriculum, the hidden curriculum, the null curriculum and the additional curriculum. different authors in the field of curricular studies have proposed these dimensions, introducing them altogether provides a powerful analytic comprehension of the different processes and actors within educative institutions as micro-systems, which in turn aids in establishing relations between different spheres of the educative system. posner (1995) describes the official curriculum as the formal documents that materialize it in study plans. it includes sequences, evaluation methods and public policy components. the operative curriculum refers the actual class practices and evaluations, namely what actually happens in the everyday educative processes of teaching and evaluation. the hidden curriculum consists of the norms and values that are not explicitly presented by educative institutions. it includes beliefs about evaluation, the role of teachers, gender and inclusion affairs, etc. the null curriculum comprises the subjects and contents that are not taught and the considerations about why they are not taught. finally, the additional curriculum corresponds to all the other experiences that are not part of the subjects and which in many cases arise from the students’ interests. they are not hidden and have an acknowledged dimension in the educative process. the design of the course to bring the participants closer to the policy 40x40 curriculum for excellence and comprehensive education adopted this view of the curricular analysis, keeping the character of collective construction. teachers’ perceptions according to authors like berger and luckmann (1973), reality is socially built in the interaction between the existing reality, the one that is being built and the knowledge that its actors have about it. thus, the knowledge built pertains to the specific social context. the perspective of berger and luckmann (1973) is complemented by the view of durkhein that emphasizes on social facts as means and ends of knowledge building, and weber’s assumption of subjective meaning of action as part of the object of knowledge. studying the perceptions about teaching and learning is a matter of interest in the current educative research on teacher’s professional development processes (hernandez, maquilón & monroy, 2012; marshall, summers & woolnogh, 1999; & vilanova, garcía & señoriño, 2007). therefore, this type of study is relevant to develop a process of continuous teacher training for schools in bogota. for this particular research, the concept of perception refers to “eclectic mental constructs that come from different sources: personal experiences, prejudice, judgments, ideas, intentions” (aparicio & hoyos, 2008). these mental constructs are highly subjective and vaguely delimited. nonetheless, they give meaning to the acts of teachers in the classroom. thus, perceptions are defined as the teacher’s ideas that constitute their position in relation to a personal, professional and institutional reality. in the case of hernández, benítez & flores. transformation of teachers 145 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci systematization process, there was evidence of perceptions related to the policy itself. this approach on perceptions was the general framework for the analysis and reflection on the curricular issue described in the results section. perceptions on how and what the students must learn have an influence on the curriculum put into practice -that is to say the operative curriculum. these perceptions are mainly based on the learning style of the particular teacher. hence, identifying the beliefs and knowledge that the main actors have about teaching and learning is a key aspect to improve educative processes (vilanova, garcía & señoriño, 2007), and contributes to the understanding of the subtleties of learning. in this regard, ramsden (1987) suggests that research on the matter should be done in the context in which the teaching learning take place, so that the results have a better application and use for teachers in their classrooms. course description the course is based on a socio-cultural view of learning, in which learning is a social process in which learners progressively become participants of the cultural ways of thinking, being and reflecting, mediated by interaction, language, signs and cultural artifacts (radford, 2008). in this way, since learning is not considered an individual and isolated enterprise, but is spread and transformed by the different members of the community with their different levels of expertise (lave & wenger, 1991, & wenger, 1998), the connection between knowing and being is fundamental. reflection, as a relation between the learner and the cultural-historical reality, plays a very important role in the elaboration of the learner, both in what he/she knows and in whom he/she becomes (radford, 2008). this view of learning is consistent with a critical view of the curriculum (posner, 1995, & montoya, 2008), in which teachers are its direct builders. thus, empowering them in this function will enable systematic changes in their teaching practice, resulting in a better quality of education. therefore, cife did an important effort in providing a participative and reflexive experience to the teachers, enabling them to replicate similar practices in their schools. on these grounds, the course began by addressing the need to extend the vision about curricular theories by reading and discussing the work of authors like doyle (1992), gimeno-sacristan (1991, 2010), goodson (2000), posner (1995) and stenhouse (1984) in small groups. then, they prepared digital portfolios on moodle platform. as part of this activity, the participants were invited to record their reflections and the relation of the sessions with their teaching practices. following the planned activities, the content of the documents of the public policy 40x40 curriculum for academic excellence and comprehensive education was addressed, starting by the different elements proposed in it and their possible implementations based on the lessons for a good living. the sessions designed to discuss and analyze the transversal pillars –citizen connivance and coexistence, differential approach, gender approach, the use of cit in educationwere object of reflection in relation to their everyday experiences. many of them were recorded in the portfolios. finally, the work of elliott (1993) and other published articles were introduced as the last theoretical element addressed to understand the methodological proposal of participative action research. these readings illustrated how this methodology can provide lessons for good living and educative transformation. consistent with this, different curriculum designs were elaborated (in small groups according to common interests or individually) considering the interests raised by the policy, the teachers’ particular contexts, the different elements analyzed and the strategic pillars. these hernández, benítez & flores. transformation of teachers 146 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci designs were recorded in posters that were presented and discussed by all the participants in the last session of the course that was open to the public. the course lasted 40 hours, organized in 3-hour sessions during 3 weeks. 120 teachers participated in the course in response to an open invitation from the education secretariat for teachers from all district schools of bogota. the design of the microcurriculum sessions was done by expert teachers of cife -16 people enrolled in cife, all of them with master’s degrees on education. these experts worked in couples, guiding groups of sessions according to their area of expertise. these people contributed to the main ideas of each topic and advised on specific ways to address them; they also provided reading material and material to develop the sessions. provided that the course was intended to disseminate the policy 40x40 curriculum for academic excellence and comprehensive education, it is relevant to ask whether this objective was met. hence, this article shares the results of the systematization of the experience lived in the course by answering two questions: what are the perceptions of the teachers about the course? and, what are the main ideas learned by the teachers in the course? methodology we conceive systematization as a strategy to produce knowledge relevant to understand educative practices more in depth by critical reflection about them. different authors (torres, 1999; jara 1994, & jara, 2006) agree that systematization is a way to recover the knowledge produced in social and educative intervention projects and generate systematic understandings about them. in addition, this process is based on the critical-hermeneutic paradigm that intends to comprehend and interpret what takes place in the development of a project, particularly in the intervention practice (cendales, 2004). the systematization was done based on the analysis of the instruments designed for data collection throughout the course:  field journals developed by the teachers of the course: at the end of every session each couple of teachers recorded in a document the progress of the session, their perceptions about them, and the challenges for coming sessions.  class observations: conducted by one person in charge of systematizing who did 6 observations in total.  portfolios: developed by the teachers throughout the course; they recorded 80 portfolios in total.  surveys: a survey was conducted in the last session of the course; 70 surveys were completed.  interviews: one of the people in charge of systematizing did 4 in-depth interviews with teachers about their impressions and lessons learned in the course. the information was transcribed and analyzed using the analysis methodology proposed by the grounded theory, using the nvivo software. the information collected with the different instruments was triangulated and grouped by categories, both pre-established and emerging. next, we will present and discuss the results. results and discussion at first, the analysis was conducted according to two categories: “perceptions about the curricular and pedagogical proposal of the course” and “lessons learned in the course”. short after, a third category appeared: “perceptions about the 40x40 curriculum for academic excellence and comprehensive education”, which is relevant hernández, benítez & flores. transformation of teachers 147 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci in the colombian context of curricular studies and struggles between the teachers’ views on the curriculum and the views of policy builders. we will start by presenting the results found in relation to the third category, more related to the general context of curricular studies in colombia. these results illustrate how teachers read, appropriate and adapt public policies to the curricula of their schools. then, we will continue with the category of perceptions about the curricular and pedagogical proposal of the course and we will close with the perceptions of the lessons learned in the course. perceptions about the 40x40 curriculum for academic excellence and comprehensive education the teachers that took the course had different profiles; some of them came from schools that had been working for two years in the processes described by the policy and their experience was reinforced by the documents; others only manifested their interest in the topic although the schools they worked in had not yet implemented the policy. moreover, there were teachers from almost all the areas, ‘linkage teachers’ and coordinators. the ‘linkage teachers’ are teachers of the institution who have no class time and use their time to implement the policy 40x40 curriculum for academic excellence and comprehensive education. it is worth highlighting that all the participant teachers expressed a genuine interest in understanding the policy because they consider it is positive for education; as one of the interviewed teachers said: rather than 40x40 it should be called open classroom because the classroom used to be very closed, focused on cognitive aspects and there was no time for experimental aspects. now with the 40x40project the classroom has to be more open and provide the necessary space for students to apply cognitive learning to other possibilities provided by the project, which is very positive. (interview teacher 4) nonetheless, some kind of struggle was evident in much of the information collected from the teachers. for example, in the analysis of the portfolios, we found expressions of reluctance: it is very difficult at school to progress in the 40x40 project. communication is quite poor in the institution, agreements are avoided and there is resistance to work and change. it hasn’t been easy to work on the curricular integration. we started with documents jointly prepared by the school management and some teachers, but they are not reinforced or appropriated by the educative community. nonetheless, the documents are an excellent work and we have the challenge to implement them and make them a reality. many are not even aware of it [the policy and its documents] and they think we are going to take their current tasks from them. they don’t understand that we are broadening the possibility of development and learning for the institution and obviously for the children. (participations in portfolio) and one of the teachers said the following in the interview: there is resistance in some teachers that are old-school and may feel their methodology is threatened because the project requires giving the students something different from what they have in the classroom, and in that moment they might prefer to be in the project rather than being in a class. (interview teacher 4) more than showing the difficulties generated by an environment of uncertainty that triggers resistance to change, the analysis of these perceptions evinces the great challenges for the appropriation of the policy in the institutional curriculum. on one hand, few people are currently working on the official curriculum, which is merely documental and oriented to planning. provided its reduced appropriation both at the hernández, benítez & flores. transformation of teachers 148 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci personal and institutional levels, there is the challenge of taking it to the operative curriculum and concrete actions of teachers. on the other hand, there is also a lack of critical thinking in relation to the aspects that have not been traditionally addressed in the school -which would be part of the null curriculum-and which the policy intends to make explicit and official to favor the quality of education. in this sense, deepening in the theoretical work of authors like posner (1995), gimeno (1991, 2010) or goodson (2000) is highly relevant for the teachers to discuss and appropriate these aspects; ultimately, this will lead to making decisions and looking for strategies become autonomous in the implementation of the guidelines of the policy. another issue identified is that there is an important group of teachers and directors that do not know the official documents of the policy and yet are in charge of establishing the agreements to modify the institutional educative project (iep). when asked about this in the interview, one of the teachers said: all the actors of the school need to be trained because the 40x40 project has not been very well accepted and we have overcome obstacles day by day. this is like stumbling and falling, so it would be interesting to train other people that are not currently part of the project because this will benefit the entire educative community. otherwise, it is very unlikely that this is studied in depth. (interview teacher 3) this information is consistent with some results identified in the responses to the open questions of the final survey in which some teachers expressed the following: based on what i did here we submitted a proposal of curricular integration, but it was not very well-received by the academic coordinators and the headmaster herself. they need this kind of training. (final survey) in both pieces of data there is the idea of extending the training to the entire educative community, especially those who have authority roles and make decisions. the participation of one single person per school in these processes is not enough because in general the collective building of the curriculum and the policy end up invalidating these change initiatives. another aspect worth mentioning is that very seldom the teachers used the term public policy. instead, they call it a project, as if it was something optional and lasting for as long as the external system takes to change the documents. during the interview, one of the teachers said: while reading the documents during the course i was surprised that topics as the cycles, standards and other programs like ‘ciudad-escuela’ that was a program from a different administration are so articulated. i liked that because it seems there is a process. (interview teacher 3) again, this reflection confirms how difficult it is to capture these guidelines in the institutional curricula, considering the definition of perceptions as the ideas of the teacher that constitute his/her position regarding a personal, professional and institutional reality (aparicio & hoyos, 2008). the teachers’ perception of the educative policies as temporary supports their resistance to change: ‘if everything will change again anyway, i can continue doing what i already do’. this issue should be seriously considered by policy makers to recover and strengthen elements provided by previous policies, so that there is more willingness of the stakeholders to work in new processes. this is not a minor challenge, since it implies breaking a dynamic of many years. the results also acquaint for the effort of the education secretariat to attain better acceptance of the policy 40x40 curriculum for academic excellence and comprehensive education by appointing teachers in every school as “linkage teachers” –rather than using external agentsto promote it. in turn, this action that intended to be hernández, benítez & flores. transformation of teachers 149 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci more empowering has its own issues. in the interview, one of the “linkage teachers” refers to his/her duties: something that draws my attention is that we do not have specific functions as linkage teachers. we don’t know what we are going to do when we are appointed as the linkage teacher. i only know that it means that everything will change. i think that it implies that i will go from being a classroom teacher to be someone from management because my work is developing activities, looking for resources, finding ways to incorporate the 40x40 program in the school. the school assumes this is something separate, something different from the school affairs, so everyone says: ‘that is something from the 40x40 program, send it to the linkage teacher’. everything works as if it was something different from the actual activity of the institution, but the point is that it must be part of the everyday life of the school. (interview teacher 2) given this change of role, the teacher feels he has lost his identity in the group and as part of management he is object of resistance as the policy is. in practice, the teachers do not want to make it part of the everyday dimension of the curriculum. the results of this category support the hypothesis of montoya (2014) that there is a poor vision of the concept of curriculum in the collective of colombian teachers. as mentioned before, as long as teachers see the curriculum as an organizer and in many cases reduce its conceptualization to the official document, they will miss the chance to take advantage of the explanatory nature of the curriculum at other levels. thus, the operative curriculum and the pedagogical practices cannot be addressed or developed to appropriate the public policy. in addition, there is resistance to matters that have not been addressed, which may be part of the hidden or the null curriculum and which are evident in the light of the policy. these issues reinforce the idea that the state disempowers the teachers and forces them to offer an education that does not consider their views. the questions are: what kind of actions is required to change this attitude of resistance? who should perform them? this matter will be discussed later. perceptions about the curricular and pedagogical proposal of the course the results of the survey conducted in the last session of the course show that 100% of the teachers experienced a significant work environment throughout the course. in the surveys, they also expressed that the proposal of the course defied the idea of the teachers about training courses, especially due to its practical, reflexive and pertinent component, different from traditional pedagogy and lectures as its main device: it is very relevant because it wasn’t talking about something that we are not addressing; it wasn’t talking about a curriculum course without relating it to the practice. they began with theoretical foundations because it was necessary to contextualize, but as the course evolved, it became pertinent; now i understand a lot of things because 40x40 is much more than the two hours that kids spend in an activity, it is much more than that. (interview teacher 3) another aspect is its focus on learning and we, as students, were permanently building knowledge. i felt that they led us to build it ourselves and that is when meaningful learning takes place, because you have experiences, knowledge, theoretical and practical inputs, and others are built collectively. they did not focus on telling us; instead it came from us and it is a very laudable task, because everything is different when things come up and you have to deal with them according to certain objectives and purposes. for a program to be successful, it needs good teachers. i think: how can all these contributions be modeled and led towards a purpose? and this experience was a good example of how to do it. (interview teacher 1) hernández, benítez & flores. transformation of teachers 150 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci when asked directly about the quality of the course, 65.71% graded the course as excellent and 25.71% as good. in addition, due the way in which the sessions were developed, by the end of the course 50% of the teachers stated that the course increased their interest in studying the curriculum. altogether, these results show that the proposal was successful and pleasant for the teachers. these results are quite encouraging, considering that the course also addressed conflictive issues in the curricular context in colombia and involved the teachers in reflexive processes about them. analyzing the pedagogical proposal, using a socio-cultural approach to learning (lave & wenger, 1991; radford, 2008, & wenger, 1998) implies a permanent negotiation of meaning to elaborate own understandings. thus, during the sessions the teachers were invited to inquire, discuss, represent, evaluate and socialize their knowledge and ideas in relation to different issues from the curricular re-design and teacher’s identity. in the interviews, the teachers acknowledge the value of this proposal: you can find a lot of information in books, but not in interaction. i liked something that perhaps we have forgotten, and it is exploring knowledge. sometimes i wondered: ‘the conference is over... is that it? what do we do after 20 minutes? and it was us who had to look for the answer of what we wanted, by talking and working together. (interview teacher 2) the training proposal surprised me, in terms of how the course was developed by means of an active model in which every student progressively built knowledge based on experiences, some references and tools they gave us, , and by cooperative work with other people. so, for me, the exercise was quite enriching; i learned a lot about how to do it. (interview teacher 4) this evidence shows that, coming from a background in which the curriculum and the teaching practice is content-oriented, the teachers were surprised to be able to address such contents from a different perspective. by building a practice community (wenger, 1998) their participation in the negotiation of meaning was permanent: the dialogue with the teachers from the course and the joint enterprise helped them resignify the role of teachers and students in this kind of pedagogical approaches. in the class observations the following aspects were recurrent: as regards to the interaction processes, it was interesting to observe how moments for socializing, discussing and talking about each other’s experiences were encouraged. (observation, june 4) it is interesting because in the conversations among pairs the teachers talk in first person... these are sentences like “it is difficult for me” “for example, we do...” “we decided” “for me...” this may imply a different acknowledgement of the practice, more reflexive”. (observation, june 18) and in the portfolios some reflections like: after every session i record in my portfolio different reflections based on the experiences that i hear from my partners, similar to those that i live day by day, with the difference that the activities of this course enable consensus of knowledge, points of view and arguments, mediated by the authors that we read. (participation in portfolio) these elements are very valuable because when the teachers share their experiences, they express and re-build their identity. for wenger (1998), identity is defined by experiences of participation and filiation in certain communities that allow belonging and it is through this constant participation that individuals can recognize who they are, what decisions they make, and their approach to difficulties within the possibilities of such community. hernández, benítez & flores. transformation of teachers 151 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci thus, by sharing with other teachers, identifying similarities in their ways of participation, in the understanding of the curriculum, public policy and their relation with these concepts, teachers were empowered in the topics under study and realized they are likely to build the curriculum: the program tells you: you can continue to create the curriculum from the perspective of your institution, your school or think that the students or the community are interested on learning things and you have the chance of building the curriculum considering those interests. (interview teacher 1) i already understood what my commitment to “creating the curriculum” is […] i also realized that the school is progressing in several processes, although we don’t know that we are doing the curriculum. (interview teacher 2) this kind of statements shows that by means of a dialogic process the relation between the teachers and the field of curricular studies can be addressed differently. as suggested by vilanova, garcía and señoriño (2007), identifying the teachers’ conceptualizations of their task through educative experiences –in case of the course, the concept of curriculum and its relation to pedagogygenerates opportunities to improve the educative processes under their charge. finally, to close this category, these two fragments of interviews express the perception of the teachers about the role of the university in this process: this training has something important: follow-up. there is continuousness and follow-up of what happened. normally you take a course, it is over, and that’s it. however, being in this course means that there is permanent evaluation of the contributions of the course, our suggestions, what can be done in a better way... that is important for me as a teacher because i feel that what i say matters and this is not usual. (interview teacher 3) what we did at school was that we started to operate; and the problem we’ve had is bringing together the conceptual aspects and the practical aspects, which was what you did in los andes university: bringing together theory and practice, which requires a dialogue between the academy and what i do, and it is supported by theory. it was fundamental to get to know the main document; it was very important because i found that we are going in a different way. one thing is what the theory says and the objective of the program and a different one is when you start doing it (…) i sent the document o other teachers in my school but sending it by e-mail for them to read it whenever they have the time is different from having participated in the course. i had never worked in los andes and now i think i have this support to continue working in my school. (interview teacher 2) legitimation is associated to power relationships and if participation is not legitimated, it is not empowering (leave & wenger, 1991). thus, these two interventions have in common the fundamental role of universities in the colombian educative system of contributing to the legitimation of teachers by listening to them, validating their contributions, recognizing their needs and finding strategies to meet them. considering that it was the colombian members of the academy and universities who have generated the conceptual rupture between curriculum and pedagogy (montoya, 2014), universities are partly responsible for having disempowered teachers by undermining their relation with the curriculum. consequently, it is the members of the academy who must foster a change. this course is clearly an alternative to make this change. the results presented in this category evidenced the importance of the proposal of a large group of international academics on re-conceptualizing the field of curricular studies as comprehensive leaving the vision of prescription (pinar, 2014). in addition, hernández, benítez & flores. transformation of teachers 152 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci they show that the idea of the curricular design with a critical perspective (posner, 1995, & montoya, 2008) empowers the teachers and leads them to take responsibility for the construction of knowledge and identity and in turn provides ways of participation to develop specific actions for this purpose. this learning experience showed them that the view of the curriculum is related to specific pedagogical practices, as suggested by doyle (1992). in this way, they could explore and analyze their own practice in a more reflexive way, establishing a positive environment, even in the moments when they were discussing unsettling points or institutional tensions. perceptions of the lessons learned in the course from a socio-cultural perspective of learning, the connection between knowing and being is fundamental. in this sense, the course intended to give the participants an experience that could make this connection true. several lessons were learned in relation to the critical analysis of the influence of the curriculum in the educative practices: from the first sessions there were activities that clarified my view of the curriculum. i learned that it must comprise in a planned manner all the experiences of the students, so as to guarantee a meaningful learning in the class. what i have learned until today is that the quality of education does not depend on how much we “teach” our students or how much we transfer to them, but on the way we do it so they are able to create a high self-esteem, self-confidence, self-respect and respect for those around them. i have reinforced the concepts i had about the curriculum and learned from new experiences that nourish my teaching: the importance of the team in the construction of knowledge importantly promotes interaction between the students. the experience lived so far gives me new perspectives for my teaching tasks with quality. (participations in portfolio) the meetings were meaningful and served several purposes; one of them was appropriating everything in relation to the curriculum, excellence and academic training. in other words, being able to appropriate its intentions, led me -as coordinatorto recognize the needs in our school and being able to connect with work mates that have much more experience in the subject. (interview teacher 4) these lessons learned show the appropriation of conceptual elements in particular contexts and how pedagogical practices are closely related to the curriculum, as suggested by doyle (1992). furthermore, there is an evident expansion of the concept of curriculum and acknowledgement about the main role of teachers in curricular restructuring and transformation of pedagogical practices, as proposed by stenhouse (1984) and elliott (1993). these two understandings were fundamental throughout the training process and indispensable in the curricular reform intended by the 40x40 curriculum for academic excellence and comprehensive education. in relation to content, the hidden curriculum was the most mentioned and object of confrontation and reflection. the teachers were able to recognize elements from their beliefs and actions that influence their practice inside and outside the classroom: after reading the text, in my personal case many questions arise regarding these actions that i perform daily and the impact that they have on my students, especially considering they are in 1st grade and their teacher is their raw model; they actually copy from me many of my actions and expressions. before i read this, i thought this course about the curriculum was important but my concern was not as evident as it is now. now i question myself, i demand myself even more as a teacher, aware of the power of my attitude, my action and of the possibility of generating in my students a hernández, benítez & flores. transformation of teachers 153 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci critical view of their context, of what happens in their classroom, in their school, in their neighborhood, until they come to what is happening in their country and how all this affects their lives and their parents’ lives. i have had experiences in which aspects of the hidden curriculum have become evident in relation to gender. for instance, in physical education activities, rounds and dances in which it is considered that boys or girls cannot move in certain ways or make couples with children from their same gender, in topics related to identifying tastes, professions, occupations. i work with 5-year-old children. in my work i can see the hidden curriculum in relation to gender when guiding the recognition of the value of human beings in respect, equality, regardless of being male or female or of the distorted gender identity created by society or culture. (participations in portfolio) in this sense, expanding the understanding of the curriculum led to assuming certain positions and perceiving themselves differently. moreover, it promotes the development of the transversal pillars of the policy in relation to gender, inclusion and diversity, which required greater awareness of the role of school in the transformation of values, beliefs and relations. when the curriculum is not conceived as an enemy but as an empowering construction, teachers are much more proactive and willing to change their practices. for example, many of the answers to open questions in the final survey showed that the student-teachers had taken their learning experiences to their own schools: i have practiced methodologies that we worked in the course, such as the group of experts, and included the orientations in different areas. i have taken into account collaborative work in the classroom, in addition to the advice given to generate debate and evaluation. in addition to reconsidering the center of interest that i guide, i have thought about the methodology that i use in my classes, about how i can make it more dynamic. (final surveys) furthermore, 88.57% of the teachers that answered the survey stated that the course contributed to their teacher training. in the portfolios the student-teachers manifested that the activities proposed were quite interesting because they were innovative and enriching in the sense they provided specific strategies to think in curricula that are not centered in contents but also address skills and competences: i valued the importance of group work in workshops as the creation of a tower with spaghetti, in which each one cooperated actively to attain a common objective. i learned the structure and operation of cooperative teams and the importance of developing collaborative skills (decision making, communication, conflict resolution) to perform the assigned tasks efficiently. the strategy of collaborative reading has become an excellent tool for the analysis of texts and their understanding; with practice, we have improved in its use and found more fluidity in its application. among other aspects it helps to focus the attention and do a comprehensive reading of texts; we improved timing and by sharing with someone else we met the objective of building knowledge. (participations in portfolio) these testimonials illustrate how meaningful experiences in training processes provide elements to the teachers to re-structure their designs and implementations in their everyday learning environments. final reflections and conclusions the perceptions of teachers about the course also reflect the challenges in the initial teacher trainings in colombia, regarding the curricular studies, as expounded by hernández, benítez & flores. transformation of teachers 154 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci montoya (2014). despite the curricular autonomy attained in the country according to the documents, teachers actually have no power on the curriculum because they do not know it. this is the source of conflicts when it comes to the demands for the implementation of new policies such as the 40x40 curriculum for academic excellence and comprehensive training. in this sense, the results of this study show that the course designed shows some divergences and convergences of the curricular realities faced by teachers in institutions. among the tensions were identified, in addition to the new demands that students and teachers generate to the institutional curriculum, the difficulty to make decisions in relation to the curriculum change. within the convergences, the results show that the designed course is a pertinent and suitable strategy for the diffusion and appropriation of the policy documents. in particular, the course structured under a curricular and pedagogical view different from the one the teachers had abstracted, generated an environment that they defined as pleasant, kind and respectful. this setting favored deep discussions throughout the course in relation to the concept of curriculum and showed them that it is not necessarily opposed to pedagogy. when teachers experienced views like that of the concurrent curriculums proposed by posner (1995) in their everyday life, they could see the comprehensive power of a more complex view of the curriculum. likewise, they realized that they could take many of the pedagogical practices they learned to their own teaching practice. these two specific actions generated transformation and empowerment in relation to the curriculum and the public policy, as well as the awareness of their responsibility as builders of a curriculum aimed at including the strategic pillars, more participative practices and new spaces and actors that mean greater learning opportunities for children and youngsters in bogota. finally, it is important to recognize the conflicts and resistance expressed by this group of teachers, generated in the poor conceptualization they have of curricular affairs, and how this fact disempowers them in their task. this experience shows how colombian universities have a great responsibility in leading processes that help the educative community to build a new comprehension of the relation between curriculum and pedagogy to favor the autonomy required by education in the country. notes 1c-hernan@uniandes.edu.co 2mbenitez2@uc.cl 3ia.flores24@uniandes.edu.co references aparicio, j. a., & hoyos, o. l. (2008) enseñanza para el cambio de las representaciones sobre el aprendizaje. universitas psychologica, 7 (3), 725-737. berger, p. l., & luckmann, t. (1973) la construcción social de la realidad. papers: revista de sociología, (1), 181-183. recuperado el 15 de marzo de 2017, de https://ddd.uab.cat/pub/papers/02102862n1/02102862n1p181.pdf cendales, l. (2004) la metodología de la sistematización. una construcción colectiva. revista aportes, 57, 91-113. recuperado el 28 de enero de http://www.cepalforja.org/sistem/sistem_old/metodologia.doc crick, b. (1962) la naturaleza del sistema político de gobierno, en defensa de la política (pp. 15 36). barcelona, spain. kriterios tusquets. https://ddd.uab.cat/pub/papers/02102862n1/02102862n1p181.pdf http://www.cepalforja.org/sistem/sistem_old/metodologia.doc hernández, benítez & flores. transformation of teachers 155 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci doyle, w. (1992) los procesos del curriculum en la enseñanza efectiva y responsable. translation: maximo bence. in effective and responsible teaching. oser. elliott, j. (1993) el cambio educativo desde la investigación acción, translation: pablo manzano. madrid: ediciones morata. gimeno-sacristán, j. (1991) el curriculum: una reflexión sobre la práctica. madrid: ediciones morata. gimeno-sacristán, j. (2010) ¿qué significa el currículo? in saberes e incertidumbres sobre el currículo. gimeno-sacristan, j. (ed.) (pp. 2143). madrid: ediciones morata. goodson, i. f. (2000) el cambio en el currículum. translation: lucila recard. barcelona: ediciones octaedro. hernández, f.; maquilón, j.; y monroy, h.f. (2012) enfoques de enseñanza en profesorado de educación primaria. revista de curriculum y formación del profesorado, 16(1), 61 67. jara, o. (1994) para sistematizar experiencias (p. 13). san josé: alforja. jara, o. (2006) la sistematización de experiencias y las corrientes innovadoras del pensamiento latinoamericano–una aproximación histórica. piragua, (23). recuperado en 14 de noviembre de 2016 de http://www.cepalforja.org/sistem/sistem_old/oscar_jarasistematizacion_y_corrientes_innovadoras.pdf lave, j., & wenger, e. (1991) situated learning: legitimate peripheral participation. cambridge university press. ley general de educación, l. g. (1994) ley 115 de 1994. constitución política de colombia. marshall, d., summers, m., & woolnogh, b. (1999) student's conceptions of learning in an engineering context. higher education (38), 291-309. retrieved: march, 23rd 2017 from https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2fa%3a1003866607873?li=true molano, m. (2011) carlos eduardo vasco uribe. trayectoria biográfica de un intelectual colombiano: una mirada a las reformas curriculares en el país. revista colombiana de educación, 61, pp. 161-198. montoya vargas, j. (2008) the case for active learning in legal education: an evaluative case study of the curriculum reform at los andes university. sarrebruck: vdm. montoya vargas, j. (2014) curriculum studies in colombia. in international handbook of curriculum research, w. f. pinar (ed.) (pp. 134–162). routledge. pinar, w. f. (2014) la teoría del curriculum. translation: edmundo mora. madrid: ediciones narcea. posner, g. j. (1995) analyzing the curriculum (2nd ed.). new york: mcgraw-hill. radford, l. (2008) the ethics of being and knowing: towards a cultural theory of learning. in luis radford, g. schubring, & f. seeger (eds.), semiotics in mathematics education: epistemology, history, classroom, and culture (pp. 215–234). sense publishers. ramsden, p. (1987) improving teaching and learning in higher education: the case for a relational perspective, studies in higher education, vol. 14, no. 2, pp 157-158. sed, orientaciones generales (2014). currículo para la excelencia y formación integral 40x40. retrieved march 11st 2017 from http://www.educacionbogota.edu.co/archivos/noticias/orientaciones_gener ales.pdf stenhouse, l. (1984) la investigación cómo base de la enseñanza. madrid: morata. torres, a. (1999) la sistematización de experiencias educativas: reflexiones sobre una práctica reciente. pedagogía y saberes, 13(4), 5-16. http://www.cepalforja.org/sistem/sistem_old/oscar_jara-sistematizacion_y_corrientes_innovadoras.pdf http://www.cepalforja.org/sistem/sistem_old/oscar_jara-sistematizacion_y_corrientes_innovadoras.pdf https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023%2fa%3a1003866607873?li=true http://www.educacionbogota.edu.co/archivos/noticias/orientaciones_generales.pdf http://www.educacionbogota.edu.co/archivos/noticias/orientaciones_generales.pdf hernández, benítez & flores. transformation of teachers 156 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci vilanova, s. l., garcía, m. b., & señoriño, o. (2007) concepciones acerca del aprendizaje: diseño y validación de un cuestionario para profesores en formación. revista electrónica de investigación educativa, 9(2), 1-21. retrieved february 26th 2017 from mailto:http://www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?pid=s160740412007000200006&script=sci_arttext. weber, m. (1919) el político y el científico la política como vocación. editorial premia, méxico. wenger, e. (1998) communities of practice: learning, meaning, and identity. cambridge: cambridge university press. submitted: april, 27th, 2017 approved: december, 9th, 2017 mailto:http://www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?pid=s1607-40412007000200006&script=sci_arttext mailto:http://www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?pid=s1607-40412007000200006&script=sci_arttext o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: jung, jung-hoon. (2014). hakbeolism: a historical and curriculum consideration of korean test-focused education. transnational curriculum inquiry volume (2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> hakbeolism: a historical and curricular consideration of korean test-focused education jung-hoon jung1 british columbia university, canada screaming he screams a desperate scream holding his head which is tearing his heart screaming, not heard only echoed wailing belated wailing, always wailing soon disappears screaming and wailing swallow one another again and again screaming is prisoned in his flying body a body that suffers from the loss of its soul my poem laments the death of a sixteen-year-old boy who threw himself off his apartment balcony on march 28, 2013. he left the message, “mom, i cannot endure this pain any more. my brain nibbles my heart. i am sorry.” my deepest sympathies are aroused by his memory and to other adolescents who have found the pressures of their lives to be unbearable. the tragedy of these adolescents killing themselves came home to me, personally and dramatically, in 2006. in the elevator of the apartment building where i lived, every day i met a high school student. one day he was not on the elevator—he had jumped off the balcony of his fifteenth-story apartment. the investigating officer said such an event was not unusual: pressure from parents, teachers, and classmates to do well on academic tests was the culprit. this kind of tragedy affects not only secondary students, however: in 2002, a fifth-grade student jumped off his balcony, leaving this note behind: “i do not understand why i have to study 28 hours and rest 20 hours whereas dad works for 20 hours and rests for 28 hours for two days.” korean education is internationally renowned for its students’ academic achievements—in 2011, koreans scored first in the world in reading and third in math jung. hakbeolism: a historical and curriculum consideration of korean test-focused education. 49 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (02) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci (program for international student assessment, organization for economic co-operation and development [oecd]). many korean educators take great pride in such results. but less well known is the high suicide rate among korean adolescents (s. w. lee & y. e. jang, 2011; ang & huan, 2006). research, mostly sociological, has shown strong correlations between these suicides and adolescents’ academic stress (h. s. juon, j. j. nam, & ensminger, 1994; s. kim, 2008). the core of this problem, i argue, is koreans’ societal tendency to make obtaining credentials from highly ranked universities their top educational priority. impressive test scores, especially on university entrance exams, are conceived as determining social status and therefore life-long success in socially stratified korea (t. h. kim, 2011; c. h. lee, 2007; seth, 2002). scoring well on university entrance examinations is thus often the main purpose of education. conversely, fear of failing these university entrance exams may constitute hamartia2 for some students, whose depression leads to suicide. the problems with standardized tests are universal educational concerns. in korea, these problems have unique elements that require historical interrogation. tenth-century korea provides a clue to this emphasis on testing: hakbeolism, a uniquely korean concept of symbolic capital based on hierarchical status or on the reputation of the school a person graduates from. those graduating from the same educational institution gain social capital while also helping and relying on each other. hakbeol is thus obtainable, for many, via high-test scores on university entrance examinations. korean education continues to emphasize test results while ironically it is believed that societal discrimination based on hakbeol is the worst one (t. h. kim, 2011). this paper introduces the korean concept of hakbeolism and analyzes the ties between the testfocused nature of korean education and the historical, cultural, and political influences of hakbeolism. it concludes by discussing the dire consequences of korean curriculum. what is hakbeolism? the historical study of curriculum requires consideration not only of “the history of the field” (pinar, reynolds, slattery, & taubman, 1995, p. 69) but also of national context: historical, social, and cultural elements (pinar, 2013; tröhler, 2014). in korea, for example, while educational and curriculum theories have been strongly influenced by those of north america (y. c. kim, 2010; y. lee, 2003),3 they have nevertheless retained certain traditions. some of the traditions point beyond the history of curriculum studies to the historical, social, and cultural context that—although has not yet much emphasized and discussed in the theoretical level of curriculum—have influenced today’s curriculum discourses in korea. that is hakbeolism. hakbeolism is a concept that is indigenous to korea. a hakbeol is a kind of social status people achieve based on a shared academic background. it is “a group of people who help and rely on each other, who are from the same school” (korean standard unabridged dictionary)4. that is, it is a group of alumni who share the “societal status or reputation of their school” (j. k. lee, 2003, p. 21). strictly speaking, their university’s reputation rather than their ability or knowledge thus determines how others judge them. while hakbeolism is similar to credentialism—in both, people place value on others’ credentials—these phenomena are different. in-sook nahm’s (2011) differentiation is helpful for readers in the west: jung. hakbeolism: a historical and curriculum consideration of korean test-focused education. 50 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (02) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci in the transition from a status society to a credential society, credentials become the most reliable criteria by which to evaluate others’ abilities. a credential society is a society in which credentialism functions as a predominant ideology. . . . credentials are social products and achieving them is an effective way to be successful in the society. this phenomenon functions as a major impetus for the movement in american social status. america is a “functional credential society” since it is focused on the functional attributes and abilities of the credentials, whereas korea is a “symbolic credential society” in that it values the particular schools from which people graduate (kim, 1995). . . to be successful in korean society, a person must put symbolic credentials above functional credentials. (nahm, 2011, p. 105, personal translation) in its emphasis on symbolic credentials as essential to better, higher status and more social opportunities—indeed, to success in life—hakbeolism thus differs from western credentialism and meritocracy. koreans tend to believe that belonging to a better hakbeol by earning a diploma from a highly ranked university will provide them with greater, what bourdieu called, “social capital” (1977). in his problematization of the cultural function of hakbeolism as social capital in korean society, young chun kim (2010) argues that hakbeolism has become “one of the most powerful [forms of] social capital in south korea” (p. 543) because of its influence on individuals’ social success. children from upper socioeconomic families, kim posits, are more likely than others to enter good universities and obtain hakbeol. sang bong kim (2004) states this argument more strongly: “the society of korea is not stratified into upper class, middle class, and working class; rather, it is stratified by hakbeol, with that of seoul university as the royalty, the hakbeol of yonsei and korea university as the nobility, and the rest of the subgroups as the plebeians” (s. b. kim, 2004, p. 30, personal translation). without factoring in hakbeol, sang bong kim argues, there is no explanation for the social authority and capital enjoyed by those belonging to certain hakbeols. in a 2004 study produced by the korean women’s development institute (kwdi), 21.5% of respondents identified hakbeolism as the strongest source of discrimination in korea, well ahead of other reasons for discrimination.5 only seven years later, tae hong kim (2011), a researcher at kwdi, surveyed 948 adults and found that 29.6% felt ‘“credentials or hakbeol” was the strongest source of social discrimination. these surveys indicate not only that hakbeolism is pervasive, but that it is a growing social problem. in fact, 46.5% of respondents in chong-hyun lee's (2007) study feel intimidated in their daily lives by people who belong to a more prestigious hakbeol. what interests me about these studies is not the actuality of hakbeol—even though its strong impact on society clearly matters—but rather, people’s perception of it. the hakbeol phenomenon has been acknowledged and criticized in korea, but ironically, it is also desired and pursued by many. the prevailing criticism of hakbeolism, which is mostly from a sociological angle, focuses on social inequity issues in terms of educational experiences and the centralization of social power. these studies provide highly detailed information about how deeply hakbeolism affects social structures and people’s psyches. in his hakbeol society (2004), for example, sang bong kim takes a sociological and psychological stance in critiquing hakbeol, arguing that it is a kind of “corruptive collective subjectivity fallen into the jung. hakbeolism: a historical and curriculum consideration of korean test-focused education. 51 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (02) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci bottomless pit of inauthenticity” (p. 193).6 according to kim, authentic collective subjectivity has its rationale when both my subjectivity and yours remain alive and are actualized within our collective identity. in my view, however, subjectivity influenced by hakbeolism risks losing its vitality, since within a hakbeol collective, individuals likely surrender their power of subjectivity to the collective. why is hakbeolism at odds with subjectivity? hakbeols are an extended form of family, modernized clans. historically, korean society was a clan society, but the notion of clans significantly weakened during the japanese colonial period, the korean war, and the subsequent dictatorships (kim, 2004, pp. 179-183). this modernization process, kim (2004) argues, transformed the traditional form of family: “people who moved to cities in order to work lost their connections, the clans that used to link them to each other and to their society” (p. 183). not surprisingly, a person who feels anxious about this process may try to become part of a clan-based community to replace that loss of family (kim, 2004). hakbeols thus help to reduce what kim calls the common “regressive phenomenon” that koreans affected by modernization have felt as their family ties have weakened. kim’s (2004) point is that hakbeolism assuages a kind of social and individual immaturity by submerging individual subjectivities in the “corruptive collective subjectivity” (p. 193) in which subjectivities conform to the collective subjectivity. 7 the root issue here from my perspective is simply the loss of people’s awareness of the void of individual subjectivity in their study and education, a problem that i turn to in the following sections. the birth of hakbeolism jung kyu lee (2003), another korean sociologist studying hakbeolism, traces its origins to 958 ad,8 near the beginning of korea's goryeo dynasty (918-1392). this date marks the implementation of the gwageo, the highest-level state examination used to recruit highranking officials. the relationship between examiner and examinee, one which would last for the rest of their lives, was considered as important as that between father and son.9 thus, for example, when the examiner (father) became successful, the son shared in that success. the gwageo was in that sense also a way to build political parties. in different areas and forms and to varying degrees, this phenomenon lasted almost 1000 years, until the gabo reform in 1894. while the social effects of this system are important, j. k. lee (2003) points out that the gwageo was not the only way that officials were recruited. there were other systems: such as the umso (蔭敍), a “protected appointment system” used during the goryo and chosun dynasties to select persons from high-ranking families whose ancestors had made contributions to the country in founding the dynasty and the chungeo (薦擧), the system by which officials could recommend a certain number of people for certain official positions. because of the political struggles between kings and powerful families throughout the dynasties, the umso and chungeo were used by families to pass on their family power, whereas the gwageo was used by the king to reduce the power of these families. thus, we should not attribute hakbeolism to the gwageo alone; rather, all three systems contributed to the growth of hakbeolism because they all privileged a few not according to merit but to personal connections. nevertheless, although the gwageo was abolished more than a century ago, its basis for selection—recommendations and different types of tests (see the encyclopedia of korean culture10)—most clearly contributes to today’s hakbeolism.11 jung. hakbeolism: a historical and curriculum consideration of korean test-focused education. 52 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (02) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the growth of hakbeolism the end of the chosun dynasty and the japanese colonial period the turbulent twentieth century greatly strengthened hakbeolism in korea. toward the end of the chosun dynasty (1392-1910), “commoners’ discontent with the exclusive social status formation increased” (j. k. lee, 2003, p. 91). by this point, it had become possible for commoners to achieve nobility through success on the gwageo, so common people increasingly sought to obtain higher social status through education. this growing reason to pursue education was actualized when the japanese colonial period (1910-1945) opened up educational opportunities to all (j. k. lee, 2003; son, 1993). educational background rather than one’s social status started to be critical to finding work and establishing social status. japanese educational policy during this period was intended to make education a way for koreans to achieve power: the “appropriate educational background was prerequisite to getting jobs and the japanese colonial government had complete control over education, which their test system made possible” (son, 2007, pp. 41-42). some sociologists, such as jong-hyun son (2007), ascribe today’s educational fever and test competitiveness in korea to this japanese educational policy, because the korean education system was modernized and institutionalized during this era. although son’s argument seems plausible to me as far as it goes, the much older gwageo and other selection systems discussed above had already established the cultural norms of hakbeolism—the employment of entrance exams and textbooks, and the administrative role of the government in various exams—that these twentieth century changes entrenched. centralization and efficiency in education after the korean war notions of centralization and efficiency marked the korean educational system after the korean war (1950-1953). trampled by powerful countries and socially, economically, and ideologically devastated during these years, korea had to emphasize centralization, nationalism, and universalism in order to revive the nation. unity in language, in the educational system, and even in ways of thinking was therefore highly valued. political universalism, aimed at binding all koreans into one collective, was considered “the only way to break through the national crisis.” 12 solidarity was promoted as indispensible, regardless of the government in power; and given the country's strong centralization, “anyone who thought differently or wanted a different kind of education was excluded” (kim, 2008, p. 149). justified by the miracle of the han river,13 for instance, this approach saw the achievement of remarkable economic development within a relatively short period of time, a result that commended this approach to many. to advance national solidarity, jung hee park’s military government (1961-1979) pledged to pursue two policies: anticommunism and economic development. the combination was intended to ensure that the korean people had clear evidence of the enemy outside of the country and that economic development would legitimize the government’s power. in the name of economic development, then, efficiency in conjunction with political solidarity became korea's most important social and educational value. while this solidarity and nationalism certainly were valuable in overcoming the national crisis after the korean war, they discounted the people's subjectivities and discouraged educational diversity: variety, differences, and discussions were rejected as inefficient (y. h. lee, 2003). these approaches also hampered the development of democracy itself, because political diversity is a prerequisite for democracy. jung. hakbeolism: a historical and curriculum consideration of korean test-focused education. 53 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (02) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci for the sake of efficiency in education, in the 1960’s and early 70’s the national ministry of education implemented bloom’s taxonomy, mager’s concept of behavioral objectives, skinner’s behavioral psychology, and mcclelland’s achievement motive theory, all approaches intended to “improve” educational efficiency by optimizing the transfer of knowledge and skills from teachers to students. also in the 1970s the ministry of education introduced jarome bruner’s (1959) “theory of the structure of knowledge,” deciding that “bruner’s theory corresponded to piaget’s psychological schema” (y. h. lee, 2003, p. 547). along with the already well-established tyler-bloom-mager rationale that saw curriculum as a means to an end, the korean government’s relatively narrow understanding and use of both theories14 effectively ensured that within the korean testfocused system, curriculum was extrinsically imposed. the notion of “curriculum development,” not “curriculum understanding,” continues to monopolize thinking in korea. in the frame of curriculum development, university entrance examinations are still seen as efficiently summarizing students’ previous education; therefore, most educational experiences in and out of school continue to focus on test preparation. of course korean students do engage in nonintellectual educational activities—art, musical instruments, sports, elocution, and so on—that are not closely related to tests. but as students progress through school, these activities become secondary and eventually tend either to be sacrificed to improving academic achievement or to become test-driven themselves, components that may enhance university applications.15 in korea, the last three decades have produced some ostensibly democratic changes to improve education, including reduced school hours, additional alternative curricular activities, integrated subjects, the concept of a local curriculum, and a teachers’ union that argues for the implementation of the democratic and progressive educational policies legalized during dae jung kim’s administration in 1991. even earlier, beginning in the 1980s, some curriculum scholars in korea started to question the ministry's reliance on tyler, bloom, and mager (y. h. lee, 2003, p. 548) and to demand an alternative understanding of curriculum. they were interested in alternatives that were based on such notions as michael apple’s social reproduction theory and william pinar’s currere— respectively, a new understanding of curriculum and a mode of understanding one’s own educational subjectivity. over the last decade, these positive steps have brought several different perspectives to the previously unified field of curriculum studies in korea (y. c. kim, 2010). however, these changes in curriculum studies, y. c. kim (2010) states, mostly involved new research methodologies and research contexts rather than the fundamentally questioning the purpose or raison d'être of education. one promising aspect of the situation, nevertheless, is that some curriculum scholars have turned their attention from “developing curriculum” to “understanding curriculum” (y. c. kim, 2010, p. 546). yet, curriculum is still under the shade of curriculum development in korea. however, despite these indications of some change in the field of curriculum in korea, the 1979 collapse of jung hee park’s military dictatorship and the 1988 installation of the country’s first civilian president, dae jung kim, had little effect on korea's strong procedural and scientific curriculum formula, the so-called “tyler rationale.” according to that frame, education is an externally imposed means to a socially engineered end. today, supported by highly developed internet-based technology, governmental surveillance of the performance of students, teachers, and schools has actually increased.16 i want to point out three legacies of the twentieth-century growth of hakbeolism that still affect education in korea: first, the education law decrees that “subjects of schools, jung. hakbeolism: a historical and curriculum consideration of korean test-focused education. 54 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (02) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci colleges of education, and informal schools except for colleges shall be prescribed by a presidential decree, and courses of study and class hours of those by a regulation of the ministry” (korean education law, article 155); second, the government still publishes, examines, and approves all textbooks, so all curriculum reforms have been inescapably bound by the government’s control of publication; and third, university entrance examinations continue to be perceived as the culmination of students’ efforts to that point. while official elementaryand secondary-school entrance exams were abolished in the 1970’s, the ongoing emphasis on unification continues to justify “individual needs and differences being subjugated to the preorganized uniform curriculum” (y. h. lee, 2003, p. 546). these educational legacies can be summarized as a continuation of the excessive governmental control exercised through post-korean war centralization and efficiency. together, these three crucial consequences continue to support the fallacy that education provides nothing more than the training that can help students prove their achievements on tests. thus, people who suffer from “education fever” have little curiosity about what students are learning; instead, they are interested only in how students can learn more, and more efficiently, compared to their peers. the dire consequences of hakbeolism hakbeolism’s negative effects can be discussed from societal, curricular, and personal perspectives. first, some argue that hakbeolism is the source of the predominant social discrimination and monopoly of power. the research on hakbeolism by tae hong kim (2011) explores the concept’s negative impact on korean society and education and concludes with the statement that koreans see hakbeolism as the predominant source of social discrimination. sang bong kim (2004) provides detailed information about hakbeolism’s role in korea’s power monopolies. people belonging to the hakbeol of seoul university dominate positions in parliament and the highest government offices: from the korean war to 2003, 283 departmental ministers (43% of all such ministers) had graduated from seoul university, while only 7% came from koryo university and just 4% from yonsei university. seoul university's monopoly far surpasses the comparable figures in japan and the u.s. for top officials having graduated from prestigious universities: in japan, just 18.5% of government officials graduate from tokyo university, while in america, no single american university supplies more than 5% of the country's senators (kim, 2004, pp. 65-66). korea's private sector is not exempt from the effects of hakbeolism either.17 some might argue that the people from seoul university are perhaps better qualified for their high-ranking positions, since they likely know more or are smarter. if indeed these people are better qualified and have made more contribution to the society, people can hardly object to their appointment: greater contributions deserve greater recognition and reward.18 if socially elite people are not better qualified, however, their status is a serious problem. unfortunately, hakbeolism indicates little about the contributions to society that one has made or his or her ability to contribute. rather, it is a kind of internalized value system that merely rationalizes social stratification on the basis of prior academic achievement.19 hakbeolism, i suspect, is a perverted form of “meritocracy” (macdonald, 1981, p. 168). the rationalization using goals and efficiency as “a tyranny of knowledge and basic skills” (macdonald, 1981, p. 169) has “the effect of replicating the social structure in terms jung. hakbeolism: a historical and curriculum consideration of korean test-focused education. 55 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (02) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci of meritocracy” by convincing “the winners and the losers that they deserve the status they achieve” (macdonald, 1981, p. 168). lampert (2012) argues that an “educational meritocracy” (p. 50) is based on the ideology of “aggressive competition and social darwinism” (lampert, 2012, p. 50). lampert explains the winner-loser trap that macdonald criticizes: [an] educational meritocracy, which focuses on cultivating the excellent and the talented, is a manifestation of the social ideology that education on some level be egalitarian, but is ultimately meant to groom the “excellent” for positions of influence, scientific development, decision-making, and leadership. (lampert, 2012, p. 51) lampert (2012) points out that an educational meritocracy is ostensibly based on an egalitarian viewpoint. while not forgetting to mention individual students’ backgrounds (family, cultural, and financial), lampert (2012) criticizes “its underpinning argument that ‘anyone can’ as long as they work hard” (p. 51). what an educational meritocracy undergirds is the thesis that educational success is a matter of each student’s effort since all students have so-called “equal opportunity.” not to mention the differences of students’ backgrounds, the corollary of this ideology blames academic failure or students’ difficulties on their lack of effort and hard work. of course this is the issue of economic hierarchy and social reproduction. the essential problem of this proposition is that it obfuscates the key curricular question, what knowledge is of most worth? (pinar, 1978, 2009, 2012). the state of hakbeolism today boils down to an “obsession with tests” because students cannot enter a highly ranked university in korea unless they achieve good university-entrance examination results. when such standardized high-stakes tests become the ultimate purpose or culmination of study, schools turn into cramming institutions and teachers become workers exploited only for “banking education” (freire, 1970, pp. 71-73). immediately obvious in the literature is the fact that this situation in korea has caused test corruption to become pervasive not only among students but also among teachers and administrators, problems that have been well documented (ang & huan, 2006; hong & youngs, 2008; jung & lee, 2003; juon, nam, & ensminger, 1994; kandel, raveis, & davies, 1991; kang, 2011; c. w. kim, 2011; s. w. lee & jang, 2011; son, 2007). a second negative effect, from my curricular perspective besides the societal one i have discussed, is that hakbeolism has shaped and strengthened the test-focused system based on the assumption that educational content can be/should be provided, transmitted, and assessed for the purpose that the providers intend. thus, it is necessary to point out the problems of standardized tests. i raise the following questions. what kind of knowledge do these tests evaluate? that is, knowledge that tests measure is not free of gender, ideology, politics, ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, and other issues. how well do tests actually measure what they intend to measure?20 are the current tests fair to students? 21 some critics, for example pinar, dispute the assumption that education is a means to an end. pinar agrees with willmann that the real content of education is not externally given matter but rather “an organic power contained in the content itself, which has a determining influence on the conceptions and thoughts during assimilation by the mind, bringing them into conformity with itself, and thus effecting internal organization” (willmann, quoted in pinar, 2011, p. 66). pinar elaborates on willmann's claim, pointing out that the primary elements of education include “self-determination, freedom, emancipation, autonomy, responsibility, reason, and independence” (p. 66)—all of the characteristics which test-focused educational systems are hard-pressed to measure. of jung. hakbeolism: a historical and curriculum consideration of korean test-focused education. 56 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (02) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci course tests may be useful on certain occasions, but tests should be no more than a tool that may be used in education, rather than education being merely a means of improving test scores. when tests that are used to increase one’s hakbeol by demonstrating certain knowledge and skills become central to education, these tests are almost certainly unlikely to raise the fundamental question that pinar urges us to ask repeatedly: what knowledge is of most worth? instead, tests like these focus students’ and educators’ attention on the “mandated knowledge” that doll (1972) calls “predetermined and externally imposed [educational] ends” (p. 309). twentieth-century education, not only in korea but also in the west, has experienced countless so-called failures of students, teachers, and education in general, as judged by traditional, scientific, and neo-liberal perspectives and that the phrase “intellectual banking education” might summarize well. empirically speaking—the way that is preferred by those who want to quantify educational outcomes—isn’t it enough to say that these failures “prove” or “argue” that “intellectual banking education” is a poor system? in scientific research, the assumptions that are made initially can be modified or changed as the research progresses. why can the assumption that educational content is given not be modified similarly according to the demonstrable failures of “intellectual banking”? in my view, the “failure” to accept that knowledge cannot be given is the reason, as pinar (2006a) suggests, that “intellectual education does not speak to many children, and, in failing to engage children’s interests, alienates them, leaving many a child behind” (p. 118). the failure of banking education as a means to an end, as gert biesta (2013) elegantly puts it in the beautiful risk of education, might not actually be a failure but rather a kind of “beautiful risk” (p. 1): a possibility, not a weakness. the risk is there, biesta continues, “because education is not about filling a bucket but about lighting a fire. . . . education is not an interaction between robots but an encounter between human beings” (p. 1). biesta’s point is, on the one hand, an ontological one about the nature of our being and the unpredictability of our existence: there are educational outcomes, which cannot be predictable, measurable, quantifiable, or standardizable. on the other hand, biesta’s point is that there is no necessary connection between “inputs” and “outcomes.” “any connections between teaching and what it effects are,” biesta (2013) contends, “weak connections [emphasis is mine], connections established through interpretation rather than through causation” (p. 120). the causation takes away the interpretations of teachers and students in their study and “overrule[s] [the] professional judgment [of teachers]” (biesta, 2013, p. 120). blame for the fallacy that educational content can be given lies not only with instrumental rationality itself, but also with our educators’ “culpability for their faith in instrumentalism [which has]. . . provided a green light for applied social science with its emphasis upon measuring outcomes quantitatively” (pinar, 2006a, p. 118). i agree with pinar that we teachers are caught within an “intellectual and political trap” (p. 120): an intellectual trap because students depend on their teachers in order to learn and a political trap one because responsibility for learning falls on teachers rather than on their students.22 the third, the stultifying effects of test-focused education on educators and students are multi-dimensional, which i try to understand through reading pinar's (1976) the trial, in which he analyzes joseph k.’s situation in kafka’s the trial as having three dimensions: political, psychological, and metaphysical. politically speaking, in this kind of system students are told what to study and teachers are told by their prescribed curriculum what, how, and when to teach. testing inspects how well both students and teachers have met jung. hakbeolism: a historical and curriculum consideration of korean test-focused education. 57 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (02) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci these externally prescribed standards. in the meantime, an “omnipresent bureaucracy which exercises a political control as mystifying as it feels complete” (pinar, 1976, p. 38) censors the whole process. having been raised in this kind of outer-directed culture, i feel and recognize how tests signified and intensified others’ objectifications of me.23 from a psychological viewpoint, students in such a system are always being evaluated by that system and their teachers and compared to other students. not recognizing their subjectivity, those involved in the educational system—that is, teachers and students—become “nearly exclusively social” (pinar, 1976, p. 38). as pinar explains, the ego [specifically, the nearly exclusively socialized ego] is incongruent with its unconscious to the extent it is primarily social in nature, a construction of social conditioning. it limits severely the information it can assimilate, just as it limits what it can externalize. such an ego is always beleaguered, always “accused” in some sense; it is arrested. (pinar, 1976, pp. 38-39) the ego that is concerned only with external factors most likely fails to listen to, recognize, or reflect on its inner forces. this failure may be caused by fear of a looming test (and thus be related to studying), by shame of family or self (and thus be related to pride), or by anxiety (and thus be related to a conscious or unconscious belief that one’s value is always measured by others). a student’s fear, shame, or anxiety might be linked not only to test results but sometimes also to a fear of study itself, arising from the tendency to decipher experience through exterior filters—others’ objectification. to maintain its psychological stability, the ego thus arrested must rely on outer evaluation, and consequently work continuously to satisfy perceived examiners or judges. this psychological stasis is an “intra-psychic corollary of political arrest, of social authoritarianism” (pinar, 1976, pp. 39). from a metaphysical viewpoint, the problem with the ego’s being in this immature stage is the failure to ask metaphysical questions properly. in the trial, joseph k. asks himself, “what is the nature of this case, [this life]?” and “what are the means of absolution, if any?” pinar would say that here the character is directing his questions the wrong way, outward instead of inward, because joseph k. thinks that only the outer world—not himself—can answer these questions. the problem for people in highly outerdirected cultures—and my problem, as a student and an educator in such a culture—is not only the presence of these questions, but also the absence of curiosity. to raise the questions properly and to be conscious of being trapped in this situation is hard for those whose psychological development has been stopped. i wonder if this dilemma explains why, even though koreans realize it is problematic, hakbeolism continues to grip korean education and society. when i was in the system that i am harshly criticizing here, i was almost completely unaware of these issues; instead, i found that the system’s clarity of direction provided a certain comfort, what pinar (1976) terms an “intra-psychic corollary of arrest, of social authoritarianism” (p. 39). because escape from this system might feel uncomfortable, those within it are highly vulnerable to stress, related both to their own uncertainty about their personal aims and to their unexpected experiences. in other words, their “arrest is signified by [their] exclusive attention to the social world, [and their] denial and ignorance of the ‘lived world’” (pinar, 1976, p. 52). the evaluation frame within hakbeolism, i argue, functions as arbitrary social conditioning and psychological constraints which should not be reflected in our educational activities. the test-focused system in jung. hakbeolism: a historical and curriculum consideration of korean test-focused education. 58 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (02) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci korea is, as macdonald (1981) might describe it, a “tyranny of cognitive knowledge and skills in our schools”(p. 169). in other words the state of students and teachers in the learning and teaching can be conceived as subjectivity-in-danger. subjectivity is an essential and fundamental constituent of learning and teaching, and thus education. information and skill practices should be carefully chosen, organized, and provided in ways, which benefit students. without the consideration of subjectivity teaching is reduced to procedural and systematized implementation and learning is dead act of mimicking whatever teachers or subject specialists choose for students; there is only intellectual submission, and the substitution of subjectivity for numbers, which is a camouflaged form of political and psychological oppression. coupled with the productivity of 20th century industrialization, and consolidation for the sake of nationalism and anticommunism after the korean war, the obsession with tests has increased rather than diminished in south korea. suffering from the influence of the history, culture, and politics in schools, “teachers may become increasingly identified with their professionalized role as educators, less attentive to educating and to learning” (pinar, 1976, p. 57). the teacher, pinar continues, gives up “his or her own voice, and nearly exclusively relies on others. . . [and] judges severely the artless attempts by students to articulate in their own words issues long ‘resolved’ by serious scholars” (pinar, 1976, p. 57). there is no need for the teachers’ voice; their entire reliance is on the national curriculum; the emphasis is on others’ judgment. teachers have hardly been considered “reflective practitioners” (phelan, 2005; schön, 1991) and have been forced to do the “dirty work” (pinar, 1981, pp. 164-171). one possible explanation for the current situation is “repression, unconsciousness role-identified behaviour, [and] intellectual and psychological arrest” (pinar, 1976, p. 57). what renders dormant the status of subjectivity in korean education can be better understood by studying the strong societal tendency to put obtaining credentials from a highly ranked university at the top of the educational goal. what one gets from having certain university credentials is “hakbeol.” hakbeolism is the prevalent belief that academic performance, especially on the university entrance exam, shapes one’s entire life because it most powerfully influences one’s social status. it has led to “the worst stratification in korean society” (s. b. kim, 2004; kim, 2011). the harmonized political oppression and cultural malady, i argue, strengthens the psychological trap in teaching and learning. the frozen structure of education (the national curriculum, censoring textbooks and school performances for example) and the deep embeddedness of the culture (a cultural tendency that people care much more about others’ objectifications than about themselves and care more about test results than about any other aspects of learning) make it difficult for people to recognize that they are in those traps. what is most dangerous is that those from this background lose their sensitivity to their subjectivity. it is my belief that our urgent task is to recover our sensitivity and agency toward our subjectivity, and in turn to cultivate our ability to reconstruct our educational experiences and thus our society. this task for us as teachers on the one hand, means proclaiming our independence from politicians and including our voices in making educational decisions and on the other hand awakening in ourselves and our students the dulled, or numbed, awareness of our ability to negotiate, deconstruct, and reconstruct our educational experience and thereby our society. teachers face a political trap in that the national curriculum in korea functions as a way to control the information sets24 and jung. hakbeolism: a historical and curriculum consideration of korean test-focused education. 59 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (02) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci sensors educational activities through tests and in various other ways with the help of highly developed technologies. students face psychological arrest in that their subjectivity remains dormant. conclusion study is the site of education. while one’s truths cannot be taught, they can be acquired through the struggle of study, for which every individual has the capacity, but not necessarily the will or the circumstances. —william f. pinar (2006a, p. 120) to solve or at least reduce the problems associated with hakbeolism, critics have suggested structural or institutional changes: the “abolition of seoul university” has been much discussed, as well as the abolition of university entrance examinations and the establishment of more democratic university-entrance processes, such as a lottery system. certainly the hierarchical prestige of universities is a problem, but i doubt if these suggestions would work or are even possible because while they might succeed in addressing the current problematic situation, they would fail to address the fundamental educational issues discussed above. unfortunately, even if koreans understand its nature, history, and consequences, hakbeolism will not likely disappear any time soon, given its complex and deep embeddedness in korean society. institutional changes certainly need to be investigated, but if we continue to allow students and teachers to assume that prescribed education should be unquestioningly accepted, such changes will most likely fail. teachers and students will remain caught in hakbeolism’s political and intellectual trap, and education will continue to be a process in which “parents and politicians exploit their anxieties over their children’s future” (pinar, 2006a, p. 120). what can we—must we—do as educators to prevent the hamartia suffered by the students who gave rise to my poem, to spring them from the test-based trap, and to fight against the governmentalization of education? how can koreans come to understand the relationship between their educational lives and the fallacies of hakbeolism? what educational questions should we educators raise? the answers to these questions lie in pinar’s entreaty that we teachers rehabilitate education by forcing “the teaching genie back into the bottle” (2006a, p. 120), by throwing away the mystic belief that only what we teach our students matters: we have to break the unnecessary causation between “inputs” and “outcomes.” john dewey (1916) tells us that “no matter how true what is learned [is] to those who found it out and in whose experience it functioned, there is nothing which makes it knowledge to the pupils” (p. 378). in other words, the knowledge that tests evaluate is possibly always secondary and instrumental to a person’s own act of thinking. knowledge is not definite, stable, fixed, and valueand context-free. rather, it is in a state of flux, ongoing, changing, challenged, converted, and modified, as students live with it, reflect on it, deconstruct, and reconstruct it. knowledge that simply satisfies tests cannot be the end of learning. it should, dewey (1916) tells us, fructify in individual students’ own lives (p. 378). as teachers, we must remember that what a teacher brings into a classroom conversation is no more important than a student’ interpretations on them and what a jung. hakbeolism: a historical and curriculum consideration of korean test-focused education. 60 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (02) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci student brings to classroom conversation. teachers provide educational experiences, and students benefit from them if they want to, no more, since more would be political oppression. accepting the limitations of our responsibilities and of our abilities to support our students in their studies, while at the same time keeping in mind that what we teachers do with our intellectual and practical wisdom and judgments does have value, might provide us with a way to demystify the educationally destructive assumptions that have dominated in korea since the birth of hakbeolism. the consequences, i imagine, might free the soul of the boy in my poem. macdonald argues that “essentially any change in consciousness or practice that moves one step closer to freeing ourselves from arbitrary domination by social structures or other persons (past or present) may be counted as a legitimate step toward liberation” (1981, p. 170). changes in consciousness or practice for liberation can be manifold. one of the ways for teachers, i suggest, is self-understanding through autobiographical inquiry. notes 1 dalinwill@hotmail.com 2the day following the 2002 korean sat, a girl committed suicide after hearing that since the exam had been easier than the previous year’s, the mean score would be raised 10-20 points. her provisional mark had been 20 points lower than she had hoped for. the next day, the media and the sat institution announced its error: the mean score would be lowered rather than raised, because the test had been harder, not easier, than the previous year's. 3 young chun kim (2010) well documents how south korean curriculum studies have been influence principally by u.s. curriculum studies. the first korean curriculum scholar bummo jung, kim explains, was a former advisee of ralph tyler and wrote curriculum based on tyler’s (tyler, 1949) basic principles of curriculum and instruction. thereafter jung’s students and followers had lead the field in korea and “promoted tyler’s rationale for south korean curriculum studies in the 1960s and 1970s” (y. c. kim, 2010, p. 534). providing detailed and chronological influence of north american curriculum on that of south korea, young chun kim (2010) states, “the major theme of curriculum studies in korea has been “curriculum development”…since the 1950s” (p. 534). kim lists the major texts on education and curriculum introduced into korea. all of them on the list are from north america. there is another influential figure in this regard, although kim does not list and he is not from north america, is paulo freire, whose books have been introduced to korean readers in fourteen volumes. 4 this is an online dictionary published by national institution of korean 5 other bases for discrimination that respondents identified as socially dominant were homosexuality (16.0%), people’s physical appearance (11.7%), disabilities (6.8%), nationality (6.2%), and being an unmarried mother (6.0%), along with ethnicity and skincolour (6%). mailto:dalinwill@hotmail.com jung. hakbeolism: a historical and curriculum consideration of korean test-focused education. 61 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (02) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 6 the phrase “collective subjectivity” sounds a bit problematic to me since i don't see how subjectivity can also be collective. i think that “collective subjectivity” might be better termed “identity.” but the use of terminology is not my point in this paper. my conception of “subjectivity” is from pinar (2009): by subjectivity he means: the inner life, the lived sense of “self”—however non-unitary, dispersed, and fragmented—that is, associated with what has been given and what one has chosen, those circumstances of everyday life, those residues of trauma and of fantasy, from which one reconstructs a life. (pinar, 2009, p. 3) my discussion on subjectivity with regard to hakbeolism continues in the section of the dire consequences of hakbeolism. 7 in what way can hakbeol be an alternative to a clan? kim (2004) explains that “the immutability, exclusiveness, and class homogeneity of hakbeol, which are the innate qualities of clans, are what make hakbeol an alternative for a clan” (p. 185, personal translation). however there is a difference between family and hakbeol. while the raison d'être of a family is the existence of the members and it does not change, the raison d'être of hakbeol is distorted: hakbeol is a group from the same school whose raison d'être is studying and building communities for study. it has nothing to do with the raison d'être of its origin. 8 the gwageo was a concept that came from china. in 958 ad, the 4th king of the goryeo dynasty (918-1392), gwang jong (光宗), inaugurated it by accepting the recommendation of ssanggi (雙冀), a chinese scholar who had become a korean citizen (author’s translation). the gwageo was the dominant selection system used by the government throughout this and the following dynasty, the chosun (1392-1910) (retrieved from http://chang256.new21.net/board/board.php?db=536&no=683 on september 10, 2013). 9 retrieved from http://chang256.new21.net/board/board.php?db=536&no=683 on september 10, 2013, the digital encyclopedia of the ethnic culture of korea. 10 this encyclopedia was published in 1971 and is updated by the korean government periodically. now it is published online (http://encykorea.aks.ac.kr). 11 i abbreviated the history of selection systems in the early history of korea. see encyclopedia of korean culture (http://encykorea.aks.ac.kr) for the entire historicity of gwageo and other systems. 12 in symbolic violence and pre-modern academic clique society, suk-soo kim (2008) traces governmental unification policies in korea after the korean war. 13 the “miracle on the han river” refers to south korea's highly accelerated export-fueled economic growth, including rapid industrialization, technological achievement, the country's education boom, the exponential rise in living standards, rapid urbanization, the “skyscraper boom,” modernization, the successful hosting of the 1988 summer olympics and the 2002 fifa world cup, rapid democratization, and globalization, all of which http://chang256.new21.net/board/board.php?db=536&no=683 http://chang256.new21.net/board/board.php?db=536&no=683 http://encykorea.aks.ac.kr/ http://encykorea.aks.ac.kr/ jung. hakbeolism: a historical and curriculum consideration of korean test-focused education. 62 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (02) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci seemed to miraculously transform the country from the ashes of the korean war to the wealthy and highly developed country it is today. retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/miracle_on_the_han_river on august 10, 2014. 14 the application of bruner’s theory of the structure of knowledge and piaget’s psychological schema is more than mere misunderstanding, given the complex and powerful legacy it has left. these scholars and their theories were combined extremely effectively along with the theories of tyler, bloom, and mager. the fallacy is not exclusive to korea, however: deweyan pragmatism, the basis for the work done by bruner and piaget, among others, has been misunderstood in america also, as william doll (1986) observes in prigogine: a new sense of order, a new curriculum: american educators and psychologists have been able to focus on the correlational aspects of stages—the measured age aspects. but the heart of piaget is the process of internal, transformatory development. “life is essentially auto regulation.” the measured curriculum has no place for autoregulatory systems. . . . both dewey’s notion of experience and piaget’s notion of development have a sense of internality and duration; both are progressive and transformational, coming out of themselves and leading back into themselves, but always at higher, qualitatively different planes. (p. 12). identifying newton’s scientific stance as a closed-system paradigm and prigogine’s as an open-system one, doll (1986) further argues that piaget's and bruner's ideas, along with dewey’s educational model “would be a transformative curriculum, with the individual and his or her structures or levels of understanding being transformed” (p. 14). dewey is not a positivist, as he was understood by many to be because of his positive perspective on the scientific method. rather, doll continues, dewey’s philosophy constitutes a way to overcome the limitations of rationality while at the same time questioning the predetermined ends of experience. for dewey, as biesta (2013) insists, “rationality is about intelligent human action and human cooperation, ultimately motivated by an attempt to restore rationality, agency, and responsibility to the sphere of human action” (p. 22). duration, internality, and transformativity are in this regard central to dewey’s philosophy. 15 on this, see young chun kim’s (2007) secrets of academic success of korean students: stories of hakwon. hakwon are private educational institutes, so-called “cram schools” or “shadow education.” kim’s research probes the nature of hakwon and reveals its mechanisms for improving academic achievement: its emphases on learning by repetition, tracking systems, continuous assessment, and sharing ideas and information regarding students’ progress between hakwon and parents. 16 there is a very powerful technological surveillance system at work in korea today, the national education information system (http://www.neis.go.kr/pas_mms_nv99_001.do), which continually asks teachers to do “computer stuff” to report to the government what is planned and happened in the schools and classrooms. it is not difficult to assume that the reports are often produced for the sake of report. the purpose of the system is to collect complete information about information (individual and collective) on students and what happens in schools (not only curricular information but also information for parents, as well as fiscal information) according to moe’s policies, all of which require the involvement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/miracle_on_the_han_river http://www.neis.go.kr/pas_mms_nv99_001.do jung. hakbeolism: a historical and curriculum consideration of korean test-focused education. 63 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (02) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci and responsible work of teachers. i can argue from my 10 years of experience, observation, and conversations with colleagues that most of the work which needs to be provided on the system is not necessary for students’ study. 17 for detailed relevant data, see jung kyu lee’s hakryuk and hakbeolism in korean society (2003) and sang bong kim’s hakbeol society (2004). according to a survey conducted by hakbooki.com in july of 2013, 39.5% of ceos in the top 1,000 companies in korea graduated from three universities: seoul (20.4 %), koryu, (9.8 %) and yonsei (9.3%) universities. retrieved from http://weekly.hankooki.com/lpage/sisa/201307/wk20130711092514121210.htm on august 25, 2013. 18 to show their similar superiority—in their case, their greater sacrifices for the empire— heroes in ancient rome wore mesh clothing that revealed the sword scars on their bodies. 19 those with an impressive hakbeol are, i think, unlikely to retain what they have learned, and of course their achievements during their long years of education are also questionable. as nichols and berliner (2007) observe that the current overemphasis on testing is causing corruption as well as waste. “not only is there more student cheating but there are also more cases of cheating by sympathetic teachers and desperate administrators” (noddings, 2007, p. 71). there were many cases of test corruption during the goryeo dynasty (9181392) and the chosun dynasty (1392-1910). nam hee lee (2008) explains in her study on the shadow of gwageo that often “the only reason that students learned was to pass the exam. practices such as cheating, the exchanging of answer sheets, and payments further corrupted the exam results” (pp. 130-131). this kind of corruption, seen nowadays also in test-paper theft and inappropriate testing practices, is not limited to schools in korea, however. an instructor in a private american sat preparation institution, for instance, was accused of leaking sat test papers and answers (retrieved from http://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=lsd&mid=sec&sid1=102&oid=003&aid=00 04308250 on august 12, 2014). 20 in his study of whether the standardized test in new york state measures what it intends to measure, reich (2013) argues, “the content tested by an item is not always obvious at first glance, and selecting the correct or incorrect answer does not necessarily mean that a test-taker knew, or did not know, the material”—a conclusion suggesting that the results tended to over-estimate test-takers' knowledge. 21 the 500 total points on the university entrance examination in 2013 broke down as follows: 100 for korean; 100 for math; 100 for english; 50 each for social studies, science, and vocation; 50 in total for a second foreign language and chinese characters. each year, this test is made, organized, and supervised by the korean institute for curriculum and evaluation. retrieved from http://www.kice.re.kr/contents.do?contentsno=29&menuno=215 on august 26, 2013. although the inauguration of the admissions officer system if bringing some changes in the university student selection system, the results of the sat are important criteria. thus the problems that i mentioned in note 15 still exist. http://weekly.hankooki.com/lpage/sisa/201307/wk20130711092514121210.htm http://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=lsd&mid=sec&sid1=102&oid=003&aid=0004308250 http://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?mode=lsd&mid=sec&sid1=102&oid=003&aid=0004308250 http://www.kice.re.kr/contents.do?contentsno=29&menuno=215 jung. hakbeolism: a historical and curriculum consideration of korean test-focused education. 64 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (02) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 22 perhaps more importantly, however, the more students work at storing the knowledge deposited with them, the less they can develop the critical consciousness that could lead to their making positive contributions to their world because in the control frame, students are conceived of as objects of intervention, not as subjects of encounters. 23 i explain how the objectification has happened in the second chapter of my phd dissertation which is in progress. 24 i deliberately use “information,” which is not knowledge, and lacks ethical and intellectual interpretation and judgment. references ang, r. p., & huan, v. s. (2006). relationship between academic stress and suicidal ideation: testing for depression as a mediator using multiple regression. child psychiatry and human development, 37(2), 133–43. doi:10.1007/s10578-006-0023-8 biesta, g. j. (2013). the beautiful risk of education. boulder; london: paradigm publishers. bourdieu, p. (1977). cultural reproduction and social reproduction. in j. k. and a. h. harlsey (ed.), power and ideology in education (pp. 487–510). new york: oxford university press. dewey, j. (1916). democracy and education. new york: macmillan. doll, jr., w. e. (1972). a methodology of experience : an alternative to behavioral obiectives. educational theory, 22, 309–324. doll, jr., w. e. (1986). prigogine: a new sense of order, a new curriculum. theory into practice, 25, 10–16. freire, p. (1970). pedagogy of the oppressed (p. 186). new york: the seabury press. hong, w., & youngs, p. (2008). does high-stakes testing increase cultural capital among low-income and racial minority students? education policy analysis archives, 16(6), 1–21. jung, t. h., & lee, b. w. (2003). general perception of halbul ideology and policies to overcome hakbeol problems. seoul: korea research institute for vocational education & training. retrieved from http://library.krivet.re.kr/search/detail/cattot000000024011?mainlink=/search/tot &brieflink=/search/tot/result?q=이병욱_a_st=frnt_a_cpp=5_a_os=_a_si=2_a_o i=disp06 on august 5, 2014. juon, h. s., nam, j. j., & ensminger, m. e. (1994). epidemiology of suicidal behavior among korean adolescents. the journal of child psychology and psychiatry, 35(4), 663–76. doi:10.1111/j.1469-7610.1994.tb01212.x kandel, d. b., raveis, v. h., & davies, m. (1991). suicidal ideation in adolescence : depression , substance use , and other risk factors. journal of youth and adolescence, 20(2), 289–309. kang, b. s. (2011, november 15). test-focused system should be changed. jeju. retrieved from http://www.headlinejeju.co.kr/news/articleview.html?idxno=131969 on august 10, 2014. kim, b. t. (1995). a discourse of credencial society in korea. seoul: book openning tomorrow. http://library.krivet.re.kr/search/detail/cattot000000024011?mainlink=/search/tot&brieflink=/search/tot/result?q=%ec%9d%b4%eb%b3%91%ec%9a%b1_a_st=frnt_a_cpp=5_a_os=_a_si=2_a_oi=disp06 http://library.krivet.re.kr/search/detail/cattot000000024011?mainlink=/search/tot&brieflink=/search/tot/result?q=%ec%9d%b4%eb%b3%91%ec%9a%b1_a_st=frnt_a_cpp=5_a_os=_a_si=2_a_oi=disp06 http://library.krivet.re.kr/search/detail/cattot000000024011?mainlink=/search/tot&brieflink=/search/tot/result?q=%ec%9d%b4%eb%b3%91%ec%9a%b1_a_st=frnt_a_cpp=5_a_os=_a_si=2_a_oi=disp06 http://www.headlinejeju.co.kr/news/articleview.html?idxno=131969 jung. hakbeolism: a historical and curriculum consideration of korean test-focused education. 65 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (02) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci kim, c. w. (2011). nature and issues of national assessment of educational achievement: focused on korean language education. korean language education, 134, 1–33. kim, s. b. (2004). hakbeol society. seoul: jipmoondang. kim, s.-s. (2008). symbolic violence and pre-modern academic clique society. society and philosophy, 16, 131–160. kim, t. h. (2011, september 6). koreans think that hakbeolism is the worst social descrimination. retrieved from http://www.christianitydaily.com/view.htm?id=1246 on august 10, 2014. kim, y. c. (2007). secrets of academic success of korean students: stories of hakwon. seoul: brenz. kim, y. c. (2010). transnational curriculum studies : reconceptualization discourse in south korea. curriculum inquiry, 40, 531–554. lampert, k. (2012). meritocratic education and social worthlessness. new york: palgrave macmillan. lee, c.-h. (2007). a sociological research on the phenomena of showing-off one’s good academic clique. korean journal of sociology, 15(2), 380–414. lee, j. k. (2003). korean credential and hakbeolism: origin and development. seoul: jipmoondang. lee, n. h. (2008). the state examination system, its lights and shadows. the journal of eastern philosophy of today, 18, 117–136. lee, s. w., & jang, y. e. (2011). a study on the effect of adolescent’s academic stress to suicidal ideation: moderating effect of family cohesion. korean journal of youth research, 18, 111–136. lee, y. (2003). politics and theories in the history of curricular reform in south korea. in w. f. pinar (ed.), international handbook of curriculum research (pp. 541–552). mahwah, n.j.; london: lawrence erlbaum associates, lnc., publishers. macdonald, j. b. (1981). curriculum, consciousness and social change. in theory as a prayerful act: the collected essays of james b macdonald (pp. 153–172). nahm, i. s. (2011). contradictions of korean education based on academic success. theory of society, 40, 101–123. nichols, c. l., & berliner, d. c. (2007). collateral damage: how high-stakes testing corrupts america’s schools. cambridge, ma: harvard education press. noddings, n. (2007). when school reform goes wrong. new york ; london: teachers college press. phelan, a. m. (2005). a fall from (someone else’s) certainty: recovering practical wisdom in teacher education. canadian journal of education, 28(3), 339–358. pinar, w. f. (1976). the trial. in autobiography, politics, and sexuality: essays in curriculum theory 1972-1992 (pp. 29–62). new york: peter lang. pinar, w. f. (1978). notes on the curriculum field. in autobiography, politics, and sexuality: essays in curriculum theory 1972-1992 (pp. 77–99). new york: peter lang. pinar, w. f. (1981). understanding curriculum as gender text. in autobiography, politics, and sexuality: essays in curriculum theory 1972-1992 (pp. 151–182). new york: peter lang publishing, inc. http://www.christianitydaily.com/view.htm?id=1246 jung. hakbeolism: a historical and curriculum consideration of korean test-focused education. 66 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (02) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci pinar, w. f. (2006). the problem with curriculum and pedagogy. in the synoptic text today and other essays: curriculum development after the reconceptualization (pp. 109– 120). new york: peter lang. pinar, w. f. (2009). the worldliness of a cosmopolitan education. new york ; london: routledge. pinar, w. f. (2011). the character of curriculum studies: bildung, currere, and the recurring question of the subject. new york: palgrave macmillan. pinar, w. f. (2012). what is curriculum theory? (2nd ed.). new york ; london: routledge. schön, d. a. (1991). the reflective practitioner: how professionals think in action. london: ashgate: basic boks, inc. seth, m. j. (2002). education fever : society, politics, and the pursuit of schooling in south korea. honolulu: university of hawaii press. son, j. h. (1993). a study of the practices of colonial domination on schooling under the period of the third chosun educational ordinance by japanese imperialism. kyungbuk university. son, j. h. (2007). the politics of school test system in the japanese imperialism. the journal of educational philosophy, 31, 21–44. tröhler, d. (2014). international curriculum research: why and how? in w. f. pinar (ed.), international handbook of curriculum research (2nd ed., pp. 60–66). new york: routledge. tyler, r. w. (1949). basic principles of curriculum and instruction. chicago: university of chicago press. submitted: august, 8th, 2014 approved: november, 29th, 2014 o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: johnson-mardones, d. (2017). internationalization and "pensamiento curricular latinoamericano". transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> internationalization and pensamiento curricular latinoamericano daniel f. johnson-mardones1 university of chile, chile introduction curriculum studies have historically been linked to the idea of a national culture (da silva, 1999). the nation-state has been its unit of prescription and analysis. this is all but strange. as historical phenomenon, curriculum emerges as that device which allows and controls the transmission of a cultural heritage. the curriculum was created as a homogenizer and standardizing device against cultural diversity within national boundaries (johnson-mardones, 2015a). however, in recent decades, we have witnessed a growing interest in studying and understanding curriculum internationally (autio, 2006; pinar, 2003, 2014a; pinar, reynolds, slattery, & taubman, 1995; popkewitz, 2013; ropo & autio, 2009; westbury, hopmann, & riquarts, 2000; tröhler, 2011; trueit, 2003; yates & grumet, 2011). the present work draws on that movement taking upon the concept of internationalization in curriculum studies to self-reflect on the existence and possibilities of latin american curriculum thinking. three assumptions underlie that endeavor. the first assumption is that academic disciplines are better understood as traditions: a concept whose semantic field offers us the possibility of situating ourselves beyond the rigidity of paradigmatic gaze, while at the same time is broader than the idea of a research program, as well as it allows us to sketch at least some conceptual continuity without ignoring their variations and disruptions. in addition, a tradition is never neither hermetic nor uncontaminated; and it is always historically constructed. those considerations seem particularly relevant when thinking about academic disciplines in the field of education in latin america. the second assumption has to do with the mestizo identity of latin america; asyncretic being born in the underside of modernity an as a consequence of its traumatic foundational phenomena. this latin american existential hybrid resonates in the hybridity of each tradition. such as mestizo identity in the field of education expresses in the presence of at least three educational “western,” yet no quite, traditions: pedagogy, didactics and curriculum. finally, the third assumption is that the intellectual history of an academic field, once written, is reified in historical periodifications that open and close possibilities of understanding. in this way, the critique of these devices helps to denaturalize such taken for granted temporal frames by favoring the disciplinary self-reflexivity in terms of heightened historical consciousness. this need to increase self-awareness is crucial to think of an international academic field from latinoamérica, where eurocentric time lines frame the intellectual history of academic disciplines and their teaching. those three assumptions delineate an understanding to reflect upon the concept of johnson-mardones. internationalization 20 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci internationalization in curriculum studies from a latin american perspective and with a cosmopolitan vocation. curriculum studies and internationalization there were my doctoral studies what brought my latin american body north of the rio bravo to further my study of the anglo-saxon tradition of curriculum studies. my dissertation problematized that tradition by understanding that field as a complicated international conversation. somehow, such understanding was an answer to my own voluntary experience of self-estrangement in which my intellectual curiosity took me into. in that educational experience the u.s. and the latin american traditions collide, emotionally and intellectually, opening a space of biographical and historical reconstruction. upon those bases, i wonder about the possibility of building a truly global academic field based on an academic dialogue among equals, a conversation among adults. consequently, what is needed is an intercultural dialogic encounter that does not deny but it recognizes, resists, and works on overcoming the neo-colonial dynamics present in the production, circulation, and exchange of knowledge worldwide. there is no real internationalization without decolonization. a truly international academic field maintains a permanent decolonial suspicion in the conviction of the decolonize project cannot be deferred anymore in a field. only embracing such a project a worldwide academic field may emerge. at least that's my, and others’, hope. in providing a historical perspective of the field of curriculum studies in the united states, william pinar has distinguished three main moments in the field’s history. according to him the american curriculum studies has faced (1) the field's inauguration and paradigmatic stabilization as curriculum development, 1918–1969; (2) the field's reconceptualization, 1969–1980, from curriculum development to curriculum studies, an interdisciplinary academic field paradigmatically organized around understanding curriculum, 1980 to current; and (3), most recently, the field's internationalization, 2000 to current (pinar, 2008, p. 495). what is intriguing about pinar time-conceptual-line is the third moment: internationalization. to my knowledge at least, while several academic publications praise internationalization, the international or the global, as an issue to be taking into consideration by the u.s. curriculum field; in this periodification, internationalization is conceptualized as a moment of the field itself. the situation became even more intriguing when one looks at the definition of the field´s internationalization suggested by this u.s. curriculum scholar. to pinar, the choice of the word internationalization was made in order to distinct it from globalization; which, according to him, has a neocolonial and neo-imperialistic connotation. therefore, in curriculum studies the term internationalization is coined to name a movement aiming to build an international community of scholars willing to engage in a dialogical encounter. in his address to the first international conference for the advancement of curriculum studies held at louisiana state university (lsu) in 2001, where the internationalization movement was born; pinar suggested to his colleagues from around the globe, that as curriculum theorists they should “depict the field’s efforts to extend its scholarly conversation beyond the national borders in which it is practiced” (pinar, 2006, p. 165). drawing on this statement, i suggest that internationalization is one of those words; and needs to be reconceptualized by an international dialogue. consequentially, i think of internationalization not just as a moment of the u.s. field but also as a dimension of johnson-mardones. internationalization 21 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci curriculum studies thought from a planetary horizon (johnson-mardones, 2016). this enables me to suggest that from that point of view, and specifically from the global south, the current movement of internationalization of curriculum studies is a third wave of internalization. three waves of internationalization as it has been just suggested, from the global south (de sousa santos, 2014), internationalization has been a dimension of curriculum studies since its consolidation in the united states at the end of the 1940s2. thus, the main historical moments suggested by pinar (2008, 2014b) acquire a new meaning when situated at a global scale; they more or less coincide with three waves of the internationalization of the u.s. field of curriculum. the first wave coincides with the consolidation and crisis of the field in the 1950s and 1960s in the u.s., and it is given by the global exportation as a new technology-driven field of curriculum in the 1960s and 1970s. the second wave is the reconceptualization of the u.s. field by opening itself to mainly european and latin american international intellectual influences, and coincides with a process of hybridization within and beyond the u.s. borders. finally, the third wave is the present moment marked by the internationalization movement and the ongoing worldwide international conversation in which we are engaged in. these waves are not fixed historical stages but tendencies that are still present in the field with different emphases in distinctive contexts. the field of curriculum studies arrived into latinoamérica during the first wave of internationalization. somehow, the concept of curriculum in latinoamérica is still related to curriculum development as it was imported from the united states; a process began in the 1960s, but which unevenly reached every latin american country in the following decades. while in chile, for instance, the process started in the context of an educational reform led by a democratic government, in brazil the field was introduced during the military dictatorship that had taken over in 1964. therefore, the first wave of internationalization had as general context the increasing intervention of the united states in the region informed by the cold war rationale. the international deployment of such educational discourse meant a mechanistic application of concepts and procedures brought from outside without consideration of local contexts and cultures. curriculum studies, then, arrived into latinoamérica as a cultural monologue rather than an intercultural dialogue, a sort of curriculum epistemicide (paraskeva, 2016). latinoamérica is, then, a worthwhile reminder to the scholars in the field that the first wave of internationalization in curriculum studies was a neocolonial one, and that the effort to overcome it is an ongoing one. in the intellectual production of latin american curriculum scholars, this wave of internationalization has been termed “acculturation” (garcia-garduño, 2011), an act of “cultural imperialism” 3(barriga & garcia-garduño, 2014, p. 11), the introduction of the “u.s. industrial pedagogy” (díaz-barriga, 1984), the beginning of the influence of the “educational technology” expressed for instance in tyler’s work (magendzo, abraham & lavín, 2014, p. 176), and the technical curriculum (montoya-vargas, 2014). before this wave, “the traits of a view of education based on efficiency and productivity were absent” (p. 11) in latinoamérica, conclude diaz barriga & garciagarduño (2014) in their study of the historical development of curriculum studies in ten latin american countries. the second wave of internationalization is the 1970s’ reconceptualization of the north anglo-american curriculum field of curriculum studies; a wave of a different sort than the first one. the direction of this second wave took now an outside-inside (of johnson-mardones. internationalization 22 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the united state) dynamic; the opposite of the previous neocolonial first wave’s. this process of reconceptualization meant a “paradigmatic shift from a focus on social engineering and the business model to the project of understanding, which involves the concept of curriculum as conversation” (pinar, 2004, p. 19). such a shift was nourished by continental and british intellectual influences. in its project of understanding curriculum “historically, politically, racially, autobiographically or biographically, aesthetically, theologically, institutionally and internationally,” (pinar, 2008, p. 493), the reconceptualization movement sought beyond its national borders means to increase the élan vital of that moribund patient diagnosed by schwab (1969) the previous decade. it is important to notice, that besides the northern western intellectual influences, there was also a southern one: paulo freire (johnson-mardones, 2015b). paulo freire had a strong presence in the first writings of the reconceptualization movement (greene, 1974, 1971; pinar, 1975, 1974; pinar & grumet, 1976). this second wave of internalization in curriculum studies was also latin american. put into perspective, these influences advanced the idea of internationalization as a conversation among equals as well as the field’s hybridity. nevertheless, these beginning strides toward an international conversation, however, faded in the following years. the current international conversation in curriculum studies may be considered a continuation of that first dialogical encounter. the hybridization of curriculum studies during the u.s. reconceptualization was not the only process of this sort, however. as early as the 1960s a similar process of external influences and internal developments critical of instrumental or technocratic approaches in education took also place in latinoamérica. these critical perspectives were an effort of thinking education within our own tradition as well as a reaction to the social engineering ethos of the first wave. those developments affected the reception of the new imported field of curriculum distinctively across countries. garcia-garduño (2011) terms this second moment in latinoamérica: “hybridization.” he writes: an argentinean anthropologist living in mexico, néstor garcía canclini, coined a concept that can help us understand the mestizaje or fusion that the curriculum field has undergone since the 1973 spanish translation of tyler´s basic principles of curriculum and instruction. garcía canclini understands by hybridity “sociocultural processes where discrete structures or practices that existed separately combine themselves to generate new structures, objects and practices.” (2000, p. 8; cited by garcia-garduño, 2011, p. 16) temporally located in the 1970s and 1980s, this latin american hybridization happened not without contradictions. the imported field of curriculum was little by little “adopting, adapting, syncretizing, rejecting and rearticulating” (díaz barriga & garcia garduño, 2014, p. 12). this hybridity was not only the result of external critical intellectual influences, although they were certainly present, but part of a latin american critique of modern schooling commenced in the 1960s that had as its main figures paulo freire and ivan illich. this critique had a clear latin american vocation, intellectually but also geographically speaking. to the works of illich, written in mexico, and those of freire written in brazil and chile; we can add others, such as those of the so-called “grupo cordobés,” the cordoba group, that reflected on “methodological aspects of teaching, apart from technical rationality” (feeney, 2014, p. 21). in relation to the mexican context, díaz barriga & garcía garduño (2014) elaborate: johnson-mardones. internationalization 23 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the development of critical perspective in curriculum “was a hybrid process led by young scholars, recently arrived from argentina, such as azucena rodríguez, alfredo furlán, eduardo remedi y roberto follari; and young mexican curriculum scholars such as ángel díaz-barriga, patricia aristi y alicia de alba. (pp. 250-251) as a result of those processes the field of curriculum in latinoamérica became hybrid; or one may say that in latinoamérica, curriculum studies has its own hybridization. in fact, in general, the influence of the u.s. hybridization–namely the reconceptualización movement of the 1970s– only reached the region around the 1990s. all of this “was enabling the conformation of a distinctive curriculum thought, with an element that gives identity: it sought to be latin american” (diaz barriga & garcia garduño, 2014, p. 252). as latinoamérica, the latin american curriculum thinking is also a mestizo field. that is its strength to address the current moment. the third wave is today´s internationalization. this academic movement interests itself in the study of curriculum studies outside of the united states (pinar, 2014b) as well as in theorizing the idea of a worldwide non-uniform curriculum field (pinar, 2014b; miller, 2009). the two editions of the handbook of international curriculum research (pinar, 2003, 2014a) are great contributions in moving forward such a project. nevertheless, this movement still struggles with a propensity to normalize “the linguistic, cultural, and racial differences under the authoritative canon of euro-american rationality” (ropo & autio, 2009, p. 3). the next already ongoing step, then, is to develop transnational research on curriculum focused on the field interrelationships and discontinuities worldwide. it is within this interpretive space that a more comprehensive theory of curriculum and education can emerge. as stated before, this third wave of internationalization seems to be recovering the dialogical encounter that began with the critiques of technocratic curriculum characteristic of the first wave of internationalization, and which the u.s. reconceptualization saw a way of raising consciousness (pinar, 1974). within that conversation, garcía-garduño (2011) affirms: in the case of ibero-américa, there are indications that processes of cosmopolitanism are underway. however, they are not completely clear. the most outstanding traits of cosmopolitanism are openings to other trends and scholarship, the acceptance of different points of view without losing one´s own. curriculum journals that exist in brazil and in spain publish articles from both latin american and anglo-saxon scholars. (garcía-garduño, 2011, p. 16) although the latin american intellectual production on the internationalization of curriculum studies is still limited, it has certainly increased during the last decade. important works have been published on brazil (pinar, 2011a) and mexico (pinar, 2011b). both texts comprise chapters by main scholars in the field in each country, providing a broad view of the curriculum discourses in those contexts. the international handbook of curriculum research (pinar, 2003) also includes chapters on argentina (feeney & terigi, 2003; feldman & palamidessi, 2003), brazil (moreira, 2003; lopes & macedo, 2003), and mexico (diaz barriga, a., 2003a; diaz barriga, f., 2003). the second edition of this handbook (2014) has expanded its latin american spectrum, adding chapters on colombia (montoya-vargas, 2014) on chile (matus, 2014) and peru (manrique et al, 2014). besides these works published in english, we find works in johnson-mardones. internationalization 24 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci portuguese such as that of moreira on brazil (2007) and in spanish such as diazbarriga’s (2003b, 2002, 1991, 1982) on mexico. in addition, two important works have been published recently in latinoamérica: desarrollo del curriculum en américa latina: experiencia de diez países (2014) [historical development of curriculum in latin america: the experience of ten countries] by diaz barriga & garcia garduño (eds.); and diálogos curriculares entre méxico y brasil [curricular dialogues between mexico and brazil] (2015) by alicia de alba and alice casimiro lopes (2015). therefore, the pensamiento curricular latinoamericano has entered into an international dialogue, including the south-south aspect of it, reconstructing its intellectual history and recognizing itself as a hybrid field. in this sense, the words of the great latin american pedagogue continue resonating. born in a dependent country, freire (1965) states that the basic dilemma of latin american societies, and by extension of latin american intellectuals, is whether to pursue a “society that decolonizes itself more and more” (p. 25). in the second decade of the twentieth first century that is still our dilemma. a final remark grounding my understanding of internationalization as a dimension of the field of curriculum here by juxtaposing the historical development of the field in the united states in relation to latinoamérica, i would like to suggest again that the next step to building an international field of curriculum studies is enlarging the conversation beyond its anglo-saxon and european influences. my work may be understood as an attempt to bring the latin american educational tradition more strongly into the international conversation that is now curriculum studies. in doing so, i am, to some extent, rejoining two educational traditions, the latin american and the anglo american, to continue a conversation already begun in the 1970s but interrupted since then. i restore the concept of dialogical encounter as a fundamental practice in times of planetary agony. notes 1 djohnson@uchile.cl 2 process usually related to the publication of tyler’s the basic principles of curriculum and instruction (1949). 3 barriga & garcia-garduño (2014) refer the term “cultural imperialism” to the work of martin carnoy (1993) la educación como imperialismo cultural [educatión as cultural imperialism]. references autio, t. (2006) subjectivity, curriculum and society. mahwah, nj: erlbaum. carnoy, m. (1993) la educación como imperialismo cultural. méxico: siglo xxi. da silva, t. (1999) documentos de identidade. belo horizonte: autêntica. de alba, a. & lopes, a. c. (ed.) (2015) diálogos curriculares entre méxico y brasil. méxico: universidad nacional autónoma de méxico. de souza santos, b. (2014) epistemologies of the south. london: paradigm. díaz-barriga, a. & garcía-garduño, j. m. (2014) desarrollo del curriculum en américa latina: experiencia de diez países. buenos aires: miño y dávila editores. díaz-barriga, f. (2014) curriculum research in mexico. in pinar (ed.). handbook of research on curriculum (pp. 75-90). new jersey. lawrence erlbaum associates. mailto:djohnson@uchile.cl johnson-mardones. internationalization 25 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci díaz-barriga, a. (ed.) (2013) la investigación curricular en méxico 2002-2011. méxico: asociación nacional de universidades e instituciones de educación superiorconsejo mexicano de investigación educativa. díaz-barriga, a. (2003a) la investigación curricular en méxico. la década de los noventa. in consejo mexicano de investigación educativa (ed.). la investigación educativa en méxico (pp. 63-123). méxico: asociación nacional de universidades e instituciones de educación superior-consejo mexicano de investigación educativa. díaz-barriga, a. (2003b) curriculum research: evolution and outlook in mexico. in pinar (ed.). handbook of research on curriculum, 1st edition (pp. 443-446). new jersey. lawrence erlbaum associates. díaz-barriga, a. (2002) curriculum: una mirada sobre sus desarrollos y retos. in i. westbury (ed.). hacia dónde va el curriculum? la contribución de la teoría deliberadora (pp. 163-175). barcelona: ediciones pomares. díaz-barriga, a. (1991) desarrollo del discurso curricular en méxico. en a. de alba, a. díaz-barriga y e. gonzález gaudiano, el campo del curriculum. antología (pp. 711). méxico: cesu-unam. díaz-barriga, a. (1982) la evolución del discurso curricular en méxico (1970-1982): el caso de la educación superior. revista latinoamericana de estudios educativos, 15 (2), 67-79. díaz barriga, a. (1984) didáctica y curriculum. méxico: ediciones nuevo mar. díaz-barriga, a. & garcía-garduño, j. m. (2014) desarrollo del curriculum en américa latina: experiencia de diez países. buenos aires: miño y dávila editores. diaz-barriga, f. (2014) curriculum research in mexico. in w. f. pinar (ed.). handbook of research on curriculum, 2nd edition (pp. 329-339). new jersey. lawrence erlbaum associates. diaz-barriga, f. (2011) curriculum studies in mexico: current circumstances. in w. f. pinar (ed.). curriculum studies in mexico: intellectual histories, present circumstances (pp. 91-110). new york, ny: palgrave macmillan. díaz barriga, a. (1984) didáctica y curriculum: convergencia en los programas de estudio. méxico: ediciones nuevo mar. feeney, s. (2014) los estudios del curriculum en argentina: particularidades de una disputa académica. in a. díaz-barriga & j. m. garcía-garduño (2014). desarrollo del curriculum en américa latina: experiencia de diez países (pp. 15-44). buenos aires: miño y dávila editores. feeney, s. & terigi, f. (2003) curriculum studies in argentina: documenting the constitution of a field. in pinar (ed.). handbook of research on curriculum, 1st edition (pp. 101-108). new jersey. lawrence erlbaum associates feldman, d. & palamidessi, m. (2003) the development of curriculum thought in argentina. in w. f. pinar (ed.). handbook of research on curriculum, 1st edition (pp. 109-122). new jersey. lawrence erlbaum associates. freire, p. (1965) la educación como práctica de la libertad. santiago de chile: icira. garcía-garduño, j. m. (2011) the institutionalization of curriculum studies in mexico: understanding acculturation, hybridity, cosmopolitanism in ibero-american curriculum studies. in w. f. pinar (ed.). curriculum studies in mexico: intellectual histories, present circumstances. new york, ny: palgrave macmillan. greene, m. (1974) curriculum, consciousness and cognition. in w. f. pinar (ed.) heightened consciousness, cultural revolution, and curriculum theory: the proceedings of the rochester conference (pp. 69-84). berkeley, ca: mccutchan pub. corp. johnson-mardones. internationalization 26 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci greene, m. (1971) curriculum and consciousness. in w. f. pinar (ed.) (1975/2000). curriculum theorizing: the reconceptualization (pp. 299-320). troy, ny: educator’s international press. johnson-mardones, d. (2016) curriculum studies as an international conversation: cosmopolitanism in a latin american key. doctoral dissertation, university of illinois at urbana champaign. http://hdl.handle.net/2142/95571 johnson-mardones, d. (2015a) formar ciudadanos interculturales en un mundo global: algunas notas desde los estudios curriculares. diálogo andino. 47(2) 7-14. johnson-mardones, d. (2015b) freire and the u.s reconceptualization. transnational curriculum inquiry, 12(1), 3-12. lopes, a. c. y macedo, e. (2003) the curriculum field in brazil since the 1990s. in w. f. pinar (ed.). international handbook of curriculum research (pp. 86-100), 1st edition. mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum associates. magendzo, a.; abraham, m. & lavín, s. (2014) el campo curricular y su expresión en las reformas curriculares en chile. in a. díaz-barriga, & j. m. garcía-garduño (2014) desarrollo del curriculum en américa latina: experiencia de diez países (pp. 173210). buenos aires: miño y dávila editores. matus, c. (2014) curricular landscapes, neoliberal densities: curriculum reform and research in chile. in w. f. pinar (ed.). handbook of research on curriculum, 2nd edition (pp. 376-390). new jersey. lawrence erlbaum associates. miller, j. (2009) curriculum studies and transnational flows and mobilities: feminist autobiographical perspectives. in e. ropo & t. autio, (eds.). international conversations on curriculum studies: subject, society and curriculum (pp. 4370). rotterdam: sense publishers. mignolo, w. (2011) the darker side of western modernity: global futures, decolonial options. durham, nc: duke university press. miller, j. (2009) curriculum studies and transnational flows and mobilities: feminist autobiographical perspectives. in e. ropo & t. autio, (eds.). international conversations on curriculum studies: subject, society and curriculum (pp. 4370). rotterdam: sense publishers. montoya-vargas, j. (2014) curriculum studies in colombia. in w. f. pinar (ed.). international handbook of curriculum research, 2nd edition (pp. 134-150). mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum associates. moreira, a. (2007) currículos e programas no brasil. são paulo: papirus. moreira, a. (2003) the curriculum field in brazil: emergence and consolidation. in pinar (ed.). handbook of research on curriculum, 1st edition (pp. 171-182). new jersey. lawrence erlbaum associates. paraskeva, j. m. (2016) curriculum epistemicides: towards an itinerant curriculum theory. new york, ny: routledge. pinar, w. (ed.) (2014) international handbook of curriculum research. mahwah, nj: erlbaum. pinar, w. f. (2014b) curriculum research in the united states: crisis, reconceptualization, internationalization. in w. f. pinar (ed.). international handbook of curriculum research, 2nd edition (pp. 521-532). mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum associates. pinar, w. f. (ed.) (2011a) curriculum studies in brazil: intellectual histories, present circumstances. new york, ny: palgrave macmillan. pinar, w. f. (ed.) (2011b) curriculum studies in mexico: intellectual histories, present circumstances. new york, ny: palgrave macmillan. http://hdl.handle.net/2142/95571 johnson-mardones. internationalization 27 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci pinar, w. f. (2008) curriculum theory since 1950: crisis, reconceptualization, internationalization. in m. connelly, m. f. he, and j. phillion (eds.). the sage handbook of curriculum and instruction (pp. 491-513). los angeles, ca: sage publications. pinar, w. f. (2006) the synoptic text today and other essays: curriculum development after the reconceptualization. new york, ny: peter lang. pinar, w. (ed.) (2003) international handbook of curriculum research. mahwah, nj: erlbaum. pinar, w. f., reynolds, w. m, slattery, p., & taubman, p. m. (1995) understanding curriculum: an introduction to the study of historical and contemporary curriculum discourses. new york, ny: peter lang. pinar, w. f. & grumet, m. (1976) toward a poor curriculum. dubuque, ia: kendall/hunt. pinar, w. f. (ed.) (1975/2000) curriculum theorizing: the reconceptualization. troy, ny: educator’s international press. pinar, w. f. (ed.) (1974) heightened consciousness, cultural revolution, and curriculum theory: the proceedings of the rochester conference. berkeley, ca: mccutchan pub. corp. popkewitz, t. (2013) rethinking the history of education. new york, ny: palgrave macmillan. ropo e. & autio, t. (2009) international conversations on curriculum studies. rotterdam: sense. schwab, j. (1969) the practical: a language for curriculum. washington, dc: national education association. tyler, r. w. (1949) basic principles of curriculum and instruction. chicago, il: university of chicago press. tröhler, d. (2011) languages of education: protestant legacies, national identities, and global aspirations. new york, ny: routledge. trueit, d. (ed.) (2003) the internationalization of curriculum studies: selected proceedings from the lsu conference 2000. new york, ny: peter lang. westbury, i., hopmann, s., & riquarts, k. (eds.) (2000) teaching as a reflective practice: the german didaktik tradition. mahwah, nj: erlbaum. yates, l., & grumet, m. (2011) world yearbook of education 2011: curriculum in today’s world: configuring knowledge, identities, work and politics. new york, ny: routledge. submitted: november, 05th, 2017 approved: december, 9th, 2017 o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: costa, hugo heleno camilo. (2019) curriculum, context and otherness. transnational curriculum inquiry 16 (1) p. 61-74 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> curriculum, context and otherness1 hugo heleno camilo costa2 federal university of mato grosso, brazil introduction the view that the proposition of something that dissolves the supposed problems that a generic school would be going through is recurrent. in this direction, readings are constituted in the curriculum field, which, often colliding with each other, affirm horizons that can be reached when a certain orientation is (or is) assumed for the school, as discussed by pinar et al (2017) and garcia-huidobro (2018). at the same time as the affirmations of solutions in this field are current, so too are the questions about the paths defended for the school. thus, not infrequently, different readings aim to propose a way for a school, recurrently interpreted as that space to be thought, treated, understood or produced by some logic that may favor it in the best, most productive, emancipatory, entrepreneurial or critical direction. the concern that mobilizes this article is to draw attention to how much a politicalcurricular thinking3 can be taken as a meaning-producing textualization for the school. but this would not be enough, because it would continue to point to a view of school as locus that can be controlled by a logic of transparency of the senses that constitute it. therefore, i do not focus on the term school as given object in the world, but i draw attention to the perspective of context, understanding it as an interesting conception of proposition or movements to the other. i refer, therefore, not to a specific space-time, a particular school, but to the presupposition about the transcendentality of access to otherness when we aim at the significance of what is and how it should be. thus, i assume as a scenario to think about the way policies and theorizations in the curriculum field operate in a context control dynamics, whether it is meant as a school, as a social movement, as a space for the formation of a given subject, the world of work, space in which given experience occurs. it is the applicant is a question of a controllable environment assumption, on which a world reading find its resonance and productivity in relation to the subject/otherness. therefore, they are important questions: how to ensure priority contexts? and what is the other to be produced / found 'in' or 'from' a given contextual intervention? these questions aim to incite the limited character of a transparent context in terms of meaning, a context as a meeting point with the otherness that would be given from an a priori conception of what the world is. in opposition to such conception, in this article, which consists of a post-structural investment in the curriculum, i highlight the perspective of context from the proposal by jacques derrida, with a view to thinking about its deconstructionist power in the curriculum studies, the curriculum policy, particularly focusing on the discussion of knowledge, taking it as an example to this discussion. this work is linked to the efforts of different other researchers who have incorporated discursive readings, particularly derridean, into the field of education, such as aquino, corazza and adó (2018), biesta (2017), carvalho (2007), couto junior and pocahy ( 2017), fabbrini costa. curriculum, context and otherness 62 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> (2005), jordan and buhrer (2013), miguel (2016), monteiro (2007), ponzoni (2014), skliar (2003), valenzuela echeverri (2017). in the curriculum field, specifically, i highlight works such as carvalho (2015), costa and lopes (2018a; 2018b), cunha, costa and pereira (2016), egéa-kuehne (2013), green (2017), lopes (2015), souza (2008), gough et al (2003), reis and paraíso (2014), macedo (2015; 2016; 2017), macedo and miller (2018), ng-a-fook (2014). such works concentrate efforts on criticizing structuring perspectives on the curriculum, the school, and the presupposition of what the subject and the meaning of the world become. in this sense, these contributions draw attention to the stealth character of otherness, pointing to deconstruction as a powerful interpretative horizon to the traditions that aim to pave the curriculum field, through themes such as knowledge, the subject, the school, the culture, the experience. given these contributions, this work focuses on a collaborative exercise through the search for the deconstruction of horizons that permeate curricular thinking in a metaphysical register. this is not a superationist expectation in which milestones of a western logocentric view would be supplanted. but it is important, as the philosopher points out, a movement of inscription in the very scenes of affirmation of such markers, so that, in revisiting the installations, we can tension them in their limits or operate in their margins, highlighting their precariousness (derrida, 1982). in a previous work (costa & lopes, 2018a), approaching official documents, we sought to think about the relationship of an expectation of control over context / contextualization through the idea of knowledge. in that work, we highlight the perspective of knowledge as property that, if well involved in supposed contextual aspirations, would lead to the formation of subjects capable of acting in all contexts in a plausible manner. in that approach to documents it helped to think of how different documents, although they can be read as productions linked to governments and / or groups of power, reiterate generic perspectives that make it possible to read a movement of structuring the curriculum and, consequently, the names triggered in the curriculum debate. here i outline as problematization the way, in addition to the official documents, different emblematic works in the curriculum field tend to operate the perspective of context as a given in the world, reasonable, transparent to analysis. i focus on the perspective of context by considering it as a mark of different moments of curricular political thinking, which, focusing on the brazilian scenario, i define as theoretical discussions of the curriculum field and official documents, such as the national curriculum guidelines for secondary dcnem (brazil, 1998; 2012) and the national curriculum common base for secondary bncc-em (brazil, 2018). i argue about control reading as to what is interpreted by context via, for example, knowledge. i point out that, not only in the scope of critical readings to what could be read as efficient and / or traditional, technicist, but i highlight different works, focused on different approaches to curriculum. in a first section of the text, i place the perspective of context in jacques derrida's thought, keeping it associated with the ideas of différance, writing and dissemination. in the second section, i focus on how a structural view of context tends to support approaches to knowledge as structuring of practice, understood as being exposed to apprehension and coordination. for this, i focus on traditional and critical approaches of the curriculum, as well as fragments of official curriculum documents, nuances of readings based on the calculation of what is supposed to be the practice, the context and how the knowledge structures and guides it. i point out that any attempt to control the knowledge, the practices of teachers and students, as well as any other identification involved with the field of education, is in a vain https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index costa. curriculum, context and otherness 63 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> motion in the face of the generative potential of all meaning. similarly, in a third moment of the text, i put into perspective the idea that practice as a production of knowledge, within the scope of a discursive approach, cannot be read as limited to a particular institution or privileged moment, idealities and teleologies. i conclude by considering that all production of meaning is a practice of reading the world, a movement in favor of the hegemonization of a given focus, is already the production of a context, sustained in the attempt to mention, to refer to the other that wants to control or respond in the curriculum. context as an event in different works derrida focuses on deconstruction of markers of western logocentrism/metaphysics as a destabilizing alternative, critical of aspirations to absolute and totalized truths, for different ways of thinking about the world. among its arguments, it beckons the reading of the world through what it calls “text in general” (derrida, 1981), as a textualization that would fuse the boundaries of different productions, turning them into moments of an endless and uncontrollable text. it is a general text driven by difference, interpretive betrayal, and impossibility of access to sameness. from this scenario proposed by the philosopher, i draw attention to the idea of context, which derrida (1982) already argued to be a little treated issue, having in its articulation with the discussions of writing and différance (derrida, 1982). i do this in order to highlight the discussion of knowledge, which i argue is structured in different approaches of curricular thought as a way of constituting skilled subjects to consciously decide in previously conceived contexts. for derrida (1982), a context is an interpretative construction, based on the presupposition of an implicit, albeit structurally vague, consensus that aims to sustain what should be treated within its limits and / or to continue the dialogues on the horizon of a intelligibility and a truth of meaning (derrida, 1982), so that norms or agreements can be established. for the philosopher, a context is never absolutely definable, not saturable by any previous knowledge or calculation. this structural non-saturation would derive from the rupture dynamics of the context itself (derrida, 1982). this is because the iterability as a repetition or quotation of what it is meant to refer to leads to the fact that, as much as one seeks to retain and contextualize the quotation, the meaning of what one intends to reproduce or communicate can never be kept intact. in this reading, the unconscious, singular and intense character of the translation as an iteration / writing is highlighted, considering its productive dynamism and, simultaneously, its ability to fend homogenizing aspirations of writing/textualization, to split full contextual pretensions. to think of the iteration / translation as a means of involvement, irresistible and permanent betrayal, consists in pondering which contexts are fragile (in) founded, because they are constituted by a faith (derrida, 2002) to be dealing with the same thing in relation to a given name or signifier. it is important to conceive of contexts as fractured in their structure, since the additive repetition of différance leads to failure the expectation to mention the referential, which is supposed as the origin or common space of the context itself, which is crossed by the differential dynamics of the meanings articulated under same name/context/signifier. by signaling the context we are no longer in it or accessing it, but changing with the idea of what we are (trying) to mention, we are supplementing and engendering other contexts, inhabiting another contextualization. to mention is, therefore, to break, to iterate the meaning of otherness as an outburst, to be in another context. derrida (1982) marks the iteration as mobilized by différance, which supplements and makes something new happen, contaminates the intention and makes every performing / speaking / writing / translation act express something other than what it was meant https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index costa. curriculum, context and otherness 64 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> to say. from this perspective, it is argued that every utterance is exposed to contextual rupture. for the philosopher (1982), the iterability, while authorizing, corrupts the rules and codes that it constitutes, diffuses the alteration in repetition, the dissemination of meaning by quoting. derrida (1982) considers the context as impossible to saturate and coordinate, given that iterability / writing / translation is the bearer of a game, a spacing, an independence from what could be considered as origin or living intention. thus, it marks the indeterminacy of the context of the production of something, the limitation of the meaning intention and the utterance beyond the context, given the supplementary operation of the iterability that, from now on, changes with the intention affirmed to itself (as full, as presence). although the affirmation of the limits of context is necessary, it is already interdicted by différance, emphasizing the fundamental fluctuation that motivates every sign. derrida (1982) argues that any brand, thought of as writing, is potent in operating beyond its supposed meaning and, being primarily conceived as a disruption of presence in the brand, can be mentioned, quoted. the affirmation of the limits of intention, of consciousness, breaks with every given context, leading to the indefinite constitution of other contexts which, in turn, are also absolutely unsaturable. the ability to be cited or duplicated, finally, the iterability of a name or an idea, is not an accident, but, according to the philosopher, is what a signifier cannot do without to have his operation considered “normal” (derrida, 1982). from this statement, derrida questions what would be a mark in the world that could not be mentioned. writing as supplementation, which intervenes in communication beyond it, which is dynamized in a dissemination that can never be reduced to polysemy, cannot be thought of as the object of the hermeneutic decoding or unveiling of an original truth or meaning. as conceived by derrida, the interpretive betrayal enclosed in writing does not, on the other hand, neglect the existence of intention or consciousness. intention may have its place, but this place is no longer able to coordinate all meaning. for derrida (1982), the intention is not present to itself and its content, but constitutes an absence to transcendentality. this “essential absence of intention in the actuality of the utterance, this structural unconsciousness” (derrida, 1982, p.369), which the philosopher points out as preventing the full saturation or apprehension of a context. according to derrida, for a context to be controllable, intention would need to act as its dominant guideline, which would confront it with the need to be absolutely present and transparent to itself and others. in this sense, derrida (1981) considers that there is no transcendental knowledge or consciousness, absolute control of meaning and, therefore, there is no knowledge about the limits and properties of context, but only a movement of generative dissemination of new senses. to this the philosopher attributes the impossibility of the prevalence of a teleological and totalizing dialectic that enables a certain occasion, moment, regardless of its distance/proximity, to be reconciled into a textual totality that guarantees a supposed truth of meaning. dissemination, which is considered to be inherent in all involvement with language, provides only the production of infinite semantic effects and the limitation to the return to a simple origin. it is the “supplement and the turbulence of a certain lack” (derrida, 1981, p. 45) that fractures the edges of the text in which the world is meant. with this, i do not think that the contextual disruption, through dissemination/différance, is a disagreeable expression, but i point out that, when we suppose to treat the same, we are already supplementing, betraying, producing other meanings in relation to what we aim to deal. it is to recognize in derrida (1981) that we play with parentage or similarity, with the simulation or fiction of a presence that is purely absent. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index costa. curriculum, context and otherness 65 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> from this reading, i focus markers of curricular thinking that i think tend to project contexts as susceptible to a knowledge, access, analysis, continents of truths. these are conceptions of context marked by the presupposition of awareness and / or precision of their limits in terms of meaning. i argue that contexts are being read as exposed to calculated action, conscious intervention. curriculum policy and the context of knowledge based on lopes and macedo (2011), macedo (2006) and pinar (2017), i draw attention to perspectives of curricular thinking that, although distinct from each other, as traditions tend to remain in the logocentric4 register of control and calculation of the curriculum, knowledge and the subject produced from it, about unforeseen contexts of practices. i consider that such practices tend to be supposed to be restricted to the work of teachers and students in the school environment. reading that, i argue, neglects the perspective that every statement about contextual practices are also contextual practices, that every production of knowledge, in a given context, is an event that, interpretatively revolving possible records, seeks to respond to what is challenging and questions the identity. for the authors, as well as for pinar (2017), since the beginning of the twentieth century, curriculum studies have sought to define its object in different ways, ranging from aspiration to precision about the best proposition of curriculum guides for educational networks until the understanding of what happens in the daily life of each school. lopes and macedo (2011) point out that the curricular tradition has, as a recognizable center, the search for the organization and conduction of processes understood as related to the educational process and, therefore, to the control of the experience, the practice of teachers and students. from the conceptual organization proposed by lopes and macedo (2011), i base this discussion focusing on what could be read as a first approach5 or moment of more organized curricular thinking as a field. so i take bobbitt's behavioral / efficientist arguments as well as his contemporary rivalry: dewey's progressive proposals. according to pinar et al (2017), the first one tends to be associated with more restrictive and directive approaches to the curriculum, understanding it as control and social administration based on scientific matrices. its perspective is the focus on knowledge and learning for solving tasks and the achievement of goals set as common and desirable for education. the second, also based on the resolution of social problems, is pointed by lopes and macedo (2011) as less coercive from the point of view of knowledge control, being linked to the defense of a more democratic education, based on the critique of inequality and valuation of the child's experience as a way to bridge the gap between formal educational presupposition and student interest. among such views, the difference in the way they think about the orientation of school practice, the production and the purposes of knowledge is highlighted, being central to bobbitt's efficiency the preparation of the child for the productive world, for adulthood. dewey's (1959) progressivism, on the other hand, would be based on the defense of learning as a continued process of knowledge production and not as a stage of adult education. however, as pointed out by biesta (2014), the author operates a projection of the subject to be constituted via knowledge in a given childhood and school, structuring, in this sense, the curricular production (dewey, 1959). according to lopes and macedo (2011), progressivism is organized as a social criticism, so that the knowledge of the child allows the reflection on social problems with a view to intervention for a more democratic society. for this, dewey's (1959) progressivism uses a set of propositions to ensure the development of an education articulated with the common social experience in school contexts. in this, a meaning of what the school context is and what should be the social experience for https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index costa. curriculum, context and otherness 66 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> the subject would already be defined. the tension between technical perspectives and social experience made possible, according to pinar (2017), tyler's eclectic proposition, whose curriculum model, although intended to articulate the two views, focuses on the efficiency rather than progressive perspective. according to lopes and macedo (2011), tyler defends a model based on a precise link between curriculum and assessment, reducing the curriculum to a set of propositions and the evaluation for the function of verifying curricular effectiveness. according to the authors, the prescriptive character of the curriculum is what is in common between efficientism, progressivism and tylerian rationality. although the referred theorists are focused on different problematizations, they converge in the sense that the school is a context of application of presupposed knowledge and, therefore, exposed to control and rationalization. in common, such curricular readings have gathered around a knowledge view linked to the academicist view, which would be based on the presupposition of scientific knowledge as the basis for the construction of subjects to act in a society perspective. critical readings of such views led, in general, to two others, criticalreproductivist and emancipation and resistance. these approaches, despite the differences, advocated ways of knowing capable of raising awareness / forming subjects to a critical social reading, for recognition of their condition in the social structure of classes and, thus, mobilizing them for transformation, involvement with counter-hegemonic purposes. in response to efficiency and progressivism, the critical movement also affirms the interpretation of contexts as exposed to determinations of what is external, superior and hegemonic: ideology and power (pinar et al, 2017). for pinar (2017) and lopes and macedo (2011), the affirmation of the centrality of knowledge in the critical movement focuses on the presupposition of neutrality, drawing attention to how different proposals, such as efficiency and progressivism, even if conflicting, reduce the debate about knowledge to methodological or systematic concern in curriculum development. as highlighted by pinar et al (2017), the theoretical investments aligned under what may be called the critical-reproductivist approach turn to the questioning of school and curriculum as mechanisms of control, alienation and social reproduction. these views are based on macrostructural readings based on marxist thinking, to think about the relationship between economic base and superstructure (lopes & macedo, 2011). despite their distinct concerns, more or less deterministic, authors such as althusser, baudelot and establet, bowles and gintis, bourdieu, young and apple, have their perspectives directed to the view that the school and therefore knowledge are reproductive mechanisms of social structure and ways of knowing. highlight as emblematic (besides considered foundational to reproductivist theories) the thought of althusser. for the author, the hierarchies between different knowledges, the selectivity in access to them, the focus on methodologies that do not lead to criticism, and the way they are proposed to form subjects who should act in specific positions in the social structure, reiterate the school and the production of knowledge as a means of reproduction and social control. in this way, the school, as well as other scopes called “ideological apparatuses”, can be read as a transparent context to the interpretation of the researcher, who through macrosystemic analysis would know every form of being and doing inside. the school would have nothing but the univocity of the domain of a given ideology. critical-reproductivist readings were also considered alienating because they reaffirmed what they criticized, as giroux (1988) points out, by calling them “discourse of despair”. such readings have come under harsh criticism from movements driven by the influence of cultural studies and other microstructural approaches in the curriculum field (pinar et al, 2017). https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index costa. curriculum, context and otherness 67 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> the thought of emancipation and resistance (lopes & macedo, 2011) opposes the view that the school is a mere space for reproduction of the social structure of classes, reproduction and transmission of world readings. this movement is mainly influenced by phenomenology, hermeneutics and existentialism, being supported also by works by freire, pinar, giroux, mclaren and willis. such readings commonly advocate the experience, the practice of knowledge production, the dynamic reality lived in schools, as critical to macrosystemic readings, which would tend to underestimate the life, nature and productive character of the school context, from and in relation to the expression of the daily life of the subjects (lopes & macedo, 2011). in this direction, for example, giroux (1988) points to the focus on human agency as a possibility of understanding the processes of mediation, accommodation and resistance to the logic of capital, as well as the social practices of domination. resistance thinking (giroux, 1988) stated that it is a gross mistake of reproductive thinking to neglect the need to produce a conception of agency that could favor the empowerment of subjects through their ways of knowing. for the author, the reproductive theory concentrates all its critical argumentation on the reiteration of the reproductive power of the school in the capitalist society. with these arguments, the authors of resistance built the opposition to reproductivist thinking and assumed, according to pinar (2017), the lead of critical thinking in the curriculum field, through an inversion of the interpretative perspective. they came to advocate school-centered approaches in contextual local experiences, seeking their interaction with broader social contexts. there were also works that advocated counter-hegemony, in response, focusing on everyday / contextual / experiential power, projecting the subject as active and potent in the production of knowledge through the empowerment of his world readings, via a critical appropriation of the world through knowledge produced by local solidarity networks. i agree with lopes and macedo (2011) to read that the projected conflict between traditional and critical thinking and, within the scope of the critical movement itself, between reproductivist and emancipation and resistance approaches, marks the search for the overcoming of a technical rationality, in a first moment. in another way, there is also the defense of the distension from a formal curriculum view, read as insufficient with the lived dimension, to a perspective of valuing the daily experience as knowledge production by the subjects in their local contexts. i consider that the conflicts marked by different productions, as they form a broader discursive field, continually affect the curricular production, also in the production of official documents, constituting the possibility of reading the curriculum policies as subsumed in a broader scenario of production of meaning. without assuming that such theoretical perspectives are transferred to curriculum documents directly, but by interpreting that, in a discursive reading, they are moments of a general text of curriculum policy, i focus on fragments of the texts involved with the national curriculum guidelines for secondary dcnem (brazil, 1998; 2012) and the national curriculum common base for secondary bncc-em (brazil, 2018), which mark what i have called here from a perspective of curriculum structuring via knowledge and context control. produced at different times and governments, these texts involved in the dcnem and bncc-em constitution movement are mentioned here not at random, but because they are considered texts of great repercussion in the public and academic debate. i consider that these are moments of attempts to represent a broader textuality of politics, besides assuming a character of obligation and foundation for the production and proposition of curricular changes in the most different levels of government and spaces of power. as a background, the text of dcnem (brazil, 1998) projects as specific contexts contemporary scientific, behavioral and https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index costa. curriculum, context and otherness 68 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> social transformations as a way to support a given worldview. such a view, stated as inexorable, is supposed to impose on society an unknown view of society, but which will be appropriated through integrated knowledge via interdisciplinarity. knowledge is attributed to the ability to achieve social inclusion, preparation for the world of work, ethical, flexible, autonomous and critical training of the person produced by secondary level, so that it can act and adapt to the most different social contexts. knowledge, projected at the center of what is the function of education / curriculum, carries the opportunity for the formation of competences and skills capable of producing socially included subjectivities that would be knowledge producers and citizens (brasil, 1998, p.16).citizenship and competence, with the potential for preparation to do everything, in this case, would be constituted by knowledge. such reading allows the conjecture that citizenship, subjectivity and ways of conceiving the world are conditioned to a knowledge not obtained, but virtually proposed by dcnem. knowledge capable of ensuring the construction of a polyvalent subject and bearer of a critical potentiality defined by what is given as critical. from the perspective of the document (brazil, 1998), a specific knowledge is capable of producing a certain subject adjusted to act in all contexts supposed to be guaranteed for life. such knowledge is assumed to be capable of enabling access to supposed “true meanings about the physical and social world” (brazil, 1998, p. 27), knowledges considered competent to the formation of subjects capable of analyzing and producing solutions, of orienting to correct decision in the face of challenges, to provide adaptability to new situations (brazil, 1998, p.27).the acquisition of such knowledge is defended as fundamental to the production of subjects by the school and through disciplinary knowledge. the defense that knowledge must be contextually appropriate is specifically supported in the absence of a given subject. with this, we have a movement that tends to limit the meaning of the context through what should be known in it, on it and for it, defining it as given of knowledge, as having known properties in its entirety prior to the experience. this stands out when topics such as work and employment, also assumed to have fixed meanings, are assumed as priority contexts for curriculum production, being understood as contexts in which knowledge must constitute competences with preparatory potential for the subject to be in different situations in “ world of occupations” (brazil, 1998).thus, it is argued that knowledge cannot be fragmented, as in a traditional disciplinary model, but should be interdisciplinary and contextualized (brazil, 1998, p.37), appropriating the knowledge of different disciplines for the formation of competent subjects to act in different contexts. in the dcnem proposed in 2012, although mobilized by the mission to achieve the purposes not achieved by the dcnem disseminated in 1998, it is proposed the need for higher qualification of subjects for the industrial development of the country. in this sense, the formation of the ideal subject for the privileged context of the work and the continuous changes of this work is brought together in the missions of promoting social inclusion and citizenship. this perspective allows the idea that the production of subjects for the world of work is necessarily to form autonomous, critical and reflective citizens / workers who can deal with the challenges ahead of a world that is admittedly dynamic. to cope with the creation of ideal conditions, the school is now perceived as a primordial context for the “systematic dissemination of scientific knowledge built by humanity” (brazil, 2012, p. 150). nevertheless, the text defends the importance of the school making a connection with the students' life projects, so that it can succeed in the educational process, in the production of knowledge (brazil, 2012, p.155). as in the 1998 dcnem, the 2012 ones start from the principles of interdisciplinarity and contextualization as a way to ensure the importance of scientific knowledge, to which school subjects would be related. such https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index costa. curriculum, context and otherness 69 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> configuration is considered fundamental to the production of competent subjects, as well as to the production of meanings in privileged contexts, controlling the forms of operation of such knowledge with the appropriate senses / meanings, seen as ideal for a contemporary society view. an integrated scientific knowledge perspective, in this case, is taken as the founding presupposition of the ways of knowing circulating in the curriculum. the contextual application of this knowledge would ensure the neutralization of the gap between theory and practice, producing subjects who are aware of what is defined as desirable in the contexts predicted for life (society, work, for example). the appropriation of scientific knowledge is effective (...) with contextualization that relates knowledge with life, as opposed to little or nothing active and meaningless methodologies for students. these methodologies establish an expository and transmissivist relationship that does not put students in real life, to do, to elaborate. (brazil, 2012, p. 167) scientific knowledge, once interdisciplinarized in its contextualization, along the dcnem texts (brazil, 1998; 2012), signals the expectation of knowledge capable of constituting subjectivities to operate contextually. in a rough perspective, bncc-em (brazil, 2018) intensifies criticism of the curriculum's disciplinary organization, often associating disciplines with the difficulty of constituting competent subjects to operate in supposed contexts for life, such as daily life, the exercise of citizenship and the work, as it points out that: [...] proposes the overcoming of the radically disciplinary fragmentation of knowledge, the stimulation of its application in real life, the importance of the context to make sense of what is learned and the student's protagonism in their learning and in the construction of their life project. (brazil, 2018, p.14) with this, it takes the disciplines as fragmentary bodies of knowledge, unable to deal with the formation of readings on such a common context. it also beckons for curriculum integration and contextualization as ways to achieve a given knowledge derived from the articulation of knowledge with experiences, both (previously) possessing the meaning of “real life” to the student subject. from this perspective, it is possible to interpret that the production of such contextual knowledge would be defined a priori of the subject, since in the affirmation of the text is punctuated the view of what the subject must "know" and must "know how to do", with a knowledge and context already set for their lives. while the document stresses the importance of curricular production being linked to life projects and the meanings of the contexts of a supposed real life, it advances the definition of meanings, for example, by establishing what characterizes as important for the subject and his future experience, as in defending “fields of experiences” and, consequently, expected learning (brazil, 2018, p.51).i consider emblematic of this movement of structuring and control of life contexts the idea of competence, defended in the bncc-em, which points out that the pedagogical practice has as its purpose the clear indication of what students should "know" (considering the constitution of knowledge, skills, attitudes and values) and, above all, what they should "know how to do" (considering the mobilization of this knowledge, skills, attitudes and values to solve complex demands of daily life, the full exercise of citizenship and the world of work) (brasil, 2018, p.12) these defenses aim to guide the pedagogical practices in schools as having to be aligned with a project of meaning of the student and teacher, their life and performance, the meaning of the experiences (in and out of school), and emphasize the school as a space-time of production of operational know-how, as pointed out by macedo (2015).i agree with the author in interpreting https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index costa. curriculum, context and otherness 70 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> that such perspectives point to an opposition to the imponderable, uncontrollable dynamics of school, life, cultural flows that mark this or that context, which cannot be probed, whose meanings are produced contingently. the reduction of knowledge to a functional condition of know-how, which must be an operation planned in / for a given context, with a fixed meaning for the other, marks an important dynamic of a broader curricular textualization. it is, by the discussion that has been conducted in this text, to constitute the perspective of a deconstructionist inscription in the relation with documents, theories and studies of the curriculum. the aim is to highlight the power of a logocentric sense in the field, which seeks to control what is the other of / in school, life, work, society, daily life, the context of a subject, which should be known for a promised future. i consider these perspectives as moments of a broader curriculum policy, in which every decision, to agree or disagree, aims to recover opportunities to propose to otherness (through names such as knowledge, for example), to anticipate it where it is not, because it is (strangely) to come. conclusions working with the idea that knowledge could be omnipotent and functional for every context (school, work, family, society, etc.) points to an attempt to calculate (and thus reduce) ways of knowing the world. i think it is the denial of dealing with the unknown other, of placating the unknown questioning of an “wholly other” otherness (derrida, 1996) that continually imposes the need to revolve our forms of knowledge, whatever they may be, to "give" the response to what is assumed as inescapable. i consider that the context is not calculable, just as the knowledge presumed to be operated in it is not a property carried by a subject with a transcendental reason / consciousness. conceiving the context as not being able to be dominated by a logic or even retaken, knowledge can only be considered as a result of the decision to answer, which comes from a subjectivation (derrida, 1996).that is, with every motion of control, what is projected as sufficient knowledge (to answer what is imposed as questioning [never know where and how]) resides in the moment of madness (derrida, 1996), in the decision in answer, at which time we suppose that subjectivation is precipitated. supported by lopes and macedo (2011), i think of the curriculum as text and, in this sense, retaking the derridean concern that mobilizes these lines, i argue that both traditional and critical perspectives, as emblematic paths in the curriculum field, tend to assume knowledge and the context as exposed to control and rationalization. i emphasize this reading taking into account the state-centric character that marks macrostructural views, defending the verticalization of power, from top to down, in terms of control over the context of school practice, over the production of knowledge. also, the perspectives of emancipation and resistance, which in defense of the vivid and latent character of subjective experience in the context of school practice, reiterate the verticality of the curriculum by conceiving the practice as capable of producing resistance from the down to top, as a counter-hegemony (giroux, 1988). in this case, it would also be possible from a knowledge defined as capable of producing certain subject constituted for pre-established contexts. i think it is conjectured a vision of knowledge supposed to be able to transcend singularities, saturate (unknown) contexts, with the power to solve generic problems, affirm appropriate competences or skills to face whatever the otherness of the school event, of the curriculum, of life. my concern here is for the common presupposition, in the different perspectives and fragments of curricular texts mentioned, that the context of practice is somewhat apprehensible https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index costa. curriculum, context and otherness 71 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> and rationalizable, either by a traditional / instrumentalist or critical logic. in addition, i am interested in highlighting the recurring readings of context as something in the world, as an object, which can be inferred from an interpretive metric, as well as tending to be delineated as a space-time open to the conscious eye, to a transparent analysis. to emphasize the perspective of the curriculum as text (lopes & macedo, 2011), reiterating the textual character of the world, as thought by derrida (1981; 1982), is to consider that all meaning of the curriculum is only a form of involvement, of decision. it is important to understand every practice as a practice of meaning with a view to hegemony, the production of meanings of knowledge, of a given enunciation, produced in a context that 'can no longer be recovered', revived. such arguments include interpreting that any movement of mention to a given context, in defense of something that is deemed important, is to create, contextually and provisionally, new contexts. along these lines of thought, every decision, as in stating a certain production of knowledge, consists of a traitorous contextual practice. it would not be interesting, therefore, to distinguish formal curriculum contexts from practices, for every motion of meaning is possible only if practiced contextually, in a "here and now" (derrida, 1994). establish relationships with such conceptions may imply that not only what is interpreted as the context of practice cannot be reduced to the differential action of teachers and students in schools, but is not restricted to practices limited to physical spaces or institutions. i support the view that all contextual production, like every possibility / opportunity of production of meaning, is singular and already in an asymmetrical movement in relation to otherness. i think it is important to understand that these words (in this text, as well as in all that concerns this discussion of contexts and their opacity), mark the ambivalence of being able to influence the production of new contexts and thereby perish as transcendental truths. notes 1this article is linked to the project “senses of knowledge in curriculum policies: geography and the national curriculum common base” (sentidos de conhecimento nas políticas de currículo: a geografia e a base nacional comum curricular), funded by cnpq and federal university of mato grosso. 2hugoguimel@yahoo.com.br 3i use the expression understanding that the theorizing that we call curriculum thinking is inseparable from the meanings that produce curriculum policies. in this direction, i agree with lopes and macedo (2011). 4according to derrida (1982), logocentric thinking would presuppose that language is transparent, reason and truth are presences affirmed as continuous and ideal. for further study on the subject, i suggest derrida (1981; 1982). 5from the conceptual organization proposed by lopes and macedo (2011), i base this discussion focusing on what could be read as a first approach or moment of more organized curricular thinking as a field. so i take bobbitt's behavioral / efficientist arguments as well as his contemporary rivalry: dewey's progressive proposals. references aquino, j. g.; corazza, s. m.; ado, m. d. l. 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(2016). por uma leitura topológica das políticas curriculares. archivos analíticos de políticas educativas / education policy analysis archives, 24 (26).http://dx.doi.org/10.14507/epaa.v24.2075 macedo, e. f. (2017). mas a escola não tem que ensinar?: conhecimento, reconhecimento e alteridade na teoria do currículo. currículo sem fronteiras, v. 17 (3), pp. 539-554. macedo, e. f.; miller, j. l. (2018). políticas públicas de currículo: autobiografia e sujeito relacional. práxis educativa (uepg. online), 13 (3), pp. 948-965. miguel, a. (2016). historiografia e terapia na cidade da linguagem de wittgenstein. bolema: boletim de educação matemática, 30(55), 368-389. https://dx.doi.org/10.1590/19804415v30n55a03 monteiro, s. b. (2007). otobiografia como escuta das vivências presentes nos escritos. educação e pesquisa, 33 (3), pp. 471-484. http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/s151797022007000300006. ng-a-fook, n. (2014). provoking the very "idea" of canadian curriculum studies as a counterpointed composition. journal of the canadian association for curriculum studies, 12 (1), pp.10-69. available in:https://jcacs.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/jcacs/article/view/39590 . issn: 1916-4467 pinar, w. f.; reynolds, w.; slattery, p.; taubman, p. (2017). understanding curriculum. new york: peter lang. ponzoni, f. (2014). el encuentro intercultural como acontecimiento: una propuesta para el avance teórico de la educación intercultural. educación y educadores, 17(3), 537553. https://dx.doi.org/10.5294/edu.2014.17.3.8 reis, c.; paraíso, m.a. (2014). normas de gênero em um currículo escolar: a produção dicotômica de corpos e posições de sujeito meninos-alunos. revista estudos feministas, 22(1), pp.237-256. https://dx.doi.org/10.1590/s0104-026x2014000100013 skliar, c. (2003). a educação e a pergunta pelos outros. diferença, alteridade, diversidade e os outros outros. ponto de vista (ufsc), 5 (1), pp. 37-50. available in:https://periodicos.ufsc.br/index.php/pontodevista/article/view/1244 . issn: 21758050. souza, r. m. (2008). língua de sinais e escola: considerações a partir do texto de regulamentação da língua brasileira de sinais. etd educação temática digital,7 (2), pp. 266-281.doi :https://doi.org/10.20396/etd.v7i2.808. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index https://dx.doi.org/10.1590/s2175-62362013000200018 http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=193542556011 http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa https://dx.doi.org/10.1590/s1413-24782006000200007 http://dx.doi.org/10.14507/epaa.v24.2075 https://dx.doi.org/10.1590/1980-4415v30n55a03 https://dx.doi.org/10.1590/1980-4415v30n55a03 http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/s1517-97022007000300006 http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/s1517-97022007000300006 https://jcacs.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/jcacs/article/view/39590 https://dx.doi.org/10.5294/edu.2014.17.3.8 https://dx.doi.org/10.1590/s0104-026x2014000100013 https://periodicos.ufsc.br/index.php/pontodevista/article/view/1244 https://doi.org/10.20396/etd.v7i2.808#_blank costa. curriculum, context and otherness 74 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> valenzuela echeverri, c. e. (2017). derrida, herencia y educación. pedagogía y saberes, (46), 77-83. retrieved august 13, 2019, from http://www.scielo.org.co/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=s012124942017000100008&lng=en&tlng=es submitted: july, 20th, 2019. approved: august, 17th, 2019. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index http://www.scielo.org.co/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=s0121-24942017000100008&lng=en&tlng=es http://www.scielo.org.co/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=s0121-24942017000100008&lng=en&tlng=es o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: lopes, alice casimiro. (2018). “i prefer no to” implement: curriculum and resistance transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> “i prefer not to accept it”: curriculum and resistance alice casimiro lopes1 state university of rio de janeiro, brazil bartleby, the character of herman melville, and his famous pronouncement i prefer not to are important to understand the political power of unwillingness without violent confrontation. in his wall street story, melville recounts the life of this man who contemplates the world. bartleby, in his work as scrivener, is a good employee, but always responds to the demands of his boss with the expression "i would prefer not to." in the words of the narrator a master in chancery in the state of new york created by melville (2015, loc 13), "bartleby was one of those beings of whom nothing is ascertainable, except from the original sources, and in his case those are very small." it may be interesting to think, as does agamben (2015), that bartleby opens a zone of indiscernibility between the yes and the no, the preferable and the non preferable. he never says that he does not want to do something or that he cannot do something, but he does not accept it, he prefers not to do it; he never confronts, but he also does not do what is asked of him. agamben understands this action of those who do not act and, at the same time, claim to prefer another option as the indiscernibility between the power of being (or doing) and the power of not being (or not doing). in the words of agamben (2015), melville elaborates in his literary text an experiment that can be connected to wittgenstein's propositions, such as "i am safe whatever happens." that is, there are experiments and propositions that cannot be submitted to the conditions of truth. they can be true and false at the same time, they refer to the power of being and not being simultaneous: to the contingency. through contingency, it is possible to think that there is no potential essence that determines a result in life or politics. multiple possibilities of being and doing compete for the power to be precipitated into actions or identities. there is no necessary or compulsory reason able to define a way of being or doing something. it is impossible to discuss bartleby's politics in this small presentation. this kind of refusal or resistance can be read in different ways, including as a problematic and weak nihilism (and i do not agree with this because nothing is so simple). then, i just want to connect this political possibility of resistance to curriculum policy. or maybe i just want to stress another understanding of resistance in the contingency. most curriculum guides in different countries whether or not produced by government institutions are currently trying to tell teachers what to do, how to be a good teacher. at the same time, they try to tell students how to be or what they have to desire for their future. one can rememember of bartleby. thus, in certain contexts or historical moments, against the powers that try to draw such actions and identities, it would be worth saying that we prefer not to implement this curricular proposal, we prefer not to construct that identity, we prefer not to be in that way, we prefer not want that future. or just answering: "we would prefer not to”, “we prefer no to”. in the case of the scrivener created by melville, such preference leads to increasing immobility and isolation. but even this immobility and isolation do not cease to produce changes in those around him. this idea may lead us to think with derrida that many political actions as deconstruction may seem paralyzing if the notion of politics with which one works refers only to lopes. “i prefer not to” 2 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the confrontation of pre-war (apud elam, 1994). in this case, it is better to change the understanding of politics, accepting the possibility of deconstruction. i propose that the articles of this issue 15 of the transnational curriculum inquiry were read in view of such reflections on the curriculum. as usual, the papers come from different research groups, different universities and countries, with different approaches, perhaps connected only through the perspective of thinking about the curriculum in a non-prescriptive way, open to defer. perhaps what also connects these articles is the political option to say, in the face of any authoritarianism and any violence against the identity of the other, “we prefer not to accept it”. notes 1 alicecasimirolopes@gmail.com references agamben, g. (2015) bartleby, ou da contingência. belo horizonte, autêntica, p. 1-53. elam, d. (1994). feminism and deconstruction: ms. en abyme. london: routledge. melville, h. (2015) bartleby, the scrivener: a story of wall-street. belo horizonte, autêntica, loc 1-636. mailto:alicecasimirolopes@gmail.com o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: uljens, michael (2018). a contribution to re-theorizing curriculum research. transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> a contribution to re-theorizing curriculum research michael uljens1 åbo akademi university, finland introduction the challenges contemporary curriculum policy work, teaching and educational leadership are to an increasing degree challenged by policy shifts generated by similar transnational developments in europe, asia, africa and the americas. most countries have, to various degree, witnessed expanding neoliberal policies, expanding cultural neo-nationalism, more populist politics, economic protectionism, increasing social inequality, religious fundamentalism, mistrust in democratic political participation and decreasing respect for knowledge institutions and established media. the above counterproductive consequences raise serious questions regarding the tasks of education. the answers to these questions take different forms in various countries (paraskeva and steinberg, 2016). for example, in europe various types of deregulation and decentralization as well as reregulation and recentralization of political power and curriculum policies within nation states have occurred since the 1980s (gunter, grimaldi, hall, & serpieri, 2016). it has become increasingly important to see connections between economic neoliberal globalization, national and transnational governance policies, educational ideals, as well as curriculum and leadership practices within and between levels. in a historical light, education and curriculum reform have always reflected dominating educational ideologies including ideas about the origin and future of a culture. this pattern continues. instead, what has changed is the (grand) narrative considered as legitimate, by existing power structures, to regulate education. the dominant and almost unquestioned narrative today has become the idea of the competitive state on a global market. this model, partly founded on the liberal ideas developed during the 19th century is global and applied both in east, in the west and global south. sweeping over the complete globe the view reflects an instrumentalizing view of education and a performative citizenship. it also embraces an idea of progress. in knowledge-based economies, instrumentalization of e.g. higher education insitutions is expected to contribute to the growth of wealth. in reality, social and economical inequality is growing. the point made here is, that the idea of progression is no longer bound to some inherent, teleological view of development of the individual or the world, typically reflected in stage theories. the global economist view of progression thus differs from pre-modern teleological explanations of how the world develops. in jan https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index uljens. a contribution to re-theorizing curriculum research 5 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index komenský’s (j. a. comenius), originally didaktika česká (later didactica magna), the ultimate aim of education was to prepare for eternity (comenius, 1907). yet, comenius also suggested revolutionary new ideas of his time, like seeing education as a universal human right. another such idea regulating curriculum reform was the paradigmatic shift replacing religion with language as the vehicle to constitute cultural coherence of the nation state and personal identity. the focuse on language as interrelated with knowledge, but still something beyond content knowledge, also initiated a move toward seeing language itself as a core competency receiving the status of a subject of its own in the schools. on the one hand language received an instrumental value, on the other language was loaded with capacity to create a sense of belonging and cultural coherence. the construction has proven successful: irrespective of an ever ongoing change and increasing plurality in values and habits, the policy of using language to constitute cultural unity, has survived. however, with ongoing cultural pluralization within the nation-states the notion of nation-state as based on one ore more languages is debated. what this post-nationalist orientation will come up with is still not clear, especially as stronger new-nationalisms have entered the agenda on a global scale. today, neoliberal, competency oriented curricula do not disregard political and cultural citizenship, but tend to overemphasize a performative view of knowledge and citizenship. in such a view, the value of knowledge and language point towards their instrumental capacity to produce economic value. this ideal is increasingly critisized from, for example, a sustainable development perspective. sustainable development has become a new parallell, and globally regulative principle for education, beyond economic profit and other political interests (wolff, sjöblom, hofman-bergholm & palmberg, 2017). these neoliberally driven policy initiatives and related globalization have taken many forms. a general background for this policy movement is the changed role of education and research in moving from a national industrial economy to a global knowledge economy. given the dramatic economic impact that research and innovation have received, educational institutions have, to an increasing degree, been directed to adopt to the needs of the market. from a european perspective, this change is described as a movement from a social democratic welfare state model to a social liberal market state model, with the year of 1989 as a turning point when the socialist eastern europe collapsed. for good reasons, there is increasing critique, and mistrust, as to whether policy reform that promote competency oriented curricula, a practice of governing by numbers and redefining learning results as indicators reflecting successful teaching, indeed can lead us right? there is a constantly increasing critique regarding initiatives driven by local and global versions of neoliberal policy and their possibilities to guide reform in the public sector including, not the least in the nordic countries (e.g. willbergh, 2015; sommer & klitmöller, 2018; värri, 2018). these complex and profound developments challenge existing theorizing of curriculum, didaktik and educational leadership. much research in different parts of the world have made a number of critical observations regarding theory development in curriculum research and didaktik (e.g. deng, 2013; green, 2018; young, 2013; paraskeva & steinberg, 2016; priestley, 2011; pinar, 2015; henderson, castner & schneider, 2018). critical dialogue among parallel theories is as things should be, but an unavoidable impression is that curriculum research as a field of research is losing ground, which makes the situation different. the increasing focus https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index uljens. a contribution to re-theorizing curriculum research 6 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index on learning outcomes, a movement from subject centered curriculum to generic competencies and qualifications’ frameworks are among the reasons to why interest in curriculum research has diminished (priestley, 2011). young (2013), for his part, considers the turn towards ideology critique in curriculum theorizing and research as one source of the crisis, with the motive that the whatand how -questions of teaching were lost. however, the dilemma with approaches delimiting curriculum research to an issue of learning, identity, bildung or the teaching-learning process, is the lack of a conceptual apparatus for dealing with the societal and political dimensions of curriculum. such orientations are therefore not well equipped to conceptualize prevalent economism or cultural neo-conservatism influencing education. pointing at some limitations of, first, approaching curriculum research primarily as an individual bildung topic or, second,approaching curriculum research primarily in a societal perspective, does not reduce their importance. as both of these questions, and others, are legitimate, the challenge is rather how we might deal with both of them in a coherent manner? to deal with both of these perspectives in a coherent manner is the heritage of the german bildung tradition as established by the classics herder, humboldt, schleiermacher and herbart and later on as developed in general didaktik (gd) and subject matter didaktik (smd) (fachdidaktik), which expanded dramatically in finland when the new faculties of education were established 1974. about 10-15 years later a similar focus on the pedagogical content knowledge occurred in the usa (schulman, 1986; for a discussion see e.g. doyle, 2017, deng, 2017). subject matter didaktik also expanded in the 80’s in the nordic countries (marton, 1981; gudmundsdottir, reinertsen & nordtomme, 1997). in relation to the german didaktik tradition the non-affirmative eduction theory approach to theorizing curriculum, teaching and learning also accepts the primacy of the contents, as in the bildung tradition, but takes the concpetual analysis of the teaching-studying-learning process to another level and provides an alternative way to define the relation between e.g. politics and education. before that, we will have a look at complementary remarks on delineating curriculum research and theorizing. the topicality of curriculum research in my understanding, the field of curriculum research is mainly covered by three related fields: a) philosophical curriculum studies. this subarea consist of conceptual and ontological research on human growth (bildung), personalization (identity) and socialization as related to pedagogical activity. this theorizing refer to, but cannot be drawn from, e.g. philosophy of mind, intersubjectivity, praxis/activity, ethics, and language. philosophical curriculum studies include epistemological reflection (e.g. phenomenology, hermeneutics, critical realism, critical theory, etc.), but a theory of curriculum cannot be based on epistemology. further, this field looks into how ethics, politics, law and curriculum/education relate as fields of practical philosophy. further, this field embrace how we conceptually explain the relation between human growth, studying and teaching. philosophical curriculum studies embrace conceptual research on various assumptions behind e.g. curriculum theories and didaktik, and their comparative analysis. b) curriculum policy studies. here we find empirical research on curriculum ideology, as well as the study of curricular contents and https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index uljens. a contribution to re-theorizing curriculum research 7 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index policies at different levels, reflecting the aims, contents and methods of teaching. such research is sometimes comparative and historical in character. c) curriculum praxis research. this field cover empirical research on curriculum reform, teaching and leadership. for example, the dynamics between and within different levels from the transnational level to the classroom level is included here, as is research on local school development and, since comenius, teachers’ work. curriculum praxis research included research on various leadership processes around curriculum reform stages like initiation, implementation, enactment, development and evaluation of curriculum. not only is a comparative perspective central, but also a historical perspective should be added to the list above. loosing historical awareness can result in that fundamental assumptions are taken for granted (paraskeva, 2017). historical ignorance can also allow researchers to define the tradition superficially or to reconstruct previous attempts in misrepresentative ways (wraga, 2016; doll, 1993). in comparative curriculum research, a historical perspective is also a key issue. in comparative research, we may be interested in following questions. how do, for example, various nations contribute and receive, translate or enact transnational or global movements? how do states and regional actors mediate national policies? why is it that different countries respond so differently to the same challenges? historical insight in each culture, brought into dialogue, often proves to be a fruitful strategy in comparative research. an approach perhaps still less developed in comparative curriculum research is educational anthropology. studying changes in educational and curricular rituals and cultures as mimetic, recreative learning activities, may prove fruitful. as schools may be considered ritualized institutions with the double task of both reproducing and destabilizing norms and practices, approaching curriculum praxis from an educational anthropology perspective is interesting level of analysis (e.g. wulf, 2010). sometimes curriculum reform or curriculum development is perceived as something that turns the attention away from what curriculum research could be at its best. instead of turning away from curriculum reform as a topic for curriculum research, i support initiatives aiming at finding new ways of relating academic research and school development, e.g. interventionist approaches. but, such cooperation must be guided by a critical attitude, and awareness of that different polities and policies frame, define and direct curriculum reform very differently. in other words, curriculum research supportings reflective school development need concepts by which these questions can be handled in order not to reduce interventionist curriculum research to simple efficiency oriented instrumentalism, misrecognizing teacher autonomy. a globopolitan view. whereas curriculum research often approach curriculum work, policy and reform, primarily as a nation-state phenomenon, we can no longer overlook transnational dimensions. we are in need of a renewed and extended discussion on cosmopolitanism and the modern, nation-state centered heritage in curriculum and education (e.g. brincat 2009; moland 2011; moos & wubbels, 2018; rönnström, 2016). kemp (2010) points atfollowing questions for cosmopolitanism: (a) how does economic globalization relate to democratic control of the economy and technology, (b) how should we deal with conflicts between national or culturally related interests and challenges connected to sustainable development https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index uljens. a contribution to re-theorizing curriculum research 8 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index and, finally, (c) how should we deal with global responsibility? in curriculum theory and educational leadership, globalization, cosmopolitanism, or rather a globopolitan vision, mainly falls into two different parts: globopolitanism as an educational ideal and globopolitanism as empirical transnational policy activities, reflecting dynamics between states and between states and transnational aggregations of various kinds (uljens & ylimaki, 2017). the simple reason to why i find globopolitanism more accurate than cosmopolitanism is that the latter today primarily refers to the totality of cosmos, in ways it never has been perceived before. but, how should these transnational dimensions then be theorized? to what extent is it possible to handle these broad and complex influences and mechanisms as truly educational or pedagogical phenomena? can a theory of education, didaktik or curriculum convincingly frame all these aspects or is there a need to move beyond education theory and partially anchor curriculum research in policy research or political sciences, like discursive institutionalism? for erich weniger, didaktik in a narrow sense was about studying the contestation of aims and contents of education on a collective level. for weniger (1965) a broader definition of didaktik included teaching methods. yet, the question remain. studying curriculum reform today must include a transnational dimension. such transnational influences operate more often as policy implementation initiatives, than being educational (pedagogical) in character. expressed differently, if curriculum theory would be limited to theorizing human growth (bildung) and how this growth is related to pedagogical activity on an interpersonal level, then such a theory would be insufficient as it is reasonable to expect that curriculum research also aim at understanding politically driven national curriculum reforms and their transnational dimensions. the growth of research on policy borrowing and policy translation are good examples of more recent research approaches given the transnational condition. as transnational institutions of different kinds have challenged the nation-state perspective, later curriculum research and theorizing has partly responded by turning into investigations into how policies travel horizontally between policy systems and how meaning translate between levels (e.g. steiner khamsi, 2004). in some versions, curriculum research has more or less turned into policy research. yet, we do indeed need comparative curriculum research on policies, also in order to support actors at different levels in their work with questions of what kind of citizenship (political, economical and cultural) our educational institutions should promote. this is especially central in an era where all nations worldwide internally develop towards increasing plurality while being simultaneously framed by challenges that call for a globopolitan view. curriculum work and educational leadership? contemporary policies, curriculum work and evaluation practices, technological developments, new patterns of governance and leadership form a new complex web where we, as before, need to understand both the relation between politics and education but, it is argued, also the nature of leadership and curriculum reform interactions on and between multiple organizational levels, including classrooms (uljens, 2015; uljens & ylimaki, 2017). https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index uljens. a contribution to re-theorizing curriculum research 9 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index to raise educational leadership as a topic for curriculum research may be unexpected. curriculum research often represents a more critical approach, which is aimed at revealing the values, the mechanisms, processes and tensions underlying education, while the more recent increase of interest in leadership research, has clearly happened against the backdrop of an accountability oriented educational policy period, at least so in europe (uljens & nyman, 2013). the english speaking world has traditionally operated with decentralized school systems giving local school leadership a prominent role. it is only with the decentralization of curriculum work, and later with accountability policies, that school leadership received a position in non-english speaking countries both in europe and asia. yet, there is broad variation in research into leadership (gunter and ribbins, 2008). after closer consideration, should not research on the selection and treatment of cultural contents for educational settings and purposes include the role educational leadership in this process? in fact, as a practice, curriculum making at different levels, as curriculum work in genereal, can be perceived as a form of educational leadership. the recent and ongoing shift in educational administration, replacing one bureaucracy with another, the movement from government to governance, has turned our attention towards understanding curriculum work and educational leadership as a multilevel endeavour. in institutionalized education, curriculum work does indeed take many forms and is horizontally distributed within, and over, many locations and professional groups as well as carried out at several, interconnected levels. this also means that educational leadership on different levels, including classroom teaching, may be seen as a mediating activity between different epistemic practices (subject matter, economy, law, media and culture) and value spheres (collective politics and intersubjective ethics). teachers and leaders typically have certain degrees of freedom to contribute to the reconstruction of social reality. from a curriculum theory perspective a main question is then how we conceptually explain how this space is constituted, through the initiation and mediating of pedagogical interests and practices. the fields of research mentioned in the beginning, condense to dealing with three topical relations. first, they point at curriculum research as dealing with philosophical and empirical questions. second, they define curriculum research as dealing with questions of the individual’s or human growth, in its broadest sense of the word, and how this growth relate to being with others. most curriculum research locate this relational focus to an institutional education context. third, curriculum research raise questions of how to approach the relation between education and society, i.e. the relations between institutional education as related to democracy and politics, to economy and working life, as well as to cultural issues. whether approaching these fields empirically or theoretically i find it reasonable to argue that the second and third group of questions above are topics that require answers from any attempt that conceptually wants to clarify the field of curriculum research. thus, first curriculum research need to answer how we theoretically define the relation between education and other societal forms of practices including politics, culture, and economics. that is, how should we conceptualize public education and curriculum in relation to politics, culture, and economics? educational practice is under the influence of all these fields, while simultaneously preparing for participation in all of them. this first question is important for curriculum research in that it asks how politics regulates education, given that one aim of education is to prepare for https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index uljens. a contribution to re-theorizing curriculum research 10 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index participation in future political life. second, curriculum theory need to explain what kind of theories may help us conceptually understand the nature of teachers’ and education leaders’ pedagogical interaction with students and colleagues, that is, how we theorize the pedagogical or educational qualities of leadership and teaching, whether we talk about school children or e.g. teachers. finally, for analytical purposes there is a need to point back at the distinction between focusing curricular contents, aims, mehods and policies at different levels, and curriculum reform and leadership. in this context the curricular contents and policies refer e.g. to the curriculum as the syllabus in which aims, contents, methods including evaluation are explicated. curriculum research of this sort means studying how a given curriculum defines the regulative educational ideas and aims, how it argues for selection and selected contents at different levels, values to ne promoted, methods of teaching and learning, collaboration, leadership and evaluation expressed and practiced. in contrast, curriculum reform and leadership refer, first, to the governance, leadership, management, teaching and evaluation practices. these practices can be carried out at different levels, from the local to the transnational level. these reform and leadership practices are not the same as the curriculum as a codified policy document, but they relate to the contents of the curriculum. second, curriculum reform and leadership, refer to the initiation, implementation and enactment of curricula. this work feature policy activities and pedagogical activities. the non-affirmative approach to curriculum research as observed at the beginning of this article, in reflections on the challenges that contemporary curriculum theory faces, it is not unusual to identify a division of the field into a critical-sociological approach and an instrumental practice oriented approach aiming at serving practical needs (lindén, annala & coate, 2017). seen from the vantage point of didaktik, these approaches broadly reflect two complementary expectations put on educational research. on the one hand, curriculum research aims at creating a critical distance to practice by making visible otherwise unreflected and taken for granted dimensions, mechanisms, norms, values and practices. on the other hand, curriculum research is typically expected to provide guidance of some sort to curriculum makers, education leaders and teachers (jank & meyer, 1997). oftentimes these approaches are described as conflicting positions. a complementary way to describe these two main orientations is to approach them from a normative perspective. the problem of normativity in curriculum theory emanate from that curriculum practice is by its nature intentional, aiming at something, which is not present, and directly or indirectly promoting certain values. i agree with green (2017, p. 1) when he observes that: “curriculum is best understood, first and foremost, as inescapably, always-already political—that there is, in effect, nothing outside curriculum-as-political-text. that means that, inter alia, knowledge questions are always, inescapably bound up with questions of power.” https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index uljens. a contribution to re-theorizing curriculum research 11 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index given that “knowledge questions are always, inescapably bound up with questions of power” (green, 2017, p. 1) the question is how curriculum is theorized and thought to be dealing with these power dimensions? i indeed do agree that one of the objects of curriculum research are political texts, and that teaching and educational leadership are normative practices. the remaining question is then how our theories position themselves in this respect? are they, or should they be, political in the same way as a curriculum as a policy document is political? is or should pedagogical practice by definition be as political as the curriculum as a policy text? even if they are all normative in the sense of being value bound, i am inclined to not to merge curriculum theory with curriculum practice and curriculum policy. practice-oriented curriculum models are often designed as tools for planning teaching. they are often instrumental but also conservative and can be reproduction-oriented. larger societal aims of education remain often as taken for granted. these societally seen reproduction oriented models often accepts contemporary values as the norm for education. bobbit’s (1918/1972) application of scientific management as developed by taylor is an example of such a view. also models of teaching basing their recommendations on learning theory represent the same pattern of thought. often in these models, curriculum practice is perceived as a question of efficiency and productivity. lindén, annala & coate (2017) remind that the european union’s so called modernization agenda invite employers and market institutions into a dialogue regarding curricular aims, contents and methods. in stark opposition to such an understanding of curriculum work we find counterhegemonic, critical emancipatory pedagogy (e.g. mclaren, 2000). transformative models typically aim at ideal, future possible practices, that are not yet real. despite that transformative and counterhegemonic curriculum models represent opposite positions they remnd of each other regarding their role for practice. the similarity consist in how they relate to norms: while the first curriculum model takes existing societal norms as given and do not problematize them, the second curriculum approach tend to defines future ideals to be worked towards. these curriculum theories takes on the role of a curriculum: the teacher is successful if the curricular aims have been promoted. the dilemma for both is that they may run the risk of turning education, leadership, curriculum work, and teaching into a technological practice where results refer to values external to the profession. neither of these would be able to solve the problem described initially, that is, a reproduction-oriented approach does not typically question ongoing developments but rather supports them. in turn, the alternative, or counterhegemonic, critical reasoning may end up replacing an existing ideology with another one, yet remaining in an instrumentalist relation to educational practice. in contrast to these approaches, non-affirmative theory argues that education is not to be seen as a vehicle for reproduction or for making predetermined ideas about the future come true. nat positions itself, not in between but beyond these models. at this point, it is important to remind of that nat does not advocate a value neutral position. on the contrary, nat has originated as a theory in and for a political liberal democracy. in a theory for democratic education, it would be mistake to equalize pedagogical practice with politics as practice, as it would a mistake to equalize educational theory with political ideology or political utopia. instead, nat would argue that educational theory is https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index uljens. a contribution to re-theorizing curriculum research 12 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index analytical tool for reflecting on educational ideals and interests as well as practice. in principle, a political democracy will have difficulties viewing education either as socialization into something existing or as an idealist transformation of society with the help of education. education and politics are indeed related, yet neither can be solely deduced from the other without violating the idea and nature of each other. in non-democratic polities, education is by definition strictly subordinate to politics. in democratic education, and in education for democracy, the task of education is, among others, to prepare for political participation. such education is normative, i.e. valuebound, in that it recognizes and respects political freedom of thought and the individual’s right to a political conviction, by not deciding in advance what values individuals should represent. according to nat, education and politics, as two forms of societal practices, relate to each other in a non-hierarchical way. in such a view, politics is viewed to direct and regulate education while recognizing that the task of education is to contribute to educating a political will, without directing what this will should be wanting as a political will. education prepares for politics, while at the same time uses education for its own purposes. according to nonaffirmative theory, politics, therefore, must accept to operate by a permanent open question: to what extent and how strong do policies steer education practice? if politics in advance strictly try to decide how a future generation should think and act, then, paradoxically, this would endanger the future of a democratic state. that is, democratic states need to educate its citizens for democracy. let us look at the non-hierarchical relation between politics and education from a pedagogical perspective. according to non-affirmative theory, a hierarchical reasoning subordinating education to politics would reduce pedagogical reflection and practice to an efficiency problem: how efficiently can given educational aims be reached by educational efforts? again, superordinating education over politics would mean, in principle, that the field of education alone would define towards what kind of future the world should be moved. nat would argue in favor of a third position. it reminds us that education and politics are not either superor subordinated to each other. consequently, nat identifies curricular ideals in a democracy as resulting from a public political process, cultural reflection and professionals’ contribution. from a normative perspective, nat would then remind us that the teacher must recognize existing interests, policies, ideologies, utopias, and cultural practices, that is, to identify them as existing. but, nat would not ask the teacher to affirm these ideologies, utopias and cultural practices. not to affirm various interests means to not pass them on to the next generation without making these interests objects of critical reflection in pedagogical practice with students. according to nat, citizenship education for democracy can therefore not be about the socialization of youth only into a predetermined form of democracy, but must include critical reflection of historical, existing, and possible future versions of democracy. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index uljens. a contribution to re-theorizing curriculum research 13 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index recognition, summoning to self-activity and bildsamkeit now moving to the second part of this article the intention is to qualify the above arguments by especially focussing the interactive pedagogical relation, in terms of three related concepts. these are recognition, summoning to self-activity and bildsamkeit. the origins of the concept recognition (anerkennung) may partly be found in a modern, classical, theory of education, i.e. within a theoretical-philosophical context of the later enlightenment. it is often associated with fichte’s and, in particular, hegel’s philosophy. although the concept has inspired many, it has nevertheless long remained on the fringes of pedagogical discussions. the past two decades, however, the situation has changed through works by and inspired by axel honneth, jürgen habermas, charles taylor, nancy fraser, judith butler, emanuel levinas, jaques ranciere, and many more. yet, the relation between recognition and some basic concepts in educational theory have remained unclear. also, what exactly is referred to by recognition varies. for instance, does recognition primarily refer to assumptions lying behind educational activity, e.g. that the subject must to be considered (recognized) free or non-determined or equal, in order to make pedagogical activity meaningful? or, does recognition refer to some quality of the actual educative activity itself, i.e. that education happens through somebody is doing ‘recognizing’? in such a case, education could be about recognizing the present state or presence of somebody. or, still, has the concept of recognition rather to do with pedagogical aims? the reason to such an interpretation would be that education often aims at some form of increased selfdetermination or practical or cultural, political and personal autonomy, which tells something about how an individual perceives or identifies herself in relation to others. in this last case recognition would be seen as a result of an educational process. from the above we can see that the concept may refer to the premises, to the pedagogical process as such or to the result of pedagogical processes. therefore we can reasonable ask, how much is included in recognition? in the following, i will try to indicate that all three ways of understanding recognition are meaningful. they have a place in curriculum theory. in order to clarify this it is necessary to relate the concept of recognition to some other core concepts from education history. in the german-influenced tradition of general pedagogy or ‘allegemeine pädagogik’ (c.f. herbart, schleiermacher, and others), the concepts (a) recognition, (b) summons to selfactivity, and (c) bildsamkeit traditionally occupy a central position (benner, 1991; uljens, 2001). these concepts are fundamental for the post-kantian modern pedagogy, the main outlines of which were drawn by fichte, herbart, and schleiermacher, among others. fichte, for instance, assumed that a defense of the freedom of will presupposes the recognition of the other as free and that this recognition is mutual (uljens, 1998). at the same time, there was the notion that the individual attains (reaches) a so-called productive or cultural freedom only by first being summoned to free self-activity. the reaching of productive, cultural freedom, would therefore accordingly be mediated by a summons (aufforderung). in order to follow this argument there is reason to step back and have a look at the larger picture framing the establishment of the concept. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index uljens. a contribution to re-theorizing curriculum research 14 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index a fundamental thought in german idealistic philosophy is the idea of freedom as a transcendental philosophical concept – the human being is radically indetermined. this mindset contributed in a positive way to the gradual abandonment of a teleological view of the individual, humankind and of the world. the new order of things viewing the future as an open question demanded a new approach to education. by virtue of the transcendental subject-philosophy, kant, for his part, assumed that the subject is free, in a radical sense, to establish his or her relation to the world through a self-reflective process. it was assumed that the human being does this in relation to an existing surrounding world whose influence the subject cannot escape. the philosophy of freedom views this radical freedom as an opportunity for the individual, not as a lack in need of a remedy. yet, this resulted in a need to radically re-theorize education. the dilemma was that if individual freedom in this radical meaning was accepted, it presented us with two possible conclusions in education. the first conclusion reflected an unlimited educational optimism: if the subject was no longer determined, by social class, original sin or anything else, then educational influencing appeared as an unforeseen possibility. the opposite conclusion was, however, was also possible: if the subject was considered radically free, how could we ever claim that educational influence was possible in the first place? a cultural identity, a me, would then be attained only by virtue of an active self-educational process, for instance, through free study of pedagogical influence. the significance of pedagogical efforts would thus be dependent on the learner’s decision to attach meaning to it – a position repeated by contemporary constructivist psychology. in such a perspective, it seems impossible to maintain how pedagogical activity would be something necessary for the individual’s development of a cultural identity. thus, from the kantian transcendental philosophy of freedom it is difficult to show how the other constitutes the necessary element it proves to be in practice. siljander (2008, 74-76) draws attention to that herbart’s contribution was to introduce the idea of pedagogical causality to overcome the antinomy between freedom and coercion, between the causality of nature and the causality of freedom. the concepts bildsamkeit and summons to self-activity have a bridging function for herbart in explaining the pedagogical paradox. the modern pedagogical paradox of freedom as a necessary assumption making education possible, and education as a necessary activity for making (cultural) freedom a possible consequence (uljens, 2017). curriculum and the modern pedagogical paradox even if j. g. fichte, in his lectures fom 1796, defines recognition as a mutual assumptional acceptance of each other’s freedom he simultaneously introduces the concept summons to self-activity as a fundamental category in order to understand a human being’s becoming a cultural being. fichte’s question is how we explain that the individual reaches an understanding of herself as a free individual. fichte developes a critique of kant’s idea according to which the individual’s perception of herself as free, is founded in one’s awareness of the moral law. according to the idea of the moral law, there exists categorical imperatives saying, for example, that we are not allowed to make use of fellow human beings in order to reach our aims. instead, wee are expected to act according to such maxims that can https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index uljens. a contribution to re-theorizing curriculum research 15 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index be raised to universal principles valid for all. for kant we had access to such moral laws before experience. for fichte, this meant that kant in fact had the idea of intersubjectivity, i.e. an idea of a shared world, built into his theory. instead, fichte introduced the idea that the empirical freedom, i.e. our awareness of ourselves as free and responsible for others, is intersubjectively mediated through others’ recognition of us as free and others’ summoning us to self-activity. the subject’s empirical autonomy and experience of him or herself as a being of free will thus becomes dependent on the empirical other, a position that hegel develops further and which today constitutes the reference point for, for instance, charles taylor’s and axel honneth’s work. fichte’s contribution includes the notion that the subject’s potentiality for culturally productive freedom can be realized solely through a summons to such freedom (aufforderung). the coming into being of the subject’s empirical awareness of freedom (understanding of oneself as a willing being, conation, provided with self-respect) becomes dependent, but not determined, on the one hand, on the other’s recognition of the freedom of the self, and on the other hand, on the other’s summons by the self to free activity.2 while the transcendental subject-philosophy appears to emphasize recognition as a matter of accepting freedom as a fundamental starting-point associated with a summons, the hegelian tradition more clearly views recognition as a question of the subject’s struggle for recognition on different levels. the incentive is that the establishment and maintenance of personal identity is seen as dependent on different forms of recognition, thus reflecting a fundamental human need, e.g. a need to be loved (“i am loved, therefore i exist”, amari ergo sum). in this spirit, axel honneth, for instance, identifies three hierarchically related forms of needs of recognition that correspond to three “practical self-relations.” consequently, a) love of home/parents/care takers is necessary for the development of a fundamental selfconfidence (selbstvertrauen). in a hegelian need oriented interpretation, the individual strives to be loved to satisfy the need of a fundamental self-confidence. (b) the civil society’s recognition of the individual as a morally responsible legal subject, i.e., as having legal rights and responsibility for his or her actions, as well as being a political citizen (respect for the freedom of will, freedom of expression, ownership), leads to self-respect (selbstachtung). it is further assumed that self-respect develops as the individual strives to be recognized by the other as responsible. finally, (c) the individual would strive to be esteemed and recognized (self-esteem, selbstschätzung) for the work he or she has performed. in other words, in this interpretation recognition means that the individual’s efforts, are identified and acknowledged as valuable contributions in the context in which the individual finds him or herself. from the perspective of curriculum theory, honneth’s view on recognition appears valuable but perhaps also limited. what is valuable, firstly, is that honneth calls attention to hegel’s expansion of fichte’s interpretation of recognition. fichte had developed his concept of recognition primarily in relation to his philosophy of rights, which presupposes all human beings’ equal and natural rights, regardless of social class and the like, and which in turn means that all human beings must themselves limit their freedom and their actions so as not to preclude others’ freedom (fichte 2000, §10, p. 102; uljens, 1998, p. 179f.). this notion returns in hegel, and honneth through the second level of recognition. secondly, honneth’s understanding of the first level of recognition represents a pedagogical tone, which clearly makes the human being’s identity formation dependent on the treatment by the surrounding https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index uljens. a contribution to re-theorizing curriculum research 16 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index (pedagogical) world. it is surprising, however, that honneth does not seem to refer to fichte’s concept of summons (fichte, 2000, §3). thirdly, the theory is interesting because the education process is seen in a cultural and social theoretical light. the limitation in honneth’s interpretation of recognition appears to be that a concept for pedagogical activity has not been worked out in relation to recognition. this is why the concept of recognition becomes so wide and vague and why, for instance, the educator’s role remains unclear. in addition, there is the issue regarding whether it is reasonable to consider recognition in terms of a “philosophy of lack” where the individual is rendered dependent on the arbitrariness of the surrounding world. in the following, the aim is to propose a few interpretations of the relation between recognition, summons to self-activity, and bildsamkeit, in order to overcome the vagueness of the previous understanding of recognition. bildsamkeit literally taken, bildsamkeit refers both to the human capacity to learn, and to the possibility to influence the other by educational means. in the present context the principle of bildsamkeit refers to the individual’s engagement in learning activity, or in studying as i prefer to say, in pedagogical situations. in such situations the learner has accepted and pedagogical invitation or provotion and in way accepts to become engaged in and by an activity, by being summoned to this by the pedagogue. bildsamkeit, incidentally the first principle in herbart’s pedagogy, does not mean that the growing individual in this process expresses something which till then would have been hidden or concealed, but, more radically, that a field of action, activity, and reflection is established through a summons to self-activity. the point is that this summons to self-activity, being a kind of intervention in the learner’s relation to herself, to the world or to others, contributes to the establishment of such a shared and mutual sphere, or such a space wherein the subject may come to see the world in another light. it is a matter of a constructed, or staged regional world or situation, that invites the other through her or his own thought and acts, to experimentally relate to what is offered or pointed at (mollenhauer, 2014). the principle of bildsamkeit or educability means that the student’s own activity is necessary and summoned in the process. one’s own activity can be viewed as representing an experimental relationship to the self and its forms of expression. the principle of bildsamkeit, then, means that the learner is recognized as a subject with a potentiality for self-transcendence. but this potentiality may be realized in and through the pedagogical space that is created through the summons to self-activity. the principle of bildsamkeit therefore refers to individuals’ own processing of their experiences – their relation to the world – through their own activity (benner 2015; uljens 1998). the results from this pedagogical dynamics in its respective case, are by definition impossible to predict. it is then easy to understand that the pedagogical space of activity is a new space, dependent on the involved subjects’ engagement. in the beginning of the pedagogical encounter, the pedagogue does not know how the meeting will turn out. pedagogical activity or summons to self-activity, then, means that the subject’s potentiality for empirical freedom is recognized (the principle of recognition, anerkennung) https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index uljens. a contribution to re-theorizing curriculum research 17 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index and is realized through the principle of bildsamkeit. freedom is realized through bildsamkeit and means that the other becomes aware of his or her own self as free through the summons to use his or her autonomy. a concept of recognition tied to the goal of the process – the recognition of the independence of the other, autonomy, as an objective for pedagogical activity – is present, as the pedagogue’s activity aims to support the individual’s development of a reflected will. this reasoning draws attention to the empirical self-understanding as essentially dependent on social recognition, as for instance axel honneth (2003) argues. if the individual’s self-image is dependent on and is established through interaction with others, and if these dimensions of self are viewed as rights, it follows that pedagogical activity can be viewed as a response to the moral demands that result from the recognition of these rights. the concept of summons can then be viewed as a concrete expression of our responsibility for the other. the principle of bildsamkeit also means that the other is recognized as being innately morally violable, i.e., is attributed a human value both through his or her species belonging and through a reflectivity, without which moral violation is rendered impossible; only the autonomous or the free can experience violation. the otherness of the other – on intersubjectivity the principle of bildsamkeit means that the otherness (difference) of the other is recognized, but in a way that this otherness cannot be negated (uljens, 2009). the radical otherness of the other is recognized through the acceptance of a mutual freedom as a startingpoint (non-determination) and through the recognition of the other as self-activated. consequently, the principle of bildsamkeit means that it is the other who self-actively “forms the self” also if it occurs in relation to “forming” practices. even if the establishment of the otherness of the other in the form of a self is dependent on the recognition/summons, the other remains a stranger for the self, unapproachable – it is impossible to predict the outcome of the encounter in advance. this is because the establishment of the self is not a function of a summons. the self is thus simultaneously both free and dependent, both as regards itself and others. therefore, it is apt to say that the continuous self-forming process is a response to a continuous question of who i am, what i can do, know, and want (desire). in the present position it is argued that the pedagogue in his or her summons cannot exclusively assume a shared life-world or some form of mutuality (symmetry) between the self and the other because the freedom of the other, and hence the assumptional and radical otherness of the other, is recognized through the concept of bildsamkeit. a symmetry, or the negation of asymmetry, in the form of the establishment of a shared life-world is rather something that is sought through the pedagogical process. but also the opposite is true. in his or her summons of the other, the pedagogue cannot exclusively take for granted a radical and total difference (asymmetry) between the self and the other, partly because the bodily-based intersubjectivity is recognized and partly because an asymmetry is something which is sought through the pedagogical process. a “sought-for asymmetry,” that is, the negation of symmetry, refers to the aim of the pedagogical process, namely that the individual develops uniqueness in a cultural sense, a uniqueness that did not originally exist (cf. fig 1). https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index uljens. a contribution to re-theorizing curriculum research 18 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index affirmative and non-affirmative summons in the interpretation of pedagogical activity represented here, summons means behaving toward the growing individual by recognizing her presence, interest, existence, but yet nonaffirmative way. non-affirmative summoning to self-activity has to do with recognizing the growing individual as being capable through self-activity to transcend him or herself and affirming the ways in which the child responds to a summons, but not taking for granted an intention to lead the growing individual to a preconceived form of perception of the world. this would be an example of an affirming pedagogy. a non-affirmative summons to self-activity highlights that the education process is dependent on an experiential address, but that when this provocation is a pedagogical activity the pedagogue should consciously refrain from confirming the prevailing or ideal future condition. with such a self-reflecting pedagogical discernment the pedagogue is thought to be better able to create a space for a bildung process that recognizes the learner’s self-activity and right to exercise intentional independence of thought. the path to the second level of recognition in honneth’s theory can go through non-affirmative summons to self-activity. in somewhat older pedagogical literature, such as in the finnish philosopher, the hegelian johan vilhelm snellman’s pedagogical writings (snellman 1861), the education of the home is represented as a normative, primary socialization to prevailing praxis and normative systems. this would be an example of affirmative pedagogy. by contrast, the school’s role was by snellman described as a step toward “the world of knowledge”, where existing normative systems may become object for reflection. this would be a question of secondary socialization, which transcends the education of the home. yet, it would be an oversimplification to say that the home nurtures and school teaches, in the sense that the activity of the home is affirmative while the activity of the school would be non-affirmative. it is obvious that all activities in the home is not about affirming in the form of non-reflective socialization for prevailing normative systems. on the contrary, it is easy to identify nonaffirmative practices in the home, in particular concurrently with an increasingly valuepluralistic everyday life and an educated generation of parents who have learned to adopt a reflective attitude toward themselves and their everyday lives. the same is true for school. numerous studies show how the school unreflectively passes on and socializes pupils into normative patterns of practices. thus, not all activities in a school are non-affirmative, some are affirmative, but in order for activities in schools to be educational they ought to be nonaffirmative. consequently, the distinction between affirmative and non-affirmative pedagogical activity becomes an analytic tool for discussing both parents’ and teachers’ pedagogical activity. the other and summons as responsibility as seen, arguably the theoretical tradition of modern pedagogy includes an idea of mutuality or intersubjectivity. this thought was initially introduced by fichte in his critique of kant and is then continued by hegel who has inspired many twentieth-century philosophers. nevertheless, it is possible to problematize this view by claiming that it is the self that subordinates the other as the self is the recognizing part. this would represent a reading that https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index uljens. a contribution to re-theorizing curriculum research 19 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index could be contrasted with, for instance, levinas’s ethics which emphasizes the primarity of the other – through the experience of the others otherness, the self is summoned to awareness of one’s (infinite) responsibility. as formulated by levinas, the face of the other appeals to the self to welcomingly open up for the other, whereby the impregnable otherness of the other is simultaneously recognized, i.e. the self is summoned by the other through the other’s mere presence. the strength with levinas’ position is that it draws attention to the self as subordinated to the other. at the same time, though, this position may be seen as a new, or reversed, one-sidedness in relation to the subject-centered tradition that levinas critiques. from a pedagogical perspective, the value of levinas’ position is that it reminds of the self’s pedagogical responsibility. however, this responsibility is constructed, as i read levinas, from his idea of man as a picture of god. nevertheless, against this background, pedagogical activity, summons, can be interpreted as the way in which the self handles the responsibility to which we awaken through the presence or address of the other. with levinas, also the self/pedagogue is reminded of its/his or her “infinite” responsibility to respond to how the other should be treated. levinas’s suggestion that the other awakens the self to responsibility simultaneously means that a reflective behavior is demanded of the pedagogue. how should i conduct myself? what does my responsibility involve? what constitutes a reasonable summons? it is possible here to discern a similarity or a point of convergence with the nonaffirmative summons: the non-affirmative summons is a reflected pedagogical act in the form of a full expression of a responsibility, and as such aware of its fundamental opportunity for affirmative or socializing teaching as well as prescriptive education, that is, freedomdepriving rather than freedom-developing pedagogy. a non-affirmative pedagogy that seeks to allow the other to deal with the problems to which existing knowledge is the answer (and also to assess the value of the existing problems), as with issues about the good life, thus works to prevent the learner from unreflectingly dedicate himor herself cultural content and therefore represents a kind of restraining pedagogy. pedagogical activity, which is ethically reflective, requires that the school as a social institution is allowed enough free space for the establishment of necessary pedagogical fields of action in relation to other social interests. educational awareness could then be defined as the self recognizing the unreachable otherness of the other, but simultaneously viewing itself as an other, for the other. thus, the self also contributes to the constitution of the otherness of the other. the self-reflexivity of pedagogical thought therefore means that the self is forced to reflect on its i-ness and ask for its otherness from the perspective of the other (who am i, what do i want, how does the other experience me?). in this way, the self is both free and dependent on the other (uljens, 2009). the education of the will one of the cornerstones of modern pedagogy is the notion that morality is the highest objective of education – discerning thought and action as regards issues of both knowledge and value (ethics and esthetics). according to herbart, moral freedom means following the reflecting will, not acting conventionally from impulse or emotion. consequently, education https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index uljens. a contribution to re-theorizing curriculum research 20 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index consists in the summoning of the other to reflect over, for instance, the reasonableness of one’s own will in relation to others and to the interests of others. the education of the will is then the cultivation of discernment with the help of reason. if levinas calls attention to the other as awakening the self to awareness of its responsibility, non-affirmative education draws attention to that establishment of empirical ethical thought on the part of the other is made dependent on the summons to ethical reflection. the paradoxical summons the non-affirmative approach, is also featured by a paradox. it implies that the growing individual is adressed as though he or she is already capable of doing that, to which he or she is summoned, and as treated someone who comes to realize his or her freedom through selfactivity (benner 1991). according to heidegren (2003), honneth has debated on whether recognition has something to do with affirming something that the other brings with her, so to speak, or if recognition means ascribing a new characteristic to the other that the other does not yet possess. according to heidegren, honneth leans toward the former interpretation. also huttunen (2007, p. 425) writes: “according to hegel, recognition must be based on the person’s existing abilities and skills.” thus, is identified a difference to the paradox formulated by dietrich benner. in the latter pedagogical theoretical tradition, recognition is not limited to the honnethian acceptance of something new, but recognition is complemented by recognition of the other as free, and this in turn refers to the concept of summons. thus, recognition can no longer be reduced to an empirical social-psychological concept (williams, 1997, 7). in dietrich benner’s formulation, pedagogical activity rather entails behaving toward the other as though the other is already capable of that to which the other is summoned and through self-activity may be and become able to accomplish. in this case, recognition is not about recognizing a specified competence, but about behaving toward the other in an opportunity-identifying way. nevertheless, the subject also always finds him or herself in a given life-worldly situation or state. even if the other “an sich” per definition is unapproachable, the summoning pedagogue’s empirical experience of the other is not, it is present. when herbart refers to the concept pedagogical tact the intention is to demonstrate that summons not only falls back on the recognition of the freedom of the other as such, but that summons must, in order to work, be experienced as reasonable by the other. in such a tactful activity, the pedagogue shows awareness of the empirical reality, life situation, and identity of the other, as these may appear for the other. conclusion non-affirmative curriculum theory as critical theory in non-affirmative education theory recognition of the subjects constitutive openness to the world, is present in the pedagogical concept summons to self-activity. that is, through the education process the individual develops both a personal uniqueness and a cultural belonging, i.e. personalization and socialization go hand in hand. when the other’s empirical life-world is recognized, it embraces to simultaneously recognize the individual as free and already self-activated. education does not make subjects self-activating but provides possibilities to turning a potentiality into a reality. in addition, recognition of the others lifehttps://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index uljens. a contribution to re-theorizing curriculum research 21 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index world means a confession of the others radical presence in a shared world. non-affirmative theory would consider pedagogical-ethical responsibility towards the other as pre-eminent, but not in the way levinás explains. rather, the fundamental human insight regarding necessity of being responsible for caring emanate from the fact that without care the newborn child will not survive. as we have seen, pedagogical activity presupposes, on the one hand, an interhuman, interdependent relation (intersubjectivity), and, on the other, the freedom of the subject (subjectivity) as equally fundamental points of departure. at the same time, tensions between the recognized freedom and the empirical life-world, where individuals work on their relation to themselves, their fellow beings, and their cultural world, can be analysed by means of the concepts educability (bildsamkeit) and summons to self-activity. this seond part of the article has also shown how recognition as a concept and problem has been present throughout the whole modern pedagogical-philosophical tradition, since the establishment of classic or modern pedagogy and onwards. from a curriculum theory perspective, it is meaningful to identify different versions of the notion of recognition. further, recognition is a crucial notion in understanding pedagogical activity. yet, it should not be mixed with summoning the other to self-activity. while recognition points to the other’s life-world, its reality and potentiality, summoning refers to the actual act of education aiming at creating a pedagogical space inviting the other to transcendence of the self, denoted by bildsamkeit as the correlate for summons. in conclusion, it is considered productive to perceive of the concepts bildsamkeit and summons as mediating between the recognition of the subject’s empirical life-world and the recognition of the individual’s potentiality or freedom. nat can also be read from a methodological perspective for analyzing curricular practices. claiming that nat is an analytic vehicle does not mean that it is considered value neutral. there is a imperative inherent in this theory, saying, for example, that the teacher is not expected to affirm existing societal practices or future political or educational ideals. leaders and teachers in democratic public school systems are, by law, expected to follow the spirit of a curriculum and must aware such interests. nat therefore argues that teachers must recognize curricular aims and contents, but that teachers are not allowed to simply affirm these aims and contents. to affirm them would mean not to problematize these aims and contents for and with students, thereby reducing education to transmitting given values and contents. this is how nat explains the creation of what was here called pedagogical spaces for the student or pupil. these pedagogical spaces feature critical reflection of what is, what is not, and what might be. they represent an invitation to discerning thought and experimental practice, i.e. the critical contemplation of contents advocated by the curriculum as policy. a non-affirmative approach reminds us of klafki’s (1994) categorical bildungor erudition centered position, where the idea is to work around the selected contents (bildungsinhalt) so that its possible educative qualities (bildungsgehalt) are revealed in relation to the student (jank & meyer, 1997). in this way educative teaching unites socialization and personalization – we become unique individuals only in so far we grow into a culture of sharing the world with others. only by such a contemplating, reflective, dialogical co-activity where the teacher intervenes (questions, listens to, problematizes) the students experiential relation to https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index uljens. a contribution to re-theorizing curriculum research 22 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index him/herself, to others and to the world, the individual may come to share dimensions of a culture, and thereby establish one’s own relation to it – a process of identification and individualization. working in relation to a humboldtian tradition of bildung as well as hegel-inspired view of recognition, non-affirmative theory of education considers pedagogical activity as mediational, and thereby hermeneutic in character. one contribution of this article is hopefully that, historically seen, we more clearly can see that the development initiated by j. g. fichte, and later carried on by herbart and hegel, introduced strong core concepts for theorizing education. the non-affirmative approach represents a present-day reconstruction of this modern tradition. whereas the bildung tradition typically remains theorizing human growth, in the widest sense of the word, representing a dynamic educational anthropology, non-affirmative theory contributes with a conceptualization of a corresponding notion of pedagogical activity, which is not very explicit in the humoldtian or later initiatives to theorize the process of bildung. non-affirmative, pedagogical mediation between the world and the students is therefore both critical and hermeneutic in the fundamental sense that education presents a pedagogically motivated interpretation of the world for the learner to engage in. such a perspective today is a strong alternative to dominating competency and performance based ideas of human growth. notes 1 muljens@abo.fi 2 this means that the already immediately and originally self-aware and object-aware subject who encounters the world (in the world!) can “be summoned to self-activity.” this summons, on the one hand, promotes the establishment of “cultural intersubjectivity,” and on the other, personal identity (empirical identity). pedagogically this means that the educator/teacher directs the growing individual’s attention toward the relation between his or her own thought and action in the subject’s relation to the world as experienced by him or her, references benner, d. 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(2013). overcoming the crisis in curriculum theory a knowledge-based approach, journal of curriculum studies, 45(2), 101-118. submitted: october, 30, 2018 approved: november, 16, 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2017.1344879 https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci7010032 o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: angulo villanueva, r. g. (2017). the young people as subjects of the curricular overdetermination. transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> the young people as subjects of the curricular overdetermination rita guadalupe angulo villanueva1 autonomous university of san luis potosi, mexico introduction the scenario that today is observed in the world is not encouraging for mexico and latin america. wallerstein (2005, p. 192) locates in the “world revolution of the 68” the beginning of the loss of hegemony of the united states of america (in a non voluntary collaboration with the soviet union), which would take them to carry on diverse tricks and strategies to keep the power, although there is already a clear competition for such leadership (europe and their search for alliances, on one hand; china, japan and russia, on the other and, perhaps, timidly, latin america, there in the far horizon). many have been the signs of such situation, among others, black empowerment, all-out wars, intromission in affairs of state of other countries, and so on. the voices regarding this hegemonic loss are diverse: jose luis sampedro (2013) even considered that the fall is not only of the usa but of the western culture; octavio ianni (2006) with the theories of globalization; and, from a very different angle, arcand (1986) with his movie the decline of the american empire. these authors, among many others, hold the credit of putting together in the argument both the social situation and the individual circumstance. when reading everyday the newpapers i find a red-top tabloid permanent since long ago. the social fabric was eroded and fractured and the official sources in mexico report in the last 20 years about 100 000 deaths (a hundred thousand! in the fight against violence) among which the majority are young people between 12 and 29 years old. what happened? where did the dream go? the social project? in mexico, globalization arises – it´s not developed – in 1982. at this time, diverse economic situations become visible for the population: the entrance of transnational companies to the country; the work, juridical and economic deregulation, among others; the opening of the market that has as an inaugural act the signing of the north american free trade agreement; the selling of over 50% of the mexican mining companies; the affiliation to regional blocks; the change in oil dynamics, etc. all the mexican social politics is modified by the eventual dismantling of the benefactor state and the change of emphasis from the social politics to the democratic. all the population sees how their quality of life goes down and just when they started to understand the previous changes appears the big change in educational politics, which is started in the nineties with many differences for all the educational levels but with a common link, the politics of an assessment state. in this period, it becomes noticeable and –let´s saythat is located in the center of all the educational politics, the curriculum. its protagonic role testifies the need of angulo villanueva. the young people 68 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci control by the state over a population that is not controlled anymore by the social politics and soon it will reach incredulity about democratic politics. while quietly the “state” curriculum slides through all the interstices of mexican life. pre-school, primary, secondary, high school, university and even postgraduate levels are in the pot of assessment, the artifact –devicethat brings them together is the curriculum. so, i state that not only there is an evaluating policy from the state curriculum that, for all the effects, has turned into pragmatics of the everyday tasks in school. then, i locate the curriculum as the center of the hegemonic logic and, therefore, as the element capable of eroding such logic. in the educational area, specifically from the curriculum, what are we going to do? it´s a priority. what are we, teachers, intellectuals, the curriculum makers going to do? excuse the naivety but i keep thinking that it´s the education, i am convinced that by educating is how we can fight, build, open horizons. i highlight the alicia de alba´s words (2007) when she considers the crisis as a space of inedit possibilities and, citating laclau and mouffe (1987), emphasizes: here there is no place for disappointment…it´s a challenge for political imagination and creativity, [are] being constructed new emancipatory discourses, more humane, diverse and democratic…” (laclau in de alba (2007:125) these words made me excited again and make me put a fence, a weak one but at least a fence, to hopelessness. alicia de alba (2007) offers us a powerful theoretical category, the generalized structural crisis (gsc). this category implies the general weakening of the elements of the relational systems and the destructuration of the structures. in bauman´s words (2004), the structures are historically constituted in pillars of the social and individual identity. in our mexico and, i guess, in a big part of latin american countries, we observe the weakening of family structures (due to death or immigration or by penetration of the western culture…), the resounding disintegration of political systems and institutions and the increasing distrust of the population, just like the smearing of teaching and the decrease in credibility in the power of education to change people´s lives. family, religion, politics and education as relational systems of the social structure in process of destructuration. from the standpoint of education, i can observe the emergence of certain glimpses of regional social projects, resulting some of them from the defeat of latin american dictatorships. other projects result from authoritarian systems in decadence or about to burst out. these glimpses i interpret as a necessity of a project, the aspiration to a necessary directionality and, i want (i truly want), to conceptualize them as one of the social contours that begin the “pulling” in the latin american behavior. retaking another of the contributions by alicia de alba i conceive this “pulling” as one of the social contours that according to our author “…are constituted through the diverse types of elements or features that, either are originated from the structures found in a process of rupture or arise in the same context of the crisis…” (2007, p. 106) like the colombian or mexican violence or like the organization of mexican self-defense groups. i can also see the conviction for a need of an educational project and here, the will of power and knowledge –from my perspectivenests and fertilizes the ground to angulo villanueva. the young people 69 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci create innovative proposals that (although isolated) will have to take their place in the history of the curriculum in the region. we want from the standpoint of education and with the support of the theory to impulse a movement that recognizes the curriculum as an opportunity to constitute itself into a device of power that achieves – in some moment contends with and interpellates the curricular hegemonic logic. as a political space, the curriculum is based on a directed project and concrete political practices achieves to contingently generate conditions of higher social justice. what would be those conditions that could be aroused and conferred, from the standpoint of the curriculum? the object of this text is to reflect on the fact that if the young, assumed as a social contour, can be induced from the curricular work to impulse education as an element that, in the long run, will allow to reconstruct the social fabric. logic of the articulation and curriculum what´s curricular could be understood, analyzed and carried out from a standpoint of a logic that would articulate: a) the relationship we and they as constitutive of what´s educational and, therefore of what´s curricular. the constitution of human beings through the formation and identification of diverse pertinent, feasible and necessary positions of the subject, could be considered in the center of the analysis and the curricular tasks. b) always based on a consciousness, necessarily historical, about the “we”, that “we” that recognizes the differences, that promotes diversity, that incorporates cultures and generates – preserves based on this recognition. the “we” around which, maybe, the latin american curricular thinking (lact) could be constituted. this is, the curricular experiences in our countries are still differences in a curricular discursive space where the curricular is the relational space of the latin american educational structure. c) a relational space necessarily antagonized, confronted and strained by disagreements and alliances in which those that achieve to establish an equivalential chain based on excluding the other hegemonize, however, it turns the other into an adversary to avoid the erosion and further dislocation to reach the balance always precarious, always contingent. i am talking then about the political and the politics involved in what´s curricular. in addition, here, as alice casimiro lopes states (2015), equality and social justice would be the power ideas that are shown as the path to the curriculum. therefore, proposing a curriculum (and its structure) depends on the contextual moment, the contingency. its organization, then, will have to be necessarily temporary and the consciousness of it (to act in consequence) a constitutive condition. “politics is the exercise of the decision that constitutes us as subjects” (lopes, 2015, p. 50). that said, in the same way of considering the logic of the articulation as an element that brings together the curricular with the political, educational, cultural and historical dimensions, emerges inevitably the epoch tension in which are “given-are” such dimensions, the tension globalization and gsc, we are in the generalized structural crisis. the current generalized structural crisis (de alba, 2007), in tension with the economic globalization, today, after a little over 60 years of development, shows its consequences crudely: environmental imbalance and planetary stability to the edge; generalized poverty for the most part of the world and extreme poverty in the most distressed and diminished areas; decomposition of the social fabric based on the erosion –and dislocation in someof the social pillars that had supported the modern world (family, education, religion, state) (bauman, 2004); violence, narcotrafic, immigration and people trafficking, when not, war, ruin the everyday life. alarming angulo villanueva. the young people 70 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci context, difficult, dangerous and complex. this context in its gestation and development throughout 60 years has put social subjects in circumstances of increasing self-helplesness and vulnerability (bauman, 2004), circumstances to which some respond with disbelief, others with fear, and some others with a defiant attitude like the young. this is the scenario in which we will have to give response to from and towards the curricular. from the standpoint of this analysis the will of justice could be the signifier that interpellates us, contingently calls us to constitute the (lact) as an equivalential chain capable of over determining or interpellating or eroding (at least) or dislocating (in the best of the cases) the educational and curricular hegemonic logic. how to grasp the curriculum theoretically and practically in order to build it as a device of power? how to imbue the will of the common being? the protagonists of the curricular game it will have to be the subjects, more specifically, the identities to which respond and affiliate the subjects. our subjects, teachers and students of the curricular realities in which we are found. looking at the possible trajectories of the different positions of the subject, those we form and those we share the formative ideals with. i would like to begin this section by retaking villoro´s statement (1993) about the figure of the world, which implies a collective assumption about beliefs and basic attitudes, ontological beliefs about the constitution of the being and the beings, epistemic assumptions about the reason that will have to be considered valid. all of them “…determine the way how in a historical lapsus, the world is configurated before the man…” (1993, p. 1). i also retake the nexus that i perceive with the category of episteme developed by foucault in words and things (1966) and from which i want to remark the idea of configuration of ways of thinking that have given place to a certain conception of truth and of knowledge. on the other hand, i want to associate these ideas to the statement by ulf p. lundgren (1992) about the invisible curricular code, proper of the present time, which accounts for the inexistence of a clear formative ideal for the society. i want to point out that the category of curricular code surpasses the school, the scholarized educational institution, points to the educational vision of a society in a historical period. i concur with lundgren in that currently we could think about an invisible curricular code as an articulating element in the relationship curriculum-society, however, a paradox emerges immediately. how is it possible for the curriculum to be the center of the hegemonic educational logic, if according to lundgren, it´s invisible? what does such invisibility consist of? from my perspective it lies in the empty meaning regarding the kind of man the society wants to form, on one hand, on the other hand, the fact that the hegemonic educational logic ignores the feeling of the social being. as if our social being didn´t know where we are going. and well, it is that way. being, world, man, truth, knowledge, formation, categories that emerge in the approaches made by villoro, foucault and lundgren. categories that, lead us to wonder is there a collective assumption about the world we want and a formative ideal regarding the man we want for this world? it´s here where the why of the empty meaning of the curricular code is linked to the state curriculum as a device of power in the hegemonic educational logic. what is then what the hegemonic curriculum – that of the competencies – transmits, projects, conforms? ways of control but not features that involve a formative ideal for a wide social project social. just like it´s stated by alicia de alba in many of her texts, there isn´t a wide social project, hence there isn´t either a formative ideal or is angulo villanueva. the young people 71 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci it the other way around? there isn´t a wide social project because in the last 60 years the ideal has been lost and it hasn´t been formed. we are going through a turn in our beliefs says villoro (1993:1) the figure of a world of the modern times begins to be an object of apprehension and doubt, philosophy itself questions its validity since the two concepts that are in the epistemic base of modernity are in doubt: subject and reason. villoro today tells us that the modern man, the subject, source of the sense of all things is losing himself. maybe because it´s divided, it´s getting into a crisis at the same time as the modern historical reason. not anymore the totalizing reason, not anymore the social megaprojects, the big narratives. consequence of his failures, one of them the predation, exhaust and loss of their own habitat, the subject “subjected” to the consumer society and the failure of the socialist revolutions. where to go now? disenchantment or renewal? villoro chooses renewal, laclau rejects hopelesness, both shouts in favor of the reconstruction of the social fabric, therefore of the ideal, in a few words “to give history a new sense” (villoro, 1993: 7), this is, to construct a new figure of the world. however, it alerts on the particular condition of mexico regarding the fact that there are large sectors of the population that haven´t even reached the modern ideal (autonomy and individual rights, natural and social world in a rational and human order) and they are stuck in irrationality and backwardness. the tension globalization – generalized structural crisis in mexico alludes a social, political and economical situation that shows an acute and polarized social inequity. “inequity has increased in all the world in the last three decades, but mexicans are advanced students in unequal distribution. the country is the second most inequitable of the 34 that integrate the organization for economic cooperation and development (oecd), only behind chile regarding public politics. in the salary gap, it leads the way. the 10% of the best paid mexican workers earn 30.5 times more than the 10% that earns less” (siscar, 2015, p. 1). the mythical ideal of méxico as the “horn of abundance” for the mexicans, the ideal of mexicanity built by the liberal mexicans of the 19th century who proposed the mixed ancestry as a definition of the national identity (aguirre, 2003) over the indigenous communities, the ideal that in some moment achieved to call the feeling of the collective subject is in crisis, as maria esther aguirre lora (2003) points it out. the founding myth, mexicanity, the nation state, begins to disaggregate not only in the economic aspect but, fundamentally, in the social imaginary. the school system and the curriculum have lost somewhere in the way of the 20th century their power to build the social myths about belonging to a nation “…scholarization as a practice of knowledge that constructs national imaginaries…in the measure that individuals imagine themselves as citizens…” (popkewitz, in schriewer, 2002, p. 227, in aguirre, 2003, p. 302) has been fractured, for the moment, only some signs of routes – not all of them desirableare observed in the horizon of our country. i can identify three social features in our horizon: the movement of the youths, the political movement without party affiliation and the teachers’ movement. it seems to us all of them are incipient, not institutionalized even if organized and with a character of being exterior to the sedimented social structure. all of them with the potential to erode and/or dislocate social institutions, alternatives to the founding myth of the nation. i am interested now in considering the young as a social contour. at this point, i consider necessary the contributions that de alba makes about the features and social contours. “[social] contours… are efforts to recover the necessary structurality of society, they are constituted as articulated spaces of signification” towards a horizon of future that pretends to be conformed as a wide angulo villanueva. the young people 72 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci political social project (de alba, 2007, p. 113-114). to what extent each of the situations that i mentioned can be considered as social contours?, i consider that two of them -at leastare building spaces of signification (young people and teachers), are also in search of a project, not clear yet because the thin thread that ties them is belligerence. we could consider that this space of signification is articulated by (…) the confrontation between ontological-semiotic codes, in which is produced the general weakening of the elements, of the relational systems of different structures interrelated that at the same time constitute a structure or system of bigger signification, which leads to the proliferation of elements or floating signifiers. this is the weakening of the elements of the economic, political, social, cultural, educational, cognitive, ethical and other structures…. a generalized structural crisis characterized by the destructuration of the structures, rather than the structuration of new structures, although in its interior complex phenomena of articulation like social contours are produced. (de alba: 2007) the educated or incorporated young people, as called by reguillo (2000), that “…in front of the discourses of the global, can´t and don´t even want to be part of the mechanisms that promote diaspora and dispersion of the solidarity, of the communities and the cultures” (zebadua-carbonell, 2008, p. 51). however, it´s not ignored that also exist the other young, the ones that haven´t found institutional answers to their needs, which they have channeled in another way, and that have responded –or have been draggedby discourses that interpellate them from delinquence and organized crime (angulo and barrios, 2013). young people that, in front of inedit contingencies could conform a social contour as to equivalential chain in face of the social structure that marginalizes them. finally, i would like to consider that the mexican social structure is constantly transformed and in imbalance, social identities don´t achieve to be fully fixed (laclau, 1987). the communities and families are in a reconfigurative process because of the strong population mobility. the young can constitute in some moment “…an «exterior» that blocks the identity of the «interior»…” (laclau, 1990, p. 34). it blocks it in the measure that it is conformed – by imposition or by assumptionin the parameter, in the finality; the condition of its constitution is the imaginary that wants to be achieved as well as the means to achieve it“…the force that antagonizes me denies my identity in the strictest sense of the term” (laclau, 1990, p. 34). the social space in which every time more there is a presence of popular demands that are becoming “but…the fact that these demands take place in the center of a society in which there were many other demands that were not satisfied…they went on to symbolize something that went beyond those demands, a popular identity…” (laclau, 2005, p. 14). the unsatisfied demand is a mark of identity among the population and the young. the responding spirit and the derived movements are a constant. the young as subjects of the curricular overdetermination in this section i will consider the young as one of the subjects of the curricular determination and, maybe, as one of the subjects of the curricular overdetermination. according to laclau (2005), the unsatisfied demand is a mark of identity in the populations. the young, our mexican young people have in their social property multiple unsatisfied demands, i could add that these demands are similar for an angulo villanueva. the young people 73 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci important part of latin american young people. lastly, in this consideration arise two central concepts for reflection: identity and subject. the young people, or, the youths cannot be characterized if not in relation to the adults, to the whole society. understanding youth as a category of analysis, in the context of the curriculum, obligates us to “read it” as a series of differential identities (the incorporated young, the working young, the young called <ninis>, the delinquent young, etcetera) that is required to understand in the core of its totality. totality that marks a series of limits for youth. limits that have led to exclusions (rejected from the educational system, without a job, in a state of suspension before they are something). in this game of equivalences and differences that self-recognition by young people as a social fraction without opportunities has been increasing throughout 50 years; and the division of the youths in impoverished and incorporated (reguillo, 2000) allow me to distinguish today two features of a social contour that, every time more, appears in the already complex situation of the mexican society, the young being established as a constitutive exterior (angulo and barrios, 2013). in this case, “the positions of the subject are necessarily articulated…but their links are contingent” (buenfil, 2008, p. 119), this is, they appear in and depend on the social context. according to rosa nidia buenfil what articulates the diverse positions of the subjects, of our subjects, the young, those, the incorporated ones and the ones that the educational system has disincorpored, implies: the antagonism “…by threatening my identity [the social structure] shows my contingency [young me]…” (buenfil, 2008, p. 120), the unforseen fight (#yo soy 132, #jornada global por ayotzinapa, #normalistas en…) and the conditions of existence. those conditions will lead the young to diverse processes of identification before diverse interpellations in the pursuit of giving sense to their everyda y tasks. the choice they make depends on their possibility of deciding, (…) the decision is not necessarily nor exclusively rational, but it´s rather woven with passions…with the unconscious, it implies the choice of one among several possibilities [studies, work, organized crime, immigration, etcetera.] in a dislocated structure. (buenfil, 2008, p. 122). the youth as to objective of the formation in all the levels but, fundamentally, in higher education is the population which the curriculum must be conformed to. we retake the notion of identity as to non fixed positions of the subject (laclau and mouffe, 1987, p. 133) in an articulation of the different positions of the same in the different social moments, this is, we think about the young in their different historical moments and the positions they have assumed; this is, all identity is assumed as relational. this identity is the one we are interested in considering in relation to the curriculum, particularly with the university curriculum. this is why i consider that the young from their historical conditions and their location in the social structure are the ones that can influence on the determination of the curricula, whether it is from a social positioning external to the educational system, or from a positioning inside the same. i locate them as subjects of the determination and the curricular overdetermination. i don´t discard, of course, the other subjects both internal (scholars, investigators, teachers, authorities) as well as external (professional societies, social institutions, etcetera.), i just pretend to point out the potentiality of young people as subjects of the overdetermination. identity is conceived as a “…system of differential positions [that constitute] a configuration…” in a given moment. we understand the articulation as every practice that is executed to set or dislocate certain identities in a search of structuration. “this angulo villanueva. the young people 74 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci field of identities that never achieve to be fully fixed is the field of overdetermination” (laclau and mouffe, 1987, p.128). our young, with their diverse positions move from one to another –and even go out of the young worldseeking to identify themselves, seeking to fix their identity. and the configuration of their identity –always precarious by means of fixing any of the positions of the subject will depend on their decisions, the ones that will be made from a figure of the world, of man, of education and of future. the curricular overdetermination assumed as a logic is related to identities (perez, 2007, pp. 42-43-44) that promote or reject projects and processes of formation in the presence of antagonic forces, instability in the borders that separate them and floating elements that interpellate them. the overdetermination, the trajectories and positions of the subject refer, then, to a question of limits in the groups and their organization, in the interactions and the communication, of course, between the identities and the differences. i could wonder if the diverse social groups (of the determination or the overdetermination) that influence the future of the youths (incorporated or not) have forseen the extent of an educational policy (and its curricula) beyond the immediate. exclusion is, maybe, one of the most evident realities of the movement of limits fixed, removed or moved by the social structure in relation to young people. management of the limits implies order, symbolic systems, classification, power, control and work division in social relationships. in a social system, according to laclau and mouffé (1987), the object of movement besides the dynamic proper of the system is contingency, the new and inedit that is presented in a sedimented structure; this element is recognized as a constitutive exterior and i consider that the element that is set as a constitutive exterior in the mexican reality, and maybe the latin american one, is the one conformed by the youths. the rigidity or the contingency of the limits assumes inclusions and exclusions and conceptions of identity that come into tension. this is assumed as the establishment of relationships of force between agents of two or more groups that work in the same social space which is a field of forces whose movement allows individuals to fix a position and allows the field to transform. to what extent the young, the youths can come into play in the field of the curriculum? the limits are cultural constructions that structure positions, differences, identities and value systems. by existing openings and closures of the relational systems and inclusions and exclusions of the agents or the events, what happens with the identity of these ones? in the beginning we visualize a fragmentation of the positions of the subject, in both the group it is part of (the youths) as well as the interior of its personality (the young person); fragmentation that is recognized as connatural to postmodernity. in the described context we recognize, as a whole, the weakening of the limits, the sudden appearance of diverse and unutterable signs and meanings, the decentralization of the identities, new forms of identification, new imaginaries and the subject divided for himself and for the others. this way, the national, educational and personal identities, share the process of crisis present in the western civilization. if the youths constitute a substantial space in the social structure and, today, in the context of the generalized structural crisis can, or not, mean a radical change that makes possible the reconstruction of the social fabric or its destruction; youn g people become the social subject that can and must be taken care of, impacted and interpellated by the curriculum, understood as an alternative logic to the hegemonic logic that today permeates education. angulo villanueva. the young people 75 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci as a wrap up i have identified the youths as a social contour that in the frame of the generalized structural crisis –from my perspectivecould be articulated to redirect the latin american agenda of curricular investigation in both the theoretical production as well as the design field and the curricular implementation. the intentional articulation of this and other contours (for example, teaching professionals) could result, in the medium term, in a wide social political project shared by the most from the education standpoint. project that could be fertilized from the curriculum. notes 1 rodriguezcenobia@gmail.com references arcand, d. (1986) la decadencia del imperio americano [película]. aguirre, m. e. (2003) ciudadanos de papel, mexicanos por decreto. en historia cultural y educación: ensayos críticos sobre conocimiento y escolarización (p.p. 297331) thomas s. popkewitz, barry m franklin, miguel ángel pereyra-garcía castro (coords.). españa: pomares. angulo, r. & barrios, r. (2013) del no lugar al exterior constitutivo. hacia el análisis del posicionamiento de los jóvenes (1-1, 13). guanajuato: memorias del xii congreso nacional de investigación educativa. bauman, z. (2004) modernidad líquida. méxico: fondo de cultura económica. buenfil, r. n. (2008) el interminable debate sobre el sujeto social, in porta, d. e. & saur, d. (ed.) giros teóricos en las ciencias sociales y humanidades (pp. 117-126). córdoba: comunicarte. de alba, a. (2007) curriculum y sociedad. el peso de la incertidumbre, la fuerza de la imaginación. méxico: instituto de investigaciones sobre la universidad y la educación. foucault, m. (1966) las palabras y las cosas. una arqueología de las ciencias humanas. méxico: siglo xxi editores. foucault, m. (1969) la arqueología del saber. méxico: siglo xxi editores. gallardo, a. (2015) justicia curricular y curriculum intercultural. notas conceptuales para su relación. de alba, a. & lopes, a. c. (ed.) (2015) diálogos curriculares entre méxico y brasil (pp. 65-80) méxico: instituto de investigaciones sobre la universidad y la educación. ianni, o. (2006) teorías de la globalización. méxico: siglo xxi. laclau, e. & mouffe, c. (1990) nuevas reflexiones sobre la revolución de nuestro tiempo. buenos aires: nueva visión. laclau, e. (2005) la razón populista. buenos aires: fondo de cultura económica. lopes, alice c. (2015) ¿todavía es posible hablar de un currículum político? en alicia de alba, a. & lopes, a. c. (ed.) (2015) diálogos curriculares entre méxico y brasil. méxico: instituto de investigaciones sobre la universidad y la educación. lundgren, u. p. (1992) teoría del curriculum y escolarización. madrid: morata. pérez arenas, d. (2007) filosofía, teoría e investigación en las maestrías en educación: un campo sobredeterminado. méxico: plaza y valdés. reguillo, r. (2000) emergencia de culturas juveniles. estrategia de desencanto. buenos aires: grupo editorial norma. mailto:rodriguezcenobia@gmail.com angulo villanueva. the young people 76 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci san pedro, j. l. (2013) josé luis sampedro entrevistado por iñaki gabilondo. youtube, el 13 mayo 2013. [https://youtu.be/_pwvt1kopm4] siscar, m. y chamizo, yosune. (junio 23, 2015) la distribución del ingreso, cuestión de vértigo. in animal político. [http://www.animalpolitico.com/2015/06/draft-ladistribucion-del-ingreso-cuestion-de-vertigo/] seminario 1507. (2015) construcción del curriculum a través de contornos sociales desde la perspectiva latinoamericana y de la internacionalización. seminario en línea (april – aug, 2015). méxico: consejo latinoamericano de ciencias sociales. villoro, l. (1993) filosofía para un fin de época. revista nexos, mayo. [retrivied octubre 2016 from http://www.nexos.com.mx/?p=6760] wallerstein, i. (2005) la imagen global y las posibilidades alternativas de la evolución del sistema – mundo, 1945-2005. en immanuel wallerstein, la crisis estructural del capitalismo (pp. 77 124). méxico: contrahistorias. zebadúa-carbonell, j. p. (2008) estudio sobre la construcción de los procesos identitarios de a juventudes contemporáneas. tesis. xalapa, veracruz: universidad veracruzana-universidad de granada. submitted: november, 17th, 2016 approved: december, 8th, 2017 http://www.nexos.com.mx/?p=6760 to cite this article please include all of the following details: lewkowich, david (2019). experiments in creative remembering: towards a theory of adolescent anamnesis in teacher education. transnational curriculum inquiry 16 (2) p. 31-36. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> experiments in creative remembering: towards a theory of adolescent anamnesis in teacher education david lewkowich1 university of alberta, canada though it figures differently in religious, philosophical, and psychoanalytic traditions, the notion of anamnesis invariably refers to an active process though which remembering invites the past into a mysterious, unpredictable, intersubjective, and often unaccountable relation. in anamnesis, remembering creates the relation; while christians may follow jesus’ pronouncement at the last supper – “do this in memory of me” – the point of anamnesis is not to remember the actual facts of the person or experience, but to somehow involve memory in the recreation of the past as it inheres in present life. remembering as anamnesis is therefore not remembering as an exercise in accurate representation, but a matter of re-calling the past – in emotional, spiritual, and incorporeal terms – to bear on the scene of present life. in the context of teacher education, which often encourages the uses of memory and reflection as a means for novice teachers to situate themselves in the emergent process of learning to teach, anamnesis emphasizes the creative, experimental, and interpretive potential of the person remembering. in this short paper, i introduce the idea of adolescent anamnesis, and gesture towards its uses as a speculative strategy of creative remembering. in john sallis’ (1999) discussion of plato’s timaeus, the question of conceptualizing beginnings and origins is presented as an “exercise in remembrance” (p. 13), in which remembering involves a series of related, interior moves: “to bring something back to mind, to bring back before one’s inner vision something remote, something past, something removed from the present, from presence. it is,” he continues, “to bring back to a certain presence something that nonetheless, in its pastness, is – and remains – absent” (p. 13). it is, therefore, to bring the dead alive, while also recognizing the inescapable irreversibility of time moving forward; it is remembering as reimagining, re-envisioning, re-inhabiting, returning. as a piece of platonic theory, which presupposes the soul as immortal and repeatedly incarnated, platonic anamnesis involves a process of recollection beyond the confines of physical reality, and through which learning is reconceived as a practice of remembering and reaching back to past lives – retrieving and recapitulating forgotten knowledge that the birth of the body obscures. about:blank lewkowich. experiments in creative remembering 32 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> similarly, in her consideration of the enduring significance of kristeva’s concept of the semiotic chora, maria margaroni (2005) explicitly links the development of this “theoretical supposition” (kristeva, 1984, p. 68) to the retrospective practice of anamnesis, which kristeva herself repeatedly describes in close relation to her psychoanalytic work. as kristeva (2014) comments, “freud founded psychoanalysis as an invitation to anamnesis, with the aim of a rebirth, or in other words, a psychical restructuring” (p. 8). since psychoanalysis invites a similar practice of reaching back, kristeva describes a “correspondence” between analytic work and this “older tradition of retrospective introspection” (pollock, 1998, p. 15). however, instead of reaching to past lives, psychoanalytic anamnesis involves “the possibility of entering as far as possible into … the most distant memories of our childhood” (p. 9). as the platonic view understands incarnation as an inevitable process of forgetting, kristeva considers language in similar terms: since language operates on a different register from what preceded it, this difference renders these earlier experiences as effectively forgotten and “unnameable” (p. 9). what cannot be perceived cannot be said cannot be known cannot be named. despite this difference, however, kristeva endeavours to reposition the psychoanalytic subject at the very limits where experience becomes un/nameable, and to reconceptualize this break in meaning and knowing as a kind of “scission that joins” (margaroni, 2005, p. 93). in psychoanalytic remembrance as anamnesis, we therefore encounter a “turn backward to a past beyond memory and our representations of it” (p. 87), which also presents an alternative to the strict association of remembering with documentary proof, and instead conceives it as anti-mimetic and inherently creative. remembering as anamnesis is thus to stage an uncertain dialogue between different registers of untranslatable meaning; by continually questioning and displacing the past, the threshold between these temporal registers is kept alive and forever brimming, introducing the potential for what kristeva calls “revolt,” which “opens psychical life to infinite re-creation … even at the price of errors and impasses” (p. 6). kristevan revolt is thus a revolt against the necessity of living in linear time. about:blank lewkowich. experiments in creative remembering 33 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> in the context in which i work and teach, i encourage others to think beyond seeing reflection and recollection as a means of knowing the self in self-evident fashion. instead, as with kristeva, i value moves that displace the past and through which we may stage memories less as fact than as an uncertain form of dynamic and always surprising relation – a function akin to dreaming and poetry. in this view, remembering the past is not an engagement with a thing but with a process, and the question i ask my students is how we may represent a past that cannot be known, and how such representations – despite their inevitable gaps and insufficiencies – may teach us something about the ways in which teaching, and learning to teach, recapitulates and creatively augments the past in the ever-developing contexts of present life. though my advice for students embarking on these tasks of creative remembering is brief, since i teach in the context of secondary education, the majority of what is remembered relates to the time of adolescence, which waddell (2018) emphasizes as “perhaps the most rich, challenging, and unsettled period of the life cycle” (p. 13). indeed, though we may typically think of adolescence as inseparable from the teenage years, i encourage my students to consider the ways in which adolescent states of mind persist into adulthood, a persistence that appears as especially forceful in the similarly “unsettled period” of learning to teach. in this way, and along with waddell, i am less concerned with conceptualizing adolescence as a strictly defined age group, than as a “process of moving towards adulthood” (p. 31) that includes a variety of states of mind, which though they may occur in the teenage years, may also be found in people of all age groups. as waddell puts it, “the adult may be found in the baby; the infant in the adolescent; the young child in the old man; the middle-aged man in the 7year-old boy” (p. 11). as britzman (2012) also suggests, encounters with adolescence may often brush against areas that remain hard to accept: “adults working in schools,” she notes, “are subject to their adolescence and these elemental sets of internal conflicts, phantasies, and defenses” (p. 274). for secondary teachers and students in teacher education, these adults may thus be unexpectedly exposed to the influence of their own unresolved and disavowed adolescent states of mind, which waddell emphasizes as a disposition between a series of contradictory desires and pulls: between the adult and the infantile, … between the tender and the aggressive, between acquisitive greed and generosity; between elation and depression; between the lures of dishonesty and the desire for truth; between hate and love; between a sense of confusion and a conviction of certainty. (p. 174) about:blank lewkowich. experiments in creative remembering 34 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> if acts of remembering adolescence are understood in relation to the aforementioned psychoanalytic process of anamnesis, this is a recursive technique that will surely feel bewildering, as it dramatizes and reactivates the past as a means to think it anew. since i first began teaching at the university level, i have incorporated strategies of creative remembrance in a variety of graduate and undergraduate classes: teaching composition, language and culture to adolescents; curricular issues in english language arts education; on keeping a notebook; adolescence in/and graphic novels; the adolescent and the teacher; and literature for young adults. in these classes, i typically ask students to keep a notebook during the length of our time together, and to use this indeterminate space, which can take any form of writing or representation they’d like, as a way to articulate thoughts, memories, and impressions about adolescence. as a way to prime our thinking about the recursive movements between adolescence and adulthood, i introduce my students to lynda barry’s (2017) graphic novel one hundred demons, whose art and narrative often highlights the inevitable deficiencies and absences of language, representation, and memory. in between the spaces of that which is expressible, barry suggests a world of inexpressible excess, including all that memories (traumatic and non-traumatic alike) simply cannot abide. describing her work as “autobifictionalography,” the demons in barry’s narratives are not only physical creatures, but stray and abandoned fragments of personal history that return as unsettling reminders of the unpredictable nature of psychic life, where nothing ever dies, and temporality folds upon itself. in the unconscious, barry’s art suggests, we are all still adolescents: “caught,” as margot waddell (2005) writes, “between lost childhood and unrealized adulthood” (p. 9). about:blank lewkowich. experiments in creative remembering 35 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> though no two instances of adolescent anamnesis – as i title these recursive experiments – will ever look the same, i have included examples throughout this paper from my students’ work, whose focus on feeling rather than fact underlines how remembering as anamnesis involves the development of a transhistorical and intersubjective relation to the past, which moves “alongside, opposite to and in the margins of history” (margaroni, 2005, p. 84). squeezed between the temporal nodes of past, present, and future, the memory in these compositions presses upon a fact of history that is always other than simply fact. like the displacements of dreaming, the emphasis is therefore never on factual evidence, or whether the representation aligns with what actually happened, but how the scene describes a poetic function of memory, which includes the enduring and protean persistence of adolescent emotion. as my students describe these pieces in writing and dialogue, i encourage them into a space of collective experimentation, where what is most important is that the meaning remains unsettled and always in new relation, so that the meaning of the past may be seem in similarly unsettled fashion. about:blank lewkowich. experiments in creative remembering 36 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> notes 1 lewkowic@ualberta.ca references barry, l. (2017) one hundred demons. montreal, qc: drawn and quarterly. britzman, d. p. (2012) the adolescent teacher: a psychoanalytic note on regression in the professions. journal of infant, child, and adolescent psychotherapy, 11, 272283. kristeva, j. (1984) revolution in poetic language (m. waller, trans.). new york: columbia university press. kristeva, j. (2014) new forms of revolt. journal of french and francophone philosophy revue de la philosophie française et de langue française, 22(2), 1-19. margaroni, m. (2005) “the lost foundation”: kristeva’s semiotic chora and its ambiguous legacy. hypatia, 20(1), 78-98. pollock, g. (1998) dialogue with julia kristeva. parallax, 4(3), 5-16. sallis, j. (1999) chorology: on beginning in plato’s timaeus. bloomington: indiana university press. waddell, m. (2005). understanding 12-14-year-olds. london, uk: jessica kingsley publishers. waddell, m. (2018). on adolescence: inside stories. new york and london: routledge. submitted: november, 20th, 2019. approved: december, 03rd, 2019. about:blank to cite this article please include all of the following details: phelan, anne & matthew clark (2019). autobiography, aesthetics and politics: educating for world spectatorship. transnational curriculum inquiry 16 (2) p. 62-73 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> autobiography, aesthetics and politics: educating for world spectatorship anne m. phelan1 university of british columbia, canada matthew clarke2 york st john university, england introduction any society’s anxieties about its present state are often evident in its meditations on the future. for instance, fritz lang’s 1927 film, metropolis (lang, 1927), presents a dystopic vision of life in the 21st century from the perspective of the early 20th century. it depicts a world in which humans have become rather disturbingly machine-like, while machines have become uncannily human in their appearance and nature (donald, 1992). specifically, the robot maria, the alter-ego of a biological woman of the same name, exhibits desires that exceed the control of her creator, the mad inventor rotwang, with apocalyptic consequences. the film can be critiqued on many counts, including its crude gender stereotyping and its heavy-handed religious imagery; but for our purposes it offers an interesting exemplification of some key themes. these include the way seeing and non-seeing are regulated and controlled in human society. the stark bifurcation between the industrial elites – the haves – and the proletarian masses – the have nots – ensures that for the most part their lives do not intersect and that each remains invisible to the other. this bifurcation is embodied in the stark vertical separation of their lives, with the hedonistic elite playing and relaxing in penthouse gardens, while the masses toil underground. the rigid separation of the two realms represents the repression of the backbreaking and dehumanizing conditions of the workers – literally out of sight and out of mind in an artificial hell. at the beginning of the 21st century, we find ourselves still firmly within the grip of capitalism. part of the explanation for capitalism’s tenacity and resilience, at least for psychoanalysis, lies in the way it “capitalizes on our status as unnatural beings” (mcgowan, 2016, p. 22), subjecting us as subjects of desire to a perpetual search for the thing – the commodity, the experience, the product – that will compensate for the loss of an object we never had (mcgowan, 2013, 2016). capitalism’s essential project is one of accumulation of things – of profits, wealth, income, assets – that we believe at some level will provide us with the satisfaction we crave. this project of accumulation requires the sacrifice of the present in return for promised future rewards in terms of access to ‘the good life’ (mcgowan, 2016). in similar fashion, education is held up as something that will transform individuals and redeem society in return for sacrifice and effort providing access to ‘the good life’. the co-implication of neoliberal capitalism and education was proclaimed by then british prime minister, tony blair, when he announced his government’s focus on ‘education, education, education’. for, like capitalism, contemporary neoliberal education’s essence lies in accumulation – of (commodified) knowledge but also of credits, grades, credentials and qualifications. about:blank phelan, clarke. autobiography, aesthetics and politics 63 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> the capitalist drive towards accumulation goes hand in hand with anxieties around the twin threats of scarcity and risk. in education, the repeated circulation of political discourses highlighting these threats is echoed in the pervasive paranoia around standards and accountability. this paranoia drives education’s compulsive circuits of transmissive teaching, assessment and testing that have reduced much teaching to what peter taubman (2009) aptly characterizes as the pedagogical equivalent of painting by numbers. critically, anxieties around scarcity and risk, and the defensive drive towards accumulation that serves as a bulwark against these threats, each require and feed off each other. as britzman (2011) notes, the anxieties that find reflection within schools in the idealization of practices such as the asking and answering of questions, the giving and following of directions, the need to teach lessons, and the sadistic pleasure of giving failing grades, are exacerbated rather than assuaged by these practices. tragically, these anxieties feed practices that suppress risk in the more productive and essential sense highlighted by writers such as biesta (2013) who remind us that risk is always present as education is an encounter between human beings not machines. another defining ideal of capitalism is productivity, and, in particular, the notion of exponential growth through endless gains in productivity. this orients capitalism around ends and obscures the means by which these ends are achieved. likewise, in education our focus is on goals, aims, outcomes, and results. in each case, our attention is focused on products rather than processes. it is no accident that neoliberal capitalism is governed by the ends-oriented consequentialist ethics of utilitarianism, just as schools and universities are governed by the ends oriented ideology of outcomes based education. in psychoanalytic terms, capitalism and education focus our attention on the product that we believe will satisfy our desire – mistakenly, because desire is constitutive rather than contingent – rather than on the (purportedly) lost object that is the cause of desire. in each realm, capitalism and education, we are encouraged to focus on the ends at the expense of attending to the labour, the effort, the work, the time, the blood, sweat, and tears, that enable access to the end. our commitment to productivity is often secured through a mixture of seduction and blackmail. we see this, for instance, in the final paragraph of the united kingdom’s ministerial foreword to the 2016 white paper, educational excellence everywhere (department for education (dfe), 2016). morgan’s statement masterfully combines folkknowledge and moralism, alongside responsibilisation and menace, as it reminds us that “children only get one chance at education and every child deserves the opportunity to reach their full potential. as a parent, i know only too well that childhood is short, and when it comes to a child’s education, there’s no time to waste” (p. 4). in one sense, the claim that schooling offers a unique window of opportunity in life is a truism, and bears no specific relation to this particular government’s policies in relation to education and teacher education but could just as easily be marshalled in favour of an entirely opposite set of proposals. but here we want to focus on the statement’s embodiment of the notion, borrowed from edelman (2004), of reproductive futurism and how it holds teachers and teacher education hostage to future, and ever-increasing, productivity. edelman’s critical insight lies in identifying how the generalised figure of the child – as distinct from individual children – whose future is deemed to be the underlying rationale and overriding telos of social organisation, is used by conservatives to assert and reproduce a hegemonic heteronormativity, against which the queer is positioned as posing a perpetual threat. refusing the blackmail this entails is the message of the title of edelman’s book, no future. adapting this insight to teacher education allows us to identify how teachers are continually held hostage to fantasmatic visions of ever-rising standards and ever-increasing degrees of inclusion – more and more schools https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index phelan, clarke. autobiography, aesthetics and politics 64 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> being deemed outstanding, more and more students achieving above average, everexpanding circles of participation in higher education – as the sure path to limitless growth and productivity gains in the economy. against this, it’s tempting to reply with lee edelman’s angry retort to heteronormative reproductive order in the us: “fuck the social order and the child in whose name we’re collectively terrorized; fuck annie; fuck the waif from les mis; fuck the poor, innocent kid on the net; fuck laws both with capital ls and small; fuck the whole network of symbolic relations and the future that serves as its prop” (2004, p. 29). however, it is also worth noting the close relationship between abundance and scarcity that haunts morgan’s words. as todd mcgowan (2016) writes, “we find unconscious satisfaction in scarcity, while our conscious thoughts focus on abundance. we need to presuppose both the existence of this scarcity and the possibility of its future elimination for us to continue to struggle with the determinants of the capitalist system. if we give up either the fantasy of present scarcity or the illusion of future abundance, we give up capitalism as such” (p. 204). in similar fashion, the logic of competition that governs neoliberal capitalism, with its either/or insistence on logically incompatible states of profit or loss, winners or losers, credit or debt, deserving or undeserving, also dominates education though logics of pass or fail, effective or ineffective, above or below average. at the same time, this unsavoury, dog eat dog logic is disavowed in politics and education policy, camouflaged by the cruel optimism (berlant, 2011; moore & clarke, 2016) that declares that every child matters, that no child will be left behind, that all can succeed, and that the right policy decisions will ensure that educational excellence is indeed found everywhere. this disavowal is key to understanding the depoliticizing dimension of neoliberal education that goes hand in hand with its ideological saturation. the depoliticisation enacted by neoliberal politics can be seen in the traits that are valorized by policy and media discussion. the neoliberal subject is positioned as flexible, adaptable and resilient. these traits are assumed to be positive attributes to which we should all aspire; but in practice what they entail is a subject who will take whatever treatment or conditions are dished out and come back asking for more. this is not a subject who is likely to resist, to coordinate resistance with others or to envisage an alternative reality; flexibility, adaptability and resilience are about fitting into the current reality and taking the latter as given rather than seeing any reality as contingent and contestable. for education, flexibility, adaptability and resilience are about maximizing one’s assets and skills in relation to the so-called ‘knowledge economy’. indeed, we are continually told that in this bright, new shiny world with its opportunities for lifelong learning, we can be and do anything we want – travel the world and beyond to the moon, enhance and sculpt our physical and psychic selves and even manipulate the basic properties of ourselves and our progeny through genetic interventions – we can do anything, it seems, except, that is, change the parameters of political-economic reality. in similar fashion, we are told that education should not be contaminated by politics on the one hand; and on the other hand, its inherently political nature is surely revealed in the repeated refrain that education holds out the promise of a better future for individuals and society. to sum up so far, education, learning, teaching and teacher education are driven by performance-oriented anxieties and governed by capitalist ideals of accumulation, productivity and competition. these ideals are embodied in the twin discourses of productive futurism that insists on constant sacrifice in the name of accumulation and cruel optimism that insists that all can succeed. what lies suppressed beneath these discourses – rather like the workers’ material lives and conditions in metropolis – is the capitalist reality that requires its blood price of failure on the part of some. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index phelan, clarke. autobiography, aesthetics and politics 65 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> the ideals of productivity, competition, and performance have become naturalized, sedimented and ossified to the point where the subject of neoliberal education can only be thought of in terms of notions like resilience, flexibility and adaptability, which require compliance rather than resistance, and leaving no room for meaningful politics. moreover, education, as in schooling, is increasingly resistant to the notion that “there is something at stake in life and learning that is not knowledge, but a form of nonknowing involving love, hate and desire” (clarke, michell, & ellis, 2016, p. 118; cf britzman, 2011). the consequence of this orientation is that much potential richness in education is occluded by the contemporary two-dimensional, input-output model, which seems to delegitimize experience, emotion, and embodiment. it is as if our fear of failure and aversion to risk has led us to extinguish any vibrancy or vitality in education and hence to de-aestheticize as well as to depoliticize it. to reintroduce aesthetics and politics to education requires engagement with what we refer to as the power of negative thinking – the strategic deployment of conceptual tools that have the potential to destabilize and disrupt the hegemonic grip of the established status quo (clarke & phelan, 2017). in particular, we want to draw on ideas from psychoanalysis, phenomenology and queer theory to build an argument for an education beyond an instrumental and reductive notion of reason. in what follows, we retrieve the visual – via the language of spectatorship – and the tactile (including the historical) in our attempt to explore further the aesthetic encounter as fomenting a critical and complex mode of education. we want to investigate what alternative modes of education might open up where (unconscious) desire, rather than knowledge, is in the position of agency – indeed, if there is an ethical framework underpinning this exploratory reading of education as world spectatorship, it concerns an ethic of disruptive desire (lacan, 1992). in our exploration, we foreground the role of objects in stimulating aesthetic encounters, generating autobiographical narratives (currere) that illustrate how meaning, feeling and being shift with time and circumstance, and disrupting any stable view of the self in relation. in short, we seek to study a possible world of education poised between passion and logos. becoming world spectators kaja silverman’s (2000) book, world spectators, invites us to descend from the heady realm of transcendental ideals and metaphysics, to exit plato’s cave, where all is shadow and illusion, and where we remain trapped in a prison house of signs, to become world spectators, engaged in “a kind of looking which takes place in the world and for the world – a kind of looking which not only stubbornly adheres to phenomenal forms, but also augments and enriches them” (pp. 2-3) through the human passion for resymbolisation. within this world, in which visibility depends upon “a confluence of the phenomenal, the psychic, the specular, and the social” (p. 4), there are intending subjects but also intending objects: “a creature or thing’s form is indistinguishable from its aspiration to be seen” (p. 132); but more than this, “the world does not simply give itself to be seen, it gives itself to be loved” (p. 133). to put this another way, silverman argues that when we look, in the most profound and creative sense of that word, we are always responding to a prior solicitation from other creatures and things…”; and “what the world of phenomenal forms solicits from us is our desire” (p. 144). in other words, appearance – world spectatorship – involves the paradoxical confluence of, on the one hand, being as presence and, on the other hand, the language of desire as absence (p. 144). the transformative meeting of absence and presence, however, can only occur when we relinquish claims to mastery – of the perceptual object and of the language of one’s desire – in order “to become the space within which the world itself speaks” (p. 145). critically, https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index phelan, clarke. autobiography, aesthetics and politics 66 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> what we are likely to discover within this space is not just a matter of meaning but of beauty. as silverman writes, “our capacity to signify beauty has no limits. it is born of a loss which can never be adequately named, and whose consequence is, quite simply, the human imperative to engage in ceaseless signification. it is finally this never ending signification that the world wants from us” (p. 146); and it is this that makes us world spectators. in an essay titled, “the painting in the attic,” caroline a. jones (2007), art historian, engages with an oil painting in her attic depicting children of various ages standing together. what might be evocative about the painting, paradoxically titled untitled, for a general viewer, she muses, is the facial expressions of the children – “two girls smile, a boy conveys mock surprise, a small girl looks solemn, a baby screams” – which “seem to seal each one into a separate world” where none reacts to any other (p. 234). as the artist who painted the piece, jones is far from sanguine about its content, insisting that interpreting one’s own work is no less challenging than finding meaning in another’s. she can recall the practical struggles she faced as a high school art student in creating the piece, often running out of patience, ideas and strategies. she can remember that the painting originally hung in their family tv room where her siblings sat on the couch beneath. upon reencountering the painting many years later (as an art historian), jones (2007) realizes that the image was retrospective, in that she had illustrated herself and her siblings six years younger (in 1966) than they were at the time of painting (1972). she writes: “the painting’s convenient optic excludes a member of my family who was born in 1967 – the retarded [sic] youngest sibling in this clan” (p. 236). the insight that she had omitted her much beloved youngest sister disturbs jones but it also reminds her of her sister’s ongoing “struggles to find a place in a family (and a world) predicated on competency and achievement” (p. 236). the life trajectory of each of those depicted in the painting was presumed – university, marriage, children, career – but the same could not be assumed for her sister. the painting seems to produce the image of an ideal phase of her family’s life, “before the traumatic event that would forever mark us as different” (p. 236) and unable to claim the promise of happiness-ever-after. the re-encounter with the painting does not simply reinforce her belief that it is impossible to capture any artist’s intentions. reentering her life, the amateur painting evokes a bitter realization of a “repressive fantasy” (p. 236) the traces of which are nevertheless embedded in the painting by her adolescent self. the young artist tells a story over and above her wanting and doing, perhaps – a complex and disturbing story that starkly rebukes the typical family photographic portrait, where everything looks (fantasmatically) harmonious and unified, yet also bland and unreal. there are several reasons to explain the lack of unity in the painting; jones sourced a range of photographs from various events and emotional moments to help her depict her brother and sisters. but why, she asks, did she choose those photographs? jones (2007) asserts that the painting refuses to be unified: the painting insists that the perfect moment is always already fractured, never unified in the first place. one preteen mugs, the baby cries, the little one refuses the obligatory camera smile. only the oldest two – me and my older sister – appear to be composed for the camera/painting. pictorial idealism fragments in the face of a reality it aims to signify. (p. 238) jones does not claim that her more recent insights about the painting are true but rather that they represent “a truth of evocation, not locked in this configuration, but https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index phelan, clarke. autobiography, aesthetics and politics 67 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> elicited from these pigmented surfaces by present interest and desire” (p. 241). it is evocative objects like the painting in the attic that invite us to augment and enrich them by resymbolization (silverman, 2000). the meaning of objects shifts with time, place and person (turkle, 2007). object, family narrative, memories and space (attic; tv room) are woven into a complicated, ever-changing web (mitchell, 2007). there seem to be many stories in jones’ painting but the one she ‘sees’ depends on a particular confluence of family circumstances, a psychic life of an art historian, and the painting itself. the painting in the attic becomes to some extent (and she acknowledges this) a kind of transitional object – a special object which aspires to be seen and evokes particular meanings, at once soliciting her to be its willing subject and the author of its meaning: “we think with them, in order to think ourselves into coherent subjectivity” writes jones (p. 242). yet the construction of new meaning underscores the fragility of meaning, always on the edge of being rethought and resignified. jones’ encounter with the painting in the attic illustrates the link between outer and inner realms, objects and our psychic lives, and ultimately between being and meaning. the emotions of a child (depicted as calm and coping) vs. those of the high school art student (depicting (not all) her siblings retrospectively in her anxiety to restore order) vs. those of the art historian (surprised and dismayed by the absent presence in her painting – her desire for less difficult family circumstances and questions about her relationship to a sister with special needs) are each at play. the painting undercuts any simple story she might tell about her family but yet it served a transitional role in enabling jones to cope for now and to “take things in stages” (turkle, 2007, p. 9/22); to imagine her sister as part of her family required time, a lifetime even, but perhaps now the painting can be relinquished. there is both beauty and meaning in jones’ chance re-encounter as the world reveals itself to her in a synthetic moment during which the anxious youth of the past is revealed to her vulnerable (i.e. defences lowered) adult self in the present; in anticipation of a compassionate future. jones’ is “played upon by the inspiring arrival of the unselected, which often yields a very special type of pleasure—that of surprise. it opens us up, liberating an area like a key fitting a lock” (bollas, 1993, p. 37). touching feeling eve kosofsky sedgwick’s (2003) rich book, touching feeling, adds to silverman’s work by extending the latter’s emphasis on visuality to encompass the full array of senses. the book “records the intuition that a particular intimacy seems to subsist between textures and emotions… the same double meaning, tactile plus emotional,” comprises the sense and essence of both words (kosofsky sedgwick, 2003, p. 17). touching feeling invites us to address aspects of experience that do not present themselves in propositional form alongside (or beside) others that do. but the book also wants to resist placing these aspects of experience in a hierarchy or merely reversing one hierarchy in favour of another. in a similar spirit, it assumes that “the line between words and things or between linguistic and non-linguistic phenomena is endlessly changing, permeable and entirely unsusceptible to any definitive articulation” (p. 6). the spatial sensibility of kosofsky sedgwick’s thought is evident in the care she exhibits with regards to the prepositions she employs to frame her project. she notes that “the irreducibly spatial positionality of beside … [also] … seems to offer some useful resistance to the ease with which beneath and beyond turn from spatial descriptors to implicit narratives of respectively, origin and telos…. beside permits a spacious agnosticism about several of the linear logics that enforce dualistic thinking” (p. 8). kosofsky sedgwick suggests that texture and affect, touching and feeling, seem to belong together. why should this be so? “what they have in common is that at whatever https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index phelan, clarke. autobiography, aesthetics and politics 68 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> scale they are attended to, both are irreducibly phenomenological” in the sense that “to describe them primarily in terms of structure is always a qualitative misrepresentation. critically, unlike neoliberal capitalism’s logics of accumulation and competition, texture and affect are not governed by commonsensical dualities of subject versus object or of ends versus means” (2003, p. 21). yet this does not mean that texture and affect short circuit reason, criticality or creativity: “to perceive texture is always, immediately, and de facto to be immersed in a field of active narrative hypothesizing, testing, and reunderstanding of how physical properties act and are acted upon over time. to perceive texture is never only to ask or know what is it like? nor even just how does it impinge on me? textual perception always explores two other questions as well: how did it get that way? and what could i do with it?” however, the sense of touch does undermine any dualistic understanding of agency and passivity: “to touch is always already to reach out, to fondle, to heft, to tap, or to enfold, and always also to understand other people or natural forces as having effectually done so before, if only in the making of the textured object” (p. 14). drawing on the work of renu bora, sedgewick highlights the helpful distinction between ‘texture’ with one ‘x’ and ‘texxture’ with two ‘x’s. “texxture is the kind of texture that is dense with offered information about how, substantively, historically, materially, it came into being… but there is also the texture – one x this time – that defiantly or invisibly blocks or refuses such information; there is texture, usually glossy if not positively tacky, that insists instead on the polarity between substance and surface, texture that signifies the willed erasure of history”. critically, texture is not restricted to the tactile and “although texture seems to have some definitional grounding with reference to the sense of touch, texture itself is not coextensive with any single sense… we hear the brush of corduroy trousers or the crunch of extra-crispy chicken” (2003, p. 15). a focus on texture/texxture invites consideration of affects as forms of disruption and enjoyment so absent in much contemporary, means-ends oriented, education – “it is enjoyable to enjoy, angering to be angered, arousing to be aroused and so on” (sedgewick, pp. 99-100). this makes affect particularly valuable for challenging the instrumentalism underpinning much current education practice by engendering and validating much needed passion. as tyson lewis (2012) writes, “passion” – such as that elicited in the aesthetic encounter – “builds a new sensory world that is not reducible to mere delusion, but is itself a refusal to accept the rules that bind certain affects to certain times, places, activities and modes of annunciation and production” (p. 6). the point, however, as lewis continues, is not to merely replace intellect with passion but rather “to understand how education exists in the moment of an uncertain community poised between passion and logos” (p. 17). in his compelling essay, “my cello,” tod machover (2007), composer, inventor and cellist, recounts the centrality of the cello as an object in his life since early childhood and that continues to have “unconscious resonance” for him (nettleton, 2016, p. 47). machover describes a series of aesthetic encounters during which the cello operates as a ‘third object’ (rancière, 2011, p. 15) that is owned by no one but which nonetheless subsists between himself and pedagogical figures such as his mother, father, several music teachers, and indian musicians. he is at once a willing subject, ready to defer to the object as a powerful and passion-inducing presence; a playing adult who steps sideward into another reality, sitting “beside” the cello (kosofsky sedgewick, 2007, p. 8), “poised between passion and logos” (lewis, 2012, p.17). machover (2007) illustrates his first experience of “music training” as a two year old. encouraged “to find music all over the house,” his mother and he would set out on “expeditions of her devising, discovering household objects that made interesting sounds, https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index phelan, clarke. autobiography, aesthetics and politics 69 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> that could in turn be combined to create new textures, emotions and narratives” (p. 14). she and he would proceed to make a ‘picture’ of the new composition so that it could be recreated later. and so he learned to invent music from the first principles of “sound, structure and score” (p. 14). at age eight, “yearning” for an instrument that had the same feel of those “natural, malleable” household objects, he embraced the cello “before learning the details” (p. 14). machover (2007) describes both pleasurable and disturbing experiences he had with the cello. seated at my cello, my body assumes a calm, natural position – my shoulders relaxed, letting gravity help bow pressure. yet, i can feel the instrument vibrate from head to foot as i draw my bow across its strings, a throbbing through my chest, a buzzing through my legs and feet, a tingling to my fingertips (pp. 14-15). the physicality of the instrument – strings of varying thicknesses that vibrate accordingly, a bridge and fingerboard that slope unevenly under the four strings, and reduced spacing between notes as the musician goes higher on each string – means that “each note feels different to play” (p. 16). as a result, while the cello felt pleasurable and controllable, “pure perfection” is “always slightly out of reach” (p. 16). under his mother’s tutelage, machover learns to play the classics on the cello but at age thirteen he became exposed to popular music. now enters a new teacher, his father, “a pioneer in the field of computer graphics” (p. 16), who is very comfortable with popular culture and willing to engage his young son. the cello with all its “sonic richness, thick-stringed resistance, wide range and lightning action” (p. 16) becomes an instrument for composing and performing rock music: “i threw away the bow, turned the instrument sideways and propped it on my lap like a (very, big, fat) guitar, clamped headphones around its belly, plugged it into a guitar amp and jammed” (p. 16). at the age of sixteen, machover recalls encountering the cello as if for the first time in the company of his new teacher, richard (richie) bock, who embraced classical, jazz, and rock. he recounts how his complacency about music making was destroyed and his former ease with technique totally disrupted. he learns to see nuance in cello playing: the continuous adjustment of pressure, pace, and angle depending on thickness of string and section of bow; the resonance achieved when the instrument vibrated freely; the beauty found in a simple constant sound played fully. he learns, again, how to listen carefully and critically, to attune himself to the slightest movement or tension felt in finger, hand, arm and back. he “learn[s] to meditate in sound … how to practice for real” (p. 17). eventually, influenced by indian musicians and his newfound knowledge of computers, he begins to produce “sounds and textures that [go] beyond the cello” (p. 18). he projects into the future music making with his own children: how do i teach a slide, a note perfectly in tune, a bow beautifully changed, a phrase delicately shaped, a musical story deeply felt and meaningfully conveyed? how do i share my love of music with my daughters when there is so much tough technique to learn, so much frustration to overcome? (p. 19) it is clear from his narrative that machover relates to the cello mnemically, endowing the instrument with personal historical significance. for him the cello is an object that contains many fragments of past experience and which enables him to reconnect with https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index phelan, clarke. autobiography, aesthetics and politics 70 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> those experiences in the present. as a mnemic object, therefore, the cello keeps him in touch with former self states and constitutes an “island[] of intensity and significance in the unconscious” (p. 50). the cello not only provokes particular memories but it operates as a threshold to “a vast realm of proliferating associations” (p. 50), and anticipations of how he will be with his own children. his cello remains for him “the perfect gauge of complexity, of how much an individual human being can shape or master, follow or comprehend” (p. 20). one could argue that machover’s essay also reflects an attempt to use the object of the cello to process parts of his internal world – “it is the object that is closest to me that i don’t share with others, the intermediary i use to reconnect to the forces and feelings that drew me to music in the first place” (p. 20). currere, evocative objects and disruptive desire a focus on aesthetics in education is not a panacea but it does offer some alternatives to the risk-averse instrumentalism and hyper-competition that grips so much educational practice today. we would argue, however, that jones and machover did not simply have “an aesthetic encounter, intellectual epiphany, transformative experience, or heightened awareness” (slattery, 2017, p. 186). rather, objects in their lives—the painting in the attic and the cello—evoke “a proleptic integration of time and memory” that irreversibly jolts the foundational perspective of self in relation—“the bedrock of our being”… (p. 186). the synthetical moment is one during which the subject ironically proclaims itself as a subject and an object of study simultaneously (slattery, 2017). the self is no mirror image of reality but “a challenge to the very assumptions of totalizing images” on offer (p. 192). slattery is referencing pinar and grumet’s (2015) currere as a method of autobiographical reflection—working from within—by which the self may pursue meaning “amid the swirl of present events, moves historically into his or her own past to recover and reconstitute origins, and imagines and creates possible directions of his or her own future,” through “mutual reconceptualization” (schubert, 1986, p. 33) with others—be they human or non-human objects. compressed associations, conscious and unconscious, overwhelm but also potentially transform. patrick slattery (2017) relates the story about when he, as an adolescent, came face to face with jackson pollock’s autumn rhythm: the intensity of the emotions of this artist touched a nerve in my adolescent confusion. i sensed the pain of the artist’s struggles and suffering, which seemed to parallel my own inner turmoil. pollock’s frustration with social structures reverberated with my own indignation about the vietnam war, racism, and social injustice. jackson pollock’s battle with alcoholism leaped from the canvas and caused me to reflect on my own family’s struggle with this disease. i did not know jackson pollock at the time, but i came to experience his emotions as i encountered autumn rhythm. …i had never heard of jackson pollock, but i became the artist through his painting as his journey and my journey were united in a synthetical [proleptic] moment. (2017, p. 186) slattery’s aesthetic encounter with its possibilities for enjoyment and disruption has the potential to counter the “stark statistical affirmation of use values, direct effects and a preoccupation with moral exemplarity” (bishop, 2012, p. 38) that characterizes so https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index phelan, clarke. autobiography, aesthetics and politics 71 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> much of education today. significantly, the linear time of cruel optimism and reproductive futurism is disrupted as the synthetic—proleptic—moment of currere relies on “a holistic understanding of the past, present, and future simultaneously” (slattery, 2017, p. 185). the self returns to the past as it intrudes upon the present, living within but not succumbing to the past, anticipating a return to the present during the second, progressive moment when one imagines future possibilities. the third moment is analytical as it attempts to describe the present, bracketing out past and future while being able “to juxtapose the past, present, and future, and evaluate the complexities of their intersectionalities” (slattery, 2017, p. 191). in the final moment, synthesis is sought as one asks: “who is that? what is the meaning of the present?” (pinar & grumet, 2015, p. 78). what is my form of life in the here and now, its public and private dimensions, its internal manifestations, its external behaviours? the self becomes available to itself; “i am placed together. synthesis” (p. 79). the upshot is “destabilization of structure and subject itself” (p. 192). while the disruption to the internal world is neither always pleasurable nor tolerable, the political and aesthetic promise of currere is that it enables one “to see anew and to understand anew” (pinar, 1991, p. 246). jones’ happenchance with ‘the painting in the attic,’ machover’s life-long relationship to ‘my cello,’ and slattery’s encounter with autumn rhythms convey the experience of prolepsis in which one is thrust out of one’s alienation and put back into touch with the complicated, textured layers of one’s becoming. conclusion the educational purpose of the curriculum is “to draw students out of themselves into unknown (to them) terrains of the “cultural field,” enabling them to engage with the world with insight, passion, and competence while never breaking the bridges of psychic attachment that makes the process of education subjectively and socially meaningful” (pinar, 2012, p. 229). we would argue that evocative objects—seen, touched, felt— occupy that “borderland between subjectivity and objectivity” (lasch, 1984, p. 194 in pinar, 2012, p. 229). it is through the practice of desire, silverman (2000) notes, that we may “approach what has traditionally been called virtue” (p. 46). the only sin for silverman, after lacan, is to give ground relative to one’s desires. the point of education is not “self-abandonment nor the suspension, until adulthood, of satisfaction” but “to become an individual, a citizen, a human subject engaged with intelligence and passion in the problems and pleasures of his or her life, problems and pleasures bound up with the problems and pleasures of everyone else in the nation, everyone on this planet” (pinar, 2012, p. 229). this essay was prompted, to a large degree, by the frustration we share with many educators and teacher educators in relation to the pedagogic regulation of seeing and the undemocratic limitations placed on the horizons of particular individuals and groups that we see operating in and through contemporary education and that a film like metropolis, to return to our opening, brings to the forefront of our attention. yet rather than seeking complete democratic emancipation through heroic activity and revolutionary upheaval, we need, perhaps, to “accept the ambivalence of participation and agency – we are always both subjects of and subject to” (donald, 1992, p. 161). embrace of such ambivalence falls largely to teachers for whom the possibility of epistemological or political innocence is forever foreclosed. as such, it becomes “impossible to imagine the exercise of liberty as a psychotic escape from relations of power. instead it becomes an invitation or an obligation to act on the basis that the rules of the game can be changed while it is being played, however rigged the game may be in favour of some players and against others” (donald, 1992, p. 161). laying the path while walking, teachers might seek “to https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index phelan, clarke. autobiography, aesthetics and politics 72 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> reconstruct democratic education as an act of perceptual alternation rather than critical consciousness raising, thus enabling us to recognize how equality is not simply a project to be achieved but is the production of new ways of seeing, being, hearing and interacting within the present” (lewis, 2012, p. 17); and, we would add, doing so always in relation to the past and in anticipation of a future. currere in action! notes 1 anne.phelan@ubc.ca 2 m.clarke@yosj.ac.uk references bollas, c. (1993). being a character: psychoanalysis and self-experience. london, uk: routledge. berlant, l. (2011). cruel optimism. durham, nc: duke university press. biesta, g. (2013). the beautiful risk of education. boulder, co: paradigm publishers. bishop, c. (2012). artificial hells: participatory art and the politics of spectatorship. london: verso. britzman, d. (2011). freud and education. new york: routledge. clarke, m., michell, m., & ellis, n. j. (2016). dialectics of development: teacher identity formation in the interplay of ideal ego and ego ideal. teaching education, 28(2), 115-130. clarke, m., & phelan, a. (2017). teacher education and the political: the power of negative thinking. london: routledge. department for education (dfe). (2016). educational excellence everywhere. uk: hmso. donald, j. (1992). sentimental education: schooling, popular culture and the regulation of liberty. london: verso. edelman, l. (2004). no future: queer theory and the death drive. durham, nc: duke university press. jones, c. a. (2007). the painting in the attic. in sherry turkle (ed.) evocative objects: things we think with. boston, ma.: mit press. kosofsky sedgwick, e. (2003). touching feeling: affect, pedagogy, performativity. durham, nc: duke university press. lacan, j. (1992). seminar vii: the ethics of pyschoanalysis (d. porter, trans.). new york: norton.. lang, f. (1927). metropolis. germany: kino international. lasch, c. (1984). the minimal self: psychic survival in troubled times. new york: norton. lewis, t. e. (2012). the aesthetics of education: theature, curiosity, and politics in the work of jacques rancière and paulo freire. london: bloomsbury. machover, t. (2007). my cello. in sherry turkle (ed.) evocative objects: things we think with. boston, ma.: mit press. mcgowan, t. (2013). enjoying what we don't have: the political project of psychoanalysis. lincoln, ne: university of nebraska press. mcgowan, t. (2016). capitalism and desire: the psychic cost of free markets. new york: columbia university press. mitchell, w. j. (2007). the melbourne train. in sherry turkle (ed.) evocative objects: things we think with. boston, ma.: mit press. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index about:blank about:blank phelan, clarke. autobiography, aesthetics and politics 73 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> moore, a., & clarke, m. (2016). ‘cruel optimism’: teacher attachment to professionalism in an era of performativity. journal of education policy, 31(5), 666-677. nettleton, s. (2016). the metapsychology of christopher bollas: an introduction. london, uk: routledge. pinar, w. f. & grumet, m. r. (2015). toward a poor curriculum (3rd edition). kingston, ny: educator's international press. pinar, w. f. (2012). what is curriculum theory? (2nd edition). new york, ny: routledge. pinar, w. f. (1991). the white cockatoo: images of abstract expressionism in curriculum theory. in g. willis & w. h. schubert (eds.), reflections from the heart of educational inquiry (pp. 244-249). albany, ny: state university of new york press. rancière, j. (2011). the emancipated spectator. london: verso. silverman, k. (2000). world spectators. stanford, ca: stanford university press. slattery, p. (2017). "i am nature": understanding the possibilities of currere in curriculum studies and aesthetics. journal of curriculum and pedagogy, 14(3), 184-195. taubman, p.m. (2009). teaching by numbers: deconstructing the discourse of standards and accountability in education. new york, ny: routledge. turkle, s. (2007). evocative objects: things we think with. boston, ma.: mit press. submitted: november, 20th, 2019. approved: december, 03rd, 2019. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: lopes, alice casimiro (2020). what will be the future in education? transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 1-2 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci <access date> what does the pandemic teach us? alice casimiro lopes1 state university of rio de janeiro, brazil in brazil, the underreporting of cases of coronavirus is high due to the lack of mass testing. social isolation, in turn, has only been partially fulfilled, and there are serious political conflicts between the federal government and state governments over health policies to face the pandemic, resulting in an unprecedented political crisis in the recent past. thus, the balance of the ministry of health of may 27, 2020, records 25,598 deaths and 411,821 confirmed cases. this number ranks brazil, at that time, in the second place in number of confirmed cases of the disease worldwide, following only the united states. currently, brazil has the most worrying tendency in record of deaths by covid-19 as to the number of people that the new coronavirus kills per day. even so, for now, there is a reasonable consensus that schools and universities are institutions that should avoid classroom activities. with the pandemic, there was a dispute between narratives, also expressing a dispute over the power of science to define truths. in this case, the brazilian pandemic scenario is similar1 as what donald trump has been doing in the usa with his notion of alternative facts. the bolsonaro government, its followers and its robots for mass dissemination of whatsapp messages and twitter posts disseminate contradictory or even false data, the famous "fake news"2, whose publications undermine the disease caused by the coronavirus or use a single isolated case as evidence for positions to be defended: “chloroquine is a drug that can save everyone,” “social isolation does not reduce contagion,” “there are not so many deaths, the numbers are invented and empty coffins are buried,” “china created the virus in laboratory to take over the world.” we mention these affirmations only to show what is being disseminated about the new coronavirus. the denial of prescriptions of epidemiologists and infectologists goes as far as to threaten the lives of the president's own followers, who are exposed to contagion, and in some cases die from the disease. nothing, however, seems to diminish the strength with which many defend their theses (about 30% of the population, according to recent opinion polls). in this scenario, educational purposes are also disputed. how does education – and schools and the curriculum – change with the pandemic? how can it contribute to the understanding of the situation in which we live? and, above all, how can education help to 1 it is not possible to detail here the approximations and differences between political processes that mark the election of jair bolsonaro in brazil and of donald trump in the usa. i focus only on how both rely on an antiscience discourse or defend an “alternative science” (contrary to the supposedly left-wing scientific principles). 2 further studies should discuss the phenomenon of “fake news.” however, i would like to point out that the common statement that “if they are news, they shouldn't be fake” projects an assumption of factual truth-fake “versus” true news, referenced in an ideal of press neutrality. without aiming to trivialize a phenomenon that transcends the usual limits of a journalism committed to certain political views, i believe that fake news requires an analysis of how they lead us to consider power relations in the production of truth in politics. farkas & schou (2018: 300) begin this discussion by stating “how ‘fake news’ has gradually become a floating signifier used within different discourses to criticize, delegitimize and exclude opposing political projects.” lopes, alice. what does the pandemic theach us? 2 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index avoid the repetition of moments like this one we are experiencing? as it has been widely discussed, education – and schools and the curriculum – cannot solve problems that go beyond pedagogical issues. the position of expecting serious social, political-economic and environmental problems to be solved by educational processes is not only a naive position, but also an ineffective one. this, however, does not mean that the educational space – in person or online – cannot contribute to the debate on these issues. particularly considering the curriculum, the field of our studies, much can be developed so that not only the covid-19 pandemic, but the serious environmental and health problems that we live in the world today are solved. i want to emphasize, however, that such solutions will not be merely technical, nor will they depend exclusively on informing the population, or spreading scientific knowledge. it is, above all, an ethical-political issue, which, as such, needs to include the discussion of how human beings relate to life, disease, health and care for the other. if the pandemic is teaching us something, it is that neither the future can be predicted nor only the sciences can make us question denial discourse and defend life. we also need political work and, with that, the education. notes 1 alicecasimirolopes@gmail.com references farkas, johan & schou, jannick (2018). fake news as a floating signifier: hegemony, antagonism and the politics of falsehood, javnost the public, 25:3, 298-314, doi: 10.1080/13183222.2018.1463047 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: silva, heslley; mortimer, eduardo; andrés díaz, martín; belloso, gabriela; carvalho, graça (2018). biological evolution in curricula of countries with different links between state and religion. transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> biological evolution in curricula of countries with different links between state and religion heslley machado silva1 federal university of minas gerais, university center of formigamg, brazil eduardo fleury mortimer2 faculty of education, federal university of minas gerais, brazil martín andrés díaz3 center for studies in philosophy and history of sciences. national university of quilmes, argentina gabriela varela belloso4 education training council, national administration of public education, uruguay graça s. carvalho5 ciec, institute of education, university of minho, braga, portugal introduction this paper analyses the impact of the state secularization on the teaching of biological evolution in secondary school in three latin american countries, argentina, brazil and uruguay. they were chosen due to their noticeably different relations between state and religion. school curricula of these three countries were analysed, and differences and similarities are discussed based on the possible influence of the relation between state and religion on the design and implementation of secondary school biology curricula, with special emphasis to biological evolution. various factors may interfere on the decision to emphasize the contents to be taught in class (shim, 2013), being the teacher's religion one of the important factors (gay, 2010). however other extrinsic issues, such as the underlying public education policy, may also influence the definition of the school curriculum. according to bourdieu (1998), it is necessary to consider the political discourse and the historical construction of the curriculum content. in silva, mortimer, andrés díaz, varela belloso, carvalho. biological evolution 14 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci other words, the forces that influence teachers in multicultural education practices must also be investigated. journell (2013) has proposed that the study of the controversy on teaching biological evolution and the challenges that it causes to teachers may provide a basis for a better understanding of phenomena that take place in the classroom. biological evolution has been neglected in secondary education by intrinsic and extrinsic reasons to biology teachers, one of which is supposedly the school curriculum (rutledge and mitchell, 2002). trani (2004) attributes teachers' rejection or denial of biological evolution partially to their own lack of knowledge of the evolutionary theory and of the nature of science. this view is also supported by blancke et al. (2011), who have observed more and more students in the classroom advocating creationism, which places teachers in conflict situations. also the council of europe (2007) has strengthened the increasing danger of creationism in education, especially in scientific education. this european international organisation further points out the risks of this movement impact on science curricula, which must be vehemently avoided, and that the creationism issue must be limited to religion classes. in contrast, nord and haynes' (1998) suggest the introduction of religion in all areas of education (including the formal curriculum and, particularly, in science education) as a teaching moral guideline. in a conciliatory position, mayer and el-hani (2013) consider that creationism must not be ignored, but rather appraised when students raise the issue, especially regarding its impact on students' education and the degree of its influence on education and science policies. nevertheless, these authors do not argue for the introduction of creationism by the science teacher. finally, it must be taken into account that the curriculum construction and design is associated to the construction of the historical educational policy of the country, with its particular emphasis and denials that are specific to each culture (maia and pereira, 2011). why a comparative study? the report on “comparative analytic-descriptive study” of the mercosur educational sector (inepeat, 2005) deals with the relevant role of analysis in a comparative approach to integration and decision making in the educational sector. it points out that comparative studies help in the understanding of the origin of the problems and in the proposition of possible solutions. thus, such comparative studies can give evidence of current situations as well as point out problems and achievements. comparison is a natural human trait, but the history and culture of each country must be taken into account in scientific investigation (franco, 2000). a study may start its methodological reflection by looking at similarities, however, the present study guides its analysis by the differences, which requires formulating questions considering the way the differences were constructed. comparisons may be relevant when what is taken as natural by someone is questioned by others, especially when the latter live in a different reality, in another country, under a different state-religion relationship. this study approach is expected to elicit new questions about the countries, either comparative or not, and possibly leading to further researches. goergen (1991) points out the need for comparative studies, which are lacking in the education area, as compared to economics, sociology and other fields that develop numerous comparative studies. in a large comparative study involving 19 countries, carvalho and clément (2007) have found clear differences in teachers' conceptions, in curricula and in textbooks, especially regarding controversial questions (e.g. sex education, health education, environmental education and evolution) that are matter of social and scientific debates. silva, mortimer, andrés díaz, varela belloso, carvalho. biological evolution 15 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci having in mind that the present study intends to analyse whether state-religion relation influences the curriculum design and its contents, the so-called "hidden curriculum" of the analysed countries also needs to be considered. hidden curriculum is understood as the implicit taught contents, which is not included in the formal or written curriculum where teachers base their teaching (jackson, 1998). secondary school and teacher training course curricula often have gaps in biological evolution contents, and even when they do not have such gaps, the teachers' conceptions and representations are influenced by their personal beliefs that tend to influence significantly what is taught about in the classroom. major differences may exist among secondary education biology teachers regarding the three important aspects of the teaching of biological evolution: what, how and to whom to teach it (diaz, ercoli and ginestra, 2009). finally, it is important to take into account how the curriculum of each country is designed, within its own historical and political condition, and how political groups are associated with religion. curricula as comparison instruments the curriculum is one of the references to set up comparisons of biological evolution teaching in different countries. multiculturalism is an inevitable condition in the present world that cannot be ignored and may be perceived in various ways revealing how individuals, groups and institutions respond to cultural reality and power relations (moreira, 2002). education, curriculum policy and citizen education are associated with theoretical discussions and debate in this field (maia and pereira, 2011). therefore, it is relevant to investigate how the biological evolution controversy runs through the countries curricula, as it can affect scientific education of secondary school students. multiculturalism has been considered in curriculum research, since cultural differences must be taken into account in curriculum analysis (moreira, 2002). it is important to theorize on the different conceptions and investigate how these conceptions affect curricula. moreira (2002) also considers that differences in curriculum design are political issues and that the underlying mechanisms and institutions must be discussed as well. indeed, the so-called “external didactic transposition” proposed by chevallard (1985; 1992) analyses the reason why some contents, and not others, are selected to be taught; such selected contents are defined by policy makers and constitute the curricula and school programmes from which the school textbooks are based on (carvalho & clément, 2007; carvalho, 2009). this is to say that values and ideologies determine what knowledge is valid and important for educational purposes and so to be considered in curriculum (leite, 2000; carvalho & clément, 2007; carvalho, 2009). furthermore, teachers are conditioned by the curriculum content, and their viewpoints affect their relation with the students, their teaching and the content to be taught (leite, 2000). there is a growing movement of fundamentalist religious groups aiming at introducing creationist ideas into curricula which interfere with regular science teaching of biological evolution, despite the opposition of scientists who support the evolutionary theory (carvalho and clement, 2007). these authors also consider that it is important to know the impact of the creationist viewpoint on curricula as well as the teachers' conceptions in different countries with distinct social and cultural backgrounds. according to them, the relation between science and religion differs greatly among countries, and religion in some countries can be a formal or an informal part of the national curriculum. the council of europe (2007) highlights the importance of maintaining biological evolution in science curricula, given its relevant place in current scientific knowledge, specially its unifying role in biology, and the need to fight for its maintenance in face of the creationist advance. this interference in favour of the creationism silva, mortimer, andrés díaz, varela belloso, carvalho. biological evolution 16 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci teaching over biological evolution is illustrated by nord and haynes (1998) when they propose the inclusion of religious themes throughout the school curriculum. taking all this into consideration, the objective of this research is to understand how biological evolution is dealt within the biology curriculum in different state-religion cultural contexts, in argentina, brazil and uruguay. the use of curricula as a comparison parameter of educational systems of different countries was inspired by pontes and fonseca (2001), who have compared specific aspects of curricula of different countries. also carvalho and clement (2007) justified the comparative analysis of curricula based on various studies in which the social background of the country had a strong influence on curriculum design regarding the topic "evolution and the origin of human beings". furthermore, berkman and plutzer (2011) have stated that citizens of a certain region want the curriculum adapted to their religious beliefs, blaming that the biological evolution theme should be avoided; those citizens even say that if they have lost the legal fight in the case of the united states, the creationist view will win the battle and so creationism will prevail in the classroom. this "victory", according to some authors, lies in the omission of biological evolution in classroom, the reduced time dedicated to it and the legitimization of creationist arguments by teaching through controversial themes, even if possibly not intentionally. for example, journell (2013) claims that there is a significant number of studies on the teaching of this curricular controversial themes, so that biological evolution would be valuable theme in human and social sciences. teachers' attitudes and choices concerning a given subject depend on their personal conceptions as well as on the implicit and explicit theories in the school environment (shim, 2013). the analysis of how the curriculum deals with specific themes and how the teachers react to the theme is a relevant field of research. berkman and plutzer (2011) propose the careful introduction of biological evolution into the curriculum to avoid attempts of imposing antievolutionary points of view. they mention that many of the investigated biology teachers in the united states reveal that they do not teach biological evolution or refer it only superficially. for some of these teachers, evolution is only a theory, not really true, and a necessary “evil” imposed by the curriculum and tested in exams compulsorily. in their study (berkman and plutzer, 2011) only 57% of the investigated american teachers considered biological evolution a unifying biological theory. for biologists, its importance is consensual, but for a significant part of the american population (40%) teaching creationism is as important as the teaching of biological evolution or even more important. the gap created by these distortions is hard to fill in (trani, 2004), but the curriculum can contribute to minimize it. anyway, in general, biological evolution when present in the secondary education biology curriculum has little relevance (rutledge and mitchell, 2002). furthermore, about half of the american teachers have great difficulty in dealing with the curriculum place for teaching biological evolution and often prefer to balance it with the teaching of creationism or not to teach it at all (blancke et al., 2011). in short, curriculum analysis can be a starting point in the investigation of how biological evolution is dealt in the three countries (argentina, brazil and uruguay) since the emphasis that teachers give to the theme depends, in large measure, on the emphasis given in the curriculum. educational systems of argentina, brazil and uruguay the selection of argentina, brazil and uruguay for the present study had in mind the distinct relations between state and religion in these countries. argentina has an openly catholic constitution which requires the government to support roman catholicism silva, mortimer, andrés díaz, varela belloso, carvalho. biological evolution 17 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci economically. this condition produced a historical symbiosis in culture, economy and politics between the catholic church and the argentinian government, with very complex and intricate relations (esquivel, 2003). in contrast, brazil and uruguay are formally secular states when it comes to their constitution, but brazil is indeed secular only formally since catholics and evangelicals have great influence and impact on policies. recently, suggestions to teach creationism in brazilian schools have been made by evangelical politicians (silva, 2015). uruguay, on the contrary, displays a consolidated secularism, where religion plays very little role in political affairs (oro, 2008). this process of laicism in uruguay has been very distinctive when compared to other latin american countries. it has its roots in the xix century, and the total separation between state and religion occurred in the constitution of 1919 (silva & fontenele, 2007). all these three countries belong to the economic block mercosur but they have differences in a whole set of public policies and developmental policies, which contributes to differentiate them sharply (souza, 1995). this gave rise to the need to investigate the dimension of these differences and to categorize them, which may contribute to a more successful regional integration. indeed, one of the great challenges in the construction of an economic block is to take into account the cultural, political and educational specificities of each member state, with their distinct relationships with the religious environment (lampert, 1998; cunha, 2000). piletti and praxedes (1998) have compared data of mercosur countries and found disparities in the education, economic and social areas. their findings on the main social indexes showed brazil in the worst position, although it has the highest percentage of investment in education, research and development. according to the comparative analytic-descriptive study of mercosur educational sector (anísio teixeira institute, 2005), the educational system of the three countries is characterized below. argentina argentina has a centralized administration and underwent a great change in the last years with the transfer of the educational systems to its 23 provinces. in 2006, the new national education act (26.206) changed the system back to the previous four levels of education: initial, elementary, secondary and higher education. (these levels may have different names in some provinces, due to the national decentralization system). initial education is for children aged from 0 to 5 years old, with the last year being compulsory. elementary education is composed of six academic years and it is compulsory for children aged 6 years and older. secondary education is composed of six academic years and became compulsory with the national education act (26.206) and is for adolescents and young adults who have completed elementary education (13 to 18 years old). all the modes and guidelines of secondary education aim at preparing pupils for the full exercise of citizenship and for either work or follow further studies. secondary education is divided into two cycles: basic cycle (three years), common to all kinds of courses, and specialized cycle (three years), the content of which varies with the areas of knowledge and the social and work worlds. the undergraduate education system of argentina is complex and heterogeneous. in more than 100 universities there are about 1.6 million students, being 80% of them in public universities and 20% in private ones. the public universities are free and require competitive application (coraggio; vispo, 2001). brazil silva, mortimer, andrés díaz, varela belloso, carvalho. biological evolution 18 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the brazilian educational system has recently undergone a democratization process, especially during the 80’s of the last century (rosemberg, 1992), with higher degree of autonomy and decentralization of educational policies. the educational system is divided in basic education (which comprises child education, elementary education, and secondary education) and higher education. municipalities act mainly in child and elementary education whereas brazilian states act in elementary and secondary education. the federal government provides mainly technical and financial support to its 26 states and organizes and promotes the higher education. child education serves children up to 3 years old in day-care centres, and between 4 and 6 years old in kindergartens. elementary education is compulsory, starts at 6/7 years old and lasts for eight years, up to 13/14 years old. secondary education is for three years (14/15 to 16/17 years old) and provides general education for further technical education or higher education. higher education, in public or private universities and institutes, provides undergraduate courses in the various professional fields and is accessible to those who have completed secondary education and passed selection examinations. in addition to undergraduate studies, universities also have post-graduation courses providing master and doctoral degrees. public schools are free. uruguay in uruguay, education is based on the principles of secularization and equal opportunity. secularization is expressed in: …the thorough and critical study of all subjects in public education through free access to sources of information and knowledge that enable learners to a take a conscious position. the plurality of opinions and rational and democratic investigation of knowledge and belief is ensured. (ley general de educacion 18437, 2008, disponible: https://www.impo.com.uy/bases/leyes/18437-2008). in order to ensure equal opportunities, the uruguayan constitution establishes free access to the 12 years of education, from initial education, starting at the age of four, up to middle basic education. the educational system is organized in the following levels: initial (three academic years) and primary education (six academic years), middle basic education (three-year unified basic cycle), upper middle education (three academic years) (including general, technical and technical-professional education) and tertiary education (including nondegree technical courses, university-level technical courses and higher technological education and higher education) and graduate and post-gradual courses. the initial and primary education, secondary education, professional technical education and elementary and secondary teacher training are subordinated is regulated by a five-member central directorate council, with three of its members appointed by the president of the republic. in contrast to other countries in the region, the ministry of education and culture exerts no political power on public higher education. middle higher education comprises three-year courses leading to university admittance. after a common first year it branches out into four basic areas in the second year (biology, humanities, science and arts expressions) and into seven branches in the third year. technical education aims to offer a fast track into the work market; it can last from one to seven years and has distinct modalities grouped in four areas: agriculture, industry, arts and silva, mortimer, andrés díaz, varela belloso, carvalho. biological evolution 19 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci handicrafts and services. it leads to professional technical education with a broad range of programmes and designs according to the level of specificity of the area of education offered. tertiary or higher education is provided by public and private universities, private university institutes and public and private non-university tertiary institutes. the “universidad de la república” was the only university in the uruguay for 150 years, but in the last twenty years the government allowed the creation of private universities (four so far) based on the principle of greater freedom of education. these private universities are not associated with the public university by any means and they are not under any control of quality by the state. mercosur data data of the comparative analytic-descriptive study of mercosur educational sector (anísio teixeira institute, 2005) points out similarities and differences among these three countries. it reveals a general decrease in the levels of illiteracy, with outstanding success in uruguay and argentina and relative failure in brazil. school child enrolment increased in the three countries (100% in uruguay, 7% in argentina and 3% in brazil), but not so much at the upper levels of schooling, particularly from ages 12 to 14 years old, indicating high levels of school dropout. the contradiction of the brazilian educational system lies in its co-occurring higher levels of approval to progress to the next grade and, at the same time, of dropout. brazil and argentina have the greatest numbers of students per class in primary education, but this tends to decrease in secondary education. argentina has the lowest indexes of school failure within mercosur countries, brazil index is twice as compared to argentina's and uruguay is in between. data also reveal that despite brazil's greater investments in education, its results are relatively poorer compared to the other two countries. similar problems in the education systems of mercosur member countries, especially in the 80’s, have also been reported by rosar and krawczyk (2001), with particular attention to argentina, brazil and uruguay. moreover, given the particularities of the constitutional origins of the national states, social behaviours and educational organizations, these authors point out that those interesting differences and possible repercussions in the field of education deserve further study. the authors also call attention for the role that comparative analysis may play in the identification of conceptual difficulties and the need to know the concrete reality of the educational systems in latin america, particularly in mercosur countries. a relevant aspect to consider is that there is no neutrality in the role of religions, and churches as a whole in latin america due to their historical importance in the construction of these societies. they exert a major influence in various sectors, such as in politics and education, an influence that may reach school curricula. even in the self-claimed secular state of uruguay, the separation between the state and religion hardly occurs in practice (mariano, 2006). indeed, oro (2008) reported the existence of discriminatory treatment, either negative or positive, depending on politics, but always associated with various country's own historical and cultural phenomena. the author points out that the best example is the catholic church, which has a differentiated treatment due to its historical-cultural role in latin america. indeed, two structures that seek to regulate society can be found in these countries, the catholic church and the state, with a winding and contradictory path that accommodates tensions in a complex relationship (esquivel, 2003). thus, the catholic tradition is at the heart of this subcontinent identity and the root of its unity (figueiredo-cowen and gvirtz, 2009). it is in this complex context of religious influence in latin america that the creationist hypothesis and the "intelligent design" (with its pseudoscientific manifestations) have been growing. their supporters see biological evolution and creationism as two incompatible points of view, which silva, mortimer, andrés díaz, varela belloso, carvalho. biological evolution 20 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci is becoming a problem for science education in latin american countries (cornish-bowden and cardenas, 2007). it is in this context that the present study intends to analyse the educational curricula of the latin american countries, argentina, brazil and uruguay, which have different levels of relation between state and religion. methodology countries selection for analysing biological evolution in school curricula the criteria for the selection of these three latin american countries (argentina, brazil and uruguay) for the comparison of the theme biological evolution in the curricula was based on the different models of relation between state and religion in these countries. the high level of influence of religion in latin america countries can be observed when only seven out of twenty countries do not mention god in their constitutions (oro, 2008). according to oro and ureta (2007), this strong influence can obfuscate the religious diversity in the american subcontinent, with a certain prevalence of christian faith. the analysis of evident contrasts in the legal relationship between the state and religion of latin america countries (oro, 2008) provided good elements for the selection for this study of argentina, brazil and uruguay. indeed, oro (2008) reported three distinct types of legal order: countries with a state church regime, i.e. with an official religion (argentina, bolivia and costa rica); countries that define the separation between the church and the state (el salvador, guatemala, panama, paraguay, peru, dominican republic and uruguay); countries with separation between the state and religion and providing equal rights to all faiths, but that in practice give special privileges to the catholic church (brazil, chile, cuba, colombia, equator, haiti, honduras, mexico, nicaragua and venezuela). in his study, oro (2008) reports that 88% of the argentinians are catholic, 8% evangelicals and 4% other religions or non-religious persons; in contrast, only 52% of the uruguayans are catholic, 2% evangelicals and a large proportion of 46% are included in other religions or non-religious persons; brazil is between these two countries since 74% are catholic, 15% evangelicals and 11% other religions or non-religious persons. the high predominance of catholics in argentina, the brazilian growing influence of evangelical groups (mariano, 2001) and the uruguayan high number of other religions or nonreligious people, were the main reasons for selecting these three countries for the analysis of their school curricula on biological evolution. document analysis curricula of secondary education (grades 10 to 12, i.e. 14/15 to 16/17 years old pupils) available on line in the education sector of each country were analysed, giving particular attention to the parts regarding biological evolution. in the case of argentina, the curriculum of buenos aires (the main province of the 23 provinces) was analysed in detail but curricula of other argentinian provinces were also analysed. in brazil, the curriculum of minas gerais state (one of the 26 brazilian states, with larger population and greater economy) was used. uruguay, being a small country, has a single and unifying curriculum which was analysed in this study. not only the official curriculum but also curriculum-related documents from the ministries of education or equivalent documents, such as curriculum guidelines and concerned legislation were also analysed. in addition, other authors’ papers of these three countries on this issue were also used as documental sources. silva, mortimer, andrés díaz, varela belloso, carvalho. biological evolution 21 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci content analysis was the methodology used in order to identify educational tendencies of the objectives, contents and methodology of biological evolution teaching and the discussion of its role and importance in the curriculum, as suggested by pontes and fonseca (2001). the curricula parts referring the topics of biological evolution, life origin and human origin were considered in the comparative study among countries. particular attention was given to the educational goals (kelting-gibson, 2005) as well as to the “hidden curriculum” (kently, 2009), since sometimes the curriculum seems to indicate some idea but the implicit idea can be a different one. this conception of “hidden curriculum” is especially important when it deals not only with controversial themes like evolution, life origin and human origin but also with different countries and cultures (carvalho et al, 2008). results and discussion argentinian curriculum on biological evolution argentina national level it has been difficult to define and implement secondary education curricula in argentina promoted by the national government due to the previously mentioned provinces decentralization and autonomy. this has led to the emergence of contradictions and conflicts regarding the theme biological evolution, as referred: in argentina, the teaching of the evolution theory has taken a path filled with conflicts, biases and errors. […] nevertheless, when we analyse the study plans and programmes approved by the ministry of education for the teaching of biology in secondary school during the second half of the 20th century, we observe that the contents related to the living beings evolution were left out until 1972 and they have hardly appeared after that, and when they do, they are a separate topic in the end of the 4 th year programme". (massarini et al. (2007, p. 3). in the neoliberal educational reform carried out in the 1990s, biological evolution was finally incorporated into the common basic concepts (cbc) of the old polytechnic (secondary) level. however, some authors (gvirtz and valerani, 1999) claim the catholic church managed to have some contents eliminated from the curriculum. furthermore, gutierrez (2009) refer that in the so-called "sources for the transformation of the natural science curriculum", biologyrelated contents were written by individuals from fields other than biology and that the names of lamarck and darwin were eliminated from the curriculum and, subsequently, those individuals had to ask their resignation to the ministry of education (gutiérrez, 2009, p. 100). in the last reform of 2006 the topic biological evolution appears as one of the teaching axis in several documents, indicating that the stress for not including biological evolution was useless. however, after the 2006 reform, the curriculum design in biological evolution has become again in trouble, even in 2008 when the "year of science education" was declared. more recently, in 2011, the priority learning nucleus has been established for secondary education national level), which, among other things determines the teaching of biological evolution in grades 2 and 3, the priority concerning living beings should be: …the approach of the historical development of scientific theories that explain the evolution of living beings and the interpretation of the idea of natural selection proposed by darwin based on the contributions from silva, mortimer, andrés díaz, varela belloso, carvalho. biological evolution 22 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci genetics to explain the evolution of the species. (ministerio de educacion, 2011a, p. 19). for the secondary cycle science specialization (grade 10), two axes have been established for the biology subject "evolution processes", indicating how the subject should be taught: "he depth and understanding of the models that explain the evolution processes of living beings from a historical point of view, with emphasis on the identification of the sources of genetic variability in natural populations under the synthetic theory of evolution. (ministerio de educacion, 2011b, p. 5). although these guidelines from the national ministry of education for the argentina provinces refer to darwin and the evolution theory, several crucial aspects have not changed in many provinces, which has been largely criticized (gutierrez, 2009). indeed, references to darwin and his work related to evolution theory are scarce. in addition, evolution is no longer used as a unifying basis for the integration of biology education and has been reduced to contents related to biological diversity. is biological evolution not necessary for integration of other biology subjects? province of buenos aires the analysis of what occurs in the 23 provinces reveal a rather more complicated picture. the autonomous city of buenos aires has always been considered more progressive, although in the last five years the government has had a conservative ideology and practice, and, consequently, a position much closer to that of the catholic church. the official document entitled "biology content for secondary school" mentions that one of the general teaching goals is: …to promote the interpretation of the life phenomenon as the result of a natural evolution processes, which represents common characteristics to all organisms. (ciudad autónoma de buenos aires, 2009, p. 6). however, there is only one reference to the diversity of living beings in a document entitled "biodiversity as a result of evolution" (p. 9). as previously mentioned, biological evolution is not presented as the main axis of the discipline and it is not taken into account in subjects other than biodiversity. the secondary school curriculum of the province of buenos aires (bracchi and paulozzo, 2011) indicates that this level of education must prepare the students for higher education and for it, subjects, contents and approaches must be selected with this objective in mind. this curriculum emphasizes that science must interpret reality and not just represent it, which leads students to evaluate this aspect in relation to the scientific theories and models in the development of science. the permanent construction and interpretation of science is also pointed out. furthermore, it is proposed that the value of observation must be relative, rather than absolute, because it depends on the theory that guides the observer; analysis may lead to a series of interpretations and consequences when the controversies involving biological evolution education are taken into account. in this same perspective, the document calls attention to the fact that there are various scientific methods, rather than a single one, and that scientific research is marked by specific interests most of the time. silva, mortimer, andrés díaz, varela belloso, carvalho. biological evolution 23 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the loss to the teaching of biological evolution leaves ample room for the previously mentioned hidden curriculum because of the questions raised on the evolution theory that may be answered according to the teachers' personal beliefs and conceptions. the argentinean curriculum guidelines is based on the inquiry-based science education concept, with the notion that constant questioning may lead the student to construct knowledge through reflection and action and to a critical view of concepts and of the surrounding world (chiappetta, 1987). the greatest problem is that biological evolution is a process that integrates the whole discipline and if students develop explanations that exclude it, it is possible that they will have great difficulty in understanding biological processes (mayr, 1998). moreover, bracchi and paulozzo (2011) claim that the curriculum of the province of buenos aires indicates concepts related to biological evolution that must be studied and that human evolution must be presented with supporting theories and evidence. the origin of the species is a suggested curriculum contents, but there is neither reference to darwinism theory nor to its fundamental principles, although it refers to "the mechanism of evolution under debate: alternative models to explain the evolutionary change" (bracchi and paulozzo, 2011, p. 26). even in the argentine province of buenos aires, which many consider the most liberal in the country, does not indicate the best accepted theory to explain evolution, i.e. the darwinian theory. nevertheless, the equivalent minimum content for secondary school suggests presenting alternative explanations for evolution. the genetic bases of evolutionary change are indicated, but well-established supporting scientific evidence of the darwinian theory is not indicated for clarification, such as palaeontology, embryology, comparative physiology and others, none of which are mentioned in the suggested minimum curriculum content. provinces that are more conservative than buenos aires tend to keep away the most sensitive subject in relation to the teaching of biological evolution in curriculums, the theories of origin of life and human evolution, because it is possible to insert themes more or not relevant in each province (ruiz and schoo, 2014). province of mendoza the natural science curriculum of the province of mendoza (quinteros, 2008) has only two pages dedicated to biology, among one hundred twenty pages, with no reference at all to evolution. therefore, students of secondary school (grades 10 to 12) in this province have little contact with these subjects, which has been considered the orienting axes in biology education (dobzhansky, 1973). in grade 11 very limited reference is made to biological evolution with a darwinian focus. in grade 12 darwin is not mentioned but there is some indirect reference to biological evolution associated with other topics. natural selection is mentioned as a hypothesis: “natural selection as a central hypothesis of the evolution theory” (quinteros, 2008, p. 132). in this same part of the curriculum, the only reference to biological evolution is an indication of what students should learn, without any reference to the darwinian theory: interpret the main characteristics of the dynamics of the natural processes that occur in the biosphere. analyse the hypothesis on the origin of life and the current theories that attempt to explain it. analyse the challenges of human development, especially the environmenta l deterioration processes and the alternatives for the management of biosphere resources. (quinteros, 2008, p. 131) silva, mortimer, andrés díaz, varela belloso, carvalho. biological evolution 24 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci in short, in argentina, evolution has been incorporated as a central theme in the teaching of biology, but it is limited to contents related to organisms diversity and, in some cases, barely incorporated, and when so in the form of questioning. we consider that it is extremely complex for students to understand the biosphere natural processes or the origin of living beings if they do not understand biological evolution and its mechanisms accurately. the result of this situation in argentina in relation to the teaching of biological evolution and, consequently, biology education, is also cause of great concern for many authors (gvirst and valerani, 1999). brazilian curriculum on biological evolution brazil national level brazilian educational system bears resemblances to those of other latin american countries (sguissardi, 2002). changes in the education guideline have been introduced in 1990 by the state administrative-managerial reform, involving the expansion of higher education, mainly the increase of private institutions. the number public schools has increased as a result of the programme “restructuring and expansion of the brazilian federal universities”, which also determines regulatory and control measures associated to the university autonomy. as previously mentioned, brazil is officially a secular country, but the catholic and evangelical churches have strong influence on politics, particularly in education, a fact that contradicts the country's supposed secularism (oro and ureta, 2007; oro, 2008). in contrast, the number of those who do not follow a religion has increased recently (mariano, 2013). the national curriculum parameters for secondary education (pcnem) propose the contents that must be taught but with no intention of setting a national norm (pcnem, 2000). this document links general competences to the contents of the secondary school subjects and propose educational practices for the school curriculum organization. in sum, it establishes themes that structure the subjects to be taught in secondary education and specifies that proposed contents must not be a plain list of topics to be considered as a minimum curriculum. the document refers that its proposals are neither mandatory nor unifying, but rather a broad view of the work to be done in each school subject. pcnem introduces evolution in secondary school topic 6 as "origin and evolution of life" (pcnem, 2000, p. 21), which is characterised as one of the most instigating themes for human beings because of the polemics that surrounds it and the various interpretations that it provokes. it is worth to point out the passage that says that the teacher must afford opportunities of confrontation the different explanations of the subject elaborated at different times, the scientific, the religious and the mythological views. it is interesting to observe that there is no indication of which explanation should be emphasized and approached based on a solid set of evidence. the brevity of scientific knowledge is highlighted but it also proposes that students get familiarized with the mechanisms of life evolution, especially human evolution. finally, it indicates that cultural and biological factors interact in the evolution process and that human interventions supported by scientific and technological knowledge change the course of the evolutionary process. among the evolution units presented in the pcnem, the "hypotheses on the origin of life and primitive life" unit refers that students should learn the explanations on the origin of the universe, the earth and living beings and compare them with conceptions from other sources from different moments in history. it also proposes that students should learn about scientific experiments and arguments that defeat the spontaneous generation idea. it suggests the use of models, drawings and charts to demonstrate the probable phenomena that led to the development of life and the primitive atmosphere conditions. silva, mortimer, andrés díaz, varela belloso, carvalho. biological evolution 25 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci this brazilian pcnem, like the argentinean national guidelines, is based on the inquiry-based approach to science education. it is based on the notion of the need to develop skills to formulate questions, that the students should be able to use models and explanations to carry out investigations, as well as understand how scientists construct scientific knowledge as proposed by keys and bryan (2001). evolutionary ideas and biological evolution are referred to in another pcnem unit (evolutionary ideas and biological evolution, page 51), which proposes the comparison of lamarck's and darwin's points of view, the explanations of evolution, mutation mechanisms, genetic recombination and natural selection. environmental factors that interfere with individual genetics are referred, and so is the comparison of gene frequency in the evolution process. it also proposes plotting the lines of evolution, the analysis of phylogenetic trees and a time line pinpointing relevant facts in the history of life. the brazilian pcnem also contains a unit (“the origin of the human being and the cultural evolution”, page 51) related to the origin of the human beings and its cultural evolution. this item proposes plotting the phylogenetic tree of humans based on evidence and pointing out the roles of intelligence, language and learning in human evolution. cultural evolution should be differentiated from biological evolution anchored on learning and the transmission of learned features, and related to modifications in gene frequencies. the benefits and disadvantages of environmental changes and the adaptation of animal species of interest to human beings, taking into account events that took place over the last million years of human history and the future of the human species should be discussed. another document related to the brazilian curriculum is the national curriculum parameters (pcn) that proposes considering the reality and diversity of the brazilian federation (pcn+, 2000). for such, the curriculum must be flexible and able to embody various pedagogies and at the same time have a high level of accuracy, indicating the competencies that secondary school students must acquire. actually, the law on brazilian education guidelines (ldb, 1996) had anticipated this great margin of flexibility in contents and methods for better school outcomes. therefore, the state departments are the decision-making for educational policies for their secondary schools, such as the curriculum design and implementation. this flexibility intends to produce decentralization and collaboration among the agents involved, leading to school autonomy to define the pedagogical proposal, with all advantages and risks. this autonomy and freedom in the curriculum design brings about virtues, such as the possibility of improvement and adapting it to the regional and local reality (moehlecke, 2012). however, some risks behind the decentralization process characteristic of the brazilian curriculum policy have been pointed out by castro (2007), especially a poorly disguised lack of interest from the government in popular education. furthermore, the possible disregard for secular education imposed by municipal and state political forces that want to give visibility to religious themes that notably oppose the teaching of biological evolution in favour of the creationist dogma or the intelligent design in the school context can also occur (martins, 2001). state of minas gerais since the 26 brazilian states have a well-known autonomy concerning curriculum proposals, this paper presents how biological evolution is treated in the curriculum in one of the states, the state of minas gerais. this state has a quite heterogeneous working conditions and, although being one of the richest regions in brazil it is also one of the poorest population. according to the results in national and international exams, the quality of its basic and secondary education is relatively good in comparison to brazil as a whole. silva, mortimer, andrés díaz, varela belloso, carvalho. biological evolution 26 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the document curriculum basic contents (cbc) of minas gerais state, produced by martins et al. (2006), establishes the biology contents, providing various suggestions and observations for secondary education (grades 10 to 12). the theme "history of life on earth" must be dealt with biological evolution over the years of secondary education: in the first year (grade 10), evolutionary theories by lamarck and darwin and the explanations of evolution based on evidence; in the second year (grades 11), the mechanisms of evolution; and in the third year (grade 12), a long programme from human evolution to the hypothesis on the origin of life. biological evolution appears right in the beginning of the document (martins et al., 2006) referred to as "transformations" along with indication of two influencing factors: natural selection and adaptation. the mechanisms that lead to genetic diversity are cited: mutation, sexual reproduction and genetic recombination. the cbc document refers "history of life on earth" as one of the fundamental axes of biology and recognizes the importance of biology evolution (martins et al, 2006). this document further states that there are strong arguments that support the evolutionary aspects of living beings and that they participate in the structuring of modern biological thinking, but it uses the term "adaptation" rather than evolution as a key idea for the understanding of biology. it also shows that there is proof for these processes, such as fossils, and that extinction seems to be the rule; therefore, adaptation and natural selection must be considered as being fundamental in the understanding of the history of life on earth (martins et al, 2006). cbc document also shows the risks of evolution misunderstandings based on the students' previous knowledge. it discusses a possible simplistic and anthropomorphic view that students may have. common sense ideas are presented, such as the perception of evolution as progress, improvement or enhancement, views that are distant from that of biological evolution. it suggests that this may be a fruitful theme for the understanding of how scientific ideas are constructed, through evidence, models and reinterpretation of facts (martins et al, 2006). in this same line of reasoning, it points out the risk of the students viewing biological evolution as a process in which plants and animals modify themselves in response to the environment. however, it proposes that it is possible to contrast these previous conceptions with scientific terms such as theory, hypothesis testing, evidence and others (martins et al, 2006). in brief, the brazilian curriculum has experienced the impact of reforms in the 1990s, with strong influence from the world bank and international evaluation processes, in order to decentralize and to bring autonomy to the 26 brazilian states. the national curriculum has become just a guideline for the development of the state curricula. the national guidelines refer the teaching of biological evolution, considering the possible controversies about it. decentralization may have been a breakthrough, because it allowed for a focus on specific regional issues in an immense and diverse country such as brazil. however, this decentralization has caused some risks, especially in state governments with religious influences, which can use this freedom to insert creationism and intelligent design, as it has been tried earlier in the state of rio de janeiro (jamil, 2004). in the state of minas gerais curriculum, i.e. in the cdc document, no religious influence (creationism and/or intelligent design) was found, on the contrary, the fundamental points of the darwinian evolutionary theory are proposed to be treated in secondary school, including the evidence of its occurrence. uruguay curriculum on biological evolution uruguayan national level there are few studies on general education in uruguay, particularly studies that sought to interpret the progress in the last decades of education both in curriculum and in classroom. silva, mortimer, andrés díaz, varela belloso, carvalho. biological evolution 27 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci therefore, any approach that allows for the analysis of some of these aspects is an important contribution to the knowledge of biology education in uruguay. since the 1990s the uruguayan elementary, secondary and technical-professional curriculum design has undergone various reformulations. at all levels of secondary education, the national curriculum produced by the “consejo de educación secundaria” (ces, 2014) establishes quite explicitly the education objectives, contents (concepts and procedures) and results expected from education. almost all units focus on functional biology teaching, in agreement with what mayr (1988) called "proximate causes" that answer questions that are fundamental to science: how does it work? particularly, in basic secondary education (grades first and second of upper middle education) there is no conceptual contents that proposes the analysis of living beings characteristics, such as: why they have a certain form and not another, why it works in one way and not in another, gaps that can be filled when biology evolution is used as the biology education axis. therefore, the inclusion of concepts linked to biology evolution depends exclusively on the biology teacher since the curriculum implementation does not establish rules for its inclusion. it is important to point out that the theoretical concept that supports the curriculum for each level states that the concept of science is present in education as part of the ‘hidden curriculum’ and that it is conveyed when the meaning and intent of scientific theories and models are worked on (ces, 2014). as previously mentioned, in contrast to other countries in the region, biology teacher training (as well as other teachers' training) does not take place at the university. as a result, research is not included as a teaching strategy in the education of future teachers; only epistemological aspects are analysed theoretically and without bringing them into practice. this can influence not only the teachers' conceptions of science and technology, but also their teaching strategies. the upper secondary school (first grade of upper middle education) corresponds to the first year of the general biology teaching course, and the first unit proposes the analysis of various theories on the origin of life, the historical context of their development and of divulgation through the main experiments related to the issue. it especially introduces prebiotic and cellular evolution concepts. however, when the academic results proposed by the established curriculum and the reports of interviewed teachers are analysed, they show that the teaching of evolution remains focused on functional biology, on processes that describe experiments and structures, without a tie to the biological concepts of evolution and natural selection (ces, 2014). the second unit of the first grade of upper middle education proposes the understanding of the universality of the genetic code and the consequences of mutations. however, there is no reference to biology evolution nor the genetic code is considered as evidence of evolution or mutations in biodiversity. again, the descriptive point of view of biological processes is evident and based on "proximal causes" (ces, 2014). especially in this unit, a kind of "regression" seems to have occurred in relation to the teaching of biological evolution since the previous plan of 1976 indicated curriculum contents on evolution (evolutionary theories, the concepts of species and populations, evidence of evolution), which has been replaced by biotechnology-related contents. in the second year of upper secondary school (second grade of upper middle education), the biology curriculum axis is the study of biodiversity from an "evo-devoevolutionary" approach, i.e. evolutionary biology of development, which studies mechanisms and sequences of embryonic development comparatively and thus seeks to understand how genes produce new forms, functions and evolutionary behaviours. the focus is the study of natural environments of uruguay (ces, 2014). once more, at no point of the curriculum mentions the causes of biological diversity, but it does focus on the teaching of flora and fauna contents and their preservation. the learning outcomes are: "to establish the evolutionary silva, mortimer, andrés díaz, varela belloso, carvalho. biological evolution 28 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci sequence for the animals studied" (ces, 2014, p. 7), which is underlined by a lamarckian view of the evolutionary process, in a straight sequence line, as a zoological ladder. another objective to attain is "to explain the adaptive value of the structures observed and their evolutionary meaning at population level" (ces, 2014, p. 7). although at first this objective might be considered closely linked to natural selection and adaptation, as a process and their results, none of the conceptual, procedural contents or the proposed activities in this or previous units present themes that are required to attain this objective. similarly, when the aquatic zone environment is analysed at this level, various conceptual contents are related to forms of adaptation (to fly or aquatic environment vegetation), but not even in this case the concept of adaptation is emphasized with an evolutionary focus. instead, it looks at the characteristics that allow organisms to inhabit a certain environment. thus, a teleological vision of evolution continues to be strengthened in a general way. the humanities option of uruguayan national curriculum of second grade of upper middle education also includes aspects associated with the evolutionary process, particularly human biological and cultural evolution. the first unit prescribes conceptual contents on the comparative study of apes and human beings, as well as the analysis of human and brain evolution processes, among others. the objective of this unit is "to acknowledge the evolutionary characteristics of human beings" (ces, 2014, p. 8) where it describes the new characteristics but does not focus on the natural selection process and the adaptive advantages of biological innovations. the uruguayan curriculum, like those of the other two countries (argentina and brazil), suggests that teachers must conduct learning through exploration, including through constant practice and questioning. the process must be coordinated by the teacher through experimentation and dialogue with the theory, which should lead to a change in the teaching method (keys and bryan, 2001). the uruguayan curriculum is more descriptive, being regulated by the central education administration for all public and private institutions. it is more accurate and objective, particularly regarding the origin of life and evolution as compared to the other two countries. the extensive and ambitious curriculum of all school levels determines that the teachers have to shorten the contents in face of the scarce weekly class time, which is not always followed by pedagogical argumentation. nevertheless, the uruguayan general curriculum indicates more clearly the theories of the origin of life and biological evolution, while the other countries leave it up to the provinces and states, in argentina and brazil, respectively. in short, it could be expected that consolidated secularism in uruguay, both at the state and social levels, could favour (or do not hinder) the teaching of biological evolution in the official curriculum. however, in the uruguayan curriculum, strongly prescriptive at the nationa l level, for both public and private institutions, the contents linked to the teaching of evolution are scarce. thematic units, such as origin of life and origin of humans are explained, although they focus on the description of the temporary changes in the process of hominization or classic experiments on the evolution of ideas with respect to the origin of life. there are no thematic units focused on understanding the natural selection model as an explanation of the evolution of living beings at any educational level. this invites us to reflect on what could be the reasons for the absence of this issue in school teaching; there may be multiple reasons, but the absence of biology evolution in initial teacher training can be one of the major reasons. conclusions and implications for teaching curriculum decentralization and flexibility is clearer in the argentinean and brazilian curricula than in the uruguayan curriculum, justified by the large territory extension together silva, mortimer, andrés díaz, varela belloso, carvalho. biological evolution 29 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci with the multiculturalism of both countries. either argentinian 23 provinces or brazil 26 states are allowed to decide on the contents and emphasis to be given in their school curricula. regarding polemic themes, such as the origin and evolution of the human being, flexibility may result in local curriculum proposals that neglect biology evolution based on religious perceptions, which has been detected in both countries. the main theories involving the origin of life and evolution are not highlighted and the interim scientific knowledge is pointed out in argentinean and brazilian general curricula. the particularities of the themes to be taught in school are left up to the provinces and the states curricula, respectively. this may produce a cycle of lack of contact with biology evolution that will hamper students’ scientific education and can result in teachers with a lack in a central topic in their training, which in turn will carry consequences on their teaching classes. being a small country, the uruguayan curriculum is used at national level and the teaching of biological evolution in secondary education stands out for its clear indication of biology evolution. being the same curriculum in the whole country, the influences of local religions is rather lower when compared to argentina and brazil. a close analysis of the three countries curricula showed that biology evolution is not considered as a guiding axis in biology education. even if it is included in isolation through some concepts associated with evolution, it is evident that there is an underlying teleological and linear conception. in general, the argentinean, brazilian and uruguayan curricula propose inquiry-based science education approach, being more evident in the argentinean and brazilian documents. indeed, they follow these three key points concerning inquiry-based education (chiappetta, 1997; keys and bryan, 2001): (i) to lead the students to make inquires and reflect on the work conducted as they acquire knowledge on the investigated theme; (ii) investigate and include previous planning; (iii) conduct the activities, interpret the obtained results and only then draw a conclusion. the curricula propose that classes are foreseen to be guided towards formulating questions to be used in the study of polemic themes, such as bio logy evolution. according to these curricula guidelines, the students' previous ideas and their historical and cultural conceptions as well as the method of construction of scientific knowledge must be taken into account in the teaching process. it is necessary to reflect on the advance of creationism, which has been considered a threat to science education, especially if biological evolution is not considered a fundamental theme in the national curriculum (council of europe, 2007). an example of this threat occurred recently in brazil when a law project, pl8099/2014, authored by one of the best voted federal congress representatives and a representative of evangelicals, whose amendment "introduction of creationist contents in private and public-school curriculums" was presented on november 13, 2014 (http://www.camara.gov.br/proposicoesweb/fichadetramitacao?idproposicao=777616). religious tolerance, something desirable in the school environment, must not mean giving the same emphasis to dogmatic knowledge in biology classes and teachers must bear this in mind in agreement with the curriculum. one of the ways to deal with the conflicts proposed by blancke et al. (2011) would be introducing the history of science to teacher training to help teachers with issues related to the science and religion dilemma. acknowledgements this work had the financial support of the university center of formiga/mg” (brazil), and the research center ciec of the university of minho (portugal). silva, mortimer, andrés díaz, varela belloso, carvalho. biological evolution 30 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci notes 1 email: heslley@uniformg.edu.br 2 email: efmortimer@gmail.com 3 email: biomartindiaz@gmail.com 4 email: biovarela@gmail.com 5 email: graca@ie.uminho.pt references berkman, m. b. & plutzer, e. (2011). defeating creationism in the courtroom, but not in the classroom. (331). science. www.sciencemag.org. published by aaas blancke, s.; boudry, m.; braeckman, j.; de smedt, j. & de cruz, h. 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(2007) religião e política na américa latina: uma análise da legislação dos países. horiz. antropol. 13 (27). retrieved from: http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/s010471832007000100013 pcn, parâmetros curriculares nacionais. (2000) ensino médio. retrieved from: http://portal.mec.gov.br/seb/arquivos/pdf/blegais.pdf pcnem, parâmetros curriculares nacionais+, pcn+ (2000). ensino médio. orientações educacionais complementares aos parâmetros curriculares nacionais. ciências da natureza, matemática e suas tecnologias. retrieved from: mec.gov.br/seb/arquivos/pdf/blegais.pdf piletti, n.; praxedes, w. (1998) mercosul, competitividade e educação. estud. av.,.12(34) pontes, j. p., & fonseca, h. (2001). orientações curriculares para o ensino da estatística: análise comparativa de três países. quadrante, 10(1), 93-115. quinteros, m. (2008). modalidad ciencias naturales, salud y ambiente. diseño curricular nivel polimodal. rosar, m. d. f. f., & krawczyk, n. r. (2001). diferenças da homogeneidade: elementos para o estudo da política educacional em alguns países da américa latina. educação e sociedade, 22(75), 33-43. rosember, g, f. (1992) education, democratization, and inequality in brazil. in: stromquist, n. p. (ed.). woman and education in latin america: knowledge, power and change. boulder, colorado: lynne rienner publishers, 33-46. ruiz, m. c. & schoo, s. (2014) la obligatoriedad de la educación secundaria en américa latina. convergencias y divergencias en cinco países. foro de educación,12(16)., rutledge, michael l. & mitchell, melissa a. (2002) high school biology teachers' knowledge structure, acceptance & teaching evolution. the american biology teacher, 64(1). sguissardi, v. (2002) educação superior no limiar do novo século: traços internacionais e marcas domésticas. revista diálogo educacional, 3(7)121-144. shim, j. m. (2013). teacher's viewpoints about other's actions: implications for multicultural education. transnational curriculum inquiry 10(2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access 24/02/2014> silva, heslley machado. professores de biologia e ensino de evolução: uma perspectiva comparativa em países com contraste de relação entre estado e igreja na américa latina. tese apresentada a faculdade de educação da universidade federal de minas gerais. belo horizonte, 2015. silva, k. a. m. da & fontenele, s. h. de m. (2007) o laicismo no uruguai. a m e r í n d i a, 4(2). souza, p. r. (1995) a educação no mercosul. em aberto, 15(68). trani, r. (2004) i won't teach evolution; it's against my religion. and now for the rest of the story. the american biology teacher, 66(6). submitted: january, 09, 2018 approved: august, 16, 2018 http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/s0104-71832007000100013 http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/s0104-71832007000100013 to cite this article please include all of the following details: strong-wilson, teresa (2019). the question of curriculum in dark times: hannah arendt, w. g. sebald, and teachers as autobiographical subjects. transnational curriculum inquiry 16 (2) p. 37-49 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> the question of curriculum in dark times: hannah arendt, w. g. sebald, and teachers as autobiographical subjects teresa strong-wilson1 mcgill university, canada the problem of studying the curriculum, madeleine grumet (1991) once pointed out, is that we are the curriculum. as william pinar (2011) has reminded us, the “question of the subject” in curriculum studies is based on a double-entendre: curriculum as subject matter but as also concerned with the subject as individual learner. this double meaning, pinar suggests, signals curriculum’s allegorical or “double consciousness” (141). in an allegory, while a specific story is being told, a more general one is also being communicated (pinar 2011). what kinds of stories are being told in curriculum studies presently? and with what implications for teachers as subjects? the dominant one in these “dark times” (arendt, 1968) centres on testing, with repeated episodes of: outcomes-only based assessment; student learning reduced to numbers, the bottom line being whether scores contribute to or detract from a school’s funding, with dire implications for the school, teachers and learners if they fall afoul of pre-set targets and teachers as “clerks” (arendt 1958; greene 1971; 1995) rewarded—or punished—for students’ test scores; (au 2011; rubin 2011). an alternative, continually murmuring, story in curriculum studies paints a more complicated picture, one important strand of which has been articulated through autobiography. the past two decades has seen an explosion in the number of memoirs published, so much so that, even in times of austerity, with bookshops closing left, right and centre, those that remain prominently feature a section dedicated to biographies and autobiographies. if there are writers of memoir, there must also be readers. “it is indeed quite probable that the desire to read auto/biographies of others is a sort of spontaneous reflex of the narratable self’s desire for narration … what orients this search is simply the conviction that each narratable self has a life about which a story can be narrated” (cavarero, 2000, p. 74). but who, or what, is a narratable self? two writers who have considered this question in “dark times” are hannah arendt and w. g. sebald; “dark times” appears in the title of one of arendt’s (1968) books. the broad lineaments of the life stories of hannah arendt (1906-1975) and w.g. sebald (1944-2001), one studying in the domain of political philosophy, the other in literary criticism and social critique, are familiar to those acquainted with their works. arendt and sebald both left germany and lived largely in exile from their homeland, one (arendt) at the beginning of what turned out to be a catastrophic sequence of events and the other (sebald) born at the end of the third reich, in its wake and thus inheriting, with birth, the ‘ineradicable, inescapable, ever-recurring, hideously retrievable 1944’ that was to mark his life course (ozick, 1996, p. 34). arendt makes much of the importance of beginnings while sebald became preoccupied with endings: “the phenomenon of suicide in old age” (sebald in kafatou, 1998, p. 33), this due to the long-term effects of trauma. while neither scholar belongs to curriculum studies, both have written and thought in https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index strong-wilson. the question of curriculum in dark times 38 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> ways that are increasingly being recognized as pertinent to education and especially, educators (e.g., hansen, 2012; joldersma, 2014). at the centre of concern for many in curriculum studies is the subject, an individual, someone who is currently “missing in action,” as william pinar (2011, p. xi) has recently reiterated. this is so despite the fact that action rests on the fact of natality: for arendt, with birth, someone appears in the world, who is distinct from every other being that preceded and will follow him or her, and about whom a story can be told. “the real story in which we are engaged as long as we live has no visible or invisible maker because it is not made. the only “somebody” it reveals is its hero, and it is the only medium in which the originally intangible manifestation of a uniquely distinct “who” can become tangible ex post facto through action and speech” (arendt, 1958/1998, p. 186). when w. g. sebald turned from literary scholarship to prose fiction, he told the stories of people’s lives, based on those of real individuals that he had known or heard about, whose lives had been profoundly affected by what they had experienced or witnessed in the wake of war (particularly, of nazism). while most of the attention on hannah arendt has focused on her political writing (totalitarianism, violence, revolutions), and thinking/judgment, she also wrote, passionately and thoughtfully, about stories, and where one of her main contributions in this domain has been her very un-post-modern insistence that life precedes any story told about it. in other words, the text is secondary. sebald has been heralded as among the most textual, and intertextual, of modern writers, and is often claimed as post-modern in sensibility as well as style. and yet, the salience of the year of sebald’s birth to the kinds of life-stories that he chose, persistently, to tell is tied to a web of lives of actual individuals. in a post-war context, sebald has perhaps contributed most to storying as a form of thinking, even as hannah arendt has helped us theorize the links between action, judging and the stories narrated. in this article, i explore the intersections between arendt’s writing on lives and sebald’s brand of life-writing, with the goal of reflecting on how these intersections inform the question of the autobiographical subject in curriculum studies as it pertains to discernment: the relationship between thinking and judging. i will then turn to consider the implications of these intersections for the teacher as autobiographical subject in dark times. beginnings (arendt) in tracing the roots of the verb ‘to act’ in greek and latin, arendt finds two different trajectories, which divided the verb into two different meanings. the greek archein means to begin, lead, or rule while in latin, the verb agere means to set in motion (viz., ‘lead’). the greek verb prattein means to pass through, achieve or finish and the latin gerere, to ‘bear’ or carry through (arendt, 1958, p. 189). arendt comments that the second meaning has predominated, in that we tend to understand the verb to act as to bring something to completion. however, arendt suggests, the original meaning of action as to begin or set in motion is more closely connected to action as natality: to the fact that when someone is born, a stranger is brought into the world, whose actions and effect on the web of human relationships cannot be predicted. she identifies three characteristics of the web of human relationships: unpredictability, frailty, and intangibility. unpredictablity arises from action and speech as being revelatory: “one discloses one’s self without ever either knowing himself or being able to calculate beforehand whom he reveals” (arendt, 1958, p. 192). the frailty of human affairs comes about because actions are boundless, with the potential “to force open all limitations and cut across all boundaries” (arendt, 1958, p. 190). the intangibility of human affairs has to do with action being the sine qua non definition of https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index strong-wilson. the question of curriculum in dark times 39 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> what it means to be human: the realm of human affairs is constituted through plurality (the fact that each person is distinct from one another) and is brought into being, and only sustained, through the actions of individual human beings. arendt’s conceptualization of story focuses on those stories that concern the narration of a life, which is not surprising, given her interest in action. the first book that arendt wrote was about the life of a young jewish woman, rachel varnhagen, who grew up in the late 18th century in berlin, and whose main struggle was with her jewish identity: “when you are all alone it is hard to decide whether being different is a blemish or a distinction. when you have nothing at all to cling to, you choose in the end to cling to the thing that sets you off from others” (arendt, 1957, p. 178). arendt later published men in dark times, which combines narration with analysis of key episodes from the lives of ten individuals (men and women) whose lives spanned the first half of the twentieth century and who were affected by “its political catastrophes, its moral disasters, and its astonishing development of the arts and sciences” (arendt, 1968, p. vii). “even in the darkest of times we have the right to expect some illumination,” says arendt; this light can come from ideas but equally from “the uncertain, flickering, and often weak light that some men and women, in their lives and their works, will kindle” (p. ix). out of action thus begins a story, where “[t]he trouble is that whatever the character and content of the subsequent story may be, whether it is played in private or public life, whether it involves many or few actors, its full meaning can reveal itself only when it has ended” (p. 192). it therefore falls to others to tell one’s story. arendt’s conceptualization of life writing rests primarily on the genre of biography. autobiography, in arendt’s perception, might be likened to the ‘strong man’ theory of action which attributes all beginnings and endings to one actor, this being a myth since others help bring into being what one has initiated. also, actors—meaning those who act—do but they also suffer, which means that we are each affected by what we ourselves do as well as what others do. on arendt’s terms, autobiography turns the actor into a maker, thus resting on that “strange pretense of a self that makes himself an other in order to be able to tell his own story” (cavarero, 2000, p. 84). the shape of someone’s life, arendt maintained, could only be seen by someone other than the one who lived it. one cannot live one’s life, in its flux of events, and also make it into a story at the same time. this principle is well-illustrated by karen blixon (pseudonym for isak dinasen), whose work both arendt and cavarero draw on, and who tells the story of a man who is awakened in the middle of the night by a great noise and runs outside, here and there, until he finds and repairs the leak in the dike. in the morning, the path made by his footsteps form the shape of a stork. life can feel like this, the fable intimates—a stumbling around in the dark, blindly, doing one’s utmost, until life ends. and yet, the distinctiveness of a life is such that it leaves something behind. “life cannot be lived like a story, because the story always comes afterwards… the one who walks on the ground cannot see the figure that his/her footsteps leave behind, and so he/she needs another perspective,” namely that of a storyteller “to trace the design” (cavarero, p. 3; emphasis in the original). eichmann arendt’s eichmann in jerusalem shares with rahel varnhagen and men in dark times that peculiar combination of narration and analysis that we also see in other life writing, like carolyn steedman’s. steedman brings her social historian lens on class to the project of writing her own and her mother’s lives, fusing narration with constructing an argument around class. steedman called her narrative writing ‘case study’: “casestudy presents the ebb and flow of memory, the structure of dreams, the stories that people tell to explain themselves to others” (steedman, 2008, p. 21). https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index strong-wilson. the question of curriculum in dark times 40 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> whatever else eichmann in jerusalem is (a report, a treatise on evil), it is also a case study of one man (benhabib, 1996). it is a case study that carries certain resemblances to the genre of biography, in that while it focuses on eichmann’s trial and that period of his adult life with which the trial was concerned to pass judgment on, it also narrates eichmann’s beginnings, as it also narrates the manner of his ending, including his last words. arendt became interested in: with how eichmann explained himself within the sticky situation in which he found himself in israel in accounting for his actions during the war. it can be risky, under any circumstances, to write about the life of a perpetrator. lawrence binet (2012) reflects on this problem in hhhh, which is an account of reinhardt heydrich’s assassination but that also entails narrating heydrich’s story. binet regularly interrupts the narrative with meta-reflections on different ways in which the story could be constructed. binet’s real interest, he maintains, is in the story of gabcik, and the story binet’s father told him of the czeck resistance, which resulted in gabcik’s killing of heydrich. in its meta-fictive form, binet’s hhhh draws attention to the fact that how the story is told can often be as important as the story itself. in the opening to her 1964 postscript to the eichmann book, added one year after the book’s original publication (1963), arendt explains that “[t]his book contains a trial report, and its main source is the transcript of the trial proceedings which was distributed to the press in jerusalem” (p. 280; arendt’s emphasis). however, the book was clearly much more than that, bringing to bear arendt’s acuity of perceptions on the trial and ultimately, on the man himself. eichmann was someone that arendt came to know; she would even say, “i know him well” (arendt, the last interview, p. 43). i am interested in how this event (namely, arendt’s attending of eichmann’s trial and her decision to report on it) is tied to arendt’s interest in story, on the one hand, and in thinking and judgment on the other. adolf eichmann falls under arendt’s description (in the human condition) of someone around whose neck it would have been better that a millstone be slung and the person thrown into the ocean. eichmann’s self-described ‘hard luck’ story became tragic for millions of others who were affected by his actions, directly or indirectly. the israeli court clarified with respect to “crimes committed en masse”: “the degree of responsibility increases as we draw further away from the man who uses the fatal instrument with his own hands” (judgment cited in arendt, 2006, pp. 246-7; emphasis added by arendt). eichmann may not have killed any person, but he was responsible for transporting countless millions to their death. if it were better that a millstone had been tied around eichmann’s neck and that he be cast in the sea, it is because his name (and life) had become synonymous, for arendt, with “the banality of evil” (p. 252). the subtitle of arendt’s book indicates that it is a “report” but on this thesis. yet, the phrase appears only once, on the last page of the last chapter, which concludes with eichmann’s last words, after having ascended the gallows “with great dignity” (p. 252). he says, arendt reports: “after a short while, gentlemen, we shall all meet again. such is the fate of all men. long live germany, long live argentina, long live austria. i shall not forget them” (p. 252; arendt’s emphasis). arendt draws attention to the clichés that, like a bad refrain, could be detected throughout his speaking during the trial: “it was as though in those last minutes he was summing up the lesson that this long course in human wickedness had taught us—the lesson of the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil” (p. 252; arendt’s emphasis). it would have to wait for arendt’s the life of the mind before she turned her mind once more to the relationship between thinking (and its absence) and evil, a subject that she had first considered conceptually in the origins of totalitarianism, where she had originally argued that nazism constituted a new form of (kant’s) “radical evil” (arendt, 1951). in the life of the mind, it was clear that her thinking on the subject had changed https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index strong-wilson. the question of curriculum in dark times 41 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> by her encounter with eichmann: “factually, my preoccupation with mental activities has two rather different origins. the immediate impulse came from my attending the eichmann trial in jerusalem” (arendt, 1978, p. 3). arendt then goes on to narrate how while we have learned (in school, as part of tradition) that evil is something “demonic” (p. 3), in eichmann, she was “confronted” with something “utterly different and still undeniably factual. i was struck by a manifest shallowness in the doer that made it impossible to trace the uncontestable evil of his deeds to any deeper level of roots or motives. the deeds were monstrous but the doer—at least the very effective one now on trial—was quite ordinary, commonplace, and neither demonic nor monstrous” (p. 4). to be a hero, arendt explains, originally meant to venture out from one’s hiding place, the privacy of the self, to “act and speak at all, to insert one’s self into the world and begin a story of one’s own” (arendt, 1958, p. 186). the key words here are: “a story of one’s own.” “the last time eichmann recalled having tried something on his own was in september, 1941” (arendt, 2006, p. 79), arendt wryly observes. “eichmann remembered only moods and the catch phrases he made up to go with them” (p. 62), one being the ‘elation’ that also marked his funeral oration. arendt closely tied thinking with judging; the two are distinct but related activities of the mind. thinking, at its most elemental, involves the socratic two-in-one. socrates tells the “thick-headed” hippias that he must be fortunate to go home and not be faced with “an obnoxious fellow” who “cross-examines” everything he says (arendt, 1978, p. 188). socrates explains that when he goes home, he is not alone; he finds himself in the company of himself. ultimately, arendt says, we have to come to an agreement with ourselves, for we have to live with ourselves. to do otherwise is to live a life of contradiction, like shakespeare’s richard iii who, when alone, finds himself at war (“fly: what! from myself? great reason why:/lest i revenge. what! myself upon myself?”) but who, when with others like him, finds the necessary courage to commit crimes: “conscience is but a word that cowards use” (shakespeare cited in arendt, 1978, p. 189). while richard iii may have had his moments of feeling troubled, by and large, arendt says, those who do not practice that inner dialogue remain as one: one who does not mind to contradict himself (because he will not be faced with the contradiction): “this means he will never be either able or willing to account for what he says or does” (p. 191). thinking, as arendt is at pains to point out, is an activity; it continues examining and re-examining, to the point of undoing thoughts already made: “thinking means that each time you are confronted with some difficulty in life you have to make up your mind anew” (p. 177). thinking happens behind closed doors, as it were; it is invisible to others, unless made manifest (e.g., through writing) and it works with representations. judging deals with particulars; with things “close at hand” (p. 193). judging is the manifestation of thought in situations, in life itself; it consists in “the ability to tell right from wrong, beautiful from ugly” (p. 193). in addressing the relation between thinking and judging, arendt explains that judging is the “by-product of the liberating effect of thinking” (p. 193). if thinking allows for this ability to think for oneself, in the privacy of oneself, and therefore for refusing, desisting, and not following or being swept up in what others believe, this “purging” ability is freeing (p.192); it allows for the political expression of difference, which is freeing, allowing the political expression of difference, which is judging: of saying, this is wrong, or, this is right, then acting otherwise than the norm. in eichmann in jerusalem, arendt occupies the place of the storyteller who comes afterwards, here to tell eichmann’s story, not as he had narrated it, through his interviews with sassen in argentina or in court (eichmann was also busy writing his autobiography while in prison in israel), but to illuminate what she saw as the devastating ‘design’ of his unthinking life. the story has come to stand as a “lesson” (arendt, 2006, p. 288): a https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index strong-wilson. the question of curriculum in dark times 42 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> cautionary tale of the catastrophic consequences of thoughtlessness: eichmann’s inability to imagine another perspective than his own because insulated from reality through an obdurate focus on himself. eichmann was filled with “a storehouse … [of] human-interest stories of the worst type” (arendt, 2006, p. 81)—of episodes that filled him with ‘elation’ at precisely inappropriate moments when a thinking person would have exercised judgment. in this, eichmann’s life was exemplary while also being completely unheroic, for he failed to think for himself and therefore begin a story of his own. i admit that i have wondered whether, in the heat of the moment of the trial, eichmann deceived arendt; whether he was in greater control of his public appearance than arendt gave him credit for; whether he knew full well his lies and the effect of his lies on others; whether he was, if not the originator of the final solution, their perfect instrument. i wonder if arendt is too vehement in her assertion that eichmann had no ideological beliefs of his own. i have read the english version of the transcript of israeli investigator’s avner less’ pre-trial interview with eichmann (eichman & van lang, 1983). i have also considered such recent books as eichmann before jerusalem by german scholar bettina stangneth (2014), which is based on documents arendt would not have had access to at the time of her writing. i wonder if arendt’s appraisal of eichmann is itself a judgment that does not take account of a fuller picture, and whether she simply dug in her heels when challenged. i do not yet have a definitive answer to my questions, although i know that arendt admitted to ‘cross-examining’ herself on this point of eichmann’s banality, while also squarely facing the skepticism of many others, including those she trusted, like her mentor, karl jaspers (young-bruehl, 2004). i have found it useful to compare arendt’s perspective with that of w.g. sebald, another german writer and scholar, also deeply preoccupied with questions raised by the holocaust and to whom stories, based on real lives, became central to thinking through difficult questions. endings (sebald) sebald writes in a mode of belatedness: of one who comes after, who is conscious of being too late to change events that have already happened, but where thinking is actively trying to catch up: to understand the significance of events painful to remember or to hear about. sebald writes in the grey space of what cathy caruth (1995) has called the delay, or interval, of trauma. he was interested by the phenomenon of suicide in old age: of the density that memory acquires over time as it settles. what contributes to this density are ‘coincidences’ or congruencies: the accumulated layers of adjacent, yet related, events, facts, thoughts and emotions. a sense of their interrelatedness builds and builds until the point when understanding begins to crystallize and in crystallizing, also threatens to unravel: not unlike arendt’s image of thinking. sebald’s interest in lives postdates his interest in stories. for most of his adult life, he had been a literary scholar. his graduate work (masters and doctoral) was based on german authors and he had certainly read, even steeped himself, in german post-war fictional writers. while sebald began his university studies in germany, he soon moved to switzerland, not being able to abide the intellectual atmosphere of the german postwar university. he then accepted a position at the university of east anglia, in the united kingdom, and remained teaching there for the rest of his life, in exile from his native germany save for periodic visits home. in 1997, he returned to germany to give a series of lectures, which were later published as the natural history of destruction. one of the main subjects of those lectures is german post-war literature and by extension, germany itself and its responsibility. sebald comments: “when we turn to take a retrospective view, particularly of the years 1930 to 1950, we are always looking and looking away at the https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index strong-wilson. the question of curriculum in dark times 43 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> same time. as a result, the works produced by german authors after the war are often marked by a half-consciousness or false consciousness designed to consolidate the extremely precarious position of those writers in a society that was morally almost entirely discredited” (p. ix). by ‘half’ or ‘false’ consciousness, sebald was referring to the “business” of covering over the legacy and burden of the past, in which many were implicated. as arendt herself observed about germany in the postwar period, admissions of collective guilt served to “whitewash … those who had done something… where all are guilty, no one is” (2003, p. 28), and where many of those in government or business who had been in power or benefited during the war, discretely remained so afterwards. arendt uses as a case in point civil servants, which she says hitler had inherited from the weimar republic and adenauer inherited from the nazis, “without much difficulty” (2003, p. 35). late in his life, sebald made a turn from scholarly criticism to the writing of prose fiction, and where his own prose fiction became a study in how to write auto/biographically “at a slant” yet with the weight of conscience, about those very subjects that german post-war writers were avoiding, or only pretending to write about. i pause here over his account of alfred andersch—a popular, successful post-war german writer who bears a certain uncanny resemblance to arendt’s eichmann. andersch andersch was a radio broadcaster, publisher and later, novelist. born in 1914 in munich, he was briefly detained in dachau (for three months) and rather than fly to switzerland, he remained in germany, later claiming the epithet of internal emigrant. an internal emigrant was considered to be someone who was resident in germany during the nazi period but not a participant—who was in exile and thus in resistance in every way but physically and geographically. however, sebald questions this stance, pointing to andersch’s work at lehmann’s verlagbuchhandlung; the publisher openly supported the nazi policies on race and “racial hygiene” (p. 116). sebald paints andersch as ambitious—an opportunist who married a jewish woman, ostensibly to protect her from the nuremberg laws, but whose family was also quite well off. a year later, in june 1942, when the final solution was being implemented, he divorced her, at the same time as he was applying for membership in an elite german club of writers (the reich chamber of literature), thus placing his wife in a precarious position. andersch was called up to the front, applying for a “cushy job in the air ministry” although he ended up in a different unit (p. 122). he was pleasantly surprised to be sent to war: riding on a motorbike through italy, drinking chianti in little villages: “wartime tourism”, as sebald calls it (p. 123). sebald quotes from andersch’s published letters: “it’s amazing… to think of all i’ve seen this year” (in sebald, p. 123). sebald’s andersch sounds uncannily like arendt’s depiction of eichmann, as someone besotted with their own experience and who cannot see the forest for the trees, and where that same word, ‘elation’, reoccurs: “andersch was not the only middle-class german citizen to feel a certain elation in the [war] experience” (sebald, p. 123). perhaps most damning is sebald’s critique of andersch’s published post-war fiction, which contain certain linguistic infelicities, even as andersch was trying at this point to re-invent himself as the next great german writer and exponent of a “new aesthetic” (sebald, p. 131). in andersch’s novel, die rote, sebald wryly notes, while taking germany’s “notorious past as its subject” the book nevertheless uses “auschwitz as a kind of background to set the scene” in such a way that strikes sebald as obscene (p. 134). his first novel, which features a jewish girl that the hero, gregor, is in love with, contains descriptions based on racial characteristics, inserted to account for gregor’s unaccountable attraction. sebald draws attention to german jargon and turns of phrase in https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index strong-wilson. the question of curriculum in dark times 44 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> andersch’s prose, which reaches strained limits with phrases which remained inappropriately popular after the war: “efraim finds himself at a party with anna when he overhears someone he has never met before saying that he intends to go on making merry “bis zur vergasung” (“until i’m gassed”), a particularly notorious german phrase, still quite prevalent in the postwar years, which must have entered the popular vocabulary in the 1940s” (p. 137). unrecounted throughout these natural history of destruction lectures, sebald is reacting to a moral decrepitude that he sees in many post-war german writers at the same time as, unawares, he is seeking the form that his own auto/biographical prose fiction will assume. there are several characteristics of sebald’s prose fiction germane to the discussion of the relation between lives and stories. sebald’s stories are based on the lives of real people. the lives that he consistently explored were those affected by contact with the policies and practices of nazism. lives do not exist in isolation from one another but (as in arendt’s web of human plurality) are impacted, directly or indirectly, from encounters with others. the phenomenon of coincidence or contiguity pervades his writing. this contributes to a ‘nesting’ effect in his narratives, a technique that he learned from other writers (e.g., thomas barnhardt, austrian writer). through the presence of a narrator— someone who is a walker and a wanderer—who bears a remarkable likeness to sebald and whose (auto)biographical queries inform the narrative, a personal accountability is also introduced. throughout his writings is the practice of writing about a difficult subject—“invisible subject”—that the reader senses is on the writer’s mind and conscience and that ‘infects’ the reader in turn, through the structure of ‘writing at a slant’ (e.g., the nesting technique) such that the sense of something awry builds slowly and inexorably (strong-wilson, 2015). in writing in this way, sebald was deliberately marking his departure from postwar german writers (like andersch), while also addressing the moral weight and burden of a subject that weighed heavily on his mind and that impacted his life deeply, given where he was born and when. one of the first narratives that sebald composed was of his elementary teacher, paul bereyter, and it signaled his interest in the manner of a life’s ending—its slow destruction and unravelling. the story appears as one of four in his collection, the emigrants, which was the first of sebald’s writings to be published in english in north america (sebald, 1986). paul committed suicide by lying on the railway tracks close to his birthplace as well as where he had taught sebald and his peers once upon a time. paul was part jewish. he finished his teacher training just as the nuremberg laws were about to come into effect, so instead of teaching (from which he was barred), he was exiled to france where he remained until he returned to germany, served in the army (which by that time was less picky about its recruits) and then taught in the same community from which he was banished long ago. late in his life, after retiring, paul spent his time reading about the lives of others who had committed suicide, overcome by the long-term destructive effects that nazism had exerted on their lives. this deepening perturbation, sebald suggests, led to bereyter’s choosing to lay himself down on the rails and to watch the train arriving to carry him (as it had carried others, like him) to his death. sebald himself died untowardly from a heart attack, while driving, this in 2001. several of sebald’s writings have been published posthumously. one of these is a co-authored collection with jan peter tripp, translated as unrecounted. michael hamburger, who translated other of sebald’s works, points out that tripp and sebald were contemporaries, even close friends; they both grew up in the same area and went to school together. they were both exposed to the same events and, importantly, shared a https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index strong-wilson. the question of curriculum in dark times 45 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> similar sensibility. unrecounted assembles 33 of sebald’s poems (haiku) with 33 of tripp’s lithographs. it is a haunting collection, due to the conjunction of sebald’s poems (e.g. “unrecounted/always it will remain/the story of the averted/faces”— sebald & tripp, 2004, p. 81) with tripp’s artful lithographs, which are all of eyes, most those of real individuals, like borges and beckett and including sebald and tripp. the eyes look preoccupied: with thinking, discerning, noticing; ever so slightly averted, because the sight is difficult to bear, attention nevertheless maintained. the question of the autobiographical teaching subject in dark times in his re-visiting of the implications of the eight-year study on curriculum studies, william pinar (2011) considers the place of ralph tyler, who he dubs curriculum’s dr. jekyll and mr. hyde. the progressive education association undertook a longitudinal study of the curricula of american secondary classrooms in the 1930s. tyler, then research director of the committee on evaluation and recording, used the occasion to develop his principles of curriculum and instruction, a slim volume first published in 1949 but reprinted since several times, the most recent being 2013. tyler’s four ‘principles’ of curricular construction—devise objectives, develop a teaching/learning plan, organize the classroom, and assess student learning—have been instilled in new teachers, with little recognition that this way of doing curriculum represents only one possible approach, and that the method is essentially driven by the last criterion: assessment (pinar, 2011). if assessment has been the threat hanging over students, it has also been systematically applied to teachers, in the wake of the bush administration’s educational legislation, no child left behind followed by obama’s race to the top. tyler’s rationale was itself based on taylorism, an approach to labour management initiated in the 1910s that was intended to optimize economic efficiency. a task was divided into component parts, with a worker assigned each part, which was then subject to an intensive schedule so as to maximize worker productivity and, by extension, profits to the company. tyler translated this instrumental, “social engineering” approach into teaching and learning in the classroom (pinar, 2011, p. 83). as pinar (2011) points out, curriculum reform can take one of two forms: reorganization or reconstruction. reorganization “alters the institutional forms through which the intellectual content is structured” (p. 78) and results in surface changes to what pinar calls the “molds” into which education is poured. the eight-year study, despite its laudable goals, was of this kind (pinar, 2011); indeed, most curriculum reform belongs in this category. deeper changes are called for by curriculum reconstruction, which reconfigures “intellectual content in light of new knowledge”, which leads to “reshaping the communicative and institutional forms” through which that content is enacted (p. 78). reconstruction calls for the kind of experimentation in which teachers intellectually engage with subject matter and actively look for new forms through which to teach it; this kind of curriculum change—subjective and social reconstruction—has typically happened by teachers, individually or collectively, in the classroom and/or through certain kinds of professional development. tyler was a circumspect writer, allowing for his words to be taken in one of two ways. in my curriculum foundations class, tyler is juxtaposed with dewey, where dewey provides a useful counterpoint. tyler, as dr. jekyll, appears as the benign, affable, progressive fellow, the facilitator who helps teachers “look critically at the consequences of their actions” (kridel & bullough, 2007, p. 96 cited in pinar, 2011, p. 83). through close study, especially in relation to dewey, who uses some of the same words but differently (e.g., “educational experience”), mr. hyde begins to appear: the one who subsumes teachers under the work of the curriculum planner, who positions teachers as manipulating conditions so as to produce desired results, and for whom, as the student https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index strong-wilson. the question of curriculum in dark times 46 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> becomes simply a cipher, so too does the teacher: an indicator of the health of outcomes of the state curriculum. as pinar notes, “what tyler ‘facilitated’ was behaviorism’s invasive incursion into mainstream educational practices” (p. 84) which renders teachers as “bureaucrats” (p. 85). this abysmal vision of teachers as mere clerks within a system indifferent to student and teacher needs, desires, dreams and ambitions, was remarked on by maxine greene in her teacher as stranger, published only a few short years after arendt’s eichmann in jerusalem. greene was profoundly influenced by arendt’s work, and was the first to meaningfully transpose arendt’s theories of action and judgment into education. greene especially drew on arendt’s idea of action as beginning: the teacher as initiator. greene also emphasized teacher thinking as judgment: the teacher being wide awake and critical of ideological trappings of curriculum language, while also being a courageous actor: someone who makes a positive and constructive difference through her actions (wilson, 2003). examining the links between narration of one’s own/another’s story and acts of discernment and judging, especially during dark times when teachers are being subjected to curricular reorganization rather than being invited to be subjects of curricular reconstruction, would involve looking at teacher narratives more closely—a task for another paper. space only permits me to very briefly indicate two that might be of interest—two that have been seminal to the genre of teacher autobiography, sylvia ashton-warner’s (1963) teacher, and frank mccourt’s (2005) teacher man—and where, in both stories, even as we hear or see the teacher authors seeking an appropriate form and language for narrating a teacher self in flux, we also see how they struggle with a curriculum that would constrain or diminish their discernment in teaching. ashtonwarner’s is an unusual compilation of narrative, poetry, stream of consciousness dreamlike thought and reverie, classroom dialogue, curriculum description and photographs, all centered on ashton-warner’s teaching very young maori children in a primary school in new zealand, this at a time when a standard british text-book approach to the teaching of reading was the norm to be applied, and inspectors monitored its (colonial) implementation. ashton-warner resists, developing what she called an organic approach to reading that was grounded in the words and concepts meaningful in the maori children’s immediate, everyday lives. noted author, memoirist and former classroom teacher, maxine hong kingston, who supplied the book’s foreword in the 1986 reprint, wrote: “the very week that i write this, the reagan administration is attacking bilingual education programs. urgently, teacher shows how to respect the language that the child already has, and how to go from there to english. i hope its re-publication gives teachers fuel” (kingston, 1986, p. 9). mccourt’s is a more complex example, riddled as it is with mccourt’s own stereotypes and clichés of student and teacher life in public and private school teaching in 1960s to 1980s new york city—echoes of the falseness in the discourses of sebald’s andersch and arendt’s eichmann—brought on by his encounters with objectives, lesson plans, textbooks, rules and strictures policed by principals and school administrators. we endure this even as we witness mccourt genuinely struggling with being and becoming a teacher despite the curriculum, sometimes regretting (yet learning from) his impromptu choices in the classroom and increasingly, rising to the occasion in improbable, stunning epiphanies—of teaching but also of finally discerning his genuine love and care for his students. we wait until almost the end of his teaching career, and of his narrative, before we hear him say, addressing his teacher self: “the mask is mostly off and i can breathe” (p. 244). a “poor curriculum,” pinar (2015) reminds us, is “one stripped of its distractions” (p. xiii). https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index strong-wilson. the question of curriculum in dark times 47 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> conclusion more than ever, discernment is necessary in teaching: the kind of discernment that can contribute to subjective reconstruction rather than to a shuffling of the curricular pieces. arendt and sebald, in the wake of catastrophic events within their country of origin, critically examined the highly compromised self-descriptions of individuals implicated in pursuing their own advancement during those times, drawing distinctions between what arendt and sebald judged as appropriate and inappropriate ways of responding to the situation. both arendt and sebald turned to biographical forms of writing—arendt to the case study; sebald to literary prose fiction—to probe the lives of individuals, and where arendt, in her most famous case study, offered an analytical narrative report of a perpetrator, while sebald chose to narrate the lives of those who, enduring, suffered. sebald’s biographical writing, though, leans strongly towards an autobiographical form, through the sebaldian narrator who bears an uncanny (and visually, unmistakable) resemblance to sebald himself, thus aligning the narrator’s struggle to understand with those individuals who he meets and whose stories he listens to. threaded through arendt’s and sebald’s writings is their own preoccupation (as subjects) with coming to terms with a dark and baffling subject. for both, discernment is paramount; it is what remains when all other possibilities have been considered. it lies in those searching, troubled eyes in sebald and tripp’s unrecounted, and the indissoluble ties between thinking and judging in arendt, with her cautionary tale of an unthinking eichmann. while the narrative examples offered by arendt and sebald may appear stark in the grey light of the present in education, it is a time overshadowed by people (teachers and students) being reduced to numbers, instruments, behaviours serving a hidden agenda. behind the examples in each case (arendt, sebald) lies a theory, which is also a personal commitment: to discernment in word and deed. in curriculum terms, this discernment and commitment brings us back to subjective reconstruction, to the “recurring question of the subject” (pinar, 2011) which, as ashton-warner’s and mccourt’s autobiographical narratives indicate, animate every day of teachers’ lives through the stories we tell or that come to be told by others whose paths crossed ours. notes 1 teresa.strong-wilson@mcgill.ca references aoki, t. (2004). curriculum in a new key. william pinar & rita irwin (eds.). lawrence erlbaum. arendt, h. (1951). the origins of totalitarianism. harcourt brace. arendt, h. (1957). rahel varnhagen: the life of a jewess. london: publishing for the institute by the east and west library. arendt, h. (1958). the human condition. chicago: university of chicago press. arendt, h. (1968). men in dark times. harcourt brace. arendt, h. (1978). the life of the mind. san diego: harcourt. arendt, h. (2006). eichmann in jerusalem: a report on the banality of evil. new york: penguin books. arendt, h. (2003). responsibility and judgment. jerome kohn (ed.). new york: schocken books. arendt, h. (2013). the last interview, and other conversations. brooklyn: melville house. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index strong-wilson. the question of curriculum in dark times 48 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> ashton-warner, s. (1986). teacher. new york: simon and schuster. au, w. (2011). teaching under the new taylorism: high-stakes testing and the standardization of the 21st century curriculum. journal of curriculum studies, 43 (1), 25-45. benhabib, s. (1996). identity, perspective and narrative in hannah arendt’s “eichmann in jerusalem.” history and memory, 8 (2), 85-59. binet, l. (2012). hhhh. new york: farrar, strauss & giroux. caruth, c. (1995). recapturing the past: introduction. in c. caruth (ed.), trauma: explorations in memory (pp. 151-157). baltimore, maryland: johns hopkins university press. cavarero, a. (2000). relating narratives: storytelling and selfhood. london: routledge. eichmann, a & von lang, j. (1983). eichmann interrogated: transcripts from the archives of the israeli police. new york: farrar, strauss & giroux. greene, m. (1973). teacher as stranger. belmont, ca: wadsorth publishing. greene, m. (1995). releasing the imagination. san francisco: jossey-bass. grumet, m. (1991). curriculum and the art of daily life. in g. willis & w. h. schubert (eds.), reflections from the heart of educational inquiry: understanding curriculum and teaching through the arts (pp. 74-89). new york: state university of new york press. hamburger, m. (2004). translator’s note. in w. g. sebald, & j. p. tripp, unrecounted (pp. 7-12). new york: new directions. hansen, d. t. (2012). w.g. sebald and the tasks of ethical and moral remembrance. philosophy of education, 125-133. joldersma, c. (2014). benjamin’s angel of history and the work of mourning in ethical remembrance: understanding the effect of w.g. sebald’s novels in the classroom. studies in philosophy and education, 33: 135-147. kafatou, s. (1998). an interview with w. g. sebald. harvard review, 15, 31–35. kingston, m. h. (1984). foreword. in s. ashton-warner, teacher (pp. 7-9). new york: simon and schuster. mccourt, f. (2005). teacher man. new york: scribner. ozick, c. (1996, dec. 16). the posthumous sublime. the new republic 215, no. 25, 3335. pinar, w. (2011). the character of curriculum studies: bildung, currere, and the recurring question of the subject. new york: palgrave macmillan. pinar, w. (2015). preface (1976). in w. f. pinar & m. r. grumet (eds.), toward a poor curriculum (pp. xiii-xvii). kingston, ny: educator’s international press. rubin, d. i. (2011). the disheartened teacher: living in the age of standardization, highstakes assessments, and no child left behind (nclb). changing english, 19 (4), 407-416. sebald, w. g. (1996). the emigrants. new york: new directions. sebald, w. g. (2001). austerlitz. new york: modern library. sebald, w. g. (2003). on the natural history of destruction. anthea bell (trans.). toronto: vintage canada. sebald, w.g., & tripp, j. p. (2004). unrecounted. new york: new directions. stangneth, b. (2014). eichmann before jerusalem: the unexamined life of a mass murderer. ruth martin (trans.). new york: alfred knopf. steedman, c. (2008). landscape for a good woman: a story of two lives. new brunswick, nj: rutgers university press. strong-wilson, t. (2015). phantom traces: exploring a hermeneutical approach to autobiography in curriculum studies. journal of curriculum studies. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index strong-wilson. the question of curriculum in dark times 49 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> wilson, t. (2003). maxine’s table: connecting action with imagination in the thought of maxine greene and hannah arendt. educational theory, 52 (2), 203-20. young-bruehl, e. (2004). hannah arendt: for love of the world. 2d ed. new haven: yale university press. submitted: november, 20th, 2019. approved: december, 03rd, 2019. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index to cite this article please include all of the following details: oliveira, anna luiza; oliveira, gustavo gilson (2019). curriculum policies of gender and sexuality in brazil: between biomedical, socio-juridical and neoconservative discourses. transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 p. 38-60 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> curriculum policies of gender and sexuality in brazil: between biomedical, sociojuridical and neoconservative discourses anna luiza a. r. martins de oliveira1 gustavo gilson sousa de oliveira2 federal university of pernambuco, brazil introduction this article analyzes, from a poststructuralist matrix, the trajectory of the curriculum policies of gender and sexuality in brazil. it conceives curriculum policies as disputes to constitute meanings about/in the curricular text (lopes, 2018), discursive articulations produced continuously from a negotiation with other existing discourses and that involves different instances as: multilateral agencies, media, ministries, secretariats, schools and social movements (lopes & macedo, 2011, macedo, 2013). producing meanings, in this sense, always involves a pedagogical dimension which attributes to discourse an authority that is based on the pre-established and reiterated and a performative dimension that obliterates any previous or original presence (bhaba, 2005, p. 206). like all discursive formations, curriculum policies are mutable and polysemic codifications, characterized by a "radical contingency" or by their "intrinsic instability" (glynos & howarth, 2018). they move intentionalities, establish symbolic places for subjects and institutions. despite their fluid and decentered property, they are momentarily fixed when, through articulatory practices, a text is produced. the fixation is only possible within the hegemony. it is important to emphasize that "articulation implies the construction of a new synthesis in which the reconstitution of the fragments is artificial, contingent. it does not restore an original organic unity "(burity, 1997, p.54). what makes the regularity of discursive structures possible are the "nodal points" (laclau & mouffe, 2015), points of reference in a discourse that connect partially fixed systems of meaning and create a chain of equivalence between them. totality though unachievable is an inescapable imaginary ideal. curriculum policies are also organized, therefore, under the projection of this ideal horizon. the articulation of chains of equivalence and difference around the nodal points is what produces the illusion of the totality of the structure. the construction of these articulations only becomes possible in the context of a relation with the constitutive exterior in a disputed (inter)discursive field. the articulation requires the presence of a difference, a constitutive exterior to those who oppose it. the relation between the logics of difference and equivalence, then, is what guarantees the temporary closing of discursive systems. as macedo (2008) highlights, discourses that condense demands from different groups and also add elaborated senses in earlier times by institutions that maintain their authority https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index oliveira, oliveira. curriculum policies of gender and sexuality in brazil 39 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> are always more effective in the displacement of the social structure, because they generate the fantasy of completeness, of overcoming the radical contingency of social relations. "the discourse starts to present itself not as an alternative within the system, but as the political alternative to the system itself". (p.15) based on these assumptions, we discuss the curriculum policies of gender and sexuality produced in brazil, trying to reveal their contingency, historicity, the structures and conditions that made them possible, especially the contexts of hegemonic dispute and processes of articulation of different logics and theoretical, moral and political practices. in accordance to carrara (2015) we have been experiencing a transition from what foucault (1988) postulated as the modern sexuality device, based on the articulation between an anatomo-politics of the human body and a biopolitics of the population, to a new device or regime of articulated sexuality, specially, over the notions of human rights and sexual rights. at the same time that the principles of the modern device subordinated the legitimacy of sexual relations to their reproductive potential and the strengthening of affective bonds between reproductive couples, the new regime assumed sexuality from the criteria of pleasure and well-being of individuals and collectivities. this change in the field of morality would also correspond to a transformation in the fields of rationality and sexual politics. in the field of rationality, while the sex ratio of the modern regime would operate mainly through the biomedical and psychiatric logics of natural instincts and sexual pathologies, the rationality of the new regime would assume the cultural, socially constructed, plastic and dynamic character of sexuality and its relations with the gender, affectivity and other dimensions of life. in the field of sexual politics, in particular, the articulation between the discipline of bodies and the biopolitical governance of populations by the state, in the name of categories such as race or body of the nation, would be definitively challenged by notions such as recognition, access to citizenship, protection of vulnerable groups and guarantee of sexual rights. for carrara (2015), the possible advent of a new sexuality regime since the last two decades of the 20th century has been the result of a complex and multifaceted sociohistorical process that has been developed, specially, from the political activism of feminists and lgbt movements, in the period post-world war ii. the fight for gender equality, for the consolidation of the dignity and the citizenship of lgbt people and for national and international policies in the field of protection and combat to sexual violence and other types of violence against women, children, gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transvestites, transsexuals, and other vulnerable groups would have played a crucial role in shifting the themes of the debates on sexuality and sexual morality from the biomedical and psychopathological field to the field of human rights. in this sense, most feminist and lgbt activists and intellectuals tend to notice the features of the constitution of this new regime as important political advances in relation to the dominant sexuality device. nevertheless, carrara (2015) highlights that the new regime also presents its own models of classification and hierarchical sexual behaviors and identities, as well as its mechanisms of standardization, regulation, patrolling and controlling, which may be linked to mechanisms and strategies of governance and biopower. it is also important to mention that carrara (2015) does not postulate the relationship between these two sexual regimes as being a simple opposite relation, mutually exclusionary, or a historical succession. carrara admits that the proposed hypothesis is an attempt of formalization it does not have the intension to be a direct representation or an exhaustive explanation of reality which seeks to contribute to the https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index oliveira, oliveira. curriculum policies of gender and sexuality in brazil 40 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> construction of an interpretive framework founded on an extremely complex and dynamic context, crossed by lines of force and escape points that are often unpredictable. it is noticeable, therefore, that sexual politics, in its heterogeneous and unstable character, articulates, in each historical moment and national context, conceptions, values and intervention techniques of both regimes. this, obviously, does not mean that in this patchwork quilt, that are contemporary sexual politics, some colors and shapes do not predominate or that some lines of force are highlighted and draw a possible horizon of transformations. [...] finally, sexual policies are dynamic and the destiny of the sexuality device remains undefined. as stated above, the postulation of these two secular regimes of sexuality and, most importantly, the process of transition from the first to the second is a formal construction. its value must be stablished only when it becomes able, from the elaboration of a more comprehensive interpretative framework, to contribute for the generation of new ethnographic research or other results from different ethnographic investments already made. (carrara, 2015, pp. 335-336) based on the hypothesis outlined by carrara (2015), we propose an expansion of the elements and analysis strategies on the trajectory of curriculum policies of gender and sexuality in brazil, over the last two decades. thus, we investigate first, to what extent and how it is possible to observe in the field of curriculum policies this displacement of hegemony in discourses centered on the biomedical, hygienist and eugenic models of control of sexuality for a hegemonic regime of articulated discourses around the sociojuridical notions of citizenship and rights. initially, there is a presentation of some elements that allow us to observe how the logics, theoretical, moral, and political practices of the biomedical/biopolitical regime directly and indirectly influenced the process of modernization of brazilian education at the beginning of the republican period and maintained a hegemonic posture about curricula policies throughout the whole twentieth century. however, it is important to emphasize that other logics, practices and contestation movements also emerged and acted in the education fieldeven if peripherally during this period. next, we seek to highlight how the emergence and strengthening of socio-juridical discourses in the field of sexuality especially through social movements and international fora and agencies have increasingly influenced curricular policies in brazil, starting in the 2000s, but have been strongly challenged over the last few years by the articulation and intensification of the work of neoconservative movements in the country. finally, we propose the appropriation of concepts such as discursive field, hegemony and identification – as considered by laclau and mouffe's discourse theory (2015) – as important resources to enable a more nuanced analysis of emergency processes, consolidation and crisis of dominant sexuality regimes in the field of education, as well as of the permanent tensions, conflicts, negotiations and articulations between different discourses and logics in this scenario. such resources may be productive, even to question how the humanist logics of guaranteeing rights and defending diversity can be as they have been in some periods contingently articulated to neoliberal and neotechnicist educational logics, helping to compose new models of hierarchy and control in the context of sexual politics (weeks, 1989). this paper also indicates a possible interconnection between the notions of fantasmatic logics (oliveira, oliveira & mesquita, 2013; glynos & howarth, 2007) and moral panic (miskolci, 2017; rubin, 1989) as a promising way to discuss how the emergence of a structured sexuality regime based on socio-juridical discourses has now https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index oliveira, oliveira. curriculum policies of gender and sexuality in brazil 41 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> been disputed by neoconservative discourses of a religious and secular matrix in the educational context. biomedical logics in the production of curriculum discourses in the first decades of the twentieth century, the newly born brazilian state developed, as well as other latin american countries, a series of public policies linked to an eugenic project of population control (stepan, 2005). aiming the constitution of a national identity and from a modern model of scientific status, the movement activated strategies of medical-family education focused on the control of social markers of difference such as race, social class, sexuality and gender. at the same time that the public education was expanded, students and teachers were segregated and regulated. in this context, as emphasized by ribeiro and souza (2003), some institutions formally teach sex education classes with the purpose of preventing venereal diseases, promoting healthy reproduction and preparing women for marriage and maternity. from well-established perspectives, an open sexuality discussion and not its omission was an important factor in the brazilian educational discourse. if we associate the schooling process to children and young people’s bodies discipline, we will notice that sexual education has found its privileged place in school since very early. thus, "educated sex" presented itself as a fundamental part of the schooling process. (césar, 2009, p.40) some sexual education experiences, therefore, have emerged throughout the first half of the twentieth century, especially in the southeastern region of the country. the círculo brasileiro de educação sexual, a study group founded in rio de janeiro, was crucial at that moment (felício, 2011; russo & carrara, 2002; ribeiro & reis, 2003) because it was responsible for editing, between 1933 and 1939, the boletim de educação sexual, a tabloid with national and international circulation, in which articles on hygiene and sexual morality were published. in the círculo there was also a center of studies in andrology, a museum, a counseling room and an art gallery. during the 1960s, there were observable changes in this approach, modestly influenced by the sexual revolution and the feminist movement, in effervescence, mainly in the united states and europe. gradually, debates on the taboo of virginity, contraceptive methods and free love are inserted in some schools. instead of sanitarians, educational counselors begin to coordinate classes. however, with the 1964 brazilian military coup and the growing rapprochement between the government and conservative catholicism represented mainly by the integralist movement the emphasis on traditional values becomes the cornerstone of curricula, especially in public education. since the mid-1970s, sex education classes restarted, especially to meet the demands of law 5.692/71, which determined educational guidance as mandatory and established the directives and bases for elementary, middle and high levels of schooling. in addition to that, sex education returned to schools, because of the strengthening of the feminist movements, which have claimed for sexual education, and because of the debate about the reality of women as part of the project to fight for the redemocratization of brazil. the un proclaimed the period from 1976 to 1985 as the un decade for women. for countries like brazil, which was coming out from a moment of strong repression with the government of general medici, these measures were extremely relevant to legitimize the still embryonic and clandestine claims and actions of the feminist movement (pinto, 2003). https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index oliveira, oliveira. curriculum policies of gender and sexuality in brazil 42 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> the gradual decline of the military dictatorship and censorship allowed, from that period on, the emergence of diverse cultural manifestations addressing sexualities. exiled intellectuals and artists returned to the country and brought with them the influences of the new social movements. homosexuality, as trevisan (2004) postulates, becomes a subject of articles published in the main magazines of national circulation, advertising campaigns and theater plays3. in the late 1970s, the homosexual movement was organized in brazil4. during the 1980s, there was widespread use of information about sexuality in the media. the “sexual behavior”, attraction presented in the “tv mulher” program, was streamed in a free-to-air channel and several encyclopedias on sexuality were released and sold on newsstands. this was also the period of discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus hiv. discourses on homosexuality multiplied. at the same time that there was a rise in homophobia aids was widely represented as a gay cancer the political identity of the gay community was strengthened and, under the demand of disease prevention, non-governmental organizations, political sectors, schools, community groups, churches and the media began to treat compulsively well or badly on the subject. in a few years, the aids virus reached a stage that not even the most wellintentioned homosexual rights movement would have reached in many decades: to make it clear to society that homosexual exists and is not the other, towards a continent apart, but is very close to any ordinary citizen [...] thanks to the characteristic of stigma that aids historically has acquired, it is impossible to hide the desire: it is there, being identified, caught and denounced through the disease [...] benefiting from the socially imposed metaphor, homosexuality tended to become a less invisible social reality: the deviation came to the surface and, in a sense, avenged itself, attacking in the form of a mortal virus. the disease was “sharpened”. sharpened were too the efforts to defend from it. there was panic because the immune system of society found himself fragile and on the verge of becoming ill from a disease that aids only means. the gestures of defense have been desperate, but we no longer know what is most feared: whether physical disease, whether the social "disease" of desire. (trevisan, 2004, p. 462) thus, a scenario of displacement is outlined, revealing the contingency of heteronormative discourse logic and its phantasmic identity (butler, 2003). the urgency of addressing the public health problem forces governmental bodies and civil society to articulate their discourses around prevention and sexual rights. decisions, laws, administrative measures and scientific statements are elaborated. the ministries of education and health publish the interministerial ordinance nº 796, 29th of may, 1992, recommending the implementation of educational projects on hiv transmission and prevention at all levels of education. also, in the 1990s, the national curricular parameters (pcns)5 for elementary school are organized. sexual orientation is proposed as a cross-cutting theme and is based on the logic of sexual and reproductive rights: sexual orientation in school is one of the factors that contributes to the knowledge and appreciation of sexual and reproductive rights. these concern the possibility for men and women to make decisions about their fertility, reproductive health and child rearing, having access to the information and resources needed to implement their decisions. this exercise depends on the validity of public policies that meet these rights. (brasil, 2001, pp. 139-140) https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index oliveira, oliveira. curriculum policies of gender and sexuality in brazil 43 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> among the objectives of the sexual orientation work there is the preparation for the exercise of citizenship through the care and respect with oneself and with the other. the topic gender relation is registered as one of the basic axes for discussion of any topic, as well as the body and the stds6 and aids prevention: issues related to sexuality are not restricted to the individual sphere. on the contrary, in order to understand personal values and behaviors it is necessary to contextualize them socially and culturally. it is in social relations that are defined, for example, the patterns of gender relations, what men and women can and should do for being men and women, and especially, what are and what should be the rights of citizenship linked to sexuality and reproduction. the high rate of unwanted pregnancies in adolescence, sexual abuse and child prostitution, the growth of the aids epidemic, and discrimination against women in the labor market are some of the social issues that demand a change in order to guarantee dignity and quality of life that we desire and that are endorsed by the brazilian constitution. (brasil, 2001, p.307) the emphasis on confronting discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender stereotypes, strongly present in brazilian curricula policies between the years 2004 to 2014, is already presented in ncps: work with sexual orientation presupposes reflecting on and opposing the stereotypes of gender, race, nationality, culture and social class linked to sexuality. it implies, therefore, to stand up against discriminations associated with expressions of sexuality, such as homosexual and bisexual attraction, and sex workers. (brasil, 2001, p.316) a homosexual connotation is frequently attributed to a behavior or attitude that is less conventional expression of a way of being a man or a woman. it escapes gender stereotypes, like a more delicate or sensitive boy been called "fag" or a more aggressive girl to be seen as lesbian, attitude these discriminatory. in each historical period and culture, some expressions of masculine and feminine are dominant and serve as reference or model, but there are as many ways to be male or female as there are people. each has its own way of living and expressing its sexuality. this needs to be understood and respected by youths. (brasil, 2001, p. 325) even if the allusion to these signifiers points to discursive displacements, the positioning of ncps on sexual orientation is still strongly linked to the health field, with emphasis on disease prevention, especially aids (altmann, 2001). its elaboration process was strongly centralizing and prescriptive (carvalho, 2004; bonamino & martínez, 2002; lüdke, 1998), with the absence of several relevant political-institutional instances in the debate, arriving in schools in a strongly verticalized way. emergence of socio-juridical logics in curriculum discourses in analyzing the flows of pedagogical discourses in brazil, we also perceive a plurality of organisms and institutions that compete for hegemony and are articulated in the production of meanings about gender and sexuality. among them, the role of nongovernmental organizations (ngos) stands out. as céli pinto (2006) points out, since the 1990s, social movements undergo a process of restructuring and the formation of ngos becomes a trend, working mainly in two directions: 1) the unorganized society, with the aim of strengthening self-image of sidelined populations, decrease vulnerabilities, https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index oliveira, oliveira. curriculum policies of gender and sexuality in brazil 44 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> promote qualification and carry out advocacy; 2) the state, through the training of workers and assistance in the implementation of public policies. some organizations have partnered with government agencies. from a visit to their websites, we realize that they have developed programs, books, booklets, videos, seminars and continuing education courses in education departments in several brazilian municipalities. thus, the sectors authorized to speak, to define patterns about sexuality and gender have been multiplied: "alongside traditional institutions such as the state, churches or science, now other organized bodies and organizations claim their truths and their ethics" (louro, 2001, p.541). the growing participation of ngos in the brazilian political scene was the subject of discussions on the relationship between civil society and the state (gohn, 1991); philanthropy, market and education (coutinho, 2008) and their role in teacher education (almeida, 2006). as céli pinto (2006) highlights, this phenomenon reveals the democratic strengthening of the period and the vanguard position of these organizations, especially in the mobilization for rights and in the insertion in the political field of themes that have always lived with historical resistance such as the rights of women and the lgbt population also encourages us to reflect on the possibilities of ngo action. studies on the "ongnization" of latin american feminist movements (alvarez, 1998; pinto, 2003) highlight an anti-state stance towards a negotiating relationship with the state and international agencies. they also point out that this was a period of great investment in gender policies for the "social and economic modernization of countries", a logic strongly linked to an agenda of public policies inspired by the model of liberal democracy. as alvarez (1998) mentions, it seems that some ngos have become to the state and to intergovernmental organizations "convenient partners" of civil society, giving up their hybrid identities: intervention in politics (through the elaboration and implementation of public policies that aim at the administration of antagonisms) and in the political (representatives of civil society who fight for changes in the cultural, symbolic and power relations). this fact is also closely related to the decrease in international financial investment in projects developed directly by ngos. the refusal by some of these organizations to submit to the "rules of the game" has often resulted in their isolation and marginalization, which has led to the need to develop a less critical stance with the state (alvarez, 1998). such negotiation generated a context of discursive accommodation, hindering a line of autonomous argumentation that would explain the most problematic discursive nodes: sexuality, family and gender (grau, olea & pérez, 1997, p.91) in this period, the development of academic studies on "gender and sexuality" also emerged, reaching, since 2002, great diversification and multiplication in universities and research centers (citeli, 2005; facchini, daniliauskas & pilon, 2013). scientific journals of reference in the area are also founded on this occasion, the same happens to the propagation of research groups. specifically in the area of education, the gt-23 gender, sexuality and education was established during the 27th annual meeting of anped, in 2004, expanding the contact between different research groups in the country, municipal education departments and ngos and granting recognition to the area of study in postgraduate education. the articulation of different social groups (religious, indigenous, blacks, women, lgbt, environmentalists); the emergence of networks of social movements (world social forum, brazilian lgbt association) and the signing of international human rights https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index oliveira, oliveira. curriculum policies of gender and sexuality in brazil 45 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> agreements had a great influence in the elaboration of curriculum policies of gender and sexuality in brazil. with the implementation of the ii national human rights program (pndh ii), in 2002, economic, social and cultural rights were elevated to the level of civil and political rights, which included in the agenda of public policies the fight against violence against women and the right to freedom of sexual orientation. with regard to lgbt rights, several achievements are prominent in the early years of the 21st century: • the creation of the national council to combat discrimination, in 2001; • the establishment, in 2003, of the permanent thematic commission to receive complaints of human rights violations, based on sexual orientation; • the administrative resolution of the national immigration council (cni), in 2003, in which brazil began to recognize, for the purpose of granting visas, the union of persons of the same sex, in a situation of stable union; • the launch, in 2004, of the program brazil without homophobia; • the creation, in 2005, of reference centers to prevent and combat homophobia; • the foundation, in 2006, of the centers for research and promotion of homosexual citizenship in several brazilian universities; • the launch in 2009 of the national plan for the promotion of citizenship and human rights of lgbt (brasil, 2009). • the organization of national conferences on public policies and human rights of lgbt (2008, 2011 and 2016). • resolution no. 175 of may 14, 2013, of the national council of justice, which prohibits the competent authorities from refusing to authorize, enter into a civil marriage or to convert a stable marriage into a marriage between persons of the same sex. in accordance to these facts, a new regime of truth about sexuality anchored in sexual and reproductive rights emerges as part of human rights. the exercise of sexuality, previously associated with marital, reproductive and/or civic obligations, starts to be based on the idea of personal fulfillment, health and well-being. sex is not approached as strictly physiological anymore and becomes conceived as technology of itself. biomedical language is progressively abandoned and gives rise to socio-juridical. the political strategies for regulating subjects are justified only if they are based on the promotion of citizenship or health (carrara, 2015). the focus on "human rights" enters the formal education, inviting the schools to propose ways to deal with the other (ramos & frangella, 2013). in this direction, there is the launching of the national human rights education plan, which has among its principles the "fight against racism, sexism, social, cultural, religious discrimination and other forms of discrimination" (brasil, 2003, p. 17). there is also a series of proposals for school education in the brazil without homophobia program (brazil, 2004), the national policy plan for women (brasil, 2005a) and the national plan for the promotion of citizenship and human rights of lgbt (brasil, 2009). https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index oliveira, oliveira. curriculum policies of gender and sexuality in brazil 46 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> the new educational demands force the creation of an official locus that presents alternatives for the conjuncture. thus, the continuing education, literacy and diversity department (secad) was established by mec in 2004, and its scope was broadened in 2011, being reformulated into continuing education, literacy, diversity and inclusion department (secadi). the materials produced by secad present their guidelines and actions in accordance to the significant "quality education for all", globally disseminated since the jomtiem conference (1990). it is an instance that has as a proposal the articulation of different educational discourses: for the education of youths and adults, lgbt, indigenous, quilombolas, rural dwellers, blacks, of child and adolescent protection creating a chain of equivalence between them and at the same time, a strategic space for managing the differences and meeting the goals established by international agreements to which brazil is a signatory. today, the greatest challenge of any government instance is to steadily reduce social inequalities. it is with this focus that the federal government, through the ministry of education (mec) created the continuing education, literacy and diversity department (secad) in 2004. secad works with a series of actions aimed at building a public policy that transforms into reality unesco's main guideline: to provide quality education for all throughout life [...] in order to do that, the issue of ethnic-racial, cultural, regional, gender, environmental, generational and sexual orientation has to be addressed in the day-to-day classroom. (brasil, 2005b, p.5) secad developed its actions based on three lines of action. planning and management headed the first line and was responsible for encouraging the production of monographs and didactic materials on ethnic-racial relations, gender and sexual orientation. access and permanence of women, lgbt, quilombolas and natives at all levels and forms of education consisted of their second line of action, however, a report created by secad (brasil, 2007) does not specify the work developed in this area. the actions cited in this document seem to be associated with the logic of proposing public policies, the allocation of resources for continuing education, and especially the partnership with organized civil society. it is important to recognize that the majority of education initiatives for gender equality and respect for sexual diversity have played a role in the social movement. thus, there would be no way to give solidity to the governmental initiatives in these areas without first listening and seeking the collaboration of these sectors, establishing with them partnerships. in the case of actions with focus on gender, the work of the department was largely instigated by the dialogue and partnership established since the beginning with the department of policies for women of the presidency of the republic [...] the work of the national council (cne) has been crucial in improving the performance of the ministry as a guideline for curricular policies, as was the case with law n. 10.639/03, which deals with ethnic-racial relations in education [...] secad encourages the approximation between universities and education systems, by encouraging the development of joint projects for the education of education professionals. (brasil, 2007, p.38) continuing education encompassed the third line of action of the department. four project funding call notices between 2005 and 2007 were implemented, one on teenage pregnancy and three on sexual diversity in school: training of education professionals for citizenship and sexual diversity, sexual diversity and gender equality in https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index oliveira, oliveira. curriculum policies of gender and sexuality in brazil 47 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> school and gender and diversity in school (gde). the projects were developed in partnership with non-governmental organizations, had a theoretical-practical profile and aimed at the training of multipliers. the debate on human rights; coping with homophobia, machismo and sexism; and the discussion on social inclusion were the main themes of the courses. the students presented as final product intervention projects in schools. this strategy seemed to be problematic in the first moment because the interventions encountered structural, material and human obstacles for example, the inexperience of students in working with gender and sexuality, the resistance of the school community to discuss the subject and the fact that the departments of education and schools do not have specialized pedagogical teams to support "multipliers". another obstacle concerns the very conception of formations based on the dichotomy proposed/implementation of curricular policies (oliveira & lopes, 2011). there were few reflections about discourses of gender and sexuality in circulation at school and how the deconstruction of active meanings triggers complex processes of negotiation of meanings and articulatory practices that enable hegemonization (laclau & moufee, 2015). in an attempt to develop pedagogical strategies "for sexual diversity" in school, for example, the students articulated the logics worked in the courses to family, school and religious referents, triggering legalistic, charitable, tolerance and victimization discourses of lgbt students. as vianna and cavaleiro (2001) postulate, during the government of the workers’ party (pt), the mec reoriented its educational policies to embrace "diversity" and even changed the organizational structure of some secretariats. in the first administration of the lula government, there were twenty-four programs focused on diversity policies in progress (moehlecke, 2009), however, the lack of integration between them hindered the development of actions involving different audiences. in an attempt to overcome this obstacle, there was a strong commitment to the transversalization of the debate and the elaboration of decentralized actions, focusing on the coordination, articulation and incentive of policies involving the three levels of government and civil society. these strategies disseminated by mec as channels of dialogue and collective participation were also mechanisms to alleviate tensions between the government and its various allies both progressive and conservative. probably, the mediation attempts, typical of this period, failed to realize the strengthening and the articulation of these groups around a politicalmoral grammar such as gender ideology which culminated in the intense hegemonic struggle that we are experiencing today on body, gender and sexuality in curriculum policies. the kick off of this collision of political forces happened in 2010, in a seminar held at the national congress to present the school without homophobia. the two-year project had been developed through a partnership between a network of ngos and mec/secad and involved three lines of action: 1) the creation of some anti-homophobia policies in different states and municipalities, under the responsibility of the "pathfinder do brasil"; 2) a research on homophobia in schools, under the supervision of "reprolatina innovative solutions in sexual and reproductive health"; and 3) the elaboration and publication of didactic material to be distributed in public schools, under the guidance of "ecos communication in sexuality" (oliveira & may, 2017; leite, 2016). the didactic material produced was presented and denominated an "educational material kit", composed by a notebook with the same project title, six newsletters, a poster, a cover letter and five videos. the seminar was tense and permeated by conflicts, reflecting the strong crisis experienced between the government and its political allies. in https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index oliveira, oliveira. curriculum policies of gender and sexuality in brazil 48 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> the following months, a vast articulated action between the mainstream media, conservative sectors of civil society, fundamentalist parties of the national congress and deputies from progressive parties dissatisfied with the government was activated to suspend the school without homophobia alleging that it lured children. the "educational kit" became pejoratively called a "gay kit". different experts and institutions federal council of psychology, unesco, un were consulted and gave favorable opinions to the project. the controversy lasted for months and involved different disputes and political articulations, until its suspension in november 2011 by the president. some years later, the polarization radicalized and had a serious repercussion in the field of brazilian education. one of the main impacts of this crisis was the withdrawal of the national education plan (pne) approved by congress and sanctioned by the president (brasil, 2014) of the reference to the promotion of racial, regional, gender and sexual orientation. this fact reverberated in several legislative assemblies and municipalities and resulted in the exclusion of the reference to gender inequalities and sexual orientation in a significant part of state and municipal education plans in the whole country (reis & eggert, 2017). after the parliamentary coup that deposed president dilma rousseff in 2016, vice-president michel temer became the president, supported by a strong right-wing coalition, and imposed a series of drastic reforms explicitly guided by the conservative agenda of various sectors. in this context, the ministry of education (mec) reconfigured the national education council (cne), which became predominantly composed by representatives of the interests of business groups, and summarily withdrew all references to gender and sexual orientation of the brazilian national common curricular bases (bncc) which was in the completion phase. as frangella (2016) observes, the bncc proposal implies not only the definition of minimum "curricular contents", but it involves a whole project of redefinition of the models of formation, teaching performance, evaluation and accountability. in relation to the civil society, the "escola sem partido" movement has built an intense political articulation to pass a law that changes ldb in order to prevent public schools and teachers from "promoting their ideological preferences" or "applying postulates from gender theory or ideology" (amorim & salej, 2016, p.33). alongside this movement, several conservative groups have encouraged parents and students to send out extrajudicial notices to teachers to prohibit them from dealing with "gender ideology" in schools, as well as to denounce and prosecute teachers and principals who insist on addressing this issue and/or in questioning established gender and sexuality patterns. conservative logics and the crisis of curriculum discourses of gender and sexuality it is interesting to notice, in the context of this debate, maintaining the focus on the journey of sexual policies in brazilian education and the thesis strongly consistent of the development of a new device or regime of sexuality based on the notions of human rights and citizenship in the last two decades, as both the concept of device and regime of truth are (re)configured in foucault’s work (2011, 1988), from the 1970s, seeking to articulate the patterns of production of statements that he considers as properly discursive to the institutional models of governing bodies and life that he treats classically as non-discursive (agambem, 2009; revel, 2005). the strength of the notion of device is precisely in its proposal to put in relation, through the same term, a https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index oliveira, oliveira. curriculum policies of gender and sexuality in brazil 49 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> heterogeneous and interactive set of dynamics of knowledge production, of truth and structures and practices of organization and government. as the author himself points out in an interview on the history of sexuality: through this term [device] i try to demarcate, in the first place, a decidedly heterogeneous set that encompasses discourses, institutions, architectural organizations, regulatory decisions, laws, administrative measures, scientific statements, philosophical propositions, moral, philanthropic. in short, the said and the not said are the elements of the device. the device is the network that can be established between these elements. secondly, i would like to demarcate the nature of the relationship that can exist between these heterogeneous elements. thus, such discourse can appear as a program of an institution or, on the contrary, as an element that allows justifying and masking a practice that remains mute; can still function as a reinterpretation of this practice, giving it access to a new field of rationality. in short, between these elements, discursive or not, there is a type of game, that is, changes of position, modifications of functions, which can also be very different. (foucault, 1979, p. 244) it is in this sense that the device of sexuality analyzed by foucault (1988) in history of sexuality encompasses rationality, moral and politics. while the dimension of rationality predominantly identifies the accepted regime and the games considered valid in the production of statements and truths about sexuality such as biomedical, psychiatric or socio-juridical discourses morality articulates these truths to the promotion of common values such as biological reproduction or well-being and politics associates these truths and values with strategies and practices of biopolitical classification and control. foucault (1979) clearly indicates that a device does not need and may not be seen as a closed, stable, and coherent system of relations. he describes the device as a dispersed or dynamic formation or network, in which the elements can vary between different positions and functions from an initial strategic objective, which constitutes them. he also points out that the type of game that is established between the various elements that are articulated in a device basically takes the form of two distinct processes. the first is the process of functional overdetermination, in which each effect coherent or contradictory produces a reaction of resonance and readjustment in the other elements. the second is the continuous process of strategic fulfillment, in which even the unpredictable and contradictory effects of some practices are often reassumed and reused from the strategic goal of the device. it is in the movement of this open and dynamic game that carrara (2015) affirms that it is possible to perceive several processes of conflict, negotiation and articulation between the logics and practices of the old biomedical device and those that point to the new regime of sexuality that slowly seems to develop. obviously the opposition between these two regimes, presented here as ideal types, is mainly heuristic. one of the complexities of this process is that although they are datable, they are not successive in time, but they tensely coexist in the contemporary scenario. in different modes of articulation, collision or confrontation, they design different sexual policies and styles of moral regulation. in addition, they interact and articulate with the prevalent christian moralities. thus, if it is possible to speak of a historical process of transformation or passage from one regime to another, it is undoubtedly built https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index oliveira, oliveira. curriculum policies of gender and sexuality in brazil 50 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> slowly, through continuities, ruptures and, sometimes, unexpected commitments. (carrara, 2015, p.333) although foucault (1979) recognizes as carrara (2015) also points out that a device does not constitute a closed and fully coherent system, the emphasis of concepts such as device and regime remains on the dynamics of articulation and negotiation between the different elements directly involved in the networks that constitute them. foucault (1988, 1979) the school genres and the (im)possible silencing of difference in the curriculum does not problematize the question and, consequently, does not develop its own analytical strategies and tools to investigate how this possible relation between two devices or discursive formations that dispute a position of regime of truth would occur. or even how could the relation between a dominant regime of truth and other logics, practices or discursive formations such as the christian moralities pointed out by carrara (2015) or other ones assume a peripheral position of persistent tension for better or worse in respect of that regime. it is from the relevance of these questions to the analysis of contemporary dynamics in sexual policies and, especially, of the policies of gender and sexuality in the context of education, that this paper aims at exploring the feasibility of appropriation of some propositions and concepts of the theoretical framework of laclau and mouffe's discourse theory (2015) as productive resources for the expansion of a further debate that has been developed. this proposal of appropriation tends to assume here -it is important to highlight a supplementary position, in a derridean sense (derrida, 1999), in relation to the perspective outlined by the work of carrara (2015). it means that, the proposal is not only to complement the conceptual framework that has been worked up so far, but, to the extent that the new questions and terms evoked change the horizon of meaning of the text itself, they produce a retroactive effect, about the notions articulated earlier. thus, following, there are some considerations about how a dialogue with the discourse theory can contribute to open new possibilities, fronts and senses of analysis of the current scenario of disputes between different discursive formations that seek to constitute the sexual policies in the brazilian education. the first aspect to be considered is that the theoretical perspective of laclau and mouffe (2015) radicalizes in accordance with the work of derrida (2005; 1999), lacan (2005) and heidegger (2001) – the discursivity of phenomenological and ontological reality. it thus breaks with the distinction, still held by foucault (1979), between discursive and non-discursive elements in social reality. it does not mean, as laclau and mouffe (2015) urge, to deny the materiality or objectivity of reality, but, on the contrary, to affirm that every reality constituted as such will always be crossed and conditioned by discursive games of meaning. "every object is constituted as an object of discourse, since no object is conceptualized outside any discursive condition of emergence" (laclau & moufee, 2015, p.180). it is interesting to notice that foucault (1979) himself advances in this sense by realizing that the production of statements and institutional practices participated indistinctly in the same game for reality configuration. he was explicitly confronted with this question since the debates on the history of sexuality and on the concept of device, but chose not to go further into this investigation. guy le gaufey: but to return to the non-discursive, beyond the statements, what exists in a device that is not "institution"? m.f. [michel foucault]: it is generally called institution any behavior more or less coercive, learned. everything that in a society functions as a system of https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index oliveira, oliveira. curriculum policies of gender and sexuality in brazil 51 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> coercion, without being a statement, that is, any social non-discursive is the institution. j.a.m. [jacques-alain miller]: the institution is evidently at the discursive level. m.f. [michel foucault]: as you wish, but in relation to the device, it is not very important to say: this is what is discursive, that is what is not. [...] i do not think it is very important to make this distinction, since my problem is not linguistic. (foucault, 1979, p. 247) the affirmation of the discursive feature of all reality assumes, however, a significant importance in the current debates. it provides a discussion to increase the analysis of devices, regimes and/or discursive formations specific to the (inter)discursive context of interactions, clashes, negotiations and articulations between the different logics and discursive formations. it is necessary to emphasize that the discourse, in this perspective, is no longer formulated like only a pattern of production of verbal or linguistic utterances. it comes to be perceived as a regular and dispersed pattern of production of articulations and senses that crosses and operates in all instances of reality: everyday conversations, professional practices, institutions, laws, architectural structures, cultural artifacts, consumer products etc. as glynos and howarth (2007, p. 104) observe, "every social practice is also articulatory", consequently it has a discursive feature and necessarily updates or challenges established discursive logics or regimes. in this sense, it is no longer possible to think of a relation of mutual exteriority between non-discursive institutions or practices with pre-discursive identities and characteristics and discursive formations and regimes that would influence and be influenced secondarily by these institutions and practices. each discursive formation or regime such as devices or regimes of sexuality and moral or religious logics can only be accurately analyzed and problematized when placed in relation to a field of discursiveness from which its own identity and the senses of its action are continuously negotiated, challenged and/or reaffirmed. another important issue is that the strategic objective of a device can no longer be conceptualized as something totally anterior and external to the discursive field in which the device operates, but only becomes possible as an unstable effect of the conflicts and negotiations that cross the field. the distinction between the notions of device and regime thus tends to become rather tenuous and circumstantial. a second aspect to be highlighted in relation to the potential of the dialogue with discourse theory, in the context here presented, concerns the way in which the work of laclau and mouffe (2015) seeks to recover the concept of hegemony as a theoretical and methodological resource for interrogating the processes of constitution, stabilization, crisis and political transformation of social reality. if every social reality is discursive and every social practice confirms, contests or displaces an established discursive regime, every social reality is constituted through a process of hegemonic dispute and articulation. the hegemonic dispute thus emerges not as a specific and particular phenomenon within society, but as a radical and permanent principle of (de/re)constitution of society itself. as a recurrent attempt to articulate all possible elements in a given social field, establishing a (new) regime of practices and logics or a (new) horizon of reality. “any discourse is constituted as an attempt to dominate the field of discursivity, to arrest the flow of differences, to construct a centre" (laclau & moufee, 2015, p.187). it is valid for both the analysis of a broad social reality and the analysis of specific and partially autonomous contexts or sectors such as sexuality or sexual policies in education that https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index oliveira, oliveira. curriculum policies of gender and sexuality in brazil 52 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> participate in this social reality. discursive devices or formations that compete to be established as hegemonic regimes, therefore, do not only seek to control reality from an external position of power, they act to (re)constitute their own sense and the (im)possibility conditions of objects and subjects that participate in this reality. however, no hegemonic formation can fully articulate and totalize all elements or even any element in particular in a determining social field. because, firstly, every speech depends, to constitute itself, of the opposition to another or to an outside constituent (laclau & moufee, 2015,); and, secondly, because of the logic of the production of meaning and identities entails an insurmountable lapse or slip différance (derrida, 1999) which prevents pure repetition (deleuze, 2006). in this sense, all hegemonic formation is necessarily precarious, partial and contingent. even if a discursive formation can stabilize, to a large extent, a certain social horizon -consolidating a hegemonic regimethere will always be boundaries, vanishing points, fluctuations, contradictions, tensions, conflicts and potential adversaries that will challenge stability, coherence and the articulation capacity of the established regime. when these tensions and challenges usually from some disruptive or traumatic event or occurrence are sufficient to significantly destabilize the hegemonic regime, then a hegemonic crisis is unleashed. the crisis of a hegemonic regime is characterized by the systematic fragilization of the reach and strength of several articulations and, consequently, of social practices and logics that configure this regime. once a hegemonic crisis was established, discourses and logics that had hitherto remained renegade, in peripheral position or partially submitted to the established hegemonic regime, tended to strengthen, opening new fronts of tension and conflict. in this context, either the hegemonic discursive formation suffers a significant displacement to accommodate the conflicts and reestablish a horizon of normality in the social field, or a new discursive formation, often constituted against the main logics and practices of the previous regime, starts to articulate the majority of the identities and elements present in the field, constituting a new hegemonic regime. thus, while the periods of stabilization of a regime tend to be represented by a multiplication of small agonistic differences (moufee, 2013) between identities and discursive formations or games of truth (foucault, 2011) that undergo and adjust, to a lesser or greater degree, to the logics and rules established by the hegemonic regime, the hegemonic crisis scenarios, after a process of rupture and denaturation of the relations established by their dominant practices and logics, tend to move towards a polarization scheme of the social field around two lines of antagonistic discursive formations, that begin to dispute the hegemony, in this field, seeking to articulate around its practices and logics most of the identities and social elements. the discourse theory, therefore, analyzes the emergence movement of a new regime of sexuality and, in particular, the implications of this movement for curriculum policies of gender and sexuality in brazil, as a process of successive hegemonic crises, in a scenario of attempted yet contested consolidation of a new hegemony. if we assume that what is observed throughout the 2000s, in the brazilian context, is characterized as a conflictive but evident process of affirmation and consolidation of a new regime of hegemonic sexuality, in conjunction with the development of a new sexual politics in the country. it is also necessary to assume that the strengthening of discourses and actions of religious and secular (neo)conservative movements, especially from 2010 on, as well as their direct participation in the articulations that led to the parliamentary coup of 2016 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index oliveira, oliveira. curriculum policies of gender and sexuality in brazil 53 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> demonstrate that this hegemonic duel remains opened and that there is no guarantee that the process started will continue in the same direction. a third and final aspect to be taken into consideration in the debate proposed by this paper is related to the question of how and why social logics and discursive formations conquer the identification and the imagination of the subjects in the processes of social reality constitutions. how and why, in contexts of stabilization of a hegemonic regime, most of the subjects identify themselves with the logics articulated by the dominant discourses, reproduce their practices and ignore their boundaries and contradictions. in the same extent, in scenarios of hegemonic crisis, how and why many subjects break important identifications and begin to identify with the design of a new discursive perspective, while others tend to identify themselves with a diverse discourse posture. in other words, what mobilizes and sustains the identifications of the subjects with the speeches? what establishes the meaning, strength or fragility of these identifications? in order to deal with these issues, based on the discourse theory, glynos and howarth (2007) propose an articulation of the theoretical debates about the discursiveness of social reality and about the hegemonic political processes with the lacanian concept of fantasy (lacan, 1998; žizek, 1996). the notion of fantasy, in lacanian psychoanalysis, seeks to name the imaginary narratives articulated by the subjects to cover or suture the limits and contradictions the lack or radical rupture that prevent the full realization of an identity and challenge the possibility of completeness of reality itself. syntactically, fantasmatic narratives are narratives that point to a horizon of total realization to be achieved the beatific dimension of fantasy which is prevented by the presence and performance of another/enemy that, if not overcome, threatens the integrity of the subject and reality itself the horrific dimension of fantasy. thus, while fantasies act to placate or minimize the anguish of subjects in relation to their own incompleteness and the impossibility of totalizing reality, they also function to structure the enjoyment of these subjects, their desire and frustration with an object that remains suspended in their horizon (glynos & stavrakakis, 2008). glynos and howarth (2007), in dialogue with žižek (1996), emphasize that the notion of fantasy might be very productive for the development of political and social analysis. since subjects are constituted and structured through socially and politically articulated discursive formations and logics, fantasmatic narratives are also socially negotiated and disseminated and play a primary role in the constitution of individual and collective subjects. for instance, glynos and howarth (2007), analyzing the emergence of thatcherism in england, point out that the fantasmatic narrative of the single irresponsible mother who drained state resources through public welfare policies contributed decisively to the formation, dissemination and strengthening of neoliberal discourse between the 1970s and 1980s. in this sense, the authors develop the concept of fantasmatic logics, together with the notions of social logics and political logic, as a resource to investigate how certain fantasmatic narratives act to produce and to maintain the identification of the subjects with the logics and practices of the hegemonic discourses or, in crisis contexts, with new discursive projects (oliveira, oliveira & mesquita, 2013). at the same time that fantasies seek to cover and suture voids and contradictions, they often present incoherent, inconsistent, and logically unsustainable narrative elements such as the enemy who is both stupid and extremely clever. the force of fantasy, however, does not come from its power of logical conviction, but from its capacity to produce joy. hence, fantasmatic logics are rarely consciously, explicitly or publicly claimed and assumed by the subjects. in general, they appear in the form of jokes, implied https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index oliveira, oliveira. curriculum policies of gender and sexuality in brazil 54 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> allusions, cartoons, slogans, artistic expressions, myths, dreams, delusions and other forms of discourse of the other (authier-revuz, 2004, 1998). and it is not because of this that they lose or weaken their ability to structure enjoyment and to guide and sustain the identification of subjects with certain discursive logics and formations. the fantasmatic narratives can be based on cynicism (safatle, 2008; žizek, 1996); it is not necessary to believe or consciously agree with its suppositions for its effect. in contexts of open hegemonic crisis, however, fantasmatic logics can move from a more peripheral position, such as implicit and ambiguous assumptions, to be publicly asserted and affirmed. the appropriation of the notions of fantasy and fantasmatic logics in the analyzes of the current hegemonic crisis of the sexuality regime, as well as, the knowledge about the curriculum policies of gender and sexuality in brazil, can be very interesting and productive, in order to investigate how the identification of social subjects have been related to the main discourses or discursive formations presented in this area of study. the socio-juridical discourses on sexual rights seem to produce the identification of the subjects with their logics and practices around the classic liberal horizon of full citizenship for all people, especially lgbt women and people, against the threats of discrimination, exclusion and sexist and lgbt-phobic violence. neoconservative discourses, on the other hand, have been gaining a surprising dimension in the public debate, in a relatively short period of time, from the mobilization of an identification with the so-called traditional family a full-harmony dream that is based on the heteronormative pattern of the bourgeois nuclear family – but, above all, that vociferously goes against the danger of gender ideology and the demands for recognition of the feminist and lgbt movements for the psychological, moral and spiritual integrity of society and especially of children. several analysts (miskolci & campana, 2017; césar & duarte, 2017) have already suggested that the mobilization of a significant part of the population on neoconservative discourses, especially convened by catholic and evangelical religious leaders, has been conquered mainly through the strategy of spreading moral panic through the generation of the category gender ideology and its association with gender studies and with feminist and lgbt identities and demands. as gayle rubin's (1989) classic work points out, the spread of moral panic has been a recurring strategy in a number of historical periods victorian england or the american culture post-world war ii to support legislation, policing, and the disciplinary control over the population. especially in periods threatened by political crisis and risks of social conflict. the fact is, in times of widespread political crisis and polarization, such as the one we are currently experiencing in brazil, the threat of gender ideology can be easily articulated as it has been to the horror of other monsters such as the communist threat, banditry, terrorism, macumba, etc., amplifying its reach and its strength. while categories such as citizenship and rights are seen with significant mistrust and have their appeal greatly reduced. for those people who agree with the feminist and lgbt demands and oppose the neoconservative hegemonic project, a question arises over the ways to weaken the appeal of fantasmatic logic characterized by moral panic about the danger of gender ideology. perhaps, carefully differentiating the way in which distinct groups and identities religious, social status, national, gender have been mobilized by this appeal and deconstructing or problematizing the equivalence allegedly natural between these subjects. likewise, it may be necessary to provoke a deeper reflection on categories such as citizenship and rights, forcing their meaning beyond the boundaries, in which they are https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index oliveira, oliveira. curriculum policies of gender and sexuality in brazil 55 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> usually claimed to belong to, to allow, therefore, the articulation of demands that are not currently contemplated in the horizon of socio-juridical discourses. the purpose of this paper, as stated above, was not to address, or even less to deepen, all aspects related to the discussion proposed here. such a task would be virtually unfeasible, even for a labor of greater breath. the proposal of the text was to expand the debate on the hypothesis of the emergence of a new regime of sexuality, presented by carrara (2015), to investigate to what extent and how this emergence can be perceived in the trajectory of the policies of gender and sexuality in the brazilian education and finally, to explore, in a preliminary way, how the appropriation of some propositions and concepts of laclau and mouffe's discourse theory (2015) could contribute to open new questions and ways of analysis in the discussion of this problem. we hope that this objective has been at least partially achieved and that the issues raised here can still be retaken and developed in other texts and interlocutions. notes 1 e-mail: alarmo@uol.com.br 2 email: gustavosaet@yahoo.com.br 3 according to trevisan (2004), in the first semester of 1978, eleven out of twenty five plays performed in são paulo were, somehow, connected to homosexuality. 4 there were two important events at this period: the launch of the first brazilian gay newspaper "lampião da esquina" and the foundation, in são paulo, of the ngo "somos", the first brazilian entity to defend homosexual rights. 5 deeper analyses on these documents can be found in bonamino and martínez (2002) and altmann (2001). 6 currently, sexually transmitted infections (stis) have been adopted in place of the term sexually transmitted diseases (stds), because it emphasizes the possibility of a person having and transmitting an infection, even if they do not show signs and symptoms. references agambem, g. 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[critical explanation in social sciences: the approach of logics] in: https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index oliveira, oliveira. curriculum policies of gender and sexuality in brazil 58 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> lopes, a. c.; oliveira, a. l. a. r. m. & oliveira, g. g. s. a teoria do discurso na pesquisa em educação. recife; ed. ufpe. glynos, j. & howarth, d. (2007). logics of critical explanation insocial and political theory. london; new york: routledge. glynos, j. & stavrakakis, y. (2008). lacan and political subjectivity: fantasy and enjoyment in psychoanalysis and political theory. subjectivity, n. 24, pp. 256-274. gohn, m. g. m. (1991). movimentos sociais no brasil: tendências e perspectivas. [social movements in brazil: trends and perspectives] revista serviço social e sociedade, n. 36, são paulo: cortez. grau, o.; olea, r & pérez, f. 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[the notion of crisis and the legitimation of curricular discourses] currículo sem fronteiras, 13, n. 4, pp. 436-450. miskolci, r. (2006). estética da existência e pânico moral. [aesthetics of existence and moral panic] in: rago, m.; veiga-neto, a. (ed.). figuras de foucault. belo horizonte: autêntica. miskolci, r.; campana, m. (2017). “ideologia de gênero”: notas para a genealogia de um pânico moral contemporâneo. ["gender ideology": notes for the genealogy of a contemporary moral panic] revista sociedade e estado, 32, n. 3. moehlecke, s. (2009). as políticas de diversidade na educação no governo lula. [the policies of diversity in education in lula's government] cadernos de pesquisa, 39, n. 137, pp. 461-487. mouffe, c. (2013). agonistics: thinking the world politically. london; new york: verso. oliveira jr., i. b. & maio, e. r. (2017). não vai ser permitido a nenhum órgão do governo fazer propaganda de opções sexuais: o discurso inaugural no “desagendamento” do kit gay do mec. 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[a history of feminism in brazil] são paulo: fundação perseu abramo. pinto, c. r. j. (2006). as ongs e a política no brasil: presença de novos atores. [ngos and politics in brazil: presence of new actors] dados revista de ciências sociais, rio de janeiro, 49, n. 3, pp. 651-613. ramos, a. h. & frangella, r. c. (2013). currículo de educação em direitos humanos: sentidos em embates/articulações. [human rights education curriculum: senses in clashes / joints] educação, 36, n. 1, pp. 14-20. revel, j. (2015) le vocabulaire de foucault. [the vocabular of foucault] paris: ellipses édition. reis, t.; eggert, e. (2017) ideologia de gênero: uma falácia construída sobre os planos de educação brasileiros. [gender ideology: a fallacy built on brazilian education plans] educação & sociedade, 38(138), pp. 9-26. ribeiro, p. r. c. & souza, d. o. (2003). falando com professoras das séries iniciais do ensino fundamental sobre sexualidade na sala de aula: a presença do discurso biológico. [speaking to primary school teachers about sexuality in the classroom: the presence of biological discourse] enseñanza de las ciencias, v. 21, n. 1, pp. 6775. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index oliveira, oliveira. curriculum policies of gender and sexuality in brazil 60 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> ribeiro, p. r. m. & reis, g. v. (2003). josé de albuquerque e a educação sexual nas primeiras décadas do século xx: um estudo bibliográfico. [sexual education in the first decades of the 20th century: a bibliographic study] in: 26ª reunião anual da anped, 2003, poços de caldas mg. anais da 26ª reunião anual da anped. rio de janeiro: anped. rubin, g. (1989). thinking sex. in: abelove, henry et al. the lesbian and gay studies reader. london; new york: routledge. russo, j. a. & carrara, s. l. (2002). a psicanálise e a sexologia no rio de janeiro de entreguerras: entre a ciência e a auto-ajuda. [psychoanalysis and sexology in rio de janeiro between the wars: between science and self-help] história, ciências, saúde. manguinhos, 9, n. 2, pp. 273-90. safatle, v. (2008). cinismo e falência da crítica. [cynicism and criticism bankruptcy ] são paulo: boitempo. stepan, n. l. (2005). a hora da eugenia: raça, gênero e nação na américa latina. [the time of eugenia: race, gender and nation in latin america] rio de janeiro: fiocruz. trevisan, j. s. (2004). devassos no paraíso: a homossexualidade no brasil da colônia à atualidade. [profligates in paradise: homosexuality in brazil from the colony to the presente] rio de janeiro: record. vianna, c. & cavaleiro, m c. (2001). políticas públicas de educação e diversidade: gênero e (homo)sexualidades. [public policies of education and diversity: gender and (homo)sexualities] revista gênero, 12, n. 2, pp. 27-45. weeks, j. (1989). sex, politics and society: the regulation of sexuality since 1800. londres; nova york: longman. žizek, s. (1996). como marx inventou o sintoma. [how marx invented the symptom] in: ______. um mapa da ideologia. rio de janeiro: contraponto. žizek, s. (2008). the plague of fantasies. lodon/new york: verso. submitted: april, 20th, 2019. approved: june, 6th, 2019. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index to cite this article please include all of the following details: huayamave, paulina (2021). understanding freire, understanding myself. transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (2) p. 4-12 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> understanding freire, understanding myself paulina huayamave1 university of prince edward island, canada introduction ella está en el horizonte. yo me acerco dos pasos y ella se aleja dos pasos. camino diez pasos y el horizonte se corre diez pasos más allá. por mucho que yo camine, nunca la alcanzaré. ¿para qué sirve la utopía? para eso sirve, para caminar. eduardo galeano, ventana sobre la utopía this poem by the uruguayan poet, eduardo galeano, describes what utopia is. utopia is in the horizon and even though we approach it, we will never reach it. what is utopia for then? precisely for that, to keep us walking, to keep us moving forward. in pursuit of this utopia, i embraced the journey of a phd program in education, this paper has been written during my first year of studies, responding to a personal search for my identity as an educator and emerging researcher, looking for answers or alternatives to disrupt educational systems that have not been able to surmount social injustice and disparities in contexts like the latin american one. the work of paulo freire, a worldwide renown educator and philosopher has been analyzed and reflected by many scholars around the world. freire has been heard, and there are people out there trying to do what they can to put into practice his theory. i have found myself experiencing, in my own life, some of his ideas and beliefs, but it has not been enough in order to change impoverished and unjust societies through education. what else needs to be done to incorporate critical pedagogy practices in the educational system so they are transformational and perennial? in this paper i have made some analogies of a few of his key ideas and concepts to my own lived experiences, unpacking them to unfold understanding of freire’s thoughts of critical consciousness, reading and writing the world, and how to possibly confront a culture of oppression. awakening of consciousness i was born and raised in the city of the big differences, guayaquil, in ecuador, a developing country with levels of poverty that reach 35% of its population. if we look at the people living in rural areas, poverty numbers go up (observatorio social del ecuador, 2018). i have to say i have been on the privileged side, but raised with a strong consciousness to see injustice around me. when i was 14, i had the opportunity to participate in a literacy program for adults in a poor and dangerous neighborhood of my city. i remember having to struggle with my parents so they would let me go to teach these lessons every week. my mom kept saying: “this is too dangerous; why do you have to go? shouldn’t they come to you? they are the ones “in need”. the program was mandatory for one year, but i kept participating in huayamave. understanding freire 5 transnational curriculum inquiry, 18 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> the program for 3 years. this was my very first experience teaching, and just now i have become conscious that my journey as an educator started then. i had my first, and eventually, my only student, i am going to call her juana, she was a mother of 3, all her kids were different ages but mom was not older than 32; she did not know how to read or write. in my first lesson with her, i had to teach her the vowels. i used the word ecuador, it was in the textbook we had to follow, and i thought it would be easy for her to recognize it…, she did not know that it was the name of our country, she did not know she was ecuadorian. i was not expecting that, i had assumed she knew the name of the country she lived in, but she did not. she was surviving, day after day, trying to meet her family’s basic needs. i was not aware of this then but now i can say she was a victim of dehumanization and oppression (freire, 1968/2018), oppressed by a system that served the privileged, and left out the poor and vulnerable ones; dehumanized, as the conditions around her had made her feel less human. i will elaborate more on this, she was a woman in her early 30’s but illiterate, deprived from knowledge and unaware of her context, fighting alone as a single mom, surviving in a society where health and other basic services are not provided. she was immersed in a context where education is a privilege and a cost she was not able to afford. in vulnerable contexts like the poor neighborhoods in latin america, the fact that a child attends school means a child that will not be able to provide for their family, therefore, even though public education is free, there is still a high cost behind that child that attends school. being a woman increases the possibility of having to drop out school as they have to stay at home taking care of the youngest children and doing household chores (observatorio social del ecuador, 2018). illiteracy prevents people from using their word; according to freire (1968/2018) our word, in order to be a true word, interacts between reflection and action, and this word, as the essence of dialogue, should help us transform the world, our world. reflecting more on juana’s situation, and considering everything she had gone through, not even being aware of the country she lived in, i could say she “had been denied her primordial right to speak her word” (freire, 1968/2018, p. 88). she did not know what her word world was. witnessing this reality was definitely a starting point in my life. juana was willing to want more, she was willing to do more for herself and her kids. she was willing to restore her humanity. we worked together every week for 3 years. she would ask me to help her pay her bills or understand the doctor’s prescription when one of her kids was sick, we learned some math and letters recognition by doing this. lots of the times i would help her prepare dinner, those were our favorite lessons. we had a relationship where the student and the educator approached the object of cognition, not from the same place maybe, but with the same capacity to understand, ask questions and draw conclusions we worked hard, we shared our experiences, our knowledge, our beliefs. was it a dialogical relationship? according to freire, a dialogical situation happens where there is a sincere love for the world, humility, and faith (freire, 1968/2018). were we humble enough to build a dialogical relationship? was there enough love and faith to learn to re-create our world? i do not know the answer to these questions. what i do know now when i reflect back on this experience is how important it is to be aware of who our students are to know about our students' reality, see where they live, ask questions about their families, their hobbies, their dreams, their problems and limitations. this praxis might change our perspective and we will be able to teach not from our minds but from our students’ minds and hearts. about:blank huayamave. understanding freire 6 transnational curriculum inquiry, 18 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> a few years later i travelled to el salvador and lived there for one year. i was a volunteer teacher of 7th and 9th grades. this experience also shaped my reading of the world. i lived in a small rural town in the north of the country, 4 hours away from the capital city. the community played a crucial role in the development of this town. el salvador, six years before i was there, had signed peace agreements after living through 12 years of a civil war. my students had not attended school properly during those years, all of them were the children of former guerrilleros, and one of them had actually been a guerrillero. i had boys and girls, all of them of different ages, and i have to say, a couple of them were even older than me. i had students that had to travel from smaller distant towns and walked for three and half hours every day to get to school, three and half hours under very harsh weather conditions, extremely hot and humid. they were excelling students, their motivation to learn and finish their studies was admirable. we decided we could enter a national math contest as they had shown really strong abilities in math. we practiced extra hours on the weekends. it was hard work, but they were incredibly driven. after a few weeks they qualified for the semi-finals and were able to represent their province in the contest. we got to travel and see the capital city of the province where we lived, they were so proud. it was the first time they had ever left their town. we did not make it to the finals, but all the experience had been totally worth it. “love is an act of courage, not of fear, love is commitment to others” (freire, 1998/2018, p. 89). there was certainly love in these students, love for the idea of having better days, that is hope. they felt love for their education which fostered their commitment. that love was contagious so that others, like me, believed in them and made it happen. “as critical perception is embodied in action, a climate of hope and confidence develops which leads men to attempt to overcome the limit situations” (freire, 1998/2018, pg. 99). these students did not only learn and practice math, but they learned to believe in themselves, they developed confidence to defeat their own limitations. after one year, i was back in ecuador. i returned to the neighborhood i had worked before while in high school, but this time to work with teenagers and youth in order to help create a space that would prevent them from using drugs or getting involved in gangs. i taught guitar and singing lessons. a non-formal education offer was a tool to engage them, to keep them occupied, to help them discover their hobbies and talents, to give them a “why” thus they stayed away from drugs and built their life plans towards a better future. this group of teenagers grew older, we are still friends, they entered higher education institutions and became professionals. were these my first steps in trying to become a humanist educator? i was not much older than they were and this experience helped us all find our vocation to become more truly human (freire, 1992/2014) as there was a sense of belonging that was crucial. we were all part of something, we all had responsibilities, they knew they were valued, respected and needed. these are crucial feelings for all teenagers, especially for teenagers that are at risk. when we teach in a vulnerable environment (poverty, family violence, children that are abandoned, drugs consumption, etc), oppression and oppressed situations can arise from different angles (family relationships, “machismo” in the family and community, boss employee relationships, unfair or unequal relationships where power is demanded) but they can also happen in the classroom, in relationships between teachers students, administrators teachers and even among students. in oppressed situations, banking education arises. a few years ago, when i was working as an english teacher, i had the opportunity to teach at a private school for rich people in my home-country. yes, i have not mentioned yet that my “formal” setting of teaching for more than 15 years has been in the field of teaching english as second language; however, in this “point of departure” and in this “necessary historical understanding of my own situation” (freire, about:blank huayamave. understanding freire 7 transnational curriculum inquiry, 18 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> 1992/2014, p. 26), all the experiences that have made sense, that have built my reading of the world, have not necessarily happened in that formal setting of teaching. anyhow, i still remember the first day of class at that school. i had to teach the first hour, it was at 7:15am, i was waiting for my students by the door. suddenly, all the students entered making such a big noise, they did not say anything to me, not even good morning! they started jumping over benches so they could talk to each other and completely ignored the teacher. i could not believe what was happening. after the class ended, which was a great relief, i asked my peers how they coped with that situation, what strategies they applied and they just told me: “here, as long as the students are not noisy, it’s ok, just let them do what they want except for speaking loudly.” another teacher said: “i just write the number of the pages of the book i want them to complete by the end of the class and if they don’t complete them, i’ll give them a zero”. i was perplexed by their answers. at that point, i did not understand the students and of course, i did not understand my colleagues. this is a situation that happens pretty often in educational scenarios, and this is an oppressor oppressed situation. these students and all the school community, from my point of view, were victims of banking education, where education was a practice of domination, where creativity and reflection were inhibited, anesthetized (freire, 1968/2018). this experience of banking education also shaped and became an important piece in the puzzle of my reading of the world. i wanted to quit from this job, and believe me, i tried many times. yes, quitting was the easiest way out; however, i noticed that my students were responding back to different things i tried. it all started to change when one day i decided to make cards for them with their names on it and a phrase describing them on the other side, they entered the classroom and i had left their cards on their desks. that was all it took, from that day on, things started to change positively. i think i showed them i cared. with that positive response i felt more motivated too; we had lessons in the school patio, in the auditorium, under a tree, etc. we had discussions about topics of their interest, maybe issues that worried them, or things they were doing at school or even current issues happening around the world in that moment, and i built my language lessons through these topics. and it worked, we managed to work together through the school year. they started to trust me and i learnt to trust them too. that is the wonder of people, once you trust them they trust you back, and by having faith and love, dialogical relationships start to flourish. these experiences and some key concepts presented so far, should shape an education that intends to transform the world (freire, 1968/2018), concepts such as: witnessing, dialogue, the oppressed and the oppressor relationships, banking education. i genuinely believe that being able to see what happens around us, helps us build our reading and subsequently, our writing of the world (freire, 1992/2014). reading and writing the world. our reading of the world comes from our experiences, from what we have been able to see, touch, smell, feel. from the people we have talked to, the places we have been to, and the moments we remember. my reading of the world comes from witnessing the struggle and happiness of the poor, the anguish but willingness of the youth, the redemption but not resignation of the guerrilleros, the endless love of the abandoned children. and i think the sense of urgency that is instilled in me comes from this ambiguous, never ending dichotomy of life, where there is good, there is bad, we find hope in despair, joy in sadness; this sense should urge our pursuit for social justice and critical reflections that help educands take the right decisions and steps toward emancipation, an emancipation that lasts, that can become a new just and social order and about:blank huayamave. understanding freire 8 transnational curriculum inquiry, 18 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> that goes beyond from just nice tryouts of good will. let us go back to reflect about the concept of reading the world, which i see as awareness. this awareness and a deep reflection of it, should generate critical consciousness, and this critical consciousness leads us to make decisions, to take actions, to write the world. i see this as an ongoing cycle that helps us keep re-reading and rewriting the world by going through the process again and again, whenever we are at a new positionality. figure 1 reading and writing the world towards a liberatory education. why is it important for educators to be conscious of this cycle of reading and writing the world? how can it help us as educators and how can it help our students? reflecting on the concept of liberatory education, as the opposite of banking education and considering that liberatory education happens when we and our students have opportunities to make an understanding of ourselves and themselves and the world around us, that is the first step to be taken towards reading the world. a world that needs to be healed, where power relations need to be egalitarian, where everyone needs to have the same opportunities, where the voices of the oppressed need to be heard as an act of respect and justice, where their claims are important and taken into account. but liberatory education also demands action, that is writing the world, after reflection and consciousness have taken place. a liberatory education, a pedagogy of the oppressed that can confront a culture of domination. torres (2019) suggests that “liberatory education will take place when people reach a deeper, richer, more textured and nuanced understanding of themselves and their world” (p. 20). i definitely think liberatory education was aimed to be achieved in that small and little town in el salvador. liberatory education is achieved when we provide people with opportunities to make an understanding of themselves and the world around them (torres, 2019). liberatory education also happens when the relationship between teachers and students is not vertical and becomes dialogical where students do not only about:blank huayamave. understanding freire 9 transnational curriculum inquiry, 18 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> learn but also teach, and teachers do not only teach but also learn from their students. i lived this liberatory education during my experience teaching in that small rural community in el salvador when i was 18 years old. i learned many things. i learned to value the power of education, how it can happen under tough conditions; i learned about people who fought for their rights even to the point of putting their lives under risk. i learned about an organized community that was able to do and achieve things through collaborative work, and i discovered my vocation for teaching. liberatory education practices might be an uncomfortable place for educators, as we fear to be questioned, as we (educators) want to have the knowledge (power) so we are superior. we still want to have the last saying and we want to be the only ones that are right. how many of us as educators really plan our work towards a liberatory education? freire, in pedagogy of the oppressed, stated this pedagogy is “humanist and libertarian and has two distinct stages” (1968/2018, p. 54). in the first stage, the oppressed become conscious of their reality of oppression and are committed to unveil it and transform it. this reality can be transformed through actions in depth, which require reading and writing the world (figure 1). once this reality is transformed a new positionality is achieved but, still, ongoing transformation is necessary, this is the second stage, a transformation that does not come from the oppressed anymore but from the people, it becomes pedagogy of the people. this new transformation sees its origin in hope and struggle. hope alone does not win, but struggle or actions without hope become meaningless (freire, 1992/2014). hope that gives the sense of urgency a why. hope that enlightens our aims and ways. hope that invites us to reflect on the idea of an education for longing and yearning for freedom. but how are hope and struggle connected? through the idea of discomfort. a few years ago, i attended a talk of a priest, he was one of the theology of liberation, saying we should always look for discomfort, no matter where we were in life, at what moment of our life. he said being comfortable in life was a dangerous place to stay for long, as that prevents us from moving, discovering, understanding and therefore learning. the constant pursuit of freedom, the constant pursuit of being uncomfortable hence we can reach a new positionality, that, leads us to a new reading and writing of the world, a utopia of struggle (torres, 2019). let’s be in discomfort, discomfort pushes us to new learning, discomfort pushes us to keep looking for alternatives of liberating the oppressed, alternatives to find the power that arises from the weakness of the oppressed as it is the one sufficiently strong to free the oppressed and the oppressor (freire, 1968/2018). discomfort and further actions in depth will lead us to an enduring liberation, where men and women have enough hope, love and faith to confront a culture of domination. about:blank huayamave. understanding freire 10 transnational curriculum inquiry, 18 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> figure 2 pedagogy of the oppressed the diagram above is very ambitious and dares to synthesize the pedagogy of the oppressed posed by freire. as mentioned before, freire stated this pedagogy could be divided in two different stages. each stage is also a cycle, once the situation of oppression is unveiled, continuous actions in depth are required; we go through the cycle again until the situation is transformed and we can move forward to a new positionality. stage 2 is also cyclical, we go through discomfort and deep actions as many times as it is necessary until this dynamic is rooted in us, the people, and then we could all be taking steps towards an enduring liberation. the way i see it, the continuum of these two stages should lead to a confrontation of a culture of domination. and i think this is the problem that happens in lots of contexts of vulnerability for different reasons (external or internal). we seldom move forward from stage 1 to stage 2, therefore, we keep ourselves living in a culture of domination. final reflections: restorers of humanity writing this paper has been an exercise of conscientization for me, as i have decoded from the abstract to concrete, describing my lived experiences and looking back at my reality in order to understand myself and be able to comprehend my why’s and my sense of urgency (freire, 1992/2014). recognizing my process until now and its importance have been key elements in my own reflection practice. we should all ask these questions at some point: what is the path i have gone through? what are the steps taken to go from here to there? what have been the stones on the way and how have i overcome them? if we are educators, who are the participants in our dialogical relationships? are these relationships egalitarian or is there room for oppressed and oppressors’ relationships? how can we engage the oppressed to transform the oppression conditions? how do we avoid the danger of being “savers” and become new oppressors? this leads me to a final diagram i want to present in this paper. a diagram that depicts how i see our reading and writing the world leads us to an enduring liberation, through critical consciousness and dialogue, as transformative educational practices that can be implemented on a daily basis. about:blank huayamave. understanding freire 11 transnational curriculum inquiry, 18 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> figure 3 restorers of humanity by reflecting on these two processes: critical consciousness and enduring liberation, and keeping in mind the five elements necessary for dialogical relationships: hope, love, faith, humility, and critical thinking (freire, 1968/2018), we could become and help others become restorers of humanity, by having faith in others, faith in their power to create and recreate and faith in their (our) vocation to be more entirely human. helping our students find their vocation, guiding and giving them the necessary tools to find it, will defeat dehumanization and will stop the violence of the oppressors. as freire said, we cannot accept dehumanization as a mere hopelessly given destiny (1992/2014). dehumanization can be defeated if we transform the conditions of an unjust system, and, even though a lot has to do with political decisions, we cannot be oblivious of the situation and we need to take active part. i started this paper describing what utopia is. for me, it is this imagined place where all educators and students become restorers of humanity. as galeano said, we might never reach it, but it is there, in the horizon, to keep us moving forward. after reflecting on my own lived experiences as an educator in different contexts, there are still several aspects of pedagogy that still need to be reflected about as they have not been approached here; however, from my point of view what has been discussed in this paper can guide us as educators to start the path of incorporating liberatory educational practices. the processes in the diagrams look easy; we all know in real life, they are not, but the key concepts are there as reminders of what can be done and should be done in our everyday lessons. as for me, i want to keep looking at the horizon, and keep moving forward, keep feeling the urgency and desire of a transformed reality through critical consciousness, dialogical relationships, and actions reflected deeply, actions filled with love. notes 1 mphuayamave@upei.ca about:blank huayamave. understanding freire 12 transnational curriculum inquiry, 18 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> references freire, p. (2014). pedagogy of hope: reliving pedagogy of the oppressed (r. barr). bloomsbury publishing plc. (original work published 1992) freire, p. (2018). pedagogy of the oppressed: 50th anniversary edition (m. bergman). bloomsbury academic. (original work published 1968) lownds, p. (2019). wake up and dream!: a polyphonic contextualization of paulo freire. in torres, c (ed), the wiley handbook of paulo freire (1st ed., pp. 83-98). wiley & sons, inc. observatorio social del ecuador (2018). situación de la niñez y adolescencia en el ecuador, una mirada a través de los ods. https://odna.org.ec/wpcontent/uploads/2019/02/situacio%cc%81n-de-lanin%cc%83ez-y-adolescencia-en-ecuador-2019.pdf torres, c. (2019). paulo freire and the dialectics of the local and the global. in torres, c (ed), the wiley handbook of paulo freire (1st ed., pp. 3-29). wiley & sons, inc. submitted: november, 26th, 2021 approved: january, 15th, 2022 about:blank https://odna.org.ec/wpcontent/uploads/2019/02/situacio%cc%81n-de-la-nin%cc%83ez-y-adolescencia-en-ecuador-2019.pdf https://odna.org.ec/wpcontent/uploads/2019/02/situacio%cc%81n-de-la-nin%cc%83ez-y-adolescencia-en-ecuador-2019.pdf o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: demissie, eyueil abate; boru, ambissa kenea (2021). curriculum choice for refugee children at jawi refugee camp, ethiopia, transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) p. 67-77 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/issue/<access date> curriculum choice for refugee children at jawi refugee camp, ethiopia eyueil abate demissie1 phd candidate at addis ababa university, ethiopia ambissa kenea boru2 addis ababa university, ethiopia background information there is a debate on the choice of curriculum to be implemented in the education offered for refugee children and the debate is based on the status of refugee children and their future aspirations. unhcr (2015) classifies the choice of curriculum in the education delivered for refugees into two: (a) parallel system and (b) mainstreaming. the parallel system refers to the use of the curriculum of the country of origin and it is described as a traditional model. in this system refugees access education in refugee-hosting schools that are managed by unhcr or its partners. the case of pakistan, liberia, and tanzania has been presented as example of curriculum choice along this system. mainstreaming, on the other handm refers to the use of the curriculum of the country of asylum (or host country). this is the curriculum of choice by unhcr education policy. refugees are mainstreamed into national schools and follow the host country's national curriculum. in the mainstreaming system, refugees access education either in a unhcr (or partner-managed) refugee camp setting or in host community schools. the question in this debate is which curriculum is the most suitable in education for refugee children and two opposing ideas have been identified from the literature reviewed (unesco, 2017; education development trust, 2018; unhcr, 2015; unhcr, 2017). the first proposition recommends that refugees need to learn by the host country curriculum for overcoming problems related to material and teacher scarcity. this idea is mainly supported by unhcr, unesco, and unicef, organizations who want to make sure that the children are accessed to some kind of education today. according to unesco the plan for inclusion of refugee students in the national education system need to be done before the emergency phase (unesco, 2017) and starting from 2012 unhcr launched an inclusive educational strategy that requests teaching refugees through the host government education system (education development trust, 2018). unhcr encourages cooperation with national education authorities for early adoption and/or transition to using of the country of asylum curriculum in refugee settings. according to unhcr use of the curriculum of the country of asylum provides access to accredited, supervised, and accountable education services (unhcr, 2015). for the writer, this is because it is convenient for safe access to examinations and certification, access to teaching and learning materials, quality assurance, and improved access to national education services including options to continue education at higher levels and safe access to accredited certification and services associated with national systems. the example cited for this stand is the experience of sudanese refugees in chad. according to this example, sudanese refugees in chad attend their education by the curriculum of origin from 2003 – 2012 and chad has a bilingual curriculum (french/arabic), demissie, boru. curriculum choice 68 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index which meant that students could continue learning in arabic. due to the continual conflict in darfur, the refugees are far from repatriation and become less prepared for the professional demand of the host country. therefore, the unhcr has conducted a participatory assessment to examine the transition of the curriculum adapted from the county of origin to the country of asylum. across the 12 refugee camps, the feedback of refugees was found to be mixed in that the transition has got support from refugees in some camps while it faces resistance in other refugee camps due to its danger to certification, education quality, a loss of national identity, culture, and religion. in order to implement the transition, training was given for 167 teachers and a joint activity was done by the unhcr, unesco, unicef, and the moe. it is also mentioned that an action plan was prepared and frequently monitored by stakeholders regularly. despite the resistance observed from students in some camps, the implementation has been continued and the results were believed to be successful (unhcr, 2015). on the other hand, some scholars argue that refugees need to learn by the curriculum of the country of origin. the concept of "education for repatriation", using the home country curriculum, gained recognition during the 1990s. this system prepares students to re-enter schooling smoothly during repatriation. the system recommends that educated refugees need to be given the chance to be teachers. unhcr, (2017), indicated that students feel a sense of security in a situation where their identity is respected, and learning in a familiar classroom gives them comfort. according to sinclair, (2001), such a kind of education system is very important in the use of the language of origin as a medium of instruction and respecting student's religious as well as cultural values. unhcr (2017) discusses that differences in curriculum and educational delay may increase trauma among refugee children. in general, dilemma is observable as far as the curriculum choice for refugee children is considered. as presented above, studying the host country curriculum is advantageous in some situations (e.g., when repatriation is extended, when educational resources are scarce, etc.). learning the home country curriculum is also advantageous from the view point of maintaining national identity, continuity in mental set-up, preparation for repatriation, etc. the other dimension of the complication is when the children aspire (and also have a possibility) to transfer to a third country from the immediate host country. added to this is the fact that the particular third country is not readily known. then, both the host and home country curricula may not be very relevant. therefore, such complexity calls for detailed analysis. the south sudanese children (the case community) in ethiopia are learning the ethiopian school curriculum following the ethiopian school system. within the lens of the dilemma identified above, this study intends to examine whether the curriculum choice made for this group of refugee children is the best possible one. material and methods this is a qualitative single case study in which schools in jewi refugee camp are considered as a case for investigation. the camp is located in gambella region in south-west ethiopia ethiopia. south sudanese refugees reside in this refugee camp and most of them were from the upper nile state. the sources of data, sampling technique, tools used for data collection and the method of data analysis are briefly outlined below: a) source of data and tools: interview, document analysis and observation serve as a data collecting tools in this study. refugee students, national teachers, refugee teachers, parents, school leaders, and officials from arra, save the children gambella office, unhcr, dicac, and south sudanese embassy in ethiopia took part in this research. b) sampling: for the selection of participant officials, principals, and parent teacher and students’ association (ptsa) members the researchers used availability sampling technique – took those that were available by the time of the camp visit. convenient sampling technique https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index demissie, boru. curriculum choice 69 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index was applied in the selection of key informant teachers, whereas systematic random sampling technique was used for the selection of national teachers. finally, the researchers used opportunistic (emergent) sampling technique for the selection of the refugee students in the primary schools. c). method of data analysis: a qualitative data analysis technique was used for analyzing the data gathered. accordingly, the data collected from the research sites were organized, the audio files were transcribed, and the field notes were read and re-read. the analysis was assisted by maxqda software version 2018.3. the findings were presented and discussed in the subsequent section. findings and discussion the perception of respondents on learning through the host country curriculum most respondent seemed supportive of using the ethiopian curriculum to educate the south sudanese refugee children. for instance, respondent from the south sudanese embassy in ethiopia indicated that students face no equivalence problem for resuming their education or get employment opportunities during repatriation. admittedly, most respondents noted the prevalence of differences in the subjects taught in the schools of south sudan and ethiopia. for example, the majority of the respondent students and key informants identified the subject called religious education in south sudan whereas it does not exist in ethiopian school curriculum. in ethiopia, education is separated from religion. however, the respondents tended to agree that the contents included in science subjects both in ethiopia and south sudanese curriculum are almost the same. therefore, they see no problem of offering science education for refugee children through the curriculum of the host country (school principal 1, 2019; school principal 4, 2019; education expert from arra, 2019). additionally, some respondents prefer to make students learn through the ethiopian curriculum by mentioning the prevalence of better opportunities for them to join a university in ethiopia than in south sudan (key informant teacher 2, 2019; respondent from development inter church aid commission, 2019; key informant teacher 3, 2019). furthermore, education expert of arra (2019) and respondent education officer from unhcr ethiopia (2019) indicated the problems of teaching south sudanese refugee students that are found in ethiopia through the south sudanese curriculum. lack of teachers, shortage of respurces, and, above all, mismatch to prepare the students for higher education in ethiopia. regarding this, one respondent stated the following: students are happy to learn the ethiopian curriculum but not happy with the medium of instruction which is a mother tongue. qualification of teachers in south sudan is not advanced, so they like the education in here. difficulty level of ethiopian education is higher than the education in south sudan. this is observable from to the fact that most of the refugee students struggle to understand the lessons at the beginning. some of them openly complain that the lessons are more difficult than the ones they used to have in their country. students love to learn a civics subject. there is no training that provides orientation for national teachers on how to consider background information about the refugees in their lessons (school principal 2, 2019) many respondent students and teachers stressed that the education provided in ethiopia is by far more difficult than the education in south sudan. the respondents believe https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index demissie, boru. curriculum choice 70 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index that the refugee children have got the opportunity to learn advanced concepts through the ethiopian curriculum. their reason is that in ethiopia the contents in each subject and grade level are reasonably more difficult than what are given in south sudan. additionally, most respondent teachers and key informants consider learning physics, chemistry, and biology at the primary school level challenge the capacity of the students as these subjects are offered for secondary school students in south sudan. in connection with this, one respondent specified that most of the textbooks used in south sudan have few topics with little volume. in comparison with ethiopia, he contended, the textbooks prepared for students of the same grade level as well as subjects in south sudan can be finished within a short period of time (respondent from save the children international gambella branch, 2019). despite this, there are not few children who lack interest to attend their education believing the education in ethiopia has no use for their future life in south sudan. as a result, they pay less attention to their current education. this part of the dilemma stated earlier in this paper. some of these children lack interest in the medium of instruction (school principal 2, 2019), some think that they would go back home or leave for another country of hope and that the education they get from ethiopian school does not serve them. this situation deserves some kind of resolve. may be is it possible to hybrid the two systems of education? would reconsider the issue of medium of instruction possible so that the children gain better skills of “bread winning language?” would making parents and the children aware of the fact that the contents of the curriculum are only means to quire some developmentally appropriate skills and that contents are not ends in themselves help? these and similar thoughts need to be considered if the children are to make good use of the years they spend on schooling for education does not wait. emphasis given in their current education for original cultural orientation of students the existence of a local community from a similar ethnic origin with refugees brings an advantage for refugee children to live in a culturally friendly environment. this factor has a constructive effect to provide culturally relevant education to some degree. there is still a serious complaint from respondent students about learning the culture, value, and system of the host country in some subjects. this research identified the prevalence of endemic issues in the lessons which are unfamiliar to foreigners taught in ethiopia. these issues have been manifested in places and individuals as well as in textbooks mentioned as examples. it is also revealed in the study that students are unhappy in learning the geography or history of ethiopia. moreover, from most of the respondents, it is understood that in civics and ethical education subject students learn about the constitution, democratic system, culture of conflict resolution, and flag of ethiopia. accordingly, some think that they are denied to learn the history or geography as well as government formation in their own country, i.e., south sudan. some teachers to initiative to introduce a situation in which children are encouraged to talk about their country. the experience of a respondent civic and ethical education teacher is presented here as it is found to be crucial to resolve such complaints. when we teach the ethiopian constitution in civics subject, there are lessons about the ethiopian government organization and the ethiopian flag. in teaching about the ethiopian flag, i asked them to tell me about the flag of their country. after i taught the meanings of the colors in the ethiopian flag, i asked them to tell me about the colors and their meanings in the flag of their country. i encouraged them to tell me about the constitution and government organization of their country (national teacher 5, 2019) https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index demissie, boru. curriculum choice 71 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index this lived experience of this national teacher clearly communicates that teachers, if they can carefully consider the students in their classroom, can make the curriculum more relevant for the refugee children. some respondent see advantage in the refugees’ learning the ethiopian curriculum. for instance, program head of jewi refugee camp (2019) stated, one of the major reasons for teaching refugee students through the ethiopian curriculum is to enable them to adapt themselves with the values and cultures of ethiopia, i.e., the host country. (. this, as to the respondents, helps to develop the people-to-people relation with the current and future generations. the values and cultures of ethiopia which are new for refugee students have been reflected in the ethiopian education system. but creating the platform is very critical if the education is needed to be highly relevant and to promote and embrace the original culture simultaneously. instructional language in refugee hosting schools in ethiopia one of the core advantages for refugees is that they settle in a community that speaks the same language and has a culture which is relatively close to theirs. for instance, eritrean refugees in ethiopia settle in tigray and afar region. refugees from somalia settle in a refugee camp built in the somali regional state. similarly, refugees from south sudan largely settle in gambella and benishangul regional states (education expert from arra, 2019; respondent education officer from unhcr, 2019; respondent from save the children international gambella branch, 2019; school principal 1, 2019). therefore, the majority of the refugees in ethiopia have a relative advantage to learn by their mother language. despite this, eritrean kunama refugees who settle in a refugee camp that is found in tigray region attend their primary education through tigrigna. in different from this, back home in eretria the refugees used to learn through latin language (education expert from araa, 2019). additionally, in a refugee camp found in assosa, there were refugees from more than 16 countries. in such a situation, using a mother tongue as a medium of instruction is impossible. as a result, in this refugee camp english serves as a medium of instruction for primary education (education expert of arra, 2019 & respondent education officer from unhcr, 2019). in refugee-hosting schools that are found in gambella region the medium of instruction for students from grade 1-4 is mother tongue. six local languages serve as a medium of instruction from grades 1-4 and students from grade 5-8 attend their education in english (respondent from gambella education bureau, 2019; education expert from arra, 2019). a similar approach is followed in the four schools in jewi refugee camp. this is because there are locals who speak the same language and there is a pre-existing experience to provide education using the nuer language as a medium of instruction for nuer communities in ethiopia. hence, as one of the respondents said, there is no problem of finding teaching materials by their mother tongue (education expert from arra, 2019). even though the researched students have got the opportunity to learn through their mother tongue, the students and other key informants criticize the ethiopian education system for being highly dependent on mother language. almost all the respondent students and key informants are not interested to use their mother tongue as a medium of instruction. according to them, it should have been used for informal communication outside of the classroom and in religious institutions. these respondents expressed that when they were in south sudan, they attended their education through the english language. some respondents pointed out that those students who learn through the ethiopian curriculum are less competent in communicating in english and they fear for the occurrence of english language skills differences between students in south sudan and refugee south sudanese students in https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index demissie, boru. curriculum choice 72 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index ethiopia. they consider this to affect the employability of the refugee students during repatriation. though the respondents expressed that they used to learn through the english language when they were in south sudan, the researchers’ observation, the responses of the national teachers as well as that of school principals revealed that the greater majority of the students are unable to communicate well using english language. very few respondents mentioned that students in jewi refugee camp are good in communicating through english and some teachers claimed that the majority of the students can comprehend things said in english. the researchers also confirmed that some of the students can communicate using english if the speaker talks slowly and clearly. comparatively, it is true that students who have school experience in south sudan were better in communicating through english than students who begin school only in ethiopia. nevertheless, all the respondents underscored, students are facing a communication gap and it is posing a problem with their academic achievement. the results of the research also indicated the prevalence of a huge communication gap between national teachers and students in refugee-hosting schools. the remarks of a respondent students can be good evidence for this argument. “we face difficulty to communicate with ethiopian teachers and our communication with them is very much limited due to language barrier” (respondent student 3, 2019). in contrast females are identified to be less confident in communicating through english language. when i talked to a female student in english, she replied in nuer. in such cases, i don’t use boys as a translator because that may not be comfortable for her. instead, i use assistant teachers as a translator (national teacher 5, 2019) to resolve the communication gap, national teachers and school principals pinpointed that they use translators from students and incentive teachers even though the capacity of the "student translator” on understanding what the teacher says is questionable. discussion this research investigates the contrasting discourses in the curriculum of choice for refugee children and the practice in jewi refugee camp. results of the study identified that primary school students in jewi refugee camp attend their education through the curriculum of the host country. in favor of this, unhcr education policy recommends the use of the national education system. according to peterson (2015), the reason for unhcr to take this stand is that the protracted nature of conflicts makes the refugees wait a long period of time for repatriating to their country of origin. peterson discusses that making refugee students learn by the national education system includes the use of the host country’s language as a medium of instruction. this situation contradicts with the universal declaration of human rights as primary school students have the right to learn by their mother-tongue. the right of these children need not be negotiated only because they are found in the status of a refugee. the reason why children are advised to learn by their mother-tongue has its own reason and it has to be respected for children in a refugee setting. luckily, the research identified that this will not be a problem in several refugee camps in ethiopia in general and in jewi refugee camp in particular. this is because the local communities are from the same ethno-linguistic groups. nevertheless, refugee children in a country of asylum where they settle in a community which speaks a language different from theirs will be forced to learn through a strange language that is unfamiliar to them. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index demissie, boru. curriculum choice 73 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index language variance is found to be one of the major challenges for many refugee students in hosting countries. as hamilton and moore (2004) pointed out, as students are making a shift on the medium of instruction in the host country, they need to get adequate support. if they get the necessary support, children have the advantage to learn a new language faster than adults (kennedy and dewar, 1997 as cited in hamilton and moore, 2004). with regard to the importance of learning a host country’s language, claire mason and shannon save the children (2018) emphasized that developing competence to communicate through a host country’s language brings a reduced level of depressive and disruptive behavior. according to them, students who are capable of communicating through a hosting country’s language would have the advantage of making use of their previous educational experience for their current learning. in the literature on learning language, females are identified to learn a new language faster than boys (ellis 1994, as cited in hamilton and moore, 2004). despite this, in this study female students are found to be very shy to communicate through the english language than boys. according to respondent national teachers, boys have better confidence to try to communicate through english. the culture of south sudan does not encourage girls to speak freely in front of others and it instructed them to be shy. as a result, girls are less confident to speak in english. refugees flee their country to escape from persecution; they have passed through a life-threatening situation and they have lost their valuable assets including their loved ones. they are in trauma and need someone to understand and support them. at this time, the expected thing is trying to get them out of confusion rather than dragging them into confusion in language. we see that learning by the language that refugees do not know before makes them incompetent in their academics and leave them stranded in their education. our argument aligns with the discussion presented by peterson (2015). according to her, making children learn in a language that they do not know is making them learn for a long period of time without understanding what they learn. therefore, our research experiences informed us the relevance of providing preparatory (bridging) language training for refugee children before making them directly attend an education that is provided in a strange language. as a result, we see the significance of giving the education through the first language of students at least until they develop basic skill in communicating through the medium of instruction in the hosting school. this is because developing a feeling of resuming education serves as a major tool to protect students from a psychological disorder and helping them to recover from the trauma. however, if they are set to be out of attending the main education under the name of language training, they may feel that they are going to lag behind from the grade level at which they are expected to be. rather than doing this, there has to be a new language policy for refugees that enable them to learn through the original language while developing the skills of communicating through the language of the host country. this requires a series of stages in the acquisition of the host country’s language simultaneously by promoting children to exercise their original language. this situation benefits the children for their future life either in the host or home country. in the choice to use the host country’s language as a medium of instruction, hamilton and moore (2004) indicated the importance of monitoring the expectation of the refugees from their new life and the expectation of the host country from the refugees. on the other hand, teachers play a crucial role in improving student's capacity to communicate through the host country’s language. as to rutter (1998), teachers need to take the responsibility of a smooth transition in instructional language, that is, from the language of origin to the host country’s language. additionally, jones and rutter (1998) discussed the needed to learn a new language. that is, to enable refugee students to learn through a second language requires the creation of a https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index demissie, boru. curriculum choice 74 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index friendly environment for students by making eye contact and smile. they also advise teachers to make themselves familiar with keywords from the first language of the refugee children. doing this enables the teacher to communicate with students, to create trust between them, and to initiate them to learn the language of the host country. more specifically, these scholars indicated that speaking slowly in a clear intonation is very important to make students learn the second language faster and in this process the support of peers who are capable of speaking the new language is vital. finally, the need to provide language training for students in addition to the regular class hour is very important for helping them record a speedy language skills development. with this regard, schools need to place strategies that can enhance the students’ english language communication skills through extra-curricular and co-curricular activities in addition to the main teaching-learning process (hamilton and moore, 2004). the other essential result of this research is the respondents are dissatisfied with the contents they learn in related to history, civics, and geography. the researchers acknowledge that most of the contents included in these subjects have a critical attachment to the social makeup of each child. therefore, each child wishes to learn the history, geography, or aspects of governance of his/her country. if the students lack to see these elements in their education their motivation and appetite to learn may gradually diminish. in similar to this, sudanese refugees who are set to learn through the chadian curriculum were observed to challenge learning by the medium of instruction implemented in the host country, way of establishing an equivalence between the two countries education system, learning the contents included in history and geography subjects, and the reason why the chad education system do not offer islamic studies as it was part of the curriculum in sudanese system (unhcr, 2015). the major question in teaching history or geography subjects is the issue of whose history or the geography of which country is going to be taught to refugee students. the role of primary education is very significant in creating a smooth cultural transition and preparing students for their future life. maintaining the cultural balance between the host and home country is very essential for the relevance of the education provided for refugees. unhcr (1994), in supporting this view, stated that the education for refugees needs to serve as a tool to help them preserve the original culture and encourage students to communicate through their original language (unhcr, 1994). besides, it needs to foster healing the wounds that occurred to students as a result of the conflict. the culture of conflict management, negotiation, and reconciliation needs to be promoted through the education provided to bring long-lasting peace in the home country among the incoming generation. equipping students with knowledge on the geography, history, state structure of their country, cultural activities, and other relevant issues is vital to make students capable of leading a smooth life during repatriation. despite this the research result informed prevalence of a gap on incorporating contents that embrace the culture of refugees especially in social study and civics and ethical education subjects. concerning the contents provided for refugee students in the country of asylum, peterson (2015) discussed that much of it is highly unrelated to the student’s previous educational experience. we see no problem in an effort to promote culture of the host country. additionally attempts to aware refugee children on the values of the host country through the mainstream education need to be promoted. these are significant because it facilitates a smooth and speedy adaptation to the new environment. the problem is intentional or unintentional intervention that blocks refugees from promoting and learning their original culture. this is a systematic oppression that makes refugees detached from their original culture and the society around their original living area. to eliminate the oppression of the host culture over the home culture mathieson (2004) recommends the use of a cross-cultural curriculum. according to this https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index demissie, boru. curriculum choice 75 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index scholar projects and topics assigned to be learnet by refugees need to consider a cross-cultural context. with regard to this issue, peterson (2015) specified that there are many refugeehosting classrooms in refugee camps that offer education for multilingual children. in such situations, as to this scholar, during instructional time plenty of time will be allotted for translating words which act as barrier for the communication. it is known in the research that there is no national teacher who is proficient to teach in the nuer language and the two national teachers who claim to speak nuer are found to be at the level of a beginner. according to respondent students, the textbooks contain local names which are difficult to be translated. therefore, these pose challenges for them to understand things. to make refugee’s beneficiary the education provided needs to consider their background, current situation, and future aspiration. jones and rutter (1998) also indicated that a proper emphasis needs to be given for the previous educational background and current needs of refugee children before providing education. likewise, anderson, hamilton, moore, loewen. and mathieson (2004) emphasized that the education provided for refugee children needs to enable them see that their culture is respected. however, the research result revealed the prevalence of limitations in this area. peterson divides the education period for refugee children into three. these periods are pre-resettlement, at arrival, and post-resettlement (peterson, 2015). during resettlement in the host nation, there will be variations in culture, curriculum, and medium of instruction. even though currently there is a shift in the curriculum of choice previously the unhcr recommends teaching language and curriculum need to strongly align with the country of origin to facilitate a smooth transition during repatriation, (unhcr, 2003 as cited in peterson, 2015). on the other hand, a study conducted on urban refugee students in nairobi indicated that the need to introduce a curriculum that provides some life skills and vocational training for refugees has been identified as an essential element in education for refugees (karanja, 2010). our research experience informed me that both the above arguments lack to see the whole picture. learning the home country curriculum may enable children to have a smooth educational transition and prepare them for their future life if they repatriate to their home country. despite this, it unable them from being competent in their future life in the host country. on the other hand, learning by the host country curriculum is favorable to get teachers, learning materials, and certification easily. but it doesn't consider refugee's future aspirations and lacks to prepare them for the life in their original country during repatriation and for the life in the third country. additionally, it lacks placing the necessary processes for the transition from home to host country curriculum. therefore, the researchers firmly believe in the need to use a negotiated curriculum that considers refugee student's future professional life in the home as well as the host country. conclusions and implications the research results informed that the curriculum provided for south sudanese children in jewi refugee camp lacks to pay adequate emphasis for the cultural orientation, previous educational background, and the impact of the crisis on them. this is observed to have an impact on the motivation of students in their education. the two contrasting choices in the implemented curriculum for refugee students are reviewed and the perception of refugees in this area was presented. even though the reasons provided in both propositions have a point, there is also a fact that does not get the necessary concern in both recommendations. the major argument in favor of the use of the host country curriculum focuses on the prolonged settlement of refugees in the hosting country and misses to see the feasibility of early repatriation. even if most of the conflicts occurred globally has a longer lifespan there are also conflicts that are resolved in a short time. the perplexity connected to either to staying in https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index demissie, boru. curriculum choice 76 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index host country (ethiopia), to repatriate or to move on to a third country of asylum also has significant implication on curricular decisions for the refugee children. therefore, to resolve this problem we firmly believe in implementing a negotiated curriculum which is the product of mediation between the home and host country’s curriculum. a mediated curriculum is relevant for making use of students' previous educational experiences, mediating the culture in education between the host and home country, and facilitating a smooth transition in education with regard to this. additionally, a negotiated curriculum fosters a mechanism of providing an enhanced care and support for the students to recover from post traumatic experiences. the need to implement negotiated curriculum becomes substantial when one observes refugees who are set to learn through the same curriculum with nationals. the most important aspect to understand is that refugees are not attending their education under normal conditions and they are in trauma as a result of the crisis. they are in economic crisis and facing social, physical, psychological, and mental health problems as well. additionally, they are displaced out of their will and it is a sudden incident in their life. as a result, the education provided needs to create a means for a smooth transition, save students from getting into confusion, help students to rehabilitate from the trauma they faced, and enable primary school children to learn by their first language. in addition to this, refugee children need to learn the history, geography, and other relevant concepts of their country to function properly during repatriation and fit with the community in their country of origin. teachers play crucial role by using each and every instructional even to relate learning to the children’s home country situation. notes 1 abateeyueil@yahoo.com 2 kenea2004@yahoo.com references anderson, a., hamilton, r., moore, d., loewen. s., and mathieson f. k. (2004). education of refugee children; theoretical perspectives and best practice. in r. h. moore, educational interventions (pp. 1-11). london: routledge. education development trust. (2018). teachers of refugees: a review of literature. eric education resources information center. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ed588878.pdf hamilton, r., & moore, d. (2003). educational interventions for refugee children: theoretical perspectives and implementing best practice. routledge. jones, c. and rutter, j. (1998). refugee education: mapping the field. trentham books limited. karanja, l. (2010). the educational pursuits and obstacles for urban refugee students in kenya. international journal for cross-disciplinary subjects in education (ijcdse) , 1 (3), 147-155. peterson, d. s. (june 2003). refugee education in countries of first asylum: breaking open the. cambridge: theory and research in education. rutter, j. (1998). refugees in today's world. in c. j. rutter (ed.), refugee education: mapping the field (pp. 13-32). london: trentham books. save the children (2018). hear it from teachers; getting refugee children back to learning. resource centre | save the children. https://resourcecentre.savethechildren.net/node/14237/pdf/hear-it-from-the-teachersrefugee-education-report.pdf https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index mailto:abateeyueil@yahoo.com mailto:kenea2004@yahoo.com https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ed588878.pdf https://resourcecentre.savethechildren.net/node/14237/pdf/hear-it-from-the-teachers-refugee-education-report.pdf https://resourcecentre.savethechildren.net/node/14237/pdf/hear-it-from-the-teachers-refugee-education-report.pdf demissie, boru. curriculum choice 77 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index sinclair, m. (2001). education in emergencies. in c. t. jeff crisp, learning for a future: refugee education in developing countries (pp. 1-83). lausanne: unhcr. unesco (2017). protecting the right to education for refugees. refworld | the leader in refugee decision support. https://www.refworld.org/pdfid/5a5f41fc4.pdf unhcr (2015, july). curriculum choices in refugee settings. reliefweb informing humanitarians worldwide. https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/560be1209.pdf unhcr (2017, december). working towards inclusion; refugees within the national systems of ethiopia. unhcr the un refugee agency. https://www.unhcr.org/5a55ed8c4.pdf united nations high commissioner for refugees (1994). refugee children: guidelines on protection and care. refworld. https://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6b3470.html submitted: august, 19th, 2021 accepted: september, 13rd, 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index https://www.refworld.org/pdfid/5a5f41fc4.pdf https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/560be1209.pdf https://www.unhcr.org/5a55ed8c4.pdf https://www.refworld.org/docid/3ae6b3470.html o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: pereira, talita; nhantumbo, hermínio ernesto (2018). when the nation kills the tribe: the paradox of a school curriculum suitable for all. transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> when the nation kills the tribe: the paradox of a school curriculum suitable for all1 talita vidal pereira2, hermínio ernesto nhantumbo3 state university of rio de janeiro, brazil introduction this article is substantiated by the understanding that the act of defending public school lies on the radical theoretical investment in deconstructing fundaments that often organize the ways through which we reason about the functioning of this institution. we focus the challenges posed by the elaboration of a unified school curriculum in mozambique, by questioning the meanings given to the school environment as a privileged locus where one can struggle for the hegemony and empowerment of new social actors. it is possible stating that the investment in the meaning given to the school environment in mozambique, which is beyond the political antagonism, has been shared by colonizers and the revolutionary liberation forces. we problematized these attempts of standardizing these meanings and, based on a post-structuralist and post-colonial perspective, we discussed the limits of a unified school curriculum conceived as the axis of a national identity project. we used the theoretical contributions from stuart hall (1992; 1996) and homi bhabha (1994) to argue education projects focused on designing the ideal identity of a new national individual by articulating the essential and realistic meaning of culture and identity. such approach allows us to advocate for the need of thinking about the development of a school curriculum the goes beyond the essentialist and realistic logic, which minimizes and/or does not take into consideration the pluralities and differences responsible for turning us into “humans” – not into an “ideal human subject”, but into “speaking, gathered and precarious beings” (lopes, 2013, p. 8). this curriculum would be based on a theoretical investment capable of favoring the denaturation of exclusion processes justified by the will to build a common identity necessary to construct a nation. education in mozambique: improving natives’ moral and spiritual conditions although the organic statute for the portuguese catholic missions in africa and timor (joão belo decree from october 13, 1926) was taken to mozambique in 1498, it only gave the catholic church the mission of educating and “civilizing” indigenous peoples (as natives were called at that time) in 1926. according to mazula (1995), the approved statute triggered the official colonial education in mozambique, which aimed at “ensuring political hegemony and the cultural orientation of the pereira, nhantumbo. when the nation kills the tribe 4 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci dominating colonial class over traditional and primitive societies, which were seen as stagnant to the zero-degree temperature of history” (mazula, 1995). the project was based on a clear eurocentric discourse substantiated by a standardized european culture – of the colonizer. such discourse triggered comparisons and the hierarchies used to justify the elaboration of a school curriculum that aimed at “gradually conducting wildlife indigenous to a civilized life by forming their self-sense of portuguese citizenship and by preparing them to the struggle of living, in order to make these individuals more useful for society and for themselves. […], it is done by outspreading the portuguese language and habits among them” (mazula, 1995, p. 80). the civilizing project adopted by the colonizer was based on the denial and destruction of “indigenous/native” cultures and on the imposition of european values, habits and costumes. based on bhabha (1994), this process allowed colonizers to construct stereotypes to delegitimize other meanings by addressing them as threatening differences. we understand these stereotypes as discursive processes marked by hierarchical and classificatory relationships. they are discursive processes that organize the colonial rhetoric; thus, they signify indigenous/natives, and their culture, as “savages”, “primitive” and “cursed”, because black individuals were/are identified as caim/cam descendants who, based on the christian tradition, killed his own brother. these are discursive construction processes focused on annihilating indigenous/native cultures in order to build the “european civilizing project”. besides the organic statute for the portuguese catholic missions in africa and timor, schooling processes were reinforced by ordinance n. 312, from may 1, 1926, since they were seen as instruments to promote the european culture. this ordinance separated the learning/teaching process provided to whites and blacks and created the school of indigenous teachers and the district school of arts and crafts. these teaching projects aimed at providing rudimentary labor training to indigenous/natives (zawangoni, 2007) and at ensuring the hegemony of the portuguese language as official language to the detriment of the approximately 41 languages4 spoken in mozambique. the mission statute was approved in 1941 and gave the catholic church the responsibility to teach indigenous/native individuals. this teaching approach was defined as nationalist and practical for what colonizers understood as “perfect nationalization, indigenous moralization and the acquisition (by their part) of labor habits and attitudes, depending on sex and on the convenience of regional economies; […]moralization, abandonment to laziness and preparation of future rural workers” (gasperini, 1989, p. 16). such segregating policy was established by colonial law n. 238, from may 17, 1930, which, among other aspects, highlighted the concept of separating the learning/teaching system between whites and blacks. the law addressed that “african children […] at school-age are not in the same conditions as european children at the same age; therefore, they cannot attend elementary school, at the same time” (mazula, 1995, p. 80). the approval of the segregating policy points out that the so-called ideal european cultural standard would not be fully accepted by indigenous-native peoples, even if they were prone to give up their own culture. in other words, “europeanization of indigenous/native” individuals did not imply eliminating differences that justify the discrimination between whites and blacks. according to gonçalves (2015, p. 107), “the [work] of the white colonizer was the only way to civilize black individuals based on a process through which these individuals would be forced to gradually abandon their own costumes”. intellectual formation was pereira, nhantumbo. when the nation kills the tribe 5 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci only available to colonists, and it would allow “students to pursue their studies until the higher education” (mazula, 1995, p. 80). yet, based on the author, the colonial educational system was divided in two subsystems based on different learning/teaching approaches: the official one [elementary school], which is available for colonists’ children (or to children in similar status) – this approach […] aims at giving children the fundamental knowledge instruments and the bases of a general culture in order to prepare them for social life -; and other approach for indigenous5 children, which is well-articulated to the structure of the dominating system in all its aspects. […] it aimed at gradually take these individuals from wildlife to the civilized life of educated peoples, the autochthonous populations of foreign provinces. […] rudimentary elementary school aims at civilizing and nationalizing indigenous individuals in the colonies by outspreading portuguese language and costumes among them (mazula, 1995, p. 80). in order to educate and have broader control, colonists introduced an efficient school curriculum to civilize indigenous individuals and to qualify them as man-power to fulfil colonial interests. the educational system applied by the catholic mission made evidenced the lack of interest in forming intellectual skilled man to autonomously think about the future, but in forming persons who could reproduce the narrative of stigmatizing replicators of their own culture in favor of the portuguese/european one. as stated by paulo freire “it would be naive to expect the oppressor elites to provide a libertarian character” (1987, p. 73). actually, it is necessary highlighting that the hegemony of the portuguese colonial education faced resistance. other european nations made inroads in the african continent to fight for territory and, according to ngoenha (2000), the situation was not different in mozambique. however, these disputes are not in the scope of the present manuscript, mainly because, despite the rivalries, they shared the concept that indigenous/native individuals are inferior, that they could and should be forged in order to fulfil colonial interests. the swiss mission, which took important actions in south mozambique, alphabetized locals in their mother language; however, without overcoming the prejudice and the construction of stereotypes to delegitimize indigenous/native individuals (ngoenha, 2000). before taking office in june 25, 1975, during the pre-nationalist period and amid military confrontations with colonists, the mozambique liberation front (frelimo) implemented an educational model for indigenous/native children in liberated zones. areas managed by the nationalist movement in mozambique were the cradle of mozambican education (gonçalves, 2015). the aim of this initiative was to replace natives’ alienated consciousness by a new culture (gasperini, 1989), to unleash native citizens from colonial oppression and alienation through education, to prepare these citizens to build the mozambican nation (gonçalves, 2015). the idea was to “trigger an inner conflict in each individual. a cultural conflict to destroy the most dangerous fronts of the enemy, the reactionary positions in our minds. the army […] should hold the competence to educate the people, to free them from the colonial and tribal cultural hegemony” (gasparine, 1989, p. 23). besides the liberation by arms, frelimo leaders knew that they need to build a cultural hegemony to consolidate the nationalist power. pereira, nhantumbo. when the nation kills the tribe 6 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci based on the concepts of frelimo leaders, a new hegemony implied fighting colonists and tribes. according to this viewpoint, the slogan “killing the tribe to build the mozambican nation” guided school curriculum policies after the national independence in june 25, 1975. all these events took place within a context in which the mozambican education (1975) was compromised by a deep economic crisis that set limitations to the project of the new government to provide education to the population. among factors boosting this crisis, one finds the flee of portuguese citizens and of some mozambicans who supported portugal, the absence of a national education system (nes) and of its derivatives (school curriculum plans, educational policies and strategies, etc.). strong efforts were demanding in order to face the great challenges ahead; accordingly, it was necessary to create, back in 1975, an educational framework linked to the new government and managed by the so-called education and culture ministry, which launched the first nes proposition in 1981. this proposition was named general guidelines for the national education system, approved in 1983 (law n. 04 from march 23, 1983), which aimed at “forming the new man free from obscurantism, superstition and from the bourgeois and colonial mentality, a man who advocates for the socialist society” (moçambique, 1983, p. 113). according to gasperini (1989, p. 32), “the first seven years after the independence were featured by a reformation implemented to change the inherited system in order to avoid the collapse of the only formation framework available in the country”. from 1975 until nes approval in 1983, the teaching/learning process was managed by the education and culture ministry, which used frelimo’s educational experiences in the “freed zones”. the marxist-leninist-socialist discourse widespread by nationalist revolutionaries substantiated an emancipatory educational project, which implied killing the tribes, as stated samora machel, the president of the popular republic in beira, in 1980: “we kill the tribe to give birth to the nation” (lima, 2016, p. 19). law n. 4 from 1983 implemented nes; the revolutionary government made it clear that the aim of education is to overcome autochthonous habits and costumes, since “through initiation in the tribe, through dogma and superstition, religion and sorcery, and tradition, the individual was prepared to accept exploitation as a natural rule and, thus, to reproduce it in his/her age group, family, tribe and race” (moçambique, 1983, p. 23). thus, the aim of nes was to contribute to the “formation of a mozambican man with patriotic consciousness, scientifically qualified, professionally and technically trained and culturally free” (moçambique, 1983, p. 23). after the colonists were expelled, the tribe became a threat for the construction of a new nation, it became an enemy to be defeated. accordingly, paredes (2014) states that, based on samora machel, racism, tribalism or religiousness should be confronted “with the same weapons used to fight colonialism. killing the tribe to give birth to a nation constituted, and that also constitutes, the main driver of the mozambican revolution” (p. 145). in a paradoxical way, the portuguese language remained as the official national language, and we understand such policy as a manner to confront the tribe and to establish a “national unity” (chichava, 2008, p. 8). nes approved in 1983 stated that education should “widespread, through teaching, the use of the portuguese language to contribute to the consolidation of the national unity” (moçambique, 1983, p. 15). therefore, based on this goal, frelimo established some standards to: encourage the confrontation to the use of the mother language in sectors of life and collective labor such as production, handcrafting, school environment, pereira, nhantumbo. when the nation kills the tribe 7 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci cafeterias, meetings, sports and cultural activities, as well as to encourage the use of portuguese as the language of national unity. therefore, there was no difference between the colonialist and “nationalist” regime when it came to language matters and national cultural values. both regimes saw these factors as barriers to their political interests, so they fought against them to silence the voice of social subjects. (cossa, 2007, p.71) after a civil war that lasted 16 years (1977-1992), the political structure in mozambique went through many reforms that ended up in the approval of a new constitution in 1990, which opened room for a multiparty democracy that favored the approval of nes law n. 6 from may, 1992. this law disrupted the marxist-leninist principles and implemented more liberal educational concepts, among them the use of national languages. at this point in time, nes started “valuing and developing the national languages by promoting their progressive introduction in citizens’ educational process” (moçambique, 1992, p. 8). the national education policy (nep) was improved in 1995 through resolution n. 8 from august 22, 1995 in order to reinforce nes. this new law, among other principles, established the “definition and application of motherlanguage introduction modalities as the languages to be taught in the first grades of elementary school (1st and 2nd grades)” (moçambique, 1995, p. 179). despite the legal initiatives, still some citizens advocated that the inclusion of national languages in the school curriculum should have a primary, rather than secondary, dimension, as it was expressed in the content of nes’ text. there are also the ones who advocated for the need of having a unified – but multicultural school curriculum capable of covering the plural mozambican culture; although, without losing the dimensions of a school curriculum driven to the construction of a national mozambican identity. from this point on, we will introduce the contribution from post-colonial reflections by authors such as stuart hall (1992; 1996) and homi bhabha (2004), who argue that, despite the antagonism between the portuguese colonizer and frelimo’s nationalist forces, the educational projects expressed in both school curriculum propositions are based on the idea of having discipline matrixes as instruments to form an idealized identity. this identity, in the first place, would be easily forged through the imposition of certain values understood as “more appropriate” according to nationalists, the marxistleninist-socialist ideas. in both cases, we can see the construction of an idealized and essentialized identity. on the other hand, we also problematized the proposition of a unified multicultural school curriculum, since such proposition carries along all the limitations and inaccuracies observed in the multiculturalism concept. building a national identity: symbolic violence and theoretical fragility hall (1992) states that we insist in operating the idea of identity and advocates for the impossibility of giving up the terminology; therefore, it is necessary scrapping the meanings given to it, mainly when it comes to the attempt of standardizing an identity project and to the assumption that it is possible to put this project in place based on a school curriculum proposition. however, the construction of an identity project remains in course due to the ways adopted to think education itself and all educational projects. the herein addressed mozambican case expressed the concern about different perspectives, which, by the way, are shared by colonizers and colonizers/revolutionaries. before going ahead in our analyses, it is important highlighting that our arguments do not aim at delegitimizing any project of a new world, not even at minimizing the ethical responsibility we have to fight for it (lopes, 2013). however, this responsibility must pereira, nhantumbo. when the nation kills the tribe 8 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci always trigger the reflection about exclusion processes involved in such struggle for a new world. based on this perspective, we aim at deconstructing the foundations that support the sense of nation and the identity that organizes the identity discourses and justifies the school curriculum propositions such as that of the unified school curriculum. we argue that these discursive articulations involve certain logic and practices that reinforce the exclusion process in school environment (pereira, 2017). hall (1996) remembers that questions about multiculturalism and differences are in the mainstream of debates about education, which are also incorporated to official school curriculum policies. on the other hand, he acknowledges that, despite its different concepts, multiculturalism tends to lie on a vague idea of respecting and tolerating diversity and differences. hall (1996) insists that the lack of a theory about identity and differences helps their naturalization, essentialization and crystallization. he calls the attention to the implications of policies focused on concepts such as those defining difference, identity, diversity and alterity. bhabha (2011, p. 84) states that multiculturalism became “a word similar to a hanger where everything in hanged on”, he goes on in his critics to the discourse of liberal theorists about the subject, which, according to him “experience the fragility of its principles of “tolerance” [emphasis added by the author] when they try to resist the pressure from the review” (p. 83). the reflection of the author concerns the language studies field, and it implies stating that identity and differences are not essential, but actually, they are factors spread around the world that long to be discovered, revealed, respected or tolerated; moreover, they constitute themselves as acts of language. in its turn, language is always featured by indetermination and instability (derrida, 1997) linguistic signs just become intelligible within a system of meanings. laclau and mouffe (1987; 2001) also help us understanding the process to produce identities and differences, they refuse the essentialist approaches of social relationships and reinforce the precarious character of any identity. they advocate for the theory that the production of antagonisms is the main condition for the construction of political identities. according to laclau and mouffe (2001), the antagonistic cut works in the discourse as a barrier to separate “us” from them. this mutual exclusion relationship also enables identity construction; it is the impossibility to constitute identity and the force to deny it. therefore, it is possible concluding that identity itself is always defined as a negative factor, thus, identity can exist prior to the establishment of an antagonistic relationship derived from a discourse. antagonism stops the construction of an identity supported by itself; the presence of the “other” stops identity to be fully established (laclau; mouffe, 1987; 2001) identities are reinforced by what they are not. derrida (1997) problematizes the illusion of seen the linguistic sign as the presence of the referent or of the concept. according to him, this illusion is always necessary to make the linguistic sign work; however, the full presence is always postponed. a framework does not have any meaning at first, the linguistic sign is always marked by differentiations, by the postponement of the presence and by the difference itself (derrida, 1978; 1997), in a way any exterior reference can be the factor definitely connecting the concept to the linguistic sign. hall (1996) highlights that processes to reinforce identity affirmation produce differences that, in their turn, always imply inclusions and exclusions in compliance with the interests of different social groups. these processes are discursive strategies focused on guaranteeing a privileged access to social assets, besides being classifications and hierarchizations produced either by the discourse of european colonizers or by that of frelimo’s nationalist leaders who seek a certain cultural standard able to make citizens pereira, nhantumbo. when the nation kills the tribe 9 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci build the “desired mozambican nation”. however, hall (1996) also points out that the language game itself, which projects different identities and works to standardize them based on a logic and on a particular grammar focused on standardization, also allows fleeing from these attempts to standardize/fix an ultimate meaning. bhabha (1994), inspired by derrida’s deconstruction concept, also provides important elements for the aforementioned reflection by investing in destabilizing binarisms that rule hierarchical and classificatory relationships capable of organizing the colonist rhetoric. nevertheless, these binarisms substantiate the contemporary thought, just as the marxist-leninist discourse does when it confronts emancipation to alienation by giving the sense of alienation and ignorance to values shared by the tribes. we understand the problem behind this statement; however, it does not mean to disregard asymmetric power relations, hierarchizations and the consequences of patriarchal practices of tribes in the lives of their women, for example. actually, we aim at discussing that these practices need to be understood in a particular context, even when they are supposed to be confronted. they cannot be seen as more or lesser legitimate than the ones exercised by any social group when they are defined within a certain context, since they are a discursive production. they imply a dispute for meaning in the world, despite the discursive meanings given to the sense of “world” that colonizers and nationalists try to standardize. post-structuralist contributions also substantiate our statement about the idea of achieving an identity project through a school curriculum, no matter its profile. macedo (2006) provided us with the concept of school curriculum as a cultural enunciation practice, she supports this understanding about school curriculum based on bhabha’s (1994) reflections about culture, who denies the idea of a culture limited to itself, of a culture free from the contamination of other cultures and from the global cultural. bhabha (1994) advocates for the concept of culture as difference, as diversity and strangeness. according to this author, cultural translation and negotiation processes are highly complex, no matter if they are assimilative or antagonistic, besides generating affections and producing identifications. we analyzed the civilizing process imposed by colonizers to natives and the process of forming the “new man free from obscurantism, superstition and from the bourgeois and colonial mentality, a man who embodies values of the socialist societ y” (moçambique, 1983, p. 113), who are guided by essentialist and idealistic ideas impossible to be achieved. we also argue that, far from being democratic and fair, the project of forming the new man requires the elimination of tribes, whose culture becomes a threat to the project of the colonizer. the universalist ideology gets stronger to the detriment of the construction of a “new society”; therefore, it contributes to maintain the socialist forces as hostages of an old segregational, discriminatory, explorative and exclusionist logic. finally, we also argue that the process to overcome this dead-lock cannot come from a multicultural pathway, from the elaboration of a unified school curriculum that encompasses all the cultural plurality in mozambique. first, because, based on such statement, this curriculum brings along a concept of culture as a patrimony of symbols and values that can be transmitted and shared. we advocate for the discursive production of these symbols and values; moreover, as for the language field, we state the fluidit y of these enunciations and the impossibility of standardizing them in definite. based on our understanding, culture is an endless process of giving meanings; thus, based on the sense of enunciation, the meanings given to symbols and values are open to constant and endless negotiation and translation processes (bhabha, 1996). pereira, nhantumbo. when the nation kills the tribe 10 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci secondly, still based on bhabha (1996), we state the limitations of different multiculturalism types, which, in greater or lesser extent, advocate for the acceleration of the rhetoric about an undifferentiated and indifferent pluralism that fulfils the attempt to stop different subaltern cultural identities. therefore, multiculturalism favors hierarchies and classifications that aim at reinforcing social control, it operates at the level of mere knowledge, but keeps these hierarchies and classifications subjected to a particularity defined as ideal. the development of any school curriculum proposition always presupposes the exclusion of a difference that does not fit the unitary project. choices, even the legitimate ones, are often arbitrary and contextualized; they need an ultimate sense of unquestionable truth to substantiate their superiority. based on macedo (2006), we state that the multicultural dimension of the school curriculum is not enough to include and encompass all cultures by eliminating the discrimination practices that produce differences through the discourse. conclusion the reflections we have addressed based on theoretical coherence do not aim at proposing supposed solutions for the issues we have identified. at most, we intend to call the attention to the risks posed by certain formulations, just as veiga-neto (2008) warns about the need of questioning the fundaments in which our certainties are rooted in, the soil that feeds our convictions about salvation through education. this is the aim of our reflection, which was boosted by the understanding that it is necessary breaking up with the dichotomous logic that organizes the contemporary thinking and that always stops us from taking positions in two alternatives in order to think about the challenges of the world. the acceptance of the fact that we live in a world of plurality and differences is the way we have found to understand how the dichotomous logic favors and legitimizes exclusion. based on such perspective, the mozambican identity disruption between colonizers and nationalists happened according to rules set for a language game that, far from expressing the antagonism between them, evidences the same will to control cultural differences (pereira, 2017). the proposition of a unified school curriculum, in its turn, is also inserted in the same language game that tries to limit the emergence of cultural differences, since it lies on the conception of a curriculum supported by the assumption that it is possible to control the imponderable (pereira, 2017). when all individuals integrate, or are forced to belong to a project such as the “europeanization” or the project of the “nation” – in which singularities are understood as a threat – all these individuals lose their right to the difference, as warns macedo (2015). the aim of writing this article was to advocate for the idea that the construction of a democratic education implies the radical questioning of this logic. it is important highlight that, as states laclau (1996, p. 24), “a democratic society is not the one where the best [emphasis added by the author] content prevails without questioning, but where nothing is ultimately achieved and where there is always the possibility of questioning”. pereira, nhantumbo. when the nation kills the tribe 11 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci notes 1 the study is funded by cnpq. 2 p.talitavidal@gmail.com 3 herminionhantumbo@gmail.com 4 see ngunda (2012, p. 3). references bhabha, h. k. (1994). the location of culture. new york: routledge. bhabha, h. k. (2011). o entrelugar das culturas. in coutinho, eduardo f. (org.). o bazar global e o clube dos cavalheiros ingleses. textos seletos. rio de janeiro: rocco, pp. 80-94. chichava, s. (2008). por uma leitura sócio‐histórica da etnicidade em moçambique. maputo: iese. derrida, j. (1978). writing and difference. chicago: university of chicago press. derrida, j. (1997). of gramatology. baltimore: john hopkins university press. freire, p. (1987). pedagogia do oprimido. 17th ed. rio de janeiro: paz e terra. gasperini, l. (1989). moçambique: educação e desenvolvimento rural. roma: edizioni lavoro. gonçalves, a. c. p. (2015). educação politécnica e a escola de trabalho em moçambique: novas e velhas falácias pedagógicas? maputo: edição cec. hall, s. (1992). cultural identity in question in: hall, stuart; held, david & mcgrew, hall, s. (1996). introduction: who needs “identity”. in hall, stuart & du gay, paul (eds.). questions of identity. sage: thousand oaks, pp. 1-17. http://www.curriculosemfronteiras.org/vol17iss3articles/pereira.pdf laclau, e. & mouffe, c. (1987). post-marxism without apology. new left review, i, 166. laclau, e. & mouffe, c. (2001). hegemony and socialist strategy. towards a radical democratic politics. 2sc ed. london: verso. laclau, e. (1996). emancipation(s). london: verso. lima, p. s. b. de (2016). moçambique como lugar de interrogação: a modernidade em elísio macamo e severino ngoenha. cape town: african minds. lopes, a. c. (2013). teorias pós-críticas, política e currículo. educação, sociedades e culturas, portugal, 39, 7 -23. http://www.fpce.up.pt/ciie/sites/default/files/02.alicelopes.pdf. macedo, e. (2006). currículo como espaço-tempo de fronteira cultural. revista brasileira de educação, 11, 32, pp. 285-296. http://www.scielo.br/pdf/rbedu/v11n32/a07v11n32.pdf macedo, e. (2015). base nacional comum para currículos: direito de aprendizagem e desenvolvimento para quem? educação & sociedade, campinas, 36, 133, pp. 891908. http://www.scielo.br/pdf/es/v36n133/1678-4626-es-36-133-00891.pdf mazula, b. (1995). educação, cultura e ideologia em moçambique: 1975-1985. maputo: ed. afrontamento. moçambique, república de (1992). sistema nacional de educação. lei n. 6 de maio de1992. maputo: assembleia da republica. moçambique, república de (1995). política nacional da educação. resolução nº. 8 de 22 de agosto de 1995. maputo: conselho de ministros, 1995. http://www.curriculosemfronteiras.org/vol17iss3articles/pereira.pdf http://www.fpce.up.pt/ciie/sites/default/files/02.alicelopes.pdf http://www.scielo.br/pdf/rbedu/v11n32/a07v11n32.pdf http://www.scielo.br/pdf/es/v36n133/1678-4626-es-36-133-00891.pdf pereira, nhantumbo. when the nation kills the tribe 12 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci moçambique, república popular de (1983). projeto da lei do sistema nacional de educação. lei nº 4 de 23 de março de 1983. maputo: assembleia popular. ngoenha, s. e. (2000). estatuto e axiologia de educação em moçambique: o paradigmático questionamento da missão suíça. maputo: livraria universitária. ngunga, a. (2012). os desafios da investigação linguística em áfrica: o caso de moçambique. in: a pesquisa na universidade africana no contexto da globalização: perspetivas epistemológicas emergentes, novos horizontes temáticos, desafios. são paulo: cea-usp. paredes, m. de m. (2014). a construção da identidade nacional moçambicana no pósindependência: sua complexidade e alguns problemas de pesquisa, anos 90, porto alegre, 21, 40, 131-161.doi: https://doi.org/10.22456/1983-201x.46176. pereira, t. v. (2017). gramática e lógica: jogo de linguagem que favorece sentidos de conhecimento como coisa. currículo sem fronteiras, 17, 3, pp. 600-616. veiga-neto, a. (2008). crise da modernidade e inovações curriculares: da disciplina para o controle, sísifo. revista de ciências da educação. lisboa. 7, 141-150. www.researchgate.net/profile/celia_figueira/publication/28240670_tutoria_no_ ensino_superior/links/5567253c08aeab77721ea204/tutoria-no-ensinosuperior.pdf#page=143 zawangoni, s. a. (2007). frelimo e a formação do homem novo (1964-1974 e 19751980). maputo: ciedima. submitted: september, 26, 2018 approved: october, 28, 2018 https://doi.org/10.22456/1983-201x.46176 http://www.researchgate.net/profile/celia_figueira/publication/28240670_tutoria_no_ensino_superior/links/5567253c08aeab77721ea204/tutoria-no-ensino-superior.pdf#page=143 http://www.researchgate.net/profile/celia_figueira/publication/28240670_tutoria_no_ensino_superior/links/5567253c08aeab77721ea204/tutoria-no-ensino-superior.pdf#page=143 http://www.researchgate.net/profile/celia_figueira/publication/28240670_tutoria_no_ensino_superior/links/5567253c08aeab77721ea204/tutoria-no-ensino-superior.pdf#page=143 o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: idrissi, hajar; benabderrazik, youssef. (2020). (re)imagining the responsible, national citizen: analysis of moroccan citizenship education textbooks, transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) p. 31-48 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> (re)imagining the responsible, national citizen: analysis of moroccan citizenship education textbooks hajar idrissi1 sidi mohamed ben abdellah university, morocco, the george washington university, united states youssef benabderrazik2 sidi mohamed ben abdellah university, morocco introduction general context recently, the concept of citizenship has become central in contemporary policy and social practice. traditionally, citizenship was only linked to the political debate of a country (isin & turner, 2002); but over past decades, the concept has been broadened to be linked not only to the nation state but also extended to the regional and global world (veugelers, 2011). this deepening of the concept of citizenship has also penetrated to the social and cultural domain of living together. human beings are social beings that need each other, and have some responsibility not only for themselves but also for other people and for society. it is not only about a recognition of humanity (nussbaum, 1997), but also about building communities and social cohesion in society (putnam, 2000), about living together in a culturally diverse world (banks, 2007; 2017), and about taking responsibility for a global world (appiah, 2010). accordingly, this requires attention for equality, empathy, tolerance, solidarity, care, respect, democracy, and so on. this means that citizenship education is becoming very relevant not in the form of abstract moral values but as values embedded in social, cultural and political practices. then, the features of the good citizen take a new shape, driven by the need to equip both the individual and the society with the adequate values, skills and competencies deemed necessary for more active citizenship. different academic perspectives have entered the field of citizenship education. presenting a short ‘genealogy’ of this academic sub-discipline will help us understand what concepts researchers are introducing into the field. as a curricular subject, citizenship education has taken several different forms depending on how the states envisaged their citizens to be. historically speaking, citizenship education in the west is often framed as originating from ancient greece and rome, where they prioritized values of loyalty and patriotism (heater, 2004). later with the decline of these societies, citizenship as social initiation (case & clark, 1999) was predominant in the early days of public education, which focused on the socializing role of schooling instead of political education. with the french revolution, rousseau and other philosophers emphasized the role of schools in teaching idrissi, benabderrazik. (re)imagining the responsible, national citizen 32 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index values that would be beneficial to society. since the 19th century, new concepts of citizenship education emerged with the development of new doctrines of liberal democracy, nationalism and socialism. it has been described (heater, 1990) that these ideologies were restrained by the interest of the nation states to maintain control over school systems and establish order. within this framework, teachers were prevented from transmitting political knowledge and values that would threaten the current status quo and urged schools to instill a sense of belonging and national collective identity, especially through the social studies course, with its component (history, geography, citizenship) (heater, 1990; phillips, 1998). these subjects were and still considered important tools for strengthening the sense of a common national identity, patriotism, and loyalty among citizens (green, 1990). in the post war period, marshall (1964) shaped the modern academic thinking about political systems, rights and duties. also, influenced by world war i and ii and fueled by minorities demanding equal rights and inclusion, citizenship education has been shaped by human rights discourse, based on the universal declaration of human rights (tibbitts & fernekes, 2011). human rights education (hre) teaches students about many of the concepts needed to be an empathetic and socially just member of a pluralistic society; these key civically minded concepts include social justice, tolerance, solidarity, participation, equality, and human dignity (osanloo, 2009). this critical aspect of hre could empower learners to recognize social justice and develop a more reflective relationship towards their nation-states, to become advocates of injustices and engage actively in demands for social justice (osler & starkey, 2005). whereas traditional national citizenship education focuses on the promotion of a common national identity, hre is universal in nature and includes the diversity of national, religious and cultural identifications of individuals. philosophers, for example mclaughlin (1992), nussbaum (1997) and crick (1999) questioned the meaning of citizenship in relation to democracy and participation and how education can or cannot contribute to citizenship development. in the modern time, no one can deny that globalisation points overwhelmingly to the problems of increasing instability, continuing warfare, and growing inequality. all these factors have political implications and can be seen to pose a challenge for social democracy. growing economic interconnectedness is undeniable and challenges for education in terms of understanding who we are, developing global perspectives and insights into how we can manage becomes a reality to face. during the latter part of the twentieth century, and at the beginning of the twenty-first, citizens are urged to ‘think globally and to act locally’. at both national and international levels, international organizations, educational researchers, and policymakers regularly expound the need to integrate global competencies into curriculum as crucial to providing students with the tools needed to live and work in an increasingly complex world. these skills are recognised in the new united nations 2030 agenda for sustainable development, in which the international community is advancing education and global citizenship as essential to the success of all 17 of its global goals. in addition, the concern for sustainability and environmental ecology has also become part of citizenship: the citizen and his surrounding should become not only democratic but also sustainable (gaudelli, 2016). all these articulations of specific concepts and research methods clearly show that citizenship education can be conceived in different ways. these differences become even more pronounced when we focus on educational policy and practice. an interesting question: considering school textbooks as important means or instruments for transmitting knowledge and values to the young generation and, thus, for reproduction or transformation of the social order, in what ways does citizenship education textbook frame the nation’s deeper and hidden trajectory for citizen formation? we may think of a school textbook as discourse, that is, “a thematically and ideologically structured, self-referring progression of communications https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index idrissi, benabderrazik. (re)imagining the responsible, national citizen 33 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index (messages, texts) circulating within a definable community of communicators and receivers over a specified period of time” (biocca, 1991, p.45). a textbook’s discourse is the outcome of an interplay between several factors, of which the curriculum, the economy, the collective mentality of a society, and the authors’ own intentions and viewpoints are probably most important (anyon, 1979; grueneberg, 1991). therefore, every textbook, as a discourse, is a part of the order of discourse (the totality of discursive practices within the educational institution or the society and the relationships between them) (fairclough, 1992, p.43) school textbooks are taken to be important socialisers within the system of education. the assumption about the influence of textbooks’ content on their readers’ cognitive and behavioral skills underlies a big part of a basic thrust in textbook studiestextual research. the role of citizenship education curricula and textbooks is to prepare pupils for participation in a civic society, to teach them the principles of critical citizenship and to set models for active civic and political participation. this means that instead of a detailed coverage of particular topics such as ‘the state, the government, the law’, etc., the emphasis of citizenship education should be on teaching skills needed for intelligent choice making, problem solving, and critical thinking; to stand up for their rights and engage in various forms of civic and political action (nelson, 2001; stanley, 2001). accordingly, the theoretical assumptions about the influence of citizenship education textbooks might be conceptualised along a continuum, which ranges from minimal (thin, narrow, content led, knowledge based) to maximal (thick, process led, inclusive, participative) interpretations (mclaughlin, 1992). in this respect, the results of previous research on citizenship education textbooks are not very favorable (anyon, 1979; wade & everett, 1994). the aim of this paper is to investigate citizenship education of primary school social studies curriculum in morocco. the analysis of textbook discourse comprises two methods. first, we used content analysis to explore the extent to which particular civic issues and values are prioritised or excluded, the extent to which scales of active participation (social and political) are presented or hidden, and the extent to which national, global/cosmopolitan social identities are promoted. in addition, we used qualitative text analysis to explore the general ideology of the textbooks. we present our analysis focused on three interrelated themes: human rights; democracy and civic participation; and national and global citizenship. education in the 21st century the rapid changes we are experiencing at the global, regional, national, and local levels are associated with increasing mechanization, information generation and exchange (anderson & markers, 2012; schmidt & cohen, 2013; schleiche, 2012). although many of these identify positive advancement, many also identify concerns about human development and citizen formation. education has become the main tool providing individuals with the knowledge, skills, and competencies needed by the society but educational provisions are not yet translated into full-scale implementation at the school and classroom levels and thus, lag behind the emergence of need. what knowledge, skills, and competencies are society demanding of citizens today? although there are differences across national values, cultures, and socio-economic character, there is a common drive towards a global approach for education with competencies beyond the knowledge accumulation that was highly valued in 20th century education. there has been a major shift in educational learning goals, as seen most recently by goal 4.7 in the 2030 agenda for sustainable development, that concern the recognition of the need for education systems to equip learners with competencies: “by 2030 ensure all learners acquire knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including among others through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index idrissi, benabderrazik. (re)imagining the responsible, national citizen 34 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index global citizenship, and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable development” (unesco, 2015). these competencies, combined with the attitudes, values, and ethics of their societies have now become explicit aspirations of the formal education sector. focus on skills-based approaches was initiated in the mid-90s by the united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization (unesco) under the leadership of jacque delors (delors, 1996). then, the organisation for economic cooperation and development (oecd) developed a project on definition and selection of key competencies (deseco) (oecd, 2005), which defined the key competencies that are required by all citizens for a successful life and for a well-functioning society (rychen & salganik, 2003). the definitions related to twenty-first century skills are changing and interpreted in many ways, depending on the organisation that is pushing for the specific reform. partnership for 21st century learning (2015, p.21) refers to ‘21st century skills’ which most often include communication, critical thinking, teamwork and creativity. the official journal of the european union (ojeu) (2018, p.7-8) focuses on eight key competencies including: “(1) literacy competence; (2) multilingual competence; (3) mathematical competence and competence in science, technology and engineering; (4) digital competence; (5) personal, social and learning to learn competence; (6) citizenship competence; (7) entrepreneurship competence and (8) cultural awareness and expression competence”. generic skills have also been emphasised in education systems with a view to improving the quality of teaching and learning (fadel et al., 2015). recently, unesco has referred to these skills as ‘transversal competencies’, which in turn include skills such as global citizenship, innovative and critical thinking, interpersonal skills, intrapersonal skills and media and information literacy (care & luo, 2016). overall, critical thinking appears across a number of perspectives. on the one hand, ‘policy critical thinking’ (a specific type in transnational policy contexts) is associated with generic abilities which can be applied to a wide range work and life contexts such as creativity, entrepreneurship, resourcefulness, application skills, reflective skills and reasoned decision making (deng & luke, 2008; lim, 2015; oecd, 2005). on the other hand, ‘civic critical thinking’ is related to a broader quest for the virtuous citizen and the good society, focusing on consideration of equity, equality, social justice, empathy and care. this type analyzes patterns of power relations and unfairness hiding in everyday social practices and looking for alternative ways for tackling social problems such as diversity, discrimination, race and ethnicity (parker, 2003). despite this recognition, a global mobilisation of efforts to respond to the 21st century skills shift is non-existent, and many countries struggle alone to plan the shift. while this shift in policies is important, many countries have yet to implement these policies, and are still using 20th century teaching methods and assessments (care et al., 2018). this is holding back progress on learning for millions of children around the world. in countries experiencing transitions in government regimes, as recently in the middle east and north africa with the arab spring, education is deemed important to first and foremost reinforce democratic values and participation embodied in a progressive citizenship education. this policy shift suggests a (re)imagination of the traditional, national and patriotic student who is blindly prescribed to unquestion versions of truth and show pride and sense of belonging (westheimer, 2009). despite many educational reforms that have been undertaken recently, the general objectives for citizenship education in egypt and jordan, for instance, still prioritises islamic and arab values (faour, 2013a), while bahrain focuses on patriotic duties towards the regime and stresses the national dimension of their citizens’ national identity (faour, 2013a). on the other hand, tunisia’s curriculum promotes a discourse of rights and responsibilities as well as tolerance and respect for differences among people (faour, 2013b). morocco makes it an https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index idrissi, benabderrazik. (re)imagining the responsible, national citizen 35 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index interesting case for investigation as it allocates up to 25% of its annual budget to education compared to the 13% average among developed nations. regardless of this massive funding, the education system lags behind in global education rankings (undp, 2007; world bank, 2008) and struggles to adequately prepare its students for the professional and civic world. is there a lack of a political will? we assume that identifying a curricular approach provides a useful scale for determining where each country broadly stands in its definition and approach to citizenship education and what are their hidden agendas for citizen formation. citizenship education in morocco it is commonly asserted that citizenship education in morocco is narrowly knowledgebased (faour, 2013a; el ouazzani et al., 2010). that knowledge-based approach derives from longstanding traditions in moroccan education but also is in part a result of more recent changes. the national charter for education and training reform or the decade of education 2000-2009, has been considered the most important education reform launched since moroccan independence, placing “learners in general and children in particular, at the core of the reflective and pedagogical action. from this perspective, the charter has to offer to the children of morocco the conditions that are necessary for their development and accomplishment” (the national education and training charter, 2000). it was clear from the instructions given and the composition of the charter that the new roadmap would be based on the country’s official religion, islam, which was to be reinforced and reflected in the new educational system. according to this reform, the education sector is considered to be a central mechanism for installing love of country, civic engagement and islamic values and also promoting global citizenship through the study of foreign languages, science and technology, human rights and sustainable development. one of the fundamental objectives of this reform is to provide a generalised, quality education to all children and young people of morocco, in preschool, from age 4 to 6, and in primary and secondary school, from 6 to 15. it also aimed mainly at enhancing the country’s economic and social development, a challenge which previous reforms have not been able to meet. to achieve these objectives, the charter established six priority work areas, which would constitute the operational bases for any decision or action taken towards educational reform: expanding access to education through establishing partnerships, building schools and addressing girls’ education in order to ensure that rural areas would not be excluded from this program specially that it is there where illiteracy is most acute; linking education to its economic specificity and environment; revisiting the pedagogical organisation to a more student-oriented educational system; raising, in format and content, the quality of education and training; reinforcing the existing human resources; restructuring educational management, and mobilising partners and funding. perhaps, of the most apparent changes brought about by the reform is the reconfiguration of the citizenship education course with the results partially in place until today. as a matter of fact, the compulsory system of primary education in morocco includes a discipline course called ‘ijtimaiat’ or social studies. there is no specific citizenship education subject. instead, morocco adopts an integrated approach in which education for citizenship (subject title) is integrated within the social studies course and taught from grade four in primary school to grade ten of high school. in terms of the time allocated for instruction, morocco allocates up to one-hour per/week, taught in alternation between the other two subject components namely history and geography. though the school curriculum in morocco does not include citizenship education as a formal subject, there are opportunities for citizenship education to be included in all phases (elementary school, junior high school, and high school). in some subjects such as arabic, islamic studies, life and earth science studies https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index idrissi, benabderrazik. (re)imagining the responsible, national citizen 36 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index as well as in extracurricular activities and classes without examinations, there is an explicit treatment of citizenship and teachers have the possibility to promote relevant work. there is a need to research the nature of textbooks that relate to citizenship education for primary school students as relatively little work has been done on this topic. some of that limited work (sanae, 2016) explores how a school subject such as ‘?asha?n ?almahali’ (the local affaire) could be effective in developing the students’ civic knowledge. the findings reveal that most of the surveyed teachers qualify the content of this subject as appropriate to the students’ cognitive development and provides students with adequate opportunities to enrich their civic knowledge. unfortunately, this school subject was dropped out from the school curriculum in 2006. for this study, we will investigate citizenship education of primary school social studies curriculum in morocco. in fact, the ministry of education promotes several versions of a textbook that are distributed across the regions. however, the books do not vary significantly; they all use the same approach and content, with only some differences in quality of stories and images to make it context and local specific. in addition, schools do not have autonomy to choose textbooks because there is a requirement that all publishers receive an equal market share. currently, the ministry of education permitted only two textbooks on social studies and education for citizenship for 4th and 5th grade and three textbooks for 6th grade. we have chosen three social studies textbooks of 4th, 5th, and 6th grades. certainly, the textbooks analysed cannot be regarded as the representative ones. however, some experts in the field (teachers and inspectors), the reputation of the publishing house and the amount of the print run, places the textbooks analysed in a good position on the textbook market. research method this article focuses on citizenship education of primary school social studies curriculum in morocco and examines citizenship conceptions from the 4th, 5th, and 6th grade textbooks (ages 9-12). the selection of materials is based on the fact that students are exposed for the first time to explicit citizenship issues beyond their home province and that certain habits, practices, a set of skills and a way of life are nurtured from an early childhood age. findings in the study are based on qualitative content analysis (hsieh hf, shannon, 2005) of the official textbooks used in morocco’s education for citizenship curriculum. the classification of social studies by barr et al (1977), and extended by martorella (1996) as well as the typologies of citizen formation by westheimer and kahne (2004) will be used as conceptual frames to guide our analysis. barr et al (1977) have grouped the various epistemological positions within social studies curriculum and teaching into three themes namely citizenship or cultural transmission; social sciences and reflective inquiry or critical thinking. first of all, social studies as citizenship transmission consists of transmitting factual and procedural knowledge, nationalistic values and beliefs with a restricted range of cognitive skills, developing a personally responsible citizen (westheimer & kahne, 2004). the second tradition characterizes social studies as social sciences, which aims to develop future citizens who learn the inquiry techniques of the social sciences, have the ability to see and solve social problems and build personality using the visions and methods of the social scientist. third, the purpose of social studies as reflective inquiry is to nurture students to make reasoned decisions and follow a scientific inquiry to identify the problem, collect, evaluate and analyse data and then make decisions. this tradition involves helping students develop a participatory citizenship and assume leadership and active roles within the community (westheimer & kahne, 2004). a fourth tradition has been extended by martorella (1996) in which social studies is framed as informed social criticism. it is a form of citizenship that teaches students how to have agency, to act for social change through critical thinking, service https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index idrissi, benabderrazik. (re)imagining the responsible, national citizen 37 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index learning (billig, 2010) and project-based learning with a civic engagement component (whitlock & fox, 2014). this tradition emphasises preparing a justice oriented citizen that “calls explicit attention to matters of injustice and to the importance of pursuing social justice goals” (westheimer & kahne, 2004). descriptive and critical data analysis techniques are used to analyse the selected textbooks page by page, with a focus on the main body of written text, images, and activities. we draw on the analytical techniques established by faas (2011) and engel (2014) to first describe the introductions of the textbook of each grade, examine the ways in which the main points of the introductions were reflected in the individual units, sorting them into categories. then, the relationship among categories was identified to establish emerging themes. we pay considerable attention to the construction and framing of discourses concerning the representation of the moroccan citizen, as well as what civic issues and values are prioritised and excluded (crismore, 1989). following this framework, the intent of this article is to explore the key themes of morocco’s primary school citizenship education textbooks, including human rights; democracy and civic participation; and national and global citizenship. within these themes, this article asks broader questions about how is citizen formation shaped at the primary level and how is the moroccan citizen represented in the textbooks? specifically, we ask: what is the approach being adopted by the state to inculcate citizenship in its students? is it in favor of a nationalist approach or more globalised one? do the textbooks cultivate the skills of the 21st century? findings in what follows, we provide a brief description of the textbooks content and focus on the ways in which each of the three textbooks take up themes related to human rights, democracy and civic participation, and national and global citizenship. textbook content explicitly through text, images and activities, the textbooks emphasise knowledge and understanding of issues pertaining to patriotism and regulation of relations in different contexts, namely in the family through highlighting certain gender issues, at school through explaining the student/teacher/team work relations that must be based on mutual respect, and in the community environment through exemplifying neighborhood relations and social roles. all these aim to build students’ awareness of differences and to promote the right to equality among both people and groups. the textbooks also stress a discourse of rights, duties and responsibilities, specifying tasks, rules, obligations, attitudes, behaviours and basic child rights characterised by respect and care. a participatory approach is also prominent in the textbooks with information about existing participatory bodies as the parliament, municipality, civil society, international organisations and encouragement to part-take in community-based projects and decision-making both within and outside the school environment such as painting and planting the school and voting in elections. all these expected cognitive learning experiences imply the development of certain skills related to scientific research as to raise a scientific citizen, who can use scientific methods and technology, for instance making comparison, preparing a report about hobbies, national and international celebrations, the role of arbitrator in sport matches, traffic signs related to child protection using proofs to justify. the selected social studies textbooks introduce the education for citizenship subject component with a preamble that includes the aims and objectives to be achieved, the competencies to be acquired and individual units of the curriculum. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index idrissi, benabderrazik. (re)imagining the responsible, national citizen 38 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index table 1. textbooks contents textbooks aims/objectives competencies 4th grade learning about individual rights, obligations, and common good. enhancing personality; acquiring the values of good citizenship; active participation. 5th grade sensitising students about rights and obligations. knowledge consolidating the understanding of some concepts as rights/ duties/ responsibilities/diversity; knowing some international conventions related to child’s rights; knowing local, national and international institutions and civil society organisations as the school council/ municipality/ child parliament/ the united nations/unicef. skills observing documents; extracting data and drawing conclusion; explaining and interpreting; data classification; analysing, justifying, reasoning and arguing; comparing and understanding relationships; making choices and decisions; research capability; debating and organising a debate; active listening; communication; doing an interview; doing field work; working with others; case studies; preparing a project and presenting a report; following through. 6th grade understanding the major component of the uncrc. attitudes building a sense of identity; self-confidence; valuing others and respecting their opinions; cultural appreciation; valuing the role of local, national and international institutions and organisations; openness to involvement and participation to influence and develop the community; responsibility to protect the self and others; awareness of the importance of international conventions in protecting the child’s rights. drawing in tandem the different approaches to social studies and citizenship education described in the framework, we considered the above aims and outcomes to answer the extent to which do human rights feature in the textbooks and what are the important omissions and missing opportunities for civic skills and values. human rights education rights and responsibilities human rights education entails education about children rights rather than a broader conception of human rights. in the 4th grade textbook, human rights are understood as needs that must be addressed and which are guaranteed by international charters as the universal declaration of the rights of the child in 1959 and the convention on the rights of the child that morocco ratified in 1993. there is a direct mention of morocco’s ratification of the convention in 1993 twice in the textbooks of 4th and 6th grade, in reference to the country’s commitment to the values and humanitarian concepts that respect children. in the 5th grade textbook, human rights are addressed in terms of rights associated with fulfilled duties in the context of the family, school, and road safety. there were only two occurrences of the word ‘human rights’ in the 6th grade textbook with reference to the universal declaration of human rights but no paragraph or extended text is dedicated to explaining human rights as a basic component of citizenship and which is bounded by a constitutional framework. in the 6th grade textbook, the framework used to structure human rights discussion remains that of the convention on the rights of the child (1989), interpreting ten basic children rights that guarantee students’ lives and existence. the aspects of universal child rights that are mentioned in the textbooks of 4th, 5th and 6th grades are as follows: the child’s right to have access to the highest attainable standard of health care to protect his/her physical and mental abilities, in particular by ensuring access to good nutrition; the child’s right to an atmosphere of happiness, love and understanding within the family environment and society; rights of children with disabilities, child’s right to free education, be equally treated, express freely his/her opinion and not be https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index idrissi, benabderrazik. (re)imagining the responsible, national citizen 39 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index maltreated inside the classroom; child’s right to be registered after birth and have a name and citizenship or nationality; the right to life and child’s right to be protected from exploitation of all forms and from performing any work which is likely to be harmful. moreover, child rights are further supported with the use of an islamic religious hadith in the 4th grade textbook stating that “the parents should give their children good upbringing and teach them writing, swimming and archery”. in addition, other social dimensions of child rights are mentioned in the 5th grade textbook, namely the right to use public space; the road has to be equipped with traffic signals; the footpath crossing designed for pedestrians has to be clearly drawn. similarly, human rights education teaches students not only about their rights, but also their responsibilities. for example, in the 5th grade textbook, the right of road safety carries with it the child’s responsibilities to respect and obey the traffic code system, police officer’s regulations and walk on the sidewalk. the right to schooling and free expression in the classroom carries with it responsibilities to work hard, actively participate in extracurricular activities, not damage school furniture and equipment and respect the teacher and pay attention to him/her while teaching. the human rights model presented centers on a rulebased approach that covers the importance of knowing how to interpret and obey instructions indicating what is right and what is wrong along a distribution of tasks where everybody should cooperate. consequently, it develops a responsible citizen kind. patriotism the textbooks associated some examples of human rights teaching with values of patriotism, loyalty and sense of belonging. for example, emphasising the right to an identity, name, and citizenship are intrinsically linked to instill nationalism and patriotism from a legal perspective. some foci of attention in the 6th grade textbook include images of national identification card, passport and a national festive celebration where the street is decorated with moroccan flags; texts that ask the student to learn the national anthem, the history of the moroccan flag, and information about who is eligible for being granted a moroccan citizenship or nationality. this version of hegemonic national practices maintains the state’s ideology for indoctrination and blindness towards the nation’s most pressing challenges and how to overcome them. gender equality/ social justice some emphasis on issues related to discrimination and gender equality are examples of awareness raising in dealing with universal human rights and social justice. to start with, discrimination is dealt with from a gender inequality perspective in the household and education in rural areas. the 6th grade textbook promotes awareness of gender discrimination as a type of discrimination that stems from the social differences that exist between boys and girls, leading to unjust treatment by considering one superior to another. texts and pictures portrayed instances of girls’ victimisation and showed them as rural girls wishing to go to school or as a sister in the kitchen washing dishes, needle felting the brother’s clothes or beaten by the brother, while the brother is sitting in front of the tv and ordering her to get him the remote control and clean his bicycle. however, some limitations in addressing this issue are manifested. gender equality as an independent issue or unit is almost invisible in the textbooks and only mentioned implicitly in the few quotes from the convention on the right of the child and the universal declaration on human rights around equality of individuals regardless of their religion, race, gender and skin. also, the textbook ignores discrimination in the workplace, media, politics and other settings, and does not provide any definition of gender issues or discussions of their manifestations and causes. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index idrissi, benabderrazik. (re)imagining the responsible, national citizen 40 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index the textbooks addressed some of the social, family and cultural stereotyping associated with women’s role in these domains. as a way of illustration, gender equality in the family setting is higher than those that showed inequalities. the text and pictures portrayed women sharing the same responsibilities as men and performing equal roles within the family, namely both mother and father carrying groceries together or cooking in the kitchen together and taking care and talking to their children together. regarding social roles, gender was almost equally treated. pictures showed women and girls participating in various activities such as environmental events and doing voluntary work; performing different jobs namely, female police officer, doctor, teacher and lawyer. nevertheless, women were not represented in the political domain except some illustrations in the 5th grade textbook that depict a woman at the voting booth and a student girl running for a campaign as her student boy counterpart to be elected for the school council. moreover, there was no discussion of any challenges that encounter women in achieving equality in the career domain. besides, the over representation of women in particular jobs maintains a huge social gender gap. in other words, while in principle women are free to choose their profession, social pressure and preferences tend to direct female students towards certain subjects such as teaching and nursing, which may not reflect the needs of the labor market. this enacts the stereotype that women lack leadership skills to advance for top management and administrative positions. the textbooks also highlighted issues of social justice. social justice is defined in terms of child labor and street children in the 6th grade textbook, who instead of attending school are forced to work, denying them their fundamental rights and stunting their mental and physical development. the content in this regard was descriptive and important opportunities to show objectives to eradicate this phenomenon and raise awareness about dropping out of school were missing. social justice, in terms of having access to materialeconomic resources as well as the distribution of power at least in rural areas, is ignored. teaching approach the analysis of the textbooks’ core activities, namely, reading, comprehension and assessment related to human rights reveals a predominant didactic approach to teaching these rights based on memorising vocabulary (e.g. what is right, law, universal declaration of human rights), key dates (e.g. the state opening of parliament by the king, the ratification of the united nations convention on the rights of the child) and human rights actors and agencies (e.g. what is an ngo, parliament, united nation, municipality, unicef, unesco) rather than an opportunity to critically reflect on the different concepts. the course and units’ objectives emphasise knowledge and attitudes, while the skills outlined in the preamble are almost missing. rights are often mentioned without problematisation and students are not asked to explore what could undermine or prohibit the enactment of certain rights and how are these rights manifested in their lives. the textbooks also included assessment activities related to human rights that encouraged students to conduct some investigations and identify some rights in their local environment. however, the assessments did not ask students to explore obstacles to their implementation through different practices. democracy and civic participation civic participation is a human right and an important tool for children to learn democracy and become democratic citizens. civic participation in the textbooks is dealt with from two perspectives: in the school context and the local environment. team building, volunteering, establishment of rules, electing the student council, decision making, freedom of speech and organisation of activities in the school and the local environment (municipality) are common in the 4th and 5th grade textbooks, while knowledge of participatory bodies to https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index idrissi, benabderrazik. (re)imagining the responsible, national citizen 41 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index protect children's rights like the parliament, civil society organisations, the united nations are predominant in the 6th grade textbook. teamwork first of all, the three textbooks have mentioned the idea of participation within a communitarian perspective, where students should actively and effectively engage in the society and environment in which they live. the most commonly highlighted skills regarding participation are teamwork or team building and decision-making. in the 4th grade textbook, teamwork is defined as ‘what a group is planning and organising to accomplish work for the benefit of the individual and the community’. image and text illustrations for teamwork are given from the school where, a teacher asked students to divide themselves into groups in order to clean, paint and plant the school, and from a countryside where the inhabitants decided to take matters into their own hands and volunteer to repair their local road. however, there were no activities in the textbooks that offered guidelines for teamwork, such as the organisation of round table debate, respecting people’s turns, listening to others carefully, deciding on who is going to speak and avoiding making noises. decision-making this participatory aspect is further enriched by the inclusion of the decision-making dimension, both at school and the local community. participation in decision-making is considered, in the 6th grade textbook as a “form of freedom of speech that the convention on the rights of the child guarantees under article 12”. the textbook illustrates some forms of free and self-expression, namely election of the school council, discussions within a school cooperative context or child parliament; participation in a play or drawing a caricature; writing poetry or a novel; writing a newspaper article in a school magazine. the 5th grade textbook defined the municipality council as “a public, citizen oriented body, elected to enact local democracy and designed to improve the quality of life and well-being, solve problems and make decisions about issues that affect everyone”. within this context, a reference to the word democracy is made, providing a definition as “rule by the people”. nevertheless, the textbooks are silent on ways of accessing the council and becoming a candidate, the position of the various councilors as well as the distribution of functions and the processes of national government through legislative and judiciary and executive powers. moreover, participation in the textbooks is seen as a combination of rights and obligations to perform a national duty through mainly voting during an electoral process; and therefore more of a passive and a thin concept of citizenship is promoted. furthermore, there seems to be a rather weak approach to political and civic literacy limited to information about political institutions and participation in local communities (through images and samples) but not on political issues and activities, such as writing petitions and letters to representatives, going on strike, following the national and international media, talking to politicians face-to face or the role of political parties in morocco. institutional participation (ngos) the 5th and 6th grade textbooks deal with institutional participation that is based on democracy like non-governmental organisations. the 6th grade textbook defined civil society as “the various non-governmental organisations and associations that educate citizens about their rights and contribute to their defense. they also raise their awareness of their duties towards their homeland and contribute to solving their problems”. the textbook mentioned some national and international ngos that mainly deal with the child’s rights protection (un, unicef, who, ilo, bayti association, karam association) the https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index idrissi, benabderrazik. (re)imagining the responsible, national citizen 42 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index environment and natural disasters rather than performing active political involvement. within this framework, ngos are described as a place to which only good and volunteering people belong, but their potential influence on political decisions is ignored. some limitations include the textbooks’ ignorance of inserting activities to enable students’ part-taking in the ngos activities. we argue that while the acquisition of knowledge can enhance awareness, awareness itself does not necessarily lead to effectiveness for a more participative role in shaping morocco’s future. in this way, the textbooks, though aimed at citizenship education, do not seem to be contributing to political literacy as a dimension of active citizenship education. national/global citizenship the textbooks focused on national issues more than global issues for students to gain a national identity and perspective. as a matter of fact, a citizen is presented as a person concerned with his/her community and the local level is the primary level at which citizenship develops its affective dimension. however, national identity presented in the textbooks does a little to develop a pluralistic imaginary and understanding of the democratic citizenship. first, textbooks gave little attention to the pluralistic side of the moroccan societal fabric that consists of different cultural identities, namely amazigh, sahraoui, hassani, and moroccan jewish. this contradicts with the moroccan educational approach developed in the national charter (2000-2009) and white book (2000), which intended to consolidate morocco’s cultural heritage, identity and diversity. second, terms like global citizenship, globalisation or even cosmopolitan are not mentioned and little voice is given to cultural diversity within morocco. in the 4th and 5th grade textbooks, cultural diversity is framed as a right and conveyed in terms of respecting others. illustrations portrayed children from diverse nationalities, backgrounds, race and religious identities; from religious institutions (mosque, church and synagogue); and a poster that showed an international children’s forum. also, an assignment asked students to draw a poster under the title “we are the world children: different and equal”. in general, the textbooks display the value of co-existence and living together at the national level to maintain harmony among the different components of society, but failed to include a connection to a global community of human beings and to develop a feeling of global citizenship and commitment. indeed, global citizenship education and global competence is a recent addition in social studies and there are many different understandings and conceptualisations, which frame its teaching and ideology. in morocco, learning languages and becoming competent in using ict are the only requirements for students to be global citizens in the textbooks; representations of the global community include international organisations and conventions on issues of human rights and children rights. inclusion of important global matters (e.g. global warming) that need to be explored in the textbooks is lacking. ignoring and marginalising important global skills that promote and facilitate interconnectedness is problematic in a context of growing cultural diversification and labor market globalisation. as such, the global is positioned as foreign and separate from the life of the student, the school, and morocco. discussion and conclusion this research focused on an investigation of the extent to which conceptions of human rights, democracy and civic participation and national/global citizenship featured in the school subject ‘education for citizenship’ of social studies in morocco. we based this research on a sample of 4th, 5th and 6th grade textbooks that social studies teachers and students use in https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index idrissi, benabderrazik. (re)imagining the responsible, national citizen 43 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index primary school. for external validity, it is important to note that a school textbook is not the only factor determining what happens in classrooms. this research paper involved only three textbooks and is limited as it excludes teacher’s guide, course plan and an analysis of the classroom practice. thus the results are not generalised for all social studies textbooks. however, this paper provides insights regarding the treatment of important citizenship concepts that are likely to be relevant for other stakeholders interested in integrating them into learning materials and practices. table 2 summarises the extent to which certain topics are prioritised, excluded and marginalised: table 2. textbooks: 4th, 5th, 6th grades prioritised topics excluded topics marginalised featured topics a discourse of rights (child’s rights); responsibilities; gender equality; institutions (un, unesco, school); teamwork/volunteering in community service; participation in civil society activities. -discussion of challenges encountering women achieving equality; activities offering guidelines for teamwork; ways on accessing politics; distribution of function in the government; global citizenship; global issues (as global warming/ esd). discrimination (workplace, media, politics); social justice; political participation; cultural diversity; pluralistic moroccan society. the analysed textbooks showed a great discrepancy between the objectives and expected outcomes. the textbooks’ content focuses primarily on transmitting procedural knowledge and values about human or child rights, rather than socialising students to a set of skills and competencies that reinforce their critical understandings of citizenship issues and active participation in the future. that predominant emphasis on human rights in the textbooks offers little opportunity for students to make connections with current social issues that face today’s world especially with the waves of cross-border mobility and the differences of cultures might cause as racism, discrimination, and to understand their place as citizens within a global context. the concept of diversity, a key goal encompassed by global citizenship education is treated from the perspective of respecting races, religious and opinion differences. we were surprised by the limited attention paid to the concept of cultural diversity and pluralism within the moroccan context or the role of multiculturalism in maintaining cohesion, commitments and identification with the nation state and the global world. there are also research studies arguing that social studies textbooks do not sufficiently deal with multiculturalism, pluralism or minority rights (jackson, 2014; montgomery, 2005; nasser & nasser, 2008). furthermore, from the point of view of democratic citizenship education, responsibility should not be limited to complying with established rules, but also implies concern for others and understanding the consequences and effects of one’s and other’s actions. unfortunately, such themes are not included in the textbooks. the globally open space in which we now live requires a kind of global citizenship learning (nussbaum, 1997; rizvi, 2009). although the important points related to global citizenship education have been mentioned among the curriculum subject priority objectives, addressing aspects of global competency in the 21st century and the role of global citizen as a citizen who is seeking contribution and international mindedness appear ignored and neglected. in addition, the textbooks presented apolitical citizenship education content, free of political events except voting and which does not develop any democratic or political literacy. moreover, the texts rarely go beyond a mere description of institutions and make no attempt to present these institutions as a context for citizen participation. research in some countries on social studies textbooks report the same results, where controversial political issues and participation are avoided (perveen & awan, 2017; zafer & tarhan, 2016). therefore, the citizenship education in moroccan schools is taught as citizenship transmission, providing https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index idrissi, benabderrazik. (re)imagining the responsible, national citizen 44 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index students with theoretical knowledge about democratic institutions but rarely giving them the chance to connect this knowledge with their everyday lives. the pedagogy followed in the textbooks in teaching citizenship education also requires attention. despite the fact that a competency-based approach has been adopted as part of the curriculum objectives, implementing this approach is almost absent from the textbooks, and the writing style is simple and descriptive. put differently, although the textbooks encourage students to express opinion in the assessments and comment on the pictures and texts, the implementation of behavioural and applied aspects of citizenship is absent, resulting in a reductionist didactic teaching; and unquestioned facts continue to dominate in the textbooks. the result is a representation of a personally responsible moroccan citizen, who is not given the opportunity to think critically or acquire the necessary skills to face not only global problems, but also complex social, political, economic, and environmental issues facing their local communities. what morocco shows us about the passive citizen is not surprising given the lack of transformative pedagogical approaches (abdi, 2014; unesco, 2014), teacher trainings, extracurricular activities and civil society involvement. some developed countries, like canada, the uk, the republic of korea, japan, and united states have integrated global citizenship education as an approach across all areas of learning and developed related curricula (milton, 2015). however, pedagogical and structural challenges persist with implementation. as oecd points out, there is a large gap-perhaps even a chasmbetween the evidence on effective learning environments for the 21st century and established practice in today’s schools and classrooms (milton, 2015). perhaps, then, this analysis asks us to reconsider the primary spaces used to foster these kinds of 21st century skills. student’s participation in extracurricular activities as a means of developing civic dispositions and achieving academic and professional success has long been noted (mcfarland & thomas, 2006; zaff et al., 2003). moreover, fostering teachers’ professional development for citizenship education and including topics, materials, and tasks that promote students’ involvement in and response to global issues related to intercultural, environmental, identity, and social problems will help cultivating a classroom of respect, inclusion and active participation (willemse, 2015). furthermore, civil society and non-governmental organisations are important stakeholders in building individual’s civic skills through providing lots of opportunities for enhancing active citizenship, empowerment and sustainable development among community members. in conclusion, it is clear that morocco has to revise social studies textbooks in order for students to develop critical citizenship skills and become active and democratic citizens of the future. textbook activities should encourage students to think critically and question political and social events. issues related to global economic, social and political structures should be emphasised and tasks should be designed to solve problems and trigger the critical thinking capacity of students. nationalism and sense of belonging also should be provided but with a focus on partnership for global citizenship. in the new global 2030 agenda, global citizenship education (gced) has been identified as a key component and has been placed at the core of sdg 4.7. for this reason, the ministry of education declared a curriculum change in the light of the new strategic vision for reform: 2015-2030. the majority of curriculum subject content of primary education will be revised except for social studies. further research might be conducted to investigate the overlap between educational and political agenda in developing critical thinking moroccan citizens. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index idrissi, benabderrazik. 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(2014).students as citizens: conceptions of citizenship in a social studies curriculum. transnational curriculum inquiry volume (2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> students as citizens: conceptions of citizenship in a social studies curriculum jennifer k. bergen 1 lorna r. mclean 2 university of ottawa, canada introduction citizenship education has long been regarded as one of the central purposes of a publically funded education system. almost a hundred years ago, john dewey remarked that democratic societies “must have a type of education which gives individuals a personal interest in social relationships and control, and the habits of mind which secure social changes” (1924, p. 115). nearly a century later, many scholars and practitioners still argue that one of the primary responsibilities of a public education system is to ensure that citizens have the knowledge and skills to effectively engage with the shifting social, economic, and political opportunities that exist in their lives, and that are inherent in a democratic system. in the past 15 years, however, there has been growing concern in democratic countries about “the levels of engagement or disengagement amongst young citizens,” (hughes, print & sears, 2010, p. 295) and their ability to engage with basic civic responsibilities. furthermore, there is general consensus among these populations that these concerns “can and should be addressed by effective citizenship education” (hughes, print & sears, 2010, p. 295) through curriculum capacity building. investigating how curricula can contribute to effective citizenship education is a multi-faceted issue when considering the political context in which curricula are created, the resources required to implement initiatives, and the pedagogical approaches of teachers in the field. it is an especially “complicated conversation” (pinar, 2011, p.1) when wading into debates about citizenship and citizenship education, as citizenship is not a static concept. disputes about citizenship arise, in part, because of the complexity of the issues and because these discussions often focus on normative concepts from a “moral point of view…. those who speak of educating for citizenship are not so much concerned about the narrow legal definition of citizenship as with some normative sense of good citizenship” (sears, 2004. p. 93).moreover, as pinto asserts, since schools play such an integral role in creating engaged citizens in democratic societies, curriculum policy development itself becomes highly political since it lays out what students „ought to learn‟ and what teachers „ought to teach‟ (2012, pp. 3-4).similarly, apple claims that for curricular theorists and other educators, it is important to document current conceptual tools used in curricula to understand to what extent they may maintain a false consensus or act as agents of bergen & mclean. students as citizens: conceptions of citizenship in a social studies… 2 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (2) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci hegemony to determine the latent ideological functions a curriculum might perform (2004, p. 97).given that in north america, studies is the subject frequently designated with the responsibility of teaching citizenship, in our research we analyzed the content of a ministry of education sanctioned curricular document in a canadian prairie province, saskatchewan. our study investigates how the curriculum navigates the shifting opportunities for citizenship in students‟ lives, and how they are encouraged to participate in the major decision-making processes that affect them. to analyze the dominant conceptions of citizenship that are inscribed in the social studies grade 9 curriculum and two state sanctioned supporting documents, we drew upon a critical discourse analysis, seeking to understand the emphasis of specific conceptions of citizenship. moreover, this study examines how global citizenship and differing worldviews are represented within these dominant citizenship conceptions. we chose the province of saskatchewan in canada because it recently underwent a substantial curricular review process that provides us with an opportunity to explore current thinking and trends on citizenship. according to the provincial education act, citizenship education is delivered through activities that are deemed appropriate by the respective boards of education and school staff and “in accordance with the curriculum guidelines issued by the department” (government of saskatchewan, 1995, p. 108). to critically assess the nature and conception of citizenship contained in these curricular documents, and building on the work of clausen, horton, and lemisko (2008),we analyzed the social studies 9 curriculum (2009) outcomes and indicators to ascertain the conception of citizenship that they represent. the curricular outcomes describe what students are expected to know and to be able to demonstrate as learning outcomes to complete the course. the curricular indicators are the competencies that students -who have achieved these outcomes -are expected to be able “to perform” (saskatchewan ministry of education, 2009b, p. 19). in addition to the core curriculum for social studies grade 9, we investigated the extent to which other significant documents produced by the ministry of education supported the types of citizenship profiled in the curriculum. we analyzed two documents that apply to all subject levels from kindergarten to grade 12: the cross-curricular competencies (2010) and broad areas of learning (2010). these two documents are used by teachers to ensure that lessons go beyond teaching subject area knowledge, in order to stimulate student growth as individuals and members of a society, which is of particular relevance to our study. analyzing these documents provided a supplementary reading to our analysis of the stand-alone social studies 9 curriculum, and provided a context for positioning the course within the broad goals of education in the province. with this investigation, we probed the following research questions:  what conceptions of citizenship are represented in the social studies 9curriculum (2009)?  to what extent do the conceptions uphold global perspectives and differing worldviews?  how are the conceptions of citizenship supported (or not) by the crosscurricular competencies (2010) and broad areas of learning (2010) documents that compliment social studies 9? bergen & mclean. students as citizens: conceptions of citizenship in a social studies… 3 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (2) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the social studies 9 curriculum is a significant document to study understandings of citizenship for several reasons. first, it is the last social studies course that students are required to take during their high school studies, and is a core curriculum course which teachers are mandated to base their lessons on (saskatchewan ministry of education, 2009a).unlike some provinces or states in north america, saskatchewan does not have independent civics courses(sears, 1994). in saskatchewan, the age for compulsory schooling is sixteen (oreopoulos, 2005) and typically, students are in grade 9 or 10 when they reach this age. second, a new social studies grade 9 curriculum was released in 2009 during the curricular reform process, two years after the election of the conservative based saskatchewan party, in 2007. the earlier developmental stages of the document began under the leadership of the previous government, the social-democratic new democratic party, and acknowledges the contribution of teachers and educators through focus groups and consultation with indigenous elders and school division committees. finally, in addition to the outcomes and indicators for grade 9, the curriculum under study details information about the core social studies curriculum and the goals for kindergarten to grade 12 social studies, the broad areas of learning and cross-curricular competencies, assessment information, and connections to other areas of study. the rationale for analyzing the cross-curricular competencies (2010) and broad areas of learning (2010) documents is also multifaceted. primarily, studying these two documents expanded our understanding of how citizenship is constructed in the curriculum, since these documents contain goals that are delivered throughout all grade levels, to “reflect the desired attributes for saskatchewan‟s prek-12 students” (saskatchewan ministry of education, 2010a, p. 1).although the documents themselves are not considered core curriculum, the concepts in these resource documents are taken up inevery course‟s curricular document, linking the broad areas and competencies to the outcomes of that particular course. broad areas of learning is a short, one-page overview of the three areas of learning that reflect the ministry of education‟s nine goals, as laid out in goals of education for saskatchewan (1985). these three broad areas of learning include „sense of self, community, and place‟, „lifelong learners‟, and „engaged citizens‟. each area has a brief description, which includes the related goals of education. similarly, cross-curricular competencies is also a short, seven-page overview of the four interrelated areas that are to be continually addressed through all areas of study. these four competency areas include „developing thinking‟, „developing identity and interdependence‟, „developing literacies‟, and „developing social responsibility‟. each competency has three sub-goals, which include descriptions of what meeting these sub-goals will look like. again, like the broad areas of learning, these cross-curricular competencies are reiterated at the beginning of each course‟s curriculum document, including a discussion and descriptions of how each competency is specifically related to social studies. given the interdependency in a democracy between publicly funded education and the related responsibility for governments to ensure that citizens are equipped to participate equally in the decision making processes that affect them, it is important to examine the relationships that exist among and between the social, economic, and political institutions in a country (and province), and to investigate how curricula encourages interactions among these systems (apple, 1983). it is also vital to dissect the nature of this type of citizenship education. an emphasis on curricula is not to deny advocacy for different conceptions of citizenship education through the efforts of teachers using varied pedagogical practices to interpret curricula. although there are examples where new bergen & mclean. students as citizens: conceptions of citizenship in a social studies… 4 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (2) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci teachers feel intimidated by the pedagogical style that accompanies progressive pedagogy (mclean, cook & crowe, 2008), other examples highlight instances where classroom environmental and pedagogical approaches have had a significant impact on students‟ understanding of citizenship (pasek, feldman, romer & jamieson, 2008; bickmore, 2004). the influence of upholding majority values in the creation of any curricular document is particularly relevant when looking at the desired attributes for citizens in a democracy. tupper and cappello describe the process of upholding majority values as „curricular commonsense‟ (2012), when the knowledge that shapes curricula is largely unchallenged, as it is considered to be accepted or „official‟ knowledge. as they note in their study of the ways that students take up notions of „good‟ citizenship, an “uncritical acceptance of commonsense (embodied in curriculum) may shut down possible alternative visions for what society might look like by consistently reifying a dominant vision” (p. 40).views of citizenship that do not „fit‟ can be silenced within the curriculum. in addition to curricula normalizing majority values, curricula can also be influenced directly or indirectly by “the hegemonic power nexus and assist[s] in the reproduction of the existing order” (kumar, 2012, p. 4). in his article on, “democracy and curriculum”, wood asserts that “the curriculum arises as a product of choice ... further, choosing from among many curricular possibilities is always first and foremost a political act” (1998, p. 177). likewise, decisions about how best to educate students about democratic engagement can be the result of deliberate political choices (beyer, 1998). embedded ideology not only surfaces in curricula through deliberate choices made by political actors, it can also influence the curricular development process itself. in her investigation of (and involvement in) the curricular development process in another canadian province in the late 1990s, pinto describes the way that the privatization of the curriculum development process through increased policy development outsourcing meant that curriculum writers had become contractors (2012, pp. 90-91). context just as the politicization of curricula is well documented and debated, so too is the history of debates regarding citizenship education (council of ministers of education, canada, 2001). in addition to provincial assessments, there have been a number of academic studies looking at citizenship education in canadian provinces and territories, including comprehensive reviews of the official policy documents, curricular documents, and types of support for citizenship education (bickmore, 2006; sears & hughes, 1996; mundy & manion, 2008). surprisingly, saskatchewan has largely been absent in these significant studies. one article that did include a saskatchewan assessment compared another province in canada, ontario, and saskatchewan social studies curricula for grades one to ten, including the former saskatchewan social studies 9 (1999) curricular document (clausen, horton, & lemisko, 2008). using the typology proposed by sears and hughes (1996) as a basis for comparison, the authors concluded that both saskatchewan and ontario show “some remnants of the elite conception, a dominant liberal conception and only a burgeoning conception of global/social justice democracy” (clausen, horton, & lemisko, 2008, p. 48). our intention in this research is to determine if this prior insight holds true for the new social studies9 (2009) curricular document, and to probe further how the conceptions in the curriculum are supported by other ministry of education approved resource documents. more recently, llewellyn, cook, and molina (2010) identified in their study of civic knowledge and skills in canadian provincial curricula that policy guidelines bergen & mclean. students as citizens: conceptions of citizenship in a social studies… 5 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (2) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci stressed procedural civic knowledge over objectives that promoted active forms of citizenship. canadian curricula are not alone in promoting passive citizenship over active engagement among students. an international study of 25 countries‟ civic education programs by losito and mintrop found that, “many country experts concluded that the prevailing goal of civic education in their country was knowledge transmission” (2001, p. 166). although teachers had a desire to emphasize critical thinking, in practice, teaching methods were still largely teacher-centric and emphasized knowledge transmission, ostensibly discouraging active forms of political engagement and critical thinking (2001, p. 158). a growing concern among those who study citizenship reveals that young citizens are increasingly ill-equipped to be active citizens (hughes, print & sears, 2010). exactly what the skills, knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors should look like for active conceptions of citizenship, however, is highly debated. as sears asserts, although “there is considerable consensus that preparation for democratic citizenship ought to be a goal of public education, there is very little real consensus around what we mean by a “good” citizen” (2004, p. 93). likewise, in his article on effective citizenship education, osborne asserts that the essence of citizenship “is to be found in the continuing debate over what it means to be a citizen” (2010, p. 13). notably, among scholars writing about citizenship in canada and the united states who acknowledge similar goals of defining the values, knowledge, and skills that citizens should espouse (journell, 2010; mundy & manion, 2008; sears & hughes, 1996; westheimer & kahne, 2004), opinions diverge when comparing the nature of these values, knowledge, and skills (sears, 2004, p. 93). included in the debates around democratic citizenship is an urgency for global education or global citizenship education programs to be developed as independent areas of study, or as embedded within citizenship education (young, 2010; davies, 2006; zahabioun, yousefy, yarmohammadian, & keshtiaray, 2013). global education programs, created partly in response to the rise of globalization, are also highly contested. as shultz asserts, there are three different types of citizen that global citizenship education approaches encourage: the neoliberal global citizen; the radical global citizen; and, the transformationalist global citizen (2007). the neoliberal global citizenship education approach is “primarily linked to global economic participation” where students learn that international mobility and participation in the global marketplace are important, and that solutions to global inequity are dealt with through donating to charities, opposed to through a process of recognizing their own privilege. conversely, the radical global citizenship education approach encourages students to recognize the global inequity that globalization causes, and challenges the structures of power and institutions (particularly financial institutions) that reinforce oppression. finally, the transformationalist global citizenship approach holds that globalization is creating new forms of inclusion and exclusion across nations, and that the north-south economic divide is now a divide between the wealthy and poor across the north and the south(shultz, 2007, pp. 252-256). insofar as global education exists in varying forms of citizenship education, the type of citizenship education advocated for by shultz (2007)and young(2010) is typically present in more progressive forms of citizenship education, specifically those that have social justice or participatory citizenship at their core. in an effort to further define this type of global citizenship education, mundy and manion offer a list of six interrelated characteristics of global education found in the literature, including: bergen & mclean. students as citizens: conceptions of citizenship in a social studies… 6 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (2) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 1. a view of the world as one system, and of human life as shaped by a history of global interdependence; 2. commitment to the idea that there are basic human rights and that these include social and economic equality as well as basic freedoms; 3. commitment to the notion of the value of cultural diversity and the importance of intercultural understanding and tolerance for differences of opinion; 4. a belief in the efficacy of individual action; 5. a commitment to child-centered or progressive pedagogy; 6. awareness and a commitment to planetary sustainability. (2008) these six characteristics are similar to those put forth by both shultz and young, such as viewing the world as an interconnected system, and being committed to social equality and human rights. in addition, the inclusion of being committed to progressive pedagogy signals a shift not just in content knowledge about citizenship, but in the ways that teaching practices can espouse the core principles of this knowledge. furthermore, mundy and manion‟s emphasis on individual action coupled with an understanding of how these actions fit within a broad system echoes the need to build authentic democratic spaces as outlined in shultz‟s transformationalist global citizenship approach. conceptions of citizenship a spectrum (synthesized in figure 1) developed by journell (2010) is particularly useful when examining citizenship conceptions in curricular documents. the first category in his spectrum identifies discourses of citizenship that deal with structural processes of government where students are imbued with patriotic values, supportive of the actions taken by their country, and are required to study the abilities needed to be competitive in a political economy. the second category focuses on character education, where students are meant to develop a strong sense of morality, under the assumption that „good‟ people will inevitably lead to a „good‟ society. the third, fourth, and fifth categories fall under the umbrella of “liberal citizenship discourses” (journell, 2010, p. 353). here, the deliberative citizenship conception invites students to question authority and encourages their engagement in public discussions about controversial issues. also contained in this set of discourses are social justice approaches, where students seek to foster change through examining systemic forms of injustice and oppression. participatory models are discussed under the umbrella of liberal citizenship discourses and students are encouraged to participate in political and social issues, and the decision making processes in their communities. journell‟s sixth category is transnational or global citizenship in which students are active on an international scale and promote connections between local communities and global issues. finally, the last category describes cosmopolitan citizenship. here, students are encouraged to make local to global connections and to be compassionate, cooperative, and cognizant that social and economic issues are not confined to political borders (journell, 2010) without having to deny a sense of belonging within local or regional communities (osler, 2010). similar spectrums have been developed for global citizenship education. of particular relevance to this study is mundy and manion‟s overview of provincial global education curriculum content in elementary schools in seven provinces and territories across canada.in their model, the continuum specifies „what global education teaches‟ at bergen & mclean. students as citizens: conceptions of citizenship in a social studies… 7 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (2) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci one end and „what global education does not teach‟ at the other. encompassed within their framework, active citizenship is described as having “transformative potential” (2008, p. 945) for both individuals and through collective action, and is grouped with other characteristics such as social justice, solidarity, critical thinking, and a strong moral purpose. elite citizenship, which appears at the opposite end of the spectrum, encourages citizens to act within the current laws and electoral systems, coupled with other characteristics such as competitiveness, charity, and uncritical thinking (2008, p. 945). although mundy and manion‟s framework encompasses many of the current trends in citizenship education, reviews are not comprehensive, nor can they cover all of the nuances and debates that exist about each conception effectively. as a salient example, none of the classifications directly address how canadian indigenous perspectives are upheld or suppressed even though such an inclusion would be integral to conceptions that promote social justice. instead, frameworks that omit indigenous knowledge further reinforce “overly euro-canadian” (deer, 2008, p. 79) values, even in spaces that encourage forms of questioning, an assessment of worldviews, or an interrogation of power structures. conceptual frameworks & methodology on a paradigmatic level, we approached our analysis through critical constructivism. our choice of critical discourse analysis (cda) as a methodology, flows from this stance. as kincheloe explains, critical constructivists are concerned with the role figure 1 citizenship conceptions from: journell, w. (2010). standardizing citizenship: the potential influence of state curriculum standards on the civic development of adolescents. ps, political science & politics, 43(2), 351-358. type of citizenship main characteristics 1. civic republicanism citizens have patriotic values, support actions of their countries, and learn skills necessary to compete and succeed in a political economy. 2. character education citizens have a developed sense of morality, and emphasis is placed on individual character, moral issues, „good‟ values. 3. deliberative citizens question authority, and are encouraged to engage in public discourse on policy and controversial issues, but are to seek to better one‟s country. 4. social justice citizens seek out and discuss elements of social injustice and oppression, such as exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence, with the goal of fostering social change. 5. participatory citizens participate in political and social issues, as well as in their communities. 6. transnational citizens are active, but on an international scale, and make connections between their local communities and issues of global importance. 7. cosmopolitan citizens are compassionate, cooperative, and see peace as a virtue of all people in a society. know that environmental, economic, and social issues transcend political boundaries, and have a desire to address large global problems. bergen & mclean. students as citizens: conceptions of citizenship in a social studies… 8 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (2) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci that power plays in the knowledge construction and validation process, and the way in which these processes uphold the privilege of some while marginalizing others (2008). in addition, our approach holds, ontologically, that the world is constructed, but also, epistemologically, that all knowledge is a construction (kincheloe, 2008, pp. 7-8), and that as a researchers, we act as co-creators of knowledge. for these reasons, employing critical discourse analysis as a methodology, which “focuses attention on the process whereby the social world is constructed and maintained” (phillips & hardy, 2002, p. 2),enabled us to read the curricular and resource documents to uncover the citizenship conceptions that are privileged over others. equally important, one of the aims of discourse analysis is to understand the socio-historic situation of the text (gillen & peterson, 2005, p. 147) and to make connections between the language used in the text and the social context in which it was created, therefore revealing the social context that it espouses (fairclough, 1992; van dijk, 1993). understanding social context was achieved by analyzing the two supporting documents. finally, identifying and adapting the methodological conceptual frameworks for this study was based on norman fairclough‟s dialectical-relational methodology for critical discourse analysis, which we used to guide our methodology and methods (2010). as we have seen, journell‟s spectrum gives voice to a number of types of citizenship (including varying forms of global citizenship) that other spectrums only broadly define (figure 2). his spectrum moves from nationalist and character citizenship education discourses, to liberal citizenship education discourses, and, to global or transnational citizenship education discourses. there are two primary differences between journell‟s original conceptualization and the one that we used to conduct this research. the first adaptation was introduced to better reflect the canadian context, since journell‟s first category, „civic republicanism‟, focuses on american political realities. in the adapted version, this conception is now called „nationalist‟, and focuses on types of citizenship that promote a canadian multicultural nationalism, to explore how the specific processes of a canadian democracy within a diverse society (indigenous, francophone communities) are represented and how the facets of democratic systems are signified within society. bergen & mclean. students as citizens: conceptions of citizenship in a social studies… 9 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (2) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci second, to pay close attention to the ways that power and hegemony are upheld in the types of citizenship in the curriculum, the „social justice‟ conception was adapted to focus on how structures of cultural imperialism and colonization are investigated and to probe the presentation of diverse worldviews, specifically, how indigenous worldviews and rights are upheld or suppressed (haig-brown, 2008). this adaptation is particularly significant because indigenous perspectives are generally overlooked in journell‟s conceptions. furthermore, since2007, saskatchewan has mandated that treaty education be taught as part of the curriculum in order for students to learn about the negotiations between indigenous groups and the canadian government that resulted in the six treaties or “contractual agreements” in saskatchewan, including treaties 2, 4, 5, 6, 8, and 10 (office of the treaty commissioner, 1998). in addition to utilizing this adapted framework for identifying general citizenship conceptions, we drew upon mundy and manion‟s six characteristics related to global education dispositions (figure 3) to pro bet he extent to which the dominant conceptions found in the curricula indicators upheld a global perspective and diverse worldviews. figure 2 – adapted citizenship conceptions adapted from: journell, w. (2010). standardizing citizenship: the potential influence of state curriculum standards on the civic development of adolescents. ps, political science & politics, 43(2), 351-358. conception main characteristics 1. nationalist advocates for a „canadian‟ way of life, and upholds status quo, democratic, and structural processes. 2. character education emphasizes individual character, issues of morality, and having „good‟ values. 3. deliberative questions the status quo, and encourages making value judgments and articulating personal opinions on issues. 4. social justice deals with structures of oppression that deny equality or justice, dissects colonization and imperialism, and includes representation of indigenous and other worldviews. 5. participatory facilitates student activism, fosters agency, and embeds learning in real-world projects or service learning. 6. transnational focuses on international issues, diverging worldviews, and abandons eurocentric curriculums. 7. cosmopolitan emphasizes human rights, cooperation, peace, and recognition of a „global community‟. bergen & mclean. students as citizens: conceptions of citizenship in a social studies… 10 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (2) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci to conduct this investigation we combined fairclough‟s dialectical-relational methodology with auerbach and silverstein‟s coding process (2003).combining these two approaches allowed for an in-depth critical discourse analysis of the texts. fairclough‟s dialectical-relational model outlines a process that seeks to describe, interpret, and explain the texts as they relate to broad societal constructs through both interdiscursive analysis and linguistic/semiotic analysis, and auerbach and silverstein‟s approach enabled us to identify relevant data within these texts and to provide tools to move conceptually through fairclough‟s analytic model. first, auerbach and silverstein‟s coding process, which moves from raw text, to relevant text, to repeating ideas, to themes, and finally to theoretical constructs (2003, p. 35), aided in the selection of relevant text for analysis and consideration within the three texts analyzed. taking the three documents as raw text, it was necessary to narrow the texts down to the relevant text to be analyzed before beginning the process of describing, interpreting, and explaining, as per fairclough‟s model. the raw text included the entirety of the social studies 9 curriculum document (2009), the cross-curricular competencies document (2010), and the broad areas of learning document (2010). the three documents were downloaded from the official saskatchewan ministry of education‟s curricula website: www.edonline.sk.ca. from here, the relevant text was selected, which included the portions of these documents that would provide the data necessary in order to answer the research questions. in the case of the social studies 9 curricular document, three sections of the text were chosen as relevant text for analysis, totaling 12 pages of the 39 page document. the first two sections are the portions of the curriculum document that describe how the broad areas of learning and cross-curricular competencies apply to teaching social studies (2009, pp. 2-5). this text describes how both are connected to social studies as an area of study broadly, but not about the content of the grade 9 curriculum specifically. the third section chosen for analysis includes the four “aims and goals of social studies and the social sciences”, as well as the indicators needed (70 in total) to produce outcomes that seek to achieve the following four goals: 1. to examine the local, indigenous, and global interactions and interdependence of individuals, societies, cultures, and nations; 2. to analyze the dynamic relationships of people with land, environments, events, and ideas as they have affected the past, shape the present, and influence the future; figure 3 – global education dispositions dispositions from: mundy, k. & manion, c. (2008). global education in canadian elementary schools: an exploratory study. canadian journal of education, 31(4), 941-974. 1. a view of the world as one system, and of human life as shaped by a history of global interdependence. 2. commitment to the idea that there are basic human rights and that these include social and economic equality as well as basic freedoms. 3. commitment to the notion of the value of cultural diversity and the importance of intercultural understanding and tolerance for differences of opinion. 4. a belief in the efficacy of individual action. 5. a commitment to child-centered or progressive pedagogy. 6. awareness and a commitment to planetary sustainability. http://www.edonline.sk.ca/ bergen & mclean. students as citizens: conceptions of citizenship in a social studies… 11 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (2) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 3. to investigate the processes and structures of power and authority, and the implications for individuals, communities, and nations; and, 4. to examine various worldviews about the use and distribution of resources and wealth in relation to the needs of individuals, communities, nations, and the natural environment and contribute to sustainable development. (saskatchewan ministry of education, 2009b, pp. 19-25) the outcomes and indicators span seven pages of the document, and are the content that lessons are typically based upon in order to reach the four goals of the curriculum. for each of these outcomes, there are typically between four and eight indicators that students should be able to demonstrate if they have achieved the designated outcome. for example, under the first outcome, “explain what constitutes a society”, there are eight indicators that students are expected to show that they can complete. in the case of the broad areas of learning document, the entirety of the one-page document was considered relevant text. this document contains descriptions of the “desired attributes for saskatchewan‟s prek-12 students” (saskatchewan ministry of education, 2010a) as these attributes are related to the ministry of education‟s nine goals. the three broad areas, „sense of self, community, and place‟, „lifelong learners‟, and „engaged citizens‟ describe “the knowledge (factual, conceptual, procedural, metacognitive) that students will achieve throughout their prek-12 schooling career” (saskatchewan ministry of education, 2010a).similarly, the entirety of the cross-curricular competencies document was also considered relevant text. this document is a seven-page overview that describes the four competencies that are to be developed through all courses of study, including „developing thinking‟, „developing identity and interdependence‟, „developing literacies‟, and „developing social responsibility‟. each of these competencies are described briefly in the document, and are accompanied by three goals that will enable the development of the competency. after identifying the relevant text for each of the three documents, we engaged in the process of describing what was going on in the texts, identifying repeating ideas, identifying themes, and interpreting these themes in the text as they related to the adapted frameworks of citizenship conceptions. in particular, emerging themes were considered in terms of the linguistic features that were being used to create meaning in the texts, paying special attention to certain concepts, including representation, voice, and reflexivity (werner, 2000). this analysis process consisted of different steps for analyzing the curricular outcomes and indicators than for the remainder of the relevant text in the curriculum document and for the broad areas of learning and cross-curricular competencies. in the case of the social studies grade 9 curricular indicators and outcomes, this process included analysis and interpretation of every individual indicator separately (70 in total). even if several indicators were all meant to help achieve the same outcome, they were considered „stand alone‟ units of text. analyzing these smaller units made it easier to interpret their content and features, and to group them into the conceptual category of citizenship that they espoused. utilizing journell‟s adapted citizenship conception framework to thematically code indicators meant selecting the best fit for each indicator, all of which could have realistically been espousing more than one type of citizenship. the specificity of the framework, however, meant that although an indicator may have espoused more than one type of citizenship, selecting where it best fit was an easier task than with frameworks that had fewer categories. secondly, for indicators that were difficult to analyze as stand-alone units of language and did not seem to overtly espouse any particular bergen & mclean. students as citizens: conceptions of citizenship in a social studies… 12 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (2) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci characteristics of any of the citizenship conceptions, they were denoted as having „no appropriate fit‟, if after several rounds of analysis the best fit was still unclear. after the initial rounds of analyzing the indicators, subsequent rounds of analysis paid strict attention to understanding whether or not the conceptions advocated in the curriculum upheld characteristics of global citizenship education, drawing from the six global education dispositions outlined by mundy and manion (2008) described earlier. taking the indicators from the two most dominant conceptions of citizenship found in the curricula through the first step (32 in total), we used a similar thematic coding process to ascertain to what extent these indicators reflected any of the characteristics contained in the six global education dispositions. in the case of the larger pieces of text in the social studies 9 curriculum, the broad areas of learning, and the cross-curricular competencies, a similar process was used. again, text was reviewed for repeating ideas, and these were interpreted by coding similar units of language based on what characteristics of journell‟s adapted framework were present in the semiotics of the texts. the units of language that espoused certain citizenship characteristics were described, interpreted, and explained in relation to how citizenship was being constructed in certain portions of the text. data & discussion conceptions of citizenship that are encouraged in the social studies grade 9 curriculum based on our findings, the following table (figure 4) depicts the frequency of indicators that espoused characteristics of each conception alongside an example of an indicator that used language to suggest a „fit‟ with the type of citizenship conception. we chose to represent the thematically grouped indicators in this way in order to highlight the breadth of types of citizenship contained in the curriculum. the majority of indicators, 60 percent, contained characteristics of the deliberative or social justice conceptions of citizenship, which are part of the liberal discourses of citizenship. within this 60 percent, deliberative citizenship that encouraged students to question authority, to engage in public discussions about policy and controversial issues and to seek ways to “better their country”, made up 36 percent of the indicators. social justice citizenship that empowers students to examine systemic forms of injustice and oppression, to discuss marginalization, exploitation, and powerlessness, and to seek to make positive social change, made up the remaining 24 percent of the indicators. the deliberative citizenship conception appeared in 25 of the 70 indicators, or 36 percent. this type of citizenship encourages students to question authority, and to engage in debates about public policy, but ultimately seeks to ensure that any efforts to work for change are accomplished through the existing political, economic, and social systems. here, unequal power structures are not addressed directly, and working within existing political systems is the norm. examples ranged from comparisons of leadership in societies, defining what constitutes a society, to encouraging students to consider their own stance on issues. as a case in point, to reach the outcome to “compare the factors that shape worldviews in a society, including time and place, culture, language, religion, gender identity, socioeconomic situation, and education”, the indicator stated that students should, explore personal student beliefs about some contemporary issues or problem (e.g., making friends; the role of technology in daily life; affordable housing; bergen & mclean. students as citizens: conceptions of citizenship in a social studies… 13 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (2) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci intergenerational families; global warming; post-secondary education; participating in religious or cultural ceremonies; designer clothing; healthy food choices; drinking and driving; violence). (saskatchewan ministry of education, 2009b. p. 20) here, the indicator is asking students to explore their „personal beliefs‟ about an issue or problem; the document is shaping the way in which it anticipates that the students will respond to the question. these beliefs offer selective representations, with “implied values and unstated preconceptions … produced from within particular social experiences, and cannot claim universality” (werner, 2000, p. 198). many of the examples offered in the indicator of issues or problems for students to explore had the potential to encourage a meaningful investigation of structural components of society, such as looking at affordable housing, global warming, or violence. however, the students are being asked to „explore‟ their personal beliefs on these issues, and not to investigate why these examples exist or what their root causes are. while there is the potential for students to probe deeper to examine the basis for their opinions on these issues, they are not being required to do so, making this indicator an example of how the document is encouraging them to describe „how things are‟ rather than challenge the existing status quo. the social justice citizenship conception was the second major conception evident in the curriculum, totaling 17 of the 70 curricular indicators, or 24 percent. in this form of citizenship, students examine the root causes of injustice, marginalization, and power imbalances. most of the indicators that fell into the social justice conception successfully encouraged knowledge transmission about these structural issues, although not necessarily through participatory activities that might equip students with the skills to engage in change-making themselves. bergen & mclean. students as citizens: conceptions of citizenship in a social studies… 14 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (2) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the strongest examples of indicators that contain characteristics of the social justice citizenship conception are listed under the goal, “to investigate the processes and structures of power and authority, and the implications for individuals, communities, and nations” (saskatchewan ministry of education, 2009b, p. 23). for students to achieve the first outcome, “examine concepts of power and authority in the governance of the societies studied” (2009b, p. 23), they are required to “interpret the effect of the system of government on the worldview of the societies studied, in terms of who had power, and how government leaders obtained power (e.g., iroquois chiefs chosen by clan mothers, european leaders selected by elite males) and how power was exercised” (2009b, p. 23). in this indicator, students directly „interpret the effect‟ of certain types of government on the worldviews in that society, „who had power‟ in society, „how government leaders obtained figure 4 social studies grade 9 indicator frequency and corresponding citizenship conceptions adapted from: journell, w. (2010). standardizing citizenship: the potential influence of state curriculum standards on the civic development of adolescents. ps, political science & politics, 43(2), 351-358. conception number of indicators examples of indicators nationalist 10 (14%) rw9.2d assess the importance of trade relations and transportations systems for prosperity in the societies studied, and make generalizations with reference to contemporary canada. character education 2 (3%) in9.1b investigate the roles of individuals in the institutions of the local community, including the expectations attached to those roles. deliberative 25 (36%) in9.1d compare two different societies studied including the attributes of leaders, the roles of various individuals, cultural traditions and ceremonies, and means of sustenance. social justice 17 (24%) in9.4b analyze the influence of worldviews upon attitudes toward territorial expansion, colonization, or empire-building in the societies studied, and assess the impact of such activities on the indigenous cultures and peoples. participatory 0 n/a transnational 13 (19%) in9.2c hypothesize about the reasons underlying the similarities and differences between the worldview of one individual and that of another person. cosmopolitan 2 (3%) pa9.3d explain the means to achieving rights in the societies studied, and compare this to contemporary canadian society. no appropriate fit 1 (1%) rw9.3d represent achievements and technologies of the contemporary world that have their origins in the achievements and technologies of societies studied. total indicators: 70 bergen & mclean. students as citizens: conceptions of citizenship in a social studies… 15 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (2) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci power‟, and how they exercised it. here, this questioning process disrupts what could be considered a „natural‟ historical storyline (werner, 2000), and invites students to probe the alternative simplicit in past power relations. additionally, another indicator includes an investigation of what this type of citizenship would mean for indigenous populations. under the outcome to “analyze the impact of empire-building and territorial expansion on indigenous populations and other groups in the societies studied” (2009b, p. 23),the indicators hold that students should “assess the treatment of indigenous populations by the imperialists in the societies studied,” and to “evaluate the authenticity and validity of information sources used in the inquiry process” (2009b, p. 23). students are required to define empire building, territorial expansion, and imperialism and to investigate the effects that these events have on indigenous populations. asking students to pay attention to the „authenticity and validity‟ of their information sources promotes reflexivity regarding the authorship of the texts used in the classroom (werner, 2000). the remainder of the indicators fell into five of the remaining six categories. transnational citizenship, where students learn about connecting international issues to local issues, accounted for 19 percent, and nationalist citizenship, where students are to engage in learning that reinforces the societal status quo, accounted for 14 percent of indicators. character education citizenship and cosmopolitan citizenship represented three percent each, while no indicators seemed to encourage participatory citizenship. in addition, one percent of the indicators fell under the “no appropriate fit” category, as they did not seem to contain any significant characteristics of any of the other seven conceptions. utilizing critical discourse analysis enabled us to assess how citizenship is constructed and how it contributes to sustaining particular power relations and ideology within the current social order. our results indicated that the majority of curricular indicators espouse a combination of a deliberative and social justice orientations to citizenship. as shown, (figure 4), these two conceptions encourage students to form their own opinions on issues, to think critically about social responsibility, to assess what constitutes the components of a society, and to consider what their role will be in contributing to justice for all. furthermore, the number of indicators that contained characteristics of the social justice conception of citizenship also encouraged students to question structures of power and to understand how these structures affect different oppressed groups. our research discovered that despite the majority of indicators containing characteristics of deliberative, social justice, or transnational citizenship, a significant amount also encouraged a nationalist conception of citizenship, whereby students are taught about government, democracy, and how to pursue activities that reinforce homogenous nationalist ideals, despite diverse canadian cultural perspectives. in general, the majority of indicators that fell into this latter category described “how things are” in contemporary canadian society. these indicators do not necessarily seek to reinforce the status quo, but, by describing the system of government as it currently exists without encouraging students to imagine possible alternatives, they may do just that. this finding is consistent with what clausen, horton, and lemisko found regarding saskatchewan curricula, in that these documents have “more „global/social justice‟ manifestations” because they include “a stronger emphasis on expectations of „active‟ participation in democratic processes” (2008, p. 47). moreover, they also stated that although the curricula bergen & mclean. students as citizens: conceptions of citizenship in a social studies… 16 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (2) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci gave space to the “study of differences within the democratic system (and saskatchewan gives greater play to decision-making within a democracy), neither [document] explores forms of dissent or opposition that exist outside the established system to any notable degree” (2008, p. 47). to this point, our analysis revealed a lacunae of indicators to encourage the participatory conception of citizenship. again, although the majority of indicators encouraged students to think critically about systems of power, none of the indicators directed them to act on what they learned or to invoke changes within these systems. for indicators and outcomes to espouse this type of citizenship would require a program design that differed substantially from the current curricular form. implementing participatory projects would enable a kind of learning that extends beyond the classroom. in “civic participation: a curriculum for democracy”, fleming argues that, “students‟ chances to make substantive contributions may start with their own schools, but they should also extend beyond the school so community members can become partners and mentors in civic engagement. the effects of this curriculum benefit both the students and the community” (2011, p. 42). examples of these projects can vary from intensive programs that take place outside of regular classes (maitles, 2010), to projects to promote electoral engagement like student voices that are embedded into courses‟ curricula (pasek, feldman, romer, & jamieson, 2008), but necessarily require a different kind of curriculum construction than exists in the one studied here. global perspectives and differing worldviews given the prevalence of the call for global citizenship education to be offered in conjunction with citizenship education activities, we utilized a set of six axioms by mundy and manion to analyze the indicators that fell into the deliberative and social justice citizenship conceptions for global perspectives and indigenous worldviews. figure 5 shows the extent to which the global education dispositions are profiled in the social studies 9 curriculum, and provide examples of each indicator. after completing this analysis,we concluded that all the indicators in the social justice and deliberative citizenship conceptions espoused characteristics described by the global education dispositions, signaling that the majority of the social studies grade 9 curricular indicators contained characteristics of global education. many examples spoke to the presence of the characteristic “commitment to the idea that there are basic human rights and that these include social and economic equality as well as basic freedoms.”for instance, to achieve the outcome to “investigate the roles and responsibilities of members of the societies studied and those of citizens in contemporary canada” (saskatchewan ministry of education, 2009b, p. 24), one indicator encourages students to “investigate examples of the oppression of rights of particular groups or individuals in societies studied including examples in canada (e.g., slavery, limited franchise, restrictions on property ownership)” (2009b, p. 24). in examining the oppression of rights of certain groups, including looking at slavery and property ownership in canadian and other societies, students would be investigating issues of social and economic equality as outlined in the previous global education disposition. bergen & mclean. students as citizens: conceptions of citizenship in a social studies… 17 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (2) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci other examples also confirm the presence of the characteristic “commitment to the notion of the value of cultural diversity and the importance of intercultural understanding and tolerance for differences of opinion”. when meeting the outcome of analyzing “the ways a worldview is expressed in the daily life of a society” (saskatchewan ministry of education, 2009b, p. 20), one indicator invites students to “investigate the worldview of the local community as represented through features including literature, the arts, cultural celebrations and traditions, education (including elders‟ teachings of indigenous peoples), sports and recreation, and architecture” (2009b, p. 20).several indicators also mentioned figure 5 – social studies 9 indicator frequency & global education dispositions dispositions from: mundy, k. & manion, c. (2008). global education in canadian elementary schools: an exploratory study. canadian journal of education, 31(4), 941-974. global education dispositions number of indicators examples 1. a view of the world as one system, and of human life as shaped by a history of global interdependence. 3 (9%) goal 1: to examine the local, indigenous, and global interactions and interdependence of individuals, societies, cultures, and nations. 2. commitment to the idea that there are basic human rights and that these include social and economic equality as well as basic freedoms. 12 (37%) goal 3: to investigate the processes and structures of power and authority, and the implications for individuals, communities, and nations. goal 3, outcome 3, indicator 2: investigate examples of the oppression of rights of particular groups or individuals in societies studied including examples in canada (e.g., slavery, limited franchise, restrictions on property ownership). 3. commitment to the notion of the value of cultural diversity and the importance of intercultural understanding and tolerance for differences of opinion. 13 (41%) goal 1, outcome 2: compare the factors that shape worldviews in a society, including time and place, culture, language, religion, gender identity, socio-economic situation, and education. 4. a belief in the efficacy of individual action. 0 (0%) n/a 5. a commitment to childcentered or progressive pedagogy. 0 (0%) n/a 6. awareness and a commitment to planetary sustainability. 4 (13%) goal 4: to examine various worldviews about the use and distribution of resources and wealth in relation to the needs of individuals, communities, nations, and the natural environment and contribute to sustainable development. total indicators: 32 bergen & mclean. students as citizens: conceptions of citizenship in a social studies… 18 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (2) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci indigenous populations in saskatchewan, first nations people, and the treaties. the presence of these indicators signals that „intercultural diversity‟ is taken up in the curriculum by asking students to identify how different worldviews inform cultural practices, and by explicitly naming indigenous elders‟ teachings in one of the examples as an alternative form of education. interestingly, none of the indicators espoused characteristics of two of the global education disposition categories, “a belief in the efficacy of individual action”, or “a commitment to child-centered or progressive pedagogy”. this finding is consistent with the lack of indicators that contained characteristics of the participatory citizenship conception cited previously in the adapted version of journell‟s citizenship conceptions. by utilizing mundy and manion‟s set of global education dispositions (2008), we concluded that the dominant citizenship conceptions taken up in the social studies grade 9 curriculum uphold global perspectives, and to a certain extent, differing worldviews. the majority of indicators that included characteristics of the deliberative and social justice citizenship conceptions primarily supported two of global perspectives: a “commitment to the idea that there are basic human rights and that these include social and economic equality as well as basic freedoms”; and, a “commitment to the notion of the value of cultural diversity and the importance of intercultural understanding and tolerance for differences of opinion” (2008, p. 944). again, within these global characterizations, none of these indicators cultivated “a belief in the efficacy of individual action” (2008, p. 944), which is consistent with the observation that none of the indicators encouraged a participatory conception of citizenship. these findings may encourage shultz‟s “radical global citizenship education approach”, where students recognize global inequity, human rights, and challenge structures of power, but do not seek to uncover the interconnectedness of these struggles, nor are they compelled to take action on them within the transformationalist approach she describes (2007, pp. 253-254). some emerging evidence indicates that differing worldviews were recognized and valued, including indigenous worldviews, as seen in the high percentage of indicators that contained characteristics of social justice or transnational citizenship conceptions. specifically, transnational citizenship, which encourages students to consider and to recognize worldviews different from their own, was shown to exist in many indicators under the outcome to “compare the factors that shape worldviews in a society, including time and place, culture, language, religion, gender identity, socio-economic situation, and education” (saskatchewan ministry of education, 2009b, p. 20). indigenous worldviews were addressed in a number of indicators. taken together, references to saskatchewan indigenous populations, first nations people, treaties, and elder‟s teachings, as well as encouraging students to analyze the effects of territorial expansion and colonization, offer evidence that indigenous worldviews are given some recognition in the curricula indicators. however, as deer points out in his article, “aboriginal students and canadian citizenship education”, recognizing indigenous groups or worldviews does not necessarily mean a recognition of the wide range of groups included under the indigenous banner, how sensitive (or not) these education efforts may be to traditional cultural practices and languages, or what they imply about a right to self-determination in education (2008). cross-curricular competencies (2010) and broad areas of learning (2010) documents bergen & mclean. students as citizens: conceptions of citizenship in a social studies… 19 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (2) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci our interpretation of the broad areas of learning resource document and the corresponding section in the social studies 9 curriculum revealed that these documents support the deliberative and social justice conceptions of citizenship identified in the social studies grade 9 curriculum indicators. in addition, the call for students to „recognize and respect‟ treaty and canadian charter of rights and freedoms signals strong support for a type of social justice citizenship that advocates for differing worldviews and recognition of the treaty rights of indigenous peoples, and an engagement in public discourse on these rights. a statement in the original broad areas of leaning document, under the “sense of self, community, and place” area of learning upholds the view that students should be “able to nurture meaningful relationships and appreciate diverse beliefs, languages, and practices from the first peoples of saskatchewan and from the diversity of cultures in our province” (saskatchewan ministry of education, 2010a, p. 1). in particular, the emphasis on nurturing an ability in students to develop „meaningful relationships‟ with the first peoples of saskatchewan supports the curricular indicators that promote valuing the worldviews of indigenous peoples, especially through efforts to acknowledge diverse beliefs, languages, and practices. in addition to the declarative statements in the broad areas of learning document, the section in the curriculum that explains how the broad areas of learning are related to social studies offers further support for the deliberative and social justice citizenship conceptions found in the majority of the curricular indicators. under the “building engaged citizens” section, there is considerable discussion of developing „active and responsible citizens‟. here, the curriculum declares that students will „engage in discussions and take action‟. as we have seen, discussions around what it means to be a member of a community are encouraged to take place, especially among the indicators that fit within the deliberative conception of citizenship. however, none of the indicators were found to encourage a participatory form of citizenship, making the part of the statement that encourages students to take action as members of their communities hard to follow through on. this statement would, however, offer support to teachers who chose to implement participatory-based ways of achieving the indicators in the curriculum. the original cross-curricular competencies resource document also contained several statements that were supportive of the deliberative and social justice citizenship conceptions found to be dominant in the curricular indicators. one example, in the „developing identity and interdependence‟ competency area asserts that students are expected to “recognize and respect that people have values and worldviews that may or may not align with one‟s own values and beliefs” (saskatchewan ministry of education, 2010b, p. 3). this statement reinforces the characteristics of a deliberative citizen, where students are meant to develop their own opinions on issues and respect those that differ from their own. further evidence supports that the social justice conception of citizenship can be founding the „developing social responsibility‟ competency area, and under the goal of „taking social action‟. in this reference, students are to “take responsible action to change perceived inequities or injustice for self and others”(saskatchewan ministry of education, 2010b, p. 5). taking action to change inequalities experienced by oneself or others is central to the social justice citizenship conception where students recognize injustices and feel empowered to take action to resolve them. bergen & mclean. students as citizens: conceptions of citizenship in a social studies… 20 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (2) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci in both cases, the cross-curricular competencies and broad areas of learning documents supported the deliberative and social justice conceptions of citizenship that were represented in the majority of the curricular outcomes and indicators. additionally, our study concluded that some of the phrasing in these resource documents could be characterized as not only supporting the social justice conception of citizenship, but encouraging a more active form of this type of citizenship. the cross-curricular competencies document, in particular, describes goals related to developing competencies in social responsibility, which point to some characteristics of the radical global citizenship education approach described by shultz (2007) where citizens recognize social inequities and are committed to changing them. this finding is especially evident in the kindergarten to grade 12 goal to „take social action‟ as part of developing competency in social responsibility that encourages students to take action when they perceive injustice, and to demonstrate a commitment to human rights, treaty rights, and environmental sustainability (saskatchewan ministry of education, 2010b, p. 5). similarly, in the case of the broad areas of learning resource document, which is meant as a guide for the knowledge to be woven into the experiences of pre kindergarten to grade 12 students, we see evidence of a well-rounded conception of social justice citizenship, especially in the description of the „engaged citizens‟ area of learning that deals with encouraging a commitment to “shaping positive change” and to “supporting the common good as engaged citizens” (saskatchewan ministry of education, 2010a, p. 1). conclusion by analyzing the saskatchewan social studies 9 curriculum, broad areas of learning, and cross-curricular competencies using critical discourse analysis, we uncovered how the documents were profiling selected conceptions of citizenship over others. as wood reminds us, every curriculum “carries with it a distinct social outcome – a notion of what body of knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values students should gain in order to live in a particular social order” (1998, p. 177). the knowledge, attitudes, and values constructed in the curriculum represented deliberative and social justice orientations to citizenship, which convincingly uphold a global perspective. acknowledging the underlying assumptions about citizenship will aid teachers and educators as they develop a variety of pedagogical approaches to teaching social studies. equally important, knowledge of the dominant conceptions of citizenship is necessary to account for what is omitted in the curriculum. for example, the existence of a participatory or active form of citizenship in broad areas of learning and cross-curricular competencies would offer teachers more freedom in their planning to address the underrepresentation of these conceptions in the curriculum. this paper provides a snap-shot of the different bodies of knowledge and skills that are profiled in a single course. future research about conceptions of citizenship in curricula and school resource materials will benefit from broad studies that examine multiple grade levels, courses, and jurisdictions. despite the limitations of this study, these findings contribute to a growing transnational debate about what role curricula plays in developing students-as-citizens, and what this form of citizenship education could look like to ensure that youth have the knowledge and skills to take up the civic responsibilities that are inherent in a democratic system. bergen & mclean. students as citizens: conceptions of citizenship in a social studies… 21 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (2) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci notes 1 jbergen@uottawa.ca 2 lrmclean@uottawa.ca references apple, m. w. (1983). curricular form and the logic of technical control. in m. w. apple & l.webb(eds.), ideology and practice in schooling (pp. 143-165).philadelphia: temple university press. apple, m. w. (2004). ideology and curriculum.(3 rd ed.). new york & london, uk: routledge. auerbach, c. f.& silverstein, l. b. (2003). qualitative data: an introduction to coding and analysis. new york: new york university press. beyer, l. e. (1998). schooling for democracy: what kind? in l. e. beyer & m. w. apple (eds.), the curriculum: problems, politics, and possibilities (2 nd ed.) (pp. 245-263). albany: state university of new york press. bickmore, k. (2004). discipline for democracy? school districts' management of conflict and social exclusion. theory & research in social education, 32(1), 75-97. bickmore, k. (2006). democratic social cohesion (assimilation)? representations of social conflict in canadian public school curriculum. canadian journal of education, 29(2), 359-386. clausen, k. w., horton, t. a., & lemisko, l. s. (2008). democracy and diversity: a content analysis of selected contemporary canadian social studies curricula. citizenship teaching and learning, 4(1), 35-49. council of ministers of education, canada. (2001). education for peace, human rights, democracy, international understanding and tolerance: report of canada. toronto: council of ministers of education, canada. davies, l. (2006). global citizenship: abstraction or framework for action? educational review, 58(1), 5-25. deer, f. (2008). aboriginal students and canadian citizenship education. the journal of educational thought, 42(1), 69-82. dewey, j. (1924). democracy and education: an introduction to the philosophy of education. new york: the macmillan company. fairclough, n. 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(1998). democracy and the curriculum. in l. e. beyer & m. w. apple (eds.), the curriculum: problems, politics, and possibilities (2 nd ed.). albany: state university of new york press. zahabioun, s., yousefy, a., yarmohammadian, m. h., & keshtiaray, n. (2013). global citizenship education and its implications for curriculum goals at the age of globalization. international education studies, 6(1), 195-206. bergen & mclean. students as citizens: conceptions of citizenship in a social studies… 24 transnational curriculum inquiry volume (2) 2014 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci submitted: september, 20th, 2014 approved: december, 12th, 2014 microsoft word tci7(1)editorial.docx to cite this article please include all of the following details: sellers, warren and gough, noel, (2010). making curriculum strange. transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> making curriculum strange warren sellers and noel gough la trobe university this issue of transnational curriculum inquiry presents very differently-similar approaches to deconstructing curriculum – different contexts and contents that are strangers to each other, yet similar theory and philosophy that are always-already familiar. each article affirms the journal’s generative desires for revealing diverse ways of ‘making the strange familiar’ (see molly quinn’s article, p. 80). charles rosen (1995) quotes the german poet novalis (17721801, aka friedrich von hardenberg) as defining romantic art with the more complete phrase, ‘making the familiar strange, and the strange familiar’ (p. 174). the concept is found among other romantic theorists such as wordsworth and coleridge and is also closely associated with surrealism. russian formalist victor shklovsky (1917/1965) introduced the concept of defamiliarization (or in russian, ostraneniye, literally ‘making strange’) to literary theory. according to shklovsky, over time our perceptions of familiar, everyday situations become stale, blunted, and ‘automatized’. shklovsky explains: ‘after we see an object several times, we begin to recognize it. the object is in front of us and we know about it, but we do not see it – hence we cannot say anything significant about it’ (p. 13). in these times of serious challenges to private and public perceptions of cosmopolitan citizenship – highlighted by events such as wikileaks’ ‘cablegate’ – strangeness and familiarity are helpful notions to work with. the articles in this issue upset routinised perceptions of the ordinary by bringing complementary theoretical and philosophical perspectives to their personal discourse, which resonate with those that might loosely be called ‘post-critical’ (see, e.g., michael polanyi, 1958). françois tochon and celile okten make a multilingual rhizome that traces beginning teachers enacting their knowing about curriculum. from celile’s observations in istanbul, turkey, a shoot sprouts to françois in wisconsin usa where peircean semiotics turn and return analyses of concept maps to afford insights into the possibility of another ‘ontological design’. using a simple assemblage to organise their complex data, tochon and okten review three students’ curriculum conceptualizing under rubrics such as: hunch, symptom, metaphor, clue, diagnosis, explanation, deductive reasoning, identification, prediction and model building. without wishing to spoil the article for the reader we can say here that, in making the rhizome, generative interactional processes are uncovered. furthermore these processes demonstrate the recursive, fractal-like patterns inhering in learning and teaching and learning and… and… and… molly quinn’s poetically inspired journey springs playfully from a punny title [s]ex and the city, towards an assemblage of discourses on inhospit-abilities, cosmopolitanism and a curriculum of refuge. beginning her rhizome, underground, with a ‘medley of “subway soliloquies”’ she introduces a reading of cosmopolitanism, drawing on jacques derrida, to challenge the concept of concepts about questions of understanding ourselves in regard to other. quinn’s title is a hat tip towards the popular tv and film series, not so much for its new york connection but more for its themes of ‘community and connection amid a world of strangers… politics of identity…making…breaking…re-imagining relationships…the perpetual need for personal asylum and amnesty – in pursuit of …(the american dream)’. the rhizome surfaces onto the first of three plateaus – city sidewalks to give us a sense of the sellers & gough: making curriculum strange transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 2 lay of cosmopolitanism’s land and the unfulfilled prospects that side-walks might suggest for education. city of lights illuminates the darkness that blinds us to the rhetoric obscuring the hidden curriculum’s purposive agenda and proposing a refuge. hot child in the city? exposes the enormity of suffering being propagated by those in pursuit of global prosperity on all and everything that stands in their way. inviting us to heed ghandi’s words: ‘be the change we wish to see in the world – i.e., world citi-zenship…responsiveness concerning the ex-iled’ (original italics), quinn resists concluding her journey. instead, she calls for always recommencing our stories for, in and from the streets and other spaces and paces of our experiences. responding to quinn, yusef waghid both agrees with and challenges the premise of ‘forgiveness as a corollary of a curriculum of refuge’. bringing a ‘post-apartheid’ south african voice to the conversation, waghid queries the plausibility of quinn’s notion of forgiveness as pardoning what is forgivable in light of ‘unforgiveable’ acts of torture, rape and genocide by hutus against tutsis. turning the argument about, he asks us to consider whether non-violent speech acts are sufficient to offset the silence of violence or if another iterative counter-activity is a necessary refuge for opening curriculum and encountering otherness. writing these introductory comments in the midst of wikileaks’ release of secret diplomatic communiqués, we found the contents of this issue of transnational curriculum inquiry resonating with ‘cablegate’ and the subsequent political and economic actions being pursued by politicians, bureaucrats and the interests they serve, not excluding wikileaks’ own agenda (see, for example, tochon and okten’s rubrics of conceptualizing and quinn’s ex-iled citi-zenship). however, it is revealing to observe the complexity of all these powerful interests, their interactions in the wake of ‘private’ communications becoming ‘public’, and the overall effects on global cosmopolitanism. at first glance, wikileaks just seems to expand and further muddy an already dense and opaque conglomeration of affairs, but on reflection it could well be an example of another iterative counter-activity that waghid invites us to think about. references polanyi, michael. (1958). personal knowledge: towards a post-critical philosophy. london: routledge and kegan paul. rosen, charles. (1995). the romantic generation. cambridge, massachusetts: harvard university press. shklovsky, victor. (1917/1965). art as technique. in russian formalist criticism: four essays (lee t. lemon & marion j. reis, trans.) (pp. 3-24). lincoln: university of nebraska press. authors warren sellers is the faculty of humanities and social sciences project manager for the design for learning curriculum renewal program at la trobe university, melbourne, australia. he is an associate editor of transnational curriculum inquiry. email: w.sellers@latrobe.edu.au noel gough is professor of outdoor and environmental education at la trobe university, melbourne, australia, and founding editor of transnational curriculum inquiry. email: n.gough@latrobe.edu.au o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: lopes, alice casimiro (2019). is there a curriculum path? transnational curriculum inquiry 16 (1) p.1-2 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci <access date> is there a curriculum path? alice casimiro lopes1 state university of rio de janeiro if we consider the history of the curriculum, it is possible to say that some theories are presented in defense of a curricular trajectory. the instrumental theories and their planning proposals are the major expression of this idea of trajectory, even tough other critical theories of instrumental registers also operate with some idea of future to be achieved. sometimes these theories try to avoid an uncertain future, try to create a landscape that sustains itself on a simplified past and also creates a safe path. this path is conceived as a road, maybe a bumpy dirt road, that allows our children to arrive in the foreseeable future. however, is this safe path possible? even as metaphor, is it possible to work with those ideas of “future” and “path for the future”? we can imagine a continuos road after a curve on a bumpy dirt path, but it is just a fantasy of future, not a norm. with the words of paul auster (auster, 1990), i prefer to say that, “in the end, each life is no more than the sum of contingent facts, a chronicle of chance intersections, of flukes, of random events that divulge nothing but their own lack of purpose”. after a simple bend – in the horizon –, we just have to take a chance, we just have a “perhaps”. derrida addresses “perhaps” as the one that deprives us of all security, leaving the future “à venir” (derrida, 2004), without calculation and strategies to define this “à venir” (to come) as a preprogrammed future. there is neither the experience of the event without the experience of perhaps, of one can be (derrida, 2003). the concerns of those who bet on social change and the formation of future generations and who want to produce some guarantee of bequeathing to the future the best knowledge, the best of us, are understandable and admissible. but even if we are provisionally able to stabilize a notion of what the best knowledge is in a curricular political conflict, who we are producing via such stabilization will always be in question. what power relations produce our ideas of who we are? in this approach, the meanings of curriculum are always postponed – and any stabilization of meaning and production of identities occurs only in provisional and precipitous ways. thus, the metaphors of path and future are only one of those “produced identities”, preciarious and without a final fixation. maybe it is impossible not to deal with the path, as it is impossible not to think about future. the curriculum policies are sedimented constructions that create these ideas of path and future all the time. however, we can try to think about curriculum policies in a different way. this issue includes different approaches on curriculum and all of them are trying to create a new possibility of thinking the curriculum policies. there are articles from different countries and traditions. the first article is about the inclusion discourses and the meanings of secondary education that are present in the curricular policies, (camila carlachiani, from university of rosário, argentina); the second one questions how the policy of curricular https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci lopes. is there a curriculum path? 2 transnational curriculum inquiry 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/ centralization has been approached by discursive researches and how the discursive perspective helps us to challenge the current hegemonic model of curricular policy without establishing a normative closure (veronica borges, viviane peixoto cunha, from state university of rio de janeiro, and clarissa craveiro, from federal university of rio de janeiro, brazil); the third one analyzes the trajectory of the curriculum policies of gender and sexuality in brazil (gustavo oliveira and anna luiza oliveira, from federal university of pernambuco, brazil); the fourth article tries to deconstruct the horizons that permeate curricular thinking in a metaphysical register (hugo heleno camilo costa, from federal university of mato grosso, brazil) and the last one tries to deal with the epistemological basis proposed by latin american authors of the decolonization and deaf studies (maría francisca lohaus-reyes, university of chile). perhaps these tci articles may be a contribution to questioning the idea of curricular path. perhaps they can improve the idea of democracy in curriculum policies, without the idea of a planned future or a known path. or even without an idea of path or future. notes 1 alicecasimirolopes@gmail.com references auster, p. (1990) the new york trilogy. new york: penguin books. derrida, j. (2003) a universidade sem condição (university without condition). são paulo: liberdade, 2003. derrida, j. (2004) como se fosse possível, “within such limits” (as if it were possible, within such limits). in: derrida, jacques. papel-máquina (paper-machine). são paulo: estação liberdade, p. 257-290. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/ mailto:alicecasimirolopes@gmail.com microsoft word tci journal 4(2) 21.11.07.doc to cite this article please include all of the following details: rhedding-jones, jeanette (2007). monocultural constructs: a transnational reflects on early childhood institutions. transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> monocultural constructs: a transnational reflects on early childhood institutions jeanette rhedding-jones oslo university college, norway at the varying systemic levels for children in pre-schooling, early schooling and care, and at the adult levels in undergraduate and postgraduate education, early childhood education is currently undergoing change. a first step is recognition of the problematics of diverse values, diverse languages, and diverse religions. a second step is awareness of the positive possibilities in these. hence policy documents begin to write in the other (rhedding-jones, 2002a), although postmodern effects of multiplicities may fail to transform the original monoculture. in practice, local settings determine which teachers and which institutions will develop pedagogies and assessments differently (rhedding-jones, 2002b). here the critical issues are the ethnicities of the clientele and the staff, the prevailing ideologies of social justice, and the economic rationalism of the controlling committees. the essay presents the reflections of a foreigner as researcher. having migrated to norway from australia in 1997, and now having early childhood education work experiences in both countries, i write theoretically and anthropologically. the reflected institutions are pre-schools and day care centres, and undergraduate and postgraduate higher education for early childhood pedagogy. local and theoretical introductions making the majority rather than the minority the problem, regarding ethnicities, citizenships and nations, is somewhat like the feminist practice of making the problem patriarchy instead of always focusing on women. with feminism, the problems associated with patriarchal institutions and individuals showed few signs of diminishing until men themselves began to take up the problems of their own masculinities (askland and sataøen, 1998; connell, 1995; mac an ghaill, 1994). this essay points to the need for majority cultures to rethink, and then to act upon the effects of their own positionings. that the them-us split is not as simple as it sounds is quite apparent to anyone who has ever had a foot in two camps. being doubly positioned, or being differently interracial are thus two possibilities. others possibilities are transformations of cultural practices, or their total rupturing. as it is, we quite often have nominal integrations, which in effect operate as unnamed assimilations all over again. the essay has developed from reflections on my own teaching and practice supervision, as an australian working in norwegian early childhood education. here i attempt to work for ethnic minorities and against racism. writing from my own positionality since i began teaching/supervising in norwegian, blurred when necessary with english, i now present an essay dealing with the practices and policies of early childhood institutions. with it i take my reflections beyond the everyday and into the theoretical. underlying this is the desire for political change for the benefit of minorities. viewed as constructors of culture, accordingly, the pre-school’s play, spoken and written language and pedagogical practices may then be seen as constructing not the multiple but the singular. in this case the singularity is white http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci rhedding-jones: monocultural constructs transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 39 (hage, 1998), monolingual, middle class norway (although of course no culture can ever be entirely singular). rather than developing its arguments only by reason, my essay unfolds theoretically (after deleuze, 1993), with some exemplifications from documents and everyday events, as traces for readers’ further deconstructings of (their own) cultural practices (following spivak, 1999). my hope is for the eventual reconstructings of what happens with young children, their carers and teachers, and the lecturers involved in higher education. questions thus informing and arising from the essay are: what constructs the monocultural? how can such constructs be seen and heard? who is able to reconstruct their culturally singular practices, values and theories? a major construct of culture, and of an individual’s position in relation to it, is language. yet following meanings, by reading, happens for literate foreigners fairly quickly. understanding by listening is more difficult. constructing meanings, by talking and much later by writing, happens with enormous difficulty. yet until the new language is able to be utilised, the monolingual nature of the other country is a brick wall barrier to cultural contact and understanding. because of this, an important pedagogical step in oslo, with five-year-old children and their parents (mothers actually), is to immerse them in the language and cultural practices of the host country (norway). while this strategy has undoubted positive effects, in that the children do learn to speak and understand norwegian, it also has some negatives. one of these is the denial of the languages the children bring to their pre-schooling encounters from their differently cultural households. in learning to use norwegian, these children also learn that the home language with which they are familiar and highly skilled, carries no status or power in this new norwegian context (ungdommens mediesenter, 1998). what they will need for the schooling they will be confronted with the following year, as six year olds, is norwegian, and apart from the recommended five minutes a day of english, norwegian only. furthermore, at the five pre-schools in central oslo where this linguistic development is in operation, there are only 5% of ethnic norwegian children in attendance. this means that the children of non-norwegian ethnicity are denied play contact with the child members of the dominant culture, and must learn their (norwegian) play and language from the adults who teach and care for them. these adults, apart from the leaders, comprise mostly ethnic minorities themselves, but speak only norwegian in the pre-schools. so although bodies and clothes may be represented differently (blacks, people of colour, foreign accents, foreign clothes) the foreign languages are rarely to be heard. neither, presumably, are foreign games, ways of interacting and generally conducting oneself. (i deliberately use the word ‘foreign’, which i here apply to myself, taking my lead from kristeva, 1991, and derrida, 1998.) as an always already positioned writer, i am stating the case of the monocultural to deconstruct the discourses of monoculturalism, operating in the face of supposed multiculturalism. i do so rather than record implicit truth through carefully gathered data (reinharz, 1992; 214-239). with this essay, which claims only to reflect and to begin to theorise, what i hope to have happen is an opening of critical consciousness. if we are to reconstruct the culture where we ourselves are of the majority (as am i in australia but not in norway), then we must know about the difficulties of having to learn the language of the other, of the new ways of conducting yourself in public, of living up to the majority’s cultural expectations. stating the case theoretically, and linking the above to recent publications, i now restate the politics of naming and critiquing (the monocultural). here the exemplification regards literacy. lingard (2000; 89) names australia’s underpinning monoculturalism as ‘opposed to a multicultural theorising of multiliteracies necessary to effective citizenship in a globalised world’. if we continue to emphasise one language only for children’s development of reading and writing, then these children become disadvantaged in today’s world (2000; 89). this http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci rhedding-jones: monocultural constructs transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 40 applies regardless of which language the children speak at home. it also applies to the evaluation or assessment of children’s spoken and written language skills/arts. assuming that lack of skill in the language of the dominant is lack of skill in ‘language’, and ‘testing’ accordingly, demonstrates not only monocultural assumptions. it demonstrates also a lack of awareness of the development and functions of language(s) (halliday, 1985). thus the socalled literacy crisis, where many minority children are labelled as underachievers, may be categorised as ‘rearticulated monoculturalism’. lingard calls this monocultural view (of the multicultural) an ‘abuse’. although he writes here only of literacy, what he says could be applied more widely, as all curriculum areas and all social interactions are culturally constructed. here a norwegian example is the notion of kompetanse, so crucial to the completion of coursework, the getting of jobs, and ‘good’ grades and evaluations. for 0-5 year olds, the all-important quality desired by the discourses of norwegian pre-schooling is sosial kompetanse, as construed by norwegians (r-96, 1995), and others such as me, coerced by institutions. it can thus be said that the articulations of monoculturalism may categorise ethnic minority children and adults as incompetent. this is in practice further qualified as ‘developmental’, ‘social’ and ‘professional’. hence language, domestic habits and public celebrations are not the only culturally constructed outcomes of racial and religious diversities, citizenships and the effects of media and migrations. for pre-school education and care this raises major problems regarding what it is that ‘ought’ to be happening. is it the home and the parenting of the dominant culture or the minority cultures that should be being replicated? to what extent should or could they blur? do dominant culture professionals hear, see and taste only their own cultural positionings? how are they to find other practices that are possible and desirable? who will move out when minorities move in? theories of construction (dahlberg, moss & pence, 1999; 55, 149) hold that things do not just happen. always something is being made up, put together, re-done, reconstructed (cannella, 1997). with these theories, the emphasis is on the with: the con part of the word. this implies collaboration, working together, social arrangement. what is constructed may be an activity, a building or a culture; and these may also be re-constructed, or constructed again, differently. a theory of construction, of the social and the cultural, is not quite the same as a theory of socialisation (davies, 1990). with socialisation, the people being socialised are made social, through interactions with other people. with construction theories, the people whose subject positions change are active themselves in choosing the change process collaborations. thus constructions of a culture happen because of group agency, though this is not likely at the time to be apparent to the people acting agentically. for researchers, a useful unravelling tool or methodology here is deconstruction (rhedding-jones, 2005c). unlike destructive criticism, deconstructive analysis may work with and for the culture it studies. in doing so it is a positive political practice, as it allows for new meanings to later be built up, and new practices and theories to evolve (rhedding-jones, 1995; 1996; 2001). if we deconstructively say that the culture that is being constructed is mostly monocultural, we say so to emphasise the enacted singularity, to silently query the normalisation of the multicultural. in part this is a shock tactic: to assert the inadequacy of the rhetoric of multiculturalism. yes, we have visible diversity in pre-schools (rhedding-jones, 2005b), you can see children of colour. but do we have diversity of languages? what do the bilingual assistants in the pre-schools and schools actually speak? whose songs are they actually singing? whose sleep patterns are being followed? who has decided that the weather conditions are suitable for outdoor play? what food are people eating and is this thought about as a cultural construct? whose home does the day care centre look like, and whose does it not? which religion is assumed to be normal? (jacobsen, 2000) whose pre-school is it? http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci rhedding-jones: monocultural constructs transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 41 the next sections of the essay deal with terms important theoretically to the above. in sequence these are: globalisation and race; ethnicity and culture; language and self; postnationalism and transnationalism (gough, 2004). each of these includes some early childhood education examples and anecdotes, some everyday english and some of my own voice. after that the essay focuses more specifically on theorising the monocultural, then on the relevant early childhood institutions. as a note to end this section on local and theoretical introductions i would point out that the term curriculum is not used in the norwegian language. i shall not here go into the details of the north european split between pedagogikk and didakikk (hamilton, 2000; rheddingjones, 2003). suffice to say that didakikk is more like curriculum. as i am employed as professor in pedagogikk, i interpret that as education. in pre-schooling there is, in anglo understanding, a curriculum. the children and their teacher-carers follow pedagogical agendas, which may be separate from the beginnings of disciplines (like music, mathematics and language). they thus play in particular ways, have particular conversations and engage with particular objects and people. this essay is thus not strictly speaking about curriculum inquiry. rather it is about the discourses constructing it. here the nationally utilised framework plan (r-96), as a curriculum document in the anglo understanding of the term, is not taking into account some of the discourses i point to here. globalisation and race although i have localised norway, today’s ‘locality is no longer what it used to be’. in practice and in theory ‘every similarity hides more than one difference’, and ‘similarities and differences conceal one another indefinitely’ (appadurai, 1996; 11). following appadurai, this essay engages with discourses of a globalisation which is ‘not the story of cultural homogenization’. i thus point out the functioning of the homogenised monocultural, to say what it is that hinders the constructions of transnationalisms and postnationalisms, in particular for early childhood educations. to quote appadurai (1996; 158): ‘we need to think ourselves beyond the nation.’ for norway, seeing only the neighbouring nations of denmark and sweden is not to see far enough (oecd, 1999a; 37-38). knowing that the children represent and reconstruct their own complex postnational identities is the knowledge required for today’s teachers. to this knowledge must be added the appropriately transformed pedagogies, linguistic practices and, not least, transformed teacher-carers. as appadurai has pointed out, globalisation is marked by ‘unprecedented movement of peoples, technologies and informations across previously impermeable borders from one location to another’ (ghandi; 1998: 125). so four year olds get on a plane to visit grandparents in bosnia during the norwegian summer. bilingual assistants in the pre-schools check out the internet in their lunch times to read their local news in their home languages, via the bbc. the early childhood lecturer goes off to international conferences in new orleans, london and sydney to speak in english about what happens in oslo (rheddingjones, 2000a; b; c). yet working and reconceptualising transnationally, as done by immigrants, goes often unnoticed by locals, who themselves may travel and speak english when abroad, but whose notion of home positions them singularly. critiquing multiculturalism then, following stuart hall, is to locate and to site ‘the convenient othering and exoticisation of ethnicity’ (ghandi; 1998; 126). hence diwali may get a mention in the schools and as a kind of substitute christmas; and bacon impregnated cheese may be understood by pre-school teachers as a factory processed removal of responsibility for the eating habits of hindu, jewish and muslim children. in these ways the hegemony of mainstream norwegian culture, with its discourses of normalisation easily concealing christians and carnivores, continues uncritiqued. ethnicity gets to mean the http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci rhedding-jones: monocultural constructs transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 42 qualities of others but not of oneself. this lack of self-critique perpetuates attitudes to the ‘always-already’ marginal (ghandi, 1998; 126). following stuart hall (1993, in luke and luke, 1999; 238) the certainties and assumptions of the past now face ‘new times’. these are characterised firstly by the emergence of the newly seen ethnicities of minorities and the indigenous. secondly they are characterised by the ‘reassertion of monocultural nationalism’ (luke and luke, p. 238). thus, as clifford geertz has said (1986, in robertson, 1995; 39), ‘like nostalgia, diversity is not what it used to be’. taking a critical perspective, diversity may now be seen as ‘the principle which allows all locals to stick to their respective cultures’ (hannerz, 1990, in robertson, 1995; 29). hence a more productive focus may be cultural pluralism (robertson, p. 31), which allows for the conditions of its production and construction. my focus on the monocultural is thus an attempt to show what pluralities are not. as robertson points out, ‘the idea of locality, indeed of globality, is very relative’. for this essay, my own cultural relativities shine through. my hope is that these function to indicate relativities other than mine. but a growing problem is: what happens when the dominant culture wants to stop a minority culture’s normalised practices, on the basis of majority ethics? because ethnicity has been over-used in census and governmental documentation, and because race is usually erased in identity politics, luke and luke (1999; 235-7) choose instead to accentuate it. when whiteness goes unmarked in caucasian cultures, and when ethnicity is seen as belonging only to ‘the other’, then the politics of naming ‘race’ avoids the naming of birthplace as the supposed location of identity. eventually providing children with an affirming politics of identity, by allowing for complex blends of resistance and agency regarding majority, minorities and hybridity, requests not only new pedagogies but new epistemological practices. going beyond collective racialisation means going beyond blackwhite dichotomies, beyond asian-european divisions, beyond linguistic categories related to skin colour: beyond the notion of nations to realities of transnationals. seeing children in the light of this is then not to think in terms of classifying them, of having cultural expectations and wanting normalisations. applied not only to the children of others, but also to the children of the monoculture, this requests imagining futures across languages, nations and races. in short, it alters our present, by attempting to come to terms with increasingly interracial families, students and populations. this is an opposite of asking for a renewed emphasis on racist discourses, via the essentialism of past practices. hence african, middle eastern, asian and european no longer operate as essentially homogenised. despite this, the notion of home may continue to construct a singular location, a singular culture. seen from this perspective, there are only monocultures. i shall take up this theory further into the essay, in the section on monoculture. ethnicity and culture a quick glance at the listed names of the people doing the lecturing in higher education (in oslo, norway) will show you that these names are not reflecting the linguistic and citizenship histories of the children in the schools and pre-schools. few minority parents take their (pre)school children skiing at the weekends and after school, yet this is a skill to be mastered by all teacher-students compulsorily studying physical education. no place here for arabic dancing or indian meditation; norwegian norms rule. similarly, ethnic minority children in institutionalised (pre)schooling go out to play on the ice; so many ethnic minority parents decide to keep their children warm at home. inequality is not, i think, the crucial question; and nor is equity the crucial answer. imperative instead is what to do with difference, and how to value it, nurture it without condescension, and allow for its shifts. there is no doubt that well-meaning teachers, carers and administrators would like to value all children equally, and cater for their differences. at http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci rhedding-jones: monocultural constructs transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 43 least this is how the rhetoric and the curriculum documentation goes (r-96, 1995), and this is what teacher-students, pre-school administrators and lecturers will tell you. words, however, are not enough. the construction of (mono)cultures happens not by words alone, but by words remaining unsaid, by non-verbals, by the (non)sharing of time and personal space, by (not) taking up the practices and some of the values of others. here then are the intermeshed politics of power and positioning. robertson (1996; 13) describes culture as a matter of group identity ‘constituted by some differences among others’. taking culture broadly and in everyday understanding, women can be seen to have their own cultures that are different from men’s; being straight is another culture from being gay; being part of a kid-culture stops at adolescence. so the term monocultural could be broadened a little, to include also one-eyed cultures related to gender, age and ability (rhedding-jones, 2000a). hence writing about ethnicities, races and languages may also be read as applying to cultures unbounded by histories of countries, wars and flags. these include complex blends of genders and races, religions and languages, disabilities and ethnicities. ethnicity is ‘the idea of naturalized group identity’ (appadurai, 1996; 13). this idea of ethnicity ‘takes the conscious and imaginative construction and mobilization of differences as its core’ (1996; 14). this is not then the old idea of ethnicity, where the ‘primordial idea of kinship... is in turn biological and genealogical’ (1996; 14). instead, ethnicity is seen as ‘value-relational’ (1996; 14). this allows for new constructions of individual and group identities, related to cultures and languages yet also involving the agencies of subjects. this takes further richard jenkins’ arguments and explorations of ethnicity (jenkins, 1997) not as the exoticised other, nor as a them in opposition to an us. for early childhood education to here pick up on the theories, would require the elimination of everyday notions of ethnic differentiation: the bridging and technologising of notions/nations of fixedness. appadurai uses the term ‘culturalism’ to focus on the effects usually attached to prefixes such as bi and multi. i am stressing the prefix mono; but culturalism itself requires attention. after appadurai (1996) culturalism is an ‘identity politics mobilized at the level of the nation-state’. in my case this is norway, with the nation-state of australia acting as informant. (my forming practices were in australia, as i taught and cared for children aged 38, then lectured and examined in higher education.) this essay is thus consciously shaped by my own emerging awareness of diaspora, deterritorialisation and the differences between two nationally constructed pedagogies. regarding my professional practices for early childhoods and for related higher educations in australia and in norway, i would point out that neither nation has a unified practice. further, i am not claiming to be accurately representing a nation regarding its ethnicities and its cultures. language and self the experience of speaking a foreign language is the experience of knowing that: ‘to speak in the desired way is, from now on, to also learn to speak against oneself.’ (ghandi, 1998; 13). said in relation to this essay, this is the knowledge that the culture that owns the language decides who you, yourself, are able to be. coming to own another language is thus what the experience of immigration, your own or those of your family earlier, is about. turkish norwegian and vietnamese english do not simply imply the learning of english or norwegian by the turks and the vietnamese. these learnings imply the learnings of new becomings, the forsakings and the transformings of the past of a people. for individuals this is sometimes painful, slow, regressive and undesired. for cultural and linguistic majorities having no such experience, the process of imagined or partial homogenisation that other people undergo is unseen and unimagined. for those us being (partly) homogenised, the questions regard costs and benefits: why act like the norwegians? http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci rhedding-jones: monocultural constructs transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 44 in this section of the essay i bring in a critical and self-reflexive account of cultural nationalism in relation to language. the nation i have in mind, and which has me by the throat, is norway. here i speak differently, act like a puppet, feel stressed, try to teach. my students are white norwegian women, with very few exceptions. ditto my colleagues. what i read in my spare time however, is eclectic text in english. through this i learn, write and reconstruct my self. in getting into postcolonial theory (gandhi, 1998; spivak, 1999), i realise that norway is neither colony nor colonised, at least in the usual sense. yet i make use of such theory, along with the theories with which i am more familiar: the feminist poststructuralist (rhedding-jones; 1995; 1996; 2005c). applied to language and self these combined sets of theories produce histories and deconstructions for the key concepts of nationalisms and institutionalisms, globalisation and culture. for norwegians the experience of linguistic difference may stop at the dialect differences between the metropolitan centre (of oslo) and the rural peripheries. yet ‘waves of voluntary and unwanted migrations continue to challenge the cultural and demographic stability’ (ghandi, 1998; 134) of the norwegian world. migration, along with the bringing in of languages of difference rather than simply dialects of difference, has little impact on the work of majority of professionals. this is because it is the so-called ‘non-professional’ work that is usually done by migrants. where i work we hear urdu whilst the floors are being cleaned, but not as the children play in the pre-schools. although i speak english if i want to be deviant, my position is one of relative power. the following is a record of an unusual event in higher education in 2000. since then there have been some changes. 18 august, (journal notes) a 100% white audience listens to the african norwegian woman addressing them from the lectern. her topic is “hvordan få flerkulturell rekruttering til lærerutdanning?’. (this translates as ‘how to get multicultural recruiting into teacher education?’) the speaker’s name is manuela ramin-osmundsen, and she is the leader for the centre against ethnic discrimination, in oslo. ‘ what is it that hinders minorities?’ she asks (and i translate). ‘how do we get out of the situation where fully qualified doctors are washing the floors? who are today’s students? who wants a higher education that is different?’ we, her audience of early childhood educators, some 60 of us together with a similar number from late childhood education, listen for the allocated hour. afterwards i skip the provided meat lunch, suffering the after effects of self-identification, the alienation of not knowing the words to norway’s national songs, not getting the jokes, never breathing in the australian ocean. my own positionality is complex. on the one hand i am the ‘feminist-as-imperialist’ (ghandi, 1998; 83), using my status and higher education experiences to advantage. on the other hand i share much with the ‘third-world’ woman (ghandi; 1998; 83), at least from my point of view as a sometimes lonely disempowered immigrant. obviously there is no ‘real me’; and just as obviously there are possibilities beyond the metaphorical hands on which i have just counted. similarly manuela, speaking english with me instead of her native french, defies the categories, understands my angst, laughs at the norwegian weather. she’s not eating the lunch either. in language the practices of a singular culture are not only reflected but ongoingly constructed by a singular set of values. ‘this is the language we speak and the food we eat, here, in this workplace, in this household, at this school,’ is the unspoken message accompanying whatever is actually being said/eaten. ‘all persons not speaking this language, and not speaking it according to our set of values regarding its linguistic conventions, vocal intonations and cultural rules of when to say what, must then become the not us’. maintaining past practices of exclusions of foreigners, the poor, the rural, the hearing impaired, the very http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci rhedding-jones: monocultural constructs transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 45 young, the down syndromed, allows for dominant groups to impose their semantic sounds and spellings on others. this ensures the continued cultural capital of those in power. as hegemonic effects, particular people are not invited to the dominant ethnicity’s private events, not offered high status jobs, not allowed to pass exams, not able to earn as much money as those whose language, and its valued variables, dominate. through language, spoken and written, the singular culture asserts its supremacy by stopping the audible and visual representations of difference. that language itself is about the makings of meanings (halliday, 1985) and the communications between people become lost in the power plays of whose meanings count in particular societies. in monocultures, two-way communications with minorities are not desired. as an ideology, this will not be said, will not be written into institutional policy, will not be known by those engaged in the practices of normalisation. what is required, to change the continued constructings of the monocultural via language, is a working knowledge of language function, of positioning because of difference and/or of courage to deviate from normalised practices. for norway, which acts like all nations which have accepted immigrants and refugees, by colonising them, the normalisation of linguistic and cultural power infiltrates institutions, social gatherings and even conversations between two people. colonising in this sense involves not the take-over of land but of ways of being and speaking. postnationalism and transnationalism despite majority cultures, minorities link themselves to each other, not only to people within the nation to which they or their earlier generations migrated. these complexities remain usually unseen by majorities, who appear to assume that their culture is all that an immigrant’s offspring knows and is skilled in. in fact there is a double richness: that of the earlier home country and the people who remain there as outsiders; and that of the related ethnicities within the domains of the majority, as urban ghettos or enclaves. thus ethnic minorities also link globally and locally, in ways unimagined by majority cultures. further, public and private transnational movements, technologies and families exist through virtual and actual proximities and frequent contact. so the sri lankan tamil whose child attends the norwegian pre-school, and the somali assistant in early schooling have worlds way beyond the monocultural knowledge of most norwegians. that these worlds are under-utilised by early childhood institutions is clearly seen when minority children, teachers and parents are defined as problems not resources: deficient not multi-abled. in these ways a national state, as a homogenous rather than a heterogenous unit (appadurai, 1996; 23), blocks the institutional emergence of transnational identities, practices and institutions. in other words, children may be as transnational as they like at home and if they travel out of norway, but not in norwegian institutions. for early childhood education this continued blinkering by mono-encultured teachers, carers and lecturers blocks any possible reconstructions, at least outside the home. it seems from the above that transnationals are people who go across the divides, to transform their earlier nations, cultures and ethnicities through their own individually enacted identities and practices. postnationalism, as a more theoretical term naming the reconstructions of nations, acts to bridge and transform the old divide of westerner and native (ghandi; 1998; 124). presumably this includes the newer divide of north and south, though in my case as a southerner (from australia), moving to the north (norway’s etymology is the way to the north) is in many ways a retrograde step. as examples: the pay for senior academics, in relation to the cost of living and australia, is much lower; research cultures remain almost fixedly local and monolingual; early childhood education goes international if it transgresses the boundaries by little trips to pre-schools in sweden or denmark. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci rhedding-jones: monocultural constructs transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 46 related theoretically to postnationalism and transnationalist practices are the twin terms of hybridity and diaspora. hybridity is the notion of ‘in-between-ness’ (ghandi, 1998; 131). diaspora is sometimes used interchangeably with migration, as a ‘theoretical device for the interrogation of ethnic identity’ (ghandi; 1998; 131). ghandi says that diasporic thought ‘betrays its poststructural origins by contesting all claims to the stability of meaning and identity’ (1998; 131). not in everyday language then, hybridity and diaspora or blendings and scatterings, are uncovered by postnational readings of global encounters (ghandi, 1998; 129). this alludes to the more theoretical aspects of researching within the postmodern. as i see (pre)schooling (in norway) and its related higher education, the ‘transnational destabilization’ (appadurai, 1996; 178) of the monocultural, via hybridity and diaspora of practices has yet to emerge (oecd, 1999b). when it does, what it will represent is ‘the mutual transformation of coloniser and the colonised’ (ghandi, 1998; 125. in this case the colonising has been done by the monocultural constructs of language, play, eating, celebrating, employing, assessing and befriending. in these ways the constructs operate through the sharing of work and power. monoculture historically the notion of a monoculture is quite impossible. all cultures have constructed themselves because of the effects of migrations past. wandering tribes, conquering heroes, raping vandals: all of these are the stuff of which we are made. england’s conglomerate history of celts, romans, angles, saxons, vikings and frenchmen represents the kinds of multiplicities that make up most nations over many centuries. thus norway too composed itself from diversities: the north and west coastal towns in particular have complex histories of sea-faring marauders from mostly the south and the east; the wandering germanic tribes infiltrated the inland areas; the indigenous sami maintained their very different languages, reindeer herding and sacred habits; romani and tartar, as gypsies, suffered 500 years of degradation. in postmodernity the notion of a monoculture is also absurd. the very term multicultural (hage, 1998) refuses singular meaning, singular theories, singular truths, definite grammatical articles (such as the meaning, the truth, the outcome). replacing certainties with dubious plurality (as in multiple findings from a research project; many different ways of going about learning; many forms of excellence in pedagogy) marks today’s postmodern praxis. relatedly, seeing pedagogical practices rather than practice, pedagogies rather than pedagogy, and theories rather than theory, denotes a break from modernity. here then is a second reason for not taking seriously the monocultural. from the above then, history and the theories of postmodernity function to normalise multiculturalism. why then go seemingly backwards and write about the mono? i do so from a viewpoint of a foreigner. confronted with the other, in the form of a culture and a language unfamiliar, the appearance of this other is its own solid unification. imagined monoculturalism is what the foreigner faces: tight knit groups, unfriendly faces, strange food and celebrations, seemingly similar but different dialects, unshared laughter, unknown reasons for work practices and recreation practices assumed normal. for the members of a dominant culture, a monocultural quality is an impossibility, given what they know about local historical differences, shades of meaning in pronunciations, regional cooking, emotional expressions, and seasonal links to the earth. for the non-dominant, whoever, whose roots have sprung from elsewhere, all of these are minor. what is major is the lack of access, the exclusion, the isolation. here i write (to right) the extreme: not all foreigners feel this way all of the time, and many refuse a foreign label. yet the experience of being confronted by the monocultural is the life history of the marginalised. whatever its reason it is the unspeakable irrationalism of difference. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci rhedding-jones: monocultural constructs transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 47 the australian example of what happens with ‘a nationalist monocultural agenda’ (luke and luke, 1999; 240) has been given much media publicity, especially in south east asia. there, as in australia, people have been angry and offended by pauline hanson’s ‘one nation’ right wing political party working actively as racist. this is monoculturalism at its most overt. from my experience monoculturalism also operates covertly, as the unsaid. for teachers, institutional leaders and students within such a culture to realise this, much deconstuctive work is required (cannella, 1999; davies, 1989; viruru, 2001). getting to see and hear what your own culture has made normal is thus the necessarily ethical work of academics, in-service educators and other activists likely to have an influence on changing practices. this work involves the recognition that a monocultural nationalism always disadvantages those not from the national majority. it acts on the knowledge that with normalised discourses a nation’s majority practices go unmarked and unremarked. what follows is more theoretical. for this i draw from postcolonial and feminist poststructural theories, which each in their different ways evolved from combining the work of foucault and derrida (ghandi, 1998; rhedding-jones, 1995). gayatri spivak (1999), who works with both the postcolonial and the feminist, dialoguing between derrida and foucault, continues to deconstruct and challenge the validity of western culture and epistemology. in a small way, i attempt to follow her. it may seem that monoculturalism is the opposite of cultural pluralism (nederveen, pieterse & parekh, 1995), yet poststructural theories and practices of undoing binaries always reject such polarised thought. i argue that in new times we both take in and reconstruct a simultaneous monoculturalism and a cultural multiplicity. the term ‘monocultural regimes’ is used by nederveen, pieterse and parekh (1995; 14) to demonstrate effects and challenges from globalisation, empire and colonialism. for monocultural regimes, decolonialisation involves refocusing on minorities and indigenous peoples (nederveen pieterse & parekh, 1995; 12). instead of nations being centred on themselves, the decentering includes others (rhedding-jones, 2005a). thus eurocentrism becomes afrocentrisms and indo-asiocentricisms. said otherwise, the previously unseen and unheard nationalisms, in the forms of language and accepted sets of socially interactive values and learnings, give way. in theory this echoes foucault’s ‘regimes of truth’, where discourses institutionalise themselves as normalising powers. opening borders and allowing border crossings, of languages, choices of what to do with time and values in educational institutions and with technologies, is thus a catalyst for change. a further reason for naming the monocultural then, is the development of new theory. within the theories of postmodernity are the erasures of boundaries between dichotomies: the home culture and the foreign culture for example, or the immigrant and the non-immigrant. this in effect constructs a new singularity which is a conglomerate singularity. far from being a negative description of a culture, the mono effects here are new blendings, shifts and transformations. theorising a contemporary cultural shift to a collective singularity rather than a unitary singularity allows for diversities within it. in this way grammatical collectives, such as a team, a committee or a group, require a singular noun but are understood as containing multiplicity. perhaps a new monocultural society could similarly reflect and construct new inclusions of otherness, new transformations of the past and the dominant. returning to the point that there are only mono(culture)s, this then can be understood as always the view of outsiders. hence, as derrida writes, regarding languages, it is ‘the other’ who is ‘monolingual’ (derrida, 1998). this then becomes, from derrida, a rhapsody of the ‘prosthesis of origin’. although i have heard him lecture in english, he writes: i am a monolingual. my monolingualism dwells, and i call it my dwelling; it feels like one to me, and i remain in it and inhabit it. it inhabits me. the monolingualism in which i draw my very breath is, for me, my element. (p.1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci rhedding-jones: monocultural constructs transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 48 he speaks, it seems, of french. for him, given all his complexities of frenchness, algerianness and transnationalism, the mono matters. (post)philosophically, it is at there at the same time as all of the multis. this is why identity, which is not only about origins but about choices, life events and languages, is extended or added to by these. the mono, from derrida, is not an opposite denying the multi. yet later i read (p. 34), ‘for never was i able to call french, this language i am speaking to you, my “mother tongue”.’ must we know the facts of his linguistic origins? does it matter which mono he means? who is it who names a mono, and why? ‘when i said that the only language i speak is not mine, i did not say foreign to me. there is a difference.’ (p. 5; emphasis in original) the mono by this becomes the familiar, as may a language learned later. this sense of mono, an opposite from much of my essay, inserts other possibilities. taking this a little further, i turn to deleuze (1993). the deleuzean theory of folding is that folds go on to infinity as what once was becomes invisible and new singularities construct themselves from earlier subdivisions. deleuze, following the baroque philosopher leibniz, calls this the monad. a monandrous plant, for example, has within its flower one stamen, yet the plant comprises many parts. the monad in music, for example, comprises a higher unity of vertical harmonics and horizontal melodies (deleuze 1993; 127). if this is useful for theorising a culture then it must allow for change, flow and eventual dissolution. risking oversimplification of a philosophical complexity, i isolate the following sentence from deleuze (1993; 125): ‘the object itself overflows its frame in order to enter a cycle or a series.’ regarding cultures and the individually encultured, i find this a useful analogy. to work with deleuze a little longer: ‘every monad thus expresses the entire world, but obscurely and dimly because it is finite and the world is infinite.’ (1993; 86) this monad then, is what i am calling the monocultural, representing and reflecting other monocultures, which themselves function similarly. hence focusing on cultures named (in my case australia until 1997, and urban oslo after that) serves to demonstrate the non-specificity of locations, the globalisation of postmodernity. in this way cultures blur and contract, enfold each other and expand, shift from micro to macro, produce clarity from obscurity and then plunge back into obscurity. all of this fits with the deleuzean/leibnizian theory of pleating of matter, of replacement of matter by form. hence in the forming of new cultural enactments and representations, what matters is movement itself. here the metaphor of folding focuses not on the two surfaces folded, but the point at which they interact, enclose and reverse their directions. seen pragmatically, this point could be early childhoods in the multicultural situations of institutions. institutions for children, early childhood education splits into the institutions of early schooling and preschooling or day care. for adults in higher education, the institutions are of undergraduate and postgraduate coursework, professional practice in the field, and funded or unfunded research projects. i am currently working between all of these. in my work in norway i sometimes visit pre-schools and day care centres. what follows are exemplary texts, for developing thinking from the theories and ideas above. i shall not stop to spell out the thinking. as a foreigner myself i often have other people with different ethnic backgrounds coming up to me to say, ‘how did you get your job teaching pre-school teachers? did you have to do the exams in norwegian like we did? how long can you stay in norway?’ in giving the answers (‘i got the job after much trying. yes i’ve got all the qualifications. and yes i had to pass the norwegian exams before i applied.’) i quite often find out that the people i am talking to are also highly educated in their own countries: a man from malaysia had an australian phd in http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci rhedding-jones: monocultural constructs transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 49 biochemistry and was working as a day care assistant. others tell me they could not read or write before they moved to norway and then had to learn to be literate. occasionally i meet a teacher who has herself taken the long hard road to higher education in this new country and language. sometimes there is anger or near tears at the difficulty of it all, the sadness of the memories of isolation during the coursework, the sheer hell of the student cafeteria for example. one woman from pakistan told me she failed the norwegian exam three times before she was able to begin as a first year early childhood education student, after her own children grew up. some sample questions here, regarding practice, are: what can be done to make access simpler? what can make course progression more likely? how will more ethnic minority and other minority people want to start doing the course? why are the institutions as they are? do they function independently of the people who work and play within them? what are the links between all of this and publicity and economic rationalism? the following narrative comes from notes from a pre-school playground, where i was employed to supervise a student-teacher-carer. in considering this we should focus on institutions rather than on individuals as ways forward in practice and in theory. there are three little boys here who stay close to each other. all the other boys and girls are white. after lunch the children get quite a lot of help from the adults to put on their heavy outdoor suits and boots. the three little boys seem keen to go out. they rush straight to the gate, stand there wistfully looking down the road. all the others are busy with trucks in the gravel pit, riding the cars, making houses out of the big blocks. after a while the woman assistant who i think is from somalia goes to the three little boys at the gate, stands there talking to them for a bit, then takes two of them by the hands down to the swings. the third little boy follows. they seem happy with the swings, and i suppose they soon forget about their mothers coming up the road to get them. why was it the black assistant who came to the rescue of the three little boys? why wasn’t it me, or the student or the supervising teacher? i became part of the dominating culture, not identifying with immigrants. a focus on institutions, as in the examples above from day-care centres, follows the theorisations of power set off by foucault (1980; 1999) and his focus on local sites. from foucault is the notion that individuals in organisations operate as elements of the articulation of power. it is not that we consent to do this; rather that we do so inadvertently, by our unspoken collaboration. in this way power effectively operates ‘both inside and outside the world of its victims’ (ghandi, 1998; 14). put into a context of monocultural constructs, it could then be said that the people who construct a monoculture are not only those of the dominant society and language, but those others who have been co-opted by it, as immigrants across the generations, and as i was in my role as the visiting norwegian supervisor of praxis. further, speaking only the language of the dominant, as happens in norwegian pre-schools and as i am careful to do, is in a foucault sense an effect of the power of the norwegians in their own country. those of us who are not norwegian but live here, act in effect as agents of the dominant language, by speaking and acting as only that, and denying our transnationalisms. subverting the established order, of norwegian pre-school pedagogies highly emphasising social collaboration for example, involves importing other pedagogies, from the home countries and nations of the relocated. challenging and changing pedagogy, for the supposed learning of all of the children and all of the higher education students who will one day work as professionals, has hardly begun. beyond pedagogy (curriculum?) but related to it are other practices. these are the qualities of everyday interactions, the customary few words http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci rhedding-jones: monocultural constructs transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 50 that people exchange in passing, the uses and non-uses of touch, eye contact and time, the accepted ways of being together and alone, the interactions between adults and children, the valuing of contact between children, between children and objects, between age groups. in higher education institutions, the monocultural is guarded and transferred by the gatekeeping of examiners. getting in to a course is the first step to accessing the peripheries of power. once past the peripheries, students must try to write the assignments, demonstrate spoken language fluencies, write enough impressive words, regurgitate or do something about the accepted discourses. it is at all of these points that the differences between majorities and minorities come to the surface. without knowing who has written the exam essays (higher education uses student numbers not student names) white middle-class middle-aged lecturers decide particular writings are unacceptable. student anonymity is seen to provide a fair practice. history should have told us that anon was a woman struggling to voice her meanings in the literary world of men. not learning this lesson, we continue to believe that the anon who fails the exam is not a black, mature-age, single parent. in norwegian higher education, norwegian values, parochialism and monolingualism have constructed pedagogical coursework for early childhood education according to their own particular and localised standards. the eight-hour exam, for example, where students handwrite all day with guarded trips to the toilet, was seen in 2000 as nothing out of the ordinary. similarly unremarked were the assignment requirements: to produce shared computer print-outs, after weeks of work with others, and without identification of who has written what and whose words were not included. getting ethnic minorities into higher education is a crucial step for statistically appropriate representations, and the acknowledgement of difference as a resource. getting them/us in must then be matched by culturally relevant pedagogies and evaluation practices. these involve higher education academics’ constructs of the monocultural. rephrased: who does the teaching, the lecturing and the examining is crucial to the outcomes of multiculturalisms and anti-racist hopes. a brief look here at who has tenure, who has seniority and who has published the respected academic texts will demonstrate the lack of minority inputs to power. the creation of ‘diasporic public spheres’ (appadurai, 1996; 10), in this location, has not yet begun. practical matters which practices are the ones that currently construct a monocultural society? which specific practices in early childhood education are operating to convert multiplicity and diversity into representations of the dominant culture? are there differences here between what is offered to young children and what is offered to the professionals who will care for them and teach them? how can these things change? in oslo, third and fourth year early childhood teacher-students asked practising professionals what constituted the multicultural, within the early childhood settings where they worked (karaman, lartey, mbonika and paila, 2000). not surprisingly quite a few of the teacher-carers and administrators said that simply being in oslo meant that their pre-school was multicultural, because here so many different races are represented. others said that they sometimes had a pakistani week, where the children with pakistani backgrounds could share something of their culture. in contrast, being critically conscious that pakistani culture, amongst others, exists within oslo on every day of the year, and not just as a special event curiosity, produces new challenges. for teacher-carers with children under the age of six, embracing the multilingual and the critical multicultural (may, 1999), and resisting the monocultural, poses problems previously unimagined (senter mot etnisk diskriminering, 2000; skoug, 1999; tefre, andreassen & http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci rhedding-jones: monocultural constructs transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 51 otterstad, 1997). if you do not know what the children and your co-workers are saying, how do you maintain your authority, let alone your composure? yet such situations are beginning to come about, with teachers believing in the power of communications without themselves always at the commanding centre, believing in learning without having to measure the outcomes, believing in play without the language of dominance being the only language heard. letting learning and play and communications look after themselves thus represents a major shift in teacher-carer role. postscripts this essay was mostly written in 2000. it was presented as a conference paper in london, at the 10th european early childhood education research association conference (eecera). since then i have not tried to publish the paper, having other professional targets to aim for, namely, practical change in the workplace around me, and the building of a local and critical research culture. meanwhile some of ‘my’ postgraduate students and colleagues (eg. andersen, 2006; becher, 2004; fajersson, 2006; otterstad, 2006; rossholt, 2006) have been working from this particular paper and its ideas. the problem of wanting local effects is that you sometimes ignore the international, in this case international publication. now that there is a publication home for transnational curriculum inquiry, i realise that is where the rewritten paper should go. as a result of thinking more about curriculum (since rhedding-jones, 1984, when stephen kemmis was my supervisor; and since then as rhedding-jones, 2001; 2002a), i see that this paper has functioned for the last five years as curriculum for the norwegians named above. further, the years of distancing between the first writing of this essay and its final draft reflect my own self-understandings of shift between foreigner and transnational. evidence of this is my international editing (rhedding-jones and grieshaber, 2005; rhedding-jones, 2006. transnational curriculum inquiry has through its review process let me think a lot more about what i have been thinking and writing. as no writing is ever ended i therefore take up the editor’s suggestion that i answer my reviewers in another separate short piece. in the interests of textual coherence i would like to keep the essay above as it is: a historical construction of some theories relating to my professional positioning in 2000. for readers interested in how curriculum practices impact on all this i would point them to my chapter on diversity (rhedding-jones, 2005b). also, i have for the last year been highly engaged in practical work once a week with muslim children aged 1-6, and with muslim women who work in pre-school day care/education. whatever monoculturalism was, it is not here. references andersen, c. e. (2006) troubling ethnicity and cultural diversity in norwegian pre-school discourses, australian research in early childhood education, 13(1): 38-50. appadurai, a. (1996) modernity at large: cultural dimensions of globalization. minneapolis, usa: university of minnesota press. askland, l. & sataøen, s.o. (1998) hva skal vi med menn? -om betydningen av menn i arbeid med barn. (what shall we do with men? meanings for men working with children) (my translation) oslo, norway: pedagogisk forum. becher, a. a. (2004) research considerations concerning cultural differences, contemporary issues in early childhood education, 5(1): 81-94. cannella, g. (1997) deconstructing early childhood education: social justice and revolution, new york: peter lang. cannella, g. s. (1999) the scientific discourse of education: predetermining the lives of others foucault, education, and children. contemporary issues in early childhood, 1(1): 36-44. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci rhedding-jones: monocultural constructs transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 52 connell, r. (1995) masculinities. sydney: allen and unwin. dahlberg, g, moss, p. and pence, a. (1999) beyond quality in early childhood education and care: postmodern perspectives. london & philadelphia: falmer press. davies, b. (1989) frogs, snails and feminist tales: pre-school children and gender. sydney: allen and unwin. davies, b. (1990) agency as a form of discursive practice. british journal of sociology of education, 11(3): 341-360. deleuze, g. (1993) the fold: leibniz and the baroque (trans. t. conley) london: athlone press. derrida, j. (1998) monolingualism of the other; or, the prosthesis of origin. (trans. p. mensah) stanford, california: stanford university press. fajersson, k. e. (2006) ethnic minority children positioned inside but outside, australian research in early childhood education, 13(1): 75-90. foucault, m. (1980) power/ knowledge: selected interviews and other writings 1972-1977, (c. gordon, ed.) hertfordshire: harvester press. foucault, m. (1999) diskursens orden: tiltredelseforelesning holdt ved college de france, desember 1970 (trans. e. schaanning) (literally, discourse’s word: introductory lectures held at the college of france; my translation) oslo, norway: spartacus. ghandi, l. (1998) postcolonial theory: a critical introduction, new york: columbia university press. gough, n. (2004) editorial. a vision for transnational curriculum inquiry. transnational curriculum inquiry. 1(1): 1-11. hage, g. (1998) white nation: fantasies of white supremacy in a multicultural society, annandale, nsw, australia: pluto press. halliday, m.a.k. (1985) introduction to functional grammar: london & melbourne: edward arnold. hamilton, d. (2000) the pedagogical paradox (or why no didactics in england?) in uljens, m. (ed.) pedagogikens problem. kulturella utveklingslinjer och teoretiska sp!rsmål (the problem of pedagogy: cultural developments and theoretical questions; my translation) vasa, finland: åbo akademi. jacobsen, k. (2000) barnehagen i norge forum for meningsskaping? en kritisk dokumentanalyse (the pre-school in norway: forum for meaning making? a critical analysis of documents; my translation). masters degree dissertation, early childhood education, oslo university college, norway. (publication as hio-notat 2002, www.hio.no) jenkins, r. (1997) rethinking ethnicity: arguments and explorations. london, thousand oaks and new delhi: sage. karaman, s., lartey, j., mbonika, o. and paila, k. (2000) hvordan forholder foreldrer og personale seg i barnehagen på oppdragelsen av barn med frle-kulturell bakgrunn? (how do parents and pre-school personnel regard the institutional bringing-up of children of multicultural background? my translation) unpublished report for third year early childhood pedagogy, fordypning i flerkulturelt (special study on multiculturalism), oslo university college, norway. kristeva, j. (1991) strangers to ourselves. (trans. l. roudiez) new york: columbia university press. lingard, b. (2000) it is and it isn’t: vernacular globalisation, educational policy and restructuring. in n. burbules and c. a. torres (eds) globalisation and education: critical perspectives. new york: routledge. pp.79-108. luke, c. & luke, a. (1999) theorizing interracial families and hybrid identity: an australian perspective, educational theory, 29(2): 223-249. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci http://www.hio.no rhedding-jones: monocultural constructs transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 53 mac an ghaill, m. (1994) the making of men: masculinities, sexualities and schooling. philadelphia, pa: open university press. may, s. (1999)(ed.) critical multiculturalism: rethinking multicultural and antiracist education. london uk and philadelphia pa: falmer press. nederveen pieterse, j. n. & parekh, b. (1995) (eds) the decolonization of imagination: culture, knowledge and power. london & new jersey: zed books. oecd organisation for economic co-operation and development (1999a) country note: early childhood education and care policy in norway. (the notes are the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the oecd or the governments of its member countries. the review team comprised michelle neuman from france, peter moss from uk, rosemary renwick from new zealand, albert tuijnman from sweden and anke vedder from the netherlands.) oecd organisation for economic co-operation and development (1999b) thematic review of early childhood education and care policy: background report from norway, barne og familiedepartementet, oslo, norway. otterstad, a-m. (2006) the concepts of equality and diversity in early schooling. australian research in early childhood education, 13(1): 12-21. r-96 barneog familiedepartementet, (1995) rammeplan for barnehagen. (national curriculum frameworks for pre-schools. my translation. this has in 2006 been replaced by a new frameworks document.) oslo, norway. reinharz, s. (1992) original feminist research methods. chapter 12 in feminist methods in social research, oxford, uk: oxford university press. pp. 214-239. rhedding-jones, j. (then ratcliff, j.) (1984) curriculum text: a case study in language. masters dissertation, faculty of education, deakin university, australia. rhedding-jones, j. (1995) what do you do after you’ve met poststructuralism? research possibilities regarding feminism, ethnography and literacy, journal of curriculum studies, 27(5): 479-500. rhedding-jones, j. (1996) positionings poststructural: some australian research in education, nordisk pedagogik 16(1): 2-14. rhedding-jones, j. (2000a) monocultural constructs: a foreigner reflects on early childhood institutions. paper presented at 10th conference for european early childhood education research association (eecera), london university, 29.8.00-1.9.00. rhedding-jones, j. (2000b) shifting ethnicities: foreign whites and others working on antiracist pedagogies in early childhood education. paper presented at the australian association for research in education, sydney, december. www.aare.edu.au rhedding-jones, j. (2000c) ethnicity and early childhoods: undoing curriculum documents. paper presented to american educational research association, new orleans usa, april 24-28. rhedding-jones, j. (2001) shifting ethnicities: ‘native informants’ and other theories from/for early childhood education. contemporary issues in early childhood. 2(2): 135-156. www.wwwords.co.uk/ciec/ rhedding-jones, j. (2002a) an undoing of documents and texts: towards a critical multiculturalism in early childhood education. contemporary issues in early childhood 3(1): 90-116. www.wwwords.co.uk/ciec/ rhedding-jones, j. (2002b) english elsewhere: glocalization, assessment and ethics. journal of curriculum studies, 34(4): 383-404. rhedding-jones, j. (2003) questioning play and work, early childhood and pedagogy. chapter 14 in d. lytle (ed.) play and educational theory and practice. westport connecticut and london: praeger. pp. 243-254. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci http://www.aare.edu.au http://www.wwwords.co.uk/ciec http://www.wwwords.co.uk/ciec rhedding-jones: monocultural constructs transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 54 rhedding-jones, j. (2005a) decentering anglo-american curricular power in early childhood education: learning and culture and ‘child development’ in higher education coursework. journal of curriculum theorizing, 21(3): 143-165. rhedding-jones, j. (2005b) questioning diversity: rethinking early childhood practices. chapter 9 in n. yelland (ed.) critical issues in early childhood education. berkshire uk and new york usa: open university press. pp. 131-145. rhedding-jones, j. (2005c) what is research? methodological practices and new approaches. oslo, norway: universitetsforlaget. www.universitetsforlaget.no rhedding-jones, j. (2006) guest editorial for themed edition on gender, complexity and diversity. australian research in early childhood education, 13(1): iii-v. rhedding-jones, j. and grieshaber, s. (2005) editorial for special edition on troubling identities. contemporary issues in early childhood 6(1): 1-4. www.wwords.co.uk/ciec/ robertson, r. (1995) glocalization: time-space and homogeneity-heterogeneity. in m featherstone, s. lash and r. robertson, (eds) global modernities. thousand oaks, london & new delhi: sage. rossholt, n. (2005) inscribing the body: ‘black’, ‘white’ and gender in early childhood education and complexity. australian research in early childhood education, 13(1): 112-124. senter mot etnisk diskriminering (centre for combating ethnic discrimination) (2000) moving towards better protection: excerpt from the report published in norwegian (my translation). oslo norway. skoug, t. (1999) minoritetsbarna og innføring av rammeplan for barnehagen. (minority children and implementation of the framework plan for day care institutions; my translation). rapport nr. 22-1999. høgskolen i hedmark, norway. spivak, g. c. (1999) a critique of postcolonial reason: toward a history of the vanishing present, cambridge, massachusetts, usa: harvard university press. tefre, å. (ed.), andreassen, a. & otterstad, a-m. (1997) tospråklige assistenters funksjon, rolle og kvalifasjonsbehov, (bilingual pre-school assistants' functions, roles and qualification needs; my translation) oslo, norway: oslo university college. ungdommens mediesenter (1998) barnehage: 5årsprojektet bydel gamle oslo. (kindergarten: the project with 5 year olds in bydel gamle oslo; my translation) video 1. oslo: norway. viruru, r. (2001) early childhood education: postcolonial perspectives from india. thousand oaks, london and new delhi: sage. author jeanette rhedding-jones is professor of early childhood education, oslo university college, norway. email: jeanette.rhedding-jones@lu.hioslo.no http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci http://www.universitetsforlaget.no http://www.wwords.co.uk/ciec mailto:jones@lu.hioslo.no o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: uljens, michael (2018). non-affirmative education theory and discursive institutionalism as possibilities for curriculum research a foreword. transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> non-affirmative education theory and discursive institutionalism as possibilities for curriculum research a foreword michael uljens1 åbo akademi university, finland this special issue aims at advancing curriculum research in a transnational perspective by the help of both a critical, bildung centered, non-affirmative education theory (eg. benner, 2015; uljens, 2001; uljens & ylimaki, 2017) and discursive institutionalism (e.g. schmidt, 2008; nordin & sundberg, 2018; wahlström & sundberg, 2018). the intention is to explore how non-affirmative education theory as an approach in general theory of education, might be fruitful for understanding of how different actors and practices, at different levels of the education system, within nation-states, with their different, historically developed education policies, mediate between the transnational, national, regional and local levels? we ask how non-affirmative theory of education can be utilized as a frame of reference in exploring both curriculum reform work, teaching and educational leadership? we also ask, can discursive institutionalism operate as a complementary approach to education or curriculum theory, in understanding how educational policies, ideas and values relate to governance processes and educational practice at different levels? it may be that a combination of these approaches can help us to become better equipped to handle reform of curriculum, leadership and teaching in relation to the contents of curriculum, that is, in relation to the intentions, contents and teaching methods and school culture. non-affirmative theory of education is considered fit for these purposes as it offers conceptual tools for understanding both a) the pedagogical dimensions of curriculum reform activity as a multi-level process especially focusing the relation between education and politics, culture and economy, and b) by opening up the teaching-studying-learning process by providing a relational theory of pedagogical practice. how is this accomplished? first, non-affirmative education theory assumes a non-hierarchical relation between politics and education, thereby opening up this relation as aporical, and as a discursive practice and critical reflection. in other words, how do political intentions transform into curricula and practice? and, as a parallel question, how does educational practice simultaneously prepare for political, cultural and economic citizenship? here, an object for reflection is how a given https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index uljens. non-affirmative education theory 2 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index curriculum defines its educational ideas and aims, the selection and selected contents at different levels, as well as values, methods of teaching and learning, collaboration, leadership and evaluation. educational practice in schools typically operate in the tension between political, cultural, economical and private (families) interests, but also reflect such interests. analytically we may, with non-affirmative theory ask what degrees of freedom schools have in mediating between the students and these external interests? from a normative perspective, non-affirmative education theory explains that schools on the one hand have to acknowledge and recognize the existence of external interests of various kinds including parental interests and state policies, but on the other hand, schools cannot be expected or forced to affirm these interests. if education would not only acknowledge and recognize such interests, but also be forced to affirm external interests, then practitioners would be hindered from creating such pedagogical spaces in schools that allow the students to relate themselves reflexively to established or intended cultural, economical and political practices. in choosing such a position non-affirmative theory positions itself as a critical theory, but at the same time seeking a position beyond typical instrumental and strongly normative ideology critical positions. both of these tend to include ready-made answers regarding how education should be used for transforming the society, thus leaving little room for teachers to engage in true dialogue about the meaning of education or for students meaning making. however, non-affirmative education theory, exemplifying german-nordic general theory of education (e.g. benner, 2015; uljens, 2001), has primarily theorized education within a nation-state perspective. given the globopolitan condition, this approach may need to be completed with perspectives developed within policy research to be able of handling transnational policy influences. in this respect, schmidt’s (2008) discursive institutionalism may provide a different point of departure to consider the “institutional” or “structural” dimensions, particularly those that are evident in later deliberative and discourse-oriented curriculum theory. discourse-oriented curriculum research provides a language for talking about the human interactive and interpersonal dimensions of any level, from classroom to transnational. discursive institutionalism acknowledges the system—laws, policy documents, task descriptions, financing systems—that lies beyond individuals’ everyday leadership practices. according to schmidt, discursive institutionalism aims at understanding how cognitive ideas (problems identification) and normative ideas (values that legitimize problems) are developed and communicated across societal, philosophical, policy, and program levels. this point explains the interplay among societal values and aims, policies, and program interactions. the term ‘discourse’ refers not only to structure (what is said, or where or how) but also to agency (who said what to whom). specifically, schmidt argues that ideas operate as coordinative and communicative discourses. coordinative discourses refer to policy construction among policy actors while communicative discourse refer to policy legitimization between policy actors and the general public. vivien schmidt’s way of approaching institutionalism, as a discursive version of it, taking the notion of ideas seriously, is in many ways coherent with non-affirmative education theory. both accept an open, non-hierarchic or non-linear, relation between societal practices. such an understanding of the relation between e.g. politics and education constitute a https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index uljens. non-affirmative education theory 3 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index negotiating, dialogical or discursive character of this relation. in this view, societal practices like politics and education are dependent of and influence each other, but they cannot be derived from each other. however, with its grounding in public administration and political sciences, schmidt’s (2008) discursive institutionalism does not have any underlying theory of education. therefore, assuming that curriculum is an object of educational research and theorizing, curriculum research applying discursive institutionalism need to ground in education theory. non-affirmative education theory then offer the language for understanding curriculum and other pedagogical human-institutional interactions, including those concerning the broader system (e.g. law, policy documents), as pedagogical phenomena. authoring this foreword i am for the time being engaged in reflecting comparative curriculum and leadership research together with colleagues at east china normal university in shanghai. it is remarkable how a cultural and geographical relocation summons oneself to rethink established patterns of thought. perhaps this is what a part of philosophical reflection is about? to invite the world to challenge one’s own conceptions, while at the same time to challenge the world with one’s conceptions. china, with its version of marxist ideology today promotes competition and evidence driven development on the education sector, clearly following a neoliberal logic of governance, while finland, as a market economy, strongly opposes such competitive patterns, instead focusing on taking care of those in need of more support. in a globopolitan perspective, the challenges are the same for us all. this is why transnational inquiry into curriculum issues is so much required. notes 1 muljens@abo.fi references benner, d. (2015). allgemeine pädagogik (8. edition). weinheim: beltz juventa. nordin, a. & sundberg, d. (2018). exploring curriculum change using discursive institutionalism – a conceptual framework. journal of curriculum studies, doi: 10.1080/00220272.2018.1482961 schmidt, v. a. (2008). discursive institutionalism: the explanatory power of ideas and discourse. annual review of political science, 11, 303–326. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.polisci.11.060606.135342 uljens, m. (2001). on general education as a discipline. studies in philosophy and education 20(4), 291-301. uljens, m. & ylimaki, r. (2017). non-affirmative theory of education as a foundation for curriculum studies, didaktik and educational leadership. in: m. uljens & r. ylimaki (eds.), bridging educational leadership, curriculum theory and didaktik nonaffirmative theory of education (pp. 3-145). cham: springer. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2f978-3-319-58650-2 wahlström, n. & sundberg, d. (2018). discursive institutionalism: towards a framework for analysing the relation between policy and curriculum. journal of education policy, 33(1), 163-183. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2017.1344879 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.polisci.11.060606.135342 https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2f978-3-319-58650-2 https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2017.1344879 o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: kumar, ashwani (2021). international handbook of curriculum research: a book review transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (2) p. 64-66 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci<access date> international handbook of curriculum research: a book review ashwani kumar1 mount saint vincent university, canada the international handbook of curriculum research is a tremendous pioneering contribution to the internationalization of curriculum studies discourses. its editor is the world-famous curriculum theorist and educator william f. pinar. a leader of the reconceptualization movement of curriculum studies in north america during the 1970s, pinar continues to be one of the most renowned and prolific curriculum scholars in the world. one of the key contributions of his scholarship is to understand curriculum as an international text and promote curriculum studies as a worldwide discipline. internationalization of curriculum studies requires, and creates, spaces where curriculum scholars working around the world in their own contexts engage in what he calls “complicated conversation” (pinar, 2019) with one another. such complicated conversation, structured by diverse cultural, political, philosophical, and theoretical perspectives, allows curriculum scholars to look at the curriculum and the factors that shape it (e.g., history, politics, economy, and culture) in deeper and broader ways. pinar has contributed many books and articles to support the internationalization of curriculum studies. his edited volumes on the intellectual histories and present circumstances of curriculum studies in south africa (2010), brazil (2011a), mexico (2011b), china (2014a), and india (2015), as well as the two editions of the international handbook of curriculum research (2003, 2014b), are remarkably ground-breaking. the second edition of the international handbook of curriculum research, the focus of this book review, has three parts. the first part is an introductory chapter by pinar that helpfully introduces the readers to the purposes and contents of the book. the second part comprises five chapters by renowned curriculum scholars who consider the issues of the internationalization of curriculum from varied perspectives. the final part contains thirty-nine country-specific reports of curriculum research from thirty-four countries. to give readers an idea of the quality and breadth of scholarship in this volume, i will discuss the key ideas put forth in the five introductory essays. tero autio’s chapter, “internationalization of curriculum research”, critiques the neoliberal emphasis on instrumental education that forces standardization, measurement, and comparison on teachers and students and undermines the possibility of holistic and transformative educational experiences. autio underscores the importance of progressive and transformative educational concepts including bildung, currere, and ideas from the eastern wisdom traditions to repair the damage done by economically driven instrumental approaches of teaching and learning. his work encourages us, educators, to consider curriculum and teaching to be deeply moral and subjective in their orientations rather than mere superficial and technical activities focused on testing and comparison. cameron mccarthy, ergin bulut, and rushika patel’s piece “race and education in the age of digital capitalism” highlights the complexity of the present world marked by kumar. international handbook of curriculum research 64 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index digital technologies, neoliberal market policies, and popular culture and the ways in which these together have changed the way we look at the notion of race, identity, and culture around the world. given the intensifying complexity of social interaction, growing economic and political instabilities, and increasing individual and relational vulnerabilities, mccarthy, bulut, and patel call for imaginative ways of looking at the notion of researching race and culture as well as “renegotiate [ing], in fundamental way[s], what counts as ‘meaningful education’ for youth” (p. 42). david geoffrey smith’s essay, “wisdom responses to globalization,” provides another effective critique of neoliberal global capitalism and its negative impact on education as reflected in the so-called educational reforms that emphasize standardization, superficial skill-orientation, and online learning instead of deeper engagement and exploration of the global crises (see also kumar, 2019). smith underscores the importance of teaching and learning from the perspectives of wisdom traditions of the east and the west. these wisdom traditions collectively celebrate the unity of life and appreciate awareness and mindfulness as the ways to heal oneself and thereby one’s relationships with human beings and nature, which can pave the way for global healing (see also kumar, 2013; kumar, 2022). daniel trohler’s chapter, “international curriculum research”, provides an intriguing analysis of the differences between curriculum research in the us and germany, highlighting how history and politics give rise to unique constructions of curricular knowledge. trohler makes two key recommendations for curriculum research: 1) he underscores the importance of paying attention to the larger social, political, and historical context within which curriculum is located rather than just focusing on the schools and the policies that govern them, and 2) he encourages curriculum scholars to appreciate the significance of comparing curriculum genealogies of different countries and contexts which would allow us to become aware of “ourselves as historical and cultural constructions” (p. 65). such contextual and genealogical understanding is, indeed, central to deep curricular and pedagogical thinking and practice. drawing upon the international wisdom traditions and non-violence activism, hongyu wang’s piece, “a nonviolent perspective on internationalizing curriculum studies,” calls upon the discipline of “curriculum studies to embrace nonviolence as an educational vision” (p. 67). nonviolence as a way of being supports dialogue, communication, and connection which we desperately need in our uncertain and violent world (krishnamurti, 1973). considering nonviolence as the core of education has tremendous promise to cultivate ethical, globally-minded, and compassionate individuals who can challenge the comparison and competition-driven neoliberal ethos of education in our contemporary society. these five essays are followed by thirty-nine country-specific reports of curriculum research from thirty-four countries. while it is beyond the scope of this review to summarize and comment on each of these chapters here, i must point out that all of these chapters are written in a very accessible manner that allows the reader to get a good glimpse of the historical evolution and contemporary circumstances of curriculum research in these unique political, cultural, and economic contexts. reading these essays, one realizes how differently curriculum is understood and conceptualized around the world and, yet, at the same time, one notices the forces that influence curriculum globally, namely, neoliberalism, government control of education, and colonial and imperial impositions on what knowledge is of most worth (see also kumar, 2019). overall, i think the international handbook of curriculum research makes the following key contributions to the field of curriculum studies worldwide: 1) it establishes curriculum studies as a worldwide discipline that respects differences and allows diverse perspectives on curriculum to interact with each other. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index kumar. international handbook of curriculum research 65 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index 2) it allows curriculum scholars from around the world to share how the curriculum is viewed within their and their colleagues’ national boundaries and how their specific context shapes the notion of the curriculum. 3) it provides a panoramic view of the diverse kinds of research taking place around the world. it makes scholarly work available for curriculum scholars so that they may become apprised of what is happening in other parts of the world in order to reflect on their own particular circumstances and find similarities and differences which can allow them to engage with each other. 4) it underlines how capitalism-driven economic globalization and neo-liberalization have become common around the world through their emphasis on the commodification of education and reliance on standardized testing, comparison, and competition, all of which are anti-educational notions that undermine academic freedom, creativity, collaboration, and holistic development. 5) it shows how curriculum in the majority of the countries around the world is controlled by dominant political, economic, and social ideologies and how colonialism and imperialism continue to affect educational systems in many countries through either imposition of colonial viewpoints or the import of educational notions from the west. 6) it allows curriculum studies scholars to see which philosophical, theoretical, methodological, and practice-oriented perspectives are being employed to conduct curriculum research around the world which can, in turn, provide inputs for their own research program. 7) it respects diverse intellectual and wisdom traditions from around the world and thereby promotes collegiality, dialogue, and connections among educators internationally. my own recent book, curriculum in international contexts: understanding colonial, ideological, and neoliberal influences, which was published by palgrave macmillan in 2019, draws upon and contributes to the internationalization of curriculum studies discourses – which is the core purpose of the international handbook of curriculum research. my book draws on two decades of my engagement with various international themes in social studies and curriculum studies including my work with william pinar at the centre for the study of the internationalization of curriculum studies (now closed) at the university of british columbia. curriculum in international contexts explores the ways in which political, cultural, historical, and economic structures and processes shape curriculum and teaching globally. it discusses how colonialism, ideological control of teaching, and neoliberal global capitalism perniciously control the process of curriculum development and teaching in diverse international settings, as is also explicit in the international handbook of curriculum research. like the international handbook, my text underscores how intellectual movements such as marxism, feminism, and postmodernism influence curriculum theory in diverse geocultural settings. in my book, i also identify and discuss four theoretical responses – indigenous, critical, autobiographical, and meditative – that can provide thoughtful perspectives to challenge negative influences on curriculum including neoliberalism, colonialism, and ideological control of teaching. being a study of diverse cultural and political conceptualizations of curriculum, and the interconnections among them, my book further contributes to the internationalization of curriculum studies discourses. i think pinar’s work on internationalization of curriculum studies in general and the second edition of his international handbook of curriculum research in particular, which have impacted the work of numerous scholars like myself and have supported the creation of curriculum studies as a worldwide discipline, is a tremendous contribution to the field of curriculum studies. it is an indispensable scholarly work for educators to move beyond the limitations imposed by standardization, testing, and comparison. it is an invitation to consider curriculum, teaching, and learning as critical, creative, and transformative processes. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index kumar. international handbook of curriculum research 66 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index notes 1ashwani.kumar@msvu.ca references krishnamurti, j. (1973). beyond violence. harpercollins college division. kumar, a. (2013). curriculum as meditative inquiry. palgrave macmillan. kumar, a. (2019). curriculum in international contexts: understanding colonial, ideological and neoliberal influences. palgrave macmillan. kumar, a. (ed.). (2022). engaging with meditative inquiry in teaching, learning, and research: realizing transformative potentials in diverse contexts. routledge. pinar, w. f. (ed.). (2003). international handbook of curriculum research. routledge. pinar, w. f. (ed.). (2010). curriculum studies in south africa: intellectual histories, present circumstances. palgrave macmillan. pinar, w. f. (ed.). (2011a). curriculum studies in brazil: intellectual histories, present circumstances. palgrave macmillan. pinar, w. f. (ed.). (2011b). curriculum studies in mexico: intellectual histories, present circumstances. palgrave macmillan. pinar, w. (2019). what is curriculum theory? (3 rd ed.). routledge. pinar, w. f. (ed.). (2014a). curriculum studies in china: intellectual histories, present circumstances. palgrave macmillan. pinar, w. f. (ed.). (2014b). international handbook of curriculum research (2 nd ed.). routledge. pinar, w. f. (ed.). (2015). curriculum studies in india. intellectual histories, present circumstances. palgrave macmillan. submitted: december, 6th, 2021 accepted: december, 20th, 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: craveiro, clarissa; strong-wilson, teresa (2019). we are not alone the subject of teachers and the auto/biographical in curriculum studies. transnational curriculum inquiry 16 (2) p. 1-3 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> we are not alone the subject of teachers and the auto/biographical in curriculum studies clarissa craveiro1 federal fluminense university, brazil teresa strong-wilson2 mcgill university, canada still, “complicated” does not mean “impossible,” and we must continue the project of intellectualization, both individually and organizationally, if we are to take back our profession as teachers, not technicians. william pinar, what is curriculum theory? william pinar once reflected: “we are not alone” a thought that first appeared in his preface to toward a poor curriculum, the volume that launched the reconceptualization of curriculum studies against the then deadening language of objectives and scripts (p. viii). we invited authors to contribute papers to a special issue of transnational curriculum inquiry on the subject of teachers and the auto/biographical in curriculum studies, hoping to hear that we were not alone in seeing in autobiography a counter-response to the “dark times” that are the present in education (arendt, 1968, p. ix). for some time, curriculum scholars have been problematizing the instrumentalization of curriculum and teaching, newly evident in such programs like the common core, curriculum foundations, back to basics, and benchmarking, and in policies like ‘no child left behind’ and ‘race to the top’ (in the united states) and the national schools reform agreement (in australia) (aoki, 2005; au, 2011; ball, 2002, 2005; grumet, 2015; price, 2014; ritzer, 2004; spector, 2019; taubman, 2009). it is in the present highly politically charged context fixated on standards and assessment that we have found ourselves returning to autobiography as a place to think, and rethink, the relations between power, difference, alterity and subjectivity on the part of teachers and within classrooms; more specifically, we wished to invite authors to engage with, and bring into academic debate, multiple aspects of the auto/biographical in teacher identity and practice -on any aspect of auto/biography that they thought might permeate, illuminate, provoke, or concern this subject, which the contributing authors have, with essays that range widely in how they engage with the auto/biographical. transnational curriculum inquiry, further, has afforded us an open international forum within which to engage in dialogue with scholars coming from various locations geographically (canada, the united kingdom, the united states, brazil) and different subject positions in curriculum studies (discourse theory, narrative, phenomenology, psychoanalytical). we agree with pinar (2012) that such a proposal to reinvest in the auto/biographical, especially at the present fraught time is "complicated" yet "not impossible.” “by reintegrating ‘teaching’ (or instruction or pedagogy) into the concept of curriculum, this craveiro, strong-wilson. we are not alone 2 transnational curriculum inquiry 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index phrase puts the teacher in his or her place” and where that place is not as an instrument but as “a participant in an ongoing multi-referenced conversation,” pinar (2009) clarifies (p. 11). in line with maxine greene’s as well as ted aoki’s commitment to teachers, as well as those who like lawrence stenhouse saw the classroom as a central site for curriculum experimentation, the teacher is a central contributor to complicated curriculum conversations. to rethink the curriculum, curricular projects in which we are immersed, and how teachers can confront the deadening culture of performativity and accountability entrenching itself in school spaces worldwide—and to do so from the perspective of the auto/biographical, which points towards to the ‘alive’ possibilities that might be opened by a fluid, contingent and provisional counterdiscourse—this is the complicated conversation to which we invited authors to contribute. one thread running through the articles is a turning towards autobiography to counter a dominant performativity culture that would exclude the textured and felt nuances of memories and lived experiences, however this turn is neither naïve nor uncritical. another common thread is methodological—different ways of deploying autobiography to critically examine situations or phenomena, or to engage critically and dialogically with autobiography/currere itself. in the first article, jessica saada provokes us to inquire into who is teaching and researching teaching. in the second article, sarah bausell invokes autobiography (a genre she typically uses with students and teachers) to instead listen critically to the power dynamics in her own practice as a humanities teacher/teacher educator. in the third article, clarissa craveiro proposes a critical dialogue between discourse theory and autobiography as discourse, using currere with teachers to deconstruct hegemonic curriculum discourses. in the fourth article, david lewkowich explores the psychoanalytical meanings of remembering, invoking anamnesis a reaching back into forgotten knowledge as a lens through which to interpret novice secondary teachers’ (adolescent) memories and drawings. in the fifth article, teresa strong-wilson looks at the intersections between the life writing of hannah arendt and w. g. sebald as a way to think about teacher auto/biographical writing and acts of discernment in dark times. in the sixth article, maria luiza sussekind and stefanie nascimento linger over the theoretical implications of a currere/lived experience lens for bringing their pedagogy/undergraduate students’ selfwriting into complicated conversation with democratic education. in the seventh article, anne phelan and matthew clarke explore the synthetical (currere) possibilities of aesthetic encounters to disrupt the instrumentalization of teaching and teachers under a neoliberal, capitalist regime and provoke new ways of seeing, and feeling, political change. in the final article, melanie janzen re-visits the significance of the territorial acknowledgment (of living on the original lands of indigenous peoples) in teaching, autobiographically probing meanings that can breathe life into acts of acknowledging. our hope is that this special issue will contribute to “the project of intellectualization” initiated by william pinar (2015), encouraging its continued exploration through projects of thinking through teachers and the auto/biographical. notes 1 clacraveiro@yahoo.com.br 2 teresa.strong-wilson@mcgill.ca about:blank about:blank craveiro, strong-wilson. we are not alone 3 transnational curriculum inquiry 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index references aoki, t. (2005) curriculum in a new key: the collected works of ted t. aoki. eds. william f. pinar and rita l. irwin. mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum. arendt, h. (1968) men in dark times. orlando, florida: harcourt brace jovanovich. au, w. (2011) teaching under the new taylorism: high-stakes testing and the standardization of the 21st century curriculum. journal of curriculum studies, 43 (1): 25-45. ball, s. j. (2002) reformar escolas, reformar professores e os terrores da performatividade. revista portuguesa de educação, braga, v. 15, n. 2, p. 3-23. ball, s. j. (2005) profissionalismo, gerencialismo e performatividade. cadernos de pesquisa, são paulo, v. 35, n. 126, p. 539-564, dez. grumet, m. (2015) autobiography: the mixed genre of private and public. in w. f. pinar, & m. r. grumet, toward a poor curriculum (pp. 220-244). kingston, ny: educator’s international press. pinar, w. f. (2009) the worldliness of a cosmopolitan education: passionate lives in public service. new york: routledge. pinar, w. f. (2012) what is curriculum theory? mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum. pinar, w. (2015) preface (1976). in w. f. pinar & m. r. grumet (eds.), toward a poor curriculum (pp. xiii-xvii). kingston, ny: educator’s international press. price, t. a. (2014) comum para quem? são paulo, revista e-curriculum, v. 12, n. 3, p. 1614 1633 out./dez. ravitch, d. (2013) reign of error: the hoax of the privatization movement and the danger to america’s public schools. new york, ny: alfred a. knopf. ritzer, g. (2004) the mcdonaldization of society. london: sage publications. spector, h. (2019) bureaucratization, education, and the meanings of responsibility. curriculum inquiry, 48(5), 503-520. doi: 10.1080/03626784.2018.1547615. taubman, p. (2009) teaching by numbers: deconstructing the discourse of standards and accountability in the education. new york: routledge. to cite this article please include all of the following details: carlachiani, camila (2019). the curricular policies and how they are translated in secondary education: an analysis based on post-critical theories. transnational curriculum inquiry 16 (1) 3-22. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> the curricular policies and how they are translated in secondary education: an analysis based on post-critical theories camila carlachiani1 national university of rosario, argentina introduction the purpose of this paper2 is to analyze the practices that challenge the format of the secondary school3 from the institutional curricular development in the key of inclusion. within the schools there are countless experiences that assume the challenge of transforming the traditional school format of the secondary school in order to achieve the real inclusion of young people for whom the secondary school was not thought, that is: entrance, permanence, learning and graduation in a timely manner. from the year 2006 in argentina, the sanction of the national education law n° 26.206 establishes the compulsory nature of secondary education, thus legitimizing a process that, since the second half of the 20th century, progressively expanded access to this educational level to sectors historically excluded. however, the concretion of the obligatoriness is not an easy task. although there are economic, social, political and cultural conditions to achieve the right to secondary education for all young people in our country, at the micro-institutional level too, there are sediments difficult to move which obturate the aforementioned access and permanence. in spite of this, multiple curricular policies were generated in pursuit of obligatoriness. it is worth noting that this arduous path towards the expansion of rights occurs in dialogue with an intense supra-national process where international organizations such as unesco and latin american countries begin to design policies that point to the compulsory nature of secondary education. thus, the intention of this advance is to analyze, from post-critical perspectives, how the curricular devices developed in secondary schools result from translation processes from the supra to the institutional micro-level (stirling network for curriculum studies, 2016). the institutional development of the secondary school curriculum is studied from a post-critical theoretical approach -which articulates postmodernism, poststructuralism and postcolonialism-, in dialogue with the different levels of curricular policy decisions in the key of translation, conceived from the derridian writings and incorporated into the study of politics through discourse theory. the derridian notion of translation consists of an important theoretical and strategic operator for the analysis of curriculum policies, as far as we understand the context as a system of provisional significance, produced by antagonism and exclusion (laclau, 2011b). working with the notion of translation articulates research with the understanding of the language games or discursive fields that constitute the scenario of the investigation (a text) from threads framed in contingency. it allows to question the undecidability that characterizes the social (casimiro lopes, et. al. 2013). https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index carlachiani. the curricular policies 4 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> it is proposed as a general objective to analyze how institutional curricular devices are designed and developed in secondary schools based on translation processes of curricular policies. in relation to the specific objectives: 1. to investigate how institutional curricular devices dialogue with the curricular policies of the macro and meso levels around inclusion for secondary education. 2. to identify which curricular devices are designed and developed by secondary schools to guarantee compulsory nature and inclusion. 3. to analyze the way in which teaching and evaluation practices are discussed with the curricular devices designed and developed by secondary schools to guarantee compulsory nature and inclusion. 4. to know what is the learning that students build in a school that generates curricular devices trying to guarantee the obligatory nature and inclusion. it should be noted that the scope of this work involves the first two objectives. methodologically, research is developed from an interpretative approach that involves the construction of data from a phenomenological study of social life (taylor and bodgan, 1987). as an analytical map, a theoretical eclecticism is elaborated (navarrete cazales, 2009) that articulates postmodernism, poststructuralism and postcolonialism as tools of intellection. thus the political analysis of discourse (apd) (buenfil burgos, 2012) allows a genealogical reading (morelli, 2016) of curricular policies for secondary education. secondary education: dispute of meanings for some time now, the modern school command of the secondary school with its eminently elitist and propaedeutic stamp is being discussed. in a social context whose technological and scientific advances are taking giant steps, where cultures and regional economies are globalized, the news travels the world at the speed of light and politics transcends the national states, secondary education finds dislocated its goal of origin. in broad terms, it is pertinent to go to the category of school culture developed by viñao (2002) which refers to a set of theories, ideas, principles, norms, guidelines, rituals, inertias, habits and practices (ways of doing and thinking, mentalities and behaviors) settled over time in the form of traditions, regularities and rules of the game not challenged, and shared by their actors, within the educational institutions (p.59). its characteristic features would be continuity and persistence, something that remains and lasts. something that the reforms only manage to scratch superficially, that survives them, and that constitutes a sediment formed over time. if we think about this issue in the field of secondary education, we interpret that many educational reforms have tried to generate some movement in their school format and in their institutional culture. the indicated sediment that little by little was formed a hard core to move, operates constantly in the practices that are developed there whose main effects are exclusion and expulsion towards those young people who do not adapt to its rules. in the words of nóbile (2016): the institutional model of the baccalaureate, with its encyclopedic curriculum, its teacher-student interactions prefigured by means of a recognition of an authority based on disciplinary knowledge and defined by specific notions of respect, shaped an institutional culture to which young people are better suited coming from sectors more related to the school culture, and that, therefore, approach the "normal" student pattern traditionally expected by the secondary, a https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index carlachiani. the curricular policies 5 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> young person fully dedicated to his studies, << respectful >> and << responsible >> (p.122) this expectation towards the type of student that the secondary school and the teachers have is directly related to the elitist, selective and propaedeutic matrix of their origin. however, this did not stop the progress towards the development of policies which extend the access of this educational level to increasingly broad sectors of the population, although it does present certain limits in the possibility of its realization. following benavot (2006), the traditional elitist nature of secondary school has been transformed to the extent that countries apply open access policies, universal reach and establish programs that offer broader curricular subjects. among the main changes that affect such transformation, the author mentions: the expansion of the purposes and objectives of secondary education; its differentiation in basic and superior cycle; the establishment of new selection mechanisms to facilitate their transition from primary education; and the diversification of curricular programs and offers to meet the needs and interests of heterogeneous populations of growing students. in this sense, the years of obligation of this level were progressively extended. in latin america, the '90s meant a great emptying of educational systems due to the installation of neoliberal educational policies. thus, while systems were decentralized, schools received increasingly heterogeneous groups of students for whom the secondary school was not thought or designed. according to gajardo (1999) for its breadth and systematic extension these transformations were categorized as "educational reforms" and corresponded to a more general trend that has been identified as a "wave of reforms" that spread throughout the latin american subcontinent. however, this expansion was accompanied by an important expulsion. claudia jacinto (2009) raises a possible argument about the crisis of the secondary school from its expansion around the extension of the obligatoriness (which produced the arrival of new social sectors); this expansion emerges with its selective matrix whose curriculum was originally of an academic nature. for that reason, some authors affirm that this process of extension of the right and the establishment of compulsory secondary education did not occur without contradictions. as argued by pineau and southwell (2010): paradoxically, this desire to universalize the secondary education occurs simultaneously with a questioning of the school in general and of the secondary school in particular, as a device of cultural transmission and integration of a heterogeneous socio-cultural population. (2010, p.4). in this sense, jacinto and terigi (2007) argue that with the expansion of secondary education there has been a social and cultural diversification of the public that attends to it, which, against the background of broader sociocultural transformations, poses new challenges. a complex social scenario is presented where the political, economic, and cultural dimensions come into play when thinking about the meaning, or the meanings of the current secondary school. it is important to point out that this process does not take place in a vacuum. there is a political and social mesh linked to new conceptions around the right to education that, starting in the 2000s, allows for a change in public policies, hand in hand of center-left governments in latin american countries. this shift is strongly https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index carlachiani. the curricular policies 6 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> linked to the guidelines that the different countries establish worldwide through unesco (united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization) for the development of the education. thus, in the year 2000, the countries of the world committed themselves to develop sustained efforts for education for all (efa). agreements on the need for a common global agenda that would give an unprecedented boost to education began in 1990 with the world declaration on education for all in jomtien, thailand. in 2000, in dakar, senegal, a strategic action framework was built and six concrete objectives were established to be achieved in fifteen years (...) early childhood education and care, universal primary education, youth and adult learning, literacy, gender parity and the quality of education. unesco coordinates and leads international efforts to contribute to these objectives, monitors progress and promotes global, regional and national actions towards its achievement (regional office for education in latin america and the caribbean, unesco, 2013, p.7). it is worth noting at this point, the tensions that develop around the local and the global (ball, 2001) where national policies need to be understood as a product of a nexus of influences and interdependencies that result from an interconnection, multiplicity, hybridization; that is, a combination of global, distant and local logics. in this way, a translation game is produced (casimiro lopes et al., 2013) among the different decision levels of educational policies, from the supra to the nano level (stirling network for curriculum studies, 2016). taking ideas from derrida (1991), casimiro lopes et.al. (2013) emphasize translation as a performance since through it is possible to think of translation not as an option of the subject in front of the text where the world and politics are constituted, but as the possibility of meaning and existing in them. performance is a promise to do something and in that doing recognizes that there is always dissemination escaping attempts to fix the text, politics, rules and the horizon of meaning. thus, the authors focus on translation as an event, as the singular production of a context understood as a structure of positions. in recent decades, the most important transformation in secondary education has consisted in a change from its definition, now seen as a constituent part of the basic education that every citizen should possess, and no longer as an exceptional or privileged situation (regional office of education for latin america and the caribbean, unesco, 2013). it is from this process that different countries in latin america have developed new policies and regulations which in this paper will be analyzed as translations for education in general and secondary school in particular. within the schools there are countless experiences that assume the challenge of transforming the traditional school format of the secondary school in order to achieve the inclusion of young people for whom secondary school was not thought, this is: the entrance, the permanence, the learning and the exit in time and form. institutional dimension to refer to the school format of the secondary school as that difficult core to modify despite the changes and transformations that occur at social, political, economic and cultural level, terigi (2008) elaborates the notion of the iron tripod. this category illustrates the almost unchangeable strength of three key elements that operate in the https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index carlachiani. the curricular policies 7 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> dynamics of secondary school and, often, they present themselves as obstacles when generating transformations in their interior. in the words of the author: "the secondary school was structured around three basic dispositions: the classification of the curricula, the principle of appointment of teachers by specialty and the organization of the teaching work by class hours" (terigi, 2008, p 64). it is an organizational pattern that is difficult to modify, although it is not an impossible task. in this sense, acosta (2012) presents some strategies in order to overcome the exclusionary model of secondary school: a). within the regular offer; b) through alternative models of schooling; c) through the revaluation of the orientation for work. in this way, the type of change required at the secondary level involves a profound transformation in the school format that historically assumed the level (terigi, 2008, p.69). terigi and jacinto (2007) point out that some paths developed from policies and from schools to contribute to the improvement of opportunities for all those who attend secondary school focused first on targeted compensatory policies known as positive discrimination; and later, cross-cutting measures that, assuming positive discrimination, cover all public schools. in our country, there are numerous attempts to generate changes in this sense, through different public policies that we can list in three large groups. in the first place, the institutional improvement plans through which the schools identify their own problems and develop lines of action having as main axis of work the accompaniment to school trajectories. secondly, the creation of alternative education institutions that introduce important modifications to the traditional format of the secondary school, adapting it to the possibilities of the populations it serves. finally, the programs that allow those who owe secondary school subjects reach their degree (nóbile, 2016). jacinto and terigi (2007) warn about the limitations that the strategy focused on the formulation of projects may have to impact on institutional management. first, they point out that the projects focused on the difficulties of the students, generating little reflection on the institutional conditions and teaching processes. secondly, there are many variations in the way in which the projects of the same school conform an articulated institutional proposal or are constituted in a sum of isolated projects. terigi (2015) argues that it is essential to focus on the conditions in which secondary schooling occurs, in particular the issues related to the academic regime, the study, the subjects in block, the attendance day by day. in short, the possibility of defining paths more appropriate to the circumstances of the students. pinkasz (2015) postulates that many of the educational policies developed in recent years for secondary education focus on the school as a unit for the development of change. this means that it is the management and teaching teams that assume the responsibility for school improvement and learning since they are the ones who know the needs of the community. beyond this, the school institution is not only composed of headships and teachers. as stated by santos guerra (2010) "the school is a shared project of the community that develops in a context and a time through the programmed, intentional, and consensual action of all its members" (p. 296). for this consensus to be possible, it is necessary that there are four shared codes: semantic code, ideological code, ethical code and degree code. it is possible to glimpse then, through the aforementioned contributions, that the institutional dimension around what the school offers, seems to be a key point when it comes to guaranteeing the obligatoriness and inclusion at the secondary level. in relation to both notions, bracchi (2014) postulates that the obligation is a cultural battle that https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index carlachiani. the curricular policies 8 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> imposes on the state the responsibility of generating material and symbolic conditions for all young people to access, stay, learn and graduate from secondary school. on the other hand, from a rights perspective, inclusion is a political category that understands young people as subjects with decision-making capacity, with rights and responsibilities to exercise and built citizenship. curricular dimension and teaching the curriculum is one of the elements that make up the iron tripod of the secondary school because it is encyclopedic and therefore anachronistic (terigi, 2012). in addition to this, jacinto and terigi (2007) systematize other problems and criticisms that historically have the curriculum of the secondary school. fragmentation in many subjects (always more than ten), the absence of alternatives for personal choice, the relegation of the interests of adolescents and the problems of the contemporary world, the absence of an orientation towards the development of intellectual abilities and basic practices. thus, the curriculum is questioned because of its effects of a formation of scarce social relevance, in terms of the school's contribution to citizenship, the extension of access to cultural goods, and the insertion in productive activities as well as continuity towards higher education. however, in the face of this critical panorama, the curriculum is specially constituted as the axis of analysis, since, according to what various authors propose, it is a dimension in which some movement could be generated that is appropriate in relation to the student's learning. for this, jacinto and terigi (2007) ask themselves what relevant changes the current structure of the curriculum supports without subjecting it to major transformations. the authors postulate that it is possible to introduce new components in the curriculum that allow the incorporation of absent topics in current curricula, and that open some possibilities to choose in the training of students as well as review the relevance of the contents. another way, through which it would be possible to offer spaces that grant new senses when being, inhabiting, and going through secondary school, is to establish the criterion of contemporaneity in teaching (gurevich, 2009). the aim is to offer students a framework of meaning between individual lives and the context of the time, taking into account the materiality of new resources and technological objects; and the particular subjectivities that occur through the multiple symbols and representations present in the daily life of our days. in the words of the author: if we think plural cultures, plural territories, plural societies, we must transmit to students multiple and diverse logics, preferences and points of view of the individual and collective subjects that permanently model and build the different textualities of the world (gurevich, 2009, p.25). in relation to this, it is feasible to go to the contributions of josé de la luz sánchez tepatzi (2011), who analyzes the meanings of value that students assign to secondary school through the school experience. to do this, he points out how the formal curriculum is translated into a relevant school experience and how such a meaning influences school permanence. it also resignifies certain traditional indicators postulating that school dropout, failure and terminal efficiency are not indicators that account for educational quality since they do not offer elements that explain the mastery of knowledge. because of this, they could be considered indicators of coverage, because they only offer information about the number of people who enter, remain and graduate. in this sense, the idea of relevant school experience and the resignification of the indicators are extremely powerful to think and analyze the relationship of young people with the school. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index carlachiani. the curricular policies 9 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> theoretical eclecticism: postmodernism, poststructuralism and postcolonialism the theoretical map from which this paper is developed takes and articulates three post-critical currents that collaborate in the deepening and analysis of curricular policies in secondary education: postmodernism, poststructuralism and postcolonialism. firstly, we start from understanding the curriculum as a complicated conversation (pinar, 2014) that links past, present and future experiences. at the same time, being a symbolic construct, its study requires placing it historically, socially and autobiographically. in this sense, the curriculum-society relationship is inherent in curricular research. we locate this relationship in the context of the generalized structural crisis (de alba, 2007) that is presented as a "melting pot of unprecedented opportunities to contribute in different ways to the task of transforming reality towards a better world" (de alba, 2007, p.104). in this framework, the possibility of constructing social contours (de alba, 2007) towards new figures of the world is presented as the great challenge for secondary education in the present century. in the transition between the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, we witness an economic, social, political and cultural change that dislocates the structures from which modernity was built. in the face of disbelief towards metanarratives, lyotard (1991) asks: where can legitimation reside after these? and he formulates the following hypothesis: “knowledge changes its status at the same time that societies enter the so-called post-industrial age and cultures in the so-called postmodern age” (p.6). in this way, scientific knowledge no longer enjoys hegemony but is a way of knowing more, among others, such as cultural, generational, experiential knowledge, etc. secondly, it is interesting to draw lines of analysis from poststructuralism since it throws horizons of intellection to which it is not possible to arrive with modern and universalist categories. from a foucaultian reading, one of the topics of study of poststructural discourse in educational research is the analysis of power-knowledge relations in teaching-learning practices (montserrat, 2003). following martinez (2010), it is important and necessary to recognize different types of links often asymmetric among childhoods with practices, knowledge, languages and diverse experiences in the school space, since it allows to display critical views and strategies that can make possible educational processes that refer to knowledge relationships and the possibility of dialogue between these diverse ways of knowing, understanding, feeling, imagining, acting and learning (martínez, 2010, p.12). in this way, poststructuralism pays attention to the local, partial and multiple, and can contribute to generate understandings of the contradictory dynamics of the lives of teachers and students (montserrat, 2003). faced with this scenario it is necessary to consider curricular policies as those discourses that, through translations (casimiro lopes, et.al., 2013), generate and promote teaching and learning practices from the supra to the nano level (stirling network for curriculum studies, 2016). it is worth pointing out, as stated by casimiro lopes et.al. (2013), that every translation is an original production, an event. following badiou (2013): an event is something that makes a certain possibility appear that was invisible before, or even unthinkable. an event is not by itself a creation of reality. it is the creation of a possibility, it opens a https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index carlachiani. the curricular policies 10 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> possibility. it shows us that there is a possibility that was ignored (...) creates a possibility, but then a job is needed, collective at the level of politics ... so that this possibility becomes real (p.21). it is important then, to analyze what events in terms of possibilities in secondary education are given in the curricular micro level, recognizing the aforementioned translation games. the supra level is composed of educational and curricular policies disseminated by international organizations such as unesco, the world bank, the oecd, etc. these are organizations that go beyond the limits of the states and design worldwide policies for education. then, the macro level corresponds to the areas of design and political decision within the framework of each national state or country. the meso level is linked to the jurisdictions that within a state politically organize the territory. in argentina, for example, the meso level corresponds to the provincial jurisdictions. following this route from the supra to the nano level, we find the micro level, which refers to the decisions and actions that are carried out within the educational institutions. finally, at the nano level, we refer to the classroom, as the concrete area in which political decisions are materialized through the concrete work of teachers (carlachiani, 2017). following morelli (2017) the construction of discourse on curricular policies is understood as that production that establishes discursive relations and articulations among decision levels supra, macro, and meso, that far from built linear and harmonic relationships, show the conflictive plot of the curriculum. from this perspective, the framework of curricular policies is recognized, recognizing the subjects of the curriculum and the possibility of intervening in them. the global/local (ball, 2001); universal/particular tension goes through the analysis. in this global/local tension, education as a field of knowledge and practices is disrupted, according to orozco fuentes (2011), by a double tendency: a push for educational reforms on international, regional, national and local scales that international organizations and promote to guide educational innovations towards quality. on the other hand, the emergence of such innovations in institutions: curricular changes and new forms of knowledge production through networks. with this double tendency, an accelerated incorporation of knowledge of operational type is promoted, which limits the capacity of critical judgment and the recovery of subjectivities. in this sense, the analysis of knowledge since foucault reveals the knowledge-power relations that are played in a typology of disciplinary and operational knowledge (orozco fuentes, 2011). given this situation and following this theoretical line, the author states that: it opens the possibility of looking at the school and educational practice as spaces where the processes of appropriation of knowledge allow a different view of history, of the language practices with which subjects are formed in the disciplines, in the school; and where the curriculum can be thought of as a technology for the production of new knowledge, new knowledge that is not reduced only to a commodity but is strengthened through an articulation with history, and with the social and cultural effects that constitute the subjects. (orozco fuentes, 2011, pp. 49-50). thus, it is possible to consider the production of curricular devices as what seeks to generate the construction and appropriation of knowledge by students. the notion of https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index carlachiani. the curricular policies 11 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> curricular devices is used in this research as an intermediate category (buenfil burgos, 2007). its meaning lies in being a figure of intellection of intermediate scope, an analytical image that joins the theoretical generality with the historical particularity. it produces lines of connection between the critical apparatus and the empirical referent of research. in other words, it is an analytical tool that depends on its relation to the object under construction and does not have its own positivity or autonomy. in the framework of this research, the curricular devices refer to the material way in which the secondary school guarantees inclusion. these are discursive constructions that produce practices where students are listened to and their interests are lodged in the school proposal. the curricular devices tie knowledge, relations of power, and produce subjectivities. they articulate what is said and what is not said, which is also discursive. these are practices that perforate the elite, academic, encyclopaedic and propaedeutic school mandate of the secondary school because they alter the discipline of the bodies allowing the agency of the subjects. crossed by global/local tension, its configuration is local and particular since each school creates curricular devices according to its context, resources, needs, objectives, ways of being of the subjects that inhabit it. at the same time, from a global point of view, its implementation responds to the imperative of social inclusion from the compulsory nature of secondary education and the maintenance of education as a right. in recent years, discourses on inclusion in curricular policies aimed at secondary education have expanded throughout latin america. however, innumerable investigations show that the development of this imperative is given by deepening inequalities. dussel (2004) gives us a powerful question to address this problem: if we wish to think and question the causes of a persistent and widespread social and educational injustice, we should probably begin by questioning this "story about inclusion," that is, the narrative which holds that the expansion of the modern school system is the only way, and the best, to illustrate the people and democratize societies (...) in what school system do we want to include everyone? is it not the current organization of the school that has produced a large part of the exclusions? how can this institution be re-examined, preserving the dream of educating everyone but avoiding reproducing the same injustices? (pp.306-307). based on this, the author affirms that the equivalence between equality and homogenization resulted in the freezing of differences as a threat or as a deficiency. the same and the other ceased to be mobile and contingent concepts to appear as ontological properties of unquestionable and immovable human groups. this is the basic pattern with which the school processed the differences. it is possible, in the third place, to make a reading of the school and school practices as a construction of colonial modernity. mignolo (2000) points out that the configuration of modernity in europe and of coloniality in the rest of the world was the hegemonic image based on the coloniality of power that makes it difficult to think that there can not be modernity without coloniality; that coloniality is constitutive of modernity. thus, “modernity, colonialism, world-system and capitalism are aspects of the same simultaneous and mutually constitutive reality” (dussel, 2000, p.58). castro gómez (2000) postulates that modernity is a machine that generates alterities that, in the name of reason and humanism, promotes exclusion processes from its imaginary the hybridity, multiplicity, ambiguity and contingency of concrete life forms. thus it was https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index carlachiani. the curricular policies 12 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> erected on a device of power that built the other through a binary logic that repressed differences. in this framework, the production of absences could be thought of as the operation that made this concealment of differences possible. it is, following hermida (2015), a discourse that displayed techniques and processes to leave out that someone or something had to be silenced. hermida points out (2015) that they are not absences of those who decided to get off the story but are produced by the coloniality of power in order to establish a certain order. thus, absences are not natural faults but positive productions. each absence hides a will to absent that produced it. at the same time, all absence structures its field in dynamic tension with a presence. the absent is that which is not, but at the same time is, evoked as absence. we must ask ourselves, then, what are the absences produced in current secondary education in terms of subjects, knowledge and practices? from this path, the notions and proposals that postmodernism, poststructuralism and postcolonialism offer to carry out a postcritical analysis of curricular policies around secondary education were unfolded. thus, the threads of a plot are woven, a plot that operates as an intellection tool through what navarrete cazales (2009) calls theoretical eclecticism. construction of methodological and analytical tools this research is developed from an interpretative logic that involves how to construct data from a phenomenological study of social life (taylor and bodgan, 1987). the theoretical map from which the problem of constructed research is studied, takes and articulates three post-critical currents that collaborate in the deepening and analysis of curricular policies in secondary education: postmodernism, poststructuralism and postcolonialism. thus a theoretical eclecticism is constructed, understood as an analytical way to look at the social reality (navarrete cazales, 2009). it involves three aspects: it allows to recognize the advances that different disciplines have developed; that recognition does not imply recovering all the advances or "the best", but only what is useful for the elaboration of the new theory; and, of what is useful there must always be a careful, rigorous, permanent and consistent epistemic vigilance. both the theories and the disciplines are interwoven, interrelated, woven with threads of different precedence where the weaver is responsible for the harmony of the colors and the combinatory of textures. thus, the political analysis of discourse (pad) is fertile as a horizon of intellection as it borrows a series of categories that function as analytical tools for the constitution and functioning of social discursivities. such theoretical eclecticism makes it possible to approach the discursive subject more broadly, historically, multireferentially, always maintaining in such an analytical operation an epistemological surveillance that takes care to make an adequate, consistent and productive use of these tools. the pad should not be seen as a theory or a method but as an analytic, a form of intellection of reality (navarrete cazares, 2009). the theory of discourse is a perspective that expresses interest in the political dimension of a meaning, by the partial fixations of the meanings constructed in the written part, what has been said, the acts, objects and social relations. "the genealogical question, how do we get here? is combined with the question of the event, what is happening?” (morelli, 2016, p.61). https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index carlachiani. the curricular policies 13 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> from this positioning, by methodology we do not understand exclusively the collection of information but a whole process of articulation and permanent adjustment in three areas: a. a theoretical dimension that involves the search for consistency between at least three levels: that of the ontological and epistemological principles, the one concerning the construction of a conceptual support body and the one that furnishes a support in intellection logics. b. the documented empirical reference composed of the corpus, which includes various material supports (printed, pictorial, video recordings, etc.) in varied codes (linguistic, iconic) and that involves both the process to be analyzed and the conditions in which it was produced. c. the researcher's questions also involve knowledge, albeit minimal, of the problem field and what has been researched about it. in this process of tension and permanent articulation the empirical reference participates together with the theoretical reference and the questions of the researcher in the construction of the object of study. it is not confused with the reality or the empirical reference, but it is recognized as a hybrid that involves traces of the subjectivity of the researcher, inscriptions of the historical particularity of the empirical reference and marks of the theoretical assembly (buenfil burgos, 2012). the aim is then to carry out a genealogical study of curricular policies in secondary education, recognizing in their discourse the subjects and their biographies. to this end, the construction of a methodology that allows the recognition of the curriculum actors as pedagogical subjects, of the discursive regularities, of the relations between the curriculum and society and of knowledge-power relations in the curricular languages is promoted (morelli, 2016). fieldwork is carried out through interviews with different institutional actors such as management teams, teachers, preceptors and tutors. following taylor and bodgan (1987) it is important to point out that in the interview special attention must be paid to what is important in the minds of the informants: their meanings, perspectives and definitions; the way they see, classify and experience their world. the means to carry out the autobiographical study is currere, which in latin corresponds to the verb of the noun curriculum, which means to follow a path or program. make the curriculum, tour it, walk it, experience it, live it. it emphasizes action, process and experience (garcía garduño, 2014). taking pinar (2014) as the main reference in introducing biographical studies in the field of curricular research, we point out that currere refers to the existential experience of institutional structures. the currere method is a strategy designed to reveal the experience and show it more clearly. the currere method consists of four phases: 1. regressive; 2. progressive; 3. analytical; 4. synthetic. for pinar (2014) there can be no reconstruction of the social without the knowledge of one's own subjectivity. currere is the method by which teachers and students could study the relationships between school knowledge, life history and subjective meaning to function self-transformatively. at this point, we take the notion of biographical space (arfuch, 2002) as a horizon of intelligibility that allows a transversal, symbolic, cultural and political reading of the narratives of the self in the contemporary scene. it gives an account of the multiplicity, place of confluence and circulation. according to this author, the so-called biographical methods, whose recourse to interviewing is almost obligatory, occupy a predominant position in qualitative research, in tune with the interest in the voice and experience of the subjects and with the testimonial emphasis. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index carlachiani. the curricular policies 14 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> the analysis of documents (sautu, 2005) and the photographic record (serrano, 2008) are also strategies that collaborate in the construction of the data. it is worth mentioning that images can be approached as texts, or as components of texts, which in their relations with other texts, make up discourses that, in turn, in their structured relationships, constitute systems of discourses. in addition, the image has an effect that can not reproduce a written text and that connects with the emotional (serrano, 2008). recovering the contributions of barthes, serrano (2008) also points out that photography not only shows that it has been, but also shows what it has been. it shows details that might even go unnoticed in direct observation. it moves, opens the dimension of memory, of emotion, is capable of causing nostalgia and combining pleasure and pain. the unit of analysis of the present investigation is a public secondary school of the city of rosario that is located in the downtown area and whose students come from peripheral neighborhoods. this school has an enrollment between the first and fifth year, as well as low rates of repetition and over-age. the institutional micro level as a translation of curricular policies we arrived at this section with the purpose of developing an analysis of what happens at the institutional micro level in terms of curricular devices. an attempt is made to see which practices are carried out at the school level as translations of the macro and meso curricular policies. in the first place it should be noted that we take as a fundamental document of the macro level in argentina the national education law 26.206/06 that establishes the compulsory nature of secondary education based on education as a right and knowledge as a public good. with this normative background, different resolutions of the federal education council (fec) synthesize and give comprehensiveness to the policies in order to achieve the objective of mandatory: resolution cfe 84/09 "political and strategic guidelines of compulsory secondary education"; cfe resolution 88/09 "institutionality and strengthening of compulsory secondary education: jurisdictional plans and institutional improvement plans (iip)"; resolution cfe 93/09 "guidelines for the pedagogical and institutional organization of the compulsory secondary school"; resolution cfe 103/10 "federal guidelines for student mobility in compulsory education"; resolution cfe 102/10 "proposals for inclusion and/or regularization of school trajectories in secondary education". within this normative framework, the iip (institutional improvement plans) become an instrument for the educational proposal of the secondary level to be displayed in multiple concretions with roots and institutional sense. this program consists of a national public policy through which the state transfers resources to the provinces and schools to implement modifications to the traditional high school model incorporating variations in its academic organization (pinkasz, 2015) in order to accompany to the trajectories of students who are in situations of school risk. thus, various actions are proposed related to: organizing interdisciplinary teaching proposals; generating socio-community proposals; complementary activities. it is also suggested the alternative of offering academic tutorials (optional non-curricular support classes) for those students who need to recover learning, perform accompaniment, etc. to carry out this task, the national state transfers funds to the provinces to form territorial technical teams and, in addition, hire professors (academic tutors) who join the institutional team and work in an articulated manner with the teaching professors. the program began in 2010 with 50% of schools throughout the country, and in 2011 it was extended to the rest. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index carlachiani. the curricular policies 15 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> in a paper by terigi et al (2013), some interesting characteristics of the iip are reflected and it is stated that it has some potential to promote changes in the traditional organizational matrix since it extends the time of certain teachers in the school, allowing to perform new roles (e.g. tutors); it supposes a possibility to extend the time in the school on the part of the student; promotes the incorporation of new teachers in the school, even in a transitory way; allows a more personalized work with the students who attend the support classes. however, one of the risks it points to is linked to the fact that the innovation promoted by the iip operates within the framework of the conditions of schooling of the standard secondary school, and for this reason it is possible that the transforming purpose of the proposal could be diluted. on the other hand, in the meso level, the complete secondary program is developed in the province of santa fe, starting in 2016, whose main purpose is the integral accompaniment of the school trajectories of the students trying to guarantee the obligatory nature of the level and with it, the right to education. it works on the design of craft trajectories involving teachers, families, and students in order for them to enter, remain, learn, and graduate from high school. thus, the collective construction of learning is expected, whose social relevance will give them a quality education. within this framework, they design and develop the so-called accompaniment spaces. these are not a parallel option that works within the same school building. these are not isolated projects that some students attend. nor are they support classes or activities unrelated to the institutional project. “when we talk about spaces of accompaniment, we refer to those places and times inside and outside the school where students transit and develop their trajectories. the classroom, the library, the patio, virtual instances, the multipurpose room, the music room, arts, languages, the attended course or out-of-school hours; they are spaces and times where teaching and learning are carried out through different pedagogical proposals, with different resources to carry out activities, using multiple languages” (csp, 2016). within the schools, different pedagogical proposals are elaborated to craft design and develop singular school trajectories according to the following axes whose approach can be face-to-face and/or virtual: links and coexistence; relationship school and families; dimension discipline in relation to the learning of the contents; organization for the study and construction of learning strategies; extra curricular activities (academic and sports olympics, science fair, un, art, etc.). now, it is worth asking then, how are these macro and meso policies translated to the micro institutional level? in the school taken as a unit of analysis it is possible to glimpse features linked to: understand education and the compulsory nature of secondary school as a right; generate spaces and times that allow the diverse journey of school trajectories; promote teaching and learning with interdisciplinarity; enhance the relationship of the school with the community and other social institutions. when describing how this school is, one of the interviewees, member of the management team of the institution, says: “i could describe it with a word: it is inclusive. we make everything possible so that the children enter and remain inside the institution. they are followed up. we have tutors, facilitators from first to fifth year (...) each course has a teacher who is its reference. and that teacher knows each student and their family reality.” the same is reflected in the institutional project: “the school assumes the responsibility of including them, ensuring their entrance and permanence. the challenge is to guarantee learning with quality.” for this, innumerable strategies are displayed that are reported in the interviews: “the students come from the western zone in their majority. they come with many shortages in terms of not talking with their families. and here at https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index carlachiani. the curricular policies 16 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> the school they find a listening place. that makes the kids stay and have confidence inside the school.” (interview 1). the opening of the school to the voice of the students is an important feature when it comes to strengthening the bond with them. on the other hand, the work of the teachers constitutes another important element. this is stated by the vicedirector: “the teachers are very predisposed and we see it in the plenary sessions and with every project that is presented from the school they immediately start working. it's like the issue of inclusion is already institutionalized. there are 150 teachers.” in addition, communication among institutional actors also seems to be a key point of the institutional dimension. “we have a fluid communication in the management team. we meet once a week. it is our moment of meeting and reunion. the pedagogical adviser is also part of the management team. beyond the shifts, the school is one. and we are internalized of everything that happens at school. the teachers have told us that they see us as a block. that word they told us. and also, we work as a team. we as a management team and teachers too. many collaborate. there is a lot of teamwork. i think it is the only way: collaboration and dialogue.” another important aspect besides listening, communication and teamwork is the curricular and teaching dimension. it could be said that in this institution it is one of the central lines since it is impossible to work towards inclusion without taking into account the quality of education, understanding it as the relevance of the knowledge that the school teaches. “for teaching we use the icc, interdisciplinary core content. then in different subjects a specific topic is taken and it is worked interdisciplinarily. projects, workshops, exhibitions are made. the boys are the ones with the most potential. many times we are amazed at the results.” it is worth clarifying that the interdisciplinary core content is an educational policy of the meso level that aims to strengthen institutional curricular development. it is a methodological proposal for teaching with interdisciplinarity based on social problems understood as an event. the icc are an unconventional way of thinking about the curriculum. their assembly is made based on social and cultural issues located as an event; and their design, implementation and evaluation is carried out from an interdisciplinary perspective of knowledge to be taught (scientific, artistic, technological, cultural) that are configured from an interdisciplinary logic. working with icc allows starting from regional problems that generate inventive attitudes on the part of the students; promotes technological scientific literacy in the educational field; fosters collaborative attitudes in all the institutional actors; improves the teaching of science; generates encounters, debates and construction of senses; awakens critical spirit and curiosity; allows the social appropriation of sciences, arts and technology favouring the integral formation of the students. it strengthens their communication skills through the exchange of educational experiences and brings the school closer to the community. it is proposed to take as a starting point regional problems typical of the contexts inhabited by the students that lead to the approach of school contents of the curricular spaces that make up the institutional educational proposal. it is expected that from each curricular space, the disciplines make contributions to the approach of the social problematic raised constituting icc and thus enabling the debate, exchange and construction of meanings, which would allow the invention of creative and innovative responses by the students. returning to the micro-institutional level, the school designs and implements various curricular devices that are explicit in their project. for students with dissimilar socio-emotional-cultural problems, the school offers specific pedagogical paths with the agreement of the families. the pedagogical advising teacher organizes attendance https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index carlachiani. the curricular policies 17 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> schedules and activities to be completed. in some cases the student goes through different courses, hours of accompaniment and classes with the laboratory assistants. the parent or guardian is summoned to inform him/her of the performance of his/her child and reinforce the concept of mandatory high school. then an agreement record is signed with the days and schedules that the student must complete, in another space of the school, not in the classroom, with a small group of students and with reduced hours. for students who need accreditation of previous curricular spaces, the school proposes the elaboration of an evaluation/accreditation plan for the pending spaces between august and december/march. it is suggested that the professors specify with the students an evaluation/accreditation plan where the evaluation criteria of the curricular spaces are discussed and agreed upon. a terminality project is also developed that consists of summoning students who finished high school in 2015-2016 and owe the approval of curricular spaces. it is proposed to transit a pedagogical path in order to accredit these spaces. a blended modality agreed with the professors of the different curricular spaces is suggested. a youth activities center (yac) also operates at the school. this device, which is also the product of macro and meso politics, is incorporated into pedagogical paths, since students transit through photography, theatre and multimedia spaces in order to accredit art education. the place and activities developed by the student center is also an interesting mechanism where student participation is encouraged, allowing students to experience politics at school through democratic coexistence. in order to carry out all the actions described, teamwork is key, as mentioned by one of the interviewees above. this is reflected in the institutional project as a key strategy: the need to form a community of practice. quoting wenger (1998), it is explicit that a community of practice is more than a teamwork, it is a group that is constituted to develop specialized knowledge, share experiences based on joint reflection. the result is professional enrichment in order to improve the practices. the strategy includes the formation of the community of practice, which will review the pedagogical practices through self-training and co-training. it incorporates a plan of observation between peers and spaces for reflection on these practices to work on the redesign of classroom proposals. it is worth noting that this community does not only involve the management team and the teachers, but also other institutional actors who share the task. thus, it is described that preceptors work daily in monitoring students, they are the first listeners, and through their task, members of the management team notice problematic situations. through them, families are called to commit them in the continuity of the pedagogical path. the secretariat staff deals with situations of mobility, follow-up and updating of documentation, complementing the task of inclusion. the librarians work daily to support the students, and they chart the flexibility of time and space since alternative pedagogical trajectories transit in that place. as a result of all this intense institutional work, one of the interviewees stated: “the results we are having lately is due to the work of many years. the enrollment is maintained from the entrance to the exit (...) the inclusive school goes beyond the pedagogical. it seems to me that listening, understanding the student, seeing the environment from he/she is coming, the reality that he/she has... and that many of us have seen that the school is the only place where they can talk and ask us for help and when we give that help and we try to do what we can, and we understand that they are teenagers and we do not see them as enemies, but we see them as mere teenagers. our head is open to see beyond.” https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index carlachiani. the curricular policies 18 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> we see in this last fragment multiple dimensions and strategies condensed, which the school sets in motion and we understand -in this workas curricular devices. these are not only based on the knowledge of the teachers, but also the voice of the students, the leadership of the management team, the collaboration of tutors, secretaries and librarians, the permanent relationship with the families. the institutional micro level is thus constituted in the space and time that makes possible the concretion of the curricular policies of the macro and meso level. it is in the particular, local that does not lose sight of the global, where inclusion is a fact and the right to education a reality. conclusion the post-critical perspectives presented offer a new lens to analyze the way in which the curricular devices of micro-level perforate the founding mandate of the secondary school, promoting inclusion processes, where the particularities of each trajectory are recognized without losing sight of the collective meaning of the educational task. the recognition of the framework that is built between the biographies of the subjects that inhabit the school and the institutional life is what we call curriculum as a complicated conversation (pinar, 2014). the translation processes make it possible to visualize how each level of macro, meso and micro political decision-making assumes the imperative of compulsory nature whose meanings are materialized in the school through curricular devices that, in an articulated way, promote interpellations to the traditional school format, producing modifications in two central dimensions: institutional logics and teaching practices. with respect to the first, it is possible to notice that the axes on which it is built involve: the team of teachers understood as a community of practice, the design and accompaniment of alternative trajectories and the recognition of the voice and participation of students in institutional decisions. in relation to the second, interdisciplinary teaching proposals and the youth activities center enable the construction of new meanings on learning in school through the incorporation of other knowledge of culture -which goes beyond scientific knowledgesuch as the arts, experiences, expression, photography, etc. it should also be noted that the dialogue among different institutional actors, a strong imprint of the headship team in its leadership role and the imperative of inclusion appear, in the school analyzed, as the conditions that make it possible to enter, stay, learn and the graduation of secondary education. it is possible to analyze how the eurocentric, homogenizing and colonialist knot of the modern school is dislocated by these practices, that enable the possibility of differences to be accommodated and coexist in school building heterogeneous subjectivities and enabling the deployment of singular and contingents school trajectories. thus, the translation imposes irremovable limits that make it impossible for the translator / agent / subject to maintain and reproduce a supposed "original" intention of the text (casimiro lopes et al., 2013). the discourses about the compulsory nature of secondary education in latin america -as analyzed at the beginning of this articleare constructed in a plot that at times shows certain agreements and points in common -such as the imperative of its obligatory naturebut the ways in which this takes place are materialized in different and particular curricular policies, as the case analyzed. secondary education deserves to rethink new curricular, pedagogical and didactic formats with other educational times and spaces to promote relevant learning and socially significant knowledge according to the challenges of this millennium. in this way, an attempt was made to unravel and show the multiple dimensions and strategies that, in the https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index carlachiani. the curricular policies 19 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> key of translation between the supra, macro, meso and micro levels configure curricular devices through which the school sets in motion various alternatives to guarantee the obligatory nature and promote inclusion processes in secondary education. notes 1 camilacarlachiani@gmail.com 2 this paper constitutes an advance of the master's thesis entitled: "curricular devices in secondary school. an analysis from post-critical perspectives”. 3 in argentina secondary school corresponds to the level of the educative system calls secondary education. there assist people from 13 to 17 years old after complete the primary education. references achili, e. 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(2012). sobre la cuestión curricular en la educación secundaria. en: tenti fanfani (coord.). la escolarización de los adolescentes: desafíos culturales, pedagógicos y de política educativa. buenos aires: iipe unesco. terigi, f. (2015). conversación con flavia terigi. la inclusión en la escuela media ante la persistencia del modelo escolar tradicional. en: diálogos del siteal, oei, unesco. terigi, f. y jacinto, c. (2007). ¿qué hacer ante las desigualdades en la educación secundaria?: aportes de la experiencia latinoamericana. buenos aires: unescoiipe santillana. unesco. oficina regional de educación para américa latina y el caribe (2013). situación educativa de américa latina y el caribe: hacia la educación de calidad para todos al 2015. santiago de chile: ediciones del imbunche. unesco. oficina regional de educación para américa latina y el caribe. (2005). educación secundaria en la región: ¿dónde estamos y hacia dónde vamos? vega, a. (2017). el concepto de dispositivo en m. foucault. su relación con la microfísica y el tratamiento de la multiplicidad. en: nuevo itinerario. revista digital de filosofía. septiembre 2017. pp. 136-158. viñao, a. (2002). sistemas educativos, culturas escolares y reformas. continuidades y cambios. madrid: morata. voyame, a. (2015). el dispositivo y el sujeto. en: revista astrolabio. núm. 14. conicet. unc. submitted: january, 20th, 2019. approved: july, 17th, 2019. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index microsoft word hasebe-ludt & jordan final.doc to cite this article please include all of the following details: hasebe-ludt, erika & jordan, nané (eds.). (2010). “may we get us a heart of wisdom”: life writing across knowledge traditions. transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> “may we get us a heart of wisdom”: life writing across knowledge traditions erika hasebe-ludt & nané jordan university of lethbridge & university of british columbia (special issue editors) opening as educators and researchers in faculties of education at five canadian universities, we are committed to life writing research that seeks to understand what it means to be human in the contemporary world, to act responsibly and to live dialogically in the world.i we are motivated by the belief that “the inner beauty of each and every human being is…at the heart of all true education and at the heart of being human” (vanier, 1998, p. 23). drawing from literary, poetic, artistic, indigenous, feminist spiritual, and other related epistemological and wisdom traditions, we advocate auto/biographical, life writing inquiry as a way to reach into the heart of wisdom (richardson, 1994). we seek to integrate through life writing inner and outer knowledge to cultivate a reciprocal wisdom and worldliness that enables life and the young to go on (arendt, 1958). cultivating wisdom expands notions of knowledge beyond instrumental, logo-centric objectifications of such. we write and live towards ontological and epistemological positions of being in the world truthfully, ethically, mindfully, and compassionately (spretnak, 1991). david g. smith writes that in the taoist tradition, there is indeed a way of life that leads to wisdom. it is very difficult to discern and requires great discipline of heart and mind, or heart-mind….the practice of the way—and here the key word is practice, as one never quite reaches the goal completely, finally—leads to an awareness of how the smallest details of life play into the largest consequences of effects, and that it is therefore highly important to maintain vigilance over the details of one’s conduct, because how we got to here, today, depends on what happened yesterday…. (smith, 2008, p. 3) life writing, as a practice and “a way” to pay attention to one’s conduct, attends to the details and moments of lived and local experiences of educators and students; it provides “a means of reflecting with a view towards action” (tompkins, 1998, p. 129). we agree with susan griffin that identity is “less an assertion of independence than an experience of interdependence” (1995, p. 91) and, therefore, “for each of us, as for every community, village, tribe, nation, the story we tell ourselves is crucial to who we are, who we are becoming” (p. 152). as part of interpretive research traditions, life writing and life histories are situated within a hermeneutical circle, opening up “unending dialogues” (gadamer, 1985) that circulate between the text, author, reader, and the world. in this way, life writing seeks to understand the wisdom that resides in an auto/biographical text. it is suited to the cultivation of what is always and already a “worldly” hasebe-ludt & jordan: “may we get us a heart of wisdom” transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 2 and embodied praxis, situated in specific texts and places—landscapes (urban, rural, and other), classrooms, homes, exiles, etc. when writing our lived and living stories (kadar, warley, perreault, & egan, 2005), we acknowledge multiple identities and the ways that these identities are constructed and shaped in language, race, class, culture, ethnicity, gender, and other social and political descriptors, as well as in old and new knowledge traditions, ideologies, and ontologies (lionnet, 1989). as kelly (1997) explains: a notion of autobiography as readings of selves positioned within a larger textuality insists that this larger textuality be interrogated for ways in which we read and are (culturally) read to, for the ways in which we have learned to look and the ways in which we are looked at. (pp. 65-66) in our life writing, we are committed to promoting emancipatory projects of learning and teaching by attending to the ways that life writing constantly explores, contests, and negotiates the imaginative possibilities of knowing and being in the world. life writing is always both personal and public; there is no separating the personal from the public. according to deleuze & parnet (1986), the aim of writing is life, and to achieve a non-personal power that moves beyond empowering an individual self. this applies to a concept of wisdom which involves ethical and sound judgement and just actions for the common good based on (life) experiences (bauman, 1993; habermas, 1990). wisdom, particularly in indigenous epistemologies, has an intimate relationship with place and requires a situated knowledge of one’s surroundings and relationship with them (basso, 1996; jardine, 1998; mcleod, 1998). like seamus heaney (1995), “[we] wish…to suggest that images and stories of the kind [we are] invoking here do function as bearers of value” (p. 22) and may indeed get us a heart of wisdom and contribute to significant matters of educational quality through mindful curriculum inquiry. in our collaborative writing and research, we aim to create and model a sense of a commons that is indicative of the kind of literacy and curriculum that we believe teachers and students need to be proficient in so they can live well with each other in the classrooms and the communities they dwell in. this commons is characterized by a sustained loving attention to each others’ stories in relation to the histories and mythologies of the places each of us lives in. we use métissage both as a research approach and a literary praxis that invites writers to braid strands of their own writing with that of others. métissage, as we have come to define it in a canadian context, is a mixing and a rapprochement of differences: race, culture, class, gender, geography, and language (chambers, hasebe-ludt, donald, hurren, leggo, & oberg, 2008). originally, cultural and literary studies scholars and writers such as françoise lionnet (1989) and édouard glissant (2007) used the concept in the caribbean creole geo-cultural and linguistic context to work with ideas of mixed identities, languages, and notions of space and place. in our own work across canadian scholarly and literary landscapes, the sign and signifier of métis are particularly appropriate considering canada’s historical and colonial context, which involves and indicates the mixing of indigenous and french or other european racial identities (saul, 2008). the word origin of métissage comes from the latin mixticius, meaning the weaving of a cloth from different fibres (mish, 1990). in greek mythology metis was an ancient titaness, the primordial figure of wisdom, descended from gaia and uranus. she was eventually married and swallowed by zeus (graves, 1955/1980). metis was also a figure of skill and craft, and of cunning, a trickster with powers of transformation who resisted notions of purity by weaving and blurring textiles (harper, 2001). métissage, derived from these origins, is thus an artful craft and hasebe-ludt & jordan: “may we get us a heart of wisdom” transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 3 practice, an active literary and pedagogical strategy for negotiating conflicting or dichotomous value systems, a political praxis that might also uncover the swallowed wisdom of lost or forgotten origins. it is a way through which researchers and writers can reformulate understandings of self and other in ways that are meaningful and appropriate for our times (lionnet, 1998; 2001). the method of métissage, as appropriated in poststructural/postcolonial and curriculum theory as well as pedagogical contexts, encourages genuine exchange, sustained engagement, and the tracing of “mixed and multiple identities” in the “messy threads of relatedness and belonging” (hasebe-ludt, chambers, & leggo, 2009). the essays that follow were originally written for a 2009 aera conference symposium and performed by the authors as an oral and visual métissage, with janet miller as respondent.ii the content of the individual strands has been adapted and extended into fuller essays for this special issue of transnational curriculum inquiry. similar to the conference symposium, we have shaped the métissage here in textual form by introducing and illuminating the themes that have emerged from our life writing praxis. we perform this writing by juxtaposing our stories and our images, emulating the act of weaving them together to become strands of a braid. the stories and images come from different parts of canada, east and west, and many points in between. they represent different geographies and ecologies. we invite you to read, listen, and look—to braid the strands in your own mind and heart through an embodied engagement with them—and to let the stories seep into your life, resonate with your own living curriculum, and perhaps inform your writing too; for, as thomas king reminds us, the truth about stories is that that’s all we are (king, 2003). notes i this research has been supported by the social sciences and humanities research council of canada with studies entitled rewriting literacy curriculum in canadian cosmopolitan schools. (standard research grant #410-2007-2313) and ulukhaktok literacies project (northern research development grant #851-2004-0009). we would like to thank all authors in this issue for their contributions and collaboration in this series of essays. we especially acknowledge carl leggo for his meticulous attention in pulling together the many threads of our weaving. ii “may we get us a heart of wisdom”: life writing across knowledge traditions. symposium, documentary and biographical research sig, annual conference of the american educational research association. april 2009, san diego, ca. references arendt, h. (1958). the human condition. chicago, il: university of chicago press. basso, k. (1996). stalking with stories. in wisdom sits in places: landscape and language among the western apache (pp. 37-70). albuquerque: university of new mexico press. bauman, z. (1993). postmodern ethics. oxford, uk & cambridge, usa: blackwell. chambers, c., & hasebe-ludt, e., with donald, d., hurren, w., leggo, c., & oberg, a. (2008). métissage. in j. g. knowles & a. l. cole (eds.), handbook of the arts in qualitative research: perspectives, methodologies, examples, and issues (pp. 141-153). thousand oaks, ca: sage. deleuze, g., & parnet, c. (1986). dialogues (h. tomlinson & b. habberjam, trans.). ny: columbia university press. hasebe-ludt & jordan: “may we get us a heart of wisdom” transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 4 gadamer (1985). truth and method. new york: crossroad. (original work published 1975). glissant, e. (2007). poetics of relation (b. wing, trans.). ann arbor, mi: university of michigan. (original work published 1990). graves, r. (1955/1980). the greek myths (vol. i). new york: penguin books. griffin, s. (1995). the eros of everyday life: essays on ecology, gender and society. new york: doubleday. habermas, j. (1990). moral consciousness and communicative action (c. lenhardt & s. w. nicholson, trans.). cambridge, ma: the mit press. (original work published 1983). hasebe-ludt, e., chambers, c. m., & leggo, c. (2009). life writing and literary mėtissage as an ethos for our times. new york: peter lang. harper, d. (2001). online etymology dictionary. retrieved from http://www.etoymonline.com heaney, s. (1995). crediting poetry. loughcrew: the gallery press. jardine, d. w. (1998). to dwell with a boundless heart: essays in curriculum theory, hermeneutics, and the ecological imagination. new york: peter lang. kadar, m., warley, l., perreault, j, & egan, s. (2005). tracing the autobiographical. waterloo, on: wilfred laurier university press. kelly, u. a. (1997). schooling desire: literacy, cultural politics, and pedagogy. new york: routledge. king, t. (2003). the truth about stories: a native narrative. toronto, on: house of anansi press. lionnet, f. (1989). autobiographical voices: race, gender and self-portraiture. ithaca, ny: cornell university. lionnet, f. (2001). a politics of the “we”? autobiography, race, and nation. american literary history, 13(3), 376-392. mcleod, n. (1998). coming home through stories. international journal of canadian studies, fall, 18, 51-66. mish, f. c. (ed.). (1990). webster’s ninth new collegiate dictionary. markham, on: thomas allen & son. richardson, l. (1994). writing: a method of inquiry. in denzin, n. k., & lincoln, y. s. (eds.), the handbook of qualitative research (pp. 516-529). thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. saul, j. r. (2008). a fair country: telling truths about canada. toronto, on: viking canada. smith, d. g. (2008, april). wisdom responses to globalization: a meditation on ku-shan. invited presentation at faculty of education, simon fraser university, burnaby, bc. spretnak, c. (1991). states of grace: the recovery of meaning in the postmodern age. new york: harperone. vanier, j. (1998). becoming human. toronto: house of anansi press. tompkins, j. (1998). teaching in a cold and windy place: change in an inuit school. toronto: university of toronto press. o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: jupp, james; gonzález delgado, micaela.; calderón berumen, freyca; & hesse, caroline. (2020). el currículo decolonial-hispanófono: un bosquejo preliminar y una invitación al dialogo sur-sur, transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1), 49-71 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> el currículo decolonial-hispanófono: un bosquejo preliminar y una invitación al diálogo sur-sur james c. jupp1 university of texas, rio grande valley, tx, estados unidos micaela gonzález delgado2 universidad nacional autónoma de méxico, acatlán, méxico freyca calderon berumen3 pennsylvania state university, altoona, pa, estados unidos caroline hesse4 university of texas, rio grande valley, tx, estados unidos en este ensayo, presentamos un bosquejo preliminar del currículo decolonial-hispanófono y extendemos una invitación al diálogo sur-sur entre alumnos, docentes, o activistaseducadores de las geo-regiones denominadas «las américas»5. el currículo decolonialhispanófono, por definición, se refiere a los recursos curriculares-pedagógicos antirracistas de lengua española, los cuales enfatizan las tradiciones geo-regionales intelectuales indígenas, morenas, mestizas, y negras de latinoamérica. para mejor historizar el trabajo decolonial latinoamericano, proporcionamos un bosquejo genealógico del currículo decolonialhispanófono desde la conquista del siglo xvi hasta los principios del siglo xx. demostramos que el pensamiento decolonial se manifiesta como contra-corriente cíclica dentro del arco histórico de la colonialidad. por medio del bosquejo, articulamos tres conceptos historizados decoloniales. terminamos el ensayo con una invitación al diálogo sur-sur decolonial-cosmopolita. dos advertencias y las bases intelectuales comenzamos nuestro ensayo con dos advertencias y una descripción de sus bases intelectuales. como advertencia primera, presentamos nuestro trabajo como emergente, incompleto, y subjuntivo. inherente a la frase «bosquejo preliminar», el propósito no es definir ni concluir el tema del currículo decolonial, sino nuestro propósito es comenzar un diálogo curricular-pedagógico sur-sur de recursos intelectuales para los alumnos, docentes, o activistas-educadores. por lo tanto, reconocemos que los recursos ofrecidos aquí no pueden ser completos. no tratamos de ofrecer una historia intelectual completa de latinoamérica y, tampoco intentamos hablar de todos los proyectos decoloniales. como advertencia segunda, entendemos que nuestras identidades e historias son reflexivamente implícitas en la producción del ensayo6. como intelectuales del sur influenciados por el norte tanto como intelectuales del norte influenciados por el sur, reconocemos a nuestras identidades e idiosincrasias lingüísticas-ideáticas fronterizas. además, como autores, jim, mica, y freyca reconocemos la sobrerrepresentación de lo nuestro, el archivo mexicano, en el contenido intelectual. es menester enfatizar que nuestras identidades e idiosincrasias entretejidas nos jupp, gonzález delgado, calderón berumen, hesse. el currículo decolonial-hispanófono 50 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index hayan proporcionado la vulnerabilidad personal y la generosidad intelectual para colaborar y, de esta manera, ejemplificamos las disposiciones para realizar este proyecto transnacional. tomando en cuenta estas advertencias, proponemos el bosquejo preliminar como una contribución al área de currículo desarrollado por paraskeva (2011, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2020) llamado la teoría curricular itinerante. la teoría curricular itinerante (tci), por definición, se refiere a la práctica elaborada de la teoría crítica por alumnos, docentes, o activistas-educadores en contextos educativos diversos de las distintas geo-regiones del mundo. aunque representa una labor emergente (jupp, 2017), la tci tiene cuatro dimensiones: (a) enfatiza el trabajo historizado por las relaciones coloniales del pasado que continúan en el presente y, por lo tanto, adelanta el trabajo curricular-pedagógico reconceptualizado por freire en las revoluciones de los 60s y 70s; (b) entiende el área de currículo como una práctica inherentemente política-conflictiva y, por lo tanto, el trabajo curricular-pedagógico proporciona un campo ideal para las intervenciones subversivas, activistas, e ideológicas; (c) busca la manera de conjugar la teoría crítica transnacional con las realidades históricas locales y, por lo tanto, enfatiza el trabajo crítico-activista local tanto como el trabajo intelectual-teórico; y (d) propone una dialéctica geo-regional de la teoría crítica y, por lo tanto, amplifica la teoría crítica latinoamericana contextualizada, no de «marcos teóricos» estáticos-burocráticos, sino de una hermenéutica móvil e itinerante. las cuatro dimensiones de la tci son importantes para descolonizar la teoría curricular latinoamericana de las teorías críticas y posestructuralistas del norte global mientras que se mantenga ligada a un movimiento crítico mundial. siguiendo la cuarta dimensión de la tci, describimos las bases intelectuales del bosquejo preliminar. nuestra hermenéutica incluye el análisis neomarxista de sistemas mundiales (e.g., gill, 1986, 1995, 2003; hall, 2004; jaramillo & mclaren, 2008; wallerstein, 1991/2007, 2004), las contra-narrativas históricas (e.g., galeano, 1971; giroux, 1992; lyotard, 1979; rivera cusicanqui, 1984/2010; zinn, 2003), el cosmopolitismo insurgente (e.g., amin, 2008; jupp, 2013a, 2013b, 2017, jupp, calderón berumen, o’donald, 2017; paraskeva, 2011, 2016, 2020; sousa santos, 2007, 2009; sousa santos, nunes, meneses, 2007), el pensamiento fronterizo chicano (e.g., acuña, 1972; anzaldúa, 1987; delgado bernal, 1998; gonzález, 1967; hinojosa, 1977; kanellos, 2002; paredes, 1976; saavedra y nymark, 2008), las alternativas decoloniales (e.g., andreotti 2011, 2015; andreotti et al., 2018; aquino moreschi, 2013; díaz gómez, 2004; grosfoguel, 2010; maldonado-torres, 2007; martínez luna, 2004; mignolo, 2008, 2009; mignolo, guilano, & berisso, 2014; mignolo & walsh, 2018; quijano, 1992, 2000), las teorías actuales de la intervención pedagógica (e.g., gonzález delgado, 2009, 2012, 2014), las pedagogías decoloniales (e.g., jaramillo & mclaren, 2008; walsh, 2008, 2012, 2013), y la ética de la liberación (e.g., dussel, 2005, 1977/2011; freire, 1970/1998, 1992/2002; maldonado-torres, 2007). en conjugar la tci, buscamos las simpatías, coherencias, y afinidades, las cuales pueden crear una comunidad transnacional hispanoparlante para adelantar el trabajo curricular-pedagógico crítico. interrogantes y contornos del ensayo con la intención de crear comunidades transnacionales, el ensayo responde a tres interrogantes: ¿cómo planteamos la problemática histórica del trabajo curricular-pedagógico de nuestras geo-regiones? ¿cuáles recursos intelectuales e históricos pueden informar el trabajo educativo dentro de la colonialidad presente? ¿y cuáles conceptos historizados emergen de los recursos intelectuales que pueden informar a nuestro diálogo decolonial sursur? enmarcado con los tres interrogantes, presentamos los siguientes contornos. primero, proporcionamos unas definiciones provisionales a los términos utilizados en el transcurso del https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index jupp, gonzález delgado, calderón berumen, hesse. el currículo decolonial-hispanófono 51 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index ensayo. segundo, planteamos la problemática del trabajo curricular-pedagógico dentro de las colonias históricas y la colonialidad presente. tercero, llegamos a la sección principal, la cual proporciona nuestro bosquejo preliminar y genealógico del currículo decolonialhispanófono. cuarto, a base del bosquejo, desarrollamos tres conceptos historizados que consideramos claves para el proyecto decolonial transnacional actual: (a) la historicidad del pensamiento decolonial latinoamericano, (b) la conceptualización mestiza, y (c) la comunalidad/pluriversalidad. por cada concepto, proporcionamos un ejemplo de la práctica curricular-pedagógica de jim y mica, primer y segundo autores, respectivamente. concluimos nuestro ensayo con una invitación al diálogo sur-sur decolonial-cosmopolita. definiciones provisionales para proceder con claridad, proporcionamos unas definiciones preliminares de términos específicos que usamos en el transcurso del ensayo. los términos son: las colonias históricas, la colonialidad, la resignificación social-histórica, la conceptualización mestiza, y la comunalidad/pluriversalidad. las colonias históricas, por definición, se refieren al «primer sistema mundo» proto-capitalista y capitalista dominante entre los siglos xvi y xx, el cual se fundamentaba en la ocupación, la administración, la extracción de los recursos naturales y la plusvalía de los territorios conquistados por europa. la colonialidad, por definición, se refiere al «segundo sistema mundo» capitalista industrial y capitalista tardío dominante en el siglo xx hasta el presente, el cual extiende las corrientes coloniales y sus estructuras históricas-sociales supremacistas, occidentalistas, criollas, y anglosajonas. la resignificación social-histórica, por definición, se refiere a la reapropiación y recirculación de símbolos dominantes con sentidos y usos resistentes y re-existentes a los sentidos y usos oficiales. la conceptualización mestiza, por definición, se refiere a «pensar el mundo» por medio de varias perspectivas críticas, historizadas, e híbridas (de raza, clase social, género, y otras) a la vez. la comunalidad/pluriversalidad, por definición, se refiere al trabajo curricular-pedagógico que comienza por la geo-región (lo común, lo cultural, lo económico) y, simultáneamente, entiende sus nexos hacia una práctica transregional. concluidas las definiciones preliminares, nos acercamos a los tres interrogantes que estructuran el ensayo. ¿cómo planteamos la problemática histórica del trabajo curricular-pedagógico? enfatizamos la necesidad de empezar con dos conceptos históricos relacionados con las américas: las colonias históricas y la colonialidad presente. las colonias históricas eran el modelo de dominación histórico-geográfico predominante desde el siglo xvi hasta los principios del siglo xx. las colonias históricas se basaban en la ocupación y administración burocrática de pueblos conquistados por medios militares. «primer sistema-mundo», las colonias históricas enfatizaban relaciones económicas de explotación, las cuales culminaron en el período histórico de la industrialización. por definición, las colonias históricas se fundamentaban por las conquistas militares y espirituales que formaban el primer sistemamundo supremacista, occidentalista, criollo y europeo. ligadas históricamente a europa y subsecuentemente al imperialismo estadounidense, las colonias históricas imponían sus cosmovisiones racistas en la justificación del saqueo de los recursos naturales y la extracción de la plusvalía laboral. a diferencia de la organización social de europa en que se establecían los privilegios en las clases sociales, en las américas la dominación enfatizaba conexiones raciales, en especial con la mano de obra americana encomendada, esclavizada, explotada, o de hoy en día, «barata». claro, ligados a otros nexos de dominación incluyendo los de género, sexualidad, cultura, y lengua, tales vínculos raciales acomodaban a los europeos, criollos, y anglosajones encima como clase directora-asalariada y https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index jupp, gonzález delgado, calderón berumen, hesse. el currículo decolonial-hispanófono 52 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index los indígenas y negros como clase servidora, cambiable, e itinerante. así en el dicho cuerpo político maltusiano del siglo decimonónico, los europeos y los anglosajones se presumían siempre «la cabeza directiva» del cuerpo político, y los demás sujetos racializados estaban allí para recibir direcciones. indudablemente, los vínculos raciales con la mano de obra explotada se adaptaban en diferentes geo-regiones de formas históricamente específicas. en el caso de latinoamérica, los vínculos raciales son particulares a cada nacionalidad y difiere entre el genocidio del indígena, el mestizaje racial-cultural, y el fomento de la esclavitud transatlántica en la creación de las naciones «modernas» (benítez basave, 2002; galeano, 1971/2008; graham, 1990; quijano, 2000; rivera cusicanqui, 1984/2010). dentro de sus trayectorias nacionales, los nexos raciales fomentan una desigualdad que tiene vigencia y presencia fuerte de hoy en día. por lo tanto, cualquier acercamiento o análisis histórico-social que disminuye los nexos raciales fracasa en entender la realidad racial y su continuidad en el momento presente. por reconocer a estos nexos raciales, nuestro bosquejo enfatiza y avanza el trabajo intelectual que reconoce las colonias históricas como base fundamental. la colonialidad representa la continuidad de las colonias históricas por medios de la enunciación epistemológica en el momento presente. «segundo sistema-mundo», la colonialidad continúa las relaciones coloniales en la producción de saberes disciplinarios relacionados con los medios financieros, administrativos, políticos, y militares. inseparable de la producción de saberes, la colonialidad avanza un programa de producción culturaleducativo oficial por medio de la llamada matriz del poder7 (e.g., mignolo, 2009; mignolo & walsh, 2018; grosfoguel, 2011). aquel programa de producción cultural-educativo forma dimensiones inherentes al funcionamiento de la colonialidad presente. por la matriz del poder, la colonialidad organiza su hegemonía geopolítica, complicada, y cambiante. en ascender su hegemonía, la colonialidad extiende «el primer sistema-mundo» hacía «el segundo» de forma a-lineal. al extenderse, la colonialidad avanza las colonias históricas no por medios directos de invasión, ocupación, y administración, sino por estrategias variadas incluyendo incentivos económicos, tratos comerciales «favorables», «reformas» curriculares-educativas, guías pastorales de mercados «libres», y simultáneamente, castigos violentos militares oficiales y extraoficiales para aquellos países «antidemocráticos». como un componente de la supremacía, la colonialidad apantalla el «primer mundo» dentro del «tercero» como espectáculo de «progreso», mientras que tal progreso sirve para desestabilizar a las economías regionales y degradar el ambiente ecológico mundial. siguiendo la supremacía blanca, anglosajona y eurocéntrica, la colonialidad presenta el «tercer mundo» dentro del «primero» como problema social. mientras tanto, estos «problemas» son los resultados de las migraciones laborales de las mismas economías desestabilizadas. más reciente y con mucha astucia política de parte de donald trump, la colonialidad avanza una política de los eeuu abiertamente anti-inmigrante, racista, y fascista para mantener un sistema racial de ventajas económicas internacionales del status quo mientras que tacha a los inmigrantes como «criminales», «narcotraficantes», «violadores», y «asesinos». lo que es peligroso de la colonialidad actual es que ha surgido un sentido común irracional, mitómano, xenófobo, racista, y eugénico. es este sentido común peligroso que insiste en construir los muros materiales y figurados alrededor de la supremacía y privilegios blancos de los eeuu y europa. inseparable de la matriz del poder, la colonialidad adelanta un programa de reproducción educativo-cultural. a diferencia de las colonias históricas, la colonialidad no tiene que ocupar ni administrar a los territorios lejanos sino mayormente trabaja sobre el https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index jupp, gonzález delgado, calderón berumen, hesse. el currículo decolonial-hispanófono 53 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index educando-alumno con un programa de reproducción o «un currículo reproductor» dirigido a la producción de identidades conformes, consumidoras, y aceptadoras de «la inevitabilidad capitalista». tal currículo se manifiesta en estrategias discursivas varias, incluyendo los centros educativos, las competencias o estándares corporativos, los museos con mensajes oficiales, y otras vías, las cuales extienden la cosmovisión supremacista, occidentalista, criolla, y anglosajona. anotamos un ejemplo claro de la colonialidad y el currículo reproductor en las evaluaciones masivas y su proliferación desde los eeuu y el norte global hacia latinoamérica (díaz lópez & osuna lever, 2016; internacional de la educación para américa latina [ieal], 2015; ravela et al., 2008). parte de una lógica neoliberal, instrumental, y financiera que emerge desde los 80s (gill, 1986, 1995, 2003), la ieal (2015) enfatiza el currículo estandarizado de las competencias globales ligado estrechamente a «la evaluación nacional e internacional (mucha evaluación estandarizada y centralizada),… ranking, y competencia entre escuelas» (p. 7). de hecho, mientras unos debaten sus aplicaciones (díaz lópez & osuna lever, 2016) y otros sueñan con evaluaciones adaptadas a latinoamérica (ravela et al., 2008) es imposible negar los efectos rotundos del currículo reproductor en latinoamérica por medio de las competencias globales y los exámenes estandarizados. como consecuencia, el currículo reproductor elimina o devalúa las tradiciones y lenguas mestizas, morenas, indígenas, negras. como proceso «educativo», el currículo reproductor impone modos de pensar modernos, nuevos, o aceptados por los centros universitarios, las metrópolis del norte global, y las multinacionales, y aparte, destina otra selección de saberes a los museos occidentalistas como representaciones folklóricas del pasado. por medio del currículo reproductor, la colonialidad reproduce una línea abisal entre las «inevitabilidades» supremacistas, occidentalistas, criollas, y anglosajonas y las tradiciones mestizas, morenas, indígenas, y negras, las cuales reproduce como «no existentes». paradójicae importantemente, el currículo reproductor no ha inventado la manera de extinguir a los sueños humanos y menos para determinar las identidades. ante el mismo currículo reproductor se presentan diferentes patrones de resistencia y re-existencia identitarias. sin embargo, la gran mayoría de aquéllos reflejan el mismo ahistoricismo, nihilismo, y oportunismo presente en el consumo hegemónico capitalista. notable e implícito en currículo reproductor, la colonialidad opera sobre las dualidades binarias «barbarie/civilización», «primitivo/moderno», «retraso/avance», «subdesarrollo/ desarrollo», «tradicionalista/progresista». como significación más general, la colonialidad utiliza la dualidad «problema/solución» para caracterizar las condiciones históricas, las cuales tacha de barbarie, primitiva, retraso, subdesarrollo, y tradicionalista. en la caracterización más actualizada, la colonialidad entiende cualquier desacuerdo con la matriz de poder como un «problema» para solucionar o, mejor dicho, erradicar. implícitamente, el uso crítico del término la colonialidad enfatiza la desvinculación de la cosmovisión supremacista. tal desvinculación se refiere a estrategias varias de resistencia y re-existencia, y toma lugar bajo las condiciones históricas enunciadas de la matriz del poder. por tomar lugar en estas condiciones, la desvinculación no representa la autonomía idealizada individualista enmarcado por la falsa libertad del capitalismo. en cambio, la desvinculación representa la búsqueda de las alternativas estructurales, laborales, geo-regionales, ecológicas e históricas. estas alternativas enfatizan la justicia social, la concientización racial, los saberes contextualizados, las economías sustentables, y la reorganización de los saberes históricosregionales. nuestro bosquejo del currículo decolonial-hispanófono reconoce, enfatiza, y superordena el entendimiento de las colonias históricas y la colonialidad como conceptos analíticos https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index jupp, gonzález delgado, calderón berumen, hesse. el currículo decolonial-hispanófono 54 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index decoloniales. en la siguiente sección, intentamos proporcionar los recursos que pueden fundamentar y adelantar los procesos históricos de la desvinculación. ¿cuáles recursos intelectuales históricos pueden informar el trabajo curricular-pedagógico? el currículo decolonial-hispanófono valora, estudia, interpreta, condiciona y, sobre todo, historiza las tradiciones mestizas, morenas, indígenas, y negras de lengua española particular a latinoamérica. lejos de querer controlar la transmisión de saberes, proporcionamos en los párrafos siguientes un retrato heurístico-bibliográfico de recursos y direcciones posibles para adelantar un diálogo sur-sur cosmopolita futuro. tal diálogo supondría indagaciones más profundas, elaboradas, y contextualizadas hacia el establecimiento de un archivo decolonial adaptable al terreno y al activismo local. cada región necesita sus propios recursos e historias decoloniales, pero también, enfatizamos la labor intelectual transnacional-compartida, la cual puede crear un movimiento social a la escala de la misma monstruosidad del capitalismo neoliberal, ahora fascista. a sabiendas de que trabajamos dentro de tradiciones curriculares-pedagógicas históricas existentes, entendemos nuestro trabajo aquí, como una continuación y crítica del trabajo colaborativo anterior8. para comenzar el diálogo, ofrecemos las siguientes subsecciones: la producción intelectual indígena, los humanismos mestizos y morenos del siglo xvi, las resignificaciones de la época barroca, y la lucha continua por la independencia. la producción intelectual indígena en el currículo decolonial-hispanófono, valoramos y condicionamos a la producción intelectual indígena, tanto histórica como actual. integro al currículo decolonial-hispanófono, repudiamos la multitud de veces cuando los españoles o europeos destruyeron los códices y otras expresiones indígenas (e.g., díaz del castillo, 1632/1992; de landa, 1566/1978), y aclamamos las instancias en que los indígenas escondieron sus códices (e.g., recinos, 1947/1995), los tradujeron en un plan de resistencia y conservación (e.g., de alva ixtlilxochitl, 1608/1891; poma, 1615/2013; tezozómoc, 1598/1994), o los reproducen en la memoria actual para las generaciones futuras (díaz gómez, 2004; menchú y burgos, 1985; posas, 1952/2012). reconocemos el trabajo intelectual colectivo indígena existente (e.g., recinos, 1947/1995; de alva ixtlilxóchitl, 1608/1891; poma, 1615/2013; tezozómoc, 1598/1994), las relecturas y las historias orales contemporáneas del archivo indígena (e.g., caso, 1953/2014; duverger, 2007; garibay, 1954/2007; león-portilla, 1961/1995; rivera cusicanqui, 1984/2010), y las contribuciones actuales (e.g., aquino moreschi, 2013; díaz gómez, 2004, marcos, 2001) como claves al diálogo sur-sur cosmopolita. enfatizamos la producción intelectual indígena, no para darla un salón mejor en el museo de la antropología occidentalista, sino para incluirla en la lectura contemporánea actual y crítica. sencillamente, entendemos su estudio como inseparable del autoconocimiento histórico y la autodeterminación contemporánea (andreotti, 2011, 2015; andreotti et al. 2018; paraskeva 2011, 2016, 2020). nuestro propósito en leer a los archivos indígenas no es celebracionista-folklórico como muchos historiadores nacionalistas-consensualistas del siglo pasado, sino acercamos a estos archivos con la intención de informar a nuestro entendimiento histórico-actual con la comprensión de la resistencia y la presencia indígena en la historia continua y actual. con este acercamiento al archivo, repudiamos la posición histórica que los indígenas representaban una especie de «barbarie» o «primitivismo» tanto como rechazamos la posición del sentido común actual en los eeuu que los indios «verdaderos» no existen de hoy en día. en cambio, vemos el ejemplo de la resistencia indígena proletarizada como un https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index jupp, gonzález delgado, calderón berumen, hesse. el currículo decolonial-hispanófono 55 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index archivo dialéctico temporal que nos coloca en el pasado del presente y el presente del pasado (marcos, 2001). los humanismos mestizos y morenos del siglo xvi anexo al entendimiento de la producción intelectual indígena, valorizamos, pero, simultáneamente condicionamos los humanismos mestizos y morenos del siglo xvi (e.g., de las casas, 1552/2011; de la vega, 1590/1967; ercilla y zúniga, 1569/1997; motolinía, 1866/2001; sahagún, 1585/2006) de aquella época que pugnaban, no por el exterminio de los indígenas, sino por su humanización. aparte de pugnar por la humanización, los humanismos morenos y mestizos narraban las instancias claras de resistencia y orgullo indígena ante las fuerzas colonizadoras y las injusticias de las colonias históricas. sobre todo, los humanismos morenos y mestizos del siglo xvi representaban un naciente mestizaje problemático, incompleto, actual, y todavía potencial, lo cual de hoy en día se llama transmoderno (e.g., coroníl, 1998, dussel, 2005; walsh, 2008). aquel mestizaje sigue vigente en el momento presente por armar un tercer espacio dialogado entre las culturas occidentales e indígenas. siempre con la problemática contradictoria y paternalista de la cosmovisión católica, sin embargo, los humanismos mestizos y morenos con sus experimentos sociales-educativos creaban las condiciones históricas interculturales y transculturales, mendelianas, y sincréticas de latinoamérica muy distintas de las condiciones históricas anglófonas estadounidenses. estos experimentos sociales del humanismo mestizo y moreno contrastan a las historias de genocidio, exterminio, separatismo, y exclusión de la supremacía blanca spenceriana de los eeuu. teorizamos más la problemática del mestizaje histórico en la última sección del ensayo. el colegio de santa cruz de tlatelolco es emblemático de los humanismos morenos y mestizos del siglo xvi. el colegio de tlatelolco representaba las aspiraciones utópicas, los límites, las contradicciones, y la clausura repentina de tales experimentos sociales, los cuales terminaron clasificados como heréticos e indigenizantes por la iglesia católica y el autoritarismo real de felipe ii a fines del siglo xvi (duverger, 1987/1996; ricard, 1933/1974). fundado por franciscanos en 1536, el propósito original del colegio de tlatelolco era proporcionar una educación trilingüe en náhuatl, español, y latín para cimentar una sociedad novo-hispana utópica-cristiana a base de clérigos indígenas. con los peligros y contradicciones del utopismo radical de tomás moro, los franciscanos y bernardino de sahagún se resaltaban tanto en la enseñanza de lengua y cultura como en la producción intelectual interlingüística e intercultural náhuatl-español. con su grupo de producción intelectual que incluía alumnos indígenas trilingües antonio valeriano, alonso vegerano, martín jacobita y otros colaboradores, sahagún (1578/2006) produjo su obra monumental historia general de las cosas de nueva españa entre otros documentos. el trabajo colaborativo del grupo intentaba proporcionar una cosmovisión del mundo náhuatl de forma interlingüística e intercultural, la cual hoy en día representa una obra clásica de la doble traducción náhuatl-español jamás igualada en ambición o resultado. lo que representaba el colegio de tlatelolco para nuestra lectura del currículo decolonialhispanófono, es un modelo del diálogo intercultural radical, dentro del cual los lenguajes y saberes son respetados como recursos educativos-identitarios del pasado hacia un futuro y, además, su producción intelectual del colegio nos sustancia los hallazgos actuales de mica, segunda autora del ensayo, quien trabajaba con las comunidades hñähñu de hoy en día. por medio de este trabajo, enfatizamos la importancia de recuperar los sistemas ancestrales referenciales de los que se pueden restaurar formas de producción del mundo como parte de la herencia cultural. de esta manera, el colegio de tlatelolco nos representa una meta de la https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index jupp, gonzález delgado, calderón berumen, hesse. el currículo decolonial-hispanófono 56 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index educación interlingüística e intercultural no como historia celebracionista de los historiadores nacionales sino con relevancia crítica actual al diálogo sur-sur cosmopolita. por este vínculo de la relevancia actual, destacamos que los humanismos mestizos y morenos representados por el colegio de tlatelolco quedaron repentinamente terminados por la política anti-indigenista del reino de felipe ii en 1571. por tal política reaccionaria, los manuscritos de sahagún entre muchos otros documentos quedaron sepultados por siglos en los archivos de madrid y el vaticano por sus contenidos heréticos. es joaquín icazbalceta (1866) quien rescató estos documentos y los publicó en su colección de documentos para la historia mexicana y, por lo tanto, ayudó en la formación de las ideologías mestizas radicales de la revolución mexicana, el chicanismo en el suroeste del eeuu, y otros levantamientos y movimientos decoloniales de latinoamérica. en fin, el humanismo mestizo y moreno con sus experimentos sociales educativos presentaba unas vías futuras alternativas, las cuales nunca pudieran realizarse por la opresión colonial de la iglesia y la corona real de españa. sin embargo, reconocemos los humanismos mestizos y morenos como recursos claves decoloniales, los cuales enfatizamos como una dimensión de nuestro bosquejo preliminar. las resignificaciones de la época barroca a continuación, también reconocemos recursos curriculares-pedagógicos de la época barroca latinoamericana. sobre todo, repudiamos la reinstauración de la política antiindigenista y anti-mestiza, la inquisición católica, y la contrarreforma opresiva. por lo tanto, reconocemos la violencia y crueldad burlesca, social, e histórica de aquella época que tenía consecuencias materiales del sufrimiento en las poblaciones indígenas y mestizas (lafaye, 1972; phelan, 1970; picón salas, 1944/1994). siguiendo la lectura del intelectual venezolano mariano picón salas (1944/1994), enfatizamos la ineptitud intelectual de la época barroca y la desconexión entre el liderazgo colonial y las masas mestizas e indígenas. acerca de esta ineptitud, la época barroca latinoamericana oficialmente abolía los impulsos interlingüísticos e interculturales del humanismo mestizo y moreno de la época anterior. en lugar de aquellos impulsos, el liderazgo criollo reinstauraba de forma vengativa del sistema de castas raciales. con el maestro picón salas (1944/1994), enfatizamos: al tono general de su cultura [de la época barroca] que nos imponía la metrópoli, el medio americano agrega todas las complejidades del trasplante. privilegio de una minoría letrada y ausente de la comprensión de las masas indígenas o mestizas, el trabajo intelectual tiene un carácter exclusivo y críptico. (p. 131) sin embargo, a cambio de aquel epistemicidio oficial (paraskeva, 2011, 2016), la época barroca latinoamericana ofrece patrones claves de la resignificación social-histórica aún no concluidos que pueden ser importantes en los proyectos decoloniales futuros, en especial a la reterritorialización de los eeuu por indígenas y mestizos del sur global. entre varios ejemplos de resignificación barroca, anotamos dos instancias que ejemplifican el currículo decolonial-hispanófono: las catedrales barrocas latinoamericanas y las sublevaciones indígenas del siglo xix. dentro de las sensibilidades indígenas-mestizas, la arquitectura barroca latinoamericana nos proporciona una instancia de la resignificación social-histórica de los símbolos hegemónicos que siguen con vigencia en los movimientos de liberación. en terrenos latinoamericanos, la arquitectura barroca se transforma en el ultrabarroquismo latinoamericano con fuerte influencia estética de la ornamentación indígena. específicamente, en la arquitectura del ultra-barroquismo, los maestros, masones, y escultores indígenas y mestizos elaboran las iglesias, monasterios, santuarios, y adoratorios de https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index jupp, gonzález delgado, calderón berumen, hesse. el currículo decolonial-hispanófono 57 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index todo un continente. paradójicamente, mientras que las autoridades católicas querían proliferar por todo el continente la ortodoxia católica, la estética y las sensibilidades indígenas se inscribían, también, por siempre, otra significación no oficial en las construcciones. con contradicciones similares a la santificación de la virgen de guadalupe/tonantzintla en el siglo xvi, las catedrales ultra-barrocas lograron integrar a las tradiciones y los contenidos intelectuales indígenas, pero, a la vez, servían para indigenizar, mestizar, y resignificar las estructuras religiosas españolas y criollas, dejando por siempre la huella de los iconos, las sensibilidades, y la estética de la mano de obra indígena. varios ejemplos de tal arquitectura barroca son el sagrario de la catedral de méxico, el colegio de los jesuitas en tepotzotlán, la catedral de santa maría de tonantzintla, y la catedral de san francisco de acatepéc entre otras. enfatizamos la importancia de apoderarse, re-interpretar, y dar otros sentidos a mensajes oficiales-hegemónicos como símbolo de resistencia y re-existencia frente al exterminio y el epistemicidio de la colonialidad. esas nociones de resistencia y re-existencia ejemplificados en el ultra barroquismo latinoamericano son claves a la praxis decolonial. son nociones claves en la época presente porque la praxis actual no será un regreso al pasado precolombino sino será una resignificación popular de los sentidos y saberes históricos en las prácticas presentes. la re-significación, ejemplificada en las catedrales ultra-barrocas, representa un proceso psíquico-social e histórico de re-tomar los símbolos oficiales de forma que representa el pensamiento fronterizo-decolonial (anzaldúa, 1987; mignolo, 2008, 2009; mignolo & walsh, 2018). aparte, y aún más radical, las sublevaciones indígenas de la época son claves para entender a los procesos de la re-significación indígena. las sublevaciones de jacinto canék (1761), túpac-amaru ii (1780-1782), juan santos atau huallpa (1742-1755), y de ambrosio pisco (1781) nos proporcionan ejemplos de la resignificación social-histórica de los símbolos indígenas despreciados durante la época colonial. jacinto canék, en continuación de la autonomía histórica del pueblo itzá-maya en yucatán, organizó un ejército de quinientos indios sublevados, se declaró rey de los itzá-maya y quiso restaurar el reino maya por la península de yucatán. túpac-amaru ii, en contra del sufrimiento económico andino, ejecutó a oficiales locales, organizó un ejército de entre 40 y 60 mil soldados indígenas, y se apoderó del sur de perú por varios años. juan santos atau huallpa, buscando un retorno al reino y la cosmovisión incaicos, rechazó su educación cristiana, expulsó a españoles y mestizos colaboradores de las provincias andinas, y se apoderó de las regiones tarma y jauja, las cuales quedaron independientes de españa hasta después de su muerte. ambrosio pisco, granjero y comerciante exitoso de terrenos que hoy día son parte de bogotá, colombia, dirigió a las fuerzas indígenas independientes y abogó por el control indígena de las industrias mineras de la región. en contra de la interpretación de la inferioridad indígena, las sublevaciones indígenas nos proporcionan una vuelta de consciencia simbólica, innegable, e importante, la cual enfatiza el protagonismo indígena en la historia del continente. esta vuelta de conciencia se manifestaba en la autonomía de las comunidades indígenas, el rechazo del liderazgo español y europeo, y una re-circulación de las cosmovisiones indígenas. lejos de repudiar, denigrar, u omitir el pasado, las sublevaciones presentaban un movimiento masivo indígena organizado por los representantes de los antiguos linajes mayas e incaicos, los cuales reconocieron, integraron, y actualizaron el indigenismo por la lucha política de su época. como la revolución haitiana del siglo xix en la isla de santo domingo, aquellos levantamientos fueron identificados con mucha seriedad y espanto en los centros gubernamentales metropolitanos, como posibles rebeliones de las masas indígenas, mestizas, y negras populares en contra de los centros capitalinos de poder criollo y europeo. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index jupp, gonzález delgado, calderón berumen, hesse. el currículo decolonial-hispanófono 58 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index esta vuelta de consciencia debe de informar los movimientos actuales de la soberanía indígena (e.g., aquino moreschi, 2013; díaz gómez, 2004; marcos, 2001, luna martínez, 2004; rivera cusicanqui, 1984/2010) y también la autonomía de los ciudades-santuarios en los eeuu que han desafiado el gobierno federal en alojar a miles de refugiados del sur global. la visión política de las sublevaciones indígenas nos proporciona un marco histórico de la desvinculación decolonial necesaria, la cual pueda generar las alternativas sociales, históricas, y económicas a la colonialidad neoliberal fascista-supremacista del presente. la lucha continua de la dependencia por «la independencia» con la época de la independencia, el currículo decolonial-hispanófono entiende el arco dialéctico histórico del ascenso y la vindicación mestiza siempre incompleta que nos deja con trabajo intelectual y proyectos políticos pendientes del porvenir. entendemos que los movimientos independistas latinoamericanos tienen base en la contradicción social, histórica, económica de una minoría gubernamental, europeizante, españolista, criolla, y blanca. tanto anteriormente como en la época actual, la misma contradicción de una minoría gubernamental ha degradado al contrato social y hecho una burla cruel de las promesas políticas. por lo tanto, un entendimiento de la lucha continua por la independencia urge, tanto en aquellas épocas como las nuestras. históricamente, esta minoría vivía a cuestas de las masas mestizas e indígenas con referencia especial a «la bastardía» mestiza y criolla popular (enríquez molina, 1906; fuentes, 1962/1992; paz, 1950/1987; picón salas, 1944/1994). dentro de los recursos del currículo decolonial-hispanófono, reconocemos a los próceres con su producción intelectual latinoamericanista siempre problemática, parcial, y contradictoria quienes pugnaban por la independencia. a la vez, repudiamos a los occidentalistas, españolistas, criollos, realistas quienes traicionaron al pueblo y retrocedieron los procesos históricos mestizos en buscar y anhelar las estructuras sociales y el pensamiento europeizante y criollo que protegía a sus privilegios. clave en el caso de latinoamérica, reconocemos que la dicha «época de la independencia latinoamericana» no era un período breve de una sola guerra revolucionaria como el caso de los eeuu de norteamérica sino era una condición histórica que sigue relevante a la colonialidad presente. la independencia latinoamericana sigue por venir y ha durado más de dos siglos de revueltas, sublevaciones, y contrarrevoluciones. mientras que los países latinoamericanos se «independizaron», el espectro del imperialismo yanqui y europeo continuaba con las caras distintas de la colonialidad. entre las instancias particulares y contradictorias que podemos representar dentro del currículo decolonial-hispanófono, destacamos muy brevemente a la producción intelectual de simón bolívar, josé martí, manuel gonzález prada y andrés molina enríquez como ejemplares del currículo decolonialhispanófono. anticipado en las enseñanzas de su maestro simón rodríguez y la acción política de otros revolucionarios, bolívar (1815/1997) entendió el proceso del mestizaje histórico a declarar «nosotros somos un pequeño género humano...no somos ni indios ni europeos, sino una especie intermedia, entre los legítimos propietarios del país y los usurpadores españoles» (p. 92). dentro del mismo arco histórico mestizo e indígena, martí (1891/1972) enfatizó una política independentista latinoamericana que nos advirtió del imperialismo amenazante «de los gigantes que llevan siete leguas en las botas» (p. 17), y también, subrayó que «el buen gobierno de américa no es el que sabe cómo se gobierna el alemán o el francés, sino el que sabe con qué elementos está hecho su país» (p. 19). resonante con las circunstancias indígenas actuales, gonzález prada (1895/1997) reconocía las condiciones históricas https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index jupp, gonzález delgado, calderón berumen, hesse. el currículo decolonial-hispanófono 59 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index revolucionarias de las poblaciones indígenas proletarias, diversas, y raciales, y enfatizó que «no se predique humildad y resignación a los indios sino orgullo y rebeldía» (p. 166). los cuatro pensadores mencionados en esta sección son representantes del currículo decolonial-hispanófono porque avanzan la misma vuelta de consciencia, la cual comienza a destacar la importancia de una cosmovisión latinoamericanista, tanto regional como transnacional. ante la realidad histórica, materialista oprimida, estos cuatro pensadores comienzan a elaborar una visión social-política, la cual servía de recursos primarios para los intelectuales críticos-marxistas del siglo xx como josé carlos mariátegui (1928/2007), domitila barrios de chungara (1978), y subcomandante marcos (2001) de nuestra época. al entender la revolución mexicana como una segunda guerra de independencia, el pensamiento mestizo-indígena del revolucionario andrés molina enríquez (1906, 1909, 1936) es emblemático de los cuatro pensadores. molina enríquez proporciona una trayectoria que reconoce la revolución como expresión material de las masas mestizas, morenas, indígenas, y negras oprimidas. estudiado notablemente por agustín basave benítez (1992/2002), el pensamiento de molina enríquez es fundamental a la revolución mexicana. egresado del instituto científico y literario de toluca fundado por el nigromante ignacio ramírez en 1846, molina enríquez avanzaba la producción intelectual del liberalismo crítico y re-distributivo que fomentaba la formación de una conciencia mestiza e indígena rural y metropolitana. la producción intelectual molinista habilitaba tanto la necesidad de la revolución mexicana como la trayectoria justiciera incompleta de la reforma agraria y el sindicalismo cardenista después de la revolución. después de haber servido en numerosos puestos gubernamentales en las administraciones pos-revolucionarias, el mismo molina enríquez se despierta de su retiro treinta años después para declarar que la revolución mexicana había fracasado. el mismo molina enríquez hace referencia directa a la colonialidad criollaespañola y la supremacía blanca, las cuales impedían el avance de la revolución por la cual él mismo se había luchado. nos enfatizó molina enríquez (1936): la revolución no ha llegado a su fin, porque los indios y los indio-mestizos...no han acertado a liberarse de la aparente «superioridad» y de la perversa acción política de los españoles, de los criollos, y de los criollos mestizos. (p. 77) los entronques y laberintos en los procesos de liberación del oprimido son ampliamente trabajados por intelectuales antiy decoloniales como freire (1970/1998, 1992/2001) y fanon (1952/1967). los dos intentan defender la mente del oprimido del opresor, y también, entienden que el arma mejor del opresor son las mentes de los oprimidos trabajando por su propia opresión. clave en el pensamiento mestizo-indígena de molina enríquez es seguir la dirección del mestizaje histórico-crítico y negar la dirección doctrinal y hegemónica que ahora representa la historia oficial. específicamente, es necesario que sigamos las direcciones justicieras, críticas, transformadoras, y redistributivas todavía venideras del mestizaje histórico (e.g., anzaldúa, 1987; coroníl, 1998; rivera cusicanqui, 2012) para re-organizar movimientos masivos-nacionales e internacionales. por la trayectoria molinista apoyada en el pensamiento de bolívar, martí, gonzález prada, y otros intelectuales críticos, el archivo del currículo decolonial-hispanófono independentista sigue vigente en nuestro diálogo sur-sur cosmopolita porque aquí mismo encontramos el entendimiento historizado, decolonial-crítico, transformador, y redistributivo en una escala masiva-revolucionaria. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index jupp, gonzález delgado, calderón berumen, hesse. el currículo decolonial-hispanófono 60 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index ¿cuáles conceptos emergen del bosquejo preliminar? en esta sección presentamos tres conceptos historizados que emergen del bosquejo preliminar. los tres conceptos reflejan y, al mismo tiempo, deben de informar el uso del contenido intelectual de nuestro bosquejo. los conceptos son: (a) la historicidad del pensamiento decolonial, (b) la conceptualización mestiza, y (c) la comunalidad/ pluriversalidad. por cada concepto, proporcionamos un ejemplo de la práctica curricularpedagógica de jim o mica. la historicidad del pensamiento decolonial la historicidad del pensamiento decolonial es la primera noción que debe de fundamentar un diálogo decolonial no-derivativo, sur-sur, y cosmopolita. importantemente, nuestro bosquejo nos conduce hacia el reconocimiento que el pensamiento decolonialhispanófono tiene una trayectoria larga, crítica y basada en cuestiones y geo-regiones latinoamericanas. lejos de ser un paradigma nuevo y abstracto de las ciencias sociales importado del norte global, el currículo decolonial-hispanófono emerge de una tradición larga del pensamiento decolonial en latinoamérica. perteneciente a las tradiciones latinoamericanas, el currículo decolonial hispanófono representa una serie de prácticas historizadas, situadas y contextualizadas en las geo-regiones específicas de latinoamérica, y atadas a momentos y movimientos históricos. no perteneciente a otra «innovación» de moda importada de los estudios culturales, los estudios críticos legales, o el currículo reconceptualizado del norte global, el currículo decolonial-hispanófono nos aleja de dichos «marcos teóricos» de la producción intelectual dominada de los eeuu. enfáticamente, no hemos desarrollado el bosquejo del currículo decolonialhispanófono como académicos aislados. al contrario, nuestras intenciones son de mejorar a los impulsos historizados existentes en el pensamiento decolonial latinoamericano. en particular, enfatizamos las direcciones recientes de walsh (2013), mignolo y walsh (2018) y rivera cusicanqui (1984/2010) en reconocer el pensamiento decolonial que precedía al grupo modernidad-colonialidad de los 90s. elaboramos el currículo decolonial hispanófono porque nuestro trabajo decolonial latinoamericano exige la re-interpretación de las fuentes históricas, las ideas fundamentales, y las tradiciones epistémicas y axiológicas. para mejor teorizar la historicidad del pensamiento decolonial hispanófono, adelantamos el currículo decolonial-hispanófono no como otra contra-narrativa crítica (e.g., acuña, 1972; galeano, 1971/2003; giroux, 1992; lyotard, 1979; zinn, 1980/2003). aunque identificamos las contra-narrativas como recursos ideológicos útiles, sin embargo, reconocemos que éstas reflejan y reproducen las narrativas hegemónicas, en especial, a las nociones hegemónicas del tiempo progresivo rectilíneo. en lugar de armar más contra-narrativas, entendemos el currículo decolonialhispanófono como los calendarios indígenas emblematizados por el calendario azteca-náhuatl. en lugar de asumir el tiempo progresivo y lineal, el calendario azteca-náhuatl asume las ruedas cíclicas y dinámicas, las cuales pueden interrumpir, cambiar, destruir, o renovar a las épocas. en nuestra época, las narrativas dominantes y hegemónicas del progreso y el desarrollo histórico tienen que quedar destruidos. en cambio, necesitamos los conceptos cíclicos de ruptura, generación, y renovación histórica para lanzar el trabajo compartido de la re-construcción social-histórica. dentro del transcurso histórico, el currículo decolonial-hispanófono ha presentado otras alternativas, las cuales se han aprovechado (o perdido) en la lucha por la autodeterminación histórica, social, económica, y política en las geo-regiones. enfatizamos que lo más clave del currículo decolonial-hispanófono, lo que entendemos de sus ciclos o https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index jupp, gonzález delgado, calderón berumen, hesse. el currículo decolonial-hispanófono 61 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index soles históricos, es que el radicalismo decolonial se presenta no como una doctrina o unos saberes entregados por las autoridades anglosajones, franceses, o alemanes, sino que nuestro pensamiento y trabajo decolonial sale de los contextos particulares y geo-regionales de latinoamérica. específicamente, el subcomandante marcos (2001) alimenta a nuestro proyecto porque se ubica dentro de nuestros contextos de la realidad histórica de latinoamérica, dentro del pensamiento indígena y mestizo, y dentro de una lucha cíclica y continua: pero se me ocurre ahora que lo más importante de soñar en la realidad es saber qué es lo que termina, qué es lo que continúa y, sobre todo qué es lo que comienza desde la violencia de la conquista...180 años después del desvelo de bolívar y manuelita sáenz, 85 años después de la profecía de los flores magón, 80 años después de emiliano zapata, 30 años después del sueño del che soñando de desvelo de todos los americanos honestos y verdaderos.... el gran poder mundial no ha encontrado aún el arma para destruir a los sueños. (p. 108) la verdad es que los sistemas de dominación y explotación no han logrado aniquilar la enzima de la utopía de la cognición histórica humana. los sueños jamás fueron propiedad de una determinada genealogía supremacista, occidentalista, criolla, o anglosajona. en las indagaciones de jim y sus colegas, esta historicidad del pensamiento decolonial es presente en la materia liderazgo curricular al nivel posgrado. jim trabaja en una universidad estatal fronteriza del suroeste de los eeuu, atzlán. en lugar de dar la materia estándar anglosajonizada «fundamentos sociales del currículo», jim ha desarrollado la materia «sustentabilidad cultural-lingüística en contextos transnacionales». a base de esta materia, los líderes curriculares estudian la historia natural y social regional antes omitida en las escuelas y universidades públicas. entre otros textos, los líderes curriculares estudian textos de críticos regionales incluyendo hinojosa (1977), paredes (1976), y anzaldúa (1987). de esta manera, desarrollan una perspectiva geo-regional de los recursos curriculares con nexos al movimiento nacional de estudios étnicos (sleeter & zavala, 2020). por medio de los líderes curriculares, jim y sus colegas influyen el entendimiento geo-regional del currículo, y adicionalmente, están colaborando con un museo local en financiar la traducción de documentos históricos regionales destinados a la escolarización crítica de los docentes. la conceptualización mestiza la conceptualización mestiza es la segunda noción que debe de fundamentar un diálogo sur-sur. el currículo decolonial hispanófono comienza con el reconocimiento que el mestizaje histórico es básico y fundamental a las contribuciones latinoamericanas al archivo mundial. ignorado y despreciado en gran parte por europa y los eeuu, el mestizaje histórico es clave y principal al diálogo historizado, sur-sur del currículo decolonial hispanófono. dicho de manera sencilla, el mestizaje proporciona materias primas al archivo latinoamericano e insistimos que el archivo latinoamericano no pueda ser sencillamente renunciado. lejos de otro discurso nuevo «crítico» o «pos-crítico», el mestizaje histórico es fundamental a las tradiciones intelectuales latinoamericanas. sin embargo, el currículo decolonial hispanófono no comienza con los hábitos celebracionistas típicos de los intelectuales latinoamericanos en épocas previas sino entendemos la problemática del mestizaje histórico. emergente del archivo del mestizaje histórico, armamos nuestra noción de la conceptualización mestiza con un rechazo del mestizaje doctrinal. en su rechazo, la conceptualización mestiza representa una restauración del mestizaje histórico hacia su capacidades molinistas, justicieras, críticas, transformadoras, https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index jupp, gonzález delgado, calderón berumen, hesse. el currículo decolonial-hispanófono 62 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index y redistributivas (anzaldúa, 1987; coroníl, 1998; molina enríquez, 1938; saavedra & nymark, 2008; rivera cusicanqui, 2012). a diferencia del mestizaje doctrinal, la conceptualización mestiza se refiere no a la transmisión de una doctrina histórica. en cambio, la conceptualización mestiza proporciona una interacción curricular-pedagógica abierta, generativa, híbrida, no-atada a las ortodoxias europeizantes o anglosajonas, hasta en desacuerdo heterogéneo con el mismo pensamiento decolonial doctrinal. por lo tanto, la conceptualización mestiza implica el uso de la capacidad lingüística-conceptual para leer y modificar a la realidad neoliberal individualista por medios subversivos, interpelantes y colectivos. esto implica visibilizar a la colonialidad, estudiar sus formas de producción y reproducción y, así, también, conceptualizar y verbalizar alternativas subversivas, las cuales permitan, a través del trabajo curricular-pedagógico, comunicar un mensaje de esperanza geo-regional y simultáneamente global. no es empresa fácil si entendemos que el currículo decolonial-hispanófono toma lugar dentro del lenguaje y las instituciones históricamente coloniales y supremacistas. sin embargo, con freire (1970/1998, 1992/2002) y otras fuentes del pensamiento decolonial independiente (e.g., martí, 1891/1972; mignolo y walsh, 2018; neruda, 1950/1985; paz, 1950/1987, picón salas, 1944/1994; rivera cusicanqui, 1984/2010, 2012; walsh, 2013), entendemos que la conceptualización mestiza representa, no un movimiento intelectual menor-chiquito para que unos cuantos académicos hagan su carrera, sino una intervención social-psíquica-lingüística-histórica-estética-conceptual. esta intervención ha de provocar la producción de la concientización decolonial en el educador-educando. freire (1992/2002) nos proporciona la base de la conceptualización mestiza que elaboramos aquí en el currículo decolonial hispanófono: por lo tanto, la enseñanza y el aprendizaje representan momentos dentro de los procesos históricos grandes—los de saber, pensar, y reconocer. los educandos se reconocen como tal por conocer a los objetos y por descubrir que ellos mismos sean capaces de significar, así identificándose al nivel de los significados, ellos se vuelven significadores en el proceso. (pp. 125-126) siguiendo el pensamiento de freire, acercamos al trabajo de la concientización como proceso complicado, el cual hoy día puede emerger, no únicamente en la alfabetización como nos enseñaba el maestro friere. sino el proceso exige una lectura histórica decolonial creativaabierta y una base geo-regional, pero, a la vez, global. por esta vía decolonial, comenzamos a entender al proceso histórico de la concientización por el término conceptualización mestiza, y de esta manera, des-universalizamos a los humanismos de freire y vinculamos su concepto de la concientización a las epistemologías racializadas, decoloniales, y latinoamericanas. en las indagaciones de jim y sus colegas, la conceptualización mestiza es presente en sus materias de posgrado. nuevamente, trabajando con líderes curriculares de su región, jim proporciona textos críticos, feministas, posestructuralistas, y decoloniales a sus alumnos. en el proceso del dialogo, estudian el mestizaje en varios textos (alonzo, 2020; saavedra y nymark, 2008) con un enfoque particular en anzaldúa (1987). en los diálogos, las chicanas de los seminarios logran reflejar críticamente, no únicamente de la opresión regional de clase y raza, pero también cuestionan la realidad patriarcal de sus vidas como hijas y maestras. en sus reflexiones, comparten que su meta es traer esta perspectiva a sus salones en las escuelas públicas. varias de ellas desarrollan investigaciones críticas como parte de sus estudios, y sus investigaciones impactan a las escuelas públicas y sus alumnos. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index jupp, gonzález delgado, calderón berumen, hesse. el currículo decolonial-hispanófono 63 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index la comunalidad/pluriversalidad la comunalidad/pluriversalidad es la tercera noción que debe fundamentar un diálogo sur-sur decolonial. al hablar de la comunalidad/pluriversalidad, se comienza a retomar las formas geo-regionales de la organización comunitaria, las cuales desde hace tiempo se ha forzado a borrar del diálogo curricular-pedagógico con las dichas «competencias globales». para quienes hemos vivido de cerca y participado en el trabajo curricular-pedagógico comunitario, nos podemos percatar de la necesidad de vincular lo común (relacionado al valor patrimonial natural, el uso y la conservación de recursos naturales), lo cultural (relacionado con la tradición, la lengua, los valores, y las cosmovisiones), y el desarrollo local (como proyecto político-educativo y de aprendizaje colectivo). en vincular lo común, lo cultural, y el desarrollo local, encontramos los elementos necesarios para recuperar la fuerza de lo comunitario que puede proveer de una forma particular de empoderamiento, fuente de la memoria, y de la identidad. en este sentido, la comunalidad/pluriversalidad representa un retorno activo a la resignificación social-histórica, la cual enfatiza tanto el apoderarnos de los significados diarios a la mano como el reconectarse a la memoria histórica geo-regional. aparte de lo comunitario geo-regional, la comunalidad/pluriversalidad reconoce y enfatiza el análisis de sistemas mundiales (grosfoguel, 2010; mignolo, 2008, 2009; wallerstein, 1991/2007, 2004). con el análisis de sistemas mundiales, la comunalidad/ pluriversalidad no puede avanzar únicamente con base a una desvinculación geo-regional aislada como aparece en algunos estudios filosóficos (mignolo, 2008, 2009) o antropológicos (aquino moreschi, 2013; díaz gómez, 2004; luna martínez, 2004). en cambio, la comunalidad/pluriversalidad funciona sobre una dialéctica que trabaja con los recursos georegionales (lo común, lo cultural, lo económico) y los vínculos con las comunidades transculturales de las américas. sobre todo, la comunalidad/pluriversalidad forma una red que puede combatir y resistir las fuerzas neoliberales globales (sousa santos, 2007, 2009; sousa santos, nunes, meneses, 2007; marcos, 2001; mignolo, 2008). para entender los límites del socialismo estatal del siglo xx, la comunalidad/ pluriversalidad avanza una red común, pero a la vez, pluriversal la cual representa: la aspiración colectiva de los grupos oprimidos para organizar su resistencia y consolidar sus coaliciones políticas en la misma escala utilizada por los opresores victimizadores. claro, esta escala es la anti-hegemónica global. (sousa santos, 2007, p. 10) por estas aspiraciones, la comunalidad/pluriversalidad representa una dialéctica de reconocer los recursos geo-regionales antemencionados, pero, simultáneamente, forjar conexiones con las corrientes de la resistencia transcultural para integrarse a un movimiento decolonial. sousa santos (2007, 2009) ha descrito a la comunalidad/pluriversalidad como el cosmopolitismo insurgente (andreotti, 2011, 2015; andreotti et al. 2018; jupp, 2013a, 2013b, jupp, calderón berumen, o’donald, 2017; paraskeva, 2011, 2016, 2020), el cual avanza una red de resistencia local, pero, al mismo tiempo, anti-hegemónica global. en las indagaciones de mica y sus colegas, la comunalidad/pluriversalidad es presente en el trabajo con las comunidades hñähñu de méxico como forma de educación sustentable. en los talleres, los alumnos adultos hñähñu con sus hijos trabajan en la reconstrucción colectiva de los saberes históricos, geográficos, políticos y económicos. de ese modo, la perpetuación cultural se da en el espacio vital social y educativo. a través de las vías del lenguaje, esto es posible dadas las circunstancias y mecanismos de oralidad en que se registran significantes y significados para su comunidad. por del método freiriano de https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index jupp, gonzález delgado, calderón berumen, hesse. el currículo decolonial-hispanófono 64 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index diálogo, los hñähñu utilizan los talleres para la auto-defensa de su comunidad de las intrusiones de la cultural global, sus medios masivos, y la destrucción capitalista tanto de su lengua y cultura como su ambiente ecológico. la invitación al diálogo sur-sur terminamos nuestro ensayo con la invitación al diálogo sur-sur, decolonial, noderivativo, y cosmopolita. a resumir, en la primera sección argumentamos por plantear la problemática histórica del trabajo curricular-pedagógico dentro del arco de las colonias históricas y la colonialidad presente. por plantear la problemática así, enfatizamos la necesidad de una reevaluación de los recursos intelectuales que usamos para conceptualizar el trabajo que hacemos como educadores-activistas. a seguir esta noción de reevaluación, en la segunda sección proporcionamos el bosquejo preliminar de recursos intelectuales del currículo decolonial-hispanófono. proporcionamos nuestro bosquejo no para indicar que los recursos señalados sean los únicos valiosos great books. al contrario, proporcionamos el bosquejo preliminar para enfatizar la necesidad de un horizonte histórico latinoamericanista a base de recursos históricos indígenas, mestizos, morenos, y negros para fundamentar y sugerir indagaciones futuras, más específicas, y destinadas a proyectos particulares-locales tanto como transnacionales. después del bosquejo, en la penúltima sección, presentamos tres nociones que reflejan y simultáneamente informan el diálogo que intentamos comenzar: la historicidad del pensamiento decolonial, la conceptualización mestiza, y la comunalidad/pluriversalidad. en el transcurso del ensayo, enfatizamos que el currículo decolonial hispanófono provisionara una dialéctica geo-regional y transnacional para poder combatir y resistir el capitalismo global. para concluir nuestro ensayo, consideramos la realidad histórica que nos acecha en el momento presente. es necesario identificar que el acta de ignorar a la colonialidad racializada es acta de mala fe intelectual, similar a tapar el sol para prender una vela. el resto del ensayo, inclusive nuestro bosquejo, así como los tres conceptos historizados, lo presentamos con tono subjuntivo y dialogado, a sabiendas de que solos no tenemos las respuestas necesarias y; por lo tanto, al fin del ensayo, evitamos las conclusiones típicas que ofrecen las famosas «implicaciones» del ensayo académico anglófono. en cambio, terminamos nuestro ensayo con la identificación de un comienzo, el comienzo de un diálogo subjuntivo, un diálogo sur-sur cosmopolita, el cual enfatiza recursos intelectuales decoloniales hispanófonos para mejor alimentar la praxis de los educandos, docentes, o activistas-educadores. notas 1 jcjupp@gmail.com 2magda57moon@gmail.com 3freycacb@gmail.com 4 carolineahesse@gmail.com 5 como límite geopolítico, tomamos los territorios llamados de hoy en día «las américas». importantemente, por el transcurso de nuestro ensayo usamos los términos «las américas», «latinoamérica», y «latinoamericano/a» a sabiendas de que son construcciones históricas, inventadas, y ligadas a las colonias históricas y a la colonialidad. por los términos latinoamérica y américa latina, nos referimos a los territorios independizados de las colonias históricas de españa. sin embargo, y conscientes de las contradicciones, usamos estos términos no para apoyar a fronteras de nacionalidad y desigualdad. con los términos «las américas», https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index jupp, gonzález delgado, calderón berumen, hesse. el currículo decolonial-hispanófono 65 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index «latinoamérica», y «latinoamericano/a» avanzamos el uso paradójico o la re-significación del término. por vías de la re-significación, el uso paradójico enfatiza entendimientos desterritorializantes como las que se encuentran en los términos «aztlán», «anáhuac», «abya yala», o «turtle island». 6 jim jupp ha impartido clases por veinticinco años en el suroeste y sur de los eeuu. por dieciocho años, él trabajaba como maestro con poblaciones mayormente inmigrantes, mexicanas, e indígenas en las escuelas públicas del suroeste de los eeuu. durante ese tiempo, trabajaba como maestro con las comunidades rurales y urbanas sobre la relevancia curricular y la escolarización crítica. en la última década, él ha impartido clases de fundamentos de educación y lingüística aplicada en dos universidades públicas del sur. actualmente, jim está a cargo del departamento de aprendizaje y enseñanza en la university of texas, rio grande valley, en el cual avanza una visión crítica-sustentable de la docencia regional con la producción masiva de maestros chicanxs bilinguales. mica gonzález delgado trabaja actualmente como profesora del área de intervención en la universidad nacional autónoma de méxico, acatlán campus, impartiendo clases en el programa de licenciatura en pedagogía. mica ha trabajado como activista y educadora por veinte años en diferentes contextos y proyectos, y se dedica a varios ejes de investigaciones incluyendo la educación ambiental y el desarrollo sustentable en zonas rurales, el diagnóstico territorial de las causas sociales de la violencia, y el activismo ambientalista-indígena en el estado de hidalgo, méxico. freyca calderón berumen trabaja actualmente como profesora en el programa de educación en la pennsylvania state university, altoona campus. sus investigaciones se enfocan en las áreas de educación multicultural y en la enseñanza del inglés como segunda lengua. además de realizar sus estudios de licenciatura y maestría en méxico, cuenta con más de diez años de experiencia docente en educación primaria y secundaria en méxico. hace diez años emigró a los eeuu por continuar sus estudios, donde cursó otra maestría y su doctorado en educación en el estado de texas mientras continuaba impartiendo clases en el programa de educación y estudios de género. las investigaciones actuales de freyca se enfocan en el uso de la categoría literaria latinoamericana del testimonio. caroline hesse ha sido maestra por quince años, con experiencia docente en escuelas primarias y secundarias del medio oeste y sureste de los eeuu. caroline ha enseñado español e inglés como lenguas extranjeras, también español para hispanohablantes, y más tarde varias materias escolares en programas de doble inmersión en los eeuu. también, ha enseñado pedagogía y lingüística en un programa nocturno de certificación para maestros bilingües. actualmente, ella es maestra en una escuela primaria de doble inmersión (español-inglés) en el sureste de los eeuu, y cursa estudios para su doctorado en currículo e instrucción en la university of texas rio grande valley. 7la matriz del poder es central al pensamiento decolonial. la matriz del poder reúne en una sola analítica las cuestiones históricas de raza, género, clase, sexualidad, habilidad, y otras diferencias. importante en el concepto de la matriz del poder es el enlace histórico con las diferentes clases de explotación con la supremacía blanca europea en sus relaciones colonials. 8 importantemente, nuestro bosquejo preliminar extiende, pero difiere de otros proyectos anteriores. a diferencia del cosmopolitismo universalizante griego, desarrollamos nuestro bosquejo preliminar del currículo decolonial-hispanófono por recapacitar a las sensibilidades cosmopolitas subalternas de las tradiciones históricas intelectuales latinoamericanas (e.g., bolívar, 1815/1997; henríquez ureña, 1945, 1947/1973; jupp, 2013a, 2013b; jupp, calderón berumen, o’donald, 2017; marcos, 1998/2012, 2001; martí, 1891/1972; neruda, 1950/1985; paz, 1950/1987, picón salas, 1944/1994). a diferencia de la teoría y pedagogía crítica europeizante de varias tradiciones entre las marxistas clásicas, frankfurtianas psicoanalíticas, gramscianas culturales, y freireanas dialogantes, nuestro bosquejo preliminar comienza con el entendimiento que las teorías europeizadas no pueden ser sencillamente «implementadas» a distancia por prótesis en el sur global sino tienen que desarrollarse y pensarse dentro de los contextos geo-regionales. a diferencia de la educación multicultural, nuestro bosquejo preliminar se distancia de las miopías históricas e instancias del multiculturalismo ligadas expresamente o inherentemente a los hábitos intelectuales estadounidenses de los 1960s y, en lugar de avanzar aquellos hábitos buscamos reconstituir un entendimiento de los archivos históricos latinoamericanos decoloniales. a diferencia de la internacionalización del currículo, nos distanciamos nuestro diálogo de las instancias del internacionalismo curricular que nomás reorganizan las relaciones hegemónicas de norte global tanto en la materialidad institucional como en las economías de prestigio académico. para concluir esta nota, nuestra relación con el trabajo de adriana puiggrós y appeal es más complicado. a diferencia del latinoamericanismo reciente de adriana puiggrós (1997, 2004) y appeal (2006, 2013) avanzamos las intenciones más amplias de su visión transcultural, pero rechazamos los tropos decimonónicos de su visión social-democrática dewyana y la noción de los saberes socialmente productivos (ssp). https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index jupp, gonzález delgado, calderón berumen, hesse. el currículo decolonial-hispanófono 66 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index referencias acuña, r. 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(2017). currere, subjective reconstruction and autobiographical theory. transnational curriculum inquiry volume 14 (1-2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> currere, subjective reconstruction and autobiographical theory wanying wang1 university of british columbia, canada education in this sense means taking what is observed and understood and incorporating it, swallowing it whole, and allowing it to alter one’s intellectual-chemical-psychic condition. william pinar (1975, p. 15) introduction this is an exploratory study of a chinese woman who is studying in canada. the study provides understandings of subjectivity from both west and east perspectives as well of the method of currere to articulate the issues i face as student, teacher, woman, and chinese in canada. it provides an example of how i use currere to acquire a deeper understanding of self. this study comprises three sections: 1) a review of several key concepts, including currere, subjectivity, and subjective reconstruction; 2) a discussion of the autobiographical method, 3) my practice of it –a writing of my own autobiography, organized around these themes: a search for understanding my self-growth, confronting my cultural background, and understanding autobiographical research. currere, subjectivity and subjective reconstruction the review involves three sections. first of all, pinar’s perspective on curriculum is discussed; after the review of the concept of subjectivity, the concept of subjective reconstruction is briefly discussed. currere william f. pinar (2015, 1976) initiated the systematic effort to understand curriculum as autobiographical and biographical text in the 1970s. he introduced a method “by means of which students of curriculum could sketch the relations among school knowledge, life history and intellectual development in ways that might function self-transformatively” (pinar, reynold, slattery & taubman, 1995, p. 515). pinar proposes the concept of currere, revolutionizing in a radical manner the notion of curriculum as a noun to curriculum as a verb, thereby extending the definition of curriculum. he defines curriculum as complicated conversation, which includes the lived experience of curriculum currere, to run the course but it also includes the social, political, cultural, etc, enactment of experience through conversation: wang. currere 111 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci curriculum becomes a complicated, that is, multiply referenced, conversation in which interlocutors are speaking not only among themselves but to those not present, not only to historical figures and unnamed people and places they may be studying, but to politicians and parents alive and dead, not to mention to the selves they have been, are in the process of becoming, and someday may become. (pinar, 2011, p. 41) curriculum as complicated conversation takes people far beyond the conception that curriculum is simply a body of academic knowledge separated from us who study it; on the contrary, curriculum as a conversation emphasizes the ongoing reconstruction of knowledge- subjective reconstruction of academic knowledge and life experience which courses through one’s life. this method of currere understands curriculum as a lived path as well as an object and a course of study. curriculum is not a “thing” to be studied; it is a path that is lived. because the running of the course occurs socially and subjectively through academic study, the concept of currere highlights the meaning of the curriculum as a complicated conversation, and thereby encouraging educational experience. it is a conversation threaded through academic knowledge. in other words, the method of currere seeks to understand the interaction between academic study and life history in the interests of self-understanding and social reconstruction (pinar, 2012). as pinar (2012) further argues: the method of currere re-conceptualizes curriculum from course objectives to complicated conversation. it is a conversation with oneself (as a private person) and with others threaded through academic knowledge, and ongoing project of selfunderstanding in which one becomes mobilized for engagement in the world. conceived as a complicated conversation, the curriculum is an ongoing effort at communication with others that portends the social reconstruction of the public sphere. (p. 47) currere is a conversational process in which participants, threaded through academic knowledge, reactivate the past, reconstruct the present and look to the future by talking with themselves, with figures across time and space. “the running of the course – currere – occurs through conversation, not only classroom discourse, but dialogue among specific students and teachers, and within oneself in solitude” (pinar, 2011, p. 1). therefore, it of course transcends the boundaries of classrooms or schools since it involves working from within. participants embark on a journey of conversation. the concept of currere emphasizes the interaction between academic knowledge and life experience. it is “a conception of curriculum that directs school knowledge to individual’s lived experience, experience understood as subjective and social, that is, as gendered, racialized, classed participants in understanding and living through the historical moment” (pinar, 2012, p. 195). in this complicated conversation, academic knowledge and life experience are intertwined with each other, mutually informative and constitutive. academic knowledge enables a more sophisticated understanding of the world. with academic knowledge one can understand life experiences more deeply and can make connections that may not have been noticed or may not have been previously recognized as important. one may begin to think about pressing issues more deeply. while searching for the connection wang. currere 112 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci between the private and the public, currere also creates opportunities to consider the particularity of each experience. it is a temporal and recursive process. while acknowledging society, culture and history, the concept of currere underscores individual’s experience. currere emphasizes the everyday experience of individuals and his or her capacity to learn from experience, to reconstruct experience through thought and dialogue to enable understanding (pinar, 2012). through this everyday experience one can learn and reconstruct experience and consequently, gain a deepened understanding of the world. currere emphasizes how each individual is socially and culturally situated in a particular historical moment and what his or her situatedness means to each. informed by phenomenology and existentialism, this autobiographical theory of curriculum suggests a shift in focus “from external, behaviorally oriented learning objectives and predetermined subject matter content to the interrogation of students’ and teachers’ inner experiences and perceptions” (miller, 2010, p. 62). therefore, grumet (1976) argues that “currere is what the individual does with the curriculum, his active reconstruction of his passage through its social, intellectual, physical structure” (p. 111). as pinar points out, “the method of currere seeks to understand the contribution academic studies makes to one’s understanding of one’s life, and how they both are imbricated in society, politics and culture” (pinar, 2012, p. 45). currere enables one who situates socially, politically, and culturally, to understand the meaning of educational experience. currere portrays the individual’s lived experience. this lived experience can be understood as educational experience (pinar, 2016). pinar designed four steps (regression, progression, analysis and synthesis) to reveal educational experience, understanding what principles and patterns have been at work in one’s educational experience (corttazi, 2014, p. 13). educational experience allows people to consider the world from different perspectives, understand various possibilities, further question the unquestioned, and thus bring about transformative change. educational experience fosters one’s interest in a certain field of study. educational experience may impact, enrich, even contradict with academic knowledge learnt from school curriculum. as a result, this might trigger or foster real learning and a deepened understanding might ensue. pinar also proposes an associated curriculum concept: “allegory”. understanding curriculum allegorically is to self-consciously incorporate the past into the present, gesturing toward an educational significance of what is studied. “in speaking allegorically, we are not merely exchanging information. when we speak allegorically we do not do so for the sake of a future in which such information will, we imagine, become usable. rather, we self-reflexively articulate what is at hand, reactivating the past so as to render the present, including ourselves, intelligible” (pinar, 2012, p. 50). the past is not stuck in the past. it implies that something may not be identifiable immediately or may not be identified by “simple” means, and calls for excavation. through allegory, subjectivity, history, and society become articulated through one’s participation in the complicated conversation that is the curriculum. “allegory underscores that our individual lives are structured by ever-widening circles of influences: from family through friends to strangers, each of whom personifies culture, symbolizes society, and embodies history” (pinar, 2012, p. 53). allegory further elaborates that how each individual is socially and culturally expanded by highlighting the “mechanism”—reflexively incorporating from the outside world. one can reactivate, reconsider, re-examine the past, and one’s or another’ experience. reactivation is different from reexamination, as the latter is conducted from the standpoint of wang. currere 113 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the present, the very standpoint reactivating the past aspires to dissolve or at least augment. reactivating the past is another conceptualization of the regressive phase of the method of currere. a case study allows us to examine others’ experience, whereas autobiography emphasizes one’s own lived experience which might also function educationally, enabling us to learn from experience. broadening memory, together with a new perspective, renders past experience into a new outlook. subjectivity to enact curriculum conceived as subjectively situated, historically attuned conversation means associating academic knowledge with the individual him or herself, teaching not only what is, for instance, historical knowledge, but also suggesting its possible consequences for the individual’s selfformation in the historical present, allowing that knowledge to shape the individual’s coming to social form. doing so is an elusive and ongoing threading of subjectivity through the social forms and intellectual constructs we discover through study, reanimating our original passions through acting in the world. william pinar (2015, p.31) subjectivity takes form, achieves content and singularity, in the world, itself reconstructed by subjectivity’s engagement with it. green and reid (2008, p.20) according to pinar (2009), “by subjectivity, i mean the inner life, the lived sense of self, non-unitary, dispersed, and fragmented—that is associated with what has been given and what one has chosen, those circumstances of everyday life, those residues of trauma and of fantasy, from which one reconstruct life” (p. 3). subjectivity refers to the inner life, the process of becoming, which can be ongoing if one engages in "becoming" all the time. from the moment one begins to experience, subjectivity is to take shape. weedon (2004) asserts that “an individual’s conscious and unconscious sense of self, emotions and desires” (p.18) constitute subjectivity, whereas “identity is perhaps best understood as a limited and temporary fixing for the individual or a particular mode of subjectivity as apparently what one is” (weedon, 2004, p. 19). in this sense, identity is the boundary between subjectivity and sociality, between one’s inner self and one’s public or social self. suggesting that identity is an effect, not a cause, jonsson locates identity at the intersection between an individual and the social, a site of negotiation between subjectivity and society (in pinar, 2009, p. 33). for jonsson, subjectivity refers to that “ineffable agency that precedes language, culture and ideology” (2000, p. 17). thus, subjectivity surrounds and saturates identity (pinar, 2009, p. 33). agency animates action but does not presume transcendence of the given, only the possibility of its reconstruction. subjectivity enables engagement with the world, informed by study and experience (pinar, 2009). subjectivity, compared with identity, tends to be more genetic, and it is a sense of self, manifested discursively. subjectivity may contradict with identity since identity may be imposed by a group or a culture. this enforces a gap space between the subjectivity and identity, but pinar affirms the importance of non-coincidence. identity is in between subjectivity and the social world. it is informed by "inward" prelinguistic even private "self" and by your social "self," what others have made of you, and the qualities they ascribe to you (pinar, 2014). for example, i am identified as a "woman" and this social, gendered identity of a "woman" is informed, even constructed, by my culture, my family, my interactions with others. it has changed over time (for example, in hong kong and wang. currere 114 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci now canada, etc). within this fluid mix of influences, i can detach myself from being (only a) "woman" by affirming my structural principle of "non-coincidence", thereby creating a subjective space in which i can act (e.g. reconstruct what i and others have made of me). i can act in the world differently from what others expect and from what i expect. one may subjectively experience tensions due to cultural expectations around the concept of a woman. over thousands of years, chinese society has adopted a set of moral principles to govern women. chinese women had been requested to follow the “three obediences and four virtues” which governs all walks of life. there are four edifying behavioral characteristics for women: the first is womanly virtue (fude), the second is womanly speech (fuyan), the third is womanly manner (fuyong), and the fourth is womanly merit (fugong).what is womanly virtue? she does not distinguish herself in talent and intelligence. what is womanly speech? she does not sharpen her language and speech. what is womanly manner? she does not seek to be outwardly beautiful or ornamented. what is womanly merit? she does not outperform others in her skills and cleverness. all these principles seem to still function today in china to some degree, and people tend to view women in terms of these principles—an identity assigned by the public. but many women in china may choose to live differently at their own will. as a result, they might be judged as “abnormal” or “weird”, and may experience tensions due to historical and cultural expectations clashing with her own inner sense of herself. mcknight (2010) argues that the notion of passionate inwardness resembles the concept of subjectivity proposed by pinar. according to the danish philosopher soren kierkegaard, passionate inwardness is an intensification of one’s focus on the particularity of his or her life that calls into question universal codes and conventions presented as true and good by any community. mcknight uses an example of the “unconscious despair of the teacher” (2010, p.502) to make his point clear. this teacher, in “unconscious despair” (mcknight, 2010, p.502), who views him or herself as a professional acting upon the written and unwritten ethical rules prescribed or implicitly prevailed within the institution of the schooling, never challenges who these rules serve and for what purpose these rules were made. they assume that the rules are morally good or are politically neutral acts of instruction. therefore, “his or her identity becomes overly determined by the finite institutional attributes, and less by the subjective reflection upon the infinite possibilities of ‘what could be’ that always call into questions any such claim or privileges of those individual and discourses that dictates the real of material existence” (mcknight, 2010, p. 508). deriving from the particular, concrete situation, a teacher can search and explore for a better or more appropriate way of teaching. he or she opens up possibilities and seeks to create a space for teachers and students to engage in creatively. no universal rule dictates belief or conduct. the misrelation is intensified when a teacher succumbs to the “normalizing tendencies” instead of engaging in the tension of the finite and infinite that enables a process of self-becoming in a critical way (mcknight, 2010, p.508). as mcknight (2010) argues: a proper relation would mean that a teacher develops a disposition to create an ironic distance from institutional conversations that claim reality. such a disposition is necessary to navigate and alter the landscape in subtle ways that begin to favor the principles of critical pedagogy and existential becoming. this disposition is a passionate inwardness that existentially removes one from the ethos of the institution, wang. currere 115 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci always presented as universal, normative and common sense, in an effort to confront the concrete particularities of the existing world. (p. 510) mcknight notes that passionate inwardness is to remove one from the institutional ethos, and to confront the particular world. such a move that resembles putting oneself back into a tension characterized by struggle with despair, is an “existential leap” (p. 510). “such a doubled move, a reasoned madness creates possible spaces for the individual to advance criticality and generate a new, proper relation that dissipates that specific form of despair” (mcknight, 2010, p. 510). however, instead of rejecting the institutional ethos, kierkegaard argues that to make a passionate, concentrated turn toward subjectivity is of great importance though it leads to paradox and suffering. as dooley (2001) explains, a critical distance is a useful method: inwardness is the movement the individual makes while becoming subjective; that is, in order to transform impersonal objective reflection into engaged and passionate subjective reflection, the individual is required to adopt a critical distance from the prevailing ethical, political and religious truths governing his or her reality, with the object of responding to the claims of singularity. (p. 5) the subjective challenge is to balance between finite demands of sociopolitical milieu and that which is eternal within us. when the individual stays closest to inner or subjective being, s/he lives at the “highest pitch of subjectivity”. the individual can deliberate upon existential becoming within this particular time and space, a comprehensive analysis of the degree to which one participates in as an actor within social milieu generated. as mcknight (2010) argues: passionate inwardness produces questions: who do the rules serve? who and what do the rule protect? how do the rule discriminate and what inequities are embedded? and, to what degree do i as a moral agent existing within this institution embody, reflect, and participate in the maintaining of those ethical constraints presented by the institution as universal good? how can i engage in a meaningful act of becoming alongside other existing individuals within this institution? (p. 513). mcknight (2010) argues that the notion of passionate inwardness resembles the curriculum theory work of william pinar, who developed what could be called a method of passionate inwardness; in pinar’s work, it is known as currere. much like currere, passionate inwardness also seeks to begin with the principle that one must interrogate any claim to universal ethics forced upon the individual. in other words, passionate inwardness does not indicate a blind repudiation and permanent exit from institutional ethics. very similarly, currere is an educational structure of subjectivity, emphasizing reflective thinking on the past, present and future. according to pinar and grumet (1976), the future is present in the same sense that the past is present. the method of currere is a strategy devised to disclose this experience, so that we may see more of it and see more clearly (pinar, 1975). with such seeing can come deepened understanding of the running, and with this, can come deepened agency (pinar & grumet, 1976, p. vii). as pinar (2012) argues: wang. currere 116 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci curriculum as currere emphasizes temporal distinctions, not for the sake of simplistic proceduralism, but to enable the reconstruction of the present through the reactivation of the past, differentiating present-mindedness into the co-extensive simultaneity of temporal attunement, expressed individually in social context through the academic knowledge. (p. 51) grumet (1976) notes that in the research method described by pinar, currere is pursued not in reflective retreat from the world but through a response to literature. as a research methodology, currere proposes to use literature as a foil for one’s own reflection. as the reader voluntarily recreates that which the writer discloses, he too creates a fictive but true (as lived) world, drawn from the substance of his experience and his fantasy. this participation in an aesthetic experience is one way of demonstrating the reciprocity of objectivity and subjectivity and their interdependence. it is also about how subjectivity operates in the individual. weedon highlights the influences of discourses on subjectivity, as weedon (1987) explains: the individual is both a site for a range of possible forms of subjectivity and, at any particular moment of thought or speech, a subject, subjected to the regime of meaning of a particular discourse and enabled to act accordingly…language and the range of subject positions that it offers always exists in historically specific discourses which inhere in social institutions and practices and can be organized analytically in discursive fields. (p. 34) as for pinar, he tends to focus on how subjectivity can fail to coincide with the discourses that inform it, how subjectivity can be reconstructed, such as by lived experience and academic study. he delves into how subjectivity can be studied, animated and finally reconstructed. pinar highlights how academic study and lived experience play a crucial role in reconstructing the subjectivity and how subjectivity is stimulated and reconstructed by engagement with the world. how is subjectivity constructed? how does a person show his subjectivity? there is an example that may illustrate it. when students being asked to write an essay, it might not be possible to identify the same writing (the same word selection or way of thinking) among these students though the same topic discussed. different persons tend to demonstrate different perspectives that could be said to be associated with their subjective standpoints. how experiences work might not be able to be described exactly or predicted, and this may even transcend language, for some experiences do not just add up, but transform fundamentally. subjectivity can become animated and expressed when a person addresses a situation, a challenge, or a question. by studying, one begins to understand one's subjectivity. i reference jane addam’s story to illustrate how subjectivity is informed by study and experience (pinar, 2009). addams went to a youth center in east london, which was similar to the people’s palace in the novel she read, and this experience led to the opening of the settlement house—hull house. “moved by her experience in london, informed by her wang. currere 117 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci ongoing academic study, she was able to imagine her future course of action” (pinar, 2009, p. 62). as a result, she opened the settlement house—hull house. pinar (2009) explains: her experiences---along with key books she read provided the passage from the individualistic, absolutist, benevolent ethics of her father and her own class in favor of what she perceived to be the working-class ethic of cooperative justice, which she found less selfish and self-righteous. though no doubt idealized, such an ethic enabled addams to distance herself from the self her upbringing has formed, thereby providing the self-reflective opportunity to reconstruct her subjectivity according to the commitments she had acquired and cultivated through study and experience. (p. 64) driven by her newly formed ethic of “cooperative justice”, she distanced from the previous self, and this experience, together with the self-reflective opportunity, led to the reconstruction of her subjectivity. “it is self-reflection---including social and self-criticism— that enable experience to be illuminated” (pinar, 2009, pp. 64-65). it might be termed as persistent rethinking, according to knight. knight (2005) argues that “persistent rethinking”, which integrates lived experience with one’s points of view, reconstructs subjectivity: this persistent rethinking, and not only the experiences, that produced her profoundest insights and taught her the most about her class, her gender, and herself. addams’ love of abstract theory, of sweeping generality, of uplifting philosophy had almost trapped her in her given life of reading, but it was the same passion for larger meaning that drove her to break free of that life, to struggle to integrate her experiences with her thoughts, and to change her mind. (p. 86, cited in pinar, 2009, p. 64) it might be understood that when reflectively examining experiences, and through academic study, one may engage in the process of forming (reconstructing) one’s own subjectivity informed by experience and consequent rethinking. when these rethinking demonstrates stable, consistent, subjectivity might be reconstructed thereafter. therefore, from experience, self-reflection, and academic study, addams “synthesized a coherent self capable of sustained, critical, and creative engagement with the world” (pinar, 2009, p. 62). addams’ story shows how subjectivity functions—a site of engaging with the world, possibly coherently, innovatively, with a critical spirit. to sum up, subjectivity entails beliefs, thinking, commitments, desires, feelings that may not be nameable but locate the site of experience; lived experience and its reconstruction – i.e. educational experience that constitute the uniqueness of a person, with which a person differentiate him/herself from what is. pinar further illustrates how adams’ reading influenced her and helped form her subjectivity. as mentioned by pinar, “study does not just yield information, it restructures one’s subjectivity, animating and focusing one’s engagement with the world” (2009, p. 63). several writers – among them w. h. fremantle, brooke foss wescott, giuseppe mazzini, mathew arnold – influenced her. by reading arnold, for instance, she strengthened her commitment to improving society and cultivated a moral and social passion for doing good; by reading mazzini, she was able to combine two ideas: education was central, but so was the wang. currere 118 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci opportunity for people from social classes to come to know each other. all the influences given by these readings become reconstructed when she established the hull house and enacted her ideas on social improvement. how lived experience – and its study – functions for each individual is often meanwhile, it seems unpredictable. study or reading a book may help offer useful supplements on issues concerned, or cause very radical change that might be regarded as turning points; study may provide contradicting perspectives that make people to further reflect on what they already hold; study may help experience different situation and events that only happen to others. reading literature and philosophy can definitely produce different results. nussbaum (1997) appreciates what different academic discipline can do to personal growth. for example, she argues that philosophy can render people the ability to reason and analyze, and look for evidence to support their opinions; literature can help people acquire sympathetic imagination by envisioning that they are in a vulnerable position. pinar also mentions addams’ teacher caroline potter, who taught rhetoric and history: “potter’s influence is discernable in an essay addams wrote in her sophomore year in which she employed george sand in an argument for women’ rights” (p. 65). “without study – knowledge, reason, self-reflexivity one cannot experience subjective meaning or participate in one’s self formation, an idea centuries old” (jay, 2005, p. 89, cited in pinar, 2009, p. 7). without knowing, one cannot acquire understandings completely or pertinently; without reasoning, one cannot obtain deepened thoughts. moreover, “without academic study, subjectivity succumbs to narcissism, presentism, and commodification of experience consumer capitalism compels” (pinar, 2009, p. 65); all these “isms” work at the surface level when subjectivity fails to obtain insights or inspiration from academic study. subjectivity without academic study may not be able to foster humbleness, historical consciousness, and judgement. to what does academic study refer? what does it offer? the academic study, might provide important elements and offer enduring insights for better understanding the world. “such a curriculum for cosmopolitanism juxtaposes the particular alongside the abstract, creating collages of history and literature, politics and poetry, science and art. such a curriculum provides a passage between the subjective and the social, between self-subjectivation and alterior interpellation” (pinar, 2009, p. vii). this curriculum always builds connection between the private and public. engaging the lincoln center of philosopher of education maxine greene, pinar (2011) points out that aesthetic education also engenders subjective and social reconstruction. by emphasizing the “lyrical moments” (pinar, 2011, p. 92) that comprise the “vivid present” (pinar, 2011, p. 92) in aesthetic education, pinar argues that such intensification of perception is not only about art apprehension on its own terms, but also about the person undergoing such experience can break free of one’s socially determined location. pinar further argues that “for me”, pinar continues, “such intensification of experience implies self-shattering insofar as the boundaries of the self dissolve into aesthetic experience that extricate us from identification with—even submersion in—the banal, the provincial, and presses us into the world” (2011, p. 96). after the self being shattered, subjective reconstruction can occur. as pinar argues: “what the art offer us is the releasing of our imagination, enabling us to move into the as-if--to move beyond the actual into the invented world, to do so without our experience. the experience of art pulls us into the world as it refracts the world through our subjectivity (2011, p. 100)”. as mcbride (2006) says: wang. currere 119 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the ecstatic experience triggered by aesthetic feeling favors a reshuffling in the individual’s perception of reality and disrupts formulaic modes of experience, releasing the individuals from the spell of established pictures of the world and opening up a space for the imaginative play with, and the emancipatory reaggregation of, given elements of experience. (cited in pinar 2011, p. 99) aesthetic experience shatters the self because it breaks the boundary within which the self inhabits, extends imagination beyond experience, and finally invites a new way of living or thinking, all of which encourage the reconstruction of subjectivity. greene (2001) argues that teachers are like artists--teachers submit themselves to inner transformation as they refashion their “raw material” through communicative enactment of their subjectivities with others, specifically their students. by reanimating the speech of others, teachers incorporate their understanding to their teaching in class: such aesthetically structured teaching encourage students to reconstruct their own lived worlds through their reanimation of the material they study. this subjective restructuring—that process is also an animation, rendering one’s intellectual passions contagious, is a matter of bring to surface forces, stirring, desires we often cannot name. (pinar, 2011, p. 103) with new perspectives incorporated, teachers might be able to broaden and/or deepen the topic being discussed, and lead students to think differently. transformation in students may proceeds thereafter. this could lead to a fundamental transformation of classroom teaching, in the sense that the whole process parallels to art creation. like artists, teachers seek means to express and engage others in the journey of exploration. methodology--autobiographical inquiry there is no better way to study curriculum than to study ourselves (connelly & clandinin, 1988, p. 31). the narrative, an autobiographical account of educational experience, serves to mark the site for excavation. what is returned in the process of excavation is hardly the original experience but broken pieces of images that remind us of what was lost. what is restored is our distrust of the accounts, as the experience, pieced together and reassemble, fails to cohere. there in the interstices, the spaces where the pieces don’t quite meet, is where the light comes through. what the restoration returns to us is doubt in the certainty of our own assumptions. (grumet, 1981. p. 122-123). the autobiographical project describes what can be revealed through a reflective lens in understanding – and through understanding, perhaps intensifying own experience of education (grumet, 1981, p. 118). william ayers (1990) argues it as “understanding the situation from within” (ayers, p. 272). such research provides a passage for me to describe my educational experience. the autobiographical lens can be an act of self-creation and wang. currere 120 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci potentially transformative (ayers, p. 274). autobiographical inquiry approach helps me make sense of and reflect on the situations by contributing more detail, more instances and more cases. this research method draws from phenomenology. as argued by grumet (1991), “reliance on the lived experience of the individual in autobiographical method of inquiry draws support from husserl’s conviction that it was only in the freshness and immediacy of encounter that certain knowledge can reside” (p. 34). this phenomenological approach offers a more vivid, fresh description of lived experience. currere has projected itself into the world through autobiography and theatre (grumet, 1976). in education, autobiography are those forms of self-revelation with focus on “a transfer of our attention from these forms of themselves to the ways in which a student uses them and moves through them” (grumet, 1976, p. 68). felman (1993) notes that “one goal of autobiography is to create, use, and explore readings and writings of autobiography that recognize their own social construction and cultural conditioning” (cited in miller, 2005, p. 53). leggo also affirms the importance of writing autobiographically. as acknowledged by leggo (2007), “because so much of my teaching, writing, and researching emerges from the intersections of the personal and the public, i contend that autobiographical writing is alwa ys both personal and public, and that we need to write autobiographically in order to connect with others” (p. 121). by pointing out that autobiography involves the realms of the private and public, leggo shows why autobiography is important. grumet (1976) discloses how autobiography can reveal the genesis of the assumption and common sense attitudes: autobiographical entries reveal the genesis of the assumptions and commonsense attitudes of the individual. when in reflection, the student brackets those assumptions and identifications with the everyday world, it is not to remove himself from that world, but to move closer to it by seeing through the structure of objectivity to the pre-objective, pre-reflective contact with the world upon which they rest. (p. 70) through autobiography, one can detach oneself from the structure of objectivity, and move closer to pre-reflective realm. as a result, pinar says, “writing, and in particular, the craft of autobiography, can soar, and from the heights, discern new landscapes, new configurations, especially those excluded by proclamations of government, state and school” (1995, p. 217). one will see new landscapes, new configurations hidden previously. at the same time, “interpretations of autobiography are always incomplete, always interminable” (felman, cited in miller, 2005, p. 53) since the constantly expanding self “incorporates what it fears and resists as well as what it desires” (pinar, 1985, p. 220). we may need to accept that we can never fully understand ourselves, through autobiographical work we can perceive and reconstruct our subjectivity and our subjective sensitivity to the biographic and educational significance of our lived experiences. autobiographical theories have provided me with a way to have a more authentic relationship with myself and to be more fully myself, as i hope to demonstrate in my own autobiographical dissertation research. as to how to conduct autobiographical research, grumet (1976) argues that autobiography involves two steps: autobiography is two steps removed from the pre-reflective events enacted by the body subject. the first step requires the reflection upon the moments already lived that that leads to a conscious grasp of their meaning. the second step involves the wang. currere 121 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci presentation of those events and their meanings as they now appear to the storyteller in terms of his relation with his audience. (p. 73) in other words, first of all, autobiographical inquiry requires storyteller to reflect on the “meaningful” moments; and then, the storyteller needs to present those events and their meanings. as formulated by grumet (1976), autobiography presents the past within present perspective of storyteller, and uses the past to reveal the present assumptions and future attention of the storyteller. grumet associates autobiography with students and teachers, illustrating how students and teachers use autobiography to enhance learning and teaching. grumet (1976) describes how the academic disciplines provide forms for students to express their private life: the student can observe his use of the objective forms provided by the academic disciplines as public symbol through which he can express his private experience…. by concentrating on the students’ biography and life-world, we will examine the ways in which these disciplines provide metaphor for daily experience, functioning as models of and models for human thought and behavior. (pp. 75-76) as for teachers, grumet (1976) argues that autobiographical writing can help teachers examine the ways in which they have moved within conventional forms to express their own subjectivities. leggo (2008) also mentions the autobiographical writing can help his professional development: “all my autobiographical research is devoted to my own professional development and the professional development of other educators. autobiographical writing is both transcendent and immanent, both inside and outside, both internal and external, both personal and public” (p. 124). in order to write personally, leggo (2008) argues that: a different culture is needed, a culture that supports autobiographical writing that is marked by an understanding that writing about personal experiences is not only egoism, solipsism, unseemly confession, boring prattling, and salacious revelation. we need to write personally because we live personally, and our personal living is always braided with our other ways of living—professional, academic, administrative, social and political. (p. 90) leggo acknowledges the interplay of personal living and other ways of living such as professional, academic and so on. in the following, i will summarize the characters of autobiography. autobiography can serve as a method for enlarging, occupying and building the space of mediation. it can enlarge the space of subjectivity by pushing back the edges of memory, disclosing more of what has been forgotten, suppressed and denied. the stories one tells cannot function to embellish and disguise the past and present, for an imagined effect. rather, autobiography which makes the architecture of self more complex moves below the surface of memory, requiring the dismantling of self-defense. it allows a re-entry into the past, a re-experience of the past moment now somewhat present in its multidimensionality and orderlessness (pinar, 1995, p. 217). wang. currere 122 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci autobiography invites one to look at the past in a more critical way and identifies problem embedded in the past which may still have impact on oneself at the present. in zhuangzi, zhuangzi, an ancient chinese philosopher, describes a story that a man keeps running to avoid his shadow while never stopping to reflect. likewise, autobiography enables slowing down, to reflect on and engage in inner dialogue with one’s shadow. autobiography provides the opportunity to gaze back and investigate. autobiography enlarges and complicates the telling subject, as well as the listening subject. “we are not the stories we tell as much as we are the modes of relation to others our stories imply, modes of relation implied by what we delete as much as what we include” (pinar, 1995, p. 218). what we delete can be as significant as what we include in autobiography. or as argued by clarke (2012), “i am deeply implicated in the retelling. the story and i are interwoven and although the difference between the two might not be readily apparent … the rendering of the other is always the rendering of self” (p. 61). autobiography allows lived experience to be revealed and expressed, whereas mainstream educational research which is in its obsession with measurement quantifies and threatens to destroy subjectivity. with autobiography, one might reconfigure elements of oneself, and find a unity within the diversity of oneself: “…with every word, this most affirmative of all spirits; all opposites are in him bound together in a new unity” (nietzsche, cited in pinar, 1995, p. 225). autobiographical method invites us to struggle with those determinations and decisions. “it is that struggle and its resolve to develop ourselves in ways that transcend the identities that others have constructed for us that bonds the projects of autobiography and education” (grumet, 1990, p. 324). autobiography invites us to see these constraints are internalized, how we consciously, semi-consciously and unconsciously comply and/or modify them. there are, then, multiple ways that one can comprehend, even struggle, with determinations. first of all, when you are aware of something restrictive or disruptive, one might begin to ask, to interrogate them, and one’s responses to them. one comes to remember the marks and influences that structure one’s subjectivity. miller (2008) introduces the concept of institutional autobiography, which is “a genre which, as i have sought to demonstrate here, unites the seemingly opposed worlds of the personal—where one is free, unique, and outside of history—and the institutional—where one is constrained, anonymous, and imprisoned by the accretion of past practices” (p. 138). he lists questions that shows the institutional autobiography can be very specific: what experiences have led you to teach, study, read, and write in the ways you do? what institutional policies have promoted or inhibited your success? what shape and texture has your life in the institutions given to your dreams of release? to answer these questions, it needs understanding of the two opposed worlds of the personal. miller (2008) suggests that “the challenge lies in how to work within and against its constraints simultaneously, so as to acknowledge without overstating the influence of past teachers and one’s own work in the classroom” (p. 139). autobiography helps portray the path on which one evolves. autobiography has become one means of “rewriting the self in relation to shifting interpersonal and political contexts” (martin & mohanty, 1986, p. 208). as suggested by miller (2005): “autobiography can be a means by which individuals draw their own ever-changing portraits and trace as well as interpret multiple versions of their educational experiences, perspectives, assumptions and wang. currere 123 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci situations” (p. 152). and also, autobiographical writing allows one to express personally, as noted by riley-taylor (2002): the autobiographical interludes woven through my work allow me to write in the language of personal voice, a language based in lived experience, experience that exclude neither rational thought nor the more aesthetic possibilities for coming to know the world. we are creatures of both reason and emotion, mind and body, matter and spirit. the language of personal voice lends a dimension to academic writing that cannot be filled by expository scholarship alone. (p. 67) riley-taylor captures the inseparability of conceptual and ontological existence of human being, akin to pinar’s biographic situation. the use of autobiography can more vividly reflect the lived experience filled with multiple way of thinking and doing, and acknowledges the complex web of various relationships and modalities. to sum up, currere focuses on an individual biography, forsaking general structures to discover the path of experience that has led a particular person to a specific choice, place, cognitive styles (grumet, 1976, p. 84). in the essay that follows, i write autobiographically in hopes of disclosing the evolving process of my subjectivity, the process of becoming structured, by a subjective thread of coherence and continuity. my autobiography my autobiography is articulated and analyzed around three themes: the search for understanding self-growth, my cultural background and new research paradigm. understanding my self-growth the decision to pursue a second doctoral degree—the search for self care “i am studying for my second degree.” “what, are you crazy?” very soon, i think, people will change their attitude toward me. they may become more polite, or more meticulous while talking with me, or…. i started studying again in september, 2013. another doctoral study. my mother opposed my decision. but this time i did not take her advice. it seemed to me that there were some puzzles inside my heart to which i wanted to attend. there were still mysteries in my mind that i wanted to explore. it seems that i am not loyal to my culture. i am far away from the culture in which i am supposed to be mother, a female member who bear the responsibility of fulfilling certain duties. am i the one destined to journey all the time? what self do i want to become? what does my decision to study again mean? what has pushed me forward constantly? what call in my self is calling me? is there a stranger inside calling me to do this? i started searching the answers to these questions from the time i was enrolled in the doctoral program in ubc. this educational experience allows me to engage in thinking about these issues. as argued by foucault, “education should concern the care we take of ourselves in order to know and transform ourselves” (1986, p. 55). foucault’s ethics begins with the relationship to oneself, introducing a personal self-examination of how we should treat ourselves. as pointed out by moghtader (2015), “the spirit in which one works on oneself, takes care of oneself is for the sake of conversion and self-transformation” (p. 4). to take care of self is to engage oneself in a complicated conversation, and then to expect a wang. currere 124 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci self-transformation. “foucault’s oeuvre is demonstrative of an ethic of transformation that aims to change the way we accept, reject and come to know ourselves by attending to the ways we come to discover a truth about ourselves and take care of ourselves”(p. 4). what has led me to this specific place or choice? how shall i discover the truth about myself? i am going to attend to the path of transformation, and to take care of myself. moghtader (2015) noted, for foucault, “care for others is already implied in care of the self ” (p.43). the relationship of self implies the relationship with others. self and others are not mutually exclusive, and they live together in the world. essentially in order to care for others, one first must be able to care for the self. foucault (1986) insists that, “care for self is ethical in itself, but it implies complex relations with others, in the measure where this ethos of freedom is also a way of caring for others” (p. 118). the “care of the self” is concerned not only with the freedom available to oneself but the freedom recognized in others (moghtader, 2015). it seems that freedom can only be ethical when it is acknowledged by others for certain behaviors may bring inconvenience to others. for instance, students have the freedom to listen to music, but they have to turn down the music after midnight when the pursuit for the care of self is indispensable of the care of others. according to foucault (1986), the care of the self in the greco-roman tradition is embedded in the idea that one ought to attend and constantly return to oneself and care for oneself so that one’s soul can be perfected by reason. without sufficient reason, one may not take care of oneself well. the return might involve asking questions of oneself; it is a posture of attending to one’s inner experience, as well as to the material aspects of one’s reality. therefore, asking these questions concerning the self might be important for caring for self. the care of the self is “a rational mastery of the self regarded as an object to be reflected upon and transformed (wang, 2004, p. 29). the reflection for self becomes the main activity for the care for self. “it is a soul-oriented activity conducted throughout one’s life…it is the practice of freedom through mastery” (wang, 2004, p. 29). it is a freedom about looking at self and examining self pathetically and critically. it seems that everyone possesses the potential for subjective freedom. to look at oneself and examine oneself tend to the major aspects of the freedom. but, do i examine myself and reflect on myself? still, “in the tradition of the care of the self, one is called upon to take oneself as an object of contemplation and knowledge and to follow the principles of rational conduct in correcting one’s faults and perfecting one’s soul.” (p. 29). i hereby take myself as the object of contemplation. the central truth might well be who i have been conditioned to be, and its realization is living in accordance with it (pinar, 1994, p. 202). i reactivate my past. my life has been centered on campuses, especially university campuses. after i finished my doctoral study in hong kong, my joy did not last long. returning from the united states, i worked as a curriculum developer in one of the biggest education companies listed on nasdaq stock exchange (the company is located in beijing). i kept busy: meetings, discussions, endless projects, evaluations, developing new curriculum. these were the major obligations of each day. i felt something strange. i felt unsettled, anxious to know why. i felt a call from inside. but what was it? i was lost in the midst of this work. i could not help asking myself: what does it mean for me to gain a doctoral degree? to get more knowledge? or to be in more chaotic complexity? am i the one who got trapped? after reading pinar’s essay on franz kafka’s the trial, i felt an answer. the essay was recommended by a professor who used to supervise me at the university of hong kong. wang. currere 125 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci joseph, k was arrested without knowing why. k. has been leading an unexamined life before his arrest. as pointed out by pinar: “he is dissociated from his subjectivity, and consequently clings to outer character structure, i.e. social role” (1995, p. 33). he was lost to his role, dissociated from what was individual in him, attentive to only what was common with others (pinar, 1995, p. 34). “k. is his career, his socio-historical identity, and thereby an arrested being (p. 36).” he was incapable of self-reflection, and arrested intellectually, psychologically, and socially. pinar uses this example to express dilemmas people face. i asked myself: was i conscious of the problems i faced? did i ask questions about probing why, not just when, what and how questions? was i able to reflect on myself? how should i attend to myself, to my soul? as argued by carl jung, “i quite agree with you that those people in our world who have insight and good will enough, should concern themselves with their own soul’s, more than with preaching to the masses or trying to find out the best way for them”(cited in pinar, 1995, p. 53)”. am i arrested? “as one becomes conscious of one level of arrest, and through a self-reflexive understanding of that level, one moves to another level that will someday become experienced as static.” (pinar, 1995, p. 40). i decided to resign and to study for a second doctorate, driven by a passion to search for the deeper or central truth and for the home that houses my soul. as argued by pinar (1995): what does it mean to be brought nearer to the central truth? for one who has been lost in heideggerian public world of false self and false values, it means returning home. for heidegger, it meant literally staying home, refusing to accept university appointment in large, sophisticated cities such as munich and berlin. he preferred to remain in freiberg, a city nearby his birthplace. (p. 203) pinar suggests returning home means being relatively conscious of origins, being open to the disclosure of unconscious material (through dreams, waking fantasy and so on) and to integrating these origins with present circumstances (pinar, 1995, p. 203). the consideration of origin might be twofold: physically and psychologically. “for many, returning home means moving away” (pinar, 1995, p. 204). maybe it is true for me. i returned to beijing but i felt myself a stranger. the care of the self is “more than an exercise done at regular intervals…is a constant attitude that one must take toward oneself” (foucault, 1986, p. 63). wang (2004) argues that it is “a lifelong project of creating an ethically and aesthetically pleasing life” (p. 30). i kept thinking, searching for these answers. will i be able to create an “ethically and aesthetically pleasing life” unless i find answers to my questions? i engaged myself in the contemplation during many quiet nights. as for leggo (2010), rumination and writing are two major ways of investigation for me. i made my own decision (to pursue the second doctoral study). it is not just an act of independent will or the exercise of my autonomy. it is for me a deadly serious decision. it poses a big question to myself, to my life. it has meant a looking forward to exploring, an attempt to reveal the “truth” about myself. it is a decision under which many aspects (self, other and the world) are considered with rationality and study. i find myself now living with peace, which comes after i made the decision. this is the path i find to my “heart”. as wang knows: “the care of the self is a practice of freedom. it is characterized as the exercise of self mastery and the governing of pleasure and desires by an active individual who practices moderation, rationality and wisdom to achieve a state of beauty in his existence.” “it is a freedom first exercise over oneself, which wang. currere 126 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci refuses the enslavement of the self by oneself or others to institution” (wang, 2004, p. 31). am i really free? like the figure described by pinar in the novel: “joseph k is reminiscent of many of us, in some degree. k is a prototypical being of an urbanized, industrialized, cerebral twentieth century in the west. his life history, with its emphasis upon career, on instrumentally-defined social relations, is a major constituent element of the historical present” (1995, p. 37). must i follow the path most people would do? will a person with a doctoral degree mean adequate for being a researcher and cannot pursue a doctoral degree again? does it matter to learn in such a way (pursuing a second doctoral degree)? “as a practice of freedom, the care of the self also emphasizes one’s independence from the external world in order to focus on the cultivation of the soul. such a turning away from the external to a retreat into oneself is a personal choice of abstinence and moderation in the exercise of active freedom” (wang, 2004, p. 31). it is not appropriate to judge or interpret according to certain cultural or social values or rules that may not fit for the particular individual. as argued by pinar: “culture cannot be reduced to biographic. social and economic structures are sufficiently frozen as to force work in the individual realm” (1995, p. 41). the standard is “heart”. it is not right or wrong. the decision to pursue a second doctoral degree is a retreat, a retreat from external reality into self. through advanced study, i search the meaning of being myself. as discussed by wang hongyu (2004): what is freedom? freedom is based upon rational self-mastery; in non-identity politics, freedom is a form of resistance against social domination; in the new ontology of the self, it is embedded in a limit attitude which valorizes transgression against historical limitations, emphasizing the creativity of producing new existential possibilities. (p. 32) freedom invites one to go beyond limits. what is the limit? the limit varies under various circumstances. it might be a domination. it might be cultural, conceptual, or spatial, racial and so on, or a combination of some, even all. freedom is also a representation of “biographic reality”, a reality portraying your current lived situation. this decision (pursuing a second doctoral study) signifies an attitude: contemplation toward life by myself, and it means a staying where thoughts and actions are interwoven, resonating with my “authentic” self-the inner one. in a certain sense, this decision often feels like a voyage out, from the habitual, the customary, the taken-for-granted, toward the unfamiliar, the more spontaneous, the questionable (pinar, 1995). i have the freedom. the pursuit to be no. 1 the three minute thesis competition (3mt) the social lounge was filled with people. it was the first time that i found the room was quite small. as the host stood out and greeted to all the audience, the competition started. i was sixth among all the participants. from the moment it began, my attention was abruptly drawn to the front area where every participant was supposed to give their speech. the first participant was from india, and she looked different from before. “she paused several times in her speech partly because she was nervous….” i thought. wang. currere 127 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the host said, “now let’s welcome wanying. the title of her thesis is ‘the yuanpei program in peking university—a case study of curriculum innovation’”. i walked to the front and turned around facing all the audience. i heard my heart beat faster and could barely lift my arm. i thought it would be fine only if i could remember what i should say. i stood still while comforting myself. i started. “i should keep my smile and the posture throughout the process. gesture needed here. my brain worked excitedly, but in a negative way. i could hear a reminder whispering around my head after i commenced. however, i was only able to half control my body. i was speaking but my face muscles and my arms seemed frozen. the designed pauses and gestures slipped away. i was just there, talking.” finally i finished. applause arose from the audience. twenty minutes after the last participant finished his speech, the judges announced the results. i did not know where i was located, but i was not one among the first two. i tried to suppress my unhappiness, clapping my hands to celebrate the two winners. i was talking with other people as i became sad, even with a little bit madness. how could i get such a result? i felt frustrated and depressed. after the event, i talked with two friends who had attended the competition for several hours. i could not fall asleep for the rest of the night. when i closed my eyes, my brain even worked faster. i could not accept the failure. scenes from the competitions and other fragmented memories came to mind. they overlapped, imbricated and swirled. i felt pain and sorrow. why? i had finished my first doctoral study and the dissertation had been published as a book. my three minutes thesis was just about this research. was it because i failed to demonstrate the academic value of that research, or was it due to my poor presentation skill? was i too nervous? this being nervous reminded me of my past experience and my childhood memory. through this three minutes thesis competition i finally found the lost past which i thought “lost”. in fact, the past not only exists, but still permeates my life. why do i always want to be no. 1 and why do i feel so sad and frustrated when i fail? with the “lost” past in hand, the connection is easily perceived. this 3mt competition experience serves as a site for autobiographical excavation, through which i can come to recover the social, cultural structures that formed me, how they have worked on me, and how these lost memories still function. “i am from chinese society” in order to perform well, i worked very hard for the 3mt competition. i spent weeks on writing, modifying and reciting the short passage. just before the real competition, i spent five hours unceasingly practicing the speech. like the overcooked food, i found that i had overprepared for the competition. what caused me to be so nervous? why did i struggle so? it seems that i am still a “product” of chinese culture. from the strong desire to win to the sense of frustration caused by the failure in the competition, it can be seen how chinese culture and confucius education has imprinted my subjectivity. i wanted to win the 3mt competition. i deemed winning the competition central to my academic success. therefore, it was of great importance to me. though in the end it turned out it might be a performance. it has been quite a while that i have not acknowledged the influence of chinese culture on me. but i think the influence still remains. confucius education communicates the notion that academic success is the most important goal for a student to achieve. according to confucius, there are four social strata, wang. currere 128 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci comprised of occupation: scholars (shi), farmers (nong), workers (gong), and businessmen (shang) (park & chesla, 2007). the highest class, scholars, did mental labor, and usually made decisions that influenced the whole society. there are many chinese sayings such as: doing scholarly work excels over any other type of work; you can see beauty in book; you can see gold in book. all of these manifest that academic success tends to be the most valuable aspect. my life has been centered on the pursuit for academic success since childhood. in confucius education diligence compromises intelligence. it is believed that if one works hard, one can succeed finally. suffering is part of personal cultivation in chinese culture (tu, 1998). wang (2004) argues that the capacity to bear pain is essential to coming maturity. i thought the pain that arose in the process should be a guarantee for success. therefore, no matter how tired i felt during the preparation, i persisted. reflecting on this competition, i clearly see the influence from my parents. my parents also explain why i have been so devoted to academic success. as salvio (1990) observes: we have to be aware of the meaning generated by intimate social relationships. in such a relationships, as in aesthetic experience, the look, the touch, the distance we keep from one another and the objects framing our lives are all meaningful, and this meaning is grasped in a moment. (p. 234) my mother has been and is with me all the time, no matter where she is, no matter where i am. she was a teacher at a middle school that shared the same school yard with my elementary school. this created a situation wherein she was the one who first knew my examination results. she then would tell me. i guessed my score according to her attitude. each time the good score she knew brought a smile to her face, i felt so relieved. she cared about my education, my examination results, and my place in the class. according to huang and gova (2012), educational achievement is visible and measurable. it encompasses one’s test performances, schools entered, and degrees received. it is generally believed that earning higher grades, attending higher ranking schools, and receiving higher degrees are indisputable routes to success in the society. in addition, education is associated with a person’s social class (huang & gova, 2012). social class is associated with occupations as well as the moral character related to the occupation, as confucius decreed. my mother regarded my education as a family business, an interdependent process for many chinese families (huang & gova, 2012). though children are responsible for their own educational success, chinese parents believe that their children’s educational achievement is greatly influenced by their parenting practices as well. they believe that they have the obligation and responsibility to contribute to their children’s success in education. when parents have a difficult time exerting influence over their children’s academic success, they may regard themselves as failures as a parent. they take their children’s academic failure as their own responsibility because they feel that they did not do their best to work with their children. pressures can be high on both parents and children. when chinese children do not achieve an intended goal, parents feel disappointed, anxious, and embarrassed (kim, 2006). it brings shame and embarrassment to the family. children are impacted by parents’ emotions and expectations. on the other hand, if the child succeeds academically, it represents the triumph of the entire family. it is considered a family achievement. my mother believes this wang. currere 129 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci and put the belief into practice. she supervised me by sitting beside me when i studied at home. each time i finished an essay, i handed it to my mother for revision. chinese parents are concerned that too much praise may have a negative effect on their children’s achievement. therefore, parents usually provide little praise to their children for academic success. that may explain why my parents placed a high value on education and academic success, which implicitly or explicitly have a great impact on my choice, on what to focus on, and the time distribution since i spent a lot of time studying after school. i was directed to study all day and gradually this demand became internalized, the only guiding principle for me. however, where i am might be another aspect deserving consideration. displacement (social and cultural) place as an important concept for understanding curriculum autobiographically emerged decades ago. as pinar argues, “place and human feelings are intertwined. when events take place, they achieve particularity and concreteness; they become infused with feeling. fiction—novels, short stories—express daily human experience, situated in concrete places with specific characters” (pinar, et al., 1995, p. 533). kincheloe and pinar (1991, cited in pinar et al., 1995, p. 533) say, “place is the life-force of fiction, serving as the crossroads of circumstance, the playing field on which drama evolves.” place represents certain notions, certain social and cultural norms. i was born in a middle sized city in the northeast of china. living in the city at that time meant a routinized life that might never change. i come from the vast land in northeast china that is dark and fertile. it is a city with 100 years of history and an industrial base where 8 huge factories operated. these factories ranged from steel industry to the manufacture of train compartment; each had more than 10,000 workers. fifty percent of the population worked for these factories or in occupations related with the 8 factories. my mother was one of them, and she worked for an affiliated middle school as a teacher. after parents retired, their children continued their job. i had heard so many stories about replacing their parents’ job upon graduation from high school. people lived quietly. the sky in winter was always gloomy due to serious air pollution caused by the eight factories which consumed tons of coal everyday. the dark smog cylinder rising everywhere still remains unforgettable in my mind. everyday life was the same. i escaped this dull, uncolored life by reading. reading was the only activity with which i felt fascinated. every school day, i dashed to the school library, reading for several hours. in most cases, the elementary and secondary education was so ritualized and obsessive that knowledge of the outside world was barely acknowledged in class. however, reading at the library provided me the possibility to see the outside world, to experience different kinds of life. even nowadays, this scene always haunts me: i was reading quietly a newly published magazine or a book. i could smell the newly arrived magazine or book and ran to read them. almost no teachers or students were around. it was my own space, my place. it was years ago but the place remains in my mind. this educational experience extended my vision, bringing me into a new “space” where i heard different “voices”. i aspired to try something i had never tried before. how could i achieve the goal? maybe the only way was going to a college, a college in beijing—the capital city of china. wang. currere 130 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci without turning back to my life in the city, i would not see the “lost” connection between me and my hometown city. this regressive moment helps me find the denied elements of the past and see how i had struggled to break free from the bondage of northeastern social boundaries. all these reasons prompted me pursue no. 1 unceasingly, the desire to go to college in beijing, and something unidentifiable…. this competition served as an occasion to question where i come from, culturally and socially. through such self-study i might recover the bridge to a lost part of “i”. by re-entering the past, i saw how i had struggled, how i had worked so hard, and then i might re-perceived the society and culture context where i had come of age, what has structured me. autobiographical reflection offered a key to unlock complexity of my situation. am i a teacher or a student? after the dinner. the dining hall was in a total silence with burst of laughers outside in the courtyard: some talked; some played soccer; some just walked around the courtyard. residents of the college enjoyed themselves after working all day. i went back into my world again. “am i all right?” “am i doing the right thing? did i talk too much? i could not help asking myself. why did i talk in that way during the dinner? why did i think that what other residents said was not correct or sound? sometimes the situation happened in the class too. when the professor asked the difference between qualitative and quantitative methods. i immediately replied: “the qualitative research tends to…”. without waiting for other students’ comments. i wanted to justify what i said in the classroom, make myself more trustworthy. the more i talked, the more unnatural i became. i told my past experience to another chinese graduate student. now she knew i am doing my second phd; consequently, it seemed quite natural that she asked me many questions, especially about achieving a phd. somehow i forgot that i am still a student. “am i not very experienced?” i outlined to her the whole process, detailed the challenges she might face, emphasizing strategies that can be adopted to overcome these difficulties. why did i tell her that i get a doctoral degree already? why did i think that i needed to demonstrate myself on that occasion? with a doctoral degree, does it means that i am more knowledgeable or competent than she is? similar situations have occurred several times since i enrolled in this second doctoral program. i can see that this has led to that; in that circumstance i chose that, i rejected this alternative; i affiliated with those people, then left them for these, that this field intrigued me intellectually, then that one; i worked on this problem, then that one…i see there is a coherence. not necessarily a logical one, but a lived one, a felt one. the point of coherence is the biography as it is lived….the predominant question is: what has been and what is now the nature of my educational experience? (pinar & grumet, 1976, p. 52) how did i identify myself at that moment? did the environment affect me? was it related to the “audience”—those with whom i was talking? i realized my identification with being a teacher on these occasions. sometimes i deemed myself a teacher, and naturally i consider i may deserve more respect since i functioned as a teacher. why should a teacher gain more respect or sustain a dominant role? why did i feel unhappy when i did not receive wang. currere 131 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the desired comment? this reminds me of chinese learning culture. to my surprise, i can so easily identify the influences of chinese learning and teaching culture on me. how does chinese culture view teachers? the traditional chinese model of teaching is one of an emptyvessel or pint pot (maley, 1982). such a model is essentially mimetic or epistemic in that it is characterized by the transmission of knowledge principally through an imitative and repetitive process (paine, 1992; tang & absalon, 1998) teaching methods are largely expository and the teaching process is teacher-dominated (biggs, 1996). the teacher is supposed to be dominant during the whole teaching process. exactly, the teacher interprets, analyzes and elaborates on these points for the students, helps them connect new points of knowledge with old knowledge, and imparts a carefully sequenced and optimally mediated amount of knowledge for the students to memorize, repeat and understand (hu, 2002). due to the perceived roles mentioned above, it is understandable that teachers tend not to embrace students challenging their authority over knowledge. it can be regarded as humiliating if teachers fail to answer students’ questions. it is a common belief that a teacher must assume a directive role, having the sole prerogative in deciding what to teach and exerting complete control over the class all the time (tang & absalom, 1998). this is to make class events fully predictable, guaranteeing the smooth delivery of carefully planned contents. to keep in tune with the transmission model of teaching, students should maintain a high level of receptiveness, wholeheartedly embracing the knowledge from their teacher or found in books. they are expected to respect and cooperate with their teacher (cortazzi & jin, 1996) and not to challenge the transmitted knowledge or present their own ideas until they have mastered sufficient knowledge to make informed judgments (brick, 1991). the teacher is the one, or the only one in class to talk and interpret. accordingly, they deserve respect. that is why i felt uncomfortable about being treated the way in which people challenged me. it seems that i need not care too much whether it is a teacher or a student i look like. teachers and students can be reciprocally related. no matter what role i might be deemed, it could be an opportunity to reconsider my situatedness. understanding my cultural background a westernized chinese?---a double alienated journey who am i? taubman (1992) remembers turning to his mother—a teacher herself—for advice about teaching. as a beginning step, she suggested that he stand in front of their hallway mirror, practicing what he would do in front of his classes during the first weeks of school. identity as a unified me congeals during the mirror stage in seeking oneself in the face of the other. “the ‘i’ comes to form in the presence and reflection of another, identity is inextricably linked to someone else. there is no private “i”. (taubman, 1992) i am in-between chinese and western culture. i am a chinese in others’ eyes, but i consider myself as embodying both cultures. i am moving between the two poles. as taubman identifies his way to midpoint, he terms a “dialectic…whose endpoints must be attended to but not submitted to” (1992, p. 232). as a chinese woman who had come to the united states to study curriculum theory, wang hongyu studies herself by studying confucius, foucault, and kristeva. she had left home: her nation, her parents. but she found that her home had become strange: “going back home does not bring me home, but has turned my mother into a stranger. i have become a stranger to myself too” (wang, 2004, p. 7). therefore, wang invokes the conception of “third wang. currere 132 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci space”, wherein one travels beyond the current forms of life. it is the third space that opens when the stranger calls one out of oneself, when the stranger inside oneself emerges, enabling one to move away from home toward a destination not yet known. wang describes a journey both a return home and to a foreign land (pinar, 2011, p. 107). according to wang hongyu (2004), “the more i probed, the more i was amazed by how much we chinese are still embedded in this tradition, no matter how many times during last one hundred years we have witnessed anti-confucianism (p. 55). will it happen to me? how has confucius culture affected me? in what way? does anything that i do conflict with the culture i am supposed to belong to? it was a cozy night. we were talking around a table, a “chinese table” around which ten chinese students sat side by side. suddenly, a chinese student said, “do you want to hear a joke?” “please…” we laughed. he began, “once there was a man who told a funny joke.” after he finished, a person said, “you can say that again.” then he retold the story…this is the joke. finished.” no one laughed. we gazed at each other. i know the funny place was that “you can say that again” is slang and it means “i agree” or “it sounds fun.” but many chinese, as second language learners may understand the phrase literally. that was why many of them did not understand and for them the joke was not funny at all. i looked at the one who had just told the joke, thinking if i needed to tell the reason. when i was about to tell, i stopped and hesitated. “should i tell? will it mean that i am flaunting? a little bit of a show off? there is a professor from peking university sitting here… no. i should keep silent. it is not a time to show myself.” i decided to keep silent. after a while, the speaker told us the reason. everyone felt relieved. every conversation resumed, back to the previous state. but my mind seemed to get out of the place. why did i have these thoughts? when some questions or situation make you conscious of where are you from, i think these are culturally sensitive moments. with the story, i begin to examine myself consciously; this examination is informed by, mainly, i guess the studying experience in hong kong, america and canada. why would i have those thoughts when being with other chinese residents? i was so hesitant about telling them the truth. how do i view the relation with others? how do i view myself among other chinese? is it subduing to collectivism, is the self placed within the collectivist ideology? ren (often translated as benevolence), the most important ethical principle in confucianism, is recognized widely for its emphasis on the care of the others (yu, 2007). according to some commentators, the confucian relational self lies under/ in human relationship, constituted by nothing more than the sum of roles he or she assumes in various relationships, and it changes as relationship changes. (yu, 2007). in confucian cultures, the self is what ho (1993) calls the relational self, which is intensely aware of the social presence of other human beings. the appearance of others in the phenomenal world is integral to the emergence of selfhood; that is, self and others are conjointly differentiated from the phenomenal world to form the self-in-relation-with-others. ho (1993) uses the term relational identity to refer to identity defined by a person’s significant social relationships. according to sun (1991, p. 1), the chinese, “perceive an individual largely as a 'body' (shen or shenti) to be made whole by the exchange of 'hearts' (xin) between two such 'bodies'. in this sense, a chinese individual, far from being a distinct and separate individual, is conceivable largely in the continuum of 'two persons'. it can be understood as no separate wang. currere 133 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci individual for a chinese individual. “ideally, the chinese 'individual', inhibited from unattenuated 'self-actualization' and thus rendered inert, is galvanized into action by its duty towards the significant other “(p. 5). the significant other can be always seen in the chinese individual. sun argues that “the emotive nature of chinese 'conscience' renders it more tractable to concerns for 'face' or shame, oftentimes leading to the compromising of rational self-interest or one's principle” (1991, p. 4). in the above situation, it seems that i exchanged my self-image or self-interest (in order not be disliked by other chinese) with the “truth” that i wanted to tell. “enveloped by heart, a chinese individual at times finds himself 'not the master of his own body' (shen bu you ji)” (p. 4). the self in confucianism is a subdued self. it is conditioned to respond to perceptions, not of its own needs and aspirations, but of social requirements and obligations. incongruence between the inner private self and the outer public self is likely to be present (ho, 1993). confucianism tends to produce people who view behavior in terms of whether it meets or fails to meet some external moral or social criteria—and not in terms of individual needs, sentiments, or volition. that is, people who tend to be moralistic, not psychologically minded, ho further argues. sun (1991) argues that confucianism is the philosophy par excellence of the 'two': “this worldly oriented, it seeks transcendence in the movement away from one's own body towards another. in such activity, the imperative is living up to one's own part in a reciprocal relation” (p. 4). such activity was traditionally codified in the five cardinal pairs of reciprocity like 'lord-subject,' 'father-son' etc., which shows the more deep-lying, long-lasting binary thrust in the chinese view of the human condition. “marxist china has continued the same thrust in the effacement of individuality in a collective matrix. ideology might be faltering now, but the need of modern-day chinese to 'settle their bodies' in the matrix of family is more real than ever (sun, 1991, p. 4)”. he contends that the chinese concept of the individual, from the confucian to the maoist, perceives man as totally malleable by society or the state. the chinese notion of 'transcendence' is the horizontal movement of feelings from a single body to a greater number of bodies, so that 'individual' impulses are developed into social concordance (sun, 1991). the great learning describes the ethical development of a person in stages beginning with the rectification of his “xin”, so that his “shen” will be cultivated, and proceeds from there to unify his family, to harmonize his nation, and eventually to pacify all-under-heaven (cited in sun, 1991, p. 13). the goal of self-cultivation is to lead one’s life in accordance with the way of heaven. it is not meant to make a person a unique individual, but to make one an ideal person (sun, 1991). confucius culture establishes the path for the individual to follow. the issue of cultural difference has never been so crucial since i had the experience of studying abroad. for four years i studied at the university of hong kong for my doctoral study; now i am doing the second phd at the university of british columbia. the experience in hong kong afforded me the opportunity to examine from where i come and signalled the start of the journey of struggle with the two cultural claims on myself (culture of mainland china and hong kong), which i may not have been very well aware of at the very beginning. i came to realize the cultural difference between the two places: where i had been brought up and where i was living and studying during the period. for some particular issue, they are just opposite. the difference that i realized renders me the opportunity of considering the wang. currere 134 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci conflicting aspects of the two cultures, and the uniqueness of the two cultures. biocultural identities implies the coexistence of two different cultures but is problematic if conflicts and contradictions between the two cultures are not addressed in generative rather than resolvable ways (young, 1998). by constantly engaging myself in various questions: i seem to estrange myself to both cultures. these questions are: how do these two cultures manifest themselves in myself? how should i react or respond while situating this bicultural environment, psychologically and behaviorally? what are the moments that critically shock me? how have my thought processes evolved during the process? am i embracing the two cultures? in what way? as noted, wang hongyu (2004) proposes a concept of a third space that may fit for this situation: the contradictory nature of differences between chinese and western cultures constantly challenges me to reconcile these differences into a creative site where new subjectivities can emerge. what we need is embracing both cultures through a third space of mutual transformation enables us to approach the issues of self, relationship, and difference in a new way. (p. 16) wang contends that a third space embodies both cultures at the same time, honoring the otherness of each and encouraging passages and interactions between them. how the two otherness interact will be interesting. it is manifested through one’s thinking and choice. can they really “talk with each other”? it is through the “oneself” that the two cultures mediate and accommodate. when the two cultures find passage into the “oneself”, one may begin to engage in the “rethinking” of the two cultures. one may think the origin, the history or how this particular aspect of the culture has been shaped. or, one may see that “different cultural layers of the self shift, intersect, and constantly reform” (wang, 2004, p. 16). naturally, as one perceives the difference, he or she may behave in accordance with a culture with another culture being considered in mind. the visible reaction may only represent a choice. the one may act upon one culture on one occasion while another on different occasion. this shift signifies the complexity of living with two cultures internalized within. the space where i was and where i am physically manifests influences of two cultures in terms of language usage, way of thinking, knowledge system being employed and so on. i am between these cultures, in ongoing and shifting relation with each. understanding the new research paradigm what is currere?--struggle for a different research paradigm another misty day in february. the class was about to start. “would i participate and speak well?” i murmured. as one of the classmates sat beside me, my wandered thought came back. “how is your writing? i asked. “yea, i just finished.” i looked around in the classroom, and i found most of them had taken their seat already. it was a class i took in the second term since i studied at ubc. i had been deeply confused and perplexed by the class discussion. it was unexpected. i did not anticipate the situation. i was not a beginner. i finished the first doctorate at the university of hong kon g and i published the dissertation. however, i found i was indeed a beginner in this class. it seemed that the knowledge i learned before was null though i did know qualitative research, case study, various research methods and so on… but why did i become numbed in the class? wang. currere 135 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci spontaneously, i had been both surprised and excited, intrigued by something that is fundamentally different. i wanted to be inspired. i was mentally activated, triggered, but failing to orient myself to somewhere. i was amazed by these thoughts, challenged by them. they are not behavioral, observable, but ontologically, exists. this is a new perspective, new thoughts, new way of looking at ourselves and world. it describes ontological shifts within temporal and spatial structure. it is a path along which i begin to walk, to reflect, to converse, and with myself. it seemed that i walked along a path that brings me a feeling of surprise, excitement, anticipation of inspiration. the talked about storytelling (autobiography) again. why are personal stories concerned with curriculum? what is currere? why does it address the contribution of academic study to the understanding of our life history? what is research? it is supposed be like the one i did before for my first doctoral study. can story-telling be a research method? and then what is the difference between research and the novel? these questions have puzzled me since the first month i enrolled in the program. i was eager to know: research methodology has evolved to enable students to study their biographies and practices. if we can extend this idea to the murky world of identity, and provide spaces for student teachers to rethink how their constructions of the teacher make for lived experience, then i think students…will be better able to politically theorize about the terrible problem of knowing thyself…students may come to understand knowing thyself as a construction and eventually, as a socially empowering occasion. (grumet, 1975, p. 43) the research paradigm is concerned with the way the world is viewed and understand. as argued by aoki (2001): what seems to be needed in curriculum inquiry, is general recognition of the epistemological limit-situation in which curriculum research is encased. accordingly, we need to seek out new orientation that allows us to free ourselves of the tunnel vision effect of mono-dimensionality. (cited in pinar & irwin, 2005, p. 94) i followed the tradition of empirical research by which i derive my understanding through cases, interviews, observations and so on. the research was directed toward others, toward outside. however, the practical is a complex discipline, concerned with choice and action. the theory-currere seems to be different. as argued by pinar, reynolds, slattery and taubman (1995), grumet (1976) cited currere as a method and theory of curriculum which escapes the epistemological traps of mainstream social science and educational research. rather than working to quantify behaviors to describe their surface interaction or to establish causality, currere seeks to describe what the individual subject him or herself makes of these behaviors (pinar et al. 1995, p. 414). as one of the theoretical foundations for currere, phenomenology tends to reject both rationalism and in which the bottom line of reality is logic and empiricism as elaborated in twentieth century mainstream social science, the bottom line of reality is its mathematical representation in statistics because they fail to account for the world as experienced (p. 405). as further pointed out by pinar. et al. (1995), currere shares phenomenology’s interest in describing immediate, pre-conceptual experience, making use of the phenomenological wang. currere 136 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci processes of distancing and bracketing required in doing so. grumet (1976) provides an explanation: unlike mainstream educational research which focuses upon the end products of the processes of consciousness as described by husserl, those end products we call concepts, abstractions, conclusions, and generalizations we, in accumulative fashion, call knowledge. currere seeks to slide underneath these end products and structures to the pre-conceptual experience that is their foundation. currere is designed to act as the phenomenological epoche, slackening the intentional threads which attach us to the world and thus bring them to our notice. (p. 41) currere is to help find the hidden “truth” and bring the truth into our attention by going beyond the end products such as concepts, abstraction and so on. currere emphasizes the individual experience of the curriculum: in contrast to the conventional empirical-analytic paradigm of educational research, currere returns to the experience of the individual, searching for those qualities which disqualify them for consideration in the mainstream behavioral sciences: its idiosyncratic history, its pre-conceptual and lived foundations, its contextual dependency, and its capacity for freedom and intelligence in choice and action. (pinar et al., 1995, p. 414) through currere, the researcher attempts a phenomenological description of both subject and object, requiring knowledge of self as knower of the world, tracing the complex path from pre-conceptual experience to formal intellection (pinar et al., 1995, p. 415). currere points to a lived path along which we better understand how we have evolved throughout the process. currere as autobiographical self-report communicates the individual’s lived experience as it is socially located, politically positioned, and discursively formed, while working to succumb to none of these structurings. summary my autobiography is organized around three themes: search for understanding my selfgrowth, cultural background, and research paradigm. through presenting these moments, memories, and stories, i have achieved the deeper understanding about myself and my subjectivity. the first theme is about the search for self-growth, which involves three stories and corresponding analysis and synthesis; the second theme is about the search for cultural understanding with one story and analysis presented; the third theme is about the search for understanding research paradigm with one story and analysis discussed. discussion—some thoughts on my autobiography i am in between: a teacher and student, being home and alienated, being chinese and a foreigner, both mother and daughter (i am a daughter but sometimes think like my mother). it seems that i always move between two extremes, two roles, or two cultures, or two modes of understanding research. these extremes might all be issues related to my “authentic self,” if from different angles. these different pairs (aspects) work to help me understand myself better. being a teacher makes sense when comparing to being a student; being chinese makes wang. currere 137 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci sense when comparing to being a foreigner. teachers do not exist isolated from students. consequently, any concept or name implies a relationship and suggests another concept as its counterpart. in other words, when we look at something, we unconsciously link it to its counterpart. for example, when we describe something as red or good, we are implicitly comparing them to their opposite counterparts. in chinese philosophy, yin and yang (also, yinyang or yin yang) describes how opposite or contrary forces are actually complementary, interconnected, and interdependent in the natural world. the yin and yang give rise to each other as they interrelate to one another. similarly, teachers do not make any sense if not relating themselves to students. they are interconnected, yet in seemingly “contradictory” positions. in chinese culture, yin and yang are two important concepts. everything has both yin and yang aspects, (for instance shadow cannot exist without light). yin and yang can be deemed as complementary forces that interact to form a dynamic system. this dynamic system is not just assembled parts, but might be a new place where new forces can be formed. this could be the reason why i have been in between for so many things, such as between student and teacher, and being home yet alienated. when something establishes itself, it naturally denies something else and implies the opposite embedded naturally. the yin and yang sides or conflicting sides characterize the whole process. in my case, constant change places me in between the “new” and the “old”: the current and the past contradict each other. the evolving process is dynamic and not static, with contradictions and harmonies representing a unity in multiplicity. it also reminds me of the chinese traditional brush painting. as one of the most important styles, freehand styleshui-mo (水墨) is loosely termed as “watercolor” or “brush” painting. the chinese character "shui" means water and "mo" means ink. this style is also referred to as "xie yi" (寫意) or freehand style. the ink-and-wash landscape is characterized as vivid brushwork and varying degrees of intensity of ink that can express the artist's conception of nature, his own emotions, and individuality. this style seeks to capture the essence of the subject rather than the details of its appearance. landscape painters, for example, frequently go outdoors and observe nature, then come back to a studio to paint what they have experienced. many landscape paintings use empty spaces to represent light or clouds. the most sustained and integral theory on chinese painting is embodied in the idea that form is only a means to express spirit and vitality (zhang, 2002). essentially, painters as early as the fifth century, “realized the importance of capturing the spirit of nature, rather than just copying it. in painting a man or woman, the artist should bring forth his or her likeness: in painting animals, trees, or flowers, he should attempt to capture their characteristics or ‘moving implications” (zhang, 2002, p. 5). in order to paint successfully, the painter must observe and understand his subject. “the artists sought a likeness in the unlikeness, more specifically they wanted to go beyond superficial identical resemblance and create an image that was unique to the artist and captured how the artist’s character, mood, and emotion affected the way in which a subject was seen” (reynolds, 2009, p. 3). one may think of it as the image that a person has when they look at a scene or subject, their interpretation and how they personally internalize and reveal the character of the subject. the purpose of these painters, particularly when painting subjects from nature, was to try to integrate themselves with the subjects and achieve a sort of harmony with nature. this idea of going beyond the images allowed painters to express their inner emotions, spiritual thinking, and show a unique self (reynolds, 2009). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/chinese_philosophy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/interconnected http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/p/index.php?title=ink_and_wash_painting&action=edit&redlink=1 wang. currere 138 transnational curriculum inquiry 14 (1-2) 2017 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci chinese painting is to pursue and exhibit the “spirit” of the scene. these paintings convey the ideal, pursuit, and understanding of the painters. similarly, while writing my autobiography, i also seek to convey the “spirit” of scenes as i lived them. it may neglect or miss some details but i aspire to capture the “essence” or “real quality” of the past experience. leaving the blank (liubai) in these paintings is used to better reflect the beauty, and to allow more imagination. writing an autobiography is to convey something that is spirited, in order to transcend factual details and highlight important understanding. these different shades of ink interact to present the beauty or spirit of the real life, resembling the different stories told in my autobiography as they interact and overlap in some way. notes 1 wywang105@163.com references aoki, t. 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(2002) a history of chinese painting. beijing: foreign languages press. submitted: october, 11st, 2016 approved: november, 1st, 2017 o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: bell, rachael; downey, adrian m.; noreiga, alicia f.; pyrke, courtney. speculative fictions and curricular futures: envisioning rural educational utopia. transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2020 p. 3 22 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci <access date> speculative fictions and curricular futures: envisioning rural educational utopia rachael bell anglophone school district north, canada adrian m. downey1 mount saint vincent university, canada alicia f. noreiga, university of new brunswick, canada courtney pyrke university of new brunswick, canada hope, futurity, and dreaming curriculum the precarity of the current socio-environmental moment cannot be exaggerated. some have articulated this moment as uncertain (bauman, 2007), others as turbid and troubling (haraway, 2016), and others still as crisis (kumar, 2013). perhaps the most compelling articulation of our precarity, and indeed the impetus for the current discussion, is roger saul’s (2021) characterization of this educative moment as “the doorstep of dystopia.” saul points to the cape town water crisis and other contemporary moments in which modern society’s infrastructure has failed to provide life’s basic necessities due to climate change. for saul (2021), and many others, these moments are becoming increasingly common and inevitable— as the global covid-19 pandemic illustrates. saul (2021) suggests these moments point toward a dystopic future marked by a collapse of the infrastructures of our post-industrial economy. saul’s (2021) unique contribution is to raise the question of how we can ethically move forward as educators at the precipice of dystopia. he is particularly concerned with the duplicity of continuing to promote education as a means to a secure future and the related conventional economic imperatives of education (i.e., if you work hard, you can go to university and get a decent-paying job) given the increasing likelihood that these futures cannot be guaranteed and that these ubiquitous economic imperatives may prove false. whether prophetic or fallacious, saul’s (2021) vision inspires us to think about the future, particularly through the lens of curriculum. we see curriculum as the space in education where competing understandings of the past and present work toward a statement of what will be of worth in the future. this is evident through the fundamental question of curriculum theory, what knowledge is of most worth, and the myriad other forms that question may take: whose knowledge is of most worth (apple, 1979), what stories are most worth telling (donald & ng-a-fook, 2020), what is worthwhile (schubert, 2010), and what knowledge is of most worth here (chambers, 1999)? curriculum is, thus, a futurity, or a way in which particular visions of the future become knowable and intervene upon the present (tuck & gaztambide-fernández, 2013). here, we are interested in all these questions, bell, downey, noreiga, pyrke. speculative fictions 4 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci particularly as they help us dream something beyond the curriculum as currently manifested in our shared place. as alluded to above, curricular futurities are always contested and political in nature (see wahlström, 2018). as chambers (1999) suggested, they are also placed. in this paper, we are particularly interested in our local, shared place—the mostly-rural canadian province of new brunswick. though new brunswick is a small canadian province, many of its characteristics resonate on a global level. new brunswick’s geopolitical context is characterized by a shrinking and aging population (jones, 2020). indeed, new brunswick is on the losing end of a population drain facilitated by the ongoing global process of urban migration (holtman & thériault, 2017). as a result, new brunswick suffers from labour shortages in jobs of all skill levels. in 2019, new brunswick assumed the title of canada’s most impoverished province and would begin receiving the most funding per capita from the federal government’s equalization support program (jones, 2019). urban migration, and the centralizing force of neoliberal capitalism that underpins it, are global phenomena. a more distinct, but by no means unique, feature of new brunswick’s socio-economic structure is the economic dominance of the irving family. irving family companies hold the majority of business in forestry, oil, gas, transportation, shipping, pulp, and paper production, and newspaper/media outlets in the province. the various companies privately owned by the family are estimated to be worth $10 billion (moser, 2019). the irving companies employ 1 in 12 people in new brunswick (livesey, 2016), but they have also been criticized for hiding wealth in bermuda and avoiding taxes (moser, 2019; poitras, 2014). regardless of one’s view on the irving family, it is impossible to ignore the role they play in shaping new brunswick's socio-economic and geopolitical context. new brunswick is also the only officially bilingual province in canada. new brunswick enacted its first official languages act in 1969, making both english and french the provinces two official languages. the official languages act (2002) also recognizes the fundamental right for citizens of new brunswick to receive services in the official language of their choice from the provincial government. as a result, new brunswick has two public school districts: anglophone school district and francophone school district. for education, the net effect of these geopolitical and socioeconomic features is a curricular futurity marked by the presence of neoliberal economic imperatives, and, in particular, a curricular focus on entrepreneurship (e.g., government of new brunswick [gnb], 2016, 2019a; see also benjamin, crymble, & haines, 2017; sears, 2018). neoliberalism can be described as the ideological project of removing societal safety nets in the economy to facilitate growth in the free market (kumar, 2019). the entrepreneur is the ideal worker of the neoliberal economy, as the individual assumes the risk and reward of labour. the precarity of entrepreneurial employment has been noted by scholars in the province (benjamin, crymble, & haines, 2017), but entrepreneurial education is still claimed by many as a solution to the unique challenges of a rural economy (e.g., hadley, 2018). though we feel it intimately in our local context, the prevalence of neoliberal ideological intrusion into curriculum is a global phenomenon—and it is not alone in its negative influence on education. through a study of several national contexts including brazil, south africa, and india, curriculum theorist ashwani kumar (2019) identified three insidious influences of curriculum globally: the ideological, the neoliberal, and the (settler) colonial. unsurprisingly, evidence of each of these influences can be found in most new brunswick’s curriculum documents and more widely in the province’s school system. new brunswick’s current curricular futurity, then, is in no way responsive to the precarity discussed by saul (2021). indeed, it seems that the neoliberal economic imperatives of new bell, downey, noreiga, pyrke. speculative fictions 5 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci brunswick curriculum serve only as a reification of the industrial and post-industrial manifestations of schooling that have directly contributed to the precarity of the current socioenvironmental moment. systems, such as schooling, can be notoriously resistant to change. yet, within the hegemonic spaces of curriculum and schooling, individuals have agency, and can—and often do—mobilize that agency toward change with varying degrees of success. we would not begin this article by over-generalizing the curricular and educational spaces in new brunswick as irredeemably damned by the above named ideological, colonial, and neoliberal influences. indeed, there are pockets of resistance everywhere, but in this province particularly within early childhood education and first nations (indigenous) education. yet, we must remain realistic about “the trouble”, as feminist scholar donna haraway (2016) names the myriad forces that have led to the environmental collapse, economic precarity, and social inequality that mark the current post-industrial moment—and of which the current covid-19 pandemic is clearly a part. haraway asks us to stay with the trouble in order to foster a sense of response-ability, defined as “a praxis of care and response” (haraway, 2012, p. 302). response-ability, for us in this moment, is found in speculation and dreaming. we take inspiration here from haraway herself, who draws on science fiction and speculative feminism in order to dream a future beyond the confines of what exists today through her “camille stories” (haraway, 2016)—a science fiction narrative where symbionts of humananimal/human-insects hybrids physically represent the possibilities of becoming-with our more-than-human others. speculation is often criticized in western philosophy as a less than rigorous modality of thought (fairfield, 2015), but many contemporary writers defend it as a part of theoretical creativity (braidotti, 2019; haraway, 2016). we view speculation as a form of envisioning or dreaming a future informed by particular understandings of the present. our speculation and dreaming here responds to the ongoing conversation in curriculum studies around speculative fiction as a source of inspiration for theorizing. historically, we think of cynthia chambers (1999) as a crucial voice in this conversation, drawing on canadian literature to make a case for a uniquely canadian curriculum theory—a call to which this article attempts to respond. more recently, we think of the journal of the american association for the advancement of curriculum studies and their two recent issues engaging speculative fictions (e.g., appelbaum, 2019; weaver, 2020). we expect the current, ongoing relationship between speculative fiction and curriculum is due to their mutual emphasis on the future. like curriculum, speculation is a futurity, but unlike curriculum, speculation is not necessarily invested in the infrastructure of post-industrial capitalism. rather our speculation here—our envisioning, dreaming, or writing of speculative fiction (terminology we use interchangeably henceforth)—is meant to speak back to that infrastructure and move beyond it toward an articulation of our individual and collective educational utopia. we use utopia here as a direct response to saul’s (2021) use of dystopia. indeed, dystopia seems rather ubiquitous in the current western social moment as evidenced by bestselling books like the marrow thieves (dimaline, 2017) and margaret atwood’s the testaments, not to mention the endless train of films and tv shows that depict socioenvironmental collapse (e.g., black mirror; world war z; the walking dead). our emphasis on utopia is not meant as an escape from the cultural fixation with dystopia, nor as an enactment of the uncritical optimisism saul (2021) condems within the school system, but rather as a search for possible responses to the actual through considerations of the impossible. zygmunt bauman (2007) reminds us that utopia, given sir thomas more’s initial treatment of the idea in the sixteenth century, is informed by “two greek words: eutopia, that bell, downey, noreiga, pyrke. speculative fictions 6 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci is ‘good place’, and outopia, which means ‘nowhere’ [emphasis original]” (p. 95). utopia, then, is an impossibility—a nowhere (see also zamalin, 2019). education will always be flawed, complex, and messy by virtue of the inherent humanness of the endeavour. nonetheless, bauman suggests that for centuries after more’s introduction of utopia to the collective consciousness, many believed that “a society without utopia is not liveable, and consequently a life without utopia is not worth living” (bauman, 2007, p. 96). despite the unlikeliness of complete educational revolution, we maintain the value of envisioning spaces beyond the current state of affairs in education as a counter-cultural act of theorizing. educational utopia may not be possible, but that does not mean dreaming it is not productive. we see our speculative educational utopia—our dreaming of an education and a curriculum beyond the post-industrial capitalism, neoliberalism, heteropatriarchy and sexism, settler colonialism, racism, and ableism of the current education system—as a form of responseability and maintaining hope. we are not alone in new brunswick in seeking hope through speculation about the future. beginning in may of 2019, nb media coop—a small, volunteer-run, news outlet aiming to cover local stories not covered by the government-run cbc or the other local news outlets, which are monopolized by irving-owned companies (livesey, 2016; poitras, 2014)— began publishing a series of letters from the future of new brunswick.2 these letters dealt with climate change, universal basic income, and gender equality from the perspective of fictitious authors from an imagined future. in this way, we see our current project of envisioning a curricular future as speaking both within a global conversation around speculative fiction/futures/feminisms (i.e., sf; see haraway, 2016) in curriculum theory, but also in a local conversation around the future of our shared place. at both levels, we look to the future with hope. many write of hope, but, to us, none speak so loudly against the gloom of dystopia and the effect of hopelessness as paulo freire. freire (2002) characterized hopelessness as a loss of agency and showcased that disadvantaged groups who believe their destinies are inevitable can lack the willpower to alter their world’s trajectory. they accept their world’s path as fixed and remain in a state of self-inflicted dormancy. their inaction further exacerbates challenges, as they make little or no effort to change their world but stand by awaiting the inevitable. indeed, the authors collectively note an exhaustion with nanoracism (mbembe, 2019), microaggressions, as well as larger systemic manifestations of oppression. yet, we maintain our hope because hope is a mechanism by which transformation can occur. freire (2002) viewed hope as the driving force that motivates marginalized and disadvantaged groups to take proactive stances in shaping their destinies—thus our communal presumption that envisioning a brighter future through hope stimulates action towards making dreams realities. through our utopic visions, we keep our own hope alive and mobilize it in the direction of our dreams. this paper unfolded over the course of 2020 and the beginning of 2021. we each began by separately responding to the prompts: “described your educational dreamworld” and “tell the story of your educational utopia”. after the initial writing, we gathered in person and digitally to discuss the themes and resonances from the writing. in march 2020, just before the pandemic hit new brunswick, we presented some of our discussions at a local environmental education conference, where we received valuable feedback. throughout the remainder of the year, we discussed, wrote, and re-wrote our visions and the surrounding paper. the result has been a rich, dynamic, and complicated conversation about the future of curriculum, both locally and globally. having outlined our justification for this paper, the process of writing it, as well as our theoretical dispositions, sensitivities, and concerns, we now share a collectively-authored bell, downey, noreiga, pyrke. speculative fictions 7 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci speculative fiction that represents some of the themes, tensions, resolutions, and complexities of a dreamed educational utopia. in what follows, we each share an individual speculation on the future of education in new brunswick bound together within a single narrative. after sharing our narrative, we offer a discussion based on those themes that have resonated most with us. we conclude this paper by returning to the notion of dreaming and calling for a collective revisioning of our global and local education systems. before asking you for your dreams, however, we first offer our own. rosie’s day: a narrative speculation it was rosie’s sixth birthday, and she was very excited because today she would begin her education. she had already learned many things from her parents and her family. she could read books, write stories, and run fast and free. but today was different. today she would begin her “formal” education. rosie knew that many children her age attended places called schools. rosie, however, had chosen something different. rosie had heard stories of school systems of long ago, where everyone was made to attend schools—where strict practices, learning methods, and expected outcomes were handed down from district offices and students were expected to follow homogenous activities and evaluations regardless of their differences. she was happy that she was given the choice to decide the mode of formal education she wanted to pursue. rosie knew she could change her mind at any time, and whether learning in a building or by interacting within her community, she understood that her learning would be equally valued and acknowledged. <<<>>> rosie began her day with a hearty breakfast. during the meal, she asked her mother, annette, to tell her about education. although they had had many conversations on this topic, annette obliged. “well rosie, today your formal education begins!” she started, eyes lighting up as she spoke. “today, i will take you down to meet the community elders, and they will tell you a long story about this land and the people who were here before us.” “who are the elders?” asked rosie between bites of oatmeal. “they are people who have lived here for a long, long time, and who have been trusted with the responsibility of making sure you know the story of this land,” replied her mother. “is the story scary?” asked rosie. annette thought for a second before responding, “some parts of it. but you’re big now and being big means we have to think about scary things.” seeing that rosie was uneasy she added, “trust the elders, rosie. they will never tell you anything you can’t handle.” this seemed to appease rosie, and she finished her meal without comment. as they were getting ready to leave, rosie asked her mother, “what about tomorrow and the next day? what will we do then?” annette smiled, “what would you like to do, rosie?” rosie thought for a minute, “i think let’s worry about tomorrow tomorrow.” annette nodded her assent, and they began their journey out the door. <<<>>> after hearing the story of the land, which took several hours, annette noticed rosie was restless, and after telling her what she saw, she asked rosie what she might like to do next. rosie responded that she might like to go for a walk. annette said that sounded nice, and they walked around town, eventually arriving at the library. at the library, rosie asked the librarian, idris, to help her find a few books. idris bell, downey, noreiga, pyrke. speculative fictions 8 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci asked what rosie might be interested in. still thinking deeply about schooling, and what her education might look like, rosie suggested they find stories about different sorts of schools. idris helped rosie find a few books on schools. one was particularly interesting as it contained an excerpt from a student’s journal. rosie and idris read the book out loud together. <<<>>> the year is 2020, and scout has been given the opportunity to enroll in a new high school education system. this high school education system is being trialed in new brunswick for the next four years, allowing any local high school student to attend. scout attended a traditional high school in grade 9 and then made the switch to the new high school for grade 10. below, scout shares their experience in their new school. there are a lot of differences between the old school system and my new school. firstly, the school system incorporates inter/multi-disciplinary teaching and learning. i like this because it supports students who struggle in certain subject areas. for me, this means that i can learn my weak subjects, such as math and science, through my strong subjects, such as the arts and humanities. this way of learning has made me more engaged in the learning process. i used to hate going to math and science class, but now i enjoy it because it is tied to subjects that i am good at. whenever i struggle in subjects, i feel less anxious because i know i can use the time during my stronger subjects to reinforce the concepts. i am currently taking an art-science class, which allows me to receive a credit for both subjects while learning them simultaneously. i am also enrolled in a music class that incorporates math into our learning. likewise, this allows me to receive credit for both subjects. there are many other students in my classes who also benefit from this learning style and are all excited about and interested in pursuing a future in the arts and humanities. i am enrolled in a self-paced learning program. the self-paced learning option allows me to control the amount of time i spend towards specific classes. each class has 20 units, and we are given two units at a time. once we hand in our two units, we are given the next two units. lessons by teachers and the community are conducted weekly and recorded so students can watch them again if they forgot or missed something. i like this way of learning, as i can get through my art-science courses in 10 weeks but can spend 30 weeks focusing on music-math. homework is dependent on how much i want to work on my units at home. if i want to finish a course before the end of the term, i can spend more time at home working on my units. every other week, we have a flex day, which is a day where we do not have any classes. we are still required to go to school on flex days and work on whatever we want during that time. i spend this time working in our school library, where i can spend the entire day researching and writing my history essays. our courses are all community-infused, where teachers are responsible for their classrooms, and the community is encouraged to contribute and collaborate. in my musicmath course, we have had units led by our community newcomers society, an indigenous elder, and some people from the chinese heritage society. we are also expected to spend one day a week out in our community, volunteering and learning from different groups of people. this past week, my friends and i went to the community garden to learn about growing food and sustainable living. this encouraged us to think of a plan to bring community gardens to our school. each grade could have its own community garden, and we could grow enough food to help provide more food for students and other community programs, such as our homeless shelters. as well, we’re going to plan a clothing swap at our high school for any staff or student to participate in. each person can bring an item of clothing to donate, but it is not required. at my new school, there is less focus on gender. all of our sports teams and extracurricular activities are gender-neutral, and the school only has single person washrooms. we bell, downey, noreiga, pyrke. speculative fictions 9 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci also have robust health lessons, where we learn about gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexuality, and sexual health. we participate in lessons twice a month where health professionals from our community teach us about these concepts. last week, a group of medical students came to our school and taught us about consent. next month, the lgbtqia2 community group will be coming to the school to teach us about sexually transmitted diseases. the halls of my school have been designed to allow the students and community to contribute to the physical image of their school. some students have chosen to contribute culturally significant items and artwork, which we incorporate into our social studies and history classes. in these classes, we learn about the “secret” history of canada. we’ve learned about topics such as the 200 years of slavery in canada, the forced labour of interned ukrainian-canadians in building banff, and residential schools. it has been eye-opening to me to have learned about this dark part of canada’s past, but i know that it is important to acknowledge and recognize these events in order for canada to embrace truth and reconciliation. there are two final aspects of my school that i am enjoying: our mentorship program and outdoor learning opportunities. my school has a mentorship program, where we are matched with a student from each grade to create a group of four students. the four of us check-in with each other throughout the year and act as an extra support system for one another. it helps to get advice from the upper-year students who have already taken the courses that i am currently taking. i also like working with the grade 9 students, as i can offer them advice or guidance on their courses. lastly, we get to spend a lot more time learning from nature compared to my old school. different community groups come to the school to lead outdoor sessions, where we can learn a variety of subjects. my favourite subject to participate in outdoors is gym/physical activity. i can see myself feeling fulfilled and happy at my school for the next three years. while i know that there are some flaws in the new education system, i believe that this is a positive step in the right direction for the future of education in new brunswick. my classmates are more supportive of one another, more engaged with the topics in classes, and my teachers seemed less stressed out than before. my grades have been higher than average, which i believe is because i can spend more time on assignments or courses that i am not as good at. i also can tell that i am building many positive relationships with my community. sincerely, scout <<<>>> at lunchtime, rosie was so busy reading with idris that she didn’t notice when her grandpa came in and annette left for work. when she finally lifted her head out of her books, her grandpa had a snack ready for her. as she ate, grandpa asked rosie many things about what she had read, and rosie told grandpa all about scout. “can we read another one?” rosie asked her grandfather. “sure,” he replied. “i have a favorite i think you’ll enjoy.” rosie’s grandpa pulled an old book out of his bag and began to read as rosie ate. <<<>>> as i walked alongside my niece, i could sense her enthusiasm and pride. i could not say no to the pleading voice that woke me from the bed earlier this morning. “aunty, can you please, please, please, take me to school today?” it is not often that relatives from abroad can visit her family in new brunswick. she just could not wait to show me the school that has dominated most of our telephone conversations. admittedly, i too was happy to spend every moment in her company as this was the first time in two years that we were together. she bell, downey, noreiga, pyrke. speculative fictions 10 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci firmly clutched her handmade model ecosystem. her creative work formed part of her class project to raise awareness of the importance of new brunswick’s natural resources’ sustainability. i was not alarmed that her school facilitated such activities. i recalled perusing a brochure on the airplane that highlighted new brunswick’s ability to maintain near-pristine environmental conditions accredited to their efficient education system. upon seeing her classmates, a huge smile came across her face. she tugged me along as she hurried to introduce me to her peers who wore congruent grins. i was pleasantly surprised to observe the bond they shared regardless of her noticeable differences. the group hurried inside as it was nearing the start of class. as if startled back to reality, kyra left her friends to give her father and me huge hugs before dashing into her classroom, excited for the day ahead. my brother, rekayi, and i slowly followed. upon entering the building, the first thing that caught my eye was the sign that displayed the school’s vision. rekayi explained that the vision was not composed behind closed doors among school staff members, nor was it handed down from the district’s office. instead, this vision was created via purposeful and meaningful discussions among educators, administrators, community members, students, and other stakeholders. the vision reflected the hopes and aspirations of both school and its community. rekayi went on to explain that the students were all cognizant of the vision and its significance. the vision was instilled in the schools’ culture, practices, and pedagogies as educators, students, and parents alike took equal ownership and responsibility in ensuring school practices are akin to their vision. we entered the doorway that kyra had disappeared into not too long before. the class teacher immediately walked towards us. rekayi introduced me as his sister and kyra’s aunt. krya was already engrossed at one of seven activity tables spread throughout the room. the teacher explained that activities, instructions, and evaluations were flexible and tailored to capitalize on each student’s diverse strengths while providing remediation for weaknesses. like all other students, kyra received instructions based on her distinct pace and needs. the class teacher and two teaching assistants diligently helped students explore their full potential by exposing them to various activities from diverse subject areas. the absence of high-stakes exams and constant summative assessments permitted teachers to help students reach selfrealization—the full and free actualization and externalization of the individual’s powers and abilities—rather than preparing them to be successful in examinations. at the school, students were not listeners but co-investigators. the roles of teachers and students were often reversed as they relied on each other for knowledge. the class teacher expressed that he was always willing to learn about his students’ experiences and opinions to facilitate their learning. students were encouraged to become creative and critical thinkers as they take proactive roles in guiding their knowledge. they were encouraged to critically consider each piece of information and reflect on the ways their knowledge impacts their lives. students were urged to partake in critical discussions about sensitive topics such as social justice, inclusion, marginalization, and privilege. during these discussions, students were encouraged to explore their position and roles in this continually evolving world. as rekayi and i left the classroom and walked further along the corridor, i could not resist peeping into a nearby classroom. a teacher’s voice caught my attention. she was inviting a student to take his place at the front of the class. i was astounded to hear the teacher call the student by name—a name that was difficult to pronounce by the average canadian as it had its origin in another country and language. i was certain it would have taken much determination for the teacher to learn the correct pronunciation. rekayi confirmed my suspicion that all staff members and students ensured that the student’s name was pronounced accurately to illustrate respect for his individuality. the student stood in front of the class and with pride and presented a poster that contained information and pictures of his home country bell, downey, noreiga, pyrke. speculative fictions 11 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci and customs. at the end of his presentation, he was asked to display his poster on the classroom wall among other posters depicting various information from varying countries. these posters were all made by students who, on previous occasions, shared with the class their unique contribution to their diverse classroom. each country represented the homeland of the class's student composition. i could sense the pride students possessed as their classroom mirrored ethnic, racial, social, physical, and academic diversity and inclusivity. the multicultural composition of the class, and by extension the province, is recognized and celebrated. students learn the histories and customs of all people who have contributed to the province’s ethos. all ethnic groups were endorsed as equal contributors to the development of the province. through various school projects and activities, students were educated on all groups that have impacted new brunswick’s rich cultural history. through these activities, students gained a sense of civic identity and stimulated patriotism that fostered effective citizenship. as we ventured to the back of the building, rekayi was elated to show off his contribution to the school. he had been a proud farmer back in our homeland. in new brunswick, he could now use his skills and experience to assist the students with agricultural projects. he confessed that his active contribution to the school stimulated his sense of ownership as he felt obligated to work toward the school’s development. he explained that this situation was not unique to him as the school always encouraged strong schoolcommunity ties and has successfully capitalized on the strengths of parents and community stakeholders. by so doing, the school has become the cornerstone of which both the school and community can work to achieve environmental goals. ******* as i sat on the airplane watching the beautiful natural ecosystem that i was leaving behind, i could not help but reminisce on a school that reflected an embodiment of cultural and civic identity. in the 22nd century, education still demonstrates the province’s true forefathers’ ideologies—the indigenous people who valued the natural resources that sustained their lives. while the world grapples with the inevitable influences of globalism, neoliberalism, and capitalism, new brunswick’s education system has successfully maintained the indigenous environmental ideologies in a modernized world. <<<>>> after he was done reading, rosie told her grandpa there were some things she didn’t understand about the story and asked a few questions. rosie wanted to know why the author said that kyra was noticeably different from her friends. grandpa answered with a smile, explaining that kyra was black. he went on to describe a previous time when new brunswick’s education curriculum excluded black histories and recognition of the numerous contributions black people provided to the province’s development resulting in students, like kyra, feeling alienated, lonely, and marginalized. rosie was relieved to learn that today, black histories, cultures, and contemporary contributions formed a major part of the curriculum, and racism—though never completely gone—was always diligently, vigorously, and relentlessly taken up by teachers when presented itself in schools. after they finished talking, rosie asked grandpa if they could go see mia, lila, and cyrus—three of rosie’s closest friends who lived nearby. grandpa agreed, and together they sent messages to mia, lila, and cyrus’s respective guardians. eventually, through their guardians, the friends agreed to meet outside at the park near their house. rosie’s grandpa volunteered to play with all four children, so that the other guardians could do other things. at the park, the four friends played in the trees near the playground. they found all kinds of interesting plants, animals, and insects that grandpa helped them identify. as they started to get excited, they started speaking loudly, but grandpa reminded them that the forest bell, downey, noreiga, pyrke. speculative fictions 12 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci isn’t their home and they are guests, and that their loud voices might disturb some of the other residents. from then on, they spoke in whispers until they got back to the playground. there, they started a game of tag and ran and played until they got tired and asked grandpa to go home. after saying goodbye to her friends and seeing them all home, rosie and grandpa went back to rosie’s house where rosie’s entire family was back from work. annette, rosie’s biological mother greeted rosie and asked her what she and grandpa did with their afternoon. rosie talked about the books she read, the time she spent with her friends in the forest, and the game of tag they played. while she spoke, rosie’s other parent, jane, listened attentively while her uncle ellis and older brother bernie listened with one ear while making dinner. the next day was jane’s day to spend with rosie, so they asked rosie what she would like to do. rosie wasn’t sure yet. finally, they all sat down to eat together. rosie was exhausted and very much willing to sit back as the adults did the talking. that night she fell asleep in her chair at the dinner table, and jane lifted her into her bed. just as jane was about to leave, rosie called out asking for a bedtime story about schools. jane was happy to oblige and began reading a story written by a teacher. <<<>>> “does everyone have everything they need?” i called out to the group of young people spread out around me. i could see that bo was still sorting through the contents of their backpack, which included snacks we had spent the previous two days planning, shopping for, and preparing together, water, sunscreen, bug spray, a sketchbook and pencils, a change of clothes, and a swimsuit, just in case. you never regret packing a swimsuit. uzo was bent down tying ari’s shoe, while the rest of the group stood chatting and chorused “yes” to my question. as ari and uzo straightened up, i looked at the assorted young people standing in front of me. three or four times a year, i offer a two-week session focused on living responsibly in our communities. youth of all ages can sign up as part of their education program. this group features folks from the ages of 5 through 23, although i have had younger and older participants as well. these kinds of programs are offered by community members all year round, on an endless variety of topics tied to the interests and passions of those community members. i am always amazed by the array of offerings—from sports and recreation, to environmental conservation, to art history, to knitting, to social activism, to traditional humanities or stem topics—that our young people can engage with, providing an incredible swath of experiences. the programs are subsidized by the government to give folks like me time off from their day jobs and to provide financial support for some of the group’s activities. my program is very open concept, but many are more structured. i like to bring together a group of folks who share a common interest in being responsible citizens. we start our two weeks by getting to know one another and finding out how we might need to support each other to spend the next two weeks together. for example, some of the older participants fell easily into care-taker roles for the 5-year-old participant, allowing their parent to leave after a few hours the first morning of our session, and as we moved into the planning stages of our conversation, we all spent some extra time thinking about spaces that would be accessible for the group member who uses a wheelchair. in those early conversations, we came to a consensus that one way we wanted to become more responsible citizens was by learning about the local river ecosystem and how different parts of the community are involved in caring for it. we spent a couple of days researching who those stakeholders were, arranging outings to visit them, and to see the river. bell, downey, noreiga, pyrke. speculative fictions 13 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci during those planning days, we also shared reflections on our relationship to the river, and ideas and opinions we had heard voiced in our community. we were heading out today to spend our time with the local salmon association’s executive director and would be taking a bus upriver tomorrow to visit with some university students who are bringing a two-eyed seeing (etuaptmumk) approach to caring for the river. we would end our three days of outings with a mi’kmaq elder, who would share stories of the river and an overview of their current outlook on the way the river is being used and treated. the final days of our session would be spent reflecting together on the experiences we had shared and helping each participant develop a plan of action that they would undertake once the session ended. in the past, i have had participants decide to continue their relationship beyond the time i was able to facilitate, working together on large-scale community projects. others carried their time with me forward on their own, either taking up a public or private action. young people sign up for programs like these as part of their compulsory education. in new brunswick, education becomes available to all at the age of two, although many families can provide education in their own ways until the age of five, when compulsory education begins. at that time, students may be enrolled in education centres, which have a very low ratio of students to teachers, and which follow a child-led curriculum. many of these education centres exist in outdoor spaces, with access to the indoors for bad weather and bathroom breaks. parents may also take advantage of programs like mine for their children. as learners grow older, they begin to participate in more and more programs per year rather than attend their education centre. because the community is so invested in the education of our young people, there is a lot of support for learners to follow through with projects conceived in the program, and learners can pursue those projects to completion before embarking on the next one. some learners will continue to spend time at their education centre for the entirety of their compulsory education, accessing support and structure that helps them learn best, while many learners find their passions in projects in the community and often begin to spend more time with particular organizations or mentors to begin specializing their knowledge and their interests. this means that by the time students finish their education, they have engaged with members of their community from all walks of life, have learned from and with other learners of diverse ages and experiences, and have a wellrounded view of the community, its needs, and the ways the community can continue to serve them. for now, i turn back to my group so that we can make our way out into the community. the next few days will hold lots of learning for the young folks in my group and me. i wonder how my experience over the next few days will shape the next program that i offer and my relationship with my community. <<<>>> twelve years passed, and rosie’s 18th birthday arrived. having spent the last 12 years learning at her own pace, based on her own interests, and in community with those around her, she decided to continue her education in a more formal capacity at a university nearby. around 15, rosie became interested in french literature and the post-1968 french philosophy movement. since then, she had read works by kristeva, foucault, and deleuze. having become a passionate intellectual, rosie had even started writing for her local newspaper and published several opinion pieces in academic journals. all of her supporters agreed that the university was the best fit for rosie. rosie’s friends, mia, lila, and cyrus had all had similar epiphanies during their teenage years. ever the animal lover, mia had become extremely interested in veterinary medicine, and had spent the last two years interning at a local vet’s office. shortly after her 18th birthday, a few months later than rosie’s, mia joined rosie in the nearby town where bell, downey, noreiga, pyrke. speculative fictions 14 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci rosie’s university was located. lila, who was the most physical of the bunch, had taken to organizing local sporting events for and with her younger peers, and although she had not yet decided on a career path, she was content with her current role in the community—as was the community. when cyrus was 12, he had broken his leg while playing soccer with his friends (to this day, he jokingly claims that lila pushed him, which she categorically denies). during the summer while his leg was healing, he spent a huge amount of time with his computer, and although his guardians were worried at first, it quickly became apparent that he had an aptitude for programming. for the past year, cyrus had been supplying his services as a freelance coder to the government and was happy that he would be able to stay where he was for the foreseeable future. although the friends were splitting up, they made promises to see each other often and to stay in touch. rosie’s initial transition into university life was difficult as she had never before been expected to maintain a schedule, but she quickly learned the skill; and when mia joined her two months later, rosie felt comfortable with her new life. without rosie and mia around, lila and cyrus became more invested in each other and each other’s worlds. lila learned to code from cyrus, and lila helped cyrus stay active. together, the two eventually used money earned from coding to invest in youth sports infrastructure in their community—a new basketball court, gym equipment, and an outdoor pool were all eventually added because of lila and cyrus’s commitment to youth athletics. discussion: making sense of rural utopia while each author initially wrote their own vision of the future, toward a narrative cohesion, we eventually brought them together in a single story with distinct parts. as such, some elements of the narrative above are in tension with others. we think these tensions are illustrative and productive. we are different people with different perspectives (one indigenous and three non-indigenous; one black and three white; one male, two female, and one nonbinary; one teacher and three academics), and our experiences of schooling and curriculum elicit different responses. some of the narrative’s tension will be left to linger unresolved, and we will not comment on every nuance of our dream(s). there are, however, a few themes emergent from our writing and subsequent discussions that we consider worth highlighting. schooling is, unfortunately, never just about schooling. the school’s diverse responsibilities go beyond instruction. this is especially true in rural areas, such as new brunswick, where schools are a cornerstone of community development. rural education scholars, such as schafft (2016) and schollie et al. (2017), highlight schools’ roles in sustaining livelihoods, fostering social interactions, and serving as one of the major institutions that assist communities in addressing their social challenges. one way of contextualizing this is through the social determinants of health (sdh) framework (raphael, bryant, mikkonen, & raphael, 2020). sdh are conditions in which people grow, live, work, and age that directly affect their health. while education is its own social determinant, for students currently in the public-school system, school also offers a space in which to address other health inequities students experience. for some, schools are a source of food stability in breakfast and lunch programs. for others, they are places of social inclusion and security. indeed, the modern school system does much more than educate. each of our visions in some way addresses sdh, and the collective effect is toward a shared desire for those determinants to be met before entering into the idea of institutionalized learning. without those basic needs being met, learning cannot happen—and if it is the responsibility of the school to provide beyond learning, policy, funding, and teacher workloads ought to reflect that. bell, downey, noreiga, pyrke. speculative fictions 15 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci as suggested in rosie’s overarching narrative, work is something of a problem within the current model of education in that schools are designed to mirror the industrial structure of adult work. despite the movement toward more flexible forms of capitalism in the prepandemic era, the school remained rigid, and the resilience of that school structure, even during the pandemic, is often explicitly linked the smooth function of the adult world (e.g., d. cardy in gnb, 2021, 19:32). this problem of work is a persistent issue for utopia. nalo hopkinson (2012), a jamaican-born canadian science fiction writer, has said that the problem that must be solved in utopia is precisely that of work—who will take on the menial, lessthan-desirable tasks required to make a society function? some writers solve the problem through technology or magic—an imagining of something beyond what exists that resolves the need for menial tasks (e.g., robots or enchanted helpers). others ‘solve’ the problem through firm social hierarchies or through slavery (e.g., george r. r. martin’s a song of fire and ice series). these latter forms do not solve the problem as much as hide it among the lower classes, and in that these imaginings are perhaps less utopic than realistic. rosie’s story engages the problem of work by restructuring the divisions of labour and the nuclear family unit. similar to and inspired by marge piercy’s woman on the edge of time, rosie’s family comprises four adults and an older brother, and each takes on a unique responsibility in rosie’s care and education. in addition, community members, such as the elders and idris, the librarian, play a role in educating rosie. while in the current narrative we have kept the team dynamic to the familial unit, piercy’s image of a futuristic society showcases teams of unrelated community members taking turns “mothering” children. haraway (2016) has made calls for a similar restructuring of the family, shifting not only traditional gender roles but also the boundaries between species. time has passed in the writing of our visions, and none of us can deny the way the covid-19 pandemic has shifted, tested, and reformed our think-dreaming about education. in his statement dated april 2, 2020, new brunswick’s minister of education, dominic cardy, said “no one’s ever tried to run a modern education system without schools” (d. cardy as cited in poitras, 2020). we were struck by the statement, as our visions all tried to reimagine or decenter schools from the idea of educational utopia. in these visions, however, we also counted on the community to create new learning opportunities for students. in the current global pandemic, families have had to retreat from community, and our communities have had to reconnect in new ways—through renewed service to vulnerable populations and digital means. in april, many education professionals hoped to see families take a renewed role in their young learners’ education by including children in family decision-making, household work, and other activities in daily family life. we wondered if the time spent at home would renew families’ value of learning and teaching together, but we also wondered, “how will communities step up to provide educational opportunities for learners?” as teachers continue to put lessons online and to support families in learning from home, how will the wider community fit into this vision? these questions still linger. entangled with this idea of community involvement in education is the notion of time. the pandemic has brought to the fore how the idea of work shapes time. the 40-hour workweek is an obvious example—one which has remained in place despite generations of technological advancements that were expected to make work less demanding and give us more free time (snyder, 2016; weeks, 2011). another example is what some are calling capitalist accelerationism—the relentless quickening of capitalist economic structures (braidotti, 2019). before the pandemic, our experiences in education echoed this phenomenon through what some feminist curriculum scholars have named “the curriculum of busy” (kurki, herriot, & french-smith, 2018), where the busier one is, the more successful one seems. despite counter-cultural movements toward “slowness” (honoré, 2009), there remains bell, downey, noreiga, pyrke. speculative fictions 16 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci an obsession with business in western society, and particularly in education (kumar & downey, 2018). in the era of the pandemic, we see the liquidity of post-industrial capitalism and the flexibility demanded of its workers (bauman, 2007; sennett, 1998) more acutely manifest in education. the rigid structures of the industrial model of schooling have given way to the “flexibility” of online learning. learning has become more accessible, but it has also become more precarious, unstable, and unpredictable—not to mention often mediated by machines and networks to which access is systematically inequitable, particularly in rural settings. moreover, the responsibility for this neoliberal vision of learning has shifted from a collective system to individual teachers and individual students, forcing both to continually make the exhausting choice to engage (braidotti, 2019). pandemic-time is always in flux. there are no bells, no lines, no recesses and lunch breaks. for teachers, the temporal barriers between work and rest have become blurred—a phenomenon that has been present in higher education for almost a generation. there is a stillness to lockdown that education ignores. rather than forced downtime in the face of first, second, and third waves of covid-19, we continue with online learning—something that, for many of us, demands more time and different sorts of expertise than we have traditionally been asked for. our visions seek slowness and gentleness with our bodily rhythms. there is a generosity in repetition (prendergast, 2019), and we see the idea of a self-paced curriculum likewise as generous. in some ways, the slowness, gentleness, and generosity of self-pacing subvert the temporal expectations of education—the tyranny of clock-time (rose & whitty, 2010). yet, in the current era, we must be cautious. flexible capitalism is notoriously adaptive, consumptive, and appropriative toward ideas and actions originally intended to be subversive (liboiron, 2019). in education, the self-pacing of curriculum speaks back to the well-worn critique that the pre-pandemic system was (and is) something of an assembly line that assumed normativity and conformability on the student’s part. a self-paced curriculum breaks apart the assembly line and, in an ideal world, restores the status of the skilled teacher as a central linchpin of the educational economy. self-pacing, however, does hold the potential to be gobbled up by neoliberal capitalism as a practice suited to the interests of a “streamlined” education by putting too much emphasis on the individual student’s responsibility for education without maintaining proper support structures (i.e., skilled teachers). this is another reason we opened this discussion section by highlighting the significance of social structures outside the school, and another reason our visions took those social structures as a given—certainly a utopic idea. this dystopic randian model of education, where content is created by private industry (commissioned or permitted by the state) and each individual is responsible for their own engagement with that content without any kind of safety net or support, seems increasingly real. a utopic curriculum is marked by freedom, but freedom supported by the state. the self-pacing of curriculum, then, should not be read as a vision of everyone for themselves, but rather a vision of everyone at their own pace, in their own way, with a spirit of genersoity, and in community with others. being in community with others, for us, extends beyond the human. it takes a profoundly interconnected network of agentive actors—human, more-than-human, and nonhuman inclusively—to help children learn their multiple embedded and embodied subjectivities, and the capacity to read their own interconnectedness. we are informed in this thinking by those who write in posthuman literacies and early childhood education, who find ways of working-with(in), while speaking back to, the status quo of neoliberal schooling (davies, 2014; kuby, spector, & thiel, 2019). here we think of rosie’s time in the forest with her friends, first observing and engaging, then being reminded that they are a guest in the bell, downey, noreiga, pyrke. speculative fictions 17 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci forest, and not to disturb their co-present others/neighbours. we can imagine that on another day in the forest, she and her friends may have found an animal’s corpse and been introduced to the myriad ways that life continues after death (harwood et al., 2018) and that “death is a necessary partner in life” (rose, 2012, p. 127). we imagine that this time in the forest is replete with moments of interconnect and mutuality—of being affected and affecting (davies, 2014). within those time-spaces, we also envision learning the traditional names of those more-than-human neighbours and the teachings embedded within the indigenous languages of that place (armstrong, 1998; styres, 2019). within our vision, the muchness of the world displaces the restrictive infrastructure of the school. the hierarchies constructed between human beings and the natural world, and the separation of those two always-entangled entities, are mirrored in human social relationships. achilles mbembe (2019) has written about the way that communities thrive when there is an ‘other’ to which they can react. indeed, mbembe (2019) traces a history of western democracy’s violent “making other” of racialized peoples. we can see traces of this making other within our shared place. we also see traces of mbembe’s idea of the necropolitical— that biopower is not indifferent to race, but an active participant in the destruction of racialized bodies. where biopower “lets die” those precariously positioned within society, racialized bodies are acted on with necropower—the power to “make die”. within the rural context of new brunswick, necropower is particularly evident through the erasure of racialized voices in curriculum and beyond. canadian rural education scholars michael corbett (2016) and cooke and petersen (2019) have critiqued policymakers' simplistic views of rural communities as homogenous, close-knit, and lacking diversity. their sentiments are echoed by the numerous minority groups that co-exist within new brunswick (yamoah, 2020). new brunswick is far from homogenous. in addition to the wabanaki nations indigenous to this territory, like other atlantic provinces, new brunswick has recently experienced a steady increase in international and visible ethnically diverse populations. this is mainly attributed to the various immigration initiatives aimed at attracting foreign workers to the province to stabilize its aforementioned depleting population (gnb, 2019b). while these economic incentives potentially offer better living standards to provincial newcomers, the scope of these programs is often limited to economic development, rather than including a consideration of new residents' holistic well-being, particularly in the face of daily systemic racism. despite the growing need for education and community practices to adapt to the evolving population composition, there is still hesitance to acknowledge and address shortcomings that covertly and overtly discriminate. in june 2020, new brunswick's government turned down a call by indigenous leaders for an indigenous-led inquiry into systematic racism within the province (o’donnell, 2020). indigenous leaders' plight is echoed in calls by the province's black advocacy groups to address systemic racism and the erasure of black histories and influences from the school curriculum. as in many north american schools, inclusion seems to be new brunswick’s preferred framework for engaging with issues of diversity—despite the limited scope that framework offers. aucoin, porter, and baker-korotkov (2020) highlighted notable advancements made by the province in its commitment to provide equitable and meaningful education to all residents via inclusion. however, the authors also found that the notion of inclusive education present in new brunswick’s schools lacked reference to visible differences (e.g., skin colour). as fortunato, gigliotti, and ruben (2018) asserted, inclusive education must include an inclusive racial environment. racial incidents, or nanoracism (mbembe, 2019), continue to be phenomena for minority groups in new brunswick, and these incidents are prevalent in schools. baker, bell, downey, noreiga, pyrke. speculative fictions 18 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci varma, and tanaka (2001; see also varma-joshi, baker, & tanaka, 2004) and massfeller and hamm (2019) conducted research decades apart that recognized similar racist instances in the province's schools. these researchers identified that racist incidents directed toward minority students were and are often ignored or dismissed as harmless by school administrators, normalizing racist practices. as baker et al. (2001) emphasized, these seemingly mundane occurrences can have long-term adverse effects on victims who do not perceive their degradation as harmless (see also varma-joshi, baker, & tanaka, 2004). massfeller and hamm (2019) described the province’s migrant students’ feelings of alienation, loneliness, and marginalization as they grappled with their schools' dominant culture. despite office acknowledgment of the various shortcomings in the province’s curriculum (yamoah, 2020), true inclusivity is still fictitious—indeed, seemingly utopic. as freire (2002) emphasized, dominant groups' admission of wrongdoings is meaningless without action toward transforming practices that disadvantage some groups while favoring others. the province has yet to witness significant implementations towards dismantling systems—including education—embedded in racial hierarchies that prejudice some groups over others. hamm (2019) and sears’ (2017) findings that students of the province's anglophone schools demonstrate a limited understanding of ethnic diversity cannot be disregarded. educators within these systemically racist spaces must be willing to continually reflect on and adapt their curriculum and pedagogies to fit all students' needs, adopt culturally relevant practices that reflect the institution's diversity, provide learning activities that foster knowledge of difference, create an environment of respect for cultural differences, and challenge actions that gloss over racial discrimination. crucially, teachers also need the time and space to be able to do this within a system that actively works toward their disempowerment and alienation from the macro processes of education (giroux, 2002; see also rogers, 2018). only then can our vision of a radically inclusive education system be realized. dreaming: a conclusion as four educators and researchers actively engaged in antiracist and social justice advocacy and pedagogy within new brunswick, we cannot help but name and lament those political forces that actively work against our visions. yet, there is hope in our dreaming. we began the process of writing this article in january of 2020 and submitted the first draft for publication a little more than a year later. in the time between, we saw our personal worlds and the wider world change as a result of the covid-19 pandemic. at times it felt as though the dreams we wrote were no longer as relevant as we had originally intended. in other moments, it felt like they were needed now more than ever. in a long overdue meeting just before putting the finishing touches on the paper, we reflected collectively on the work, and we were each struck by how far we still have to come to realize these visions. covid-19 seemed, at times, like an opportunity for sweeping societal and educational change. yet, here and now, we see the same rigidity and movement toward neoliberal economic imperatives that have historically marked public education since the 1970s (kumar, 2019). thus, after envisioning our utopia, a question haunts: how might our engagement need to change to facilitate a utopic educational experience? we have ideas. we have thoughts. we have dreams. but ultimately, the question lingers as do the structures and links between education and the economy—especially here in the rural province of new brunswick. yet, we continue to engage—continue to try to make changes in our spaces. most significantly, we continue to dream. we have shared our dreams with you, dear reader. now it is your turn. speak your educational utopia into being, leave it to linger in silence or demand it provoke cacophony, but do share it because “only the archaic bell, downey, noreiga, pyrke. speculative fictions 19 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci definition of the word ‘dreaming’ will save us: to envision, a series of images of unusual vividness, clarity, order, and significance” (morrison, 2019, p. 69). notes 1 authorship is alphabetical. all correspondence should be directed to adrian m. downey at adrian.downey@msvu.ca 2 see the following for more details: https://nbmediacoop.org/category/letters-from-new-brunswicks-future/ references appelbaum, p. 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(2021). curriculum challenges and opportunities in a changing world: transnational perspectives in curriculum inquiry. palgrave macmillan: new york. culture as a strategy of survival is both transnational and translational. homi bhabha the book edited by bill green, philip roberts, and marie brennan provides a rich intellectual journey on different productions by researchers from different countries. such contributions provide opportunities for deepening the most recent discussions in the curriculum field for researchers, teachers, and those interested in starting their studies. the work involves provocations presented as answers to the central question proposed by the organizers: what role does curriculum scholarship have to play in the strange and difficult times we find ourselves in? the unique perspectives presented by the authors make up, at the same time, the state of art and an agenda for the future of the curriculum field considering the challenges and issues of our times as paths for curricular studies. the work comprises a whole set of tensions involved in the meaning of the name "curriculum" in the world, including the overload brought by the covid-19 pandemic. such a conflicting scenario poses a challenge to the field of curriculum, in a scenario in which new educational dynamics are initiated and others are hindered by the impacts of the disease and by so many other demands of our times. in this sense, the organizers of the collection propose as a general problematization what the practice of the curriculum is, what is a curriculum, what it means to make a curriculum in a current situation with so many issues, opportunities, and challenges for reflecting on. the present nature of the work lends consistency to its provocative tone, considering that, in addition to the pandemic, there is a great number of social demands in effervescence, of struggles based on debates about race, coloniality, knowledge, identity, teacher education, among many others. seeking to provide the reader with a dense dialogue on those central themes, the work is organized around four parts that focus on the themes of decoloniality, knowledge and nation, in addition to innovative interpretations of future challenges in the field of curriculum. in accordance with the structure of the 6th world curriculum studies conference (december 2018), the collection is organized as follows: part i decolonizing the curriculum, part ii knowledge questions and curriculum dilemmas, part iii history, nation, curriculum, and part iv curriculum challenges for the future. costa. ways to think about a changing world 57 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (2) 2021’ https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index despite the segmentation into parts, it is important to highlight the organicity of the work, signaling an interesting internal dialogue with regard to possible interactions between the chapters of the different parts. in this sense, the book is consolidated in an invitation or provocation to the reader in order to get involved with what has been produced about curriculum around the world and/or about how curriculum has been produced in what we call our world. it is an interesting resource for understanding the different questions that produce a curricular thought that is continually constituted by singular interpretations that converge in a transnational conversation about curriculum. it is a work marked by different perspectives, diverse theoretical traditions, innovative approaches, alternative problematizations, and transnational interpretations that drive new interactions and an understanding of how the curriculum field has been redesigned in a changing world. it is through such intellectual dynamics that the book is energized comprising the thought of authors from aotearoa, new zealand, argentina, australia, brazil, canada, chile, england, hong kong, luxembourg, singapore, south africa, and the usa. among the motivations for the work is the inspiration from a perspective of "curriculum-as-internationaltext," whose focus is on a situatedness approach aimed at reflecting on how and in which part of the world curriculum is being talked about and thinking about the curriculum, which is assumed as a production mobilized in multiple spaces and places. part i begins with the chapter by crain soudien, which is called development, colonization, and the curriculum: new directions for new times?, and focuses on the colonial character of the university in south africa, as well as the questioning of its ability to meet the demands of black students and its commitment to social development and the fight against inequality. the purpose of the article is to critically discuss the current decolonial moment of higher education in south africa. specifically, it addresses the effects of decolonial theories on curriculum transformation, in addition to identifying four key positions in this political scenario, namely transformation by detachment, transformation by inclusion, transformation by enlargement, and transformation by critical appropriation. in his approach, the author highlights relations with the decolonial movement sustaining critical perspectives on the arrogance that guides modernity, the premise of its inevitability, the imperial role of the university in south africa, and racialization as the core for the formation of human subjects. it focuses on the thoughts of sousa santos, essop, prah, and mbembe, among others. the chapter concludes by pointing out that decolonial contributions allow the recognition of racism as a signifier of imperial power and the idea of race as a means to maintain a normativity for the conception of what it is to be human, whose effects can be fought through an curriculum agenda that comprises contributions from southern decolonialists. the second chapter, smoke and mirrors: indigenous knowledge in the school curriculum by georgina tuari stewart explores the inclusion of māori knowledge into policies and practices in aotearoa, new zealand. for the author, the theme is fraught with complexity and requires an approach centered on specific situations. in order to think about this scenario, it approaches the thought of michael young in order to challenge his conception of powerful knowledge, considering it illusory and capable of reifying knowledge in a binary way. in this sense, it develops an analysis of young's most recent thought, highlighting limits in his conceptions about the relationship between curriculum and knowledge. for the author, young's perspective is dissonant with the reality of multiple contexts and tends to reiterate technicist logics in the school by assuming ways of knowing as presuppositions prior to school culture and the demands of communities. on the other hand, it agrees with the idea that, even from a bicultural education perspective, the curriculum should be based on disciplinary knowledge, articulating systematized knowledge with knowledge produced in the https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index costa. ways to think about a changing world 58 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (2) 2021’ https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index daily lives of students. curriculum should be also capable of being understood in the school context. the chapter the mestizo latinoamericano as modernity's dialectical image: critical perspectives on the internationalization project in curriculum studies by daniel f. johnsonmardones proposes a reflection on the possibility of building an interdisciplinary research field based on an intercultural dialogue beyond the limits of eurocentric modernity. at first, it criticizes the modern educational project in view of the conception of the "latin american mestizo" as a dialectical image. then, it relates the critique of modernity to the decolonization project of the academic educational field taking into account the inclusion of latin american thought in the discussion on the internationalization of curriculum studies. for this, it approaches the thought of authors such as quijano, walenstein, and mignolo, among others, with the objective of thinking about the identity dynamics involved in what he considers as the "latin american mestizo." based on the singularities of this identification, the author proposes the liberation of latin american thought from pedagogies of domination, venting as a possibility the idea that the hybrid construction that marks latin american thought highlights the unique character of each tradition, culture, or investigative field. for the author, this helps to rethink a curriculum studies project as international, although not uniform, which can be sustained through constant conversations and dialogues. the chapter 5, refusing reconciliation in indigenous curriculum by kevin lowe, nikki moodie, and sara weuffen draws attention to the reconciliation discourse involved in the rise of indigenous content in the australian curriculum. for the authors, the treatment given to the representation of indigenous populations in the curriculum tends to focus on colonial purposes of exclusion from ways of knowing, doing, and being indigenous people in the school system. in this sense, they argue that one of the purposes of the increase in indigenous themes in the curriculum is to make the australian common good known to the general population. they also emphasize that the identity logic of the australian curriculum tends to separate indigenous knowledge from indigenous learners, while at the same time it presents perspectives such as maintaining the impossibility of sovereignty for indigenous peoples and the rescue of "futures" through politics of reconciliation. the authors conclude by stating that current australian curriculum policies reiterate the logic that indigenous school success is separate from social justice and a rights-based agenda, which tends to reiterate processes of school exclusion. part ii begins with the chapter by zongyi deng entitled bringing content back in: perspectives from german didaktik, american curriculum theory, and chinese education, which focuses on the importance of knowledge for the curriculum debate, highlighting the current disappearance of the approach to the theme of knowledge in curriculum studies. for the author, current curricular trends have focused more on the discussion of generic competences for the 21st century, in addition to results to be achieved, than on knowledge. such changes, according to the author, are also due to the influence of neo-marxist, postmodern, and post-structuralist studies, which would tend to make knowledge secondary in the curriculum agenda. this would explain why curriculum theorists were being sidelined from curriculum policy making. the chapter draws primarily on the studies of michael young, as well as the contributions of american curriculum thought, german didatik and chinese education. based on these contributions, it concludes by inviting curriculum researchers to reflect on new ways to think about knowledge and content in curriculum production with a view to planning and teaching at school. the chapter 8, knowledge beyond the metropole: curriculum, rurality and the global south by philip roberts questions what kind of knowledge counts and how it can be involved in a more meaningful curriculum for students in rural areas. for this, he makes use of https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index costa. ways to think about a changing world 59 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (2) 2021’ https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index contributions from southern epistemologies in order to problematize curriculum research, with a special attention to spatial-epistemic justice for rural spaces. it assumes that there is a lack of recognition of the rural in contemporary australian education, which leads to a marginal understanding of what rural spaces are and, consequently, to spatial injustice. it defends a conception of rural life opposed to the ingrained meanings of a metropolitan worldview. after stressing the different logics involved in the rural-metropolis relationship, it focuses on the case of the australian curriculum to highlight the absence of the debate on knowledge, which is supposed to have been resolved. the author concludes by stating that the current curriculum privileges learning and acquisition of results, moving away from the nature of the curriculum and knowledge. such current logics would operate the marginalization of different ways of knowing in favor of visions of progress marked by perspectives associated with the city, the global and the metropolis, leading to the aggravation of social-spatial injustice. then, the chapter curriculum making as design activity by yew leong wong considers the debate on curriculum formulation taking into account the intellectual production of the field and proposes questions about how educators can develop and implement an effective curriculum. the text proposes the design methodology as a useful possibility for educators to develop curricula. in this sense, it discusses aspects, key concepts and social problems associated with the design field, relating them to those related to the curriculum field. for the author, in addition to design characteristics, curriculum development should include various aspects, such as structure, operational elements, student learning demands, teachers' professional development, experiences, meanings and beliefs. after understanding the elements discussed, the article presents sketches of curriculum designs that involve interpretive framing, design for deep meaning, and co-designing with users. finally, these methodological possibilities are considered as a set of tools capable of supporting the work of educators in the continuous redefinition of their work in the school context. silvia morelli's chapter, curriculum–didaktik and bildung: is language for teaching? draws attention to the relationships between the fields of didactics and curriculum studies aiming to think of them as a unique field of studies and reflecting on their contributions today. for this, the author proposes a discursive approach based on post-modern theorizations mainly related to lyotard's thought in defense of a re-signification of such discursive encounters. specifically, it focuses on the conception of bildung to think of it from a perspective outside of modernity and facing the possibility of re-reading ideas such as content, schooling and knowledge in relation to the current educational demands. in her conclusions, morelli argues about the importance that a perspective of knowledge today needs to consider its associations to culture, contexts, and identities constituted in them bearing in mind the constant production of new translations of what knowledge is. in this sense, everyday life, particular interpretations of the world, and personal stories constitute other narrative forms of knowledge. ending part ii, the chapter 11, entitled ethical vexations that haunt 'knowledge questions' for curriculum, by lew zipin and marie brennan, addresses the field of curriculum studies taking into account the tensions between knowledge, being and ethics and considering these three dimensions as intertwined in reflections on curriculum. for the authors, there is a strong current trend in defense of a return to the centrality of knowledge in the curriculum. however, they problematize this movement and propose that knowledge in the curriculum, as well as its purposes, should be considered in relation to ethical principles. based on authors such as nancy fraser, they defend that knowledge is inseparable from values, that there is no good knowledge for everyone, and then question the field based on https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index costa. ways to think about a changing world 60 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (2) 2021’ https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index concepts such as responsibility and justice regarding the way knowledge has been thought about in relation to the performance of teachers and students. they conclude, supported by derrida's aporetic thought, by affirming the existence of an abyss between the defense of the redistribution of knowledge/codes of power and the recognition of people's diverse values and cultural representations. in this sense, they ponder the importance of teachers bringing these two attitudes together in a process of continuous negotiation within this abyss. bill green's chapter, curriculum history and progressive education in australia: prolegomenon opens part iii of the book with a focus on understanding the history of curriculum as a broader context of transnational research. for the author, attention to culture and education is important, however without disregarding issues such as internationalization and cosmopolitanism. in this sense, it points out that issues such as neoliberalism or progressivism need to be engaged historically, but also geospatially and comparatively. to think about such tensions, green approaches the history of curriculum in australia in its relations with international production. in his interpretation, he appropriates the thought of derrida and foucault to think about the discursive production of the curriculum. from a historical perspective, he draws attention to the influence of progressive conceptions on the australian schooling process. among his conclusions is the defense of meeting national cultures and local contexts, while reiterating the understanding of transnational research in this scenario. the articulation of these dimensions in a discursive perspective makes it possible to complement and enrich local research on schooling and curriculum development without losing sight of factors such as uneven development, coloniality, governmentality, and geography. the following chapter, curriculum and literacy policies in a context of curriculum centralization: the case of brazil, by rita de cássia prazeres frangella, draws attention to the scenario of curriculum reform in brazil considering the discourse of teacher education as a means to improve the quality of national education. in this sense, the author focuses on teacher education not as a topic related to reform and the curriculum, but as a moment of curriculum production. for this, she approaches discursive theoretical conceptions related to the thoughts of derrida, bhabha, and laclau through which she argues for the conception of curriculum policy as a discursive production. specifically, she focuses on the national pact for literacy at the right age (pnaic) to discuss the interactions such policy constitutes with broader political contexts. the author concludes by stressing the ambivalent nature of the policy and points out that if, on the one hand, the right to continuing education for teachers is affirmed, on the other hand, it aims to control the process of meaning and regulate school practices. she ends by reiterating the perspective that, in addition to attempts to control, the curriculum is produced through uncontrollable translation processes in multiple contexts. michael corbett's chapter relocating curriculum and reimagining place under settler capitalism draws attention to the debate about placeless curriculum and schooling developed from within the local education movement and considering criticisms to that movement. for his approach, the author draws on the works of kincheloe, pinar, and reynolds. he takes on the perspective of a sociologist and rural education researcher to think about the field of curriculum. theoretically, he appropriates contributions from homi bhabha with the aim of approaching culture and/in space with a view to a discussion about place and curriculum. corbett concludes by stating that the challenge for the curriculum today is to develop relational understandings of culture, communication and materiality, which requires an understanding of new imaginaries, worldviews and new histories. this proposal aims to reiterate the importance of dealing and reflecting in and with the spaces in which we operate, with their challenges, singularities and relationships with broader contexts. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index costa. ways to think about a changing world 61 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (2) 2021’ https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index the chapter 15, reconceptualizing the multilingual child: curriculum construction in luxembourg, by sabrina sattler, addresses the issue of identity in the curriculum with the aim of understanding which conceptions of identity are inscribed in the curriculum and how they affect its creation. taking the case of the grand duchy of luxembourg, the author draws attention to the intimate relationship of identity with institutional multilingualism. she discusses the process of cultural standardization, which has taken place through educational planning, considering it as a cause of changes in linguistic identities. in this sense, she highlights the impacts of such changes from the point of view of cultural history, highlighting two important national educational laws for primary education, one from 1912 and the other from 2009, with the purpose of demonstrating changes in the conceptions of linguistic identity. she concludes by considering that the two legislations can be considered milestones in the production of a collective linguistic awareness and that, currently, within the scope of the mixed culture project, the concept of a trilingual child as something natural is supported. for the author, the political tension around such a conception tends to be based on the argument of equal opportunities for all children, an idea that is associated with knowledge of languages. the chapter distal confabulation and transnational literacy: complicating “complicated conversation” in curriculum inquiry, by patrick roberts, opens part iv of the collection by addressing the tension between the engagement of the intellectual field and the reality of “post-truth” politics in the united states. such policies would consist of resurgent discourses of white nationalism, militarization of immigration policy, gun violence, abuse of campaign funding, erosion of voting rights, increase in hate speech in mainstream politics, and the destruction of environmental and consumer rights, among others. in order to think about such conflicts, the author approaches transnational studies in curriculum seeking to problematize the limits of pinar's conception of curriculum as a complicated conversation. in this sense, he appropriates the metaphor of "distal confabulation" to defend it as a powerful approach to understanding the degradation of the public sphere, replacing cosmopolitan conceptions, often represented by pinar's conception, which tends to suggest forms of stubborn blindness to an anglo-eurocentric expectation of reasonable and mutually understandability, which is always distal and imaginative as to the truth itself. in chapter 17, curriculum for teacher formation: antagonism and discursive interpellations, by veronica borges and alice casimiro lopes, focuses on the brazilian context of teacher education from a discursive perspective supported by the thoughts of derrida and laclau. in this sense, the authors draw attention to the continuous disputes over meaning in curriculum policy, with special attention to the meanings mobilized by the productions of the national association for the training of education (anfope) from the 2000s, as well as highlight articles that address signifiers such as teacher professionalization, teaching professionalism, teaching work, teaching profession, teaching occupation. throughout the discussion, they draw attention to key ideas that circulate in the discursive field under analysis, such as “reflective teacher” and “the teacher as an agent of social change”, in their expectations of controlling the subject/teacher. they conclude by considering that the dissemination that guides the discursive dynamic challenges the expectation of control of the subject in politics, which makes any struggle for control of the other vain, while at the same time they emphasize the dispute over the meaning of teacher education as a permanent horizon. the chapter 18, curriculum design in the anthropocene: challenges to human intentionality, by lucinda mcknight, problematizes curriculum design under different logics and theoretical perspectives and questions what exists beyond planning for the production of better humans. thus, she explores the history of the curriculum designer, drawing attention to https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index costa. ways to think about a changing world 62 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (2) 2021’ https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index issues of interest to curriculum research. in this movement, she addresses the thoughts of rosi braidotti on the post-human and of karen barad on the belief that humans can find the material universe halfway. the articulation of such contributions aims to provide interpretive possibilities on theory and practice in curriculum production, taking into account the opportunity to think of new curricular perspectives in terms of new materialism and posthuman studies. the author concludes by defending that the figure of the designer remains in the curricular thought, but that it starts to be conceived as part of several agencies no longer guided by technical or scientific univocalities. she emphasizes that post-humanism and the new materialism, with their rejection of binarisms and cartesianism, help to reconceptualize the curriculum in a perspective of plural production. the chapter 19, titled from the fossil curriculum to the post-carbon curriculum: histories and dilemmas, by john morgan, closes the book taking as inspiration the thought of timothy mitchell, from which he speculates on how the fossil fuels era led to a “fossil curriculum”. thus, also considering the school context, it problematizes developmental logics separated from an ecological reflection in their relations with the curriculum. specifically, he draws attention to the relationships between society and nature considering them as means by which different perspectives have been constituted in the curriculum. he also analyzes the curricular implications of contemporary discussions on the subject, with special attention to the marxist view, which tends to defend the analytical separation between society and nature, and constructionist studies, which seek to consider such dimensions as entangled. after mapping this discussion around the topic, he concludes by pointing out the importance of reflection and investment in more studies on the transition from a world based on fossil energy to a post-carbon society considering the implications of such changes on what is taught at schools. at the end of the trajectories constituted by the work, it can be concluded that its content reiterates the importance of the transnational curriculum inquiry, the primordial role of the iaacs in this sense, and the constitutive plurality of the curriculum field. divergences, convergences, and interpretative alternatives cross the collection, especially the wealth of different contributions brought by the authors involved, as well as (part of) the breadth of curricular thinking today. i think that the invitation to which the work is intended is audacious precisely because it provokes the opening of channels and conversations on such different themes and approaches lined up under the noun "curriculum". the invitation to interact with this name is, at the same time, an invitation to its re-signification, to the translatory and constitutive interlocution of other narratives, landscapes, theories, and meaning contexts of what curriculum is, how we can produce it, certain that its meaning rests on a furtive horizon towards which we move with every reference we make. notes 1 hugoguimel@gmail.com references bhabha, h. (1994). the location of culture. london: routledge. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index mailto:hugoguimel@yahoo.com.br costa. ways to think about a changing world 63 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (2) 2021’ https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index submitted: june, 20th, 2021. approved: july, 03rd, 2021. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: raisinghani, latika. (2018). world of technology: better or blinding? transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> world of technology: better or blinding? latika raisinghani1 university of british columbia, canada introduction this paper is an attempt to create ethical awareness about how humanity’s efforts to bring good through technological advancements have contributed in its own destruction and disempowerment at various fronts of life including education. by drawing attention towards the technological abuse, which is often instigated in the name of progress and increased knowledge production, i attempt to incite humanity’s moral consciousness against this technological outrage of the world that has devastated so many lives and the nature in multiple cultural contexts. guided by ferneding’s quest to understand technology, i explore heidegger’s notion of contemplating technology which invites technology as a technoscience: an intellectual virtue that does not alienate humanity and destroy nature. inspired by these insights, i hope to create a dialogic space that could allow complicated conversations to understand technology (pinar, 2012a) — conversations that do not technicalize schooling but call for (re)investigating humanity’s relationship with technology and create love and sense of belongingness amid teaching, learning and living encounters of education. i begin this paper by first sharing the incidences of technological devastations in diverse cultural contexts. then, i discuss how the desire to control has led humanity towards a path of self-destruction and a technicalized mode of schooling. by problematizing this industrialized notion of technology, i draw attention towards some disastrous realties that may consume humanity, and conclude the paper by searching hope in george grant’s invitation to (re)think: “what technology is” (pinar, 2013a)? technological advancements or abuse? “the age of information is an age of ignorance.” (pinar, 2005, p. 2, emphasis added) “for the good of mankind…” (primetime video, 2004; 1 march 1954 castle bravo, n.d.) that is what was said to the people of bikini atoll in the republic of marshall islands (rmi) when their homeland was taken away from them to test hydrogen bomb called castle bravo. on march 1st, 1954, castle bravo was detonated — within minute a mushroom cloud rose to a height of 47,000 feet (14 km) and a diameter of seven miles (11 km); it reached a height of 130,000 feet (40 km) and 62 miles (100 km) in diameter in less than ten minutes and continued to expand at more than six kilometers (4 miles) per minute (castle bravo, the biggest usa atomic bomb test on the bikini atoll, n.d.), and showered the nuclear fallout over more than 11,000 square kilometers (1 march 1954 castle bravo, n.d.). people of rongerik (where people of bikini were relocated) as well as nearby rongelap, ailingnae, and utrik atolls of rmi were not informed about the dangerous effects of this radioactive fallout. they did not know what was falling from the sky — some thought raisinghani. world of technology 35 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci it was a communion coming down from heaven, some rubbed the radioactive ash on their bodies, and many children played and opened their mouths to taste the divine gift of heavenly snow (primetime video, 2004; 1 march 1954 castle bravo, n.d.; raisinghani, 2005). since then, several people have died due to cancer. many have suffered life-long from other illnesses due to exposure to radiation. in women, it caused still births, miscarriages, and faulty pregnancies. i watched the old black and white video along with my physics and chemistry students in 2004 in the library of assumption high school, majuro, rmi where i was then working as a science teacher. one of the officials in the video said that testing castle bravo was the secret “project 4.1” of the united states of america (u.s.), which was established to test the effects of nuclear radiation on human beings (also see bikini atoll, n.d.). a raging thought crossed my mind: were the people of bikini and neighboring atolls just guinea pigs? the people of rmi are still receiving a large compensation from the u.s. government. but can we really compensate? is paying a price for people’s life, humane? one woman interviewed in the video said, “if i knew that i would get money to buy a coffin for my son, i wouldn’t have left my home.” another said, “we were taken into open fenced fields and hosed down naked in front of the men and children, like the pigs in a pig pen” (primetime video, 2004). reflecting on the devastation caused by these nuclear bomb tests, daniel kyle, a grade 11 student wrote — “boom!!!!!! marshallese future is doomed” (raisinghani, 2005, p. 5). the loss caused by the shadow of nuclear mushroom is not only immediate and environmental; it is permanent and agonizing, deeply affecting the socio-cultural life of past, present and future generations of rmi as is expressed by a grade 12 student terrence muller who in his poem identified people of rmi as the “victims of a tragedy” who lost their homeland and are forced to bear the scars of nuclear contamination for generations: victims of a tragedy they said it was intended to promote world peace but how it ended was sad, a lesson to teach men of ignorance, of greed for worldwide recognition and the people who agreed but with no cognition of what was to happen to their beloved atolls and the women and men the victims of the fall the weapons went and exploded one after another. a story in history mended a burden upon their fathers those who bear the scars of contamination who suffered illnesses, mishaps, and exile in turn were bargained with compensation money thought to be worthwhile they were treated as lab rats subjects of experimentations; raisinghani. world of technology 36 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci mere beings of the aftermaths they lost knowledge of their homelands and their old ways of living not knowing where they stand in a world so perplexing. terrence muller (as published in raisinghani, 2005, p. 8). indeed, the pain caused by repeated nuclear bombs tests in rmi is agonizing as evident in another student benjua kaminaga’s haiku: this pain piercing flakes hurt skin a sorrow little nation this eternal pain (as published in raisinghani, 2005, p. 5). i am sharing this tormenting story that i learned and lived with my students in majuro, rmi, to raise the ethical question about (mis)use of technology in the name of progress. ferneding (2010) has shared a similar concern about the abuse of technological progress, “the image [of the atomic bomb] still haunts me” (p. 171). and this technological abuse is not uncommon. i still remember the panic and anxiety in my parents’ eyes when they heard the news about leakage of a poisonous gas from the union carbide factories in bhopal, india in 1984. my parents were not at peace until they were able to get in touch with my maternal uncle who was living in bhopal with his wife and four daughters. luckily, my uncle and his family survived. but can the union carbide corporation that knowingly built a substandard pesticide plant (ahlquist & kailin, 2003, p. 42), return the lives of more than 10,000 people who were killed, and 200,000 who were injured? can japan be made accountable for increasing air and noise pollution in kosrae, federated states of micronesia (fsm)? most of the cars used in kosrae, fsm are second/third hand japanese cars that are not allowed to run in japan because they do not meet the requirements of japanese environmental protection agency and thus are exported to places like kosrae where they are bought because of their comparatively cheap prices and no strict government regulations to stop the use of such cars (personal experience and observation, 2006-2012). who should be blamed for environmental catastrophe in nauru — germany, britain, australia, new zealand, japan or the people of nauru itself? phosphate mining for more than a century has left the country unsustainable. eighty percent of the surface has been strip mined and has left nauru with no arable land; no permanent pastures and no forests (resture, 2012). no effort is being made to reclamatize the land as cost of reclamatization is too high. secondary mining is still continued. the people of nauru are totally dependent on imported commodities from australia and new zealand, and have no other economic resource left except to sell the fishing rights in nauru’s territorial water in addition to allowing phosphate mining (economy of nauru, n.d.). i wonder if anybody cares: how are people of nauru surviving? what impact will this continued mining have on their future? by looking at these examples, i reckon the comment of one of my classmates in a doctoral seminar who interpreted, the course instructor’s comment “humanity has the capacity to be evil” as “humanity is evil”— an understanding, one may argue is mirroring today’s reality. indeed, without any underlying spiritual-ethical foundations, many human actions that are based on a destructive mechanistic anthropocentric paradigm, have made raisinghani. world of technology 37 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci human race an “enemy of the world” (ferneding, 2010, p. 183). increased acts of terrorism at political, social-cultural and personal fronts that are often results of humanity’s unwitting, unethical acquiescence to technoscience, confirm that “humanity is in an ongoing crisis” (pinar, class discussion, doctoral seminar, department of curriculum and pedagogy, university of british columbia, november 28th, 2012). quest to control in becoming part of today’s technoculture2, in our continued quest to control nature through technological innovations, humanity’s moral consciousness has become quiescent. ferneding (2010) has affirmed the unfortunate truth that in the name of bringing change, humanity’s relationship to the technoscience has become ir/rational — “not so much to experience or understand, but rather to control” (p. 171). i reckon that behind this need to have control or to become powerful is the truth of being powerless, similar to the bullies, we may encounter in our lives. often people who become bullies, are themselves, the victims of faulty socialization process. they become bullies to disguise and overcome their own fears, frustration and hurt (randall, 2001). similarly, it is evident that the need to have control and gain prominence in the world market is driving many countries to invest more in technology. in the name of development, we are failing to recognize that a product of this technical advancement namely, the thoughtless industrialization, is a leading cause of global environmental problems. by engaging blindly in technological advancements, humanity has designed a tool for self-destruction. it seems that we are like the woodcutter of an old indian story who was cutting the same branch on which he was sitting. as rachel carson the author of “the silent spring” had shared in her chapter “needless havoc”: as man[sic] proceeds toward his[sic] announced goal of the conquest of nature, he[sic] has written a depressing record of destruction, directed not only against the earth he[sic] inhabits but against the life that shares it with him[sic] (1962, p. 85). indeed, we should not forget that we embraced technology to bring changes for the betterment of humanity. how long are we going to continue exploiting nature in the name of modernity? how far will we go with this instrumental rationalism that worships the ideology of progress as truth (ferneding, 2010)? is there any hope when according to george grant, technology has become “a philosophy of reason as domination over nature, a politics of imperial, bureaucratic administration, a public discourse of efficiency, and a sociology of adjustment and equilibrium” (as cited in pinar, 2012b, p. 4)? and more disquieting truth is that, “it is not only nature that is wasted in this technology of thinking, it is human nature itself” (pinar, 2012b, p. 12). one apparent example of such is drastic change in the values and socio-cultural beliefs of today’s younger generations who have started forgetting old customs of respecting people and their human needs first. they have learned to prioritize their own wants/desires because that is what they are mostly fed through the mass media of televisual world. it was a shocking experience for me to see that in most of the kosraean homes, there was a television and cable but not enough food and clothes for the family. children were left roaming naked and hungry on the beach while other family members were “busy” in the fantasies of the televisual world brought to them through modern technology. raisinghani. world of technology 38 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci is not it true that most of us assume that technological devices are mere tools to achieve greater efficiency and consider them fully under our control? but as heidegger pointed out, this is only half of the story. technological tools and systems actually act as shaping forces (ferneding, 2010). fear, expressed by grant (2011a, b; pinar, 2012 b, 2015), has come true as technology has started to dominate our consciousness and constrain our freedom of thoughts and actions. indeed, technological innovations are related to production of knowledge, and thus power because they operationalize human intentions (ferneding, 2010). techinicalized schooling operationalization of human intentions by technology is very evident in today’s educational world. the integration of technology in today’s classrooms is often stressed by claiming that many features of new information and communications technologies (ict) are consistent with the principles of the science of learning and that they hold promise for improving education and students’ learning (bransford et al., 1999; roschelle et al., 2000; wang, 2009). a study conducted by kozma (2003) examined the findings from 174 case studies of so called innovative pedagogical practices focused on using technology from 28 participating countries. this study reported interactivity of technologies as a key feature that enables students to receive feedback on their performance, test and reflect on their ideas, and revise their understanding. the findings of this study claim that ict can bring exciting curricula based on real-world problems into the classroom as it provides tools to scaffold learning. the study further argues that ict expands opportunities for learning by enabling teachers and students to build local and global communities. many researchers argue that computer-generated simulations (cgs) are safe, cost effective alternatives to real laboratory experiments as they promote active learning and selfregulation through immediate feedback, and break the routine instructions by minimizing guidance by the teacher and giving students ownership of their leaning (campbell, wang, hsu, duffy, & wolf, 2010; finkelstein, et al., 2005; wieman, adams, loeblein, & perkins, 2010). friesen (n.d.) sees “educational brilliance” in cgs as it is designed specifically for educational purposes, reduces distractions by muting the unwanted manifold sense experiences, and is entirely subjected to desire and manipulation, disposability and discontinuity — “in a virtual world any object can be refreshed, rebooted and simply shut down at will” (p. 4). friesen argues that the use of cgs relieves students from the agony and discomfort caused by the undesired smell of formaldehyde, sight of blood, and the wet touch of dead animal skin while performing real ociaociaections on a dead frog in a lab. i would agree with these researchers that in some cases, such as in chemistry or physics labs, where students are expected to use expensive and dangerous chemicals and/or equipments, cgs might be safer and cost-effective alternatives. in friesen’s case, use of cgs may relieve one from the ethical dilemma of sacrificing animals and ensure environmental safety as we may not need to worry about safely disposing real dissected frogs. but how engaging, meaningful and rewarding is this “momentary and virtual satiation” (pinar, 2013a, p. 1), learning only through clicking a mouse and staring at a screen — only students could tell. can we just rely on technology to impart learning? was it really due to technology that the students learned better virtually than in the real world? perhaps not, as many of these studies indicate that other classroom practices are more likely to be associated with certain teacher and student outcomes (kozma, 2003). the positive impact of technology does not raisinghani. world of technology 39 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci come automatically; much depends on school contexts and how teachers use ict in their classrooms (bransford, et al., 1999; ertmer, 2005, perrotta, 2013). the critical question to inquire persists: is technology really enhancing students’ learning? a national study in the u.s. (wenglinski, 1998) found a negative relationship between the frequencies of home and school computer use, academic achievement and the social environment of the school. similarly, the use of ict in canadian schools had little impact on students’ scientific literacy (luu & freeman, 2011). more alarming are the findings about full-time virtual schools in the u.s. which indicate that the students of nation’s largest virtual school company k12 inc., are falling behind in reading and math scores and they are also less likely to remain at their schools for the full year (miron & urschel, 2012). pinar (2013b) further elaborates the case by sharing that in agora cyber charter school (managed by k12 inc.), sixty percent of the students are found to fall below grade level in mathematics and almost fifty percent are lagging in reading. many students withdraw within months of enrollment and out of those remaining students, one-third fail to graduate on time (national education policy center, 2012). one underlying reason for it is illustrated in a report by miron and urschel (2012), which states that k12 inc. has more than three times the number of students per teacher compared with overall public-school student-teacher ratios and it devotes considerably fewer resources to instructional salaries and benefits for employees. glass and welner (2011) raised a concern about the ongoing expansion of full-time virtual schools in the u.s. with more than 200,000 students enrolled in full-time virtual school programs nationwide without any high-quality research supporting them as a suitable replacement for traditional schools. this report also questioned the use of public revenue to run the cyber charter schools in light of the fact that the full information about the actual cost of these programs is not shared with the public. according to pinar (2013b), the replacement of schools with online instruction, where students from grades k-12 are encouraged to take some or all their classes away from their actual school, marks the end of public education in the u.s. the crucial issue involved in operating these virtual schools is that many of them are run by professional technological companies who not only govern administrative tasks for their businesses, “the online schools,” but they also take important educational decisions such as hiring teachers, providing curriculum, and monitoring students’ performance, reflecting the fact that public education in the u.s. is no longer a professional commitment but only an economy driven system established to support corporate profitability: “teaching-to-the-test positions technology not the student, not the professional educator as central to educational experience” (pinar, 2013b, p. 5). and this seems to be the case not only in the u.s. but in many other countries also where schools are asked by the government agencies to incorporate educational technology as part of an instructional shift within the context of school improvement (fox & henri, 2005; pelgrum, 2001). pelgrum (2001) who investigated obstacles in integrating technology in education in 26 countries claims that recognition of ict as an important catalyst and tool for inducing educational reforms has changed students as “productive knowledge workers” who are “trained” to perform skilled tasks (p. 163). lingering questions is rendering students to be “trained” through mass incorporation of technology in everyday schooling, really a progress? can mere technology-mediated learning help students raisinghani. world of technology 40 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci become active learners who can self-advance their knowledge and understanding? studies show that many teachers use ict mainly to support existing teachercentered approaches and see it only as a resource to teach the standard curriculum and increase students’ performance on standardized tests (kozma, 2003; fox & henri, 2005). in the name of reforming schools, technicalization of schools is blindly forcing integration of technological tools, i.e., computers, ipads, electronic boards, etc. (pinar, 2013b), with a stubborn mindset to teach only for the skills required to pass standardized tests (doll, 2008, pinar, 2005, 2012a), and disseminating education merely as “imitation” (mimesis), based on “platonist” views (doll, 2005 as cited in trueit, 2005). i wonder if any one cares about the quality of education, and the key curriculum question: “what knowledge is most worth” (pinar, 2011, p. 14; schubert, 1997, p. 1)? where do we want to go? what are we aiming for? how long are we going to use schools as mere factories of “social engineering” (pinar, 2005)? i wonder if all these superficial efforts to reform schools are merely filling up the pockets of certain business organizations. is not it an unfortunate truth that “in today’s capitalist structure the pursuit of dynamic technology is now a worldwide religion” (grant, 2011b, p. 114). one thing is clear, and definitely discouraging — students’ education has been put at stake. pinar (2013b) is right — “in ‘school reform’ children are not pupils but numbers: profits, commodities to be bought and sold” (p. 19). can we not encourage and allow schools to communicate knowledge that could let us discover, “how do we know what we know?” and “how well do we know what we know” (brandwein, 1962, p. 142)? disastrous realities indeed, such modes of technicalized, profit-based schooling are unfortunate and disappointing. in fact, such schooling is an outrageous, pecuniary form of pedophilia in which children have merely become a means to earn profits. in this political-economical capitalization not only children’s education is compromised but their psychological wellbeing is also neglected (pinar, 2013b). digital multitasking and extensive time spent in front of screens was found to be correlated with poor emotional and social health of 3,461 preteen girls who displayed low social confidence, sleeplessness, and were reported to be feeling abnormal, and having more friends whom their parents considered as poor influences (silverman, 2012). furthermore, research shows that students who multitask, actually compromise the speed as well as accuracy and quality of their performance on various tasks. for example, the students who send emails while tackling their homework, end up spending 50 percent longer time than the if they had done each of these tasks separately (mcneil, 2009). these studies highlight the importance of focused attention on single tasks for learning as well as the need for direct face-to-face communications for strong social and emotional health development of children. importance of face-to-face interactions for healthy development is also emphasized by another study that reports on the impact of video watching on vocabulary development in eight to ten-month-old infants of over 1000 parents in washington and minnesota (sikorski, n.d.). the study illustrates that every hour of video watching resulted in acquisition of six to eight fewer common baby words by these infants as compared to those who did not watch them. these findings are just samples of the problems, which most children of the 21st century are encountering due to high and irrational use of technological devices. these children are reported to engage in an average of seven to eight hours per day of technology raisinghani. world of technology 41 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci use which could lead them to increased childhood obesity, aggression, irresponsible sexual behavior, anxiety, depression and deleterious effects on learning and academic performance including lack of concentration (national aboriginal health organization, 2009; rowan, 2008). what does the future hold for these children? we all are aware of negative consequences of over/mis use of technology, but are we learning any lessons? grant (2011b) stated, “modern men are committed to unlimited technological progress” (p. 100). so, when will we stop? lost identities enveloped in our “technological cocoon”3 (ihde, 1979) do we know that this technological abstraction is leading us away from nature, and our humaneness is being engulfed? in the state of postmodernistic reality social and technical worlds have become merged and we live within and of technological systems (ferneding, 2010). what pinar (2012b) rightfully stated about past, “technology had become not just one optional mode d” être, but the only way of life on earth” (p. 4), has become more conspicuous in today’s world. our dependence on technology is evident in extensive use of electronic gadgets in our everyday life. it is like we cannot eat, sleep or move without them — “in each lived moment of our waking and sleeping, we are technological civilization” (grant, 2011a, p. 11). for many of us “technosphere” has become the determining feature of identity — we are lost in “spaces” created through the televisual and cyber world. one example of such an illusionary technological fantasy is the 3-d virtual world of second life which is being promoted as “a wonderland in which everyone can be anything or anyone they want to be. it is a place to make dreams come true” (han, 2011, p. 41). in the virtual world we can relive our life in a new way by personification of our identity as “avatars” (han, 2011, p. 41). according to ihde (1979) our relationship to technology in such situations is perceived as one that is grounded in our embodiment. the “world” created by instrumentation becomes “real” and enables reification. this new instrumental realism becomes convincing because “what was invisible becomes present” (p. 47). in fact, it makes our experiences with direct senses in flesh, secondary to those generated by instrumentation (ferneding, 2010). one can be fascinated by getting such opportunities of living a life of perfection in virtual world. but while living in this self-created, personified “virtual life,” how does one contemplate and tackle with the “actual-world life” that one is living in flesh and bone through birth as a human? is not living these two lives similar to multiple personalities found in the psychological disorder, dissociative identity disorder or multiple personality disorder, which is characterized by at least two distinct and relatively enduring identities or dissociated personalities that alternately control a person’s behavior (dissociative identity disorder, n.d.)? and if we live in two worlds, which life is real in real sense? is not this effort to live virtually, another human attempt to conquer life? in ferneding’s (2010) words: a mask to cover our profound fear — a design of our imagination, created for “denial of death” (becker, 1973). we crave to hide our guilt of beingness, of existence, and attempt to find meaning to hide the meaninglessness of our existence in this mortal life. in quest to do so our focus has shifted from finding god in heaven to become god ourselves as we try to recreate and relive our lives in the virtual world. as pinar (2013a) has stated, our constant search in the online world has become our salvation — by being lost in the online world, staring at the screens, transfixed, our subjectivity has become a prosthetic extension of our virtual being, and we are raisinghani. world of technology 42 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci lost in an unending search of finding something that we are not even sure if it exists. i wonder if this “virtual life” makes one’s life easier and happier in the “actual-life world”. how does it affect one’s relationships with self and others? by modifying our mode of communication, electronic technologies shape our social reality and cultural relationships. humanity designed technology in an effort to capture and conquer time, but in doing so it has actually started attempting to transcend time (ferneding, 2010). as participants of “networked society” connected within the cyberspace created through ict, virtuality, spontaneity and immediacy of our communications have led us into a “timeless time,” where, in an effort to connect globally by becoming immersed in “technoculture,” we are actually becoming locally disconnected — uprooting ourselves through alienation and psychological distancing. our traditional systems of socialization (religion, values, and political ideology) are diluted as we attempt to create a secular society that embraces a new “cultural system” of “real virtuality” where we live like ihde’s (1979) “technological cocoon” for whom: reality itself (people’s material/symbolic existence) is entirely captured, fully immersed in a virtual image setting, in the world of make believe, in which appearances are not just on the screen through which experience is communicated but they become the experience. (castells, 2000 as cited in ferneding, 2010, p. 177) grant considers this elopement of our social reality by technically created virtual reality as “monistic vulgarity” (pinar, 2013a, p. 2). immersed in the self-centered universal world of cyberspace created through the internet, what morality do we expect from ourselves? in having the freedom of dissolving our personal identities, how sure are we that everybody would follow the moral rules when, according to hannah arendt, the conditioned environment of our own (un)making is dominated by bureaucratic and technological forces that follow “rule by nobody” (ferneding, 2010, p. 181)? how will we ensure that this neoliberal, radical, individualistic “negative freedom” or “freedom from” would associate with universal concern of what is good or right (ferneding, 2010)? in escaping from ourselves by creating reality that is unreal but still becomes our reality, how would we transcend? humanity created technology in quest for salvation but in turn has become its servant (ferneding, 2010). according to macdonald (1971/1995), “humanity is sleepwalking on a tightrope”: what will awaken men from the idiocy of their technological compulsions? will we be saved by superior intelligence from the unknown universe? will there be a second coming of christ? perhaps, but then, perhaps not. will california quake and crumble in the pacific as a warning to men? or shall we simply risk the possibility of beginning again after we have purged ourselves in the fire of nuclear redemption? (as cited in ferneding, 2010, p. 179) if we are not wise enough to awaken now, we must prepare ourselves to enter and live into the “posthuman” condition created by cybernetics that entails an ironic turn — “a humanization of the machine and the mechanization of the human” (ferneding, 2010, p. 175). in fact, i am afraid that we have already begun this process as evident by the new scientific technologies of reproductive cloning (reproductive cloning, 2004) and ectogenesis (aristarkhova, 2005). raisinghani. world of technology 43 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci reproductive cloning could be a new hope for gay and lesbian couples who want to have children and do not want to adopt a child, but efforts to design human clones through somatic cell nuclear transfer might eliminate the process of biological birth and lead to “selfcreation” through reproductive cloning. and there are ethical issues involved — thousands of donated eggs and cloned embryos are sacrificed in an attempt to have a single successful cloning (aristarkhova, 2005). can we afford such mass killings? moreover, how sure are we that eugenic advantage of reproductive cloning will not lead to perpetuating desired genes? and this could result in “bioterrorism” where anybody could claim that their genes are superior to others. would not this result in a new kind of racism/cultural/ethnic war to design humans of their own kind? through ectogenesis, we are replacing the uterus, the natural womb, with an artificial incubator to develop a fetus totally outside a woman’s body. aristarkhova (2005) has described that ecogenesis has been justified historically through an underlying assumption that uterus is just a clever incubator whose function can be ultimately substituted. supporters of ectogenesis claim that by using this technique, we are actually relieving women from their reproductive function, and allowing them opportunities to spend more time and energy for their professional growth (aristarkhova, 2005). they prefer ectogenesis over natural gestation because it reduces the chances of birth defects by allowing control and manipulation of the processes of conception; gestation and birth at any stage through various means. ectogenesis also claims to relieve parents from tensions of having a surrogate mother and also from the need to think about paternal pregnancy (aristarkhova, 2005). in ectogenesis, a fetus develops “outside” the maternal body by enabling gestation “inside” a machine that strives to simulate the conditions of the womb; a machine that acts as if it was a mother (aristarkhova, 2005). in this technological dream of “machine as mother,” we have actually reduced the “mother as a machine”. is process of giving birth to a new individual totally mechanical? we have completely ignored mother’s nurturing role — where the need for emotional and affectionate bond between the mother and child is gone? if we will continue designing humans and manufacturing babies — what will be the nature of human families and society? wrapped up in this blind desire to progress, ignoring morality in the name of universal race to conquer nature where are we going? searching hope by ignoring the critical issues of moral and ethical reasoning, and merely engineering children through technicalized, standardized schooling are we really giving education? how would we respond to the request of this child? dear teacher: i am the child of a concentration camp. my eyes saw what no person should witness: gas chambers built by learned engineers. children poisoned by educated physicians. infants killed by trained nurses. women and babies shot and burned by high school and college graduates. so, i am suspicious of education. my request is: help your students become human. your efforts must never produce learned monsters, skilled psychopaths, educated eichmanns. reading, writing and arithmetic [and technology] are important only if they were to make our children more humane.4 (as cited in delpit, 2006, p. xix, parentheses added) raisinghani. world of technology 44 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci is there any hope? we cannot turn the clock back. as brooks (2010) has mentioned — we now stand in an era, where technology is inextricably entwined both as general and educational method, and as a discourse in global economic order. so, what should we do? following grant, we must (re)think: “what technology is?” (pinar, 2012b, 2015). heidegger invites us to understand technology not merely as technē that is guided purely by instrumental rationality, which contemplates nature as a calculable material extension through a distanced, modernistic, objectifying, cartesian construction, but as an intellectual capacity or virtue — as technē in its greek sense that has to do with making or creating something new in accordance with a reflexive rational capacity of identifying truth and falsity, as a way of revealing nature and life. ferneding (2010) awaits for an awakening and active resistance that she expects will evolve naturally as humanity experiences suffering in the process of disappearing itself quietly in self-generated emptying (in technology). she invites curriculum scholars to engage in post reconceptualization within the context of technology-generated “transpochal state”5, and create a “next moment” in curriculum studies. brooks (2010) hopes to break the wall of instrumental rationality, and relieve the tension of humanness, and technology through phronēsis — the ethical intellectual virtue of mind. indeed, only curriculum conceived as practical wisdom, moral knowledge, art (technē), scientific intelligence and prudence of phronēsis will enable us to continue our “complicated conversation”6 (pinar, 2011, 2012a) and allow “intersubjective truth”7 (kemmis, 2005) to rise in communication so that we can continue our “allegory”8 (pinar, 2011) to reconstruct our present by reactivating our past and visiting our future with “love” (pinar, 2015). the love that would allow us to transcend our technologically bound destiny defined in terms of instrumental calculation and obsession and stop us from blindly embracing technological vulgarity that kills humanity in the name of progress. the love that would allow us to reconceptualize technology as a process that is “poetic”9 (poiēsis) (davis, 2010) running of the course of our life as currere10 (pinar, 2012a, 2015) — to acknowledge and understand the “other” in every realm of life with consent that grant conceives as “authentic otherness” (pinar, 2015, p. 122). acknowledgement this paper is a tribute to all the victims of nuclear bomb testing in the republic of marshall islands as well as to people who have succumbed to various forms of technological devastation in multiple cultural contexts. the author would like to thank dr. william pinar for his thought-provoking teachings that have served as a guiding source for writing this paper. the author would also like to acknowledge the contributions of students of assumption high school, majuro, republic of marshall islands who shared their communal lived experiences through their poems and mr. theodore stepp, former english instructor, college of marshall islands, majuro, republic of marshall islands for his help in refining this manuscript. and last but not least, i want to thank my late father professor prem mangharam raisinghani who instilled in me the belief that education is the greatest wealth and it is through sharing this wealth we can contribute in making this world a better place to live and learn for all. raisinghani. world of technology 45 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (1) 2018 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci notes 1 email: latikarai@hotmail.com 2 category of technological-human relation where mechanic condition as “technosphere” is ubiquitous and humans exist inside the machine, which is manifested as a “technological cocoon” (ihde, 1979). 3 our “will to control” nature through technological inventions, exists as salve for human psyche, illustrating the mysterious symbolic power of possibility and inevitability, of hope and fear, wrapped up in one upright symbol of human power and powerlessness it collapses for meaning in technoculture culture being one manifestation, technics another (ferneding, 2010). 4 haim ginott (1972) included this letter in his book teacher and child: a book for parents and teachers. this letter was given by a principal to all of his teachers at the beginning of a new school year (as cited in delpit, 2006, p. xix). 5 transpochal state is being characterized by humanity’s sense that “something is changing, something different is emerging. we can feel it; we are trying to articulate it” (kochhar-lindgren, 2005, as cited in ferneding, 2010, p. 176). 6 curriculum conceived as complicated conversation invites students to encounter themselves and the world they inhabit (and that inhabits them) through academic study, through academic knowledge, popular culture, all threaded through their own lived experiences (pinar, 2011, p. 10-11). 7 intersubjective truth can be found only through communicative action – by being locked or engaged together in the search for intersubjective agreement, mutual understanding and consensus about what to do (kemmis, 2005, p. 8). 8 understanding curriculum allegorically self-consciously incorporates sharp sense of past in present. enabling discernment of the present and foreshadowings of the future in to a complicated conversation that is threaded through one’s subjectivity, it allows us to build passages from the particularity of our situations to the alterity of others (pinar, 2011, p. 4-7). 9 etymological root of the word poetic is related to making meaning through interactions with others, with the environment/cosmos, and reflexively to develop a sense of being-in-relation (as mentioned in trueit, 2005, p. 2). 10 currere is a method of self-reflective autobiographical intellectual inquiry. as a self-situated study of “ongoing self-formation through academic study…as a form of cultural criticism, currere fosters educational journey to allow individuals to be in touch with their own experiences” by making them critically aware of their own identity as it is “dreamt into existence” by their own “internalized histories [and] other’s expectations and fantasies” (pinar, 1992, p. 233, 2012 a). references 1 march 1954 castle bravo (n.d.). in ctbto. retrieved november 29, 2012 from http://www.ctbto.org/specials/infamous-anniversaries/1-march-1954-castle-bravo/ ahlquist, r., & kailin, j. 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2018 microsoft word sinner final.doc to cite this article please include all of the following details: sinner, anita (2010). fragments: spectres of a sojourning sojourner. transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> fragments: spectres of a sojourning sojourner anita sinner concordia university the waiting that surrounds an impending death tears and suspends time, inducing a state of absence that is in relation, where the shadows of what we are, were and will not be are entrusted to the ether, to be reawakened in the breath of aliveness of those that remain. last spring, my cousin, who i knew as janet, died of cancer, ending her third trial of life and death at age fortyfour. she was my closest cousin, two years senior, a woman of great richness: an accomplished and respected scholar, artist, classical guitarist, curator, art historian, lecturer and author who lived in berlin. she held all that is living, but for life. in the prolonged waiting that unfolded, reconciling the paradox of her incompleteness became the heart of my why. why: a predictably complicated complex that opens and unravels patterns of two cousins living artfully, creating relationships with the arts that are and were in part genealogical. yet it was in the realization that i mourned deeply for a woman i had never met, a relative i only knew through childhood photographs, traces of words and select stories retold that i began to question my relationship with photography: why my understandings of relatives were almost entirely constructed through photographs, and why photography was a medium of research shared by janet and me. in this expression of life writing with light, i draw on the theoretical lens of literary métissage as a sojourning sojourner, contemplating stories of the past, as leggo suggests, “that actively shape who we are in the present” (hasebe-ludt, chambers, & leggo, 2009, p. 97). métissage is a form of life writing that attends to the “counternarrative...to the interval between different cultures and languages...a way of merging and blurring genres, texts and identities” in a mixing of spaces and places and memories and histories that is my becoming (hasebe-ludt, chambers, & leggo, 2009, p. 9). i offer fragments of life writing as a response to the provocation of literary métissage, taking up the notion of sojourning as a way into grand (familial) narratives, narratives so protected i can only offer glimpses within the confines of an article, but narratives i acknowledge as always flowing in the background, in the recesses of words, images and movements. such fragments are intentionally open to interpretations, to relational connections, to questions for which there are not necessarily answers. my fragments are ambiguous, and deliberately so, as all stories are deliberate and shared in the particular, like a sequence suggesting continuity that is actually discontinuity, much like the triptych i call spectres, implying a conversation across three generations, from a grandmother i never knew, through me, to my mother and back again: sinner: fragments 76 transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci spectres disjuncture began my quest into life writing with light as a methodology of practice in which the spectres, in this case my mothers’ family, are continually reflected back in life interests, choices and directions janet and i have taken. we shared parallels: pursuing the arts, finding expression through writing, seeking homes in the academy, and studying dimensions of photography as cultural expression. i wonder: had we unknowingly become the living spectres of our relative relationships? and if so, how is it we did not even know we shared such spirals in life as we actively pursued shared interests in our locations across the world? recognizing “this coincidence is a kind of metamorphosis,” i entered with uncertainty to reconsider my ways of seeing (barthes, 1981, p. 109). photography defines my earliest experiences, both as imaginative creator and image-object. in fact my introduction to the camera was due to the unintentional work of the sister in-between my mother and janet’s mother, our aunt lore. lore created photo logs of the next generation as small children, reprinting and distributing those images to her siblings in different countries across two continents. through photography, we, who did not know one another or in some instances share the same language, were offered a forum to dialogue. these photographs, as bal (2004) suggests, served as sites of “acute reflection,” where continued “visual interactions” with portraits were “the essential constituents” of identity formation, making family portraits “triggers” for interaction, identification and expressive action (pp. 6, 7). lore created hundreds of images, if not thousands over a quarter century. in her central location in toronto, lore was geographically poised to keep us all connected between europe, the united states and canada. in part because of her geographic place, lore became the keeper of our stories. this may have been a role she created by default, for as an employee of kodak, the company where she spent her professional life, generous benefits included free film development. as an aside, it is curious to consider how kodak made photography accessible to the masses, where the snapshot redefined ways of seeing and became emblematic of memory, identity and place, and how it was the significance of such cultural attributes of photography that janet and i would come to trouble in academic spaces. however it came to be, all our lives seemed to flow through lore’s lens. sinner: fragments 77 transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci i still recall the consuming childhood excitement when lore’s letters arrived, and the social affinity and bonding i experienced knowing these photographs were ‘my people’ too. today, i recognize in the vernacular of lore’s domestic snapshots the aesthetics of a gifted photographer of moments, emotions and candour. she had a talent to render our lives in her light writing. each photo presented a story of a time and place in the stages of growing up into which i, for one, read meaning and developed a sense of kinship through an exposed piece of photographic paper. it was lore, our visual storyteller, who became the “mediator of a truth” (barthes, 1981, p. 70). her camera served as an instrument to bridge differences within, to create a collective consciousness. lore’s photographs remain the heart of my family’s archive and it was through her images that i came to know my extended family. i venture this may be true for my cousins, maybe it was so for janet too. lore’s photographic practice represented much more than a means to record. at an early age i learned there was a relationship between technology and the telling of stories. when i look at my family archive now, i am surprised to find images of myself, two or three years old, carrying different cameras. i have no memory of this. but as in any good story, foreshadowing is often embedded in symbolic acts, and i wonder if intuitively i chose photography, or if photography chose me. my interest in handling cameras continued with lore’s kodak instamatic 124, left behind during one of her visits. i spent countless hours investigating the inside of this camera. with the camera back open, clicking the shutter, watching the lens open and close, manually resetting the advance lever, and doing it all again, the kind of playing inherent in experiential learning well before any formal schooling. i understood the shutter years ahead of exposing my first roll of film, which was eventually made with the same instamatic. in grade six i learned how to develop and print black and white film in a temporary darkroom that doubled as the school kitchen on hot-dog day, and the cloakroom for the christmas play. there i developed my first photographs. by then the ravages of playing, dropping, and even some dismantling of lore’s old kodak had taken a toll and the lens was no longer able to focus, but images were still made, and i discovered the artistic medium i loved most. perhaps i continue to practice because photography is arguably more accessible, and not as prescribed as painting or crafts, but innovative, eclectic and unpredictable. and as a teacher of teachers, knowing from experience children can be taught how to work a black and white darkroom convinces me we need to perceive and engage children differently, and not be afraid to develop challenging activities that extend beyond the simplicity of art that does not involve scissors. i have spent over thirty years engaged almost exclusively in landscape interpretation. i cannot account for this thematic choice given my relationship with photography was informed by lore’s portraits in my early years. yet in an ironic twist, today i teach photography as life writing, not landscape imagery despite my ongoing art practice. instead i encourage students to find in photography a medium through which to tell autobiographical stories, just as lore had taught me as a child. like a spectre in-between waiting, deliberating the why of janet’s death, i came to consider again my family archive entrusted with me only temporarily after my mother died. in recognition of the value, the preciousness of these photos, i planned to digitize and preserve, to dwell in this “uncommon place,” and like a guardian of documents, create multiple copies so we could all share our memories (derrida, 1995, p. 3). after eight years, i completed scanning only a part of my immediate family’s very small collection of photographs and that part has since been lost sinner: fragments 78 transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci when technology failed, reminding me again of the value of materiality and the printed image. but technology was only part of the reason this project remaining unfinished. my inertia to document these photographs increased as i lingered with the collection, realizing as a researcher that these photographic stories were also stories of absence. i look at these photos now. some arranged in albums, many loose-leaf, along with a small, tattered yellow box of slides, upon which i printed as a child, “i don’t want this.” such an awkwardly printed statement of fact that now strangely seems to reveal my truth-telling. it is as if i intuitively understood then, a lifetime ago, what i am now contemplating about absence in this collection. i am struck by a profound fact. most of these photographs are of families i have never met. and there is not a single photo of my immediate family all together, just ones, twos, threes, but never all five of us. there are no photographs of transformative moments in our immediate lives: birthdays, graduations, marriages, the birth of grandchildren. all this is silent. i cannot account for why, except that lore was not there to record life writing with light. always there was absence. if i proceed into photography with an understanding that the photograph inscribes stories using literary traditions, how should i read this absence? speculatively, literally, symbolically, or simply, out of context with unintended arbitrariness? or as sontag (1977) suggests, does the “true distinction” lie in “not having [my] body published at all” (p. 166)? is this family album too unconventional? or perhaps this absence constitutes photographic “violence,” where the absence of each occasion silences stories so that nothing can exist (barthes, 1981, p. 91). and if photographs represent our collective consciousness, the site where we hold our memories, what story does absence tell? can i simplify multiple meanings to just one narrative of absence, ignoring the elements, structure and codes of each photo and the cumulative stories that are part of this whole? for barthes (1981), there is the space between life and death in the act of photographing, a notion reiterated by cousineau-levine (2003) among others. perhaps this is why i cannot complete the digitizing of this archive; the mythology has finally become too much and i remain suspended between photographic life and death. in the few photographs of me as a child not made by lore, i am frequently portrayed alone, objectified in the modelling of newly sewn dresses, or portrayed with my mother only. the lifelong effect of that isolating bond remains manifest in the guilt of failing to reproduce the archive, a guilt that compounds with each year, as does the strife. in the material layers of these images are stories of “encounters,” like a performance where the intent is to create relationships through a specific kind of familial gaze that facilitates “a certain latency” (barthes, 1981, pp. 27, 53). it was only with janet’s passing, a woman with whom i had artful parallels, that life writing shed light on the possibilities of my incompleteness. how can i, a life writer, in relation to relative life writers, fail to fulfil my storying? the family album as a site of spectres became my impetus for undertaking this reflective inquiry through the arts. for my mother’s family, photographs were symbols of hope, expressions of betterment, authenticating familial recovery and demonstrating stories of conformity through social and cultural integration. from an older generation through to the children of my generation, photographs were symbols of the promise of purpose, the sacrifice obscured behind smiles, and the prospects foregone because of war, loss, death, destruction. as hirsch describes, such “postmemory” is “familial inheritance”: the relationship of children of survivors of cultural or collective trauma to the experiences of their parents, experiences that they ‘remember’ only as the narratives and images which they grew up, but that are so powerful, so sinner: fragments 79 transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci monumental, as to constitute memories in their own right. (hirsch, as cited in crownshaw, 2004, p. 215) these photographs were made to remember what words could not, to exchange as social markers between family, to prove we existed and to guarantee each life would bring forward lost dreams, making each photograph “a form of agency” (hirsch, as cited in langford, 2001, p. 29). such life writing offers a way to respond to spectres within the family album, and perhaps more so, the “naturalizing cultural practices” that “makes [photography] particularly powerful,” and thus an “insidious instrument of social conformity” (hirsch, 2002, p. 251). in this in-between space, i began to question our naturalizing cultural practices, and by extension, how i, as a first generation canadian, feel far less canadian than my immigrant parents. i am hyphenated in my social conformity, consigned to the canadian landscape where i have yet to find a sense of home, and to the european, to lands i still have not visited and which will never be home, despite holding a dual citizenship. perhaps as crownshaw (2004) suggests, photographs are “inscribed with the agency of witnessing,” in effect, revealing the “ethical dynamic of postmemory that resists a colonizing impulse” (pp. 232, 235). my sense of kinship to home-places remains tenuous and shifting, belonging to both and yet neither. extending cousineau-levine’s (2003) thesis that contemporary canadian photography reflects “the space in-between two zones” of our “dualistic reality,” dividing “realms of here and elsewhere,” i utilize the camera as a form of identity construction. but unlike my aunt lore, i turned to the aesthetic distance of landscapes rather than portraiture to explore notions of belonging in an art practice i have lived for decades (p. 7). perhaps this is why i remain happiest when i am in movement, passing through the landscapes that possess my photographic attention. perhaps this is why i elect to reside where the landscape dominates conceptions of what is canada: the far west coast as an extreme landscape. here my archive has burgeoned with tens of thousands of images, almost all landscapes. it may be, as sontag (1977) states, “people robbed of their past seem to make the most fervent picture takers, at home and abroad” (p. 10). perhaps that was lore’s story too. janet’s passing bore witness to that which was unseen by me for so very long. as an arts researcher and teacher, i continue to pursue the stories i cannot obtain, seeking in life writing what i lack in my own story: a belonging, a rootedness, an identity i can claim. this absence is chaffing in the background, in my unsettled solitude, a solitude that is always looking to escape into images. is it possible that as researchers, we are always seeking in our work what we lack in our own stories? that our research is most strongly motivated by that which we cannot find in our narratives of becoming? my research has a long-standing trajectory of life writing, and like a shadow, my teaching of photography consistently focuses on how photography can tell our stories. i mindfully encourage class after class to render their lives visually, to enter a space i do and do not easily enter myself. my life story is not traumatic, not vivid, not exceptional; instead my story begins in erasure, in my family photo album, in the erasure of my mothers’ family when they were children, a burden that became the burden of the next generation. yet this contested space is also where my life-long obsession of life writing with light began. my relationality is geographic, shape-shifting between the familiar-unfamiliar along borders and notions of citizenship in a “longing to inhabit” (barthes, 1981, p. 40). i now consider how lore’s portraits are literal interpretations of family as spectres, while my scenic landscapes are social projections of the spectres of family, metaphors calling into and answering back the stories imprinted in me as a first generation canadian, where sinner: fragments 80 transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci unbelonging is littered with structural dualities like margins-centres. in this way, the spectres, as peim (2005) suggests, “conjure a present absence,” an incompleteness that endures (p. 74). broaching my relationship with photography as life writing has been challenging. this is a story that is riddled with obligation to and scrutiny of a family that i effectively do not know, doubling my necessity as an arts researcher and teacher to open spaces that have long been absent. i agonize over every detail, the implied and explicit meanings, and my desire to honour those who are no longer in this world but form part of this conversation. this is an ethical quandary that often ends with my self-silencing. bal (2004) suggests this is not geographic but ontological distance, “a distance normally erased in the routine of perception when it is embedded in affection,” but for me, this distance is emotion braided in métissage, operating spatially and as the essence of being, deeply entwined in the texture of photography as social biography (p. 11). at the same time, i am mindful of the potential of such hybridity to “decontextualize” or “distort” meaning through “formalistic reduction” of “a phrase or a word” from the whole “discursive logic of philosophical text” (porter, 1997, pp. 93-94). simply, for me life writing begins with an ethic of caring, and as a methodology of writing with light, i look to landscape interpretation as my means to encourage connections across time and place, a coming to know between janet and me, not as confession, but as a practice of heightened awareness of relational events that has informed our lives. sinner: fragments 81 transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci references bal, m. (2004). light writing: portraiture in a post-traumatic age. mosaic: a journal for the interdisciplinary study of literature, 3(4), 1-19. barthes, r. (1981). camera lucida: reflection on photography (r. howard, trans.). new york: hill and wang. cousineau-levine, p. (2003). faking death: canadian art photography and the canadian imagination. montreal: mcgill-queen’s university press. crownshaw, r. (2004). reconsidering postmemory: photography, the archive, and postholocaust memory in w.g. sebald’s austerlitz. mosaic: a journal for the interdisciplinary study of literature, 37(4), 215-236. derrida, j. (1995). archive fever: a freudian impression (e. prenowitz, trans.). chicago: university of chicago press. hasebe-ludt, e., chambers, c. m., & leggo, c. (2009). life writing and literary métissage as an ethos for our times. new york: peter lang. hirsch, m. (2002). collected memories: lorie novak’s virtual family album. in s. smith & j. watson (eds.), interfaces: women, autobiography, image, performance (pp. 240-262). ann arbor, mi: university of michigan press. langford, m. (2001). suspended conversations: the afterlife of memory in photographic albums. montreal: mcgill-queen’s university press. peim, n. (2005). spectral bodies: derrida and the philosophy of the photograph as historical document. the journal of the philosophy of education society of great britain, 39(1), 67-84. porter, j. (1997). aristotle on specular regimes: the theatre of philosophical discourse. in d. levin (ed.), sites of vision: the discursive construction of sight in the history of philosophy (pp. 93-116). cambridge, ma: the mit press. sontag, s. (1977). on photography. new york: picador. microsoft word miller final.doc to cite this article please include all of the following details: miller, janet l. (2010). reweavings: engaging with life writing across knowledge traditions. transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> reweavings: engaging with life writing across knowledge traditions janet l. miller teachers college, columbia university “history” even eve, the only soul in all of time to never have to wait for love, must have leaned some sleepless nights alone against the garden wall and wailed, cold, stupefied, and wild and wished to trade-in all of eden to have but been a child. in fact, i gather that is why she leapt and fell from grace, that she might have a story of herself to tell in some other place. —jennifer michael hecht, from the next ancient world life, according to richard rorty (1989), ought to be viewed as a “web of relations to be rewoven, a web which time lengthens each day” (pp. 42-43). as i read and re-read the conjoined essays presented here, i was drawn back into the very conference room at the 2009 aera symposium where i first heard these life writings and viewed images that vicki kelly, erika hasebe-ludt, carl leggo, nané jordan, anita sinner, and cynthia chambers projected with their presentations. the moments of silence that followed their performances of métissage still hang suspended in my memory, and i again feel the visceral force and power of their collective work. i believe that “we,” as members of that temporary assemblage known as an aera audience, remained quiet for some moments following the words of the final speaker in order to allow ourselves to feel, to connect. not the ordinary aera experience, that’s for certain. i further imagine that we “as audience” had no immediate words, no impulsive responses, because, to borrow an idea from anita’s braid, we were “still going through it.” and as i read and re-read the essays for this particular iteration of their work, i was moved anew by this assemblage of teachers/researchers/writers/colleagues and their obvious commitments to a conceptualization of métissage as both a research approach miller: reweavings transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 102 and a literary praxis wherein writers/researchers braid strands of their own writing and image-work with those of others. i thus am hesitant here, just as i was then as the official discussant for the aera symposium, to attempt to “respond” in any detached and supposedly “objective” way to the courageous and aesthetically embodied performances of a complex, messy and intricate “web of relations” that constitute these individuals’ academic collaborations as well as approaches to curriculum theory and research. therefore, as i re-visited these papers in their current forms, i have allowed myself the leisure of time and contemplation, wanting to create enough space for myself to enable that connective tissue of readings to revive my sense of “still going through it.” on one hand, then, my extended engagement with the work presented in these revised and expanded versions of those symposium papers has granted me the gift of again entering into the braid of these writers’ interwoven and yet distinct areas of intellectual pursuit as well as their interpretations of their lived educational experiences. but, for me, there also is a somewhat scary aspect in so doing. for, i do not presume in any way to attempt to reweave this group’s long-term web of relations in ways that might snag or catch on complicated entanglements, commitments and engagements with one another’s lives and intellectual work. rather, i gratefully add some small strands into the authors’ existing braid, hoping at the same time that perhaps some of my disparate social, cultural, autobiographical and theoretical locations generate new warps in the weave, or perhaps produce new threads that may spin fresh configurations onto that web that time continues to lengthen. primarily, as i engage recursively with these texts, i wish to emphasize that these writings must not be read as simply a proliferation of self-serving representations of individualistic memory or ideological position or theoretical commitment, especially in relation to issues of teaching, researching, and curriculum theorizing or to “what counts” as “wisdom” within these contexts. nor should the authors’ use of métissage be read as resulting in a composite view, a unified and completed “web of relations,” a perfectly braided entity in and of itself. nor should their conceptualization of métissage become a reified prescription for narrative, autobiographical, life-writing or life-story research “method.” rather, i believe that the theory and practices of métissage, as conceptualized and intricately entwined with/in these researchers’ wordand image-braidings, instead highlight paradoxes, contradictions, muddles, surprises and messy complexities of life writing as a form of educational research and practice. indeed, one of the major contributions that these authors make to research, writ large, is their insistence on the necessity of a form of connect-ness that demonstrates life writing as educational inquiry that is at once social and productive of possible new and unanticipated constructions of selves and histories. such work, i believe, serves as one way of working toward the forging of ethical and just educational relationships across difference as well as through varying research, pedagogical and wisdom traditions and practices. vicki, erika, carl, nané, anita and cynthia, through their textual, pedagogical and research artistry, indeed have woven filaments of historically, socially and culturally situated representations of lived experience. by utilizing juxtaposition as a textual braiding technique, these life writers have inter-connected, interrupted, and interrogated complexities, differences, and concomitant possibilities in attempting to represent their miller: reweavings transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 103 beliefs in life writing as a primary way of actually constructing new knowledges, including ways of “getting a heart of wisdom,” if you will. at the same time, as i too work to collaborate, present, and represent with others as one way of embodying as well as researching relationality, i have come to realize that such interwoven work requires a stance of anticipation rather than rejection of the unknown. for indeed, throughout my own collaborative research and writing endeavors, i have learned that i cannot know, predict or control ahead of time what particular relations or representations of identities and knowledges will get enacted. so, unlike any romanticized or static and intact version of a “self” or “community” within particular weavings and interconnections, i now am committed to forms of autobiographical and narrative inquires that explore relationality as predicated on constant movement, channelings, meanderings and stoppages. such changes, writ large, have forced me over the years of my work in academe to explore “always becoming” relations among shifting conceptions of place, mobility, difference, subjectivity and constructions of identity as crucial moments of representational challenges and (im)possibilities with/in collaborative work as well as narrative and autobiographical forms of educational research. i do see the workings of métissage with which both authors and readers engage here as one powerful means by which educational researchers and teachers might refuse not only singular and unitary versions of what and whose knowledges are deemed of the most worth, but also manifestations of essentialized, unitary and standardized forms of curriculum, pedagogy and research with and on our disparate lives as students, teachers and researchers. the very weavings, re-weavings and un-weavings that métissage as both method and life practice require thus enable writers-teachers-students-researchers to be momentarily and yet relationally situated along threads of interconnections as well as (dis)locations within and among fluid and constantly shifting subjectivities. in what clearly are my preferences in regard to notions of how and to what extent educational researchers can imagine as well as enact what i am calling temporary and contingent “communities without consensus,” i thus look forward to the possible reweavings that might be created as well as undone as this impressive group of canadian scholars continues to explore forms of life writing that foreground their interconnections across differing cultures, ethnicities and races. because i too am committed to working with and in forms of autobiographical and narrative research that explore relationality as a primary component of just and humane acts of teaching, researching and learning, i see the unbraidings and re-braidings of métissage as necessary within what might be characterized as temporary intersectional alliances, fostered by both interconnections as well as (dis)locations within and between fluid and shifting interpretations of “selves.” such constant movement characterizes what i regard as now necessary hybrid and transdisciplinary approaches to the still-current crisis of representation in all forms of qualitative research, writ large, but especially in forms of autobiographical life writing. that crisis of representation especially must be taken into account, not only in relation to local, institutional and individual contexts and encounters, but also in relation to the nonunitary visions of subjectivities as flows of inter-relationality that now characterize global/local contexts. i perhaps am imposing a difficult imperative here: i would hope that the work of métissage as so intricately represented in these braided texts and images might help all educational researchers, teachers and students to begin to understand the intersections, miller: reweavings transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 104 stases, weavings and unravelings of these processes as well as implications of such. further work to complicate notions of both “self” and métissage may result in non-static enactments and conceptualizations of entangled local/global educational contexts—and their embodied persons—who have their own complex and knotted interpretations of social and cultural histories, dominant discourses that often normalize, and residues of conflicting and conflicted meanings of alterity both within and with/out their “selves.” obviously, within these reweavings, fluid interconnections too might simultaneously include paradoxical losses of “fully known and identified” selves, countries, nations, affiliations. such losses often raise, interrupt, stall, enable, detour, multiple or re-route varying constructions of difference—forcing all involved to deal with forms of disidentification—that is, with the additional loss of habits of thought and representation. what i am interlacing throughout these braided essays, then, are questions that foreground uncertainties, shifts, ambiguities, surges, contradictions, incoherences, and the un-knowable and un-nameable that shadow any firm and total representations of writer/researcher/teacher subjectivities and relational inter-subjectivities. it’s difficult work that should accompany any inquiry that places our selves, or allows us to be placed in a position of speaking for others from partial, situated and densely invested positions. the intricately braided life writings of erika, nané, cynthia, carl, vicki, and anita focus readers’ attentions on the unique particularities of lived lives as always contextualized within analyses and theorizing of history, politics, discourses, culture, place and subjectivity. as i have engaged not only with the nuances of their intersubjectively influenced representations through poetry, photographs, paintings, dreams, and stream-of-consciousness dialogues and monologues, but also with my own questions about the ways in which the impossibly messy details of lived lives exceed any attempts to fully represent or “understand,” i am already braiding and braided into the complex research processes that these six have conceptualized, enlarged and re-imagined. i hope that any reweavings in which i have become entangled here might only serve as further impetus—not to totally untangle the entwined braidings but rather to imagine endless braiding combinations and patterns that could contribute to a notion of how we all might “get a heart of wisdom” about responsibility in not knowing. i thank these six colleagues for their inspiring, lyrical and innovative conceptualizations that i am convinced have already expanded notions of life writing by attending to such as a moral enterprise. i am honored to engage, disrupt, tease out and add some rewoven tendrils into this particular web of relations that clearly changes, grows, hybridizes and morphs within the contexts of life writing inquiries and practices. the authors’ braidings—their conceptualizations and enactments of métissage—are a remarkable achievement. references hecht, j. m. (2001). the next ancient world. dorset, vt: tulepo press. rorty, r. (1989). contingency, irony, and solidarity. cambridge, ma: cambridge university press. microsoft word leggo final.doc to cite this article please include all of the following details: leggo, carl (2010). writing a life: representation in language and image. transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> writing a life: representation in language and image carl leggo university of british columbia seeing and seeking i recently spent several days reviewing more than twenty-five thousand digital photographs i composed and collected during the past decade. i have been feeling a sturdy need to organize and preserve these myriad and multiple images of quotidian life, each image like a fragment of memory, a trace of the heart’s desire. in some of the photographs i saw my father, the man i knew and did not know, the man i can only recognize as familiar and unfamiliar. christina baldwin (2005) claims that “when we live in a family, a community, a country where we know each other’s true stories, we remember our capacity to lean in and love each other into wholeness” (p. 18). this is my hope—to learn how to tell true stories, at least stories full of truth, and to learn to lean into wholeness. but i always know isabel huggan’s (2003) wisdom that “stories are only partial truths” (p. 25). in much the way that photographs change life into images, huggan reminds me that stories “change life into language and keep it firm” (p. 25) so we can cling “to our fabricated versions of history” (p. 234). in roland barthes’ autobiography titled roland barthes, barthes (1977) begins with the following advice for reading his autobiography: “it must all be considered as if spoken by a character in a novel” (p. 1). like barthes, in all my autobiographical writing, in every poem, anecdote, narrative, or incident, i perceive myself as a character in a fiction, in a story that has been made up. i am both present and not present; or more accurately, i witness a person who is both me and not me. like barthes i know “a state of disturbing familiarity: i see the fissure in the subject” (p. 3). it is the sense of “disturbing familiarity” that both holds me as if enthralled, and that compels me to write more as if i can break loose from enchantment by stacking images like bricks in a tower to a mysterious knowledge that teases and tantalizes. but, for all my writing, i never know much. instead, what happens is that the fissures open up like sudden cracks and gaps in ocean ice when spring writes with warm breath. and, so, like barthes, “i abandon the exhausting pursuit of an old piece of myself, i do not try to restore myself (as we say of a monument)” (p. 56). instead of restoring myself, instead of seeking ways to patch up the fissures, i story myself; i seek connections amidst the cracks and gaps; i spell out a series of images. as barthes suggests, “you are the only one who can never see yourself except as an image; you never see your eyes unless they are dulled by the gaze they rest upon the mirror or the lens” (p. 36). we know ourselves only in images, written in words and light. leggo: writing a life transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 48 my sense of who i am in the world is an effect of language, a sense of presence, a representation, seemingly whole but always fragmentary. for over two decades i have been writing autobiographical poetry and fiction about my father in an effort to know him and to know my relationship with him. and in all my searching for my father, i am reminded of robert bly’s haunting advice (1990): “it is possible that we will never have the closeness we want from our fathers” (p. 121). in my father’s arms all my life i have wanted my father to hold me in his arms and tell me, i love you i went to a counsellor, empty but still full of fear, and she walked me through the tangled garden of five decades of living in the earth to a quiet meadow where my father and i stood all alone with the dandelions, both dazed and lost. i was once more a small boy. faraway, i heard a soft voice, what do you want? i began to weep. all my life i have wanted my father to hold me in his arms and tell me, i love you we are each shaped by the first years of our lives; we learn how to live with one another from the stories we have been invited to live with others. fathers and sons live in an alien world born in contest, often confused, where we seldom know how to name our desires. my father says, i’m a depression baby but i’m not depressed. all my life i have wanted my father to hold me in his arms and tell me, i love you leggo: writing a life transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 49 in middle age i know my desires with an ache that pushes against the walls of my heart, and i know i will never lie in my father’s arms, but i will still know my father in love, thankful for all stories, written, to be written, all fragments, only, subtending the whole and holy story that always exceeds the geometry of the heart’s tangled lines. on november 18, 2008, at seventy-eight years old, my father died with a brain tumour. our story is over and not over. i am left to write the story as well as i can, with as much wisdom as i can. what follows is a series of ruminations and poems, mostly remembered and composed during two weeks in october, 2008 when i lingered with my father in the palliative care unit of the western memorial regional hospital in corner brook, newfoundland. as brian brett (2009) knows, “death is not about the dead. it’s about the living. our grief, and our inability to speak it. the tragedy of death only exists when you are still alive” (p. 22). rumination 1 in the last two months of his life, my father both lived and died with a brain tumor that stole most of his energy, much of his speech, and even more of his spirit. in this liminal space between living and dying, i ruminated on memories, and experiences, and questions of love, relationship, ethics, and spirituality. i also read lesley craig’s (2005) burning fence: a western memoir of fatherhood, a sad, humane book about family. craig writes: “tricky business, fathers and sons” (p. 7). craig acknowledges that while he and his father “had only the sketchiest history,” he still “longed to have a relationship with him, some moments of intimacy and connection” (p. 305). craig feels “the terrible pull of my father’s blood” (p. 141), and knows only with his father’s death that “all my questions remained unanswered” (p. 272). what is the obligation of a son to a father? what is the hope a son carries for his father? leggo: writing a life transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 50 slow motion in the beginning my father lost his nouns. then he couldn’t find his memories. now my father sleeps with a wide mouth. his breathing is shallow and guttural. he lies on his side with his fingers splayed on his forehead, his thumb under his chin. he wakes long enough for ginger ale, chocolate pudding, and a tea biscuit. i change my father’s diaper, wishing i had practiced more with madeleine. each day, my father defies the doctor’s dire diagnosis by dying in slow motion. rumination 2 my time with my father is drawing to a kind of close, and my thoughts are focused almost entirely on living and dying, and the challenges that extend beyond a poet’s imagination and resources. living is always a tangled story that often is, but never should be, taken for granted. in my father’s footsteps: a memoir, sebastian matthews (2004) writes about his father, the well-known poet william matthews: “this song for my father is also the song of myself” (p. 44). in his memoir, matthews explains: “i launch myself over and over into a reservoir of memory. each time i dive, i hope to go deep. each time i come up for air, i hope to emerge new” (p. 274). leggo: writing a life transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 51 hip waders i bought hip waders last summer so i could go trout fishing with my father. like we often fished when i was a boy. i should have bought them a long time ago. today, my mother called with hard news, and i know our fishing stories are done. and the hip waders will hang in his garage as a sign i loved my father, even if too slowly, not nearly enough for happy memories. rumination 3 the invitation we are offered with birth is the invitation to learn to live well, and to live well is to live with wisdom, and to live with wisdom is to live with a perpetual curiosity and courage and conviction. in the eyes of the heart: a memoir of the lost and found frederick buechner (1999) writes about his father who committed suicide when buechner was a boy, “one way to read my whole life—my religious faith, the books i have written, the friends i have made—is as a search for him” (pp. 23-24). as an old man, buechner confesses: “my father has been dead for more than sixty years, but i doubt that a week has gone by without my thinking of him. in recent years i doubt that a single day has gone by” (p. 60). leggo: writing a life transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 52 intrepid the doctor tells skipper, you’re fiddly fit. at seventy-eight, from may to september, he wants to fish in the ponds, a lifetime familiar, but most of his buddies didn’t make it much past seventy. because he is living a long life, a lot longer than many, he is often called to be a pallbearer, each funeral, a testimony to the doctor’s diagnosis. for years he was a warden (not a prison warden he reminds me) to the local anglican priest, happy he was always available, with the key in his pocket, and no taxing theological issues. his neighbour planted a pot-bellied stove in his front yard. skipper, what do you think? skipper didn’t know what to say, so he said, that’s some pot-bellied stove you’ve got there. like a rubik’s cube and crossword puzzles, my father is an inscrutable text, indecipherable. as usual i am trying to know him, still seeking the cipher to the enigma. perhaps this is a son’s plight, wondering if i will grow old, perhaps even with enough sense to know that a pot-bellied stove in the front yard isn’t my idea of art but can be yours. leggo: writing a life transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 53 rumination 4 our storied lives are never only unique and idiosyncratic accounts of individual and isolate experiences. instead, our stories are always part of a network of communal and collaborative stories, a network that knows no beginning and no ending. as human beings we are inextricably and integrally connected like fire and water and air and earth, sustained by an ecology of ancient elements. in enough about you: adventures in autobiography david shields (2002) claims that he writes confessionally in order to present himself as “a representative human being” (p. 53). shields also notes that “language is all we have to connect us” even if “it doesn’t, not quite” (p. 98). i still hear the bell ringing on long walks from crescent pond in cool/warm mays on the keen edge of promised summer (our creels heavy with a dozen trout more than the law permitted) my father offered the only advice i remember: take your garbage home, and in my knapsack, then and now, empty vienna sausage cans, wax paper, pop bottles if you don't know a word, look it up in a dictionary, strong advice, for now i know many words and in words i am known never hate anybody, wisdom like an iron bell ringing from a gray sky, its echoes heard through the years never hate anybody never hate anybody my one wish (who needs three?): on long walks from crescent pond through the dense spruce, across the bog on a trail only my father could see, i wish he had taught me how leggo: writing a life transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 54 rumination 5 in order to live with wholeness and love in the world, we need an ongoing commitment to exploring the places of dreams and visions, including the precocious psyche, the inimitable imagination, and the ineffable heart. why am i reluctant to journey in the interior places—the less familiar places, the places for which i do not necessarily have well-prepared maps, the places where mystery reigns? i have so little experience with those places. in listen to me: a book for women and men about father-son relationships gerald g. jampolsky & lee l. jampolsky (1996), a father and son, claim that “like us, many men in our culture have lost all awareness of their souls. it has been replaced with the need to achieve, succeed, compete, and conquer. as men, we need to return to our soul” (p. 111). the same nose carrie says skipper and i have the same nose. the son is in the father, the father is in the son, perhaps. skipper daily disdains snobs: cobb lane snobs, and snobs who join, even want to join, the blomidon golf and country club, snobs who attend the arts and culture centre, snobs who moor in the harbour of wood's island leggo: writing a life transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 55 in big yachts to yak the weekend away, snobs who eat at the glynmill inn with prices three times higher than the seven seas restaurant, snobs who drink coffee at the natural bean instead of tim horton's (with dozens of donuts), all the snobbish things i enjoy except golf which i despise (even though i've only ever played mini-golf twice). skipper snubs snobs with dismissive swipes. skipper's emotions wig-wag like a tall alder in a hurricane shaken by hyperbolic currents: jobs? things are so bad at the hospital, you can be standing at the counter, and the nurse admitting you will receive a dismissal slip; she can't even finish filling out the form, she just gets up and goes. loud laughter like a gust of spring punctuates skipper’s stories. carrie still responds, after all these years. i grew up with a stand-up comic team: george and gracie, lucy and desi, ralph and alice, carrie and skipper, the busker, the jester, bursting out always in song dance mimicry oratory. like a newsroom wire service skipper has information and opinions on everything, especially municipal provincial national international intergalactic politics. convicted truth shines hard in the air around his head in concise editorial comments: they think they're smarter than everybody else. he's not right in the head. they ought to put a bomb under his bum. he never changes: father of the poet, he offers me his stories, and stands still long enough for me to know the poems. he watches me writing in my journal. it's all going down there now, he says. he trusts me with his stories, even invites the neighbours to read my poems. leggo: writing a life transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 56 the father is in the son, the son is in the father. carrie says skipper and i have the same nose. rumination 6 there is a healing power in stories and sharing stories. perhaps lingering with the dying will help me learn living. we are all wounded; we are all living with death and dying. so, how then should we live? what does it mean to be human? regarding his father’s desertion, thomas king (2003) writes: “i tell the stories not to play on your sympathies but to suggest how stories can control our lives, for there is a part of me that has never been able to move past these stories, a part of me that will be chained to these stories as long as i live” (p. 9). bogart when humphrey bogart died, lauren bacall said, spring is a shitty time to die from the hospital’s third floor autumn in the humber valley is a cheap chinese combo gold silk, mustard pungency, leggo: writing a life transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 57 crimson memories, gelled orange, nature’s flamboyant dying i could climb a poplar tree and fall into the low gray sky if i had enough faith to trust the geometry of possibilities in the countless shapes of trees, rationality only one way of being my father stirs, crazy with not knowing, his brain now owned by a tumour with a despot’s humour everything is okay, i lie, wanting more malleable truth, knowing only autumn is a shitty season to die rumination 7 each of us is called to live a story in the world. some of us live long stories like victorian or russian novels that extend for a thousand pages, and some of us live short stories that end with suddenness, and many of us live stories that are neither short nor long, but almost none of us is eager to write the end to our stories. we want our stories to continue, like a tv episode that ends with to be continued. but none of us is entirely in control of the stories that we live. as george elliott clarke (2009) observes with wry wisdom, “every life carries an expiration date” (p. 70). even though clarke’s story with leggo: writing a life transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 58 his father was mixed with long periods of estrangement and rejection, clarke confesses, “i was absolutely unprepared for the death of my father, william lloyd clarke, on august 31, 2005, at age seventy” (p. 70). even though clarke “still felt the need … to punish” his father “for not loving me enough as a child” (p. 72), he is poignantly surprised by how his father’s “end hurt me most, wounded me most deeply, and was the most psychologically crushing, perhaps because we had not been as close as i would have liked, even though i now know his influence—for good and for ill—has been indelible upon my life” (p. 71). in his grief, clarke gives a voice to the experience of so many sons as they remember their fathers. remains after the surgery with only a sickle of staples to stitch your head together, the ambulance carried you across the island to months in palliative care, the inevitable long walk up the church aisle, the silent parade to mt. patricia cemetery near wild cove (where we once often spent sundays sitting in the sun, eating egg salad sandwiches, glad for whatever the day might mean), and the last slow slip into the dry ground like an elevator shaft to somewhere we couldn’t go, and now i stand in the mirror, naked, wrapped only in your memory, and i see more and more of you each time i glimpse like a ghost is writing me from somewhere faraway i know i don’t want to know leggo: writing a life transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 59 seeking still my father is my father, and his gifts are the gifts i received. i love him for who he was and for the gifts he lived. it is fruitless to focus on what was not, or could not be, and what was not given or could not be given. as christopher dickey (1998) writes about his father james dickey, the poet, “blood doesn’t let go of you” (p. 16). my experience of more than two decades of writing about my father is like dickey’s experience: “the more i sifted through his life and mine, the more i tried to bring my father to myself, the more i realized that what i was looking for lay somewhere between truth and imagination” (p. 30). margaret atwood (2002) proposes that “writing has to do with darkness, and a desire or perhaps a compulsion to enter it, and, with luck, to illuminate it, and to bring something back out to the light” (p. xxiv). atwood also suggests that “all writing of the narrative kind, and perhaps all writing, is motivated, deep down, by a fear of and a fascination with mortality—by a desire to make the risky trip to the underworld, and to bring something or someone back from the dead” (p. 156). so, i will continue to write—in words, in darkness, in light, in images—always seeking what likely cannot be found, knowing only that seeking can lead to seeing, at least seeing something that can sustain the heart’s longing. when i remember my father, one of my favourite memories will be the way his fishing line hung still in the air with each careful cast like a line of poetry seeking its catch. my father died in the fall, and in the long bleak winter, i remember him, the last summer i saw him, standing still, waving with what i then thought was a lackluster show of civility, but now remember as a sad final farewell: take care, with a sigh that holds me till spring light. leggo: writing a life transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 60 homework when my son was young, most nights i helped him with his homework and remembered how skipper sat close beside me on the edge of his big bed while i memorized textbooks and answered questions. in spite of long days in the mill and frequent calls from neighbours to fix their ovens, toasters, electric kettles, skipper always quizzed me for tests, sometimes for hours, and never complained. when we studied geography, skipper said, wherever you go, know where you come from so you can find your way back. leggo: writing a life transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 61 references atwood, m. (2002). negotiating with the dead: a writer on writing. cambridge: cambridge university press. baldwin, c. (2005). storycatcher: making sense of our lives through the power and practice of story. novato: new world library. barthes, r. (1977). roland barthes (r. howard, trans.). berkeley: university of california press. bly, r. (1990). iron john. new york: vintage books. brett, b. (2009). tasting my father. in g. bowering & j. baird, (eds.), the heart does break: canadian writers on grief and mourning, (pp. 17-31). toronto: random house canada. buechner, f. (1999). the eyes of the heart: a memoir of the lost and found. new york: harpercollins publishers. clarke, g. e. (2009). the baggage handler. in g. bowering & j. baird, (eds.), the heart does break: canadian writers on grief and mourning, (pp. 69-80). toronto: random house canada. dickey, c. (1998). summer of deliverance: a memoir of father and son. new york: simon & schuster. huggan, i. (2003). belonging: home away from home. toronto: vintage canada. jampolsky, g. g., & jampolsky, l. l. (1996). listen to me: a book for women and men about father-son relationships. berkeley: celestial arts. king, t. (2003). the truth about stories: a native narrative. toronto: house of anansi press. lesley, c. (2005). burning fence: a western memoir of fatherhood. new york: st. martin’s press. matthews, s. (2004). in my father’s footsteps: a memoir. new york: w. w. norton. shields, d. (2002). enough about you: adventures in autobiography. new york: simon & schuster. to cite this article please include all of the following details: bausell, sarah byrne (2019). we were taught to colonize with literature: a pedagogical memoir. transnational curriculum inquiry 16 (2) p. 15-21 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> we were taught to colonize with literature: a pedagogical memoir sarah byrne bausell1 university of north carolina, united states maybe you can relate to my obsession with the humanities; the humanities are miracles, after all. they are torrents and ruptures of voice that remind us of the mysterious in the organized world. humanities are an eye of the deity: in our close gaze of them, we are validated in our humanness and simultaneously offered an escape, no matter how ephemeral. thich nhat hahn (2013) points to this very arrangement in his question, isn’t poetry already spirituality, and spirituality already poetry? his is not a particularly unique musing about the connection between form, reception, and mystery. paul klee (1969), renowned master of color theory, reflected on humankind's affinity for this mysterious escape in a lecture delivered for his bauhaus students. “creative power”, he held, “is ineffable. it remains ultimately mysterious. and every mystery affects us deeply” (p. 4). i am a harvester of the humanities. i want to cull from art the very stuff that might save us from one another and save me from myself. i depend on them for pleasure, for time travel, for shared language, for ethics of goodness and justice, for understanding what arendt (1958) called the “conditions of human existence” (p. 34). to say that i devour texts, is a too-polite understatement. i am a gourmandizing fiend. i slurp up novels, swallow paintings whole, feast on memoirs. i get and spend all my calories this way. my enduring devotion to the humanities delivered me into the work of teaching high school english, where i promptly learned ways to ruin them. like many others, i was confronted with, and have been complicit in, an escalation in ‘accountability’ culture. this manifested as an overemphasis on discrete competencies, behavior compliance, and a shared fixation on testing scores. from the very first days in my career as english teacher, i was challenged by schooling rituals and expectations that i found to be antipodal to the humanities. though my personal life felt like a banquet of art, certain scenes from my early professional life more clearly reflect a butchering of it. the tension i felt between humanities, aesthetic engagement and production are not unique to this era of teaching. nearly two centuries ago, noverre (1760), the father of ballet d’action, warned that an overemphasis on technical mastery would repress “the fertile and poetic imagination,” the miraculous mystery of dance (p. 2). this is an agedbattle between the mysteries of the humanities and production yet, now more than ever, as the current wave of teaching candidates are likely graduates of high-stakes testing contexts themselves, the use of autobiography as an intellectual reprieve from the technocratic contexts of teaching and learning, is particularly necessary. this piece grapples with the possibilities of engaging the auto/biographical project, pioneered by https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index bausell. we were taught 16 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> pinar and grumet, into the work of teacher education as a counter-response to present times and as a gesture towards the never-ending work of learning to teach well. here, i attempt to write with the immediacy and intimacy common in memoir about my own practice of teaching english, to uncover, not what the humanities do for us, but what i (and i believe other teachers have been likely to do), have done to humanity, under the guise of teaching the humanities. in returning to my own early pedagogical memoir, i hope to experience what madeline grumet (1980) so beautifully described as “see[ing] oneself seeing” (p. 3). how and why we listen i sat down to write this memoir, but somehow i ended up at a bar. i turned to a half-way stranger, a friend of a friend, to fill up the hour. we talked first about an art exhibit, then about children, and finally about ourselves. i told her about this opportunity to write an autobiographical piece about my work as english educator. i told her, i want to use it as a way to listen to my early practice, to my complex relationship with the humanities and the humans who i taught. she surprised me with: “i listen for a living.” my good fortune didn’t end there. a week or so later, at a party, a man introduced himself first by name and later, after i’d shared my idea, as “a listener who prepares listeners.” two mornings later, the guard at the local art museum leaned over my notepad and pointed to my crude drawing of an ear. “i use mine all the time,” he said, rocking back on his heels “just listening to what people think they know about these paintings.” here’s something that matters: three out of three strangers: an art therapist, a coordinator for hospice care, and a guard of curated arts, self-identified as listeners. they listen for a living. here’s something else that matters: their listening was different. the art therapist couldn’t get to listening without first sharing her repulsion to the nomenclature of her life’s work: “therapist”, she felt, “sounds like someone in a corner lurking and patient”, she laughed, “a person laying stone still.” she went on to talk about her approach to listening in a predominantly white field—comparing the ways of listening for a white therapist and a white patient to a game of narcissism. “nah”, she said, “sometimes you need someone to be like hello do you hear yourself? let’s try a new script.” she shared a description of what listening with someone feels like: a spiraling and tightening in her shoulders. listening emerged from her joints and compelled her to create art alongside others. patients who lay stone still are at the center for stewart, the listener who prepares listeners. he described the work of preparing clergy members to listen to people as they give their last rites. listening to the clergy members required helping them recognize how fears and anxieties about their own mortality surfaced in their attempts at listening to patients. he kept remarking that he recognized their fears. he heard himself in their anxieties, but “adding mine to their’s would be distracting”. according to stewart, what they needed in order to become listeners was the chance to reflect on the physical limits of their humanness. his description of listening to reminds me of matryoshka dolls---in the same way the dolls split in the middle to reveal a miniature but otherwise undistinguishable version of the one that came before, stewart’s listening practice was simultaneously personal and contained. and, different still, was the curious watchman at the museum—who likened listening to eavesdropping. he propped against the long white walls of the permanent collection waiting for a chance to correct misconceptions or to jump in with an answer to questions passed between two lovers. he pointed out that the architecture made it nearly impossible to escape the sounds of people talking and in this way, listening in became a timex, his way to mark the passing hours of a work-shift. the conversations he described https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index bausell. we were taught 17 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> were markedly less personal than the deeply human work that denise and stewart engaged in, but i won’t write his observations off. i respected his honesty about the sensory rewards of listening in. “when the gallery clears” he said, “i got a new way to see something old.” it was clear to me that the distinctions in their listening practices emerged from who they are in the world and, too, were shaped by the nature and physical space of their work. i began to wonder about the ways i was inculcated into the physicality of teaching the humanities and the influence on my listening practice. in the end, it was impossible for me to listen to this lucky trio describe the distinctions between the experiences of listening with, listening to, and listening in and not feel like i was on a stairwell descending into the earliest days of my work as english teacher. to hear dub’s song i began my teacher life in a historically black high school in a small, southern town known for biscuits and furniture. if you asked me then about the town, i’d say it didn’t have a lot going on. i was 22, neither a furniture nor biscuit fanatic, a graduate of a private liberals arts quaker high school and college, and an absolute outsider in the public schools. worse, i was an outsider with instantaneous, explicit authority. i was being trained in particular ways, antithetical to the humanities and, to the humans i was entrusted to teach. during a summer professional development session, we were handed popsicles and loaded onto fetid school buses for a zoo’s-eye roaming tour of our students’ neighborhoods. an administrator offered what i remember being an ahistorical and singular description of the town, pointing out public housing and neighboring, historic mansions. it was the year that non-verbal communication cues were reincarnated into that thinly veiled genre: ‘urban education’; we were instructed by curriculum experts to touch our noses every time a student subverted control. one such expert showed us clips from the television program “dog whisperer” in a faculty meeting to model the concept of pack behavior and alpha control. i was shocked by the cruelty and implied metaphor of both of these professional development events, but every morning i laced up my new work shoes (all green new balances) and did what i thought i was supposed to do. i was being trained to be a keeper of cowrie shells. the english ii team was supposed to be teaching chinua achebe’s novel, things fall apart, which chronicles myriad, devestating effects of anglo-european colonial violence against the cultural, linguistic, and lived experiences of an igbo community. it is heartbreaking. the 19th century violence that achebe (1958) describes became backdrop to our own 21st century pedagogical version. it was recommended that i use cowrie shells in a mason jar at the front of the room as a visual thermometer of the class’s behavior. “take one out and pretend to throw it away,” a mentor suggested, “in the end, they can each make one of those african bracelets that are so popular these days.” i could say that i never dipped my fingers in that jar, but i’m no revisionist. the truth is that i wasn’t paying attention to what and who i should have been. i was another first year, white teacher in training. i thought i was going to be a poet. i thought my students were going to be poets. i thought we were going to talk about poetry. but instead, i shored up the banks with a jar of storebought cowrie shells and went about the work of colonizing with literature. i can’t stop thinking about a slim boy in the third row of that very first classroom. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index bausell. we were taught 18 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> he went by the name, dub. with perfect range and impeccable rhythm he could pull up and belt out the song to match the mood of any moment. he crossed genres, decades, and teachers to spell a moment clear. of course, back then it took me a while to hear him. dub liked to start his songs in the middle. during, silent reading he’d sometimes croon a flawless alto version of bonnie rait’s (1991) let’s give them something to talk about out the back window—and the afternoon cheerleader practice just beyond it, “how about love, love, love, love? how about love, love, love, love?” and louder still, “how about love, love, love, love?” he thundered out onyx’s (1993) let the boys be boys whenever the school resource officer walked by the classroom, a spattering of friends pounding against their desks “ba duh da ba duh da, slam”. no matter the song, and how much i liked his music, i rushed us back to silence or to the lesson or to myself. i harbored the misconception that his habit was the wedge keeping us all from enjoying the pleasures of literature and i worried about hammering through the literature in preparation for our annual, district-wide writing test. if you’ve not already recognized that this pre-the-era-of-google kid was a virtual jukebox of throwback songs, then let me tell you about the first song of his that i truly heard, the most throw-back of his throw-backs, and then i’ll follow in the art-therapist’s footsteps and tell you how it felt to listen. dub could mimic bonnie rait and he could match onyx’s throaty rasp, but he had to become cat stevens (1970) for me to hear him. it was a rendition of the late 70’s classic where do the children play. this is an anthem i believe he reserved for the day i’d reached towards the conch shell jar one too many times. he sang and his voice was a vinyl record and the students who watched for my reaction were the needle: will you make us laugh, will you make us cry? will you tell us when to live, will you tell us when to die? i wouldn’t say i was listening with shoulders like the art therapist, denise. or that i was listening in like the security guard at the art museum. or, that i was listening to prepare dub for something greater. this listening was happening everywhere else. something fleshy was pounding against my ribs. something was quivering in my mousseline kneecaps. i told my brain to tell my lungs to breathe. i could hear him. i could hear some sub-text, animating the room i’d rendered so stale. thank god i took my fingers out of that jar long enough to see dub seeing me, at which point he shoveled into the chorus with a southern twang, an obvious false-soprano imitation of me i know we've come a long way we're changing day to day but tell me where do the children play? what i know to be true is that teenagers make the finest teachers. they don’t keep something going just to keep it going and they never volunteer for work that’s not their own. because of their generosity, and because i imagine they knew it was my work to do, and because dub was very funny, we laughed hard at his impersonation of me. any avid reader knows to look for the tragedy that comes before the comic relief. i’ve never stopped thinking about that jar of white supremacy and all the ways i used it and all the ways it uses me. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index bausell. we were taught 19 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> listening with, listening to, listening in, and listening beyond cook-sather (2002) noted that power relationships, like that between teacher and student, depend upon the very kind of non-listening like that which i shared with dub, because they “have no place for listening and actively do not tolerate it because it is very inconvenient: to really listen means to have to respond” (9). i have reflected on my interaction with dub countless times, but i never discussed it with anyone other than dub and some of his classmates, and not until years after they had moved on to college and me to another school. our interpretations of it vary (my reading being closely linked with discourses of racism and schooling, and dub’s reading being related to boredom and the rise of “american idol,” a televised talent show). across all of the conversations i’ve had the opportunity to be a part of, two central elements bear emphasizing: (1) dub’s song choice was never accidental and (2) i wasn’t the only teacher he serenaded. this speaks to the problem of unexamined whiteness in teaching and teacher education and associated misuses and abuses of anti-colonial literature in curriculum. this also speaks to the importance of returning to our own pedagogical experiences as an exercise in close listening alongside those present in the moment. teacher education and the pedagogical memoir on the power and process of the autobiographical project, madeline grumet (1990) argued that, “any writing and reading of our lives presents us with the challenge that is at the heart of every educational experience: making sense of our lives in the world” (p. 324). as an english teacher, i depended on autobiographical writing for this very reason. i loved memoirs for their adamance. they show us readers that we too have been in this place, pushed for example, from the comforts of childhood into the oftentimes unfathomably cruelty of adulthood, or that we might too be here, eventually—in the transability of our own bodies. i loved them for their candor, which allows us to become truthsayers, to revisit, to come to know, and to honor the most pressing queries and tensions of our lives and to do so together as a group. in my practice, i used memoirs as mentor texts to unbraid the faux-distance between text and reader and i used them as authentic literacy prompts to unearth and make clear our interior lives. in spirit, this commitment to autobiographical writing has carried over naturally to my work as a teacher educator, where i have the responsibility of nurturing teachers who carry similar passions for the humanities. yet, i have a lopsided devotion to the autobiographical project that needs correcting. i’ve drawn a million times over from the wells of memoirs in my english practice, using them as provocations and as writing prompts, but rarely have i used the genre to listen to my own pedagogy as it relates to my current efforts as teacher educator. the auto/biographical project has become ubiquitous in teacher education, commonly used as a writing exercise to cultivate critical reflection and to engender equity-oriented stances amongst preservice teachers. less common is the pedagogical auto/biographical project written from the perspective of teacher educator and used in conversation with the dilemmas of practice that teaching candidates face. in my own work as teacher educator, i often engage teaching candidates in an examination of how their teaching practices are deeply embedded in socio-cultural contexts, histories, and power struggles. here, i wanted to use this auto/biographical experience in vulnerability to understand and engage https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index bausell. we were taught 20 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> the teaching candidates i currently work with. bell hooks (1994) reminds us that “one of the tragedies in education today [is that] we have a lot of people who don’t recognize that being a teacher is being with people” (p 165). when i think back to my first-year of teaching—to all my 13 years of high school teaching—i recall near-weekly english department meetings where we buzzed between the topics of lesson plans, course alignment, preparation for standardized tests and the perpetual onslaught of test scores. i don’t recall that we thought through what it was like to be with our students or, more importantly, what it might be like for them to be with us. we were rarely with one another in the work of reflection; we never confronted that which kept us apart from our students, and we certainly never openly reflected on the ways in which we used, or misused, the very humanities texts we were entrusted to ‘teach.’ i turned to the medium of autobiography to deliberate on my own early practice because i wanted to re-see and “see myself seeing” the power relations embedded in my early teaching life, particularly as it relates to the humanities. the practice has been a reminder of the complexities of teaching and the possibilities of pedagogical transformation through difficult moments. along these lines, i believe the process and sharing of a pedagogical memoir has the power to illustrate how critical consciousness can be non-linear, how relationships with the texts we are entrusted to teach can and should evolve, and how we might work towards a constant state of listening-relisteningseeing and re-seeing ourselves and our work. notes 1 sbausell@unc.edu references achebe, c. (1958) things fall apart. toronto: anchor canada. arendt, h. (2013). the human condition. university of chicago press. cook-sather, a. (2002). authorizing students’ perspectives: toward trust, dialogue, and change in education. educational researcher, 31(4), 3-14. eikhard, s. (1991) give them something to talk about [recorded by bonie rait]. on luck of the draw. sony/atv music publishing llc. grumet, m. (1980). autobiography and reconceptualization. journal of curriculum theorizing, 2(2), 155–158. grumet, m. (1990). retrospective: autobiography and the analysis of educational experience. cambridge journal of education, 20(3), 321-325. hanh, t. n. (2013). the art of communicating. random house. hooks, b. (2014). teaching to transgress. routledge. noverre, (1767) lettres sur la danse et sur les ballets. trattnern. klee, p. (1953). pedagogical sketchbook. new york: frederick a. stevens, c. (1970). where the children play. on tea for the tillerman. islands records; a&m records. scruggs, f & jones, k. taylor, t. &parker, c. (1993) slam [recorded by onyx]. on bacdacucup. jmj records, rush associated labels and chaos recordings. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index bausell. we were taught 21 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> submitted: november, 20th, 2019. approved: december, 03rd, 2019. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index to cite this article please include all of the following details: janzen, melanie (2019). breathing life into the territorial acknowledgment. transnational curriculum inquiry 16 (2) p. 74-81 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> breathing life into the territorial acknowledgement melanie janzen1 university of manitoba, canada we are all severely damaged goods: on the one hand, canadians are damaged by their history of plunder, the constant rationalization of their preponderant super-sized entitlement over space, and their control of time; on the other hand, indigenous people are damaged by the absence of entitlement, so damaged that sorting this out will be a nightmare. but do it we must. (maracle, 2015, p. 126) it was one of those enchanting mornings; the illuminated cerulean prairie sky, the mudbottomed ribbon of the red river silently slipping along without a ripple, and the air already warm, clear, and full of promise for a hot summer day. i was cruising the river trail on my bike, heading towards the canadian museum for human rights (cmhr) where i was co-teaching a summer course. as i followed the trail along the scrubby bank, the path gently veered to the left and entered a clearing where my view was captured by the immense museum building in the distance. the glass tower of hope, issuing from the museum nd piercing the unclouded sky, was illuminated by the sun, while the grassy riverbank lay before me at my feet. i stopped to take a photo, thinking i could add it to my slides before class began. i work on a university campus surrounded on three sides by the snaking red river. the campus is situated on treaty one territory, original lands of the anishinabe, cree, oji-cree, dakota, dene peoples and homeland of the métis nation. according to aimée craft (2013), indigenous lawyer and scholar (anishinaabe-métis), treaty one is significant in the history of relations between the canadian government and indigenous peoples, as it was the first of the numbered treaties and was “the hinge on which western agricultural expansion, and the national railway, were resting” (p. 39). historically significant given the shared colonial history of this place, treaty one remains important as canadians work to understand this country’s colonial history, as well as the presentday colonial structures and their implications. our campus, like many institutions across canada, has developed a territorial acknowledgement that is intended to pay respect to the land and the original peoples of the land, the treaties, the damaging effects of colonization, and our collective responsibility in an era of truth and reconciliation. however, this is not without problems. how, as a settler, researcher and teacher, do i offer a territorial acknowledgment that is meaningful, when i am so clearly situated on—and benefit from—stolen land? traditional territorial acknowledgement the university of manitoba campuses are located on original lands of anishinaabeg,cree, oji-cree, dakota, and dene peoples, and on the homeland of the métis nation. we respect the treaties that were made on these territories, we acknowledge the harms and mistakes of the past, and we dedicate ourselves to move janzen. breathing life 75 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> forward in partnership with indigenous communities in a spirit of reconciliation and collaboration. (university of manitoba, traditional territorial acknowledgement) many elders and indigenous colleagues advise that in order to make a territorial acknowledgement meaningful, the one providing the acknowledgement should create a personal link to the acknowledgement. in other words, the one giving the acknowledgement should consider what the acknowledgement means to them personally. as a white settler who grew up near the red river in this city, i feel as though i have historic, geographic and social connections to this place. the photo i took that morning seemed like a pleasant image reflecting the river and the city and my personal connections growing up here. however, when i looked at the photo again, i was surprised to see the ways the camera had captured some of the complex layers of this city’s colonial past and present. the photo provided me with a text that was richer than i had first imagined— but, as i will explore, could only bring me so far. figure 1. photograph for territorial acknowledgement about:blank janzen. breathing life 76 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> my (insufficient and incomplete) territorial acknowledgement i would like to acknowledge that we are on treaty one territory, home of the cree, oji-cree, dakota and dene peoples and homeland to the métis nation. i use the photograph that you see projected here to visually represent our shared colonial history and the complexities of the relationships of those who reside here. i like to use this photograph to remind myself of my place on treaty one territory and the work that is required of me as a settler of this place. you can see how in this two-dimensional photo, the image appears layered into horizontal striations. in the layer second from the bottom, we see the muddy river (for which the cree word is “winnipeg”; “win” meaning muddy and “nippee” for water.) the river slices across the page, flowing from the forks where indigenous peoples have been gathering for millennia. the river represents the robust trade and travel systems of the first peoples and the vigorous fur trade facilitated, in part, by the voyageur. in the layer directly above the river, we see the rusty bridge of the rail line like a razor cutting across the image and through the land of this country, and representing the arrival, spread, and physical colonization of this place. in the layer above that and dominating the eye, we see the canadian museum of human rights and its now-famous imagery of the glass tower of hope spouting from its immense tyndal stone base. the museum was and is a contentious project, built on the banks of the forks (an indigenous sacred site) and directly on top of the greatest archeological find of indigenous artefacts in canada. aiming to be a beacon for our city and nation, the museum simultaneously acts as a lightning rod to both controversy and thoughtful critique. finally, in the foreground (at the bottom of the photo) and easily overlooked, we see a nondescript riverbank, grassy and flat, with the decrepit alexander dock on its edge… in winnipeg, it is enough to say that this is the alexander dock—everyone here knows the recent history and horror of that site. however, if i was welcoming people to this place who do not know the significance of these docks, i might also remind them that: the alexander dock is a significant landmark in our city, as this is the place where 15-year old tina fontaine’s body, wrapped in a garbage bag, was pulled from the river. finding her tiny body ignited outrage in our city and it spread across the country, ultimately sparking the initiation of the missing and murdered women and girls inquiry.… but i don’t usually say that—people who live here know this. describing the photo as part of my territorial acknowledgement felt more meaningful and i was satisfied with it—for a time. in creating this territorial acknowledgment, using the image and its layers of visual and historic text along with the commentary, i thought it was an attempt to “breathe life into what are essentially relationship documents” (craft, 2013, p. 12). craft explains that the treaties were agreements that were greater than the actual treaty document and that they are premised on relationships: “relationships between and among ourselves, relationships with other animate beings” (p. 16). the image provided context and a personal connection to the about:blank janzen. breathing life 77 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> place, but … who was in relation here? and, with whom? territorial acknowledgements: “pretty but empty words” recently (and perhaps for much longer), indigenous peoples, academics, and community leaders have been questioning the value of land and territorial acknowledgements altogether. for example, audrey siegl of the musqueam stated that territorial acknowledgements are “just tokenism, pretty but empty words, spoken so we will be pacified for at least a little bit longer” (as cited in hergesheimer, 2016). similarly, indigenous professor, laara fitznor, who generally supports the intention of land acknowledgements, cautions that we need to be remind ourselves that these acknowledgments are “just words” (as cited in brass, 2018). this made me wonder, what and whose narratives are being upheld in these acknowledgements? i am reminded of dwayne donald’s (2012) metaphor of the fort and how this became a symbol that reified the divide between indigenous and setter peoples. i think it could be argued that territorial acknowledgements act in similar ways; as examples of a colonial frontier logic (donald, 2012) that works to maintain divides between settlers and indigenous peoples. in other words, are they becoming another example of an institutionalized practice that assumes and maintains the “assumption that the experiences and perspectives of aboriginal peoples in canada are their own separate cultural preoccupations” (p. 92)? as laara fitznor points out, although she appreciates that the university has a land acknowledgment, it does not reflect her perspective as a cree person and indigenous faculty member. fitznor said, “when i read it, i said ‘this is not me’ because they’re saying ‘i’m sorry’ to you, and i’m reading it — do i say ‘i’m sorry’ to myself?” (as quoted in brass, 2018). it seems that the acknowledgement reiterates settler colonial logics, reinforcing colonial dominance as “a kind of cultural ditch—separating aboriginal from canadian” (donald, 2012, p. 93). is it possible for treaty acknowledgements to be more than just empty words, moves of colonial logics? donald (2012) suggests that one must “contest the colonial frontier logics by instead emphasizing the relationality and connectivity that comes from living together in a particular place for a long time” (p. 93). back to the beginning sometimes to go forward, we need to go to the beginning (maracle, 2015, p. 120). after the signing of treaty one in 1871, the canadian government began to facilitate settlement of the prairies by offering large parcels of land to europeans. in the late 1800s, mennonites from southern russia arrived in the ‘newly created’ province of manitoba. my great grandparents—both maternal and fraternal—arrived in canada as immigrants seeking refuge from persecution due to their religious beliefs as conscientious objectors. according to manitoba government documents, the government sought to “entice” these “industrious farmers” to the prairies by providing them with exemptions from military service, religious freedom, and land for settlement (ledohowski, 2003). thus, the mennonites received reserves or “large tracts of land for their exclusive settlement,” and subsequently developed the “east reserve” (1874) and the “west reserve” (1875) on respective sides of the red river (klassen, 2018). enlisting colonial discourses of terra nullius, and reinforced by narratives of the making of canada, the land was considered uninhabited and free for the taking. this “logic of elimination” (tuck & gaztambide-fernandez, 2013) is an event of settler colonialism “in which the colonizer comes to stay, making himself the sovereign, and the arbiter of citizenship, civility, and about:blank janzen. breathing life 78 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> knowing” (p. 73). the reserve land granted to the mennonites allowed for the establishment of 87 mennonite villages and accompanying farmland for which they paid nothing, and which is now some of the most productive and lucrative farmland on the prairies. it is no coincidence that the government’s promises of land for european immigrants coincided with the development of residential schools, which actively removed children from their homes and land, and coincided as well as with the indian act (1876), which was put in place to control indigenous peoples and their movement. generally speaking, canadians are beginning to understand that these colonial stories of discovery and nation-making were narratives established and perpetuated by the colonizing state in an effort to control and colonize the land and its first peoples. however, these were not the stories we were told growing up, nor do we—at least in our family history—articulate these in regards to our personal implication. the stories we were told reinforced heroic settler narratives of canada. for example, as conscientious objectors, mennonites were forced to flee their homeland for fear of persecution and upon arrival in canada, carved out a life through their hard labour and innovations of farming. the sod house, temporary structures built before materials were secured for more permanent dwellings, makes an interesting metaphor for the prairie settlers, for industriousness, perseverance in extremely difficult conditions, but also for illustrating how embedded in the land these immigrants were—literally burrowing themselves into the landscape to survive the winter. these narratives were reinforced in family stories, school curriculum, and multicultural ideologies that painted canada as a great frontier, bravely settled and improved through industriousness and hard work. extolling mennonite values of pacifism and heroic tales of immigration, our family’s history was legitimated a “creation story” used to “conceal the teleology of violence and domination that characterize settlement” (tuck & gaztambide-fernandez, 2013, p. 74). in the mennonite creation story of righteousness and brave struggle, stories of the first peoples of this land were absent. i cannot recall a single family story that involved my family’s relations with indigenous people. it was if these people—whose land we occupied—simply did not exist. it is this logic of elimination that seeks not only to dominate a group of people, but is primarily motivated by the acquisition of land (tuck & gaztambide-fernandez, 2013). importantly, in this historic and contemporary move, in which the “violence of invasion is not contained to first contact or the unfortunate birthpangs of a new nation, but is reasserted each day of occupation” (tuck & gaztambide-fernandez, 2013, p. 73), the mennonites are still there and farms have often been passed down through generations. in seeking information about what has been eliminated in our family’s creation story, i found a news story posted online by cbc about the exploitation of indigenous peoples who were recruited by mennonite farmers to harvest the sugar beets in the 1940s to 1980s. the farmers would enlist indigenous people from the reserves, promising pay and accommodations. what the labourers received instead, it was reported, was grueling work, minimal pay, and no food or even water. when i shared this story with my mother who was born and raised in the mennonite reserve lands, she mused aloud, “i wonder what other little secrets exist.” she proceeded to tell me of memories of her grandmother giving bread to the ‘indians’ who showed up on their doorstep begging for food. it would have been important to mennonites to uphold savior narratives, reified by constructing indigenous peoples ‘as less than or not-quite civilized’ and in doing so allowed the colonizers to feel—and reassert—dominance by ‘helping’ the ‘poor.’ such creation stories “cover the tracks” of the settler colonizer masking the violence of domination and erasure (tuck & gaztambide-fernandez, 2013). about:blank janzen. breathing life 79 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> my mother was wise to these and other hypocrisies that emerged throughout her upbringing, leaving her community the day she completed her final grade 12 exam. she could not reconcile the teachings of the faith with the ways in which she saw life being played out for people around her. for example, her father, who had enlisted in world war ii as a means to provide for his family, was actively shunned by the community upon his return, refused employment and access to the church because of his violation of their religion’s pacifist beliefs. risking his life to put food on the table was not a forgivable offense. donald (2012) explains that “imagining decolonizing aboriginal-canadian relations begins with carefully tracing the colonial nature of those relations—in the past and today—and acknowledging that colonial frontier logics continues to have a tremendous influence on how the relationship is conceptualized” (p. 93). unearthing stories that reveal the relationships between the mennonite settlers and the indigenous peoples helps to reveal underlying power structures, inequities, racism, and failures of ethical relationality. yet, these stories are scarce. my mother’s question, “i wonder what other little secrets exist,” indicates the efforts made by settler communities to hide their inconvenient and unethical truths and the dominant narratives at play in hiding these secrets. yet, it is through ongoing efforts to reveal the dirty little secrets that a “shared condition wherein colonizers and colonized come to know each other” (donald, 2012, p. 93) can be fostered. my great grandparents and grandparents were quite poor; they never did own any farmland—they did, however, benefit from the work that settlement on the land allowed. eventually, my parents moved individually from their mennonite communities in southern manitoba to winnipeg, seeking work and, perhaps, also freedom from the religious communities that they often found oppressive. after marrying and renting in the north end of the city, my parents purchased a small house near the red river, on treaty one territory—although they would not have known that. treaties were not acknowledged in the 70s. the mortgage was an immense financial burden. yet, my parents managed to carve out a working-class life for our family due to their industriousness and hard work, as well as their white privilege. although my dad had dropped out of school at grade nine to work, he was trained and employed in a unionized trade. as a family, we benefited greatly from his job, which provided a good salary and benefits. it meant my sister and i could go to university—the first of our dozens of cousins to be able to do so. like most settler canadian children of that time, my sister and i were schooled in rosy narratives of the history of canada reflecting ideals of multiculturalism. ‘natives’ were portrayed in our books as historical figures benefiting from colonization. we ‘acknowledged’ this history by making sugar cube igloos and reading a poem by pauline johnson—ignoring entirely the first nations and métis peoples of the past and of the present on whose land this education was occurring. except for the story of louis riel— who back then was still considered a traitor and deserved the punishment of being hanged. these minor curricular events (in that they took up hardly any time or space) are stark illustrations of the ways in which curriculum was—and is—a hegemonic structure. our curriculum reflected (and still reflects) “idealized and mythologized” (donald, 2012, p. 95) versions of history, which “morph into hegemonic expressions of existing value structures and worldviews of the dominant group in society” (donald, 2012, p. 95). the curriculum circulated stories of courageous settlers of manitoba—from mennonites to icelanders—all pioneers of the frontier and makers of this nation, erasing any real existence and influence of indigenous peoples in the past and ignoring their continued existence in the present. about:blank janzen. breathing life 80 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> lowering the fire …the fire is lowered, until the next time we meet. we have not finished our work. our work is never done. things change, we change. we will discuss this again. (elder elmer courchene, in craft, 2013, p. 113) i have attempted to consider my family’s presence and complicity in the shared colonial past of this country, seeking to reconsider the mennonite myths of victimhood and heroism, and narratives of settlement and survival, in order to recognize the multiple truths that exist in our creation—and more importantly, the stories that were absent. this helps to illuminate both the gifts we were given and the debt that we owe. this is an exercise that “seeks to understand more deeply how our different histories and experiences position us in relation to each other”, unearthing our “relationality and connectivity that comes from living in a particular place for a long time” (donald, 2012, p. 103). yet, it is unfinished and remains inadequate. of course, this reflection risks critique of navel-gazing, of re-circulating the settler narrative, and of re-centering whiteness and my own privilege. and so, as lee maracle (2015) reminds us in this paper’s opening quote, sorting this out risks being a nightmare, “but do it we must” (p. 126). at best, this effort might be seen as an attempt to unveil the dirty little secrets of our past in order to inform a more truthful creation story. hopefully, it may be seen as a provocation of a conversation about our shared colonial past and how it operates in the present; a consideration of what a territorial acknowledgment might mean—to me, to my family, to all of us in relation on this place, then, now and in the future. as i continue on this journey of truth and reconciliation (and not unproblematically), my territorial acknowledgement continues to evolve. currently, it ends with: what i appreciate about this photo—and why i share it with you—is that it visually represents a shared colonial history and our complex present of residing on this place. it reminds me, as i ride past on my bike, of my privilege as a descendent of the mennonite settlers who were given land, of the debt that i owe, and of the responsibility that i have to live here in a good way, together in relation with others, and in particular with those to whom this land belongs. notes 1 melanie.janzen@umanitoba.ca references brass, t. (2018, october 11). speaker raises issue with traditional territories acknowledgement in lecture. http://www.themanitoban.com/2018/10/indigenousprof-critical-of-u-of-m-land-acknowledgement/35407/ carreiro, d. (2017, june 18). “you had no choice”: indigenous manitobans shed light on exploitative farm labour program that ran for decades. cbc manitoba. retrievable from: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/indigenous-forced-labour-sugarbeet-farms-1.4165272 craft, a. (2013). breathing life into the stone fort treaty: an anishinabe understanding of treaty one. saskatoon, sk: purich publishing. about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank janzen. breathing life 81 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> donald, d. (2012). forts, colonial frontier logics, and aboriginal-canadian relations: imagining decolonizing educational philosophies in canadian contexts. . in a. a. abdi (ed.), decolonizing philosophies of education (pp. 91-111). rotterdam: sensepublishers. hergesheimer, j. (2016, march 18). unceded territory: meaningfully acknowledging coast salish peoples. retrieved from: http://www.megaphonemagazine.com/unceded_territory klassen, j. (2018, august 9). mennonites, métis and first nations. steinbach village news blog. retrieved from: https://www.mysteinbach.ca/blogs/9111/mennonitesmetis-and-first-nations-people/ ledohowski, e. (2003). the heritage landscape of the crow wing study region of southeastern manitoba. manitoba: manitoba culture, heritage and tourism. retrieved from: https://www.gov.mb.ca/chc/hrb/internal_reports/crow_wing_study.html maracle, l. (2015). memory serves: oratories (s. kamboureli, ed.). edmonton: ab.: newest press. tuck, e., & gaztambide-fernández, r. a. (2013). curriculum, replacement, and settler futurity. jct (online), 29(1), 72. tuck, e., & yang, k. w. (2014). unbecoming claims: pedagogies of refusal in qualitative research. qualitative inquiry, 20(6), 811-818. university of manitoba. traditional territorial acknowledgement. retrieved from: http://umanitoba.ca/admin/indigenous_connect/5728.html submitted: november, 20th, 2019. approved: december, 03rd, 2019. about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank about:blank o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: ng-a-fook, nicholas; lee, carol; déri, catherine; abat-roy, virginie; barrette, johanne; drake, aaron sardinha; mya, nyein; luo, xiaoling (2021). life writing: a literary métissage during a global pandemic, transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) p. 3-23 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> life writing: a literary métissage during a global pandemic nicholas ng-a-fook1, carol lee2, catherine déri3, virginie abat-roy4, johanne barrette5, aaron sardinha drake6, nyein mya7, xiaoling luo8 university of ottawa, canada academic writing as literary métissage: fragments of a global pandemic i regard all my autobiographical writing as a tantalizing search for wholeness by dwelling with the fragments. i write fragments of narrative out of the fragments i cherish, and the fragments of stories of others, especially family, offer me, and the fragments represented in photographs. the autobiographer is akin to a person putting a jigsaw puzzle together with most of the pieces to the puzzle, long lost and no longer recoverable. …in my autobiographical writing i am hoping to catch hints of the whole story in the glimpses offered by fragments. (leggo, 2009, p. 220) on december 30th, 2019, the world health organization (who) country office in the people of republic of china first caught wind in the media of a viral pneumonia in wuhan. that office then notified the international health regulations. who’s epidemic intelligence from open sources (eios) also began to pick up media reports on the same cluster of pneumonia cases that had yet to be traced to their root epidemiological cause (who, 2021). one month later, on january 30th, the who director-general “declared the novel coronavirus outbreak a public health emergency of international concern,” which is who’s highest level of alarm (who, 2021). on february 6th, the doctor who initially raised concerns in china died after becoming infected with the virus (bbc, 2020). that same day, chinese officials began a mass quarantine of all infected residents living in the city of wuhan (ny times, 2020). a few weeks later february 11th, who was able to establish the cause of the disease. it was called covid-19, to avoid the inaccuracy and stigma of associating the disease with a geographical region, an animal, or group of people. one day later, ontario confirmed its third case. february 27th, canada’s chief public health office dr. theresa tam expressed to officials and the public that our governments were preparing to respond to a global pandemic (labbé, 2020; government of ontario, 2020). a week later, dr. tam warned canadians that they should prepare for disruptions to their daily life (gunn, 2020). that same week, the first case spread as a community transmission is confirmed in british columbia (slaughter, 2020). countries in europe, such as italy, begin to implement strict traveling restrictions (kirby, 2020). on march 11th, “deeply concerned both by the alarming levels of spread and severity, and by the alarming levels of inaction, who made the assessment that covid-19 could be characterized as a ng-a-fook, lee, déri, abat-roy, barrette, drake, mya, luo. life writing 4 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index pandemic” (who, 2021). a day later, ontario announced the closing of its public schooling system, which also included in-person classes at the university of ottawa (stone, gray, & alphonso, 2020). prior to the nationwide lockdown here in canada, we, the authors, were studying together in a course titled scholarly writing toward publication. this course sought to support graduate students in presenting their research at conferences and/or publishing their research in peer-reviewed academic journals. each student proposed a specific writing project that we workshopped together over the course of that 2020 winter term. the format of the course was blended with 6 face-to-face and 6 online sessions together. we soon found ourselves collaborating with each other completely online. as we neared the end of the term, i invited everyone in the course to contribute to this life writing research project which sought to document fragments of our lived experiences during the first few months of the covid-19 pandemic. the university of ottawa is the largest bilingual francophone and anglophone university in canada, if not the world. consequently, for this specific course, graduate students could write in the language of their program of studies. in turn, we offer narrative snapshots, fragments of our lived experiences in both english and french. several canadian curriculum scholars have contributed toward enhancing life writing research methodologies. perhaps, most notably, erika hasebe-ludt, cynthia chambers, and carl leggo (2009) have performed the concept of life writing as métissage within life writing and literary métissage as an ethos for out times. these canadian curriculum scholars, …take métissage as a counternarrative to the grand narratives of our times, a site for writing and surviving in the interval between different cultures and languages, particularly in colonial contexts; a way of merging and blurring genres, texts and identities; an active literary stance, political strategy, and pedagogical praxis. (p. 9) in this essay then, we offer narrative fragments, snapshots of our lived experiences in relation to a specific place, context, and moment during the covid-19 pandemic. “métissage offers,” for us, “a rapprochement between alternative and mainstream curriculum discourses and seeks a genuine exchange among writers, and between writers and their various audiences” (p. 9). as we conclude our writing, about our differing situated lived experiences, the third wave of the pandemic continues to rage on here in canada and elsewhere in the world. although several health professionals world-wide urged the international olympic committee (ioc) and the japanese government to cancel the games (dunlap, 2021, swift, 2021), the japanese government decided to proceed with the toyoko summer olympics. covid-19 news is currently centred on variants and vaccinations. while there are people refusing to be vaccinated in countries with access to the vaccines, there is “scandalous inequity” says who director-general tedros adhanom ghebreyesus in vaccine distribution world-wide (nebehay, 2021). in his address on may 24, 2021, he urged the ten countries who currently receive 70% of the vaccines to donate a portion of them to covax for distribution to other countries with the aim of vaccinating 30% of the world’s population by end-of-year 2021. together with its appeal for equity, the who also announced a new naming system for covid-19 variants of concern (voc) and variants of interest to avert stigmatization (elliot, 2021). the new system, based on greek letters, alpha, beta, gamma, delta, and so on, avoids naming countries and their peoples where the variants were first identified (breslow, 2021). as covid-19 mutates and as our response to the virus evolves, this métissage documents our early reactions to the pandemics as phases or strands. strand i, navigating a global stand still at viral speed, highlights our shock and incredulity. strand ii, mediated: slow going virtually alone, speaks to our acceptance of the situation and our readiness to https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index ng-a-fook, lee, déri, abat-roy, barrette, drake, mya, luo. life writing 5 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index begin adapting to it. strand iii, social distancing: reflections toward a way forward, engages with a phase of deep thinking we all found ourselves doing concerning the implications of covid-19 for the social conditions of the world we live in. strand i navigating a global stand still at viral speed the virus came (xiaoling luo) covid one nine (aaron drake) new beginnings: there is a crack in everything (nicholas ng-a-fook) viral fear: a haiku; and media straight talk (carol lee) sit down (virginie abat-roy) the straw that broke the camel’s back (catherine déri) is it them or me? (johanne barrette) the government of canada’s response to covid-19 (nyein mya) the virus came rumors and news of covid-19 started to circulate in china during november 2019. leaked news was reported on weibo, confirming that wuhan patients had a rarely seen virus (thomson, 2020). then the reports vanished into thin air. later, as the virus spread fiercely from person-to-person, news about the virus was seen on weibo. there were confirmed cases reported in every city, province, and later unfortunately, in other countries one after another. it soon became apparent that we were amid a global pandemic. however, it wasn’t until january 2020 that the chinese government announced that a new virus had been discovered: covid19. it should have been a time for chinese people to celebrate the traditional lunar new year. but the supposedly festive atmosphere disappeared because of the outbreak of covid19 and the subsequent city lockdowns. chinese authorities also issued a ‘stay home’ order to restrict the spread of the pneumonia-causing virus. compared to past years when they could visit relatives, the chinese people were stuck in their homes. i felt gloomy because the virus was causing countless deaths, because i couldn’t spend the spring festival with my family, and because i am worried about my family’s safety and security. the only thing i can do is take care of myself. the covid-19 came, i am not sure when it will diminish but i cannot lose hope. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index ng-a-fook, lee, déri, abat-roy, barrette, drake, mya, luo. life writing 6 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index covid one nine ctv news (bryden, 2020) reported the following on tuesday march 24th, 2020, 2:24pm: • one in five canadians polled think the covid-19 pandemic is blown out of proportion. • one in five paramedics have fallen ill from covid-19. • one in five paramedics are unable to help those fallen ill from covid-19. • one in five are staying in. seven million, five hundred and eighteen thousand canadians think covid-19 is blown out of proportion. they are deciding the fate of thirty million, seven hundred and twenty thousand canadians. to the thirty million, seven hundred and twenty thousand canadians who are doing their part to stay home, stay safe, and protect the community, and economy around them: dear, thirty million, seven hundred and twenty thousand canadians, i grew up in toronto, i was raised by my grandmother, sandra, and two other guardians who stepped into place after my mother passed away close to my tenth year alive. to my thirty million, seven hundred and twenty thousand canadians, you probably don’t know this, but i don’t want to lose another parent, not that many people do. to my thirty million, seven hundred and twenty thousand canadians, my parents are immuno-compromised and to know that you are doing your part, to the best of your ability to keep this virus in check, to stay safe, to stay home is important to me. to the thirty thousand people who have lost your lives, and to the millions who are impacted by such beautiful people falling ill, and away, too soon, i’m sorry. your loss is more than just a number. you are not a number. we are not numbers. it’s now march 10th, 2021. almost one full year after covid-19 made headlines and cracked lifelines when i wrote those words. i was twenty-four on the 15th of march, the day before the federal shutdown in 2020. my birthday, the day before the world seemingly collapsed. but perhaps it didn’t. one full year after covid-19 was announced, i’m alive. that’s more than enough. 2 600 000 fellow human beings have now lost their lives. for some, even one full year after, who refuse to wear a mask, it is seemingly not enough. the lost, the names and faces i will never get to know, the spaces and places they will never get to go, we, the living, will not forget. it was covid-19 who took their lives away, but it was us who let it. new beginnings: there is a crack in everything after a restless, night i reach over to the desktop where my cell phone is temporarily resting from the grasp of my fingertips. i open it from my bed and scan the news updates and the world health organization's (who), situation report on the coronavirus (covid-19) pandemic. at the end of yesterday, at 10:00 pm who released report 64. confirmed new cases and deaths are still being reported in china, albeit at a slower rate. italy and spain are dealing with death rates that exceed what has already taken place in china. and, the united states now has over 40,000 infections. meanwhile, trump continues to host propaganda rallies during his daily white house briefings by claiming that the life support of the us economy is more https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index ng-a-fook, lee, déri, abat-roy, barrette, drake, mya, luo. life writing 7 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index important than the lives of the most vulnerable affected by this global pandemic. here in canada, today there are over 2000 infections. i scan apple news for articles on the different testimonies from patients, doctors, and nurses from across the world, trying to make sense of what we should be preparing for to come as a family. i often become frustrated with our politicians for not acting fast enough with the necessary appropriate actions that are necessary to what is now referred to as “flattening the curve.” why have they not learned from the empirical evidence so highly touted in social and health science research? i understand that politicians are attempting to mitigage the potential spread of panic among the public, and in turn civil unrest. what has become clear over the past few weeks is that our health system, like other countries around the world, has itself been on life preserve. we have been subsidizing big corporate interests at the expense of much-needed public services. one only needs to read the different news stories about the dire situation of privatized health services in the united states. the 1% has access to asymptomatic testing. they can rest assured in self-isolation with a certain lack of anxiety. as parents, we have tried to establish a daily routine with our three boys. indeed, because of my occupation as a university professor, my daily work routine, for the most part, has not been affected. we are part of the privilege few who still have our economic livelihoods. over the weekend i spoke with my brother who lives in vancouver. he expressed that one of his good friends had to layoff 800 employees who work in the service industry. on facebook, a friend who is a mechanical engineer, was laid off from his auto manufacturing company here in ontario. after scrolling through social media, the news, and my emails, i get up and greet ezra and jonah who are watching japanese anime on netflix. aidan is still asleep in the tent he and jonah set up in the basement. he usually does not pop his head up from the basement until 11:00am or so. i put on a pot of coffee and make breakfast for the boys. their mom usual comes home from her run as we finish up breakfast. after cleaning up, i then make my way to my office where i read over students' work, respond to emails, read, and write. who knows what tomorrow, next week, or next month holds for us all. so many of our fellow citizens are not sure if they will have a roof over their head, food on the table, or a future job. this is a moment in time where we will be asked to make a radical shift in the ways to which we relate to our institutions, the world, and each other. i have been posting a song each day on my twitter feed. this past week, i share leonard cohen’s (1992) anthem. ring the bells (ring the bells) that still can ring forget your perfect offering there is a crack in everything (there is a crack in everything) that's how the light gets in... perhaps it takes such world crisis to provoke us to stop, slow down, hear the bell ring, and witness the crack; to let the light get in. viral fear: a haiku … a warm breath inhaled an asphyxiated gasp ignites a wildfire https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index https://youtu.be/6wryjtviyk0 ng-a-fook, lee, déri, abat-roy, barrette, drake, mya, luo. life writing 8 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index … and media straight talk my youngest son sent me a link to a podcast of joe rogan interviewing michael osterholm (osterholm 2012; 2013; 2017) has spent 30+ years studying infectious diseases and is often consulted by health organizations throughout the world about epidemics and the current pandemic, covid-19. this interview, unlike other information sources from agencies, such as the centre for disease control (cdc), the world health organization (who), or health canada, is not guarded. osterholm (2020) speaks candidly about the scope and scale of the covid-19 virus, and what in his opinion, based on experience, we can realistically expect in the coming months. even with social isolation, he says not to expect the disease to run its course, or for our lives to return to normal, for a minimum of three to six months or longer unlike other predictions of a few weeks. sit down sit down pull it down – refresh focus pull it down – refresh deep breath pull it down – refresh is this a pinch? pull it down – refresh are you sick? refresh – open article anxiety symptoms: chest tightness, difficulty breathing title – this is now a pandemic difficulty breathing: covid-19 symptoms close it, pull it down – refresh repeat after me: it’s just anxiety you should turn it off but the news never stops, you will miss information, you won’t be aware anxiety symptoms: overread and overprepare be ready for anything, be aware, be connected: overcome the pandemic holding your hand up, shaking, and find the x on an equally shaking square breath it’s gone breath it’s your choice breath you choose to be connected breath you choose what you read breath you read what you want, whenever you want breath you are anxious, but anxiety is not you breath https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3urhjx0nsw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3urhjx0nsw ng-a-fook, lee, déri, abat-roy, barrette, drake, mya, luo. life writing 9 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index you are vulnerable breath you are human breath through our choices, we will protect through our reading, we will inform through our movements, we will respect through our constancy, we will keep fighting the tightness through our breathing, we will calm down our hearts we will grow stronger. the straw that broke the camel’s back on march 14th, 2020, the university of ottawa president and vice-chancellor sent a general message to the student population announcing that a student was found lifeless in a campus residence. we receive these messages from time to time and they always make me pause. i wonder what prompts young adults to end it when they have their whole lives in front of them. then again, university students are not always young. the university of ottawa student population is rich in diversity. students come from all corners of the world. some with the hopes of not only obtaining a university degree, but of also achieving a better life for their families. so, three days after the world health organization confirms the coronavirus as pandemic, a student takes his own life on campus. was that the straw that broke the camel’s back? out of curiosity, i searched for the number of students from canadian universities who committed suicide in 2019. i thought that it would be an easy task, but it proved to be quite challenging. even by narrowing my search to the province of ontario, it led to a dead end (no pun intended). it appears that the office of the coroner of ontario tracks suicide by age group, without recording employment status. as for universities, they seem to track suicides that occur on campuses, but exclude student deaths taking place elsewhere. if we can track every single individual contaminated by covid-19 across the world, we should be able to do the same for student suicides under normal circumstances, with a view of preventing reoccurrences. is it them or me? my first week into confinement was spent almost oblivious of the pandemic. it is the end of the semester. i am swamped with work and living alone in the countryside. i spend most of my days in front of the screen, stopping only for the daily walk in the woods with my dog, eating and sleeping erradicly. i see no change due to covid except for this chat at the grocery where i ask a clerk about this toilet paper pandemonium: “is there a shortage?” “no. the warehouse is full. and it’s made next door, so no worries.” so where is this panic coming from? is it them overdoing it, or me not reacting enough? the solid wall-to-wall rock-hard carpet of ice covering the alley at home is more threatening than any virus. i fear falling and breaking my neck or worse. boots need to be spiked. i saw a cat sliding down the alley slope, helpless. it’s mean stuff. then i read about two covid cases in the faroes, and it hits for real. the faroes! there? the place only has a few people isolated from each other on islands isolated from the world (peterson, 2018). there, space and silence, but for the far cry of the sheep and the call of the sea. if the faroes have cases, no one, anywhere, is immune. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index ng-a-fook, lee, déri, abat-roy, barrette, drake, mya, luo. life writing 10 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index the government of canada’s response to covid-19 we are recommending to those travelling abroad to return home while it is still possible to do so. let me be clear: if you are abroad, it’s time for you to come home. if you’ve just arrived, you must self-isolate for 14 days. and finally, all canadians should stay home. (trudeau, 2020) coping with the pandemic, initially, meant asking questions and seeking answers. whether the replies were fact or fiction, for some, it did not matter. it was certain that canadians abroad were to be brought back home. we were told how rapidly the virus spread. how contagious it was. how it may already be in canada. as the narratives shifted, so did the questions that were asked. canadians who were stuck abroad were questioned about the ligitimacy of their citizenship. some asked why they were abroad in the first place. why should we waste taxpayer money on ‘convenient canadians’? why would we risk the health of millions just to bring back a few hundred? there was true fear of covid-19, the invisible enemy, and because humans act as human do, we began to create tangible formations for our fears. thus, in many ways, the virus took shape in the form of a “race” of people to blame. strand ii mediated: slow going virtually alone praise for the chinese people (johanne barrette) facing some changes in canada (xiaoling luo) sandcastles on the sand (aaron sardinha drake) police checkpoints (catherine déri) funambule des frontières invisibles (virginie abat-roy) not so different (carol lee) drinking from the well of being: one song a day (nicholas ng-a-fook) june black lives matter protest 2020 (nyein mya) https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index ng-a-fook, lee, déri, abat-roy, barrette, drake, mya, luo. life writing 11 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index praise for the chinese government and its citizens extreme situations can bring out the worst in people. some are shaming the chinese people for the virus, blaming them publicly, shunning them, and calling covid-19 the chinese virus. some folks use every opportunity they have, be it official or anonymous, to insult and even threathen the chinese living in canada. if it wasn’t for the chinese government and its citizens’ outstanding reaction to the outbreak, we’d all be in a much worse place, said a who report (2020). yes, they made mistakes and they have political issues, but the people's quick and total mobilization makes them examples we’d all do better to follow, said same report. so, praise to the chinese people. you are showing us the way. on the other hand, extreme situations also bring out the best. i came upon a bouquet of soul soothing gestures put together in a short video (the canadian press, 2020). for anyone in need of a little help to mend their faith in humanity, it is done in less than five minutes. also, my 95-years-old neighbor has put a big red heart in her window. to think she committed herself to painting that heart makes mine lighter. éric-emmanuel schmitt (2000) writes, “death teaches us nothing but the urgency to love” (p. 29). it seems like we humans were never so close before covid-19, but since, d ifferent kinds of social networks have formed. checking in has become mandatory. the “urgency to love” is palpable. to know that we are all in this together, albeit differently, creates a certain kind of “us” that was not very real until now. here erich fromm (1968) reminds us, only through full awareness of the danger to life can this potential be mobilized for action capable of bringing about drastic changes in our way of organizing society… one cannot think in terms of percentages or probabilities as long as there is a real possibility — even a slight one — that life will prevail. (p. 10) facing some changes in canada just two weeks ago, i received an email from the university of ottawa stating that our group trip to visit niagara falls was open and ready for registration. however, after the prime minister’s wife tested positively for covid-19 (bogart, 2020), stronger measures were put in place. and, i soon began to experience changes. schooling pivoted from in-person to online. international flights into and from canada have stopped. masks, alcohol hand sanitizers, and toilet paper sold out. buying fruits and vegetables at some grocery stores was limited. people stood farther from each other on streets. it is a tough time for most of us. we keep hearing horrible news of an exponential increase in confirmed cases. people are staying at home more and there is a huge decline in traffic on the roads. it seems that canadians have become more aware of the severity of the virus lately, but people on the streets still don’t always wear masks. sandcastles on the sand stay inside and sing to sandcastles on the beach. the imaginary queens and forgotten storied kings the moat is gone, and the flag made of twigs was used for a sparrow's nest. quarantined isolation. event-less entropy our minds made of sand, squeezed through a vile of time, moved by the currents of circumventing circumstance, https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/a-provincial-breakdown-of-covid-19-in-canada-5576-cases-and-61-dead-as-of-saturday ng-a-fook, lee, déri, abat-roy, barrette, drake, mya, luo. life writing 12 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index relaxing if you let it. if you /can/ let it. we can build castles, they will fall, we are pressurized glass, fragile. distorted quartz remorseful headless horsemen re-spouting myths and memories of a time we once knew to relive. to remind you that it will all be fine. serendipity will play its role our sandcastles will stand. for seconds by the sunset. isn't that enough? and if we don't make it to tomorrow if our hearts give us notice if our bodies don't make the cut if our hands can't hold each other then let us be what we thought we always could imagine by the waves, under sun, given time we'll be diamonds. pressurized bury your temptations, even if it's with a broken plastic shovel from an unremembered picnic years ago, discarded and disappointing the tide will come, and the currents pass(t) will bring us back tomorrow all in all, with just enough time to make one more sandcastle. police checkpoints yesterday, the quebec premier decided to put police checkpoints on bridges between ottawa and gatineau. police only allowed essential services personnel to cross the invisible border between the two provinces. i live in ottawa, but i usually go to gatineau to work, visit friends, enjoy museums, hike in the national park, and see french movies... since the start of the pandemic, my friends have been confined to their homes and everything else has progressively closed. i no longer have a reason to go to gatineau. but the fact that i still could, gave me a shred of freedom. now i can't. now i feel trapped on this side of the river. then, i realized that my doctoral thesis director is in quebec, and i am in ontario. although graduate students can suffer from a dysfunctional relationship with their supervisors, i have been fortunate to have a thesis director who is highly invested in my success. we meet monthly to monitor my progress. we do so face-to-face. i have enjoyed these meetings, as they are filled with inspiring intellectual dialog and insightful advice. we can no longer meet because we are now physically separated by law enforcement! you might say that i can skype, zoom, messenger, google hangout, facetime... i know that. i have used these virtual platforms to supplement first-hand interactions. but it will never be the same as flesh and blood human contact. the same human contact that must now be avoided at all costs because it can infect me and kill others who are in more vulnerable positions. funambule des frontières invisibles je suis originaire d’un petit village sur la rive-sud de québec où je devais traverser un pont chaque jour pour me rendre à mon travail. maintenant, j’habite à gatineau, j’étudie et travaille à ottawa. pour visiter ma famille, je dois habituellement quitter la province du québec, https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index ng-a-fook, lee, déri, abat-roy, barrette, drake, mya, luo. life writing 13 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index traverser l’ontario pour finalement retourner au québec. les frontières physiques ont toujours fait partie de ma vie. cependant, dans la volée des balbutiements de mars 2020, la présence des frontières visibles et invisibles entre l’ontario et le québec n’a jamais été aussi éloquente. depuis le début de cette pandémie, je dois me tenir en équilibre sur la mince ligne des consignes de deux provinces ayant chacune leur propre plan d’action afin de contrer la covid19 et de protéger leur population. mais qu’en est-il pour ceux qui vivent sur la frontière ? comme de nombreux travailleurs de la région de l’outaouais, j’habite au québec et travaille en ontario. même les réseaux de nouvelles sont en dualité : l’annonce quotidienne du premier ministre canadien est à 11h, puis les premiers ministres québécois et ontarien font la leur simultanément à 13h. alors qu’il y a quelques semaines mes collègues ontariens m'informaient que les rencontres de moins de 50 personnes étaient encore permises, au québec elles étaient déjà interdites. c’est à en devenir étourdie, alors que je me concentre à ne pas perdre pied sur un fil tissé de fleurs de lys et de trilles blancs. la rivière des outaouais a toujours été bien plus qu’une frontière entre deux provinces. elle est aussi, pour moi comme pour d’innombrables gens, le lien entre différentes facettes de sa vie: emploi, études, maison et cercles sociaux. c’est ainsi que je me retrouve, un pied de chaque côté de ces limites physiques et invisibles, en recherche d’équilibre face à une maladie qui, elle, ne s’impose aucune frontière. not so different at the risk of sounding anti-social, i have to say that life has not changed much for me since covid-19 social distancing was put in place. i must admit that when i learned that the two conferences (csse and gea), for which i was scheduled to present three papers, were cancelled, a part of me was relieved not to have to travel and leave home. the same for the writing retreat in montreal and even for my new york trip to attend the posthuman conference where katherine hayles was going to be the keynote. i make myself speak at conferences and otherwise participate in academic life. and yet, it does not come naturally for me. this is not to say i don’t really enjoy meeting people, talking with them, learning from them, i do. i just hate leaving my place, my backyard, my neighborhood. every fall when i send my proposals to csse, i try not to think about how i will miss the best bloom time of the lilac tree that grows next to my deck and the magnificent scent that perfumes the air and attracts hundreds of bees at a time. i try not to think of how i can sit a half meter a way and never get stung while i listen to their collective hum, so loud that the bird songs can’t get a note in edgewise. in this time of social distancing, i miss my three children who do not live with me, but i would anyway. i miss them every day, covid-19 or not. fortunately, one son does live here. however, this spring/summer, while my youngest stays distanced to protect me, i miss him especially because he loves the life in my backyard as much as i do. he revels in it too. this is a place where we connect and are of one mind. still, we share what we can. i just sent him a picture of the lilies that have already pushed up about 10 centimeters, green and eagerly drinking in the sun, the rain, and whatever each day brings. drinking from the well of being: one song a day like other professors and teachers here in ontario i was called on to “pivot” from teaching courses face-to-face to online via brightspace, zoom, and microsoft teams. the ensuing social and physical distancing would have serious impacts for graduate students enrolled in the different curriculum studies courses that i was teaching over the spring/summer session. in response, i tried to send weekly check-ins via email like the following for our seminar in curriculum research course: https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index ng-a-fook, lee, déri, abat-roy, barrette, drake, mya, luo. life writing 14 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index dear colleagues, we've been studying the importance of recognizing the historical connections to our present circumstances in relation to the curriculum -asplanned, -implemented, and -lived (aoki, 1992/2005). over the last six days we have seen in the media what public officials would like to keep hidden as part of the public curriculum, the hidden curriculum of anti-black racism. dr. vidya shah (2018, 2019) addressed this work in module 5. sara will be sharing their reader response this week in relation to vidya shah's work. however, i also noticed that no one took up dr. mishra-tarc's (2011, 2020a, 2020b) work for this upcoming week. this is my fault of course for not pointing this out sooner. however, dr. mishra-tarc discusses how we might respond to the injustices in the world via literature. so, if you can draw on dr. mishra-tarc's work and concepts to respond to sara's post on the module 5 discussion board, that would be greatly appreciated. it was for me, a restless weekend, in terms of witnessing the intergenerational hurt, pain, and destruction shared through the media over the weekend (mccarten, 2020). as our readings for this week and next will illustrate, this has also been part of the very constituting of a nation we call canada. and yet, what can we then unlearn and learn in terms of our conceptions of curriculum as a potential response to such ongoing systemic racisms? for the rest of the course, each week a few of your colleagues will be sharing their reader responses. if you could please respond to sara over the course of this week. the key is to try and make connections among the concepts from the readings and their response in your postings for the remainder of the course. please take time to do and enjoy the readings. and then draw on concepts put forth in the readings, on the news, or from your lived experiences to create a conversation over the week. please keep your responses to 250 words. i will be releasing module 5 later today. sara will also share their reader responses. my song of the day is a change is gonna come (cooke, 1963) performed by the main squeeze (2013). how might we become proactive in addressing everyday anti-black racisms and other forms of racisms @uottawa, @uottawaedu, @ottawacity within our wider community and lived curriculum? until, nicholas over that weekend, like others, i witnessed the hurt, harm, and rage expressed on the streets of cities across the united states and here in canada in response to the brutal murder of george floyd. as part of my daily check-ins with students, i expressed that amid the seasonal transition here in ottawa, there are also several communities, families and individuals who continue to experience violence beyond the covid-19 pandemic. i too, was still struggling to make sense of it all. and that "trying" to do so, that is, making "sense," at least for me is part of the privilege of my hyphenated proximity to whiteness, of living in ottawa, and working as a first-generation immigrant settler professor at the university of ottawa. others https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index https://www.nationalobserver.com/2020/06/01/news/trudeau-acknowledges-anti-black-racism-exists-canada https://youtu.be/obdh-s_3e_c%20day%2072! https://twitter.com/uottawa https://twitter.com/uottawaedu https://twitter.com/ottawacity ng-a-fook, lee, déri, abat-roy, barrette, drake, mya, luo. life writing 15 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index are still trying to survive a life worth living in the face of ongoing systemic violence and inequities. i invited students to reconsider how we might address the current macro contexts in relation to the micro contexts of our lived experiences? this life writing research question continues to be a core curriculum inquiry for me. that week several black students reached out to me to express the harm that they were experiencing as witnesses here in canada to what was taking place at the time in the united states. that week we sought to drink from the well of being, without any promises of respite, to express our pain, anger , and/or outrage through writing. we took heed and council while listening to podcast interviews with vidya shah, aparna mishra-tarc, catherine van kessel, and timothy stanley about this current moment of outrage and protesting against systemic racisms. (see www.fooknconversation.com) june black lives matter protest 2020 june 19th; juneteenth. life goes on. the current reality is that we are to live with the affects and effects of covid-19. the pandemic has revealed to us fundamental truths of being human and that social interaction is a need. healthcare is a right. diversity reflects our societies. but there are sects that deem these as privileges. by doing so, many lives have been, and will be, lost to viral aggressions that are racial, political, and human in nature. there is true fear in covid-19, however, it is an invisible enemy. humans act as human do, and we tend to latch on to the tangible formations of our fears. thus, these viruses have become a person. or rather, “races” of people. but human resiliency is unmatchable. if we carry on, we can overcome the biggest adversities and the smallest viruses. strand iii social distancing: reflections toward a way forward every decision bears a moral compass (johanne barrette) confinement, isolation and loneliness (catherine déri) tip toeing (carol lee) saskatchewan enters phase 2 (nyein mya) troubling a doctrine of discovery (aaron sardinha drake) what’s in my mind now (xiaoling luo) 1er avril 202, la journée de la marmotte | groundhog day (virginie abat-roy) living the wake of a third wave (nicholas ng-a-fook) https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index file:///c:/users/carol/onedrive%20-%20university%20of%20ottawa/desktop/metissage%20prepub/www.fooknconversation.com ng-a-fook, lee, déri, abat-roy, barrette, drake, mya, luo. life writing 16 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index every decision bears a moral compass the ice in my alley is totally gone! it’s a miracle. never had it been so thick and dangerous, and never has it melted away so fast. at the same unfathomable speed, the pandemic continues to spread. my beloved, whose work is considered essential, decided he should not visit on weekends until the end of the crisis. i have an autoimmune condition that might make me more vulnerable. and besides, there is not much point anyway, as i’m always working. not much point. not much. if he gets sick, i am utterly forbidden to show up to help. when did we become so reasonable? or is it plain insane? then there is my mother who is recovering from surgery. i am not around for her. how hard it is to convince myself that i love her better by staying away. it seems like every decision bears a moral compass. there’s this invisible threat all around. it might not have changed anything for me, but there remains a weight in the air. and, even though i can’t see it or touch it or feel it, i know that right this minute, or the next, in growing proportions the world and the times they are, as bob dylan forewarned, “a-changin’.” through this eerie silence, the noise, at least for me, is within. confinement, isolation, and loneliness due to the covid-19 pandemic, post-secondary institutions globally switched to a complete virtual delivery of their curriculum. this change came at a time when there were only two weeks left to the winter semester, to complete a course that i was auditing on “writing toward publications.” as a graduate student there is always pressure to “publish or perish.” especially, if the end game is to join academia after completing a doctoral study program. academic writing can become a lonely task, spending hours in front of a computer to do research and in turn write thoughts down on paper. in fact, it is well recognized in existing literature that phd candidates suffer from isolation. this feeling stems from a myriad of sources, from doubting personal capabilities, to lacking time and money, to being misunderstood by loved ones. the doctoral journey requires a certain amount of isolation to assimilate new knowledge from which emerges innovative scientific contributions. nevertheless, when isolation becomes a synonym for loneliness, a line needs to be drawn. joining academic writing groups is an effective way to break from isolation, while continuing to progress individual projects. under normal circumstances, i would be participating in writings groups, where i could feel energized by the presence of other graduate students. we would support each other toward improving our published contributions to different fields of study. during this current social distancing reality, i have joined writing groups using virtual platforms to maintain a semblance of normality during these times of uncertainty. graduate students are obviously forced to isolate like anyone else, but what i am most afraid of is that my isolating will transform into loneliness. tip toeing covid-19 social distancing and home confinement is more difficult for some than for others, due in part to lost income, sick loved ones, or because they are extraverted personalities. extraverted personalities not only miss the company of others, but also need the company others to maintain their energy levels (dubrowa, 2013). notwithstanding, some of my colleagues and a few notable others have been posting observations that sound dangerously close to statements about covid-19 having an upside. these statements are hushed and couched in other socially appropriate and sanctioned discourse. and yet, there is no mistaking what they are saying: https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index ng-a-fook, lee, déri, abat-roy, barrette, drake, mya, luo. life writing 17 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index ● we can breathe easier because the environment is less polluted. ● we notice the beauty in nature more often. we are walking and hiking and enjoying the outdoors. ● we are more hospitable. when we meet people (at a distance of course) we smile and say hello even if we don’t know each other. ● parents are enjoying their kids and making things and memories with them; some are cooking together, others building things together, and soon it could be gardening. ● for some, tele-commuting and distance learning has freed up time to do or learn other things they kept putting on hold. ● we are not so addicted to consumerism; shopping is based on need. ● we are taking time to reflect on what we have been doing to our planet. it is as if mother earth has said enough and sent us to our rooms for a time-out to think about what we’ve done and how we can make amends. i’m recalling an alberta bumper sticker i once saw a long time ago that went something like this, “god, please give us $40 a barrel oil again and i promise i won't waste it all this time” (the hon. ed stelmach speaker, 2007). the message here is not about alberta’s economy, but about remembering the lessons we’ve learned when the covid-19 pandemic ends. will we forget these lessons, like the many albertans who subsequently saw oil rise to $80 a barrel and still managed to squander much of it by returning to their same old practices? or will we take pause, recalibrate, and heed the message we see routinely on quebec license plates? je me souviens. saskatchewan enters phase 2 phase 2 of re-open saskatchewan continues on tuesday, may 19th, with retail businesses, shopping malls, public & farmers markets, and select personal care services, subject to their own guidelines. #covid19sk. (government of saskatchewan, 2020) dashboards of my various worlds have been consolidated within the palm of my hand. endless scrolling and an endless feed. anti-lockdown protesters. commemoration of the mass shooting. facebook memories. snapchat memories. memories, a reminder of moments gone by. strange is the word that comes to mind as various modes of lockdowns are lifted across the world. within canada, there are entire cities still under mass quarantine while simultaneously there are crowds that go about their usual or who are brewing a revolution. i look down at my social media feed, my world between the 4 corners of my phone screen summarized in 280 characters. scrolling, scrolling, scrolling… video chats, video calls, and video conferences are my only form of social interaction. before, i reveled in technology almost to a state of religious dependency. now, i detest pop-up reminders and i block notifications. i mute the chimes and whistles. i am born of a generation who lived with social media but also remember a life without it. and yet, i keep a wary eye out for those pesky notifications. irony! i have been given the ability and the heavy expectation to traverse the entire world through my fingertips only because the pandemic has ball and chained me to my bedroom. i am tired of my screen time because my view of the world is only as big as my bedroom window and my laptop. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index ng-a-fook, lee, déri, abat-roy, barrette, drake, mya, luo. life writing 18 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index troubling a doctrine of discovery amid the chaos, a glimmer of remarkability shines brighter and stands taller than the rest. during this covid-19 pandemic, i am finding myself connecting to family and friends in ways i never have before. i am learning about myself and my heritage. this week i have spent countless hours on the phone with my cousins and grandmother on my mother's side discussing our family history. she told us about our late grandfather, gus who was born and raised in lamaline, newfoundland. we didn't know this. my cousins and i never had the opportunity to meet gus due to his early passing before we were born. he was a schoolteacher, mainly raised by our great grandmother, who was a mi'kmaq woman, and our great grandfather, who no one seems to remember. my grandmother and i then spent time searching through the toronto yellow pages in search of gus' late brother's wife, who we have never met, and whose wisdom would shed light on our untold histories. the line is disconnected. my dad and my aunt tell us of our history of slavery, of perseverance and strength. our great-great-grandparents, born of someone enslaved in st. kitts, and an unknown father, raised in barbados and storied in trinidad. my history is scattered, erased, by shame and trauma, left for generations ahead to forget, and for stories to be silenced. as a trinidadian, settler canadian, with mi'kmaq ancestry, i don't have the privilege of a complete genealogy. and yet, i possess the potential strength of memories yet to be made. the time we have during this pandemic has taught me that our stories are not over, and to share and learn with our loved ones while these moments are still available. what’s in my mind now the covid-19 pandemic has already lasted for a year, which has changed how we connect with others and the world. i had to use technology and gradually found myself indulging in it. every news, email, notification seemed to convey that i was not alone. attending online courses with a time difference of 13 hours in china in the middle of the night and seeing everyone's faces on the zoom video appeared to form a supportive community. however, there's a voice deep inside me, saying i was not fully satisfied with the life i was living. i wanted my “normal” life back. i wanted to see my lovely classmates and professors and have academic conversations on the noisy but energetic campus soon. i wanted to sing along with others at concerts and travel to see astonishing sceneries i have never seen before. during the pandemic, i realized that this might be a time to pause, to fall behind, and an opportunity to see through what’s in my mind. and now, i get to cherish every moment i spend with my family and friends. i have become more aware of living healthier by doing more exercise and eating healthily. i hope to mitigate covid-19’s effects on me by wielding my power of will and a lot of selfcare. i will become a better person when the pandemic is under control. 1er avril 2021, la journée de la marmotte | groundhog day « madame, quand pourrais-je revoir mes amis ? » cette question, mon élève me la pose de temps en temps. entre nos leçons et les activités, dans sa petite chambre à la maison, elle me regarde du haut de ses 8 ans et me demande quand elle retournera à l’école, au parc, à sa vie normale. elle a des diagnostics de santé qui la rendent à très haut risque en public et une autre condition qui l’empêche d’utiliser les écrans. l’enseignement médical à domicile est sa seule option. depuis mars 2020, de nombreux articles ont fait état des oubliés de la pandémie. pour n'en nommer que quelques-uns : les personnes âgées en centres de soins longue durée, les adolescents en manquent de contacts sociaux, les parents qui jonglent entre école à la maison https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index ng-a-fook, lee, déri, abat-roy, barrette, drake, mya, luo. life writing 19 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index et travail sur la table de la cuisine, les étudiants universitaires isolés dans leurs appartements sombres et les individus qui vivent seuls. or, les élèves qui passent entre les mailles du filet social d'urgence tricoté pour cette pandémie semblent passer inaperçus. ceux qui ne peuvent aller à l’école à cause d'une condition médicale préexistante et qui ne peuvent, pour la même raison, faire de l’enseignement en ligne. ces élèves qui ont le cancer et suivent des traitements, ou qui ont une malformation aux poumons et font des crises épileptiques provoquées par les écrans. ces jeunes de 4 ans, 9 ans, 13 ans, 17 ans. ils regardent défiler les mesures de santé publique saupoudrées de codes de couleurs, de confinements en dé/confinements, des plaintes aux applaudissements dans une valse qui semble sans fin. « madame, quand pourrais-je revoir mes amis ? » je n’ai plus de réponse depuis longtemps. en ce 1er avril 2021, alors qu’elle me colle un poisson de papier dans le dos en riant derrière son masque, elle est à la maison depuis plus d’un an. nous devrons apprendre à vivre avec les hauts et les bas de cette pandémie, mais où est la solution pour ces élèves qui doivent jongler entre les risques collectifs et leurs besoins fondamentaux ? un an après le début de la pandémie, cette dernière continue de mettre en lumière les zones grises de notre système. living in the wake of a third wave …the wake spoke to the affect of the process/event in which knowledge, emerging from the middle and growing at the edges, was not always a comfortable place. the wake rendered the sense of aliveness that materialized in an ambiguous and transient space. (the word “wake” has three definitions: not only is it a noun for the track left behind a moving ship, it is also a verb meaning (1) to awaken; to be aroused from mental activity; to become alive or active; to be restored to life; and (2) to hold vigil for someone who is deceased as an act of commemoration.) (leblanc & irwin, 2020, p. 14) today, at least for our family, is day 385! we are now in another provincial lockdown. we are living covid-19’s third wave with all of it respective global variants. for some of us, covid-19 has awakened us, perhaps momentarily, from a curriculum lived as a neoliberal capitalistic form of sleepwalking. for several others, they continue to hold vigils in commemoration for those whom they have lost during the first, second, and now third waves of this global pandemic. here in canada, today on april 7th 2021, we have surpassed 1 million cases, and lost over 23,000 fellow citizens. despite the waves of lockdowns, teachers, frontline health workers, and other essential service providers continue to risk their lives to serve the public good. unlike australia or new zealand, the provincial governments here in canada have refused to sacrifice the “promise” of our economic livelihood in exchange for the livelihoods of certain fellow citizens and their respective communities. what will “it” mean to be aroused, alive, active, restored to live, to hold vigil, when we emerge from the a/wake/ness of covid19? https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index ng-a-fook, lee, déri, abat-roy, barrette, drake, mya, luo. life writing 20 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index notes 1 nngafook@uottawa.ca 2 clee185@uottawa.ca 3 cderi055@uottawa.ca 4 vabat032@uottawa.ca 5 jbarr091@uottawa.ca 6 adrak013@uottawa.ca 7 nmya059@uottawa.ca 8 xluo055@uottawa.ca references bogart, n. 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worldometer (2020). covid-19 coronavirus pandemic. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries submitted: june, 8th, 2021 approved: july, 24th, 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/interactive-timeline?gclid=cj0kcqjw4coebhdmarisaa3xdrgletle6ff3ejed9ig1qvlkec7zewwerlpbd_aq7524akvhzdt7obuaarycealw_wcb%23! https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/interactive-timeline?gclid=cj0kcqjw4coebhdmarisaa3xdrgletle6ff3ejed9ig1qvlkec7zewwerlpbd_aq7524akvhzdt7obuaarycealw_wcb%23! https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/interactive-timeline?gclid=cj0kcqjw4coebhdmarisaa3xdrgletle6ff3ejed9ig1qvlkec7zewwerlpbd_aq7524akvhzdt7obuaarycealw_wcb%23! file:///c:/users/littlebell/desktop/ file:///c:/users/littlebell/desktop/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: wariyo, l. g. & asgedom, a. (2021). curricular innovations in building college readiness: a comparative study. transnational curriculum inquiry, 18 (1) p. 24-48 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> curricular innovations in building college readiness: a comparative study lemecha g. wariyo1 wachemo university, ethiopia amare asgedom2 addis ababa university, ethiopia introduction college readiness of students is one of the determinants of college success and higher education student learning outcomes (an & taylor, 2019). attention to college readiness has sparked reforms to students’ transitions from high school to higher education (domina & ruzek, 2013). the two great innovations to promote college readiness took curricular reform approaches and college readiness assessment approaches (kolluri & tierney, 2020; tierney & duncheon, 2015; tierney & garcia, 2011; venezia & voloch, 2012). the curricular innovations intend to expose students to a college preparatory curriculum. a college preparatory curriculum involves minimum coursework in core academic subjects (e.g., four years of english language and at least three years of math) that make students eligible for higher education entrance (venezia & jaeger, 2013). traditionally, underrepresented students have been less likely than their higher-income counterparts to be ushered into the college preparatory track and more likely to be steered into vocational courses. recently, policymakers have aimed to challenge this trend and started cultivating collegegoing culture by implementing stricter curricular requirements and reforms (venezia & jaeger, 2013). the recent reforms aim to ensure that all high school graduates meet the course-taking requirements for entrance into higher education institutions (heis). studies reported that schools whose students take college preparatory coursework achieve better in higher education and have more equitable learning opportunities for low-income students (lee et al, 1997). the accelerated learning programs, e.g., dual enrollment (de) and advanced placement (ap) expose high school students to college-level academics and the opportunity to earn college credits. those studies comparing the outcomes of ap or de course-takers with non-course-takers revealed that participation in college-level classes increases the probability that students will enroll and succeed in college (iatarola et al, 2011). even though recent college-readiness policy encourages the participation of all students in college preparatory programs, some study reports raise criticisms. firstly, the critics stated that the higher over-restrictions based on course-taking requirements highly reduce the number of degree holders the future job openings need. also, by mandating course-taking patterns required for entering selective institutions, current reforms de-emphasize educational and vocational alternatives and potentially disadvantage students geared for non-selective colleges (barnes & slate, 2013). rather, enabling students to pursue multiple postsecondary wariyo, asgedom. curricular innovations 25 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index pathways is recommended. in addition, opponents of tracking indicate that different paths result in the marginalization of traditionally underrepresented youth, which is a legitimate concern. to solve these problems, the current transition conversations are focused on aligning college readiness standards and college expectations in terms of both quality and equity (brown, 2015; harklau, 2001; musoba, 2011; savage et al, 2014). even though the countries have embarked on developing the college readiness of students, studies reported that the number of students who need remediation after college access has increased than before (an & taylor, 2019; kallison, 2017). also, the issue of student dropouts has remained a problem (dinsdale, 2016). inappropriate high school curriculum reform resulted in high student drop out (görlitz & gravert, 2016) the current college readiness curriculum also emphasized the configuration of noncognitive and career skills (savitz-romer & rowan-kenyon, 2020). the major college cognitive and non-cognitive readiness factors are integrated into the school curriculum from lower grades (allen et al, 2019). the college readiness innovation also includes schools’ counseling services and co-curricular activities that promote the development of college readiness skills and attitudes (martinez et al, 2017). the ethiopian education system has also implemented education policies to deal with college readiness. these attempts were reflected in 1) curricular changes; for example, implementation of the ethiopian preparatory for higher education (prep) curriculum that is aimed at exposing students to the college experience through the curriculum; 2) addressing equity issues in the transition to he, e.g., applying affirmative action policy, use of mother tongue as a language of instruction in elementary schools and middle schools. although numerous international trends are reflected in the ethiopian college readiness program, a number of factors widened the gap between theory and practice. ethiopia’s prep curriculum shares similarities with other college readiness curricular innovations, such as de, ap, and international baccalaureate (ib) that award college credit transfer (i.e., college readiness badging) even though it does not badge college readiness. these curricula deal with the objectives of both badging and building college readiness. objectives of the review the major objectives of this review are to: 1) compare and contrast the ethiopian prep curriculum with some college readiness curricula around the world using some criteria; 2) analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the ethiopian prep curriculum depending on the existing college readiness curriculum theories and practices to recommend the implications for improvement. review questions the study was guided by these review questions: 1) how the ethiopian prep curriculum differs from the existing college readiness curricula in terms of the given parameters? 2) what are the major strengths and weaknesses of the ethiopian prep curriculum when it is seen through the lens of the existing college readiness curricula’s theories and practices? sample of literature and methods of the review the resources, such as journal articles, books and book chapters, policy documents, and government reports were the major resources used for the review. these resources were collected from online international research databases, local libraries, and offices. the literature used for review is a mix of quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods research reports. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index wariyo, asgedom. curricular innovations 26 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index the international research databases, e.g., scimago country and journal rank, web of science, directory of open access journals (doaj), directory of open access books (doab), and googe scholar were used for searching the resources. all relevant sources found in these databases were selected for the review. the purposive and selective online and hardcopy search of the local literature was also conducted. a critical in-depth analysis and synthesis of the literature followed the following two major criteria: 1) comparative analysis of the college readiness curricular innovations in terms of course development, assessment, instructor illegibility and professional development, instructional process, the setting for delivery, funding, and student participation, 2) the extent to which the resources focused on experiencing students to college, the inclusiveness of the programs, their impact, and emphasis on the student learning outcomes were major aspects of the resources analyzed in the review. theoretical frameworks the ecological theory of college readiness urie bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory of human development is also known as the processperson-context-time (ppct) model (bronfenbrenner & morris, 2006; kitchen et.al, 2019; williams, 2016) is a prominent college readiness model. ecological college readiness theory considers the role of student individual characteristics and personal agency; the characteristics of multiple, interacting levels of context; the effects of chronological and historical time, and the processes through which all these elements bring about change in students (arnold et al, 2012; williams, 2016). real college readiness occurs through a reciprocal relationship between the student and the context. being in the heart of the environment, the individual student interacts with the proximal contexts (microsystems, such as teachers, peers, parents, and others) that play their direct interactions with the student, and the development of college readiness is realized through what arnold, lu, and armstrong (2012) call the proximal processes that happen as a result of these natural interactions. through de experience in a college, the student has a chance to experience the college environment and teaching-learning process that allows the student to bring the college to his/her microsystem where real experiences can occur. generally, studies used ecological systems theory to study how contexts and environments affect the different aspects of college readiness including the teaching-learning process of college-going students (hines et.al, 2014; williams, 2016). the input-environment-outcomes model astin’s input–environment–outcomes (i–e–o) model considers the impact of institutional characteristics and student characteristics on student development. taking into account characteristics and qualities the students bring to university as inputs, and the experiences students develop when they are in college as environments, the i-e-o model describes outcomes as the developmental endpoints that occur for students as a result of their experiences with the environment (astin & antonio, 2012; mukhopadhyay & tambyah, 2019). a fundamental purpose of the i–e–o model is to allow higher education researchers to examine a less biased estimate of the effects of environments on an outcome after the researcher controls for the differences in characteristics students bring to college (astin & antonio, 2012; pike et al, 2014). therefore, studies assume that dual-enrolled students have prior exposure to curricula, teaching-learning experiences, communications with lecturers and college students, and the physical factors around the de programs in college (kim & bragg, 2008; pike et al, 2014). https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index wariyo, asgedom. curricular innovations 27 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index theory of role and socialization ‘role and socialization’ theory has gained attraction in de research as an explanation of how de prepares students for college beyond academic preparation. according to role and socialization theory, individuals inhabit roles or positions within a social structure. these roles reflect patterns of behaviors and attitudes that provide actors a strategy to deal with recurrent sets of situations (atherley et al, 2016; turner, 1990). students gather information on the roles of the university community, such as faculty and peers during the interaction period. they use this information to predict the expectations others hold for them (lile et al, 2017; richards, 2015). these role-based identities become integrated into individuals’ selfconcepts, which helps shape their future actions and interactions with others (karp, 2007). roles are dynamic, and they may change over time (an & taylor, 2019; turner, 1990). during their transition to higher education, students’ social structures change. therefore, students will be in a position to adjust their cultural repertoires and how they behave and understand the university environment and teaching-learning circumstances. the problem is that this process is not immediate and it may require a trial period in which the students may need to adjust and conform to the normative expectations (an & taylor, 2019). studies state that de program works as a socialization organization in which students get rid of their inappropriate understanding of the college environment and teaching-learning experience by providing students with a transition period in which they learn the normative rules and behaviors of being a university student (an & taylor, 2019). also, de allows students to develop skills and coping strategies, such as critical thinking and help-seeking that are important for college success (an & taylor, 2019; kanny, 2015). the major college readiness curricular innovations the major three primary curricular innovations to promote college readiness are ap, ib, and de. these curricular approaches are the most utilized innovations (national research council, 2002; tobolowsky & allen, 2016). studies discussed contributions of curricular approaches in promoting college readiness on one hand and indicated their demerits on the other hand. the major objectives of these curricular approaches are: 1) preparing students for college so that they will require less remediation, taking a shorter time to a degree, hence reducing costs, and being more competitive in the global economy; 2) in addition, college readiness programs are aimed at providing realistic information about the skills that students will need to succeed in college, increasing students’ motivation, and; 3) building relationships between high schools and colleges (hemelt et al, 2019; jenkins, 2018). the programs accomplish two general activities: badging college readiness and bridging transitions to higher education. the ap ap programs offer college-level courses to high-achieving students in high school (geiser & santelices, 2007; lewis, 2011). normally, students take the course, and they may choose to take an exam, which is developed and is administered by the college board (cb). the student has to earn at least three out of five on their high school ap course exam to count toward their college course requirements, and to be placed in more advanced college courses (lea, 2016; tobolowsky & allen, 2016; warne et al, 2015). some researchers have noted that even though these courses are considered to be quite rigorous, they are taught in a high school setting by high school teachers. for this reason, they do not introduce the students to collegelevel work or the college environment (lea, 2016; lewis, 2011). tinto (1993) and kuh et al (2005) found that students who have a more realistic understanding of the campus atmosphere https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index wariyo, asgedom. curricular innovations 28 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index are more likely to have a successful adjustment to college. this shows a lack of giving important exposure to the college campus as one of ap’s demerits. even though numerous studies support the effect of ap on college readiness, there are mixed results on who gains from the ap experience and the value of these courses in promoting students’ success in college. ap has less benefit for college entering students and its gpa has non-significant correlations with college gpas (warne et al, 2015). jenkins (2018) lists the weaknesses of ap courses: 1) the determination of the course content by the high school, and college administrators’ reluctance regarding the rigor of the ap courses, and 2) the fact that instructors for ap courses are all high school teachers. the cb lacks clearly defined selection criteria for selecting and recruiting ap teachers. the ib the ib offers a complete curriculum structured around a set of ideas that are both academic and philosophical, unlike the ap which offers students the opportunity to take specific advanced coursework (hughes, 2006; jenkins, 2018; rehm, 2014; tobolowsky & allen, 2016). the goal of ib is to develop true global citizens who are academically strong, principled, open-minded, and caring individuals who want to create a more just and peaceful world. although ib was designed for high school seniors years ago, today, there are the middle years, primary years, and career-related programs in addition to the diploma program. thousands of schools in many countries around the world offer ib programs (caine & wimmer, 2014; jenkins 2018; tobolowsky & allen, 2016). like ap, ib diploma program targets high achieving students and helps them get college-ready by providing a standardized curriculum and tests, which assure colleges and universities of their academic excellence (hughes, 2006; caine & wimmer, 2014). in receiving an ib diploma, students require to complete studies in six subjects: foreign language, literature, the arts, mathematics, experimental sciences, and computer sciences. in addition, students need to submit an essay of 4,000 words and should complete the extracurricular of the 150 hours and community services. then, students are examined in the core courses on a 7-point scale. to graduate with an ib diploma, students should attain a minimum score of 24 so that they can be eligible to receive college credit for introductorylevel college courses (jenkins, 2018; suldo et al, 2018). the de the de is used interchangeably with initiatives such as concurrent enrollment, joint enrollment, or dual credit. accelerated learning options or credit-based transition courses, the more general terms that show the curricular approaches for college readiness, often include de. de was defined as courses high school students take where they earn both high school and college credit simultaneously without having to take a standardized test to gain the credit (an & taylor, 2019; tobolowsky & allen, 2016). college credit courses fall into two different categories: a) advanced college credit courses (acc courses) that have been approved by various local colleges/universities; and, b) ap courses designated by the cb. acc/ap courses are transferable to most colleges/universities. students are advised to check with a college’s counselors on all acc/ap courses available or needed (suldo et al, 2018; national research council, 2002). the differences of de from ap and ib are 1) unlike ap and ib, which are college-level courses or preparatory courses, de is a college course; 2) de courses are often more accessible in colleges in rural areas while ap and ib courses are not offered in a rural area; 3) de courses are flexible and easily accessible that they can be taken at a high school or in university campuses; 4) while de is based on a course grade, earning college credit with ap https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index wariyo, asgedom. curricular innovations 29 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index is based on standardized exams (jenkins, 2018; suldo et al, 2018). the de, unlike ap and ib which target high achieving students, targets a wide range of students. however, de’s quality is lower compared to ap and ib (hughes, 2006; tobolowsky & allen, 2016). de courses can be individual courses or a complete high school curriculum. they can be taken at high schools, colleges, universities, and online. these courses differ by rigor, content, instruction, structure, and design within and between countries. the variability of its offerings is its major characteristics (hughes, 2006; rowett, 2012). the benefits of de are: 1) it is purported to reduce the cost of college and the time-todegree; 2) when courses are offered at a college campus, de also serves as an introduction to the full college experience, which assists students in their college adjustment when they transfer to higher education (rowett, 2012; tobolowsky & allen, 2016). regarding student benefits, it is well-known for its tangible benefits. for instance, research suggests that firstfor-college students in their families and students from low-income backgrounds seem to get greater advantages than students whose parents did earn a college degree or come from a higher income background (an & taylor, 2019; tobolowsky & allen, 2016). because of quality problems, some institutions will not accept all (or any) de. to alleviate this problem, an optimum number of courses that offers maximum benefits to students is required; as well as an introduction to the college environment and rigor was suggested (tobolowsky & allen, 2016). areas of variability for de de programs are possibly the most unique of the credit-based transition programs mentioned here. these courses have a difference not only with the other pre-college initiatives but also between each other in terms of delivery, funding, student participation, instructor eligibility, and course content. for this reason, de looks quite different (an & taylor, 2019; hughes, 2006; tobolowsky & allen, 2016). the first area of variability is the setting for delivery. most of the time, these courses are offered in a larger part of academic settings. they are often taken in traditional high schools, online, at universities, or in unique high schools such as early college high schools that are focused on offering a de curriculum starting from late junior ninth grades (karp et al, 2004). criticisms state that courses offered at high school may lack college-level standards. also, courses offered at universities may lack rigor. in some cases, some colleges use de courses for attracting high achieving students to apply to their colleges after high school graduation to increase the college retention rate (hunter & wilson, 2018). however, the lack of quality in some course contents has resulted in universities’ refusal to accept some des after students matriculate as freshman college students (borden et al, 2013). therefore, issues of course quality and course transferability are associated with the variability in course content and the course setting (hughes, 2006; tobolowsky & allen, 2016). funding is the second area of variability. funding sources for these courses vary. in some cases, the cost of one or all de courses is paid by the government and, in other instances, there may be reduced or waived fees for some courses (tobolowsky & allen, 2016). both the high school and the college can receive government funds to cover the cost of these courses (karp et al, 2004). in some instances, the students are responsible for the entire cost of the courses (tobolowsky & allen, 2016). the third area of variability is student participation. as the primary purpose of de coursework is to promote the success of the high achieving high school students (edwards et al, 2011), there are still limited studies that argue all students (for instance, underrepresented populations, medium and low achieving, low-income, remedial students) benefit from taking these courses (bailey et al, 2003). https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index wariyo, asgedom. curricular innovations 30 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index participation in de programs is stated by the admission criteria set by a university or a high school (hughes, 2006). most de programs have eligibility requirements. the minimum scores on scholastic aptitude test (sat) or american college test (act), grade level, class rank, and/or high school gpas are among the requirements needed. in some cases, letters of recommendation are required (tobolowsky & allen 2016). borden and associates (2013) also stated that some institutions offering de courses had requirements that were not identified. generally, great variability in student eligibility has been reported (tobolowsky & allen, 2016). some studies question the assumption that students who qualify for these courses are ready to enroll, especially when these courses are taught on a university campus (tinberg & nadeau, 2013). some researchers found that students may have the academic preparation to enroll in these courses but may lack sufficient maturity to manage in the less structured college environment (ferguson et al, 2015). although studies show that participation in de courses is traditionally biased for high-achieving students, whites, and peoples with higher socio-economic status (ses) and the problem tends to continue, countries have been implementing different measures to make the participation more inclusive (an & taylor, 2019). for instance, early college high schools are created to make these courses more inclusive. as the fourth area of variability, instructor eligibility is also used to compare the programs. one of the most controversial issues with de courses is the lack of uniform quality assurance practices and policies in place regarding the quality of instruction (hughes, 2006; tobolowsky & allen, 2016). policies regarding teacher selection, training, and credentials for these courses should be there (borden et al, 2013), and there should be national standards. these criteria should require the high school instructors to meet the same standards as adjunct community college faculty, including a master’s degree and expertise in the subject (borden et al, 2013). when the fifth area of variability, course content, is observed, states determine which courses should be offered as de in some countries (karp et.al, 2004). most of the time, a college or a high school approves the course syllabus, textbooks, and/or exams. however, on some occasions, the responsibility of approving the syllabi is left to the state (tobolowsky & allen, 2016). because the course content is not standardized, it may not guaranty that students take the same subject or they cover similar material. for the reason that de course content can vary significantly depending on the nature of the de program, and the students it is opted to serve, there is no standard content. some specific de courses target medium to low achieving students and others are related to vocational students. although initially many of the offerings were designed to provide college-level content to high-achieving high school students, this is not always true (golann & hughes, 2008). witkowsky and clayton (2019) supported the significance of de for promoting college readiness while they also emphasized the high contribution of high school counselors in mediating the success of de students. also, de significantly increases student retention at college (hunter and wilson 2018). lile et al (2017) reported that participation in de increases the clarity of college student roles. on the contrary, lawrence and king (2018) revealed that students who participated in the de program were less likely to complete the associate of arts and associate of applied science degrees. additionally, a lack of quality control concerning de courses leads to problems with the transferability of course credit. modarelli (2014), who studied the transfer of credits from de programs, found that “competitive” and “highly competitive” universities were 78% likely to accept associate degree credits from other institutions whose degrees are non-de whereas the probability of https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index wariyo, asgedom. curricular innovations 31 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index acceptance for the degrees earned from de programs is (19%). the more competitive the institution, the less likely they were to accept the credits (tobolowsky & allen, 2016). when compared with other accelerated learning options, ap credits were more likely to be accepted by the most competitive institutions (70%) followed by ib (59%) and then de (33%) (tobolowsky & allen, 2016). generally, the authors stated that this was a puzzle for students who want to be admitted to universities they want and for policymakers. understanding that policies and implementations of de have varieties across counties, an and taylor (2019) illustrated some commonalities and convergences that have emerged in the literature as best practices to facilitate the success of de. these are leadership, partnerships, funding and finance, structure, and stakeholder perceptions. these authors identified the effective leadership approaches, namely, visionary, progressive, strategic, and reflective. helping students to develop a sense of purpose and value, and transforming the school culture to a college-going culture (e.g., which includes early assessment for de eligibility and hiring more bilingual teachers for core curriculum) were some of the characteristics of progressive leadership. partnerships between schools, colleges, and other significant members of the community on the implementation of de are indicated as some of the key factors for the success of the de program. also, inadequate funding created differences in participation in de courses between the rich and the poor. the problems of qualified teachers to teach de in high schools and differences in stakeholders’ perceptions and support for de are discussed as some factors that impact the implementation of de. the environmental factors (staff, counselors, school type, and the college type) have also been associated with the success of the de program (witkowsky & clayton, 2019). the challenge of increasing equitable college access while increasing effectiveness through the application of ap, de, and ib programs has remained a problem. this is partially caused by the challenge to make the courses more inclusive (gagnon & mattingly, 2016; kolluri, 2018). studies also used student learning outcomes to compare these curricular innovations. studies reported findings on the relationship between de and student outcomes, such as college matriculation, college academic performance, college persistence, degree completion, time to degree completion (evans, 2018; witkowsky & clayton, 2019). to begin with, a significant number of studies associated a significant relationship between participation in de and college matriculation as a degree-seeking student. the largest evidence on the effect of participation in de and student outcomes is evident in the relationship between participation in de and student college academic performance. the most important point for policy-makers is the effect of participating in de on degree completion or degree attainment. in this case, similar to de’s effect on college academic performance, studies confirmed that participation in de was also found to have a significant effect on degree attainment. also, a significant number of empirical works reported that participation in de reduces time to degree through the accumulation of college credits before college entry (evans, 2018). another advantage of the de is the fact that it reduces the need for remediation at college. studies revealed that students who participate in de are less likely to participate in remedial education in college than students who did not participate in de (kolluri & tierney, 2020). for this reason, it is believed that participation in de primarily tackles the college readiness problem of college-entering students. studies also show that students who participate in de tend to be more motivated and persevered in their school work than those who are not dual-enrolled. studies also reported the effect of de by course type. although all de courses have a significant effect on college student outcomes, mathematics de course has the strongest effect. scholars also studied the de course effects depending on course differences based on academic and career and technical focus courses. indicating the recent curriculum emphasis https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index wariyo, asgedom. curricular innovations 32 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index on career and technical education, studies show a significant effect of tech prep courses on college outcomes than academic de courses (judson, 2017; warne et al, 2019). studies also compared the difference between the de and ap in affecting student college outcomes. generally, the largest number of studies reported that ap students are more likely successful at college than de students. overall interest in increasing ap course taking emerged from the urge to promote college readiness particularly in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (judson, 2017; warne et al, 2019). the ethiopian prep curriculum the ethiopian prep curriculum has evolved from the former socialist regime’s 6-2-4 structure, in which the middle two years belonged to the lower secondary program. the 1994 education and training policy (etp) revised the curriculum to become an 8-2-2 structure. then, grades 11 and 12 were reserved for the prep schooling program that prepares students for a three-year university undergraduate program. following this change, many topics previously taught in the first year of undergraduate programs were moved down to grades 11– 12, and consequently, topics from grades 11–12 were moved down to grades 9–10. this change resulted in the overall difficulty of grades 9 -12 curricula (joshi & verspoor, 2013). the grades 11 and 12 curricula have been categorized into 2 major streams: social science and natural science. the social science curriculum includes major courses, such as geography, history, economics, and general business whereas the natural science curriculum consists of major courses, such as biology, chemistry, physics, and technical drawing. the english language, civics, physical education, mathematics, and ict are the common courses that are taken by both of the streams. the mother tongue and amharic are electives (joshi & verspoor, 2013; moe, 2009). areas of variability for the ethiopian prep curriculum compared to the major de courses in terms of delivery, funding, student participation, instructor eligibility, and course content, the ethiopian pep curriculum has differences from others. regarding the settings for delivery, unlike the other de courses that can be delivered in a traditional high school setting, online, at a college or university, or in a unique high school setting, ethiopian prep courses can only be taught in recognized private or governmental prep schools. there is no university interference in prep course delivery. this is one difference from the other de programs. therefore, the course setting has no significant variety compared to the other de courses. however, the difference in quality of course delivery may be observed between types of schools (e.g., private, governmental, rural, and urban). the government funds the governmental prep schools. governmental prep schools make free delivery of the courses for all regular students who formally attend the governmental prep schools. the private for-profit prep schools, however, receive money for their service. not-for-profit non-governmental organization schools also provide free education. there is also uniformity in funding compared to the international trends in funding de courses. when student participation is observed, the eligible students to join prep schools are only those who score greater than or equal to a cutting score of the ethiopian general education school leaving certificate examination (egeslce). this cutting score is lowered for females, students from the remotest regions of the country whose families live on rearing cattle only, and students with special needs. although the ministry applies an affirmative action to include gender, minorities, and special needs in the admission process, the enrollment to preparatory education is very low compared to the other peer countries. compared to the peer countries such as kenya, tanzania, uganda, and burundi, enrollment to https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index wariyo, asgedom. curricular innovations 33 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index upper secondary school is very low (17.7 for ethiopia, and 31.2 for peer countries) (donnenfeld et al, 2019; joshi & verspoor, 2013). the eligible instructors for prep school are those who are trained at universities for three years in a major field and obtained a bachelor’s degree. they also have to take an additional one year of professional teacher training to receive an additional post-graduate diploma in teaching (pgdt). pgdt consists of training in educational foundations, pedagogy, and school-based practicum experience. besides, teachers take additional continuous professional development (cpd). english language teachers have also to receive additional language training. aimed at raising the qualification of preparatory school teachers to master’s degree (masters for prep school teachers), the ministry of education (moe) has already been training prep teachers during the summer times since previous 6 years ago. therefore, the objective is to make all preparatory school teachers ma holders (joshi & verspoor, 2013; moe, 2009). when it is compared with the international college readiness trends, ethiopia’s prep school instructor eligibility system is unique. in another world, instructors are either assigned from university faculties or assigned from high school teachers to teach the courses. in the case of ethiopia, prep teachers are the only teachers for prep schools. since the prep courses were moved down from university to prep schools, the invitation of university instructors would have been mandatory. this may have been a demerit. in one or another way, the university-prep-school partnerships are important. the prep school course contents are prepared by moe. the courses are three types: the major courses, common courses, and electives. all prep schools, both private and governmental, teach similar courses that are prepared by moe in order to eligibly prepare students for college. in the case of other international de college readiness courses, the approval of the syllabus revolves around the state, the college, and the school. for this reason, there is a similarity and difference in quality among the courses (tobolowsky & allen, 2016). generally, the ethiopian prep program is more similar to de courses. firstly, in terms of course content, like some de courses, the ethiopian prep courses are believed to be college freshman introductory courses. secondly, the ethiopian prep uses both continuous classroom course assessment and the nationally prepared national testing assessment without awarding college credit. however, de courses use course grading assessments that award college credit. similar to ethiopian prep courses, de courses are more prescriptive and the role of teachers is low in course development and adjustment of the courses to the real teachinglearning contexts at schools. when it is compared with ap courses, the ethiopian prep courses have many differences. for example, firstly, unlike the ethiopian prep courses, ap courses are not university courses. ap courses are prepared by cb in collaboration with high school teachers and college instructors while ethiopian prep courses are prepared by the moe participating teachers also. compared to the ethiopian prep courses, ap courses are more challenging. also, the role of the teacher in course development is very high for ap courses than the ethiopian prep courses that are more prescriptive and has low teacher participation in course development. in the case of ap, the exams are standardized examinations, unlike ethiopian prep exams that are nationally prepared by moe. similar to ib, the ethiopian prep courses are a fully-fledged curriculum. unlike ib, ethiopian pp courses are local. ib is an internationally prepared and recognized curriculum. also, the ib curriculum is so broad that it is designed for elementary school, junior school, and secondary schools while the ethiopian prep curriculum is prepared only for grade 11 and 12 students. compared to the ethiopian prep, the ib curriculum is challenging. ib courses have college credits, unlike prep courses. also, the assessment system for ib uses https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index wariyo, asgedom. curricular innovations 34 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index standardized testing while prep is not. the role of teachers in curriculum development is very high for ib compared to ethiopian pp. the effect of the ethiopian prep curriculum on students’ learning outcomes is also studied by some studies in ethiopia. since the ethiopian prep curriculum has been applied in ethiopia, very few studies have been conducted on its effect on student preparedness for college. these studies reported controversial findings on its rigor in preparing ready students for college compared to the former socialist system’s freshman program complete (fpc) curriculum. for example, regassa (2005) compared the reading ability of the former fpc students and prep complete students and found that fpc students outperformed prep complete students in reading comprehension. demewoz et al (2005) also conducted a comparative study on the prep and fpc students on their self-efficacy and academic achievement and reported that prep students and fpc students differed to a statistically significant extent in academic self-concept and academic achievement in favor of the latter. the assessment the ap’s exam development procedure was observed in this study. the content specifications are determined for the courses during the development of ap courses. deciding the general content of the examination and the ability level to be tested for each ap course is the responsibility of the test development committee (dc). the examination is constructed by being guided by the topic percentages from the ap course descriptions for the distribution of questions. the representative committee from secondary schools, college, and university level teachers work in cooperation with educational testing system (ets), content specialists, and psychometricians to validate that the exam scores are meaningful from year to year and from student to student (hughes, 2006; national research council, 2002). the validity studies are conducted for the ap curriculum to validate the ap courses for college credit by measuring the comparability of content knowledge and processes required for the students to master the introductory-level college courses. the multiple-choice tests are constructed and pre-tested by dc in university classes to obtain some measure of the difficulty level and comparability with university courses. the ap’s dc works to design a multiple-choice section so that the average raw score is between 40 and 60 percent of the maximum possible raw score. during test development, test items with varying levels of difficulty are included in the examination. to make it clear that distinctions will be made between students earning grades of 2 and 3 on the one hand, and 3 and 4 on the other, many questions of medium difficulty are used (hughes, 2006; national research council, 2002). in order to create a linkage between the current form of the examination and the previous forms, a few previously administered test items are included. this is also aimed at maintaining reliability from year to year and examination to examination. the committee writes, selects, reviews, and refines free-response questions (hughes, 2006; national research council, 2002). ap’s dc members work with ap content experts and ets statisticians to determine which item type and format is best for assessing a given topic or skill area. as questions are being written and refined, the dc proposes preliminary scoring standards that are based on consistent criteria from year to year. in addition, the committee develops a formula for assigning composite scores based on differential weights for the multiple-choice and freeresponse questions (hughes, 2006; national research council, 2002). another issue discussed in ap’s assessment is scoring ap examinations. during scoring, the number of correct and incorrect answers in the multiple-choice section of the ap exam is identified. a correction for guessing is also applied. during ap readings, usually held at college campuses, faculty consultants score the free-response questions. the creation of https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index wariyo, asgedom. curricular innovations 35 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index detailed scoring guidelines is given due attention to ensure a consistent scoring system for free-response items. all faculty consultants are trained for this purpose, and various ‘checks and balances’ are applied throughout the ap reading. composite scores are created using formulas developed by dc. a five-point scale for awarding final grades on the examinations is used in ap assessment. those who earn a score of 3, 4, or 5 are described as qualified for the credit and/or enrollment in advanced courses at colleges and universities. boundaries for awarding ap grades, however, are reset annually at a grade-setting session for each examination (hughes, 2006; national research council, 2002). the ib’s assessment procedure is also studied. the written external assessment is administered globally in may of each year. the external examination opts to assess core knowledge and optional contents. the teacher’s formative assessment of the student’s practical skills (i.e., laboratory works in science subjects and portfolios in mathematics subjects) is analyzed against established assessment criteria. the teachers conduct the formative assessments during the teaching-learning process at schools being externally moderated by the international baccalaureate organization (ibo). the external and internal assessments are 76% and 24% of the final exam mark, respectively, in the experimental sciences. the ib teachers submit both internal assessment marks and a predicted final examination grade of all students they teach. the internal assessment component covers skills that cannot be demonstrated satisfactorily within the context of a written examination (hughes, 2006; national research council, 2002). an issue discussed in the ib assessment procedure is developing ib assessments. exams for all ib courses are written by chief examiners and deputies and are checked and approved by the exam board. within a situation that is organized and managed by the ibo academic staff, examination teams prepare the exams for each of the administrations. for standard level (sl) and higher level (hl) courses in a subject area, separate exams are prepared. single senior examiners normally write individual exam questions. these exam questions are directly linked throughout the exam development process to the assessment and the objectives to be measured as outlined in the program guides for each subject (national research council 2002). for some reasons, such as the difficulty of finding an appropriate trial group of testtakers without the probability of compromising security, the test questions are not field-tested. rather, new test questions are written for each examination period. the test items are not banked, and for this reason, the examination team plans to prepare a different form of examination for each session of exams. also, the new examination needs to be the same standard of demand as in previous sessions. both the cb and the ibo do not make use of systematic validity studies on the cognitive characteristics of the exams. the ib curriculum team specifies and describes the internal assessment criteria as a part of the curriculum development and review process in each subject. the examiners in each subject periodically meet to develop common understandings on how to assess each of the criteria. through program materials and training, the ibo describes the assessment procedures to teachers and moderators in each subject (hughes, 2006; national research council, 2002). periodically, the assessment structure for each subject is reviewed as a part of an overall curriculum review. the curriculum review committee (crc) also develops proposals for revisions of the assessments following a procedure similar to that is stated for curriculum review. then, the proposals are reviewed by the diploma review committee (drc). the chief examiners representing each subject group and senior academic staff from the ibo are members of drc. after each exam session, students’ responses are analyzed to determine that they fit expectations for each question. in addition, all ib teachers are asked to complete feedback forms after the examinations. they answer question items about both the emphasis of the exam and the content and form of individual items. emphasis is given to teachers’ https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index wariyo, asgedom. curricular innovations 36 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index feedbacks on the appropriateness of exam papers in hitting the intended objectives. the information gained in this way contributes to the exam development process for future sessions (hughes, 2006; national research council, 2002). the second issue raised under the ib assessment procedure is scoring ib assessments. the ib follows a criterion-referenced grading system. each test taker’s performance is measured depending on seven scale grade descriptors. these grade descriptors are prepared in the form of levels of achievement that students are required to achieve. the levels of achievement are strongly related to the objectives of the course and are specified for experimental sciences and mathematics areas. the descriptors apply in the same manner to both hl and sl exams. grade descriptors are, for example, 7 (excellent performance), 4 (satisfactory performance), and 1 (poor performance) for the experimental sciences are used (hughes, 2006; national research council, 2002). reporting ib examination results is the third issue discussed under the ib assessment procedure. the ib curriculum and assessment centre (ibca) sends exam results directly to secondary schools. the schools ensure the communication of the test results to students. also, the ibo office of a country communicates the results to colleges and universities. a profile of students’ grades is also available to schools for each examination period. the profile is available only for candidates whose examinations are entered by a corresponding school and includes predicted grades; examination grades, including marks for each paper; and internal assessment grades, showing any adjustments made. twenty-four hours after the testing date, teachers are allowed to use all sections of the exam in their classrooms (hughes, 2006; national research council, 2002). assessments in the ethiopian prep program were also compared with others. the grade 11 and 12 classroom assessment is accomplished in two ways. firstly, the continuous assessment that monitors students’ learning throughout a semester is applied in the class. this assessment accounts for 60% of all classroom assessments. the final exam (i.e., 40%) is also administered at the end of a semester. for grades 11 and 12, these procedures of formative and summative assessments are applied to make up the final preparatory school transcript of the students (moe, 2009). the second exam is prepared by the national educational assessments and evaluations agency (neaea) at the end of grade 12. this assessment is aimed at screening the students for higher education entry. when it is compared to ap and ib, the ethiopian higher education entrance examination (eheee) has differences. firstly, the eheee is all objective type examination, unlike ap in which 50 percent of the mark is given for essay items. secondly, eheee is totally centrally prepared. in the case of ib’s experimental sciences, however, the external and internal assessments make up 76 percent and 24 percent of the final exam mark, respectively. the process of developing the eheee is also discussed in the assessment procedure in the ethiopian prep program. the eheee is prepared by the neaea. the two directors, exam preparation and placement directorates monitored by naea’s vice director are accountable for eheee preparation, validation, administration, and scoring and placement decision. a committee consisting of the test preparation specialists, subject specialists, curriculum specialists, and experienced teachers prepares the eheee. the test items are constructed depending on the objectives of courses and content sampling using the table of specifications. in addition, the percentage of the items with their difficulty level, for instance, 30 % easier items, 50% items with medium difficulty level, and 20% of items with high item difficulty index, are included in the examination. before administration, the items are pilot tested and item analysis is conducted in order to maintain the test quality. during the item https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index wariyo, asgedom. curricular innovations 37 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index analysis, the test experts and the experienced teachers in each subject carefully observe the quality of the items (naea, 2009; moe, 2009). unlike ib, ap, and ethiopian prep courses, the assessment of de courses is through course grading that is accomplished by the instructors. this is because the de courses are college courses. as college courses, ethiopian prep courses’ assessment process must also have any relation with colleges like de courses. however, it is completely disconnected from its ties with the college experience. the ethiopian prep curriculum reviews that have been conducted in five years interval, did not describe any criteria by which the college standard of these courses have been maintained. the eheee test administration process was also discussed. the administration process is accomplished by selected coordinators and invigilators assigned to every school in the country. after administration, the answer sheets are collected and categorized by the type of exam taker, subject type, and by booklet code and packed by the invigilators. then, the carefully packed answer sheets are submitted to the neaea (neaea, 2009). the scoring system in the ethiopian eheee is accomplished through a computerized system. the optical mark reader assists the scoring system. the evaluation is, like ib, a criterion-referenced. in the eheee’s case, rather than calculating the cumulative grade point average (cgpa) for each examinee, the total percentages of marks earned from each subject are added, converted to percent for each of the courses, and added up to become the final score. then, the cutting score is determined depending on the intake capacity of universities, resource availabilities, gender, special need students, and the minorities by region (naea, 2009). instructional process. when the instructional process in the ap program is studied, what to teach and how to teach is decided by teachers every day. many factors influence these decisions: teaching philosophies, experience, the teacher’s educational background and familiarity with various topics in a discipline, and student outcomes (hughes, 2006; national research council, 2002). the ap’s course descriptions and teachers’ guides are unique when they are compared with others. the ap course description prepares content outlines and the descriptions of course objectives, while still encourages teachers to flexibly develop their own lesson plans, syllabi, and then bring their creativity to the ap classroom. the guidelines given to the dc for ap science courses include a charge to assess knowledge about laboratories and experimentation. for instance, one of the free-response questions on each ap science examination will be a laboratory question (hughes, 2006; national research council, 2002). the instructional process in the ib program is also studied. the instructional process differs from classroom to classroom concerning what is taught in an ib course, how much of the topic list is covered, how much time is budgeted to different topics in ib courses, and what instructional methodologies are used. however, the detail provided in the ib guide in terms of expected student outcomes directs teachers toward the use of specific instructional strategies. whenever possible, teachers are made responsible for building internal assessment tasks into classroom teaching. internal assessment activities ought to form a part of the learning experience of the learners and should not be regarded as additional to the teaching schedule (hughes, 2006; national research council, 2002). the ib programme guides and teaching notes are used by ib teachers in teaching. the general guidance on instruction is given by ib program guides but the guides also offer detailed suggestions about instructional strategies. the objectives for students are listed in the program guides. notes for teaching each topic in all subjects offer suggestions for teachers while underlining that it is not a must that these suggestions be accurately followed. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index wariyo, asgedom. curricular innovations 38 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index the use of action verbs in the science assessment statements informs teachers about the depth of treatment required. depending on that, teachers make decisions about the best way to prepare their students for the required outcomes (hughes, 2006; national research council, 2002). in specifying aspects of a subject to be assessed, the ib internal assessment criteria require that teachers should structure the classroom and laboratory environment so that students have the chance to acquire and practice the skills needed (hughes, 2006; national research council, 2002). when the instructional process in the ethiopian prep is compared with others, unlike the ap and ib courses, encouraging the teachers’ decision-making is minimal in prep instructional guides. the teachers follow the prescribed curriculum. they add a lower contribution to the context of students’ learning. the rigidity of the prep curriculum made the teachers the followers of the prescribed curriculum and the teaching-learning process nonadjustable to the pace of student learning. teachers have two guides that use during their preparation for a class: the plasma tv teacher guide and students’ textbook teacher guide. using these guides and other references, teachers prepare themselves for the class depending on the lesson objectives and contents of the day. the teachers also have to prepare their lesson plan that corresponds to the plasma tv lesson or they can prepare their lesson plan and teach without the plasma tv. the ethiopian prep curriculum follows the student-centered outcomes-based philosophy. the minimum expected competencies for each topic are stated in the syllabus. the teachers are expected to skillfully organize their teaching towards enabling the students to meet these minimum learning standards or outcomes. the assessment process is stated to be a continuous assessment with a percentage of assessment to be shared by a summative final exam test. one of the strong sides of plasma tv is that it demonstrates some teaching experiences that are not accessible to the teachers. some laboratory experiences and other learning experiences that cannot be presented in the class by the teacher are demonstrated by the plasma tv teachers. the weakness is that the plasma tv learning experiences are rigid and not adjustable to the pace of student learning. for this reason, the students are always felt boring because they skip many plasma lessons without understanding well. on the other hand, the english language proficiency of the students also highly determined the extent to which the students understand what is taught by the plasma tv teachers. conclusions the ethiopian prep curriculum was compared with other college readiness curricula depending on the criteria, such as the curriculum, settings for delivery, student participation, instructor eligibility and training, course content, assessment, and instructional process. these college readiness curricula are compared depending on their theories of curriculum, the shift from the traditional content-based curriculum theory to the modern holistic and competency approach to curriculum development is reflected in all college readiness curricula including the ethiopian prep curriculum. regarding this, gray et al (2014) stated that most of the curriculum reforms emphasize assessment-driven, goal-directed, competency, and fact-based forms of learning. all of the accelerating programs are also gradually transforming from elite to more inclusive. in order to prepare young people for the changing needs of adult and working life, an increasing emphasis is now given to new “key” skills and knowledge. approaches to ensure that the “essential” elements are included in school curricula include student entitlement, establishing compulsory requirements, and mobilizing consumer pressure (hughes, 2006). in ethiopia, the curriculum revision (moe, 2009) was guided by the identification of the core https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index wariyo, asgedom. curricular innovations 39 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index competencies, curriculum standards, deriving of the contents, and assessment from these standards depending on the minimum competencies that should be achieved. the researchers also tried to observe the breadth of high school curriculum maps in some high schools over the world compared to the ethiopian prep curriculum contents. the general interpretation shows the researchers that the breadth and depth of the curriculum contents show variety from country to country. for instance, one of the curricula observed was china’s current holistic competency-based curriculum (wang, 2019) in which the breath of the curriculum touches almost all holistic nature of modern human development. in addition to the breadth of the curriculum, china’s curriculum highly emphasizes closing the gaps between theory and practice. for instance, high school students take a long time in practicum. gray et al (2014) also stated that most developed countries around the world give great emphasis to language (literacy), mathematics, and science. this is also true in the ethiopian case, although the depth, breadth, and level of experiencing these courses may be affected by so many contextual factors. compared to other programs, the ib, in addition to its emphasis on language (literacy), mathematics and science, is specifically opted to produce inquiring, knowledgeable and the young who cares for people and who creates a suitable, more peaceful world through intercultural respect and understanding. regarding the breadth and depth, the ethiopian prep curriculum shows problems. for instance, some contents such as theology, music, and fine arts are very important ones that are missed. the depth of the curriculum is not to the expected standard. for instance, regardless of their high importance for students, the depth of technology courses such as it, and computer science is not adequate in the ethiopian prep curriculum. this is also partially caused by the shortage of resources. for these gaps, schools and universities are facing problems in responding to the effect of covid-19 in their teaching-learning at this time. it is found so difficult to train teachers and students to use technology at this time. for these reasons, as a holistic competency-based curriculum, the ethiopian prep curriculum did not reach an expected breadth and depth; and it is not in the standard of closing the gap between theory and practice. another big problem in the ethiopian prep curriculum theory is observed in its role of exposing students to the college experience. compared to the other three curricular innovations for college readiness, the ethiopian prep is completely detached from the college experience. although the prep courses moved down to grades 11 and 12 with the intent that they expose students to college academic rigor and expectations, in practice, they are completely disconnected from the college experience. as a curriculum, the ethiopian prep is a fully-fledged curriculum like ib, and unlike ap and other de courses. unlike the ap and ib courses that are developed by cb and ibo respectively, the ethiopian prep courses are assumed to be the former university introductory freshman courses. also, the ap and ib courses have similar pre-requisite courses in grades 9 and 10 (e.g., ap math for grades 9 and 10) whereas the ethiopian prep has no such prerequisite similar courses in the lower grades. additionally, ap and ib course development has another significant difference from the ethiopian prep curriculum design and implementation. guided by clear objectives, content outlines, and assessment processes, the schools implement, add, and reshape the curriculum in their local context during the implementation in the case of ib and ap. for these reasons, for ib and ap, the curriculum may show differences across schools. although the curriculum can show differences in design and implementation, the ib and ap standardized assessment is centrally prepared depending on the objectives of the curriculum contents. the central development of the objectives, the course contents, and assessment criteria is updated year to year depending on the timely inputs from local schools https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index wariyo, asgedom. curricular innovations 40 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index contexts, unlike the ethiopian prep curriculum revision that is accomplished once in five years. for these reasons, the curriculum is highly flexible and adaptable to the local contexts compared to the ethiopian prep curriculum. the vertical design of the ib and ap curriculum is also very strong compared to the ethiopian prep curriculum. the ethiopian prep curriculum seems weakly built on its pre-requisites since the curriculum is said to be migrated down to grades 11 and 12 from college. almost all responsibility of the curriculum revision is rested on the shoulder of the moe and the teachers have low contributions in curriculum development, unlike the ib and ap courses in which the teachers have the highest role in curriculum design and implementation. thus, the ethiopian prep curriculum is a more prescribed one compared to the others. the setting for the delivery of the courses is also another factor that differentiates these courses. for instance, de courses are college courses that can be delivered either in college or in high school settings. similarly, the ethiopian prep courses are college courses that migrated down to grades 11 and 12 and are taught by high school teachers. the ib and ap courses, like ethiopian prep courses, are taught by high school teachers. however, de courses are taught either by college instructors on college campuses or taught by college instructors in high schools. the critics on ap and ib courses are also there on their potential to expose the students to the college experience. the critics stated that, firstly, the courses are taught in high schools by high school teachers. in addition, although the courses are believed to be rigorous enough and equivalent to college courses, some critics doubt these courses’ role as preparing the students for college. the de courses, however, expose students to the college experience for the reason that they are delivered in college or high schools by college instructors, though they may lack a vertical design. in ethiopia’s case, the prep courses have a disconnected nature from the college experience, although the courses are said to be moved down from college to high school. moving the college introductory courses down to high school by itself did not guarantee the exposure of students to the college experience. these are due to: 1) the courses are not horizontally designed depending on their pre-requisites; 2) the students are taught by high school teachers although the courses are believed to be college courses; 3) unlike ib and ap, and de, there are no partnerships between university, the moe, and schools in terms of curriculum development and test development. to cover this gap, the teachers of these courses should be either trained in college teaching qualification level or they should be the college instructors themselves. the former ethiopian socialist regime’s freshman program curriculum allowed the students to take these migrated courses in college by college instructors. also, the students stayed in college experiencing college for one year before choosing their fields of study. they also had enough time and adequate information to think about and choose their fields that correspond to their career interests. another parameter by which the ethiopian prep is compared with other college readiness programs is the student participation or eligibility criteria. regarding student eligibility and participation criteria, the ethiopian prep has homogeneous criteria for all schools. the eligibility for prep school entrance is set by the moe for all schools depending on the gender, the region, and the special need. depending on these criteria, the moe decides the cutting gpa of the egeslce gpa for these groups. however, the ib and ap course participation and eligibility criteria are targeted to high achieving students. one of the weaknesses of the ethiopian prep program is its sole focus on affirmative action that targeted lowering college entry scores to support the underrepresented and disadvantaged group’s college access. the modern models of college readiness, however, in addition to using empirically developed affirmative action models, focus on research-oriented early warning intervention systems https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index wariyo, asgedom. curricular innovations 41 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index and multidimensional, organized support systems to make these groups college-ready (bragg & taylor, 2014; gansemer-topf et al, 2018). the ib and ap programs are often criticized for their discrimination against minority groups and low achieving students (lakes & donovan, 2018). compared to ap and ib, de courses are well known for participating low-achieving and disadvantaged groups in college preparatory experiences. to cover the discrimination nature of ib and ap against low achieving and disadvantaged groups, the enhanced comprehensive de programs, such as middle and early college high schools have been established (edmunds et al, 2010). these schools are targeted on the inclusive tendency in exposing all members of citizens to the college experience. they take on a holistic approach to support students to experience college. on the contrary, although early college students graduate from high school at a higher rate than those students from traditional schools, they are generally considered similarly prepared for higher education with students from traditional high schools (edmunds et al, 2017). in addition, the instructor eligibility and training was taken as one of the criteria by which these college readiness programs have been compared in this study. for ib schools, the profile of teachers is taken along with the schools’ profiles at the time when these ib schools apply to become ib schools for ibo. for this reason, the ibo assumes that these schools have competent teachers to teach ib courses. however, before teaching these courses, ib teachers must take a 3-to-5 days’ workshop at ibo. generally, ibo depends on the quality of the schools that deliver ib courses in determining the competency level of teachers to teach the courses. also, cb does not certify teachers to teach ap courses. cb delivers some 1to -2 day workshop to teachers, counselors, and administrators on the rudiments of ap courses’ teaching. also, the ap teachers attend summer institutes to receive some training on the pedagogy of ap courses. for these reasons, ap and ib programs are criticized for their less emphasis on teachers’ quality. the ethiopian prep teachers are normally those who are graduated with a three-year bachelor’s degree in teaching. the ethiopian prep teachers are not assigned to prep classes as soon as they are graduated. the teachers need some experience in teaching and a one-year pgdt diploma in teaching before teaching prep courses. the english language teachers also need some training in language and language teaching before teaching prep english language courses. years ago, the ethiopian moe started upgrading the prep teachers’ qualification to ma and this is good progress in the professional development of prep teachers. this move aligns with the assumption that if the prep courses are college-level courses, the teachers should be either college instructors or those teachers who have got college-level qualifications. the course content development also varies across these programs. regarding the ap program, the course description and topic outline for each of the contents is prepared by the curriculum development committee summoned by cb. the major ap course topics on the outline are accompanied by percentages. the subtopics are listed and provided for each major topic. the objective of the topic outlining is to indicate the scope of the course; however, the depth of contents and the orders in which the courses are taught are balanced and achieved by the teachers. depending on these outlines and other guides, the teachers take a major role in shaping and implementing the curriculum. the major areas of emphasis are given for teachers in the ap course development process especially in percentages. the percentage of the items included in the examination also depends on this emphasis and percentage. internationally selected crc takes responsibility for developing, implementing, and achieving a vision in each subject. the primary responsibility for curriculum development is also is rested on the shoulder of the ibca. during curriculum reviews, ibca staff works with https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index wariyo, asgedom. curricular innovations 42 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index the ib teachers who are selected from ib member schools from around the world. the committees for all subjects in a discipline meet jointly at ibca. the crc identifies topics to be included, reviews the assessment structure, and writes the assessment statements for each topic. a major feature of ib curriculum review is the systematic participation of subject classroom teachers in a consultative process. the teachers’ responses to questionnaires start ib’s curriculum review process. in the questionnaire, the teachers are asked about the instructional time spent on each topic in the syllabus and on laboratory work for each topic, as well as about the technology resources accessible and available to them. the curriculum committees in all subjects make revisions to the diploma guides for each subject. the revised versions of the curriculum guides are posted on a password-protected website for further teacher review and comment before being published. generally, the ethiopian prep curriculum revision follows four major steps: needs assessment; curriculum development, or writing the curriculum; implementation; and monitoring, and evaluation. during the needs assessment, firstly, the task force that will conduct and oversee the curriculum development is established. secondly, this group will conduct a situational analysis through desk research. thirdly, this group conducts the needs analysis and identifies the gaps to be filled in the new curriculum revision or development (moe 2009). the process of writing or developing the curriculum includes tasks such as developing the national curriculum framework; determining minimum learning competencies, flow charts, and syllabuses for each subject; and developing textbooks and teacher guides. the activities accomplished during the implementation stage are delivering training of the trainers (tot) workshops to introduce the curriculum framework and the new curricular materials. monitoring and evaluation include the activities, such as conducting formative evaluations of the curriculum and invitation of external evaluators for summative curriculum evaluation. regarding the assessment process, the ap exam allocates 50 percent of the total time to multiple-choice questions and the rest to free-response, essay, or problem-solving questions. students elect the colleges to which their ap scores can be reported for future admission. this exam makes students show the mastery of the concepts and skills learned in the course, enabling some students to continue, as freshmen, second-year work in the sequence at their institution. they can also be registered for courses in other fields of study for which the general course is a prerequisite. another criterion by which the programs were compared was the assessment process. in the test development process, the ap test dc consists of university instructors whereas the ethiopian prep crc does not include college instructors. the ap course content is strictly matched against the college introductory courses during development. the ap tests are also pilot-tested and validated in the university campuses. other than the assumption that the ethiopian prep courses are college introductory-level courses, there are no tracks that show the alignment of prep courses with college introductory courses during the ethiopian prep curriculum review. the curriculum revision at the five-year interval is also another weakness compared to the ib and ap programs in which the yearly revisions guide continuous curriculum updating. also, both ap and ib standardized assessment formats have percentages for objective and subjective items whereas eheee is totally objective type. the de courses, which are college courses like ethiopian pp courses, have also a significant difference from the ethiopian pp program in their assessment system. de courses do not have an identity crisis in their belongingness. this means that they are college courses as they are said to be; they are taught by university instructors, and their assessment is completed through instructor course grading. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index wariyo, asgedom. curricular innovations 43 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index regarding the instructional process, the ap and ib give the highest responsibility for teachers to shape, adjust, and implement the curriculum in the classroom settings. the teachers are given general guidelines that include objectives, lists of contents, methods of teaching, and assessment suggestions leaving the largest job to teachers. compared to these programs, the ethiopian prep follows a more prescriptive instructional process where teachers’ role in reshaping and contextualizing the curriculum is low. notes 1lemechageleto@yahoo.com 2asgedomamare@gmail.com references allen, a. h., jones, g. d., baker, s. b. & martinez, r. r. 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(2019). what makes dual enrollment work? high school counselor perspectives. community college journal of research and practice, 44(6), 427-444. https://doi.org/10.1080/10668926.2019.1610676 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index wariyo, asgedom. curricular innovations 48 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index submitted: may, 10th, 2021 accepted: july, 31st, 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index to cite this article please include all of the following details: süssekind, maria luiza & nascimento, stephanie (2019). just lingering, a complicated conversation. transnational curriculum inquiry 16 (2) p. 50-61. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> just lingering, a complicated conversation maria luiza süssekind1 stephanie nascimento2 federal university of the state of rio de janeiro, brazil this article3 discusses multiple senses of curricula created and woven among authors and students, capturing classroom conversations and students' self-assessments at the end of courses that we, maria sussekind and stephanie nascimento, taught in pedagogy and undergraduate classes at unirio/ rio de janeiro state federal university, brazil during the last years. our pathway was illuminated by the theoretical contributions of professor william f. pinar who, from our long conversations between the years 2011 and 2013 and, as his works also point out, taught us the importance of unstitching theories, displacing knowledges and deconstructing theories. that became our understanding and approach to his work, drawing on currere (pinar, 1975) and its unfolding by the methodologicaltheoretical concept of complicated conversations (pinar, 2012; süssekind, 2014). however, we were weaving curricular theory and methodology within everyday life studies in the brazilian curricular field (pinar, 2011; süssekind, 2012). to carry out this method, we used (reused) oral and written conversations captured in the classroom, arguing that curricula are complicated conversations that entangle and rhizomatize knowledge, biographies, feelings and cosmogonies, bringing from an indiciary archeology (ginzburg, 1989) different perspectives and notions of curricula and conversations, allowing for democratic learning with/in/of differences and displacing the dominant relation between curricula-knowledge-society. we, the authors, working curricula as a register of (oral and written) conversations that happened within classrooms as lived-experience (aoki, 2005), are trying to displace language not just in the learning processes at the university but with our theoretical approach to conversations, evident in the style of this article. in this decolonizing movement, we assume conversations are rhizomatic, in defiance of the modern western idea of authorship. arguing that colonizing language was born to be the register of slavery, constituting the erasure and invisibilization of those knowledges, epistemologies, cosmogonies and histories (santos, 2019), we defy the traditional academic template, using quotes from pinar as subtitles so as not to foreclose on but continue our conversations in each section of this article. the article is thus meant to be itself a conversation with you, dear reader and where our students’ words will also be interpolated, thus weaving a curriculum tissue texturized by theories and complicated by subjectivity and its history. it will be an implicated and complicated conversation. according to pinar, conversations are complicated because people are talking to each other. and because teachers talk not only to their students, but also to their own mentors, their own experiences and their contents, because the contents themselves are conversations (...) such conversation is also complicated by being informed, of course, for what occurs and occurred outside the classroom, https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index süssekind, nascimento. just lingering 51 transnational curriculum inquiry 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> as in the students' families. the conversation is complicated because it happens between everyone in society. (süssekind, 2014b, p. 207) so, if curriculum is a conversation and a complicated one, it is because it happens between people in schools or universities in their everyday lives, within classrooms and also in their other spacetimes (pinar, 2001), inside and outside, as seen in alves, cited in pinar’s (2011) research about debates in the brazilian curriculum field. curriculum is a complicated conversation, bringing local and global dialogues, influences, ancestries, stories and histories, cultures and allegories (pinar, 2012), as well as the interiority of each of those involved. for pinar (2017), curriculum is the seeking of the “history of subjectivity: how history is internalized and reconstructed” (p. 195) and this is not just a contemporary idiom of the conversations but a tendency or risk: “in this age of internet, time is flat-lined, when history disappears subjectivity shrinks” (p. 195). that’s why conversations must be seen also as texturized and in multiple layers, painting innumerable social and cultural lines besides those abyssal ones of oppression brought out by boaventura de sousa santos’ (2007) thinking4 including on capitalism, fundamentalisms, patriarchalism and colonialism. santos’ work provides a necessary social and historical context, complicating this conversation even more, traces evident in students’ speaking: beyond such conceptualization and the citation of authors, it says how much i got involved in this course. i recalled my career as a teacher, slum resident, the prejudices i faced in 2010 when entering the classroom at this university and the challenge of alphabetizing children with my sexuality as a cause for distrust ... (student xii, 2019) these elements, like capitalism, fundamentalisms, patriarchalism and colonialism, amongst others, can complicate and implicate curriculum conversations, leading us to extend the conversation to santos, who helps us understand, in the debate of the north-south relationship, the role played by science in reinforcing colonization movements at the university and schools and in their curricula. recognizing pinar's idea of complicated conversation, paraskeva (2011) argues that we should ask if this international conversation is challenging what santos (2007) denounced as epistemicides: "is the conversation committed on opening the canons of knowledge? or, as we fear and hope we are wrong is it an attempt to build a new canon? if so, it would be a disaster" (süssekind, 2014d, p. 73). so, as a complicated conversation between all forms of knowledge, not only those associated with science, curriculum needs to be considered from an everyday life studies perspective as multiple experiences, enhancing a complicated conversation within all knowledge forms, but not hierarchically. according to pinar (2012), curriculum is more than discourse or narrative: it is autobiographical and it is a complicated conversation that will surely bear the hallmarks of racism and homophobia, as we are all traversed by prejudice in hetero-patriarchal, racist and homophobic contemporary societies; and it is precisely how and where the conversation goes and makes the difference, since classrooms and society per se are spaces of sexism and racism in multiple forms. so, this complicated conversation that curriculum is, becomes also an everyday fabrication and invention (certeau, 1994) while it is, for pinar, a sort of discovery and articulation for themselves and others of the educational significance of school subjects, for the self and for society. (pinar, 2008, p. 140). and they are complicated... due to lack of transparency or selftransparency. it's complicated by how opaque are teachers and students to themselves and others. (süssekind, 2014b, p. 31) https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index süssekind, nascimento. just lingering 52 transnational curriculum inquiry 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> like physicians and other professionals, teachers can and do make mistakes (pinar, 2012, p. 18). the pressure over us is huge. (pinar, 2008, p. 151) while teaching teacher education courses, stephanie and i were talking with students and with pinar, who reinforced the idea that “[c]onceived as a complicated conversation, curriculum is a permanent effort to communicate with others” (pinar, 2012, p. 47). in this sense, complicating the curricular conversation is the constant struggle for social emancipation (santos, 2007), rising up against dichotomies, hierarchies and abyssalities (santos, 2001, 2007, 2010) in a permanent search for a horizontal, rhizomatic and dissenting movement that forces us to look, recognizing and exchanging, rather than annihilating, the difference. like the importance of ecology and dissent in teachinglearning movements. like surprise, astonishment, constitutive elements of complicated conversations. (...) surprise in the research. because research is committed to surprising, inventing and de-creating the social. (süssekind & santos, 2016, p. 285) during the january 2019 summer course, we invited different teachers, activists and artists to conduct complicated conversations and somehow enliven, color and bare differences and the different. these are two assessments written by students on the occasion, reporting that with the conversations, i was able to meet several teachers who spoke of democratic education in different ways, which shows me there is not only one way to democratize education, the more diverse the paths, more likely is to achieve it. (student i, 2019) exchanging ideas together often becomes more productive and a better way of learning than conventional teaching which often puts a lot of individual pressure on the student, where he or she is often forced to memorize what has been taught. the experience of valuing the ideas of individuals, uniquely and without pressure, helps their growth, and the class ends up having another path, whether to disagree or not with, which is also good for teachers. (student vi, 2019) bringing together the idea of curricula as complicated conversations and the commitment to democratic education5 was an experience with some strong learning that displaced us all. we have been required to escape from the total explanatory perspectives that take on the task of defining what is right or wrong, expected or innovative, prescribed or nonexistent. at the same time, we found ourselves crying, weaving rhizomes, hoaxing the writings (certeau, 1994), deciphering parchments (alves, 2001) and talking in a complicated way, emptying a project of unique future towards the north. above all, we were weaving collective and individual diverse knowledges, learning not to summarize and preserve consensus, seeking other forms to register the curriculum lived by the group: as a lived experience registered posteriori to our curriculum dislocating abyssal lines towards the south, the democracy and the ecology. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index süssekind, nascimento. just lingering 53 transnational curriculum inquiry 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> at the ecology of knowledge, as a post-abyssal epistemology, the pursuit of credibility for non-scientific knowledge does not imply discrediting scientific knowledge. it simply implies its counterhegemonic use. (santos, 2010, p. 48) because it is a curriculum designed for life, it has to be thought beyond the classroom, a curriculum that is real, always dialoguing with students, teachers, the community itself, as the demands are diverse. (student iii, 2017) by working with our own knowledge and the knowledges that the students brought from theorists and authors studied throughout the teachers’ education, like excavators, it was as if we were doing a treasure hunt, valuing students' ideas even in dissent, as quoted by student iii above. one question catches our attention: to understand curricula as complicated conversations requires working on dissent, which makes the recognition of the legitimacy of the other pass through the appreciation of difference and autonomy. that is why we have suggested that the final assessments should consider the currere method. in our reading of pinar (1975), currere is the idea that writings about curriculum are documents of excavation and displacement, a recognition that people pre-exist to knowledge and not vice versa. thus, students' written productions have value as an effort of self-rewriting and self-declaration of identity. currere is, therefore, somehow historicized, post-written, autobiographical and cosmopolitan at the same time. currere is also a complicated conversation woven from the self and many others that inhabit us. bringing post-abyssal thinking (santos, 2001, 2007, 2010, 2013) into dialogue once more, we will say that currere curriculum's practicestheorypractices (alves, 2001) and conversation are actions from nonlinear, experiential and co-present perspectives. with certeau (1994), we value an ordinary person who makes creative uses of culture and we invent new ways to train ourselves as teachers and to research at-from-with studies of everyday life. with pinar (2011; 2012), we learn to dig holes in our lesson plans (süssekind, 2014) by practicing complicated conversations with curricula in order to write currere (pinar, 1975). with alves (2001) and oliveira (2012), we dive into the knowingdoings of the teacher’s education curricula creation and its richness and disobedient daily life. in the curricula in, of, within teacher education and research, (süssekind, 2007; 2012), we have invested in the study of singular narratives captured in “complicated conversations” (pinar, 2012, p. 193) that happen in the daily life of schools and university where we perceive ordinary people creating (certeau, 1994) knowledge in education situations that value dissent, co-presence and cognitive justice-oriented practices (santos, 2010, p. 40), which “we think is important exchange ”(süssekind & lontra, 2016, p. 86). thinking of our complicated conversations as a practice of dissent, we compare it with santos' (2007) idea of intercultural or diatopic translation, which makes it possible to better understand curricula as negotiation of spacestimes, layers of silences and multiplication of meanings, redemption of experience and even invention of words, thus constituting zones of mutual intelligibility between cultures and knowledge. is conversation a possibility of post-abyssal practice in research? in santos, we find that "the struggle for global social justice must, therefore, also be a struggle for global cognitive justice. in order to be successful, this struggle requires new thinking, postabyssal thinking" (santos, 2013, p. 11). thus, by moving the abyssal lines of practicing co-presence and intercultural translation (santos, 2007) from a perspective of social and cognitive justice (santos, 2013) it becomes possible to constitute and to value the existence of more horizontal spacestimes of dialogues, in which different logics and https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index süssekind, nascimento. just lingering 54 transnational curriculum inquiry 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> values cohabit the same spacestimes. this is a properly complicated conversation, with glocal implications and whose existence happens only in difference and, therefore, in dissent. and as the students report it. the curriculum is not limited to a document containing discipline programs, or a well-written script about what should be done. a curriculum is made day by day, knowing the experience of each individual. that is why it makes no sense for a closed document that precludes diversity of thoughts. respecting and knowing how to work with differences is the current difficulty, we will not go into a pattern, let us be different. long live the diversity! (student viii, 2017) in an ever-complicated conversation, agreement is in itself an impossibility since the contents are themselves complicated conversations, for teaching is curricula creation in everyday life, making more complicated the conversation between visibilities and opacities. recently, pinar (2017) wrote that “currere, above all, is a turn toward the subject, and his non-coincidence with the self is perhaps the prerequisite for a dissonant education” (p. 197). currere is a complicated conversation with ourselves, our readings and wishes. that is why it is always at odds, subsisting in dissonance and dissent: it is resistance. the affront to traditionalism will be made by me, democracy will be practiced in my daily actions, and those who oppose it must do their very best to try to keep me from following. but i am sure that they will lose this battle, because respect for religions and their stories will be present in my speeches, conversations will create knowledge in the spaces i am in, the appreciation and recognition of differences and i will always defend a collective and multicultural curriculum, aiming to overcome prejudice and inequality, while building a democratic society. (student x, 2019) agreement, within a traditional learning canon, is abandoned in the name of the right to dissent, knowledge, autonomy of thinking and, ultimately, to democracy. student xi, despite noticing the authoritarian mark of a certain expectation of agreement, feels comfortable to disagree and criticize. of course, i don't agree with 100% of everything you say and i don't like the bad words (lol). (student xi, 2019) within a post-abyssal epistemological approach, we argue that classrooms with democratic practices are possible since they value the average person in their practices of invention, uses and consumptions, unveiling the daily life of teachers’ education, the conversations in which we form ourselves and others in the legitimization of the different, valorizing historicity, subjectivities, situational status, perishables, incompleteness and knowledge localities. not considering your baggage of knowledge is denying your existence. nothing can/should prevent anyone's existence. if i try to be like the other just to be accepted i deny myself as existing being. we must be careful when we self-deny or deny the other. (student iv, 2017) https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index süssekind, nascimento. just lingering 55 transnational curriculum inquiry 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> as student iv says, "to deny one's knowledge is to annihilate one's existence.” consequently, we understand curricula as complicated conversations that unfold into a profusion of narratives that can be "interpreted under the idea of curriculum political, epistemological and methodological crossings of teacher education and self-education” (süssekind & lontra, 2016, p. 87), always as unique, new and human crossings. thus, we understand that formation as well as the curriculum “is not that something goes from immobility to movement” (skliar, 2014, p. 26), and, in this sense, the teacher is an artist, and "the complicated conversation is his medium" (süssekind & pinar, 2014, p 16). (süssekind & lontra, 2016, p. 91) in this sense, investigation into learning-teaching-learning processes, professional education and curricula's practice, responds little to the idea of a curriculum as a list of objectives and content with measured results. rather, we experience that curriculum as a complicated conversation, a movement, a crossing, numerous paths. for aoki (2005), teachers are like bridges. this is what happens in all spaces and levels of education, involving planners and teachers, as well as the school community and society in general, their allegories, clichés, plots, historicity, contexts and situational ways (pinar, 2012; süssekind, 2014b). if curricula are crossings, if they are complicated, cosmopolitan, historicized conversations that bring glocality in multiple dimensions, which rhizomatically prevent fixity and suggest liquidity and fleetingness, then classrooms are spaces of event, difference and invention, of "manipulating common places" by conquering their own. (süssekind & lontra, 2016, p. 94) for us, this also means assuming that curricular practices constitute knowingdoing networks and subjectivities (alves, 2001; oliveira, 2012) as processes of permanent reconstruction/ recreation, invention and exchange between "ordinary" people (certeau, 1994, p. 14), although in this process, school is only one amongst many spacestimes (alves, 2001), which are, like us, made of this rhizomatic social fabric (süssekind, 2014). the daily invention of curricula is made in conversations lived and narrated, in meetings that are the conversations in the classroom. in the meetings there are exchanges of experiences with teachers and curricula as well as collectivesingular narratives, which are captured in the "complicated conversations" and studied from the epistemologies from the south. (reis, süssekind & lontra, 2017, p. 137) understanding, thus, the curricula as daily creation (oliveira, 2012) that is done through negotiations with major or lesser silences that are the complicated conversations (pinar, 2012), we thinkpractice (oliveira, 2012) the curricula as a field of experience entangled in the exercise of teaching, through encounters and narratives (reis, 2014). (reis, süssekind & lontra, 2017, p. 138) https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index süssekind, nascimento. just lingering 56 transnational curriculum inquiry 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> when we understand curriculum as a complicated conversation, academic disciplines are living traditions, dynamic, learned through participation (pinar, 2012, p. 194) talking to curricula as complicated conversations, we set out to think of classrooms and "the thinkingpracticing curricula in school everyday life as a creative encounter of different and common that go through the reconstruction of oneself, the world and even the contents" (reis, süssekind & lontra, 2017, p. 138). and so, we recognize that teaching is intellectual, creative, eventful, and experimental. in this sense it is worth understanding that curricula and writing are created on a daily basis (oliveira, 2012) as a complicated conversation (pinar, 2012) and that why is necessary to hear what practitioners of everyday life (certeau, 1994) have to say, if we want to understand knowledge as a condition of existence in the relationship between people, and, not as an individual property. (reis, süssekind & lontra, 2017, p. 137). since it is a curriculum designed for life, it has to be thought beyond the classroom, a curriculum that is real, always dialoguing with students, teachers, the community itself, because demands are diverse. (student iii, 2017) as we have already said, conversation is complicated because it happens among everyone in society, so curriculum is conversation, something that is done in an autobiographical way, being also group and societal, manufactured also in a collective and historicized way (pinar, 2012; süssekind, 2014a; 2014b). in teacher education, we believe, students learn the advantages of being democratic and alive. didactics and curriculum are not about whatever needs to be taught only, but also about the experiences students and teachers bring to the conversation. all of this should be part of the classroom and count as content. a conversational, dynamic, complicated curriculum. (student vii, 2018) therefore, we (süssekind, 2012; 2014a) claim that taking curricula as complicated conversations is, in connection with the idea of invention and everyday practice, to value its everyday creation aspect by returning teachers and students to themselves as protagonists (ferraço, 2003). such connection, the possibility of understanding curricula as thoughtpracticed (oliveira, 2012); as negotiation, or noisy auction (ferraço, 2003), points to possibilities such as thinking curriculum-as-lived-experiences6, a contribution brought by pinar from ted aoki (2005). in the same direction, pinar argues that the notion of curriculum needs to consider the conversation established between students and teachers at all levels involved in education, that is not restricted to the classroom, thus emphasizing personal/autobiographical, cultural/allegorical, social and political aspects, also the historicity of the subjectivity of the curriculum seen as a verb-concept, but also as a practice. while talking-thinking-making curriculum, teachers talk not only to their students, but to their own mentors, their own experiences and their contents as well, since the contents themselves are conversations (pinar, 2008). in a textbook, conversations may be presented as series of facts, representing a tentative agreement on what is truth, about this or that. so, conversations are tattooed by their time and have a certain direction or argument, moving towards them, said pinar (süssekind, 2014). for him, for example, racism is an indelible mark of american curricula and as many activities are planned, books written and anti-racist policies implemented yet, for the same reasons, racism will continue to be part of the complicated conversation that curricula are (süssekind, 2014c; 2014b). https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index süssekind, nascimento. just lingering 57 transnational curriculum inquiry 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> by taking curricula as complicated conversations, we abandon the possibility that a teacher in classroom may teach the same class, negotiating the same directions as another teacher in next room and, therefore, applying the same curriculum or the same test. by assuming, epistemologically, complexity and inventiveness, the power of creation, re-creation and invention in school daily life, it is not possible to sustain the existence/possibility of a scriptural text. also, it becomes a condition, as i learned from alves, to dive into the school’s daily life in order to listenfeel (2001) (certeau, 1994) teachers and the classroom's many layers of voices. (aoki, 2005) (süssekind, 2014, p. 1520) when history disappears, subjectivity shrinks (pinar, 2017, p. 195) i can't wait to meet you and continue that conversation we didn't finish yesterday stayed for today.7 understanding and writing, registering the curriculum as a complicated conversation, we intend to argue that it is an everyday creation that resides in the differences, as well as in the complexity, of human networks and the epistemological diversity of the world. in a school or academic environment, instead of exalting the world of different groups and practices, we need to draw from silence and oblivion the ontological and human significance of difference. through conversations and narratives, we can build meaningful knowledge of all of us, definitely disregarding the possibility of a total, unique knowledge shaped from any a priori defined common interests. a complicated conversation only exists as dissensus. our theorization is guided by the idea of a classroom spacetime as a rich space for collaboration, exchange and solidarity, with multiple forms of knowledge and interests which contribute to the permanent and infinite process of human and professional formation. the power of the collective and practice in curriculum elaboration must be placed in a theoretical place of irrefutable importance, being the finite means though the uses are infinite (certeau, 1994). curricula created ecologically moves towards justice, social, cognitive and epistemological. understanding curriculum as an everyday life creation, and as a conversation (alves, 2001), everyday life studies highlight teachers' narratives as a kind of political, methodological and epistemological research of choice. it is an epistemological turn that consolidates the idea that teachers' experience is defined as knowledge networks (pinar, 2011), very close to the idea of curriculum-as-lived, experience formulated by aoki (2005), giving newness and density to studies of everyday life (süssekind, 2012; 2014c) (…) no longer split by the dichotomies and hierarchies between knowledge, values, cultures. subjects of aesthetic experience, inside and outside schools. subjects who make themselves and their worlds, inseparable dimensions of word's existence, always impregnated by the perception of what we do, learn and re-signify. (oliveira, 2012, p. 9) research itself becomes a complicated conversation in teacher education, without prescription, method or protocol. there are clues, tips on following people, following the plot and allegory, as stated by postmodern ethnography (marcus, 1998). research, under this approach, is doing things together (becker, 1967, p. 21; certeau, 1994, p. 58). such https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index süssekind, nascimento. just lingering 58 transnational curriculum inquiry 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> work is about establishing relationships, sharing knowledge, building wisdom, being aware of voice stratification (aoki, 2005) as vigilant classroom teachers who want to reallocate the authority of knowledge, working less with logic than with experience (dewey apud doll, in trueit, 2012; süssekind, 2014c). strange but i already feel like an old friend of yours your blue all star matches my high-top black sneakers8 everyday life studies propose a theoretical movement that understands the curriculum as a conversation, as lived experiences, and focuses on the side of personal and common daily invention and creation (certeau, 1994). this is why the epistemological debate about research and curriculum in teacher education can refer us not only to pinar's concept of currere, but also to aoki's (2005) legacy, who understands curriculum as a lived experience and teachers’ stories as bridges to understand it (süssekind, 2014c, p. 208). this story demonstrates the colors and multiplicity that exist in the school classrooms, in the complicated conversation that is the curriculum. (süssekind, porto & reis, 2018, p. 5) notes 1 luli551@hotmail.com 2 stephanielaau@gmail.com 3 a different and smaller version of this text was published in portuguese in a book. süssekind, m. l. (2019) quem conversa conversa com. [if it’s a conversation we are talking with, not to]. in: oliveira, i. b., peixoto, l., süssekind, m. l. estudos do cotidiano, currículo e formação docente. curitiba, crv. 4 “as a product of abyssal thinking, scientific knowledge is not socially distributed equitably, nor could it be, since its original purpose was to convert this side of the line into a subject of knowledge and the other side of the line into object of knowledge. realworld interventions that favor them tend to be those that serve social groups that have greater access to this knowledge. as long as the abyssal lines continue to draw, the struggle for cognitive justice will not succeed if it is based solely on the idea of a more equitable distribution of scientific knowledge. apart from the fact that such a distribution is impossible under the conditions of capitalism and colonialism, scientific knowledge has intrinsic limits to the kind of intervention it promotes in the real world. in the ecology of knowledge, as a post-abyssal epistemology, the pursuit of credibility for non-scientific knowledge does not imply discrediting scientific knowledge. it simply implies its counter-hegemonic use” (santos, 2010, p.48). 5 democratic education, whose definition has been socially and historically disputed and built as a "permanent process of democratization in which the school is not a ready and finished institution, since democracy only exists if and when it is democratically built from the perspective of respect for human rights and dialogue with social movements. for this, the autonomy of each school is the foundation of the democratization process, which therefore requires the emptying of standardizing educational policies in any pedagogical sense or sphere. thus, democratic public education is necessarily for all https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index mailto:luli551@hotmail.com süssekind, nascimento. just lingering 59 transnational curriculum inquiry 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> citizens, so it is popular, free, secular, inclusive, of social quality and is opposed to all forms of prejudice being-antiracist, antimachismo, anti-sexist, anti-misogynist, antixenophobic, anti-lgbtphobic, anti-adult centric, thus contributing to overcoming all forms of discrimination" (conape, 2018). 6 for aoki, curriculum administrators need to hear more of the stories that teachers tell by building a posteriori curriculum, such as reports of lived experiences. 7 all star. josé fernando gomes dos reis / nando reis. warner/chappell music, inc 8 all star. josé fernando gomes dos reis / nando reis. warner/chappell music, inc. references: alves, n. (2001) decifrando o pergaminho — o cotidiano na escola nas lógicas das redes cotidianas [deciphering the parchment — everyday life in schools and the logic of everyday life networks], in oliveira, i. & alves, n. (eds) pesquisa no/do cotidiano das escolas-sobre redes de sabers [research in/with everyday life within schools — about knowledge nets]. rio de janeiro: dp&a. aoki, t. (2005) layered voices of teaching: the uncannily correct and elusively true (1992), in: curriculum in a new key: the collected works of ted aoki. nj: lawrence erlbaum. becker, h. (1967) whose side are we on?, social problems, 14(3), 239-247. http://www.jstor.org/stable/799147 conape (2018) conferência nacional popular de educação: documento final plano de lutasetapa nacional lula livre. [national popular conference in education: final document strategy plan national stage lula livre. http://fnpe.com.br/docs/documentos/docs-conferencia/fnpe-conape2018documento-final-planodelutas.pdf certeau, m. de (1994) a invenção do cotidiano. artes de fazer [the practice of everyday life]. rio de janeiro: vozes. ferraço, c.e. (2003) eu, caçador de mim [i, the hunter of myself], in r.l. garcia (ed.) método: pesquisa com o cotidiano [method: everyday life research]. rio de janeiro: dp&a. ginzburg, c. (1989) mitos, emblemas e sinais: as raízes do paradigma indiciário [myths, emblems and signs: the roots of evidentiary paradigm]. são paulo: cia letras. marcus, g. (1998) ethnography through thick and thin. new jersey: princeton university press. oliveira, i.b. (2012) o currículo como criação cotidiana [the curriculum as an everyday life creation]. rio de janeiro: dp&a. paraskeva, j. (2011). conflicts in curriculum theory: challenging hegemonic epistemologies. new york: palgrave/macmillan. pinar, w.f. (2017) working from within, together. in: the reconceptualization of curriculum studies. routledge. pinar, w.f. (2012) what is curriculum theory? new jersey: lawrence erlbaum. pinar, w.f. (2011) curriculum studies in brazil: intellectual histories, present circumstances. new york: palgrave macmillan. pinar, w.f. (2008) a equivocada educação do publico nos estados unidos [the misguided education of the public in united stated], in garcia, r.l. & moreira, a.f.b. (eds) currículo na contemporaneidade: incertezas e desafios. são paulo: cortez. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index http://www.jstor.org/stable/799147 http://fnpe.com.br/docs/documentos/docs-conferencia/fnpe-conape2018-documento-final-planodelutas.pdf http://fnpe.com.br/docs/documentos/docs-conferencia/fnpe-conape2018-documento-final-planodelutas.pdf süssekind, nascimento. just lingering 60 transnational curriculum inquiry 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> pinar, w.f. (1975) the method of currere. paper presented at the annual meeting of the american educational research association, april, in washington. reis, g. (2014) por uma outra epistemologia de formação: conversas sobre um projeto de formação de professoras no município de queimados. 196 f. [towards another epistemology of teacher’s education]. tese (doutorado em educação) – faculdade de educação, universidade do estado do rio de janeiro, uerj, rio de janeiro. reis, g.; süssekind, m.l.; lontra, v. (2017) alegria nosdoscom os encontros: narrativas com currículos nos cotidianos escolares. [happiness within encounter: narratives of everyday life schools curricula]. cadernos de pesquisa em ciência política. http://www.periodicos.ufes.br/educacao/article/view/19030 santos, b.s. (2019) a três ignorâncias: arrogante, indolente e malévola. jornal de letras. lisboa: caderno ideias. santos, b.s. (2013) se deus fosse um activista dos direitos humanos. [if god were a human rights activist] coimbra: ed. almedina. santos, b.s.; meneses, m. p. (org). (2010) epistemologias do sul. [epistemologies of the south]. são paulo: cortez. santos, b.s (2007) para além do pensamento abissal: das linhas globais a uma ecologia de saberes [beyond abyssal thinking: from global lines to an ecology of knowledges]. revista crítica de ciências sociais. santos, b.s. (2001) crítica da razão indolente: contra o desperdício da experiência [a critique of lazy reason: against the waste of experience]. são paulo: cortez. skliar, c. (2014) o ensinar enquanto travessia: linguagens, leituras, escritas e alteridades para uma poética da educação. [teaching as a crossing]. salvador: edufba. süssekind, m. l. (2014a) as (im)possibilidades de uma base comum nacional [the impossibilities of a common core curriculum]. revista e-curriculum http://revistas.pucsp.br/index.php/curriculum/article/view/21667 süssekind, m.l. (2014b) quem é william f. pinar? [who is william f. pinar?] petrópolis: dp et alii. süssekind, m.l. (2014c) taking advantage of the paradigmatic crisis: brazilian everyday life studies as a new epistemological approach to the understanding of teachers' work. citizenship, social and economics education. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.2304/csee.2014.13.3.199süssekindsüss ekindsüssekind süssekind, m.l. (2014d) why a deterritorialized curriculum?. transnational curriculum inquiry https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/article/view/186041 süssekind, m. l. (2012) o ineditismo dos estudos nosdoscom os cotidianos: currículos e formação de professores, relatos e conversas em uma escola pública no rio de janeiro, brasil [the uniqueness of everyday life studies: curricula and teacher’s education, stories and conversation within a public school in rio de janeiro, brazil.] revista e-curriculum. süssekind, m. l. (2007) teatro de ações: arqueologia dos estudos nosdoscom os cotidianos. relatos das práticas pedagógicas emancipatórias nas escolas. [theater of actions: archeology of everyday life studies]. tese (doutorado em educação) 235p. universidade do estado do rio de janeiro, uerj, rio de janeiro. süssekind, m.l.; lontra, v. (2016) narrativas como travessias curriculares: sobre alguns usos da pesquisa na formação de professores [life stories as complicated conversations: telling about research within teacher’s education] roteiro. https://portalperiodicos.unoesc.edu.br/index.php/roteiro/article/view/9263. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index http://www.periodicos.ufes.br/educacao/article/view/19030 http://revistas.pucsp.br/index.php/curriculum/article/view/21667 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.2304/csee.2014.13.3.199süssekind https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.2304/csee.2014.13.3.199süssekind https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/article/view/186041 https://portalperiodicos.unoesc.edu.br/index.php/roteiro/article/view/9263 süssekind, nascimento. just lingering 61 transnational curriculum inquiry 16 (2) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> süssekind, m.l., porto, m.m. & reis, m.s.a. (2018) the (im) possibilities of the common: an opinion on the erasing of differences in brazilian curriculum reform. sociology international journal. https://medcraveonline.com/sij/sij-0200027 süssekind, m.l. and santos, w. (2016) um abaporu, a feiúra e o currículo: pesquisando os cotidianos nas conversas complicadas em uma escola pública do rio de janeiro. [abaporu, the ugliness and the curriculum: complicated conversations within a public school in rio de janeiro]. momentos diálogos em educação https://periodicos.furg.br/momento/article/view/5625 trueit, d. (ed.) (2012) pragmatism, post-modernism, and complexity theory: the ‘fascinating, imaginative realm’ of william e. doll, jr. new york: routledge. submitted: november, 20th, 2019. approved: december, 03rd, 2019. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index https://medcraveonline.com/sij/sij-02-00027 https://medcraveonline.com/sij/sij-02-00027 https://periodicos.furg.br/momento/article/view/5625 microsoft word kelly final.doc to cite this article please include all of the following details: kelly, vicky (2010). finding face, finding heart, and finding foundation: life writing and the transformation of educational practice. transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> finding face, finding heart, and finding foundation: life writing and the transformation of educational practice vicki kelly simon fraser university other people’s stories are as varied as the landscapes and the languages of the world; and the storytelling traditions to which they belong tell the different truths of religion and science, of history and the arts. they tell people where they came from, and why they are here; how to live, and sometimes how to die. j. edward chamberlin. if this is your land, where are your stories? the truth about stories is that that’s all we are. “you can’t understand the world without telling a story,” the anishinabe writer gerald visenor tells us. “there isn’t a center to the world but a story.” thomas king. the truth about stories: a native narrative. kelly: finding face, finding heart, and finding foundation transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 83 indigenous peoples throughout canada and the world have sustained their unique worldviews and associated knowledge systems for millennia, even while undergoing major social upheavals and transformations. many of the core values, beliefs and practices associated with those worldviews have survived and are beginning to be recognized as having an adaptive integrity that is as valid for today's generation as it was for generations past. the depth of indigenous knowledge, rooted in the long inhabitation of a particular place, offers lessons that can benefit everyone as we search for more satisfying and sustainable ways to live on this planet. indigenous epistemologies acknowledge the individual journey of lifelong learning as a pathway, a sacred way of moving toward completeness or fully becoming one’s potential. through our journey toward wholeness we are gifting our essence to the multitude of unique essences, which make up our world. this profound reciprocal sense that “we are all related, we are all related, we are all related” is central to indigenous ways of knowing, being and participating in the world. in this process we are at once poised between an environmental ecology and a spiritual ecology (cajete, 1994). together they create our one world. we embrace and enact a pedagogy of place within landscapes of the natural surroundings, family and community, and the affective foundations of a life lived in a respectful reciprocal relationship with the world. in this relationship we are interwoven with our own ecologies and the places we are “indigenous” to. these complex ecologies involve the four elements of earth, water, air, and fire; our relatives the plants and animals; our sisters and brothers around the world; as well as the manitous that coinhabit these places with us. they fashion and form unique natural patterns that ultimately become our patterns. our own understanding of our indigeneity in relationship to our place and our interconnectedness with our environmental ecology leaves a qualitative signature deep within our physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual identities. we also embrace and enact a subtle pedagogy of the imagination through our participation in the spiritual ecological foundations of our lives in art, myth and vision (cajete, 1994). those stories, artistic images and emerging visions that accompany us on our journey create psychological landscapes, soul spaces and unique ecologies where we dwell. these are the ecologies that nourish our learning spirits. the implicit goal of indigenous education is finding face (identity), finding heart (passion) and finding foundation (vocation); this is the destination to which the various pathways of indigenous pedagogy lead; we are endeavouring to “look to the mountain” (cajete, 1994). environmental relationship, myth, visionary traditions, traditional arts, tribal community, and nature-centered spirituality have traditionally formed the foundations of indigenous life. these elements formed a context for discovering one’s true face (character, potential, identity), one’s heart (soul, creative self, true passion), and one’s foundation (true work, vocation), all of which lead to expression of a complete life. (cajete, 1999, p. 77) the journey toward wholeness and the good life follows the tradition of “looking to the mountain” and the ancient pathway or sacred way that meanders through or kelly: finding face, finding heart, and finding foundation transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 84 traverses our environmental and spiritual ecologies. however, it is through life writing that i began to understand the true value of “looking from the mountain.” in writing i was engaged in the act of stopping and attending to the lived landscapes of my life from a distance in time and space. i began to read the patterns in new ways because distance created perspective and an achieved height of land allowed me to trace my meandering. it was as though i was looking from the mountaintop and could clearly see both the landscape and my own pathway. i was following my own act of navigating through life. i was witnessing my wayfinding by tracking my lived experience. though life writing i began the practice of re-membering and dwelling in specific places within my lived landscape. i began tracking my own story. as i heard my own voice tell the story and as i relived the experiences through the writing i noticed new patterns emerging. i then began to follow the threads of connection. i was engaged in the traditional practice of tracking and using the skills i had acquired as a child now in the pursuit of living inquiry (meyer, 2006). indigenous traditions honour the act of hunting or the searching for sustenance as a profound discipline. “the hunter of good heart is a metaphoric ideal that reveals the nature of journeying toward completion” (cajete, 1994, p. 58). it requires great skill to follow the spoor or track left by a living creature. i was being schooled as i engaged in the practice of tracking and in the sacred art in hunting or finding life’s meaning. cajete indicates that at the heart of an indigenous pedagogy is the act of tracking the concentric circles of relationship (cajete, 1994). this act of tracking allowed me to follow the pathway of my own lived curriculum and to explore both my environmental ecology as well as my spiritual ecology from a new perspective. i was “looking from the mountain.” this is the conceptual framework that informs my living inquiry (meyer, 2006). kelly: finding face, finding heart, and finding foundation transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 85 in this article i explore the threads of a specific autobiographical inquiry and i braid these threads into strands that are woven into the patterning that emerges in the following métissage. it is an in-depth study, a living inquiry (meyer, 2006), in which a life writing method of life review, and an arts-based inquiry using visual arts practices and reflection are incorporated in order to discover formative experiences which have influenced my evolving artist/teacher/researcher self and chosen life path within the larger context of my personal narrativei. by reflecting on one’s life through a reverse review, backwards viewing or “looking from the mountain,” key incidents emerge from the panorama of lived experience. these pivotal moments are threaded and braided, creating strands that are then woven into the emerging patterns of an evolving métis sash, a métissage. this living inquiry is intimately connected to finding face (identity), finding heart (passion), and finding foundation (vocation) on my life long journey and has been greatly deepened and broadened by my practice of life writing. in my work with in-service teachers we explore their experiences of the visual arts, life writing, living and poetic inquiry during their action research projects while engaged in a master of education in educational practice. using life writing, métissage and other forms of autobiographical writing, they present their experiences of living inquiry within communities of inquiry. this practice of life writing by imaging and storying reveals the events that led to the development of a particular line of inquiry and how this eventually informs, revises and revitalizes teachers’ educational practice. it awakens and enables them to find face, find heart, and find foundation through engaging in a pedagogy of place in an emerging environmental ecology of being, and nurtures a spiritual ecology by cultivating personal mythology, artistic practice and spiritual vision to the end of transforming educational practice. the teacher research explored in these courses emerged out of my own living inquiry and life writing. in the following métissage i share examples from my own living inquiry and life writing. i describe moments in my life-long journey of finding face, finding heart, and finding foundation. for it was through the following experiences that i came to know the profound impact that autobiographical inquiry and life writing can have on an individual and how it can ultimately transform one’s educational practice. now, listen…i will tell the tale of my finding face, finding heart and finding foundation…listen to my telling…. i was placed on this earth in a particular place. my being entered a particular ecology and it was in this location that my senses and sensibilities were schooled. i came open to all the impress of the world ready to attend to her, to bend and blend with her. she in turn guided not only what i bumped into but shaped how i encountered it. the pedagogical relationship of the senses to a particular environment creates the finely tuned instrument, the organism for perceiving and ultimately for knowing in that place. it is a process of enacting of the subtle pedagogy of place within a particular environmental ecology. i also grew up within the context of competing cosmologies. i was born into two creation stories, one that honoured life and the creator, kitche manitou, through the reading of signs in the book of nature while the other found truth and god through reading words in the printed pages of the bible. later i encountered a third creation story, one i learned at school and one in which the world was initiated by a random anomaly. kelly: finding face, finding heart, and finding foundation transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 86 you see, i am métis, irish/scotch and anishinabe. the métis are people of mixed marriages, mixed blood and mixed heritages. as a nation the métis are also one of the aboriginal peoples recognized by the canadian constitution. as a half-breed my life is woven through and through by the various threads of mixed and mixing identities. it is a living métissage. in what follows i will begin by sharing with you a creation story that you may not know, the anishinabe story of creation. i will then tell some of my own creation stories. i will describe key events, which arise out of the vital patterning of my life, the braiding of my various selves into a métis sash, creating a living métissage. the first pair of stories tell of being seen, the second describes my first encounter with art making, with creating, and the third describes the moment when i decided to follow this pathway that i am now on as an artist/educator, my way of finding identity, passion and vocation. ultimately this métissage is about seeing and being seen, of knowing and being known. now, listen…i will tell the tale of my finding face… listen to my telling…. kitche manitou, the great spirit, beheld a vision. in this dream he saw a vast sky filled with stars, sun, moon, and earth. he saw an earth made of mountains and valleys, islands and lakes, plains and forests. he saw trees and flowers, grasses, and vegetables. he saw walking, flying, swimming, and crawling beings. he witnessed the birth, growth, and the end of things. at the same time he saw things live on. amidst change there is constancy. kitche manitou heard songs, wailings, stories. he touched wind and rain. he felt love and hate, fear and courage, joy and sadness. kitche manitou meditated to understand his vision. in his wisdom kitche manitou understood that his vision had to be fulfilled. kitche manitou was to bring into being what he had seen, heard, and felt…. (johnston, 1976, p. 12) being seen: finding face i had the opportunity to visit a few sessions given by david bouchard, a métis author a while back. he spoke to secondary students about his own journey as a student and educator, both in the role of teacher and principal, with dyslexia. with the educators attending a professional development day he spoke of the personal journey with kelly: finding face, finding heart, and finding foundation transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 87 dyslexia and of his experiences as a person who learned of his métis heritage late in life. he found out he was métis when he was 40 years old. before that time he did not know of his aboriginal ancestry, and thus had lived his life without this knowledge, a whole part of his identity was silenced, a whole side of his face was not seen. when i sat there in the audience hearing him play the native flute and speaking his words i was aware of a whole flood of emotions simultaneously demanding attention. i felt my heart twist painfully in resonance with his pain and my feelings swelled like a tsunami wave and tears welled in my eyes. then he said: “i tell my own story for those others who share this journey. i am proud to be métis. i tell my story for all those who live the reality of my story. and the stories i write are for all those known and unknown grandmothers, our kokums.” unexpectedly, i was transported back to sioux lookout when i was 16 years old and i was sitting with friends celebrating a birthday in the old sioux lookout hotel. i was up for the summer staying with my grandparents in the same town where my parents grew up. i was working as a lifeguard on the same lake around which their community nestled, swam where they used to swim and rode my bike past were my dad played hockey. lac seul is one in a long series of lakes that runs form sioux lookout as far west as ear falls where my parents were living when i arrived in this world. ear falls is almost 100 kilometers by water on the other side of the lake from where my parents were born. my father drove 2 hours on a bush road to take my mother to the red lake indian hospital where i was born. northwestern ontario and the boreal forest dotted with thousands of lakes is my home, it is the place i am from, my place and the place of my people. yes, there i was underage sitting in a bar because my friend the head lifeguard was turning 21. i was sitting there listening and joining in the laughter when an aboriginal man suddenly sat down beside me at the table. startled, i looked at him questioningly, but he just sat there silently looking at me. i sensed his presence and was drawn to look at him, and as i did our gaze met and he captured my full attention. i felt like his intense gaze met mine and that his seeing penetrated deeply into my soul. i felt like he was looking into the centre of my being. no one had ever looked at me that way. when something distracted me and i looked away or joined the casual conversation at the table, i could hear him humming and then quietly singing: “oh the games people play now…every night and every day now….” when i returned my gaze to his he would stop singing. he introduced himself as an oji-cree artist from sandy lake, one of the fly-in communities north of sioux lookout. i began to feel more comfortable and studied him intently. his name was carl ray and he told me he was unveiling a large mural depicting the creation of the world the next day. he invited me to attend the unveiling. throughout our conversation i felt looked at or seen in a way i had never experienced before. i felt seen and known for who i was. he saw and awakened my aboriginal self, lying deep within me. he recognized and honoured my indigenous identity as no one had ever done before. i went the next day to the unveiling of the mural. kitche manitou, as a thunderbird with outstretched wings, glided across the painted portrayal of the creation story i knew so well. flowing out of the tail feathers of the great spirit flowed the gift of life. it pulsed into all creation, into the bear, the wolf, the moose, the crawlers, the swimmers, the wingeds, all the plants and animals. carl unveiled the magnificent mural not once kelly: finding face, finding heart, and finding foundation transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 88 but three or four times. humbly he would climb the ladder and cover and uncover his creation as the cbc reporter filmed. the reporter did not seem to see the greatness of the vision nor the magnitude of indigenous insight depicted in the creation scene. he did not seem to notice the intense and astonishing artistry before him. he did not honour carl as the great artist i now know him to be. he did not see, respect or know who and what lay before him. it was only much later i learned that carl ray (cree) was born on the sandy lake reserve in 1943. the sandy lake area was known as the birthplace of the woodland school of art, founded by artists such as norval morrisseau, the kakegamic brothers and carl ray himself. primarily a self-taught artist, carl’s early images were heavily influenced by the secret legends of the ojibway/cree people. these legends, held sacred by his people due to tribal custom, were previously unrecorded. he also learned much about ojibway legend from his grandfather, one of the most revered medicine men from his area. as a young man carl spent much of his early life hunting, trapping and fishing. through these experiences he gained an appreciation for his natural surroundings, which also contributed to his imagery. carl ray was a friend and apprentice of norval morrisseau, the ojibway shaman artist. together they painted the large mural for the canadian government representing their vision of native people in canada for expo '67 in montreal. carl ray had a unique x-ray style of painting, often showing the inner organs and energy lines inside an animal or figure. his subjects were often shown in turmoil with the elements. to carl life was full of conflict and redemption. towards the end of his life his focus grew more personal and reflected his own inner turmoil. he had shared the creation stories and the legends of the sandy lake cree with an outsider, a researcher, and as a result had been ostracized by his community. soon after my meeting with him carl ray was fatally stabbed at 35 years of age, at sioux lookout, during a domestic dispute in 1979. meeting carl and honouring his legacy has profoundly impacted me as an artist and indigenous scholar. i am left wondering if his life journey would have been quite different if others had seen him and truly honoured his finding face as he had honoured me. kelly: finding face, finding heart, and finding foundation transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 89 there was one other time when i was truly seen and had a deep sense of my identity awaken within me. i was in nova scotia guiding for coastal adventures, which offered eco-tours with sea kayaking and hiking. we were a group of thirteen or so paddling around the tip of cape breton island having departed from cheticamp on our way by bay st. lawrence to cabot landing. as we were paddling along in small groups our attention was gradually drawn to a pod of whales swimming parallel to our course along the shore but some distance from land. we rafted up and decided that those who wanted to would go out to whale watch while those who would rather not would paddle to land, beach the kayaks, and wait on shore. i took the latter group to a lovely pebble beach and got them all settled with snacks and juice. then, unable to miss this amazing opportunity, i headed off to join the others. as i paddled along i suddenly found myself surrounded by a small pod of whales. one of the largest ones surfaced right below my paddle stroke so i quickly lifted my paddle. the whale glided along beside me, not making a ripple, and then slowly rolled over on its side and looked at me. i sat motionless as i gazed back at this enormous animal floating on its side and looking at me with the one eye raised above the surface of the water. gradually, i dared to return the gaze and found myself seeing, eye to eye, with a presence that felt so ancient, so wise. i was conscious of being seen, being truly perceived in a way i had never before experienced. this being looked so deeply into my being that i felt seen and known in a remarkable way. i felt i was looking into the eye of a vast primeval being. we looked into each other’s eyes, reached deep into the other, and i felt that even though we encountered entirely different worlds of experience, we felt deeply connected. i felt like the truth of me was known by this being. we were related in reciprocal relationship. we are all related on mother earth and within the weaving world of the creator. i had not been seen like this before except for the moment long ago while sitting in the bar in sioux lookout. carl ray had looked me in the eye in a similar fashion. i was being seen. understood as a sister being in creation, i was being recognized as indigenous to creation. my indigenous self was seen and honoured—the part of my métis self that so often went unseen by others, unknown in the world, the part that only felt at home in the wilderness where i grew up. my face was now twice seen and recognized by an-other. i was indeed finding face. now listen…i will tell the tale of finding heart…listen to my telling…. in his wisdom kitche manitou understood that his vision had to be fulfilled. kitche manitou was to bring into being what he has seen, heard, and felt. out of nothing he made rock, water, fire, and wind. into each he breathed the breath of life. on each he bestowed with his breath a different essence and nature. each substance had its own power, which became its soul-spirit. from these four substances kitche manitou created the physical world of sun, stars, moon, and earth. to the sun kitche manitou gave the powers of light and heat, to the earth he gave growth and healing, to the waters purity and renewal, to the wind music and the breath of life itself. on earth kitche manitou formed mountains, valleys, plains, islands, lakes, bays, and rivers. everything was in its place; everything was beautiful. kelly: finding face, finding heart, and finding foundation transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 90 then kitche manitou made the plant beings. these were four kinds: flowers, grasses, trees, and vegetables. to each he gave a spirit of life, growth, healing and beauty. each he placed where it would be the most beneficial, and lend to the earth the greatest beauty and harmony and order. after plants, kitche manitou created animal beings conferring on each special powers and natures. there were two-leggeds, four-leggeds, wingeds and swimmers. last of all he made the human beings. though last in the order of creation, least in the order of dependence, and weakest in bodily powers, human beings had the greatest gift—the power to dream. (johnston, 1976, p. 12) my creation story: finding heart my first experience of art making was when i was 19 years old. i had left home and set off on a train, travelling southeast. all night long i sat in the sky-car watching the northern lights as they swirled, spiralled, pulsed in a cosmic dance across the heavens. it was a very moving beginning to a journey that would be profound in its synchronicity, a journey that would deeply impact my developing self for years to come. i arrived in new york city startled by its strangeness and waited for what seemed like hours in the port authority bus depot. i then proceeded over the george washington bridge into the countryside along the hudson valley. my final destination was spring valley where i worked in the garden, learned about organic agriculture and during a summer institute had the opportunity to take a course with m. c. richards, the potter, poet, and educator. kelly: finding face, finding heart, and finding foundation transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 91 i was somewhat intimidated that first afternoon, i had never done art. however, m. c. quietly dispelled this fear by beginning the session with a fairy tale concerning the enchantment of tamlayn. i sat spellbound as i listened, the whole story unfolding vividly in my imagination. for years i could not find the text of the story that haunted my memory but i remember her artful telling of it, even today. now listen…i will retell the tale…listen to my telling.... a long time ago in a far off land a fairy queen had charmed tamlayn and he lived captive in her enchanted forest. one day a princess wandered from the castle into the forest and found a lovely clearing where she picked a wild rose. tamlayn suddenly appeared to ask her if she had lost her way. they sat by the well in the beautiful enchanted forest and eventually he told her of his plight. the princess asked how she might help him and was told he could only be freed from the fairy queen’s spell if someone who cared for him would undergo the trial. they had to love him enough to hold onto him, no matter what he became. they were to hold fast as he underwent a series of transformations and when he became like burning molten iron they were to throw him into the well. the princess agreed and when she took hold of tamlayn he first became a writhing snake like an adder, then changed into ice, then fire, and finally became a dove. the princess had to discover how to hold him regardless of what he became. she managed to do so and at the moment he became like molten iron she threw him into the well. out of the rising mist he emerged cloaked in a splendid garment. thus, tamlayn was released from his enchantment and the fairy queen’s spell. soon after there was a great celebration in the kingdom. tamlayn and the princess were wed and lived happily ever after. after the telling, m. c. richards directed us to take something from the story and to sculpt it. i tentatively began to knead the clay. gradually the image that fascinated and took hold of me was the trial. more specifically it was how the princess was able to hold tamlayn through all his transformations. i began to form the princess as a sitting figure, not unlike the maria in michelangelo’s pieta. she had long flowing hair under a hood and sat circled by the folds of her long cloak and flowing skirt. at her feet on one side was the undulating form of the snake, on the other, flaming tongues of fire. she had a winged dove resting on one thigh and cold crystalline ice formations on the other. her earnest gaze was intently focused on her cupped hands wherein lay the power and gentleness to hold tamlayn steadfastly regardless of the transformations he underwent. she managed to hold him through all the changing embodiments of enchantment so as to eventually free him from the fairy queen’s spell and allow him to emerge in his true human form. i sat silently amazed and wondered: how had she managed to hold a shape-shifter in her bare hands? how had her knowing heart been able to undo the trickster’s enchanting magic? kelly: finding face, finding heart, and finding foundation transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 92 i worked with intense absorption as i humbly tried to give this image form. even after i left the studio, the image stayed with me. i turned it over and moved it around, pondering it deep within me. the next day i reappeared at the modeling class. we were instructed to take one of the aspects or images that interested us, concentrate on that, and develop another sculpture. i had been fascinated by the hands of the princess and started to model a hand in a relaxed, open position. i modeled it from my own hand and as i worked i did not know what i would lay delicately in the palm of the hand. finally, i decided on a little bird’s egg. in the heart of the hand i placed the egg, which represented all the unborn forms, embodiments of enchantment, all the un-hatched possibilities of transformation that tamlayn could be metamorphosed into. these hands of the princess had the possibility of embracing tamlayn with the kind of love that was so malleable that it morphed, allowing her to be so adaptable that she could hold him appropriately even when he became fire and ice. again, i was absorbed into this world of concentration where i lived with the developing imagination, oblivious to all else as hours went by. i finished the piece and began to walk in the forest. i was bursting with energy as i walked. i pondered what had just happened. suddenly i realized that the hand i had just sculpted was not unlike the nature of knowing or understanding in the way we hold objects and experiences close to our hearts. it was similar to the unspoken mystery that i sensed within the story itself. we embrace things of the world, which we take into ourselves holding them as unique and precious. we take them to heart, impressing them there, each in its own unique way abiding in our hearts; there each one echoes, resounds, and resonates. gradually we come to know each object or experience intimately as we hold its living impression within us. we know intuitively we must kelly: finding face, finding heart, and finding foundation transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 93 hold each rightly, in an appropriate fashion. we learn how to cherish each, experiencing it in its own individual way. if we manage to do so, each is gradually freed from enchantment to exist as living meaning in our soul. no longer is it clasped in the fetters of the fleeting mortality of the moment; instead it joins the developing imagination of understanding that travels with us our entire life long. each then transforms us and we become more than we were, more of who we are to become in our essence by embracing the essence of the object or experience. our essential self, our spirit, is like the un-hatched egg in which such mighty metamorphoses are happening unknowingly and un-seen by the eye of the world. our soul is like the hand that knowingly transforms itself to hold each and every thing or moment. it has the required gentleness or strength, the courage and loyalty in the face of the trials of life, to hold fast, to be steadfast in our becoming. with this thought, i stopped walking, breath caught, suspended for a moment and then i felt the impact of the realization: this is a thought, an objective thought which is not me; it lives separate from me as a reality beyond my subjective world. this experience of the story of tamlayn was and is a picture, an imagination of understanding of how the world is com-pressed, pressed with compassion into our hearts. this imaginative metaphor revealed a living truth to me and i sensed that although i could perceive it, it lived in essence free of my ability to perceive it. kelly: finding face, finding heart, and finding foundation transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 94 i remember at the time i was so excited because i felt that i was developing thoughts for the first time. i was aware of how i lived in the world predominately with my feeling life. this was how i experienced the world: through feeling, through doing; i didn’t reflect much. i always said that if the room was blue, i turned blue or was blue. i had such profound experiences in nature as i grew up and was sensitized, made more sensible, to subtle mood changes. in the midst of the intense experiences in the wilderness i felt i had to be able to withstand them, i had to find the strength to bear them. at such times, however, i did not think much; i always tried to silence the chattering of my head in the presence of such profound beauty. my knowing was experienced as resounding deep within me and not an echoing in my head. this was the first time i was able to follow the process, the movement from experience to thought. i was ecstatic at the power of illumination, the enlightenment that the modeling had given me. it was a treasure that i was to cherish for years to come. during the modeling course, i did three more variations on the theme that held me enthralled. one was a vessel, a crucible standing on a foundation with its form of cupped concavity flowing in waves. it was open, receptive and listening. it was fired in a dark shining glaze. the second was a tall round box with a sculptured lid, fired in the primitive outdoor sawdust kiln that we made as a group and which burned throughout the night. i burnished this piece by rubbing it with a spoon until there was a rich shining quality to the burnt black colour. it was designed as a place to put treasures, the dwelling place of wonderful things and cherished happenings. the final piece was a form that rose in flowing undulations and sculptured forms to a point. it stood strong, vertically victorious, and reminded me of “the winged victory” sculpture of which i had been given a photograph the year before. i can say now that the sculpture was an image of becoming and the rising up of the human spirit, majestically like the phoenix from the ashes in the crucible of life. the imaginations that i arrived at through the experiences of sculpture were like a portal, a doorway through which i moved into a universal realm where truths lived incarnated as a living spiritual reality. they were embodied for a fleeting moment and hovered about me as i tried to grasp them, bring them down, struggling to reveal a glimpse of them through the medium of clay. out of the most humble beginnings mere shadows appeared on the table before me, but the experience resonated in my soul with a magnitude of vast proportions. i had touched the hem of an experience that would lead me filled with longing on a life long journey. i was finding my passion in the arts, i was finding heart. now listen…i will tell the tale of finding foundation…listen to my telling…. kitche manitou then made the great laws of nature for the well-being and harmony of all things and all creatures. the great laws governed the place and movement of the sun, moon, earth and stars; governed the powers of wind, water, fire and rock; governed the rhythm and continuity of life, birth, growth, and decay. all beings lived and worked by these laws. kitche manitou had brought into existence his vision. (johnston, 1976, p. 13) kelly: finding face, finding heart, and finding foundation transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 95 communion with the creator: finding foundation i once visited wells cathedral, and as i wandered through the majestic building, i came to stand under the transept where there was a crossing or intersection of the different segments of the cathedral. there, in that place, one finds an upright figure eight uniting the upper sections of the roof with the floor. this lemniscate sweeps up in a graceful line embracing and uniting heaven and earth. there are moments in our biographies in which we stand poised between heaven and earth, like living intersections; we are conduits transfixed at a crossroads in the flow of time. these moments then become turning points or fulcrums around which revolve the resolution of the past and promise of the future. in these moments of communion we pledge to or enter into sacred vows dedicating our very becoming to the acknowledgement of the larger reality with which we converse. the following is a description of just such a moment, which had the potential to unite all dimensions of my previous experience into one spiraling vortex of becoming as i stood, a simple creature before the creator. i was finding foundation. i made the decision to study eurythmy, a form of dance, on an island in poohbah lake while i was on a canoe trip. we had spent the day portaging, wrestling our way through dense forest and up steep embankments to finally arrive at this pristine place. after dinner i sat there as the sun set, grappling with a deeply urgent, yet unresolved question. what should i be doing with my life? and how was i going to set about doing it? i was canoeing with my sister and two friends who had withdrawn to the tents after the long day and had fallen asleep. all was still as i sat there watching the wash of rose fade from the treetops, eventually the evening translucent turquoise gave over to a deep midnight black. gradually the small radiant light of the stars of the milky way slowly illumined the night sky. i sat there asking the creator woven into the world around me kelly: finding face, finding heart, and finding foundation transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 96 what it is that i should be doing, knowing that places such as this wilderness landscape were gradually disappearing. i knew that in the future i would have to go to the ends of the earth to find such potent places in nature where mother earth was as she had been from the moment of creation on the turtle’s back, when the creator, kitche manitou, the great spirit, breathed the living essence of his vision into all creation. i had come to recognize that these sacred places where one can experience the resounding spiritual presence of the creator in nature were receding before the invasion of modern culture. was i going to be a pilgrim longing after this presence, pursuing these vanishing places all my life? i was well aware that all that i had received though the subtle pedagogy of my experiences in such places, the rich environmental ecologies of my childhood and youth, were not going to be there for others who came after me, that such pristine nature would vanish before the next seven generations could experience the profound pedagogy of place that i had come to know. i had experienced a heritage that would not necessarily be available to others, and i knew that its legacy had formed the firm foundation of my being. mother earth had given birth to my being in this place; she nurtured the substance of my morality and forged my faith in the processes of becoming in life; she had shaped my identity, the very contours of my face. out of these eyes i could look into the world and the future with a richness of soul that would welcome a new creation, a vision fired by my passion in the crucible of life. i was finding heart and recognized that because of this heritage, the environmental and spiritual ecologies of my life, i trusted the process of being wrought. the pedagogy of place and the pedagogy of imagination shaped my experiences like i was a lump of clay or a piece of stone being worn by the waves of experience washing over me. kelly: finding face, finding heart, and finding foundation transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 97 with the sense of a coming epiphany i sat on the shore enveloped in darkness. my heart strained and quivered, and the mood of the moment filled my soul with anticipation. the event to come would touch my yearning soul like an annunciation. as if to reply to the question posed by my spirit, the whispering began. it was so distant and ephemeral that i was not certain if the horizons to the north and south danced with light. i waited, and the pulsing increased in strength, miraculously it began to swing and sway suspended overhead. the whirl, twirl and swirl of spun light seemed to hush, brush, and gently caress my soul, it moved along my blood even to my heart’s core. it was as if i was no longer separate in body lying on the sun-warmed rock but expanded and spread across the sky. i mingled with the pulsing, dancing light; the spiral became a circle that throbbed and radiated around a dark centre. my breath caught, my heart stopped, i was suspended between the horizon of my soul and the vast horizon of the heavens. the light gathered and intensified, suddenly it became an enormous eye, the eye of the creator, looking down penetratingly into my soul, caressing my heart, and touching my spirit. i was being seen. i gazed into the radiant iris and the fathomless darkness of its pupil; it opened inwards into an infinitude of being. midst the patterns of light and dark i moved like someone blinded, feeling like i was reading a braille script with the fingers of my spirit along the movements and outlines of coloured light in the heavens. the experience was so immense and powerful i felt overwhelmed. i quivered, trembled and vibrated. i felt like my soul sang, straining, vibrating like a string strung taut over the breast of the cello that begins to move as the pipe organ chords sound, resound and reverberate. it felt like the ringing shook and rocked the world, causing entrainment; aftershock waves began to rumble and echo in my soul. it was singing or speaking a language that i had the ears to hear and understand. as the great eye above me faded and the cosmic choreography in the heavens ended, i gradually became aware of my self sitting on the cold granite beside the silent lake, its still surface mirroring the starlight. it was also like an eye, a jewel in the kingdom of mother earth mirroring back the tenderness in the gaze of father sky, the eye of the creator. the earth and the heavens met eye to eye and i had sat between the two witnessing the dialogue, listening to the conversation. i too had been seen, heard and known. the conversation between spirit world and the learning spirit of the individual, i believed then and know now, is also the intent of our human endeavour. the arts act like this mighty medium that also allows for the intimate conversation between the soul of the world and the human soul: eye-to-eye, being to being, essence to essence. their created gifts, like the gifts of the creator, can be discerned or are heard by each of us, in a unique way, in a particular moment. through this meeting eye to eye with the creator, i found my foundation, my vocation. since that moment i have found myself on a vision quest and my pathway or sacred way of questing is through the arts. kelly: finding face, finding heart, and finding foundation transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 98 gradually, over time, my soul learned to dance and flow into movement through eurythmy, visible song or visible speech. i loved this art form and cherished the ability to sing or speak through the instrument of my humanity. my whole being was engaged, body, soul, and spirit, in the doing of the art. my path was to learn of the world through movement and my knowing was deeply connected to listening to the movement and following the reverberating songlines in my soul. the world told me of itself by my trying to create its reality through the language of gesture: to become earth, water, air, or fire, to become the landscape painted through the voice of imagination in the poet; to sing the tonal imagination of the composer; to be actively searching and creating through the movement that was condensed within the work of an artist in word or tone, poetry or music. as a dancer, one strives to speak with one’s feet, to sing with one’s hands, and to be receptive to the imaginations painted by the creator in the sensing or attending of one’s spirit. the movements of the northern lights are like the choreography in eurythmy, in dance. the sounding of music and language are made visible in gesture and resound within the movement. the instrument of our humanity, body, soul, and spirit join in the dance and give answer to the call: to have vision and create. i was finding face, finding heart, finding foundation, and finding vision. since the experience on poobah lake i have continued the journey and remained the hunter of good heart. on my pathway of finding face, finding heart, finding foundation, and finding vision i have been schooled in dance, the visual arts, and in music. i have found that the various arts enact a subtle pedagogy: a pedagogy of place, creating an environmental ecology within the art form that schools the senses and our sensibility; as well as a pedagogy of the imagination, creating a spiritual ecology that kelly: finding face, finding heart, and finding foundation transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 99 through creating art, story and vision nourishing our learning spirits. the arts and the artist’s way have become my pathway, a sacred way of finding sustenance by finding life’s meaning. they lead me as a hunter of good heart towards completion, towards becoming fully human. now listen…i will finish the tale…listen to my telling…. the creator had a vision and out of nothing he created earth, water, air, and fire and breathed into each a vital nature. he then created the plants and the animals and conferred on each special powers and natures. last of all he made human beings. though last in the order of creation and least in the order of dependence, and weakest in bodily powers, human beings have the greatest gift—the power to dream… kitche manitou then made the great laws of nature for the well-being and harmony of all beings. the great laws of nature governed the place and movement of sun, moon, earth, and stars; governed the powers of wind, water, air, and fire; governed the rhythm and continuity of life, birth, growth, and decay. all things lived and worked by these laws. kitche manitou had brought into existence his vision. (johnston, 1976, p. 13) finding face, finding heart, finding foundation, and finding vision. in the writing, or through life writing i have found that lived experiences began to braid and weave together. they created a métis sash, a swath of cloth woven of multicoloured threads and braided into varied strands. in the midst i began to see patterns that revealed and honoured my pathway of finding face, finding heart, finding foundation, and finding vision. these formative experiences when tracked became part of a living inquiry that deeply informed my work as an artist/teacher/researcher within the academy. this inquiry has also led me to share with others in a community of inquiry: how through the arts and autobiographical writing, through tracking life and life writing, there is a way of finding face, finding heart, finding foundation, and perhaps in our times most importantly finding vision. as the creator created out of his vision, may we also learn to create out of our visions honouring the fact that: we are all related…we are all related….we are all related…. “looking to the mountain” and “looking from the mountain” my engagement with the arts is deeply interwoven with my way of tracking and orientating in life, it is my way of “looking to the mountain.” my practice of life writing is deeply interwoven with my journey as a hunter of good heart, it is my way of finding meaning by “looking from the mountain.” my work with métissage is my way of seeking life and becoming complete by weaving the patterns of my métis sash, my métissage. it is my way of honouring my métis self and the reality that i am a living métissage. now listen…i have finished the tale…thank you for listening to my telling…. miigwetch kelly: finding face, finding heart, and finding foundation transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 100 notes i all images are original artworks by vicki kelly. this series of 12 artworks entitled, finding face, finding heart, finding foundation, was created in 2006 as part of a transformative art making and learning process. references cajete, g. (2005, spring). american indian epistemologies. new directions for student services, 109, 69-77. cajete, g. (1994). look to the mountain: an ecology of indigenous education. skyland, nc: kivaki press. hasebe-ludt, e., chambers, c. m., & leggo, c. (2009). life writing and literary métissage as an ethos for our times. new york, ny: peter lang. johnston, b. (1976). ojibway heritage: the ceremonies, ritual, songs, dances, prayers and legends of the ojibway. toronto, on: mcclelland & stewart. king, t. (2003). the truth about stories: a native narrative. toronto, on: house of anansi press. meyer, k. (2006). living inquiry: a gateless gate and a beach. in w. ashton & d. denton (eds.), spirituality, ethnography, and teaching: stories from within (pp. 156-166). ny: peter lang . o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: geletu, girma moti (2021). curriculum implementation using equitable pedagogical practices in primary schools: its efficacy in promoting 21st century classrooms, transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (2) p. 39 55 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> the curriculum implementation using equitable pedagogical practices in primary schools: its efficacy in promoting 21st century classrooms girma moti geletu1 phd candidate in curriculum studies at addis ababa university, ethiopia introduction scholars are advocating multicultural education and the theory of social constructivism for the reason that the globe is becoming a small village where we find heterogeneous society at every corner of the world. likely, they are encouraging avoiding segregation and promoting diversity in schools that provoke policymakers and educational planners at all levels in the development of intercultural competencies of teachers and students to avoid schools with low diversity (unesco, 2013; banks & banks, 2001). accordingly, multicultural education curriculum incorporates content integration, knowledge domain, prejudice reduction, equity pedagogy and empowering school culture and social structure (banks and banks 1995b). this ensures that the school curricula need to incorporate diversity as a cross-cutting issue through addressing religious, ethnic and other forms of critical aspects of education in the world in general and ethiopia in particular. this cross-cutting issues are in the positions to be implemented through critical and equitable pedagogical practices in the schools and classrooms. diversity in education represents large ideas and initiatives to create learning environments that are safe, inclusive and equitable for different identities in the school context as much as possible. practically, mother tongue education has a profound impact on a person’s sense of identity and well-being. more specifically, ethiopia is naturally endowed with multi-ethnic, multilingual and multicultural settings. however, this reality was condensed by the past regimes’ policies of the country for the political purpose of “one nation-one country rule” until the fall of the derg regime in ethiopia (etp, 1994). the discriminatory policies in the past had denied the reality of diversity on ethnic basis and insisted on praising the culture of one hegemonic group as superior mainstream and looked down into the cultures of other nations. as a result, these diversified people have been forced and assimilated to the mainstream culture. based on this acculturation political view, ethiopia’s educational policy was influenced by the unitary system of governance. western ideologies from the usa’s melting pot cultures and french assimilation policy were adopted informally and applied as instruments of mainstreaming (unesco, 2008). in certain multiethnic societies, dominant groups believe that their cultural practices are superior to those of minority groups. cultural homogenization is an aspect of cultural globalization and reduction in cultural diversity through popularization and diffusion of a wide array of cultural symbols (justin and zachary, 2008; melluish, 2014). this involves the process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/cultural_globalization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/cultural_diversity geletu. curriculum implementation 40 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index of assimilation whereby other ethnic groups are expected to adopt the culture and practices of the dominant ethnic group in the society. in the long-lasting hegemonic political system, without considering ethnic, linguistic and cultural differences, learners from nations, nationalities and peoples of ethiopia were forced to learn in amharic language of the superior culture as medium of instruction. however, multiculturalism opposes monoculturalism and rejects assimilation and the melting pot image as an imposition of a dominant hegemonic culture and instead prefers to democratic and glorious mosaic image in which each cultural group in a society maintains its distinctiveness to maximize the image of cultural pluralism. the cultural pluralism of diverse groups needs to be maintained by effective practices of additive and transformative curricula with integrated objectives, contents, learning experiences, activities, norms and values through application of critical and equitable pedagogical practices (banks & banks, 2007; banks & bank, 2001). in the development of educational system, there is a growing recognition of the roles played by language of instruction in educational access, quality and equity, particularly for groups that have been socially marginalized (adea, 2010; ollane, adama & glanz, 2011; unesco, 2012). as many students come from diverse backgrounds populate the 21st century classroom and efforts support to identify effective methods to teach these students, the needs for culturally responsive pedagogical practices maintains educational diversity among diverse groups of learners. since, today’s classroom requires teachers to educate students varying in culture, language, abilities and other diverse characteristics (diller & module, 2015). thus, the diverse cultures of students are expected to be addressed through effective utilization of equitable pedagogical practices in primary classrooms. the idea of diversity in education encompasses acceptance and respect of individuals from different backgrounds and identities (banks & banks, 2007). it means understanding that each individual is unique and recognizes our individual differences. the underlying philosophical paradigm behind adopting the use of mother tongue language for primary education i.e. the pedagogical advantages for the child and as a means of promoting nationality rights, the right to be educated in one’s own language has been acknowledged in the unesco declaration (unesco, 2009). each regional state of the federal republic of ethiopia has the constitutional right to choose, use and to develop the individual languages spoken there and to promote the cultures of its citizens (etp,1994). theoretically, this political assumption contributes to exercise multiculturalism throughout the country. in the journey of decentralization process each regional state became responsible for educational issues at the primary level meaning for instance, that regional authorities decide what languages should be used in primary education. however, a disparity in implementing the policy of mother tongue primary education between states, zones and districts restrict it to the first cycle while others extend it to the second cycle (getachew & derib, 2006) . the other defect lies with the practical implementation of this policy on children in addis ababa are forced to learn their kindergarten and primary education in amharic regardless of their ethnic backgrounds which seriously affects the promotion of identity. in oromia regional state, due to the presence of non-afan oromo speaking ‘immigrant’ minorities mostly in the urban centers, the use of amharic for primary education is allowed besides using afan oromo as a medium of instruction (etp, 1994). hence, multicultural classrooms embrace diversity and incorporate ideas, beliefs, or people from different cultural backgrounds. diverse cultural perspectives are put together to enable students to get a truly inclusive education by minimizing negative stereotypes/ prejudice reduction (banks & banks, 1995b). education practitioners develop or adapt appropriate curricula and pedagogical practices to accommodate the needs of different children although https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/cultural_assimilation geletu. curriculum implementation 41 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index variety and flexibility in the implementation of pedagogical practices and commonalities can be found (mesay, girma & solomon, 2019). thus, effective utilization of equitable pedagogical practices enable teachers to implement the curricula to the target of addressing diversity in the schools and classrooms. the 1948 universal declaration of human rights in its article 26 has introduced the basic principles of human rights to the people. regarding education, it declared the right to education insisting on the vitality of education for entire development of human personality (unesco, 2012). moreover, the document presented education as a means to promote tolerance and harmony among nations, racial and religious groups. it also authorized parents to decide the kind of education appropriate to their children. on the other hand, article 29 of the convention stresses respect for the child’s cultural identity, language and values for the development of national values of the country in which the child is living (etp, 1994). although there was critics of multiculturalism which argue against cultural integration of different ethnic and cultural groups to the existing laws and values of the country, critics may argue for assimilation of different ethnic and cultural groups to a single national identity (malik, 2015). by evaluating the the significance of inclusive education, education and training policy of ethiopia has recognized the diversity of the people and provided equal respects. in this regard, the policy places the way for the implementation of multilingual and multicultural education in ethiopia. the policy gave due emphasis to the languages of nations and nationalities to serve as medium of instruction. despite of the existing problems, 25 of 84 spoken local languages have already been chosen to become introduced as medium of instruction at the primary level to address educational diversity using appropriate language of instruction to diverse groups of learners (kosonen, kimmo, benson & carol, 2013; schroeder, 2013). moreover, experts of unesco recommended the use of mother tongue as a medium of instruction in 1951 (teferra, 1999). this mother tongue education should cover the teaching of the mother tongue as a subject and using the mother tongue as a medium of instruction in primary schools. our country, ethiopia introduced mother tongue languages as mediums of instruction at primary education level using multilingual education strategies and contextualization of useful teachers’ professional development theories and practices (girma, dawit & geberew, 2021). however, the effectiveness of curricular implementation using varieties of mother tongue languages as mediums of instruction face multi-faceted challenges. regarding this, educational experts of several regions, zones and districts decided whether the mother tongue should be used as a medium of instruction at grades 1-4 or 1-8. this demonstrated that the medium of instruction can not only be different within a regional state but sometimes even within zones of a region with a multi-ethnic situation. local languages are used as media of instruction up to grade 8 in the regions of oromia, amhara, tigray and addis ababa city (etp, 1994).the policy ensured the use of mother tongue at primary level education and is articulated as cognizant of the pedagogical advantage of the child in learning in mother tongue and the rights of nationalities to promote the use of their languages, primary education will be given in nationality languages (etp, 1994). hence, the study revolves around a comparative study of addressing educational diversity targeting by using afan oromo and amharic mediums of instruction in primary schools and its contribution for promoting the 21st century classroom. the following conceptual framework looks into education and training policy, and language policy pertaining to addressing educational diversity using two mediums of instruction in primary schools. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/social_integration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/cultural_assimilation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/national_identity geletu. curriculum implementation 42 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index fig. 1. conceptual framework developed from literature the problem statement educational diversity is one of the cross-cutting issues which needs to be addressed globally, nationally and locally. today, the 21stcentury teachers produce the 21st century students in the 21st century classroom through implementing innovative and inclusive curricula using equitable pedagogical strategies like different active learning methods, assessment for learning, utilization of information and communication technologies and digital literacy. such experiential learning takes place if and only if educational diversity is maintained in the matrix of the school system and classrooms. my long time experiences as an instructor, researcher and practicum coordinator in different colleges of teacher education allowed me to travel to different primary schools and explored varieties of cultural heritages, diversities and learning styles of students. contextually, the study demonstrated that there is an ambitious need to address issues of diversity into the ethiopian education and training policy. nevertheless, some elements of dimensions of diversity such as knowledge construction process and equity and critical pedagogical practices were not exhaustively treated (banks & banks, 1995b; sime & latchanna, 2016). likewise, while i was serving as practicum coordinator, mentor and researcher, i came across the diverse needs of students among afan oromo and amharic mediums of instruction in some primary schools found in fitche town. learning in a mother tongue language has pivotal roles in building ethnic identity and promoting cultural respects among different ethnic groups with diversified cultures, languages and dialects. with this regard: “international mother language day is celebrated across the globe on 21st february every year! mother tongue and multilingual education are keys to reducing discrimination, promoting inclusion and improving learning outcomes for all” (unesco, 2012). correspondingly, nelson mandela noted an amusing expression that “if you talk to a man in a language he understands that goes to his head. if you talk to him in his language he understands that goes to his heart” (2003, p.28). medium of instruction language literacy development language policy school contexts education diversity societal attitudes, awareness, motivation communities and their school involvement material and trained human resources education and training policy https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index geletu. curriculum implementation 43 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index educational researchers have been challenged by the diversity of students such as their readiness, interests and learning profiles but have not always adequately responded to students’ varied needs. they tend to rely on the logic of teach to-the-middle or one-size-fitsall approach expecting all students to do the same activity, have the same culture and work at the same pace. likewise, a shared understanding of student diversity is reflected as dynamic and wide-ranging because none of these qualities resides entirely within an individual in their brains nor in their genes since no two children are alike (meyer, rose &gordon , 2014). yet, achieving greater equity in education is a social justice imperative to increase the supply of skills that fuel economic growth and promote social cohesion (oecd, 2016; 2014). furthermore, educational researchers world-wise discoursed that teacher preparation is important to address inclusive and multicultural education and they are the keys to work with students who come from diverse sociocultural, racial and ethnic minority group (banks & banks, 2007).they asserted that teacher preparation should engage in critical and equitable pedagogical practices that should prepare teachers to build on the cultural differences of students and teach them how to develop and establish positive relationships among students, teachers, parents and community members at large. in multicultural society like ethiopia, one can imagine that “ the effects of power naturalizes the existence of no child should be left behind creates a demarcation line and the only way to ensure that nobody is excluded to change deconstructing the very idea of inclusion, betting on an education committed to the uniqueness of subjects in which the idea of "behind" does not make sense” (macedo, 2013). likewise, appreciating the beauty of diversity to live together in harmony on the basis of respect and willingness of all nations, nationalities and people’s strong foundation lies on promoting cultures and perpetuating their identity. thus, diversity in education offers benefits of building democratic citizenship (european commission, 2015). thus, institutional, instruction and personal dimensions of inclusive and multicultural education are central to address educational diversity by using different mediums of instruction in primary schools (penina et al., 2005). the importance of realizing, valuing and respecting a child's family, culture, language and values is increasingly articulated in educational policy to attest diversity. such practices can be powerful tools for extending children's knowledge and understandings of themselves and others who may be different culturally, socially or historically. however, some evidences suggest many settings provide a monocultural ideology which is counter-productive to the principles of diversity (adam, helen, barrett-pugh & caroline, 2020) and becoming sources of hegemonic outlooks and results to cause conflicts. this influences social and political justice of diverse groups of learners. therefore, in such multi-ethnic and multi-linguistic town, afan oromo and amharic are used as mediums of instruction for primary schools following the ethiopian policy direction (etp, 1994). these languages are the first and second biggest languages spoken in ethiopia respectively. however, there are remarkable differences in the utilization of educational inputs and teaching and learning processes between these groups to address educational diversity, institutionalization and preparation of gender responsive plans at school level and effective utilization of gender inclusive language in classroom are focal points to address the diversity of students (girma & abraham 2019). thus, a professional teacher has a responsibility to fulfill students’ learning needs and gives quality instructional services without any students’ exception (tatto, 2021) in conducive and child friendly learning environments. as far as my knowledge was concerned, no research has been fully conducted to address educational diversity by using the two mother tongues as mediums of instruction in primary schools to examine the diverse needs of students and discrepancies. on the bases of https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index geletu. curriculum implementation 44 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index my professional knowledge, reading, experiences and reflections. therefore, i was initiated to examine educational diversity of students targeting at curriculum implementation using equitable pedagogical practices in afan oromo and amharic mediums of instruction in five primary schools in fitche town, oromia regional state. objectives of the study the main purpose of the study was to examine curriculum implementation using equitable pedagogical practices in promoting cross-cutting issues in 21st century classrooms in five primary schools of fitche town, oromia regional state. more specifically, the study has the following objectives. these are to: 1. evaluate the engagements of students, teachers, principals, supervisors and educational experts in curriculum implementation using equitable pedagogical practices in afan oromo and amharic mediums of instruction. 2. explore whether accessible curricular materials and pedagogically trained teachers are equally assigned for students to give educational services. 3. compare and contrast the availability of educational inputs and instructional processes in afan oromo and amharic mediums of instruction in primary schools in fitche town. 4. evaluate the motivation of teachers, principals and supervisors to address education diversity of students through implementing appropriate curricular materials and equitable pedagogical practices. 5. examine availability of curricular and didactic materials, and effectiveness of pedagogical orientation and skills in promoting educational diversity in afan oromo and amharic mediums of instruction. research questions this section discusses the following research questions: 1. how effectively are teachers, principals and supervisors engaged in curriculum implementation using equitable pedagogical practices in afan oromo and amharic mediums of instruction? 2. how do you evaluate the availability of curricular materials and resources to address educational diversity in afan oromo and amharic mediums of instruction? 3. what specific pedagogical orientation, curricula and didactic materials appear to be effective tools for promoting educational diversity in afan oromo and amharic mediums of instruction? 4. to which categories of medium of instruction are available curricular materials or resources allocated and pedagogically skilled teachers relatively assigned for students to give better educational services? 5. how motivated are principals, supervisors, teachers, students and parents to address educational diversity targeting at curriculum implementation using equitable pedagogical practices in afan oromo and amharic mediums of instruction? significance of the study in many multicultural societies like ethiopia, the unity based on equal recognition of all nations realized through the provision of multicultural education to the young generation in the future. hence, this study is expected to demonstrate the exact practices made to address educational diversity using equitable and critical pedagogical strategies in afan oromo and amharic media of instruction in primary schools in fitche town. similarly, it is important to find out possible strategies to develop the practices of addressing education diversity of students (curriculum and equitable pedagogical practices) in afan oromo and amharic https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index geletu. curriculum implementation 45 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index media of instruction. believing that multicultural education is important in multicultural society, this study will be scaled up to other cities and towns in the region. materials and methods a qualitative research method with case study design was employed in this particular study because cases are bounded by time, activity and the researchers collect detailed information by using a variety of data collection procedures over a sustained period of time (yin, 2011). with this regard, creswell (2014) assured that case study is an approach to inquiry involving collecting qualitative data to make an in-depth investigation. therefore, i believe that this is an appropriate method to display the status of educational diversity through curriculum implementation using equitable pedagogical strategies in afan oromo and amharic mediums of instruction in fitche town’s primary schools. sources of data the data were collected from both primary and secondary sources of data to get sufficient information about how to recognize and address diverse needs of students. the primary sources of the data were principals, teachers, students, supervisors and vice-academic dean of fitche college of teacher education. besides, the secondary sources of the data were instructional materials available online, in library, laboratory and schools’ pedagogical centers. regarding the sample size, merriam (2009) emphasized that the size of the sample depends on the nature of research questions to be answered and the data to be collected. participants of the study the research participants in qualitative case study are chosen from five primary schools according to what is known as purposive sampling technique. accordingly, 54 participants were participated in this study. these are 4 principals, 14 teachers (9 afan oromo & 5 amharic) mediums of instruction, one supervisor, one vice academic dean were interviewed and 34 students (20 afan oromo &14 amharic) mediums of instruction were participated in focus group discussion. teachers, principals and supervisors have more than 5years experiences in their respective schools. they have diploma and first degree holders and grade 7 & 8 students are matured enough and best experiences to participate in a focus group discussion in comparison to lower grades students. regarding this, patton (2015) suggested that 20-30 participants are commonly included in most qualitative studies. te sample size can also range from a single participant to hundreds thanks to the advances in qualitative data management software programs. data collection instruments the most appropriate data collection strategy for case study researches are an interview, observation, focus group discussion and document analysis. creswell (2014) suggested that the researcher should make an interview with 3 to 15 individuals. accordingly, to collect the data from respondents, i prepared unstructured interview questions in english and then translated them into afan oromo and amharic mediums of instruction. then, an indepth interview was made with teachers, principals, and supervisor and vice academic dean of fitche college of teacher education from 15-20 minutes for 5 consecutive days. besides, focus group discussion was held with 8 groups of students in all schools. besides, focus group discussions were made with 8 groups of students (4 afan oromo & 4 amharic) mediums of instruction in five primary schools for about five days to validate the data collected through interviews. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index geletu. curriculum implementation 46 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index data analysis i synthesized the themes into textual and structural descriptions of the experiences of the individuals and then, i constructed composite descriptions of themes from my methodological, ontological and epistemological views. discussions of major findings i identified a total of 108 individual verbatim statements shared by the principals, teachers, supervisors, vice academic dean of the college of teacher education and students. from this scenario, 85 individual verbatim statements represented, relevant and nonoverlapping significant statements were considered for the study. these 85 relevant verbatim statements were grouped into 5 themes and the rest 23 statements were rejected because they were unrelated to addressing educational diversity targeting at curriculum implementation through equitable pedagogical practices in afan oromo and amharic mediums of instruction in fitche town’s primary schools. themes of the study motivations of teachers or implementer of curriculum and equitable pedagogical practices the integrated contents or curricula of educational diversity represents diverse social and cultural perspectives into curricula which creates safe environments for all students. this is non-discriminatory in that all students feel comfortable while asking questions and taking risks and promoting outreach programs to the minority students and their families (hicklinghudson & mcmeniman, 1993). this opportunities are aligned with an equity pedagogy exists when teachers modify their teaching in ways that will facilitate the academic achievement of students from diverse racial, cultural, and social-class groups (banker & banker, 2007). thus, creating more diverse and inclusive classroom practices foster learning and improving social interactions. accordingly, participant ip1 discussed that schools are governing themselves by rules and regulations prepared in 1995 and 2003 academic years. these rules and regulations were distributed to schools after contextualized by regional education bureau in afan oromo and amharic mediums of instruction. the practices of the rules and regulations are monitored by parent-teacher-association. besides, clear information was emblazoned on the notice boards or walls in both media of instruction (date: 03/2/2019; time: 3:25-3.50’ p.m). besides, the participant (ip4) discussed his experience that i think providing instruction with mother tongue is for better understanding. but even though teachers’ willingness is positive to teach properly, teachers turn over and retention is too high and the educational facilities are too limited to teach in amharic in comparison to afan oromo medium of instruction in our school (date: 03/2/2019;time 3:55-4:10’ p.m). the other participant (ip7) stated that sometimes teachers are forced to teach in the mother tongue with which they have not taken any training at all because of shortage of teachers trained in amharic medium of instruction in oromia region state. for instance, some teachers are teaching in amharic medium of instruction because of simply trying to speak amharic as a second language but certified in afan oromo medium of instruction (date: 03/2/2019; time: 5:25-5: 40’ p.m). furthermore, a student, ‘x’ in a focus group discussion shared their ideas that sometimes teachers teaching in amharic medium of instruction are out of their fields of specialization. for example one teacher teaches chemistry, biology and mathematics….. besides, some teachers have the problems of expressing their ideas in amharic freely because https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index geletu. curriculum implementation 47 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index i think that they were not learning and certified in amharic medium of instruction in their previous training institutions (group 2, date: 26 /12/2019; time: 8:25-10;00’ am)). on the other hand, ip8 suggested that though teaching-learning process is for best understanding with mother tongue and teachers’ willingness is positive to teach properly, teachers turn over and retention are relatively low and educational facilities are moderate to teach in afan oromo in comparison to amharic medium of instruction (date: 29/11/2018 & time 9:55-10:10’a.m). besides, a student, ’r’ assured that teachers are trained in afan oromo medium of instruction and they are teaching their students in afan oromo medium of instruction as well and which is motivating regardless of its quality (date: 04/11/2019 & time: 11:15-12:25’ pm). additionally, a student, ‘l’ in focus group discussion shared her ideas and assured that teachers who are teaching in afan oromo medium of instruction are relatively better in number and qualification to address the diverse needs of students than amharic medium of instruction. they are also teaching in their field of study though the number of students is greater than 50 in all classes and difficult to manage (group 5, date: 24 /11/2019 & time: 3:00-4:45’ pm). with respect to motivations, participant ip13 centrally summarized that afan oromo medium of instruction have better qualifications and number of teachers than amharic medium of instruction where teachers are becoming less in number due to retirement, attrition and death. the other issue is that i haven’t seen any motivation or rewards given to teachers in primary schools in fitche town. because of his/her top performance regardless of afan oromo and amharic media of instruction, no one has got any motivation and rewards (date: 27/11/2019, & time 2:45-2: 55’ p.m). the central idea of this theme is that the perception of front-line implementer of the curriculum (teachers) through using appropriate equitable pedagogical practices to address educational diversity of students in afan oromo medium of instruction is better than amharic medium of instruction. besides, teachers teaching in afan oromo medium of instruction have better preparation and performance in their subject matter compared to teachers teaching in amharic medium of instruction. availability of educational inputs (curricular materials and resources) the schools take inputs form the environment and then transform them into outputs through teaching-learning process. the schools have the potential opportunities to take educational inputs or curricular materials from surrounding school communities which process and change the learning inputs to outputs. based on this philosophical assumption, the comparison was made on the availability of educational inputs between afan oromo and amharic mediums of instruction in order to address educational diversity of students. one of the interviewees, ip18 demonstrated that leave alone the supplementary reference materials, there are shortages of student textbooks as well. i saw that there are only few old reference books written in amharic medium of instruction found in the library. besides, i ponder that the laboratory has no manuals written in amharic medium of instruction but the teachers and students are doing by translating the material from afan oromo to amharic mediums of instruction. there are shortages of equipment and chemicals to make experiment even simple tasks in the laboratory. i was a home-room teacher for grade 7 students but still now some students do not have amharic, civics & mathematics text books (date: 04/1/2019;time: 2:50-3:15’ p.m). on the other hand, one of the interview participants (ip5) centrally highlighted that some science books for references in afan oromo medium of instruction were bought last year and placed in the library but not enough to more than 2000 students in our schools. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index geletu. curriculum implementation 48 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index likewise, i think there are better but not enough educational facilities to teach in afan oromo medium of instruction in comparison to amharic medium of instruction in the library and pedagogical centers of our schools. besides, student text books to student ratio are nearly 1:1 in afan oromo medium of instruction. for example, excess science and mathematics books were in the libraries even though they were not well-organized (date: 28/2/2019;time:5:306:00’ p.m). similarly, students ‘t’ in focus group discussion make a thorough debate that though the management of the schools and parent-teacher-association are remaining the same in our schools but i am witnessing shortage educational materials such as text books, reference books, work sheets to large number of students in a single class (more than 80 students) due to shortage of teachers in amharic compared to afan oromo medium of instruction…… (group 6, date: 25/2/2019;time: 3:00-4:50’ pm.). a particular concern is the impact of school policies and procedures on the allocation of resources which affect curriculum implementation using critical and equitable pedagogical strategies to address diversity of learners in schools. the school policies and procedures impact on the delivery of services to students from diverse backgrounds. hence, the central message of this theme is that afan oromo medium of instruction has relatively available educational inputs to provide better educational services in comparison to amharic medium of instruction to address educational diversity in primary schools of fitche town. curricular practices/ instruction using equitable pedagogical practices when the quality of instruction such as curriculum and its pedagogical equity application (books, teaching methods and activities) are worse marginalized, the students culturally experienced disconnection with the learning environment in the school. for some students such rejection of school may take the form of simply under achieving, for others rejection could range from not performing at all to dropping out of school completely. pertaining such marginalization, multicultural education seeks to create equal educational opportunities for all students including those from different racial, ethnic, and social-class group (banks & banks, 2001; girma and abraham, 2019). thus, it tries to create equal educational opportunities for diversified groups of learners. one of the interviewees (ip10) ensures that it is difficult to get amharic medium of instruction teachers on markets for employment according to the current deviance because we have only fitche college of teacher education that is training only few prospective teachers. these are 60-80 preservice teachers region-wide annually. due to this reason, the teacher to student ratio is becoming greater than 1:73 and sometimes 1:84 (unmanageable size) for grade 7 in amharic medium of instruction whereas the student to teacher ratio in afan oromo medium of instruction is 1:51 sometimes it reaches to 1:56 (date: 23/12/2019; time: 3:154:15’ pm). from this, we can infer that the class size is too large in amharic medium of instruction in comparison to afan oromo medium of instruction to address educational needs of each learner. ip12 further extended his reflection that “in our context, there is weak pedagogical center with insufficient teaching aids and the problems of laboratory centers are the worst of all challenges to teach necessary knowledge and skills to students effectively and efficiently (date: 24/12/2019; time: 4:45-5:00’ p.m). besides, one of the respondents (ip18) overshadowed that in both afan oromo and amharic mediums of instruction, one teacher is teaching more than three subjects but trained in the college to teach only major and minor subject areas. they are highlighted that students are learning in 1-5 (cooperative learning and micro learning) to improve their communication, understanding, reflections and performances but it is difficult for teachers to manage the classroom and give continuous assessment to 56 student in afan oromo and 84 students in https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index geletu. curriculum implementation 49 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index amharic medium of instruction respectively. for instance, grade 7 students of afan oromo and amharic mediums of instruction in a single classroom. as senior teacher, i have to use different active learning methods and continuous assessment techniques. but it is difficult to manage more than 50 students in a single class. even classroom management itself is a challenge, suffocation, and sound, narrowness of table and health problems like common colds, covid-19, tuberculosis and other air born diseases. at the same time until recently, student in amharic medium of instruction has no chemistry and english teachers. therefore, some teachers try to enter the class once per week simply to cool the complaints from students. for example, chemistry grade 7 (date, 21/2/2020; time: 10:00-10:30’ a.m). similarly, excessive training was given by fitche college of teacher education mainly for the purpose of practicum program implementation on the application of integrated pedagogical content knowledge, active learning methods, assessment for learning, action research, classroom management and continuous professional development. these training were successfully given to afan oromo in comparison to amharic mediums of instruction. these training has positive impacts on quality of instruction and are better to address all teachers of course. because, we don’t have educators trained in amharic medium of instruction at all though there are small number of amharic medium of instruction teacher candidates at fitche college of teacher education (date: 21/2/2019; time 9:40-10:00’ a.m). likely, a student, ‘d’ in focus group discussion suggested that it is difficult to expect quality of teaching-learning process where it is difficult to implement active learning methods and continuous assessment due to large number of students, shortage of instructional materials and teacher preparation. however, when we talk from our experiences, afan oromo medium of instruction students are relatively learning better than amharic medium of instruction particularly at higher levels of primary schools from grades 5-8….. even, this can negatively affect the attitudes of students from diverse backgrounds to address educational diversity (group 8, date: 27 /12/2020;time: 8.45-10:50’ a.m). the central idea of this theme is that instructions given for afan oromo medium of instruction students are relatively better than amharic medium of instruction particularly at higher levels of primary schools. although the attempts of implementing culturally responsive pedagogy (ladson-billings, 1995; penina et al., 2005) were encouraging, teacher’s selfreflection is important to analyze the attitudes and beliefs about themselves and others. although many attempts are made the curricula developmentally appropriate to the ages and stages of children and standardize to the theoretical and practical contextual settings (girma et al., 2021) to prevent the generic one size fits for all generic syllogism, the practices of children-centered learning in schools are contradicting with integrated play-based pedagogical practices (mesay et al., 2019). thus, as teachers’ values cause impact relationships with students’ learning and their families, teachers must reconcile negative feelings towards any groups. accessibility of teachers and relevance of primary schools’ curricula one of the interviewees, ‘ip9’ well elaborated that it is difficult to fulfill the needs of all schools in the cities of oromia regional state in amharic medium of instruction because it is only fitche college of teacher education that trains 60-80 teacher candidates annually in amharic medium of instruction in comparison to more than 600 candidates of afan oromo medium of instruction in fitche college of teacher education alone. on one hand, fostering the capacity of teachers towards science, technology, engineering and mathematics (stem) diversity (davis-lowe, 2006) and curricular responses to multiculturalism (hickling-hudson & mcmeniman, 1993) potentially guarantee quality of instruction in the classrooms. however, the availability of teachers in amharic medium of https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index geletu. curriculum implementation 50 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index instruction is low in comparison to afan oromo medium of instruction. on the other hand, with respect to the relevance of the curricula and its equitable pedagogical utilization, the overall curricula of colleges of teacher education are symmetrical with primary schools curricula. thus, teaching the schools’ curricula and teacher education needs to have relationships to maintain diversity of groups of learners (banks and banks,1995b). thus, preservice teacher trainees are practicing their teaching profession passim four practicum courses in primary schools for three years (date: 28/11/2020; time: 3:25-3:40’ p.m). moreover, one of the respondents from focus group discussion ‘v’ inspected that they are helping us in teaching the subject matter (curriculum contents and activities) by preparing themselves as much as they can….however, they are too busy throughout the school time in teaching 30 periods per a week. often, the teaching-learning process was covered by teacher candidates assigned by college of teacher education for teaching practices/practicum for 45 days (group7, date: 25/12/2020;time: 4:15-4:50’ pm). opportunities of curriculum implementation and equitable pedagogical practices in high performing schools, all members of the school community both individually and collectively hold themselves accountable to address students’ diverse needs and successes (adea, 2010; girma and abraham, 2019). hence, staffs with sense of common purposes, strong instructional leadership, principals, confidence and respect of parents and resources support the school’s vision, mission and destinations. in respect of providing opportunities to address educational diversity using afan oromo and amharic media of instruction, ip11 supposed that the best opportunity we have is that we must work in collaboration with the society to fulfill educational inputs such as curricular materials and through utilization of equitable pedagogical practices. this addresses educational diversity of students in afan oromo and amharic media of instruction in primary schools found in fitche town. besides, the region should improve and redesign new amharic and afan oromo primary schools’ curricula in line to initial teacher preparation, induction and in-service programs to address the diverse needs of learners (date 12/1/2020;time: 5:405:55’p.m). the central ideas of this theme are searching for the best opportunities that enable us to address educational diversity by using both afan oromo and amharic mediums of instruction. for instance, working in collaboration with society, begin teacher training programs in amharic medium of instruction in some college of teachers’ education in oromia regional state. the researchers’ methodological, epistemological and ontological perspectives an exploration to minimize subjectivity by using afan oromo and amharic mediums of instruction to address educational diversity of students targeting on the quality of curriculum and effectiveness of pedagogical strategies in primary schools of fitche town is undeniably contributes to the success of multiculturalism. methodologically, my knowledge development paradigm leads to exploratory effort and provides further rationales for strategic decisions regarding data collection, participants’ selection and data analysis. the study has epistemological implication in that the interactive relationships between me and the respondents is subjective and guiding where multiple realities are emerged to create complexity of the texts and contexts. from my engagement in this project, i appreciated that giving instruction in both mediums of instruction in the four primary schools of fitche town is https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index geletu. curriculum implementation 51 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index encouraging to address educational diversity. however, while the comparison is carried out, afan oromo medium of instruction has more access and possible opportunities to curricular materials and pedagogical practices compared to amharic medium of instruction. this ontological difference observed in the primary schools were emanated from lack of awareness and weak emphasis given to education system by the government, non-governmental bodies, faith-based organization, parent-teacher-association, parents, school communities and societies at large. data validation strategies the most commonly used strategies during the process of data validation under case study are corroboration by participants and agreement between coders (creswell, 2014). i made corroboration with participants through presenting and discussing the data between the research participants and us to verify that the themes are properly identified and discussed. hence, hot discussions were further made on the findings of the study with 40 participants; 4 principals, 12 teachers and 24 students for 2:00 hours. discussions were made with respect to the questions asked during interview, focus group discussion and researcher’s sense organs’ witness through observation. therefore, i wrote the report by using five thematic units developed from 85 individual verbatim statements and ideas from further corroboration of the data made with participants. furthermore, i ensured the validity of instruments, data analyses and research questions in line to the objectives of the study. conclusions and recommendations effective lines of communication, critical thinking and making critical reflections on multicultural education are dynamic pillars to create peaceful and welcoming learning environment in schools in particular and the society at large. conversely, upper primary, secondary and higher education institutions become the centers of conflicts because of the power effects associated with political changes and vulgarization. undertaking wide scale researches at different educational hierarchies on inclusive education, multiculturalism or cultural pluralism assist countries with multicultural societies like ethiopia. this small scale study focuses on curriculum implementation using equitable pedagogical practices in promoting cross-cutting issues in the 21st century classroom of five primary schools in fitche town, oromia regional state verified the practices of cultural responsive education (curriculum and equitable pedagogical practices) at glance. therefore, on the bases of summarized major findings, the study was concluded as follows. these are: the findings of the study underlined that though the attempts to address different educational needs of diverse groups of students through curriculum implementation and equitable pedagogical practices are encouraging, the willingness and motivations of front-line implementer of the curricula (teachers) in afan oromo mediums of instruction was better than amharic medium of instruction. besides, teachers who were teaching in afan oromo medium of instruction have better preparation and performance in their subject matter compared to teachers who are teaching in amharic medium of instruction. because teachers who were teaching in afan oromo medium of instruction were teaching in the mother tongue they were trained so far in the college of teacher education while some teachers who were teaching in amharic medium of instruction were trained in afan oromo medium of instruction. the other problem was due to shortage of teachers, those who are teaching in amharic medium of instruction are teaching many subjects for which they were not qualified but teachers were teaching in afan oromo medium of instruction are teaching only their major or minor subjects. in light of philosophical assumption of the availability of curricular materials to https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index geletu. curriculum implementation 52 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index address educational diversity, due to socioeconomic status of the community, lack of attention to balance the diverse needs of learners and about 70% students and teachers in each school, afan oromo medium of instruction has relatively available educational inputs in the libraries, pedagogical centers and laboratories. i have a hope that it assists the schools to provide better educational services in afan oromo compared to amharic medium of instruction. when equity pedagogical tools of instruction (constructivist teaching-learning methods, assessment for learning and classroom management) were well qualified, the teaching-learning processes are carried out to the standards that assure quality of instruction. here, the findings of this comparative study underlines that the quality of instruction is relatively better in afan oromo than amharic medium of instruction. in afan oromo medium of instruction, teachers are applying active learning strategies (e.g. cooperative learning method, concept mapping, pyramiding, jigsaw, goldfish bowl, and micro-teaching), continuous assessments and classroom management) due to small class-size than amharic medium of instruction relatively. the opportunities of getting appropriate training and experience sharing practices on application of equitable pedagogical strategies such as using varieties of active learning methods, assessment for learning, action researches, lesson studies and classroom management were limited. however, due to better access to professional training and modified instructional materials, afan oromo medium of instruction teachers were relatively giving better lessons than amharic medium of instruction teachers. as the implementer of the curricula, the quantity and quality of teachers is required. however, the accessibility of pedagogically qualified teachers was not founded to be encouraging to address the needs of all schools in cities of oromia regional state. it is obviously known that fitche college of teachers’ education is the only college of teacher education which trains few teacher candidates in amharic medium of instruction. hence, it is impossible to address teachers who are giving instruction in amharic medium of instruction to all schools. therefore, the availability of teachers who are teaching in amharic is insufficient in number compared to afan oromo medium of instruction. pertaining to the relevance and appropriateness of the curricula, the overall curricula of colleges of teachers’ education are symmetrically aligned with primary schools’ curricula. hence, preservice teachers trainees are practicing their teaching profession through four consecutive practicum programs in primary schools for three years. the ultimate goal of the practicum courses are to familiarize teachers candidates with equitable pedagogical practices. this study forecasts that addressing educational diversity of students in implementing various curricula using equity pedagogical strategies in afan oromo and amharic mediums of instruction need vertical and horizontal collaboration on top of owing motivation and commitments of stakeholders. better treatment of educational diversity is a potential for growth and development of ones country. this positive scenario shows the paths on how to address educational diversity in the schools and classrooms where peoples are living together on equal farewells through application of equitable pedagogical strategies. on the bases of this ground, i posed the following feasible suggestions. these are: regional education bureau, fitche city administration, woreda education office, parent-teacher-association and the nearby college of teacher education should work in collaboration by using possible opportunities to build the whole school matrix to ensure educational diversity of diverse learners. undertaking experience sharing practices with model schools, growing internal financial resources, designing and submitting projects searching for additional funds from local authorities, non-governmental and governmental organizations. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index geletu. curriculum implementation 53 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index in order to address educational diversity in afan oromo and amharic mediums of instruction in primary schools, woreda/district education supervisors and teacher development program, parent-teacher association, principals and teachers should develop positive attitudes, willingness and motivation to fulfill curricular materials and give awareness creation training for practitioners about pedagogical strategies on the bases of number of students and teachers in the schools system. likewise, additional pedagogically qualified teachers in the two media of instruction should be employed to minimize the class-size and teacher-student-ratio which was very large in amharic compared to afan oromo medium of instruction to use equitable pedagogical practices in the classrooms. regional education bureau had better introduce best opportunities such as working in collaboration with society and begin preservice and in-service teacher training programs in amharic medium of instruction in some college of teachers’ education in oromia regional state. zone education office, districts and town administration should work in collaboration with fitche college of teacher education to design and give short-term professional training concerning subject matter knowledge and equitable pedagogical practices to both media of instruction teachers with special attention to amharic medium of instruction teachers. besides, it is imperative to make additional employment of new teachers from oromia and amhara regional state colleges of teacher education. through articulating the missing voices from the paradigms and identifying critical questions that lead to enduring understandings, teachers should learn how to begin to make their lessons culturally responsive and relevant to the diverse needs of learners in schools’ contexts. competing interests i have declared that no competing interest exists. the products used for this research are commonly and predominantly use products in our area of research and country. there is absolutely no conflict of interest between the authors and producers of the products because we do not intend to use these products as an avenue for any litigation but for the advancement of knowledge. notes 1 mshgirma15114@gmail.com; girmam2015@gmail.com references adea, c. (2010). policy guide on the integration of african languages and cultures into education systems. presented at the african conference. ouagadougou, burkina faso. adam, h.; barratt-pugh, c. (2020). the challenge of monoculturalism: what books are educators sharing with children and what messages do they send? early childhood education, australian educational researcher, 47 (5), 815-836. banks, j.a and banks, cam. (2007). multicultural education: issues and perspectives (6th.ed.). united states: john wiley and sons inc. banks, j. a. and banks, cam. (2001). multicultural education: issues and perspectives (4th. edition). boston: allyn & bacon. banks, j. a. and banks, cam. (1995b). dimensions of multicultural education (2rd. ed). boston: allyn & bacon. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index mailto:mshgirma15114@gmail.com; https://eric.ed.gov/?redir=http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3005-7142 https://eric.ed.gov/?redir=http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1470-0089 geletu. curriculum implementation 54 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index creswell, j.w. (2014). research design: qualitative, quantitative and mixed approaches (4th. ed.). london: sage publisher inc. davis-lowe, e. (2006). fostering stem diversity. report presented at opas initiative. available:http://opas.ous.edu/committees/resources/staff_papers/fostering_stem_di versityaccessed on december/2019. diller, j. v., module, j. (2005). cultural competence: a primer for educators. toronto, ca: thomson wads worth publishers. etp (1994). new education and training policy in ethiopia, addis ababa. european commission. 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(1999). the politics of multilingual education and publishing in ethiopia. challenges and prospects, london publisher(pp.75-110). unesco (2013). education in a multilingual world. unesco education position paper, paris: unesco, available:http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/001297/129728e.pdf, accessed on december/ 2019. unesco (2012). why language matters for the millennium development goals. bangkok,thailand: unesco, available:http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0021/002152/215296e.pdf.accessed on december/2019. unesco (2010). international conference on language, education and the millennium development goals. available:http://www.seameo.org/languagemdgconference2010/. acessed on december/2019. unesco (2009). investing in cultural diversity and intercultural dialogue. unesco world report. paris: available:http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0018/001852/185202e.pdf.accessed on december/2019 unesco (2008). improving the quality of mother tongue-based literacy and learning: case studies from asia, africa and south america. bangkok, available:http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0017/001777/177738e.pdf accessed on december/2019 yin, r. k. (2011). qualitative research from start to finish. usa: the guilford press. submitted: november, 10th, 2021. approved: december, 03rd, 2021. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/pisa-2015-results-volume-i_9789264266490-en https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/education/pisa-2015-results-volume-i_9789264266490-en http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0012/001297/129728e.pdf,%20accessed http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0021/002152/215296e.pdf.accessed%20on%20december/2017 http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0021/002152/215296e.pdf.accessed%20on%20december/2017 http://www.seameo.org/languagemdgconference2010/acessed%20on%20december/2017 transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (1) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci editor’s notes on issue 3 (1) 2006 noel gough university of canberra, australia transnational curriculum inquiry (tci) seeks to contribute to the internationalisation of curriculum studies by providing a site for transnational scholarly conversations – a space in which scholars from different nations can collaborate and converse as they reframe and decentre their own knowledge traditions and negotiate trust in each other’s contributions to their collective work. like its parent organisation, the international association for the advancement of curriculum studies (iaacs), tci exists to support a worldwide – but not uniform – field of curriculum studies. the iaacs’s mission statement reminds us that: at this historical moment and for the foreseeable future, curriculum inquiry occurs within national borders, often informed by governmental policies and priorities, responsive to national situations. curriculum study is, therefore, nationally distinctive. the founders of the iaacs do not dream of a worldwide field of curriculum studies mirroring the standardization and uniformity the larger phenomenon of globalization threatens (http://iaacs.levinux.org). thus, a necessary step in the internationalisation of curriculum studies is to represent and perform our nationally distinctive approaches to curriculum inquiry in ways that authentically demonstrate their localness. this is precisely what lyn yates provides in the paper that leads this issue. her response to the question, ‘what can schools do?’ is framed explicitly by her location as an australian curriculum scholar. it implicitly invites curriculum scholars elsewhere to consider how her question might be answered in their own locations. for example, although mei wu hoyt does not directly address the question ‘what can schools do?’ in the people’s republic of china, her essay in this issue makes it quite clear that chinese curriculum scholars would answer that question differently – and also that it would have been answered differently at different times during the eighty-seven years since john dewey first visited china. i would certainly welcome manuscripts from curriculum scholars elsewhere in the world that offer perspectives on what schools can do in their particular nations. i should say too that yates’ inaugural lecture as foundation professor of curriculum at the university of melbourne is itself an event of some considerable significance in the history of australian curriculum studies. established in 1853, the university of melbourne is australia’s second oldest university and arguably the most prestigious of all australian universities that have a faculty or school of education. as an alumnus of that university myself, i would have preferred that its recognition of curriculum studies as a discipline meriting the establishment of a chair might have taken less than 153 years – but better late than never! i will also use these notes as an opportunity to remind readers that tci a site both for curriculum inquiry and for inquiry into the ways that electronic publishing procedures facilitate and/or constrain inclusive knowledge work in global virtual spaces. noel gough: editor’s notes on issue 3 (1) 2006 transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (1) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 27 one of the ways in which we try to produce such conversations is to keep tci’s editorial policies and procedures flexible and refrain from imposing arbitrary standards and styles. for example, tci does not have a fixed publication schedule: articles and book/media reviews will be published when they are accepted for publication. each issue will normally consist of one article and/or one book/media review but (as was the case with volume 1, issue 1) articles that complement one another will be reviewed together and, if accepted, published as a single issue. we are also flexible in matters of layout and style. if authors go to the trouble of formatting their articles in a particular way then we will not change them to fit our templates. similarly, we do not prescribe a single citation style. authors are free to use whatever style they see as most appropriate for their work, provided that they use a style consistently and provide all of the bibliographic information we require. tci’s review policies and procedures are also flexible. for example, although all articles published in tci are peer reviewed, they are not necessarily ‘blind’ reviews. authors may choose to anonymise their manuscripts, and the editors will respect their choice, but we do not impose anonymity on authors. normally, each manuscript is reviewed by at least three referees, two of whom (in most cases) will be of different nationalities from the author(s) and from each other. in addition, the editor may assign a consulting editor to liaise with the referees and the editor in reaching a decision about publication. each referee’s signed review is circulated to the other referees. my experience, like that of many other journal editors, is that signed reviews are usually of a higher quality than unsigned reviews. however, the names of referees are not divulged to authors of rejected manuscripts. at the editor’s discretion, manuscripts accepted for publication may be published together with some or all of the referees’ comments and the author’s response. i have chosen not to do so in this issue, chiefly because most of the reviewers’ comments on hoyt’s initial paper were of a technical nature and have been addressed to my satisfaction in the revised version. i wish to thank mei wu hoyt for her patience, and also thank the three reviewers (from canada, the people’s republic of china, and korea) for their thoughtful comments and recommendations. o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: lopes, alice casimiro (2021). curriculum in a pandemic world: what will be the future of education? transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) p. 1-2 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci <access date> curriculum in a pandemic world: what will be the future of education? alice casimiro lopes1 state university of rio de janeiro, brazil contingency would be abolished. it was the dream of the perfect death, the socratic death, the philosophical death: absolute self-coincidence at the point of disappearance. autarchy. autonomy. authenticity. autism. it was a delusion of control. memory theatre, simon critchley in this moment of pandemic, many of us ask ourselves what the future of education, school and curriculum will be. will we return to face-to-face classes? will we organize online and face-to-face curriculum activities in a hybrid model? will online education be one of the biggest investments in the future? i think we can say yes and no to these questions simultaneously. there are arguments and researches that support many of these conclusions. the most important thing, however, is to think about what we do today and what the contextual impacts of our theories and actions in the curriculum field are. it is not possible to predict the future, but we can try to modify the present. as i have already written before, some aim, as paul auster in his excellent book 4321, to identify different contextual realities that can be drawn from the current scenario. however, only literature, this fictive institution that extrapolates institutions and in principle allows saying everything or anything2 (tout dire) by challenging and suspending the belief (derrida, 1992, p. 36), could make us consider such multiplicity of curriculum and school or educational contexts. even so, i consider it increasingly important to reactivate the notions of education, school and curriculum as linked to radical contextualization. following a point of convergence between derrida and rorty, i defend that there is not a reason that could guarantee the possibility of a mode of argumentation that would transcend its particular conditions of enunciation (mouffe, 2009). such a conclusion makes any decision over a curriculum at the time of this pandemic or at any other time as a result of a radical investment (lopes, 2020). the radical investment, in the sense propagated by laclau (2004), is not an a priori, not deterministic, not essentialist. the radical investment consists of the attempt to name and to represent the unrepresentable: nothing logically determines or pre-announces normative content, but nevertheless this content is enunciated, and we are invested in its constitution. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci lopes. curriculum in a pandemic world 2 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index with the idea of radical investment, the future is left to come. the focus is not on planning the future – of the curriculum, education, school, life – as someone who intends to outline goals to be achieved, designing the future as a project. the important thing is to investigate today the challenges that allow us to bet on more creative possibilities, open to receiving the other, and to productions that can only be carried out contextually. it is in this direction that the tci articles are presented. very different experiences in contexts also marked by difference. notes 1 alicecasimirolopes@gmail.com 2 as the translator of this book writes about these options, “say everything” has a sense of exhausting a totality and “say nothing” means to speak without constraints on what one may say. as discussed by evando nascimento (2018) in the commentary on the translation of this text into portuguese, such as in “tout dire,” derrida points out that literature proposes a form of liberation that calls into question the institutionality itself and is related to the notion of modern democracy: greater freedom and infinite possibility of relationships among subjects. references auster, p. (2017). 4321. new york, ny: henry holt & co. lopes, a. c. (2020). investment in curricular normativity in brazil: a critical-discursive perspective. in j. chi-kin lee & n. gough (eds.), transnational education and curriculum studies: international perspectives. london: routledge. lopes, a. c. (2021). radical investment in the curriculum in times of covid-19: can we question the anti-science discourses?. prospects (paris), p. 1-8. laclau, e. (2004). glimpsing the future. in s. critchley & o. marchart (eds.), laclau: a critical reader (pp. 279–328). london: routledge. mouffe, c. (2009). deconstruction and pragmatism. london: routledge. nascimento, e. (2018). a literatura à demanda do outro. introduction of essa estranha instituição chamada literatura – uma entrevista com jacques derrida. belo horizonte, ufm press. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index microsoft word sameshima and irwin03.doc transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci responding to pauline sameshima and rita irwin’s ‘rendering dimensions of liminal currere’ warren sellers ako aotearoa national centre for tertiary teaching excellence, wellington, new zealand marg sellers the university of queensland, australia, and whitireia community polytechnic, new zealand sameshima and irwin, in rendering dimensions of liminal currere, draw on daignault to critique curriculum and explore expressions of complexity in artful scholarship research towards liminal currere through visual examples of personal practice… the picturings and texts that follow are warren sellers’ and marg sellers’ responses to reading rendering dimensions of liminal currere. in our own currereing work we use a rhizomatic approach to reading, seeing, writing, picturing, thinking and re-reading to move towards ways of understanding, conceptualising and expressing our interpretations of complex notions, such as sameshima and irwin’s liminality. in this instance, we envision our approach as responding to an invitation to make opportunistic interconnections with the reinforcing rods that extend liminally from the plateau edges in pauline sameshima’s photograph ‘edges 5’. or, plainly put, a chance for us to join with pauline and rita in elaborating their ideas. "edges 5" sameshima (2005) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci sellers and sellers: responding to sameshima and irwin transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 70 for some readers this may seem a strange way to review, but our poststructural reading of reviewing calls on us to be excessive, rather than intercessive, and to contribute more than critique. that is, we choose to be both celebratory with and salutary to our colleagues… from warren my approach to reading and rendering uses picturing to express ideas as they emerge and coalesce and flux. the following sketch is a two-dimensional rendering of a five-dimensional (including spissitude1 and time) synthesis of my reading. to help understand how i see this, imagine my drawing as being like a hologram – a plane from which thresholds of spatial dimensions can be projected. 1 spissitude: a fourth (orthogonal) spatial dimension (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/fourth_dimension) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/fourth_dimension sellers and sellers: responding to sameshima and irwin transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 71 following that allusion, my image below projects and re-visions the reading by locating dimensionally (by placement) and liminally (by overlapping) examples of rita’s, pauline’s and my images. in doing so, i am picturing the reading more literally and illustrating how i see rhizomatic growth breaching and broaching and rending and rendering plateaus of liminal currere through interconnecting diverse ideas that call for more readings, engendering other diverse ideas… http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci sellers and sellers: responding to sameshima and irwin transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 72 and, in the image below – picturing word patterns – i explore another notional dimension for accreting ideas and pointing to networks and nodes of thinking, expressing and rendering some of the concepts and titles and terms interconnecting pauline and rita’s text with my sources and interpretations of liminal currere to nurture and grow the rhizome… from marg i look at warren’s picturing (of words) and i am intrigued with what he pictures~says and the way he ‘says’ it. he asks me what i think and i ask him why he is expecting me to respond in words. i actually don’t know what to say – i think because it is not appropriate to say anything; the picturing is there to speak for itself. but, i want to say something as i like creating word~pictures. so, i return to the article, to re-fresh my reading and for inspiration. we have both made notes (words, lines, pictures) on the article so his reading becomes mine, our reading~picturing becomes multidimensional and inter-twined across space and time (sameshima and irwin, p.12), as i add my rendering to his rend(er)ing of rendering dimensions of a liminal currere. what i see in warren’s response is more of the ‘individual art-making processes as living inquiries’ (p.3) that pauline and rita discuss as he ‘travel[s] between and along the edges of here [rita’s photographic spaces] and there [pauline’s photographic edges] in the unsettled liminal space’ (p.4) of his own creation; as he depicts what happens for him as he pass(ag)es along this gap(ing) of in-between-ness, play-fully including his/other dimension/s through "a path in walking" picturing currere (sellers, 2003) cloudsculpting synecdoche chiasmus "&" series (irwin, 2005) lines of flight metonymy drift "edges" series (sameshima, 2005) planes to plateaux irony layering "auto-pugilism" (sellers, 1999) knowledge violence "l o re n z a tt ra ct o r" m e ta p h o r "rhizomatic roots" meme http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci sellers and sellers: responding to sameshima and irwin transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 73 inter-ing/entering the dimension of a liminal currere. his trope has formed other pictorial~textual layers for (his, our, your) ideas to ripple through understandings of the text and from liminal spaces around and with/in it (pp.10-11). our picturing~words are ‘prepositional’, that is, in in-between spaces, as we attempt to ‘move the words and ideas beside them to new spaces’ (p.13), as we attempt ‘becoming and transforming from what is to something anew’ (p.13). by picturing~wording our reading, we also are ‘traveling rhizomatically through multidimensional spaces of knowing’ (p.13). we accompany pauline and rita in recognising that these ‘liminal spaces are dynamic spaces of possibility…open[ing] up possibilities for different insights and thus expand[ing] notions of scholarly inquiry’ (p.15). as i look at the contrasting photographs in the article, i sense there is more anew awaiting within liminal spaces between the shadows and light captured by rita and along the edges of pauline’s perspective(s). perhaps not within their article (for me at the moment anyway) but rather as i take the word~pictures their imagery evokes in me into my own research, which (perhaps not) incidentally involves young children’s picturing of their understandings of currere-ing through a multidimensional curriculum, as they negotiate ‘curricula of currere...[or] paths of running’ (sameshima, 2006, p.51, emphasis in original). but, in response to warren’s picturing of rita and pauline’s article, i (re)turn to sameshima’s (2006) explanation of the curricular inter-play amongst learners (and scholars) as my response to warren’s picturing, in itself and as a review response, and to the article under review. in rendering dimensions of liminal currere, rita and pauline (and warren’s response) have created ‘shape shifting figures which speak to the mobile identities, contiguity, reverberating complexities, and entanglements of learning in the dynamic space of relationality (p.53). references sameshima, pauline (2006). household at the shore: a marshall mcluhan metaphor. journal of the canadian association for curriculum studies, 4(1), 51-58. retrieved from http://www.csse.ca/cacs/jcacs/v4n1/pdfcontent/jcacs_4_1_f_sameshima.pdf sellers, warren (2003). picturing currere: envisioning-experiences within learning. paper presented at the 10th biennial conference of the australian association of curriculum studies. adelaide, south australia. available at http://acsainc.com.au/content/sellers_picturing_currere.pdf reviewers warren sellers is a research associate with the ako aotearoa national centre for tertiary teaching excellence, wellington, new zealand. email: w.sellers@paradise.net.nz marg sellers is a doctoral candidate at the university of queensland and is programme leader for the early childhood teacher education programmes at whitireia community polytechnic, new zealand. email: m.sellers@paradise.net.nz http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci http://www.csse.ca/cacs/jcacs/v4n1/pdfcontent/jcacs_4_1_f_sameshima.pdf http://acsainc.com.au/content/sellers-_picturing_currere.pdf http://acsainc.com.au/content/sellers-_picturing_currere.pdf mailto:sellers@paradise.net.nz mailto:sellers@paradise.net.nz o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: lopes, alice casimiro (2021). we are all paulo freire transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (2) p. 1-3 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> we are all paulo freire alice casimiro lopes1 state university of rio de janeiro, brazil if he were alive, paulo freire would be 100 years in 2021. also in 2021, i say goodbye to the managing editor of tci, after 10 years. in my research about curriculum policies, i do not support my ideas in the texts of paulo freire. however, it doesn't mean that paulo freire wasn't part of my life as a professor and curriculum researcher. thinking about this coincidence of events, i tried to analyze my relationship with freire´s thought. in the post-structural and discursive theories with which i work, i question a certain essentialist approach of the subjects and knowledge, typical of critical curricular approaches, among them that of paulo freire. i argue that every curriculum is a political dispute for meaning. binary statements, such as "dominant knowledge and popular knowledge", "dominant subject who defines curriculum and oppressed subject who are submitted to a selection, being able only to resist it", "historically constructed knowledge versus traditional knowledge", presuppose fixed positions in the political dispute. i argue that there were not subjects with fixed identities linked to each of the categories of knowledge. differently, i argue that political antagonisms constitute subjects and identities (curriculum, knowledge, competences) and these antagonisms and identities change in the course of the disputes for the meaning of culture. in other words, curriculum is a product of a dispute to signify legitimate knowledge, competences, content. curriculum is the dispute for the production of meaning itself, the political dispute itself for the production of culture. in this perspective, it is not worth talking about introducing popular knowledge in school, but about disputes in the production of meanings in the school. this dispute does not precede the production of the curriculum: it is the very production of the curriculum. this dispute is not restricted to the school. it is linked to a whole social process that has the school as an important locus of power. in this case, paulo freire's thinking can be understood as one of the discourses that enters the dispute for the meaning of the curriculum and education more broadly. subjects are decentered, there are not full identities. groups and projects in dispute are not predefined. subjects, identities, groups and projects are effects of political articulations, they are constituted and changed in a political dispute. in these articulations, there are traces of histories, traditions and multiple processes of social identification – such as citizens, professors, researchers, teachers, men, women, blacks, whites, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, affiliated or not to social movements. all of them are translated and hybridized to the new processes of representation developed. all these articulations are precarious, unstable, ambiguous, contingent. nevertheless, how does an articulation constitute itself? how does the articulation among different demands take place in a given political context, in order to construct a discourse about what comes to be curriculum, education, quality of education? these are some of the questions i have been researching in curriculum policy. within the limits of this presentation, i mention only ernesto laclau's theoretical notion: the closure of a discursive lopes. we are all paulo freire transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index articulation is guided by the logic of equivalence (laclau,1996). usually the articulations, linked to the formation of political groups, are conceived according to an equality of purposes or conceptions or even identities. laclau questions this perspective by proposing that equivalence (never equality) depends on antagonism to a difference expelled from the articulatory chain. this difference is an exterior against which all other differences included in discursive totality are antagonized and become equivalent, giving up their particularities. in this process, a group is built. some individuals remain together around contextual and contingent demands and drive others away from that same group. sometimes we call this group as “our group”. in politics (even curriculum policy or any policy), we are always building this “our group” (we) against “the others”, the ones that are against us (them). in this antagonistic relationship "we" against "them", antagonism is not due to previously constituted identities that are denied. the identifications of “who we are” and “who they are” are constituted by the antagonistic relationship. the identities in an antagonistic relationship are interdependent, they are established as a result of mutual opposition and this opposition is always constitutive: i can only say that something threatens a certain identity if at the same time i affirm the existence of that same identity. affirming western and eastern identities in contemporary political dispute, for example, is not based on a set of characteristics common to different peoples inserted in each of these classifications. the construction of the meaning we confer on the east is a result, not necessary nor obligatory, of a discourse on the east produced in the west, and with its power in geo-political disputes. this discourse on the east makes equivalent multiple differences, often signified as the stranger, the enemy, "the outside ones". from this perspective, the east is not represented as formed by identities that are not western. the east is represented as an anti-west. at this point of investigation on the political disputes of curriculum, marked by antagonism, i return to paulo freire and the politics in brazil today. some of the central clashes during the 2018 presidential election campaign developed around education. the criticism of gender policies, the proliferation of fake news related to sexuality policies in education and what is privileged in the curriculum were some of the moments of a discursive articulation that led jair bolsonaro to the presidency of the republic. during this process, ultraconservative educational discourses identified these differences as associated with paulo freire's thinking. attacking paulo freire has become one of the central movements in the elections and even now. in this interpretation, it is possible to represent politics as instituted by an antagonism between the pro-bolsonaro and anti-bolsonaro discursive articulations. as there are many articulations at the same time, it is also possible to identify a discursive chain anti-paulo freire and pro-paulo freire. in education, if some (they) become anti-paulo freire, others (we) become pro-paulo freire, even if we were not working with the freire´s theory or could be identified with such thinking before this moment. and it was thus, in the political dispute, that people like me began to value paulo freire more, reread paulo freire, to cite paulo freire. the force with which the pro-bolsonaro movement built the representation of its enemy (paulo freire and us) in a given way, as well as the very representation of an antagonistic dispute, also constitutes us. i want to reiterate here that such representations of “them against us” are not just an antagonism to be situated on an outside. they are also constitutive. to the extent that we are inserted in this dispute, we are also constituting the other and we are being constituted in a given way. if all processes of signification are relational, such antagonistic discursive chains engender new and precarious meanings of who they are and who we are. however, laclau's theory of discourse not only highlights the logic of equivalence, it also theorizes about the logic of difference. political movements remain in process, marked https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index lopes. we are all paulo freire transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index by difference. the temporarily constructed equivalence among educational and curricular demands does not erase the differential movements that make impossible any discursive fullness, prevent the end of politics. some articulations have secured an election, although they are not necessarily the articulations that make it possible to govern. new disputes are in process. at this moment, i argue an investment in a democratic political dispute in brazil (lopes, 2020). for this, it is necessary to invest radically in the deconstruction of the chains of antagonistic meaning that constitutes the devaluation of public education, a political dispute in favor of education and social justice. at this political moment, this radical investment is also a defense of paulo freire. today, paulo freire no longer just means an educational thought of an internationally known researcher who has built a popular education project and a new way of thinking about literacy and the teacher/student relationship. paulo freire is a possible name for the democratic political dispute for the education in brazil. to agree or disagree with freire, to perform different readings of paulo freire – what he represented and what he represents in brazil, in the world – to defend paulo freire is to insert himself in an articulatory chain that produces an emblematic discourse, the representation of a political dispute. like the meme "eu paulo, tu freires, ele não" (i paulo, you freire, not him)22 , widely disseminated on brazilian social networks on paulo freire's 100th birthday, we can say that in today's brazilian education which is waging a political dispute in defense of democracy: "we are all paulo freire". notes 1 alicecasimirolopes@gmail.com 2 the expression "not him" appeared at the time of the presidential campaign, when different social movements organized to say that it would be possible to agree with any candidate, but bolsonaro – not him, ever. references laclau, e. (1996). emancipation(s). london: verso lopes, a. c. (2020). investment in curricular normativity in brazil: a critical-discursive perspective. in: john chi-kin lee; noel gough. (org.). transnational education and curriculum studies: international perspectives. routledge, p. 68-82 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index microsoft word waghid_tci.doc to cite this article please include all of the following details: waghid, yusef (2010). on the limits of cosmopolitanism and a ‘curriculum of refuge’ – a response to molly quinn. transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> on the limits of cosmopolitanism and a ‘curriculum of refuge’ – a response to molly quinn yusef waghid stellenbosch university, south africa if molly quinn wanted to introduce her readers to a poetic exploration of cosmopolitanism and curriculum change she succeeded in doing so quite insightfully. she begins and inconclusively ends her essay with poetic language and affirmation of cosmopolitan justice through convincing arguments in defence of a curriculum of refuge. she derives her notion of a curriculum of refuge from derrida’s (2002) idea of a ‘city of refuge’ which builds on both an ‘acceptance of human vulnerability’ and a capacity for ‘imagining community anew’. for quinn, in academia a curriculum of refuge ‘is multicultural in terms of inclusive curriculum – anti-racist, anti-oppressive, et al. – a sanctuary for the unsanctioned – different epistemologies, subaltern discourses, other discourses – initiated in audacity for interrogating the apparatuses of welcoming’ (derrida, 2002) as well as in terms of practices of legitimation. this includes the rights and responsibilities curriculum takes up (or doesn’t), and has (or hasn’t) historically. so conceived, this call may for instance also involve offering protection to children, from a culture of consumerism; a culture that has been called our ‘audit society’ (quinn, 2010, p. 94). thus conceived, for quinn a curriculum of refuge should in fact be a haven for hospitality and multicultural, intercultural, transcultural and postcultural community, thus making room for imaginative transformation of a ‘not-yet’, ‘yet-to-come’ child/children-centred curriculum (quinn, 2010, p. 95). it is hoped that this curriculum would entertain encounters with otherness, difference and forgiveness – the latter being by far the most pronounced piece of poetic justice that a curriculum of refuge, in my mind, has to offer. as a south african who has encountered racial oppression, marginalisation and exclusion in much of my life, i can relate experientially to quinn’s poetic call for forgiveness as a corollary of a curriculum of refuge. i agree with quinn that practising forgiveness would enable teachers, students and others to enhance educative relationships constituted by moments such as ‘walking city sidewalks into a new way’, ‘wondering anew’, ‘wondering into unexpected moments’, and ‘being open to otherness’ – all those encounters with others, strangers or otherness in our midst. why? like quinn i contend that forgiveness is a redemptive encounter with the other which would enable us to move towards reconciliation and peace. this is what post-apartheid south africans ─ and i am sure quinn’s community too ─ are expected to do. only then curriculum change will hopefully be justly poetic. but this is also where i wish to depart from quinn. in as much as a curriculum of refuge (intertwined with hospitality, the granting of temporary asylum to others, and forgiveness) might be of value, such a curriculum also has the potential to reify encounters with otherness as some romanticised dream. my argument is premised on an understanding that quinn seems to be silent about the nature of cosmopolitan encounters with others and otherness. i am not suggesting that quinn has abandoned the democratic education project but her obvious silence on deliberative iterations as a cosmopolitan imaginary suggests that she might be ignoring an epistemological and psychological endeavour (that is, iterations) to talk quinn: cosmopolitanism and a curriculum of refuge transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 105 back or to learn to talk back as the shaping of a curriculum of refuge unfolds. the very notion of a curriculum of refuge will not be possible without the cosmopolitan ethic of deliberative iterations. moreover, forgiveness and peace are set up by quinn as an elitist agenda of a curriculum of refuge. but should forgiveness be limited to pardoning what is forgivable? this seems to be an issue quinn appears to be muted on and which i intend to explore in order to make her case for a curriculum of refuge more plausible. derrida (1997, p. 33) argues for a view of forgiveness which builds on the premise ‘that forgiveness must announce itself as impossibility itself … (and that) it can only be possible in doing the impossible’. ‘doing the impossible’ for derrida (1997, p. 33) implies forgiving the ‘unforgivable’. in his words, ‘forgiveness forgives only the unforgivable’ – that is, atrocious and monstrous crimes against humanity which might not be conceived as possible to forgive (derrida, 1997, p. 32). derrida (1997, p. 44) explicates forgiveness as ‘a gracious gift without exchange and without condition’. amongst crimes against humanity derrida (1997, p. 52) includes genocide (say of hutus against tutsis), torture and terrorism. this notion of forgiving the ‘unforgivable’ is spawned by the view that forgiveness is an act without finality – that is, the fault and the guilty (the one who perpetrates the evil) is considered as being capable of repeating the crime without repentance or promise that he or she will be transformed. and, forgiving the ‘unforgivable’ takes into consideration that the crime might be repeated, which makes forgiveness an act (of madness) of the impossible (derrida, 1997, p. 45). now a cosmopolitan account of forgiveness that makes possible the act of forgiving the ‘unforgivable’ makes sense, because if tutsis are not going to venture into forgiving the ‘unforgivable’ genocidal acts of hutus, these two different tribal communities on the african continent might not begin to connect with one another and a process of inducing transformation within a congolese or rwandan society might not begin to take place. such a derridian view of forgiveness is grounded in an understanding that ‘nothing is impardonable’ (derrida, 1997, p. 47) and, that ‘grand beginnings’ are often celebrated and redirected through amnesia of the most atrocious happenings – a point in case is south africa’s democracy which grew out of forgiving those ‘unforgivable’ racial bigots who committed heinous crimes against those who opposed the racist state. then also, quinn seems to be adamant about the prospects for a curriculum of refuge through peace – that is, ‘imagining and creating spaces where forgiveness, healing, communion, and fellowship might actually be made possible’ (quinn, 2010, p. 95). i think quinn is ignoring the potential that violence has to offer to a curriculum of refuge. i shall elucidate this claim in reference to the thoughts of arendt. following arendt’s (1969) analysis, violence can be considered to be a phenomenon whereby people impose themselves on others, thus making others the ‘instruments’ of their will (arendt, 1969, p. 56). in other words, violence is an instrumental means of coercion (arendt, 1969, p. 44). so, hutu militia murder, torture, rape and maim tutsi women and children because they use such instrumental acts in order to terrorise tutsis. off course, non-violence can counteract violence because unlike violence, non-violence is capable of speech acts – that is, ‘violence itself is incapable of speech, and not merely that speech is helpless when confronted with violence’ (arendt, 1963, p. 19). unlike violence, which is determined by silence (arendt, 1969, p. 77) such as the silence of both victims and perpetrators of torture in nazi concentration camps, nonviolence draws on the authoritative voice of speech. it is here that non-violence can begin to tackle the genocide of hutus by tutsis. like arendt, i contend that there is no legitimate justification for violence and that the use of violence will only result in more violence. yet, following cavell (1979) and arendt we sometimes require a disruption of existing practices of violence through violence. is it conceivable that non-violent resistance will always be met quinn: cosmopolitanism and a curriculum of refuge transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 106 with non-terrorisation and peace? i do not imagine so. if hutu militia were to be resisted nonviolently, massacre and submission of tutsis would be the order of the day. thus, in a cavellian sense, we require a momentary breakage from non-violence in order to ensure lasting change in the congo – that is, a condition ought to be set up whereby speech could become dominant in an attempt to resolve conflict. what this argument amounts to, is that non-violence with its insistence on speech acts can temporarily create conditions for violence to counteract the destructive force of more violence. thus, if a curriculum of refuge could be extended to forgiving the unforgivable and to the temporary use of violence, ‘new openings for curriculum … (and) new encounters with otherness’ (quinn, 2010, p. 98) might be a distinct possibility. references arendt, h. (1963). on revolution. london: penguin books. arendt, h. (1969). on violence. london: allen lane, the penguin press. benhabib, s. (2006). the philosophical foundations of cosmopolitan norms. in: j. waldron, b. honig, & w. kymlicka, (eds.). seyla benhabib: another cosmopolitanism. oxford: oxford university press. cavell, s. (1979). the claim of reason: wittgenstein, skepticism, morality, and tragedy. oxford: clarendon press. derrida, j. (1997). on cosmopolitanism and forgiveness. london & new york: routledge. author yusef waghid is professor of philosophy of education and dean of the faculty of education at stellenbosch university, south africa. his current research focuses on philosophy of education, democratic citizenship education, cosmopolitanism and higher education transformations. his most recent book is education, democracy and citizenship revisited: pedagogical encounters (2010, sun press). email: yw@sun.ac.za o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: jupp, james; gonzález delgado, micaela; calderón berumen, freyca &; hesse, caroline (2020). decolonialhispanophone curriculum: a preliminary sketch and an invitation to a south-south dialogue transnational curriculum inquiry 17(1), 72-94 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> decolonial-hispanophone curriculum: a preliminary sketch and invitation to a south-south dialogue james c. jupp1 university of texas, rio grande valley, united states micaela gonzález delgado2 national autonomous university of mexico, acatlán, mexico freyca calderón berumen3 pennsylvania state university, altoona, united states caroline hesse4 university of texas, rio grande valley, united states in this essay, we present a preliminary sketch of decolonial-hispanophone curriculum and extend the invitation for a south-south dialogue between students, teachers, or activisteducators of the geo-regions denominated “the americas.”5 decolonial-hispanophone curriculum, as definition, refers to spanish-language, anti-racist, curricular-pedagogical resources that emphasize indigenous, brown, and black geo-regional traditions of latin america. to better historicize decolonial latin american work, we provide a genealogical sketch of decolonial-hispanophone curriculum from the 16th century conquest through the beginning of the 20th century. with the sketch, we demonstrate that decolonial thought is manifested in historically specific and contextualized ways as an oppositional cyclical countercurrent inside the historical arc of coloniality. working through the sketch, we articulate three historicized concepts. we finish our essay with an invitation to a south-south decolonialcosmopolite dialogue. two cautionary notes and our intellectual foundations we begin our essay with two cautionary notes and a description of our intellectual foundations. as our first cautionary note, we present our work as emergent, incomplete, and subjunctive. inherent in the phrase “preliminary sketch,” the purpose of our essay is not to define nor to conclude the topic of decolonial curriculum, but rather, our purpose is to initiate a south-south dialogue on curricular-pedagogical resources for students, teachers, or activist educators. for this reason, we recognize that the resources offered here are not complete. we do not try to offer a complete intellectual history of latin america, nor do we speak of all the decolonial projects throughout the world. we merely offer a preliminary sketch of curricularpedagogical resources for further discussion and research. as a second precaution, we understand that our identities and histories are reflexively implicit in the production of this essay6. as global south intellectuals influenced by the north and global north intellectuals influenced by the south, we recognize our borderland linguistic-ideational identities and idiosyncrasies. for us, we emphasize that our identities and idiosyncrasies create the 73 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index sensibilities necessary for the production of this essay and the project we initiate here. on our positionalities, it is necessary to emphasize that our intertwined identities and idiosyncrasies have made for the personal vulnerability and intellectual generosity required to collaborate, and in this way, we exemplify the necessary dispositions to realize this transnational project. taking the two notes into account, we propose our work as a contribution to the area of curriculum developed by paraskeva (2011, 2015, 2016, 2018, 2020) called itinerant curriculum theory. itinerant curriculum theory (ict), by definition, refers to the elaborated practice of critical theory by students, teachers, or activist educators in diverse contexts of the distinct geo-regions of the world. although it represents an emergent area (jupp, 2017), ict has four dimensions. ict (a) emphasizes historicized work through colonial relations of the past that continue into the present, and therefore, advances freire’s reconceptualization of curricularpedagogical work from this revolutions of the 60s and 70s; (b) understands the practice of curriculum as inherently political-conflictive, and therefore, curricular-pedagogical work provides an ideal area for subversive, activist, and ideological interventions; (c) seeks ways to conjugate transnational critical theory with historical-local realities, and therefore, emphasizes local critical-activist work as much as theoretical-intellectual work; and, (d) proposes a georegional dialectic of critical theory, and therefore, amplifies contextualized latin american critical theory, not static-bureaucratic “theoretical frameworks,” but rather a sliding critical hermeneutic. these four dimensions of ict are important for decolonizing latin american curriculum theory from critical and poststructuralist theories of the global north while also maintaining its ties to leftist-critical world movements. following ict’s fourth dimension, we describe the intellectual foundations of our preliminary sketch. our hermeneutic includes marxian world systems analysis (e.g., gill, 1986, 1995, 2003; hall, 2004; jaramillo & mclaren, 2008; wallerstein, 1991/2007, 2004), historical counter-narratives (e.g., galeano, 1971; giroux, 1992; lyotard, 1979; rivera cusicanqui, 1984/2010; zinn, 2003), insurgent cosmopolitanism (e.g., amin, 2008; jupp, 2013a, 2013b, 2017, jupp, calderón berumen, o’donald, 2017; paraskeva, 2011, 2016; sousa santos, 2007, 2009; sousa santos, nunes, meneses, 2007), chicanx borderland thinking (e.g., acuña, 1972; anzaldúa, 1987; delgado bernal, 1998; gonzález, 1967; hinojosa, 1977; kanellos, 2002; paredes, 1976; saavedra y nymark, 2008), decolonial alternatives (e.g., andreotti 2011, 2015; andreotti et al., 2018; aquino moreschi, 2013; díaz gómez, 2004; grosfoguel, 2010; maldonado-torres, 2007; martínez luna, 2004; mignolo, 2008, 2009; mignolo, guilano, & berisso, 2014; mignolo & walsh, 2018; quijano, 1992, 2000), contemporary notions of pedagogical intervention (e.g., gonzález delgado, 2009, 2012, 2014), decolonial pedagogies (e.g., jaramillo & mclaren, 2008; walsh, 2008, 2012, 2013), and the ethics of liberation (e.g., dussel, 2005, 1977/2011; freire, 1970/1998, 1992/2002; maldonado-torres, 2007). in conjugating ict, we seek sympathies, coherences, and affinities that might create a transnational spanish-speaking community to advance the necessary curricular and pedagogical work in the present moment. questions and contours of the essay with the intention of creating emergent transnational communities, our essay responds to three questions: how do we historically frame curricular-pedagogical work in the americas? which intellectual and historical resources might inform our educational work within present-day coloniality? and, which historicized concepts emerge from the intellectual resources that can inform our south-south decolonial dialogue? organized by these three questions, we present the following contours. first, we provide some provisional definitions to terms used throughout the trajectory of the essay. second, we plant the https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index 74 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index historical problem of curricular-pedagogical work inside the historical colonies and presentday coloniality. third, we arrive at the principal section, the section that provides our preliminary and genealogical sketch of decolonial-hispanophone curriculum. fourth, based on the sketch, we develop three historicized concepts that we consider key to our present-day decolonial transnational project: (a) the historicity of latin american decolonial thought, (b) mestizx conceptualization, and (c) communality/pluriversality. for each concept, we provide an example from the curricular-pedagogical practice from jim and mica, first and second authors, respectively. we conclude our essay with an invitation to a south-south decolonialcosmopolite dialogue. provisional definitions to proceed with clarity, we provide definitions to specific terms we use throughout the essay. these terms are: historical colonies, coloniality, social-historical re-signification, mestizx conceptualization, and communality/pluriversality. historical colonies, by definition, refer to the proto-capitalist and capitalist “first world system” dominant between the 16th and 20th centuries that was founded on the occupation, administration, and extraction of natural resources and surplus value from territories conquered by europe. coloniality, by definition, refers to the industrial and late-capitalist “second world system” dominant in the twentieth century that extends colonial currents and related supremacist, occidentalist, elite criollx, and anglo-saxon structures. social-historical re-signification, by definition, refers to the reappropriation and recirculation of dominant symbols with resistant uses and meanings. mestizx conceptualization, by definition, refers to “thinking the world” through various critical, historical, and hybrid perspectives (race, class, gender, and others) that combat, interrupt, and subvert the hegemonic and capitalist matrix of power. communality/pluriversality, by definition, refers to curricular-pedagogical work that begins with the geo-region (the communal, the cultural, the economic) and, simultaneously, extends its connections toward a transregional practice. having concluded the preliminary definitions, we now move to the three framing questions that structure this essay. how do we historically frame curricular-pedagogical work in the americas? we emphasize the need to begin with two historical concepts related to the americas: historical colonies and present-day coloniality. the historical colonies were the model of historical-geographic domination from the sixteenth century until the beginning of the twentieth century. the historical colonies were based on occupation and bureaucratic administration of the conquered via military means. as “first world system”, the historical colonies emphasized economic relations of exploitation that culminated in the historical period called industrialization. by definition, the historical colonies were founded on military and spiritual conquests that formed the first, supremacist, occidentalist, criollx and european world system. tied historically to europe and subsequently to us imperialism, the historical colonies imposed racist cosmovisions to justify the sacking of natural resources and the extraction of working-class surplus value. differing from european social organization that established social class privileges, in the americas domination emphasized racialization, especially in relation to enslaved, exploited, or as referred to today, “cheap” labor. of course, racialization was tied to other nexuses that included gender, sexuality, culture, language, and these ties accommodated europeans, criollxs, and anglo saxons at the top as the directive and salaryearning class while assigning indigenous, mestizx, and black peoples as a changeable, itinerant, and domestic-service classes. in this way, the nineteenth-century, malthusian, https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index 75 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index political body assumed europeans and anglo saxons as always “heading up” leadership and, at the same time, racialized subjects were assumed to be the directed social “appendages.” undoubtedly, racial links to exploited labor adapted differently across geo-regions in historically specific ways. in latin america, these racial links are particular to each nation and differ between indigenous genocide, racial-cultural mestizaje, and the promotion of the transatlantic slave trade in the creation of “modern” nations (benítez basave, 2002; galeano/2008, 1971; graham, 1990; quijano, 2000; rivera cusicanqui, 1984/2010). within differing national trajectories, racial nexuses with labor created an ongoing and persistent inequality that has a strong and undeniable presence in the present. for that reason, any historical-social analysis that diminishes race fails to comprehend racialized reality and its continuity in the present moment. because it recognizes these links, our sketch of decolonialhispanophone curriculum emphasizes and advances intellectual work that recognizes the historical colonies as fundamental bases for the critical reading of reality. coloniality represents the continuation of the historical colonies via processes of epistemological enunciation in the present moment. as “second world system,” coloniality continues colonial relations in the present in the production of disciplinary knowledges related to the financial, administrative, political, and military knowing and doing. inseparable from the production of knowledges, coloniality advances a program of official educational-cultural knowledge production through the matrix of power7 (e.g., mignolo, 2009; mignolo & walsh, 2018; grosfoguel, 2011). this program of official educational-cultural knowledge production provides one key dimension of present-day coloniality. through the matrix of power, coloniality organizes its changing, complicated, geopolitical hegemony. in the ascendance of this global hegemony, coloniality extends “the first world system” toward “the second” in non-linear but persistent form. in his extension, coloniality advances the historical colonies, not through the means of direct invasion, occupation, and administration, but rather through varied strategies that include economic incentives, “favorable” trade agreements, educational-curricular “reforms,” pastoral guides like “free” markets, and simultaneously, violent official and extra-official military invasions for “anti-democratic” countries. as part of this supremacy, coloniality also presents itself as “first world” inside the “third” as a spectacle of “progress” while this progress serves to destabilize regional economies and degrade world environmental conditions. following historical white, anglo saxon, eurocentric supremacy, coloniality presents the “third world” inside the “first” as a social problem. all the while, these “problems” are results of necessary labor migration that is caused by the same destabilized economies. more recently and with the political astuteness of donald trump, coloniality advances a us internal politics and foreign policy that is openly anti-immigrant, racist, and fascist to maintain a status quo of racialized, systemic, international, economic white privilege and advantage while labeling immigrants as “criminals,” “drug dealers,” “rapists,” and “murders.” what is dangerous about present-day coloniality is that it has created an irrational, mythomaniac, xenophobic, racist, and eugenic “common sense.” inseparable from the matrix of power, coloniality advances a program of educationalcultural reproduction. differing from historical colonies, coloniality does not occupy or administrate faraway territories, but rather, predominantly works through educands-students through a program of reproduction or “reproductive curriculum” directed toward the production of conformist, accepting, consumer identities that comply with capitalist inevitability. this curriculum is manifest via various strategies including educative centers, competencies or standards, museums with official messages, and other means that extend the supremacist, occidentalist, criollx, and anglo saxon cosmovision. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index 76 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index here we note a clear example of coloniality and the reproductive curriculum in the standardized testing and its proliferation from the united states and the global north toward latin america (díaz lópez & osuna lever, 2016; internacional de la educación para américa latina [ieal]; 2015; ravela et al., 2008). part of a neoliberal, instrumental, and financial logic that emerged since the 80s (gill, 1986, 1995, 2003), the ieal (2015) laments the omnipresent proliferation of standardized curricula and global competencies tied closely to “national and international evaluation (much standardized and centralized evaluation), … school rankings, and competition between schools” (p. 7). in fact, while some debate their applications (díaz lópez & osuna lever, 2016) y others dream of evaluations adapted to latin america (ravela et al., 2008), it is impossible to deny the resounding effects of the reproductive curriculum in latin america via global competencies and standardized testing. within these strategies, the reproductive curriculum eliminates or devalues mestiza, brown, and black traditions and languages. as an “educational” process, reproductive curriculum imposes modes of modern, new, accepted ways of thinking with stamps of approval from university centers of the global north metropoles. moreover, reproductive curriculum sends another selection of “quaint” yet “outdated” knowledges to occidentalist museums as representations of a folkloric past heritage. through the means of reproductive curriculum, coloniality reproduces an abyssal line between the “inevitabilities” of supremacist, occidentalist, criollx, and anglo saxon traditions and mestizx, brown, indigenous, and black traditions that, through the abyssal line, are made non-existent (paraskeva, 2011, 2016; santos, 2007, 2009). paradoxically and importantly, reproductive curriculum has not invented a way to extinguish human dreams nor to determine identities. additionally, before the same reproductive curriculum, there are different patterns of resistance and re-existent identities. nonetheless, the great majority of these patterns reflect the same a-historical, nihilistic, and opportunistic directions inherent in hegemonic consumer capitalism. notable and implicit in reproductive curriculum, coloniality operates through binaries of “civilization/barbarism,” “savage/modern,” “backwards/advanced,” “underdeveloped/developed,” and “tradition/progress.” as the most general way of managing this binary, coloniality uses the duality of “problem/solution” in order to characterize “unmodern” historical conditions it understands as barbarism, primitive, backwards, underdeveloped, or traditional. in this recent characterization, coloniality understand any and all disagreements with the matrix of power as a “problem” that needs to be solved or, better said, eradicated. implicitly, the critical use of the term coloniality emphasizes a de-linking with this supremacist cosmovision outlined above. this de-linking refers to various strategies of resistance and re-existence, but it also takes place under the historical conditions enunciated by the matrix of power. because it takes place within these conditions, de-linking does not represent an autonomous and individualized autonomy as framed by the false freedom of consumer capitalism. rather, de-linking represents the search for structural, laboral, georegional, ecological, and historical alternatives. these alternatives emphasize social justice, racial conscientization, localized knowledges, sustainable economies, and the reorganization of historical regional knowledge production. our sketch of decolonial-hispanophone curriculum recognizes, and super-ordinates the understanding of historical colonies and coloniality as decolonial analytic concepts. in the next section, we attempt to provide historicized resources that can advance the processes of de-linking. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index 77 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index which intellectual and historical resources might inform our curricular-pedagogical work? decolonial-hispanophone curriculum values, studies, conditions, and above all historicizes mestizx, brown, indigenous, and black spanish language traditions particular to latin america. far from desiring to control the transmission of knowledges, we provide the following paragraphs as a heuristic-bibliographic outline of resources and possible directions that might advance a south-south cosmopolitan dialogue in the future. such a dialogue supposes more profound, elaborated, and contextualized research toward a decolonial archive adaptable for particular engagements and local activisms. each region needs its own resources and decolonial histories, but also, we emphasize transnationalshared intellectual resources that can create social movements of the same scale as the monstrosity of neoliberal (now fascist) capitalism. knowing that we work within existing historical curricular-pedagogical traditions, we understand our work here as continuation and critique of intellectual work that came before us8. to begin the dialogue, we offer the following subsections: indigenous intellectual production, brown and mestizx humanisms of the 16th century, re-significations of the baroque period, and the continued fight from dependence toward independence. indigenous intellectual production decolonial-hispanophone curriculum values and conditions indigenous intellectual production, both historical and present-day. integral to decolonial-hispanophone curriculum, we repudiate the multitude of times that the spanish or europeans destroyed indigenous codices and other indigenous expressions (e.g., díaz del castillo, 1632/1992; de landa, 1566/1978), and we recognize the instances in which indigenous intellectuals hid their codices (e.g., recinos, 1947/1995), translated them for resistance and conservation (e.g., de alva ixtlilxochitl, 1608/1891; poma, 1615/2013; tezozómoc, 1598/1994), or re-produced them in present-day memory for future generations (díaz gómez, 2004; menchú y burgos, 1985; posas, 1952/2012). we recognize existing collective indigenous intellectual production (e.g., recinos, 1947/1995; de alva ixtlilxóchitl, 1608/1891; poma, 1615/2013; tezozómoc, 1598/1994), re-readings and contemporary oral histories from the indigenous archives (e.g., caso, 1953/2014; duverger, 2007; garibay, 1954/2007; león-portilla, 1961/1995; rivera cusicanqui, 1984/2010), and present-day contributions (e.g., aquino moreschi, 2013; díaz gómez, 2004, marcos, 2001) as key to south-south cosmopolite dialogue. we emphasize indigenous intellectual production, no to give it a better chamber in the occidentalist anthropology museum, but rather, to include it in contemporary, present-day, critical readings. simply stated, we understand its study as inseparable from historical selfknowledge and self-determination (andreotti, 2011, 2015; andreotti et al., 2018; paraskeva, 2011, 2016, 2020). our purpose in reading the indigenous archives is not celebrationist or folkloric like many of the national-consensual historians of the 20th century, but rather, we approach these archives with the intention of informing our historical-contemporary understandings with understandings of indigenous resistance and presence in both the past and present. in approaching the indigenous archive in this way, we repudiate the us historical common-sense position that “real indians” no longer exist. rather, we understand the example of indigenous proletarian resistance as a dialectic archive that requires an understanding of the past in the present and the present of the past (marcos, 2001; martínez, 1976/1991). https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index 78 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index brown and mestizx humanisms of the 16th century tied to our understanding of indigenous intellectual production, we value, but also simultaneously condition, brown and mestizx humanisms of the 16th century (e.g., de las casas, 1552/2011; de la vega, 1590/1967; de ercilla y zúniga, 1569/1997; motolinía, 1866/2001; sahagún, 1585/2006) that pushed, not for the extermination of indigenous peoples, but rather for their humanization. besides pushing for humanization, brown and mestizx humanisms narrated clear instances of indigenous resistance and pride before unjust forces of the historical colonies. overall, brown and mestizx humanisms of the 16th century represented a nascent, problematic, incomplete, actual, and still potent process that might be called transmodern (e.g., coroníl, 1998, dussel, 2005; walsh, 2008). this mestizaje continues to be important in the present moment because it opens a third space of dialogue between occidental and indigenous cultures. always needing to confront the historical paternalism of the catholic cosmovision, nonetheless, brown and mestizx humanisms with their social-educative experiments created distinct, mendelian, syncretic, intercultural, and transcultural historical conditions of latin america that are very distinct from historical anglophone conditions. these social experiments of brown and mestizx humanisms contrasted with the genocide, extermination, apartheid, and exclusion of spencerian white supremacy of the united states. we theorize the historical problematics of historical mestizaje in the final section of this essay. the college of santa cruz de tlatelolco is emblematic of the brown and mestizx humanism of the 16th century. the college represented the utopic aspirations, limits, contradictions, and sudden closure of social experiments deemed heretical and indigenizing by the catholic church and phillip ii’s authoritarianism at the end of the 16th century (duverger, 1987/1996; ricard, 1933/1974). founded by franciscans in 1536, the original purpose of the college was to provide a trilingual education in nahuatl, spanish, and latin to cement a new hispanic-christian utopia based on an indigenous priesthood. with all the dangers and contradictions of the utopianism of thomas more, the franciscans and bernardino de sahagún underscored the teaching of language, culture, and history in nahuatlspanish inter-linguistic and intercultural production. with this group of intellectuals that included nahuatl trilingual students antonio valeriano, alonso vegerano, martín jacobita, and other collaborators, sahagún (1578/2006) produced his monumental work general history of new spain and many other documents. the collaborative work of the group attempted to render the nahuatl cosmovision of the world in an inter-linguistic and intercultural way that gave rise to a body of nahuatlspanish double-translation work that has not since been equaled in ambition or result. what the college represented for our reading of decolonial-hispanophone curriculum is a model of radical intercultural dialogue inside which languages and knowledges are respected as educational-identitarian resources of the past toward a better future. moreover, this intellectual production also supports the findings of mica, second author of this essay, who works in hñähñu communities today. through this work, we emphasize the importance of recovering ancestral traditions that can be leveraged toward alternative re-creations of the world through distinct historical heritages and traditions. in this way, the college of santa cruz de tlatelolco represents a goal of inter-linguistic and intercultural education, not as celebrationist history of national historians, but rather a resource with present-day critical relevance to our south-south cosmopolite dialogue. with this link to present-day relevance, we emphasize that brown and mestizx humanisms represented by the college of santa cruz de tlatelolco ended up suddenly terminated by the anti-indigenous politics of the reign of phillip ii that started in 1571. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index 79 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index because of this reactionary politics, sahagún’s manuscripts and many other documents remained buried in the archives of madrid or the vatican because of their heretical content. it was joaquín icazbalceta (1866) who rescued these documents and published them in his collection of documents for the study of mexican history and, therefore, promoted the radical mestizx ideologies of the mexican revolution, the chicano movement in the southwest us, and other uprisings and decolonial movements in latin america. in the end, brown and mestizx humanism, tied to social-educational experiments presented future alternative avenues that were never realized in the 16th and 17th centuries because of the oppression of the spanish crown and the catholic church. nonetheless, here we recognize brown and mestizx humanisms as key decolonial resources that emphasize one dimension of our preliminary study. re-significations of the baroque period in continuation, we also recognize curricular-pedagogical resources of the baroque period in latin america. overall, we repudiate the re-instatement of anti-indigenous and anti-mestizx politics, the catholic inquisition, and the oppressive counter-reform. importantly, we recognize the burlesque, historical, and social violence and cruelty of this period that had material consequences in indigenous and mestizx communities (lafaye, 1972; phelan, 1970; picón salas, 1944/1994). following the readings of mariano picón salas (1944/1994), we emphasize the intellectual ineptitude of the baroque period and the disconnection between the colonial leadership and the indigenous and mestizx masses. regarding this ineptitude, the baroque period officially abolished the inter-linguistic and intercultural impulses of brown and mestizx humanisms of the previous period outlined above. again, with educator picón salas (1944/1994), we emphasize: the general tone of the culture [of the baroque period] that the metropoles imposed was that of the complex of transplant. there was the privilege of an erudite elite that lacked any understanding of the indigenous and mestizx masses. official intellectual work of the period had an exclusive and cryptic character. (p. 131) nonetheless, confronting this official espistemicide (paraskeva, 2011, 2016), the baroque period offered patterns of historical-social resignification that are not yet concluded but are important for future decolonial projects, especially regarding the reterritorialization of the us by indigenous and mestizx populations from the global south. among several examples of baroque re-signification, we note two instances that exemplify decolonial-hispanophone curriculum: (i) the baroque cathedrals of latin america and (ii) the indigenous uprisings of the 19th century. part of indigenous-mestizx sensibilities, baroque latinamerican architecture provides an instance of social-historical re-signification of hegemonic symbols that became relevant to subsequent liberation movements. in latin american terrains, baroque architecture transformed itself into a latin american ultrabaroque style with strong esthetic influence from indigenous ornamentation. specifically, in ultra-baroque architecture, the indigenous and mestizx crafters, masons, and sculptors elaborated churches, monasteries, sanctuaries, and shrines for an entire continent. paradoxically, while catholic authorities tried to proliferate orthodoxy for all, indigenous and mestizx esthetics and sensibilities were codified in stone, for the future, displaying a different unofficial meaning to the constructions. with contradictions similar to the sanctification of the virgen of guadalupe/tonantzintla in the 16th century, ultra-baroque cathedrals integrated indigenous traditions and content, but, also, at the same time, https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index 80 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index indigenized and re-signified the religious, spanish, and criollx structures by leaving an indigenous imprint on icons, symbols, and esthetics from the hands of the workers who made them. several examples of the baroque architecture are the sacred cathedral of mexico, the college of jesuits in tepotzotlán, the cathedral of santa maria de tonantzintla, and the cathedral of san francisco de acatepéc among others. here, we emphasize the importance of taking ownership, re-interpreting, and giving other meanings to official-hegemonic messages as symbol of resistance and re-existence before colonial extermination and epistemicide. these notions of resistance and re-existence exemplified in the latin american, ultra-baroque style are key to decolonial praxis in the present. these are key notions in the present moment because decolonial praxis does not represent a return to an idealized precolumbian past but rather a popular re-signification of historical knowledges and practices in the present. resignification, exemplified in the ultra-baroque cathedrals, represents a social, psychic, historical process of re-taking official symbols that is a type of border-thinking (anzaldúa, 1987; mignolo, 2008, 2009; mignolo & walsh, 2018). apart from the architecture of the period but more radical, the indigenous uprisings of the latin american baroque period also help us understand the processes of indigenous resignification. the uprisings of jacinto canék (1761), túpac amaru ii (1780-1782), juan santos atau huallpa (1742-1755), and ambrosio pisco (1781) provide examples of socialhistorical resignification of previously deprecated indigenous symbols of the colonial period. jacinto canék, manifesting the continued autonomy of the itzá-maya in yucatán, organized an army of five hundred indians, declared himself king of the itzá-maya, and tried to restore mayan reign to the yucatan. túpac amaru ii, fighting against economic suffering in the andes mountains, executed spanish officials, organized an army of between fortyand sixtythousand, and took over the south of perú for several years. juan santos atau huallpa, looking for a return to incan reign and cosmovision, rejected his christian education, threw out spanish and mestizx collaborators with the spanish crown, and took over the tarma and jauja regions, which remained autonomous regions until his death. ambrosio pisco, farmer and successful businessman in territories close to what is today called bogotá, columbia, directed indigenous independent troops and negotiated for control of indigenous mining rights in the region. against the interpretation of indigenous inferiority, indigenous uprisings provide a permanent, symbolic, undeniable, and important turn of consciousness that emphasized indigenous presence and protagonism in the history of the continent. this turn of consciousness is manifest in the autonomy of indigenous communities, the rejection of spanish and european leadership, and a re-circulation of indigenous cosmovisions. far from repudiating, denigrating, or omitting the past, the uprisings presented a massive indigenous front organized by the representatives of the ancient mayan and incan lineages. these lineages recognized, integrated, and actualized the indigenous struggle of their time. similar to the haitian revolution of the 19th century on the island of santo domingo, those uprisings were identified with much seriousness and fear in the governmental and metropolitan centers as possible permanent rebellions of the indigenous, mestizx, and black popular masses against the criollx and european centers of power in the capitals. this turn of consciousness informs present-day indigenous sovereignty movements (e.g., aquino moreschi, 2013; díaz gómez, 2004; marcos, 2001, luna martínez, 2004; rivera cusicanqui, 1984/2010) and also movements of autonomy exemplified by sanctuary cities in the us that have defied the federal government in housing thousands of refugees from the global south. the vision of the indigenous uprisings provides us with an historical framing of the necessary de-linking that is part of decolonial praxis. drawing on historical https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index 81 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index indigenous uprisings, helps envision social, historical, and economic alternatives to the neoliberal fascist-supremacy that we see today. the continued fight from dependence toward independence with the independence period, decolonial-hispanophone curriculum understands the historical dialectic arc of mestizx ascendance and vindication as always incomplete that requires continued intellectual work and projects for the future. we understand that latin american independence movements had in their very in their foundations the social, historical, and economic contradiction of a governmental, europeanized, spanish, criollx, and white minority. as much before as in the present-day, this contradiction of a governmental minority has degraded the latin american social contract and made political promises of the elite into a cruel joke. because of these past and present-day contradictions, we understand that the fight for independence is urgent, as much then as it is now. historically, this minority lived on the backs of mestizx and indigenous masses with special reference to mestizx illegitimacy-bastardy (enríquez molina, 1906; fuentes, 1962/1992; paz, 1950/1987; picón salas, 1944/1994). within these decolonial-hispanophone resources, we recognize the revolutionaries’ intellectual production as always partial, problematic, and contradictory as they advanced the cause of independence. at the same time, we repudiate the occidentalist, spanish, criollxs, royalists, and other traitors to the people who worked to block the historical mestizx identities of independence and instead wished for a return to europeanized and criollx social structures and thinking that protected their privileges. key in the case of latin america, we recognize that the assumed “independence period of latin america” was not a brief period of a single revolutionary war like the case of the us in north america but rather an historical-social process with relevance to present-day coloniality. latin american independence is still coming and it has lasted two centuries of revolts, uprisings, and counter-revolutions. while latin american countries became “independent,” the specter of yankee and european imperialism continued with the new faces of coloniality. between the particular and contradictory instances that we can represent inside decolonial-hispanophone curriculum, we very briefly emphasize the intellectual production of simón bolívar, jose martí, manuel gonzález prada, and andrés enríquez molina as exemplary of decolonial-hispanophone curriculum. anticipated in the curriculum offered by his teacher simón rodríguez and the action of other revolutionaries, bolívar (1815/1997) understood the historical process of governance as distinct from european or anglo saxon models when he emphasized “the difficulty of prophesizing the natural type of government that should be adopted” (p. 92). demonstrating similar thinking, martí (1891/1972) emphasized an independent latin american politics that warned against the imperialist “giant who measured seven leagues in his boots” (p. 17), and he also underscored that “good government in the americas is not made by the one who knows how to govern in germany or france, but rather, one who understands what elements make up his own country” (p. 19). resonant with present-day indigenous circumstances, gonzález prada (1895/1997) recognized the historical conditions of the proletarian, diverse, racialized indigenous populations in writing “one shouldn’t preach humility and resignation to the indigenous, but rather pride and rebellion” (p. 166). these four thinkers referenced in this section are representatives of decolonialhispanophone curriculum because they advanced the same turn of consciousness that begins to emphasize the importance of a latin american cosmovision, both regional and transnational. before this oppressed, historical, and material reality, these four thinkers begin to elaborate a social-political vision that served as primary resources for critical-marxian https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index 82 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index intellectuals of the 20th century such as josé carlos mariátegui (1928/2007), domitila barrios de chungara (1978), and subcomandante marcos (2001) of our time. if we understand the mexican revolution as a second war for independence, the mestizx-indigenous thinking of andres molina enríquez is emblematic of the four thinkers. molina enríquez provided a trajectory that recognized the revolution as the material expression of the mestizx, brown, indigenous, and black masses. studied notably by agustín basave benítez, the thinking of molina enríquez is fundamental to the mexican revolution. student in the scientific and literary institute of toluca founded by ignacio ramirez (“el nigromante”) in 1846, molina enríquez advanced critical and redistributive liberalism that founded the mestizx-indigenous turn of consciousness in both rural and metropolitan areas. molinista intellectual production served to advance the need for the mexican revolution as the incomplete historical social justice trajectory that later brought about agrarian reform and cardenista unionism after the revolution. after having served in numerous governmental positions in post-revolutionary administrations, the same molina enríquez woke up thirty years later to declare that the revolution he helped create had failed. molina enríquez makes direct reference to spanish-criollx coloniality and white supremacy that impeded the revolution for which he had fought. molina enríquez (1936) emphasized: the revolution has not arrived at its end, because the indians and indianmestizos…have not yet made certain their freedom from the apparent “superiority” and the perverse political action of the spanish, of the criollos, and the criollosmestizos. (p. 77) molina notes the cul-de-sacs and labyrinths in the liberation of the oppressed that are amply studied by antiand decolonial intellectuals such as freire (1970/1998) and fanon (1952/1967). these intellectuals focus on defending the mind of the oppressed from the oppressor and, also, they understand that the best weapon of the oppressor is the minds of the oppressed working with complicity on their own oppression. key to the mestizx-indigenous thinking of molina enríquez is to follow mestizaje’s critical-historical direction and deny the doctrinal-hegemonic version that know is co-opted in official national histories. specifically, it is necessary that we follow the social-justice, critical, transformative, and re-distributive directions of historical mestizaje (e.g. anzaldúa, 1987; coroníl, 1998; rivera cusicanqui, 2012) to reorganize national and international massmovements. following these molinista trajectories also supported by bolívar, martí, gonzález prada, and other critical intellectuals, the archive of decolonial-hispanophone curriculum from the independence period remains relevant to the south-south cosmopolite dialogue. this independent thought remains relevant because it is here that we find historicized, critical-decolonial, transformative, and redistributive understandings on a massive revolutionary scale that we emphasize in the final subsection on communality/pluriversality. which concepts emerge from the preliminary sketch? in this section, we present three historicized concepts that emerged from the preliminary sketch. these three concepts reflect and, at the same time, should inform the use of and further research on the intellectual content from the preliminary sketch. these three concepts are: (a) the historicity of decolonial thought, (b) mestizx conceptualization, and (c) communality/pluriversality. for each concept, we provide an example of curricularpedagogical practice from jim or mica. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index 83 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index the historicity of decolonial thought the historicity of decolonial thought is the first historicized concept that should found our non-derived, decolonial, south-south, cosmopolite dialogue. importantly, our sketch requires us to recognize that decolonial-hispanophone thought has a long and critical trajectory based on latin american questions. far from being a new and abstract paradigm from the social sciences of the global north, decolonial-hispanophone curriculum emerges from a long tradition of decolonial thought in latin america. belonging to these traditions, decolonial-hispanophone curriculum represents a series of historicized, situated, and contextualized practices in specific geo-regions of latin america that are tied to historical moments and movements. not pertaining to another “innovation” imported from cultural studies, critical legal studies, or the reconceptualization of curriculum from the global north, decolonial-hispanophone curriculum moves us away from so called “theoretical frames” of dominant social science production of us universities. emphatically, we have not developed the sketch of decolonial-hispanophone curriculum as isolated academics. to the contrary, our intentions are to better historicize decolonial thought of latin america. particularly, we emphasize the recent historicizing directions of walsh (2013), mignolo and walsh (2018), and rivera cusicanqui (1984/2010) in recognizing that decolonial thinking preceded the work of the modernity-coloniality group of the 90s. we advance decolonial-hispanophone curriculum because continued decolonial work in latin america requires the re-interpretation of historical resources, fundamental ideas, and epistemic and axiological traditions. in order to better theorize its historicity, we advance decolonial-hispanophone curriculum not as another critical counter-narrative (e.g., acuña, 1972; galeano, 1971/2003; giroux, 1992; lyotard, 1979; zinn, 1980/2003). although we identify counternarratives as useful ideological resources, nonetheless, we recognize that these reflect and reproduce hegemonic narratives, especially hegemonic notions of linear time. instead of proposing more counter-narratives, we understand decolonialhispanophone curriculum in ways similar to indigenous calendars for which the aztecnahuatl calendar is emblematic. rather than assuming progressive-linear time, the aztecnahuatl assumes cyclical and dynamic wheels-within-wheels that can interrupt, change, destroy, or renew epochs. in the present-day, dominant and hegemonic notions of progress and historical development have to be destroyed. contrasting with those, we need concepts of cycles, rupture, generation, and renovation to begin the shared work of social-historical reconstruction. within this historical trajectory, decolonial-hispanophone curriculum has presented other alternatives that have been taken advantage of (or lost) in the fight for historical, social, economic, and political self-determination across geo-regions. we emphasize that the most important aspect of decolonial-hispanophone curriculum, what we understand to be historical cycles or “aztec suns,” is that decolonial radicalism does not present itself as a doctrine or set of knowledges passed down from anglo saxon, french, or german authorities, but rather, that decolonial thinking and work emerges from particular latin american geo-regions. specifically, subcomandante marcos (2001) informs our project because he locates our contexts within the historical reality of latin america, within indigenous and mestizx thinking, and inside an historical cycle that continues: https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index 84 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index but it occurs to me now that the most important aspect of dreaming in reality is knowing what is coming to an end, what is continuing, and overall what was started since the violence of the conquest…180 years after the appearance of bolívar and manuelita sáenz, 85 years after the prophecy of the flores magón brothers, 80 years after emiliano zapata, 30 years after the dream of che, dreaming of the revelation of all true an honest americans. …the great oppressor powers have not found the weapon that destroys dreams. (p. 108) the truth is that systems of domination and exploitation have not attained the ability to annihilate the enzyme of utopia from human cognition. dreams were never the property of a determined supremacist, occidentalist, criollx, or anglo saxon genealogy. in research conducted by jim and his colleagues, the historicity of decolonial thought is present in his graduate teaching on curriculum leadership. jim works in a state university in the border region of the southwest of the us, atzlán. instead of giving the standard course “social foundations of curriculum,” jim has developed the course “cultural and linguistic sustainability in transnational contexts.” from engagement in this course, curriculum leaders study natural and social history of their region omitted in public schools and universities. among other readings, curriculum leaders study texts by regional intellectuals including hinojosa (1977), paredes (1976), and anzaldúa (1987). in this way, curriculum leaders develop a geo-regional perspective of the curricular resources tied to the national ethnic studies curriculum movement (sleeter & zavala, 2020). through these regional curriculum leaders, jim and his colleagues influence a geo-regional understanding of curriculum, and additionally, this group is collaborating with a local museum in order to finance the translation of historical regional documents dedicated to teachers’ critical scholarship. mestizx conceptualization mestizx conceptualization is the second historicized concept that should found our non-derived, decolonial, south-south, cosmopolite dialogue. decolonial-hispanophone curriculum begins with the recognition that historical mestizaje is basic and fundamental to latin american contributions to the world archive. by and large ignored or looked down on in europe and the us, historical mestizaje is key and principal to decolonial-hispanophone curriculum’s historicized, south-south dialogue. simply stated, mestizaje provides primary materials of the latin american archive, and we insist that the latin american archive cannot simply be denied or wished away with global north social science fads. far from being a “new” critical or post-critical discourse, historical mestizaje is fundamental to latin american intellectual traditions. nonetheless, decolonial hispanophone curriculum does not begin with the celebrationist habits typical of latin american intellectuals of previous epochs, but rather, we begin with an understanding that historical mestizaje is problematic. emergent in the mestizaje archive, we take up the idea of mestizx conceptualization as a rejection of hegemonic-doctrinal mestizaje. in this rejection, mestizx conceptualization seeks a restauration of historical mestizaje’s molinista, social-justice, critical, transformative, and redistributive capacities (anzaldúa, 1987; coroníl, 1998; molina enríquez, 1938; rivera cusicanqui, 2012). differing from hegemonic-doctrinal mestizaje, mestizx conceptualization does not refer to the transmission of an historical doctrine. in contrast, mestizx conceptualization provides for located, open-ended, hybridized, generative, curricular-pedagogical interactions that are not tied to european or anglo saxon orthodoxies. this heterogenous discord with https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index 85 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index orthodoxies even extends to emergent orthodoxies within decolonial thinking in the social sciences. for this reason, mestizx conceptualization implies the use of shared linguisticconceptual yet hybridized capacities to read and modify neoliberal, individualist reality in subversive, interpellative, and collective ways. this reading implies making coloniality visible, studying its forms of production and re-production, and in this way, also conceptualizing and verbalizing subversive alternatives. through educative institutions, these verbalized and conceptualized alternatives allow for a geo-regional yet simultaneous global message of hope. if we recognize that reality is made of words and concepts, mestizx conceptualization recognizes the force of subverting, appropriating, re-signifying, and influencing historical directions through transcultural, negotiated, historicized, unfinished, and mestizx means. therefore, it is necessary to work through new words, concepts, ideas; it is necessary to create a new language for teacher education and education writ large, a language that helps us think differently, in alternative ways, and when necessary, speak through our silence. for this work, we need to advance mestizx conceptualization in the reading of multiple texts and historical realities, as we hoped to perform in our preliminary sketch of decolonialhispanophone curriculum. this is not easy work if we understand that decolonial-hispanophone curriculum takes place within the language and institutions that are historically colonial and supremacist. nonetheless, with freire (1970/1998, 1992/2002) and other sources of independent decolonial thinking (e.g., anzaldúa, 1987; martí, 1891/1972; mignolo y walsh, 2018; neruda, 1950/1985; paz, 1950/1987, picón salas, 1944/1994; rivera cusicanqui, 1984/2010, 2012; walsh, 2013), we understand that mestizx conceptualization represents, not a small scale or small-minded movement of academics so that a few have “good careers,” but rather, we understand mestizx conceptualization as a social-psychic-linguistic-historical-estheticconceptual intervention that modifies reality. this intervention has to provoke a decolonial conscientization for the educator-educand. freire (1992/2002) provides us with the foundations of mestizx conceptualization that we elaborate in decolonial-hispanophone curriculum: therefore, teaching and learning represent moments inside great historical processes— those of knowing, thinking, and recognizing. the educands recognize themselves as such by coming to know objects and discovering that they themselves are capable of signifying, and at the same time identifying themselves as signified. this is the way that educands makes themselves signifiers in the process. (pp. 125-126) following the thinking of freire, we come to the work of conscientization as a complex process, which today can emerge, not only through “literacy” as freire taught us. rather, this process requires a creative-and-open, decolonial, geo-regional, but simultaneous, global readings of historical reality. through decolonial means, we can begin to understand this historical process of conscientization through the term mestizx conceptualization, and in this way, we both de-universalize freire’s humanisms and also link him to racialized, decolonial, latin american epistemologies. in the research conducted by jim and his colleagues, mestiza conceptualization is present in his graduate teaching. again, working with curriculum leaders from the region, jim provides critical, feminist, poststructuralist, and decolonial texts to his students. in the process of dialogue, they also study the notion of historical mestizaje in various texts (alonzo, 2020; saavedra and nymark, 2008) with a particular focus on anzaldúa (1987). in dialogues, chicana feminist students achieve the ability to reflect critically, not only about regional https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index 86 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index oppression of class and race, but they also question the patriarchal reality of their lives as daughters and teachers. in these reflections, they share the goal of bringing this critical perspective to their teaching in public schools. several of these students develop critical research as part of their studies, and these studies impact public schools and their students. communality/pluriversality communality/pluriversality is the third historicized concept that should found our non-derived, decolonial, south-south, cosmopolite dialogue. in speaking of communality/ pluriversality, we retake geo-regional forms of communal organization that have been erased from curricular-pedagogical dialogue by the so-called “global competencies.” for those of us who have lived close to and participated in curricular-pedagogical communal learning, we can notice the need to link the commons (related to inheritance, the use and conservation of natural resources), the cultural (related to tradition, language, values, and cosmovisions), and local economics (related to the political-educative project, collective learning). in linking the commons, the cultural, and the economic, we find these elements necessary to recover the communal force that can provide particular empowerment, sources of memory, and identity. in this way, communality/ pluriversality represents a return to active social-historical re-signification. this re-signification allows us to take control of daily sensemaking and re-connect with geo-regional memory. in addition to the communal and geo-regional, communality/pluriversality emphasizes the analysis of world systems (grosfoguel, 2010; mignolo, 2008, 2009; wallerstein, 1991/2007, 2004). taking world systems into account, communality/pluriversality cannot only advance via notions of isolated, geo-regional de-linking as it appears in some philosophical (mignolo, 2008, 2009) or anthropological studies (aquino moreschi, 2013; díaz gómez, 2004; luna martínez, 2004). in contrast, communality/pluriversality functions through a dialectic that works with local geo-regional resources (the common, the cultural, and the economic) and links to transnational communities across the americas. overall, communality/pluriversality forms a network that can combat and resist neoliberal and global forces (sousa santos, 2007, 2009; sousa santos, nunes, meneses, 2007; marcos, 2001; mignolo, 2008). in order to understand the limits of 20th century state socialism, communality/pluriversality advances a common regional network of understanding, but at the same time, represents: the collective aspiration of oppressed groups to organize their resistance and consolidate their political coalitions to the same scale as those leveraged by the victimizing oppressors. of course, this scale is global, anti-hegemonic and global. (sousa santos, 2007, p. 10) having these aspirations, communality/pluriversality provides a dialectic that recognizes the geo-regional resources mentioned before, but simultaneously, forges connections with transcultural resistant currents in order to be integrated into a decolonial movement. sousa santos (2007, 2009) has described communality/pluriversality as insurgent cosmopolitanism (andreotti, 2011, 2015; andreotti et al. 2018; jupp, 2013a, 2013b, jupp, calderón berumen, o’donald, 2017; paraskeva, 2011, 2016, 2020). this insurgent cosmopolitanism advances a local resistant network but, at the same time, an anti-hegemonic global one. in research conducted by mica and her colleagues, communality/pluriversality is present in her work with hñähñu communities in mexico. in community workshops, adult hñähñu students along with their children elaborate on the reconstruction of collective socialhistorical, geographic, political, and economic knowledges. in this way, cultural continuation https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index 87 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index is provided through vital social y educational space within communities. through the means of language, this is possible given the circumstances and mechanisms of orality that provide meaning and signification in their community. through the freirean method of dialogue, the hñähñu leverage the workshops for the defense of their community from the intrusions of global culture, mass communication networks, mass migrations to and returns from the global north, and the capitalist destruction of their language and culture as well as their ecological environment. the invitation to a south-south dialogue we finish our essay with an invitation to a south-south, decolonial, non-derived, and cosmopolite dialogue. in summarizing our preliminary sketch, in the first section we argued that the problem of curricular-pedagogical work must be situated within the arc of the historical colonies and present-day coloniality. planting our work this way, we emphasized the need for a re-evaluation of historical resources that we leverage to conceptualize the work we do as educators-activists. following this notion of re-evaluation, in the second section we provided a preliminary sketch of intellectual resources that we called decolonialhispanophone curriculum. we provided our sketch, not to indicate that the resources we signaled are the only valuable great books. to the contrary, we provided the preliminary sketch to emphasize the need for a latin american historical horizon based on indigenous, mestizx, brown, and black resources to found and suggest future, more specific research, destined to local-particular and transnationally informed projects. after the sketch, in the penultimate section, we presented three historicized concepts that reflect and simultaneously inform the dialogue we would propose to start: the historicity of decolonial thought, mestizx conceptualization, and communality/pluriversality. in the trajectory of the essay, we emphasized that decolonial-hispanophone curriculum provides a geo-regional and transnational dialectic to resist global capitalism. to conclude our work here, we consider the historical reality that presently stalks us. it is necessary to identify that ignoring present-day racialized coloniality is an act of intellectual bad faith, similar to blocking out the sun to light a candle. we present the rest of the essay, including our sketch and the three historicized concepts, with an expressed subjunctive and dialogical tone, knowing that we do not have all the necessary answers; therefore, at the end of our essay, we avoid offering the typical conclusions or the everpresent “implications” of the anglophone academic essay. in contrast, we finish our essay by identifying a start, a start of a subjunctive dialogue, a south-south and cosmopolite dialogue, one which emphasizes geo-regional and decolonial intellectual resources to better inform our praxis with educands, teachers and teacher educators, or educator-activists. notes 1 jcjupp@gmail.com 2magda57moon@gmail.com 3freycacb@gmail.com 4 carolineahesse@gmail.com 5 as a geo-political limit, we take on the territories that are today called “the americas.” importantly, for the trajectory of our essay, we us the terms “the americas,” “latin america,” and “latin american” knowing that https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index 88 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index these are invented historical constructions that are tied to historical colonies and to present-day coloniality. regarding the terms latin america and the americas, we refer to the territories previously colonized by spain. nonetheless—very conscious of these contradictions, we use these terms not to support nationalities and borders of inequality. in contrast, we use these terms in de-bordering, post-national, contingent, geo-regional, and critical-utopian ways. and—in the case of north america—we use “the americas,” “latin america,” and “latin american” with the understanding of the diasporic re-territorialization of the us by indigenous and mestizx people of the global south in the north. with the use of terms, we advance the paradoxical use of or resignification of the term instead of simply calling things by another name. via this re-signification (explained in the preliminary sketch), this paradoxical use emphasizes de-bordering understandings that are similar in terms such as “atzlán,” “anáhuac,” “abya yala,” or “turtle island.” 6 jim jupp has taught classes for 25 years in the us southwest and south. for eighteen years, he worked as a teacher of immigrant, mexican, and indigenous students in the public schools of the us southwest. during this time, he worked as a rural and later urban teacher with notions of critical and culturally relevant curriculum and pedagogy. in the last decade, he has taught educational foundations and applied linguistics in two universities in the us south. presently, jim is professor and chair of the department of teaching and learning at the university of texas, rio grande valley. in his present role, he advances critical and sustainable notions of teacher education in the massive production of chicanx and bilingual teachers. mica gonzález delgado presently works as a professor in the area of pedagogical interventions mexican national autonomous university, actalán, teaching classes for the pedagogical studies program. mica has worked as an activist and educator for twenty years in different contexts and projects, and her research is dedicated to several axes of investigation including environmental education in rural areas, the diagnosis of the causes of social violence, and indigenous-environmental activism in the state of hidalgo, mexico. freyca calderón berumen presently works as a professor in the college of education at pennsylvania state university, altoona. her research focuses on multicultural education and teaching english as a second language. besides having studied her undergraduate and master’s degrees in mexico, she also worked as a primary and secondary teacher in mexico for a decade. ten years ago, she emigrated to the us to continue studying, where she earned another masters and also her doctorate in education at a university in the us southwest where she concurrently taught both women’s studies and education classes. her most recent research focuses on the use of the literary genre “testimonio” in the conscientization of latin american immigrant mothers in us contexts. caroline hesse has been a teacher for fourteen years, with teaching experience in primary and secondary schools in the us midwest and southwest. caroline has taught spanish and english as foreign languages, spanish for spanish speakers, and later different school subjects in bilingual double immersion programs. additionally, she has taught pedagogy and linguistics classes in a night program to certify bilingual teachers. presently, she is a teacher in a double immersion elementary school (spanish-english) in the us southeast, and she is studying her doctorate in curriculum and instruction. 7 the matrix of power es central to decolonial thought. the matrix of power unites historical questions of race, gender, class, sexuality, ability, and other differences into a single analytic. important to the concept of the matrix of power es the historical tie-in with different types of exploitation with white, european supremacy in its colonial relations. 8importantly, our preliminary sketch extends but differs from previous projects. differing from universalizing greek cosmopolitanism, we developed our preliminary sketch of decolonial-hispanophone curriculum in recapacitating the subaltern cosmopolite sensibilities in latin american intellectual traditions (e.g., bolívar, 1815/1997; henríquez ureña, 1945, 1947/1973; jupp, 2013a, 2013b; jupp, calderón berumen, o’donald, 2017; marcos, 1998/2012, 2001; martí, 1891/1972; neruda, 1950/1985; paz, 1950/1987, picón salas, 1944/1994). differing from europeanizing critical theory and pedagogy of various marxian, frankfurt-psychoanalytic, gramcian-cultural, and freirean-dialogic traditions, our preliminary sketch begins with an understanding that europeanizing theories cannot simply “implemented” through distant prosthesis in the global south, but rather, that theories need to be developed and thought through within geo-regional contexts. differing from multicultural education, our preliminary sketch distances itself from the historical myopias and instances of multiculturalism tied expressly or inherently to us intellectual habits of the us 1960s, and in place of advancing those habits, we look to re-constituted understandings of latin american decolonial archives. differing from the “internationalization of curriculum,” we distance our dialogue from the instances of curriculum internationalization that serve to re-organize hegemonic relations with the global north as monolithic “curriculum history” as much as in institutional material relations established in economies of academic prestige. to conclude this note, our relationship with the work of adrianna puiggrós and appeal is complicated. differing from the recent latin americanisms of puiggrós (1997, 2004) and appeal (2006, 2013), we advance broader intentions of their transcultural vision, but we reject the nineteenth century tropes of their deweyan social-democratic vision of socially productive knowledges. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index 89 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index references acuña, r. 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(original work published 1980) submitted: december, 20, 2019. approved: july, 27, 2020. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (1) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci review of technology, culture, and socioeconomics: a rhizoanalysis of educational discourses by patricia o’riley reviewer: warren sellers deakin university, australia rhizoanalysis. if this term is unfamiliar, don’t resist it; it concerns an important and accessible concept. a common metaphor for analysis is that of a tree: a central stem, roots at one end, and branches at the other, and by tracing the branches and/or digging at the roots, the analyst gets to the heart of the matter. the tree metaphor has served modernist science for several centuries. however, postmodernist inquiries of analysis suggest that there are problems with seeing the wood for the forests. alongside the development of increasingly complicated information/communication/knowledge regimes and technologies, specific understandings are being recognised as chaotically and complexly involved in ways that are resisting structural analysis. poststructuralist interpretative metaphors are needed. rhizome is such a metaphor, as its chaotic and complex form is poststructurally appropriate and generative. rhizome is to a tree, as the internet is to a letter. the chaotically complex networkings of stems interconnecting the upshoots of some grasses are rhizomes (fig 1) – nodal networkings that echo the hyper-connectivity of the internet (fig 2) – whereas a tree, like a letter, is a relatively simple linear connection between two poles (fig 3). figure 1. rhizome figure 2. burch/cheswick map of the internet,1999. (http://research.lumeta.com/ches/map/gallery/isp-ss.gif) figure 3. tree warren sellers: review of technology culture, and socioeconomics transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (1) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 29 in the context of knowledge/knowing discourse, gilles deleuze and felix guattari (1987) explain that ‘[t]he rhizome is a map and not a tracing… the map is open and connectable in all of its dimensions; it is detachable, reversible, susceptible to constant modification… the map has to do with performance, whereas the tracing always involves alleged “competence”’ (pp.12-13). and, pat o’riley (2003) writes that ‘deterritorializing the terrain of technology discourses in education is not a simple task… how is it possible to open technology discourses to different stories, the unsaid, the unthought, the ineffable?… where might i begin to map an elsewhere and otherwise without relying on grids, isobars, fronts and lows?’ (p. 17). after reading o’riley, i pondered on how i could write about a book that disrupts the arboreal metaphor of writing and reading, towards writing~reading1, a text describing itself as ‘a series of stutterings, a series of plateaux, of resonances and vibrations, oscillations, to encourage more complex, contingent, and indeterminate theories and practices’ (p.19). then another writing~reading stimulated me: lixin luo’s (2003) ‘letter to my sister about doll’s 4r’s’. the title of the paper contextualises its contents; it’s an english translation of a ‘letter’, written in chinese, to a sister explaining how personal experiences of william doll’s teachings about postmodern perspectives on curriculum have important implications for a niece’s learning and teaching. luo’s ‘letter’ (a fragment is reproduced above) generated, for me, a sense of the paradoxical interactivity of complex and simple – a notion referred to as ‘complicity and simplexity’ (cohen and stewart, 1994) – involved in personally transforming doll’s (1993) curriculum concepts from english into chinese and back into english in ways that generatively expand understandings of the concepts. what i read with-in o’riley is a similar, personal complex-simple recursive interactivity with concepts, for exploring otherness in technology. o’riley and luo understand the importance of generatively personal intercommunications, conversations for appreciating meanings in temporal spaces such as ‘zones of proximal development’ (vygotsky, 1978), or, as luo (2003) puts it ‘the peaches you can pick by jumping’ (p.3), and o’riley writes ‘i load up my canoe, take a long breath of the cool mountain air, and begin paddling to the next plateaux’ (p. 158). warren sellers: review of technology culture, and socioeconomics transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (1) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 30 let me put o’riley’s writings into context with my own readings. this work embodies the considerations of arnold pacey’s (1999) meaning in technology, the foresight of marshal mcluhan’s (1967) the mechanical bride: folklore of industrial man and the critique of neil postman’s (1993) technopoly: the surrender of culture to technology. however, this is a differently gendered voice conveying radically different notions about what bruno latour (2004) calls ‘matters of concern’. for example, o’riley cautions readers: ‘this book is not an enclosed storytelling or an elaborate system of textual defense moving toward a gripping conclusion: rather it is a radical (actually rhizomatic) writing journey mixing and juxta-posing styles, genres, theories, and practices – always in a state of “becoming” (deleuze & guattari, 1987)’ (p. 20). for me, this suggests picturing2 intertextuality. o’riley’s ‘opening’ paragraph (reproduced above right) conveys a critical sense of the paradoxical problematics, of gender, sex and technology that mcluhan’s the mechanical bride alluded to, and that j. g ballard’s (1985) crash fictionalised. i choose to illustrate my reading~writing of the epigraph and paragraph by superimposing m.c escher’s (1950) lithograph order and chaos (fig 4). figure 4. order and chaos m. c. escher, 1950. © 2004 the m.c. escher company – the netherlands. all rights reserved. used by permission. www.mcescher.com warren sellers: review of technology culture, and socioeconomics transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (1) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 31 and, to put you in touch with the continuum of o’riley’s intertextuality, here’s her ‘penultimate’ paragraph: in this, i say-hear resonancing of a notion that noel gough and i are calling postlogographic.3 postlogographic concerns ways for exploring conceiving ideas beyond the conventions of structuralist signs. that is, for example, reading the text reproduced above as picturing words for thinking generatively towards other ideas, in a manner resonating with poetry – similar to a notion that max van manen referred to as ‘poetizing activity’, interpreted as an aesthetic rendering of experience (quoted in pinar et al, 1995, p. 406). a helpful hint is to regard the ‘preamble’ in the context of making a ‘toolbox’ – with all the manual mechanical manoeuvres that demands – and contextualise the ‘map’ as you would experience a landscape – with the rigour, release, and relaxation that presents. move beyond making the words a means to an end; explore the pages as paths for generative experiences, which i picture thus: figure 4. c(ura)&me warren sellers: review of technology culture, and socioeconomics transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (1) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 32 o’riley’s own ‘poetizing activity’ introduces the reader to ‘coyote’ and her/his aboriginal readings~writings conversations concerning ‘trickster discourse’. lest o’riley’s work is beginning to seem too esoteric, i hasten to add that there is also much to satisfy a more pragmatic reader. the middle chapters – plateaux – discuss the siting of technology education, it’s shifting shape, and the emergence of ‘virtual(ly) ed tech’. although these exhibit a more teleological stance, they also turn the standpoints towards a critique of progressive, first world, technification of technology education – siting, an interruption of technology education’s constructs – shapeshifting, and an exploring of spaces, places and peoples – virtual(ly). i’m thinking of the latter more as vertuality, and here is a mapping of my many turnings, journeying through-over-in o’riley’s plateaux: warren sellers: review of technology culture, and socioeconomics transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (1) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 33 figure 5. plateaux mapping – o’riley’s chapter headings are reproduced in the clouds resting over my writing~reading upon each plateau. mesa morphing methodology methodological positionings ‘cpi’ capitalist patriarchal ideology methodology of difference shapeshifting tech ed intermezzo-interculture rhizo-dance-disruptive move (off the western map) siting tech ed historical roots and imbrication of discourses global/corporate/military technocapitalist re: mapping theoretical geography rhizomatics nomadics trickster discourse narrative chance chance operations poethics virtual(ly) ed tech theoretical space real virtual converge-digress-interpose posthumans and cyborgs abound a dataplay performative space rhizoanalysis of virtual ed, a mi jeté – be still, or dervish folding back towards previous plateaux synth-ana-(l)ysis, and imaginings of potentialities joining landscape and epistemologies warren sellers: review of technology culture, and socioeconomics transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (1) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 34 figure 6. currere-ing but this picturing (fig. 6), more and less, is my writing~reading for this review… notes 1 the expression writing~reading is used throughout to show that writing and reading are inextricably intertwined, hence the use of the tilde symbol, which indicates complementary alternation. 2 this notion of ‘picturing’ for interpreting, which i discuss elsewhere (sellers, 2003), also draws on w. j. t. mitchell’s (1995) picture theory: essays on verbal and visual representation. 3 bill green (charles sturt university) used this expression in a presentation titled space and equity in education held at deakin university on 13 november 2003. he characterised ‘post-logographic research’ as ‘moving beyond words and numbers’ and ‘new forms of visual research and spatial analysis’. our use of the term is further elaborated in gough and sellers (2004). references ballard, j. g. (1985), crash, triad/panther books, london. cohen, jack and ian stewart. (1994), the collapse of chaos: discovering simplicity in a complex world, viking, london & new york. deleuze, gilles and félix guattari. (1987), a thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia, athlone press, london. doll, william e., jr. (1993), a post-modern perspective on curriculum, teachers college press, new york & london. gough, noel, & sellers, warren. (2004, 6-9 july). re/de/signing the world: poststructuralism, deconstruction and ‘reality’ in outdoor environmental education research. paper presented at the connections and disconnections: examining the reality and rhetoric. international warren sellers: review of technology culture, and socioeconomics transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (1) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 35 outdoor education research conference, la trobe university bendigo, victoria, australia. http://www.latrobe.edu.au/oent/oe_conference_2004/papers/gough2.pdf latour, bruno. (2004), ‘why has critique run out of steam? from matters of fact to matters of concern’, critical inquiry, 30, pp. 225-247 luo, lixin. (2004), letter to my sister about doll’s 4 r’s. transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci. mcluhan, marshall. (1967), the mechanical bride: folklore of industrial man, routledge & kegan paul, london. mitchell, w. j. t. (1995), picture theory: essays on verbal and visual representation, university of chicago press, chicago. o’riley, patricia a. (2003). technology, culture, and socioeconomics: a rhizoanalysis of educational discourses. new york: peter lang. viii + 175 pp. isbn 0-8024-5793-0. pacey, arnold. (1999), meaning in technology, mit press, cambridge, ma. pinar, william f., william reynolds, patrick slattery and peter taubman. (eds.) (1995), understanding curriculum: an introduction to the study of historical and contemporary curriculum discourses, peter lang, new york. postman, neil. (1993), technopoly: the surrender of culture to technology, vintage books, new york. sellers, warren. (2003), picturing currere: envisioning-experiences within learning, paper presented at the 10th biennial conference of the australian association of curriculum studies, adelaide, south australia, 28-30 september 2003. vygotsky, l. s. (1978), in m cole, v. john-steiner, s. scribner and e. souberman (eds.), mind in society: the development of higher psychological processes, harvard university press, cambridge, ma. reviewer warren sellers is a doctoral candidate at deakin university who resides in aotearoa-new zealand. correspondence to: w.sellers@paradise.net.nz o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: borges, veronica ; cunha, viviane p.; craveiro, clarissa (2019). curricular centralization policy in brazil: a discursive perspective on academic researches. transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 p. 23-37 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> curricular centralization policy in brazil: a discursive perspective on academic researches veronica borges1, viviane peixoto cunha2 state university of rio de janeiro, brazil clarissa craveiro 3 federal fluminense university, brazil introduction the national common core curriculum (bncc) is the current curricular centralization policy in force in brazil.4 this policy is being constituted in the flow of articulations derived from different educational demands in different levels (international, national and local) and in different spaces (governmental, academic, business, among others). its document was approved by the cne (national council of education) in 20175 and is the result of negotiations signed around a provisionally hegemonic sense of curriculum. it is a curricular policy of a normative nature, whose logic operates with the organic and progressive selection of minimum contents; with a centralized evaluation of accountability performance and a supposedly mobilizing discourse around educational equity (the right of access and development of learning for all students and in all stages and modalities of basic education)6. as pointed out by jason beech (2009), the process of internationalizing has grown stronger since the 1980s, notably due to the significant influence from international organizations such as unesco, the world bank and oecd in latin america. brazil's military dictatorship (1964-1984) was deeply dependent on international organizations the world bank being the best example of it and, not by chance, added to that, the country witnessed a strong sense of nationalism. regarding educational policies, we had technocratic reforms and, as far as curricular policies are concerned, these reforms could also be felt in the academic production about curriculum that argues that values such as national and common character should be valued. it is remarkable how mcdonaldization´s traces (ritzer, 2004) in the global society are spreading through our local reality. jomtien's declaration education for all in 1990 brings out this proposal´s traces. in its core is the idea of decentralizing the management of education, but, paradoxically, it also contributes to the ideology of a centralized curriculum in its defense of an education common to all. the democratic aspect, from an egalitarian distribution point of view, is strengthened. however, when we analyze the same arguments in favor of a decentralized curriculum, which are also connected to the idea of efficiency, it becomes clear that there is a departure from democratic positions7. the effect in the curricular field is noticed on the demands signed in international agreements that tension local propositions in order to https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index borges, cunha, craveiro. curricular centralization policy in brazil 24 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> incorporate the notions of a decentralizing management, a centralizing curriculum and the socalled performativity culture8. more clearly, we can refer to the document presented by unesco international bureau of education / ibe (2017)9 in the context of the education agenda 203010. according to the document, the globally shared curricular vision should promote a unity of purpose, and a sense of long-term direction among those who are somehow responsible for developing or monitoring the curriculum. they argue that although there are divergent views on certain curricular issues that will undoubtedly and understandably exist across the education sector, all must share a common belief and understanding of how the curriculum can shape the future of individuals, society, and the nation itself. to sum up the document reaffirms this notion, while we seek to problematize it "curriculum as a pillar and a platform to the fulfillment of learning opportunities to all"; "curriculum as a basis for successful educational reforms, to ensure the achievement of high quality learning outcomes"; "curriculum as an opportunity to provide essential knowledge, skills and competences" (unesco, 2017). although international influences on curricular production are not recent in the brazilian context, the creation of the common curriculum base movement11 were the cornerstone, especially from 2013 on, for trigger to start developing partnerships more orderly aiming the bncc production and implementation (macedo 2014, 2015). among others, the following international references have received emphasis by this movement: the common core experience12; consulting conducted by the curriculum foundation13; the use of benchmarking14. these references validate a curriculum model which displays objectivity marks (explicit uniform and rigorous standards as a support for "good decisions" by teachers and managers); marks of determinism (value of standards as a "powerful lever" for improving all aspects of the education system); normativity marks (alignment of assessments; the making of new instructional materials; provision of "adequate" training to teachers); marks of the universalization of the common (appreciation of careful planning to support the successful implementation of new standards); scientification marks (consideration of explicit, uniform and rigorous standards as a strategy to expand educational opportunities for all brazilian students, especially among disadvantaged groups). by restoring pedagogical discourse, we seize the discursive relations that converge towards the comprehension of a curriculum policy conception for global economic competitiveness. although they are emphasized and implemented in different ways in local circumstances, the proposals of common national curricula have sought to promote universal values giving more visibility to alternatives considered inadequate from the neoliberal pragmatism point of view. the movement of the post-graduation national association on educational research (anped) states – there is a curriculum already: the one we build in school, for example, "antagonizes the extensive discursive chain of a pro-centrality curriculum" (lopes, 2018, p. 158). lopes (2018) also emphasizes that from the perspective shared within these groups, the discursive practices around curricular centralization cannot be understood outside the current political context, which act as territories for such a dispute. the signifiers "there is a curriculum already" and bncc do not necessarily establish a relationship between each other, that is, no essence is capable of guaranteeing in itself the meanings of these signifiers. likewise, if we take the articulation in support of the bncc as a curricular policy on federal level, it is worth mentioning that this also expresses discursive disputes much more diverse and with a national and even international scope. the subjects and their discourses are formed in hegemonic processes – they subjectivate and are subjectivated discursively in an attempt to fix meanings. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index borges, cunha, craveiro. curricular centralization policy in brazil 25 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> several researches in the field of brazilians curricular policies (macedo, 2014; cury, 2014; lopes, 2015; pereira & albino, 2015; sussekind, 2014) and in other countries (price, 2014; ravitch, 2011; taubman, 2009) carry marks of modernity, such as objectivism, determinism and essentialism. through them, we intend to explore the extent to which different authors and their inscriptions in the field of discursivity also bear marks of the pedagogical discourse. we consider this field, on one hand, strongly represented by instrumental discourse (but not entirely). the curricular documents, in this perspective, refer to the processes that portray the underlying structure of social relations and social institutions. such thought understands education as part and, to some extent, the product of the existing society, meaning that its task, in a broad level, is to prepare all individuals to live in society in a movement to maintain the status quo. such propaedeutic demand feeds the discourses in this sense, which multiply exponentially in the space-times that praise the curricular centralization. in education, as seen by the market language, is recurring the notion that the tasks of education is teaching one to read, write and learn the four basic mathematical operations in order to find a job. on the other hand, there are resisting forces against the normative propositions represented by the critical character, which claims that the dispute for an ideal of emancipatory education is capable of promoting social transformation. here, explored curricular thinking functions in a super-organized position for society, with plans, contents, and methods that are articulated to free citizens from existing and oppressive social norms and values. the social function of education, then, is to develop a curricular proposal that is capable of more than merely guaranteeing a set of minimum contents. aiming to build a fair and equal society, the moto of such an approach implies designing curricular policies that can guarantee a critical and emancipated formation which can overcome the current neoliberal perspective that reconfigures the labor relations of citizens. some supporters of such a proposition do not question the curricular centralization policy. on the contrary, they argue that the curricular proposal must be common and that the contents must be selected so that everybody could have access to the "knowledge of the powerful." we intend to answer the following questions: how has the policy of curricular centralization been approached by discursive researches? how does the discursive perspective help us to challenge the current hegemonic model of curricular policy without establishing a normative closure? in the research process we operate with empirical material (texts / discourses) as registration means. they are scattered meanings carried through discursive formations and that are "read", interpreted contextually (lopes, 2018). we chose to gather some articles about the curricular centralization theme and bncc between (2014-2018)15. we selected part of the academic production of the research group on curricular policies of the post-graduation program of the university of rio de janeiro (proped-uerj), which has been developed around a discursive approach. in general, they propose to operate with the reactivation and deconstruction of sedimented representations and presented as the hegemonic discourse of curricular policy. as pointed out by howarth (2005), working with the theory of discourse implies (dis)articulating the elements of the analyzed reality, in the most consistent way for the scientific community and for the social actors themselves, fulfilling the role of criticism and / or of support of discourses that present themselves in the hegemonic field of the social. not establishing a normativity that might validate an ideal curriculum to be produced, we consider that the relevance of this text lies in the possibility of setting the academic discursive practices that focus on curricular centralization into motion. we hope that, by https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index borges, cunha, craveiro. curricular centralization policy in brazil 26 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> revisiting the hegemonic discursive formations from a new perspective, novel ways of thinking about curriculum could gain visibility. we emphasize the suspicious condition of curricular centralization policies, such as the bncc, as well as the radical political condition that aims to challenge it. in the first part of the text, we summarize some academic contributions (2014-2018) that sought to recover articulated demands in the policy of curricular centralization of brazilian education, addressing, mainly, the discursive similarities that, by disruptive relations, tend to cover a conception of curriculum policy for global economic competitiveness and for normative prescriptions of a common language. our objective is to gather research that helps us to think critically about the subject without establishing a normative closure, but rather, opening up possibilities for new approaches. next, we discuss the radical political condition in the process of challenging the centralized curricular production through a discursive approach. lastly, we made some final comments. academic production (research) with a discursive approach (2014-2018) since the early 1990s16, the field of curriculum has gradually become more open to the poststructural perspective, as a theoretical-methodological framework of research. despite this, there is still much to be debated regarding the notions discussed in the studies, as well as the proposals. the texts gathered in this section present a "reading" of the social aspect from a discursive construction point of view, in order to destabilizing naturalized meanings in the curricular field. we expect that, by presenting the aspects activated during the analysis of curricular centralization with a discursive approach, other paths become feasible. how, then, has the policy of curricular centralization been addressed in research that operates with a discursive approach? as we shall see below, the researches that operate with a discursive approach have attempted to shed light on different ways of thinking curricular discussion, for example, discussions about the meanings attributed to the signifiers "differences", citizen's rights, quality in education and also aspects treated so far as "unquestionable" meanings such as: knowledge, teacher professionalization, teacher assessment. it is worth highlighting the academic-political strategic option of the researches listed below, following the laclaunian discursive approach, postulating that the centering of the politics when structuring society is an essential aspect of this approach. incorporating the centering of the politics undermines the very foundations of the stabilized educational project in this case, curricular centralization and raise important questions about the meaning of educational purposes. differentiated emphasis on notions as context; subjectivation; difference; fundamentals; hegemony; contingency; precariousness; articulations; normativity; among others, favor theoretical elements that blame, but for that very reason empower, the social actors (outside of the performance metrics), in the different social contexts, among them the practice of schools (laclau, mouffe, 2015, p.25). emphasis on the radical contextualization of curricular policy lopes (2016) contributes by signaling that, in the discursive approach, policies "are always sedimented versions of interpretations of interpretations" (p.9). when referring to stephen ball's theory of enactment, she argues that meanings are radically contextual. it emphasizes that the actions of power, in all contexts, that produce a center in meaning and close the discursive structure, even if precariously and contingently. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index borges, cunha, craveiro. curricular centralization policy in brazil 27 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> in the same direction, inspired by the derrida and laclaunian thoughts, costa and lopes (2018) contribute to the idea of context in its deconstructionist power within curricular studies, that is, meaning by a space that cannot be "saturated by any knowledge or calculations, or be controlled in their meaning "(p.5). they argue that a structural view of context (contexts previously conceived) tends to understand knowledge as structuring of practice, aiming the control of the other. thus, unforeseen and unique possibilities of being and deciding are restricted to a form of being (and deciding), projected by some to everyone else and supposedly necessary to society. cunha (2015) also contributes to the theme by bringing to surface concealed elements of complex language games or power relations in the educational field in the presentation of an essential curricular unit (a basis). by articulating the discursive approach with derrida's notion on interpretive context, she points to the interdiction of the sign as an impossibility of accessing the truth, the essence, to what can be assumed as a basis. she emphasizes the contexts of interpretation as open fields which make meanings ruin. through difference macedo and ranniery (2018) propose an understanding of public policies in curriculum as intersubjective networks multiply located. they problematize who is the public being addressed in recent curriculum policies: are they being addressed as "all" or as a group of abstract, universal, interchangeable and similar subjects? they propose thinking the public as an idea committed to the contingency, the multiplicity, the place and, in sum, as the lives of the people involved in the educational experience. through the explaining of an "intervention" research project carried out in public schools, miller and macedo (2018) dialogues with a long tradition of autobiographical studies in the field of curriculum and teacher training, providing the argument that, despite bringing terms linked to subjectivities to the educational policy discourse, they function with a metaphysical notion of the subject and a belief in conscious reflection as a guarantee of improvement of subjective experience. the narrative of experiences is used to question the normativity and as a means to establish the difference in the constitution of the subjects. disputing meaning lopes; matheus (2014), when analyzing the meanings within quality of education linked to the curriculum in educational policy, argue that the articulation between the quality discourse that claims to be totalizing and the social quality discourse is favored by the equivalence established between the demands related to knowledge. there is a trend for reading the curricular policies as territories for disputes eminently in order to fix a meaning of curriculum from certain articulated senses. for that reason, the meaning is never sealed and closed. it is valued the deconstruction of the discourses as to capture the way in which the senses have been articulated in social practices within a certain historical context. the proposal is to reconfigure meanings of the sedimented curriculum from a contingent and precarious production point of view and to recognize the exclusion of other possibilities of curricular production. from this perspective, macedo (2014) argues about the new forms of sociability between the public and private political agents who act upon the hegemonization of a given sense for the bncc and, consequently, for curriculum and education. articulating ernesto laclau's theory of discourse with stephen ball's concept of policy networks shows that such forms create a mode of regulation based on evaluation following private management models, and aim to exclude those that are constitutive of education. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index borges, cunha, craveiro. curricular centralization policy in brazil 28 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> dias; frangella (2018), in this regard, analyze the unfolding of the premises defended on bncc, observing the meanings of curriculum and teaching that it intends to hegemonize. frangella; mendes (2018) also argues that "political space is around the senses never fixed nor crystallized" (p.4). they identify in their analysis an approximation between the meanings of curriculum and evaluation in a significant articulation of quality / equality / meritocracy. denaturalizing curriculum’s foundation under a critical argument for the common national curriculum project, lopes (2015) analyzes governmental programs of the 2014 presidential candidates in brazil and challenges them with the politics perspective with an unfounded curriculum. that is, "without absolute curricular principles and rules, defined scientifically or by any other determining reason". she argues that the absence of foundings is "what allows us to be always acting politically [...] it is to try to dissolve the possibility of a preprogrammed intervention and with a project of universalizing pretension, despite the political game" (p.17). still in this aspect, lopes; cunha (2017), using curriculum documents produced at the federal level and pro-base institutional actions, question the production of this policy arguing it is a reductionist myth of education. applying derridian notions of text, interpretative context and dissemination, they point to the bncc as a regularity in dispersion since it is interposed in order to exclude from the curriculum policy the adverse, the unforeseen, the deferred and the imponderable. they advocate an curriculum capable of maintaining the possibility of choosing what to learn and the freedom of difference in the curriculum. a curriculum "without a universal that closes in on itself" (p.11). they go against curricular centrality as a unit, as an objective and controllable reality. in dialogue with gert biesta, lopes (2014) deals with the connections between knowledge, power, curriculum and discourse, arguing that this line of thought is not relativistic. what we have here is a radical affirmation about decisions that are made in an undecidable terrain. in this sense, it shows that the absence of criteria that justify once and for all a decision made among different possibilities for solving a problem different curricular options, as well as different ways of educating is not a reason for not making decisions. confronting the "bncc": the power in the notions of hegemony, contingency and precariousness among the various possibilities of working with the theory of discourse for understanding curricular policies, the notions of "hegemony", "contingency" and "precariousness" are at the core of many issues. in this perspective, a certain meaning of hegemonic curriculum is the result of the articulation between different fragmented and scattered elements / private and antagonistic demands. it is an operation by which a particularity assumes a universal meaning contingentially and precariously given its political dynamics. in this direction, lopes (2012) offers the understanding that "the texts of curriculum policies can only represent politics if they are understood as part of a given hegemonic articulation, comprehended in a discourse that tries to establish, although provisionally, certain meanings" (p.7). pereira; costa; cunha (2015) also question the bncc, treating it as a contingent and provisional discourse, crossed by ambivalences, which, like every moment of politics, projects as universal a particular reading on the curriculum. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index borges, cunha, craveiro. curricular centralization policy in brazil 29 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> deconstructing the tradition of knowledge in the curricular field to address the relationship between knowledge and interpretation, lopes and borges (2017) articulate the translation-deconstruction in derrida plus the critique of universal foundations in laclau. this obviously makes things very different defends the centrality of knowledge in the curriculum blocks certain interpretation and multiple readings of curricular texts. they reaffirm a position contrary to a normative notion of curricular theory that supports the correct reading to be carried out in curriculum policy. also, they defend the argument that knowledge and interpretation in the discursive perspective dialogue with issues of alterity and cultural production. they question the senses of knowledge defended by tradition, control, and predictability not because of the recuse of inherited knowledge but because they block the interpretation of such knowledge. the curricullum as cultural production is defended and as a result there should be a respect for otherness and plurality as constituents of identities. macedo (2017) draws our attention to think about the power relations that knowledge meant as content acquired along the well-established "tradition". some traditions of curriculum theory advocate: the senses of knowledge opposing the learning process developed by michael young (powerful knowledge) and the skills and abilities associated with the meaning of content / learning developed in the usa and disseminated in several countries both aspects attributed to evaluation results. in her text, the author instigates with the possibility of thinking about the recognition of the citizen and its social belonging along with its control over content, considered important by the curricular tradition. in this domain, it signals the neoliberal option in education that associates knowledge with individual "ownership" of content and, in this sense, a notion of social belonging. trajectories in the establishment a common curricular base: reverberations in related fields such as teacher training in the broad field of curriculum and teacher training, craveiro; ribeiro, (2017) analyzed curricular documents that subsidized the argumentation of bncc in teacher training. from an understanding of curriculum as a practice of signification, as culture, they argue that bncc underestimates social interaction and difference, even ignoring the multiple demands in a teacher’s formation. craveiro, borges (2015) highlight meanings in curricular policies of teacher training that "mold" the good teacher and their scopes of action in school by fixing meanings. dias (2017) also questions the standardization and homogenization of teacher training policies in the ibero-american context with a discursive approach. lopes; borges (2015) and borges, pereira (2015), from teacher training or professionalization meanings, points out to “the impossibility” of standardization. the political change of the world caused by contextual actions of each individual having as centrality the unpredictability and the risk. in the studies presented, the bncc is perceived as a “signifixation”17 (macedo, 2016) which, in our view, is conceived as an "obstacle" for multiple curricular proposals in brazil. its sedimentation supports paradigms such as large-scale assessments; pedagogical residence; national base for teacher training, as well as other normative models, with fixed foundations for an ideal curriculum that opposes the model of neoliberal pragmatism. however, we argue that challenging the policy of curricular centralization, in this case, and the bncc having democracy as a horizon, is a radical political condition that leads us to rethink the way we establish a critical reading. for this, we propose to think in the section that follows, how the discursive approach helps us to challenge/question the current hegemonic model of curricular policy without establishing a normative closure? https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index borges, cunha, craveiro. curricular centralization policy in brazil 30 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> the radical political condition of challenging centralized curricular production in the course of this article, we argued about the discursive sedimentations regarding curricular centralization. our intention was to analyze how such sedimentations favor the provisional and precarious foundations of certain meanings for curricular policies in the brazilian conjecture. assuming the reverberating conditions of discourses, there are no national or international boundaries for sedimentations. although there are no boundaries, it is worth emphasizing aspects as the context and the negotiation with tradition. thus, one of our key arguments explores the extent to which the discursiveness field informs, subjectivate and is subjectivated within discursive formations themselves, whether they are hegemonic or not. moving beyond that binary pairs such as, conception and implementation, proposal and practice, local and global, centralization and decentralization are not inherently apart if we are to follow the discursive perspective. when we operate under the radical political condition such binary pairs are mutually constitutive. discourses are in dispute constituting politics as they also act subjectivating and being subjectivated. another aspect that we emphasize is the impossibility of tracking the origin point of a given policy as shown by stephen ball et. al (1994) in their work on policy cycle when operating with three contexts: practice context, curricular production context and the influence context. we consider it is fertile to discuss how, beyond the national or local official curricular texts, for example, educational academic texts reverberate meanings for policies. by doing this we stress that the dominance projects are not limited to the official documents. they are being written / inscribed in our discursive practices that appear either in academic texts, or in political speeches, or in texts to advertise these policies, etc. this research is focused on transiting among the meanings present in academic articles whose main theme is curricular centralization. it is worth emphasizing that our empirical material is not confined to the texts accessed. the discursiveness field is much broader than the discourses accessible through any documents. although we make moves to try to reconfigure the political and social context, it is worth affirming this constitutive impossibility and it is still worth noting that such impossibility is not related to any technical or theoretical limitations. ernesto laclau's theory of discourse (2000; 2011) has been our theoretical-strategic inspiration, especially when it concerns the idea that meaning is not constituted by its necessary character. we thus evoke the contingency character in which meaning is established, as well as in which the curricular policies are inscribed, in a discursive perspective. by doing this we also affirm that curricular policies, always tentatively, express social sedimentations that do not fully develop, so as to compose an understandable and fixed whole. the movement of policies, whether national or international, implies blockages other possible options in the context of political decision-making are also in dispute and are not even capable of being evidenced. it is not possible to control what will be instituted and, at the same extent, there is no way to reveal all processes of significations that have been interrupted / blocked. there, this has been our investigation movement that privileges an interpretation of the discursive chains of curricular centralization in order to reactivate the conditions of possibility of certain articulations that are often silenced by the attempt of total erasure of contingency. there is a tradition that repeatedly praises the full condition of the objects / realities / identities and the attempt to make them seem complete (marchart, 2009). according to the author, such a mode of metaphysical functioning of the world uses naturalizing devices that make it difficult to perceive a series of privileges in political choices, not by chance, filled with disputes of power. marks of the western metaphysics present themselves in a realism imbued https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index borges, cunha, craveiro. curricular centralization policy in brazil 31 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> with the idea that there is a referent that holds certain notions and / or practices. this realism promotes and is promoted by the expectation of language transparency, associated with determinism that tends to establish causal relations. we argue that to operate from a discursive perspective is a process of reiterated betting, place under scrutiny the realism, essentialism and determinism that inform the discourses as well as inform us (our texts, discourses, practices). so far we have tried to mobilize notions from the discursive perspective to present our analysis exercise having a radical political condition as a starting point, as to place the centralized curricular production under question. by doing this, we expect this strategy puts us, or puts our processes of meaning, as mutually constitutive. the incompleteness character is one of the devices that strengthen the political aspect, is what maintains the radical condition of the politician aspect in the process of discursive dispute. as allegory, as laclau (2000) suggested, we could think of a moving ground in which we move and there is no way to find something firm (objectivity, essence, foundation) in which we can safely stand. we could only count with the radical contingency that presents itself an undecidable terrain on which it is up to us to decide. final considerations attempts to close meaning of what a curriculum should be as are happening now, as we pointed out in the introduction of this paper. a vain attempt: more and more meanings were / are articulated in the various equivalence agreements that are put in place and that are explored in researches working with discursive approaches. the signifier "curriculum", tendentially empty, needs to be extended to the maximum to fit different particular demands that reach the universal condition in the dispute of meanings. we identified that our theoretical-strategic option for this article focused on two aspects – the curricular centralization and the discursive approach to the curriculum. we explored the possibilities of meaning reverberations that move through flows, from international to national / local levels. such a theoretical-strategic conception operates by sedimenting the terrain on which they are settles the self-explanatory character of what becomes a curricular centralization and which senses are mobilized: exacerbation of nationalism and belonging, praise of the equanimity character of the common; universalism; determinism; accountability; among others. we considered that one of the tasks of curricular centralization is the definition of normative characteristics by different inputs, from educational theories, legislations, teaching practices, academic productions, among others. by means of instrumental policies, the normative character gains strength trying to comply with the regulatory principles prescriptively determined. if we lean on critical perspectives, the tendency would be to resist regulatory processes by understanding them as obstacles to the emancipation of subjects and the transformation of the status quo. however, still rooted in the logic of setting grounds for curricular policy. there was no pretension in doing an extensive work, we collected some researches inscribed in the discursive perspective dealing with the problematic of the curricular centralization. we highlight as an important marker of the post structural perspective its broad discussion of power relations in education by reconfiguring the sociological tradition that links debate markedly by economic determinism in the face of the emphasis that the epiphenomenon of the economy can serve as a key to understanding the social aspect as in the theories considered critical. when we think of the impossibility of a fully constituted identity, we still value the post-foundational perspective that proposes to work with a temporary fixation level of unstable fundamentals. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index borges, cunha, craveiro. curricular centralization policy in brazil 32 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> regarding the questions about the approach of discursive research, we highlight the radical political condition that presents itself in the process of contesting the curricular production in the brazilian context, as well as the suspicious condition of curricular centralization policies, in this case the bncc, as to favor multiple curricular subjectivities based on/ by democracy. the complexity of the discussions about curricular centralization and the understanding of what has become a curriculum has been increasing in brazil since 1990`s (the proposals of the pcns), in the various stages and modalities of basic education. our provisional conclusion can be that the reactivation of the discourses that have presented themselves contingently and that may have competed to the establishment of a certain meaning of curriculum can contribute to broader and also to reconfigure other possibilities of analysis. what has to be stressed here is the influence of the theory of discourse perspective in the researches analyzed. we have dealt reconfigure the political struggles in education insofar as they signal aspects of the discursiveness not only from curricular policies, but also from the academic production that challenge them. notes 1 borges.veronica@gmail.com 2 vivianegpeixoto@yahoo.com.br 3 clacraveiro@yahoo.com.br 4 it integrates the trajectory of curricular centralization in brazil, which took place since the implementation of the national curricular parameters for primary education in 1998. 5 in 2015 it started the process of building the bncc with advisors and specialists, and then the public consultation was held with the participation of civil society to build the first version of the document; in 2016, in order to discuss the second version of the bncc, seminars were held with teachers, managers and experts open to public participation. the third version was then drafted and approved in 2017. 6 the official documents justify and legitimize the elaboration of the bncc from the following regulations: a) the federal constitution of 1988, which establishes, in article 210, the fixing of minimum contents, in order to ensure common basic learning and respect for cultural and artistic values (national and regional), and b) the law of guidelines and bases of the national education / ldben nº 9394/1996 that determines in its article 26 that the curricula must have a common national base, to be complemented, in each education system and in each school, by a diversified part and the national plan of education approved in 2014, with validity of 10 years. 7 here we invoke ernesto laclau and chantal mouffe in their understanding of radical democracy: "there is, however, a crucial difference, why we never visualize the process of a radicalization of democracy, which we defend, as if giving, in a neutral terrain whose topology was not affected, but as a profound transformation of existing power relations. for us, the goal was to establish a new hegemony, which requires the creation of new political frontiers, not its disappearance "(laclau and mouffe 2015, p.43). https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index mailto:borges.veronica@gmail.com mailto:vivianegpeixoto@yahoo.com.br mailto:clacraveiro@yahoo.com.br borges, cunha, craveiro. curricular centralization policy in brazil 33 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> 8 based on stephen ball, we consider that the culture of performativity represents a new logic of regulation of the educational system "a method of regulation that employs judgments, comparisons and demonstrations as means of control, friction and change" (2005: 543). it makes use of meritocracy from the exhibition of the evaluation of performances of subjects, schools and educational networks. based on lyotard, ball further explains that performativity represents a culture of "terror" (2002, p.4) and "context control" (2005, p.544). thus, it is based on leading the subjects to feel "continually held accountable and constantly watched" (ball, 2001, p 110). 9 "prototype of a national curriculum framework" 10 meeting in the city of incheon in south korea world education forum 2015. declaration of incheon education 2030: towards inclusive and equitable quality education and lifelong education for all. at the occasion, the vision of the global movement education for all was reaffirmed, initiated in jomtien in 1990 and reiterated in dakar in 2000. 11 the movement for the common curricular national base is constituted by a nongovernmental group formed by people and institutions that work in the area of education. they are civil society organizations, academics, researchers, classroom teachers, municipal, state and federal managers, specialists in curricula, assessments, and public policies. it is also worth noting that the leadership of the movement for the base is based on the articulation and, mainly, the financing of entrepreneurial sectors in tune with the ideas of the world bank and the organization for economic cooperation and development / oecd in relation to education. the group promotes debates, produces studies and researches with managers, teachers and students and aims to investigate success stories in various contexts to substantiate bncc's development in national and international research evidences. 12 the 2010 education initiative in the united states that sets out state standards and details what elementary and middle school students should know in english language and mathematics disciplines at the conclusion of each school year has become a benchmark for our policy. 13 organization founded in 2009 in the united kingdom it works with education ministries around the world to help develop a "modern curriculum" to meet the challenges of the 21st century "a world-class curriculum." 14 regarding national and international benchmarking, the objective has been to gather insights from indicators on good practices, difficulties and learnings from different experiences of base and curriculum implementation to compare experiences and suggest new approaches. the cases from australia, singapore, china, chile and the united states (new york and california) were analyzed. 15 the time cut was due to the year the discussions about bncc were strengthened in the academic world. 16 until then, the critical perspectives contributions, to a large extent, of marxist subsidies were pointed out as the hegemonic ones in the curricular field in brazil (lopes; macedo and paiva, 2006). 17 “signifixação”, from the original in portuguese. the merge of the words “meaning” and “fixation”. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index borges, cunha, craveiro. curricular centralization policy in brazil 34 transnational curriculum inquiry, 16 (1) 2019 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> references ball, s. j. 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(2015). des-sedimentações de discursos que tendem a projetar políticas curriculares para a formação docente. revista e-curriculum (pucsp), v. v.13, pp. 660/4-682. 28 revista de educação pública pereira, t. v.; costa, h. c. ; cunha, e. v. r. (2015). uma base à base: quando o currículo precisa ser tudo. revista de educação pública, v. 24, pp. 455-469. 29 educação e realidade matheus, d. ; lopes, alice casimiro. (2014). sentidos de qualidade na política de currículo (2003-2012). educação e realidade, v. 39, pp. 337/2-357. 30 educação lopes, alice casimiro. (2014). mantendo o conhecimento na conversação curricular, porém via discurso: um diálogo com gert biesta. educação (puc camp), v. 19, pp. 99-104. 31 debates y combates macedo, elizabeth. (2014). sobre el sujeto educado: políticas curriculares instauradoras de sentidos. debates y combates, v. 4, pp. 32-43. 32 revista ecurriculum (pucsp) macedo, elizabeth. (2014). base nacional curricular comum: novas formas de sociabilidade produzindo sentidos para educação. revista e-curriculum (pucsp), v. 12, pp. 1530-1555. 33 teias pereira, t. v. ; borges, v. (2014). base nacional comum: a autonomia docente e o currículo único em debate. teias (rio de janeiro), v. 15, pp. 24/39-42. submitted: july, 20th, 2019. approved: august, 17th, 2019. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index http://lattes.cnpq.br/0712774444037943 http://lattes.cnpq.br/0712774444037943 http://lattes.cnpq.br/0377631022122389 http://lattes.cnpq.br/1649689580143996 http://lattes.cnpq.br/5262190522408958 http://lattes.cnpq.br/5123689806783161 http://lattes.cnpq.br/5123689806783161 http://lattes.cnpq.br/0712774444037943 microsoft word hasebe-ludt final.doc     to  cite  this  article  please  include  all  of  the  following  details:     hasebe-ludt, erika (2010).  a  love  song  to  our  pluriverse:  life  writing  as  cosmopolitan  motherwise   text. transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date>   a love song to our pluriverse: life writing as cosmopolitan motherwise text erika hasebe-ludt university of lethbridge and what if it is love one is trying to understand, that strange unmanageable phenomenon form of life, source at once of illumination and confusion, agony, and beauty? love, in its many varieties, and their relations to the good human life, to aspiration, to general social concern? what parts of oneself, what method, what writing, should one choose then? what is, in short, love’s knowledge—and what writing does it dictate in the heart? —martha nussbaum, love’s knowledge stepping out of the carriage, werther sees charlotte for the first time (and falls in love with her), framed by the door of her house (cutting bread-and-butter for the children: a famous scene, often discussed): the first thing we love is a scene. is the scene always visual? it can be aural, the frame can be linguistic: i can fall in love with a sentence spoken to me: and not only because it says something which manages to touch my desire, but because of its syntactical turn (framing), which will inhabit me like a memory. —roland barthes, a lover’s discourse out of the dark womb of night…the sun represents rebirth…. human beings no longer insist that they are separate from each other and the rest of the planetary life. the sun represents the knowledge that we are connected by the eternal rays of the life force, each of us part of a vast organism called “humanity” and the even greater body of the earth itself….many people today feel the presence of these soul-lights, and are mobilizing in groups around a central guiding principle that overrides egocentricity and promotes life. —vicki noble, motherpeace hasebe-ludt: a love song to our pluriverse transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 40   in this essay, i take up the words and wisdom of inspirited writers and thinkers such as the above, writing about love and light, and these notions’ significance in a cosmic shift presently occurring across geo-cultural differences. mindful of my own complicated relationship with these phenomena in the world, and of the “memory work” (mitchell & weber, 1999) this living and writing call forth as part of my pedagogical and curricular composure, i linger in life writing as both individual and collective research. my aim is to enter into dialogues about “love’s knowledge” (nussbaum, 1992) through hermeneutical questioning (smith, 1999) in the form of life writing that positions the personal within the cosmopolitan narrative humans are part of. i remember the fibres and fissures of love in my world, and i listen and look for those of others—women and men whose lives have been shaped by this cosmic relational force. in visceral cosmopolitanism (2007), mica nava, a jewish german cultural studies scholar situated in and out of london, england, narrates her family’s mixed stories of living and migrating across eastern, central, and western europe against the background of racial, ethnic, and cultural diaspora of the twentieth and twenty-first century. she interweaves her own sojourns across continents in search of her homelands, traceable and untraceable all at once. nava documents and theorizes these familial narratives as exemplars of a new kind of embodied cosmopolitan identity, one that celebrates, much like salman rushdie’s satanic verses (1988), “hybridity, impurity, intermingling, the transformations that come of new and unexpected combinations of human beings, cultures, ideas, politics, movies, songs” (rushdie, 1991, p. 394). both nava and rushdie, along with a cohort of other contemporary authors across multiple disciplinary threads (appiah, 2006; benhabib, 2008; breckenridge, pollock, bhabha, & chakrabarty, 2002; derrida, 2001; mignolo, 200; pinar, 2009; sandercock, 2003), claim that these “love song[s] to our mongrel selves” (nava, 2007, p. 133; rushdie, 1991, p. 394) constitute the kind of cosmopolitanism that is indicative of our times, one that attends to the intimate, familial auto/biographical tales that are part of the larger political and sociocultural narratives of our century. nava, in particular, urges us to establish a visceral genealogy of cosmopolitanism, one that pays homage to the domestic, the vernacular, the intimate dimensions of lives lived in the maelstrom of the new and the old imperial all-toofamiliar master narratives, right in “the micro territories of the local: at school, in the gym and the café, at home” (p. 135). similarly, madhu prakash, the indian american philosopher and educator, challenges me to reconsider notions and definitions of what it means to be at home in the cosmos we inhabit as humans among others. no longer, prakash claims, can we think of ourselves as part of a commonly known universe; instead, she states, humans “are awakening, moving and stimulating the creative imagination of many others…the door is opened for settling in a pluriverse” (esteva & prakash, 1998, p. 36). in this movement towards a cosmos that is not dominated by “one world,” or one nation-state, or one global narrative, we are finding evermore diverse ways to articulate and negotiate the local realities and terroir of our lives lived among relationships that matter (hurren & hasebe-ludt, 2009). these are the relationships with those we love, those we cherish, those we admire, those we seek out when trying to make sense of the complicated narratives and conversations (pinar, 2009) of our lives, and our precarious times (butler, 2006), and deep public untruths (smith, 2006). more and more of the narratives coming to the forefront of our conscious collective soul are the maternal voices of the cosmic mother, and the individual mothers and the grandmothers in our presence and past that have been ignored, forgotten, or resided in our subconscious for hasebe-ludt: a love song to our pluriverse transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 41   far too long. in her groundbreaking work motherpeace, feminist scholar and activist vicki noble (1983/1994) reminds us of the imminent rebirth of a new consciousness that honours ancient matriarchal traditions of sun goddess and mother love, heralding a new age of light-filled and peaceful coexistence of humans working together with “the warm energy of love…in a circle of healing” (p. 138), to heal the wounds of wars and pollution, and to en/light/en a new collective consciousness of peace and deep maternal caring for our earth and cosmos. like vicki noble, madhu prakash and mica nava, and other women writers and scholars, including hélène cixous (cixous & calle-gruber, 1997) and janet miller (2005), i want to remember the lives of the grandmothers, mothers, and daughters who have inspirited our own lives in multiple ways, with their mixed narratives of hope and despair, of sojourning across foreign and familiar landscapes, of migrating in and out of hospitable and inhospitable terrains. through life writing and auto/biographical stories that “locate the writer in a network of contexts, including family, neighbourhood, community, and cosmos” (hasebe-ludt, chambers, & leggo, 2009, p. 205), we can reclaim their voices along with our own. together with a group of colleagues and co-writers across the western part of canada, i work collaboratively through life writing in a variety of classrooms and their surrounding neighbourhoods and communities. together with teachers and students, we ask questions about what is going on in the cosmopolitan sites we live, where students and teachers do the hermeneutic “work of the world” (arendt, 1997), through thinking about where we live and how we live, through giving reciprocal gifts of listening and loving and languaging through stories. in these interpretive acts, we explore the tensions inherent in entering the new worlds of a cosmopolitan curriculum and pedagogy that address the complex relatedness of self to other in the cosmos of the personal and the public. we claim that when we are in truthful relation with one another, we have the power to better understand our own and others’ stories with/in the world, and through this knowing to ultimately rewrite the world. in my own life writing in and out of the sites i am situated in, in and out of vancouver, canada, i weave the threads of the mixed cultural, ethnic, racial, and linguistic homelands that are part of my identity as a german immigrant to this place, a woman married to a sansei (third-generation) japanese canadian husband, the mother of a mixed-race daughter, an english language educator with a different mother tongue from the lingua franca of the world that has dominated our world for centuries. i weave and work the fibres of my identity into an intertextual métissage (hasebe-ludt, chambers, & leggo, 2009) as part of my pedagogical and curricular theorizing about what matters in the relationships between humans dwelling in the humus of this earth and dwelling on the matters that constitute life between teachers and students, mothers and daughters, grandmothers and granddaughters. i return to a birthplace and a history both familiar and strange. hasebe-ludt: a love song to our pluriverse transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 42   two charlottes, among many charlotte and jakob lang, with grandson gerhardt ludt, saarbrücken-fechingen, germany, circa 1940 charlotte: a family name—my paternal grandmother's, charlotte lang, and my daughter's, charlotte hasebe. a name both old and new, part of the mixed linguistic past and present of the life stories of four generations of women in my family. a name re-surfacing in the world all around me, in texts of different kinds: a character in a goethe bildungsroman; a dedication in a children’s book: “to my charlotte, love mom;” a read-aloud sound bite from charlotte's web; a feature in a german magazine: “charlotte: ein name macht karriere”…a name that gets on well with/in the world. and so i think of a daughter who lives the promise of that line, and a grandmother whose life i know too little of. i only remember that when she died in her seventies in the small german village where she spent all of her life, she had lived through two world wars, endured the loss of one husband in the first one, raised a son on her own, married again just before the second world war started, only to see her second husband and a second son leave again to fight on the front. after the war ended, my grandmother was blessed to see her sons, one of them my father, start families of their own in the aftermath of this global bloodbath. both my brothers were born during my grandmother’s and mother’s evacuation from home while my father fought in hitler’s navy. they remember the harsh stories of the war, and they remember my grandmother too; but i, born a decade later, have few memories of her, even though she lived close by, just down the road from where i grew up. charlotte lang died when i was quite young, barely and all i remember of my grandmother is the scene of her standing by the old wood-burning kitchen stove singing a sweet german lullaby about a mother separated from her child, kommt ein vogel geflogen, evoking sentiments of maternal love and longing, and memories of letter writing across vast hasebe-ludt: a love song to our pluriverse transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 43   distances—a visceral practice i became all-too-familiar with in relation to my own mother after i left home to live first in berlin, then in vancouver. this domestic scene and its sounds inhabit me like a memory, intense and elusive all at once, evoking both imaginary and material threads of narratives from an almost-forgotten home that i long to know more viscerally. the scene fills me with the desire to grasp the visual and aural ambiguity and elusive incompleteness of this narrative more firmly, more securely—knowing, at the same time, the difficulty of this quest in the face of the recent and not-so-recent deaths of the people in my family who held her memory: my mother, my father, my uncle, my grandfather. i almost came to forget my grandmother’s soft voice and the small footprint she left in the humus of our common birth place, saarbrücken/sarrebruck, a place among many imprinted by the large harsh footprints of war and empire building that have mapped our world. it is a city within a territory of mixed national origins, the alsace lorraine and saar regions, tossed back and forth and torn apart between germany and france over the last century and between the various empires claiming their possession of the territory in previous centuries—austria, hungary, prussia, and throughout it all, the threads and threats of the holy roman catholic and lutheran protestant churches with their competing grand narratives (seck, 1999). recollecting her childhood and her family’s, alsatian american writer fabienne andré worth (2001) commented: “each generation had a war, and each time alsace had to become the opposite of what it had just been. french, german and then french, back to german and then french again” (n.p.). growing up in the post-war period in this region, she writes of her grandmère and her maman whose lives were caught in the maelstrom of “alsace’s tormented history, a history i knew through the dinner table stories, the military marches, the patriotic bugles, the wreaths, the minutes of silence, the monuments to the dead” (worth, 2001, n.p.). my own mother’s and grandmother’s lives were caught in the same grand narrative of war on the other side of the border, in saarbrücken, my home and that of generations of my family. after i had moved to berlin, when writing a thesis about women writers, among them the brontë sisters, charlotte and emily, who spent their short lives struggling with being female in a patriarchal colonial empire, i remembered my grandmother charlotte in her own place of struggle. i carried her name with me from one continent to another, to a new cosmopolitan colonial humus, and i gave it to my canadian daughter. hasebe-ludt: a love song to our pluriverse transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 44   charlotte hasebe, a canadian daughter, vancouver, canada, circa 1984 years later, i returned to berlin and visited charlottenburg, the imposing palace of charlotte, queen of prussia, with my daughter charlotte, seven years old and learning about yet another queen charlotte in school, in her home in vancouver, canada: charlotte, wife of king charles iii of england, whose name had been imprinted on haida gwaii, the west coast island home of generations of aboriginal peoples denied their names and their histories for centuries. charlotte and i also visited my grandmother and her great-grandmother charlotte’s weathered grave in the small cemetery of my birthplace. the name charlotte bears an embodied resonance for me—making me remember its legacies and liabilities— making me mindful of the mixed pain and promise of naming our children, our daughters, of renaming the world by remembering the names that are both familial and worldly, names that come from the micro territories we dwell in, and from the grand narratives of our times, names and narratives that must not be forgotten. there is a radiant hope and a “radical wisdom” (lanzetta, 2005) in such feminist acts of not forgetting, and of forgiving. with this life writing, my intention is to open up new heart-filled fertile feminist dialogues, to sustain those “lover’s discourses” roland barthes (1979) speaks of, between divergent worlds. my intention is to honour the legacy of the sun goddess and the motherpeace matriarchies vicki noble (1983/1994) researched, and to advance a knowledge borne out of love and the love of writing that martha nussbaum (1992) speaks of. my desire, like mica nava’s, madhu prakash’s, and that of other women writers and scholars, is to engage in embodied conversations and a visceral writing praxis that attend to the new age and new realities of life in micro territories where a “cosmo-polis” (mignolo, 2000; sandercock, 2003) mixing of languages, cultures, races, identities, and knowledges, occurs in ever more complex “mongrel” cosmopolitan ways. my hope is that through these new mixed narratives located in the vernacular of everyday women’s and men’s lives we can indeed hasebe-ludt: a love song to our pluriverse transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 45   write ourselves into new wise ways of being in the world and knowing of the world. the ontologies and epistemologies of being and becoming mixed thus can constitute meaningful multiple “love song[s] to our mongrel selves” (rushdie, 1991) and to our pluriverse—if taken up ethically and collectively. life writing about the memories and stories of daughters, mothers, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers—of the goddesses—that have been part of our genealogical individual and collective histories creates a difficult yet necessary and ultimately hopeful dialogical exchange, one that is urgent for our times, one that “may get us a heart of wisdom” (kadar, 1993) generated out of re-naming and re-writing our pluriverse motherwise, radiantly—lovingly. luise ludt, saarbrücken, germany, circa 1945 references appiah, a. k. (2006). cosmopolitanism: ethics in a world of strangers. new york & london: w. w. norton. arendt, h. (1997). ich will verstehen: selbstauskünfte zu leben und werk [i want to understand: self reports on life and work]. münchen: piper. barthes, r. (1977). roland barthes (r. howard, trans.). berkeley: university of california press. barthes, r. (1979). a lover’s discourse. new york: hill and wang. benhabib, s. (2008). another cosmopolitanism. oxford & new york: oxford university press. breckenridge, c. a., pollock, s., bhabha, h. k., chakrabarty, d. (eds.). (2002). cosmopolitanism. durham & london: duke university press. butler, j. (2006). precarious life: the power of violence and mourning. london: verso. cixous, h. (1991). “coming to writing” and other essays. cambridge: harvard university press. hasebe-ludt: a love song to our pluriverse transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 46   cixous, h., & calle-gruber, m. (1997). hélène cixous rootprints: memory and life writing. new york: routledge. derrida, j. (2001). on cosmopolitanism and forgiveness. london & new york: routledge. hasebe-ludt, e., & hurren, w. (eds.). (2003). curriculum intertext: place/language/pedagogy. new york: peter lang. hurren, w., & hasebe-ludt, e. (2009, may). the terroir that we are: bringing curriculum down to earth. paper presented at the 4th biannual provoking curriculum conference, ottawa, on. kadar, m. (1993). what is life writing? in reading life writing (pp. ix-xv). toronto, on: oxford university press. king, t. (2003). the truth about stories: a native narrative. toronto: house of anansi press. lanzetta, b. (2005). radical wisdom: a feminist mystical theology. minneapolis, mn: fortress press. mignolo, w. d. (2000). the many face of cosmo-polis. public culture, 12(3), 721-748. miller, j. l. (2005). sounds of silence breaking: women, autobiography, curriculum. new york: peter lang. mitchell, c., & weber, s. (1999). reinventing ourselves as teachers: beyond nostalgia. london, uk: falmer press. nava, m. (2007). visceral cosmopolitanism: gender, culture, and the normalization of difference. oxford/new york: berg. noble, v. (1983/1994). motherpeace: a way to the goddess through myth, art, and tarot. new york: harpercollins. nussbaum, m. (1992). love’s knowledge: essays on philosophy and literature. new york: oxford university press. pinar, w. f. (2009). on the agony and ecstasy of the particular. in the worldliness of a cosmopolitan education: passionate lives in public service (pp. 25-35). new york: routledge. prakash, m. s., & esteva, g. (1998). escaping education: living as learning within grassroots cultures. new york: peter lang. rushdie, s. (1988). the satanic verses. london & new york: viking press. rushdie, s. (1991). imaginary homelands: essays and criticism 1981-1991. london: granta books. sandercock, l. (2003). cosmopolis ii: mongrel cities of the 21st century. new york: continuum. seck, d. (1999). von 1000jähriger geschichte geprägt—saarbrücken [imprinted by 1000year-old history—saarbrücken]. gudensberg-gleichen, germany: wartberg verlag. shields, d. (2002). enough about you: adventures in autobiography. new york: simon & schuster. smith, d. g. (1999). pedagon: interdisciplinary essays in the human sciences, pedagogy and culture. new york: peter lang. smith, d. g. (2006). trying to teach in a season of great untruth: globalization, empire and the crises of pedagogy. rotterdam/taipei: sense publishers. worth, f. a. (2001). gosses d’alsace/quicksand. jouvert: a journal of postcolonial studies, 6(1-2). available: http://english.chass.ncsu.edu/jouvert/v6i1-2/fworth.htm microsoft word naidoo et al editorial.doc to cite this article please include all of the following details: naidoo, loshini, singh, michael and sanagavarapu, prathyusha (2007). guest editors’ introduction: globalisation, westernisation and sino-australian educational reform. transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> guest editors’ introduction: globalisation, westernisation and sino-australian educational reform loshini naidoo, michael singh and prathyusha sanagavarapu university of western sydney, australia the changes in the social and economic circumstances which characterise the present society and hence education make it essential to rethink the relation of curriculum, its purposes and shapes, to the social and economic environment of the near future. curricular changes as a result of globalisation have led to a greater variety of theoretical perspectives, methodologies, voices, and accordingly pedagogical strategies. the challenges posed by the worldwide flow of people are deeply embedded in transnational processes. transnational curriculum development therefore involves the employment of a framework, a method and an agenda that is international in scope. it involves linking the analysis and location of individuals, small communities and even nations across the boundaries of state and nation. unprecedented migration, a core dimension of contemporary globalisation, therefore challenges transnational curriculum development. in a world of increasing human mobility, many curricular outcomes are shaped by transnational interactions. the enormity of contemporary transnational mobility is illustrated by the case of australia. in the past half century, australia's resident population has doubled, while the movement of people across its international boundaries (that is, into and out of australia) has increased nearly one hundredfold. so ever since globalisation became a buzzword, the world has changed. technological innovations and global restructuring has led to a new economic, cultural and political order. some theorists like latouche (1996) use the concept of globalisation to explain westernisation of the whole world while other theorists argue that globalisation can be used to explain the increased spread of capitalism around the world (ferguson, 1992). with the former, globalisation is equated to the loss of autonomy. the standards, regimes, and regulations that come to be adopted by countries in response to globalisation are made by western countries according to their own values and interests. according to the latter position, globalisation represents the extension of capitalist modes of production across the globe and signifies that capitalism has entered a new stage of its development. still others argue that globalisation increases in homogeneity while simultaneously producing diversity and heterogeneity through hybridisation (giddens 1990, appadurai 1991, 1996; featherstone 1995; robertson 1995). so globalisation has not only economic implications but also political and cultural ones. it is evident that globalisation is contested as a concept as much as a practice experienced in people’s 24/7 lives. it has both positive and negative meanings for the economy, polity, culture and indeed everyday life and involves an overall process of social change. globalism is the term used to name the major ideological force and political projects used to reshape international relationships, community relations and the individual’s place in them. a plethora of ‘new’ keywords have emerged to name aspects of this political program. concepts such as ‘trans-national families’, ‘knowledge workers’, ‘renegotiation of identities’, ‘hybridity of cultural identities’, are among the range of complementary armoury used to http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci naidoo, singh and sanagavarapu: guest editors’ introduction transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 2 support its value as an ideological tool of twenty-first century capitalism. as people integrate into new ‘host’ societies and renegotiate their identities in foreign environments, new analytical tools to help understand recent processes of increasing flows of people across international boundaries have emerged. for australia, globalisation was taken in the 1980s to mean the creation of a ‘technologically advanced, low labour-cost, export-oriented, internationally competitive economy’ (foley, 1999, p.68). a major focus for reform has been the internationalisation of education especially the recruitment of full fee-paying students from overseas. since then australian government policy responses to globalisation have involved stimulating export production; realigning government expenditure; reducing real wages; providing publicly funded incentives for foreign investment, production and consumption; devaluing and floating the currency; reducing government regulation of business activity while increasing it in areas such as education and training, and curtailing the role of organised labour in the political economy by demobilising the labour movement. the justification for these changes has been that there was no real choice to de-industrialisation other than declining living standards and economic vulnerability (frankel, 2004). since the late 1970s, with deng xiaoping’s opening up of china, building socialism/capitalism with chinese characteristics, and the saturation of western consumer markets, mass production has been moved to cheaper labour areas, resulting in the de-industrialisation of australian and other similar economies (deng, 1995; luen, 2001). education in china and australia has changed markedly as a result of this transnational interplay. the astute build-up of knowledge workers, foreign currencies, trade surpluses and economic capacities in china serves as a new determining force in global politics and trade. it provides new avenues and challenges for citizens in australia, china and elsewhere as they become the new knowledge workers of the 21st century. keping (2005) argues that from 1978 to 2003, the chinese gross national product increased from 362.4 billion yuan (us$44.2 billion) to 11,690 billion yuan (us$1,425.6 billion). it has increased 8.4 times with an average yearly growth rate of over 9 percent. this growth rate is much higher than the 2.5 percent average gnp growth rate of developed countries; the 5 percent growth rate of developing countries, and the 3 percent average world growth rate during the same period. china has registered the fastest economic growth in the world in this period. high-speed economic growth has been accompanied by a 22-fold expansion in the scale of foreign trade over the past twenty-two years. at the same time, china successfully protected itself from the shocks of the asian financial crisis in the 1990s, and realised its goal of entering the world trade organization (wto) after ten years of assiduous effort. the chinese government rose above ideological differences and developed bilateral and multilateral relations with various countries and regions in the areas of politics, economy, and culture. australia is one of the major beneficiaries of well-trained and efficient knowledge workers from china. as such these transitions in globalisation have emerged as key issues in enhancing the importance of sino-australian research in curriculum and related fields of education. the changes contemporary and continuing in curriculum are responses to and expression of the processes of global restructuring, and are held to offer gains for everyone. much attention has been given to the technical aspects of curriculum restructuring in response to and as an expression of contemporary transitions in globalisation (tomlinson, 1999). changes occurring in particular curriculum areas such as language and education are affected by decisions made nationally and globally about economic, cultural and political issues (stromquist and monkman, 2000). much research into curriculum restructuring has focused on the technical and managerial processes, dealing with the issues of ‘cost minimisation’, ‘downsizing’, ‘job shedding’, and ‘efficiency gains.’ the resulting costs of the globally dominant technicists and rationalist approach might be seen as including uncertainty of http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci naidoo, singh and sanagavarapu: guest editors’ introduction transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 3 employment and mass casualisation of those who do curriculum workwhether teachers or policy-makers. for curriculum workers who experience globalisation as westernisation or americanisation they are confronted with questions such as: how can the curriculum reproduce cultural traditions in the face of the restructuring and transformations effected through globalisation? how might the curriculum provide access to the dominating forms of power while at the same time valuing and promoting diverse cultural heritages? by providing access to the dominating forms, the curriculum contributes to their dominance. by denying access to these forms marginalisation is perpetuated. in societies that recognise the value and importance of such forms of dominance as the english language, these raise serious curriculum dilemmas. the spatial displacements of capital into ‘cheap’ labour areas such as china has seen efforts to reconstruct curricula in ways intended to better serve the australian economy. the outcome and consequences of these processes is held to be the formation of ‘productive, flexible, internationally competitive workplaces’ (foley, 1999, p.85). however, some see globalisation as having effects on minority world nations such as australia, that have resulted in the curriculum being more workplace oriented, more entrepreneurial, and more accountable through quality assurance regimes. the papers in this special issue of transnational curriculum inquiry, were selected because they investigated how educators in china and australia engaged with, and responded to the local experiences of globalisation manifested by contextually specific changes in curricula so as to better position themselves and/or others in the changing local/global order. together these papers provide insights into what educators in china and australia understand to be the social, political and cultural issues that could help position the curriculum, advantageously in the new global ordering of things. further these papers identify the curriculum dilemmas educators are experiencing with regard to societal, cultural, religious or language concerns in the context of the regional and global environment. these papers help us to understand a little of what educators in china and australia regard as desirable (and undesirable) features of (a) the new global order and (b) ways of engaging with, and responding to the everyday practices of globalisation as well as to the insecurities of globalisation, including those arising from the trans-national movement of people. this collection of papers contributes to advancing sino-australian curriculum engagement by investigating educators’ responses to, and engagements with emerging global/local issues of mutual interest. ravinder sidhu and pam christie discuss asylum seekers and refugees in their consideration of curriculum assumptions about globalisation. the paper explores the mechanisms that inform the governance of ‘marginal and peripheral’ subjects and spaces of globalisation, using australia’s policies towards asylum seekers and refugees and their education as a focal point. viewing asylum seekers and refugees as subjects of globalisation within a foucauldian framework, they suggest that current ways of ordering and thinking about the space/time dimensions of globalisation may work to render peripheral spaces and subjects invisible and/or without rights in the state/citizen order. in regards to curriculum practices, they suggest the importance of recognising the spatial and temporal influences that operate in knowledge production. an ethical approach towards curriculum is recommended and one that will question the existing power relations that influence the production and circulation of knowledge. finally, they explore the possibilities for subjects of knowledge to challenge and redress the epistemic damage arising from existing regimes of knowledge in light of the ethical codes that are available in the public sphere. questioning whether cultural identity has ruptured or continued among indian immigrants in australia is the topic of loshini naidoo’s paper. to understand the global reframing of cultural identity in indian immigrant communities, globalisation theories from the perspective of the social sciences and empirical evidence from studies on indian migrant families in http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci naidoo, singh and sanagavarapu: guest editors’ introduction transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 4 australia were analysed. naidoo concluded that while identity is predominately transformed as a result of globalisation, amongst indian immigrants in australia, this has not ruptured completely and still continues despite internal conflicts. this wave of transmigration represents discursive and multilayered narratives of social displacement that bring together different language abilities, needs, expectations and aspirations, together with different histories and experiences of cultural and social fractionalisation. the subsequent dynamic reconstitution of group and individual identities within adoptive societies engenders new sets of social relations that fracture previous certainties within the nation-state. naidoo argues that hook’s teaching approach – ‘engaged pedagogy’ and social justice education can address the curricular issues raised by this transnational movement of people across the globe. the point being that knowledge is relational and the dominant discourse of academic knowledge is not value-free. these values of difference amongst marginalised groups need to be re-discovered from a starting point of trust and mutual respect if new curriculum initiatives are to grow. from this, it is argued; identities will strengthen, with consequent effects on community cohesion and social growth. fabiansson and healey’s research is based on interviews with local government councillors, council staff and a survey of 751 rural students, between 14 and 21 years of age who were attending local secondary high schools and living in two rural communities in queensland (australia). this research explores students’ preferred education trajectories and work aspirations, and community representatives’ perception of young people’s future in rural communities. the findings indicate community awareness of the changing situation where females aspire to university education and professions beyond local family traditions and local employment opportunities. males are still following strong traditional education pathways of mining and farming within their communities. the technologies of production and the consequential competitiveness that results from this, led to the downward spiral affecting areas. this led to the ensuing loss of population from these areas, the outflow of economic and social infrastructure, with governments withdrawing services, businesses relocating elsewhere and young people moving away to urban areas. this reaffirms the notion that education, vocational, training and curricula have become essential requirements for competing in local / global labour markets. with the globalisation of a specialised workforce, the education period has become an accepted phase between childhood and adulthood, giving young people the freedom to pursue education for professional gains and work opportunities, as well as for personal satisfaction. transnational movements and globalisation operate in and emerge out of local contexts in a relationship that is in flux and as such challenges not only thinking about the local/global dualisms but also of the implications for transnational curriculum development. anne power’s paper discusses the journey of a teacher using asian arts and literature with students in middle and primary school years. from the perspective of the external ‘other’, powers’ chronicles and interprets the classroom practice of a teacher who had completed an extended course of professional development at the university. at one level, the narrative focuses, at one level, on engaging students with material that encourages understanding and admiration for different cultural expressions. at another level, the teacher’s aspirations for her work in the high school setting. she shows how the teaching studies of asia program provided practical application of the theory that understanding another culture requires both knowledge and the development of attitudes and values. it also argued that a re-orientation of australian curriculum to include asian frames of reference can be justified on the grounds of intellectual and cultural imperatives alone without reference to economic imperatives such as skilled migration and trade but of course to do so would be naive. this observation of a teacher’s journey is part of a broader context of social and cultural research. teachers are encouraged to reflect critically on their actions; and be aware that they can in a small but http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci naidoo, singh and sanagavarapu: guest editors’ introduction transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 5 nonetheless significant way influence where society is going. more importantly however, the relational approach between transnational communities and asian arts and literature has opened up spaces for a specifically australian inflection to, and extension of, current articulations of transnationalism and curriculum inquiry. similarly, white’s paper points to the impacts of globalisation on australian university education and curricula. he highlights both the opportunities and constraints that globalisation has brought for university academics, and the growing need for academics to position curriculum and pedagogy within virtual spaces. his paper presents a case study of an australian mathematics educator involved in pre-service education, and shows how the educator responded to the challenges imposed by globalisation in the australian higher education sector. he presents data involving a japanese teacher professional learning process implemented in australia and malaysia. this paper indicates the need for academics to embrace online teaching and learning technologies, as a response to commodification of education in a globalised world. further, it provides valuable insights to australian educators in dealing with a vital question about the transportability of teaching and learning strategies across countries in a globalised context. it encourages educators to consider the interplay of global and local processes on mathematics curriculum in the 21st century. in an age of globalisation, curriculum conversations tend to be dominated by english. in this context, the next three papers highlight the need for educators to reflect on their commitment towards linguistic diversity and to incorporate topics of language policies and programs in transnational curriculum inquiry. han and singh’s paper documents the experiences of world english speaking (wes) student-teachers in working class suburban schools in australia. this issue is situated in the context of policy initiatives to encourage the trans-national mobility of tertiary students, an internationally significant expression of which can be found in the bologna process. based on the analysis of the interview evidence, it is argued that the practicum contributes to the ‘metamorphosis’ of the multi-layered identities of these wes student teachers, supplementing their existing many-sided sense of self. this paper explores some of the complexities trans-national student mobility has for australia, given its considerations of what the bologna process might mean for higher education policy and pedagogy. it was established that the internationalisation of higher education through policy settings such as the bologna process involves more than removing formal limitations on degree structures, the credit transfer system and recognition of qualifications. han and singh’s paper is concerned with questions relating to how such policy settings may be used to raise questions about, if not solve informal limitations associated with differences in ethnic, language, educational cultures and background knowledge and to further establish how might these policy settings deal with the issues that arise when crossing frontiers especially if they are not ‘readable’ in the new education environment or meet imaginings of australian standard practice? in this context, han and singh’s paper considers how future developments in teacher education might usefully benefit from reflecting on the bologna process as it moves from ‘out there’ to find expression in, and responses through local teacher education programs ‘here and there.’ xiulan argues for the preservation of minority languages in the globalized age using the notions of identity, language, and human rights. she uses an example from the peoples’ republic of china to highlight the need for policy initiatives in preserving minority languages in china. in this paper, she presents an overview on china’s policies on minority languages, their writing systems, bilingual education, and policies that favour the use of minority languages in political, administration, educational, and legal sectors. although there is no critical analysis regarding the benefits of minority language policies in the peoples’ republic of china, her article draws attention to the global threat to minority languages. xiulan recommends the need for research on the effectiveness of language policies in preserving http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci naidoo, singh and sanagavarapu: guest editors’ introduction transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 6 cultural and linguistic heritage. in short, xiulan argued that globalisation and transnationalism represented by the global expansion of dominant cultures and languages includes the inherent threat of the erosion of minority ethnic cultures and languages, thus leading to her argument for the inevitable need for greater cultural preservation. so for xiulan, transnationalism and globalisation could be a process of making people aware of the necessity of mutual recognition of the diversities and peculiarities of human cultures and values. the internet as the major example of new electronic information and communication technologies (icts), in fact, affects patterns of language use in many respects. on the one hand, it seems to support the trends of linguistic standardisation which accompany the more general processes of globalisation while on the other hand, the internet may actually support the maintenance of local minority languages in situations, where access to national spheres of communication is restricted and conventional resources for storing multilingual information are scarce. li and tingjun’s paper looks at the impact of computer-mediated communication (cmc) on the teaching/learning of english language to speakers of other languages in a global context (esol). one of the issues raised in this paper focuses on how the internet has altered the use of standardised english and the english curriculum. they elaborate on how the lexical, phonetic, and syntactic standards as well as curriculum orientations of the english language are altered by computer mediated communication and highlight the need for new curriculum and pedagogical tools in the teaching/learning of english. li and tingjun recommend a multiliteracies curriculum framework and project-based learning as strategies for teachers of esol in responding to the transformations brought in by cmc and the business of english language teaching. the papers in this special issue of transnational curriculum inquiry offer a number of useful insights into different approaches to globalisation and education. in the main, they have been drawn from australia and china. central to the idea of contemporary globalisation is the changing role of the state that continues to have a determining effect on the direction of curriculum politics, policies and pedagogies. rather than seeing globalisation in onedimensional terms this collection of papers has shown that educators see it as both a source of threat and an object of desire. the problems of economic globalisation that educators in china and australia struggle over reflect and give expression to the difficulties various other groups within these societies have to deal with. some have seen globalisation as having a pernicious effect on asylum seekers and refugees, resulting in educators having to work harder with evershrinking resources. this special issue of transnational curriculum inquiry has revealed differences and similarities among educators within and across australia and china. it demonstrates the heterogeneity of forms of global/local consciousness and action among educators, and locates these in terms of the challenges that curriculum workers face in actual lived situations. this collection of papers has explored the contradictory, conflictual and complex dynamics of curriculum change in the work of educators, by attending to actual learning experiences, as educators engage with the significant reorganisation of their lives in the name of globalisation. authors loshini naidoo is a lecturer in the school of education at the university of western sydney, australia. email: l.naidoo@uws.edu.au michael singh is professor of education at the university of western sydney, australia. email: m.j.singh@uws.edu.au prathyusha sanagavarapu is a lecturer in the school of education at the university of western sydney, australia. email: p.sanagavarapu@uws.edu.au http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci mailto:naidoo@uws.edu.au mailto:singh@uws.edu.au mailto:sanagavarapu@uws.edu.au microsoft word tochon_fr_dec2010.doc to cite this article please include all of the following details: tochon, françois victor and okten, celile e., (2010). motifs didactiques et représentation visuelle de la discipline: sources de transformation chez les stagiaires en formation des maîtres. transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> motifs didactiques et représentation visuelle de la discipline: sources de transformation chez les stagiaires en formation des maîtres françois victor tochon university of wisconsin-madison, usa celile e. okten université technique yildiz, istanbul, turquie introduction la sémiotique est l’étude des signes en action; elle peut porter sur tout processus qui implique une production de sens, linguistique ou non. la sémiose définit ainsi le processus même de création du sens par l’entremise de signes et l’interprétation de ces signes. la prise de conscience de la sémiose, chez les enseignants, génère une métasémiose au moment où ils s’engagent dans une réflexion approfondie qui, à son tour, peut stimuler un recadrage conceptuel qu’on peut qualifier de processus trans-sémiotique. a partir d’intuitions, la perception est mise en mots selon des étapes de clarification successives que charles s. peirce (1877a) a déchiffrées et théorisées comme étant inhérentes au processus de confirmation des croyances qui caractérise l’investigation scientifique. d’une manière similaire, l’intuition, la perception, la représentation et la mise en mots des interprétations didactiques du programme scolaire implique de façon subtile la formation de croyances et de convictions que nous nous donnons pour but d’explorer dans cet article en étudiant comment des stagiaires se représentent et hiérarchisent leur domaine de spécialisation en formation des maîtres. nous nous référons pour ce faire à l’analyse qu’a faite peirce des diagrammes existentiels, qui ont notamment démontré la pertinence des cartes conceptuelles en logique théorique. la section qui suit réinvestit ces concepts dans la théorisation du processus de construction didactique. elle indiquera pourquoi la représentation visuelle de la discipline à enseigner et la cartographie didactique du programme scolaire peuvent stimuler une investigation sémiotique et une transformation du savoir didactique chez les stagiaires en enseignement. la représentation didactique comme design ontologique la représentation conceptuelle nécessite un support pour être communiquée: organigrammes économiques, rubriques de planification, généalogies littéraires, représentations de l’espace géographique, cartes anthropologiques, présentations de systèmes, cadres, cognitifs, modèles mentaux, arbres de connaissance sociologiques, etc. ces cartes de concepts présentent des ontologies, elles présentent des structures conceptuelles qui décrivent, qualifient et modèlent « ce qui est ». lorsque des étudiants conceptualisent de tels modèles de la réalité, ils sont simultanément impliqués dans un processus épistémique qui les amène à choisir de quelle manière concevoir leur priorités disciplinaires. leur « design » ontologique sera la résultante d’un processus de conceptualisation qui leur est propre. parce que leur processus entraîne une réflexion sur la manière de voir, on les appelle parfois des « cartes épistémiques ». plusieurs recensions ont été publiées sur la cartographie conceptuelle (brown, 2002; daley et al., 1999; tochon & okten: motifs didactiques et représentation visuelle de la discipline transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 28 danesi, 2002; gómez et al., 2000; goodyear et al., 2005; novak, 1995; tochon, 1990ab). dans cet article, nous explorons les fondements sémiotiques de la représentation visuelle de la discipline à enseigner, une forme particulière d’investigation éducative qui peut stimuler une métasémiose (urban, 2006) et rendre ce processus transformationnel. john deely, susan petrilli, augusto ponzio (1998), et thomas sebeok (2001) ainsi que d’autres sémioticiens ont fait allusion au concept de métasémiose, indiquant que l’humain est un animal métasémiotique capable d’engendrer du sens sur la construction du sens. nous démontrons ici que la représentation didactique stimule une sémiose transformatrice du processus sémiotique, processus transformateur que nous nommons trans-sémiose. nous définissons la trans-sémiose comme une transformation de la connaissance qui résulte d’un recadrage métasémiotique. comme la trans-sémiose est étroitement reliée à la compréhension dialogique de soi et de l’autre – et que la connaissance n’est pas distincte du processus sémiotique – il en résulte que la trans-sémiose est un processus identitaire. quand une stagiaire en enseignement envisage sa discipline globalement, elle organise ses présupposés intuitifs quand aux éléments qui doivent prévaloir, à ce qui est conceptuellement important de sorte à le représenter. d’une manière semblable, le lecteur d’un graphe didactique doit laisser ses propres hypothèses et présupposés émerger afin d’interpréter ce qu’il voit. c’est alors inductivement qu’il articule ses hypothèses et forme ses convictions (kankkunnen, 2004). en fin de parcours interprétatif, les significations de ces présupposés sont réexaminées de façon déductive, le tout s’articulant selon un design dynamique. les cartes de concepts ont souvent été interprétées dans le cadre de la psychologie cognitive classique, un cadre qui fixe le sens sémantique au lieu de situer le flux interprétatif selon les incidences pragmatiques qui charactérisent l’apprentissage trans-sémiotique. peirce avait perçu assez tôt les mérites des diagrammes : ils peuvent soutenir et améliorer le raisonnement logique propre à l’intellect en situation pratique (cp 4.582). ses “graphes existentiels”, publiés en 1906 (cp 4.618), avaient été inventés en 1897, comme il le mentionne, et probablement plus tôt. peirce créa des règles permettant l’articulation logique de diagrammes représentant le raisonnement pratique afin d’assister l’expérimentation en pensée et d’étudier les relations logiques entre concepts. il tenta d’améliorer son système de cartographie conceptuelle pendant plus de vingt ans. même à la fin de sa vie, il ne se déclarait pas vraiment satisfait de la logique de ses « graphes gamma », toutefois, il estimait que « tout raisonnement indispensable est diagrammatique » (brouillon c, 90-102) : la conceptualisation est une forme de représentation. le but de peirce était « d’illustrer le cours général de la pensée : (…et de trouver) un système de diagrammatisation au moyen duquel tout processus de pensée puisse être représenté avec exactitude » (cp 4.530). chaque feuille « phémique » représentait un univers de discours à l’aide d’« icônes de relations intelligibles » (cp 4.531). øhrstrom (1997) indique que le raisonnement diagrammatique est très puissant sémiotiquement mais que, comme toute représentation, il ne peut être parfait ou complet: il propose un point de vue. le raisonnement pratique pourrait ne pas suivre les règles de la logique mathématique ou pourrait être l’incarnation d’un champ mathématique différent (menand, 1997) : celui de la logique des « images mouvantes de la pensée » (cp 4.8). depuis que peirce a proposé ses graphes existentiels, un ensemble de travaux ont porté sur le développement de cartes logique qui puissent fournir une représentation précise des champs de connaissance et des manières de raisonner. les élèves ou les étudiants qui revoient leurs propres cartes de concepts deviennent conscients des relations entre concepts. leur progrès est marqué par la pertinence des liens logiques établis entre ceux-ci. la différenciation conceptuelle initie chez l’étudiant un processus d’intégration qui permet une vision plus globale du champ conceptuel étudié (novak & cañas, 2006). ces structures tochon & okten: motifs didactiques et représentation visuelle de la discipline transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 29 permettent à l’étudiant d’attester et de vérifier ce qu’il sait de son expérience éducative. les structures de compréhension de l’étudiant deviennent plus claire et plus précises, ce qui indique leur rôle dans la naturalisation du savoir et des savoirs scolaires. l’étude de la manière dont la connaissance didactique se transforme en quelque chose qui puisse déboucher sur une pratique fournit des indications intéressantes sur l’interprétation de notions, genres et processus scolaires décrits par les étudiants (droz & schneuwly, 1997; tochon, 2000a). les représentations graphiques peuvent être utilisées pour observer les phases initiales de la connaissance d’apprenants, apprentis ou stagiaires et pour guider leurs changements conceptuels. novak & cañas (2008, p. 180) indiquent les relations entre apprentissage et épistémologie : l’épistémologie concerne « la nature de la connaissance et la création de nouvelles connaissances ». les apprenants qui s’efforcent de mettre à plat leur savoir s’engagent dans un processus créateur. novak compare les concepts et propositions aux atomes et molécules de la matière : ce seraient les briques élémentaires de toute matière disciplinaire. les concepts s’accordent aux patterns ou régularités perçues de situations, d’événements et d’objets qu’ils désignent. l’analogie atomique fournit un perspective réaliste platonicienne, comme si les concepts étaient des universaux abstraits; cependant leur dynamique épistémique implique qu’ils soient constamment en procès et en construction. la cartographie didactique est une méthode qui peut générer chez les apprenants « l’habitude de changer d’habitudes » (kankkunen, 2004, p.1). elle permet aux apprenants et aux enseignants d’évaluer leur développement conceptuel et leur système de croyances1. les systèmes de croyances sont des substrats sémantiques sédimentés par l’habitude qui se cristallisent en savoirs. les articles de peirce publiés en 1877-1878 dans popular science monthly proposaient une interprétation sémiotique des croyances : « nos croyances guident nos désirs et donnent forme à nos actions » (peirce, 1877a, iii). la croyance établit une stabilité conceptuelle, quand bien même les convictions puissent se modifier avec le temps. peirce postule que les croyances nouvelles se forment en réponse à des situations d’inadéquation et de doute authentique. confronté à un doute sincère, l’humain s’efforce d’atteindre une nouvelle croyance selon un processus que l’on nomme « recherche ». d’une manière semblable, l’investigation didactique est engendrée par les situations de doute authentique sur le fond d’un tissu culturel fait de croyances quant à ce qu’il convient d’enseigner. ce processus d’investigation didactique permet d’approfondir les connections possibles entre différentes significations et contribue au développement de la compréhension. peirce envisage quatre manières de fixer les croyances : l’a priori, la ténacité, l’autorité, et l’expérimentation (ibid, 1877b). il préfére l’expérimentation qui implique la négociation, la coopération et l’ouverture à l’alternative. peirce fournit ainsi un cadre de référence pour comprendre les croyances et représentations des enseignants et, de façon générale, l’éducation. l’expérimentation donne aux enseignants des moyens d’investiguer et de modifier leurs convictions grâce au raisonnement « abductif ». ce processus, qui est l’un des aspects analysés dans cet article, a un impact significatif sur les croyances des enseignants et affecte leurs décisions. la révision spontanée des jugements préalables est un phénomène constant. de plus, lorsque le raisonnement didactique est remodelé selon des standards internationaux (étrangers) et leur « impérialisme de la qualité » (gough, 2006), la conversation intérieure des enseignants est alors complexifiée par le croisement de régimes de raison et de signes d’autres cultures (pinar, 2000), tout spécialement dans un domaine comme celui de l’anglais langue étrangère. 1 le terme anglais “belief” est traduit ici par croyance, sa traduction la plus directe et légitime, plutôt que “conviction” ou “représentation” dont le sens est également impliqué dans le concept de “belief”. tochon & okten: motifs didactiques et représentation visuelle de la discipline transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 30 dans cette section, nous avons indiqué que la recherche sur la représentation conceptuelle peut s’étendre à des processus subtils de transformation sémiotique. cette transsémiose pratique implique un approfondissement de la compréhension de son propre processus sémiotique. la recherche didactique a ainsi été définie sur un fond sémiotique et identitaire. elle peut être intégrée en formation des maîtres pour stimuler la capacité des stagiaires à réfléchir sur leur savoir didactique et la production du sens de façon plus large. la prochaine section approfondit ce cadre analytique. le cadre analytique de charles s. peirce pour peirce (1931-1958), la logique doit être étudiée dans sa dynamique contextuelle; le contexte d’énonciation conditionne son interprétation. tout mouvement interprétable, toute pensée est un signe (chander, 2003). peirce a développé des taxonomies qui décrivent de quelle manière le sens des signes émerge selon un processus continu d’interprétation des liens entre la forme, la perception du contexte, et les significations envisageables. sa théorie est subtile, adaptative et dynamique. le sens crée les formes du réel, la culture et la communication. ce modèle du signe dégage les composants actifs de la construction du sens dans le mouvement réciproque des signes, objets et interprétants. le signe est médiateur entre l’objet et l’interprétant. l’interprétant est « le résultat (de l’interprétation) du signe, ce qui indique que différents signes puissent faire référence à divers aspects d’un objet et mener à des effets ou résultats interprétatifs différents. le processus qui permet de créer un résultat (ou interprétant) est un type de raisonnement qu’on nomme abduction » (osberg, 1997, p.27). comme l’induction et la déduction ne sont pas à même de générer de nouvelles connaissances, un troisième processus inférentiel entre ainsi en jeu dans la création d’hypothèse et dans l’intuition didactique : la dynamique du raisonnement abductif passe du résultat interprétatif à la règle puis au cas (bopry, 2002). au fur et à mesure de la sédimentation des savoirs, l’accueil du sens passe de l’abduction à la déduction et se transforme en processus balisé de sélection des vérités nécessairement impliquées (shank, 1995). le modèle peircien caractérise le processus sémiotique par la mise en jeu de mouvements de la pensée que sont le mouvement premier, second et tierce (priméité, secondéité et tiercéité dans la traduction de delledalle, 1990). le mouvement premier d’idéereprésentation est associé aux qualités qui ont une relation icôniques avec leur objet, par exemple une photographie, un portrait, une carte, etc. le mouvement premier implique l’abduction soit l’émergence spontanée et directe d’un sens qui met en jeu les croyances et les idées porteuses d’appréciations qualitatives fines chez la personne : celles naissent de l’ordre du préphénoménologique. le mouvement second implique l’induction grâce aux signes verbaux ou non dont la personne a déjà l’expérience consciemment. le mouvement second de présence brute à l’objet vient avec la reconnaissance de l’« autre ». c’est la reconnaissance qu’il y a du soi et du non-soi sur une scène dans laquelle l’arrière-plan se distingue de l’avant-plan d’un point de vue oppositionnel. le mouvement tierce associe les deux précédents mouvements grâce au raisonnement systématique qui établit des connexions déductives. le mouvement tierce interprète l’âme du signe à l’aide de symboles. un symbole forme un mouvement tierce comme de mouvoir la main, d’utiliser un feu de circulation, etc. le symbole est médiation entre objet et interprétant sous l’égide de la raison et de ses lois. la perception implique la sémiose ou la production de sens à partir de signes (allot, 1994). comme la perception entraîne une interprétation conceptuelle, elle est orientée par la personne qui perçoit, et produit des changements en continu pour permettre la construction organisationnelle du percevoir. la sémiose est ainsi partie intégrante du processus perceptuel. la perception implique des patrons d’action en réponse à la dynamique de l’environnement tochon & okten: motifs didactiques et représentation visuelle de la discipline transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 31 (ou umwelt, deely, 1994). les actions sont complémentaires et imbriquées dans la structuration de la perception. l’organisation des perceptions est ainsi l’arrière-plan de l’expérience d’apprentissage et, en retour, l’éducation organise les perceptions. selon cunningham, la sémiose humaine et l’éducation seraient une seule et même chose : « si, par sémiose, on entend la construction des structures de l’expérience sur la longueur de la vie, alors l’éducation est précisément ce domaine qui tente de comprendre, nourrir et rendre les gens plus réflexifs sur ce processus » (cunningham, 1987, p.207). aussi la perception didactique est-elle formée par la sémiose. cunningham (2002) propose un modèle général qui détaille le processus de connaissance selon quatre composantes : les signes, la sémiose, l’inférence, et la réflexivité. il définit les signes comme les référents analogiques ou métaphoriques d’aspects, concepts, objets ou relations. ils sont sensibles au contexte. les humains développent de nouvelles idées et hypothèses au gré de leur expérience. ainsi, le processus de conceptualisation didactique est inférentiel. les résultats interprétatifs d’un tel processus sont partie intégrante de la perception du savoir. dans la perspective d’un cunningham, la réflexivité est la conscience de la sémiose. tous les aspects du processus sémiotique ne peuvent être explicités et clarifiés car certains ressortissent de l’intuition (ce sont des abductions). la théorie sémiotique offre un cadre suffisamment nuancé pour que l’on puisse saisir de tels processus en mettant en lumière les subtiles progressions possibles entre diverses phases de prise de conscience allant du moins au plus explicite dans la compréhension de la perception elle-même. peirce envisage dix classes de signes dans sa théorie sémiotique. nous avons recours ici à la terminologie de merrell (2000) sur ces objets (celle de peirce est entre parenthèses) : la taxonomie inclut a) le sentiment (qualisigne de peirce); b) l’imagination (sinsigne icônique); c) la sensation (sinsigne indexical rhématique); d) l’attention (sinsigne dicent); e) la schématisation (légisigne icônique); f) l’impression verbale (légisigne indexical rhématique); g) le regard conscientisant (légisigne indexical dicent); h) la vision identifiante (symbole rhématique); i) la perception verbale (symbole dicent ou proposition); et j) la réalisation (argument) (ms 540, cp 2.233-72). shank & cunningham (1996) ont dérivé de la taxonomie que propose peirce six modes distincts d’abductions créatrices d’hypothèses, dont on peut brosser le portrait de la façon suivante : 1) l’intuition ou pressentiment est un type d’inférence qui alerte l’attention quant à la possibilité virtuelle d’une ressemblance vraisemblable : les observations initiales pourrait servir de suggestions intuitives afin d’étayer d’autres indications possibles. 2) les symptômes feraient appel à de possibles ressemblances afin de comparer des propriétés en voie d’être considérées, en cherchant la présence d’un phénomène plus général. la détection du symptôme souvent implique que l’on s’appuie sur les expériences antérieures. 3) la métaphore ou l’analogie manipulent la ressemblance afin de créer de nouvelles règles potentielles et de nouveaux cadres conceptuels. 4) l’indice ou indication stimule un type d’inférence proche de l’élaboration d’une preuve possible; il implique la détermination de la nature des indices issus de l’observation pour décider s’ils sont associés à un phénomène plus général. ce signe aide à détecter les circonstances d’un événement passé. de sorte à établir un jugement, l’observateur cherche des connections. 5) le diagnostic ou scénario forme une règle possible sur la base des preuves disponibles de façon à aboutir à un jugement diagnostic à partir d’observations. de tels tochon & okten: motifs didactiques et représentation visuelle de la discipline transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 32 diagnostics créent des scénarios plausibles à partir de regroupements d’indications. les regroupements d’indications on un caractère unitaire. 6) les explications concernent des règles formelles qui permettent de tenir compte d’ensembles de données intrigantes et de réunir des scénarios possibles en explications cohérentes qui donnent une intelligence de l’événement. nous utiliserons ce modèle pour analyser la capacité des stagiaires en enseignement à suspendre leur action et à délibérer de façon critique pour accroître leur conscience de ce qu’ils font (petrilli & ponzio, 2007). ce modèle permet d’élucider des aspects importants de la sémiose didactique qui constituent les motifs (affordances) stimulant l’investigation didactique. une « affordance » est la qualité ou caractéristique d’un objet ou d’un environnement qui permet à l’individu d’envisager une action. c’est un motif sur lequel on peut ancrer son attention et établir une corespondance. ce concept est lié au fait que la création de sens naît de la perception de « niches sémiotiques » au sein d’un environnement fluide et dynamique. il réfère aux propriétés perçues et réelles d’une chose qui déterminent comment la chose peut être utilisée (norman, 1988). il implique aussi que le sens des signes soit associé et négocié au sein de niches sémiotiques (schumann, 2003; logan & schumann, 2005; burgin & schumann, 2006). “une situation fournit un niche appropriée seulement pour les personnes qui sont prêtes à percevoir et utiliser ces propriétés. celles qui ne sont pas en phase ou préparées ne réussiront pas à tirer de la situation les éléments nécessaires » à leur réflexion ou à leur action (snow, 1998, p. 107). cela nous amène à anticiper que les stagiaires puissent être plus ou moins bien en phase avec des niches didactiques et que le fait d’être « en phase » nécessite une transformation. ces niches seraient les lieux d’une transformation conceptuelle. dans cette section, nous avons discuté de la sémiose et de l’émergence d’une métasémiose au gré de processus abductifs qui engendrent trois formes de processus : mouvement de sens simple ou premier, mouvement second et mouvement tierce. nous avons vu comment le raisonnement façonne le sens des signes, donnant naissance à des interprétations et des inférences. la dernière étape, fondée sur la création du sens, a été d’explorer comment la perception est structurée par l’éducation sur la base de l’expérience. dans ce but, nous avons présenté une taxonomie qui nous aidera à analyser les intentions des stagiaires dans la représentation visuelle de leur discipline. design de la recherche dans cette étude, nous proposons de comprendre la représentation didactique comme le résultat de propriétés révélées par l’investigation sémiotique du champ disciplinaire. la didactique comme investigation sémiotique. l’analyse sémiotique implique une variété d’approches qui lui confèrent richesse, subtilité et souplesse dans la mise en lumière des étapes du processus de recherche. dans le processus par lequel les stagiaires en enseignement conceptualisent leur domaine didactique, la sémiose transformationnelle facilite la déconstruction du réel de sorte à déchiffrer son arrière-plan historique et culturel. le point de vue sémiotique est intégrateur et englobant, il ne privilégie pas un positionnement particulier. il rend les individus et les groupes plus critiques quant à leur propre perspective, à leur responsabilité interprétative et à leur action. la théorie des niches sémiotiques postule que la personne qui perçoit est active et créatrice d’environnements (umwelten) riches de sens possibles. les humains accordent leurs perceptions à des motifs qui forment des niches conceptuelles. l’éducation, à cet égard, peut être comprise comme le processus sémiotique de déchiffrage qui coconstruit des relations significatives entre un apprenant ou un groupe tochon & okten: motifs didactiques et représentation visuelle de la discipline transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 33 d’apprenants, la composition mentale du programme scolaire et l’enseignant. cette clarification donne une dimension humaine à l’instruction. contexte de recherche. cette étude présente un aspect d’une recherche plus large qui porte sur l’intégration de portfolios électroniques dans le département d’enseignement de l’anglais langue étrangère d’une université publique turque à istanbul. les stagiaires apprenaient à intégrer le cadre européen commun de référence pour les langues (cefr) ainsi que les standards du conseil américain pour l’enseignement des languages étrangères (actfl) (tochon, 2008). nous avons étudié le rôle des portfolios dans l’amélioration du système de formation des maîtres. le but du programme était de former des enseignants sensibilisés aux questions interculturelles qui aient une profonde connaissance de leur discipline et de leur profession sur la base d’une recherche action participative (kemmis & thagart, 2005). une carte du champ disciplinaire à enseigner a été intégrée aux portfolios après de multiples phases de feedback et évaluations formatives. participants. l’étude a impliqué 23 stagiaires volontaires en anglais langue étrangère (elt). c’étaient des étudiants de 4e année, la dernière année du programme. douze de ces étudiants ont terminé leur carte didactique au printemps 2008, alors que d’autres ont décidé d’affiner le processus de construction pendant l’été qui suivait. ces stagiaires avaient des perceptions contrastées sur des questions comme les politiques langagières, le rôle de l’anglais dans la globalisation et son rôle par rapport à la laïcité en turquie. trois étudiants ont été choisis dans le cadre du présent article selon les critères suivants : • les cartes didactiques étaient assez contrastées pour permettre une analyse sémiotique de leur développement; • nous avions suffisamment d’informations sur leur construction sémantique et pragmatique grâce à nos observations et interviews; • la correspondance des éléments rapportés sur la carte avec la connaissance de la matière exprimée par les stagiaires lors d’entrevues indiquait sa validité externe. les entrevues orales avec les trois participants (deux femmes et un homme) dont les cartes didactiques ont été choisies pour cette étude ont été transcrites au mot à mot, les interviews écrites ont été utilisées comme compléments pour dégager une interprétation de cette investigation didactique. données. l’étude était fondée sur des sources multiples : discussions de groupe, travail entre pairs, observations participatives de l’instructeur, feedback oral sur l’organisation de la discipline à enseigner, mémos et journal de recherche, commentaires des stagiaires, interviews écrites et orales. les stagiaires n’avaient aucune connaissance de la cartographie conceptuelle avant de commencer leur portfolio. les participants ont d’abord étudié avec un camarade et en petit groupe, ou encore individuellement, les moyens numériques de construire une carte de concepts qui représente leur savoir didactique. les stagiaires ont été observés durant leur étude, soit individuelle soit lors de discussions en groupe, au cours de laquelle des notes de terrain ont été prises. les stagiaires ont reçu un questionnaire écrit dont ils ont envoyé les réponses par mèl. ils ont été observés quand ils faisaient leurs cartes didactiques et ont été interviewés individuellement pendant environ 20 minutes chacun. en plus des mémos, des transcriptions d’interviews en langue turque, les chercheurs ont traduit une partie des commentaires des stagiaires sur le processus de cartographie didactique pour tochon & okten: motifs didactiques et représentation visuelle de la discipline transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 34 en discuter les détails. depuis le début de cette exploration, un journal de bord a été tenu après chaque rencontre. procédure. tout au long de la conception de leurs portfolios électroniques, les stagiaires ont appris à créer des cartes de concepts afin d’explorer, visualiser et discuter leur connaissance de la matière à enseigner, selon le modèle de beyerbach (1988) et de beyerbach et smith (1990). ainsi la cartographie étaient partie intégrante de la planification du portfolio. les cartes didactiques constituaient une manière sympathique d’échafauder des supports conceptuels dans l’élaboration de projets auxquels collaboraient ces stagiaires, qui les ont amenés à créer une forme d’apprentissage en commun dont les connaissances allaient croissant. les instructions qu’ils avaient reçues étaient de détailler à l’aide de cartes conceptuelles ce qu’ils savaient de la matière didactique plutôt que ce qu’ils en ignoraient. le processus était guidé de façon souple par des polycopiés sur les façons possibles de procéder pour visualiser leurs connaissances. ils pouvaient chercher plus d’information sur internet. ils partageaient alors les informations ainsi glânées, et comparaient les modèles. il avait été décidé de ne pas imposer un format contraignant aux cartes didactiques dont les règles de conception et le formalisme puisse limiter leur créativité. la plupart des exemples venaient de cartes dans le style de novak, à phylactères. les stagiaires se rencontraient une fois par semaine au laboratoire informatique et avaient une autre rencontre hebdomadaire dans une salle de cours normale pour discuter du processus et des contenus. il est habituel en formation des maîtres de guider les stagiaires et de fournir des critères précis relatifs au format de ce qui est attendu de toute action. ici, toutefois, les stagiaires étaient libres de choisir leur propre cadre de référence visuel et leur format pour représenter leurs savoirs didactiques. les participants étaient encouragés à inclure dans leurs cartes tout aussi bien des faits que des représentations ou croyances, en leur rappelant que les connaissances du jour ne sont jamais parfaites ni immuables. après avoir préparé leurs propres cartes, ils comparaient leur travail entre pairs et évaluaient oralement leurs cartes entre eux. analyse de données. l’analyse sémiotique est un processus herméneutique. elle a donné aux chercheurs la possibilité d’explorer les aspects communs des processus étudiés entre stagiaires et leurs différences. l’accent n’était pas sur l’analyse des savoirs naturalisés ou réifiés par les stagiaires mais plutôt sur le processus même de représentation, de concrétisation et de naturalisation des connaissances dans la pensée de ces stagiaires, processus inhérent au design didactique. nous participions d’une logique intégrée et d’une épistémologie non dualiste dans notre analyse des processus de normalisation du savoir. peirce était un pragmatiste et il considérait que le processus de normalisation conceptuelle était partie intégrante du processus jaillissant de la priméité vers la tiercéité. nous avons utilisé le modèle de raisonnement pratique que shank et cunningham (1996) ont dérivé des travaux de peirce pour comprendre le processus de visualisation de la connaissance didactique chez les stagiaires dans les étapes initiales de conception de leur portfolio. nous avons tenté de dégager de quelle manière ils construisaient leur représentation de la discipline d’enseignement au fil d’évocations particulièrement significatives, à l’aide de motifs dont les niches sémiotiques s’accordaient à l’environnement de la classe d’anglais langue étrangère en turquie. dans l’analyse et l’interprétation, notre attention a porté sur les points suivants : les perceptions et représentations de la connaissance du programme d’enseignement et d’apprentissage; les cartes générales et les cartes subordonnées, la logique de l’organisation de ces représentations visuelles; les conflits possibles dans le processus de construction de la connaissance didactique; les questions qui surgissaient lors de la sélection des connaissances et de leur degré de pertinence; la trans-sémiose : les transformations de la connaissance tochon & okten: motifs didactiques et représentation visuelle de la discipline transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 35 stimulées par la représentation graphique de la discipline; les critères de pertinence didactique; les manières de réfléchir : les processus de représentation et les manières de catégoriser ce qui est important pour l’action professionnelle; la sélection comme acte politique : les manières dont la discipline était politisée par les catégories choisies; le programme comme développement identitaire : l’apprentissage transformationnel dans le processus représentationnel. analyse sémiotique du processus de représentation didactique nous nous sommes centrés sur les réponses de trois stagiaires liées à leur représentation de la discipline à enseigner. ces réponses ont été évaluées en termes de construction du sens, de réflexion sur la matière d’enseignement et d’apprentissage, sur leur manière de catégoriser le savoir disciplinaire, et sur les processus sémiotiques qui soutenaient des transformations profondes impliquant un recadrage identitaire. processus sémiotiques engageant les stagiaires dans une réflexion approfondie la représentation visuelle de la discipline à enseigner sur une carte de concepts était un aspect particulier du processus plus global de construction du portfolio, le portfolio ayant pour fonction de témoigner du développement de compétences professionnelles. des processus sémiotiques identiques étaient à l’œuvre car, dans les deux cas, il s’agissait d’analyser les arguments qui légitimaient et normalisaient des processus expérientiels. ciaprès, nous analysons les représentations didactiques de chaque stagiaire comme autant de sédimentations progressives de couches de compréhension qui ont stimulé des investigations sémiotiques afin de mieux cadrer une perspective personnelle du programme d’enseignement-apprentissage dans la discipline. ce processus nécessitait une réflexion approfondie des stagiaires sur les connaissances et contenus disciplinaires. ce qu’ils ont appris sur eux-mêmes au cours de ce processus était d’accorder leur attention au sens et à l’usage de la langue. ils ont vu – ce qui les a beaucoup surpris – que lorsqu’ils écrivaient un mot sur une carte, ils se souvenaient immédiatement d’un autre contenu disciplinaire s’y rapportant. ils décidèrent de limiter les sous-menus car les champs conceptuels étaient liés les uns aux autres d’une certaine manière. il leur fallait hiérarchiser le champ disciplinaire et ne garder que ce qu’ils pensaient valable dans leur carte. shank et cunningham (1996) nous ont guidés dans l’analyse de la sémiose didactique présentée dans les sections qui suivent. harun, seval, et esra (pseudonymes) étaient les trois étudiants dont les cartes didactiques ont été choisies pour la présente étude. ils ont été invités à discuter de leurs représentations didactiques et à commenter leurs cartes, puis à partager leurs idées entre eux. dans cette section, nous analysons leurs conversations et les entrevues orales ainsi que les remarques qu’ils ont écrites en cours de processus. leurs cartes didactiques sont présentées dans les figures 1, 2, et 3. harun, stagiaire 1 intuition: harun n’avait jamais fait de cartes de concepts et n’avait pas particulièrement fait attention à sa connaissance de la matière enseignée; pour cette raison, la sélection de sujets pertinents a exigé beaucoup d’efforts. ses intuitions étaient peu articulées. dans son entrevue orale, harun se plaint du peu de temps disponible pour concevoir la carte représentant son savoir disciplinaire. il tente d’organiser ses pensées, mais celles–ci sont floues à ce stade. tochon & okten: motifs didactiques et représentation visuelle de la discipline transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 36 figure 1. la carte didactique de harun symptômes: harun a cherché sur internet des modèles possibles. il a fait plusieurs brouillons de cartes possibles en tâchant de discerner des titres et sous-titres définissant la matière didactique. il se sentait confiné surtout à l’aspect structural du savoir, mais cela l’a aidé à se remémorer de connaissances fondamentales pour son enseignement et de techniques d’enseignement appropriées dans sa discipline. quand nous l’avons observé, harun contemplait le modèle qu’il avait tracé sur le papier. il tentait de tout mettre sur une page, qu’il percevait comme le format le plus compact. il préférait opter pour une composition hiérarchique des sujets. parce que la carte de harun suivait largement les patrons visuels qui lui avaient été montrés auparavant dans sa formation, il lui paraissait évident qu’ils cadraient au mieux sa connaissance de la discipline. métaphore: les observations indiquaient que le design de harun impliquait les processus distincts de nommer et d’ordonner ses idées en une hiérarchie. il utilisait l’internet pour trouver des ressources à la fois qui l’aident à choisir des concepts didactiques appropriés et des modèles de cartes. ses brouillons rassemblaient en une carte des idées trouvées sur internet dont il comparait les contenus avec ceux de ses pairs; il portait ainsi plus d’attention au design qu’à la cohérence des catégories choisies, titres et sous-titres. harun élaborait sa connaissance didactique à partir d’une structure de base composée d’aspects tels que contenus, enseignement et apprentissage, qu’il reliait ensuite à l’anglais compris comme une langue mondiale. il faisait aussi allusion à l’arrière-plan historique et économique de sa tochon & okten: motifs didactiques et représentation visuelle de la discipline transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 37 discipline. durant son entrevue, harun ne réfléchit pas à la littérature sur l’enseignement des langues et, pour cette raison, elle n’apparaît pas dans sa carte. il ne sent pas le besoin de détailler la grammaire ou les compétences langagières. indices: harun voit la culture comme l’élément constitutif du langage. il induit le degré de popularité de l’anglais sur la base de son importance historique et de son impact passé sur l’économie. il met l’accent sur la dimension sociale de l’anglais comme l’une des causes probables de sa popularité autour du globe. il perçoit clairement une connexion entre ces aspects, l’enseignement, et l’apprentissage. diagnostic: harun a établi ces connections à partir de connaissances didactiques antérieures, dit-il. il trouve que la création de sa carte didactique est une expérience valable. c’est aussi une méthode d’instruction utile. il estime que la révolution industrielle et le capitalisme constituent les facteurs premiers du succès de l’anglais. pour lui, le capitalisme a une spécificité culturelle liée au monde anglophone: cette façon de penser l’économie stimule l’expansion extra-territoriale et promeut une hégémonie qui conduit au contrôle du reste du monde. ce diagnostic explique les sous-titres qu’a choisis harun pour l’enseignement de la langue anglaise: l’argent, les voyages, et l’interaction. explication: harun clarifie les implications de sa représentation de la discipline; il a opéré une sorte d’autoévaluation de sa connaissance du domaine de l’anglais langue étrangère et réalise qu’il doit travailler de façon plus soutenue pour maîtriser sa discipline dans son entier. les connections mutuelles entre les trois différents aspects que représentent l’anglais, la langue, l’enseignement, ont maintenant plus de sens pour lui. harun ne peut pas détailler davantage sa carte du domaine didactique à cause de la taille du papier et, en format électronique, de la taille de la page internet. il voulait obtenir un design hiérarchique qui, en raison du manque de place, l’a obligé à laisser tomber certains sujets. les concepts prédominants sur sa carte sont l’anglais et la culture. raisonnement déductif: harun relit à nouveau sa carte didactique et la compare à celle de ses pairs afin de s’autoévaluer. la connaissance de l’anglais ouvre la porte à des possibilités d’emploi, remarque-t-il. on peut gagner de l’argent plus facilement et améliorer son standard de vie. ensuite, on peut voyager et interagir avec d’autres peuples et cultures. ces dimensions qui sont autant de facteurs motivationnels pour les étudiants s’avèrent essentiels dans la vision qu’en a harun. le pouvoir d’accès au capital se traduit en force monétaire et caractérise les apports de l’anglais comme langue étrangère. harun connecte cette perception aux politiques linguistiques en vigueur. le pouvoir monétaire forge les politiques langagières et les politiques éducatives autour du globe. a ce stade de la création de la carte de harun, esra intervient dans la conversation et compare sa carte à la sienne. elle trouve que sa carte à lui est inadéquate. elle estime qu’il a besoin de détailler davantage ce qui se passe dans la salle de classe, dans l’apprentissage de la langue, l’environnement scolaire, et ce qui relève des élèves. harun abonde dans ce sens et fait son autocritique. il n’a pas bien développé les problèmes relatifs à l’école, à la salle de classe, aux élèves; il est d’accord que ces points devraient avoir leur place plus clairement. il compare aussi sa carte avec celle de seval. il trouve que seval approfondit avec plus de détails les caractéristiques propres aux perspectives de l’enseignant et l’apprenant. il apprécie en particulier sa distinction de différents types d’apprenants. il analyse alors sa carte déductivement, il stimule une activité sémiotique qui l’amène à découvrir combien ses propres caractéristiques identitaires ont tochon & okten: motifs didactiques et représentation visuelle de la discipline transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 38 influencé le processus de construction du savoir scolaire, ce qui entraîne une révision de son système de croyances. identification: les niveaux de sensibilité sémiotique suivants (identification, prédiction et modélisation) apparaissent clairement dans l’entrevue orale avec harun. harun corrrige ses vues antérieures. dans le choix initial de ses titres, il aurait dû écrire ‘enseignants’ avant ‘élèves’, estime-t-il. il avait identifié ces deux perspectives opposées dans la même catégorie mais elles articulent des manières d’approcher la réalité didactique très différentes. il répond qu’il devrait porter plus d’attention à l’écologie de la classe et devrait développer ce sujet. prédiction: les autres aspects de l’enseignement de l’anglais tels que les quatre modalités langagières, le vocabulaire et la grammaire sont déjà connus et ne représentent pas des sujets nouveaux. cependant harun insiste encore sur l’importance de la culture dans l’enseignement de l’anglais. il veut mettre l’accent sur une approche culturelle de sorte à organiser toutes les activités de la classe selon cette perspective. modélisation: finalement, harun réexamine l’enseignement de l’anglais langue étrangère à travers trois catégories de sens: l’anglais proprement dit, la langue, et l’enseignement. cellesci représentent une perspective plus achevée et globale de son savoir didactique, dit-il. le travail de modélisation de son savoir disciplinaire a eu une valeur transformationnelle pour harun qui sent que, bien qu’il ait été amené à intégrer des détails auxquels il n’avait pas pensé initialement, il s’identifie davantage à son positionnement didactique et sociopolitique original qui transparaît en filigrane, de manière mieux intégrée. seval, stagiaire 2 intuition: quand seval commença à tracer le brouillon de ce que pourrait devenir sa carte, elle passa en revue mentalement les connaissances didactiques accumulées au cours de ses études dans sa discipline. le fait de mettre ces concepts sur le papier l’obligeait à catégoriser et à organiser sa carte mentale. sa première impulsion fut de se référer à ses études de premier cycle et de modéliser son savoir sur la base de ce programme. le sentiment de saisir intuitivement l’ensemble de sa discipline telle qu’elle s’était peu à peu construite dans son esprit avec ses innombrables ramifications lui donnait le sentiment de faire quelque chose d’utile et agréable, qui la rendait heureuse. le professeur lui conseilla de coucher sur le papier tout item didactique qui surgissait dans son esprit; ce qu’elle fit en rédigeant tout ce dont elle se souvenait quant à l’anglais langue étrangère, puis elle organisa ces premières intuitions. au départ elle n’avait aucune idée de ce que sa carte pourrait être et de la manière dont elle pourrait localiser les connaissances. l’accès au savoir fut d’abord intuitif. symptôme: seval revit mentalement sa connaissance de la discipline, et nota qu’elle devait mettre l’accent sur les deux pôles que sont l’enseignement et l’apprentissage. elle voulait montrer les différences existant entre ces pôles parce qu’elle sentait que cela pourrait aider sa compréhension de l’enseignement des langues. après la phase initiale de clarification et de classification, seval se centra sur les aspects subordonnés aux catégories enseignant et apprenant. tandis qu’elle tentait de conceptualiser ce que sa carte pourrait devenir, elle réalisa qu’elle n’avait jamais réfléchi à certains sujets didactiques. elle ne savait pas grand chose sur les types d’enseignants et les styles d’enseignement, alors elle fit une recherche sur internet qui lui permit d’accroître sa connaissance de telles nuances. tandis qu’elle commençait à réfléchir au langage comme un entité soumise à une classification didactique, tochon & okten: motifs didactiques et représentation visuelle de la discipline transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 39 elle se souvint de davantage de détails sur des savoirs utiles, et elle décida de faire son propre schéma selon ce qui lui semblait particulièrement important à titre personnel. elle avait une préférence marquée pour le terme linguistique plutôt que langage. elle pensait au départ que la linguistique comprendrait plus de catégories pertinentes sur le plan didactique, toutefois avec plus de recherche elle se rendit compte qu’un grand nombre de sujets didactiques importants et utiles ne pouvaient pas être placés sous la rubrique linguistique. figure 2. la carte didactique de seval métaphore: selon seval, le fait d’intégrer des connaissances relatives aux types d’enseignants et d’apprenants, à leurs styles, méthodes et modalités d’application rendrait l’instruction plus complète et agréable aussi bien pour l’enseignant que pour l’élève. seval estime que les enseignants devraient considérer ces facteurs lorsqu’ils planifient leurs leçons, comme à son avis ces aspects contribuent à créer un environnement d’apprentissage adapté. elle pense que l’enseignant de langue devrait intégrer les quatre modalités langagières en les connectant les unes aux autres. bien que seval identifie des linguistes comme chomsky, krashen, whorf et sapir et souhaite les mentionner dans sa carte, sa connaissance de la linguistique n’est pas précise. indices: seval a classifié sa connaissance selon les catégories des enseignant, apprenant, modalités langagières, langage, littérature, classe de langue, personnes clés et standards. elle tente de montrer la pertinence de ces catégories et leur nécessité dans la discipline. seval met l’accent sur les techniques et méthodes d’enseignement comme des connaissances requises dans la discipline. elle croit que l’approche des « 5 cs » est l’une des plus tochon & okten: motifs didactiques et représentation visuelle de la discipline transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 40 convaincantes et valides. elle relève que la littérature en anglais sur ces sujets est également importante. d’autres aspects qui méritent d’être mentionnés dans la mesure où ils gardent les élèves à l’écoute de la discipline sont les caractéristiques de la classe de langue, la motivation, le besoin de feedback, et les éléments composant l’environnement de la classe. diagnostic: seval a pris chaque catégorie une à une et a investigué les connections de chaque partie avec le tout. après bien des hésitations dues à son incompréhension du rôle de la linguistique dans l’enseignement d’une langue, seval choisit la catégorie plus générale du langage. elle place les linguistes sous la catégorie des personnes clés pour montrer leur contribution aux études linguistiques. seval mentionne le matériel didactique comme l’un des éléments du contexte de la salle de classe lorsqu’elle examine les variables qui interagissent sur l’enseignement de la langue. elle aborde ensuite les stratégies sociales (centration sur l’enseignant ou l’apprenant, individuellement ou en groupe). elle perçoit que c’est l’une des dimensions particulièrement importantes dans le contexte turque. explication: seval a choisi les catégories qui selon elle sont essentielles pour planifier des leçons. elle a détaillé les catégories de l’enseignant et de l’apprenant, et a ensuite mis l’accent sur l’intégration des quatre modalités didactiques dans la planification. elle a divisé le langage en sous-groupes: syntaxe, sémantique, et linguistique qui englobent selon elle la nature et la structure du langage. seval sent de plus que si la littérature anglophone est enseignée, la logique de la langue sera mieux comprise, selon le raisonnement que l’accès à la littérature permet d’acquérir les formules idiomatiques de la communauté langagière plus facilement. se fondant sur l’opinion que les élèves aiment lire des poèmes, de brefs récits et des nouvelles, seval procède du raisonnement selon lequel la littérature est l’entrée la plus aisée pour l’apprentissage d’une langue. raisonnement déductif: seval a peu à peu défini les critères d’une formation pertinente des enseignants: ce que devraient être les détails de l’enseignement et de l’apprentissage, comment les standards des « 5 c » (communication, culture, connections, comparaisons, communautés) devraient permettre d’organiser le programme et les évaluations en accord avec le cadre de référence européen commun pour les langues, tout en intégrant la littérature pour donner une perspective culturelle sur la langue cible. tous ces aspects sont des composantes essentielles de l’enseignement de l’anglais langue étrangère pour seval. elle compare sa propre carte didactique à celle d’esra et trouve que la sienne est bien meilleure pour plusieurs raisons. tout d’abord, esra discute de l’anglais langue étrangère comme d’un concept général et examine les modalités langagières comme si elles étaient les fondements du langage. seval trouve qu’elle a raison d’examiner la situation des apprenants et la classe de langue comme deux sous-groupes distincts, alors qu’esra les traite comme des variables du contexte de l’enseignement. esra aborde les apprenants plus en profondeur en détaillant les types et niveaux d’apprentissage. seval indique qu’esra ne mentionne aucun linguiste et que la littérature n’apparaît pas sur sa carte. en même temps, seval remarque qu’esra a mieux réussi à spécifier des domaines comme le matériel didactique, les stratégies sociales, et l’histoire de la langue anglaise. seval critique la part mineure que joue l’évaluation dans la carte d’esra: esra ne dit rien de l’évaluation, et cet aspect de l’enseignement semble exclu de sa perspective. finalement, seval examine la carte de harun et critique l’absence de mention des approches de l’enseignement, l’absence de techniques, des styles, et de ceux des apprenants. selon elle, harun néglige certains des aspects les plus importants de l’enseignement de l’anglais langue étrangère en n’abordant que deux méthodes d’enseignement: traditionnelle (grammaire et traduction) et communicative. seval estime tochon & okten: motifs didactiques et représentation visuelle de la discipline transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 41 que ces savoirs sont insuffisants; elle apprécie toutefois la mention du plan de cours (syllabus) comme un aspect nécessaire de la connaissance didactique. identification: seval identifie nombre de détails de l’enseignement et de l’apprentissage qui ont un impact sur la planification en classe et l’éducation proprement dite. les 5 cs représentent des compétences standards qui témoignent de l’interrelation entre tous les domaines de l’apprentissage langagier. de plus, on a besoin de la littérature pour comprendre les codes culturels de la communauté linguistique. sous le titre enseignant, seval aborde les types d’enseignants, les styles d’enseignement, les méthodes, approches et techniques. elle indique par là que les enseignants devraient bien connaître les nouvelles méthodes, les styles et les approches pour communiquer avec les élèves et enseigner d’une manière qui ait du sens pour eux. elle identifie aussi sous le titre langage la linguistique, la syntaxe, la sémantique et la méthode des 5 cs. dans ses termes, c’est une bonne façon de développer les compétences langagières. seval n’a pas besoin de développer un titre distinct pour la politique langagière, en effet sa carte spécifie que les politiques éducatives portent sur toute question concernant les enseignants et les apprenants. pour elle, harun devrait développer plus en profondeur les aspects didactiques propres à l’école et à l’environnement de la classe, aux élèves, et à l’enseignant. ce sont des dimensions importantes de l’anglais langue étrangère. comme harun ne présente l’anglais que comme un sous-groupe de l’enseignement de la langue étrangère connecté à l’argent, aux voyages, et à l’interaction, seval estime ces mentions superfétatoires dans la caractérisation de la discipline enseignée. sa propre carte est plus réussie que celle de harun, évalue-t-elle, parce qu’il ne semble simplement pas porter attention aux apprenants! elle admet néanmoins qu’il fait allusion au plan de cours, un instrument didactique utile qu’elle a, il est vrai, oublié de placer sur sa carte de concepts. mais alors elle inscrirait le “syllabus” comme l’une des composantes de la classe de langue. prédiction: le choix par seval des sujets didactiques à privilégier se justifie par son but premier qui est un enseignement performant en termes d’interaction. elle croit que ce cadre théorique soutiendra mieux l’apprentissage. elle estime que l’histoire de l’enseignement de l’anglais—qu’on ne trouve pas sur sa carte—est trop générique, et que bien que cet aspect puisse revêtir une certaine utilité pour l’enseignant et peut-être l’apprenant, son importance est mineure. pour ces raisons, elle trouve que sa carte didactique constitue un prédicteur sûr d’un enseignement réussi. seval a vérifié les fortes implications qu’ont les standards (5 cs) et la littérature dans sa formation et dans l’enseignement d’une langue seconde. elle récapitule les énoncés linguistiques et les idiomes particuliers ainsi que les points de vue culturels des locuteurs natifs fournis dans la littérature, et elle tente de se figurer de quelle manière elle pourrait les utiliser dans une salle de classe. elle pense que l’aptitude à communiquer se développe grâce à l’intégration des standards. modélisation: seval dit que la langue devrait être enseignée et apprise dans son contexte d’énonciation. de plus, l’utilisation d’une taxonomie donne du sens au savoir. seval classifie ses savoirs didactiques en une hiérarchie de titres avec des contextes qui puissent s’accorder à cette taxonomie de savoirs. le titre principal est anglais langue étrangère, et les sous-titres de son arborescence sont enseignant, apprenant, modalités langagières, langage, littérature, classe de langue, personnes clés, et “5c”. seval interprète la réalisation de sa carte en termes de modélisation didactique. cette construction didactique a accru chez elle le sentiment que la discipline enseignée a une cohérence. tochon & okten: motifs didactiques et représentation visuelle de la discipline transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 42 figure 3. la carte didactique de esra esra, stagiaire 3 intuition: esra réfléchit tout d’abord à son programme de formation et tente de trouver des exemples tirés de ses cours universitaires. elle se demande ce qu’elle pourrait enseigner, la manière de le faire, et quand le faire. elle navigue à vue en tentant de répertorier ce qu’elle connaît. elle fait allusion au contenu de cours qu’elle avait suivis, auxquels elle pourrait ajouter ses propres éléments. au cours de l’entrevue orale, esra remarque que sa première carte de concepts était intuitive et désorganisée. elle avait écrit tout ce qui lui passait par la tête. il n’y avait pas d’ordre systématique. c’est alors quelle a envisagé de concevoir une autre carte. tochon & okten: motifs didactiques et représentation visuelle de la discipline transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 43 symptôme: esra avait fait un brouillon de sa première carte didactique un peu au petit bonheur la chance, et a réalisé après un premier remue-méninges qu’elle avait besoin d’une manière un peu plus systématique de procéder et de classifier ses connaissances didactiques. elle établit alors deux catégories: enseignement et apprentissage. elle ferait une sélection personnelle afin de respecter ses critères d’organisation de la manière qui semblerait la plus appropriée au long du travail. elle se met alors à réfléchir un bon moment, en profondeur. elle en ressort avec le sentiment que certains titres pourraient lui servir d’organisateurs didactiques, un concept proposé par tochon (1992). un concept didactique lui en rappelle un autre et ainsi de suite, c’est un processus créatif continu. elle doit sélectionner les aspects distinctifs qui rendront l’enseignement de l’anglais langue étrangère plus accessible. les aspects du domaine tels que l’acquisition d’une language seconde (als), l’enseignement de l’anglais langue étrangère (ale) et la linguistique ne sont pas clairs dans son esprit et nécessitent une théorisation plus simple de la discipline, selon elle. esra cherchera des titres didactiques compacts assez frappants pour être présentés dans son portfolio et être immédiatement saisis. son premier souci en concevant sa carte est d’anticiper le résultat en vue de son portfolio. ses choix sont profondément influencés par son contexte de cours universitaires. métaphore: tandis qu’elle sélectionne et rédige ses sous-titres, esra s’efforce de restreindre leur nombre pour réduire la complexité et le désordre inhérents aux multiples ramifications des connaissances. la plupart des concepts sont reliés les uns aux autres, ce qui lui permet de terminer sa sélection avec la concision voulue autour de deux images centrales. dans cette carte, le langage et enseignement sont les concepts didactiques premiers. esra est très intéressée par l’étude du langage comme science mais, paradoxalement, elle n’a pas inclus la linguistique dans ses considérations et celle-ci ne figure pas sur la carte. les catégories qu’elle a choisies sont importantes pour l’apprentissage des langues comme champ d’application. mais, lorsqu’elle examine sa carte, d’autres catégories viennent spontanément à l’esprit. ensuite, elle tente d’utiliser la taxonomie de bloom pour améliorer l’organisation de sa carte. indices: esra met l’accent sur le statut présent et à venir de l’anglais et l’importance que cette langue a dans l’esprit des gens, qui semble expliquer le rôle de l’enseignement de l’anglais langue étrangère en turquie. elle estime que, si l’anglais devenait moins important sur le plan mondial, alors l’anglais langue étrangère pourrait vite disparaître des programmes d’éducation turques. esra se concentre sur les aspects du langage et de l’enseignement utiles dans cette didactique disciplinaire. elle ne s’intéresse guère au jargon et aux sujets propres à la linguistique qui, pour elle, est de toute façon incluse dans la catégorie plus générale du langage. esra considère d’abord les styles d’enseignement comme une catégorie pertinente en raison de son lien avec l’action: de quelle manière l’enseignante peut-elle être un modèle ou, en d’autres termes, quelles sont les caractéristiques dont les enseignants doivent faire montre dans la salle de classe. esra affirme que l’enseignant est un facilitateur, mais… que facilite l’enseignant dans la classe? elle tâche de trouver des indices. diagnostic: esra finalement choisit d’intégrer la catégorie linguistique ainsi qu’anglais comme sous-titres de langage, après avoir consulté les cartes de ses compagnons. l’histoire de la didactique des langues, la théorie de l’enseignement de la langue, deviennent alors des sous-titres de sa catégorie enseignement. esra postule que les pratiques d’enseignement de l’anglais, leur arrière-plan historique et le statut de lingua franca devraient faire l’objet de la formation des maîtres comme ces aspects sont fondamentaux pour comprendre la discipline. tochon & okten: motifs didactiques et représentation visuelle de la discipline transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 44 le formateur devrait orienter le stagiaire de sorte à ce que non seulement il acquière des savoirs mais qu’il les interprète de façon critique. en sus des méthodes générales d’enseignement comme le remue-méninges, le jeu de rôle, elle distingue ce qui relève de l’apprenant et de l’enseignant sur le plan typologique et examine les types d’intelligence qui forment des caractéristiques d’apprentissage. elle établit ainsi un diagnostic des savoirs utiles. explication: esra remarque qu’on pourrait arguer du fait que sa carte didactique est politique, mais sa tentative était épistémique. pour elle, il est crucial d’enseigner les aspects socioculturels de la discipline qui sinon pourrait être simplement soumis à des pratiques hégémoniques, ce qui l’amène à interroger l’arrière-plan historique de son enseignement. aujourd’hui, l’anglais semble être accepté comme la lingua franca. l’histoire de la langue aiderait probablement les élèves à comprendre pourquoi ils apprennent l’anglais. esra aimerait que ses élèves considèrent de plus ce qui arriverait s’ils n’apprenaient pas l’anglais, et pourquoi l’anglais est si populaire aujourd’hui plutôt que tout autre langue. en sus, esra examine le statut de l’anglais, l’approche pas compétences standards (les 5cs), le matériel didactique, les stratégies sociales dans la salle de classe, et la structure de la langue du point de vue de la réception (dimension interprétative) et de la production (dimension présentationnelle). elle inclut la connaissance de la langue et l’évaluation comme des aspects cruciaux de l’enseignement de l’anglais. esra ne discute pas vraiment de la linguistique parce qu’elle ne croit pas qu’elle soit importante pour enseigner la langue. ce faisant, ses conceptions semblent faire corps avec la théorie communicationnelle: elle entend faciliter la compétence énonciative, non pas former des grammairiens. raisonnement déductif: à la suite d’une relecture de sa carte, esra réalise quel est son vrai niveau d’acquisition de l’anglais et commence à saisir où elle se situe dans la maîtrise des théories didactiques, de l’application des théories en classe, et des méthodes. la création de sa carte didactique l’a aidée à atteindre un niveau de réflexion qui lui permet d’entamer une investigation assez systématique et déductive de l’organisation du savoir et de la compétence langagière après les premières phases inductives. la cartographie du programme d’enseignement a aidé esra à réfléchir en profondeur à son champ disciplinaire. elle décide que les enseignants feraient mieux de mettre en pratique différentes méthodes pour que l’apprentissage ait du sens, un tel éclectisme étant bénéfique en classe. les apports de l’enseignant en termes d’expériences et de détails personnels sont des composantes nécessaires d’un enseignement réussi car le rapport au vécu donne sens au matériau didactique pour l’élève. elle a oublié de mentionner l’apport de la littérature dans sa carte, note-t-elle. elle croit en l’utilité de la littérature mais préfère l’utiliser dans les devoirs à domicile et dans certaines applications ponctuelles en classe. elle accepte de plus les critiques de ses collègues quant à la partie evaluation de sa carte. avec plus de réflexion, elle écrirait feedback au lieu d’evaluation car elle est d’accord que cela s’accorderait mieux à sa conception générale de l’enseignement. esra examine la carte de concepts de seval et trouve que seval rend mieux compte de l’enseignement en général mais elle perçoit aussi que celle-ci est peu ouverte aux caractéristiques de détail de sa discipline: seval pourrait être plus spécifique. esra apprécie la vision didactique de seval quand il s’agit de classer les types d’apprenants tels que visuels, auditifs et kinesthésiques afin de tenir compte de leurs caractéristiques. ce point en particulier amène esra à reconceptualiser sa propre approche. maintenant, elle préférerait ne pas inclure les mentions enseignant et apprenant sous le label théorie de l’enseignement de la langue. ainsi, le fait de voir les cartes didactiques d’autres stagiaires amène esra à recadrer son savoir. les premières phases abductive et inductives tochon & okten: motifs didactiques et représentation visuelle de la discipline transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 45 sont maintenant remplacées par un processus déductif par lequel elle examine les différentes logiques. esra argue du fait que harun met dans sa carte des titres très généraux, et qu’il aurait dû raffiner ces cadres conceptuels de sorte à détailler leurs caractéristiques spécifiques en cherchant leurs implications didactiques dans l’instruction de la discipline elle-même. identification: esra admet qu’elle a besoin de réflexion avant de s’engager plus avant dans ce que les études propres à la didactique de l’anglais représentent afin de concevoir un programme qui ait plus de sens. elle veut participer à des ateliers ou congrès pour voir des exemples de la façon de traiter la connaissance didactique. le feedback qu’elle a reçu a stimulé esra à réfléchir aux concepts de sa discipline. elle pense qu’elle pourrait mieux classifier les enseignants selon leurs types d’expériences professionnelles. elle n’a pas intégré les politiques linguistiques dans sa carte. quand ce sujet a été abordé par les stagiaires, elle en a conclu que chaque carte didactique témoigne d’une philosophie personnelle de l’enseignement. chaque carte dépeint la discipline de façon particulière et leurs approches indiquent leurs propres politiques de l’éducation. le point qui distingue sa carte des autres est le rôle de l’histoire dans la construction du savoir. selon elle, harun aurait dû placer plus de sous-titres et clarifier ses domaines didactiques. il ne parle que de deux méthodes (grammaticale traditionnelle et communicative) et devrait tenir compte de bien d’autres aspects de l’enseignement de la langue. quoiqu’il en soit, elle apprécie le point de vue culturel de sa carte, et la façon dont il a réfléchi à la culture anglaise selon une perspective globale. prédiction: les cours ne suffisent pas pour acquérir un niveau de professionalisme; esra a besoin de plus d’expérience dans la pratique de l’enseignement de la langue. ell a aussi besoin de revoir ses plans de leçons quant à l’arrière-plan historique de la discipline, et d’avoir une perception plus claire de sa valeur potentielle dans la création d’un monde global futur. elle utilise le livre de richards & rodgers dans sa discussion des méthodes d’enseignement. les enseignants devraient intégrer leur expérience personnelle aux méthodes pour améliorer leur enseignement, dit-elle. ils devraient connaître leurs traits personnels pour en faire le meilleur usage possible et créer un profil professionnel cohérent. esra se donne en exemple: elle est parfois impatiente, ce qui peut affecter son professionnalisme. elle évalue les apprenants selon ce qu’ils apportent à la vie de la classe plutôt qu’en fonction de leur aptitude à apprendre. dans l’environnement de la classe, l’enseignante devrait prendre note du background des élèves, de leurs caractéristiques développementales, de leurs intérêts, et découvrir ce pour quoi ils sont bons. commentant sa carte, esra mentionne que la linguistique inclut la syntaxe et la sémantique, alors on n’a pas besoin de les spécifier séparément. modélisation: la carte de concepts d’esra est davantage fondée sur des théories que des pratiques. elle s’est centrée sur le programme national et les savoirs qu’elle a reçus pendant la formation des maîtres, ce qui indique le rôle clé de la formation dans l’édification des valeurs fondant les didactiques qui seront mises en oeuvre dans la salle de classe. esra divise le domaine de l’anglais langue étrangère en deux sous-domaines: enseignement et langage. ensuite elle divise langage en deux sous sections: anglais et linguistique. elle distingue alors deux sortes d’aptitudes langagières: réceptives (lire écouter) et productives (écrire et parler). elle classe les méthodes sous la rubrique histoire de l’enseignement de la langue. elle remarque que harun a ajouté quelque chose de plus original en marge des catégories qu’ils ont étudiées à l’université: à lire sa carte on peut percevoir qu’il a une interprétation tochon & okten: motifs didactiques et représentation visuelle de la discipline transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 46 différente des savoirs disciplinaires. le fait qu’il ait créé un modèle original l’a aidée à repenser son propre positionnement, estime-t-elle. si l’on compare maintenant les trois cartes, toutes trois font référence à des savoirs didactiques antérieurs construits pendant la formation universitaire. les savoirs antérieurs procurent l’impulsion initiale du processus réflexif mais, lorsqu’ils délibèrent sur le champ de leurs connaissances, les stagiaires élargissent leur potentiel didactique à un niveau métasémiotique. seval et esra mettent l’accent sur les aspects de l’enseignement et de l’apprentissage qui forment les éléments clés de la transition entre théorie et pratique. leurs approches sont fondées sur une conception néoconstructiviste mais elles suivent des procédures structuralistes en matière d’instruction. elles tentent tout d’abord de choisir une approche valide grâce à une analyse de leurs besoins, elles l’appliquent ensuite au groupe cible parce qu’une telle application peut avoir du sens. enfin, les résultats et attentes sont évalués en fonction des objectifs poursuivis. toutes deux se centrent sur des structures d’information modèles qui leur ont été données lors de leur formation et ne mettent guère en jeu leur capacité de générer une interprétation personnelle, idisyncrasique, de leur propre chef. en comparaison, le dialogue intérieur de harun l’aide à modéliser sa perception de la globalisation selon des termes propres à la ‘sémiotique du soi’ (petrilli, 2003). même si la carte de harun semble quelque peu distante des conceptions reconnues dans le domaine, il propose une perspective socioculturelle dont les relations et implications globales indiquent un niveau plus élevé de réflexion personnelle. c’est un cas plus manifeste de métasémiose. tout d’abord, il est en rupture avec les conceptions usuelles du domaine, il suspend un moment son interprétation de ce qu’est l’anglais langue étrangère pour y réfléchir et délibère sur le pouvoir impérialiste de l’anglais et des politiques linguistiques imposées par cette langue; enfin, il prend une position et des décisions originales en termes de communication, d’éducation, d’économie et de gestion publique. sa métasémiose implique un recadrage des connaissances et détermine sa position par rapport à l’anglais comme langue et culture. ce processus l’amène à se sentir responsable de son savoir didactique en ce qui a trait à son action professionnelle. ainsi il développe ce que petrilli (2004) a nommé une ‘sémioéthique’. discussion evaluation des cartes didactiques une approche constructiviste des cartes didactiques la sémiose didactique a ainsi été explorée parmi des stagiaires en enseignement qui vont enseigner l’anglais langue étrangère en turquie. dans ce but, la représentation didactique du champ disciplinaire a été un élément clé pour activer leur réflexion sur le cadrage sémiotique du domaine d’étude et, en conséquence, aider ces stagiaires à élaborer leur perspective professionnelle. la cartographie de la discipline à enseigner a permis aux participants d’investiguer leur manière de percevoir, de comprendre, de construire, d’interpréter, de se figurer en pensée et de mettre en action la discipline enseignée (tochon, 2000b). le feedback reçu sur ce processus met en lumière le rôle essentiel des cours de formation initiale dans la conceptualisation des contenus didactiques. cette perspective est compatible avec la perspective néoconstructiviste de l’éducation. les cartes du champ disciplinaire jouent un rôle constructif pour l’enseignement, comme dans le cas de harun. l’étude des particularités sémiotiques de la discipline amène à prendre conscience des systèmes de signes et de leurs codes. les stagiaires donnent sens à des signes selon des codes dont ils ne sont pas conscients. quand ils évaluent et interprètent leur savoir didactique, ils doivent réfléchir aux valeurs sous-jacentes aux contenus et expressions des savoirs préalablement appris. un tel processus de recherche donne plus de sens à l’apprentissage du programme de sa discipline. tochon & okten: motifs didactiques et représentation visuelle de la discipline transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 47 les stagiaires n’acquièrent pas leur connaissance de la matière comme un ensemble de concepts neutres et aseptisés, mais ils construisent plutôt leurs propres opinions quant à ce qui est pertinent grâce à des interprétations, dialogues, collaborations, additions et améliorations. ils s’adaptent aussi aux savoirs nouveaux qu’ils reconstruisent par leurs contributions mutuelles. ainsi leur programme didactique est tributaire d’une évaluation de pertinence : chaque fois que des savoirs sont ajoutés au modèle antérieur, les étudiants s’ajustent d’eux-mêmes à l’aide de nouvelles interprétations. comme cette approche est fondée sur l’expérience, les savoirs en résultant sont expérimentaux et intersubjectifs, permettant à la représentation didactique de cadrer le développement professionnel. la cartographie de la discipline à enseigner relie les idées visuellement, son design indique la nature des relations entre cas et idées. elle montre les convergences et les manières de connecter les postulats et les significations. a cet égard, la cartographie didactique est une approche que nous pouvons recommander dans les réformes en cours pour aider les praticiens et les praticiennes à réfléchir à l’organisation des savoirs disciplinaires. l’usage des cartes de concepts a été notamment recommandé par le programme national de turquie pour améliorer la qualité de l’instruction à tous niveaux (meb ttkb curriculum, 2005); cette étude fournit des données qui concourent à l’utilisation de cette approche dans un contexte de formation initiale des enseignants, en témoignant de la manière dont la cartographie didactique contribue à des approches plus pratiques, collaboratives, créatrices et réflexives. avantages de la cartographie didactique la découverte première de cette étude est que la représentation visuelle de la matière à enseigner peut être utilisée comme un moyen de formation pour les stagiaires en enseignement de sorte à améliorer leurs compétences professionnelles et la perspective didactique qu’ils mettront en œuvre dans des situations scolaires. la cartographie des savoirs s’est révélée une approche sémiotique encourageante qui a permis aux stagiaires de découvrir les aspects significatifs de la matière enseignée tout en facilitant la communication entre stagiaires et formateurs. de plus, la création de cartes didactiques a facilité l’acquisition de concepts importants car ces cartes ont indiqué aux stagiaires les connexions existant entre les sujets qu’ils avaient appris en formation et ceux qu’ils enseigneraient, donnant ainsi du sens à leur formation. les cartes ont stimulé la pratique réflexive des stagiaires, les amenant à repenser leur savoir personnel, scolaire et professionnel. ils purent alors discuter de la pertinence de leurs priorités en collaboration, mieux se préparer professionnellement, et réduire les risques inhérents au fait d’être inexpérimentés. la représentation didactique du programme a aussi aidé ces stagiaires à concevoir le professionalisme comme une entreprise à long terme, sur la durée de leur vie. ils ont pu percevoir en quoi la construction du programme est une conceptualisation interprétative qui est en partie fabriquée. d’un point de vue peircien, une telle expérimentation est importante afin de préciser ses croyances et stabiliser ses représentations. la cartographie du programme permet aux stagiaires de revoir leurs réflexions personnelles, leur attentes, leur buts antérieurs et leurs critiques. le processus de développer des cartes individuelles a élevé le niveau de conscience des stagiaires sur ce qu’ils savaient, et les a amenés à réfléchir à l’utilité et à la pertinence de leur savoir disciplinaire et de leur formation didactique, à repenser leur manque éventuel de formation dans certains secteurs ou leur manque de motivation grâce à une autoévaluation. au départ, ils avaient quelque difficuté à localiser et à classifier les matières sur le papier. toutefois ils ont bientôt senti qu’ils étaient placés dans la position de futurs professionnels faisant des choix importants sur ce qui leur avait été enseigné pendant leurs années de formation. un aspect particulièrement motivant pour eux a été le fait de vouloir se tochon & okten: motifs didactiques et représentation visuelle de la discipline transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 48 comporter comme des enseignants qualifiés. tenter de préciser pour eux-mêmes ce qu’un enseignant qualifié ferait les a motivés à réfléchir aux concepts de la discipline. tandis qu’ils évaluaient leur niveau de savoir, ils étaient encouragés à représenter leurs idées d’améliorations du domaine, ce qui constituait en fait une excellent préparation pour le stage. l’étude indique que les formateurs peuvent utiliser la représentation graphique de la discipline comme un outil de réflexion pour professionaliser les stagiaires en leur fournissant un moyen d’autoévaluation qui mette en évidence leurs insuffisances. les étudiants qui mettent leurs savoirs sur le papier resituent le rôle et les contenus des cours qu’ils ont pris. d’autres aspects révélés par les conversations sur leurs représentations du programme ont été l’importance de se préparer à enseigner dans des classes nombreuses, et de développer les aptitudes à l’école et à la prise de parole requises dans la langue cible. les cartes de concepts sont d’excellents instruments pour que stagiaires et formateurs développent leurs compétences professionnelles. elles permettent de poser des questions cruciales sur la nature du savoir didactique. les stagiaires investiguent les manières appropriées de séquencer les savoirs, et le raisonnement sous-jacent à la construction du savoir disciplinaire. le concept de motif didactique (affordance) a l’utilité de montrer que le savoir n’est pas vécu dans l’abstrait, mais doit être adapté à des niches et environnements sémiotiques (umwelten) qui lui donnent une signification. les stagiaires ont leurs propres niches sémiotiques et des liens avec des motifs spécifiques du programme, qui les amène à accorder une priorité à certains segments du programme national; la représentation graphique du programme était une manière intéressante d’investiguer les raisons de tels choix. les stagiaires étaient guidés à partir de leur niveau premier d’investigation intuitive en vue d’articuler les objets didactiques (seconds) avec cohérence et de commencer à mouvoir ces concepts au sein d’un tout théorique qui les aide à recadrer le domaine comme leur champ d’action et de pensée professionnelles. le processus dans son entier était suffisamment profond pour dépasser les préoccupations d’apprentissage et d’enseignement et leur donner un avant-goût de « formation approfondie » (tochon, 2009). construction du savoir didactique dans cette étude, nous avons analysé la représentation didactique comme un processus métasémiotique et potentiellement trans-sémiotique, impliquant plusieurs niveaux de négociation et de modélisation. les programmes scolaires tendent à représenter l’autorité dont le but est de fixer le sens pour la société. la manière dont ce processus est envisagé dans les institutions de formation turques est que la construction du sens peut évoluer dans l’esprit des apprenants mais elle est supposée stabilisée et normée dans l’esprit de l’enseignant. l’enseignant reçoit une formation pour objectiver les concepts d’une manière qui permette leur transmission ou leur reconstruction réflexive. bourdieu (2001) aurait peut-être noté qu’une telle naturalisation fait partie du rôle que se fixe l’école dans l’exécution du testament socioculturel. comme la présente étude l’indique, la connaissance est bien davantage que le traitement de l’information. sa sélection et son mode d’action émergent de processus identitaires. harun, par exemple, a une vision socio-politique de la discipline enseignée qui diffère radicalement de celles de ses pairs. quand il compare sa carte avec les leurs, il réalise qu’il lui manque une dimension méthodologique qui s’accorde à sa vision première. après discussion avec ses pairs, cependant, il tombe d’accord sur le fait qu’il lui faut compléter sa philosophie politique et tenir compte d’autres positions. il accepte de changer pour suivre ces suggestions extérieures. avec le temps, le processus de modélisation de ses représentations transforme harun qui se sent affermi et mieux identifié à son positionnement didactique. tochon & okten: motifs didactiques et représentation visuelle de la discipline transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 49 la réflexion de seval, d’autre part, se fonde sur des connaissances « avérées » : elle considère les savoirs reçus en formation comme allant de soi. son acceptation du savoir établi l’empêche d’avoir une lecture approfondie des perspectives innovatives de harun. elle considère cette perspective comme insuffisante du point de vue des méthodes naturalisées dans le discours didactique, malgré le fait que la perspective proposée par harun approfondisse les questions propres à la sociologie de la connaissance et aux politiques linguistiques. a cet égard, seval ne témoigne guère d’une réelle trans-sémiose, hormis pour quelques catégories de compréhension à propos desquelles elle pressent qu’esra a proposé une meilleure articulation qu’elle, quant au sens plus aigu qu’elle a pu développer de la cohérence inhérente à la discipline enseignée. esra quant à elle a réfléchi en profondeur à la relativité du statut d’une langue et à la manière dont les gens perçoivent et valorisent socialement certaines pratiques langagères. elle réalise que le statut actuel de l’anglais pourrait changer, comme il est relié de près au pouvoir économique actuel du monde anglosaxon qui pourrait bien s’évanouir en partie d’ici une ou deux décennies. esra développe une compréhension accrue du fait que sa discipline de prédilection est tributaire de représentations épistémologiques et sociales. elle voit ensuite que harun a une perspective globale sur la culture anglaise qui transparaît dans sa carte, ce qui l’amène à réviser sa propre carte. cette interaction avec harun et sa conceptualisation de l’histoire la conduit à recadrer sa perspective d’une manière qui diffère de l’orientation proposée dans ses cours de formation méthodologiques mais qui représente mieux ce qui à son sens est important dans ce qu’elle va faire comme enseignante d’anglais. la transsémiose de ces stagiaires—de harun et d’esra en particulier—met en évidence le fait que le programme enseigné est lié à l’expérience partagée, aux identités en présence, à leur humanité, aussi bien qu’à la conceptualisation et à la planification. nous avons analysé l’émergence dynamique de relations entre structure conceptuelle et identité, et observé combien les stagiaires reconceptualisent leur discipline, faisant évoluer la structure de leurs representations didactiques de manière originale au gré de significations émergentes qui ne sont jamais définitivement fixées. la manière dont les concepts sont souvent véhiculés dans un contexte scolaire explique pourquoi les élèves ont souvent de la peine à personnaliser ce qu’ils ont appris. les stagiaires en enseignement, de même, témoignent de cette difficulté. comme cette étude montre, toutefois, les stagiaires voudraient que les savoirs deviennent des moyens d’action fonctionnels et efficaces dans leur vie professionnelle. le mythe de l’efficacité leur cache en partie les valeurs qui soutendent l’évaluation. l’évaluation est un processus de valorisation inhérent à la sémiose normalisatrice qui conditionne le savoir en produits qualifiés de « bonne éducation ». le fait de réfléchir au processus de planification des savoirs a aidé les stagiaires à comprendre la fabrication du savoir scolaire en développant leur pensée critique. conclusion la perception que les stagiaires développent du programme à enseigner est fondée sur des valeurs qui diffèrent de façon marquée selon leur substrat socioculturel et leur histoire expérientielle. en aidant les stagiaires à comprendre l’importance de ces processus de valorisation en éducation, l’analyse sémiotique offre un cadre interprétatif utile, au vu du fait que les buts de l’éducation peuvent à leur tour être compris comme des expressions sémiotiques. quand, par exemple, les stagiaires composent leur programme d’enseignement sur une carte électronique, ils tendent à reconstruire and reconceptualiser leur compréhension de la matière à enseigner. cette forme de construction didactique constitue une négociation du sens imprégnée de valeurs qui impliquent des choix politiques et socioculturels, une tochon & okten: motifs didactiques et représentation visuelle de la discipline transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 50 sélection, une hiérarchisation, et leur mise en actes en un modèle qui puisse être enseigné à l’école, au collège ou au lycée. ainsi la représentation du programme peut être un instrument intéressant pour observer et discuter des intuitions et valeurs qui conduisent à édifier ses choix didactiques dans un groupe de candidats praticiens. le fait d’analyser les représentations didactiques en leur processus plutôt que comme des buts aide à clarifier combien la connaissance de la discipline est intriquée dans la connaissance personnelle. sur la base des interviews qui ont accompagné le processus de représentation didactique, nous avons observé que le stagiaire considère le programme en termes de savoirs antérieurs et d’expériences dans la recherche de niches sémiotiques qui puissent fonder sa pratique d’enseignement. la représentation didactique est fondée sur la sélection de motifs (affordances) qui correspondent à certaines niches de savoirs disciplinaires avec lesquelles les stagiaires se sentent à l’aise. le programme scolaire a des niches conceptuelles auxquelles ils doivent s’accoutumer. l’investigation sémiotique du stagiaire permet la découverte de tels motifs, ce qui explique pourquoi le processus de visualisation de ses représentations s’avère si utile. ces motifs n’existent pas indépendamment de la personne qui les perçoit mais impliquent une interaction dans la construction du sens. le programme scolaire offre une série spécifique de constructions interactionnelles qui sont disponibles pour les enseignants qui savent utiliser ces motifs. ainsi, la théorie des motifs qui soutendent les organisateurs didactiques fournit, d’un point de vue sémiotique, les moyens de déchiffrer comment des stagiaires donnent sens et fonctions aux objects didactiques et construisent interactivement leur niches conceptuelles. en résumé, lorsque des stagiaires tentent de résoudre leurs doutes face à la matière à enseigner, ils suivent des intuitions et cherchent des indices, créent des scénarios et envisagent des explications possibles. ils affinent leur capacité de saisir quels symptômes sont importants et doivent être écoutés et lesquels sont dénués d’intérêt. l’abduction marque le début de ce processus de conceptualisation. les idées sont reliées entre elles et évaluées par le raisonnement. la comparaison des représentations met au défi les croyances initiales, induit un doute légitime, et stimule le recadrage conceptuel. le déchiffrage des motifs est l’expression d’une recherche sémiotique. il a aidé les stagiaires à explorer les processus conceptuels de sélection nécessaires à la planification didactique. ils ont dû préciser leurs convictions en cours de processus. cela impliquait des prises de décision sélectives. le fait de devoir cartographier les motifs didactiques de leur discipline a engendré chez les stagiaires une forme de raisonnement tout d’abord intuitive et de nature abductive, qui les a stimulés à initier un processus de transformation au cours duquel ils devaient analyser et donner du sens à leur propre manière de donner un sens didactique aux objets du savoir. nous avons nommé ce processus subtil et complexe « trans-sémiose ». le fait de comprendre leur propre raisonnement intuitif lors du cadrage de la discipline en objets didactiques a caractérisé la recherche menée par ces stagiaires et lui a donné sa dimension formative. remerciements la recherche dont il est fait mention dans cet article a été subventionnée par un fonds de tübitak—le conseil national scientifique et technologique de turquie, par la fondation spencer (no38723) et par l’université du wisconsin à madison. nous sommes reconnaissants à elif kir, assistante de recherche, pour son aide dans certains aspects du recueil de données et dans la transcription de quelques entrevues. nous sommes de plus reconnaissants aux stagiaires qui ont participé à cette étude, à münire erden et ali ilker gümüseli, administrateurs, pour leur soutien tout au long de l’intégration de ce projet. tochon & okten: motifs didactiques et représentation visuelle de la discipline transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 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(2001). global semiotics. bloomington: indiana university press. tochon & okten: motifs didactiques et représentation visuelle de la discipline transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 53 shank, g. (1995). semiotics and qualitative research in education: the third crossroad. the qualitative report, 2(3), pp.9. téléchargé le 4 avril 2008 de: http://www.nova.edu/ssss/qr/qr2-3/shank.html shank, g., & cunningham, d. j. (1996). modeling the six modes of peircean abduction for educational purposes. paper presented at the annual meeting of the midwest al and cognitive science conference, bloomington, in. smith, h. (2001). psychosemiotics. new york: peter lang. snow, r. e. (1998) abilities as aptitudes and achievements in learning situations. in j. j. mcardle and r. w. woodcock (eds), human cognitive abilities in theory and practice (pp. 93-112). mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum . tochon, f. v. 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(2009). the deep approach to turkish teaching and learning. title vi grant from the u.s. department of education. madison, wi: university of wisconsinmadison, wisconsin center for educational research. urban, g. (2006). metasemiosis and metapragmatics. encyclopedia of language and linguistics (2nd ed. vol. 8, pp.88-91). london, uk: elsevier. correspondance françois victor tochon, professeur, world language education, department of curriculum & instruction, school of education, teacher education building, 225 north mills street, madison, wi 53706 usa. courriels: ftochon@education.wisc.edu fax: (608) 263-9992. celile e. okten, yildiz technical university, yıldız teknik üniversitesi eğitim fakültesi, davutpaşa yerleşim birimi, esenler, i̇stanbul, 34210, turkey; e-mail: cargit@yildiz.edu.tr o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: ma, ying (2021). living impotentially: an allegorical inquiry, transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) p. 49-66 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> living impotentially: an allegorical inquiry ying ma1 university of british columbia, canada a pot of cactus drew my attention from the hectic practice. i began to spin a pencil in the air pointing nowhere and everywhere. the cactus had stilled spikes like lances and sticking pikes; growing out from the plump stem gently poking the mayhem. schools are usually considered as places for students to learn. what underlies this “commonsense” understanding is that schools belong to a “productive regime” (vlieghe & zamojski, 2017, p. 857) where students learn towards something, striving to succeed and progress. teachers, then, are expected to do everything to make it happen. they are held accountable for students’ success as is evidenced in the notorious 2001 u.s. act of congress “no child left behind” as well as the billions of dollars of obama’s government granted of “race to the top” in 2009. of course, such striving for student success and economic development is not only limited to the united states, but has also become a predominant phenomenon worldwide, highlighting the importance of teaching effectiveness and efficiency through high-quality technological pathways that guarantee the pre-set outcomes. what happens in schools has to be useful and geared towards tomorrow, achieved through productive means, determined by economic and political demands. however, what we neglect in the enthusiastic pursuit for success is that “a new beginning with our world is ruled out” (vlieghe & zamojski, 2017, p. 857). in other words, these futuristic attempts paradoxically reproduce existing mechanisms and maintain the institutional status quo as a projection of the present. to challenge the constrained and reduced understanding of education, this paper discusses agamben’s conceptualization of “impotentiality” (agamben, 1998, 1999, 2011a), with particular attention to and implications for education (lewis, 2013, 2014a, 2014b, 2018). agamben contributes to the fields of politics, linguistics, literary theory, aesthetics, philosophy and religious studies. though not specifically writing for education, agamben’s works bear great significance for its renewed understanding. in modernity’s hectic pursuit of productivity and efficiency, attending to our “potential to not do” seems to be out of joint. especially in the schooling systems, we witness the institutional, political and economic forces to actualize students’ potential to the fullest. the very idea of impotentiality may appear unfriendly or even appalling to the schooling systems shadowed by neoliberal ma. living impotentially 50 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index ideology today. however, these concepts are “fundamentally important for an understanding of the meaning and purposes of education” (jasinski, 2018, p. v). recognizing agamben’s works as relevant for education at all may “require us to question the basic assumptions, not only about the nature of education but about what it means to lead a meaningful life” (jasinski, 2018, p. v). agamben calls for our attention to what we cannot do (agamben, 1999). critiquing technological and neoliberal rationality, agamben writes that: “human beings are the living beings that … are capable of just as much of one thing as its opposite, to do [as well as] to not do…human beings are the animals capable of their own impotentiality” (agamben, 2011a, p. 44). in light of agamben’s and lewis’ understandings of impotentiality with reference to education, i hope to conduct an allegorical inquiry into my lived educational experiences in the past: allegorizing impotentiality through autobiographical narratives to reveal its educational significance. my lived experiences are to generate a genuine personal twist of the concept and bring it “back to the rough ground” (dunne, 1993). impotentiality is concretized and embodied in my lived experiences as well as in my constant quests for a better understanding of myself. allegory, in its “autobiographical, pedagogical and communicative nature” (pinar, 2011, p. 50), will be appropriated methodologically in this self-study that could be understood as a montage, a poetic re-encounter of the past. i unpack and reactivate the fragmented, nuanced and autobiographical stories to explore what impotentiality means to me, and analyze or break loose what is involved in living impotentially. the stories are not necessarily chronological and logical; instead, they are overlapped, incomplete, fragmented, and, most of all, allegorical. the stories that i include in this paper are not coherent representations of what i experienced as impotentiality but as a narrative account of it: what is embodied in lived experiences; how i make sense of it; what stories i include, miss or could not recall in light of impotentiality. through the allegorical re-searching in my own stories in relationship with others, i find that the theme of living impotentially involves overlapping and recursive moments, including yielding and suspending, wondering and wandering and dis/re/connecting, which jointly contribute to one’s becoming/unbecoming and doing/undoing. finally, i bring daoist tradition into a dialogue with impotentiality, suggesting that impotentiality could be compared with and enriched in conversation with “wu wei.” (lao tzu, 2008). lao tzu points out that it is where we perceive nothing (in the void—wu) that true efficacy lies, even though people always think that they benefit from perceptible things (the visible). the absence of perceptible qualities characterizes dao (kaltenmark, 1969). lao tzu sees the invisible, perceiving the invisible qualities of the world. the opacity of my stories as living impotentially could reveal that “an awareness of the disorderly and chaotic world we inhabit is a fundamental aspect of being human” (orr, 2002, p. 16). concept of impotentiality (with particular reference to education) agamben uses aristotle’s de anima (agamben, 1999) to examine two kinds of potentiality denoted by aristotle: a stronger sense is to indicate how something could be done well and a weaker sense of potential, meaning simply that something might have a chance to happen or not to happen. agamben writes: “i would like to pause on a figure of potentiality that seems to me to be particularly significant and that appears in de anima. i refer to darkness, to shadows” (agamben, 1999, p. 180). as i understand it, the stronger sense of potentiality points to what we must learn in order to become the person others expect us to become, that is to convert a contingency into a necessity. the weaker sense of potentiality attends to “darkness” and “shadows” which are, nevertheless, inseparable from the light. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index ma. living impotentially 51 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index potentiality “is always already accompanied by an equally primordial impotentiality” (lewis, 2014a, p. 336). the kind of potentiality that especially interests agamben is the weaker one: to bring knowledge into actuality—or not. impotentiality refers to someone who can bring his knowledge and capacity into actuality, but would prefer not to. one “suspend[s] the functioning of obedience through ‘preferring not’ to act as such and such a subject within the allotted order of things (lewis, 2014b, p. 276). agamben references aristotle to illustrate the non-duality and enabling tension between potentiality and impotentiality:“ potentiality be also im-potentiality (adynamia)” or “potentiality constitutively be the potentiality not to (do or be)” (agamben, 1998, p. 45). it is argued that “every potentiality is impotentiality of the same and with respect to the same” (aristotle, 1984, metaphysics, 1046a32) and “what is potential can both be and not be. for the same is potential as much with respect to being as to not being” (aristotle, 1984, metaphysics, 1050b10). impotentiality is not unified into the concept of potentiality, which might risk of the former disappearing into the latter. rather, impotentiality is always in tension with potentiality. for agamben, potentiality is not simply a positive capacity to achieve specific goals through specific methods and procedures. agamben asks us fundamentally: “what does it mean when say ‘i can, i cannot?’” (agamben, 1999, p. 177). the parallel structure of “i can,” “i cannot?” with a question mark forms a genuine question and invites us to reflect on what we are capable of not doing (instead of we are not capable of doing) together with we are capable of doing at the same time and embrace our “potential not to be” (agamben, 1999, p. 182). “i can” is a possibility only as long as one remains in relation to “i cannot.” by conserving itself in the moment before actualization, potential remains impotential. thus, all theories of potentiality (i am capable of x) must also and equally be theories of the impotential (i am capable of not doing x); otherwise potentiality will be indistinguishable from actualization. (lewis, 2014a, p. 336) lewis interprets agamben’s impotentiality with particular relevance to education. education, in a stronger sense, is often concerned with “deadlines—or lines that end with the death of potentiality” (lewis, 2014b, p. 277). lewis suggests that potentiality and impotentiality could not be separated from one another; otherwise, the educational system could be stratified where some students are commanded to actualize their potentiality, while others fail the system and are rejected (lewis, 2014b). potentiality would pass over into actualization without the possibility of being “able not to pass over into actuality” (agamben, 1998, p. 45). as soon as the potentiality is actualized (i.e., the students’ potential is realized to the fullest by achieving the highest marks and going to the best universities), it loses its rigor and alternative possibilities. potentiality and impotentiality are not binary or contradictory concepts, but they are supposed to be reunified, radically transforming a stronger sense of education as efforts to excavate and maximize the potential of the students to a weaker sense of education. a weak understanding of education involves “a weak withdrawal into a state of perpetual study through their gestures of ‘i would prefer not to.’” (lewis, 2013, p. 62). melville’s bartleby the scrivener, in a singularly mild, firm voice, asserted that “i would prefer not to” (melville, 2004), resisting in doing what is required of him. “would prefer not to” is a choice that defies the given choice between “can do” or “cannot do.” this challenges the fundamental underlying assumptions and taken-for-granted norms. it is a choice that transcends the dichotomies of conformity and subversion, being positive and negative. it “push[es] the aporia of sovereignty to the limit” (agamben, 1998, p. 48) without immediately https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index ma. living impotentially 52 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index and finally resolving the question at hand. it depends on inoperativeness that could dislodge us from our hectic pursuit of the realization of the goals, where “a generic mode of potentiality … is not exhausted (like individual action or collective action understood as the sum of individual actions) in a transitus de potentia ad actum” (agamben, 1998, p. 62). agamben points to the significance of “let[ting] erotic behaviors idle, to profane them, by detaching them from their immediate ends” (agamben, 2007, p. 91). leaving room to profane the unprofanable, to idle and wander is not merely a getaway from reduced approach to education where promises of newness in the students are often suppressed in the desperate consumption of subject content knowledge for marks and job markets. rather, it enables and redefines education in more humane terms. i believe it is “only when potentiality and impotentiality are seen as mutually constitutive that we can fully theorize the unique experience of study in education” (lewis, 2014a, p. 335), a much more ambiguous activity compared with learning with an entrepreneurial will and quantifiable objectives. impotentiality, as i interpret it, is not a noun that implies a state of being, but a verb that dwells resistantly and creatively in the tension of the in-betweenness and holds onto the dynamic space rather than casting a division or opposition. allegory as method “i” am allegorical (pinar, 2011, p. 52). etymologically, allegory means to “speak publicly in an assembly. a speech at once concrete and abstract, through allegory one narrates a specific story which hints at a more general significance” (pinar, 2011, p. 50). pinar speaks to the interwoven components of “i”: “it is ‘i’—however much the first-person singular is a term of convenience—who exists, in whom history, culture, and society are personified in singular form” (pinar, 2011, p. 52). with its “autobiographical, pedagogical, and communicative” (pinar, 2011, p. 50) characteristics, allegory enables educational experience. allegory could be understood as montage, “interrelated with ‘reconstruction’, as each reactivates the past in order to find the future” (pinar, 2011, p. 49). allegory becomes “a new mode of signification that represents the past in a new, meaningful way as if to guide us in how we can sensibly live with this ‘past in ruins’”(rauch, 2000, p. 208). the allegorical sensitivity to the past in ruins, with the possibility of recovering and reactivating their meanings, navigates my (re)search. i appropriate allegory as a method of inquiry, which helps me enter the past and reactivate it to make sense of what impotentiality means to me in the embodied and lived experiences. it seems to me that allegorical inquiry, with its attention to both the concrete and the conceptual, the private and the public, the historical and the ethical, is an appropriate method for my purpose of embodying the concept of impotentiality in the past, the present and the future of my life. the creative tension of allegory speaks to the in-betweenness of potentiality and impotentiality. in brief, allegorizing impotentiality will help concretize the conceptual, privatize the public, and interweave the past, present and future. it is this tensioned reciprocity between subjectivity and history that structures allegory (pinar, 2011). in terms of allegory’s connection to autobiography, pinar adds that “[h]istorical facts are primary, but it is facts’ capacity to invoke our imagination that marks them as allegorical…[h]istory becomes accessible through allegory” (pinar, 2011, p. 54). the meanings are no longer confined and contained in the past. they transcend time and space to “spill into our experience of the present” (pinar, 2011, p. 54). without allegorical imagination, historical facts and autobiographical narratives, though interesting, carry little https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index ma. living impotentially 53 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index significance and relevance. my allegorical re-search focuses on the theme of impotentialty, complicated simultaneously by the specific and general, literal and analogical conversation, a conversation with myself, others, texts and my memories. ultimately, i hope to allegorize impotentiality in my nuanced autobiographical narratives. pinar notes, complicated conversations serve as a “conversation with oneself [as a ‘private person’] and with others threaded through academic knowledge, an ongoing project of self-understanding in which one becomes mobilized for engagement in the world” (pinar, 2011, p. 47). i attend to intertwining multiple dimensions of culture, society, politics and history in a webbed allegorical inquiry, including, but not limited to, the generational conversations between my parents, my grandmother and myself, the institutional development of teacher education programs in china and my own experiences unfolding both in it and despite it, the hint of the social and economic injustice between urban and rural education, the opening-up policy of china and internationalization of higher education along with my own struggles for self-understanding across borders. it is both inward and outward, simultaneously horizontal and vertical, and at once concrete and abstract. the allegorical search is to break with linear grand narratives or merely appropriate empirical evidence to support the hypotheses. it is a fragmented, recursive and dialogic process, burdened with my own historicity and shadowed by my own ignorance. hence, this allegorical inquiry ends in what the educators, including myself, could “make of such conversation” (pinar, 2011, p. 55). it is more of an exploration than a targeted, wellthought-out plan, as what might come out of the allegorical inquiry could not be foreseen in the province. allegory “underscores that our individual lives are structured by ever-widening circles of influence: from family through friends to strangers, each of whom personify culture, symbolize society, embody history” (pinar, 2011, p. 51). again, allegorical inquiry assembles fragmentary pieces in collage and reconstructs with lived structures through subjectivity (pinar, 2011). through allegory, i narrate my stories in their particularity and situatedness in a broader historical, cultural and political context, acknowledging that the concrete is at the same time general. i allegorize impotentiality in the stories of my immature love during high school, in the tension of my successful launching a teaching career and the inner struggles and wonders in the process, in what was/is expected of me and what was/is meaningful to me. retrieving my own stories, i enliven impotentliality, generating new understandings and significance rooted in the allegorical “i.” i do not do [this allegorical inquiry] for the sake of a future in which such information will … become usable. rather, [i] self-reflexively articulate what is at hand, reactivating the past so as to render the present, including ourselves, intelligible. (pinar, 2011, p. 50) the theme of impotentiality will guide my story but will not contain it: allegorical meanings will spill outside the conceptual scope of impotentiality. with imaginations and openings, i attend to the jagged edge of becoming: what is revealed and what could be missing in my lived personal stories, which are at the same time personal, historical and political forming the “civic square and room of one’s own” (pinar, 2004, p. 38). my life is not merely “a flat line between what is no more and can never be, the present becomes a vivid “ palimpsest” (pinar, 2011, pp. 47, 51), a manuscript that original traces remain yet leave room for new later writings. re-entering the past could help me witness with a distance and hence make a better sense of today’s schooling system in the estrangement, detachment and reattachment. the re-entry will also empower me to dislodge myself from the fantasyland of “race to the top” with neoliberal underpinnings. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index ma. living impotentially 54 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index autobiography or allegorical inquiry exists as circular movements, yet may unveil something previously hidden in its nuanced remembering and reactivating process. i dialogue with theory, myself, and others, i connect my present self with my past, threaded through allegory, which in turn promises to enlighten my experience of the present. the claim that “we find the future not in the present, … , but in the past” (pinar, 2011, p. 49) is not merely metaphorical but methodological. i could shape and reshape my particular stance and lived experiences in the world with historical and subjective structures. impotentiality becomes embodied and historical in the allegorical search, that is to personify the abstract and conceptual. prelude one: yielding and suspending my “immature” love in 2000, i was 18 years old. i was supposed to prepare diligently for gaokao, the most important exam in china. it is considered a fate-determining exam by most families in china. however, i must confess that i did not spend the “due” amount of time on coursework. i went to the “little forest” behind the school, the bank of the hucheng river with xi, my boyfriend. he and i were so different: i was then a “well-behaved” student who often got the first place in exams, while xi was not much into the schooling “game”. he never went to the library to study coursework, but he had a collection of books that i had never read before; he didn’t do homework that he didn’t like, yet he dedicated much time to pole climbing until his palm blistered; in a class gathering, most classmates talked about how to improve their marks, while he confessed to the whole class what he didn’t like about school due to “good” reasons. not out of expectations, my headteacher approached me to deal with the issue of “immature love,” which was considered “inappropriate” during high school. when my parents learned about it, they told me to focus on my study which was the most important thing for me at that stage. i thought i was to blame until my grandmother, with whom my parents and i lived for over two decades, told me that “he must be very special for you. tell me more about him…” my grandmother invited him to lunch a few months prior to gaokao, and we chatted and laughed together in an afternoon with golden sunshine poured into the living room. in china, gaokao, the college entrance examination, is “the exam.” two days, nine hours and four exams determine the future of each student. since the republic of china was founded in 1949, gaokao has undergone many policy reforms. my father, born in 1953, was assigned to the countryside as zhiqing (the “educated” youth) to live and work in rural areas as part of the “up to the mountains and down to the countryside movement” after graduating from middle school. he never got a chance to go to university. my mother, two years younger than my father, “escaped” (quoting my mother here) the involuntary fate of being away from home to work in the countryside for a few years. when gaokao resumed after the cultural revolution in 1977, my mother finally took it after she had been teaching in a middle school for a few years with only a middle-school diploma. she was admitted to beijing normal university in the late seventies. for my generation, born as the only child in the early 1980s in beijing, china, i was made to believe that succeeding in gaokao was a familial duty. of course, this was surely considered as a privilege or advantage for the students with beijing hukou compared with the students in economically disadvantaged rural areas in china, as my teachers and family always candidly reminded me. gaokao is compared to thousands of “soldiers” going across the single-plank bridge. it seems to be a “win or lose” game: while some might succeed, many others are doomed to fail https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index ma. living impotentially 55 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index (or fall). the whole country seems to seethe with enthusiasm about the gaokao each year. indeed, gaokao is not merely a standardized test in china, but traverses generations in china with eagerness, regret, opportunity, competition, hesitation, success or failure. it seems to become a ritual that everyone piously follows, a wave that pushes everyone in the same direction. it seems that everyone “has to” cross the single-plank bridge and win the battle. in preparation for the “sacred” time of the gaokao, we often spent weekends in cram schools and studied from six a.m. to midnight each day; my parents, like many other concerned parents, nourished us with vitamin supplements; policemen blocked roads near the exam locations to ensure an absolutely quiet environment for us gaokao students. i did feel an intense calling to survive and excel in gaokao; however, the determination was unexpectedly suspended by my unexpected “immature love.” i surrendered to my complex feelings about xi, the “unruly” boy in my class. he seemed very special to me that he wasn’t as “well-behaved” as me. the fact that he read novels during math class, he would not do the homework he judged neither challenging nor enjoyable was fascinating to me. for me, xi was not an ill-behaved student; he was just so different from me. his ultimate otherness drew my attention away from the gaokao imperative. i yielded myself to these moments, intrigued by our differences. yet i found myself in awe of the possibility of not doing what i was “supposed to do”: the possibility of living impotentially, making claims that “i would prefer not to”. xi’s presence enabled me to loosen my armor, which would have safeguarded me as i crossed the single-plank bridge. together, we went to the little forest to eat watermelon; we caught dragonflies by the hucheng river, for the whole afternoon. i was able to suspend the worries about the test temporarily. my yielding to the moment and suspending the to-do list generated and expanded the impotential space for me. i attended to each moment with more sensitivity: the sunshine, the dew on the leaves, and the spinning bicycle wheels could tickle my senses and seemed to allow meanings to overflow from those moments. seated on the moist moss in the little forest with someone, a different other, enabled me to stretch my self-understanding as i listened to beautiful birds chirping, gazing at mushrooms sprouting by the rotten tree root, intoxicated by the earthly fragrance around me. i experienced everything around me more keenly and intensely. as these experiences deepened for me, i became more inward searching in connection with an othering other despite the hectic and always solo pursuit of higher scores on gaokao. as sadhguru tells us: if i see a leaf, i could just sit there looking at the leaf, just staring at it, for hours…. this attention brought a completely different level of involvement and interaction with just about anything and everything around me, animate or inanimate. (2018) i struggled to “figure out what is what” (sadhguru, 2018). the presence of xi made me start to question many things; i began to feel more and more uneasy about the schooling system i had always succeeded in. generations of myths around gaokao and its utmost importance became suspended and reinterpreted in those empowering emotions, confusion and questions, all of which generated room for renewed self-understanding. i seemed to discover and recover part of me, rebellious and challenging, unseen to myself before: “for the first time, i did not know which is me and which is not me” (sadhguru, 2018). these experiences were simultaneously blissful and disturbing. on the one hand, they raised my awareness and sensitivity to things around me. on the other hand, they were distractions from my diligent “exercise book” routine. i seemed to make an adventurous, even risky exploration of myself through unspeakable and intense feelings, through my time in the forest, away from the classrooms. these experiences were able to transform the script of https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index ma. living impotentially 56 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index gaokao to “palimpsest” (pinar, 2011, pp. 47, 51) of self-discovery in relation to others, in the noncoincidence with the present. of course, not all times were emotionally joyful. sometimes they were difficult and intensified into an emotional swirl, especially as i felt it was in constant tension with what was “appropriate”. my grandmother acted unlike everyone else around me. i lived with my parents, my grandparents, my uncles and aunts and my cousin together in a 700-square-foot apartment for almost twenty years. my grandmother did not finish elementary school. yet, she was very wise and always brought joy and harmony to the big family. the noises of mahjong mingled with her big laughs were music to my ears. the presence of my grandmother helped me witness my thoughts and emotions in more disarmed and at-ease ways. the emotional swirl eventually washed through me and made my inner space more spacious and more welcome to the impotentiality of “what i am capable of not doing”. in those moments, i was awake and alive, returning to myself, my wonders, worries, passions and thoughts in more open and imaginative ways. for me, the “immature love” was also a pedagogical gift: it produced the conditions for my emergence from out of the ordinary: a sphere of suspension where everything except for the subject matter (the object of love) was temporarily bracketed out (vlieghe & zamojski, 2017). “immature love” and “impotentiality” are alike as each is unformed at first; each carries risks of being hurt or being negated, and each carves crevices for noncoincidences among what it was, is now, and what can be. the noncoincidence derives from an inner empty space wherein i come to form as an individual through relationships with self and others (including non-human animals and objects) (pinar, 2021). drawing upon paul north’s notion of yielding as a humble alternative to resistance, transformation, and constitution, lewis advocates for a “weak philosophy of education” (lewis, 2018, p. 8), which involves an idling process that suspends and yields. the idling, unsettling and inoperative process generated creative, aesthetic and resistant energies which could “turn potentiality back upon itself in order to give itself to itself” (agamben, 1998, p. 46) and mediate the external force with subjective spaciousness. hence, potentiality maintains itself in relation to actuality in the form of its suspension. it is capable of the act of not realizing it, and it is sovereignly capable of its own impotentiality (agamben, 1998). prelude two: wondering and wandering twist and turns in my schooling and career trajectories i was a proud member of the science cohort in my high school thanks to my outstanding performance in math, chemistry and physics. there was a popular saying among my teachers and peers: “you will have no trouble throughout your life once you've learned math, physics and chemistry well.” there was an implicit rule in my high school that if you could not perform well in these “core” subjects, you would be advised to go to the arts cohort. though i performed well in core subjects, i was not passionate about them. english and business were, back then, very job-promising subjects in chinese universities. english was considered a much-needed communicative tool in china’s modernization and internationalization. doing business seemed to be an exciting adventure for me, having grown up in my family of teachers and factory workers who had never stepped into the field of business. therefore, i applied for the beijing foreign studies university（bfsu）with double majors in english and business. at bfsu, the most attractive place was the little garden beside the library. grabbing a book from the library and sitting on the bench in the little garden, facing my back to the sun, i found the garden was transformed into a https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index ma. living impotentially 57 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index wonderland where i wondered and wandered. i randomly came across marcus aurelius’ book titled “meditations” one day on a shelf where it was misplaced when i hoped to find a language book. it altered my focused reading on business and linguistics, moving me towards intriguing philosophical texts. i imagined myself dressing in professional business suits and high-heeled shoes, sitting in front of the computer, dealing with all kinds of forms, numbers and customers all day for many years to come. unfortunately, i did not find it attractive. in a visit to my high school prior to my graduation, i found myself so nostalgic: the familiar noises of the school bells and energetic scenes of students running and chatting were lingering in me for days and days after the visit. i decided to apply for a teaching post. since i was not enrolled in a normal (teacher-preparation) university, i did not have a teaching certificate upon graduation. i spent a few weeks passing two tests on educational psychology and educational theory in order to be certified. i finally became a teacher, like my mother, who also didn’t have “official” teacher education training when she became a teacher three decades ago. i was often overwhelmed by the wondering, confusion and uncertainties during my study and in my career choices. re-entering those indecisive moments of making decisions that could have moved me to take “the next step” is no effort to eliminate the confusion and help me make “the best choice”. rather, remembering and reactivating those moments help me listen to them once more and bring their remainders and spills to the present moments. i am not content with choosing among the options. rather, i hope to understand the possibility of “idling, that is, in its possible profanatory potential” (agamben, 2007, p. 88). the scientific paradigm has defined educational institutions in china since the may fourth movement at the turn of the 20th century. science has held its supremacy over humanities for decades. at the turn of the 21st century, i chose to, or rather, i was chosen to study science, having performed excellently in all core subjects. however, i always seemed to leave room for deviation and distraction. i profaned the potential to pursue further in the scientific realm by applying for a double major in english and business. pursuing degrees in english and business seemed to be a well-informed choice at that moment. however, i did not anticipate where that choice would take me: i did not expect bathing in the sunshine in the little garden beside the library, encountering the lovely book of “meditations” that imprinted me, leaving its mark on me for so many years to come. my undergraduate study did not steer me towards ambitious entrepreneurship. i profaned it again by falling in love with reading philosophical texts in a lovely garden. i decided to become a teacher when visiting my high school teachers. was that aspiration secretly planted in me by my mother long ago? when i was little, i often waited for my mother in her teachers’ office, listening to the cheerful noises of the students in the hallway during recess or peeking into her classroom through the backdoor window. i profaned what i was “supposed-to-be” by experiencing certain lacks, distractions, and deviations while hoping for something “not yet” (pinar, 2005). i kept wondering what i would otherwise be. i entered my teaching post without formal training from a teacher education program at a normal university. since my middle school years, the teacher certification system has gradually become an integrated part of the teacher professionalization movement in china. in 1993, the national teacher law put forward for the first time “the national teachers’ certification system” and “teacher certification regulations” was promulgated in 1995, considered as the official launch of china’s teacher certification, with more detailed “measures for implementation” circulated in 2000 (siri & li, 2010) a few years prior to my graduation with an english and business degree at bfsu. thanks to the newly https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index ma. living impotentially 58 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index inaugurated teacher certification policy, i was, without a degree from a normal university, then “certified” as a teacher after having taken two written tests of teaching theory and psychology together with the putonghua (standard spoken chinese) oral test. i prepared for the tests for a few nights. prior to this certification policy, a degree from an accredited normal university was almost considered a must for getting a teaching job in a secondary school in beijing, china. interestingly, thanks to the new certification system, i was able to be certified after merely taking two written and one oral tests. i was then offered a teaching post at my alma mater. ironically, though the discourse of “teacher professionalization” (siri & li, 2010) was prevalent during the days when i became a teacher, i was minimally “professionalized” prior to the entry into my teaching career. what i experienced seemed to “fall short of” what was demanded in policies. “teacher education curriculum standard in china” (2011) stipulates that teachers should “master the knowledge of student psychological developmental stages and learning to deal with common behavioral and mental problems” (2.2.6) and to “improve language skills, communication and collaboration skills and be able to use modern educational technologies” (2.2.7). like my mother decades ago, i became a teacher without formal training. however, i felt no regret for that (and i hope my students would not feel sorry for that as well). to some extent, the lack of professional training in teacher education programs and the qualified competence and confidence somehow gave me “advantages”— despite and due to not mastering the “core competencies” (zhang, 2016)—namely humbleness and the capacity to wonder. i knew that i did not know, so i always raised questions. i was not as enthusiastically modelling “best practices” as teacher education programs in china: from the japanese training model in the late nineteenth century, american pragmatism in the 1920s to the widespread adoption of a rigid and oppressive soviet model in the 1950s (lu, 2008). not until the 1980s did teacher education begin a search specifically for a chinese model. too often, however, home-grown teacher education in china still embraced instrumental approaches to teaching, and the practice of teaching was reduced to generalized descriptions of what teachers should know and be able to do. over time, i found myself raising more questions and refining some of them. i moved forward and backward, dislocating myself “at the margins of the system, when situation of danger or exception arise” (agamben, 2007, p. 88). i practiced being “inoperative” (lewis, 2018) in my schooling journey by not immediately acting upon taken-for-granted choices but rather took turns and twists in my trajectories. there would be turns and twists only if one noticed the possibility of turning around or turning away. otherwise, one would be on a fastforward galloping train whose path has already been paved. of course, the books that i encountered in the bfsu’s library did not suddenly draw my attention; they responded to vague and formless ideas that could have been lingering in my mind for some time. it was my wondering, in my feebly yet stubborn ways, that brought me to the little garden and the misplaced book. it is helpful to recall schools in its original greek meaning “scholé (free time)”. etymologically, school is meant to provide free time and space to recount and recapitulate our common world. during such free time, i would be permitted and even invited to wonder about my “reality”. i would be encouraged to renew my “reality” by wandering near and afar, recollecting my stories in relation to myself and others. as agamben would approve, what we need to “reconfigure is not an ideological narrative, a discourse, a political strategy, social institution or a rule of law. instead, we need to build the conditions for this other experience of time to emerge” (vlieghe & zamojski, 2017, p. 857). https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index ma. living impotentially 59 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index prelude three: dis/re/connecting being unable to respond without going through a “formal” teacher education program at a university, i did not expect my teaching career to go very smoothly. i achieved first place in the district model lesson; was awarded first place in the national teaching competency contest; my students earned higher marks than those in other classes. yet, after a few years of feeling complacent, i felt something missing from my teaching. at first, i could not articulate what was missing. but when i saw my students burying their heads behind big piles of exercise books, working diligently towards better scores, i remembered my own schooling years. i could finally re-see my worries, frustrations and emotional rollercoasters well hidden behind my glossy scores. i found myself unable to respond to the quests from the worried parents to deal with the “immature love” issue of their child. having worked seven years as a middle school teacher, i resigned in 2011 due to a family decision: immigration to canada. i returned to school as a graduate student at the university of british columbia. i can still remember my very first course in the department of educational studies. i felt so frustrated after the first lesson: even after translating the whole article into my native language, i still could not understand it. my peers seemed to participate in the class discussion enthusiastically, while i hardly knew what they were talking about. i found myself clumsy and awkward. after a few classes, i finally mustered the courage to ask michelle, a professor who always wore a big smile, whether i could withdraw from the course. she just looked at me and paused for a while. she responded to me gently, still wearing a big smile: “i don’t know what to say…but i hope you could stay.” in the fall of 2019, a few days prior to my ph.d. defense, i met with my supervisors, david and anne, at the waves café in steveston near my home. i told them that i was reluctant to leave the space in which “i could have coffee with them regularly”. they laughed and assured me that we could have coffee together after graduation. with the quarantine policy during the pandemic, ironically, it was for a very long time impossible for us to have coffee together at waves, unimaginable months ago. of course, we still connect with one another via email, zoom and phone calls. the decision to leave the secondary school where i studied and later worked as a teacher for more than a decade was not an easy decision to make. nor was it easy to think about the familiar hutong in beijing where i grew up and where my dear families and friends still live. i also have to admit that it was a privilege for me to be able to make the change: the financial support from family, china’s opening-up policy, the internationalization trend in higher education and many other factors were interwoven, creating the conditions for the move. leaving the familiar and comfortable gave me a chance to not only connect with people on the other side of the planet, but also to reconnect myself with my past in renewed and reimagined ways. i cannot recall the exact moment i made the decision to go to canada. the decision seemed to arrive in its due course as i became eager to disturb my stability and wondered about the otherwise. i bid farewell to my hometown and flew to canada with my husband and my two-year-old son during the beautiful fall of 2011. with leaving and returning, leaving my hometown and teaching post and returning to school as a graduate student with my teachers and colleagues, i became simultaneously attached to and detached from teaching, creating a gap between the social pretense and true aspiration of teaching: an ironic existence as a tension, not a simple opposition: https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index ma. living impotentially 60 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index the possibility of irony arises when a gap opens between pretense as it is made possible in a social practice and an aspiration or ideal which .... seems to transcend the life and social practice in which that pretense is made. the pretense seems at once to capture and miss the aspiration. (lear, 2011, p. 11) i understand that responding to this ironic gap requires a dynamic and open process of “dis/re/connecting”. i dis/connect from the familiar (e.g., my successful teaching) and simultaneously re/connect with it to complicate it in different dimensions, including ethical concerns (e.g., what are the differences between good teaching and successful teaching?) and political questions (e.g., who determines whose success?). the dis/connecting process is not a total breakaway from constraints, but a loosening process, leaving a gap where i can breathe. disconnecting is always mitigated by re/connecting in renewed ways. i gave second thoughts about and took an enduring look at the fantasies of the formal teacher education program. i reimagined teaching beyond being successful and effective measured against students’ performance. in the enduring moments, i created possibilities of connecting and reconnecting anew to challenge and transcend dominant discourses around teaching. with leaving and returning, i started to re-see the podium that i stood behind too protective of my authority; i re-saw the exercise books mounted on the table of each student bizarre and excessive; i resaw the possibility of sharing my own story of“immature love” with the worried parents. the root language of dis/re/connecting is connect: we are always connected with the past, with others, and with ourselves, yet in reimagined ways. indeed, my particular location in the world is always nourished, informed, constrained or haunted by the ghost of the past (doll, 2017). this dynamic and embodied dis/re/connecting process subjectivizes impotentiality, carving space for tensions and new connections. in impotentiality, there are elements of disconnecting from the prescribed, which enables a distance for us to witness and hence reconnect in fresh ways. i relived the moments of my not being able to respond to the worried parents. i felt the tension between the connection with my own past and the dominant norms that usually prescribed that situation to “deal with the issue”. the disconnection from the dominant discourse contributed to my reconnection with the past. at the same time, the reconnection with the past empowered me to dis/re/connect with the present while undergoing the dominant discourse: i remained silent in front of the worried parents. my refraining from dealing with the issue of the “immature love” of their child is similar to michelle’s advice to me that “i don’t know what to say”. michelle and i both resisted the temptation to “move here to there” or to cater for what was expected or demanded of us: me assuring the parents to help them “solve” the problem (i.e., making their child focused on the schoolwork) or michelle providing me quick and effective advice (i.e., how to get an a in her course). our non-action happened to hold an impotential space, a space that allowed us to disconnect temporarily from the prescribed goals or the next steps, and simultaneously reconnected us to ourselves in the particular situated moments, historically, culturally and (inter)subjectively with imaginations. dis/re/connecting process is poetically and creatively transforming one’s subjectivity in the “/” in-between moment and space, a place for study. impotentility emerges in those moments and spaces and we are enabled to “move beyond problematic formulations of learning and rediscover the uniqueness of studying” (lewis, 2014a, p. 334). studying dwells in the tension between isolation and relation, disconnection and reconnection. they are not contrary moments, yet they always coexist and enable one another. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index ma. living impotentially 61 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index dis/re/connecting creates an impotential space to make a claim “i would prefer not to” (melville, 2004) possible. i “would prefer not to” read the required books during my undergraduate study; i “would prefer not to” take up a profession in business which could promise a financial reward; during my ph.d. study, i “would prefer not to” do empirical researches which are considered as the orthodox research paradigm. after graduation, when securing a stable job at university was the goal of most ph.d. graduates, i did not just do it. for me, a decent university job is indeed appealing, yet it is not as important, urgent or as mysterious and interesting as self-understanding. i gave talks on education to the public, built collaborative relationships with chinese universities, organized workshops for high school teachers and tutored students by designing a course on philosophical and critical thinking, formed a “decameron today” with two friends to share feelings, thoughts with each other on a weekly basis in the pandemic. during my post-doctoral appointment as a moderator for the curriculum studies in canada seminar series (2020-2021). i was intrigued by the talks, pondering what had been shared for days after, bathing in intellectual light. the blissful moments for me were talking with dr. pinar over the phone, chatting with david and anne via skype and zoom in “off the record” ways without particular agendas or imminent tasks. sometimes, i sat in the backyard for the whole morning, walked deep into the forest, and practiced yoga. in doing and undoing, action and non-action, i seemed to effortlessly hold an impotential place for study, an endless study about myself and the world. these moments are always connected back to the past with my unaccomplished aspirations, unanswered puzzles and unfinished conversations. i do not hope to resolve this incompleteness. in these moments of incompletion and unfinishedness, i live impotentially. i enliven the concept: i do not overcome my potential to achieve impotentiality. instead, impotentiality brings holisticness and wholeness to potentiality. this creative tension reclaims my educational freedom and helps me resist the commodifying and homogenizing forces of “harness[ing] and actual[izing] in the name of neoliberal entrepreneurialism” (lewis, 2014a, p. 334). it is not the result of criticizing, negating or overcoming, but a process of redescribing, recounting and recapitulating. returning to where and what i was, i reimagine it for a renewed future. returning to what it means to be human is to become a human. agamben recently criticized quarantine during the pandemic as being “in a perverse vicious circle, the limitation of freedom imposed by governments is accepted in the name of a desire for safety, which has been created by the same governments who now intervene to satisfy it” (agamben, 2020). this is where i depart from agamben’s thoughts. i appreciate alternative ways of (re)connecting, transforming this impossible situation into more possibilities. the social distance policy during the pandemic indeed delimits mobility, but it might create new understandings and opportunities for people to reconnect in and to our own stillness, in reverence for life. quarantine makes ordinary travelling and moving extraordinary. however, if we come into more reflective and sensitive connections as a result of the crisis, we are being encouraged to go deeper into ourselves and at the same time be more aware of and in awe of the unpredictable world we dwell in, rather than being trapped in a hectic mode of constant “moving” from here to there: job promotions, graduations, next steps and next destinations. we constantly negotiate what it means to be free in a relationship with one another during the most uncertain and unprecedented occurrences. our freedom is not merely constrained by the quarantine policy, but reimagined and reconnected to our moving and not moving. isn’t that being impotential? the dynamic stillness of dao https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index ma. living impotentially 62 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index this autobiographical-allegorical inquiry into impotentiality returns me to my own heritage—daoism in china. in the preceding preludes of yielding and suspending, wondering and wandering, dis/re/connecting, i allegorize the concept of impotentiality. i find that reactivating my lived experiences seems to thicken the notion of impotentiality with nuances and subtleties. in this section, i will briefly discuss laozi’s dao and how it might speak to impotentiality in dao’s “dynamic stillness” (lao tzu, 2008, p. 53). like impotentiality, dao does not dichotomize. i believe it is worth citing laozi in length here: everyone recognizes beauty only because of ugliness everyone recognizes virtue only because of sin life and death are born together difficult and easy long and short high and low— all these exist together sound and silence blend as one before and after arrive as one the sage acts without action and teaches without talking all things flourish around him and he does not refuse any one of them (lao tzu, 2008, p. 3) as laozi suggests, clay is molded to form a cup only because the void space within could allow it to hold water (lao tzu, 2008). action and non-action do not contradict each other. rather, a bowl does not have contrary parts or sharp angles; the space and the wall make one another possible. on the one hand, dao is the wall of a bowl, endless and incomprehensible, disturbing and defying the binary between stillness and movement. the wall seems to define the still bowl, while the wall is formed by the never-ending circling movement of every bit of the clay particles. on the other hand, dao is also the voidness in the wall of a bowl. the ontological dao is located in the nothingness, emptiness and nonexistence. dao is doing not and doing everything (lao tzu, 2008). as lin yutang interprets dao, it does not plan or design; it usually does nothing. however, everything has grown from it. hence, dao does everything by not doing it (lin, 2009). stephen mitchell also suggests that dao does nothing, yet through it all things are done (lao tzu, 1999). i believe dao aligns with impotentiality as they both lie in the tension between making an effort to actualize one’s potential and refraining from the compulsion to realize that potential. with dao’s dynamic stillness, both yang and yin are immanently underway all the time and in harmonious confrontation with each other. daoist yin-yang wisdom could be compared with study and learning: study-yin transcends learning-yang by letting it idle in their tensioned impotential space. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index ma. living impotentially 63 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index [b]oth learning-yang and study-yin are immanently happening all the time and in confrontation with each other, allowing for the happening of study-yin to ascend and let idle the dominant learning-yang at certain moments. it is the weak study-yin that sustains and overcomes the strong learning-yang. (zhao, 2019, p. 272) laozi emphasizes the effortlessness of dao and says that dao never strives, yet nothing is left undone (lao tzu, 2008). it seems to allow and invite the impotential space: suspending the planned and designed, yielding to the void space within, creatively enlivening nothingness with wondering and wandering, and dis/re/connecting with people and nature in courageous genuineness and dynamic stillness. the dynamic stillness seems to be comparable to the character of the cactus sitting quietly on windowsill beside piles of exercise books in my classroom more than twenty years ago. it appealed to me because of its contrast to the hectic classroom environment: it seemed quiet and still, pointing nowhere but everywhere like the pen between my fingers. it grew in every direction without moving, gently, but most determinately. cactus profaned its surroundings with a determined manner of defiance; it generated and renewed meanings by “poking the mayhem”—awakening me inwardly, forming the spaciousness or voidness in me. as laozi observes when a thing has existence alone, it is a mere deadweight. only when it has wu (voidness), in its very spaciousness, does it have life (lao tzu, 2008). lingering thoughts re-searching my stories autobiographically, i allegorize agamben’s radical conception of impotentiality. i embed and enrich the concept in my nuanced lived experiences. understanding allegorically implies self-consciously incorporating the past into the present, gesturing towards the educational significance of what is studied. i point to the moments that i “would prefer not to” (melville, 2004), that is, to hold my impotential space by yielding and suspending, wondering and wandering, and dis/re/connecting. i “inquire into them… [to] move beyond regarding stories as fixed entities… , restory [myself] and perhaps begin to shift the institution, social and cultural narratives in which we are embedded” (clandinin, 2013, p. 34). agamben’s conception of impotentiality, i believe, defies the sense of actualization and dwells in the space of “would prefer not to”. the inoperativeness and effortlessness are often negated and criticized in today’s schooling system which predominantly emphasizes targets, measures and competitions. impotentiality, in contrast, lets go of a sense of ending in a playful and at-ease manner. to live at ease is “to live without any vocation, without any desire for mastery, without any desire to reach an end, beyond ease itself” (lewis, 2018, p. 346). one could then temporarily suspend the forces of the “economic, social, cultural, religious, or political pervading institutions that would influence, cajole, or direct students” (phelan et al., 2015, p. 31). attending to the space of impotentiality is not only to challenge existing norms: it involves withdrawing from them to allow distance from them, enabling the inner spaciousness that profanes them in playfulness and newness. the potentiality that exists is precisely the potentiality that is “able not to pass over into actuality” (agamben, 1998, p. 40). impotentiality is “an ‘ambiguity’ or an ‘undifferentiated chaos’ that resists any clear distinction between wanting and not wanting, affirmation and negation, occurrence and nonoccurrence that keeps open the ‘luminous spiral of the possible’” (agamben, 1999, pp. 254– 257). impotentiality dynamically rests on a life of ease, writes agamben, is a life “which contemplates its (own) power to act” (agamben, 2011b, p. 251)—or not. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index ma. living impotentially 64 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index impotentiality could provide a space for education that acknowledges “your wildness could not be contained in my poem” (leggo, 2016, p. 36). impotentiality highlights an “open relationality, a relation or potential to, where the infinitive is not governed by anything that already is… [we embrace] a future of open, unimpeded becoming” (colebrook, 2008, p. 112). what has to be noted here is that despite its yearning for openness, impotentiality is not absolute freedom as if every day is “a fresh new start”. rather, it is always, and has to be, constrained in our ethical engagement with others, situated in our historicity and particularity. such a constraint itself allows the meanings to be (re)generated allegorically. skhole, a place originally meant for free time, yearns for a space of impotentiality, inviting each one of us to return to ourselves, to understand ourselves as a human being. notes 1anita.maying@gmail.com references agamben, g. (1998). homo sacer: sovereign power and bare life (d. heller-roazen, trans.). stanford university press. agamben, g. (1999). potentialities: collected essays in philosophy. (d. heller-roazen, trans.). stanford university press. agamben, g. (2007). profanations. zone books. agamben, g. (2011a). nudities (d. kishik & s. pedatella, trans.). stanford university press. agamben, g. (2011b). the kingdom and the glory: for a theological genealogy of economy and government. (l. chiesa & m. mandarini, trans.). stanford university press. agamben, g. (2020). the state of exception provoked by an unmotivated emergency. positions politics. http://positionswebsite.org/giorgio-agamben-the-state-of-exceptionprovoked-by-an-unmotivated-emergency/ aristotle. (1984). metaphysics, nicomachean ethics, politics, rhetoric and posterior analytics. in j. barnes (ed.), the complete works of aristotle: the revised oxford translation. princeton university press. clandinin, d. j. 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(2011). a case for irony. harvard university press. leggo, c. (2016). a poem can: poetic encounters. learning landscapes, 9(2), 351–365. https://doi.org/10.36510/learnland.v9i2.780 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index ma. living impotentially 65 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index lewis, t. e. (2013). on study: giorgio agamben and educational potentiality. routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203069622 lewis, t. e. (2014a). it’s a profane life: giorgio agamben on the freedom of im-potentiality in education. educational philosophy and theory, 46(4), 334–347. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2013.779208 lewis, t. e. (2014b). the potentiality of study: giorgio agamben on the politics of educational exceptionality. symploke, 22(1–2), 275–292. lewis, t. e. (2018). inoperative learning: a radical rewriting of educational potentialities. routledge. lin, y. 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(2011). ministry of education of the people’s republic of china. http://www.moe.gov.cn/publicfiles/business/htmlfiles/moe/s6049/201110/xxgk_12572 2.ht ml vlieghe, j., & zamojski, p. (2017). the event, the messianic and the affirmation of life. a post-critical perspective on education with agamben and badiou. policy futures in education, 15(7–8), 849–860. https://doi.org/10.1177/1478210317706621 zhang, j. (2016). cultivating curriculum thinking and core competencies 树立课程意识落实 核心素养. 5, 1–4. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index ma. living impotentially 66 transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (1) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index zhao, w. (2019). daoist onto-un-learning as a radical form of study: re-imagining study and learning from an eastern perspective. studies in philosophy and education, 38(3), 261–273. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-019-09660-5 submitted: august, 02nd, 2021 accepted: september, 13rd, 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index microsoft word jordan final.doc to cite this article please include all of the following details: jordan, nané (2010). how she becomes herself: the artist as the daughter of the artist. transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> how she becomes herself: the artist as the daughter of the artist nané ariadne jordan university of british columbia i am at the centre, i am at the centre, i am at the centre, and you are at the centre, and you are at the centre, and you are at the centre, and we are at the centre, and we are at the centre, and we are at the centre, and she is at the centre, and she is at the centre, and she is at the centre. jordan: how she becomes herself transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 63 where does experience separate – and where does it meet? “spirituality is a love affair – a love affair with existence.” (chopra, 2006, p. 16) the term spirituality was purposefully never defined in the accredited women’s spirituality master of arts degree program i graduated from. in my scholarly movement since completing this degree in san francisco into doctoral studies in education in canada, i find that the idea of having to define ‘spirituality’ for my research often comes up. i resist its definition. i like shambavi’s idea, that it is a love affair with existence. an affair i am always reaching for, at times having and at others wondering where all the love went. the notion of spirituality, as a part of an emerging, yet ancient, knowledge tradition of women’s spirituality (birnbaum, 2005; jenett, 2008; spretnak, 1982) moves beyond exclusive male-centred religious understandings of such (braud, 2005; irigaray, 1993), to re-find and centre divine mothers, goddesses, and the sacred dimensions of women’s daily lives. the experience of spirituality is understood as immanent and transcendent, as being located within ourselves, including our bodies and sexuality, the earth as sacred, the more-then-human world and cosmos of trees, rocks, animals, stars and the spirits of places. i am drawn in my life path towards female spiritual leaders and teachers such as vicki noble (1991), judy grahn (1993), and luisah teish (1985), women who take the enactment of women’s freedom within feminism to its spiritual inheritances and dimensions. these women support a way of being in the world that sanctifies and has names for my own lived experiences of connectivity with nature, with others, with myself engaging sacred, mindful and socially transformative circles, rituals and classrooms with other women. we speak, experience and co-create new and old sacred worlds with each other. there is a deep, soul-full mother of education going on in this process, and a lot of work being done by women to make it happen at all. in my dissertation research i am studying women’s stories and lived senses of this creativity, of spirituality, and relationships to self/other, female divinity and the earth as an alive being, in networks of interconnection and inter-being. i study all this through the multi-vocal (many voiced) practice of women-centred education developed in the women’s spirituality degree i graduated from. i would say spirituality is a calling within people’s lives to serve, care and relate to the world from an interior place rooted as deep inter-relation / inter-being (crawford, 2005) to the ‘exterior’ world of others, to act for personal and social justice from a core of oneself and others as holy and whole. connectivity seems important to me in this regard, that we weave and write threads both within ourselves and outwards towards others, mirrored in a relational practice of research that catches the intimate details of the weaving. in this way, researching auto/biographically has a rich herstory within feminist, jordan: how she becomes herself transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 64 and especially race/class conscious and lesbian feminist scholarship (anzaldua, 1999; grahn, 2009; lourde, 1984; rich, 1977), as in the well-known idiom of “the personal is political.” such writing is a central feature of the curriculum within women’s spirituality education. women’s writing and truth telling to each other and the world both frees and complexifies solidified understandings of social/cultural/racial/sexual/political identities and contexts of our lives. in my own life writing, my life as a daughter and a mother is completely mixed up with my self-knowing, my ways of being in the world. this fact of mothering i would call my ‘maternal inheritance,’ that which is located within any mother, but is also located within the culture at large. this inheritance runs from the more diffuse mothers, the mystical mothers, the ones not so obviously present but always here and there in day to day life in the way that mothering is so central to existence. yet mothering is so absent from scholarly discourses beyond a psychology or biology of its experience. writer hélène cixous speaks of the demons we carry from lost histories and lineages that we block out in daily life, how “we are all walking on a volcanic earth” (2008, p. 5). at times i feel an aching despair around mothering, which may be the lost religion of the earth itself. i feel despair in relation to my own mother and the invisibility of the day to day work i perform in maintaining my own children’s lives. beyond demons, cixous notes other more “dazzling” obscurities, that of love for and with other beings, the points of connection “where ecstasy and divination are to be found” through each other’s bodies and beings (p. 5), how we are created beings at all. in a way everything (and nothing) came from my mother, now my own children come from (and don’t come from) me. i am at the centre, i am at the centre, i am at the centre, story i have a mixed media art practice in photography, video, textiles and performance. i also worked within pre-regulation canadian midwifery as a home birth attendant and post partum caregiver to women and babies. my life writing research within women’s spirituality education is located within this artist/arts-based and embodied, birthing, mother lens (jordan, 2009; 2007). to describe the interweaving in my life of thought, feeling, and art, the way that female-centred knowing and spiritual sourcing can come through art for me, is to tell a story from the fall of 2008. the art show wack! art and the feminist revolution (butler, 2007) came to the vancouver art gallery, in vancouver, british columbia, for the fall season. i enrolled my 11 year-old daughter in what i saw as an incredible opportunity of a theatre program for girls. the girls would be going into the art show, looking at art made by women of my daughter’s grandma’s generation, and collaborating to perform their own scripts and skits based on art pieces in the show. i thought, “wow, what an education, women’s studies 101 in art and performance for 11-15 year olds, sign her up!” a performance enthusiast, she was a willing participant. given what i later heard about the censorship of this show by children’s jordan: how she becomes herself transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 65 school programs in all of the american cities it toured, this theatre program, let alone the fact that schools groups were touring the show in vancouver, was itself a significant educative feat. given sensitivity to the representation of copious female nudity throughout the exhibit, it was suggested by the girls’ theatre instructor to first tour the show myself and let her know if there was any content i would not want my daughter to view. there was a definitely censored section devoted to the development of the pornographic industry during the 1970’s and women artists’ responses or co-option into this movement. this part of the exhibition overtly displayed examples of pornographic materials from those times, where female breasts, bodies, bums and vulvas where on graphic view. this section, hidden away from full view, was off limits to the girls. but i wouldn’t have limited them from seeing any of the other art, including the post-coital, realism-informedby-colour-abstraction paintings by joan semmel (1975), where the lower halves of a male and female body lay naked, relaxed on their shared bed. the man’s penis is visible, but is inert and soft upon his lap. or the images of artist ana mediata (untitled – glass on body, 1972) with plexi-glass pressed on to her naked breasts, back and bottom, holding the tension of what it feels to be squashed, to be pressed against, such invisible walls. one of my daughter’s favourite pieces was the crocheted environment, by faith wilding (1972, re-made 1995). in this 3-dimensional installation, intricate nets and webs fill a space you could walk inside of. the girls in the theatre program poked their arms and limbs gently though circular openings of this matrix of thread, weaving themselves together in laughter. what better place for my daughter to learn something of the impact of the patriarchal times we live in, how women artists have responded to, transformed and attempted to re-shape these times. because she was in this program every saturday morning for three months, and because i had a gallery membership, i found myself wandering into the show most saturday mornings. i got to know the security guards, including the one who helped me adjust the film projection to the right day when friday’s film track was on instead of saturday’s. i would have missed viewing alanis obomsawin’s film, mother of many children (1977) that tracks survival and cultural re-vival in the lives and activism of first nations women and mothers across canada. in fact, an archive of women’s film and video work was playing all over wack! in multiple tv screens. i began to compile mental lists of videos to view while i could, where else would i ever see all this work again? i noticed myself inhabiting the gallery like an extension of my living room, moving between the rooms and the art, sometimes sitting with a piece for hours, the collection becoming more and more familiar with passing weeks, details i missed one week surfaced in the next. one saturday morning my younger, 6 year-old, daughter came with me. as we strolled through the gallery together, she was drawn to watch the videos and became transfixed by judy chicago’s pyrotechnics performances (atmospheres, 1967-74). judy’s big hair flows in slow motion in the credits, as she walks in slow motion through billowing plumes of colourful smoke. the video documents chicago’s numerous performances of flaming, exploding plumes of colour going off in la and california locations, parks and art gallery steps. my young daughter especially loved a performance on the pacific coast beach, where nude women sit very still in meditation postures, their jordan: how she becomes herself transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 66 bodies painted in different colours, until plumes of coloured smoke go off around them in mini explosions. my daughter thought this was very exciting work, later asking, “is judy chicago still alive?”—somehow aware of the historicity of this work in her 6-year-old experience. attending and re-attending this art work, both alone and with my daughters, what i haven’t explained about the impact of this show on me is the part about my own mother. when i say that this show was my daughters’ grandma’s generation, what i mean to say is that my mother was an artist who came of age in this moment of the 1970’s. she came of age as an artist and as a woman who chose to live in ways her working-class irish immigrant parents, my irish grandparents whom i visited weekly as a child in urban toronto, were never able to enter. yet i am heir to these times of my mom’s life. i did live these years with and through her experiences, in what were also my experiences. where does our experience separate – and where does it meet? and you are at the centre, and you are at the centre, and you are at the centre, in order to escape the mythological antigone’s fate, feminist philosopher luce irigaray speaks of how the “world of women must successfully create an ethical order and establish the conditions necessary for women’s actions” (1993, p. 108). this must be a vertical and horizontal order, where mother-daughter genealogies pass forward a centrality of female subjectivity, while the “sisterhood of women” works to build horizontal actions in women’s lives. this order describes a socially transformative vision of education by women, through women’s work done both within and outside of families. my mother’s artistic education was something she chose to pursue, though it went beyond the understanding of her natal family as a working path. irigaray notes that the vertical order of mother-daughter relations is little known or understood in our times, because systemic “female becoming” suppressed within such patriarchal family relations (p. 108). my mother’s ‘becoming’ was at a time of tension between expectation and desires of women to enter marriage and raise families, and the explorations of women beyond such fixed gender identities. my mom occupied the city as her own in a way that jordan: how she becomes herself transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 67 my grandparents never really settled into, despite their living for more than 40 years in toronto after leaving ireland. their east end toronto home was a fixture of my childhood and young adult life, we lived in separate but parallel worlds. through the artwork in wack! i was aesthetically transported to my childhood, growing up with my mom in the 1970’s toronto art ‘scene’, if such a thing or time might be called a scene. wandering in the vancouver art gallery, i started to realize a particularly embodied response to the art, and its relation to my own mother. my cell fibres responded with something akin to aesthetic, sensory recognition, to the material artistic tropes of this time; the uses of paint, collages of found objects, the so recognizable type-writer lettering on art pieces documenting lists of the artist’s actions and titles; the style of clothes that my mother hand sewed for both herself and me; the photocopy aesthetics and b&w images that i was weaned on as a child artist. i could feel my childhood in a tint of white paint dripping over canvas, the stacking of found objects in assembled sculpture, the images of the women, and the ways of making things that my mother and her friends were experimenting with in materials, sound, text, performance. the timeliness of reviewing, exhibiting and publishing this epoch of art work, which was not actually taught to me within my 1980/90’s bfa curriculum, is described by curator cornelia butler in making “the case that feminism’s impact on art of the 1970’s constitutes the most influential international movement of any during the post war period” (2007, p. 15). the archive of art within wack! brings forward hidden histories/herstories of this art movement, as if its only being ‘discovered’ now, what was really an ‘anti-movement.’ butler describes feminism being an “open-ended” system containing “wildly divergent political ideologies and practices” (p. 15) and how many of the artists within this exhibition would not identify as “feminist” given the various locations of their practices. yet she contends that all of the artists reinforced “two central tenets: the personal is political, and all representation is political” (p. 15). i didn’t really anticipate how i would find my mother in this show, and my childhood self who followed her from event to event, art openings, parties, performances. parties, gatherings of friends and artists, were big in 1970’s toronto. my mom never hired a babysitter, i just went along to things as part of life. i would just be with all the adults, or other kids who happened to be there, having conversations, sitting and listening, or occupying myself with some drawing or writing project, daydreaming at the end of some couch. i was a child who grew up in a shared house of artists in the little italy neighbourhood of toronto. my mom’s non-traditional parenting of me could be understood as an effect of the totality of art within which she was then living, and the openness of this culture. after my parent’s separation, i lived with my mother half the week in this shared housing until i was 12. we had three rooms on the second floor of the painter and ontario college of art instructor tom hodgson and his wife cathy’s house on shaw street in inner city toronto. tom had been one of the “painters eleven,” a group of canadian painters who brought abstraction to modern painting in toronto in the mid-1950’s. the painters eleven were as much about shaking up the art establishment in its ways of life as about new painting techniques. we lived with tom in his post-oca teaching years, where he had been one of my mother’s instructors there. my mom was by then working on her mfa. i just really knew tom as a person, i didn’t have an objective perspective of his art practice. i would say now that he was a great free spirit, easy for me to talk with as jordan: how she becomes herself transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 68 a child and always very energetic. he was also a runner and athlete, an exemplar of life, art, and creativity. he had an appreciation of the ‘female nude’ and what might be called eros in daily living; his downtown art studio was famous for its all-night artist parties. the shaw street house had an overgrown, weed-full, you-couldn’t-really-call-it-alawn out front. tom had redone the old brick through sand blasting and purple paint on the trim. on either side, italian neighbours re-did their brick by covering the old with faux-brick, and adding fancy work of wrought iron fences. tom had installed a sauna, rudimentary-like in the unfinished concrete basement, and built a small swimming pool half into the kitchen and half into the back yard. this was dug out from both, and covered with solar panels to trap heat. nothing was made with a puritanical designer’s hand, but all built by tom himself. things had the feel of organic assemblage, the pool made by concrete plaster smoothed by hand into curved ledges, no sharp edges. it was freezing cold to get into in winter. i made the most use of it then and other times, other then naked adult swimmers who jumped into it after emerging from the sauna during gatherings or parties at the house. it was the first time i saw how a penis actually floats, if a man was just standing there in the water. needless to say the shaw street house stuck out within the context of the neighbourhood, and was never visited by my irish grandparents. it was, i suppose, ahead of its time in restorative renovations, organic building and gardening strategies. for my mom and i, it was a hub, our home for this time of our lives. this house and its creative renovations were a metaphor for the liveliness and re-constructions of the people inside. i would hang around tom’s back studio and storage area on sunday afternoons, making my own assemblages with cast off wood scraps from the two-by-fours of his painting frames. it was a place i loved to explore. his large, 4 x 6 ft paintings lay around the coach house studio, stacked to the side, or propped up in different phases of completion. my favourite painting of his was the huge one hanging in the shared kitchen, a profile of his adult daughter lise, her beautiful face outlined, soft colours, worked through brush strokes, washes of paint and lines, filling the giant square field towards abstraction. i was a child who learned early to wear a sense of independence while riding the subway by myself by age 10, moving between homes and parents. i grew up quickly listening to and living my mother’s relationships with men, a source of activity and tension in her life. though i know my mom was engaged in art making, i was not often with her on trips to her graduate school studios. she had a drawing, mixed media and conceptual art practice. it was weekends and evenings that we shared time in our three rooms on the middle floor of tom’s house. two were our bedrooms, and one was my mother’s office. we often ate meals in her bedroom cum living area. i would watch friday night tv there, always love boat and fantasy island. she often went to her office to sit at the desk, head bent over, thinking or lost in contemplation. we spent our time in the neighbourhood on weekends, going to the corner italian café for sicilian ice cream. we shopped for food, ate out in chinatown, and took city walks to other neighbourhoods, or visited the fabric shops on college street. my mom was often sewing something: bags, clothes, coats. always people came through the house, coming and going, or we went out to see people, to art events and parties. the sociability of this time was a constant compared to other times in our lives after these years. yet in all of this movement, my sense of our rooms was central, a close, engaged jordan: how she becomes herself transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 69 space. i loved the window of my room which looked out to the backyard from a side edge of the house. waking up in the mornings, i would lie in bed and stare at the moulding details of its wooden frame and corners, this view to the outside that was an inside in itself. and we are at the centre, and we are at the centre, and we are at the centre, viewing the art work in wack! i could feel the warm curious presence of this child that was myself, her active imagination and love for the world in the firm soaking of paint on the surfaces of wrapped ladder-like objects, the way paint drips were okay to drip and canvas was wrapped, over and over in strips around the boards (harmony hammond, hunkertime, 1979-80). i could feel my mom’s creative impulse and her anarchistic way of nurturing me through thought and freedom in this way of making things, making art. she was often distracted, or irritated, and needed to be left alone, not the kind of mom who would show up at my elementary school events or fuss over what was for dinner on weeknights. she expected me to just be intelligent, to be able to follow her around when needed. i learned to occupy myself, an impulse i followed and seem to continue to. i spent a lot of time in my room making things such as cloth dolls, learning to sew by hand early and later by machine, trying to imitate the lettered and painted quilts by joyce weiland that i loved to look at hanging in the art gallery of ontario on our trips there. i also made films and little animations, clicking frame by frame through cut out scraps of paper and drawings, and i learned to use the darkroom at age 12. i made and made and made, filling the time around me. this primal education from my mother’s ‘lap’ came back to me in the wack! show in swoops of enlightenment. cumulative moments of seeing/realizing all this, painful in its deep nostalgia, yet telling in the chaotic, offbeat aesthetics of my lineage, the creative and destructive sides of this. this straining towards freedom, and liberation from social convention that was going on for women and in which i still attempt to move. if it is true that my mother’s life lay groundwork for my own, it is also true that i have taken up ‘feminism’ in ways she did not herself imagine. my mother expected me to jordan: how she becomes herself transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 70 pursue higher education, in any field i chose. though educated and influenced by male art teachers such as tom, living the then timely dearth of women professors, she had unhinged her life from orthodoxy, living a generation and education gap in relation to her own parents. as in irigaray’s vertical passage of female subjectivity through motherdaughter genealogy, i followed her example. i follow my vocations as callings, throwing my life to the wind it seems in my own pursuit of the arts, re-claiming women’s ways of birthing, and ‘spirituality’. without naming this as such, i sought from am early age to live life from some core of wholeness within myself, wanting to navigate from this, to both live within and push beyond my circumstances, with always an eye to the female source of life. this source seemed somehow hidden from full view within the culture around me, was not readily apparent, though was often commented on by my mother in such things as her feminist analyses of movies we would watch, or her noting the dominance of men in the field of art. luce irigaray writes that “a female god is yet to come” (1993, p. 67), that the “divinity of women is still hidden, veiled” (p. 71). i leaned towards this hidden female, in the centrality of my mother’s vibrant and troubled energies, or the mix of complacency and strength in my grandmothers’ lives, both of whom lived in life-long marriages, devoted to singular husbands and homes. this female becoming and un-becoming became of utmost interest to me in possibilities for my own living. the spiritual implications of which began to occupy my own yearnings, time and energy, and are now the focus of my research and writing. in my mother’s original copy of susan sontag’s 1966 book, against interpretation, sontag calls for an erotics of art, deploring the practice of art interpretation that “amounts to a philistine refusal to leave the work of art alone” (p 8). sontag wonders what kind of criticism can “serve a work of art and not usurp its place” (p. 12). as if anticipating the explosion of creative impulse to emerge in the decade following her essay, the arrival of the “post-modern” with the civil rights and women’s rights movements, sontag asks for transparency as the most liberating value in art. she calls for acts of art criticism that deliver an “accurate, loving description of the appearance of a work of art” (p. 13). she wanted us to “recover our senses. we must learn to hear more, see more, to feel more” (p.14), in an age already too depleted from such sensual capabilities. the women artists of wack! surely arouse this sensuous, feeling experience of ourselves through art and exposure of their naked selves. the artists were at play with the censor of women’s bodies and stories, a patriarchal censor who blocked a ‘naked’ truth of lives both from within and without. nakedness was perhaps a trope for more poignant social and spiritual freedoms, re-framing gender and sexuality from women’s perspectives. living with my mother through these times opened doors for my own sensual and sensate knowing of the world around me, a kind of trust in one’s own experiences that can be hard to describe, but was cultivated in the ways free thinking, living and art making were encouraged or just expected as status quo. this trust is alive within me in a way that did not cause me to worry about exposing my daughters to the nakedness in wack! though women’s nakedness was a cause of concern to the theatre teacher and other mothers i spoke with. i didn’t see that this work was done with shock value, or to exploit in anyway. a particular sensibility and expression was at work that i recognized and could resonate with, a visual, sensory education by women for women and the world beyond such categories of gender. the work has to be experienced, the work is about direct experience. this is where the discernment of education comes into jordan: how she becomes herself transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 71 play. how can we learn to trust our experience and knowing, and even know what this means across contexts of lives? as i stood in the vancouver art gallery, in front of carolle schneeman’s film fuse (1965-7), i watched how this film’s surface was intentionally scratched, as if left lying around her apartment, images of her bedroom window glowed with soft morning light, images of her male partner/lover driving, and images of her cat lying on the bed, all these images spliced between images of kissing, her partner’s penis, brief scenes of further love making as he rhythmically moves between her legs, each shot is an instance of gathered meaning, an ode to love, its making and intimate rituals. i had read about how this film was censored at the time it was made. here now, people strolled casually by me in the gallery space as i sat in front of the tv monitor. they seemed oblivious to the content of what i was viewing, the scratch-like quality, and flashing of cats and windows and driving and snow and a beach, diffusing and yet at one with its intimate sexual content, representing a connecting fluidity of eros within daily life. and suddenly i became aware of two realities, a dividing line, and fear gripped my upper belly in a knot and i felt i could not breathe. i could not stand to know the deeper meaning of this piece while people strolled so casually by. my anxiety caused me to leave the gallery. i had to focus on my breath, one breath at a time, walking decidedly but slowly down the gallery stairs, as if in a dream, a bad dream. and then i knew what i had felt throughout this whole show, and all of its previous weeks. i realized how a community of women, of artists, of which i am an heir and accomplice, were and are generating a collective impulse of awakening, through race, class and sexual differences, beyond the forces of a society that promotes the ranking of individual artists over such collective powers of art. i felt that this collective awakening was releasing what can be understood in women’s spirituality as human realization or kundalini, the distinct energy which i was feeling surge through my own body/self at that moment. this is a spiritual life-force energy, the kind that pulses through the earth and makes us what we are though we might deny its real source in economic terms, ever drawing from its vitality and sustenance. i felt then that the art was a trigger for incredible female-based energetic release if one could sense it this way, an opening into life. i wondered if any one had written a catalogue essay describing this work, beyond its stereotype-shattering impulses, as a collective impulse of energetic or spiritual awakening? elinor gadon, feminist art historian and scholarly instigator of the women’s jordan: how she becomes herself transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 72 spirituality degree program from which i graduated, brings this idea forward in her analysis of feminist artists of the time as re-inscribing connections to the female body, sexuality, lost female iconography and repressed or lost goddesses (1989). gadon maintained that investigation of art, both ancient and modern, and art making practices be at the core of the women’s spirituality degree curriculum. she writes of the artist as “prophet” where “the arts always hold the promise of enriching our ways of seeing and being in the world” (p. 309). she notes how women artists of the 1970’s created a new visual language, having to move beyond a male-dominated art world. “woman is everywhere present as a mediating symbol for the male but almost completely absent as an expression of female experience” (p. 310). what was true for the 1970’s is still disarmingly so now as my daughters face the continuing barrage of popular culture, and the objectification of female bodies in media and advertising. and she is at the centre, and she is at the centre, and she is at the centre. in my experience of wack! the “new visual language” that gadon notes awakens something asleep within the culture, something that had been long repressed, a spiritual life force energy, residing within the earth, within women themselves an erotics of art. an erotics that serves a function of awakening, of the kind of direct sensual experience sontag was calling for. thus, the collective energy of the art in wack! was having its way with me in this moment of potent feeling and anxiety. the surges of distinct sexual and life energy i felt walking through the gallery in past visits, the visual and naked stimulus of so much women’s revolutionary art, in teasing, self-aware ways made light of by the cover of the catalogue displaying a pornographic-like collection of smiling naked women (martha rosler, body beautiful, or harem, 1966-72), now came to me in one moment of knowing. this time and place was indeed a scrapping away of false layers shovelled onto women’s bodies and selves to find real, felt bodies and ‘selves’. the artists call towards an undefiled, in-corruptible, yet sexual female, one who walks without fear of violence and shame, calling to the potent present and “future of a loving and nurturing social order” that depends on such embodied and spiritual freedom of women (chopra, 2007, p. 167). in that flash i found myself occupying two ‘spaces’, both the liberated and the mundane, and i couldn’t stand to know and experience both at once. art had become real, life was the dream. in experiencing this dream of freedom, i recognize myself as a female initiate of such practices and art-full prayers. in the long years of my mother’s cultivations and my own search, art practices and art-full re-search in women’s spirituality, i would tend this desire for freedom as a wisdom seeker on a path grounded in fleshy and divine female beings, a path that could not have been forged without movements of feminism and women’s art making alongside and before me. i want my daughters’ lives to be enriched by such education, its vertical and horizontal dimensions. jordan: how she becomes herself transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 73 i belong to the mother, and i belong to art – i am hers in ways i barely discern with this text. i am at the centre, i am at the centre, i am at the centre, and you are at the centre, and you are at the centre, and you are at the centre, and we are at the centre, and we are at the centre, and we are at the centre, and she is at the centre, and she is at the centre, and she is at the centre. references anzaldua, g. (1999). borderlands, la frontera: the new mestiza. san francisco: aunt lute books. birmbaum, l. (ed.). (2005). she is everywhere: an anthology of writing on womanist/feminist spirituality. lincoln, ne: iuniverse. jordan: how she becomes herself transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 74 braude, a. (ed.). (2004). transforming the faith of our fathers: women who changed american religion. new york: palgrave. butler, c. (curator). (2007). wack! art and the feminist revolution. exhibition tour catalogue: the museum of contemporary arts, los angeles, ca. cambridge, ma: the mitt press. chopra, l. s. (2006). yogini: unfolding the goddess within. new delhi: wisdom tree. cixous, h., sellers, s (ed.). (2008). hélène cixous: white ink, interviews on sex, text and politics. new york: columbia university press. crawford, j. (2005). spiritually-engaged knowledge: the attentive heart. burlington, vt: ashgate publishing. gadon. e. (1989). the once and future goddess: a symbol for our time. new york: harper & row. grahn, j. (2009). the judy grahn reader. san francisco: aunt lute books grahn, j. (1993). blood, bread, and roses: how menstruation created the world. boston: beacon press. irigaray, l. (1993 / 1987). sexes and genealogies. gillian c. gill (trans.) new york: columbia university press. jenett, d. (2008). spirit and embodiment: praxis in the academy. unpublished paper. jordan, n. (2009, march). what is goddess? towards an ontology of women giving birth. trivia: voices of feminism. special issue: thinking about goddesses. spring equinox, 9. http://www.triviavoices.net/current/jordan.html jordan, n. (2009). roots of life. matrifocus: cross-quarterly for the goddess woman. imbolc, 8(2). http://www.matrifocus.com/imb09/connections.htm jordan, n. (2007). the swallowed mother: c-sections, metaforms and male cuts. metaformia: the journal of menstruation and culture. http://www.metaformia.org/article_08.cfm lorde, a. (1984). sister outsider: essays and speeches by audre loudre. freedom, ca: the crossing press. noble, v. (1991). shakti woman: feeling our fire, healing our world. san francisco: harpersanfrancisco. rich, a. (1977). of woman born: motherhood as experience and institution. new york: bantam. teish. l. (1985). jambalaya: the natural woman’s book of personal charms and practical rituals. san francisco: harper and row. spretnak, c. (ed.). (1982). the politics of women’s spirituality: essays on the rise of spiritual power within the feminist movement. new york: anchor press / doubleday. sontag, s. (1966). against interpretation. new york: farrar straus & giroux, inc. o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: hardy, ian ; uljens, michael (2018). critiquing curriculum policy reform in finland and australia: a nonaffirmative, and praxis-oriented approach, transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> critiquing curriculum policy reform in finland and australia: a non-affirmative, and praxis-oriented approach ian hardy1 university of queensland, australia michael uljens2 åbo akademi university, finland introduction in this paper, we explore whether and how key curriculum policy documents in two national contexts finland and australia – are mediations between broader ‘global’ challenges, and local conditions, and how the content of subsequent curriculum documents/content are more or less ‘educational’ in their intent for the teachers and students to whom they are directed. we argue the aims, contents and methods of key curriculum policy documents in these two national settings reveal that curriculum-development processes are no longer limited simply to the individual nation-state, but to an increasing degree, reflect both national and transnational (‘global’) influences, even as such documents seek to respond to more localized circumstances and conditions within individual nation-states. comparative educational curriculum research is a particularly useful vehicle for bringing to light the variable nature of these relationships, and how broader transnational influences are expressed in curriculum policy documentation. in this article, which refer to an international research program on comparative curriculum and leadership research based on non-affirmative education theory (uljens & ylimaki, 2017), we describe and compare the values, aims and priorities (‘why’) as reflected in the contents (‘what’) of key curriculum documents for these national contexts, and the methods (‘how’) by which these are to be taught. we begin by highlighting the broader global and national political discourses associated with the development of the specific national curriculum in each context, including the influence of evaluation in this process. we then elaborate the conceptual resources – nonaffirmative action, and practice-as-praxis – we bring to bear to better understand the nature of these broader conditions, and how they have influenced the nature of curriculum policy reform in each context. the paper then proceeds to provide an analysis of the principal curriculum policy documentation – the national core curriculum for basic education, 2014 (fnbe, 2014) in finland, and the australian curriculum (acara, n.d.) in australia to analyze how these broader conditions have influenced the nature of curriculum reform at the policy level in each country. we conclude that while current approaches to curriculum development, and these foci, have the potential to cultivate more non-affirmative, praxisoriented proclivities amongst students, as expressed in the curriculum ‘content’, these are challenged by both more neoliberal conditions and pressures, and a tendency towards ‘closure’ in the respective curricula in relation to individual and collective challenges that https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index hardy, uljens. critiquing curriculum policy reform 51 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index confront students as tomorrow’s citizens. we elaborate important differences between the two national settings, even as reveal several points of intersection and policy ‘overlap.’ understanding curriculum in the context of globalization and neoliberal policy reform curriculum reform and associated policy making is reflective of significant global processes. broad processes of economic globalization, expressed as neoliberal policy-making, have been particularly salient during the past 30 years. these processes have been manifest in different countries, and within different cultural traditions. such processes have been expressed differently; various forms of path dependency, as the expression of individual nation-states, are evident, even as policy borrowing has become more normalized (steinerkhamsi, 2004). in many ways, globalization is something of an empty signifier – a term that seems to be unanimously understood, but that is actually used to describe any manner of practices and phenomena (popkewitz, 2004). consequently, the nature and effects of globalization processes is heavily contested. nevertheless, particular conceptions of globalization do have considerable cogency, and have gained increasing influence in varying national contexts. furthermore, such manifestations are not simply economic, but expressed in relation to all social arena, including education. the oecd’s educational policies, including in relation to standardized measures of student attainment through international large-scale assessments are good examples of such phenomena. such standardization processes are reflective of what sahlberg (2016) refers as corporate management approaches to concerns about the quality of schooling across nationstates. standardization of teaching, and testing of students and teachers, as well as the reconstitution of public schooling into more privatized ventures reflect the influence of various kinds of globalized educational accountabilities (lingard, martino, rezai-rashti & sellar, 2016). such processes are enabled through the influence of international student assessments, particular programme for internal student assessment (pisa), trends in international mathematics and science study (timss), and progress in international reading literacy study (pirls). advocacy for forms of decontextualized, ahistorical conceptions of educational improvement based on standardized literacy, numeracy and science scores are evidence of the sorts of decontextualized reforms that have gained increased currency most recently. however, these are not the only influences at play. in this paper, we take the contested nature of globalization processes as our starting point for better understanding how curricula have been manifest in specific national contexts – namely finland and australia. while there has been strong institutional support for such reforms, and nations have become increasingly influenced by such reforms through the logics of competitive nationalism, encouraged through such advocacy, and supposed processes of policy-borrowing encouraged by such bodies as the oecd, whether and how such processes transpire as such is a matter for empirical inquiry. a broad historical overview of curriculum reform a broad, sweeping attempt to conceptualize the nature of curriculum reform, in a western perspective, over the past 150 years might reveal how specific curriculum texts, and associated policies and politics, have simultaneously reflected and sought to constitute more broader social practices and processes at the national level, connecting education to more general ideas of what ends education should serve. broadly speaking we may, first, refer to a pre-modern era ‘subordinating’ education to foundational perceptions of the origin and future of humanity as expressed through tradition and religion. second, from the 19th century https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index hardy, uljens. critiquing curriculum policy reform 52 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index onwards education may be construed as oriented to the construction of modern nation state. construction of national identity was central, in addition to the promotion of contextand content-independent competencies, such as reading and mathematics. these were to serve the liberal view of the individual and her future as non-determined – as open to any number of future possibilities and opportunities, and reflective of an education that provided the capacity to think and analyse, even as the content of the actual education that played out may have been overly determined or prescribed (benner, 2015). just as the curriculum policy documents of the latter part of the 19th century, and early 20th century, may have been focused upon processes of nation building, those of the postworld war ii period perhaps emphasized more dominant disciplinary conceptions of knowledge – again for national ‘gain’. in contrast, the curricula documents, processes and practices of the 1970s could be construed as oriented towards more political citizenship development, and critique of established social practices. after 1989 and subsequent conditions of curriculum reform gestures towards an increased focus upon economist cultivation of the individual as a consumer (gunter, grimaldi, hall & serpieri, 2016). most recently, and notwithstanding the significant rise of much more nationalistic influences and foci at the level of the nation-state, curriculum policy reform can be seen as the product of not only national influences, but also broader, transnational often described as ‘global’ conditions. these conditions give rise to what peck and theodore (2015) refer to as ‘fast policy’ reforms initiatives that are construed as ‘universally’ applicable within a broader neoliberal context, and somehow able to be adopted contemporaneously, without concern for context. such homogenization is also exacerbated by technological changes that trend towards ‘sameness’, including through processes of inter-operability between various international, national and sub-national data sets. arguably, such potentially ‘decontextualized’, transnational approaches to education reform are more focused on economic and labour-market reforms, rather than more traditional approaches to education for citizenship. at the same time, the nation state is caught in the tension between processes of increasingly global homogenization, and local pluralization. these more homogenizing influences all sit in tension with more nationalistic tendencies, and fractious localized politics that serve as symptoms of an uneasy relationship between supporter and opponents of these broader globalizing and homogenizing processes and the economization of post-industrial society. under these circumstances, cultural differences have been reconstituted, in many national settings, into ‘problems’ of dislocation, disorientation, and sometimes hostility and conflict towards ‘the other’. recent nationalist responses both reflect and constitute the increasingly neoconservative conditions within many nation-states throughout the world. seeking to respond educatively to these tensions is vital, given the social, political, and economic tensions and contentions generated within nation-states, and particularly amongst the most disenfranchised. however, the specificity of such ‘global’ influences is not simply a given, but an empirical question. how do broader neoliberal pressures play out in national contexts, in relation to curriculum reform? how is this reflected in the policy and political discourse that surrounds curriculum policy and politics? in an effort to answer such questions, this article analyses how recent curriculum reforms in two national contexts – finland and australia – define the preparation of reflexive students. what kind of citizenship ideals are promoted, what kind of societal, humanist and global values and ideas about justice are supported? such an analysis requires explicating the broader political and administrative governance process of curriculum making – the ‘process’ of curriculum reform – as well as the subsequent ‘product’ – the ‘curriculum’ – of such https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index hardy, uljens. critiquing curriculum policy reform 53 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index reform. in contemporaneous work, we are exploring the nature of the curriculum reform ‘process’ (e.g. uljens & rajakaltio, 2017; tian & risku, 2018). however, this article is limited to an analysis of the ‘product’ of such reforms in australia and in finland, as expressed in key policy documentation in each national context. consequently, we focus on the ‘content’ of curriculum reform – the aims or ‘why’ of curriculum, the ‘what’ of curriculum, and the ‘how’ of teaching methods supported in the curriculum; these elements are also all part of the broader continental/european didaktik tradition (e.g. benner, meyer, peng & li, 2018). to help understand the curriculum ‘product’ – aims/values (‘why’), content (‘what’) and methods (‘how’) – of this reform process, and the extent to these aims, contents and methods are productively ‘educational’, we draw upon dietrich benner’s notion of a ‘nonaffirmative’ theory of education (benner, 2015; uljens & ylimaki, 2017), and neoaristotelian insights into practice as praxis. these resources enable us to critique the extent to which the national curriculum documents (the ‘curriculum’) discursively promote a conception of teaching that allows teachers to develop local curricula and practices to foster future citizens capable of engaging in the broader policy and political circumstances outlined above, but not in prescriptive, ‘telling-students-what-to-believe’ ways, but in ways that open students up to inquiry into important issues and how to think through them openly, but productively, and with an orientation to fostering a more inclusive, sustainable world. we argue that a necessary pre-condition for such disposition is an education which helps to build students’ understanding of such issues in a robust, dialogic process. deng (2013), following young (2013) has argued that contemporary curriculum theorizing and research have failed to give sufficient credence to curriculum as the ‘object’ of research – that ‘educational discourse and policy development have been accompanied by a loss of the ‘primary object’ in the contemporary curriculum field’ (p. 583). this focus upon ‘what is taught and learned in school’ (young, 2013, p. 101), and how this is to occur, however, is a key focus of attention in this paper. however, we seek to understand this ‘object’ of curriculum reform as not simply ‘text’ on a page (or, as evident in the australian case presented here, ‘text’ on multiple webpages), but also as knowledge ideals as a contextualized product of a broader political, and often contested, process of educational reform. given the centrality of evaluation/assessment processes in educational reform more broadly, including curriculum reform processes, the relationship between curriculum and assessment (hereafter referred to as evaluation) is also important and needs to be explicitly addressed. curriculum in context: the relationship with evaluation to understand curriculum reform, we cannot simply focus upon curriculum alone. contemporary comparative research must include attention to the specific cultural and historical contexts in which curriculum reform is undertaken. it is important to realise, processes of curriculum reform in global contexts have not occurred in isolation. while curricular have traditionally been construed as a key ‘input’ to the educational enterprise, the increased attention to ‘outcomes’ in education has more recently heightened the focus upon evaluation processes. the following diagram seeks to summarize these changes over a 50year period (1968-2018), and how recent attention to outcomes differs from earlier periods. also, while different countries might, in their curriculum policy documents, represent similar ideas about aims, contents and methods of teaching, how these aims, contents and methods may be practiced in schools and classrooms is largely affected by evaluation or assessment practices in each polity. the assessment practices obviously regulate/frame teachers’ degrees of freedom or autonomy to affirm or not to affirm given aims and contents. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index hardy, uljens. critiquing curriculum policy reform 54 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index figure 1. positions and changes western curriculum policies during the past five decades (uljens & nyman, 2013) in the first part of this 50-year period, the history of curriculum change was characterized by an increasingly centralized approach, particularly in anglophone settings. this involved a broad shift from more context-specific and responsive approaches to curriculum development and reform (curriculum reform as school based) to a much more centralized approach. the 1988 education act, with its increasingly prescriptive curriculum in the english context, is emblematic of such a shift. during the same period, however, more neoconservative and neoliberal logics did not exert influence to the same degree in many continental and nordic countries. consequently, in these countries, processes of decentralisation of curriculum, associated with increased valuing of differentiation within educational systems and professionalization of the teaching force, were more evident. at the same time, and in both continental and anglophone settings, from the late 1980s, schooling became characterized by increased attention to evaluation. these evaluations increasingly served as indicators of schools’ performance, often as part of a broader strategy of the marketization of education. gradually, this focus upon results replaced attention to the ‘input’ side of the educational ‘equation’. education became increasingly competitive, with the assumption that competition would enhance educational ‘quality’. at the same time, during the 1990s, these outcomes came to be closely associated with increased emphasis upon literacy and numeracy, with such foci construed as essential for enhanced economic productivity more broadly within an increasingly technology-intensive world. such skill development was associated with work-related competency development. the use of more and more standardized tests was also seen as a vehicle to provide parents with more ‘objective’ information about educational quality. more recently, as outlined above, more competitive and economistic logics have been manifest in increased attention to national and international standardized literacy and numeracy test results. international testing processes, particularly with the shift from more unesco-led (iea) surveys to oecd-led (pisa; pirls) measures, have focused even greater attention upon large scale assessments as significant markers of the ‘quality’ of https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index hardy, uljens. critiquing curriculum policy reform 55 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index educational systems. as a result, curriculum-making practices and processes have arguably become much more centralized. however, this process is manifest differently in different countries. curriculum making and especially curriculum enactment must therefore be understood in relation to such evaluation processes in context; evaluation and curriculum have to be thought of together. this does not mean that evaluation somehow simply determines curriculum reform, but it is to suggest that the two processes occur concurrently, and that different nation-states position themselves differently in relation to processes of homogenization and heterogeneity in relation to evaluation. assessment as evaluation in australian and finland in australia, even as education is the constitutional responsibility of the individual states, evaluation is expressed most overtly through the national assessment plan, particularly in relation to elementary/primary (‘basic’) education. even as the most significant national assessment practices – national assessment program-literacy and numeracy – have a much greater influence upon primary schools than secondary schools, in many ways, much focus on assessment is ‘situated’ at the national level, while teaching is positioned at the state (i.e. sub-national) level. naplan assessment is a census-style test undertaken by all students in years 3 and 5 (primary), and years 7 and 9 (secondary). the aims (expressed as ‘benefits’) of the nap are explicitly oriented to identify areas of strength and weakness, and for accountability purposes: two benefits of the nap are to help drive improvements in student outcomes and provide increased accountability for the community. … all australian schools benefit from the outcomes of national testing. schools can gain detailed information about how they are performing, and they can identify strengths and weaknesses which may warrant further attention (acara, 2016). the approach to nap is that australians can expect education resources to be allocated in ways that ensure that all students achieve worthwhile learning during their time at school. the reported outcomes of the nap enable the australian public to develop a general national perspective on student achievement and, more specifically, an understanding of how their schools are performing (national assessment program, 2016). public accountability is explicitly referenced in the australian context. in finland, national testing exists in a very different format, and is characterized by a survey rather than a census-style approach to evaluating educational performance. furthermore, the approach to assessment is explicitly oriented to supporting learning: under the basic education act, the aim of pupil assessment is to guide and encourage learning and to develop the pupil’s capability for self-assessment. the pupil’s learning, work and behaviour shall be variously assessed. these tasks are the point of departure for developing the assessment culture in basic education. the emphasis is on assessment that promotes learning (fnbe, 2014, p. 49). in this way, attention to assessment is more obviously oriented towards learning, rather than accountability, as in the australian context. furthermore, in the finnish context, education providers (municipalities) are responsible for assessment practices, rather than the nation-state: https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index hardy, uljens. critiquing curriculum policy reform 56 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index the education provider monitors the implementation of the assessment principles in the schools and supports the development of assessment (fnbe, 2014, p. 50). there is similarly the case in australia in that the individual state governments are constitutionally responsible for education, rather than the federal government. however, the very existence of the national assessment program means that there is much more attention to performance on various forms of national measures in the australian context, particularly naplan, especially in primary schools. the way in which these data are presented to schools is also differentially situated between the two nations. in australia, schools’ naplan results are available publicly through the myschool website, while in finland, the municipalities have to purchase the results. the way in which the results are used is also vital. in finland, teachers want to know ‘how is my class doing’; in australia, while teachers and schools certainly want to know how their students have performed, this is associated with a heightened sense of concern about how their school compares with similar (‘like’) schools, and with various national averages in literacy and numeracy subcategories. because the results are published through the publicly available myschcool website, schools may be shamed by these results. this publication of results also feeds into discourses of the need to provide ‘choice’ to parents. to help undertake a context-responsive analysis of curriculum policy reform, we make the case for the need for comparative curriculum research under current policy conditions to also include issues in relation to evaluation. a comparative curriculum research approach, such as the comparison we provide here of recent finnish and australian curriculum reforms, is particularly helpful for not only understanding the mediation between national and transnational (‘global’) influences, but also whether and how nation-states seek to respond differently to more localized circumstances and conditions. a comparative methodology why finland and australia? we draw upon two varying national curricula, with distinctive national political identities, to reveal how distinctive and different policy and political contexts influence approaches to curriculum, even as these nations are simultaneously buffered by more transnational/‘global’ processes. on the one hand, both australia and finland might be described as adopting broadly ‘welfare-society’ approaches to public provision, including education. however, they are also politically distinctive in ways that are useful for revealing the variation that arises within national contexts. the finnish and australian cases represent two different western traditions in public policy provision. the more continental-european consensus-oriented tradition, with its ‘thicker’ state has a different approach to such provision and contrasts with the ‘thinner’ state that characterizes the anglo-american approach. moos' (2017) describes how the nordic tradition differs from that in uk/us: it is reasonable to conclude that the uk/us had societal and political systems more inclined to build on rational choice theories – because of the belief in a liberal, and weak state; on principal-agent theory because of the bigger power distance and gini and lower trust in people; and on market-thinking because of the stronger belief in civil society and market. the uk/us thus seem better equipped to take in the transnational ideas of new public management’ (p. 157). https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index hardy, uljens. critiquing curriculum policy reform 57 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index the more disputational westminster system in the australian context also demands a much more communicative discourse in relation to decision-making, while the more consensus-oriented political system in the finnish context reflects a much more multi-party system, requiring leading parties to develop coalitions to form government. historical circumstances and differences are important for understanding how broader neoliberal influences play out in curricula reform within each national context. australia has a ‘settlement’ history dominated by british colonization, and for the indigenous peoples, this meant dislocation. this influences the cultural character of the country and influences deemed important at present (including the focus upon ‘aboriginal and torres strait islander histories and cultures’ as an important ‘cross-curriculum priority’ in the australian curriculum). finland, as a small ‘peripheral’ nation, borders two historically dominant powers (sweden ruled finland until 1807, and then russia after the napoelonic wars (1809); however, it is also important to note the grand duchy of finland, established after 1809, also enjoyed much more freedom (own currency; laws) under russia). importantly, finland has been used as a ‘comparator’ country amongst those advocating policy borrowing, while australia is construed as a country needing to ‘learn’ from more ‘successful’ countries, such as finland. paradoxically, principles of germ (sahlberg, 2016) encourage comparison, and competition between countries. so various solutions should be those of more successful comparator nations! however, as we argue here, this is not necessarily the case. structurally, we acknowledge differences between the finnish and australian educational systems. finland has a strong national system, with the delivery of education as the responsibility of the municipalities (as is evaluation). as a federal system (somewhat akin to the german model), education in australia is the constitutional responsibility of the individual states. because of the primacy of the states in education, and because of historical circumstances, there are considerable differences between the individual states. while the 330 municipalities in finland have the constitutional right to lead curriculum work and evaluation independence, the small size and relative weakness of these municipalities in relation to the national level, means their impact is reduced. we also acknowledge that there are variations in the way individual municipalities and states mediate and co-construct broader national initiatives; the larger and more powerful states and municipalities exercise much more power than smaller, weaker states and municipalities, which are much more dependent upon the nation-state (finland), or subordinate to pressures and demands (such as in relation to national assessment) exercised at the federal level (australia). the value of a comparative curriculum research approach under current policy conditions at the same time, we also acknowledge that comparative approach to research into curriculum has an important recent history which also informs our work. rosamund (2007) argues that curriculum as a focus of attention within comparative international studies research began during the 1990s, with work by meyer, kamens and benavot (1992) revealing increased homogenization and standardization of the organization of primary school curricula, and kamens, meyer and benavot (1996) shedding light upon similar processes in academic secondary education. unlike hopmann (1999), who focuses attention upon three types of curriculum discourses: political, administrative or ‘programmatic’, and ‘practical’ classroom levels, rosamund (2007) seeks to make sense of curriculum change under broad global conditions. rosamund (2007) refers to three rationales for curriculum change: 1) institutional discourse (education system); 2) political discourse – single national society; 3) political discourse – global society. while earlier distinctions reflect how curriculum-making has been traditionally understood as primarily a nation-state issue/dilemma, today we have to https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index hardy, uljens. critiquing curriculum policy reform 58 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index understand national curriculum development in the context of global conditions, and how nation-states respond, adapt and position themselves in relation to these global processes. such global processes can be understood and critiqued within existing, more critical traditions. within more traditional conceptions of curriculum, curriculum making can be seen as a rational response to global concerns about national economic competitiveness. by not problematizing these global developments as such, more technocratic, tylerian (1949) instrumentalist notions of curriculum planning could be construed as justifying curriculum work as simply a more adaptive response to more global processes and pressures. from more critical traditions, however, the ideological dimensions of such global processes can be foregrounded; on such a rendering, apple’s (2004) work on ideology and curriculum, for example, can be rearticulated to critique the relationship between such social processes and schooling. from a more foucauldian perspective of power/knowledge relationships, popkewitz’s (1991) work highlights curriculum as constitutive of power relations ascendant within such global discourses as these play out in curricula documents and programs, and their enactment. at a more national level, rosamund’s (2007) focus upon curriculum changes can be understood as ‘a political measure that re-shapes relationships between individuals and institutions of the nation-state through the selection and organization of school knowledge’ (p. 177). an alternative, non-affirmative, praxis-oriented analytical approach however, while shedding valuable light upon broader processes of curriculum reform, we do not believe these theorists give adequate attention to whether and how the content of curriculum reform processes are actually ‘educational’ for a better world. by ‘educational’ in this context, we mean that research on curriculum reform should be based upon, or at least include, a theory of education which foregrounds how a) the curriculum reform process itself is enacted as an educational process, and b) that the object of this curriculum reform process is education. but what do we mean by actually mean by ‘education’ in a political democracy? to be understood as ‘education’ in such a democracy, opportunities must be provided to recognize somebody’s experiences, and treat them seriously, but not necessarily ‘affirm’ these experiences – if by affirming we mean simply accepting a person’s or an institutional interpretation of their experiences. non-affirmative curriculum reform is about calling attention to, questioning, or problematizing contemporary practices, existing values, or knowledge (uljens, 2015; uljens & ylimaki, 2017). the same is done in relation to future ideals. as with existing societal norms, future ideals, such as sustainable development, are taken seriously but questioned in order to create a reflective space for possible understandings. this is a creative, reflective space in which the learner comes to enhanced understandings about particular issues, in light of exposure to multiple possibilities. under such conditions, specific norms and ideals are not simply affirmed. in a word, then, education is about summoning (german: aufforderung) the learner to self-activity. this means that the educator as a moral practitioner takes a position, but in such a way that a reflexive space is co-constructed for the learner to establish or re-establish his or her own relationship to himself or herself, others, and the world. the learner’s activity is then a form of bildsamkeit – the activity the learner is involved in response to a pedagogical invitation. as bildsam conventionally refers to that humans have a capacity to learn, in this context it refers to an engagement the individual has been invited to by the educator. given this, education has beginnings and an ends, while the process of bildung is lifelong (uljens, 2002) the principle of non-affirmative education is informed by notions of recognition (honneth, 2003; fraser & honneth, 2003) – of both the self, and others. to recognize an https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index hardy, uljens. critiquing curriculum policy reform 59 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index individual’s potentiality means to accept their freedom or non-determinedness as a learner, but also to acknowledge their experiences, and empirical life-world. in addition, if we accept that the individual has the right to develop something like self-worth, self-esteem and selfawareness and that this depend on how the individual is received, this demands an ethical response. the educator is confronted with the fact that the self-development of the learner is related to how the learner is summoned (uljens, 2002; honneth, 2010; ranciere, 2010). thus educational development work is an intervention in the learner’s relationship to himself or herself, other people, and the world (benner 2015). the position acknowledges the necessity of the learner’s own agency as a necessary requirement for transcending a given state. these processes are true of not simply the relationship between a teacher and a student and learning in a classroom. they are equally valid in relation to the learning that occurs in relation to teachers’ learning, the learning that occurs within institutions (e.g. schools), and leaders’ learning. these processes are also true for the learning that occurs around curriculum development and production. however, these non-affirming practices are always undertaken in situated circumstances, and take these circumstances into account. this questioning, and critique must be undertaken in such a way that leads to an open engagement with ideas and which makes for a better world. such an approach is evident through various forms of deliberation, the development of various forms of communicative dialogue and action (habermas, 1987), and in keeping with a broader approach to educational practice as praxis. working from a more neo-aristotelian approach to practice, kemmis and smith (2008) argue that praxis is a form of action oriented to improving people’s lives, in the best traditions within a particular field. it is focused upon taking action, in the context of deliberating about what is best to do, under the circumstances: praxis is a particular kind of action. it is action that is morally-committed, and oriented and informed by traditions in a field. it is the kind of action people are engaged in when they think about what their action will mean in the world. praxis is what people do when they take into account all the circumstances and exigencies that confront them at a particular moment and then, taking the broadest view they can of what it is best to do, they act. (kemmis & smith, 2008, p. 4; emphasis original). in a more recent summation, kemmis et al. (2014) argue praxis is ‘action that aims for the good of those involved and for the good of human-kind’ (p. 26). such a standpoint advocates for changed circumstances, for a better world, and for individuals and groups as agents of productive change. in a sense, the non-affirmative approach is an educational act that seeks to constitute such a praxis-oriented stance through the power of rational argument – education as enlightened dialogue. in this sense, it believes in the possibility of rationality. however, it doesn’t imagine that it is somehow possible to escape political, social and cultural interests, to somehow ‘bracket out’ the conditions within which education is exercised; in this sense, the broader discourses (in a foucauldian sense) that also simultaneously constitute society are also always simultaneously at play. therefore, we would argue, a non-affirmative praxisoriented approach to education could be construed as something of a ‘middle-way’ between illusionary emancipatory possibilities, and the broader processes of power that always and everywhere operate. while there is a fine line between critical-transformative and non-affirmative positions, as uljens and ylimaki (2017) also argue, ‘political democracy requires a specific form of critical curriculum and educational leadership, including a relative independence for https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index hardy, uljens. critiquing curriculum policy reform 60 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index educational practitioners guaranteed by the political system itself’ (p. 10). the extent of this relative independence is an issue of interest in relation to curriculum policy making in both the finnish and australian contexts. policies and political conditions should not serve as predetermined constraints upon what is possible, but should instead establish conditions which enable teachers and students to engage productively with one another in processes of collaborative knowledge creation: as a theoretical construct non-affirmativity asks to what extent a given practice or policy allows for teachers and learners to co-create spaces for critical reflection, not only to substitute one ideology with another. although education is always political, the task of education is also to prepare for political participation the forms and aims of which are not determined in advance (p. 10 ). a ‘non-hierarchical’ relationship is fostered through such an approach, such that education is not somehow simply subordinate to society or political interests. rather, education operates within a sphere of relative independence with regard to such interests, even as it is always influenced by broader interests/conditions. a genuinely democratic education demands nothing less. in order to achieve these ends, and to create spaces for such thinking, it is necessary to have reflective educators, educational leaders and politicians. such thinking requires that ‘norms themselves must be brought into question for educational reasons.’ on such understandings, norms ‘are to be recognized, but not affirmed’; such a stance is necessary to foster pedagogical spaces within which ‘for the learner to step back and see how ones-self relates to these’ (ibid., p. 12). such thinking keeps open the possibilities for education; while it recognizes and acknowledges particular understandings, values and ideals, these are not simply ‘affirmed’ without considered, critical reflection. the data: analyzing key policy documents – a comparative approach the data informing the research, to which these conceptual resources are put to use, comprise key policy documents in each of the australian and finnish contexts. specifically, this includes the national core curriculum for basic education, 2014, which comprises the principal curriculum policy document for finland. in the australian context, the australian curriculum exists in the form of various webpages supported through the federal australian government’s department of education and training. these web resources are complemented by key teaching policy statements in the form of the national professional teaching standards national professional standards for teachers (mceecdya, 2011), and the national assessment program, although these texts and programs are not the primary focus of our work here. a comparative analysis of the two sets of curriculum policy documents informs the analysis. analytically, for us, comparative educational research therefore entails close scrutiny of the content of these curriculum documents but in context. to be able to understand the relationship between the broader policy conditions, curricular development processes and the subsequent ‘content’ advocated in curriculum policy and associated documents, it is necessary to draw upon policy research, curriculum research, and education theory. consequently, we seek to shed light upon how specific discourses operating at the national level relate to (including reflecting and challenging) broader global discourses/processes, and how they seek to engage with the local. however, in order to understand the nature of the primary curricula documents arising from this process (the ‘curriculum’ in a more traditional sense), and particularly the extent to which they genuinely foster engagement/dialogue and debate without simply advocating preconceived positions, we draw upon dietrich benner’s notion of https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index hardy, uljens. critiquing curriculum policy reform 61 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index education as ‘non-affirmative’ – as not simply ‘affirming’ a given position, without due regard for alternative viewpoints and dispositions. to focus attention upon how such processes also foster a more praxis-oriented stance – to make for a better world – through this dialogic process, we also draw upon notions of praxis (kemmis & smith, 2008; kemmis et al, 2014). while broader analyses may provide some insights into the nature of curricula reforms under global conditions, closer analysis of the key texts arising from these policy processes, are essential for making any sort of informed judgment about the nature of the educational practices that seem to be supported discursively within nation-states – in this case finland and australia – and how these are similar and differ. results and discussion our analysis is informed by an exploration of the content of the curriculum as reflected in the a) specific aims, b) contents and c) methods advocated in key curriculum documents in finland and australia. we present our findings by firstly exploring these foci in relation to the finnish case. this is followed by the australian case. we then present a comparative analysis between the two countries in the subsequent section, prior to the conclusion. aims, contents and methods in the finnish curriculum aims in the finnish curriculum: equality and local decision-making as pointed out by uljens & rajakaltio (2017) in 2010, significant changes were made in the administration guidelines for special education which affirmed a number of basic principles including the early identification of risks and a three-step-support system for inclusive education. the supplementary documents to the national core curriculum further demonstrated a strong emphasis on diversity and equality in all aspects; sex, age, ethnicity and nationality, language, religion, conviction, opinion, health and disability. these values correspond to ambitions to create a safe and collaborative school community, enhancing all students’ well-being and meaningful learning, to be reached through differentiation and cooperation (national board of education 2010). these changes and amendments all became included in the national core curriculum 2014 (finnish national board of education (fnbe), 2014). the curriculum also explicitly mentions the need to ensure balanced meals for students, and that educational provision will occur in accordance with anti-discrimination provisions, and the un declaration of human rights (including declaration on rights of the child, and un declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples). key values thus include the ‘uniqueness of each pupil and the right to a good education’ (p. 31), ‘humanity, general knowledge and ability, equality and democracy’ (p. 32), ‘cultural diversity as a richness’ (p. 33); ‘necessity of a sustainable way of living’ (p. 34). the curriculum is also explicit in outlining its ‘conception of learning’ as focused on students as active participants in their learning. local perspectives and emphases that are seen to ‘complement the underlying values and conception of learning of basic education’ are also flagged as valued (p. 37). schools are also tasked with educational, social, cultural and futures-oriented aims and objectives (section 3). this includes processes of ensuring high quality educational experiences, equitable dispositions, cultural competence and appreciation, and approaching change positively and productively, and as a vehicle for national and international sustainability. the new finnish curriculum seeks to be responsive to concerns about both equality and quality. discourses of equality are foregrounded in ways perhaps not evident in other national https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index hardy, uljens. critiquing curriculum policy reform 62 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index curricula. this is apparent from the outset, in the way the curriculum frames the provision of an equitable and quality education: the purpose of the steering of basic education is to ensure the equality and high quality of education and to create favorable conditions for the pupils’ growth, development and learning. (fnbe, 2014, p. 16) the finnish curriculum begins with the importance of the local in relation to the national core curriculum in the first chapter, moving to the ‘foundation of general knowledge and ability’ in the second chapter. these foundations include the legislative framework (basic education act) that informs the curriculum, the ‘underlying values of basic education’, the conception of learning informing the curriculum, and the nature of issues subject to local decision-making. the values, and the conception of learning as a collaborative process in which students are ‘active learners’ (p. 17) serve as the center-piece of the chapter. the values focus upon: the importance of the uniqueness of each student and their right to a good education; humanity, general knowledge and ability, equality and democracy; cultural diversity as richness; and the necessity of a sustainable way of living. within these values, the focus upon ‘humanity, general knowledge and ability, equality and democracy’ provide the opportunity for a more non-affirmative approach to ethics education in its aspirations for education. education shall not demand or lead to religious, philosophical or political commitment of the pupils. the school and education may not be used as channels of commercial influence (p. 16). foregrounding local decision making the challenges of responding to the provision of education are explicit from the early stages of the principal curriculum text, which also frames the need for changes to education provision to be better responsive to the world in which schools are situated: the normative part of the steering system comprises the basic education act and decree, government decrees, the national core curriculum, and the local curriculum and annual plans of individual schools based on it. various parts of this system are being updated to ensure that changes in the world around the school can be responded to and that the school’s role in building a sustainable future can be strengthened in the organization of education. (finnish national board of education, 2014, p. 16) there is also an element of ‘steering’ through the core curriculum, and that is framed as necessary for more equitable educational provision: the purpose of the core curriculum is to support and steer the provision of education and school work and to promote the equal implementation of comprehensive and single-structure basic education (finnish national board of education, 2014, p. 16) however, at the same time, it is striking how the finnish curriculum foregrounds local decision-making and planning in relation to the curriculum. the new finnish curriculum begins with a section entitled ‘the significance of local curricula and the local curriculum process.’ it explicitly states that the local curriculum is imperative for enacting various ‘national targets’ and ‘goals’, as well as responding to issues of local concern. it also acts as a connector between the schools and other individuals and groups focused on providing services for children’s growth and development: https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index hardy, uljens. critiquing curriculum policy reform 63 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index the local curriculum is an important part of the steering of education. it plays a key role in setting out and implementing both national targets and goals and tasks considered important locally. the local curriculum lays a common foundation for and points the direction to daily school work. it is a strategic and pedagogical tool that defines the policies for the education provider’s operation and the work carried out by the schools. the curriculum links the operation of the schools to other local activities aiming to promote the well-being and learning of children and young people. (finnish national board of education, 2014, p. 17). in this way, the local is explicitly privileged in much of the early documentation that attends the finnish curriculum, and that this is a valued aim is evident in the relatively extensive documentation about its importance in the early parts of the main curriculum document (fnbe, 2014). methods and content: transversal competences however, of much more significance is what are described as the ‘transversal competences’ outlined in the curriculum. these refer to various competences that ‘cross the boundaries of and link different fields of knowledge and skills’, and which are seen as essential for students’ current and future growth and learning, including for civic, social and economic development (p. 44). these competences are: competence as objectives for learning defined in the finnish national core curriculum are delineated as follows (fnbe 2014): ● thinking and learning to learn ● cultural competence, interaction and self-expression ● taking care of oneself and others, managing daily life ● multiliteracy ● competence in information and communication technology (ict) ● working life competence and entrepreneurship ● participation, involvement and building a sustainable future. explicit mention is made of these transversal competences in relation to local decision making. to operationalize these transversal competences, educators are asked to consider: ● what are the perspectives that may complement the mission of basic education and that are manifest in its practical implementation; ● what are the potential local emphases of the transversal competence areas defined in the core curriculum, and how are these emphases manifested in practice…; ● what are the arrangements and measures by which the achievement of transversal competence objectives in education is ensured and monitored? (fnbe, 2014, p. 56) accepting the above transversal competencies reflect partly a europeanisation process as they correspond with those eight key-competencies advanced by european union from more than a decade ago: ● communication in the mother tongue ● communication in foreign languages https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index hardy, uljens. critiquing curriculum policy reform 64 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index ● mathematical competence and basic competences in science and technology ● digital competence ● learning to learn ● social and civic competences ● sense of initiative and entrepreneurship (official journal l 394 of 30.12.2006) the movement towards emphasizing general objectives instead of subject-matter teaching is a fairly dramatic shift in the finnish education culture, including teacher education, and especially since teacher education for primary/lower and upper secondary school have been solely centered around subjects. typically, a teacher for these grades has been teaching two subjects each, of which one was the major. now the schools face the question about to what extent teaching in a school subject supports the learner’s development with respect to the key competencies above. the policy movement towards emphasizing more holistic transversal competencies invites collaborative teacher practices, which also forces teacher education to rework its approaches. accepting general competences as guiding aims require cooperation across school subjects, including making use of various kinds of integrative working methods. instead of a general part expressing aims and a specific part communicating information about subjects, a feature of this new curriculum was, therefore, an integrated approach to curriculum development. the objectives in the subject syllabi include competence goals. an explicit intention of the fnbe group leading this policy work was to promote collaborative teaching. this was enhanced by bringing about multi-disciplinary learning modules (uljens & rajakaltio, 2017). at the same time, in our interpretation, the finnish curriculum policy promotes more of a bildung oriented curriculum for four reasons, and the curriculum is not simply treated as a ‘compilation’ of general competencies per se: a) the transversal competencies are not the only general objectives explicated in the curriculum, but are complemented by an individually-centered way of communicating the aims of schooling; b) the transversal competencies are clearly elaborated in relation to specific subject matter contents; c) evaluation procedures do not focus students’ abilities regarding transversal competencies but rather assess students’ knowledge and understanding in subject matter; d) national evaluation of student success apply sample-based methods thereby not having schools compete against each other. teachers are also allowed the degrees of freedom to adopt teaching to the individual students’ interests and needs. in this way, the transversal competences are key vehicles for reform, but they do not exist in isolation of a more holistic, and subject-informed approach to learning. methods and content: integrative teaching and multidisciplinarity in relation to teaching methods and content, integrative and multidisciplinary instructional approaches are also advocated within the new curriculum. various ‘real-world’ themes are encouraged as vehicles for such approaches. schools must provide at least one multidisciplinary learning module each year, and teaching approaches must reflect this multidisciplinary approach. these modules are seen as providing opportunities to achieve the goals of basic education, and ‘in particular, the development of transversal competences’ (p. 73). furthermore, topics are planned locally, and reflective of the principles of school culture https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index hardy, uljens. critiquing curriculum policy reform 65 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index outlined in section 4.2. the transversal competences are also seen as a direct outcome of these multidisciplinary approaches; this is evident in how the links between school culture, multidisciplinary learning modules and transversal competences are explicitly outlined (see diagram p. 75). the municipalities are particularly important in the work of curriculum enactment, as they are responsible for making decisions on a variety of issues relating to teaching methods and content, including: ● how the education provider and schools promote and evaluate the implementation of the principles of the school culture; which are the potential local emphases and how are they manifested in practice…; ● the local goals and special questions that guide the selection, use and development of learning environments and working methods…; ● how integrative instruction is implemented in practice; ● how multidisciplinary learning modules are implemented; ● the local goals that guide implementation…; ● the principles and methods that guide implementation (for example, whether decisions on the topics of multidisciplinary learning modules are made in a joint local curriculum while the more detailed objectives and contents are described in a schoolspecific curriculum or annual plan, or whether some other method is followed; how it can be ensured that the studies of each pupil include at least one multidisciplinary learning module in each school year; what type of instructions are issued concerning the scope of the learning modules, how the subjects included in the modules at any one time are selected; how the pupils’ participation in their planning is organized …); ● objectives and contents (defined either in the curriculum or in the annual plan as decided by the education provider); ● assessment practices (how to ensure that working skills and other competencies demonstrated in the modules are taken into account in the assessment of subjects that are part of the module implementation) and; ● monitoring, evaluation and development of the implementation. (p. 77) a range of ‘issues subject to local decision’ (p. 106) are also outlined in the national curriculum and pertain to the relations between school providers (municipalities) and schools. these include in relation to: the organization of the school day; various disciplinary discussions and measures; distance learning; grade-independent studies; multi-grade instruction; flexible basic education; instruction in particular situations (e.g. hospitals, prisons); and, other activities supporting the goals of education (pp. 107-110). methods and content: collaborative curriculum work there is also a focus upon engagement and cooperation amongst educators in the provision of the local curriculum: cooperation in the preparation of the curriculum and annual plan promotes commitment to shared goals and the coherence of instruction and education. the education provider shall ensure that the education personnel have possibilities for taking part in this cooperation and promote both cooperation between subjects and multiprofessional cooperation between various groups of actors. these opportunities for participation will be ensured regardless of the manner in which the curriculum is prepared. (fnbe, 2014, p. 19-20) https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index hardy, uljens. critiquing curriculum policy reform 66 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index significantly, explicit mention is also made that opportunities for curriculum development and related plans ‘must also be provided for the pupils’ (p. 20). in effect, because of the way in which the finnish constitution is framed, the municipalities are held responsible as the ‘education provider’ described within the curriculum documents. methods and content: developing school culture a broadened notion of methods ‘school development’ processes are considered key to the enactment of these competences, and the new national curriculum more broadly. the operation culture of schools is considered key to the educational experiences of students: the school culture plays a key role in implementing comprehensive basic education. it always affects the quality of school work as experienced by the pupils. (finnish national board of education, 2014, p. 58) school cultural development is construed as necessitating ongoing interaction with all members of the community: the clearest manifestations of the school culture are found in the community’s practices. in basic education, all practices are geared to supporting the goals set for the educational work. the school culture must support commitment to the goals and objectives and promote the realization of the shared underlying values and conception of learning in school work. the basic precondition for developing the school culture is open and interactive discussion that is characterized by respect for others, ensures the participation of all members of the community, and inspires trust. (finnish national board of education, 2014, p. 59). several key principles are identified as guiding the development of school culture. these relate to the cultivation of schools as learning communities, emphasizing well-being and safety in daily life, a versatile approach to cultivating learning, advocacy of cultural diversity and languages, opportunities for democratic action, equity and equality, and environmental sustainability: ● a learning community at the heart of the school culture. this entails provision of an environment in which all can learn; ● well-being and safety in daily life. this includes preventing discrimination; ● interaction and versatile working approach. there is a focus on flexibility and experimentation in learning environments and approaches; ● cultural diversity and language awareness. there is a valuing of multiculturalism and multi-lingualism; ● participation and democratic action. the community fosters participation and democratic dialogue amongst all participants; ● equity and equality. diversity and difference are valued; ● environmental responsibility and sustainable future orientation. specific practices and values are altered to foster improved environmental stewardship. (finnish national board of education, 2014, pp. 60-65) there is also a focus upon engagement and cooperation amongst educators in the provision of the local curriculum. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index hardy, uljens. critiquing curriculum policy reform 67 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index the australian curriculum aims, methods and contents aims of the australian curriculum the australian curriculum also seeks to provide the opportunity to foster learning in a myriad of ways, and through a progression of learning opportunities through schooling. the values of the curriculum are evident in advocacy for successful learning, informed citizens, and this is to occur through a specific curriculum program from foundation to year 10: the australian curriculum is designed to develop successful learners, confident and creative individuals, and active and informed citizens. it is presented as a progression of learning from foundation-year 10 that makes clear to teachers, parents, students and others in the wider community what is to be taught, and the quality of learning expected of young people as they progress through school (acara, n.d(a)). at the same time, a senior secondary curriculum is supported that has been endorsed by the education council – the council of federal, state and territory education ministers – with fifteen senior secondary subjects endorsed across english, mathematics, science, and humanities and social sciences. the australian curriculum also seeks to engage with all students as learners, and includes explicit attention to equity as construed in relation to geographic local and ‘background’ status: the australian curriculum sets the expectations for what all australian students should be taught, regardless of where they live or their background. (acara, n.d(b)) there is also some attention given to the importance of local direction and organization of learning, with schools and teachers construed as responsible for the organization of learning, in relation to the needs of their specific students: schools and teachers are responsible for the organization of learning and they will choose contexts for learning and plan learning in ways that best meet their students’ needs and interests. (acara, n.d.(c)) however, this equity principle is also problematized by the ambiguity that surrounds how nation-states seek to provide education for their citizens. the curriculum explicitly states a need to ensure ‘access to the same content’, and ‘consistent national standards’. on the one hand, this statement could be taken as evidence of efforts to ensure educational provision of an appropriate quality is available to all. however, at the same time, such a stance also reflects a more ‘controlling’ ‘consistent’ approach, at the national level, that may limit how states and individual schools seek to actually enact the curriculum in ways responsive to their particular circumstances. more recent reforms to the australian curriculum have led to a stronger focus upon issues about equity, described as ‘diversity.’ in more recent iterations, a broadly inclusive ethos is evident: acara is committed to the development of a high-quality curriculum for all australian students, one that promotes excellence and equity in education. all students https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index hardy, uljens. critiquing curriculum policy reform 68 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index are entitled to rigorous, relevant and engaging learning programs drawn from a challenging curriculum that addresses their individual learning needs. teachers will use the australian curriculum to develop teaching and learning programs that build on students’ interests, strengths, goals and learning needs, and address the cognitive, affective, physical, social and aesthetic needs of all students (acara, n.d.(d)) these aims are also made in the context of explicit reference to the melbourne declaration on educational goals for young people (mceetya, 2008), which provided the policy framework for the australian curriculum and referred explicitly to the need for australian schooling to promote equity and excellence (goal 1), and to enable all students to become ‘successful learners, confident and creative individuals and active and informed citizens’ (goal 2). methods and contents: competencies as capabilities in the australian curriculum the australian curriculum also refers to seven general capabilities which arose out of the mceetya process (mceetya, 2008): literacy; numeracy; information and communication technology; critical and creative thinking; personal and social capability; ethical understanding, and intercultural understanding. general capabilities are described as being addressed through the learning areas (english, mathematics; science, humanities and social sciences, arts, technologies, health and physical education, languages) particularly where they are referred to and applied in specific content descriptions within each learning area, and where these descriptions are further elaborated (described as ‘content elaborations’). the general capabilities are organized into three sections: an introduction outlining the nature of the capability and its relationship to the learning areas; various organizing elements that undergird a learning continuum; and a learning continuum that outlines the nature of the knowledge, skills, behaviors and dispositions students should be developing at specific stages of their schooling. the general capabilities are described as being elaborated through each of the learning areas, and assessed where appropriate. in relation to literacy, a broad-based approach is taken, focusing upon communicating in school and beyond: in the australian curriculum, students become literate as they develop the knowledge, skills and dispositions to interpret and use language confidently for learning and communicating in and out of school and for participating effectively in society. literacy involves students listening to, reading, viewing, speaking, writing and creating oral, print, visual and digital texts, and using and modifying language for different purposes in a range of contexts. (acara, n.d.(e)) similarly, for numeracy, the curriculum is construed more broadly as a vehicle to cultivate capacity with numbers: in the australian curriculum, students become numerate as they develop the knowledge and skills to use mathematics confidently across other learning areas at school and in their lives more broadly. numeracy encompasses the knowledge, skills, behaviours and dispositions that students need to use mathematics in a wide range of situations. it involves students recognising and understanding the role of mathematics in the world and having the dispositions and capacities to use mathematical knowledge and skills purposefully. (acara, n.d.(e)) https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index hardy, uljens. critiquing curriculum policy reform 69 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index icts are also seen as productive vehicles for learning both within and beyond school: in the australian curriculum, students develop information and communication technology (ict) capability as they learn to use ict effectively and appropriately to access, create and communicate information and ideas, solve problems and work collaboratively in all learning areas at school and in their lives beyond school. ict capability involves students learning to make the most of the digital technologies available to them, adapting to new ways of doing things as technologies evolve and limiting the risks to themselves and others in a digital environment. (acara, n.d.(e)) the capacity to engage in critical and creative thinking is framed as drawing upon and developing practices and processes of logic, resourcefulness, imagination and innovation: in the australian curriculum, students develop capability in critical and creative thinking as they learn to generate and evaluate knowledge, clarify concepts and ideas, seek possibilities, consider alternatives and solve problems. critical and creative thinking involves students thinking broadly and deeply using skills, behaviours and dispositions such as reason, logic, resourcefulness, imagination and innovation in all learning areas at school and in their lives beyond school. (acara, n.d.(e)) personal and social capability is also construed as a broad-ranging activity, involving students modulating their emotions, being empathetic, developing positive relationships, being responsible, working in teams, responding effectively to difficult circumstances, and fostering leadership skills: in the australian curriculum, students develop personal and social capability as they learn to understand themselves and others, and manage their relationships, lives, work and learning more effectively. personal and social capability involves students in a range of practices including recognizing and regulating emotions, developing empathy for others and understanding relationships, establishing and building positive relationships, making responsible decisions, working effectively in teams, handling challenging situations constructively and developing leadership skills. (acara, n.d.(e)) ethical understanding is similarly wide-ranging, entailing understandings of context, tension and uncertainty. principles of honesty, resilience, empathy and respect, outlined in the earlier melbourne declaration, are also promoted: ethical understanding involves students building a strong personal and socially oriented ethical outlook that helps them to manage context, conflict and uncertainty, and to develop an awareness of the influence that their values and behaviour have on others. it does this through fostering the development of ‘personal values and attributes such as honesty, resilience, empathy and respect for others’, and the capacity to act with ethical integrity, as outlined in the melbourne declaration on educational goals for young australians (mceetya 2008, p. 9). (acara, n.d.(e)) finally, in relation to intercultural understanding, the curriculum advocated opportunities for students to reflect upon their ow culture, and that of others. the multifaceted https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index hardy, uljens. critiquing curriculum policy reform 70 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index nature of different cultures is supported, as is engagement with diverse cultures, and the development of connections and respect for difference: in the australian curriculum, students develop intercultural understanding as they learn to value their own cultures, languages and beliefs, and those of others. they come to understand how personal, group and national identities are shaped, and the variable and changing nature of culture. intercultural understanding involves students learning about and engaging with diverse cultures in ways that recognize commonalities and differences, create connections with others and cultivate mutual respect. (acara, n.d.(e)) again, these general capabilities are all described as to be addressed within the content of the specific learning areas that comprise the curriculum. methods and contents: cross-curriculum priorities in the australian curriculum the cross-curriculum priorities are similarly described as arising from the original melbourne declaration (mceetya, 2008), and focus upon three areas that ‘need to be addressed for the benefit of both individuals and australia as a whole’ (acara, n.d.(f)). the australian cross-curriculum priorities reflect the specific australian context –and are quite different from finnish curricula policy reforms. this includes attention to indigenous knowledges and cultures, australia’s engagement with asia, and issues of sustainability. again, these are to be addressed through the specific learning areas/subjects: the australian curriculum also includes three current cross-curriculum priorities that are to be developed, where relevant, through the learning areas. these are: aboriginal and torres strait islander histories and cultures; asia and australia’s engagement with asia; and sustainability. the priorities are not separate subjects in themselves; they are addressed through learning area content, where appropriate, and identified by icons. a set of organising ideas that reflect the essential knowledge, understanding and skills has been developed for each cross-curriculum priority (acara, n.d. (f)) . the cross-curriculum priorities are described as dimensions that enable rich insights into each of the priorities, at the same time as they enhance learning through the learning areas, and enable engagement between learning areas: the priorities provide national, regional and global dimensions which will enrich the curriculum through development of considered and focused content that fits naturally within learning areas. they enable the delivery of learning area content at the same time as developing knowledge, understanding and skills relating to aboriginal and torres strait islander histories and cultures, asia and australia’s engagement with asia or sustainability. incorporation of the priorities will encourage conversations between learning areas and between students, teachers and the wider community. (acara, n.d.(f)) in relation to aboriginal and torres strait islander (a&tsi) histories and cultures, students are described as having the opportunity to develop their understandings and knowledge of australia through engaging with a&tsi perspectives, and this in turn will enable them to productively understand contemporary a&tsi communities: https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index hardy, uljens. critiquing curriculum policy reform 71 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index the aboriginal and torres strait islander histories and cultures priority provides opportunities for all students to deepen their knowledge of australia by engaging with the world’s oldest continuous living cultures. through the australian curriculum, students will understand that contemporary aboriginal and torres strait islander communities are strong, resilient, rich and diverse. (acara, n.d.(f)). furthermore, explicit mention is made about how this might be achieved in relation to each learning area. in english, for example, literature is construed as a key source to inform students: in the australian curriculum: english, students begin to engage with the priority as they develop an awareness and appreciation of, and respect for, aboriginal and torres strait islander literature. this includes storytelling traditions (oral narrative) and contemporary literature. students will learn to develop respectful, critical understandings of the social, historical and cultural contexts associated with different uses of language features and text structures including images and visual language. (acara, n.d.(g)) this priority is also developed around three key concepts which encourage students to develop better understandings of indigenous connections to country/place and the belief systems that inform this relationship; the diversity of a&tsi peoples’ cultures through engagement with ‘language, ways of life and experiences as expressed through historical, social and political lenses’, and; the rich variety of kinship structures and contributions of indigenous peoples at local, national and global scales (acara, n.d.(f)). in relation to ‘asia and australia’s engagement with asia’, students are construed as being provided the opportunity ‘to celebrate the social, cultural, political and economic links that connect australia with asia’ (acara, n.d.(f)). they are encouraged to be ‘asianliterate’, and to ‘develop knowledge and understanding of asian societies, cultures, beliefs and environments’ (acara, n.d.(f)), as well as the connections between peoples in asia, australia and the remainder of the world: ‘asia literacy provides students with the skills to communicate and engage with the peoples of asia so they can effectively live, work and learn in the region.’ (acara, n.d.(f)). within this priority, the three concepts through which this priority will be developed through an understanding of the diversity of peoples, countries and environments in this part of the world; historical and ongoing achievements of peoples of asia, and; past and ongoing links between australia and asia. in relation to ‘sustainability’, the focus is upon developing within students ‘an appreciation of the necessity of acting for a more sustainable future and so address the ongoing capacity of earth to maintain all life and meet the needs of the present without compromising the needs of future generations’ (acara, n.d.(f)). the first key concept through which the priority will be developed is through the exploration of ‘the interdependent and dynamic nature of systems that support all life on earth as well as the promotion of healthy social, economic and ecological patterns of living for our collective wellbeing and survival’ (acara, n.d.(f)). the second concept calls for an understanding of sustainability in a global context, and the discussion of a variety of perspectives on ‘ecosystems, values and social justice’ (acara, n.d.(f)). the third concept relates to developing the ability to engage in reflective thinking to help foster empowerment of students ‘to design action that will lead to a more equitable, respectful and sustainable future’ (acara, n.d.(f)). https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index hardy, uljens. critiquing curriculum policy reform 72 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index discussion: a non-affirmative, praxis-oriented conception of education? curriculum aims: equity and responsiveness to context in relation to the aims of the curricula more broadly, within both curricula, issues of equity are apparent. if we look carefully at the discursive presentation of the australian curriculum, from the outset, there is clear evidence of an equity-informed approach to teaching practice. however, arguably, the conception of equity is also one that construes the australian curriculum as ‘set[ing] the expectations for what all australian students should be taught, regardless of where they live or their background’ (acara, n.d(b)), and this reflects a potentially homogenising approach, particularly in relation to geographic locations, and their background. in part, such an approach can be construed as reflective of broader homogenizing influence of ‘fast-policy’ (peck & theodore, 2015), neoliberal logics, which fail to take context adequately into account. while a more holistic understanding of diversity appears evident in the further elaboration of the aims of the australian curriculum, particularly in relation to ‘diversity’, whether such diversity is recognized sufficiently from the outset is a moot point. furthermore, the concurrent influence of test-based accountability in the context of naplan testing has made it difficult to enact more context-responsive approaches and foci, which effectively challenge these more responsive possibilities (polesel, rice & dulfer, 2014). at the same time, the finnish curriculum is expected to be strongly connected to local contexts of community, and of efforts to cultivate circumstances which are conducive to the individual reaching knowledge and understanding through their own inquiry and uncoerced learning. the more extended elaboration of the nature and importance of local contexts is indicative of tighter relations between the national and the municipal levels of government in finland, which are much looser, albeit increasingly ‘national’ in orientation in relation to the federal and state governments in australia. this is not surprising, given the states are principally responsible for education in australia, rather than the federal government. nevertheless, a more non-affirmative educative stance is evident in the finnish context is the way in which the curricula value and validate local circumstances and conditions for learning; local decision-making processes appear to be foregrounded much more in the finnish context. this is a clear manifestation of the value and significance of community in relation to schooling processes, and reflected in the mutually recursive way in which school-community relations are constituted: ‘the curriculum links the operation of the schools to other local activities aiming to promote the well-being and learning of children and young people’ (fnbe, 2014, p. 17). this manifestation of the local is also evidence in how school cultural development is explicitly promoted as crucial to the enactment of the curriculum. again, however, constitutional differences are important here. in australia, education is the responsibility of the individual states, with the commonwealth/federal government providing additional (typically tied) funding to those areas it deems most important (most recently, in relation to literacy and numeracy, stem education, and languages). in contrast, in finland, local municipalities are responsible for the provision of education, supported by the national government. in the australian context, this focus upon the ‘local’ is evident in advocacy by teachers to ‘choose contexts for learning and plan learning in ways that best meet their students’ needs and interests’. (acara, n.d.(c)). such approaches have the potential to be sufficiently open to enable the possibilities for teachers to engage with students about what these learning experiences might be. however, the focus upon how to ‘best meet their students’ needs and interest’ could also imply a more passive approach on the part of students, with teachers as the ‘decision-makers’ about what these learning experiences should look like. the way in https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index hardy, uljens. critiquing curriculum policy reform 73 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index which teachers are openly constituted as ‘responsible for the organization of learning’, and that they ‘will choose contexts for learning’ betrays a much more prescriptive and directive approach. while it may be possible to challenge such circumstances through how teachers enact the curriculum, these potentialities, arguably, should also be evident within the curriculum as expressed in policy documents, and not simply left to the good will and professional capacity of teachers and principals. the extent to which students are provided with the opportunity for a more ‘summonsing’ to learning approach is reflected in efforts to recognize their experiences but whether and how this is sufficient for a more non-affirmative approach is perhaps open to question. in relation to comparative studies, and contextual influences more broadly, while the aims of the curricula can be related ‘horizontally’ – in relation to policy-borrowing and lending, and ‘vertically’ – in relation to national and more local responses to globalized policy discourses (steiner-khamsi, 2004), it appears that in the australian curriculum policy context more broadly, there has not been substantive borrowing around focusing upon ‘the local’. while the finnish focus upon context as a ‘leading’ comparator country could provide hints into what the aims of a productive educational system might look like, there is perhaps less evidence of such policy learning about what is occurring in other countries with a more explicitly local-orientation (such as finland) from the australian side. that the municipalities are the educational ‘providers’ in finland, rather than the states as in australia, is a significant difference between the two contexts, and enables a more context-responsive approach in the finnish case. however, this more context-responsive approach may also be threatened by increased centralization in the finnish case. if decisionmaking is decentralised, in the hands of the municipalities, this is impossible to control. this concern about control is arguably a reason for more recentralisation processes that have also occurred most recently in finland – and that seek to reclaim control, via processes of ‘steering at a distance’ (kickert, 1995). increased control also has the potential to reduce the efficacy of educators at more local levels, potentially reducing the capacity for substantial reform at the local level. nevertheless, the discursive focus upon the local at the level of the principal curriculum document guiding educational reform in finland also gives confidence that this ‘localness’ may not be easily relinquished. curricula content and methods: competencies and cross-curriculum priorities in relation to the curriculum content in each context, the transversal competencies (finland) and cross-curriculum priorities (australia) reflect what is valued in the current curricula in each nation-state. the oecd (2006) competences are strongly reflected in both national contexts, reflecting how more economistic logics exert influence internationally, constituting what might be described as a neoliberal imaginary, and a global education policy field (rizvi & lingard, 2010). the way in which the curriculum acts as a tool for governing educational practice is evident through the particular conception of education that it promotes. and the conception of education promoted in each of the curricula presented here is a multifarious and at times contested, reflecting the multifarious foci and influences upon the curriculum-making, and curriculum-taking process in and across national contexts. in some ways, these competing foci have contributed to cultivating the conditions for a nonaffirmative, more praxis-oriented conception of education, but in other ways, these conditions themselves challenge the possibility of more substantive, non-affirmative, praxis-oriented stances through the curricula. in a sense, the foregrounding of the ‘competences’ and ‘general capabilities’ within the respective curricula reflect the more neoliberal positioning of education, and a new concept of the self-managing, active ‘citizen’ with entrepreneurial perspectives. pedagogically, https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index hardy, uljens. critiquing curriculum policy reform 74 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index however, education has always tried to promote capacities beyond the learning of specific content. the development of more general capacities (‘transversal competences’ in the finnish context) is reflected in a broader subject matter oriented didaktik tradition, including a focus upon how to provide the conditions for productive student learning more broadly, beyond curriculum ‘subjects’. competencies only come to play in terms and as related to specific contents. arguably, in the australian context, and from a broader critical tradition informing curriculum studies, the focus upon ‘capabilities’ and ‘cross-curricula priorities’ is also reflective of a conception of education that seeks to work across disciplinary knowledges. there is a particular focus upon marginalized understandings and perspectives within dominant knowledge domains – such as a focus upon sustainability (including environmental sustainability), indigenous ways of knowing (ontologies and epistemologies), and engagement with diverse cultures (including in relation to australia’s geographical location as an asianpacific country), which again is not very much at the fore in the finnish curriculum. arguably, both curricula attempt to provide, and reflect, the sorts of circumstances for a non-affirmative, praxis-oriented conception of curricula development and enactment in how they keep these possibilities open. both the general capabilities and transversal competences are described as being developed through the various learning areas/subjects in their respective contexts, and these are not prescribed. the curriculum in each country does appear to display evidence of a summons to self-activity (fichte), which in turn has the potential to enable the development of the child/student, such that she/he is able to reach consciousness of her own self-development – her freedom to act. this is at least partially evident in the way in which teachers are encouraged to foster the circumstances within which students come to develop particular transversal competences and general capabilities. the content of the two curricula reveal some of these competences/capabilities seem to share common traits/characteristics, and some of these common foci may provide the opportunity for a more open conception of education which is not restricted to particular ways and means. the competence of ‘thinking and learning to learn (t1)’ seems to resonate with the general capability of ‘critical and creative thinking’ and retain possibilities for more summonsing-to-self activities. similarly, the focus upon enhanced cultural comprehension is evident in the ‘cultural competence, interaction and self-expression (t2)’, and the general capability of ‘ethical understanding and cultural understanding’. ‘taking care of oneself and managing daily life’ (t3) has some resonances with the ‘personal and social capability’. these also all seem not to foreclose upon particular ways of understanding students’ place in the world. however, there are also important differences. the ‘multiliteracy’ (t4) competency in the finnish context seems to foreground a richer and more cross-curricula approach than the support for the three discrete general capabilities which appear to be most closely affiliated in the australian case: literacy, numeracy and icts. students are certainly constituted as responsive to a particular kind of summons to self-activity, but, in the australian case, this appears to be dominated by broader conceptions of these capabilities as necessary ‘workready’ capacities. the federal government’s revisions of the curriculum, and its subsequent emphasis upon ‘back to basics’ provides further evidence of a more instrumentalist approach to education, and a desire to increasingly ensure that schooling serves the immediate interests of industry, even as the focus upon ‘innovation’ within the broader political realm simultaneously gestures towards the difficulty of actually doing so. however, the finnish focus upon ‘working life competence and entrepreneurship’ also clearly resonate strongly with more working life-oriented approach. in this case, the market logic arguably, moves to the foreground, while cultural and historical understandings are more marginalized. while earlier, the role of the school was to constitute the nation, and https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index hardy, uljens. critiquing curriculum policy reform 75 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index citizenship, this appears to have been challenged and perhaps marginalized. more instrumental approaches to schools and schooling, reflective of economistic logics, but not of a more reflexive disposition of concern for sustainable world – a world worth living in (kemmis et al, 2014) – have exerted increasing influence, even as religious, cultural and broader historical circumstances are evident. however, again, that the finnish competences are not only explicitly elaborated through the general objectives explicated in the curriculum, but are complemented by a more individually-focused way of communicating the aims of schooling, and the way in which they are strongly elaborated in relation to the content of specific subject matter, also helps reduce the potentially reductive impact, and a more problematic ‘affirmative’ economistic rendering of schooling. arguably, more instrumentalist sensibilities are evident in relation to the australian cross-curricula priorities. while working life competence and entrepreneurship (t6) may reflect more economistic logics in the absence of sufficient focus upon situating the competencies within the curriculum as a whole, such logics are reflected in those more economistic features of the push for australian students to engage with asia. in the australian context, this push to promote engagement with asia is certainly undertaken to enhance intercultural understanding and appreciation with australia’s neighbors. however, it is also undertaken to enhance broader strategic (e.g. singapore military training in australia with australian troops), political (e.g. indonesia as the largest democratic muslim country in the world) and economic alliances (e.g. with china as the biggest customer for australian mineral resources). such responses could be seen as important ways of stabilizing international relations, and in this way, could be construed as promoting a form of practice as praxis – practice as concerned with enhancing circumstances for not only individuals, but the wider world. however, this potentiality could be rendered more strongly in the australian case, to challenge foreclosing upon more economistic and political renderings of what students ‘should know’. a more non-affirmative approach is certainly challenged by more emphatic emphases upon advocacy for particular kinds of strategic, political and economic alliances that the current government might feel should be cultivated in schooling through the curriculum, for broader social, political and economic purposes. at the same time, participation, involvement and building a sustainable future (t7) does resonate strongly with the cross-curriculum priority of sustainability, and here, arguably, more overtly praxis-oriented concerns about how to reduce environmental pollution and destruction are much more evident (kemmis et al, 2014). the promotion of ‘environmental stewardship’ (national board of education, 2014, pp. 60-65) is similarly evidence of a more praxisoriented approach. and the advocacy for various integrative and multidisciplinary instructional approaches in the finnish curriculum could serve as a useful vehicle for cultivating a focus upon education for sustainability more broadly. indeed, these integrative and multidisciplinary instructional approaches seem to provide the opportunity to develop more genuinely non-affirmative approaches, as students are called to potentially identify the nature of the sorts of sustainability practices they wish to explore, and/or particular industries or human activities to which more sustainable practices would seem increasingly important, indeed vital. the way in which the transversal competences are also construed as necessary for cultivating students’ civic, social and economic development (p. 44) is also evidence of the explicit linking of broader community processes and schooling for the generation of a more praxis-oriented disposition. an important point of distinction between the two curricula is evident in relation to indigenous knowledges and traditions. reflecting ongoing concerns about both indigenous participation in education, and broader tensions about the relationship between indigenous and dominant knowledge traditions in australia, the australian curriculum foregrounds the https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index hardy, uljens. critiquing curriculum policy reform 76 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index place of such knowledges through its advocacy for a panoply of aboriginal and torres strait islander perspectives. the way in which students are to develop better understandings of indigenous’ perspectives and approaches to country/place, the rich variety of different indigenous cultures, languages and experiences, and the diversity of kinship structures, and of indigenous contributions at local, national and global levels all reflect much more praxis oriented approach to education as not only oriented towards the development of the individual, but of the broader society more generally. in finland the sami culture and language is acknowledged but not in the same explicit way as in australia. the influence of varying approaches to evaluation another important point of distinction pertains to evaluation, which has particular effects upon the nature of the curriculum developed and subsequently enacted. in a centralized evaluation-centric political culture, as in australia at present, where there is so much focus upon reductive accounts of students’ numeracy and literacy capacities (polesel et al, 2014; comber, 2012; thompson & harbaugh, 2013), how teachers respond to the invitation to teach as outlined in the curriculum, is limited by these broader policy conditions. while, in many ways, the australian curriculum seems to provide teachers with the latitude to decide how best to teach their students – thereby seeming to preserve teachers’ professional autonomy and independence of practice – the conditions within which this curriculum is enacted serve as a counter to these freedoms. because teachers are responsive to national testing pressures, even as they may deny the influence of these pressures (hardy, 2014; lingard, thompson & sellar, 2016), the decisions they make are affected by these circumstances. in this respect the finnish education system, including curriculum and assessment, represents perhaps a better balance – the absence of an evaluation-centric approach provide the teachers with opportunities to reconstruct educative spaces more from the perspective of students interests. teachers are empowered with an influence over evaluation. in a sense, in australia, assessment practices are reflective of the ‘social efficiency’ argument of deng and luke (2008), while aspects of the curriculum are reflective of a variety of approaches, including more ‘social reconstructionist’ approaches (such as in relation to advocacy for sustainability, better understanding of indigenous issues, and australia’s place in asia). ‘academic rationalism’ is reflected in the finnish context (deng & luke, 2008) through not as strongly as in the australian one. yet, as assessment is mainly focused on students learning of the content taught, this is perhaps in tension with the transversal competences. even as the ‘didaktik tradition’ is also clearly prevalent and evident, arguably, more ‘social efficiency’ approaches are also evident, through the advocacy of some competences, perhaps most obviously related to entrepreneurship. this is not to ignore that more ‘social reconstructionist’ approaches continue to be evident, with their emphasis upon equity – witness the explicit reference to such concerns from the outset of the basic education curriculum. in australia, it has only been more recently that concerns have been expressed about doing more to address the needs of lower performing students, as indicated in naplan – revealing ourselves as engaging in more social reconstructionist, praxis-oriented approach, even as the evidence used to advocate for such a position is more reductive (i.e. standardized test results)! this is one of many tensions in the relations between policy, curriculum and evaluation. more economic issues are reflected through ‘social efficiency’ while more political ideals are established through ‘social reconstructionism’, while a more ‘open future’ is evident through ‘humanist’ ideals (while the ‘academic rationalist’ position is reflective of the cultural conservative reproductive approach (and also potentially neonationalist and conservative). https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index hardy, uljens. critiquing curriculum policy reform 77 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index also the way in which the australian curriculum is presented through the acara website reflects how a focus on evaluation is immediately evident in relation to the curriculum. the very name of the organization – australian curriculum, assessment and reporting authority – together with the recent history of test-based accountability practices in the australian context makes it difficult to construe the australian curriculum as strongly grounded in principles of education other than those associated with assessment. in many ways, the specific learnings about the importance of context that have been promulgated in the finnish case, including skepticism about international comparator surveys, and processes of ‘international spectacle’ and ‘mutual accountability’ (simola, 2005) do not appear discursively in the relation to the australian curriculum policy settings, and this is evident in the relations between standardized testing and curriculum in australia. rather than challenging the more decontextualized logics, and more reductive comparative logics that reduce schooling to test scores on national and international tests, key australian curriculum policy texts seem to overlook such foci, even as they spend relatively less time and attention focusing sufficiently upon local circumstances. in a way, the most recent finnish curriculum is also more centralized. first, it does encourage certain teaching method in ways that has not been the case before. these teaching methods are now a topic within the curriculum, with some professional teaching associations perceiving such statements as an imposition upon the work of teachers. the focus upon ‘phenomenon-based’ teaching, for example, is prescribed in ways that were not previously the case. second, instead of emphasizing school-based curricula, with the task to make a selection regarding aims and contents, schools are now expected to create development plans. this might be taken as an indication of that schools are more clearly than before seen as executive institutions expected to developing themselves as to better reach aims explicated in the national curriculum. however, again, unlike in the australian setting, the evaluation culture in finland is based upon a survey approach of students’ knowledge, and not only in relation to literacy, numeracy, but also citizenship education. the finnish curriculum is influenced differently because of a different evaluation culture and policy environment. also, unlike the australian case, the responsibility for evaluation is at the level of the municipality/local council level – a further example of how the finnish case is less centralized than the australian case, where such responsibilities are the work of the individual states, but with considerable attention to the influence of naplan, particularly on primary schools. in a sense, the evaluation approach ‘feeds back’ and influences the way in which teachers and those in schools might engage with the curriculum. the focus on accountability seems to dominate over the potential benefits of the national assessment program, and its purported efforts to promote how ‘[s]chools can gain detailed information about how they are performing, and they can identify strengths and weaknesses which may warrant further attention.’ (national assessment program, 2016). a non-affirmative approach can only be operationalized if the evaluation system writ large enables such an approach. pedagogies can only be non-affirmative if the conditions within which teachers teach enable this. in the australian context, this is problematized by the broader circumstances of national testing within which curriculum is enacted. this contrasts with finland where, even as the curriculum refers to assessment, including the ‘purpose of assessment and assessment culture that supports learning’ (p. 49), the conception of assessment promoted in the finnish curriculum is a much more nonaffirmative approach. that is, the finnish case is much more supportive of an ‘assessment for learning’ approach, with evaluation much more in the hands of the teacher, rather than the state. while teachers in schools are also responsible for evaluation in australia, the teacher or school is not accountable to an external entity in finland in the same way that they are in https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index hardy, uljens. critiquing curriculum policy reform 78 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index australia. evaluation is not a ‘marker’ of the ‘value’ of the education provided by a particular school – as an example of a market model in education provision – but as an indicator of the learning that has occurred in context. in those settings where the teacher is more ‘forced’ to respond to the evaluation system, the teacher is similarly forced to respond in an ‘affirmative’ way in relation to the student. the result is a strongly instrumentalized approach to teaching practice. following the logic of such approaches, those modes of accountability encourage less educative experiences. this is what makes the accountability philosophy counterproductive to educational outcomes the publication of naplan results in the australian context also reveals how the neoliberal is clearly ascendant. the teacher is recognized for her/his achievements as a teacher, as indicated through these test scores. the strong sense of ethical responsibility within teaching is put at risk, and the professional judgement and trust that should characterize teaching (o’neill, 2013), diminished; externalized testing ‘takes away’ the sense of such responsibility which becomes more instrumentalized. what matters is ‘good scores’ – an external measure of achievement rather than internal disposition to act. a professional ethics is violated through such processes. being a teacher is downplayed, and replaced by the activity of constantly responding to these external markers. again, the ‘recognition’ of the teacher is externalized, and effectively taken away. however, more external markers of achievement/influences also influence the finnish context. even as the aims of education are important, these aims cannot be prescribed definitely in advance, but are instead the product of an informed, educated citizenry engaging with one another about how to construct a better world, a world worth living in (kemmis et al., 2014), but for a future about which we don’t know. more accountability-oriented approaches assume that we do know what needs to be achieved. while nobody disputes strong literacy and numeracy skills are essential, the kinds of competencies encouraged are what is important. critical thinking and creativity are needed but these can become instrumentalized within broader economic logics if homo economicus dominates personhood as political and cultural citizens. finland has adopted oecd principles of seeking to enhance economic competitiveness through advocating particular ‘entrepreneurial’ principles – hence the focus upon various competences. in many ways, while finland has resisted adopting ‘horizontal’ policy borrowing (steiner-khamsi, 2004), by endeavoring not to go down the path of centralized census-style evaluation systems, there has been a movement ‘together’ – homogenization – in the way in which some of the transversal competences reflect the sorts of economistic logics that similarly characterize the australian equivalents. in this sense, there is always the risk of policy borrowing rather than policy learning. conclusion thus, key curriculum documents reflect important tensions and proclivities towards ‘closing down’ educational opportunities for students, even as such texts may simultaneously seek to ‘open up’ more dialogic, non-affirmative and praxis-oriented approaches to education. in this article, we have explored the aims, content and methods advocated within the principal curriculum documents in two different national settings, and how these reflect the relationship between broader national and international influences, and how these have subsequently sought to construct the relationship between teachers and students through these texts. the research reveals that just as more neo-conservative and neoliberal approaches run the risk of limiting the possible life-worlds of those to whom they are directed, such texts contain within them the seeds for more non-affirmative approaches to contest established positions and positioning, and to leave open how schooling might be genuinely ‘educational’ for its students. in efforts to move beyond global economism and neo-conservative nationalism, https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index hardy, uljens. critiquing curriculum policy reform 79 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index curriculum policy is an important part of providing counter-hegemonic discourses and understandings to enable such conditions for learning, even as it may reflect more dominant discourses and understandings. important similarities and differences between the finnish and australian curricula help shed light upon the nature of the educational processes they seek to construct. this paper has flagged some of these similarities and differences as a vehicle for better understanding whether and how it might be possible to construct non-affirmative, praxis-oriented approaches to curricula development under current policy and political conditions. through a comparative study, such as this, is it possible to become aware how more local concerns and issues of equity have perhaps been better prioritized in finland, even as such foci, particularly around equity, are becoming more important in the australian context. the research has also revealed how more generic competences have exerted influence in both countries, but also how these are varied, with, again, seemingly greater opportunities for more less prescriptive approaches in the finnish context. the research has also revealed how broader contextual circumstances influence educational traditions – in this case, in relation to curriculum reform. such analyses enable each system to become more conscious of its own strengths, limits and proclivities. once this become apparent, it becomes possible to better understand whether and how curriculum policy as intervention may influence schooling practices more positively and productively, even as such curricula simultaneously reflect more dominant knowledge traditions and conceptions of education within which they are situated. such comparative analyses also make it possible to engage in more genuine policy learning. however, arguably, one of the so-called ‘poster-children’ (finland) of educational reform has not been well ‘represented’ in other contexts, as evident in some of the more problematic approaches and foci that have characterized reforms in some of these contexts. one might expect policy borrowing – through which a peripheral country such as finland can become a more influential actant, as an example of how to approach reform differently, and thereby become more influential. however, processes of policy borrowing that have occurred have resulted in convergence around more problematic practices, and it is such convergence that has motivated our study. while there has been a convergence, it appears to have been around different practices from what might be expected, if we are to accept the argument that nation-states should ‘borrow’ from the ‘best’. nobody learned from finland, otherwise there should be adoption of the kinds of cultural practices evident in the finnish context. in a way, perhaps, finland has ‘learned’ to adopt the sorts of economistic, neoliberal policies associated with anglo countries such as australia, through advocacy of the various competences rather than vice versa! but this is to overlook the important nuances that actually attend the particular curriculum foci we have outlined here. it is this specificity that is important, and that must be understood in relation to the particular cultural conditions that attend the schooling system in each national context, including the very different evaluation policies in each country. more careful and closer conceptual work, and analysis of specific aspects of schooling, such as key curriculum documentation, enable much greater understanding to inform the sorts of more productive, non-affirmative and praxis-oriented policy borrowing that should attend educational reform. notes 1 ian.hardy@uq.edu.au 2 muljens@abo.fi https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index mailto:ian.hardy@uq.edu.au mailto:muljens@abo.fi hardy, uljens. critiquing curriculum policy reform 80 transnational curriculum inquiry 15 (2) 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index references acara (2016). why nap? retrieved 31 october 2018 from www.nap.edu.au/about/whynap acara (n.d.(a)) australian curriculum. retrieved 29 october 2018 from www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/f-10-curriculum/structure/ acara (n.d.(b)) australian curriculum. retrieved 30 october 2018 from www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/about-the-australian-curriculum/ acara (n.d.(c)) australian curriculum. retrieved 2 february 2017 from www.australiancurriculum.edu.au acara (n.d.(d)) australian curriculum – student diversity. retrieved 29 october 2018 from www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/resources/student-diversity/ acara (n.d.(e)) structure (australian curriculum). retrieved 29 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(ed.), the global politics of educational borrowing and lending (pp. 1-7). new york: teachers college press. sahlberg, p. 2011. finnish lessons: what can the world learn from educational change in finland? new york, ny: teachers college, columbia university. sahlberg, p. (2016) the global educational reform movement and its impact on schooling. in k. mundy, a. green, b. lingard & a. verger (eds.), the handbook of global education policy (pp. 128-144). chichester: john wiley & sons. schmidt, v. (2002). europeanization and the mechanisms of economic policy adjustment. journal of european public policy, 9(6), 894-912. siljander, p. (2007). education and ‘bildung’ in modern society. developmental trends of finnish educational and sociocultural processes. in: r. jakku-sihvonen & h. niemi, educational sciences as societal contribution (pp. 71-89). frankfurt am main: peter lang. simola, h. (2005). the finnish miracle of pisa: historical and sociological remarks on teaching and teacher education. comparative education, 41(4), 455-470 thompson, g. & harbaugh, a. (2013). a preliminary analysis of teacher perceptions of the effects of naplan on pedagogy and curriculum. australian educational researcher, 40(3), 299-314. tian, m. & risku, m. (2018). a distributed leadership perspective on the finnish curriculum reform 2014. journal of curriculum studies, doi:10.1080/00220272.2018.1499806 uljens, m. (2002). the idea of a universal theory of education – an impossible but necessary project? journal of philosophy of education, 36(3), 353–375. uljens, m. (2015). curriculum work as educational leadership: paradoxes and theoretical foundations. nordic journal of studies in educational policy, 1(1), 22–30. retrieved from http://nordstep.net/index.php/nstep/article/view/27010. uljens, m., & nyman, c. (2013). educational leadership in finland or building a nation with bildung. in l. moos. (ed.), transnational influences on values and practices in nordic educational leadership: is there a nordic model? (pp. 31–48). cham: springer. uljens, m. & rajakaltio, h. (2017). national curriculum development in finland as distributed and non-affirmative educational leadership. in: m. uljens & r. ylimaki (eds.), bridging educational leadership, curriculum theory and didaktik nonaffirmative theory of education (pp. 411-438). cham: springer. uljens, m. & ylimaki, r. (2017). non-affirmative theory of education as a foundation for curriculum studies, didaktik and educational leadership. in: m. uljens & r. ylimaki (eds.), bridging educational leadership, curriculum theory and didaktik nonaffirmative theory of education (pp. 3-145). cham: springer. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2f978-3-319-58650-2 young, m. (2013). overcoming the crisis in curriculum theory a knowledge-based approach, journal of curriculum studies, 45(2), 101-118. submitted: october, 30, 2018 approved: november, 16, 2018 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2f978-3-319-58650-2 microsoft word sousa_english.doc to cite this article please include all of the following details: sousa, francisco (2007). curriculum making on the edge of europe: two alternative scenarios. transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> curriculum making on the edge of europe in the age of globalization: two alternative scenarios francisco sousa university of the azores, portugal introduction my purpose in this article is to discuss some possible implications of the peripheral position of the region where i live – the azores, portugal – for curriculum construction. in this discussion, i shall consider, with special emphasis, the current debates on globalization, and also the fact that the regional government of the azores has recently started to design a regional curriculum for basic education (grades 1 through 9). geographically, the azores are a group of nine small islands located in the eastern half of the atlantic ocean, quite isolated from continental europe (760 nautical miles from lisbon and 2,111 from new york city), with a population of about 240,000 inhabitants. politically, they are an autonomous region of portugal and an ultra-peripheral region of the european union. given these geographic characteristics and this political status, the azores are hardly visible at the national and at the international levels. many people do not even know that the islands exist, and some people have a very inaccurate idea of their characteristics. in order to start a discussion on curricular implications of this invisibility in the age of globalization, it is useful to read noel gough’s (2002) reflections on a special series of articles on globalization – entitled ‘one world, ready or not?’ – published in 1999 by the australian newspaper the age. the announcement of the series was illustrated with a drawing of a globe positioned in such a way that asia occupied the central part of the image, europe and north america were quite visible, and other parts of the planet – like south america – were out of sight. according to gough (2002), ‘one reading of this image is that the question of being ‘ready or not’ to belong to ‘one world’ is most pertinent to nations that are visible from this standpoint’ (p. 170). the azores are also absent from many graphic representations of the earth. this absence results not only from perspective but also from scale. even when the atlantic ocean is depicted, the azores – given their small size – are simply invisible at the scales used in many graphic representations of our planet. in addition, language used in the media and in many popular discourses frequently conveys some disregard for the azores, by failing to represent the whole portuguese territory with accuracy, as if some of its parts did not exist. at the time of writing this article, i can find many instances of this phenomenon through a simple internet search. for example, a website for tourists1 – linked to a travel publishing group supported by the portuguese hotel association and by the portuguese institute of tourism – states that ‘the peak of serra da estrela is the highest point in portugal,’ which is inaccurate, since the highest point in portugal is pico mountain, in the azores.2 among many other problematic texts in terms of geography, a text written on the website of a professional school of agriculture3 1 http://www.portugaltravelguide.com/pt/beiras 2 pico mountain is 2,351 meters high, whereas serra da estrela is 1,993 meters high. 3 http://www.epafbl.edu.pt http://www.portugaltravelguide.com/pt/beiras http://www.epafbl.edu.pt http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci sousa: curriculum making on the edge of europe transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 1 states that the school is located ‘in the western region of portugal.’ by reading the text, one realizes that what the authors mean by ‘western region of portugal’ is a given area on the western coast of continental portugal, as if there were no more portuguese territory to the west, namely the azores islands. such lack of accuracy is not absent from textbooks and other curricular materials. although materials of this kind have increasingly become more accurate and respectful of all the portuguese regions, one can still find some counter-examples of this tendency. at least two recent textbooks for the 4th grade (aguiar, 2006; rodrigues, 2006) present a wrong description of the political organization of the azores, by stating that the region is divided into three districts, which has not been true since the 1970s. according to an exercise book for 5th grade students of history and geography (costa & marques, 2006), published by one of the leading publishing companies in portugal, the azores were named after a marine bird called the goshawk (accipiter gentiles). indeed, historians usually accept that the azores were named after the goshawk (‘açor,’ in portuguese language). but taxonomists do not classify goshawks as marine birds. that specific part of the exercise book is not accurately written and one does not easily find such lack of accuracy when central parts of the territory are concerned. what implications should the marginal position of the azores – illustrated by the examples that i have just presented – have in terms of the construction of a regional curriculum? in this article, i shall not provide a definite answer to this question, but i will discuss two alternative possibilities (two among many possible scenarios) for the construction of a regional curriculum that takes that position into consideration. the regional curriculum of the azores in order to discuss the curricular implications of the marginal position occupied by the azores at the national and international levels in the age of globalization, it is important to consider the formal structure of curriculum decision making in that region. until recently, the specific characteristics of the azores had not been reflected in the design of the formal curriculum. given the traditionally centralized character of curriculum decision making in portugal, the official curriculum used to be exactly the same in the whole portuguese territory, including the autonomous regions of azores and madeira. but recently the regional government of the azores took the initiative of creating a regional curriculum for basic education (grades 1 through 9) that is subsidiary to the national curriculum. the concept of regional curriculum was introduced in the azorean educational policy via regional decree number 15/2001/a. in this official document, the regional curriculum of the azores is defined as follows: for the purpose of this document, the regional curriculum should be understood as the content to be learnt and the competencies to be developed by students on the basis of the geographical, economical, cultural, political, and administrative characteristics of the azores. the construction of the regional curriculum has been, to some extent, open to public debate. accordingly, in september 2003, the regional government organized a seminar on this topic and, since then, has consulted with leaders of teachers’ unions, scholars, and other stakeholders. in 2004, another important step was taken in terms of the construction of a regional curriculum in the azores, with the publication of resolution number 124/2004, through which http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci sousa: curriculum making on the edge of europe transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 2 a set of curricular competencies was officially approved. according to this document, the regional curriculum of the azores is legitimized by the following principles: a. inclusive education, which supports the adaptation of school to all the students and to every kind of cultural diversity; b. project-based rationality, according to which curriculum is permanently reconstructed and negotiated by all the actors involved; c. curriculum differentiation, which requires a critical attitude and a broad conception of teachers’ professionalism. d. meaningful learning, which requires the exploration of the cultural contexts of the student as important resources in terms of meaning. alternative scenarios for the ongoing construction of a regional curriculum living and studying in a region like the azores can be considered a way of being different from students who live elsewhere. in other words, it can be considered a source of identity. accordingly, one may discuss forms of curriculum differentiation that take that kind of difference into consideration. by curriculum differentiation, i mean the adaptation of curriculum to each student’s characteristics, in order to maximize the student’s opportunities to succeed in school. it is a concept of curriculum differentiation based on inclusive principles. in the light of those principles, ‘to differentiate is to define different paths – but it cannot ever be the establishment of different levels of arrival due to different departing conditions’ (roldão, 1999, p. 53). therefore, the kind of curriculum differentiation that i refer to in this article is not synonymous with tracking, ability grouping, and similar mechanisms. mechanisms of this kind have been associated with an idea of curriculum differentiation as a device that necessarily leads to academic and social stratification. as oakes, gamoran, and page (1992) acknowledge, ‘with tracking, educators prejudge how much children will benefit, with the result that some children are not taught knowledge that provides access to future academic and social opportunity’ (p. 597). this idea of curriculum differentiation as provision of alternative paths of study, some of which are more socially prestigious than others, has deep historical roots, as apple (1990), kliebard (1995), and deschenes, cuban, and tyack (2001) note with regard to north america and goodson (1995) notes with regard to the uk. apple (1990), for example, states that the thought of franklin bobbitt and other pioneers of curriculum studies in the u.s.a. at the transition from the nineteenth to the twentieth century was dominated by an idea that is still very influential nowadays – the idea that ‘the curriculum needed to be differentiated to prepare individuals of different intelligence and ability for a variety of different but specific adult life functions’ (p. 95). the pervasive dominance of stratified forms of curriculum differentiation notwithstanding, it is possible to differentiate the curriculum without stratifying it at the outset, by spending more time and energy with diagnostic and formative assessment, in order to get to know students well and adapt curriculum to their characteristics; by dignifying a wide range of ways of addressing reality, knowing, and solving problems; by practicing differentiation preferably through the adjustment of teaching strategies, considering differentiation of objectives only as a last resort option, in order not to jeopardize the pursuit of the highest standards for every student as long as that it feasible. living in the azores may, thus, be considered one among many reasons why curriculum differentiation should be practiced and the regional curriculum may become one among many instruments of curriculum differentiation. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci sousa: curriculum making on the edge of europe transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 3 to what extent does it make sense, in the age of globalization, to construct a curriculum that takes the specific characteristics of a given region into special consideration? according to smith (2003): human self-understanding is now increasingly lived out in a tension between the local and the global, between my understanding of myself as a person of this place and my emerging yet profound awareness that this place participates in a reality heavily influenced by, and implicated in, larger pictures. (p. 36) in order to seriously discuss the relationship between curricular regionalism and globalization in the azores, it is not enough to suggest the cliché ‘glocal’ to characterize the curriculum that is being constructed in the region. one possible way of engaging in a deeper discussion of this issue consists of exploring a kind of discourse that helps us map the aspects of identity that result from living in the azores in the complex web of identities and differences that frames relationships between human beings in general and students in particular. the ‘grammar of difference’ proposed by burbules (1997) may be helpful in this exploration. since one’s approach to curriculum differentiation is related to one’s conceptualization of difference among students, i will now discuss two alternative ways of viewing difference in school in the light of burbules’s ‘grammar of difference’: the categorical approach and the non-categorical approach. this discussion will include both an overview of these two approaches and specific references to the regional curriculum of the azores. firstly, i will briefly characterize the categorical approach, then i will summarize some of the criticism that has been made of this kind of approach and, finally, i will tackle some possible starting points for the construction of a non-categorical approach. categorical approach viewing difference through the lens of a categorical approach implies organizing one’s thinking about difference by classifying individuals into categories or taxonomies. accordingly, this kind of approach usually includes (1) the selection of a dimension of difference that is considered relevant – for example, religion, gender, or race – and (2) the distribution of individuals among categories within the selected dimension – for example, ‘jew,’ ‘christian,’ ‘muslim.’ the categorical approach is often associated to advocacy of the rights of given minorities or groups that are somehow considered oppressed. accordingly, special attention is paid to a given dimension of difference and special efforts are often made in order to serve the interests of people who belong to a given category within that same dimension. let us consider, for example, differences in terms of gender. more than one hundred years ago, john dewey (1902) wrote that what we need is something which will enable us to interpret, to appraise, the elements in the child’s present puttings forth and fallings away, his exhibitions of power and weakness, in the light of some larger growth-process in which they have their place. (p. 19; my emphasis) in 1902, using the masculine pronouns he or his to refer to both sexes was not considered to be problematic. nowadays, a sentence like the one quoted above would be considered by most reviewers of academic manuscripts as an instance of sexist bias and, therefore, would have to be changed into a gender-inclusive version in order to be published. this move towards language that is more accurate and respectful in terms of gender has been supported and consolidated by many individuals and groups, some of which (e.g., feminist scholars) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci sousa: curriculum making on the edge of europe transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 4 have played a specially relevant role in emphasizing gender as a dimension that must be considered when difference and respect for difference are at issue. curriculum theory and development, as a field of scholarship, has accompanied this move towards unbiased discourses and practices in terms of gender and beyond. noticeably, there are many texts discussing curricular implications of gender (fonseca, 2000; louro, 2000; munro, 1998), as well as many texts on curriculum theory and multicultural education (gay, 1995; gimeno sacristán, 1999; leite, 2000, 2002), curriculum and special educational needs (moreira & baumel, 2002), curriculum aligned with multiple intelligences and learning styles (silver, strong, & perini, 2000), and so on. these crossings between curriculum theory and other sub-fields within educational theory have been made in the context of a phenomenon whereby various dimensions of difference that operate in educational settings have become the objects of study of academic specialisms, such as multicultural education, education of students with special educational needs, and gifted education. these fields have produced discourses that naturally tend to be focused on specific aspects of difference, although they are sometimes extended to difference at large and in some cases are used to claim some leadership in the construction of innovative approaches to difference in general. the construction of a regional curriculum in the azores can possibly follow a similar kind of logic, that is, emphasizing a relevant dimension of difference – the condition of living in a given geographical location with particular characteristics – and then constructing a discourse that respectfully considers students affected by that same dimension. through this kind of approach, the school curriculum is supposed to be designed with a very special attention to the characteristics of azorean students. inside and outside schools, supporters of this kind of approach are expected to press authors of every kind of text to change sentences like ‘the peak of serra da estrela is the highest point in portugal,’ into ‘the peak of serra da estrela is the highest point in continental portugal,’ or ‘the peak of pico mountain is the highest point in portugal,’ just like authors have been pressed – in given situations – to write, for example, ‘he or she’ instead of ‘he’ in order to avoid sexist bias. criticism of the categorical approach burbules (1997) criticizes categorical approaches to difference by highlighting the unstable nature of categories, which is ensured by (1) the existence of differences that escape our capabilities of understanding, constituting a mysterious alterity, one that cannot be explained through the grids that we normally use to interpret reality; (2) the invocation of differences with the aim of affirming identity not only through what one is but also through what one is not; 4 (3) the assertion of difference as resistance to totalitarian processes (the system of categories that is legitimized by the totalizer is naturally different from the system of categories that those who resist totalization hold as a reference). the use of a categorical approach may become particularly problematic when taxonomies of categories are expanded to very specific levels. to speak about the specific characteristics of the azores may sound too generalist in given contexts, because, for example, living in s. miguel island is quite different from living in corvo island, and, within s. miguel island, living in ponta delgada is quite different from living in nordeste. by dividing categories into multiple levels of sub-categories, one could possibly be more respectful of certain specificities, but such a procedure would certainly yield a very fragmented taxonomy, one that would not be helpful for those who deal with student diversity in schools daily. hybridism and border crossing also pose difficulties to categorical approaches. one may live 4 as an example of this, burbules mentions the assertion of heterosexual identities through anxiety or hostility toward homosexuality. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci sousa: curriculum making on the edge of europe transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 5 in the azores after having lived elsewhere for many years, thus receiving contributions from different geographic and cultural settings to the construction of one’s identity. in addition, ‘multiple dimensions of difference are always acting simultaneously’ (burbules, 1997, p. 101). nobody is simply azorean, white, homosexual, or muslim. discourses about difference that are restricted to a categorical rationality tend to reification, which hinders the perception of the dynamic nature of difference, by freezing systems of classification and thus making them static, context-independent, and hence deprived of the flexibility that would allow them to accommodate, at any time, any instance of difference. the same issue has been discussed in terms of identity, via criticism of essentialist perspectives, which view identity as a static description because they do not acknowledge that it involves performativity. as silva (2000, pp. 92-96) puts it, identity entails performativity and is thus more related to the process of ‘becoming’ than it is to the state of ‘being.’ the concept of performativity, as developed by butler (1993), is grounded in the acknowledgement that identities are not only transformed but also of the role that certain discursive acts play in such transformation. thus, the propositions ‘the meeting is closed’ and ‘i pronounce you husband and wife’ are clearly performative, to the extent that they are considered necessary in order for certain things to occur. the proposition ‘john has low intelligence’ seems descriptive, but, as silva (2000, p. 93) explains, may function as performative, since its repetition may end up by producing the ‘fact’ that it was only supposed to describe. likewise, the proposition ‘the peak of serra da estrela is the highest point in portugal’ seems descriptive but may function as performative, since its repetition produces in many people’s minds a subjective reality that obfuscates the objective reality. problems of this kind can only be addressed by curricula that acknowledge performativity and help the students study how it operates. if we want our specific characteristics to be respected, we cannot simply tell the students who we (students included) are. we also need to help them discuss others’ discourses about us. the simplification of reality that is conveyed by reified sorting systems obscures not only the processes through which identities and differences are constructed but also the least visible aspects of that same reality. those systems capture the most outstanding aspects of difference, to the neglect of less visible differences, which are often excluded from official discourses, although they may be significant from the standpoint of those who experience them. indeed, many discourses about difference are focused on highly visible instances of difference (related to dimensions like race and gender, for example) and, through a rhetoric that emphasizes advocacy of minorities, end up by privileging the majority among the minority. in order to get a more concrete idea about this tendency, one need only search a library or a database for texts about the education of ethnic minorities and/or groups of immigrants in the u.s.a. and then compare, for example, the quantity of available references about chinese or mexicans with the quantity of available references about greeks or portuguese. quantity and visibility may also be sources of power (although there is not a linear relationship between the size of a population and its power), which means that certain groups that are insistently presented as oppressed minorities may be, after all, relatively well positioned in the web of power relations, if compared to those who belong to minorities that are so small that they become invisible. certain groups have the power to assert their claims by organizing social movements – like the civil rights movement that took place in the u.s.a. in the 1960s – or, at least, parades in big cities, which are not accessible to a few students who live in the middle of the atlantic ocean. this should make us question the usefulness of a categorical approach to the construction of a regional curriculum in the azores. one of the main reasons why the struggle for a more respectful language and for a more inclusive curriculum in terms of gender has been relatively successful is that roughly 50 % of the world’s population is female. since only 0.004 % of the world’s population live in the azores, http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci sousa: curriculum making on the edge of europe transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 6 it would be frustrating to concentrate one’s efforts in a specific and direct struggle for a worldwide acknowledgement of that region. non-categorical approach in his discussion of alternative approaches to difference, burbules (1997) states: a very different way to think about difference is to begin with the continuous, the blurry, the unstable, and try to develop a language that allows us to make particular distinctions and to offer explanations without reifying our working concepts into categories or typologies. (p. 102) how can the construction of a regional curriculum in the azores begin with the continuous and the blurry? this alternative approach may involve, for example, readiness to avoid overemphasizing the aspects of the students’ identities that result from their living in the azores, that is, to avoid using them as the exclusive pillars of the curriculum, thus neglecting other relevant aspects of the students’ identities. the official discourse conveyed by regional decree number 15/2001/a, and by subsequent preparatory documents that were submitted to consultants for analysis and comment, puts a strong emphasis upon an idea of regional curriculum as a contribution to the consolidation of the political autonomy of the azores. as a consultant to the regional government, i wrote a position paper in which i suggested that the regional curriculum could be conceptualized from a less instrumental perspective, without abandoning a legitimate concern for knowledge about the specific characteristics of the azores and its translation into the curriculum. accordingly, significance of content to the students would be a major criterion in decisions about what to include in the curriculum, since the (lack of) relevance or meaningfulness is, after all, one of the main problems of school culture nowadays, as advocated by esteve (2000), who states: it makes absolutely no sense for an educated 21st-century man or woman to study three years of physics and, at the same time, to use telephones, computers and televisions every day without having even the vaguest idea of how they work. (p. 9) learning specifically about the azores or learning about more universal realities through resources available in the azores may indeed contribute to making the curriculum more significant, but that is not enough, for several reasons. a great portion of what students should learn in school can hardly be approached from a regional point of view. obviously, students have to learn much beyond the geographical boundaries of the place where they live in order to avoid provincialism. moreover, there are many other sources of significant learning that may be used more effectively in many situations. in fact, students do not necessarily view phenomena that are physically close to them as more significant than distant phenomena (roldão, 1994, p. 7). exotic and imaginary realities have always played an important role in shaping children’s and young people’s experiences. finally, nowadays our virtual geography – ‘the terrain created by the television, the telephone, the telecommunications networks crisscrossing the globe’ (wark, 1994, p. vii) – is at least as influential as local geography in shaping experience. the discourse conveyed by resolution number 124/2004 puts much more emphasis on the idea of meaningful learning at large than the prior documents. since, according to the official documents, the regional curriculum of the azores is based on competencies, ‘to begin with the continuous’ would certainly imply viewing the set of competencies as a continuum, extending from a local focus to a global one. instead, the http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci sousa: curriculum making on the edge of europe transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 7 preparatory documents mix competencies that are clearly focused on regional realities – such as ‘to use scientific and technological knowledge to understand natural phenomena occurring on the islands and to interact with them’ – with competencies that are as relevant in the azores as anywhere else in the world – such as ‘to use knowledge and experience related to sport in civic activities that contribute to the promotion of solidarity and to the improvement of the quality of life.’ some stakeholders criticized this mixture, arguing that by presenting competencies in this manner, the regional government was treating the regional curriculum as an addition to the national curriculum, rather than viewing it as an organic adaptation. in the text of resolution number 124/2004, policy makers present competencies in a slightly more continuous manner. this document states that the competencies are organized ‘according to a sequence of contexts of meaningfulness in learning, from the most general to the most specific.’ nevertheless, by sorting competencies into three different contexts – citizenship (competencies that are common to all the portuguese citizens), insular reality, and azorean reality – the official discourse remains quite subject to a categorical, additive logic, one that can hardly be made compatible with the blurry nature of some competencies. let us consider, for example, a competency to be developed in the context of citizenship, according to resolution number 124/2004: ‘to deploy cultural, scientific, and technological knowledge to understand reality and to deal with common situations and problems.’ the same legislative document states that a competency to be developed in the context of insularity is ‘to deploy scientific and technological knowledge to understand natural phenomena occurring on islands and to interact with them.’ are these two statements really about two different competencies or are they about one competency whose focus can be made broad or narrow? a more effective way of making the regional curriculum explicit can perhaps be tried by highlighting regional specifications of the national curriculum whenever those specifications are considered relevant. for example, if curriculum decision makers consider that ‘to deploy cultural, scientific, and technological knowledge to understand reality and to deal with common situations and problems’ is a competency that should be exerted in the azores in particular ways, they may simply adapt the statement, by adding the following words: ‘such as natural phenomena occurring on islands.’ there is no need to create another competency. a regional curriculum that begins ‘with the continuous’ is certainly a curriculum that fosters awareness of multiple identities. as w. h. taylor puts it, ‘individuals can and usually have many cultural identities, a gaelic speaker being simultaneously a highlander, a scot, a briton and a european: this list can expand in both directions’ (quoted in nóvoa, 2000, p. 44). likewise, the identity of someone who lives in, say, graciosa island, in the azores, is constructed at different geographical layers, nested within each other: europe, portugal, the azores, graciosa. the list can expand in both directions. in a non-categorical approach to curriculum differentiation, these multiple layers of identity are strongly considered and curricular work deliberately shifts from layer to layer all the time. this readiness to zoom in or out all the time can be enhanced if we think seriously of curriculum decision making through the lens of fractal geometry, as davis and sumara (2000, 2003) suggest, instead of keeping our thinking about the school and the curriculum framed by euclidean geometry. perhaps there is even some potential in the azores for the construction of an interesting contribution to the exploration of forms of curricular work inspired by fractal geometry. people who live in an archipelago with nine islands that are quite different from one another – in terms of size, population,5 political power, and other aspects – are especially sensible to an idea of island as a significant unit in terms of identity – a unit that is integrated into broader 5 s. miguel, the biggest island, has about 132,000 inhabitants, whereas corvo, the smallest one, has about 450. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci sousa: curriculum making on the edge of europe transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 8 units and includes sub-units, thus forming a network wherein identities and power relations are, like a matryoshka, multi-layered rather than based on a binary logic. in short, the construction of a regional curriculum in the azores (as well as in other small regions around the world) in a non-categorical way could be made in the light of the following guidelines: 1) select content according to its broad social significance and its personal relevance to students; treat regional identity as one among many other sources of curricular relevance, not necessarily the main one; 2) treat the regional curriculum as an organic adaptation of the national curriculum, not as an addition to it; translate that adaptation into the official documents by including regional specifications in the competencies stated at the national level, not by creating competencies at the regional level; 3) maximize the exploration of connections between local and global phenomena. concluding comments at the time when i write this article, it is too soon to evaluate with any certainty whether the regional curriculum of the azores is closer to a categorical or to a non-categorical approach, although some evidence suggests that it has been mostly influenced by a categorical rationality. noticeably, the official discourse that supports the regional curriculum under discussion is centered on ‘the azoreans’ and implicitly suggests that ‘the azoreans’ are the ones who, preferably, were born in the azores and/or have lived most of their lives in that region. in other words, this discourse does not consider, for example, the immigrants that have recently arrived in the azores – traditionally a region of emigrants, but now a region with some immigrants as well, most of them coming from brazil and eastern europe. in the age of globalization, local reality is heavily influenced by larger pictures (smith, 2003). in this context, national and regional education policies are somehow put under pressure to adopt ways of conceptualizing the school and the curriculum that have been consolidated at a supranational level (nóvoa, 2000; smith, 2003). given this pressure, regional policy makers may either conform or resist. to resist by isolating and emphasizing the specific features of a minority living in an almost invisible region can be quite frustrating and counterproductive. but perhaps there will be some chances of success if the relationship between identities that result mostly from the specific natural and cultural background of the region and other identities is explored, thus opening the space for strategic alliances with other minorities. making the world acknowledge the existence of the azores is very difficult, perhaps impossible, but it is possible to improve the azoreans’ understanding of their place in the world, without which they cannot struggle for higher levels of respect for their identity. this requires solid knowledge about global phenomena and their relationship with local phenomena. in order to promote that kind of knowledge, the regional curriculum has to be international as well. furthermore, it has to be continuously enacted by zooming in and out, between the global and the local. acknowledgment this article is based on a paper with the same title that i presented at the second world curriculum studies conference, tampere, finland, may 21-24, 2006. my participation in that conference was funded by the regional government of the azores, department of science and technology. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci sousa: curriculum making on the edge of europe transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 9 references aguiar, o. p. (2006). aprender mais – estudo do meio, 4º ano, ensino básico. porto: editora educação nacional. apple, m. (1990). ideology and curriculum (2nd ed.). new york: routledge. burbules, n. (1997). a grammar of difference: some ways of rethinking difference and diversity as educational topics. australian educational researcher, 24(1), 97-116. butler, j. (1993). bodies that matter: on the discursive limits of ‘sex’. new york: routledge. costa, f., & marques, a. (2006). história e geografia de portugal, 5º ano caderno de actividades. porto: porto editora. davis, b., & sumara, d. (2000). curriculum forms: on the assumed shapes of knowing and knowledge. journal of curriculum studies, 32(6), 821-845. davis, b., & sumara, d. (2003). the hidden geometry of curriculum. in r. edwards & r. usher (eds.), space, curriculum, and learning (pp. 79-91). greenwich, ct: information age publishing. deschenes, s., cuban, l., & tyack, d. (2001). mismatch: historical perspectives on schools and students who don't fit them. teachers college record, 103(4), 525-547. dewey, j. (1902). the child and the curriculum. chicago: the university of chicago press. esteve, j. m. (2000). culture in the school: assessment and the content of education. european journal of teacher education, 23(1), 5-18. fonseca, m. l. (2000). currículo e género: o lugar da escola na construção de culturas juvenis femininas. paper presented at v congresso da sociedade portuguesa de ciências da educação, faro. gay, g. (1995). curriculum theory and multicultural education. in j. banks & c. a. mcgee (eds.), handbook of research on multicultural education (pp. 25-43). new york: macmillan. gimeno sacristán, j. (1999). currículo e diversidade cultural. in t. t. silva & a. f. moreira (orgs.), territórios contestados: o currículo e os novos mapas políticos e culturais (3ª ed., pp. 82-113). petrópolis: vozes. goodson, i. (1995). the making of curriculum: collected essays (2nd ed.). washington dc: falmer press. gough, n. (2002). the long arm(s) of globalization: transnational imaginaries in curriculum work. in w. doll jr. & n. gough (eds.), curriculum visions (pp. 167-178). new york: peter lang. kliebard, h. (1995). the struggle for the american curriculum: 1893-1958 (2nd ed.). new york: routledge. leite, c. (2000). uma análise da dimensão multicultural no currículo. revista de educação, ix(1), 137-143. leite, c. (2002). o currículo e o multiculturalismo no sistema educativo português. lisboa: fundação calouste gulbenkian / fundação para a ciência e tecnologia. louro, g. (2000). currículo, género e sexualidade. porto: porto editora. moreira, l., & baumel, r. (2002). currículo em educação especial: tendências e debates. paper presented at v colóquio sobre questões curriculares (i colóquio luso-brasileiro), braga. munro, p. (1998). engendering curriculum history. in w. f. pinar (ed.), curriculum: toward new identities (pp. 263-294). new york: garland. nóvoa, a. (2000). the restructuring of the european educational space: changing relationships among states, citizens, and educational communities. in t. s. popkewitz http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci sousa: curriculum making on the edge of europe transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 10 (ed.), educational knowledge: changing relationships between the state, civil society, and the educational comunity (pp. 31-57). albany: suny press. oakes, j., gamoran, a., & page, r. (1992). curriculum differentiation: opportunities, outcomes, and meanings. in p. w. jackson (ed.), handbook of research on curriculum: a project of the american educational research association (pp. 570-608). new york: macmillan. rodrigues, a. m. (2006). crescer – estudo do meio, 4º ano, ensino básico. porto: editora educação nacional. roldão, m. c. (1994). o pensamento concreto da criança: uma perspectiva a questionar no currículo. lisboa: instituto de inovação educacional. roldão, m. c. (1999). gestão curricular: fundamentos e práticas. lisboa: ministério da educação. silva, t. t. (2000). a produção social da identidade e da diferença. in t. t. silva (org.), identidade e diferença: a perspectiva dos estudos culturais (pp. 73-102). petrópolis: vozes. silver, h., strong, r., & perini, m. (2000). so each may learn: integrating learning styles and multiple intelligences. alexandria, virginia: ascd. smith, d. g. (2003). curriculum and teaching face globalization. in w. f. pinar (ed.), international handbook of curriculum research (pp. 35-51). mahwah, new jersey: lawrence erlbaum associates. wark, m. (1994). virtual geography: living with global media events. bloomington: indiana university press. author francisco sousa is assistant professor in the department of education, angra do heroísmo campus, university of the azores, portugal. email: fsousa@notes.angra.uac.pt http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci mailto:fsousa@notes.angra.uac.pt o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: fathi vajargah, kourosh (2020). beyond reconceptualization: recontextualization/multicontextualization of curriculum studies in iran (toward new curriculum ecosystems). transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) p.57-72 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> beyond reconceptualization: recontextualization/multicontextualization of curriculum studies in iran (toward new curriculum ecosystems)1 kourosh fathi vajargah2 shahid beheshti university, iran introduction as a new but complicated area, which deals with difficult issues, the curriculum studies discipline involves several challenges and problems, so that resolving them not only provides the ground for growth and flourishing of this discipline, but also brings about unpleasant outcomes and consequences for the experts as well as those who deal with the issue of curriculum in their professional lives. for this reason, schwab (1970) refers to curriculum as a "moribund field" and miller (2014) considers it as "communities without consensus". in other words, curriculum is inherently a discipline in which constant disagreements are inevitable. several thinkers throughout the world have tried to explore and investigate the curriculum studies field. perhaps, one of the most documented studies is the discussion provided by pinar et al. (1995) who have divided the evolution of the curriculum into different major periods or waves which can be summarized as: a) the first wave includes traditionalists who are divided into two groups: 1. classical traditionalists: this group includes the pioneers in the area of curriculum such as franklin bobbitt and ralph tyler who proposed this discipline as a technique (the same as the scientific curriculum development) for the first time, and considered the issue of curriculum as a technical trend and technology and attempted to predict all components and processes of curriculum linearly from the beginning to the end. 2. conceptual empiricists: these scholars mainly have adopted social sciences concepts and used them in curricula. the members of this group, including bruner and schwab, tend to study the curriculum phenomena empirically. b) the second wave includes re-conceptualists who have reviewed and criticized fundamental concepts of curriculum. they believe that curriculum discipline is not merely a scientific field, which could be designed, developed, implemented, and evaluated, but it is a complex phenomenon with political, feminist, artistic, historical, environmental, as well as racial aspects and identities (pinar, 1978; pinar et al., 1995). reconceptualists believe that the major concern for field is not to develop or plan a curriculum but is to understand it. during the second wave, the curriculum has passed through a profound transformation as a cognitive realm and the title has been transformed from “curriculum development” to “curriculum studies” (fathi vajargah, 2007). https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index fathi vajragah, recontextualization/multicontextualization of curriculum studies 58 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index reconceptualization is mentioned as the era characterized by the prominent name and effects of pinar, so that today-as the main waveit dominates the curriculum departments in many countries. this is a period when the discipline achieved significant development and expansion; it distanced from domination of scientific and traditional management approach and discarded understanding curriculum development as a whole discipline. in addition, non-technical concerns and questions that were mainly based on more accurate discovery and understanding have been spread in this era. however, iran has experienced a different situation. the curriculum field in iran is an imported discipline, in which there are no traces of thinking, generating or theorizing for resolving problems and issues in the society. instead it has been the translations of the mainly american and western efforts and their dissemination at universities and academic and administrative communities. this paper seeks to explain the status quo of curriculum discipline in iran, criticize obstacles that hinder the development of this discipline, and introduce alternative solutions to this situation in the form of recontextualization or multicontextualization movement of curriculum studies. ?curriculum studieswhat is the subject of perhaps, the first issue that comes to mind is related to what the subject of curriculum studies is. in fact, the subject of curriculum studies is students, schools, and school curricula. according to the traditional perspective, the subject of curriculum studies is to investigate different processes and aspects of curriculum development for schools (bobbitt, 1918; tyler, 1949; taba, 1962; & oliva, 1982), in which the main role of the discipline focuses on the process of designing or implementing school curricula. (it should be noted that regarding the question whether curriculum implementation is a subset of curriculum development process there is disagreement among the experts in the field. see: fathi vajargah & mehrmohammadi, 1999). based on a more profound and comprehensive point of view, the subject of curriculum studies is the overall school educational system and any experience that forms in that context (jackson, 1992; pinar, 1978; pinar, 2015). according to the contemporary perspective we are faced with intricacies when studying the learners’ experiences as curriculum, so that the study of the quality and function of such an experience requires continuous interaction of the curriculum experts, theorists, and professionals in several organizational, researching and scholar roles in the educational environment and forefront of the activities of education, namely, school. both the traditional perception and experience-oriented contemporary perception of the discipline provide minimum opportunity of interaction with schools and curricula for professionals and educators in the field of curriculum studies in iran. students and graduates who spend a considerable part of their academic time on studying theories, models, and methods of curriculum development or studying the experiences of learners and teachers, are hardly allowed to engage in schools or curriculum development institutions during their education or even after graduation. most studies conducted by these people emphasize “the study about curriculum” rather than "practical involvement in curriculum". as an interdisciplinary and professional field (yadegarzadeh, fathi vajargah, mehrmohammadi & arefi, 2014; walker, 2003), the discipline of curriculum studies requires the presence of students and graduates in practical situations, so that the graduates gain information and advantage of the curriculum theory and knowledge and achieve appropriate capabilities and competencies necessary for implementing the curriculum. this is observed in many professional fields, including medicine (which requires the exposure to and engagement in different therapeutic departments), technical and engineering fields https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index fathi vajragah, recontextualization/multicontextualization of curriculum studies 59 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index (which require the presence at workshops and implementation of various projects), and so forth. although many disciplines have continuously had inadequate ties with practical and professional experinces of the field, the depth and outcome of such a deficiency and lack of curriculum studies is far more serious because: 1) the nature of curriculum studies discipline has a hand in this problem; 2) this problem may be significantly related to the lack of cooperation between organizations, institutions, and schools for engaging students of curriculum studies with curriculum development and/or schools contexts in observance of strict and restrictive rules; and 3) there is a lack of recruitment of graduates in the respective jobs and positions. the resistance of decision-making institutions to engage professionals and experts of curriculum discipline in such systems either in the form of recruiting graduates of the field or in the form of participation and acceptance of the views and roles of experts of the field, has seriously blocked curriculum studies in its traditional form especially in the past two decades, so that curriculum research in universities, higher education institutes, and decision-making institutions have functioned separately going without any interaction. although there is a research gap regarding the reasons behind these disjunctions and inherent resistance, some hypotheses could be proposed regarding the causes of the mentioned situation as follows:  there exists a centralized decision-making system in which all curriculum decisions are made practically by a national powerful organization called the organization for research and educational planning (orep). the decisions are communicated to schools for fidelity implementation; therefore, schools do not have the relevant authority to review and modify curricula. this situation has virtually blocked employing the curriculum graduates’ expertise and ideas at both central and school levels.  the imperative political and cultural climate of the education proves that it would be costly for experts to critically review curricula and the decision-making system in education. this means that critique of curriculum content or applying the new concepts and new achievements in schools of other countries requires an open political and cultural space; something that is less present in the current situation.  due to the existing laws and regulations for the educational system, it is not easy for experts to examine theories and expert ideas in the real-life school contexts or to extract ideas from the everyday and lived experience of students at the schools. in other words, the presence of curriculum students and scholars in school environment and the educational system necessitates several considerations and in some cases will end up in restrictive bureaucracies.  the existence of some research institutes and centers in the educational system that employed some researchers has created a feeling of no need to use the views of experts or the use of curriculum graduates form outside of the ministry of education.  using new ideas and theories in curriculum decisions and trying to make reforms and to maximize the participation of professionals and graduates requires that the educational system is held accountable and specific mechanisms are provided to critique the performance at the practical levels. however, the ignorance of such mechanism in iran educational system could be mentioned as another significant reasons behind the current situation.  finally, the unscholarly and poor quality academic nature of the universities programs in the field of curriculum studies and its incompatibility with the real-life needs of the educational system could be raised as the other factor exacerbating the problems. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index fathi vajragah, recontextualization/multicontextualization of curriculum studies 60 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index universities accuse such organizations for monopolization and resistance to new academic ideas and approaches, and the experts and decision-makers of the country's curriculum system also emphasize the lack of information and inadequacy and contradictions of knowledge and procedural products in universities with real needs of education. at the school level, where the curriculum flows in its deep sense, the role of graduates of the field is far more insignificant and non-systematic; the role which could considerably contribute to address fundamental challenges at the schools or develop curriculum knowledge and theory. such obstacles lead to high costs and consequences for both the country's educational system as well as the curriculum studies as a field. curriculum researchers have the opportunity to attend the schools with a wide range of formal limitations and there are no organized and defined roles for graduates of the discipline in schools as curriculum consultants or curriculum coordinators as it is common in some other countries. consequences of blocking curriculum studies in iran 1. weaknesses in theorizing and producing curriculum thoughts the lack of serious signs and suitable conditions for producing thoughts in the area of curriculum is one of the most important characteristics of curriculum studies in iran. some studies have cited such problems (fathi vajargah, 2018; pakseresht, 2006) in which the causes of this condition have been attributed to various factors, including the existing situation. the present situation represents a kind of conflict between classic literature of curriculum development and reproduction of discourses inspired from the ideas of reconceptualism or pinarian era. optimistically, the literature of the curriculum discipline in iran involves publication and dissemination of reconceptualist discourses in leading universities that possess characteristics such as a focus on specialists with a range of curriculum identities and forming some groups of certain interests related to those thinkers in the form of publications, meetings, reviews, and so forth. in other words, what lacks or is seen less frequently in the faculties of educational sciences is the production of curriculum thoughts which could serve as a foundation for theorizing. this backwardness of the production of curriculum knowledge and theories in comparison to many leading countries, and even recently to developing countries is largely caused by the negligence of the educational actions and the curriculum decision-making circles in the country. this is a process that even if it has no contribution to the theorization, it could contribute significantly to localizing the curriculum knowledge, views and debates in iran. 2. the imitative approach this imitative approach and efforts to make followers, especially its american type, by the curriculum thinkers, directed this discipline towards unpleasant conditions which has clear conflicts with the discipline procedures at global level. these procedures seek to decentralize american theories and thoughts in curriculum studies. pinar refers to this attitude as a "deviation from narcissism in curriculum studies in america" (pinar et al., 1995), characterized with efforts to lead curriculum theorization beyond the boundaries of north america, giving an international character in the form of the establishment of international organizations including iaacs, and reliance on international studies in the form of curriculum internationalization movement. unfortunately, the conditions of curriculum studies in iran could be named the "iranian altruism" as a condition against the https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index fathi vajragah, recontextualization/multicontextualization of curriculum studies 61 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index american narcissism. although, the internationalization of curriculum studies could contain a kind of domination of american curriculum studies worldwide and practically lead to the translation of many works and ideas of north american curriculum scholars to the educational contexts of other countries, its main purpose is to provoke the curriculum studies in other countries based on their own indigenous culture and traditions. curriculum field is an area that suffers from imitation in the context of iran. the famous thinker of curriculum, jo anne pagano, uses the term "epistemological refuge" to explain women and their place in society (pinar et al, 1995). the term refers to the use of insight and understanding of men by women in life. similarly, the iranian curriculum community also suffers from this situation, so that there is no option but to reach what is found in the works and thoughts of the imported curriculum knowledge. 3. unpunctuality of curriculum practice in the education institution another consequence of such obstructions/obstacles is several problems faced by schools. as a place to educate people and prepare them for life, schools have become a place to implement traditional practices and actions in education. in the new era, curriculum decision-making system in iran predominantly acts as a centralized institution with the least opportunity for participation and intervention of families and local communities, and minimum attention to the real needs and problems of students. in such a system, which is excessively affected by competitive spaces, university entrance exam (konkour), and tests, the motivation for research and scientific work is declining, and few people pay attention to scientific achievements. 4. unemployed graduates of the discipline of curriculum studies the lack of a systematic and practical relationship between universities and higher education institutes responsible for educating professional human resources in the area of curriculum and education institution as well as the lack of admission of human resources, specifically trained for the educational system practices, seriously resulted in the phenomenon of graduates’ unemployment in this field. this phenomenon itself causes depression and disappointment of a majority of graduates and scholars in the field. optimistically, these graduates who have passed high levels of education mainly look for a career as a faculty member. according to the ministry of science, research, and technology (msrt), the total number of the students graduated in the educational sciences in the academic year of 2016-2017 is as follows: table 1. total number of the students graduated in the educational science in the academic year of 2016-2017 (msrt, 2017) female male total associate's degree 3042 1283 4325 bachelor's degree 20368 12888 33256 ma 3786 3128 6914 professional doctorate 0 0 0 ph.d 69 121 190 total 27265 17420 44495 as seen, near 7000 ma and 190 ph.d. students are graduated each year. these figures have been reported for curriculum and educational planning as follows: https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index fathi vajragah, recontextualization/multicontextualization of curriculum studies 62 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index table 2. the number of graduates of curriculum development and educational planning disciplines (msrt, 2017). discipline ma ph.d total curriculum development 1043 36 1079 educational planning 557 2 559 educational planning and curriculum development 1600 38 1638 the number of students studying in these disciplines has been reported as follows: table 3. the number of students by department and grade in the academic year 2016-2017 (msrt, 2017) discipline ma ph.d total curriculum development 3046 839 3885 educational planning 2069 17 2086 educational planning and curriculum development 5115 856 5971 according to table 2, 1600 ma and 38 ph. d students are annually graduated in disciplines related to curriculum. about 5115 graduate students and 856 ph.d students have been studying during the 2016-2017 academic year. generalizing this procedure to the past and future decades further reveals the main nature of the crisis of unemployed graduates, who are educated at universities to be hired in schools and educational system, but do not have a place for their future career in this system. 5. training generalists in the area of curriculum and lack of serious professional education another consequence of such obstruction is the training of generalists in the area of curriculum and lack of professional and specialized training of the students in curriculum studies. as a professional field of study, curriculum development requires that the corresponding graduates continuously attend the context for which they are trained. the lack of practical communication between universities and ministry of education in the training of human resources in the area of curriculum leads to inadequate opportunity for students to attend the educational system. on the other hand, the limited opportunities designed for internship courses, seminars, and implementation of research projects in the form of theses and dissertations will not have acceptable effectiveness and efficiency due to the lack of cooperation between the educational system and universities. what actually occurs in the training of curriculum professionals and experts in iran is the focus of universities on the teaching of principles and concepts of curriculum development rather than practical involvement in the process of curriculum development or "work experiences". this situation leads to the training of generalists who are not specialized in specific fields such as science education, preschool or secondary education. 6. questioning the position of curriculum studies at universities and society another consequence of such obstruction is to question the status of curriculum studies in the academic decision-making circles and society. when unemployed graduates cannot involve in the context and practices that they are trained for (i.e., the educational https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index fathi vajragah, recontextualization/multicontextualization of curriculum studies 63 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index system), and when extensive resources are used to train this workforce without a tangible achievement for individuals and families, serious questions will be gradually raised for continuing the presence and surviving this discipline in universities and higher education institutes. in other words, unavailability of job opportunities for the graduates will cause disappointment and frustration and reduce students’ motivation in this discipline at the postgraduate courses. this, in turn, will also have unfavorable effects on the quality of the graduates. the most important point in this regard is the effect of this process on the future entrance demands and the quality of students who choose this area for their study. 7. dissatisfaction of the needs of families and schools and the emergence of opportunist organizations informal education organizations play important roles in the growth and education of students and development of capabilities of a society. the main focus of the disciplines related to education and governmental institutions is on the formal education. in such a situation, informal education is provided by educational centers and families. in general, the main objective of informal education is to provide training and learning opportunities using the capacities and capabilities of organizations and institutions for meeting the dissatisfied needs of students, parents and social groups. although supervisory agencies, such as the supreme council of the cultural revolution, could generally intervene in achieving this main objective by formulating some policies, it could be said that inattention of curriculum field to these capacities and needs led to inadequacy of disciplines to meet the society needs as well as the emergence of the profiteering institutes who merchandise education and fate of children and teenagers of this country. needs of families in terms of curriculum and academic counseling, especially at the level of university entrance exam (konkour), and the lack of appropriate response of curriculum field to this requirement, have led to the formation of "curriculum trade". this has emerged in the form of uncontrolled growth of opportunist organizations and establishment of impure and immoral business through targeting hopes and desires of families and children which have ultimately caused deterioration of the culture of education and deviation of the educational system. there is no doubt that the discipline of curriculum studies is not only responsible for the losing of the survival opportunity in the area of informal education, but also is blamable for deviating the educational system and unresponsiveness to the needs of the society. in general, the discipline of curriculum studies has been obstructed by the lack of interaction with the main context for which it has been defined; that is, the education system suffers from obstruction. education for curriculum has been like water for living; however, due to the lack of access, the discipline has been gradually declining in iran. . what is the alternative approach to the current obstruction? in order to face with the current conditions, three different scenarios or approaches could be followed: 1. to neglect the current realities and conditions of curriculum studies and continue the process that we have passed through especially over the past two decades. that is, regardless of the context, on which we are going to be the focus of scientific and academic circles, we should show that curriculum studies as a discipline has not been blocked in any area, and if there are any problems – which are obviousit is the responsibility of the educational system officials to solve them. it seems that if we adopt this approach, it would https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index fathi vajragah, recontextualization/multicontextualization of curriculum studies 64 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index not result in problem-solving and even will lead to a kind of backwardness in the developments in curriculum studies discipline in iran. 2. to adopt a more critical and more aggressive position on curriculum-related events and publish reports, critiques, and pressure decision-making circles to initiate negotiations and further interaction between academic circles and education in order to eliminate obstructions. 3. to move beyond the educational system as the only context and field of curriculum studies and try to achieve and identify new areas and contexts for conducting curriculum studies. this does not imply passing over the education or forgetting the concerns and problems of curriculum in the schools, because this is not feasible (due to the origin of the discipline and interconnectedness of the discipline with the schools and institutes) and not ethical, since studying curricula for professionals in the discipline affects professional and occupational aspects and is also a moral mission affecting the future of the country. it seems that adopting the third approach as a kind of movement for expanding curriculum studies in other fields and areas, while adopting a critical attitude towards the events of curriculum in the educational system, could motivate to exit the dead-end, remove the monotonous situation, improve the discipline, solve some of the problems, and even develop theoretical and practical aspects of the discipline. this approach can be mentioned as recontextualization or multicontextualization of the curriculum studies. the concept of recontextualization or multicontextualization recontextualization is the process of extracting text, signs, and meanings from their original context in order to use or propagate them in other context(s). since the meanings of texts and signs depend on their own conditions and contexts, this process leads to change and innovation (oddo, 2013). this term has a prospective semantic burden, because it refers to future opportunities that have not yet been created and they should have been done. the best way to create a new market is to find the problem. some problems have no straightforward solution, hence finding the solution could lead to the development of a new market. in the current state, the curriculum knowledge and techniques are produced and provided for known audiences, while the solution can be hidden in the creation of curriculum knowledge and products for new groups of audiences. searching secondary markets for a discipline is a good and secure way to strengthen the position of the discipline. for this reason, most of the major companies throughout the world either seek to create an innovation or minor changes in current products and define a new life cycle for their product or even supply and introduction of their product. the recontextualization or multicontextualization of curriculum this concept means to introduce, apply and engage the curriculum studies in new fields, areas, and ecosystems with suitable theoretical and practical capacity in addition to the main or primary context (i.e. educational system). in this sense, the discipline of curriculum studies finds this opportunity to be re-arranged in new areas. due to this presence and the relationship between curriculum studies in new realms and ecosystems, deep and diverse understandings, as well as other applications of what has existed in the initial ecosystem, can be achieved. these understandings and applications are the outcome of interaction between information from curriculum studies and requirements and conditions in the new ecosystems. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index fathi vajragah, recontextualization/multicontextualization of curriculum studies 65 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index for example, when the discipline of curriculum studies moves beyond its original context that is public education, and is institutionalized and used in issues and concerns of other areas with different audiences, such as higher educational system or adult education, the result could be the creation and achievement of new understandings different from the initial understandings of the fundamental concepts of the curriculum studies. specifically, this claim is supported by the introduction of the view and approach governing curriculum models to the higher education studies, which, in addition to creating a new area called curriculum studies in higher education, creates new models (wolf, 2007; diamond, 1998; toohey, 1999; barnett & coate, 2005; fathi vajargah, 2006; vaziri,1999; momeni mahmoie, 2005; fathi vagargah & norouzzadeh, 2008; mohsenpoor et. al, 2018). although this new area has structurally conventional categories of technical, non-technical, and eclectic, their stages, components and morphology are different from the models of curriculum studies. the concept of disciplinary immigration a metaphor that can help us in this area is the concept of disciplinary immigration from so called motherland that is education, as a native land to new ecosystems, where there are both new opportunities for progressing the discipline and questions and concerns about curriculum but with different terms and literature that require focal attention and investigation. undoubtedly, there would be several obstacles to the development and expansion of the discipline and theorization in the motherland. in addition, there are minor practical involvement opportunities accompanied by significant historical failures in the motherland. hence, opportunities available in other potential areas cannot be neglected. immigration does not mean leaving the motherland and forgetting it. it also does not imply removing all the capacities and facilities of the discipline from the area of education and depart to other areas, but to establish a kind of balanced attention to the opportunities for growth in curriculum studies in new ecosystems in addition to the original and initial intended habitat. on the other hand, this migration has positive consequences and achievements for the mainland. as the immigrants always contribute to the country economy and dynamism by sending their material achievements to their home country or encouraging investment in the motherland and supporting it, and even some countries guarantee their survival by sending immigrants to other places, departing and entering the new curriculum areas can promote the main discipline and its primary context, that is, education by proposing new ideas and views, and contribute to its flourishing promotion. yet, such a migration will be accompanied by some challenges and difficulties for experts and graduates of curriculum. the most important obstacles in this area are as follows: obstacles to disciplinary culture different disciplines have different cultures and are derived from different experimental and theoretical backgrounds. hence, although curriculum problems have the same nature in different disciplines, such fields of study are actually different in terms of the amount of familiarity with education and curriculum practices. moreover, different disciplines have distinctive features as a result of belonging to different epistemological paradigms, which affect the introduction process of curriculum discipline into new realms. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index fathi vajragah, recontextualization/multicontextualization of curriculum studies 66 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index obstacles to technical language each discipline has a different technical and, to a large extent, unique language that makes it difficult for newcomers to understand occasions and interpretations. for example, it is necessary to deal with the tools for quality control of curriculum and education in organizational training and workplace learning. the best known standards include iso 29990, iso 21001, iso 10015, and hse (health, safety, and environment). it has been observed in practice that learning and mastering these standards are very difficult and time -consuming. 1. background obstacles contingencies and conditions in new areas could be very different from the initial conditions. for example, there are fundamental differences in the context of higher education and universities in comparison to the schools and educational system, which makes it difficult for newcomers to work and think. 2. barriers to acceptance another problem in this area is the resistance of new grounds to accept the entry of individuals from new disciplines and recognize their interferences in study, research, education, and provision of services in these fields. for example, introduction of curriculum discipline into organizational areas and workplaces has been faced with relatively significant resistances from the side of management and human resources departments for accepting the position of the discipline of education and human resources development as a sub-discipline of educational sciences, in which concerns and questions of curriculum are raised. 3. concentration on schools although multicontextualization of curriculum studies refers to the re-arrangement process of curriculum discipline in emerging areas and fields, this does not imply disregarding curriculum issues in educational system and schools. but it means that curriculum should decentralize its efforts from mere focus on schools and use other opportunities and capacities to grow, progress, and flourish curriculum studies. in other words, although efforts related to schools and theorizing and helping to solve the school problems continue to be the major concerns of the discipline, this implies that the discipline should not be fully occupied by school affairs, interests and concerns. on the other hand, multicontextualization also means changing the procedure in the form of rethinking the discipline performance in its main or primary field, that is educational system, and searching opportunities and using them for more effective participation in schools. this can be done using a critical approach to the curriculumrelated events at schools by professional institutions, such as curriculum associations. observation and systematic review and criticism of curriculum-related decisions and actions as periodic critical reports can strengthen the status of curriculum studies in educational system. which contexts? which areas? in the recent years, significant efforts have been made to initiate or develop the use of curriculum studies in areas other than education, which promises the discipline growth and development in new areas. the most important of these new areas and efforts are: https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index fathi vajragah, recontextualization/multicontextualization of curriculum studies 67 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index 1. higher education curriculum as a new and evolving area, curriculum discipline has experienced widespread transformations in higher education, especially in the last decade. curriculum is one of the new areas of curriculum discipline in higher education, as well as a missing element of higher education studies, as it has not been seriously addressed by higher education and policy-making efforts. (barnett & coate, 2005). the designing process of curriculum is still not quite logical and thoughtful. a review over the limited published works in this area suggests that the introduction of curriculum into the higher education is relatively new and, of course, necessary. barnett and coate (2005) titled their great book on curriculum of higher education as engaging curriculum in higher education, and owen hicks (2007), as one of the curriculum thinkers of higher education, labeled his famous paper as "higher education curriculum in australia; hello?" in general, curriculum in higher education should be considered in both areas of higher education and curriculum studies (fathi vajargah, 2011). the situation of curriculum in higher education is very different from that of general education. in practice, curricula have been significantly considered as an essential element of higher education but there are a few studies on curriculum theorizing and how to develop a curriculum in higher education. (see: conrad & pratt , 1986; dressel, 1971; diamond, 2000; stark & luttuca, 1997; toohey, 1999; barnett & coate, 2005; wolf & houghes, 2007). in the same vein, several studies and works have been published in this area in iran during the past decade (saketi, 2000; vaziri, 1999; arefi, 2005; momeni & fathi vajargah, 2004; fathi vajargah, & norouzzadeh, 2007; fathi vajargah, 2009). 2. workplace curriculum another new area where the discipline of curriculum studies can attend and respond to the respective concerns is organizational training. human resources training and development system as any other educational sub-system deals with the subject of development of employees and managers, and a large volume of resources are spent on such training every year (atd, 2016). the main objective of the workplace curriculum is the development of technical and non-technical competencies required by the employees to become skillful in their jobs and manage to achieve satisfactory outcomes. in fact, workplace curriculum requires re-thinking and reviewing how to understand and conceptualize how to learn and organize teaching and learning programs based on the experiences and scientific principles. addressing curriculum-related issues in this area, which is referred to and known by different terms, such as training course, learning plan, curriculum in educational standards and procedures, and employees’ development, is a new ground and context that has been considered nationally (fathi vajargah, 2016; fathi vajargah et al., 2017) and internationally (billett, 2006; boud, & solomon, 2001; moore, 2004). 3. curriculum counseling as mentioned earlier, another area with great potentiality for attending curriculum specialists is the needs of informal education, especially the learning needs of students and families. many students and learners generally face challenges regarding the study and learning methods, time management, curriculum adaptation, and determination of their learning pathways (renzulli, 2013). in order to receive specialized counseling on curriculum, they turn to centers and institutions that often lack sufficient expertise and competence, and largely seek their material goals. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index fathi vajragah, recontextualization/multicontextualization of curriculum studies 68 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index on the other hand, education managers and trainers in educational centers often need specialized counseling on curriculum in many situations, and this defect sometimes causes harms to the education process. lee and dimmock (2010) stated that actions, such as advice on facilitating the implementation of curriculum and counseling on curriculum elements to the managers and educational leaders have been neglected, and they should be taken into account (roudi et. al, 2018). in order to solve these problems and respond to the demands in the educational community of the country, a communication bridge between curriculum and academic counseling, which seems to be one of the tasks and responsibilities of the educational system, should be established between curriculum and academic counseling. it seems that this is one of the duties of curriculum area that has been neglected and needs to be renewed and represented (roudi et. al, 2018). curriculum counseling can play the role of this bridge and contribute as an interface to curriculum, counseling and even learning psychology to improve the level of learning and achieve curriculum objectives. at present, curriculum counseling does not exist as a systematic and organized process, and only some non-specialized institutions and centers do this, whereas it should be seriously and systematically discussed and considered in the area of curriculum. therefore, establishment of a "curriculum system organization" which is responsible for professional training of curriculum graduates and preparing them for establishing curriculum counseling centers, is an activity could contribute to the improvement of the discipline’s status in society. there have been very few studies conducted on this new discipline in iran (roudi et. al, 2018), which can be the starting point for engaging more professionals and experts in curriculum in this new field. 4. adult education curriculum adult education either in its traditional sense (i.e., adult education and education of the villagers and people living in productive and agricultural regions to improve livelihoods) or in its new sense, which involves in-service training of human resources employed in the organizations, is an area with very suitable capacity for the presence of curriculum specialists and experts. in this context, some actions have been taken to theorize and develop practical guidelines in the area of curriculum for adult education in the world (langenbach, 1993; usher, 1991) and iran (maleki, 2005). it is clear that what has been said about the new contexts of curriculum is an introduction, and further studies can introduce other areas and contexts. misunderstandings about the rearrangement and recontextualization of curriculum in the new grounds in general, as with any new phenomenon, some serious misunderstandings about this new movement will be found in the area of curriculum studies. some of the most important of these misunderstandings are:  commercializing curriculum studies and merchandizing with it;  neglecting curriculum in the area of public education or denying, rejecting and challenging it the moral mission;  lack of historical attitude as well as the claim which shows re-arrangement of a discipline is not a new concept;  deconstructing and going beyond the well-defined and acceptable boundaries of curriculum;  lack of curriculum concern in the new intended areas. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index fathi vajragah, recontextualization/multicontextualization of curriculum studies 69 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index expected accomplishments of the new movement the rearrangement movement in new areas can bring about considerable accomplishments. the most important achievements are:  applying the results and accomplishments of the discipline in new areas and emerging the relationship between theory and practice,  innovations in theories, methods, models, and technologies of curriculum,  responding to the increasingly dissatisfied needs in various areas of human life as well as various social groups and preventing the entry of opportunist organizations and institutions to the educational system and society,  developing the knowledge boundaries and producing thoughts in the area of curriculum studies as an epistemic field,  contextualizing for employment of graduates through their professional preparation for the areas required in the form of independent and professional occupations, including activities of licensed professional curriculum consultants,  stimulating the society for claiming knowledge and findings of curriculum in new fields such as the needs of families.  relying on interdisciplinary studies between curriculum studies and other epistemic areas in order to generate the required products and integrated knowledge.  attending international scientific circles of curriculum using the iranian perceptions and experiences of curriculum and helping to theorize and reflect on the discipline in new areas.  making history for curriculum via publishing and expanding the discipline rearrangement movement in new areas.  professionalism in curriculum studies and specialists-centeredness in dealing with concerns and issues. yet, the following actions and mechanisms can facilitate the above-mentioned movement in iran:  holding periodical conferences as bergamo conferences in the united states for discussion and development of the new movement.  publishing specific books, papers, and journals in new areas and fields.  developing and approving academic disciplines with the specialized nature of curriculum in new areas.  establishing the organization of curriculum system or the institution of the experts in curriculum and legitimizing it, and providing practical and experimental training for graduates and granting licenses in specialized areas for professional and independent activities at society level.  organizational and institutional encouragement of the respective institutions for defining and approving new occupations related to this discipline, such as curriculum consultants at universities and curriculum coordinator or counselor in schools and educational areas.  holding specialized courses in new areas, such as post-doctoral courses in capable universities with appropriate conditions. notes https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index fathi vajragah, recontextualization/multicontextualization of curriculum studies 70 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index 1 this research was supported by a research grant at shahid beheshti university and is a further elaboration of persian version paper “toward third wave of curriculum studies in iran: a recontextualisation movement”, journal of curriculum studies, 18(2)2019 2k-fathi@sbu.ac.ir references arefi, m. (2005). curriculum development in higher education strategy. tehran: shahid beheshti university publication. association for talent development. (2016). state of the industry report. retrieved from: https://www.td.org/insights/atd-releases-2016-state-of-the-industry-report barnett r., & coate k. (2005) engaging the curriculum in higher education .maidenhead: society for research into higher education and open university press. biggs, j. (2004). teaching for quality learning at university, 2nd ed, (pp.11-33). berkshire: srhe and open university press. billett, s., (2006) constituting the workplace curriculum, journal of curriculum studies, 38:1, 31-48, doi: 10.1080/00220270500153781 bobbitt, f. (1918). the curriculum. boston: houghton mifflin. boud, d., & solomon, n. (eds.). (2001). work based learning. society for research into higher education. open university press. conrad, f., & pratt, a. (1986). research on academic programs: an inquiry into an emerging field. in john c. siuart (ed.) higher education: a handbook of theory and research, vol. 2. new york: agathon press, pp. 235-273. diamond, r. m. (1998) designing and assessing courses and curricula: a practical guide. san francisco: jossey-bass. dressel, p. l. (1971). college and university curriculum. berkeley, california: mccutchan publishing corporation. fathi vajargah, k. (2006). a model of experimental curriculum in higher education. nsw: sothern cross university. fathi vajargah, k. (2007). curriculum identities. tehran: aeij publication. fathi vajargah, k. (2008). introduction to universities curriculum development. tehran: higher education research and development institution. fathi vajargah, k. (2009). fundamental principles and concepts of curriculum. tehran: iran zamin. fathi vajargah, k. (2011). exploring lived curriculum in higher education (toward a conceptual model). journal of techniques, technologies education management, 6(1), 83-91. fathi vajargah, k. (2011). in-service training and development. tehran: samt press. fathi vajargah, k. (2016) workplace curriculum discourses. paper presented at iranian society for training and development. tehran: 18 december 2016 fathi vajargah, k. (2018) toward third wave of curriculum studies in iran. iranian journal of higher education curriculum. 18(2) pp 45-69 fathi vajargah, k., & mehrmohammadi, m. (1999). limits and boundaries of curriculum and instruction. academic research journal (2).pp 12-27 fathi vajargah, k., & momeni mahmoie, h. (2008). investigating the role of factors affecting the participation of faculty members in the academic planning. iranian higher education, 1(1),pp 139-165. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index https://doi.org/10.1080/00220270500153781 fathi vajragah, recontextualization/multicontextualization of curriculum studies 71 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index fathi vajargah, k., khorasani, a., & dousti hajiabadi, h. (2017). workplace curriculum. tehran: industrial research and education center press. hicks, o. (2007) curriculum in higher education in australia – hello? in enhancing higher education, theory and scholarship. proceedings of the 30th herdsa annual conference, adelaide, 8-11 july. jackson, p. w. (1992). conceptions of curriculum and curriculum specialists. in jackson, p. (ed.), handbook of research on curriculum: a project of the american. new york: macmillan. langenbach, m. (1993). curriculum models in adult education. malabar , florida :krieger publishing company. lee ,john chi-kin & dimmock, clive (2010). curriculum leadership and management in secondary schools: a hong kong case study. school leadership & management, formerly school organization, volume 19, 2010 issue 4. maleki, h. (2005). the proceedings of the curriculum papers with focus on adult education: tahran: literacy movement organization press. miller, j. l. (2014). living tensions in curriculum studies: communities without consensus in transitory times. studies in curriculum theory series. rutledge. mohsenpour kebriyaei, h., fathi vajarghah, k., arefi, m., & khorasani a. (2018). explaining the outcomes of curriculum development culture progression in universities and higher education institutions of iran. journal of curriculum research, 14(2), 28. retrieved from: http://jsr-e.khuisf.ac.ir/article_539013.html momeni mahmoie, h. 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(1995). understanding curriculum: an introduction to the study of historical and contemporary curriculum discourses. new york: peter lang. renzulli, s., ((2013). using learning and study strategies and counseling interventions to improve the academic performance of university students placed on academic probation. unpublished doctoral dissertations. 68. university of connecticut http://digitalcommons.uconn.edu/dissertations/68 roudi, m. t., fathi vajargah, k., arefi, m., hakimzadeh, r., (2018). conceptualizing curriculum counseling as one of the modern fields of curriculum studies. quarterly https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index https://www.tandfonline.com/author/lee%2c+john+chi-kin https://www.tandfonline.com/author/dimmock%2c+clive https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/cslm20/19/4 https://doi.org/10.1108/13665620410550303 https://doi.org/10.1080/0022027780100303 http://digitalcommons.uconn.edu/dissertations/68 fathi vajragah, recontextualization/multicontextualization of curriculum studies 72 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index journal of theory and practice in curriculum, 6(11). retrieved from https://www.sid.ir/en/journal/viewpaper.aspx ?id=744424 saketi, p. 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(1999). curriculum development system in higher education of iran. characteristics and orientations. unpublished doctoral thesis. tarbiat modarres university: tehran. walker, d. f. (2003). fundamentals of curriculum: passion and professionalism (2nd ed.). mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum. wolf, p., & houghes, j. c. (eds.). (2007). curriculum development in higher education: faculty-driven processes and practices. uk: jossey bass wiley yadegarzadeh, g; fathi vajargah, k; mehrmohammadi, m & arefi, m., (2014). designing and developing of curriculum scholars professional duties. journal of research in educational systems. 8(26) 7-45. retrieved from: http://www.jiera.ir/article_50245.html submitted: may, 24th. approved: august, 10th. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index https://www.sid.ir/en/journal/viewpaper.aspx https://doi.org/10.1080/00220272.2013.809152 microsoft word sameshima irwin formatted with edits .doc to cite this article please include all of the following details: sameshima, pauline and irwin, rita l. (2008). rendering dimensions of liminal currere. transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> rendering dimensions of a liminal currere pauline sameshima washington state university, usa rita l. irwin university of british columbia, canada attempts to explore and articulate the role(s) of the arts in qualitative social science research, in particular, understanding the relationship between processes of the arts and the processes of research, present challenges because for an a/r/tographer, the relationship between the creation of artful representational forms and the crafting of artful scholarly research are not dualist, nor dichotomous, but rather non-linear, rhizomatic, and dynamically interwoven. this paper offers a description of our individual art-making processes as living inquiries of spiritual pedagogical practice grounded in the work of curriculum theorist, jacques daignault. to assist understanding while visually conceptualizing the cycling hermeneutic a/r/tographic (irwin 2004) description of our own processes within creative scholarship, we use rita's "ampersand" photo series and pauline's "edges" photo series to figuratively convey our understandings of the dimensions of currere. the paper is framed with the following five subsections: curriculum as multi-dimensional, curriculum as spiritual, curriculum as textual literacies, curriculum as liminal currere, and finally, curriculum as renderings of liminality. curriculum as multi-dimensional to metaphorically situate artful research and create possibilities for understanding processes of the arts in research, we turn to the work of jacques daignault to inform our thinking about artful inquiry as a description of curriculum and of pedagogy. daignault is a major north america curriculum theorist with a focus on contemporary french literature and philosophy in relation to education. pinar, reynolds, slattery, and taubman (1995, p. 480) enthusiastically advocate that daignault "brilliantly explores the space, the gaps, the 'in-betweens' and the differences within language, thought, the subject, and our ways and modes of conceiving ourselves and curriculum." daignault attempts to "articulate the very movement of thought itself as it thinks itself in the relationships of teaching and learning" (p. 481). we pause now to provide a very brief frame for daignault's view of curriculum. daignault argues that "to know is to kill" (1992a, p. 199). violence stems from privileging power between ideologies and doctrines, thus to know is to murder, to terrorize. for daignault, the opposite of terrorism is nihilism, which is the abandonment of any attempt to know. nihilism is the hopelessness of surrendering ideals to empty fictions and memories. daignault (1983) urges a residing in the in-between, where the power of terrorism is not sought nor is education viewed as a place of efficiency and manipulation. thinking, he believes "happens only in between suicide and murder . . . between nihilism and terrorism" (1992a, p. 19). daignault believes thinking is itself the passage between. it is in the process of thinking that a forward movement is created. daignault writes, "i have tried to find passages between the variable and the invariable, between both: not from one to the other, but passages at their absolute difference, the differénce [derrida's term] between death, twice evaded" (p. 201). many researchers seek to bridge the http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci sameshima and irwin (2008) rendering dimensions of liminal currere transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 2 disparate, trying to link the science and the arts, or theory and practice whereas daignault suggests that we walk between, not across. we follow the paths of the liminal edge not seeking the nostalgic desire to leave where we are and travel across to the other place, but to travel between and along the edges of here and there in the unsettled liminal space. daignault's work is very much about articulating the passages between. he resists representing a totalized knowledge but rather stages or performs "knowledge through a passageway" by thinking aloud (1983, pp. 7-13). daignault says the "gap" is the curriculum and that "thinking is the incarnation of curriculum as composition" (quoted in hwu, 1993, p. 172). curriculum understood as composition allows "a participation" in "continuing creation" (quoted in hwu, 1993, p. 171). daignault's views on knowledge creation are not about pinning down or defining reification, but are rather a translation of a joyful wisdom, "thinking maybe" (1992a, p. 202) and being sincere as he says, "do not expect me to know what i am talking about here; i am trying to think. that is my best contribution to the composer's creativity" (1992a, p. 4). to expand daignault's view, we see the space between or the passageway as not a twodimensional preformed pathway, but a multi-layered complex interplay of dimensions which span breadth, depth, height, and time. a simple metaphoric image to describe liminal dimensionality is to imagine a tree's both grown and not yet grown branches as passages of rhizomatic travel. in the liminal learning space, one can move between, in, on, and through the branches of the tree itself, on and through its changing shadows on the context of land, as well as under the earth on and through the roots of the tree. figure 1. "rhizomatic roots." p. sameshima, 2005, new orleans. this metaphor is also useful for noting that as one forges through open spaces growing branches and roots where none were before, the liminal itself is eliminated in the process of growth and becomes the evidenced curriculum. hence, the liminal, once encountered, is curriculum. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci sameshima and irwin (2008) rendering dimensions of liminal currere transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 3 a second image useful for conceptualizing multi-dimensional liminal curriculum comes from the postmodern work of william doll (1993) and the work on complexity theory in relation to education by brent davis and dennis sumara (2005). davis and sumara encourage poststructuralist methods of conceptualizing educational research which abandon characterizations of and distinctions among qualitative research methodologies which have tended to be defined in terms and principles developed against a background of scientific research. on the cover of doll's (1993) book, a post-modern perspective on curriculum, is the figure of a "phase space" diagram named "chaos." "chaos" alternately called the "lorenz attractor" was introduced by meteorologist edward lorenz (1963) and is a graphical representation of a nonlinear, three-dimensional system over time. figure 2. a lorenz phase shape sample. retrieved from: http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/~pbourke/fractals/lorenz/ patterns are random but not created with wild, haphazard abandon. patterns are complexly ordered and trajectories of patterns have "bounds" and a center "attractor" area. there is a dynamic tension between moving out and back and an overall coherence (see the unpaginated opening in doll, 1993). a phase space graph or diagram provides a heuristic to imagine and represent possible states of a system. one possible state would thus be one unique point in the whole diagram. in mechanical systems, the phase space graph usually consists of all possible values of position and momentum variables. the diagram represents plots of position and momentum variables as a function of time (see wikipedia, 2006, ¶ 1). although phase shapes in mathematic models are deterministic systems with set possible positions, traversing liminal spaces that cross borders between time and space are "grown" and self-created through the movement of currere. the act of articulation, performance, or even a simple acknowledged or witnessed encountering of these liminal intersections which correspond with coordinates on the phase shape graph, provide contextual situators which designate points of learning. in the language of research and the language of practice: neither one nor the other: pedagogy (1988), daignault suggests that we not try to find a language which is common to both groups or an average between or a form of moderation, but rather, speak a language that subverts the dualism itself and yet honours difference. he says, "difference between the language of practice and the language of research are not reducible at the surface level. . . . nevertheless, language is language. at some level, there are no differences between languages" (quoted in hwu, 1993, p. 166). so it is with art. the text of artful representation is still a text seeking response. daignault proposes http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/~pbourke/fractals/lorenz sameshima and irwin (2008) rendering dimensions of liminal currere transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 4 that curriculum and pedagogy operate in the space between practice and theory, between what is and what ought to be, and which is the "excluded third" (pinar et al., 1995, p. 483). thus daignault grounds our artful ways of researching as thinking about curriculum as the gap which we travel along as artists, imagining a pedagogy of spirituality that informs and reforms our thinking. curriculum as spiritual the development of curriculum is spiritual in that artful practice, creativity, and creative acts are spiritual (hall, 2000) and the heart of the research is not only mirrored, but actually constructed in its own creation and development. artful research is spiritual because it evidences care and compassion, joy, responsive mindfulness, and an embodied esthetic awareness. a spiritual curriculum moves beyond the rational and analytic ways of understanding the world and favors intuitive and emotional ways of knowing as we focus our perceptions on building connections, seeking unity and feeling centered: in other words, being mindful. (irwin, 2007, p. 1401) iannone (1999) explains: "mindfulness for curriculum means learning how to focus and grasping meanings that are important for the individual" (also see tuoti, 1997; langer, 1997). to live inquiry in the liminal space is to be present in a heightened state of being, as if immersed in luminiferous ether (sameshima, 2007). ether was historically the fifth element along with air, earth, fire, and water and was once believed to be a medium that filled all space to support the propagation of electromagnetic waves (thehyperdictionary, 2007). living in the ether is thus living in a mode of inquiry that is sensually and sensitively charged. merleau-ponty (1968) describes living this aesthetic openness of being as "chiasm" which is experiencing the world as "flesh"—a meshing of subject and object, self and body, and body and world. merleau-ponty explains: the flesh is not matter, is not mind, is not substance. to designate it, we should need the old term "element," in the sense it was used to speak of water, air, earth, and fire, that is, in the sense of a general thing, midway between the spatio-temporal individual and the idea, a sort of incarnate principle that brings a style of being wherever there is a fragment of being. the flesh is in this sense an "element" of being. (p. 139) parker palmer says: "as i teach, i project the condition of my soul onto my students, my subject, and our way of being together" (1998, p.1). thus, our presence and our encounters with others and our selves become a curriculum (irwin, 2007). daignault (1992b) too, sees the spirituality in curriculum. he talks about writing and encouraging others to write as a form of care for the other, reiterating again his views of active participatory curriculum construction. he believes that through language, serenity can be achieved. serenity is defined as inner peace, not happiness but a "comeback to happiness" in spite of suffering (p. 2). he believes serenity dispels suffering by attaching meaning to moments of active and passive violence. curriculum as textual literacies as a/r/tographers (see irwin, 2004), we continue to attempt to articulate the art processes in terms of research processes through language, which itself "occupies the space of separation" (pinar et al., 1995, p. 447). merleau-ponty asserts that "the primary meaning of discourse is to be found in that text of experience which it is trying to communicate" (1962, p. 388). thinking about research through artful processes of inquiry allows for possibilities for making fresh connections. one method of developing emergent connective relational intersections can be made by using the four identified types of literary tropes. a trope is simply language used in a figurative or nonliteral http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci sameshima and irwin (2008) rendering dimensions of liminal currere transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 5 sense. when looking at or developing artful research, one can attempt to make connections through: 1) metaphor as similarity, comparison and literary zeugmas; 2) metonymy as association, contiguity, connectedness, and essence; 3) synecdoche as the interchanging of more and less inclusive terms or the distribution of the whole into the part; and, 4) irony as contraries or a wide-awakeful awareness of the incongruity between what is expected and what occurs. these tropes form various layers in and around artful inquiry as a methodology. the arts are a moving center and the theoretical constructs are multiple planes of voices radiating in, under and over layers around the arts. we adopt pinar, reynolds, slattery, and taubman's (1995, pp. 448-449) metaphor of curriculum as a jackson pollock painting in our own work: understanding curriculum as deconstructed text acknowledges knowledge as preeminently historical. here, however, history is not understood as only ideologically constructed, rather as a series of narratives superimposed upon each other, interlaced among each other, layers of story merged and separated like colors in a jackson pollock painting. the stories we tell in schools, formalized as disciplines, are always others' stories, always conveying motives and countermotives, dreams, and nightmares. to understand curriculum as deconstructed (and deconstructing) text is to tell stories that never end, stories in which the listener, the "narratee," may become a character or indeed the narrator, in which all structure is provisional, momentary, a collection of twinkling stars in a firmament of flux. curriculum is a complicated conversation (pinar, 2004) in whatever textual form "encounters" are articulated. encounters are iterations of moments of understanding, renderings through the arts or verbal acknowledgements of knowledge. roger ames (1996) describes the articulation of order in the chinese world with the example of the formation of the han dynasty wherein simply, there were five zones or concentric, hierarchical layers. the central zone received the greatest degree of tribute. each circle is essentially a focus field. using this nesting model, we compare the centrality of focus in artful research not in defined zones but as the source of dynamic ripples that move in and out of one another, rippling from and through the various layerings of tropes. ames further explains the han dynasty: it is a centripetal order articulated outward from a central axis through patterns of deference and importance. . . . whatever constitutes the authority at the center—in this political example, the ruler—derives its authority from . . . within. . . the order of its field of influence. the ruler does not stand above or outside the empire; he is the empire. . . . this determinate, detailed, "center-seeking" focus fades into an increasingly indeterminate and untextured field. the magnetic attraction of the center is such that, with varying degrees of intensity and success, it draws into its field, suspends, and harmonizes the disparate, diverse, and often mutually inconsistent centers that constitute its world." (p. 222) as a/r/tographers, we imagine tropes as forming various layers of vibrant interpretation. we welcome multiplicity as we create art; pool, but not diminish diversity; and in the process of creation, we contribute to the construction of curriculum and pedagogy in the passageway of thinking. metaphors, metonymy, synecdoche, and irony seen as prepositional to artful research enables a rich collective understanding of the research representation that encourages openness and variety. rudolf arnheim emphasizes that: overcoming the egocentric view amounts to realizing that a center is not always in the middle. . . . more often, the environment is dominated by other centers, http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci sameshima and irwin (2008) rendering dimensions of liminal currere transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 6 which force the self into a subordinate position. . . . speaking generally, one can assert that every visual field comprises a number of centers, each of which attempts to draw the other into subservience. the self as viewer is just one of these centers. . . . the overall balance of all these competing aspirations determines the structure of the whole, and that total structure is organized around what i will call the balancing center. (1982, vii) the balancing center is hence the artful research, research representations, and all its tropes seeking simultaneous subordination and focus in an agitation and inability to "settle into a clear, linear course, neither willing to stop moving, restless, transient and transitive. . . drawing one charged moment into another, constituting knowledge in an ongoing process of transmission and transferal" (pollock, 1998, pp. 90-91). roger ames (1996, p. 223) further suggests that rudolf arnheim's (1982) notion of composition can easily be used to describe "the construction of the confucian self and the various foci that define its world." this chinese sense of order in the focal area values the richness of diversity and difference by absorbing into itself all that is around, merging and changing the focus. instead of defining the center as already whole and closed, the "movement from disunity to unity is better expressed in the language of incorporation and accommodation than in terms of suppression and exclusion" (ames, 1996, p. 223). it is important to note here that incorporation does not mean assimilation. difference continues to be acknowledged as the researcher seeks to walk between disparity. although ames' work centers on self-perception and he describes a "focus-field" as conception of self, we substitute conception as rendered which is the dialogic creation between scholarly research and artful research which is shaped continuously and dynamically in its context. most importantly, "the field of the focal is not circumscribed or holistic, but is open: an unbounded and inexhaustible reservoir of particular detail which, in a graduated degree, has relevance for the focal" (1996, p. 221). james corner explains layering as a thickening process where layers are independent, not "mappings of an existing site or context, but of the complexity of the intended programme for the site" (1999, p. 235). thus, for us, several transparent maps can be overlaid and the possible variations are complex. this is to say that the construct of mapping curriculum or liminal currere is not a two-dimensional cartographic representation of something like landscape or geography but rather a construct of "vacant layers" or a living grid of layered planes made up of "contextual points" which one can ricochet up, down, across and between so that liminality becomes multidimensional across space and time. in this sense, the verb, mapping constructs points on the phase space diagram unfolding a pattern with a dynamic focal area. the prepositions of liminality the spaces of liminality speak to a place of agitation. the in-between is unsettled. to describe liminality we use prepositional words such as from, at, or, with, by, and others. metaphors use "as" or the notion of "as" as a key word. prepositions purpose for being is to be in the in-between and move the words and ideas beside them to new spaces. conceptualizing prepositions as liminal words inherently points to relationality, of becoming and transforming from what is to something anew. for example: "education through art" as compared to "education in art" are completely different ideas and transform "education" and "art" by the sheer act of being in-between the two words. carl leggo (1998, p. 178) writes: the word preposition is derived from prae (before) and ponere (to place). a preposition is a word of relation/relating. a preposition connects elements of a sentence. a preposition makes a proposition possible. a preposition is a marker of place. a preposition does not stand alone; it is always a part of the sentence. . . . prepositions keep things in motion, unstable, mobile. prepositions signify act/ing, http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci sameshima and irwin (2008) rendering dimensions of liminal currere transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 7 relating, connecting. . . . the pose or position or place of a preposition is not stable. it is always a fecund place. another way to look at the word preposition is to think of the meaning as pre-position or to place or position something in advance. if one can imagine mapping as traveling rhizomatically through multidimensional spaces of knowing, seeking pre-positional points of intersection on the transparent layers of metaphoric planes of time and space, then one can further see how prepositions themselves can be viewed not only as nouns but also as verbs of transformative action. curriculum as liminal currere much of educational rhetoric today seeks to make learning experiences common amongst all learners, which in turn leads to a reduction of personal identity in favor of collective sameness within focus fields. the uniformity of the collective naturally creates a literal stagnation and an acceptance of a status quo which can be likened to the word curriculum as meaning a prescribed list of outcomes, objectives and content. interestingly enough, the word curriculum is derived from the latin word, currere, which means to run. curriculum is static, while currere is dynamic. in order to support an energetic curriculum of currere, working in the liminal space where art and its tropes continue to resist distinction and containment in focus fields or layers will hearten a generative place of creative knowledge construction. ted aoki (1999, p. 181) reminds us to: recall the textured form of plannable/unplannable or predictable/unpredictable. these are [m]etonymies. . . . contexturing this way brings forth the space between, here grappled with a slash: "/". it looks like a simple oppositional binary space, but it is not. it is a space of doubling, where we slip into the language of "both this and that, but neither this nor that." the liminal space is the studio of the a/r/tographer. a/r/tographers live and work in the spaces of dynamic currere. they are situated in liminal spaces between the identities of being an artist, researcher, and teacher/educator. the forward slashes in the word a/r/tographer emphasize the liminal in-betweens. a/r/tographers are not straddling between two or three roles, but are constructing the liminal space by articulating and traveling the borderlands in james corner's (1999) three contemporary thematic mapping practices which he names: drift, layering and rhizome. liminality is derived from the latin word for threshold and is perceived to represent borders or the borderlands. these in-between spaces are always attached to other areas yet they are neither inside nor outside. liminal spaces are dynamic spaces of possibility where individuals and cultures come in contact with one another creating interstitial conditions for new communities of learning (see conroy, 2004). the arts offer practices that are inherently liminal because they highlight taken-for-granted experiences or conversely, make strange experiences seem familiar. they open up possibilities for different insights and thus expand notions of scholarly inquiry. (see irwin, 2006). curriculum as renderings of liminality rita's photographic "ampersand" series people are longing for more meaning in their lives (see huebner, 1999) – or perhaps i am longing for more meaning in my life. when we are consumed with the things that seem to fill our lives, we often forget to listen to our souls. in listening to my soul, i feel compelled to experience joy, compassion, and a sense of awe for the mystery that abounds as i search for mindfulness – that meaning making that is significant to my sense of self. to nurture this, i find i need to open up spaces for play, contemplation, and intuition in an overly rational world. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci sameshima and irwin (2008) rendering dimensions of liminal currere transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 8 figure 3. "& 1." r. irwin, 2005, vancouver. robert starratt (2000, p. 3) talks about spirituality as a: way of being present to the most profound realities of one's world. a way of being present implies a certain discipline, a certain pattern of paying attention, a process of focusing or centering on the basic reality that gives meaning and sustenance to everything. it is this sense of presence that i aspire to in my pedagogy, my leadership and in my artistic practices. carolyn shields, a colleague and friend, talks of this presence as "giving the gift of self to another" (2004, p. 5) or to oneself. it is, after all, through an encounter that we come to know ourselves, and others. artists act as liminal beings working in liminal spaces. i see my presence as an artist as one in which i dwell in a threshold of understanding, a threshold of dynamic possibilities creating interstitial conditions for learning (see conroy, 2004). the arts are liminal as they offer spaces to quest for meaning making (e.g. irwin, 2006). in other words, they offer ways for individuals to understand their own liminal spaces of experience. by acknowledging subtle forms of engagement i seek to nurture a quest for wisdom (see abbs, 2003). "a quest for wisdom is a search for deeper insights, transcendence, transformation, and a restoration of humanity that is bound together through spiritual and aesthetic engagement" (irwin, 2007, p. 1403). my photographs are at once an exploration of my body in movement and an imaginative turn within the process of photography itself. my photographs are in and of the liminal spaces of forest walks near my home. in these photographs, i use my camera as if it were a paintbrush as i quicken to understand my surroundings through motion – a motion that metaphorically evokes deep breathing. ironically, this quickening slows me down by offering me a time and place to linger in the moment of creation, to pay attention to my breathing, to allow my breath to move the image itself. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci sameshima and irwin (2008) rendering dimensions of liminal currere transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 9 figure 4. "& 2." r. irwin, 2005, vancouver figure 5. "& 3." r. irwin, 2005, vancouver. the original meaning of the word spirit in many ancient traditions is that of the breath of life (see capra, 2002, p. 67). all human beings need to breathe deeply to feel intensely alive. figure 4. "& 4." r. irwin. 2005, vancouver http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci sameshima and irwin (2008) rendering dimensions of liminal currere transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 10 through these photographs i explore the breath of the image, the breath of my body creating the image, and the breath of the concept of liminality within/between/through/of the image and myself. through my forest walks and the photographs that accompany them, i engage in acts of spiritual and aesthetic liminality that offer me an opportunity to experience the depths of being fully alive. pauline's photographic "edges: naturally made" series i have been intrigued with perceived visible edges – the imagined liminal space where gadamer (1989) believes transformation takes place. initially, i imagined this liminal space as a narrow band of limbo with daignault walking gingerly along, but by taking photographs of visible "edges," i realized that the defined edge between two "things" is only articulated when rendered (in this case as a photograph). for example, from this photographic collection, i have come to better understand the convergences of my pedagogy and my life perspectives. figure 5. "edges 1." p. sameshima, 2005, new orleans. if i think metaphorically of myself as man-made construction and curriculum as natural environment, the space to "think through" as daignault would suggest, i find myself controlled and curriculum loose—always disparate dichotomies. yet, when rendered photographically and thinking about the metaphor of self as building and curriculum as sky, building and sky clearly touch at the edges. in reality, the two do not "meet" as sky has no concrete edge—only in the photograph does the building and sky have an edge. this is to say that through representation, the articulation of the liminal space is spoken or created into existence. and when the liminal "borders" are "seen" then navigation through, in, or on the running passageway of constructed currere is possible, always honouring difference. perspective, angle, and personal location also change the edges that visually touch. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci sameshima and irwin (2008) rendering dimensions of liminal currere transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 11 figure 8. "edges 2." p. sameshima, 2005, las vegas. figure 9. "edges 3." p. sameshima, 2005, las vegas. each person's liminal space alters in every moment of changing light, stance and context. i know at once that the imaginary edges are side by side and yet there is actually infinite depth between myself as a researcher teacher and the possible passages of pedagogy. the task for all is to develop spaces for professional dialogue in order to find, articulate, and render congruencies – the edges where we touch (see sameshima, 2007). in finding these points of contact, we welcome and embrace interdisciplinary and intradisciplinary learning in the multifarious rhizomatic pathways of pedagogic experience. figure 10. "edges 4." p. sameshima, 2005, las vegas. a fully rendered image of curriculum can also be imagined as a mandelbrot set – the closer you look at the design, the greater the complexity that continues infinitely to fractal in detail. (see the work on fractals by benoit mandelbrot; and in relation to educational research, davis & sumara, 2005). http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci sameshima and irwin (2008) rendering dimensions of liminal currere transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 12 figures 11, 12 & 13. examples of mandelbrot sets. retrieved from: http://images.google.ca/images?q=mandelbrot&hl=en&lr=&sa=n&tab=ii&oi=imagest the touching edges in my photographs are the liminal spaces – the places where new synergetic collaborative understanding evolves, the space where an anisogamic union can produce something completely new. in challenging ourselves to think artfully, heartful imaginative and new creative ways of articulating our being and our spiritual connections become constructed. hermes, the greek trickster and messenger teaches us that learning is playful and "understanding is an adventure and, like any other adventure, it is dangerous" (gadamer 1983, pp. 109-110). hermes is also identified with borders, with boundaries and with keeping open the gates between one realm and another, "to hear the messages in whatever is said. this is the hermeneutic ear that listens-through, a consciousness of the borders, as hermes was worshiped at borders. we are reminded that every wall and every weave presents its opening. everything is porous." (hillman 1987, p. 156, quoted in jardine, 1998, p. 51) figure 14. "edges 5." p. sameshima, 2005, new orleans. rendering a drawing together in this paper, we have attempted to render a number of dimensions in the liminal currere of our artful inquiry. we draw our rendering together now with words from anne carson (1998, p. 4) for prepositions are not the only words which lie in-between and provoke transformation: what is an adjective? nouns name the world. verbs activate the names. adjectives come from somewhere else. the word adjective (epitheton in greek) is http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci http://images.google.ca/images?q=mandelbrot&hl=en&lr=&sa=n&tab=ii&oi=imagest sameshima and irwin (2008) rendering dimensions of liminal currere transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 13 itself an adjective meaning "place on top," "added," "appended," "imported," "foreign." adjectives seem fairly innocent additions but look again. these small imported mechanisms are in charge of attaching everything in the world to its place in particularity. they are the latches of being. the adjectives of research are artful research inquiries. artful inquiry enables research to latch onto the heart and to transpire transformation. prepositions paint the scene, opening spaces of imagination and possibilities while adjectives bring the scene alive by filling the multidimensional space between metaphoric text and image, and viewer. adjectives can be further likened to a soundtrack accompanying a movie scene – different soundtracks will evoke dissimilar responses even when the scene remains the same. in using metaphors to articulate our notions of working in liminal spaces, we describe relational inquiries between artful research processes and artful scholarly research representations and offer expanded notions of the role of poststructual conceptions, spirituality, textual literacies, and the arts in the practice of scholarly curriculum inquiry. references abbs, peter. (2003). against the flow: education, the arts and postmodern culture. london: routledgefalmer. ames, roger. (1996). the classical chinese self of hypocrisy. in r. t. ames & w. dissanayake (eds.), self and deception: a cross-cultural philosophical enquiry. albany, ny: university press. aoki, ted. t. (1999). rethinking curriculum and pedagogy. kappa delta pi record, summer, 180-181. arnheim, rudolf. (1982). the power of the center: a study in the visual arts. berkeley: university of california press. capra, fritjof. (2002). hidden connections: a science for sustainable living. new york: random house. carson, anne. (1998). autobiography of red. new york: alfred a. knopf. conroy, james. c. (2004). betwixt and between: the liminal imagination, education and democracy. new york: peter lang. corner, james. (1999). introduction: mapping meaning. in dennis cosgrove (ed.), mappings (pp. 1-23). london, uk: reaction books. daignault, jacques. (1983). curriculum and action-research: an artistic activity in a perverse way. journal of curriculum theorizing, 5(3), 4-28. daignault, jacques. (1988). the language of research and the language of practice: neither one nor the other: pedagogy. university of québec, rimouski, canada: unpublished manuscript. daignault, jacques. (1992a). traces of work from different places. in w. pinar & w. reynolds (eds.), understanding curriculum as phenomenological and deconstructed text (pp. 195-215). new york: teachers college press. daignault, jacques. (1992b, october). serenity. paper presented at the bergamo conference, dayton, oh. davis, brent., & sumara, dennis. (2005). challenging images of knowing: complexity science and educational research. international journal of qualitative studies in education, 18(3), 305-321. doll, william e. jr. (1993). a post-modern perspective on curriculum. new york, teachers college press. gadamer, hans-georg. g. (1983). reason in the age of science. cambridge: m.i t. press. gadamer, hans-georg. (1989). truth and method. (d. marshall & j. weinsheimer, trans.). (2nd revised ed.). new york: continuum publishing. (original work published 1960) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci sameshima and irwin (2008) rendering dimensions of liminal currere transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 14 hall, james. (2000). art education and spirituality. in r. hickman (ed.), art 11-18: meaning, purpose and direction (pp. 133-151). london: continuum. hillman, james. (1987). puer papers. dallas: spring publications. huebner, dwayne. e. (1999). spirituality and knowing (1985). in v. hillis (ed.), & w. f. pinar (collected and introduced), the lure of the transcendent: collected essays by dwayne e. huebner (pp. 340-352). mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum. hwu, wen-song. (1993). toward understanding poststructuralism and curriculum. unpublished doctoral dissertation. louisiana state university, baton rouge, la. hyperdictionary (2006). see www.hyperdictionary.com irwin, rita l. (2004). a/r/tography: a metonymic métissage. in r. l. irwin & a. de cosson (eds.), a/r/tography: rendering self through arts-based living inquiry (pp. 27-38). vancouver, bc: pacific educational press. irwin, rita l. (2006). walking to create an aesthetic and spiritual currere. visual arts research, 32(1), 75-82. irwin, rita l. (2007). plumbing the depths of being fully alive. in liora bresler (ed.), international handbook on research in arts education (pp. 1401-1404). dordrecht: springer. jardine, david w. (1998). to dwell with a boundless heart: essays in curriculum theory, hermeneutics, and ecological imagination. new york: peter lang. langer, ellen j. (1997). the power of mindful learning. new york: addison-wesley. leggo, carl. (1998). living un/grammatically in a grammatical world: the pedagogical world of teachers and students. interchange, 29(2), 169-184. merleau-ponty, maurice. (1962). phenomenology of perception. london, routledge & kegan paul. merleau-ponty, maurice. (1968). the visible and the invisible. evanston: northwestern university. iannone, ronald v. (1999, summer). toward spirituality in curriculum and teaching, summer. retrieved march 12, 2006, from http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3673/ is_199907/ai_n8870450/print palmer, parker j. (1998). the courage to teach: exploring the inner landscape of a teacher's life. san francisco: jossey-bass. pinar, william f. (2004). forward. in r. l. irwin & a. de cosson (eds.), a/r/tography: rendering self through arts-based living inquiry (pp. 9-25). vancouver, bc, canada: pacific educational press. pinar, william f., reynolds, william m., slattery, patrick, & taubman, peter m. (1995). understanding curriculum: an introduction to the study of historical and contemporary curriculum discourses. new york: peter lang. pollock, della. (1998). performative writing. in phelan, peggy & lane (eds.), the ends of performance (pp. 73-103). new york: university press. sameshima, pauline. (in press). letters to a new teacher: a curriculum of embodied aesthetic awareness. teacher education quarterly. sameshima, pauline (2007). seeing red—a pedagogy of parallax: an epistolary bildungsroman on artful scholarly inquiry. youngstown, ny: cambria press. shields, carolyn. (2004). taking account of spirituality: should educational leaders care? in c. shields, m. edwards & a. sayani (eds.), inspiring practice: spirituality and educational leadership (pp. 3-16). lancaster, pn: proactive. starratt, robert. j. (2000, april). historical frameworks for understanding spirituality: implications for catholic education. paper presented at the annual conference of the national catholic education association, baltimore, md. tuoti, frank x. (1997). the dawn of the mystical age. new york: crossroad. wikipedia. (2006). see www.wikipedia.com http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci http://www.hyperdictionary.com http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3673 http://www.wikipedia.com sameshima and irwin (2008) rendering dimensions of liminal currere transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 15 authors pauline sameshima is an assistant professor in the department of teacher and learning at washington state university. email: psameshima@wsu.edu rita irwin is professor and associate dean of teacher education and professor of art education and curriculum studies in the faculty of education at the university of british columbia. email: rita.irwin@ubc.ca http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci mailto:psameshima@wsu.edu mailto:irwin@ubc.ca microsoft word kameniar formatted080208.doc to cite this article please include all of the following details: kameniar, barbara (2007). dilemmas in providing hospitality to others in the classroom: stories about one christian religious education teacher. transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (3) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> dilemmas in providing hospitality to others in the classroom: stories about one christian religious education teacher barbara kameniar the university of melbourne, australia introduction: hospitality and the teacher ‘teacher’, as a subject position, is highly complex. the teacher, like the zombie, the hymen, the pharmakon or différance is an undecidable who/that marks the limits of order. the teacher is like the maitre d’ who has oversight over a public/private space which is never her/his own. the maitre d’ simultaneously exerts conditional and discretionary control over that space but especially over the waiters who must perform the demands placed upon them without autonomy or with an autonomy that is circumscribed. acting as a host they must welcome whomever arrives and extend hospitality on behalf of another (a host, the host), while remaining vigilant in upholding the rules and norms of that host. the teacher, like the maitre d’, must also manage contradictory demands. the teacher must negotiate a pathway between the responsibility they have to those who enter the classroom, those before them (the students, the others about whom they teach) and those for whom they are agents (a multitude of others with often conflicting demands). like the maitre d’ teachers embody ‘undecidability’. they are an in-between subjectivity, marked by ambivalence. in terms of the argument in this paper, teachers who teach about another culture or religion are both ‘hosts’ to a ‘foreign’ other and ‘agents of the host/s’1. by ‘agents of the host/s’ i mean they represent hegemonic national culture, hegemonic national religious culture and the religious culture of the school, which, in the context of this paper are white australia, white christianity and, in terms of the religious tradition of the school, a white christian variant. in this paper i use ‘white’ to refer to a location of institutional privilege, power, and domination that goes beyond the physicality of ‘race’ as it is often understood (differences in skin pigmentation, eye colour etc.) to include the acquisition of ‘cultural capital’ and a ‘state of psychological entitlement’ (brodkin 1999, 8). i draw on the work of whiteness scholars (see for example frankenburg 1993; kincheloe & steinberg 2000; ware and back 2002) who see ‘white’ and whiteness as relational concepts involving diverse sets of practices that are established and reinforced through what brodkin calls an ‘invidious contrast with an invented blackness’ (1999, 8-9). that is, ‘white’ is a racialised and privileged identity produced through contrast with what it is not. when discussing christianity in this paper i am referring most particularly to anglo and european christianity because it is these forms that represent the religion of australian whiteness. coptic, asian and eastern forms of christianity exist as other to anglo-celtic and western european forms within the australian context and will therefore not be included in the conceptualisations of ‘australian’ identity, ‘australian christian’ identity and ‘white christian’ identity engaged in this paper. it is also vital to note that there is no singular ‘anglo’ or ‘western european’ or ‘australian’ or ‘white’ form of christianity. each of these categories is marked by difference and manifests in multiple 1 teachers are also always ‘hosts’ to the students in the class. however, this paper does not address this element. see ibrahim (2005) for a discussion of teacher as a ‘host’ of students. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci kameniar: dilemmas in providing hospitality to others in the classroom transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (3) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 2 forms. however, insofar as religion is linked to culture, and christianity (in a multiplicity of forms) is the religious tradition of white, hegemonic culture(s) within the australian context, christianity’s relationship to white australian national identity (both consciously and unconsciously) is assumed. it is in a context of hegemonic white christianity that teachers are summoned forth as ‘host’ and ‘agent of the host/s’. as ‘host’, teachers are called not only to fulfil their obligations to laws of hospitality that have been determined through cultural histories and practices but also to the (im)possibility2 of offering unconditional hospitality and therefore responding to a ‘law without law’ (derrida 2000). in this position, teachers risk also becoming ‘hostages’ to the multitude of others they host, just as they risk becoming hostages to the host/s for which they are agents. foreigners and hosts in of hospitality derrida (2000) discusses relationships that may be possible between a ‘host’ and a guest, a ‘host’ and a foreigner, a self and (an)other. these relationships are determined by an understanding of ‘host’ as one who has certain rights as well as certain obligations. the ‘host’ is one who is able to imagine themselves as centred, as present, as having originary presence, as having rights of ownership, rights to speak first and to be heard, as the one who belongs in this place, here, now. the guest or the foreigner is one who is imagined as having originary absence, as one who comes to this place from there, from over there, beyond, one who is unknown, who lacks rights of ownership to this place, who must wait to be asked to speak and who must hope to be heard and to be given a ‘fair hearing’. what establishes one as host and the other as guest or foreigner, however, is dependent upon the relationship that must exist between them. for there can be no host without a guest, or without a foreigner to whom hospitality can/must be shown. and there can be no guest or foreigner without one who has the power to invite or exclude, as well as one who has the power to refuse to enter into a relationship on singular or unilateral terms. this relationship that exists between host and guest/host and foreigner is subject to certain ‘laws of hospitality’ (derrida 2000) that emerge from and are embedded in culture. however, this relationship is also subject to ‘the law’ (derrida 2000) of hospitality. that is, the law as the categorical imperative of unlimited hospitality, that which is above all laws and precedes and gives meaning to the laws. for as derrida tells us, the law of unlimited hospitality (that is, the imperative to give the new arrival all of one’s home and oneself, to give her or him one’s own, our own, without asking a name, or compensation, or the fulfilment of even the smallest condition, to be radically open to what is unforeseeable), exists with and relies upon (while simultaneously being in conflict with and contradictory to the laws [in the plural]), those rights and duties that are always conditioned and conditional. derrida (2000) argues that what distinguishes the foreigner (or she/he who is ‘other’) from the barbarian (she/he who is an ‘absolute other’ or wholly ‘other’) is whether they come with a name or not. and not just any name, but a ‘proper name’, because a ‘proper name is never purely individual’ (derrida 2000, 23), rather it is relational and carries with it both a past and the possibility of a future. for derrida ‘the name’ or the ‘proper name’ provides familiarity and elicits obligation, elicits responsibility. he notes: … this right to hospitality offered to a foreigner ‘as a family’, represented and protected by his or her family name, is at once what makes hospitality possible, or the hospitable relationship to the foreigner possible, but by the same token what limits and prohibits it. because hospitality, in this situation, is not offered to an anonymous new arrival and 2 drawing on derrida’s deconstructive work, i understand ‘that the impossible does not refer to what is not possible but to that which cannot be foreseen as a possibility’ (miedema & biesta 2004, 24-25). http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci kameniar: dilemmas in providing hospitality to others in the classroom transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (3) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 3 someone who has neither name, nor patronym, nor family, nor social status, and who is therefore treated not as a foreigner but as another barbarian. (derrida 2000, 23-25) christian variants may sometimes appear to be irreducibly different but the laws of hospitality, so embedded in western modes of thinking (derrida 2000, 155), require, indeed oblige, hospitality be shown to those who come with the proper name ‘christian’ regardless of their status as ‘foreigner’ or ‘other’. the hospitality that is shown by one christian to another is not absolute hospitality but conditional hospitality in the ordinary sense. that is, hospitality as a duty or as reciprocity – hospitality as a pact. one can expect to some extent that the expression of hospitality, the act of being hospitable, will be returned. however, the religious tradition that comes with a name that is unknown or unfamiliar, that has no history of automatic and mutual obligation, of reciprocity, is wholly other and therefore immediately recognisable as dangerous. the kind of hospitality to be shown to the ‘absolute, unknown, anonymous other’ (derrida 2000) is the kind of hospitality that breaks with conventional western laws of hospitality and has the potential to destabilise the sovereignty of the ‘host’, to make of them a hostage. derrida argues that conditional hospitality, or hospitality in the ordinary sense, is a hospitality of ‘invitation’ where the ‘host’ exerts the power to invite. however, unconditional hospitality is a hospitality of ‘visitation’ (derrida 2003, 129). it is an openness to a non-identifiable and unforeseeable other and as such ‘it exposes the host to the maximum risk, as it does not allow for any systematic defense or immunity against the other’ (borradori 2003, 162-163). other religious traditions, or the religious traditions of others, are always invited into the classroom on terms that are conditional. however, these traditions, like the tradition of the school, always already come with a ‘remainder’, with an excess, to that which is called upon to enter. it is this ‘remainder’, unknown, unknowable and uninvited, that may/will ‘visit’ unannounced and unexpectedly. it is this remainder that is always greater, and perceived as less difficult to control and contain when it ‘visits’ or comes from an other who does not have a name familiar to the ‘host’. derrida notes, ‘[t]he visit might actually be very dangerous, and we must not ignore this fact, but what would… hospitality [be] without risk’ (derrida 2003, 129). this conundrum, produced through the invitation/visitation of a cultural and religious other in the classroom, positions teachers in an ethico-political space that challenges them to negotiate between ‘two contradictory and equally justified imperatives’ (derrida 2001, xii) – that of providing hospitality to the other tradition about which they teach and that of honouring the tradition for which they are agents and burdens them with the requirement that they may have to break with established laws of hospitality, established rules of relationship, established obligations. as such, the teaching of a culture or religious tradition other than the dominant tradition of the school might be seen as ‘antinomic’ (derrida 2000) and therefore dangerous. dangerous visitations in a religious education classroom religious traditions other than the dominant tradition of the school are always located as other to the ‘host’ tradition. this otherness is not differentiated laterally but hierarchically, and the hierarchy is structured through the others’ proximity to the ‘family’ of the ‘host’. in the christian religious education classroom this proximity is never static but determined through shifting cultural, political and economic histories and practices. this results in differential treatment of different religions in different places and at different times. the examples drawn on in this discussion come from a multi-sited microethnographic study that examined how the subjects of religious education are racialised http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci kameniar: dilemmas in providing hospitality to others in the classroom transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (3) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 4 through discursive classroom practices3. the study was conducted almost ten years ago. it was a time before ‘the event’ in new york in 20014. it was a time when ‘asian’ immigration was considered the greatest ‘threat’ to white australia and people of south east asian descent, along with indigenous australians, were the dominant racial, cultural and religious other in australian and, most particularly south australian social relations (see hanson 1996; hage 1998; stratton 1998). it was largely in response to the perceived othering of australians of south east asian descent and those who lived in south east asia that i commenced this study. since that time global relations have moved restlessly in many different directions. at the time of writing this paper there has been a shift in the perception of who is the most feared racial, cultural and religious other in australia. today it is muslims, in what has been constructed as the global threat of militant middle eastern islam, who have come to occupy the unenviable position. the reasons for this are complex and a full discussion of them is beyond the scope of this paper. however, it needs to be noted that although the group that is currently occupying the position of the dominant other has shifted since the fieldwork, australia remains a white nation in which the racialisation of the subjects of religious education and the invisibility of whiteness in religious education, remains. the issue of how to respond to the racial/religious/cultural other in the religious education classroom also remains, as does the moral imperative to ‘host’ those who come as foreigners to our classrooms and our shores. in the next section of this paper i illustrate some of the ways one of the teachers who taught a unit of work on buddhism in adelaide, south australia, managed the competing obligations that being both ‘host’ and ‘agent of the host/s’ demanded. the particular components of the teacher’s representations of herself, christianity and buddhism i focus on here are drawn from observations within the classroom as well as responses to interview questions. the teacher’s representation of herself, christianity and buddhism in these different contexts illustrate attitudes and beliefs about religious, cultural and racial identities that go ‘well beyond that of the individual and her beliefs or attitudes’ (frankenburg 1993, 44) to the discourses available for teachers to ‘take-up’ in their teaching. that is, this teacher’s representations illuminate the discourses that circulate within religious education and the broader community that both constrain and make possible the ways in which the dominant religious tradition in the school and other religious traditions can or might be represented, can or might be shown hospitality. i close by considering how this teacher’s representational practices suggest that regardless of what discursive choices she makes, regardless of her location to the ‘host/s’ and her understanding of what it means to be ‘host’ to another tradition, and in spite of many of her representations remaining loyal to the logic of white european christianity, she cannot escape the ‘difficulty in choosing’ that being simultaneously positioned as both ‘host’ and ‘agent of the host/s’ demands. indeed these two positions/locations must be ‘restlessly negotiated’ (derrida 2001, xii). 3 research for the study took place during 1998. it involved ethnographic fieldwork in four different religious education classes. each class was at a different school. the amount of observational time spent in classrooms varied as follows: 14 weeks, 10 weeks, 10 weeks and 4 weeks. the time spent at each site was dependent on the length of time each teacher chose to teach a unit of work on buddhism. the teacher referred to in this study undertook a 10 week unit of work. 4 for derrida’s discussion of the difficulty in naming what happened in new york city on september 11, 2001, see his interview with giovanna borradori in philosophy in a time of terror. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci kameniar: dilemmas in providing hospitality to others in the classroom transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (3) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 5 restless negotiations ‘caroline’ was one of four teachers who took part in the study. she taught in a co-educational year 12 class in a religiously affiliated school. the school was located in an area with a high migrant population where the average weekly income of individuals and households was amongst the lowest in the state. however, there were also a small number of households in the area with very high incomes. unemployment rates in the local area at the time of the research were well above the state and national average. according to the australian bureau of statistics 1996 census data, approximately forty percent of the people in the local area were born outside of australia. about a quarter of all people living in the area came from south east asia, east asia and south asia with the majority coming from south east asia. this distribution was also evident in the school. almost half of the households in the area spoke a language other than english and a large number of students in the school spoke english as a second, and sometimes third, language. a number of the students i interviewed spoke english as a second language. like many other children of non-english speaking migrant backgrounds, this class was distinctive not only because of a ‘catalogue of cultural differences’ but because of the class position they came ‘to occupy in australian capitalism’ (rizvi 1991, 188). religion education was a compulsory part of the curriculum across the school and across all year levels. the students in the study were taking part in a public curriculum as part of their sace5. the curriculum statement required students to learn about two different religious traditions and the school had elected to undertake a study of buddhism as one of those traditions because of ‘cultural relevance’ of the tradition to people in the area. a small number of students in the school were buddhist. i have chosen to represent caroline’s negotiations because it seemed to me that she most clearly represented a teacher for whom the imperative to undertake negotiations between conflicting obligations was most immediately apparent. she also represented a teacher who remained committed to an openness to what was unforeseeable in her negotiations. while caroline is but one teacher, the discussion of her negotiations highlights some of the complexities of what individual teachers bring to the ‘moment’ of teaching about (an)other and the ‘difficulties in choosing’ they face. caroline was a highly experienced teacher who held a position of responsibility in the school in which she taught. she was a convert to the christian variant of the school. her identity as a ‘convert’ was highly significant to her identity as a christian and her identity as a religious education teacher. it also had implications for how she understood her obligations as an agent of the school (one of the hosts for which she was agent) and her obligations as a ‘host’ to others. caroline referred to her conversion during a number of different conversations with me, speaking about it in a way that positioned her as being in a state of ‘between-ness’, neither entirely ‘this’ nor ‘that’, both inside and outside the christian tradition to which she now adheres. when i first started doing a grad. dip. in re you know, i think i’d been quite challenged by ideas that were different, because i’d actually, you know, converted from being [christian variant] to being [a different christian variant] and so i knew i wasn’t [the different christian variant] like other people were in terms of being that since birth… yeah! so like i knew that i didn’t even understand and even though i really valued the history and that was part of the thing that really fascinated me about [the christian variant to which i now belong] was the whole history of it, and the richness of the history, because there’s so much difference in history. 5 south australian certificate of education, a two year program of study. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci kameniar: dilemmas in providing hospitality to others in the classroom transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (3) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 6 as a convert, caroline may be understood in terms of what derrida (1991) calls the metis or ‘cultural half-breed’6. according to derrida, the metis as a subject within culture is characterised equally ‘by a hybrid origin and by the myth of a single origin – by difference and by the discourse of a unitary nondifference’ (quoted in spurr 1999, 196). spurr (1999, 196-197) argues that when a cultural subject is cognisant of this ‘difference-withinthemselves’, as caroline was, they are able to negotiate border regions and other spaces, because they have abandoned notions of cultural or religious purity and are no longer threatened from the outside. of course some converts attempt to erase their hybrid origins and seek only to assert a myth of a single origin. for those converts, difference remains outside themselves and, as such, all threats are also seen to come from without. however, in the case of caroline she appeared to operate from the former standpoint. she recognised that her state of ‘between-ness’ existed because of her prior ‘outsider-ness’ and appeared to not only acknowledge her ‘between-ness’ but to assert it as a possible standpoint for students to take up as well. she suggested to the students: ‘let’s get out of our religious background’. as a convert caroline’s position was always slightly unstable and undecidable. indeed, it might be argued that it positioned her to negotiate the (im)possible position of being both ‘host’ and ‘agent of the host/s’ in a creative way. as a convert caroline was herself a ‘foreigner’ to the tradition she spoke for, was agent of. her relationship to the ‘host/s’ was not entirely seamless ‘like other people… in terms of being that since birth’, for she had ‘joined’ and had ‘been joined’ to the religious tradition of the school. by articulating a lack of ‘birthright’ (derrida 2000, 21) caroline expressed the seeming stability and naturalness of a connection between (and a union of) birth, culture, race, gender, sexuality, history, and religion, and called this connection (this union), into question by her own decision to convert. her relationship with non-christian religions reflected a very deep sense of a decentred self and an understanding of her own alterity (ashcroft et al 1997) or hybridity (bhabha 1990). in terms of her teaching, caroline utilised her undecidability to create a space ‘inbetween’, or a ‘third space’ (bhabha 1990) into which the other might be invited or might find a ‘place’. this place was a space for the articulation of a form of hospitality that attempted to negotiate between the law of unconditional hospitality and the laws of conditional hospitality, and between her obligations as ‘host’ and as ‘agent of the host/s’. in part, this was the result of the kinds of investments/requirements made by/of her as an outsider/insider on the inside/outside. that is, as one who was herself simultaneously ‘host’ and ‘guest’, and yet never fully either, she had to continuously negotiate a space for ‘outsiderness’, ‘insider-ness’ and ‘between-ness’ (her own and that of the students in the class) when there was no such necessity for the other teachers who participated in this study to do so. for each of the other teachers were not converts to the christian variant they represented in the classroom and nor were their classrooms as culturally diverse as the one in which caroline taught. more recently awad ibrahim has discussed the ways being ‘an immigrant black body that is assumed to be muslim in a post-9/11 united states’ (2005, 149) has positioned him as ‘host’ and ‘foreigner’, as ‘foreigner host’ in the classroom context. for ibrahim the classroom is always a place that opens up the possibility of hospitality. what becomes apparent from both caroline’s and ibrahim’s understanding of themselves as other to the hosts for whom they are agents is the ways in which that otherness encourages engagement with the modulations of the dominant culture’s and the student’s own otherness (britzman 1997, 37). caroline did not see her location as a convert as a disadvantage. rather, she expressed her conversion as advantageous to her practice as a religious education teacher. caroline said she felt having a different religious origin had taught her to value difference. 6 derrida describes himself as a metis. see spurr (1999) for a brief discussion of this. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci kameniar: dilemmas in providing hospitality to others in the classroom transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (3) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 7 i reckon a lot of it came out of being a ... being challenged to value difference. not just accept it, but actually value it. and there’s a big difference. caroline distinguished between seeing and accepting difference and ‘actually valu[ing] it’. she saw a distinction between ‘acceptance’ and ‘value’ with one’s capacity to ‘value’ difference (that is, to give it positive worth), a more moral and just response. it is this valuing of difference that signals caroline’s striving towards an unconditional hospitality. it signals the depth of her commitment to negotiation, learning, exchange and the humility of an unconditional welcome. caroline’s notion of difference was highly complex. her relationship with non-christian religions and her high regard for them appeared to be located somewhere between a fascination with the exotic or entirely other, which was primarily evident in the language she used to describe her interest in others and other-ness, and a resistance to objectification which was most evident in the ways in which she negotiated representational issues and her relationships with students. the form of hospitality shown to a reified, exotic other can only ever be a circumscribed and formulaic hospitality that is little more than a performance of culturally determined laws. indeed, there is no obligation to provide any form of hospitality beyond that which is required by a self-imposed form of social politeness. however, when one resists objectification of the other, one opens oneself to unconditional hospitality. caroline would often query the language students used in their responses to her questions as a means of challenging them to think carefully about the ways in which they engaged with the other: caroline: what does this teach you about the value of meditation in buddhism? student: he escapes! caroline: that’s an interesting word. what is meant by it in buddhist terms? in this way she takes up her position as an agent of the tradition she is hosting and invites the student to enter into a relationship with buddhism that moves beyond learning about ‘the other’ to an openness to understanding the other on their terms. caroline described her approach to teaching religion in general and buddhism in particular as being primarily concerned with difference and diversity: the wonder of it all is that... the diversity thing, so... i try... i operate out of ‘isn’t this interesting ‘cause it’s different?’ and so you can learn something because it’s different, you know. you get something there about life or whatever because it’s different... so... um... yeah. so i think i took to heart this... that thing was ‘well let’s start valuing each other by being different’. for this school, an excursion to a buddhist ‘temple’7 came late in the program. caroline felt students needed a considerable amount of information about buddhism before they participated in an excursion. part of the information provided to students prior to the visit had included work on mandalas. caroline had shown the students a film about a group of tibetan monks who spent a lengthy period of time constructing a mandala out of coloured sands. once the mandala had been constructed, the monks destroyed it. the act of destruction was a 7 quotation marks have been placed around ‘temple’ to signal the problematic nature of this term. the term implies a building used for the worship of a deity, or a building in which a deity resides, and is therefore inappropriate in the buddhist context. these buildings are best described as centres of religious ritual and learning. however, as ‘temple’ remains the dominant english language term used by schools and buddhist communities in australia to name these centres i have used the term within the paper. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci kameniar: dilemmas in providing hospitality to others in the classroom transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (3) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 8 reminder of anicca (impermanence). the students had found the destruction of the mandala to be disturbing and had become quite fascinated by the production and use of mandalas as well as the notion of anicca. this fascination had spilled over into the excursion where the students had decided to ask the chinese buddhist person who spoke to them at the temple (‘susan’) about the construction and use of mandalas. during lessons, no distinction had been made between the beliefs and practices of the tibetan buddhists in the film and the beliefs and practices of chinese buddhists in adelaide. instead, chinese buddhists, like tibetan buddhists and vietnamese buddhists, were all conflated under the category mahayana8. caroline said that at first she (like the students) had expected susan to know all about mandalas and had been quite surprised when susan didn’t appear to know what she was being asked: … when we got over to the temple the kids couldn’t… the… the… the lady couldn’t… couldn’t answer the questions… she… knew nothing, and they were so stunned when she knew nothing about a mandala… we… so we said it three or four different ways, with different inflections and pronunciations, and she still didn’t… have a clue what we were talking about… the attempts by caroline and the students to say ‘mandala… three or four different ways’ signals something of the confidence and investment students and teachers often have in their own capacity to ‘know’ about others. it suggests that part of the intention of the excursion was to affirm and confirm the students and caroline as knowing subjects. according to said (1995) and others (see for example hooks, 1992, 1994, 1995; razack, 2001; freire, 1985), it is always the subordinate or colonised other who possesses characteristics or practices that can be studied and ‘known’, and it is those at the centre, or dominant groups who ‘know’. through their knowledge of the known object, the knowing subject confirms their authority, power and privilege. when susan was unable to answer the question she not only called into question her own position as ‘native informant’ but also inadvertently destabilised the ‘mainstream positionality’ (hooks 1992, 24) of the students and most particularly caroline, who, as the white religious education teacher, is positioned as an all-knowing subject (in spite of her own ruminations to the contrary). however, while caroline was initially destabilised by the response she engaged in a self-reflexive analysis of what had occurred: i found that quite fascinating and i was trying to… well, i was trying to make a… a connection in my head. i was trying to say ‘well, i suppose it’s like asking…’ you know, it is like asking a pentecostal what mass is like, you know?… ‘what do you do for mass?’ i suppose. this analysis provided an explanation for why susan didn’t ‘know’ about the mandalas while also confirming the status of caroline and the students as knowing subjects. however, caroline’s explanation also signals a recognition of her place as a ‘visitor’, a ‘foreigner’, to the temple, which is, a foreign space within the national space. it signals the ways in which host/guest relations must always involve negotiations and require an ‘openness’ to what is unforeseeable, or as meidema and biesta (2004, 24) have written, the ‘unforeseeable incoming of the other’. it is about understanding that there is always ‘remainder’. teaching about (an)other religious tradition must always involve ‘the expectation of something 8 the categories ‘chinese buddhists’, ‘vietnamese buddhists’ and ‘tibetan buddhists’ are also heterogeneous but tend to function as homogenizing categories themselves. buddhist scholars no longer separate different traditions of buddhism into mahayana and theravada. recent scholarship separates the different traditions into three vinaya traditions: theravada, dharmaguptaka and mulasarvastivada. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci kameniar: dilemmas in providing hospitality to others in the classroom transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (3) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 9 unrepresentable, running up against the unforeseeable’. as a teacher who was both ‘host’ and ‘agent of the host/s’ caroline attempted again and again to open students to that which could not be foreseen, could not be known and defied representation, even as she attempted to teach them to ‘see’, to ‘know’ and to represent. she returned to the students with her reflections on their shared misunderstanding and used the incident as a moment to recognise the tendency of those who occupy a position close to the centre to presume they ‘know’. she also used the incident as a space in which to differentiate difference (their own and others) in multiple ways. caroline’s capacity for reflexivity was quite extraordinary. in an attempt to explain what happened in the classroom for herself, the students, and their understanding of others, she resisted closure in her analyses of her own and other religious education teachers’ practice, preferring instead to dialogue with difficulties and successes which arose. however, caroline’s personal engagement with the material she taught and her willingness to be reflexive in a way that entailed sharing her doubts and reflections with the students in the class made her vulnerable. by sharing doubts she broke with strict obligations placed upon many teachers in religious education classrooms to act as ‘agents of the host/s’ who are generally called upon to assert an unproblematic and seamless ‘vision’ or representation of a coherent, united and unified universe in which white christianity is central9. caroline accepted and performed this vulnerability as a pedagogical and political technique which destabilized the privilege inherent in her own position as a white christian teacher who embodies the right to speak and to name the ‘real’ within the white australian national space. in so doing, she also destabilized the privilege of white christianity. caroline replaced a ‘myth of a single origin’ with a fluid and hybridised representation of christianity that defied attempts by some of the students to construct it as an absolute and definitive identity. caroline also attempted to construct fluid and hybridised representations of buddhism but, as shown above, she found this more difficult. conclusion all the teachers who participated in the original study engaged in representational practices that both enabled and limited the ways in which buddhism could be understood. each of the teachers engaged forms of essentialism at different times. however, teachers like caroline who were cognisant of difference, or what frankenburg (1993) calls ‘race cognisant’ were less likely to do so repeatedly. they were also more likely to see they were faced with representational choices in the classroom and that those choices carried with them the burden of addressing unequal power relations. they were also more likely to be those who entered into negotiations with the conflicting obligation being positioned as ‘host’ and ‘agent of the host/s’ demanded. on the other hand, when teachers engaged in essentialist discourses they were more likely to privilege their obligations as ‘agent of the host/s’ over their obligations as ‘host’, more likely to engage in ‘small acts of cunning’ (foucault 1991, 139) that subordinated buddhism and buddhists to white christianity, and were less likely to see the possibility for choice or the violence embedded in representation. this paper illustrates some of the possibilities available for teachers within religious schools if they come to understand their location as both ‘agents of the host/s’ and as ‘hosts’. these positions/locations must be understood as expressing ‘two contradictory and equally justified imperatives’ (derrida 2001, xii). as ‘agents of the host/s’ teachers are subject to ‘laws of hospitality’ (derrida 2000) that are multiple, complex, culturally determined and 9 something teachers are currently asked to do in their teaching of australian history and global politics. to do otherwise is to risk censure from a white nation as hegemonic host. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci kameniar: dilemmas in providing hospitality to others in the classroom transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (3) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 10 made normative through cultural practices. as ‘host’ to the wholly other they are not only subject to ‘laws of hospitality’ but also to the law of hospitality that is, the law which is above the laws and obligates the ‘host’ to provide unconditional hospitality to a new arrival (derrida 2000). these two positions/locations must be ‘restlessly negotiated’ (derrida 2001, xii). when teachers develop an understanding that they are immersed within a network of power relations and that many of their discursive practices are anchored in colonial tropes that circulate throughout white australian society as commonsensical statements of fact that are anything but hospitable, then they might be able to actively engage with those power relations and discursive practices to produce creative ways of representing difference. power relations are both product and producer of discourse and yet teachers seldom see their place within various discourses and, at a structural level, are not provided with the tools to develop an understanding of the ways in which they are located within, produced by and reproduce, hegemonic discourses of difference and unequal power relations. as teachers within religious schools they are also positioned within changing but also persisting colonial discourses that both limit and enable the ways in which they can ‘talk religion’. how a teacher of religions represents their own tradition and that of others can reproduce, disturb or subvert hegemonic and colonial understandings of themselves and others. this paper has been an attempt to think through the (im)possible task of representation in a way that might allow teachers to understand their location in a system that structures them as undecidable, always located inbetween with conflicting obligations that, i would argue, are best served through dialogue and restless negotiations rather than fixed allegiance to dominant worldviews. like the teacher above, all teachers of religious education must negotiate and re-negotiate their relationship to the ‘foreigner’ and the host/s. teachers must resist unreflected practices that lead to the subordination of others. acknowledgments i wish to thank julie mcleod from the university of melbourne and lyn wilkinson and alia imtoual from flinders university for their comments on various drafts of this paper. references ashcroft, b., griffiths, g. & tiffin, h. (eds) 1997. introduction(s). in the post-colonial studies reader. london: routledge. bhabha, h.k. 1990. the third space: interview with homi bhabha. in j. rutherford (ed.) community, culture, difference. london: lawrence & wishart. borradori, g. 2003. philosophy in a time of terror: dialogues with jurgen habermas and jacques derrida. chicago: the university of chicago press. britzman, d. 1997. difference in a minor key: some modulations of history, memory, and community’. in michelle fine, lois weis, linda c. powell, & l. mun wong (eds.) off white: readings on race, power, and society. new york: routledge. brodkin, k. 1999. studying whiteness: what’s the point and where do we go from here? in belinda mckay (ed.) unmasking whiteness: race relations and reconciliation. nathan, queensland: griffith university, pp. 7-27. derrida, j. 2003. autoimmunity: real and symbolic suicides. a dialogue with jacques derrida. in philosophy in a time of terror: dialogues with jurgen habermas and jacques derrida. chicago: the university of chicago press. derrida, j. 2001. on cosmopolitanism and forgiveness (mark dooley & michael hughes, trans.). london: routledge. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci kameniar: dilemmas in providing hospitality to others in the classroom transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (3) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 11 derrida, j. 2000. of hospitality: anne dufourmantelle invites jacques derrida to respond (rachel bowlby, trans.). stanford, california: stanford university press, pp.3-73. derrida, j. 1991. a derrida reader: between the blinds (peggy kamuf, ed.) new york: harvester wheatsheaf. foucault, m. 1991. discipline and punish: the birth of the prison. london: penguin books. frankenburg, r. 1993. white women, race matters: the social construction of whiteness. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. freire, p. 1985. pedagogy of the oppressed. ringwood, victoria, australia: penguin books. hage, g. 1998. white nation: fantasies of white supremacy in a multicultural society. annadale: pluto press australia. hanson, p. 1996. pauline hanson mp independent member for oxley speaking at australian reform party (vic.) melbourne. saturday, october 12. hooks, b. 1995. representations of whiteness in the black imagination. in killing rage: ending racism. new york: henry holt and company. hooks, b. 1994. teaching to transgress: education as the practice of freedom. new york: routledge. hooks, b. 1992. black looks: race and representation. boston, ma: south end press. ibrahim, a. 2005. the question of the question is the foreigner: towards an economy of hospitality. journal of curriculum theorizing, vol. 21, no. 1, pp 149-162. kincheloe, j.l. & steinberg, s.r. 2000. addressing the crisis of whiteness: reconfiguring white identity in a pedagogy of whiteness. in joe l. kincheloe, shirley r. steinberg, nelson m. rodriguez, & ronald e. chennault (eds.) white reign: deploying whiteness in america. new york: saint martin’s griffin, pp. 3-29. miedema, s. & biesta, g.j.j. 2004. jacques derrida’s religion with/out religion and the im/possibility of religious education. religious education vol. 99, no. 1, pp 23-37. razack, s. 2001. looking white people in the eye: gender, race, and culture in courtrooms and classrooms. toronto: university of toronto press. said, e. 1995. orientalism: western conceptions of the orient. london: penguin books. spurr, d. 1999. the rhetoric of empire: colonial discourse in journalism, travel writing, and imperial administration. durham & london: duke university press. stratton, j. 1998. race daze: australia in identity crisis. annadale: pluto press australia. ware, v. & back, l. 2002. out of whiteness: color, politics, and culture. chicago: university of chicago press. author barbara kameniar is a lecturer in curriculum studies in the faulty of education at the university of melbourne, victoria, australia. email: b.kameniar@unimelb.edu.au http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci mailto:kameniar@unimelb.edu.au o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: oguanobi, hembadoon iyortyer. (2020). toward decolonizing the black and white a’nger cloth: culture, praxis and hyphenated spaces, transnational curriculum inquiry, 17 (1) p. 16-30 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> toward decolonizing the black and white a’nger cloth: culture, praxis and hyphenated spaces hembadoon iyortyer oguanobi1 university of ottawa, canada voyager i, native traveller on exile road. home behind. abroad in view. children in hand. visions in pockets full of flowers. in transit from our roots, we arrive, the extreme weather at the airport lets us know the journey is far from over. we walk north. alone we walk. the cold rips through our brown melanin skin. ripped from fear of what lolls ahead. our dreams are plentiful, but the bubbling visions of what lies on the other side of the tracks distort the journey as the dazzling eyes of travelling children lookup for assurance that this time the journey will be different. reassurance that this time disorder and chaos will be displaced, and replaced by stability and sanctity. at the taxi rack, we queue up. the taxi driver beckons us. boxes, overload. dislocation. an avalanche of expectations greets us. the burden of uprooting overshadowed by visions of home. prelude the a’nger is a traditional cloth that is woven with narrow stripes of black and white lines, stitched together to form a piece of cloth. the a’nger cloth is woven using an indigenous machine (figure 1). it usually takes a few days to create a piece of cloth large enough to form a four-yard wrapper. the finished woven fabric is pigmented with camwood and forms the foundation of the tiv culture and identity. the tiv people have over fifty types oguanobi. toward decolonizing 17 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index of traditional clothes. they are the predominant ethnolinguistic group in benue state, nigeria, west africa. the tribe has a population of over seven million people (waapela, 2014; pulse, 2019). figure 1. the a’nger cloth being handwoven figure 2. tiv traditional clothes displayed for sale using the a’nger as a metaphor for place, i situate my journey in topographies that encourage conversations about migration and home. when do we know when we are home? in searching for home, i linger in a hyphenated space that chinua achebe describes as a “crossroad” a “no man’s land,’ a space unabating where one feels like a “bat in the folk tales – neither bird nor mammal” where “one can get lost, not being one or the other” (cott, 1981, n.p). as a first-generation immigrant, and like many immigrants, i sometimes see myself as a “hyphenated, split self” (trihn, 1991, p. 16); as someone living in “double exile” far from my native land, and far from my mother tongue (trinh, 1991, p.10). yet, i feel like i am halfway in and halfway out. cuninghame (2008) describes a hybrid place of being “both/neither” here nor there (p. 22); a place where culture and experience are blended to form identity. in untangling my identity, i trace it back to the a’nger cloth, which has an underlying symbolism that is attached to the tiv community. the tiv people assign significance to the a’nger cloth, and this enables them to understand their history, culture, society, and the world around them. in this paper, i use the black and white stripes of the a’nger cloth as a metaphor for writing and weaving through pedagogical elements for teaching and learning. the intersections between the warp and weft of the a’nger cloth embody and represent “other” kinds of knowledge that emerge when generational stories are told. making a case for the interrelatedness of the a’nger cloth and identity, i draw on woolf (1956) who tells us that clothes "change our view of the world and the world’s view of us... there is much to support the view that it is clothes that wear us and not we them” (p.187-188). in salman rushdie’s (2010) midnight’s children, he metaphorically describes the process of “chutnification,” where hindi and urdu words are blended with english words to reflect india’s hybrid culture. likewise, metaphorically, i use the a’nger to create a blended space to reflect on my hybridity. in his book, the locatoin of culture, bhabba (1994), writes about colliding https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index oguanobi. toward decolonizing 18 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index cultures and explores themes of alienation, diaspora, exile, hybridity, transnationalism, and cosmopolitanism. drawing from bhabha’s (1994) idea of third space and his description of a space that gives rise to something different and new, i am in search of a “terrain for elaborating strategies – singular or communal – that initiate new signs of identity and innovative sites of collaboration and contestation” (p.2). living in diaspora, i find i am continually working at navigating the changing and uncertain spaces of belonging. these precarious spaces of belonging can sometimes become entangled and take on a life of their own. situating the a’nger cloth as a third space provides an opportunity for people displaced and living in diaspora to write from historical understandings of culture, race, gender, and class, and in so doing, produce knowledge (brunsma & delgado, 2008). such perceptions enable me to find new possibilities, even as i seek to make sense of my experiences and my environment. in using life writing as a praxis for understanding, adopting, connecting and questioning, the a’nger cloth represents an entry point and metaphor for opening doors. this doorway opens, allowing me to enter, and affords me curricular opportunities to enter into conversations about what forms of knowledge count, and which ones are relegated to the sidelines and margins (little &threatt, 1994). my inclination to write autoethnographically emerges from moving in and through various geographical locations. hasebe-ludt, chambers and leggo (2009) tell us that an “autobiographic work invites a recognition from others, not of who we are, and who we have always been, but of who we are becoming in the encounter with the other (p. 33). in encountering others, russel (1998) reminds us that “autobiography becomes autoethnographic,” at the point where personal history becomes “implicated in larger social formations and historical process” (p. 1). these social developments and historical practices are interwoven and shape our identity. in response to such macro and micro interconnections, i draw on chambers (1999) to find ways to understand the issues surrounding my sense of belonging and non-belonging in canadian topography. further, i am interested in the curriculum questions that chambers (1999) asks us to think with, “who am i?” “how do i find my way around here? can i survive here? how can i survive here?” (p. 137). in finding answers to curriculum questions, i am drawn to poetize. scholars have advocated for poems to be used as a methodology in autoethnographic research because of its power to create something new which is universal, personal and capable of capturing our deepest thoughts, feelings and fears (carr, 2003; denzin, 1999; faulkner, 2016). the use of poetry in this paper ties in with my desire to use metaphorical generalities to reinforce the role of the a’nger cloth as part of my narrative. furman et al. (2007) describe the use of poetry in qualitative research as communicating through a special language. by threading poetry through my narrative, i invite and welcome readers into “another world” (neilson, 2008, p.96), where i share my experiences. enter the a’nger a’nger is spinning her web from home, stories conjoined, mixed up from here and there, producing and reproducing new life. a’nger, not anger guides our path, travelling we shift, the seeds are sown tales to be told and retold https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index oguanobi. toward decolonizing 19 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index from our heart, the depth as deep as a well. a re-birth the white and black a'nger is watching over the children. to her, she sings, do not be afraid, you will overcome the silence your voice is returning you will sing again her, the leading choir soloist be brave. this journey will make you stronger. you will rise to uncover the mysteries of the ancestors the a’nger cloth is guiding you through the storm, shaking the shackles, reassuring you with a soothing voice. it tells you. you will know when you arrive. decolonising through the a’nger cloth through the a’nger cloth, different forms of knowledge emerge from customs, rituals, practices, and landscape of communities. scholars have written about the importance of consciously taking on the task of decolonization to recognize indigenous pedagogies and “other” knowledge systems that include african and asian ways of knowing (battiste, 2013; wilson, 2004). wilson (2004) writes: the recovery of indigenous knowledge is deeply intertwined with the process of decolonization because for many of us it is only through a consciously critical assessment of how the historical process of colonization has systematically devalued our indigenous ways that we can begin to reverse the damage wrought from those assaults. (p. 72) settler colonization of africa, americas, and asia by western european countries have had developmental, economic, political, and psychological impacts on both the colonized and their colonizers (chow, 2002; fanon, 1967). centuries of racially discriminatory colonial rule and oppression has had an impact on traditional, cultural, and educational practices and thoughts; this has led to eurocentric and exclusionary educational structures and practices in a postcolonial world. schubert (2008) encourages us to "keep alive basic curriculum questions," such as: what has shaped us? how did we become what we are? ... who do we want to become and how can we shape the journey to go there? how can we live together without continuing to destroy this planetary environment?". (p. 412) https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index oguanobi. toward decolonizing 20 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index as a non-western feminist academic living in ottawa, canada, on unceded algonquin territory, it is tenable to present my cultural heritage as knowledge that is important in the process of decolonization (asher, 2009). fellow postcolonial scholars working at the margins towards decolonization inform us that our task as dislocated scholars in western academia “includes resisting reimplication in the colonizing forces of being othered and participating in othering,” (asher, 2009, p.74). thus, we are always consciously and unconsciously at work unlearning repression, informing curriculum, and interrogating possibilities and limitations. as we work toward decolonizing education, i theorize about the pedagogy of the a’nger cloth as a self-reflexive process that commits to social and educational transformation. in reflecting on my lived experiences for understanding and acknowledging differences as reconciliatory spaces, i am conscious of stories handed down to me from my grandmothers and great grandmothers. the tiv people have their unique practices and ways of being that date back centuries. like many indigenous and non-indigenous cultures, people have practised body decoration, including the colouring of feet, palms, nails and skin with henna, and chalks. traditionally, the tiv people had tattoos and scarification on their bodies for a variety of reasons including for self-expression, artistic freedom, personal stories, spiritual protection and identification with a particular clan. some of the popular tiv tattoos and scarification include ikpur, ivev, kusa, shondo, tema adzongo and gufulu (waapela, 2014). these body decorations adorned my grandmothers and great grandmothers’ bodies. i grew up memorizing the tattoos on their faces, hands, back, and feet. my paternal grandmother, alukpam, had two deep scar marks beneath her cheekbones, and several other symbols sketched across her face (figure 4). the tattoos made her face light up like gazania rigens opening up to the sky. whenever she laughed, the sound of her laughter filled the air like a song sparrow travelling through the seasons. her tattoos decorated the flesh of her body, while the traditional native wax, lace, and jewellery made of local beads adorned her outer being. on my mother’s side of the family, my great maternal grandmother, mama lydia, had tattoos that decorated her busty, full-figured body. whenever she entered a room, you could tell from the atmosphere that she was a force of nature. these are my recollections of my grandmothers’ expressions and ways of being. figure 3. my great grandmother, lydia mngunengen magen decolonization of education encourages societies weighted down by eurocentric cultures to engage in restorative practices. such restorative practices are crucial for looking within cultures to restore what has been lost, and rescue what can be rescued. restorative practices involve acknowledging that indigenous and organic societies have valuable knowledge that matter and are worth preserving. how then, might we work together to bring indigenous ways of knowing into our classrooms in ways that encourage minority and dominant groups to "see" each other? smith (1999) writes that decolonization is about “centring our concerns and world views and then coming to know and understand theory and https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index oguanobi. toward decolonizing 21 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index research from our own perspectives and for our own purposes” (p.39). in understanding theory and research in alternative and inclusive ways, the a’nger cloth acts as a metaphor for validating identity and cultural knowledge through history, language, and stories. figure 4. tiv wearing the a’nger cloth and performing the traditional dance weeks (1990) asks us to think about how migrants who leave their homelands discover that they are marked by their experiences and a sense of being “dislocated and disoriented” (p. 94). elsewhere, she writes “each of us lives with a variety of potentially contradictory identities, which battles within us for allegiances” (weeks, 1990, p.88). understanding contradictory identities through the a'nger cloth helps us acknowledge autoethnographic undertakings that validate cultural, social, and gender differences as alternative paradigms of education. these paradigms are manifested in concepts such as globalization and digitization that continue to draw nations closer, minimizing differences in culture, history, race, and religion. undertaking to position oneself at the intersections of cultural experiences, disciplines, locations, speech, and silence become an integral part of autoethnographic commitments. having grown up in a culture that encourages women to be silent, and speak less in the presence of men, i am reminded that if one partakes in the unnatural for long, it can have a profound power to encircle and consume the partaker. conceptualizing gender empowerment is a site that performs equality and power-sharing with women; it speaks through the silences that have subjected people living at the margins for centuries. in decolonizing what it means to "know", i use storytelling, autoethnographic undertakings, culture, praxis, and the a’nger cloth to encourage lingering and dwelling in organic sites. a dwelling that is important in a postcolonial world where polarisation seeks to divide and destabilize. the silence that grew. “hush”, i was told. women do not speak when men are speaking. “quiet”, don’t ask questions, just do as you are told. lay still. do not move a muscle. that’s a good girl. that’s how to show respect. act shy in their midst. cover your teeth when you laugh. you must not appear too bold, otherwise, you will become a stain, marked for ridicule. men do not like loud women. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index oguanobi. toward decolonizing 22 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index do not laugh too loud, or burp too loud. cross your legs when you are seated, so, the silence began to grow. it followed me around. it filled the cupboards. it filled the drawers. it filled the fridge. it filled the pots. it cooked. it cleaned. it grew until it became a zombie. it developed legs, hands, and feet. it could see, hear and smell. it said ‘hi’ to the neighbours in the morning, and goodnight to the security at night. it became my companion. one day i woke, weary of my companion, i put a bread knife into its back. i woke up, and there was no blood, no knife, no me, only silence filled the room. hanging together the conceptual framework of this paper is narrative and metaphoric; both hang together. this alliance allows me to express and share my experiences and suppositions as marginal knowledge in western academies. conceptualizing the a’nger cloth as a metaphor for moving beyond time and discipline, penwarden (2019) tells us that a “metaphor offers a picture which speaks, but remains static. through talk and play, a metaphor can be extended into a narrative; into a story with a beginning, middle, and end, which unfolds over time” (p. 255). by sharing my stories and using the a’nger cloth as a metaphor for passing on generational histories, i chronicle events to narrate, describe, connect, and disrupt. disch (1994) encourages us to adopt a conceptual framework that disrupts and challenges. he writes that “if one should not tell stories to fellow scholars it is not because stories are beneath them, rather it is because to do so is to make one’s argument vulnerable to challenge” (p. 3). in drawing from my stories and those of my ancestors, i lean on carvareo’s and cixious’s rationale for writing: i write in order to go further, further than what i say, and that is not impossible. i can go further than myself because there is further-than-myself in myself as there is in all beings. this further-than myself in myself can be a mixture of others and myself. (as cited in cixous and calle-gruber, 2012, p. 5) carvarero (2000) writes: each of us knows that who we meet always has a unique story. and this is true even if we meet them for the first time without knowing their story at all, we are all familiar with the narrative work of memory, which, in a totally involuntary way, continues to tell us our personal story. (p. 33) https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index oguanobi. toward decolonizing 23 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index drawing from cixious (2012) and cavarero (2000), i feel the need to tell my family’s stories, as i imagine the a’nger cloth as a point of contact for going further than telling a story. aitken and radford (2019) remind us that “metaphor carries conceptual meaning; it can shape thinking, and its use can illuminate underlying assumptions and reveal emotions and attitudes” (p. 179). a metaphor goes further than a story to inform the audience about the perspective of the one who tells the story. allusions to the a’nger cloth conjure up semantic representations that form the bases of other types of interpretations that connect to histories, difference, and ways of knowing. through the a’nger cloth, i connect african indigenous ways of knowing to western scholarship, thereby pushing the boundaries, embracing difference, and welcoming the reader into a cultural encounter. societal inequalities often mark differences in linguistic, gender, racial, sexual, ethnic, and class. in overcoming biases in academic institutions that consciously and subconsciously prevent indigenous knowledge from being shared with students, i use the a'nger cloth as a space for inviting inclusivity and acceptance of “other” ways of knowing. weeks (1990) writes that “the freedom to live your life in the way you choose must imply acceptance of other ways of life” (p 98). weaving a pedagogy of the a’nger cloth into life writing, acknowledges engagement in african indigenous ways of being. people have valuable lessons to learn from other peoples cultures. thus, having lived in different countries and communities, i am continuously opening up to learn and unlearning about different ways of being and living hospitably. the willingness to learn about different cultures helps us to open ourselves to each other and encourage diversity in schooling and society. it enables communities to build stronger bonds where we can acknowledge that we are part of one interconnected eco-system. within stories, learning takes place as sites that recognize diversity and embraces the tensions that come from living on the margins. aoki (1986/1991) understood this “indwelling in tensionality” as part of being a teacher. he reminded us that “to be alive is to live in tension; it is in fact the tensionality that allows good thoughts and actions to arise when properly tensioned chords are struck” (p. 162). here, aoki is referring to the tensionality between curriculum as plan and curriculum as lived, while at the same time inviting us not to become preoccupied with either extreme. by dwelling between two curriculum worlds, educators can learn to engage in what britzman (1998) terms “difficult knowledge” in the classroom. how might a teacher engage in teaching difficult knowledge about race and racism, prejudices and privileges? can restorative and decolonizing practices help teachers overcome their fear of a difficult conversation? if marginalized and minority students were able to bring into the classroom their stories, artefacts and experiences, might this help in creating transformative sites that allow school communities to encounter new ways of thinking, as well as understanding the “other”? sharing stories young and saver (2001) believe that “to be without stories means ...to be without memories, which means something like being without a self” (p. 24). i understand this to mean stories are what we live for; our lives are all narratives. starved of stories, there would be no past, present or future. as human beings, we create memories to refer to in the future and as signposts of where we have been, where we hope to go and who we want to be. without using stories to sketch our journey through geographical locations and encounters, it would be difficult to pass on intergenerational knowledge to future generations. chambers writes that “part of the power of words – of telling and listening to stories – is that lives can be changed by what is told and heard, what is written and read” (hasebe-ludt, chambers & leggo, 2009, p. 78). https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index oguanobi. toward decolonizing 24 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index storytelling is central to educational research. scholars have used stories as a vehicle to convey critical theories (arendt, 1977; benhabib, 1990). arendt’s (1977) work questions the idea that the only assurance of “objective science’ is that it is free from subjectivity. in our daily interactions, stories are equally as important in how we see the world to form opinions and make decisions. hanne and kaal (2019) write: we exchange stories with others in almost every social interaction: introducing ourselves, listening to and passing on news, recounting our symptoms to the doctor, puzzling over political events, justifying our actions…we may accept the story someone tells us, but equally we may disbelieve or not be convinced by it (p.5). passing on stories is a crucial part of knowledge systems, including african and indigenous cultures. first nations, inuit and metis people have always passed on knowledge from one generation to another through oral traditions using storytelling (hanna & henry, 1995). similarly, the a’nger cloth is a channel for passing on generational stories, poems, and songs. african storytelling is a reliable pedagogical tool for passing on knowledge about culture and the insight of ancestors; this is particularly important in a postcolonial era of “othering” non-western knowledge and perceptions in academics. telling and sharing stories are crucial to survival. in a conversation with moyer (1988), achebe said, “the storyteller creates the memory that survivors must have otherwise surviving would have no meaning… this is very, very important… memory is necessary if surviving is going to be more than just a technical thing” (n.p). passing on histories and cultures to new generations is about survival, it has the effect of refining and defining people’s identity, creativity, beliefs, imagination, as well as shaping their understanding and actions. it is through storytelling that i too continue in the traditions of passing on stories as gifts and tools of healing and survival to future generations. figure 5. my mother, mercy (nee yuwa) iyortyer wearing the tiv a’nger gifting stories to whom the gift of story is given, she must pass on the gift to the new generation to pass on. stories are not material gifts to be stored on shelves for decoration. stories are told at borderlands and frontiers, as we journey through migration paths. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index oguanobi. toward decolonizing 25 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index when stories are told, the light flows through the twilight of uncertainty and judgment. stories fluctuate and shift, as they are reproduced and replicated time and time again. we, the dislocated and displaced move across borders and boundaries, moving frenziedly, seeking healing, searching for sprouting plains. fleeing homes that have become dwellings of ghosts, we discover that once you walk through the mysterious doors of leaving home you can never go back. never look back, never return. entering stories, entering poetry my first memories of going to vandiekya was to visit my grandmother, mama alukpam. i was seven or eight years old, and it was the summer holidays. i returned to visit mama alukpam until she died. some of the fondest memories i have of visiting my grandmother were planting rice in the shallow, lazy flowing stream behind her house. figure 6. my paternal grandmother, sarah alukpam iyortyer figure 7. my grandmother’s rice farm https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index oguanobi. toward decolonizing 26 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index passage to vandiekya travelling to vandeikya is always a spectacular event. mother announces the news of the impending journey. i go into the room where the suitcases are stored. on the wall of the room hangs a tray i gave to my mother. it reads “lord, help me to accept the things, i cannot change, change the things that i can, and wisdom to know the difference”. i take a suitcase to my room and begin to pack for the journey ahead. the sunsets, the moon stays, the day breaks, morning comes. outside, the cars are parked, washed, fueled, waiting. the journey begins. the car drives through red solid metal gates. it drives through the traffic at a-y-a junction. it will take seven hours to drive on pothole infested roads crawling with police checkpoints. tired looking policemen in black uniforms ask us, “show me your particulars!” the driver speeds through akwanga and lafia. we stop by the roadside to buy roasted corn, boiled groundnuts and bananas. we enter benue, pass by makurdi, pass by benue cement, pass by gboko. eventually, we arrive in vandiekya. mud houses scattered around the village, lazily hanging in between brick houses. there is a church by the roadside my grandmother attends called nkst (nongu u kristu u i ser u sha tar) universal reformed christian church once i saw a dead man lying defeated on this road. no one came to claim him. it was a hot, sunny day, 37 (ºf). the locals say he was “mad”. the man foamed at the mouth, white foam, the colour of candy floss sugar. on the left, there is a primary health care (phc) facility. it looks abandoned. it is the only phc for miles. we drive over a shaky old bridge. there is a corn farm on the left. a yam farm on the right. a naked little boy runs after the car waving a banana leaf. we drive past a school. we turn right into the street that leads to my father's country home. mama waits, anxiously, excitedly we meet, we hug, we stay, we merry. we plant, we sow, we dance, we wake, we cook. we tell and listen to stories around the mango trees. minutes pass, days pass, weeks pass. the journey ends. we leave this visit always is full of seamless recollections. i pack them up in tidy wicker baskets. the memories like seeds are planted in my mind. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index oguanobi. toward decolonizing 27 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index safeguarding stories travelling, the content of my box is my secrets still, nostalgia fills the air in the airport lounge i wait the take-off in excitement i move closer energy in my hips, swagger in my walk lips parted suggestively i whisper tell no one postscript: concluding stories intermingled generational stories light the way to decolonize classroom spaces and communities. this work is urgent, and it can be done through commitment and grit. mitchell (2009) reminds us: sometimes, to discern the present, you have to be able to see both the future and the past. time has to be compressed into a single dimension, akin to folding a strip of indistinct photographic film into an accordion so that you can see many exposures layered on top of each other all at once and thus get a clear picture. if you lose the past, the present and the future cannot really be understood. (p.122) how then might we think about our experiences and cultures as open spaces for understanding that “difference” is not something to be afraid of; it can welcome and satisfy you, me, and the “other”. the fulfilment comes from saying “come in and be my guest, listen to my stories and i will listen to yours.” in telling and listening, perhaps we might find more things that bind us together than keep us apart. in thinking with “difference”, i am rereminded of my positionality living at the fringes of academia and the legal profession. while i am eager to learn how one might know when the self has been found, there remains much work to be done in the restorative practice of decolonizing spaces and overcoming the legacies of injustices in institutions and society in general. through the pedagogy of the black and white tiv a’nger, we might find common ground to overcome anxieties that make us close-minded about “other” cultures, and ways of being in the world? how then might we move away from unhealthy preoccupations with technicalities about what constitutes knowledge and what does not? how might we move with vick (2004) away from impoverishing the questioning spirit of students and teachers as we engage with difficult conversations in the classroom? how might we move from seeking objectivity and distancing ourselves from our lived experiences to dancing freely with subjectivity and other researchers who use their personal experience as primary materials for research? still, we are at a crossroad. this road we must cross. acknowledgements i would like to thank dr patricia palulis for her guidance and kindness. her work invites students to disrupt, and open up their minds to endless possibilities. working with her has been a life-changing experience. thank you to dr linda radford for reading through this paper, and finally thank you to the anonymous reviewers for their useful comments. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index oguanobi. toward decolonizing 28 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index notes 1 email: hogua080@uottawa.ca references aoki, t. (1987/1991). teaching as in-dwelling between two curriculum worlds. in william f. pinar & rita irwin, (eds.), curriculum in a new key: the collected works of ted t. aoki. (pp. 159-166). mahwah, new york: routledge. aitken, a., & radford, l. (2018). teaching for reconciliation: insights from an augmented reality project. in m. hanne & a kaal (eds.), narrative and metaphor in education: look both ways. (pp.177-190). new york: routledge. arendt, h. (1977). between past and future. new york: penguin. asher, n. (2009). decolonization and education: locating pedagogy and self at the interstices in global times. counterpoints, 369, 67-77. battiste, m. (2013). decolonizing education: nourishing the learning spirit. saskatoon, sk: purich publishing. benhabib, s. (1990). hannah arendt and the redemptive power of narrative. social research, 57(1), 167-196. berry. b. (2015, july 18). the tiv people [web log post]. retrieved from https://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/ng%7dtiv.html bhabha, h. (1994). the location of culture. new york: routledge. britzman, d.p. (1998). lost subjects, contested objects: toward a psychoanalytic inquiry of learning. albany, new york: state university of new york press. brunsma, d. l., & delegado, d. j. (2008). occupying third space: hybridity and identity matrices in the multiracial experiences. in k.e.i. smith & p. leavy (eds.), hybrid identities. theoretical and empirical examinations (pp. 333-354). leiden: brill academic publishers. calle-gruber, m., & cixous, h. (1997). hélène cixous, rootprints: memory and life writing. new york: routledge. carr, j. m. (2003). poetic expressions of vigilance. qualitative health research, 13(9), 13241331. cavarero, a. (2000). relating narratives: storytelling and selfhood. new york: routledge. chambers, c. (1999). a topography for canadian curriculum theory. canadian journal of education/revue canadienne de l'éducation, 24(2), 137-150. chow, r. (2002). the protestant ethnic and the spirit of capitalism. new york: columbia university press. cott, j. (1981). chinua achebe at the crossroads: an interview with the nigerian writer. parabola: myth and the quest for meaning, 6(2), 33-37. cuninghame, p. g. (2009). hybridity, transnationalism, and identity in the us-mexican borderlands. in k. e. i. smith., & p. leavy (eds.), hybrid identities, theoretical and empirical examinations (pp. 13-40). leiden: brill. denzin, n. k. (1999). two-stepping in the’90s. qualitative inquiry, 5(4), 568-572. disch, l.j. (1994). hannah arendt and the limits of philosophy. new york: cornell university. fanon, f. (2008). black skin, white masks. new york: grove press. faulker, s. (2009). poetry as method. new york: routledge. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index mailto:email:%20hogua080@uottawa.ca https://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/ng%7dtiv.html oguanobi. toward decolonizing 29 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index furman, r., langer, c. l., davis, c. s., gallardo, h. p., & kulkarni, s. (2007). expressive, research and reflective poetry as qualitative inquiry: a study of adolescent identity. qualitative research, 7(3), 301-315. glesne, c. (1997). that rare feeling: representing research through poetic transcription. qualitative inquiry, 3(2), 202–221. https://doi.org/10.1177/107780049700300204 hanna, d. & henry, m. (1995). our telling: interior salish stories of the nlha7kapmx people. vancouver: ubc press. hanne, m., & kaal, a. (2019). narrative and metaphor in education: look both ways. new york: routledge. hasebe-ludt, e., chambers, c., & leggo, c. d. 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(2019, august 25). tiv culture: a brief walk into the lives of one of the greatest storytellers. retrieved from https://www.pulse.ng/lifestyle/food-travel/tiv-culture-abrief-walk-into-the-lives-of-one-of-the-worlds-greatest-storytellers/njktygn rushdie, s. (2010). midnight's children. chicago: random house. russel, c. (1998). autoethnography: journeys of the self. retrieved from http://www.haussite.net/haus.0/script/txt2001/01/russel.html schubert, w. h. (2008b). curriculum inquiry. in f. m. connelly, m. f. he, & j. phillion (eds.), the sage handbook of curriculum and instruction (pp. 399-419). thousand oaks, ca: sage. smith, l. t. (1999). decolonizing methodologies: research and indigenous peoples. dunedin, new zealand: university of oregon press. trinh t. m. h. (1991). when the moon waxes red: representation, gender and cultural politics. new york: routledge. van manen, m. (2016). pedagogical tact: knowing what to do when you don’t know what to do. new york: routledge. vick, d. (2004). interdisciplinarity and the discipline of law. journal of law and society, 31,163–93. waapela. n.p. (2014) symbolism in tiv religion and culture. lagos: bahiti and dalila publishers. weeks, j. (1990). the value of difference. in j. rutherford (ed.), identity: community, culture, difference (pp.88-100). london: lawrence and wishart ltd. wilson, a. c. (2004). reclaiming our humanity: decolonization and the recovery of indigenous knowledge. in d.a. mihesuah., & a. c. wilson (eds.), indigenizing the academy: transforming scholarship and empowering communities. london: university of nebraska press. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index https://billmoyers.com/content/chinua-achebe/ https://www.pulse.ng/lifestyle/food-travel/tiv-culture-a-brief-walk-into-the-lives-of-one-of-the-worlds-greatest-storytellers/njktygn https://www.pulse.ng/lifestyle/food-travel/tiv-culture-a-brief-walk-into-the-lives-of-one-of-the-worlds-greatest-storytellers/njktygn http://www.haussite.net/haus.0/script/txt2001/01/russel.html oguanobi. toward decolonizing 30 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (1) 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index wilson, w. a. (2004). introduction: indigenous knowledge recovery is indigenous empowerment. american indian quarterly, 28(3/4), 359-372. woolf, v. (1956). orlando: a biography. new york: harcourt brace jovanovich. young, k., & saver, j. l. (2001). the neurology of narrative. substance: a review of theory and literary criticism, 30(1 & 2), 72-84. submitted: february, 01st, 2020 approved: july, 26th, 2020 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index microsoft word bussey review formatted.doc transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci review of neohumanist educational futures: liberating the pedagogical intellect (edited by sohail inayatullah, marcus bussey and ivan milojević) mary burston la trobe university, australia sohail inayatullah, marcus bussey and ivan milojević’s (2006) neohumanist educational futures should be compulsory reading for those working in the field of education as well as those wishing to reconnect with their world. it anticipates a healing of mind, body and spirit by arguing for a holistic and ethical re-engagement with nature, the earth and human relationships. the authors challenge the orthodoxies of western epistemology and the legacy of absolute belief in the superiority of the human species. in arguing for a new ethical consciousness in education, they promote a philosophy of connectivity through integrating eastern (tantric) meditative and reflective empiricism and western inquiry that will provide innovative and regenerative learning environments in the twenty-first century. in its philosophical stance, neohumanism distinguishes its moral and ethical philosophy from the liberal-humanist nexus of western political and intellectual traditions and modern and post-modern notions of human and social progress. prabhat rainjan sarkar explains the core difference between neohumanism and traditional humanism. neohumanism is ‘the philosophy which will make people understand they are not merely ordinary creatures…it…will liberate them from all inferiority and defects and make them aware of their own importance; it will inspire them to build a new world’ (p.98). the guiding narratives of neohumanism promote partnership models in education rather than the traditional dominator models that have literally violated the soul and spirit of children’s curiosity and intelligence and their relationships to their community and to the natural world. situating the spiritual in education is not just a matter of theology but a need for a reawakening of being in the world. the sense in which inayatullah and others conceptualise a pedagogy of liberation in education is through an empathetic ‘wisdom directed curricula’ (avadhuta, p. 170). as advocates of holistic education, the authors draw from the traditions of indian and eastern philosophy and mysticism; however it would be presumptive to dismiss the rationale as simply idealistic and theoretically vapid. in chapters one to five, various authors trace the theoretical and historical pathways of western consciousness to unravel networks of knowledge that have shaped traditional educational thinking and practice. marcus bussey has tabulated how the core values symbolised by terms such as humanist, utilitarian, romantic, democratic, green, spiritual are enacted pedagogically through power-authority models of educational delivery (pp. 14-15). vedaprajinanandra avadhuta describes the shortcomings of traditional humanism (centred on religious values) and secular humanism (promoting utility values – earth and species serve humanity) as an inability to accept or recognise the existential value of living species (animals and plants). as an embracing philosophy, neohumanism acts as a wake-call about how we relate to our world to redress societal, environmental and educational malaise. future thinking pedagogies, such as those promoted by inayattulah et al, require an unpacking of the ways in which an education has come to be represented in contemporary contexts. contemporary http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci burstin: review of neohumanist educational futures transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 72 educational thinking in the australian context exemplifies the core problem of pedagogical reform in education. visions for the future are hamstrung by the emergence of liberalconservative discourses and desires to return to traditional value systems based on ‘character development’; ‘control and accountability’; and ‘discipline’ (milojević, pp. 55-79). how to reform contemporary education structures and performance-based educational discourses is a critical task for inayatullah et al., when challenging dominant discourses in education. here, criticisms about idealism could surface in terms of how to persuade educators and educational authorities that a holistic, spiritual and ecological education will ‘work’ as a mainstream pedagogy. as marlene de beer has indicated, ‘soft’ learning jars at the hard centre of traditional pedagogy and the way in which knowledge is delivered and bound up as a commodity of exchange in contemporary market-bound economies (pp. 202226). as de beer agues, calling for a new pedagogy in education does not mean to soften or relax the need for disciplined inquiry. critical spirituality seeks to ‘break down the intellectual prudery of those who are attached to their own discipline and have little capacity to envision beyond narrow and self imposed confines’ (bussey cited, p.219). it offers another space of analysis developed from critical forms of inquiry and a philosophical stance that seeks to deconstruct and reveal the under layers and effects of power and inequality across society. the strength of the book comes from the respective authors’ capacities to appreciate and respect the traditions of both western and eastern philosophies when conceptualising what neohumanism offers to the field of education. the core philosophies of truth and meaning, integrity and well-being, self-discipline, are not dissimilar, but the manner in which each has achieved those pedagogical goals historically, culturally and socially, diverges quite sharply. prabhat rainjan sarkar’s ideas on neohumanism exemplify how paradigms of western rationality are basically fragile in terms of assuming that the rationale of scientific and technological logic holds precedence over all other forms of human intelligence. neohumanism literally requires a stripping away of contemporary expressions of materialism, nationalism, class, race, individualism, species superiority, that reinforce such egocentricity so that a new thinking and social order can be achieved. this is not just a wish list for change. senior corporate executives reported a profound shift in their corporate thinking in moving from an “i” sense of self to a “we” as the self of a collective when they experienced the different layers of sarkar’s ‘social circle’ (hayward and voros, pp. 283-296). this book also comes with practical advice on how to implement a neohumanist curriculum in pre-schools by showing how to creatively engage children’s imaginations and play that will enhance physical and psychological well-being. conceptual explanations are provided for those who wish to familiarise themselves with indian, buddhist and zen philosophies and with peace oriented concepts. as evidence that neohumanist curricula can be adapted in school contexts, the case study of the river school in queensland showed how that school community faced issues of behaviour management. they encouraged students to take responsibility for their actions and language and implemented curricula that celebrated multiculturalism, diversity and racial tolerance. in enacting the school philosophy of nurturing students, teachers and parents, the school also recognised that further challenges lay ahead and that there were ‘many new skills to develop’ in response to social, cultural and environmental change (pp. 307-321). this is a challenging book for educators, teachers, parents and the broader community. it raises questions about why we continue to inflict an educational system more in common with nineteenth-century philosophies of discipline and punish than being excited by the possibilities of generating learning philosophies and practices in tune with the souls, hearts and minds of learners, teachers, and communities. holistic education focuses on being in the http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci burstin: review of neohumanist educational futures transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 73 world and reconnecting to our world through integrative curricula doing, learning, and generating knowledge. reference inayatullah, sohail, bussey, marcus, & milojevic, ivana (eds.). (2006). neohumanist educational futures: liberating the pedagogical intellect. tamsui and taipei: tamkang university press in association with gurukula press and metafuture.org., queensland, australia. reviewer mary burston is a research assistant in the faculty of education, la trobe university, bundoora, campus, victoria, australia. email: m.burston@latrobe.edu.au http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci mailto:burston@latrobe.edu.au to cite this article please include all of the following details: moon, seungho. (2012). cultural translation: curricular discourse with/in internationalization of curriculum studies. transnational curriculum inquiry 9(1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> cultural translation: curricular discourse with/in internationalization of curriculum studies 1 seungho moon 2 oklahoma state university, united states in recent decades, curriculum studies has been reconceptualized as a complicated sphere in which texts, knowledge, and subjectivity are situated with/in historical, political, cultural, and auto/biographical contexts (miller, 2005a; pinar, reynolds, slattery, & taubman, 1995). the field also has been reconstituted internationally due to economic, sociopolitical, and educational exchanges among shifting versions of nationstates (asher, 2010; gough, 2003, 2004; pinar, 2003a). pinar (2003a), most notably, has conceptualized internationalization as multiple dialogues among nation-states for a better understanding of curriculum and its exchanges. a cross-cultural, cross-national conversation has been enriched within several academic organizations, including the international association for the advancement of curriculum studies (iaacs) and its regional associations (e.g., the american association for the advancement of curriculum studies: aaacs). by participating in iaacs and aaacs, among others, i have joined these complicated conversations in inquiries into what knowledge is, who decides most valuable knowledge, and the ways in which knowledge is defined in its specific inter/national contexts. yet, i sometimes notice that multiple dialogues among nationstates are grounded in the explanation of curriculum at a nation-state level without a deeper interrogation into the complex sociopolitical, historical, and economic interactions among nation-states. dialogues happen as if a universalized version of curriculum exists in a nation-state (e.g., the “korean” curriculum or the “u.s.” curriculum). when i encounter any monolithic understanding of one nation’s culture, curriculum, and educational practice, i cannot stop asking the question, what possibilities are curriculum theorists missing when they do not pay attention to the shifting meanings and cultural clashes of curriculum? in what ways can a curriculum theorist investigate curricular experience that the meanings of knowledge, curriculum, and nationality are complicated with/in specific historical, political, and cultural exchanges between and among nationstates? the purpose of this inquiry is to complicate the meanings of internationalization of curriculum studies when conversations among nation-states are universalized through simplistic explanation of one nation-state’s culture, curriculum, and education. drawing from the account of cultural translation, i review my past participation in iaacs and imagine different dialogues in the field by investigating shifting interactions among moon. cultural translation: curricular discourse with/in internationalization of curriculum studies 2 transnational curriculum inquiry 9(1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci nation-states. by definition, i conceptualize cultural translation as working at the sociocultural limits of universal concepts to create openness, fluidity, and inclusion that previously were excluded from the dominant discourses (bhabha, 1994; butler, 2000, 2002, 2004). most notably, i pay attention to new sociopolitical, economic, and cultural interactions between south korea and other nation-states. for this inquiry, cultural translation has potential to be a particular curriculum discourse by opening up different ways of thinking about culture, human beings, and knowledge. as such, this paper examines theoretical and practical possibilities when cultural translation is incorporated into the inquiries of curriculum and its internationalization. this article presents this thesis with two distinctive parts. the first part of this article is dedicated to the analysis of the notions of cultural translation, where theories of walter benjamin, homi bhabha, and judith butler are the main references. the second part of this article is committed to the analysis of the internationalization of curriculum studies drawing from the theories of cultural translation. i utilize my own narratives as a participant for iaacs. by the critical examination of recent sociopolitical, economic transformation of south korea for the past decades, i review the ways in which my understanding of “korean” curriculum studies had been examined with the use of east/west binary (e.g., an eastern curriculum theorist speaks to the western audience). at the end, i discuss the importance of creating new vocabulary to understand the complicated aspects of korean society and curriculum in order to foster openness, fluidity, and mobility in understandings of curriculum studies and its internationalization (butler, 2000, 2002). cultural translation as curricular discourse traditionally, good translation means the extent to which a translator is faithful to the reproduction of the same words in a different language and, consequently, fulfills fidelity to the words. in this chapter, i examine three theorists of walter benjamin, homi bhabha, and judith butler, who have complicated this conventional definition of translation toward cross-cultural, political engagement. in order to provide a theoretical background on translation, i begin this part from the examination of walter benjamin’s (1923/2000) seminal work “the task of the translator.” i highlight benjamin’s contribution to translation theory that challenges translators’ fidelity and accuracy. i also examine the notions of cultural translation both from cross-linguistic and cross-cultural perspectives with the use of homi bhabha’s (1994) notion of transnational as translational. i then discuss judith butler’s (2000, 2002, 2009) theorization of cultural translation to show another perspective on culture, difference, and social transformation. while accepting yet challenging benjamin’s and bhabha’s ideas, butler theorizes a concept of cultural translation by emphasizing political engagement for examining the ways in which one’s life is recognized as valuable and grievable. this examination of cultural translation provides a theoretical framework to review my previous participation in the internationalization of curriculum studies in the second part. i investigate how the notions of cultural translation could engage complicated conversations in curricular discourses. walter benjamin: the impossible task of the translator moon. cultural translation: curricular discourse with/in internationalization of curriculum studies 3 transnational curriculum inquiry 9(1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci while translation used to mean to transfer one specific and accurate meaning to another language, walter benjamin posed important questions to challenge the assumptions of conventional approaches to translation. in his seminal work “the task of the translator,” benjamin (1923/2000) asked, “what can fidelity really do for meaning?” (p. 19). benjamin challenged fidelity of translation by saying that translated individual words can almost never fully reproduce the meaning of the original. he stated: the imperfection of languages consists in their plurality, the supreme one is lacking: thinking is writing without accessories or even whispering, the immoral word still remains silent; the diversity of idioms on earth prevents everybody from uttering the words which otherwise, as one single stroke, would materialize as truth. (p. 20) the above excerpt implies that language translation is untranslatable, not because of any inherent difficulty, but because of the plurality of languages and “looseness with which meaning attaches to [words]” (p. 21). according to benjamin, translation is provisional because the foreignness of language remains out of human reach. translation is always insoluble as the relationship between content and language is different in the original and in the translation (benjamin, 1923/2000). benjamin’s (1923/2000) theory of translation has informed new perspectives about translation by challenging the conventional theory of translation that emphasizes changing one fixed original text to another. for benjamin, no universal meaning exists in the original text, and, regardless, it is impossible to translate “the meaning” accurately into another language. benjamin highlighted the foreignness of language and culture that remains out of human reach. the relationships between content and language are different in the original and translated texts. given that, translation can never be total, universal, and final; instead, it is an instant, temporal, and provisional attempt (benjamin, 1923/2000). homi bhabha: transnational as translational benjamin’s emphasis on the difficult and impossible task of translation from one fixed meaning to another has impacted many thinkers in their inquiries into culture, difference, and translation. homi bhabha (1994) examines the complexity of translation from linguistic elements to those of culture. he highlights the difficulties of translating one culture into another, similar to the impossible task of linguistic translation from one language to another. he postulated that as one text never can be translated “accurately” to another, neither could culture be translated with a monolithic meaning. because of the complexity of culture, bhabha also underscored the untranslatability of certain words or ideas as well as their resistance to being rendered in another language or idiom (miller, 2010; wang & hoyt, 2007). according to bhabha (1994), the “meaning and symbols of culture have no primordial unity or fixity” because of their “discursive conditions of enunciation” (p. 55). in other words, cultural meanings and symbols of culture are contextual depending on their sociopolitical, economic, and historical locations. cultural difference, overall, moves beyond the idea of unique and monolithic to complex, temporal, and contextual. most notably, bhabha (1994) mentioned the importance of “foreign” elements in terms of challenging the universal meanings of a culture and moon. cultural translation: curricular discourse with/in internationalization of curriculum studies 4 transnational curriculum inquiry 9(1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci considering hybrid meanings of cultures. citing walter benjamin’s words in illuminations, bhabha stated: i am engaged with the “foreign” element that reveals the interstitial; insists in the textile superfluity of folds and wrinkles; and becomes the “unstable element of linkage,” the indeterminate temporality of the in-between, that has to be engaged in creating conditions through which “newness comes into the world.” the foreign element “destroys the original’s structures of reference and sense communication as well” not simply by negotiating it but by negotiating the disjunction in which successive cultural temporalities are “preserved in the work of history and at the same time cancelled” (pp. 325–326). concurring with bhabha’s elaboration on the impossible task of translating one static meaning to another due to the “foreign” element of culture, i posit that different words, rituals, and customs are culturally, historically, and politically inscribed with/in lived historical and social constructions and interpretations of memories. bhabha’s emphasis on discursively and sociopolitically constructed meanings and memories of culture push the boundaries of predefined, fixed, and universalized definitions of east/west, self/other, and colonizer/colonized. rather, bhabha invites readers to examine what sociocultural, political, and economic contexts construct meanings, interpretations, and memories of language, culture, and translation. furthermore, bhabha (1994) illustrated the interwoven relationship between transnational and translational while explaining the multiple dimensions of culture. first of all, culture is “transnational” in that postcolonial discourses are founded upon specific histories of cultural displacements and exchanges. bhabha showed examples of these cultural exchanges from history, including the atlantic slave trade from the 16th to 19th centuries, the voyages to the american continents and asia for europe’s civilizing missions, and the traffic of economic flow from the third world to the first world. similarly, bhabha (1994) explained that culture is translational from not only spatial histories of displacement and exchange but also current global media technologies. to understand culture within these sociopolitical contexts, one must raise new questions about in terms of “how culture signifies and what is signified by culture” (emphasis added) (bhabha, 1994, p. 247). for example, inquiries into meanings and diverse cultural experiences of literature, music, ritual, and life/death circulate within specific contextual locations. since social systems of value are signified by culture, new experiences and interpretations are translated into a “complex form of signification” (bhabha, 1994, p. 247). as such, transnational dimensions of cultural transformation (e.g., migration, diaspora, dislocation, and relocation) generate the process of cultural translation as complicated modes of signification. the naturalized, unifying, and monolithic discourses of nation, people, and tradition are challenged through translation (bhabha, 1994). thus, culture, identities, and experiences are always in the process of interpretations, discursive practices, and constructions. i underscore the close connection between transnational theories and translational discourses because “translation” consists of cross-linguistic and cross-cultural practices (castells, 2010; gough, 2004). influenced by bhabha’s theory, my inquiries into common understandings of translation purport, in part, to explore the web of translation as not limited to linguistic translation but to cultural aspects with/in curricular discourses. moon. cultural translation: curricular discourse with/in internationalization of curriculum studies 5 transnational curriculum inquiry 9(1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci through cultural translation, the notions of knowledge, curriculum, and internationalization, for example, move beyond transferring one “final” meaning to challenging the boundaries of universalized meanings. judith butler: cultural translation as political engagement previously, i explained bhabha’s (1994) emphasis on the discursively constructed aspects of meanings, memories, and culture. the conflicting, challenging, and interstitial “spaces” are sociopolitically constructed via cultural translation. in this section, i examine judith butler’s (2000; 2002) theorization of cultural translation with her emphasis on the question of power and political engagement. she defines cultural translation, which fosters openness, fluidity, and mobility by working at the cultural and social limits of universal concepts. butler’s (2002) notion of cultural translation is inquiry in order “to become more politically responsive” (p. 148) in the midst of not all people are recognized in their daily lives. in her book frames of war, butler (2009) posed an important question of whose life is recognized as grievable and livable. butler analyzed current sociopolitical actions of war situations (e.g., the iraq war) and asked whose life is “recognized” as valuable and whose death is mourned. butler (2009), most notably, challenged how norms operate to produce “certain subjects as ‘recognizable’ persons and to make others decidedly more difficult to recognize” (p. 6). this normative violence, which generates frames to dominate and enforce who and what will or will not count as intelligible, calls for a new version of cultural translation. via cultural translation, we could challenge the social and cultural limits of the universal concepts of human beings. it is a task to dismantle the familiar notion of the human being––which has been normatively generated by heterosexual normalcy, for example––and to create new lexicons in order to perpetuate openness (butler, 2000, 2002). when we encounter the sociopolitical limits of universalized concepts, butler has invited us to ask new questions about what might be done to produce new vocabulary to challenge the existing set of norms by which life is recognized. by posting this question, butler is not merely interested in generating tools to include more people within existing social norms, but also passionate about disrupting universal norms in order to allocate recognition differently and to all. cultural translation is not only considering multiplicity and impossibilities of translating culture with exact meanings. rather, butler focused on the malleability of language and its amenability to recycling in translation. translation gives us the potential to “engage in the difficult yet necessary labor of constructing, across and within differences, a concept of what it means to be human that can encompass groups with very diverse ideas” (miller, 2010, p. 15). new discourses about cultural translation originate from ideas that language does not have the exact meanings all the time. instead, the language has become a scene of conflict, and translation begins at this scene while pushing the boundaries of any universal meaning. in this sense, cultural translation is to work at the sociocultural limits of universal concepts to create openness, fluidity, and inclusion that previously were excluded from the dominant discourses (bhabha, 1994; butler, 2000, 2002, 2004). in other words, cultural translation is a process to radically rearticulate the meanings of universality itself. it is a procedure of an inclusion that was previously excluded from the dominant moon. cultural translation: curricular discourse with/in internationalization of curriculum studies 6 transnational curriculum inquiry 9(1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci discourses. the task of cultural translation is important for possible ethical transformation, and social change could begin with/in this understanding of a set of social norms about what is familiar and what is already known (butler, 2002). a task of cultural translation enables the future to remain open and unpredictable because “the meaning” intended is no more determinative of a “final” reading. cultural translation, after all, constitutes a loss and disorientation, and this sense of loss and unfamiliarity presents a chance to come into being anew (butler, 1997). butler theorized cultural translation with the aim of a reconfigured and a more fluid and inclusive form of translation. butler (2000) highlighted that a translation accepts foreign vocabulary into its lexicon in order to challenge the dominant discourse and its hegemony. for example, when dominant discourses limit the notion of livable and recognizable human beings within heterosexual normalcy, we attempt to generate new vocabulary to dismantle this hegemony. in other words, we can rethink “semantic operations and the forms of life that they indicate” (butler, 2000, p. 168) via cultural translation and thus create own definitions in flux. as such, butler (2002) explicates language’s flexibility that allows users to construct meanings across differences. this difficult but indispensible labor originates from discursively constructed meanings of culture, self/other, and sameness/difference (miller, 2010). drawing from butler (2000, 2002), i conceptualized cultural translation as political engagement to challenge fundamental assumptions of what we already know, what we firmly believe, and why things happen in a specific direction. with setting this understanding of cultural translation as a framework, i review my previous participation in the internationalization of curriculum studies. situating my participation of curriculum studies within a necessary analysis, i utilize my introduction of what “korean” curriculum studies is and of how to make koreans’ voices heard. this explication is a means to rethink some dominant discourses when the internationalization movement aims conversations among nation-states. my self-reflexive thoughts after attending the international conferences provide possible challenges i encounter when static versions of dialogues happen among nation-states. through the lens of cultural translation, i attempt to rethink my previous understanding of joining conversations. participating iaacs as “korean” in this section, i explore the possibilities that cultural translation could provide to rethink predetermined aspects of conversations or translations about different notions of culture, history, and curriculum. with a use of self-reflexive autobiographical inquiry, i investigate discursively, sociopolitically, and historically constructed identities, realities, and experiences (moon, 2012b). most notably, i juxtapose two different approaches to internationalization of curriculum studies. in the first part, i narrate my experiences to explicate korea’s curriculum studies that are grounded in its understanding of the united states and its impact on its own development and establishment of curriculum creation and studies in south korea. the second part of this section deals with my critique and reflexive thoughts about the limits of universal meanings have, as well as the need for new vocabulary to challenge social norms. these existing social norms establish whose life is recognized and whose life is not, within a context of what curriculum studies offers in terms of the examination of “valuable” knowledge. i interrogate the ways in which to moon. cultural translation: curricular discourse with/in internationalization of curriculum studies 7 transnational curriculum inquiry 9(1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci challenge dominant discourses in the inquiries into internationalization of curriculum studies, especially when i focus on south korea’s participation in a global society since 20 th century. overall, i attempt to theorize the internationalization of curriculum studies drawing from my own narratives as a participant of iaacs conference. dominant korean curriculum studies in the internationalization movement in may 2006, i was looking at a conference program for the second international association for the advancement of curriculum studies (iaacs) during my flight from jfk airport in new york to tampere airport in finland. my eyes were focused on the word internationalization. when i looked at this word, i automatically connected it with americanization by interpreting the united states as a cultural, political, and academic colonizer of south korea due to historical, cultural, economic, and political interconnections between these two countries. a modest and brief modern korean history and education. the korean peninsula, which is located between china and japan, was politically engaged with the united states after the atomic bombings of nagasaki and hiroshima, japan, in 1945. after japan unconditionally surrendered to the united states, korea became officially independent from japanese imperialism. yet, korea was not fully independent due to the trusteeship according to the potsdam declaration: the southern territory of korea was under the u.s. military government and the northern territory was controlled by the soviet union. the u.s. army military government was established for three years (1945-1948) in the southern part of korea, which is the birth of south korea. during the u.s. military government, the modernization of korean education was highly influenced by the u.s. education. the korean-american foundation organized the american educational mission to korea (aemk) (brazinsky, 2007; lee, 2003). this organization was contributed to the development of korean educational system by consulting the korean department of education. for example, aemk established a 6year of elementary school, 3-year of middle school, 3-year of high school, 4-year of college education system (6-3-3-4). it introduced english language classes in secondary schools and adopted deweyan progressivism, including learning by doing curriculum. aemk also introduced conceptions of democratic education. paradoxically, the korean citizens were not familiar with the ideas of democracy in that korea was a monarchical system before japanese colonization (lee, 2003). the republic of korea was founded on july 17, 1948. unfortunately, the korean war began only two years after this new democratic government was established and was temporarily stopped by the armistice agreement in 1953. in 1955, aemk published the curriculum handbook for the school of korea. the united nations korean reconstruction agency (unkra) and the american-korean foundation assisted in publishing this handbook. the korean government decided what, how much, and when to teach based on this handbook. u.s.-centered notions of curriculum explicitly and implicitly influenced the development of korea’s modern curriculum and education. the united states’ influence on korean education continued as time passed. bloom’s taxonomy of educational objectives was translated into korean in 1966 and moon. cultural translation: curricular discourse with/in internationalization of curriculum studies 8 transnational curriculum inquiry 9(1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci influenced a revision of the national curriculum grounded in three major domains of educational activities: cognitive, affective, and psychomotor. bruner’s theories of the structures of the disciplines and the spiral curriculum were highly influential in reorganizing the third korean national curriculum reform in 1973 (lee, 2003). most notably bruner’s model of spiral curriculum dominated––that is, presenting a discipline’s structure to students in order to enhance their understandings of how concepts evolve and correspond within a discipline. korean national math and science curriculum exhibited particular knowledge structures and concepts repeatedly in elementary schools to high schools (kim, 2005a). bruner’s theory shifted previous experience-based curriculum models, which had lasted almost a decade since 1962, to discipline-based models (kim, 2009). educational discourses circulating in the united states were transferred to korean educators and researchers: discipline-centered curriculum, self-regulated curriculum, master learning, spiral curriculum, hidden curriculum and critical theory, multiple intelligences and curriculum, and reconceptualization of curriculum studies, to list a handful. the more the united states was actively involved in korean politics, economy, and culture, the more the united states was involved in korea’s educational policy, theory, and practices (kim, 2010). u.s. influences in korea’s curriculum studies. on the plane from new york to finland in may 2006, i could not hide my skepticism about internationalization. because of koreans’ collective memories of how the united states has influenced south korea’s education, politics, economics, and culture, i worried that this movement might generate another “neocolonial” agenda in worldwide curriculum studies. i reflected on the ways in which korea’s past curriculum discourses were highly influenced and even “colonized” by u.s. academic discourses. my concern was that u.s. curriculum discourses might dominate discourses on worldwide curriculum studies and, thus, heavily influence korean scholarship, theorizing, and practice in curriculum studies. pinar (2003a, 2006) explicitly stressed that iaacs was a call for complicated conversations, not envisioning a unified version of worldwide curriculum studies, such as one resembling the u.s. curriculum studies field. similarly, miller (2006) has noted the danger of a u.s.-centric curriculum and its application to worldwide curricula. however, my educational and professional experiences in korea have forced me to reflect on the vast historical, political, economic, and educational influence of u.s. curriculum discourses on the korean field of curriculum studies. i remember numerous names of u.s. scholars i eagerly studied in college and graduate school in korea: dewey, hirsh, tyler, bruner, bloom, greene, pinar, miller, anyon, apple, gardner, sternberg, and more. during coursework and seminars, my classmates and i translated these scholars’ original texts into korean. figuring out the “exact” meanings of texts and translating them into correct korean were major efforts during class preparation. in light of such “correctly” translated documents, we discussed how to implement the “best” educational practices grounded in their theories without carefully examining different social, cultural, and political contexts. although some of the curriculum scholars (i.e., greene, pinar, miller) were heavily against moon. cultural translation: curricular discourse with/in internationalization of curriculum studies 9 transnational curriculum inquiry 9(1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci decontextualized educational practices, my concern was how to “adopt” their ideas well into korea’s educational settings. thus, korean teachers, educators, and policymakers, including me, have assumed that there are universal meanings of good, effective, and standardized curriculum––in most cases, imported from the u.s. curriculum. the “culture of importation” (kim, 2005b, p. 59)––that is, the uncritical use of u.s. curriculum research as major sources for korean educational discourses––has been prevalent in korean curriculum studies. according to kim (2005b), majoring in curriculum studies means to master the major curriculum studies’ discourses in the united states. this culture of importation has treated u.s. curriculum studies as the most advanced and has situated korean curriculum studies as part of this discourse––and yet subservient to it. this approach to considering u.s. curriculum as “universalized” curriculum helped spread the “best” national curriculum into korean k-12 classroom settings. it assumes that u.s. educational discourses are universal, valid, and important. ironically, so many u.s. reconceptualist scholars (e.g., william pinar and janet miller) have rejected this universalized notion of “best,” or “effective,” curriculum; however, translating materials to implement effective curriculum, teaching-learning resources, and lesson plans remains as one of the major tasks in korean curriculum studies discourses (kim, 2005b, 2010). “beyond/against the discourse of the us/western teachers’ lives” late may in tampere, finland, was quite impressive; it was a refreshing moment to enjoy daylight later than 11:30 p.m. and have the sun rise earlier than 3:00 a.m. situated within this new environment, my co-presenter and i were ready to present korean teachers’ “stories” to an audience from all around the world under the title “beyond/against the discourse of the us/western teachers’ lives: texts of the other (korean context)” (kim & moon, 2006). since korea has such a deeply rooted educationally and culturally colonized history predominantly linked with u.s. academia, we considered that iaacs would provide a great opportunity to “talk back” to the cultural, economic, and political “colonizer” with the indigenous and “authentic” voices of the “colonized,” freshly delivered by “colonized” scholars. we attempted to follow iaacs’s “call for a conversation” (pinar, 2003a, p. 1) that each nation-state “cultivate[s] its own indigenous and conceptually independent strains of curriculum theorizing, inquiry, and research” (pinar, 2003b, p. 8). we introduced some korean teachers’ life histories in order to “include” a few local narratives into the mainstream discourses of teachers’ life stories. using a postpositivistic research paradigm, we presented what western literature has omitted through discourses on korean teachers’ lives. in addition, as part of introducing a korean version of the reconceptualization of curriculum studies, we attempted to address issues beyond effective curriculum models for korean students, korean teachers’ behavioral developmental stages, or korean students’ academic achievement. we reported that western discourses on classroom teachers’ lives have not mentioned important issues or phenomena related to korean teachers’ lives. we reconstructed some of the stories of korean teachers’ struggles in being promoted to school administrators, conflicts between public education and private moon. cultural translation: curricular discourse with/in internationalization of curriculum studies 10 transnational curriculum inquiry 9(1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci education, and a novice teacher’s struggles to design progressive curriculum due to a senior teacher’s resistance to such an approach. we briefly explained how competitive it is to become a school administrator because eligibility requirements to become vice principal and principal are overwhelming. they require almost ten years of classroom teaching experience, head teacher experience, attending numerous professional development conferences with high achievement scores, and getting almost all as on the principal’s assessments. we introduced the story of a teacher who tried to become an administrator his entire teaching career but ended up as a classroom teacher who is actively involved in dancing performances with his elementary students. we also introduced the notion of gyo-shil-bung-geo 3 —that is, the failure of public schooling due to the privatization of education by the huge business of tutoring (gwaweh) and hakwon. all private, after-school learning institutions are called hakwon, and they are run by private organizations, including both academic (e.g., math and english) and nonacademic subjects (e.g., music, martial arts, or fine arts). reducing the expenses for hakwon and gwaweh is always a political issue because parents hope to optimize educational quality while minimizing their individual expenses for their children’s education. at the same time, we presented the notion of gyo-shil-bung-geo as a constant issue among politicians, educators, parents, and students. some students and parents trust hakwon or gwaweh teachers more than public school teachers for their academic achievement. many students study in hakwon and/or through gwaweh and go to public school to repeat what they have learned in these private institutions (kim, 2005a; kim & moon, 2006). visions for our iaacs presentation. young chun kim and i (2006) envisioned that the inquiry on korean teachers’ lives and the findings would be a complementary resource to western literature in korean education. during our presentation, we tried to share many stories and make koreans’ voices heard. i believed then that korean teachers’ voices helped establish a network of conversations across borders, cultures, and traditions in the internationalization of curriculum studies. this presentation was our gesture at taking part in this movement from two korean scholars’ “authentic” voices. in addition, grounded in postpositivistic approaches, we attempted to decolonize the consciousness of the colonized, including “centering” decentered korean educational phenomena as well as demystifying u.s. curriculum theories as universalized (kim, 2005b). questioning dominant discourse and generating new vocabulary the tampere narrative tells of my previous attempt to make korean voices heard to non-koreans, more specifically to a western audience. when we co-presented on korean teachers’ life stories, we believed that the contribution of our presentation was translating korean curriculum studies into other languages so that local knowledge, which supposedly was established through korean teachers’ authentic voices, could possibly be included within the universal curriculum discourse worldwide (pinar, 2003b). when i look back on our presentation as part of korean curriculum studies to an international audience, i become skeptical of our use of the binary concept of colonizer/colonized to situate korea’s socioeconomic, political, and educational stance. i am now concerned that this approach, which is inviting people to conversations grounded moon. cultural translation: curricular discourse with/in internationalization of curriculum studies 11 transnational curriculum inquiry 9(1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci in this fixed understanding of self/other, could reinforce grand narratives that indicate a universal and monolithic model of korean curriculum studies using fixed binary oppositions. for example, this approach could be interpreted as us, academically and culturally influenced by the united states, now attempting to talk back to the colonizer. in addition, this approach could be interpreted as our having asserted our authentic, indigenous, and “real” voices. in presenting our argument based on the colonizer/colonized binary, we assumed that we were capable bilingual translators, able to bring our voices to an international audience and, furthermore, to have that voice and its suggestions fully and successfully understood. in consideration of the numerous binaries inherent in our argument, i think we committed a mistake of reductionism by introducing “korean” curriculum and culture as if a universalized voice exists. i do note that this “emancipatory” approach to the translation of korean curriculum studies for an international audience is somewhat valuable. it may generate different perspectives for the exploration of the meaning of curriculum among korean educators by making some colonized or local voices heard (kim, 2010). however, i ultimately challenge this approach in that it assumes that the notions of self/other, difference, and curriculum are already predetermined and known. it allows for the possibility of generating a universalized version of “korean” curriculum studies or “u.s.” curriculum studies, when neither of these exists so monolithically. since the notions of a korean curriculum are socio-culturally contextualized and discursively constructed, simply addressing the korean curriculum with the use of the binary of colonizer/colonized is not possible and even problematic. the challenge then becomes how to explain korean curriculum studies while avoiding translating one universalized version of korean curriculum studies and culture to u.s. curriculum studies and vice versa. moreover, how can korean curriculum studies contribute to its internationalization when some people are included in the mainstream discourse while others are not? butler (2000) highlighted that the “translation will have to be one in which the terms in question are not simply redescribed by a dominant discourse” (p. 168). i interpret butler’s ideas as a means of challenging a dominant discourse when the binary of colonizer/colonized is implemented in understanding korean society and its interaction with the world. when korean curriculum studies is universalized with the use of the binaries of colonizer/colonized, how is a dominant discourse reinforced in its understanding of experience, knowledge, and curriculum? who are recognized (or not recognized) as valuable human beings when korean curriculum studies apply this dominant discourse repeatedly? what kinds of “foreign” vocabulary can korean curriculum scholars admit when we see korea’s ever-changing sociopolitical, economic, and cultural contributions in the global world? in the following section, i want to reconsider what possibilities there exist for korea’s participation in the internationalization of curriculum studies. a recent sociopolitical, historical, and economic transformation of south korea will be an example of using cultural translation to dispute dominant discourse by generating new vocabulary. in particular, i will examine the ways in which korea’s involvement in the international community have dramatically changed within the past few decades, and thus impacted my understanding of internationalization as well as curriculum studies. moon. cultural translation: curricular discourse with/in internationalization of curriculum studies 12 transnational curriculum inquiry 9(1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci constant changes of korea’s stance in the global community in this section, i briefly elaborate on how korea’s socioeconomic, political, and cultural influences with and on other nation-states have drastically increased during the past decade (economist, 2009; moon, 2012a). as a result of this increased influence, korea has created new relationships with other nation-states in the world. i introduce these major aspects in terms of korea’s interactions with the world: tenant farmland abroad (economist, 2009; evans, 2008; walt, 2008), exportation of hangul (choe, 2009), and increasing numbers of immigrants (kim, lee, kim, & cha, 2010; moon, 2012a). tenant farmland abroad tenant farming in other countries is a huge issue in international journals and newspapers. for example, the economist (2009) reports that 20 million hectares, which equals 5 million acres, of farmland are handed over to capital-exporting countries such as saudi arabia, kuwait, and china. they buy or lease millions of acres, grow biofuels on them, and ship them home. saudi arabian investors are spending $100 million to raise wheat, barley, and rice in ethiopia. similar to these countries, daewoo logistics––a major korean corporation–– planned for tenant farming of maize, biofuel, and palm oils in madagascar in november 2008. daewoo logistics attempted to negotiate with madagascar to lease 3.2 million acres of farmland––half the size of belgium––for about $12 per acre for 99 years (walt, 2008). in march 2009, this agreement was cancelled by madagascar’s new leader, mr. rajoelina. he proclaimed, “in the constitution, it is stipulated that madagascar’s land is neither for sale nor for rent, so the agreement with daewoo is cancelled” (berger, 2009, para. 4). whether this negotiation could mutually benefit madagascar’s economy and that of south korea is controversial. daewoo logistics announced that the company would invest about $6 billion to build the port facilities, roads, power plants, and irrigation systems to support agribusiness in madagascar, although the yield of the land would be exported. according to daewoo, this infrastructure would be beneficial in creating jobs for madagascar’s unemployed, in establishing roads, and in applying advanced agricultural techniques (walt, 2008). a daewoo spokesman stated, “we will provide jobs for them by farming, which is for madagascar” (evans, 2008, para. 2). it is debatable if this proposal would actually be for madagascar when daewoo uses untouched arable land and creates infrastructure in madagascar. the madagascar government is desperate to have capital for agriculture; giant international companies can benefit some “poor” african countries (walt, 2008). efficiently grown crops can be beneficial to madagascar workers in providing wages. however, i think the benefit to south korea seems to be more salient than any benefit to madagascar. a manager at daewoo, hong jon-wan, stated, “we [south koreans] can either export the harvests to other countries or [ship] them back to korea in case of a food crisis” (evans, 2008, para. 4). i also think the people of madagascar should buy their own food with the money they make (berger, 2009). unlike this failed deal with madagascar, some of south korea’s companies have made successful deals with other nations. hyundai heavy industries paid $6.5 million for a majority stake in khorol zerno, a company that owns 10,000 hectares of siberia. south moon. cultural translation: curricular discourse with/in internationalization of curriculum studies 13 transnational curriculum inquiry 9(1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci korea has signed deals with sudan for 690,000 hectares to raise wheat (economist, 2009). i cannot forget my shock at hearing about some south korean companies’ economic plans to follow a conventional colonizing model to work with other countries, such as renting the land for 99 years. i am surprised by the fact that south korea initiated this neocolonial approach. korea has resisted japanese colonization and u.s. imperialism throughout modern history and still has memories of being a victim of that imperialism. the exportation of hangul hangul is the native alphabet of the korean language, which was created in 1443 by king sejong and his assistants. before the creation of hangul, only hanja (sinokorean), chinese logographic characters, were used as the official written language (shon, 1999). hangul is a phonetic alphabet with 24 letters (ㄱ ㄴ ㄷ ㄹ ㅁ ㅂ ㅅ ㅇ ㅈ ㅊ ㅋ ㅍ ㅌ ㅎ ㅏ ㅑ ㅓ ㅕ ㅗ ㅛ ㅜ ㅠ ㅡ ㅣ), which have the sound values of g, n, d, r/l, m, b, s, ng, j, ch, k, p, t, h, a, u, o, yo, u, yu, eu, and i, respectively. almost 450 years after its invention, hangul finally became the official korean language in 1894. recently, an indonesian tribe that uses the austronesian cia-cia language adopted the korean alphabet as its writing system. the exportation of hangul to other countries was a similar shock to me: my myth that only “the” korean ethnic group uses hangul as an official language is being challenged. korean government established a museum in downtown seoul in order to celebrate hangul’s simplicity and to being easy to learn. for example, hangul can represent all lexical items––including native, sinokorean, loan, and foreign words and morphemes––because it is a phonetic alphabet. when i visited the museum, it was interesting to notice cia-cia language that are written in hangul but do not deliver any specific meanings to me. to think of koreans as possible linguistic colonizers instead of linguistically colonized by english was a huge paradigm shift. increasing numbers of immigrants the numbers of immigrated wives (e.g., from vietnam, the philippines), migrated workers (e.g., from mongolia and bangladesh), and north korean defectors have dramatically increased within a decade in south korea. these new populations made me realize how korea’s political, cultural, and economic power generates such “korean dreams.” in 2009, the korean government proclaimed that more than one million foreigners lived in south korea, constituting almost 2% of the total population. since 2000, there have been almost 50,000 international marriages. more than 75% of these marriages were between korean husbands and immigrant wives from china, japan, mongolia, vietnam, and the philippines, to name a few (kang, 2008; nahm & jang, 2009). as of 2007, north korean defectors numbered more than 10,000. all of these numbers for immigrants continue to increase (kim et al., 2010; moon, 2012a). this new international relationship between korea and other countries challenges me to rethink the universalized and fixed notions of colonizer/colonized, center/peripheral, west/east, north/south, and first/third. moon. cultural translation: curricular discourse with/in internationalization of curriculum studies 14 transnational curriculum inquiry 9(1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci multiplicity of “korean-ness” and curriculum discourses in the international space the above two descriptions portray my abbreviated academic journey to engage in the internationalization of curriculum studies. given korea’s movable context that challenges the binaries of first world/third world, the notion of internationalization takes on different meanings in terms of situating korea as sociopolitically, economically, and intellectually colonized by the western world. when korea’s sociopolitical stance is labeled by western colonization in education, other marginalized groups within korea and other countries (e.g., madagascar, immigrants from south asian countries) are not recognized by this dominant discourse. in the theorization of postcolonialism, quayson (2000) has indicated that first world agendas are no longer reproduced in the third world and vice versa due to discursively constructed relationships. even these terms of first and third worlds are now called into question. quayson (2000) posited that we “must pay special attention to the changeability of material and discursive oppression in and across multiple, specific contexts” (p. 7). similarly, shange (1983) stated, “there is no necessary or fixed geography to center/periphery relations” (p. 2). she emphasized that the political and sociocultural boundaries are shifting, and the center/periphery binary is provisional and complicated. in other words, “peripheries of the center as well as centers of the periphery” exist concurrently (p. 8). these two postcolonial theorists have highlighted permeable and diffusing concepts of the colonizer/colonized binary. universal and universalized versions of binaries have their limits in our understanding of self and others. butler (2000) mentioned that the politics of translation should be “in the service of adjudicating and composing a movement of competing and overlapping universalisms” (p. 169). i argue that translating korean curriculum studies and generating conversations among nation-states should move beyond reinforcing universalism about static understandings of a “unified” nation-state and its curriculum. i here focused on problems of introducing korean curriculum studies with the use of fixed binaries of colonizer/colonized and east/west in order to problematize this static understanding of korean society and korean curriculum studies. butler (2009) stated that cultural translation is imperative in order to “rethink the complex and fragile character of the social bond and to consider what conditions might make violence less possible, lives more equally grievable, and, hence, more livable” (p. viii). i emphasize the necessity of generating a new lexicon via cultural translation in order to consider who is marginalized again when koreans highlight a social bond generated by its emphasis on the u.s. impact on korean curriculum studies without considering korea’s ever-changing interaction with other countries. introducing korea’s curriculum and its translations needs to move beyond simple understanding of korean-ness, with its persistent use of binaries, in order to challenge universalized meanings of korean culture, people, and curriculum. when discourses about korean curriculum studies are summarized by the use of colonizer/colonized binaries, we miss opportunities to address other voices that are not recognized by this collective form of korean-ness and its curriculum. i introduced three outstanding examples that have shifted korea’s sociopolitical, historical, and economic stance in the moon. cultural translation: curricular discourse with/in internationalization of curriculum studies 15 transnational curriculum inquiry 9(1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci world. my narrative of korea’s new stance in the world recounts my more recent struggle to explore the complicated meanings of korean curriculum and discursively constructed meanings of colonizer/colonized. these questions are still connected to the inquiry into which populations have recognized as valuable human beings and which have not in the korean context. what is the history of this category? where are we in its history at this time? in other words, korean curriculum scholars can ask which korean populations are recognized as valuable human beings within current historical and political discourses that are actively generated. miller (2010) posited that “differences from one another cannot be known prior to our interactions” (p. 15). simply reiterating the binaries of colonizer/colonized, east/west, and self/other without considering the interactions creates another grand narrative. not considering always shifting and changing interactions among nation-states possibly normalizes violence and excludes certain groups from recognition. concurring with miller, i postulate that such binary oppositions are discursively constructed during interactions with “others” as well as during our political engagement with cultural translation. toward the internationalization of curriculum studies i theorize cultural translation as discourse for complicating the meanings of internationalization of curriculum studies. my definition of cultural translation is debunking dominant discourses by creating new vocabulary that cannot possibly be explained with the use of any predetermined concepts of knowledge, self/other, and culture. when dialogues about curriculum among nation-states are universalized with the use of east/west, colonizer/colonized, and self/other, cultural translation provides a lens to interrogate sociopolitical complexity within/among nation-states. thus, cultural translation in the field of curriculum studies could challenge the multiple binary oppositions inherent in current curriculum discourses. for example, when the predominate discourse on korean curriculum studies is focused on “what” korean curriculum is drawn from binaries, cultural translation enables korean curriculum theorists to rethink monolithic elaboration of korean-ness with using concepts of east/west, colonizer/colonized, and developed/developing. the meaning of curriculum studies and internationalization of the field should encompass groups by creating a new lexicon—lexicon which includes groups marginalized by dominant discourses to determine whose life is recognized and whose is not. the notions of korean and korean curriculum studies should be diversified by recognizing multiple subgroups. they cannot be totalized by any fixed categories of skin color, gender, or nationality. a presumably effective label of “korea” is problematic in that it universalizes the meanings of being korean, without considering sociopolitical, economic interactions. an effort is needed to constantly dismantle any tendency to reduce every cultural instance to a presupposed universality. furthermore, this effort for generating new lexicon underscores the fact that transnational relationships among nation-states are more complex. as shown in this paper, the simple binary opposition of center/periphery is not possible for examining the complex international relationships between south korea and other nation-states. moon. cultural translation: curricular discourse with/in internationalization of curriculum studies 16 transnational curriculum inquiry 9(1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci cultural translation, thus, can possibly minimize the imposition of universalized and ready-made forms of curriculum on other audiences. in this paper, i have provided a constantly shifting sociopolitical position of south korea in order to challenge monolithic illustration of korean curriculum studies internationally. when discourses of korean curriculum studies are introduced mainly by korea’s sociopolitical interactions with the united states by the use of a colonizer/colonized structure, shifting interactions between korea and other nation-states can never be recognized. moreover, these fixed binaries may “reproduce exactly the hegemonic structures” toward people within the group, especially those who are not recognized by dominant discourses (pillow, 2003, p. 192). for example, the predetermined understanding of korea as the colonized, the other, or the east blocks opportunities to interrogate korea’s sociopolitical and cultural influence on multiple nation-states and vice versa. new vocabulary is needed to introduce korea or korean-ness when the complex inter/national relations are constantly in flux. otherwise, the complex socioeconomic relationships between south korea and madagascar, south asian countries, and multicultural families in korea are not recognized by the preexisting definitions of korean or the korean curriculum studies. butler (2009) theorizes cultural translation as political engagement by creating new vocabulary. this project of translation dismantles the dominant discourse and its hegemony to exclude people from proper recognition. i connect butler’s main idea with miller’s theorization of the international movement of curriculum studies. miller (2010) creates the vocabulary of worldliness in order to debunk dichotomous relationships between national and international. by challenging questions about preliminary assumptions of knowing and known inter/nationally, miller (2005b) initiates the inquiry into how curriculum theorists can work with/in this worldwide movement of curriculum studies. this inquiry in curriculum is to push our fundamental assumptions about knowledge, knowing, and unknowing. drawing from miller, i postulate that curriculum scholars re-examine a sense of knowing/unknowing that we cannot predict outcomes prior to our interactions with others. curriculum theorists should develop new vocabulary in understanding curriculum and its internationalization. this academic and political action is challenging but necessary labor at the sociocultural limits of universalized concepts of knowledge, recognizable human beings, and curriculum studies (miller, 2010). cultural translation, overall, leaves the possibility open for future conversations of whose knowledge, life, or curriculum is recognized as valuable and whose is not, especially when interactions among nation-states become complicated and prevalent in our daily lives. by accepting the possibilities of the unknown as open, yet rejecting any closed readings, dialogues among nation-states will be complicated and enriched in the current internationalization movement of the field. notes 1 the paper, with minor revisions, appears in dissertation research (moon, 2011). i thank reviewers for thoughtful review of the initial manuscript. i also appreciate to janet miller for introducing cultural translation through her work and providing me with feedback for in-depth inquiry. moon. cultural translation: curricular discourse with/in internationalization of curriculum studies 17 transnational curriculum inquiry 9(1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 2 seungho.moon@okstate.edu 3 according to national statistical office, the republic of korea (2009), 1 to12 public school students spend 7.4 hours per week in hakwon and/or gwaweh in 2008. the annual cost per household is $230 per month. more than 75.1% of the 1 to 12 students in korea attended hakwon and/or gwaweh (national statistical office, the republic of korea, 2009). the expense and participation of hakwon education causes inequity in education. a household in which the income is under $1,000 spends $50 a month, and 34% of the students attend hakwon and/or gwaweh. these figures contrast with a middle-class household that spends more than $400 out of $5,000 a month on average. more than 90.5% of students attend hakwon and/or gwaweh. references asher, n. 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(2006). beyond/against the discourse of the us/western teachers’ lives: texts of the other (korean context). paper presented at the 3rd meeting of international association for the advancement of curriculum studies (iaacs), tampere, finland. lee, y. (2003). politics and theories in the history of curricular reform in south korea. in w. f. pinar (ed.), international handbook of curriculum research (pp. 541-552). mahwah, nj: erlbaum. miller, j. (2005a). sounds of silence breaking: women, autobiography, curriculum. new york, ny: peter lang. miller, j. (2005b). the american curriculum field and its worldly encounters. journal of curriculum theorizing, 22(2), 9-24. miller, j. (2006). curriculum studies and transnational flows and mobilities: feminist autobiographical perspectives. transnational curriculum inquiry, 3(2), 31-50. retrieved from http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci miller, j. (2010). relationality as an indispensable component of curriculum studies. paper presented at the annual meeting of american association for the advancement of curriculum studies (aaacs), denver, co. moon, s. (2011). autobiographical interrogations of multicultural education: complicating conversations in curriculum studies (unpublished doctoral dissertation). teachers college, columbia university. new york, ny. http://www.globaldashboard.org/2008/11/20/madagascar-worse-than-thought/ moon. cultural translation: curricular discourse with/in internationalization of curriculum studies 19 transnational curriculum inquiry 9(1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci moon, s. (2012a). korea, multicultural education in. in j. a. banks (ed.), encyclopedia of diversity in education (vol. 2, pp. 1307-1312). thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. moon, s. (2012b). disciplinary images of “korean-ness”: autobiographical interrogations on the panopticon. sage open, journal, 2(3), 1-12. doi: 10.1177/2158244012455649 nahm, i., & jang, h. (2009, spring/summer). cultural understanding of the native countries of marriage immigrant women's families. social theory, 7-29. national statistical office, the republic of korea. (2009). a report for non-public education in korea. seoul, korea: national statistical office. retrieved from http://kostat.go.kr/portal/korea/kor_nw/2/13/1/index.board?bmode=read&aseq= 69779 pillow, w. (2003). confession, catharsis, or cure? rethinking the uses of reflexivity as methodological power in qualitative research. international journal of qualitative studies in education, 16(2), 175-196. pinar, w. (2003a). introduction: toward the internationalization of curriculum studies. in d. trueit, h. wang, j. william, e. doll, & w. f. pinar (eds.), internationalization of curriculum studies: selected proceedings from the lsu conference 2000 (pp. 113). new york, ny: peter lang. pinar, w. (2003b). introduction. in w. f. pinar (ed.), international handbook of curriculum research (pp. 1-13). mahwah, nj: erlbaum. pinar, w. (2006). the synoptic text today and other essays: curriculum development after the reconceptualization. new york, ny: peter lang. pinar, w., reynolds, w. m., slattery, p., & taubman, p. m. (1995). understanding curriculum: an introduction to the study of historical and contemporary curriculum discourses. new york, ny: peter lang. quayson, a. (2000). postcolonialism: theory, practice, or process? malden, ma: blackwell. shange, n. (1983). a daughter's geography. new york, ny: st. martin's press. shon, h. (1999). the korean language. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press walt, v. (2008). the breadbasket of south korea: madagascar. the times, retrieved from http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1861145,00.html accessed: november 23, 2008. wang, h., & hoyt, w. m. (2007). “sounds of silence breaking”: working difference, translation, and curriculum. journal of the american association for the advancement of curriculum studies, 3. retrieved from http://www2.uwstout.edu/content/jaaacs/vol3/wang.htm. submitted: december, 5 th , 2011. approved: august, 23 rd , 2012. http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1861145,00.html http://www2.uwstout.edu/content/jaaacs/vol3/wang.htm microsoft word fabiansson_healey.doc to cite this article please include all of the following details: fabiansson, charlotte and healey, louise (2007) envisioning a global future for rural australia: local government visions and local youths’ educational aspirations. transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> envisioning a global future for rural australia: local government visions and local youths’ educational aspirations charlotte fabiansson and louise healey university of western sydney, australia introduction rural education has traditionally been able to satisfy the local workforce requirements of employers, local industry, trade, and business groups. however, with the global challenges facing rural families today, it seems that rural educational institutions are unable to provide the specialised education and vocational training necessary for individuals to compete in the international market. in addition, decreasing opportunities for school leavers to find local employment have made it necessary for young people to look beyond their local communities. for the purposes of this paper, the concept of transnationalism will be limited to occupations and activities that require regular and sustained social contacts over time across national borders for their implementation. within the definition of transnationalism, it is possible to accommodate a number of diverse activities. activities across national borders of members of a rural community also contribute to strengthening the transnational field. rural industry is one example of the new demands facing rural families and of the need for local youth to pursue higher education and specialised training. these challenges can only be understood in the context of globalisation. globalisation in the context of this paper refers to the economic, political and cultural aspects of the international market where technology, transport and communication are creating a ‘global village’. no longer can australian farmers consider themselves from a purely regional or national context. the world bank’s official definition of globalisation is: ‘freedom and ability of individuals and firms to initiate voluntary economic transactions with residents of other countries’ (milanovic, 2002, p. 6). globalisation refers to greater mobility of production such as capital and labour, and enhanced world integration through increased trade and exchange of ideas. the present movement of globalisation is predated by a similar trend at the end of the last century ending by 1914 (milanovic, 2002). australian rural families find themselves defined as ‘individual’ players in an international market. gone are the days of government protections and subsidies. one consequence of this new won ‘freedom’ is that rural farmers must maximise their ability to work the land. in other words, they must use all available knowledge to maximise production. moreover, it has become increasingly necessary to pursue higher education in order to work on the land. techniques such as maximising agricultural produce, land management strategies and the need to conserve water resources require specialised knowledge, taught at tertiary institutions. competition in the international market has brought about increased scientific management of rural industries. it is no longer possible for farming families to survive by relying on traditional agricultural knowledge. rural families must keep up with latest knowledge about farming, and with the aid of advanced technology such as computer programs, the internet, and specialised accounting packages, farmers can monitor and assess livestock and produce, in order to successfully compete in global markets. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci fabiansson and healey: envisioning a global future for rural australia transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 30 this trend to apply specialised knowledge to farming is borne out by an article in the sydney morning herald (22/02/2006) describing the “e-sheep” project being trialled by the nsw department of primary industries. it involves attaching electronic ear tags to sheep and using equipment such as scanners to provide information to farmers about an animal’s weight, age, and sex or wool thickness. in a drought, it will enable farmers to know which sheep is losing condition, and at shearing time, it will provide information that will enable farmers to group the animals based on wool quality. according to this article such technology will enable farmers to save money by reducing the amount of work they do and will enable them to cater to every animal individually without even venturing into a paddock. it is argued that specialised information will allow farmers to make better decisions about how to spend their money such that it will not be lost on inferior livestock. a farmer from bourke who has been trialling this technology explained that “we are looking at completely changing the way we manage stockgoing from subjective to objective management”1 in the rural communities we studied, it was often seen as a necessity to send one’s children to high schools more than 600 km away to the cities where they could receive the necessary education to compete in the modern world. their own towns could not offer the necessary curricular support for the diversity and specialisation of education that were needed to be competitive in the global market. councillors who were interviewed in this study recognised the need for tertiary education and were attempting to establish higher education facilities in their shires. at the same time, councillors recognised that traditional work areas such as mining and agriculture were providing less opportunities for local youth and limited job opportunities for graduates in the shires. they recognised the need for young people to move away to urban areas to fulfil their professional aspirations. they identified the loss of their young people as a real problem for their communities and discussed strategies which would halt the drift to the cities. for example, councillors talked about the need for their shires to create ‘knowledge based industries’ such as innovative it businesses, tourism, hospitality and service industries that could create job opportunities for their young residents. this paper will situate young people’s aspirations for education and employment in the broader context of australian rural communities and show how globalisation is affecting these communities. the notion of social capital will be used as a conceptual tool for understanding the kinds of cultural resources which exist in rural communities and which are being developed to enhance opportunities for rural young people. in the shires, young people, particularly women, displayed constructive aspirations towards higher education. this paper will explore the gender differences in attitudes to work and higher education within these communities. in our study, we found that community members such as councillors and parents active in local voluntary organisations provided important leadership role models and helped to promote many informal learning experiences within the communities. informal learning processes help to build strong networks of social capital within communities and in our study, these positive experiences seem to account for the positive aspirations displayed by many young people in the shires (falk, 2001a; falk and harrison, 1998). social capital and social cohesion social capital is the attitude, spirit and willingness of people to engage in collective, civic activities and the degree to which a community or society collaborates and cooperates through networks, shared trust, norms and values to achieve mutual benefits (putnam, 2000). social capital can be described as the link between individual behaviour and the social community 1 ‘mustering sheep with the click of a mouse’, the sydney morning herald, february 22, 2006. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci fabiansson and healey: envisioning a global future for rural australia transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 31 environment. the social capital construct has been used within academic disciplines and in policy construction to describe non-economic, often difficult to define connotations of social structures, factors that underpin economic growth and sustainability (bryden and hart, 2004). trust and social interaction among people, people who take pride in their local community and care for their community, being active participants in local issues create a healthier atmosphere and is more likely to cultivate effective social network systems to the benefit of the residents and the community as a whole (uk department of health, 1999, paragraph 4.34). a community is built on personal social networks that provide support, identity and belonging to the residents and glue the community together (wellman, 2001, p. 228). the two research communities are defined by their geographical boundaries even if social cohesion and social network systems do not necessarily follow these boundaries. moreover, in rural areas, geographical distances are vast which makes it difficult to sustain intensive social networks between communities without the help of telephone and internet communication. the concept of social capital is complicated to define and differs from economic factors where a figure value can be attached and explained. social factors do not have this clarity: their ambiguous nature can create difficulties in definitions, measurements and interpretations (morrow, 2001, p. 39). key fundamentals of social capital are sociability which is based upon an individual’s skills and the desire to sustain social network systems (bourdieu, 1993). individual relationships require durability and are indispensable for community members (bourdieu, 1986, p. 249; paxton, 2002, p. 256). recent social research has demonstrated the importance of social capital building for rural communities.2 in order for a community to sustain itself and flourish community members must participate in exchanging experiences, skills, services, commodities, and social support. in other words, a reciprocal approach is essential for sustainability, and even more so in isolated communities which may be lacking in resources or essential services. mutual respect among community members is a crucial foundation for social networks and social cohesion. reciprocal network systems create support and interest in community members’ welfare, a consideration and trust that will be returned (putnam, 1993, p. 35; 1995, p. 665). social capital structures such as networks and organisations provide opportunities for members to have shared learning experiences. these experiences contribute to the development of strong social structures and culture within the community and are factors which will help to sustain and enhance the community. social capital cannot be thought of as a property of closed and bounded rural communities, which merely perpetuates the myths of rurality as a preserve of old traditions. and yet, on the other hand, it is very much linked to ideas of place and identity. where social capital brings positive benefits, it is likely to be associated with a plurality of cultural identities, a plethora of diverse networks of social relationships, a mixing and interweaving of spatial scales …, and strong links to the multiple historical themes that characterise european rural areas (lee, árnason, nightingale, and shucksmith, 2005, p. 281). although lee et al. (2005) refers to a european context, the assumption is applicable to other societies and to the australian situation where rural communities need to preserve their uniqueness and identity but at the same time look for new ideas and structures to promote their sustainability. recent research has recognized the importance of social capital as a 2 see studies from the centre for research and learning in regional australia, in particular discussion papers and reports by ian falk, sue kilpatrick, john field, l. harrison and j. guenther on social capital, support networks, trust and learning communities. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci fabiansson and healey: envisioning a global future for rural australia transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 32 means of rebuilding communities (see falk, 2001b, pp. 1-2). different forms of social capital exist in communities. in our study of two rural queensland communities social capital existed in many forms. it was evident through the existence of youth councils and youth centres which undertook activities for the benefit of young residents and which encouraged youths to take shared responsibility for activities such as running a skateboard park in one of the shires. the development of social capital was evident in community organisations such as landcare where volunteers ran classes on computer literacy and art and through community projects such as the art gallery and activities to beautify the towns (“tidy towns”). social capital existed in the form of a plethora of sporting organisations run by dedicated parent volunteers. research design and methodology the research project was designed to elucidate young people’s everyday life on three community levels: the local government, communityorganisational and individual. two queensland rural shires with comparable demographic and socio-economic profiles and a substantial high school -aged population, the years 10-12, were researched. the councillors were personally interviewed while the students completed a self-administered 25 minute survey during school time. all councillors elected to local government in the shires were invited to participate in the research project and to talk about their role as councillors and as residents in the shires. fourteen councillors, a further eleven people representing the local government, sports and recreational, youth counsellor and social support organisations in the shires were interviewed. the student sample includes 751 young people between the ages 14 and 21 years. the sample represents 98 per cent of all young people attending the schools the day that the research was conducted and 84 per cent of all students enrolled in the participating schools. the first research phase was undertaken with local government councillors in october 2002 and the second phase, the youth survey, was undertaken in march 2003. the youth survey data was analysed with spss, v11 (2002)3. the survey questions related to young people’s sport and recreational pursuits, involvement in local clubs and organisations, future educational and professional aspirations, family and friends social networks, feeling safe in the community and trust of people, and experiences of gambling. female students were slightly over-represented in the sample, 55.9 per cent of the sample (n = 420) and the males 44.1 per cent (n = 331). the 15 and the 16 year old students were the largest group, making up two thirds of the sample, while the youngest and oldest age groups together covered one third of the sample. nearly two fifths of the students had lived in the local community their whole life and another one fifth had resided there ten years or longer. only seven per cent of the respondents had been living in the community less than one year, thus creating adequate time for most residents to be familiar with life in the community (white and wynn, 2004). the majority of the population can be described as angloaustralian with only seven per cent of the respondents identifying themselves as indigenous australians. ninety-six per cent of the young people were living with their parents, relatives or in a comparable family situation. results the results from the question of future education and vocational preferences show a clear indication of what the majority of the students aspired to in the future, (6.8 per cent did not 3 the research is presented in detail in fabiansson, c and healey l., 2004, young people’s community affiliation. final report, sydney: university of western sydney. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci fabiansson and healey: envisioning a global future for rural australia transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 33 respond to the question and 13.2 per cent were not sure). in total 601 students (80.1 per cent) of the students had clearly thought about their future after leaving high school4). table 1. overview of the students’ future professional preferences in relation to gender and per cent educational pathway – professional area females males total per cent/n medical, science and social 33.5 9.6*** 23,1/139 technical 2.4 35.6 16.8/101 education 20.0 3.4 12.8/77 trade 8.5 16.0 11.8/71 defense and security 5.9 14.9 9.8/59 creative and artistic 9.4 3.8 7.0/42 hospitality 8.5 3.4 6.3/38 service sector 5.6 3.8 4.8/29 design and construction 4.7 4.2 4.5/26 sports area 1.5 5.3 3.2/19 total per cent/n 100.0/340 100.0/261 100.0/601 pearson chi-square; level of significance; >.001***-strong; .001-.009**-moderate; .01-.05*--weak the results show that the females were more inclined to seek an academic pathway outside the community while a higher percentage of the male students chose areas that could be satisfied in traditional male jobs within the local community. the females’ choices reflect the limited opportunities that exist in the communities for young females aspiring for a professional career. the females’ aspirations reflect the reality of the limited employment market and the realisation that the local opportunities are fewer and likely to stay that way for the foreseeable future. even unqualified service and hospitality positions would be in short supply. the males’ situation is less acute where local opportunities are still seen as a viable option, even if technical skills training would be required which to some degree could be undertaken locally. rural communities the shires are situated in central queensland: the less remote shire is 120 kilometres west of gladstone and 144 kilometres south west of rockhampton; the most remote shire is situated along capricorn highway, 271 kilometres west of rockhampton and 415 kilometres east of longreach. the most remote shire has a railway link and both of them have airports with 4 the categories used in the survey included: (i) medical, science and social professions (medical doctor, different specialities of scientist, veterinary surgeons, nurses, nutritionists and physiotherapists (table 1). (ii). technological professions (engineer related occupations, mechanical work, computer programming, information technology related occupations and computer analysts) (iii) educational professions (primary and secondary teachers, early childhood teachers; childcare related occupations included nanny positions, social workers, child counsellors and occupational therapist occupations) (iv) the defence and security group (occupations within the air force such as pilots and army, navy, or air force positions; police officers, detectives, prison guards, intelligence officer and lawyers within the legal field) (v) design and construction (architects, interior designers, graphic designers and fashion designers) (vi) creative and artistic professions (actors, musicians, museum curators, journalists and fashion editors); (vii) trade professions (plumbers, electricians, hairdressers, fire personnel; real estate agents and people working within agriculture); (viii) service sector (administrative positions, accountants and managers); (ix) hospitality sector (occupations related to hospitality, tourism and entertainment such as chefs and cooks, resort managers; and in the entertainment industry, events managers and travel agents) (x) professional sport (athletes, professional trainers of people or animals). http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci fabiansson and healey: envisioning a global future for rural australia transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 34 daily flights to brisbane. the populations of the shires range from approximately 13,600 to 14,300 people in 2001 (australian bureau of statistics census, 2001). the main industries in the shires are coal mining, power generation, aquaculture, horticulture, and agriculture such as beef production, both dry land cropping and irrigation cropping growing lucernes, cotton, wheat, sorghum, soybeans, sunflowers, citrus fruits and grapes in addition to flowers such as the kangaroo paw, rice flower, protea, eucalyptus, red claw, herbs and spices. the shires are also the dormitory centres for adjacent mines. the shires provide the mainstream services needed for the residents. however some specialist health services such as specialist medical procedures need to be sought outside the shires. education facilities outside compulsory schooling (year 1 10) including year 11 – 12, are in the least remote shire limited to a technical and further education (tafe) college, while in the most remote shire there is access to tertiary education through the university of central queensland and an agricultural college campus. these education faculties are highly treasured and protected by the residents. education is valued in the communities and approximately seven per cent of the adult residents in the shires have a bachelor degree (abs census, 2001, b23). however, there is a shortage of employment opportunities for those with professional education. in addition, affordable housing is another limitation facing young people who would like to settle in the shires. the rural communities are made up of strong mining communities. the mines have traditionally provided many jobs for males in these shires. by contrast, there are less work opportunities for females. this imbalance makes it necessary for females to seek employment and higher qualifications outside the shires as few options are available outside the traditional path as a stay at home parent. the research findings indicated that females were more inclined than males to choose teaching as a desired profession (20.0 per cent and 3.4 per cent, respectively, table 1). it was quite likely that graduate teachers would find themselves working outside of their local community. it was recognised in the interviews the importance of quality education and the fact that their local communities offered limited opportunities to the young. the less remote shire had only one school catering for students sitting their higher school certificate, while the more remote shire had two schools catering for year 12, one public and one private catholic. the schools were only able to offer the main stream choices of subjects so that students with other interests needed to attend schools as boarders in the larger cities, 600 to 900 km away, or alternatively they could do distance education externally, with the help of their schools. community members responded to this dilemma in two ways. on the one hand, they saw the necessity of sending their children away to seek education ‘outside’ the community, demonstrating openness to new ideas, and the ability to look beyond their own communities. on the other hand, community members valued the continuity of their communities and desired to make them stronger. they expressed disappointment that many young people who left the shires to seek further education, did not return. their response to the urban drift was to look critically at their own communities to find ways of improving local educational facilities and work opportunities. local residents desired to make their communities places where the young enjoyed living, in the hope that when they left they would one day wish to return. in other words, residents’ desire to nurture a kind of civic pride in their young residents through projects such as skate parks, and activities initiated by young people themselves working through the youth councils. councillors were proud of the extensive sporting facilities sponsored through the efforts of council members and the plethora of sporting organisations available to the town’s young people, which were organised largely through the voluntary efforts of dedicated parents. at the same time, they recognised that http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci fabiansson and healey: envisioning a global future for rural australia transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 35 these activities favoured male participation or sports minded people and that a broader collection of cultural activities was lacking. one councillor explained that he was not fearful of young people leaving their community because leaving was beneficial both for the individual and for the community if the person returned and shared their new learning experiences. however, he was concerned that young people often did not return, and so in his view it was important to build a community that people would want to return to. thus, he emphasised the importance of encouraging research, which would build local industries such as solar energy. he recognised that in 20 years the mining industry would not be a viable option for graduates wanting to return to the shires. the local economy in order to understand the educational and professional aspirations of young people in the shires, it is instructive to look in some detail at the local economy and the opportunities available to local youths. agriculture and mining are the mainstays of these communities within the shires. agriculture and coal mining form the main industries in the most remote shire while the less remote shire is largely dependent upon coal mining, beef production, lucernes and cotton cropping. the main township in the shire is the dormitory town for three callide power stations and the callide coal mine. the town meatworks is the third largest in queensland and processes meat for export throughout australasia. fairburn dam and lake maraboon in the remote shire have given the shire a reliable water supply and the ability to develop a variety of irrigated crops including horticulture, cotton, wheat, sorghum, sunflowers, and citrus fruits as well as being a major beef supplier. in addition to the main town in the shire, the shire provides dormitory facilities for the bhp’s coal gregory mine, the gordonstone mine, since 1992 and for the crinum and enshum mines since 1994. the prosperity and growth of the town is highly dependent on the future of the mines. the mayor in the less remote shire described the severe drought facing their region due to the lack of water infrastructure. the only available water source for industry was water that came from underground from the callide dam in gladstone. consequently, the town was facing severe water restrictions. one of the most important future projects would be to secure access to water and present residing major companies indicated they would expand if they could get ‘water’, the single most significant factor in attracting people and businesses to the shire. shire mayors and councillors indicated an awareness of their communities’ changing economic situation: the drift of youth from their towns to metropolitan areas, the loss of essential services, the squeeze on shire resources due to drought and global economic circumstances. they spoke of the need to bring their communities into the 21st century and demonstrated this desire through their proactive management of community issues. for example, one of the shire councils had commissioned a strategic document to research the various ways the council could promote development within its region. the document was being used as a blueprint to initiate and develop new projects, for example it mentioned issues such as the need for another dam (nathan dam) to create an alternative water supply, the importance of new railway link in the area, and the need to promote the town in terms of international tourism and through the hospitality industry. councillors recognised the need to broaden the types of industry within the shire, to extend agricultural products to new areas such as herbs, not just water dependent cotton, and to attract new commercial industries which are not agriculturally based. for example, they recognised the importance of their communities becoming globally connected through it and the use of the internet. shire councillors spoke about the new local government act which would expand the role of local councils. rural and regional councils would take over many areas formerly provided by http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci fabiansson and healey: envisioning a global future for rural australia transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 36 the state government, which according to many of the councillors interviewed, would be an improvement. they emphasised that local councils ha special knowledge of their local communities and so are in a better position to develop programs suited to their communities. social and economic infrastructure within the shires one of the most obvious facts about living in rural areas is the lack of higher education facilities and high schools. it was a common fact that most families in the area would send their children away to boarding school in urban areas such as rockhampton or brisbane for the last few years of high school, if they could afford to do so, in order to take advantage of the broader curricula offered by these schools. the move could be long term or even permanent if these teenagers decided to take up tertiary education and then work in these centres. from our surveys, it appears that a high percentage of young people had these aspirations, thus the loss of population that falk (2001a) describes is clearly acerbated by the lack of local educational facilities. the lack of local resources forces rural families apart at an early age, and necessitates this drift to the urban centres. councillors in both shires recognised the serious problem of young people drifting away from their communities and developed strategies to try to stem this tide. even when there were limited higher education facilities available, such as the local tafe in the less remote shire, which provides it and engineering, the location of this institution near the power station 15 km out of town, with no mobile phone coverage, and with no bus service to the area, made this a limited option for most young people in the community. the mayor spoke of plans to relocate the tafe closer to the town. the council was also in the process of talking to university of southern queensland at rockhampton, to establish a level 1 university in the shire. the surveys conducted with young people in the shires represent the population of young people who have stayed in the communities, and have not experienced boarding schools. their experiences have been firmly rooted within their local rural communities. it is interesting therefore to account for the kind of positive aspirations displayed by many of the high school students surveyed in their choice of further education (table 1). there was a clear aspiration towards further tertiary education especially for the females. social researchers such as ian falk (2001a) have described the flow of social and economic infrastructure out of rural communities and the outward perception of rural communities as caught in a ‘downward spiral’ or some kind of inevitable decline5). yet the positive aspirations of these young people indicates a high degree of social capital, a high degree of confidence in themselves and their future, and in many instances, the desire for further education, in the form of apprenticeships or tertiary education. according to town councillors and other community representatives, there were plenty of job opportunities in the shires, but the young people often aspired to broader directions. these aspirations can be understood by looking at the community spirit which existed within the shire, and in particular, the way local townspeople maximized the use of their resources and facilities through the existence voluntary associations and through special projects and community events organised by parents, families, schools, churches, councillors and various other networks. the presence of constructive youth aspirations indicates a vibrant rural community able to nurture constructive and positive views in their young residents. they are able to do this despite the challenges and difficulties facing rural families. talking to town councillors provided glimpses into the hopes nurtured by the townspeople for their communities and their young residents. the desire to start a local university was just one example. other examples 5 see various reports by ian falk, centre for research and learning in regional australia. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci fabiansson and healey: envisioning a global future for rural australia transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 37 included individual councillors and community involvement in establishing a youth centre in one of the smaller towns, the use of the local post office as a study place for students with access to a computer and the internet and where the post office staff took on the responsibility of supervision. rural communities, globalisation and the role of local leaders. the issue of rural communities, globalisation and the role of local leaders was raised in the interviews with community representatives. the experience of globalisation is a problem common to many australian rural communities. the effects of globalisation and the decline in population of australian rural communities have been well documented6). for example, falk (2001b, chapter 1, p. 1) talks about the ‘crisis’ affecting rural communities: the downward spiral affecting regional communities due to the globalisation of agricultural markets and the consequential competitiveness that results from this; the ensuing loss of population from these areas, the outflow of economic and social infrastructure in the form of governments withdrawing services, businesses relocating elsewhere and young people moving away to urban areas (falk, 2001b; 1999). a recent inquiry by the productivity commission (1999, pp. 28-30) into the plight of rural australia identifies ‘drivers’ of change in rural australia and refers to the increased scale and pace of globalisation. the report refers to technological advances such as improved transport and telecommunications, increased mechanisation of farming, agronomic developments and the adoption of new mining techniques. another facet of globalisation has been the downward trend in world prices for agricultural commodities, which has resulted in a decline in producers’ terms of trade. at the same time rural australia has experienced government policy changes such as the lowering of trade barriers, deregulation of the financial system and increased regulation to protect the environment. according to pritchard (2001, p.1), australia has championed agricultural trade liberalisation since the 1980s. from the late 1970s, neo-liberal economics contested the idea that government should have priority over market processes. these changes have brought about changes in australia’s economic activity, and while it is still true to say that agriculture and mining has continued to grow, the reality is that these activities have diminished as a proportion of gross domestic product (gdp). a large share of gdp has been taken over by service activities. pritchard (2002, p. 5) describes the ‘profound sense of vulnerability’ in much of rural australia due to a variety of circumstances. these include problems of environmental degradation forcing changes in agricultural practices, long term declines in terms of rural trade are squeezing farm incomes; trends in agricultural production increasing dependence on large-scale capital investment with implications for debt and farm size; and service industry restructuring is leading to small businesses leaving small towns. the role of local councils in the community in the communities studied, it was clear that local councils played an important role in community development. councillors provided important structures of leadership within the communities and were responsible for directing and mobilising local resources, for the benefit of the community. at the same time as being councillors, many of these towns’ people were dedicated parents, and business owners. they were able to integrate their experience as parents, business owners/workers, and their knowledge of the community and apply it to the challenges facing local council. the study of these local councillors is a good example of how 6 see recent works such as gray and lawrence, a future for regional australia: escaping global misfortune 2001; lockie and bourke, rurality bites: the social and environmental transformation of rural australia 2001; pritchard and mcmanus, land of discontent 2000 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci fabiansson and healey: envisioning a global future for rural australia transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 38 local residents applied their local knowledge and mobilised community resources in order to tackle problems such as the lack of educational facilities, housing issues, and various social issues facing the communities. as one interviewee explained, the councils had gone beyond being about rates and limited services. their new vision was about building infrastructure and developing programs which would enhance the whole fabric of their communities. many councillors explained that their interest in being on council was related to social issues which affected their community such as improving local housing, making the community a place which young people were proud of and developing industries in the area. one mayor explained that local government councils have more responsibilities than 10 years ago. the responsibilities have expanded to environmental health and economic development such as bringing workers to the area and this brings with it social issues and affordable housing concerns. in other words, the council was now responsible for encouraging development. an example of this is that one council had funded a major study of gladstone hinterland in order to define the major issues of economic development for the region. many councillors expressed the view that local government was more important than state government and there existed duplication of efforts and as a result a waste of resources. they believed that as local people, their knowledge of the issues was superior to the state government and the latter tended to represent an interference. some councillors believed it would be better to get rid of state government altogether. they described what they saw as a more constructive form of governing in the structure of committees responsible for regional areas relating to specific issues. local government was the structure through which these regional committees could be formed. councillors were involved in a wide range of activities and committees which reflected their commitment to community development: some examples included committees for road works, landcare and the environment, housing, youth issues, and agricultural development. it was clear that councillors took pride in their communities and saw their role on the council as an important means of bringing about positive change. one mayor was proud of introducing a youth council to their local area; another mayor was proactive in managing the local police citizens youth clubs (pcyc) and made it a passion of his to gain diplomas in a myriad of youth activities so that he could pass these skills onto other potential teachers. his idea was that even though their town may lack resources, he could use his own skills and energies to provide leadership and pass on knowledge to others. one councillor explained the plight facing local young people due to the lack of affordable housing and how young people are spending most of their disposable income on rent. one of her interests in being on council was to focus on housing in the council planning scheme, so that more council land could be used to deal with this problem. councillors shared their concerns about the lack of social services in their communities and the need to attract specialists such as doctors and nurses to the area. once again, affordable housing was an important issue if the communities were going to be able to attract professionals to their communities. one council was in the process of trying to set up a private medical practice with specialists. another councillor described his special interests in the portfolios of art and culture, environment and tourism: he was involved in friends of the gallery and the country music festival, australia day celebrations, landcare. he showed a concern about making the town interesting for young people, and was concerned when a channel v (television youth program) bus came to town and the young residents described their town as boring. another councillor mentioned the need for change in the training and employment area of young people: his concept was that of acquiring more ‘learning communities’ which concentrated on higher learning rather than just relying on resource based activities such as mining and agriculture (coal, cattle and farming). http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci fabiansson and healey: envisioning a global future for rural australia transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 39 conclusion young rural females’ aspirations towards tertiary education, their preparedness to leave their communities (not an easy route due to expensive hecs [higher education contribution scheme] fees and the uncertainty related to gaining work) indicated positive social capital within these rural queensland communities. this can be partly explained by the fact that females had fewer alternatives than males in their communities nevertheless the choice is still their own and rather than stay in town doing whatever work was available or relying on welfare, they have aspired towards higher, if uncertain goals. this in itself speaks positive things for the communities in that they are able to nurture such aspirations. these aspirations are reflected in the kind of projects the communities provide and help us to understand the context in which such aspirations have developed. in these communities there may not be a lot of specific youth activities (apart from sports which are extensive), although there are some and, increasing attempts by locals to provide more activities such as skate parks, art galleries with the existence of an active adult community involved in voluntary work, which provide constructive role models for young people. a member of landcare in one of the smaller towns explained that if you get into trouble in the community there is a network there to help you. for example, people organised a working bee to help a wife whose wheelchair bound husband had difficulty venturing outside the home and into the community, through building wheelchair friendly pavements. our research indicates that in rural communities local young residents may be more exposed to these kinds of networking activities where the community maximises their limited resources by utilising human capital as a resource. young people see their elders actually getting down to practice real action and making things happen. these role models are priceless and go much further than being able to just buy things for your children, or always being able to give them any activity they desire. sometimes getting things too easily and having too many choices as exists in the cities breeds a lack of value of things, and a lack of value of what human efforts are involved in actually achieving change. even though young rural people may complain about their communities being boring and lacking activities for youth, they are at the same time exposed to an active community life. this criticism of local communities may come from the fact that rural children are exposed to the excitement of urban life as presented through television and the internet and so by comparison their communities seem lacking. at the same time, the nature of community life in rural areas reflects situations where families involved in many activities together, although perhaps more adult-centred create the basis for developing social capital and social cohesion. transnational movements and globalisation operate in and emerge out of local contexts in a relationship that is in flux. this challenges us not only to think of the local/global dualisms but also of the implications for transnational curriculum development. references australian bureau of statistics [abs]. (2001) census 2001, commonwealth of australia, canberra bourdieu, p., 1986, the forms of capital. in j. g. richardson (ed) handbook of theory and research for the sociology of education (pp. 241-58). new york: greenwood. bourdieu, p. (1993) sociology in question. london: sage. bryden, j. and hart, k. (2004) a new approach to rural development in europe: germany, greece, scotland, and sweden. lewiston, new york: lampeter, wales: edwin mellen press. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci fabiansson and healey: envisioning a global future for rural australia transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 40 department of health, united kingdom. (1999) saving lives: our healthier nation. london: hmso fabiansson, c. and healey l. (2004) young people’s community affiliation. sydney: university of western sydney. falk. i. (2001a) ‘challenges facing rural regional australia in new times’. in falk, i. 2001,learning to manage change, centre for research and learning in regional australia (crlra), launceston: university of tasmania. falk, i. (2001b) learning to manage change, centre for research and learning in regional australia (crlra), launceston: university of tasmania. falk, i. (1999) situated leadership: a new community leadership model, centre for research and learning in regional australia, launceston: university of tasmania. falk, i. and harrison, l. (1998) indicators of social capital: social capital as the product of local interactive learning processes, crlra, launceston: university of tasmania. gray, i and lawrence, g. (2001) a future for regional australia: escaping global misfortune. cambridge university press, cambridge. lockie, s. and bourke, l. (2001) rurality bites: the social and environmental transformation of rural australia, annandale: pluto press. lee, j., árnason, a., nightingale, a. and shucksmith, m. (2005) networking: social capital and identities in european rural development. sociologia ruralis, vol 45, number 4, october, pp. 269-283. milanovic, b. (2002) can we discern the effect of globalization on income distribution? evidence from household budget surveys. world banks, policy, research working paper; no. wps 2876, 2002/08/31, pp. 1-44. morrow, v. (2001) young people’s explanations and experiences of social exclusion: retrieving bourdieu’s concept of social capital. the internal journal of sociology and social policy, vol. 21 no. 4/5/6, pp. 37-63. paxton, p. (2002) social capital and democracy: an interdependent relationship. american sociological review, vol. 67, no. 2, pp. 254-277. putnam, r. (2000) bowling alone: the collapse and revival of american community, simon and schuster publishing. putnam, r., 1995, tuning in, tuning out: the strange disappearance of social capital in america. the 1995 ithiel de sola pool lecture. political science and politics, italy. putnam, r. (1993) making democracy work: civic traditions in modern italy. princeton. nj: princeton university press. pritchard, b. (2001) on australia’s pursuit of agricultural free trade, australian review of public affairs, september. pritchard, b. (2002) of droughts and flooding rains: policy on rural australia, australian review of public affairs, december. pritchard, b. and mcmanus, p. (2000) (eds) land of discontent: the dynamics of change in rural and regional australia, sydney: unsw press. productivity commission (1999) impact of competition policy reforms on rural and regiona australia. report no. 8, canberra: ausinfo. statistical package for social sciences, spss 2002, statistical analysis, v11.5.0. sydney morning herald (2006) mustering sheep with a click of the mouse, 22 february, by regional reporter daniel lewis. wellman, b. (2001) physical place and cyberspace: the rise of personalized networking.’ international journal of urban and regional research, vol 25, no 2, june, pp 227-252. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci fabiansson and healey: envisioning a global future for rural australia transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 41 white, r. d. and wyn, j. (2004) youth and society: exploring the social dynamics of youth. south melbourne: oxford university press. authors charlotte fabiansson is a research fellow at the social justice social change research centre, and lecturer in the school of social sciences, university of western sydney. her academic areas of interest include young people’s everyday life, leisure pursuits, gambling and trepidations in the local and global environment. her current research areas relate to young people’s community affiliation, young people’s aspirations for the future, ethnicity, and social inclusion/social exclusion within the social community milieu. email: c.fabiansson@uws.edu.au or fabiansson@optusnet.com.au louise healey has recently been teaching in the school of sociology at macquarie university. she has worked as a senior researcher investigating the role of information technologies in government administration. she was also a researcher together with charlotte fabiansson in her research project, a comparative community study of young people’s gambling experiences, researching social cohesion and young people’s participation in sports, leisure, and gambling, at the university of western sydney. her academic areas of interest include social movement theory, the sociology of religion, youth studies, and government administration. her phd thesis explored the nature of political commitment in the australian peace movement. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci mailto:fabiansson@uws.edu.au mailto:fabiansson@optusnet.com.au microsoft word wu_cao_1.doc to cite this article please include all of the following details: wu, li and cao. tingjun (2007) english language teaching in non-english language countries: the curriculum impact of globalisation and computer-mediated communication transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> english language teaching in non-english language countries: the curriculum impact of globalisation and computer-mediated communication li wu and tingjun cao heilongjiang university, china introduction the last few decades have seen a rapid growth in the role of the english language around the world, especially as the lingua franca for economic and scientific exchange. the term lingua franca means ‘any language used for communication between groups who have no other language in common’ (matthews, 2000, p. 209). according to crystal (1997), 85% of international organizations in the world use english as their official language in transnational communication. about 85% of the world’s film market is in english, while 90% of published research articles in the field of such as linguistics are written in english. this educational, economic, scientific and technological globalisation has greatly speeded up the growth in the use of the english language. the consolidation in the use of english as the world’s lingua franca can be attributed to globalisation. viewed as an economic phenomenon, globalisation involves the increasing interaction and integration of national economic systems through the growth in international trade, investment and capital flows. perhaps more usefully, giddens (2000) defined globalisation as both a condition and a consequence of the separation of space and time from place as one of the three sources of modernity, emphasizing that with instantaneous communications, knowledge and culture can be shared around the world simultaneously. it also includes cross-border social, cultural and technological exchanges between people, such as the movement of visiting scholars from china to australia; their use of internet telephony to talk to and see their family while abroad, and their building of transnational knowledge networks. computer-mediated communication (cmc) is one of many outcomes of the process of globalisation, which is impacting on the english curriculum. working in unison with the development of the internet has become an important linguistic medium. cmc impacts on many aspects of human life, but nowhere is it more dominant than in the english language curriculum. mcluhan (1962) coined the term ‘global village’ to express his belief that communication via “global electronic networks” (what is today referred to as the internet) would connect the world, and change people’s desires and imaginings. warschauer and healey (1998: 63) state that: it is the rise of computer-mediated communication and the internet, more than anything else, which has reshaped the uses of computers for language learning at the end of the 20th century. with the advent of the internet, the computer—both in society and in the classroom—has been transformed from a tool for information processing and display to a tool for information processing and communication. for the first time, learners of a language can now communicate inexpensively and quickly with other learners of speakers of the target language all over the world. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci li wu and tingjun cao (2007) english language teaching in non-english language countries transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 93 the qualities of cmc (including sms), a subset of the internet have been impacting upon the lexical, phonetic, syntactic standards of the english language and challenging the importance that teachers place on the use of ‘correct’ of this language. for example, this global technology has led to the evolution of abbreviated english words that emerged in the chat groups of this virtual world. examples of this phenomenon include, 2day (today), b4 (before), ruok? (are you ok?), c%l (cool), cu (see you), and 88 (bye-bye). capital letters are also given syllabic values, as in thn (then), ned (need) in internet communications. in one creation, ru2cnmel8r? (are you two seeing me later?), less than half the characters used in the traditional sentence and word formation are used. it seems that this new form of english language communication means that sentence length is being shortened, and that certain types of complex structures (relative clauses, for instance) are being avoided. such computermediated communication is a challenge for the writing curriculum. further, in everyday conversation, terms from the computer technology are being given a new application among people who want their talk to have a ‘cool’ tone. such examples include: it’s my turn to download now (i’ve heard all your gossip, now hear mine); she’s multitasking (she is doing two things at once); c u later (farewell — see you later). cmc through the internet has important implications for the linguistic curriculum. in this context of transnational communications, this paper explores the impact of the cmc on the english language curriculum. the internet: prescriptive/descriptive approaches to curriculum for some globalisation is leading to the end of cultural diversity as it imposes sameness through out the world. everyone in the world now drinks coca-cola, eats american junk food, and watches american movies. similarly, there has been an argument that the internet is bad for the future of many languages, enables rich countries to monopolise the content generated on the internet. in this way it becomes a form of cultural and linguistic imperialism in which western values dominate. given this scenario, it was argued that internet users must generate mew principles and standards in order to grow and maintain linguistic diversity (crystal, 2001). traditionally, curriculum orientations to language studies have been prescriptive or descriptive (fromkin, 2004). prescriptivism is the view that one variety of language has an inherently higher value than the others, and that this variety of language ought to be imposed on the whole of the speech community. prescriptivism favours a curriculum that presents a version of the standard written language that most closely reflects the literary style of great classics in a language. those who speak or write in a standardized variety are seen to be using the language ‘correctly’; those who do not are termed to be using it ‘incorrectly’. an example of the correct usage of grammar in english is ‘never begin a sentence with and’. an example of correct spelling is that ‘there must always be an ae in encyclopaedia’. however, the prescriptive curriculum ignores the realities of everyday usages of language, where most people do begin sentences with and, and do not put the ae in the spelling of encyclopedia. the descriptive curriculum, by contrast, does not condemn usages that do not follow the standardized rules of language set by linguistics. rather, it describes the variations in usage found within a language, and explains the reasons for variations in usages. the usa usage favours the spelling ‘encyclopedia’, whereas, traditional british usage favours the spelling ‘encyclopaedia’. due to the global dominance of the usa in the later half of the twentieth century, american spelling is increasingly accepted and found in british publications. descriptivists do not like the narrow-minded intolerance and misinformed purism of the prescriptivist curriculum. correspondingly, prescriptivists do not like the all-inclusiveness http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci li wu and tingjun cao (2007) english language teaching in non-english language countries transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 94 and egalitarian philosophy of the descriptivist curriculum, which they interpret as lacking of responsibility towards what, is best in a language (crystal, 2001). the controversy over these curriculum approaches to language education remains even after 250 years, with the arguments being passed on by each generation and re-energised by the most recent developments in society, such as broadcasting and the internet. what is of interest in the rapidly developing domain of internet literature, is the way researchers are struggling to maintain a descriptive and egalitarian language education curriculum while recognizing a prescriptive urge for a curriculum to impose regularity and consistency on this world language which otherwise might spiral out of their control (crystal, 2001). for example, short or instant messages such as good nite (good night), so wot (so what) and @home (at home) have become commonly used daily expressions in england. in china, there have also appeared some new expressions from popular tv programs, such as pk (play kill) and fensi (fans). how can anyone say that such short or instant messages are not acceptable or incorrect in at least colloquial english and chinese? but what does this mean for the more formal requirements of the english language curriculum? from the above discussion, it appears that in the 21st century, the world’s english speakers may increasingly diverge from what they have been taught is correct usage of language, in order to make themselves understood to people from around the world. thus, the internet is likely to alter the standardized usage of english in a globalized context, and perhaps even the curriculum. the internet and the english literacy curriculum according to the american management association international (amai) (1998) e-mail is supplementing face-to-face and telephone communication as the preferred means of business communication. it has also been found to be popular among students with more than 95% of university students in the usa using the web to conduct research and stay in touch with friends (diederich, 1998). the development of modern information technology is occurring simultaneously with new developments borne of contemporary shifts in globalisation. thus, it is having rapid impact on the literacy and communication curricula. the usa remains the world leader in internet use. other industrialized countries also use it widely. the use of internet is boosting emerging economies of asia, the middle east, eastern europe, and latin america. according to one estimate, china will have more internet users than the u.s. by the year 2010 (nua internet surveys, 1999). when the internet first emerged in 1970s, the tendency among teachers of english to speakers of other languages (esol) was to see how it could be employed as a tool in the curriculum (warschauer, 1995). then, computers were seen as an optional or supplementary tool among others for teaching english. today, however, the significance of information technology for teaching or learning is widely acknowledged. to put it simply, information technology has become the fourth revolution in human communication and cognition, matched in significance only by the prior revolutions in language, writing, and print (harnad, 1991). information technology is now impacting on how people interact, their access to information, and their share of information. these changes are akin to the bi sheng revolution about 900 years ago in ancient china. (bi sheng, an ancient chinese inventor in the song dynasty (960-1279), invented an advanced method on the art of printing by engraving/carving chinese characters/letters on clay dices that could be set and removed in a type case/plate fixed with melted resin and wax so as to make printing possible by composing and typesetting, which was much easier and less expensive at the time.) this impact on the curriculum is occurring much more quickly than anticipated. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci li wu and tingjun cao (2007) english language teaching in non-english language countries transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 95 the internet revolutionizes the ways of human communication and language learning. learners of english now need a new set of literacy skills for learning this worldly language. in some developed countries such as in australia, webct is broadly used in tertiary education as a complimentary teaching tool. computers are widely used in classes in secondary and primary schools in these countries. the curriculum impact on reading and writing are further discussed below. the reading curriculum as a result of the it revolution, the page has been supplemented by the screen in the reading curriculum (reinking, 1998; snyder, 1998). this supplementation has occurred especially among young people who have more time to engage with computers (tapscott, 1998). its use necessitates different psycholinguistic processes related to decoding information from a screen instead of a page, especially when the screen is helping decoding words for the reader at the click of a mouse. it is changing how educators teach skills like skimming, scanning, and guessing words from a context (anderson-inman & horney, 1998; mckenna, 1998). it is forcing educators to think more about how text combines with graphics, images and audiovisual content to communicate a message (bolter, 1998; kress, 1999; lemke, 1998). reading is not just a psycholinguistic act of decoding letters and words. rather, it is a social practice that takes place in particular sociocultural contexts (de castell & luke, 1986; gee, 1996). in this sense the supplementation of reading from the page with reading multimedia from the screen, and the new socioeconomic circumstances in which it takes place, has an even greater impact on the language curriculum. reading from the screen is not a passive act of decoding a message, but more of a self-conscious act of creating knowledge from a variety of sources (bolter, 1991; landow, 1992). the following skills are central to curricula intended to develop students’ ability to read from the screen (shetzer & warschauer, 2000): 1. finding the information to read in the first place through electronic database searches by using search engines. 2. rapidly evaluating the source, credibility and timeliness of information once it has been located. 3. quickly making navigational decisions as to whether to read the current page of information, pursue links internal or external to the page, or revert back to further searching. 4. making on-the-spot decisions about ways to save or catalogue part of the information on the page or the complete page. 5. organizing and keeping track of electronic information that has been saved. these may seem like mysterious skills for a class of beginning esol learners who are still trying to figure out how to decode simple english words. but as english expands in the 21st century as the language of international communication, the number of learners who master basic english skills will grow. furthermore, an increasing number of learners throughout the world are finding themselves in the situation of being secondary students in english-speaking countries, where the challenge is not so much to achieve basic decoding skills but rather to use english for global communication. none of these types of skills are completely new additions to the curriculum. the need for critical, active, and interpretive reading has always been an important part of the print literacy curriculum. nevertheless, the vast amount of information available on the internet and its http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci li wu and tingjun cao (2007) english language teaching in non-english language countries transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 96 hyper-textual organization has changed the nature of reading curriculum making these kinds of critical and creative reading skills all highly essential for the english language curriculum. the writing curriculum like the changes esol students need to learn to read the internet, changes are expected to be made in their writing practices (bolter, 1996; faigley, 1997). in much of the world, writing has been given little emphasis in english language courses. if it is emphasized at all, it is seen as synonymous with the putting on paper a series of grammatically correct sentences (raimes, 1991). indeed, this was sufficient for most learners’ needs prior to the information revolution of the 1970s. however, the rise of informationalism, and the widespread use of computers and the internet, has dramatically raised the profile of writing in the english language curriculum and the need for effective written communication (american management association international, 1998). the writing skills which are required in the context of the internet include: 1. integrating texts, graphics and audio-visual material into a multimedia presentation. 2. writing effectively in hypertext genres. 3. using internal and external links to communicate a message well. 4. writing for an audience of unknown readers on the world wide web. 5. using effective pragmatic strategies in various circumstances of cmc such as e-mail, including one-to-one and discussion lists, and various forms of synchronous real-time communication (shetzer & warschauer, 2000). the supplementation of reading and writing practices via the internet necessitates the need for new curriculum frameworks for teaching of english. the following section briefly explores the significance of multiliteracies as a curriculum framework for the teaching of english in an era of globalising information and communication technologies. the internet and world english speakers: new curriculum approaches and practices the global spread of english language speakers and the emergence of new technological literacies are mutually re-enforcing new trends in the global informational economy and the cultures. in response, it is argued that some common curriculum approaches might be adopted. a key pedagogical concept that responds to those trends is ‘multiliteracies’, encompassing as it does resources from education, critical literacy and discourse analysis (cope & kalantzis, 2000; new london group, 1996). multiliteracies were developed in recognition of the inadequacy of curricula which limit themselves to ‘page-bound, official, standard forms of the national language’ (new london group, 1996, p. 61). instead, it suggests that students should learn to negotiate a multiplicity of media and discourses. curricula that seek to meet this challenge should include the following elements (new london group, 1996): 1. immersion in situated practice: practice in “authentic communicative situations” is required for students to learn how to collaborate with partners, negotiate complex points, and critically evaluate information as it applies to particular meaningful contexts. at the same time, such “authentic situations” give students the opportunity to develop new technological literacies in meaningful contexts. 2. overt instruction: the kinds of sophisticated communication skills required in the 21st century seldom develop through practice alone. students need the opportunity to step http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci li wu and tingjun cao (2007) english language teaching in non-english language countries transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 97 back, under the guidance of a teacher to critically analyse the content, coherence, organization, pragmatics, syntax and lexis of communication. 3. critical framing: effective cross-cultural communication and collaboration, including making effective use of information found in online networks, necessitates a high degree of critical interpretation. the teacher’s overt role is to extend students’ understanding of language items and to help them learn to critically interpret information and communication in a given social context. 4. transformed practice: for students to improve their communication skills each new level of learning is based on situated practice, overt instruction and critical framing. this involves working toward higher-quality outcomes within particular contexts and transferring what has been learned for application in new social and cultural contexts. such a curriculum framework includes, but beyond the linguistic syllabi that are based on collections of syntactic or functional items. it also includes but goes far beyond the notion of task-based learning that is making progress on tasks designed principally to assist learners in grasping particular grammatical forms. akin to the multiliteracies curriculum framework, project-based learning is a pedagogical tool that is useful in the english language curriculum (stoller, 1997). projects themselves may include many individual tasks, that allow collective opportunities for students to criticize and transform their literacy practices in ways that individual tasks do not. projects can take many forms when based on students’ backgrounds, needs and interests. today they necessarily involve electronic communication and collaboration to increase students’ online literacy skills. they provide students opportunities to deal with cultural and identity issues emerging in this era of more transnational communication and interaction. these include long-distance exchange projects in which students debate and discuss issues related to cultural identity (kern, 1996). service learning projects enable students to use their knowledge of english and technology to assist their local communities (warschauer & cook, 1999). project-based work of this type of course is not to be suitable for all curricula. there is, for instance, a mismatch between the pedagogical values of educators from british, australasian, or north american (bana) settings and the actual contexts of ‘tesep’ (in tertiary, secondary, and primary) english teaching in the rest of the world. the former are often working with highly motivated adult learners in small classes, while the latter frequently feature poorly motivated students in large classes (holliday 1992; 1994). or at lest that is the stereotype. most bana tesol programs favour student-centred group work and ‘learning festivals’ (holliday, 1992, p. 36), whereas most tesep institutions value educators with strong disciplinary knowledge (e.g., of linguistics or literature); firm control of the classroom, and the ability to deliver captivating lectures, ‘teaching spectacles’ (holliday, 1992, p. 36). the new information and communication technologies could change this. e-mail is a convenient medium which gives students the experience of authentic writing tasks, through communication with fellow students, teachers and native speaker contacts (kelm, 1995; tella, 1992, cited in crystal, 2001). such electronic communication is now widely incorporated into english language teaching—in those parts of the world where internet access is routine — for a broad range of purposes. additional textual and graphic material can be sent through the use of attachments. this is a useful and feasible tool that is included in teaching english in chinese universities as all students have easy access to the internet. it enables them to make a pen-friend with a native english speaker by exchanging emails on a regular basis. the use of ‘smileys’ is very common among and popular with the chinese youth, and is used as a pedagogical tool in teaching english in chinese universities. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci li wu and tingjun cao (2007) english language teaching in non-english language countries transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 98 chat groups are another means to teaching english to esol. chat group interactions are either asynchronous with delayed-time exchanges or synchronous with real-time interactions. both of those are used in english language teaching (crystal, 2001). asynchronous situations, such as mail lists and newsgroups, facilitate discussion of issues, student-student contact, and teacher-student interaction. this quickly takes on the characteristic of a virtual classroom. synchronous interaction is also used as chat groups and as a virtual world. the web puts learners into contact with up-to-date information about the english language, especially through the use of online dictionaries and usage guides. these are limited due to access fees and copyright. websites provide a great variety of materials attractively packaged, such as newspaper articles, exercises, quizzes, and self-assessments. the use of the internet in the english-language curriculum is in its early stages. for this reason teachers are learning search-engine skills, ways of evaluating web pages, techniques for manipulating and creating their own web materials, and methods for integrating web activities into their language curriculum (eastment, 1999). conclusion with the rapid changes brought about by contemporary transitions in globalisation, especially transnational developments in information and communication technology, teachers of esol are coming to understand that they are on the brink of a major revolution in the english language curriculum. many teachers and students have learned to meet the demands of the new internet situations, such as e-mails, chat groups, web pages. the e-prefix is used in hundreds of expressions by people on a daily basis. for instance, the oxford dictionary of new words (knowles, 1997) had already noted e-text, e-cash, e-books, e-conferences, evoting, e-loan, e-newsletters, e-cards and e-shop. however, it is difficult to know how many of these e-expressions which originated with the internet will remain in long-term use in the english language. because we can only recognize and describe language change once it has occurred, this creates problem for making curriculum decisions. linguists have begun to investigate the linguistic properties of the so-called ‘electronic revolution’. it is an open question as to whether the way in which the english language is being used on the internet is so different from previous linguistic behaviour, and should it be described as revolutionary. as paolillo (1999, p.1) puts it, ‘if we are to understand truly how the internet might shape our language, then it is essential that we seek to understand how different varieties of language are used on the internet.’ there are over 1,000 elt english language teaching (elt) sites devoted to language learning activities, resources, and materials on the internet. from his survey of elt on the internet, eastment (1999, p.1) found that the internet is transforming “the way that the teaching and learning of english, and the business of elt is conducted”. the continuing changes in the global spread, reception, interaction, sharing and understanding of information in english continue to alter the process of human communication. it has created a necessity for curriculum workers, especially language teachers, to better understand these factors and the internet influence on the way the english language might now be taught. therefore, there is a need for further analysis, evaluation and description of the changes in the language curriculum, as a result of the internet’s role as a tool and pedagogical device. there is a need to make appropriate responses in esol teaching and learning since the internet has transformed cmc and the business of elt. references american management association international. (1998). e-mail tops telephone, say hr execs at 69th annual human resources conference. retrieved: dec. 6, 2005, from <http://www.amanet.org/survey/hrc98.html>. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci http://www.amanet.org/survey/hrc98.html li wu and tingjun cao (2007) english language teaching in non-english language countries transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 99 anderson-inman, l., & horney, m. (1998). transforming text for at-risk readers. in d. reinking, m. mckenna, l. labbo, & r. kieffer (eds.), handbook of literacy and technology: transformations in a post-typographic world (pp. 15-43). mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum associates. bolter, j. (1991). writing space: the computer, hypertext, and the history of writing. hillsdale, nj: lawrence erlbaum associates. bolter, j. (1996). ekphrasis, virtual reality, and the future of writing. in g. nunberg (ed.), the future of the book (pp. 253-272). berkeley: university of california press. bolter, j. (1998). hypertext and the question of visual literacy. in d. reinking, m. mckenna, b. cope, & m. kalantzis, (eds.). (2000). multiliteracies: literacy learning and the design of social futures (pp. 3-13). london: routledge. crystal, d. (1997). english as a global language. cambridge: cambridge university press. crystal, d. (2001). language and the internet. cambridge: cambridge university press. de castell, s., & luke, a. (1986). models of literacy in north american schools: social and historical conditions and consequences. in s. de castell, a. luke, & k. egan (eds.), literacy, society, and schooling (pp. 87-109). new york: cambridge university press. diederich, t. (1998). web use among students continues to rise. retrieved: dec. 16, 2005, from <http://cnn.com/tech/computing/9808/31/opstud.idg/index.html>. eastment, d. (1999). the internet and elt. oxford: summertown publishing. faigley, l. (1997). literacy after the revolution. college composition and communication, 48 (1), 30-43. fromkin, v. (2004). an introduction to language (7th edition.). beijing: peking university press. gee, j. (1996). social linguistics and literacies. london: taylor & francis. giddens, a. (2000). runaway world: how globalization is reshaping our lives. new york: routledge. harnad, s. (1991). post-gutenberg galaxy: the fourth revolution in the means of production and knowledge. public-access computer systems review, 2 (1), 39-53. holliday, a. (1992). tissue rejection and informal orders in elt projects: collecting the right information. applied linguistics, 13(4), 404-424. holliday, a. (1994). appropriate methodology in social context. cambridge: cambridge university press. kern, r. (1996). computer-mediated communication: using e-mail exchanges to explore personal histories in two cultures. in m. warschauer (ed.), telecollaboration in foreign language learning (pp. 105-119). honolulu, hi: university of hawaii second language teaching and curriculum center. knowles, e. (1997). the oxford dictionary of new words. oxford: oxford university press. kress, g. (1999). ‘english’ at the crossroads: rethinking curricula of communication in the context of the turn to the visual. in g. e. hawisher., & c. selfe (eds.), passions, pedagogies, and 21st century technologies (pp. 66-88). logan, utah: utah state university press. landow, g. (1992). hypertext: the convergence of contemporary critical theory and technology. baltimore: john hopkins university press. lemke, j. (1998). metamedia literacy: transforming meanings and media. in d. reinking, m., mckenna, l., labbo., & r. d. kieffer (eds.), handbook of literacy and technology: transformations in a post-typographic world (pp. 283-301). hillsdale, nj: erlbaum. mckenna, m. (1998). electronic texts and the transformation of beginning reading. in d. reinking., m. mckenna., l. labbo., & r. kieffer (eds.), handbook of literacy and http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci http://cnn.com/tech/computing/9808/31/opstud.idg/index.html li wu and tingjun cao (2007) english language teaching in non-english language countries transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 100 technology: transformations in a post-typorgraphic world (pp. 45-59). mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum associates. mcluhan, m. (1962). the gutenberg galaxy: the making of typographic man. toronto: university of toronto press. new london group. (1996). a pedagogy of multiliteracies: designing social futures. harvard educational review, 66 (1), 60-92. nua internet surveys. (1999). chinese users to outnumber us users by 2010. retrieved: dec. 16, 2005, from <http://www.nua.ie/surveys/?f=vs&art_id=905355392&rel=true>. paolillo, j. (1999). the virtual speech community: social network and language variation on irc. journal of computer-mediated communication 4 (4). retrieved: dec. 20, 2005, from <http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol4/issue4/paolillo.html>. matthews, p. (2000). oxford concise dictionary of linguistics. shanghai: shanghai foreign language education press, 209. raimes, a. (1991). out of the woods: emerging traditions in the teaching of writing. tesol quarterly, 25(3), 407-430. reinking, d. (ed.). (1998). handbook of literacy and technology: transformations in a post-typographic world. mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum associates. shetzer, h., & warschauer, m. (2000). an electronic literacy approach to network-based language teaching. in m. warschauer & r. kern (eds.), network-based language teaching: concepts and practice (pp. 171-185). new york: cambridge university press. snyder, i. (ed.). (1998). from page to screen. london: routledge. stoller, f. (1997). project work: a means to promote language content. english teaching forum, 35(4), 2. tapscott, d. (1998). growing up digital: the rise of the net generation. new york: mcgraw-hill. warschauer, m. (1995). e-mail for englishtteaching. alexandria, va: tesol publications. warschauer, m., & cook, j. (1999). service learning and technology in tesol. prospect, 14 (3), 32-39. warschauer, m., & healey, d. (1998). computers and language learning: an overview. language teaching 31(2), 57-71. authors li wu is an associate professor of linguistics in the school of western studies, heilongjiang university, china. her research interests include general linguistics, cognitive linguistics, and applied linguistics. she held a position of visiting scholar in the school of english studies, university of nottingham, uk, from january 2003 to january 2004. email: wuli668@yahoo.com.cn tingjun cao is an associate professor of english in the department of foreign language teaching and research, heilongjiang university, china. his research interests include teaching methodology and english education. he is now a visiting scholar in the school of education, university of western sydney, australia. email: t.cao@uws.edu.au http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci http://www.nua.ie/surveys/?f=vs&art_id=905355392&rel=true http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol4/issue4/paolillo.html mailto:wuli668@yahoo.com.cn mailto:cao@uws.edu.au microsoft word naidoo.doc to cite this article please include all of the following details: naidoo, loshini (2007). teaching for social justice: reflections from a core unit in a teacher education program. transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> teaching for social justice: reflections from a core unit in a teacher education program loshini naidoo university of western sydney introduction teachers cannot restrict their attention to the classroom alone, leaving the larger setting and the purposes of schooling to be determined by others. they must take active responsibility for the goals to which they are committed and for the social setting in which these goals may prosper. if they are not to be mere agents of others, of the state, of the military, of the media, of the experts and bureaucrats, they need to determine their own agency through a critical context of their calling (scheffler, 1968, p. 11). the school of education at the penrith campus of the university of western sydney has adopted a conceptual framework for pre-service teachers that includes a commitment to teaching for social justice to prepare teachers to work with students from diverse racial, ethnic, social class and language backgrounds. this initiative is an indication that there are sites of social injustices that need to be challenged if we are to have a society ‘in which the distribution of resources is equitable and all members are physically and psychologically safe and secure’ (bell, 1997, p. 1). it is to face this challenge that ‘social justice issues in secondary education’ was set-up as a core coursework unit of the bachelor of teaching (secondary) degree. developing a learning climate that encourages awareness and appreciation for those with various cultural backgrounds -racial/ethnic, language, socio-economic, gender, sexual orientation is an important role of this unit in the teacher education program. with a population of over 1.4 million, western sydney is the third largest regional economy in australia, after sydney and melbourne, and its population is larger than that of south australia. it is the most culturally and linguistically diverse region in new south wales, and also home to 60 percent of australia’s largest urban indigenous population (abs, 1998). greater western sydney is an area of both diversity and resilience. not only the diversity of the physical and social geography of the region, but also the enormous diversity of issues, constraints and also opportunities that face each of the thirteen local government areas that comprise greater western sydney. the region is far from homogeneous. variations between one part of the region and another are important indicators of deprivation. lack of housing amenity, households without access to a car, high unemployment rates particularly for males, poor english proficiency, are greater problems in some areas of western sydney than others. parts of greater western sydney have tended to house those citizens least able to exercise choice in terms of their jobs, homes and personal consumption. it is evident that greater western sydney and the university of western sydney have a unique set of communities with higher proportions of relative social disadvantage and ultimately lower access to resources. the university of western sydney is coming to terms with these differences and is widening its activities in order to help these diverse communities help themselves. naidoo: teaching for social justice transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 24 within these environments, identities are challenged; relationships between different cultural groups are both eroded and reshaped. this process of rupture leads in the first instance to confusions and rejections around different ‘world-views’. often, the complexities that emerge are marginalised and silenced. if social cohesion is to be maintained, then the complexities of identities in ‘new times’ must be openly dealt with. these tensions are now being played out in the schools of the greater western sydney region. it is crucial that these schools provide young people with the opportunities to openly discuss their concerns and fears; to acknowledge the differing viewpoints that exist; and to critically deconstruct the social, political and economic complexities of the issues that have contributed to current world events. to inform my own practice to understand better the students with whom i work, i decided to embark on a study to evaluate the students’ perceptions and understandings of social justice and its role to teaching based on their experience of the social justice unit coursework and school practicum. students’ perceptions are vital for working on social justice in the classroom and for working towards a better education. social justice education is not only a reality but it is also a part of the socio-cultural context of schooling that teacher’s encounter. in view of this fact, social justice education has become a major concern for educational scholars and practitioners in recent times since it is seen as an attempt to redress educational inequities rising from the increasing pluralism of westernised industrialised societies. such pluralism has led to increasingly diverse school populations (goldring & greenfield, 2002) economic inequalities between mainstream and minoritised children (coleman, 1990) discourses about the marginalized ‘other’ with little examination of the ‘self’ at the centre of the dominant culture (asher, 2003) and challenges to institutionalised racism (sleeter, 1996). conceptualising social justice defining social justice is difficult and the vagueness surrounding the term is indispensable and likely to create intellectual debates. however, in attempting to conceptualise social justice the following emerged; that it (social justice) was a ‘condensation symbol’ (edelman, 1987) defying ‘stipulative definition’ (troyna & vincent, 1995, p. 149). macintyre (1985) identified various ‘historical renditions’ of social justice within australian politics and rizvi & lingard (1996) within political theory more generally. more recently, these have been challenged by post-modern, post-structural and postcolonial criticisms of their formerly universal character and ahistorical treatment (foucault, 1984; hall, 1996) as well as their failure to account for difference (fuss, 1989; young 1990). in this paper, social justice is defined as equal participation in a democratic society, which allows for equal distribution of resources to all its members, who have a degree of selfdetermination and interdependence (bell, 1997). in the context of education, social justice means examining why and how schools are unjust for some students. nieto (2000) asserts ‘it [a concern for social justice] means analysing school policies and practises… that devalue the identities of some students while overvaluing others’ (p.183). in conceptualising the role of social justice for teacher preparation, the focus in the paper is on assisting educators to critique the larger socio-cultural, political dimensions of teaching and schooling. this is in keeping with the assertion by cochran–smith (1999) that ‘part of teaching for social justice, is deliberately claiming the role of educator as well as activist based on political consciousness and on the ideological commitment to diminishing the inequities of american life’ (p.116). theoretical framework as a university teacher educator, i have aspired to prepare student teachers to be active agents in their own professional development, and hence in determining the direction of naidoo: teaching for social justice transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 25 schools. this means, not merely translating theories into classroom practise, but recognising the fact that theories are produced through practises and that practises reflect particular theoretical commitments. the relation between social justice education and pedagogical practise is a core and often rarely addressed aspect. freire’s (1985) argument of the necessity of reading both the word and the world is crucial here. it is not enough to teach about social justice. educators must both orient and organise teaching in such a way as to practise social justice. an important discourse and one relevant to teaching social justice is critical theory. beyer (2001, p.154) assets that ‘it is precisely in understanding the normative dimensions in education and how they are all intertwined with social, structural and ideological processes and realities that critical theory plays a key role’. not only does critical theory examine the educational perspectives and politics that serve the interests of the dominant groups and silence and marginalise students of colour (aronowitz & giroux, 1980; giroux & mclaren, 1986; shor, 1980) but critical pedagogy argues for an anti-oppression and emancipatory approach to education (nieto, 1995). this implies that it is possible to critique schooling practises in terms of social class and capitalism in a national and globalised context (mclaren, 1999). unfortunately, critical theory does not go far enough to deal with issues of race and ethnicity and hence, anti-racist education emerged as a discourse to place racism at the centre of the debate of equity and social justice. anti-racist education aims to link race, ethnicity and power in the context of colonialism and power (mclaren & mayo, 1999). the above-mentioned discourses indicate that teaching for social justice is more than instilling new knowledge. while the content should focus on the dominant – subordinate relationships in society (sleeter, 1996) pedagogy should engage students as critical thinkers, participatory and active learners. to understand the impact of critical content and critical pedagogy, two other inter-related aspects dialogic education and active learning need to be considered. freire (1971) believed that dialogic education, in which the knowledge, perspectives and experiences of students and teachers are honoured, are central to the education process. in this process, students and teachers can become active citizens, challenging injustices from within and amongst themselves and in the social world around them. reflection alone is insufficient. active learning can help deepen students understanding. kolb (1984) emphasised students bringing their lived experiences into the classrooms and subjecting them to reflection and experimentation. asking students to reflect on and debrief such classroom experiences through discussion can have positive effects. coupled with knowledge content – lectures, readings and other conceptual input, students can develop a more abstract understanding of social life and that understanding can be tested outside the classrooms and in new situations. thinking, talking and applying class concepts and acting upon these, all reflect engaged learning (nagda, gurin & lopez, 2003, p.169) and may be brought back to class as content for further exploration and meaning making. important too are the works of goffman (1964) and helms (1990). the former explains how a social attribute may be used for discrediting an individual or a group, thereby promoting differential treatment by others. goffman (1964, p. 3) defines stigma as ‘an attribute that makes [one] different from others in the category of persons available for him to be, and of a less desirable kind…he is thus reduced in our minds from a whole and usual person to a tainted, discounted one’. one often elaborately works to manage her/his identity away from a discreditable standing. hence, careful attendance to how others treat us, or how we imagine being treated, provides information required for the work of managing our identities away from a stigmatised role. the latter (helms, 1990) in his work on racial identity suggested that in any society where some form of identity is stigmatised, members of the dominant and subordinate groups naidoo: teaching for social justice transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 26 will react to each other based on the relative status of their identity. helms (1990) suggested that african americans' feelings of self-worth may be associated with their assessment of racial status as a minority group member. thus, racial identity development can be a crucial aspect of personality development for african americans. as noted by helms (1990), intrinsic to racial identity is the belief that individuals need an appreciation of group identification in order to maintain a healthy sense of personal identity. research process my research study focuses on the unit ‘social justice issues in secondary education’. the unit, drawing on many of the theories reviewed above was designed: a) to introduce students to the historical, social, political and conceptual roots of social differences and social inequalities, b) to provide opportunities for engagement with students from differing sociocultural-economic backgrounds, c) to foster engagement through critical pedagogy, d) to help students gain a critical understanding of the role of schooling in broader social contexts, including the relevance of sociological perspectives to this awareness, e) to assist students in critically analysing the multiple contexts of power operating in schools and their relationships to concepts of discourse, subjectivity and identity as well as exploring the ‘politics of difference’ associated with identity, and f) to help students develop an understanding of the construction of gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, class and the intersections between these concepts and to show how they are related to inequality in and outside schooling. the ‘unit content’ based on cultural diversity, difference, social justice and change, covered structural and historical basis of various forms of oppression (sleeter, 1996). it also includes content on schooling in socio-cultural contexts, the role of education in social justice, multiple contexts of power relations in school, curriculum/ knowledge and discipline. the unit content, using social justice education as a basis combined a structural critique of inequality with possibilities of change. it is hoped that in the process of deconstruction, future educators are able to reconstruct social reality (caputo, 1997; gay, 1997). the unit pedagogy, which involved reflexivity as a form of social justice, operated in different ways. students, in groups of thirty, met in tutorial groups for two hours to discuss and debrief lectures and readings, and to participate with others in the group to deconstruct and thereby provide students with an ‘apprenticeship for the possibility of participation in democracy’ (nieto, 1995, p. 207). reflection was also encouraged through assessments, two per semester, in which students articulated their understanding of issues covered in the unit in relation to their own perspectives and experiences. the criteria for writing the assessment was provided and included amongst others the critical and analytical argument of the issues studied. nieto (2000, p. 180) asserts that we ‘place equity front and centre of the teacher preparation process if we are to transform teacher education.’ she put forth five ways in which teacher educators can situate equity at the centre of the teacher education program. firstly, teacher educators should be encouraged to take a stand on social justice and diversity issues. secondly, social justice should be made ubiquitous in teacher education. thirdly, teaching should be promoted as an ongoing process of transformation, fourthly, teacher educators need to learn to challenge racism and bias and finally, teacher educators need to develop a community of critical friends (nieto, 2000, pp. 182-183). the unit ‘social justice issues in secondary education’, in content and pedagogy, was able to take a stand on social justice and diversity issues because it asserted the critical values, attitudes and skills necessary for just an equitable teaching. in this way, the unit addressed diversity in value added ways (nieto, 2000) and gave students from diverse backgrounds a greater opportunity to interact. furthermore, by taking a stand on social justice issues, the unit constantly reinforced and re-assessed issues relating to diversity and social naidoo: teaching for social justice transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 27 justice in lectures, tutorials and assessments. by constantly re-affirming that teaching was an ongoing act of transformation (nieto, 2000), teacher educators studying the unit became aware of the socio-cultural, political context for their teaching and were able to reflect upon their own identities in relation the identities of their students especially as it related to issues of difference, diversity, power and oppression. supporting teachers to fundamentally reconceptualise the relationship between teacher and student into a dynamic, bi-directional, mutually reflexive relationship is intimately tied to concepts of social justice and equity (ball, 2000; haberman, 1995). in examining issues related to gender, class, sexuality, racism and indigenous australia, teacher educators studying the unit were able to build a knowledge base that allowed them to challenge injustices that occurred in teaching and learning. finally, to sustain a process of critical reflection and ongoing teacher transformation, students studying the ‘social justice issues in secondary education’ unit, completed a four week school practicum that allowed them to make connections between theory and practice, and hence allowed them to understand the context in which they teach and the students that they teach. to establish whether the ‘social justice in secondary education’ unit acts as a catalyst to innovative teaching about social justice issues in the classroom, a study was undertaken to ask the ‘questions that really matter’ (cochrane–smith, 2000a, p.18). this meant that the questions that mattered had to be grounded in teachers’ work that is ‘interpretive, political, theoretical as well as practical, strategic and local’ (cochrane–smith, 2000a, p.18). this paper presents a critical analysis of the unit as reflected in the responses of my preservice teachers to an open-ended question i posed to the student cohort during the beginning of the autumn (february 2004) semester, to assess student knowledge and understanding of social justice. content analysis of their short essay responses will show how their thinking reflects internalised ideologies that justify the status quo and devalue diversity and difference. following the analysis of their responses and discussion of the findings, it will be seen how the unit content and structure was used to counteract the cognitively limited thinking so much so that the twelve students who volunteered to be interviewed at the end of that semester were able to demonstrate through their transformative emotional growth experiences in that semester, a commitment to social justice and equity in their teaching. the concluding discussion will hence show that the ‘social justice issues in secondary education’ unit does impact on teacher educators’ understanding of social justice and equity issues. of the group of twelve students who volunteered to participate and who were not identified within the research results, eight were females and four were males. they differed in terms of cultural backgrounds, one was pakistani born, others were anglo-celtic and yet others were of european descent. their sexuality differed in that while most of them were heterosexual, one student during the interview declared that she was a lesbian. the students were mostly from working class backgrounds and resided in western sydney. of the twelve students, two were mature age students with young families. the first research question ‘what social justice means to me’ was given to the entire student cohort (68) at the beginning of the semester in the hope of determining what ideologies circulate in relation to social justice. this was conducted as a written response to isolate ideological discourses. the interview later in the semester, which focused on the group of twelve volunteer students, gave these students an opportunity to comment and recount their experiences in the unit and in the classroom. this part of the study occurred after the students’ practicum in the field and towards the end of semester so as to serve as a comparative tool to participants’ responses earlier in the semester. changes relating to participants’ empathy, meaning and definition of social justice were noted for further analysis. naidoo: teaching for social justice transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 28 the literature search had revealed that while students’ school practicum experience had been adequately researched, there are almost no studies that focus on students’ experiences with social justice issues. as such the central aim of the study was to 1) document accounts detailing the experiences of pre-service teachers in social justice education. it was hoped that by having these social justice conversations that it would be possible to investigate students’ understandings of the meaning of social justice so that they may be able to teach for social justice in the increasingly diverse school population. in our global world where the rift between these accesses is getting larger and there is an increasing divergence of the privileged and non-privileged, education in social justice issues for upcoming teachers can prepare them consciously by bringing theses issues to the surface. this may be able to advance their understanding on societal interactions and develop a commitment to teach students in an egalitarian environment (lewis, 2001). it was proposed that the purpose of the study was also to 2) identify the critical discourses that emerge in the contested environment of schools and classrooms. by focusing on social justice issues, it is hoped the study will also provide insights on socio-cultural issues that arise in schools and classrooms. as such, information obtained from the study will lead to 3) an awareness of and respect for those from diverse cultural backgrounds as well as an understanding of the policies and practices of school systems within which teachers work. it was hoped that the research will make 4) a valuable contribution to knowledge about social justice issues in teacher education at uws, penrith campus by understanding the discourses influencing secondary pre-service teachers’ perspectives about the extent to which social justice issues is incorporated into their school practicum program. not only did the research try to understand and document the participants’ theoretical and pedagogical approaches to social justice education, it also demonstrated an increasing awareness 5) of pre-service teachers’ experiences of social and cultural diversity issues in schools and classrooms. furthermore the focus on the development of social theory around the contradictory relationship between education as the simultaneous challenger of social inequities and the maintenance of the social order, particularly around social justice issues reinforced the conceptual framework of the school of education. this research fills a vacuum in understanding social justice issues in teacher education programs at uws, penrith. it is a fact that racism, gender, ethnicity, sexuality to name a few are social justice issues relevant to schooling. consequently, teachers have a professional, moral and legal obligation in intervening and addressing issues related to social justice and with providing their students with a safe and supportive environment free from discrimination. amid generalised feelings of global unrest ensuing from september 11, it is more likely that individuals from certain ethnic sectors will experience elevated risks of subjection to racist comments and behaviour. hence during school practicum, pre-service teachers are likely to encounter instances of social injustice experienced by school students from a non –dominant culture. it is absolutely essential therefore to engage pre-service teachers in social justice education. method and techniques of research the methodological approach was ethnographic and included discourse analysis, in-depth interviews and collation, description and analysis of pedagogical frameworks. this approach also included an analysis of materials and approaches used in the subject. in-depth interview the key to this research study was the way in which definitions of social justice and social justice education was shaped by participants’ experience of the social justice education coursework and school practicum. this study aimed to explore the dynamics of this process naidoo: teaching for social justice transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 29 using in-depth interviews of participants who were students in the ‘social justice issues in secondary education’ unit. in-depth interviews were carried out towards the end of semester to serve as a comparative tool to participants’ responses earlier in the semester. in-depth interview is a qualitative research technique that allows person-to-person discussion. it can lead to increased insight into people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviour on important issues. this type of interview is often unstructured and therefore permits the interviewer to encourage an informant (respondent) to talk at length about the topic of interest. it is a flexible approach that aims to ask questions to explain the reasons underlying a problem or practice. you can use the technique to gather ideas, to gather information, and to develop materials for social justice education. this allowed the researcher an opportunity to gain an insight into the various meanings, perceptions and understandings identified in the written responses and to note changes relating to participants’ definitions of social justice. discourse analysis to delve more deeply into the values and ideas that circulate in relation to social justice, the student cohort (68) engaged in a written response entitled: ‘what social justice means to me’. in teaching and learning about social justice, there is emphasis on a range of genres mainly in written responses and class discussions. discourse analysis involves seeing talk and text as social practice (bryman and burgess, 1994). discourse analysis is a deconstructive reading and interpretation of a issue or text and will, thus, not provide absolute answers to a specific problem or issue, but enable us to understand the conditions behind a specific ‘problem’ and make us realize that the essence of that ‘problem’, and its resolution, lie in its assumptions; the very assumptions that enable the existence of that problem or issue. the written response from participants which was conducted at the beginning of the autumn semester 2004 focused on content-meanings; form, genre and field since these demonstrate action; and argumentation showing how texts are organised (bryman and burgess, 1994). it was hoped that the analysis of the discourse would provide a rich source of data for comparison with participants’ views once the coursework and school practicum had been completed. qualitative case study the qualitative case study method (merriam, 1998) was selected because it allows the researcher to gain an insider’s view of questions being studied (patton, 1990; seidman, 1998). in qualitative research, the investigator tells each participant’s story by using the voice of the participant to tell the participants’ experiences. a triangulation approach was adopted involving the review of a written response by participants, an in-depth interview and document analysis. the triangulation approach is a mixed-method analysis approach. the core premise of triangulation is that all methods have inherent biases and limitations, so use of only one method to assess a given phenomenon will inevitably yield biased and limited results. it is important to process as well as analyse the data. thus a triangulation approach, one that uses multiple layers of analysis through systematic procedures, is used to identify essential features and relationships. a combination of the above three (3) research methods would adequately address the questions of the study and provide a rich source of data. findings at the beginning of the autumn (february 2004) semester, students in the ‘social justice issues in secondary education’ unit were asked to write a short essay (250 words) entitled ‘what social justice means to me.’ of the sixty-eight students that made up the cohort, eighty six percent believed social justice to be related to fairness and equality with intolerance of discrimination. the responses highlighted an appreciation of inequality rather naidoo: teaching for social justice transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 30 than an acknowledgement of inequality as a result of hierarchical and systemic differences of domination and subordination. the following selected responses from students are indicative of the limited thought processes. when i heard the term social justice, for the first time last week, i did not know what to think… but i suppose it means to be fair in the classroom. social justice means equity and fairness and it promotes fairness and personal rights. social justice means equality, equity and the distribution of fairness. i am not really sure; perhaps justice refers to the treatment being fair. social justice encompasses areas of anti-discrimination. to truly understand social justice, it is important that the responses reflect an understanding of the historical, political, economic and social forces that shape relations of power in schools, classrooms and communities. thus, the majority of students explained social justice in a limited way… as fairness and equality without recognising the structural inequality built into the social order. only seven percent of the respondents made a link between social justice and the structures of society. social justice is a concept of rights and privileges of the citizens living in a social set up. social justice means that anyone can participate in learning irrespective of gender, ethnicity, class, sexuality and disability. social justice is the idea that all members of society are given equal rights including education availability, health care and adequate housing. social justice means equality for all regardless of age, gender, ethnicity or social class. while the majority of students failed to link social justice to other forms of societal oppression and exploitation, there were still others (about seven percent) who had very different ideas of what social justice meant to them. social justice starts with the individual and if the individual were to place the needs of him/her before others, this will be an excellent start. social justice is to be able to ride a bike legally on the road and not be abused by oil burning car drivers who entomb themselves within their own metal world in which they play god. social justice is about evaluating the disparity among school students. i have no idea. it sounds pretty airy-fairy. it is a term that does not involve government or political bodies to intervene. it relies on people enforcing what they deem is right. naidoo: teaching for social justice transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 31 these students studying this unit have limited knowledge and understanding of social justice issues. not only are they unaware of their own ideological perspectives, but they are also unaware of how their subjective identities reflect an uncritical identification with the existing social order. for those who made the link between social justice and law or politics, the link was more one of ‘legal/law’ rather than equal access to say education and healthcare as examples. to achieve social justice, the existing structural inequality has to be recognised and struggled against. the equality and fairness that most of the students write of is not the one reflected in this explanation. thus their responses reflect uncritical limited ways of thinking about social justice. one of my outcomes in this unit is to encourage students to think critically about education in general and about schooling in particular and more particularly in relation to social justice and their own identities as teachers. the unit is so organised that students have an opportunity through lectures, tutorials, readings and online discussions to critically analyse the social purposes of schooling. students are also made aware of the fact that education is not neutral; that it can serve various political, economic and cultural interests (cagan, 1978; freire, 1971; o’neill, 1981). not only do students learn about macro social (societal) issues but they also examine micro social (classroom) issues. in an analysis of the social construction of childhood, students examine the concept of childhood within a historical perspective. they learn that the creation of the concept of childhood is ‘grounded in enlightenment/ modernist, cultural bias that places limitations on younger human beings, constructs privilege and power for those who are older and lessens the connections we make with children and each other’ (sloan, 1997, p. 158). this construction of the child silences a group of human beings, removing all possibilities for social justice. our constructions for social justice therefore embrace the struggle for liberations avoiding constructions of the ‘other’ and aiming for just and caring communities (giroux & simon, 1989). the power relations constructed within such patriarchal value systems such as education would be acknowledged and evaluated. students also encountered the scholarship of apple (1993) which demonstrates that it is possible to engage in educational practises that are meaningful, critical and grounded in a sense of critical literacy. from him they also learn that education is inherently political, an arena in which groups attempt to institutionalise their cultures, histories and visions of social justice issues. similarly, meadmore (1999) is examined for her views in social class and the ways in which it works in and through education to produce advantage and disadvantage. in the same way, we look at how bourdieu’s (webb, shirato, & danaher, 2002) concept of ‘habitus’ provides the core of his understanding of how schools work to reproduce social inequalities. the unit further examines modernism, post-modernism and feminism as three of the most important discourses for developing a cultural politics and pedagogical practise capable of extending and theoretically advancing a radical politics of democracy. afshar and maynard (1994) are studied for their concerns with theorising the relationships between ‘race’ and ‘gender’ oppression and the extent to which it is furthered by using the concept of ‘difference’. students also examine ways in which schools support and reinforce binaries or heterosexuality/ homosexuality in terms of normality and abnormality and ways in which aboriginal australians and other minority groups are portrayed as objects of paternalistic concern. during lectures, tutorials and online discussions, students discussed their thoughts and feelings about the abovementioned authors/ ideas and reflected upon the soundness of such arguments. in so doing, students struggled with the ideas, values and social interests at the heart of the different educational and social visions which they as future teachers must either naidoo: teaching for social justice transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 32 accept, reject or resists. the ‘social justice issues for secondary education’ unit thus provides a forum for students to debate and reflect upon their own views in relation to the views of others. freire’s (1971) strategy of ‘problem posing’ is often used as a strategy for students to detect bias and prejudice in school texts. sometimes, an alternative view of history is presented and often reflects aspects of the ‘hidden curriculum’, unmasking the political and cultural role of schooling of which many students are unaware. such intellectual and emotional growth opportunities allow students to reflect on the nature of their own socially constructed knowledge and identities. this will lead to a transformation in thinking which was clearly reflected in the responses to the interview questions conducted at the end of autumn (july 2004) semester in which twelve volunteers were interviewed. their responses reflect a transformation in students’ values, beliefs and ideologies regarding social justice. an analysis of the data obtained from student interviews indicated that consciousness was raised about social justice issues during the unit. clearly the ideas expressed during the interview indicated that the unit increased awareness of social justice issues, allowed students to be self-reflective about their teaching practices, while on professional experience, permitted students to identify issues relating to social justice in the school environment and to offer possible solutions which could make a positive change to the school environment. through unit readings and lectures, followed by practicum in schools, students reported that their awareness of social justice issues had increased and changed the way that they viewed the world. one student reported that the unit taught him about: equality for all people, having opportunities, caring for others, making a better world, understanding why inequities exist and looking at practical solutions to power, privilege and wealth, such as the underprivileged in terms of resources, education and social capital, etc. being more in tune with human relationships. students also spoke about the fact that the unit content allowed them to be more critical of issues and understand the importance of access to resources. another student commented that: an awareness of social justice issues means giving everyone the opportunity to reach their potential. so it doesn’t mean giving everyone the same money or the same job or whatever. it means that everyone has the same access to their own potential. i think that’s basically it, irregardless of gender, sex, race, ethnicity … there was certainly consciousness raised in the unit and this was further supported by the impact the unit content had on school practicum. as a result of the unit, students were able to reflect upon their own roles as teachers in the classroom setting. a student summarised his self-reflection by saying that: it’s given me the opportunity to reflect on some of the social justice issues in school, such as gender and racism. in terms of change i’ve always been fair and non discriminatory. through self-examination i become more aware of my experiences, and analytical of my constructed prejudice. interestingly the unit made an impact on students from both the dominant and minority cultures. one student reported that: naidoo: teaching for social justice transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 33 what we’ve learned challenged our assumptions of morality and opinions. i don’t always agree with people’s views. they can be overly critical and personally sensitive. being from the dominant culture, myself, i have gained more respect for ‘others’ while i was out at schools. for example, i took on feminism more seriously when we were talking about a mothers place in society. those things affected me. i’m more aware now about differing perspectives. overall, students believed that by studying the unit they were able to bring about not only a change in themselves but also a change in the school environment. a student reflected that: social justice is broader not simply about equality. school practicum taught me that it is also about not being discriminated, teased, or abused and having a school as a safe place to learn. another student believed that the unit and school practicum encouraged him/her to reflect upon their privileged upbringing. i’m from a privileged middle class background. we had money, and education was valued. i thought that everybody had equal opportunities, and access to further their education. now i realize that other prejudicial factors, such as race and sexual also affect access to the privileges that education provides. acknowledging recognition that teachers are predominantly envisaged as white, middle to upper middle class heterosexuals (smulyan, 2004) because a majority of the teachers are from a privileged background, gives rise to the need for social justice to be taught to the privileged (smith, 1999). this will bring forward a realization that the institutions that are responsible for maintaining social inequalities can also be used as a catalyst towards social change (mcmahon, 2003). yet another student saw the unit and professional experience as providing an opportunity to closely examine and assess issues relating especially to racism and aboriginality. this pursuance of knowledge and further research was reflected in the comment made that the unit and school teaching experience encouraged: research into issues of aboriginality. looking at what different types of socializations that there are, and how differences in socialization, at home, changes what’s considered normal behaviour in the classroom. now i’m better prepared to approach an aboriginal student and deal with their responses and interpret them more accurately. it would appear from the above as though students’ understanding of social justice issues particularly in the secondary school deepened as a result of the unit. not only were their beliefs and assumptions challenged but the unit and its content also allowed students to challenge many of the unjust practices that became evident in the classroom and school playground. still the analysis of the transcripts indicated that there was room for improvement in the unit more particularly in regards to providing actual examples or strategies for dealing with social justice issues in the classroom to some degree i was familiar with racial, sexual, and gender issues, but not in terms of why they’re there, and being able to identify where they are coming from, and who the powers are causing factions or inequalities to occur. nevertheless is important to be naidoo: teaching for social justice transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 34 aware that people are different, and that they figure in hierarchal power struggles over resources, knowledge, etc. treating people equally will resolve many issues. in general, students wanted real strategies for real classrooms. as one student stated: i haven’t strongly defined strategies for teaching, yet. i think i will develop strategies on the job. theories are nice, but i know what i’m going to do. i’d be deluding myself if i walked into a class expecting things to be perfect. i want to know and study the students in terms of their personality, cultural background and expectations, their issues, english, literacy skills, and economic circumstances. i’m more motivated and determined according to the curriculum in knowing students better so i can focus my lessons more appropriately. in terms of power relationships i can move from being the leader and them being the submissive students if i knew more about the students. i can also empower them to succeed in the school environment without making them conform slavishly to the current system. conclusion this has led me to conclude that the ‘social justice issues in secondary education’ unit has provided the opportunity for students to recognise and evaluate the ideological influences that shape their thinking about schooling, society, themselves and diverse others. as a pre-service teacher is progressively made aware of the current struggle that is occurring everyday within the educational institutions, students, through the unit, came to the realization of the enormity of the obscured political forces that dominate the curriculum. not only had this unit given these students the motivation to teach students under any challenging circumstances, but also it had created an appetite to learn about other cultures and the continual study of social justices issues. a teacher needs to act as a mediator between two cultures, both the dominant and the disadvantaged. this is achievable by facilitating the less dominant to understand, acclimatise and hence thrive academically in pursuit of conquering the dominant culture without loss of identity, therefore bridging the cultural gap and levelling the societal inequality, resulting in the empowerment of students in succeeding academically and socially (chisholm 1994). a teacher may be successful in a school that is predominantly white and middle-class, but when placed in a school that is disadvantaged and underprivileged, may find it difficult to cope and, in turn may devalue their self worth as a teacher. a study of social justice could contribute to their success as a teacher by making them aware of their position within the school environment and by allowing them to adopt critical teaching strategies to challenge the status quo. social justice education therefore needs to be continually taught and monitored as it is not a natural or permanent structure (merrett, 2004). as one student stated: if you want to stay being a teacher and make it meaningful, you’ve got to look at social justice with your heart… since this research study was undertaken to provide a greater link between theory and practice, the unit has been improved to include an integrated task between the social justice issues unit and the students’ teaching methods, so that students will develop an original teaching unit of work relevant to their teaching methods, which can be used in the classroom. the unit will need to address the following: • a rationale (750 words) justifying why this unit of work should be taught. the justification should briefly indicate how the unit meets syllabus requirements but naidoo: teaching for social justice transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 35 more substantially how it meets the directions set by the broader school curriculum in terms of equity and social justice. the rationale should be linked to relevant sociological theories with evidence from relevant weekly readings covered in lectures and tutorials, specifically social justice issues in schooling. the rationale needs to argue a position on the equity of social justice concerns associated with an issue in schooling and the broader community. • the unit outline must include all the necessary components as outlined in method lectures and tutorials. these will include outcomes, content, assessment, resources, timeline and anything else relevant to a unit of work in your method area. • in-depth lesson plans for 4 lessons will also be included. each lesson will need to show connections in terms of outcomes and content as well as an explanation of the relevance of the particular lesson to equity and social justice 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(1990). justice and the politics of difference. princeton, nj: princeton university press. author loshini naidoo is a lecturer in the school of education at the university of western sydney, australia. email: l.naidoo@uws.edu.au microsoft word noelg_formatted.doc to cite this article please include all of the following details: gough, noel (2008). ecology, ecocriticism and learning: how do places become ‘pedagogical’? transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> ecology, ecocriticism and learning: how do places become ‘pedagogical’? noel gough la trobe university, australia we live... lives based on selected fictions. our view of reality is conditioned by our position in space and time – not by our personalities as we like to think. thus every interpretation of reality is based on a unique position. two paces east or west and the whole picture is changed. — lawrence durrell (1963) balthazar i can date my explicit interest in the interrelationships among places and pedagogies very precisely to 4 april 2007, when i received the following email message from margaret somerville1 – a rhizomatic shoot popping up in my inbox: hi noel, i met you a long time ago through a seminar… at une [university of new england]. i am now at monash [university] gippsland and i am organising a symposium with david gruenewald as a leader about place pedagogies research on 14 august [2007] and we would love you to come along to speak. we are planning a lecture by david and then a series of three panels in which 4 speakers address issues of space and place from their particular theoretical perspective… can you please let me know if you are interested… thanks, margaret up to this time, i doubt that i would have nominated ‘issues of space and place’ as being among the chief objects of my inquiries in education, although a moment’s reflection was enough for me to realise that this interpretation was very reasonable.2 moreover, i was sufficiently familiar with gruenewald’s work in environmental education (e.g. gruenewald, 2004) – a field with which i identify strongly – to accept somerville’s invitation with little hesitation. however, the draft flyer for the landscapes and learning symposium that accompanied the invitation provided a further impetus for my engagement with place pedagogies research. the flyer included a prominent (and emphatic) epigraph, ‘place is profoundly pedagogical’ (attributed to gruenewald, 2003), that immediately prompted me to question – and to anticipate dissenting from – its implicit assumptions. to simply assert an 1 professor of education, monash university, victoria, australia. 2 by way of illustration, i used the lawrence durrell epigraph with which i began this essay in my first journal article on the generativity of poststructuralism for environmental education (gough, 1991). however, my emphasis then was on the positionings provided by ‘selected fictions’ rather than spatial positionings. noel gough: ecology, ecocriticism and learning: how do places become ‘pedagogical’? transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 72 essential relationship between place and pedagogy is too totalising for my taste.3 thinking about the inadequacy of this essentialist (and static) assertion generated the working title for my contribution to the symposium, which i have retained as the subtitle for this essay. i cannot imagine ‘place’ (as a generic abstraction) or ‘a place’ (as a specific location) being ‘profoundly pedagogical’; but i can imagine ‘places’ (as specific locations) becoming ‘pedagogical’ through cultural practices that enable or encourage us to attend closely to their multifarious qualities, including not only those that we might consider to be ‘profound’ (such as the deep, pervasive or intense qualities that we sometimes call the ‘spirit’ of a place), but also their more superficial, ephemeral or obvious characteristics. as an environmental educator, my particular interest is in the relations of ‘natural’ places to pedagogies. in the remainder of this essay, i explore some of the ways in which places ‘becoming-pedagogical’ might be related to the ways that nature is envisioned, named, traversed and transformed. however, i first need to say a little more about how my work has changed in recent years, with particular reference to the material places in which it has been situated and to which it refers. changing places prior to the landscapes and learning symposium, somerville circulated a paper that she described as a ‘provocation’ for the conversations that the symposium was intended to stimulate (somerville, 2008). i was pleasantly surprised to find that her paper begins by referring to some of the ways of theorising place that have been generative for me – and i am delighted that she finds them to be generative too. the title of the particular work to which she refers, ‘shaking the tree, making a rhizome: towards a nomadic geophilosophy of science education’ (gough, 2006), clearly signals my theoretical debt to gilles deleuze and félix guattari (1987), but i am now also indebted to somerville for her generous and insightful reading of my essay – a reading that generates further interpretations and understandings of the deconstructive strategies i deployed in it. i wrote ‘shaking the tree’ for a special issue of educational philosophy and theory on the philosophy of science education. my article builds on sandra harding’s (1993) critique of the eurocentrism and androcentrism of scientific knowledge. i argue that both popular media culture and non-western knowings tend to be ignored or devalued within many forms of western science education and these exclusions contribute to what harding calls an increasingly visible form of scientific illiteracy. somerville elaborates on the nomadic geophilosophy of science education that i attempt to demonstrate in my article, and draws particular attention to a passage in which i explain how a song, ‘shaking the tree’ (gabriel & n’dour, 1989), inspired my essay: peter gabriel and youssou n’dour’s song, ‘shaking the tree’, is in several ways emblematic of my project. it is a call to change and enhance lives composed in a spirit which complements deleuze and guattari’s (1994) practical ‘geophilosophy’ (p. 95), which seeks to describe the relations between particular spatial configurations and locations and the philosophical formations that arise therein. both gabriel and n’dour compose and perform songs about taking action to solve particular problems in the world, 3 as it happens, the flyer’s epigraph is a slight misquotation. gruenewald (2003) actually asserts that ‘places are profoundly pedagogical’ (p. 621), which is a less totalising formulation because ‘places’ imply specific locations rather than the generic abstraction of ‘place’. noel gough: ecology, ecocriticism and learning: how do places become ‘pedagogical’? transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 73 and deleuze (1994) believes that concepts should intervene to resolve local situations’ (p. xx) (gough, 2006, p. 625). somerville (2008) offers an interpretation of my words for which i am deeply grateful, because she makes explicit some aspects of my method that i struggled to articulate: this richly layered metaphorical passage works on several levels and i would like to briefly reflect on these. ‘shaking the tree’ is a song, so we begin with a metaphor of singing, sound and the human voice, of creative expression in song, a move between a metaphysics of logics and of poetics. then we have the subject of the song, the tree, as an image of nature, being shaken, a vigorous physical action related to radical social critique. this action has both practical and metaphysical implications. the image of ‘shaking the tree’ is connected with deleuzian notions of the problematic of the tree as opposed to the rhizome as a metaphor of thought. in this paper the tree stands for the certainties and hierarchies of western science and the paper is gough’s song, a song that is both practical and located, metaphysical and transformational. he names the variety of assemblages available to shake the tree of modern western science: ‘arts, artefacts, disciplines, technologies, projects, practices, theories and social strategies’ (gough, 2006, p. 626). in his paper he deploys many of these to disrupt the certainties of modern western science (education). i have for many years tried to heed donna haraway’s (1991) advice that ‘the only way to find a larger vision is to be somewhere in particular’ (p. 196), that is, to work towards situated and embodied knowledge claims. in 1998 i began to work in an australia-south africa institutional links program and, between then and 2004, made over a dozen visits to various sites in southern africa to work for periods of two to six weeks at a time with colleagues and doctoral students on various ‘capacity-building’ activities around issues of research methodology and supervision, with particular reference to environmental education and science education. in the course of this work i quickly became aware of the many material and theoretical difficulties and complexities of being ‘somewhere in particular’, especially when my south african colleagues expected (or assumed) that i might be situated in several places at once. like haraway (1991), i aspired to put ‘a premium on establishing the capacity to see from the peripheries and the depths’, but i was also aware of the ‘serious danger of romanticizing and/or appropriating the visions of the less powerful while claiming to see from their positions’ (p. 191). to ‘see’ from marginalised or subjugated locations is neither easily learned nor unproblematic. by 1999 i had begun, with tongue only partly in cheek, to characterise myself as a ‘travelling textworker’ (gough, 1999), an identity through which i could collaborate with co-workers on very site-specific tasks in particular places without ever pretending to be of those places. like somerville (2008), my practice drew on poststructuralist and postcolonialist theorising, and the more productive collaborations tended to be consistent with the three key principles of the place-responsive pedagogy that she describes, namely: (i) our relationship to place is constituted in stories and other representations; (ii) place learning is local and embodied; and (iii) deep place learning occurs in a contact zone of contestation. my ‘travelling textworker’ disposition has clearly informed my performance of the strategies i describe in ‘shaking the tree’ as a ‘nomadic geophilosophy’ (more recently i have characterised these strategies as ‘rhizosemiotic play’ – (see gough, 2007a, 2007b). however, noel gough: ecology, ecocriticism and learning: how do places become ‘pedagogical’? transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 74 i doubt if i would ever have written ‘shaking the tree’ without my extended experiences of working in southern africa. the song itself celebrates and affirms the women’s movement in africa, and took on new meanings for me when i personally witnessed the many materialisations of patriarchal traditions and gender discrimination that remain pervasive across the continent. in addition, a key section of the paper, ‘mosquito rhizomatics’, began to take shape as a direct result of seeing how particular assemblages of parasites, mosquitoes, humans, technologies and socio-technical relations produce particular manifestations of malaria in different places. malaria kills around 3 million people per year in sub-saharan africa, most of them under the age of five, and it is no coincidence that the nations hit hardest by the most severe forms of malaria have annual economic growth rates significantly lower than those in which it is rarely fatal. in one sense, it is tempting to see my southern african experiences as evidence of gruenewald’s (2003) assertions that ‘places are profoundly pedagogical’ (p. 621), that ‘places teach us about how the world works’ and that ‘places make us’ (p. 621). but in those same experiences i can also find evidence of his alternative formulation: ‘that places are what people make them – that people are place makers and places are a primary artifact of human culture’ (p. 627). indeed, much of the work in which i participated in southern africa was explicitly directed towards changing the places in which we worked, to make them places that would no longer ‘teach’ the determinisms of apartheid and the patriarchy, sexism, homophobia, class and language bias, ethnic nationalism, and other social and spatial arrangements that supported its ideological machinery. since june 2006 the focus of much of my everyday practice has shifted from the international to the local. although my interests in transnational curriculum inquiry and the globalisation of higher education are in no way diminished, my institutional responsibilities demand that i attend closely to practices of environmental education that are, in every sense, much closer to home. as director of a centre for excellence in outdoor and environmental education i have a responsibility to walk my ecopolitical talk. my present standpoint on outdoor and environmental education can reasonably be characterised as educating for ecocritical literacy. in an essay exploring principles of ecocriticism, william howarth (1996) describes an ecocritic as ‘a person who judges the merits and faults of writings that depict the effects of culture upon nature, with a view toward celebrating nature, berating its despoilers, and reversing their harm through political action’ (p. 69) – a characterisation with which i can readily identify. this definition is, of course, a point of departure for howarth’s speculations and i share his reservations about its adequacy and utility. nevertheless, it serves my purpose here, which is to draw attention to some aspects of outdoor and environmental education that deserve ecocritical attention. put briefly, outdoor and environmental educators (or people who in some way identify positively with environmental education) produce many of the ‘writings that depict the effects of culture upon nature’, where ‘writing’ is understood broadly as any means of representing environments and/or environmental issues. my concern is that many outdoor and environmental educators, through activities that they may conceive as ‘celebrating nature’ (or even as describing it dispassionately and objectively), might actually be despoiling and harming nature, albeit unintentionally. i use the term ‘ecocritical literacy’ hesitantly and cautiously. education is now so awash with ‘literacies’ – ‘environmental literacy’, ’scientific literacy’, ‘technological literacy’, ‘computer literacy’ and so on – that the term is in danger of becoming an empty signifier. i agree with andrew stables and keith bishop (2001) that most references to environmental noel gough: ecology, ecocriticism and learning: how do places become ‘pedagogical’? transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 75 literacy in the literature of environmental education exhibit a ‘weak’ conception of literacy that ignores many contemporary debates about language and literature, such as the limits of representation, referentiality and textuality. i therefore use the term ‘ecocritical literacy’ to tactically distance my project from naïve or shallow versions of environmental literacy, and to emphasise the need for environmental educators to embrace a ‘stronger’ conception of literacy that takes account of the broader ramifications of understanding environmental education as a textual practice – a practice that is susceptible to improvement through inquiries in disciplines of the arts and humanities that have tended to be undervalued in environmental education, including language arts, semiotics, literary criticism and cultural studies. against definition questions of definition often seem to loom large for environmental educators and i would venture the view that an obsession with defining terms is one manifestation of a weak conception of literacy. consider, for example, the following extract from mitiku adisu’s (2005) review of william scott and stephen gough’s (2004) sustainable development and learning: framing the issues, in which he historicises the concept of sustainable development. twenty years ago ‘sustainable development’ was a newly-minted notion. unlike theorists of modernization and economic growth, the proponents of sustainable development promised that growth and environmental protection are not mutually exclusive and that one can have the cake and eat it too. therein lay the charm – and the risk. the risk is in overlooking the fact that humans had, from time immemorial, a sense of the benefits of coexisting with the natural world and with each other. the charm is in that the new term engendered great optimism and created space for multiplicity of voices. twenty years later, however, the promise remains as ambiguous and elusive as ever. today, the respectability of the phrase is being contested by emerging definitions and by variant terms. then as now, the focus of such inventiveness was decidedly to create awareness and improve the quality of life in a world of disparities and limited resources. unfortunately, the minting of new phrases also favored those better disposed to set the global agenda (n.p). adisu rightly reminds us that we have already had two decades of sustainable development and that, as a concept, it remains ‘as ambiguous and elusive as ever’. but his implicit positioning of the ambiguity and elusiveness of sustainable development as a matter of troubling concern puzzles me. why should the ‘respectability’ (a curious term to invoke here) of sustainable development be anything but ‘contested’? although scott and gough (2004) begin by treating sustainable development ‘at least initially, as a set of contested ideas rather than a settled issue’ (p. 2, my emphasis) and ‘set precision aside and begin with working definitions which are as inclusive as possible’ (p. 1, authors’ original), they nevertheless ‘see definition [of both (lifelong) learning and sustainable development] as a core process of the book’ (p. 1). in other words, these writers (authors and reviewer alike) appear to be saying that contestation, ambiguity and multiplicity are conditions to be tolerated as we struggle to overcome them and eventually reach authoritative, stable and settled definitions. i agree with adisu that scott and gough succeed, to a commendable degree, in bringing together many diverse perspectives on both learning and sustainable development ‘in an effort to make sense noel gough: ecology, ecocriticism and learning: how do places become ‘pedagogical’? transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 76 of the contradictory, the inconspicuous, and the time-constrained features of our individual and collective lives’ (n.p.), but i also fear that they succumb to universalising ambitions by regarding contestation, ambiguity and multiplicity as problems to be solved (and which are, in principle, solvable) rather than as qualities that signal marvellous potentials for an on-going, open-ended fabrication of the world. thus i was not particularly surprised to find that poststructuralist thought is something of a ‘blind spot’ (see gough, 2002; wagner, 1993) for scott and gough and that they very largely ignore the possibilities and potentials afforded by poststructuralism and deconstruction for thinking imaginatively and creatively about socio-environmental problems. indeed, they completely ignore deconstruction and make only two cursory references to poststructuralism, firstly in a section on ‘language and understanding; language and action’ in which they conflate ‘post-modern’ and ‘post-structuralist’ (p. 26), and secondly in a section titled ‘literacies: the environment as text’ in which they uncritically reproduce an assertion they attribute to andrew stables (1996): ‘as structuralists and post-structuralists have pointed out, one way of looking at the world is to say that everything is a text’ (p. 29; authors’ emphasis)4. this appears to be an extension (and a misinterpretation) of jacques derrida’s often-quoted assertion that ‘there is nothing outside the text’, which is in turn a somewhat misleading translation of ‘il n'y a pas de hors-texte’ (literally, ‘there is no outside-text’). but derrida was not, as some of his critics insisted, denying the existence of anything outside of what they (the critics) understood as texts; his claim was not that ‘il n’y a rien hors du texte’ – that the only reality is that of things that are inside of texts. rather, his point was that texts are not the sorts of things that are bounded by an inside and an outside, or ‘hors-texte’: ‘nothing is ever outside text since nothing is ever outside language, and hence incapable of being represented in a text’ (derrida, 1976, p. 35)5. poststructuralism invites us to approach questions of definition differently from those who take its importance for granted. criminologist mark halsey has recently – and very cogently – exemplified this in relation to environmental law. naming nature halsey (2006) begins his book, deleuze and environmental damage: violence of the text, as follows: one of the key purposes of this book is to offer a micropolitical account of the evolution of such taken-for-granted concepts as ‘nature’, ‘sustainability’, and ‘environmental harm’. for what law prescribes as permissible in respect of nature, and ipso facto, what it deems to be ecologically criminal, is intimately linked to how such terms have been spoken of, imagined, and otherwise deployed over time. to believe other than this is to turn away from the ethical, and at times violent, dimensions that go along with speaking and writing the world (p. 2) thus, halsey’s book critically examines the process, impact, and ethics of naming nature, focussing specifically on the categories and thresholds used over time to map and transform a particularly area of forested terrain, namely, the goolengook forest block in far eastern 4 scott and gough add three other citations to stables to authorise this assertion 5 i am especially grateful to tony whitson (2006) for clarifying the implications of misleading translations of derrida’s (in)famous aphorism. noel gough: ecology, ecocriticism and learning: how do places become ‘pedagogical’? transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 77 victoria, and the socio-ecological costs arising from these thresholds and transformations and ensuing conflicts. although halsey is a criminologist, his study is not specifically about ‘crime’ or even ‘environmental crime’: it is instead about the ways such terms as ‘harm’, ‘sustainability’, ‘ecological significance’, ‘value’, and ‘right’, have been coded, decoded, and recoded by various means, at various times, with particular results. further, this is not a study about ‘justice’ – at least, not in the transcendental sense of the term. but it is most certainly about the ways law marks the earth. more particularly, it is about the composition of the various knowledges law calls upon to justify its ‘justness’, its ‘rightness’, and its ‘comprehensivity’ when it permits, for instance, the conversion of a 10, 000 year old ecosystem into scantling for houses or paper for copying machines (pp. 2-3). halsey provides a very detailed account of the modes of envisaging and enunciating the particular geopolitical space now known as goolengook forest block over time and the ‘violence’ that make these visions and enunciations possible – the ‘violence borne by way of the slow and largely inaudible march of the categories and thresholds associated with using and abusing nature’ (p. 3, author’s emphasis). typically, accounts of the conflict over goolengook (and other forest conflicts) are rendered as variants on david and goliath narratives: greenies versus loggers, or greenies versus government, or sometimes loggers versus government. halsey contends that stories based on such dichotomies fail to articulate sufficiently the subtleties and nuances contributing to forest conflict as event – as ‘something which is both a discursive invention (i.e. an object of our policies, laws, imaginings) and a body consistently eluding efforts to frame, categorise, think, speak – in short, represent, “its” aspects’ (p. 3). halsey applies poststructuralist concepts, especially the work of deleuze and guattari, to demonstrate that the conflicts at goolengook are about something much more than ‘forests’ (australian or otherwise) – they also raise critical questions about subjectivity (who we are), power (what we can do), and desire (who we might become). for example, the struggles at goolengook raise questions about the ontological consistency and ecopolitical utility of categories such as ‘we’, ‘society’, ‘global’, ‘environment’, ‘forest block’, ‘old-growth’, ‘truth’, ‘harm’, ‘right’, ‘crime’ and so on. halsey clearly shows how the geopolitical terrain of goolengook has been textually configured over time – by indigenous knowledges, legislation, management plans, mining leases, etc. – and how, why and for whom each textual configuration ‘works’. following deleuze and guattari, halsey argues that places like goolengook become – they are always already invented and fabricated, although they are no less ‘real’ for being so. he suggests that the process of ‘becoming-known’, ‘becoming-forest’ (or, for that matter, becoming-uranium mine, becoming-housing estate, becoming-hydro-electric dam, etc.), and thus of ‘becoming-contested’, is intimately related to what he calls four ‘modalities’ of nature involving the way nature is envisioned, the way nature is named, the speed at which nature is traversed and transformed, and the affect (image, concept, sense) of nature that is subsequently produced (p. 229). these modalities always already harbour an ethic linked to the production of a life (or lives) and/or a death (or deaths). for example, the australian federal government envisions ‘forest’ to mean ‘an area… dominated by trees having usually a single stem and a mature stand height exceeding 5 metres’ (commonwealth of australia, 1992, p. 47). envisioning ‘forest’ in terms of trees exceeding 5 metres – rather than, say, 20 noel gough: ecology, ecocriticism and learning: how do places become ‘pedagogical’? transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 78 meters – has significant consequences for biodiversity, employment, resource security, research and development, and so on. following halsey, i would argue that places ‘becoming-pedagogical’ could also be explored by reference to the modalities of nature he identifies. in the following sections, i present three pedagogical vignettes (two of which draw on the work of colleagues) that characterise approaches or dispositions to aspects of these modalities: these focus, respectively, on unnaming nature, envisioning nature in a video game, and choosing a speed for traversing a forest. unnaming nature ursula le guin (1987) demonstrates how we might use words to subvert the contemporary politics of ‘naming nature’. in one of her short stories, aptly titled ‘she unnames them’, le guin mocks the biblical assertion that ‘man gave names to all the animals’. in this story eve collaborates with the animals in undoing adam’s work: ‘most of them accepted namelessness with the perfect indifference with which they had so long accepted and ignored their names’ (p. 195). in ‘she unnames them’ le guin demonstrates the practicality of some insights that we can draw from relating deep ecology to semiotics. modern science maintains clear distinctions between subject and object and, thus, between humans and other beings, plant and animal, living and non-living, and so on. these distinctions are sustained by the deliberate act of naming, which divides the world into that which is named and everything else. naming is not just a matter of labelling distinctions that are already thought to exist. assigning a name to something constructs the illusion that what has been named is genuinely distinguishable from all else. in creating these distinctions, humans can all too easily lose sight of the seamlessness of that which is signified by their words and abstractions. so, in le guin’s (1987) story, eve says: none were left now to unname, and yet how close i felt to them when i saw one of them swim or fly or trot or crawl across my way or over my skin, or stalk me in the night, or go along beside me for a while in the day. they seemed far closer than when their names had stood between myself and them like a clear barrier... (p. 196) we could do with some creative unnaming in our work. we could start with some of the common names of animals and plants that signify their instrumental value to us rather than their kinship. there is a vast difference between naming a bird of the bass strait islands an ‘ocean going petrel’ or a ‘short-tailed shearwater’ and naming it a ‘mutton bird’. only one of these names identifies a living thing in terms of its worth to us as dead meat. names are not inherent in nature; they are an imposition of human minds. it is as if we wish to own the earth by naming it. we corrupt education by naming parts – by constructing illusions that suggest that meaningful distinctions can be made between ‘facts’ and ‘values’, or between ‘perception’ and ‘cognition’, or that ‘arts’, ‘humanities’ and ‘sciences’ are separate ‘subjects’ (when we treat them as objects anyway). furthermore, we cannot reconstruct the whole by ‘integrating’ the names. integration in education is a desperate attempt to recapture the wholeness that has been lost through naming. unnaming our professional identities as ‘environmental’ or ‘outdoor’ or ‘health’ or ‘science’ educators is one way in which we might establish closer connections and continuities with one another and with the earth. unnaming makes it harder to explain ourselves – we cannot chatter away as noel gough: ecology, ecocriticism and learning: how do places become ‘pedagogical’? transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 79 we are so accustomed to doing, hearing only our own words making up the world, taking our names and what they signify all for granted. in always coming home, le guin (1986) offers a meditation on scrub oak that suggests another critical perspective – i am tempted to call it ‘uncounting nature’ – on modern scientific techniques of observing and interpreting nature: look how messy this wilderness is. look at this scrub oak, chaparro, the chaparral was named for it… there are at least a hundred very much like it in sight from this rock i am sitting on, and there are hundreds and thousands and hundreds of thousands more on this ridge and the next ridge, but numbers are wrong. they are in error. you don’t count scrub oaks. when you count them, something has gone wrong. you can count how many in a hundred square yards and multiply, if you’re a botanist, and so make a good estimate, a fair guess, but you cannot count the scrub oaks on this ridge, let alone the ceanothus, buckbrush, or wild lilac, which i have not mentioned, and the other variously messy and humble components of the chaparral. the chaparral is like atoms and the components of atoms: it evades. it is innumerable. it is not accidentally but essentially messy… this thing is nothing to do with us. this thing is wilderness. the civilised human mind’s relation to it is imprecise, fortuitous, and full of risk. there are no shortcuts. all the analogies run one direction, our direction… analogies are easy: the live oak, the humble evergreen, can certainly be made into a sermon, just as it can be made into firewood. read or burnt. sermo, i read; i read scrub oak. but i don’t, and it isn’t here to be read, or burnt. it is casting a shadow across the page of this notebook in the weak sunshine of threethirty of a february afternoon in northern california. when i close the book and go, the shadow will not be on the page, though i have drawn a line around it; only the pencil line will be on the page. the shadow will then be on the dead-leaf-thick messy ground or on the mossy rock… and the shadow will move lawfully and with great majesty as the earth turns. the mind can imagine that shadow of a few leaves falling in the wilderness; the mind is a wonderful thing. but what about all the shadows of all the other leaves on all the other branches on all the other scrub oaks on all the other ridges of all the wilderness? if you could imagine those even for a moment, what good would it do? infinite good (pp. 239-41). envisioning nature in a video game john martin is a doctoral student in educational communications and technology at the university of wisconsin-madison. since 1993 he has also helped to run flying moose lodge, a deep woods summer camp for boys in maine, usa. he brings these interests together in his research on experiential learning, educational design, and what he calls ‘the importance of situating learning in culturally significant places’.6 in a paper titled ‘making video games in the woods: an unlikely partnership connects kids to their environment’, martin (2008) examines some of the successes and failures of his three-year study of incorporating placebased augmented reality games in outdoor activities: video games and computers have been derided as ‘inside’ technologies that pull kids away from the outdoors. they connect less with, and value less, their outdoor environments. rather than fight the pull of these inside technologies and their attraction to 6 http://regardingjohn.com/learn/ noel gough: ecology, ecocriticism and learning: how do places become ‘pedagogical’? transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 80 kids, we have developed a handheld outdoor gps-enabled video game platform that attempts to build in the lure of video games and online social spaces, and connect them with real places. kids play a place-based hiking video game, and then help redesign it for their peers. martin’s study encompasses six trips of 11-15 year old boys, and counsellors, over the course of three summers. the first was a fact-finding trip to come up with ideas for a game. the boys carried a handheld gps, notebook, and video camera, and documented their progress as they explored the landscape with an eye toward designing a game. they created a rudimentary game narrative involving five characters (including axman sam, pat the pirate, and harry the hiker), and a few quests. the second group played, critiqued, and redesigned the game based on john marsden’s (1993) young adult novel, tomorrow when the war began, and the movie red dawn (john milius, dir., 1984). in this narrative, woven together by martin from the boys’ ideas, a rival (rich) camp attacks and takes over the boys’ camp while they are hiking in the area. the group is ‘contacted by videophone’ (that is, their location triggers a video on the handheld computer) by a survivor and has to perform a number of quests in order to foil the rich camp’s evil plan to construct a grey poupon mustard factory on the pristine lake. quests include spy-like activities designed by the boys to appeal to their peers, such as surreptitiously topping three nearby mountain peaks to triangulate and decode messages sent out by invading campers, setting up a low-impact campsite to avoid detection by the invading camp’s scouts, and canoeing under cover of darkness to the centre of the lake to broadcast a countermessage. the following groups test-played the game and developed it further. martin’s particular study connects to a broader issue for place-conscious educators. if we are to have meaningful place-based pedagogical encounters with young people, we need to understand the new literacies and learning styles that today’s ‘screenagers’ develop through playing video games.7 james gee (2007b) explores this issue very thoroughly in his book, what video games have to teach us about learning and literacy (see also gee, 2007a). gee argues that schools, workplaces, families, and academic researchers have a lot to learn about learning from good video games and also that they can use games and game technologies to enhance learning. many video games incorporate learning principles that are strongly supported by contemporary research in cognitive science. for example, gee notes that video games are long, complex and hard – yet people (especially but not only young people) spend many hours playing them, involving themselves in complex learning, and even paying for the privilege. he argues that the way to make complex tasks easier to learn is not to make them simpler: game designers understand that although games must be easy to learn, game players demand that the games themselves be difficult. according to gee, human minds and video games work in similar ways. at one time we assumed that the human mind functions like a big inference engine, manipulating symbols and rules. but humans do not follow rules – they act on experiences from which they construct simulations in their minds. the brain is a neural network and experience forms a pattern of neural activation in the mind; cognition is a process of reflecting and manipulating these patterns of perception. conventional schooling in western nations is based on a ‘content fetish’ – that if a learner understands 100 facts about biology then he or she has ‘mastered’ 7 the term ‘video games’ encompasses all games played using digital visual interfaces, including computer games, web-based role-playing games and simulations, and platform games played with digital consoles or hand held devices. noel gough: ecology, ecocriticism and learning: how do places become ‘pedagogical’? transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 81 biology. gee argues that learning biology, like learning a video game, should be about asking of this learning, ‘what experiences did it give you?’ gee (2007b) derives a set of thirty-six learning principles from his study of the complex, self-directed learning each game player undertakes as s/he encounters and masters a new game. he suggests that adherence to these principles could transform learning in schools, colleges and universities, both for teachers and, most importantly, for students. many of these principles are consistent with experiential learning, and suggest many generative possibilities for outdoor and environmental education. traversing lyell forest: choosing a speed a number of my colleagues in the centre for outdoor and environmental education at la trobe university are developing place-based pedagogies that converge with and complement those articulated by gruenewald and somerville and that i see as being implied by halsey and le guin. for example, alistair stewart (2003; 2004a; 2004b; 2006) is investigating placeconscious natural history with particular reference to the murray river and its environs. similarly, andrew brookes (2000; 2002a; 2002b; 2004; 2005) focuses on ‘situationist’ outdoor education practices that develop deep consciousness of particular places. here i borrow extensively from his account of developing an appropriate pedagogy for the lyell forest (near bendigo, victoria) that demonstrates how different modalities of nature may be enacted through different pedagogical choices. brookes (2005) examines relationships between outdoor activities and environmental learning by considering bushwalking as a cultural practice in victoria. from the early 1900s, small numbers of city-dwellers sought to understand the australian environment by bushwalking in their leisure time, often as members of a club. accounts by bushwalkers published in the early post-war period indicate that they understood bushwalking to be a knowledge-based activity, which the clubs assisted by providing a social milieu for telling stories of past experiences and for planning future visits. tales of exploration and discovery permeate many accounts, but the dominant theme was of individually and collectively building experience of the bush regions around melbourne. bushwalking maintained and transmitted experiential knowledge through programs of walks that formed loose patterns of repetition and geographical coverage (see brookes, 2002b, p. 410-411). the development of more formalised outdoor education courses during the 1970s inflected bushwalking towards becoming either an activity for its own sake or a technical exercise. this change was particularly evident in approaches to navigation: at least in the early years, the bushwalker was someone who ‘knew the bush’. accurate topographic maps were not available, and bushwalking clubs allowed knowledge to be shared, through written accounts of trips, contacts with local stockmen who grazed cattle in the bush under licence, sketch maps made on previous trips, and above all through providing relationships with experienced and trusted individuals… in contrast, when bushwalking became part of formal education there was more emphasis on technical navigation… topographic map-reading and navigation using a compass became central to bushwalking instruction. maps originally developed for the military provided information that enabled the technically competent to plan a bushwalk as a strategic exercise in unknown terrain… at two extremes, navigation can be approached using the knowledge and world view of an invading military force with no local knowledge but advanced technology, or from noel gough: ecology, ecocriticism and learning: how do places become ‘pedagogical’? transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 82 the perspective of a local defending force with little technology but who know the country. the sport of orienteering – competitive cross country navigation, based on maps using standardised information similar to military maps, and with very little if any local cultural information, contains within it an invader’s perspective of the land as a strange place, offering strategic challenges than can be overcome with strength and skill. this might be contrasted with older traditions of mountain guiding, earlier forms of bushwalking, and aboriginal ways of knowing, in which local experience was essential (brookes, 2002b, p. 418). making pedagogical choices among different ways of knowing the victorian bush requires detailed site-specific knowledge. the victorian bush is not singular – it is a multitude. brookes (2005) draws on his experience of using lyell forest as a site for learning to demonstrate the importance of situation-specific details in understanding how outdoor activities shape and distribute knowledge in communities, and why we might choose one activity rather than another in locally-based environmental education. the lyell forest near bendigo is well-suited to technical navigation training and is a popular place for orienteering. the vegetation is not too thick to prevent running, the topography has just the right mixture of complexity and subtlety, and there are boundaries that prevent anyone from becoming really lost. but the lyell forest does not attract bushwalkers. it is small, has no water, and may seem drab and uninteresting in comparison to the landscapes favoured by many bushwalkers. the forest also bears the scars of many different uses and abuses since the 1850s, and thus does not fit the imported american ideal of pristine wilderness (which has recently found favour in australia despite the inconvenient truth of aboriginal occupation of the land). the lyell forest is part of the box-ironbark group of forest types found mostly inland of the mountain range along the east coast of australia. between 3% and 45% of the boxironbark vegetation that existed at the time of european settlement now remain, and these remnants have in turn been altered since then, through a series of interrelated ‘ripple effects’ which continue to spread. for example: very little forest remains along streams or rivers – it is almost all along ridges, which has had consequences for the rivers, and also for the wildlife that lives in the forest; trees have been cut down faster than they can grow back and there are few large old trees in the forests; the forests are mainly in small fragments, so although they are mostly government owned, they are difficult to manage compared to the large blocks of land that can be managed as a national park. as a group, the box-ironbark forests have wider environmental significance. almost all of them are within the murray-darling catchment, which supports 60% of australian agriculture and faces many difficulties, some of which depend in practical ways on how those living in box-ironbark areas understand and treat the land. none of these facts determine what people should or should not do in the box-ironbark forests, but they indicate what might be at stake in the relationship between a community and a forest. different outdoor activities provide lenses through which to ‘see’ forests. orienteers prefer an area that is not familiar to them, mapped according to desired topographical features (rather than cultural features), and terrain where running is possible. once an area has been mapped the map may be used many times but, symbolically at least, orienteering resembles the search for new land ‘beyond the frontier’. fossickers see a historical landscape, focussing in particular on the sites of the nineteenth century gold rushes. but they also look for ‘new ground’, because they hope to find places where other contemporary fossickers have not used noel gough: ecology, ecocriticism and learning: how do places become ‘pedagogical’? transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 83 their metal detectors. beekeepers develop particular local knowledge, especially about the trees; different species produce different honey, at different times, and older trees produce more nectar. a fox-shooter may sometimes be an orienteer. an apiarist may be a naturalist, or may collect firewood. these examples should suffice to demonstrate that outdoor activities can create complex maps of knowledge of a forest within a community. each of these ways of knowing produces tensions between technical skills and personal experience, and between taking some benefit from the forest and becoming familiar with it. individuals will learn different things about the forest from the particular activity they have chosen, but the meaning of that knowledge will also be shaped by the activity. a practical problem for outdoor environmental educators is judging whether an activity can be shaped to develop particular knowledges or to create particular meanings. for example, the lyell forest has a relatively small number of old trees. boxes and ironbarks grow slowly and may require centuries to reach large sizes in some locations. hollows, which are essential for much of the wildlife – particularly some of the mammals, but also some birds and goannas – form slowly in these trees. much of the wildlife is nocturnal, and local people may be unaware of what lives in the forest or of the importance of hollow trees. the activity that brookes introduces to outdoor education students has a simple premise. students take a small area of forest and get to know the hollow trees in the area. the process begins in the first year of their course, requires that they spend several nights in the forest, and encourages them to spend more. they must learn what lives in the trees in a respectful, unobtrusive way. they may observe, but are allowed no trapping, spotlighting, banging on trees, playing recorded mating calls, feeding, or intrusive viewing (such as climbing trees to inspect holes in daylight). they must learn to see signs of wildlife, and wait until the creatures show themselves. the purpose of this activity is to teach students how an activity may be constructed which, in a small way, weaves some important but neglected aspects of the forest into the lives of local people. the activity has a very different structure and pace from bushwalking – students walk from tree to tree, looking for scratches on the bark and signs of hollow branches. they arrange their day so that in the evening they can quietly watch a tree to see what creatures emerge. many of the animals that live in the trees only come out at night, which, combined with the fact they hide in hollows, means that for many local people they barely exist. for the students, the activity makes the forest come to life in a particular way. a single activity may teach some facts, but it is important that students understand how an on-going relationship changes the meaning of an activity. students who have visited an area more than once recognise things they have seen before, and notice changes. they not only learn about wildlife and its relationship to the trees, but they connect what they have seen with personal stories. students who expect to visit again have a reason to remember what they learn. brookes uses a simple device to introduce this social aspect of learning. students in the final year of their course introduce first year students to a small area of forest over three days and nights. the first year students visit the forest on several more occasions over the next two years. then, in their final year, they in turn introduce a group of first year students to ‘their’ piece of forest. a map of students’ movements through the forest would show a very different pattern and pace from that of an orienteer visiting checkpoints, or a bushwalker passing through. the rhythm of activity is also different, because it has to take into account the schedule the wildlife sets. instead of all meeting for an evening meal, students disperse to watch different trees at dusk. the activity also has some clearly evident social signatures. students walk noel gough: ecology, ecocriticism and learning: how do places become ‘pedagogical’? transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 84 without maps, and speak of places in colloquial and idiosyncratic ways: ‘the goanna tree’; ‘the red box tree where we saw the sugar gliders’; ‘the echidna stump’, and so on. when groups meet in the forest at least some of their conversation involves an exchange of stories about what they have seen. thus wildlife becomes part of their social networking, in a similar way to which stories about sporting events on the weekend have a social function in the work place. the interweaving of knowledge about wildlife with personal stories and social relationships makes this activity a little more like an indigenous way of knowing, and a little less like a field trip for a science class or walking for sport. brookes calls the activity a recreation activity because for some students at least it provides the same interest and motivation as recreation; some have returned many times to watch ‘their’ trees. however, it is also a modest program, and it is important to note that it is more successful on some occasions than others. which groups should undertake what activities where, if australians are to learn how to live sustainably in australia, is a much bigger question. inconclusion deleuze and guattari (1987) explain that rhizomes have no beginnings or ends but are always in the middle: beginnings and ends – like introductions and conclusions – imply a linear movement, whereas working in the middle is about ‘coming and going rather than starting and finishing’ (p. 25). thus, i have no desire to provide a ‘conclusion’ to this essay but will simply pause with this ‘inconclusion’ – a brief reflection in the middle of the comings and goings it performs. i do not intend the stories, vignettes, arguments and meditations that i have assembled here to be interpreted as constituting a ‘case’ for any particular approach to theorising place in education. nor have i attempted to answer the question in my essay’s subtitle. rather, i have explored a number of positions, dispositions and tactics that offer ways to think and act that have moved me in the direction of new or renewed possibilities for representing and performing place-based pedagogies. these ways of thinking and acting have been generative for me, and i offer them to readers for their own appraisal of their usefulness. acknowledgment the section on traversing lyell forest draws extensively on andrew brookes’ invited keynote address to the annual meeting of the japan society of sports sociology, hokkaido university of education, asahikawa, japan, 2004. the only published version of this address (brookes, 2005) is a japanese translation. with dr brookes’ kind permission, i have abridged and adapted significant portions of his address for inclusion in this essay. although i take responsibility for the final form of the wording in this section, i gratefully acknowledge dr brookes as the author of its substantial content. references adisu, mitiku. (2005). sustainable development and learning: framing the issues. education review: a journal of book reviews. http://edrev.asu.edu/reviews/rev422.htm brookes, andrew. (2000). nature-based tourism as education for sustainability: possibilities, limitations, contradictions. australian journal of environmental education, 15/16, 25-32. noel gough: ecology, ecocriticism and learning: how do places become ‘pedagogical’? transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 85 brookes, andrew. (2002a). gilbert white never came this far south. naturalist knowledge and the limits of universalist environmental education. canadian journal of environmental education, 7(2), 73-87. brookes, andrew. (2002b). lost in the australian bush: outdoor education as curriculum. journal of curriculum studies, 34(4), 405-425. brookes, andrew. (2004). astride a long-dead horse. mainstream outdoor education theory and the central curriculum problem. australian journal of outdoor education, 8(2), 122133. brookes, andrew. (2005). outdoor activity in the context of nature and society (in japanese, transl. maeda kazushi). japan journal of sport sociology, 13, 12-22. commonwealth of australia. (1992). national forest policy statement. canberra: commonwealth of australia. deleuze, gilles. (1994). difference and repetition (paul patton, trans.). new york: columbia university press. deleuze, gilles, & guattari, félix. (1987). a thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia (brian massumi, trans.). minneapolis: university of minnesota press. deleuze, gilles, & guattari, félix. (1994). what is philosophy? (g. burchell & h. tomlinson, trans.). london: verso. derrida, jacques. (1976). of grammatology (gayatri chakrovorty spivak, trans.). baltimore: the johns hopkins university press. durrell, lawrence. (1963). balthazar. london: faber and faber. gabriel, peter, & n’dour, youssou. (1989). shaking the tree [song]. london/paris: peter gabriel ltd/editions virgin musique. gee, james paul. (2007a). good video games and good learning: collected essays on video games, learning and literacy. new york: peter lang. gee, james paul. (2007b). what video games have to teach us about learning and literacy (second ed.: revised and updated). new york: palgrave macmillan. gough, noel. (1991). narrative and nature: unsustainable fictions in environmental education. australian journal of environmental education, 7, 31-42. gough, noel. (1999). tales of a travelling textworker: troubling ‘freedom’ in post-apartheid environmental education. paper presented at the 17th annual conference of the environmental education association of southern africa. retrieved. gough, noel. (2002). ignorance in environmental education research. australian journal of environmental education, 18, 19-26. gough, noel. (2006). shaking the tree, making a rhizome: towards a nomadic geophilosophy of science education. educational philosophy and theory, 38(5), 625-645. gough, noel. (2007a). changing planes: rhizosemiotic play in transnational curriculum inquiry. studies in philosophy and education, 26(3), 279-294. gough, noel. (2007b). rhizosemiotic play and the generativity of fiction. complicity: an international journal of complexity and education, 4(1), 119-124. gruenewald, david a. (2003). foundations of place: a multidisciplinary framework for placeconscious education. american educational research journal, 40(3), 619-654. gruenewald, david a. (2004). a foucauldian analysis of environmental education: toward the socioecological challenge of the earth charter. curriculum inquiry, 34(1), 71-107. halsey, mark. (2006). deleuze and environmental damage: violence of the text. aldershot: ashgate. noel gough: ecology, ecocriticism and learning: how do places become ‘pedagogical’? transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 86 haraway, donna j. (1991). situated knowledges: the science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective. in simians, cyborgs, and women: the reinvention of nature (pp. 183-201). new york: routledge. harding, sandra. (1993). introduction: eurocentric scientific illiteracy – a challenge for the world community. in sandra harding (ed.), the ‘racial’ economy of science: toward a democratic future (pp. 1-22). bloomington and indianapolis: indiana university press. howarth, william. (1996). some principles of ecocriticism. in cheryll glotfelty & harold fromm (eds.), the ecocriticism reader: landmarks in literary ecology (pp. 69-91). athens ga and london: the university of georgia press. le guin, ursula k. (1986). always coming home. london: victor gollancz. le guin, ursula k. (1987). she unnames them. in buffalo gals and other animal presences (pp. 194-196). santa barbara: capra. marsden, john. (1993). tomorrow, when the war began. sydney: pan macmillan. martin, john. (2008, 24-28 march). making video games in the woods: an unlikely partnership connects kids to their environment. paper presented at the annual meeting of the american educational research association, new york, usa. scott, william a. h., & gough, stephen r. (2004). sustainable development and learning: framing the issues. london and new york: routledge falmer. somerville, margaret. (2008). a place pedagogy for ‘global contemporaneity’. educational philosophy and theory. retrieved 6 march 2008 from http://www.blackwellsynergy.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1469-5812.2008.00423.x stables, andrew. (1996). reading the environment as text: literary theory and environmental education. environmental education research, 2(2), 189-195. stables, andrew, & bishop, keith. (2001). weak and strong conceptions of environmental literacy: implications for environmental education. environmental education research, 7(1), 89-97. stewart, alistair. (2003). reinvigorating our love of our home range: exploring the connections between sense of place and outdoor education. australian journal of outdoor education, 7(2), 17-24. stewart, alistair. (2004a). canoeing the murray river (australia) as environmental education: a tale of tale of two rivers. canadian journal of environmental education, 9, 136-147. stewart, alistair. (2004b). decolonising encounters with the murray river: building place responsive outdoor education. australian journal of outdoor education, 8(2), 46-55. stewart, alistair. (2006). seeing the trees and the forest: attending to australian natural history as if it mattered. australian journal of environmental education, 22(2), 85-97. wagner, jon. (1993). ignorance in educational research: or, how can you not know that? educational researcher, 22(5), 15-23. whitson, james a. (tony). (2006, 21-24 may). est-ce qu'il n'ya pas de hors-curriculum. paper presented at curriculum as an international conversation: the second world curriculum studies conference, tampere, finland. retrieved 18 may 2006 from http://www.uta.fi/laitokset/okl/tokl/wcsc/wcscabstract.pdf. author noel gough is foundation professor of outdoor and environmental education and director of the centre for excellence in outdoor and environmental education at la trobe university, victoria, australia. email: n.gough@latrobe.edu.au microsoft word pinar2006.doc to cite this article please include all of the following details: pinar, william f. (2006). bildung and the internationalization of curriculum studies. transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> bildung and the internationalization of curriculum studies a keynote address presented to the triennial meeting of the international association for the advancement of curriculum studies, may 22, 2006, tampere, finland. william f. pinar university of british columbia, canada abstract i explore resonances between didaktik and north american curriculum studies, focusing on bildung, linking it to the autobiographical tradition in north america. posing historical and gendered questions regarding the concept (of bildung), i also explore differences between the two traditions. during our time together in tampere, i suggest, we can focus our own, and not only our students’, self-formation. perhaps we use conference encounters not only to report our own work, faithful to our own national cultures and theoretical programs, but also to allow ourselves to go into temporary exile, undergo estrangement from what is familiar and everyday and enter a third space, neither home nor abroad, but in-between, a space that, in von humboldt’s words, “makes possible the interplay between his receptivity and his selfactivity.” in this interplay, i suggest, can occur the internationalization of curriculum studies. ***** i wish to participate in the dialogue1 proposed by stefan hopmann and kurt riquarts in their edited collection on didaktik, “generally defined as the art or study of teaching” (2000, 3), a definition drawn, perhaps, from eric weniger (2000 [1952], 112), who defines didaktik as “primarily, and certainly in everyday terms, the study of teaching and learning, the study of instruction.” if instruction and teaching are subsidiary concepts in u.s. curriculum studies, it appears we are creating a dialogue between differently positioned, as well as historically and culturally distinctive, concepts. given these “fundamental” (2000, 3) differences2, hopmann and riquarts acknowledge that such a dialogue will be difficult. despite the difficulty, i want to share their conviction that (2000, 4) each tradition can offer the other “substantial insights” and “knowledge.” acknowledging (see 2000, 4) that curriculum theory has “taught” the didaktik tradition “important” lessons concerning the relationship between school and society, on the nature and scope of educational planning, and on the socially constructed character of schooling, hopmann and riquarts (2000, 4) assert that the didaktik tradition can, in turn, support curriculum theory’s interest in reflective teaching, curriculum enactment, and teacher thinking.3 as well, didaktik’s emphasis upon content as the “core” of teaching intersects, they suggest, with the “recent awareness” of curriculum theorists that “subject matters” (2000, 4).4 drawing upon comenius, hopmann and riquarts (see 2000, 4) list three elements of didaktik. teaching, they tell us, requires knowing 1) the content of instruction, 2) from where that content comes, and 3) how content is used. this third element is not a matter of “application” as north americans might understand that concept, but, rather, “a crucial factor william f. pinar: bildung and the internationalization of curriculum studies transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (2) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 2 induced in any level of educational reasoning” (2000, 5). what does this mean? drawing upon herbart, hopmann and riquarts (2000, 6) describe instruction as “developing” the student’s knowledge of his or her “obligations, opportunities, and choices.” in herbart’s view, they summarize, “instruction is education by content” (hopmann and riquarts 2000, 6; emphasis in original). this notion, we are told, constitutes the “core” of german didaktik onto the present day (hopmann and riquarts 2000, 6). the most important contribution of herbartianism, hopmann and riquarts (2000, 6) stress, was its extraction of didaktik from general educational theory, rendering it a discipline of its own, focused on instruction “under the conditions of schooling” as distinct from other instructional settings like self-education or education in the family.5 indeed, the “overwhelming success” of didaktik, they suggest, had to do with being embedded in “certain institutional environments” (hopmann and riquarts 2000, 7). the centralization of schools in prussia required a theory regulating the interplay of these organizational domains (e.g. the state curriculum, centralized teacher education, and local schooling). certainly here is one historical difference, as in the united states, there has been (until four decades ago) a reluctance to centralize curriculum making and to align it with teacher education and local schooling. despite this historical difference, in the 1960s there were german scholars who imagined that “the”6 american curriculum tradition seemed to be “far ahead, and much more appropriate, for meeting the needs of a rapidly changing society” (hopmann and riquarts 2000, 8). in germany, the curriculum “fever,” as hopmann and riquarts (2000, 9) characterize it, “did not burn very long.” the difference in “institutional structure” (2000, 9) – namely that difference between state and federal curriculum control, mentioned earlier – coupled with the strength of the didaktik tradition within teacher education and school administration meant (hopmann and riquarts tell us) that the german appropriation of the american curriculum tradition was brief, a kind of “first love” hopmann and riquarts (2000, 9) describe it, “hot and fierce, but short.” didaktik did not emerge from these “wonder years” of “curriculum love” completely “unchanged,” hopmann and riquarts (2000, 9) continue.7 the changes hopmann and riquarts identify bear no resemblance to mager or to bruner (the names they associate with “the” american curriculum tradition with which germans had become infected), but more to the critical tradition that would surface after schwab’s famous 1969 pronouncement, during the decade of reconceptualization (see pinar et al. 1995, chapter 4). first, and “foremost,” hopmann and riquarts (2000, 9) explain, “there is a consensus … today … that didaktik has to be critical, and even resistant,” especially when state requirements do not coincide with didaktik’s conception of the “good” of students. (who determines the “good” of students, asks tero autio [2006b], and by what criteria? do issues of class, gender, and power disappear in such a formulation?) second, and “no less important,” they continue, didaktik had reclaimed its “old strength” as a “mediator” between the content and the teacher by a “radical turn” toward “content” (2000, 9). this is, however, no reconceptualization of the synoptic textbook for teachers, as i have proposed (pinar 2006a). instead, hopmann and riquarts are referring to the substitution of general by specific subject-matter didaktik, that is the “didaktik produced and delivered inside the boundaries of the school subjects” (2000, 9). just as general curriculum development was replaced by school subject specific areas in the united states (especially after world war ii), it appears that in germany, too, subject-matter didaktik has replaced the previous, more generalized, versions.8 this fact both fields face. in order to clarify differences as well as hint at resonances between the two traditions, today i will concentrate on the key concept of bildung, as presented in the westburyhopmann-riquarts volume. i underscore two aspects of the concept: the first its historically variable meaning and the second its gendered structure. i conclude with the suggestion that william f. pinar: bildung and the internationalization of curriculum studies transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (2) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 3 the concept may help us focus our labor of internationalization, including the work we undertake during our time together – at this second world curriculum studies conference in tampere. bildung humanity can be realized only in an individual way! wolfgang klafki (2000a, 93) key to didaktik is the notion of bildung, defined by ian westbury (2000, 24, n. 3) as “being educated, [or] educatedness.” he notes that it also conveys the connotation of the german word bilden, “to form, to shape.” he continues: bildung is thus best translated as “formation,” implying both the forming of the personality into a unity as well as the product of this formation and the particular “formedness” that is represented by the person. the “formation” in the idea of “spiritual formation” perfectly captures the german sense. during the weimar republic, as we will see, “spiritual” meant “reactionary” (see jonsson 2000, 24). the major figure in contemporary didaktik is, we are told, wolfgang klafki, a figure whose ideas, we are told, are still “very much alive” in german teacher education (gudmundsdottir, reinersten, and nordtomme 2000, 332). klafki (2000b, 144) describes the “first step” in preparing to teach as understanding the contents of education, a phrase acknowledging bildung as a “basic” term of pedagogy (2000b, 146). the content of education is not, klafki (2000b, 147) cautions, an “externally given matter,” but rather, an organic power contained in the content itself, which has a determining influence on the conceptions and thoughts during assimilation by the mind, bringing them into conformity with itself, and thus effecting internal organization. (willmann 1957, 324; quoted in klafki 2000b, 147). if the site of that “internal organization” is the subjective, we may have found one point of resonance between didaktik and north american curriculum studies, even if we differ over the educational significance of that fact.9 historically, klafki (see 2000a, 85) tells us, theories of bildung developed (during the period 1770-1830) in response to the “dangers” and the “possibilities” of the bourgeois subject. the association of bildung with the bourgeoisie is shared by german-born u.s. historian george mosse (1996, 35), who defines bildung as that “middle-class urge to selfeducation and character building that in central europe was meant to create good citizens.” for klafki (2000a, 87), the primary elements of bildung include: self-determination, freedom, emancipation, autonomy, responsibility, reason, and independence. given these characterological aspirations for education, “creative self-activity”10 becomes the “central” form of bildung. klafki (2000a, 88) is quick to point out that the selfdetermination central to bildung bears no resemblance to what he terms subjectivism, a disavowal designed, i suppose, to underscore subjectivity’s inextricable bond with the social. self-determination and freedom of thought and action can only be achieved through the study of what is “outside” subjectivity: humanity, culture, the world. we sense in this view von humboldt’s emphasis on the “richness of the other” (humboldt 1792, vol. i, pp. 64-65; quoted in lüth 2000, 75). despite the complexity of the concept, the william f. pinar: bildung and the internationalization of curriculum studies transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (2) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 4 question determining the content of bildung remains, klafki says, the same (see klafki 2000a, 90): “what objectifications of human history seem best suited to open a person who is engaged in his or her own bildung to the possibilities and duties of an existence in humanity?” i am reminded of the basic curriculum question in the u.s. tradition, namely: what knowledge is of most worth? the american question is, i believe, the more political one, especially given the rejection of political, and specifically democratic, concerns in earlier versions of bildung (see tröhler 2003, 760, 773). to emphasize the inextricable link between subjectivity and objectivity in bildung, klafki (2000a, 91) quotes humboldt’s fragment, theory of the bildung of man (1793): “[education] can be fulfilled only by the linking of the self to the world to achieve the most general, most animated, and most unrestrained interplay.” in this sentence, self-formation occurs through that engagement with the world that promises animation. this order of engagement came to imply that the particular dimensions of the world that are potentially the most educational are aesthetic in nature. indeed, since schiller (1759-1805), bildung has been associated with aesthetic education. schiller regarded aesthetic experience as primarily a “means,” not an end-in-itself, klafki (2000a, 100) tells us, a “tool” employed in the “formation of humanity’s capacity for moralpolitical reason.” in the letters on aesthetic education, however, schiller suggests aesthetic education has value in itself. that value has to do with (in klafki’s words) the experience of happiness, human fulfillment, of a fulfilled present in which an expectation always emerges that goes beyond that present moment, a hope, a future possibility of the not-yet-realized “good life” of human existence. (klafki 2000a, 100) the meaning of bildung has not remained unchanged. at the end of the nineteenth century, its political-moral potential faded as many embraced an exclusively aesthetic conception of bildung. this development underscores the concept’s historicity. the historicity of bildung late nineteenthand early twentieth-century aesthetes withdrew from political struggle in the public sphere to private worlds where they might cultivate perfection (janik and tolman 1973; le rider 1993). this is one critique of robert musil’s (1955 [1906]) character torless, who watches but fails to intervene in the rape of a schoolmate (see rogowski 1994). musil was an austrian who denied the uniqueness and autonomy of austrian culture, regarding it as an extension of german culture. like george mosse, musil emphasized, stefan jonsson (2000, 41) tells us, the “intimate” relationship between the bourgeois subject and bildung, especially within the literary genre of the bildungsroman, the novel of apprenticeship. the bildungsroman – jonsson cites goethe’s wilhelm meister’s apprenticeship (1796-1796) and its “great” precedent, rousseau’s emile introduces its reader to a role model who represents an imaginary solution to the contradictions of modernity, namely the conflict between the unique subjectively-existing individual and the faceless automaton demanded by mass society. in his inward moment, the modern individual is constituted as an autonomous male agent11 in the pursuit of personal happiness; in his outward moment, he is forced to assume the position assigned to him by society. it is this gendered contradiction – between agency and passivity, assertion and penetration the bildungsroman tries to transcend. musil, jonsson (2000, 27) reports, had “little patience with the jargon of soul, personality, culture, and community.” young torless and – later – the man without qualities portrayed musil’s impatience. william f. pinar: bildung and the internationalization of curriculum studies transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (2) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 5 as the social totality exceeded the everyday horizon of ordinary men and women (as, over the course of the nineteenth century, the rural was eclipsed by the urban: see below), the notion of an individual’s self-realization as occurring through harmonious participation in the social was no longer a realistic aspiration of education (jonsson 2000). just as capitalism could not accommodate (except through commodification) the aesthetic education of the individual, the aesthetic education of the individual could not, by musil’s time, accommodate capitalism. for jonsson, it is the bildungsroman, a literary genre wherein the social totality translates directly into the self-realization of the individual, that lost its rationale. in those difficult decades before the cataclysm that was world war i, not all educators could be confident that europe was a world in which their subjectivity-existing students could harmoniously participate. the “progress” of capitalism was unrelenting (despite the political challenges posed by communism and socialism). today we live in a very different historical moment than did von humboldt, when he (2000 [1793-1794], 58) could call for the “linking of the self to the world to achieve the most general, most animated, and most unrestrained interplay.” indeed, as tero autio (2003, 323) has observed, [m]any features of personality we used to advocate as worthwhile in terms of bildung and education have been badly depreciated by the political subordination to the sheer interests of commodification and economy. in addition to the depreciation of subjectivity (see jay 2005, 328), the political and natural world itself is deeply degraded, a point klafki (see 2000a, 98, 101) himself acknowledges. on the gendered structure of bildung bernadette baker (2001, 369) characterizes the gendered structure of bildung as “building up from, and then away from, and then back to, woman-as-mother.” this is the basic movement of boys’ coming-of-age rituals worldwide (gilmore 1990), also narrated in psychoanalytic object-relations theory (see chodorow 1978). in aesthetic education and the tradition of the bildungsroman, jonsson (2000, 40) suggests, the feminine – as well as nature and community – enticed the estranged male subject. art came to evoke and represent these three and thereby harmonized the two sides of subjectivity: the (male) public self, subject to the laws of the world as it is, and the (feminine, natural or authentic) inner self, yearning for the world as it ought to be (yack 1986). by the end of the nineteenth century, such yearning was often directed aesthetically, not politically (see jonsson 2000, 41). soon it would be, however. the “upheavals” structuring europe one hundred years ago – culminating in world war i – produced a steady stream of conservative reactions. jonsson (see 2000, 24) summarizes: worried that the intellectual spirit of modernity was too rationalistic and that the emergent social forms were too individualistic, or, even worse, too democratic, german and austrian intellectuals sought to redress the powers of instrumental reason by asserting the spiritual powers of german culture, and to hedge the leveling impact of the masses by propagating the ideal of personal bildung. during this historical moment, bildung would seem to be a politically reactionary notion, far from the “critical-constructivist” potential klafki would later elaborate. the work that best codified this reactionary response to modernity, jonsson suggests, was that of the german sociologist, ferdinand tonnies. in gemeinschaft und gesellschaft (1887, community and society), tonnies distinguished between “natural” and “rational” will, the william f. pinar: bildung and the internationalization of curriculum studies transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (2) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 6 former grounded in the body. this means, as jonsson (2000, 26) puts it, “the identity of the individual subject and of the collective is grounded in an intrinsic essence, which conditions those manifestations, utterances, and ways of behavior through which this identity is externalized or expressed.” jonsson (2000, 7) characterizes this subjective and aesthetic structure as “expressivist.” tonnies made no normative judgments regarding the historical shift from agrarian communities to mass urban societies, from the “living organism” as he characterizes the inhabitants of the former, to the “mechanical and artificial aggregate” of modernity (quoted phrases in jonsson 2000, 26). tonnies appreciated that the shift was irreversible, and so he thought nostalgia futile. most of his contemporaries and followers, jonsson tells us, did not employ the same tone of neutrality; they saw the shift in terms of cultural decline. they insisted that these developments – often associated with jews (le rider 1993) must be reversed so that germans might return to their presumably authentic and harmonious past. by world war i, tonnies’s concept of community had become a popular slogan, and by the 1920s, few doubted that a profound cultural crisis plagued german society. scholars and intellectuals attempted to contain the “crisis” by supporting educational, cultural, and political programs aimed at resurrecting the classical bildung and thereby presumably reviving community. in 1925, ulrich peters, editor of the zeitschrift für deutsche bildung, suggested that the “german soul” must return to itself; william stern and eduard spranger argued that the integral “i” and the “soul” should be reinstituted as foundational psychological and philosophical concepts. (a professor of education and philosophy in berlin, spranger belittled john dewey’s work as “merely” economic and technical [tröhler 2003, 765]). the educator aloys fischer asserted that these concepts should serve to “create the irrational bases and forces of communal life” (quoted phases in jonsson 2000, 27). while taken out of context, these statements, stefan jonsson argues, were typical of a dominant discourse during the weimar republic. it was a discourse promoted by intellectuals committed to the restoration of a classic bildung, the task of forging a cultural synthesis through the reeducation of the people, “to make them believe in an interior truth or communal essence” (jonsson 2000, 27). presumably, it was only through such restoration that the german nation could be saved from its precipitous decline. these intellectuals – jonsson lists peters, stern, spranger and fischer dismissed modernity (e.g., science, specialization, and democracy) because they were convinced that modernity distanced the individual from the internal truth of bildung, thereby blocking him or her from expressing the german national vitality. what was necessary, it seemed to them, was a return to a premodern, authentic interiority, and a restructuring of external reality, so that reconciliation12 could be achieved (see jonsson 2000, 41). it was, presumably, a gendered reconciliation, at least in part. as gerald izenberg (2000) has shown, the feminine was appropriated by several early twentieth-century artists (he focuses on frank wedekind, wassily kandinsky, and thomas mann) to subjectively restructure their masculinity, then considered in crisis. not only did these early twentiethcentury european men summon the feminine within to face the perils of industrial society, they demanded that she be outside his psyche as well, en personne, at home, waiting for him to return, triumphant. man’s victory (and self-fulfillment) was judged incomplete, jonsson (see 2000, 42) observes, without recognition by the woman (his betrothed or, as baker notes, his mother: it is, incidentally, his mother who rescues young torless from his gendered crisis at the school). due to her nature presumably, this feminine figure retains a state of innocence, even naiveté, while the male hero has to suffer the knowledge of alienation and struggle before returning home, if now, allegedly, at a higher level of consciousness. the gendered fantasy of bildung is now realized: the male subject enjoys, and is vitalized by, an expressive-authentic relationship to his life-world and to the world as a totality; his william f. pinar: bildung and the internationalization of curriculum studies transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (2) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 7 individual self-realization then becomes compatible with socialization (see jonsson 2000, 53). and more than compatibility between inner and outer is implied, at least for baker (see 2001, 372); for her, this version of bildung risks the exploitation of the individual by his society as s/he is enfolded into its totality.13 contemporary theorists of didaktik appear to appreciate the vexed relation between selfformation and society. klafki (2000a, 94) acknowledges the “limitations” and “mistakes” of such “collective individualities” in german history – he refers to the “conquest, subjection, and extermination of other nations, cultures, peoples” but these go unspecified. in an apparent reference to the rise of national socialism in germany, klafki (2000a, 104) points out bildung degenerated into a stabilizing factor of a class-based society in an authoritarian state; every possibility was also excluded of facing seriously that criticism – raised especially in marx’s early works – as regards the realities of bourgeois society and the contradictions of its self-interpretation … including its understanding of education. while disclaiming a “nationalistic” (2000a, 94) reading of bildung, klafki’s general point is that these “mistakes” and “limitations” constitute a “yardstick” for a “critical” perspective he characterizes as “universal-historical” (2000a, 94). at least in this passage, these adjectives seem simultaneously hegelian and communitarian (see 2000a, 94). this interpretation is implied in klafki’s (see 2000a, 95) equation of the general or universal in bildung with those “binding” problems that are “central for us all” and for “generations to come,” the “key problems of our social and individual existence,” insofar as these problems can be “foreseen.” here the hegelian elements of klafki’s view are discernible, as the phenomenology of history seems to settle the matter (although the question of its teleology remains unclear). there is no acknowledgement of how contentious, how unsettled, the matter of “key problems” is, and not only politically. “above all,” klafki (2000a, 96) concludes, bildung means “the awakening of self-determined moral responsibility, a readiness for moral action, and the capacity for moral action.” understood critically, this includes political action, and klafki (see 2000a, 98) refers specifically to the accelerating environmental crisis, a point, as noel gough (2003) has ably demonstrated, on which our internationalizing efforts might well be concentrated. for klafki, critical theory becomes the contemporary core of what he terms a criticalconstructive didaktik.14 in a klafkian sense, autio (see 2003, 323), suggests, didaktik is a historical-hermeneutic conception oriented to the future. for klafki, self-formation – he specifies “reasonableness, capacity for self-determination, and freedom of thought and action” (2000a, 88) – occurs “only” through the study of the world: “humanity, humankind and humaneness, world, objectivity, the general” (2000a, 88). for klafki, these elements of humboldt’s formula remain intact today. this “interplay” (von humboldt 2000 [1793-1794], 60) between self and world occurs subjectively. as noted earlier, klafki (2000a, 87) posits “creative self-activity” as the “central form” through which the process of bildung is conducted. such self-activity must be focused and, perhaps, even restrained; von humboldt (2000 [1793-1794], 60), suggests subjective “unity” enables “escape from dissipating and confusing diversity,” diversity here understood as an excess of the world. while bildung occurs subjectively, klafki (2000a, 88) emphasizes that it is not “subjectivism,” as “creative self-activity” occurs in-the-world. hegel stressed the “mediatory structure” of the subjective and the “objectively general” in the process of bildung. klafki emphasizes this point by quoting hegel (see 2000a, 92), namely that the subject “comes” through the other (the “other” meaning the objective, the general) “to himself,” to “fundamental reasonableness, to concrete universality.” in the william f. pinar: bildung and the internationalization of curriculum studies transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (2) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 8 process of self-formation, the individual “has” to work off his “mere subjectivity” (hegel 1952, 269); he “has” to “form himself” according to the world already existing, “to make [himself] according to it” (hegel 1961, 272, cf. 312f.). this sounds close to conformity15 to me, but klafki (2000a, 92) emphasizes not a politically conservative, but a socially progressive, reading of hegel: bildung is possible only in the medium … of historical objectifications of humanity, of humanness and its conditions, with an orientation to the possibilities of, and obligations to, humanitarian progress. in klafki’s critical-constructive didatik, the central concepts appear to be individuality, history, and community, particularized in self-formation through intellectual content. in bildung, the cultivation of personal uniqueness does not occur in isolation but, klafki emphasizes, only in communication with others. the formation of individuality occurs in communication through processes of recognition (see klafki 2000a, 93). to this north american ear, kafki’s emphasis upon communication recalls our conception of curriculum as “complicated conversation” (pinar 2004, 9), an expansive definition of curriculum that includes dialogue and recognition, as well as incommunicability and misrecognition. the centrality of teaching in the trope of bildung-as-education, baker (2001, 413) tells us, the hero is also the teacher under whose tutelage the boy-child achieves knowledge of self and society, an educational process “determined more by the tutor’s activity than by any notion of organic, unfolding faculties.” the historically key role of the tutor might help explain the emphasis of didaktik upon instruction and teaching, terms i position as subsidiary to the contemporary concept of curriculum in the u.s. (pinar 2006a; mcclintock 1971). the centrality of instruction and teaching in bildung supports autio’s (2003, 322-323) characterization of didaktik as the “constant and critical search for the mode of rationality best suited to contemporary challenges of each time.” autio (2003) locates this search and the faith in reason it implies in the german enlightenment and its twentieth-century expressions in german critical theory, but in contrast to the critical theory, he (2006b) worries that didaktik leaves open the question of who decides what constitutes “contemporary challenges” and what mode of rationality is “best suited” to address them. kafki’s “critical-constructive” didaktik as located within critical theory, and, specifically, within a habermasian notion of communicative action employs reason in the pursuit of egalitarian social practices. for autio, this employment of reason contrasts with instrumental rationality, and helps explain why, he writes: the germans have never felt a burning urge for postmodern discourses which have resulted as they might see it from their intellectual background from the critical response to the comprehensive and absurd dominance of instrumental rationality. (autio 2003, 322) from my perspective (see pinar 2006a, chapter 7), the employment of reason to produce future effects – whether social egalitarianism or social hierarchies – constitutes instrumentality. in this tradition, autio (2006b) points out, instrumentality is embedded within “the judgmental potentialities of communicative rationality.” in imagining that rationality can ascertain ends as well as means, it can co-opt “democratic conversation” concerning “goals” william f. pinar: bildung and the internationalization of curriculum studies transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (2) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 9 and “power” by self-interested appeals to rational, indeed “scientific” (in the sense of geisteswissenschaften), and thereby “authoritative understanding of reality.” for autio, this danger remains a problem with didaktik, despite its claims to hermeneutics, humanism, and individuality. as we have seen, bildung functioned in conservative, even reactionary, ways during early decades of the twentieth century. even with its critical-constructive cast, how does it fare under contemporary historical conditions? autio (2003, 323) worries bildung risks commodification under contemporary conditions of postmodernity. no longer, he asserts, can we expect bildung to be capable of realizing “edifying cultural potential” (2003, 323), given that culture itself has been thoroughly commercialized. hiller’s (2000, 209) depiction of teacher education would seem to support autio’s point: the education industry has in recent years been publishing more handbooks for teachers, which evidently sell better if they are presented as series of well-designed lesson crib sheets, increasingly forcing teachers out of their role as instructional designers and claiming them as engineers for learning processes, schooled in communication psychology and motivation theory. this commercialization and vulgarization of educational culture with its reductive instrumentalization of teaching to the management of learning constitutes a crisis shared by didaktik and by u.s. curriculum studies alike. autio (2003, 326) describes the reconceptualized curriculum field in the u.s. as “as an up-dated postmodern theory of bildung.” certainly there is a resonance between our respective emphasis upon self-formation, in the u.s. through studies of autobiography and, in europe, through didaktik’s embrace of bildung. self-formation through the academic disciplines self-consciously situated in society at particular historical moments constitutes what i have called currere, the lived experience of curriculum. while i privilege study, not instruction, as the primary means of such self-formation, the structure of the educational process is not entirely dissimilar, as other scholars have observed.16 internationalization tero autio (2003, 326) argues that our project – enabling the “complicated conversation” that is the internationalization of curriculum studies – consists not in making connections between our “own discipline and another discipline [and] seems to pursue incommensurable aims in an incommensurable vocabulary.” instead, drawing upon richard rorty, autio (2003, 326) calls for what he terms the “inverse” of hermeneutics, reinterpreting our own disciplinary surroundings in the unfamiliar terms of new disciplinary inventions.17 this is not a “constructive” activity, he suggests, in that it builds upon what we already know. rather, such an inverted hermeneutics is “abnormal” and, as such, promises “to aid us in becoming new beings” (rorty, 1980, p. 360; quoted in autio 2003, 326). is this a postmodern reformulation of bildung or the prerequisite to a post-bildung, post-didaktik conception of european curriculum studies (see autio 2006a)? in his notion of an inverted hermeneutics, autio names one aspiration of the internationalization of curriculum studies, at least as i have participated in it myself and have imagined its potential for my colleagues in the u.s. in our encounter with those whose national cultures render their conceptions of curriculum paradigmatically incommensurate (brown 1988) with our own, what and how we know – including our very subjective structuration of knowledge – can be reconstructed. this is akin to what hongyu wang (2004; pinar 2006c) theorizes as the educational potential of “exile” and “estrangement.” for wang, william f. pinar: bildung and the internationalization of curriculum studies transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (2) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 10 this potential resides in a “third space” – neither in china nor in the u.s. where she studied foucault and kristeva but somewhere between – that renders the familiar strange, the self as other. such educational experience – without that centered and unified subject “whose individual bildung was long assumed to be its telos” – leads, martin jay (2006, 260) suggests, to “songs of experience composed in a new and different key.” that last phrase reminds of us of the landmark contribution of the canadian curriculum theorist ted aoki (2005 [1978]), whose performance of the auditory turn enabled us to hear curriculum inquiry in a new key, transporting us to a third space. such a space, neither in one’s homeland nor elsewhere – in tampere perhaps, for those of us who traveled here for this historic conference (i thank eero ropo and tero autio for drawing us together in finland) – affords us some distance from the everyday, that site and structure of disciplinary society in late modernity. gathering together in tampere may enable us to hear curriculum inquiry in an international key. upon our return home, let us invite our colleagues, including our schoolteacher colleagues and university students, to join us in the internationalization of curriculum studies. as we participate in this present moment, let us recall our important inaugural meeting in 2003 in shanghai, china (for which we owe thanks to professors zhang and zhong and members of the coordinating committee) as well as look forward to our 2009 meeting in pretoria, south africa (for which we owe thanks to professor and dean jonathon jansen). the constitution of community was, for foucault, “an important, even a fundamental” stage “of the struggle to invent new forms of existence and to invent new styles of life” (eribon 2004, 328). creating such culture was, for foucault, aesthetic, yes. but it was clear from the interviews he gave toward the end of his life that for him such culture is characterized as well by emotional and political structures that enable us “to escape from the much more serious looming danger of the rigors of the norm and of the totality of a ‘disciplinary’ society” (eribon 2004, 328). without escape from the social totality of our daily institutional lives, creating culture, a counter educational culture, cannot occur. during our time together in tampere, through our year-round virtual encounters with colleagues at, for instance, the iaacs website (my thanks to web-managers jacques daignault and renee fountain), perhaps we can think of our own, and not only our students’, self-formation. despite the corrosive effects of commercialization, despite the complicity of universities and schools in that degradation of character commodification compels, we can focus, for the moment, upon our own bildung. perhaps we can use our encounters with each other not only to report our own work, faithful to our own national cultures and theoretical programs, but also to allow ourselves to go into temporary exile, to undergo estrangement from what is familiar and everyday and enter a third space, neither home nor abroad, but inbetween, a liminal or third space that, in von humboldt’s (2000 [1793-1794], 60) words, “makes possible the interplay between his receptivity and his self-activity.” in this interplay can occur the internationalization of curriculum studies. notes 1. this dialogue could be said to have been initiated by professor bjorg gundem of the university of oslo by convening a 1995 conference on north american curriculum studies and didaktik: see gundem and hopmann 2002. 2. there are terminological differences as well: peter menck (see 2000, 181-182) distinguishes among curriculum theory (lehrplantheorie), subject-matter didactics, didaktik analysis, and the lifeworld of children. the more inclusive definition of curriculum in the u.s. field – as “complicated conversation” (pinar et al. 1995, 848) – might subsume didaktik within it. 3. ian westbury (2000, 27) tells us that “didaktik provides models of teacher thinking,” but in the hopmannriquarts collection, these are implied only. william f. pinar: bildung and the internationalization of curriculum studies transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (2) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 11 4. hopmann and riquarts (2000, 7) point to the “fragmentation” in u.s. curriculum studies, specifically the separation of curriculum from pedagogy; such a division is, they tells us, “fundamentally opposed” to the “holistic approach” of didaktik. due to this fragmentation, they continue, “content was lost in american curriculum studies.” while pedagogy is not separated from curriculum in the u.s. tradition (see pinar et al. 1995, chapter 13), they are not, in my view, completely mistaken on this point, and i have, in recent years, offered one example (see pinar 2001, 2006a, b) of the reincorporation of “content” in curriculum studies. the example hopmann and riquarts cite – shulman’s “pedagogical content” knowledge – does not, in my view, accomplish the reincorporation of content to curriculum studies but, instead, elides the binary. see footnote 8. 5. in reviewing a draft of this paper, tero autio (2006b) found the term “contribution” to be “ironical.” didaktik’s “extraction” from general educational theory, he points out, coincided its being embedded in the “bureaucratic-administrative controls of the nation state, veiling its bureaucratic-administrative function by claims to disciplinary legitimacy. as for herbartianism, autio claims it reduced the complexity of education to “proceduralism” and instrumentality, rationalizing sequence that, in the u.s. context, became behaviorialized. in his 2006 presidential address to the american association for the advancement of curriculum studies, autio suggested that bureaucratic-administrative control became restated, in the u.s., as the prediction of behavior. 6. there is, of course, no one american curriculum tradition, a fact belied by the use of “the” in the hopmann-riquarts’ sentence. the only specific reference they make to “the” u.s. field is to “mager or bruner” (2000, 9), two quite different, even adversarial, intellectual traditions within u.s. curriculum studies. curiously, we are told that certain german scholars thought the u.s. field “far ahead” of the german one, and just as schwab pronounced the u.s. field “moribund” (pinar et al. 1995, chapter 4; see hopmann and riquarts 2000, 8). 7. künzli and horton-krüger (2000, 42) write that the consequences of the “affair” with u.s. curriculum studies was that “german didaktik became ideologically suspect and considered outdated.” 8. the reference hopmann and riquarts make here (see 2000,10) is to that work of two americans (lee shulman and walter doyle) and of one israeli scholar, miriam ben-peretz. the distinctions among the works of these three seem stronger than their similarities: it is not obvious how they are “dealing with the same set of questions” (hopmann and riquarts 2000, 10). there are no footnotes to the work of these three scholars, but in his 1992 handbook chapter, walter doyle focuses on the institutionalization of teaching in the u.s., specifically, how the construal of teaching as classroom management has eclipsed the curriculum as topic of public debate and educational research, rendering curriculum invisible. shulman (1986), too, focused on the eclipse of curriculum by teaching; he is famous for his concept of “pedagogical content knowledge” (1987), which attends to the subject matter of teachers and, more specifically, to the knowledge teachers require to convey subject matter to students. it is, he suggests, that mix of content and pedagogy that is uniquely the province of teachers. teachers’ own particular form of professional understanding includes, he asserts, a) knowledge of learners and their characteristics, and b) knowledge of educational contexts, ranging from the workings of the group or classroom, the governance and financing of school districts, to the character of communities and cultures, and c) knowledge of educational ends, purposes and values, and their philosophical and historical grounds. shulman’s model focuses more on the first rather than the second modifier in his concept, except insofar as pedagogy is regarded as an order of content. gudmundsdottir, reinersten, and nordtomme (see 2000, 319) also link klafki and shulman as “working theoretically with concrete and practical issues.” that is a rather general link, indeed. 9. of the three scholars hopmann and riquarts cite (see 2000, 10; gudmundsdottir, reinersten, and nordtomme [see 2000, 320) reference her work as well), miriam ben-peretz (1990, xv) affords teachers the most active role in the formulation of content: “to sum up [her view]: teachers are encouraged to see their major role in the partnership of curriculum development as that of informed and creative interpreters who are prepared to reflect on their curriculum and to reconstruct it.” her subsequent work focused almost exclusively on teachers, including teachers’ memories of teaching (1995) and their experience of the teachers’ lounge (2000). from my experience at an israeli national curriculum conference, chaired by professor saul feinberg (and at which professor ben-peretz spoke), held in jerusalem in february 2005, i would venture to say that miriam ben peretz is regarded by many as the dean of israeli curriculum studies. 10. i am referring to the autobiographical tradition in north american curriculum studies (pinar et al. 1995, chapter 10). i choose “resonance” to emphasize the fact that there is no simple correspondence of the two traditions’ interest in self-formation through educational experience, a point amplified by autio in his review of this manuscript. 11. autio (2006b) begins by underlining klafki’s use of herbart’s “apperceptive mass” in the passage i have quoted, but in a “mechanical” way, in which he seems to assume that “content itself” has “organizing power,” implying that we know how consciousness works or, more probably (in autio’s judgment), that consciousness is secondary in klafki’s formulation. in didaktik, autio continues, the subjective suffers a william f. pinar: bildung and the internationalization of curriculum studies transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (2) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 12 subsidiary even “subjugated” position; what is important is outside subjectivity, the content, wherein characteristics of subjectivity are, presumably installed. he concludes that the emphasis upon content in didaktik implies that the locus of determination resides outside the subjectively existing individual. individuality is defined in “collectivist terms” – as “humanity” – that is to be realized in individual ways. autio’s analysis is, in general, shared by daniel tröhler (see 2003, 759), who notes that, especially in early twentieth-century conceptions of bildung, “the individual person can perfect himself only in the framework of the typical characteristics of his volk – the german volk.” especially in my conception of currere, the individual’s study of his or her self-formation requires skepticism toward the national culture and character (see pinar 2004). 12. this phrase recall william heard kilpatrick’s (1918) emphasis on the educational project as providing an opportunity for “creative self-activity.” 13. klafki (see 2000a, 89) acknowledges the gendered dimension of the classical concept of bildung. 14. autio (2006b) underscores the nostalgia and detachment from, even aversion to, history implicit in such “reconciliation.” i have stressed the interiority of education (pinar 1994), and its relation to the external restructuring of reality (pinar 2004), but i conclude not with “reconciliation” but “reparation” (pinar 2006b). in the politically polarized america of george w. bush, i inflect the “synthetical” moment of the method of currere as “self-mobilization.” this represents no “reconciliation” with an archaic past, of course. rather, “synthesis” is the final (if recursive) moment or phase in an ongoing regressiveprogressive-analytic-synthetic social and self-understanding enabling social reconstruction through study (pinar 2006a). 15. this is a crucial difference in emphasis from klafki’s contemporary concept of “co-determination” (see, also, autio 2003, 322). 16. klafki (see 2000b, 141) tells us that his study of the frankfurt school (he lists adorno, horkheimer, and habermas) as well as his ongoing dialogue with theorists committed to revising traditional german pedagogy led him, from the late 1960s onward, enabled him to theorize a “crucial constructive science of education” and, within this framework, a system of “critical-constructive didaktik.” in this phrasing, “critical” is to be understood in the sense of “social criticism.” in terms of didaktik, klafki explains, this implies “constant reflection on the relations between school and instruction on the one hand (their goals, contents, forms of organization, and methods) and social conditions and processes on the other.” the concept of “constructive” indicates an emphasis on practice, and on “reform.” 17. klafki is, of course, not alone in emphasizing the link between didaktik and progressive democratic politics. for example, karsten schnack (see 2003, 272) understands bildung as closely linked to democracy: “democracy without bildung is merely an empty shell,” he writes. without democracy, schnack continues, echoing the critique of aestheticism jonsson summarizes, “democracy is reduced to what the leaders of the hour have defined as highbrow culture and good manners.” 18. conformity implies non-thinking acceptance of the status quo, while its conscious “cousin” – solidarity implies self-chosen, self-critical, and self-conscious participation in a common cause, an important distinction to be sure, but one that can fade in (especially political) practice. in his discussion of klafki’s critical-constructive didaktik and its commitment to egalitarian social practice, autio (2003, 323) posits “solidarity as a precondition of egalitarian practice,” a notion, he tells us, based on “the moral conviction intrinsic to the very meaning of bildung.” such moral conviction recalls, autio continues, the classic notion of “general bildung for all, as the right of every person, without qualitative or quantitative gradations in status determined by social origins or future positions in society” (klafki, 2000, p. 103), or as in humboldt, “that each and every person, even the poorest, should receive a complete education” (ibid., p. 89; both passages quoted in autio 2003, 323). the slippery slide from solidarity to conformity can be demonstrated by reference to the key issues of academic or intellectual freedom. 19. u.s. teachers appreciate the constraints on their intellectual freedom installed by local – and federal political interests, especially, politically conservative interests. in germany, weniger (2000 [1952], 119) allows that while there is a “danger” associated with an “omnipotent state pedagogy,” the “freedom” of pedagogy is most strongly “guaranteed” by the state. even a cursory historical review recommends qualification of that statement. certainly one cannot trust the administration of u.s. president george w. bush to protect academic freedom; indeed, the legislated foreclosure of such freedom is nightmarishly evident (see pinar 2004). 20. 16. klafki (see 2000b, 142) makes this social definition explicit in his concept of instructional planning, wherein teaching and learning are understood as processes of interaction, that is, as processes in which relationships between people – between teachers and learners and between the learners themselves – play a central role. these processes must therefore be comprehended not only as processes of acquisition in which subject matter and problems are confronted, but also as social processes or processes of social learning. certainly this is one sense of the u.s. concept of curriculum as “complicated conversation.” william f. pinar: bildung and the internationalization of curriculum studies transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (2) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 13 21. willem wardekker and his colleagues see the apparent similarity. in fact, they suggest that this similarity is the reason dutch scholars have had little interest in the reconceptualized u.s. field: “we end this section by noting that a reconceptualization of curriculum thinking, as advocated in the u.s. by pinar, has not found many adherents in the netherlands, probably because it is perceived in a way as too reminiscent of the outmoded paradigm of bildungstheorie” (wardekker, volman, and terwel 2003, 488). this is a mistaken reading, however, as the differences between (especially) autobiographical studies and bildung tradition are several and striking. most prominent among them, perhaps, is the politically assertive, even antagonistic, character of curriculum conceived as currere, in contrast to the tendency, at least historically, of bildung to coincide with, not contest, politically conservative conceptions of german culture and nationhood. “politicization of the german person,” tröhler (2003, 760) writes, “had to take place in the context of volksstaat, not in democracy. to be free meant the embedding of the individual into the harmonious beauty of the whole.” 22. autio’s notion of an inverted hermeneutic resonates with patrick slattery’s (2003, 652) depiction of a postmodern hermeneutic, “grounded in aesthetic experience and poststructural subjectivity” while “attentive to the aristotelian sense of applicato.” slattery (2003, 652) continues: an educational experience which incorporates bildung — without separating learning from its application to oneself as happens in technical, managerial, and behavioral models — encourages interpretation within lived world experiences and intersubjective contexts. it is here that forms of self-encounter emerge where various human communities are imaginatively engaged in individual and social transformation; where administrators and educators – management and labor – all recognize and act upon their mutual needs as well as the broader interests of the environment and marginalized global societies; where teachers and students are aesthetically present to subject matter rather than assuming they possess it and can manipulate it in decontextualized projects. (slattery 2003, 652) this is bildung with a messianic – in walter benjamin’s sense (see wolin 1982) – inflection. references aoki, ted t. (2005 [1978]). toward curriculum inquiry in a new key. in william f. pinar and rita l. irwin (eds.), curriculum in a new key (89-110). mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum. autio, tero (2003). postmodern paradoxes in finland: the confinements of rationality in curriculum studies. in william f. pinar (ed.), international handbook of curriculum research 301-328). mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum. autio, tero (2006a). subjectivity, curriculum, and society: between and beyond german didaktik and anglo-american curriculum studies. mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum. autio, tero (2006b). personal communication. ben-peretz, miriam (1990). the teacher-curriculum encounter: freeing teachers from the tyranny of texts. albany: state university of new york press. ben-peretz, miriam (1995). learning from experience: memory and the teacher’s account of teaching. albany: state university of new york press. ben-peretz, miriam (2000). behind closed doors: teachers and the role of the teachers’ lounge. albany: state university of new york press. brown, theodore (1988). how fields change: a critique of the "kuhnian" view. in william f. pinar (ed.), contemporary curriculum discourses (16-30). scottsdale, az: gorsuch scarisbrick. doyle, walter (1992). curriculum and pedagogy. in philip jackson (ed.), handbook of research on curriculum (486-516). new york: macmillan. gundem, bjorg and hopmann, stefan (eds.) (2002). didaktik and/or curriculum: an international dialogue. new york: peter lang. william f. pinar: bildung and the internationalization of curriculum studies transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (2) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 14 gough, noel (2003). thinking globally in environmental education: implications for internationalizing curriculum inquiry. in william f. pinar (ed.), international handbook of curriculum research (53-72). mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum. hiller, gotthilf gerhard (2000). levels of classroom participation. in ian westbury, stefan hopmann, and kurt riquarts (eds.) teaching as a reflective practice: the german didaktik tradition (207-221). [trans. gillian horton krüger.] mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum. hopmann, stefan and riquarts, kurt (2000). starting a dialogue: a beginning conversation between didaktik and the curriculum traditions. in ian westbury, stefan hopmann, and kurt riquarts (eds.) teaching as a reflective practice: the german didaktik tradition (3-11). mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum. izenberg, gerald n. (2000). modernism and masculinity: mann, wedekind, kandinsky through world war i. chicago: university of chicago press. janik, allan and toulmin, stephen (1973). wittgenstein's vienna. new york: simon and schuster. jonsson, stefan (2000). subject without nation: robert musil and the history of modern identity. durham, nc: duke university press. le rider, jacques (1993). modernity and crises of identity: culture and society in fin-desiecle vienna. [trans. rosemary morris.] new york: continuum. kilpatrick, william heard (1918). the project method. teachers college record, 19 (4), 319335. klafki, wolfgang (2000a). the significance of classical theories of bildung for a contemporary concept of allgemeinbildung. in ian westbury, stefan hopmann, and kurt riquarts (eds.) teaching as a reflective practice: the german didaktik tradition (85107). mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum. klafki, wolfgang (2000b). didaktik analysis as the core of preparation of instruction. in ian westbury, stefan hopmann, and kurt riquarts (eds.) teaching as a reflective practice: the german didaktik tradition (139-159). mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum. musil, robert (1955 [1906]). young torless. [preface by alan pryce-jones.] new york: pantheon books inc. pinar, william f. (1994). autobiography, sexuality, politics. new york: peter lang. pinar, william f. (2004). what is curriculum theory? mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum. pinar, william f. (2006a). the synoptic text today and other essays: curriculum development after the reconceptualization. new york: peter lang. pinar, william f. (2006b). race, religion and a curriculum of reparation. new york: palgrave macmillan. pinar, william f. (2006c). exile and estrangement in the internationalization of curriculum studies. journal of the american association for the advancement of curriculum studies (2), 1-17, available online at www.uwstout.edu/soe/jaaacs/ pinar, william f., reynolds, william, slattery, patrick, and taubman, peter (1995). understanding curriculum. new york: peter lang. rogowski, christian (1994). distinguished outsider: robert musil and his critics. columbia, sc: camden house. schnack, karsten (2003). action competence as an educational ideal. in donna trueit, (et al.) (eds.) the internationalization of curriculum studies (271-291). new york: peter lang. shulman, lee (1986). paradigms and research programs in the study of teaching: a contemporary perspective. in m. wittrock (ed.), handbook of research on teaching (336). [third edition.] new york: macmillan. shulman, lee (1987). knowledge and teaching: foundations of the new reform. harvard educational review, 57 (1), 1-22. william f. pinar: bildung and the internationalization of curriculum studies transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (2) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 15 wang, hongyu (2004). the call from the stranger on a journey home: curriculum in a third space. new york: peter lang. wardekker, willem, volman, monique, and terwel, jan (2003). curriculum theory in the netherlands. in william f. pinar (ed.) international handbook of curriculum research (479-494). mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum. westbury, ian, hopmann, stefan, and riquarts, kurt (eds.) (2000). teaching as reflective practice: the german didaktik tradition. mahweh, new jersey: lawrence erlbaum associates, publishers. wolin, richard (1982). walter benjamin: an aesthetic of redemption. new york: columbia university press. yack, bernard (1986). the longing for total revolution: philosophic sources of social discontent from rousseau to marx and nietzsche. princeton, nj: princeton university press. author william f. pinar is founding president of the international association for the advancement of curriculum studies and canada research chair at the university of british columbia, canada, where he directs the internationalization of curriculum studies project. correspondence to: william.pinar@ubc.ca microsoft word davissumaraformatted v.2.doc to cite this article please include all of the following details: davis, brent and sumara, dennis (2008) complexity as a theory of education. transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> complexity as a theory of education brent davis and dennis sumara university of british columbia, canada educational research, as a domain of academic inquiry, is a relatively young field. most of its major journals have been established since the 1960s, and only a few of them were in place a century ago. university-based colleges and faculties of education are similarly recent. very few have been around for more than a half-century. for the most part, when they were first established, colleges and faculties of education drew their personnel from specialists in psychology, sociology, history, philosophy, management, and the subject matter areas. and even though the situation has changed so that a huge majority of current faculty members have been credentialed by schools of education, the derivative nature of the field continues to be manifest in the names of its subfields and departments: educational psychology, educational philosophy, educational history, mathematics education, and so on. few branches, with the obvious exception of curriculum studies, can justly be seen as proper to education. given this background, it is not surprising that educationists have a longstanding habit of importing theoretical frames and methodological approaches from other domains and disciplines. in this article, we examine some of the issues around this tendency, arguing that there are emergent qualities to educational research and curriculum studies that have not (and cannot) be represented in any of the fields from which they have drawn. in particular, we look toward the transdisciplinary and participatory domain of complexity theory as a means to make sense of the emergent character of educational research—ultimately arguing that complexity theory might be construed as a properly educational theory. we do not regard it as a frame that can be simply adopted, but an emergent conversation that compels participation (see stewart & cohen, 1997). in the process, we offer a series of critiques of the established practice of carving educational inquiry into subdisciplines that map tidily onto the grander academic world. transphenomenal—the nature of educational forms not unlike educational research, complexity thinking is young and evolving—and as we develop, it refuses tidy descriptions and unambiguous definitions. it has captured the attentions of many researchers whose studies reach across traditional disciplinary boundaries. for example, the following phenomena are currently under investigation by researchers who align themselves with this emergent school of thought: • how does the brain work? now that researchers are able to watch brain activity in real time, it has become clear that many long-held beliefs about its structure and dynamics—that is, assumptions about what thought and memory are, how learning happens, and so on—are misinformed if not completely mistaken (cf. zull, 2002). • what is consciousness? over the past century, many neurologists, psychologists, and sociologists have attempted to present definitions and discipline-specific explanations of self-awareness, but it has become increasingly clear that none of these contributions http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci brent davis and dennis sumara: complexity as a theory of education transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 34 is up to the task of making sense of human consciousness of self and other-than-self (cf. donald, 2002). • what is intelligence? iq scores have been climbing steadily for the past century, at a pace that cannot be explained in terms of biological adaptation, improved nutrition, or educational intervention. it appears that the sort of spatio-logical abilities that are measured by iq tests must be readily influenced and enabled by experience and context (cf. johnson, 2005). what are the conditions that contribute to increases in iq? can they be manipulated? how is iq related to or reflective of a broader, more encompassing conception of intelligence? • what is the role of emergent technologies in shaping personalities and possibilities? the most creatively adaptive humans—that is, young children (deacon, 1997; gopnik, meltzoff, & kuhl, 2000)—are able to integrate the latest technologies into their existences in ways that older, less plastic adults can only envy. what might this mean for formal education, both in terms of pragmatic activity and with regard to common understandings of the purposes of schooling? • how do social collectives work? popular assumption has it that the actions and potentialities of social groupings are sums of individual capacities. yet it is becoming more and more evident that, on occasion, collectives can vastly exceed the summed capacities of their members (cf. bloom, 2001). how does this happen? can these situations be orchestrated? what might this mean for classrooms, school boards, communities, and so on? • what is knowledge? even the most static of domains—including formal mathematics, the hard sciences, and fundamentalist religions—can be readily shown to be adapting to the shifting interests and obsessions of societies, being led as much as they lead (cf. plotkin, 1994). • what is education for? if one seriously considers the range of theories and philosophies invoked in current discussions of education, it is obvious that there is little agreement on what formal education is doing, much less on what it is intended to do. on first blush, it might appear that the only common theme across such questions is that their answers are anything but self-evident. however, a closer look reveals some deep similarities among the phenomena addressed. for example, it might be argued that each of these phenomena is pointing toward some sort of system that learns. brains, social collectives, bodies of knowledge, and so on can all become broader, more nuanced, capable of more diverse possibilities. further, each of these phenomena is emergent—that is, each arises in the interactions of many sub-components or agents, whose actions are in turn enabled and constrained by similarly dynamic contexts. in very different terms, it is not always clear where one should focus one’s attentions in order to understand these sorts of phenomena. for instance, to research consciousness or intelligence or knowledge, does it make sense to focus on the level of neurological events? or personal activity? or social context? or physical setting? the emergent realm of complexity thinking answers that, to make sense of the sorts of transphenomena mentioned above, one must “level-jump”—that is, simultaneously examine the phenomenon in its own right (for its particular coherence and its specific rules of behavior) and pay attention to the conditions of its emergence (e.g., the agents that come together, the contexts of their co-activity, etc.). this strategy is one of several that have been developed within complexity research, and it stands in stark contrast to, for example, the individual-focused emphases of imported frames anchored in behaviorist psychology or http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci brent davis and dennis sumara: complexity as a theory of education transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 35 constructivist epistemology. as the argument goes, such emphases might make sense in the context of a laboratory or a one-on-one engagement, but they are simply inadequate for the multi-layered, intertwining happenings of a real-time classroom. transdisciplinarity—the nature of educational practice as a coherent realm of discussion, complexity thinking has only come together over the past 30 years or so. through much of this period, complexity has frequently been hailed as a “new science.” although originating in physics, chemistry, cybernetics, information science, and systems theory (among other domains), its interpretations and insights have increasingly been brought to bear in a broad range of social areas, including studies of family research, health, psychology, economics, business management, and politics. to a lesser, but accelerating extent, complexity has been embraced by educationists whose interests extend across such levels of activity as neurological processes, subjective understanding, interpersonal dynamics, cultural evolution, and the unfolding of the more-than-human world (e.g., doll, 1993; mason, 2008; for a review see davis & sumara, 2006). this sort of diversity has prompted the use of the adjective transdisciplinary rather than the more conventional words interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary to describe complexity studies. just as transphenomenality entails a sort of level-jumping, transdisciplinarity compels a sort of border-crossing—a need to step outside the limiting frames and methods of phenomenon-specific disciplines. transdisciplinarity is a term that is intended to flag a research attitude in which it is understood that the members of a research team arrive with different disciplinary backgrounds and often-different research agendas, yet are sufficiently informed about one another’s perspectives and motivations to be able to work together as a collective. the history of the word transdisciplinary is useful to understanding the way that education, as a domain of inquiry, is positioned as more a participant-in-the-production-ofideas than an importer-of-ideas within a complexity frame. although there is some debate as to who coined the term and when it was first used, there is general agreement that educational issues figured prominently from the beginning. by some accounts, jean piaget was the first to propose the notion in the early 1970s in reference to problems that transcend the boundaries of conventional academic disciplines. others attribute it to basarab nicolescu who, while principally concerned with questions in physics, related the term to the educational problematic. whatever the case, not only has education been part of the conversation, the domain has been characterized as among the most complex of human projects. the transdisciplinary character of complexity thinking makes it difficult to provide any sort of hard-and-fast definition of the complexity movement. indeed, many complexivists have argued that a definition is impossible. complexity thinking might be positioned somewhere between a belief in a fixed and fully knowable universe and a fear that meaning and reality are so dynamic that attempts to explicate are little more than self-delusions. in fact, complexity thinking commits to neither of these extremes, but listens to both. complexity thinking recognizes that many phenomena are inherently stable, but also acknowledges that such stability is in some ways illusory, arising in the differences of evolutionary pace between human thought and the subjects/objects of human thought. the fact that complexity thinking pays attention to diverse sensibilities should not be taken to mean that the movement represents some sort of effort to embrace the “best” elements from, for example, classical science or recent postmodern critiques of scientism. nor is it the case that complexity looks for a common ground among belief systems. complexity thinking is not a hybrid. it is a new attitude toward studying particular sorts of phenomena http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci brent davis and dennis sumara: complexity as a theory of education transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 36 that is able to acknowledge the insights of other traditions without trapping itself in absolutes or universals. further to this point, although it is tempting to describe complexity thinking as a unified realm of inquiry or approach to research, this sort of characterization is not entirely correct. in contrast to the analytic science of the enlightenment, complexity thinking is not actually defined in terms of its modes of inquiry. it is this point that most commonly arises in popularized accounts of complexity research: the domain is more appropriately characterized in terms of its objects of study than anything else. in an early narrative of the emergence of the field, waldrop (1991) introduces the diverse interests and the diffuse origins of complexity research through a list that includes such disparate events as the collapse of the soviet union, trends in a stock market, the rise of life on earth, the evolution of the eye, and the emergence of mind. other writers (e.g., prigogine, 1997; stewart & cohen, 1997) have argued that the umbrella of complexity reaches over any phenomenon that might be described in terms of a living system—including, and of immediate relevance to this discussion of educational research, bodily subsystems (such as the brain or the immune system), consciousness, personal understanding, social institutions, subcultures, cultures, and species. in a similar vein, in our own work we have argued that, for educationists, complexity research might be productively understood as the study of learning and learning systems—a notion that encompasses individuals, social groupings, bodies of knowledge, cultures, and species as well as the contexts that are implied when such “agents” are specified (davis, sumara, & luce-kapler, 2008). of course, the strategy of list-making is inherently problematic, as it does not enable discernments between complex and not-complex. to that end, researchers have identified several necessary qualities that must be manifest for a phenomenon to be classed as complex. for example, complex phenomena are self-organizing, self-maintaining, and tend to be nested within (arising from and giving rise to) other systems. these qualities might be applied to a range of phenomena of interest to educationists, including individual sense-making, teacher– learner relationships, classroom dynamics, school organizations, community involvement in education, bodies of knowledge, and culture. clearly, such a sweep may seem so broad as to be almost useless. however, the purpose of naming such a range of phenomena is not to collapse the diversity into variations on a theme or to subject disparate phenomena to a standardized method of study. exactly the contrary, the intention is to embrace the inherent complexities of diverse forms in an acknowledgment that they cannot be reduced to one another. in other words, these sorts of phenomena demand modes of inquiry that are specific to them. interdiscursivity—the nature of educational discussions one of the major issues with the notion of transdisciplinarity is that the discourses that support and are supported by various disciplines are commonly seen as incompatible, if not flatly contradictory. this particular issue is manifest in contemporary ‘paradigm wars’ in which, for example, modernist sensibilities are pitted against postmodernist, and analytic orientations are often contrasted with ecological. complexity thinking provides a means around these apparent impasses: it does so by emphasizing the need to study phenomena at the levels of their emergence, oriented by the realizations that new stable patterns of activity arise that are specific to the emergent system. this piece of advice requires that researchers pay particular attention to the paces of evolution for the phenomena at hand. for example, the biology of a species transforms over millennia and eons, and is thus sufficiently stable to lend itself to the assumptions and methods of analytic science. by contrast, other phenomena, such as a culture’s symbolic http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci brent davis and dennis sumara: complexity as a theory of education transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 37 tools, not only evolve more quickly, but are subject to very different sets of influences. analytic methods are simply inappropriate for making sense of such disperse, rapidly changing, intricately entangled sets of phenomena. it is thus that we would describe complexity thinking as a sort of interdiscourse. a discourse is a structurally coherent domain of language use—along with the activities associated with the use of that language—that organizes and constrains what can be said, done, and thought. every discourse has its own distinctive set of rules, usually operating implicitly, that govern the production of what is to count as meaningful and/or true. discourses always function in relation to or in opposition to other discourses. no discourse stands alone, although some (such as fundamentalist religion, scientism, or modernism) lay claim to a certain totalized and exclusive understanding of the universe. by attending to evolutionary pace, complexity thinking enables and compels a simultaneous appreciation of the insights of such disparate discourses as post-structuralism and analytic science. notably, as a collective, educational researchers have acknowledged this point. discourses as diverse as analytic science and post-structuralism are prominently represented in the current research literature. what is not so well represented, within single publications, at least, is the necessity of interdiscursivity. indeed, most often in the contemporary literature, discourses are presented as oppositional rather than complementary. this sort of conclusion is inevitable if the transphenomenal nature of educational “objects” is not taken into consideration. this argument may be even more germane to curriculum studies, given the inherently transphenomenal, transdisciplinary, and interdiscursive character of the domain. to that end, we move now to a discussion of the emerging pragmatics associated with a complexivist mindset. pragmatics—moving beyond description the transphenomenal interests, transdisciplinary emphases, and interdiscursive nature of complexity thinking are, we have argued, well fitted to the nested, evolving, and intertwining phenomena that are of concern to educational researchers. it is another matter, however, that renders complexity especially well suited to the realm of formal education. another of the problems with the importation of theoretical frames from psychology, sociology, and other tributary domains is that the borrowed theories tend to be concerned mainly with description. that is, they are not oriented by the principal and pragmatic project of educators of prompting learners toward particular, prespecified sets of competencies. descriptions of complex phenomena and processes are clearly useful, but insufficient within a domain construed in terms of effecting change—which, although a matter of frequent debate, is how formal education tends to be popularly understood. on this point, we do not mean to suggest that complexity thinking is the only pragmatically oriented frame. others that have been taken up by educational researchers in recent decades include psychoanalysis and, to a much lesser extent, eastern mindfulness traditions. complexity thinking shares with these frames the conviction that transformations of learning systems cannot be understood in linear or mechanical terms and that any attempt at such transformations is necessarily a deeply ethical matter than must be undertaken with caution, humility, and care (stewart & cohen, 1997). of course, as has been foregrounded by critical theorists over the past several decades, the project of effecting change is neither innocent nor benign. questions that must be addressed include, “whose conception of change?”, “where does the authority rest?”, and “who benefits?” (we could go on.) educational research that has been oriented by subjectcentered constructivist theories, for example, tends to be aimed toward “doing things http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci brent davis and dennis sumara: complexity as a theory of education transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 38 better”—ensuring better comprehension of topics, developing more effective assessment strategies, and so on—thereby side-stepping questions of the social impact or the cultural relevance of the topics to be taught and evaluated. in prompting attentions to the nested and co-implicated aspects of the educational project, questions of how to teach are often considered independently of questions of why, who, where, and what. the point? for a teaching species in a complex and ever-evolving world, it is troublesome to conceive of education strictly in terms of top-down, ends-driven structures. this is not to say that formal education can do without formal organizations or explicit curricula. the point is, rather, that education is better understood as being oriented toward the as-yet unimagined—indeed, the currently unimaginable. such a “goal” can only be understood in terms of exploration of the current spaces of possibility. education and educational research conceived in terms of expanding the space of the possible rather than perpetuating entrenched habits of interpretation, then, must be principally concerned with ensuring the conditions for the emergence of the as-yet unimagined. we would align these suggestions with pinar and grumet’s (1976) development of the notion of verb currere, root of curriculum (along with a host of other common terms in education, including course, current, and recursive), through which they refocused attentions away from the impersonal goals of mandated curriculum documents and onto the emergent and collective processes of moving though the melée of present events. in recent years, there has actually been a rapid growth in understandings of the sorts of conditions that must be in place to allow the emergence of such expansive possibilities (johnson, 2001). knowledge of these conditions has been applied, for example, in efforts to re-establish devastated ecologies and, as already mentioned, within the corporate sector to improve the viability and productivity of various industries. this knowledge has also been adapted and elaborated by a handful of educational researchers to structure classroom and research collectives (see davis & sumara, 2006, for an elaborated discussion). in particular, we have investigated educational import of the following conditions: • internal diversity, • internal redundancy, • neighbor interactions, and • decentralized control. space prohibits us from offering an in-depth discussion of these conditions, and so we offer only brief descriptions of these conditions and their possible relevancies. to render the discussion manageable, we have elected to focus on one particular level of complex activity: the transformation of a group of affiliated but independently acting agents into a unity in which personal aspirations contribute to grander collective possibilities. the discussion is oriented by the assumption that a successful collective is not just more intelligent than the smartest of its members, but that it presents occasions for all participants to be smarter—that is, to be capable of actions, interpretations, and conclusions that none would achieve on their own. in other words, each of the interdependent conditions discussed below is simultaneously a reference to global properties of a system and to the local activities of the agents. the condition of internal diversity has been used to discuss the importance of, for example, the tremendous amount of unexpressed “junk” dna in the human genome, the range of vocational competencies in any large city, the biodiversity of the planet, and the specialized functions of different brain regions. in each case, the diversity represented among units/parts/agents is seen as a source of possible responses to emergent circumstances. for instance, if a pandemic were to strike humanity, currently unexpressed dna sequences might http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci brent davis and dennis sumara: complexity as a theory of education transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 39 bestow immunity upon a few people, and hence ensure the survival of the species—an intelligent response to unforeseeable circumstances. a differently intelligent response to the same circumstances (and a ‘more’ intelligent response, from the perspective of most members of the species) might arise among the interactions of a network of researchers with expertise in such diverse domains as virology, immunology, sociology, entomology, and meteorology. a critical point here is that one cannot specify in advance what sorts of variation will be necessary for appropriately intelligent action, hence the need to ensure and maintain diversity in the current system. our linking of systemic intelligence with internal diversity in the preceding paragraph is deliberate. internal diversity defines the range and contours of possible responses. on the level of collective human action, there are important and usually broad diversities in any social grouping, no matter how homogeneously conceived. however, as demonstrated by certain religious groups, classrooms, and other structures that are in one way or another rigidly governed and/or insulated from grander systems, the possibility for expression of relevant diversities can be readily suppressed, thereby minimizing the opportunities for innovative collective action. with specific regard to classroom settings, we are prompted here to offer a critique of those “cooperative learning” and collaborate group-based strategies that are organized around formal roles and instrumental, close-ended tasks. one cannot impose diversity from the top down by naming one person a facilitator, another a recorder, and so on. diversity cannot be assigned or legislated; it must be assumed to be present. similarly, it is unlikely that diversity, even if expressed, will be recognized and valued if the task set for a collective is trivial. the complement of internal diversity of a system is internal redundancy, a term that is used to refer to duplications and excesses of those aspects that are necessary for complex coactivity. for example, in order for a group of historians to reconstruct some portion of egypt’s past, it is not necessary that everyone be able to interpret hieroglyphics. however, this sort of redundancy would likely be highly useful. in a social grouping, redundancies typically include common language, similar social status of members, shared responsibilities, constancy of setting, and so on. such redundancies tend to fade into the backdrop of social action and are only pulled into focus when there is some sort of rupture in one or more of them. in fact, at least among humans, there is vastly more redundancy than diversity. this sort of deep sameness is vital. a complex system’s capacity to maintain coherence is tied to the deep commonalities of its agents. as demonstrated by the ways that some people’s brains recover from strokes, some companies cope with employee disloyalty, and some ecosystems adapt to the loss or introduction of new species, redundancy among agents is what enables a system to cope with stress, sudden injury, and other impairments. redundancy thus plays two key roles. first it enables interactions among agents. second, when necessary, it makes it possible for agents to compensate for others’ failings. it is in these senses that redundancy is the complement of diversity. whereas internal diversity is outward-oriented, in that it enables novel actions and possibilities in response to contextual dynamics, internal redundancy is more inward-oriented, enabling the habituated, moment-tomoment interactivity of the agents that constitute a system. an upshot, perhaps obvious, is that educators and educational researchers who are interested in interactivity in a complex collective must attend to the common ground of participants. again, much of the necessary redundancy can usually be assumed to be present. however, some aspects may need to be negotiated—as is especially evident, for instance, at international meetings of curriculum scholars. some aspects can be manipulated by, for example, introducing a common text or other artifact to focus attentions, which is a point that http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci brent davis and dennis sumara: complexity as a theory of education transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 40 that is embodied in activities such as academic conferences and preparation of academic publications. none of this is to say that all members of a complex unity must “be on the same page” in terms of purpose, intentions, expectation, and so on. in fact, the vibrancy of complex unities arises in the mix of its redundant and its diverse elements—or, in systemic terms, the sources of its stability and its creativity. the harmonious co-existence of these elements is not strictly dictated by the system itself, but is better understood in terms of a function of the system-in-context. minimal redundancy among (i.e., high specialization of) agents is most valuable in relatively stable settings, but it can be associated with a loss of robustness and, hence, presents a risk of poor adaptability if the context were to become volatile. for instance, wide-scale extinctions are often linked to overspecialization (more precisely, over-speciation) and consequent inability to adapt to new conditions. similarly, factories that are organized around highly specialized micro-tasks can be very efficient, but very difficult to update or upgrade in the face of changing consumer demands. on the flip side, maximum redundancy (i.e., highly interchangeable agents, and therefore low specialization) is more appropriate in more volatile situations. increased redundancy can also engender decreased adaptability, however. taken to an extreme, a reduction in internal diversity can diminish a system’s capacity to respond quickly and intelligently, simply because it lacks a sufficient range of diverse responses. in such cases, even minor perturbations can trigger the collapse of a system. on these counts, it bears mention that projects such as the internationalization of curriculum studies stand out as powerful examples of how and why one must seek out redundancy while promoting diversity. in a knowledge-producing system, these elements must co-exist in productive tension. (by way of more familiar and more accessible examples, the juxtaposition of varied voices around common themes in discussions of curriculum serve as provocative examples of the necessary simultaneity of diversity and redundancy. see, e.g., pinar, 1999; pinar, reynolds, slattery, & taubman, 1995). with regard to the internal dynamics of a collective learning system, it goes without saying that agents must be able to affect one another’s activities. clearly, neighbors that come together in a grander unity must communicate. however, what is not so obvious is what might constitute a neighbor in the context of a knowledge-producing community such as a research collective, an academic community, a classroom grouping, or even an individual’s psyche. in our own ongoing efforts to interpret and prompt complex activity around educational topics, we have come to realize that the neighbors in knowledge-oriented communities are not physical bodies or social groupings. that is, although undeniably important, personal and group interactions for their own sake may not be as vital or as useful as is commonly assumed. rather, the neighbors that must interact with one another are ideas, hunches, queries, and other manners of representation. we recognize that there are dangers with the phrasing of the previous sentence. the claim that notions can “interact” might be interpreted as invoking a knowledge-as-object metaphor or as ascribing intentions to ideas. however, we understand knowledge in terms of potentials to action—necessarily dynamic, even volatile, subject to continuous revisions as the knowing agent integrates/embodies new experiences. the principle that we are developing here is more about the importance of activating these potentials in the hope that they might trigger others and, in the process, be blended into more sophisticated possibilities. one need only look to the academic world for many examples of these sorts of mechanisms, including conferences, seminars, journals, hallway interactions, visiting professorships, and wiki spaces, to mention only a few. a prominent metaphor that is used to point to such interactive structures is that of the conversation, foregrounding the contingent and engaged nature of the phenomenon. unfortunately, a more descriptive english vocabulary for this manner of http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci brent davis and dennis sumara: complexity as a theory of education transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 41 ideational interaction has not yet emerged, hence our reliance on the somewhat troublesome, but nonetheless productive, notions of bumping, colliding, and juxtaposition of ideas. a perhaps surprising implication here is that the critical point is that mechanisms be in place to ensure that ideas will stumble across one another, not that there must be a particular sort of organizational structure in a social collective. small group meetings, round-table discussions, face-to-face interactions, and so on may be no more effective than large conventions, straight rows, and text-mediated exchanges. indeed, in some instances, the latter structures can be considerably more effective. to restate this vital point, then, complexity thinking explicates the importance of neighbor interactions, but offers little generalizable advice on means to accomplish the meeting and blending of ideas. teachers and educational researchers must make provision for the representation and interaction of ideas, but the means of doing so must be considered on a case-by-case basis, contingent on the particular issues, contexts, and participants involved. notable trends in these regards include web 2.0 (i.e., social networking applications, wiki-spaces, etc.; see watts, 2004), collective “lesson study” protocols (fernandez & yoshida, 2004), and current movement toward “participatory” educational structures (jenkins, clinton, purushotma, robison, & weigel, 2006). our experience is that one of the first lessons of enabling neighboring interactions is that one must relinquish any desire to control the structure and outcomes of the collective, following an important conclusion of complexity research (kelly, 1994). consistent with such unities as brains, anthills, cities, and ecosystems, control in a knowledge-producing collective must be understood as decentralized, arising in localized activities. note that in this discussion of knowledge-producing systems, just as “neighbors” is used to refer to ideas, “control” has to do with emergent conceptual possibilities. we are in no way suggesting that teachers, educational researchers, or curriculum scholars should abandon their responsibilities for organizing physical structures and spaces. rather, we are talking about the development of interpretive reach, and that may entail rather rigid constraints on the physical system (as we discuss in the next section). the point is simply that interpretive possibilities (as opposed to physical conditions) cannot be managed. to impose a singular or centralized authority would be to extinguish the potential of the collective as a knowledgeproducer. in the context of this discussion of education, it might seem that an immediate implication of this condition of complex emergence is that the teacher-centered classroom and the researcher-led study group are inherently problematic. such may well be the case, at least insofar as the desire to achieve preset objectives, but the conclusion is not fully justified. in fact, the condition of decentralized control also serves to problematize the constructs of student-centered classrooms and participant-driven research. this condition of complex emergence compels us to question an assumption that underlies arguments for both teacher/researcher-centeredness and student/participant-centeredness—namely, that the locus of learning is the individual. learning occurs on other levels as well, and to appreciate this point one must be clear on the nature of the complex unities that might be desired in educational collectives. for us, these complex unities are shared ideas, insights, projects, concepts, and understandings that collectively constitute the group’s body of knowledge. to underscore this point, the goal is not interpersonal collectivity, but collective knowing, noting once again that a knowledge-producing system is not the same as the knowledge produced by the system. this conception of shared/decentralized control prompts our attentions away from matters of a leader’s actions and toward consensual domains of authority. within a structuredetermined complex system, external authorities cannot impose, but merely condition or occasion possibilities. the system itself “decides” what is and is not acceptable. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci brent davis and dennis sumara: complexity as a theory of education transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 42 pragmatically speaking, with regard to shared/distributed work or understandings, the upshot is that a person should never strive to position herself or himself (or a text or other figurehead) as the final authority on matters of appropriate or correct action. structures can and should be in place to allow students to participate in these decisions. for us, then, an important element in effective educational and research practices is the capacity to disperse control around matters of intention, interpretation, and appropriateness. the four conditions that we have presented—that is, diversity, redundancy, neighbor interactions, and decentralized control—are just part of a longer list that is subject to ongoing revision (johnson, 2001; kelly, 1994). complexity researchers have identified many others, including: • negative feedback loops (mechanisms to keep systems in check, so that aspects do not spiral out of control); • positive feedback loops (means to amplify specific qualities or dynamics that may be of use to the system); • the possibility of dying (given the interdependency of agents, a significant rupture in their interactivity—such as a shift in the relational web arising from the failure or departure of an agent—presents the possibility of cascading failure and catastrophic collapse of the system); • memory (complex unities embody their histories and identities, so an inability to preserve relevant information will precipitate a collapse of the system); • stability under perturbations (although existing far from equilibrium, the patterns of activity and interactivity that constitute a system must have some measure of stability); • reproductive instability (there must be room for “error”—that is, for the emergence of variations on relatively stable patterns—if a system is going to be adaptable). we could go on but will suffice it to say that our basis for selection of the conditions discussed in this article is the extent to which the educator or educational researcher can affect or tinker. for instance, we might readily occasion the expression of diverse understandings in a research collective or a classroom. however, by contrast, it is not (yet) clear to us how we might tinker with negative and positive feedback loops. for those, and the others listed above, we rely on conditions that are already present and well developed in human social systems, but that tend to operate on biological and/or tacit levels. on the constant need to restructure structures given the idiosyncratic characters, recursively elaborative, and ever-divergent possibilities of complex phenomena, accounts of complexity-informed research can never be offered as events to be replicated or even held up as models. at best, they can serve as illustrations, not exemplars. indeed, we ourselves have failed in efforts to “replicate” studies in different settings, in large part because of inabilities to accommodate to the particularities of varied contexts. encouraged by the fecundity of specific projects, we have on occasion misinterpreted or failed to perceive the ambiguities that arise between settings and, in the process, assumed a coherence (or the possibility of a coherence) that simply was not there. in retrospect, in these instances, we failed to attend to the four conditions discussed in this article. yet even if we had, there was no guarantee that a similar richness would have been achieved. complexity cannot be scripted or managed into existence. however, it can sometimes be occasioned. the critical issue developed in this article is that such occasioning http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci brent davis and dennis sumara: complexity as a theory of education transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 43 is contingent not only on the appropriate conditions being in place, but for attentions to be oriented toward the appropriate level(s) of complex activity. or, phrased somewhat differently, an education that is understood in complexity terms cannot be conceived in terms of preparation for the future. rather it must be construed in terms of participation in the creation of possible futures. educational research, framed complexly, must also be interpreted as participatory—meaning that (following jenkins et al., 2006), there are opportunities for expression and engagement, there is support for creating and sharing creations, there is some type of teaching so the most experienced can mentor new members, members believe their contributions matter, and members feel social connection with one another. in this way, complexity theory offers an alternative to the longstanding tendency among educational researchers to import frames and foci from other domains. complexity research does not allow such unidirectional borrowing. rather, there is an expectation of participation in the emergence and evolution of insights. one does not “apply” complexity principles; one takes part in their articulation and elaboration. in this sense, we would argue, complexity theory can be properly construed as an educational theory. references bloom, h. (2001). global brain: the evolution of mass mind from the big bang to the 21st century. new york: wiley. davis, b., & sumara, d. (2006). complexity and education: inquiries into learning, teaching, and research. mahwah, nj: erlbaum. davis, b., sumara, d., & luce-kapler, r. (2008). engaging minds: changing teaching in complex times, second edition. new york: routledge. deacon, t. (1997). the symbolic species: the co-evolution of language and the human brain. new york: w.w. norton. doll, jr., w.e. (1993). a post-modern perspective on curriculum. new york: teachers college press. donald, m. (2002). a mind so rare: the evolution of human consciousness. new york: w.w. norton. fernandez, c., & yoshida, m. (2004). lesson study: a japanese approach to improving mathematics teaching and learning. mahwah, nj: erlbaum. gopnik, a., meltzoff, a.n., & kuhl, p.k. (2000). the scientist in the crib: what early learning tells us about the mind. new york: harperperennial. jenkins, h., clinton, k., purushotma, r., robison, a.j., & weigel, m. (2006). confronting the challenges of participatory culture: media education for the 21st century. the macarthur foundation. available at: http://www.digitallearning.macfound.org/ johnson, s. (2005). everything bad is good for you: how today’s popular culture is actually making us smarter. new york: riverhead books. kelly, k. (1994). out of control: the new biology of machines, social systems, and the economic world. cambridge, ma: perseus. mason, m. (editor). (2008). “complexity theory and the philosophy of education.” special issue of educational philosophy and theory, 40(1). pinar, w.f. (editor). (1999). contemporary curriculum discourses, 2nd edition. new york: peter lang. pinar, w.f., & grumet, m.r. (1976). toward a poor curriculum. dubuque, ia: kendall/hunt. pinar, w.f., reynolds, w.m., slattery, p., & taubman, p.m. (1995). understanding curriculum. new york: peter lang. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci http://www.digitallearning.macfound.org brent davis and dennis sumara: complexity as a theory of education transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 44 plotkin, h. (1994). darwin machines and the nature of knowledge. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. prigogine, i. (1997). the end of certainty: time, chaos, and the new laws of nature. new york: the free press. stewart, i., & cohen, j. (1997). figments of reality: the evolution of the curious mind. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. waldrop, m.m. (1992). complexity: the emerging science on the edge of order and chaos. new york: simon and schuster. watts, d. (2004). small worlds: the dynamics of networks between order and randomness. princeton, nj: princeton university press. zull, j.e. (2002). the art of changing the brain: enriching the practice of teaching by exploring the biology of learning. sterling, va: stylus. authors brent davis is professor, david robitaille chair in mathematics, science, & technology education, department of curriculum studies, university of british columbia, canada. email: brent.davis@ubc.ca dennis sumara is professor and head, department of curriculum studies, faculty of education, university of british columbia, canada. email: dennis.sumara@ubc.ca http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci mailto:davis@ubc.ca mailto:sumara@ubc.ca to cite this article please include all of the following details: hoyt, mei wu (2006). john dewey’s legacy to china and the problems in chinese society. transnational curriculum inquiry, 3(1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> john dewey’s legacy to china and the problems in chinese society mei wu hoyt texas a&m university, usa eighty-seven years ago, john dewey and his wife, alice dewey, visited china in response to an invitation from some of his chinese former students at columbia university. dewey stayed in china for two years, traveling throughout the country to present lectures at universities and colleges, many of which were published or reported in various local newspapers. his educational philosophies were respected and valued, and were even taken as the theme for china’s educational conference in 1922. his lectures included political science, social science, philosophy and education. in those lectures, dewey clarified the democratic way of thinking, doing and living to the chinese people. through his speeches, he enlightened his chinese listeners about the importance of reflective thinking and reasoning in constructing human intelligence, of lively inquiries, and of education rooted in science and democracy. during dewey’s visit, china was in a state of political instability, economic sluggishness and vulnerable international relationships. in contrast, both culturally and intellectually, chinese thinkers were dynamic and full of passion. many chinese intellectuals were disappointed with the political and economic situation of that period, and they admired the democracy and industrial development of western countries. they wanted to learn from the west so as to save china from economic poverty, political chaos and diplomatic inferiority. many attributed the genesis of these problems to traditional confucianism’s confinement of china’s modernization. these leaders in chinese thought wanted to break away from the old and construct a new way of conceptualizing china. dewey’s inspiring speeches and ideas brought hope to chinese intellectuals that they might move china forward. when in china, dewey had a unique opportunity to advance his philosophy. at the same time, he was confronted with substantial challenges. many chinese intellectuals’ ties to confucianism were still strong, and their desire to find a western counterpart to the humanistic and spiritual values of confucianism was not successful. these intellectuals, such as liang shu-ming, a professor of beijing university, and liang qichao1 (known as liang ch’i-ch’ao in taiwan), a well-known reformist, had no doubt about china’s need for reform, but they also worried about the spiritual and humanistic values (or lack thereof) in western democracy. moreover, dewey’s democracy was not the only western philosophy being studied in china at the time. for example, many of the chinese who studied in europe promoted european philosophy, especially marxist theory, which was widely discussed among university professors and students. the success of the russian revolution in 1917 and the bolshevik socialistic government was a prominent (and apparently successful) model for budding chinese communists. dewey’s achievements in the educational sphere were substantial, yet this significant impact was overshadowed by the pragmatism omnipresent in western democracy. also, after mei wu hoyt: john dewey’s legacy to china and the problems in chinese society transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (1) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 13 1927, dewey’s influence in china had been declining. the coupling of his pragmatism with his theories of democracy disturbed both chinese confucian intellectuals and chinese marxists. i argue that dewey’s influence might have been stronger if he had solely advocated educational philosophies. however, that was not possible because dewey’s understanding of education was inseparable from his notions of pragmatism and democracy. consequently, the decline of his influence and his philosophies was due to many factors. this paper explores the strength of dewey’s democracy, traces these factors, and considers why western democracy did not thrive in china. i do this from the standpoint of a person of chinese origin who is especially about the problems that defer or deter the development of democracy and the construction of human intelligence in china. dewey’s democracy to understand dewey’s legacy to china, and the decline of his influence on the chinese, it is important to understand what dewey meant by democracy and why those meanings were considered either adequate or conflicted at that period of time. dewey’s democracy, in general, had the following features, which i will discuss at greater length: • democracy is more than a form • step-by-step democracy • associated democracy • tolerant democracy • pragmatism (cf. marxism) democracy is more than a form dewey (1916/1944) presented his democratic ways of teaching, learning and living in one of his best-known books, democracy and education, a work in which he integrated his democratic philosophy with his theories of education, to the extent that he saw education as the basis for seeking a democratic realization of self and society. dewey also wrote books and gave lectures on political democracy, democratic rights, social democracy and economic democracy, all of which embodied and vigorously promoted the understandings of a democratic society that endured throughout his career. when talking about democracy, many people connect it with egalitarian suffrage in the electoral process. indeed, the democracy of political rights began with polling and was how the ancient athenians governed their polis (condemning socrates to death by democratic votes is a well-known example). but if democracy is equated with voting at polls, then it is only a “most votes” system and has nothing to do with being wise. the democracy that dewey presented demanded democratic intelligence and wise individuality. dewey (1916/1944) wrote: “a democracy is more than a form of government; it is primarily a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experience” (p.87). in other words, democracy should be carried out from the bottom to the top, not from the top to the bottom – a pervasive acceptance and practice of democracy by the general populace. benjamin schwartz reflected this important concept when he paraphrased dewey: democracy must have a grass-roots social basis. it must be part of the fabric of the lives of people and begin in every village and in every city block. discussions concerning cabinet organization, parliamentary organization, even about centralism versus federalism, are unreal so long as the people as a whole are not thoroughly imbued with democratic attitudes and do not participate in the processes of a democratic life (quoted in berry, 1960, p.208) mei wu hoyt: john dewey’s legacy to china and the problems in chinese society transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (1) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 14 there are numerous (so-called) democratic elites. for example, many democratic representatives of the june 4th movement in beijing believe that only when political problems are resolved, that is, only when the government is changed, can social and cultural problems be fixed. this point of view takes politics to be omnipotent. but democracy is beyond a political concept or a power. the form of government democracy takes is only an external change. dewey argued that external signs could not provide for internal beliefs, but that internal human intelligence would by necessity be both critical and influential. only the people themselves have the wisdom to judge right from wrong; only they can adjust their thinking and behavior to build a truly democratic society. democracy is the effect of intelligent decisions, which include voting in a democratic forum. voting is an effect rather than the cause of democracy and voting alone does not necessarily produce democracy. in constructing human intelligence, practice is important. it should encourage undeveloped ideas and critical thinking for people to express and examine. democracy, then, is much more than a form of government. in dewey’s lectures in china, he repeatedly reiterated this point. he called upon chinese people to be willing to freely participate in political discussions and activities, to build up a government that would represent them but not control them. he said, “a fundamental tenet of democratic political theory is government by the consent of the governed” (dewey, 1973, p.94). here dewey showed that democracy is not only a political concept but that it is also a concept important to daily life. it should not be defined stipulatively, but rather remain an open, questionable and critical dialogue or exploration among freethinking and freely acting people in their pursuit of human intelligence. many chinese intellectual radicals in the 1920s lost trust in a corrupt warlord government. also, the governments during the 1910s and 1920s were very unstable and, therefore, the desire for these intellectuals to set up a new order and a new government outgrew their tendency to simply acquiesce to unstable governments. a step-by-step democracy dewey believed that true democracy demands a democratic life that needs to be built up and lived out bit-by-bit, even in china – an unstable nation in a state of disorder and national turmoil. in working for a democratic life, force or eagerness alone cannot accomplish the goal. instead, in discussing intellectual freedom with his chinese audience, dewey (1973) suggested: ideally, of course, it is a good thing to have the people of a nation thinking about the same problems and moving in the direction of agreement. but---and this is especially true of a time like the present---this sort of consensus can be achieved only through gradual development, as the result of free discussion and evaluation of conflicting ideas and claims; it can never be achieved by force (p. 178). to act by continuous and patient persuasion to gain consensus, rather than by force, was largely a western rhetorical skill, which could be traced back to classical greco-roman education. western self-expressive presentation, especially in front of an audience, was an experience that many chinese lacked. chinese people had previously focused on changing the views of the leader rather than the majority of the people, and the relationship between the leader and the followers was (most of the time) authoritative, but not persuasive. dewey presented the chinese people with a new mode of political action, a way that was different from chinese habit. dewey was not a radical philosopher, and he did not believe in radical ways of achieving success. many radicals wanted to replace bad governments with democratic ones, which would give voting rights to common people and people the freedom to talk freely and mei wu hoyt: john dewey’s legacy to china and the problems in chinese society transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (1) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 15 publicly. it seems that this way seemed quickest and easiest, but might not ingrain democratic attitudes and ways of living into people’s minds. radicals emphasized less the construction of democratic attitudes by the populace than the form of governmental democracy itself. radical ideas often sound reasonable and radical opinions often overcome conservative views, eventually gaining the necessary support from the masses. this result is not necessarily because radical action is imperative, but because social conditions cannot sustain continual conflict. therefore, when radical ideas are presented, they usually get both response and support. dewey (1973) contradicted radical ideas when he wrote: “the basic reason why a radical idea can gain acceptance quickly lies not in the idea itself, but in the circumstances under which it is advanced” (p. 177). he explained that what people need is not the radical idea itself, but some means of expressing their displeasure, disbelief and antagonism, and radical ideas often seem to expedite the realization of that “dream.” radical ideas ignite the fuse attached to the bomb of tension and eagerness infused within the masses. ideas must be internalized and linked to a person’s experience for them to be utilized and to achieve true acceptance. a radical idea or a radical action does not allow process for people to reflect, to wonder. if an idea is put into action too quickly, without its intellectual “digestion” by its practitioners, it cannot promise stability. dewey, therefore, believed that it was not the radical idea itself, but rather the environment within which the people suffer that might accelerate their acceptance of radical ideas. instead of choosing radical ideas and resolving their problem the fast but temporary way, dewey suggested changing the world incrementally – little by little. he said: “progress is retail business, not wholesale. it is made piecemeal, not all at once” (p. 62). democracy needs to be lived rather than preached. for a true sense of democracy, dewey reminded chinese people to use intelligence to distinguish radical forces from a gradual democratic consensus. associated democracy for dewey, a democratic society was for all, including both friends and enemies. a democratic society is based on communication, cooperation and interaction among all involved individuals; its survival depends upon the consensus of its people. he claims: “a democratic society depends for its stability and development not on force, but on consensus” (p. 93). he favored the common good over class struggle. for dewey, theories of class struggle deprive opponents of their rights; these opponents are also part of the society, and are elements of the same society; they are still important and should not be ignored. some followers of class struggle theory, including the early communists in china’s history, deprived the bourgeoisie of their rights to own land, property, and even to possess common human dignity. between 1949 and 1976, many landlords, capitalists and intellectuals were put into re-education camps, and were publicly criticized and insulted. spiritually, the bourgeoisie were treated as an exploiting class, an opposite to the proletariat. but do two different classes have to be in opposition to one another? does one’s success have to be the other’s failure? looking back on chinese history, every exchange of dynasties, every revolutionary action, was due to class struggle. the antagonism was intense, the struggle was difficult, and the means were always radical. this model, for dewey, obviously did not represent the common good. to end this antagonistic cycle, he argued that incorporating democratic ways of living could present a satisfactory resolution for all parties involved. recognizing the common good and the compatible relationship among social groups, dewey suggested the enrichment of associated living. he understood associated living to be the essential criteria for judging a right act of human activity and societal improvement. he told the chinese people: mei wu hoyt: john dewey’s legacy to china and the problems in chinese society transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (1) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 16 associated living is characterized by cooperation, and that it is to the mutual advantage of everyone concerned in it. it is like friendship. friends help each other, exchange knowledge and insights, with the result that their lives are richer and more meaningful. associated living is the highest ideal of social development (dewey, 1973, p. 89). in associated living, animosity could be attenuated and cooperation strengthened. reconstruction of relationships would take the place of power struggles when dealing with controversies and conflicts. reconstruction would keep the original infrastructure of the society, making changes to it without totally destroying the existing social structure. this reconstruction would be internal, generated from a mutual understanding among the living system of an entire society rather than stemming from superficial structures or rules. the reconstruction of a society should aim to increase progress both socially and culturally and would depend upon every member’s effort. social progress, in dewey’s words, “is neither an accident nor a miracle; it is the sum of efforts by individuals whose actions are guided by intelligence” (p.63). tolerant democracy associated living primarily depends upon one’s degree of tolerance. recognizing human weakness, dewey remained optimistic and treated examples of such weakness with tolerance. he preferred aristotle to plato because plato was too utopian to be realistic about human society. a utopia, for dewey, was simply a castle in the sky, unrealistic and unreachable; utopia could only ever be an illusion never to come true for human society. for dewey, there were no ideal human beings or society. as ryan (1995) writes: “individuals and societies alike are stirred into life by problems; an unproblematic world would be a world not so much at rest as unconscious” (p, 28). dewey saw society as problematic and believed that an unproblematic world is also wholly unrealistic. therefore, human life itself is also necessarily problematic. he acknowledged that human nature is flawed and that people have weaknesses. as a result, social conflicts are unavoidable. however, being both positive and hopeful, he believed that the purpose of life as a human being is to overcome one problem after another; these problems, then, would include the weaknesses of human beings themselves. dewey optimistically believed that during the process of solving these problems, human beings could change and grow in a positive way. he understood that social conflicts do not always exist simply because there are different interests among the classes, races or different belief structures. we cannot avoid the occurrence of conflict, and instead need to discover if there is a group’s interest based upon other groups’ disadvantages, and if other groups are being suppressed or deprived of their rightful privileges and opportunities. the function of democracy is not to reject difference or disallow controversy, but rather to achieve the common good through discussion and debate. dewey (1916/1944) believed that there can be a shared common good among different groups of people. he argued: “it is not true there is no common interest in such an organization between governed and governors” (p. 84). tolerance of difference is an ideal shared by many western democracies. the diversity within american society exemplifies this principle. dewey cherished this value and affirmed it by calling for free participation in social activities and associated living. deweyan pragmatism cf. marxism in the early part of the 20th century, especially between the onset of world war i and the late 1920s, the problems within china intrigued many young chinese intellectuals, encouraging them to try to find the best way to save china from an historical crisis. both dewey’s pragmatism and marx’s communism were honored and speculated. dewey and marx mei wu hoyt: john dewey’s legacy to china and the problems in chinese society transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (1) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 17 emphasized many similar social issues such as social justice, democracy and the economy. some ideas generated by these different schools of thought were not totally opposite, yet both their focus and understanding of each problem were quite different. marxism eventually won political dominance, and this final outcome has since inspired people to ponder how marxism managed to succeed, what characteristics of the chinese, of chinese habits, living philosophies and national emotions facilitated this takeover at that time. dewey is well known for his pragmatism, and dewey’s democracy is supported by pragmatic values. because of dewey’s democratic emphasis on the social aspects of life and his critique of capitalism, he was often considered a socialist. while both dewey and marx promoted similar aims for human beings, that is, the creation of a society for the common good, their means were substantially different. for dewey, such a result could only be obtained by a gradual construction of communicative social relationships, and this process must be based upon self-improvement; for marx, a radical revolution was necessary to get expunge the old, and even to oppress the opposite, currently dominant parties. with regards to their relationship to working for the common good, for many chinese, dewey’s philosophies and ideas were unclear, overly complicated, and inefficient, while marx pointed out a concrete destination, a clearly designed and expedient way to implement an egalitarian society. both dewey’s pragmatism and marx’s socialism shared social equality as their aim. however, dewey’s emphasis was on the process and the foundation, such as the human being’s capacity to achieve social equality and actually live it through cooperative approach, whereas marx focused on a blueprint for the future, empowering the oppressed, and ignored the capacity of individual intelligence. dewey’s pragmatic democracy focuses more on morals and ethics, more on individual initiative and intelligence of a single person within the democratic system – on the internal characteristics of human beings; marx proposed a materialist or class-struggle socialism, an external system. if marx’s socialism emphasized an external form of egalitarian suffrage, i.e., economic rights, dewey’s pragmatism focused on a more a spiritual one. dewey’s spiritual focus matched confucian ethics and taoist aesthetics, both of which occupy a prominent place in chinese thinking. dewey (1973) criticized marx for overlooking the importance of morality. he explained that marx’s socialism “eschews morality as an irrelevant criterion for criticizing social and economic institutions, calls its point of view scientific, and postulates a determinism in which the natural law of cause and effect will automatically bring about revolutionary changes” (p.118). facing the impending political and social crisis in china in the early 20th century, many chinese intellectuals might not have been able to admit abstract human intelligence and ethical issues to be as critical as the possibility of obtaining concrete political power. the human intelligence and ethics that marxism substantially neglected were what chinese intellectuals left unexpressed and understated. chinese marxism failed to elaborate upon ethics and aesthetics, the traditional virtues and infrastructure of a society, and this failure to harmonize marxism with ethics and aesthetics created a dissonance between marxism and the inner character of most chinese people. dewey also opposed marxism’s governmental control of the economy, which is called a “planned economy” in china. dewey argued that one important and dangerous aspect of this kind of economy was the “diminution of individual initiative, a reduction of spontaneity, a lessening of incentive, and a resulting apparent regression to feudal arrangements” (p.122). dewey’s economic theory represented his democratic ideas on human potential, and the importance he placed on developing that potential. the planned economy of socialism nullifies these potentials and deprives individuals of their creativity, vigor and the power of their imagination. both marx and dewey remarked that the economy is the foundation of a country, but on some of the finer points of this claim, they differed. for marx, economy was mei wu hoyt: john dewey’s legacy to china and the problems in chinese society transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (1) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 18 the decisive factor for the entire social structure, but for dewey, considering only the economy was not enough; the human mind, or human intelligence, was more critical. marx implied that in capitalism the exploiters would always be richer; the proletariat would be much poorer as a capitalist system developed. he believed that a capitalist’s property should be appropriated to break the recycling of wealth. as campbell (1988) argues: marxists’ complex of the exploitation of the many by the few brings about the need for fostering an exclusive class morality and the class struggle to establish the kind of economic equality which will eventually result in a truly democratic society (p. 141). marx aimed to establish a proletariat democratic society, and his point of view was deeply rooted in his lack of faith in capitalists, or indirectly, he doubted that any capitalist would intentionally work for the common good of other groups of individuals. this distrust led to his theoretical dichotomy between human beings. he felt that this dichotomy did not compromise the diversity of the proletariat or those who did not share in one another’s truths. alternatively, dewey’s pragmatic democracy was a plural one, which accepted and compromised to accommodate all diversity and difference. hall and ames (1999) describe dewey’s communitarian pragmatic pluralism: “in general, communitarians will promote the idea of a community that manages to harmonize the greatest degrees of difference. difference itself becomes a value to be prized” (p. 181). dewey conceived that the wealth that capitalism produced could benefit the poor. also, he believed that experienced capitalists could better manipulate business than governments, allowing for a more prosperous economy that would inherently carry advantages for the poor. he felt that capitalism was not really the enemy of the poor. he did not like capitalism, but his unfavorable opinion of capitalist society stemmed from the “exploitative possessive individualism fostered by capitalism” (westbrook, 1991, p. 434), which over-emphasized isolated individuality and neglected an individual’s social functions and responsibilities. dewey was less a social darwinist and more a welfare liberal. he believed in associated living and hoped that capitalists would be able to work for the good of other groups. he believed that “any real advantage of one group is shared by all groups; and when one group suffers disadvantage, all are hurt” (dewey, 1973, p.71). instead of examining class struggles among social groups, dewey conceptualized society as an associated living community. the notion of associated life centered on dewey’s definition of democracy. he considered that every individual in such a society was an essential component and had to be conscious of social changes in order to make it his or her duty to act for a better social environment for all. dewey (1916/1944) considered an extended democracy to be a joint endeavor. he wrote: the extension in space of the number of individuals who participate in an interest so that each has to refer his own action to that of others, and to consider the action of others to give point and direction to his own, is equivalent to the breaking down of those barriers of class, race, and national territory which kept men from perceiving the full import of their activity (p. 87). for dewey (1973), the essential components of associated living were “free and open communication, unself-seeking and reciprocal relationships, and the sort of interaction that contributes to mutual advantage” (p. 92). associated living stressed equal opportunity for the free participation of all social groups, assuming that in such a society everyone would, by necessity, be considerate of others’ rights and needs. we can see that the heart of dewey’s democracy lies in his attitude towards moderation, his belief in doing things gradually, his optimism about people’s potential to change themselves as well as his acknowledgement of the weakness of human nature, his respect for mei wu hoyt: john dewey’s legacy to china and the problems in chinese society transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (1) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 19 differences and pursuit of common interests, his construction of social intelligence as opposed to blind faith, and finally, his understanding that the content of democratic life is much more important than the form (i.e., voting). dewey’s moderate attitude is not singular to his philosophy. in confucianism, chung yung, or the doctrine of the mean, also valued moderation and harmony as the soul of living. confucius took the virtue of chung yung to be the highest. however, this does not necessarily mean that many chinese people or even many confucian intellectuals actualized or embodied such a virtue. even confucius himself always questioned: “how transcendent is the moral power of the mean! that it is but rarely found among the common people is a fact long admitted” (quoted in zhang & zhong, 2003, p. 256). in chinese history, every dynasty’s exchange occurred according to the revolutionary means of overthrowing the former dynasty. the chinese had not actively practiced the way of chung yung. although dewey and chinese traditional culture fostered one another, marxism eventually took control. marxism demonstrated a definite answer to chinese psychological aspirations during that period of time. on the one hand, chinese people resented their corrupt, feudalistic warlord government, which also happened to be supported by western powers; that resentment was developed for both anti-feudalism and anti-imperialism. on the other hand, the capitalistic democratic revolution of 19113 was not tangibly successful and left many problems unresolved. china’s direction was uncertain, and substantial doubt for capitalist democracy did exist. essentially, marxism could be considered to be both antifeudal and anti-capitalist/imperialist, and it also asserted that communism was the unavoidable ultimate endpoint to human society’s development. feudalism and capitalism were just steps along an unavoidable progression towards communism. these ideas align more closely with the needs of many chinese than with dewey’s moderate pragmatism, and pragmatism itself was considered to be an extension of western capitalist democracy. marxism convinced the chinese that they could take a faster road to utopia by skipping capitalism. dewey’s contribution to china dewey received a warm welcome from chinese intellectuals when he visited china in the 1920s. before dewey’s arrival, his former student, hu shih, had already written several articles to introduce dewey’s pragmatism to the chinese intellectual community. when dewey arrived in china, he gave lectures at the national peking university and the national nanking university; his articles were published in the bulletin of the ministry of education and various newspapers. dewey taught courses at the national peking university, the national peking teachers’ college, and the national nanking teachers’ college. during his time in china, he visited at least eleven different cities. he and his wife wrote of their experiences in letters to their daughter, evelyn dewey, in the u.s., and she later published them under the title letters from china and japan (1920). this book gave readers a picture of his experiences in china and of chinese social life in the 1920s. dewey also recorded his impressions of china and the chinese people, which were collected into another book entitled characters and events (1929). his most direct, face-to-face encounters with chinese people occurred during his lectures. dewey lectured on social and political philosophy, philosophy of education, ethics, types of thinking, three philosophers of the modern period, modern tendencies in education, and the democratic development of america. of these topics, he considered the philosophy of education and social and political philosophy to be the most important. dewey put tremendous effort into these lectures, and his philosophy of education lectures attracted substantial attention, greatly influencing china during that time and after. mei wu hoyt: john dewey’s legacy to china and the problems in chinese society transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (1) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 20 the most significant influence dewey had on china was due to his arduous promotion of civilian education. dewey believed absolutely in the importance of knowledge for the entire nation, and especially knowledge as it featured within democracy and science. the human intelligence he encouraged not only fit the sphere of science, but most importantly for dewey, it helped to develop reflective ways of thinking, living, reasoning and doing, and would be best developed through basic education for all. dewey’s influence extended from higher education to middle and elementary schools. many chinese teachers were inspired by dewey’s lectures and began to teach by using dewey’s pragmatic educational philosophies. one of the great chinese educators, tao hsing-chi, was one of dewey’s graduate students at columbia university. after he finished his study in the united states, tao hsing-chi went back to china and taught at the national nanking teachers college. like dewey, tao realized that civilian education was the foundation for national development. tao later left his job at the college and went into the countryside to promote civilian education. he considered his work in the country to be one of the most important educational concepts he practiced, and set up his own experimental teachers’ school, xiaozhuang teachers school, to actualize his beliefs. civilian education provided the opportunity to educate those who lived at the lowest levels of society; step-by-step, civilian education popularized the possession of knowledge within the rural populace. tao’s school emphasized doing, and learning by doing, exemplifying dewey’s influence on tao’s educational philosophy. chinese traditional thinking believes that knowing is first. only when you know, can you do. dewey argued that doing comes first, and that by learning while doing, you will actually know. tao hsing-chi acknowledged the difference in philosophies and agreed with dewey. tao, previously named chi-hsing changed his name to tao hsing-chi after he embraced dewey’s philosophy. when translated to english, “hsing-chi” means “doing-knowing.” thus tao hsing-chi and his educational philosophies were greatly influenced by dewey, and dewey in turn paid great attention to tao’s work. when tao died in 1946, dewey, then aged 87, sent condolences to tao’s family and was emeritus chairman of tao’s memorial gathering in new york. however, although they clearly had a meaningful relationship, dewey was not acknowledged when other chinese intellectuals eventually evaluated tao’s work. tao was a great thinker who put his beliefs into practice and adapted dewey’s theories to chinese conditions – a pragmatic approach that worked. dewey did not think china was a nation that should uncritically accept ideas from others. he always suggested that the chinese combine advanced foreign ideas with their own cultural potential. hu shih was another chinese intellectual who advocated civilian education. in hu shih’s lectures he emphasized that civilian education is the prerequisite of civilian politics. he was also one of the founders of the “chinese organization for promoting civilian education.” civilian education was important and meaningful for china, with its substantial population of peasants. to educate most civilians, instead of only the elite, was to construct human intelligence on an extensive scale. another important contribution dewey made to the chinese people in the sphere of education was the guidance he gave in achieving intelligence. a few days after dewey arrived in shanghai in 1919, the may fourth movement2 broke out and quickly spread from the north, into southern china. students in beijing were the initiators, and later more students joined in the south. in addition, businessmen and workers in both the north and south joined in the movement. dewey was emotionally affected by the students’ enthusiasm, but at the same time he worried that this movement was only an expression of outrage instead of an expression of a more mature, national wisdom. about the movement, dewey (1929) said, “the movement is for the most part still a feeling rather than an idea. it is also accompanied mei wu hoyt: john dewey’s legacy to china and the problems in chinese society transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (1) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 21 by the extravagances and confusion, the undigested medley of wisdom and nonsense that inevitably mark so ambitious a movement in its early stages” (p.278). by facing the situation in china at that time, dewey showed his great compassion for the chinese people and the nation of china. his compassion became his method of enlightening the populace about both democracy and science. during the end of his lecture entitled moral education: the social aspects, he told his chinese audience about his thoughts on the may fourth movement. he hoped to convince the chinese people to realize the difference between emotion and intelligence, and to guide them to transcend emotion in exchange for intelligence. he explained: i do not deprecate emotion; emotion is essential, but i must be under the control of intelligence if it is to contribute to the solution of fundamental problems. the student movement now has this characteristic of controlled emotion; it is a conscious movement which hopes, with reason, that it can help build a new china (dewey, 1973, p. 302). most likely, the educational reform under dewey’s philosophy was appeared to be the most obvious and most effective. according to clopton and ou (who translated and edited dewey’s lectures in china), some practical reforms under dewey’s influence in the 1920s can be seen in the following alterations to chinese culture: chinese educational aims were changed to “the cultivation of perfect personality and the development of democratic spirit” (p, 22); the principles of the national school system reformation in 1922 were described as: (a) to adapt the education system to the needs of social evolution; (b) to promote the spirit of democracy; (c) to develop individuality; (d) to take the economic status of the people into special consideration; (e) to promote education for life; (f) to facilitate the spread of universal education; and (g) to make the school system flexible enough to allow for local variations” (quoted in dewey, 1973, p. 23). a child-centered curriculum was developed, experimental schools following the model of dewey’s chicago laboratory school were set up, and textbooks written in the common vernacular were used. from these practices, the significance of dewey’s ideas in chinese education was exampled. although dewey’s philosophies were purged in the early days of the chinese communist party’s governance, dewey’s influence on chinese educators was lasting and remarkable. besides the impact he had at that time in history, dewey’s importance can also be seen today. even during the 1970s, in mao’s era, dewey’s educational philosophies were discussed and published in china, and after the 1980s, more and more people became interested in dewey. since then, his theories and books, one after another, have increasingly been published. problematic reappraisal of dewey dewey’s theories were suppressed from the 1950s to the 1970s. even dewey’s pragmatism had been affected by the purge initiated by the chinese government in the 1950s. this movement aimed to purge the influence of dewey’s pragmatic philosophies and the details of his capitalistic democracy that did not fit with marxist dogma, for dewey had explicitly expressed his disapproval of marxism. the chinese communist government’s desire to keep dominant the dictatorial status of marxism was evident through its continual preaching of marxism and constant criticizing of capitalism (or any other -isms that did not align with marxist principles). dewey’s pragmatism became a target not only because of his antimarxist ideas, but also because many of dewey’s followers, especially the most famous one, hu shih, escaped to taiwan and joined the national people’s party (kuomintang), a sworn mei wu hoyt: john dewey’s legacy to china and the problems in chinese society transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (1) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 22 enemy of the communists. it is no surprise that pragmatism survived and developed in taiwan, but not in mainland china. in the 1980s, some mainland chinese scholars began to reappraise dewey’s theories and his influence. most of them carefully and quietly considered dewey’s educational ideas within the boundaries of chinese educational requirements. what they primarily discussed was dewey’s pragmatic educational theories. few discussed dewey’s social and political theories, or his theories on ethics. zhang rulun, a philosopher at fudan university, gave lectures on dewey at beijing university in the fall of 2002. there, he argued that dewey’s 16 lectures on social and political philosophy given during his visit to china did not get sufficient attention. after the 1980s, many chinese scholars tended to focus on dewey’s educational philosophies, leaving behind dewey’s social and political philosophies. one possible reason for this was probably the inconvenience associated with obtaining references. according to zhang rulun, the original english transcripts of the essential 16 lectures were missing. these 16 lectures were given on the request of hu shih, specifically meeting the requirements of china’s unique situation. although dewey had other published works on social and political philosophy, they seemed not as relevant to china’s problems. another reason for a lessening of interest in dewey’s work was that many scholars became more conservative with regards to sensitive topics, especially after the cultural revolution that suppressed chinese intellectuals and deprived them of their intellectual and academic freedom. at the time, it was simply too risky to be political. yet another reason was that at the time there was a contrasting vogue in the academic field. people tended to focus on more popular persons and philosophies. new theorists began to attract chinese people’s attention, such as derrida, habermas and heidegger. as zhang rulun (2002) argues: “usually people judge a thinker by the academic popularity instead of one’s achievement and importance in academic sphere”. when reappraising dewey’s philosophy, only focusing on his educational philosophy is not enough. dewey’s educational theories and his values were closely tied to the social, political and economic environment of his time. education is a socially sponsored activity, and dewey did not deny the political nature of education. he pointed out that “any education given by a group tends to socialize its members, but the quality and value of the socialization depends upon the habits and aims of the group” (dewey 1916/1944, p. 83). bearing in mind the political and social implications of his educational philosophies would help further research in comparative education. current problems in chinese society like all societies, china has her own unique problems, and these problems become the obstacles to critically examine social, political and educational problems in the light of dewey’s legacy. one of these problems is the party’s monolithic presence in both social and political life. when chinese marxists took over power in 1949, the whole nation was ordered to learn marxism. even in the interpretation of marxism, diversity was not encouraged. dogmatic and assertive, the implementation of the knowledge of marxism became rigid doctrine. a piece of knowledge, an idea that cannot wholly be one’s own, is dead if it is not allowed to develop. william doll (2005), drawing on whitehead, argues: “ideas are inert when they are ‘disconnected,’ atomistic, isolated; related neither to the practicalities of life, nor to an individual’s own interests, nor to the field in which they exist” (27). what made the chinese communist party afraid to allow different interpretations of marxism or the making of marxism more discussable in people’s own individual ways, based upon their personal experiences? perhaps that human intelligence, the advancement of which dewey was so dedicated, was a threat to the dominant party in china. the free expression of ideas might mei wu hoyt: john dewey’s legacy to china and the problems in chinese society transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (1) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 23 allow for a challenge to the status quo, but that does not necessarily mean that dewey, himself, was a threat. he argues: “when ideas are openly expressed and published, they can be modified and corrected; when they are suppressed they erupt in some other form, frequently in violence. the more rigid the efforts to suppress ideas, the greater the danger”(p.176). the numerous radical rebellions in china’s history exemplify the fact that if the ideas of oppressed peasants cannot be expressed, the government leaves those peasants only one way to express themselves: through rebellion or revolution. the second problem inhibiting dewey studies is the trust crisis. in the 1950s, many movements directed and initiated by the communist party gradually caused a deeply rooted disbelief to exist amongst intellectuals and the populace. most of these movements intentionally exaggerated class conflicts among the people. they were aimed at finding those individuals who had opinions different from marxism, leninism or the current dominant ideology (i.e., chairman mao’s theories). people with different ideas or beliefs from the above-mentioned dominant theories were usually taken into government custody as suspected “enemies.” movements such as adjusting the capitalistic ethos, the anti-rightist campaign, the great leap forward, and the cultural revolution decade caused inestimable trauma to the chinese people. whatever the individual purposes of the respective movements were, during their practice, due to the doctrinism of their theories and ideas, the officers accepted authoritative opinions indiscriminately and uncritically; they even used their imagination and apparently omnipotent “-isms” to classify innocent intellectuals as suspected “enemies.” to avoid being a victim of these movements, rather than face the truth, many honest people became silent or even told lies to protect themselves. the confucian notion of ethics, morality and culture was all but destroyed by these movements. after the reformation of the 1980’s, materialistic modernization replaced class struggle, but a reconstruction of morality, ethics and culture was left undeveloped. the third problem with a continued study of dewey’s theories is that chinese people are not in the habit of thinking about and deciding for themselves their philosophical opinions, and are mostly indifferent to politics. on the one hand, they believe that political life does not belong to the common people, that it’s the business of public officials. in addition, in their experience an individual idea or effort cannot change the status quo. being indifferent to politics was one of the characteristics dewey accurately represented when he wrote about the chinese. he quoted from an ancient chinese poem describing a farmer: “dig your well and drink its water; plow your fields and eat the harvest; what has the emperor’s might to do with me?” (dewey, 1929, p, 224). this national character has not changed with the passage of time, but has instead grown stronger. this indifference is not helpful when attempting to construct the type of associated living that dewey suggested. being indifferent causes one to not think or decide. majiang (mahjong) is a gambling game played primarily for entertainment in china. majiang has become the most important form of entertainment for the chinese people since the latter part of the previous century, enjoyed by everyone from the high officials to the common people, from the southern part of the country to the north. many chinese people grow passionately attached to the game of majiang, which does not help gain knowledge about how to live a reflective life. nor does it help to improve one’s health. when they play majiang, their minds stop thinking. they can avoid all inquiry, all pondering, and all questions. the only thing they learn is how to win another’s money. many people play majiang as much as 24 hours a day, and it can frequently become a daily activity. majiang does not create a mutually helpful social relationship amongst individuals. playing majiang may be a way for many common chinese people to escape from their own personal realities, realities they cannot change but must bear. in the long run, the chinese people’s minds will be dulled because they will lose the ability to see other meanings of being alive. hu shih was mei wu hoyt: john dewey’s legacy to china and the problems in chinese society transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (1) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 24 very against majiang and in calculating the time chinese people spent on majiang, he pointed out: there are one million majiang tables (each table seats four people), if every table plays eight circles, every circle is thirty minutes, then four million hours would be used, it will be more than one hundred sixty thousand days. playing majiang wears out the energy and money. but the most important thing is that it is wasting time and we cannot find any advanced and civilized nation like our country! (quoted in huibin, 2003, originally in chinese) the critical issue for chinese society today is how the chinese see the importance of constructing humanity, human intelligence, morality, culture, ethics and history. the traditional confucian belief is that a person should embody a moral and ethical self. this self has multiple roles as son/daughter to the family, father/mother to the children, friends to the neighbors, and citizen to the state; the self is responsible, even and especially to oneself. tseng tzu said: “each day i examine myself in three ways: in doing things for others, have i been disloyal? in my interactions with friends, have i been untrustworthy? have not practiced what i have preached?” (quoted in muller, n.d.). dead minds were what dewey worried about, for a dead mind runs away from the development of human intelligence that dewey proposed through his speeches made in china. the confucian notion of examining the self frequently and dewey’s worry about dead minds both reflect the importance of constructing a human intelligence that is at the root of a nation’s development. pragmatic democracy, like confucian morality, was also generated from self-improvement, for democracy is obtained by all the people’s effort, and from efforts made on a daily basis. it is a living concept not only a political means to an end. we cannot wait for democracy to fall upon us. instead, we must work for it. conclusion today, reexamining dewey’s democracy and his legacy to china is meaningful both for democracy per se and for china as a whole. democracy is beyond a noun. it demands a closer look and a comprehensive examination. the capacity to tolerate differences, the patience to move forward, and the wisdom to achieve associated living, all engage in making intellectual inquiry dynamic and human intelligence constructive. these aspects of dewey’s democracy are valuable references for china. in china, due to the above listed historical, political reasons, the foundation for associated living in china, the traditional ethics, morality and culture have not been fully experienced by most chinese people. they now need to be reevaluated and enhanced. the rapid economic growth of china today gives individuals enough freedom to realize self-fulfillment, but does not encourage initiative to develop social responsibilities. the notion of self in relation to others remains yet a far off vision for chinese people; therefore, for the common good, it is both imperative and advantageous for both the government and the people to develop civilian intelligence, associated living, and free participation in social and political life. dewey’s legacy to china was significant in the past, and is inspirational today. notes 1 thomas berry, in his article “dewey’s influence in china,” made a detailed argumentation on liang shuming and liang qichao’s doubt about the spirituality nature of western democracy. 2 the may fourth movement: the chinese sided with the allies against germany in the first world war, and after the war requested that the allies end their occupation of chinese territories in the form of mei wu hoyt: john dewey’s legacy to china and the problems in chinese society transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (1) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 25 concessions made to china. despite china’s support for the allies against germany, her requests were ignored. the chinese felt betrayed. anger and frustration erupted in student demonstrations on 4 may 1919 in beijing in order to protest the betrayed and impotent chinese government. 3 the 1911 revolution: this movement was led by sun yat-sen, who was educated both in the united states and japan. sun aimed to build a democratic and republican china with western democracy. the 1911 revolution overthrew the last feudalistic dynasty of china — the qing (manchu) dynasty — so this revolution was considered to be a watershed in chinese history. however, the democratic practices of the new government of the 1911 revolution met many obstacles. as a democratic political system, it had not been successfully organized. references berry, thomas. (1960). dewey’s influence in china. in blewett, john, s.j. (ed.). john dewey: his thought and influence (pp. 199-232). new york: fordham university press. dewey, john. (1929). characters and events. new york: henry holt and company. dewey, john. (1916/1944). democracy and education: an introduction to the philosophy of education. new york: the free press. dewey, john. (1973). lectures in china, 1919-1920. (translated from the chinese and edited by robert w. clopton and tsuin-chen ou). honolulu: the university press of hawaii. https://libcat.tamu.edu/cgibin/pwebrecon.cgi?sc=author&seq=20050221105404&pid=206&sa=dewey,+john, dewey, john with dewey, alice chipman. (1920). letters from china and japan (evelyn dewey, ed.) new york: e.p. dutton. doll, william. (2005). keeping knowledge alive, journal of educational research and development [taiwan], 1(1), 27-42 campbell, james. (1988), dewey’s understanding of marx and marxism. in gavin william (ed). context over foundation: dewey and marx (pp.119-146), dordrecht; d. reidel huibin, (2003, april). hu shih talks about majiang. retrieved aug 31, 2003, from http://www.cnhubei.com/200304/ca246975.htm hall, david and ames, roger. (1999). the democracy of the dead. chicago and lasalle, illinois: open court. muller, charles. (n.d.) (trans.). the analects of confucius. retrieved jan.15, 2005, from http://www.hm.tyg.jp/~acmuller/contao/analects.html#div-1 ryan. alan. (1995). john dewey and the high tide of american liberalism. new york: w.w. norton & company. westbrook, robert. (1991). john dewey and american democracy. ithaca and london: cornell university press. zhang, hua & zhong, qiquan. (2003). curriculum studies in china: retrospect and prospect. in william f. pinar (ed.), international handbook of curriculum research (pp. 253-270). mahwah nj: lawrence erlbaum associates. zhang, rulun. (2002). the fate of john dewey in china. lecture was given at beijing university. retrieved may 4, 2005, from http://news.blcu.edu.cn/detail.asp?id=2610 author mei wu hoyt is a doctoral student in the college of education and human development, texas a&m university, usa. correspondence to: may_wudl@yahoo.com microsoft word wang_6-2.doc to cite this article please include all of the following details: wang, hongyu (2009). life history and cross-cultural thought: engaging an intercultural curriculum. transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> life history and cross-cultural thought: engaging an intercultural curriculum h o n g y u w a n g oklahoma state university abstract this paper provides a cross-cultural reading of two contemporary philosophers’ – feng youlan (1895-1990) and alan watts (1915-1973) – life and thought to inform today’s crosscultural and intercultural education. this paper discusses feng’s and watts’ opening to another culture and their contributions to integrating eastern and western thought, and in particular focuses on their intellectual transitional periods when the connections and the tension between life and thought were highlighted. this life history analysis initiates an east/west dialogue at the level of educational thought through an experiential approach. introduction in a rapidly globalized – simultaneously fragmented – society, engaging cross-cultural and inter-civilizational dialogues becomes crucial to vitalizing contemporary education. although the binary image of the east and the west is problematic (aoki, 1996/2005), this paper, rather than reinforcing such a dualism, intends to foreground a mutually enhanced relationship and a productive cross-cultural interchange so as to highlight the necessity of working across difference in an internationalized context in which education is implicated. east/west dialogues in the west have (re-)emerged in recent decades but are more visible in philosophy, religion, literature, and sociology than in education. however, the irony is that education lies at the heart of eastern thought. in-depth cross-cultural dialogue at the level of educational thought is imperative. educational scholars have begun to pay more attention to it (aoki, 2005; eppert & wang, 2008; li, 2002; nakagawa, 2000; smith, 1996; wang, 2004), and we need to deepen, enrich, and advance transnational understanding and interchange in the western education. situated in these recent moves, this paper adopts a fresh lens for understanding the relationship between life and thought through a cross-cultural approach to inform our efforts to create intercultural educational experiences.1 this approach is adopted for several reasons. first, personhood situated in history, place, and culture is essential to educational thought in eastern (particularly chinese) philosophical traditions. personal cultivation is the foundation of building harmonious social, communal, and cosmic relationships in confucianism, but it is a very different notion from the western individualism (wang, 2004). an interdependent relationship between self and society makes it important to transform the self in order to mobilize the social, but such a self can never be fully separate from the bigger cultural context. using an eastern approach of personhood rather than the western notion of individualism, the paper intends to decenter the dominance 1 an earlier draft of this paper was presented at the center for the studies of the internationalization of curriculum studies at the university of british columbia on september 25, 2007. my thanks to william f. pinar and participants in the discussion for their helpful feedback. wang: life history and cross-cultural thought transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 38 of the neoliberal tendency in globalization (smith, 2003). second, currently a lot of discussions about globalization stay at the macro institutional level (hershock, mason, & hawkins, 2007; odin & manicas, 2004), but global transformation cannot be imagined without personal transformation. william f. pinar (2009) argues for the significance of autobiography over identity politics in the worldliness of cosmopolitanism that privileges the meanings of lived experiences for situated personhood that goes beyond the totalizing abstraction. in the chinese context, either historically or contemporarily, the link between intellectual development and life history in autobiography or biography has remained strong. a scholar’s life journey itself is both intellectual and educational (for instance, see tu, 1976). so using a life history approach to an east/west dialogue in education embodies an integrated perspective for understanding personal cultivation and global transformation. third, this approach of thought in action and action in thought is inherently related to an organic viewpoint in which intellect is not separated from emotional, social, and spiritual aspects of humanity. yet this non-separation does not mean sameness among the different aspects. intellectual history may intersect or disrupt life history or vice versa, but what is important is to understand the dynamics between intellectual contour and experiential trajectory. this dynamic is especially meaningful for today’s educational task, as experiencing differences is more and more a part of everyday life for most teachers and students: how can we make sense of such an experiencing in a most educative way? in addition, this lens does not follow an instrumental approach to education as an application of philosophical thought but understands education as an inherently intellectual and experiential process of meaning making. as you will see, the unfolding of life history itself is educational. david geoffrey smith (2008) argues that the cross-cultural exchange between the east and the west is not new but became a hidden story after the western enlightenment pursuit of science shadowed all other forms of human possibilities. due to the unequal power relationship that continues today, the cross-cultural exchange has been more uni-directional, from west to east, than mutual. to recover a certain sense of reciprocal relationship, i offer a cross-cultural reading of two contemporary figures – feng youlan (1895-1990) and alan watts (1915-1973) – whose life, philosophy, and spirituality in their efforts to integrate eastern and western thought demonstrate their mutual openness to the other culture. they are also exemplary teachers as they teach in both formal and informal ways. this reading does not provide any comprehensive analysis of feng’s or watts’ thought or life, which would be far beyond the scope of this paper, but highlights several moments when the intersections and disconnections of life and thought in a cross-cultural context are most illuminating in order to inform intercultural education. the choices of these two important figures are both purposeful and accidental, so there exists an asymmetrical relationship. although they lived in a similar time, they were from quite different backgrounds. while feng was a philosopher who had stayed more or less at university settings, watts was of popular kind as part of the 1960s counter cultural movement in the u.s.; feng’s study did not have any strong religious bend, but watts’ efforts to integrate buddhism and christianity had deep religious and spiritual implications; feng followed the road of academic training while watts followed the path of self-study. western academic philosophers do not seem to have high regard for watts perspectives (peter hershock, 2006, personal communication). due to the intellectual tradition in china, as i mention earlier, resources on scholars’ autobiographical and biographical accounts are not lacking, but in the western field of philosophy, it is difficult to find a compatible philosopher who lived through the last century and extensively engaged with eastern thought and, at the same time, whose life histories i have access to in the public domain. alan watts is the only wang: life history and cross-cultural thought transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 39 person i can locate currently for the purpose of my study. perhaps the difficulty in locating such resources itself is telling of how we treat the relationship between intellect and person differently across the ocean.2 but their differences are less important than their lessons for us to understand the mutual engagement of east and west in a transnational, global time. their asymmetrical relationship perhaps can inform more of the complexity of intercultural dynamics that is educational. my own encounter with feng’s works was incidental as i happened to pick up his autobiography in a chinese bookstore on a ‘homecoming’ trip a few years ago. i was interested in knowing the stories of the chinese intellectual in his generation. it was not his philosophical thought but his life across a century in the dramas of china-west conflict that caught my attention. my interest in alan watts began with reading his book (1975), tao: the watercourse way. i was most impressed by the flow of the book and the comfort the author takes in blending the western and the eastern ways of thought. particularly, al chung-liang huang’s foreword describing watts as a person and as a teacher with joyous playfulness fascinated me. as a person from another chinese generation, who is currently working at an american university, i imagine that feng’s and watts’ stories may illuminate the puzzles and paradoxes of my own cross-cultural life and work as an educator and many others who are teaching and learning in today’s transnational society. this paper introduces feng and watts’ brief biographies first and then discusses what initiated their openness to thought and culture that is dramatically different from their own. particularly, if feng’s travel to the west was due to the intellectual trend during his time, what made watts pay attention to eastern thought when it was highly marginalized in the west in his youth? next is the analysis of how life and thought influence each other especially at those transitional moments. both connections and disjunctions will be addressed. finally, the paper highlights what we as educators can learn from this life history analysis to engage intercultural and cross-cultural education in today’s world in which globality and locality interact with each other. biographical sketches i choose feng and watts for this study as both had extensively engaged in their counterpart culture and thought even though they did not spent much time in a different country. but their integration of thought and culture that is dramatically different from their own is sustained in their writings and public activities. both lived through the turbulence of their own times and traveled across national borders intellectually and spiritually. feng was a chinese who finished his doctoral studies in the u.s. and his interest in western thought would have continued his lifetime without the interruption of the chinese politics after 1949. watts was born in england and migrated to the u.s. in his youth but was devoted to studying and teaching eastern thought throughout his lifetime. feng youlan (1895-1990) was a contemporary chinese philosopher. with wisdom in chinese thought and formal studies in western philosophy, he wrote two volumes of a history of chinese philosophy in the 1930s, six books with the intention to re-create chinese philosophy in the 1940s, and finished the revised version, seven volumes of a history of 2 this paper is the first step in my long-term qualitative, life history, project to understand contemporary crosscultural engagement between chinese with western thought and between americans with chinese thought and the impacts of such engagements on their teaching in higher education. relying on publicly available resources to understand the lives and thought of feng and watts will be helpful for my design of the fieldwork. what will be particularly interesting about that project will be the stories of american professors, since they are seldom told, and the stories of women, which i did not find enough resources to write in this paper. wang: life history and cross-cultural thought transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 40 chinese philosophy in the 1980s. he graduated from beijing university in 1918 and traveled to the u.s. in 1919 where he finished his doctoral studies at columbia university, studying with american philosophers including john dewey. he returned home in 1923 and later traveled back to the u.s. several times and also made academic visits to european countries. living through the establishment of the two new chinas in 1911 and in 1949 respectively, both influenced by different branches of western thought, and the cultural revolution (19661976), which denounced both capitalism and china’s own traditions, he went through all the up-and-downs of the china-west conflicts in the 20th century. the cultural conflict between the east and the west preoccupied his philosophical attention throughout his lifetime, and he responded to it differently in different life stages. alan watts (1915-1973) was a philosopher of the popular kind, a spiritual teacher, and a charismatic public speaker, considered by some as a cultural icon of the 1960s’ countercultural movement in the us. watts was born in england but felt more at home with chinese and japanese arts than with his english education. refusing to be confined by institutional constraints, he did not follow a formal academic path but engaged in buddhist learning from his adolescence. he moved to new york in 1938. as he followed his own path, he gathered and intermingled with a diverse group of people from all over the world who shared his interests in eastern thought, and he traveled to japan several times later in his life. he wrote extensively and published prolifically, including 20 books. in particular, he was strongly influenced by zen buddhist spirituality, and attempted to integrate the mystical aspect of christianity with buddhist insights. his lifelong involvement with and teachings of eastern thought to a western audience greatly contributed to building bridges between eastern and western philosophy and spirituality. openings to a different thought the paths onto which feng and watts opened to another thought and another culture were different. western learning in china has had a long history since the 17th century due to religious missionaries and western advancements in science and technology (hu, 2005). at the turn of the 20th century, however, it took an intensified turn due to internal turbulence including the collapse of the qing dynasty, the establishment of the republic of china, the subsequent frequently-changing warlord governments, and the external forces of colonization by the west. it was a historical period when clashes of culture, politics, thought, and religion asked imperative questions about western learning and chinese learning, tradition and advancement, universal truth and national salvation. despite and perhaps because of the turbulence, it became an active period for intellectual hybridity and freedom. situated in such a background, feng’s attention to western thought was hardly surprising. in a sense, as an intellectual of his time, he had to travel across the ocean in order to learn something new. however, feng started with chinese learning since his father firmly believed that chinese language and thought should be the basis of children’s education, before engaging western learning. feng studied classical chinese literature first with his mother and private teachers before his formal studies. at his time private tutoring of siblings at home was a common form of education although schools were also established either publically or privately. as he states in his autobiography (feng, 1984/20043), private learning at home also included a mixture of chinese and western knowledge since new knowledge such as geography was included. his father passed away when he was a teenager. two years after his 3 i read and quote from the chinese version of feng’s autobiography. an english translation of feng’s autobiography is available (translated by mair, 2000). i list both books in the reference list. wang: life history and cross-cultural thought transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 41 father’s death, with his mother’s support (his mother not only supported her sons’ education but also sent her daughter to the highest level of school, which was radical at the time), feng went to public schools including a high school where english was the working language of teaching and learning, and later he passed the examination to enter beijing university in 1915. when he was a student at beijing university under chancellor cai yuanpei’s leadership, scholars from various schools of thought were invited to teach, and students had opportunities to study with professors ranging from the most conservative to the most radical. influenced by german philosophy and the pre-industralization germany university model, cai emphasized academic freedom and ‘the independent development of the university as a center of a new culture, which was a synthesis of both chinese and western knowledge’ (lin, 2005, p. 49). students were allowed maximum freedom to choose what they wanted to learn and how they could learn, and three student newspapers were published from left, neutral, and right positions respectively (feng, 1984/2004). according to feng, cai’s policy of channeling between the old and the new and integrating chinese and western learning served the purpose of paving new pathways. with the variety of thoughts present both within faculty and students, the clash between traditional chinese culture and western culture was evident at all levels, and the efforts to mediate between the two gave birth to new intellectual and cultural movements. after his graduation in 1918 on the eve of the may fourth movement, it was a natural move for feng to join in the tide of studying abroad and passed the exam for oversea students sponsored by his provincial government. he became a graduate student at columbia university in 1919. in his autobiography (1984/2004), feng described the event of going abroad in a similar tone as his description of leaving his hometown to go to another school in china. the intellectual climate of his time built a bridge for his transnational and crosscultural move, but his continuous pursuit of new ideas and knowledge played an important role as the conservative force of sticking to the traditional way was equally strong. watts’ interest in eastern thought started with his childhood, but he went against the trend of his time as the world of the early days of 20th century was very much dominated by the west. historically, there had been the western encounters with buddhism due to missionary works, commercial exchanges such as along the silk road, and fascinations with eastern culture (sutin, 2006). however, with the increasing power of the west over the world such an interest had seldom reached a broad audience and only had small groups of followers. the first buddhist society in england was established in 1907 (humphreys, 1968) with 25 people attending the meeting; the first buddhist organization in the u.s. was established in 1899, but it was organized by japanese-americans; and the first zen institute of new york was formed in 1930, but it attracted only a small group at the time (layman, 1976). not until the 1950s and 1960s did buddhism and zen attract much more attention among intellectuals, youth who rebelled against institutions and authorities, and common american people. watts was certainly ahead of his time; in fact, he was credited as an influential leader in shaping an american approach to zen in the middle of the last century, along with japanese zen master, d. t. sukuzi and the beats movement (layman, 1976; seager, 1999). watts did not feel at home with his english upbringing during his childhood, particularly the denial of sensuality and the body in fundamental christianity. although his mother’s taste for chinese and japanese antiques and her marvelous embroidery skills made a great impression on him, he somehow felt distanced from her due to her fundamental christian heritage. his father read to him the tales and poems about the east in the room where his mother showcased all her oriental treasures. it was in that magic room where watts claimed that he ‘acquired an interior compass which led me to the east through the west’ (watts, 1971, p. 29). he found an affirmation of the body in eastern thought to escape the alienation wang: life history and cross-cultural thought transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 42 of western dualism and therefore ‘took refuge in buddhism’ as ‘a method for clarifying and liberating one’s state of consciousness’ (p. 71) rather than as a religion. his close relationship with nature – birds, trees, flowers, stone, and sky – from his childhood also found resonance in asian philosophies, art, and calligraphy which seemed to him to capture the flowing and sensual nature of life. thus as a 15 year old schoolboy, watts declared himself a buddhist and wrote to the founder of the buddhist lodge in london, christmas humphreys. (as an interesting side note, christmas humphreys himself was introduced to buddhism when he was 17 and another englishman pioneer before him, ananda metteyya, found a new world of buddhism when he was 18 in 1890 reading the light of asia [humphreys, 1968].) he regularly participated in the lodge’s activities through commuting by train, learned from various mentors including those from other countries, and engaged in self-study through readings and meditations. he had distaste for discipline, institutions, and authority, rebelled against the formal educational system in england, and never attended any university. watts’ university was certainly a different kind, and when he wrote his first book, the spirit of zen, he was only nineteen. this was the beginning of his lifelong journey to introduce buddhism to a western audience. cross-cultural engagements: from china to the west and back according to feng’s (1984/2004) own summary in his speech at columbia university in 1982, his intellectual development went through three stages: in the first stage, he considered cultural difference as the difference between the east and the west; in the second stage, he considered cultural difference as a historical difference between the ancient and the modern; and in the third stage, he understood cultural difference as the difference between types of society. engaging in a critical analysis of feng’s three interpretations is beyond the focus of this paper; i am most interested in the transitions between stages because they may highlight and dramatize both the link and the tension between life and thought. the transition from the first stage to the second stage happened during his study at columbia university. the direct contact with american culture made him think more about what caused the prosperity of the west and the downfall of china. in 1922 he presented and published a paper on cultural difference as the difference between the east and the west, arguing that the underdevelopment of modern science in china, influenced by chinese philosophy, was the weakness. however, as he further studied the history of philosophy and experienced american society on a first hand basis, he began to think that what was regarded as existing only in eastern philosophy actually existed also in the history of western philosophy, and vice versa, even though their emphases are different. in his doctoral dissertation published in 1924 in english (by a chinese publisher in shanghai), he discussed such a discovery. he began to formulate cultural difference as the historical difference between the medieval and the modern, with the industrial revolution as one symbol of such a distinction. he argued in the first edition of a history of chinese philosophy in early 1930s that chinese philosophy had never reached its modern stage. while we can critique this understanding from today’s post-colonial and poststructuralist approaches as centering on the west, his perspective emerged from a particular historical period when many chinese intellectuals – most of whom traveled back and forth between china and the west – were interested in learning from the west for national salvation both from the internal turbulence and the external threat. they believed that ‘the confrontation between eastern and western cultures was a difference not of kind but of degree, between the wang: life history and cross-cultural thought transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 43 new and the old, tradition and modernity’ (lin, 2005, p. 69). as ge (2006) points out, while criticizing the universal is becoming another masternarrative today, the chinese intellectual of that generation searched for universal truth as a way to advance society out of internal and external difficulty. they did not blindly follow the west, however, and criticized the materialism and the colonialization mentality of the west, while advocating science and democracy as a means to engage social and cultural transformation of the traditional china. feng did not stay with this position for long, though, and shifted his angle in the late 1930s when he started to think that neither geography nor history could point out the path forward as societal development could. after he returned to china in 1923, he took professorship positions at different universities and then settled at qinghua university in beijing until 1952. these decades witnessed dramatic changes in china. feng’s new focus on societal type began to take form during the time of the sino-japanese war (1938-1945), and he wrote six books reflecting on the traditional chinese spiritual life when he was exiled to a remote place along with his colleagues from qinghua university (which joined with beijing university and nankai university to form a wartime united university called southwest union university) after the japanese’s invasion and occupation of china in the 1940s. as he (1984/2004) states in his autobiography, the exile and turmoil did not prevent me from writing. the rise and fall of a nation and historical change had actually given me inspirations and excitement. without these inspirations, i would not have written these books. even if i had written them, they would not have been the same as what they were. (p. 187) that period of difficult wartime, even though filled with bombs, constant threats, and internal conflicts, left feng many fond memories of teaching and learning and mutual inspiration among faculty who were from many diverse backgrounds and held different perspectives about life and philosophy. however, political, cultural, and national turmoil did not always have such a positive impact. after the 1949 revolution, he could not continue his intellectual work and the marxist re-formation was imposed on him. he started to write a new version of a history of chinese philosophy but was not able to continue because of both historical and intellectual confusion. new china had launched various political movements to not only break away from the chinese traditional philosophy and way of life but also to oppose the capitalism of the industrial west in the cold war period. intellectuals were forced to adopt a uniform ideology and frequently became the target of political attacks. as feng’s traditional chinese heritage and western learning had to be reformed, it is not difficult to imagine his difficult position. only after the ending of the cultural revolution in 1976 could he more fully formulate the idea that cultural conflict is an issue of how to deal with historical legacies to create new types of society, integrating vertical and horizontal lines of analysis. he raised these issues in the early 1950s but soon was under attack. he was able to finish the new edition of a history of chinese philosophy in the 1980s when he had lost much of his eyesight, but he relied on his internal resources, insights, and wisdom to complete this revision work. his hope was to provide nourishment for the future of chinese philosophy, forming a comprehensive system to bring cultural conflicts back to the organic whole. i suspect, however, that the dominance of marxism during that period must have left indelible marks on his intellectual development, even in his final works. his autobiography was finished in 1981; what might have happened to his thought in his last decade when there was much more intellectual freedom? feng was first influenced by pragmatism and then became more aligned with neo-realism in western philosophy, while he leaned more towards wang: life history and cross-cultural thought transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 44 the cheng-zhu school of neo-confucianism in chinese philosophy. i cannot help but wonder whether, without the intellectual setback and hibernation after 1949, he would have formulated his own philosophical thought as a modern philosopher. in the 1940s, he aspired to become a philosopher, rather than a historian of philosophy, but what he left behind is another series of a history of chinese philosophy. if he had any regret, it would also have been a historical loss for the chinese philosophical field. feng’s life experiences during the transitional periods enabled or constrained his intellectual pursuits. his exile both abroad (to columbia) and at home (to a remote place within china) marked the most dynamic and creative times for him. but turbulence may not lead to new thought as the thirty years of intellectual setback later demonstrated. the most generative thought comes from the freedom to work with and through confusion. he did not have such freedom to work through under political and ideological control. conflict and how to deal with it is central to his life and also central to his thought. the conflict between the past and the present, between east and west, both experientially and intellectually laid out a major task for his work on culture, history, and society. as feng reflects (1984/2000) on his life and his work, he finds himself usually in a position that does not cling to either extreme and thus gets criticized from both sides. another major philosopher of his time, liang shuming (2006), commented that feng seemed to be a confucian in thought but acted like a taoist in political turbulence. while liang implies that feng did not stand up to his confucian principles, a student in southwest union university fondly remembered him as a professor with the pedagogical wisdom of reaching students by explaining the profound in simple terms (wang, 2007), and another graduate of qinghua university commented that feng was well-known not only for his scholarship but also for his openness to different perspectives and his diplomatic organization talents (zi, 2008). feng’s life and thought was marked by the historical task of negotiating between the ancient and the modern and between china and west, which is still pretty much present in today’s china, and his mediation among and through conflicts to integrate different elements into his own is inspiring for a new generation’s own efforts to walk transnational and cross-cultural pathways. cross-cultural engagements: the inner compass between the west and the east watts’ experience was different from feng’s, although dealing with conflict is also important to him. watts (1972) argues that cultural renewal comes from the mixture of highly differentiated cultures. this also applied to his own life as he made persistent efforts to bring together different spiritualities, philosophies, and cultures. rather than analyzing watts’ life and thought through different stages, i highlight several transitional moments in his lifelong concern with what his biographer furlong (2001) describes as ‘the synthesis of buddhism and christianity, and the links of both with healing, particularly in the form of psychoanalysis’ (p. 66). when watts was 17 and still at school, he was in the middle of trying to figure out what zen is: what is the experience which these oriental masters are talking about? the different ideas of it which i had in mind seemed to be approaching me like little dogs wanting to be petted, and suddenly i shouted at all of them to go away. i annihilated and bawled out every theory and concept of what should be my properly spiritual state of mind, or of what should be meant by me. and instantly my weight vanished. i owned nothing. all hang-ups disappeared. i walked on air. (watts, 1972, p. 97) wang: life history and cross-cultural thought transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 45 such a walking into the unknown in one’s own style is unique to alan watts’ pioneering spirit, but his pursuit of something different was based upon his devoted studies and exercises. this rebellion against authority, theory, and institution – of both his own tradition and eastern tradition – is a constant theme of his life, a rebellion which might have been too strong, as he admitted later. not surprisingly, this rebellious spirit made him a hero for the u.s. counter-cultural movement in the 1960s when western thought was in crisis. he declared he was a buddhist at the age of 15 (an age coinciding with confucius’ age to set his heart on learning) but came back to christianity at the age of 26. but such a comeback was not a simple ‘homecoming.’ with the growing realization that ‘christianity might be understood as a form of that mystical and perennial philosophy which has appeared in almost all times and places’ and that such an understanding positioned him as ‘a misfit and an oddity in western society’ (p. 180), he nevertheless took a sharp turn to become a christian minister. as furlong (2001) comments, his ambition to uncover the vitality and mystical meanings of christianity was ahead of his time; it was also ‘an attempt at healing the great divide of east and west, as well as, maybe, the great divide within alan watts’ (p. 86). similar to feng, watts was also concerned with differences between the east and the west and their integration, and his understandings of another thought were intimately related to his studies of his own tradition. this move into priesthood, although seemingly surprising, does not surprise me much since christianity, as his native soil, would have remained as the background for his venture outside of it. coming to term with it through immersion back into it – yet from another angle – could have been part of a further movement to integrate christianity and buddhism. and such a homecoming brought fresh air. watts’ five years of being a formal episcopal priest at northwestern university in chicago was anything but conventional. he introduced into the chapel a sense of magic and held open house, tea parties, and cocktail hours filled with lively discussions among faculty, students, and invited guests. during that time, he wrote the book behold the spirit which won him a master’s degree in theology. but his life in the church was not long, and he left it in a dramatic way. not wishing to go into the details, especially of the controversial personal reasons, i only want to point out that those years made him dive more deeply into christian mysticism in its ‘word made flesh,’ a side of christianity which had been pushed away by the modern churches. he wrote wisdom of insecurity afterwards, returning to buddhism. it is interesting to note here that to the degree that the east and the west are different, the differences become the shadow to each other, so that the full realization of humanity relies on our ability to recognize and integrate the shadow within ourselves through encounter with the other. watts accomplished that by exposing the flesh of christianity. feng’s early argument that the west is within the east and the east is within the west can be re-read here as the need for uncovering one’s own shadow in order to bridge relationship between cultural differences. what is unique about alan watts is his embodied, sensual, and playful spirit, and he believes that ‘real religion is to transform anxiety into laughter’ (watts, 1972, p. 69). watts’ estrangement from his childhood religion was due to the dominance of fear and anxiety and the absence of sensuality and play. the first-hand experiencing of life in its aliveness in zen devoid of theorization or dogmatic beliefs was appealing to him and he wrote in his first book, the spirit of zen (1960/1935), that zen is to move with life without trying to arrest and interrupt its flow; it is an immediate awareness of things as they live and move, as distinct from the mere grasp of ideas and feelings about things which are the dead symbols of a living reality. (p. 52; italics in wang: life history and cross-cultural thought transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 46 original). there are different schools of thought in buddhism and zen both internationally and in the west, but what alan watts took from zen was peculiar to his own life history and his concerns to reach higher wisdom and consciousness beyond the control of logic, theory, or law. as he suggests in his last unfinished work (watts, 1975), tao as the unity of opposite forces or duality is a watercourse way that does not control but move through and nurture the joyful growth of life. he left empty pages as he did not finish the last two chapters on ‘fun and surprises’ – themes important not only to his work but also to his life. to embrace a sense of joyfulness and humor in philosophy and spirituality is indeed important but is usually neglected in formal intellectual and religious training. alan watts builds such bridges first through intellectual and spiritual traveling to the east and then by fleshing out the mystical sensuality of christianity within home. as a pioneer in introducing buddhism to the mainstream american society beyond the small circle of western orientalists, alan watts was not merely influenced by his time as feng was, he also contributed to forming the turning points of the american imagination, academic or popular alike, in the 1950s and 1960s. through watts’ speeches and prolific writings, together with the influential lectures d. t. sukuzi delivered at columbia university in the 1960s and the changes in the popular culture of that time, buddhism was no longer treated as an alien way of life but became a common knowledge in the american society. as seager (1999) argues, ‘the individualistic, upbeat, and humanistic quality of [watts’] version of buddhism and its emphasis on creative self-expression fit well with the expansive idealism of the early 1960s’ (p. 41). here we can see the blending of the personal and the social at a matching historical time to lead to the meeting of individual and cultural transformation. life and thought, however, are not always in harmony, but can contradict with each other. while watts’ central concern was healing western man’s alienation through the buddhist dissolution of dualism, he was not fully successful in moving beyond a sense of separateness in his life. according to furlong (2001), it was his inability to handle loneliness that intensified his alcoholism, which contributed to his early death. moreover, his refusal to engage almost anything formal does not match the rigor required by cultivating buddhist wisdom. he failed the oxford entrance exam, he could not finish his formal zen study with a zen master, and he did not want to experience the discipline of psychoanalysis. it was his rebellious spirit that enabled him to pave out alternative pathways, but it was also this rebellion against any constraints that turned around to constrain him. disjuncture in feng’s case is more historical: he was not allowed to follow the line of his intellectual development, and his efforts to integrate western and chinese thought were swept away by the dominance of marxism after 1949. but he was also criticized for his actions during cultural revolution as not living up to his own confucian ideals (liang, 2006; zi, 2008). his political accommodation to the demands of authorities at that time was not lofty. the relationship between life and thought cannot be linear and direct; i argue, though, the gap between thought and life can shed light on the paradoxical human condition that one must live in, with, and through, and the gap between life and text opens up rather than closes down an ongoing process of authoring personhood in polyphony. feng and watts’ stories tell us that engagement with the other is intertwined with understanding the self more fully and opens the door to those aspects of one’s own culture that are little known. in cross-cultural inquiry, opposite to the common tendency of assimilating the other into the self, it is easy to fall into the trap of romanticizing the other and using the other’s perspective as a way to cure one’s own problems. in the beginning of cross-cultural engagement, sometimes it is difficult to avoid such a tendency; one is wang: life history and cross-cultural thought transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 47 interested in the other because the other can provide something different from oneself. such a tendency was not fully absent in feng and watts’ initial openings, but as their engagement with the other was deepened, they negotiated between self and difference in such a way that did not negate either but integrated different horizons to broaden landscape for both self and other. as a result, the unknown potential of both self and other can be brought forth to meet in an interactive space for individual and cultural creativity. such an interplay between self and other is important in today’s transnational inquiry which works through the complexity and richness of intercultural space (wang, 2004) and spirals to another level of understanding, awareness, and relationships. it is important to point out that such a life history analysis does not attempt to lay out any cause-effect relationship which is both impossible and undesirable. the intertwining relationship between life and thought is complex, dynamic, and unpredictable, but such a relationship is deeply pedagogical as today’s education needs to provide intercultural learning opportunities for students. the focus of this paper is not the specific schools of thought that feng and watts followed or what caused such choices, as we have learned from cai yuanpei’s academic freedom policy that allowing different schools of thoughts (whether they were labeled as ‘old’ or ‘new’) to coexist and interact among one another is beneficial to hybrid intellectual creativity. but educators can benefit from understanding what enabled feng’s and watts’ initiatives to learn from the other, what sustained their engagement with the other, and what conditions were most conducive to their cross-cultural journeys. while their efforts to integrate different thoughts led to intellectual advancement, experiential complexity, and cultural creativity, their entrances to and engagement with different cultures were not the same: feng was schooled in formal learning while watts was schooled in selfstudy and experience. they channeled through diverse life experiences and concerns but their messages echoed each other across the ocean. feng and watts demonstrate multiple ways of cross-cultural engagement and diverse paths for advancing intercultural education. engaging a cross-cultural and intercultural curriculum what do feng and watts’ life histories of engaging cross-cultural thought say to contemporary education? as we listen to the sounds of their footsteps, we are already on the path of engaging a cross-cultural and intercultural curriculum. here i use ‘cross-cultural curriculum’ and ‘intercultural curriculum’ simultaneously because both border-crossing and a ‘third space’ (aoki, 2005; wang, 2004) are needed for curriculum dynamics. aoki (2005) critiques the use of ‘cross-cultural’ in the identity-oriented imaginary of east and west as separate and essentialized entities. he further evokes the image of a non-bridge bridge to set into motion the demarcation of boundary and calls for dwelling in an inter-space in which the tensionality of conjunction and disjuncture upholds the emergence of newness. following his effort to deconstruct the east/west binary, i nevertheless think crossing and dwelling are interdependent. without crossing into another world (and coming back), an inter-space does not embody what exists on the other side; without dwelling on the bridge, crossing pushes away the interactive potentiality of an in-between space. to allow newness to emerge, both crossing and dwelling are necessary, as feng’s and watts’ life histories demonstrate. in today’s mobile society in which migration, immigration, and globalization continue to disrupt the homogeneous picture of locality, crossing can be imminent within the border, and dwelling gestures towards what is beyond the landscape. the creativity of intercultural dynamics lies in our capacity to engage cross-cultural educational work on a daily basis. the added-on approach to diversifying curriculum in today’s schools, although necessary as the first step, runs the risk of objectifying and wang: life history and cross-cultural thought transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 48 disembodying what is different and thus leaving the privileged site of the self intact and refusing to risk self-transformation. feng (1984/2004) discusses the difference between his academic visit in the u.s. from 1946 to 1948 and his travel to the u.s. in 1982. he says that in the 1940s he felt like chinese culture was treated as dead artifacts displayed in a museum, but in 1982 he felt that the vitality of chinese culture was beginning to be present. the spirit of a culture cannot be displayed in a frozen, static, disembodied way but must be felt as if touching the pulse of lifeblood. today a cross-cultural intellectual and educational landscape at an existential level is no longer only accessible to elites but to many teachers and students within their classrooms through both face-to-face interaction and virtual reality. this landscape provides a rich soil for inter-civilizational and intercultural dialogue through the daily lived experiencing of transnational dynamics. as noel gough (2004) points out, ‘the challenge to the curricular imagination is to envisage how we might build transnational networks of curriculum workers who share these senses of [global] solidarity and are willing to enact them in curriculum inquiry’ (p. 5; italics original). such a sense of global solidarity is not for cultural sameness but is built upon the interaction between and among the local, national, regional, and global curriculum work which questions both the neoliberal, market-driven, homogeneous aspects of globalization and cultural isolation or ethnocentralism. under the current move towards the internationalization of curriculum studies (pinar, 2003; gough, 2004), transnational, crosscultural, and intercultural imagination becomes important for daily educational praxis, although such a possibility is largely limited by the current push for standardization and accountability in the u.s. education. if we want to sustain a vital and meaningful educational life that we share, we as educators have to find openings for the watercourse of cross-cultural interplay to erode the constraining line of the official boundary. u.s. education’s current drive to maintain international superiority by imposing highstakes testing and conformity is an example of official efforts to contain difference and fluidity by hardening the educational structure and system. there is an opposite tendency among scholars, although it is seldom in the spotlight. in recent decades, the crisis of the west caused some to look far into the east for possible solutions. while it is an understandable shift, i question the logic of crisis: if we sustain everyday engagement with difference in an open-minded, wide-awake manner, would it be possible to soften the edge of crisis before it erupts? is not the lure to contain crisis and cure our problems the very root of the problem itself? nor can this direction lead to creative education. the other horizon cannot rescue us but invites us to engage the self differently on a daily basis to create a more sustainable life. the east is no longer far away but is already in the midst of our presence, although it remains at the margin (as the west is already in the midst of the east although the west is much more centered there). we can cross borders into the stranger’s land within our own boundary, and now it is time to engage in the daily educational praxis of transnational and intercultural encounters. as we can learn from feng’s and watts’ life histories, the awareness of the need to learn from the other initiates a cross-cultural education, persistent engagement with the other encourages reciprocal intercultural exchanges, and subsequently enlightenment and wisdom emerge through the process of experiencing and making sense of intercultural intersections and disjuncture. ways of initiating and sustaining such an education are different, contextualized, and multilayered; but creating a stimulating educational environment that encourages ‘polyphonic lines of movements’ (aoki, 2005) and allows time and space to work through confusion and conflict is crucial. today’s society is much more complicated, with new problems, challenges, and possibilities, while students of all ages have unprecedented access across borders to different knowledge, relationships, and ways of life. if we encourage wang: life history and cross-cultural thought transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 49 critical thinking throughout the educational process and bring refreshing or even controversial lenses into classrooms, if we nurture students’ cross-cultural imagination and intercultural capacities, new generations will be more likely to work together across difference to enact living a good life together in their own worldly conditions. the tensionality of crossing and dwelling can be transformed into a generative site for opening up the multiple educational potentialities. in order to do so, we also need to question the conventional notion of learning as mastering knowledge and materials. to form a productive relationship with the text does not mean exhausting its meanings, just as a productive self-other relationship must allow the surprise of the other to bring something new on an ongoing basis. the otherness of the text needs to be respected in order to allow a creative interplay with it (huebner, 1999). the demand for students to understand everything (or the demand from students for the teacher to make everything understandable) drains the vitality, imagination, and creativity out of learning. learning is not for mastery but for transforming learners and leading to more possibilities. the forms of learning can be various, but the openness to allow difference to teach is crucial, which also means the capacity for living with ambiguity and being comfortable with the unknown. the cultivation of such open-mindedness needs to start early as the stories of feng and watts (and humphreys or metteyya) tell us. actually, as dwayne huebner (1999) argues, schooling usually suppresses children’s creativity, so the task of educators is to allow children’s creative potential to come into play. this vision in the crosscultural context requires educators to become transnational thinkers and learners themselves. feng and watts’ life histories and cross-cultural thoughts do not provide direct answers to our problems today, but their voices, their footsteps, and their bridge-building efforts invite our own unique responses to engaging intercultural thought in educational praxis. may this invitation evoke our commitment to engaging cross-cultural imagination and intercultural creativity in our daily educational work...... r e f e r e n c e s aoki, ted t. (2005). curriculum in a new key (william f. pinar & rita l. irwin eds.). mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum. eppert, claudia, & wang, hongyu (eds.) (2008). cross-cultural studies in curriculum (pp. 1–33). mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum. feng, youlan (2000). the hall of three pines (denis c. mair trans.). honolulu: university of hawai’i press. feng, youlan (2004). a memoir of feng youlan. beijing: people’s university press (original work published 1984). furlong, monica (2001). zen effects: life of alan watts. woodstock, vt: skylight paths. ge zhaoguang (2006). becoming a chinese intellectual of that generation. reading books [读书], 6, 47–56. gough, noel (2004). a vision for transnational curriculum inquiry. transnational curriculum inquiry, 1 (1). retrieved june 16, 2007, from http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci hattam, robert (2008). socially-engaged buddhism as a provocation for critical pedagogy in unsettling times. in claudia eppert & hongyu wang (eds.), cross-cultural studies in curriculum (pp. 109–136). mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum. hershock, peter, peter d., mason, mark, & hawkins, john n. (2007). changing education. hong kong: the university of hong kong press. hu, minghui (2005). from latin west to the qing dynasty china. reading books [读书], 11, wang: life history and cross-cultural thought transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 50 21–25. huebner, dwayne (1999). the lure of the transcendent. mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum. humphreys, christmas (1968). sixty years of buddhism in england (1907 – 1967). london: the buddhist society. layman, emma mccloy (1976). buddhism in america. chicago: nelson-hall. li, xin (2002). the tao of life stories. new york: peter lang. liang, shuming (2006). interview with liang in his late years.reading books[读书], 7, 34– 38. lin, xiaoqing (2005). peking university: chinese scholarship and intellectuals (1898 – 1937). new york: state university of new york press. nakagawa, yoshiharu (2000). education for awakening. brandon, vt: foundation for educational renewal. odin, jaishree k., & manicas, peter t. (eds.) (2004). globalization and higher education. honolulu: university of hawaii press. pinar, william f. (2003). international handbook of curriculum research. mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum. pinar, william f. (2009). the worldliness of a cosmopolitan education. new york: routledge. seager, richard hughes (1999). buddhism in america. new york: columbia university press. smith, david geoffrey (1996). identity, self and other in the conduct of pedagogical action. jct: an interdisciplinary journal of curriculum theorizing, 12, 6–11. smith, david geoffrey (2003). curriculum and teaching facing globalization. in william f. pinar (ed.), international handbook of curriculum research (pp. 35-52). mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum. smith, david geoffrey (2008). ‘the farthest west is but the farthest east.’ in claudia eppert & hongyu wang (eds.), cross-cultural studies in curriculum (pp. 1–33). mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum. sutin, lawrence (2006). all is change: the two-thousand-year journey of buddhism to the west. new york: little, brown and company. tu, wei-ming (1976). neo-confucian thought in action: wang yang-ming’s youth (1472 – 1509). berkeley: university of california press. wang, hongyu (2004). the call from the stranger on a journey home. new york: peter lang. wang, zihao (2007). not only for the sake of memory. shanghai: life, reading, new knowledge. watts, alan (1960). the spirit of zen. new york: grove press. (original published 1935) watts, alan (1972). in my own way: an autobiography (1915 – 1965). new york: vintage books. watts, alan (1975). tao: the watercourse way. new york: pantheon books. zi, zhongjun (2008). about feng you-lan [实说冯友兰]. beijing: beijing university press. author hongyu wang is associate professor in the school of teaching and curriculum leadership at oklahoma state university. her research interests include post-structural and asian philosophies, cross-cultural life histories and thought, autobiography and curriculum, international studies, gender issues, psychoanalysis and culture, chaos and complexity theory, and multicultural education. email hongyu.wang@okstate.edu microsoft word han_singh_1.doc 17 july 07.doc to cite this article please include all of the following details: han jinghe and singh, michael (2007) world english speaking (wes) student-teachers’ experiences of schools: curriculum issues, transnational mobility and the bologna process transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> world english speaking (wes) student-teachers’ experiences of schools: curriculum issues, transnational mobility and the bologna process jinghe han charles sturt university michael singh university of western sydney introduction increasingly those involved in teacher education curricula in britain, australasia and north america are confronted by the challenge of what it means for english to be a transnational language. the term world english speakers (wes) has emerged to name all the people’s of the world who now speak this language and lay claim to it as their own. this includes and extends beyond the native speakers of the language to those who have acquired it as a consequence of british or north american colonialism, or as a result of the post-cold war expansion of english as the language of transnational trade, politics, communication, education, culture and labour movement. the recruitment of world english speaking (wes) immigrants from asian-pacific nations as student-teachers represents a small but nonetheless significant contribution to solving the skills mismatch in the supply of teachers in some disciplines and localities in these countries (the committee for the review of teaching and teacher education, 2003; han, 2004). simultaneously, the bologna process, which started in 1998 as an initiative to create a european higher education area, is encouraging the transnational mobility of tertiary students and knowledge workers (witte, 2004). while not formally addressed to date as part of the bologna process, the transnational mobility of students and graduates poses particular difficulties for nation-centred professions such as teaching. this is especially so given the role of nation-states in disciplining or otherwise controlling ethnic, linguistic, cultural and religious differences through all levels of education. through an exploration of the practicum experiences of wes student-teachers from asian-pacific countries this paper investigates some of the complexities transnational student and graduate (workers) mobility has for australia. this is warranted given the australian government’s considerations of what the bologna process means for higher education policy and pedagogy (department of education, science and training, 2006). this paper draws on evidence from interviews with twenty (n=20) wes student-teachers from asian-pacific backgrounds; twelve (n=12) of their course lecturers (exclusively monolingual, anglo-phone speakers of world english); and three groups of wes school teachers (n=15) who had migrated from similar places as the student-teachers and who were responsible for their inschool practicum supervision. it arises from a research project which investigated how teacher education assists and/or hinders wes student-teachers from asia and oceania in gaining access to the teaching profession (han, 2006). based on the analysis of the interview evidence, it is argued that the practicum contributes to the ‘metamorphosis’ of the multilayered identities of these particular wes student-teachers, supplementing their already http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci jinghe han & michael singh: world english speaking (wes) student-teachers’ experiences of schools transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 66 existing many-sided sense of self. this paper analyses some of the tensions in the power relations this specific group of wes student-teachers confronted after they made the shift and moved into the australian teacher education and school environments. it identifies three dimensions to the power relations affecting their process of metamorphosis: the societal disciplining of who they are; the societal control of who they are becoming, and the affects of their embodied power on their shifting identities. using this baseline data, future research could provide for a comparative investigation of the experiences of immigrant wes studentteachers and australian-born wes student-teachers in order to provide a more nuanced analysis. in the meantime, let us consider the bologna declaration (1999) which has set in train a process that began with aims specifically related to europe, but has grown to global proportions. the bologna process as a policy reform mechanism minimally, the bologna declaration was a proposal for creating a european system of easily readable comparable degrees; the establishment of a europe-wide credit transfer system; the promotion of student and graduate mobility throughout europe by removing obstacles to recognition of qualifications; the promotion of a cooperative approach within europe to quality assurance, and the promotion of a european dimension to higher education (wachter, 2004). the prague 2001 ministerial meeting gave the bologna process a social dimension. european higher education was formed as a public good with a lifelong learning dimension to be provided to european citizens as part of the responsibility of nation-states. ironically, for a supra-national economic organisation it was also given an anti-neo-liberal globalism orientation. in 2003, the berlin ministerial meeting gave emphasis to reducing social and gender inequalities nationally and throughout europe. also at this time quality assurance procedures, structures, standards and guidelines came to the fore. doctoral level studies were also integrated into the process of harmonising degree structures which is expected to see the implementation of the new tri-level bachelor/master/doctoral structure throughout europe by 2010. wachter (2004, pp. 272, 273) observes that the bologna process was certainly not conceived as an outright neo-liberal agenda. … in berlin, what had earlier been a vague and modestly-phrased anti-liberal undercurrent turned into a manifest antiglobalism attitude. … the insistence on the ‘academic values’ and repetition of the credo that higher education remain a ‘public good’ and a ‘public responsibility’ point in same direction. … a new social agenda with a partly anti-globalist undercurrent which is rapidly gaining ground. the bologna process represents an archetypal instance of an ambiguous and contradictory policy setting which cannot be studied within an aims-to-outcomes, nation-centred implementation process. a two-stage, top-down model cannot adequately capture what the bologna process is. the process is not progressing in any distinguishable stages because different interpretations and contexts are blurring its phases, generating translations in what it is and transformations in its meaning (witte, 2004). this is because like so much contemporary policy action in higher education it involves multiple actors operating at multiple (local/national/transnational) levels engaging in the formulation, reformulation and implementation of policy according to their differing perceptions, conceptions and experiences. even so, the bologna process might come to be regarded as the single largest reform of european higher education since the eleventh century when the university of bologna was established. initially, the administrative moves made under the bologna process were to bring http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci jinghe han & michael singh: world english speaking (wes) student-teachers’ experiences of schools transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 67 greater transnational consistency in degree structures, credit transfer arrangements and quality assurance systems across an estimated 4,000 higher education institutions throughout europe. the harmonisation of approaches to higher education across europe aims to facilitate the movement of increasingly mobile transnational knowledge workers. the expectation is that this will increase the transnational mobility among european students and graduates as well as secure an increased share of the international student market through recruitment outside that continent. the european higher education ministers are also concerned about competition in international education from non-european sources, such as australasia and north america. perhaps not surprisingly, the bologna process is bringing about some consistency and portability across europe’s higher education systems, but is also influencing other countries across the world to do likewise. it is this competitive challenge that is of most concern to the australian government and its higher education system. in the discussion paper, the bologna process and australia: the next steps (department of education, science and training, 2006), the australian government acknowledged that its higher education ranked among the world’s best; had developed a strong dialogue with some asian countries on education; and that its european student enrolments had doubled in the last decade. however, whether these current strengths are powerful enough to deal with matters concerning students’ transnational mobility and their graduate employability in the transnational labour market invites further investigation. moreover, it is likely that the australian government will use the bologna process, as it has been by european governments to achieve its own particular national goals. for instance, the next steps policy text highlights the australian higher education system’s ‘lack’ of an accepted or uniform national system of credits which is characterised as a weakness that makes transnational credit transfer more difficult for students. this suggests the possibility of an outcomes-driven, competency-based driver of further reforms to the australian higher education system. the next steps policy text illustrates opportunities the australian higher education system has in choosing to align with the bologna process. specifically, clarification of qualification recognition standards and effective credit transfer systems promises to help students and graduates move easily between australian and european universities. likewise, the compatibility of australia’s quality assurance arrangements is expected to increase the confidence of european institutions and employers in australian qualifications and make the quality framework more transparent. these opportunities also pose challenges for further reforming australia’s higher education system. consider for a moment the following questions. how might qualifications and their recognition be made more consistent? whose higher education will provide the criteria for judging the consistency of australian qualifications? and in terms of the focus of this paper, how will this make transnational students’ and graduates varieties of the english language as well as their nationally-grounded education, recognised, transferable and assured? australia accepted an invitation to audit the 2007 bologna process ministerial meeting because of its worries about the risk of not being aligned with the process. if hurdles from different systems and structures do exist, this could decrease student and graduate mobility, and therefore decrease australia’s attractiveness in the transnational education and labour markets. as with any serious curriculum issue, the bologna process has stimulated contestation over modes of accreditation, the criteria for judging quality and benchmarking procedures. noting british universities engagement in ‘lobbying and subterranean warfare’ around these matters, neave (2005, p. 19) observes that each nation-centred higher education system is struggling to have its http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci jinghe han & michael singh: world english speaking (wes) student-teachers’ experiences of schools transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 68 particular version of normative instruments, their home-grown definitions of conditions regulating and making more ‘readable’ the qualifications and conditions accompanying cross-frontier student traffic … accepted as european standard practice. it is important to distinguish between the ideology of neo-liberal globalism with its particular political projects such as corporate management, and the contemporary transitions in the social, cultural, economic and historical processes of globalisation. in other words, it is not possible for the bologna process to occur without european nation-states thinking carefully about their centuries old transnational connections, including those that are beyond europe. this sees them working out how to marry their commitment to the european higher education area with the global competition and cooperation in which higher education worldwide is now necessarily involved (department of education, science and training, 2006). this is especially so for former imperial powers such as britain which has a strong transnational trade in education. neo-liberal globalism pulls in the direction of state regulated quasi-market forces, while transnational cooperation favours social justice. for instance, neave (2005, p. 20) argues that britain faces a struggle to restore social justice as a prominent part of the current agenda, by contrast with the obsessive concentration on achieving efficiency, cost saving and performance plus the setting in place of monitory bodies and agencies. neo-liberal globalism is not a totalising force; there are political projects. for those british universities which are overwhelming white, male and anglo-phone, dow (2006) found that the bologna process promotes self-interested, national defensiveness. this was evident in insular responses to distant horizons, their sense of complacent superiority, and their neocolonial paternalism with respect to the english language. thus, with respect to british universities, dow (2006, p. 10) concluded: there is an automatic, in-built and dangerously myopic assumption that the world is an english-speaking, mono-cultural whole, that our degrees are already internationally acceptable; some of our students may disagree. neo-liberal globalism is not the only focus of concern for australian teacher educators; they too struggle with the legacy of white australia politics. it is in this context that this paper points to some of the disagreements that world english speaking student-teachers, specifically immigrants from asian-pacific nations, have with regards to the nation-centred teacher education programs of australia. among the curriculum challenges these particular translational student-teachers confronted were those framed around their racial or ethnic ‘differences’, especially their speaking of english and their educational cultures. institutions are ‘the humanly devised constraints that shape human action’ (north cited in witte, 2004, p. 409). their formal or structural constraints include laws, political regulations, and economic rules as much as curriculum policies. the informal or cultural constraints of education institutions include the behavioural norms, standards of conduct, values and shared societal traditions governing the enactment of the curriculum in practice. together these formal and informal constraints form an institutional fabric that give substance to and shape the curriculum. however, the term ‘constraint’ may direct our thinking only to the restrictive functions of the curriculum. it may be better to talk the curriculum’s regulatory and cultural ‘features’ in recognition of its enabling and constraining capacities. the curriculum fabric of any national higher education system contains formal regulatory and informal cultural http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci jinghe han & michael singh: world english speaking (wes) student-teachers’ experiences of schools transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 69 features. hardt and negri’s (2000) three dimensional view of power provides a useful tool for analysing these informal cultural features, the focus of this paper. the notion of ‘disciplinary society’ refers to the exercise of society’s discipline via diffuse networks of power to produce and regulate taken-for-granted ways of enacting the curriculum. the concept of ‘societal control’ refers to the surveillance effected through the mechanisms for monitoring the curriculum used variously by the state, the media and through acts of consumption. ‘biopower’ is the self-controls enacted by individuals on their minds and bodies’ curriculum engagements as a result of internalising these other forms of power. the societal disciplining of wes student-teachers’ knowledge, ethnicity, language and culture the internationalisation of higher education through policy settings such as the bologna process involves more than removing formal curriculum limitations on degree structures, the credit transfer system and recognition of qualifications (wachter, 2004). this paper uses these policy settings to raise questions about the informal cultural features associated with differences in ethnic, language, educational cultures and background knowledge that may inhibit or enable transnational mobility. how might these policy settings deal with the informal features of teacher education curricula that arise when students cross frontiers and they themselves are not ‘readable’ in the new education environment or meet the imaginings of australia’s teaching practices? looking ethnically different made these particular wes student-teachers less authoritative. rosh was an immigrant student-teacher from fiji. she experienced professional isolation due to the racial attitudes of australian school students. they doubted that she was a qualified teacher of australian geography because she was from another country. the appearance of these wes immigrant student-teachers marked them as ‘other’ in the dominating anglo-phone australian multi-culture (santoro, kamler and reid, 2001, p. 200). a small linguistic or cultural mistake could cause these student-teachers to lose the curriculum authority they automatically expected to have as pre-service school teachers. they felt that they were expected to be more accurate in their teaching than their anglo-australian peers. the school students put these wes student-teachers to the test before accepting them. the ‘outing’ of them as ‘coloured’ teachers was a challenge that both the wes teachers and student-teachers we interviewed came across in their efforts to be accepted as ‘australian teachers’. in this embryonic stage of becoming ‘australian teachers’ they learned the need to change their ‘form’ and ‘habits’ to do so. thus, how to address the readability of nationcentred professions in the internationalisation of higher education incited or invited by the bologna process is an important question. any use of the english language by these wes student-teachers that was deemed incorrect made them an easy ‘target’ for the school students to ‘shoot.’ for these wes student-teachers, language inaccuracy opened them to marginalisation. this made them feel excluded from the curriculum authority of schooling. despite english being a transnational language, it is a powerful means of place-based inclusion into or exclusion from one’s social positioning as a teacher (valdes, 1999, p. 47). despite being a native speaker, it was not easy for ‘eliza dolittle’ to completely change her east london cockney english to the ‘received english pronunciation’ authorised by the upper classes. that she sometimes lapsed back into this cockney english suggests that identities are fluid and multiple. despite this liquidity she bounced up against hard edges during the very long time it took her to shift. a summary of the evidence from the interviews with two wes student-teachers (s) and a teacher educator (l) is presented in table 1. it highlights the challenges the australian teacher education curriculum as enacted through the practicum caused these particular wes student-teachers. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci jinghe han & michael singh: world english speaking (wes) student-teachers’ experiences of schools transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 70 all were aware of the reconfiguration occurring in the wes student-teachers’ identities, but more could say exactly where it would lead them or australian education. table 1 school students as agents of societal discipline data sources issues theme pattern rosh (s) students not believe rosh could teach australian geography; because she from another country stereotype: ‘other’ people not qualified teachers in australia ethnicity and power kihi (s) teachers coloured, have to know the subjects better; small mistake could ‘out’ them; have to be careful coloured people are easily ‘out’ colour and power marie (l) kids made fun of wes studentteachers’ accent world english speakers’ disadvantage world english one reason these wes student-teachers were challenged in their teaching was their linguistic ‘difference’ from the anglo-australian teachers who spoke australian english, one relatively powerful variety of world english. in the school students’ eyes, they spoke differently, and looked different, and therefore it was assumed that their curriculum knowledge might be not appropriate for australian students. the student-teachers acquired strategies to overcome this challenge, gain confidence in their teaching and make the shifts to become ‘australian teachers.’ however, this raises the issue of whether australia can be as complacent in its engagement with the bologna process as the uk given its distinctive variety of world english maybe less competitive (dow, 2006). the guilty pleasure derived from such complacency may drive some curriculum innovations. these wes student-teachers’ practicum classes might be taken as sites representing a ‘disciplinary society’ whereby australian society’s disciplinary power is exercised through a ‘diffuse network, producing and regulating customs, habits, and productive practices’ (hardt and negri, 2000, p. 23). in this instance, this societal discipline or behaviour management operated in these schools through a dispersed set of connections linking school teachers, school students and teacher-educators in governing the behaviour and identity (re)formation of these wes student-teachers. together these agents had differing capacities for shaping and governing the practicum of these wes student-teachers. these curricula experiences taught them the need to develop a nationally-grounded workplace identity, rather than the transnational professionalism assumed by the bologna process. schools are typically thought of as disciplinary institutions where school students learn to obey its rules and regulations. however, the evidence indicates that these wes studentteachers could not draw on this disciplinary power in the same way or to the degree that the anglo-phone australian school teachers did. the latter had this curriculum power at their disposal for them to ensure that the school students obeyed the rules in their classes. however, the school students found ‘reasons’ not to obey the rules to which the particular wes student-teachers appealed. the students’ resistance to their exercise of disciplinary power was framed by its own logic. because these wes student-teachers were ethnically different; their skin colours were different and their englishes were different, the school students refused to give them the curriculum power or authority to discipline them. in this way these wes student-teachers felt they were excluded from the disciplinary power of this nation-centred institution and profession. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci jinghe han & michael singh: world english speaking (wes) student-teachers’ experiences of schools transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 71 societal controls for affecting identity shifts with the globalisation of the bologna process, the efforts of policy makers in australia are directed to considering the rules and regulations governing the transfer of credit and the recognition of qualifications (department of education, science and training, 2006). the increased opportunities for transnational student and graduate mobility are due to these processes of internationalising higher education which involve redressing the formal constraints on transnational flows of certain types of labour. these transnational knowledge workers also have to make the effort to change to better engage the informed cultural features by adjusting their identities to their new education or work environment. they learn to make the effort to transfer themselves from being a teacher embodying their home country’s educational culture to becoming ‘australian teachers’ so as to be part of its educational culture. in this way they make themselves more readable as ‘australian teachers’, albeit without necessarily achieving the transnational harmonisation of their multi-layered identities the bologna process implies. during the practicum the wes student-teachers we interviewed learned to establish rapport in the new environment with their school colleagues, the school children and teaching itself. these negotiations in this new context saw these wes student-teachers experience the process of ‘becoming’ rather than ‘being’ (see table 2). their identities concerns were more about whether they could really become ‘australian teachers,’ how they might enact teaching and how they might re-present themselves as ‘australian teachers’. they were more concerned about who they were becoming rather than ‘who they are’ or ‘where they came from’ (hall, 1996, p. 4). understandably, their identities were fractured in this process of transformation. these wes student-teachers struggled to develop and take-up their identity as ‘australian teachers.’ they assumed that being prospective teachers, they would be respected for the occupation itself. the chinese idiom ‘zun shi zhong jiao’ means respecting teachers and valuing education. in chinese philosophy, teachers expect to be automatically respected, while in australia even the prime minister has to win the respect of citizens to be elected (remennick, 2002, p. 109). the students’ conduct shocked these wes student-teachers. they ignored teachers’ directions, openly engaged in conversations during their teachers’ explanations and answered back. for instance, arun found it was difficult to teach when he had no taken-for-granted authority in the class because the students kept talking and did not listen to him. he thought learning was possible only when the students were well disciplined and expressed their intention or desire to learn. like others, he placed more importance on behaviour management than academic work (carr & klassen, 1997, p. 69). kaza, a wes supervising teacher who had migrated from fiji explained to the student-teachers why the school students had no motivation for learning, in the following rather questionable terms: some kids here don’t really value education. 30% kids are absolutely not interested in anything. their attitude towards learning is totally negative. i teach science here and kids don’t see modern technology as relating to science. they don’t value science as a subject. they often ask, ‘why should we learn this? we are not going to use it.’ there are so many options for them. in our country, if you don’t work, you don’t get food. here they can go to the centre-link and get better money than we do (t: kaza). kaza’s opinion was that some students in australia did not see to value the official curriculum, especially knowledge which they could not see as being of immediate, short-term use. although open to questioning, kaza attributed the negative attitude these students had towards education to their many other life options. for them, a good education was not the http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci jinghe han & michael singh: world english speaking (wes) student-teachers’ experiences of schools transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 72 only means for gaining a decent life. however, in developing countries such as china, india, fiji and sri lanka education is a very important and highly competitive channel for achieving socio-economic mobility. it is a basic means to change or make a better life for ordinary people. parents expect their children study hard so they can successfully compete for the few university places, because this means a good job after graduation as well as ‘guang zong yao zu’, that is bringing honour to one’s ancestors. therefore, for many students in these countries learning more and getting good marks are the essential tasks for themselves, teachers and parents. for these student-teachers this did not seem to be the case in australia. har, another wes supervising teacher who had also migrated after military coups in fiji indicated the shifts she made in her identity to become a successful ‘australian teacher.’ rather surprisingly, these included learning to tolerate low expectations of students’ behaviours and academic performance: it took me five years to change. i feel i am a much better teacher now. i got my year 10. it is a horrible class. i am happy with them too. some of the girls are racist. the boys don’t listen to me. they haven’t done much work for the whole year, but i am tolerant with them. i have made them feel better about themselves. yes, a little bit work is fine. if they give me 10%, i am happy, and i keep trying to encourage them. i am not telling them you can’t do anything in the class. good positive relationship is very important for any teacher (t: har). har’s new identity was constructed through negotiating her power relations with the school students. after five years’ experience, har had shifted to tolerating the horribly low socioacademic achievement of her students. she started to tolerate them doing ‘little work’, being happy instead to encourage them rather than always making negative comments. ironically, she was now confident in herself as a good ‘australian teacher.’ similarly, jagi learned to compromise his sense of himself as a teacher, and lowered his expectations for students’ learning outcomes. this he saw as being part of forming his new identity as an ‘australian teacher’: ‘student management’ is about how actually you were going to cooperate with students who don’t want to learn anything. they don’t listen to you. as a teacher you got to begin where they are and bring them up. you cannot use your criteria from your background to expect them. you cannot say, ‘you are in year 11, you don’t know how to do this and how to do that.’ … you give in some and they learn something (t: jagi). jagi, a transnational knowledge worker from india did not stabilise his identity around an unchanging oneness nor did he experience cultural belongingness in this new environment. instead, slowly he learned to ‘give in’ part of his teacherly ‘self’ by giving in on his formerly high expectations about students’ learning. this made it possible for him to cope with students who did not engage with schooling and lacked the motivation to learn. however, his ‘giving in’ indicated an internal struggle which he experienced as transmogrification. these tendencies towards lowered expectations of students’ socio-academic performance raise concerns if they recur across wes immigrant teachers working in low socio-economic schools across australia. learning to accept rather than mitigate or mediate the school students’ alienation, disaffection or disengagement from schooling was a way these wes student-teachers adjusted to their context and formed a sense of themselves as ‘australian teachers.’ har started her journey with shock. she cried, thinking of herself a bad teacher and became angry http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci jinghe han & michael singh: world english speaking (wes) student-teachers’ experiences of schools transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 73 with her students’ misbehaviour. after five years of teaching practice, she could give a little smile at the same behaviour by her students. her identity did not remain the same across time. she learned the self-control necessary to concealing one ‘self’ by showing another workplace identity, a questionable one of an ‘australian teacher’ as tolerating low socio-academic performance by students (hall, 1996, p. 4). by doing this, she acquired an additional layer for her identities. her little smile showed her adjustment to what the ‘fijian teacher’ in her regarded as unacceptable. the shift from being angry to smiling was a yet another step that paralleled ovid’s metamorphosis. there was another dimension to becoming an ‘australian teacher’. here it is worth considering for a moment the test of professional english assessment for teachers (peat) (institute of languages unsw, n.d.) which was introduced in 1991 by the then new south wales (nsw) department of school education (dse). overseas educated teachers from language backgrounds other than english whose teaching qualifications have been recognised by the department as commensurate with australian qualifications are also required to demonstrate their english language proficiency. the goal of peat is to determine the level of the candidate’s english proficiency. it is not a test of their curriculum competence but an assessment of their english language skills within the context of school education. the level attained in each component of peat is designed to determine whether the candidate’s english proficiency is of a standard which would enable him/her to teach and interact effectively and confidently in a nsw school. in effect, peat sets the criteria to measure the identity transformation of wes teachers from overseas in terms of their capacity to read, listen, write and speak a dialect akin to australian english. asho considered the test ‘good’ and ‘reasonable’ and thought ‘everybody should be doing’ it. for her it measured whether wes teachers arriving from abroad used english in ‘the way the majority population is talking, the way they speak, and the way they act.’ in effect the test measures their success at making themselves more like an ‘australian teacher.’ that asho was happy to change herself in this new environment suggests that identities may be adopted and discarded, albeit not quite as easily as a change of costume (bauman, 1996, p. 23). a summary of the evidence from the interviews with wes student-teachers (s) and wes teachers (t) is presented in table 2. it reveals the metamorphosis these wes student-teachers experienced in their shift from being different to finding a teacherly identity within australian schools and its education culture, with which they could make a living. unequal images of education battled in their minds and bodies for precedence. the bologna process is changing the formal limitations on the transnational readability of degrees (witte, 2004). beyond this the students and graduates, the carriers of these qualification face the informal constraints of nationally-grounded education cultures which require that they change themselves to adjust to the new environment. the particular wes student-teachers in this study (han, 2006) were not sure where they belonged; how to place themselves within the various australian patterns of professional teaching behaviours; or whether this placement was right and proper. the guidance these wes student-teachers received from their university lecturers and supervising teachers provided useful directions for becoming ‘australian teachers.’ in the practicum, the student-teachers had to juggle what to keep and what to give up in the curriculum work that formed, informed and transformed their teaching strategies and identities. although they assumed their identity as teachers was solid and stable, the problems they encountered during the practicum meant they had to keep their options open: ‘modernity was built in steel and concrete; post-modernity, in biodegradable plastic’ (bauman, 1996, p. 18). these student-teachers tried to resituate their steely sense of themselves by happily accepting australian english and australian education culture of australian teachers, which for some meant downgrading, if not degrading their http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci jinghe han & michael singh: world english speaking (wes) student-teachers’ experiences of schools transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 74 expectations for students’ learning. their shift to lower expectations about students’ socioacademic performance is troubling. table 2 metamorphosis through the societal control of difference data sources issues theme pattern ron (s) hard to teach when the students talked and did not listen; their minds somewhere else; no intention of learning behaviour and academic work discipline/ behaviour management kaza (t) 1. not value education, not interested, attitude towards learning negative, many options vs 2. don’t work, don’t get food learning motivation and life, life-driven or interest-driven motivation har (t) five years’ experience, happy with horrible class, from unendurable to endurable with students’ low performance new identity change jagi (t) to be a teacher in australia, learned to lower down expectations to appropriate students compromising oneself, give in part of the old self change har (t) from crying and thinking of herself a bad teacher, being angry with naughty children to smiling changing response to same students’ behaviour change jagi (t) wes teachers have to change & learn, come to close to what acceptable not to find identity but to lose it & become unidentified change asho (t) peat test very good and reasonable; to pass the test, have to perceive, talk and act the way the majority people speak and act subaltern identity change during the practicum the school students’ behaviour and academic performance confronted these wes student-teachers and might be explained in terms of hardt and negri’s (2000, p. 24) concept of ‘society of control’. in contrast to the disciplinary power operating within schools, this form of power arises outside schools and extends well within them. such societal control is exercised in relation to these wes student-teachers through mechanisms that directly organise people’s brains and bodies, for example the surveillance activities of welfare systems, information networks and consumer monitoring. in this instance their students did not have the expected self-motivation or apparent academic capacity for engagement in deep learning. to some degree their students’ vitality and creativity seem to have been sapped by the dependency on instantaneous gratification that australia’s welfare system, mass media and consumer culture has created. this societal control is characterised by an intense and generalised system of disciplinary norms that the students internalised, shaping their day-to-day practices of schooling. the embodied power of wes student-teachers’ education culture the bologna process aims to achieve formal credit transfer for studies undertaken in one european country in all others. this raises interesting questions (singh and han, 2007). in australian teacher education should the prior knowledge, formal or otherwise, that wes student-teachers from overseas have of education be a source of such credit? should the http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci jinghe han & michael singh: world english speaking (wes) student-teachers’ experiences of schools transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 75 possible curriculum knowledge they have remain unrecognised? are they required to engage in a one-way learning process whereby they change to meet the new environment? is the possible curriculum knowledge they acquired in their former homeland credit worthy? if so, how might their possible knowledge of curriculum be translated for use in their teaching in australia? does australian education want, need or require transnational curriculum knowledge that lies outside europe and north america? these wes student-teachers had acquired knowledge of education in their homeland about test-driven, text-based teaching/learning strategies. their impression of australian school classes was ‘active learning’ and student-centredness. while these wes studentteachers appreciated the student-centred classes, most were scared of students being so active in class. worrying about their own english language proficiency provided them with an excuse for their quietness in university lectures and tutorials. one reason these wes studentteachers did not talk in class was their habit of being quiet in class. their tongues shied away from australian english. the chinese idiom ‘xi guan cheng zi ran’ means once you form a habit, it comes naturally to you. mei was used to sitting and listening. as she said, students did not do presentations in school in malaysia. she had acquired that habit through her own schooling. the requirement of doing presentations in front of a class in australia not only challenged her english language performance but also her habituated sense of what it meant to be a student. guli shared a similar experience with mei. guli’s ‘awkwardness’ and ‘uncomfortableness’ was due in part to language barriers, but more so because of the experiential knowledge he had acquired of test-driven, text-based teaching and learning through years of schooling in china. in his educational philosophy, students could learn more if they listened more to their teachers. the traditional chinese philosophy of ‘modesty’ says, using more of one’s ears (listening) and less of one’s mouth (talking) enables students to quickly improve their learning. this philosophy found deep roots in the wes student-teachers who were of asian background. this might be a source of their apparent ‘passive learning’ and lack of interaction with peers and their teachers in class. these particular wes student-teachers emphasised the transmission of curriculum content at the expense of learning how to learn, or engaging in the development of meta-learning strategies. the process of learning focused on teaching students to be passive receptors of other people’s knowledge, socially constructed in the form of unquestionable facts and moral truths. it has been argued that this curriculum seemingly works against higher order critical and creative thought, creating people unable to produce their own knowledge, to innovate or engage rapid social change (kalantzis, cope, noble and poynting, 1990, p. 34). given that the habit of ‘passive learning’ is seemingly deep-rooted in some asian education cultures it was not surprising that some of these wes student-teachers brought such pedagogies to their practicum in australian schools: i have a friend who is from syria. he was a school teacher in syria. in syria, when the teacher speaks, the students shut up. that is the culture there. but here it is not the same. you find they have more equality, and the culture is different here. there is more interaction in class. he couldn’t get connectivity with the kids. he expected that every time he had to yell at them to be quiet. he couldn’t get them to work because he couldn’t get connection with them. he wasn’t prepared to change and he thinks his teaching methodology is good but it doesn’t work here (s: arun). arun’s example showed the conflict between the ‘passive learning’ method used by his wes friend and the ‘active learning’ of students in australia. this student-teacher was accustomed http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci jinghe han & michael singh: world english speaking (wes) student-teachers’ experiences of schools transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 76 to the teaching methods he used in syria and so employed the same teaching practices in australia. however, while his methods did not work during the practicum, he could not envisage making any changes because these teaching strategies were ‘gen shen di gu’ for him, that is deeply rooted or solidly ingrained in his thinking. however, some of these wes student-teachers were happy to accept student-centred teaching. comparing the two teaching and learning experiences, rohini valued australia education as excellent. however, she still thought education in sri lanka was good because the students there could learn more and achieve at a higher level. suni indicated that she too valued australia education but still kept a positive attitude toward the education in her home country: in fiji, when the teacher goes into the class, the kids are very quiet and very attentive. they don’t talk around or move around. but it is not so here. in fiji, the principal and the teachers work hard to make sure the kid get good marks. people give top priority to education. everything comes to the next. but here we have to see the children are really learning, not only for the purpose of the exam. i wouldn’t say the one that is in fiji is relevant, but the requirement is there. that is how i was educated. here the education is preparing children for life (s: suni). suni appreciated the hard work fijian principals and teachers put into making sure students achieve good marks; whether this is the same as deep learning is open to further investigation. she appreciated the quietness and attentiveness of fijian students. she did not give much weight to the informed features of australia’s education culture. the interview evidence that emerged in relation to the affects of differences in education cultures on these wes studentteachers’ teaching/learning is summarised in table 3. the differentiated identities borne of their life-histories are key parts of the (re)construction of educational realities. table 3 the embodied power of cultural differences in teaching data sources issues theme pattern guli (s) 1. quiet in large classes, listening to learn vs 2. active presenters: awkward & uncomfortable education philosophy awkward & uncomfortable jean (s) 1. sit & listen to the teacher vs 2. doing presentations in english to peers: scary habit – habitus scary ron (s) 1. teacher talk, students shut up vs 2. teacher-student equality, more interaction in class 3. not ready for change deep-rooted thinking stereotype ready for change? rohini (s) 1. kids have opportunity to express vs 2. follow teachers’ methods, teachers’ material 3. value australian education vs 4. sri lanka higher level value both teaching methods which is better? suni (s) 1. test-driven teaching vs 2. teaching for real learning attitudes towards educations silence? through its encouragement of transnational student and graduate mobility the bologna process involves removing formal limitations through reforms to degree structures, credit transfer and recognition of qualifications (wachter, 2004). there are also informal features of education cultures that this process does not appear to acknowledge. the national grounding http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci jinghe han & michael singh: world english speaking (wes) student-teachers’ experiences of schools transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 77 of education cultures see transnational teachers and student-teachers bringing this knowledge to their teaching career in australia. in the education cultures from where these particular student-teachers came, teachers are a powerful presence before their students and are the controller of the class. however, in australian schools the curriculum work of teachers seems markedly different. their different background knowledge of education, schooling and teaching has to be confronted and reworked via the hidden curriculum through which they become ‘australian teachers’. the curriculum work of these particular wes student-teachers were regulated by what they have internalised about schooling, teaching/ learning and teacher/student relationships through their own experiential learning overseas. this might usefully be explained by hardt and negri’s (2000, p. 24) concept of ‘biopower’. in schools, the students are disciplined by their teachers but this disciplinarity is not necessarily effective. schools can impose disciplinary power on the students, but whether this power takes effect also depends on the students. generally, the relation between the use of disciplinary power and the students is contradictory. but once the disciplinary power has seeped into an individual’s body and mind, it becomes part of that individual’s identity. in this way disciplinary power becomes biopower, controlling the individual’s consciousness and body. it is the societal control exercised through media and other modern technologies that makes possible the transformation of disciplinary power into biopower (hardt and negri, 2000, p. 24). these student-teachers followed the practices of teaching they learnt in their former homeland. they interpreted their experiences in these schools using this frame of reference. having absorbed the power that directed their experiences as students and teachers overseas, they sought to rearticulate these australian in school settings. in this sense biopower had achieved some degree of command over their curriculum work and imaginings as teachers. it was expressed as an integral, vital function in their everyday embrace of the curriculum and what it means to be a teacher. through their practicum these student-teachers themselves reactivated this biopower of their own accord. although no longer obligated to the models of teaching and learning that existed in their homeland, they remained objects of its power. this biopower was thoroughly imbued in their sense of teaching and learning, administering their curriculum endeavours. along with societal discipline and control, this biopower was also a stake in the production and reproduction of these wes student-teachers as ‘australian school teachers.’ conclusion europe’s bologna process has direct implications for the acceptance of teacher education awards and the transnational mobility of student-teachers and graduate teachers from countries in latin america, north america, asia, africa and the pacific. it has important implications for the success and reputation of teacher education providers in serving domestic, immigrant and international students from many countries. as a contribution to this work, this paper has focused on some of the challenges in teacher education associated with the already existing transnational mobility of students. it found that these wes studentteachers confronted challenges around their racial or ethnic ‘differences’, identity shifts and their educational multi-cultures. this paper has addressed the tensions these wes studentteachers confronted in the australian teaching environment. the hidden curriculum driving the process of metamorphosis in their identities was explained by using hardt and negri’s (2000) multi-dimensional conceptualisation of power: ‘disciplinary society’, ‘society of control’ and ‘biopower.’ given this context, considerations about future developments in the transnational developments in teacher education might usefully benefit from reflecting on the http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci jinghe han & michael singh: world english speaking (wes) student-teachers’ experiences of schools transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 78 bologna process as it moves from ‘out there’ to find expression in, and responses through local teacher education curricula ‘here and there.’ references department of education, science and training (2006). the bologna process and australia: next steps. 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(2004). the bologna process: developments and prospects. european journal of education. 39 (3), 265-273. witte, j. (2004). the introduction of two-tiered study structures in the context of the bologna process: a theoretical framework for an international comparative study of change in higher education systems. higher education policy. 17, 405-425. authors jinghe han is a lecturer in english language and literacy education at charles sturt university. she is currently investigating australian, chinese and european perceptions, conceptions and experiences of the bologna process. this arises from her study of issues http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci jinghe han & michael singh: world english speaking (wes) student-teachers’ experiences of schools transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 79 relating to the retention of world english speaking student-teachers from overseas to meet the skills mismatch of teachers throughout australia. her research publications include explorations of the mobility of transnational knowledge workers (melbourne studies in education), global english and the loss of language communities (mosaic), and vocational education in china (vocal). in 2006 she was the elected post-graduate student representative on the executive of the australian association for research in education. email: jhan@csu.edu.au michael singh is professor of education, centre for educational research, university of western sydney, australia. he has recently studied the initial development of queensland’s multi-level, large scale education and training reforms to the senior phase of learning, and is investigating the globalisation of higher education through the bologna process. he is currently investigating strategies for making ‘robust hope’ practical through undertaking research into innovation in international, regional and urban education, comparative cultural studies and meta-language learning strategies. his most recent book, globalizing education (edited with m. apple and j. kenway), explores the local/global connectedness evident in policies and pedagogies governing education and its reform. email: m.j.singh@uws.edu.au http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci mailto:jhan@csu.edu.au mailto:singh@uws.edu.au microsoft word white formatted 131108.doc to cite this article please include all of the following details: white, julie (2008). sustainable pedagogy: a research narrative about performativity, teachers and possibility. transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> sustainable pedagogy: a research narrative about performativity, teachers and possibility julie white la trobe university, australia introduction in our work as researchers we weigh and sift experiences, make choices regarding what is significant, what is trivial, what to include what to exclude. we do not simply chronicle what happened next, but place the next in meaningful context. by doing so we craft narratives; we write lives (richardson, 1990, p. 10). the narrative turn in contemporary qualitative research has led me to present this paper as a research narrative (white, 2006a) rather than in a more conventional ‘results’ and ‘discussion’ style in the tradition of empirical social science research. several years ago i determined that my approach to research was more ‘subjective’ narrator, than ‘objective’ recorder (white, 2004; white, 2007) and it is with this in mind that i investigate the links between the ecological and the pedagogical. this paper begins with a theoretical consideration of sustainability and pedagogy followed by my conceptualisation of ‘sustainable pedagogy.’ a discussion of performativity is included to support this conceptualisation, but the purpose at the heart of this investigation is to consider how teachers might be supported to develop, articulate and maintain their pedagogy, and further, how they might sustain themselves in the face of increasing performativity. in the later part of the paper, ‘sustainable pedagogy’ is illustrated with three vignettes of current projects about pedagogy. firstly, the importance of identity in the development of pedagogy is discussed in relation to a new approach within a pre-service primary education program. secondly, a bureaucratically inspired ‘train-the-trainer’ program about pedagogy for experienced teachers is critiqued. and thirdly, a project involving creativity and pedagogy in an inner city primary school is described in relation to this new conceptualisation. over the past twelve years, my work with pre-service teachers has compelled me into two major research areas. firstly, i explored the experiences of teachers in their first year of employment and, in the process, critiqued the portfolio of competency standards established by the victorian institute of teaching for beginning teachers (white, 2004; white & hay, 2005; white et al., 2005; white, ferguson, hay, moss & dixon, 2004a). and the second area that captured my attention is the exploration of pedagogy and identity for pre-service education students (mccann, heywood & white, 2008; godinho, white, hay & st leger, 2007; heywood, white & mccann, 2007; white, 2006a; hay & white, 2005; white, dixon & smerdon, 2004b). more recently, however, i have begun to question what happens to the confident and articulate graduates who leave the university holding clear views of their own pedagogy and a strong sense of teacher self. i have also become increasingly interested in experienced teacher pedagogy not only how pedagogy was initially shaped, but how it is developed, questioned and challenged throughout a teaching career (see white & smerdon, 2008; burnard & white, 2008). http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci white: sustainable pedagogy transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 2 sustainability the united nations decade for sustainable development 2005–1014 has a ‘vision for the world where everyone has the opportunity to benefit from education and learn the values, behaviours and lifestyles required for a sustainable future and for positive societal transformation’ (ministerial advisory committee for educational renewal [macer], 2006, p. 21). this is difficult to contest and most teachers would wholeheartedly support it. the devil, as usual, is in the detail. it is how teachers should go about this task that is of particular interest to me. wooltorton’s (2002) zeal in the pursuit of sustainability education goes so far as to recommend ‘that education systems and schools include education for sustainability as their primary purpose’ (p. 3) which would indeed change the purpose of schooling altogether. tilbury (2004, p. 4) deplores the dreadful state of australian education in relation to sustainability programs in schools, but fails to notice her complicity in the audit and surveillance culture which might in itself contribute significantly to the problem she describes. for tilbury, as for many others in bureaucracy, government, universities and private consultancies, it seems that teachers exist to do the bidding of others. in this paper i do not attempt to examine ‘sustainability education’ per se, but link notions of sustainability to pedagogy in order to contribute a new conceptualisation and to transform perceptions of teaching and teachers work. drawing upon macer’s (2006) comment above, i am interested in the process whereby teachers articulate and enact their pedagogies and my interest is to explore the potential of this. i question whether visions of ‘positive societal transformation’ are at all possible when teachers are viewed as program implementers rather than professionals. the concept of sustainability in relation to pedagogy is complex and interesting, and a range of interpretations might prove fruitful. one way of viewing sustainability is the notion of supporting or bearing weight. in this way, pedagogy might be considered the vital component in teaching, or perhaps the metaphors of ‘cornerstone,’ ‘load bearing wall’ or ‘linchpin’ might be useful. another view of sustainability is in the sense of sustenance that provides strength, encouragement, support and nourishment. if teachers are to sustain themselves over time and uphold up their ideals and heart-felt beliefs, the idea of community is suggested as a way of doing this. so does pedagogy require community nurturing? a further interpretation of sustainability involves the notion of enduring commitment or bearing up against adversity, which lends itself well to consideration of pedagogy – particularly in relation to performativity or bureaucratic imposition a concept i will address shortly. one sustains an injury in sport or defeat in battle and in music, to sustain a note is to continue the sound for as long as possible. sustainability is therefore a rich concept that affords multiple perspectives, and allows for further consideration of pedagogy. performativity and education education is – will we ever learn? – no mechanical affair, and yet, astonishingly, much of the field and the public still seems to proceed upon the assumption that if we only make the appropriate adjustments – in the curriculum, teaching, learning, administration… “standards” – then those test scores will soar’ (pinar, 2001, pp. 13-14, cited in reeder, 2005, p. 247). before attention is turned to ‘sustainable pedagogy,’ a brief consideration of performativity is required. while performativity is used in science and technology studies as well as economic sociology, there are three major strands of performativity that are of particular interest to me. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci white: sustainable pedagogy transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 3 firstly, judith butler (1997; 2000) a significant scholar who has published widely in a range of critical and theoretical fields uses performativity and draws on speech act theory and the linguistic work of j. l. austin (1962) to analyse gender development and political speech. to some extent, i am interested in the power of ‘speech acts’ to bring identity to the fore. my interest in the ‘performative,’ however, mostly draws on the work of lyotard (1984), but before giving this attention, i turn briefly to the interpretation related to the arts. a general use of ‘performativity’ is related to a performance (moore, 2004, p. 104) where for example, a play or piece of music is publicly shown and shared. drawing on conquergood’s (1998) work, denzin distinguishes between performativity as the ‘doing’ and performance as the ‘done’ (denzin, 2003, p. 4). performativity, in this sense precedes performance and involves ‘participatory, kinaesthetic, embodied, enactive and experiential modes of learning’ (donelan, 2006). my interest in this sense of performativity is the development of teacher pedagogy, rather than the teaching act itself. lyotard (1984), the french philosopher, uses ‘performativity’ to represent political and bureaucratic mechanisms of control. i have argued that australian school systems are increasingly subjected to performative requirements through political control and bureaucratic imperative (white, 2004; white et al., 2004a) and that this performative backdrop to contemporary australian education warrants some consideration. performativity in this sense is captured by what judyth sachs (2005) calls an ‘audit society’ where: surveillance and inspection go hand in hand. regulation, enforcement and sanctions are required to ensure its compliance. of its professionals it requires self-ordering, based not on individual or moral judgement, but rather upon meeting externally applied edicts and commands’ (p. 2). the australian education context is influenced by policy and practice from the united kingdom and the united states where levels of government control have increased significantly over the past decade (tickle, 2000; cochrane-smith, 2001; sachs, 2003; trotman, 2005). together with their departments and instrumentalities, australian ministers of education have also formalised ‘evidence-based’ values through the implementation of competence standards in teacher education and the use of funding to ensure compliance. by way of example, a recent newspaper article commenting on political intervention in the teaching of history and reminded us that: while the howard government has meddled with state school business before brendan nelson made raising the flag and new school report formats a condition of federal government funding it has not previously gone so far as to interfere with school curriculum (koutsoukis, 2006, p. 13). while i take up the discussion of professionalism shortly, it is relevant to note the comment made by hoyle and john (1995) about professionals: it is essential to effective practice that they should be sufficiently free from bureaucratic and political constraint to act on judgements made in the best interests (as they see them) of the clients (in furlong, barton, miles, whiting & whitty, 2000, p. 5). the pervasive education discourse in australia, led by politicians and education bureaucrats, has focused on a perceived need for accountability, testing, benchmarks, standards, increased http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci white: sustainable pedagogy transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 4 rhetoric about teacher professionalism and compliance (white, 2004). the ‘no child left behind’ act (united states congress, 2001) has been harshly criticised (mathis, 2003; meier, kohn, darling, hammond, sizer & woods, 2004) while performativity in the u.k., particularly the introduction of ‘competence standards’ have long been discredited by education academics (furlong & maynard, 1995; furlong et al., 2000; tickle, 2000). pinar (2004, p. 25) warns of the effect of this discourse on teachers: if we employ, for instance, that bureaucratic language in which teaching becomes not an occasion for creativity and dissent and, above all, individuality, but rather, the “implementation” of others’ “objectives,” the process of education is mutilated. echoing pinar’s concerns, andy hargreaves and his colleagues have suggested that the outcomes and standards movement in education would eventually lead to teacher shortages as well as with a loss of creativity in the classroom (hargreaves, earl, moore & manning, 2001). woods and jeffrey support this view and comment that the wider educational context in the united kingdom ‘suppresses the creativity of the teaching profession’ (1996, cited in craft, 2001, p. 10) whereas in the united states teacher creativity and autonomy is undermined (orek, 2004, p. 57) by ‘performative’ or external control, surveillance and measurement of the work of teachers. lyotard’s use of performativity in this context is therefore a helpful one, but the three quite different aspects of ‘performativity’ considered above provide interesting possibilities for consideration of teacher pedagogy. sustainable pedagogy in this section, i report on implied discussions of pedagogy evident in sustainability education. this is followed by an exploration of existing uses of the term ‘sustainable pedagogy.’ subsequently a brief discussion about a general understanding of pedagogy is provided and followed by a new conceptualisation of sustainable pedagogy. wooltorton (2002) argues that teacher education holds the key for sustainable education and exhorts the bureaucracy to consider the complexities involved: education for sustainability is underpinned by radically different ways of comprehending learning, teaching and human interaction with the environment and each other to that understood by the ‘business as usual’ society in which we live. education for sustainability requires teachers who are prepared for transformative education with the accompanying personal transformation required…’(p. 26-27). mette de visser and her danish colleagues (2002) have considered pedagogy for sustainability (p. 25) as forward looking learning structures and approaches in contrast to the traditional ‘factory model’ roe draws attention to: in australia, during the late nineteenth century, the factory was the ‘blueprint’ or organising principle…[for] schools which became sites of public instruction and masseducation. and as such, “they processed pupils in batches, segregated them into agegraded cohorts called classes or standards, taught them a standardized course or curriculum, and did this through teacher-centred methods of lecturing, recitation, question-and-answer and seatwork. (hargreaves 1994, p. 27, cited in roe, 2007, p. 3) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci white: sustainable pedagogy transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 5 while the term ‘eco-pedagogy’ has been in general use since the unesco and paolo freire institute sponsored meeting in brazil in 1999 (antunes & gardotti, 2005), the term ‘sustainable pedagogy’ has been used in several different contexts. it is often implied in the context of architecture, engineering and design. for example, fleming (2002) describes an elaborate game as a teaching strategy based on the television series survivor designed to raise awareness of sustainability design issues for architecture students (p. 146). similarly, steinemann (2003) describes a problem-based learning project involving engineering students improving their campus environment to develop student ability to analyse sustainability. owens (2004) writes about the sustainable pedagogy within the context of community connectedness and the teaching of writing, and draws links with critical pedagogy, while brooke hessler and rupiper taggart (2006) see sustainable pedagogy as a process of establishing and maintaining communities of writers within the academic context. while the university of southern queensland [usq] uses ‘sustainable pedagogy’ to describe teaching excellence in awards criteria for university lecturers: ‘teaching excellence is defined as demonstrating a high capacity to create innovative and sustainable pedagogy relevant to the context/s within which the teaching occurs (usq, 2007). these examples bear some relation to my use of the term, however the individual teacher here is only considered in relation to teaching strategies. within an education context, pedagogy is more than strategy, as the discussion below illustrates. gray, cowey and axford (2003) also use ‘sustainable pedagogy’ about a study of indigenous australian students’ literacy development, and draw upon pedagogical theory. they also suggest that pedagogy as more than strategy and comment that: ‘the strong link that has been established between pedagogic theory and classroom practice has been critical to the success of the project’ (p. 5). they claim success of their work in terms of measurable student learning outcomes, but all power and professionalism resides with the university researchers. the teachers involved in this project have been relegated to the role of mere implementers of programs and recipients of ‘professional development.’ in terms of performativity, this study upholds bureaucratic values and the use of language in this study is illuminating. words such as ‘effective,’ ‘outcomes’ and ‘standards’ point to key researcher values. anderson (2005) suggests that ‘pedagogy’ has many different meanings: pedagogy determines how teachers think and act. pedagogy affects students’ lives and expectations. pedagogy is the framework for discussions about teaching and the process by which we do our jobs as teachers. pedagogy is a body of knowledge that defines us as professionals. pedagogy is a belief that all children can learn and that it is the duty of the adult to participate in that growth and development. pedagogy is a definition of culture and a means to transmit that culture to the next generation (p. 53). in developing a plausible account of sustainable pedagogy, i firstly propose that pedagogy involves three key elements. the first of these requires an examination of one’s identity and personal biography together with some awareness of subjectivity, or who one becomes in relation to others. the second element is the articulation of beliefs and values about teaching and the development of a coherent professional philosophy. the third element in this account of pedagogy is the classroom practice itself, which is necessarily consistent with the first two elements. while teaching strategy forms part of this, it is greater than that and involves relationships with students and establishment of classroom culture. in this element, teachers enact and embody their philosophy and retain identity. sustainable pedagogy adds an http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci white: sustainable pedagogy transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 6 additional fourth element to this understanding of pedagogy and is a means by which the teacher is able to maintain the self and retain professionalism. it involves the connection and relationships with other professionals and is as subtle and as subject to problems as any ecosystem. in previous theoretical work about pedagogy i have used the term ‘performance pedagogy’ (white, 2006a) in relation to pre-service education students to mean the establishment of a learning culture where five key elements are present: 1. creativity derived from risk-taking and daring (see nickerson, 1999); 2. support and encouragement for students, especially when working in unfamiliar (and possibly terrifying) ways; 3. collaboration and collegiality in dealing with challenges, negotiating and solving problems; 4. encouragement and inclusion of innovative thinking and ideas (including the personal and the political); 5. exploration of ideas and learning through the creation of performance rather than learning about ideas through discussion and reading only (see gardner 1993). this conceptualization of sustainable pedagogy is broader than pre-service teaching context, and applies also to experienced teachers. drawing on these points above, however, i forward the suggestion that sustainable pedagogy is also about the establishment of collaborative learning cultures that encourage risk-taking, where the personal and the political are included as well as development of creativity and expression in addition to the central elements of identity, values and beliefs and classroom practice. project narratives in order to illustrate the possibilities of ‘sustainable pedagogy,’ as a useful conceptualisation, three brief narratives are created below. these are distilled from field notes, data and conference presentations and draw upon contemporary ethnographic processes. two of the projects discussed are not yet completed, so this section is something of a progress report and a tentative exploration of what sustainable pedagogy might mean for practice. 1. pre-service identity-pedagogy project early in 2007 my colleague, peta heywood, and i developed an assignment for our newly enrolled pre-service primary education students that has yielded more than our expectations for sustainable pedagogy with a particular focus on the ‘identity and subjectivity’ and ‘professional community’ elements. we each drew on our previous work in other courses and at other universities that focused on biography as part of the process of ‘becoming’ a teacher (britzman, 2003). we justified the project in terms of our understanding of pedagogy and the need to articulate identity as a first step in the development of pedagogy. we asked all 240 students to each make a ten-minute presentation during their first semester of study that revealed their identity and to consider what life experiences have shaped them and brought them to teaching. further, we invited them to bring creativity to their presentations and gave permission for them to sing, dance, paint, use photographs, make a website or whatever else they chose to do, as long as the audience – the rest of the class of 40 students – was engaged. as our students are postgraduate, most have varied career trajectories as well as school experiences to draw upon for this task. individual students held the power over how much, http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci white: sustainable pedagogy transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 7 and what aspects, they would reveal of themselves and what form they would choose. assessment criteria were published and class time was provided for the presentations. we discussed how in previous programs with similar assignments, students tended to see their lecturer as the audience for their work, rather than their colleagues. we now suggest that this shift in focus – in having the classes as audience for the presentation, rather than just the lecturer has had significant consequences in terms of development of professional community. the extent to which each of the six groups of forty students have become closeknit and self-contained communities is a surprising by-product of the assignment. when we recently visited our students while they were on placement in schools, many reported on the commitment they feel towards their classmates and the extent to which they have come to rely on each other for support and sustenance as a result of the powerful assignment in first semester. this establishment of a community of learners (wenger, 1998) connects with ontology, or the basic human need to feel a sense of belonging. by inviting the students to share their vulnerable selves, key elements of pedagogy have begun to develop. they learnt by belonging to a professional community, and by revealing their identity, and in the process developing an awareness of subjectivity. this brief narrative goes some way to illustrate the potential of the sustainable pedagogy conceptualisation. in a quite different way, the second episode is a critique of a recent education system that epitomises performativity. here, the inherent values and questionable professional learning processes values expose the polt initiative as particularly flawed. 2. bureaucratic pedagogy in victoria a bureaucratically inspired program of ‘instruction’ about teacher pedagogy has been systematically introduced to victorian teachers during the period 2005-2007. this victorian department of education initiative is called ‘principles of learning and teaching’ (polt). the aim of polt, according to the bureaucrats within the victorian department of education who wrote it, was to encourage victorian teachers to discuss pedagogy. my aim in this section is to draw attention to the discussion of performativity in the first part of this paper, in order to illustrate that polt is the antithesis of sustainable pedagogy. firstly, the implementation of the polt program is via the train-the-trainer model, which is widely used in the health field to ‘train’ workers and semi-professionals into new procedures and approaches. this is highly problematic if teaching is accepted as a profession. the use of the term ‘training’ rather than ‘learning’ also sheds light on this approach to teachers. senge et al. (1999), clarify this distinction: the word ‘training’ originally meant ‘directing the course of the plant’: to be trained is to be controlled. but the word ‘learning’ derives from the indo-european leis, a noun meaning ‘track’ or ‘furrow’. to ‘learn’ means to enhance capacity through experience gained…learning always occurs over time and in ‘real life’ contexts…this type of learning may be difficult to control, but it generates knowledge that lasts: enhanced capacity for effective action in settings that matter to the learner…training, by contrast, is typically episodic and detached (p. 24). to control teachers by training them in how they should be teaching, rather than supporting their learning is exemplified by the metaphor of the ‘blueprint’, which is the overarching organiser of the victorian department of education’s reform agenda, in which polt is situated. a blueprint is a plan – someone else’s plan – that is to be followed. an architect draws up the detailed plan, while the workers – the builders, plumbers, tilers, etc., enact or http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci white: sustainable pedagogy transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 8 implement the plan. unlike the tasmanian experience of extensive consultation about essential learnings, in victoria, a different, more contemptuous view of teachers appears to have taken hold. ensuring that programs and the values of bureaucrats are adopted in a ‘top down’ way is reminiscent of the ‘teacher proofing’ movement in the us in the 1960s. the early years literacy program is perhaps the worst example of this cultural value in victoria. the debt that education in victoria owes to hill and crevola (1999) for this attitude is significant. this seemingly entrenched attitude towards teachers leads to questions about underlying assumptions of polt and the reform agenda of the de&t articulated in its blueprint. firstly, are teachers professionals? or are they paraprofessionals who need to be trained in procedures and approaches? judyth sachs (2003) comments that, ‘the idea of professionals and professionalism has such common currency in everyday language that the explanatory power of these concepts is becoming meaningless … we are left asking what relevance does the concept have for teachers individually and collectively? (p. 1)’ she also differentiates between ‘old’ notions of professionalism and ‘new’ ones, particularly in relation to teaching (2003). furlong et al. (2000) comment that ‘despite the widespread use of the term, the concept of a professional remains deeply contested in our society’ (p. 4) and draw attention to hoyle and john’s (1995) suggestion that what it means to be a professional focuses around three central issues – knowledge, autonomy and responsibility (p. 4). as mentioned earlier in this paper, they suggest that: ‘judgement is more important than routine’ for professionals who ‘should be sufficiently free from bureaucratic and political constraint to act on judgements made in the best interests (as they see them) of the clients’ (cited in furlong et al., 2000, p. 5). commenting on this, furlong et al. say: of critical importance here is the suggestion that professionals make judgements on behalf of clients as they see them. it is for the professional to interpret those interests. to draw a distinction … [professionals] do not act as an ‘agent’ of someone else (for example the government); they act as a ‘principal’ making their own judgements (furlong et al., 2000, p. 5). my interest lies in how polt and the reform agenda in which it sits reflect these notions of professionalism? how is teacher knowledge and pedagogy respected and included? how is this concordant with the use of ‘training’ and ‘instruction manual’ values? are teachers accorded the respect of autonomy and responsibility? or are they expected to act without individual agency to implement the government’s programs? secondly, polt is not located within the international literature of pedagogy or teacher learning and references to ‘research’ are unsubstantiated and vague. the teacher manuals and tools for assessing teacher pedagogy are problematic in terms of teacher autonomy, agency and voice. the use of a number of ‘surveys’ and reliance on ‘data’ indicate that it resides in a post-positivist paradigm. however basic validity and reliability issues of the kind normally addressed in any ‘introduction to research methods’ course have not been met. i forward the view that this represents an attempt to ‘pull the wool over the eyes’ of teachers, by creating an illusion of an ‘evidence –base’ through a seemingly scientific approach. for a more detailed discussion of this issue see white, williams & scholtz (2006). the idea of pedagogy is complex and is not easily defined, but anderson (2005) suggests it has something to do with both the ‘art’ and ‘science’ of teaching, learning and the profession. when pedagogy is considered in these terms, the polt seems narrowly conceived and reductionist. the attempt to package pedagogy and ‘train’ teachers into adopting a state http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci white: sustainable pedagogy transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 9 sanctioned version, as seen in the polt program, indicates that either the complexities involved in pedagogy have not been understood, or they have been denied. polt is a simplistic and traditional version of pedagogy. at best it might support a little more group work and inclusion. at worst, rather than transforming education through critical pedagogy, teachers will be limited to maintaining the status quo of an already outdated, classed approach to schooling (teese, 2000). as reeder (2005) suggests: our best efforts for change are often complicated by our own beliefs and ideas about schooling and perhaps an inability to see beyond traditional ideas about pedagogy and education. envisioning alternatives for education calls on our ability to question critically not only our own educational experiences but also to question current education practices, constraints, and limitations, and our own ideas about curriculum and learning (p. 247). this discussion of polt is included in order to consider sustainable pedagogy from a different perspective. the two are in stark contrast to each other. in polt, as in the use of competency standards, the individual teacher and her/his beliefs are not relevant. classroom context and professional community is not of interest either, except as ‘data collection sites.’ the focus of polt is at the level of strategy, which would be related to sustainable pedagogy’s element of ‘classroom practice.’ a pronounced difference between polt and sustainable pedagogy worth considering here is that within the polt approach to pedagogy, the strategies stand alone. in sustainable pedagogy, strategies are contextualised in terms of identity, philosophy, and overall classroom culture as well as within professional community. in polt they are an ‘end’ in themselves, while in sustainability, teaching strategies are ‘a means to an end.’ the strategies so important in polt represent a ‘blueprint’ of what bureaucrats think good teacher pedagogy encompasses, but in light of sustainable pedagogy, it can be seen to fall short on many levels. 3. pedagogy and creativity: the primary school project the third episode focuses on a three-year funded project (2006 – 2008) at an inner city primary school. the purpose of describing the design of this project is to point to its potential as a way of illustrating sustainable pedagogy. this project (white & smerdon, 2008; yehong & white 2008 forthcoming; white, 2006b) focuses on the articulation of teacher pedagogy and development of professional community by enhancing the use of creativity and ict by teachers, in the hope that this will translate into greater encouragement of creativity in classroom practice. while the ict element needs little explanation, development of creativity in australian education appears limited (see burnard & white, 2008). drawing on craft’s description of creativity as ‘an essential life skill’ that ‘needs to be fostered by the education system’ (2001, pp. 137) the aim of this project is to enhance pedagogy in order to strengthen community and experimentation. risk-taking is seen as an important element in creativity (nickerson, 1999, p. 494) and learning, and teachers in this project are willing to experiment. thirty teachers are being supported to develop collaborative action research, but what is unique about this project is the performance element involved. drawing on both performance ethnography (denzin, 2003) and autoethnography (ellis & bochner, 2000), the teachers have to date worked through three of the seven phases of the project which are: 1. write an individual account of pedagogy. 2. create and present a photographic essay, supported by music, that best articulates the shared pedagogy of the junior, middle or senior school teams. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci white: sustainable pedagogy transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 10 3. create and present a short film or animation that demonstrates the pedagogy of two school teams. 4. as a professional community, explore a range of performance art forms in order to enhance confidence in creativity. 5. create a performance script that articulates teacher pedagogy. 6. develop and rehearse the performance 7. public performance. with support of a colleague from the victorian arts centre, the teachers are currently working on the fourth phase by taking not inconsiderable risks and engaging with unfamiliar ways of expression and exploration of performance. as nickerson (1999) suggests, creativity is often defined in terms of results and products (p. 392). however, in denzin’s (2003) use of ‘performative,’ it is in the process of collaboratively experimenting and developing performance that the value lies, rather than the product or culminating performance itself, where it is expected that teacher learning may occur. in ‘sustainable pedagogy’ terms, the design of this, as yet unfinished, project gives cause for hope. at centre stage is creativity, an area that receives scant attention within australian education. the shared purpose of the project is to develop professional community through individual and collective expression of pedagogy. teacher identity, school context and classroom practice are all included and respected, and teachers are challenged to work outside areas in which they are comfortable, but supported to do so. conclusion this mostly theoretical paper explores an emerging conceptualisation of ‘sustainable pedagogy.’ the development of this concept has drawn upon sustainability education, three interpretations of performativity as well as key concepts of professionalism and creativity. sustainable pedagogy involves not only acknowledgement of self and subjectivity, but professional philosophy and classroom practice that keeps fidelity with philosophy and identity. importantly, sustainable pedagogy also involves building and sustaining professional community. through its inception, i have tried to demonstrate that teachers’ work requires nourishment and strength and that sustainable pedagogy affords a richer and more complex understanding of teacher 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(2005) ‘portfolio exposed’, in t. hay, & j. moss (eds), portfolios, performance and authenticity, pearson, frenchs forest, nsw, australia. white, j. & hay, t. (2005) passport to the profession: standards based portfolios, in t. hay, & j. moss (eds), portfolios, performance and authenticity pearson, frenchs forest, nsw, australia. white, j. (2004) questions of identity: the researcher’s quest for the beginning teacher, phd thesis, faculty of education, the university of melbourne. white, j., ferguson, p., hay, t., moss, j. & dixon, m. (2004a) ‘ownership and identity: developing and implementing teacher professional standards in australia’, unicorn online refereed articles, article no. 32. white, j., dixon, m. & smerdon, l. (2004b) ‘learning “through” or learning “about”? the ridiculous and extravagant medium of opera: gardner's multiple intelligences in preservice teacher education, australian journal of teacher education, vol. 29, no. 2, pp. 110. wooltorton, s. (2002) education for sustainability: a background paper prepared for the state sustainability strategy, report for the sustainability policy unit of the department of the premier and cabinet, western australia. ye, h. & white, j. (2008 forthcoming) ‘creativity and pedagogy: developing methodology, developing theory’, paper in symposium: white, j., rosauer, k., hay, t., wang, y., burston, m., creese, e. & ye, h. ‘sustainable methodologies’, at the australian association of research in education annual conference, ‘changing climates: education http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci http://www.usq.edu.au/resources/781.pdf white: sustainable pedagogy transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 14 for sustainable futures,’ queensland university of technology, 30th november – 4th december. author julie white is a senior lecturer in the faculty of education at la trobe university, melbourne, australia. email: julie.white@latrobe.edu.au http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci mailto:white@latrobe.edu.au microsoft word tochon_eng_dec2010.doc to cite this article please include all of the following details: tochon, francois victor and okten, celile e., (2010). curriculum mapping and instructional affordances: sources of transformation for student teachers. transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> curriculum mapping and instructional affordances: sources of transformation for student teachers francois victor tochon university of wisconsin-madison, usa celile e. okten yildiz technical university, turkey introduction semiotics is the study of semiosis or sign action; it can describe any process that includes the production of meaning, whether linguistic or not. thus semiosis defines the process of making meaning as mediated by signs and the interpretation of those signs. significantly, teachers’ awareness of semiosis generates metasemiosis, as their engagement in such deep reflection stimulates conceptual reframing, which can be qualified itself as a trans-semiotic process. from intuiting to perceiving to wording, stages of clarification operate that charles s. peirce (1877a) has deciphered and theorized as being inherent to the process of belief confirmation that characterizes scientific inquiry. in a similar manner, intuiting, perceiving and wording curriculum interpretations involves a subtle belief formation that this article aims to explore through hierarchizing and mapping curriculum concepts in teacher education. we are using a peircean analysis in part due to his work with existential diagrams, making his theories a natural match for concept maps. the next section reinvests these concepts into theorizing the curriculum building process. it will highlight why curriculum mapping can stimulate semiotic inquiry and student teachers’ transformation of knowledge. curriculum mapping as ontological design conceptual mapping requires a support for communication, such as an economic organigram, planning rubric, literary genealogy, geographic representation, anthropological card, systems representation, linguistic tree, semantic structure, cognitive frame, mental model, sociological tree of knowledge. such visual maps constitute ontologies or conceptual structures that model ‘what is’. when designing such models of reality, then, students are involved in an epistemic process, a way of conceptualizing disciplinary priorities. therefore conceptual maps are sometimes named epistemic maps. several excellent and thorough reviews have been published on concept mapping (brown, 2002; daley et al., 1999; danesi, 2002; gómez et al., 2000; goodyear et al., 2005; novak, 1995; tochon, 1990ab). in this article we explore the semiotic basis for a specific form of educational inquiry based on curriculum mapping, which can stimulate metasemiosis (urban, 2006) and make the process transformative. the concept of metasemiosis was alluded to by thomas sebeok (2001), john deely, susan petrilli and augusto ponzio (1998) and other semiotic scholars who referred to the human as the only ‘metasemiotic animal’, able to generate meaning-making on meaningmaking. we want to show that, as a semiotic tool, curriculum concept mapping can initiate a transformative semiosis of semiosis, a process we name trans-semiosis. we define transsemiosis as the transformation of knowledge that results from the reframing process of metasemiosis. since trans-semiosis is so closely related with the dialogical understanding of tochon & okten: curriculum mapping and instructional affordances transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 4 self and the other – and knowledge is not distinct from the semiosis process – it results that trans-semiosis is an identity process. when a student maps her curriculum, she has to organize her intuitive assumptions about what is hierarchically important and visualize it. in a similar way, the reader of a curriculum map must let hypotheses and assumptions emerge from the visuals. then through induction the construction of assumptions takes place (kankkunnen, 2004). finally, through deduction the meanings of such assumptions are interpreted and knowledge is dynamically designed. concept mapping has often been interpreted within a classical cognitive framework, a framework that fixes semantic meanings instead of situating the pragmatics of the interpretive flow that characterizes learning trans-semiosis. peirce had been alerted early about the merits of diagrammatic mapping as a way to support and enhance logical reasoning and represent the mind (cp 4.582). his ‘existential graphs’, published in 1906 (cp 4.618) had been invented in 1897, as he mentioned, and probably even earlier. peirce created rules for reasoning with diagrams as a means of helping experiment with thought and investigate the logical relationships between concepts. peirce tried to improve his system of concept mapping for more than 20 years and was not really satisfied with his logical, ‘gamma graphs’ at the end of his life. nonetheless he considered that ‘all necessary reasoning is diagrammatic’ (draft c, 90-102) that is, any conceptualizing is a mapping process. his purpose was ‘to illustrate the general course of thought: (…) a system of diagrammatization by means of which any course of thought can be represented with exactitude’ (cp 4.530). each ‘phemic sheet’ would represent a universe of discourse as ‘icons of intelligible relations’ (cp 4.531). øhrstrom (1997) indicates that diagrammatical reasoning is semiotically very powerful, yet as any representation it can’t be perfect or complete: it provides a viewpoint. practical reasoning might not follow the rules of mathematical logic or might embody another mathematical field (menand, 1997): the logic of ‘moving pictures of thought’ (cp 4.8). since peirce proposed his existential graphs, much work has been done to develop logical maps that provide precise representations of ways of reasoning and fields of knowledge. students’ revisiting of their own concept maps makes them aware of differences between their concepts. their progress is measured by the degree of relevance of the logical links they established between concepts. each time they achieve some degree of relevance between concepts, it contributes to their conceptual progress. conceptual differentiation initiates in the students a process of integration that allows them to achieve a holistic vision of the scientific field studied (novak & cañas, 2006). such structures make students ascertain what they know about their educational experience. the learner’s structure of understanding becomes precise and clear, which indicates their role in the essentializing, naturalizing process of school meanings. the study of how curriculum knowledge is transformed into something that can be handled in practice provides interesting indications on the interpretation of school notions and genres presented and processes described by the students (tochon, 2000b). such maps can be used to observe the initial stages of a learner’s knowledge as well as monitor conceptual changes. novak & cañas (2008, p. 180) indicate the links between learning and epistemology: epistemology deals ‘with the nature of knowledge and new knowledge creation’. learners who struggle to map knowledge are engaged in a creative process. novak compares concepts and propositions to the atoms of matter and the molecules of matter: they would be the building blocks of knowledge in any subject-matter. concepts relate with perceived regularities (or patterns) in either events or objects designated by labels. the atomic analogy provides a platonician perspective as if concepts were abstract universals; however their epistemic dynamics implies that they are in process and in construction. curriculum mapping can be a method that makes students tochon & okten: curriculum mapping and instructional affordances transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 5 acquire ‘a habit of changing habits’ (kankkunen, 2004, p.1). it allows both students and teachers to evaluate their conceptual development and belief system. belief systems are the substrates of meanings sedimented by habits that crystallized into knowledge. peirce’s 1877-1878 articles published in popular science monthly propose a semiotic interpretation of beliefs: ‘our beliefs guide our desires and shape our actions’ (peirce, 1877a, iii). beliefs help establish conceptual stability even though they are changeable. peirce stated that new beliefs are formed in situations of inadequacy and genuine doubt. in a genuine doubt situation, humans struggle to attain a new belief and this process is called ‘inquiry’. in a similar way, curriculum inquiry is led by genuine doubt on the ground of belief cultures. the inquiry process gives opportunities for deeper interaction with a variety of possible meanings, and it furthers the development of understanding. peirce proposed four ways of fixing beliefs: tenacity, authority, a priori, and experiment (ibid, 1877b). experimentation was his preferred way to provide negotiation, cooperation, and openness to alternatives. peirce’s work thus helps provide a framework to understand teacher beliefs and more generally education. experimentations provide teachers ways to investigate and alter their beliefs through abductive reasoning. this process, which is one of the foci of the present study, has a significant impact on teachers’ beliefs and affects their decisions. genuine revision of prior judgments is a constant process. moreover when curriculum reasoning is remodeled by (foreign) international standards and their ‘quality imperialism’ (gough, 2006), the teachers’ inner conversations get ‘complicated’ within cross-cultural regimes of signs (pinar, 2000), especially in such an internationalized curriculum field as english language teaching. in this section, we have indicated that concept mapping research can be extended to subtle processes which imply a transformational understanding of one’s own semiosis. semiotic curriculum inquiry thus defined can be integrated into teacher education to stimulate the ability of student teachers to reflect on their curriculum knowledge and the meaning making process more broadly. the next section digs into this analytical framework further. peirce’s analytical framework for peirce (1931-1958), logic has to be interpreted in its contextual dynamics; the context of an utterance conditions its interpretation. any interpretable movement, or any thought is a sign (chandler, 2003). peirce developed taxonomies to describe how sign meanings emerge from the on-going interpretation of links between form, perception of the context, and possible meanings produced. his theory is subtle, adaptive and dynamic. meanings are constructed to form realities, culture, and communication. peirce’s model of signs depicts the agency components of meaning constructions in the reciprocal movement of signs, objects and interpretants. the sign mediates between the object and its interpretant. the interpretant is the interpretive ‘outcome of the sign which indicates that different signs may reference different aspects of an object, leading to different outcomes or effects. the process of creating the outcome or interpretant is a type of reasoning called abduction’ (osberg, 1997, p.27). as deduction and induction are not capable of generating new knowledge, a third inferential process creates hypotheses and instructional guesses: abductive reasoning moves from the interpretive result to the rule to the case (bopry, 2002). as we move from abduction to deduction, we progress from the simple reconciliation of meaning toward the prescribed process of selecting the necessary truth (shank, 1995). the peircean model characterizes the semiotic process on the basis of three movements of meaning making: firstness, secondness and thirdness. firstness (or idea-representamen) is associated with qualities that have an tochon & okten: curriculum mapping and instructional affordances transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 6 iconic relationship with their objects (a photograph, portrait, map, etc.). secondness (or brute actuality-object) comes in the recognition of ‘the other’. it is the recognition that there is self and not self, and comes into play in the separation of field and ground, given that the nature of secondness is opposition. firstness involves abduction – which is the spontaneous and direct emergence of meaning – and deals with the person’s qualitative ideas and beliefs. secondness involves induction through verbal and non-verbal signs that the person already experienced consciously. thirdness associates firstness and secondness through reasoning and making connections, and it is deductive. thirdness (or a sign’s soul-interpretant) refers to the use of symbols. a symbol is a form of thirdness (such as waving hands, traffic lights, etc.). the symbol mediates between an object and the interpretant through law or reason. perception involves semiosis or meaning production on the basis of signs (allot, 1994). as perception leads to conceptual interpretation, it is directed by the perceiver. it produces continuous change to provide an organizing construction within the perceiver. semiosis is thus part of the perceptual process. perception involves the patterns of action in response to the environment dynamics (umwelt – deely, 1994). the actions are complementary and interlocked with each other in the structuring of perception. organizing perceptions are the ground of learning experience and, in turn, education organizes perceptions. according to cunningham, human semiosis and education are but one and the same thing. ‘if by semiosis we mean the lifelong building of structures of experience, then education is precisely that field which attempts to understand, nurture and make people more reflective about this process’ (cunningham, 1987, p.207). thus educational perception is formed through semiosis. cunningham (2002) proposes a broad model that details the cognitive process in terms of four components: signs, semiosis, inference, and reflexivity. he defines signs as metaphorical or analogical referents to some aspect, concept and object, or relationship. they are context-sensitive. individuals develop new ideas and hypotheses through their experiences. the process of conceptualizing the curriculum is inferential. the results of this process contribute to the perception of knowledge. in cunningham’s view, reflexivity is the awareness of semiosis. not all aspects of this rising awareness can be explicit and explicated as some irrupt from intuitions – or, in semiotic terms, abductions. semiotic theory offers a broad framework to understand such processes through highlighting the nuances of subtle possible progressions between implicit stages and more explicit stages of understanding within perception itself. peirce devised ten classes of signs as part of his theory. in the terminology proposed by merrell (2000), this taxonomy includes: a) feeling (peirce’s qualisign); b) imaging (iconic sinsign); c) sensing (rhematic indexical sinsign); d) awaring (dicent sinsign); e) scheming (iconic legisign); f) impressing-saying (rhematic indexical legisign); g) looking (acknowledging)-saying (dicent indexical legisign); h) seing (identifying)-saying (rhematic symbol); i) perceiving-saying (dicent symbol or proposition); and j) realizing (argument) (ms 540, cp 2.233-72). shank & cunningham (1996) derived from peirce’s taxonomy six distinct modes for abduction, which are sketched out as follows: 1) the hunch type of inference opens awareness to the virtual possibility of a possible resemblance: initial observations might serve as intuitive suggestions for possible evidence. 2) symptoms would appeal to possible resemblances, comparing properties to be considered, looking for the presence of a more general phenomenon. the detection of a symptom often implies a dependence on prior experience. tochon & okten: curriculum mapping and instructional affordances transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 7 3) metaphor or analogy manipulates resemblance to create new, potential rules and conceptual frames. 4) the clue would lead to the type of inference dealing with possible evidence, a mode of determining whether or not observations are clues of some more general phenomenon. the sign would help detecting the circumstances of a past state of affairs. in order to make a judgment, the observer would look for connections. 5) the diagnosis or scenario forms a possible rule on the basis of available evidence, in order to discover diagnostic judgments amidst observations. such diagnoses create plausible scenarios from the cluster of clues. the patterns of clues take on a unity of character. 6) explanations concern formal rules to account for puzzling clusters of data and gather scenarios into a coherent explanation that forms the basis for meaningful insight. this model will help us analyzing the capacity of student teachers for ‘suspension of action and deliberation for critical thinking and conscious awareness’ (petrilli & ponzio, 2007, p.7). it elicits important aspects of curriculum semiosis that appear as affordances in the process of educational inquiry. the concept of affordance relates with the creation of meaning from the perception of meaningful ‘niches’ within a fluid and dynamic umwelt. it refers to ‘the perceived and actual properties of the thing, primarily those fundamental properties that determine just how the thing could possibly be used’ (norman, 1988, p.9). it also integrates the understanding that sign meanings are associated with and negotiated within such semiotic niches (schumann, 2003; logan & schumann, 2005; burgin & schumann, 2006). ‘a situation provides a suitable niche only for those persons who are prepared to meet and use its affordances effectively. those not properly tuned or prepared will in some way fail to perform effectively in the situation as given’ (snow, 1998, p.107). this leads us to anticipate that student teachers get attuned to curriculum ‘niches’ through transformative affordances. these niches are locations for knowledge transformation. in this section, we have discussed semiosis, metasemiosis, knowledge emergence and generation processes through three types of reasoning. we have seen how reasoning provides meaning to signs, allowing for interpretations and inferences. the last step, based on the production of meaning, has been to explore how perception is structured by education on the basis of experience. for that purpose, we have presented a taxonomy that will help us analyze student teachers’ intentions related to curriculum mapping. research design in this study, we propose to explicate curriculum mapping as the result of affordances that characterize semiotic inquiry in education. curriculum as an inquiry process. semiotic analysis involves a variety of approaches that confer richness and flexibility in the signifying stages of inquiry. in the process by which student teachers conceptualize their curriculum field, transformative semiosis helps deconstruct reality such that its historical and cultural background can be deciphered. the semiotic viewpoint is integrative and encompassing and does not privilege particular stands: it makes individuals and groups self-critical of their own interpretive responsibility and action. the theory of affordances in education – as noted earlier – posits that the perceiver is active in sensing information-rich environments. humans build a sense of meaningfulness through matching patterns of perception to semiotic niches. education can be viewed as a tochon & okten: curriculum mapping and instructional affordances transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 8 semiotic process of deciphering that co-constructs meaningful relations between one learner or a group of learners, the curriculum and the teacher. this understanding brings a humane dimension to the education process. setting. this study is one aspect of a larger inquiry that bears on the integration of portfolios in the english language teaching (elt) department of a public university in istanbul, turkey. the student teachers were taught about the common european framework of reference for languages as well as the standards of the american council for the teaching of foreign languages (tochon, 2008). we studied what role e-portfolios could play in the enhancement of teacher education. the aim of the teacher education program was to train culturally-learned teachers who have a deep knowledge of their discipline and their profession on the basis of exploratory and participatory action research (kemmis & mctaggart, 2005). curriculum mapping was integrated in the portfolio with multiple feedback loops and formative evaluations. participants. this study involved 23 volunteer student teachers of english language teaching (elt). they were third year students in a 4-year teacher education program. twelve students finished their curriculum maps in spring 2008, while others decided to continue the process during summer. at the end of the semester, 23 student teachers had completed their concept maps. the student teachers had various contrasted views on issues such as language policies, the role of english in globalization, and its role regarding turkish secularism and issues related with christian and islamic fundamentalisms. three student teachers were chosen for the purpose of this article according to the criteria below: • the curriculum maps were contrasted enough to allow for a semiotic analysis of their development; • we had information through observations and interviews about the meaning-making process that led to the construction of these maps; • the correspondence of items in their curriculum map with subject-matter knowledge expressed by student teachers during interviews provided an indication of its ecological validity. the oral interviews with the three participants whose concept maps were chosen for the study (two females and one male) were transcribed verbatim, and written interviews were used additionally to form an opinion about their curriculum inquiry. data. the study was based on multiple sources: group discussion, peer work, teacher’s participatory observations, oral feedback on their curriculum design, research logs, students’ comments, written and oral interviews. the student teachers had no idea about concept mapping before starting their portfolio. the participants studied with their peers and in groups and explored individually ways of building concept maps electronically to represent their curriculum knowledge. student teachers were observed during both individual studies and group discussions at which time notes were taken. the students were given a written interview form, following which they sent their answers for the interview questions by email. participants were also observed while doing their curriculum maps and were interviewed orally for about 20 minutes each. besides their memos, and transcriptions of interviews held in the turkish language, the researchers translated parts of the student teachers’ comments on the concept mapping process to share the details. from the beginning of the research logs were kept for each meeting day. tochon & okten: curriculum mapping and instructional affordances transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 9 procedure. while building e-portfolios, student teachers learned concept mapping to explore, envision and discuss their subject-matter knowledge, as beyerbach (1988) and beyerbach and smith (1990) had modeled. thus concept mapping was an integral step in portfolio planning. curriculum maps offered a nice way to scaffold conceptual supports in this project-based learning through the student teachers’ collaborations and their growing knowledge community. the participants’ instructions were to detail through concept maps what they knew rather than what they did not know. they were given handouts and were guided flexibly in the process. they could search more information on the internet. they shared such information, comparing models and studies. it was decided not to constrain concept mapping with too many rules, of which formalism could restrict the creative flow. most examples were from novak’s style maps. they met once a week at the computer laboratory and had another weekly meeting in a normal classroom to discuss the process and contents. it is usual in teacher education to guide the students and to provide precise formatting criteria for action. here however, student teachers were free to choose their own framework and format when they mapped their curriculum knowledge. participants were encouraged to include both curricular beliefs and facts in their concept maps, while being reminded that ‘up-to-date’ meanings are never perfect, nor immutable. after preparing their own concept maps, they compared their work with their peers and became evaluators of their curriculum maps. data analysis. semiotic analysis is a hermeneutic process. it gave the researchers the opportunity to identify commonalities and be provided with flexibility in the research. the resulting emphasis was to try not to essentialize the data or the process but to study the normalization process which is inherent with curriculum design. we enacted an integrated and not dualistic epistemology – peirce was a pragmatist while also considering that conceptual normalization was part of the process rising from firstness to thirdness. we utilized shank & cunningham’s (1996) model of reasoning – derived from peirce’s works – to explain student teachers’ mapping process as an initial step in the creation of their portfolio. we tried to show how they construct their curriculum through available affordances, or through the perception of specific ‘semio-niches’ proper to the classroom environment of elt in turkey. the questions addressed the following points: perception of curriculum knowledge; sub-concept maps and the rationale for their organizing; possible conceptual conflicts in the process of building curriculum knowledge; questions raised while choosing relevant knowledge; trans-semiosis: transformations of knowledge stimulated by the mapping process; criteria for curriculum relevance; ways of reflecting: thought processes and ways of categorizing what is important for the field of action; selection as political process: ways the curriculum was politicized by the categories chosen; curriculum and identity development: transformative learning in the mapping process. semiotic analysis of the curriculum mapping process we focused on the answers of three student teachers related to their curriculum mapping. the answers were evaluated in terms of meaning construction; of student teachers’ reflection on the subject-matter; of their way of categorizing the subject-matter; and the semiotic processes that supported deep, transformative thinking involving identity reframing. semiotic processes that led student teachers to think more deeply curriculum mapping was a special case of portfolio building process. identical semiotic processes were at work in portfolio building, as in both cases the arguments were linking tochon & okten: curriculum mapping and instructional affordances transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 10 normative experience. hereafter, we analyze each student teacher’s curriculum map as the progressive sedimentation of layers of understanding that stimulated semiotic inquiry to frame a personal view of the curriculum. it urged the students to think deeply about their subject-matter knowledge. what they learned about themselves in this process was to give attention to the meaning and usage of the language. they saw – which surprised them very much – that when they wrote a word on the map, they would immediately remember another subject-matter relevant to it. they decided to limit the sub-titles because conceptual fields were related to each other in a certain way. they had to hierarchize the subject-matter and select what they believed would be worth keeping on their map. shank & cunningham’s model (1996) guided us in the analysis of curriculum semiosis in the following sections. harun, seval, and esra (pseudonyms) were the three students whose concept maps were chosen for the present study. they were invited to discuss their curriculum mapping and comment their maps, then share them with each other. this section analyzes their conversations, and the oral interviews as well as written remarks they made during the process. their curriculum maps are presented in figures 1, 2, and 3. harun, student teacher 1 hunch: harun had no prior experience with concept mapping, and never thought about his own curriculum knowledge; therefore the selection of valid topics was a demanding task. his intuitions are not clear. in his oral interview, harun complains about limited time he had for designing his curriculum map. he is trying to organize his thoughts which are fuzzy at this stage. his design incorporated both structural and social aspects of the curriculum. symptom: harun searched the internet for possible designs. he drafted possible forms of maps trying to put titles and sub-titles. he felt confined mostly to the structural aspect, but it helped him remember basic curriculum knowledge and teaching techniques within the discipline. when we observed him, harun was looking at the design on paper. he tried to put everything on one page, perceived as the most compact design. he preferred a hierarchical composition of topics. because harun’s concept map structure largely followed the visual patterns that were given to him earlier, it was evident that these framed his knowledge of the discipline. metaphor: observations indicated that harun’s designing process involved naming and ordering ideas within a hierarchy. he used internet as a reference resource for both choosing curriculum concepts and map designs. harun designed his map according to samples on internet and comparing the results with his peers and paid more attention to design than to consistency between titles and sub-titles. harun constructed his curriculum knowledge on a structural basis with contents, teaching and learning aspects, and then linked these elements to english understood as a worldwide language. he also alluded to the historical and economic backgrounds of the discipline. during the interview, harun does not reflect about the language teaching literature and therefore it does not show up on his concept map. he does not feel the need either to discuss grammar and language skills. clue: harun sees culture as the constructing element of language. he induced how popular english is through its historical importance and current impacts on economy. he emphasizes the social dimension of english as a possible cause for its worldwide popularity. he expresses clearly the connections between teaching and learning. tochon & okten: curriculum mapping and instructional affordances transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 11 figure 1. harun’s curriculum map diagnosis: harun states that he used his previous curriculum knowledge in making those connections. doing his curriculum map was a worthwhile experience. he evaluates concept mapping as a useful method for instruction. for harun, capitalism and the industrial revolution are primary factors contributing to the popularity of english. to him capitalism largely the cultural specificity of the anglo-world: it stimulates its expansion, promotes its hegemony and leads it to control the rest of the world. this diagnostic explains harun’s subtitles for english language teaching: ‘money, travel, and interaction’. explanation: harun clarifies the implications of curriculum mapping: he made a selfassessment of english language teaching, and realizes his need to work harder and master the discipline as a whole. the mutual connections between the three different foci of english, language, and teaching now become more meaningful to him. harun could not post more details on his curriculum map because of the size of the paper and, in the electronic format, the size of the webpage. he wanted a hierarchical design that, because of this economy of space, might overlook some topics. the distinctive concepts on his map are ‘english’, and ‘culture’. tochon & okten: curriculum mapping and instructional affordances transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 12 deductive reasoning: harun re-read his curriculum map and compared it with his peers, and then made a self-assessment. knowing english means having advantages in terms of job opportunities. you may earn money more easily, and increase your standard of living. then you can travel, and interact with other people, and cultures. these dimensions that may motivate learners are thus, key in harun’s curriculum vision. capitalist power provides currency and characterizes the contributions of english. harun connects that view with language politics. the power of that currency contributes to shape language policies and education policies around the world. at this point in the creation of the map, esra intervenes in the conversation and compares her curriculum map with his. she finds his map inadequate, claiming that he needs to write more details about the classroom, language learning, the school environment, and the students, harun then criticizes himself for not having better exposed issues related with the school, the classroom, and the students, agreeing that such topics should appear more clearly. he also compares his maps with the map of seval. he finds that seval examines the characteristics of the teacher and learner perspectives in more detail. he especially appreciates her statements about types of learners. such deductions stimulate his transformative semiosis as he is discovering his own identity traits in the process, which leads him to revise his belief system. identification: the next semiosis levels (identification, prediction, and model building) appear clearly in harun’s oral interview. harun corrects his previous views; he should have written ‘teachers’ before the ‘students’ title. he had identified these two opposite perspectives coincidentally, but they emphasize different ways of approaching curriculum reality. he responded that he would better pay attention to classroom ecology, and enlarge that topic. prediction: the other prospective aspects of what should be learned in english, such as the four skills, grammar, vocabulary… are already known and are not new topics for english language teaching. nonetheless harun still insists on the significance of culture in english learning. the cultural approach should be emphasized and the classroom activities would be better organized along the cultural dimension of the discipline. model building: finally, harun re-examines elt through three basic categories: english, language, and teaching as expressions of globally constructed curriculum knowledge. this modeling process has been transformative for harun as he feels a better sense of identification with his curricular stands. seval, student teacher 2 hunch: when seval started to design her map she faced the curriculum knowledge accumulated during her studies. sketch theses concepts on paper obliged her to categorize, and organize her mind map. her initial huntch was to refer to her undergraduate studies at the university and to model her understanding according to that program. she was happy to perceive intuitively with a sense of wholeness the broad understanding that she had developed, grasping the numerous rhyzomatic aspects of the field. the professor had advised her to write about any curriculum item that came to mind; it is what she did as she subsequently wrote down everything she remembered about english language teaching, then she organized these first intuitions. at first she had no idea of what her map could be, and how to locate and design knowledge making her approach intuitive. tochon & okten: curriculum mapping and instructional affordances transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 13 figure 2. seval’s curriculum map symptom: seval mentally surveyed her curriculum knowledge, and noticed that some emphasis should be given to the two poles of the learner and the teacher. she wanted to show the differences, as she felt it would help her understanding of language teaching. after the initial phase of clarification and classification, seval focused on sub-maps titled ‘teachers’ and ‘learners’. while she was attempting to conceptualize what her map could be, she realized that she had never reflected about some curriculum topics. as she did not know much about teacher types and teaching styles, she researched them on the internet, which increased her awareness of such nuances. while seval started to reflect about language as an entity, and about its educational classification, she remembered more details about worthwhile knowledge, and decided to make her own design according to what was most important teaching for her. one marked preference for seval was speaking of ‘linguistics’ rather than simply ‘language’. she initially thought linguistics might include more educational topics than language, but then found that she could not compose a whole variety of important and useful topics under the ‘linguistics’ label. metaphor: according to seval, implementing knowledge relative to teacher and learner types, styles, methods and applications would make instruction more complete and enjoyable for both teacher and student. seval felt that teachers should consider these factors while planning lessons, since in her opinion, these aspects contribute to an adaptive classroom environment. during the interview, seval reflected on the needs of teachers for instruction. in her opinion, a language teacher should apply and connect the four language skills together. although seval identified linguists such as chomsky, krashen, whorf and sapir, and wants to mention them on her concept map, her knowledge about linguistics is not accurate. tochon & okten: curriculum mapping and instructional affordances transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 14 clue: seval classified her knowledge in terms of ‘teachers, learners, skills, language, literature, language classroom, people, and 5c’s standards’ and tries to show the relevance of these categories and their necessity for the discipline. seval likewise emphasizes teaching techniques and methods as what is mostly required in the discipline and believes that the ‘5 c’s standards approach’ is one of the popular and valid methods in language teaching. she notes that the literature in english on these topics is also important. other important issues for keeping students’ learning alive include the language classroom characteristics, motivation, the need for feedback, and aspects of the class environment. diagnosis: seval took each category one by one and inquired into the connection of each part to the whole. after much hesitation due to comprehension problems about the role of linguistics, seval located it as a sub-title of the ‘language’ category. she also put the linguists under the ‘people’ title to show their contributions to linguistic studies. seval mentions the instructional materials as one of the classroom contexts while examining the context variables of language teaching. then she talks about social strategies (teacher centeredness and learner-centeredness from the view point of individuals and large groups). she feels it is but one of the major issues of teaching in the turkish context. explanation: seval chose categories that were key elements for lesson planning. she detailed the teacher and learner categories, then emphasized the whole integration of the four skills into lesson planning. seval divided ‘language’ into ‘syntax, semantics, and linguistics’ sub-groups to comprehend the nature/structure of language. seval furthermore felt that if english literature is taught, the logic of english will be understood more clearly based on the reasoning that when given access to the literature, the students can acquire the utterances of the speech community more easily. based on her opinion that students like to read poems, short stories, novels seval reasoned that they would feel more comfortable learning english through literature. deductive reasoning: seval clarified bit by bit the criteria for an appropriate teacher education: what should be the teaching and learning specifics, how to apply the 5c’s standards as a way to handle the curriculum, organize evaluations to match the common european framework for languages, and integrate literature to provide cultural perspectives on the target language. these are all important features of english language teaching for seval. seval compares her own curriculum map with the one of esra and finds hers to be better for several reasons. for starters, esra discusses english language teaching as a general concept, and examines the skills as being the basics of language. seval finds she is correct in examining the ‘learners’ and the ‘language classroom’ as two separate sub-groups whereas esra deals with them as context variables for teaching. esra talks about the learners in more details as she details the learner types and levels. seval indicates that esra does not mention any linguist, and literature does not appear on her map. at the same time, seval finds esra to be more successful in specifying topics such as instructional materials, social strategies, and the history of english teaching. seval criticizes the minor part that evaluation plays in esra’s curriculum map, as esra says nothing about evaluation, and it seems out of her vision. finally, seval examines harun’s map and criticizes its lack of information on teaching approaches, techniques, styles, and learners; according to seval, harun disregards the most important aspects of english language teaching, while discussing only two teaching methods: grammar translation and the communicative approach. seval evaluates this knowledge to be insufficient, yet appreciates that he mentions the ‘syllabus’ as an important aspect of curriculum knowledge for teaching. tochon & okten: curriculum mapping and instructional affordances transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 15 identification: seval identifies teaching and learning specifics that impact classroom planning and education. the 5c’s standards are distinctive language standards to demonstrate the interconnectedness of all areas of language learning. literature is needed to comprehend the cultural codes of the speech community. with the first sub-title ‘teachers’, seval deals with ‘teacher types, teaching styles, methods, approaches, techniques’, and indicates that teachers should know new methods, styles, approaches well to communicate with students and teach more meaningfully. she also identifies ‘syntax, linguistics, semantics, the 5c’s method’ as a sub-group of ‘language’. in her words, that’s a good way of developing language skills. seval does not need to write a separate title for language politics; indeed her curriculum map specifies that educational politics relate with any issues that concern teachers and learners. for her, harun should detail the curriculum aspects that pertain to the school and classroom environments, the students, and the teacher with greater depth. these are also important aspects of english language teaching, and as harun only shows ‘english’ as a sub-group of elt dealing with money, travel, and interaction, seval finds these issues irrelevant to the discipline. she evaluates her own curriculum map as being more successful than his as he does not seem to pay attention to the learners! nonetheless she admits that he mentioned the syllabus as a useful curriculum instrument, which she forgot to place on her concept map. but she would prefer to write ‘syllabus’ as a language classroom characteristic. prediction: the choice of seval’s curriculum topics is justified by her main goal which is teaching performance in terms of interaction. she believes that this framework will provide a better support for learning. she perceives the history of english teaching – which is not found on her map – as generic only, possibly helpful for teachers and learners but of minor importance. thus she considers her curriculum map to be a sound predictor of successful teaching. seval verifies the implications of the 5c’s standards and the literature on elt training on classroom practice. she recapitulates the peculiar idioms and language utterances, and the cultural viewpoints of native speakers provided by literature, and tries to figure out how she would use them in a class situation. finally, seval feels that learners would develop their communicative skills with the 5c’s orientation. model building: seval says that language should be taught and learned in context. in addition, using a taxonomy makes knowledge more meaningful. seval classifies her curriculum knowledge as a hierarchy of titles, and contexts are provided to match knowledge taxonomies. the main title is ‘elt’ and the sub-titles are teachers, learners, skills, language, literature, language classroom, people, 5c’s. seval interprets the realization of her map in terms of curriculum modeling, and curriculum building has increased her sense of coherence in the discipline taught. esra, student teacher 3 hunch: esra first reflected on her undergraduate program and tried to find examples in her courses at the university. she was wondering what to teach, how to teach, and when to teach. she sailed on sight attempting at figuring out what she knew. she alluded to the contents of courses to which she added her own elements. in the oral interview, esra remarks that her first concept map was intuitive and disorganized. she wrote down everything coming to her mind; there was no systematic order. then she started to design another map. tochon & okten: curriculum mapping and instructional affordances transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 16 figure 3. esra’s curriculum map symptom: esra drafted her first curriculum map somewhat randomly, and then realized that, after this initial brainstorming, she needed a systematic way of classifying her curriculum knowledge. she built two categories: ‘teaching’ and ‘learning’. she would make a proper selection to match her personal sense of order as necessary along the way. she reflected deeply for a good while, and noticed that certain titles were a good fit as curriculum tochon & okten: curriculum mapping and instructional affordances transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 17 organizers. one title would remind her of another possible one, and it was an ongoing, creative process. she had to select the most distinctive ones to make english language teaching more comprehensible. indeed elt related topics such as sla (second language acquisition), efl (english as a foreign language), and linguistics were not clear in her mind and would call for more straightfoward theorizing in the discipline. esra looked for compact curriculum titles that could be flashy in her portfolio and would be noticed immediately. her primary concerns while designing her concept map was the anticipated result for her eportfolio. she was heavily geared by her university courses in the choice of contents. metaphor: while selecting and writing the sub-titles, esra pushed herself to limit their number in order to avoid the complexity and messiness of knowledge ramifications. most of the concepts were related to each other, which allowed her to conclude her selection concisely. ‘language’ and ‘teaching’ are the main curricular concepts and organizing metaphors. esra was very interested in language as a science, but paradoxically, she did not really consider linguistics as a relevant category for her map. the categories she chose are important for language learning as an applied field. while she was examining her initial draft, more curriculum categories would come to mind. then she tried to utilize bloom’s taxonomy in an effort to better organize her map. clue: esra emphasized the present and forthcoming status of english and the importance of the perception that people have of language status, which seemed to explain the role of elt training in turkey. if english became less important worldwide, she felt that elt would be out of the agenda of turkish education. esra focused on the language and teaching aspects of elt. she would not really consider much linguistics’ topics and its jargon as, for her, linguistics items were anyway already included in the broader, language category. esra firstly considered teaching styles as a category that seemed relevant as a guide for action: in what way would the teacher be a model and, in other words, which characteristics teachers should expose in the classroom. esra calls the teacher a facilitator, but what does the teacher facilitate in the classroom? she tried to find clues. diagnosis: she eventually chose ‘linguistics’ as well as ‘english’ as the sub-titles of ‘language’ after consulting the maps of her peers. ‘history of language teaching’, ‘theory of language teaching’ then became sub-titles of ‘teaching’. esra argued that english teaching practices, their historical background, and lingua franca status should be demonstrated during language training, as they were fundamental to the understanding of the discipline. the teacher should orient students towards not only acquiring knowledge, but also interpreting it critically. besides the general teaching methods such as brainstorming, role-playing, she would distinguish the learner and teacher types separately, and develop the intelligence types as learner characteristics. she thus establishes a diagnostic of useful knowledge. explanation: esra indicated that one might find her curriculum map political, but her attempt was epistemic. for her, teaching the sociocultural aspects was the most crucial in a discipline that otherwise might simply be submitted to hegemonic practices, leading her to question the historical background of english. today, english seems to be accepted as a lingua franca. language history would probably help explain to students why they learn english. esra wants her students to further consider what would happen if they did not learn english, and why english is so popular today rather than other languages? additionally, esra examines the status of english, the 5 c’s standard approach, instructional materials, social strategies in classroom, and the language structure in both receptive (interpretive) and tochon & okten: curriculum mapping and instructional affordances transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 18 productive (presentational) skills). she includes language knowledge and evaluation as crucial elements for teaching english. esra does not discuss linguistics much because she does not believe it is important for teaching the language. in so doing, her conceptions match communicative theory: ; she wants to facilitate proficiency, not train grammar specialists. deductive reasoning: having a second look at her map, esra realized what was her real level of english language acquisition, as well as her current level of mastery of the theories, classroom applications, and methods. the map helped her reach a level where she could start investigating deductively and systematically into knowledge organizing and proficiency, after the first inductive phases. curriculum mapping helped esra remember and reflect deeply on her disciplinary field. she decided that teachers should practice different methods together for meaningful learning, and that such eclecticism would be more profitable in the classroom. the teacher’s input in terms of personal experiences and characteristics are a necessary component of successful teaching as lived experiences make the material meaningful for the student. esra forgot to mention literature as an instructional tool, she notices. she believes in the usefulness of literature in language teaching but prefers using literature for homework as well as occasional classroom applications. esra furthermore accepts the critiques she received from her peers on the ‘evaluation’ part of her curriculum map. with more reflection, she would write ‘feedback’ instead of ‘evaluation’ as she agrees that it provides a better fit with her general conception of teaching. esra examines seval’s concept map and finds that seval has a deeper account of teaching in general, but she also feels that it not so much open to the characteristic details of the discipline and that seval could be more specific. esra appreciates seval’s curriculum view for classifying learner types such as visual, auditory and kinesthetic and taking their characteristics into account. this point in particular brings esra to reconceptualize her own approach to concept mapping. now, she would prefer not to express the teacher and learner characteristics under the title theory of language teaching. as a result, viewing the maps of her peers helps esra reframe her own knowledge. the first abductive and inductive phases are now replaced by deduction and she examines different rationales. esra argues that harun put general titles on his map and that he should have opened such generic conceptual boxes and refine their distinctive characteristics to look for their instructional (didactic) implications in the discipline itself. identification: esra admits she needs some brainstorming to engage more in what english language teaching studies represent and make her curriculum more meaningful. she wants to attend conferences to see samples of processed curriculum knowledge. feedback inspired esra to reflect on the concepts of the discipline. she felt she could better classify the teachers according to types of professional experiences. she did not integrate language politics in her concept map. when it came to be discussed with the students she concluded that each curriculum map demonstrates a personal teaching philosophy. each map depicts the discipline in various ways, and their approaches indicate their own politics of education. the distinctive point in her map is the role of history in constructing the field of knowledge. according to her, harun should have put more sub-titles and have clarified the instructional topics, as he talks about only two methods grammar translation and communicative approach and needs to account for many more aspects of language teaching. nevertheless, she appreciates his map’s cultural viewpoint, as he reflects about english culture from a global perspective. prediction: courses are not sufficient to acquire professionalism; esra needs to experience more language teaching practices. she also needs to revisit her lesson plans as regards the tochon & okten: curriculum mapping and instructional affordances transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 19 historical background of the discipline, and get a better sense of its worlwide potential value for the future. esra uses richards & rodgers’ book in her discussion of methods. she thinks teachers should add their own experiences to the methods to improve teaching. they should note their personal traits to make the best out of it and create a coherent, professional profile. esra gives herself as an example: she sometimes becomes impatient, which may affect her professionalism. she evaluates the learners according to what they bring into the classroom, not as a measure of their learning aptitudes. in the classroom environment, the teacher should notice the students’ background, their developmental characteristics, interests, and discover their talents. commenting on her map, she mentions that linguistics includes semantics and syntax, so you do not need to show them separately. model building: esra’s concept map is based more on theories than practices. she considers the national curriculum and knowledge she received during teacher training, which indicates the key role of teacher education in shaping the curriculum values that will be enacted in the classroom. esra divides the domain of ‘elt’ into two main topics, ‘teaching’ and ‘language’. then she divides ‘language’ into two sections: ‘english’ and ‘linguistics’. she makes two groups of language skills: receptive (reading, listening) and productive (speaking, writing). she classifies the methods under the ‘history of language teaching’. she remarks that harun added something more distinctive besides the categories they studied at the university: a different interpretation of disciplinary knowledge can be noticed on his map. she feels that because he built an original model, this helps her re-think about her own positioning. if we compare the three maps, all three use previous curriculum knowledge constructed during teacher education at the university. prior knowledge provides the hunch to start the reflective process but, while deliberating about the field of knowledge, the student teachers increase their capacity to work on curriculum at a metasemiotic level. seval and esra emphasize the teaching and learning aspects that are key to the transition from theory to practice. their approaches are based on neo-constructivism but they follow structural procedures for instruction. first, a valid approach is chosen through needs analysis, then it is applied to the target group because its application can be meaningful. finally the results and expectations are evaluated according to the objectives. both seval and esra focus on the previously modelled structure that they were given during their teacher training, and do not use their capacity to reach a personal, idiosyncratic interpretation of their own. in contrast, harun’s inner dialogue helps him model a sense of globalization along the lines of a ‘semiotic of the self’ (petrilli, 2003). even if harun’s map seems somewhat distant from known designs of the field, he elicits a sociocultural perspective with global implications and connections that indicate a higher level of metasemiosis. his case manifests the metasemiotic process more clearly than the others. first he interrupts routine conceptions of the domain, he suspends his interpretation of english language teaching for a while as he reflects, and then deliberates on the imperialist power of english and imposed english language policies, and finally makes original decisions and suggestions in terms of communication, education, economy, and state governance. his metasemiosis involves knowledge reframing and determines his position towards the english language and culture. the process makes him feel the responsibility of his own curriculum knowledge as it relates to professional action. thus he develops what petrilli (2004) has named ‘semioethics’. tochon & okten: curriculum mapping and instructional affordances transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 20 discussion evaluation of curriculum maps a constructive approach of curriculum maps curriculum semiosis was explored among turkish student teachers who will teach english as a foreign language. for that purpose, curriculum mapping was instrumental in helping activate reflection on the semiotic framing of the field and consequently help the students construe a sense of professionalism. mapping curriculum knowledge allowed the participants to inquire into how they perceived, understood, constructed, interpreted, ‘enminded’ (tochon, 2000a) and enacted the discipline taught. the feedback on this process shed light on the crucial role of teacher education courses in the shaping of curriculum contents. it is compatible with a constructivist view of teacher education. curriculum maps support a constructive view of teaching, as it did for harun. the study of semiotic features raises awareness of the sign systems and its codes. student teachers give meanings to signs according to codes of which they are not aware. student teachers who evaluate and interpret their curriculum knowledge reflect on the value of contents and the expressions of knowledge they learned previously. such an inquiry process makes curriculum learning more meaningful. student teachers do not acquire subject-matter knowledge as a set of neutral, sanitized concepts, but rather construct their own perception of relevant knowledge through interpretations, dialogues, collaborations, additions and improvements. they also adapt themselves to new knowledge that is reconstructed by their mutual contributions. constructing their curriculum then becomes a relevance process: each time, knowledge is added to prior models, students adjust themselves with new interpretations. as this approach is experience-based, the resulting knowledge is experimental and intersubjective, allowing curriculum mapping to provide a framework for teacher development. because curriculum mapping connects ideas visually, its design contributes to indicate the nature of the relations between ideas and cases. it provides a road map that shows the convergences and ways of connecting meanings and assumptions. in this respect, curriculum mapping is an approach we can recommend in the current reforms as its helps practitioners reflect on the organization of knowledge. as concept mapping has been recommended by the turkish national curriculum to increase the quality of education at all levels (meb ttkb curriculum, 2005) this study provides supporting data for this approach in a pre-service context, demonstrating that it leads to more reflective, creative, collaborative, and pragmatic approaches. benefits of curriculum semiotic mapping the primary finding of this study is that curriculum maps can be used as training tools for student teachers to improve their professional skills or improve their view of the curriculum they will enact in classroom situations. knowledge mapping proved to be an encouraging semiotic approach which allowed student teachers to get a sense of what was meaningful in the subject-matter as it eased communication between the student teachers and their teacher educator. additionally, curriculum mapping facilitated the acquisition of major educational concepts as the curriculum maps indicated to students the connections between subjects that they had been taught and those they would choose to teach, thus legitimating their teacher education. curriculum maps furthermore stimulated reflective practice among student teachers, leading them to re-conceptualize their personal, academic and professional knowledge. the student teachers could then collaboratively discuss the relevance of their priorities, better prepare professionally, and minimize the risks of being inexperienced. tochon & okten: curriculum mapping and instructional affordances transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 21 curriculum mapping also helped these student teachers to foster their professionalism as lifelong learners. they started to understand that curriculum building is a form of interpretive conceptualizing, it is partly fabricated. in the peircean view, experimentation is important to fix beliefs. curriculum mapping allows the students to review their personal reflections, expectations, past goals and criticisms. the process of developing individualized curriculum maps raised students’ awareness of what they knew, and led them to reflect on the utility and the pertinency of subject-matter knowledge, their deficiencies in disciplinary training, possible lack of motivation and self-assessment in the growth of professionalism. in the beginning the student teachers had some difficulty locating and classifying subject-matters on paper. however, they soon felt they were placed in the position of future professionals making crucial choices as to what is to be taught during one school year. one particular motivating factor for the student teachers was their desire to behave like qualified teachers. defining for themselves what a ‘qualified teacher’ would do motivated them to reflect about the concepts of their discipline. while they were appreciating their level of knowledge they were encouraged to represent their ideas on improving the field, which was a sound preparation for their internship. the study indicates that teacher educators can use curriculum mapping as a reflective tool to professionalize student teachers through providing self-assessment and highlighting possible deficiencies. students who map their knowledge reframe the functions and contents of the courses they took. other aspects revealed by conversations around curriculum mapping were the importance of preparing for large class activities, and developing the listening and speaking skills required to teach in the target language. curriculum mapping was an excellent instrument for both teacher educators and student teachers to foster their professional skills, and gave rise to important questions on the nature of curricular knowledge. the student teachers investigated proper ways to sequence knowledge, and the reasoning behind the construction of disciplinary knowledge. the concept of affordance was useful in emphasizing that the national curriculum is not lived in abstracto, but must be adapted to specific meaningful niches and semiotic environments where it is being taught. furthermore student teachers have their own semiotic niches and affordances with particular aspects of the curriculum, which will lead to prioritize particular segments of the national program; curriculum mapping proved to be an interesting way to dig into the rationales for such choices. student teachers were guided from their initial level of intuitive inquiry (the firstness level) to articulate the major objects of the curriculum with coherence (at the secondness level) and start moving these curriculum concepts into a theoretical whole, which helped them reframe the field as their professional domain of thought and action. the whole process was deep enough that it not only aimed at teaching and learning but gave them a taste for ‘deep education’ (tochon, 2008) curriculum knowledge construction in this study, we have analyzed curriculum mapping as a metasemiotic, and potentially transsemiotic process, which involves multiple layers of negotiation and design. curricula tend to represent the authority that aims at fixing meanings for society. the shared understanding in turkish institutions is that meaning construction can evolve in the students’ minds but it is supposed to be stable and normed in the teacher’s mind. the teacher gets training to objectify concepts in a way that will permit either their transmission or their reflective reconstruction. bourdieu (2001) might note that such naturalizing is part of the school enforcement of the sociocultural heritage. as this study demonstrates, knowledge is certainly more than information processing. its selection and processing emerges from identity processes. tochon & okten: curriculum mapping and instructional affordances transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 22 harun, for example, has a socio-political view of the discipline taught that differs drastically from the ones of its peers. when he compared his map to theirs, he realized that he missed some methodological dimensions that would be relevant compared to his initial vision. after discussion with his peers, however, he agreed to complement his political philosophy with other stands that indicate that he agreed to change to follow external suggestions. over time the modeling process proves transformative for harun as he feels an increased identification with his curricular stands. seval’s reflection, on the other hand, is based on ascertained knowledge: she takes for granted knowledge she was given during teacher training courses. this prevents her from having a thorough reading of harun’s innovative views. she sees these views as insufficient from the viewpoint of methods as essentialized in the didactic discourse, although they dig into crucial issues in the sociology of knowledge and the politics of language. in this respect, seval doesn’t demonstrate much trans-semiosis outside of a few categories of understanding that she felt esra articulated somewhat better than her, and for the increased sense of coherence within the discipline taught. esra deeply reflects on language status and how people perceive and create social valorization of particular language practices. she realizes that the current status of english might change one day, given how it is closely related with the current economic power of the anglo-saxon world, which could partly vanish in one or two decades. esra develops a better understanding that her discipline of choice is a matter of epistemic and social representation. then while considering harun’s map, esra sees that he has a global perspective on the english culture that shows up on his map, which leads her to revisit her own map. this interaction with harun’s conceptualization of history leads her to reframe her perspective in a way that differs from the orientation provided in method courses, but it is a better fit with her new sense of what is important in what she will do as an english teacher. through the transsemiosis of these three student teachers, it becomes obvious that curriculum is related with shared experience, identities, humaneness as well as conceptualizing and design. we have analyzed the dynamic emergence of relations between agency and structure, and observed how student teachers reconceptualize their discipline in original ways, including how the structure of their curriculum maps evolves as meanings are never fixed. the way concepts are conveyed in the school context explains why students often fail to personalize what they learned. student teachers likewise often exhibit this tendency. as this study shows, however, student teachers would like to see knowledge as an effective and functional way of acting in their professional lives. the myth of effectiveness hides the values underlying evaluation. evaluation is a valuing process and is part of a normalizing semiosis, leading prior knowledge to condition what is considered good education. reflecting on the designing process helped student teachers understand the fabrication of knowledge for schooling allowing them to become critically reflective. conclusion the student teachers’ perception of the curriculum is based on values that differ markedly according to their sociocultural substrate and experiential history. in helping student teachers understand how central the valuing process is to education, semiotic analysis offers a useful interpretive framework, given how the goals of education can in turn be understood as semiotic expressions. when, for example, student teachers design their curriculum on electronic maps, they tend to reconstruct and reconceptualize their understanding of the tochon & okten: curriculum mapping and instructional affordances transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 23 subject-matter for teaching. this form of curriculum building constitutes a meaning negotiation endeavor imbued with values that involves political and sociocultural choices, selection, a hierarchizing of values and their enactment into a model that can be taught in schools. thus curriculum mapping can be an interesting instrument to observe and discuss hunches and values that lead the edification of curriculum choices among postulant practitioners. viewing curriculum mapping, then, as a process and not as a goal in itself helps explicate how disciplinary knowledge is enmeshed with personal knowledge. based on the interviews that accompanied the process of curriculum mapping, we observed that the student teacher looks at the curriculum in terms of prior knowledge and experiences in search for semiotic niches on which to base his or her teaching practice. curriculum mapping is based on the selection of and affordance with subject-matter niches in which student teachers feel comfortable. for them, the curriculum has conceptual niches to which they must get accustomed. the student teacher’s semiotic inquiry can be regarded as the discovery of such affordances, which is why curriculum mapping is such a helpful process. affordances do not exist independently from the perceiver but rather imply interaction in the meaning construction process. the curriculum supports a particular set of interactional constructions that are available for teachers who know how to use these affordances. thus the theory of affordance, analyzed from a peircean, semiotic viewpoint, provides a way to decipher how student teachers give meanings and functions to curriculum objects and interactively build their conceptual niches. to sum up, when student teachers try to resolve their doubts, they follow hunches and look for clues, building scenarios and coming up with possible explanations. they sharpen their ability to catch what symptoms are important and need to be trusted, and which ones are irrelevant. abduction is the beginning of the process of conceptualizing. ideas are linked by reason and evaluated. as student teachers jointly compared curriculum maps they also challenged their beliefs, induced genuine doubt and stimulated conceptual reframing. the deciphering of affordances is an expression of semiotic inquiry. it helped student teachers explore the conceptual processes of selection elicited when designing the curriculum. in this process, the student teachers had to fix their beliefs. this implied selective decision-making. mapping curriculum affordances generated a form of reasoning that was initially of abductive nature, as the student teachers were stimulated to enter a transformative process, through which they had to make meaning of their own meaning-making. we named that process ‘trans-semiosis’. understanding their own abductive reasoning in framing the subject-matter in turn characterized the student teachers’ inquiry and gave the whole process an educational dimension. acknowledgements the research reported in this article was supported by a grant from tübitak – the national science and technology council of turkey – that permitted the first author to spend one semester onsite facilitating the integration of e-portfolios, and from the spencer foundation (#38723) that supported data processing on issues of globalization, standardization and organizational learning as well as a visit of the second author to uw-madison. we are grateful to elif kir, research assistant, for helping with some aspects of data collection and transcription, and to nathan black who did the linguistic revision of the paper. we are also grateful to the pre-service teachers who participated in the study, to münire erden and to ali ilker gumuseli for their support all along the 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(2006). metasemiosis and metapragmatics. encyclopedia of language and linguistics (2nd ed. vol. 8, pp.88-91). london, uk: elsevier. authors francois victor tochon, professor, world language education, department of curriculum & instruction, school of education, teacher education building, 225 north mills street, madison, wi 53706 usa. emails: ftochon@education.wisc.edu. fax: (608) 263-9992. celile e. okten, yildiz technical university, yıldız teknik üniversitesi eğitim fakültesi, davutpaşa yerleşim birimi, esenler, i̇stanbul, 34210, turkey; e-mail: cargit@yildiz.edu.tr o legado de paulo freire para as políticas de currículo e para o trabalho docente, no brasil to cite this article please include all of the following details: unsworth, leslieanne; namukasa, immaculate k.; aryee, kinful l. & kotsopoulos, donna (2021). mathematics education of pre-service teachers: as reflected in methods course syllabus. transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) p. 23-56. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/issue/<access date> mathematics education of pre-service teachers: as reflected in methods course syllabus leslie anne unsworth1, immaculate k. namukasa2, kinful l. aryee3, donna kotsopoulos4 western university, canada introduction the merriamwebster’s dictionary defines syllabus as a summary, a course of study, or an outline. matejka and kurke (1994) proposed that there are four key functions of a syllabus. the syllabus represents a legal agreement between the instructor and the student, the student and the university, and the instructor and the university; it is a communication device regarding the learning outcomes and goals of a program of study; it is a plan or a description of events to occur within the course; and it is a cognitive map outlining a way in which knowledge will be shaped by the content of the course. burkhardt, fraser, and ridgway (1990) provide comprehensive definitions for various kinds of curricula where the term ideal curriculum may add to the understanding of the role of a syllabus. according to these authors, the ideal curriculum is what experts propound; because it is not firmly grounded in relevant experience. the ideal curriculum is fundamentally speculative but important in defining directions for change that should be pursued. the implemented curriculum is what teachers actually teach in the classroom; because teachers vary enormously in their capabilities, hence, there is a wide distribution of implemented curricula. the achieved curriculum is what the students actually learn; its distribution is even wider across many variables. the tested curriculum is determined by the spectrum of tests which vary public credibility, and through that, influence what happens in classrooms (burkhardt et al., 1990, p. 5). a syllabus can be viewed as a representation of what burkhardt, fraser, and ridgway call “ideal curriculum” (burkhardt et al., 1990, p. 5) and what deng (2011) refers to as one of the major constituents of programmatic curriculum. the syllabus is therefore an important first glimpse for students to know what matters most to a discipline and to their learning by providing information on the topics to be studied, and the planned activities of the course. the ideal curriculum is particularly important in mathematics teacher education. it signals important theory to practice connections from research that are relevant for advancing learning and understanding for students. in this paper, we concern ourselves unsworth, namukasa, aryee, kotsopoulos. mathematics education course syllabus 24 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index with the course content in mathematics method courses, also referred to as mathematics pedagogy and school mathematics. as we describe shortly, we specifically adopt a framework of analysis that is derived from research literature in mathematics education. the objective of this study is to examine the extent to which key opportunities to learn mathematics method courses by pre-service mathematics teachers, as recommended by researchers, is evidenced in course syllabi. the question guiding the research was: how are recommendations derived from research for the mathematics education of pre-service teachers reflected in mathematics methods course syllabi? some studies have attempted to identify ideal curriculum. for example, the recent teacher education and development study (teds-m) (tatto, 2013) provided crossnational data and shared terminology on what, and how, teachers learn in teacher education programs around the world (tatto, lerman, & novotna, 2010; blömeke, 2014). others have investigated specific components of teacher education such as mathematics concepts and knowledge pre-services teachers need for teaching and the links between these components (hill, rowan & ball, 2005). this understanding contributes to conversations on teacher knowledge and practices as well as to conversations on improving the future teachers’ effectiveness in the classroom. certain studies have focused on areas such as course goal, course content, course structure, instructional approaches, and assessment (see for examples, little, 2009; monoranjan, 2015; sinay, & nahornick, 2016). teds-m also administered a content test questionnaire to teacher candidates (tatto, 2013). this questionnaire was administered to determine the “effectiveness of a course/content arrangement” [in teacher education programs] (hsieh, law, shy, wang, hsieh, & tang, 2011, p. 180) by focusing on “organization of sequences, links of the course/content, and whether the courses/content met the needs of future teachers” (hsieh et al., p. 180). teds-m not only studied the achieved curriculum by future teachers at the end of their teacher-education programs (tep), it also collected data on “syllabi and sample assignments from teacher education mathematics curricular” (cmec, 2010, p. 7). canãdas, gómez, and rico (2013) maintain that analyzing the content dimensions of the syllabi of courses offered by teacher education institutions was a useful data source, which was more important than using student and instructor self-reported data on the learned curriculum. in certain studies, instructors investigated syllabi (e.g., burton, 2003) for the course which they taught, or syllabi at their institutions (e.g., corlu, 2013), or syllabi in their own countries (e.g., canãdas et al., 2013). also, canãdas et al. (2013) studied the content for spanish primary teachers’ training programs. we found few studies on syllabi of mathematics pedagogy or mathematics knowledge at the university level that offered a comparative analysis on proposed ideal curriculum. our research hopes to contribute in this way. this study serves three goals: (a) introducing an instrument that may be useful in supporting the conceptual thinking of instructors when developing mathematics methods course content, (b) providing an examination of the extent to which key assertions within the field related to the mathematics education for future teachers materialize in course content, and (c) serving as a study of recommended elements for teacher education. it also has the potential to suggest ways to strengthen teacher preparation courses. our study examines syllabi for mathematics teacher-education courses in six countries. cross-national studies are particularly important in an international climate of educational reform that emphasizes the need to promote learning for all students (tatto et al., 2010). in short, we examine trends identified in course syllabi that signal what is deemed as important across the discipline. our analysis provides these findings as well as commentary on areas that appear to be underrepresented. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index unsworth, namukasa, aryee, kotsopoulos. mathematics education course syllabus 25 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index theoretical framework cross-national comparative studies on mathematics teacher education have only emerged in the past decade. it is, therefore, commonplace for a study on this topic to develop its own framework for analysis (blömeke, 2014). in line with the framework development, blömeke, suhl, kaiser, and döhrmann (2012) raised its importance and a need to review research internationally to discuss such issues. variations seem to exist in the literature among the components of pedagogy courses. for instance, tatto et al. (2013) developed a framework on teacher education using data from 20 countries to analyze approaches to content in teacher education programs. their framework which classified the overall curricular structure of teacher education, specifically inquiring whether mathematics content knowledge (ck), pedagogical content knowledge (pck), or pedagogical knowledge (pk), were successfully addressed in the programs. on the question of content and pedagogy, canãdas et al. (2013) following teds-m, considered four major categories of ck that should be taught to teachers in teacher preparation programs–school mathematics content knowledge, tertiary mathematics content knowledge, mathematics pedagogy and general pedagogy. these four categories of ck were considered the content categories of the seven broad opportunities to learn (otl) for teachers (tatto, 2013; tatto & senk, 2011). the seven otls identified altogether were: mathematics content knowledge (mck)– school and tertiary, mathematics education, general education pedagogy, teaching for diversity, reflection on practice, school experiences and the field experience, as well as overall coherence of the teacher education program. table 1 summarizes categories identified in teds-m, blömeke (2014), nctm (2012), and wang and tang (2013) alongside the categories identified in our study of course syllabi. table 1: classification of mathematics pedagogical (content) knowledge, mpck mathematics education (blömeke 2014; monroe, 1984; nctm 2012; tatto, 2013; tatto & senk, 2011; wang & tang, 2013). this study & mted teaching issues (e.g., planning, reflection, and foundations of mathematics) pedagogical content knowledge curriculum (e.g., school content and assessment) content knowledge assessment learning issues (e.g., development of mathematics thinking, planning), technology mathematical tasks contexts (e.g., equity and diversity) policy and politics of mathematics education equity and diversity affective issues (e.g., motivational issues) affective issues in pedagogy and content professional competencies (e.g., teacher inquiry) reflection lesson as unit of study field experiences and clinical practices theory and practice connections blömeke et al. (2012) and hsieh (2013) argue that examination of both teaching and assessment of future teachers would generate more insight into the relationship between teacher-education programs and teacher learning. furthermore, it is clear from https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index unsworth, namukasa, aryee, kotsopoulos. mathematics education course syllabus 26 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index studies using teds-m data that opportunities to learn (together with teacher backgrounds), were closely positively correlated to teacher performance on the tests of mathematics knowledge and mathematics pedagogical knowledge (canãdas et al., 2013). still other distinctions such as teacher learning, and teacher quality are possible (blömeke, 2014). this current research is an extension of a study that proposed an evaluative tool, the mathematics teacher educator (mted) instrument (see appendix a; kotsopoulos, morselli, & purdy, 2011). the mted instrument includes 11 categories of research related to mathematics pre-service teacher education and the rationale for these derives from the literature as described above and outlined in table 1. these 11 are: reflection, mathematical tasks, lesson study, assessment, theory and practice connections, policy and politics of mathematics education, equity and diversity, affect, content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and technology. we state up front, that other categories or classifications likely exist. several of these categories also appeared independently in the teds-m framework. given the contributions we hope to make in this paper, these categories are viewed by us as broad and yet encompassing enough to capture this field area of research. our literature review consists of brief overviews of each of the 11 categories. more robust reviews are contained within the citations in each category. literature review reflection artzt and armour-thomas (2002) contended that for teachers to develop their teaching practice, they must engage in reflection before, during, and after implementing a lesson. in the same way, prospective teachers must participate in those same forms of reflection throughout their teacher preparation program (chung-shu, 2006; garcía, sánchez, & escudero, 2007). researchers argue that reflection helps teacher candidates to: become active learners; think about mathematics; improve their professional skills; contribute to their understanding, especially of teachers’ professional knowledge; and serve as teaching for diversity. although reflection on practice in the teds-m framework was conceptualized to be outside of the opportunity in mathematics pedagogy, we argue that reflection is an integral component [tool] of pre-service mathematical methods courses. mathematical tasks nctm (2012) breaks content into content knowledge and mathematical practices. it includes a distinct category of professional knowledge and skills about teachers continuing to learn. pre-service teachers need to engage in mathematical tasks that allow them to develop a deeper understanding of mathematical content and student learning processes (ching-shu, 2006; watson & sullivan, 2008; zaslavsky, 2007). watson and sullivan distinguish between classroom tasks for students, that is, “questions, situations and instructions teachers might use when teaching students” (p. 109) and tasks for teachers, that is, “the mathematical prompt” (p. 109) that teachers employ to increase their knowledge levels. mathematical tasks for teachers serve as a basis for providing meaningful help to pre-service teachers to develop a blend of mathematical and pedagogical knowledge (chapman, 2007). lesson study teachers increasingly engage in inquiry or research to obtain reliable and updated information for their lessons. teacher engagement in inquiry involves avenues such as collaborative inquiry, communities of inquiry, design research, lesson study and learning https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index unsworth, namukasa, aryee, kotsopoulos. mathematics education course syllabus 27 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index study (lerman, 2014). in this study, we focus on lesson study, which is a process that is aimed at improving teaching practices among pre-service teachers by allowing them to collaboratively plan lessons, [to] observe one or more teachers while teaching the jointly planned lessons, and [to] collectively reflect upon the lessons (dumm & mojeed , 2015; post & varoz, 2008; stigler & hiebert, 1999). assessment generally accepted in mathematics education is the need for pre-service teachers to engage in assessment practices through the act of analyzing students’ level of mathematization. additionally, it is important for teachers to engage in a variety of assessment strategies (cunningham & bennett, 2009; ketterlin-geller & yovanoff, 2009) since authentic assessment practices can encourage and support further student learning and teachers’ own understanding of students’ mathematical thinking. theory and practice through theory-to-practice activities pre-service teachers make connections between research and practice when learning to teach (mcdonnough & matkins, 2010; tsafos, 2010). they are given opportunities to engage in research that allows them to make practical connections between educational theory and practice. policy and politics policy documents and educational reforms (e.g., the new math reform of the postsputnik era) pervade mathematics education. curriculum and teaching standards and guidelines for teacher preparation programs (ncate, 2008; nctm, 2000), the institutional curriculum (deng, 2011) that according to doyle (1992) guides programmatic curriculum for teacher education. apple (1992) and johnston (2007) have verified the importance of pre-service teachers exploring and engaging with policy documents as a means of becoming familiar with regional and educational standards. further, mathematics by itself according to gutiérrez (2013), “operates with a kind of formatting power on our lives” and critical mathematics education researchers underscore the importance of engaging preservice teachers in exploring the politics of teaching mathematics. equity and diversity numerous factors have been identified as contributing to the marginalization of certain populations of students, such as: pedagogical factors (esmonde, 2009), eurocentric mathematics (d'ambrosio, 1985; skovsmose, 1990), and teacher preparation (sleeter, 2001). this research points to some serious deficiencies in the learning environments of several students, specifically when it comes to how teachers are prepared during their pre-service teacher education (bartolo, smyth, swennen, & klink, 2008). as a result, prospective teachers need to explore concepts of equity and diversity, so that they learn strategies for meeting the needs of diverse learners. the teds-m framework adequately addresses this concern by making ways of teaching diverse students an integral part of mathematics method courses for pre-service teachers. affect goldin (2002) stresses that the affective system is not merely an auxiliary to cognition; it is central to what the cognitive represents. traditionally, four key components of affect are studied: emotions, beliefs, conceptions, and attitudes. beliefs about teaching and learning mathematics deeply influence teachers’ instructional practice (philipp, 2007; thompson, 1992). affect influences teaching practice as much as the social context and the teachers’ level of thought and reflection (ernest, 1989) to the extent https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index unsworth, namukasa, aryee, kotsopoulos. mathematics education course syllabus 28 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index that, sometimes, it is difficult to distinguish beliefs from knowledge because “teachers treat their beliefs as knowledge” (thompson, 1992, p. 127). therefore, it is important for pre-service teachers to become aware of and begin to challenge and potentially change any unhelpful beliefs during their teacher preparation programs. content knowledge over the last decade, numerous scholars have attempted to articulate the sorts of content knowledge required by future mathematics teachers, where the outgrowth of this research has become known as mathematics for teaching (mft) (adler & davis, 2006; ball, hill, & bass, 2005; ball, thames, & phelps, 2008). stylianides and stylianides (2009) define mft as the “mathematical content that is important for teachers to know and be able to use in order to manage successfully the mathematical issues that come up in their practices” (p. 161). mkft allows pre-service teachers to know, implement mathematical content, and also solve mathematical problems (ball & bass 2000; stylianides & stylianides, 2009). the reason for acquiring the content knowledge is that most elementary teachers are noted to “have had little or no mathematics [education] since high school, and have found their high school mathematics difficult” (jonker, 2008, p. 328). therefore, to improve the effectiveness of teaching and students work, mathematics knowledge for teaching (hurrell, 2013) would be an important aspect of preservice teachers’ education. pedagogical content knowledge much of teds-m study research focused on the knowledge of content learned in mathematics pedagogy courses. shulman (1986) defined two different components of teachers’ knowledge: content knowledge, also known as mft as stated earlier, and pedagogical content knowledge (pck). mft and pck are complementary pieces of the knowledge puzzle necessary for teaching mathematics. it appears that prospective preservice teachers need opportunities to examine, develop, and analyze various pedagogical strategies to gain knowledge about the components of mft and pck including instructionally sound representations and how to approach students’ learning difficulties (shulman,1986). technology according to niess (2005), research regarding technology integration in mathematics teacher education has focused primarily on ways of using technology to enhance teaching and learning. mistretta (2005) noted that this integration has brought a lot of enhancement into the teaching and learning environments. freiman (2014) breaks down learning technologies into: microworlds, virtual learning communities, applications and task designs, mobile learning, and games. educational reforms around technology have promoted the integration of various facets of these technologies into all classrooms (greenhow, robelia, & hughes, 2009; jonassen, howland, marra, & crismond, 2008; xiao & carroll, 2007). some of the teacher education practices championed in classroom technology include: a professor demonstrating or modeling the use of mathematics technology (picha, 2018; sturdivant, dunham, & jardine, 2009), opportunities for pre-service teachers to study mathematics technology (da ponte, oliveira, & varandas, 2002), and to engage in authentic implementation of mathematics technology (lin, 2008). studies have shown that when pre-service teachers are provided with the opportunity to observe, investigate and implement technology, they maximize their current knowledge of technology integration in a mathematics classroom (blubaugh, 2009; niess, 2001). even though this category did not appear in the teds-m, as evidenced in the review above, it is a major category in mathematics education research. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index unsworth, namukasa, aryee, kotsopoulos. mathematics education course syllabus 29 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index methods participants mathematics methods course syllabi (english only) for pre-service teachers were solicited from professors/instructors of mathematics teacher education courses through two listserv mailing lists: the psychology of mathematics education (pme) listserv and the canadian mathematics education study group (cmesg) listserv. in total, 147 syllabi were submitted. although our intent was to obtain syllabi from every continent, we were unable to do so despite numerous invitations. the full syllabus set underwent a preliminary filtering to exclude (a) syllabi that were not consistent with the methods courses under investigation in this research (e.g., syllabi related to practicum/field experience, enrichment mathematics, mathematic content exclusive of pedagogy, graduate courses that had a narrow/conceptual focus), and (b) syllabi with less than 30 or more than 49 hours of instructional time. hours of instruction were bracketed to ensure that appropriate comparisons were made across courses of similar length versus short courses or full year courses. this considerably reduced the data set. multiple syllabi from one institution were not excluded, given that differences existed between the syllabi when examined; that is, different instructors prepared different versions of mathematics methods courses reflecting differing perspectives on essential components. two researchers and one graduate student coded the syllabi and analyzed the data. the two researchers are specialists in mathematics education. interrater reliability was determined by independently reviewing coding by two coders and any disagreements were resolved. data sources in total 31 syllabi were analyzed from six different countries, three of which– canada, malaysia, united states—also participated in teds-m. the mean length of the syllabi in the final sample was 9.3 pages and the mean number of course hours was 37.9 hours. each of these courses spanned one academic term (approximately 12 to 13 weeks) and was deemed to be as close an approximation of similar hours as possible. to maintain anonymity for the course instructors, the syllabi were referred to by country and a sequential number (e.g., canada 1, canada 2, etc.). the final syllabus data set was then broken down into two categories, elementary and secondary. elementary refers to syllabi used in courses that prepare teachers to teach kindergarten to grade eight. secondary refers to syllabi used in courses that prepare teachers to teach grades nine through to twelve. this grade breakdown between elementary and secondary reflects common groupings in canada. the final dataset included 19 elementary syllabi and 12 secondary syllabi (see table 2). table 2: final syllabus dataset sorted by country (elementary vs. secondary) country syllabi level elementary secondary australia canada italy 5 6 2 5 6 1 0 0 1 malaysia new zealand united states of america 1 3 14 0 2 5 1 1 9 total 31 19 12 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index unsworth, namukasa, aryee, kotsopoulos. mathematics education course syllabus 30 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index materials the mted instrument used in this study is an analytical rubric that uses level one through to level four, to evaluate the extent to which the categories emphasized in the mathematics education literature and research in the literature review is evidenced in a syllabus. low, moderate, and high tags were assigned to each syllabus based upon the cumulative level of the syllabus obtained using the mted instrument. in a similar manner, corlu (2013) developed and applied an analytical rubric to assess stem courses at a university. the cumulative level was determined by adding up the levels from each of the individual categories, with one point for each level one, two points for each level two, three points for each level three, and four points for each level four. a syllabus was tagged as showing low evidence of research if it scored below 22 (total of one point for each of the 11 categories), moderate evidence of research if it scored between 22 and 32 (range of potential points if all categories scored below a level three), and high evidence of research if it scored higher than 32 (range of potential scores reflecting inclusion of one or more categories at a level four). data analysis each of the syllabi contained in the final syllabus data set (n = 31) were coded using the mted instrument. items on the syllabus could be coded as representing two different categories or multiple instances of the same category. if multiple pieces of evidence were found for one category within one syllabus, then the highest level noted for that category was recorded. if no pieces of evidence were found for a category within one syllabus, then the category was given a level one. a ten percent reliability test of coding was conducted, and inter-rater reliability was 90%. descriptive statistics were computed to summarize overall levels across the eleven research areas analyzed. qualitative examples of categories were identified. correlation analysis was conducted to examine the relationship between category levels and overall levels assigned to each syllabus in elementary-only and secondary-only. finally, a mannwhitney u test was conducted between two groups found in the final data set, elementary and secondary, to see if the distribution of levels varied in a statistically significant way. results an overall level of high was achieved by eight syllabi since their overall score was 33 or higher. an overall level of moderate was achieved by nineteen syllabi since their overall score was between 22 and 32. an overall level of low was achieved by four syllabi since their overall score was 21 or lower. the overall score assigned to the syllabi ranged from 17.0 to 38.0. of the eight syllabi that scored high, six were elementary, and two were secondary. of the four syllabi that scored low, one was elementary, and three were secondary. consequently, the evidence of research in the course syllabi was moderate overall. descriptive analysis (see table 3) of the 31 course syllabi revealed variation across the research areas identified on the mted instrument. mathematical tasks (m = 1.77, sd = 0.80) and affect (m = 1.68, sd = 0.87) were the lowest represented on the syllabi. additionally, equity (m = 2.94, sd = 1.41) and technology (m = 3.84, sd = 1.44) had the greatest amount of variance. conversely, the three categories that showed low variance were: theory (m = 2.61, sd = 0.67), policy (m = 3.03, sd = 0.75), and content (m = 2.71, sd = 0.64). https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index unsworth, namukasa, aryee, kotsopoulos. mathematics education course syllabus 31 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index table 3: overall descriptive statistics of syllabi (n = 31) range n m sd min. max. course hours 31 37.94 5.31 30.00 49.00 mted categories reflection 31 2.52 1.03 1.00 4.00 tasks 31 1.77 0.80 1.00 4.00 lesson study 31 2.71 1.07 1.00 4.00 assessment 31 2.16 0.90 1.00 4.00 theory 31 2.61 0.67 2.00 4.00 policy 31 3.03 0.75 1.00 4.00 equity 31 2.94 1.41 1.00 4.00 affect 31 1.68 0.87 1.00 4.00 content 31 2.71 0.64 1.00 3.00 pedagogy 31 3.03 1.02 1.00 4.00 technology 31 3.84 1.44 1.00 4.00 overall score 31 28.00 5.28 17.00 38.00 qualitative examples of the cells of the mted instrument are provided in table 4. the table does not distinguish between elementary and secondary examples. as we will show later, differences in means across cells between elementary and secondary syllabi were not significant except for content. therefore, only one table of examples is provided. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index unsworth, namukasa, aryee, kotsopoulos. mathematics education course syllabus 32 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index table 4: qualitative examples of mted instrument cells categories level 1 level 2 level 3 level 4 reflection (no reference to reflection) “[teaching assignment] comments will focus on how successful the sequence of lessons was including in areas for improvement, and possible directions of future lessons.” (australia 4) (only one type of reflection – posteri) “[teaching assignment] following your peer teaching session you will view your lesson on tape and write a 2-3-page self-analysis/reflection paper using feedback from the instructor and students in the class.” (usa 13) (two types of reflection – initeri while watching tape and posteri after viewing) “[assignment] …weekly reflective journal” (canada 1) (a weekly journal is ongoing and thus requires all 3 types of reflection – priori, initeri, and posteri) mathematic al tasks (no reference to mathematical tasks) “[lesson planning assignment] at least two examples of how to solve the problem you have chosen for the main part of the lesson. solutions (showing various approaches) to the questions you are assigning for worktime and/or “[assignment] activity of problem solving to find an operation that is commutative and not associative. activity of problem solving: the sum of the first 100 numbers. activity of problem solving: the magic square.” (italy 1 translated) “[assignment] three problem-solving assignments will be given to you to complete. the main goals of these assignments are for you to become a better problem solver yourself, to identify and develop strategies for solving problems…to reflect on your own approach and style in problem solving.” (usa 4) (extensive opportunity to engage in mathematical tasks) https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index unsworth, namukasa, aryee, kotsopoulos. mathematics education course syllabus 33 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index homework.” (canada 6) (opportunity to engage in only pupil level tasks) (some opportunity to engage in mathematical tasks) lesson study (no reference to lesson planning) “[assignment] …developing a unit of mathematics study (individually)… include…lesson plans (minimum of five)” (canada 1) (individual planning lessons but they are not enacted or reflected upon) “[course objectives] design and implement a mathematics lesson in collaboration with practicum teacher.” (usa 7) (collaborative lesson planning and implementing those lessons but no reflection piece) “[assignment] plan and teach a mathematics lesson…collaborate with your mentor teacher on a lesson that you will be responsible to teach. after conducting your lesson, you need to write a reflection on your assessment of the lesson” (usa 4) (planned collaboratively, presented, and reflected upon) assessment (no reference to engaging in assessment) “[student outcomes] …by the end of this course, students should be able to describe a variety of formative and summative assessment techniques” (canada 1) (limited opportunity to analyze student level work because the candidate is only required to describe assessment techniques) “[course content] assessment of children’s mathematical understanding, performance, and disposition.” (usa 4) (some opportunity to analyze the different aspects of student level work) “[student outcomes] developing understanding of curriculum in context by assessing students’ work, mathematical problems and/or texts.” (usa 10) (extensive opportunity to analyze student level work and other aspects of the mathematics program) https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index unsworth, namukasa, aryee, kotsopoulos. mathematics education course syllabus 34 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index theory and practice connections (reference only to textbook and no other research) “[assignment] …article and reading summary paragraph.” (canada 1) (limited opportunity to engage with research since highly structured introduction to research literature) “[assignment] …assume responsibility for reading, reporting on, and presenting three practitioners’ articles…presentation should include an overview of the concepts…along with the group’s critique or reflections.” (usa 7) (some opportunity to engage with research through course being grounded in research but no chance to engage in their own inquiry/research) “[section under each class schedule with research links] linking theory and practice” (canada 3) “[inquiry project assignment] … engage in teacher/action research…actively involved in asking questions aimed at understanding or improving teaching.” (canada 3) (extensive and authentic engagement in research with links to current research and engagement in their own inquiry/research) policy and politics of mathematic s teaching (no reference to curriculum documents or political aspect of education) “[course description] the course provides participants the opportunity to be familiar with the organization of mathematics through the bc’ s math curriculum” (canada 1) (limited evidence of policy exploration “[lesson topic] …familiarization with the content standards of nctm, the ontario curriculum, and additional ministry documents (e.g., expert panel reports and support documents).” and a list of supplementary journal readings (canada 6) “[course objective] critique national assessment practices and tasks for mathematics” and a list of supplementary journal readings (australia 1) (extensive evidence of policy exploration due to additional readings and critique of national standards) https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index unsworth, namukasa, aryee, kotsopoulos. mathematics education course syllabus 35 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index since curriculum document stated but no extra journal readings required) (some evidence of policy exploration due to additional readings and one class discussion) equity and diversity (no reference to the exploration of equity and diversity issues) “[learning objectives] …developed an understanding of…suitable teaching approaches for addressing anxiety and other mathematical phobias.” (australia 5) (limited evidence of equity exploration due to narrow focus on mathematics specific phobias and not the diverse needs of contemporary students) “[lesson topic] multicultural mathematics” (canada 1) (a topic for a class but not an overriding concept for the entire course) “[course objectives] …apply their understanding of student differences and needs in the classroom to promote quality mathematics for all students.” (usa 9) (equity statement and an overriding concept for the entire course) affect (no reference to addressing affect issues) “[course assignment] mathematics autobiography… write your ideas, attitudes and beliefs about mathematics…” (usa 13) “[generic skill] students will develop… confidence in addressing personal conceptual and skillbased knowledge of mathematics during class activities.” (australia 4) “[course framework] reflecting professionally how does my relationship to math, my math thinking, and my teaching change over time?” (canada 2) (addresses, challenges, and potentially changes affect) https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index unsworth, namukasa, aryee, kotsopoulos. mathematics education course syllabus 36 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index (addresses affect but does not try to challenge or potentially change it (addresses affect and challenges students’ confidence, but it does not try to potentially change affect) content knowledge (no reference to content knowledge exploration) “[course schedule] algebraic thinking [and] geometry” (usa 10) (engaged in only two selective components of content knowledge) “[course schedule] geometry and measurement [and] number concepts and operations [and] patterns and place value, fractions [and] percent, and decimals, statistics and probability data analysis.” (canada 1) (engaged in content knowledge at student grade level but not taken beyond it) (no syllabi received on this level since none evidenced engagement in broader ranges of content knowledge beyond the level of instruction of the students) pedagogical content knowledge (no reference to pedagogical discussion) “[learning outcomes] …on successful completion of this course, students should be able to access strategies to implement…relevant pedagogy.” (australia 2) (examine pedagogical “[course description] …pragmatic activities involving the development and implementation of effective teaching and learning strategies.” (usa 12) (examine and develop pedagogical strategies but no analysis of “[course objectives] be immersed in, discuss when and how, and implement the use of different instructional strategies appropriate for teaching mathematics, including whole class, small group, cooperative learning, and individual instruction.” (usa 7) (examine, develop, and analyze pedagogical strategies) https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index unsworth, namukasa, aryee, kotsopoulos. mathematics education course syllabus 37 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index strategies but no development or analysis of pedagogical strategies) pedagogical strategies) technology (no reference to the use of technology) “[course topic] technology” (canada 5) (didactic method of technology investigation since technology is limited to a course topic to be covered by the professor) “[assignment] …lesson plans…one based on the use of technology” (canada 1) (some evidence of investigation into technology but limited to one lesson plan opposed to integrating technology into an entire unit) “[technology use statement] utilize technology as a resource for your own learning and the learning of children.” (usa 4) (extensive evidence of investigation into technology since it is an overriding concept for the entire course) https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index unsworth, namukasa, aryee, kotsopoulos. mathematics education course syllabus 44 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index correlations in the elementary syllabus data set correlation analysis of elementary syllabi revealed a statistically significant very strong positive relationship between technology and overall score (r = .841, p = .000). additionally, numerous statistically significant strong positive relationships were found including: reflection and pedagogy (r = .492, p = .016), reflection and overall score (r = .484, p = .018), lesson study and assessment (r = .571, p = .005), lesson study and technology (r = .418, p = .038), lesson study and overall score (r = .666, p = .001), assessment and technology (r = .477, p = .020), assessment and overall score (r = .649, p = .001), theory and policy (r = .520, p = .011), policy and overall score (r = .521, p = .011), equity and technology (r = .586, p = .004), equity and overall score (r = .575, p = .005), and pedagogy and overall score (r = .579, p = .005). finally, a statistically significant moderate positive relationship was found between policy and pedagogy (r = .392, p = .048) correlation analysis of elementary syllabi also revealed statistically significant strong negative relationships including: course hours and lesson study (r = -.446, p = .028), course hours and assessment (r = -.459, p = .024), mathematical tasks and equity (r = -.490, p = .017), and mathematical tasks and content (r = -.403, p = .044). therefore, mathematical tasks were negatively related to a focus on equity and content, and more course hours did not suggest more lesson study or more evidence of assessment. important to note, course hours and overall score were negatively related and not statistically significant (r = -2.99, p = n.s.). correlations in the secondary syllabus data set correlation analysis of secondary syllabi revealed a statistically significant very strong positive relationship between technology and overall score (r = .772, p = .002). additionally, numerous statistically significant strong positive relationships were found including: course hours and theory (r = .507, p = .046), course hours and affect (r = .510, p = .045), reflection and lesson study (r = .641, p = .012), reflection and overall score (r = .600, p = .020), lesson study and assessment (r = .647, p = .012), lesson study and overall score (r = .562, p = .029), assessment and theory (r = .554, p = .031), assessment and policy (r = .514, p = .044), assessment and overall score (r = .664, p = .009), policy and overall score (r = .586, p = .023), equity and pedagogy (r = .553, p = .031), equity and technology (r = .555, p = .031), equity and overall score (r = .499, p = .049), and pedagogy and technology (r = .635, p = .013). correlation analysis of secondary syllabi also revealed statistically significant strong negative relationships between mathematical tasks and theory (r = -.696, p = .046) and mathematical tasks and affect (r = -.507, p = .046). more evidence of mathematical tasks was negatively related to evidence of theory or affect components to the syllabi. important to note, course hours and overall score were not related and not statistically significant for secondary syllabi as well (r = .084, p = n.s.). mann-whitney u a mann-whitney u test was conducted between the elementary data-set and the secondary data-set and the results indicated that evidence of content was greater in the elementary syllabi (mean rank = 18.11) than in the secondary syllabi (mean rank = 12.67), u = 74.00, p = 0.18, r = .42 and this was statistically significant. there were no other statistically significant differences found across any of the other mted instrument categories. therefore, other than around content, evidence of research representing the mted instrument categories across both the elementary and secondary syllabi was consistent. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index unsworth, namukasa, aryee, kotsopoulos. mathematics education course syllabus 45 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index discussion results suggest that only moderate levels of the dominant areas of research in mathematics teacher education were found in the syllabi that were analyzed in this research. technology and assessment were the only categories correlated across both datasets to overall score. the elementary and secondary course syllabi only differed in content, where elementary syllabi were shown to have a higher overall level. finally, course hours were not related to overall score. this implies that secondary courses likely include more content, and this perhaps makes intuitive sense. these findings also imply that an overall score, which would suggest high levels of evidence of the categories explored in this research, are not influenced by simply more classroom time. it is important to note from this study’s result that while the analysis of course syllabi showed moderate or no evidence of correlations between certain categories, such as course hours and tasks, opportunities to learn these may still emerge when instructors connect to them in classroom practices in the implemented curriculum. however, the absence of this evidence has led to questions about the importance of transparency of course content for students. numerous scholars have argued that this sort of transparency is essential and that it may indeed be why some institutions have policy statements regarding course syllabi (matejka & kurte, 1994). conversely, it is important to also note that certain items may be stated in a syllabus but may not necessarily be implemented in the classroom, while other items may be implemented that may not be stated at the onset of the syllabus. the categories of mathematical tasks and affect have the lowest mean levels and are thus the two categories least represented on mathematics teacher educators’ syllabi. it has been proposed that pre-service teachers engage in mathematical tasks to develop a deeper understanding of content and learning processes (chapman, 2007; watson & sullivan, 2008). yet, this does not appear to be widely evident on the syllabi examined. this finding is worth sharing because mathematical tasks is one of the important attributes to assist teachers in engaging students in a meaningful learning. one possible reason for the lack of representation of mathematical tasks on mathematics teacher education syllabi might be that research on pre-service education in this area is still at an early stage. this is not to say that there is no historical research on the importance of mathematical tasks, but rather that current research is focusing more on pre-service mathematical tasks, and giving consideration to the importance of both student-and teacher-level mathematical tasks (watson & sullivan, 2008). in contrast, research on affect is robust and stretches across many years, which makes it unusual that so few syllabi reference affect. interestingly, affect is proposed to influence teaching practice as much as the social context and the teachers’ level of thought and reflection (ernest, 1989; watson & sullivan, 2008). perhaps the only justification for the lack of representation of affect in mathematics teacher education syllabi is that sometimes it becomes difficult to distinguish beliefs from knowledge, because most “teachers treat their beliefs as knowledge” (thompson, 1992, p. 127). as a result, it could be inferred that mathematics teacher educators overlook affect when planning their preservice teacher preparation programs because the syllabi already represents, at least implicitly, their orientation towards affect. equity and technology have the greatest amount of variance in terms of the levels received from syllabus to syllabus, and this is not surprising. this may be because most syllabi either mentioned equity and/or technology once in their overriding course goals section or not at all. conversely, the three categories that showed the least amount of variance about the levels received from syllabus to syllabus were theory, policy, and content. the low variance of levels received suggests that mathematics education is a https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index unsworth, namukasa, aryee, kotsopoulos. mathematics education course syllabus 46 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index political endeavor that is closely prescribed by policy and needs to be followed by teachers and taught to pre-service teachers. mathematics teacher education research around content knowledge has been extensive and vigorous, particularly over the past decade (adler & davis, 2006; ball, 2000; ball et al., 2005; ball & grevholm, 2008; stylianides & stylianides, 2009). as stated in the literature review, numerous scholars have attempted to articulate the sorts of content knowledge required by future mathematics teachers. many outgrowths of this have occurred (ball & grevholm, 2008; blömeke 2014; nctm, 2012; tatto, 2013; wang & tang, 2013). overall, the extensive research available on theory-to-practice connections and content knowledge may explain why pre-service teacher educators include these areas of research in their program and thus, why these two categories showed the least amount of variance about the levels received from syllabus to syllabus. content knowledge was the only category on the mted instrument that displayed a statistically significant difference between elementary and secondary syllabi (i.e., content knowledge was observed more on elementary syllabi than on secondary syllabi). this may be due in part because secondary teachers likely have more background in mathematics education discipline and thus, mathematics teacher educators may assume that content knowledge is not necessarily a crucial aspect of their teacher education program. this finding is in line with research which notes that elementary teachers, on the other hand, tend to have a smaller number of mathematics courses, and rather explore more content knowledge and in ways that make it less difficult (jonker, 2008). the literature on assessment points out that opportunities for pre-service teachers to engage in the analysis of student level diagnostic, formative, and summative assessment tasks allow them to gain the necessary knowledge and understanding needed to teach mathematics (cunningham & bennett, 2009; ketterlin-geller & yovanoff, 2009; xu & liu, 2009). it could be argued then that assessment weaves through many stages of the teaching and learning processes and thus, an explanation for the relationship between assessment and overall score can begin with the realization that assessment is embedded into some of the eleven categories on the mted instrument (e.g., lesson study, pedagogy, equity). educational reforms around technology have endorsed the advantages of integrating information and communication technologies (ict) into all classrooms (chai, koh, & tsai, 2010; greenhow et al., 2009; jonassen et al., 2008; tan et al., 2006; xiao & carroll, 2007). this type of mass adoption of technology into all facets of teaching and learning is a relatively new and an evolving concept as it is still in its formative stages as stated by tsai and tsai (2019). one can therefore conclude that a mathematics teacher education course that integrates technology into its program demonstrates an approach to pre-service teacher education that is grounded in current research. moreover, pre-service mathematics teacher education courses that incorporate technology into the classroom may also incorporate other educational reforms into their program and thus, a high degree of current research in their pre-service teacher education course syllabi may also be evident. another surprising result was that no statistically significant positive correlations (at p = .01 or below) existed between course hours and overall score. an increase in course hours did not potentially yield high score or more lesson study according to this research. whereas this result may be interpreted that more time spent in a course may not necessarily lead to greater opportunities to learn for a pre-service teacher, it could mean that certain courses focus on in-depth opportunities for selected categories, leaving other categories for other methods courses. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index unsworth, namukasa, aryee, kotsopoulos. mathematics education course syllabus 47 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index when considering statistically significant correlations (at p = .01 or below) between course hours and individual mted instrument categories, we see that one statistically significant strong negative relationship appears between mathematical tasks and course hours within the full data set. again, this result could be interpreted that when course hours increase, the level for mathematical tasks activities decreases, and vice versa. a plausible interpretation could be that this category could have been the focus on another method course or experience. limitations of the study there are some limitations in the study that will be addressed. first, the sample may not have been fully representative of all mathematics methods courses in a program, at a university or in the country, and may not have been vigorous enough to generalize the result. hence, a larger sample size may have been needed, given the methodology adopted to reach data saturation. second, the instrument may need further development both in category content and design to obtain deeper and richer data for generalization of results. it may be argued that the categories are not fully representative of the field. while this may be true, the preliminary contributions of this work and this instrument are viewed by us as still noteworthy. the mted instrument used a rating scale that was limited to level one through level four, which may have caused a compression of trends due to its small range. alternatively, it could be argued that a different or a larger ranged grading scale may be appropriate. we recognize the limitations that the mted instrument weighted all the categories equally when it could be argued that some of the eleven categories are more deferentially important to mathematics teacher education in different contexts. in future research, it would be important to use mted categories together with categories arising from more recent studies. furthermore, the study does not consider how the syllabus is implemented in the classroom or the implications for pre-service teachers’ learning and their subsequent practices in their own classrooms. we agree with hora and ferrare (2013) that firsthand observations of classroom practice and activities, the achieved and tested curriculum (burkhardt et al., 1990) or classroom curriculum (deng, 2011) would capture multiple dimensions of what is learned in mathematics methods courses and how this learning comes to life in practice. these limitations should not diminish the importance of this preliminary work, given the important first message that a syllabus provides to a student about a discipline and their learning. suggestions for further research further research that validates the instrument would be important extensions of this work. for instance, the strong evidence of technology applied across the dataset, may demonstrate that technology is an excellent indicator of overall score on the mted instrument. hence, this measure could be used in place of an elaborate rubric to quickly evaluate the extent to which a pre-service teacher mathematics education program reflects current research. the mted instrument could also be very useful for instructors to evaluate intentionally if what is proposed to be optimal for learning in the research is reflected in their curricular plans and goals. the mted has established a way for teacher educators to self-evaluate what is included in their syllabi. moreover, the more correlated categories in both data sets–technology and assessment–could be further studied to consider what they entail. on the other hand, three categories–mathematical tasks, affect, and content knowledge–on the mted instrument did not have any correlation with the overall score https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index unsworth, namukasa, aryee, kotsopoulos. mathematics education course syllabus 48 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index of the syllabi. the most surprising result is related to content knowledge. there is extensive research available on content knowledge and its importance in teacher development (e.g., ball, 2000; ball et al., 2005; ball & grevholm, 2008; blömeke, 2014; nctm, 2012; tatto, 2013; wang & tang, 2013). so, it is surprising that no correlation exists between content knowledge and overall score. this raises a lot of research questions that would need further research, which would in turn replicate the present study. it would also be of great interest to explore variation in teacher practices considering pre-service teachers who participated in courses that exhibited low, moderate, and high evidence of research, such as theory and practice connections, policy and politics of mathematics teaching within their course syllabi. finally, certain categories reflected on the syllabus may not result in implemented curriculum (burkhardt et al., 1990) in the classroom; and, conversely, those categories not listed in the syllabi may nevertheless have been implemented. further research would be useful to explore implemented curriculum in mathematics teacher education programs. conclusions this study examined paper syllabi from six countries to analyze the intended learning experiences and the course effectiveness in mathematics education courses of pre-service teachers. although pre-service teachers take a variety of courses, the focus of this research was limited to mathematics education courses. this research found that recommendations in research related to the mathematics education of pre-service teachers were moderately represented in the course syllabi analyzed (according to the mted instrument). technology and assessment were the only two categories that proved to be correlated in both datasets, elementary and secondary syllabi differed on content, where elementary syllabi were shown to have a higher overall level. moreover, in terms of representation on the syllabus, equity and technology had the greatest amount of variance, followed by three categories—theory, policy, and content— that showed low variance with mathematical tasks; whereas affect categories had the lowest representation on the syllabi. lastly course hours are not related to overall score, which suggests that more course hours may not necessarily result in pre-service teachers gaining qualitative differences in knowledge and understanding about research-informed practice. this study recommends future research to further examine the relationship between the number of course hours a mathematics teacher education course offers and the level of knowledge and understanding that pre-service teachers receive from that course. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index unsworth, namukasa, aryee, kotsopoulos. mathematics education course syllabus 49 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index appendix a: mted. instrument low evidence of research (overall score less than 22) moderate evidence of research (overall score from 22 to 32) high evidence of research (overall score more than 32) categories level 1 level 2 level 3 level 4 1. reflection no opportunities to engage in reflection. opportunities to engage in only one type of reflection. opportunities to engage in only two types of reflection. opportunities to engage in all three types of reflection (priori, initeri, and posteri). 2. mathematical tasks no direct engagement with mathematical tasks. opportunities to engage only in either pupil or preservice level tasks. some opportunities to engage in both types of tasks. extensive opportunities to engage in both types of tasks. 3. lesson study no lesson planning. developing lesson plans individually or collaboratively that are not enacted. [no reflection piece] developing lesson plans individually or collaboratively that are presented to the class. [no reflection piece] developing lesson plans collaboratively that are presented to the class and reflected upon. 4. assessment no opportunities to engage in assessment. limited opportunities to engage in assessment and analyze pupil level mathematization. some opportunities to engage in assessment and analyze pupil level mathematization. extensive opportunities to engage in assessment and to analyze pupil level mathematization. 5. theory and practice connections no opportunities to engage with research. [e.g., only the textbook – no references to other research] limited opportunities to engage with research through course readings and discussions. [e.g., attempt made to introduce students to research literature – highly structured or select] some opportunities to engage with research through course readings and discussions (course is somewhat grounded in research and research is evident in the course content). [e.g., when a new topic is introduced the students are provided with links to current research] extensive and authentic opportunities to engage in and with research (course is grounded in research and research is evident in the course content). [e.g., when a new topic is introduced the students are provided with links to current research and in addition, the student has the opportunity to engage in their own inquiry or research] 6. policy and politics of mathematics teaching no evidence of any exploration of the political aspects of mathematics education. limited evidence of exploration of the political aspects of mathematics education. [e.g., regional curriculum documents] some evidence of exploration of the political aspects of mathematics education. [e.g., regional curriculum documents with some journal-type readings which further the discussion about the role of those documents] extensive evidence of exploration of the political aspects of mathematics education. [e.g., regional curriculum documents with lots of journaltype readings which further the discussion about the role of those documents, and the issues (i.e., high stakes testing)] https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index unsworth, namukasa, aryee, kotsopoulos. mathematics education course syllabus 50 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index 7. equity and diversity no evidence of any exploration of the equity and diversity considerations in mathematics education. limited evidence of exploration of the equity and diversity considerations in mathematics education. some evidence of exploration of the equity and diversity considerations in mathematics education. [e.g., one lesson] extensive evidence of exploration of the equity and diversity considerations in mathematics education. [e.g., a diversity statement on the syllabi] 8. affect no evidence of addressing the implications of affect on the teaching of mathematics. evidence of addressing the implications of affect on the teaching of mathematics. evidence of addressing and challenging the implications of affect on the teaching of mathematics. evidence of addressing, challenging, and potentially changing the implications of affect on the teaching of mathematics. 9. content knowledge no evidence of exploration of content knowledge at any level. engaging in a selective component of content knowledge at the level of instruction of the students. engaging in content knowledge at the level of instruction of the students. engaging in broader ranges of content knowledge beyond the level of instruction of the students. 10. pedagogical content knowledge no evidence of pedagogical discussion. examine pedagogical strategies. [e.g., limited opportunity for critical analysis] examine and develop pedagogical strategies. [e.g., some opportunity for critical analysis] examine, develop, and analyze pedagogical strategies. [e.g., extensive opportunity for critical analysis] 11. technology no evidence of technology integration. didactic methods of technology investigation and implementation. [e.g., teacher-led only] some evidence of preservice teacher investigation and implementation of technology. [e.g., one lesson] extensive evidence of pre-service teacher investigation and implementation of technology. [e.g., a unit of study or a technologyuse statement in the syllabi] https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index unsworth, namukasa, aryee, kotsopoulos. mathematics education course syllabus 51 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index notes 1 leslie.anne.unsworth@gmail.com 2 inamukas@uwo.ca 3 karyee@uwo.ca 4 dkotsopo@uwo.ca references adler, j., & davis, z. 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(2009). teacher assessment knowledge and practice: a narrative inquiry of a chinese college efl teacher's experience. tesol quarterly, 43(3), 493-513. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index https://www.scirp.org/(s(351jmbntvnsjt1aadkposzje))/reference/referencespapers.aspx?referenceid=1056609 https://www.scirp.org/(s(351jmbntvnsjt1aadkposzje))/reference/referencespapers.aspx?referenceid=1056609 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10511970802409180 unsworth, namukasa, aryee, kotsopoulos. mathematics education course syllabus 56 transnational curriculum inquiry 17 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index zaslavsky, o. (2007). mathematics-related tasks, teacher education, and teacher educators. the dynamics associated with tasks in mathematics teacher education. journal of mathematics teacher education, 10(4-6), 433-440. submitted: january, 10th. approved: july, 5th. https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index to cite this article please include all of the following details: kumar, ashwani. (2012). indian social studies curriculum in transition: effects of a paradigm shift in curriculum discourse. transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> indian social studies curriculum in transition: effects of a paradigm shift in curriculum discourse ashwani kumar 1 mount saint vincent university, canada introduction in recent times, and especially since 2004, india has undergone a major curriculum reform under the leadership of professor krishna kumar, 2 who served as the director of the national council of educational research and training (ncert) 3 from september 2006 to march 2010. the directorship of ncert is a highly political post and is determined by the political party in power. the ascendance of krishna kumar to the post of ncert’s directorship was not merely a recognition of his renowned scholarship; it also happened because the ruling party––the right wing bhartiya janta party (bjp) and the coalition, national democratic alliance (nda) that it led––lost the 2003 national election to the congress party, which was supported by left wing parties. the outcome was the formation of a relatively progressive alliance known as the united progressive alliance (upa) that appointed krishna kumar as the new director of the ncert. notably, during the rule of nda, j. s. rajput was the director of ncert. during rajput’s ‘regime,’ ncert produced what is known as the national curriculum framework (ncf) 2000––a document that outlined the basis of the curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment of k-12 education in india. the ncf 2000 reduced education to the level of information acquisition and served as a means to propagate hindu ideology. the ncf 2000 misrepresented history by overemphasizing hindu fundamentalism, promoting communalism and national chauvinism, and undermining minority groups’ historical experiences and contribution to the making of the nation of india. it also uncritically appreciated neo-liberalism and globalisation (see habib, 2005; lall, 2009) and imposed traditional authorities and hierarchies and thereby negatively influenced social mobility of disadvantaged people (subaramaniam, 2003). according to professor anil sadgopal (2005a), a radical indian educator, ncf 2000 adopted a “secretive approach where the entire writing process was restricted a 6-member team that operated under the chairpersonship of the then ncert director prof. j.s. rajput” (p. 25). sadgopal reports that during the preparation of ncf 2000, “the then ncert director refused to even reveal the names of the team members engaged in the task of drafting the curriculum framework lest they are disturbed!” (p. 28). thus, ncf 2000, sadgopal argues, was characterized by a “lack of transparency, participation, and democratic consultation ... [which] contributed to the dubious credibility of the document during the years that followed its release in november 2000” (p. 27). besides, sadgopal criticizes ncf 2000 for arbitrarily recommending kumar. indian social studies curriculum in transition: effects of a paradigm shift in curriculum discourse 21 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci “intelligence quotient (iq), emotional quotient (eq) and spiritual quotient (sq) for curricular planning and evaluating children without any scientific basis whatsoever” (p. 29). in view of teesta setalvad (2005, para. 8), a radical indian journalist, by means of ncf 2000 bjp led government sought “blatant distortions and even hatreds ... for not simply narrow political gain but to enable a slow insidious reconstruction in the public mind and public domain of what india is and what it should be. exclusions and denials of rights and liberties of religious minorities, dalits, tribals and all women were a singular part of that agenda.” marrie lall (2009), in her essay “globalization and the fundamentalization of curricula: lessons from india,” argues that: [ncf 2000] was heavily based on the hindutva ideological agenda ... to ‘indianize, nationalize and spiritualize’ [india]. the discursive implications of this slogan are enormous––‘indianize’: india is not really indian, it needs to be ‘indianized.’ it is not a proper nation, because it contains too many un-indian elements, so it needs to be nationalized, involving a purging of all foreign elements from the curriculum (sharma, 2002). these include british legacies as well as aspects of indian culture that are seen as having been introduced by the mogul invaders. ‘spiritualize’: india has no soul and the foreign non-hindu elements (as opposed to the consumerism advanced by economic globalization) have taken away its soul. the new policy engendered a massive textbook 4 revision that justified an anti-minority outlook. in these textbooks muslims are homogenized, described as invariably antagonistic, perpetual aggressors and violators of the sacred hindu land, women, cows, and temples. (p. 168) lall outlines the ways, based on relevant documents and texts, in which bjp attempted fundamentalization of education in various spheres and levels, which include: replacing key officials in the central government’s education department, national council of educational research and training; writing and publication of school history textbooks that primarily asserts, without scholarly evidence, hindu cultural superiority vis-à-vis other cultures and demonizes islam in particular; providing support to the establishment of a large number of schools by rashtriya swayamsevak sangh (rss)––a cultural organization that was set up in 1925 to promote india as a hindu nation where minority religious group would be subordinate to hindus; and intimidating authors and publishers of books critical of hindutva ideology. based on her study of the works of varadarajan (2004), lall believes that the case of india under bjp rule, characterized by promotion of religious nationalism through educational means, represent a “state-controlled discursive mechanism ... to contain and deflect potential dysfunctionalities produced by the effects of globalization in societies” (p. 176). due to the apparent problematic nature of ncf 2000, ncert produced another document––national curriculum framework (ncf) 2005 5 ––under the leadership of professor krishna kumar. ncf 2005 represents a complete break and a paradigm shift from the ncf 2000 in many critical ways. most significantly, it has been developed through an elaborate process of what william reid (2006) calls “curriculum deliberation.” never before had curriculum development happened on such a large scale in terms of the number of people involved in its creation from diverse social spectra including education professors, discipline experts, school teachers, educational ngo’s, psychologists, and policy experts, among others. this process of curriculum deliberation continued for years and has produced one of the most progressive curriculum documents in india. this, however, is not to say that ncf 2005 is a perfect document free of infirmities, as i will explain later. nevertheless, ncf 2005 has been applauded even by kumar. indian social studies curriculum in transition: effects of a paradigm shift in curriculum discourse 22 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci its critics (sadgopal, 2005a; setalvad, 2005; thapar, 2005) for being the result of hard work by people who would like to see india moving on the path of democracy, justice, peace, and secularism. notably, this paradigm shift in the indian curriculum discourse has influenced all school disciplines including social studies education. the objective of this article is to explain how such a paradigmatic change on india’s educational landscape represents, with particular reference to social studies, a shift from “traditional social studies” (leming, 1994) to “critical social studies” or “social studies for social change” (hursh & ross, 2000). undoubtedly, changes at the level of curriculum documents and textbooks are extremely significant and represent the level of thought, understanding, and intentions of curriculum planners. nevertheless, “curriculum as document” does not necessarily translate itself into “curriculum as experience” (cornbleth, 1990). thus, in the empirical section of this paper, in addition to doing a comparative content analysis of the national curriculum frameworks of 2000 and 2005, i will also report the results of a short study wherein i analyse the perceptions of three teachers about such a paradigm shift and the problems and challenges that they encounter in implementing the new curriculum. theoretical framework the social studies we see in schools is normally treated as a way of providing mere informational knowledge to the students about their country and the world in terms of social, political, economic, and geographical phenomena without any serious engagement with social conflicts and problems. social conflicts and problems––such as racial and gender discrimination, conflicting political ideologies, competing economic systems, poverty, and inequality––are social, political, economic, historical, and geographical in their origin and impact and, therefore, should ideally be addressed as part of social studies curriculum and teaching in schools; however, this does not seem to be the case in india (kumar, 1996; kumar, 2007; lall, 2009) nor is it in north america (hursh & ross, 2000; orlowski, 2001; osborne, 2000; ross, 2006). 6 the policies, curriculum frameworks, pedagogic practices, and evaluation procedures that present social studies as accepted or received general knowledge, have deprived social studies of its essential role in developing critical thinking and reflexivity among teachers and students about the conflict-ridden realities of a world torn apart along political, economic, religious, and racial lines. when social studies does not give attention to the conflicts and problems of society, it serves the hegemonic power nexus and assists in the reproduction of the existing social order. social studies education that is governed by traditional approach does not create opportunities for raising controversial issues. instead, it shows its faith in the established social and economic order and thereby develops tendencies to comply and conform among teachers and students rather than encouraging them to develop critical and transformative thoughts and actions. as we shall see later, the social studies component of national curriculum framework 2000 encourages traditional social studies approach and thereby perpetuates status quo. the problem of social studies at the level of curriculum documents and textbooks is further compounded when social studies teachers conceive of their roles as limited to ensuring that the curriculum is covered effectively so that students are prepared to perform well on standardized tests and function in society in a manner that does not question the status quo (ross, 2000). the outcome is that in most classroom situations social studies education is primarily characterized by “text oriented, whole group, teacher-centred instruction” (ross, 2000, p. 47) or kumar. indian social studies curriculum in transition: effects of a paradigm shift in curriculum discourse 23 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci what leming (1994) terms as “traditional social studies instruction (tssi)” (also see leming, ellington, & porter-magee, 2003; ravich, 1990; schlesinger, 1991). leming (1994) believes that the main purpose of social studies teaching is the mastery of social science content in classrooms. leming also rejects the critique of traditional social studies instruction offered by critical social educators (e.g., cuban, 1991; mcneil, 1988; newmann, 1991) arguing that the traditional mode of social studies is the result of the acceptance by social studies teachers themselves who are mainly concerned with memorization of prescribed content and students’ performance on tests (ross, 2006). 7 leming’s description of tssi dismisses the issues of world hunger, poverty, capitalism, racism, sexism, and casteism as potential organizing themes because social studies instruction based on these themes represent “particular ideological perspectives” (ross, 2000). leming’s tssi approach presumes social studies instruction to be objective, neutral, and apolitical. leming’s tssi is, however, no less ideological than the social studies instruction organized around themes of multiculturalism, antiracism, and internationalism (ross 2000, 2006). being neutral does not mean the absence of a stance; the ideology of neutrality is a stance in favour of the status quo. tssi is based on a “doctrine of inevitability” wherein the existing social, political, and economic orders are accepted without critical analysis and examination (ross 2000). the epistemological premise behind tssi is the “spectatorial theory of knowledge” (ross, 2000). in the spectatorial epistemological stance, the knowers’ (in this case, social studies teachers and students) primary task is the construction of a mental image corresponding to an ordered and absolute external world with minimum subjective interference. the “spectator knowing” in tssi leads to “spectator citizenship” (ross, 2000) and “spectator democracy” (ross, 2006). in spectator citizenship, the goal of the citizens is to adapt and conform to the status quo and interests of the socially powerful rather than having the aim to transform and reconstruct society. spectator citizenship reflects a “failure of social studies educators to interrogate the meaning of words such as democracy, capitalism, freedom of speech, and equality” (ross, 2000, p. 55). in spectator democracy, a specialized class of experts identify what the common interests are and then think and plan accordingly (ross, 2006). tssi promotes spectator citizenship and democracy by situating students outside the knowledge construction process as passive recipients of pre-packaged information and by teaching a conception of democracy that is almost always equated with elections and voting rather than preparing students to possess the knowledge, values, and skills needed for active participation in society. thus, tssi, along with other “ideological apparatuses” of the state (althuser, 1971) such as media and government policies, ensures that the “population remain passive, ignorant, and apathetic” (ross, 2000, p. 56; emphasis added). moreover, tssi focuses more on implementing curriculum standards and responding to high-stakes tests with little or no consideration to the “social reconstructionist” vision of the future (as espoused by george s. counts, harold rugg, theodore brameld, and john dewey) to develop a more socially just world (ross, 2006; vinson, 2006). in a nutshell, “tssi gives students the instruments to trace [and accept] the lines drawn by others, rather than opportunities to examine those lines and consider how they might be redrawn” (ross, 2000, p. 57; emphasis added). 8 the alternative to leming’s traditional social studies instruction (tssi) approach might be termed as critical social studies (css) as outlined in the works of critical social educators, namely, evans (2004), ross (2000, 2006), ross and marker (2009), stanley (2001), stanley and nelson (1994), and vinson (1998, 2006) among others. i am employing the term “critical social studies” to recognize the significant attempts of the foregoing critical social educators towards kumar. indian social studies curriculum in transition: effects of a paradigm shift in curriculum discourse 24 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci making social studies education a meaningful and creative experience for teachers and students. 9 as we shall see later, national curriculum framework 2005 and its social studies component uphold the basic ideas that form the backbone of critical social studies. critical social studies rejects the prevailing paradigm of social studies education, which is currently involved in the process of the reproduction of social reality. css is an attempt through which students and teachers, instead of accepting the status quo or taken for granted assumptions or what ross (2000) calls “lines as drawn,” critically examine and engage in the dynamic social reality and contribute towards its reconstruction for a more democratic and just world (hursh & ross, 2000). in css, the notion of active learner and the development of higher order thinking skills with an emphasis on issues of antiracism, gender equality, multiculturalism, and social criticism occupy the central place (ross, 2006). css does not claim that there is a determinative set of principles that social studies instruction needs to fulfil; such principles might have the danger of reducing css to tssi in its actual practice. thus, css recognizes the contextual specificities of the classroom and the social milieu in which the classroom is situated rather than some universalistic conceptions (noffke, 2000). in this manner, css would encourage students and teachers to engage in the conflicts and problems of their own local community and understand how these conflicts and problems are related to the larger political and economic structures. thus, css rejects the spectatorial theory of knowledge discussed above and draws upon the experiential and critical approaches outlined in the works of john dewey and paulo freire. 10 in the rest of this section, i will discuss the ways in which dewey’s and freire’s ideas can contribute to the conceptualization of critical social studies. john dewey’s (1916) alternative to the spectatorial theory of knowledge is the experiential and constructivist ways of learning and knowing. instead of a sharp division between subject and object in the tssi, a deweyean approach to critical social studies argues for a “tridimensional paradigm”––inquirer, subject matter, and objective (ross, 2000). in this organization, human beings examine and analyze subject matter, which is reconstructed and coconstructed with reference to the goals, interests, and the perspectives of the inquirers rather than something given, fixed, and determinative, as in tssi. thus, dewey’s theory of knowledge: rejects tssi’s focus on a singular vision of the world and allows for the multiple ways of knowing and constructing reality; affirms the role of experiential learning where the learner is active and not simply passively absorbing the facts; treats doubts, uncertainty, and confusion in the everyday experience of human beings as problematic situations that provide impetus for thinking and doing rather than some kind of hurdle in the way of constructing a “clear” picture of the world (ross, 2000). dewey’s theory of democracy, which can fruitfully inform critical social studies, defines democracy as “a mode of associated living, of conjoint communicated experiences” (dewey, 1916, p. 87). for dewey, democratic life or citizenship involves paying attention to the multiple implications for our actions on others. dewey views democracy as a force that breaks down the barriers that separate people and community. in a deweyean way of theorizing, democracy is not merely a form of government nor is it an end in itself. rather, dewey considers democracy as the means by which people discover, extend, and manifest human nature and human rights. according to dewey, democracy has three central features: free individual existence; solidarity with others; and choice of work and other forms of participation in society (ross, 2006). guided by dewey’s conception of democracy and education, social studies curriculum, (including pedagogy and assessment) should not merely be an exercise in preparing the young to live in a democracy; rather, it should attempt to create opportunities for broader participation in a kumar. indian social studies curriculum in transition: effects of a paradigm shift in curriculum discourse 25 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci democratic community of inquirers, reflective thinkers, and interactive practitioners (ross, 2006). critical social studies education, influenced by deweyean thought, can never have the purpose of inculcating among students the tendency to comply and conform to existing patterns of society; css instead intends to contribute towards developing the abilities to question, understand, analyze, and transform social reality. dewey’s work can certainly be regarded as the beginning of a critical turn in education where subjective experience, reflective thinking, child-centred activities, knowledge construction, and the individual-society interface were combined together for an education that intends to create a democratic world; however, it is the pioneering work of brazilian educator paulo freire, which led to the development of critical theory and pedagogy tradition in education, which further informs the notion of critical social studies as well as the conceptual underpinnings behind national curriculum framework 2005. critical pedagogy intends to develop the capacity of thinking in a way that does not blindly conform to or accept the givens of society. critical pedagogy encourages children to question, analyze, denaturalize, decontextualize, and deconstruct accepted belief systems–– political ideologies, religious superstitions and orthodoxies, socio-economic exploitation based on racial discrimination, gender inequalities, and income divides––that have deeply permeated our consciousness. critical pedagogy’s objective is social transformation, which is not possible if the givens of society are taken for granted or remain unquestioned. in the absence of critical pedagogy, education is simply subject to the pressures of the dominant political, economic, and cultural forces and serves as a passive agent of reproduction of the existing social reality. critical pedagogy tradition is developed by the works of paulo freire (freire, 1973 1996a, 1996b, 1998), henri giroux (1981, 1983, 1989), and peter mclaren (1994) among others, and finds its roots in the critical theory school/frankfurt school developed by philosophers like adorno (1973), habermas (1968), horkheimer (1972), and marcuse (1964), among others. 11 for the purpose of brevity, i would like to discuss paulo freire’s theory of education (which forms the core of critical pedagogy), and the way it may strengthen the theorization of critical social studies. paulo freire, since the publication of his landmark pedagogy of the oppressed (1973), has contributed immensely to the theory and practice of education. he has developed a radical theory of education and revolution. the ultimate goal of freire’s theory is the disappearance of “oppressor-oppressed contradictions” from the society. this ultimate goal is to be achieved through the revolutionary process of conscientization––the development of “critical consciousness,” which can perceive social, political, and economic exploitation, and take actions against the oppressive elements of reality by means of dialogical praxis to liberate the oppressed from oppressors and humanize the world where there would be no oppressor-oppressed contradiction. freire considers the process of “humanization” the “historical and ontological vocations” of humankind (freire, 1973). freire’s theory of education is radical and dialectical in nature. it is radical for it demands complete change or transformation of the unequal and oppressive nature of present society. the change, of course, does not mean mere superficial modifications and reforms (“paternalism”) based on the sectarianism of the right or the left. freire (1973) builds his theory dialectically where for each present negative condition he suggests a healthy, transformative, and positive alternative (see figure 1). kumar. indian social studies curriculum in transition: effects of a paradigm shift in curriculum discourse 26 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci figure 1: freire’s dialectical theory of education banking education (instrument of oppression) produces ↓ culture of silence that gives rise to ↓ anti-dialogical action for ↓ mythesization by means of § conquest § divide and rule § manipulation § cultural invasion ↓ that gives rise to praxis of domination resulting into ↓ dehumanization (historical distortion) (oppressor-oppressed antagonism persists) problem-posing education (instrument of liberation) allows for the ↓ generation of themes for discussion that gives rise to ↓ dialogical action for ↓ conscientization by means of § cooperation § unity of liberation § organization § cultural synthesis ↓ that gives rise to revolutionary praxis (cultural revolution) resulting into ↓ humanization (historical and ontological vocation of humankind) (oppressor-oppressed antagonism disappears) according to freire, one of the most significant and basic elements in the relationship between oppressor and oppressed at all levels of society is “prescription,” which represents impositions of one individual’s choice upon another, transforming the consciousness of the person prescribed into one that conforms and complies with the prescriber’s consciousness. the oppressed, having internalized the image of the oppressor and adopted his guidelines, are fearful of freedom. when applied to educational systems, prescription gives rise to authoritarian education systems, which freire creatively termed as “banking education” that works as an “instrument of oppression.” in such a system, freire elaborates, teachers are the subjects and students are the objects of teaching where the former deposits information in the latter’s mind. students, without resistance, mechanically receive, memorize, and reproduce this information. thus, in this system there is no interaction, cross-questioning or dialogue. this transfer of information becomes an instrument of oppression that inhibits authentic thinking, inquiry, creativity, and dialogue, which are essential for an individual to be truly human. such an educational practice can only produce conformists and mediocre people who would further this oppressive reality instead of critical and authentic thinkers who would transform oppressive reality to create a humanized world. such a prescriptive and authoritarian form of education can only produce in society a “culture of silence,” which is the result of economic, social, and political domination and paternalism in society. that is how the oppressed in society and students in schools, rather than being encouraged and equipped to know and respond to the concrete realities of their world, are kumar. indian social studies curriculum in transition: effects of a paradigm shift in curriculum discourse 27 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci kept “submerged” in a situation in which critical awareness and response through dialogical encounter is practically impossible. the oppressors (teachers) perpetuate a culture of silence through their “anti-dialogical actions” directed at “mythicization” or “indoctrination” of oppressed people (students). in this oppressive system, there is no place for dialogue with the oppressed about their life and problems; their critical consciousness is never awakened. such anti-dialogical actions produce “praxis of domination” where all reflection and action, theory and practice are directed at dominating the oppressed and maintaining the status quo (“possessive or oppressive consciousness”). obviously such praxis, carried out through anti-dialogical actions aiming at “mythicization” of the oppressed, is dehumanizing in nature. in my understanding, freire’s description of banking education is similar to what leming (1994) termed the “traditional social studies instruction,” as discussed above, and it forms the basic thinking behind national curriculum framework 2000 as i will explain later. the alternative that freire suggests is “problem-posing education” as an “instrument of liberation.” problem-posing education proposes a democratic relationship between teachers and students in which both are simultaneously teachers and students. the democratization of the content and method of teaching incites inquiry, creativity, and critical thinking, which brings about the emergence of consciousness and constant unveiling of reality through discussion on themes that matter (in the context of social studies education, the themes that pertain to the conflicts and problems of society such as racism, casteism, nationalism, neoliberalism, and capitalism). obviously, such education has to be “dialogical” (conversational) in nature that promotes freedom of expression without any oppression and encourages “cooperation,” “unity,” “organization,” and “synthesis” among diverse groups and ways of thinking. undoubtedly, freire’s theorization of problem-posing education provides the foundation of critical social studies, as discussed above, which in turn, provides support to the social studies component of national curriculum framework 2005. research questions in the present study i have explored the following research questions: in what ways do the national curriculum frameworks of 2000 and 2005 differ from each other with particular reference to their guidelines for social studies curriculum? how do social studies teachers perceive and conceptualize the paradigm shift as a result of ncf 2005 and theorize their classroom practice? what are the major problems and challenges that these teachers face in implementing the new curriculum? in order to explore these research questions, i have focused on two aspects. first, i have conducted a comparative analysis of ncfs 2000 and 2005 with references to their specific guidelines for social studies curriculum and teaching. second, i have reported the results of semistructured interviews and a focus-group discussion with three secondary social studies schoolteachers regarding their perceptions of recent curriculum reforms. comparative analysis of the ncf of 2000 and 2005 the nature of curriculum determines to a large extent the nature of pedagogy and evaluation (see bernstein, 1973). curriculum that seeks to develop critical consciousness of students will give rise to critical and dialogical pedagogy aimed at problematizing the givens of society as well as emphasize evaluation procedures that seek and encourage critical reflection on the part of students. on the other hand, curriculum that is designed to perpetuate existing social system and its values will give rise to pedagogic practices that are mechanistic and antikumar. indian social studies curriculum in transition: effects of a paradigm shift in curriculum discourse 28 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci dialogical, facilitate an unproblematized transaction of knowledge, cultivate a culture of silence in the classroom, and expect unreflexive, rote-memorized, and pre-decided responses from the students. in this section, i have attempted a comparative content analysis of the national curriculum frameworks of 2000 and 2005 with reference to their guidelines for social science (social studies in north america) to understand the extent to which they differ from each other in terms of their objectives and epistemological framework. as part of my analysis, i carefully studied ncfs 2000 and 2005 with special reference to their guidelines for social studies. based on my study, i identified the main objectives of these frameworks and the epistemological perspective that guided their conceptualization. i then conducted an individual analysis of the identified objectives and epistemological framework of each ncf separately to understand their basic thrust. then, i drew comparisons between them regarding their objectives and epistemology. 12 thus, i have employed two criteria to do the comparative analysis: objectives of teaching social science and proposed/implicit epistemological framework. objectives of teaching social science objectives are one of the most significant elements of curriculum documents because they bear upon the epistemological framework, content, pedagogic practices, and evaluation procedures. they explain the purpose behind curriculum formation: what does the curriculum want teaching material (e.g., textbooks) to be like? what does it expect of teachers and students? what does it expected of the teaching-learning process? objectives of teaching social sciences in ncf 2000 social science in ncf 2000 aims to develop an understanding in children about “human environment in its totality” (p. 62). there is no explanation as to what it means by “human environment” and how it can be understood in its “totality.” ncf 2000 further emphasizes the development of a “broader perspective” and an “empirical, reasonable and humane outlook” (p. 62). however, it fails to provide any explanation of these terms (which belong to three different strands of thought, namely, empiricism, rationalism, and humanism) or even a clarification of how these diverse strands will be combined in the curriculum, pedagogy, and evaluation. moreover, ncf 2000 sees social science as merely a subject of general knowledge and utility to make students skillful in contributing to society (p. 62). it places no emphasis on developing a critical perception of social reality ridden with innumerable conflicts and problems. thus, ncf lacks in providing social science with a normative outlook, which may have the purpose to work for a peaceful and just society. the ncf 2000 also intends to develop the skills of “critical thinking,” “reading,” and “interpreting tables, diagrams, and map,” “cooperating with others,” and “responding to others problems” (p. 62). here, the last two phrases represent values to be nurtured and the first three are skills. there is no explanation for how these values and skills come together. besides, ncf 2000 doesn’t provide any explanation for what it means by “critical thinking” and why reading and interpretation of tables and diagrams are essential in social science when mathematics is available as a school subject and what kind of data is being considered for interpretation. the meaning of “critical thinking” seems to be confined to the mere development of cognitive skills rather than the critical examination of oppressive social reality for social change, as articulated in the critical pedagogy tradition. 13 overemphasis on skills gives ncf 2000 a positivistic and utilitarian orientation and confines it within the parameters of traditional social studies instruction, as discussed in the theoretical framework. kumar. indian social studies curriculum in transition: effects of a paradigm shift in curriculum discourse 29 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci ncf 2000 also has objectives that are simply meant for the uncritical glorification of india (e.g., promote a “humane and national perspective and inculcate a sense of pride in the country and in being an indian” and “strengthen the national identity and develop an appreciation for cultural heritage,” (p. 62)). 14 such objectives may be seen as the root causes behind developing nationalistic and chauvinistic attitudes. this doesn’t mean one should not be proud of one’s country but the latter should not come at the cost of suppressing a critical understanding of the conflicts and problems of a nation, which is essential if rigid social structures and practices are to give way to a democratic society. ncf 2000 also desires to “promote communal harmony and social cohesion” (p. 62). however, this is merely a statement without an explanation of how to bring about desired harmony and cohesion; ncf 2000 develops no argument on what brings disharmony and disintegration to promote critical awareness among students. on the whole, the objectives of teaching social science in the ncf 2000 epitomize leming’s traditional social studies instruction (tssi). objectives of teaching social sciences in ncf 2005 the social science component of ncf 2005 has the basic aim of developing a knowledge base for a just and peaceful society: social science encompasses diverse concerns of society, and includes a wide range of content drawn from the disciplines of history, geography, political science, economics, sociology and anthropology. social science perspectives and knowledge are indispensable to building the knowledge base for a just and peaceful society. (p. 50) one ncf 2005 objective, which calls for “raising students’ awareness” (p. 50), links the curriculum to those perspectives in education (for example critical social studies, as discussed in the theoretical framework), which see education as a process of developing critical awareness among students about their social reality to view curriculum as an agent of social change. ncf 2005 also aims to develop “social, cultural, and analytical skills” (p. 50) with a view to helping children to adjust to an increasingly interdependent social reality rather than arousing a sense of dangerous nationalism. moreover, ncf 2005’s objective of developing understanding of “concepts and the ability to analyze sociopolitical realities rather than on mere retention of information without comprehension” (p. 50) is a departure from the traditional or the common sense perception of social science as the storehouse of information that needs to be rote-memorized and reproduced in exams. according to ncf 2005: it is believed that the social sciences merely transmit information and are text centered. therefore, the content needs to focus on a conceptual understanding rather than lining up facts to be memorized for examinations. reiterating the recommendations of learning without burden (1993), emphasis has to be laid on developing concepts and the ability to analyze sociopolitical realities rather than on the mere retention of information without comprehension. (p. 50) the emphasis on conceptual clarity and comprehension of sociopolitical reality stands in sharp contrast to ncf 2000, which emphasizes mere information acquisition and cognitive skills. ncf 2005 is also a serious effort in making education a process of social change and democratization. it lays stress on the normative dimensions of social science by considering the development of “human values, namely, freedom, trust, mutual respect and respect for diversity” (p. 51), which are essential for and the basis of a peaceful and just society. 15 ncf 2000 doesn’t make any recognizable and appropriate reference to the normative dimension of social science kumar. indian social studies curriculum in transition: effects of a paradigm shift in curriculum discourse 30 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci education. finally, ncf 2005 also stresses upon the need to incorporate “relevant local content” (p. 50) so that the teaching-learning process not only respects the plurality of our society but also makes learning relevant for all by not putting restrictions via a uniform curriculum framework. 16 thus, ncf 2005 is a framework or guideline in the real sense of the term rather than being a straight-jacketed document, resulting in textbooks that need to be considered sacrosanct and memorized for exams. it is a significant development when put in comparison with ncf 2000 that hardly makes any reference to local culture and plurality. the objectives of teaching social science in ncf 2005 explicitly incorporates the ideas of critical social studies. epistemological framework epistemological framework explains how curriculum views knowledge: which knowledge is considered worthwhile for students? how is that knowledge selected? how is that selected knowledge to be taught in the classroom? and, how will such knowledge be evaluated? thus, an epistemological framework provides broader perspective on the selection of knowledge in terms of textbooks and other teaching materials, pedagogic methods, and procedures of evaluation. epistemological framework of ncf 2000 ncf 2000 doesn’t have a well-defined epistemological framework. however, there are certain points mentioned in the document in a rather disjointed fashion that demands critical scrutiny. ncf 2000 employs certain phrases and words such as “interrelatedness of ideas and comprehensibility,” “process of learning and thinking,” “meaningful learning experiences,” and “from simple to complex” (p. 63). the preceding ideas, which are clearly drawn from constructivist approaches of education, remain unexplained. moreover, one of the points seems to suggest that the textbooks developed in line with ncf 2000 would give emphasis to theme/issue-based organization of the curriculum material 17 ; in reality ncf 2000 adopted strict disciplinary divisions among the contributory subjects of social science. finally, ncf 2000 reduces the objective of learning to the mere acquisition of “basic competencies and skills” (p. 63). epistemological framework of ncf 2005 ncf 2005 has outlined major “epistemological shifts” (see position paper on national focus group on teaching of social sciences 2005, p. 3-4) for the social science curriculum. first of all, ncf 2005 recognizes the suitability of social science for rigorous inquiry and distinctness of its method(s). this is a clear departure from the common sense perception that social science is “unscientific” or not rigorous: it is often presumed that only natural and physical phenomena lend themselves to scientific inquiry, and that human sciences (history, geography, economics, political science, etc.) cannot be, by their very nature, ‘scientific.’ in view of the ‘higher status’ and legitimacy enjoyed by the natural sciences, some practitioners of the social sciences seek to imitate the methods of the physical and natural sciences. in light of the above, it is necessary to recognize that the social sciences lend themselves to scientific inquiry just as much as the natural and physical sciences do, as well as to indicate ways in which the methods employed by the social sciences are distinct (but in no way inferior) kumar. indian social studies curriculum in transition: effects of a paradigm shift in curriculum discourse 31 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci to those of the natural and physical sciences. (p. 2) ncf 2005 takes a midway position between the pure disciplines versus integrated discipline debate in social science. it recognizes the boundaries of all disciplines and suggests identifying a few themes, which are “culturally relevant” and in accordance with the cognitive capacities of children, that can be studied in an integrated fashion. the position paper on national focus group on teaching of social sciences, 2005 shows its concerns for interrelationship among disciplines: the disciplines that make up the social sciences, namely, history, geography, political science, and economics, have distinct methodologies that often justify the preservation of boundaries. the boundaries of disciplines need to be opened up, and a plurality of approaches applied to understand a given phenomenon. for an enabling curriculum, certain themes that facilitate interdisciplinary thinking are required. these themes should be culturally relevant, and concepts introduced bearing in mind the age of the child. there is a need to select themes where different disciplinary approaches can facilitate an in-depth and multiple understanding. however, not all themes can be discussed in an interdisciplinary manner. a careful selection of a few themes needs to be made, as well as having separate chapters relating to different disciplines. (p. 3) ncf 2005 is also a departure from the chronic conception of textbooks as sacrosanct and the cul-de-sac of learning. it sees textbooks as a means of “opening up avenues for further inquiry” (p. 3). this concern of ncf 2005 is also reflected in social science textbooks where considerable space is provided through projects, fieldwork, in-text and end-text questions, and real life narratives so that teaching and learning may go beyond the textual material. according to batra (2005, p. 4350): while recommending the need to move away from a ‘textbook culture’ (where the textbook is seen as the only source of legitimate knowledge) towards a plurality of locally produced text materials, the ncf 2005 makes an important argument in favor of bridging gaps between the lived experiences of children and formal school knowledge. ncf 2005 also makes an attempt to link the local with the global via the national. it emphasizes the learning of history with reference to local ways of seeing national events and links the history of india with developments in other parts of the world. such an approach has the capacity to broaden students’ minds for accommodating and assimilating multiple perspectives looking at historical events and processes (p. 3). thus, the ncf 2005 and its social science section are not based on what ross (2000), drawing upon dewey (1916), calls “spectatorial theory of knowledge”––the epistemological foundation of traditional social studies instruction–– where reality is singular and fixed. on the contrary, in ncf 2005 social science intends to encourage multiple ways of knowing and, thus, best fit with the theoretical assumptions of critical social studies. ncf 2005 also replaces “civics” with “political science,” which aims at developing citizens with social sensitivity and the capacity to question and transform existing social reality. this is a very important reconceptualization because the discipline of civics grew in india as a subject whose main objective was to create “civilized” and “obedient” citizens for the british raj. political science, on the contrary, is an attempt to prepare students to treat “civil society as the sphere that produces sensitive, interrogative, deliberative, and transformative citizens” (p. 4). this perspective certainly resonates the ideals of critical pedagogy and critical social studies, as discussed previously. kumar. indian social studies curriculum in transition: effects of a paradigm shift in curriculum discourse 32 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci ncf 2005 also shows its concern with developing a gender sensitive curriculum that incorporates the perspective of women to make the curriculum egalitarian instead of being patriarchal. according to the position paper on national focus group on teaching of social sciences, 2005: gender concerns have been addressed within the social sciences by including women as ‘examples.’ for instance, in history the discussion on women is often limited to including rani lakshmibai, sarojini niadu, and some others in chapters on india’s freedom struggle. but ‘gendering’ the curriculum is not limited to increasing the number of references to individual women. rather, what is crucial is the need to make the perspectives of women integral to the discussion of any historical event and contemporary concerns. this shift requires an epistemic shift from the patriarchal frame within which social studies is currently conceptualized. (p. 4) finally, ncf 2005 also represents a shift from being developmental to become normative in its orientation (see comparative analysis of the objectives of ncfs 2000 and 2005 above). in a nutshell, ncf 2005 represents a great paradigm shift; it is for the first time that issues of epistemology, which are core to any educational process, have been raised. as discussed earlier in this article, ncf 2000 lacked an epistemological framework and, thereby, a perspective on the entire educational process––the nature of textual material and other teaching and learning resources, pedagogic devices, and assessment procedures. it may appear to the readers, not only to those who are not familiar with indian political and educational landscape, but also to the indians who believe in right-wing conservative hindu nationalist ideology and are supportive of neoliberalism and globalization, that my comparative analysis of the national curriculum frameworks of 2000 and 2005 with reference to social studies is lop-sided, that is to say, biased in favor of national curriculum framework 2005. the analysis may appear lop-sided not because of any deliberate intention on my part, but due entirely to the content of these curriculum documents. ncf 2000 and bhartiya janta party’s educational policies received heavy criticism from all quarters of critical educational scholarship for being a tool in the hands of a right-wing party who wanted to propagate hindu ideology and neoliberal reforms (kumar, 2001; lall, 2009; nanda; 2005; roy 2003; setalvad, 2005; sharma; 2002; subarmaniam; 2003; taneja, 2003). undoubtedly, ncf 2005 is also not free of infirmities. while there also exists criticisms of ncf 2005 from theoretical, political, and methodological perspectives (apte, 2005; sadgopal, 2005a; setalvad, 2005; thapar, 2005; verma, 2005 ) 18 , i, who was a social studies schoolteacher when this study was conducted, became particularly interested in critically evaluating the challenges and opportunities that social studies component of ncf 2005 presented to teachers in their everyday classrooms. thus, in the next section, i discuss the perceptions of three social studies teachers regarding the changes in the social studies curriculum and its influence on their classroom teaching. interviews and a focus-group discussion with three social studies teachers curriculum is what actually unfolds in the living reality of the classroom (cornbleth, 1990). and this unfolding of curriculum depends on the perceptions of teachers as well as the factors that shape those perceptions. in this section, i present findings from three in-depth semistructured interviews and a focus-group discussion with three secondary social studies teachers, namely, reshma mihir, bhairavi tandon, and kanta kapoor 19 of dilip singh public school, 20 where the language of instruction and examination is english. 21 i conducted three formal onehour interviews separately with each teacher and one hour of focus-group discussion with all kumar. indian social studies curriculum in transition: effects of a paradigm shift in curriculum discourse 33 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci three teachers together for the purpose of this short study. as a brief introduction, reshma mihir is the senior-most teacher of economics in dilip singh public school. she teaches classes (grades in north america) 10, 11, and 12. bhairavi tandon is a senior commerce teacher in the school. she joined school in 2006 and was requested to teach economics to grades 9 and 10. kanta kapoor is a senior history teacher, but for little more than a year she has also been teaching political science. it is important to point out that in my interviews and discussion with teachers, i gave considerable emphasis to eliciting responses about the differences between the old and new textbooks, 22 developed by the ncert in line with the perspectives of ncfs of 2000 and 2005 (see appendix that contains three tables showing the social science content sequence from grade 6-10 in ncfs 2000 and 2005). this focus was warranted because most teachers in india get to know about changes in curriculum discourse through changes in the textbooks––their bible in classroom. 23 hardly, any of the teachers i interviewed had looked at the ncfs of 2000 and 2005; their opinion about the curriculum change and its impact on their classroom teaching is based on the changes in the content and organization of the textbooks. none of these teachers went through any professional development workshops or seminars about new curriculum changes prior to this interview. however, they had some idea of the national level curriculum change because of the media and changes in the textbooks. the three perspectives that influenced my understanding of the role of teachers vis-à-vis curriculum include “curriculum as a praxis” (grundy, 1982), “curriculum as contextualized social process” (cornbleth, 1990), and “teacher personal theorizing” (chant, 2009; ross, cornett, & mccutheon, 1992; ross, 1994). in the perspective which view curriculum as praxis, teachers play a central role vis-à-vis curriculum; their role is not just confined to the implementation of the documents but is a creative and reflective engagement in classroom situations where the curriculum is actually created through interaction and participation. in this view, curriculum is a social process and knowledge is socially constructed and subject to criticism, multiple interpretations, and reconstruction (grundy, 1982). while grundy gives importance to social criticism along with personal reflection, the idea that curriculum and teaching in classrooms are subject to tremendous influence by social context is well developed by cornbleth (1990). cornbleth views curriculum as a “contextualized social process.” her perspective on curriculum is influenced by critical theory and pedagogy that have the purposes of “engendering enlightenment and empowerment that can foster personal and social emancipation from various forms of domination” (corrnbleth, 1990, p. 3). nevertheless, cornbleth does not limit her conception to the theoretical argument of the influence of social context on society; rather, she considers her approach to curriculum theoretical as well as experiential. for cornbleth, curriculum is what actually happens in classrooms. curriculum, for her, is a social process comprised of the interactions of students, teachers, knowledge, and milieu. this kind of curriculum conceptualization, which can be termed “curriculum practice” or “curriculum-in-use,” is diametrically opposite to the conceptions of “curriculum as document.” in this perspective, a teacher’s association with curriculum depends on the structural context (established roles and relationships, shared beliefs, and norms at several levels from individual classrooms to the national level education system) and socio-cultural context (environment beyond the education system including demographic, social, political, ideological, and economic conditions). the notion of teacher personal theorizing and the findings of research in this area (chant, kumar. indian social studies curriculum in transition: effects of a paradigm shift in curriculum discourse 34 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 2009; ross, 1994; ross, cornett, & mccutheon, 1992) argue that teachers’ personal and practical theories (e.g., the ways teachers perceive curriculum and theorize their practice) have considerable influence on their classroom instruction. the findings in this area also illustrate that teachers live in the real world and tend to develop context-bound theories of curriculum and teaching, contrasted with universal and theoretical principles (e.g., as espoused in india’s national curriculum frameworks). thus, teachers’ theories of teaching significantly determine the quality of the curriculum enacted in their classrooms. below i discuss in detail the concerns of the three social studies teachers who i interviewed and conducted a focus-group discussion with regarding their experiences of recent curriculum reforms in india. what do teachers like about the new social science textbooks? of the three teachers i interviewed and conducted discussion with, kanta seems to have really liked the new books of history and political science. she recognizes the importance of “alternative perspectives,” offered in the new textbook of history to understand india’s freedom struggle. according to her, for example, the non-cooperation movement had previously been taught from a “singular” perspective, but now the inclusion of the responses of various social groups and regions who participated in the movement (in other words, multiple ways of imagining reality) has received considerable importance. the new book explains in detail why non-cooperation started and why it was taken back rather than merely appreciating it uncritically. besides, the freedom struggle has been viewed “critically” by pointing to various problems associated with it. the new history book has also introduced many new topics that catch children’s attention such as the history of cricket. she points out that the old textbook was simply an exercise in “rote-memorization” where students had to learn “various dates of historical significance and roles of various leaders.” kanta thinks that the new book for political science “helps children to understand concepts better by means of interesting case studies.” there are various questions on the margin of the text that “makes reading interesting, and an exercise in thinking and reflection.” she also feels that the replacement of civics by political science has “relieved children from boring classes.” the new political science book allows “lively discussions” in the classroom where students participate enthusiastically. pictures, cartoons, and newspapers cuttings help students to comprehend the text effectively. activities, boxes, and other in-text exercises are helpful in understanding the content of the chapter, which is to be covered by means of discussions, classwork or self-study. there are various open-ended questions that promote discussion in the classroom. the old book, she thinks, did not have any “input for thinking.” the new book, on the contrary, “makes you think” about issues like “communalism” or “casteism” and the way they need to be countered by “secularism.” the old books did not talk about social issues and problems as elaborately and did not evoke debates and discussions in classrooms, as the new ones do. kanta also feels that the new books are able to develop “thinking and awareness” among the students. the old books were more of an exercise in rote-memorization of the historical facts and government institutions. by means of these new books “students can develop their own ideas” and can develop their own “answers to examination questions.” rashmi and bhairavi also appreciated certain aspects of the new economics textbooks they teach. however, they have also found considerable trouble while teaching with new books that i highlight next. kumar. indian social studies curriculum in transition: effects of a paradigm shift in curriculum discourse 35 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci what about the lack of “direct material”? according to reshma, the old textbook of economics was better because it provided “direct material,” in the form of definitions, reasons, characteristics, positives and negatives etc., which can “answer all questions” given in the book and in the central board of secondary examinations (cbse). 24 she argues that although the new books are “child friendly” because they contain photographs and case studies, they lack “basic knowledge” or factual content needed to “reproduce answers in the exams.” to support her points, reshma further argues that the chapter titled “globalization and the indian economy” in the new book (ncert textbook of economics for class 10, pp. 54-73, 2007) is a misnomer as this chapter “only talks about mncs.” the chapter “does not give even a passing reference to liberalization and privatization and history of india’s economic policy.” she asserts that the chapter “towards liberalization and globalization” in the old book (ncert social science textbook contemporary india for class 9, 2000) “treated liberalization and globalization in a better way than the new book because the former had direct content for the purpose of examinations” (reshma emphasized these words). bhairavi also asserts, like reshma, that the “new book has made no reference to liberalization as part of globalization and only focuses upon mncs.” she argues that the new book also does not explain, “how india actually facilitated globalization” and what are the “negatives and positives of globalization.” reshma, however, acknowledges that, “overall learning will be higher if we teach through the new books. she acknowledges that “children seem happy” with the new books because of colored pages, ample number of examples, narratives, and case studies. however, she also feels that examples are good but not sufficient, and “we need to tell students about formal institutions and their policies in a very structured and direct way.” she also remarks in the end that new books “do encourage students to explore” while the old books only emphasized “rotememorization, which is what is expected in exams” (reshma emphasized these words). kanta also shares her concern that “if the pattern of the examination is not revised then these books might create considerable problems.” in that case, “teachers will be required to provide notes to the students.” even bhairavi argues, “if exams continue to be on the same track [based on memorization of the textbooks] these books might even create trouble.” bhairavi further explains that the new book is “good for top 10% students” but for an average student it is very difficult to understand and “put that understanding on paper in exams.” moreover, it is “difficult to get 90 to 100% marks” because the mode of assessment, as the nature of the book suggests, will be “subjective” and an example can be viewed in many ways and students and teachers might not think alike. this might jeopardize students’ final grades. what problems do teachers face in the classroom? all three teachers think that the new books are capable of arousing students’ questioning and imaginative capacities. though teachers like the books with such attributes, they are afraid of the prevalent conception of “teachers” in indian society. in india many students and parents believe that teachers are “experts” in their subject, and if any teacher is unable to answer questions raised in the class then they are incompetent. thus, the emphasis is more on “answers” rather than exploration and engagement. since the new books are full of activities, in-text and end-text questions, and case studies, teachers at times find themselves in position where they might not have immediate answers. teachers complain that the new books have many questions “whose answers cannot be found in the book itself,” which makes it very difficult for them to “manage the class.” kumar. indian social studies curriculum in transition: effects of a paradigm shift in curriculum discourse 36 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci moreover, kanta feels that the children do face problems with the new books because they “do not have background to study history and civics in this fashion.” for example, students study about ancient, medieval, and modern india in grades 6, 7 and 8 respectively and in grade 9 they are introduced to the history of the contemporary world, which breaks the continuity. as well, the books for grades 9 and 10 do not have any relation to the previous grades. however, she acknowledges that the “books for grades 9 and 10 show continuity between them” because what students study in grade 9 also gets reflected in grade 10. additionally, although kanta finds no problem in teaching with the new history book, as she has a strong background in history, she emphasizes that it is “very difficult to teach from this book for someone who does not have background of history especially where a teacher is teaching all the subjects”––which is a common feature of the government schools in india. do teachers have enough time? teachers argue that new book requires “more efforts” on the part of the teachers. bhairavi stresses that “due to the arrival of the new books we [the teachers] will have to give notes from the old books to meet the requirements of the exams” (emphasis added). this will create burden on teachers, she explains further, and on the school because we have to provide photocopied notes to the students. if the school does not provide such facilities then teachers will have to dictate notes in the class. this would require a lot of time and teachers are just given 2-3 periods (80-120 minutes) per week. 25 this would require children to buy and study two books–– old and new––that would add to their burden. teachers also raise the issue of “less number of periods available per week.” teachers report that the content of the new book arouses many questions in children’s minds and makes it difficult for them to balance “satisfying” students’ curiosity and “completing the syllabus” on time. besides, there are many questions in the new book for which “no answer can be found in the book itself; the old book, on the contrary, contains almost 100% of the answers.” what do teachers expect? in spite of the aforementioned challenges teachers still feel that with certain changes they will be able to do justice with the new curriculum. for the new books to be successful, reshma suggests that the “examination system needs to be changed.” 26 teachers also show their frustration due to “frequent curriculum change” in the wake of shuffles in political power. they expect new books to stay for at least two-three years to allow them to “adjust and build up their own ways of teaching.” bhairavi feels that if the cbse follows the pattern of new ncert books for designing “exam papers” then teachers should have proper guidelines so that they may “prepare students for the exams, as their teaching is based on the patterns of previous years’ exam papers.” she argues that the topics of the old and new books are almost the same, but the new books contains case studies, and those who prepare exam papers might think that children have understood the concepts and ask a “direct” question. thus, “we will also have to provide students with theoretical matter.” teachers also feel that those who write ncert books are “too educated” and write textbooks from their own level, which does not connect with teachers and children. bhairavi suggests that schoolteachers should be involved in textbook writing because ultimately “they have to teach” (bhaiaravi emphasized these words). nevertheless, teachers also think that in the new books the “teacher is more important and is expected to look for other books, news paper articles etc.,” which is very good for their kumar. indian social studies curriculum in transition: effects of a paradigm shift in curriculum discourse 37 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci “professional growth.” teachers believe that “earlier books promoted rote-memorization” of the facts but now teachers and students have been provided with plenty of “case studies” to explain things in a better and more interesting way. in the absence of these case studies, teachers produce “crammers not learners.” teachers recognize that earlier children would “sleep in social studies classes” but now they are very “alert” as they get the opportunity to know and engage with “what is actually happening in the world.” teachers also stress that there should be a balance in the number of photographs, case studies, narratives, and theoretical content in the textbooks. teachers also demand more time during the week along with professional training and help to implement new curriculum initiatives. professor romila thapar’s (2005, p. 57) important statement summarizes teachers concerns in this manner: textbooks should certainly be child-friendly but it is equally necessary that the schoolteacher should be made child-friendly. it is not enough to encourage participative discussions between teachers and students in class. an extensive programme of familiarising schoolteachers both with changes in the methods and concepts of the social sciences and with child-centred pedagogy will help. without this, there will be no essential change in either the approach to the subject or the pedagogy. children will still be required to memorise sections of the new or old textbook and reproduce these for the exam. instant workshops for history teachers are not going to make a dent. teachers need a more intensive exposure if they are to understand the concepts of the social sciences, the changes in data and methods that disciplines such as history have undergone in the last fifty years, and to realise the significance of critical enquiry to education, which is said to be the aim of the ncf. it is important for me to acknowledge that my interview data in no way represents the vast pluralism of india’s educational, socio-cultural, and economic landscape. the teachers who participated in my research teach in a privileged, private school, which is attended mainly by children from middle class families. the purpose of incorporating these interviews, thus, was not to generalize, but to understand social studies teachers’ perceptions, which, in turn, allowed me to situate my documentary analysis in a real life context. although my interview data is fairly limited, it is informative and revealing. one important inference that can easily be drawn is that if the teachers of a private and privileged school are facing problems in implementing the recent curricular changes, empirical studies of government schools are likely to show serious challenges faced by teachers, students, administrators, and parents in understanding the implications of new curriculum and executing it successfully on the ground. the following arguments support this assertion. as already discussed in this article, ncf 2005 heavily draws on the philosophy of constructivism. constructivism is a school of thought that grew out of the contributions of john dewey, jean piaget, and lev vygotsky among others. according to constructivist philosophy, the child is the centre of the educational process. the teacher, instead of being a transmitter of the knowledge, is a facilitator who creates situations whereby students construct knowledge through experience and experimentation rather than teacher-centered textbook instruction. for constructivism to become operational on the ground several considerations are essential: fewer students per teacher, large instructional spaces in schools and classrooms, ample resources (e.g., well-equipped library, audio-visual media, instruments etc.), highly trained and knowledgeable teachers, and parents with sufficient income and educational background, among others. while being progressive, constructivism has been problematic in developing countries, for example south africa (see kumar, 2010; pinar, 2010), and is likely to face serious problems kumar. indian social studies curriculum in transition: effects of a paradigm shift in curriculum discourse 38 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci in india, because of her social, historical, economic, and political contexts, which include massive population size, poverty, malnutrition, underdeveloped school infrastructure, and poorly trained teachers. my interviews clearly show that the new curriculum reforms have not been taken positively in entirety even by the teachers of a privileged school; it is not difficult to imagine the extent to which this reform is likely to create challenges for the government schools, which have poor infrastructure and poorly trained teachers, and which are understaffed and are attended by children whose parents are neither educated nor free to spend time with their children and help them with their studies. although limited in its scope, the empirical part of my study supplements my documentary analysis. moreover, my study also has the potential to open (and not only with reference to social studies) avenues for scholars to carry out further research, which may focus on one or more of the following possibilities: comparative analysis of the social studies textbooks developed in line with the perspectives of ncfs 2000 and 2005; classroom observation in both private and public schools to understand the challenges posed by the new curriculum changes for teachers and students; interviews and focus-group discussions with government and private schoolteachers, students, parents, and administrators to understand, analyze, and compare their perceptions of the recent curriculum changes; interviews with curriculum planners and textbook writers to understand their perceptions of new curriculum and the factors that shape such perceptions; and tracing the history of social science curriculum framework in india to see how it has changed over a period of time and what factors have been responsible for the changes. conclusion this study reveals that the ncf 2005 and the new ncert textbooks of social science represent a paradigm shift in the way social science is viewed in indian schools. ncf 2005 argues for a social science that is epistemologically and pedagogically experiential, critical, and constructive and, thereby, provides space for teachers and students to engage in dialogue by questioning, analyzing, and deconstructing social reality with its conflicts and problems. the ncf 2005 and new social studies textbooks prepared in its perspective are certainly influenced by and are an important contribution to critical social studies, as discussed in this article. however, curriculum is what unfolds in the living reality of the classroom (cornbleth, 1990). interviews and a focus-group discussion with teachers of a private and privileged school clearly reveal that although teachers appreciate the new textbooks for being child-centered, creative, and interactive, they are also concerned about the challenges they face while implementing the new curriculum in their classrooms. the lack of adequate time and training for teachers, paucity of resources, and textbook and exam oriented system poses serious challenges for teachers to adopt constructivist and critical pedagogy expected by the new textbooks. significantly, interviews with three teachers of a private and privileged school helped me infer a critical contradiction between ncf 2005 and india’s social reality. ncf 2005 quite emphatically argues in favor of constructivism as a mode of pedagogy without fully recognizing that the latter was developed in industrially advanced countries, and that it needs resource rich schools and professionally trained teachers. india is a developing country with rampant poverty and over population. government schools lack proper infrastructure as well as a sufficient number of highly qualified teachers. students who attend government schools primarily belong to economically weaker sections and, thus, cannot participate in such an ambitious endeavor unless they receive extraordinary supports from government. given india’s social reality, it is not kumar. indian social studies curriculum in transition: effects of a paradigm shift in curriculum discourse 39 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci hard to imagine that if the teachers of a private school are encountering problems in implementing the curriculum, the new textbooks will certainly create academic and practical challenges for the teachers and students of government schools. by not attending to india’s socio-economic, historical and political reality, setalvad (2005, para. 9) thinks: ncf 2005 has consciously avoided the critical issues of structural denials to large sections of our population any form of education ... that have not simply been perpetuated over the last 58 years but have sharply grown through the years after 1992 with the withdrawal of the state from its basic constitutional mandate––to ensure uee [universalization of elementary education] to each and every indian child, regardless of gender, caste or community. irfan habib (2005) supports and strengthens setalvad’s arguments further: in spite of ncf-2005's repeated statements that its scheme is to help children of rural and poorer backgrounds, almost every proposal it makes is only practical––if at al––for elite schools. its insistence on ‘individualized attention’ to be given to children (2.4.4, p.19), or multiplicity of subject choices (3.9.4, pp.63-64; 3.10.4, p. 66), or two levels (standard/ higher) of teaching, are all possible only for highly privileged schools. (p. 11) if the ncf 2005 and the new textbooks developed in accordance with its guidelines are to be successful in achieving their objective of raising students’ critical awareness of their social reality to bring about a peaceful and just society, then intervention is needed in the following spheres: the system of examination, pre-service and in-service teacher education programs, and infrastructure development. first of all, examinations in the form of high-stakes testing need to be abandoned at the national level for the apparent psychological stress on students, teachers, and parents and their sheer utilitarianism. 27 moreover, the term “examination,” (which is directly handed down from british colonial practices and continues to exert its influence on the indian education system even today) should give way to “assessment” in the curriculum lexicon as well as in classrooms. assessment of students’ learning should happen through diverse ways depending on the subject, context, resources, and the cognitive abilities and interests of students. assessment should have the purpose of helping students understand rather than reproduce in order to receive a certificate. assessment procedures should incorporate critical reflection, thinking, and inquiry as their central features, and relieve teachers and students of rote-memorization of facts (mathison & fragnoli, 2006). the incorporation of right assessment procedures will eradicate the unnecessary conflicts between the ncf 2005 and the national level examination systems (see thapar, 2005). second, while changes in curriculum documents and textbooks are essential, it is the teachers and their pedagogic practices that give life to the curriculum in real classroom situations. thus, curriculum reform should not remain confined to producing documents and textbooks; it should also be concomitant with the rich academic and professional training of the preand in-service teachers. in an important article, “voice and agency of teachers: missing link in the national curriculum framework 2005,” professor poonam batra (2005) discusses the complexities of the landscape of teacher education in india that presents serious challenges to the success of ncf 2005. batra (2005, p. 4347) points out that most schoolteachers across the country are “under trained, misqualified, under-compensated, [and] demotivated instruments of a mechanical system of education that was initially conceived as a support to a colonial regime.” kumar. indian social studies curriculum in transition: effects of a paradigm shift in curriculum discourse 40 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci moreover, she explains further, “in a globalizing india, school teaching has declined to the status of a least favored profession. it has become a last resort of educated unemployment youth ... , part-time business people and young women seeking to find a part-time socially acceptable profession away from competitive university education system.” furthermore, over the past two decades, schoolteachers have been reduced to “a mere object of educational reform or worse a passive agent of the prevailing ideology of modern state.” this is further compounded by the behavioristic and positivistic nature of teacher education programs in india, which have remained largely unchanged since colonial times. while the ncf 2005 “presents a fresh vision and a new discourse on key contemporary educational issues ... ,” batra (2005, p. 4347) argues, “... it appears unable to define the contours of a traverse between the romantic ideal of the empowered and empowering individual teacher and an educational system comprised of several million such teachers focussed on a ‘mechanical’ universalization of education.” while there has been “repeated reiteration to strengthen the active ‘agency’ of the teacher in policy documents and commission reports over the last 30 years,” batra (2005, p. 4349) explains, “teacher education institutes continue to exist as insular organizations even within the university system where many are located,” which prevents the larger academic debates on equity, gender and community from entering teacher education programs . researchers (e.g., anitha, 2000; vasavi, 2000) have shown that teachers consider issues of drop-outs and child labor as inevitable resulting from poverty and children’s social backgrounds rather than due to inadequate policies and programs. in addition to reminding these bitter realities of indian educational landscape, batra (2005, p. 4349) argues that “[ncf 2005] offers limited directions on how teachers could be prepared to include hitherto excluded social narratives, experiences and voices and make them available in the classroom and more importantly, to respond and resist attempts of short-term ideological persuasions of educational policy makers to intervene in the teaching-learning process.” in view of the above contextual realities, batra’s (2005, p. 4349) thinks that ncf 2005 avoids dealing with a central curricular and pedagogical question: “how do you enable critical thinking and meaning making among children (the aim of ncf) with a teacher who has not been through such a process herself?” what could be done in the sphere of teacher education to meet the goals of ncf 2005? first of all, teacher education programs, which have been largely dominated by educational psychology (which in turn is dominated by behaviorism), must create space for constructivism and critical pedagogy to facilitate the development of critical thinking and reflexivity among teachers. needless to say, the former must be recontextualized in indian context and juxtaposed with the indian educational thought (e.g., the ideas of gandhi, ambedkar, krishnamurti, and tagore, among others) rather than imposed from outside. if constructivism and critical pedagogy are imposed without recontexualization and creative juxtaposition with indian thought, they will not only perpetuate academic imperialism but will also be defeated on the ground. second, teacher education programs must provide students with spaces to discuss and deeply inquire into the meaning of curriculum, teaching, learning, and education rather than simply preparing “implementers” of state-mandated curriculum. schoolteachers should be provided with the opportunities for professional development. most often, professional development is seen as capsule courses to learn how to implement state-mandated curriculum. definitely, the later in reality is not professional development but professional degradation. actual professional development of teachers implies that they are encouraged to engage with, participate in, and conduct critical educational research which questions the hegemonic and oppressive educational discourses and practices. kumar. indian social studies curriculum in transition: effects of a paradigm shift in curriculum discourse 41 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci finally, central and state governments should make efforts to improve the quality of government schools. readers may be surprised to learn about the acute level of inequality in india’s k-12 schools: certain schools in the larger cities are no less than five star hotels, while other schools in small villages are no more than huts! and, when the teachers of these “five star” schools are having problems in implementing new textbooks, it does not seem appropriate to expect much of the teachers, students, and parents of underprivileged schools and localities. recognizing the significance of systemic reforms, professor sadgopal (2005b, p. 4) argues: the essential linkage between curricular reforms and systemic reforms must be appreciated, before it is too late. and such reforms would be feasible only within the framework of a common school system. 28 it is also necessary to assert that no developed or developing country has ever achieved uee [universalization of elementareducation] or, for that matter, universal secondary education, without a strong state-funded and state-regulated common school system. india is unlikely to be an exception to this historical and global experience, notwithstanding the ambition of the indian state to become a ‘superpower’ by 2020! given the above analysis, it is only through combining curriculum reforms with reforms in other spheres––the system of examination, teacher education, and infrastructure––that the larger educational goals of social justice, democracy, and peace can be realized, as espoused in the national curriculum framework 2005. acknowledgements i sincerely thank professors anne phelan, william pinar, e. wayne ross, and peter seixas and mr. ahmed rahim for providing their generous feedback in preparation of this article. i also sincerely thank professor shyam menon who supervised my research in india. kumar. indian social studies curriculum in transition: effects of a paradigm shift in curriculum discourse 42 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci appendix hierarchical organization of the contents of the social science textbooks (class 6-10) developed in line with the perspectives of ncfs 2000 and 2005 below given tables provide subject wise content of the textbooks developed in accordance with the guidelines of the ncfs of 2000 and 2005. textbooks, which came out of the deliberations of ncf 2000, did not have separate textbooks for history, civics, geography, and economics. i have identified the disciplinary themes and organized the content of the textbooks for classes 6-10 according to the disciplinary boundaries. ncf 2005, on the other hand, has respected the disciplinary boundaries and has developed separate textbooks of history, political science, geography, and economics. notably, textbooks written in the perspective of ncf 2000 do not have separate unit on economics. however, class-x social science textbook in its unit-iii economic and social development has a few chapters devoted to economics: economic development; towards globalization and liberalization; major challenges before indian economy; consumer awareness; social development and concerned issues; and dynamics of human development. ncf 2005, on the other hand, has introduced economics as a discipline for classes 9 and 10. according to the position paper on national focus group on teaching of social sciences: as the discipline of economics is being introduced to the child at this level, it is important that the topics discussed should be from the perspective of the masses. for example, the discussion of poverty and unemployment should no longer be undertaken in terms of statistics, but instead should derive from an understanding of the elitist functioning of many economic institutions and inequality sustained by economic relations. (p. 7) the textbook economics for class 9 has following chapters: the economic story of palampur; people as resource; poverty as challenge facing india; food security: and sources of food grains. the textbook of economics for class 10 understanding economic development has following chapters: development; sectors of the indian economy; money and credit; globalization and the indian economy; and consumer rights. kumar. indian social studies curriculum in transition: effects of a paradigm shift in curriculum discourse 43 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci table 1 contents of textbooks of geography (class 6-10) developed in the perspective of ncfs 2000 and 2005 class 6 india and the world class 7 india and the world class 8 india and the world class 9 contemporary india class 10 contemporary india ncf 2000 unit-i earth our habitat our earth and the solar system; how the globe and maps help us; locating places on the earth; how days and seasons are caused; major domains of the earth; indiaour country; our climate, natural vegetation and wildlife unit-i our environment components of environment; changing face of the earth: the processes; earth’s surface and interiors; air around us; water surrounding the continent; life on earth; human environment: settlement, transportation and communication; land and the people. unit-ii resources and development resources types and development; natural resources: land, soil, and water; natural resources: minerals, energy, plants, and wildlife; agriculture; manufacturing; industries; human resources unit-iii land and the people the locational setting; relief; climate; drainage; natural vegetation and wildlife; population unit-ii resources and their development land and soil resource; forest and water resource; agriculture; mineral and energy resources; manufacturing industries; transport, communication and trade ncf 2005 class 6 the earth—our habitat class 7 our environment class 8 resources and development class 9 contemporary india-i class 10 contemporary india-ii the earth in the solar system; globe : latitudes and longitudes; motions of the earth; maps; major domains of the earth; major landforms of the earth; our country—india; india : climate, vegetation and wildlife environment; inside our earth; our changing earth; air; water; natural vegetation and wildlife; human environment—settlement, transport and communication; human environment interactions; the tropical and the subtropical region; life in the temperate grasslands; life in the deserts resources; land, soil, water, natural vegetation, and wildlife resources; mineral and power resources; agriculture; industries; human resources india—size and location; physical features of india; drainage; climate; natural vegetation and wild life; population resources and development; forest and wildlife resources; water resources; agriculture; minerals and energy resources; manufacturing industries; life lines of national economy kumar. indian social studies curriculum in transition: effects of a paradigm shift in curriculum discourse 44 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci table 2 contents of textbooks of history (class 6-10) developed in the perspective of ncfs 2000 and 2005 class 6 india and the world class 7 india and the world class 8 india and the world class 9 contemporary india class 10 contemporary india ncf 2000 unit-ii people and society in ancient period the early humans; early non-indian civilizations; egyptian civilization; mesopotamian civilization; greek civilization; roman civilization; chinese civilization iranian civilization; indian civilization; the vedic civilization; indian history (600 to 100 b.c.); megalithic culture of deccan and south india; north india after mauryas and sungas (first century b.c. to third century a.d.) ; deccan and south india (fourth and seventh century a.d.); india’s cultural contacts with outside world; major religions unit-ii non-indian contemporary civilization; america, europe, the arabian empire, central asia, china, south east asia; history of north india (ad. 700-1200); history of south india (ad. 700-1200); delhi sultanate; india in the fifteenth century; the mughal empire; india in the eighteenth century; road to modern world; major religions and bhakti movements unit-i people and society in modern period the world in modern time; india in the 18 th century; rise of british power in india; 19 th century social and cultural awakening; rise of nationalism in the 19 th century; indian national movement-emergence and development; indian national movement-development and fulfillment unit-i india in the 20 th century world world: some developments; british policies and india upheavals; congress, new sprit and muslim league; towards mass involvement; struggle for swaraj and british response; partition and independence; democratic republic, integration and international relations unit-i heritage of india natural heritage; archeological heritage; living heritage; preservation of heritage ncf 2005 class 6 our past-i class 7 our past-ii class 8 our past-iii class 9 india and the contemporary world-i class 10 india and the contemporary world-ii kumar. indian social studies curriculum in transition: effects of a paradigm shift in curriculum discourse 45 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci what, where, how and when?; on the trail of the earliest people; from gathering to growing food; in the earliest cities; what books and burials tell us; kingdoms, kings and an early republic; new questions and ideas; ashoka, the emperor who gave up war; vital villages, thriving towns; traders, kings and pilgrims; new empires and kingdoms; buildings, paintings and books tracing changes through a thousand years; new kings and kingdoms; the delhi sultans; the mughal empire; rulers and buildings; towns, traders and craftspersons; tribes, nomads and settled communities; devotional paths to the divine; the making of regional cultures; eighteenth-century political formations how, when, and where; from trade to territory: the company establishes power; ruling the countryside; tribals, dikus and the vision of a golden age; when people rebel: 1857 and after; colonialism and the city: the story of an imperial capital section 1: events and processes the french revolution; socialism in europe and the russia nazism and the rise of hitler section ii: livelihoods, economics and societies forest society and colonialism; pastoralists in the modern world; peasant and farmers; section iii: everyday life, culture and politics history and sports: the story of cricket; clothing: a social history section i: events and processes the rise of nationalism in europe; the nationalist movement in indo-china; nationalism in india; section ii: livelihoods, economies and societies the making of a global world; the age of industrialization; work, life and leisure; section iii: everyday life, culture and politics print culture and the modern world; novels, society and history table 3 contents of textbooks of civics/political science (class 6-10) developed in the perspective of ncfs 2000 and 2005 class 6 india and the world class 7 india and the world class 8 india and the world class 9 contemporary india class 10 contemporary india ncf 2000 unit-iii community and its development communities meet their needs; how village people meet their needs; how people in cities meet their needs; caring for things belonging to us all unit-iii people and government india and the world in the twentieth century; the making of our constitution; our national symbols and identity; citizenship and civic life; fundamental rights, duties and directive principles; government at the centre; government in the states; administration and development in india unit-iii major issues and challenges of india and the world natural disasters; environmental degradation; developmental issues; globalization; terrorism—a challenge; united nations, international agencies and human rights; india and the united nations; foreign policy of india; india and its neighbors unit-ii making of a modern nation framing of the constitution; salient features of the constitution; government: executive and legislature; judiciary in india; fundamental rights, directives principles of state policy and fundamental duties; indian democracy: how it functions unit-iii economic and social development (last three chapters were devoted to civics) challenges of communalism and casteism; insurgency and terrorism; india’s peace initiatives ncf 2005 class 6 socio-political life-i class 7 social and political life-ii class 8 our social and political life class 9 democratic politics-i class 10 democratic politics-ii kumar. indian social studies curriculum in transition: effects of a paradigm shift in curriculum discourse 46 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci unit i diversity understanding diversity; diversity and discrimination; unit ii government what is government?; key elements of a democratic government unit iii local government administration panchayati raj; rural administration; urban administration; unit iv livelihoods rural livelihoods; urban livelihoods unit one: equality in indian democracy on equality unit two: state government role of the government in health; how the state government work; unit three: gender growing up as boys and girls; women change the world unit four: media and advertising; understanding media; understanding advertising; unit five: markets markets around us; a shirt in the market; equality in indian democracy; struggles for equality unit one: the indian constitution and secularism the indian constitution; understanding secularism; unit two: parliament and the making of laws why do we need a parliament?; understanding laws unit three: the judiciary understanding our criminal justice system unit four: social justice and the marginalized understanding marginalization; confronting marginalization unit five: economic presence of the government public facilities; law and social justice democracy in the contemporary world; what is democracy?; why democracy?; constitutional design; electoral politics; working of institutions; democratic rights unit i power sharing; federalism unit ii democracy and diversity; gender, religion and caste unit iii popular struggles and movements; political parties unit iv outcomes of democracy; challenges to democracy notes 1 ashwani.1979@gmail.com 2 i am not related to professor krishna kumar. i studied with him for a couple of weeks at the central institute of education (university of delhi) in new delhi, india. 3 the ncert is an apex resource organization set up by the government of india in 1961, with headquarters at new delhi, to assist and advise the central and state governments on the various dimensions of school education. ncert is also responsible for drawing up the national curriculum framework and publish textbooks, which are used as models by majority of the state governments in india. 4 for a critical analysis of history textbooks developed according to the perspective of ncf 2000 see roy (2003) and subaramaniam (2003). 5 significantly, according to poonam batra (2005, p. 4348), the reason behind efforts to bring about ncf 2005 is “[d]eeper than ... the politically driven initiative ... [t]he professional need for curriculum review ... [emerged] from the long ossification of a national education system that continues to view teachers as ‘dispensers of information’ and children as ‘passive recipients’ of an ‘education,’ sought to be ‘delivered’ in four-walled classrooms with little scope to develop critical thinking and understanding.” kumar. indian social studies curriculum in transition: effects of a paradigm shift in curriculum discourse 47 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 6 the basic matter for this article comes from my master of education thesis that i submitted to central institute of education (university of delhi, new delhi, india) in 2007. my further engagement with the conceptualization of social studies in north america (due to my studies at the university of british columbia) further helped me to engage with my research in india with new theoretical understanding. my experiences in india (first as a student and later as a teacher of geography) and north america (first as a phd student in the field of curriculum studies at university of british columbia and now as a professor of social studies education at mount saint vincent university) have informed my decision to juxtapose these two fields––indian and north american––together with particular reference to social studies education. 7 leming’s claim that social studies teachers have accepted or prefer tssi approach is not fully substantiated. vinson (1998) has published evidence that directly contradicts this particular claim by leming in north american context. 8 various schemes have been offered by researchers to make sense of a wide variety and opposing purposes for social studies e.g., barr, barth & shermis (1977); morrissett & hass (1982); stanley & nelson (1994); and vinson (1998) among others. these works use different terms such as “citizenship or (cultural transmission),” “conservative cultural continuity,” “cultural transmission,” and “citizenship transmission,” respectively, to categorize the social studies instruction akin to leming’s tssi. 9 the above mentioned authors use a wide variety of terms to define the purpose of css, namely, “reflective inquiry” (barr, barth & shermis, 1977), “thinking reflectively” (stanley & nelson, 1994), “informed social criticism” (morrissett & hass, 1982), and “critical or reflective thinking” (vinson, 1998). 10 the educational thoughts of john dewey and paulo freire have not only greatly influenced educational theory and practice in west but also in developing world including india. in schools of education in india, dewey and freire occupy considerable space and attention along with indian educators such as rabindranath tagore, gandhi, and j. krishnamurti. the major political figures like mahatma gandhi and b.r ambedkar, who had their deep influence on educational policy making, had acknowledged considerable influence of john dewey’s ideas on their educational thought (see nanda, 2007). professor krishna kumar, the key player behind national curriculum framework 2005, has also written a foreword to the indian edition of dewey’s democracy and education. moreover, dewey’s ideas on experiential and constructivist learning have found considerable space in ncf 2005. dewey’s ideas on pragmatism, however, have come under attack by critical educators who are drawn more towards the works of paulo friere, henry giroux, geoff whitty, and michael apple. even ncf 2005, along with its emphasis on constructivism, provides space to the principles of critical pedagogy. 11 while there are merits of critical pedagogy approach as i have noticed in this article, it seems to me that critical pedagogy is entirely focused on the social structures and has little place for subjective consciousness and latter’s depths and complexities. the scope of this article does not allow me to elaborate on this point here. those who are interested in understanding the limitations of critical pedagogy from the perspective of human consciousness and meditative inquiry, consider reviewing my book: curriculum as meditative inquiry (kumar, in press). kumar. indian social studies curriculum in transition: effects of a paradigm shift in curriculum discourse 48 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 12 ncf 2000 doesn’t provide any clear statements regarding its vision about social science curriculum and teaching. ncf 2005, on the other hand, has discussed its vision about social science in a well-developed manner. for the purpose of analysis i have developed two categories––objectives and epistemological framework––and organized the information according to these categories without making any changes to the language and meaning. 13 for a detailed analysis of the differences between critical thinking and critical pedagogy see burbles & berk (1999). 14 according to irfan habib (2005, p. 9), an eminent indian historian, “the ncert's post-2000 textbooks in history and social sciences were a scandal (see indian history congress report, history in the new ncert textbooks kolkata, 2003).” 15 romila thapar (2005, p.56 ), an eminent indian historian, while recognizing the inclusion of normative issues in ncf 2005, warns that it may also be a tendency to avoid the “question of why poverty, illiteracy and communalism have come about.” “how secularism, democracy, and human rights became a concern in indian society,” she points out, “are themes significant to the social sciences” and therefore needs to be clearly stated in the ncf 2005. 16 while appreciating ncf’s concern for local-content and diversity, romila thapar (2005, p. 56) hopes that: the social sciences will also explain how diversities came or come into being, why there is an inequality among diverse groups, and how attitudes supporting this inequality are constructed. furthermore, how diversities can be a source of enrichment to some cultures, but can also in some other cases become agencies of oppression. local conditions and surroundings can be more purposefully studied if they are also seen in the context of a larger national perspective. 17 stanley and nelson (1994) is an important resource to understand the differences among ‘subject-centered,’ ‘civics-centered,’ and ‘issue-centered’ approaches to organize social studies curriculum. 18 i incorporate some of these criticisms in the next section where i analyze teachers responses to the recent curriculum reform as well as in my conclusion. for a collection of marxist critique of ncf 2005 see an important document, debating education-1. it is available online at: http://issuu.com/sahmat/docs/debating_education-1. 19 these are all pseudonyms. i took permission for this study from all the three teachers as well as from the principal of the school. 20 this is also not the real name of the school. readers should also know that in india the term “public school” means private schools. there are, however, a great number of schools that are run by government and primarily cater to the socio-economically disadvantaged sections of indian population. 21 when i conducted this study, i was also a secondary social studies teacher at this school. http://issuu.com/sahmat/docs/debating_education-1 kumar. indian social studies curriculum in transition: effects of a paradigm shift in curriculum discourse 49 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 22 i have labeled ncert textbooks developed in the perspectives of ncfs 2000 and 2005 as “old” and “new” respectively. teachers who i interviewed mainly restricted their comments to the social science textbooks of grades 9 and 10. 23 the culture of textbooks, examination, and teacher control in india has its origin in british colonial policies, which continue to impact indian education system even today (see kumar, 2000, 2004). 24 the cbse is a highly regarded national level government agency in india that is entitled to conduct exams for the grades 10 and 12 and certify the appearing candidates. notably, due to a recent human resource and development ministry regulation, cbse exams for grade 10 has become optional now. it is up to the school and the students if they want to participate in the annual board exam. cbse has also encouraged schools to practice comprehensive evaluation schemes that is supposed to have reduced stress on teachers and students. it is a very recent phenomenon and its actual effects will be visible in the coming years. 25 this concern of teachers should also be seen in light of habib’s (2005, p. 4) criticism of ncf 2005, which does not specify “the distribution of time among the subjects (with the main components indicated thereof) at each set of class-levels.” 26 as i mentioned above, the examination system in india has changed to quite an extent at the level of policy. it will be an exciting followup study to explore teachers perceptions of these new changes in examination system and how these changes have influenced their practices and changed their experiences of the textbooks developed in the perspective of ncf 2005. 27 it is these concerns about assessment, which many indian educators share with me, that, in my view, have influenced central and state governments policies vis-a-vis assessment and exams in the recent years. however, there is a need to be watchful of the culture of behaviorism, positivism, neoliberalism, and capitalism which is rampant worldwide and appreciates grades, efficiency, and measurable knowledge. 28 professor anil sadgopal has been the most significant proponent of the idea of common school system in india, which was originally recommended by education commission 1964-66. according to sadgopal (2005b, p. 3): common school system means the national system of education that is founded on the principles of equality and social justice as enshrined in the constitution and provides education of a comparable quality to all children in an equitable manner irrespective of their caste, creed, language, gender, economic or ethnic background, location or disability (physical or mental), and wherein all categories of schools––i.e. government, local body or private, both aided and unaided, or otherwise––will be obliged to (a) fulfill certain minimum infrastructural (including those relating to teachers and other staff), financial, curricular, pedagogic, linguistic and socio-cultural norms and (b) ensure free education to the children in a specified neighborhood from an age group and/or up to a stage, as may be prescribed, while having adequate flexibility and academic freedom to explore, innovate and be creative and appropriately reflecting the geo-cultural and linguistic diversity of the country, within the broad policy guidelines kumar. indian social studies curriculum in transition: effects of a paradigm shift in curriculum discourse 50 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci and the national curriculum framework for school education as approved by the central advisory board of education. to know more about common school system and how this transformative concept has been undermined by indian educational policies including ncf 2005 see sadgopal (2005a; 2005b). references adorno, t. (1973). negative dialectics. new york: seabury press. althusser, l. (1971). lenin and philosophy and other essays. london: new left books. apte, b. (2005). a critique of national curriculum framework 2005. pusedo-secularism. http://pseudosecularism.blogspot.com/2005/09/critique-of-national-curriculum.html barr, r., barth, j., & shermis, s. (1997). defining the social studies. arlington, va: national council for the social studies. batra, p. (2005). voice and agency of teachers: missing link in the national curriculum framework 2005. economic and political weekly, xl/40, 4377-4356. bernstein, b. (1973). on the classification and framing of educational knowledge. in r. brown (ed.), knowledge, education and cultural change (pp. 363-392). london: tavistock publications. bourdieu, p. (1973). cultural reproduction and social reproduction. in r. brown (ed.), knowledge, education and cultural change (pp. 71-112) london: tavistock publications. bourdieu, p., & passeron, j. (1977). reproduction in education, society and culture. beverly hills, cal.: sage. bowels. s., & gintis, h. (1976). schooling in capitalist america. new york: basic books. burbles, n., & berk, r. (1999). critical thinking and critical pedagogy: relations, differences, and limits. in t.s. popkewitz & l. fendler (eds.), critical theories in education (pp. 4565). new york: routledge. chant, r. (2009). developing involved citizens: the role of personal practical theories and action research in a standards-based social studies classroom. teacher education quarterly, 36(1), 181-190. cornbleth, c. (1990). curriculum in context. bristol: falmer press. cuban, l. (1991). history of teaching in social studies. in j. p. shaver (ed.), handbook of research on social studies teaching and learning (pp. 197-209). new york: macmillan. dewey, j. (1916/2004). democracy and education: an introduction to the philosophy of education. new delhi: aakas books. evans, r. 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(1989). schooling, citizenship and struggle for democracy. london: routledge. gramsci, a. (1971). selection from prison notebooks. new york: international publishers. grundy, s. (1987). curriculum: product or praxis? london: falmer press. habermas, j. (1968). knowledge and human interests. boston: beacon press. habib, i. (2005). how to evade real issues and make room for obscurantism. social scientist, 33(388-389), 3-12. horkheimer, m. (1972). critical theory: selected essays. berkeley: university of california press. hursh, d., & ross, e. (eds.). (2000). democratic social education: social studies for social change. new york: falmer. kumar, a. (2007). reflexivity and critical thinking in secondary school social science: a study of transition between two alternative perspectives in curricular practice. unpublished master’s thesis, university of delhi, new delhi, india. kumar, a. 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(1994). past as prologue: a defense of traditional patterns of social studies instruction. in m. nelson (ed.), the future of social studies (pp. 17-23). boulder, colo: social science education consortium. leming, j., ellington, l., & porter-magee, k. (2003). where did the social studies go wrong? washington, dc: fordham foundation. marcuse, h. (1964). one dimensional man: studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. boston: beacon press. mathison, s., & fragnoli, k. (2006). struggling for good assessment in social studies education. in e. w. ross (ed.), the social studies curriculum: purposes, problems, and possibilities (pp. 197-216). albany: state university of new york press. mclaren, p. (1994). life in schools: an introduction to critical pedagogy in the foundations of education. new york: longman. mcneil, l. (1988). contradiction of control: school structure and school knowledge. new york: routledge. ministry of human resource development, government of india. (1993). learning without burden. new delhi: author. morrisset, i., & hass, j. d. (1982). rationales, goals, and objective in social studies. in the current state of social studies: a report of project span (pp. 1-80). boulder, co: social science education consortium. http://www2.uwstout.edu/content/jaaacs/kumar_v6.htm kumar. indian social studies curriculum in transition: effects of a paradigm shift in curriculum discourse 52 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci nanda, m. (2005). intellectual treason. new humanist, 12 (1). available online at: http://newhumanist.org.uk/827/intellectual-treason nanda, m. (2007). breaking the spell of dharma and other essays. new delhi: three essays collective. national council of educational research and training (2000). national curriculum framework. new delhi: author. national council of educational research and training (2005). national curriculum framework. new delhi: author. the online version is available at: http://www.ncert.nic.in/html/framework2005.htm national council of educational research and training (2005). position paper on national focus group on teaching of social sciences. new delhi: author. the online version is available at: http://www.ncert.nic.in/html/focus_group.htm newman, f. (1991). classroom thoughtfulness and students’ higher order thinking: common indicators and diverse social studies courses. theory and research in social education, 19(4), 410-433. noffke, s. (2000). identity, community and democracy in the new social order. in d. w. hursh & e. w. ross (eds.), democratic social education: social studies for social change (pp. 73-83). new york: falmer. orlowski, p. (2001). the revised social studies curriculum in b.c. our schools / our selves,10(4), 85-102. osborne, k. (2000). public schooling and citizenship education in canada. canadian ethnic studies, 32(1), 8-37. pinar, w. (2010). curriculum studies in south africa: intellectual histories, present circumstances. new york: palgrave macmillan. ravich, d. (1990). multiculturalism, e. pluribus plure. american scholar (summer), 337-354. reid, w. (2006). the pursuit of curriculum: schooling and the public interest. greenwich, ct: information age. ross, e. (ed.). (1994). reflective practice in social studies. washington, dc: the national council for the social studies. ross, e. (2000). redrawing the lines: the case against traditional social studies instruction. in d. w. hursh & e. w. ross (eds.), democratic social education: social studies for social change (pp. 43-63). new york: falmer. ross, e. (ed.). (2006). the social studies curriculum: purposes, problems, and possibilities. albany: state university of new york press. ross, e., cornett, j., & mccutheon, g. (eds.). (1992). teacher personal theorizing: connecting curriculum practice, theory, and research. albany: state university of new york press. ross, e. & gibson, r. (eds.). (2007). neoliberalism and education reform. cresskill, new jersey: hampton press, inc. ross, e., & marker, p. (eds). (2009). social studies teacher education: dare we teach for democracy. teacher education quarterly 36(1). roy, k. (2003, february). the new ncert textbooks, in rewriting history. seminar, 522. available online at: http://www.india-seminar.com/semframe.html. http://newhumanist.org.uk/827/intellectual-treason http://www.ncert.nic.in/html/framework2005.htm http://www.ncert.nic.in/html/focus_group.htm http://www.india-seminar.com/semframe.html kumar. indian social studies curriculum in transition: effects of a paradigm shift in curriculum discourse 53 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci sadgopal, a. (2005a). on the pedagogy of writing a national curriculum framework: reflections from an insider. social scientist, 33 (9/10), 23-36. sadgopal, a. (2005b). a compilation of notes on common school system. paper presented at the meeting of the central advisory board of education (cabe), july 14-15, new delhi. available online at: http://www.ashanet.org/campaigns/rte/docs/anil_sadgopal.pdf schlesinger, a. (1991). the disuniting of america. knoxville, tn: whittle direct books. stanley, w. (ed.). (2001). critical issues in social studies research for the 21 st century. albany: state university of new york press. stanley, w., & nelson, j. (1994). the foundation of social education in historical context. in r. martusewicz & w. reynolds (eds.), inside/outside: contemporary critical perspectives in education (pp. 266-284). new york: st. martin’s. setalvad, t. (2005). comments on national curriculum framework 2005. the south asian. available online at: http://www.thesouthasian.org/archives/2005/comments_on_national_curriculu.html sharma, r.n. (2002). indian education at the crossroads. delhi: sterling publishers. subaramaniam, c. (2003). ncert’s national curriculum framework. revolutionary democracy, ix(2), september. available online at: http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv9n2/ncert.htm taneja, n. (2003). bjp assaults on education and educational institutions. available online at: http://www.indowindow.com/sad/article.php?child=29&article=27 thapar, r. (2005). national curriculum framework and the social science. social scientist, 33(388-389), 54-58. varadarajan, l. (2004). constructivism, identity and neoliberal (in)security. ris, 30:3. verma, v. (2005). the national curriculum framework-2005. green teacher. http://www.greenteacher.org/?page_id=30 vinson, k. (1998). the traditions revisited: instructional approach and high school social studies teachers. theory and research in social education, 26(1), 50-82. vinson, k. (2006). oppression, anti-oppression, and citizenship education. in e. w. ross (ed.), the social studies curriculum: purposes, problems, and possibilities (pp. 51-76). albany: state university of new york pres. submitted: september, 15 th , 2011. approved: october, 2 nd , 2012. http://www.ashanet.org/campaigns/rte/docs/anil_sadgopal.pdf http://www.revolutionarydemocracy.org/rdv9n2/ncert.htm http://www.indowindow.com/sad/article.php?child=29&article=27 http://www.greenteacher.org/?page_id=30 microsoft word chambers final.doc to cite this article please include all of the following details: chambers, cynthia (2010). “i was grown up before i was born”: wisdom in kangiryarmuit life stories. transnational curriculum inquiry 7(2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date>   “i was grown up before i was born”: wisdom in kangiryarmuit life stories cynthia chambers university of lethbridge i grew up in the canadian north, an only child in a family of migrant bush pilots. as a young woman, i landed in yellowknife, the capital of the northwest territories; it was there, at st. patrick’s high school, i earned the nickname, “99.” “ninety-nine” was a pun on both my alleged academic scores (a percentage i rarely, if ever, actually achieved) and the competent and ever faithful “agent “99” of the 1960s get smart sit-com fame. agent “99” was the intelligent sidekick who tirelessly rescued the bumbling secret agent, maxwell smart, from himself, while she simultaneously saved the free world from kaos and its nefarious plots to take over the entire world. kaos was a thinly disguised spoof on the soviet kgb. by assigning me the nickname “99,” my northern friends suggested that i was perhaps too smart for my own good, and not quite smart enough in ways that truly mattered.1 rather than “get smart,” the nickname was an admonishment to “smarten up,” a familiar northern reprimand for lack of maturity and social intelligence with the potential to harm self or other. after high school, marriage, children, divorce, teaching and working all in no particular order, “99” moved to southern canada for graduate school—there are no universities in the canadian north. encumbered with a doctorate, i remained in the south, teaching at a university, getting even smarter in that bookish way of the academy. in 2003, helen balanoff, a researcher with the northwest territories (nwt) literacy council, invited me to be part of a northern research project. given our shared interest in language and literacy, the research questions we lighted on were: what might literacy mean? how might it be practiced in northern communities? what was literacy in these predominantly indigenous communities? before the global reach of multinational corporations and the relentless babble of english? before the heavy weight of the cross, and the dark corners of the churchoperated residential schools? before diamonds, before oil? emily kudlak was from the small arctic community of ulukhaktok, northwest territories. it was she who had peaked helen’s interest in these questions. emily kudlak was, and is still, a tireless community volunteer and a fierce advocate for the survival of inuinnaqtun, the predominant local indigenous language. emily had applied for funds to offer drum dancing and printmaking workshops as local literacy programs but, at the time, the territorial government rejected the proposals on the grounds they didn’t address “literacy.” emily then turned to the nwt literacy council for help. she asked: why isn’t drum dancing literacy? why isn’t printmaking literacy? (chambers & balanoff, 2009). thus, began a lengthy collaboration among emily kudlak and her community, helen balanoff and the nwt literacy council, and the university of lethbridge and myself. chambers: “i was grown up before i was born”     transnational  curriculum  inquiry  7(2)  2010  http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci     6 the research team: alice kaodloak, helen balanoff, emily kudlak, cynthia chambers in this research team made up of “insiders” and “outsiders,” i could not be chief, even with a ph.d. in this research team of northerners and southerners (which now i am technically), the project could not be under my control, the counter-intelligence agency to whom agent 99 and maxwell smart reported. headquarters could not be 123 main street, washington, dc; nor could it be the university of lethbridge. headquarters had to be in the north. and this mission needed local agents. english-speaking graduate students raised and residing in the south would not do; they were not smart enough, not in the right way. we needed community-based researchers and we needed salaries to pay them. after two years of relentless proposal writing, helen balanoff and i secured a few small grants to begin the project: salaries for the community-based researchers and dollars needed to cover the exorbitant costs for travel and accommodation in the arctic (chambers & balanoff, 2009). in the winter of 2004, helen and i journeyed to ulukhaktok, nwt to meet with emily kudlak who arranged for community members to interview us. ulukhaktok is a small community of five hundred, mostly inuinnait and inuvialuit, on victoria island in the arctic archipelago. three hundred miles north of the arctic circle. seventy degrees latitude. seventy degrees north, that is. not that ulukhaktongmiut locate their home in this way. in the 1950s and early 1960s, the bush pilots in my family flew into ulukhaktok (they called it holman island); i went to school with children from holman in aklavik and inuvik; i was in day school but they were in residential school: all saint’s (anglican) and immaculate conception (roman catholic) in aklavik, and stringer hall (anglican) and grollier hall (roman catholic) in inuvik, supervisors in the latter now convicted with sexual abuse of their young charges. but 2004, with helen, was my first trip to the community of ulukhaktok. emily kudlak agreed to be part of the research team if she could work with her aunt, alice kaodloak. emily was re-learning to speak inuinnaqtun and alice kaodloak was a fluent speaker. while emily had grown up mostly in small village of ulukhaktok, alice was from one of the last inuit families to move into town from the land and sea ice; alice’s knowledge of the chambers: “i was grown up before i was born”     transnational  curriculum  inquiry  7(2)  2010  http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci     7 language and “our ways“ would be invaluable to emily and the project. emily kudlak, helen balanoff and i met with representatives from the local school authority, the hamlet council, the inuvialuit settlement regional development corporation and the student council. over tea and snacks, helen and i pitched the project and the community members interviewed us. there were no formal meetings, no protocol agreements were signed; yet the community agreed to the project on the condition that emily kudlak and alice kaodloak were partners in the research team. community members believed that emily and alice’s presence would protect the people’s interest. they agreed to the project if it meant that emily and alice would document elders’ knowledge about the past. and their wisdom. the people knew their elders were smart. the problem is, they said: how do we help our young people be smart like our ancestors were? although a scholarly endeavour, this project offered that rare chance in life, as disco artist maxine nightingale sang, “to get right back to where we started from” (edwards & tubbs, 1975). with this research i found myself right back in the past, learning about a different kind of smart. the kind of smart the world needs now. over the next two years, emily kudlak and alice kaodloak interviewed fourteen ulukhaktok elders in inuinnaqtun. to begin, the four of us designed interview protocols on topics related to local literacies; drum dancing, songs and clothing; sewing and clothing; tool making and use; astronomy, weather, and travelling; storytelling; and names and naming for people and places. these interviews were moderately successful; elders on their own, or in pairs and in groups of three, recalled what they remembered about each topic. then emily and alice labored to translate the interviews into english. reading the english translations of interviews, and elders’ comments, such as “why are you asking me my name when you already know it?” helen and i realized what emily and alice had been perhaps too polite to tell us: “collecting” knowledge on topics following a set of questions, “designed to elicit” maximum knowledge and wisdom, wasn’t smart! it wasn’t how people in ulukhaktok transfer knowledge. the transcripts were as disjointed and stilted as the steps of awkward dance partners struggling to follow an unfamiliar rhythm.2 like maxwell smart and agent “99,” the team needed another, smarter plan! the literacies of ulukhaktok are living literacies, ways that people learn what they need to know and do in their daily lives. at one time, their daily lives were lived entirely on the land, and now they are lived primarily in town. in the past, people learned and practiced these literacies in a context: in particular places, in the midst of a particular life and language. the people were constituted as ulukhaktongmiut as they practiced these literacies (ingold, 2000). we hoped that stories of lives lived would reveal clues to these living literacies so emily and alice went back to the elders of ulukhaktok, and invited each of them in turn to tell their life story. once again, emily and alice translated these stories, recorded in inuinnaqtun, into written english. these english transcripts were only intermittently intelligible to helen balanoff and myself who were continually “lost in translation” (hoffman, 1990). like many non-indigenous researchers before us, we presumed that the elders’ life stories would reveal fully accessible sets of (fixed) meanings that each man and woman had accumulated over his or her lifetime. professional researchers and smarty pants that we were, we supposed that what elders knew from lived experience—and were able to articulate in fluent, and often lyrical and elegant, inuinnaqtun—could be (easily) translated into english. we unconsciously assumed the exchange was equivalent, that a word or idea in inuinnaqtun has a meaningful equivalency in english and chambers: “i was grown up before i was born”     transnational  curriculum  inquiry  7(2)  2010  http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci     8 vice versa. helen and i were oblivious to the surplus of meaning that leaked out of either end of the transaction. we assumed that what the elders knew could be transmitted outside of the context in which it was learned; that, in spite of paulo freire’s warning to the contrary, the elders’ knowledge could be deposited into our empty bank accounts available for withdrawal at a later date. we assumed that the narrator of a life history could explicate what he or she has learned in that life, and perhaps most naively, that researchers, such as ourselves, could decode their wisdom. like someone without hands reading poems in braille. so for several years helen and i have bumbled and fumbled through those english transcripts searching for clues both us more like maxwell smart than agent “99.” but now, it is a different kind of kaos that threaten the entire world: global warming and the melting of the polar seas and the ice caps. irrevocable climate change brought on by the smart money of corporations, greedy bankers and ponzi scheme promoters; the sassy practices of corrupt and ignorant politicians; and the habits of insatiable southern consumers and gullible citizens who bought into world domination by capitalism (anything is better than communism). drawing western societies and economies into debt, as margaret atwood (2008) reminds us, from which there is no default, for which the actual “payback” is unimaginable. “it seems like our earth is getting tired,” sighed mary akhoakhion, one of the ulukhaktok elders (2006-002, 286). “you know how it is when people are getting old and older; well, our earth is getting old, too,” mary said, “and the weather is getting bad very quickly.” of all regions on the planet, it is the arctic, and all its inhabitants, which smarts most intensely from global warming. far away from the southern sites of production and consumption, ulukhaktongmiut watch the ice melt, the polar bears decline, the snow deepen, the temperatures rise. yet, dwelling in the arctic has never been easy for humans or any other beings; ulukhaktongmiut have always needed smarts to dwell in nunakput, what the people call “our land.” and those smarts were both transferred and gifted rather than inherited, as in western notions of intelligence. when describing how the ancestors made inukhuit, or stone structures which often resembled human form, to keep animals out of their food caches, ohkeena (2007003 #079) remarked, “the people back then were smart” and her old friend, taipana (2007-001, #353), concurred: “people back then were unbeatable.” elsie nilgak said, “we can’t top those people from the past.” for ulukhaktongmiut, wisdom is not accumulated like capital or interest on a deposit. nor are human beings naturally developing in civilized darwinian style. rather knowledge and skill, and what it takes to maximize both, seem to be retrospective rather than progressive. describing the variety and ingenuity of the tools of that “our parents, and their parents and the ancestors before them used,” kapotoan said, “making tools, our ancestors were very smart, while us we don’t know how.” when rene oliktoak describes the tiny copper needles the women made and the even tinier stitches those needles made, she said, “people back then— unanminaitut—you couldn’t beat them…today we use these wide needles and our stitches … get too big.”3 tiny stitches help keep clothing waterproof and windproof.4 what is gained with ease is lost in quality. it seems that mediocrity threatens to triumph in the north, as it has in the south.5 perhaps smarts, and the returns on them, are diminishing rather than accumulating. akoakion (2005-003, #349) said, “it seems like we were smart when we were younger, back then. but today we are not smart anymore.” when he was young, the people read the directions chambers: “i was grown up before i was born”     transnational  curriculum  inquiry  7(2)  2010  http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci     9 of drifting snow to find their way in terrible arctic snowstorms. to wayfind (davis, 2009; ingold, 2000) was to visualize the destination before departure and throughout the trip so you could see it even when you couldn’t see it. finding your destination, in the midst of a whiteout: that was smart. akoakhion tells the story of his father, niakoaluk. once egotak, my father, and myself caught a polar bear way out on the sea ice where there is no land to be seen. we were in a storm on our way back and used the snowdrifts formed by the west wind, and the wind direction to get home to pitotak. we came to land right at nauyaat (where our camp was). i thought niakoaluk was very smart.6 smart people learned the names and movement of the stars; they knew how to use the stars to guide them when they travelled, and to tell the time of day in the darkness of winter.7 morris nigiyok said: long ago the people would travel in the dark, using only dogs —no headlight, using only dogs. black, nothing but black. when there are completely no clouds, they would use the stars to guide them chambers: “i was grown up before i was born”     transnational  curriculum  inquiry  7(2)  2010  http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci     10 to their destination. just like a compass to them.8 when these elders were young, there were no two-way radios or telephones, certainly no cell phones or internet. no electronic means of contact across large expanses of sea ice, coastline and land. but people would meet, converge, disperse and meet again, all at predetermined times and destinations. at first, we would travel together; then, when it is time to separate, we would go our own way. we would camp overnight; then, the next day when the weather is fair we would all separate and continue checking our traps. … they had no radios, but they would tell each other that in four days they would meet in the same area. they would meet each other again. people were smart back then.9 today younger inuit rely increasingly on satellite-operated gps to find their way and the internet to predict weather (aporta, 2003). and older inuit are getting, well, older. the elders’ life stories were filled with stories of others, of the people that others looked up to, the ones the people depended on. smart people. they told stories of dancers who were very smart. men like kangoak: “the women would help him sing and kangoak would be their dancer.” or women like mimi: “an old lady who could follow the fiddler and jig even without a partner” (andy akoakhion, 2005-002, #866). these were very smart people: kangoak with his capacity to learn drum dance songs with no pen or mp3 player, and to remember those songs so he could dance long into one winter night and then all through the next without repeating a single song. and mimi, the jigger, with her ability to follow the fiddle and its music, instead of a male partner. very smart, the elders said. taipana tells the story of milukhuk and how the place, ulukhaktok, came by its name. the ancestors knew they could find ulukhahat, the slate material used to make arrowheads and the ulu, or woman’s knife at the site of present-day ulukhaktok. ulu means “woman’s knife” and ulukhaktok means “the place of the material used to make the woman’s knife.” the ancestors knew there was ulukhahat, the flat, soft but sharp rocks, on the large steep cliff next to the present-day town. although the ancestors knew the location of the ulukhahat no one bothered to chambers: “i was grown up before i was born”     transnational  curriculum  inquiry  7(2)  2010  http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci     11 climb in search of them. no one, that is, until joe milukhuk. he dared climb the steep cliff high above the sea and he returned with the rocks used to make the ulu. taipana says, “[milukhuk] must have been smarter than all the rest; he never tumbled down the steep cliff” (2006-005, 398). smart people are agile and courageous; qualities needed to locate and collect materials essential for living. they are skilled at making tools with those materials—knives, needles, iglus, fish hooks, floats and toggles. they are dexterous in using those tools. they knew how to store, maintain and repair the tools needed for living.10 for ulukhaktongmiut, smart people understand what is required to “make a living” in this place. alice cutting orange with ulu inuinnait, like other indigenous peoples, learned to live, and to live well, in the places that sustained them. ulukhaktongmiut call these places nunakput, our land and that includes all the other-than-human beings who live there. and hila, the sphere that encompasses the land: the ocean and tides and all the beings who live there such as the fish and the seals, as well as the sky, and all the beings who inhabit these places, including the birds, the sun, the moon, and the stars. and then there is weather—perhaps the most powerful element in hila, the force from which the people have learned many lessons. smart people learn from experience and adapt to what is both predictable and changing. “our earth is getting old,” mary akoakhion said, “and the weather is getting bad, very quickly.” at the end of a long, and sometimes bitter, doctoral program, i interviewed for a tenuretrack position in qualitative research at ohio state university. near the welcome end to a twoday interview marathon, a distinguished and elderly member of the search committee turned to me and asked: “how did you get to be so smart?” in the end, patti lather, the distinguished feminist scholar, and qualitative researcher, got the job. chambers: “i was grown up before i was born”     transnational  curriculum  inquiry  7(2)  2010  http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci     12 how did ulukhaktongmiut get to be so smart? eugenics aside, in western education, intelligence is generally considered an individual trait. however, ulukhaktok elders referred to the collective smarts of their teachers, the masters: “the ancestors,” the previous generations to whom people today simply cannot hold a candle. clues to how smart the ancestors were and how they got that way are found in the stories: niakoaluk brings home the hunters in a whiteout; milukhuk defies death on the cliffs of ulukhaktok in search of the elusive materials needed to make the ulu. animals are smart, too. people studied the animals carefully, and shared what they learned in stories.11 taipana (2006005, side a: #038) says there are many stories about …our ancestors, their way of life, angayuqapta hivuliita, and the way they hunt, and the animals they see, and their way of hunting the animals… they would tell stories of where the animals have been. these stories are told to the next generation, and to the next generation, so the next generation after next generation can know those stories dogs—the early means of rapid transit—were much smarter than snowmobiles. mary t. okheena told us (2005-012, side b: 329): dogs knew how to follow the weather, even if it is dark out… they knew where to go. they could not get lost dogs would announce the arrival of strangers, particularly dangerous ones. when morris nigiyok was very young, he spotted a polar bear outside the iglu. he immediately yelled for his father to come outside. his father did not hurry because the dogs were not barking a warning. morris’ polar bear turned out to be an arctic hare. that is when nigiyok (2006-003, side a: #300) learned: the dogs will be the first to know chambers: “i was grown up before i was born”     transnational  curriculum  inquiry  7(2)  2010  http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci     13 if a polar bear comes. they will know before me. and the dogs will not keep quiet about it. there are other stories about when the animals “take their hoods off” so human and otherthan-human could speak to each other, a time when animals and humans shared a language, shared their experiences and their stories: shared their smarts. these are stories of transformations where animals turn into humans and conversely, smart and powerful humans can turn into animals (qanuqliqaq havaktut).12 these are the “smart stories,” said andy akoakhion (2005-003. #596), the stories that are “disappearing.” part of being smart is having the power to act, to enact, and to make things happen. to come out on top, or at least alive, in dangerous situations. and part of the path to becoming smart is to listen to and to learn the stories. keeping the stories alive would be really smart. being smart is also a gift, not necessarily a reward from god for the good behaviour of your parents—the opposite of the sins of the father. not really karma, either, not a reward or punishment for the good (or bad) deeds of your soul from a previous lifetime and different bodily manifestation. for ulukhaktongmiut, being smart has more to do with what might be poorly translated in english as reincarnation. families can give a child a path, one that, if followed, may lead the child to being smart. elsie nilgak (2004-001, #016) explains: when a couple is going to have a child, [or] when their child is born, when they want to name the child, either grandmother or grandfather picks… [the] name of a family member that has passed on… giving a baby an atiit, or name of someone who was smart, “helps” the child, gives him a path. as a hunter, a seamstress, someone who treats others well. babies or children “inherit” the traits of their namesake, as well as her life experience and kin relations, her wisdom.13 referring to his namesake, jimmy memogana (2005-01, #928) said, memogana. i have his name. [and so] i was grown up before i was born… when asked why the people named their children in this way, elsie nilgak said matter-offactly, “because a person cannot live without a name” (2004-001, #033). a name of an ancestor gives a child a path and a life. rather than starting fresh at birth, with a name each newborn is chambers: “i was grown up before i was born”     transnational  curriculum  inquiry  7(2)  2010  http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci     14 given the possibility of accessing the smarts of their namesake. naming a child also continues the life of the namesake, keeping alive the wisdom, knowledge, memories, stories and traits of the deceased person. keeps the smarts of several lifetimes in circulation. morris nigiyok (2004016, side a: # 148-172) lost his parents when he was very young. later he wanted to name one of his children named after kongoatohuk, the one who “watched over him and fed him” when he was orphaned. he wanted one of his children to be kongoatohuk’s namesake so he could “keep her” and still “see her.” like morris nigiyok, names may be given in gratitude. families of the namesake may respond in gratitude for the continued life of their loved one, presenting gifts to the newborn.14 smart people pay attention to dreams, and the instructions the dreams may bring. like other knowledge necessary for living smartly, instructions for choosing the best name for a newborn often comes from dreams. a deceased person may appear in a dream and in some way indicate that he or she wants to be, or should be, a namesake. songs come in dreams as well. jean ohkeena (2005-011, #291) tells this story of her late husband, kagyut. william kagyut drumming chambers: “i was grown up before i was born”     transnational  curriculum  inquiry  7(2)  2010  http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci     15 kagyut’s song that is sung often came from his dream. when he returned from the hospital (he was hospitalized in edmonton at the charles camsell hospital for ten years with tb), no wonder he was going to get better, the dream that he had, he made it into a song. in his dream, this person that he did not know was teaching him this song, so when he awoke he made that song that he learnt in his dream. the dream not only gifted kagyut with a song but with the healing he needed after a long illness. okheena (2005-011, #308) continues: the first part of the song got him back on his feet. the last part of the song is about his catches during his hunts. he added those so he would be able to get back on his feet. …it seemed like he was not going to get cured, but he was cured chambers: “i was grown up before i was born”     transnational  curriculum  inquiry  7(2)  2010  http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci     16 and around for many years afterwards. namegiver concept map but an atiit, a name, is not like a password that activates computer software. newborns are smart because they are grown up before they are born, and because they are so smart they have a say in their name; they have what poststructuralists might call “agency.” a baby can reject his name (atiqluaqpakpa); she can cry or be sick until she is given a different name. if the new name is acceptable, the crying will cease, the illness will subside. kapotoan (2004-008, side b: #732) tells this story: my first born didn’t survive, the infant was a boy. he didn’t live long. the next one was elsie. higona. her name was poinik. egyokhiak gave her that name. he had named her after one of his parents chambers: “i was grown up before i was born”     transnational  curriculum  inquiry  7(2)  2010  http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci     17 so they can have a namesake, but it was very hard. she didn’t seem like she was going to survive; she always stopped breathing. she was like that for a long time… when the minister, mr. sperry, came he would put her above the coleman stove, where it is warm, keeping her there …until she would start to breathe again. she was like that for a long time. there were a lot of people down there at kitikat waiting for spring. it was around may. algiak and the minister had come in. while they were there she kept having trouble breathing. people were all at my tent. the old man, unayak, finally started to yell from their tent (to ours)… “give her another name. name her higona.” he was yelling loudly, “name her higona. she wants a name.” after they gave her the name higona, she did a lot better. chambers: “i was grown up before i was born”     transnational  curriculum  inquiry  7(2)  2010  http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci     18 mabel nigiyok interview with emily and alice even before a child was born, the elders said that parents would amaaqtuq, a practice which could be roughly translated as “modelling”.15 parents would rise early in the morning, before others are awake, to work, do chores and help others. in the darkness and stillness of early morning, parents would do the very things they wanted the baby to eventually learn to do, things the child would use throughout his lifetime. parents would practice those traits they wanted their children to have. if a son was born, it was the mother’s responsibility to amaaqtuq, (to practice cooking, cleaning, hunting, and helping others) for the baby. if a daughter was born, these responsibilities fell to the father. kapotoan remarked on the sacrifice that parents made to lay down a good path for the child. “they don’t get tired,” she said, acknowledging both the stamina of the previous generations and the toll this practice must have taken in spite of their endurance. kapotoan wasn’t sure she could parent in this way: “i would be so frustrated!” but she acknowledges the wisdom and steadfastness of “our parents’ parents, and their parents’ parents before them” (elsie nilgak, 2004-016, #421). “they were so smart…following their beliefs and traditional ways from way back. that is how they were” (nigiyok, 2004-016, #416). people tried to borrow or capture the smarts of animals, on behalf of their children. elders, such as kalvak, a renowned shaman and healer of the kangiryuarmiut, attached atatat (poorly translated in english as “amulet”) to the sleeves and hoods of the first clothes of small children: a loon’s throat for a singer, a ptarmigan’s beak for a great ptarmigan hunter, a weasel for a light-footed drum dancer.16 atatat transferred the powers and smarts from an accomplished human to a newborn: scrap material from the work of a renowned seamstress were attached so the girl would grow up to be a great sewer, miniature kamiks (called “mukluks” in english) so she would grow up to make the perfect tiny stitches necessary for waterproof shoes. atatat are chambers: “i was grown up before i was born”     transnational  curriculum  inquiry  7(2)  2010  http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci     19 strong and they give strength and power to small that can last a lifetime (ohkeena, 2005-011, #844). the people from back then were very strong, people were very strong back then, right? must have been very strong. they had very good helpers (amulets). (nilgak, 2005-011, #455) adults can help children become smart, to build their skills and confidence. they can give newborns a strong name and a powerful helper (an amulet); parents can ammayuq—practice the important character traits they want their children to have. adults also train children in specific tasks, particularly by giving them opportunities to practice. from the time children were young enough to play outside they practiced making snow blocks and building iglus “because this was not learnt easily” (akoakhion, 2005-002, side a: #381). young girls began by sewing small items such as doll clothes and mitts; later they progressed to larger and more difficult projects. good teachers combined show and tell. taipana (2005-007, side b: #879) describes how she learned to sew as a young girl: kongoatuhuk and agligoitok were very good teachers. they showed me how to make the marks with the ulu, woman’s knife, on the area where i will cut by, because there were no pencils… [they’d] tell me not to make the stitches too tight. how do you say it in english? “don’t wrinkle it.” young children “tagged along” with fathers and grandfathers to learn how to hunt and trap. mary akoakhion (2006-001, side a: #457) said, i would follow either my grandfather or my father when they are going hunting, and that is how i learned… chambers: “i was grown up before i was born”     transnational  curriculum  inquiry  7(2)  2010  http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci     20 mary akoakhion learned to trap for fur by following her mother on her short trap line near the camp. while mary akoakhion’s first kill was a seal, ,most young hunters start with small birds, and progress to small animals, like rabbits, and then on to big game.17 andy akoakhion explains: when a person follows their father on hunting trips like polar bear hunts, it is like this; their father would let them shoot their first bear. when there are three or two bears they were taught to shoot the cub. outside of tukhuk, my father shot the mother bear and he had me shoot the cub. girls are smart enough to learn to hunt and they are taught in the same way. taipana (2005-007, side b: #906) learned to hunt before she learned to sew: my parents didn’t have any male children, so when i got old enough to carry a gun and bow and arrow, my father and my uncle would let me hunt small animals like birds, rabbits and others. they would bring me closer to the animals and let me try to make a kill. that is how they taught me, so i would try my best. i was taught the hunting skills first. taima ingilrat pivaktuniqtut: it was the way of the ancestors, they taught their young apprentices how to walk and walk, without giving up, how to find inukhuit (stone structures) and chambers: “i was grown up before i was born”     transnational  curriculum  inquiry  7(2)  2010  http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci     21 other signposts left to mark important places, such as fishing holes, camping spots, river crossings, as well as caches of food and supplies. ida kuneyuna describes how she learned. taima ingilrat pivaktuniqtut, that was the way of our ancestors —walking, walking and going fishing even during the winter, where the markers are that tell you where to fish, when they get to the places where they know. my adoptive father taught me by letting me walk down onto the ice and he would stay way up on the land. and then, when i got very small he would gesture with his arms, to let me stop. that is where we would make fishing holes. even after the young were able to hunt larger animals, their apprenticeship continued.18 elders told their sons about ice conditions and the dangers of travel. young people learned to listen to what their elders had to say. akoakhion (2005-002, side a, #495) was critical of the modern order where teaching is a profession, rather than a social relation among master, apprentice, the places they inhabit and the other beings with whom they dwell. today, he said children follow the words of professional teachers rather than their parents; they are learning to dominate rather than participate. back then, our parents would lecture us on pitquhikhaptingnik, what will be our ways, like scolding us. but today children don’t get scolding from their parents. because they have teachers now they do not get scolding from their parents, and now children are running chambers: “i was grown up before i was born”     transnational  curriculum  inquiry  7(2)  2010  http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci     22 their parents’ lives, bossing them around. back then, we were not the bosses; we followed their words. we would hunt following their words. we didn’t do what ever we wanted ihumainaqtungitugut. when the elders were young, the smarts that a person needed to make a living, to support his family, were learned from others. although some elders spoke about being “self-taught,” these were not the skills at which they excelled. mary t. okheena (2005-012, side a: #381) attributed her present-day difficulty with sewing to how she was taught when she was young: [my adoptive mother] would try to teach me sew, how to make the stitches. she would tell me, ‘you are very hard to teach.’ no wonder sometimes i have a hard time trying to sew. the elders expressed profound gratitude for the adults in their life who took the time and had the patience to teach them and to teach them well. noah akhiatak (2005-015, side a: #144369) was an orphan and so when mona, his older sister, began living with kuneyuna, he was both relieved and grateful. [kuneyuna] was to be my brother-inlaw and i really cared and loved him because i had no male to teach me hunting skills. when they got together, i was very thankful [to him] for teaching me. chambers: “i was grown up before i was born”     transnational  curriculum  inquiry  7(2)  2010  http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci     23 i am not sure how old i was [but] …i was very thankful when he started teaching me because i had no male teacher. although their elders gave them plenty of direct instruction, they also were given plenty of opportunity to play and to learn on their own. sometimes there were very few children in a camp, and so the times when families gathered together at one place were very important for the children as well as the adults. children played at games where they honed the skills and smarts they would need to support themselves one day. taipana (2005-007, side b: #799) explains: they would play together, games like pretending to be a wolf, hide and seek, rope skipping, string games, also other games. then, during the spring and summer, we would pretend to make kikhuk, fire on rocks, and play house with rocks, making them look like a campsite… although women in the past were so smart they delivered their own babies, the elders said quana—“thank you”— for western medicine and doctors, for social programs, employment and the security of food supplies. they acknowledge that life is a fragile and risky venture for which all the best efforts and intentions of parents cannot guarantee a win.19 and they remembered the hard times when parents were forced to choose between the survival of those infants with a name and a namesake, and the burden of those without. mothers often had to “throw their newborns” away, never able to forget the sound of the infant left crying for his name.20 as important as courage and steadfastness, as critical as stamina, dexterity, and ingenuity, as indispensible as craft and skill, the elders told us that being smart is about living well. it is about loving and being loved, about caring for one another. it is about relations and relationships. when parents practiced amaaqtuq (see above) with newborn babies, they taught these things as well. contemporary parents may not always rise early to do chores as a way to set a path for their newborns. but like their parents and grandparents before them, contemporary ulukhaktongmiut are still devoted parents, always showing babies, toddlers, and young children affection and chambers: “i was grown up before i was born”     transnational  curriculum  inquiry  7(2)  2010  http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci     24 practicing infinite patience. jean briggs (1970), the eminent anthropologist, memorialized the consequences of losing patience, especially with young children, in her classic ethnography of an inuit camp entitled never in anger. for inuit, open displays of anger suggest a lack of selfcontrol and constitute a serious threat to group safety and cohesion. brigg was ostracized and without the social and economic support of her adopted inuit family, she could not survive in the camp. her fieldwork was over. for inuinnait, you must be as patient and respectful of children as you would be of adults because, as jimmy memogana said, children “are grown up before they are born.” the child you encounter is not only a son or a daughter but also a namesake, perhaps a deceased grandmother or great-uncle. inuit ancestors are not dead; instead they live on, happy, healthy, and never hungry, accessible from the realm where they now dwell. when aghalingiak (the northern lights) flicker, you see the ancestors playing a never-ending game of ball.21 smart people know the importance of respecting other beings, particularly animals, such as the caribou and the polar bear. death transforms animals, as it does humans, but it does not destroy them. if treated properly at the time of death, large animals make themselves available to be killed again, their flesh, bones and hides continuously available for human consumption and use. treating animals respectfully means disposing of their bones properly (kapatoan, 2006-004, #032). morris nigiyok tells the story of a time when starvation came, “when the land ran out of food.”22 morris and kapotoan were newly wed, and there were so few seal that their dogs were starving. the couple resorted to feeding their sled dogs the sealskin bags they used to store and carry food; with this sacrifice, they saved five dogs out of a team of eleven. eventually, morris and his hunting partner tracked and killed a polar bear. the hunters knew they must never feed polar bear heads to dogs but morris’s partner tossed the head of the kill to their famished huskies; they gnawed and crushed the bear’s skull into tiny slivers and fragments of bone. the polar bear had his revenge; kapotoan (2006-004, side b: #32) laments: “from there it did not go well and we had [even more] hardship…” for inuinnait, human mistreatment of the larger animals precipitates hardship, and even disaster. the people must never violate the protocols between humans and these animals—even in times of great hardship. in the arctic, smart beings know the power of words. people learn to speak carefully and respectfully to, and about, all beings, one another, as well as, animals. for inuit, animals are smart and powerful beings: they understand human language and they can hear across great distances. animals, such as polar bears, hear and understand what people say, know what humans do and how they behave (keith & arqviq, 2009).“large animals can hear you,” said kapatoan. “yeah,” her husband, nigiyok, agreed, “you must not talk badly about them” (nigiyok, 2006-004, #041-48). when hunters search for polar bear, the people waiting for their return must be careful in their speech. they must not say things like: “maybe they caught a polar bear” (taipana oliktoak, 2005-007, side a: #225). people must not compliment polar bears on how good they look or how good they taste. a person mustn’t brag about her ability to hunt a polar bear or patronize these animals by calling them “cute.” smart people respect the sensitivity, intelligence, and power of other beings. there are many protocols for showing respect and gratitude for the animals who give up their lives so humans may eat and have clothing. in fall and early winter, for example, the people camped at various sites along the coastline fishing and hunting. once the snow was the right depth and texture, they built iglus and worked on the caribou hides. sometime after the sun had chambers: “i was grown up before i was born”     transnational  curriculum  inquiry  7(2)  2010  http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci     25 set for the winter, they moved out onto the sea ice, where they set up camp to hunt seals and the occasional polar bear.23 but the group would not make the move out onto the sea ice until the women had finished sewing the winter clothes because, out of respect for the caribou, the people cannot “sew caribou hides…on the sea ice” (taipana, 2007-002, side b: #031); they cannot “work on them again until the sun returns…aqliktuuniqtu those were the beliefs they followed” (okheena, 2004-010, side a: # 860-873). animals offer themselves up to humans for food and materials (ingold, 2000), and in return the people are grateful and treat animals with the agreed upon respect. in nunakput, humans depend on each other as well as the animals and other beings for their survival. smart people do not assume that their survival and successes are individual achievements; they recognize that in spite of their best efforts, life ultimately depends on the contribution of beings and forces other than human, animals as well as hila, the atmosphere, weather and celestial beings. for example, if it is well built, a snow house can remain warm with only a seal blubber lamp for warmth and light. to build a warm snow house, people must know how and where to find the right snow—not too old, too new, too hard, or too soft.24 jimmy kudlak (2005-014, side b: #074) remembers the snow house at night: when it is nighttime, the snow houses would be warm. when people talked about the snow houses getting warm, they would say, “the ones below us have lit up their lamps.” …that is what i have heard. i have never forgotten it. i know of this from when i can remember. i know that from my parents. both the sun and the moon provide light, and their conditions predict weather.25 smart people know how to predict the movement and abundance of animals from the phase and direction of the moon (nigiyok, 2006-003, side b; 75-100). with few wristwatches or calendars, the ones from before …tell time only by the stars, chambers: “i was grown up before i was born”     transnational  curriculum  inquiry  7(2)  2010  http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci     26 when night falls and when daybreak is near, when daylight will be getting longer. the significance of these celestial beings is memorialized in stories about their origins. the people acknowledge their dependence on these beings; they cannot take the sun’s return each year for granted. egotak (2005-009, side a: #013) recalls: when the moon shows up in the wintertime, the women who went to get meat, they would do this (hand gestures) to their pots because the moon is a man. when the sun shows up for the first time, they would run towards it and put out some meat for it, because the sun is a woman. they would also throw some blubber from their stone lamps. the life stories of the elders of ulukhaktok remind us that human weakness and folly can precipitate hardship at any time. at the heart the elders’ wisdom is the knowledge that while smart individuals accomplish much, survival is a collective endeavour that requires collective wisdom. as animals share their corporeal and spiritual being with humans, humans are called to share what they receive from the animals with their relations and neighbours. taipana (2004003, side a: #200) and elsie nilgak (2004-003, side a: #204-) reminisce about their parents and the people of that generation: they were all related to each other. they were all happy with each other and would share everything… they would share their food chambers: “i was grown up before i was born”     transnational  curriculum  inquiry  7(2)  2010  http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci     27 until the weather was good enough to go hunting. if one did not have enough material to make clothing they would get some from others. …but nowadays people cannot get anything for free. (taipana)26 family members would gather across town in a large family snowhouse, at nipalakyok’s. they would gather food together and share with all and eat together. (nilgak) important as it is to be generous with food, materials and teachings, it is equally important to accept gracefully the generosity of others. children are taught not refuse food or drink when it is offered. olifie told the story of his first seal kill, and how his atiaquk (the person who gave him his inuinnaqtun name) invited olifie over to his place to eat and celebrate olifie’s (2005-005, side a: #159)first kill. [when] kahak, my atiaqhik, found out [about my first seal kill] he asked me to come over. because he was my atiaqhik, he would always feed me. he asked me to come over, really asking me to come over [insisting i come over]; chambers: “i was grown up before i was born”     transnational  curriculum  inquiry  7(2)  2010  http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci     28 i went over to their tent. it was such a happy and shy time! he was really telling me to eat [insisting i eat]. although i did not want to eat, i started to eat at their place. food sharing is smart for many reasons. it renews relationships and it ensures that as many as possible survive. stories remind the people that stinginess (or thoughtlessness) is potentially fatal. after the caribou were no longer scare, morris nigiyok became a successful hunter. then he experienced hard times again. upon reflection, morris (2006-004, side a: #329) remembered that he neglected to share food when he had it; and he neglected to share with two men, in particular, who had the power to teach him a lesson. …at the time, i caught lots of caribou. but i did not bring my two grandfathers any meat when they were camped out on the sea ice. i did not take any caribou meat to them and i had hardship after that. …back then, when one does not get any meat (from a hunter) one will give hardship to the hunter. that was the way they were, hivuliit, our ancestors. 27 chambers: “i was grown up before i was born”     transnational  curriculum  inquiry  7(2)  2010  http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci     29 all beings are flawed, and even smart people make mistakes so it is important to have compassion oneself and for others, particularly during times of difficulty. in the interviews, the elders laughed and were often wistful for the good times of their childhood and life in nunakput, but they did not romanticize the past. noah akhiatak (2006-015, side a: 037) remembers a time when the seals were scarce. it was always blowing snow and bad weather. we had no more food …my older sister made broth from an old sealskin bag that she stored food in. when we had broth we were very grateful because we were quite hungry… and [after the broth] our stomachs felt so good. during that period of starvation, someone killed a single seal and shared the meat with everyone in the camp. akhiatak continues his story: i brought meat to hologak and akhok. when i went in [to their iglu], akhok was very happy when she saw fresh blood from a seal. …she was very grateful. they had no more food …i have not forgotten that… noah concluded his life story by saying: “life is hard, life is on its own.” the elders’ stories remind the present generation of the hardships that befall people when their food source disappears: life is much harder without the seals, without the polar bear and without the caribou. the elders’ experiences warn us that such terrible events from the past can occur again. elsie nilgak (2004-002, side b: #341-345) told the researchers: after the caribou came back, there was plenty of caribou; chambers: “i was grown up before i was born”     transnational  curriculum  inquiry  7(2)  2010  http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci     30 then recently the caribou got scarce [again]. when the caribou came back, there were caribou, but now caribou are scarce again. taryukutli ai. for ulukhaktokmiut—like many people throughout the world—longevity is prized. being smart can increase one’s chances of longevity. so can being kind and generous. okheena (2005-011, side b: #254) tells the story of how she earned her longevity, how her kindness, and that of her older brother, was rewarded. there was a noise from a nalaktaq (a springtime iglu) close by. a person was making a lot of noise, someone who was sick, making a lot of noise from pain. my brother and i heard that person. …when we went inside her place, it was kitaaluk lying in her blankets in pain, making a lot of noise like she was going to die. …she must have had a very high fever …she said, “give me water, i am very thirsty.” …she put out her arm and asked for water …that i have not forgotten. elgayak, my older brother, … gave her the cup of water and she drank it all. after, she said, “some more.” she drank all the water again. after she drank water, she was able to talk. she said this to us— chambers: “i was grown up before i was born”     transnational  curriculum  inquiry  7(2)  2010  http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci     31 “thank you very much to both of you for giving me water when i was very thirsty. may you live a long life.” that is why we got old. how smart are we, contemporary citizens of the falling western empires and failing post capitalist economies? how smart are we, really? the elders’ life stories tell us that the arctic has never been an easy ride for humans; ulukhaktokmiut have always needed smarts to live in nunakput. the elders of ulukhaktok are in awe—not of gps, the snowmobile, or stick-frame houses heated with an oil furnace; they are in awe of their parents and their ancestors. they punctuated their stories with: “the people back then, they were really smart.” “we can’t top them.”28 “back then,” as the ulukhaktok time marker goes, smart people followed the direction of drifting snow to reach their destination in an arctic storm. finding their way, in a whiteout: now that’s smart. the stars guided their travel on clear nights, and told them the time of day when there was no day. they could read the sun and the moon to predict changes in the weather. smart people paid attention to dreams, and the instructions they bring. like the best namesake for a newborn. like a song that will heal the singer. they showed animals the deepest respect. and their children intense affection. they cached tools and food. built inukshuks to mark the spot. waited for hours without moving at seal holes on the ice. sang and danced through dark winter nights. walked for endless days and through thick clouds of mosquitoes to the caribou calving grounds. they crafted elegant tools, used them dexterously and maintained them meticulously. with fine copper needles they sewed tiny stitches to keep out water and wind. staying warm and dry is an art form and a necessity of life. humans don’t have a corner on smarts, either. parents attached amulets to a baby’s clothing. hoping the animal would gift the child with its traits. a weasel so she may be lightfooted; a loon’s throat so he may sing. there was a time when animals would “take their hoods off” and speak to humans and share their smarts. polar bears still understand human speech. they can hear disrespect from great distances. caribou, too. they want their bones and hides treated with respect. wendell berry (cayley, 2008) says the primary responsibility of the human species is to adapt to the places where they dwell. not to make the place, and the beings who already live there, adapt to humans. there are consequences when humans ignore their collective agreement with the animals and the other beings. one of them is withdrawal of services. so how smart are we, really? when we were very young, the elders said, we remember a time when the caribou were “scarce.”29 the caribou disappeared when the rifle appeared. others killed caribou taking only their hides, leaving the carcasses and bones to rot. not smart. not part of the agreement. “caribou wish their bones respected,” kapatoan told us. back then, no caribou meant no sinew for sewing or making bows; no fur for winter parkas and pants, for dance clothing; no hides for bedding and packing heavy loads; no legs to chambers: “i was grown up before i was born”     transnational  curriculum  inquiry  7(2)  2010  http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci     32 make shoes, winter mitts and tool cases; no antlers to make hide scrapers and adzes, or sled runners and snow knives; no knee joints for the mouthpiece on a bow drill; no calf skins for children’s clothing; no skins for the drum; no skins to paint with ochre; no rumen, no liver, no nutrients; no fat; no fresh blood soaked in snow to quench thirst and hunger, to energize. no caribou meant no meat—no food.30 now the caribou are disappearing again. mary akoakion (2006-002, side a: #275-293) told us: the ocean does not freeze too much any more. during this winter, it is not very cold. and last winter was not cold at all. …seems like the earth is tipping over to one side… our earth is getting old, too and the weather is getting bad very quickly. seems like our earth is getting tired. listening carefully to the elders’ life histories contemporary audiences learn that people “back then” studied the world carefully. and they shared what they learned through stories. and those stories were “smart, too,” said andy akoakhion. but, these “smart stories” are “disappearing,” along with the sea ice and the caribou. smart people pay attention to what is around them. learn to watch and listen. they remember what they see and hear. paying attention, listening to these elders, remembering their stories, that would be really smart. because their stories tell us about the kind of smart that the tired, old earth needs. i’m 99% sure that i haven’t got those kind of smarts. yet. chambers: “i was grown up before i was born”     transnational  curriculum  inquiry  7(2)  2010  http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci     33 bluffs of ulukhaktok references aporta, claudio. (2003). new ways of mapping: gps mapping software to plot place names and trail in igloolik (nunavut). arctic, 56(4), 321-327. atwood, margaret. (2008). payback: debt as metaphor and the shadow side of wealth. toronto: house of anansi press. badiou, alain. (2007). the century. cambridge: polity press. briggs, jean. (1970). never in anger: portrait of an eskimo family. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. cayley, david. (producer). (2008, january 16th). how to think about science: part 8, wendell berry. [radio broadcast and podcast]. in bernie. lucht (executive producer), ideas. chambers: “i was grown up before i was born”     transnational  curriculum  inquiry  7(2)  2010  http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci     34 toronto, on, canada: canadian broadcasting corporation. podcast retrievable from http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/features/science/index.html#episode8 chambers, cynthia m., & balanoff, helen. (2009). translating “participation” from north to south: a case against intellectual imperialism in social science research. in dip kapoor & steven jordan (eds.), education, participatory action research and social change: international perspectives (pp. 73-88). new york: palgrave macmillan. collignon b. & therrien m. (eds). 2009. orality in the 21st century: inuit discourse and practices. proceedings of the 15th inuit studies conference. paris: inalco. available at <http://www.inuitoralityconference.com> davis, wade. (2009). the wayfinders: why ancient wisdom matters in the modern world. toronto: house of anansi press. edwards, j. vincent, & tubbs, pierre. (songwriters). (1975). right back where we started from [single song recording]. united kingdom: united artists. gardner, howard. (1983). frames of mind: the theory of multiple intelligences. new york: basic books. keith, darren, & arqvik, jerry. (2009). taima’na uqamaqattangitlutit: the polar bears can hear: consequences of words and actions in the central arctic. in collignon b. & therrien m. (eds). 2009. orality in the 21st century: inuit discourse and practices. proceedings of the 15th inuit studies conference. paris: inalco. available at <http://www.inuitoralityconference.com>. ulukhaktok literacies research project. (2009). pihuaqtiuyugut: we are the long distance walkers. yellowknife, nwt: nwt literacy council/inkit publishing. noble, charles. (2009). sally o: selected poems and manifesto. saskatoon, sk: thistledown press. stern, pamela. (1999). learning to be smart: an exploration of the culture of intelligence in a canadian inuit community. american anthropologist, 10(3), 502-514. sternberg, robert j. (1985). beyond iq: a triarchic theory of human intelligence. cambridge: cambridge university press.                                                                                                                 1  in  northern  indigenous  communities,  people  expect  that  as  children  mature  into  adults,   they  will  “learn  to  be  smart,”  that  is  to  be  competent  and  creative,  to  have  bodily-­‐ kinesthetic  and  spatial  intelligence,  as  well  as  personal  or  social  intelligence.  people  who   grow  older  but  do  not  mature—that  is,  do  not  learn  these  complex  and  interrelated   intelligences—need  to  “smarten  up.”  sometimes  people  in  communities  take  it  upon   themselves  to  educate  outsiders,  like  me,  who  do  not  know  how  to  behave  and  participate   chambers: “i was grown up before i was born”     transnational  curriculum  inquiry  7(2)  2010  http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci     35                                                                                                                 in  locally  appropriate  ways.  in  the  north,  humor,  including  teasing,  is  an  appropriate  way  of   helping  someone  to  “smarten  up.”  see  stern  (1999)  for  more  about  what  intelligence   means  in  ulukhaktok  using  two  theories  of  implicit  intelligence:  gardiner’s  (1983/1993)   multiple  intelligences  (linguistic,  logical-­‐mathematical,  spatial,  musical,  bodily-­‐kinesthetic,   interpersonal  and  intrapersonal)  and  sternberg’s  (1985)  triarchic  model  of  intelligence   where  competences  is  a  product  of  innate  ability,  social  and  physical  environment,  and   experience.   2  most  if  not  all  these  elders  had  been  interviewed  before  as  “research”  is  part  of  the  local   economy,  with  as  many  as  six  southern  researchers  in  the  village  in  the  summer  of  2007.   the  point  to  the  elders’  questions  and  implied  critique  was  that  while  southern  researchers   did  not  know  better,  emily  and  alice  should.  what  can  be  asked  and  how  in  an  “interview”   or  “conversation”  is  dictated  as  much  by  the  relationship  between  the  conversational   partners  as  by  the  topic.       3  rene  oliktoak  (2005-­‐010  #086).   4  jean  taipana  tells  the  story  of  how  manoyok  always  wanted  his  aunt,  jean’s  mother,  to   sew  his  clothing  because  her  stitches  were  small  keeping  the  clothes  windproof  and   waterproof  (2006-­‐006,  side  b:  #280).       5  the  idea  of  the  triumph  of  mediocrity  arriving  in  the  west  during  the  last  century  is  from   alain  badiou’s  the  century  (cambridge:  polity  press,  2007).  i  first  came  across  reference  to   this  in  charles  noble’s  sally  o:  selected  poems  and  manifesto  (thistle  down  press,  2009).     6  andy  akoakhion  (2005-­‐003,  #393).   7  see  the  interviews  with  elsie  nilgak  (2004-­‐018,  #440)  and  jimmy  kudlak  (2005-­‐014,  side   b:  #  065-­‐071).   8  morris  nigiyok,  (2006-­‐003,  side  b,  #143).   9  noah  akhiatak,  (life  history,  2005-­‐015,  #300-­‐360).   10  “some  people  that  have  relatives,  they  know  the  lifestyle  of  the  deceased  person,  the  way   he/she  hunted  and  their  traits  to  the  people  .  .  .”  (elsie  nilgak)…”if  it  was  a  female   (deceased  person)  they  would  remember  the  way  that  person’s  traits  such  as,  if  she  was  a   good  worker  or  a  good  seamstress.  they  would  tell  stories  amongst  themselves  about  her   traits”  (rene  taipana).  (interview  with  rene  taipana  &  elsie  nilgak,  2004-­‐001,  #148).   11  “back  then,  the  people  knew  a  lot  about  the  animals.  they  have  talked  about  them  from   the  time  i  can  remember”  (jimmy  kudlak,  2005-­‐013,  side  a:  #430).   12  jean  okheena  kagyut  tells  the  stories  of  humans  that  turn  themselves  into  foxes   (storytelling,  2006-­‐006,  side  b:  #034).   13  see  interview  with  mabel  nigiyok,  jean  (ohkeena/okhealuk)  kagyut.  tools  and  shelters,   2004-­‐007,  #205).   14  “you  know  it  is  just  like  the  generation  today,  when  one  of  your  relatives  names  their   child  after  one  of  your  immediate  family  members,  you  would  buy  them  clothing,  pampers   or  a  small  gift,  but  in  our  ancestors’  time,  before  we  were  born,  there  was  no  material   clothing  that  was  ready  to  use,  (so)  when  a  child  was  already  named,  the  relative  of  that   namesake  would  then  get  them  something”  (rene  taipana).  “a  way  of  saying  ‘thank  you’”   chambers: “i was grown up before i was born”     transnational  curriculum  inquiry  7(2)  2010  http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci     36                                                                                                                 (elsie  nilgak).  “to  use  as  pampers  or  something  to  cover  up  their  body”  (rene  taipana).   “because  they  are  thankful  that  their  family  member  has  been  named  through  a  child”   (elsie  nilgak).  “same  tradition  as  today”  (rene  taipana).  (interview  with  rene  taipana  &   elsie  nilgak,  2004-­‐001,  075-­‐079).   15  the  interview  is  not  clear  about  whether  amaaqtuq  was  with  new-­‐borns  only  or  goes  on   during  the  pregnancy.  mabel  nigiyok  (2004-­‐015,  #427)  said:  “parents  would  teach  their   children  the  beliefs  and  traditions  that  they  followed  once  they  found  out  their   offspring/child  was  expecting.”  this  suggests  that  the  practice  began  before  the  birth.   16  for  more  information  on  atatat  (amulets)  see  the  interview  with  ohkeena  (2006-­‐006,   side  b:  301),  with  taipana  (2005-­‐010,  side  a:  125)  and  with  nilgak  (2006-­‐006,  side  b:   301).   17  gender  was  not  an  absolute  categorical  difference;  nor  was  it  used  as  a  hard-­‐and-­‐fast   criterion  for  determining  which  life-­‐skills  a  child  would  learn  or  master.  women  often   hunted  and  men  learned  to  cook  and  sew.  ida  kuneyuna  (2005-­‐005,  side  a:  #36)0,  in  her   life  history  explains,  she  learned  to  hunt  not  sew:   when  the  ducks  and  other  animals  started  to  arrive,  my  adoptive  parent  would  not  let   me  sleep  in  as  much.  he  sure  taught  me  a  lot  about  hunting.  that  was  the  first  skill   that  i  learnt  without  learning  how  to  sew  or  other  skills.  i  was  not  taught  how  to  sew.     18  in  an  interview  with  rene  taipana  oliktoak  (2005-­‐010,  side  a:  #186)  about  traditional   clothing,  she  described  this  gradual,  way  of  teaching.     the  father  would  try  to  let  him  hit  the  small  game  and  kill  it,  to  see  if  he  can  kill  it.   back  then  the  word  was  tuqutikahiniariaha.  and  then  they  would  let  them  try  to  kill   bigger  game  later  on.  they  do  not  teach  them  everyday,  but  would  teach  them  every   other  day.     19  “but  some  ladies  deliver  babies  with  no  helpers.  they  are  smart,  and  tough,”  said  mabel   nigiyok.   20  jean  okheena  kagyut  (life  history,  #1,  2004-­‐010,  side  a:  #044)  remembered:   long  ago  they  gave  birth  to  children  even  when  they  were  busy  doing  things.  my   mother  was  herding  caribou  with  napayualuk,  my  father’s  younger  sister,  when  she   gave  birth  just  out  there.  she  went  into  labour  out  there.  they  were  going  to  herd   caribou  to  the  blinds.  she  went  into  labour  so  they  delivered  the  child.  must  have   been  my  older  sibling.  but  when  my  mother  and  napayualuk  were  leaving  the  baby,   she  cried  like  an  older  baby  and  not  like  a  new  born,  left  in  a  crevice.  she  must  have   wanted  the  name  okhealuk.  they  have  told  of  that  story.   in  a  future  interview  on  storytelling,  okheena  said:     they  had  ways  like  that  all  right:  throwing  away  their  children.  throwing  them  away,   because  they  travelled  all  the  time,  always  walking  on  the  land  and  never  staying  in   one  place.  they  (the  babies)  were  on  the  way.  that  is  why  some  people  had  very  few   children.  (2006-­‐006;  side  a:  ##170).     in  this  interview  she  explains  how  she  was  “picked”  to  survive  and  be  raised  while  others   of  her  siblings  were  not.     chambers: “i was grown up before i was born”     transnational  curriculum  inquiry  7(2)  2010  http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci     37                                                                                                                 21  interview  with  elsie  nilgak  and  kapotoan  (mabel  nigiyok)  on  astronomy  (2004-­‐018,  side   b:  #648-­‐707).     22  annie,  emily  kudluk’s  aunt,  described  a  time  from  her  childhood  when  they  lived  on   rabbits  for  an  entire  winter,  it  was  a  time  “when  the  land  ran  out  of  food”  she  said.  she  told   this  story  to  helen  balanoff  and  myself  while  we  were  eating  at  the  coop  hotel  in   ulukhaktok.   23  in  the  interview  with  elsie  nilgak  and  kapotoan  (mabel  nigiyok)  on  25  november  2004,   emily  began  the  interview  by  commenting  that  sun  was  “already  disappearing.”  in  his  life   history,  andy  akoakhion  (2005-­‐002,  side  a:  #005)  noted  that  people  “they  must  have   started  to  travel  (onto  the  ice)  by  the  end  of  january,  beginning  of  february.”  other  elders   reported  the  move  would  take  place  around  the  winter  solstice  or  christmas.     24    morris  nigiyok  identified  six  different  types  of  snow:   the  snow  all  had  separate  names.  some  for  snow  houses,  for  tea,  qiquktutikhamutlu.   they  were  not  the  same.  they  did  not  make  snow  houses  with  any  type  of  snow  long   ago.  they  would  go  looking  at  the  snow  and  go  through  it  with  a  harpoon.  they  could   tell  what  type  of  snow  it  was.  when  they  find  the  right  type  of  snow,  then  they  would   build  a  snow  house.  and  then  down  there  on  the  ice,  they  would  have  different  types   of  snow  for  tea.  then  they  had  a  different  type  of  snow  for  umiktuut.  it  was  a  different   type  of  snow.  also  the  houses  used  to  drip  back  then.  they  would  make  the  snow  stick   to  the  snow  house  to  make  the  dripping  stop.  that  type  of  snow  is  also  different  from   the  other  snow.  it  is  called  nipitaaq  (base  word  nipi,  to  stick  and  also  voice).  it’s  got  to   be  really  hard  snow,  right?  it  is  called  qiqumaniq  (base  word  qiqu,  cold  or  frozen).  the   one  that  is  nipitaaq,  and  aqiluqaq  (base  word  aqit,  soft)  is  used  to  block  cracks  on  the   snow  house.  and  pukaq  is  used  for  tea  water.  and  the  one  that  is  not  pukaq  is  used  to   build  snow  houses.  all  different  names.  they  are  not  the  same.  also,  the  snow  used   for  traps  is  different  than  the  one  they  use  to  build  snow  houses.  they  would  find  the   snow  for  the  traps  by  poking  the  snow  with  a  knife,  poking  around  the  snow  near  the   trap.  that  is  what  they  used  to  cover  up  the  traps.  that  snow  outside  is  not  all  the   same,  the  snow  that  people  need  to  use  outside  around  here.  qaffiuyungaqhivuqli,  i   wonder  how  many  there  are?  paqaqpalluktuq,  pukaq,  iglukhaut  nakuyuq,  aqilluqaqlu,   qiqumanaklu,  naniriangmutlu  atuqtukhauyuq.  six  different  snows.   25  mary  akoakhion  described  how  people  forecast  weather  from  changes  in  the  sun,  moon,   clouds  and  wind  (2006-­‐002,  side  a:  #001-­‐033).           26  the  importance  of  sharing  was  repeated  in  the  interviews  with  many  of  the  elders.   however,  in  her  interview  about  the  “long  walk”  inland  during  the  summer  to  hunt  caribou   for  winter  clothing,  taipana  (2007-­‐001,  side  a:  #137)  reiterated  what  she  had  said  three   years  earlier:   they  don’t  think  of  it  [what  has  been  hunted]  as  being  [only  for]  them.  they  would   always  share  with  relatives  and  neighbours.  …also  when  their  relatives  don’t  have   enough  for  clothing,  the  caribou  hides,  which  they  have,  they  would  give  the  hides,   and  also,  meat.   chambers: “i was grown up before i was born”     transnational  curriculum  inquiry  7(2)  2010  http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci     38                                                                                                                 see  pihuaqtiuyugut:  we  are  the  long  distance  walkers.  yellowknife,  nwt:  nwt   literacy  council/inkit  publishing,  2010  for  more  information  on  the  long  walk  and  on   the  literacies  of  the  kangiryuarmiut.     27  i  have  edited  the  english  translations  of  the  quotations  to  assist  the  readers  ease  in   understanding  the  elders.  i  apologize  for  any  errors  i  have  made.  i  hope  i  am  not  one  of  the   people  that  rene  oliktoak  (taipana)  referred  to  when  she  said:  “you  know,  these  white   men,  they  just  guess  at  times  and  they  are  never  true  at  times”  (2005-­‐010,  side  b:  #704)  in   reference  to  a  loon-­‐skin  parka  mislabeled  in  the  museum.   28  see  jean  ohkeena  kagyut  (2007-­‐003  #079)  and  rene  taipana  oliktoak  (2007-­‐001,   #353).   29  references  to  the  “first”  time  in  living  memory  when  there  were  few,  if  any,  caribou  are   found  throughout  the  interviews.     30    the  late  william  kagyut  (2004-­‐004,  side  a:  #507;  side  b:  #002;  007)  speaks  about   caribou  antler  being  used  for  adze,  drills  and  sled  runner.  rene  taipana  oliktoak  in  her  life   history  (2005-­‐007,  side  a:  #320)  describes  how  caribou  antler  was  used  for  snow  knives   when  there  was  no  copper.  in  the  same  interview,  she  also  describes  how  they  stretched   bull  caribou  hides  on  a  frame  to  make  a  travois  or  gurney  to  carry  her  father  on  the  long   walk  (#354).  when  interviewed  about  tools  and  shelters,  kapotoan  and  (jean)  okheena   (2004-­‐006)  described  the  use  of  caribou  knee  joint  for  making  the  bow  drill  (side  a:  #036);   caribou  legs  for  tool  cases  (ikhirvik)  (side  a:  #246);  hollowed  out  caribou  antler  for  needle   cases  (side  a:  #250);  caribou  antler  above  the  forehead  (qingautaa)  drilled  to  make  a   “straightener”  —a  tool  used  to  straighten  curved  objects  such  as  arrow  shafts;  braided   sinew  from  the  hind  leg  of  a  caribou  (nuilinnganik)  used  to  reinforce  the  curved  part  of  a   bow  (side  a:  #397)  and  at  the  tips  of  either  end  of  the  bow  (ihua)  (side  a:  #380-­‐436);   pounded  caribou  leg  bones  for  pegs  or  spikes  (qapurat)  to  hold  down  the  tent  or  tipi  (side   a:  #757-­‐760);  skins  for  the  tents  or  tipis  (side  a:  #775-­‐813);  caribou  hide  with  fur  on  as   mats,  for  example  to  muffle  the  crunching  of  the  snow  at  a  breathing  hole,  so  as  not  to  alert   the  seals  to  the  presence  of  humans    (2004-­‐007;  side  a:  #269,  jean).  in  their  interview  on   seasons  and  places  names,  elsie  nilgak,  rene  okheena,  taipana  and  kapotoan  (2004-­‐014,   side  a:  #114-­‐125)  describe  those  sites  where  people  camped  on  the  coastline  of  prince   albert  sound  to  inakhaktun,  that  is,  make  winter  clothing  with  caribou  skins.  in  the   interview  on  dance  clothing,  taipana  and  okheena  (2005-­‐011)  describe  how  this  special   and  decorative  clothing  was  made  from  caribou  hide.  okheena  explains  that  drums  were   made  from  caribou  skin  (drum  dancing,  2005-­‐011,  side  b:  #810).  jimmy  kudlak  explains   the  value  of  caribou  blood:     …when  a  person  has  caught  a  caribou  and  it  went  down  on  the  snow  and  bled  on  the   snow  and  the  snow  is  soaked  with  blood,  they  would  eat  that  snow  which  is  soaked   with  blood,  so  one  cannot  feel  tired  anymore  …  one  does  not  feel  any  tiredness  or   does  not  think  of  hunger  and  will  not  be  thirsty  (2005-­‐014,  life  history,  #2,  side  a:   #015).  jean  okheena  explains  how  caribou  calf  skins  are  used  for  young  children’s   clothing  (2006-­‐006,  side  b:  #142).   microsoft word 26-124-1-sm.doc to cite this article please include all of the following details: sünker, heinz (2006) democratic education: educating for democracy. transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> democratic education: educating for democracy a keynote address presented to the triennial meeting of the international association for the advancement of curriculum studies, may 22, 2006, tampere, finland. heinz sünker university of wuppertal, germany abstract against the background of the devastating experiences of the short twentieth century (hobsbawm) and its human consequences the question of real democratic education for a real democratic society is once again on the intellectual and practical agenda. the contribution inquires in a first step about the appropriateness of social analysis and the contemporary adequacy of critical theory for the work of (re-)conceptualizing democratic education. the main focus, therefore, is the relevance of adorno’s proposals for a democratic education, first appearing in his article “education after auschwitz”. there, he says one of the education’s primary objectives should be to ensure that auschwitz should never be repeated. auschwitz is a symbol signifying the decline of western civilization. this work adorno’s helps us to understand other primary relationships among social conditions, political culture, ethics and education, all of which are extremely important in establishing a democratic everyday life, including educational institutions and sites. in a next step the debate between adorno and gehlen – his conservative counterpart – is summarized as a major example of the critical and conservative positions in the field of education and society with respect to the questions of concepts of reason, of agency, autonomy, and personal responsibility. in this context, the question of the conditions for the constitution of subjectivity is most pertinent for our further discussions. as adorno says in this respect, democracy must take hold in such a way that people internalize it and make it their own, i.e., they understand themselves as subjects of dynamic democratic political processes and as active participants in political, i.e., public life. as castells puts it in the end of his third volume of “the information age”: to overcome the gap between technological overdevelopment and social underdevelopment – which is threatening the survival of our planet – we need only responsible governments but an educated responsible society. what is must be changeable if it is not to be all. (theo. w. adorno, negative dialectics) 1. under the conditions of neo-liberal regulation strategies, in late capitalism there is an attempt to enforce homogenization processes in the form of globalization that scorn the official deregulation policy as well as the dispersed difference thinking. for what goes by the official name of deregulation policy by all means also in the form of various strategies of social policy on a world scale is really nothing more than an attempt to enforce global social relations that follow unrestrained market logics, or profit orientation, and the turning of potential citizens into customers. this is in the interests of securing power in the context of heinz sünker: democratic education: educating for democracy transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (2) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 17 hegemonic disputes (cf. for example altvater/mahnkopf, 1996; todd, 1999; stiglitz, 2002; jessop, 2002).1 what c. boggs (2000) subtitles as “corporate power and the decline of the public sphere” behaves complementary to this and conveys the national as well as international standard. bringing together classical social analytical topics such as capitalism, politics, democracy, political conscience and political involvement, with reference to today’s us american reality but by all means able to be generalized, to a historically concrete relationship, he reaches a devastating conclusion about the state and perspective of democratisation in his study that is titled “end of politics”. in particular he points out against those who (still) opt for the “taming” or “civilising” of capitalism, the support of democracy in the form of “civil society”, as an result of empirical research: “the reality is that civil society, with the end of the cold war, has come to embrace a turn toward privatisation, toward a neo-liberal emphasis on market capitalism that is fully compatible with the growth of corporate colonisation and economic globalisation” (2000, p. 276). this is an extension of the understanding that earlier lead bowles/gintis (1987, p.3; cf. meiksins wood 1995) to the conclusion that no capitalist society nowadays is able to be properly seen as democratic because this must go hand in hand with the securing of personal freedom and socially responsible and made responsible dealing with power. when looking at ‘politics’ and its constitutional conditions, in the usa and elsewhere, this basic deficiency has not only not been remedied, rather it even gained strength after the collapse of the state capitalist systems of central and eastern europe. this leads chossudovsky in his study “the globalisation of poverty. impacts of imf and world bank reforms” (2002, p. 310) to the challenging conclusion: “marked by conflicts of interest and as a consequence of its ambivalent relationship towards private economical and financial interests, the state system in the west is experiencing a crisis. under these conditions parliamentary democracy has become a mere ritual. there are no alternatives available for the voters. neo-liberalism has become an integral part of the political program of all the great political parties. like in a one party state election outcomes today have practically no effect on the actual path of state economic and social politics”.2 the decline of ‘politics’ and ‘democracy’, which seems to be even more advanced in the usa in light of the rule of the ‘thief in the president’s position’ (kellner, 2001) and is connected with many crimes (mandel, 2004) -, has been a deciding qualitative problem of the topics “democratic education”, “achieving democracy” , “education for democracy” and its mediation with the background of social relations for both political structures and political conscience. the obvious enforcing and strengthening of an oligarchic rule in today’s class structured capitalist societies, the colonisation of the every day life of adults and children through consumerism (classically: lefebvre, 1972; marcuse, 1987), the oppression of potential alternatives (berman, 2000; steinberg/kincheloe, 1997), the colonisation of the conscience of those ruled by indoctrination, manipulation and disinformation (chomsky, 2000, p. 173 onwards; 2001, p. 99 onwards), the myth of the classless society; all this has always belonged to the known inventory in hegemonic struggles.3 against a reductionist judgement of the situation one could and can maintain, owing to the importance of the differentiation of strategies and institutions, “even with the necessary criticisms of the unequal power relations surrounding education and the larger society, we need to remember that schooling was never simply an imposition on supposedly culturally/politically inept people. rather, educational practices were and are the result of struggles and compromises over what should count as legitimate knowledge, pedagogy, goals and criteria for determining effectiveness” (carlson/apple, 1998, p.11). the involved problems of forming opinions and judgement as a basis for ‘political ability’ are also referred to by bourdieu’s views when he confirms that it is valid to recognise the contradiction that heinz sünker: democratic education: educating for democracy transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (2) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 18 exists in the fact that everyone “is granted an equal right to personal opinion, but not everyone is given the means by which to carry out this formal, universal right” (bourdieu, 2001, p. 89; cf. boudieu, 1984, p. 639, 686 onwards ). first of all the task of “reformulating the concept of democracy” comes into view with its differently formulated attributes, but pointing in the identical direction (hirsch, 1995, p. 198, cf. p. 187), or the clarification of the question of possibilities for a “rediscovery of politics”, as boggs (2000, p. 278) calls it, as a base for hopes for processes of “re-politicisation”: “political renewal depends on recovery of precisely those concerns that a depoliticised society so thoroughly devalues, namely, collective consumption, social planning, citizen involvement, and the imposition of public controls over capital”.4 this shows very clearly the challenges and tasks in dealing with our topic: mediating a concept of democracy with concepts of autonomy and self-determination, and therefore making use of the german concept of ‘bildung’.5 with this conceptualisation the necessity to account for the fundaments and content of ‘participation’ is linked in the context of theory and practice of democracy in a way that is appropriate for the present. pateman remarked here: “davis (1964) has said that the ‘classical theory (i.e. the theory of participatory democracy) had an ambitious purpose, ‘the education of an entire people to the point where their intellectual, emotional and moral capacities have reached their full potential and they are joined, freely and actively in a genuine community’, and that the strategy for reaching this end is through the use of ‘political activity and government for the purpose of public education’. however, he goes on to say that the ‘unfinished business’ of democratic theory is ‘the elaboration of plans of action and specific prescriptions which offer hope of progress towards a genuinely democratic polity’ (pp. 40 and 41). it is exactly this last that can be found in the theories of the writers on participatory democracy; a set of specific prescriptions and plans of action necessary for the attainment of political democracy. this does take place through ‘public education’ but the latter depends on participation in many spheres of society on ‘political activity’ in a very wide sense of the term” (1970, p.21; cf. széll, 1988). especially as education and politics are part of the bulwark of bourgeois society, one must remember on the other hand that, spoken by the marx of grundrisse, “the great historical side of capital” or “the great civilising influence of capital” (marx no date: p. 313; cf. berman, 1988, p. 90 onwards) has, to a great extent, fallen down in these areas, although within systematic borders that, as in the beginnings of the history of education (heydorn, 1979) clearly let the opposite to partial, utilisable talent and to the overlapping freedom orientated perspective of education emerge. in light of the possibilities of generalising education today, which are particularly based on historical/social developments as well as changes in the labour process (cf. heydorn, 1980, p. 290), in the interests of securing humanity and the ability to survive (cf. bloch, 1959: chapter 55) at least essential elements of the debate about ‘education’ and ‘democracy’ are portrayed as renewable.6 2. here adorno’s thoughts on a “democratic education theory” (adorno, 1998b) are given fundamental importance and are to be linked to his formulated starting point in his text “education after auschwitz”: “the premier demand upon all education is that auschwitz not happen again” (adorno, 1998a, p. 191; see also 1973, p. 361 onwards). adorno’s concept suggestion and postulate could assume the function of a clamp because through them relationship regulations become possible in the context of social constitution, political culture and education processes, which are fundamental for our topic. heinz sünker: democratic education: educating for democracy transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (2) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 19 against the background of the often devastating experiences of our century especially with respect to the german experiences it may seem bold to deal in a text with democracy, education, and ethics in the post-auschwitz world, i.e., asking for a democratic pedgagogy and democratic education today. so i would like to declare at the outset that my concern here is simply to recall a number of ideas from the history and present of the discipline of pedagogy, from the tradition of democratic ideas, if possible to rethink them with a social-theoretical and social policy interest and to examine their consequences for a democratic education. the focus of my deliberations are – as i said adorno's (1903-69) thoughts on democratic pedagogy (adorno, 1998b) and the starting point of his very famous text erziehung nach auschwitz (education after auschwitz). this shows: auschwitz is the salient sign of the decline of civilization. adorno's categories and postulate can serve as a focal point because they enable understanding of the relationships between social conditions, political culture, ethics and educational processes which are decisive for our topic. we can see what is most significant about the relationship between political culture, democratic politics and subjectivity in the radio debate, which has since become famous, between theodor w. adorno, the outstanding intellectual in post-fascist germany, and arnold gehlen, his counterpart a conservative 'mandarin', on 3 february 1965: gehlen yes, the child, who hides behind the mother's skirt, it has both anxiety and the minimum or optimum of security that the situation produces. mr. adorno, you of course again see here the problem of autonomy. do you really believe that we should expect everyone to bear this burden of a concern with principles, with excessive reflection, with the on-going after-effects of the confusions of life, because we have sought to swim free? that is what i would very much like to know.7 adorno to that i can very simply say: yes! i have a conception of objective happiness and objective despair, and i would say that as long as we unburden people [with authoritarian institutions, h.s.] and do not grant them full responsibility and self-determination, so long too will their well-being and their happiness in this world be a sham. and a sham which will one day burst. and when it bursts, it will have terrible consequences. (grenz, 1974, p. 294f.) the core of this dispute is the meaning of maturity and responsibility.8 adorno responded to gehlen's statement with the remark, i mean, the need which drives people to this unburdening is precisely the burden imposed by institutions, that is, the world's agencies which stand outside and over them. it is thus to a certain extent so: first they are chased out, sent out by the mother, into the cold, and are under terrible pressure; and then, afterwards, they flee into the lap of precisely the same mother, namely society, which chased them out. in the context of his view of the conditions of the constitution of subjectivity and its (in)capacity for action, he is here clearly speaking of the relation between autonomy – self-determination accountability.9 this triad can be illuminated by an exploration of both individual and social history. in defending adorno's position, intellectuals are the keepers of political culture in a democratic tradition and meaning (cf. sünker, 1994). this means that, against the (neo-) aristotelian tradition – which is concerned with ‘elites’ -, not only a few people are able to reflect, to carry the burden of reflection and responsibility, but all are able to do so. it includes, today, the task to (re-)construct the public and, therefore, the political culture in a participatory model. within this approach, 'the public sentiment which is encouraged is not reconciliation and harmony, but rather political agency and efficacy, namely the sense that we have a say in the economic, political and civic arrangements which define our lives together, and that what one heinz sünker: democratic education: educating for democracy transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (2) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 20 does makes a difference' (benhabib, 1989, p. 389). this is the basic assumption to defend concepts of resistance. reflections on historical experience, which contains more than any gathering of knowledge, can lead to a socio-historical consciousness accompanied by a capacity for judgement which provides a capacity for action. thus it can help serve this democratic, participatory goal. education precisely in the ways it differs from 'knowledge' has to derive its present from the past, to make history the content of educational processes (benjamin, 1969; flacks, 1988; wehler, 1988). for a democratic pedagogy this means, inter alia: learning from the history of this country or its regions, and in my case the history of german political culture. this requires, firstly, engaging with the question 'what does it mean to deal with the past?' (adorno, 1998b). and, secondly, posing the question, what form can be taken by an alternative to domination in individual action and social structures in democratic social conditions and an accompanying political culture in europe – and beyond. in view of the frequently unsuccessful engagement, dominated by political majorities, with recent german history, and the accompanying consequences for the quality of political culture in germany up to the present day (mitscherlich and mitscherlich, 1967; brunkhorst, 1987; stern, 1991), for the moment we can only say that this question, as a question for everyone interested in a substantial democratization of all areas of life, must stay on the agenda. the second question which follows from this is related to a problem which is decisive for the future of a european society: that which currently appears as right-extremism and hostility to foreigners, as well as a re-activation of politically motivated violence in this society, and in its adoption by a majority of the dominant political class exposes the latter, relates to traditions in the european and german history and the history of the political culture which many overwhelmingly believed in (lepsius, 1988).10 in this situation it becomes clear that the question of democracy once again reappears on the agenda. adorno maintained that the delay in german democracy also resulted in crucial problems in the way the past was dealt with: “but democracy has not become naturalized to the point where people truly experience it as their own and see themselves as subjects of the political process”. this is why, continued adorno, democracy was evaluated according to the success or failure it brought with it (adorno, 1998b, p. 93). speaking about the necessity of “a return to the subject,” adorno put forward his thesis that education only makes any sense as critical self-reflection. and he concluded: “the single genuine power standing against the principle of auschwitz is autonomy, if i might use the kantian expression: the power of reflection, of self-determination, of not-cooperating (adorno, 1998a, pp. 195). this indicates the relationship between a democratic education and an education for democracy with which we should engage. an initial formulation of this foundational question can be found in classical pedagogic conceptions, as they appeared in the reflective and wide-ranging early bourgeois theoretical debates. at the end of the eighteenth century kant (1724-1804), in his lecture 'über pädagogik' (on pedagogy), wrote perhaps education constantly improves, and every successive generation takes another step towards the full realization of humanity; for behind education lies the great secret of the realization of human nature (kant, 1964, p. 700). he also tied this to a positive anthropology which placed social conditions, and thus the social conditionality of humans, in the foreground: “good education is precisely that which produces everything that is good in the world. the seeds which lie within people must be constantly developed. for the basis of evil cannot be found in the natural constitution of people. the only cause of evil is that nature is not brought under control. people contain only the seeds of good” (kant, 1964, p. 704f.). lf, as kant stresses, education constituted the most heinz sünker: democratic education: educating for democracy transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (2) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 21 important and difficult question posed to humanity, it thus also led to this requirement: “children must be raised not towards the current, but the future possibly improved state of the human race, that is, the idea of humanity, and everything appropriate to its destiny. this principle is of great importance. parents generally raise their children only so that they fit into the existing world, even though it may be ruined. they should, however, better raise them so that a future, better state is brought about” (kant, 1964, p. 704).11 in the first third of the nineteenth century schleiermacher (1768-1834) one of the discipline's founding fathers also in a lecture titled 'über pädagogik' said that education should be based on the intergenerational relationship, from which derives the task that the younger generation should be delivered to the main communities in which they have to become self-sufficiently active (schleiermacher, 1983, p. 94). because he was concerned with the category fundamental to the educational relationship, the future thus the capacity for construction he binds the perspective of the socially-based action of the rising generation to the dual task of conservation and change. at the same time this premise leads him to a crucial principle concerning the relationship between pedagogy and politics: both theories, pedagogy and politics, strive towards what is most complete; both are ethical disciplines and require the same treatment. politics will not reach its goal if pedagogy is not an integral part of it, or if a similarly developed discipline does not stand beside it. the more communal life within the state is practically disrupted theoretically seen, misunderstood the less it is possible for a correct approach to exist in relation to the influence of the older generation on the younger (schleiermacher, 1983, p. 12; cf. mollenhauer, 1980, p. 103). 3. the positions of kant and schleiermacher constitute a critique of the instrumentalization of people foundational for all approaches to a criticial theory of society to which adorno's frosty conclusion, which in a certain sense describes a final stage in social relations, relates in a complementary way.12 this leads us to the task of examining social relations in their consequences for the relations between individuals and society. for the present this means to deal with the contradictory results of the capitalist framework of societalization for people, to dissect their conditions of existence. the relations between society and individual are constituted by a contradiction between a production and a destruction of the social, of sociality, which can be understood as a result of the capitalist framework of societalization, as inherent to it from the outset (bowles and gintis, 1987; berman, 1988). this contradiction can be seen as both a general and a particular social problem, because it is generation-specific, too. what is interesting here in terms of ethics, education and pedagogy is that when one takes up this contradiction between the production and destruction of sociality, one can speak of a caesura or break in the development of the social potential for both control and communication. this finding is relevant within the framework of educational and pedagogic reflections if one poses the question, firstly, of possible determinations of the relationship between education and society13, and secondly of the consequences for possible foundations and practices of democratic education. what is of interest here is, of course, the question of the possibilities of a development of communicative potential within and opposed to social contexts which cannot free themselves of their hegemonic form. the issue then becomes one of the analysis of societalization and individualization, of democratic theory and its 'praxis' in the form of political culture, of the question of the constitutive conditions of subjectivity as a basis for the development of self-sufficient life orientations, and finally of a theory of educational processes, the heinz sünker: democratic education: educating for democracy transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (2) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 22 social-theoretical and sociopolitical challenge which still lies in the classical conception of every individual's capacity for education and reason.14 this task becomes relevant precisely when one acknowledges theunissen's comment, his reflection on social reality, that autonomy is complicated or even hindered, undermined to the same degree that the social deformation of individuals increases (theunissen, 1989, p. 86). for in connection with classical and still contemporary positions, which precisely in this way indicate their modernity, it is important to pose the problem of a contract based on the principle of communalization (theunissen, 1989, p. 87) and thus the construction and principles of a relational reason (geyer-ryan and lethen, 1987, p. 68). it seems to me to be crucial to establish a mediation between what benjamin brought forward on the basis of his conception of the relevance of mutual recognition for processes of identity formation, that there is a coercion-free sphere of human agreement which is completely inaccessible to domination: the actual sphere of agreement, speech (benjamin, 1966, p. 55), and the problem, how power can be criticized from a perspective which appears to profit from and out of it. the question is how reason in itself can establish that murder is worse than non-murder, if it is to one's advantage. in the light of a relational reason, murder becomes suicide, this is already the response of the odyssey (geyer-ryan and lethen, 1987, p. 69). the systematic significance of these positions for the constitution of subjectivity and its consequences, is whether the issue is still the difference between a construction of knowledge which remains external to the individual, and the development of the individual themselves in constellations of educational processes (sünker, 1989), so that it can become clear how education, enlightenment and experience are interwoven with each other. the thesis put forward by adorno, quoted and discussed earlier, that people must experience democracy as their own affair, understand themselves as the actors in political processes, is complementary to the task of taking this up and spelling it out for institutionally-formed educational processes.15 opposed to one-dimensional, linear interpretations of the working possibilities in the institution of the school, we must insist that the contradiction contained within the dialectic of the institutionalization of education, between education and domination (heydorn, 1979), indicates that the institution of the school in its diversely-determined structures, dimensions, levels of action encompasses possibilities for the promotion of emancipation and autonomy for all who work in these institutions. this raises the question, firstly of professionalization, the self-understanding of pupils and the consequences contained therein for praxis, that is, the initiation or promotion of educational processes.16 secondly that of the relationship between the individual being educated and the inner structures of educational processes and their objects (cf. holzkamp, 1993; tomasello, 1999; kincheloe/steinberg/hinchey 1999). this requires a pedagogy of recognition which, as heydorn taking up the socratic maieutic made clear in his emphasis on the significance of the ‘other’ in educational processes (heydorn, 1979), lies in the promotion of the formation of subjectivity – on the basis of intersubjectivity (cf. sünker, 1989). this demands at the same time the conceptualisation of the relationship between democratic education and the education of democracy in the context of a social formation that recognises ‘problems of justice’ to be a political problem and approaches solutions analytically and practically. a main line of this positioning, that overlaps the relationship of the individual and society and defines it as political, can be found in the marxist problem with which both the problem of identity and difference between normality and normativity becomes a central theme as a ‘question of measure’ in order to evaluate historically concrete relations: “here the old view where people, in whatever narrow minded national, religious or political determination they appear to be as the purpose of production, seems to be very raised above the modern world, where production seems to be the purpose of human beings and wealth appears to be the purpose of production. heinz sünker: democratic education: educating for democracy transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (2) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 23 in fact, however, when the narrow minded bourgeois form is stripped away, how is wealth different to the universality, produced by universal exchange, of needs, abilities, pleasures, productive powers etc. of individuals? the complete development of human control over the powers of nature, that of so-called nature as well as one’s own nature? the absolute exhaustion of one’s creative resources with no other requirement than that of past historical development, that makes this totality of development, that is to say, of the development of all human power as such, not measured by a given scale, an end in itself? where one does not reproduce oneself with certainty, rather produces one’s totality? does not try to remain an achievement, rather exists in the absolute movement of becoming?” (marx no date, p. 387, remark h.s). to remove from pedagogical processes as far as is possible in society and history the existing formation of subject and object also means making it possible for the rising generation to live and experience democracy in everyday life and in institutions such as family, school, work (bowles and gintis, 1987, pp. 204, 208). this holds fast to the possibilities for dealing with individuals and associations of individuals against the pedagogization of socially produced problems within social relations, that is within social relations of power. this understanding certainly depends on a culture of hope (benjamin, 1966), an ideal of education, as kant formulated it; but it also refers to the necessity of building up new social movements to confront the experiences of domination in the various areas of life with experiences and life-forms orientated towards mutual understanding.17 18 in the interests of defending or supporting democracy this perspective gains in importance when one socially theoretically and socially politically assumes a finding for the present social situation and its processing, as vester et al. (2001, p. 103) depicted in their study “social milieus in social structural change”: “according to theories by giddens and beck it is not the milieus that are in decline today. the class cultures of every day life are to a greater extent extraordinarily stable particularly because of their ability to be altered and differentiated. what collapses to a certain degree are the hegemonies of certain parties (and fractions of intellectuals) over the followers in ideological positions. therefore we do not have today a crisis of milieus (as a result of the change in values), rather a crisis of political representation (as a result of a growing distance between the elite and the milieu)”. dangerous for civilising progress it is therefore today a mixture that consists of this crisis of representation, which can partly be said for continental europe in the sinking quotas of election participation in the “annoyance” at parties, but not at politics, and problems of the state’s ability to take action that can reach the “powerlessness of politics in industrial societies” (jänicke, 1986). in this situation we face the ‘depoliticisation’ of politics by dominating powers. but in the interest of the survival of our planet we should be interested in what castell calls ”a responsible, educated society” (1998, p. 353; cf. flacks, 1988, p. 68 onwards), i.e. a society based on the reflexivity and competencies of educated citizens (citoyens) who are interested in public discourse on public issues and democracy.19 therefore principles of universalization and reciprocity are on the agenda. as heller (1984) concluded the perspective is 'to create a society in which alienation is a thing of the past: a society in which every man has access to the social "gifts of fortune" which can enable him to lead a meaningful life . . . true "history" is pregnant with conflict and continually transcending its own given state. it is history consciously chosen by men and moulded to their design that can enable all men to make their everyday lives "being-for-them" and that will make the earth a true home for all men' (1984, p. 269). this shows again the necessity to discuss the problem of regulating the social in a reasonable way – especially in a time when the “extraordinary gap between our technological overdevelopment and our social underdevelopment” (castells, 1998, p. 359) is threatening heinz sünker: democratic education: educating for democracy transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (2) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 24 comparable to the situations in the first half of the twentieth century. therefore we have to bring the topic “democratic education – education for democracy” to bring to the fore. thereby once again in a new form the task of reformulating the relation of education and democracy comes to light, whose practical formation depends on the interests and competences of educated citizens whose ‘educated’ and ‘stubborn’ (therefore different yet able to be generalised) “capacity for expression and to distinguish” (negt/kluge, 1993, p. 289) forms the basis for the mediation of the power of judgement and reasoning that is historically socially necessary in general as well as in particular interest. this perspective is strongly connected with the political project of the “abolition of all education restriction” (heydorn, 1994/95, iv, p. 138). here one must adhere to the fact that a) “education is no independent revolutionary movement, not even indirectly, it can only be so in connection with the entire historical movement” (iv, p. 62), but it b) is essentially about realising that education “makes its own unchanged contribution which is irreplaceable. this contribution must not be withdrawn from the institution; it cannot be made in the same way in any other place” (iv, p. 141). a real democratization of our societies has to be seen as a problem of our planet’s ability to survive. we have to perceive it as a task for various policies tied to the power of judgement and competence of action of all citizens.20 the demand for education for everyone remains in this context on the agenda as a central challenge for the real existing social inequalities and overcoming it in a democratic way. another, a human, world is possible. notes 1 duchrow’s view (1997, p. 102 ) refers to the fact that it concerns here by all means a conscious struggle for power, above all from the side of the often violent possessors of power: “correspondingly in secret documents it is also demanded that in this conflict about the ownership of and sharing out of powers that try to alter the status quo, one must fight ‘on all levels of power’, namely military, political, economical and socio-psychological. the interesting thing is, however, that in 1987 secret services and supreme commanders of the north and latin american armed forces present at the conference in which the documents were presented seemed to be quite stable and superior in military, political and economic matters. most of their attention is aimed towards what they call the ‘socio-psychological’ or cultural level of power, people’s ‘hearts and thoughts’. practically this means for them that the main struggle against the ‘international communist movement’ henceforth must be introduced to churches, schools, universities and, above all, to the media. correspondingly the main opponents become: the basis church, release theology and human rights’ groups as well as solidarity networks like amnesty international and development organizations like ‘brot für die welt’, who work with the poor. the head of the philippine security authorities once expressed his broad view of the enemy at a torture trial of edicio de la torre, a release theologian with the sentence: ‘we are suspicious those who do good deeds and do not get rich’. social movements are defamed through disinformation campaigns; their activists are disabled or even murdered by death commands like the jesuits in el salvador or, at the moment, in the hottest war of low intensity in south africa. of course this strategy includes the old methods of equipment and of military and death squadron training that pose as representatives of the usa, as well as economical destabilization programs. nicaragua and el salvador as well as other central american countries are the best known examples of recent history”. this view makes clear how different power strategies can be used, whereby the first “area” of the shaping of power refers to the fact that foucault has obviously been received even in these circles. 2 here one may refer to german discussions that have been placed under the heading of “the transformation of democracy” (agnoli/brückner, 1968), “parliamentary ritual and political alternatives” (roth, 1980) or “the failure of the state” (jänicke, 1986). 3 the emphasis on the importance of competence for regulating social relationships by means of subjects makes it even more clear how important it is to break down the basis for opposite action, which siemsen (1948, p. 5) labeled “the blind subjection to a state leadership, a party or a fuehrer”. heinz sünker: democratic education: educating for democracy transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (2) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 25 the analysis of media politics, media culture and the control of behavior by the media also belong to this context (cf. kellner, 1995) 4 in this context confer with meiksins wood (1995, p. 290f.): “i have suggested throughout this book that the capitalist market is a political as well as an economic space, a terrain not simply of freedom and choice but of domination and coercion. i now want to suggest that democracy needs to be reconceived not simply as a political category but as an economic one. what i mean is not simply ‘economic democracy’ as a greater equality of distribution. i have in mind democracy as an economic regulator, the driving mechanism of the economy. here marx’s free association of direct producers (which does not, even in marx’s terms, include only manual workers or people directly involved in material production) is a good place to start. it stands to reason that the likeliest place to begin the search for a new economic mechanism is at the very base of the economy, in the organization of labour itself. but the issue is not simply the internal organisation of enterprises; and even the reappropriation of the means of production by the producers, while a necessary condition, would not be sufficient, as long as possession remains market dependent and subject to the old imperatives. the freedom of the free association implies not only democratic organisation but emancipation from ‘economic’ coercions of this kind”. 5 the german language allows to distinct between “erziehung” (education 1) and “bildung” (education 2). while education 1 is aiming at affirmation, accomodation, conformity, education 2 is aiming at maturity and responsibility, reflexivity, social judgement, aesthetics, human development without forgetting society – or better: processes of societalization (cf. for a conceptual analysis sünker, 1997). 6 here the deciding factor is to keep an eye on how fundamentalism and perspective are determined by processes of change; cf. bloch’s thoughts on this: “change is possible in the false meaning to a great extent; the huns also caused change, there is also change through caesar mania, through anarchy, even through the mental illness of blather, which hegel calls a ‘perfect picture of chaos’. but dignified change, even that of the kingdom of freedom only occurs through dignified understanding; with more and more precisely controlled necessity” (1959, p. 326). 7 with these ‘nice’ words mr. gehlen is trying to hide his collaboration with national socialists. 8 see with respect to adorno’s approach and concept of “mündigkeit”, translated as “maturity and responsibility” french/thomas (1999). 9 see for a mediation of concepts of autonomy, modernity and democracy arnason (1990). 10 an initial thread to this discussion is today the theme ‘youth and violence’, which reveals this in its various facets and brings forwards very diverse findings in relation to the question of the conditions (otto and merten, 1993, heitmeyer, möller and sünker, 1992). a second thread relates to the theme 'the 68ers and youth violence today' and value education, in which the thesis itself is not very interesting, but rather the question of the role which can be played in hegemonic struggles by such a nonsensical proposition such as the responsibility of the 68ers for today's youth violence. otherwise it seems to me to be worth referring to a conception of the problem of education similar to that of s. bernfeld (1892-1953) over seventy years ago: „the educative role of the family is now everywhere in question, and the old pedagogical remedies on which our grandparents still relied have ceased to be effective, or at least have lost most of their authority. with regard to moral and social questions, a general insecurity prevails, robbing parents of the courage to enforce their will and lay down the law. beset by a host of feelings, which include guilt and hostility to family and children, parents are caught in a situation of psychic stress and reach out for whatever help tested educational doctrines may give them. even if these should not quite bring the desired results, they would at least permit the parents to justify themselves: they could say that they had done what was possible. this situation indeed creates a considerable interest in education, but not necessarily a high appreciation of it. on the contrary, there are indications that predict an early fatigue and disappointment in the parts of the parents. for the plain fact is that educational theory does not meet the expectations people set on it” (bernfeld 1973, p. 3f.). 11 interesting too is kant's observation that not only parents but authorities, too, are to be considered as obstacles to the road to an improvement of the human condition: “ monarchs regard their subjects only as instruments for their goals. parents care for the house, monarchs for the state. both do not have as their aim the welfare and the completeness for which humanity is destined and for which it is capable (kant, 1964, p. 704). marcuse (1987, p. 34) compared kant’s position with the reality of capitalism and reached the following conclusion: “the monopoly capitalistic manipulation of the population, the inflationary economy, the ‘defense’ policy of ‘kill and overkill’, the training for genocide, war crimes that become normal, the brutal treatment of the great number of prisoners have lead to a frightening increase in violence in every day life. …the whole complex of aggression and its victims indicates a proto-fascist potential par excellence”. heinz sünker: democratic education: educating for democracy transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (2) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 26 12 this diagnosis of the frost also throws a characteristic light on the question of the preconditions of national socialism, as the german form of fascism, in people themselves: “a barbaric experiment in state control of industrial society, it [the hitler period, h.s.] violently anticipated the crisis management policies of today. the often cited ‘integration,’ the organizational tightening of the weave in the societal net that encompassed everything, also afforded protection from the universal fear of falling through the mesh and disappearing. for countless people it seemed that the coldness of social alienation had been done away with thanks to the warmth of togetherness, no matter how manipulated and contrived; the völkisch community of the unfree and unequal was a lie and at the same time also the fulfillment of an old, indeed long familiar, evil bourgeois dream. the system that offered such gratification certainly concealed within itself the potential for its own downfall“ (adorno, 1998b, p. 95; cf. adorno, 1998a, p. 201; sünker/otto, 1997). 13 socio-historical and socio-political analyses of the relationship between education and society can be found in an extremely interesting anglo-saxon discussion, which revolves – following very often the work of b. bernstein around the concept ‘new sociology of education’ and ‘critical pedagogy’ (giroux and mclaren, 1989; wexler, 1990; mclaren, 1993; farnen/sünker, 1997; whitty, 2002; ball, 2003; apple 2003; kincheloe 2004). on the german-language discussion see heydorn, 1979; lenhart, 1987 and von friedeburg, 1989, sünker/krüger, 1999. both approaches meet in emphasising the relevance of ‘consciousness raising’. 14 with clear words heydorn makes it obvious that neither violence nor liberation have automatisms: “it concerns the production of what is efficient, obedient, exchangeable and moronic, technical rationality is separated from human rationality according to system. relying upon previous history this is considered possible, revolution of technology and the deformation of humans. in schizophrenia not only the mental asylum and collective suicide lie in wait, but also the possible uprising of people to produce themselves” (heydorn, 1979, p. 289). 15 lt is understandable that this emancipatory perspective is far more difficult to represent in the framework of school socialization process (cf. wexler, 1999) than in the context of educational work which is not based in the school context as youth work (cf. peter, sünker and willigmann, 1982). in view of debates on global society and interculturalism, such an approach to the task of schooling seems even more relevant (steinberg, 2001; richter, 2006). 16 here it should be considered that – following the famous phrase from marx’ ‘theses on feuerbach” (1969, p. 5f.) – “conditions have to be changed by men and the educator himself has to be educated”. 17 here the systematic place of a justification of “communicative freedom” is also named (theunissen, 1978, p. 45 onwards ), a conception which, unlike that of habermas, does not limit itself only to the area of interaction. 18 as opposed to the worship of technology, streams of money and their power, the logics of the market, social movements are presently opting for alternatives, as castells (1998, p. 351) writes: “what is characteristic of social movements and cultural projects built around identities in the information age is that they do not originate within the institutions of civil society. they introduce, from the outset, an alternative social logic, distinct from the principles of performance around which dominant institutions of society are built”. this opting for alternative social logics qualifiedly distinguishes the present situation from the beginnings of capitalism, as braudel (1994, p. 164) describes: ‘in short there are many poor people, many are miserable – a large proletariat for which the science of history is gradually providing a place according to the requirements of difficult research. a proletariat that burdens the entire activity of the century and whose weight is becoming more and more pressing in the course of the years. on this ground a persistent so-called brigantentum is flourishing – a real social revolution which is taking an endless, unproductive course. for at the end the general misery settles the conflict: it mercilessly throws the poor and destitute back to the starting point. in spain it is down to two factors: the survival of the old wealth and a stronger decline in population that both produce a strange social class, a proletariat that is similar to the plebs of ancient rome. poor people who have always lived in poverty, no hopers from the cities as they have become famous through picaresque novels, muggers, real and fake beggars, all the gente del hampa and the hampones, the vagabonds – all these people have stopped work, admittedly only after the other side, that of work and employment, did not want to have anything to do with them”. 19 this is one reason why heydorn (1980, p. 301) ends his “survival through education” with the sentence: “consciousness is all”. 20 this includes the question of aesthetics: „indelible from the resistance to the fungible world of barter is the resistance of the eye that does not want the colors of the world to fade. semblance is a promise of nonsemblance” (adorno, 1973, p. 405). heinz sünker: democratic education: educating for democracy transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (2) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 27 references adorno, th. w. 1973: negative dialectics. new york/london: continuum adorno, th. w. 1998a: education after auschwitz, in: adorno, th. w.: critical models. interventions and catchwords. new york: columbia university press, 191-204 adorno, th. w. 1998b: the meaning of working through the past, in: adorno, th. w.: critical models, ibid., 89-104 agnoli, j./brückner, p. 1968: die transformation der demokratie. frankfurt/m.: europäische verlagsanstalt altvater, e./mahnkopf, b. 1996: grenzen der globalisierung. ökonomie, ökologie und politik in der weltgesellschaft. münster: westfälisches dampfboot apple, m. w. 2003: the state and the politics of knowledge. new york/london: routledgefalmer arnason, j. p. 1990: the theory of modernity and the problematic of democracy, in: thesis eleven no. 29, 20-45 ball, st. 2003: class strategies and the education market. the middle class and social advantage. london/new york: routledgefalmer benhabib, s. 1989: autonomy, modernity, and community. in: honneth, a. et al. (hrsg.): zwischenbetrachtungen. im prozess der aufklärung. frankfurt/m., 373 – 394 benjamin, w. 1966: zur kritik der gewalt, in: benjamin, w.: angelus novus. ausgewählte schriften ii. frankfurt/m.: suhrkamp, 42-66 benjamin, w. 1969: geschichtsphilosophische thesen, in: benjamin, w. : illuminationen. frankfurt/m.: suhrkamp, 268-279 berman, m. 1988: all that is solid melts into air: the experience of modernity. new york: penguin berman, m. 2000: the twilight of american culture. new york: norton & norton bernfeld, s. 1973: sisyphus, or the limits of education. berkeley et al.: university of california press bloch, e. 1959: das prinzip hoffnung. frankfurt/m.: suhrkamp boggs, c. 2000: the end of politics. corporate power and the decline of the public sphere. new york/london: the guilford press bourdieu, p. 1984: die feinen unterschiede. kritik der gesellschaftlichen urteilskraft. frankfurt/m.: suhrkamp bourdieu, p. 2001: meditationen. zur kritik der scholastischen vernunft. frankfurt/m.: suhrkamp bowles, s./gintis, h. 1987: democracy and capitalism: property, community, and the contradictions of modern social thought. new york: basic books braudel, f. 1994: das mittelmeer und die mediterrane welt in der epoche phillips ii. 2. bd. frankfurt/m.: suhrkamp brunkhorst, h. 1987: der intellektuelle im land der mandarine. frankfurt/m.: suhrkamp carlson, d./apple, m 1998: introduction: critical educational theory in unsettling times, in: carlson/apple(eds.): power/knowledge/pedagogy: the meaning of democratic education in unsettling times. boulder: westview, 1-38 castells, m. 1998: the information age. vol. iii: end of millennium. malden: blackwell chomsky, n. 2000: chomsky on miseducation, ed. and introd. by. d. macedo. lanham: rowman & littlefield chomsky, n. 2001: war against people. menschenrechte und schurkenstaaten. hamburg/wien: europa verlag chossudovsky, m. 2002: global brutal. der entfesselte welthandel, die armut, der krieg. frankfurt: zweitausendeins heinz sünker: democratic education: educating for democracy transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (2) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 28 duchrow, u. 1997: alternativen zur kapitalistischen weltwirtschaft. gütersloh: gütersloher verlagshaus farnen, r./sünker, h. 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(hrsg.) 1992: jugend – staat – gewalt. politische sozialisation von jugendlichen, jugendpolitik und politische bildung, 2. aufl. weinheim/münchen: juventa heller, a. 1984: everyday life. london et al.: routledge & kegan paul heydorn, h.-j. 1979: über den widerspruch von bildung und herrschaft. frankfurt/m.: syndikat heydorn, h.-j. 1980: überleben durch bildung. umriss einer aussicht, in: ders.: ungleichheit für alle. bildungstheoretische schriften 3. frankfurt/m.: syndikat, 282 301 heydorn, h.j. 1994/95: werke. bd. iv. liechtenstein: topos hirsch, j. 1995: der nationale wettbewerbsstaat. staat, demokratie und politik im globalen kapitalismus. berlin/amsterdam: ed. id-archiv holzkamp, k. 1993: lernen. subjektwissenschaftliche grundlegung. frankfurt/m.: campus jänicke, m. 1986: staatsversagen. die ohnmacht der politik in der industriegesellschaft. münchen/zürich: piper jessop, b. 2002: the future of the capitalist state. cambridge: polity kant, i. 1964: über pädagogik, in: kant, i., band 10. werken in 10 bänden. darmstadt: wbg kellner, d. 1995: media culture: cultural studies, identity and politics between the modern and the postmodern. london/new york: routledge kellner, d. 2001: grand theft 2000. media spectacle and a stolen election. lanham: rowman & littlefield kincheloe, j. 2004: critical pedagogy. new york et al.: peter lang kincheloe, j./steinberg, sh./hinchey, p. (eds.) 1999: the post-formal reader. cognition and education. new york/london: falmer lefebvre, h. 1972: das alltagsleben in der modernen welt. frankfurt/m.: suhrkamp lenhart, v. 1987: die evolution erzieherischen handelns. frankfurt/m.: peter lang lepsius, m. r. 1990: interessen, ideen und institutionen. opladen: leske & budrich mandel, m. 2004: how america gets away with murder. illegal wars, collateral damage, and crimes against humanity. london/ann arbor: pluto heinz sünker: democratic education: educating for democracy transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (2) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 29 marcuse, h. 1987: konterrevolution und revolte, in: ders.: schriften bd.9. frankfurt/m.: suhrkamp, 7 – 128 marx, k. no date: grundrisse der kritik der politischen ökonomie. frankfurt/m.: eva marx, k. 1969: thesen über feuerbach, in: marx, k.: werke. bd. 3. berlin: dietz, 5-7 mclaren, p. 1993: schooling as a ritual performance. towards a political economy of educational symbols & gestures. london/new york: routledge meiksins wood, e. 1995: democracy against capitalism. cambridge: cambridge university press mitscherlich, a./mitscherlich, m. 1967: die unfähigkeit zu trauern: grundlagen kollektiven verhaltens. münchen: piper mollenhauer, k. 1980: einige erziehungswissenschaftliche probleme im zusammenhang der erforschung von “allatagswelten jugendlicher”, in: lenzen, d. (hrsg.): pädagogik und alltag. stuttgart: klett-cotta, 97-111 negt, o./kluge, a. 1993: maßverhältnisses des politischen. frankfurt/m.: fischer otto, h.-u./merten, r. (hrsg.) 1993: rechtsradikale gewalt im vereinigten deutschland. jugend im gesellschaftlichen umbruch. opladen: leske & budrich pateman, c. 1970: participation and democratic theory. cambridge: cambridge university press peter, h./sünker, h./willigmann, s. (hrsg.) 1982: politische jugendbildungsarbeit. frankfurt/m.: diesterweg richter, e. 2006: intercultural education: a contribution to peace in the developing global society?, in: fischman, g./mclaren, p./sünker, h./lankshear, c. (eds.): critical theories, radical pedagogies, and global conflicts. lanham et al.: rowman & littlefield, 307 316 roth, r. (hrsg.) 1980: parlamentarisches ritual und politische alternativen. frankfurt/new york: campus schleiermacher, f. 1983: pädagogische schriften i: die vorlesungen aus dem jahre 1826. frankfurt/m.: ullstein siemsen, a. 1948: die gesellschaftlichen grundlagen der erziehung. hamburg: oetinger steinberg, s. (ed.) 2001: multi/intercultural conversations. new york et al.: peter lang steinberg, s./kincheloe, j. (eds.) 1997: kinderculture. the corporate construction of childhood. boulder: westview stern, f. 1991: im anfang war auschwitz: antisemitismus und philosemitismus in deutschen nachkrieg. gerlingen: bleicher stiglitz, j. 2002: globalization and its discontents. new york: w.w. norton stern, f. 1991: im anfang war auschwitz. antisemitismus und philosemitismus im deutschen nachkrieg. gerlingen: bleicher sünker, h. 1989: bildung, alltag und subjektivität. weinheim. deutscher studien verlag sünker, h. 1994: are intellectuals the keepers of political culture? some reflections on politics, morality, and reason, in: farnen, r. (ed.): nationalism, ethnicity, and identity. new brunswick/london: transaction, 193-204, 486-488 sünker, h. 1997: heydorn’s bildungs theory and content as social analysis, in; farnen/sünker, 113-128 sünker, h./otto, h.-u. 1997: volk community: identity formation and social practise, in: sünker/otto (eds.): education and fascism: political identity and social education in nazi germany. london/washington: falmer, 15-35 sünker, h./krüger, h.-h. (hg.) 1999: kritische erziehungswissenschaft am neubeginn ?! frankfurt/m. suhrkamp széll, g. 1988: participation, worker’s control and self-management. current sociology 36 (no. 3) heinz sünker: democratic education: educating for democracy transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (2) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 30 theunissen, m. 1978: sein und schein: die kritische funktion der hegelschen logik. frankfurt/m.: suhrkamp theunissen, m. 1989: möglichkeiten des philosophierens heute, in: sozialwissenschaftliche literatur rundschau 12, 77-89 todd, e. 1999: die neoliberale illusion: über die stagnation der entwickelten gesellschaften. zürich: rotpunktverlag tomasello, m. 1999: the cultural origin of human cognition. cambridge/london: harvard university press vester, m. et al. 2001: soziale milieus im gesellschaftlichen strukturwandel. frankfurt/m.: suhrkamp wehler, h.-u. 1988: aus der geschichte lernen? münchen: beck wexler, ph. 1990: social analysis of education: after the new sociology. new york/london: routledge wexler, ph. 1999: die toyota-schule: ökonomisierung von bildung und postmodernes selbst, in: sünker/krüger, 35-57 whitty, g. 2002: making sense of education policy. london: paul chapman author heinz sünker is professor in the department of social sciences, university of wuppertal, germany. his most recent book is politics, bildung and social justice: perspectives for a democratic society (sense publishers, rotterdam, 2006). correspondence to: suenker@uniwuppertal.de microsoft word sousa_portuguese.doc to cite this article please include all of the following details: sousa, francisco (2007). construir currículo na ultra-periferia da europa em tempo de globalização: dois cenários alternatives. transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> construir currículo na ultra-periferia da europa em tempo de globalização: dois cenários alternativos francisco sousa universidade dos açores, portugal introdução com este artigo, tenciono discutir algumas possíveis implicações da posição ultra-periférica da região onde vivo – os açores – para a construção curricular. nessa discussão, terei em conta os actuais debates sobre a globalização e também o facto de o governo regional dos açores, através da sua secretaria regional da educação e cultura1, ter recentemente iniciado um processo de criação e implementação de um currículo regional para o ensino básico. do ponto de vista geográfico, os açores constituem um arquipélago de nove ilhas, localizado na metade leste do oceano atlântico, a uma distância de 760 milhas náuticas de lisboa – o que o torna bastante isolado do continente – e 2.111 de nova iorque. este arquipélago tem uma população de cerca de 240.000 habitantes. do ponto de vista político, os açores são uma região autónoma de portugal e uma região ultra-periférica da união europeia. dadas estas características geográficas e este estatuto político, os açores são pouco visíveis no plano nacional e, sobretudo, no plano internacional. há quem nem saiba que tais ilhas existem e há quem tenha uma ideia muito pouco rigorosa sobre as suas características. para iniciar uma discussão sobre as implicações curriculares desta invisibilidade na era da globalização, é útil ler a reflexão apresentada por noel gough (2002) acerca de um dossiê sobre globalização – intitulado ‘one world, ready or not?’ – publicado em 1999 pelo jornal australiano the age. o anúncio do dossiê continha um desenho de um globo terrestre posicionado de tal forma que a ásia ocupava a parte central da imagem, a europa e a américa do norte ficavam bastante visíveis, enquanto outras partes do planeta – como a américa do sul – ficavam invisíveis. para gough (2002), ‘uma interpretação possível desta imagem é que a questão de estar ou não pronto para pertencer a ‘um mundo’ é mais pertinente para as nações observáveis deste ponto de vista’ (p. 170). também os açores estão ausentes de muitas representações gráficas do planeta terra. esta ausência resulta da forma como a representação do planeta é feita não só em termos de perspectiva mas também em termos de escala. mesmo quando o oceano atlântico é representado, os açores – devido à sua reduzida dimensão – são simplesmente invisíveis à escala usada em muitas representações do planeta. além disso, a linguagem usada nos meios de comunicação social e em muitos discursos populares contribui para o reforço dessa invisibilidade, ao referir-se ao território português como se algumas das suas partes não existissem. no momento em que escrevo o presente artigo, é possível encontrar muitas manifestações desse fenómeno através de uma simples pesquisa na internet. por exemplo, numa página para turistas2 – da responsabilidade de uma empresa de divulgação de serviços na área do turismo, apoiada pela associação portuguesa de hotéis e pelo instituto de turismo 1 devido a alterações entretanto introduzidas na estrutura orgânica do governo da região autónoma dos açores, no momento em que este texto é redigido, já não existe uma secretaria regional da educação e cultura, mas sim uma secretaria regional da educação e ciência. 2 http://www.portugaltravelguide.com/pt/beiras http://www.portugaltravelguide.com/pt/beiras http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci sousa: construir currículo na ultra-periferia da europa transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 12 de portugal –, afirma-se que ‘o pico da serra da estrela é o ponto mais alto de portugal’, ignorando que o ponto mais alto de portugal se encontra na montanha do pico, nos açores, 358 metros acima do pico da serra da estrela3. entre outros textos de questionável rigor geográfico, um texto disponibilizado na página de internet de uma escola profissional de agricultura4 informa que a escola se localiza ‘na região oeste de portugal’. ao ler o texto, apercebemo-nos de que, para os autores do texto, ‘região oeste de portugal’ significa uma determinada área da costa ocidental de portugal continental, como se não houvesse mais território português para oeste, designadamente as ilhas dos açores. esta falta de rigor não está ausente de manuais escolares e outros materiais curriculares. embora se registe, nesse tipo de recursos, um progressivo aumento do rigor nas referências a todas as regiões do país, ainda é possível encontrar contra-exemplos desta tendência. pelo menos dois manuais da área do estudo do meio para o 4º ano de escolaridade, publicados recentemente (aguiar, 2006; rodrigues, 2006) referem-se de forma errada à organização política dos açores, ao afirmarem que a região se encontra dividida em três distritos, o que não é verdade desde os anos 70 do século xx. segundo um caderno de exercícios para estudantes de história e geografia no 5º ano de escolaridade (costa e marques, 2006), o nome da região autónoma dos açores foi inspirado numa ave marinha chamada açor (accipiter gentiles). de facto, os historiadores geralmente consideram que o nome da região foi inspirado numa ave chamada açor. mas os taxonomistas não classificam o açor como ave marinha. o caderno de exercícios em causa não é, nessa parte específica, rigoroso, sendo que não se encontra facilmente esse tipo de falta de rigor em referências a partes mais centrais do território português. que implicações deve a posição marginal dos açores – ilustrada por estes exemplos – ter em termos de construção de um currículo regional? neste artigo, não será apresentada uma resposta definitiva a esta questão, mas serão discutidas duas possibilidades alternativas (dois cenários entre muitos outros possíveis) para a construção de um currículo regional que tenha essa posição em conta. o currículo regional dos açores para discutir as implicações curriculares da posição marginal ocupada pelos açores nos planos nacional e internacional na era da globalização, é importante ter em conta a estrutura formal do processo de tomada de decisão sobre o currículo naquela região. até há pouco tempo, as características específicas dos açores não se reflectiam no conteúdo do currículo formal. dada a natureza tradicionalmente centralista do processo de tomada de decisão sobre o currículo em portugal, o currículo oficial costumava ser exactamente o mesmo em todo o território português, incluindo as regiões autónomas dos açores e da madeira. mas há pouco tempo o governo regional dos açores, através da sua secretaria regional da educação e cultura, tomou a iniciativa de criar um currículo regional para o ensino básico, subsidiário do currículo nacional português. o conceito de currículo regional foi introduzido na política educativa açoriana por via do decreto legislativo regional nº 15/2001/a, de 4 de agosto. neste documento oficial, o currículo regional dos açores é definido da seguinte forma: para efeitos do presente diploma, entende-se como currículo regional o conjunto de aprendizagens e competências a desenvolver pelos alunos que se fundamentam nas características geográficas, económicas, sociais, culturais e político-administrativas dos açores. (artigo 2º, nº 1) 3 a montanha do pico tem 2.351 metros de altitude e a serra da estrela 1.993. 4 http://www.epafbl.edu.pt http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci http://www.epafbl.edu.pt sousa: construir currículo na ultra-periferia da europa transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 13 a construção deste currículo regional tem sido, até certo ponto, aberta ao debate público. assim sendo, em setembro de 2003, a secretaria regional da educação e cultura promoveu um colóquio sobre o assunto e, desde então, tem recolhido alguns pareceres junto de sindicatos de professores, académicos e outros interessados. em 2004, foi dado mais um passo importante no sentido da construção de um currículo regional nos açores, com a publicação da resolução nº 124/2004, de 9 de setembro, através da qual um conjunto de competências curriculares foi oficialmente aprovado. de acordo com este diploma, o currículo regional dos açores é legitimado pelos seguintes princípios: a. o princípio da educação inclusiva, que sustenta a adaptação da escola a todos e a todas as diversidades culturais; b. o princípio da racionalidade de projecto, que pressupõe o currículo como uma realidade em permanente reconstrução, contratualizada por todos os actores envolvidos; c. o princípio da diferenciação curricular, que exige uma postura crítica e um conceito alargado de profissionalidade docente; d. o princípio da significatividade das aprendizagens, que explora os contextos culturais de referência como recurso para dar sentido às aprendizagens. cenários alternativos para a contínua construção de um currículo regional o facto de se viver e estudar numa região como os açores pode ser considerado uma forma de ser diferente de estudantes que vivem noutros lugares. por outras palavras, pode ser considerado uma fonte de identidade. assim sendo, podemos discutir formas de diferenciação curricular que tenham esse tipo de diferença em conta. no contexto deste artigo, entende-se por diferenciação curricular a adaptação do currículo às características de cada aluno por forma a maximizar as suas oportunidades de sucesso escolar. trata-se de um conceito de diferenciação curricular baseado em princípios de inclusão. à luz de tais princípios, ‘diferenciar é estabelecer diferentes vias – mas não pode ser nunca estabelecer diferentes níveis de chegada por causa das condições de partida’ (roldão, 1999, p. 53). portanto, o tipo de diferenciação curricular a que este artigo se refere não é sinónimo de tracking, agrupamento por níveis e dispositivos afins. tais dispositivos têm estado associados a uma ideia de diferenciação curricular como mecanismo que necessariamente conduz à estratificação académica e social. como oakes, gamoran e page (1992) reconhecem, ‘com o tracking, os educadores julgam previamente quanto vão beneficiar os alunos, sendo que a alguns deles não serão ensinados conhecimentos necessários para aceder a determinadas oportunidades académicas e sociais no futuro’ (p. 597). esta ideia de diferenciação curricular como disponibilização de vias alternativas de estudo, tendo algumas delas mais prestígio social do que outras, tem raízes históricas profundas, como notam apple (1990), kliebard (1995) e deschenes, cuban e tyack (2001) em relação ao caso norte-americano e goodson (1995) nota em relação ao caso britânico. apple (1990), por exemplo, afirma que o pensamento de franklin bobbitt e de outros pioneiros dos estudos curriculares nos estados unidos da américa na transição do século xix para o século xx era dominado por uma ideia ainda hoje muito influente – a ideia de que ‘o currículo necessitava de ser diferenciado para preparar indivíduos de diferente inteligência e capacidade para uma variedade de funções específicas a desempenhar na vida adulta’ (p. 95). mas, apesar do predomínio das abordagens estratificadoras à diferenciação curricular, é possível diferenciar o currículo sem o estratificar à partida, investindo mais tempo e energia em avaliação diagnóstica e formativa, a fim de conhecer bem os alunos e adaptar o currículo às suas características; dignificando um amplo leque de formas de aceder à realidade, conhecê-la http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci sousa: construir currículo na ultra-periferia da europa transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 14 e resolver problemas; praticando a diferenciação de preferência através do ajustamento de estratégias de ensino, considerando a diferenciação de objectivos apenas como opção de último recurso, de modo a não prejudicar a demanda dos mais elevados padrões para todos os alunos enquanto isso for possível. neste sentido, a residência nos açores pode ser considerada uma entre muitas razões pelas quais o currículo deve ser diferenciado naquela região e o currículo regional pode tornar-se um entre muitos instrumentos de diferenciação curricular. até que ponto faz sentido, na era da globalização, construir um currículo que conceda especial atenção às características específicas de uma determinada região? para smith (2003), a auto-compreensão humana é agora cada vez mais vivida numa tensão entre o local e o global, entre a minha compreensão de mim próprio como pessoa deste lugar e a minha emergente mas profunda consciência de que este lugar é parte de uma realidade fortemente influenciada por, e implicada em, paisagens mais alargadas. (p. 36) para discutir seriamente a relação entre regionalismo curricular e globalização nos açores, não basta sugerir a aplicação do cliché ‘glocal’ ao currículo que está a ser construído naquela região. uma possível forma de aprofundar a discussão sobre esta problemática consiste em explorar um tipo de discurso que ajude a situar numa paisagem mais global os aspectos identitários resultantes da residência nos açores, mapeando-os na complexa teia de identidades e diferenças que molda as relações entre seres humanos em geral e estudantes em particular. a ‘gramática da diferença’ desenvolvida por burbules (1997) pode ser útil nessa exploração. considerando que a abordagem à diferenciação curricular adoptada por determinado decisor curricular está associada à respectiva conceptualização da diferença entre estudantes, discutirei agora duas formas alternativas de encarar a diferença na escola à luz da ‘gramática da diferença’ proposta por burbules: a abordagem categorial e a abordagem não categorial. essa discussão incluirá uma caracterização geral desses dois tipos de abordagem e referências específicas ao currículo regional dos açores. em primeiro lugar, a abordagem categorial será caracterizada de forma breve. depois, será apresentado um resumo da crítica que tem sido feita a esse tipo de abordagem. finalmente, serão referidos alguns possíveis pontos de partida para a construção de uma abordagem não categorial. abordagem categorial abordar a diferença numa perspectiva categorial implica organizar o pensamento acerca da diferença classificando indivíduos em categorias ou taxonomias. assim sendo, este tipo de abordagem geralmente inclui (1) a selecção de determinada dimensão da diferença que seja considerada relevante – por exemplo, religião, género ou raça – e (2) a distribuição dos indivíduos por categorias no âmbito da dimensão seleccionada – por exemplo, ‘judeu’, ‘cristão’, ‘muçulmano’. a abordagem categorial tem sido frequentemente associada à defesa dos direitos de determinadas minorias ou de grupos de alguma forma considerados oprimidos. nesta perspectiva, presta-se especial atenção a determinada dimensão da diferença e desenvolvemse especiais esforços no sentido de defender os interesses das pessoas que pertencem a uma determinada categoria no âmbito dessa mesma dimensão. atente-se, por exemplo, nas diferenças de género. há mais de cem anos, john dewey (1902) escreveu o seguinte: enquanto professor, ele [ênfase acrescentado] não está preocupado em adicionar novos factos à ciência que ensina; em levantar novas hipóteses e em testá-las. ele [ênfase http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci sousa: construir currículo na ultra-periferia da europa transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 15 acrescentado] preocupa-se com a matéria da ciência enquanto representativa de um determinado estádio de desenvolvimento da experiência. (p. 30) em 1902, o uso do pronome masculino ‘ele’ em referência a ambos os sexos não era considerado muito problemático. actualmente, a passagem de texto acima transcrita seria considerada por muitos revisores de propostas de publicação, principalmente no mundo anglo-saxónico, um caso de linguagem sexista e, portanto, teria de ser alterada para ser publicada. esta crescente exigência de uma linguagem mais rigorosa em termos de género tem sido apoiada e consolidada por muitos indivíduos e grupos, alguns dos quais (e.g., investigadoras feministas) se têm destacado na asserção do género como dimensão relevante quando a diferença e o respeito pela diferença estão em causa. a teoria e desenvolvimento curricular, enquanto área de estudo, tem acompanhado esta aproximação a linguagens e práticas não discriminatórias em termos de género e não só. é de notar, a este propósito, que existem muitos textos que discutem implicações curriculares da identidade de género (fonseca, 2000; louro, 2000; munro, 1998), tal como existem muitos textos sobre teoria curricular e educação multicultural (gay, 1995; gimeno sacristán, 1999; leite, 2000, 2002), currículo e necessidades educativas especiais (moreira e baumel, 2002), currículo alinhado com inteligências múltiplas e estilos de aprendizagem alternativos (silver, strong, & perini, 2000), e assim por diante. estes cruzamentos entre teoria curricular e outros domínios de estudo do âmbito das ciências da educação têm ocorrido no contexto de um fenómeno através do qual várias dimensões da diferença que operam em contextos educacionais se têm tornado objectos de estudo de determinadas especialidades académicas, tais como a educação multicultural, a educação de estudantes com necessidades educativas especiais e a educação de sobredotados. estes estudos especializados têm produzido discursos que tendem naturalmente a focar aspectos específicos da diferença, embora se estendam por vezes à diferença em geral e nalguns casos sejam usados para reivindicar alguma liderança na construção de abordagens inovadoras à diferença em geral. a construção de um currículo regional nos açores pode eventualmente seguir uma lógica semelhante, ou seja, enfatizar uma dimensão relevante da diferença – a condição de viver num determinado enquadramento geográfico com características particulares – e construir um discurso revelador de consideração para com os alunos afectados por essa mesma dimensão. neste tipo de abordagem, o currículo escolar é construído tendo em especial atenção as características dos estudantes açorianos. dentro e fora das escolas, espera-se que os apoiantes deste tipo de abordagem façam pressão sobre os autores de todos os tipos de texto para mudarem frases como ‘o pico da serra da estrela é o ponto mais alto de portugal’ para ‘o pico da serra da estrela é o ponto mais alto de portugal continental’, à semelhança do que acontece no caso da pressão que tem havido para que, em determinadas situações, se escreva, por exemplo, ‘ele ou ela’ em vez de ‘ele’, de modo a evitar o uso de uma linguagem sexista. crítica à abordagem categorial burbules (1997) critica as abordagens categoriais à diferença salientando o carácter instável das categorias, que é assegurado (1) pela existência de diferenças que escapam às nossas capacidades de compreensão, constituindo uma alteridade misteriosa, que não pode ser explicada através das grelhas que normalmente utilizamos para interpretar a realidade; (2) pela invocação de diferenças com o propósito de afirmar a identidade não só pelo que se é mas também pelo que se não é5; (3) pela asserção da diferença enquanto resistência a processos de totalização (o sistema de categorias que é legitimado pelo totalizador é 5 burbules dá como exemplo deste fenómeno a afirmação de identidades heterossexuais através de ansiedade ou hostilidade para com a homossexualidade. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci sousa: construir currículo na ultra-periferia da europa transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 16 naturalmente diferente do sistema de categorias que aqueles que resistem à totalização tomam por referência). o uso de uma abordagem categorial pode tornar-se particularmente problemático quando as taxonomias de categorias são expandidas até níveis de grande especificidade. um discurso sobre as características específicas dos açores pode parecer demasiado generalista em determinados contextos, porque, por exemplo, viver na ilha de s. miguel é diferente de viver na ilha do corvo e, em s. miguel, viver em ponta delgada é bastante diferente de viver no nordeste. dividindo categorias em múltiplos níveis de sub-categorias, poder-se-ia porventura respeitar melhor certas especificidades, mas tal procedimento geraria certamente uma taxonomia muito fragmentada, pouco útil para quem lida diariamente com a diversidade na escola. o hibridismo e a possibilidade de mudança de categoria também representam dificuldades para as abordagens categoriais. pode-se viver nos açores depois de ter vivido durante muito tempo noutras partes do mundo, tendo assim recebido contributos de diferentes contextos geográficos e culturais para a construção da identidade. além disso, ‘múltiplas dimensões da diferença actuam simultaneamente a todo o momento’ (burbules, 1997, p. 101). ninguém é simplesmente açoriano, branco, homossexual ou muçulmano. os discursos sobre a diferença que se restringem a uma racionalidade categorial tendem para a reificação, o que dificulta a percepção do carácter dinâmico dessa mesma diferença, cristalizando sistemas de classificação, tornando-os estáticos, independentes do contexto e, portanto, desprovidos da flexibilidade que lhes permitiria acomodar, a qualquer momento, qualquer manifestação de diferença. a mesma questão tem sido discutida do lado da identidade, por via da crítica às perspectivas essencialistas, que concebem a identidade como descrição estática, porque não reconhecem o carácter performativo da mesma. como afirma silva (2000, pp. 92-96), a identidade envolve performatividade e, portanto, consiste menos em ‘ser’ do que em ‘tornar-se’. o conceito de performatividade, desenvolvido por butler (1993), baseia-se no reconhecimento não só de que as identidades se transformam mas também no reconhecimento de que certos actos discursivos desempenham um papel importante nessa transformação. neste sentido, as proposições ‘está encerrada a sessão’ e ‘declaro-vos marido e mulher’ são claramente performativas, na medida em que são consideradas necessárias à ocorrência de certos factos. já a proposição ‘o joão é pouco inteligente’ parece puramente descritiva, mas, como explica silva (2000, p. 93), pode funcionar como performativa porque a sua enunciação repetida pode acabar por produzir o ‘facto’ que supostamente se limitaria a descrever. de igual modo, a proposição ‘o pico da serra da estrela é o ponto mais alto de portugal’ parece descritiva mas pode funcionar como performativa porque a sua enunciação repetida produz em muitas mentes uma realidade subjectiva que obscurece a realidade objectiva. este tipo de problema só pode ser enfrentado por currículos que reconheçam a performatividade e ajudem os estudantes a estudar como é que ela opera. se queremos que as nossas características sejam respeitadas, não podemos simplesmente dizer aos alunos quem nós (incluindo os estudantes) somos. temos também de ajudá-los a discutir os discursos que outros produzem sobre nós. a simplificação da realidade que é veiculada por sistemas de classificação reificados esconde não só os processos através dos quais as identidades e as diferenças são construídas mas também os aspectos menos visíveis dessa mesma realidade. esses sistemas captam os aspectos mais salientes da diferença, em detrimento das diferenças menos visíveis, que são frequentemente excluídas dos discursos oficiais, embora possam ser significativas do ponto de vista de quem as experiencia. de facto, muitos discursos sobre a diferença focam manifestações muito visíveis de diferença (relacionadas com dimensões como raça e género, por exemplo) e, através de uma retórica que enfatiza a defesa das minorias, acabam por privilegiar a maioria dentro da minoria. para se obter uma ideia mais concreta sobre esta tendência, basta fazer uma experiência muito simples: pesquisar numa biblioteca ou numa http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci sousa: construir currículo na ultra-periferia da europa transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 17 base de dados textos acerca da educação de minorias étnicas e/ou grupos de imigrantes nos estados unidos da américa, comparando, por exemplo, a quantidade de referências disponíveis sobre chineses ou mexicanos com a quantidade de referências disponíveis sobre gregos ou portugueses. a quantidade e a visibilidade também podem constituir fontes de poder (embora não haja uma relação linear entre a dimensão de uma população e o seu poder), o que significa que certos grupos insistentemente apresentados como minorias oprimidas podem, afinal, estar relativamente bem posicionados na teia de relações de poder, se comparados com aqueles que pertencem a minorias tão pequenas que se tornam invisíveis. certos grupos têm poder para promover a defesa dos seus interesses através da organização de movimentos sociais – como o movimento dos direitos civis dos anos 60 do século xx nos estados unidos da américa – ou, pelo menos, de desfiles em grandes cidades, o que não é acessível a um reduzido número de estudantes que vivem no meio do oceano atlântico. perante este facto, pode-se questionar a utilidade de uma abordagem categorial na construção de um currículo regional nos açores. uma das razões pelas quais a luta por uma linguagem mais respeitadora e por um currículo mais inclusivo em termos de género tem obtido algum sucesso reside no facto de cerca de metade da população mundial ser feminina. como apenas 0,004% da população mundial vive nos açores, seria frustrante concentrar esforços numa luta específica e directa por um reconhecimento global daquela região. abordagem não categorial na sua discussão sobre abordagens alternativas à diferença, burbules (1997) afirma o seguinte: uma forma muito diferente de conceber a diferença consiste em começar com o contínuo, o indefinido, o instável, e tentar desenvolver uma linguagem que nos permita fazer distinções particulares e explicar a realidade sem permitir que os conceitos com os quais trabalhamos se reifiquem em categorias ou tipologias. (p. 102) como pode a construção de um currículo regional nos açores começar com o contínuo e o indefinido? esta abordagem alternativa pode envolver, por exemplo, disponibilidade para evitar uma ênfase excessiva nos aspectos da identidade dos estudantes que resultam do facto de residirem nos açores, isto é, evitar usá-los como pilares exclusivos do currículo, negligenciando outros aspectos relevantes das identidades desses mesmos estudantes. o discurso oficial veiculado pelo decreto legislativo regional nº 15/2001/a e por documentos preparatórios subsequentes, submetidos a consultores para análise e comentário, enfatiza fortemente a ideia de currículo regional como contributo para a consolidação da autonomia política dos açores. como consultor da secretaria regional da educação e cultura, elaborei um parecer no qual sugeri que o currículo regional poderia ser conceptualizado numa perspectiva menos instrumental, sem que isso implicasse o abandono de uma preocupação legítima para com a promoção do conhecimento sobre as características específicas dos açores e para com a transposição dessa mesma preocupação para o currículo. sugeri também que a significatividade dos conteúdos do ponto de vista dos alunos fosse tomada como critério nas decisões sobre o que incluir (ou não) no currículo, uma vez que a (falta de) relevância ou significado é hoje, afinal, um dos principais problemas da cultura escolar dominante, como nota esteve (2000), para quem não faz qualquer sentido que uma pessoa educada no século xxi estude física durante três anos e, ao mesmo tempo, use telefones, computadores e televisores todos os dias sem ter a mais vaga ideia sobre o modo de funcionamento desses aparelhos. (p. 9) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci sousa: construir currículo na ultra-periferia da europa transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 18 a realização de aprendizagens específicas sobre os açores ou sobre realidades mais universais através de recursos disponíveis nos açores pode, de facto, contribuir para que o currículo se torne mais significativo para os alunos daquela região, mas, por si só, não é suficiente, por várias razões. uma parte importante do que os estudantes devem aprender na escola dificilmente pode ser abordada numa perspectiva regional. os estudantes devem, obviamente, aprender muito para além dos limites geográficos do lugar onde vivem, por forma a evitar o provincianismo. além disso, há outras fontes de aprendizagem significativa que podem ser usadas com mais eficácia em muitas situações. a crença de que os alunos necessariamente atribuem maior relevância aos fenómenos fisicamente mais próximos não tem fundamento científico, como evidencia roldão (1994, p. 7). o exótico e o imaginário sempre desempenharam, aliás, um papel importante na configuração das experiências das crianças e dos jovens. finalmente, a geografia virtual – definida como ‘o terreno criado pela televisão, pelo telefone e pelas telecomunicações que atravessam o globo’ (wark, 1994, p. vii) – é hoje pelo menos tão influente como a geografia local na configuração da experiência individual. o discurso veiculado pela resolução nº 124/2004 enfatiza bastante mais a ideia de aprendizagem significativa em geral do que os documentos precedentes. uma vez que, de acordo com os documentos oficiais, o currículo regional dos açores se baseia em competências, ‘começar com o contínuo’ implicaria certamente conceber todo o conjunto de competências curriculares como um continuum, que se estendesse de um foco local para um foco global. em vez disso, os documentos preparatórios misturaram competências claramente focadas na realidade regional – como ‘utilizar os saberes científicos e tecnológicos para compreender os fenómenos naturais ilhéus e para com eles interagir’ – com competências tão relevantes nos açores como em qualquer outra parte do mundo – como ‘usar conhecimentos e experiências relacionadas com o desporto em actividades cívicas que contribuam para a promoção da solidariedade e para a melhoria da qualidade de vida’. esta mistura foi criticada por alguns analistas, que afirmaram que, ao apresentar competências dessa forma, a secretaria regional da educação e cultura estava a conceber o currículo regional como uma adição ao currículo nacional, em vez de construí-lo numa lógica de adaptação orgânica. no texto da resolução nº 124/2004, as competências são apresentadas de forma mais contínua. neste documento, afirma-se que as competências são organizadas de acordo com uma ‘sequência de contextos de significatividade das aprendizagens, da generalidade para a especificidade’. todavia, ao dividir competências por três contextos diferentes – contexto da cidadania (competências já previstas no currículo nacional), contexto da insularidade e contexto da açorianidade – o discurso oficial permanece bastante cativo de uma lógica categorial, que dificilmente se pode compatibilizar com o carácter polivalente de várias das competências. repare-se, por exemplo, numa das competências que a resolução nº 124/2004 coloca no contexto da cidadania: ‘mobilizar saberes culturais, científicos e tecnológicos para compreender a realidade e para abordar situações e problemas do quotidiano’. o mesmo documento legislativo determina que uma das competências a desenvolver no contexto da insularidade é ‘utilizar os conhecimentos científicos e tecnológicos para compreender os fenómenos naturais ilhéus e para com eles interagir’. estes dois enunciados apontam realmente para duas competências diferentes ou referem-se a uma única competência cujo foco se pode tornar mais amplo ou mais estreito? uma forma mais eficiente de explicitar o currículo regional pode talvez ser ensaiada através da indicação de especificações regionais do currículo nacional sempre que tal se considere relevante. por exemplo, se os decisores curriculares considerarem que ‘mobilizar saberes culturais, científicos e tecnológicos para compreender a realidade e para abordar situações e problemas do quotidiano’ é uma http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci sousa: construir currículo na ultra-periferia da europa transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 19 competência que deve ser exercida nos açores de forma particularmente distinta, poderá haver uma simples adaptação do enunciado acima transcrito, através da adição das seguintes palavras: ‘tais como os fenómenos naturais ilhéus’. não há necessidade de criar outra competência. um currículo regional que começa ‘com o contínuo’ é certamente um currículo que promove a tomada de consciência do carácter multi-dimensional da identidade. como nota w. h. taylor, a identidade cultural exprime-se geralmente em vários níveis de especificidade, podendo determinado indivíduo ser simultaneamente considerado, por exemplo, highlander, escocês, britânico e europeu, sendo que ‘esta lista pode ser expandida em ambos os sentidos’ (cit. por nóvoa, 2000, p. 44). de igual modo, pode-se afirmar que a identidade de alguém que resida, por exemplo, na ilha graciosa, nos açores, é construída a partir de diferentes referências geográficas e culturais aninhadas umas nas outras: europa, portugal, açores, graciosa. a lista pode expandir-se em ambos os sentidos. numa abordagem não categorial à diferenciação curricular, estas camadas múltiplas de identidade são seriamente consideradas e o trabalho curricular é transferido deliberadamente de camada para camada a qualquer momento. esta disponibilidade para fazer zoom a todo o momento pode ser fortalecida se o processo de decisão curricular for seriamente perspectivado na lógica de uma geometria fractal – como sugerem davis e sumara (2000, 2003) –, em vez de se manter o pensamento acerca da escola e do currículo moldado pela geometria euclidiana. talvez haja mesmo algum potencial nos açores para a construção de um contributo interessante para a exploração de formas de trabalho curricular inspiradas pela geometria fractal. quem vive num arquipélago de nove ilhas bastante diferentes umas das outras – em termos de dimensão do território, população6, poder político e outros aspectos – tende a desenvolver uma sensibilidade especial em relação a uma certa ideia de ilha enquanto unidade particularmente significativa em termos de identidade – unidade essa que se integra em unidades mais amplas e inclui subunidades, formando assim uma rede na qual as identidades e as relações de poder são, à semelhança de uma matryoshka, constituídas por múltiplas camadas, não podendo, portanto, ser explicadas apenas com base numa lógica binária. em suma, a construção de um currículo regional nos açores (tal como noutras pequenas regiões) de um modo não categorial poderia ser feita à luz das seguintes orientações: 1. seleccionar conteúdos tendo em consideração a sua relevância social e a sua relevância pessoal para os alunos; tratar a identidade regional como uma entre muitas outras fontes de relevância curricular, não necessariamente a principal; 2. tratar o currículo regional como uma adaptação orgânica do currículo nacional, não como uma adição a este último; repercutir essa adaptação nos documentos oficiais por via da inclusão de especificações regionais nas competências enunciadas a nível nacional, não pela via da criação de competências de âmbito exclusivamente regional; 3. maximizar a exploração de ligações entre fenómenos locais e globais. comentários finais no momento em que se redige este artigo, é demasiado cedo para avaliar com rigor se o currículo regional dos açores está mais próximo de uma abordagem categorial ou de uma abordagem não categorial, embora alguns sinais sugiram que tem sido influenciado sobretudo por uma racionalidade categorial. note-se, a este propósito, que o discurso oficial que apoia o currículo regional em questão tem estado centrado nos açorianos e tem sugerido, implicitamente, que os açorianos são, de preferência, aqueles que nasceram nos açores e/ou 6 s. miguel, a ilha maior, tem cerca de 132.000 habitantes, enquanto o corvo, a mais pequena, tem cerca de 450. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci sousa: construir currículo na ultra-periferia da europa transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 20 passaram a maior parte das suas vidas naquela região. por outras palavras, tem havido pouco lugar nesse discurso, por exemplo, para os imigrantes recentemente chegados aos açores – tradicionalmente uma região de emigrantes, mas agora também uma região com alguns imigrantes, a maioria dos quais vindos do brasil e da europa de leste. na era da globalização, a realidade local é fortemente influenciada por paisagens mais amplas (smith, 2003). neste contexto, as políticas educativas nacionais e regionais são de alguma forma pressionadas no sentido de adoptarem formas de conceptualizar a escola e o currículo que têm sido consolidadas a um nível supranacional (nóvoa, 2000; smith, 2003). dada esta pressão, quem decide sobre o currículo regional pode conformar-se ou resistir. resistir isolando e enfatizando as características específicas de uma minoria que vive numa região quase invisível pode ser bastante frustrante e contraproducente. mas talvez haja maiores possibilidades de sucesso se for explorada a relação entre as identidades que resultam sobretudo do ambiente natural e cultural específico da região e outras identidades, abrindo assim espaço para alianças estratégicas com outras minorias. fazer com que o mundo reconheça a existência dos açores é muito difícil, porventura impossível, mas é possível melhorar o conhecimento dos açorianos acerca do seu lugar no mundo, sem o qual não poderão lutar por mais elevados níveis de respeito pela sua identidade. isto requer conhecimento sólido sobre fenómenos globais e sobre a sua relação com fenómenos locais. para promover esse tipo de conhecimento, o currículo regional tem de ser também internacional. além disso, tem de ser continuamente posto em prática através de avanços e recuos de zoom entre o local e o global. nota este artigo baseia-se numa comunicação com o mesmo título que apresentei à ‘second world curriculum studies conference’, realizada em tampere, finlândia, em maio de 2006. a minha participação nesse evento foi financiada pela secretaria regional da educação e ciência do governo regional dos açores. referências bibliográficas aguiar, o. p. (2006). aprender mais – estudo do meio, 4º ano, ensino básico. porto: editora educação nacional. apple, m. (1990). ideology and curriculum (2nd ed.). new york: routledge. burbules, n. (1997). a grammar of difference: some ways of rethinking difference and diversity as educational topics. australian educational researcher, 24(1), 97-116. butler, j. (1993). bodies that matter: on the discursive limits of ‘sex’. new york: routledge. costa, f., & marques, a. (2006). história e geografia de portugal, 5º ano caderno de actividades. porto: porto editora. davis, b., & sumara, d. (2000). curriculum forms: on the assumed shapes of knowing and knowledge. journal of curriculum studies, 32(6), 821-845. davis, b., & sumara, d. (2003). the hidden geometry of curriculum. in r. edwards & r. usher (eds.), space, curriculum, and learning (pp. 79-91). greenwich, ct: information age publishing. deschenes, s., cuban, l., & tyack, d. (2001). mismatch: historical perspectives on schools and students who don't fit them. teachers college record, 103(4), 525-547. dewey, j. (1902). the child and the curriculum. chicago: the university of chicago press. esteve, j. m. (2000). culture in the school: assessment and the content of education. european journal of teacher education, 23(1), 5-18. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci sousa: construir currículo na ultra-periferia da europa transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 21 fonseca, m. l. (2000). currículo e género: o lugar da escola na construção de culturas juvenis femininas. comunicação apresentada ao v congresso da sociedade portuguesa de ciências da educação, faro. gay, g. (1995). curriculum theory and multicultural education. in j. banks & c. a. mcgee (eds.), handbook of research on multicultural education (pp. 25-43). new york: macmillan. gimeno sacristán, j. (1999). currículo e diversidade cultural. in t. t. silva & a. f. moreira (orgs.), territórios contestados: o currículo e os novos mapas políticos e culturais (3ª ed., pp. 82-113). petrópolis: vozes. goodson, i. (1995). the making of curriculum: collected essays (2nd ed.). washington dc: falmer press. gough, n. (2002). the long arm(s) of globalization: transnational imaginaries in curriculum work. in w. doll jr. & n. gough (eds.), curriculum visions (pp. 167-178). new york: peter lang. kliebard, h. (1995). the struggle for the american curriculum: 1893-1958 (2nd ed.). new york: routledge. leite, c. (2000). uma análise da dimensão multicultural no currículo. revista de educação, ix(1), 137-143. leite, c. (2002). o currículo e o multiculturalismo no sistema educativo português. lisboa: fundação calouste gulbenkian / fundação para a ciência e tecnologia. louro, g. (2000). currículo, género e sexualidade. porto: porto editora. moreira, l., & baumel, r. (2002). currículo em educação especial: tendências e debates. comunicação apresentada ao v colóquio sobre questões curriculares (i colóquio lusobrasileiro), braga. munro, p. (1998). engendering curriculum history. in w. f. pinar (ed.), curriculum: toward new identities (pp. 263-294). new york: garland. nóvoa, a. (2000). the restructuring of the european educational space: changing relationships among states, citizens, and educational communities. in t. s. popkewitz (ed.), educational knowledge: changing relationships between the state, civil society, and the educational comunity (pp. 31-57). albany: suny press. oakes, j., gamoran, a., & page, r. (1992). curriculum differentiation: opportunities, outcomes, and meanings. in p. w. jackson (ed.), handbook of research on curriculum: a project of the american educational research association (pp. 570-608). new york: macmillan. rodrigues, a. m. (2006). crescer – estudo do meio, 4º ano, ensino básico. porto: editora educação nacional. roldão, m. c. (1994). o pensamento concreto da criança: uma perspectiva a questionar no currículo. lisboa: instituto de inovação educacional. roldão, m. c. (1999). gestão curricular: fundamentos e práticas. lisboa: ministério da educação. silva, t. t. (2000). a produção social da identidade e da diferença. in t. t. silva (org.), identidade e diferença: a perspectiva dos estudos culturais (pp. 73-102). petrópolis: vozes. silver, h., strong, r., & perini, m. (2000). so each may learn: integrating learning styles and multiple intelligences. alexandria, virginia: ascd. smith, d. g. (2003). curriculum and teaching face globalization. in w. f. pinar (ed.), international handbook of curriculum research (pp. 35-51). mahwah, new jersey: lawrence erlbaum associates. wark, m. (1994). virtual geography: living with global media events. bloomington: indiana university press. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci sousa: construir currículo na ultra-periferia da europa transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 22 autor francisco sousa é professor auxiliar no departamento de ciências da educação, campus de angra do heroísmo, da universidade dos açores, portugal. correio electrónico: fsousa@notes.angra.uac.pt http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci mailto:fsousa@notes.angra.uac.pt microsoft word sidhu_christie.doc to cite this article please include all of the following details: sidhu, ravinder and christie, pam (2007). spatialising the scholarly imagination: globalisation, refugees and education. transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> spatialising the scholarly imagination: globalisation, refugees and education ravinder sidhu and pam christie university of queensland, australia introduction the notion of globalisation has attracted much attention since its arrival as a master concept in the social science disciplines in the 1990s. despite the flurry of commentary, much work remains to be done. one of the consequences of the emphasis on the newness and uniqueness of globalisation is a tendency to view established disciplines and intellectual traditions as ‘old fashioned’ or ‘outdated’ (robinson, 2003, eriksen, 2003). this, we suggest, is a problematic view. we use the case of refugees to argue that talk about a borderless world and global connectivity is misleading as ‘old’ ontologies of space, time and identity are still at work. while the purpose of this paper is not to engage in an extended critique of studies about globalisation, we argue against uncritically embracing the idea of globalisation as a ‘new’, heroic and unprecedented sphere of reality. this is not to argue that nothing has changed: we live, after all, in a world which features sophisticated information and communication technologies, globally integrated financial markets, greater urbanisation, and population movements of all sorts. our concern stems from the abstract and disembodied quality of many studies, as identified by a number of scholars (see hesse, 1999; massey, 1999; sheppard, 2002; tikly, 2001). our point of departure, using an approach authored by the french historian michel foucault, is the recognition that writing and thinking on/about globalisation themselves form ‘regimes of truth’ that govern space and subjects in particular ways. if globalisation is taken as a way of knowing and ordering the world, then it becomes possible to question what is often presented by politicians and policymakers as inevitabilities. we suggest that regimes of truth emerging from globalisation discourses may be unsettled by studying globalisation through ‘peripheral places and marginal others’ (foucault, 1980, our emphasis). the management of refugees – marginal subjects from marginal spaces – by nation-states provides a rich opportunity to refine theorisations and methodologies about globalisation the purpose of this paper is to explore the mechanisms that inform the governance of ‘marginal and peripheral’ subjects and spaces of globalisation, using australia’s policies towards asylum seekers and refugees and their education as a focal point. viewing asylum seekers and refugees as subjects of globalisation within a foucauldian framework, we suggest that current ways of ordering and thinking about the space/time dimensions of globalisation may work to render peripheral spaces and subjects invisible and/or without rights in the state/citizen order. we conclude with a brief discussion of how curriculum work might engage ethically with knowledge of globalisation. governmentality governmentality (‘the art of governing’) is an expansive way of understanding governance as a project that embraces the relations between people and things, and more specifically, how these relations are played out in the governance of others (technologies of power) and of http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci sidhu and christie: spatialising the scholarly imagination: globalisation, refugees and education transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 8 ourselves (technologies of the self). foucault traces the origin of this plural form of governance to 16th century europe, when the pertinence of individuals for the state became anchored in their capacity to contribute towards the strength of the state (foucault, 2001b, p. 409). the aim of government thus mutated towards ‘the state’s preservation, expansion and felicity’ (p. 408). governmentality (‘the conduct of conduct’) came to be defined as ‘…a right manner of disposing things so as to lead to … an end that is convenient for each of the things that are to be governed’ (foucault, 2001a, p. 211, our emphasis). in the governmentality schema, power is not the antithesis of freedom. instead, as rose (1999, p. 4) observes: ‘to govern human beings is not to crush their capacity to act, but to acknowledge it and to utilize it for one’s own objectives’ (rose, 1999, p. 4). governmentality works at a variety of scales – inside and outside of the nation-state from supranational authorities such as the bretton woods institutions (world bank, wto, imf), to governments and bureaucracies, to collectivities such as families and professional associations, to the level of the self, where it touches the bodies, desires, thoughts, fears and aspirations of individuals (dean, 1999). the paper focuses on three areas. first, we consider the ways in which globalisation is used as a governing technology by nation-states and nation-building institutions. second, we illustrate how the governance mechanisms underpinning the refugee management policy in australia are based on particular manipulations of space and time. third, we explore the possibilities for subjects of knowledge to challenge and redress the epistemic damage arising from existing regimes of knowledge in light of the ethical codes that are available in the public sphere. globalisation as a governmentality it is important not to restrict the idea of governing to the institution of government. governing involves a range of devices including what we understand as knowledge practices – experts, theories, projects, conferences, academic papers, media reports and political speeches. the instruments of governing include images and ideas which flow almost instantaneously through information and media communication networks such as television and the internet. for example, electoral support for australia’s treatment of refugees and asylum seekers in recent years has been secured by shaping the popular imagination through such formal and informal knowledge practices. the mobilization of fear in the aftermath of the september 11 attacks on the world trade centre in new york has reduced empathy for the suffering of refugees. governments, media bodies and terrorism experts have created the conditions for ‘a culture of affect’ which operates on generalisations about ‘good versus evil’ (o‘tuathail 2003). as we discuss later in the paper, asylum seekers, particularly those who travelled to australia in boats, have been regarded as potential terrorists, and treated in inhumane ways. different kinds of knowledges and ideas, some new, and others long-standing, have been called on to specify the appropriate treatment not only for asylum seekers who are regarded as non-citizens, but also for ideal citizens and marginal citizens. to summarise, governmentality is a multidimensional endeavour featuring both state and non-state actors. it recognises that the practices of just governance require an engagement with power, truth and the self. acting as moral beings requires of us a willingness to engage with how power, truth and self form the conditions of life for ourselves and others. being knowledgeable and ethical in our everyday practices requires ‘understanding how we constitute ourselves as subjects who know, who act on others and who are moral beings [agents]’ (o’farrell, 1989, p.116). merely accumulating knowledge is not by itself sufficient. we apply these concepts to show how power and knowledge come together in discursive practices to produce particular truths about globalisation, the security of the nation-state and http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci sidhu and christie: spatialising the scholarly imagination: globalisation, refugees and education transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 9 refugees. we also explore how such truths are used to create governing and governable subjects. identifying these truths in terms of power/knowledge helps to question current understandings and practices of citizenship and political community, as well as the ethical subjectivities of educators and researchers. location, location for slater (2003), the practices of knowledge production are marked by a tendency to give priority to issues and agendas that are inimical to the lives of majority of humanity. he has suggested that the producers and transmitters of knowledge explore and acknowledge the limits of their inquiry. this involves questioning how their location in the world – eg their country of origin and their social position – shapes the kinds of knowledge that they generate. we suggest that educators need to establish a ‘moral proximity’ with the marginal subjects and spaces of globalisation (see o’tuathail, 1999). a critical first step involves paying attention to the language used to describe globalisation. the metaphors used in debates and discussions of globalisation – global village, flows, network society – construct a world that is borderless of all, where benefits and opportunities arising from global flows of capital, technology and ideas reach every global citizen. o’tuathail invites researchers to ask ‘for whom is the world borderless? who benefits?’ who is excluded from global networks? similarly, in imagining globalisation as ‘global flows’, there is a need to recognise that some flows are smooth and benign, while others are turbulent and profoundly destructive. we need to pay greater attention to the polarizations, marginalisation and struggles for livelihood faced by an increasing number of the world’s population whose material conditions do not necessarily benefit from global flows, speed and instant communication (castells, 1996-1998; appadurai, 2001, nagar et al, 2002, sheppard & nagar, 2004, slater, 2003). a major factor why our understandings of globalisation have been dominated by notions like ‘global village’ or ‘the collapse of space and time’ is because globalisation theorists and their empirical work is largely drawn from the ‘core’ – the anglo-american and european ‘first world’. the concentration of globalisation conferences in places of the first world, and the difficulties for non-english speakers writing for english speaking journals limit understandings that scholars of the ‘north/west’ may have of how globalisation processes are played out in the ‘south/east’ (see nager et al, 2004; robinson, 2003; slater, 2003; sheppard & nagar, 2004; appadurai, 2001). as an aside, we suggest that it is useful to consider the ways in which academic research and publishing processes privilege and universalise euroamerican perspectives and approaches in australian educational institutions. but knowledge practices which engage with issues of geography (spatialisation) are not by themselves adequate. spatialisation does not of itself produce more equal power relations. we offer one example of this. in certain strands of globalisation studies and development, poverty and asymmetrical development have been attributed to ‘the tyranny of geography’ or ‘bad latitude’ (see hausmann 2001; see also watts 2003. bassin 2003, mitchell 2003 for a critique of this geographic determinism). closely associated with the kennedy school of government at harvard university, ‘a veritable growth industry’ has emerged which notes equates temperate regions and temperate cultures with spectacular progress and productivity. in this logic, the geographically challenged and intemperate regions are best served by ‘a good dose of [neoliberal] globalisation’ (haussman, 2001, cited in watts, 2003, p.11). equally worrying is the turn to culture as proposed by samuel huntington, who argues that cultural values are a key variable in the capacities of societies to achieve economic progress and political democratisation. for huntington, ‘it is bad attitude rather than bad latitude that prevents the laggards from taking advantage of markets’ (hart, 2002, p. 814). in both schools, http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci sidhu and christie: spatialising the scholarly imagination: globalisation, refugees and education transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 10 the historical legacies of colonialism and the role of contemporary postcolonial politics in sustaining staggering levels of inequality are not acknowledged. while greater engagement with postcolonial issues has the potential to increase our understandings of the marginal subjects and spaces of globalisation, this does not necessarily result in more equal power relations. as sharp (2003, p. 70) cautions, researchers need to resist the potential depoliticisation and dematerialisation of postcolonial research: …too many theorists (western and western-educated third world academics) are interested in postcolonialism to look for difference and new approaches to enliven their own theories and advance their own careers, rather than having a deep commitment to drawing the marginalised and silent into the heart of academic debate. these debates replicate the geographical violence of orientalism rather than overturning it’ (sharp 2003, p. 70 in agnew, mitchell & toal, 2003, p. 70) spatialising the discipline? conventional framings of globalisation and knowledge economies inform educational policies and practices by exerting a series of normalizing effects. these framings are transmitted through state bureaucracies, nation-building institutions such as schools and universities and multilateral institutions like the world bank and imf (international monetary fund). in the discipline of education, globalisation has emerged as a ‘master concept anchored in a network of kindred terms such as knowledge society, information society, information economy, knowledge based economy and post-fordism’ (peters, 2004). globalisation is portrayed as ushering in ‘new times’ characterised by greater competition within and between nations (rizvi & lingard, 2000; burbules & torres, 2000). the language of change, inevitability and necessity is pervasive: knowledge is now regarded as a factor in production; technology has a vital role to play in all facets of education; educational institutions need to prepare students to be enterprising subjects, making them ‘work ready’ and equipping them with the capacities for lifelong learning to enable them to re-train for ‘portfolio careers’ (peters, 2004; robertson, 2005). the language of change is often accompanied by a narrative of a ‘failure’ of the curriculum of public education to develop students who are attuned to new standards of excellence. in a globalised world of knowledge economies, education is viewed as a key contributor to the nation’s economic competitiveness, and schools and their curricula are seen to be at risk of failing in this task. similar in tenor are the knowledge economy narratives found in world bank and oecd policy discourses. they, too, are animated by a narrative of crisis featuring inflexible and outdated schools, teachers and curricula, which are held responsible for failing young people and society (robertson 2005). as peters (2004) observes in his comments on education and the knowledge society, concepts like globalisation are often uncritically absorbed into the policy templates of nationstates. when this happens, particular regimes of truth are allied to globalisation – its inevitability, its unstoppability, and its neoliberal forms. through its incarnation as the knowledge/network society, globalisation is often portrayed as the ‘next phase of human development’ (see jessop, 2000, thrift, 2003). globalisation, then, comes to be seen as a natural part of human evolution. the greatest casualties of this crude neo-darwinist ethic are those deemed ‘other’, the marginal and peripheral subjects of globalisation, found in both the 'developed’ and ‘developing’ worlds as, for example, refugees or indigenous people. they are either rendered invisible, or their ways of life are deemed to be ‘backward’, requiring ‘improvement’ through various ‘capacity building’ aid and welfare programmes. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci sidhu and christie: spatialising the scholarly imagination: globalisation, refugees and education transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 11 like peters (2004), law and urry (2004) remind us that concepts like globalisation and the knowledge society do not merely describe a reality, but help to construct social realities and social worlds. in other words, ‘theory has effect; methods are performative – they enact realities; they bring into being what they discover’ (law & urry, 2004, pp. 392-393). law and urry pose a set of questions which may be usefully considered by researchers: if methods help to make realities, which realities might we wish to enact? neoclassical ones? ameliorist agendas? revolutionary realities? anti-patriarchal or postcolonial worlds? realities composed of post-structuralist partialities and shifting identities? (2004, p. 396). how do australian curricula engage with this profusion of ‘new’ discourses about ‘new times’, and new imperatives to overcome the ‘crisis’ of schooling for the knowledge society? how are australian citizens being educated to become members of a global and national community? what space exists for greater moral proximity with the marginal subjects of globalisation such as refugee youth? educating for the ‘strategic cosmopolitan’ the spatial logics deployed by australian schooling in its engagement with globalisation are notable for their paradoxes. the 1999 adelaide declaration on national goals for schooling for the 21st century captures these paradoxes. the declaration acknowledges schooling’s holistic goals to develop in students ‘the capacity to exercise judgement and responsibility in matters of morality, ethics and social justice, and the capacity to make sense of their world’. schooling is also expected to prepare students with ‘an understanding of, and concern for stewardship of the national environment, and the knowledge and skills to contribute to ecologically sustainable development’. however, these commendable goals that aim to build on the socially just impulses of schooling are counteracted by other practices: for example, curriculum and assessment that emphasise excellence through testing and performance measurements. as well, the goal to prepare students to engage with economic developments taking place on a global scale lends itself to a focus on skills and mobility for economic competitiveness. this also involves the project of re-making the educated person into the lifelong learner who accepts personal responsibility to adjust to a shifting labour market. the declaration’s national goals may be read in ways that implicate schooling in the task of scripting a particular kind of national identity, that of the responsible, enterprising, productive citizen who can contribute to national development within a global capitalist economy: the achievement of the national goals for schooling will assist young people to contribute to australia’s social, cultural and economic development in local and global contexts. their achievement will also assist young people to develop a disposition towards learning throughout their lives so that they can exercise their rights and responsibilities as citizens of australia with national societies networked into global systems of social, political and economic relationships, emerging transnational citizenship narratives may be read as engaging ‘strategically’ with the economic institutions of globalisation, rather than being concerned with the inequalities of neoliberal global capitalism or with building social cohesion on a global scale. this trend is not restricted to australia but is found in europe, north america http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci sidhu and christie: spatialising the scholarly imagination: globalisation, refugees and education transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 12 (mitchell, 2003; popkewitz, 2003) and in the asia pacific in countries such as singapore and malaysia (ong, 2005; (sidhu 2005). the mobility of the cosmopolitan is read in idealist terms: highly skilled individuals who move across national boundaries to maximise economic opportunities, or elite travellers savouring the cultures of strange places. the actually existing, albeit enforced, unplanned cosmopolitanism of refugees goes largely unacknowledged. our empirical work on schooling and refugees has confirmed that schools tend to regard refugees not as hopeful survivors making the best of their enforced cosmopolitanism but at best as victims of trauma and displacement. at worst, they are pathologised as deviant subjects at risk of terrorism, criminality or welfare dependency. the particular case of refugees and asylum seekers provides a good point for reflection on the spatial logic of the nation state and its governmentality. this we explore in the section which follows. we show that amidst celebrations of greater global connectivity, membership of the political community continues to define who is entitled to be the recipient of justice and ethics. outside the citizenship project: australia’s governance of refugees and asylum seekers at a time when notions of global interdependency and flows have assumed currency in academic discourse, the management and governance of refugees suggests that there are limits to these notions. in the international order of sovereign states, refugees occupy a precarious position. as non-citizens – belonging to no state – they have ‘no rights to rights’, as hannah arendt (1967) famously noted. falling outside of the nation state, they are easily rendered invisible and abject. the refugee experience captures the tensions between perceptions of a borderless, interconnected and interdependent world peopled by fluid and eclectic identities, and the inescapable materiality of borders, nation-states and the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. out of place and denied the territorialisation of life and existence, in the face of the uncertainties of statelessness, the refugee experience offers a sobering perspective on mobility in the 21st century, and draws our attention to the less triumphal aspects of globalisation. the governance of refugees in the present geopolitical climate also highlights the resilience of the state’s sovereign powers and calls into question predictions about ‘the end of the nation-state’ (lui, 2004). what practices, logics and power relationships govern the refugee subject in australia? through a detailed grid of governmental practices, australia applies a strict regulatory framework to all who seek to enter the country. the primary principle of classification is by citizenship or visa category. the australian migration act of 1958 stipulates that every ‘noncitizen’ who enters or stays in australia must have a valid visa to do so (see crock and saul, 2002). there are two streams of controlled migration, each with an allocated number of places: the migration stream, including family migrants, skilled migrants and special eligibility migrants; and the humanitarian stream, made up of refugees, special humanitarian, and onshore protection visas. each category and subcategory is elaborated in immigration regulations, with different visa categories bringing different entitlements in terms of duration and benefits. only people who apply for refugee status from outside australia, or who are assessed as refugees by unhcr before arriving, are given refugee status, with full residence rights and the right to apply for citizenship. mode of arrival operates as a second principle of classification and control. all people who arrive by boat without visas are deemed to be ‘unlawful non-citizens’. since 1994 they have immediately been placed under mandatory detention while their refugee status is assessed. asylum seekers who are subsequently assessed to be genuine refugees are released http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci sidhu and christie: spatialising the scholarly imagination: globalisation, refugees and education transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 13 into the community on temporary protection visas (tpvs) for three years, and must apply for visa renewal. even though they meet international criteria for refugee status, they are not granted permanent residence visas or refugee status in australia. by law, those who are deemed not to be genuine refugees are to be repatriated. in contrast, those who arrive by air with valid visas (student, visitor, business, etc) may apply for asylum within 45 days of arrival. in the interim, they are granted bridging visas and released into the community. even if they are assessed to be genuine refugees, they are granted permanent protection visas (ppvs) rather than full refugee status. those who miss the 45-day rule are not eligible for protection status. in 2002, crock and saul (2002) estimated that most visa over-stayers came from the uk and usa. it would appear that having arrived within the law, this group has been able to slip from view, and not aggressively pursued in the same way as those deemed to have arrived ‘unlawfully’. the vastly different treatment of asylum seekers who arrive by boat compared to those who arrive by air draws on a long-standing fear of australia as a fragile continent whose vulnerable maritime borders opens it to hostility from its northern asian neighbours. similarly, the general tolerance exercised towards over-stayers suggests a bias towards australia having a euro-american cultural identity. with different visa categorizations come different entitlements, and different rights to social and economic participation. those who are classified as refugees or have permanent protection visas are entitled to assistance of various sorts funded by the australian federal government: employment assistance, english language tuition, family reunion, travel rights, social security benefits, health care, accommodation and settlement assistance, and schooling for children, including fully funded english second language (esl) support. in stark contrast, people granted tpvs (who are genuine refugees) have not been eligible for employment assistance or english language tuition; for family reunion or travel rights; or for accommodation and settlement assistance. children on bridging visas have had to apply for special ministerial permission for free schooling. at university level, people on tpvs and bridging visas are treated as foreigners and temporary residents, and thus must pay full fees as overseas students. the elaborate classification of refugees and asylum seekers and the attendant regulations and limitations on their rights illustrate the detailed operation of governmental power, with its forms of knowledge, strategies of power and modes of subjectification. a graduated moral order operates to classify and control population in the australian nation-state: those who have rights from birth; those who have visas, classified by categories; and those who fall outside (christie & sidhu 2006). australia’s strict visa regime is justified in terms of what is considered to be the national interest. state security and border protection are seen to justify tight controls over entry, including criminalisation of asylum seekers as ‘unlawful non-citizens’ warranting mandatory detention. yet, as crock and saul (2002) point out, in terms of international conventions there is nothing unlawful in asylum seekers arriving in another country to seek protection. in fact, under international conventions to which australia is a signatory, australia has obligations to protect these people until their refugee status is determined. nonetheless, the australian government has resurrected the historical problematic of a nation under threat of invasion by dangerous foreigners to secure popular consent to the inhumane treatment of a vulnerable group. alongside the laws to regulate the refugee as subject, australia has also taken significant steps in relation to borders and sovereignty. it has excluded a number of remote atolls and islands from its migration zone, and has entered into arrangements with poor neighbours to incarcerate asylum seekers arriving by boat in return for aid payments. as the human rights watch (2003) points out, australia’s ‘pacific solution’ appears to have established a precedent for a new vision in refugee management, now being considered by several http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci sidhu and christie: spatialising the scholarly imagination: globalisation, refugees and education transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 14 european countries. what is proposed is the establishment of ‘transit processing centres’ and ‘regional protection zones’ where refugees and asylum seekers would be intercepted and required to submit their case that they are indeed suffering persecution. of concern to human rights advocates is the use of poorer countries for hosting these processing centres, many of which also have a poor record of defending the human rights of their own citizens as well as refugees. the influence of neoliberal ideology is also evident in governmental practices. the department of immigration and multicultural affairs has highlighted the cost of ‘unauthorised arrivals’ to the community at large, noting that it removed ‘taxpayers money that could have been spent on services for you and your children’ (dimia. 2001, cited by rajaram, 2003, p. 13). immigration detention centres in australia are run by private, forprofit companies on tender from the government. services provided to refugees under the integrated humanitarian settlement scheme are also administered by private providers on contract through tender. not only is this a distancing of direct responsibility for care; it also reflects assumptions that profits may be made from refugees and asylum seekers in a neoliberal order. we tentatively conclude that there are signs that the social changes associated with economic globalisation, state securitisation and neoliberalism are creating ‘fragile citizen subjects’ who operate on increasingly restricted conceptions of moral borders. the question of ‘what we owe others’ is inextricably linked to the question of who we are (see perera, 2001). nation-states operate in powerful ways to create differential subjects in the moral order. differential power relations are created and sustained in the multidimensional practices of government, accompanied by ways of thinking and understanding the world. in strong contrast to the transnational mobility of elites and associated notions of cosmopolitanism, the ethnoscape of asylum seekers and refugees shows a regime of nation state regulations that radically exclude and deny human rights to those deemed to fall outside of the recognised order. if we assume that globalisation produces a borderless world and equality of access in global flows, this logic in itself operates to render invisible the experience of marginal and peripheral subjects. conclusion: the ethical imperative for subjects of knowledge what are the implications of what we have said for curriculum practices? first, we suggest, is the importance of recognising the spatial and temporal influences that operate in knowledge production, in this case, of globalisation. given that theories are themselves part of the construction of social realities, it is important that curriculum practices enable knowledge to be problematised rather than naturalised. in the case of globalisation, concepts of borderlessness and connectivity are fruitfully explored by considering exclusions as well as inclusions and by questioning taken-for-granted assumptions about the nature of changes under globalisation. in some cases, ‘old’ ontologies of space, time and identity may valuably put to use rather than discarded. an ethical approach towards the curriculum requires reflexivity and continual attentiveness to the power relations and partialities of knowledge. second, we suggest that one of the ethical imperatives for educators as subjects of knowledge is to recognise and question the spatial privileges that underpin knowledge production generally, including, very often, our own scholarship. this may have the uncomfortable effect of undermining the centrality and importance of the position of leaders of particular fields (see robinson, 2003). the knowledges produced within contemporary circuits of intellectual labour today are shadowed by the relentless pressure to secure yet another grant and to produce yet another publication before the caravan of new ideas moves on. ‘just-in-time academic production’ militates against deep and reciprocal engagements http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci sidhu and christie: spatialising the scholarly imagination: globalisation, refugees and education transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 15 with other spatialities of difference. we need to recognise that our own activities in meeting our pressured commitments may have the effect of reproducing the unequal relationships that we reflect upon in our research and teaching. whether the ethical imperatives are for the subjects of knowledge in academe to postcolonialise, internationalise or cosmopolitanise their knowledges, theories and methodologies, a key challenge is to question the existing power relations that influence the production and circulation of knowledge and to commit to a ‘will to truth’ that pushes the boundaries of power. citizenship is, after all, an assemblage of techniques and technologies aimed at producing governable subjects, and foucault acknowledges the reach of broader societal forces, including global forces, on the subject (white and hunt, 2000). individuals can create coercive, dominating or ethical relations with self and others through the mediation of power/knowledge structures. ethical choices have to be made daily and ethical work integrated into the framework of the social and professional self. foucault wryly observes that: for centuries we have been convinced that…we couldn’t change anything…without ruining our economy, our democracy, and so on. i think we have to get rid of this idea of an analytical or necessary link between ethics and other social or economic or political structures (foucault, 1997, p. 261). as foucault’s (1988, 1997) work reveals, there is arbitrariness with which social, political and economic processes are put in order. there are always possibilities to unsettle the seemingly habitual (foucault, 1988, foucault, 1997), and the challenge for educators is to do just this in ethical ways. the example we have used 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(2000) citizenship: care of the self, character and personality. citizenship studies 4 (2): 93-116. authors ravinder sidhu is a postdoctoral research fellow at the school of education, university of queensland, st lucia, queensland 4072. correspondence to: r.sidhu@uq.edu.au pam christie is a professorial research fellow in the australian centre for peace and conflict studies, university of queensland, st lucia, queensland 4072, and visiting professor at the university of witwatersrand. correspondence to: p.christie@uq.edu.au http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci mailto:sidhu@uq.edu.au mailto:christie@uq.edu.au to cite this article please include all of the following details: kumar, ashwani; brigham, susan; kharbach, mohamed; downey, adrian; lemieux, amélie; wells-hopey, debra; shahidi, mehrdad; card, antony (2022). curriculum in international contexts: a complicated conversation, transnational curriculum inquiry 18 (2) p. 13-38 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> curriculum in international contexts: a complicated conversation ashwani kumar1 mount saint vincent university, canada susan brigham2 mount saint vincent university, canada mohamed kharbach3 mount saint vincent university, canada adrian downey4 mount saint vincent university, canada amélie lemieux5 université de montréal, canada debra wells-hopey6 mount saint vincent university, canada mehrdad shahidi7 islamic azad university, tehran central branch, iran antony card8 mount saint vincent university, canada introduction ashwani kumar this paper offers a multifaceted and dialogical engagement with my book, curriculum in international contexts: understanding colonial, ideological, and neoliberal influences (kumar, 2019). the book emerged from two decades of my academic work on education in international contexts, as well as from my ongoing dialogues and conversations with scholars, students, and colleagues regarding contemporary issues related to curriculum, teaching, and learning. in this book, i examine the dangerous and deep-rooted impacts of colonial, ideological, and neoliberal influences on contemporary curriculum development in diverse international contexts such as india, south africa, brazil, mexico, the united states, canada, and eastern asia. drawing upon the literature and my own theorization, i articulate four theoretical responses – indigenous, critical, autobiographical, and meditative – that can challenge these deleterious influences. i emphasize how intellectual movements such as marxism and postmodernism have influenced curriculum and kumar, brigham, kharbach, downey, lemieux, wells-hopey, shahidi, card. curriculum in international contexts 14 transnational curriculum inquiry, 18 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> teaching in varied political and economic locales. given its focus on the unique and diverse conceptualizations of curriculum, curriculum in international contexts contributes to the internationalization of curriculum studies as a field of scholarly inquiry (pinar, 2010, 2011a, 2011b, 2014a, 2014b 2015). this paper provides an avenue to continue the dialogue and to extend the complicated conversation (pinar, 2012) around the internationalization of curriculum studies (pinar, 2014a) with particular attention to the insidious influences on curriculum (e.g., colonialism and neoliberalism) discussed in the text and the enduring and evolving educational theories, concepts, and practices that can challenge these influences. in this paper, i have invited a group of seven scholars to share their thoughts on the book. this is a very diverse group in terms of their focus of research and theory as well as their stages of academic career. these diverse scholars engage with the text from a variety of perspectives including post-human, postmodern, black feminist, critical discursive, and critical theory to deepen the responses to the colonial, ideological, and neoliberal influences on curriculum development. this is a unique paper as it has emerged from the four symposia that i organized to have a dialogue about the ideas that i shared in this book. this paper is an example of how dialogical meditative inquiry (dmi) – a contemplative research methodology that i have developed to conduct subjective and intersubjective qualitative research (kumar, 2022; kumar & downey, 2018, 2019) – can be useful in deepening the academic conversation. dmi implies an existential and meditative engagement between or among participants to inquire into the subject matter that interest them. it demands the capacity to listen holistically, a respectful disposition towards others, and a deep desire to inquire and understand the profound meanings of phenomena, concepts, and experiences that we encounter in our life. in this instance, dmi facilitated a deeper engagement with my book under discussion. while i was preparing the manuscript of this book, i took help from four research assistants – four of them were doctoral students at mount saint vincent university (msvu), and one was then a doctoral student at university of new brunswick. each of these students expressed a deep interest in the contents of the book and especially in the idea of meditative inquiry – four of them are contributors to this paper. inspired by their interest and my prior work on the notion of dialogue as a way of exploration and research, i organized a symposium on the pre-published manuscript of the book and invited these five doctoral students to have a conversation with me in november 2018 as part of the faculty of education colloquium series (kumar et al., 2018). at the symposium, i was moved by their thoughtful reflections on my ideas and appreciated their serious engagement with my work. i particularly enjoyed responding to their questions on the book – i found the questions to be thought-provoking and stimulating. after the symposium, i asked if they would want to write a paper with me where they will share their reflections on my book and raise questions to which i will respond. they agreed. the book was published in 2019, and thanks to the aids to scholarly publication grant from msvu and support from dean of education, antony card, i organized another symposium on this book with two faculty members (who are also contributors to this paper) and one high schoolteacher. this time the symposium was open to the entire msvu community and the public. i organized this symposium during one of my bed holistic teaching and learning course classes as students really appreciated attending the symposium that i planned for my previous book, curriculum as meditative inquiry, in 2013 (kumar et al., 2013). the second symposium on the book was very well-attended and was video recorded (kumar et al., 2019). i was again touched by about:blank kumar, brigham, kharbach, downey, lemieux, wells-hopey, shahidi, card. curriculum in international contexts 15 transnational curriculum inquiry, 18 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> the seriousness with which each panellist studied my work and shared their reflections on it. the dialogue that happened with the whole group was particularly very engaging. we all loved hearing pre-service teachers’ responses to the text and panelists’ comments as well as engaging with their intriguing questions. after this panel, i invited the panellists to be contributors to the paper that i had been working on with the phd students. i submitted a proposal for the third symposium on this book to the canadian association for curriculum studies annual conference (may-june 2020) at the university of western ontario to share the ideas with a wider audience. a group of panellists from the previous two symposia were able to participate in this submission, and sean wiebe kindly agreed to be the chair and discussant for this session. while the proposal received very positive reviews and all the panellists were excited to share their thoughts and ideas at the symposium, the conference was cancelled due to covid-19. however, an abstract of the symposium was published by the journal of the canadian association for curriculum studies (kumar et al., 2020). i submitted a revised proposal for another symposium on this book to the annual conference of the comparative and international education society of canada (ciesc may-june 2021). the session was well attended, and we had a robust discussion on the key themes of the book. this paper showcases the thoughts of those panellists in the symposia described above who were interested in contributing to this paper. each contributor articulated their thoughts on my book independently to maintain the uniqueness of their perspective and posed their questions regarding the contents of the book. i read each reflection gratefully and carefully and then shared my responses to the questions from each contributor. finally, all the reflections on the book and my responses were read by antony card – who was present in the audience for the two symposia and who actively participated in the discussions on the book. antony was also a panellist at the ciesc symposium. in the discussion and conclusion section of this paper, antony shares his thoughts on the book, on the reflections shared and questions raised regarding the book by each contributor, my responses to each contributor’s questions, and the dialogical meditative inquiry process that we adopted to put together this paper. i am deeply grateful to each contributor for the thoughtfulness and the dedication with which they have engaged with me in this complicated conversation; this paper would not have been possible without their contributions. the textual dialogical meditative inquiry was as stimulating and intriguing as the face-to-face communication during the symposia. i hope the readers enjoy and benefit from the following reflections and discussions regarding the colonial, ideological, and neoliberal influences on curriculum internationally and the ways we can challenge them in our own unique political, economic, geographical, cultural, and educational contexts. resistance through black feminism, africentricity, and anti-colonialism susan m. brigham in this section, i reflect on ashwani kumar’s book curriculum in international contexts: understanding colonial, ideological, and neoliberal influences (2019), responding to the ways it resonates with my own work, theory-building, and teaching/learning experiences. drawing on my understanding of black feminism, africentricity, and anti-colonialism, i highlight the ways in which kumar focuses on the power of curriculum and the power invested in curriculum. i discuss the south african context (which is chapter 2 of kumar’s book) by reflecting on my observations about:blank kumar, brigham, kharbach, downey, lemieux, wells-hopey, shahidi, card. curriculum in international contexts 16 transnational curriculum inquiry, 18 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> visiting that country over the past 10 years and the key concerns raised through a historical analysis of the colonial and the apartheid processes. i conclude with some suggestions for change that resonate with kumar’s. [the subject of geography] opened my mind to the world of concepts, insights, and perceptions, which allowed me to study and understand how human beings across the globe have come to relate with and connect with nature, and how this interaction has brought about a diverse, unique, and rich cultural heritage around the globe. (kumar, 2019, p. 2) while kumar is referring to geography, these words can describe what i believe we all hope to gain through education: “opening minds to concepts, insights, and perceptions;” “relating with and connecting with nature;” and understanding “diverse, unique, and rich cultural heritage around the globe”. unfortunately, when looking around the world, including here in canada, we must acknowledge that there has been in our educational systems a narrowing, not a broadening of understandings. in other words, there has been an opening of minds to selective concepts, insights, and perceptions; developing an understanding of how selective human beings connect with nature and advancing an understanding of selective cultural heritages. how and why does this happen? the hegemony of colonialism, eurocentricity, white supremacy, patriarchy, and elitism allow the persistence of inequities. inequity becomes a habit. hierarchies of power and privilege have been reproduced in family households, in everyday practices, social relations, and in institutional and state policies. as a feminist, i draw on feminist theory to give me the critical insight into mechanisms of power, and to analyze how gender influences people’s expectations, roles, and identities. black feminist thought helps bring into focus the intersectionalities (crenshaw, 1989) of race, sex, sexualities, class, ethnicity, age, ability, and nation and how intersecting systemic barriers collude to disempower some individuals, communities, and groups while empowering others. as an educator, i try to be attentive to the subtle and not so subtle forms of educational institutional power. kumar offers a critical site to begin an analysis of education – the curriculum, which he defines as: “a concept, a document, or a lived experience” (p. 7). i agree with the importance of this centre of analysis and the need to understand how curriculum is controlled, shaped, and influenced by: the culture in which it is situated, political and religious ideologies that have sway over it, the market to which it intends to or is expected to cater, and the teachers and the students who interpret and engage with it and create it in their everyday lived contexts. (p. 7). curriculum is the boss text that gets reified and over time harder to loosen and flex. essentially, the formalized school systems’ eurocentric, patriarchal, racist, and exclusionary curriculum that colonialists imposed on people in countries around the world is maintained in contemporary times. the curriculum may appear less obviously racist, sexist, and classist and perhaps there has been some inclusion of certain concepts and theories, and perhaps additions of a few more historical perspectives but the essential core stubbornly remains. for example, in nova scotia some high school students may have the option of taking mi’kmaw studies 11 or african canadian studies 11, but these are electives and may not be offered in all schools or in both english and french, which means a child in nova scotia can go through 13 years of schooling without taking such a course. moreover, even if a student was able to take one of those courses, they may have a teacher who has no deep understanding of the course content (benjamin, 2014). additionally, such a course could really only provide a “snippet” of culture and history (benjamin, 2014, p. 222). the message is clear – that these two studies are not sufficiently relevant or valid to be centred in the about:blank kumar, brigham, kharbach, downey, lemieux, wells-hopey, shahidi, card. curriculum in international contexts 17 transnational curriculum inquiry, 18 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> curriculum; they belong on the margins. yet, not all students, their families and communities passively accept this message. hence, i would add that in addition to kumar’s call to understanding the power of curriculum we must also strive to understand how students and their families actively resist, challenge, thwart, and defy curriculum. an example of this is the indigenous communities around the world who for centuries have been raising awareness of the ways in which colonial formal curriculum has resulted in epistemic violence and cultural genocide, where colonizers (through state and church) have actively, physically, and ideologically used curriculum to subjugate, control, dominate, and repress indigenous populations. in canada, residential schools were designed to “take the indian out of the indian” (benjamin, 2014, p. viii). using terrorism and dehumanizing the indigenous peoples and dismissing their knowledge of “math, astronomy, physics, biology, and chemistry,” fishing, trapping, hunting, gathering, as well as “their practice of medicine” (p. 5) has had lasting generational impacts on indigenous learners. these communities have been demanding control over their own schools and pushing for curriculum changes for years (archibald, 1995; assembly of first nations, 1988). recently the truth and reconciliation commission of canada (trcc) (2015) further amplified the voices of indigenous peoples in the calls to action. one call for action titled “education for reconciliation 62(i)” refers to curriculum. it says: we call upon the federal, provincial, and territorial governments, in consultation and collaboration with survivors, aboriginal peoples, and educators, to… [m]ake ageappropriate curriculum on residential schools, treaties, and aboriginal peoples’ historical and contemporary contributions to canada a mandatory education requirement for kindergarten to grade twelve students. (p. 7, trcc, 2015) the call for action is now 5 years old and the change in curriculum is moving at a snail’s pace. to see the change there needs to be a political will; a deeper understanding of indigenous ways of knowing and being; an openness to learning from indigenous groups; and a removal of the blinders of racism, white supremacy, and eurocentricity. in chapter 2 kumar focuses on south africa where educational reform has been underway also at a slow pace. the chapter discusses the impact of colonialism that involved christian churches and the racist apartheid system that assumed some people are naturally superior to others and some people are sufficiently human to be considered citizens under law while others are not. kumar examines the “extraordinarily complicated and painstaking process” (kumar, 2019, p. 43) of educational reform and some of the most significant complications that stand in the way of “creating the ground for a relevant and purposeful education for south african children” (p. 43). once the anti-apartheid movement was successful and a hard-won post-apartheid constitution was ratified in 1994 there were great expectations for positive change, equality, and democracy, but thirty-six years later these great expectations have yet to come to fruition. i have been traveling to south africa over the past 10 years, and have had opportunities to visit schools and universities, chat with students, parents, teachers, community workers, professors, and administrators and observe the residue of the old oppressive system. for example, i gave a talk at a university in cape town on critical race theory and was surprised by how the campus populations was entirely black and brown. i thought all universities had opened their doors to all of the (superficially racially designated) groups. i came to understand that while they do open their doors in theory and policy, there is still a reluctance for transformation. some campuses still hold more prestige compared to others. according to the black and white professors i spoke with, there is an apparent reluctance for some professors to move to a new campus, and about:blank kumar, brigham, kharbach, downey, lemieux, wells-hopey, shahidi, card. curriculum in international contexts 18 transnational curriculum inquiry, 18 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> students likewise may choose their campus based in part on the ethos of the university and which universities have professors who look like them and can relate to them. when i visited a school in the cape flats district in cape town, i began to understand the level of violence people in the community of all ages are exposed to and caught up in. this district constitutes large housing projects in cape town built previously under apartheid for so-called ‘coloured’ communities …characterised by concentrated poverty, and high levels of substance abuse, violence, crime, and gangsterism (loots, 2005; okecha, 2011, cited in khan, 2013, p.4) an ex-gang member brought a group of us from a conference to visit a school situated amid rival gangs called the americans, hard livings, fancy boys, dixie boys and others that fight to control the drug trade of ‘tic’ (crystal meth) and other drugs. in the cape flats district, “systemic violence stems primarily from gang involvement as well as sharing the markets in the substance industry, resulting in rivalry for territory and clients” (khan, 2013, p.i). our guide pointed out the community swimming pool, library, and playground that are each under the control of a different gang. he also pointed out the men on every corner who patrolled the gangs’ borders. for the residents, avoiding gang members and gang involvement is impossible. the schoolchildren dressed in coats and woolen hats in the unheated classrooms (for it was june and a cold winter day) were excited to see us and shared with us their hopes and dreams of the future about becoming a math teacher, an engineer, a nurse, and so on. according to the teachers and community workers, most of these students are suffering post-traumatic stress syndrome; traumatized by the violence around them, including the murder the night before we arrived of a teacher from the school. in a six-month period, nearly 2000 people were killed in violent crimes, most caught in the crossfire of rival gangs. on many occasions, the police call in support from the south african national defense force (sabc news, 2019). khan (2013), who interviewed youth in the cape flats district, supports the teachers and community workers’ observations. khan’s participants reported that “being subjected to violence results in post-traumatic stress symptoms, impaired psychological functioning, and maladjustment” as well as feeling anxious for younger children living with violence in the community (p. 48). our guide explained that gangs recruit children who are showing academic promise, which may make striving for schooling success a dreaded endeavour. while wealthy tourist areas are walking distance from the cape flats, there seems to be no escape from the area. indeed robins (2000, p. 412) describes the cape flat residents as being “trapped in dangerous spaces”. the situation in the cape flats district is a result of the apartheid system; while apartheid is over, its influence continues. in contexts like these, one may wonder about the hope for change and the role of education. yet, kumar ends the chapter with a ray of optimism for the south african curriculum theorists [who] have been making commendable efforts towards creating the ground for a relevant and purposeful education for south african children by critiquing the instrumentalist, colonial, and discriminatory nature of the curriculum reforms and by emphasizing the significance of indigenous cultures, egalitarian ethos, democratic education, and contextual pedagogy. (p. 43) in addition to creating, analyzing, and reforming the curriculum for children we need to do the same for adult education curriculum including the nonformal and formal curriculum. moreover, it is vital to simultaneously examine pedagogy, for there is hope in the subjugated and subversive pedagogies that have the potential to “liberate minds, ideas, and practices” (dei, 2019, p. 21). africentric and indigenous pedagogies have been denigrated over time rendering indigenous and about:blank kumar, brigham, kharbach, downey, lemieux, wells-hopey, shahidi, card. curriculum in international contexts 19 transnational curriculum inquiry, 18 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> african peoples, their living legacies, and epistemologies as inferior, primitive, and barbaric. african-centred pedagogy legitimizes african knowledge; strengthens ties with community and promotes community service; encourages positive relationship building; “imparts a world view that idealizes a positive, self-sufficient future for one’s people without denying the self-worth and right to self-determination of others”; and stimulates critical consciousness (lynn, 2005, p. 134). it reflects ubuntu relational philosophy i am because you are, which derives its power from spiritual connection to all relations with love at the centre of our interconnectedness (mucina, 2019). to practice ubuntu is to reclaim and centre indigenous knowledge in decolonizing efforts (mucina, 2019). to conclude this section, i, like kumar, see hope for change in the education system, within and beyond schools, in curriculum and in pedagogy for the youth and for adults, as well as in other state supported systems (justice, health, migration, and so on). this requires dreaming big. “we must have a vision of the educational future we want in order for us to strive for it. … the whole idea of educational futurity is to be able to dream new ways of schooling and education… dreaming must be a ‘metaphor for resistance’ anchored in the anti-colonial realm of spiritual resurgence” (dei, 2019, p. 22). questions & answers susan brigham: what is the link between meditative inquiry and spirituality? ashwani kumar: that is a great question. in my view, meditative inquiry and spirituality are very intimately connected. to me, being spiritual implies understanding oneself and one’s relationships to other people and nature deeply. meditative inquiry is an existential process of becoming aware of oneself and one’s relationships in day-to-day living. it allows one to connect with oneself and others and nature at a deeper level and brings about a sense of compassion, care, creativity, and wholeness within oneself and in one's relationships, all of which i consider to be spiritual qualities. susan brigham: change seems to come about in slow motion, which frustrates those who are living in oppressive violent circumstances. can you comment on the importance of the notion of time for transformation and meditative inquiry? ashwani kumar: it seems that oppression and violent circumstances that you speak of, susie, have always existed in human history but their contexts, locales, and manifestations may differ. the oppression, i feel, exists because there is no real sensitivity to the insight that when i hurt others, i hurt myself; when i hurt other cultures, i hurt my own culture; and when i hurt other nations, i hurt my own nation. because of our divisive conditioning and self-centeredness, many of us have been unable to see that we are all very deeply connected despite the geo-cultural variations. if we see this, then the root of oppression, which is the division among human beings due to one factor or the other, will end in our hearts. and if we are not oppressive within, we cannot be oppressive outside because we will realize that hurting one is hurting all. if one is really earnest, this realization can happen instantly. however, we do not have this realization at our very core because we are not very earnest in going through inner change. in the absence of this realization, we approach oppression outwardly and structurally through laws and policies, which can only slowly bring about a modification of oppression rather than a real change in the heart of about:blank kumar, brigham, kharbach, downey, lemieux, wells-hopey, shahidi, card. curriculum in international contexts 20 transnational curriculum inquiry, 18 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> the people. real change requires a deep meditative inquiry to understand and dissolve centuries of conditioning influences that have divided human beings along racial, religious, and nationalistic lines (see kumar, 2013). the place of ideology and discourse in curriculum in international contexts mohamed kharbach as a research assistant in kumar's book project, i had the chance to read the book multiple times and interact with its ideas first-hand. each reading would unravel new insights and bring me closer to a nuanced understanding of kumar's conceptualization of curriculum studies. to say the least, the experience has been very illuminating and insightful. coming from a background of linguistics and language studies, kumar's book curriculum in international context constitutes an important addition to the theoretical and methodological arsenal underlying my doctoral research. as such, and in line with the dialogic approach emphasized in kumar's works (e.g., kumar, 2013, 2019; kumar & downey, 2018), my section contributes to the unfolding dialogue around curriculum in international contexts, a dialogue that started with kumar's (2018) symposium in mount saint vincent university in which the graduate students that took part in this project discussed and shared their views about the book. i engage with some key ideas outlined in curriculum in international contexts in light of my scholarly and research background. in his discussion of the forces that influence and shape curriculum, kumar (2019) cited three main forces: ideology, colonialism, and neoliberalism. he convincingly substantiated his arguments with examples of curriculum studies from different countries including brazil, mexico, india, south africa, and asian countries like china, japan, malaysia, and others. similar curricular experiences can also be noticed in other countries, though in varying degrees. for instance, in saudi arabia, religious ideology is the dominant force that exerts the most control over curricular policies. these policies have been the object of critique over allegations that they promote a culture of violence and extremism. following a wave of international pressure, the trump administration stepped in urging its close ally, saudi arabia, to conduct a general overhaul of the contents of its textbooks. in a report published in reuters last year (2018), it has been claimed that “saudi arabia has made little progress in removing textbook content that promotes violence and hatred towards religious minorities and others.” on the other hand, in the moroccan context where i am originally from, the colonial influence is the most prominent. morocco was under french military colonization for several decades until the mid 1950s when it finally got its independence. since then, french colonial influence has been predominant in almost all sectors of life: the economic, the social, the cultural, the political, and the intellectual. french language has been the official language of instruction in schools for many years. it was only until recently that the arabisation movement spearheaded by a number of influential intellectuals and public figures has succeeded in countering this linguistic colonialism and minimally downgraded the status of french. yet, french is still the language of instruction of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics and is also present side by side with arabic in all official administrative documents. decolonization struggle is still ongoing to this day. when reading curriculum in international contexts, i noted the intersection of kumar's work with my own research focus. we both depart from a critical stance that problematizes knowledge production and questions the taken-for granted and commonsensical assumptions about reality and the social world. in many instances in the book, kumar refers to curriculum as being a about:blank kumar, brigham, kharbach, downey, lemieux, wells-hopey, shahidi, card. curriculum in international contexts 21 transnational curriculum inquiry, 18 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> multifarious text, or as he stated, “a historical, political, cultural, autobiographical, and economic construct” (p. 7) which, i believe, is a postmodern conceptualization that also underlies my own approach to critical discourse analysis. likewise, in my own research, i start from the premise that language is never neutral and every instance of language in use, as james paul gee (2011) argues, is inherently political. my understanding as developed from this book and from my readings into the field of discourse studies is that curriculum is involved in relations of power, hegemony, and ideology. in this sense, curriculum is a social practice and a mode of social action whose purpose is to intervene in the way the social world is ordered. it follows, then, that curriculum is a discursive construct that is socially and historically situated. it shapes and is shaped by the dialectical relations it maintains with other social actions. i maintain that the discursive dimension has been accorded a marginal position in kumar's book. i argue that an engagement with the discursive component in discussions about curriculum studies can potentially shed light on new insights and further enrich these debates. curriculum, after all, is essentially a piece of text, a discourse genre. analysis of its language can help in deconstructing the political, social, and ideological structures underlying it. another important point i would like to raise here is about the concept of ideology which, as kumar contends, figures among those influential forces that shape curriculum. given its centrality in curricular discussions, ideology, i believe, requires more theoretical elaboration in curriculum in international contexts. we, the readers, are left to speculate about the potential meanings the term ideology carries in the context of this book. admittedly, ideology is an elusive and controversial concept that can mean different things in different contexts. also, ideology has various conceptualizations; for instance, from a marxist perspective, ideology carries negative connotations, it represents “false consciousness” (miller, 1972). for some scholars such as van dijk ideology is not always negative, it can also be positive and productive (van dijk, 1993). my contention is that a clear explanation of this concept would have clearly demarcated the contextual territory within which ideology operates in curriculum in international contexts and would also have demystified the ambiguity surrounding its polysemic nature. all in all, curriculum in international contexts constitutes a valued addition to the field of curriculum studies and provides significant insights into the interplay between curriculum and other forces mainly ideology, neoliberalism, and colonialism. i am deeply indebted to kumar for having me be a part of the team that worked on this project. the learning journey has been very fruitful. kumar's philosophy of meditative inquiry has particularly piqued my intellectual interest. i found his ideas of the importance of 'inner consciousness' and its role in understanding our positionality in the world very intriguing. as kumar (2019) argued, it is only through understanding our inner selves through critical and reflexive introspection that we get to comprehend the world around us. for me, as a doctoral researcher, this meditative practice means a deeper engagement with my own motivations, biases, and subjectivities, not to bracket them and feign an unrealistic position of the researcher as objective producer of knowledge but rather to embrace them and make them visible. it is this form of visibility that "makes it possible for one to see that what appears to be merely outer problems ... are in actuality tied intimately to the way the inner consciousness flows, to how one thinks, feels and acts on a daily basis" (p. 11). indeed, the concept of meditative inquiry has introduced me to an unconventional way of doing research, one that is grounded in ethos of 'meditative awareness', self-reflection, freedom, and creativity (kumar & downey, 2018). about:blank kumar, brigham, kharbach, downey, lemieux, wells-hopey, shahidi, card. curriculum in international contexts 22 transnational curriculum inquiry, 18 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> questions & answers mohamed kharbach: to counter the three influences on curriculum (i.e., ideological, colonial, and neoliberal) you proposed the indigenous, critical, autobiographical, and meditative responses. how about a discursive response, one that highlights the importance of discourse and language in decolonizing curricular knowledge? ashwani kumar: that is a very good question, med. i think the critical response that i discuss in my book draws on a variety of critical traditions in social theory and philosophy including critical theory, critical race theory, postcolonial studies, postmodernism, and poststructuralism, among others. the discursive response is extremely important. it draws on various critical traditions, and it helps us understand the structure and process of discourses that influence curriculum, teaching, and learning. while i did not articulate it separately in the book, i think a critical examination of the curriculum and educational discourses that i carried out in my book, at least to some extent, serves as a discursive response. however, i acknowledge that i could have done more work in that regard, and it is an important area to work on. one of my students has carried this work out in the context of libyan educational policies (see zayed, 2020). her work shows the power of discourse and discursive response. mohamed kharbach: the construct of ideology figures among the central concepts in your discussion and since it is a highly elusive concept whose meaning is context-dependent, i wonder what do you exactly mean by ideology in the current context of your work? ashwani kumar: in the context of the present book, ideological influences include political, religious, and cultural forces that have sway on the process of curriculum selection and production as well as implementation in the classroom. it implies government control of curriculum and teaching, and the way dominant cultural and religious organizations influence the government to shape curriculum in light of their own ideological preferences. i have discussed how these factors influence curriculum in teaching through various examples in this book. curriculum at the precipice of dystopia adrian m. downey in a recent paper, roger saul (2021) introduced the notion of teaching “at the precipice of dystopia”. driven by the abysmal state of our current social, economic, environmental, and political reality, saul was not the first to acknowledge that within our lifetimes, the world as we know it will no longer be possible—that all markers of our present reality will give way to something new, or simple fade into absence without rebirth. saul’s novel contribution, however, is in articulating the duplicity of continuing to perpetuate narratives of meritocracy or predictable career and life pathways to students. that is, how can we tell students that if they work hard, they can achieve their dreams when the reality of their future may be much darker than we can even imagine? in curriculum in international contexts: understanding colonial, ideological, and neoliberal influences, kumar (2019) brings a rigorous, complicated, and contextualized understanding of the fundamental problems that have brought us to that precipice of dystopia. about:blank kumar, brigham, kharbach, downey, lemieux, wells-hopey, shahidi, card. curriculum in international contexts 23 transnational curriculum inquiry, 18 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> through the study of neoliberal, ideological, and colonial forces in education in a variety of countries, the patterns of our crises begin to emerge. we start to see the trademark moves toward standardization and accountability-based funding popularized by no child left behind and solidified by race to the top. we also see the movement toward the de-professionalization of the teacher based in what pinar (2012) might call the anti-intellectualization of education through the attempted removal of subjectivity from knowledge – in other words, the dominance of tylerian rationality in our school systems. kumar shows that these are international phenomena, but they have intimately local manifestations. in nova scotia (canada), for example, pamela rodgers’ (2018) doctoral dissertation, tracing neoliberal governmentality in education: disentangling economic crises, accountability, and the disappearance of social studies, clearly shows that over the past 20 years, regardless of the government that has been in power, the educational trend has been precisely toward neoliberal accountability and standardization. this, i would argue, has been the pathway to our possibly dystopic future. as educators, we must all wrestle with these issues, and each of us must come to our own understanding of how best to move forward in what some are calling the posthuman convergence – the combination of the sixth extinction event and the fourth industrial revolution (braidotti, 2019) – a moment at which we have arrived through the relentlessness of neoliberal capitalist expansionism both in society and education. in kumar’s text, he offers four potential responses to the factors listed above: the indigenous, the critical, the autobiographical, and the meditative. each of these offers a potential response to the problem of educating with a dystopic vision of the future, whether a return to living in balance with the land, a radical redistribution of wealth, a phenomenological and psychoanalytic understanding of one’s experience, or a deep, holistic, judgement-free understanding of who we are. these responses are not exhaustive, nor are they mutually exclusive, but they are, i think, useful. for some, so dark is the dystopic future that moving forward in any way becomes a burden. how can we continue to act, to teach, to create, and to wonder when it will all eventually become meaningless? one response is that we must continue to operate within the confines of our present reality until a new one makes itself clear. for me, this response is too easy – it allows us to continue along the personal and ideological pathways that have gotten us into this mess in the first place. i call this complacency. another, perhaps the more morally ethical response, is that of herman melvil’s bartleby the scrivener, who when faced with any demand of his participation in society broadly conceived uttered the simple phrase, “i prefer not”. bartleby died by what i read as his moral conviction to disengagement, but this strikes me as an impractical approach to adopt on a wide scale. like me, i suspect kumar would be satisfied with neither these options. i know from our dialogues (kumar & downey, 2018, 2019), my study of his previous work (kumar, 2013, 2014), and our many conversations, that his own approach is to live and teach dialogically and meditatively – to help those around him understand themselves on a fundamental level. and while this may not ultimately save us from our dystopic future, i think it serves as a necessary disruption of the ideas of disengagement and complacency. through this new text, kumar has offered curriculum studies an expanded view of our journey toward the current precarious and uncertain moment. where previously he concerned himself with our internal landscapes and those fragmentations that have caused societal crises (see kumar, 2013), here he has shifted his focus outward into the world and detailed the external manifestations of our internal crises particularly where education and the study of curriculum are about:blank kumar, brigham, kharbach, downey, lemieux, wells-hopey, shahidi, card. curriculum in international contexts 24 transnational curriculum inquiry, 18 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> concerned. but throughout this work he has also given us responses, both intellectual and, if we listen carefully, practical, to ideology, neoliberalism, and colonization, and i argue to the problem of educating at the precipice of dystopia. questions & answers adrian downey: there is a growing body of evidence (e.g., covid-19) that suggests that there will be, within our lifetimes, some incredible shift and/or decline in the quality of human life. i have, following the lead of dr. roger saul (2021), referred to this broadly as a dystopic futurity – a realistic visioning of the future that centres a dystopic collapse of dominant social, economic, environmental, and political ways of being. in light of this, i ask: to what degree do you agree with the premise i have articulated above? you have stated that you believe the world is in crisis (kumar, 2013, p. 1), but what is the character of that crisis? are we likely to see a dystopic end to the western way of life within our lifetimes? ashwani kumar: yes, it seems to me that we are headed for a very problematic future. we have been unable to find any lasting resolution to our many problems including wars, racial discriminations, antagonistic nationalistic relations – even where relations between nations appear amicable, they are primarily based on economic alliances rather than based on trust and love and can break as soon as economic security is threatened. additionally, the large-scale acceptance of a western lifestyle and goals of economic development – which are primarily based on growth models and undermine ecological balance – further take us towards a dystopic future as the resources that we have cannot sustain us forever at this rate of exploitation. in fact, our lack of respect for waters, forests, and air and their gradual destruction is very explicit in our contemporary world. in the wake of covid-19, which has caused the entire world to come to a standstill, nature found a breathing space to regain the balance that human beings have destroyed in the name of development. hardly any political leaders have spoken about the need for a slow pace of life so that earth and its inhabitants may live a peaceful and balanced life in harmony with nature. everybody is desperate to return to a “normal” which was nothing but abnormal. i am not, however, undermining the acute difficulties millions of people have had to go through due to this pandemic. adrian downey: to what degree have the three factors that influence curriculum (i.e., the colonial, the ideological, and the neoliberal) contributed to the decline of western society? more broadly, how has the education system led us to what i have termed "the precipice of dystopia." ashwani kumar: to a great degree. colonialism, and the capitalistic greed in which it is rooted, laid the foundation for destroying cultures and ecologies around the globe. it is a major factor behind the suffering of the world. ideological and political control does not allow us to challenge colonial and hegemonic notions and thus force most of us to comply with self-destructive and unsustainable economic models. neoliberalism, a heightened form of capitalism, has further paved the way for our collective destruction by considering nature and its benedictions as well as human beings as collections of “resources” (rather than spiritual beings). the goal of neoliberal capitalism is to produce more and more without much consideration for the psychological (stress and anxiety) and ecological implications of so-called productivity. as i have argued in my book, education has about:blank kumar, brigham, kharbach, downey, lemieux, wells-hopey, shahidi, card. curriculum in international contexts 25 transnational curriculum inquiry, 18 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> been a victim of all these influences. it has lost its purpose of bringing about holistic and integrated individuals and, thereby, is a contributor to the dystopic future. adrian downey: if we truly are at the precipice of dystopia, how can educators prepare students for that which comes after the collapse? i am particularly interested, here, in the potential alternatives represented in your four responses to colonialism, neoliberalism, and ideology, namely: the indigenous, the autobiographical, the critical, and the meditative. ashwani kumar: these responses can be helpful in challenging and controlling the movement towards dystopia. together, they provide us with a mind and heart that may deal with challenges that we face as human beings at personal, relational, cultural, structural, and ecological levels. they can help us to deal with destructive realities in a holistic manner. perspectives on internationalizing postmodernism and posthumanism amélie lemieux my theoretical perspective is informed by the current landscape of posthumanist research as it relates to curriculum studies and literacy research. the latter increasingly accounts for relationality in learning, accounting for the centrality and role of non-humans and more-than-humans in literacies research. in light of this turn, how is posthumanism accounted for in internationalizing the curriculum? in this section, my focus on the word 'internationalizing' is semiotically-oriented. the locus of 'international' rests between nations, focusing in a somewhat ambivalent space of ideas of retention, to arrive at some sort of truths about education and global curricula. this is where human values – about education, culture, languages – are negotiated. this is also a space where power relations are enacted. what if education framed researchers as decentralized, yet critical human entities, and how would nations (nation-states, universities, research bodies) reconcile that role in producing knowledge? to answer this question, i focus on kumar’s (2019) historical depiction of postmodernism and the shift to posthumanism that ensued. then, i propose avenues to consider humans as entangled entities with species, non-humans, and more-thanhumans. in chapter 7 (“postmodern turn in north american social studies education: considering identities, contexts, and discourses”), postmodernism is framed as the conditions through which relationality occurs within socio-political, cultural, historical, and economic situations that shift over time (kumar, 2019). one key contribution of this chapter is the focus on decentering the notion of “objective truth” to privilege, instead, a rhetoric of relationality in teaching and learning. this consideration is generative in thinking about learning as a state of continuous, dynamic relationality as opposed to a fixed entity whose only purpose is to be assessed. building on these parameters and vectors helps us understand the conditions of teaching and learning in literacy classroom settings by disrupting the idea, for example, of such idiosyncratic and vague notions as reaching “students’ full potential”. taking this a step further, postmodernism solicits important to counter inflexible notions often found in research. as a response to kumar’s (2019) chapter 7, i note how meditative inquiry promotes an awareness of others and the self in relationality which is in line with the tenets of posthumanism9. the turn to postmodernism slowly emerged as a result of the may 1968 events led by french philosophers jacques derrida, michel foucault, roland barthes, and their colleagues who, about:blank kumar, brigham, kharbach, downey, lemieux, wells-hopey, shahidi, card. curriculum in international contexts 26 transnational curriculum inquiry, 18 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> at that time, were considered initiators of intellectualism in the humanities. key postmodern texts, such as jean-françois lyotard’s (1979) postmodern condition, crystallized the emergence and institutionalization of postmodernism, with related contemporary texts such as barthes’ death of the author and jacques derrida’s deconstruction theory. derrida’s perspective highlighted how humans need to consider the messiness of ideas. this premise was made explicit in the theory of deconstruction, generating an understanding that there are some traces of truth in the truth’s opposite. things are often seen in dualities (e.g., high and low culture, visual over touch in the senses), but derrida’s point is that all counterparts should be equally privileged and both sides of the duality need each other to exist. while these dualities do not exist in posthumanism, they shed light on the equality of perspectives and symbiosis to some extent, with an emphasis of dismantling superiority of one concept over another. in posthumanism, this would translate as critically decentering humans to generate relational humanisms, in embodying that humans operate in conjunction with other species. this drive away from logocentrism brings forth the value of confusion and doubt – what derrida calls aporia – to reject representational logic in communication. critical posthumanism (nayar, 2014) favours symbiosis and dynamic hybrids, which falls under kumar’s critical and indigenous response to colonial, ideological and neoliberal influences on education. in parallel, barad’s (2007) agential realism and rosi braidotti’s (2018) feminist posthumanism remind us that being human results from a hybridization of material and immaterial forces and ‘data’ (such as the genetic code) that permeate species, skin, animal function, plants, and humans. postmodernism and the subsequent shift to posthumanism in the 1990s (with theoretical contributions from haraway, barad, braidotti) proved useful for curriculum inquiry as they provide ways to deconstruct silos in education and see fields of inquiry and learning as cross-disciplinary. in breaking those disciplinary areas and working towards crosspollinated fields, curriculum scholars can help shape tomorrow’s future by generating collaborative and meditative inquiries in education. teachers are too often trained to compartmentalize learning because school systems drive them to make sense of partialities on the daily – curriculum outcomes, behavioural reports, parent meetings, professional development days, planning, and so on – but the realities of contemplating a relational curriculum produced reflections on learning as rhizomatic as opposed to a problem that needs to be fixed (lemieux & rowsell, 2020a, 2020b; sheridan et al., 2020). with meditative inquiry, one of kumar’s propositions, comes evidence to make sense of the world holistically. by now, we know that literacy learning is dynamic, relational, and rhizomatic (lemieux, 2020; lemieux & rowsell, 2020; rowsell et al., 2018). how can this be actualized in global settings for an internationalized curriculum? my observations point to canada’s role as a nationstate to seriously consider indigenous thought in education. indigenous education echoes relationality with land, oral languages, histories, and knowledge, and it notices how humans play a complementary role to nature and species in education (styres, 2018). for canadian provinces to seriously do this work, stakeholders should enact work emerging from consultations, implement change in teacher education, and commit to professional development in schools with appropriate resources and funding. as kumar (2019) puts it in his indigenous response in the introduction of his book, such a framework works “towards restorative justice, and between people and nature by working towards restoring ecological balance” (p. 10). in so doing, we must remain critical of western epistemologies (including postmodernism and posthumanism) by recognizing its affordances and drawbacks, answering derrida’s call for aporia. about:blank kumar, brigham, kharbach, downey, lemieux, wells-hopey, shahidi, card. curriculum in international contexts 27 transnational curriculum inquiry, 18 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> questions & answers amélie lemieux: what hopes do postmodernism and posthumanism give with regards to internationalizing the curriculum? ashwani kumar: one key goal of curriculum internationalization is to celebrate diverse perspectives of how we understand curriculum and initiate a dialogue among these perspectives (see pinar, 2014a). given that postmodernism’s and posthumanism’s core concern is also to celebrate and respect diverse perspectives and to trouble binary concepts, they offer hopeful visions to guide the internationalization of curriculum studies. amélie lemieux: what relationship exists between posthumanism and your idea of the “indigenous response”? ashwani kumar: while i am not an expert in either of these areas, based on my current level of knowledge, what unites indigenous perspectives and postmodern/posthuman perspectives are their emphasis on inclusivity and diversity, their focus on questioning power and its abuse, their ecological sensitivities, and their respect for more than human. together, they offer a view of education and life that is holistic and inclusive. reflections on kumar’s inquiry into postmodernism’s role in social studies education debra wells-hopey in my reflection on kumar’s book, curriculum in international contexts, i will share my thoughts on chapter 7 in which he outlines the significance of postmodernism and postructuralism for social studies education. in chapter 7, “postmodern turn in north american social studies education: considering identities, contexts, and discourses,” kumar provides a robust discussion on the influence, or lack thereof, of postmodernism/poststructuralism on social studies education and the impact these ideologies have had (or not had) on social studies education research, curriculum theory, and teaching in north america. kumar begins this chapter in a way that is useful to those entering a discourse surrounding postmodernism/poststructuralism. kumar seeks to define these terms; or in the very least, sets parameters around what the traditional understandings and influences are which have given rise to that movement which we collectively agree (but not without inherent controversy) to be classified as “post” ways of thinking. thus, the chapter begins with an introduction to the notion of postmodernism and traces the history of how and why postmodernism emerged as an important but often underutilized influence in social studies research and teaching. it strikes me as a most useful discussion to have, and his observations of how intellectual movements such as postmodernism have shaped (or not shaped) curriculum theory are particularly compelling. chapter 7 offers relevant examples of what social studies education looks like when employing a “post” framework. one can see, through kumar’s analysis, how postmodernist methodologies, research, and teaching are particularly relevant to a social studies curriculum, as they offer a contextual and relativist view, rejecting the positivist and empiricist insistence on objective truth discoverable through notions of objectivity, scientific method, logic, and about:blank kumar, brigham, kharbach, downey, lemieux, wells-hopey, shahidi, card. curriculum in international contexts 28 transnational curriculum inquiry, 18 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> rationality; asserting instead that truth is found in diverse spatial, temporal, and cultural realities. here, kumar exposes social studies curriculum and educational research’s traditional roots in positivistic and behaviouristic notions of reality, scientific truth, and knowledge. he shows that when one compares social studies curriculum with other areas of research in education it only peripherally participates in postmodern discourse. unless there is a profound engagement and exploration into social studies education curriculum, the subject will continue to remain positivistic, outcomes-oriented, and instrumental. to contrast, kumar offers examples of social studies scholars who counter non-post methods and work instead with diverse theoretical frameworks and methodologies such as gender, sexuality, family, multiculturalism, and so on. constructive aspects inherent to a “post” influence on social studies education, as explained by kumar, include the situatedness found within political, historical, psychological, and cultural contexts, often unaddressed by traditional social studies education. under a “post” ideology, social studies education is enlightened by notions of multiplicity, inclusiveness, and individualization of circumstance, exposing the ways in which social construction and notions of progress and power are inseparable. ultimately, this means the loss of the “grand narrative,” which has been the glue that has held (and in many cases still is holding) the social studies curriculum together. employing postmodern themes, methodologies and theories in the social studies classroom has been transformative, as kumar shows in many examples from the current research. what i really appreciate is that kumar does not just leave the discussion here. he opens the door to a critique of his critique, offering examples of how “post” treatments may not be fully adequate. he claims that while “post” discourses have much to contribute to social studies education research and teaching, there are also areas where these goals and purposes need scrutiny. chapter 7 is a discussion that captures the intense and inherent complexity of “post” theories’ influence on education as is evidenced by kumar’s following queries. to summarize, it could be that: • postmodernist thinkers may tend to conflate modernism and positivism. kumar explains how such thinking is valid in some ways, however it may be a “throwing out the baby with the bathwater “situation (as marxism, psychoanalysis, existentialism, and critical theory also fall within the gamut of modernist thinking). • while postmodernism is sympathetic to issues of social injustices, it does not fully explore why injustice exists in the first place. for example, there is a lack of discussion of the expanding empire of capitalism through neoliberalism and neocolonialism as directed by the world trade organization, the world bank, and the international monetary fund. • there is little concern over the issues of war, nuclear crisis, and ecological problems. it is important that these problems be part of the postmodern social studies research agenda. • there may be room for a “defence” of grand narratives. while understanding the contextuality and situatedness of a problem is important, we can’t completely ignore the significance of grand narratives. as examples, kumar mentions the principles of capitalism and neoliberalism, which dominate a majority of our world and the behaviourist and positivist thinking which dominates most educational systems. • one should question the purpose of postmodernism in social studies education. is it to replace modernism? or, is it to keep the core values of modernism such as social justice, freedom, and equality and help social studies educators see how the limitations of modernist thinking might be overcome? is looking at modernism and postmodernism from about:blank kumar, brigham, kharbach, downey, lemieux, wells-hopey, shahidi, card. curriculum in international contexts 29 transnational curriculum inquiry, 18 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> a dualistic lens a mere academic exercise or is it a valuable approach for remedying the problems? for kumar, postmodernism is an essential aid in understanding cultural contexts and situations from diverse and relevant perspectives. however, the author also provides important critiques and raises questions regarding the usefulness and limits of postmodernist thinking regarding social studies curriculum studies. in terms of educational research, postmodernism may be necessary – but is it sufficient? by offering a critique of his critique, kumar presents a truly robust and rigorous analysis of “post” theories in social studies education and moves us towards an expanded notion of what may be required. chapter 7 serves a number of valuable purposes, from an introduction to the very notions of postmodern and poststructuralist thought, to the importance of it to the social studies curriculum, to examples of successful “post” research and teaching methods, and finally to a questioning of post theories as fully sufficient in relation to the overall intent of social studies education. he claims that while “post” discourses have much to contribute to social studies education research and teaching there are also areas where its goals and purposes need scrutiny. questions & answers debra wells-hopey: what separates an educational movement from an ideology? ashwani kumar: in my book, i have discussed ideology as a collection of factors that control curriculum, teaching, and learning. for example, in many countries in asia (see chapters 5 and 6 of my book under discussion here), education is under serious control by the ideology of the government as well as cultural and religious forces. another example of ideological control is the neoliberal education reforms (e.g., the no child left behind act in the us) which have reduced education to numbers (taubman, 2009). educational movements such as the movement for democratizing education or the alternative education movement, in my view, are educational forces that question the ideological control on curriculum, teaching, and learning. they demand academic freedom for teachers and students and question and critique the measurement, comparison, and competition-oriented education. if followed uncritically, they can also become hegemonic ideologies. so, we must always be critically engaging with all worldviews and ideologies to ensure that they do not become hegemonic or normalized. debra wells-hopey: what is the place of a grand narrative in social studies education? is it possible to form an understanding of events-through-time affecting a number of people without one? how many individuals must agree or believe in an occurrence or force before it becomes “grand”? ashwani kumar: i am not against grand narratives and theories, as you have also noted in your reflection above. as academicians and theoreticians, it is impossible not to see how phenomena operate on larger scales. for example, neoliberal education reforms are a global phenomenon. we need macro-analyses to understand its nature and character. however, we cannot ignore the way it operates locally though. neoliberalism may not look exactly the same in the us and in india. local culture, politics, and social structures complicate and contextualize global forces. so, while we need grand theories and macro-analysis, we also need contextual and local analysis. grand about:blank kumar, brigham, kharbach, downey, lemieux, wells-hopey, shahidi, card. curriculum in international contexts 30 transnational curriculum inquiry, 18 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> theories become problematic when they begin to disregard local phenomena and circumstances, and when we impose theories on real situations without considering the complexity of those situations. debra wells-hopey: your work on meditative inquiry may offer a potential resolution to these tensions through non-judgemental engagements with the inherently conflicted nature of human consciousness. although not addressed in detail in this book as it is in your 2013 book, curriculum as meditative inquiry, meditative inquiry may expose how ideological influences operate within ourselves and how we relate to others. is this a path towards overcoming ideological influence on social studies curriculum? ashwani kumar: yes, that is what i have proposed in several places in the book under discussion and in more detail in curriculum as meditative inquiry. in social studies education, we often focus on critical thinking and critical consciousness as ways of becoming aware of the social problems, issues, and conflicts such as racism and homophobia. however, we rarely turn our attention to how social discourses and conditioning influences that perpetuate injustices and discriminations operate in our deeper layers of consciousness. meditative inquiry is an existential process of becoming deeply aware of our psychological structures and how they explicitly or implicitly affect our actions in day-to-day living and sustain division, hatred, and discrimination. so, i think meditative inquiry can contribute to understanding and challenging ideological influences. to what degree can the curriculum be free from serving power? mehrdad shahidi concerns and contexts, agency, and structure (archer, 2012), collectivity (elder-vass, 2010), the entanglement of humans in the materiality of things (hodder, 2011 cited in plumb, 2012), shared intentionality (tomasello, carpenter, call, behne & moll, 2005), shared cognition (plumb, 2012), the community of practice (wenger, 2013) and many other terms and expressions reveal that humans and their societies are inseparably interconnected. this interconnectedness endlessly produces new power and potentials (properties) such as curriculum to control societies as well as to maintain and enhance the power. curriculum is one of the products of this interaction that is created and used as a tool to legitimate and idealize the “power”. in his book, kumar (2019) argues that curriculum has been in the service of power of the nation-states historically. considering that the power of nation-states is always embedded in the heart of culture, political and religious ideologies, and economic forces, kumar (2019) demonstrated that curriculum … is controlled, shaped, and influenced by the culture in which it is situated, political and religious ideologies that have sway over it, the market to which it intends to or is expected to cater, and the teachers and the students who interpret and engage with it and create it in their everyday lived contexts (p. 10). colonialist, ideological, neoliberal, and other historical types of curricula that were discussed in kumar’s (2019) book, curriculum in international contexts, are significant tools to serve the power of state through creating norms, endorsing, and enforcing norms. the curriculum about:blank kumar, brigham, kharbach, downey, lemieux, wells-hopey, shahidi, card. curriculum in international contexts 31 transnational curriculum inquiry, 18 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> changes and reforms globally have been largely a result of such political, religious, cultural, and economic powers (see for example the evolution of curriculum in japan, brazil, and south africa in kumar’s book). even though the historical trends in curricula reveal that the democratic curriculum has tried to challenge and change the oppressive nature of curricula by demolishing colonialist and other types of curricula, kumar (2019) argues the colonial nature of curriculum persists insidiously and is more dangerous in combination with neoliberalism which has reduced the curriculum to a marketable commodity. kumar’s book (2019) shows that in any period of history, curriculum has been in service of power in one way or the other. this trend aligns with the theory of power (foucault, 1975). in this theory nothing can be separate from the power (policy) (foucault, 1975). thus, educational systems are fully in service of power through establishing three forms of control including hierarchical observation, normalizing judgment, and the examination. these forms of control, which were elaborated by foucault (1975) are core techniques in service of authority (gutting, & oksala, 2019) or hegemony (mayo, 2008). a close study of educational systems reveals that these forms of control are embedded into each part of educational systems, particularly in the curriculum. through the curriculum, the hegemonic power generates a framework of norms, beliefs, and ideologies and teaches people how to interpret the world based on its favorite framework. therefore, it is the curriculum that normalizes thoughts based on what the dominant policy enforces, determines, and endorses. also, educational systems play as the eyes of power in observing the results of the curriculum through examination. since hegemony and domination have a non-static nature; that is, they are always renewable, adaptable, and changeable (mayo, 2008), it is possible to observe these forms of control in each political epoch in western or eastern countries. however, it seems that the western world is going to re-establish its notion of the democratic system in which critical rationalism is powerfully galloping (popper, 1966) to make balance in humans’ power. in his philosophical theory of critical rationalism, popper (1964; agassi, 2019; thornton, 2011) argued that people should use their thoughts and language to criticize their assumptions, hypotheses, beliefs, and ideologies that are supposed to shed light on the “truth”. this criticism allows them to eliminate their errors and substitute more appropriate conjectures that increase the survival of mankind. furthermore, this critical rational methodology can make people closer and closer to each other and increase their mutual understanding of truth. as popper mentioned “i may be wrong and you may be right and by an effort, we may get nearer to the truth” (1964, p. xii), the new way for democratic states is to use critical rationalism in each part of political systems. seemingly, popper’s critical rationality provides people with different languages, ideas, and thoughts the analytical skills to understand each other and overcome hegemonic frameworks. considering that education in each nation-state enforces its favorite framework of thoughts, popper (1964) emphasized that people who live in different cultures or civilizations with different paradigms of knowledge can communicate and understand each other reciprocally if they endeavor to begin a critical discussion with each other based on the critical rationalism. in this process they will find that the understanding of others is possible even very less. if their attempts become doomed to failure, their efforts will be fruitful and lead them to find new ways of understanding that is a type of higher level of knowledge and rationality to establish freedom for their societies. about:blank kumar, brigham, kharbach, downey, lemieux, wells-hopey, shahidi, card. curriculum in international contexts 32 transnational curriculum inquiry, 18 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> however, even if we suppose curriculum is following the principles of critical rationalism, some vital questions remain unanswered. questions & answers mehrdad shahidi: to what extent can curriculum be free of serving power? is it possible? what type of curriculum would it be if it becomes independent of power? ashwani kumar: i do not think that the curriculum can ever be free of power and ideological control. its selection, production, and implementation are imbued with power, ideology, and politics. human beings are political creatures and as long as they view education as means of achieving their group’s self-interests, they will continue to exert their power over the curriculum. as educators, it is our responsibility to study and reveal the complex ways in which the curriculum is controlled and influenced by the power of the dominant groups in society. this will help us raise the critical consciousness (freire, 1973) of ourselves, our students, and our society to challenge and undermine the dominance of powerful elites over curriculum. this engagement is essential for democratizing curriculum and teaching. mehrdad shahidi: is it true that in each period of history we have a different kind of ideology that controls curriculum? is not the present-day democratic curriculum also a form of ideological imposition? ashwani kumar: yes, i agree with you. oppressor and oppressed conflict have always existed in one form or the other, and oppressors have always exerted control over what is worth teaching and learning. if the democratic curriculum is also a construct of oppressors, then it is nothing but merely an ideological imposition. but the very essence of the idea of a democratic curriculum implies a curriculum that is constructed through deliberation (reid, 2006). the process of deliberation that is central to a democratic curriculum can also be seen as an ideology, but it is not dictatorial and controlling in nature. it is an emergent and inclusive process that provides space to the voices of the oppressed and, therefore, is capable of challenging the power dynamic. we cannot get rid of the discourse and ideology, but we can choose which discourses and ideologies are democratic, inclusive, and just rather than dictatorial, oppressive, exclusionary, and unjust. discussion and conclusion antony card this paper has provided the opportunity to reflect on three symposia and commentary that followed the release of kumar’s book entitled, curriculum in international contexts: understanding colonial, ideological, and neoliberal influences (kumar, 2019). it is a great pleasure to be invited to try and capture the essence of the book and to reflect on the dialogue on the book that emerged in the symposia. this narrative provides reflections from applying the theoretical perspectives of indigenous, critical, autobiographical, and meditative enquiry to a range of international contexts. it supplements and extends insights into the complicated discussions around the internationalization of curriculum studies. a postmodern stance suggests that to try and about:blank kumar, brigham, kharbach, downey, lemieux, wells-hopey, shahidi, card. curriculum in international contexts 33 transnational curriculum inquiry, 18 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> adequately capture all aspects of this grand and deep project is not feasible and to attempt such an endeavour would delimit its potential. my response, therefore, is an enunciation of my journey within this project and the critical understandings that have resonated with me. i perceive there to be three key tenets emerging from kumar’s (2019) book, the associate symposia, and papers. the first is that curriculum is not neutral; it is controlled and shaped by various forces. curriculum has been shaped, controlled, and influenced by cultural, political, religious, technocratic, and neoliberal influences. pinar’s notion of curriculum as complicated conversation (2012) has provided a pathway for the authors and audiences in these discussions to illuminate the many differing influences and how they exist within multiple global contexts. secondly, there is a realization that there has been hegemonic predominance of either imperialist or colonial influences over the education systems in the majority of global jurisdictions. this has resulted in the removal of culture, identity, and contextually rooted pedagogical approaches to learning. thirdly, the commodification of learning has created situations in which the enterprise that supports learning and learning itself has become problematic. learning, which is packaged and paid for and designed primarily for the purpose of future employment, is viewed by the authors of this paper as being antithetical to a natural process driven by curiosity and having the efficacy of emancipation. curriculum has been considered in this paper as a document, concept, and also a lived experience that has been formed and influenced by imperialist, colonial, and neoliberal forces. brigham has also described it in our symposium as an epistemic and ontological violence, and she has highlighted the ways in which curriculum has been used to dehumanize and terrorize indigenous peoples replacing their knowledge, culture, language, and truths with those of the colonizers. our symposia also highlighted countries where curricula are being delivered in schools in the language of the imperialists or colonialists and not the native language. kharbach has provided the example of french as the language of instruction of science, technology, and mathematical subjects in morocco. the influence of external agendas can also be seen within specific curricula in the canadian context. in my own scholarly area of health and physical education, i draw on the work of dyson, gordon, and cowan (2011) and lounsbery and mckenzie (2015) and others to show that physical education has a “chameleon” curriculum established on muddled thinking as it has attempted to adapt to a range of approaches and political ideologies. this has resulted in a swath of nomenclature to describe the subject that now includes terminology associated with (physical) literacy, fitness, coaching, kinesiology, wellness, and health promotion (card, 2017). similarly, wells-hopey has described in this paper how the social studies education curriculum will continue to remain positivistic, outcomes-oriented, and instrumental without deep and profound changes. in literacy education, lemieux reminds us that, through digital literacies and co-creation spaces, there needs to be an awareness that an entanglement of non-human artifacts can contribute to the perpetuation of neoliberal agendas. the symposia audiences raised important questions about how they could support change and engage in counter hegemonic practice. the four potential solutions of indigenous, critical, autobiographical, and meditative enquiry have ‘shone a light’ on the unique influences on the curriculum. popper’s critical rationality theory has the potential to bring people with differing languages and cultures together to understand each other. meditative enquiry provides a critical self-understanding as well as an understanding of social structures. it leads us to understand that the multiplicity of crises faced by contemporary society is not political or economic but rather a about:blank kumar, brigham, kharbach, downey, lemieux, wells-hopey, shahidi, card. curriculum in international contexts 34 transnational curriculum inquiry, 18 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> crisis in consciousness. j. krishnamurti’s philosophies, in this regard, help us to understand that the pure role of education is the understanding of oneself and not an enforced neoliberal curriculum created by oppressors and processes of normative thinking. the pre-service teachers in our audience were provided with a number of pragmatic ideas to help them negotiate a challenging and often incongruous trajectory between a desire to pursue activism on these points and the constraints of professional codes of conduct. suggestions included drawing on the diversity that exists within classrooms and bring different cultural heritages into the classroom. further, connections can be made to world events pursuing the idea of opening the school to diversity that exists in the community. brigham sees a role in getting students and families of students to actively engage in resisting and challenging the crisis that underpins curriculum development. the timeline of the development of this project presents a unique opportunity for future thinking. kumar’s book was published in 2019 and the associated symposia held during precovid-19 pandemic times. the presentation of this paper coincides with the global crisis having been present for more than two years. downey posits that the colonialism, neoliberalism, and ideologies have led society to the point that he termed, “the precipice of dystopia”. my assertion is that whatever the ‘new normal’ is, that emerges from this critical juncture in our history, the hope is that historical injustices associated with the hegemony of imperialism, colonialism, cultural genocide, white supremacy, elitism, and patriarchy can be corrected. the impossibility of disconnecting power, ideology and curriculum has been discussed by shahidi and kumar. perhaps, the indigenous, critical, autobiographical, and meditative enquiry perspectives, or a combination or extension of these may help to liberate societies and curricula in its various global contexts from the tyranny of the commodification of education and learning. notes 1ashwani.1979@gmail.com 2 susan.brigham@msvu.ca 3 khmed9@gmail.com 4 adrian.downey@msvu.ca 5 amelie.lemieux.1@umontreal.ca 6 dwellshopey@gmail.com 7 mehrdad.shahidi@msvu.ca 8 antony.card@msvu.ca 9 recommended readings on posthumanism that build to some extent on postmodernism include the works of rosi braidotti (2018) on feminist posthumanism, pramod nayar (2014) on the post-sciences, donna haraway on cyborg culture, jessica ringrose, katie warfield, and shiva zarabadi (2018) on feminist posthumanisms and phematerialisms, and jennifer rowsell (2020) on posthumanism and affect in literacy education. about:blank mailto:ashwani.1979@gmail.com mailto:susan.brigham@msvu.ca mailto:khmed9@gmail.com mailto:adrian.downey@msvu.ca mailto:amelie.lemieux.1@umontreal.ca mailto:dwellshopey@gmail.com mailto:mehrdad.shahidi@msvu.ca mailto:antony.card@msvu.ca kumar, brigham, kharbach, downey, lemieux, wells-hopey, shahidi, card. curriculum in international contexts 35 transnational curriculum inquiry, 18 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> references agassi, j. (2019). the future of critical rationalism. in r. sassower & n. laor (eds.), the impact of critical rationalism: expanding the popperian legacy through the works of ian c. jarvie. (pp. 97-107). palgrave macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90826-7_9 archer, m. s. (2012). the reflexive imperative in late modernity. cambridge university press. archibald, j. (1995). locally developed native studies curriculum: a historical and philosophical rationale. in m. battiste & j. barman (eds.), first nations education in canada: the circle unfolds (pp. 288-313). ubc press. assembly of first nations, national indian brotherhood. (1988). tradition and education: towards a vision of our future. national review of first nations education; 1-3. territory of akwesasne, hamilton's island, summerstown, on. barad, k. (2007). meeting the universe halfway: quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. duke university press. barthes, r. (1984). la mort de l’auteur. in r. barthes, essais critiques iv: le bruissement de la langue (pp. 63–69). seuil. benjamin, c. (2014). indian school road: legacies of the shubenacadie residential school. nimbus. braidotti, r. (2019a). a theoretical framework for the critical posthumanities. theory, culture & society, 36(6), 31-61. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276418771486 braidotti, r. (2019b). posthuman knowledge. polity. card, a. (2017). physical and health education: an event horizon?. physical & health education journal, 83(2), 1-18. crenshaw, k. (1989). demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: a black feminist critique of anti-discrimination doctrine feminist theory and anti-racist politics. the university of chicago legal forum, 139-168. https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclf/vol1989/iss1/8. dei, g. (2019). decolonizing education for inclusivity: implications for literacy education. in k. magro & m. honeyford (eds.), transcultural literacies: re-visioning relationships in teaching and learning (pp. 5-29). canadian scholars' press. downey, a., kharbach, m., petersen, b., shahidi, m., & wells-hopey, d. (2018, november). “curriculum in international contexts: understanding colonial, ideological and neoliberal influences”. in a. kumar (chair), mount saint vincent university colloquium series. symposium conducted at msvu, halifax, canada. dyson, b., gordon, b., & cowan, j. (2011). what is physical education in primary schools in aotearoa/new zealand? asia-pacific journal of health, sport and physical education, 2 (3-4), 5-16. elder-vass, d. (2010). the causal power of social structures: emergence, structure and agency. cambridge university press. lounsbery, m.a.f., & mckenzie, t.l. (2015). physically literate and physically educated: a rose by any other name? journal of sport and health science, 4(2), 139-144. foucault, m. (1975). discipline and punish. pantheon. gee, j. p. (2011). discourse analysis: what makes it critical. in r. rogers (ed.),. critical discourse analysis in education (pp. 23-45). routledge. about:blank https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclf/vol1989/iss1/8 kumar, brigham, kharbach, downey, lemieux, wells-hopey, shahidi, card. curriculum in international contexts 36 transnational curriculum inquiry, 18 (2) 2021 https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/tci/index <access date> gutting, g. & oksala, j. (2019). michel foucault. in e. n. zalta (ed.), the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2019/entries/foucault/ haraway, d. (1990). simians, cyborgs and women. free association press. khan, g. 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(2018). teaching as meditative inquiry: a dialogical exploration. journal of the canadian association for curriculum studies, 16(2), 52-75. kumar, a., & downey, a. (2019). music as meditative inquiry: dialogic reflections on learning and composing indian classical music. artizein, 4(1), 98-121. kumar, a., downey, a., kharbach, m., petersen, b. wells-hopey, d. (2018). curriculum in international contexts: a book symposium, mount saint vincent university, halifax, ns. kumar, a., brigham, s., downey, a., lemieux, a., kharbach, m., petersen, b., wiebi, s. (2020, may 29-june 4). emerging perspectives on the internationalization of curriculum studies [abstract accepted and published for cancelled presentation]. canadian society for the study of education conference, london, ontario, canada. https://jcacs.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/jcacs/issue/view/#### kumar, a., downey, a., kharbach, m., petersen, b. wells-hopey, d. (2019, october 17-19). a dialogue on meditative inquiry [abstract accepted and published]. canadian association for the study of adult education. halifax, nova scotia. https://a9ccdf8b-3e8e-42c7-82d13ab9e3de3136.filesusr.com/ugd/5b73bb_30344f979bf348549ec8d41e13f7968a.pdf lemieux, a. (2020). de/constructing literacies: considerations for engagement. peter lang. lemieux, a. & rowsell, j. (2020a). on the relational autonomy of materials: entanglements in maker literacies research. literacy, 54(3), 144-152. lemieux, a. & rowsell, j. (2020b). ‘this documentary actually makes welland look good’: exploring posthumanism in a high school documentary film project. in k. toohey, s. smythe, d. dagenais & m. forte (eds.), transforming language and literacy education: new materialism, posthumanism, and ontoethics (pp. 120-135). routledge. lynn, m. 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(2011) karl popper. in e. n. zalta (ed.), the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2011/entries/popper/ tomasello, m., carpenter, m., call, j., behne, t., & moll, h. (2005). understanding and sharing intentions: the origins of cultural cognition. behavioral and brain sciences, 28, 675-691. truth and reconciliation commission of canada (trcc) (2015). calls to action. https://nctr.ca/assets/reports/calls_to_action_english2.pdf van dijk, t. a. (1993). elite discourse and racism. sage publications. wenger, e. (2013). communities of practice a brief introduction. http://hdl.handle.net/1794/11736 submitted: november, 13rd, 2021. approved: january, 15th, 2022. about:blank http://hdl.handle.net/1794/11736 microsoft word editorialformated070109.doc to cite this article please include all of the following details: carter, lyn, camden-pratt, catherine & white, julie (2008). complicated conversations: the ecological, the sustainable and the educational. transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> complicated conversations: the ecological, the sustainable and the educational lyn carter, catherine camden-pratt and julie white australian catholic university, melbourne university of western sydney la trobe university, melbourne after we introduced ourselves over coffee, we began to notice connections. over time, the conversations became increasingly complicated… on a blue skied, crisp winter weekend in june 2007, twenty-five australian scholars and community educators came together at la trobe university in melbourne to exchange ideas and deepen their understandings of what might be meant by ‘eco-learning’. associate professor bernie neville – a passionate educator with a keen interest in creating community and transformative education – initiated the colloquium. he welcomed us all and outlined his hopes for the weekend. he anticipated a spirited and informed exploration of ecological learning at a time when understanding the ways in which we interact with the natural environment are crucial to personal, community, and planetary ecological sustainability. bernie’s personal style set the tone of the colloquium – relaxed, open, curious and fully engaged in informative conversation. one by one, we presented our ideas. over the two days we co-created conversations and connections. the papers presented on saturday explored aspects of environmental and ecological education, spirituality, sustainability, literacy and sustainable pedagogies using creativity and social ecology. by the end of the first day clear themes had begun to emerge which highlighted the need for, and the ways in which, personal and community agency contributed to eco-learning processes and outcomes. as the remaining papers were delivered the next day, we became involved in a diverse yet connected range of projects including the development of scientific literacy; reconstructing science education; curriculum and sustainability; challenges in community eco-education programs; teaching an ecological world-view; permaculture training as a holistic learning model; using creative arts and applying jungian frameworks to enhance personal ecological relationships. such complexity, such conversations! the colloquium was entitled, ‘eco-education’ which drew on the late twentieth century plethora of new terms with the prefix eco, usually with a hyphen, that embody an environmental perspective towards whatever concept happens to be under discussion. collectively the cambridge guide to english usage tells us, they take their cue from the term ecology, first coined in 1873 by german zoologist ernst haeckel from the greek oikos meaning house or dwelling place, and then, ‘oikology’ as the study of home. when combined with ‘environs’ from the french environer, meaning surroundings in the sense of the conditions in which a person or thing lives, then ecology has come to signify both the idea of a home or an environment as well as the systematic or symbiotic relationship that dwell therein (soanes & stevenson, 2003). haeckel defined ecology as the comprehensive science of the relationship of the organism to the environment or home in nature, but as he didn’t elaborate the concept further, nor write its first authoritative work, he is not always credited with its origin (goodland, 1975). carter, camden-pratt & white: complicated conversations transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 2 hence, we can come to think of the term ‘eco-learning’ as the systematic or symbiotic relationships that dwell within home or an environment or a place or nature. these relationships must necessarily include learning and other matters of curriculum and pedagogy. as klein (2007) suggests, the eloquent words of david gruenewald help to explain: a critical pedagogy of place aims to contribute to the production of educational discourses and practices that explicitly examine the place-specific nexus between environment, culture, and education. it is a pedagogy linked to cultural and ecological politics, a pedagogy informed by an ethic of eco-justice, and other socioecological traditions that interrogate the intersection between cultures and ecosystems (gruenewald, 2003, p. 10). with the exception of noel gough’s article, this issue of transnational curriculum inquiry does not consider place-based pedagogies in any detail, but there are a number of related points we can take from gruenewald’s perspective. in our selection of articles around ecolearning, we are interested in the production of educational practices and discourses that trouble the intersection of cultures and ecosystems, and seek an ethic of ecoas well as that of social justice. the articles in this edition have approached this task in two main ways. those from annette gough, arran gare and lyn carter focus on the environmentalism inherent in eco-learning, while the articles from julie white and catherine camden-pratt consider student learning and teacher pedagogy. athena vongalis-macrow’s and noel gough’s papers traverse both aspects, troubling distinctions between knowing and doing by questioning the oversimplification of complex knowledge about sustainability in schools and society at large. for bill pinar, complicated conversation is central to the study of contemporary curriculum and ‘keeps hope alive, enabling us to have faith in a future’ (2004, p. xiv). in this edition, we offer a view from the south with some measure of hope. we are hopeful that readers from other places might engage with some of the ideas and authors and enter into further complicated conversations. in the next issue, we plan to print some of these responses as well as another instalment of themed articles arising from this fruitful colloquium in melbourne. references goodland, r.j. (1975). the tropical origin of ecology: eugen warming’s jubilee. oikos 26, 240-245. gruenewald, d. (2003). the best of both worlds: a critical pedagogy of place. educational researcher 32(4), 3-12. klein, r., (2007). educating in place: mathematics and technology. philosophical studies in education 38, 119-130. peters, p. (2004). cambridge guide to english usage. cambridge: cambridge university press. pinar, w. f. (2004). what is curriculum theory? new jersey: lawrence erlbaum. soanes, c. & stevenson, a. (2003). the oxford english dictionary. oxford: oxford university press. authors lyn carter is a senior lecturer in science and sustainability education in the faulty of education at the australian catholic university, melbourne campus, victoria, australia. email: lyn.carter@acu.edu.au carter, camden-pratt & white: complicated conversations transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 3 catherine e camden pratt is a lecturer in social ecology in the school of education at the university of western sydney, new south wales, australia. email: c.camdenpratt@uws.edu.au julie white is a senior lecturer in the faculty of education at la trobe university, melbourne, australia. email: julie.white@latrobe.edu.au to cite this article please include all of the following details: low, marylin and palulis, pat. (2004). laboured breathing: running with and against internationalizing texts of currere. transnational curriculum inquiry, 1(1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> laboured breathing: running with and against internationalizing texts of currere marylin low international educator, hawai’i, usa pat palulis university of ottawa, canada abstract two texts running a chiasmatic course – running with and against lines of separation. traces of bergamo 1999 linger in these textured doublings invoked by an invitation to baton rouge and a dialogue of international curricular provocations from which iaacs emerged. we query what happens when teachers and learners locate themselves in spaces where languages invoke a re-articulation of their pedagogic lives. incited by such cadences of ar/rhythmic moments, we write out of a living pedagogy that is always already in-between movements of translation and transformation. re-running the course – the course of running with and against our work – we have learned to read with aoki that the same is always already – toujours déjà – the same and not the same. and hence our laboured breathing…running with and against internationalizing texts of currere. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci marylin low & pat palulis: laboured breathing transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 13 two texts running a chiasmatic course – running with and against lines of separation. traces of bergamo 1999 linger in these textured doublings invoked by an invitation to baton rouge and a dialogue of international curricular provocations from which iaacs emerged. 1. attentive to the double gesture of writing as inter-discursive moments of currere – as sender, we respond to our addressees who invited us to attend to our breathing and bring our bodies into the work. “i am experience. with each breath. experience. regardless of the context, i am, running a course. currere is to run” (pinar & grumet, 1976). 2. in our (w)rites of passage – moments of to-and-fro – at the scene of departure – a driver – le passeur – one who takes people across borders into ex-clusionary spaces – made reference to our going ‘up-the-way-a-bit’ – blurring the boundaries of our re-turn – and now – in the now of discourse we are ‘down-the-way-a-bit’ – revisiting – in a re-currence of discourse. fragment from heraclitus (robinson, 1987) inscribes that “a road up [and] down [is] one and the same [road]” (p.41). rerunning the course – the course of running with and against our work – we have learned to read with aoki (2003) that the same is always already – toujours déjà – the same and not the same. and hence our laboured breathing ... [chiasm(us) ] http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci marylin low & pat palulis: laboured breathing transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 14 what happens when we, as teachers and learners, locate ourselves in a space where languages provoke a rearticulation of our pedagogic lives? engaging with/in such chiasmatic acts of languaging has opened us to the international as texts of currere. in the ‘inter’ of our work with students, we are drawn to derrida’s double proposition of monolingual polyglossia, to aoki’s textured hybridity of language, and to bhabha’s in-between space, as sites that surprise and disrupt signs of difference in the classroom. and, we have become wary of the tenancy of those signs in our encounters with currere. through reading elsewhere and writing otherwise, we are alert to a labouring of signs we hadn’t anticipated. incited by such cadences of ar/rhythmic moments in the pedagon (smith, 1999) of our teaching lives, we dwell in a living pedagogy that is always already in-between movements of translation and transformation. for us, the inter is a curricular space of liminality, textured by gil’s (1998) modulating breath as passage – a passage taking “its pulse from…difference” (pollock, 1998, such a language would be one that grows in the middle. ted aoki ‘inter’ the cutting edge of translation and negotiation, the in-between space – that carries the burden of meaning of culture. homi bhabha what is a body? it is a speaking respiration. respiration, breath, pneuma a modulating pathway ... any rhythmic expression, like rapid speech or hesitation, which reverberates there, is made possible, as such, by this property of the breath as a passage. jose gil we only ever speak one language. . . (yes but) we never speak only one language. . . jacques derrida a word located in a hybrid space in-between englishes [british/american] performs in tensionality beneath and beyond the sign. brackets clattering – clamo(u)ring – as discordant aspirations. tracking the economy of signs from husserl to derrida, caputo (1987) makes reference to the labor of the sign – the anonymous productivity of the sign – a productivity performing the work of tenancy in the presence and in the absence of objects. tracking a shift from the uselessness of the sign to the productivity of the sign, derrida contends that the sign performs the work of tenancy – holding on to the thing as the thing slips away from the sign. and what happens when signs labour to perform the work of tenancy in curricular spaces in-between languages? in a doubling moment of pedagogy, derrida (1998a) evokes two alternating symptoms: the first as an “asphyxia: a state of apparent death, a ceasing of respiration, a fainting fit, a cessation of the pulse” and the second as the pulse quickening as if “drugged, intoxicated, inebriated by the new richness” (p. 53). could yet another language emerge from this ar/rhythmic space – from a labouring of language that grows in the middle – as an aokian moment? running with and against the signs of pedagogy – across borderlines in the slippery inter spaces of an international currere, how can we begin to trouble the tenancy of the sign? we attend to ar/rhythmic breathing with our neighbours across the border – taking a pulse from difference – in the running of a course – up and down the road. from one neighbour to another – the property of a breath as passage. running the interval of translation as derrida’s notion of survivre – living on. each re-writing a doubling gesture – a transformative moment of discourse. [labo(u)r] http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci marylin low & pat palulis: laboured breathing transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 15 p.82). running with and against internationalizing texts invoked in our classrooms, we trouble and are troubled by passages of colonial nostalgia; where phantoms trafficking in english take on the guise of neo-colonial inscriptions, only to remind us that the colonial “smile [still] lingers in the air” (nandy, 1989, p. 276). classroom rhythms disrupted, interrupted, corrupted by the willful impositions of phantoms. surprised by ghostly remains, we are seduced into a laboured breathing of contingent and restless dialogues – of speaking respirations in the cutting edge of translation and negotiation – that move us on. we write out of the laboured breathing of our pedagogic lives enacted in translation – one shifting roles from a primary teacher to a teacher of teachers always already midst inter/national arrivals and departures, and the other a teacher of english language learners at home and elsewhere ever-dwelling in the difficulties of translation. entering into liminal folds of translation with our admittedly derridean curiousities, we take from trinh t. minh-ha (1992) that translation as grafting is “a problem of reading and identity” (p. 244). as writers/translators, we story into hybrid spaces of persistant instability that invoke difference into our co-evolving work with students. with jean-luc nancy (1993, p. 33) we track a trembling that “differentiates, defers, identity; that is how identity is colonialism may have vanished from the world scene but its smile lingers in the air. ashis nandy to write means to graft. it’s the same word. the saying of the thing is restored to its being-grafted. the graft is not something that happens to the properness of the thing. there is no more any thing than there is any original text. jacques derrida translation, like identity, is a question of grafting several cultures onto a single body so hybridization is not only between but within. trinh t. minh-ha a detour now with maurice blanchot (1982) into the space of literature. blanchot contends that ambiguity seduces us – evoking in us the desire for clarity – a desire that is endlessly deferred. gasché (1999) reading blanchot reminds us that “ordinary language seeks to remove ambiguity and to limit equivocality by putting a term to understanding” (p. 339). blanchot turns to literary language as a slippery passage for setting it free. i re-read ondaatje’s (1992) the english patient through the blanchotian (1995) citation of ambiguity in literary language as “in some sense abandoned to its excesses by the opportunities it finds and exhausted by the extent of the abuses it can commit” (p. 341). the hungarian count ladislaus de almasy, as the english patient, betrays and is betrayed through sly spatialities midst languages. what happens when ambiguity is halted? when an accent as acoustic hybridity is refused entry into englishness – is this how betrayal occurs? let us enter into the space of re-readings – the space of a hyphen where identities are de-stabilized. re-reading ondaatje re-works the hyphen. alerted to the property of a breath as passage i become aware of the english patient’s laboured breathing with and against his languages in the tensioned hybrid space of ambiguity and uncertainty – of promise haunted by the possibility of its perversion – a doubling gesture of betrayal through the textual ambiguities of his languages. what happens in the inter of international – always already a haunted space? there are no easy in-betweens in bhabha’s cutting edge of translation and negotiation. laboured breathing – the property of a breath as passage – as passage to the death of the english patient. the promise of breathing haunted by the inevitability of cessation. a derridean doubled symptom. the discourse in-between nations – a discourse of ambiguity halted. could this be what derrida means by performative contradictions? the occupant and the ghost – in the body of the text – in the text of the body – in the textual resonances of the body of the english patient. [de-tours] http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci marylin low & pat palulis: laboured breathing transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 16 given”. an aokian (2003) play doubles the space of ko-jin as individual – as both divided and undivided – exposing some slippage in the ‘inter’ of translation. with blanchot (1997, p. 56), we labour with the notion of “translating as the bringing into ‘work’ of difference.” theorizing internationalizing discourse(s) of currere through hybrid graftings and de-tours keeps us open to the im/possibilities of reading and writing the work of difference in classroom life. within the gesture of a performative and hybrid genre, we graft into wounds and gaps and fissures of pedagogy – running into troubled topographies – turner’s ‘limen’ – to interrupt our complicity with and against the globalization of english as a productive signifier. as teachers we ask, how can we enter into conversations with students and with each other, opening to the limen – the ‘inter’ – of internationalizing texts as generative sites of possibilities? sites that call into question experiences with english and its hegemonic tendencies? trembling with/in storied translations of curricular practices, we read with derrida (1998a) that he no longer has to distinguish between promise and terror – “a promise…is…haunted by the possibility of its perversion” (p. 93). laboured breathing as a dwelling with/in curricular practices of promise and terror… • the cinematic event of the english patient returns me to the acoustics of laboured breathing – a ‘sounding’ of hybridity – the english patient’s laboured breathing as he is held [host/age] in his charred burnt body – a rereading within the gap – the interval. rey chow (1995) alerts us to the generativity of detours through translation from novel to filmic script opening to yet another moment of pedagogy. my re-reading becomes another supplement in my writing – in my speaking – in my breathing – into the space of interval. trinh (1999) contends that “[t]he interval, creatively maintained, allows words to set in motion dormant energies and to offer, with the impasse, a passage from one space…to another” (p. xi). in re-viewing the television documentary “the resonance of the english patient” that followed the filmic version of the novel, i am re-reading trinh who envisions ongoing conversations around texts and scripts breathing life into the work – the reader invited into these circum-scriptions as supplement. three variations on an english accent – author/producer/director – engage in performative re-readings of textual fragments and engage in complicated conversations on the making of the film – in what trinh refers to as “the task of speaking nearby…in an interrelational space of detour” (p. xii). and viewing the documentary, i am startled by the enunciation of an ‘international’ sand club. limen: a no-man’s-land betwixt-and-between a fructile chaos, a fertile nothingness, a storehouse of possibilities, a striving after new forms and structure. victor turner [inter-val] http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci marylin low & pat palulis: laboured breathing transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 17 in an ‘inter’ space of the classroom, a complicated conversation errupts and enfolds derrida’s double proposition; “we only ever speak one language (yes but) we never speak only one language” (1998a, p. 10). in class a student labours through her thoughtfulness – a passage unsure of itself – sharing her responsibility of a group task. a fragmented language – “one that grows in the middle” (aoki, 1993, p. 99) – is halted to redress its impurity. teacher impulses work to purify a language at the cutting edge of translation and negotiation. it was what she wanted, wasn’t it? my (un)intentional curricular practices became language games, perpetuating necessary illusions of speaking “only one language”. a close colonial encounter labours to imprison the originary language, the un/grammatical core now arrested at the borderlines and imbued with imperial ink – my unsuspecting ink is used to map another. a cartography where colonial texts work to establish and sustain the possibility of a base rhythm of english resisted and transformed by acts of translation. learning (in) english proffers a place where the interdiction of english is the indisputable incursion of its own law – at once there is both obedience and a failure to obey. a jabèsian “cadence of subversion” (1996, p. 5) always already there destabilizes the colonial encounter with a language that grows in the middle – an aokian metonymic moment (aoki, 2003) that locates itself in the terror of a promise of “only one language”. another stopped by my office visibly upset. broken words midst ar/rhythmic pulses alerted me to what was for this international student from japan a troubled translation. living language in the abyss of a moment in exile, she had spoken japanese in an ‘english only’ classroom – a classroom invested with the ideals of linguistic purity and enforced by students outlawing the use of japanese, their originary language from which they sought leave. in front of her japanese classmates, she stood to take her curricular turn, speaking only in the unity of one language, english. the in-struct(ur)ed a sand club – a group of hash harriers – ex-patriates – running a course in desert lands – a currere in the desert – mapping a course for the other – in the jabèsian desert spaces beneath the words. but…running where? footprints disappear in desert sands that refuse our imaginary cartographies. in a radical reading of the cinematic version of the english patient, hanley (1998) critiques the romanticism of the film and calls for attentiveness to the “abrasiveness” of sand – the “maddening intrusiveness” of sand (p. 23). how can we work with abrasion as a tensioned space of generative possibilities? currere always already under erasure through maddening intrusiveness. and hanley draws our attention to the torment of kirpal singh as he hears news of the bombing of hiroshima and nagasaki. i am citing singh’s words from ondaatje’s work: “never turn your back on europe. the deal makers. the contract makers. the map drawers” and blurring the boundaries of national distinction: “american, french, i don’t care. when you start bombing the brown races of the world, you’re an englishman” (p. 25). troubling the sly spatialities of englishness in a slippery passage of globalization. commenting on the circulation of religion like an english word comme un mot anglais derrida (1998b) inscribes a globalization that is “running out of breath essoufllee, however irresistible and imperial it still may be” (p. 30). we listen deeply as derrida asks “what are we to think of this running out of breath?” (p. 30). laboured breathing as abrasive text(ure). de-stabilizing english. [currere] http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci marylin low & pat palulis: laboured breathing transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 18 base rhythms of english reverberated discordantly. the passage of english only was impassable; instead, she sought a hybrid place nearby. living a moment of terror of my mis-informed obligations as an english teacher disrupted my commonplace. i, too, had been seduced and become complicit in the colonial act of insisting on the (im)possibility of english only. disruptive discursive excursions. i found myself now wanting to risk opening to the possibility of never speaking only one language. her traces of japanese in a moment of translation troubled the english ear. what am i asking of her in an ‘english-only classroom’? what does ‘english only’ want? sutured by the geneology of graftings between and within one language, how can any language be pure? differing social and structural forms from language contact seep, spill, spin into and out of the other. living languages always already running with and against a course of translation, at once altering and maintaining their forms in fluid and fragmented (pre)tension – speaking only one language (yes but) never speaking only one language. the burden of purity of a language becomes its untenable demise. the enunciatory space of english in translation caught her by surprise. languaging in cultural uncertainty, her japanese slippage exposed itself in the summons of another language. an ambiguous space of speaking in-between languages – midst aoki’s (2003) vertical and horizontal signification and bhabha’s (1994) ‘inter’ – “the cutting edge of translation and negotiation, the in-between space of limen that carries the burden of meaning of culture” (p. 38). a text emerges not as this language or that but as this language and that – a “third space” wherein the textured “others of ourselves” (p. 39) work to dissolve the weightiness of textual polarity – of this language or that. base rhythms of only one language troubled this student – she turned to intertextual moments – texts that invoked turner’s “storehouse of possibilities” within unwanted remnants of one language nested in another. it was in a class with ted aoki in the summer of ‘96 that we first heard of derridean différance – a neologism of difference and deferral – and we began to seek out readings on deconstruction. and now i’m reading derrida’s letter to izutsu. in derrida’s “letter to a japanese friend” on the difficulty of translating his notion of deconstruction – he writes on the chance of ‘deconstruction’ – “the chance of ‘deconstruction’ would be that another word (the same and an other) can be found in japanese to say the same thing (the same and an other) to speak of deconstruction and to lead elsewhere to its being written and transcribed.... i understand translation as involving the same risk and chance as the poem. how to translate ‘poem’? a ‘poem’?…” (kamuf, 1991, p. 275-6). derrida in his letter to izutsu contends that the sign of deconstruction interests him only when replacing other words “as ‘écriture,’ ‘trace,’ ‘différance,’ ‘supplement,’ ‘hymen,’ entame,’…etc.” – an open listing – translating the sign is a movement – a moment – a rhythm of aspiration. derrida punctuates his ending with an ellipsis that continues to breathe life into the work. and listen to aoki (2003) on the sign of ko-jin – the doubling of labour in the productivity of the sign – translating ko-jin as individual – as both divided and undivided – “an admission perhaps that in translation there is some slippage, something left untranslated, and thus incomplete” (p. 6). we learn with aoki that to be attentive to the ‘re’ is to dwell in the silence and the excess of the hyphen. grafting and being-grafted as a labour of language(s). [translation ] http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci marylin low & pat palulis: laboured breathing transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 19 and now returning from the blanchotian space of literature – two narratives – two storied memoirs – two students – dis/located through live(d) experiences midst sly spatialities. two hyphenated identities dwelling in hybrid spaces – spaces of promise haunted always already by the possible perversion of promise. a young algerian-jewish student expelled from school – an experience that derrida contends “leaves nothing intact, something you can never again cease to feel” (derrida in interview with wood & bernasconi, 1988, p.74). a japanese-canadian university graduate dis/located from mainstream society – displaced and relocated – an experience of pain that aoki felt bone deep (in conversation with ted aoki, 07/96). what does the hyphen want? who desires to limit the ambiguity of the hyphen? how does the violence of language and the law come to inhabit the space of the hyphen? and here i draw on a citation from cixous (1993): “why?…because. as you know this is the secret of the law: ‘because’,…. this is the law’s logic. logic. it is this terrible ‘because,’ this senseless fatal ‘because’ that has decided people’s fate …. it is this because that rules our lives. it pervades everything. it can even touch the fragile world of translation” (p.117). as graftings are halted. as bodies are excluded. as the colonial smile lingers in the air … a singular definite article questions the possibility of english being at one with itself – questioning the risk in wanting to speak the pure language of the master, a language that derrida (1998a) contends, is a system whose unity is always reconstituted. but this unity is not comparable to any other. it is open to the most radical grafting, open to deformations, transformations, expropriation, to a certain a-nomie and de-regulation. (p.65) i reassured her of the double bind of translation – those de-regulated (ar)rythmic movements of (in)alienated graftings where we never speak only one language. risking my desire to remain open to language-in-translation as a generative space within tensions of ambiguity and uncertainty, my words were quickly silenced as the western phantasms of unity, of purity, of clarity worked to motivate a re-constitution of the master’s language. english was only one language. wanting to re-work this site with her, i shared michel de certeau’s (1988) iteration of clarity as a betrayal of the richness of ambiguity. she did not want to hear these words. she had broken a promise – an illusory promise of speaking only one language – a promised sentence undelivered. the phantoms of the promise’s perversion did not rest. the student, a japanese writer of english living in the chiasmatic two-fold of translation midst the departure and arrival of languages, does not speak in only one language – can never speak in only one language. a reversal transverses the faltering terrain as she begins to question the im/possibility of english-only. yet, japanese is alienated in the english only classroom – a “sweet dream of reason” (doll, 1999) now implicated in derrida’s (1998a) “irremediable suffering” of the speaker when the double [re-turns] http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci marylin low & pat palulis: laboured breathing transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 20 fold of languages-within-languages is not assumed – when alienation “institutes every language as a language of the other” (p. 63). leaning on derrida’s notion of desistance as a rupture always already there, her trembling translation is at once a problem and not a problem. messy texts of translation (low & palulis, 2000) emerge, entangle, fragment, and create anew. speaking with a faulty tongue, estrangement breathes life (and death) into english. a living language she seeks to master, locates itself in the spaces between mastery and non-mastery. what english does she want? her “sweet dream” slips away as alienation lingers in her troubled aspirations. she pauses momentarily, disquieted yet intrigued by her unique ways with words. life in the abyss runs with and against such alienation and yet lives on in a language she can now bear to live with. is english only ashis nandy’s (1989) warning of the colonial smile that lingers in the air? is it a veiled assertion of colonial sovereignty in classrooms that enact languaging as a mastery of the other? faint traces work to preserve the ‘gift’ of an imperial passage – illusory tropes of a pure, unified english and its mastery – endemic with/in sites now engaged in internationalizing curriculum. the limits of speaking/writing english only become the limits of one’s world. a world labeled by english becomes limited only by the perversion of its mastery in the otherwise promise of an unlimited world. re-writing english only as derrida’s double proposition unveils a colonial smile and exposes a scandalous myth of translatable transparency. the colonial desire to deliver a limiting, perfunctory english narrative of the world is obliterated, no longer resting on assumptions of illusory clarity in the possibility of translating one language/one world as a passage into the other (english). borderlines always already crossing borderlands of foreign tongues – anzaldua’s (1999) new mestiza – indwelling midst texts in-between, texts always already in a constant flux of translation…laboured breathing. • a teacher trafficking in english. my canadian “i” was once an expatriate working in the oil company’s school in libya, north africa, when the time-was-out-of-joint. a moment surprised by difference in an early morning bombing attack. my identity – de-stabilized through border crossings – living with the terror of being mistakenly identified as the enemy ‘other.’ a few words in arabic – a passage – a modulating pathway through another language – the stranger in my ‘self’ speaking in the tongue of another – to mark my borders – frame my boundaries. a desire to clarify the ambiguity of the hyphen in expatriate. the words labo(u)ring to frame my difference from those who dropped the enemy bombs. working and worked by a double vowel. an experience, as cixous (1993) would say, of “[c]rossing the frontier...at the stroke of a signifier” (p.81). a displaced body seeking replacement – relocation – through the labo(u)r of the sign – the productivity of the sign – the productivity of an appropriated sign – the brackets clamo(u)ring in terror. cixous (1993) contends that “[t]he person who doesn’t tremble when crossing a border doesn’t know there is a border and doesn’t cast doubt on their own definition” (p.131). labo(u)ring across borders, i trembled. returning to libya, my english books are removed by airport security and hurled across the floor – bhabha (1994) makes reference to “the presence of the english book….surface that stabilizes the agonistic colonial space” (p. 110) – the surface of the english book as a sign of labour while the thing has already departed. the english teacher is passed through the gates – the body as a speaking respiration … a modulating pathway…the breath as a passage. but the english books are held in house arrest. trafficking in english – confiscated typographies – the english text as contraband. the body as a token of this exchange – a counterfeit economy – a space surprised by difference – complicity interrupted and disturbed. passing through security … a modulating pathway … [trafficking ] http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci marylin low & pat palulis: laboured breathing transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 21 discursive spaces of internationalizing curriculum, accentuated as sites of translation, constantly traffick in the presumption that practices can be translated from one cultural localism to another – from a curricular practice to the curricular practice – an imperial passage that constantly brushes against the conceit of its own discursive formations. i read internationalizing texts of currere as liminal, un/translatable spaces, spaces troubled within multiple and complex losses and gains of languages-in-flux. i am wary of dis-eased sites of colonial desire that seduce me into a cartography already mapped – a pilgrimage tainted by the residuals of social memory, a foreign tongue that threatens to alter the state of the language of the translator, and the symbolic loading of language games that become re-routed by scandals of translation. guarding against the scandals of translation is an imperial task of the translator (benjamin, 1968). yet, what happens when translation by scandals is refused? one, in a graduate class of students, labours in a language not his own. in his desire to participate with the other, he told me he couldn’t speak – at the threshold of an utterance his breath agonized in troubled perplexity – left with “a fertile nothingness” – constantly running with and against the sayable expectations of a graduate student. the silently oral enactment of a grafting not-yet-taken enacts a distortion of an initial selfpromise to the sayable now caught up in a network of texts living in the moment. his text – perhaps a derridian sur-vive – a ‘living on’ in words that are both at once translatable and untranslatable – becomes a text toiling to survive. a student, engages in benjamin’s (1968) task of the translator and, in the pause of a moment indebited to the search for words in english to prolong the textual life of his originary – was deferred by the voice of an other insisting to be heard. an other graduate wanting to speak. an act working un/intentionally to silence the promise of survival. for a moment, we were ‘down-the-way-a-bit’ in baton rouge engaged in complicated conversations conducted in cross-border english(es). running with and against internationalizing curriculum, we were hash harriers running the course in jabèsian desert spaces. a desert under erasure offers infinite hospitality – an opening to grafting multiple identities into a writing that always already doubles its gesture of deliverance. where are we? peggy phelan (1997) contends that, “[p]erformative writing enacts the death of the ‘we’ that we think we are before we begin to write” (p.17). and so we continue to write with and against – this englishness. we write toward what phelan terms “the radicality of unknowing who we are becoming” (p. 17) – our writing pushing against the hegemonic ideologies of knowledge – our writing pushing against this englishness that shifts with some degrees of separation. in the space of the ‘inter’ one imagines a coming and a going – a to-and-fro movement in in-between spaces – an ex-change of messages. translation as reading – iterability of the mark – translation always already adrift – language itself as a babelian event in the im/possibility of translation. how to write as/in a complicated conversation? reading giorgio agamben (1999), we are mindful of his call for a restoration of the difficulty of writing as “the task of the coming philosophy” (p.38). as a task for the coming community. translation is always already – toujours déjà – what marks and re-marks the “detour of language in languages” as drift (leavey, 1987, p. 36). we are crossing oceans now in drifting conversations – fragments in virtual space … detour of language in languages … [internationalization] http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci marylin low & pat palulis: laboured breathing transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 22 derrida’s (1998a) reference to a double proposition of monolingualism is a reminder of how the double-fold of language works to blur the boundaries of a text’s speakable passage – the internationalization of a curricular translation frays at the edges, finding trouble in the asymmetry of one language in another, “always for the other, from the other, kept by the other” (p.40). in the extended silence, was he seeking a form of survival that reproduced his original text in the language of arrival? the base rhythms of an imperial passage into english disrupted by a foreign tongue – english only as/in a colonial silencing of translation? the “sweet dreams of reason” return hauntingly with their “dark underside” (doll jr., 1999, p. 88) – their desire to absorb the other into one – one language appropriated by another. in the moment of a laboured pause, a colonial tendency to pre-empt the other was enacted – the cadence of english was not to be disrupted. an international graduate student signing his own desistance in hybrid pulsations – one language ar/rhythmically conversing with the other – experiences the double bind of translation. what do i say to this student, caught in the silence of his pronouncement – his desire to speak overcome by the sweet dream of reason? how does one live in spaces of laboured breathing, running with and against the internationalization of currere? i read with derrida (1985) that translation is not representation and reproduction of the orginary but is an act of “transforming the original as well as the translation” (p. 122). the obligation of the translator is to both sustain textual life and survive beyond – a kind of hospitality that becomes a symbolic alliance between languages – a language that grows from the middle, extending each language beyond itself – in grafting, a reconciliation of languages where the whole becomes greater than either the original or the translation. running with and against the colonial desire for an english only, translation as transformation welcomes the impurity of language and its multiple tongues. edmond jabès makes reference to an infinite hospitality. a generous hospitality was extended toward the participants in louisiana in the founding of a new association (iaacs) – welcoming the stranger in conversation. stamelman (1991) in his introductory essay to the jabès reader evokes the jabèsian notion of hospitality as “a form of dialogue and sharing offered to the other, to the stranger in his or her radical difference” (p. xxi). a jabèsian hospitality welcomes “the unknown person who suddenly appears from nowhere” (p. xxii). we responded to an invitation extended at bergamo to work on our breathing and to bring our work to louisiana. rosmarie waldrop (1991) translating jabès comments on a writing that does not seek to “master language” – a jabèsian writing opens language to silence…and “lets it breathe a larger air…listens to it, listens to language thinking and breathing...” (p. xxvi). could this be a modulating pathway for international dialogue? learning to listen to language thinking and breathing. what happens when listening invokes a modulating pathway for hospitality? derrida (1998a) writes of a generous hospitality in louisiana in april ‘92 at lsu – as an invitation to francophones and to hyphenated francophones. this derridean text that so entices us began as a presentation – as a labour of signs at an international/bilingual conference in louisiana entitled “echoes from elsewhere”/ “renvois d’ailleurs.” and it is from the space of hyphenated identities that derrida asks what the hyphen wants,contending that the hyphen is never enough – “never enough to conceal protests, cries of anger or suffering, the noise of weapons, airplanes, and bombs” (p. 11). we have learned to listen to the performative contradictions of hospitality and hostility. [hospitality] http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci marylin low & pat palulis: laboured breathing transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 23 if curricular traces of internationalization are understood as sites of intertextual translation – of benjamin’s kinship of languages, of derrida’s double proposition – would this graduate student’s task of speaking in an other language continue to be deferred, his tongues silenced in the imperialist’s desire for ‘pure’ english? his breath labours in attempting the im/possiblity of a transparent translatability? was he living in the borderline – running with and against base rhythms of english – dwelling in a derridian paradoxical agreement (in the abyss between translatability and untranslatability)? how can we, as teachers and learners – only ever speak one language (yes, but) never speak only one language – dwell in a moment of language reconciliation – in a complicated conversation of currere and its internationalization – in this practised place of classroom life? a text moves on … responding to calls – transporting words and transported by words from conference to conference – (e)migrating, mutating, translating, transformed and transforming. a text renews itself in a postscriptive labouring with words… after china. seated in the audience at the first world curriculum studies conference in shanghai, i heard through my earphones, the laboured breathing of a translator as a speaking respiration. a translator gasping for air. languagesgasping-in-transport. i heard the acoustic hybridity of translation-in-labour. one translator near asphyxia passes the work to an other … a pulse quickening …to pick up the laboured breathing of breath as passage and move it on. laboured breathing through translation� transported through language(s)� words and worlds of a complicated currere – a breathing, gasping pulse of difference. and at year end i am drawn to a headline: “china … exhales …” a reference to china’s extraordinary year and future possibilities. as one exhales an other inhales in modulating pathways … reverberations … of the breath as a passage. noel gough (2003) at the first world curriculum conference in shanghai calls for “rearticulations of the languages in which curriculum work is performed and represented” (p. 296-7). we listen for the resonance of the detour of language in languages. gough encourages us in building “transnational solidarities in curriculum work based on shared responsibilities rather than shared identities” (p.296). we struggle with the im/possibility of separating identity from responsibility. we work with and against gough: the ‘re’ of our re-articulation(s) labours to dis/mantle the language of solidarity. does not the language of solidarity require some tension to keep the work-in-motion? some abrasiveness as a maddening intrusion to radicalize an international sand club. we draw phelan into conversation as performative writing enacts the death of the ‘we’ that we think we are before we begin to write. what might happen to the tenancy of the identity ‘we’ in solidarity if it were a performative act? we read phelan’s notion of the radicality of unknowing who we are becoming with derrida’s contention that promise and terror are inextricable. a dis/articulation in a moment of curriculum theorizing – an aokian moment – as productive instability. our labo(u)ring signatures adrift as host(age) welcoming the unknown stranger who appears from nowhere to share in a discourse that grows in the middle – a grafting that begins in the ‘inter’ spaces of international curricula – that traveled from north america to china – that carried curriculum across the pacific where it was interrupted in conversation and transformed in its return. we welcome the reader to the text as stranger in his or her radical difference … to run with and against our words … [re-articulating...] http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci marylin low & pat palulis: laboured breathing transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 24 two texts running with and against languages of currere –vestiges of bergamo ‘99 and now iaacs resonate as we attend to the rhuthmos of our bodies and our breathing in this work – breathing that labours in complicated conversations inspirited by a louisiana invitation 1. ar/rhythmic interdictions dwelling in living spaces of internationalizing discourses as textured inbetweens 2. unsuspected cadences that disrupt the base rhythms of the colonial project in curricular practices and enter the space of the ‘inter’ – a space now rhythmed into the re/percussive double folds of lacoue-labarthe’s (1989) typography of the subject – of derrida’s (1989) rhythmic desistance–[rhythmic ruptures] – destablizing stances “set spinning from within” (p. 23) – where “there is no subject without the signature of this rhythm” (p. 31) – rhythms that are neither perceptible nor discernible, remaining outside of the sens(ibl)e – residing in the echoes of no sense. we attend to the inscriptive forces of an ar/rhythmic rupture – a ‘pedagon’ of un/translatability in the ‘inter’ of internationalization – a non-sensible disposition of unique ar/rhythms – opening to the possibility of an intelligible sense midst no sense – opening to the space of the double fold as a generative site. laboured breathing. could this be the frisson – a vibrant tensionality – of textured in-betweens in internationalizing discourses of currere? could this be an aokian moment of living pedagogy? [rhuthmos ] http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci marylin low & pat palulis: laboured breathing transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 25 references agamben, g. (1999). potentialities: collected essays in philosophy. (d. heller-roazen, ed. and trans.) stanford, ca: stanford university press. anzaldua, g. (1999). borderlands la frontera (2nd ed.) san francisco: aunt lute books. aoki, t.t. (1993). in the midst of slippery theme-words: toward designing multicultual curriculum. in t.t. aoki & m. shamsher (eds.), the call of teaching, (pp. 87-100). vancouver, b.c., canada: british columbia teachers’ federation. aoki, t.t. (2003). locating living pedagogy in teacher “research”: five metonymic moments. in hasabe-ludt & hurren (eds.) curriculum intertext (pp. ). new york: peter lang. benjamin, w. (1968). the task of the translator. in arendt’s (ed.) illuminations (pp. 6982). new york: schocken books. bhabha, h. (1994). the location of culture. new york: routledge. blanchot, m. (1995). the work of fire. (c. mandell,trans.) stanford, ca: stanford university press. blanchot, m. (1997). friendship. (e. rottenberg, trans.) stanford, ca: stanford university press. (p.56) caputo, j. (1987). “the economy of signs in husserl and derrida: from uselessness to full employment.” in j. sallis (ed.), deconstruction and philosophy: the texts of jacques derrida. (pp. 99-113). chicago,il: university of chicago press. chow, r. (1995). primitive passions: visuality, sexuality, ethnography, and contemporary chinese cinema. new york: columbia university press. cixous, h. (1993). three steps on the ladder of writing. new york: columbia university press. de certeau, m. (1988). the practice of everyday life. berkeley: university of callifornia press. derrida, j. (1985). the ear of the other. (peggy kamuf, trans.). lincoln: university of nebraska press. derrida, j. (1989).introduction: desistance. in p. lacoue-labarthe, typography, (pp. 142). (c. fynsk, trans.). stanford: stanford university press. derrida, j. (1991). “letter to a japanese friend”. in p. kamuf (ed.), a derrida reader: between the blinds (pp. 269 –276). new york: columbia university press. derrida, j. (1998a). monolingualism of the other or the prosthesis of origin (p. mensah, trans.). stanford, ca: stanford university press. derrida, j. (1998b). “faith and knowledge: the two sources of ‘religion’ at the limits of reason alone.” (s. weber, trans.) in j. derrida and g. vattimo (eds.) religion. stanford, ca: stanford university press. doll, w. jr. (1999). conversing with “the other”. journal of curriculum theorizing, 15, 3, 83-90. gasche, r. (1999). of minimal things: studies on the notion of relation. stanford, ca: stanford university press. gil, j. (1998). metamorphoses of the body. (s. muecke, trans.) minneapolis, mn: university of minnesota press. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci marylin low & pat palulis: laboured breathing transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 26 gough, n. (2003). transnational curriculum inquiry: towards new constituencies and solidarities in curriculum work. in the collection of papers to the first world curriculum studies conference (1). shanghai: institute of curriculum and instruction, east china normal university. hanley, l. (1998). “desert suits: viewing the english patient.” radical america 26(3), 20-27. jabes, e. (1982, 1996). the little book of unsuspected subversion. (r. waldrop, trans.). stanford: stanford university press. jabes, e. (1991). from the book to the book: an edmond jabès reader. (r. waldrop, trans.) hanover, nh:wesleyan university press. kamuf, p. (ed.) (1991). a derrida reader: between the blinds. new york: columbia university press. lacoue-labarthe, p. (1989). typography. (c. fynsk, trans.). stanford, ca: stanford university press. leavy, j. (1987). “destinerrance: the apotropocalyptics of translation.” in j. sallis (ed.), deconstruction and philosophy: the texts of jacques derrida. (pp. 33-43). chicago, il: university of chicago press. low, m. & palulis, p. (2000). teaching as a messy text: metonymic moments in pedagogical practice. journal of curriculum theorizing. 16(2), 67-79. nancy, j-l. (1993). the birth to presence. (b. holmes and others,trans.) stanford, ca: stanford university press. (p.32) nandy, a. (1989). shamans, savages and the wilderness: on the audibility of dissent and the future of civilizations. alternatives, xiv, 263-277. ondaatje, m. (1992). the english patient. toronto: mclelland and stewart. phelan, p. (1997). mourning sex: performing public memories. london: routledge. pinar, w. & grumet, m. (1976). toward a poor curriculum. dubuque, ia: kendall/hunt publishing company. pollock, d. (1998). performing writing. in p. phelan(ed.), the ends of performance (pp. 73-103). new york: new york university press. robinson, t.m. (1987). heraclitus fragments: a text and translation with a commentary. toronto: university of toronto press. smith, d. (1999). pedagon. new york: peter lang. stamelman, r. (1991). the graven silence of writing. in e. jabès, from the book to the book: an edmond jabès reader. hanover, nh: wesleyan university press. trinh, minh-ha t. (1999). cinema interval. new york: routledge. trinh, minh-ha t. (1992). framer framed. new york: routledge. waldrop, r. (1991). when silence speaks. in e. jabès, from the book to the book: an edmond jabès reader. hanover, nh: wesleyan university press. wood, d. & bernasconi, r. (eds.). (1988). derrida and differance. evanston, il: northwestern university press. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci marylin low & pat palulis: laboured breathing transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 27 authors marylin low lives in hawai’i where she works with pacific educators and children of oral traditions around questions of language(s) and literacy(ies). she is particularly interested in bilingualism as/in resistance to global english and in global/local dialectics on linguistic and cultural exchange. correspondence to: marylinlow@hotmail.com pat palulis is an assistant professor in the faculty of education, university of ottawa. she is interested in the integration of theory and practice in teaching as living pedagogy. her research interests involve language, literacy, culture and spatiality. correspondence to: ppalulis@uottawa.ca http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci microsoft word tci_lugg.doc to cite this article please include all of the following details: lugg, alison (2009). journeys in/with ‘sustainability literacy’: possibilities for ‘real world’ learning in higher education contexts. transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> journeys in/with ‘sustainability literacy’: possibilities for ‘real world’ learning in higher education contexts. alison lugg school of outdoor education and environment la trobe university bendigo australia recent reports from the higher education sectors of the uk and australia1 suggest that graduates from higher education institutions should be sustainability literate. conceptualisation of sustainability literacy is emerging, complex and contested, providing significant curriculum and pedagogical challenges for higher education institutions. research in sustainability pedagogy emphasizes the need for interdisciplinary or other innovative approaches to sustainability education and sets a cultural, structural and curricular challenge for the higher education sector. this paper focuses on pedagogical possibilities from the standpoint of research findings that demonstrate the importance of holistic, ‘real world’ learning for understanding the complex and problematic nature of sustainability and sustainable development in theory and practice. through 1 australian research institute in education for sustainability (aries, 2005); higher education academy (heac, 2006); higher education partnership for sustainability (heps, 2004). lugg: journeys in/with ‘sustainability literacy’ transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (1) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 16 the paper i explore potentials and problems for outdoor environmental education pedagogy, in higher education contexts, to contribute to sustainability literacy. while the focus of the paper is an exploration of processes and outcomes of a post-graduate expedition conducted for an outdoor environmental education programme in scotland, it is also, in a sense an expression of my own, ongoing journey of engagement with the concepts and issues relating to sustainability education and, in particular, the notion of sustainability literacy. introduction with global warming and economic ‘melt down’ vying for the attention of governments, citizens and corporations throughout the world, the urgency to address issues of environmental and social sustainability is clear. of these two issues, representatives at the united nations climate change convention in poznan, poland, now recognize that global warming must take priority (the age, 2008). this significant recognition will be welcomed by scientists such as tim flannery (2008), who urge governments and the public to recognize the serious consequences of global warming: ‘there is no real debate about how serious our predicament is: all plausible projections indicate that over the next forty to ninety years humanity will exceed … the capacity of earth to supply our needs…’ (p. 2). flannery asserts that humans, with the capacity of intelligence and selfawareness, can act in the twenty-first century as gaia’s2 ‘brain’ (p. 6). with our increasing understanding of the carbon cycle and its effects on thermo-regulation, he hypothesises that humans can assist rather than hinder, the earth’s regulatory process to maintain a balance that supports life. this requires a new understanding of humans as an integral part of the natural system and new ways of thinking that incorporate moral and philosophical considerations about how to live well with scientific knowledge about how the world works. flannery’s view is supported by environmental educators such as orr (1992) who advocates a change of paradigm from a hubristic planetary management approach to one of stewardship (p. 161), a closer, caring relationship with ‘nature’. both authors recognise that such deep change will require different approaches to knowledge development, specific ecological knowledge and generic interpersonal skills to tackle emerging problems creatively. such knowledge and skills constitute sustainability literacy, a notion that is central to this paper. given this context, there is a critical imperative for education to develop curricula, pedagogy and educational systems to engage with sustainability and/or sustainable development. while recognizing that these terms are highly contested, (jucker, 2002; redclift, 2005), it is not the intention of this paper to pursue the controversies in any depth since an analysis of these discourses is not the main purpose of the paper. however some of the key issues are highlighted to provide a context for the discussion of sustainability education and sustainability literacy in higher education and in outdoor and environmental education. the paper is written in an international educational milieu where the higher education sector has only recently paid serious attention to the sustainability education agenda. however with unesco’s declaration that 20052014 is the decade of education for sustainable development (desd), and increasing government imperatives to address this, more focused attention has been paid to policy, management and curriculum development in this sector (holcombe, 2005; parkin, s., johnston, a., buckland, h., brookes, f. & white, e. 2004b; tilbury, keogh, leighton & kent, 2005). this 2 based on james lovelock’s notion of the earth as ‘gaia’, earth goddess, whereby the planet is a self-regulating, evolving organism. lugg: journeys in/with ‘sustainability literacy’ transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (1) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 17 paper focuses on curriculum development and pedagogy in a higher education context, where pedagogy is used broadly to encompass different approaches to teaching and learning, including adult learning (or andragogy). sustainability and sustainable development clearly the notions of sustainability and sustainable development raise questions of what is to be sustained, by whom and for whom or what purpose? these questions highlight the inherently subjective and political nature of the terms. although the brundtland commission’s (1987) definition of sustainable development has been commonly adopted3, contemporary discourse tends to emphasise the ambiguity of both terms4. while this ambiguity can cause confusion and lack of direction, leal filho (2000) asserts that it is, to some extent essential, since they are contextually situated concepts, necessarily evolving as they are shaped by culture, politics and landscapes. the significance of contextuality is well understood by jucker (2002), sauvé (1999) and redclift (2005), however, like many environmental educators, they are concerned that the breadth of the notion of sustainability, encompassing environmental, social and economic dimensions, leaves interpretations open to hijacking by economic interests so that sustainable development may mean sustaining the growth of a business or industry. this ‘economisation’ of sustainable development underpins the debate around the oxymoronic (sauvé, 1999; redclift, 2005), juxtaposition of the terms sustainable and development in a dominant culture where the growth principle of development, seems to be at odds with sustaining ecological balance in a finite planet. the modernist economic agenda also exacerbates issues of social inequity that underpin the notion of sustainability, particularly where the needs of people in ‘developing’ countries are influenced (often negatively), by the changing ‘needs’5 of more affluent populations. some discourses extend this social justice agenda further to embrace environmental or ecological justice (see bowers, 2001 for example). in this context redclift (2005) argues that notions of needs and rights should be examined in relation to ‘post sustainability discourses’ (p. 225), since social realities and relationships are continually reconstructed as new technologies, communication systems and environmental issues arise, thus changing the ways in which we comprehend and interact with, the social and physical world: as the human subject itself is changing, then might the notions of citizenship, democracy and entitlements also change? in the new world, materiality and consciousness bear an increasingly complex relationship to each other. as species boundaries are eroded, and genetic choice dictates policy, are the ‘environment’ and ‘sustainability’ even valid categories any longer? (redclift, 2005, p. 224) redclift’s (2005) discussion of the interplay between ‘materiality’ and consciousness, resonates with gough and sellers’ (2004) notion that humans and ‘the world’ experience each other in a 3 ‘sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.’ (brundtland, 1987: 43) 4 the higher education partnership for sustainability (heps) report (parkin et. al. 2004a: 8) is an exception since it states that ‘ heps has underlined that, as a concept, sustainable development is not complex, defining it as progressing our social, economic and environmental goals at the same time.’ the ambiguity of the word progressing is of course contentious and anything but simple! 5 the inverted commas are used with ‘needs’ to highlight the socially constructed nature of the term and the ’blurring’ of needs and wants in more affluent populations where basic survival needs have been met. lugg: journeys in/with ‘sustainability literacy’ transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (1) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 18 ‘mutually constitutive’ way. this concept blurs the boundaries of identity and ‘otherness’ thus offering a conceptualisation of being in the world that may be helpful for thinking about sustainability in innovative ways. this notion obscures distinctions between nature and culture offering a conception of sustainability and sustainable development as relational concepts emphasising connectedness and creativity. dale and newman’s (2005) epistemology of reconciliation offers a similar perspective: the basic premise of sustainable development is that human and natural systems are dynamically interdependent and cannot be considered in isolation in order to resolve critical issues. human societies and ecological systems are so connected that they are co-adaptive, reacting to each other and to previous interactions and reactions in a network of feedbacks. (dale & newman, 2005, p. 352) notwithstanding the view that to propose alternative paradigms for ‘development’ is naïve or ‘politically illiterate’ (jucker, 2002; sauvé, 1999), a relational or reconciliatory perspective on sustainable development may offer a way out of the impasse created by the modernist interpretation of ‘development’ and common understandings of ecological and social sustainability. although this relational perspective is emergent and therefore ‘vague’, it is ontologically and epistemologically aligned with the integrated, multi-disciplinary nature of the sustainability concept. it challenges normative notions of ‘sustainable development’ by embracing uncertainty, adaptability and co-evolution, thus drawing attention to processes as well as content. dale and newman (2005, p. 352) argue that this approach to sustainable development education (sde), grounded in a ‘complex adaptive systems epistemology’, requires interdisciplinary and/or transdisciplinary thought, thus differentiating sde from traditional discipline-based enquiry. this brings us to questions of how and whether, education should address issues of unsustainability. the relational view outlined does reconcile teaching and learning processes with knowledge and skill development for sustainability literacy, so, for the purposes of this paper, any reference to sustainable development is made with this conceptualisation in mind. the paper is primarily concerned with an ecological approach to sustainability education since it is framed around an example of outdoor environmental education practice which draws on elements of this perspective. this ecological approach is congruent with the relational or reconciliatory perspective referred to above and to the notion of sustainability as discourse (alvarez & rogers, 2006) explained subsequently. sustainability education esd is fundamentally about values, with respect at the centre: respect for others, including those of present and future generations, for difference and diversity, for the environment, for the resources of the planet we inhabit. education enables us to understand ourselves and others and our links with the wider natural and social environment, and this understanding serves as a durable basis for building respect. along with a sense of justice, responsibility, exploration and dialogue, esd aims to move us to adopting behaviours and practices which enable all to live a full life without being deprived of basics (unesco, 2004). this notion of moving people towards ‘adopting behaviours and practices …’ is highly contentious since it puts decision-making about values at the centre of sustainability curriculum discourses. again the language used is critical as it reflects different underlying value systems. lugg: journeys in/with ‘sustainability literacy’ transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (1) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 19 the united nations documentation refers to education for sustainable development (esd) which not only encompasses the arguments around the term sustainable development, but implies an instrumental approach to education. educators such as jucker (1992) prefer to use the term education for sustainability (efs) as it deemphasizes economic development and, arguably, allows for balanced consideration of environmental, social and economic dimensions. however both concepts are disputed for different reasons. jickling (1992) for example, is well known for his objections to educating for sustainability or for sustainable development, arguing that this approach is a righteous form of indoctrination rather than education. instead jickling advocates a dispassionate appraisal of the issues so that young people are well informed and able to make up their own minds. on matters of value judgement, environmental educators such as bowers (1993, 2001), fien, (1993, 2001), orr (1992, 2004) and sterling (2004) are less equivocal, arguing that the ecological crisis is such that we cannot afford to waste time or take a ‘business as usual’ approach to esd. these authors argue for a transformative approach to education that develops new priorities and ways of thinking about our place in the world, or as sterling puts it, ‘a fundamentally different story about the way the world works’ (2004, p. 49). all are concerned with critical reexamination of deep cultural assumptions and practices, arguing for an ecological educational paradigm emphasising relationships based on connection and interdependence, participation and empowerment: but what seems most appropriate both to understanding the complex cultural processes we now recognise to be part of the educational process and to preparing students to be more responsible citizens of a community that includes trees, grasses, birds, and all other life forms, which make up the energy and food chains of life, is the analogue of an ecology (bowers, 1993, p. 157). in advocating an ecological approach to education, sterling (2004) uses the term sustainability education to represent a form of education based on this holistic, ecological metaphor, where educational structures and practices are aligned with the philosophy. this transformative approach to sustainability education is unapologetically ideologically driven, as a response to the critical environmental and social issues dominating international and regional agendas. as such it is open to critique as somewhat deterministic and perhaps at odds with emergent and dynamic conceptualisations of sustainability and related issues. this argument however, can be countered by pointing to the consequences of inaction: ‘reform does not require a master plan before it begins; but it needs to be guided by a clear sense of the direction in which we must move and a full awareness of the consequences if we fail.’ (bowers, 1993, p. 217). a different view is put by dale and newman (2005) who assert that debates around values in sustainability education are ‘diversionary’ (p. 354). they see the aim of sustainability education as developing sustainability literacy skills needed to tackle future problems. this process, they argue, should develop critical thinking so that students can recognise and work to reconcile, competing values and ideologies. rather than being ‘diversionary’, it seems to me that this approach puts values and ethics at the centre of the educational process since any reconciliation of values requires careful thought about the implications of particular values in practice. in ‘real life’ issues ethical dilemmas inevitably arise and, with competing environmental, social and economic interests, are not easily resolved. critical thinking requires paying attention to the logic of arguments and to the values and assumptions that underpin those arguments in order to evaluate their merit in relation to the issues and the context. it is hard to envisage how lugg: journeys in/with ‘sustainability literacy’ transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (1) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 20 sustainability education, even if carefully constructed to allow for examination of multiple perspectives, freedom of thought and expression, can avoid being construed as being about values. in fact one could argue that all education, whether its aims are reproductive or transformative, is value laden and, arguably, a form of social and cultural inculcation,6 the tensions between instrumental, positivistic approaches to sustainability and more holistic, integrated approaches, represent an issue in sustainability education that may impede curriculum and pedagogical development. there is however broad agreement that sustainability is a complex notion that requires the application of interdisciplinary and, possibly transdisciplinary7, knowledge and skills to address issues from multiple perspectives (parkin et. al. 2004a and b; tilbury et. al. 2005). in order to embrace the range of approaches, i refer in this paper to sustainability education, deliberately acknowledging multiple interpretations while acknowledging some uneasiness with the term education for sustainable development (esd)8 for the reasons previously outlined. environmental literacy clearly language and its interpretation are significant in conceptualizing and communicating broad notions such as sustainability or development and the same could be said about environment. understanding language and its meanings is a function of literacy and of cultural reproduction and transformation. the understanding of language as a ‘socially constructed system of signs’ has expanded conceptions of literacy to encompass the ability to interpret ‘a wide range of social systems and artifacts’ as texts (stables, 1996, p. 189). this socially critical perspective has spawned ‘new’ terms such as ‘scientific literacy’, ‘computer literacy’, ‘ecological/ environmental literacy’ and now, ‘sustainability literacy’. consequently the nature of the texts being interpreted has broadened to include numerical codes, visual images and, in the case of environmental literacy, the environment itself. arguing from this perspective, stables (1996) asserts that the degree to which a particular environment such as a street, garden or landscape can be ‘read’ as text depends on the extent to which it is socially constructed. he argues that in many instances, particularly in britain, even ‘wild’ landscapes have been significantly shaped by human activities and as such are open to interpretation as social constructs. similarly, in australia, where vast areas are deemed ‘wilderness’ through european constructs of landscape, most of the landscape has in fact been shaped physically or symbolically, by humans over thousands of years (langton, 1998). this conceptualization of environment as text renders the world ‘a network of shared meanings which gives sense and shape to new experience’ (stables, 1996: 190). stables & bishop (2001) assert that this enables a strong conception of environmental literacy, cognizant of cultural, aesthetic and personal dimensions of environmental issues. the authors argue that this has several implications for environmental education. firstly, the notion of ‘reading’ environments as socially constructed entities implies an examination of human values and subjectivities. the significance of this perspective is that it shifts the emphasis from a single discipline (usually physical science) framework for understanding environments to a 6 for more on this see fien (1993), chapter 2. 7 transdisciplinary knowledge refers to new knowledge, ‘transcending’ the disciplines and possibly, conventional thought. 8 esd is used frequently in the literature, particularly in government documents and as such needs to be considered in educational discourse. lugg: journeys in/with ‘sustainability literacy’ transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (1) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 21 multidisciplinary approach including the social sciences and arts. it does not however, deny knowledge that develops understanding of physical elements of environments,9 rather it adds to the ‘story’ of a place. secondly, reading the environment as text implies interaction with environments which can engage cognitive and affective responses or ‘hearts and minds’, (stables, 1996; stables and bishop, 2001, p. 96). this holistic interaction is particularly important since it’s more likely to facilitate care for the world in a way that conventional or scientific approaches to environmental education rarely achieve on their own. thirdly, stables & bishop (2001) assert that this interaction creates a ‘dialogue’ with the biophysical world that blurs the distinction between ‘reading’ and ‘writing’, thus action competence necessarily becomes a component of environmental literacy. this need for dialogue with the natural world and for affective as well as cognitive learning are central to orr’s (1992) groundbreaking notion of ecological literacy: ‘knowing, caring, and practical competence constitutes the basis of ecological literacy’ (orr, 1992, p. 92). orr’s ultimate educational aim is to develop citizens that understand the need to live sustainably and have the intellectual and practical means to do so. he argues that these competencies require both knowledge and experience of healthy ecological systems in order to develop an ‘affinity for the living world’ (p. 86) or ‘sense of place’ (p. 89). this, orr (1992, p. 86) asserts, requires both ‘indoor’ and ‘outdoor’ learning, the latter being a means of instilling or maintaining a ‘sense of wonder’ that is ‘rooted in the emotions’. such experiences, he argues, have more potential to motivate students to ‘make the leap from “i know” to “i care” to “i’ll do something”. however, like dewey, orr (1992, p. 147) warns that not all experience is educationally worthy and that ‘carefully designed experiential education which reinforces intellectual and personal growth will require a deeper understanding of what kinds of experience catalyze what kinds of learning’. this latter issue lies at the heart of this paper. if, as orr asserts, direct experience of natural environments is essential for engendering environmental concern and action, what kinds of outdoor education experiences (if any) might help higher education students to become more ecologically and/or sustainability literate? how can we as educators know how students interpret their experiences? are some educational experiences more likely to engender environmental (and perhaps social and economic) concern than others? importantly, the notion of engaging the ‘heart’ as well as the mind in order to develop environmental concern is a key theme in outdoor and environmental education literature where the direct experience of natural environments is seen as being crucial for the development of ‘care’ and, possibly, environmental action (nicol & higgins, 2005; martin, 2004). gough (1993) however, is more sceptical about the claims for the value of ‘direct experience’ of ‘nature’ for environmental education purposes. from a poststructural perspective, he cautions outdoor and experiential educators to consider the notion of intertextuality, that our interpretations of the world are mediated by our previous encounters with ‘texts’ thus any ‘direct’ experience of ‘nature’ is not ‘pure’ but socially and culturally constructed. gough exhorts experiential educators to consider carefully, the ways in which language and technologies are used in educating in/about/for ‘natural’ environments and to pay ‘…particular attention to narratives, myths and rituals which have sustained and reproduced human society’s alienation from the earth’ (1993, p. 13). such critical awareness requires understanding of how culture shapes ideas and values, in other words ‘cultural literacy’. bowers (1993) provides a detailed analysis of the role of education in perpetuating the cultural ‘myths’ that drive the dominant culture and our exploitation of ‘nature’. he 9 such as ecology or geology for example. lugg: journeys in/with ‘sustainability literacy’ transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (1) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 22 argues that ‘cultural knowledge’ must become ‘…part of the natural attitude of the teachers and students…’ (p. 121). bowers asserts that educators must critically examine how ‘root metaphors’ such as anthropocentrism and individualism and rationalism, work to create and perpetuate the ecological crisis. by developing this awareness students are empowered to challenge exploitative values and practices and create deep level change: the intellectual genealogy of a “man-centred” universe, and the accompanying assumptions that the future represents a progressive advance over the present and that continued expansion of human choices and power is limitless, have framed … how the nature and purpose of rational process has been understood (bowers, 1993, p. 51). sustainability literacy in higher education the notion of sustainability literacy is gaining currency, particularly in the uk (murray, brown & murray, 2007), with the uk sustainable development strategy, securing the future (2005), the higher education academy (2006) and the higher education partnership for sustainability (heps) (parkin et. al. 2004a) suggesting that all graduates from uk higher education institutions should be sustainability literate. this notion is an extension of environmental or ecological literacy, encompassing knowledge and skills for understanding the symbiotic relationships between environmental, social and economic dimensions of sustainable development and the ability to assess and make decisions by taking these three dimensions into account simultaneously (parkin et. al. 2004a, p. 9). the australian research institute for education for sustainability (aries) review of environmental education in australian higher education institutions also advocates sustainability literacy, proposing the development of generic skills such as: dealing with uncertainty and complexity; action-oriented skills; stakeholder engagement skills, appreciation of multi-cultural understanding; practical problem-solving and project management skills (tilbury et. al., 2005, p. 16). the authors describe these ‘literacies’ as ‘transdisciplinary skills’ which should be addressed across the curriculum and educational sectors (p. 16). similarly, in a report for senior managers of higher education institutions, the higher education academy (hea) (2006, p. 6), takes further the recommendation that graduates should be sustainability literate, by identifying examples of ‘literacies’ that could be attained. the tensions between different conceptualizations and interests in sustainability is very clear on the first page of this report where the rationale for developing sustainability literacy is taken from the uk government sustainable development strategy (2005), to maintain a more competitive economy, to compete internationally and build ourselves sustainable communities, we need to improve the knowledge and skills base of everyone, including professionals and others in the workplace. …the [sustainable development] strategy sets out how we are planning to upgrade public sector skills for sustainable development, help businesses with corporate social responsibility and develop strategy for sustainable development within the work place, but we need to make “sustainability literacy” a core competency for professional graduates (securing the future, 2005, in hea, 2006, p. 2). here we see economic and social imperatives apparently aligned and, of particular interest, is the omission of reference to environmental responsibilities in this selective quotation. this raises questions about the primary motivations and agenda of the hea in developing the following set of competencies and the extent to which it reflects authors’ perceptions of the interests of the audience for whom the report was prepared. like the aries proposal, the sustainability literacies lugg: journeys in/with ‘sustainability literacy’ transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (1) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 23 suggested here tend to be generic attributes, to be addressed across discipline areas and which emphasise action-oriented knowledge and skills suitable for the needs of future employers: • an appreciation of the importance of environmental, social, political and economic contexts for each discipline • a broad and balanced foundation knowledge of sustainable development, its key principles and the main debates within them, including its contested and expanding boundaries. • problem solving skills in a non-reductionist manner for highly complex real-life problems • ability to think creatively and holistically and to make critical judgements • ability to develop a high level of self-reflection • ability to understand, evaluate and adopt values conducive to sustainability • ability to bridge the gap between theory and practice; in sustainable development, only transformational action counts • ability to participate creatively in inter-disciplinary teams • ability to initiate and manage change (hea, 2006, p. 6). the intention is that each institution works out how best to ensure that these literacies are addressed and the hea provides advice on barriers and solutions for facilitating this process. based on case study research, the report also recommends particular pedagogical approaches likely to enhance the effectiveness of the sustainability education process. specifically, experiential learning, problem solving and work-based learning have been identified as important in translating theory into practice10 as has the role of educators as role models and learners for putting sustainability principles into practice (hea, 2006). while these proposals may be reasonable in principle, the translation of these statements and attributes into curricula and teaching practice, is complex and problematic. the enormity of the challenge is perhaps reflected in the findings of a survey of student perceptions at the university of plymouth which revealed that, while most students expressed positive attitudes towards the notion of ‘sustainability’, many had a limited understanding of the breadth and complexity of the concept. a majority associated sustainability and sustainable development with environmental concerns but were relatively unaware of the social and economic dimensions (kagawa, 2007). the survey also highlights a dissonance between attitudes and actions, with students tending to agree with critical or radical statements relating to social and environmental justice but not reflecting these attitudes in their behaviour or proposed behaviour. additionally kagawa identified mixed feelings amongst students about the future and suggests that, in addition to a multi-dimensional approach to sustainability education curricula, facilitation of affective as well as cognitive learning is important (thus reinforcing the views of orr, 2002, 2004 and martin, 2004). while there is some commonality in the types of knowledge and skills identified by the different proponents of sustainability literacy, the fundamental values underpinning the transformative, ‘ecological’ change proposed by bowers (2001), orr (1992, 2004) and sterling (2004), contrast the more pragmatic approaches to sustainability education in higher education, with such fundamentally different value systems underpinning sustainability literacy discourse, it is clear that the processes for determining what literacies should be addressed and if in fact, a ‘literacies’ approach is the best way to address sustainability issues through higher education, are 10 heac subject centre for geography, earth and environmental sciences, 2005 lugg: journeys in/with ‘sustainability literacy’ transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (1) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 24 problematic. on what basis would universities decide which knowledge and skills should be attained, how they should be developed, who should be responsible and how they should be evaluated? such issues merely ‘scratch the surface’ of the complexities involved in developing a ‘sustainability literate’ culture in the higher education sector let alone the wider community with which it interacts. nevertheless work already undertaken by enthusiastic academics and administrators reveals considerable potential for innovative curricula and pedagogies to respond to these imperative. one such example is the work of alvarez & rogers’ (2006) which demonstrates how the multiple dimensions of sustainability might be developed in higher education contexts and the kinds of knowledge and skills (or literacies) that can be attained. the authors identify three key approaches to work on sustainability, all of which have informed their work with tertiary students: (i) definitions of sustainability – histories and comparisons (ii) managerial – focused on implementation and typified by check lists, measurement and indicators (iii) sustainability as discourse – accepts that it is contested and claimed by competing interests. alvarez and rogers (2006) explain how, through their work with students, their conceptualization of sustainability has shifted from the first two approaches to the third, sustainability as discourse. this shift occurred mainly as a result of their observations of student learning during field trips to farms and community sites where students’ encounters with local people grappling in their own ways with ‘real life’ issues of ’sustainability’, revealed a ‘messy’, complex and often contradictory set of circumstances and values. on reflection, alvarez and rogers realized the value of students learning ‘out there’ in the community, since some of the insights gleaned could only come from the local people themselves and be understood in the particular context: after seven years of taking students into the field the authors now see themselves as facilitating a process where learners (both teachers and students) are exposed to different understandings of sustainability and are able to recognize the messy and complex reality of sustainability on the ground… to think about sustainability as a complex set of discourses and practices that interweave through and over people’s lives giving both meaning and legitimacy to their practice in some cases, while in others challenging their sense of certainty and assumptions about place…’ (alvarez & rogers, 2006, p. 183). this sustainability as discourse approach has strong resonance with dale and newman’s (2005) reconciliatory approach and, possibly, gough and sellers’ (2004) ‘mutually constitutive’ being. these conceptualizations also provide a strong conceptual framework for the example of outdoor education practice that is explored in this paper. in this context the identification of experiential or problem solving methods as effective pedagogies for developing sustainability literacy, highlights the potential for outdoor education to make a contribution to developing sustainability literate graduates. bearing in mind the range of approaches to sustainability education and concepts of sustainability or environmental literacy, i explore some possibilities for outdoor education to contribute to sustainability literacy through engendering participants’ abilities to ‘read’ environments (both natural and cultural) in ways that may engender the sense of environmental affinity described by orr (1992) and/or offer ‘new’ forms of knowledge, attitudes or skills as suggested by gough and sellers (2004). i also consider lugg: journeys in/with ‘sustainability literacy’ transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (1) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 25 the possibilities for learning relevant to the social and economic, as well as the environmental, dimensions of sustainability issues. i focus on outdoor education curricula and pedagogy in higher education since graduates from this sector have the potential to exert broad influence on the wider community via a long term ‘ripple effect’ if graduates later use knowledge and skills developed during their higher education programmes. i draw on a particular uk example to illustrate how an expedition, informed to some extent by particular understandings of sustainability and environmental education, seems to have contributed to students’ ecological or sustainability literacy. outdoor education, sustainability and ecological literacy like sustainable development, outdoor education is a somewhat vague and eclectic term that has multiple interpretations, draws on a range of practices, philosophical approaches and disciplines and skills. outdoor education objectives range from broad personal and social development goals to those underpinned by social justice principles and, more recently, to environmental and sustainability education imperatives (lugg, 2004, martin 2004, nicol, 2002). although practices vary significantly there is general consensus amongst practitioners and researchers that outdoor education pedagogy usually employs experiential, problem solving or reflective pedagogies in outdoor (predominantly non-urban) environments. it is this interaction with natural environments and processes that underpins most claims for outdoor education’s relevance (and perhaps significance) for environmental and sustainability education. environmental education (particularly significant life experience) research and some outdoor education research tentatively suggests that direct experience of ‘natural’ environments can (but may not) initiate environmental sensitivity, feelings of connectedness with particular places and enhanced understanding of ecological processes (rickinson, dillon, teamey, morris, mee young, sanders, & benefield, 2004). martin’s (2004) and stewart’s (2004) research with students undertaking a b. a. in outdoor education in victoria, australia, suggest that carefully crafted outdoor education experience can offer a powerful forum for critical reflection on how we live our lives, particularly in relation to the values and knowledge that underpin human relationships with ‘nature’ in general (martin 2005), or with particular places (stewart, 2004). martin’s research also points to the establishing of deep emotional connections with particular ‘natural’ environments over time and, in some instances, through engagement in outdoor activities. this observation resonates with the views of british educators; higgins, (1996), nicol, (2004) and shallcross (1996) who, like orr (1992), argue that emotional identification with nature is crucial to developing an environmental ethic and that this dimension has been overlooked in outdoor education research. they assert that educational experiences in outdoor environments can develop this emotional connection in several ways (i) through sensory immersion in natural landscapes thus emphasizing human connectedness with ‘nature’ (nicol, 2004); (ii) through direct experience of the consequences of our actions (higgins, 1996) and (iii) through holistic outdoor experiences that emphasise a fusion between the affective, cognitive and physical modalities (shallcross, 1996). common to all these outdoor educators, is the understanding that the role of the educator is crucial in facilitating the experience in ways that might engender critical reflection and environmental sensitivity. although the research literature linking outdoor education with sustainability education is scarce, the possibilities for outdoor education to contribute to the sustainability agenda are becoming recognized at both an individual and government level, particularly in the uk where government policies and agencies are promoting outdoor learning as a means of improving lugg: journeys in/with ‘sustainability literacy’ transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (1) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 26 physical and mental health and for engaging young people in developing environmental awareness and citizenship skills. the scottish executive goes a step further in identifying outdoor education as a vehicle for sustainability education (learning for our future, 2006, p. 7), recognizing its potential for developing environmental awareness, citizenship and for linking different strands of the school curriculum (p. 7). this is an important step towards publicly and formally recognising the role of outdoor learning in environmental and sustainability education and provides real impetus for the development of interdisciplinary curricula incorporating outdoor education pedagogy. bearing in mind this political climate, in the uk at least, there is fertile ground for research in the role of outdoor environmental curriculum and pedagogy as an innovative approach to sustainability education and sustainability literacy development. conceptual links between outdoor education and sustainability literacy are evident when we consider the knowledge and skills suggested by the hea with the three skill identified as integral to esd in scotland’s learning for our future (2006): (i) joined-up thinking, (ii) participative working and (iii) reflective practice. these generic skills strongly reflect those advocated by uk outdoor educators such as higgins, (1996), loynes, (2002) and nicol, (2002, 2004) in their arguments for development of concept-based outdoor education practice underpinned by ecological and sustainability objectives. their arguments are based around the potential for outdoor education to emphasise human interconnectedness with ‘nature’, holistic and constructivist learning principles and critical reflection processes. these processes also echo the criteria used by o’connell, potter, curthoys, dyment & cuthbertson, (2006) as a basis for demonstrating the potential for sustainability education through outdoor recreation education and practice. their work is based on lefebvre’s (2000) criteria for evaluating sustainability education pedagogy which they see as pertinent to outdoor recreation practice: (1) interconnections between social, environmental and economic aspects of issues covered, (2) emphasis placed on interacting and learning with nature, (3) teaching methods and strategies develop skills and attitudes to enable reflection, critical thinking, collaboration and action for social change, (4) materials and curricula support community involvement and participation towards contextually and culturally appropriate learning . demonstrating a ‘double-barrelled’ conceptualization, o’connell et. al. (2006, p. 91) see sustainable development as both a necessary ‘good’ in terms of oudoor recreation curriculum planning and as a means of maintaining or ‘growing’ the ‘industry’. although several unexamined assumptions underpin this argument, the four criteria outlined are also similar to those often advanced as a rationale for outdoor environmental education. again, the possibilities for convergence between aspects of sustainability education and outdoor education emerge. it is worth noting at this point that the sustainability literacies identified by the hea (2006), emphasise personal and interpersonal skills rather than specific environmental knowledge or skills. traditionally the most persistent rationales for inclusion of outdoor education in education curricula has related to personal and social development objectives. however the strongest arguments for outdoor pedagogy in sustainability education have so far related to environmental learning (see nicol, 2002, for example). by considering how outdoor pedagogy might be useful for sustainability goals, opportunities open up to integrate personal and social skill development with environmental learning. such a convergence will require creative thinking and open minds but, as suggested by o’connell et. al. (2006), such opportunities may serve the agendas of sustainability, outdoor and environmental education. lugg: journeys in/with ‘sustainability literacy’ transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (1) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 27 in light of the above observations it should be noted that some studies such as odgers’ (2007) quantitative study of pre-service teachers’ environmental attitudes and behaviours, point to possible limitations in the transformational effectiveness of experiential approaches to environmental and sustainability education. in this study students’ attitudes and behaviours were determined via a questionnaire administered before and after an environmental education course which involved practical outdoor elements such as a water quality investigation and revegetation of the catchment area. findings revealed that the pre-service teachers’ environmental attitudes became even more positive after the course but their behaviours did not change significantly. while these results raise questions about the effectiveness of this particular example of ‘real world’ pedagogy, the data was too limited to infer any particular reasons. nevertheless such findings alert outdoor/environmental educators and researchers to pay particular attention to the characteristics of pedagogical and research processes and, perhaps, the environments in which learning takes place, if transformative learning is the goal. sustainable outdoor education practice? context in this section i focus on an example of outdoor education practice that illustrates how, in a higher education context, students may learn about sustainable living and develop particular sustainability literacies through ‘real world’ pedagogy. in this example post-graduate students plan, implement and evaluate a three-week expedition in the north-west of scotland by employing experiential and problem-solving methods as advocated by the hea (2006). the participants undertook this expedition in june 2006 as the final component of the post-graduate diploma in outdoor education (pgdoe), at the university of edinburgh (where i was teaching at the time). the programme is a one-year, full-time programme incorporating theory and practice in outdoor and environmental education. it includes courses in ecology studies, environmental interpretation, environmental philosophy, community building, personal and social education and professional practice as well as a ‘competency programme’ to develop practical skills in areas such as hillwalking, canoeing, climbing, mountaineering and expeditioning. method the following is an outline of the expedition – aims, activities and outcomes – based primarily on the expedition report, a pannier full of porridge11 (bassant, davidson, fedouloff, saunders, sylvester, sedman, watters, & webborn, 2006), written by the students and submitted for completion of the module. some findings are also gleaned from participant responses to questionnaires (on their perceptions of learning from the whole pgdoe programme) that i emailed to them four months after the expedition and the gdoe programme had finished. although i was a staff member and did teach these students, i was not involved in the expedition module or its assessment. for the purposes of this paper i aim as much as possible, to allow the reader access to the students’ words and images. i have therefore included direct quotations (in arial font) and selected photos to depict aspects of the journey. these words and images are filtered firstly by the participants’ own interpretations of the experience, by what they see as fitting for inclusion in the report and by my own interpretations and selections. i have also made 11 this is the title of the expedition report (see reference) lugg: journeys in/with ‘sustainability literacy’ transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (1) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 28 some observations based on my initial analysis of the expedition report and responses to the questionnaire. themes highlighted are a combination of those highlighted in the report and themes that i have identified as emerging from the text. therefore i offer a version of the journey that draws on different ‘stories’ of the experience. the expedition the expedition is the culmination of the programme, and is framed as a self-sufficient activity where students assess their collective resources and motivations to develop a journey in which they can all participate meaningfully without requiring external expertise. students meet regularly during the academic year to plan the expedition. this process is loosely guided by a staff member who also evaluates the expedition plan, provides feedback and participates in 4-5 days of the expedition. fundamentally however, this is a student-led process in which learning relates as much to the planning and negotiation processes as the experience of the expedition itself. once the expedition is completed the students write a group report which is submitted to complete the module. eight students, aged between twenty-three and thirty-six years, were involved in the expedition. four participants were male and four female. seven were british (five english, one irish, one scottish) and one american. their previous academic, professional and personal backgrounds varied considerably (thus a common knowledge and skill base cannot be assumed). the rationale for this expedition was: • to explore northern scotland using methods of travel that made • a low impact on the environment, and allowed us to be close to the • wilder areas of scotland as well as bring us close to the • human landscape of the country (expedition report, 2006, p. 1). the students identified their aims as to: • encourage experiential learning about the landscapes and people we passed. • show to what extent local produce was available during a trip in the area, and whether this was a feasible priority of the trip. • bring us closer to the environment by incorporating local issues, history, nature and food producers into the trip as much as possible. • establish to what extent ‘expeditions’ are worthwhile educational trips. • be as environmentally sustainable as possible.’ (expedition report, 2006, p. 1). to put these aims into practice they decided to travel by bicycle (incorporating a train and ferry where necessary) around the northern scotland, travelling as far as the orkney islands. lugg: journeys in/with ‘sustainability literacy’ transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (1) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 29 planning and ‘doing’ students undertook different planning roles, taking responsibility for particular needs and aims. one student conducted a co2 audit of the whole trip (including human respiration) and calculated how many trees needed to be planted to absorb this amount of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. after the expedition the students met to plant these trees. another student contacted local organic farmers and organised to buy food from them en route. others organised equipment, campsites, investigated historical sites and cultural events and so on. distances cycled varied from 20-70 km per day but the emphasis was on being able to enjoy the landscape and take time out to rest, talk to people and take in the experience rather than to cover big distances. a significant feature of the trip was the nature and availability of food. in addition to buying locally produced food, some students took a great interest in harvesting ‘wild’ food, so considerable time and energy was spent in searching for sea foods such as mussels, crayfish, fish and periwinkles which were available in varying degrees of abundance. while on the orkney isles, the students arranged to visit an organic farm and spent three days building a stone-wall in exchange for food and accommodation. the expedition also happened to coincide with the orkney islands folk festival so they were able to spend a day or two absorbing the local artistic culture and local beverages! time was also built in to visit the ancient ruins and standing stones for which the orkneys are famous. energy use and co2 emissions often forgotten are the unseen and indirect environmental impacts. these extend from the first expedition meeting … to the actual expedition. at every step of planning we consumed energy directly through computer use, the lighting and heating of meeting rooms and transport to these meetings. indirect energy consumption occurred in the manufacture of every piece of equipment used whether paper, pens, computers or phones (expedition report, 2006, p. 17). we do not think that carbon offsetting is the sole answer to the problems of global warming, however until we live in a society that as a standard produces zero emissions through clean, renewable energy sources, we believe it is better to do something than nothing… expedition allows an ideal opportunity to explore modern day environmental problems highlighting the complexity yet allowing group members to realise that everyday decisions can have a positive impact and even if it is small it genuinely means a lot to those concerned (expedition report, 2006, p. 21). lugg: journeys in/with ‘sustainability literacy’ transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (1) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 30 food and agriculture conscious omnivory a personal challenge for the future (jack12, expedition report, 2006, p. 27). wherever possible food was sourced from producers, reducing ‘food miles’ and the use of local, organic of pesticides, herbicides and manufactured fertilisers…we would have liked to source all our food locally and organically however three weeks on just seafood, meat and dairy products would no doubt have compromised our health and mental sanity… although this compromised our efforts it was realised as a necessity and when positively reframed we were supporting local businesses (expedition report, 2006, p. 18). despite his methods being in compliance with organic certification s… is no longer in support of the ‘organic’ label, since this carries with it the expense of certification, and prefers his greens to be known as ‘normal’ or ‘home grown’, highlighting that good food need not be the exception (expedition report, 2006, p. 14). ‘wild’ food harvesting the search for wild food is a journey back through time, every single plant and animal that is used for food descended from a wild ancestor… exploring in this way is an education that taps and nourishes inquisitiveness, a delight in the natural world that we have sensed for millenia … gathering these fruits of the wild is where the adventure lies. it takes one off the roads into the water up to your knees, around an unknown hill, onto a tidal island, to places with detail and beauty, on a visit to the homes of secretive creatures with their own quirks and complexities (expedition report, 2006, p. 16). inadvertently our complete lack of success in catching mackerel taught us a simple lesson in the seasonality of food. we wanted to catch fish, but the fish weren’t there… the history of helmsdale’s herring industry highlighted our present disconnection from the seasons… there are few examples of transhumance in tune with nature’s migrations today. we are unlikely to experience this harmony while our friends, the supermarkets, thrive on providing all our favourite products just where you found them last week… the homogeneity is not just unresponsive to seasonal inspiration, the familiarity may foster lethargy in the consumer. on the other hand, why don’t we just embrace the extraordinary array of choice that we now have, and eat what we want, when we want, because we can? (expedition report, 2006, p. 15). landscape and cultural history everywhere we travelled there were indications of the clearances. the landscape itself shows the effects of centuries of grazing and upon that land many ruins of what were crofting communities. the wild landscape which scotland is famous for, and has inspired writers and groups like ours to journey through it, may not be as ‘wild’ and ‘natural’ as i once thought. 12 where individuals have been quoted pseudonyms have been used to maintain their anonymity lugg: journeys in/with ‘sustainability literacy’ transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (1) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 31 thousands of years of human influence has changed the land, beautiful still, to the treeless and rugged and sparsely populated places we visited…’ (expedition report, 2006, p. 23). throughout the expedition i have learned a great deal about birds, rocks and plants. for me these pieces of knowledge will always be linked by association to the places where i discovered them for the first time. this link between knowledge and landscape is particularly relevant to me because of my training as a geographer (bob, expedition report, 2006, p. 27). community i found it particularly interesting being the only scot in the group and much of the time i felt like a tourist in my own country. i guess it gave me a new way of looking at things and a new appreciation of what is special about scotland. the majority of people we met were surprisingly not from scotland, leaving their home to live a way of life that once thrived in the highlands until the clearances. in many ways, it pains me to say they may be just as scottish as i (jim, expedition report, 2006, p. 29). c… is an artist and member of a co-operative who own a shop … where members and community artists sell their wares. this was not the first time we had encountered community owned property during our trip. on our way north we had journeyed through the north assynt estate, which covers 21,000 acres and was our first encounter with community ownership of land…other community-focussed farming projects have sprung up all over the highlands… we were also in touch with ‘food for thought’, a lottery-funded project addressing issues of food and health … such is the enduring kindness among the people in touch with the land, from whom we received many gifts of food, drink and advice along the journey, we can only hope that these communities thrive for a long time yet (expedition report, 2006, p. 15). conclusions on sustainability the expedition as the active process showed how it took commitment and that many choices which were more environmentally sustainable were harder in a group than as an individual. it also demonstrated that the infrastructure of western life does not make it easy to be sustainable however it is possible to make choices which have less environmental impact, although you have to be prepared to pay more and have reduced choice (jill, questionnaire response, 2006). contrary to geddes’ time-honoured maxim, perhaps we should try to ‘think local and act global’ since all our actions have the potential to impact on the world, let’s focus on realistic, achievable goals that have tangible benefits to our community… (jack, expedition report, 2006, p. 27). so much of the disconnection with the natural world … is to do with a disappearing connection with food and its production… a radical and long term effort has to be made to prevent food “illiteracy”. indeed the pgdip expedition was largely about food, local sourcing and the waste we produce. it is totally unsustainable for communities to survive in a supermarket-oriented world… a simpler, more frugal existence living in harmony with seasons… resonates very strongly now lugg: journeys in/with ‘sustainability literacy’ transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (1) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 32 …and i have begun to change my modest consumer “power” (ron, questionnaire response, 2006). outcomes – sustainability literacy?? the expedition report offers a glimpse into the expedition and the ways in which it was experienced by the participants at the time. undoubtedly, with hindsight, participants would tell a somewhat different story. however, based on the evidence at hand, it seems that this expedition did have a significant impact on all members of the group – each individual experiencing it differently, weaving it into their own ‘stories’ as gough might suggest. it is difficult at this point to determine the extent to which the expedition contributed to the participants’ sustainability literacy but there are some connections between the types of knowledge and skills suggested by the higher education reports mentioned earlier in the paper and the observations made by the students. the significance of this of course depends on the extent to which we accept those particular attributes as being indicative of sustainability literacy. it is not possible to claim any specific connections between notions of sustainability literacy and learning outcomes expressed in the expedition report since any such connections are far too tentative to be meaningful. however i think it is reasonable to make some general observations, based on the report. clearly participants encountered social, economic and environmental issues (often interrelated) throughout the planning and expedition process. this indicates the potential for at least superficial engagement with these broad dimensions of sustainability as applied to a specific context. there is also evidence that participants drew on knowledge from a range of disciplines to make sense of their encounters with places and people as well as to make ethical decisions and to solve problems (such as the level of co2 emissions produced throughout the expedition). this both reflects research findings that call for multi-disciplinary approaches to sustainability education and also to the reality of encounters and situations that call for different ways of understanding and responding. evidence from the report suggests that the expedition processes offered the following learning opportunities: (i) it created a ‘space’ for participants’ to grapple with the different dimensions of sustainability issues with real, immediate consequences for them personally, as a group and as a member of a broader community. this notion of immediate and tangible consequences reflects one of higgins’ (1996) key arguments for outdoor learning as a medium for sustainability education. (ii) it enabled deliberate observation of landscape features (e.g. through food foraging, site visits…) and sensory immersion in the landscape (through cycling, camping, washing…). this holistic engagement enabled a gradual ‘uncovering’ of its ‘stories’ as participants interacted with places in various ways. this reinforces nicol’s (2004) argument for the value of sensory immersion in landscapes and perhaps, gough’s (1993) and stables’ (1996) notions of environment as text. (iii) it facilitated critical thinking about some previously ‘taken for granted’ notions (e.g. organic farming as a ‘good’, food quality and availability, scottish landscape as ‘wilderness’, identity and ethnicity…). an important catalyst appears to have been participants’ interactions with local people, initiating new conversations and insights relating to ways of being with others and the land. this learning reflects martin’s (2004, 2005) arguments that outdoor education experiences can provide powerful contexts for critical reflection on personal and societal values. participants’ emerging understandings of the complexities and lugg: journeys in/with ‘sustainability literacy’ transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (1) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 33 problems associated with ‘sustainability’ in practice echoes the sustainability as discourse approach of alvarez and rogers (2006) and emphasises the importance of these encounters with people and non-human beings in their own ‘habitats’. perhaps some of this learning might have occurred without participating in an expedition of this nature and undoubtedly learning emerging through different contexts and methods, is likely to manifest and develop in different ways. however i suspect that a rich and varied learning experience such as the ‘pannier full of porridge’ expedition will continue to engender valuable insights and connections that will contribute to participants’ learning for some time to come. the relationships, memories, images and ideas engendered through this experience are likely to reverberate in unpredictable ways, rewriting stories and creating new meanings, perhaps in the ‘mutually constitutive’ way suggested by gough and sellers (2004). research focusing on the relationships between processes of learning in ‘real life’ situations such as these and the kinds of meanings that emerge relating to ‘sustainability’, may be worthwhile. having said that it could be argued that, for the participants, this expedition did not reflect ‘real life’ in that they come mainly from urban environments and lifestyles. while there is not scope to pursue these arguments around ‘reality’ and relevance here, it may offer another avenue for research. pedagogical questions before concluding i would like to make some observations about participant perspectives on their learning processes before, during and after the expedition. while these are not proposed as recipes for teaching to enhance sustainability literacy, this summary is based on observations made by participants in the expedition report, in some instances by more than one person. participants highlighted the following processes as important influences on their learning: • importance of participant planning and decision-making processes • direct experience with landscapes and communities • slow movement and time for contemplation • sensory engagement with self & landscape • learning from peers and local people • food foraging seasonality, niche habitats, close observation • community volunteer work ‘contributing to’ rather than ‘taking from’ the local communities visited these observations lend support to the findings of the hea (2006) and aries (tilbury et. al. 2005) that experiential, participatory and holistic methods of learning are important for effective sustainability education. it seems that the detailed planning phase was perhaps just as important as the expedition itself and that learning from peers and other people encountered during the journey was equally significant. student references to the planning process throughout the report suggest that this process has been a significant part of their ‘journey’. it is worth remembering that staff had minimal input into the details, decisions and implementation of the expedition. in the main the process was student led thus allowing for significant decision-making and ownership of the experience. the possibility for this situation is a particular feature of the higher education context. since the students were adults with a collective breadth and depth of experience and skills, it was possible and probably desirable to provide this degree of autonomy. the opportunity to create and implement a ‘self-guided’ learning experience such as this is lugg: journeys in/with ‘sustainability literacy’ transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (1) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 34 unlikely (although not impossible)13 to be feasible for younger students in schools but could be adapted for specific groups and situations. while it is possible to glean certain benefits of this ‘journey’ approach to sustainability pedagogy there are also likely to be several disadvantages or issues around such an approach. one issue, identified in some outdoor education literature, relates to the relevance of journeying in remote places, far from where we live and to which we may never return. arguments proposed by brookes (1998) and stewart (2004) for example, suggest that it is more valuable and respectful to know, intimately, local places or those that will be regularly revisited and which have particular educational significance. this issue also raises social justice questions around access to outdoor experiences and who is able to participate. these are significant issues for educators contemplating the value of remote outdoor journeys for sustainability education goals and i raise these as possibilities for further investigation. the notion of what constitutes a ‘journey’ for example, might form part of this conversation. concluding remarks the intention of this paper was to explore possible connections between the notion of sustainability literacy and outdoor pedagogy by focusing on a specific case as an example of such potentials. given the educational imperative to address issues of sustainability and to develop skills for addressing these issues there is much scope for research into pedagogies that may offer possibilities and alternative perspectives. while creative, interdisciplinary approaches to outdoor education or outdoor learning are not the ‘norm’ in higher education contexts, such programmes do exist in outdoor education and other discipline areas. there is considerable scope within higher education institutions to develop pedagogies for sustainability literacy through outdoor as well as indoor contexts. it seems to me that, any pedagogy oriented towards developing sustainability literacies might take advantage of a range of learning contexts in order to enrich and extend student experiences and creative learning opportunities. the example of the expedition in the north of scotland is but one approach to sustainability and outdoor pedagogies that may offer some insights, other possibilities abound. references alvarez, a. & rogers, j. 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(1992). ecological literacy: education and the transition to a postmodern world. albany, n.y.: state university of new york. orr, d. (2004). earth in mind: on education, environment and the human prospect. washington: island press. parkin, s., johnston, a., buckland, h., brookes, f. & white, e. (2004a). learning and skills for sustainable development: developing a sustainability literate society. guidance for higher education institutions. london: forum for the future. parkin, s., johnston, a., buckland, h., brookes, f. & white, e. (2004b). on course for sustainability: report of the higher education partnership for sustainability 2000 2003. london: forum for the future. redclift, m. (2005). sustainable development (1987-2005): an oxymoron comes of age. sustainable development, 13, 212-227. rickinson, m., dillon, j., teamey, k., morris, m., mee young, c., sanders, d. & benefield, p. (2004). a review of research on outdoor learning: national foundation for educational research. sauve, l. (1999). "environmental education between modernity and postmodernity: searching for an integrating educational framework." canadian journal of environmental education 4(1): 9-35. scottish executive (2006). learning for our future: scotland’s first action plan for the un decade of education for sustainable development. edinburgh: scottish executive. shallcross, a. (1996). caring for the environment: can we be effective without the affective?environmental education and research. 15(2). 121-134. stables, a. (1996). reading the environment as text: literary theory and environmental education. environmental education research, 2(2). 189-195. stables, a. & bishop, k. (2001). weak and strong conceptions of environmental literacy: implication for environmental education. environmental education research, 7(1), 89-97. lugg: journeys in/with ‘sustainability literacy’ transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (1) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 37 sterling, s. (2004). higher education, sustainability and the role of systemic learning. in p. b. corcoran & a. e. j. wals (eds.) higher education and the challenge of sustainability, pp. 47-70. dordrecht, netherlands: kluwer academic. stewart, a. (2004). decolonising encounters with the murray river: building place-responsive outdoor education. australian journal of outdoor education, 8(2), 46-55. the age (2008). tackle climate or face dire future: un> retrieved on 2/12/08 from: http://news.theage.com.au/world/tackle-climate-or-face-dire-future-un-200812026oxt.html. tilbury, d. keogh, a. leighton, a. & kent, j. (2005). a national review of environmental education and its contribution to sustainability in australia: further and higher education. canberra: australian government department of the environment and heritage and australian research institute in education for sustainability (aries). tilbury, d., podger, d. & reid, a. (2004). change in curricula and graduate skills towards sustainability: final report. australian government, department of environment and heritage, maquarie university. the higher education academy (2006). sustainability in higher education, current practice and future developments: a progress report for senior managers in higher education. the higher education academy: heslington, uk. retrieved on may 15th, 2007 from: www.heacademy.ac.uk. uk government (2005). securing the future: the uk government sustainable development strategy. department of environment, food and rural affairs, march, 2005. retrieved on 3 september 2007 from http://www.sustainable-development.gov.uk/publications/ukstrategy/index.htm. unesco (2004). united nations decade of education for sustainable development: international implementation scheme. paris: unesco. retrieved on 3rd august, 2006 from http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.phpurl_do=do_topic&url_section=20 1.html. author alison lugg is a lecturer in outdoor education, sustainability and environmental literacy and physical and health education at la trobe university, bendigo, vic 3552 australia. email a.lugg@latrobe.edu.au microsoft word review anning cullen fleer rev.doc transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 65 review of early childhood education: society and culture (edited by angela anning, joy cullen and marilyn fleer) marg sellers the university of queensland, australia, and whitireia community polytechnic, new zealand i think perhaps i am about to learn as much about socio-cultural theories of learning in early childhood settings from the writing of this review as i have from reading and using the material in early childhood education: society and culture (anning, et al. 2004). in a similar way to my reading of this book, not in a straight path from beginning to end, this review is shaping up to be something of a ‘nomadic journey’ as i ‘travel in the thinking that writing produces’ (st. pierre, 2000, p. 258). as a student of curriculum theory/philosophy and an early childhood teacher educator, my non-linear meanderings through the book meant that i frequently followed deleuzean ‘lines of flight’ (st. pierre, 2000, p. 265) for my own research and that i often paused in ‘smooth spaces’ (p. 263) as i embodied various ideas into the teaching of my classes. this afforded me other dimensions of understanding as i presented concepts to these pre-service teachers, participated in discussions and listened to conversations that enabled shared understandings, and as i observed them applying some of their understandings within their practicum experiences. the sociocultural approach (in which there are neither experts nor novices) to teaching and learning is as applicable to teacher education as it is to early childhood settings. relating to early childhood teacher education, sue novinger, leigh o’brien and lou sweigman (2003) say, ‘a view of teacher as learner via collaborative and action-oriented classroom research positions teachers very differently than the expert discourse does: it puts them in charge of their own learning’ (p. 24). similarly, of early learning experiences marilyn fleer and jill robbins (2004) say, ‘learning and development are seen as occurring as a result of participation with others in culturally relevant contexts and tasks’ (p. 23). as well, deborah britzman (1999) says, ‘teachers’ own educational experiences reverberate through each classroom they occupy, ultimately shaping the learning experiences of the children they teach’ (p. 179). thus the socio-cultural processes the pre-service teachers were experiencing in the classroom was likely enhancing their theoretical understandings of this perspective on learning and affecting their practical teaching of young children. in this broad landscape of early childhood education, there are complexities of theorising~teaching~learning~doing as/of student~teacher in theoretical~ practical spaces of early childhood settings and teacher education contexts. early childhood education: society and culture provides a comprehensive overview of research from various socio-cultural perspectives enabling meaningful understandings of this theoretical approach. early childhood education: society and culture comprises contributions from practitioners and scholars from the united kingdom, australia and new zealand. they present socio-cultural perspectives about practices, theories and policies covering the dynamics of teaching and learning, the nature of knowledge, assessment, and evaluation and quality within early years settings. these four thematic parts include a chapter from each of the three countries, bringing a transnational perspective to the research-based evidence and to sellers: review of early childhood education: society and culture transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 66 66 the emerging research discourse that challenges individualistic developmental explanations of learning and foregrounds a cultural and socially constructed approach. in part one, about conceptualisations of learning and pedagogy in early years settings, elizabeth wood (uk) examines the pedagogy of play with an awareness that ‘while there is substantial evidence on learning through play, there is relatively little evidence on teaching through play’ (p. 19, emphasis in original). while i acknowledge the ‘importance of professional knowledge and expertise… [and that] teachers have a strategic role in planning for play… combining intended learning outcomes and the possible outcomes that emerge from children’s interests, engagement and participation’ (p. 30), there is still a tendency here towards adult ‘expertise’. this highlights that an ongoing challenge for researching and developing a pedagogy of play will be to find ways of understanding more of teachers’ participatory roles while simultaneously disrupting power relationships between learners and teachers. the challenge resonates in barbara jordan’s (nz) clearly articulated chapter about ‘scaffolding learning and co-constructing understandings’, within which ‘teachers identified that children were more empowered when interactions were co-constructive in comparison with the outcomes of scaffolding interactions’ (p. 31). as well as presenting us with an accessible resume of scaffolding and co-construction by explaining these theoretical concepts within practical vignettes from her research, she provides information about how teachers, by becoming active and equal partners in interactions (i.e. developing intersubjectivity), disrupt the historically traditional power relationship of expert teacher and novice child. the child’s understandings are as valid as the adult’s and on many occasions the child will be acknowledged as more of an expert than the adult. each participant listens to the other’s ideas, contributes from their own, and together they develop their own ‘shared meaning’. the child’s voice is heard and valued and both participants make links between experiences, across time and distance. (p. 37) so scaffolding for children’s learning transforms into co-constructing understandings with children, enabling children to enact empowerment. at this moment in my reading of the book, i paused to take these ideas into the content of the courses i teach and into the processes of my teaching. however, within this moment of feeling secure in my partial resolution of unequal power relationships between child and adult, glenda macnaughton (australia) perturbs this supposed security – ‘meanings are bounded by our culture and the meanings we construct most often reflect the meanings of those who have the most power within our culture to articulate and circulate meanings’ (p. 46). within my poststructuralist thinking, i am reminded that ‘we cannot be or think “outside” of culture’ (p. 47). but now, macnaughton’s chapter about ‘exploring critical constructive perspectives on children’s learning’, in its critique of dominant perspectives as seen in children’s understandings of gender distracts, my linear reading – moving sequentially from one chapter to the next –and the nomadic me goes off in search of explicitly minority cultural perspectives within the book. but, i am disappointed. ‘building bridges between literacies’ in part two, ‘the nature of knowledge in early childhood settings’, by denise williams-kennedy, who describes herself as indigenous australian, appears to be the only one. ironically and synchronistically, williams-kennedy presents the explicit sharing of cultural knowledge in figure 7 (p. 81) that situates an area of shared meaning centrally between adult and child, and between school culture and indigenous culture, which reflects jordan’s figurative model of intersubjectivity (p. 36). further, she deconstructs discourses of school structure and culture that assume sellers: review of early childhood education: society and culture transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 67 67 western knowledge to be the norm by providing ‘researchers and teachers with a series of real contexts to begin the process of demystifying indigenous worldviews, school learning and literacy outcomes for young aboriginal children growing up in australia today’ (p. 91). i am left wondering why there are no contributions included from new zealand’s indigenous maori or from immigrant minority cultures in the united kingdom. was this an editorial oversight? is it that there has been no recent research about socio-cultural theory by minority groupings in these countries? is it that viewing children and their learning through a sociocultural lens is a problematic that belongs with/in majority domains? perhaps the latter, because the editors, in their concluding comments about a socio-cultural framework for conceptualising early years education say, ‘in foregrounding the cultural and political imperatives across nations, it is possible to critically examine many taken-for-granted practices and to begin to not only understand the “historical child” but create new and different histories for children and for early childhood education’ (p. 189). as i see it, these new and different histories are for majority cultures to be re/thinking/working/ conceptualising. angela anning (uk), in ‘the co-construction of and early childhood curriculum’ and joy cullen (nz), in ‘adults co-constructing professional knowledge’ also appear in part two with williams-kennedy, continuing ‘the nature of knowledge’ discussion. anning reports on an action research project that set about creating an informed community of practice among a group of practitioners. i agree with her closing comment – the processes of confronting conflict and combining professional knowledge that were involved in creating an innovative curriculum framework for birth-to-five-year-olds may be more important to other practitioners than the resulting model. similarly, cullen proposes that critical to implementing the inclusive practice that te whāriki1 espouses is the shared construction of professional knowledge that coincides with a community of practice approach. again, throughout this part of the book, the complexity of teacher~learner~learning~teaching dynamics is explicated through the intermingling of theory, practice and research. part three discusses assessment in early years settings. bronwen cowie and margaret carr (nz) say that within a socio-cultural perspective, the consequences of documented assessment, such as through learning stories, can play out in three ways: through interactions of learners, teachers and families together in a community of learning, by developing competent learner, and by providing continuity (temporally and situationally) as learning becomes (a) work in progress. these researchers provide more of the emerging story of learning stories as a way of assessing children’s learning and implicitly respond yet again – through (poststructurally) elucidating its validity – to many of the ‘yes buts’ often mooted by practitioners. in sharp contrast, a markedly technicist chapter by peter tymms and christine merrell (uk) describes the development of the pips2 computerised on-entry baseline assessment tool that supposedly provides teachers with a profile of their pupils, ‘from which to plan an appropriate curriculum and against which progress can be measured’ (p. 107). the authors’ proposal to, in effect, globalise a universal early learning assessment tool is an uncomfortable intrusion into the trans-national co-constructive discourse of other chapters. in the third chapter of part three, ‘mapping the transformation of understanding’, marilyn fleer and carmel richardson (australia) report on their twelve month longitudinal study, which revealed ways in which teachers can document young children’s participation in sociocultural activity. as they moved away from an individualistic developmental approach to assessment, the participating teachers rendered their teacher/teaching voice visible in their 1 te whäriki (ministry of education, 1996) is new zealand's early childhood curriculum document. 2 pips, performance indicators in primary schools, is widely used in england, scotland, australia, new zealand with growing use in the netherlands. sellers: review of early childhood education: society and culture transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 68 68 observations, considering also children’s interactions with others and with the environment. they came to view assessment practice ‘as part of a mediated process residing within the collective rather than the individual’ (p. 132). evaluation and quality in early years settings is the theme for part four. these three chapters explain in different ways the parent~teacher~home~school dynamics of communities of learning that occur with/in the more participatory teaching that is moving us through a fading child-centred era. valerie podmore (nz) presents an action research study of ‘teaching and learning stories’ that concerns not only accounts of children’s learning but also illuminates the role of reflective practitioners attuned to children’s perspectives and the relevance of their teaching stories. susan hill and susan nicholls’ (australia) study highlights the importance of links between home and school literacies to quality learning that recognises diversity of cultural and linguistic capital thus enabling reflection of social inequalities. iram siraj-blatchford (united kingdom) calls attention to the importance of relationships between learner and teacher to quality provision, foregrounding the role of the teacher and positioning teaching as central to quality early childhood education. overall, perturbing dominant majority perspectives may be a bigger task than disturbing adult (expert) and child (novice) perceptions, but this collection of research evidence from transnational research and cross-cultural studies of three nations illuminates many possibilities for/from ‘sharing common concerns across the particularities of national boundaries’ (p. 189) and for working co-constructively within many spaces towards shared understandings. this book thus becomes a not-to-be-missed text for students (diploma, degree, post-graduate), teachers (early childhood, primary and teacher educators) and practitioners who work in early childhood settings and the first years of school. despite a few shortcomings, such as lack of minority majority discourses and tymms and merrell’s somewhat disembodied interlude that sits uncomfortably alongside the rest, widespread use of this text will undoubtedly contribute to significant socio-cultural growth within early childhood education. since my initial reading of selected chapters, i have regularly returned to (re)read more as i further explored – in my teaching practice and in my studying – various aspects of socio-cultural theory. considering the concepts presented by this group of respected scholars, the prognosis is favourable for my teaching and my studies. references anning, a., cullen, j., & fleer, m. (eds.). (2004). early childhood education: society and culture (2nd ed.). thousand oaks ca: sage publications. britzman, d. p. (1999). cultural myths in the making of a teacher: biography and social structure in teacher education. in e. mintz & j. t. yun (eds.), the complex world of teaching: perspectives from theory and practice. cambridge, ma: harvard educational review. fleer, m., & robbins, j. (2004). beyond ticking the boxes: from individual development domains to a socio-cultural framework for observing young children. nz research in early childhood education, 7, 23-39. ministry of education. (1996). te whäriki: he whäriki mätauranga mö ngä mokopuna o aotearoa: early childhood curriculum. wellington: learning media. novinger, s., o’brien, l. m., & sweigman, l. (2003). training the always, already failing early childhood educator: some contradictions of the culture of expertise in early childhood teacher education. paper presented at the 11th reconceptualizing ece conference, tempe, arizona. sellers: review of early childhood education: society and culture transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 69 69 st.pierre, e. a. (2000). nomadic inquiry in smooth spaces. in e. a. st.pierre & w. s. pillow (eds.), working the ruins: feminist poststructural theory and methods in education (p p. 258-283). new york: routledge. reviewer marg sellers is a doctoral candidate at the university of queensland and is programme leader for the early childhood teacher education programmes at whitireia community polytechnic, new zealand. email: m.sellers@paradise.net.nz microsoft word broussardformatted.doc to cite this article please include all of the following details: broussard, julia t. (2008) nüshu: a curriculum of women’s identity. transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> nüshu: a curriculum of women’s identity julia t. broussard harvard graduate school of education, boston, usa introduction rural women in jiangyong county, hunan province, developed their own unique script called nüshu (女书), a phonetic form of writing different from chinese script. nobody is quite sure how or how long ago nüshu was invented; we only know that it existed before the twentieth century. largely barred from learning to read and write chinese script, the women of jiangyong county taught nüshu to each other, passing the knowledge from generation to generation (chiang, 1995, pp. 273-277; s. liu & hu, 1994). chinese, and then western, scholars began studying nüshu in the 1980s, when it was already dying out. by that time only a small group of elderly women could still read and write nüshu. scholars have examined nüshu from the perspectives of anthropology, linguistics, literature, literacy, and women’s studies (chiang, 1995; gong, 1990; idema, 1999; idema & grant, 2004; f. liu, 2001; s. liu & hu, 1994; mclaren, 1996, 1998, 1999; silber, 1994, 1995; zhao, 1992). i would like to examine nüshu from the perspective of curriculum theory. nüshu, after all, was an educational practice: a group of women who made themselves literate and transmitted this literacy across generations. one of the core concerns of curriculum theory, shared with the humanities and social sciences, is the nature of subjectivity, or how a person experiences his identity in relation to lived experience. educational processes impart much more than knowledge and skills; educational processes that learners experience help to shape identities (greene, 1997; pinar, 1994, 1998; smith, 1996). i draw on the work of one curriculum theorist in particular, suzanne de castell (1996), who examines the links between literacy and “self-formation,” as she terms it. my purpose is to explore how nüshu, in what is spoken and what is left silent, forms a curriculum that shapes experiences through which the women learn how to present and understand their identities. to do this, i will look at nüshu texts and practices. the corpus of extant nüshu texts includes personal letters, adaptations of fictional stories, wedding laments, autobiographical ballads, and other writings. the autobiographical ballads recount the lives of this group of rural women. william pinar (1994) has proposed the study and practice of autobiography as a means for uncovering “the architecture of the self.” anthropologists have similarly analyzed what they term life narratives or “stories of self” to understand the relationship between schooling and selfhood (eisenhart, 1995; luttrell, 1996). narratives about people’s own lives present, in what they say and do not say, a certain portrait of a life. the nüshu autobiographical ballads offer a unique perspective on how these women understand and choose to portray their own identities. since nüshu is an oral literature, originally intended to be sung aloud for gatherings of women, not to be read from paper, an analysis of any nüshu texts is not complete without a corresponding analysis of nüshu practice. in fact, i will argue that together practice and text form a curriculum of identity, neither constituting a curriculum by itself. as for examining nüshu texts and practices, i first must acknowledge my limitations. i do not read nüshu and have relied on other scholars’ transcriptions of nüshu texts into chinese script (primarily the julia broussard: nüshu: a curriculum of women’s identity transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 46 transcriptions of zhao, 1992). i have not visited jiangyong county nor observed any of the practices of nüshu. my knowledge of nüshu practices comes entirely from scholars who have visited jiangyong and worked directly with the nüshu practitioners, namely cathy l. silber (1994; 1995), william w. chiang (1995), and liu fei-wen (2001). i rely mainly on silber’s account of nüshu as it was practiced in jiangyong county, which i describe below. afterwards i will turn to the texts of three nüshu autobiographical ballads. the practice of nüshu i will begin by explaining the social background of jiangyong county, then recount the larger practice of nüshu, and finally focus on the practices surrounding the autobiographical ballads. the women of jiangyong county, in the twentieth century, led lives of hardship. most of jiangyong county’s residents eked out a living from agriculture. many of the autobiographies paint a picture of the hard life of farmers, occasionally beset by drought and other calamities. public health services in the county were negligent through much of the twentieth century; many women describe family members falling ill and dying, unable to pay for what medical treatment was available or receiving inadequate treatment. this period in china’s history saw a great deal of social upheaval. the japanese army invaded jiangyong; women describe fleeing to the mountains where they hid and family members dying at the hands of the japanese. the nationalist government drafted the local men into their army; some women write about how their husbands or sons were forced to join the army, often to never be seen again or to return after many years. the land reform carried out in the 1950s by the communist government impoverished some widowed women who, unable to farm the land by themselves, had been renting out their farmland; labeled as “landlords” they often lost much of their land and thus their income. women generally suffered more than men, due to the social order, and had little recourse against injustice. married out to an unfamiliar husband, an adolescent girl found herself performing an enormous amount of labor for her new family. while the nüshu writings make clear that the women were well aware of how they suffered under a patriarchal system, they did not actively protest against this social order (idema, 1999, p. 100; silber, 1995, pp. 157-158). the social conditions under which they women lived are crucial to understanding what the women chose to say and, more importantly, not say in the texts they wrote and performed. the practice of nüshu typically began in adolescence. girls usually began learning to read, write and sing nüshu as teenagers, often taught by a grandmother, mother, aunt, peers, or sister-in-law (chiang, 1995; silber, 1995). the practice was not secret; men knew about it, but did not participate in nüshu gatherings and showed no interest in learning it themselves (silber, 1995, p. 7). the ability to read and write nüshu carried some prestige in jiangyong county, a rural and remote locality dependent on agriculture. one woman stated that when her father, a village doctor, saw that his women patients who knew nüshu were all “wellcultured” (很有教养), he encouraged her, as a teenager, to learn nüshu (li, 2003d, p. 12). girls learned to read nüshu by repeating aloud the lines recited by a teacher (chiang, 1995, p. 68). one woman recounted how she learned to write nüshu: her grandmother would write the words on her hand and she would then copy them by writing them in the dirt while she was playing outside, but older girls and adult women would look at the words on paper and copy them (li, 2003d, p. 24). girls would also participate in informal gatherings, during which women would do embroidery together and sing nüshu. formally, girls first used nüshu to write letters to their laotong (老同), their ritual siblings. girls entered into laotong relationships with another girl of a similar class background (betteroff families with better-off families, poor families with poor families) and characteristics julia broussard: nüshu: a curriculum of women’s identity transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 47 (same age, pretty with pretty, not-so-pretty with not-so-pretty), and always from another village. these “matches” were usually arranged by their families, who could expect in return a certain amount of social prestige as well as mutual favors. without having met the other girl, one girl would write a ritual letter to the other, composed in nüshu on a fan, and “propose” the match. the other would reply with another ritual letter. these letters expressed praise for their intended partner, how well matched they were as a couple, how approving their parents were, how much fun they would have visiting each other, chatting, and doing embroidery together, and how their match would last forever.1 silber (1995) describes how the act of writing these letters to girls they had never met and reproducing socially-prescribed sentiments made girls “step into the subject positions” of these texts (pp. 68-69), inculcating them with social knowledge and inserting them into a cultural role. to a certain extent, the practice of entering laotong relationships – arranged by their parents, matched with someone they had not met, fulfilling social rituals – prepared these young adolescents for their upcoming marriages. these laotong matches rarely lasted after the girl was married; their social purpose fulfilled, the matches dissolved (silber, 1995, pp. 62-89). adolescent girls would also enter into sworn sisterhood relationships, called jiebai zimei (结拜姊妹), which always involved groups of more than two girls, usually about four or five, who were typically of the same or nearby villages. the girls formed these groups themselves informally, without writing nüshu letters. a group of sworn sisters would typically gather to do embroidery together, have slumber parties, and sometimes sing nüshu. membership in the group required each to contribute a certain amount of rice, once at the formation of the group; her portion was sold when she married to buy wedding gifts for her. the formal sisterhood ended when the last girl married, although some girls would continue their friendships as adults. formal use of nüshu occurred at the wedding of each member, when a girl’s sworn sisters, as well as her sisters, laotong, cousins, and elder brother’s wife, would compose sanzhaoshu (三朝书) or “third day letters,” ritual letters written in nüshu and elaborately decorated in cloth-bound booklets. sanzhaoshu always expressed the writer’s sorrow and anger at losing her friend or sister to marriage, and typically also expressed the writer’s abiding affection for the bride, exhortations to the in-laws to forgive the bride’s shortcomings and her meager dowry, acknowledgement of the hard lot of women in marriage, and advice to the bride to be patient and endure. the letters were displayed publicly on the third day after the bride has left her parents’ home. the authors wrote sanzhaoshu before the key event that the letters describe – the tearful scene of the bride’s departure and the writer’s emotional reaction to the loss (silber, 1995, pp. 89-94 & 116-131). like the laotong letters, writing the sanzhaoshu places the authors in a “subject position.” the practice tells the writers and the bride herself how they will behave at the bride’s departure (silber, 1995, p. 116). this literacy act creates an understanding and performance of self. the sanzhaoshu also, by virtue of being publicly displayed, conferred a socially-acknowledged identity upon the bride and her natal family; the greater the expression of loss over the bride, the greater her social worth (silber, 1995, p. 122). in this way, these nüshu texts and practices served a larger function of not only forging friendships among girls and women, but also upholding the local class structure. cathy silber (1995) writes that after marriage nüshu practice would decline among newly married women. burdened with housework and childcare, and unwilling to risk offending her in-laws by writing about her hardships, women in this age group produced very few extant 1 lisa see (2005) has written an excellent novel illustrating, fictionally, a laotong match between two girls in jiangyong county in the 19th century and their continued friendship and conflicts in adulthood. julia broussard: nüshu: a curriculum of women’s identity transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 48 letters (pp. 135-136). nothing prevented them from participating in nüshu practices, however, where they could still find some creative outlets. the nüshu adaptations of folktales were always an option. these tales typically feature female protagonists who transgress social norms or express greater agency in the nüshu version of the story than the character does in the canonical hanzi (chinese script) version. scholars have already studied these nüshu folktales at length (chiang, 1995, pp. 78-80; idema, 1999; s. liu & hu, 1994; mclaren, 1996, 1999; silber, 1995, pp. 163-189), so i will not dwell on this genre except to note that all nüshu practitioners, including newly married women, could gather to perform these stories and enjoy vicariously the transgressions and heroic behavior of the female characters. nüshu practitioners of all ages could also write letters of congratulations, such as at the birth of a child, or letters of condolence, such as at the death of the relative, addressed to woman friends and female relatives, and letters of invitation, inviting friends and family members to attend some social event. two genres that offered some space for the venting of one’s frustrations included prayers to local deities and letters of vituperation (chiang, 1995, p. 86). ostensibly the prayers to local deities, composed in nüshu and left in temples, were private, intended for the deity and beseeching the deity’s assistance, but were potentially public as anyone who visited the temple and could read nüshu might peruse the contents (idema, 1999, p. 98). extant prayers to deities and letters of vituperation are few in number (see chiang, 1995 for a rough count; silber, 1995, p. 142). letters of vituperation were addressed to one person, someone who had wronged the writer and the object of the writer’s wrath; these letters are quite direct in their criticisms and resort to insults (chiang, 1995, pp. 85-86; silber, 1995, pp. 142-146). nevertheless, the public venting of frustrations and airing of grievances occurred mainly through autobiographies, which were primarily, but not exclusively, written by older women and were only ever publicly performed in front of other nüshu women, never for the general public. venting grievances in public might have led to reprisals from those accused. many autobiographies recount ill-treatment by mothers-in-law. we can surmise that since elderly women composed these autobiographies their mother-in-law was long dead and they could afford to vent old grievances. fewer recount abuse at the hands of their husbands, who also seem to be out of the picture, either through death or divorce, when the autobiography was composed. one autobiography recounts how a woman successfully sued for divorce from a husband who had been beating her and having affairs (zhao, 1992, pp. 348-358). the majority of autobiographies recount the trials and tribulations of being a widow. the socially proscribed cult of widow chastity meant that widows were not supposed to remarry, especially if they had sons. many women describe the loneliness and hardship of managing a household and farmland and raising their sons all by themselves. yet, some women did remarry, particular those with daughters or no children. often they remarried only to have the second husband also die or to find themselves mired in poverty. some widows were forced to remarry by parents-in-law who stole their dowries. the women had little recourse against these injustices. for the most part, they do not blame the social order for stacking the deck against women. they see ill fate accrued in a previous life as the cause of most of their misfortunes. as noted above, social reform or even social commentary was not the aim of the nüshu practitioners. the autobiographical ballads, unlike letters of vituperation, were addressed to no one in particular and were intended to be sung by the author at nüshu gatherings where they evoked the sympathy of the listeners, although chiang (1995) writes that women would read their own autobiographies and cry even when alone (p. 80). these ballads were written in the stylized heptasyllabic verse used for most of the nüshu writings and made heavy use of stock, julia broussard: nüshu: a curriculum of women’s identity transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 49 formulaic phrases (discussed more below). each autobiography recounts one woman’s life (except number 18 in zhao, 1992, pp. 358-366, which includes sections from other women's autobiographies). because the ballads that survive extant were collected in recent years, they all record events that occurred in the twentieth century. the nüshu autobiographies they were not intended to excoriate an accused party in person. instead, they recount the sufferings, misfortune, hardships and grief of an individual woman, and along the way they might mention that person or persons who caused her suffering, hardship or grief. yet, their primary purpose is to tell a tale of woe and in so doing to create on representation of a woman’s life. the nüshu autobiographical ballads are essentially a form of lament. scholars have studied women’s laments as a type of oral literature in other parts of the world (bourke, 1993; kerewsky-halpern, 1981; kononenko, 1994), including chinese wedding laments in other parts of china (blake, 1978; mclaren & chen, 2000; watson, 1996). kerewsky-halpern (1981) writes of serbian women’s ritual laments: “… the act of lamenting serve[s] a vital function in maintaining continuity within the community. lament is a verbal linkage of present to past, of living to dead, of the often perplexing enigmas of rapidly changing life ways to tradition” (p. 52). establishing the community of nüshu writers and performers was a primary function of all of the nüshu writings. yet, the autobiographical writings served a further function of recounting, explaining and defining the women’s subjectivities. cathy silber (1995) writes: the genre of autobiography provides not only a voice and a venue for the telling of one’s life story, but at the same time a template for self-understanding. by entering into the subject position provided by the autobiography, or even by identifying with the speaking subjects of autobiographies as readers or listeners, women were learning and passing on a certain understanding of their lives. (p. 146) it is in the “passing on” of that certain understanding of women’s lives that the curricular function of nüshu lies. these are tales of woe, not only written down, and not only performed before groups of women, but also taught to women, who in the process learned not only how to read, write and sing nüshu but also learned the stock phrases and metaphors they could use to describe their lives. they learned what life events they could include and what they could not include in their stories. when scholars began to collect nüshu texts, they found that women could not only recite their own autobiography but also other women’s autobiographies from memory. the majority of autobiographies published in anthologies today were written down from memory by two nüshu practitioners, gao yinxian and yi nianhua (zhao, 1992, pp. 271-406). the learning process behind the autobiographies apparently included more than a one-time composition and a one-time performance. unfortunately, since scholars did not begin investigating nüshu until the 1980s when it was already dying out and only handful of old women could still read and write it, all we know about how nüshu was passed on – how it was taught – comes only from scanty anecdotal evidence. no outsider actually observed a nüshu teacher instructing a nüshu novice. the descriptions of nüshu practices make clear, however, that starting as adolescents, girls would likely have observed older women performing their autobiographies, as well as other nüshu texts, at informal and formal nüshu gatherings. silber (1995) reports that many elderly, illiterate women in jiangyong could sing their unwritten autobiographies (p. 147). we can surmise that girls/women would have learned to sing and maybe to read and write the stock phrases and conventional expressions that comprise the bulk of most nüshu texts (these stock phrases are discussed more below). once a large enough portion of those stock phrases was julia broussard: nüshu: a curriculum of women’s identity transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 50 memorized, the versification of an autobiography was relatively straightforward and easy. herein lies one key part of the curricular nature of nüshu texts: the nature of these formulaic, metaphorical phrases enabled and constrained certain subjectivities within the autobiographical texts. curriculum theory proposes that pedagogical processes instill more than academic knowledge; they also instill social norms and values necessary to maintain a certain social order, and these norms and values largely define acceptable identities for people within that social order. david g. smith (1996) discusses how pedagogical action, and indeed any social action, entails a theory of identity; all action depends on who the actor thinks she is and who she thinks the other is in relation to her (p. 6). suzanne de castell (1996) looks specifically at literacy as pedagogical action. she writes that literacy is western culture’s “primary technology for the formation of the self,” that in fact textual practices cultivate subjectivity (pp. 27-29). keeping in mind that nüshu was an oral literature tradition and that many illiterate women who could not write their autobiographies could nevertheless sing them, we should acknowledge that within nüshu practice oral literacy, meaning the ability to compose the spoken/sung, and textual literacy, the ability to compose the written, reinforced each other. together both types of literacy provide the conventions for organizing the formulaic, metaphorical phrases of nüshu into a coherent narrative of a woman’s life and a representation of a woman’s subjectivity. the dual nature of nüshu literacy – that it was written and performed – indicates how the curricular function of nüshu resides both in its textual conventions and lived practices. the very nature of this forum – an article published in written form in an academic journal – and my own limitations – that i myself have never witnessed any nüshu practice but must rely on other scholars’ accounts of them – means that unfortunately i am giving short shrift to the lived practice of the autobiographical ballads. i do believe, based on scholars’ descriptions, that the practice of these ballads afforded women opportunities, for lack of a better term, for “positive” expressions of selfhood, despite the ostensibly “negative” nature – the strong focus on grief, suffering and hardship – of the content of these texts. recitation of the ballads was evidently cathartic for the women. silber (1995) describes how on one occasion, while tape-recording her own chanted autobiography for silber, a woman broke down in sobs and was unable to continue (pp. 149-150). silber believes she could not go on because she lacked an audience of fellow nüshu women. the audience was necessary to validate the life of the author through sympathy and identification. silber also believes, from the performances she witnessed, that a performer interrupting her own ballad to cry and give emotional speeches was common practice. in the words of one nüshu writer: “even though women suffered endlessly/ they could use nüshu to express their feelings of pain” (zhao and gong, cited in mclaren, 1996, p. 412). another nüshu writer, interviewed as part of a chinese women’s oral history project, said: 我要写我的痛苦，我的悲哀呀。(li, 2003d, p. 56) i want to write my pain, my sorrow.2 a central function of the practice of the nüshu autobiographical ballads is the explication, acknowledgement, and catharsis of that pain and sorrow through solidarity with other women. i argue, however, that beyond the cathartic function lies the curricular function. the conventions of the autobiographical ballad define an identity of i-who-has-suffered becoming 2 all translations are the author’s, unless otherwise noted. julia broussard: nüshu: a curriculum of women’s identity transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 51 part of we-who-have-suffered through lament as a social practice and thus provided an emotional space in which “suffering” could transform into an occasion for identification, sympathy, and unity with others. the educational practice of nüshu – the learning of nüshu – promulgated these conventions, which in turn defined not only the autobiographical texts but also how a woman was supposed to represent her life in text and in performance. yet, as we shall see in our analysis of the texts of three autobiographies, despite relying on the same set of conventions, these three women are able to craft quite different identities. the textual conventions may shape a certain range of allowable subjectivities, but the women ultimately shape the texts. three nüshu texts my analysis will first focus on the common themes that appear in autobiographical ballads in general and then examine how three writers present themselves individually. altogether i analyzed 32 nüshu autobiographical ballads published in zhao liming’s (1992) anthology. they tell the stories of 30 women.3 the three ballads that i have chosen to analyze are “her own story of sufferings by gao yinxian” (高银仙自述 可怜) (zhao, 1992, pp. 273-277), “huang lianzhu of baishui: life is first bitter, then sweet” (白水黄连珠先苦后甜) (zhao, 1992, pp. 331-338), and “her own story by he huanshu of baishui” (白水何焕淑自述) (zhao, 1992, pp. 373-374). i chose these three autobiographies because they demonstrate the range of allowable identities that these women could construct. gao yinxian, the author of the first ballad, was one of the most prolific nüshu writers of the latter twentieth century. she and yi nianhua, another prolific writer, were key informants about nüshu practices and transcribed from memory the majority of the nüshu texts now available in anthologies, texts that otherwise would have been lost. her autobiography was written toward the end of her life, after scholars began investigating nüshu in jiangyong county (silber, 1995, pp. 161-162). gao yinxian’s autobiography demonstrates how a prolific and adept nüshu writer assembles the stock metaphorical phrases so common in nüshu ballads into larger and more intricate expression of selfhood. the autobiography of the second author, huang lianzhu, differs slightly from the norm in that it ends happily, as reflected in the title “first bitter, then sweet.” as laments, the majority of autobiographies end on tragic notes. yet, some end relatively happily, with the author either reunited with a temporarily absent husband or happily remarried and now with children. this second ballad demonstrates how one writer constructs her self as experiencing “sweetness” at the end of her life. the author of the third ballad, he huanshu, was apparently an adolescent at the time her autobiography was composed. cathy silber (1995) writes that autobiographies “were exclusively the province of old women” (p. 136), but i found that not to be the case. several of the autobiographies included in zhao’s anthology (1992) are written in an adolescent voice (namely, numbers 21, 23, 26, 27, 28, & 36). this third ballad indicates how an adolescent uses the nüshu conventions to express a self that is still in formation. to analyze these texts, i will first use narrative analysis and then return to curriculum theory. i will employ two sub-types of narrative analysis known as performative analysis and 3 the ballads numbered 14, 27, 30 and 33 in zhao’s (1992) anthology (which numbers the autobiographical ballads 1 through 36) are not autobiographies and are mistakenly included in that section. number 33 is an embroidery song. number 30 is a personal letter. (the line between personal letters and autobiographies is blurred, but this ballad is clearly addressed in response to someone else’s letter). number 27 is a fictional story. i classify number 14 as a biography, not an autobiography, since it tells the story of the narrator’s grandparents and parents and ends when the narrator is a young, orphaned child. the narrator does not describe herself as an actor in this story in any way. julia broussard: nüshu: a curriculum of women’s identity transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 52 thematic analysis (riessman, 2003). thematic analysis examines what is said, with particular attention to themes and metaphors. performative analysis examines how the storyteller/writer performs or constructs her “self” for a listener/reader. sociologist and narrative analyst catherine riessman (1993) argues that since narrative analysis “gives prominence to human agency and imagination, it is well suited to studies of subjectivity and identity” (p. 5). my purpose is to examine how these two women construct their identities through these texts and what this reveals not only about their subjectivities but also about the curricular practice of nüshu. common themes all of the nüshu autobiographical ballads begin with stock phrases identifying the author as writer or narrator, frequently but not always pictured sitting alone in a room (an allusion to widowhood), often writing upon a paper fan (a common medium for nüshu writings), wishing to tell her tale of miseries: 把笔修书双流泪 千般可怜人不知 (zhao, 1992, p. 373)4 holding my brush to write this letter, two streams of tears flow./ of the thousand hardships i’ve suffered, nobody knows. the story that follows proceeds from a self that is situated as if alone. no reference is made to the intended audience of sympathetic listeners, who would have been present when the author recited her ballad at a nüshu gathering. stylistically the autobiographical ballads, within the corpus of nüshu writings, bear many similarities to personal letters, which also tend to open with these same stock lines (chiang, 1995, p. 80). the autobiographical ballads are like open letters, written to make known the otherwise private sufferings borne by one woman. the phrase “nobody knows” (人不知) frequently follows a description of sufferings. the purpose of a lament as a literacy act (oral and written) is to make known – to take private sufferings and transform them into public empathy through the medium of words. to accomplish this, certain stock phrases of suffering and anguish are repeated throughout the ballads: knives cutting the heart (刀割心); gut-wrenching sorrow (肝肠断); crying all through the night (透夜哭); two streams of tears (双流泪); and anguish in the heart (气入心) (silber, 1995, p. 157). through metaphorical language, the ballads give the sufferings, misfortunes and miseries quite visceral form. the majority of metaphors use bodily sensations to make physical the narrator’s emotional experiences. the very visceral and physical qualities of these images bring the pain the narrators suffered into the present and given concrete form so that this pain can be explicated, acknowledged by sympathizers, and then released in catharsis, the process to repeat again. these stock metaphorical phrases serve several functions in nüshu. first, they facilitated learning. learning to read, write and recite nüshu relied on rote memorization, and the repetition of stock phrases made memorization all the easier. second, as mentioned above, many of the stock phrases give concrete form to the otherwise intangible emotions that are the focus of these laments. a woman feels grief, sorrow, frustration and “nobody knows” how 4 as i noted above, i cannot read nüshu script and relied on chinese scholars translations of these ballads into chinese hanzi script for my analysis, and primarily for that reason i include the hanzi script, instead of the original nüshu script, in this article with my english translations. in addition, although most readers of east asian origin will be able to read the hanzi, very few of these same readers can read nüshu. finally, there is the ultimately practical reason that most word processing programs now can write hanzi, but no word processing program i am aware of can reproduce nüshu script. julia broussard: nüshu: a curriculum of women’s identity transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 53 she feels. the majority of the stock metaphors literally embody these emotions so others can know them. finally, these stock phrases can be assembled and re-assembled with ease into larger metaphorical constructions of self. the vast majority of nüshu texts are written in heptasyllabic verse, meaning each line of poetry is composed of seven syllables. these seven syllables further break down into components of four plus three syllables. all the stock phrases mentioned above are three syllables, but some of them are easily transformed into four syllables. for example, “crying all night” (透夜哭) can easily become “crying all night for a (dead) son” (透夜哭子), which tacking on another three syllables at the end can then become “crying all night for a (dead) son and a (dead) husband” (透夜哭子又哭夫). as the deaths of sons and husbands qualify as the greatest tragedies in these women’s lives, this line and variations of it frequently appear in autobiographies. in this manner, a nüshu writer could assemble a series of metaphorically embodied phrases into a larger representation of her suffering self. below, we shall examine how three writers accomplish this assemblage of metaphors to represent their selfhoods. “her own story of sufferings by gao yinxian” gao yinxian was one of the most prolific nüshu writers on record. her autobiography shows a high degree of skill at not only using the traditional stock phrases but also going beyond these conventional stock phrases to create new series of metaphorical phrases that build upon each other to form a uniquely compelling portrait of her self. the central theme of gao yinxian’s autobiography is her complaint against her unfilial son. after raising him to adulthood, she finds herself abandoned by him, left to fend for herself: 靠子望孙过时光 得知台身是没份 (zhao, 1992, p. 273) spending time relying on one’s son, expecting a grandson – / this share of happiness i realize my life is without. this situation is contrary to all cultural norms, which require sons in particular to care for their parents in old age, but gao yinxian has no recourse other than her words: 高声不得骂下你 将到如今说来由 (zhao, 1992, p. 273) a loud voice is not enough to curse you into submission. / that it’s come to the present situation, say the cause. “voice” becomes the central metaphor in the ballad. after the initial use of this metaphor, gao yinxian then proceeds to recount an episode (“the time in the front room”) when she was apparently recuperating. she never says directly from what she was recuperating, but reading between the lines the reader can surmise that her son apparently beat her. silber (1995) writes of gao yinxian’s autobiography that she could not afford to be too specific about her son’s transgressions for fear of reprisal and therefore her “voice” is constrained in this text (p. 161). this “constrained voice” is transformed into a powerful image in the text. she writes of the time spent recuperating: 起起前厅之时日 四十日身不起床 高声没得问下台 低声更加没得闻 伯娘煮肉送上楼 接起伯娘一点恩 哪样咽得过喉头 (zhao, 1992, p. 273) julia broussard: nüshu: a curriculum of women’s identity transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 54 recalling the time in the front room,/ for forty days i could not get out of bed. / a loud voice would not do to ask myself. / a soft voice is even less likely to be heard. / my uncle’s wife boiled some meat and brought it upstairs to me,/ i received a little kindness from elder uncle’s wife./ how to swallow that food down my throat? in so much pain that she cannot get out of bed for forty days, she is cared for by an uncle and his wife, who feed her. what is left unsaid is that, were he filial as he should be, her son should be the one feeding her, not her uncle’s wife. that is the primary responsibility of a son, to feed and care for his elderly parents. in this passage, the voice that she cannot use fully then becomes aligned metaphorically with her throat, which is in so much pain that she can barely swallow food. a throat that cannot speak out the abuse she has suffered is the same throat that cannot take in the very sustenance that her abuser should be providing. the “voice” metaphor aligned with the “throat” metaphor, gaoyinxian then elaborates further on both metaphors. she first emphasizes that her son is not providing her with food: 我今亦有亲儿子 郎叔伯娘奉茶汤 今日高声骂下你 (zhao, 1992, p. 274) i now have nothing, my darling son./ my uncle and aunt offered tea and soup (to me)./ today with a loud voice i curse you! in case anyone doubts that her son is not fulfilling his filial obligations, which silber (1995) reports that apparently he did indeed fail to do (p. 161), gao states: 不信往看屋舍水 点点落地不差余 (zhao, 1992, p. 274) if you don’t believe, then come see my living conditions./ the water drips on the ground leaving nothing to drink. the image gao yinxian creates is of herself left nearly empty of sustenance; even the water drips on the ground. after another reiteration of how she dares not speak in a loud voice, she then builds on this image of sustenance: 一日吃我三腹奶 三日饮我九腹浆 娘奶不是长江水 娘奶不是树木浆 背了抱了不算事 饮我四岁的骨浆 (zhao, 1992, p. 274) three times a day you drank my milk./ nines times in three days you drank my juice./ mother’s milk is not the water of the yangzi river./ mother’s milk is not the sap of trees./ i carried you, held you, does this count as nothing?/ you drank the juice of my bones for four years. not only has her son now left her nearly empty of sustenance, but as a suckling child he took his sustenance from “the juice of her bones.” she has moved from the voice metaphor, to the throat metaphor, to the sustenance metaphor, and tied all of these metaphors together in the image of a mother greatly wronged by her son. immediately after the passage above, she alludes to another incident that left her unable to get out of bed for 19 days. after describing her pain and anguish, she says: 哪个我的心肝人 (zhao, 1992, p. 275) how could you, my own flesh and blood? mother and son come together in her words, in “voice” – “my own flesh and blood” (我的心肝人) – literally “my heart-liver person.” the expression is particularly poignant julia broussard: nüshu: a curriculum of women’s identity transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 55 because the accumulation of metaphors highlights the fact that they should be – but are not – together “as one flesh” in life. in the next part of the ballad, gao yinxian returns to the metaphor of voice. after a few more lines of asking questions to her son – “do you know that i don’t wear one yard of your cloth,” she then addresses her audience with a series of admonitions that stress the importance of how parents use words to teach children: 子女上头要细心 就是子女不知事 细说细言教子女 骂骂打打不当行 (zhao, 1992, p. 275) those of you with sons and daughters be careful./ our sons and daughters do not understand matters./ teach your children carefully with words,/ not by lots of scolding and hitting. the admonitions about the correct parental use of voice continue for several more lines. again, one metaphorical image is compounded upon another. gao yinxian is describing an ideal: mother and child should be linked through the flow of words – careful words, just as they were previously linked through the sustenance the flows from mother to child. against this ideal, she is also alluding to its distortion: instead they are linked through scolding and hitting. voice-words and body-sustenance connect mother and son, for better or for worse. the last part of the ballad dwells on how she has been left alone, an old person of no use, with nowhere to vent her rage: 透夜不眠如刀割 眼泪四垂到天光 台想将身无出气 (zhao, 1992, p. 276) unable to sleep all night, like knives cutting./ i cry out my eyes until daylight./ come to think of it, i have nowhere to vent my frustration. here we see some of the more commonly used stock phrases, or slight variations on them, that are peppered throughout her narrative: “like knives cutting” (如刀割), instead of “knives cutting heart”; “unable to sleep all night” (透夜不眠), instead of “crying all night”; “cry out my eyes” (眼泪四垂), instead of “two streams of tears.” what distinguishes gao yinxian’s autobiography, however, is that she goes well beyond these stock phrases. she takes the core function of nüshu metaphors – the embodiment of intangible emotions – and crafts it into an intricate portrait of her own subjectivity in relation to her son. her autobiography concludes with: 只想老了是无用 千般可怜在心埋 不给四边人取笑 崽没孝顺在心愁 今年年共八十八 还有世间几多年 (zhao, 1992, pp. 276-277) thinking of how i am an useless old person,/ a thousand miseries are buried in my heart./ i don’t want to be a laughingstock for others./ my son unfilial, it pains my heart./ this year i am eighty-eight years old./ i still have a few more years in this world. the desire to vent her frustrations caused her to speak out in this autobiography, but the fear of not only reprisals from her son but also other people’s ridicule tempers her voice. part of her voice – perhaps the larger part of it – remains buried in her heart. the image of the mother who used her voice and body to raise her son becomes the image of an old woman, depleted of body and deprived of full voice, remaining alone in the world. julia broussard: nüshu: a curriculum of women’s identity transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 56 “huang lianzhu of baishui: life is first bitter, then sweet” the title “first bitter, then sweet” marks this ballad, and thus its author, from the very beginning as being different. in her dissertation, cathy silber (1995) analyzes another woman’s happily ending ballad also given the title “first bitter, then sweet” by yi nianhua who transcribed the ballad for its author (pp. 150-151). apparently, in these two cases, whoever created the titles determined that the readers/listeners should know that the ballads are not typical laments. nevertheless, i found in zhao’s anthology more autobiographies with happy endings that were not set apart by their titles. huang lianzhu begins her story with a long and complicated genealogy. we might wonder why all this discussion of the infertility and deaths in the families of her father’s sisters and brother and her father’s father’s brother’s daughters and sons. silber (1995) explains that the narrators of happily ending ballads would use the recitation of family genealogies to recount as much bitterness as possible, deliberately including anguish and misery suffered by relatives, in order to paint as woeful a picture as she could of her own life by extension (p. 148). however, even many tragically ending ballads contain long and convoluted genealogies. the storylines of nüshu autobiographical ballads tend to follow genealogy more strictly than chronology (silber, 1995, p. 150), because for these women one’s genealogy in part defines one’s subjectivity. one is never a woman apart from being a daughter, wife or mother, and the greatest tragedies occur when one loses that status and becomes instead an orphan, widow, or childless woman. through the recitation of the genealogy, the text serves to structure the narrator’s identity. after recounting how her aunt – her father’s father’s brother’s second daughter – had three sons only to have her husband die, then two sons die, and then be forced to depend on the labor of her only remaining young son to make ends meet, huang lianzhu says: 细姨可怜讲不尽 (zhao, 1992, p. 332) i could never describe all of second aunt’s suffering. huang’s litany of the sufferings of this and other aunts, and later her litany of her own sufferings, serve to place her squarely within the conventions of this genre of women’s lament, despite her happy ending. her recitation of her genealogy serves an additional purpose, however. she is eventually married to the eldest son of her father’s father’s brother, a cousin eight years younger than her, and the hardships she suffers and the happiness she eventually attains all occur within the context of this marriage. the genealogy places her in this context. so huang lianzhu is first a daughter, then a wife, and then her sufferings begin when she finds herself childless. after almost five years of marriage, she becomes ill, and the illness makes it difficult for her to do chores. given that her husband had been nine years old when they married, her lack of children at this point in time is not entirely surprising, but the illness continues, as does her childlessness. her sisters-in-law look down on her; her husband’s feelings for her turn sour. her place in her husband’s home becomes unpleasant: 身在房中无出气 只是回程去安身 (zhao, 1992, p. 334) inside the home i could not vent my frustration./ only when i returned to my parent’s home did i feel at ease. here she presents herself as one self inside her husband’s home – restricted, suffering, silenced – but as another self in her parent’s home – at ease and, by extension, free. like the genealogy that defines her identity as a woman within a family, the home environment julia broussard: nüshu: a curriculum of women’s identity transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 57 defines, in part, her selfhood. for huang lianzhu the core metaphors that she employs to define her subjectivity are family and home. she next digresses into a discussion of her husband’s younger brother’s marriage, children and grandchildren, the blessings of which become more relevant later in her story. then she goes into another digression about the unfairness of the draft in the pre-socialist era, how the authorities would take away too many men. this is the only place in the four ballads in which a woman gives any indication that life has indeed improved under a socialist society; the ballads otherwise portray a society full of hardship, even post-1949. huang lianzhu discusses the draft because her husband is taken away and does not return for thirteen years. yet, he does return, coming back in 1949 when the new socialist society begins, and her life eventually turns “sweet.” perhaps for this reason she can acknowledge social improvement within her ballad, whereas other women do not. although she never states so but simply implies it, her husband’s thirteen-year absence becomes the reason she never has children. almost as an after thought, she mentions that her illness is cured just before her husband is drafted and his feelings for her return. after all the details of how she had suffered due to her illness, this almost seems surprising, but she is simply following the conventions of nüshu lament, emphasizing suffering and deemphasizing the lack thereof. at any rate, despite being cured, she never bears a child, and her infertility becomes the essential characteristic of her ill fate. the occasion of her husband’s unexpected return gives rise to language that is rare in the nüshu laments: metaphors of joy and happiness. typically in these ballads the most happy events are the birth of a son, the common metaphor for which is that a son is “like a treasure,” or a wedding, for which the metaphor “red as a flower, green as a willow” describes the happy bride. describing her husband’s return, huang lianzhu expands the metaphors of joy to include: 两脚腾云快回家 my feet flew like clouds in the sky, quickly back home. 一见我夫心欢喜 可比见了宝与金 (zhao, 1992, p. 336) as soon as i saw my husband, my heart rejoiced./ seeing him was better than seeing treasure and gold. such joyful expressions do not typically appear in the other three ballads. huang lianzhu may have suffered from illness and infertility, but her later adult life is indeed “sweet” and her voice shows it. her story continues with the division of the family property among her husband and his two brothers. she implies that the youngest brother gets a smaller share because he is still young and unmarried. her husband takes care of his youngest brother, however, and this care is returned when the youngest brother marries, has a son, and gives the son to her husband and herself to raise. late in life, unexpectedly a mother, huang lianzhu expresses tenderness: 伯郎伯娘顾孙子 可如公嬷引大孙 (zhao, 1992, p. 338) we, older brother and his wife, took care of this nephew/ as if we were grandparents caring for our eldest grandson. her story ends happily with the marriage of this adopted son, with all brothers married with children and even some grandchildren – blessings upon blessings upon blessings. one wonders if this ballad was ever performed and, if so, how it would have been received. did huang lianzhu compose her autobiography to say “yes, you may see me happy julia broussard: nüshu: a curriculum of women’s identity transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 58 now, but i did suffer before”? or did the social world of nüshu women allow for dissimilarity: “some of us have suffered intensely, but not all of us have”? did huang lianzhu’s story still qualify as a lament because she acquired a son through adoption rather than by birth? whatever the reason, she presents a self that pushes the boundaries of the genre without contravening its conventions – “include me, i am one of you, although i am different too.” “her own story by he huanshu of baishui” this fourth ballad tells the story of mother and daughter entwined. it begins: 自己修书纸扇上 娘女可怜落扇中 只恨我爷没在世 抛下娘女好凄凉 (zhao, 1992, p. 373) i write this letter myself on a paper fan,/ the misery of mother and daughter is found on this fan./ alas, when my father departed from this world,/ he left us, mother and daughter behind, such a sorry fate! (idema & grant, 2004, pp. 553-554) the words “my father” establish that this story is told in the daughter’s voice. otherwise, he huanshu refers to herself using the pronoun “i/me” rather than the “we” of mother/daughter only two times in the ballad. this is clearly an adolescent’s voice. the narrator is evidently still living with her widowed mother. they suffer through hardships together, both rising at the crack of dawn, doing chores with no one to help them, cutting their own firewood, going hungry before the harvest, sleeping together on straw in the winter, and hardly making any money from selling pigs and chickens. they are a pair, a unit. silber (1995) notes that the shifting between and the merging of voices is quite common in nüshu autobiographies. one of the more common merged voices is between widowed daughter and widowed mother (p. 156). here we have an unmarried daughter occasionally merging her voice with her widowed mother and occasionally speaking in her own voice. the daughter is in the process of forming a subjectivity apart from her mother. the “i” of the daughter as distinct from the “she” of her mother next appears in reference to the missing brother: 我娘生台无兄弟 到老年来靠哪个 (zhao, 1992, p. 373) i am my mother’s only child, i have no brothers at all,/ so on whom can she rely when she grows old? (idema & grant, 2004, p. 554) the story continues with them as a unit again. they are pitied by others, who do not have as many problems as them. due to a former life, they now both suffer. at this point, the story shifts point of view again. the recitation of woes gives way to a reflection on the speaker’s situation: 跽在楼头透口气 望天疼惜拔乌云 只望乌云吹拔散 日出东方显显阳 (zhao, 1992, pp. 363-364) sitting here in my upstairs room, i let out a heavy sigh,/ hoping that heaven will pity us and send away the black clouds./ i hope that the black clouds will all be blown away/ and the sun will emerge in the east revealing its light. (idema & grant, 2004, p. 554) this passage is clearly the narrator’s own voice, but the pronoun “i” is absent, as is typically the case in chinese verse, nüshu verse no exception. she is alone, sighing in her upstairs julia broussard: nüshu: a curriculum of women’s identity transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 59 room, but alone by default, not by design. in her darksome despair, she hopes for relief symbolized by light. in the next passage, she is sitting by herself at the gate: 谁知门前跽到黑 不见姐娘在哪方 知见百鸟树上跽 并没姐娘到眼前 (zhao, 1992, p. 364) who could have known that i would sit before the gate till dark,/ i don’t see my mother – where could she be?/ i only see the birds roosting in the trees,/ but still cannot see any sign of my mother. (idema & grant, 2004, p. 554) the “i” pronoun is still absent in the chinese, but the voice that looks for her mother is clearly the daughter’s voice. as readers we are left wondering what happened to her mother. in the next and final passage she says: 自从姐娘生错我 不得欢盈过一时 请愿上天落大雨 娘女两个让水催 (zhao, 1992, p. 364) from the day my mother, alas, gave birth to me,/ i have not experienced a single moment of joy./ i pray to high heaven to send down a terrible rain/ and drown us both, mother and daughter in its flood. (idema & grant, 2004, p. 554) in the phrase “alas, gave birth to me” the clear “i/me” pronoun makes its final appearance in chinese. the separate individuality of he huanshu is defined by her position within this family – a daughter without a father, a girl without a brother, the joyless one her mother – alas – gave birth to – the one who now wishes a flood would drown her and her mother together. the image of her sitting alone at the gate looking for her missing mother, followed by her wish for a flood to destroy them both, could be the anxiety of an adolescent contemplating possible separation from her mother and wishing to remain together even in death, or it could be the grief of an adolescent who just lost her mother and wishes she could join her in death: 请愿上天落大雨 娘女两个让水催 (zhao, 1992, p. 364) i would have preferred that high heaven had sent down a terrible rain/ that had drowned us both, mother and daughter, in its flood. (idema & grant, 2004, p. 554) to a nüshu audience the meaning would have been obvious. they would have known whether she had lost her mother or not. her last wish would have needed no explanation. the former reading – that she is merely experiencing separation anxiety – is the more likely interpretation given the conventional rules of chinese verse. yet, the poem, like her adolescent identity, is still unfolding, even though the words have come to an end. in comparison to the unambiguous litany of deaths, births and more deaths in the other three ballads, this ballad’s image of the young girl sitting and waiting for her mother is uniquely evocative, bringing the reader back to wait with her and see what resolution comes. the curriculum in the texts in these three autobiographies we see how the language of the texts, and in particular the metaphorical phrases, serves the construction of an identity. a nüshu practitioner, learning to read and perhaps write the common phrases that form a nüshu narrative, is also learning how to shape a representation of her self. like the practices of composing laotong letters and third day letters (sanzhaoshu), the writing of an autobiography causes a woman to “step into a julia broussard: nüshu: a curriculum of women’s identity transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 60 subject position” or the subjective space that the conventional language provides (silber, 1995). curriculum theorist suzanne de castell (1996) writes that identifying “the distinctive speech styles and genres of the classroom” will reveal how the selves constructed there are limited and shaped both by literacy conventions and by other people’s expectations (p. 29). while not occurring in a classroom space, nüshu instruction operates in much the same way. as for the selves constructed within nüshu, cathy silber (1995) cautions: thus, while we can read these texts to learn something about the way these women interpreted themselves, we must also keep in mind that we are learning about the ways these texts interpreted these women. just as many things happened in the lives of these women that never made it into their autobiographies because of generic conventions governing what sorts of events did or did not belong in such a text, so must we acknowledge the possibility that women could have other interpretations of their lives, interpretations that fell outside the bounds of the conventions of the genre. (p. 147) some possibilities of alternative interpretations of these rural chinese women’s lives can perhaps be seen in comparison to the self-interpretations that another group of rural chinese women shared in an entirely different genre, but still a genre that is primarily autobiographical: oral histories. a missing dimension? the twentieth century chinese women’s oral history project collected narratives from more than 600 women all around china, rural and urban, mainly old but also young (li, 2003a, 2003b, 2003c, 2003d). a comparison of the content of the 32 extant nüshu autobiographical ballads to that of oral histories collected from rural women (sixteen in number)5 reveals a key dimension of rural women’s understanding of their selfhood that is present in the oral histories but absent in the texts of the ballads. that dimension is a stated sense of pride in their accomplishments and abilities: 我那会识那善书（佛教的书）。。。我那时候猴（机灵）得很，能记下！我妈（婆 母）说，“唉，娃，你可怜的，人家屋里把你那么打骂得么，你把兴啥（什么）还 能记下。” 那是多少能记些。 库淑兰 (li, 2003d, p. 303) at that time, i could read the scriptures (buddhist) …. back then i was quite clever. i could memorize it! my mom (mother-in-law) said, “ah, child, you’re pitiful, being beaten and yelled at by people in the home, but you can memorize anything.” no matter how much, i could memorize some. ku shulan 我纺的花织的布在咱那是第一名。。。。人家的布都卖不了，我的都能卖了，织得 好么，又细又白的。 姥姥 (li, 2003d, p. 315) 5 please refer to the appendix for a list of these sixteen rural women’s oral histories that i analyzed. the vast majority of the 600 women interviewed as part of the oral history project either originally came from urban areas or were describing their lives after they left the countryside for the city, including my friend’s motherin-law mentioned below. for my analysis, i compared the nüshu autobiographies, composed exclusively by rural women, to the oral histories of rural women who stayed in the countryside. i include the anecdote about my friend’s mother-in-law, although she was urban and her oral history was not among those i analyzed, because chinese cultural conventions discouraging boasting transcend rural / urban boundaries and because the anecdote is such a wonderful example of a chinese woman humbly taking pride in her accomplishments. julia broussard: nüshu: a curriculum of women’s identity transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 61 the patterned cloth that i wove was number one in our locality…. other people’s cloth couldn’t sell, but mine would sell out. it was well-woven, both fine and white. laolao 我是出了名的好媳妇，我娘家一个叔伯哥说我，“２００块钱也雇不着这样一个好 伙计（长工）。” 荣妈妈 (li, 2003d, p. 341) i was famous as a good daughter-in-law. an uncle on my mother’s side said of me, “for 200 yuan you couldn’t hire such a good worker.” mother rong expressions like these are quite common in the oral histories of rural women collected as part of the twentieth century women’s oral history project. expressions like these do not appear in the nüshu autobiographies that i found. the closest type of statement concerns public acknowledgement of the speaker’s/writer’s upright and moral behavior: 红花兑如我亲生 四边之人多路见 得尽好名传四边 (zhao, 1992, p. 295) i treated my stepdaughters like my very own children./ everyone around saw this fact,/ and i obtained a fine reputation. yet, the women never mention being skilled. apparently the form of nüshu autobiographical ballad precludes outright expressions of accomplishment and skill. as “laments” the autobiographical ballads are “supposed to be” about gloom and doom, despair and longing, pain and suffering. the oral histories also contain plenty of descriptions of despair, suffering, pain and hardship, but they move back and forth between despair and accomplishment, pain and triumph to a greater degree than the nüshu autobiographies. i must acknowledge that the two genres – nüshu autobiographical ballads and oral histories – are quite different genres, produced under very different circumstances. the nüshu autobiographies were all produced by jiangyong county nüshu practitioners for other jiangyong county nüshu practitioners to validate their lives while still upholding the social structure under which they lived. the oral history project was instigated by li xiaojiang, an eminent professor of women’s studies in china, and carried out by various researchers who interviewed women across china with the purpose of documenting aspects of chinese women’s lives that would otherwise be lost to history (li, 2003a, 2003b, 2003c, 2003d). the oral history project, in other words, had a larger feminist agenda behind it; the nüshu autobiographies did not. this background agenda meant that, as a genre, the oral histories created conditions that permitted and even encouraged the women interviewees to speak about their skills and accomplishments through the particular questions and prompts that the researchers asked them. the grandmother-in-law of a friend of mine was one of the 600 women interviewed as part of the project. her family knew that she had been a professional opera singer in her younger days but were surprised to learn details about her fame and success that emerged in her oral history but which she had always downplayed, even among close family members. the format of the oral history data collection – an “authority” asking specific questions about women’s lives and another “authority” writing down her story with the purpose of giving women a “voice” – meant that her fame and success could be voiced, despite chinese cultural conventions discouraging boasting. when family members mentioned their surprise at her fame, my friend remembers that her grandmother-in-law remarked something to the effect that the oral history project editors had been kind when they interpreted her story, still verbally downplaying her success, but her face was beaming with pride at the time (corinne mckamey, personal communication). julia broussard: nüshu: a curriculum of women’s identity transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 62 this example indicates the importance of genre conventions in encouraging or restricting certain expressions of self. as textual genres, the oral histories encouraged this type of selfexpression; the nüshu autobiographies did not. yet, i also argue that, to a certain extent, the nüshu autobiographical texts do not need to contain expressions of skillful ability because opportunities for and expressions of the-self-as-skilled-and-accomplished were embodied in the practice of nüshu. as a unitary curriculum of identity, the practices and the texts of nüshu complement each other. in terms of skill in nüshu – whether singing, reading or writing – women would have provided social acknowledgment of each other’s abilities. since nüshu was occasionally public, such as the displays of sanzhaoshu, they would also have received some acknowledgment from men and other community members.6 also, the women interviewed for the oral history project were not interviewed by people claiming the same skill. for one or several jiangyong women to mention their own skill in nüshu in their compositions – in the face of other women similarly skilled in nüshu – would have seemed boastful and even arrogant. cathy silber (1995) mentions the social norms for women in jiangyong county discouraged boasting and encouraged self-disparagement (pp. 147-148). for all these reasons, women did not portray themselves as skilled or educated in any ability – nüshu or otherwise – in their autobiographies. apparently the conventions of nüshu laments, and perhaps the prevailing social order, did not allow this type of textual self-interpretation. women’s laments appear as a type of oral (and textual) literature in many different parts of the world perhaps because prevailing, patriarchal social orders deem acceptable women describing their selves as woeful and miserable; women describing their selves as skilled and educated is another matter. however, to say that women chose not to portray themselves as skilled and educated because they had to conform to the social order is an interpretation that removes agency from women. i would like to put forward an alternative interpretation that allows for agency on the part of the women who crafted these autobiographies. suzanne de castell (1996) writes that for many students confronted with literacy practices that overly and too strictly “normalize” the acceptably-presented self sometimes “the strongest voice is silence” (pp. 29-30) students may have understandings of their selfhoods that they never choose to share publicly. de castell further states: my argument here is that for many forms of subjectivity to survive, it is essential that they not be spoken at all, except with the most extreme caution, and under carefully crafted conditions of protection…. (p. 31) the alternative explanation is that for these nüshu women to not “write” the self-as-skilledand-accomplished, to not put this subjectivity into the texts, is actually an act of protection, in effect keeping the self-as-skilled safely lodged within the practice of nüshu where it can exist free of normalizing literacy conventions. we can never know exactly why the nüshu practitioners of jiangyong apparently chose to downplay or simply not include the self-as-skilled in their autobiographical ballads. they may have chosen not to portray the self-as-skilled for all of these reasons: because they did not want to boast in front of their peers, because the acknowledgement of the skill was embodied in the practice and so was unnecessary in text, because the culture discouraged it, and because the textual silence afforded them strength. yet, when compared to self-interpretations that appear in the chinese women’s oral histories, we can sense in the absence of the self-as 6 novelist lisa see (2005) portrays quite well the sense of pride that her fictional women characters found in their ability to read, write and perform nüshu. julia broussard: nüshu: a curriculum of women’s identity transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 63 skilled in the nüshu women’s autobiographies both how influential the normalizing genre conventions governing self-representation can be and how women nevertheless found room to maneuver around them. conclusions anne mclaren (1999) argues that in nüshu “one can indeed hear ‘women’s voices’, not so much as individuals, but as a collectivity who transmitted their beliefs and perspectives in a highly ritualised verse medium” (p. 177). the emphasis in the curricular nature of nüshu autobiographical practice on attainment of an identity through the conventional expression of anguish and grievance would certainly seem to encourage a collective identity, and undoubtedly realizing a collective identity through expressed anguish and grief was an essential feature of the this practice of lament. nonetheless, in my narrative analysis of these autobiographies, i am most struck by two seemingly contradictory characteristics of them: first, by how unique each ballad voice is and, second, by how the silence between the ballads’ textual lines also speaks. these ritualized and formalized autobiographies share the very individual voices of individual women. their authors may well find meaning and moral support as part of the larger subjectivity of nüshu practitioners, and they may well have incorporated aspects of that subjectivity through their adoption of conventional forms and phrases, yet the collective identity has not erased their quite apparent individualities. even a woman whose life has a happy ending, and even an adolescent still forming her identity, can find a subjective space within this otherwise highly conventionalized genre. however, beyond this textual subjective space lies a performative space for silence, a space in which the parameters on socially-prescribed agency are potentially loosened and relaxed. the very nature of silence means that we can never know for sure what alternate interpretations of their lives these women chose to omit from the written record – such as the self-as-skilled-and-educated – and how that omission came to shape the subjectivities presented within, but a close analysis reveals that these texts are not wholly shaping these women. the women are at least in part shaping the texts, both in terms of how what they say and what they do not say in the texts. the agency of each in this process is evident in her unique voice and her unique silence. in the double-sided process of shaping and being shaped lies the power of the nüshu curriculum to explicate, acknowledge and express a woman’s identity. julia broussard: nüshu: a curriculum of women’s identity transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 64 response to reviewers i wish to thank my two anonymous reviewers for their insightful and helpful commentaries. some of their comments have been incorporated in this revision of my originally submitted article. specifically, i have tried to clarify and strengthen my central thesis that what is left silent and not explicitly incorporated in the nüshu autobiographical ballads is as crucial as what is stated in these texts in shaping how these women presented and understood their identities. reviewer b asks “how do these texts both contest and reinforce the social norms of the time?” in this draft, i’ve tried to clarify that in many ways nüshu actually helped uphold the local patriarchal order by normalizing jiangyong county’s class structure and gender norms within its textual and social conventions. in her dissertation, cathy silber stresses the point that the women did not use nüshu to protest against the patriarchal order. silber emphasizes this fact to contradict press reports of nüshu that she feels sensationalized the women’s script as “secret” and “feminist” in nature. although nüshu was never about social reform, silber also makes clear that the women did take pride in their accomplishments as nüshu practitioners and forged a sense of solidarity with other nüshu women that helped them deal with the injustices that they experienced as women. based on silber’s descriptions, i feel that nüshu’s overt textual and social conventions – i.e. the nature of the stock metaphorical phrases and the practice of same class girls being matched as laotong – helped reinforce local social norms, whereas the lived practices – i.e. the opportunity for women to “voice” their own autobiographical ballads and the solidarity and catharsis that women could experience when performing nüshu – permitted a certain amount of contestation of the local social order. for anyone interested in learning more about nüshu, i highly recommend lisa see’s novel snow flower and the secret fan, which follows the lives of two fictional nüshu women in jiangyong county in the 19th century from childhood through their elderly years. reviewer c kindly mentions this novel as a resource. i first encountered and read this book just after submitting this article. lisa see conducted extensive research on nüshu and the social and historical background of these women, including a visit to jiangyong county, before writing her novel, and i feel that it quite richly captures what these women’s lives were probably like circa the mid 1800s. yet, lisa see is fictionally filling in a silence in much the same way that i am academically filling in a silence in this article. in this regard, reviewer c is absolutely correct in her observation that “we can never know what that silence means.” i hope that i have made clear that this article does not present “conclusions” but rather speculations or possible interpretations about what the silence around the self-as-skilled in the nüshu autobiographical texts may mean. ultimately, what it actually means, we simply cannot know. nevertheless since, historically, texts have frequently failed to document the lives of women and other marginalized groups, attending to silences – what falls outside written or performed texts – is a key aspect of feminist methodology and of curriculum theorizing. my aim with this article is to attend to a silence – the silence of self-asskilled – that i personally sense in the autobiographical ballads based on my concurrent study of chinese women’s oral histories (in which this silence does not occur) and open this silence and its surrounding texts to scholarly attention. this brings me to the final comments made by both reviewers – namely asking what this study of nüshu offers to contemporary curriculum studies. the study of nüshu provides many parallels to numerous examples of how marginalized and suppressed people in many parts of the world have developed their own curriculums of silence, texts, and lived practices to forge identities and promote their own education. rather than, in this article, draw some explicit julia broussard: nüshu: a curriculum of women’s identity transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 65 parallels to a few of these curriculums as examples, i prefer simply to open this larger subject to discussion with tci readers. julia broussard: nüshu: a curriculum of women’s identity transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 66 appendix list of rural women’s oral histories selected from oral history project volumes name location in books age (at time of interview) province huang shunxing 黄顺兴 2003d 文化寻踪 pp. 115-134 90 guangdong ku shulan 库淑兰 2003d 文化寻踪 pp. 301-331 79 shaanxi rong mama 荣妈妈 2003d 文化寻踪 pp. 333-343 83 shandong feng daniang 冯大娘 2003d 文化寻踪 pp. 352-361 80 shaanxi wang mama 王妈妈 2003d 文化寻踪 pp. 362-367 70 guangxi yang guiying 杨桂英 2003c 亲历战争 pp. 485-487 69 shandong hou xueying 侯学英 2003c 亲历战争 pp. 492-497 66 shandong li fenglan 李风兰 2003c 亲历战争 pp. 497-508 66 shandong huang fagui 黄发桂 2003c 亲历战争 pp. 14-19, 158-163 80 jiangxi chen yingqiao 陈应桥 2003c 亲历战争 pp. 163-165 83 anhui yang yafang 杨亚芳 2003c 亲历战争 pp. 165-172 77 anhui lu fengjiao 芦风娇 2003c 亲历战争 pp. 139-150 79 hunan lin renqin 林任勤 2003c 亲历战争 pp. 145-150 83 hunan sun huaying 孙华英 2003c 亲历战争 pp. 152-156 88 hunan yu miaolan 喻庙兰 2003c 亲历战争 pp. 156-158 83 hunan lao lao 姥姥 2003a 独立历程 pp. 302-322 >90 henan julia broussard: nüshu: a curriculum of women’s identity transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 67 references blake, c. f. 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(1992). zhongguo nüshu jicheng [collection of chinese nüshu]. beijing: qinghua daxue chu ban she. microsoft word gare formatted 131108.doc to cite this article please include all of the following details: gare, arran (2008). teaching an ecological world-orientation through teaching history. transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> teaching an ecological world-orientation through teaching history arran gare swinburne university, melbourne, australia with global warming, the eco-catastrophe of which environmentalists have long warned is now imminent. thinking the unthinkable, james lovelock (2006, ch. 4) suggests that a runaway greenhouse effect will leave only be a few hundred million people left alive at the end of the century. however, george monbiot (2006) is optimistic. he argues that if we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions in rich countries by 90% we might avoid this calamity. so, how are people responding to this situation? australia is an interesting case in point. even without global warming jared diamond (2005, ch.13) classified australia as one of two countries most likely to collapse due to environmental destruction. if, as lovelock predicts, there is a runaway greenhouse effect, australia will become uninhabitable. the human survivors of this calamity will be living close to the north pole. it is not unlikely that most children born in australia today will die a hideous death due to environmental destruction. yet australians produce more greenhouse gas emissions per head than any other country and are continuing to destroy their remaining rainforests. so what has been the response of australians? concern for the environment in australia has been declining (newton, 2006, p. 24). while there are a number of reasons for this, this response suggests that australia’s education system is so fundamentally flawed that australia is now a country worth investigating to work out what all countries should avoid. at the same time, by revealing what to avoid, australia could provide guidance on what kind of education is required to produce people with the virtues necessary to grapple effectively with global ecological problems. if there is one word that sums up what is wrong with australian education, it is ‘nihilistic’. it imposes the doctrine that it is impossible to defend any values or any idea of the good life, and to even attempt to do so is oppressive. not only does the nietzschean question ‘why?’ find no answer. asking this question is severely discouraged. anyone who poses such a question is suspected of suffering from bi-polar disorder, or even worse, of being boring. in the face of an educational system that has generated such a culture it is difficult to know where to start. however, it is possible to identify a number of layers by which this nihilism is imposed. to begin with the most superficial layer, nihilism is imposed through a fragmentation of knowledge. the young have been left without any context to understand anything, let alone pose questions about the meaning of life. this fragmentation is supported by ‘political correctness’ through which multiculturalism and correspondingly, the right of everyone to have their own values without other people questioning them, are defended, and all further discussion of the issue terminated. if there is further discussion, deconstructive strategies pouring scorn on any claims to superior values or knowledge are deployed to debunk high culture, that is, anything which is not instrumental knowledge or merely a form of entertainment. however, all this is only the most superficial level, and hides the acceptance of free market libertarianism of milton friedman, and more importantly, of friedrich von hayek. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci gare: teaching an ecological world-orientation through teaching history transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 27 free market libertarianism has been almost completely embraced not only by australian politicians, but by the general population. notions of social justice are no longer taken seriously and the sole value upheld is the right of everyone to buy and sell what they choose in the marketplace. with the market, no values are required apart from subjective preferences about what to buy and sell. ultimately, all that is valued is consumption and the means to consume more. while these ideas are inculcated through neo-classical economics, the ‘gospel of greed’, which has taken the place of theology, this in turn presupposes a mix of logical empiricist epistemology and ontological reductionism. not only is there no real community, there are no real people. what appear to be people are merely arrangements of matter organized to win out in the struggle for survival. the only knowledge that counts in such a world is knowledge of how to control, whether people or nature. there are deeper levels of assumptions than these, however. and it is these that i want to focus upon. the first of these is that we are external to, and only externally related to, what we are striving to know. the second, closely associated with this, is that reality consists of objects with properties. on the basis of these assumption the goal of science is taken to be the identification of the fundamentally real objects which can explain all others, whether these fundamental objects be conceived as elementary particles, force fields or superstrings. it is these hobbesian assumptions, accepted at a very deep level in people’s whole mode of being, that leads them to accept that the only way to know the world is to enframe it to reveal how it can be controlled, that only subjective experience is of any value, and therefore that the ultimate freedom is the freedom to buy and sell in free markets according to one’s subjective preferences. it is in relation to these assumptions that we can appreciate the challenge of an ecological world-orientation. so, what is an ecological world-orientation? by this i do not mean teaching mainstream ecological theory. while some ecological theory has upheld a very radical revision of what is taken to be knowledge, like many sciences, ecology has also been contaminated with objectivist assumptions. success is equated with enframing its object of study to reveal how to control it. by an ecological world-orientation i am suggesting an orientation that rejects these assumptions. that is, it is an approach which treats the world as self-organizing activities irreducible to their constituents and environments, while being dependent upon these in order to exist. it involves conceiving ourselves, including our efforts to know and understand the world, as within the world we are trying to understand, seeing our efforts to know and understand the world as part of the world’s coming to understand itself, the beings and relations within it, and their significance. to conceive the world in this way is to go behind the subject-object dichotomy to grasp a more primordial level of processes of becoming from which subjects and objects co-emerge. it is to understand the world as a creative process of becoming within which we are semi-autonomous participants. to uphold this world-orientation is to uphold a tradition of thought going back to herder, goethe, schelling and von humboldt, who in turn were reviving a tradition of thought going back to anaximander. this tradition has provided a continuous challenge to the dominant mechanistic world-view and the one-sided idealistic reaction against this, since the beginning of the nineteenth century. it is a tradition that can make the emergence of life and mind from nature intelligible, and which provides the reorientation in thought required to conceive of eco-systems as simultaneously consisting of physical processes and increasingly complex forms of semiosis, including the forms of semiosis associated with human culture. as such, it upholds a conception of humans as essentially socio-cultural beings who can only develop as individuals through their relations to others as participants within communities. upholding the goal of science as understanding rather than knowing, it also provides the basis for http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci gare: teaching an ecological world-orientation through teaching history transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 28 overcoming the division between so-called ‘facts’ and ‘values’, between what ‘is’ and ‘what ought to be’, and revealing what is the good life. it overcomes nihilism (gare, 1996). while a major reason for teaching this world-orientation is that it is much more coherent and promising as a research program for comprehending the world in all its complex diversity than either any form of reductionist materialism or any form of idealism, what makes it imperative to reform education around this world-orientation is that the future of humanity now depends upon it. the problem is, how can it be done? it is here that the australian experiment in nihilism is so valuable. by taking nihilism to its extreme conclusion, not just theoretically but practically, australia has produced a generation of young people almost completely devoid of what in the past were regarded as essentially human characteristics. samir amin could have had these students in mind when he wrote: there are no more individuals, neither men nor women. these beings – one does not know what to call them – are neither human nor animal, neither liberated nor alienated, neither conscious nor animated by false consciousness. they are perfectly plastic. their nature is no longer determined by other men but by a perfect machine. … these beings no longer speak – they have nothing to say, since they have nothing to think or feel. they no longer produce anything, neither objects nor emotions. no more art. no more anything. the electronic machine produces – the word itself has lost all meaning – everything, these being included (amin, 1974, p.12). incurious, emotionally tepid, dull eyed, they flock to the business faculties to study marketing, a ‘vocation’ that promises the maximum economic returns for the minimum intellectual effort in a country not only threatened by world-wide over-consumption, but a country which has among the highest levels of personal debt and net-national debt in the world. through contact with such people it is possible to see what is lacking, and the stages that such people would have to pass through to fully develop as people. there would be no point in attempting to reveal to such people the possibility of a radically different way of understanding the world. quite apart from the profound lack of interest in the possibility of this, and a disinclination to read or exert the intellectual effort required for such an endeavour, it is simply beyond their comprehension. as anyone who has much contact with young students will attest, with occasional exceptions their experience of the world is so fragmented and decontextualised that they are almost incapable of transcending their egocentric and present-centred perspectives to examine their own way of understanding the world. it is necessary to begin at a much more basic level. a number of philosophers have argued that narratives or stories are more primordial than logical or mathematical thinking. without narratives, the organization of these more abstract forms of thinking would be impossible (gare, 2002). young australian students who have not developed the capacity to organize their experience of the world through stories, provide good empirical support for such claims. what we find in these students is a breakdown of the temporal organization of their lives. they manifest the postmodern state of consciousness described by fredric jameson where ‘the subject has lost its capacity actively to extend its pro-tensions and re-tensions across the temporal manifold and to organize its past and future into coherent experience…’ (jameson, 1991, p.26f.). it is stories, particularly historical narratives, which should be treated as the foundation of education to provide the means to combat this fragmentation. what is the connection between narratives and an ecological world-orientation? i have suggested above that the two most basic assumptions of our culture that need questioning and http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci gare: teaching an ecological world-orientation through teaching history transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 29 replacing are the externalist perspective associated with an objectivist theory of knowledge which accepts a sharp dichotomy between the objective world and subjectivity, and associated with this, the assumption that this objective world consists of objects with properties. the second of these assumptions is the more fundamental. taking narratives seriously involves treating not objects and their properties but actions and processes as the basic reality. stories are, as aristotle pointed out, the mimesis of actions. these are always within the context of other actions and processes. objects and their properties only have a place in narratives as context, support, instruments and obstacles to actions. once actions and processes are privileged, it becomes possible to understand how subjects emerge in conjunction with objects as processes of becoming, confronting, using and striving to overcome resistances to their projects in their environment. personal identity emerges as a form of narrative identity, a temporal coherence through change, quite different from the identity of objects (ricoeur, 1991). it is possible to construct narratives with just one agent, so that all the world comes to be seen as objects in relation to his or her project or projects, but narratives lend themselves to polyphony, to acknowledging the different perspectives of different actors, sometimes in conflict, but often pursuing a common cause, and thereby achieving a collective identity in a ‘we’ relationship. a feature of polyphonic narratives is that different perspectives are brought into dialogue to contest each other, rather than accepting difference and relativism. so narratives not only integrate the future and the past in the present, but can provide a context for dialogue and unify individuals and groups as active agents. such unity can be to different degrees, and is often associated with conflict as well as unity, and historical narratives are pre-eminently concerned with such complexity. that is, while our culture has tended to privilege monologic narratives of heroic individuals, narratives have the potential not only to enable us to understand multiplicities of co-becoming processes, but to analyse their coming into being and the different kinds of interactions between them. to follow a story involves experiencing actors and their world from the inside, putting oneself in their place. this does not necessarily mean that one is included as part of the story one is telling, but stories lend themselves to including both the narrator and the receiver of stories as part of the story. this is clear in everyday life. while stories are the mimesis of actions, actions of any complexity involve telling stories, particularly where a number of people are involved (carr, 1991). any major project involving a large number of people can only be undertaken by the actors continually recounting and updating the story of their actions to themselves and to each other, in the process adjusting their understanding of the situation and the state of the ongoing action. it is because humans are able to do this that they can undertake projects transcending the lifetimes of individuals, such as building nations, comprehending the cosmos, or creating a just world-order. such trans-generational projects clearly require the inclusion of new people into the story as participants, themselves able to participate in the process of updating and developing the story. healthy projects involve questioning and debating the point of the project, of the way the situation is defined, of the goods the project is committed to realizing, which must be included in the history of the project. that is, through stories we can understand that even in the process of telling a story we are participants in the unfinished story we are telling. stories lend themselves to an internal perspective on the world. stories for the most part recount human actions. however, with the development of history, historians have developed very complex forms of narrative that include the dynamics of the natural environment, and stories can be told about non-human actors, both living and non-living. fernand braudel (1980) developed a multi-levelled form of narrative which not only gives a place to everything from the enduring geographical conditions of social life and http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci gare: teaching an ecological world-orientation through teaching history transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 30 the mental envelopes that dominate societies for centuries, to the very short term activities of everyday life. braudel was also able to give a place to mathematical analysis of crystallized patterns within such history. in doing so he has shown how history can be extended to include the whole of nature, yet situate individuals as actors in their everyday lives within this history, a task which has been taken up by others (berry and swimmer, 1994). while braudel has shown how mathematical modelling can be given a place within history, scientists are beginning to face up to the impossibility of a mathematical ‘theory of everything’ which could replace stories. stuart kauffman (2000), a leading complexity theorist, has argued that it is only through stories that we can grasp the ‘persistent becoming’ of the universe. that is, within science itself it is coming to be recognized that stories are more primordial and more general than mathematical models of reality. in short, to overcome nihilism, to replace the fundamental assumptions that have engendered this nihilism and to develop an ecological world-orientation, historical narratives should be recognized as the foundation and core of education. through these, pupils and students should be encouraged to see themselves as creative participants within the unfinished stories they are learning about, taking an internal perspective on these and seeing themselves as part of the world being described. by incorporating the whole of nature in these stories, they should be encouraged to see the world as consisting first and foremost of inter-related physical, biological, cultural and social processes of becoming. they should come to appreciate that they are participants in a very complex world of self-organizing processes which have formed and provide a home for them, while they themselves are constituents and part of the environment or home of other processes. by inducting them into a complex of stories of the becoming of nature and humanity, their societies and communities, as both receivers and producers of stories, they should come to accept their role as co-authors of the stories they are participating within, with a deep responsibility for the lives they lead, the communities of which they are part, and, ultimately, for the future of the world. references amin, samir. (1974). in praise of socialism. monthly review, 26(4), 1-16. berry, thomas & swimmer, brian. (1994). the universe story, new york: harpercollins. braudel, fernand. (1980). on history. trans. sarah matthews. chicago: university of chicago press. carr, david. (1991). time, narrative, and history. bloomington: indiana university press. diamond, jared. (2005). mining australia. in collapse: how societies choose to fail or survive. harmondsworth: london: allen lane. gare, arran. (1996). nihilism inc.: environmental destruction and the metaphysics of sustainability. sydney: eco-logical press. gare, arran, (2002). narratives and culture. telos, 122, pp.80-100. jameson, fredric. (1991). postmodernism. durham: duke university press. kauffman, stuart. (2000). emergence and story: beyond newton, einstein, and bohr? in investigations. oxford: oxford university press, chap.6. lovelock, james. (2006). the revenge of gaia. new york: basic books. monbiot, george (2006). heat: how to stop the planet burning, harmondsworth: penguin. newton, p.w. (2006). human settlements, theme commentary prepared for the 2006 australian state of the environment committee, department of the environment and heritage. canberra. ricoeur, paul (1991). narrative identity. in david wood (ed.). on paul ricoeur: narrative and interpretation. london: routledge. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci gare: teaching an ecological world-orientation through teaching history transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 31 author arran gare is associate professor in philosophy and cultural inquiry at swinburne university, victoria, australia. email: agare@swin.edu.au http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci mailto:agare@swin.edu.au microsoft word white.doc to cite this article please include all of the following details: white, allan (2007) an australian mathematics educator in south-east asia: globalisation has virtually changed everything. transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> an australian mathematics educator in south-east asia: globalisation has virtually changed everything allan leslie white university of western sydney the universal and the particular globalisation is a familiar and inexact term that has been associated with current multiple and significant changes happening in all areas of social life, particularly economics and culture (stromquist & monkman, 2000). the word itself portrays a process of universal influence that is apparent in some attempts at defining this catch-all term such as: the processes through which sovereign national states are criss-crossed and undermined by transnational actors with varying prospects of power, orientations, identities and networks (beck, 2000, p. 11). levin (2001) studied the effects of globalisation upon seven educational institutions and while they differed in history, geography, community composition and regulatory frameworks similar forces directed their organizational responses. he described how university educators are compelled to respond to social contexts constituted and regulated by regional, national and multinational flows of ideas and information, capital, material and artefacts. levin discussed how many of the patterns and practices of everyday life are shifting and changing at different rates in response to the powerful global processes that often appear beyond immediate local control, belief or even comprehension. thus levin is emphasizing the homogenizing aspects of the globalisation processes. clarke (2003) argued that the globalisation of mathematics education, if it were to exist, would be evident in the extent a specific mathematics curriculum (policy and practice) was present in all school systems. but how homogeneous and universal is the influence and impact of globalisation? globalisation processes are transnational and have resulted in the increasing standardization of some areas yet they are only partly constitutive of local realities. globalisation is not a predetermined force that moulds local contexts into uniform shapes (singh, 2004). yet local contexts cannot be completely understood in strictly local terms (lee, 2000). stromquist and monkman (2000) point to the efforts of groups to recapture traditional values and identities as unintended effects of globalisation and the reaction of local contexts (for example the indians in latin america). green (1999) presents evidence of the mutual influence of global and local in terms of convergence and divergence: there is clear evidence of policy convergence within europe and east asia around a range of broad policy themes: including lifelong learning; internationalization in higher education; decentralization in regulation and governance; increasing use of evaluation and quality control measures; and the need to bring education and work closer together. however, this does not appear to have lead to any marked convergence in structures and processes… what is apparent is that each country has responded in practice to common http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci allan white: an australian mathematics educator in south-east asia transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 55 problems in different ways in line with its particular traditions and et (education and training) model characteristics (p. 69). in an attempt to name this process of mutual influence, robertson (1995) uses the term ‘glocalization’ whereby the global and the local interpenetrated each other, creating a hybrid. this hybrid contains sources of global trends adapted and blended with local conditions and options. lee (2000) provides an example of the malaysian education hybrid that has on the one hand standard subjects such as mathematics, social studies and the almost identical classroom hours devoted to each which are observable across nation states. and on the other hand, the local influence of the islamic movement has resulted in an emphasis on the teaching of moral values across the curriculum. thus global trends are recontextualised by the specific local settings. this paper involves a local context of an australian university operating in an environment exposed to the processes of globalisation. the paper will attempt to explore issues that arise as the universal and the particular interpenetrate. globalisation or transnational effects will have an influence upon local australian university education and curricula, but what are the issues and challenges that arise for an educator working in preservice mathematics education as a result of the tensions between global and local contexts? for example, are teaching and learning strategies transportable across countries or are they specific to the local context? to explore these issues, the paper will consider briefly the processes of globalisation that are influencing the australian higher education (ahe) system. then the paper will concentrate upon the local context of an australian tertiary mathematics educator (atme) and the educator’s responses to the challenges and issues that have arisen. and finally, an attempt will be made to determine if some responses have possible consequences for higher education beyond the local context. global context globalisation theories often emphasise different processes involving economic, cultural, technological and political aspects (stromquist & monkman, 2000; singh, 2004). thus globalisation has many important implications for the policies, pedagogies and politics involving mathematics education in universities. globalisation manifests itself through the dimensions of ecology, economics, culture, civil society, work organisation including the destabilisation of the patterns of university professional work, and information communication technologies (ict), where the speed brought about by the current technologies vastly surpasses earlier times (kirkbride, pinnington, & ward, 2001). in the area of global economic and political decision making the market and the transnational corporations are seen as very important (stromquist & monkman, 2000). the power exercised by these two players may not benefit all, thus in the market education and knowledge may be seen as components in the attainment of competitiveness and thus accessibility may be limited and controlled. transnational organizations can provide knowledge management systems as a means around this access issue, but others are highly critical of their impact (stromquist, 2002). the power of the market is also evident in the influence of business upon education. at local levels, there is an increased presence of business in cooperation with the schools, determining what constitutes quality and what is needed (stromquist & monkman, 2000, p. 6). http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci allan white: an australian mathematics educator in south-east asia transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 56 the forces of the market have impacted upon ahe resulting in education becoming increasingly commodified, with transnational education in australia now exceeding wheat as an export earner (lee, 2000, p. 327). australian academics work in a context where educational export in 2004 has exceeded $5 billion to be come the third largest export after tourism and individual transport and seventh largest national export of all goods and services (atweh & clarkson, 2005, p. 110). australia has mirrored the global trend of neo-liberal economic ideologies whereby the state limited its role to basic education and extracted user fees from higher levels of public education as any other service in the market place (stromquist, 2002). thus universities are expected to become self-supporting and students are expected to pay for the service they receive. in the late 1980s the hawke government minister john dawkins administered significant structural changes to ahe. dawkins’ restructuring had the purpose, since realized, of greatly expanding ahe participation rates. to fund this expansion dawkins altered the funding arrangements for ahe, primarily through the introduction of a local graduate tax system, the higher education contribution scheme (hecs) and fees for overseas students. prior to the dawkins funding changes 90% of ahe was government funded. the level of government funding was declining gradually under the labor administration of keating with the balance being taken up by the new hecs and fee based funding arrangements. however the howard government funding arrangements have led to a dramatic decline of over 6.9% per student between 1995 and 1999 (cripps, mcmahon & seng, 2002, p. 4). there has been a steady increase in the higher education contribution scheme (hecs) payments by students. with the federal government’s tighter controls on over-enrolments the result has been increasing competition amongst universities for a declining number of students. stromquist (2002, p. 128) included the performance of schools of education in training teachers as a global challenge. green (1999) provides the background for such a trend, situating it in global demographic trends involving ageing of populations and workforces in the advanced nation states. the declining size of the youth cohort and the ageing of the teaching population created challenges with teacher recruitment and retention. a recent submission to the senate inquiry into higher education in australia by the australian mathematical association reported that the australian context would experience a shortage of mathematics teachers as a consequence of an ageing teaching force and an inadequate supply of pre-service mathematics teachers. the submission highlighted: a dramatic fall over the last decade in the number of secondary students studying the more advanced mathematics subjects and a lack of appropriately qualified staff (carey, guttmann, & thomas, 2001, p. 55). and the submission proposed that in the near future: ... there will be an emerging realization by parents and the students themselves for the necessity of mathematical competence, and that this is related to quality teaching. they http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci allan white: an australian mathematics educator in south-east asia transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 57 will demand the right to learn mathematics and will demand properly qualified teachers (carey, guttmann, & thomas, 2001, p. 58). in a review of teaching and teacher education, the department of education science and training (dest) (2002) reported data indicating “a recent trend towards shortages of teachers in some subject area specialisations” (p. 7). in particular the number of tertiary students in secondary mathematics education courses declined by 46% between the years 1992 and 2000, and students in combined mathematics – computing secondary education courses declined by 37% (dest, 2002, p. 8). the australian overall figures also showed 45.7% of current secondary teachers were aged 45 years and above in 2000 (dest, 2002, p. 8). this current and looming shortage of mathematics teachers has created pressure on pre-service teacher programs to deliver more quickly and efficiently and this issue will be elaborated upon at a later stage in this paper. there has been a number of responses to these global trends upon the ahe system, so that: today, australia evinces a large diversity of institutions of higher education that spend a great deal of time recruiting students from within and from abroad (stromquist, 2002, p. 107). the recruitment of overseas students has become an important source of funds for some universities: at present there are about 303,000 overseas students enrolled in all sectors of australian’s education system, of which $6 billion (andrews, 2005) is earned from about 186,400 students enrolled in the tertiary sector (department of education and training, 2005). this sector has continued to increase over the last 5 years or more by approximately 10 per cent or more. (atweh & clarkson, 2005, p. 110) many universities have enthusiastically embraced online teaching and learning in order to give them an edge in the market place. in three years from 2000 to 2002, online courses throughout the world had grown from 700,000 to 2.2 million (stromquist, 2002, p. 124). in many cases these directions have been forced upon staff as a result of non-consultative senior management decisions. thus policy has moved from strategic planning to continued responsiveness in order to cater for market sensitivity (stromquist & monkman, 2000, p. 19). so market forces and transnational processes have resulted in the ahe system reacting in ways that resonate with responses of other nation states. is this the case for the reader? it is appropriate now to consider how the local context has modified these responses to accommodate local concerns. how does an australian tertiary mathematics educator engaging with, and responding to the local experiences of globalisation, cope with and adapt to the changing local and global order? australian tertiary mathematics educator’s (atme) local background context people experience globalisation in complex, uneven, and varied ways across different places and locales (singh, 2004). these complex uneven and varied ways of responding by the atme are grounded to a large part in the educator’s personal and professional background, the background and expectations of the educator’s students, and the specific local university’s responses to the global trends. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci allan white: an australian mathematics educator in south-east asia transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 58 the atme works with undergraduate and postgraduate pre-service primary and secondary mathematics teachers. he has been at his current university for the past eight years after returning from two years of living and working in malaysia. the atme has an extensive primary and secondary school mathematics teaching background as well as a strong network of educators and institutions in countries within south east asia. he gained his doctorate in mathematics education in 2000. the atme is involved in coordinating and presenting what are regarded as 'method' units where the focus is upon mathematics pedagogical knowledge rather than content knowledge. the units attempt to prepare the pre-service students in how to teach the content of secondary school mathematics. as a result of research reporting student dissatisfaction with units that are too theoretical and academic and not paying attention to the realities of schools (lampert & ball, 1998), the method units have the added expectation that lecturers will model 'best practice' teaching and learning strategies. thus there is a greater emphasis on the process of delivery and assessment. what constitutes ‘best practice’ is an amalgam of local and international research and practice. the students expect that these units will play a large part in preparing them for the classroom. while the foundation units (for example psychology) also do this, the method units provide the context for the foundation subjects to operate. it is usual for students to report that method units have the greatest direct relevance to their professional experience placements in schools. method units aim to provide pre-service teachers with a range of teaching and learning strategies to be used in their particular context. global trends mentioned earlier involving increasing financial pressure resulted in the university seeking to maximize quality education while using fewer resources and using them more efficiently. the impact of this trend upon the local context has meant that over the past eight years at the educator’s university, the atme has witnessed a decrease in the time allocated to the units taught (15 weeks of 3 hours to 9 weeks of 4 hours), an increase in the class sizes (from average of 17 in 1998 to 28 per class in 2005), as well as a general reduction in the time allocated to complete an undergraduate or postgraduate course (a 2 year add-on bachelor of teaching that could be accelerated to 1 year. the majority of students choose the accelerated option). this trend contradicts beck (2000) who wrote in response to ten errors of thinking about globalisation and education stated: one of the main political responses to globalisation is therefore to build and develop the education and knowledge society; to make training longer rather than shorter; to loosen or do away with its link to particular jobs or occupation, gearing it instead to key qualifications that can be widely used in practice. this should not only be understood in terms of 'flexibility' of 'lifelong learning', but should also cover such things as social competence, the ability to work in a team, conflict resolution, understanding of other cultures, integrating thinking, and a capacity to handle uncertainties and paradoxes ... (pp. 137-8). thus the challenge of this global trend for the atme involves the ability of the method units to deliver key knowledge and strategies that are able to be widely used in school practice and to produce reflective lifelong learners. this section has very briefly outlined some of the challenges and constraints faced by the atme as a result of the university's response to globalisation. what would the reader do when faced by the same challenges? the next section continues the themes of globalisation and examines some of the attempts at meeting the challenges and constraints faced by the atme as a result of the university's response to globalisation. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci allan white: an australian mathematics educator in south-east asia transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 59 virtual solutions to global challenges the atme has used research and ict to support the development of mathematical thinking and effective pedagogy within his pre-service mathematics teachers (white, 2003). the globalisation processes of ‘time-space compression’ are evident in this work. singh (2004) lists ‘time-space compression’ as: first, it signals the shrinking of space in terms of the time taken to travel physically and electronically between places and locales. second, time-space compression points to the increasing connectivity across places, or the extension of social relations across distance. third, it suggests the specific presence and absence of people in specific locales (p. 103). thus ict is used to provide a local context inhabited by images, ideas, expertise and people who are not physically present. in all mathematics method units it is intended that students are immersed in the efficient and effective use of icts in order to give them the confidence and the knowledge to incorporate icts in their own teaching. however it is the underlying pedagogical practices that are employed in using ict which are crucial. students are given the opportunity to consider carefully the social and individual effects due to icts as their unit progresses. so while discussing the strategies used in the development of mathematical thinking their units will also address the questions, is it possible: to differentiate between what ict can do with what it is doing and what it should be doing? for ict to support learning and the building of knowledge? for ict to contribute to the development of mathematical thinking? and for ict to be more efficient and effective in producing independent thinkers, skilled in life-long learning, with sound social values and capable of intelligently handling complex problems? all units are presented using a combination of lectures and tutorials and students have access to a web site for each unit, which are located on the webct platform of the university's server. with the decrease in unit time and the increasing numbers in class, the unit web sites are used to maximize the engagement of students in each class. one way this is achieved is through the provision of all lecture notes, tutorial material and copies of overheads used in the classes, for students to download and read before their class. this allows the atme to abolish the traditional style of transmission lecture class. instead, the class becomes an opportunity for a collaborative dialogue with the material, where students are encouraged to explore the ideas and the information supplied while the lecturer models pedagogical practices based upon constructivist learning principles. thus the drudgery for students in copying is removed and more time is provided in class for them to think and respond to what is presented. the atme assists the students to deepen their understanding by facilitating the making of connections with previous learning, and students who are unable to attend are able to minimise their loss by having access to the notes. some issues that arise in class may become on-line discussions that continue outside of the classroom and where the material expands and progresses until the end of semester. during the lectures and tutorials, other icts are introduced, demonstrated and used by the pre-service teachers, such as spreadsheets, internet activities, cd-roms, and databases. the secondary pre-service teachers are loaned a graphical calculator that they return at the end of the year. there is an expectation that preservice teachers will boost (by out of school time) their skills on certain technologies. take home activities are planned and assigned to develop this expectation such as becoming familiar with the keyboard of a graphics calculator. web-based simulations and applets are also very useful as take home activities. at the very beginning of each unit, students must register on the discussion board by leaving a short message of introduction. this is a check that all students have access and the http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci allan white: an australian mathematics educator in south-east asia transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 60 necessary computer knowledge and skills. students are divided into communities of learners and each community is given a private chat area on the discussion site. thus discussions can be continued and students can gradually build and refine their ideas as the unit progresses. there has been considerable research completed on the effect of internet use upon the patterns of social interaction of the users. castells (2001, p. 124) in summarising this research stated: thus, overall, the body of evidence does not support the thesis that internet use leads to lower social interaction and greater social isolation. but there are some indications that, under certain circumstances, internet use may act as a substitute for other social activities. he further claimed that the new pattern of sociability in our societies was characterised by networked individualism. to further encourage the process of student networking, one or two questions are displayed on the unit web site as a focus for the key ideas for that week, so that by the end of the unit there is a collection of about twenty. the communities of learners are asked to consider and discuss how to respond to these questions. the aim was to assist them to focus their thinking. one component of the unit assessment is a 2-hour end of semester extended reflection activity paper (taken under examination conditions) that consists of 5 questions taken from the collection, although precisely which ones are not known. research involving the extended reflections paper has revealed gains from this assessment strategy. students reported that the stress from fear of the unknown in examinations was removed or greatly reduced. assessment markers reported that the quality of the answers exhibited a deeper understanding of the issues as a result of the prolonged thinking and reflection. the preservice teachers revealed that they used to a lesser extent pre-prepared and memorised answers which they reported using in other examinations (white, 2003). another strategy for coping with larger student numbers involves the atme's use of the discussion facility. it is a rule that questions concerning assignments, examinations or unit material will only be answered via this space. this not only ensures that every student has equal access to the information, but it also saves the atme a great deal of time and effort as questions need only be answered once. also, the atme advertises the times when he will be on-line and this reduces the expectation by students that they will receive an immediate reply. it also discourages them from asking trivial questions, and quite often another student will answer a question, and the atme needs only to add a brief supporting statement. an unintended benefit is that the better students through their questions and enthusiasm greatly influence the pace and quality of the unit. the more relaxed students are encouraged into greater effort by the thoughtful questions and responses from the keener students. other research indicated that students in both primary and secondary areas experienced difficulty in obtaining expert and quick mathematical pedagogical advice while completing in-school professional experience programs (white, 2002). due to the increased numbers, the atme was unable to supervise all the secondary and primary pre-service students. in response, a webct site was constructed as a means of providing access to speedy expert advice on the teaching of mathematics. this site contained a number of features such as collections of classroom teaching ideas and lesson plans, links to other helpful websites, a threaded discussion site, frequently asked questions, and an entry port for submitting material. although the provision of pedagogical and content information was seen as important, it was access to fast feedback and assistance that the students valued highest. for example one student from the secondary program wrote: http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci allan white: an australian mathematics educator in south-east asia transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 61 i had my first lessons and they were so terrible! it was 2 x 50 min lessons for yr9 adv math class. kids were ok when they were with my supervising teacher, but in my lesson they just didn't listen and i had serious problems in attracting students concentration on the tasks and controlling the whole class. so my supervising teacher gave me 1/14 total failure! after discussion with my supervising teacher, i found i had problem(s) with * long teacher talk. * disorganised lesson (my lesson went astray very quickly!) * need to be more assertive. * lack of teacher-students interaction and the list goes on... i agree with everything my supervisor commented, but i felt so down after my first shot. i feel so bad. can you give me some tips that can improve my lessons? also i would like to know how long teacher's talk should be. (i.e. what's the kid's concentration span?) (white, 2002, p. 588). in this case a telephone call was made to the student (overseas student from korea) and time was spent allowing the student to ventilate his feelings before gently moving him to consider his part in the situation. the important issue arising from this example is the speed in providing feedback which resulted in the student being able to return the next day with confidence and with a plan of action. the student managed to pass his professional experience after a very poor start. this section has very briefly outlined some of the attempts at meeting the challenges and constraints faced by the atme as a result of the university's response to globalisation. what would the reader have done differently? the next section continues the themes of globalisation and ict but examines the challenges that have arisen through the increasing overseas contacts with academics. beyond the local context: a global lifestyle or a lonely traveller? luke (2001) examined the imagining of professional identities for a number of senior academic women employed in higher education institutions in southeast asia. she elaborated on the homogenising aspects of educational globalisation (for example through the greater standardisation of degree programs and accreditation) and identified an elite cosmopolitan transnational female educational community. these women attended international conferences, were advisors on international and national education committees, and yet worked within specific local institutions. this facility to move between the transnational and the local was not without complications. around the world young graduates fresh out of university look for jobs with international opportunities. at the same time, however, many older executives tell how tedious it is to live out of a suitcase, moving from one anonymous international hotel to another. they speak freely of how little they spend at home, how rarely they see their partner or spouse, of the monotony of airline food and lounges, of missed birthdays and forgotten anniversaries (burns, dell'anno, khan & poppleton, 2001, p. 300). stromquist (2002) observes that transnational corporations use transient professional migrants as a means of supplying human capital and advanced technical knowledge to their many operations. she claims that it remains an invisible fact of globalisation processes. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci allan white: an australian mathematics educator in south-east asia transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 62 globalisation has meant greater travel opportunities for the atme and the building of a wide and rich source of colleagues and contacts within the nearby asian countries. ict has enabled this network to be constantly used and renewed, and collaboration is encouraged through the simplicity and immediacy of the technology. it has allowed the atme to become a regular presenter at asian conferences and to work in overseas universities and centres such as seameo recsam which is the southeast asian ministers of education organization's regional centre for education in science and mathematics. it could be argued that being rootless is desirable for a global lifestyle, where skills, knowledge and ideas are easily transportable allowing the person to belong anywhere and everywhere. yet there is evidence that people become increasingly uncertain, anxious and feel they belong nowhere. a global lifestyle necessitates immersion in many cultures. yet this can be in opposition to the developing of a deep appreciation and knowledge of one culture and using it as a grounded basis for valuing new experiences. this dilemma is particularly illustrated by the educator's research involving a process of teacher professional learning called lesson study. while the lesson study program originated in japan (stigler, & hiebert, 1999) it has manifested itself in various forms according to cultural contextual differences in countries such as usa (fernandez, 2000), and australia (white & southwell, 2003 a, b). the educator was invited to participate as 'expert' when the school of educational studies of university science malaysia initiated a lesson study research project in june 2004 at two secondary schools in a district of northern malaysia, which was the result of earlier professional discussions and research (chiew & lim, 2003). this collaboration is largely conducted through the use of ict. lee (2000) describes the malaysian system as a product of the interaction of global and national influences. thus it is possible to identify the global thrust of technology and the local influence of islam upon the education system. so while the atme continues to be collaboratively engaged with the malaysian researchers and has three jointly authored research papers, the fact of knowing how the lesson study process works in australia was no guarantee of success in the malaysian context. in fact each country that has implemented the process, while identifiable with the japanese original model, has made adjustments to accommodate the local circumstances, resulting in a number of versions of the lesson study process. for example, in the new south wales (nsw) statewide implementation teachers were recruited through a voluntary process, whereas the malaysian teachers were directed to participate by their school executive. the educator’s research illustrated again that it was not surprising to observe: how ideas get translated into policies and practices depends greatly on the local settings, and, very often, what may at first appear to be similar policies may end up being quite different practices (lee, 2000, p. 329). this section has very briefly outlined some of the issues that have arisen through the increasing overseas contacts with academics by the atme as a result of globalisation. it is appropriate to conclude this discussion of the interplay of global and local influences and the atme’s attempts at seeking a balance. conclusion the paper has discussed an atme’s attempt to engage with and respond to the constraints and challenges that have arisen as a result of globalisation within a local university context. the paper has explored the interaction of the global homogenisation processes upon the presentation of mathematics education within a local university context in order to identify http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci allan white: an australian mathematics educator in south-east asia transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 63 specific local responses. for example, particular examples were given where pedagogical practices are being increasingly positioned within a virtual space. other examples were briefly provided where ideas while transportable across country boundaries, nevertheless still required knowledge of the local context for the ideas to succeed. there is an importance of knowing other groups and cultures and the development of comparative insights across situations and countries in order to improve understanding of current and evolving trends (stromquist, 2002). only a brief effort in this paper was made to consider if the experiences of the atme were transferable beyond the educator’s local context. in a paper of this type, general principles of response are not possible for it remains for the reader to determine if these reflections resonate with their own experiences and reflect the universal or instead constitute particular and unique local responses. references atweh, b., & clarkson, p. (2005). conceptions and tensions in globalisation and their effects on mathematics educators. in p. clarkson, a. downton, d. gronn. m. horne, a. mcdonough, r. pierce, & a. roche (eds.). building connections: research, theory and practice (merga 28) (pp. 105-112). melbourne: deakin university press. beck, u. (2000). what is globalization? cambridge (uk): polity press. burns, s., dell'anno, p., khan s., & poppleton, a. (2001). faces of globalization. in p. kirkbride (ed.). globalization: the external pressures (pp. 285-303). ny: john wiley. carey, a., guttmann, t., & thomas, j. (2001). the senate inquiry into higher education: submission by austms. the australian mathematical society gazette, 28(2), 55-58. castells, m. (2001). the internet galaxy: reflections on the internet, business and society. new york: oxford university press. clarke, d. (2003). international comparative research in mathematics education. in a.j. bishop, m.a. clements, c. keitel, j. kilpatrick, & f.k.s. leung (eds.), second international handbook of mathematics education (part 1, pp. 143-184). great britain: kluwer cripps, h., mcmahon, l., & seng, m. s. y. (2002). prospects for quality assurance in australian higher education: government initiatives and institutional responses. paper presented at the australian association for institutional research forum. perth. department of education science and training (dest) (2002). web site accessed on 10 october 2006, http://www.dest.gov.au/nr/rdonlyres/8c010e04-0076-433f-bf51-1a5b4ef10726/1658/discussionpaper.pdf green, a. (1999). education and globalization in europe and east asia: convergent and divergent trends. journal of education policy, 14 (1), 55-71. kirkbride, p., pinnington, p., & ward, k. (2001). the state of globalization today. in p. kirkbride (ed.). globalization: the external pressures (pp. 13-42). ny: john wiley. lampert, m., & ball, d. l. (1998). teaching, multimedia, and mathematics. new york: teachers college press. lee, m. n. n. (2000). the impacts of globalization on education in malaysia. in n. p. stromquist & k. monkman (eds.). globalization and education (pp. 315-332). maryland us: rowman & littlefield. levin, j. s. (2001). globalizing the community college: strategies for change in the twentyfirst century. new york: palgrave. luke, c. (2001). globalization and women in academia: north/west, south/east. mahwah, new jersey: lawrence erlbaum associates. robertson, r. (1995). globalization: time-space and homogeneity-heterogeneity. in m. featherstone, s. lash, & r. robertson (eds.). global modernities (pp. 25-45). london: sage. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci http://www.dest.gov.au/nr/rdonlyres/8c010e04-0076-433f-bf51-1a5b4ef10726/1658/discussionpaper.pdf allan white: an australian mathematics educator in south-east asia transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 64 singh, p. (2004). globalization and education. educational theory, 54(1), 103-115. stromquist, n. p. (2002). education in a globalized world: the connectivity of economic power, technology and knowledge. maryland us: rowman & littlefield. stromquist, n. p., & monkman, k. (2000). defining globalization and assessing its implications on knowledge and education. in n. p. stromquist & k. monkman (eds.). globalization and education (pp. 3-25). maryland us: rowman & littlefield. white, a. l. (2002). expert mathematical pedagogical assistance to pre-service teachers using a website. in w.-c. yang, s.-c. chu, t. de alwis, f. m. bhatti (eds.), proceedings of 7th asian technology conference in mathematics 2002 (pp.585-591). melaka: multimedia university malaysia. white, a. l. (2003). ict support in the development of mathematical thinking. in w.-c. yang, s.-c. chu, t. de alwis, m-g lee (eds.), proceedings of 8th asian technology conference in mathematics (pp.249 256). blacksburg, va: atcm inc. white, a. l. (2004). the long-term effectiveness of lesson study, a new south wales mathematics teacher professional development program. in i. p. a. cheong, h. s. dhindsa, i. j. kyeleve, & o. chukwu (eds.). globalization trends in science, mathematics and technical education 2004 (pp. 320-338) (proceedings of the ninth international conference of the department of science and mathematics education, universiti brunei darussalam). brunei: university brunei darussalam. author allan white has taught in primary and secondary schools in three australian states. he has lectured at a number of australian and overseas universities and has worked on international projects in malaysia, thailand, brunei darussalam, indonesia and the cook islands. his research interests are teacher beliefs and attitudes; teacher professional learning; and mathematics curriculum incorporating ict. he is currently a senior lecturer at the university of western sydney. email: a.white@uws.edu.au http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci mailto:white@uws.edu.au microsoft word power.doc to cite this article please include all of the following details: power, anne (2007) the journey of a teacher using asian arts and literature with students in primary and middle school years. transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> the journey of a teacher using asian arts and literature with students in primary and middle school years anne power university of western sydney, australia introduction this paper tracks the journey of a teacher’s classroom practice following professional development in 2000. it is a narrative in which the writer has observed the teacher encountering both success and disappointment. from the perspective of the external ‘other’, the writer aimed to chronicle and interpret the classroom practice of a teacher who had completed an extended course of professional development at the university of western sydney. the writer, from that university, has a research interest in arts learning. nevertheless, the research took on a life of its own as the teacher’s circumstances changed and became a key component of the narrative. the graduate certificate program, teaching studies of asia, contributed to the completion of a master of education for the teacher; and subsequently research was initiated to critique her evolving practice in her classroom as a consequence of that program. the research methods adopted were interviews and discourse analysis. the teacher was interviewed at the end of the year in which the graduate certificate was undertaken about the ways in which she had implemented what she had learned from her study. at that time she provided access to integrated units of work (the australian term for cross-disciplinary topics within a course) and policies she had created for the primary school setting in which she worked. subsequently she was interviewed again in early 2005 when she provided access to units of work created for the high school setting into which she had moved. the narrative focuses, at one level, on engaging students with material that encourages understanding and admiration for different cultural expression and, at another level, on the teacher’s aspirations for her work in the high school setting. teaching studies of asia emphasises mobility and travelling for unpacking the identity formations and knowledge productions of transnational communities with cultural allegiances and political connections across a number of sites within and beyond the nation. change globalisation and the arts since the 1980s, perhaps longer, australia has been deciding what its future with asia will be. in education, this has led to programs such as access asia in schools and the implementation of the national asian languages and studies in australian schools (nalsas) modules in teaching studies of asia offered by various universities. the access asia program aims to increase empathy, knowledge and understanding about the peoples and countries of asia amongst teachers and students. it also provides professional development for teachers focused towards the design of quality studies of asia learning sequences. the national asian languages and studies in australian schools (nalsas) strategy developed as a cooperative initiative of the commonwealth, state and territory governments. this strategy was in response to the council of australian governments (coag) working group on asian languages and cultures report, asian languages and australia’s economic future, which http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci anne power: the journey of a teacher using asian arts and literature transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 43 was endorsed by the prime minister, premiers and chief ministers at the coag meeting in 1994. the asian studies council, that began its operations in 1988, intended that australians should feel at home with asian art, music, theatre and literature by the early 21st century. it promoted the incorporation of asia literacy in school curricula; but singh (1995) cautions that the term ‘asia literacy’ is intended to represent an australian institutional response in helping to negotiate australia’s future repositioning in the region. with due regard to caution, the teaching studies of asia program provided practical application of the theory that understanding another culture requires both knowledge and the development of attitudes and values (halse & baumgart, 1995). it also acknowledged that a re-orientation of australian education to include curriculum with asian frames of reference can be argued on the grounds of intellectual and cultural imperatives alone without reference to economic imperatives such as skilled migration and trade (bishop & mcnamara, 1998; fitzgerald, 1997). when it comes to the arts, gleeson (2003, p. 5) argues that globalisation may be the new colonialism ‘because its forces have the potential to be all-encompassing’. its effects are more complex. there are good and bad outcomes in relation to globalisation in the arts. on the positive side there are the benefits of international exchange, the free flow of ideas and the potential gains from new communication technologies (fensham et al., 2000). the negative effects lie in a possible standardisation of art forms as a consequence of the imbalanced global power relations dominated by the west. there is also a potential loss of respect in a global discourse where a non-dominant culture is received as an ethnic curiosity rather than an equal having its own cultural meanings (gleeson, 2003). multiculturalism, too, is problematic, if it is based on an idea where no culture can be judged by the criteria applied to another. in such a case, it is impossible to find common ground. the positive effect of these tensions is to challenge the west as the centre of globalisation (hall, 1992). seares (2001, p. 13) reminds us that: ‘it is in our works of art that we reveal to ourselves and others, the inner vision that guides us as a nation’. globalisation, or preferably global exchange, plays a crucial role in allowing a nation to reveal itself and its culture to others, and to have that reciprocated. indeed debates over globalisation and multiculturalism may find their best expression in arts that are taught, produced and discussed in the midst of such unresolved concepts. in this era of globalisation, there are developments beyond the concept of multiple identities expounded in the 1980s-90s by film makers (trinh 1989), novelists (rushdie, 1991), sociologists (sarup, 1996) and cultural theorists (hall, 1996). in the past, such multiple identities have been explored for their relevance to migrant experience (gingras, 1998). now, singh (2005, p 120) argues for the transformation of society through responsive education on the grounds that teachers must reassess ‘curriculum narratives centred on dated articulations of global/national connectivities’. a preparatory ground seems to be offered by wardani (2004) who writes of the state of being translated and translating the other as the process of translation. wardani’s (2004) research has been re-examining postcolonial identities by critiquing the conflicting signifying process between indonesian language and visual culture and the relationship of that conflict to the issue of indonesian identity building. the metaphor of ‘translation’ is chosen with care as the indonesian language is a relatively new one derived from many languages (loschmann, 2004). the metaphor is extended in an image of a babelian space that appears to get smaller and unified in a post-colonial world. in reality, wardani (2004) argues that in such a space it is easier to encounter differences and that world multiculturalism is built on the paradoxes that arise in translation of those differences. such a situation is always unstable, always in flux as individuals and communities are continually encountering hybrid meanings in the process of articulating their identity, of having that http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci anne power: the journey of a teacher using asian arts and literature transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 44 translated, of ‘listening’ to the expressions of identities and of translating the other. such mappings have the potential to diversify the modes of social and cultural intervention and multiply opportunities for the politicisation of minority citizens that go beyond ideas of supplement by challenging notions of a singular or hierarchical national space and narrative. method the data collected in this study consisted of teacher interviews and texts supplied by the teacher to demonstrate her practice. in providing a narration of a teacher, the writer has positioned herself as the external other, with due regard to the advantage that gives for a ‘wide-angle’ vision (wynter, 1992, in denzin & lincoln, 2000, p. 262). in line with postmodern locating of the interpretive project, (schwandt in denzin & lincoln, 2000 p. 203), this research is less about an understanding that can be applied and more about an unravelling of the multiple meanings of notions of self, identity, objectivity and subjectivity. the researcher used semi structured interview technique, with a framework of key questions and flexibility to issues raised by the teacher. the researcher took an active role in interaction with the teacher. as noted by schwandt (1997, p. 79 cited in denzin & lincoln, 2000, p. 663), ‘it has become increasingly common in qualitative studies to view the interview as a form of discourse between speakers’. foucault defines discourses as ‘practices that systematically form the objects [and subjects] of which they speak’ (1972, p. 49 cited in denzin & lincoln, 2000, p. 494). foucault’s thinking about discourse as social practice, demonstrated in concerns with social locations (in this research, a school), suggests the importance of understanding the practices of subjectivity. what foucault calls discourse in practice is, in other words, ‘the working mechanism of social life itself’ (gubrium & holstein in denzin & lincoln, 2000, p. 494). the graduate certificate in teaching studies of asia had formed half of a masters coursework requirement for the teacher participant in this research. the teacher concerned had completed the coursework requirements in mid 2000. the researcher addressed appropriate ethical requirements and obtained the consent of the teacher to track her subsequent teaching practice. the method involved two phases, with the initial phase aiming for immediacy of response and the second phase aiming for depth of response. in phase 1, at the end of 2000, an interview took place with the teacher who had completed her higher degree study in the middle of the year and was in the process of implementing the ideas she had developed during the teaching studies of asia course. the interview included but was not confined to questions about: any changes to her teaching practice; the nature of experiences planned in visual arts and music using resources from countries in asia; the proportion of time in the study of creative arts that those experiences represented; any problems encountered in teaching about art forms from asian cultures, the nature of students’ responses to the experiences; and the school’s implementation of the teacher’s devised policy about including study of art forms from asian countries. the data on teaching for this interview was coded in terms of planning and programming, policy, resources and student responses. these questions were designed to briefly summarise what had been possible to implement in the six months after the completion of the teacher’s study. in phase 2, a further interview took place after four years to focus on developmental changes in the teacher’s practice. when setting up this interview, it was necessary to take account of the change in workplace for the teacher from primary to secondary education. the interview drew upon questions about: activities that were influenced by the teaching studies of asia course; the impact of the course on the teacher’s practice; the travel to china undertaken by the teacher and her use of that in the classroom; the extension to her teaching practice through her involvement in the http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci anne power: the journey of a teacher using asian arts and literature transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 45 professional development of other teachers; the move the teacher had made from primary to high school teaching and the consequences of that change; and the benefits for students flowing from the teacher’s professional growth. the data on teaching and learning was coded in themes of significance, engagement, deep understanding of traditional and contemporary art forms, knowledge of cultural change and avoidance of stereotypes. this coding formed the basis of one strand of the narrative. the data on teacher aspiration and workplace setting was coded in themes of integrated units of work (the name used in australian schools for crossdisciplinary topics), collaborative planning and the imperatives of middle years strategies. this coding formed the basis of the second strand of the narrative. in schools, generalist primary teachers using creative arts with year 5 and 6 classes (nsw stage 3) are following government mandates but are, nevertheless, something of a rarity (mca & asme, 2002). among such teachers, those who implement learning experiences based on the cultures of neighbouring asian countries represent an unknown quantity but it is estimated to be a small percentage. in terms of the quality teaching elements (nsw det, 2003) such planning encompasses the elements of cultural knowledge, inclusivity and connectedness. teachers who provide their students with opportunities to experience aspects of the cultures of asian countries through their art forms are moving from what might be locally known towards a more global context. the journey of the teacher in these pages emerges in the context of government funded initiatives to move school educators towards an ‘asia-literate’ australia, facilitating communication in regional and global contexts (garnaut, 1989; fitzgerald, 1997). ‘jacqui’ undertook the government-funded teaching studies of asia course in 1999-2000. jacqui is second generation australian, her grandparents having migrated to australia from europe. at the time of undertaking the course, she had some 15 years experience of teaching in a primary school and was at that time teaching on a year 5 class. prior to studying, while she had taken on the role of access asia and nalsas coordinator for the school, she had not travelled to any asian country and spoke none of the languages of those cultures. she was motivated to take the course because she wanted to do the best she could in the nalsas co-ordinator role, wanted to challenge herself and broaden her own knowledge. indeed, the primary reason teachers undertake professional development is the desire to know more (halse, 1996) in relation to the day-to-day operation of their classrooms (guskey, 2002). one teacher’s journey at the end of 2000, jacqui responded to a series of questions that asked about the changes made to her teaching practice and planning. she recalled that she had only taught asian arts as part of a nalsas unit of work in human society and its environment (hsie). when asked about differences from previous teaching, jacqui said: in implementing a unit of work on mandalas, i found that my students learned more about asian culture and belief systems through the arts than they had previously in the hsie unit. the mandala unit was something i found fascinating and stimulating and evoked a similar response from my students. other than batik, puppets and the angklung, i knew nothing about asian arts. however i am now launched on a wonderful journey. the students loved it and so did i. i’ve always enjoyed teaching new things and learning with my students. this statement aligns with the aim of the asian studies council for australians to feel at home with asian art, music, theatre and literature by the early 21st century. it exemplifies the theory that understanding another culture requires more than knowledge alone (halse & baumgart, 1995). it demonstrates the importance of the teacher sharing her positive attitude http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci anne power: the journey of a teacher using asian arts and literature transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 46 with students. jacqui found the content fascinating and modelled that to the students in her class, learning alongside them. the unit jacqui designed and implemented for her year 5 students, on mandalas in buddhist art, had several stages in it. first, the students had the opportunity to see a variety of mandalas, learn about their significance and research more information from websites. then groups of students planned and designed sand mandalas. lastly, students completed a class mandala using coloured paper and quilting designs, demonstrating this to another class. students also completed reflection sheets on their learning about mandalas and buddhist values. jacqui’s description was corroborated with photographic evidence of the students’ creations of the mandalas. these showed a level of engagement and deep understanding that was further developed in the written reflections of the students on their learning about symbolic meanings in traditional manadalas as well as newly created meanings in their own patterns. it was also evident in the writing of students in the other class to whom students in jacqui’s class demonstrated what they had been doing. school policy one of the tasks the teachers were asked to do for the teaching studies of asia course was to design an internal school policy for the inclusion of asian arts in the creative arts curriculum. teachers responded to this task by finding common ground between the asia education foundation’s (aef) studies of asia: a statement for australian schools (2000) and the nsw board of studies’ k-6 creative arts syllabus and support documents (2000). the aef statement declares that: australia’s social and economic and political relationships with the asian region heighten the need for educational policies and programs to improve knowledge and understandings by australian students of the nations and cultures of asia (2000, p. 1). jacqui was able to nest that statement within the creative arts syllabus’ more generalised support of the development of a tolerant and diverse society. her rationale for the inclusion of asian arts in the creative arts curriculum for her primary school was based on the way they provide 1. awareness and appreciation of australia’s multicultural society 2. insight into the history as well as the social, religious and cultural values of traditional and contemporary asian societies 3. rich and diverse art forms which can be enjoyed by the school community 4. acknowledgement of the cultural heritage of many australians 5. opportunities to explore ways asian art forms have changed as a result of interaction with other cultures 6. opportunities to explore how asian art forms have inspired the range of artistic expression in other cultures the last points align with fajardo’s observations that the arts of asia do not exist ‘in an [association of southeast asian nations] asean vacuum because global culture [is] made accessible by computer chips. [they] seep into our lives…and [are] transformed in our own cultures’ (1994, p. 65). the focus on appreciation of both traditional and contemporary in a selected asian culture also addresses concerns (singh, 1995) about oriental fantasies that construe the essential difference between asia and europe as the ancient traditions of the one and the modernism of the other. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci anne power: the journey of a teacher using asian arts and literature transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 47 learning by moving jacqui travelled to china in 2001 to attend the linking latitudes conference in shanghai organized by access asia and the aef. this gave her the impetus to devise a unit of work on china for students. her travel took her into schools where she was very taken by the outstanding creative arts displays. for her school she bought multiple calligraphy sets and magazines for challenging stereotypical ideas that students might have developed through lack of experience of families from other cultures. she wanted her students to be aware of the way in which primary school-aged children in shanghai had hobbies and favourite activities that were not so very different from their own. she set out to dispel the myths that can arise when the only resources children have access to in schools are to do with china’s ancient past. for her personal resources, jacqui had her name made on a stamp to use whenever she was marking students’ work in the chinese unit. jacqui, in the 2005 interview, confirmed that the teaching studies of asia course had ‘opened up a whole new world of learning; that i’d only learned european and american and australian history.’ then when she travelled to china, she stated: my strongest memories are of the people. i would get up early in the morning and walk with another teacher out on the streets in shanghai. we would walk through the back streets and look at the markets; we would strike up conversations with grandparents that were walking their grandchildren to school; we’d look at the tai chi happening on the bund. i guess we were totally immersed in looking at the way people started their day in a modern city in a different part of the world. in beijing on the other hand, we had the chance to see the forbidden city and to take in the fact that this is such an ancient, organized culture. for jacqui, this travel was an important affirmation of her taking on the role of nalsas coordinator, the teaching studies of asia course and her desire to learn more about the cultures of asia through their art forms. she was reflecting, both at the time and afterwards, on what she was learning about her values and her personal growth: and she was also becoming aware of how her new understanding ‘might influence others’ (holly, arhar & kasten, 2005, p. 292). her responses show an appreciation of both present and past; and her discussions with her year 5 students, based on her memories of china – from the images of the people she would see on her early morning walks to the broadening and deepening of her understanding of its history – gradually opened their ideas to a world beyond their experience. she documented in her journal when they, in turn, told her what a difference it made to their ideas. the use of her own experience in the classroom helped her students understand on multiple levels: making sense of images that are the same and those that are different; considering aspects of chinese culture; learning from their teacher’s response to that culture in modern and ancient modes. developing this, jacqui devised a hsie unit on how and why cultures change. in this way, her teaching reinvigorated curriculum content that she had previously implemented with her students. secondment access asia contacted the teachers who attended the conference and asked them to share what they had done; and jacqui gladly did so. her professional journey continued in a different role when she was seconded through the system in which she worked to be involved in the writing of units of work on the art forms of asia. her teaching ideas were circulated to schools and made available through a website. in this way, wardani’s (2004) idea of ‘translating’ culture became part of jacqui’s practice. in a sense, jacqui embraced a kind of multiple identity (sarup, 1996; gingras, 1998) transformed, by her study and her travel, beyond her previous http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci anne power: the journey of a teacher using asian arts and literature transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 48 australian-of-european-heritage existence. her sphere of influence widened from her own classroom to touch the students of other teachers who implemented units of work that she wrote. her commitment to integrated learning in the unit on cultural change led her to create links between english, visual arts, music and drama. she incorporated experience with chinese opera and opera masks. in the classroom, jacqui took a simple story, dramatised it and accompanied it with improvised music. the students made their own paper mache masks. as jacqui observed: through the story the students learned about buddhist beliefs. we talked about the symbolism of sounds that accompany chinese opera, colours in the masks and what they mean, and the students’ designs for the character they wanted to portray. when they displayed their masks they looked absolutely stunning. and they enjoyed wearing them. for jacqui, it is the art forms of the culture that reveal the inner vision of the people of that culture. her view confirms the intellectual and cultural benefits of re-orienting australian education to include curriculum with asian frames of reference (as argued by bishop & mcnamara, 1998; fitzgerald, 1997). through the unit of work, her students reflected on what inner peace might mean and trialled simple buddhist meditation techniques. jacqui gave her students a voice in these classroom decisions and a ‘safe’ space in which to share their ideas. her developing practice, in action research terms, was contributing to the creation of a quality learning environment. the students wrote about their interpretations of the story, created masks that showed the journey towards happiness and inner peace and improvised music that evoked the changing states of mind of the characters. jacqui was interested in her students gaining knowledge of themselves as well as of other cultures. in this approach, jacqui also aligns with seares (2001) about revealing self and other through art forms. high school teaching jacqui moved to teaching in high school, wanting to teach studies of asia to older students. she had experienced the growth of stage 3 students and confidently anticipated what students in high school might achieve. she was not dissatisfied by her primary school teaching but she in servicing of teachers had given her the opportunity to experience more complex learning interactions. she anticipated finding similar interactions in a high school setting, feeling that ‘teaching studies of asia in a high school would be even more exciting.’ there have been both advantages and disadvantages in this move. on the positive side, she embarked on a train-the-trainer course implementing the use of access asia’s voices and visions cdroms, enabling her professional development of teachers to include those resources for senior english students. in her own high school teaching in stage 4 english, she incorporated texts that would allow students to explore asian story. from looking at european texts, she would move to wider reading projects on such topics as people whose lives have been displaced by war. whenever she could she would encourage students to read novels that had more focus on asian cultures, such as chinese cinderella. she explained: with my year 8s, i’m doing a drama unit on romeo and juliet. so we’re looking at the shakespeare text, the baz luhman film and an asian film called ‘the chicken rice war’. that’s set in singapore and has two young people fall in love from two rival families. we’re simultaneously looking at the expression of love across cultures. i use a simple series of questions about what the art form is, where was it made and who is the audience to whom it speaks. from the voices and visions resource, i’ll incorporate video clips and http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci anne power: the journey of a teacher using asian arts and literature transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 49 contemporary poetry that show emotions that are common amongst all cultures. i think that when students in high schools look at asian-based texts, they see that there are universal themes. using such texts challenge the stereotypes. and that’s where i like using these resources to increase students’ awareness. this area [in which the school is located] is still very insular and children don’t have much experience of thinking they belong in a diverse society or what their place in the world is. jacqui documented student discussions on expressions of emotion in different cultures in her teaching journal. she reflected on her choices of stimulus material and how they positively engaged the students in learning about such themes as love, hate, despair and the resolution of conflict. students commented that the emotions shown in both films were deeply felt. they went on to identify other film examples they had seen that reinforced a stereotype that they would now question. giroux (1992) writes that, through a postmodern perspective, the cultural relations of the centre and periphery are seen with more clarity. there is a challenge to the ‘hegemonic notion that eurocentric culture is superior to other cultures and traditions’ and giroux protests against the expunging of ‘the stories, traditions and voices of those who, by virtue of race, class and gender constitute the other’ (1992, p. 55). in studying film, students can develop an understanding of the social construction of individuals and of subjectivity. this, in turn, allows students to ‘begin to acknowledge the many different interpretations of the world and appreciate this difference’ (robinson & jones diaz, 1999, p. 36). macnaughton (1998) also states that teachers can assist students to deconstruct their understandings of racial and cultural meanings, offer alternative meanings and facilitate discussion of the exercise of power of some peoples and cultures over others. in simple tasks, jacqui led her students to experience a different kind of globalisation – one in which the idea of the free flow of ideas (fensham et al., 2000) and the potential gains from communication technologies such as film is lived out. giroux (1992) also states that new forms of knowledge emerge through a postmodern emphasis on breaking down disciplines. one of the things that jacqui missed in her high school teaching was the possibility to teach through integrated (cross-disciplinary) units of work. the year 8 classes jacqui taught for english and for religious studies were not the same students. furthermore, the disadvantage for jacqui in the move to high school has actually meant less teaching that brings studies of asian cultures into the classroom. such teaching would have been most easily located in subject choices above year 8 level. however, as a former experienced primary school teacher, the executive of her new workplace saw the potential for jacqui to be an important force in transition to high school as students enter year 7 and through year 8. while she has fulfilled this expectation, taking on a co-ordination role, it was not then, and does not remain now, her motivation for change. in fact, she states: i actually, perhaps, came to high school on false pretences. and each year when we write down our preferences for the next year, i’ve put that i’d like to teach in asian studies. in the new syllabus for hsie, there is scope for teachers to do optional units on asia. that hasn’t happened. but we have quite a well resourced library; we have lots of textbooks in teaching studies of asia and we offer japanese and chinese language at the school. i’m also disappointed at my own children’s primary school that there is nothing offered involving asian studies. it is a great loss that a teacher so ready to embrace the teaching of different cultural experiences in her school has been deflected from doing so as a result of the middle years agenda of the high school. she acknowledges that she is good with juniors and a good transition person; but her own professional need was to move in another direction and it has http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci anne power: the journey of a teacher using asian arts and literature transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 50 not happened for her. to some extent, there may be an unconscious playing out of the hierarchy of primary and secondary school teachers in this aspect of jacqui’s story. there has certainly been a priority of the institution’s needs over the teacher’s; and that appears from an external perspective to be short-sighted. jacqui’s teaching and learning strategies in integrated units of work jacqui’s story is one that demonstrates the process of translating other cultures for and with her students. in her former primary school, her stage 3 integrated unit of work on how and why cultures change incorporated many skills for the students. they defined the word ‘culture’, creating a concept map of the elements that combine to form and develop a culture. the students broke into groups to make landform maps of china and created charts to explain the population statistics for china and australia. they researched and made timelines of chinese historic, scientific and technological events. in pairs or groups the students worked to map cultural influences on australian identity and on chinese identity. on venn diagrams they recorded similarities and differences of chinese family life and australian family life in the past and of both cultures in the present. from these diagrams, they discussed the common family values of both cultures, past and present. the students explored the history of chinese migration to australia and dramatised their learning through techniques such as hot seat and readers’ theatre. they researched and conducted power point presentations about the influence on australian society of chinese festivals, feng shui, chinese medicine, cuisine and horticulture. they created information brochures on china’s contributions to world heritage, about such sites as the great wall, the forbidden city, and the terracotta warriors. jacqui was able to talk with her students about her own experiences of seeing these. the importance of jacqui’s sharing of experiences with students is nested in action research principles. she was involved in reflecting on her own thinking and the ways it was becoming more inclusive and more differentiated (holly, arhar & kasten, 2005). simultaneously, she was planning and implementing experiences that would encourage students to reflect on their thinking. to complete this unit, the students created two picture walls, one using images of traditional and contemporary chinese society and the other of australian society. in groups, the important information on each wall was first recorded as a series of issues and then reduced to a handful of main ideas. the final step for the students was to reduce the key ideas into what the group consensus believed to be the key message. jacqui was proud of her year 5 class’s achievement in this unit. her experience in teaching in a primary school was that the students were open to absorb new learning experiences. she states that if i’d packed the primary students on a bus and taken them to cabramatta [a sydney suburb} and said this is vietnam, or to chinatown [in the centre of the city] and said this is china, they would have believed me; because a lot of the students don’t even travel to sydney. so they are not aware of our multicultural population; but they were happy to be challenged with new content and processes of learning. this statement was borne out in the ways in which the students researched topics, recreated narratives in their own words, considered the impact that music would have on their presentation and in so many ways demonstrated their knowledge. however she has not been able to implement integrated units of work in high school. she taught her unit of work on mandalas within a visual arts context to assist the visual arts teachers at a time when the school’s building program meant that art teaching could not take place in the art rooms. the art co-ordinator commented that the boys especially loved the unit. jacqui speculates that it might have been the highly organized drawing of the mandala that appealed to them; but she is not able to support that speculation as without continuously teaching the class, she missed the student feedback at first hand. jacqui has shared resources http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci anne power: the journey of a teacher using asian arts and literature transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 51 that explored asian cultures from voices and visions with teachers of year 11 students to provide context for some of the work they do in english. nevertheless, in the high school, there has been little collaborative planning across disciplines that would promote the kind of rich, multi-layered learning that jacqui had been able to bring to her primary classroom and model to other teachers on the staff there and in professional development courses. furthermore, jacqui believes that there are teachers who tend to use resources, texts and repertoire that they have always used: when i’ve spoken at conferences, i’ve tried to show other teachers that i don’t have all the answers. i’ve only visited one asian country. but i’ve read a lot, got some resources and been motivated to get to know more about asian studies. it’s amazing the impact that it has on the kids when they can recognise what a symbol means. you’re opening up a little more of the world for them. i try to encourage teachers who are yet to travel in asia that they can teach this. you have to have the right mindset. fensham et al. (2000) argued for the benefits of international exchange and jacqui’s practice embodies that notion. in her primary classroom, jacqui was able to put aside outdated thinking about the ways in which australia connects with asian countries, as argued by singh (2005); and to listen to the expressions of identity of the other (wardani, 2004). in her high school classrooms, she has been curtailed in her desire to engage students in integrated learning about asian cultures at a more complex level. to a large extent she has been asked to teach on stage 4 and, within that stage, she has not been able to have the same class of students for several subjects such as history, studies of religion and english, that might have facilitated her engaging the students with multiple skills. teachers in many places can see studies of asia as outside the mainstream of curriculum. by contrast and in line with emerging frameworks of teaching standards, jacqui sees professional knowledge as a core component of teaching. her taking on the course initially both enriched the work she was already doing and opened up further possibilities in employment, mentoring and publication. she is keen to see students as ‘global citizens’; and in her primary classroom she had her students looking at projects that ausaid were conducting and encouraged them to discuss case studies of such issues as child labour in india. inspired by access asia resources, she had taught an integrated unit of work that looked at global connections and debated why links with asian neighbours were important. conclusion the decision to research the changing practice of a teacher using asian art forms and literature grew out of a goal to remove some of the complexities that primary school teachers might find in using unfamiliar cultural resources. from the perspective of the ‘external other’, the writer commenced the research with the professional audience of primary school teachers in mind. as the narrative developed, the writer’s goal has also changed. researchers such as bauman (1993) and noddings (1990) (both cited in denzin & lincoln, 2000, p. 204) argue for an ethic of closeness, care and relatedness in the interaction between researcher and participant; and in such a framework, ethical relationship is ‘grounded in the notion of beingfor the other’ (ibid. p. 205). the writing of this narrative has been framed from such a perspective. in this instance researcher and teacher share the same cultural heritage, with multiple epistemological positions. nevertheless, both researcher and teacher have been conscious of ‘walking out of one culture and into another’ (anzaldua, 1987, p.77). this observation of a teacher’s journey is part of a broader context of social and cultural research that assists in the analysis of transnational communities, their histories and cultures. teachers are encouraged to reflect critically on their actions; and be aware that they can http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci anne power: the journey of a teacher using asian arts and literature transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 52 ‘consciously, if humbly, influence where [society] is going’ (holly, arhar & kasten, 2005, p. 52). more importantly however, the relational approach between transnational communities and asian arts and literature has opened up spaces for a specifically australian inflection to, and extension of, current articulations of transnationalism and curriculum inquiry. the teacher in this study endeavours to teach in a way that understands the world in which both she and her students are located now; she is looking beyond existing practices, questioning them with respect to larger social issues. she is consciously trying to meet needs of the students that were not being met before; and she is concerned with long term consequences. the mode from which she operates is one of continuing cycles of action research and reflection. her current workplace is a few steps behind her. references anzaldua, g. (1987). borderlands/la frontera; the new mestiza. san francisco: aunt lute. asia education foundation (aef) (2000). studies of asia: a statement for australian schools. (2nd ed.). melbourne: curriculum corporation of victoria. bauman, z. (1993). postmodern ethics. oxford: blackwell. bishop, b. & mcnamara, d. (eds.) (1998). the asiaaustralia survey 1997-1998. south melbourne: macmillan education australia. denzin, n. & lincoln, y. (eds.) (2000). handbook of qualitative research. (2nd ed.). thousand oaks, ca: sage. fajardo, b. (1994). the aesthetic of asean expressions. manilla: asean committee on culture and information. fensham, r., throsby, d., rayson, h., stewart, g. & sellars, p. (2000). our souls are not for sale. meanjin. 59 (4). pp. 164-188. fitzgerald, (1997). is australia an asian country? st leonards, nsw: allen & unwin. garnaut, r. (1989). australia and the northeast asian ascendancy. canberra: agips. gleeson, r. (2003). dislocate, renegotiate and flow: globalisation’s impact on art practice. commissioned by the arts council with critical voices 2003. retrieved 20 june 2005 from http://www.recirca.com/backissues/c107/p67_70.shtml gingras, f. (1998). multiple identities. ottawa: university of ottawa press. giroux, h. (1992). border crossings: cultural workers and the politics of education. new york: routledge. gubrium, j. & holstein, j. (2000). analyzing interpretive practice. handbook of qualitative research. (2nd ed.). eds. n. denzin & y. lincoln. thousand oaks, ca: sage. pp 487-508. guskey, (2002). professional development and teacher change. teachers and teaching: theory and practice. 8 (3) pp 381-391. hall, s. (1996). who needs identity? questions of cultural identity. eds. s. hall & p. du gay. london: sage. halse, c. (1996). cultures of change: teachers’ stories of implementing studies of asia. kingswood: university of western sydney. halse, c. & baumgart, n. (1995). do teachers regard australia as part of asia? paper presented to the 25th annual conference of australian association for research in education. hobart. holly, m., arhar, j. & kasten, w. (2005). action research for teachers: traveling the yellow brick road. upper saddle river, nj: pearson education, inc. loschmann, h. (2004). facilitating symposium: encounters with ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘globalism’ – a debate concerning the politics of culture and identity in globalization from the arts’ perspective. chiang mai art museum and heinrich boll foundation. retrieved http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci http://www.recirca.com/backissues/c107/p67_70.shtml anne power: the journey of a teacher using asian arts and literature transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 53 20 june 2005 from www.hbfasia.org/southeastasia/thailand/exhibitions/identitiesversusglobalsation macnaughton, g. (1998). techniques for teaching young children: choices in theory and practice. melbourne: longman mca (music council of australia) & asme (the australian society for music education). (2002). national report on trends on school music education provision in australia. sydney: author. noddings, n. (1990). ethics from the standpoint of women. in d. l. rhode (ed.) theoretical perspective on sexual difference (pp. 160-173). new haven, ct: yale university press. nsw department of education and training (det). (2003). quality teaching in nsw public schools. retrieved from http://www.curriculumsupport.nsw.edu.au/index.cfm robinson, k & jones diaz, c. (1999). doing theory with early childhood educators: understanding difference and diversity in personal and professional contexts. australian journal of early childhood. 24 (4) 33-39. rushdie, s. (1991). imaginary homelands. london: granta. sarup, m. (1996). identity, culture and the postmodern world. edinburgh: edinburgh university press. seares, m. 7/5/01. globalisation of trade and culturearts journal, the australian. retrieved 20 june 2005 from http://www.ozco.gov.au/issues/trade/media.htm singh, m. (1995). edward said’s critique of orientalism and australia’s ‘asia literacy’ curriculum. journal of curriculum studies 27 (6) pp. 599-620. singh, m. (2005). responsive education: enabling transformative engagements with transitions in global/national imperatives. m. apple, j. kenway & m. singh (eds.) globalising education: policies, pedagogies and politics. new york: peter lang. trinh, t. min-ha. (1989). woman, native, other. bloomington: indiana university press. wardani, f. (2004). a dislocated generation. in symposium: ‘encounters with ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘globalism’ – a debate concerning the politics of culture and identity in globalization from the arts’ perspective’. chiang mai art museum, organised by heinrich boll foundation, 2004. retrieved from http://www.hbfasia.org/southeastasia/thailand/exhibitions/identitiesversusglobalsation author anne power lectures in music education, mentoring and curriculum change at the university of western sydney and is author of two volumes in the australian opera series, published by the australian music centre. her commitment to sharing research ideas in the immediate region led her to present at several asia pacific symposiums on music education research and the pacific science intercongress, as well as studies of asia professional development conferences. she was part of a research team which evaluated the delivery of arts education within the 2003 arc-funded research project identifying and analysing processes in schooling producing outstanding educational outcomes, to assist national renewal in junior secondary education, known as aesop. she also contributed to the 2005 destfunded research motivation and engagement of boys: evidence-based teaching practices. email: am.power@uws.edu.au http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci http://www.hbfasia.org/southeastasia/thailand/exhibitions/identitiesversusglobalsation http://www.curriculumsupport.nsw.edu.au/index.cfm http://www.ozco.gov.au/issues/trade/media.htm http://www.hbfasia.org/southeastasia/thailand/exhibitions/identitiesversusglobalsation mailto:power@uws.edu.au microsoft word zuo.doc to cite this article please include all of the following details: xiulan ,zuo (2007) china’s policy towards minority languages in a globalising age. transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> china’s policy towards minority languages in a globalising age zuo xiulan dalian maritime university, china introduction: is globalisation a threat to the future of minority languages? one of the main linguistic issues facing the world in the 21st century is the extinction of a substantial proportion of the world’s languages. the technological, social, cultural, and, economic trends of globalisation seem to contribute towards the endangerment of languages. the age of globalisation refers to the current times of growing interdependence and interconnectedness of the modern world. people around the globe are more connected to each other than ever before through increased international communication and travel. information and money flow more quickly than ever across countries. goods and services produced in one part of the world are increasingly available in all parts of the world. this phenomenon has been titled ‘globalisation.’ the ‘free market’ ideology of globalisation appears to demand cultural and linguistic homogenisation leading to the extinction of minority languages around the world. some six thousand languages are spoken today throughout the world. this number was probably higher in the not so distant past because many languages have become extinct due to various reasons, including globalisation. the process of extinction is still going on all over the world. the threat to linguistic resources is now recognized as a worldwide crisis. hale (1998) and woodbury (1998) believe that only 600 out of the 6000 plus present languages are fully secure. krauss (1992) believed that a language with fewer than 10,000 speakers is probably at risk. this is a crude generalisation, but it may nonetheless be useful as a first approximation. nearly 60 percent of world languages are already endangered. the percentage of languages with fewer than 10,000 speakers was higher in north (78%) and south america (77%), and australia/pacific (99.5%) compared with for example, in asia (53%) (nettle & romaine, 2000). language loss is a natural phenomenon in the development of society and language. nationalism is one of the main reasons why small groups come to be conceived as minorities. nationalism and nation building often favour linguistic assimilation to make sure that every member of a community is able to use the dominant language. this results in transferring prestige to, and asserting the superiority of the dominant language. in extreme cases, linguistic minorities are given little or no rights. all nation-states, despite their political ideology have persecuted minorities in the past, and many continue to do so today through the policies designed to assimilate indigenous people into the dominant culture. moreover, the world languages do not all have the same function, the same vigour or the same prospect. according to romaine (2002, p.1) ‘fewer than 4 per cent of the world’s languages have any kind of official status in the countries where they are spoken… most languages are unwritten, not recognised officially, restricted to local community and home functions and spoken by very small groups of people…’ the future of a vast majority of languages is in doubt, and more and more efforts are being made to document, describe or even preserve them. languages, like some animals, can be regarded as endangered species. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci zuo xiulan: china’s policy towards minority languages in a globalising age transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 81 globalisation is accelerating extinction of minority languages around the globe. ‘competition between languages in a globalising world is considerably more fluid and languages are more susceptible to change now than in a less technologically advanced world’ (maurais & morris, 2003, p. 5). thus, the number of languages will disappear much more quickly than before. the arrival of new types of media: internet, radio and television satellites forces language adoption of technical norms for facilitating the transfer of computerized data. standardisation of new technologies could have consequences for the destiny of many world languages. new information technologies make most minority languages excluded de facto from the world wide web. they ‘are first and foremost handicapped, because they do not represent sufficiently profitable markets for the software giants’ (thomas, 2002, p. 2, cited in maurais, 2003). global economic influences are prompting the young to leave isolated villages for the urban area in search of better lives. thus the native languages and cultures will be abandoned for the sake of social mobility. the age of globalisation confers privilege upon those prestigious language speakers. it inevitably elevates the widespread languages over others. nowadays, the more and more tightly integrated world generally favours the spread of english. english is a strong language, accepted, and used as the medium of international communication. english is being accused of threatening the existence of other languages. but this is not unique to english. the french authorities are still being accused of suppressing minority languages within their borders, and so are spain, norway, and several other states (jóansson, 1996). the future of the world’s major languages is at stake in the age of globalisation, including the 100 or so tongues officially recognized by governments or sub-national regions, such as the constitutional languages of india and the languages of the russian nationalities. most of the thousands of sometimes struggling minority languages are in danger of extinction. in this context, how do multicultural countries respond to the issue of endangerment of minority languages? in this paper, i attempt to present an overview on china’s policies aimed at preserving minority languages. the paper is divided into three sections. following this introduction, in section one, i have provided details on how loss of minority languages is an issue in the age of globalisation. in section two, i have given an overview on china’s attempts towards protecting endangered minority languages. in section three, i have provided few recommendations for the chinese government to further protect the minority languages from extinction and these are followed by conclusions to this paper. international attention to endangered languages the sheer scale and speed of language shift and loss have led to a heightened interest in the fate of the minority languages of the world in the last two decades. linguists started making language loss as the focus of major international meetings. for example, in the conferences on maintenance and loss of minority languages, held in netherlands, in 1992, the conference on language endangerment held at dartmouth college in the united states in 1995, and the conference on language rights in hong kong in 1996, international attention was drawn into the issue of extinction of world languages. ever since its creation in 1945, unesco has recognized the importance of cultural diversity. one of its missions has been to encourage mutual knowledge and understanding between people using every means of mass communication. in 1993, unesco set up the ‘endangered language project’, a programme to record the world’s disappearing languages before their last speakers died. at the stockholm inter-governmental conference on cultural policies for development in 1998, cultural diversity was perceived both as a basic building http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci zuo xiulan: china’s policy towards minority languages in a globalising age transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 82 block of the ‘emerging global civic culture’ that required global ethics and values, and as a major source of social energy for individual nations. the universal declaration on cultural diversity 2001, places diversity at the heart of the development process understood not only in terms of economic growth, but also as a means of achieving a more satisfactory intellectual, emotional, moral, and spiritual existence (article 3). this declaration also firmly links cultural diversity to a respect for universality, indivisibility, and the interdependence of human rights and fundamental freedoms (article 4). cultural rights are identified as the right to freedom of expression and the dissemination of one’s work in the language of one’s choice, the right to good education and training, and the right to participate in the cultural life of one’s choice and to conduct one’s own cultural practices with respect for the human rights and fundamental freedoms of others (article 5). unesco’s thirty-second general conference in october 2003, decided that the matter of the protection of the diversity of cultural contents and artistic expression should be the subject of an international convention, and invited the director-general to submit a preliminary draft of such a document to its next session in 2005. in october 2003, unesco’s general conference adopted two standard-setting measures that emphasise the potential of information and communication technology (ict) to contribute to the promotion of freedom of expression, linguistic, and cultural diversity, education, and access to information, particularly information in the public domain. the recommendation adopted by this conference promotes multilingualism. it recognizes that language is the foundation of communication between people and is also part of their cultural heritage. for many, language has far-reaching emotive and cultural associations and values rooted in their literacy, historical, philosophical, and educational heritages. the harmonious development of the information society is therefore, only possible if the availability of multilingual and multicultural information is encouraged (unesco publications for the world summit on the information society, 2003). need for protecting world/minority languages there are several arguments advanced for protecting minority languages around the world. they can be summed up as follows: first, language is a valuable resource. according to the sapir-whorf hypothesis, language is the carrier of the knowledge and experiences accumulated by a nation, or a group throughout history. it conveys the core values of the community and builds ambition and spurns invention essential to strengthening the aspirations of people. language structures provide a means of perceiving the world of which the speakers are unaware. the loss of a language is the permanent, irrevocable loss of a certain vision of the world, comparable to the loss of an animal or a plant. traditional knowledge may indeed linger even after a native language is lost, but the richness and diversity of that knowledge cannot survive even one generation of language loss (skutnabb-kangas, 2000). when a language disappears, there is likely to be a serious loss of inherited knowledge and cultural legacy to the nation and to the world as well. second, language is an essential element of a person’s identity that should be respected. language spoken by somebody and his or her identity as a speaker of that language are inseparable. languages are dependent on the users; they cannot be seen separately. they are robust markers of group membership. you are what you speak. sir james henare, a maori leader, expressed such sentiments about the maori language by saying that ‘the language is the life force of our maori culture and mana [‘power’]. if the language dies, as some predict, what do we have left to us? then, i ask our own people who are we?’(nettle & romaine, 2000, pp. 22-23). http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci zuo xiulan: china’s policy towards minority languages in a globalising age transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 83 third, languages constitute an irreplaceable resource for understanding the work of the human brain. languages provide us with information about the way the human brain processes thoughts. thus, preserving the thousands of human languages that currently exist may help scholars to understand how language works. linguists need to study as many different languages as possible if they are to perfect their theories of language structure, and to train future generations of students in linguistic analysis. ‘if every linguistic system finds a slightly different way for individuals to conceptualise, reason, communicate, be expressive and so on, then the loss of one way takes away a building block that might allow us to understand the process more clearly’ (wright, 2004, p.228). one consequence of declining use of a language is a loss in its complexity and richness of expression. fourth, linguistic and cultural diversity embodies linguistic human rights (lhr). the overwhelming majority of endangered languages are an indictment of the history of injustice towards minorities and their languages (skunabb-kangas, 2000). owing to deficient education programs and urbanisation unequal distribution of access to literacy and language study for minority languages ends with unfair competition in the globalised ‘linguistic market’. minority languages and cultures are stigmatised as being traditional, backward, narrow, and inferior. they are marginalised, deprived of resources for their development and use. freedom to name your people is one of the essential human rights. cultural, linguistic, and other human rights should act as a strong corrective to the market economy. lhr are situated both on an individual and collective level, supporting free identification with the mother tongue and allowing a group to exist and to reproduce its language and culture. they are ‘necessary rights’ to maintain linguistic and cultural diversity. human rights are guarantees of linguistic and cultural diversity. the defence of cultural diversity is an ethical imperative, inseparable from respect for human dignity. it implies a commitment to human rights and fundamental freedoms, in particular the rights of persons belonging to minorities and those of indigenous peoples. multilingualism is a cultural and personal fortune, and in many countries it is necessary for the protection of human rights. skunabb-kangas (2000) states that maintenance programmes will become natural human rights only when the state and educational authorities stop being a problem by looking at minorities as if they were the problem. linguistic diversity is essential to freedom of thought and the survival of modern people. linguistic human rights support the existence of minority languages and they should be used prevent further loss of linguistic and cultural diversity in the world. china’s attempts to protect minority languages: multinational and multilingual china the people's republic of china is a united multi-ethnic country. so far, 56 ethnic groups have been identified and recognized by the central government. the population of various ethnic groups differs greatly. while the han ethnic group has the largest population, the other 55 ethnic groups with relatively small population are customarily referred to as ‘ethnic minorities.’ according to the fifth national census, conducted in 2000, the population of all the 55 ethnic minority groups totalled 104.49 million, accounting for 8.41 percent of the total population of china. people of all ethnic groups in china have made important contributions to the creation of a unified multi-ethnic country and the creation of the time-honoured chinese civilisation, as well as chinese historical progress (facts and figures: regional autonomy for ethnic minorities in china, 2005). modern standard chinese is the most widely spoken of all chinese languages or dialects. it is the language of hui and man ethnic groups, in addition to the han majority, which belongs to an independent branch of the sino-tibetan language family. the speakers inhabit a huge area of the mainland, running diagonally from the extreme southwest to manchuria in http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci zuo xiulan: china’s policy towards minority languages in a globalising age transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 84 the north and along the entire east coast north of shanghai. although chinese speakers write the same language, there are some specific dialects mainly including mandarin, wu, min, yue (commonly known as cantonese), and hakka (kejia). the beijing-based standard dialect is known as modern standard chinese or mandarin. this dialect is the standard for the national language, which is officially called putonghua in china, guoyu in taiwan, and huayu in singapore. to increase linguistic and cultural homogeneity, the government is making an effort to standardize and spread the national language. the other 53 ethnic groups speak over eighty languages (such as tibetan, uighur, kazakh, mongolian, korean, zhuang, yi, miao, buyei, dong, hani, bai, dai, li and yao), spoken by around 6% of the population, and 30 of them have written forms. most of them belong to the four different language families including altaic, sino-tibetan, south-asian and indo-european language families. ‘among them, more than 20 languages are used by less than 1,000 people and on the verge of extinction, said sun, president of the chinese association on minority languages. the situation is no better with languages of larger ethnic minorities’ (researchers work to save endangered languages, 2001). the manchurian ethnic group with a population of several million has only about a dozen elderly native language speakers in the fuyu county of northeast china’s heilongjiang province. the same is true with many other languages. in the small regions where an ethnic minority concentrates, their own language is retained mostly among the elderly people. the younger generation has shifted to putonghua. during the last 20 years, in search of a better life more and more young people leave their hometowns for the urban areas and gradually shift their language. whaley (2002, cited in wright, 2004) documented the language shift among the oroqen, a group living on the northwest frontier of china. the oroqen tried to save their language when they became conscious that their language was not being transmitted to the next generation. however, their initiatives did not turn out to be successful, because the language has no unitary standard written form. also, substantial populations of zhuang – dong – (thai-) language speakers were assimilated into the ye’ (cantonese) over several millennia, and in the last millennium many members of minorities in the southwest, including quite a few yi, have amalgamated themselves into the chinese population who speak south-western mandarin (bradley, 2001). china’s policies towards endangered minority languages as a multiethnic and multilingual country, how is china preserving the many cultures and languages in its society? what are the government’s policies towards minority people and minority languages? the initiatives of the government to protect minority people and salvage their languages are evident in china’s many policies, and are presented below in the following sections. all the following texts are based on details sanctioned by the state government of the people’s republic of china. political policy towards minorities: equality of all ethnic groups and local autonomous governments china has been a multi-cultural and multi-disciplined society for a few thousand years. all minorities in china today have the same rights as the han chinese. since minorities reside in the remote areas that are usually poor, the chinese government has a preference policy to provide training for the minorities to progress, govern, and manage themselves. the essential principle in china’s policies towards minorities is that people of all ethnic groups are equal. this is guaranteed in act 4 of the constitution of the people’s republic of china. it prescribes that ‘people of all ethnic groups are equal in the people’ republic of china. the government will guarantee the rights and interests of all minorities, and develop a good relationship http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci zuo xiulan: china’s policy towards minority languages in a globalising age transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 85 between all ethnic groups. people are equal and should be united and help each other. any oppression of minorities or prejudice against them will be prohibited in order to avoid the damage of national unity and division of the state’ (selected rules and policies towards minorities in the people’s republic of china, 1996, p.28). the basic political policy is the establishment of local autonomous governments in ethnic regions. regional autonomy for ethnic minorities in china means that, under the unified leadership of the state, regional autonomy is practiced in areas where people of ethnic minorities live in compact communities. in these areas, organs of self-government are established for the exercise of autonomy. the implementation of this policy is critical to enhancing the relationship of equality, unity, and mutual assistance among different ethnic groups, to upholding national unification, and to accelerating the development of places where regional autonomy is practiced and promoting their progress. these areas are recognized in the prc's constitution and are given a number of rights not accorded to other administrative divisions. this means that under the leadership of the central government, there is a special autonomous administration in charge of the affairs in minority-intensely-populated regions. autonomous regions, prefectures, counties, and banners are covered under section 6 of chapter 3 (articles 111-122) of the constitution of the people's republic of china, and with more detail under the law of the people's republic of china on regional national autonomy. the constitution states that the head of government of each autonomous area must be of the ethnic group as specified by the autonomous area (tibetan, uyghur, etc). the constitution also guarantees a range of rights including independence of finance, independence of economic planning, independence of arts, science and culture, organization of local police, and use of local language. in addition, some important concessions are made to the non-han, such as the non-imposition of the one-child family. from 1947 to the end of 1998, 155 ethnic autonomous areas have been established in china, including 5 autonomous regions, 30 autonomous prefectures, 120 autonomous counties, and 1256 autonomous villages. they encompass 75% of the total minority population and inhabit 64% of the total area of china (wu, 1997). language policy towards minorities: the right of all ethnic groups to use and develop their native languages and writing systems china’s minority-language policy is based upon its minority-political policy. people of all ethnic groups have the right to use and develop their native language and writing systems. the right was first written into the provisional constitution of the prc passed in 1949, elaborated upon in the first constitution passed in 1954, simplified in the constitutional revision of 1975, and fully elaborated in the constitutional revisions of 1978, 1982 and 1999 (huang, 1992, cited in zhou, 2000). legally, the right to use one’s native language is especially guaranteed in ethnic autonomous areas. act ten of the laws of autonomous governing of minority regions prescribes that ‘authorities of autonomous minority should guarantee that all ethnic groups are free to use and develop their native languages’ (selected rules and policies towards minorities in the people’s republic of china, 1996, p. 40). regulation 20 of urban minority working regulations passed in 1993 is that ‘urban governments should guarantee that minorities have the right to use their native languages’ (selected rules and policies towards minorities in the people’s republic of china, 1996, p. 81). efforts to create and improve writing systems for minority languages soon after the founding of the people’s republic of china, the work of creating writing systems and improving imperfect writing systems of minority languages began in order to http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci zuo xiulan: china’s policy towards minority languages in a globalising age transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 86 reduce the mass illiteracy of minority communities. in 1951, the editorial board of contemporary chinese nationality work was established to undertake this task. in the following years, research was conducted on a few minority languages, and few recommendations were suggested. the policy, tentative language planning towards minority languages, was passed during the first national conference on minority languages in december 1955. it was determined that during 1956 and 1957, a general survey of minority languages would be conducted, the plan for creating and improving minority languages would be formulated in the following three years and for those unstudied minorities, the work would be finished by the end of 1960 (jiang, 1994, p. 377, cited in zhou, 2003). surveys were conducted on up to 40 minority languages by the end of 1958. in the late 1950s, fourteen writing systems, using latin scripts were created for the minority languages spoken by the ten minorities. they are zhuang, buyei, yi, miao, hani, lisu, naxi, dong, wa and li. among these fourteen writing systems, four are for miao, and two for hani. in real communication, the li preferred mandarin instead of the newly created writing system, the hani used one and abandoned another, and the yi did not like the new writing system created for them, but preferred the improved and standardized traditional one instead. thus, to date, eight minorities are using eleven new writing systems created for them. in the beginning of the 1980s, plans were designed for language writing systems of tu, jingpo, bai, dulong, qiang and tujia. since the last biennium (2002/2003), with the assistance of the unesco beijing office, the chinese academy of social science has been making a special effort to preserve and revitalize endangered languages of selected ethnic minority groups in china. research has already been completed for the six minority languages uygur, anong, she, manchu, lakkia and tujia. in 2005, research has focused on two more languages, hezhen and ersu (safeguarding and revitalizing of ethnic minority groups in china, 2005). protection and fostering of traditional minority cultures the following information is quoted from regional autonomy for ethnic minorities in china (information office of the state council of the people’s republic of china, 2005, section 5.4) from the 1950s to the 1980s, the central authorities organized over 3,000 experts and scholars to compile and publish five series of books on ethnic minorities, totalling 403 volumes and over 90 million chinese characters. the series are: the ethnic minorities in china, a series of books on the brief history of the ethnic minorities in china, a series of books on the brief record of the languages of the ethnic minorities in china, a series of books on the survey of autonomous areas of ethnic minorities in china, and a collection of research materials on the societies and histories of the ethnic minorities in china. over 500,000 copies have been distributed. today, each of the 55 ethnic minorities in china has its own brief written history. the 55 ethnic minorities in china, except for the chinese-speaking hui and manchu, each have their own language. the mongolian, tibetan, uygur, korean and yi languages have coded character sets and national standards for fonts and keyboard. software in the mongolian, tibetan, uygur and korean languages can be run in the windows system, and laser photo-typesetting in these languages has been realized. applied software in languages of ethnic minorities are emerging one after another, and some achievements have been made in research into the ocr (optic character recognition) of languages of ethnic minorities and machine-aided translation. the state has set up special institutions to collect, assort, translate, and study in an organized and programmed manner the three major heroic epics of china's ethnic http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci zuo xiulan: china’s policy towards minority languages in a globalising age transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 87 minorities, i.e., gesar(an oral tibetan epic), jangar (a mongolian epic) and manas (an epic of the kirgiz people). in the past decade, the state has appropriated over 30 million yuan for the collation and publishing of 160 volumes of the buddhisttripitakain the tibetan language. it has also earmarked a large amount of funds for the renovation of the drepung, sera and ganden monasteries in tibet, the kumbum monastery in qinghai, and the kizil thousand-buddha caves in xinjiang, and many other key national cultural relics. from 1989 to 1994, the state invested 55 million yuan and 1,000 kg of gold in the first-stage renovation of the potala palace in lhasa, capital of the tibet autonomous region, and in 2001, 330 million yuan for the second-stage renovation policies in favour of the use of minority languages (1) political selection it was prescribed in act 19 of organization laws of the state peoples’ representatives of the prc passed in 1982, which ‘interpreters should be provided for minority representatives in the congress of the state peoples’ representatives’. this was repeated in rule 30 in rules of procedure of the congress of the state peoples’ representatives. the use of minority languages was guaranteed in rule 22 of the selection laws of the congress of the state peoples’ representatives and various local peoples’ representatives. it was written that in autonomous regions, prefectures, and counties ‘promulgated selection documents, name lists, selector cards, name lists of representative candidates, representative certificates and seals of the selection committee should be written in both the local popular minority language and modern standard chinese’ (zhou, 2003, p. 264). ever since the first congress of the state peoples’ representatives in 1954 there have been simultaneous interpreters for minority representatives. interpreters of minority languages are provided in all kinds of important political congresses and activities in the national and local governments. there are minority language versions for all important documents, laws and administrative rules issued by the central communist party, the state congresses, and various local committees of the communist party and governments with areas containing multinational populations. policies in favour of the use of minority languages (2) administrative management minority languages are the working languages of ethnic autonomous governments. this is guaranteed by laws and working regulations (selected rules and policies towards minorities in the people’s republic of china,1996). it is stated in act twenty-one of laws of autonomous governing of minority regions that minority languages should be adopted to conduct regional autonomous government business. it was guaranteed in the 1993 working regulations of minority village administration that local minority languages should be the working languages in autonomous minority villages. minority languages coexist with modern standard chinese in the seals of ethnic autonomous authorities and organizations, identity cards of minorities, and the names of businesses in ethnic autonomous areas. rmb notes are written in mongolia, tibetan, uighur, and zhuang, in addition to chinese (zhou, 2003). policies in favour of the use of minority languages (3) lawsuits and arbitration it was prescribed in act of 134 of the 1982 constitution that ‘people of all ethnic groups are entitled to file suit in their own native language. people’s courts and people’s procuratorates should provide translators for the defendants who do not know mandarin. in areas which are heavily populated by minorities, cases should be tried in the local popular language and all documents concerned with lawsuits including indictments, court verdicts, notices should be http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci zuo xiulan: china’s policy towards minority languages in a globalising age transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 88 written in one or several local popular languages’ (selected rules and policies towards minorities in the people’s republic of china, 1996, p. 31). it was prescribed in regulation 5 of regulations of economic contracts arbitration of the prc that ‘in intensely minorities or multi-ethnics populated areas the processes of mediation, arbitration and the awards of them should be in one or several local popular languages. interpreters should be provided for the agents’ (selected rules and policies towards minorities in the people’s republic of china, 1996, p. 346). policies in favour of the use of minority languages (4) education bilingual education in minority communities is guaranteed in laws and regulations. for example, act thirty-seven of the 1984 law of autonomous governing of minority regions states that ‘in schools where minority students are in the majority, text books should be in minority languages and courses should be taught in minority languages when conditions are permitted. chinese courses should be offered in the late years of elementary schools or middle schools in order to spread modern standard chinese throughout china’ (zhou, 2003, p. 266). it was restated in the 1986 compulsory education laws of the people’ republic of china, 1988 regulations for the work of eradicating illiteracy, as well as the 1989 management regulations for kindergarten as issued by the state council. also it was re-emphasized in the notice about contemporary language and scripts as issued by the state language commission approved by the state council in 1992. in some minority schools, all courses are conducted in minority languages such as mongolian, tibetan, uygur, kazak and koran, and chinese is offered only as one of the courses. in some other minority communities, chinese is the language of instruction. minority languages such as miao and jingpo are offered as a subject, or as an auxiliary language of instruction. policies in favour of the use of minority languages (5) publications and translation government funds are offered to minority language journals or magazines according to the 1984 notice of journals and publications by the state council. special privileges are offered to minority language authors and translators according to 1990 provisional regulations of publication payment and 1990 copyright laws of the people’s republic of china. there is no limit for minority language books to publish and the stripe code is free. this was officially guaranteed in 1996. by the end of 1998, there were thirty-six minority language publishing houses. there are five in beijing including the ethnic press and the china mongolian press. with the assistance of the state and efforts of the ethnic autonomous areas, by 2003, 4,787 titles of books in ethnic minority languages had been published, totalling 50.34 million copies. there were also 205 magazines and 88 newspapers in such languages, totalling 7.81 million copies and 131.30 million copies, respectively. the ethnic autonomous areas had set up 513 art performance troupes, 566 libraries and 163 museums (information office of the state council of the people’s republic of china, 2005, section 5.4). moreover, the centre of china minority language translation was established in 1978 in beijing. works of the state officials and government documents are translated into mongolian, tibetan, uygur, kazak, korean, yi and zhuang and speeches in national conferences are simultaneously interpreted. policies in favour of the use of minority languages (6) the mass media http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci zuo xiulan: china’s policy towards minority languages in a globalising age transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 89 ever since may 22, 1950, sixteen minority languages have been used as the programs languages of cctv for those minority-intenselypopulated regions or areas where people cannot understand programs in chinese. some of these minority languages are tibetan, mongolia, korean, uighur, kazak, zhuang, and yi. now more than twenty minority languages are used on china’s national radio broadcasting, over thirty on local radio broadcasting, and 3,410 movies in minority languages. there are 10,430 translated movies and tv programs in minority languages (zhou, 2003). in 2003, the ethnic autonomous areas had 122 radio broadcasting organizations with 73 radio stations and 523 radio transmitting stations, broadcasting in 15 ethnic minority languages; 111 tv broadcasting organizations with 94 tv stations and 830 tv transmitting stations, broadcasting in 11 ethnic minority languages. there were also 254,900 satellite radio and tv receiving and relaying systems (information office of the state council of the people’s republic of china, 2005, section 5.4). policies in favour of the use of minority languages (7) minority language organisations the committee of minority language research and instruction was established in 1951. it is in charge of research, coinage and the improvement of state minority languages. changes were made to the management of minority languages in 1998. since then the state ethnic committee is in charge of minority languages concerning translation and publications of minority languages; the educational department is in charge of the standardization of minority languages and the research and application of minority language information. ever since 1977, with the permission of the state congresses, mongolian associations have been set up in eight autonomous areas and korean associations in the three north-eastern provinces, and there are also yi and tibetan associations in other provinces. china has about 300 minority language translation organizations with part-time and full time staff of more than 100,000. according to xinhuanet on july 4th 2005, china will build a new training and proficiency authentification system to standardize minority language translation, said dainzhub angbon, director of the china translation association’s minority language translation commission. the official said that the china translation association has already granted certificates to 70 senior translators and the tibet autonomous region, xinjiang uygur autonomous region and inner mongolia autonomous region have already made rules and regulations concerning minority languages (vorontsov, 2005). as a multiethnic and multilingual country, china has been assisting people of different ethnic groups to live in harmony and respect each other’s cultures so that every one can enjoy their human and language rights. the information presented in this section indicated that both in theory and in practice, chinese policies are supportive of multilingualism and that they are aimed at protecting minority languages in china. where to from here? china has been attempting to salvage and maintain the endangered minority languages by investing money, time, and, people into the development of successful minority education policies, and constantly reaffirming its superiority in this regard in media and policy discourses. language policies in china are becoming more inclusive of minority language use. further, to the initiatives presented in this paper, it is vital for chinese government to continue to: • train more qualified minority language teachers and compile suitable material resources (texts and materials in minority languages); http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci zuo xiulan: china’s policy towards minority languages in a globalising age transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 90 • promote bilingual education/programmes in many chinese schools; • revitalize local and indigenous knowledge transmission; and • encourage minority people to make more handicrafts to stimulate economy. the impacts of economic and social trends worldwide, improved transportation and the global reach of telecommunications tend to continue to pose a threat to many minority languages. the number of endangered languages is still on the increase in china. in this context, it is imperative that research is being done on the effectiveness of the chinese language policies in preserving minority languages and in promoting linguistic diversity in china. conclusion the philosophy of the chinese central government is that people of all ethnic groups are equal, and there should be no prejudice or discrimination against minorities and their languages. dictated by this political principle, several language policies are formulated in china, favouring the existence of minority languages. the details presented in this paper appear to indicate the significance of policy initiatives in preserving minority languages and their cultures. however, there is little empirical evidence to indicate their effectiveness in preserving minority languages or cultures. given that minority languages are in danger of extinction in the globalised age, it is important that the degree of success of these policies throughout china needs to be established by undertaking research on this topic. references bradley, d. 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(2003). towards a new linguistic world order. in j. maurais & m. a. morris (eds.), languages in a globalising world (pp. 13-36). cambridge: cambridge university press. maurais, j., & morris, m. a. (2003). introduction. in j. maurais & m. a. morris (eds.), languages in a globalising world (pp. 1-10). cambridge: cambridge university press. nettle, d., & romaine, s. (2000). vanishing voices: the extinction of the world’s languages. oxford: oxford university press. researchers work to save endangered languages (2001). china daily, november, 15. retrieved december 2, 2006, from http://www.china.org.cn/english/2001/nov/22210.htm romaine, s. 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(2000). linguistic genocide in education – or worldwide diversity and human rights? , mahwah – new jersey: lawrence erlbaum associates. unesco publications for the world summit on the information society, 2003. retrieved 10 december 2006, from http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/files/12850/10704636965cultural_diversity.pdf/cultural_dive rsity.pdf vorontsov, y. (2005). china to standardize minority language translation system. retrieved 10 december 2006, from http://www.aquarius.net/index.cfm?chapter=blog&aq=blog_topic&article_topic_id=3 woodbury, a. (1998). documenting rhetorical, aesthetic and expressive loss in language shift. in l. grenoble & l. whaley (eds.), endangered languages. (pp. 234-258). cambridge: cambridge university press. wright, s. (2004). language policy and language planning: from nationalism to globalisation. new york: palgrave macmillan. wu, s. (ed.). (1997). a general survey of minority issues. chendu: sichuan people’s press. zhou, q. (2003). china’s university in diversity (pp. 250-275). language policy, state, nationalities and languages: study of language policies abroad. beijing: language and culture press. zhou, m. (2000). language policy and illiteracy in ethnic minority communities in china. journal of multilingual and multicultural development, 21(2), 129-148. author zuo xiulan is a professor of sociolinguistics in school of foreign languages of dalian maritime university in china. her main interests are language policy and language planning; lexical borrowing; linguistic purism; endangered languages. email: graceteacher@163.com; jenny141904@sohu.com http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci http://portal.unesco.org/ci/en/files/12850/10704636965cultural_diversity.pdf/cultural_dive http://www.aquarius.net/index.cfm?chapter=blog&aq=blog_topic&article_topic_id=3 mailto:graceteacher@163.com mailto:jenny141904@sohu.com are they feminists to cite this article please include all of the following details: li, xin. (2011). daoism and feminism identity through life stories of chinese immigrant women. transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> daoism and feminism: identity through life stories of chinese immigrant women xin li 1 california state university, united states daoism and feminism: identity through life stories of chinese immigrant women teaching gender equity in multicultural teacher education classes in the united states of america for the past decade, i have encountered unexpected strong resistance. the few male students were usually the loudest. they argued “those feminists are more equal than us now. what else do they want?” the majority of the female students concurred with their male counterparts and claimed they had never been discriminated against in america, nobody forced them to be teachers, and it was the male teachers who were discriminated against in the teaching profession. both sides often agreed that feminists should go to china to save the chinese girls from infanticide, orphanage, and foot binding. they were strongly aware of my ethnic and gender identity as they perceived. the curriculum meanings in these questions are at least three folded. first, the male students considered feminist, however they defined it, as the other, and resented the feminist interpretation of the reality. second, the female students have taken for granted the positive results of our first-and second-waive feminist movements, and “falsified” their self-identities (greene, 1978). thirdly, both have stereotyped chinese women. these questions raised in my teacher education classes in the u.s context also reflect a nationally and internationally conservative trend moving away from feminist identities observed by oleson (2005). such a pendulum swing, oleson pointed out, has “substantial potential to shape women’s and men’s lives” (p. 235). what makes a feminist? does a feminist cause benefit the second sex at the expense of the first? can chinese women be feminists? if so, how would they look like? how would they live their lives? what would their lives mean in an international context and at the current historical moment? these questions took me on a journey of a narrative inquiry about the feminist identity of five chinese-canadian women, including myself, through our cross-cultural life experiences. “since feminist theory is grounded in women’s lives and aims to analyze the role and meaning of gender in those lives and in society, women’s personal narratives are essential primary documents for feminist research” (personal narrative group, 1989, 4). narrative inquiry is “the study of how humans make meaning of experience by endlessly telling and retelling stories about themselves that both refigure the past and create purpose in the future.” (connelly & clandinin, 1988, 24) it is “stories lived and told” (clandinin & connelly, 2000, 20). in the past two decades, li. daoism and feminism : identity through life stories of chinese immigrant women 70 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2001 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci narrative inquiry has been developed into a powerful methodology for cross-cultural women immigrant studies through lives of teachers and students (conle, 1993; conle, et al, 2000; conle, et al, 2007; elbaz-luwisch, 2001a, 2001b; elbaz-luwisch at al, 2004; elbaz-luwisch & pritzker, 2002; li, 2009, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2002; li, conle, & elbaz-luwisch, 2009). narrative inquiry research consists of two phases: composing field texts and composing research text (clandinin & connelly, 2000). field text composition relies on life experiences and entails a variety of ways to collect the resources, such as autobiographical and biographical writing, journaling, interviews, letters, conversation, family stories, and so on. research text composition is considered as a process to analyze and interpret field text through various ways, such as looking for metaphor, narrative tension and thread, experimenting with form, and exploring voice, signature, and audience. the narrative field texts in this study were prepared through autobiographical writing, journaling, interview, life story sharing, field observation between 1993-1997 in canada with five chinese-canadian women, including myself. for the current inquiry, i revisited the field texts, and inquired about our cross-cultural gendered experiences. as a life historian, i will present such gender identity through women’s life stories. as a chinese woman writing about chinese women, i will construct the inquiry in a daoist 2 frame of feminism. the daoist frame of feminism daoism is considered by most scholars in the field as the indigenous organized religion of china. it includes its philosophical foundations, health practices, social political visions, rituals, priestly hierarchies, protective talismans and exorcistic spells, spiritual medications and ecstatic soul travels to the stars, and so on. beginning with the works of laozi and zhuangzi around 400600 b.c.e., daoism went through several stages of organization and development and is still evolving in china today. historically, daoism is largely considered as a “religion of people” in contrast to confucianism, which has been adopted by many rulers of the china to be the state religion. during mao’s era, daoism was considered as a religion of withdrawal and self-defeat, contrary to mao’s philosophy of class struggle to eliminate different political and ideological differences. daoism was thus eradicated from official narrative. my inquiry about daoism began in the late 1980’s in canada through studies of life experiences of chinese immigrant women. the void of daoism in china’s official narrative during mao’s era did not reflect common people’s life experiences at the time. instead, daoist thinking and ways of living played a pivotal role in the lives of survivors of the horrendous social vicissitudes and natural catastrophes (li, 1991, 1998, 2002). the study of daoism so far, kohn (2004) explicates, can be described as having been approached from four major angles: 1) philosophy—the study of the ancient texts daode jing and zhuangzi and their commentaries as well as the analysis of later daoist texts from the viewpoint of philosophy or comparative mysticism; 2) history and literature; 3) ritual, and 4) practices and techniques. i study daoism philosophically as in kohn’s first category. thus daoism in this article refers to the indigenous chinese religion as a whole and my focus of study is on its philosophical foundations of daode jing. daode jing, which is believed to be written by laozi between 4 th to 6 th centuries b.c., is considered as the foundational classic of daoism taken broadly to include all forms of daoist thought and practice. inasmuch as daoism forms a pillar of chinese culture, the influence of the li. daoism and feminism : identity through life stories of chinese immigrant women 71 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2001 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci daode jing is pervasive. the sheer number of commentaries devoted to the classic—some 700, according to one count, of which about 350 are extant (w.t.chan, 1963,77)—is itself a telling indication of its enduring popularity and hermeneutical openness (chan, 2004, p. 1). outside of china, daode jing is the most translated work in world literature, next to the bible (mair 1990, xi). in daoism, femininity is a concept, not a synonym of women or female. nor is masculinity a synonym of men or male. not one woman could or should be reduced to a pure concept of femininity; nor a man masculinity. daode jing 3 challeges the patriarchalism prevalent in ancient chinese society. it defied the dominating masculine outlook of strength, achievement, and power (as in chapters 6, 10, 61), and ridiculed attempts to achieve such (as in chapters 2, 3, 8, 12, 13, 19, 20). from this standpoint, many scholars considered possibilities of construe daode jing as being sympathetic to the feminist cause in general, and sought to address and deal with the oppression and subjugation of women. however, to say that daoism endorses femininity and abandons masculinity is to take it out of the context of the overall daoist thinking. lai (2000) analyzed this ancient text as resources for contemporary feminist thinking, and suggested that femininity and masculinity are non-reducible to each other and must remain distinct. more importantly, lai cautioned us that 1) femininity and masculinity in daodejing are not mutually exclusive, but interdependent concepts; 2) femininity and masculinity are not static but dynamic concepts. i concur with lai in his interpretation of laozi’s 4 distinctive, interdependent, and dynamic concepts about femininity and masculinity, and shall construct the life stories of the five chinese immigrant women accordingly. daoist masculinity of strength, achievement, and power we---the five chinese immigrant women ---revealed distinctive masculine characteristics in our ways of living. our strength, achievement, and power were most noticeable in the process of immigration. we came to canada in the later 1980s and early 1990s for a variety of reasons. four of us were the pioneers in the family to take responsibilities as well as the risk to come to a strange county for a better life. linda was the fifth one, who arrived in canada two months after her husband. she traveled with their daughter, and he brought his daughter from a previous marriage. the foursome traveled separately to avoid suspicion of not returning to china. however, waiting for her in canada was more than her husband and stepdaughter, but her husband’s mistress, who was pregnant with his child and living under the same roof as one family. although she was not the pioneer to bring her entire family over to a new country, she was courageous to go through a divorce in a country where she could not speak neither of its two official languages, nor did she have a job or any financial means to support herself. she did not even have a bank account under her own name. our educational backgrounds varied, four of us had received college education and professional training in china. i was a university professor, jenning a fashion designer, yiping an engineer, and dr. liu a pediatrician. linda was again the only one who was a high school graduate during the cultural revolution, which means her literacy was gained through reading mao’s works, and no math nor any other subject content competences. she succeeded in real estate development in 1980s when the chinese government began to allow private business and property ownership. along with her success in the real estate development, came money and power, no less than the rest of us had achieved in the society at the time. all five of us were li. daoism and feminism : identity through life stories of chinese immigrant women 72 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2001 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci brought up in families where mothers worked outside of the house, and daughters were encouraged to be independent. independent women like the five chinese women immigrants in my research were not the exception but the norm in china since 1949the beginning of the people’s republic of china when the communist party-led government came to power. having committed unforgivable crimes to the chinese people, the culture and humanity, mao has done one thing, i believe, that could be viewed as progressive: outlawed the practice of polygamy, concubine, and prostitution and made it possible that most women joined the workforce outside of their home. no more house wives, stay-at-home wives or moms. women became workers, peasants, office clerks, teachers, nurses, doctors, mathematicians, scientists, engineers, government officials, peasants, army officers, navy, marine corps and air force officers, professors, politicians, and the vicechairman of the country (not a chairman or president yet). such nation-wide change empowered women economically and psychologically. of course, culture does not change overnight. there was and still is inequality at work, and more of inequality at home outside of the public eye as we observed in our life experiences. wife-abuse was and still is considered private matters. after the entire days’ work and having brought home the same or similar income, many women were/are pressured to fulfilled the confucian traditional of three obeys: obey father before she is married; husband during marriage; and adult son after husband dies. taking care of her male family members’ daily needs, both physical and emotional, can be overwhelming, especially at the pre-modern technology time when housework was done more manually. stay-at-home type of womanhood may be appealing for some, although not an option at the time. but with the income they contributed to the family, the expertise gained at work, and the social network established through work, chinese women were much better off than not to have the economic independence. slowly, things changed, men learned, and culture evolved. by late 1980s when the five of us left china, more gender equality seemed to have achieved in the society on the whole. men and women were fulfilling more and more of the stereotypically opposite gender roles. none of us had our feed bound, nor did our mothers, because foot-binding was officially banned for the last time in 1911 when the republic of china came to power. the first time footbinding was officially outlawed was in the 17 th century by the first emperor of the qing dynasty (1616-1627 a.d.). the emperor did not suddenly become a feminist or cared about women. as a conqueror, he simply did not care about the chinese culture, which, like all cultures, has its share of oppression. foot-binding was one of the extremes. it was practiced for about one thousand years starting from the last emperor of tang dynasty (904-907 a.d.). when the people’s republic of china came to power in 1949, food-binding had become history, and women with bound-feet were rarely seen, except in very remote rural areas. dr. liu and yiping were born before 1949, and their mothers grew up after foot-binding was officially banned for the last time in chinese history. jenning, linda, and i were born after 1949, our mothers were not allowed to have their feet bound. most of our grandmothers had started the painful process of foot-binding, but did not finish it. they had their feet bound to various degrees depending on the time and place of their childhood. the earlier in time and more isolated place, the more complete the food-binding was. my grandmother, who was born around the turn of the 20 th century, had her feet bound for a few months and later unbound because footbinding practice became less and less popular. growing up in the aforementioned historical times, all of the five of us chinese immigrant women in this study enjoyed having “big feet,” and were repeatedly reminded by our li. daoism and feminism : identity through life stories of chinese immigrant women 73 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2001 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci mothers and grandmothers of our good fortune. along with the big feet came the big wide flat shoes, pants, sports, and competition. we were expected to “hold up half of the sky” as one of mao’s slogan goes. at school, i participated and won competitions in 60 meter and later 100 meter sprints, table tennis, and mathematics, as well as singing and dancing contests. jenning’s volleyball and basketball teams won champions at levels ranging from school, district, municipality to province. she auditioned to act main characters in various plays and won award for one of her performances at the municipal level. she excelled in meteorology study as well as fashion design. both yiping and dr. liu played softball and tennis on their school teams. yiping excelled in engineer, specialized in railroad designing and building. dr. liu was good with medicine, specialized in pediatrics. they both sang in school choirs and yiping also danced in her school’s chinese folk dance club. in our minds, males had no superiority over females for school subjects or extra-curricula activities. we only heard about such division after we came to canada. linda experienced “big feet” differently. growing up in rural china as the eldest of six sisters, having big feet meant being able to help not only around the house, but also in the fields. at age four, she was already carrying her baby sister on her back, and picking up fallen wheat grains after her mother at harvest time. by seven, she climbed trees to collect firewood while one of her younger sister picked them up and gathered them together on the ground and the other one sitting beside the piles of firewood, watching. at 10, she carried buckets of water from the village well, dug out potatoes from the field, and stood up on a stool to cook for the family while keeping an eye on her three younger sisters. she went to school at 16 when the curriculum was mao’s book and school hours reduced to half day. for the rest of the day, she worked side by side in the field with her parents and the rest of commune members, ploughing, hoeing, weeding, fertilizing, and harvesting. for that she made one-third of what her father and half of what her mother made to compensate the family. she had more physical mobility to work in the field by having big feet. had there been no capitalization in china’s economic policy, she would have been married out to another peasant’s family and repeat all over again. the national policy change to a more open economy provided her with opportunity for social mobility. the self-confidence she gained working with adults, the endurance she obtained from carrying her baby sister from age four, the determination acquired from climbing trees from seven, and multi-tasking ability through cooking and watching kids at 10, all came handy at her disposal. she went into real estate development, worked with men and women, and succeeded. for her, being a “big feet” female was no different from being a male in terms of limit. well, until she came to canada to find herself having to live under the same roof with her husband and his mistress, to find herself so powerless as an immigrant women without the language, a job, a bank account under her name, or a man on her side. that was when she learned a valuable life’s lesson: “we women need to help each other.” the daoist femininity of modest, nurturing and caring the highest good is like water, benefiting the myriad creatures, claiming the lowest position loathed by others. therefore, it is near to the dao. —chapter 8, daodejing, translated by xin li li. daoism and feminism : identity through life stories of chinese immigrant women 74 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2001 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the qualities of being modest, nurturing, and caring in the daoist metaphor of water have been considered by many as feminine. as strong, high-achieving, and powerful as the five chinese immigrant women in this study were, we were also modest, nurturing, and caring. we took the modest role of mothering, and dedicated to the most underpaid domestic work. we cooked, sewed, knitted, embroidered, washed, swept, shopped, listened, consoled, and cared. we raised children. nurturing a fetus through our flesh and blood, we experienced unique pleasure and pain, and life’s cycle. raising children with our hands, hearts, and brains, we underwent vigor and exhaustion, comforts and aches, satisfaction and challenge, and unconditional devotion. we consider raising children as our ultimate femininity. we were always ready to nourish, no matter how gossamer, unsubstantial, and ordinary as we were. the daoist water metaphor was with us, and was us. we did not kill nor desert infant daughters, because we were daughters ourselves, and we did not reject our femininity. as a predominantly agrarian country, china has a long cultural tradition of marrying daughters out. without social support, sons were the parents’ best, in most cases, and only oldage pension. daughters married out and became part of her husband’s family and her in-law’s pension. therefore, when parents had only daughters, their old-oage pension is threatened. in addition, most of china’s dynasties had adopted confucian thoughts to maintain its social order, which placed women at the very bottom of the hierarchy. female infanticide occurred. the practice of infanticide was largely forsaken in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s due to the ruthless government enforcement of law. the phenomenon of missing female infants showed a sharp upward trend in the 1980s, linked to the “one-child policy” introduced by the government in 1979 (three years after mao’s death) to control the spiraling population growth. the chinese government has taken some energetic steps to combat the practice of female infanticide and sexselective abortion of female fetuses. it has employed the marriage law and women's protection law which both prohibit female infanticide. the women's protection law also prohibits discrimination against women who give birth to female babies. the maternal health care law of 1994 strictly prohibits the use of technology to identify the gender of a fetus. however, although the government has outlawed the use of ultrasound machines, physicians continue to use them to determine the gender of fetuses, especially in rural areas. in recent years, the chinese government modified its one-child policy to allow people in the rural area to have a second child if their first is a daughter. it is also reported that the government is now considering further loosening up the policy because of its booming economy and the pressure to improve its human rights record from the international community. china’s ruthless one-child policy has benefited both china and the world economically and environmentally at the expense of lives of females. the five chinese immigrant women in this article were all born before the one-child policy became in effect. so we all have siblings. all but one is from the urban areas, where our parents receive pension from the state. and most importantly, we are all against female infanticide. linda is the only one from the rural area. after she was married, she learned that her husband had hidden from her a daughter from his first marriage and left the child with the grandmother. immediately, linda adopted the stepdaughter and brought her home from the aging grandmother’s hands, and raised her. there are many people like linda in china. they would rather risk their old-age pension than killing a female child. we did not reject femininity. li. daoism and feminism : identity through life stories of chinese immigrant women 75 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2001 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the goodness of the valley never dies; that is the mystery of femininity. the entry to the mysterious femininity is the root of heaven and earth; it appears insubstantial, but forever inexhaustible. —daodejing, chapter 6, translated by xin li interdependent and dynamics between masculinity and femininity “know masculinity, maintain femininity, and be a valley for all under heaven. by being a valley for all under heaven, eternal integrity will never desert you. —daodejing, chapter 28, translated by xin li knowing how to be strong and competitive, we maintained our caring, nurturing, and modest femininity. such distinctive and inclusive understanding of femininity and masculinity provided us with resilience. we survived and lived through extreme social vicissitudes; and we bounced back and grew stronger through major interruptions imposed on our lives in man’s life cycle (gilligan, 1979/1994). doctor liu’s life was interrupted several times before, during, and after the chinese cultural revolution. in mao’s anti–rightist campaign 5 in the late 1950s she was forced to divorce her husband, who was accused of rightist thoughts and speeches. as the ex-wife of a rightist, she was sent by the government to work in a remote mountain area in order to have the influence of her husband cleansed. embracing her lowest social position—the opposite of the powerful, she volunteered her expertise as a doctor. under the basic medical conditions there, she learned to solve problems not only for children, but also for adults; not only in western medicine, but also in chinese medicine. with the passing of mao came the end of the cultural revolution. dr. liu’s medical practice was officially restored. because of her unofficial involvement in medicine on the reform camp, she bounced back quickly and easily. soon her medical expertise surpassed many of her colleagues and she was promoted to be the director of the pediatric department. yiping took an early retirement from her engineer position in a railroad research institute. born in indonesia, she came back to china in the late 1950s. as a hot–blooded teenager full of socialist ideals, she was coming to make her contributions to her motherland. despite her culture shock and the big famine era in the early 1960s when millions died of starvation, she did not give up her faith. she was among the first to leave her railroad research institute and newborn son for camps set up deep in the mountains on the railroad construction sites. “research should serve the practice of railroad construction; researchers should understand the real life of construction workers.” she took this call from the government sincerely and practiced it enthusiastically. she was deeply disturbed at the sight of lives in the communes around the railroad construction area. her faith was challenged and her naiveté was questioned. identifying with the most deprived people in society, she visited commune members, helped them clean up water, take care of children, and collect firewood. she was unexpectedly and ironically honored li. daoism and feminism : identity through life stories of chinese immigrant women 76 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2001 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci as “model of re-education receiver” for her willingness and outstanding efforts in accepting reeducation from the commune members. linda grew up in the country of northern china. to ask how many sisters she has embarrassed her, “quite a few” she said. her parents did not send her to school until the cultural revolution, when she was 16. to answer the call from mao “it is right to rebel,” red guards entered school and taught themselves with mao’s book. she was one of them. high school was the first school she went to and the last school she graduated from in china. mao’s book was her text. with the high school certificate, she was assigned a job as a salesperson in a department store. but her schooling did not provide her with enough skills to balance her everyday sale’s records. out of desperation, she grabbed a beginning grade math textbook, and taught herself addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. with patience and perseverance, she won several awards for her work at the department store. her experience as a submissive and obedient female member of a family of the lowest status motivated her to succeed in a man’s world. at age 19, jenning spent two years in prison, because of her father’s accused involvement in lin biao’s conspiracy to overturn mao’s regime. life hit its bottom. physical confinement and psychological torture tested her hope for life. she survived, and her come back was strong and triumphant. she successfully maneuvered through the chinese bureaucratic system, cleared off her parents’ and her own names, and established an award-winning interior design business. i witnessed my home ransacked when i was 13. before my 16 th birthday, i was sent to a reform camp in a remote countryside. living conditions were below basicsno electricity, tap water, or modern sewage, nor enough food or warm clothes. people died of starvation. besides these physical challenges, confusion about the seemingly irrational interruptions in life drove me to the edge of insanity. being friends with the local women commune members provided me with a perspective of women’ s position different from what i had experienced at home. identifying with them helped me appreciate what i had: ability to read. i picked up some old high school textbooks to read when schools were closed and knowledge repudiated. a few years later when schools reopened, i found myself passing national university entrance exam with ease, and walking on a campus of higher education without formal high schools education. our femininity of embracing low social status inherited or imposed on us, identifying with the most deprived people in society, and living and learning through social injustice interacted with our masculinity of independence, competitiveness, and self-assertiveness. our perseverance in adversity saved us all during the times when the past had been cut off and the future had been wiped out of our curriculum and when we were deprived of our autonomy to choose. the resilience we gained through adversity was the most important source of our selfconfidence to explore an immigrant’s life. our reasons varied. our mottoes were the same: since we survived the cultural revolution, what else can we not? the five chinese immigrant women met in canada in a bilingual adult english as a second language class. i was their instructor. in our teacher-student, and researcher-participant relationships, we cared for each other, and let each other care for ourselves. dr. liu looked worried. sitting in the classroom with her husband beside, she did not seem to be really focused. one day when her husband was absent, she revealed her worry—her husband was a control freak and she was in fear that he would kill her. “i put a kitchen knife under my pillow at night just in case,” she told me. i was petrified, and suggested that she had the police emergency number handy and a few important english words ready. i also promised that i would phone her sometime in the evenings to provide moral support, and perhaps to li. daoism and feminism : identity through life stories of chinese immigrant women 77 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2001 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci interrupt her husband’s abusive behavior. i kept my promise and helped her find a job so that she could move out, away from her abusive husband. yiping, an engineer in china specialized in railway construction, could only find work as restaurant helper in canada. but she was always in high spirit, and extremely driven in learning english. one day, she asked me to teach her “bad english words.” i was puzzled and wanted her to explain. at work, it turned out, she had experienced racism and she wanted to protest it in english. i gave her a list of anti-racist vocabulary and connected her with the local restaurant workers’ association and human rights organization. linda could not focus in class, either. staring at me, she would repeat the question i just asked of her “do you have any questions?” one day after class, she walked out with me and apologized for her absent-mindedness in class. she then explained her family situation to me and asked if i could help her find a good divorce lawyer who would know how to work with international cases. i did. not only that, i accompanied her to her lawyer’s office many times, as an interpreter and moral support; i went with her to see her daughter’s principal and looked after her daughter while linda was traveling internationally to locate the money her husband had hidden from her. jenning asked me to help her with her banking, and i did. i later found out that she was going through a major health crisis and needed to have a surgery soon. i became her interpreter and a bouncing board for her to play with her knowledge about health in the chinese medical understanding and the western system. i was the first person she called after she woke up from the surgery. as their teacher, i listened to them and cared for them beyond a teacher’s professional responsibilities. as students, they reciprocated my care. dr. liu was better focused in my class, and her english progressed faster. she also offered her expertise and consulted me on my son’s health. yiping moved up to a higher level of english class soon, and became actively involved in the restaurant workers’ organization. linda took my mother and son to her temple to protect us from evil. i was very touched although i did not believe in the religious institute she belonged to. she came to stay with my mother to keep her company and help watch my son when i was away for conferences. and we became family friends. jenning and i have experienced a higher level of reciprocity in our relationship. we are from two different, and at times in the contemporary chinese history, warring social groups. one example of such difference was that she was a red guard during the cultural revolution ransacking people’s home, whereas i witnessed my own home ransacked by red guards. despite of that we became friends. we listened to each other while suspending our own judgment; we shared our stories with confidence, trust, and authenticity. we also lived through our early years of immigration as each other’s moral and practical support. we co-founded a chinese immigrant organization. in our teacher-student and researcher-participant relations, we were independent and interdependent at the same time; competitive and caring at the time, critical and nurturing at the same time. we became friends and we still are. we established an interdependent bond, without which, as heilbrun (1979, 98) believes, we as women who had moved out of the home would have entered the limbo world of the ‘honorary male.’ without our bonding as women we would have gone through a more severe identity crisis in our cross-cultural immigration experiences. in our “web of interlocution,” to use taylor’s (1989) term, the friendship was a crucial interlocking of our selves, as well as a milestone in the development of our relationship. li. daoism and feminism : identity through life stories of chinese immigrant women 78 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2001 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci chodorow (1978) once said that women need a “network” of female kin to develop their sense of self. as immigrant women, we were challenged with a re-creation of a sense of self by our new immigrants’ environment of radical changes in culture, gender, economy, class, and power. we needed to seek, more urgently, the salvation of a female bond that nurtures a realization and recognition of our strengths. our friendship was our strength through which we re-created ourselves as strangers, who were no longer full members of any culture. life of new immigrants was no lack of adversity. i had to be a live-in nanny with belowthe-legal wage to support my son, myself, and save for my tuition fees for graduate studies. jenning worked in a donut shop for many years to pay her rent, support her son, and her own education. linda worked as a cleaning woman in hotels and a janitor in schools. yiping was a kitchen helper and dr. liu a live-in nanny and had to endure an abusive husband. we all had to take women’s jobs with low social status. relying on our femininity in supporting each other, we all bounced back. dr. liu was pleased with her success in bringing her daughter over. yiping was satisfied with her son’s graduate degree in an english speaking country. linda brought up her daughter to be a caring and independent woman. jenning became an esl teachera profession i had when i met her, and just recently her son obtained a master’s degree in fine arts from new york. and i am now a professor and my child was also college-educated. our resilience acquired in adversity in china was challenged and enhanced through our experience of immigration. we took women’s position, fought and won in man’s battles. nothing under heaven is softer and weaker than water, yet, nothing is harder or stronger than water to overcome the strong and hard because of its persistence. —daodejing, chapter 78, translated by xin li dimorphism and polymorphism what makes a feminist? does a feminist cause benefit the second sex at the expense of the first? can chinese women be feminists? if so, how would they look like? how would they live their lives? what would their lives mean in an international context and at the current historical moment? these are questions i asked at the beginning of this narrative inquiry. following the daoist frame of feminism, i examined life experiences of five chinese immigrant women. what i have found from the study does not answer these questions directly. instead, it provoked rethinking of feminism and feminist identity from the indigenous chinese daoist worldview. when all under heaven know beauty as beauty, already there is ugliness; when everyone knows goodness, this accounts for badness. being and nonbeing give birth to each other, difficult and easy complete each other, long and short form each other, high and low fulfill each other, tone and voice harmonize with each other, li. daoism and feminism : identity through life stories of chinese immigrant women 79 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2001 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci front and back follow each other it is ever thus. —daodejing, chapter two, translated by xin li daodejing, as cited above, presents a dialectic and interdependent epistemology. to view the world as such, we reconstruct a post-modern feminist identity that is a constant and dynamic interplay between masculinity and femininity appropriate to specific social cultural contexts in our ever increasingly internationalized world. as we recalled in the lives of us five ordinary chinese immigrant women, we were strong and weak, competitive and nurturing and caring, powerful and vulnerable, independent and interdependent, … the concepts usually assigned separately to males and females as their expected characteristics. at times and places in our lives, our gender roles were flowing between the pairs of opposites. considering our understanding about the world as these pairs of concepts about a primordial landscape, as in the daoist worldview, liberates us from being alienated by our own concepts, and encourages us to create new concepts better reflective of and more suitable for our ever-changing and complicating realities. i, therefore, propose a new set of opposites: dimorphism and polymorphism. dimorphism in biology refers to the two forms of individuals within the same animal species—male and female. borrowing this term for gender difference in a humanly and socially constructed environment, we get the opposite concepts of masculinity and femininity. within this dimorphic frame of thinking, we easily fall into the either-or trap, forgetting the dynamic interaction between the two ends of extreme. worse, we tend to normalize the extremes, strive to live a life of such abnormality, and judge others accordingly. polymorphism in biology refers to multiple different forms, stages, or types in individual organisms of the same species—queen, worker, and drone in bees, for instance. borrowing this term for gender difference in a humanly and socially constructed environment, we acknowledge multiple forms of behaviors that range between and beyond the concepts of masculinity and femininity. within this polymorphic frame of thinking, we recognize differences and normalize diversity. to think about gender differences in the frame of dimorphism-polymorphism dynamic, we allow ourselves to position dimorphism as a simplistic, out-of-date, and unrealistic concept, and polymorphism its opposite. the inquiry would be no longer between femininity and masculinity, which we already know as problematic in capturing the totality of our gender identity, but are compelled to use the vocabulary for the distinction between the two. our research agenda would be no longer between feminism and chauvinism. we would ask ourselves questions that include others—others who are stereotyped by the femininity-masculinity normality, and marginalized by feminism-chauvinism debate. we would push our research agenda towards a post-modern paradigm—a daoist dynamic between dimorphism and polymorphism. this new vocabulary for thinking and new map of territory would offer more individuals hope to be of their own choices and making, and help swing the pendulum of conservatism to a progressivism that embraces diversity and unity all at once in shaping lives of people. relating to the pedagogical questions i asked at the beginning of this article, the daoist dynamic between dimorphism and polymorphism would include male students on a feminist journey to learn about themselves and other female students. female students would be given an li. daoism and feminism : identity through life stories of chinese immigrant women 80 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2001 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci opportunity to study their own gender experience in the cultural and historical contexts, therefore sort out their falsified gender identities. in this frame of post-modern daoist feminist concepts, both the male and female students would obtain a more complex and realistic view about chinese women, and hopefully about others, who are easy targets of stereotype in the modern western dualistic paradigm. notes 1 xli@csulb.edu 2 daoism is also translated as taoism. in this article, daoism is used to keep up with the most current translation, except in references published in early dates. 3 also translated as tao te ching, or the scripture of the way. it refers to 道德经 in chinese. to keep up with the most current translation of it in the field, daode jing will be used in this article, except in references published in early dates. 4 also translated as lao tzu. it refers to 老子 in chinese, the proclaimed author of daode jing. to keep up with the most current translation of it in the filed, laozi will be used in this article, except in references published in early dates. 5 the anti-rightist campaign in 1957 was targeted at two groups of people. they were intellectuals and cadres who had criticized mao’s socialism in 1956’s campaign of freer criticism under the slogan of “let a hundred flowers bloom together, let the hundred schools of thought contend.” after repeated invitation from the government, many intellectuals and cadres expressed their dissatisfaction toward mao’s socialism in 1956 as their practice of loyal remonstrance to the government. as a consequence, in 1957’s anti-rightist campaign, they were harshly attacked, obliged to recant publicly and condemn one another. the erstwhile critics, including writers, artists, and professors, were subjected to a big campaign for “downward transfer.” it moved a great number of teachers, students, and city cadres and functionaries into countryside and remote areas like tibet, xinjiang, and gansu. it was not unlike the exile stalin had put on many political dissidents in siberia. dr. liu’s husband was one of the exiles. references chodorow, n. (1978). the reproduction of mothering: psychoanalysis and the sociology of gender. berkeley, ca: university of california press. conle, c. (1993) “learning culture and embracing contraries: narrative inquiry through stories of acculturation.” unpublished doctoral dissertation. university of toronto, canada. conle, c. with blanchard, d., burton, k., higgins, a., kelly, m., sullivan, l. and tan, j. (2000). the asset of cultural pluralism: an account of cross-cultural learning in preservice teacher education. teaching and teacher education, 16(3), 365–387. conle. c. with blanchard, d., higgins, a., sullivan, l. and tan, j. (2007). the asset of cultural pluralism in schools and teacher education. hauppauge, ny: nova science publishers. li. daoism and feminism : identity through life stories of chinese immigrant women 81 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2001 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci elbaz-luwisch, f. (2001a). personal story as passport: storytelling in border pedagogy. teaching education, 12(1), 81–101. ______________. (2001b). understanding what goes on in the heart and in the mind: learning about diversity and co-existence through storytelling. teaching and teacher education, 17, 133–146. elbaz-luwisch, f. & kalekin-fishman, d. (2004). professional development in community: fostering multicultural dialogue among israeli teachers. british journal of in-service education, 30(2), 245–264. elbaz-luwisch, f. & pritzker, d. (2002) writing workshops in teacher education: making a space for feeling and diversity. asia pacific journal of teacher education, 30(3), 277-289. gilligan, c. (1979). woman’s place in man’s life cycle. in stone, l. (ed.) the education feminism reader. new york: routledge, 26-41. greene, m. (1978/1994). the lived world. in stone, l. (ed.) the education feminism reader. new york: routledge, 17-25. heilbrun, c. g. (1988). writing a woman’s life. new york: w.w. norton. lai, k. (2000). the tao te ching: resources for contemporary feminist thinking. journal of chinese philosophy, 27(2), 131-153. lao tze (4 th -6th century b.c./1990). tao te ching: the classic book of integrity and the way. (trans. & fwd.) victor h. mair. new york: bantam books. li, x. (2009). black and white may make a rainbow: cultural creativity from opposites. multicultural perspectives, 11(3), 1-7. _____. (2007). multiculturalize teacher identity: a critical descriptive narrative. multicultural education. 14(4), pp. 37-44. _____. (2006). becoming taoist i and thou: identity-making of opposite cultures. journal of curriculum and pedagogy, 3(2), 193–216. _____. (2005). a tao of narrative: a dynamic splicing of teacher stories. curriculum inquiry, 35(3), 339–365. _____. (2002). the tao of life stories: chinese language, poetry, and culture in education. new york: peter lang. _____. (1998). becoming an intersubjective self: teacher knowing through chinese women immigrants’ knotting of language, poetry, and culture. unpublished ph.d. dissertation. university of toronto, canada. _____. (1991). moments of improvisation in my life experience. unpublished master’s thesis. university of toronto, canada. li, x.; conle, c.; & elbaz lucwisch, f. (2009). shifting polarized positions: a narrative approach in teacher education. new york: peter lang. li, y. (1992). (ed.) chinese women through chinese eyes. armonk, new york: an east gate book. olesen, v. (1994). feminisms and models of qualitative research. in n. k. denzin & y. s. lincoln (eds.) handbook of qualitative research. thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. _____. (2005). early millennial feminist qualitative research: challenges and contours. in n. k. denzin & y. s. lincoln (eds.) the sage handbook of qualitative research. thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. personal narrative group (1989). (eds.) interpreting women’s lives: feminist theory and personal narratives. bloomington, indiana: indiana university press. li. daoism and feminism : identity through life stories of chinese immigrant women 82 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2001 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci raymond, j. (1986). a passion for friends: toward a philosophy of female friendship. boston: beacon press. wolf, m. (1985). revolution postponed: women in contemporary china. stanford, california: stanford university press. submitted: march, 12nd, 2010 approved: january, 10st, 2011 microsoft word jrj_commentaries.21.11.07.doc transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci commentaries and conversations on jeanette rhedding-jones’s ‘monocultural constructs’ editor: noel gough la trobe university, australia introduction transnational curriculum inquiry (tci) is both a site for transnational scholarly conversations and a site for inquiry into the ways that electronic publishing procedures facilitate and/or constrain inclusive knowledge work in global virtual spaces. one of the ways in which we try to produce such conversations is by keeping tci’s editorial policies and procedures flexible and refraining from imposing arbitrary standards and styles. for example, tci does not have a fixed publication schedule: articles and book/media reviews will usually be published as soon as they are accepted for publication. some issues might consist of just one article or one book/media review, other issues might contain several articles that we believe might be complementary. we will also be flexible in matters of layout and style. if authors go to the trouble of formatting their articles in a particular way, we will not change them to fit our templates. similarly, we do not prescribe one single citation style. authors are free to use whatever style they see as most appropriate for their work, provided that they use a style consistently and provide all of the bibliographic information we require. tci’s review policies and procedures are also flexible. for example, although all articles published in tci will be peer reviewed, they will not necessarily be ‘blind’ reviews. authors can choose to anonymise their manuscripts, and the editors will respect their choice, but we will not impose anonymity on authors. each manuscript is normally reviewed by three referees, two of whom, in most circumstances, will be of different nationalities from the author(s) and from each other. in addition, the editor may assign a consulting editor to liaise with the referees and the editor in reaching a decision about publication. each referee’s signed review will be circulated to the other referees. my experience, like that of many other journal editors, is that signed reviews are generally of a higher quality than unsigned reviews. however, the names of referees will not be divulged to authors of rejected manuscripts. although tci publishes principally in english, we encourage co-publication of manuscripts in the author’s ‘home’ language, if this is other than english. i thank francisco sousa for providing his article on curriculum work in the azores in both english and portuguese. at the editor’s discretion, manuscripts accepted for publication may be published together with some or all of the referees’ reports and the author’s response, as is the case with jeanette rhedding-jones’s article in this issue. i thank jeanette rhedding-jones and loshini naidoo for their patience, and also thank jyotsna pattnaik and marg sellers for their thoughtful and engaging commentaries and questions. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci commentaries and conversations on jeanette rhedding-jones’s ‘monocultural constructs’ transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 56 monad, nomad: where to with this poststructuralist philosophising? an open letter to jeanette rheddingjones marg sellers the university of queensland, australia, and whitireia community polytechnic, new zealand dear jeanette your article has inspired me to respond in a letter to you, partly because you have alerted me to recesses of monoculturalisms that lurk in my thinking; partly because like you and others (for example, richardson, 2000, st. pierre, 2004) i like to let my writing unfold in deleuzean (1987) ways, and partly to disrupt any monocultural expectations of this review of your article. an epistolary exchange eases my dis/un/covering of what may be enfolded within pleats, and enhances the pleasure of flowing with/through academic ideas and the spaces they appear in. similarly to you, i read through feminist poststructuralist lenses and am open to simultaneity of monoculturalism(s) and cultural multiplicity. i know little of postcolonial theory although i am aware that the ‘post’ confronts colonisation poststructurally and this allows me a glimpse into the territory. i write from aotearoa new zealand,1 very close to your native australia but far from your current home in norway. although we are distanced geographically, we appear close philosophically and theoretically, although my cultural relativities are different – i live in my homeland, and am of the majority pakeha2 culture. i have been involved as teacher and parent in a variety of early childhood settings over the years and currently work as a teacher educator, of early childhood student teachers. before beginning, i will explain briefly the didaktik educational perspective that backgrounds my response to your article. in aotearoa new zealand, the treaty of waitangi3 signifies a commitment to a bicultural society; also, we have two official languages, mäori4 and english. drawing from tikanga mäori,5 the philosophy of our unique, national early childhood curriculum, te whäriki (ministry of education, 1996), meaning a woven mat, uses the metaphor of weaving to bring together four principles (empowerment, holistic development, family and community, and relationships) and five strands (well-being, belonging, contribution, communication and exploration). mäori perspectives of these principles and strands, while being a separate part of the curriculum document, are integrally related – the weaving of the mat includes a bicultural perspective involving language, culture and values of mäori and pakeha, an antiracist approach and respectful, reciprocal relationships between both peoples. margaret carr and helen may (1993), who were actively 1 aotearoa new zealand acknowledges biculturalism. aotearoa is the name given by indigenous mäori to the land that europeans (re)named new zealand. 2 pakeha refers to citizens who are non-mäori and of european extraction. 3 this document was signed in 1840 by mäori and representatives of the crown. it had three objectives: ‘the protection of mäori interests, the promotion of settler interests, and the securement of strategic advantage for the crown’ (durie, m. 1998, te mana, te käwanatanga: the politics of mäori self-determination, oxford university press, [n.z.]. p. 176). 4 colonisation almost destroyed mäori language. today, a minority of mäori are fluent in te reo (the language) and very few pakeha speak te reo, although the rise in the 1980s of kaupapa mäori schooling, which immerses children in te reo and tikanga mäori, has contributed to a renaissance and increasing fluency. 5 mäori culture, that is, all things mäori. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci commentaries and conversations on jeanette rhedding-jones’s ‘monocultural constructs’ transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 57 involved in its development, explain that te whäriki ‘attempts to protect diversity and quality, to provide direction without prescription, and to be helpful to a wide range of age groups, communities, cultures and philosophies’ ( p. 17). also, every centre is able to metaphorically weave its own curriculum mat, to incorporate the patterns, features and contexts unique to its programme and to its community of families and children. considering your challenge to monocultural thinking, this may sound too good to be true, and in some ways it is. although the final draft of te whäriki presented to the ministry of education involved extensive consultation with a culturally diverse group of practitioners, tertiary early childhood educators and people with nationally recognised expertise, the ministry’s revised draft – by people not involved in early childhood education – attempted to integrate difference but actually lessened the emphasis on diverse curriculum contexts, such as pacific islands settings. however, eight years on, we now have samoan and cook islands mäori early childhood curriculum documents, similar to te whäriki, and curriculum documents for tongan and tokelau cultural settings are in process. although these all include strands that are important to the cultures they represent, they remain constrained by monocultural values. for example, the ministry selected one person to write the samoan curriculum, thus denying the collective voice that is integral to fa’asamoa.6 as well, in practice, how centres weave their curriculum mats is very much influenced by achievement expectations in the form of learning outcomes that are based on western developmental ideals, although this is mediated somewhat by the focus on language immersion in te kohanga reo (mäori language nests) and the different pacific islands centres. but, complexity arises in the form of a dilemma that appears similar for minority children in oslo. a dilemma emanates from needing and/or wanting to learn the majority language to communicate and having to learn new ways of operating so as to progress educationally and economically in mainstream norway/aotearoa new zealand and the associated loss of cultural identity when the home language is relegated to second place and risking losing the home language and access to the culture and knowing how this impacts on children’s learning, both shortand long-term. yet, if all these were articulated positively, educating our young children could be very different. from an alternative perspective, learning other languages, learning protocols of other cultures and nurturing individual children’s home language and culture need not create problems for minorities. rather, all these could be seen to enrich all cultures involved. at this moment, i am reminded of sonia nieto’s (1999) question, ‘who does the accommodating?’ (p.77ff) when such dilemmas arise. as you say, jeanette, making the majority monocultural perspective (with its associated values and beliefs) the problem, rather than minority multiculturalism(s) is challenging. you ask: ‘do dominant culture professionals hear, see and taste only their own cultural positionings?’ (p.6). from my conversations with students and teachers (both early childhood and teacher educators), it appears that most find it difficult to think beyond the western psychological emphasis on independence, for example, that perceives certain kinds of developmental stages and achievement expectations. so even in mainstream settings, weaving the mat of te whäriki is relatively unaccommodating of diverse experiences of a critical multiculturalist approach that you present. as you suggest, mono-encultured teachers in any setting need to be asking questions like: ‘whose songs are we singing? whose sleep patterns are being followed? whose home does our centre look like, and whose does it not?’ (p.7). another significant question that i agree would do well to be foregrounded, and reflected upon regularly, is: ‘what happens when the dominant culture 6 the samoan culture http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci commentaries and conversations on jeanette rhedding-jones’s ‘monocultural constructs’ transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 58 wants to stop a minority culture’s normalized practices, on the basis of majority ethics?’ (p.10). throughout your article, questions such as those above alerted me to mono/multi/culturalist concepts that operate through many areas – societal, institutional, personal and collective – which lead me to reflect on what my mono-encultured gaze might be missing. within the aotearoa new zealand early childhood education scene, we invest much time and effort attempting to consult and collaborate with a diverse range of people, cultures and people with various expertise around any given situation or event. this collaborative approach is one that pakeha have had to learn and are still grappling with in many instances. it honours mäori protocol and aligns with some, but not all, pacific peoples’ cultural expectations. so it was puzzling for me to see you write: ‘subverting the established order, of norwegian pre-school pedagogies highly emphasising social collaboration for example, involves importing other pedagogies, from the home countries and nations of the relocated’ (p.24). doesn’t collaboration enable a mono/multi hybridity of cultural pedagogies and curriculum? i’m confused. here i was, (un)comfortably focussing on te whäriki’s strands of well-being, belonging, contribution and communication, all of which seem to enable inclusiveness. but you challenge me to (re)think my mono-encultured inclusive perspective – by reflecting on the norwegian context, and, by acknowledging my admission that not all pacific peoples value collaboration to the same extent. if i think too big, it seems too hard – how can we be all things to everyone at once? yet, if i think about the importance of knowing the students that i am working with at any moment and understanding what is important to their home culture, then it does become possible – through personal interactions. and, i envisage this to be similar for early childhood teachers as they interact with young children from diverse cultures. it’s around the personal that there are readily accessible opportunities for change. like nieto (1999), you point to the importance of change occurring through/within/ between/among societal and institutional and personal and collective systems and behaviours if we are to develop early childhood learning communities that nurture multiculturalism(s). also, that it is in the interplay between the personal and the institutional, for example, that transformation is more likely to occur; within spaces where each is embodied in and emerges from the other(s). this resonates in your ideas about mono/multi/culturalism(s) as an emergence of a ‘conglomerate singularity’ when you write: far from being a negative description of a culture, the mono effects here are new blendings, shifts and transformations. theorising a contemporary shift to a collective singularity rather than a unitary singularity allows for diversities within it. (p.20) in reference to derrida, you say that both the mono and the multi matters, and that from this idea other possibilities emerge. deleuze (re)appears as you consider the complexity of his philosophical monad – within the finiteness of its own existence is expressed the infinity of the entire world – and the implications for theorising culture. you say: ‘this monad then, is what i am calling the monocultural, representing and reflecting other monocultures, which themselves function similarly’ (p.21). when you talk of cultures ‘produc[ing] clarity from obscurity and then plung[ing] back into obscurity’ (p.21), it is like appearing in another of deleuze’s nomadic spaces, there to dis/un/cover cultural change and flow and dissolution. as shadows and light appear within a landscape, so a collective mono shines as multi before fading into mono, and reappearing as multi elsewhere, and so on. monad, nomad: where to with this poststructuralist philosophising? http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci commentaries and conversations on jeanette rhedding-jones’s ‘monocultural constructs’ transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 59 perhaps not much further for now if this letter is to be of value. i read your article, hopefully as you intended, as being about discourses constructing curriculum (p.8) and i have reflected on some of them. there isn’t space here to explore directly how your discussions of globalization and race, ethnicity and culture, language and self, and postnationalism and transnationalism relate to te whäriki and what it represents, although some intersecting issues appear in my reflecting. as i look through the jottings i made on your article as i read it, there is more that i could respond to. monocultural assumptions and the implications for assessment of young children’s learning, and aotearoa new zealand’s strategies for increasing the numbers of qualified mäori and pacific islands early childhood teachers are two examples. i am heartened that your final observations about beginnings of changes are echoed in aotearoa new zealand. here, i see teachers letting go of the need for control as they work coconstructively with young children towards shared understandings of knowledge; i hear more encouragement of children using their home language; i see assessment occurring through learning stories that do not focus on measurement. but despite te whäriki and the potential for weaving multiculturalist mats, a focus on planned learning experiences gets in the way of ‘letting learning and play and communications look after themselves’ (p.26). if there is an established order to be subverted here, perhaps it is the primacy given to planning that is overly directive and sabotages flows of learning, play and communications. but how do i know that this is not my mono-encultured voice speaking? i would be interested in your response. in the meantime, thankyou, jeanette, for the inspiration to reflect on monoculturalism(s) and reconsider my critical multi-culturalist perspective. yours truly marg sellers references carr, m. & may, h. 1993, ‘choosing a model. reflecting on the development process of te whäriki: national early childhood development guidelines in new zealand’, international journal of early years learning, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 7-21. deleuze, g. & guattari, f. 1987, a thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia, athlone press, london. durie, m. 1998, te mana, te käwanatanga: the politics of mäori self-determination, oxford university press, [n.z.]. ministry of education 1996, te whäriki: the early childhood curriculum, learning media, wellington. nieto, s. 1999, the light in their eyes, teachers college press, new york. richardson, l. 2000, ‘skirting a pleated text: de-disciplining an academic life’, in st. pierre, e. a. & pillow, w. s. (eds.), working the ruins: feminist poststructural theory and methods in education, routledge, new york, pp. 153-163. st. pierre, e. a. 2004, ‘deleuzian concepts for education: the subject undone’, educational philosophy and theory, vol. 36, no. 3, pp. 283-296. reviewer marg sellers is a doctoral candidate at the university of queensland and is programme leader for the early childhood teacher education programmes at whitireia community polytechnic, new zealand. email: m.sellers@paradise.net.nz http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci mailto:sellers@paradise.net.nz commentaries and conversations on jeanette rhedding-jones’s ‘monocultural constructs’ transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 60 a reply to marg sellers jeanette rhedding-jones lovely to get a reader out there who thinks about these things too. my tardy response is simply overwork, and the ever-present need to prioritize the local. yes, i know something of aoteoroa’s practices and have been working with a copy of te whārike almost since it was published. i will be going to the late november 2006 conference reconceptualizing early childhood education, led by jenny ritchie in rotorua. many of my norwegian colleagues in early childhood education will be there presenting too: the theme is decolonizing and anticolonial research and practice. http://reconece.org thanks too for your reference list: very useful. i think there are big differences between a nation such as norway and a nation such as new zealand. also i’m against the rhetoric of ‘enriching all cultures’, as this can get passed off as a glib statement. my sentence about ‘importing other pedagogies from the home countries and nations of the relocated’ is challenging i know. in an islamic context, such as where i work one day a week with muslim children, it means the children not drawing people: making geometric designs instead, or depicting birds and flowers. quite a challenge for my monocultural background of curriculum/care practice with the very young. yes, in theory, a mono-multi hybridity is what’s desired; but where is social competence when what is wanted might not be shared play with other children but individual skills in folding small pieces of paper? the desired social competence of norwegian pedagogy is a norwegian construct, based on norwegian notions of liberty and democracy. as i see discourses of ‘goodness’ we can never get it right. the notion of the good teacher, the good curriculum, good parenting and the good/quality institution is an essentialist fabrication culturally contrived. all we can do i think is keep on being critical of how we position ourselves, and be open to difference as the not-me. yes there is hope when things change; it is possible to let go and to work together for something else; and there are more languages around at least in oslo than there were when i originally write this piece in 2000. but the mono always asserts itself because that’s how monads operate (deleuze, 1993). we have to watch for it. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci http://reconece.org commentaries and conversations on jeanette rhedding-jones’s ‘monocultural constructs’ transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 61 a review of ‘monocultural constructs’ jyotsna pattnaik california state university, long beach, usa the article is written very well. i agree with the author’s theoretical stand and fully support the need for post-colonial perspectives in early childhood education. the concerns voiced by the author (in reference to norwegian early childhood education discourses and practices) echo on the other side of the atlantic as well. early childhood reconceptualists in the united states such as canella, soto, viruru, have vehemently criticized the canonization of western child development theories in early childhood education and adoption of naeyc’s ‘developmentally appropriate practices’ (daps) by states, national, and local bodies to define quality practices in early childhood classrooms. criticisms are mounting (both by proponents and opponents of multicultural education) against the widely practiced tourist multiculturalism in the us public schools. with a social reconstruction agenda in mind, critical theories (such as critical multiculturalism, critical race theory, and critical pedagogy) are taking center stage in academic discourses on pluralism at present. therefore, perspectives presented by minority scholars, hopefully, will lead toward disrupting majority discourses and unsettling majority codes. i have a few suggestions/perspectives that i present here. 1. while theoretical justifications and perspectives are well articulated, there seems to be some gap in connecting these discussions to the practical/day-to-day practices in early childhood settings. theoretical discussions have been left abruptly without providing examples related to early childhood curriculum practices so as to demonstrate concrete applications. for example, how do teachers/carers simultaneously reconstruct monoculturalism and cultural multiplicity within an early childhood curriculum? 2. the notion of ‘multiplicity’ is not without its discontent and has faced many implementational challenges. for example, in what ways may a feminist educator address gender equity in his/her early childhood classroom while not distancing families whose cultural and religious affiliations preach against such an ideal? 3. it is true that teachers’ multilingual competence plays a major role in facilitating communication with immigrant children and parents. however, how many languages could a teacher/carer possibly learn if a classroom consists of immigrant children from many different linguistic communities? learning a language in adulthood is a difficult endeavor unless one is immersed within a particular language-speaking community for an extended period. therefore, we may need to look beyond teachers to school/center-wide policies that facilitate utilization of bi/multilingual interpreters in linguistically diverse early childhood programs. mandating second language learning for all children in schools may also help prepare future bi/multilingual teachers. 4. the perspectives and roles of immigrant parents and communities need to be incorporated in discourses surrounding monolingual and monocultural curriculum practices in schools. utilitarian considerations, frequently, determine parental preference for monocultural/ monolingual schooling for their children. therefore, immigrant parents may not challenge schools’ policies that devalue (through a tourist curriculum) or entirely ignore their home language and culture. parents’ preference for english-only instruction and rejection of http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci commentaries and conversations on jeanette rhedding-jones’s ‘monocultural constructs’ transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 62 bilingual education in california (that resulted in proposition 227, english-only instruction) is a case in point. parental preference for english-medium instruction has resulted in mushrooming of english-medium private pre/schools (many of which are of questionable quality) in south asia. linguists in india lament over the loss of indian languages as a result of global monopoly of english. children are graduating from english-medium private schools without acquiring literacy in their mother tongues. 5. many researchers perceive ‘the trait approach’ (that defines children’s development, learning, and behavior on the basis of their ethnic membership) as reductive and a simplistic explanation that ignores people’s varied participation that change over time and space and through contact and relationship with other communities and systems. from their research, orellana and bowmen (2004) and mcneil (1999) highlight within-ethnic group differences (in socializations, adaptation pattern etc.) and categorize people as cultural retainers or cultural non-retainers. a host of factors such as phenotypic markers; languages and or language preferences; immigration status; country of origin and regions of origin (urban/rural); generational status; current and past social class positioning; nature and frequency of contact with home countries; and other cultural practices including religion, celebrations, and cultural customs contribute to variations in experiences among immigrants. explorations of such variations is a complex endeavor and call for embracing a philosophy of ‘emergent curriculum’ that emerges with the needs and interests of individual children rather than adopting a normative curriculum based on ethnic learning traits and culturally appropriate curriculum. 6. the issues of social class did not surface in the author’s discussion. to many critical theorists, multiculturalists have focused primarily on the understandings of asymmetrical gender and ethnic relations and neglected the issues of class struggle. according to peter mclaren, postmodernist critique may reproduce the very bourgeois structures of signification that it attempts to contest. some may claim that social class, gender, race, and ethnicity are so deeply mutually implicated that class issues pervade all discourse on gender, race, and ethnicity. however, as rightly pointed out by ortner that the pervasiveness and hiddenness of class frequently makes it muted and unavailable for discourse and subordinated to other discourses on marginalization. global capitalism has contributed to the division of immigrant communities on the basis of their income. therefore, immigrant children’s experiences with curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment practices may vary depending on their parental income, their place of residence, and the school that they attend. reviewer jyotsna pattnaik is a professor in the department of teacher education at california state university, long beach, usa. email: jpattnai@csulb.edu http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci mailto:jpattnai@csulb.edu commentaries and conversations on jeanette rhedding-jones’s ‘monocultural constructs’ transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 63 a response to jyotsna pattnaik jeanette rhedding-jones i have numbered my comments to match the 7 points made by jyotsna pattnaik. yes, we seem to be reading and thinking in related directions to each other. in particular, people around me in early childhood education in norway are now talking and writing about developmental psychology and its effects. how majority discourses are disrupted is a critical issue in pluralism. 1. i know there is a gap in my paper between connecting what i say as theories to everyday practices. in part this is caused by a word length problem. but also i have published about practices elsewhere; and i am more concerned right now with influencing the thinking and political actions of the people around me than with demonstrating that i know about practice. in the chapter i have written for amos hatch’s new usa book early childhood qualitative research (2007) i write about seven of ‘my’ graduate students and how they are dealing with how teacher carers simultaneously construct the mono and the multi. also in my own writing, together with muslim women in a range of languages, we are trying to say what happens in practice with the children aged 1-6 in a five section kindergarten in central oslo. for my questioning of diversity see my chapter (2005) in nicola yelland’s edited book by open university press: critical issues in early childhood. 2. yes there is a problem when feminist and multicultural ideals and ideas clash. my colleague (becher, 2004) has published about this on ciec (www.wwwords.co.uk/ciec) as a series of vignettes. male violence is a case in point. she advises that feminism takes a back seat when other matters are more crucial. in my own case, after migration, i began to see gender equity as not the only practice that matters. 3. it’s not a matter of how many languages a teacher can understand or speak. what matters i think is that these languages are heard and used, even if ‘we’ are not central to what happens. the women i work with as carers, assistants and pedagogues with the very young all speak at least three languages, not the same as each other, and use them every day with the children. the common languages are arabic and norwegian, and i understand only norwegian. that doesn’t seem to matter. it’s the mono mentality that is the problem in institutions where this is not happening. this is because so-called integration operates as assimilation. having a transformative agenda makes a world of difference. 4. yes, the perspectives and roles of immigrant parents and communities need to be incorporated into discourses surrounding monolingual and monocultural curriculum practices. easier said than done. i’ve used the term ‘monocultural’ to shock people into an awareness of how things operate. it’s a resistance of the ‘multicultural’ as a now normalized focus or aspiration or policy. it’s to show how the mono keeps coming back in, and how it’s there even if we are trying as much as we can to do the multi. it’s not only linguists in india who are lamenting the loss of indian languages: it’s a global process of take-over which we anglophones have to constantly work at avoiding. one of the reasons http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci http://www.wwwords.co.uk/ciec commentaries and conversations on jeanette rhedding-jones’s ‘monocultural constructs’ transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (2) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 64 why i am so slow in fixing up this article for publication is my desire to work with the immigrant norwegians who won’t be reading it. 5. ‘the trait approach’ defining children’s development, learning and behaviour: yes, as you can see i am working against this too. normative curriculum is unfair, unjust and inappropriate. psychology and its power has much to answer for. i have a paper about this (written as veiled text by my scribing of it as a play for theatre performance). it’s called ‘the oecd and the nation of expert in ece: a play’. it’s on http://reconcece.org as fully published conference proceedings from arizona 2003. i usually leave it off my cv. 6. social class: i agree with your comments and will work at this point. thanks. i do ‘have’ a graduate student who is doing women teachers’ life histories in relation to social class as her project. i quote her by name (bente lande lyngstad) in my forthcoming chapter in the hatch edited book i name above. earlier analyses of social class left off the education of families, in particular mothers’ lack of higher education. for immigrants in relative poverty, compared to the majority around them, the lack of family/women’s cultural capital as higher education and as spendable money is critical. so children’s social class location follows, even if the word ‘class’ is unspeakable. for dominant cultures in affluent nations such as norway (now oslo is named the most expensive city on the world to live in) the monocultural makes inaudible the financial differences between the kindergarten assistants, for example, and the parents of the mainstream norwegian children without immigrant backgrounds from non-western nations. afterword there are now two books forthcoming as effects of a development project (2005-2008). these regard some of the critical issues i raise in what i have written as my 2000 conference paper, now rewritten for transnational curriculum inquiry; and what i say as responses to the two named reviewers. i thank noel gough for the unique process of publication here, which allows the forthcoming books to be stronger. rhedding-jones, j., nordli, h., tanveer, j., dhoski, s., abdellaoui, n., djelassi, m., karaman, s. and ibrahim s. (2008 forthcoming) fortellinger fra en muslimsk barnehage (stories from a muslim preschool in norway). bergen norway: fagbokforlaget. rhedding-jones, j. (2008 forthcoming) muslims in early childhood education: discourses and epistemology. berlin and new york: springer. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci http://reconcece.org microsoft word woo_boyanton_formattededit1.doc to cite this article please include all of the following details: woo, yen yen joyceln and boyanton, dengting (2008) conversing about ‘self-creation,’ ‘the third space,’ and ‘harmony/control’: an essay review of the call from the stranger on a journey home by hongyu wang. transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> conversing about ‘self-creation,’ ‘the third space,’ and ‘harmony/control’: an essay review of the call from the stranger on a journey home by hongyu wang yen yen joyceln woo and dengting boyanton long island university, c.w.post, usa introduction in the call from the stranger on a journey home, hongyu wang interweaves her own biography, memories, cultural stories and questioning as a woman who travels between china and the u.s., together with her thoughts on the works of michel foucault, confucius, and julia kristeva, to meditate on the notions of ‘self,’ ‘home,’ and ‘difference.’ through this process, wang articulates a theory of ‘curriculum in a third space,’ with implications for an ethics of teaching. in excavating the instability of the meanings of commonplace notions of ‘self’ and ‘home’ through her own personal journey, wang’s project is highly relevant to contemporary biographies and consciousness. by trying to articulate what happens to us when we go on journeys – whether physical, biographical, psychic, and/or intellectual – wang helps us find nurturing ways to bridge the many ‘differences’ we encounter along the way. reflection and refraction the intellectual and personal struggles that wang recounts in her book (whose lyrical title we shall henceforth refer to for convenience as ‘the call’) present strong echoes for us, the two authors of this review, who, like wang, are both women of ethnic chinese descent who have traveled to the u.s. to study and work in higher education. yen yen woo, first author, left her home country of singapore in 1998 to pursue a doctorate in education at teachers college in columbia university in new york. she is now an assistant professor at long island university, where she teaches courses in curriculum development and social foundations of education. dengting boyanton, second author, left beijing, china in 2001 to study at the university of virginia, and has just joined long island university, where she teaches psychological foundations of education. like wang, we both teach students who are very different from ourselves in terms of race, ethnicity, lived experience and political commitments. in view of the similarities in the our biographies, ethnic affiliations and languages, but also because of the significant differences in our lived histories, individual journeys and the intellectual traditions in which we have been immersed, we felt it might be illuminating to review the call in the form of a conversation with each other. we have never had any indepth discussions about our different fields and approaches to education, even though we work across the hallway from each other. we decided to read the call together, write our individual responses, and then engage with each other’s thoughts on, specifically: wang’s discussion of foucault and the idea of ‘self-creation’; kristeva and the concept of ‘the third space’; and the question of harmony or control in confucius. thereafter, we conclude our http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci woo & boyanton: essay review of the call from the stranger on a journey home transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 75 review with a few thoughts on the trans-national and trans-cultural voices that wang has used in the writing of the text, as well as our reflections on how to speak to and across our similarities and differences in this conversation with each other. early in the book, hongyu wang (2004) invites and challenges the reader ‘to bear with [her] through this difficult journey, struggling to make sense of multiple cultural traditions, and thereby envisioning curriculum differently’ (p. 20). conversing through our similarities and differences, we hope to ‘make sense of’ and query our own and each other’s interpretive frameworks. this review thus constitutes a kind of transnational curriculum inquiry, pulled together by similar transnational biographies and a concern that pedagogies should focus on what is ‘educational’ for students, yet sustained in tension by our multiple differences. foucault and self-creation dengting: wang begins her theoretical survey by introducing foucault’s self-care theory to emphasize that the meaning of the self is to achieve one’s own maximal creativity, which foucault calls ‘self-creation.’ based on foucault’s principle of self-care, wang argues that one should actively take charge of one’s life, think for oneself, take good care of oneself (both one’s body and soul), and develop a new self based on one’s experience and ability (p. 25). on the basis of foucault’s concept of the ‘aesthetic self,’ wang asserts that the goal of self-care and self-creation is to make the self (body, behavior, spirits, feelings) as beautiful as a piece of art. ‘aesthetic’ here does not mean that a person should be beautiful in the literal sense, but to achieve one’s fullest potential. take the body, for example, we should take care of our bodies by exercising, eating properly, and having a routine so that the body can be in its best condition. the same applies to our soul. we should frequently take care of our souls by reflecting, questioning, cleansing our foul ideas, strengthening our will, being kind to others, and developing good qualities (p. 25). wang is concerned, however, that foucault’s ideas may be too extreme in that he encourages the individual to develop the self to the extent of transgressing against the social system. particularly, wang takes issue with foucault’s glorification of criminal behavior such as murdering and raping (p. 26). as a developmental psychologist who is interested in how we as human beings develop psychologically in a healthy and productive way, i am particularly attracted by this concept of self-creation. i believe that the purpose of education is not just to pass the knowledge to our students, but also to guide them become better human beings who are able to think critically, think for themselves, and discover/create a new self. this world is still full of problems as well as opportunities. i agree with foucault that in order to become a useful individual, one cannot just passively or submissively follow social norms. otherwise, one will never fully develop his true self or make a real difference in society. only when one is sufficiently courageous to challenge the norm and question authority, are creation and progress possible. however, although i like foucault’s idea of self-care and self-creation, i do share wang’s concerns. i am afraid that foucault’s ‘enthusiasms for something completely new’ (p. 47) and becoming ‘absolute other’ (p. 47) may be too extreme. i agree with wang that law is not necessarily bad and it actually provides certain protections for individuals (p. 47). in fact, if wisely used, the social system can be beneficial for self-care and self-creation (p. 77). yen yen: for me, coming from singapore, where the education system has been regarded by many in the country as being overly stressful and being overly focused on gaining the correct http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci woo & boyanton: essay review of the call from the stranger on a journey home transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 76 academic credentials (woo, 2008), foucault’s message of self-care against the ways that society disciplines us to be is initially very attractive and liberating. like wang, i am troubled by any uncritical embrace of foucault’s language of the ‘care of the self’ (p. 39), but for a different reason. the language of the care and transformation of the self has also been used within neoliberal discourse for the construction of the neoliberal self (see mcgee, 2005; ong, 1999; rose, 1999), where the locus for development is conceptualized as being within the self. works such as micki mcgee’s self-help, inc. (2005) point out how there is now an entire self-help industry that capitalizes on this very message of the possibility of selftransformation, self re-creation, and working on the body and behavior as an artist would work on his/her material. in curriculum reform in singapore, it becomes attractive to implement ‘critical thinking’ and ‘creative thinking’ classes in schools, focusing on the development of individual selves that can be re-created to become ‘entrepreneurial’ selves aligned with the needs of a new economy, whilst the school system continues to separate students into somewhat segregated life-worlds, where students’ access to cultural and social capital have significant impact on their access to more or less desirable educational tracks or streams (woo, 2008). absent in this construction is the self in relation to others, the self as a citizen. in this ‘century of the self’ (curtis, 2002), where commercial marketing and policy messages are deliberately constructed to ascribe personal desires, ‘care of the self’ itself, when embraced uncritically, can become, in foucauldian terms (1990, 1995), another disciplinary discourse. kristeva and the third space yen yen: kristeva provides wang with a more balanced understanding of the self. wang learns from kristeva neither to define herself against nor to embrace limitations and strangeness, but to ‘take exile, strangeness, and foreignness’ as a site of creation (p. 10). while foucault focuses on the ‘surrendering’ of the self defined by social and cultural limits in order to ‘transform’ it (p. 35), kristeva, for wang, points to the less dramatic ‘intimate revolt’ (p. 110), eschewing the simplistic binary of self/other to see differences within herself, with important pedagogical implications for teaching students that we perceive to be strangers to ourselves. i found the following statement particularly significant for understanding what happens to teachers who are able to work through the silences, resistances and perceived failures in their interactions with students who are different from themselves: the pedagogical act of working through failures provokes and invites the teacher’s own psychic transformation. in this relational noncoincidence of encountering the unknown in students (and ourselves), we as educators are called upon to reach out of ourselves in our im/possible meeting with students so that pedagogical potentialities can be realized for us all (p. 110). wang talks about this transformation of the self and other without giving up either as happening in ‘a loving third space—both psychic and social’ (p. 110). herein lies wang’s central motif, which is also in the title of the book: ‘curriculum in a third space.’ dengting: similar to wang, i myself had also struggled with this ‘third space’ issue a great deal as an immigrant from china. i still remember how proud i was of my chinese ethnicity when i first http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci woo & boyanton: essay review of the call from the stranger on a journey home transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 77 moved to the u.s. in 2001. i was constantly fighting against american culture and resisting being americanized. i felt very disappointed when people (both chinese and americans) told me that i was very americanized. they saw this in my way of talking and walking—what wang describes as a ‘relational individuality’ change (p. 76). learning about the ‘loving third space’ (p. 110) made me realize that i do not have to give up either self (chinese) or other (american). i do not have to over-protect my chinese identity, nor do i have to feel disappointed about being americanized either. i should not resist american culture but should experience, explore, embrace, and learn from it. it should be an advantage or even a privilege rather than a shame to be familiar with both cultures, to learn from both, and thus to ‘generate a new self of relational individuality’ (p. 76). as the old chinese saying says: stagnant water becomes stinky, running water stays fresh. yen yen: like dengting, i began my life in a different country. but, i have always experienced ethnic and national identities as contextual and fluid. ‘american,’ ‘chinese,’ and ‘singaporean’ are signifiers without fixed referents. in singapore, i am identified as a chinese singaporean; in china and to my chinese neighbor in flushing, new york, i am ‘wai di ren’ (someone from the outer lands); in the u.s., i look chinese but sound a little british (because singapore used to be a british colony and we retain british pronunciation). i am also perpetually suspicious of feelings of pride about belonging to a certain group, as the political leadership in various countries, including the u.s., singapore and china, has used the discourse of national pride and a sense of patriotism as a tool for managing dissent. feelings of national pride are, to me, based on managed and mythologized pasts and futures (shapiro, 2000), producing memories of heroes, victories and struggles selectively while simultaneously erasing or forgetting inconvenient events, characters and narratives (popkewitz, 2000, p. 167). dengting: i find it interesting that although yen yen and i both identify ourselves as chinese, and we both came to american at an adult age, our attitudes towards our identity were different. while yen yen is uncertain whether she should feel proud of her singaporean chinese identity or not, i feel very proud of being chinese, and fought very hard to protect it after my arrival in the u.s. the question is: why? is it because of the differing historical and political experiences of our two countries? i wonder if the history of singapore (being a colony of britain) made yen yen’s singaporean chinese identity less strong than my chinese identity? the fact that i had a ‘fixed’ ethnic self while yen yen has a ‘fluid’ self is intriguing to me. according to wang, the self is the base and is also necessary to ‘renew one’s relationship both with oneself and with others’ (p. 26). i wonder how this difference in our ethnic selves affects our journey of self-development in america. yen yen: it is not that i am ‘uncertain’ of whether i should feel ‘proud’ of my singaporean chinese identity. it is that i find all identities – whether ‘singaporean chinese’ or ‘american’ – to be fluid and manufactured concepts, which can operate to exclude as much as they can include. but dengting reminds me that no matter how i intellectually eschew static categories of identity as constructions, we all experience the desire to be in communication with others like ourselves on a daily basis. for example, i feel quite at home in flushing, queens, in new york in large part because of the preponderance of asian people, cuisines, and stores, which is at once a manifestation of ‘chinese-ness’ and ‘american’ immigrant culture. there are many immigrant parents who desire to send their children to charter schools with students of http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci woo & boyanton: essay review of the call from the stranger on a journey home transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 78 similar ethnic and cultural affiliations because it provides some comfort (rimer, 2009). i have also been moved by the demonstration of the ‘american’ mantra of possibilities for any one with the election of the first african-american president. this seems to describe what stuart hall calls the ‘both the necessity and ‘impossibility’ of identities’ (cited in ang, 2000, p.2). within this context, i understand wang’s invocation of ‘the third space’ not as a permanent new state but those moments when our various constructed and experienced categories of identity are transcended and we see each other, and ourselves outside of these categories. questions of ‘who am i?’ and ‘who are you?’ become less important than the questions of: how do our stories echo each other? what do others’ stories tell us about what we have missed in our own? dengting: yen yen’s experience with her ethnic identity mirrors very well with wang’s self in ‘the third space,’ where the self is fluid and continues to grow and develop as one experiences new things in different contexts. as yen yen mentioned, stuart hall’s statement of how identity is both the ‘necessity’ and the ‘impossibility’ is a perfect summary of the self in ‘the third space.’ reflecting on my own journey, i believe my personal struggle with the ‘third space’ crisis is not just an individual struggle but also a national one. historically and politically, china had a strong sense of self as a nation and strived to instill this sense of pride in its citizens, as clearly manifested in me when i first arrived in the u.s. this ‘fixed’ identity has caused great clashes as china has become more and more heavily influenced by western culture, especially american culture (e.g., music, language, culture, architecture, food, business, literature, clothes). china is currently experiencing a cultural crisis. many chinese are worried that if we keep absorbing american culture like this, china will lose its own identity. how should we deal with this ‘identity crisis?’ or is it really a ‘crisis’ in the first place? again, wang’s concept of ‘third space’ provides great insight for us. on the one hand, china is moving in a new direction towards america by bringing diversity (e.g., allowing different kinds of culture and style to co-exist with each other) to the attention of the public. on the other hand, china will not lose its identity or become america. china’s dance in the third space between these two cultures ‘has its own unique style,’ which is different from that of america (p. 78). yen yen: talking about a country uniformly in the psychological terms of achieving its ‘identity’ is difficult for me because different groups of citizens experience this journey of change differently. for some, the tension of economic ‘progress’ is framed as being between being chinese and american, for others it might be between capitalism and socialism, or between the rich and the poor, or the politically connected and those without political connections. each framing has political implications, privileging certain voices over others. how do we talk across our differences, our different framings of national identity, change, our problems and their solutions? wang talks about how, when we communicate through stories and narratives (the semiotic rather than the symbolic), rather than begin from static categories of identity, we are more likely to find what wang calls, ‘harmony in differences’. this is particularly important for teacher education within a political context where ideologues and ideologies call out for an individual’s identification. for instance, i keep finding in the teacher education classes that i teach in the u.s., how the labels of being left/right, from a blue/red state, liberal/conservative, democrat/republican, urban/suburban, pro-war/anti-war, often have the effect of shutting down meaningful dialogue. instead, wang http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci woo & boyanton: essay review of the call from the stranger on a journey home transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 79 calls for teacher education classrooms to be spaces of education beyond these seemingly irreconcilable differences and to be spaces where we dare to listen to each other and engage in dialogue. she wants us to utilize and not resist silences and clashes, and not to be completely debilitated by them, but to respond with ‘compassionate intelligence’ (p. 176) and to have ‘an unyielding pedagogical faith in students’ potential for change’ (p. 178). this is an important call for educators to commit themselves to making a ‘polyphonic curriculum,’ i.e. one where teachers/students seek less to convert students/teachers to their point of view, but more on building a democratic classroom where consideration of everyone’s differences helps both teachers and students on their individual and collective journeys: in a polyphonic curriculum … harmony in differences is also needed to promote a communal inquiry with the trust that, however different we might be, we still can connect with one another. in such an inquiry, students are more willing to journey into new territories, unafraid of mistakes or dead ends. and so are teachers (p. 175). i recall a recent incident in my teacher education classroom, which is predominantly middleclass and white. a teacher had asked how to address the topic of death in her elementary classroom, which is located in a poor, urban and mainly african-american neighborhood, where children see and hear about deaths regularly. several students objected to talk about death in their classrooms, citing reasons such as sensitivity, religion, protecting the innocence of children, and the differences between ‘those children’ and ‘our children.’ the conversation took a different turn when a white suburban mom revealed how grateful she was when her child contracted a deadly illness, that the child’s teacher engaged the class in a frank discussion on death and illness, and enabled her classmates to ask questions in their own terms, such as ‘will her hair grow back?’ a number of the students in this teacher education class were then able to engage in the kind of ‘communal inquiry’ through narrative that wang talks about, by recalling the stories of death in their own families and in the families of the children in their classrooms, when some of us had assumed previously that it did not happen to ‘our children’ and therefore could not be addressed in the curriculum. dengting: like yen yen, i am also fascinated by the concept of a ‘polyphonic curriculum.’ it is my strong belief that wang’s implementation of the ‘curriculum in the third space’ will bring some fundamental changes to our current educational system in the u.s. wang’s curriculum in the ‘third space’ reminds us that learning is a process, is on-going, is open-ended, is an inquiry, is individual, is about understanding and creating (p. 156) and not memorization or finding the correct answer. the ‘third space’ raises our awareness of the purpose of education, which is not about memorization, high test scores, or obtaining educational degrees, but understanding, inquiring, critical thinking, sense of responsibility, and citizenship (p. 158). curriculum in the ‘third space’ also reinforces student-centered pedagogy by stressing the importance of teachers’ understanding students’ thoughts, perspectives, backgrounds, and cultures (p. 162). after all, our education is about the student. in order for students to learn, we have to really listen to them, know them, understand them, and find ways to reach them or to guide them to learn. curriculum in the ‘third space’ draws a beautiful picture of how teachers and students co-teach and co-learn together by engaging in an interactive, on-going, and ever-changing process (p. 180). yen yen: i am, however, uncomfortable with any invocation of ‘harmony,’ as it is ultimately utopian and impracticable. in my classroom, i regularly come across instances where identity http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci woo & boyanton: essay review of the call from the stranger on a journey home transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 80 categories are momentarily transcended, but i have rarely, if ever, encountered fluid narratives of deliverance and transformation. as elizabeth ellsworth (1994, 1997) reminds us, all of us, whether teachers or students, continue to be engaged in relations and practices of domination, even in a classroom that prioritizes critical pedagogy and dialogue. in the example i raised earlier, did i recognize the situation as ‘communal inquiry’ because the discussion about death in the curriculum was moving in a direction i wanted it to? i cannot help but wonder what i would have thought if the discussion had instead moved away from my own inclinations; would i still recognize it as ‘harmony,’ ‘communal inquiry,’ or the enactment of a ‘polyphonic curriculum’? confucius: harmony or control? dengting: through exploring confucius’ ideas on human relationships, wang further examines the ‘third space’ between the self and the society. wang sees confucius’ emphasis on ‘harmony’ in the self-society relationship as an emphasis on the importance of the individual serving the society. in spite of the primacy given to society, wang argues that confucius also encouraged individualism through the form of self-cultivation. the goal of self-cultivation is to become a noble man (junzi), who is supposed to be righteous, rationale, calm, and wise. the noble man is supposed to stand by his principles even when the whole society is corrupt or his own life or family is endangered. thus, wang argues, the confucian self is not completely subsumed by its social duties but is, in fact, encouraged to develop independently of the society, which it, nevertheless, continues to serve (p. 58). yen yen: wang’s discussion of confucianist teachings is especially intriguing to me, as i hail originally from singapore, whose political leadership has come to espouse an interpretation of confucianism that emphasizes control and order (see zakaria, 1994). wang explains this neoconfucianism, but also quotes from the analects to discuss how confucianist thought emphasizes ‘harmony’ and not ‘conformity,’ and argues that accordingly, it is right for the individual to ‘criticize the ruler’ when the ruler ‘deviates from the way’ (p. 60). thus, she notes how confucius’ original conception of harmony never precluded critique, yet, through neo-confucianism, it has become ‘a dogma which has suppressed individual freedom’ (p. 55). dengting: i found wang’s argument on how confucius encourages independence interesting but unconvincing. it is true that confucian thought emphasizes ‘harmony’ and not ‘conformity,’ and even encourages individuals to ‘criticize the ruler’ if he ‘deviates from the way’ (p. 60). however, if one reads closely, one can see that the purpose of personal cultivation was to develop individuals who would do the socially correct thing and support a harmonious social order: when the person is cultivated, the family life can be regulated. when the family life is regulated, the state can be rightly governed. when the state is rightly governed, the whole world can be made peaceful (p. 58). according to confucius, individuals are supposed to be governed, regulated, and cultivated. there is always a ‘right’ way to guide individual behavior, and the individual is not encouraged to discover and develop a unique true self as in foucault’s concept of selfhttp://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci woo & boyanton: essay review of the call from the stranger on a journey home transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 81 creation. therefore, in many ways, the purpose of confucian personal cultivation is more about the individual better fitting into society and better serving society. the essence of the confucian self is to behave and interact properly in different contexts. in this sense, i believe confucian personal cultivation is more about how a person can be cultivated so that family can be easily regulated, the state can be easily governed, and the world can be in order. this, i believe, is the key feature which distinguishes confucian personal cultivation from foucault’s self-creation. wang’s voice/s yen yen: the call contributes significantly to the field of curriculum studies as it demonstrates a new way of doing thoughtful and situated transnational curriculum comparisons. what i find particularly intriguing is how wang’s perspective presents us with an east-west perspective that is neither imperialistic, nor colonized, nor post-colonial. these categories cannot describe her perspective because her comparison of the theories of the east and the west never comes from the simplistic understanding of an insider or an outsider, which might sometimes veer towards either over-romanticizing or being overly critical. rather, wang is simultaneously a local and a foreigner, in both the u.s. and china. always hovering over her analysis is what benedict anderson calls, the ‘spectre of comparisons’ (1998), a sense of seeing places and things simultaneously in the now and seeing through the experiences, ghosts and stories from far away, both having equal power over her consciousness. the following extracts show the difference between wang’s struggle with language and sentiments about the english language, and those of postcolonial literary greats like r.k. narayan and raja rao, who have both mastered the english language yet seem to manifest an unease in so doing: we cannot write like the english. we should not. we cannot write only as indians. we have grown to look at the large world as a part of us. english both is and isn't 'an alien language'; it is the language of indians' 'intellectual make-up' but not of 'their emotional make-up' (narayan, 1988, p. 53) one has to convey in a language that is not one's own the spirit that is one's own. one has to convey the various shades and omissions of a certain thought-movement that looks maltreated in an alien language. i use the word 'alien', yet english is not really an alien language to us. it is the language of our intellectual make-up-like sanskrit or persian was beforebut not of our emotional make-up. we are all instinctively bilingual, many of us writing in our own language and in english. we cannot write like the english. we should not. we cannot write only as indians (rao, 1938). chinese words and english words mingle together, mostly english words, since i have learned to think in english. reading what i have written down, i feel chinese and english fit together nicely, while translation is impossible and not necessary. chinese comes out naturally when english fails me. english commands me with its own structure and rhythm, but it is more like a game. before i finish my practice, though, i am back to the world, in which i must express myself either in chinese or in english. in my mind, however, the two languages are already mingled, sometimes in honeymoon, sometimes in conflict, with, unsurprisingly, many english grammatical errors (wang, 2004, p. 113, italics author’s own). http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci woo & boyanton: essay review of the call from the stranger on a journey home transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 82 while the postcolonial sentiment of those like rao and narayan is an assertion against the colonizers – a distinction between ‘my’ thinking and ‘their’ thinking – wang demonstrates a sensibility that positions east and west and english and chinese equally, and equally problematic as well. there are no barriers to referring to chinese and western academic and literary writers, as well as to writing in different forms. it demonstrates what mccarthy calls, ‘a kind of poetics of a curriculum without borders’ (1998, p. 26). there is no center and no periphery. it is a perspective that leads us to see across national borders, to de-center our canon of scholars and literary writers, parsed through one’s personal journey. it is also a pragmatic position. throughout the book, wang seems to be less concerned about being angry about inequalities or being an insider/outsider than she is about the sustainability of a critical pedagogical practice. throughout the text, wang’s concern seems to be with being ‘back to the world’ and engaging with her students again the next day. dengting: although i highly recommend this book to all administrators, school principals, and teachers, i do, however, have some reservations about it. when i was reading the book, i couldn’t help asking myself: what is the purpose of this book? who is the intended audience? is it intended to reach anyone who is interested in education, or is it intended to be a very academic and scholarly book for well-educated people only? because of the way it was written, i doubt lay people will have the time or the patience to read it. the main difficulty is the writing style. i personally found this book very difficult to read and i often encountered long sentences, difficult terminology, abstract ideas, and confusing sentence structures. one thing that made it difficult for me to follow is that many ideas are not meaningfully connected but seem randomly piled together. for example, wang started her book with her journey back to china, which i was excited to read about since i was curious to know what her experiences were like. to my great disappointment and surprise, however, wang seemed to totally forget about this story and did not mention it again till the very end of the book, leaving me hanging throughout the entire book. also, wang tends to jump from one idea to another without clear connections between the ideas. this gave me the impression that she simply jotted down her thoughts randomly without organizing them together in a meaningful way around one specific theme. for instance, she was talking about the role of mother in china (p. 2), changed to the topic of silence (p. 3), and then suddenly jumped to language (p. 3). this fragmented style of writing fails to articulate a comprehensible overarching thesis and makes it difficult to see what her point was exactly. another issue i had with the book is that although i like the fact that wang shared many of her own experiences and stories in the book, most of the stories were not related to the topic she was addressing. i often wondered why she added a particular story in a particular place. finally, for a reader like myself, new to the writings of foucault and kristeva, these two philosophers’ ideas can be difficult to understand. when wang introduced these theories, she almost never used any examples nor provided any explanations to help the audience better understand them, which only made it more challenging for me. yen yen: it is an imperfect writing experiment, and wang acknowledges this early in the book: http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci woo & boyanton: essay review of the call from the stranger on a journey home transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 83 overall, theoretical and narrative voices, which are not separate in life, are mingled in the book…. such is my experimental effort to mingle theoretical and literary writing so that a space open to differences is created through languages. this experiment may not be as satisfactory as i hope, but it is a risk worth taking (p. 19). the blending of these styles reflects the different influences and voices that speak to wang simultaneously, and it is illustrative of the many hybrid cultural and intellectual encounters that are characteristic of an age of the global movement of people and ideas. i also feel that, at times, it came at the expense of drawing me, the reader, into this journey. in chapter 4, for instance, wang provides some of her most moving, perceptive, and thought-provoking autobiographical vignettes, exploring her own complex process of teaching and learning. however, the connections between vignette and theoretical discussion were often tenuously articulated and her use of italics was also confusing; sometimes they are used to signal vignettes while at others, they represent wang’s own ponderings on theory. the problem in the end is that in trying to be both an act of ‘self reflection’ (p. 51) and a statement on curriculum, the call at times tipped too far in the direction of the former, and made distilling the latter a sometimes laborious task. still, it is undeniable that the mixing of voices and the interweaving of personal narrative and cultural stories will be deeply provocative for readers, as it has been for the two of us. final thoughts dengting: after finishing the book, i began to understand why wang started her long journey with the exploration of herself as a foreigner in the u.s. and her position as a minority, female professor in an american university. i also began to understand her need to explore these three philosophers and bring their theories together. it was through this long, contradictory, and even painful journey that wang developed a deep understanding of self, education, teaching, learning which became her ‘curriculum in the third space.’ wang’s ‘curriculum in the third space’ has very profound and revolutionary applications in today’s educational system. although she did not provide specific methods that teachers can apply directly to their classroom, she does provide many insights on education. wang’s ‘curriculum in the third space’ upholds the idea that the real purpose of education should be to better understand/create the self/others and better relate to the self/society. it redefines the role for both the teacher and the student. it creates a new relationship between the students and the teacher. it offers a new level of understanding of teaching and learning. it provides a new approach towards curriculum. most importantly, it gives us guidance on how we can live and learn from each other in harmony despite all the differences of race, ethnicity, gender, nation, language, background, or experience. in modern education, developing a renewed and deep understanding of all these key concepts is not merely desirable but critically necessary. to renew our understanding of self, community, and creativity, complicated by the discourse of foucault, kristeva, and confucius, it becomes crucial to rethink the important issues of curriculum and education. (p. 121-122) although this book has limitations in writing style and some of the questions wang poses remain unanswered, i highly recommend that all educators read this book carefully and try to implement the ‘curriculum in the third space’ in their schools and classrooms. i believe wang’s ‘call from a stranger on a journey home’ will wake up many educators who are either afraid to change, afraid to lose themselves, or afraid to take the risk. likewise, those who are http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci woo & boyanton: essay review of the call from the stranger on a journey home transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 84 in a foreign land but uncertain if they are in the right place, who are confused about who they are, who have lost their direction, or feel guilty about having left their homes can benefit from reading this book. yen yen: the call is a vital text for curriculum scholars, as it contributes a very new and relevant crosscultural perspective to transnational curriculum studies. it also introduces and analyzes writings that are conspicuously absent in the field of curriculum studies in the english language, such as that of confucius. wang’s journey towards ‘curriculum in the third space’ also teaches us what it means to engage in the building of a democratic classroom – not with any instant prescription of methodology to be ‘implemented,’ but its call for commitment to the daily labor, pains and pleasures of journeying towards ‘harmony in differences’ (p. 175). for the two of us, wang’s text and narrative has provided the material and occasion to articulate our different understandings of home, national and ethnic identity, social relations of domination through voices that have very different disciplinary influences. it has also demonstrated the opportunities and challenges of conversing through our similarities and across our differences: we sometimes push each towards greater clarity, help each other articulate something that we could not articulate before, we are sometimes too careful with each other, sometimes make assumptions about each other, sometimes ignore each other’s points because one person’s concerns are invisible to the other, and sometimes try to pave over our differences in order to move on. yet, wang’s provocations in the call push us to begin a much larger and longer conversation about our intellectual pathways and our pedagogies that we would otherwise not engage in, even though we all work in the field of education, or like dengting and myself, might have the similar biography of being women of chinese descent from china and singapore, and work just across the hallway from each other. references anderson, b. (1998/2000). the spectre of comparisons: nationalism, southeast asia and the world. london: verso. ang, i. (2000). identity blues. in p. gilroy, l. grossberg, a. mcrobbie (eds.), without guarantees: in honour of stuart hall (pp. 1-13). london: verso. curtis, a. (director) (2002). century of the self. [television series]. london: bbc four. ellsworth, e. (1994). why doesn’t this feel empowering? working through the repressive myths of critical pedagogy. harvard educational review, 59(3), 297-324. ellsworth, e. (1997). teaching positions: difference, pedagogy, and the power of address. new york: teachers college press. foucault, m. (1990). the history of sexuality, volume i: an introduction (r. hurley, trans.). new york: vintage. (original work published 1976) foucault, m. (1995). discipline and punish (a. sheridan, trans.). new york: vintage books. (original work published 1975) mccarthy, c. (1998). the uses of culture: education and the limits of ethnic affiliation. new york: routledge. mcgee, m. (2005). self-help, inc.: makeover culture in american life. new york: oxford university press. narayan, r. k. (1988). a writer's nightmare: selected essays 1958-1988. penguin books. ong, a. (1999). flexible citizenship. durham & london: duke university press. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci woo & boyanton: essay review of the call from the stranger on a journey home transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 85 popkewitz, t. (2000). reform as the social administration of the child: globalization of knowledge and power. in n. c. burbules & c. a. torres (eds.), globalization and education: critical perspectives (pp. 157-186). new york: routledge. rao, r (1938). kanthapura. london: george allen & unwin. rimer, s. (2009). immigrants see charter school as a haven. new york times. retrieved january 12, 2009, from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/10/education/10charter.html rose, n. (1999). powers of freedom: reframing political thought. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. wang, h. (2004). the call from the stranger on a journey home: curriculum in a third space. new york: peter lang. woo, y. y. (2008). youth temporalities and the cost of singapore’s educational success. discourse: studies in the cultural politics of education, 29(2), 159-178. zakaria, f. (1994). culture is destiny. foreign affairs, 73(2), 109-126. authors yen yen joyceln woo is an assistant professor in the department of curriculum and instruction, long island university, c.w. post. her research interests are in the areas of public pedagogies, linguistic hybridity, and constructions of citizenship. she also works in multiple media as a writer, producer, and film director. email: yenyen.woo@liu.edu dengting boyanton is an assistant professor of educational psychology in the department of curriculum and instruction, long island university, c. w. post. her research interests are in the areas of classroom teaching and learning, classroom interpersonal communication, motivation, and student-teacher relationship in the classroom setting. email: dengting.boyanton@liu.edu http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/10/education/10charter.html mailto:woo@liu.edu mailto:boyanton@liu.edu microsoft word naidoo.doc to cite this article please include all of the following details: naidoo, loshini (2007) rupture or continuity? the impact of globalization on cultural identity and education in indian immigrant families in australia. transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> rupture or continuity? the impact of globalisation on cultural identity and education in indian immigrant families in australia loshini naidoo university of western sydney, australia introduction this article aims to bring together existing research that bear directly or indirectly on the cultural identity of indian immigrants in australia in order to establish whether the migratory experience has ruptured indian cultural identity. to do this, it was important to provide a general framework of globalisation theories so that a better understanding of the impact of globalisation and migration on cultural identity can be facilitated. the passage from an unproblematic conception of identity as the shared possession of ‘norms’ (rouse, 2005) to the socially constructed, contested multiplicities of identity ((nonini and ong 1997, p. 24), is closely bound up with the forces of globalisation. first, i engage in a discussion of the different theoretical perspectives on globalisation and discuss the ways in which some of these theoretical perspectives about cultural identity are being challenged and alternative frameworks are being developed. secondly, i examine empirical findings from recent research and evaluate their contribution to the notion of cultural identity. a review of the literature (faria, 2001; lakha & stevenson 2001; butcher, 2003; voigt-graf, 2005) addresses the ways in which indian immigrants in australia conduct their everyday lives in terms of their identities thirdly, i highlight the main conclusions from the emerging research to show that cultural identity among indian immigrants in australia has not ruptured but has continued and finally, i conclude with the implications for curriculum development and participation in diasporic communities. globalisation, for the purpose of this paper will be defined as ‘the intensification of world-wide social relations which link distant localities in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and via versa’ (giddens, cited in naidoo. 2006.). in conceptualising globalisation, two important characteristics emerge: the first is that the world is viewed as a single space, a whole and the second revolves around the concept of time-space reordering. featherstone, (cited in naidoo. 2006), believes that globalisation ‘entails the sense that the world is one place, that the globe has been compressed into a locality, that others are neighbours with whom we must necessarily interact, relate and listen’. some of the important socio-economic dimensions of globalisation are transnational transportation and migration of people or increased transportation of labour across the globe (castles & miller, 1998, cited in robinson & jonesdiaz 2005). in this context, social institutions such as the family are rendered vulnerable to the influences of consumerism and cultural homogenisation typically fostered by the west (tomlinson, 1999), with antiglobalisation activists arguing that globalisation needs to be understood as a form of western cultural imperialism (shepard & hayduk, 2002). so while identity is predominately transformed as a result of globalisation or westernisation, amongst indian immigrants in australia, this has not ruptured completely and still continues despite internal conflicts. considering the fact that the family is the http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci loshini naidoo: rupture or continuity? transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 19 fundamental reference point in indian societies, we can assume that family conflicts reflect the changes in the social life-world caused by the competition between traditional and western. it is quite obvious that issues such as marriage, the economic and social role of women, social aspects of gender equality, and the relationship between elders and their descendants are aspects of social change resulting from globalisation and migration but the research (faria, 2001; lakha & stevenson 2001; butcher, 2003; voigt-graf, 2005), shows that despite this, cultural identity among indian immigrants in australia is fairly intact. given the focus of this paper, to understand whether cultural identity in indian immigrant communities has been ruptured or continued, it is imperative to understand some of the globalisation theories from the perspective of the social sciences. this paper seeks to contribute to the conceptual spadework of the impact of globalisation and cultural identity on indian immigrant families by examining the multi-local transnational family practices of indian immigrant families in australia through a critical review of the literature on indian migrants in australia namely, faria (2001), lakha and stevenson (2001), butcher (2003) and voigt-graf (2005). globalisation: theoretical perspectives with globalisation, attention in the social sciences has largely focused on the negative impact of globalisation on culture. it ranges from studies of communities within nations to ‘spaces of which nations are components’ (kearney, 1995, p. 549) to the model that is concerned about national cultures in a globalising world and in particular the influence of the western ways of life on non-western societies. the domination by the west accelerated by global networks of communication and economic exchange ‘diminishes the grip of local circumstances over peoples’ lives’ (giddens, 1990, p. 18). this latter concern highlights aspects of a subset of the global culture approach, ‘globo-localism’ which aims to unravel the complexities of localglobal relations by focusing on the territorial dimension, in particular the impact of globalisation on territorial identities. giddens’ time-space distanciation (giddens, 1990) is reflective of this model. giddens’ says that social interactions and relations in today’s world are not dependent upon simultaneous physical ‘presence’ within a specific location, since communication technology has facilitated from and fostered intense ‘relationship between absent others, locationally distant from any given situation of face-to-face interaction’ (giddens, 1990, p. 18). there was a time before globalisation when there was a cultural connection between identity and geographical place. identity then became something that belonged to communities, to local culture. however with the advent of globalisation, people were displaced, culture thus obliterating the differences between locality-defined cultures which had constituted our identities (tomlinson, 1999). thus ‘globalisation has dislocated traditional livelihoods and local communities, and threatens environmental sustainability and cultural diversity’ (world commission on the social dimension of globalisation, 2004, p. 3). this fear of the loss of cultural diversity and hence identities stems from the fact that globalisation is viewed as cultural homogenisation or westernisation or americanisation. with increased interaction across borders, local cultures are being diluted in favour of global norms, ideas and practices. the new cultural mixture therefore deeply impacts the world of the family and that of the child. according to pieterse (1994, p. 49), cultural homogenisation is the belief that the socalled global culture follows the global economy and this has lead to such phrases as ‘cocacolonization’ and ‘mcdonaldization’. the notion of ‘mcdonaldization’ refers to the ‘worldwide homogenisation of societies through the impact of multinational corporations’. in this view, the mechanisms for change are closely linked with the globalisation of the market http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci loshini naidoo: rupture or continuity? transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 20 economy and multinational corporations. as holton (2000, p. p. 142) notes that ‘[c]onsumer capitalism of this type has been built upon a standardized brand image, mass advertising, and the high status given by many third world populations to western products and services. this view of cultural homogenisation and the global economy has been strengthened by the rise of the internet and other information technologies with the influence of information technology, computers and the internet, the world becomes a small and new place that directs children, especially immigrant children towards exploring their actions, events and virtual groups. according to giddens (1991, p. 187), children have ‘phenomenal worlds that are for the most part truly global’. robertson (1992, p. 8) argued that children today gradually develop ‘the intensification of consciousness of the world as a whole’. tomlinson (1999, p. 30) wrote that the world as a whole ‘increasingly exists as a cultural horizon within which we (to varying degrees) frame our existence’. this means that in developing a global identity, children have a sense of belonging to a worldwide culture which includes an awareness of the events, practices, styles, and information that are part of the global culture. the global identity of children allows them to use information technology to communicate with people throughout the world. tomlinson (1991) believes that children are not passive recipients of media output and that they do interpret the global media through their own cultural experiences. but, morley and robbins (1995) see the global media as having consequences for cultural identities. older generations of migrants see the media as a way of maintaining the’ imagined community’ of the home nation, making assimilation into the host culture more difficult while children representing the younger generation, may develop new hybrid identities. drotner (2001) sees age difference as significant because while the older generation may prefer home produced programs, the children would prefer imported programs which indirectly encourage the emergence of global youth cultures that transcend national and cultural borders. the latter is viewed as a positive outcome by authors such as tapscott (1998) while ohmae (1995) believes that this may lead to children from migrant backgrounds having more in common with children from other countries than with their own parents. what the above literature review indicates is that the erosion of values of the local culture has no doubt been affected by globalisation. the process is more complicated for migrant children because not only do they have to negotiate the boundaries of the local and global culture, but there is also that of the native culture. so as globalisation alters and erodes traditional ways, as giddens (2000, p. 65) observed, identity ‘has to be created and recreated on a more active basis than before’. furthermore economic globalisation has heightened the demands for formal education and linguistic homogeneity thereby reinforcing english as a dominant global language. this could threaten the local language/ dialect of immigrant groups especially as they are already struggling with english as a second language. said, (1978) argues that western cultural imperialism operates through discourses of power, whereby the non-western world is constructed as the ‘other’, that is, fundamentally different in nature from the west (holton, 2000, p. 145). another dimension of cultural homogenisation is that of the assimilation of ‘elites’ into the political, educational, and economic life of western society. the experience of a western education not only globally disseminates western knowledge but also creates similar values which then influence international organizations such as the world bank, international monetary fund, the united nations, the united nations educational, scientific, and cultural organization (unesco) and multinational/global corporations. in his essay ‘disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy’, appadurai (1990, p.170), writes of regional homogenisation, where the cultural ‘periphery’ is threatened by cultural homogenisation from the cultural ‘core’. he writes, ‘for the people of irian jaya, indonesianisation may be more worrisome than americanisation, as japanisation may be for http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci loshini naidoo: rupture or continuity? transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 21 the koreans, indianisation for sri lankans, vietnamisation for cambodians’ there are then, according to appadurai’s analysis, multiple ‘cores’ that hold cultural power, rather than a relationship of core-periphery centred on the united states or the west, to which all others are homogenized. if the world is experiencing cultural homogenisation, we must view this homogenisation as being a multi-centred phenomenon, a homogenisation of peripheral cultures to ‘core’ regional cultural powers. appadurai’s five dimensions of global cultural flow best illustrate the two characteristics of globalisation addressed above and offer a radical new framework for examining cultural dimensions of globalisation. appadurai (1996, pp. 33-36) speaks of five kinds of ‘scapes’ ethnoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes, financescapes and ideoscapes. ethnoscapes refers to the landscapes of people, the shifting world in which one’s life is situated, technoscapes refers to the movement of technology across borders, financescapes describes global capitalism, mediascapes refers to the distribution of the images of the world ‘created’ by the media and finally ideoscapes has to do with ideologies of states and counter-ideologies of movements which challenge the states. these ‘scapes’ are the foundation for understanding the contemporary imagined worlds. faria (2001) in her study on indian ethnicity in australia captured some of the global cultural flows (appadurai, 1990) which influence the formation of ‘ethnoscapes’ in the early twenty-first century. what these definitions of globalisation show is that theory and research about globalisation in the social sciences is largely pessimistic and demonstrates a growing awareness of and a rising concern with the notion of identity reflected in notions of dispersion, decentering and interpenetration. central to the notion of identity is the notion of culture since the latter plays an important role in constituting identity. despite this, there are other, quite contradictory, views on globalisation which show that far from destroying cultural identity, it, has been perhaps the most significant force in creating and proliferating cultural identity (tomlinson, 1999). castells (1997, p. 2) has as his primary objection, the fact that globalisation has the power to create ‘the widespread surge of powerful expressions of collective identity that challenge globalisation… on behalf of cultural singularity and people’s control over their lives and environment’. what is implied here is that the local culture is powerful enough to challenge global capitalism and hence the implications for preserving one’s cultural identity are increased. central to the analysis of transnational social formations are structures or systems of relationships best described as networks. the network’s component parts – connected by nodes and hubs – are both autonomous from, and dependent upon, its complex system of relationships. the technologies do not altogether create new social patterns but they certainly reinforce pre-existing ones. some examples would be the popularity of all things ‘bollywood’ among indian families in australia. it is a form and style that australian indians can claim as their own and it allows for an assimilation of the values of urban australian youth culture in combination with a continued attachment to the values shared with parents and rooted in the subcontinent (ray, 2001). their ‘indianness’, according to niranjana’s study (1994) of the diaspora, is shaped within the social imaginary in india, even if it is deployed in a society such as australia, in which indians are not culturally hegemonic. the essential core of culture, which smolicz (1994, 1979) called ‘core values’, is retained amidst all the flux and change. barth, cited in faria (2001, p. 141) emphasised that ‘central and culturally valued institutions and activities in an ethnic group may be deeply involved in its boundary maintenance by setting processes of convergence in motion’, reinforcing and reproducing aspects of culture. this is shown by both voigt-graf’s (2002, p. 286) study of punjabis, kannadigas and indo-fijians in australia, ‘given that kinship is the organising principle of indian transnationalism,’ she observes, ‘the type and regularity of transnational flows depends primarily on what happens within the extended family rather than on the http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci loshini naidoo: rupture or continuity? transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 22 economic or political situation in the home or host country.’ migration and transnational communication within extended families involve tactics for collective upward mobility, while marriages are arranged to strategically extend a family’s kinship networks. in this way the social capital of families can be transformed into economic possibility if the need arises and faria’s (2001, p. 142)) study showed that: family values, in other words, respect for the family and all it entails has certainly emerged as a core value for most of my respondents. the role of family in keeping alive cultural awareness of the beliefs and practices, in determining relationships and maintaining them within and outside the family, in promoting contact with extended family, in influencing, even directing career aspirations, choosing life partners are all part of the family’s role description what these research studies show is that the notion of cultural identity is not easily eroded under globalisation because it ‘is not in fact merely some fragile communal-psychic attachment, but a considerable dimension of institutionalised social life in modernity… it is the product of deliberate cultural construction and maintenance via both the regulatory and the socializing institutions of the state: in particular, the law, the education system and the media ‘(tomlinson, 1999, p. 270). for example, the complexities and tensions introduced by the multi-ethnic constitution of societies arising from global population movements (smith, 1995; geertz, 2000) and can pose problems like ethnic violence. in such instances, issues of identity are amplified and this was clearly seen in the cronulla riots in sydney in 2005 (pereira, 2006) the 2005 cronulla riots were a series of ethnically motivated mob confrontations which originated in and around the beachfront suburb of cronulla in southern sydney. those who claimed an anglo ethnicity wanted to erect an ethnic fence around aussie-ness, which is the way that ‘ethnic’ identities, a product of multiculturalism are reproduced and reinforced. what this reflects is that despite a policy that calls for integration, migrants will always do a cultural balancing act. the cause of the cronulla riots was much deeper than the attack of anglo-life-savers by youth of middle eastern origin. there have been efforts to portray people of middle eastern origin as 'others' especially after 9/11 and what this reflects is territoriality which in effect has heightened one’s cultural identity in a multicultural society. this could lie in the fact that the positions of identity could be producing challenges to the dominance of national identity. the key point in kaldor’s (1999, p.76) analysis of the wars in the yugoslav federation between serbs, croats, bosnian, ethnic albanians; christians and muslims is that they were fought around ‘identity politics’ in which ‘movements… mobilize around ethnic, religious or racial identity or for the purpose of claiming state power’. these examples are sufficient evidence to show that globalisation does not simply undermine cultural identity and that it actually generates cultural identity. people are exposed to hybridised forms of multicultural life through migration and transnational transportation and they are becoming self-conscious of the changing civilisational, societal, ethnic, linguistic, cultural and regional engagements in which their lives are embedded (singh, 2004). while globalisation is seen by some as exacerbating the homogenisation of cultures through the dominance of western, especially us/american cultural commodities, this paper supports the contrasting view that globalisation not be seen as a question of either homogenisation or heterogenisation, but rather aims to show the ways in which both of these tendencies have become features of life in indian immigrant families in australia. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci loshini naidoo: rupture or continuity? transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 23 globalisation and cultural identity: evidence from research on indian immigrants in australia my argument in this section is that cultural identity is enhanced and continued as indian migrants confront their transnational situations. i illustrate this by a review of the emerging literature on indian immigrants in australia. as a consequence of globalisation, most people in the world now develop an identity, part of which is rooted in their local culture while another part from an awareness of their relation to the global culture. there has been an increase in recent years in the frequency and intensity of the contacts that people in various cultures have with the global culture led by the west and defined by free markets, consumerism, and individualism. people in urban areas experience globalisation with much greater intensity than people in rural areas do. the values of the global culture often collide with traditional cultural values, causing people to face the challenge of adapting to both the global culture and their local culture, even as their local culture may be changing rapidly. finally this could result in transformations in identity, that is, in how people think about themselves in relation to the social environment. in the migration process, identity undergoes changes because it must continue to meet the same set of needs within a changed context. migration therefore redefines and challenges the established codes that organize and give meaning to the commitments and demands of the community. displacement and physical relocation disrupts the migrant life as roles become embedded within different economic, social, political and cultural contexts. based on a discussion of the empirical evidence provided by faria (2001), voigt-graf (2005) and lakha and stevenson (2001) and butcher (2003), in their studies on indian immigrants in australia it will be shown that globalisation has continued rather than ruptured cultural identity amongst indian immigrants in australia. voigt-graf (2005), in her study of punjabis, kannadigas and indo-fijians observed that in the case of indians in australia, they follow their normative cultural and social systems. her research has shown that kinship solidarity amongst punjabis is at the centre of the migration process and impacts on their activities in australia. the basis of social organisation is the family, providing its members with both identity and protection. marriage is an important institution among punjabis in sustaining the ethnic bond. one of its important roles is to create positive self-image through arranged marriages in which region; religion and caste identities are maintained and promoted. punjabis choose their marriage partners not only in their respective places of residence but from the homeland and other countries around the world. through regular travel to india and frequent phone-calls, the dayto-day lives of indian migrants in australia are to a great extent affected by what happens in their own family networks. so information technology and the internet provides the platform for indian migrants in australia to interact with each other and link their lives, strengthen their shared heritage, deal with the problems of living in foreign countries, conduct business together and maintain stronger links with india. language, regional culture and religion offer the ideological base for their identities and bondage for fusion at the global level. the role of international indian associations and organisations is very significant in the promotion of networks by bringing all indians together to preserve the indian culture, tradition and folklore. lakha and stevenson (2001, p. 249), say that ‘the various associations in melbourne are important sites of cultural activity and provide the communicative space where the heterogeneity and multiculturalism of india are represented and addressed’. faria (2001, p. 137) quotes one of her participants in her study as saying that ‘that he looked for indians with whom to associate, attended indian functions and generally sought the company of other indians because of his loneliness and isolation. similarly, the permeability and blurring of boundaries can be clearly seen in the proliferation of indian restaurants and grocery shops in australia to ‘create an ethnoscape… not limited solely to friends and family http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci loshini naidoo: rupture or continuity? transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 24 but represented areas where participants could safely engage with both their cultural worlds, through food consumption’ (lindridge, hogg, & shah, 2004, p. 229). diasporic members, living on cultural borderlands, cluster around remembered or imagined ‘homelands’, practise ‘authentic home cultures’, form ethnic communities, so as to re-root their floating lives and reach a closure in making sense of their constantly changing subjectivities (shi, 2005, p. 57). they are constantly producing and reproducing themselves with an endless desire to return to ‘lost origins’ (hall, 1992). the existence in australia of many temples affirms according to clothey (1983, p. 196) ‘a worldpsychic space in which the community lives and acts out its identity’. there are hundreds of hindu temples in australia especially in major metropolitan areas likes melbourne, canberra, sydney nsw, queensland and perth, which have wider networks within australia and with their counterparts in different parts of the world (sahoo, cited in naidoo, 2006). so remembered places like that of the temple, serves as a symbolic anchor for this community of dispersed persons. to overcome the anxiety associated with possible assimilation into the australian way of life many families of the indian diaspora in australia, use religion or religious affiliation in order to make their children ‘good indians’. retaining the cultural heritage through native religious practices could increase self-esteem even when such practices could diverge from that of the host culture. such expressions of cultural affinity they believe may increase one’s sense of ethnic pride and may in turn increase one’s personal self-worth (phinney, 1990; porter & washington, 1993). butcher’s (2003) participants in her research shifted from one cultural space, such as home, to another and adopted appropriate behaviour, language, even values expressed as particular attitudes for that setting. this movement between cultural spaces required the management of strategies of identity: to fulfil the requirements of continuity and place in the home or the communal space by perhaps adopting ‘tradition’. similarly faria’s (2001, p. 136) study showed that one respondent ‘spoke to her parents in the same accent that they used to speak with her. yet when operating outside the home, the accent she had acquired as a result of her schooling and her interaction with the mainstream came into play… there was a certain comfort and confidence in responding in this diverse manner to the two audiences, to relate, to belong and to be at ease’. the fact that most indian children can speak their native language reinforces their family orientation and cultural identity, their bilingual ability related to the need to negotiate an existence within two. in this way, multiple identities could be constructed that satisfied family and community expectations and helped them retain their ethnic identity within the wider society (lindridge et al., 2004, p. 223). furthermore, lakha and stevenson (2001, p. 251) believe that migration and the diasporic experience are now themes that are increasingly woven into the narratives of the bollywood cinema. the poignant themes inserted into the films and songs, offer migrant indians an opportunity to assert their cultural affiliations. the themes mostly centre on family, family relationships and the maintenance of family stability. the conflict between tradition and modernity is also repeatedly invoked in bollywood narratives. the binary between modernity/tradition, regulates thinking about the modern indian social formation which invariably disapproves of modernity and approves the recuperation of the ‘indian tradition’. this self-produced popular culture helps displaced populations form and maintain cultural identities from a distance and across national and geographic borders. implications for curriculum development current ways of constructing and teaching knowledge are value laden and designed to privilege only certain groups in society. dominant power systems define who has authority to know and who determines valuable knowledge. the education institution perpetuates the http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci loshini naidoo: rupture or continuity? transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 25 status quo of this power relationship, thus making it difficult for those already silenced to get their voice heard (goduka, 1998). the effect is to deny the silenced person’s identity and to create ‘disjunction between the values and beliefs about the nature of knowledge, its transmission, assessment and constitution’ (allen, 1997, p. 184). hooks (1994) proposes a particular teaching approach – ‘engaged pedagogy.’ she describes this as a learning relationship where ‘everyone’s presence is acknowledged’ (p.8). according to this approach, teachers are regarded as mutual learners and the students’ lived experiences are central to informing the academic material. the teacher learner relationship encourages students to challenge what has previously been taught. devising a culturally or socially relevant curriculum which simultaneously engaged with critical analysis, the student voice and reflexivity has the potential to be insular. curriculum planners need to build on people’s lived experiences as a knowledge base to construct new knowledge which is then validated by and within their shared social or cultural heritage. educators need to make their pedagogy critical, extending good interactive teaching and learning beyond the classroom and into the real world. some of the processes involved in engaged critical pedagogy may include reflection of self and those who are from culturally diverse backgrounds. this can lead to self and social understanding. within teaching environments, identities are challenged; relationships between different cultural groups are both eroded and reshaped. this process of rupture leads in the first instance to confusions and rejections around different ‘world-views’. often, the complexities that emerge are marginalised and silenced. if social cohesion is to be maintained, then the complexities of identities in ‘new times’ must be openly dealt with. if educators connected their pedagogy to the life-worlds of students from diverse cultural backgrounds, they will not only understand their own cultural capital but also those of the students they teach. hooks (1994, p.8) in writing of her own experiences at the university states ‘but excitement about ideas was not sufficient to create an exciting learning process. as a classroom community, our capacity to generate excitement is deeply affected by our interest in one another, in hearing one another’s voices, in recognizing one another’s presence… any radical pedagogy must insist that everyone’s presence is acknowledged… everyone influences the classroom dynamic . . everyone contributes. (p. 8). we should try to ‘place diversity front and centre’ (nieto, 2000), to work for educational equity. teachers and teacher educators must take stock of ourselves by questioning and challenging our own biases and values… teachers also have cultural identities… and colleges of education need to provide prospective teachers of all backgrounds… opportunities to reflect on their identities and privilege before teaching children from diverse backgrounds. (p. 184). nieto put forth five ways in which teacher educators can situate equity at the centre of the teacher education program. firstly, teacher educators should be encouraged to take a stand on social justice and diversity issues. secondly, social justice should be made ubiquitous in teacher education. thirdly, teaching should be promoted as an ongoing process of transformation, fourthly, teacher educators need to learn to challenge racism and bias and finally, teacher educators need to develop a community of critical friends (nieto, 2000, pp. 182-183). a teacher needs to act as a mediator between two cultures, both the dominant and the disadvantaged. this is achievable by facilitating the less dominant to understand, acclimatise and hence thrive academically in pursuit of conquering the dominant culture without loss of http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci loshini naidoo: rupture or continuity? transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 26 identity, therefore bridging the cultural gap and levelling the societal inequality, resulting in the empowerment of students in succeeding academically and socially (chisholm 1994). social justice education therefore is not only a reality but it is also a part of the sociocultural context of schooling that teacher’s encounter. in view of this fact, social justice education should become a major concern for curriculum planners in recent times since it is seen as an attempt to redress educational inequities rising from the increasing pluralism of westernised industrialised societies. conclusion in examining the theoretical perspectives of globalisation and the empirical material on indian immigrants in australia, i have established that indian cultural identity is rooted and even heightened as reproduction of the home culture takes place. this is so because indian migrants recapture the familiar past to maintain equilibrium and sustain a sense of home (featherstone, 1993). this kind of identity, is one that is constructed through a process of ‘imaginative rediscovery’ of the past, a harkening back to a glorious history, full of timeproven traditions, values, and faith – to ‘some very splendid era whose existence rehabilitates us…’ (fanon, cited in hall, 1990, p. 223). maintaining ‘indianness’ is an important part of one’s cultural identity and one which provides continuity for indian migrants in australia. this process whereby diasporic communities transport cultural products with them as they move and attempt to recreate in their new locations parallel or alternative systems that establish and promote values, assumptions, and ideologies that resemble the culture the diasporic community left behind is what hall (1990, p. 223) refers to as ‘true cultural identity that ( my emphasis) reflects common experiences and cultural codes that provide stable, unchanging, and continuous frames of reference and meaning, which can be retrieved and nurtured to create a potent mixture of blind faith in the past (a discourse of ‘who we were’) and boundless passion to assert that identity in the here and now (a discourse of ‘who we are’). cultural identity therefore becomes enhanced alluding to the fact that physical presence in a nation is not necessarily a pre-condition for feelings of nationhood. what this discussion shows is that through the production of a homeland culture, indian immigrants in australia were able to develop a sense of community and subsequently indian identity while still acknowledging global orientation with all its contradictions and complexities. a community of this kind has two points of reference. one is to the homeland and the second is the relationship to the land of settlement. it is within the latter that they will have to fight against being treated as inferiors, because of their racial or colour characteristics, as well as their cultural distinctiveness. for this reason, curriculum planners need to incorporate social justice education and critical engaged pedagogies in the classroom to address curriculum issues arising with the worldwide flow of people, ideas, culture and technology. references allen, p. (1997). black students in ivory towers. studies in the education of adults, 29(2), 179-190. appadurai, a. (1996). modernity at large, cultural dimensions of globalisation. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. appadurai, a. (1990). disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy, in m. featherstone (ed.) global culture: nationalism, globalisation and modernity. london: sage. butcher, m. (2003). transnational, television, cultural identity and change: when star came to india, new delhi, sage. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci loshini naidoo: rupture or continuity? transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 27 castells, m. (1997). the power of identity. oxford: blackwell. chisholm, i. m. (1994). preparing teachers for multicultural classrooms. the journal of educational issues of language minority students, 14, 43-68. clothey, f.w. (1983). rhythm and intent: ritual studies from south india. bombay: blackie & son. drotner, k. (2001). global media through youthful eyes, pp. 283-306. in livingstone, s and bovill, m. (eds.), children and their changing media environment. mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum. faria, a. i. (2001). the future of indian ethnicity in australia: an educational and cultural perspective. international education journal, 2(4), 134-143. featherstone, m, (1995). undoing culture: globalisation, postmodernism and identity. london: sage featherstone, m. (1993). global and local cultures, pp. 169-187. in j. bird et al. (eds.) mapping the futures: local cultures, global change, london and new york: routledge geertz, c. (2000). available light: anthropological reflections on philosophical topics. princeton, nj: princeton university press. giddens, a. (2000). runaway world: how globalisation is reshaping our lives. new york: routledge. giddens, a. (1991). modernity and self-identity: self and society in the late modern age. cambridge, england: polity press. giddens, a. (1990). consequences of modernity. cambridge: polity press. goduka, i. n. (1998). educators as cultural awakeners and healers. south african journal of higher education, 12(2), 49-59. hall, s. (1996). introduction: who needs identity? in hall & p. du gay (eds.), questions of cultural identity. london: sage hall, s. (1992). the question of cultural identity, pp.273-320. in modernity and its futures. s. hall and a. mc grew. cambridge: polity press holton, r. (2000). globalisation’s cultural consequences. the annals of the american academy, 570, 140-152. hooks, b. (1994) teaching to transgress. london: routledge. kaldor, m. (1999). new and old wars. cambridge: polity press. kearney, m. (1995). the local and the global: the anthropology of globalisation and transnationalism. annual review of anthropology, 24, 547-65. lakha, s. & stevenson, m. (2003). indian identity in multicultural melbourne. some preliminary observations. journal of intercultural studies, 22(3), 245-262 lindridge, a. m., hogg, k. m., & shah, m. (2004). imagined multiple worlds: how south asian women in britain use family and friends to navigate the ‘border crossings’ between household and societal contexts. consumption, markets and culture, 3, 211-238. morley, d. and robins, k. (1995). spaces of identity. london: routledge. naidoo, l. (2006). re-negotiating identity and reconciling cultural ambiguity in the indian immigrant community in sydney, australia. the anthropologist. (in press). nieto, s. (2000). placing equity front and center: some thoughts on transforming teacher education for a new century. journal of teacher education, 51(3), 180–187. niranjana, t. (1994). the indian in me: studying the culture of the indian diaspora. paper presented at the international conference on indian diaspora, hyderabad (mimeographed). nonini, d. m. & ong, a. (1997) chinese transnationalism as an alternative modernity, pp. 333. in ong, a. and nonini, d. (eds.) ungrounded empires: the cultural politics of modern chinese transnationalism, new york and london: routledge. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci loshini naidoo: rupture or continuity? transnational curriculum inquiry 4 (1) 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 28 ohmae, k. (1995). the end of the nation state. new york: harper collins. pereira, s. (2006). race, terror, sydney, december 2005. borderlands e-journal, 5 (1) phinney, j. s. (1990). ethnic identity in adolescents and adults: a review of research. psychological bulletin, 108, 499–514. pieterse, j. n. (1994). unpacking the west: how european is europe? pp.129-149. in ali rattansi and sallie westwood, (eds.), racism, modernity and identity. cambridge: polity press. porter, j. r. & washington, r. e. (1993). minority identity and self-esteem. annual review of sociology. 19, 139-61. ray, m. (2001). bollywood down under: fiji indian cultural history and popular assertion, pp. 136-184. in stuart cunningham and john sinclair (eds.), floating lives: the media and asian diaspora. new york: rowman & littlefield. robertson, r. (1992). globalisation: social theory and global culture. london: sage. robinson, k., & jones-diaz, c. (2005). diversity and difference in early childhood settings. uk: open university press. rouse, r. (1995). questions of identity: personhood and collectivity in transnational migration to the united states, critique of anthropology, london, thousand oaks, ca, and new delhi: sage, vol. 15, no. 4, 351-80. said, e. w. (1978). zionism from the standpoint of its victims. social text, 1, 7-58 sahoo, a. k. (2004). transnational networks of indian diaspora in australia. journal of contemporary asia and europe. 1(2), 120-134. shepard, b., & hayduk, r. (2002). (eds.). from act up to the wto: urban protest and community building in the era of globalisation. new york: verso. shi, s. (2005). frictional assignment, part ii: infinite horizon and inequality. academic press for the society for economic dynamics, 8(1), 106-137. singh, m. (2004). responsive education: enabling transformative engagements with transitions in global/national imperatives. in m. apple, j. kenway, & m. singh (eds.), globalizing education: policies, pedagogies and politics. new york: peter lang. smith, a. (1995). nations and nationalism in a global era. cambridge: polity press. smolicz, j. j. (1979). culture and education in a plural society. canberra: curriculum development centre. smolicz, j. j. (1994). australian diversity. canberra: curriculum development centre. tapscott, d. (1998). growing up digital: the rise of the net generation. new york: mcgraw hill. tomlinson, a. (1991). cultural imperialism. baltimore: john hopkins university press. tomlinson, j. b. (1999). globalisation and culture. chicago: university of chicago press. voigt-graf, c. (2002). the construction of transnational spaces: travelling between india, fiji and australia. phd thesis, geography, university of sydney world commission on the social dimension of globalisation (2004). international labour office, geneva. author dr loshini naidoo is a lecturer in sociology in the school of education at the university of western sydney, australia. her academic areas of interest include social justice, cultural diversity and difference and pedagogy and globalisation. her current research is related to issues of globalisation and localisation and she was one of the chief investigators into a recent study of globalisation, westernisation and sino-australia education reform. email: l.naidoo@uws.edu.au http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci mailto:naidoo@uws.edu.au to cite this article please include all of the following details: prud’homme, marc-alexandre. (2012). reading education’s front covers and margins. transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> reading education’s front covers and margins marc-alexandre prud’homme 1 doctoral student at the university of ottawa, canada opening there is an old saying that says that an image is worth a thousand words. i remember that, when i was young, to choose what book to buy or what movie to rent, the majority of my decisions rested on the front covers that appealed to me. needless to say, i have been disappointed on more than one occasion with some of these decisions. publishing companies and film producers, aware of this phenomenon, often hire teams of graphic designers to showcase their products. most ministries of education are no exception to this. in the context of high-stake competitions between schools and between school boards, many ministries of education across the world are posting images as focal points on their websites to express various messages about their activities and about that of their schools. they design these images for parents, students and other stakeholders in education such as teachers, administrators, researchers, but also for members of the community. these images provide a glance into the world of school systems. they represent pieces of information to ponder in order to take informed decisions about education. with this in mind and freire’s (1970) idea of reading one’s wor(l)d, in this paper, i will deconstruct and reconstruct images used by three western ministries of education, those of ontario, oklahoma and france. having attended a school in oklahoma, studying in ontario and being a francophone, i chose these ministries so that my familiarity with these regions could benefit my analysis. my goal in this process is to help everyone involved in the world of education in reading the messages sent by these images about three different school systems, keeping in mind that educational systems cannot be reduced to a single picture. to achieve this, i will draw on tools of discourse analysis and on some ideas associated to post-colonialism, post-structuralism, antiracism and queer theory. methodology: discourse analysis the first principle that i will use to complete my analysis suggests that the meaning that a picture has is not inherent to that picture in isolation from the world (watt, 2011). the meaning of a picture arises from the interaction between a viewer, this person’s history, the picture and the context in which it is seen. in line with this, the meaning that i will ascribe to each image in my analysis will have emerged from my interactions as a graduate student in education with these images as seen on websites in july 2011. the other principles that i will follow in my analysis represent a set of questions that i will ask in relation to each picture. the first question implies that the message articulated by a speaker (in this case, ministries of education) corresponds to what is said plus what the speaker assumes the listener (here, the person looking at the picture) already knows (gee, 2011). indeed, when most people are talking, they are trying to keep a balance between the speed and the clarity of their ideas so that their listeners understand what is said without getting bored by a long speech. to do this, most people leave prud’homme. reading education’s front covers and margins 55 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci out of their speech what they think listeners already know. the same principle applies to pictures where people creating an image try to keep a balance between the space of the picture and the quantity of ideas on that image. thus, when analysing each picture, i will ask what the ministries of education are assuming that their audience already knows. the third question that will guide my inquiry stems from the idea that speakers construct different meanings by choosing certain words and sentences and by putting these words and sentences in specific orders (gee, 2011). in the case of pictures, this entails that speakers lay out colors, foregrounds, backgrounds and images in particular ways in a picture in order to create pre-determined meanings. for instance, environmentalists often use the color green in the foreground of their logos to elicit the idea of nature and to put emphasis on this idea. for my analysis, this will imply asking how ministries of education have constructed their messages with the various elements that are part of the picture, the arrangement of these elements and the different colors used. another question that i will ask is in line with the idea that, when speakers are speaking they are not just saying, they are also doing (gee, 2011). for example, if i say “i had trouble parking my mercedes”, i am not doing the same thing as if i say “i had trouble parking my car.” indeed, in the first situation, i am not just saying these words. in addition to complaining, i am constructing the identity of a wealthy person. hence, when talking, speakers can build or destroy connections, relationships with others, significance for certain things, identities for themselves, promote certain discourses or ideas, or carry out actions such as criticizing, complimenting, questioning, thanking... in my analysis, i will try to determine what the three ministries of education are doing with their images. deconstructing the front covers the first picture (image 1) that i will read can be found on the ontario ministry of education’s (ome) website (ome, 2011). while the ome aimed at depicting their activities, they did not show a picture of their building, of a school, of a classroom or of children studying or taking an exam. they assumed that most viewers were already familiar with these activities. they designed an image that comprises a written component and a picture of students. the part “reach every student” appears in green over a shape coloured in various pale tones of green and grey that suggests tranquility. this shape takes the form of an ascending path when read from left to right. this way, the ome is associating their educational activities to an idea of a linear process of improvement. in addition, this path is slightly curbed. this characteristic links the ome’s schools to flexibility. with the words “reach every student”, the ome is stating that they are engaging every student indiscriminately. in the foreground of the picture, there are eight adolescents, four boys and four girls. all of them look healthy. they are also smiling. as such, the viewer can read that the ome built a prud’homme. reading education’s front covers and margins 56 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci connection between school, happiness and health. moreover, each student is well-dressed and is wearing clothes of different design and colors, some are even wearing jewellery. in this fashion, the ome is associating school to wealth and is welcoming diversity. additionally, the students are standing up, even though, in most school, children spend the bulk of their days sitting down. in the picture, they are also very close physically to one another and most are hugging each other. this suggests that the schools are not only welcoming once again, but that students are united in these educational environments. each student is also looking in the direction of the viewer. hence, when examining this picture, one can feel invited to join their world like i did. finally, every student in the picture appears to belong to a different ethnic group. given the demographic situation in ontario, the presence of members of a multitude of ethnic groups is representative of the general population of ontario. this presence in the picture enabled the ome to make a connection between its schools and diversity. on top of that, this diversity of people fulfills the function of building a stronger relationship with each ethnic community, which include european, african, asian and indigenous canadians, as well as valorizing and encouraging multiculturalism and open-mindedness. in the background of the picture, a beige bricked wall stands. this wall reminds common sights in schools. as well, the color of the wall strengthens the peaceful atmosphere of the image. a bookshelf filled with books is lying against that wall. the presence of the books reaffirms to the viewer that the picture is about education. it also further associates books to education while valorizing books in learning processes. additionally, it indicates to everyone involved in the ome’s schools that books are part of the students’ progression in schools. most of all, while the students are smiling, laughing and hugging in this context, the ome is again creating a relation between pleasure and unity to education. lastly, the general colours that are part of the picture are pale, contributing to the serenity of the message sent by the ome. overall, in many ways, the picture is constructing a message where schools, education, happiness, union, openness, diversity and union are connected. in this fashion, the ome is promoting a discourse that considers schools as fun and healthy where multiculturalism thrives. the picture is not just illustrating what is happening within the ome, it is also selling the educational activities lead by the ome to the viewer. the picture that plays the role of front cover of the oklahoma state department of education (osde) introduces to the reader many patterns similar to those on the image posted on the ome website (see image 2, below). prud’homme. reading education’s front covers and margins 57 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci in this picture, images of buildings where the osde evolves, of schools, of classrooms and of children reading books seated at desks are missing. this suggests that the osde is also assuming that the viewer has, for the most part, an accurate idea of the activities taking place in the osde. hence, one of the purposes of the picture is to associate specific meanings to these activities. the foreground comprises five shapes, three squares and two circles. these shapes are joined together in a way similar to the rings on the olympic flag. this setup elicits that the ideas represented by each of the shape are united. each shape corresponds to a group of people involved in the education in oklahoma: administrators, parents, teachers, the community and students. once again, each shape is curbed and comprises subtle reflections and shadows that are also curbed. the form of each shape contributes to creating an identity that entails some flexibility for the osde. in the first shape on the left, there are three people who represent administrators. two of them are women, while the person in the middle is a man. they are all white, young and smiling. the viewer can read that the osde insinuates that the administrators working in this department enjoys their job and are energetic. the administrators’ smiles are making another connection between schools and pleasure. these people are also dressed in clean black suits. these clothes facilitate the association between schools and wealth and also evoke that the administrator take their job seriously. in the first circle to the left, two adults, a man and a woman, are each holding by one hand a child. they represent the parents. they are all european americans and well dressed. this creates an idea that implies that the parents are involved in their child’s life, united and wealthy. through this layout, the reader can interpret that the osde values a conception of family as heterosexual, devoted and united. moreover, the family in the picture is jumping in the air. this reinforces a connection between families, pleasure and energy. all of this is taking place in a grassed area in front of a blue sky. in this fashion, the osde is giving the impression that its activities are taking place in a healthy environment. a women’s white smile is the focal point of the second square. she epitomizes the teachers working for the department. she is also white and appears healthy. she has an expensive haircut, which consolidate the relation between education, health and wealth. she is holding a pen against her chin. this gesture indicates that she is thinking. this brings to mind the devotion of the teachers of the department. the osde labelled the second circle community. in this circle, there is an image of four hands grabbing one another in the form of a square. as such, the osde is expressing to the viewer the idea of unity and collaboration suggesting that there is a strong collaboration between the community and the school system. by the same token, it is giving a great significance to unity and collaboration as values. all the hands in the image are white. they appear in front of blue sky. the choice of this background reiterates the relation between the osde and peacefulness. the last shape is entitled students. in this shape, three young white girls are smiling lying down on the floor staring in the direction of the viewer. through these graphic devices, the department remains congruent with a message that connects youth, pleasure and openness with education. the girls look healthy and are also well-dressed, reaffirming the link between the school system with health and wealth. the colors of their clothes convey ideas of youth and life. the absence of african american, hispanics, native american and asian american is incongruent with oklahoma’s demography as these people represent a quarter of the population of this state (infoplease, 2011). using various graphic mechanisms, the osde is not only making connections between its activities and youth, health, wealth, happiness, unity and collaboration, it is also building an identity for itself and promoting these values as well as education as a positive process. in doing so, it is also portraying its activities and trying to make its operations enticing. indeed, it is attempting to sell education in oklahoma as involving serious, but pleasant and energetic work in collaboration with prud’homme. reading education’s front covers and margins 58 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci many social actors. the picture plays another role. the association of each image to a social group (e.g. students and teachers) enables the website to direct visitors to information in function of who they are since each of the labels underneath each shape corresponds to a link to another webpage. image 3 (see below) involves a greater number of graphic resources and, as such, articulates a more complex message to a certain extent. nonetheless, many ideas expressed in the first two images can also be read in this image. produced by le minisère de l’éducation nationale (men), the picture starts from the top with a title that reads, “tout savoir sur la scolarité de la maternelle au lycée” (men, 2010). translated in english, those words are saying, “to know everything about education from kindergarden to high school.” through this title, the men is claiming that all the information about education can be found on the website. having articulated the relation between kindergarten and high school by using the words from and to, it is also reducing to a linear path the evolution through the different school levels. by capitalizing the words kindergarten and high school, the title is trying to draw the viewer’s attention to these two ideas. each letter of the word kindergarten is in a different color while, as opposed to the black letters in the rest of the phrase, the word high school is spelled in green. as such, the color creates a contrast between these two words and the other words in the phrase. the various colors appearing in the word kindergarten are constructing a connection between this school level and pleasure while the green in high school is achieving the same result to a smaller extent. the subtitles of the picture – école prud’homme. reading education’s front covers and margins 59 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci maternelle, école élémentaire, college and lycéeare written in way that replicates some of the mechanisms employed in the main title. these subtitles mean in their order of appearance kindergarten, elementary school, middle school and high school. in capitalizing these words, the men is again trying to direct the attention of the viewer on these ideas. the various colors used in the words kindergarten and elementary and the single colors that spell the other two terms are strengthening the relation between pleasure and education. their presence also hints that the ome assumes the viewer is familiar with differences between these school levels. in contrast with image 1 and 2, image 3 comprises a depiction of a school and of children carrying book bags. hence, the picture suggests that the men is assuming that visitors to the website are aware of what happens in the school building, that is classes, studying, exams... in the foreground of the picture, four tabs appear. their curbed shape enabled the men to link its activities with flexibility. each one is associated to one of the school levels starting from kindergarten and linearly progressing towards high school. together, the four tabs form a consistent representation of a school viewed from the front. one student is present in each tab. in this fashion, the men is asking visitor to pay heed to these students and is stating that the focus of the ministry is on students. the transition between each student from left to right is congruent with a production chain. the first child is standing looking in the direction of the viewer’s right. the next two students are not only standing, but they are walking towards the high school tab where the last and tallest student is standing facing the viewer as the final product. in this image, every student appears on the same crossing lane reinforcing the idea of a linear process. furthermore, they are guided in the background by an adult holding a stop sign. the presence of this character can reassure the reader that the students’ linear progression occurs under the supervision of the adult’s eyes. the first child is a girl like the last one. the other two are boys, being consistent with demographics. they are all white while the third student is african french. all of the students are smiling except the african frenchman whose head is bowed. when reading the picture, i saw a reiteration of associations of school with pleasure, a promotion of school as a positive experience, though the african frenchman’s posture brought to my mind past feelings of alienation, obedience and sadness in schools. all of the students are wearing different styles of cloths suggesting the idea of openness and wealth. furthermore, they all appear healthy. as such, the men is associating health with its schools. the background of the picture is composed of hand-made pale drawings to keep the emphasis on the students in the foreground. the drawings depict a fenced school, its playground and its fenced windows. when noticing the prevalence of fences, i was reminded of commonalities between school buildings and prisons, and i thought of a study that compared the level of coercion to which students and in-mates are subjected (epstein, 2007). on the other hand, through this mechanism, the men is eliciting a feeling of security in relation to schools. on the sidewalk that leads to the school, several persons are present. they are of different age and ethnic groups. most of them are parents with their child holding hands or handing out bags. such images associate families to unity and help while valorizing such vision of a family. like in all the other pictures, everyone on the sidewalk is wearing nice clothes and seems healthy. once again, such characteristics entail associating schools to health and wealth as well as promoting these aspects. lastly, two big trees are standing in the front yard of the school. through this graphic device, the men is reminding a connection between the natural environment and education while promoting the environment to some degree. in addition to all the connections that it makes, the picture fulfills many functions. like image 2, it guides visitors of the webpage on the website in function of the different levels of schools. by having children of different ages associated to each school level, it distinguishes those levels. it prud’homme. reading education’s front covers and margins 60 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci portrays the education system and tries to sell it as lively, flexible, open to diversity, healthy, environmentally friendly and pleasant for the most part. in a way, it values multiculturalism and education in general despite one student’s head bowed. un(cover)ing the front covers to discuss what the messages ex/pressed through image 1, 2 and 3 mean, i will frame my arguments within some ideas inherent to post-structuralism, post-colonialism, antiracism and queer theory. according to davis (2004), post-structuralists claim that individuals and groups construct systems of beliefs, of knowledge, of relationships... during that construction, these individuals and groups valorize certain ideas and behaviours while leaving out others in the margins (e.g. valorizing christian beliefs at the expense of others). to accomplish this, they employ various mechanisms, for example, institutions and privileging policies to keep their system in power. in this context, poststructuralists are interested in what is left out in the margins and what mechanisms enable such imbalances. here, i will try to determine what the three images included as part of their system and what they left out by drawing on personal experiences. moreover, while doing this and keeping in mind aoki’s (1990) distinction between the intended curriculum and the curriculum as experienced by students, i will look at differences between the pictures and what students experience in schools in the three chosen contexts. to achieve this, in order to un/cover the realities behind education’s front covers, i will continue to use the metaphor of the reading of a book by making references to these hidden realities as footnotes in a book. first footnote: the place of ethnicity with respect to ethnicity, the ome included students from various ethnic backgrounds. on the other hand, the osde created an image of school that excluded everyone who was not a european american. in the case of the men’s picture, although people of colour were present, the main character who is an african frenchman was the only one without a smile on his face. i am concerned about what message can be read from the assignment of this role to this student as opposed to one of the other white models. reflecting on the prevalence of white people in all three pictures and the lack of space granted to indigenous people, to give a purpose to my analysis, i started to think about the words of smith (2005) when she said: the decolonization project in research engages in multiple layers of struggle across multiple sites. it involves the unmasking and deconstruction of imperialism, and its aspect of colonialism, in its old and new formations alongside a search for sovereignty; for reclamation of knowledge, language, and culture; and for the social transformation of the colonial relations between the native and the settler. (p.88) when deconstructing all three images, i am frustrated to see images of constructions of what has emerged from colonialism. for instance, in the case of the ome and of the osde, i remained troubled when noticing that on their images there are few traces of indigenous people while indigenous people used to hold sovereignty over the land 2 on which both the ome and the osde operate. more paradoxical, the ome and the osde, each bears an indigenous expression in their acronyms. in the ome’s case, this expression is ontario, which is derived from a iroquoian language and means beautiful water (mithun, 2000), whereas in the osde’s case, it is the word oklahoma, which means red people in choctaw and was suggested to name the territory now known as prud’homme. reading education’s front covers and margins 61 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci oklahoma today by a choctaw chief (wright, 1936). however, no red people appears on the osde’s front cover. even though an aboriginal girl is present on the ome’s picture, her smile does not represent every indigenous student’s experience of schools in ontario. for example, in the aboriginal community of attawapiskat in ontario, the local school was built on a site contaminated up until now for three decades by diesel fumes making the school unsafe for both teachers and students (attawapiskat school, 2012). a state of emergency was called in april 2009, yet, to this day, a new school remains to be built. second footnote: the representation of schooling in this second footnote, i want to critically dissect the representation of education that the three images construct with various graphic resources. before doing this, i want to remind readers of dewey’s (2008) distinction between schooling and education. dewey claimed that only a small part of a child’s education happened in school. here, the idea of schooling is encompassed by that of education and refers strictly to the education happening in school. each image analyzed here was created by the organizations of each respective state and province that officially represent education in these countries. each of the pictures, in one form or another, associates the message that it wants to convey to a representation of elements of schooling, whether these representations be some books on a shelf (ome), the presence of administrators (osde) or a school building (men).in this context, each of the official institution is communicating that education is what happens in schools. in this process, they relegated to the side traditional and alternative forms of education such as those taking place at home and in the community. furthermore, schooling as experienced by students is highly structured around standardized curricula and tests, and around the epistemologies and methodologies that underpin these curricula and tests. under these circumstances, multiple epistemologies remain missing in classrooms. two elements recurrent in all three pictures can illustrate this absence. first, in all three pictures, i saw images of wealth linked to schools through the appearance of jewellery the prevalence of clean and fashionable clothes and of expensive haircuts. i am concerned that, through such images, the three ministries are encouraging some forms of lifestyles that entail a certain socioeconomic level that many parents cannot afford. after analyzing the pictures, i became uncomfortable for individuals like those who are part of the growing number of homeless children in the us and who are in contact in their daily school experiences with such messages. more importantly as far as epistemologies are concerns, through the appearance of fashionable clothes and jewellery, each image is valuing and promoting the consumerism at the root of the capitalist model that guides most of the world today. such forms of consumerism are incoherent with principles inherent to, for instance, ecopedagogies or holistic education. as a second example, when analyzing how families were portrayed, i did not find images to which divorced families, homosexual families and single-parent families, which comprise a significant part of the population, could relate. i can understand that many families involved in schools are those composed of two heterosexual parents. nonetheless, other types of families participate in education. i am worried that the absence of queerness in the pictures is symbolic of the place granted to elements of queer theories in schools. third footnote: mechanisms of colonization in this third footnote, i want to draw on chambers (2003) when she claimed that postcolonialism does not mean that aspects of colonialism are not in motion anymore. to illustrate this, prud’homme. reading education’s front covers and margins 62 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci she raised the question as to whether western countries are colonizing in some ways new immigrants. bhabha (2007) formulated a similar concern when he wrote: a just measure of global progress requires that we first evaluate how globalising nations deal with “the difference within” – the problems of cultural diversity and redistribution, and the rights and representations of minorities. what is the status of the aboriginal peoples of australia, or the muslims in india in the midst of the transformational myths and realities of global connectivity? (p.9) here, i want to join bhabha () in asking what the place of new immigrants’ sets of beliefs, cultural traditions and language is in western schools. i have already hinted at the promotion in the three pictures of consumerism, a lifestyle incongruent with many new immigrant families’ cultural traditions. as well, i have shared my concern for the valorization of schooling over other forms of education through the three pictures. here, i would like to explore the expressed happiness of the new canadians in the ome’s picture from another angle. i remain worried that the expressed happiness hides certain dimensions of colonialism. indeed, to some extent, the new canadians’ smiles do not speak to the experienced reality of every new immigrant in schools. many of them are legally obliged to learn in a language that is not theirs in schools, whether it be english or french in the case of these three pictures. here, i am not asking government to start offering school in every language, though i am calling for the right of new immigrants not to learn an imposed language and to a greater space so that these children can have the opportunity to learn in a language of their choice, whether it be through homeschooling or other alternative forms of education. fourth footnote: students’ general experiences of schools in this fourth footnote, i want to contrast students’ physical and emotional representations in the pictures with their experiences of schools. in relation to health, i interpreted that every participant in the pictures seemed physically healthy. every one of them seemed to be at their healthy weight. none of them were underweight or overweight. even though i can appreciate that, as such, the three ministries are promoting healthy lifestyles to a certain degree, i am uncomfortable that people who do not fall into that conception of health might feel outcast from the three educational systems. moreover, none of the students posing in any of the three pictures appears to have some sort of disability. with regard to health from a mental perspective, while everyone in the pictures is smiling except for one student, i am worried about the feeling of exclusion that many students like the one that i used to be who did not enjoy compulsory education might experience when seeing one of these pictures and not recognizing their sadness about attending schools. authors like freire (1970) have deplored that mechanisms of oppression in schools that might give rise to such sadness often represent forms of undemocratic authority in some classrooms. in line with this, neuberger (2007) considered the absence of freedoms such as those of speech, assembly and conscience as forms of oppression while gatto (1992) stated that, in the us, from a legal perspective, students are not entitled to freedom of speech in schools unless when granted by teachers. in that context, according to a report, the us ranks second to last amongst countries members of the oecd in relation to the happiness and wellbeing of children (wolk, 2009). in addition i read that the images promoted involvement in education as positive to teachers, administrators, the community, students and parents. indeed, the prevalence of positive facial expression in all three images told me that everyone appreciated such involvement and that the opposite was untypical. when i was first thinking about how i was going to write this section, i prud’homme. reading education’s front covers and margins 63 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci considered using the title “where are the drugs, the frustration, the dropouts and the bullying?” as all of these aspects had been a very significant part of my life in schools as a student and a teacher. indeed, none of the pictures alludes to any of these aspects, even though, for instance, in the us, half a million adolescent try to commit suicide each year and 125 000 prescriptions for ritalin were made in 1994 in ontario alone, number that is continuously growing (hennessy, 2006). on another note, the men and the ome portrayed education as a linear process. complexivist thinkers like davis and sumara (2006) claimed that education is more complex than a linear path. is a child’s evolution in education a continual steady growth? can an elementary student skip a grade, repeat one or study a topic deemed to belong to the high school level? does a line include such students’ learning experiences? on the other hand, i also construed that the men and the odse esteemed family as a value. in addition, the ome with images of students hugging and holding one another, and the osde with a picture of four people grabbing each other’s hands valorized unity as well as collaboration between members of the community, stakeholders, students and family members. the same applies to the men’s depiction of parents accompanying their children to school. even though i am glad that the message coded as such in the pictures gave significance to the aforementioned values and that it shows evidence that the ministries are taking strides to encourage the adoption of such values, i remain worried that many students are not experiencing unity in diversity when remembering my own experiences, for example, when eating lunch at the cafeteria in a public high school in oklahoma noticing that, for the most part, girls sat with one another, so did boys, and that african americans and european americans were rarely seen at the same table, hence, that the schooling experiences of many is missing from the three pictures. conclusion in order to assist people involved in education in the reading of their world, i analyzed front covers of three ministries of education’s website using tools of discourse analysis. in the process, i interpreted that the three ministries depicted for the most part connections between their operations and values like unity, health, wealth, collaboration, family, diversity and education. through their messages, they were also promoting these values while trying to sell their products. to determine what these images meant, i addressed what i called four footnotes associated to the analyzed front covers to contend that these ministries, while forefronting these values, are also to some extent leaving in the margins various educational epistemologies, indigenous people, individuals having negative experiences in schools, those inflicted with disabilities and those who live in family who are struggling to make ends meet, among other people. in addition, i highlighted that these ministries kept in place mechanisms that can contribute to the colonization of new immigrants. while edwards (2010) argued that many have deplored that post-structuralism often criticize such forms of alienation without offering any suggestion, when trying to come up with a solution to the issues that i discussed i thought about arguing that the ministries who produced the three analyzed pictures could use graphic resources to value other epistemologies or that they could add a student who has a physical disability or a girl wearing a hijab. i was thinking that this could help democratizing or hybridizing the ministries’ front covers, though i became uncomfortable at the idea that such changes would still misrepresent the experiences of most in schools. for that reason, i opted for encouraging these ministries to, at least, use collage of pictures of schooling as it happens in its natural settings as opposed to artificial ones like those employed in the three images. as such, it is my hope that a shift from artificial to natural could provide every stakeholder in education with a reading that would be prud’homme. reading education’s front covers and margins 64 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci more coherent with students’ experiences and that, in the process, the messages consigned to footnotes could emerge from the margins. acknowledgment i would like to thank dr. patricia palulis for her words of advice. notes 1 mprud15@gmail.com 2 i want to clarify that, here, i am only referring to the anthropocentric meaning of the notion of sovereignty. references aoki, t. (1990). inspiring the curriculum. the ata magazine, 37-42. attawapiskat school, (2012). education is a right. retrieved january 12, 2012, from the attawapiskat school website: http://www.attawapiskat-school.com/information.html bhabha, h. (2007). ethics and aesthetics of globalism: a postcolonial perspective. in a. p. ribeiro (ed.), the urgency of theory (pp. 1–20). manchester, uk: carcanet/calouste gulbenkian foundation. chambers, c. (2003). “as canadian as possibleunder the circumstances”: a view of contemporary curriculum discourse in canada. in international handbook of curriculum research edited by w. f. pinar, 221-252. london: lawrence erlbaum associates, publishers. davis, b. (2004). inventions of teaching: a genealogy. mahwah, nj: laurence erlbaum, associates. davis, b., & sumara, d. (2006). complexity and education. inquiries into learning, teaching and research. mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum. dewey, j. (2008). democracy and education. new york: seven treasures publications. edwards, d. jr. (2010). critical pedagogy and democratic education: possibilities for crosspollination. urban review: issues and ideas in public education, 42(3), 221-242. epstein, r. (2007). the case against adolescence: rediscovering the adult in every teen. sanger, ca: quill driver books/world dancer press, inc. freire, p. (1970). pedagogy of the oppressed (ramos, m. b., trans). new york: the continuum publishing company. gatto, j. t. (1992). dumbing us down: the hidden curriculum of compulsory schooling. new york: new society publishers. gee, j. (2011). how to do discourse analysis: a toolkit. new york: routledge. hennessy, p. (2006). from student to citizen: a community-based vision for democracy sic. toronto: white knight books. infoplease. (n.d.). demographic statistic: oklahoma. retrieved july 19, 2011, from infoplease website: http://www.infoplease.com/us/census/data/oklahoma/demographic.html mithun, m. (2000). the languages of native north america. cambridge: cambridge university press. mailto:mprud15@gmail.com http://www.attawapiskat-school.com/information.html http://www.infoplease.com/us/census/data/oklahoma/demographic.html prud’homme. reading education’s front covers and margins 65 transnational curriculum inquiry 9 (1) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci ministère de l’éducation nationale. (2010). tout savoir sur la scolarité de la maternelle au lycée. retrieved july 19, 2011, from ministère de l’éducation nationale web site: http://www.education.gouv.fr/pid24345/portail-parents-eleves-2010.html neuberger, b. (2007). education for democracy in israel: structural impediments and basic dilemmas. international journal of educational development, 27(3), pp. 292-305. oklahoma state department of education. (n.d.). oklahoma state department of education. retrieved july 19, 2011, from oklahoma state department of education web site: http://sde.state.ok.us/ ontario ministry of education. (2011). ontario ministry of education. retrieved july 19, 2011, from ontario ministry of education web site: http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/ smith, l. (2005). “on tricky ground: researching the native in the age of uncertainty.” in the sate handbook of qualitative research, third edition edited by n. denzin and y. lincoln, 85-108. thousand oaks: sage publications. watt, d. (2011). from the streets of peshawar to the cover of maclean’s magazine: reading images of muslim women as currere to interrupt gendered islamophobia. journal of curriculum theorizing, 27(10), 64-86. wolk, s. (2009). reading for a better world: teaching for social responsibility with young adult literature. journal of adolescent & adult literacy. 52(8), 664-673. wright, m. (june 1936). "chronicles of oklahoma". retrieved july 31, 2007, from oklahoma state university: http://digital.library.okstate.edu/chronicles/v014/v014p156.html submitted: may, 5 th , 2012 approved: september, 18 th , 2012 http://www.education.gouv.fr/pid24345/portail-parents-eleves-2010.html http://sde.state.ok.us/ http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/ http://digital.library.okstate.edu/chronicles/v014/v014p156.html http://digital.library.okstate.edu/chronicles/v014/v014p156.html microsoft word camden-pratt formatted 131108.doc to cite this article please include all of the following details: camden-pratt, catherine (2008). social ecology and creative pedagogy: using creative arts and critical thinking in co-creating and sustaining ecological learning webs in university pedagogies. transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> social ecology and creative pedagogy: using creative arts and critical thinking in co-creating and sustaining ecological learning webs in university pedagogies catherine e camden-pratt university of western sydney, australia introduction “a big wind blows for everyone who’s in their first year of uni1” the student calls out, standing in the centre of the circle of seated students, including me. some of us jump from our seats and run across the circle, racing for the just vacated chairs. gales of laughter fill the room as two students vie for the same chair, one gives in and a new student stands in the centre. she calls “a big wind blows for anyone who speaks another language besides english” again some of us leap from our chairs racing for the just vacated chairs. “hurricane” shouts the new centre person and we all leap up bumping into each other in our rush for a chair. and so the game, “a big wind blows” continues for a time, each person choosing something they’d like to find out about the group. the bare walls of the classroom hum with our laughter. the game closes and we settle back in our seats laughing with some apologies again to those we’ve bumped in our rush for seats. “okay, so what’s going on in that game? what do you notice?” i ask. “well we get to find out about each other.” “it’s fun.” “it got my heart racing.” “we all got to have a turn.” “there were no winners or losers.” “well … it got me out of my comfort zone. i didn’t leap up for a while until i saw that there wasn’t a right or wrong in the game” “i didn’t like being in the centre” “didn’t you, i did?”… “great observations” i respond. “so, how might that game relate to the unit we’re here to explore? where does a game like this fit in to learning and creativity? let’s apply theory to what we’ve just experienced.” and so the conversation begins in the first tutorial of the 100 level unit learning and creativity in the school of education at the university of western sydney, new south wales, australia (university of western sydney, 2007). my teaching and research practices centre on applied creative processes and cultural action (camden pratt, 2007, 2006, 2002; horsfall et al., 2004) and foreground critical thinking (freire, 2005; 1970/1996; giroux, 1994; hickling hudson, 2004; hooks, 1994; gore, 1 ‘uni’ is an australian colloquial abbreviation of ‘university’. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci camden-pratt: social ecology and creative pedagogy transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 5 1993; whang & waters, 2001) using a social ecology framework (bateson, 2000; bookchin, 2005; capra, 1997, 1996; hill et al., 2004). i frame student and teacher agency within a context of critically reflexive personal and academic rigour. this article discusses selected aspects of my pedagogies and their theoretical underpinnings using examples of unit content, assessment examples and student feedback from the 100 level undergraduate unit learning and creativity (university of western sydney, 2007), which i have taught for four years.2 this unit develops applied understandings of the inter-relationship between learning and creativity, critical and creative thinking and creative arts skills within a social ecology framework. it is characterised by experiential learning. students experience and apply a variety of creative arts approaches, which ground and explore unit theory, facilitating new ways of expressing critical reflections. they work with critical autobiography, as an approach to working with unit material. in this way individual biographies become community biographies the personal becomes political and theorised (hooks, 1984; lather, 1991). in their critical reflections students are encouraged to understand feelings and experience, as well as concepts and ideas, as a way of developing agency in their personal and professional lives. through unit pedagogies the unit becomes a site that “brings people together … to talk, exchange information, listen, feel their desires, and expand their capacities for joy, love, solidarity, and struggle” (giroux, 1994. p. x). in this article i am writing to know (richardson, 1997) taking an opportunity to explore my pedagogical praxis, which as feedback from students consistently demonstrates, facilitates engaged critical and deep learning3. i’m interested in how pedagogies using applied creative arts and critical thinking including critical autobiography enable these kinds of learning. while my thinking is referenced where relevant, there is much i have learned through my praxis and in this i am my own authority. social ecology applied: ecological learning webs, risk taking, vulnerability and trust i lecture in social ecology. most people ask, “what’s that?” i respond, “well, it examines the inter-relationship between the personal, social, the environmental and the spiritual/unknown” “yeah, but what does that really mean?” is usually the next question. “basically it acknowledges that everything you and i do affects our personal wellbeing, that of others, future generations and the environment (university of western sydney, 2006). umm, if you see each of these areas – the personal, the social, the environmental, and the spiritual – as separate circles which overlap in the centre it makes the centre a powerful place. and each of us is in that circle – in/formed by our social relationships acting in specific environments with personal worldviews. so if you act from a critical awareness of this interrelationship then your actions have the capacity to facilitate change in the area where you’d like to see change happen – personally or in the community, locally or globally. it means that when i teach at university, the student is placed right in the centre of her/his own learning in a 2 although my focus in this article is on one unit, i apply similar pedagogies across all my postgraduate and undergraduate teaching. 3 university generated unit feedback data (sfu), anecdotal evidence, student conversations, formative and summative unit feedback, and lecturer observations of student learning, student testimonials and emails. in 2006 and 2007 this unit received the highest positive scores in the newly instituted sfu in the school of education and the college of arts. in 2007 i received a college of arts award for excellence in teaching. writing to know about my own pedagogies risks a heroine narrative – i can only acknowledge this and note that it is an unstable narrative, which rests within my application of critical theory. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci camden-pratt: social ecology and creative pedagogy transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 6 critically reflective way – it’s about their learning – and of course i learn too because i’m learning alongside them, so it’s always different because all students are different.” “that sounds great!” “yeah, i love my work” i say and smile. in order to examine the inter-relationship between the individual, society, the environment and the spiritual/unknown, social ecology draws from a variety of disciplines. these disciplines include: humanities; psychologies (including eco-psychology and jungian psychology); sociology; environmental studies; ecology; chaos and complexity; education (including transformative education); creative arts (including visual, written and performing arts); and spiritual disciplines including theology. as already said, it places the individual in the centre of their own learning and foregrounds their learning agenda. this means that the student directs his/her own learning within unit content which is critically positioned within diverse theories and across the above disciplines. applied social ecology challenges him/her to critically reflect on and theorise about the inter-related processes of learning and creativity and the application and practice of these in all aspects of life – his/her own as well as in various social, political, cultural and environmental sites. social ecology promotes agency in personal and cultural change and facilitates this through experiential learning. each year i participate in awe as i witness time and again the co-creation of an ecological learning web and its rich emergent learnings in a large student group drawn from a variety of undergraduate degrees education to humanities, business and science. building on ecological understandings from bateson (1974), bookchin (2005), capra (1997, 1996) and hill et al. (2004), an ecological learning web describes the complex web of inter-relationships between students, teacher, content and processes. this web is mutually woven over the semester by me and the students, in such a way that it builds and sustains community, which in turn enables and facilitates deep learning. applied social ecology means that my theory is grounded in my practice – i walk my talk. my pedagogical practices in the unit demonstrate a central understanding of the unit that creativity is based on the process of ‘offer, accept, extend”. in simple terms this means i offer content/ processes/ myself; students accept and extend on my offer, which comes back to me as a new offer which i accept and extend and offer back to them and so it goes (ellwood, 2008). of course, students also make/ accept and extend offers among themselves. a crucial point here is that for an ecological learning web to be woven and for deep learning to take place students need to accept and extend on my/ their offers. so what are aspects of my praxis that motivate students to accept and extend on the ‘offers’ and so weave a web that facilitates and holds deep learning? risk taking and vulnerability are implicit in making offers, accepting and extending on them just as they are in learning and in creativity. so how do we as educators/ teachers co-create learning contexts in which risk taking and vulnerability are possible for students and teachers? what is the praxis that builds an ecological web of relationships that allows, supports and sustains this?4 in placing the student at the centre of their learning the teacher as student is similarly placed. i am an active learner. i take my own learning risks alongside the students, sharing and celebrating my learning edges. my willingness to do this, and my ongoing congruence in working with the majority of unit activities at the same time as the students, develops student trust in the work we are doing. it also grounds freire’s notion that, 4 writing about my praxis means it reads as a linear experience – it is not. all my practices occur simultaneously in a deeply integrated way. this integrated approach is crucial for effective pedagogy. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci camden-pratt: social ecology and creative pedagogy transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 7 from the outset her (the teacher’s) efforts must coincide with those of the student to engage in critical thinking and the mutual quest for humanisation. his efforts must be imbued with a profound trust of people and their creative power. to achieve this they must be partners of students in their relations with them. (freire, 1970/1996, p. 56) while i find this challenging on days when i’d like to hide behind ‘the teacher teaches and the students learn’, my own willingness to make collage, finger paint and write my haiku, sharing my critical theorised reflections when there is time, demonstrates the worthiness of the process and lets the students know that i am an active risk taking learner along with them. my participation is crucial in building a mutually trustworthy ecological web and as this student acknowledges it also demonstrates that learning is life-long. she gets involved with all activities and doesn’t just tell you what to do and stand back. catherine leads by example. she doesn’t ask you to do anything she’s not willing to do herself. she never asks you to be more vulnerable than she’s willing to be. if she wants you to share of yourself, she shares first. if she wants you to play a game where you might have to be silly, she’ll be right there too, being just as silly. however, if you don’t want to participate in any of the games, she completely respects your right to pass. she shows that learning is life-long. (testimonial, 2007) through my participation i model vulnerability, which is also a crucial aspect of engaged pedagogy (hooks, 1994). i articulate my pedagogical practices within engaged pedagogy, which means that that my ways of working are theoretically positioned and transparent for students, with hooks (1994) as one of the unit readings5. university teachers’ willingness to demonstrate risk and vulnerability is particularly crucial for those engaged in teacher education in university education faculties where students are learning how to be teachers of future learners. as hooks suggests, when education is the practice of freedom, students are not the only ones who are asked to share … engaged pedagogy does not seek simply to empower students. any classroom that employs a holistic model of learning will also be a place where teachers grow, and are empowered by the process. this empowerment cannot happen if we refuse to be vulnerable while encouraging students to take risks. (1994, p. 21) this is a challenging paradigm shift in a culture where traditionally, teachers know and students learn. it is a culture-shift that is crucial for engaged learning and also for engaged teaching. my own creative work with the students invariably provides me with shifts in consciousness and deeper understanding of the particular learning edge i am working with – for example i may use the collage activity to explore my current research challenges. this benefits my own development and feeds back into my teaching. the following student reflection shows how my demonstrating professional learning edges were crucial for her learning as a future teacher. it also shows how learning shifts appropriately shared by a teacher are powerfully educative and build mutual respect: 5 all unit readings are explicitly applied in unit tutorials and lectures. this means my ways of working are transparent as well as being grounded in experiential learning. readers are updated regularly to reflect current theorists and practitioners. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci camden-pratt: social ecology and creative pedagogy transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 8 educators need to know the value of being learners themselves and they need to value students learning – this class really showed that. catherine taught us ‘it’s okay not to know’ and showed us how to model ‘learning our way towards knowing’. (unit feedback, 2006) developing and maintaining /sustaining trust is a multifaceted and ongoing process built in to all aspects of my pedagogy. it is underscored by sustained deep listening on my part, as a teacher. in modelling deep listening, alongside critical personal reflection, i facilitate student critical reflection about themselves and their learning / life journeys positioned within a politicised ecological whole: she really listens to students (and not just their words) and she is aware of how self / subjectivities can be critically reflected on to better understand others and have effective relationships. (unit feedback, 2005) pedagogical practices are constitutive. these practices both shape us and our learning and are in turn themselves shaped by how we teach-learn. practising engaged pedagogy, practising vulnerability, trust and risk taking in turn shapes the pedagogical encounters and develops the learning-teaching subjects. the trust that is crucial in risk taking and which develops through the consistent application of my pedagogical practices allows safety in being vulnerable – they are not separate. discursive practices become effective over time and with consistency. as one student reflected this consistency is crucial: it’s about trust and safety. we try the water and if it’s safe – and safe again and again and again – then we trust. then we trust and shine our gifts and talents. tell our stories. but only if it’s safe to trust over time. we watch what happens. it’s about the heart really. intentions. (unit feedback, 2004) it is evident from this reflection that risk taking itself in turn develops and strengthens trust, which in turn deepens student engagement and learning and how the student participates in the class. this trust helps build the web of relationships which are then able to safely hold the vulnerability involved in learning and creativity. social ecology gives a theoretical framework for this ecological web creative and critical thinking provide ways of entering and exploring the unit content. applied creative arts in agency and critical thinking: the right to pass, games and creative arts practices creative arts meet soul needs, shift consciousness and both facilitate and enhance learning. these approaches are usually not experienced in university settings outside specific discipline areas yet they are crucial in educating for sustainable living as individuals and global citizens (heywood, 2005; griggs, 2003; neville, 2006; tacey, 2005). critical thinking and personal agency are also developed through the use of creative arts. as a central learning principle and pedagogical practice, i use ‘the right to pass’ as an option for all students and myself in all unit activities with the exception of assessment tasks which come under the university rules. i do this knowing that learning needs to be owned in order to be meaningful, effective and sustained over time. it also allows students power over their vulnerability and risk taking. having the right to pass is a way of activating student http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci camden-pratt: social ecology and creative pedagogy transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 9 awareness of their ownership of learning and all that it entails. this right and its responsibility is explained to students at the beginning of the unit and reinforced during the unit. the responsibility that comes with this right is that students are asked to use their time as an opportunity to critically reflect on how come they have chosen to pass in this activity at this time. there are always students in each cohort who exercise their right to pass. this proves to be crucial in some students’ experiences of empowerment and agency in the unit and also develops trust, as i consistently maintain its application: exercising my right to pass’ was big for me because it made me make choices for myself instead of doing things because someone told me to. all of my education including uni has been about being told to do something and doing it whether i was motivated to or not so it was amazing for me to pass on an activity, i felt empowered then to say ‘yes’ because i’d been able to say ‘no’. (student unit feedback, 2005) each tutorial begins with a game and follow-up discussion which grounds the game in class relevant theory. my pedagogical intentions about using games are clear have fun, reawaken our playfulness which is so crucial in creativity and in life, get to know each other, cut across power relations and break down ‘othering’, get our bodies moving to better enable learning, apply and ground specific content theory and build inclusivity. all the games are inclusive – without winners and losers – and succeed because of all the players. at the same time each of us can exercise our right to pass and not join in. playing games means we get to have a laugh – often running about the room engaging our bodies, quite literally bumping up against and sitting next to students we mightn’t normally choose to sit near, making fools of ourselves. having fun re-fills often empty playful places of ourselves and helps sustains goodwill for subsequent challenging activities and conversations (boal, 2002). being safely vulnerable – even in a game – enables the soil of our-selves to soften so that learning can take place. all students comment on the fun aspect of the games however as this comment reflects, students go deeper and critically reflect on their placement in the unit: the games she uses, aside from providing the basis for theoretical learning in the context of the unit, also help to develop that sense of community. the community within catherine’s classroom is a safe place, a place where you feel supported and encouraged in your learning and where you feel like you can bring your whole self to the table, not just your academic mind, something which seems to be rare and undervalued in academic learning environments. (testimonial, 2007) we use a variety of creative arts approaches in the unit as a way to explore and apply unit theory. the experience of creative arts themselves in turn establishes and demonstrates the inter-relationship between learning and creativity. the creative arts we use over the 13 weeks of the unit are: collage; finger painting; writing ‘first thoughts’; making word clusters; bringing life to writing through multi-sensory questions; writing in place; haiku; joint text construction; body meditation; place based mediation; drama games and theatre of the oppressed. in week 2 as a beginning place for each student’s learning in the unit we use a structured collage process in which students focus on their individual learning-creative edges and goals for the unit (camden pratt, 2002, 2007). this becomes a resource for future tutorial activities and a document for assessment 2 and their reflections on their learning in the unit. as freire (1996) suggests teachers do, i demonstrate a profound trust in students’ creative power. hands on activities are linked to a lecture and theoretical discussion so that theory http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci camden-pratt: social ecology and creative pedagogy transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 10 emerges from and is grounded in the experience. each workshop activity scaffolds the next. we use the same approaches a number of times throughout the unit building student confidence in applying these approaches. some examples in week 4 we use the collage from week 2 with first thoughts, word clusters and haikus moving from visual texts into written texts, experiencing the opportunities and permissions of different creative arts and their ways of deepening learning, which has been the focus of the accompanying lecture. in week 5 we use writing first thoughts, word clusters, finger painting and haiku in the tutorial, as ways of grounding the lecture on emotion in learning and creativity (csikszentmihalyi, 2006; goleman, 1996, 1999; gardner, 2006; heywood, 2005; nachmanovitch, 1990; neville, 2005). the following week we use a body-mind meditation, as a way into grounding lecture material on embodied knowing and the place of the body in learning (balenky et al., 1997; gardner, 2006; hocking et al., 2001), with students using finger painting, word clusters and haiku to express their learning as it emerges from the body-mind meditation. boal’s (2000) theatre of the oppressed (to) develops critical thinking in a drama context. to is based on boal’s notion of there being no such thing as spectators or innocent bystanders, that we are each of us spect-actors and in this have a role to play in oppression and its interruption (ibid). in to the ‘audience’ become actors in the ‘play’ of the oppression, taking turns to step into the various roles and try out different approaches, thereby experiencing located positions in the oppression and through this developing understanding of the various roles played out in oppression and possible ways of interrupting it. this process allows often-marginalised voices of oppression to be heard and responded to and for learning to take place about these locations. learning is facilitated by the creative process and so demonstrates the inter-relationship between learning and creativity as well as developing critical thinking and demonstrating ways of bringing about personal, systemic and cultural change. we experience to toward the end of the unit scaffolded by drama games and activities in previous weeks. the trust developed over the semester is necessary for the stories of oppression to emerge from and then be enacted by the group. the strong ecological learning web that has developed supports this process. in 2004 a small group of indigenous students acted out aspects of their oppression as learners in school. as one non-indigenous student moved from the ‘audience’ and became an actor in the ‘play’ she tried to get those who were oppressed to act in ways she felt would shift their oppression, her comments below reflect the reflexive and empathic power of to: i found the theatre of the oppressed exercises unsettling (part of their intention, no doubt) … the scene in which some of the indigenous students expressed their sense of historical marginalisation in eurocentric learning spaces was particularly confronting. on the one hand i wanted them to demand justice, but at the same time i recognised that this was more of the same patronising approach they were protesting about. (student reflection document, 2004) theory can develop agency and liberate when it based on experience which the students can see/identify. using creative arts allows experiences to be enacted and expressed in a classroom setting. these can then be safely reflected upon using theory which places the individual experience inside a political theorised whole. during an intense class discussion on discourse and agency following the tutorials using to, a young veiled muslim woman and an older anglo student told the group that they had sat in classes together in the same education subjects over a four year period but both of them had never spoken to each other prior to this http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci camden-pratt: social ecology and creative pedagogy transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 11 unit. as the conversation progressed and they shared their perceptions of this lack of engagement the young muslim woman said, “so i guess we have both being ‘othering’ each other” (in-class conversation, 2004). this was a powerful moment for the muslim woman, the anglo student and the class; her personal knowing and learning became a community learning. it also grounded critical theory. this same student went on to comment in her reflection document about her personal learning through the unit: for most of my life i have been made to feel different … i have come to the realisation that being different is not a bad thing in fact it’s what makes me special …i think having had this experience has made me realise that people think much more of me than i give them credit for … i have rarely felt included and understood, but rather excluded because of my appearance so i have learnt to live with it. i believe making people realise their negative judgements toward me is [sic] not at all what they thought makes me feel positive about myself. people have so many misconceptions on how muslim women are. they are surprised by what i know and who i am … people are interested in learning about my culture and by speaking with them about who i am; i am opening doors for people they didn’t know existed. for the first time in my university life, i walked into a class and could say hello to everyone. i was surprised that so many people could relate to me. (reflection document, 2004) for teacher education students, my grounding in freire (1996, 2005), gardner (2006), giroux (1994), gore (1993) and hooks (1994), amongst others, through these pedagogical practices, motivates and models an ecological way to teach. seeing her model a teaching approach that is very reflective of the theory of best practice – questioning, promoting critical thinking, drawing on various learning styles and cultural knowledge (valuing these) has been extremely motivating . . . she ‘walked her talk’ and completed my up to then theoretical understanding of diversity and how to promote an inclusive classroom / individualising and actively searching/ encouraging / supporting individuals’ learning processes and their creativity with respect, compassion and sensitivity. (unit feedback sfu, 2005) critical autobiography and transformation: centring the personal using creative arts drawing on critical autobiography (church, 1995; camden pratt 2002, 2006, 2007) and social ecology i begin the first lecture with photographs of myself as a young child in two quite different life contexts and sites of learning school and non school and invite students to discuss what they see in these visual discourses. in doing so i immediately position my self and my life as worthy of rigorous academic inquiry and i make myself vulnerable to student observations about aspects of my early life. by association, their own lives are similarly worthy. i ground this by having them reflect on their early life memories in various sites of learning and the impacts on who they are today. through this, the notion that we are each central in our ongoing learning, is grounded as a unit priority and of academic value. it also allows me to be present as a whole person and in doing so, model this for students: the lecturer accepted every individual and our different journeys. she shared her own journey and that allowed us to feel more comfortable in the space and willing to share our http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci camden-pratt: social ecology and creative pedagogy transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 12 own. i have been able to bring myself and my life into my university studies. (unit feedback, 2006) next, i foreground ideas of agency and transformation within a social ecology map as described in the opening paragraph of this paper and highlight how social ecology places ‘you’ at the centre of ‘y/our’ own learning. i use a popular song ‘unwritten’ (bedingfield, 2005), as a way into discussing unit opportunities and the social ecology map. in the following lecture i introduce critical theory and problematise notions of agency within a critical discussion of the intersections of personal, social, political and cultural discourses and education (boal, 2002, 2000; freire, 1970, 2005; gore, 1993; hooks, 1994; whang & waters, 2001). in a later lecture and related tutorials i draw on critical autobiography, creative arts and strategic questioning, in discussing power in and from the margins (armstrong et al., 2001; higgs et al., 2007; camden pratt 2002, 2007; church, 1995; peavey, 2000). i show and discuss a painting from my 2002 phd daughters of persephone: legacies of maternal madness. my private story and those of the women with whom i researched is in the public domain through this phd and its subsequent popular press publication out of the shadows: daughters growing up with ‘mad’ mother (2006); exhibitions (2003) and public talks (2003, 2006, 2007). my movement from the private personal into the public social, through my academic work, gives students an example of how to do this using rigorous academic theorising and also says that even the messy marginalised stories of our lives are valued. i draw on giroux’s (1994, p. x) positioning of pedagogy as “the creation of a public sphere, one that brings people together in a variety of sites to talk, exchange information, listen, feel their desires, and expand their capacities for joy, love, solidarity, and struggle” and the feminist understanding of the personal as political. when the self is firmly centred and understood in social and political terms using critical theory, education can become a practice of freedom – until then, there is no agency. my demonstrating how to theorise about the personal allows and teaches students to theorise from their own lives. working this way seems to be particularly transformative for those students whose lived experiences have been in the marginal silenced places –mental illness, suicide of loved one, parental substance addictions, sexual abuse, cultural marginalisation, sexuality marginalisation etc. providing students with theoretical grounding for discussing and unpacking these messy areas using theory enables a personal transformative shift. as one student (2005) articulated it in her final reflection document: just as camden-pratt (20036 and lecture 4) brought the asylum into the academy, i have been able to bring my depression into the academy. this has allowed me to voice a silenced part of myself. in the marketplace i had the opportunity to show fellow students what depression is like and how it affects my learning, especially in academic settings, while also showing how it can simultaneously enhance my creativity … working creatively helped me to place the depression outside myself so that i could better understand it to communicate it to others, and objectively increase my own understanding (camden-pratt, lecture 4). i recognised that the social silencing of depression profoundly influenced feelings of disengagement from myself, and from the wider community which inevitably caused the silencing of the self. my knowledge has shifted as i was able to move myself from the margin into the centre and by doing this i made the social body 6 now published in higgs et al., 2007 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci camden-pratt: social ecology and creative pedagogy transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 13 bigger (bell hooks, 1984). my personal story became a social story. (reflection document, 2005) the student is referring to the second assessment task in the unit marketplace of learning and creativity– in which the room is transformed into a marketplace with each student bringing a creative depiction that tells a story about her/his learning journey and understanding of learning. the assessment is a celebration of our learning and the learning risks we have taken. this student created a simple and powerful depiction of how depression affected her learning. three canvas were placed alongside one another: one a puzzle-piece face showing the segmented self, the second a butterfly surrounded by silver foil which conveyed hope and light, and the third a candle melted on a canvas which had a background of old no longer prescribed medication scripts thereby demonstrating the changing nature of depression. she lit the candle at the beginning of marketplace and by its end two hours later, the candle had burned down and destroyed most of her canvas; much like depression eats away at life. the student had a few lines of text which helped students understand that the candle represented her life source and how depression made it burn down slowly destroying her ability to learn and engage with life. in the same reflection document quoted above, the student demonstrates the kinds of empowerment and insights that can come with working creatively with autobiographical material, as well as the place of peer feedback in this: using the candle as a symbol was very powerful as it contrasted feelings of darkness towards the medical model against feelings of hope and determination. i felt empowered that the candle could only be lit once; therefore the canvas was ‘alive’ only for the duration of the marketplace. peer feedback from the marketplace conveyed the beginnings of new knowledge for those who had not experienced mental illness and empathy and healing from those who had. (reflection document, 2005) students are encouraged to use “i” in their essays and documents; this grounds critical autobiography and applied social ecology, which places the student at the centre of their learning. it is also reflective of my research practices (camden pratt, 2002, 2006, 2007). in each assessment students are encouraged to submit written work in non-traditional academic forms including narrative and poetry, with well integrated academic referencing and critical rigour. this combination of practices was particularly meaningful for one student who wrote in her final document: in my first assessment i put in a story i wrote about stranger danger using my aboriginal storytelling style. i realise now at the end of this semester that in the beginning i saw all of you as strangers and i felt in danger. i don’t now. i think that’s because it’s been okay to be me and how i am. i guess we’ve done so much yarning together we’re like a family – a new mob. (student reflection document, 2004) feedback on student assessment and ongoing learning is a crucial part of the learning cycle and contributes to the co-creation and maintenance of ecological learning webs. it provides an educative function as well as demonstrating how i and other students value each student’s work. when critical autobiography is part of the unit and aspects of student lives are part of the content then feedback is even more crucial. each student receives positive feedback from their peers in the marketplace using a provided feedback sheet which asks students to http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci camden-pratt: social ecology and creative pedagogy transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 14 comment on favourite aspects of each presentation as well as what they have learned from the presentation and how they connected with it. my own written feedback is grounded in examples from the student’s work and provides positive recognition of their learning edges and the learning risks they have taken. i provide detailed constructive feedback on areas of strength and suggestions of how to deepen their engagement with the content including highlighting specific theory they need to develop. the challenges and opportunities of nontraditional forms of assessment, the need for scaffolding in this and the importance of feedback are highlighted in this student comment: assessment tasks were somewhat open ended as they allowed students to express themselves within university-academic guidelines. taking this unit was a challenge for me as i had previously questioned my own creativity. however, the way the unit was delivered allowed me, as well as many other students, to successfully show creativity, because there were no restrictions to what we could do, or on how we should express personal theories of learning and creativity. assessment feedback was worthwhile, as it was positive and constructive, which was encouraging; it engaged students in learning and allowed them to take further risks. (testimonial, 2007) concluding reflections: tying threads together social ecology maps the inter-relationship between the personal, the social/ political/ cultural, the environment and the spiritual. it facilitates students’ learning by placing them at the centre of their learning in holistic and response-able learning contexts. it likewise places the teacher in the centre of her learning. pedagogical practices using creative arts and critical thinking – including critical autobiography – provide students and teachers with the tools and skills to become creative and critically reflective agents of personal and social change. these pedagogies provide space and ongoing application of freire’s quest for humanisation in their combination of academic and personal rigour. this combination is crucial if as giroux suggests: teachers should become transformative intellectuals if they are to educate students to be active, critical citizens … this means providing students with the critical tools they will need to both understand and dismantle the chronic rationalisation of harmful social practices, while simultaneously appropriating the knowledge and skills they need to rethink the project of human emancipation. (giroux, 1998, p. 127, p. 152) in their words, student feedback suggests that unit pedagogies enable this: having studied units in relation to discourse and power relations in society, this unit challenged me further, to really deconstruct my life’s experiences and learning and practise ‘reflexivity’ using the theories which has really empowered me. i know myself better and can move forward with confidence to be open to other people’s personalties and journeys and to what each new day brings. i am taking a more active role in my life, more perceptive about life and am more appreciative of events. (student unit feedback, 2006) social ecology using creative arts and critical thinking provides an example of sustainable, critical and creative engaged university pedagogies. writing to know in this paper, demonstrates how working holistically enables deep learning for students. it illuminated for http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci camden-pratt: social ecology and creative pedagogy transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 15 me how my participation as an engaged creative learner sustains my teaching. be-ing teacher/learner inside do-ing teaching/learning is a way of approaching the university pedagogical site that facilitates and models sustainability through building an ecological web of relationships. it also opens opportunities for student and teacher transformation – so that even bare walls sing. references armstrong, h. b., higgs, j. & horsfall, d. (eds.). (2001). critical moments in qualitative research. oxford: butterworth heinemann. balenky, m., clinchy, b., goldberger, n. & tarule, j. (eds.). (1997). women’s ways of knowing: the development of self, voice, and mind. new york: basicbooks. bateson, g. (2000 c 1972). steps to an ecology of mind. chicago: university of chicago press. bedingfield, n. (2005). unwritten. track 4 on cd, unwritten. united kingdom: artista label. boal, a. (2000). theater of the oppressed. london: pluto. boal, a. (2002). games for actors and non-actors. new york: routledge. bookchin, m, (2005). the ecology of freedom: the emergence and dissolution of hierarchy. oakland, ca: ak press. camden pratt, c. (2002). daughters of persephone: legacies of maternal madness. phd thesis, university of western sydney, sydney, australia. camden pratt, c. (2003). bringing the asylum into the academy. unpublished paper in learning and creativity unit reader 2004 – 2006, university of western sydney, sydney, australia. camden pratt, catherine eileen. (2006). out of the shadows: daughters growing up with a ‘mad’ mother. sydney: finch publications. camden pratt, c. (2007). creative arts and critical autobiography: challenges of blending the deeply personal and the academic in qualitative research. in j. higgs, a. titchen, d. horsfall & h. armstrong (eds.). being critical and creative in qualitative research. (pp. 248 – 260) sydney: hampden press. capra, f. (1996). the web of life: a new understanding of living systems. new york: anchor books. capra, f. (1997). the web of life: a new synthesis of mind / matter. london: flamingo. church, k. (1995). forbidden narratives, critical autobiography as social science. newark, nj, usa: gordon and breach. csikszentmihalyi, m. (1996) creativity: flow and the psychology of discovery and invention. new york: harper collins ellwood, c. & camden pratt, c. (2008 forthcoming) becoming blossom, becoming oddbod: clowning as transformational process. in b. davies & s. gannon (eds.). pedagogical encounters. (chapter 5). friere, p. (1970 / 1996). pedagogy of the oppressed. london: penguin. friere, p. (2005). education for critical consciousness. london & new york: continuum. gardner, h. (2006). multiple intelligences: new horizons. new york: basic books. giroux, h. (1994). disturbing pleasures. new york: routledge. goleman, d. (1996). emotional intelligence: why it can matter more than iq. london: bloomsbury. goleman, d. (1999). working with emotional intelligence. london: bloomsbury. gore, j. (1993). the struggle for pedagogies. great britain: routledge. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci camden-pratt: social ecology and creative pedagogy transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 16 griggs, d. (2003) spirit of learning. victoria: jubilation press. heywood, p. mccann, t. neville, b. & wills, p. (2005). towards re-enchantment: education, imagination and the getting of wisdom. flaxton, qld., australia: post pressed publishers. hickling hudson, a., matthews j. & woods, a. (eds.). (2004). disrupting preconceptions: postcolonialism and education. flaxton, qld., australia: post pressed publishers. higgs, j., horsfall, d., titchen, a., & armstrong, h., (eds.). (2007). being critical and creative in qualitative research. sydney: hampden press. hill, s. b., wilson, s. &watson, k. (2004). learning ecology: a new approach to learning and transforming ecological consciousness in e. o’sullivan & m. taylor (eds.). learning toward an ecological consciousness: selected transformative practices. (pp. 47 64) new york: palgrave. hooks, b. (1984). feminist theory, from margin to center. boston, ma: south end press. hooks, b. (1994). teaching to transgress: education as the practice of freedom. new york: routledge. hocking, b., haskell, j., linds, w. (eds.). (2001). unfolding bodymind: exploring possibility through education. brandon, vt: foundation for educational renewal. horsfall, d., bridgeman, k., camden pratt, c., kaufman hall, v. & pinn j. (2007). playing creative edges: performing research women out to lunch. in j.higgs, a. titchen, d. horsfall & h. armstrong (eds.). being critical and creative in qualitative research. (pp. 136 151) sydney: hampden press. lather, patti (1991). getting smart: feminist research and pedagogy with/in the postmodern. london: routledge. neville, b. (2005). educating psyche: emotion, imagination and the unconscious in learning. nmit victoria: flat chat press. peavey, f. (2000). heart politics revisited. sydney: pluto press. richardson, l. (1997). fields of play: constructing an academic life. new brunswick, n.j. : rutgers university press. student voices: #15736781 2007, # 16350191 2007, 2007 #13538936 2006, # 15911227 2005, #10090419 2004, #12068702 2004 rosie 2004, jasmin 2004. learning and creativity feedback data and reflection documents. university of western sydney, nsw australia. tacey, d. (2005). educating the heart: spirituality and interiority. in p. heywood, t. mccann, b. neville & p. wills (eds.). towards re-enchantment: education, imagination and the getting of wisdom. (pp. 39 48) flaxton, qld., australia: post pressed. university of western sydney (2006). course documents, social ecology major. university of western sydney, nsw, australia. university of western sydney (2007). learning and creativity 101259 unit description. accessed 6th november 2008, via http://handbook.uws.edu.au/hbook/ whang, p. & waters, g. (2001). transformational spaces in teacher education: map(ing) a pedagogy linked to a practice of freedom. journal of teacher education, vol. 52, no. 3, 197-210 author dr catherine e camden-pratt is a lecturer in social ecology in the school of education at the university of western sydney, new south wales, australia. email: c.camdenpratt@uws.edu.au http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci http://handbook.uws.edu.au/hbook mailto:camdenpratt@uws.edu.au microsoft word waterhouse_formatted_2.doc to cite this article please include all of the following details: waterhouse, monica (2008) a pedagogy of mourning: tarrying with/in tragedy, terror, and tension. transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> a pedagogy of mourning: tarrying with/in tragedy, terror, and tension monica waterhouse university of ottawa, canada “is there something to be gained from grieving, from tarrying with grief, from remaining exposed to its unbearability?” (butler, 2004, p.30) foreword here are my remembrances as a teacher-traveler1 around my live(d) experiences in a sometimes (always already) violent world. i attempt a narrative reflection on peace and/as violence in our worlds as we go about the business of teaching, learning and living together. it is preoccupied with the work of mourning and its possibilities for pedagogies for peace; a wondering and wandering through stories, accompanied by narrative ghosts of past, present, and the always imminent future. inspired by the work of ted aoki, this memory work is metonymic, slipping between different places and times. such metonymic “memory plays the part of the shifter… the trickster, taking on ambiguous syntactic and semantic role of both here and there, this and that, then and now” (hasebe-ludt, 2003, p.463). in these metonymic movements, in these “spaces of generative possibilities in between” (hasebe-ludt, 2003, p.464) it is my hope that something will happen for me and for the reader; that there will be a provocation. my sense of the word provocation is inspired by smith’s (1999) idea of provocation and/as pedagogy; a kind of productivity and a calling forth. this is echoed in robertson’s (2006) observation that provocation and education are “etymological siblings” (p.175) where educare involves a “bringing forth” (jardine, 2000, p.115) of life. these authors invite a return to life and the work of education that embraces all their difficulties and passions, because it is precisely in these tensions that we find generative possibilities. from this perspective, i view the writing (and perhaps reading) of this text and the mourning it involves as an inherently pedagogical endeavor closely related to questions of peace, violence, and human connection. above all else it is an invitation in/to difficulty, a provocation to pedagogical movement. i enter in the middle; a narrative moment, a movement. moving forwards… four words: tragedy, terror, tension, tarry. 1 as teacher-traveler, i inhabit a socio-historical positioning as a canadian, white, middle-class, monolingual anglo, protestant woman. it is from this position that i read the worlds i travel and work my memories. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci monica waterhouse: a pedagogy of mourning transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 17 1st movement – tragedy/terror may 8, 1999 i am living and working in a small village on the outskirts of beijing, china. i teach english as additional language to the children of well-to-do and politically well-connected families at an experimental school. this morning, i am standing at a lectern facing my grade eleven students speechless and with heavy heart. a terrible event has just occurred. in the kosovo intervention, a nato2 air-strike in belgrade (apparently targeting an enemy arms depot) has resulted in the destruction of the chinese embassy and the deaths of three journalists staying there: “shao yunhuan, 48, of the state-run xinhua [new china] news agency, and xu xinghu, 29, and his wife, zhu ying, 27, both with the national newspaper guangming daily”3. confronted with such tragedy i have no words to offer my students. there is a lengthy silence that is finally broken by a young man, the class representative, of whom i am especially fond. he stands up from his desk at the back of the room and quietly asks, “teacher, why would your country want to bomb our country?” and after a pause, tentatively, “do you still like us?” at a complete loss, i begin to weep. this was not the first or the last time that my chinese students would move me to tears. what could i say? how could i respond to this terrible tragedy that had happened? it was a most poignant instance where life was restored “to its original difficulty” (caputo, 1987, p.1) within the walls of a classroom (jardine, 2000); a space of tension where pedagogy was confronted, brutally by the unpredictability and ambiguity of life. of course that day i made reassuring remarks in a choked voice about the differences between macro politics and the micro interactions between individuals. i made stumbling excuses that i did not understand what had happened, but most surely i still cared for them all very much and that nothing could ever change that. still, a terrible tension remained between us born of confusion, contradictions, and words that could not be spoken. in the days that followed, public protests in cities across china had the dual effect of uniting the chinese people in national sovereignty as well as stoking anti 2 north atlantic treaty organization 3 these names were obtained from an online cnn article entitled china mourns victims of belgrade embassy bombing (mackinnon, may 12, 1999), but it seems significant that these same names are absent from the north atlantic council’s press release on may 8, 1999, where they express their “deep regret for the tragic mistake of the bombing of the chinese embassy in belgrade”. they go on to offer “the sincere sympathy and condolences of all members of the alliance … to the victims, their families and the chinese government”. this is a recognition and yet a denouncing in the same rhetorical move. there is the presence of remorse coupled with an absence of specifics; it cannot name names. in a derridian paradox, the presence of the three dead journalists seems all the more glaring in the absence of their names. as judith butler observes, “i am as much constituted by those i do grieve for as by those whose deaths i disavow, whose nameless and faceless deaths form the melancholic background for my social world” (butler, 2004, p.46). this idea affects me greatly and i will return to it in various ways throughout this text. i sense the importance of naming names in order to recognize a life and to make space for the public recognition of a death. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci monica waterhouse: a pedagogy of mourning transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 18 american sentiments4. in beijing, the local english language radio station consistently referred to the “american led nato bombing” and university students, by the busload, arrived at the gates of the u.s. embassy to hurl eggs, stones, bricks, and balloons filled with red paint in protest of what had become popularly understood in terms of a “terrorist attack” (gries, 2004). it was a time when my school’s administration discouraged canadian ‘foreign experts’ from traveling into the city, and if we absolutely had to do so, we were warned that we ought to carry our canadian passports to avoid being mistaken for u.s. citizens. from my perspective though, most of these events had very little impact on my day-to-day life. it was inside the classroom that the aftermath of the bombing was most difficult for me. at our school, the students of each homeroom class were responsible for decorating a chalkboard on the back wall of their classroom with an appropriate monthly theme. immediately following the embassy bombing, all classes were expected to recreate their chalkboard displays as memorials to the victims and as protests against the terrible injustice they had suffered. in one room the students had pasted up large images clipped from newspapers that graphically showed the bloody, broken bodies of the journalists and others injured in the bombing. from my lectern at the front of the room, these images were inescapable and deeply disturbing. yet strangely even more troubling was a careful chalk drawing amongst these images that read “nato nazis” in a red crossed out circle (much like a ‘no smoking’ sign). at the time i could not put my finger on what bothered me so much about this text. was it the association of nato – and by affiliation, canada – with another group responsible for unspeakable atrocities? was it that this association caused me, for perhaps the first time in my life, to be ashamed of being a canadian? reflecting on these experiences now, from another time and place, i am surprised at how i overlooked the obvious. the particular significance of this text, the reason it had struck such terror in my heart, was that it was written in english. typically any words written in the students’ chalkboard displays were completely inscribed in chinese characters. i am led to puzzle about the meaning of this english message, “nato nazis”. who was this message for? did the student who designed this image intend to address it directly to her/his english-speaking canadian teachers? did she/he want to be sure that we received, unequivocally in our own language, a public reprimand? that we should be made to feel their disapproval and reminded of our own complicity in the terror of this event? here i am powerfully reminded of words that have also taken hold of bell hooks (1994): “this is the oppressor’s language yet i need it to talk to you” (p.167). was this image a way to anonymously speak those words of anger that could not be said aloud? words that could not pass from student to teacher, from chinese to ‘foreign expert’5? these are questions that cannot be answered, so i am left to ponder 4 a careful analysis of the events around the belgrade embassy bombing in 1999 and their effects on chinese anti-american sentiment, as well as their effects on an enigmatic and rapidly evolving popular nationalism in china, is found in gries’s (2004) book entitled china’s new nationalism: pride, politics, and diplomacy. 5 ‘foreign expert’ is the term used to describe foreigners who have attained a work permit for employment in china. however, this is a problematic term from a post-colonial perspective. it demonstrates clearly pennycook’s (1998) argument that “the traces left by colonialism run deep” (p.2) and that colonialist discourses still adhere in english language, discourses through which “constructions of superiority and inferiority were [and still are] produced” (p.19). pennycook writes, “it is important to understand colonialism not only in terms of its macro-political structures http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci monica waterhouse: a pedagogy of mourning transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 19 the meaning of my student’s response to the terror and tragedy in belgrade; the giving of two words, both foreign and terrible: nato. nazis. 2nd movement – terror/tension september 12, 2001 as usual, i am in the office early this morning. like most of the other canadian teachers working at our school campus located in the countryside just east of beijing, i am eagerly checking to see if there are any interesting emails from home (there are not). i ignore the pop-up advertisement for a new disaster movie, an image of new york’s world trade centre in smoke and flames, turn off my computer, and begin gathering together my teaching materials in preparation for another busy day in the classroom. just now, one of my fellow canadian colleagues, skids into the office looking sleepless and disheveled, shouting, “have you heard the news?” most of the staff and students at my school in china experienced the attacks of 9/11, 2001 in the united states across a rupture of space and time. half a planet away and twelve time zones ‘ahead’ in time, as the twin towers fell in new york, many of us in beijing were snoozing away peacefully, temporarily oblivious to this event that would irrevocably change the geopolitical realities of the world we all share. thus, it was not until waking on september 12th that i joined the world in shock and horror. the first bell rings and i begin moving slowly toward my grade eleven classroom in a daze. what will i say to my students? do they even know? will i be the first bearer of this terrible news? as i stand facing my students, gripping the lectern to steady myself, i take a deep breath and begin with a simple question, “have you heard the world news this morning?” i wait for a response. what happens next is shocking, unpredictable, and completely unfathomable. my beautiful chinese students whom i hold so dear begin, in unison, to applaud. i am speechless, horrified, reeling. we fall into the grip of a tension-filled moment. i am silent. the students are silent. finally, i ask, in a tone that i hope conveys incomprehension, rather than judgmental rebuke, “why are you clapping?”6 that day was one of those “singular, rare, and strange pedagogical encounters [that] offer a window into cultural difference, which teachers within dominant languages and cultures may be prone to ignore” (macpherson, 2005, p.52). this moment served to make strange what i had taken for granted. in aoki’s (2005c) terms this was a but also in terms of the cultural politics of everyday life … the micropolitics of daily life (p.24). it is perhaps, in part, these latent colonial structures that made it difficult, if not impossible, for my chinese students, or even my chinese colleagues, to openly discuss with me, as a so-called foreign expert, the possibility of canada’s complicity, as a member of nato, in the 1999 bombing of the chinese embassy in belgrade. 6 by sharing this anecdote i fear i may have done my former students a textual violence by representing them and their actions through the fickle lens of my own memories. to attempt to lessen this kind of violation, i again refer the reader to gries, 2004 book (see also note 4) as a counter-text that helps to situate my narrative account, a mere snapshot, within in a broader and more complex socio-political picture. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci monica waterhouse: a pedagogy of mourning transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 20 metonymic moment in the site of living pedagogy where “curri/culum” is cracked open midst the tensions between the plannable/unplannable, the predictable/unpredictable, the sayable/unsayable (p.426). i had expected, even planned for, my students to react with shock, horror, sorrow, perhaps even tears. instead, the jarring and unpredictable sound of their applause was a doubly noisy provocation in smith’s (1999) sense of the word. it was a calling forth of something different, a generative possibility that grew out of terror and tension. so what happened next? my students explained that they clapped because they were happy to see that someone had finally put the u.s. in its place and i suppose i did empathize with their feeling knowing how deeply the wounds of the embassy bombing two years earlier still affected them. in the ensuing discussion, it became evident that they were also under the impression that only a military installation (the pentagon) had been attacked and their tone changed dramatically when i explained that the world trade centre was also successfully targeted. we talked about how this was a place of international business, full of u.s. citizens, yes, but also ‘others’ from all over the world, including chinese and canadians. they seemed taken aback when i told them that i myself was recently in the world trade centre on a tour with a group of my canadian high school students. then we thought about the crew and passengers on the planes that were hijacked and slowly the mourning began. as an exercise in pedagogical textual mourning, i invited the students to create a persona and then write the imagined life story for someone on one of the hijacked flights. there were no rules: it could have been someone old or young, male or female, rich or poor, passenger or crew. many fictions were written: the tale of a child going to visit her sick grandmother; another about a businessman who traveled all the time for his job in order to support his family. looking back, it seems significant that no one chose to write the story of one of the hijackers and that it certainly had not occurred to me at that time to suggest that anyone take on this task. i wonder now: would anyone have accepted such a challenge? what might that story have looked like? what might we all have learned from its writing? the provocations of ‘other’ reasons admittedly, i found it hard to love my students in that moment when they seemed to applaud the deaths of over three thousand people. however, it was also an important provocation to reframe this strange pedagogical encounter in ‘other’ terms. the sources of such animosity toward the u.s., and perhaps in part all so-called western developed countries, is multiple and complex. my intention is not to oversimplify these issues in a broad brush stroke of naïve geopolitical analysis here. instead, in an attempt to understand ‘other-wise,’ i draw on the thoughts of scholars who have followed closely the complexity of these dynamics, particularly in a post-9/11, 2001 world. from a european perspective, for example, baudrillard suggests the gross wealth and conspicuous consumption of the west in comparison of the rest of the globe leads to the humiliation of ‘others’ and consequent hostility towards the west in his 2002 essay the despair of having everything. he writes that “the attacks of 11 september were a response to this animus, with one kind of humiliation begetting another” (¶14). in the united states, noam chomsky (2001) has a slightly different take. he has responded to this popular suggestion that globalization and cultural hegemony have helped create hatred towards the united states by calling it a “convenient excuse” (p.31) for many u.s. and western intellectuals. instead http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci monica waterhouse: a pedagogy of mourning transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 21 chomsky (2001) sees u.s. foreign policy and actions abroad at the heart of the “why” question, elaborating thus: what happened on september 11 has virtually nothing to do with economic globalization. … the reasons lie elsewhere. nothing can justify crimes such as those of september 11, but we can think of the united states as an “innocent victim” only if we adopt the convenient path of ignoring the record of its actions and those of its allies. (p.35) despite differing opinions of what these ‘other’ reasons actually entail, it is crucial that we attend to them if we accept judith butler’s (2004) proposition in precarious life to rethink the relationship between global geopolitical conditions and violent acts in such a way that responsibility lies at the nexus of individual agency and collectively produced conditions. such a stance does not intend to blame the victims of terrorism, but does bring into critical question the role of western societies in producing the conditions that provoke (sometimes) violent responses. earlier i described the bombing of the chinese embassy in belgrade as a “terrible tragedy”, but i am careful, taking a cue from mcniff and heimann (2003), not to use the word “tragedy” in reference to the events of september 11, 2001. while the terrorist attacks of that day might be a generally considered a tragedy in the sense of a “disastrous event” that inspires “pity and terror” (merriam-webster online dictionary, n.d.); for mcniff and heimann (2003) a tragedy rather “refers to the idea that people’s good intentions are … caught up in forces outside their own control and diverted and distorted into outcomes they never intended” (introduction, ¶4). taking up this meaning alongside a serious consideration of butler’s collectively produced geopolitical conditions of this era, the terrorist attacks can be seen as “atrocity, yes. devastation and horrendous misery, yes. tragedy, no” (mcniff & heimann, 2003, the nature of tragedy, ¶1). these are controversial stances and scholars who have advanced such positions have found, perhaps not surprisingly, that it is poorly received in the united states where binarism – you’re with us or against us – “stifles any serious public discussion of how u.s. foreign policy has helped to create a world in which such acts of terror are possible” (butler, 2004, p.3). baudrillard (n.d.) summarizes resistance to collective responsibility for the september 11th, 2001 terrorist attack thus: that the entire world without exception had dreamed of this event, that nobody could help but dream the destruction of so powerful a hegemon – this fact is unacceptable to the moral conscience of the west, … a fact that resists the emotional violence of all the rhetoric conspiring to erase it. (¶3) yet, our shared responsibility is difficult to hide from for, “in the end, it was they who did it but we who wished it”(baudrillard, n.d., ¶4). chomsky (2001) calls refusals to acknowledge our complacency in bringing about the geopolitical conditions, that set the stage for such terrorist events, “self-indulgent fantasies” (p.32) that “contribute significantly to the likelihood of further atrocities” (p.31). however, butler (2004) offers a hopeful alternative. she argues that by accepting collective responsibility for geopolitical conditions and by attending to the ways in which the world has been shaped, we will find the possibility “to form it anew, and in the direction of nonviolence” (p.17). http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci monica waterhouse: a pedagogy of mourning transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 22 this 2nd movement is about terror and terrible happenings, but it is also about tension. i want to move on and briefly say something about the tension that remains after the terror, something about exiles in mourning. but who are these exiles? what are they mourning? what have they lost? september, 2002 my friend and i are finding out the hard way that the old saying is true: you can never go home again. our return to north america, after years of working in china, has been strange for both of us. in canada, i am dealing with the reverse culture shock by taking refuge in the haven of ottawa’s chinatown, while my friend is wrestling tigers of his own in far away colorado, u.s.a. we send messages of support to each other and this week he writes, “i’m not american anymore, no matter what my passport says.” our sense of displacement and loss, a metonymic tension in-between home/not home, was perhaps, in a historical moment that marked the first anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, felt all the more keenly by my friend who returned to a u.s. very different from the one he had left seven years earlier. as ‘ex-pats’ returning home ‘post-9/11,’ we faced a kind of double estrangement with the revelation that home was no longer home – a capital h, monolithic idea (lyotard, 1993) – and perhaps it never was. this sudden awareness that home was a myth inspires a new kind of tension. such is the result when hegemonic conceptions are raised to the status of grand narration, even though their unity is “only a transcendental illusion… [and] the price of this illusion is terror” (lyotard, 1993, pp.15-16). peters (1999) has commented that “idealization [of the original home] often goes with mourning” (p.19). these statements resonate with me as i try to understand how we might be mourning a homeland lost. we have suffered the fate of the exile, but our loss is different because we were not forced out of home. in a strange reversal, the homeland we thought we lived in – secure and invulnerable – got up and left without us. thus, as ‘pseudoexiles,’ we suffer nostalgia for a home that was lost in time rather than space (peters, 1999). on september 11, 2001 home was revealed to be a fiction. grandiose fantasies must be lost and mourned. … such mourning might (or could) effect a transformation in our sense of international ties that would crucially rearticulate the possibility of democratic political culture [in the u.s.] and elsewhere. (butler, 2004, p.40) in the wake of loss, in the residual tension, generative possibilities might emerge. 3rd movement – tension/tarry december, 2005 the christmas season is in full swing and everywhere the immediate world around me is filled (in only for this moment) with the messages of peace, joy, and love. i wanted to join this hopeful herald. i wanted to say something about a peaceful future, by reflecting on tensions of the past. but at this same http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci monica waterhouse: a pedagogy of mourning transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 23 moment, other messages swirl around me. as my computer boots up this morning, breaking news arrives instantly by the world wide web reporting horrible acts of violence only minutes old: a suicide bomber on a bus kills thirty; elsewhere the lives of four kidnapped peacemakers hang in the balance as the deadline for their execution ticks by. my efforts to push such events from my mind and get caught up in the fervor of festive concerts, parties, card-sending and gift-shopping seem doomed to fail. so this holiday season, instead of yuletide rush, rush, rush, i propose something different. i propose to tarry, to tarry with/in tension… writing this text was a welcoming of aoki’s (2005d) challenge to “tarry with the negative,” not in zizek’s sense of the absence of a master signifier, but in the absence, or rather in the absent presence of names and in mourning for (un)nameables. that i choose to spend time in these difficult spaces and reflect on what they might mean should not be construed as a kind of nihilistic melancholy. instead i come to these reflections with an aokian understanding that such a space is “a site of original difficulty, of ambiguity, ambivalence and uncertainty, but simultaneously, a site of generative possibilities and hope – a site challenging us to live well” (aoki, 2005c, p.429), a site “where newness can flow” (aoki, 2005a, p.319). in the following section, i find myself tarrying with/in such tension-filled spaces as i embrace mcniff’s (2005) provocation to value reflective work as a way to meaningfully encounter the ‘other’. tarrying with/in tension i am haunted by an image; a close-up, freeze-frame. these are the eyes of a suicide bomber moments before he will attempt to change his world in the only way he believes he might; ready to take his only way out of a life he cannot bear. peace, finally, imminent in his mind. the beauty of these dark eyes is interrupted by a strange lifelessness. eyes dead, drowned in too many tears, too much mourning. eyes in which there is nothing but empty resignation. this is the final scene of paradise now, a film that traces the last forty-eight hours in the lives of two young palestinian men, saïd and khaled, childhood friends, who have been recruited for a suicide bombing mission in tel-aviv. i watch this movie from a comfortable theatre in ottawa, a place that is an unfathomable distance from the occupied territories. this distance is a reflection of life-worlds that are also light-years apart. but is this an (un)bridgeable distance? how might this film act as a bridge, not as a place for crossing over, but as a space for tarrying (aoki, 2005a); a space for encountering an ‘other’; a “contact zone” (pratt, 1992) where east and west might come together? reflecting on another contact zone, the space of international arrivals in airports, braidotti (1994) observes how those who arrive on the doorsteps of the socalled developed world without any written documentation of their official ‘existence’ (e.g. a birth certificate, identification) become non-people. relegated to the crowded margins, where “nonbelonging can be hell” (braidotti, 1994, p.20), they wait to be scrutinized, recognized, and brought to life on paper by an immigration official’s rubber stamp. similarly, paradise now also depicts the ways the lives of palestinians are textually acknowledged through official work permits and identification in the http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci monica waterhouse: a pedagogy of mourning transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 24 contact zones of checkpoints between israel and the occupied territories. their lives are conjured into being through this inscription. death is likewise made ‘real’ in writing. this is the thought that comes to my mind as i link this idea of life becoming on paper with the textual recognition of deaths. judith butler (2004) has also noted the textuality of death in precarious life: “if there were to be an obituary, there would have had to have been a life, a life worth noting, a life worth valuing and preserving, a life that qualifies for recognition” (p.34). the politics of the textual avowal of deaths are poignantly demonstrated by butler (2004) in this anecdote: a palestinian citizen of the united states recently submitted to the san francisco chronicle obituaries for two palestinian families who had been killed by israeli troops, only to be told that the obituaries could not be accepted without proof of death. the staff of the chronicle said that statements “in memoriam” could, however, be accepted, and so the obituaries were rewritten and resubmitted in the form of memorials. these memorials were then rejected, with the explanation that the newspaper did not wish to offend anyone. (p.35) this story, echoing nato’s (un)naming of the journalists killed in the chinese embassy bombing in belgrade discussed earlier, tells of the double disavowal of certain lives/deaths that cannot count, that cannot be named, and that cannot be publicly, textually mourned. now i am thinking again of the suicide bomber in the narration at the outset of this 3rd movement. i am trying to connect with him on some level by imagining him like the character saïd in paradise now. i want him to have a name. but suicide bombers must remain faceless, nameless, lifeless, and inhuman. they are not nameable and are certainly not mournable. “some lives are grievable, and others are not” (butler, 2004, p.xiv). butler (2004) challenges us to consider “who is normatively human: what counts as a livable life and a grievable death?” (p.xv). it seems that, at this historical moment, the life/death of the suicide bomber cannot be publicly mourned; an (un)speakable death for an (un)speakable life that always offends. yet paradise now has provoked in me a strange compulsion to know the names of the suicide bombers i hear about nearly weekly in the news. i went looking for names and deaths that were written, textually recognized, and so made ‘real’. what i found was an online article in the german magazine spiegel online by yassin musharbash (2005) entitled terrorism in the internet: the cyber-cemetery of the mujahedeen. his introduction reads: they were once medical students, fathers or businessmen who took their own lives -as suicide bombers in iraq. their obituaries, which can be read on the internet, are documents of men who were blinded by their deadly version of faith. (¶1) musharbash goes on to offer excerpts from the obituaries of these would-be “martyrs” not as examples of public grieving in text, but rather as examples of propagandizing “hero worship.” he condemns these texts that serve “the goal of aggrandizing the http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci monica waterhouse: a pedagogy of mourning transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 25 terrorists’ deeds and encouraging others to follow in their footsteps” (goal: hero worship, ¶4). despite this denouncing of these obituaries, i still find myself cautious about discussing them here. perhaps this hesitancy is born of “the cultural barriers against which we struggle when we try to find out about the losses that we are asked not to mourn, when we attempt to name, and so to bring under the rubric of the ‘human,’ [the ungrievable]” (butler, 2004, p.46). can we grieve the nameless suicide bomber? can we mourn for an ‘ungrievable’? is such grieving significant? how might it be related to our capacity to connect with the ‘other’? to see the ‘other’ in ourselves? in response to the tensions provoked by such questions, i offer this fictive counter-text: obituary for a suicide bomber: december 8, 2005 mr. unknown (the world will not know his name. he knows this. he and his people are forgotten. he knows this too.) mr. unknown, aged 23, died in a fiery bus in a foreign land, believing himself a martyr. he will be remembered by his friends and family as a loving father and husband; a skilled electrician who dreamed of getting a work permit so that he might support his family. he is survived by his wife (who continues to live in poverty), two children (who do not have the privilege of regularly attending school), and his mother (who has lost a total of three sons now to the conflict). he is not survived by his father who was tortured and then executed as a collaborator, and the 30 (also nameless) victims that he murdered in that same fiery bus. memorial services for mr. unknown will not be held, as his friends and family are now in hiding for their own safety. a public mourning being impossible, mr. unknown will be mourned in private. through this textual mourning, i hope to heed butler’s (2004) imperative to bring to light the conditions that set the stage for such atrocities and to reflect on my own complicity in the shaping of them. writing becomes a pedagogical provocation; an attempt to empathize; a way to seek a connection across strangeness, albeit in the most partial way, with the (un)nameable ‘other’. refrain – tarrying as pedagogy refrain – a curious signifier whose roots in old french suggest the paradoxical tension within it between “refrain (n.)” as musical repeat, and “refraigner (v.)” meaning to “restrain, repress” (online etymology dictionary, n.d.). its multiple significations create the tension of a repetitious avoidance, but an avoidance of what? schools are often places of refrain as repetition (kumashiro, 2002): “repeat after me,” invites the teacher, repeat the timetables, repeat the story, repeat the refrain of the status quo. the indoctrination that ensures the repetition of normalized hegemonic discourses also demands refrain as restraint and repression. please refrain from speaking, from running, from questioning, from thinking. please avoid these many dangerous, vital things. this is education as refrain. however, refrain can also suggest “something that causes a song to ‘break off’ and then resume” (online etymology dictionary, n.d.). this is a hopeful reformulation of pedagogy and/as refrain. it is not a repetition, but instead a break and resumption. in this retexturing of refrain there is the possibility of a radical break and the potential that something transformative might happen in the ensuing iterations. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci monica waterhouse: a pedagogy of mourning transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 26 tarrying with/in mourning now i am looping back to think again of other avoidances: refrains from/of naming and mourning. butler (2004) recalls such a refrain from mourning: “president bush announced on september 21 that we have finished grieving and that now it is time for resolute action to take the place of grief” (p.29). she reminds us however, that such a move to quick resolution only serves to “reinvigorate a fantasy that the world formerly was orderly” (p.30). instead she invites another kind of refrain, a radical break from the repetitious cycle of violence begetting violence. instead of a rejection of grief and mourning, she proposes something otherwise by asking, “is there something to be gained from grieving, from tarrying [italics added] with grief, from remaining exposed to its unbearability and not endeavoring to seek a resolution of grief through violence?” (p.30). my sense is that the answer is a resounding ‘yes!’. i feel i have gained something (perhaps lost something) and provoked something to happen within myself by tarrying with/in mourning during the process of writing this text. this experience attests to derrida’s (2001) observation that, “one cannot hold a discourse on the ‘work of mourning’ without taking part in it” (p.143). so i believe butler (2004) has something when she suggests that “perhaps mourning has to do with agreeing to undergo a transformation (perhaps one should say submitting to a transformation) the full result of which one cannot know in advance” (p.21). i want to turn my attention to the implications of this narrative journey for the work of learning to “live together in a way that will ensure that life can go on” (smith, 1999, p.132). in other words, what might be the pedagogical possibilities of tarrying with/in mourning for the work of educating for peace? one of the key elements of an approach to peace education is to develop a sense of empathy that somehow fosters connections with the ‘other.’ broadly conceived, this empathy with the ‘other’ can include connections with another group of people, with a specific individual, or with all life forms and inanimate elements of our shared biosphere (as in the ecological strand of peace education). the work of scholars who take up feminist epistemologies to attempt to theorize this connection with the ‘other’ may offer a powerful way for peace educators to rethink the pedagogical work they do. heidi ross (2003), for example, draws on “relational theorizing” to understand human connection as “being in a relationship through inclusive, multilateral, and generative approaches to power and respect” (p.34). her theoretical work also shares butler’s (2004) concern for the notion of shared vulnerability. however, in butler’s theorizing, “a ‘common’ corporeal vulnerability” (p.42) has taken on the shape of an embodied relationality that highlights the public, social, and political nature of bodies thus forcing us to ask ourselves: “who ‘am’ i, without you?” (p.22). a feminist stance also informs the theoretical and pedagogical writing of megan boler (1999) who brings to the fore the political and public aspects of emotions in education. these scholars’ theorizing around connection and emotions help make intelligible what might happen through tarrying with/in mourning. i recall the way in which the collective, public mourning of the journalists killed in the chinese embassy bombing (manifested as a chalkboard display) was an important conduit through which i was able to feel a connection with my chinese students. in a similar way, our collective mourning for the passengers of the hijacked flights of september 11, 2001 (actualized in the imagined life-stories students wrote) had a doubled connectivity, drawing my chinese students and i closer together as well as provoking a reimagining http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci monica waterhouse: a pedagogy of mourning transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 27 of our relation to the u.s. ‘other’. these textual mournings became ways for us to access our underlying interconnectedness and to foster feelings of empathy. moreover, i suggest the potential for this kind of connection may be less possible when mourning is viewed as something to be gotten over quickly, worked through, or avoided completely. when the newspaper i mentioned earlier refused to publish the memorials for the two families killed in the palestinian-israeli conflict on the grounds that it might offend, they were precluding the possibility that it might also connect people in important ways. the act of collective, public mourning has multiple, unpredictable possibilities. we can also touch this abstract connection with ‘others’ by revisiting our own individual losses; returning again to grief by tarrying with/in that mourning. “for all of us have some notion of what it is to have lost somebody. loss has made a tenuous ‘we’ of us all” (butler, 2004, p.20). to demonstrate that “suffering as grieving is an experience common to us all, one that is inevitable” (aoki, 2005d, p.409), aoki (2005d) recounts the ch’an buddhism story of kisagotami. in short, this is a tale about a woman who loses her mind after the death of her child, but who is returned to her senses through a task asked of her by the buddha: to bring seeds from a house that had never known death. of course, she finds this impossible because every home had experienced a loss and listening to these stories – narrative grievings for people with “names [italics added] and birth dates, distinctive traits and dreams” (hershock, 1994, p.690) – returns kisagotami’s sanity. here again is an example not only of the transformative power of shared grieving, but also of the importance of naming names and knowing the life-stories of those who have died, whether they are victims or even, as i have proposed, the perpetrators of violence. i would like to take a doubled cue, from leonard cohen via ted aoki (2005b), to crack the open mourning to “let the light in”. this metonymic move cracks mour/ning to think about mourning-as-shared/mourning-as-difference. so far, i have tried to show the value of mourning-as-shared as a way of allowing people to find a connection with, and a way to empathize with ‘others’ as a possible in-road towards peace. however, in (re)presenting hershock’s doubled interpretation of kisagotami’s story, aoki (2005d) rejects a modernist western logic that attempts to essentialize and universalize the specificities of experiences of suffering. this reflects mourning-as-difference. while mourning-as-shared is a suggestion of the ubiquitousness of grieving, mourning-as-difference recognizes that the shape of this experience is multiple and unique. derrida (2001) has also noted the universality and singularity of mourning writing of “the emotion of mourning that we all know and recognize, even if it hits us each time in a new and singular way” (p.158). the form each mourning will take is unique and also unpredictable: a gorily graphic chalkboard display, the nostalgia of the pseudo-exile, an obituary, tears, applause, silence. as these narratives of mourning-as-difference intertwine, mourning-as-shared becomes the twine that might tie us together. coda – pedagogical provocations in the future imminent… there are exciting times now, ahead. it may appear odd to bring together mourning and excitement in the same text, but it is less so if these are seen as a provocation; a generative movement of something that is always already happening. jardine (2000) reminds us that new life explodes into being as a “provocative, a prophetic ‘calling http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci monica waterhouse: a pedagogy of mourning transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 28 forth,’ a voice crying out from the midst of things” (p.120). such voices are bursting forth from within the discipline of peace education to invite a reimagining of the work of pedagogies for peace. they are calling out for “something totally other … as a demand for responsibility, seriousness, and love” (gur-ze’ev, 2001, p.336); challenging us to think other-wise and differently (mcniff, 2005). they are asking for a pedagogical refrain: a breaking off and a transformation in the resumption. other voices from diverse emergent epistemologies are also provoking something different. postmodern moves are disrupting the taken-for-granted certainties that characterize a modernist worldview (and i see this as a productive thing). using a deleuzean approach may (2005) urges us to consider complex answers to the apparently simple question: “how might one live?”, or in terms of educating for peace we might ask “how might we live together?” postcolonial perspectives are also offering ideas – such as kanu’s (2003) “postcolonial imagination” and asher’s (2002) “hybrid consciousness” – in their efforts to bring people together in generative “hybrid third spaces” that encourage thinking otherwise and move us towards more responsible, ethical forms of pedagogical work. from a feminist stance, boler (1999) outlines a “pedagogy of discomfort” that draws “the emotional dimensions of our cognitive and moral perception” (p.xxiv) back into education in ways that push for a critical and affective examination of our relationship with ‘others’. elsewhere, complexity and chaos theories are being used to conceptualize the underlying “connectivity and potentiality” of nonlinear, open curricular systems, and to help bring us to terms with the multiplicity and “unpredictability” of live(d) curriculum (smitherman, 2005, p.168). others invoke quantum theory, like macpherson (2005) who ponders our underlying interconnectedness using the concept of “entanglement” to suggest a collapse of space-time that allows a “correspondence” when “two human beings meet, affect one another, and part again” (p.44). everywhere voices are calling out, provoking diverse, strange, and productive ways of thinking about pedagogical work and human connectivity. but all of this comes with a caveat to educators. boler’s (1999) choice of the phrase ‘pedagogy of discomfort’ is apt. none of this is likely to be easy; the provocative rarely is. then what are the risks of pedagogical violence that lie in tarrying with-in mourning? should the ethical educator avoid moving into these difficult spaces with students, spaces of mourning and emotional upset? in response i offer words from kumashiro (2002): not surprisingly, some educators choose not to teach such information or to lead students to uncomfortable places. … felman (1995) suggests that learning through crisis is not only ethical, but also necessary when working against oppression. what is unethical, she suggests, is leaving students in such harmful repetition. entering crisis, then, is a required and desired part of learning in anti-oppressive ways. (learning against repetition, ¶12) after making an argument that emotional crisis is needed to break away from repetitive cycles of oppressive education and open the way for other possibilities, kumashiro goes on to articulate the ambivalence and ambiguity that imbue such difficult pedagogical spaces. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci monica waterhouse: a pedagogy of mourning transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 29 of course, not all students will respond to a lesson by entering some form of crisis, nor will all students benefit from a crisis. once in a crisis, a student can go in many directions, some that may lead to anti-oppressive change, others that may lead to more entrenched resistance. (learning against repetition, ¶13) provocations, then, are characterized by passion and conflict, ambivalence and ambiguity, “excitements and uncertainties” (robertson, 2006, p.174). the outcomes of strange thinking and provocative pedagogies cannot be known a priori because, if we follow deleuze, thinking “is an event that happens to us” (colebrook, 2002, p.3) and is beyond our control. similarly, the work of mourning and its potential transformations “cannot be charted or planned” (butler, 2004, p.21). each mourning is singular and unique (derrida, 2001). this ambiguity is part of what makes the prospects of peace education through tarrying with/in mourning so exciting – rife with possibility – yet unnerving in uncertainty. despite, or rather because of, these ambiguities and ambivalences, i believe there is a provocation to hope in pedagogies of peace that tarry with/in tragedy, terror, and tension; in the promise of transformations through tarrying with/in mourning. i exit now, leaving these ideas and reflective stories ‘out-there’ in the process of their inscription. perhaps they will be caught up and taken elsewhere, elsewhen. perhaps they will make something happen. this is an invitation, a provocation, ‘an end’ and a beginning. acknowledgements i wish to gratefully acknowledge the helpful comments offered by the members of the society, culture, and literacies seminar group (faculty of education, university of ottawa) on an earlier draft of this paper. in particular i am indebted to dr. pat palulis for her gentle, yet firm, nudging that encouraged me to share this text. thanks go as well to the two reviewers whose close readings and compassionate criticisms greatly enriched the text. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci monica waterhouse: a pedagogy of mourning transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 30 references aoki, t. 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(2003). rethinking human vulnerability, security, and connection through relational theorizing. in w. nelles (ed.), comparative education, terrorism, and human security (pp.33-46). new york: palgrave macmillan. http://www.cnn.com/world/europe/9905/12/kosovo.china.02 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci http://www.jeanmcniff.com/writings.html http://www.jeanmcniff.com/writings.html http://www.m-w.com http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,382097,00.html http://www.nato.int/docu/pr/1999/p99-076e.htm http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=refrain&searchmode=none monica waterhouse: a pedagogy of mourning transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (2) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 32 smith, d.g. (1999). pedagon: interdisciplinary essays in the human sciences, pedagogy and culture. new york: peter lang. smitherman, s. (2005). chaos and complexity theories: wholes and holes in curriculum. in w. e., doll, jr., m. j. fleener, d. trueit, & j. st.julien (eds.), chaos, complexity, curriculum, and culture: a conversation (pp. 153-180). new york: peter lang. author monica waterhouse is an esl instructor and part-time professor in the faculty of education at the university of ottawa. she is currently conducting doctoral research at the intersections of multiple literacies, peace education, and critical pedagogies within language instruction contexts. email: mwate037@uottawa.ca mailto:mwate037@uottawa.ca http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci to cite this article please include all of the following details: nicholas ng-a-fook (2009). toward understanding a curriculum of being inhabited by the language of the other. transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> 3 the southern wetlands await the louisiana migratory birds to fall from their skies. the canadian geese’s annual flypatterned return from a summer of birthing life, reminds me of a departure, a birthing of otherness, migrancy of a name, its title and genealogical trace of migration from china to guyana, south america to britain, and glasgow to kapuskasing, a small rural logging town in northern ontario. toward understanding a curriculum of being inhabited by the language of the other nicholas ng-a-fook university of ottawa i feel lost outside the french language. the other languages which, more or less clumsily, i read, decode, or sometimes speak, are languages i shall never inhabit. … but the “untranslatable” remains— should remain, as my law tells me—the poetic economy of the idiom… (derrida, 1996/1998, p. 56). in the south, the suspense of an autumn harvest shortens, as the southeastern sugarcane fields reach up towards the bluish sky. the cypress and live oak trees, leaning from the levees, shed this season’s greenery into the depths of the louisiana bayous murky meanderings. a grayness of spanish moss still dangles from the nakedness. i fall behind, and delay any headings, towards a final arrival at the academic shores of the louisiana state university instituted general examinations, what derrida (1980/1983) calls elsewhere a time of a thesis: punctuations. i have difficulty finding, “…the potential values that sleep or play at the bottom…” of writing, on writing, about derrida’s (1990/2002) philosophies, autobiography as currere1, the relationships among self, other, institutions, and their housed systems of universal knowledge (p. 4). often at the end of the night, after trying to negotiate and translate thoughts on derrida’s various concepts (deconstruction, idiom, aporia, genealogy, trace, difference, différance, language, translation, subject, etc.) into spoken and written words, i close his books which clutter the kitchen table in sweet submission, unable to surrender to the language of deconstruction, his deconstruction of language. dawn arrives before me, and as the sun surfaces at the horizon of louisiana’s wetlands, i struggle to translate their alien landscape. my thoughts continue to tremble with fear in the face of examining the untranslatable poetics ng-a-fook: toward understanding a curriculum transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 4 of derrida’s writing, his birthing of idiomatic conceptions, and their respective excesses of otherness. i long for the arrival of dusk, for the specters of derrida to whisper a gift of understanding, a translation of his conceptual riddles, the secrets of his aporias, and inscribe this time of thinking into the marks of a written language, always situated, limited, “…on the verge of untranslatability” (p. 41). under the shadows of the horizon, the following creative energy, electricity, teleports life, its materiality into re-marks, repetitions, and iterations from derrida’s writings onto the landscape of this textual body. “dusk is,” kohák (1984) reminds us, “the time of philosophy” (p. 32). in this nighttime of writing, its unconscious sleepwalking, its shadows, i am concerned most of all with where to begin a (philosophical, curricular) “complicated conversation,” from where to affirm our departure (pinar, 2004). this moment of writing then, is a response to questions raised in previous texts, in other academic landscapes, now mapped within the temporal limits of this autobiographical writing, as i “search for a method” of “understanding” derrida’s curriculum on inhabiting and being inhabited by the language of the other (see pinar, 1975/2000; pinar & reynolds, w., & slattery, p., and taubman, p. 1995). it is the end of august and under its starlit nights, off the shores of language, i continue to sleep and play on the horizon of derrida’s writing. this paper traces, often drawing on autobiographical examples, the temporal migrations of educational experiences in the language of the other. as a documented canadian and british citizen, an immigrant with an ex-appropriated proper name traced to guyana’s indentured chinese cane reapers, and thus, an imperial and postcolonial subject with certain identity disorders here in america, canada, and elsewhere, how is a migratory subject subjected to the language of the other? more specifically, how might one learn, via currere, from a migrant subject’s educational experiences of appropriation and alienation in the language of the other? in order to do so, in the first section i examine derrida’s concept of “deconstruction” and its relationships to deconstructing “the subject” of colonialism, language, and its translations.2 in the second section i problematize the impossible colonial politics of properly appropriating the language of the other. in the last section, i introduce a curriculum of hospitality towards the language of the other which moves beyond alienation and appropriation. now, let us open this paper with a letter. addressing a letter on the subject of deconstruction …i would say that the difficulty of defining and therefore also of translating the word “deconstruction” stems from the fact that all the predicates, all the defining concepts, all the lexical significations, and even syntactic articulations, which seem at one moment to lend themselves to this definition or to that translation, are also ng-a-fook: toward understanding a curriculum transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 5 a gift of death instituting slavery created a historical space for chinese indentured laborers, known as cane reapers, to birth their existence without origin into the margins of guyana’s national narrative. britain abolished the slavery of african subjects in 1834. however the west indies plantation owners’ demands for cheap labor did not diminish. chinese subjects subjected to persecution, famine, or wanting to escape a feudal system, in search of “common” wealth, migrated to british guiana (see sue-a-quan, 1999). china prohibited such emigration, fearing the possible political revolution caused by those who returned from “foreign” places. a subject, not yet hyphenated, traveled the tumultuous seas, without the possibility of return, in order to become an indentured laborer cutting cane along the tributaries of the demerara river. no longer with rights as a chinese subject, or protected by rights as a british subject, fook ng, my great, great, grandfather, was now a subject subjected to the power of colonial rule. deconstructed or deconstructible, directly or otherwise, etc. (derrida, 1983a/1991, p. 274). the silence of that hyphen does not pacify or appease anything, not a single torment, not a single torture. it will never silence their memory (derrida, 1996/1998, p. 11). it is before the thaw of daybreak. yesterday’s reading, thinking, and writing experiences a certain temporal death. however, the temporality of a yesterday— the writing and understanding of derrida’s concept of “deconstruction,” its immediacy—is suspended between the lines of these pages, dawn and dusk, life and death. my thoughts continue to inscribe their particular traces on these pages with a universal energy. today, this paper opens with an addressing, a re-turning, to the subject of deconstruction in a letter to a japanese friend.3 derrida (1983a/1991) cautions professor izutsu, it goes without saying that if all the significations [on deconstruction] enumerated by the littré interested me because of their affinity with what i “meant” [“voulais-dire”], they concerned, metaphorically, so to say, only models or regions of meaning and not the totality of what deconstruction aspires to at its most ambitious (p. 271). these models themselves, derrida (1983a/1991) maintains, must be submitted to “deconstructive questioning” (p. 271). derrida (1992a/2001) reminds us, asks us, demands of us in the name of responsibility for the other, to free “deconstruction,” the “subject,” “its human rights,” from the “word,” and its assumed logocentric or phonocentric idiomatic forms. deconstructive work involves tracing genealogies across academic borderlands, and uncovering the historical layers from which such concepts and their translations emerge, and thus are promised, and made ng-a-fook: toward understanding a curriculum transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 6 some time after the 1850s, the first ships from china made the arduous journey to the land of many rivers for which the local amerindians named guiana. on fook ng’s arrival at the gates of the colonial port, a british magistrate translated and reinscribed this foreign subject’s first and last names with the unfamiliar anglicized marks of john and cyril respectively. his son later re-appropriated his chinese name. hyphenating his father’s former chinese title, the family surname became cyril ng-a-fook. the descendents of john cyril ng-afook jr. learned how to embrace the inscription and father the language of this newly named title. although his title was translated, the subject of fook ng’s history continues to survive and surf the postcolonial hyphens between self, other, language, and culture. possible through language. in this movement of deconstructing “the subject,”— which derrida (1992a/2001) doubts is yet possible—the subject of deconstruction “is thus taking into account all the determinations and trying…to improve the concept of the human subject” (derrida, 1992a/2001, p. 179). the concept of “the subject,” like those of “deconstruction,” “colonization,” and their translations, can be traced, for example, through the greek, latin, german, french, and english languages. derrida (1992a/2001) maintains that we must first translate the words philosophy, deconstruction, or subject for example, “…into a different idiom, and finally in all the possible idioms,” in order to make, the “…word subject understandable in other cultures” (p. 178). therefore to approximate an understanding of deconstruction, or to deconstruct the subject of and subject within autobiography, one is faced first with the problem of translation. the “first thing you have to do is a universal translation” of what “the subject” is and is not (derrida, 1992a/2001, p. 178). deconstruction of the word “subject” is then first for derrida (1992a/2001), among other things, “the genealogical analysis of the trajectory through which the concept has been built, used, legitimized, and so on” (p. 177-178). and to deconstruct the subject is not, derrida (1983a/1991) makes it clear, to destroy, dissolve, or cancel the legitimacy of what you are deconstructing. furthermore, “the subject” of which derrida (1992a/2001) speaks, is not used the same way in the anglo-american tradition for example, as it is in continental philosophy. 4 beyond a dogmatic critique of pure reason, derrida (1990/2002, 1991a/1992, 1992a/2001) asks us to recall, with care and rigor, our double duty,5 our inheritance of concepts, and the language which conceives the subject of deconstruction, in order to reaffirm the limitless possibilities illuminated by the philosophical heritage of husserl, heidegger, kant, descartes, aristotle, and so on. the “…subject was first,” derrida (1992a/2001) explains, “in the aristotelian tradition the hypocheimenon, something which is underneath, identical to itself, and different from its different properties, qualities, attributes; it is the center of an identity” (p. 178).6 the “speaking subject” performs certain representations of identities—cultural and national— through language, his or her mother tongue (see derrida, 1967/1973, 1996/1998). butler (1990/1999) stresses, that “the domains of political and linguistic ‘representation’ set out in advance the criterion by which subjects themselves are ng-a-fook: toward understanding a curriculum transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 7 formed, with the result that representation is extended only to what can be acknowledged as a subject” (p. 4). how might one then reaffirm the structure of “the subject,” within autobiography for example, while questioning the limits of its canonized representations (e.g., a white european male bourgeoisie)? in the name of god, king, queen, country, state, or the metropolis, institutions such as the university guard and discipline the legitimacy of who is (which subjects are) entitled access to the universal systems of euro-, ameri, and/or can-centric knowledge. and, as butler (1990/1999) stresses, such universal systems work in turn to shape “the subject.” the american state, albeit not globally alone, continues to invest in a cultural, linguistic and economic capital which attempts to reproduce a common subject, with a common curriculum, and thus disseminates its empire through ideological apparatuses—juridical, educational, medical, religious, media, etc.— which makes the subject of deconstruction, and the deconstruction of “the subject” all the more pressing today. in “privilege,” derrida (1990/2002) continues to work, without settling for a resolution, through the oppositions, paradoxes, and aporias of “what is,” and “what is not” philosophy. who has the “rights” to such philosophical institutions? in following such lines of questioning, what are and what are not, the “rights” of a migrant subject? as a migrant, an indentured laborer, a postcolonial subject, what were john cyril ng-a-fook’s rights of access to the institutions which house a knowledge of citizenship, its language, and in turn his en-title-ment to, the right to name and to naming his rights? derrida (1990/2002) makes it clear that …the title given (or refused) someone always supposes, and this is a circle, the title of a work, that is, an institution, which alone is entitled to give (or refuse) it. only an institution (the title of the body entitled to confer titles) can give someone his or her title (p. 4). but who then, entitles an (colonizing) institution? such institutional entitlement is presupposed, derrida (1990/2002) explains, for institutions (philosophical, juridical, medical, educational, etc.) are already entitled to give someone his or her title. institutions entitle themselves through an exemplary system, a system of circular examples, (which, through a tradition of western logocentrism proves, offers proofs of its logic) originated, established, and privileged by an instituted foundation of what is and what is not. deconstruction, therefore, is a “questioning in the sense of search, exploration, reflectivity, rejection of all assumptions, not as an act of demolition, but as striving for awareness” of alterity, heading towards the possibility of otherness which resides at the marginal limits of such institutions (egéa-kuehne, 1995, p. 299). derrida (1992a/2001) suggests that if you call deconstruction “…an ethics of affirmation, it implies that you are attentive to otherness, to the alterity of the other, to something new and other” (p. 180). how does “the ng-a-fook: toward understanding a curriculum transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 8 through the process of translating derrida’s interview, i stumble across words for which translation and their immediate understanding are, deferred, not ready-athand. are they ever? but suspended, i am, in the cultural web of the french language. the following sentence, “le temps du sursis se rétrécit de façon accélérée,” eludes my present comprehension. the words “sursis” and “rétrécit” are alien, and alienate, my ephemeral moment of understanding. my memories of a language, the only language we had in the french catholic school system i attended, a language that was never mine, eludes a proper appropriation. although i find some reprieve keeping a french-english dictionary close at hand, i continue to struggle, while trying to negotiate the violence of universal translation, of excluding and reducing all possible meanings of the other, to a proper english idiom. i settle with the following phrase, “the time, suspended in reprieve, shrinks ever faster.” at the end of this process of translating french writing into language, its inscriptions into thoughts, thoughts back into english language, and its inscriptions into writing, i learn that derrida’s time suspended between life and death shrinks ever faster. subject” of deconstruction negotiate his or her (human) rights to name, of naming, his or her rights of otherness, his or her citizenship in the language of a colonizing other? how do the institutions of schooling and their languages work in the configurations of such entitlements? what knowledges are privileged and presupposed in (colonizing) educational institutions? writing towards the impossible terrain of “properly” understanding the answers to such questions is where this paper heads next. returning to the shores of a french language: colonial politics of language every culture institutes itself through the unilateral imposition of some “politics” of language (derrida, 1996/1998, p. 39). it is another day after yesterday in august. in the south, the humid invisibility, damp and heavy, floats over the landscape’s eroding skin. birds of flight continue their migration to the refuges of louisiana’s vanishing wetlands. once again, nighttime overshadows a place of thinking, reading, and writing. i entangle myself in le monde with the textual body of derrida’s interview.7 alien to the climate of this landscape, i sense the estrangement of invisibility coming from beneath the cracks of my apartment door. i struggle to translate, always with a certain amount of violence and death towards the language of the other. how might i then, whisper and breathe life into the words of derrida? under the alienating light of darkness and solitude, its shadows, i learn that derrida’s breathing and his suspension between life and death is shrinking, shortening, slowly ceasing. he is suffering, internally, with pancreatic cancer. just before daybreak, before the songs of mourning doves awake me, i am reminded of the parallels between him and my father’s colonial births, their shared encounters with ng-a-fook: toward understanding a curriculum transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 9 terminal illnesses, exclusions, separations, and en-titled ties to national citizenships and their alienating institutions. to be alien, an alien worker, is to live without title, without the human rights afforded under the language of entitle-ment.8 alienation is a certain death of the subject, and yet one’s own death is an alien moment in autobiographical writing. can derrida and my father write a currere of death, when death precedes such writing? one remains “…un-educateable with regards to the knowledge of knowing how to die,” derrida (2004) reminds us. yet, can one write about a certain death of yesterday, of who “i” was yesterday? there is also death between the hyphenated spaces of alienation and appropriation, a violence, a loss of meaning, involved in first, and second, and third, and fourth, …and…and…and, translations of a french language that was never mine, or an english language that never was fook ng’s. but, there is also a birthing of a language and its otherness in such—hyphenated—“third space” (wang, 2004). and therefore, how does one learn-to-live within the aporias—a language of undecidability—of such hyphenated third space? in response to this question, derrida (1996/1998) shares the following: 1. we only ever speak one language—or rather one idiom only. 2. we never speak only one language—or rather there is no pure idiom (p. 8). in monolingualism of the other, derrida works to situate our lived experiences in, and with, a language which moves beyond the hyphenated spaces of appropriation and alienation. derrida migrated from algeria to study in paris. but even before leaving the shores of africa in 1949, derrida spoke in the language of a country where he had never been himself. “my language, the only one i hear myself speak and agree to speak,” derrida (1996/1998) tells us, “is the language of the other” (p. 25). elsewhere derrida (1997/2001) explains, french is the only mother tongue i have, but while still a child i had a vague sensation that this language was not really my own. … so i had the feeling that this language, which was the only one i had, came from somewhere else (p. 38). his family migrated to algeria from spain before the french colonization. the crémieux decree in 1870 granted french citizenship to the jews of algeria. less than a century later in october of 1940, during wwii and the german persecution of jews, henri philippe pétain’s administration abolished the crémieux decree.9 ng-a-fook: toward understanding a curriculum transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 10 along with others, i lost and then gained back french citizenship. i lost it for years without having another. you see, not a single one. i did not ask for anything. i hardly knew, at the time, that it had been taken away from me, not, at any rate, in the legal and objective form of knowledge in which i am explaining it here (for, alas, i got to know it in another way). and then, one day, one “fine day,” without, once again, my asking for anything, and still too young to know it in a properly political way, i found the aforementioned citizenship again. the state, to which i never spoke, had given it back to me. … that was, i think, in 1943; i had still never gone “to france”; i had never been there. (derrida, 1996/1998, p. 15-16) two years later derrida was expelled from elementary school. “here we have a 12-year old boy,” derrida (1997/2001) writes, “who, without anyone explaining to him what anti-semitism is, or what is happening politically, is kicked out of school” (p. 37-38). yet, derrida (1996/1998) stresses, the denial of french citizenship did not prevent an unprecedented assimilation of the state official and institutionally privileged language. derrida (1997/2001) continues, “a crack is opened in the relative security of the school, the place where culture is offered to him, where languages are taught—especially the dominant models of the french language” (p. 38). as a result of his expulsion, derrida’s parents enrolled him in a jewish school. but he still experienced anti-semitism outside the school, in the streets, and among his circle of peers. the lived experience of not belonging, its alienation, affected his relationship with the jewish community. derrida’s (1997/ 2001) childhood trauma caused him to cultivate “a sort of not-belonging to french culture and to france in general, but also, in some way, to reject” his belonging to judaism (p. 39). in reading derrida’s account of exclusions due to his paternal and genealogical ties to judaism, cultural jewishness, i try to imagine how exclusion emerged/emerges under the proper surname of ng-a-fook and its traces of chinese-ness, or in turn, how it erases gaelic-ness under the maiden name gray.10 father gained and lost his british citizenship in the land of many rivers. when guyana was granted liberation in 1966, many former colonial subjects, who where not born on the queen’s crown land, now occupied a post-colonial11 status of not belonging, and lost their inalienable rights granted under the title of british citizenship and its entitlements: “citizenship, does not define a cultural, linguistic, or, in general, historical participation” (derrida, 1996/1998, p. 15). even during the global decolonization of the 1950s and 1960s, institutions in france and britain continued to define their national identities by the groups they did not— chinese, irish, jewish, black, indian, migrants—belong to. in “privilege,” derrida (1990/2002) writes, the surface of its [the institutions’] archive is then marked by what it keeps outside, expels, or does not tolerate. it takes the inverted shape of that which is rejected. it lets itself be delineated by the very thing ng-a-fook: toward understanding a curriculum transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 11 that threatens it or that it feels to be a threat. in order to identify itself, to be what it is, to delimit itself and recognize itself in its own name, it must espouse the very outlines of its adversary, if i can put it thus (p. 5). during different historical eras the french and british institutional apparatuses have had to react and redefine their cultural identities and respective national narratives in the “face” of a certain “masked” otherness, by declaring with a politics of language what they were not (fanon, 1967/1991). this universal system of exclusionary logic, of defining philosophically what the other is, and what one is not, its system of deferral, différance, displacement, worked and still works today to privilege certain national identities associated to the metropolises of a colonial motherland or fatherland. in the name of responsibility for the other, derrida (1990/2002) asks us, to question recursively the “essences” and “functions” of language which privilege the foundations of such (educational and colonizing) philosophical institutions. “it is the apparent firmness, hardness, durability, or resistance of philosophical institutions,” derrida (1990/2002) suggests, which “betrays, first of all, the fragility of a foundation. it is on the ground of this (theoretical and practical) ‘deconstructability,’ it is against it, that the institution institutes itself” (p. 10). cane reapers, former colonial, colonized subjects, eventually learned the hard secrets, now no longer secrets, about the frailty of colonizing institutions. some post-colonial subjects, alien in foreign lands, appropriated the languages of the other and learned to navigate the polyglot, hybrid, and hyphenated spaces between an appropriation of what is and an alienation of what is not colonial culture. here derrida (1991a/1992) tells us, “there is no culture or cultural identity without difference with itself” (p. 9). yet, how does a colonial or postcolonial subject negotiate between the hyphenated spaces of sameness and otherness, alienation and appropriation, the colonizer’s institutional language and one’s native language, the schoolmaster’s tongue and one’s mother tongue, which in turn is always already occupied by the language of the other? what are the limits-situations of such (re)appropriations? a curriculum of hospitality toward the language of the other what is happening today, and has been for some time, i think, are philosophical formations that will not let themselves be contained in this dialectic, which is basically cultural, colonial or neo-colonial, of appropriation and alienation (derrida, 1991b/2002, p. 337). this mother language with which we are at home is the language belonging to a community—a language of sharing, a language of familiarity, a vernacular ng-a-fook: toward understanding a curriculum transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 12 because that master does not possess exclusively, and naturally, what he calls his language, because, whatever he wants or does, he cannot maintain any relations of property or identity that are natural, national, congenital, or ontological, with it, because he can give substance to and articulate [dire] this appropriation only in the course of an unnatural process of politicphantasmatic construction, because language is not his natural possession, he can, thanks to that very fact, pretend historically, through the rape of a cultural usurpation, which means always essentially colonial, to appropriate it in order to impose it as “his own.” (derrida, 1996/1998, p. 23). language of daily conversation, a language with a profound respect of the other and self (aoki, 1987/2005, p. 239). …language is for the other, coming from the other, the coming of the other (derrida, 1996/1998, p. 68). the sound of morning bells tolls. it is october. the suspension of derrida’s breathing between life and death has ceased.12 today, an unseasonal humidity, its invisibility, still heavy and damp, floats on the surface of louisiana. i long for seasonal change. until then, “you” and “i” must host the death foretold of this season’s language. dawn and dusk, self and other, two strangers in the same sky, share a universal terrain of such seasonal language. language is our invisible prosthesis for moving between the shifting terrain of self and other. but language, its promise of a universal terrain, has no material body. self and other however, are able to perform their accents, intonations, and rhythms—of gender, class, race, culture, and differences—through the body of language. and yet, the universal landscape of language, its invisibility, eludes both a master’s ownership and a colonial subject’s (re)appropriations of a proper terrain called homo-hegemonic meaning. in monolingualism of the other, derrida (1996/1998) maintains, the colonial master, the teacher, “wants to make others believe” in his ownership of the language, of a universal terrain called homo-hegemonic meaning, “as they do a miracle, through rhetoric, the school, or the army” (p. 23). a first trick is thus played—a master’s ownership of an invisible place, which hosts language. “mastery begins,” derrida stresses, “through the power of naming, of imposing and legitimating appellations. … it always follows or precedes culture like its shadows” (p. 39). therefore, like a shadow and its visible absence of light, the colonial master’s lack of proper appropriation, ownership of invisibility, moves him to impose his fantasies of possessing the alchemy of a monolanguage, onto the linguistic landscape of a colonized other.13 ng-a-fook: toward understanding a curriculum transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 13 at immaculé conception i remember for the first time, hearing the teacher, master, perform and pronounce the accentuated strangeness of the name ng-a-fook, in the language of the other. or learning with difficulty to differentiate, differ, the different, grave, acute, circumflex, dieresis accentuated sounds of é, à, è, ê, û, ë, au, eu, ou, and où. i have flashbacks of flashcards. french was my language of learning at the elementary and secondary schools. for 6 hours a day the language of the other and its culture, attempted to teach me, they taught me. each day, we mastered a model which promised good speech and good writing. as a child, there was always a certain amount of unconditional hospitality towards the language of the other. my attempts to appropriate the impossible purity of its idioms were not, however, without a certain sense of accentuated alienation. english is my mother tongue. but there were few places of hospitality to receive its utterance at school. i was forbidden to practice the alchemy of the only language i spoke, never only spoke, and which never was mine inside and outside the school walls. for me, french was the schoolmaster’s language. because of my alien responses to experiencing the accentuation of a second language, or my refusal to utter in the language of the other, i often found myself sitting in the silent refuges of the hallway shadows, lost in translation, between the hyphenated spaces of appropriation and alienation. the master’s language of liberation, emancipation, revolution, and decolonization then plays a second trick. “it will provide freedom,” derrida (1996/1998) asserts, “from the first while confirming a heritage by internalizing it, by reappropriating it—but only up to a certain point, for, as my hypothesis shows, there is never any such thing as absolute appropriation or reappropriating” (p. 24). a master’s performed ownership, proper appropriation of a monolanguage, and the invisibility of its otherness, cannot be fully promised or assimilated by the other. this lack of promise, the unattainable terrain of homohegemonic meaning, is the madness at the heart of language. nonetheless, “the language, the only one i hear myself speak, and agree to speak, is the language of the other” (derrida, 1996/1998, p. 25). therefore, our responsibility for the other, in the face of a sovereign other, requires hospitality for the other’s inalienable alienable rights to the landscape of a universal language that is never mine. language is a structure, derrida (1996/1998) writes, of alienation without alienation. the practices of colonial alienation and of being othered by its language, derrida (1996/1998) maintains, is language. it is a mother tongue, which is already inhabited by the language of the other. therefore to be at home with the french or the english language, to inhabit it as my second skin, i must be at home with the other. derrida (1996/1998) stresses that the very conditions of unconditional hospitality towards the language of the other “relies upon a foundation, whose sovereign essence is always colonial, which tends, repressively and irrepressively, to reduce language to the one” (p. 40). “this homo-hegemony,” derrida (1996/1998) adds, “remains at work in the culture, effacing the fold and flattening the text” (p. 40). here, the host and the other’s language we receive, house and feed have the dual possibilities of being a guest and an enemy, a ng-a-fook: toward understanding a curriculum transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 14 … an irreducible experience of language, that which links it to the liaison, to commitment, to the command or to the promise: before and beyond all theoreticconstatives, opening, embracing, or including them, there is the affirmation of language, the “i am addressing you, and i commit myself, in this language here; listen how i speak in my language, me, and you can speak to me in your language; we must hear each other, we must get along” [nous devons nous entendre]. (derrida, 1991/1992, p. 61) so french is my only language. nevertheless, in the culture of the french in algeria, there was a way in which, despite everything, france was not algeria; the source, the norm, the authority of the french language was elsewhere. and, in a certain manner, confusedly, we learned it, i learned it as the language of the other—even though i could only refer to one language as being mine, you see! (derrida, 1983b/1995, p. 203). promise and a terror. and, if each of us is born into the concrete language of our mother tongue, as aoki (1987/2005) suggests, how then does one negotiate a curriculum to migrate through and beyond the hyphenated spaces of colonizer and colonized, appropriation and alienation, the language of the other and a language reduced to the one? in response to this last question, of a yesterday, today, and tomorrow, there are many strategic turns.14 but, as dusk marks the death of another day, the specters of derrida return and whisper, language must be a place of hospitality for the invisible movements of understanding between self and other to occur. concepts like deconstruction, subject, colonial, colonizer, postcolonial, alienation, appropriation, monolanguage, and their proper place of homohegemonic meaning, remain in a perpetual movement, a migration of unfinished promises, of exappropriation, caught in the inbetween spaces of translation, always on the verge of untranslatability. therefore monolingualism of the other, learning language and its translation, is a promise, derrida (1996/1998) suggests, which no longer expects what it waits for. and thus, learning the only language i speak, the only language i never speak, unconditionally hosting the invisible language of the other, its landscape of universal translation, welcoming him or her as a friend or enemy remains veiled by the promise of an understanding which can never be fully attained. falling behind: another heading it is this language that holds us, as both hostage and support (chambers, 1994, p. 33). wouldn’t this mother tongue be a sort of second skin you wear on yourself, a mobile home? but also an immobile home since it moves with us? (derrida, 1997/2000 p. 89). ng-a-fook: toward understanding a curriculum transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 15 to learn how to live is to grow, to educate also. to reprimand someone and say, “i will teach you how to live,” signifies at times like a threat, i will shape you, even break you. the ambiguity of this play then is more important to me. this space opens to a more complex interrogation; can one actually learn how to live? teach how to live? can we learn, through discipline or through study, by experience or by experimentation, to accept, or better still, to affirm life? … yet, i remain un-educateable with regards to the knowledge of knowing how to die. i learned or acquired nothing yet about this subject. the time, suspended in reprieve, shrinks ever faster (derrida, le monde, 2004). the language of fall is here. it is november. i witness another season shrinking, shortening, changing. at dusk, during the time of philosophy, my windows and doors are now open to host a different kind of invisibility which still floats on this southern landscape. a language of unions, on this terrain called homo-hegemonic meaning, between self and other, derrida’s texts and my translations, has made its singularities present. through death, derrida gives life to another language, a heritage of deconstruction, now suspended within these pages and the universal landscape of the english and french languages. memories, or is it the nostalgia of experiencing the language of the other, its alienation, appropriation, exappropriation, always migrating with us, that faithfully keep derrida’s philosophical inheritance alive? the responsible inheritance of derrida’s deconstruction asks us in the name of the other to recursively question “the subject’s” rights to name for example, and to name the rights of his or her institutional language. responsibilities of guarding this heritage of deconstruction, keeping it alive, also involve questioning any institutional language that presupposes its foundations with universal systems of exclusionary logic. deconstruction, derrida (1991/1992, 2004) tells us, guards against euroand ameri-centric institutional, cultural, national, and linguistic incorporations of an official cultural capital. the autobiographical examples utilized in this paper provide a foil, an exemplarity of singularities that challenges universal claims to a homo-hegemonic meaning. the value of exemplarity, derrida (1991/1992) writes, is that it … inscribes the universal in the proper body of a singularity, of an idiom or a culture, whether this singularity be individual, social, national, state, federal, confederal, or not. whether it takes a national form or not, a refined, hospitality or aggressively xenophobia form or not, the selfaffirmation of an identity always claims to be responding to the call or assignation of the universal (p. 72). each time that fook ng, john cyril ng-a-fook, and i utter our differences, the disorder of our cultural identities, we must call upon the universal terrain of language and inscribe its universality in the singularities of our educational ng-a-fook: toward understanding a curriculum transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 16 as the death foretold of winter nears, fly-patterned birds will once again make their migration north, to birth otherness into life. i continue to learn how to live while i witness my father leaning how to die. he is also at war with himself. robert cyril ng-a-fook continues to struggle with the bodily language of lupus. on his deathbed in toronto, his father, bertie cyril ng-a-fook longed to return to guyana, the landscape of many rivers, the place that baptized my proper surname. what landscape and language will father long for in the face of death? how might i in turn, learn to say goodbye? experiences, for example, with alienation and appropriation. in such examples the migrant, post-colonial subject, does not settle for a proper cultural and national identity, but is rather, unsettled, between the hyphenated spaces of colonizer and colonized, alienation and appropriation, the language of the other and a language reduced to the one. in monolingualism of the other, derrida teaches us the impossibility of properly appropriating the schoolmaster’s language. self and other are caught in the double movement of exappropriation, a hyphenated space of understanding that verges on untranslatability. however, derrida ask us to listen carefully, and host unconditionally, the language of the other. to do so, “you” and “i” must be open to a possible alienation without alienation caused by receiving each other’s otherness. this double movement of teaching and learning involves a listening, heading towards the other. the fall suspension of daytime shrinks ever faster. the sugarcane fields have been harvested. a time of darkness grows longer. the canadian geese are now here taking refuge in the vanishing wetlands of louisiana. meanwhile, i fear, the french language that was only mine, never only mine, the language of the other, held hostage inside me, is dying. how might i teach a dying language to survive, and in turn, learn to support a language that says goodbye? what landscape of language did derrida long for in the face of death? how does one host the language of death? and, how might its invisible terrain greet “you” and “me”? let us now say farewell to such goodbyes. notes 1 currere is the latin infinitive form for curriculum and means to run the course. pinar’s (2004) method of currere consists of the four following intertwining parts: regressive, progressive, analytical and synthetical. in the regressive phase one conducts free association with the memories in order to collect autobiographical data. the purpose is to try and re-enter the past in order to enlarge and transform one’s memories. the second phase, or the progressive, is where one looks toward what is not yet present. in the analytical stage one examines how both the past and the future inhabit the present. how might one’s future desires and/or interpretations of the past influence present understandings of relationships with alienation and appropriation in the language of the other for example? at the analytical stage, how might one bracket such experiences in order to loosen emotional attachments and one’s respective limit-situations? the synthetical is the last stage, where one brings together past, present, and future limitations and possibilities in order to re-enter the present moment hopefully with a sense of greater self-knowledge. ng-a-fook: toward understanding a curriculum transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 17 2 under one form or another, derrida’s concept of deconstruction can be found in all his writings. however, within the constraints of this paper, i limit my references to deconstruction to the following texts: of grammatology (1967/1976), a letter to a japanese friend (1983a/1991), the other heading (1991a/1992), and talking liberties (1992a/2001). 3 not unlike pinar’s (1975/2000, 1995) use of currere in the field of curriculum theory, derrida’s concept of “deconstruction” is controversial in the academic field of philosophy. although this section begins with a letter to a japanese friend, it is important to realize that derrida continued to discuss the concept of deconstruction in response to various questions put forth by fellow scholars in different academic fields and the french media until the moment of his death on october 9, 2004. 4 derrida traces a genealogy of “the subject” through the western tradition of continental philosophy. the purpose of this paper is not to trace the essence of what “the subject” is, but rather its relationships with language. for the convenience of keeping this conversation moving, this paper momentarily settles on how derrida and montefiore position “the subject” in talking liberties. in this interview, montefiore and derrida situate “the subject,” among its other determinants, as “identity to itself, consciousness, intention, presence, or proximity to itself, autonomy, relation to the object” (in biesta and egéakuehne, 2001, p. 188). it is important to realize that the “subject” is also conceived differently in psychoanalytical and feminist theory, etc. even if this paper did pursue such a tracing of the “subject,” how might tracing its trajectory through a westernized canon limit our conversation on the “subject”? what might eastern philosophy have to say on the concept of the “subject,” for example? for a further discussion on derrida’s deconstruction of the subject see for example eating well: or the calculation of the subject (1983b/1991), from speech and phenomena (1967/1973), and “différance” in margins of philosophy (1972/1982). 5 in the other heading, derrida (1991a/1992) explains, that it is our national and individual duty to criticize, both in theory and in practice, a totalitarian dogmatism which works to destroy democracy and its european, american, and canadian heritage. such a duty, also involves criticizing institutions which institute dogmatism under new guises. yet this same duty, derrida stresses, “dictates cultivating the virtue of such critique, of the critical idea, the critical tradition” and submits it, “beyond critique and questioning, to a deconstructive genealogy that thinks and exceeds it without compromising it” (p. 77). therefore this double duty, according to derrida, asks us, in the name of responsibility, to affirm our philosophical heritage while also submitting it to a deconstructive questioning. 6 here i offer a footnote on a footnote about the etymological closeness between “subject” and “substance.” in talking liberties, egéa-kuehne (2001) explains, “subject comes from the latin subjectum, past participle of the verb subjicere, which signifies to ‘throw or put under, to place underneath.’ the latin term substancia was constructed from the verb substare which means ‘to stand’ (stare) ‘under’ (sub).” egéa-kuehne continues that this word was utilized in order to translate aristotle’s “…huspotasis, which signified ‘what is underneath, basis, foundation’ (from hupo, ‘under,’ and stasis, ‘the action of fixing itself’)” (p. 184). the concept of substance was one of the most important notions in metaphysics up to the seventeenth century. 7 on august 18, 2004 le monde conducted an interview with derrida titled “i am at war against myself.” i have translated this interview in its entirety from french to english, yet not without losing some of its “original” meaning. can one ever? in deconstructive fashion, derrida avoids his interviewer’s initial question about his war with pancreatic cancer. yet derrida moves through the interview to recount his past work and share his current thoughts on various topics and concepts such as the conflict in iraq, same sex marriages, heritage, and the question of how one learns to live life. ng-a-fook: toward understanding a curriculum transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 18 8 in the oxford american english dictionary, alien is defined as: “belonging to a foreign country or nation; unfamiliar and disturbing; introduced from another country and later naturalized.” 9 soon after the initial invasion of france in 1940, and in the absence of the official french government, the national assembly voted in henri philippe pétain as the head of what was later known as the vichy administration which controlled the remaining two-fifths of unoccupied france. he then signed an armistice that gave germany control over the northern landscape of france. during his administration the language of the french constitution was changed from freedom, equality, brotherhood, to labour, family, country. not all french citizens supported the newly established government. charles de gaulle led france libre (free france), the french government in exile, from london. in the southern unoccupied terrain and elsewhere in france, the french resistance continued to fight the germans and help jewish subjects escape the genocide of the holocaust. after france’s liberation by the allies from the german occupation in 1945, pétain was sentenced to death and expulsed from the academic française. the following year his sentence was commuted to life in prison due to his old age (see encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com, 2004). 10 elizabeth gray is my mother’s family name and her mother spoke the gaelic language. 11 the hyphen between post and colonial indicates a period of decolonization after wwii (see boehmer, 1995). 12 derrida died of pancreatic cancer on october 9th, 2004. 13 upon arriving to foreign lands and during their colonization, it was common practice for europeans to systematically re-inscribe the landscape itself, and the animals, insects, plants, and indigenous people who inhabited it, with anglicized remarks. the colonizer, the master, demonstrated his fantasies of ownership through renaming the land, and thus, appropriating the indigenous terrain of meaning. for a further discussion that complicates colonial power, naming, and ownership of land, see smith’s (1999) decolonizing methodologies: research and indigenous peoples. 14 one of the concepts and strategies derrida introduces in order to problematize an appropriation of a language proper to itself is “exappropriation.” in this deconstructive double movement, “exap-” marks the sense of “-propriation” with an irreducible discordance or dissociation between its two directions” (kamuf, 1991, p. xxiii). “whereas the proper movement of the proper” kamuf (1991) states, “can only be in an appropriative direction back to itself, the circle of return cannot complete itself without also tracing the contrary movement of expropriation” (p. xxiii). the more master and colonial subject seek to appropriate, jealously own a language, one proper to itself, and thus uncontaminated by the other, the more “-propriation” loses itself in the “ex-” of an exteriority to itself. for a further discussion on the concept of exappropriation see derrida’s of hospitality (1997/2000), the post card (1980/1987), and there is no one narcissism (1983b/1995). references aoki, t. t. (1987/2005). “the dialect of mother language and second language: a curriculum exploration. in w. f. pinar and rita l. irwin (eds.). curriculum in a new key. mahwah, hew jersey: lawrence erlbaum associates. boehmer, e. (1995). colonial & postcolonial literature. new york and oxford: oxford university press. butler, j. (1990/1999). gender trouble: feminism and the subversion of identity. new york: routledge. ng-a-fook: toward understanding a curriculum transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 19 chambers, d. (1994). migration, culture, identity. new york and london: routledge. derrida, j. (1967/1973). speech and phenomena and other essays on husserl’s theory of signs, (trans.) d. b. allison. evanston, illinois: northwestern university press. derrida, j. (1967/1976) of grammatology, (trans.) g.c. spivak. baltimore and london: the johns hopkins university press. derrida, j. (1972/1982). margins of philosophy, (trans.) a. bass. chicago: the university of chicago press. derrida, j. (1980/1983) “the time of the thesis: punctuations,” (trans.) k. mclaughlin. in a. montefiore (ed.), philosophy in france today, cambridge: cambridge university press, (pp. 34-40). derrida, j. (1980/1987). the post card: from socrates to freud and beyond, (trans.) a. bass. chicago and london: the university of chicago press. derrida, j. (1983a/1991). “letter to a japanese friend,” (trans.) d. wood and a. benjamin. in p. kamuf (ed.) a derrida reader: between the blinds, new york: columbia university press, (pp. 270-276). derrida, j. (1983b/1995). “there is no one narcissism,” (trans.) p. kamuf and others. in e. weber (ed.) points…interviews, 1974-1994. stanford, california: stanford university press (pp. 196-215). derrida, j. (1989/1995). “‘eating well’, or the calculation of the subject,” (trans.) p. kamuf and others. in e. weber (ed.) points…interviews, 19741994, stanford, california: stanford university press, (pp. 255-287). derrida, j. (1990/2002). “privilege.” in who is afraid of philosophy? (trans.) j. plug. stanford, california: stanford university press. derrida, j. (1991a/1992). the other heading. reflections on today’s europe, (trans.) p.a. brault and m. b naas. bloomington, indianapolis: indiana university press. derrida, j. (1991b/2002). negotiations…interventions and interviews, 1971 2001, (trans. and ed.), e. rottenberg, stanford, california: stanford university press. derrida, j. (1992a/2001). talking liberties. in g. j. j. biesta denise & egéa kuehne (eds.), derrida & education, new york and london: routledge (pp. 177-185). derrida, j. (1992b/1995). points…interviews, 1974-1994, (trans) p. kamuf and others and (ed.) e. weber, stanford, california: stanford university press. derrida, j. (1996). monolingualism of the other, or the prosthesis of origin, (trans.) p. mensah. stanford, ca: stanford university press. derrida, j. (1997/2000). of hospitality, (trans.) r. bowlby. stanford, california: stanford university press. derrida, j. and ferraris, m. (1997/2001). a taste for the secret, (trans.) g. donis, and (ed.) g. donis & d. webb, oxford, cambridge: blackwell publishers. derrida, j. (2004). “i am at war with myself.” in le monde. ng-a-fook: toward understanding a curriculum transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 20 http://www.lemonde.fr/web/recherche_articleweb/1,13-0,36375883,0.html. egéa-kuehne, d. (1995). deconstruction revisited and derrida’s call for academic responsibility. educational theory, 45 (3), pp. 293-309. egéa-kuehne, d. (2001). derrida’s ethics of affirmation. in g. j. j. biesta denise egéa-kuehne (eds.), derrida & education, new york and london: routledge, (pp. 186-208). fanon, f. (1967/1991). black skin, white masks, (trans.) c.l. markmann. new york: grove press. henri philippe pétain. retrieved december 1, 2004, from http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/henri+phillippe+petain kamuf, p. (1991). (eds.), a derrida reader: between the blinds. new york: columbia university press. kohák, e. (1984). the embers and the stars: a philosophical inquiry into the moral sense of nature. chicago & london: university of chicago press. pinar, w. f., and reynolds, w., and slattery, p., and taubman, p. (1995). understanding curriculum. new york: peter lang. pinar, w. f. (1975/2000). “search for a method.” in w. pinar (ed.), curriculum studies: the reconceptualization. troy, new york: educator’s international press (pp. 415-424). pinar, w. f. (2004). what is curriculum theory? new jersey: lawrence erlbaum associates. smith, l. t. (1999). decolonizing methodologies: research and indigenous peoples. new york & london: zed books ltd. sue-a-quan, t. (1999). cane reapers: chinese indentured immigrants in guyana. british columbia: riftswood publishing. wang, h. (2004). the call from the stranger on a journey home: curriculum in a third space. new york: peter lang. author nicholas ng-a-fook is an associate professor of curriculum studies in the faculty of education at the university of ottawa. email: nngafook@uottawa.ca microsoft word vongalis-macrow formated 131108.doc to cite this article please include all of the following details: vongalis-macrow, athena (2008). the knowledge-doing gap: how organizational and health studies help understanding of the knowledge-doing gap in sustainability education. transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> the knowledge-doing gap: how organizational and health studies help understanding of the knowledgedoing gap in sustainability education athena vongalis-macrow la trobe university, melbourne, australia introduction the examination of the knowing-doing gap evident in the transfer of sustainability knowledge into sustainability actions in schools, begins by reviewing the lessons learnt from organizational studies because, as in health systems, the organizational context of educational systems contextualises educational practices. for this reason, an exploration of the importance of the organizational context begins the theoretical examination of the knowingdoing gap exposed through the troublesome transfer of sustainability knowledge into practice. the transfer of knowledge into practices concerns many organizations seeking to bridge the differences between what is known and how this knowledge may be better used by organizational members in order to move the organization forward. organizational research (argyris, 1999, wenger et al., 2002) reveals multifaceted reasons for explaining why the knowing-doing gap persists. for example, studies into the improvement in the application of knowledge by hospital managers has identified factors such as skill level, culture, structures and process as a few of the variables affecting transfer of knowledge into good practices (adler et al., 2003). research into applied knowledge in organizations aims to clarify and construct models of organizational practice through managing processes, mechanisms and structures that enhance organization learning and knowledge transfer (senge, 1994). in constructing organizational models of learning, attention focuses on the role of knowledge as information and data, as well as knowledge as applicability and practice (gupta & mcdaniel, 2002). at the core of unpacking the knowledge-doing gap in different organizational knowledge management models, are concerns about competitive advantage, innovation and sustainability. school education systems have changed over the last decade to model organizational forms by incorporating more business-like practices and organizational features, so much so that there is overlap between corporate learning and school based learning. for example, many educational administration and managerial strategies look towards the learning organization model as a way to structure and manage educational systems. certainly, much can be understood about the knowing-doing gap through organizational research. the other example where the knowing-doing gap remains critical is in the treatment and prevention of diseases, such as aids, which continue to afflict world populations. the knowledge-doing gap in healthcare and prevention concerns the transfer of information about disease and how knowledge can be effectively incorporated into new behavioural patterns for preventative actions (pang, 2003). in order for preventative health programs to have impact, systematic approaches are required to ensure the full participation of those who are at risk and in need of some sort of change to their behaviour. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci vongalis-macrow: the knowledge-doing gap transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 50 these two examples of how the knowledge-doing gap is identified, are important for educational systems to consider and to draw expertise from. educational systems can draw upon research from the organizational management perspective in that schools systems are based on enterprise models and many of the concerns of a modern organization are relevant to educational settings. similarly, interests of health and wellbeing have been embedded in modern curriculum and pedagogy, where the role of the school extends into personal and familial spaces. this paper will therefore, draw from organizational studies and health research in order to explore the knowledge-doing gap. from these two perspectives, a critical examination of school organizational features will discuss ways in which schools may act to impede the transfer of knowledge into actions. exploration of the ways that health programs function to ensure participation may lead to a better understanding of knowledge based practices that may help to bridge the knowledge-doing gap. knowledge transfer organizational studies distinguish between information, data and knowledge. data refers to facts in their raw state without classification or organization (parikh, 2001). in the school context, data may appear in administrative fields as a collection of statistics about the school population or it may appear in classrooms as the underlying facts on which areas of learning are founded. once organised, data sense making creates information. it follows that the kind of information created depends on the schema used to interpret and organise the facts. according to senge (1994), the schema, or mental model is the filter through which information is interpreted and evaluated. in education, the mental model can also refer to learning theories and curriculum models representing those theories. without some theoretical schema or model for teaching, facts and information about the world are very disordered and so not make much sense. for example, we can have data after data about changes in the ozone layer or other sustainability phenomena, but without some schema to make judgments about the data and information, any form of deeper understanding about the implications of this information remains elusive. the prevalence of constructivist theory in current pedagogy, constructs a teaching and learning model that has epistemological, psychological, and socio-cultural framings. although there are branches of constructivist theorizing, which dispute the meaning of a constructivist understanding, there are two essential tenets of constructivist thinking. these are: knowledge is not passively received but actively built up by the cognising subject; the function of cognition is adaptive and serves the organisation of the experiential world, not the discovery of ontological reality (husen & postlethwaite, 1989). the constructivist organisation of the experiential world represents a schema through which data and information about the world is organised for sense making. in making sense of data and information, psychological, social and personal factors contribute. at this stage, the creation of knowledge emerges. according to gupta and mcdaniel (2002): knowledge implies a deeper (in emotional, psychological, and social terms) involvement of individuals, and initiatives aimed at altering existing patterns (particularly if they are anchored in years of experience/practice) (p.2). gupta and mcdaniel stress the deeper engagement of individuals at the stage of knowledge making. in the organizational context, the deeper involvement of people seeks to ensure that http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci vongalis-macrow: the knowledge-doing gap transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 51 knowledge is not misconstrued and that knowledge transfer happens unimpeded for innovation and growth. a critical review of how knowledge about sustainability is created in schools, and by implication, a critique of constructivist modelling for knowledge making, may be a factor in understanding the knowledge-doing gap. firstly, the simplification of complex knowledge and phenomena may be a pedagogical device to help students’ understandings, however this may also impede deeper learning and deeper engagement. there are two problems associated with the oversimplification of complex knowledge. the first issue is that in reducing complexity, what may be lost are elements of the emotional, psychological and sociological factors that construct knowledge. the result may be a partial knowledge about the phenomena and as such, manifesting as less engaging or encompassing in the learners’ knowledge making. in a study arguing that there is a common basis for instructional failure based on ‘unrealistically simplified’ (spiro et al., 1991:1) information and knowledge transfer. the authors contend that learning needs to be complex. the authors state: cognitive and instructional neglect of problems related to content complexity and irregularity in patterns of knowledge use leads to learning failures that take common, predictable forms. these forms are characterized by conceptual oversimplification and the inability to apply knowledge to new cases (failures of transfer) (spiro et al., 1991:2). it is reasonable to raise similar questions about sustainability knowledge transfer. the way that scientific knowledge is taught to students and then how this knowledge is made ‘messy’ when transferred into real case situations presents a conundrum. if knowledge making is indeed about engaging the total person, that is the emotional, psychological and sociological factors, then more well structured instructional designs and pedagogies are necessary to ensure knowledge making happens from informational complexity. flexible knowledge application would be an area of further investigation in light of the problems with transfer of sustainability knowledge into positive action. the second problem related to the simplification of knowledge, relates to the teachers’ information and knowledge about sustainability issues and how this is then transferred to learners. in a forthcoming study, kurup and vongalis-macrow (2008) undertook a survey of 200 pre-service teachers to find out the extent of their accurate knowledge about sustainability. the pre-service teachers were asked to rate the most correct answer when given information about climate change, greenhouse gases and global warming. asking preservice teachers the meaning of climate change, 65.4 percent stated that it referred to changes in average temperatures, 15.4 percent stated changes in weather forecasts, 16 percent replied increase in sea water level and 46.2 percent answered global warming. significantly, of the 156 students who attempted to answer the question, 35 opted not to answer. therefore, 23 percent may not have known. in another question, students were asked what constituted greenhouse gases. forty-two percent of students answered carbon dioxide, 39.5 percent methane, 19.7 percent oxides of nitrogen, 37.5 percent cfc gases, 7.2 percent ozone and 44.7 percent all of the aforementioned gases. as in the previous question, about 25 percent of the students did not supply any answers. overall, less that 50 percent students had the correct information about greenhouse gases. further analysis of the survey results will follow in another publication however, there are two points of interests when we consider the knowledge level of pre-service teachers when asked about climate change and greenhouse gases. clearly there appears a gap in teachers’ information and knowledge about these two sustainability issues. this may have an important http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci vongalis-macrow: the knowledge-doing gap transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 52 affect in the knowledge passed down to learners. i particularly refer to knowledge and not just information. a teacher may be able to gather the correct information however, whether taught with the convincing emotional, psychological and social depth may be an issue. it is even more critical when considering that the survey showed that over 73 percent of the preservice teachers stated that the issue of sustainability was of such importance that they believed it is the teaching responsibility of all teachers. there are important quality issues here, however, the point being made is that the knowledge-doing gap may be affected by lack of knowledge about sustainability on the part of teachers, and the learners’ own knowledge making from this deficient base may be a hindrance in the way learners construct their own psychological, emotional and sociological schema to engage with the knowledge. furthermore, recent studies into socio-scientific reasoning have suggested that learners are more willing to incorporate scientific knowledge into their reasoning patterns around complex scientific issues, if that information is given by someone they consider an authority in the topic (salder, 2003). this is indeed problematic when considering the knowledge level of teachers and how issues around sustainability may be presented. the aim is not to blame the teachers, in fact teachers ought to be applauded for their proactive stance on sustainability. the aim is to advocate for more effective teacher training programs, which incorporate sustainability knowledge as a key component of teacher training, as a social and pedagogical necessity for future generations. action plans the knowledge-doing gap is also of concern to health practitioners and researchers, especially in high burden disease prevention (davies, ireland & buchan, 2005). when faced with situations leading to mortality and/or morbidity, the decision-making capacities of people, and how they act upon certain knowledge, is vital. in the context of this paper, there have been overlaps of theories that attempt to model behavioural patterns and decision-making patterns towards positive actions for change, when people are faced with certain indisputable information. balanced theory and theory of reasoned response are two prominent theories seeing to explain behavioural change and its ties to knowledge. these are important to consider in the light of the previous discussion about the quality of knowledge transfer about sustainability. according to fishbein (1993), two important variables helped to provide better indications of behaviour. he surmised that intensions to engage in certain behaviour were dependent upon whether the outcome was under the volitional control of the individual. behaviour perceived as under volitional control proved a better predictor of probable actions. however, if the outcome was perceived outside the volitional control of the individual, the likelihood for predicting actions was markedly reduced. for example, if there were other factors that impinged on the success of the action, it was less likely that the person would engage in that behaviour. fishbein devised the theory of reasoned action as a way to explain that behaviour was more likely to change if we can maximize the likelihood of goal attainment by focusing actions on one or two goals deemed attainable and under the control of the individual. he focused on cognitive structures, that is, on behavioural and normative beliefs that influence individual attitudes and subjective norms. fishbein has used this rational, linear model for behavioural change to explore smoking, drinking, and the use of contraceptives, to name but a few health related issues. the directional change offered by fishbein is an important step towards understanding behaviour because he is acknowledging the complexity of external influences that shape actions. his solution to environmental complexity is to reduce the complexity by narrowing the focus on a couple of achievables. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci vongalis-macrow: the knowledge-doing gap transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 53 this has been a major limitation of rational, linear behavioural theories of change. changing behaviour towards a more sustainable use of natural resources and biodiversity is a complex issue that has social and political influences, which resist normative framings. for example: changing the way people think and act when it comes to sharing their knowledge, integrating and using that of others, as well as creating it collaboratively, is not an easy task. it involves considering psychological factors, personal attitudes and competencies as well as the history and the dynamics of the social, emotional and organizational context in which people operate. (fishbein, p. 1) the politics of sustainability create a dynamic and complex social space in which attitudes towards sustainability take shape. this brief historical overview of the growing international awareness of sustainable practices, serves to map out the way sustainability has entered public discourse and occupied social space. the our common future report (also known as the brundtland report) (world commission on environment and development, 1987), presented a prototype political definition of sustainability. the report defined sustainability as: development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs (world commission on environment and development, 1987). in 1992, the united nations conference on environment and development (united nations 1997), (known as the earth summit, or the rio earth summit) called for the reconciliation of economic development and environmental protection and the resulting policies intended to affect the flow of global finances and trade. the main message proposed that large-scale changes in attitude and behaviour were needed to ensure a healthy planet. changes in behaviour and attitude were needed in these areas: patterns of production — particularly the production of toxic components, such as lead in gasoline, or poisonous waste… alternative sources of energy are being sought to replace the use of fossil fuels which are linked to global climate change…new reliance on public transportation systems …greater awareness of and concern over the growing scarcity of water (united nations, 1997). in1997, the kyoto conference on global warming opened dialogue centring on greenhouse emissions. the negotiation over the compliance, specific targets and responsibilities were ratified in 2005, which led to the kyoto protocol. there are numerous evident tensions when considering how the concept of sustainability is presented within public discourses, such as the media. the rise of media reports about climate change illustrates how ideas about climate change have started to penetrate public discourse challenging the dominant ideas that climate change was a fictional model of global warming. interestingly, the ascendancy of climate change as a dominant idea in the public discourse, illustrates a global phenomena whereby, ideas are no longer bound to local territories, but have global reach. negotiating ideas of global significance creates a political conundrum for social action. social action can be distanciated from local expressions, can align with exchanges beyond the nation state, beyond institutions and organizational boundaries and give rise to a more complex set of choices. it is within this complex place, resisting the isomorphic organisation http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci vongalis-macrow: the knowledge-doing gap transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 54 of ideas and action, that education is situated. changing behaviours in the direction of positive attitudes and actions towards sustainability requires making diverse sets of choices negotiated through socio-political, emotional and psychological involvement. clearly this is challenging for schools, teachers and learners. however, a social function of the school, as an organization, may impede the formation of positive environmental attitudes and actions because of the tendency for institutional closure as a way to deal with complexity. the impact of institutional closure may be to further reduce knowledge making and thus diffuse the capacity of learners to create meaningful, informed knowledge that underpins their actions and motivations. according to downward, finch, and ramsay (2002), the role of school and learning happens in a simplified way as the structure of education sets up a quasi closure of open systems (downward, finch, & ramsay, 2002). the open system in this case would refer to the highly politicised social context in which issues about sustainability are prevalent. in order to help regulate and make persistent certain ways of learning, responding, making decisions and taking actions, education systems shut down access to the social and political context and in doing so, access to the political and social debates, that construct complex, social space. according to downward, finch, and ramsay, in the face of too much choice and action, the quasi closure of education systems acts to set limits to possible courses of actions in order to create regularity and limit structural decisions. there are of course ideological reasons for reshaping educational structures in this narrowed way, especially when there is highly charged debate around an area of knowledge, such as climate change, which has lead to political decision-making and has had legislative implications. the evolution of sustainability as a resonant idea and public value, displaces complacency about the environment with political ideas and actions seeking deep structural and agential changes so that systems and relationships are restructured to function towards achieving balance and optimisation rather than maximization of resources use. as a public institution, education illustrates the tensions when new ideas and new practices occupy public spaces. from the mid 80s onwards, the managerial framework for organising public education has dominated educational ideology (psacharopoulos, 1996; welch, 1998). however, the infiltration of sustainability and eco agendas unsettles compliance and problematises educational spaces. as intimated through the historical evolution of the concept of sustainability, and how governments have been challenged to act in accordance with global rules about sustainable systems, challenges pacification. gruenewald (2003) states: when we fail to consider places as products of human decisions, we accept their existence as non-controversial or inevitable, like the falling of the rain or the fact of the sunrise…we also become complicit in the political processes, however problematic, that stewarded these places into being and that continue to legitimise them (p. 627). recognising education, as more than work preparedness, necessitates that educational sites are reconfigured as socially constructed places and not only as sites for performative products and services, framed by bureaucratic control and condemned to reproduction. the entrenching of education as instrumental practice has prioritised what berry (1988) terms an ‘autistic’ education which undervalues deep dialogue, communication and participation in meaning making of our places. i would also add that meaning making has been further undervalued when examining issues around sustainability by the poor quality knowledge about the science of sustainability and related issues which makes informed meaning making challenging for learners. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci vongalis-macrow: the knowledge-doing gap transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 55 downward, finch, and ramsay (2002), suggest that institutions such as education, represent a shared territory in which the institution represents a shared space for the exchange of ideas and values about the outside environment and how actions, relationships and decisions should be managed. in other words, the school transmits favourable practices to learners through quasi closure that pre-limits choices and actions, and how to behave. the assumption being, that once outside school, the learner will have a model for quasi closure, and limiting choices based on their experience and learning within the school. perhaps this assumption is misleading. overlooking the complexity inherent in educational spaces, becomes a pedagogical issue. gruenwald (2003) stresses that, “the gradual process of taking our socially constructed places for granted is deeply pedagogical” (pp. 627.) when educational spaces are de-invested of meaning, solid knowledge, beyond the managerial framing of outcomes and achievement, negating the socio-political in place making, education, as an institution, divorces from deep connections with the extra-institutional landscape. it is this dislocation that may contribute to the knowledge-doing gap in students because they cannot bridge the divide once outside the school enclosure. in other words, once outside the school, the sheer complexity of informed decision making in a political context creates troublesome tensions for students and the resulting actions steer them away from actively participating in complex decision making and having a say in how their social space is constituted through their actions. perhaps the dislocation of education from broader social, political and economic debates, limit meaningful engagement and participation in place-making of students and staff. the dislocation of education from participating in social dialogue, in creating a presence in social spaces has consequences that delimit deeper knowledge making about sustainability and may water down the educational messages about sustainability and eco friendly living. when preventative health care programs seek behavioural change, the urgency underlying the change, and the realism that health issues are at stake, require complex, realistic appraisal of what needs to be known and changed. these programs account for the myriad of social and cultural attitudes, beliefs and values that may reflect unhealthy practices. in other words, complexity has to be faced head on, in order to affect real change. in addition, it can be argued that in making decisions affecting health, the way information and knowledge is created by recipients, promotes and reflects rational models for behavioural change so advocated by fishbein (1993) and others. it may be easier to correlate unhealthy behaviour with particular outcomes. thus, the recipient can connect the cause, action and effect in a clearer, demonstrable way. there is a linear strategy that makes sense. however, it can be argued that the predominance of behavioural theories may have limited application in a school context. the quasi closure of schools, in a sense to help students delimit information, knowledge and decision making, may present a somewhat simplified appraisal of sustainability knowledge and practices thereby neglecting the focus on how students would negotiate the curriculum within a complex setting and from these negotiations, arrive at doable actions. effective health preventative programs, which lead people towards behavioural change, need to take into account complex social, cultural and personal issues and resolve a way to prioritise and validate new behaviours. perhaps, the quasi closure of schools is a hindrance to fuller engagement with the social, political and personal responses to sustainability knowledge making and action taking. it means that in terms of sustainability, further socio-scientific research is needed to unpack the social implications of scientific knowledge and how students use this to construct beliefs, values and actions about complex open-ended scientific dilemmas. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci vongalis-macrow: the knowledge-doing gap transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 56 final remarks so far, this paper has argued that in order to target the knowledge-doing gap more attention needs to be focused on how informed knowledge is constructed to engage the learner fully. this necessarily means retaining social and political complexity, so the realistic appraisal of how peoples’ actions impact and construct sustainable places, is possible. a true learning organization requires the unencumbered transfer of knowledge towards meaningful actions. the knowledge-doing gap appears to be influenced by the quality of knowledge, the wholeness of knowledge making, and the way that relevant knowledge is enabled in the complex and messy context of the real world where normative actions are still emerging. since the transfer of knowledge into eco actions is problematic, it suggests that further research needs to be undertaken, drawing on organizational and health studies to ensure that sustainability pedagogy, and ecological education transfers critical knowledge into relevant and empowering student actions. references argyris, c. (1999). on organizational learning. malden, ma: blackwell publishing. adler, p.s., riley, p., kwon, s. w., signer, j. b. & lee, r. (2003). performance improvement capability: keys to accelerating performance improvement in hospitals. california management review, vol. 45, no. 2, pp. 12-33. berry, t. (1988). the dream of the earth. san francisco: sierra club books. davies, j., ireland, p., & buchan, h. (2005). closing the knowing–doing gap. evidencebased healthcare and public health, volume 9, issue 5, pp.361 364 downward, p., finch, j. h., & ramsay, r. (2002). critical realism, empirical methods and inference: a critical discussion. cambridge journal of economics, vol. 26, 498-500. gruenewald, d. (2003). foundations of place: a multidisciplinary framework for placeconscious education. american educational research journal, vol. 40, no. 3, pp. 619654. gupta, a. & mcdaniel, d. (2002). creating competitive advantage by effectively managing knowledge: a framework for knowledge management. journal of knowledge management practice, vol. 3, no. 2, pp. 40-49. husen, t., & postlethwaite, t. n. (eds.) (1989). the international encyclopedia of education, supplement vol.1. oxford/new york: pergamon press, pp162–163. kurup, p., & vongalis-macrow, a. (2008). sustainable environmental action audit (gseaa) among beginning primary and secondary teachers. unpublished paper, la trobe university, australia. fishbein, m. (1993). introduction in d.terry, c. gallois, & m. mccamish, the theory of reasoned action: it’s application to aids preventative behaviour. oxford: pergamon press, pp. xv-xxv. pang, t. (2003). filling the gap between knowing and doing: research into delivery systems is needed to translate knowledge into improved health. nature, vol. 426, no. 6965, p. 383. parikh, m. (2001). knowledge management framework for high-tech research and development. engineering management, vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 27-33. psacharopoulos, g. (1996). economics of education: a research agenda. economics of education review, vol. 15, no. 4, pp.339-344. sadler, t. d. (2003). informal reasoning regarding socioscientific issues: a critical review of research. journal of research in science teaching, vol. 41, no. 5. pp.513-536. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci vongalis-macrow: the knowledge-doing gap transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 57 senge, p.m. (1994). the fifth discipline: the art and practice of the learning organization. new york: currency doubleday. spiro, r. j., feltovich, p. j., jacobson, m. j., &. coulson, r. l. (1991). cognitive flexibility, constructivism, and hypertext: random access instruction for advanced knowledge acquisition in ill-structured domains. educational technology, vol. 31, no. 5, pp. 22-25. taylor, n., kennelly, j., jenkins, k., & callingham, r. (2006). the impact of an education for sustainability unit on the knowledge and attitudes of pre service primary teachers at an australian university. geographical education, vol. 19, pp 46-59. united nations (1997, 23 may). earth summit: united nations conference on environment and development. accessed 10th june 2007, http://www.un.org/geninfo/bp/enviro.html. vongalis-macrow, a. (2007). i, teacher: re-territorialization of teachers’ multi-faceted agency in globalized education british journal of sociology of education, vol. 28, no. 4, pp. 425-439. welch, a. r. (1998). the cult of efficiency in education: comparative reflections on the reality and the rhetoric. comparative education, vol. 34, no. 2, pp.157-175. wenger, e., mcdermott, r., & snyder, w. (2002). cultivating communities of practice: a guide to managing knowledge. google books. accessed 1 november, 2007 http://books.google.com/books?id=m1xzunq9rygc&dq=wenger+%22communities+*+p ractice%22&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=zra7km4iet&sig=k8zag_8zkb5egdm4achvtllgws#ppa116,m1 world commission on environment and development (1987). our common future. oxford/new york: oxford university press. author athena vongalis-macrow is a senior lecturer in the faculty of education, la trobe university, bundoora campus, victoria, australia. email: a.vongalis@latrobe.edu.au http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci http://www.un.org/geninfo/bp/enviro.html http://books.google.com/books?id=m1xzunq9rygc&dq=wenger+%22communities+*+p mailto:vongalis@latrobe.edu.au to cite this article please include all of the following details: annala, joanna & mäkinen, marita. (2011). the research-teaching nexus in higher education curriculum design. transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> the research-teaching nexus in higher education curriculum design johanna annala 1 & marita mäkinen 2 university of tampere, finland introduction mediaeval university was described as a place of learning, not a site for research. its main focus was on preparing future generations of highly educated employees (king 2004, 3). the modern university is based on wilhem von humboldt’s (1767–1835) model in which the cutting-edge research was perceived inseparable and even identical to teaching and learning (cf. fanghanel, 2012, 4–7; mcneely, 2002). according to his ideal, the unity of research and teaching should result in learning on the part of the teacher as well the student. learning should be valued for its own sake, as a goal itself, without dependence upon employers. (humboldt 1810/1959, 378; schleiermacher, 1808/1959, 253, 281.) humboldtian image of academic work by teacher-scholar-researcher carries a strong ideological resonance within the present-day academy, although it has not led to the emergence of a coherent model nor implementation, being rather a myth. yet humboldtian ideal is the prevailing ethos against which the internal and external pressures of change are reflected in research universities in finland. we suggest, that even though the set of humboldtian values has been suitable for elite higher education (he) in the early 19th century, there is a need for rethinking the balance between research and teaching in the context of 21st century mass he. current european union’s policy stresses providing he based on research and assuring a high standard in research and innovation. the increased emphasis on linking he with economic imperatives has introduced a new paradigm for shaping the academy and in attaching research to teaching. research seems to be in the top priority inside and outside the universities, but concurrently increasingly sophisticated understanding of learning places emphasis on valuing and developing the culture of teaching. in this article we will pay particular attention to the varied constructs of the nexus between research, teaching and learning in curriculum design in he. despite of the long history of the research–teaching nexus there is no consensus on what it actually means to ‘attach’ or ‘connect’ research and teaching together. here we use the term ‘r–t nexus’ as an acronym for referring to how research in all its aspects interacts with teaching and learning within the specific context of curriculum design. the complexity of the r–t nexus in universities has been discussed widely (e.g. brew, 1999, 2003, 2010; brew & boud, 1995; hattie & marsh, 1996; healey et al., 2010; neumann, 1992, 1994). still, the concept r–t nexus is rather slippery, as trowler and wareham put annala & mäkinen. the research-teaching nexus in higher education curriculum design 4 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci it: ’does it refer to the influence on teaching and learning of students doing research, staff doing research, staff practices being informed by research, the curriculum being informed by contemporary research, the research culture of a particular context and so on’ (2007, 22). in previous studies of r–t nexus the perspective to curriculum is limited. approaching r–t nexus from the point of view of curriculum studies could help deepening the understanding of this phenomenon. among academics, the curriculum is often placed within the context of school education rather than he. humboldtian thinking makes a relevant distinction between school and university. school is concerned with a socialization process of agreed and accepted knowledge, but the function of university is to stimulate critical questioning and inquiring into problems not yet completely solved (cf. humboldt 1810/1959, 377–378; rorty, 1999; schleiermacher, 1808/1959, 240). humboldtian ideal rejected prescribed curricula, majors, exams and grades in university studies (mcneely, 2002). however, these do exist in present-day he. the absence of research interest on the curriculum design in he has left room for hidden functions (margolis, 2001). barnett and coate (2005) propose that through the curriculum the core of the discipline and the field of research are put into practice, i.e. teaching and learning. therefore, the curriculum should be one of the main concepts in the discourse on the purposes and functions of he. in this study, we approach r–t nexus with the following questions: what kinds of representations do academics and students give to research in curriculum design? how could curriculum design promote the nexus of research, teaching and learning in he? understanding curriculum in higher education for many academics and students, the curriculum generally means the documented degree requirements or syllabus, which typically includes a list of contents of lecture series, the accompanying background reading and knowledge-related areas (coate, 2009; neumann, parry & becher, 2002). curriculum, in this sense, is perceived as something to be produced in response to administrative demands or quality assurance (e.g. barnett & coate, 2005; coate, 2009; fraser & bosanquet, 2006). the place of research in this view of the curriculum is often understood as courses based on the research interests, contents and results of the academic staff to be delivered to students, commonly known as a research-led approach (griffiths, 2004; healey, 2005). this view reflects the product-based view of curriculum (tyler, 1949; kelly, 1999). in contrast, pinar (2006) provides an alternative strategy for understanding curriculum by studying interdisciplinary reconfigurations of the content knowledge of the curriculum. he also calls for demonstrating how academic knowledge might contribute to the restructuring of students’ subjectivities in terms of social reconstruction. therefore, to have a comprehensive view, we understand he curriculum as an intentional and dynamic process, which reveals the values and principles in relation to learning, knowledge and disciplines, and the cultural and political purposes of he (cf. barnett & coate, 2005; mckernan,1993; pinar, 1994; pinar et al., 1995). our earlier work (mäkinen & annala, 2010) suggested a comprehensive framework for examining the nature of curriculum in he. according to our previous results, the academic staff’s perspectives on curriculum varied within complementary domains, annala & mäkinen. the research-teaching nexus in higher education curriculum design 5 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci composed of polarities and interconnected views. the academics’ polarised views reflected a relatively narrow and reproductive approach to the interplay between research and teaching in curriculum design. in that study, there also emerged interconnected views proposing that by curriculum redesign it could be possible to conceptualise the core of a given discipline, learning environment and changes in the world as an interactive process. this interconnected perspective on curriculum seemed to be fruitful in understanding the processes of integration between research and teaching as well as that of students’ academic engagement. these findings also raised the need to study the relationship between curriculum design and r–t nexus more closely. the research-teaching nexus in curriculum design among academics, the belief and wish to have symbiosis between research and teaching is strong, following the humboldtian ideal, as it makes research universities different from other institutions (clark, 1994; visser-wijnveen et al., 2010). in curriculum design, the ideal relationship between them is still contested. several researchers have suggested that there are a range of relationships, both positive and negative, if there is relationship at all (e.g. coate, barnett & williams, 2001; hattie & marsh, 1996; hughes, 2005). understanding how the r–t nexus features in curriculum design varies in how students’ learning is taken into account (students as audience or participants) and how research is understood (research as contents or processes). healey (2005) depicts this with four-quadrant schema: research-based, research-led, research-tutored and research-oriented views. this model posits a matrix of relationships between research content, research processes and problems, student-focused and teacher-focused views, and the treatment of students as an audience or as participants. brew (2010) summarises conditions that tend to discourage r–t integration. these include narrowly defined research; a lack of research-based activities in curriculum; the strict research culture; government funding based on formulas that serve to separate teaching and research; research funding bodies not encouraging involvement of undergraduate students in research, and, institutional non-commitment to develop the relationship. brew characterizes he as a split community where academics, students and support staff work in separate social spaces concentrating on separate tasks and goals. also neumann (1992) argues that the supposed symbiosis is partly an illusion; the ideal beliefs and values differ from the prevailing practices. neumann’s (1992, 1994) framework for r–t nexus shares these cultural notions of academic communities of practice, as more recently described by brew (2010) and underpins our comprehensive approach to curriculum. neumann depicts three types of connection between research and teaching: tangible nexus which relates to the transmission of factual information and disciplinary advances; intangible nexus which relates to the progress in students’ inclination, attitude and commitment to knowledge and discovery; and global nexus which describes the departmental r–t activities and directions given to study courses arising from the total research involvement of the community. neumann (1992) argues that only actively researching academics are able to convey these quite subtle and diffuse nexuses in their teaching. hence, institutional, disciplinary, personal and political factors have a strong impact on the r–t nexus in curriculum design. when developing the r–t nexus in curriculum design, sometimes the focus gets stuck on matters of principle: is the aim to integrate teaching with research or to integrate research with teaching (e.g. willcoxson et al., 2011). this in itself is embedded within the annala & mäkinen. the research-teaching nexus in higher education curriculum design 6 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci broader context of what a university education should comprise which will inevitably mean various aims, interests and ideas. eu policy emphasises r–t nexus in the name of employability (van vught, 2009). the employability agenda as well as ‘pedagogisation’ of universities were criticized by simons and elen (2007) who distinguish a functional approach, where research is seen as a tool for learning the skills needed in the knowledge society, and an idealistic approach, where academic education is understood as participating in research, with a concomitant edifying potential for the student and for the researcher. according to simons and elen (2007), in the functional approach, the focus is on designing student-centred teaching, calling for expertise in teaching among researchers. instead, in the idealistic approach, following the humboldtian ethos, the pedagogical expertise is not needed and the demands from society or the labour market do not have a role: the point of departure is autonomous research activity, and a student is considered as a co-researcher from the very beginning. (simons & elen, 2007.) as discussed, instead of symbiosis the views of the objectives, practices and interpretations of r–t nexus seem to be rather dichotomized. research methodology the research reported here was conducted in a multifaculty research university in finland, the profile of which emphasises societal perspectives. the research was carried out in the form of theme interviews during autumn 2009. the data consists of interview transcripts of 27 academic teachers and 23 students representing various faculties and disciplines 3 . all university departments were asked to suggest the names of potential interviewees, a teacher and a student, who were actively involved in curriculum design. the academic position of interviewed academics varied from professors to assisting staff. on average they had 13 years of working experience in he (range 3–30 years) and about half of them (15) had participated in some pedagogic educations. the interviewed students were involved in curriculum design in the role of a student representative. most of them were studying their 2nd to 5th academic year 4 . to protect the anonymity of the informants we don’t present the results by departments or disciplines but in more general level. the interview themes covered practices, processes, reforms, topical discussions, objectives and significance of curriculum design. one topic was the informants’ view of the significance of curriculum in developing a discipline or a field of science. during the interview, the informants were encouraged to talk about the relevant issues for them. all interviews were recorded (range 26–85 minutes) and transcribed (1287 pages). in this article, we concentrate on the themes addressing the r–t nexus in curriculum design. the strategy for organizing and making sense of the data was based on qualitative content analysis (cf. kondracki et al., 2002; krippendorff, 2004). the analysis was conducted in progressive cycles by combining data and theory driven content analysis, which consisted of close reading, categorising, and summarising. during the close reading, we examined the transcripts through an iterative reading process. in the categorising stage, we used the framework of our previous study on a topic of the various meanings the academics gave to the curriculum development in he (mäkinen & annala, 2010; mäkinen & annala, 2012). the framework relies on barnett and coate’s (2005) suggested schema of knowing, acting and being where the domain of knowing refers to the core knowledge of the discipline; the domain of acting emphasizes skills and actions that students are expected to annala & mäkinen. the research-teaching nexus in higher education curriculum design 7 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci acquire, and, the domain of being (‘self’) denotes the formation of a student’s personality and identity. the other basis for our framework rests on bernstein’s (1996) conceptions of introjection and projection. by introjection bernstein (1996) refers to the construction of curriculum on the basis of internal disciplinary interests. by projection he describes the curriculum development on the basis of external demands. the framework is presented in table 1. table 1. framework for understanding curriculum in he (mäkinen & annala, 2012) domain internal external knowing curriculum representing disciplinary knowledge curriculum implementing knowledge-intensive education acting curriculum supporting growth of academic expertise curriculum producing competencies in employment market and society being curriculum contributing to identity formation processes curriculum providing individual career success the basic unit of analysis was either a longer segment containing complete view, or a shorter segment, such as notional expression. during categorising atlas.ti software was utilized to find from the database the segments containing one or more of the following keywords: research, discipline, knowledge, science, field of study (in finnish language). in the summarising stage of the content analysis, the relevance of the framework was explored, scrutinised and developed from the point of view of the present research aim. the consistency of the emerged representations was assessed by rechecking the basic units and transcription excerpts in their original contexts in the data and by researcher triangulation. results the findings provided a frame of r–t nexus in curriculum design reflecting the contemporary relationship between he and society. figure 1 depicts five, partly overlapping representations constructing and summarising the results. these representations entail tensions concerning the internally and externally driven curricular goals of knowing, acting and being, and the ways of understanding the role of research and teaching in curriculum design. we characterise these tensions with a metaphor of ‘core point’ which represents the ultimate, ideal r–t nexus (figure 1) with its comprehensive idea of curriculum design in he. the representations are approaching or receding from the ‘core point’. next, we present each of the five representations more closely. first, we focus on disciplinary and societal representations on the curricular aims of ‘knowing’. second, we approach the curricular aims of ‘acting’ with scholarship and functional representations. third, with future oriented representations we present the curricular aims concerning students ‘being’. annala & mäkinen. the research-teaching nexus in higher education curriculum design 8 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci the interview quotes substantiating our research findings are numbered and coded, disclosing the speaker’s role as a student (stu) or a member of staff (sta) and gender (male m or female f). the quotes have been translated from finnish to english by the authors. internal external knowing disciplinary representations societal representations acting scholarship representations funtional representations being future oriented representations r–t nexus figure 1. representations framing r–t nexus in curriculum design disciplinary representations various views of disciplinary knowledge as a static or dynamic entity emerged in the data. curriculum was characterized to reflect “the history of teachers, their research areas and interests” (sta3f), and it was often equated with a static syllabus of knowledge to be transmitted to students (cf. kelly, 1999; coate, 2009). the curriculum seemed to be based on the academics’ preferred knowledge-content, appropriated theories or individual research interests. an extreme example of this view is demonstrated in the following comment: “a student doesn’t get the master’s thesis completed if it doesn’t represent certain theoretical or methodological approach” (stu9m). this particular statement reflects a feature of a hidden curriculum (cf. margolis, 2001) which becomes apparent in the assumption that the core of the curriculum should be in line with the personal strengths of the academics of a certain community. in our previous work, we named this viewpoint as a personified curriculum (mäkinen & annala, 2010). it follows the humboldtian idea of academic freedom in teaching, but lacks the idea of discovering knowledge by integrating research, teaching and mutual learning (cf. elton, 2008). this kind of approach may weaken the r–t nexus in curriculum design. this came out in expressions claiming that it is not possible to promote discipline by curriculum design: “it leads the research nowhere” (sta9m). this is parallel to barnett and coate’s (2005) arguments that scholars are quite reluctant to engage in critical reflection on the curriculum design. this may be due to the fact that he is often understood through the narrow perspective of research-led teaching, and consequently, the annala & mäkinen. the research-teaching nexus in higher education curriculum design 9 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci curriculum is structured around the subject matter selected among the particular research content of the teaching staff (cf. brew, 2001; griffiths, 2004; healey, 2005). also pritchard (2004) found that the academic freedom is more beneficial to staff than students. ambitions for research-led teaching may also be concerned with reducing the risk of research institutions and teaching universities being, according to rather unpredictable he policy, separated from each other (cf. brew, 2003). while some of the informants emphasised the importance of special subjects or content areas, others expressed a wish for more dynamic and general edification, as characterised in the following way: “[curriculum] should encourage students to pursue what they want, to unite and use knowledge from different subject areas, instead of disapproval, this should be our right and obligation” (stu6m.) the dynamic view of knowledge emerged also in staff’s visions with topical and critical questions of certain disciplinary knowledge or areas of research attracting students to processes that enable scientific knowledge generation, like in the following: “[by curriculum] we can promote the students’ thinking towards new directions and create basis for the development of the discipline” (sta14f). consequently, curriculum was seen both as a disciplinary knowledge to be discovered and as a sustained process of generating knowledge (cf. mckernan,1993; newswander & borrego, 2009; stenhouse, 1975). these views are parallel to parker’s suggestions of discipline-based he. he proposes that disciplines are not demarcations but communities and have fluid structures based on common concerns, practices and interests (parker, 2002). in this data, curriculum design was perceived as discovering the diverse ways of developing disciplinary knowledge, especially in new disciplines and interdisciplinary programmes. thus, the curriculum was perceived as a facilitator of learning processes, which can be characterised as the ‘intangible nexus’ between research and teaching, i.e. progress in students’ inclination, attitude and commitment to knowledge and inquiry (cf. neumann, 1992) and encouragement to disciplinary wonder. societal representations interaction between autonomous knowledge creation of the academy and collaboration with its surrounding society emerged as a pivotal dilemma in implementing the r–t nexus in curriculum design. many academics seemed to prefer universities’ autonomous position in knowledge generation and in conducting research as raised in the following student’s quote: “in a university, there are enough people who are so focused into their topic that they lose contact to the real world, which is partly cool but at the same time freaky, because every phenomenon has something to do with the reality (stu10m)”. this finding is in line with naidoo’s (2005) notion that academics often have a tendency to protect their research interests against those of the stakeholders in surrounding society. according to the data, knowledge generation was primarily thought of as the domain of academics, and knowledge transmission was targeted for students, because “research proceeds on one track and teaching on another (sta10m)”. therefore, r–t nexus appeared as isolated knowledge creation, giving an impression that research as well as teaching is somewhat divorced from society. this suggests a narrow interpretation of knowledge, research and curriculum (cf. brew, 2003; coate, 2009). in contrast, the students stressed the need for interaction between he and society, and the necessity of taking advantage of r–t nexus in enhancing social effectiveness: annala & mäkinen. the research-teaching nexus in higher education curriculum design 10 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci it is in the students, what the society needs. the society changes all the time, and when we study and find new focus for scientific interests, or view the changes in society. -but if we are taught in a way that ‘you must know this and this’, we can’t meet the challenges of the working life and society in the future. (stu6m.) also some staff members described themselves as academics seeking to explore contemporary phenomena “that challenge us (sta3f)” and have relevance for the science and the society. they had been involved in research collaboration with faculty and stakeholders concurrently with students’ research projects and practical training periods, for example: “they conduct in pairs a study for a real customer” (sta6f). this type of approach to a r–t connection is close to what neumann (1992) entitles a ’global nexus’, but it is more intersectional than just co-operation at departmental level. extensive links between research programmes, practical interventions and curriculum design were successfully implemented more often in vocational (hard and soft) programmes (cf. neumann, parry & becher, 2002), but also in emerging, non-professionally oriented fields of science. the academics were aware of the risk of unilaterally following the needs of society, and emphasised the specific nature of university studies: “the reactive curriculum design would be fully possible, if we would just follow the current trends, but that would be quite short sighted -[curriculum] must be based on research findings, leading the way or at least being awake” (sta13m). in this statement, the r–t nexus in curriculum design is portrayed with an interconnected view, uniting discipline based and societally conscious approaches (cf. mäkinen & annala, 2010). scholarship representations in the statements of the students as well as the staff, the r–t nexus in curriculum design was perceived to be significant in creating preconditions for acting in the academic community and by that, creating space for the growth of academic expertise. however, the perspectives of the informants varied in how they understood research, teaching and scholarship. an example of scholarship culture is demonstrated in the following comment: “it often seems that the teachers are afraid of losing their employment due to a disappearance of the area of their own expertise. in such a situation it is always difficult to start for a proactive curriculum change.” (stu16m.) this demonstrates the student’s awareness of how the r–t nexus in curriculum design may focus on promoting the scholarship of the academics and create preconditions for their position in the scholar communities. this kind of view narrows curricular work as ‘trade unionism’ to benefit the academics instead of students. the academics had an inclination to assume that they themselves have to legitimize their existence in the research community through teaching, as the next quote represents: “when a new professor was recruited to the department, his strengths and domains were included in the curriculum” (sta10m). and vice versa, in order to develop as a scholar the focus ought to be on research, as one academic noted: “if you want to reach the top of research you have to concentrate on scientific papers” (sta6f). these two quotations characterise the paradoxical nature of academic work and scholarship, which is incarnated in the varied, often split implementations of the r–t nexus in curriculum. as found in previous studies (e.g. brew, 2003; deem & lucas, 2007; neumann, 1994), teaching was annala & mäkinen. the research-teaching nexus in higher education curriculum design 11 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci often considered secondary compared to research. some academics perceived research as entirely separate from teaching. in extreme cases, such views indicate the so called fragmentary curriculum (mäkinen & annala, 2010) which may turn he curricula into intellectual department stores (cf. jaspers, 1960/2009). deem and lucas (2007) found in their study, based on bourdieus’s concepts, that a majority of the academics value scientific capital more than teaching capital, although they also found signs of emerging new forms of academic capital. with academic capital they refer to collaborative approaches to teaching and research, of which there was also evidence in the present data. instead of seeing research entirely separate from teaching, there appeared to be some inclusive views of raising a new generation of scholars, uniting the intellectual interests of staff and students. there were some genuine efforts to see the curriculum from the point of view of students’ growth of expertise by creating room for their acting, like in the following: “our task is to teach the students, how to do research. so, that is the nexus between teaching and research, one aspect, as opposed to telling the students, what kind of research i’m doing.” (sta11f.) this view is similar to the researchbased and research-oriented ideas presented by healey (2005) in which he argues that students are not merely audience but participants. in the present study, especially the students expressed their wish to enter into the academic community by assisting the staff with research: “[professors] shouldn’t be persons who do research in their own chambers, but instead be central figures in the academic community with some skill for interaction. they should be obligated to take students along when doing their research.” (stu2m.) brew (2010) has argued that involving students with research carried out by academics benefits the students differently compared to students doing research with their peers. at its best, the growth of academic expertise is mutual, which brew describes to be based on shared responsibility: to induct newcomers into the community of practice, thus carrying the community into the future. in the data, this was depicted as a modern way of uniting personal scientific aims and the common good of students as well as the academy, like in the following comment by a professor: i think that my research should be directed parallel with the curriculum. --i think i’m professional as a researcher and i can conduct research on different themes. -it is a question of harnessing my proficiency for teaching and for the service of academy. (sta25f.) concerning the scholarship representations, we could not identify much variance between the disciplines. instead, the staff with inclusive views reflected their identity as a university teacher, or highlighted that their department positively values not just research, but also teaching. functional representations the various aims of he relating to employment and employability appeared in the statements of interviewees. although often heard of as academics’ wish for the new researcher generation, according to the data, it appeared to be a narrow and inconsistent perspective as a curricular approach. namely, teachers pointed out that, in fact, there is no room for great numbers of emerging researchers – even ten per cent of their graduates would be too much. students described how the curriculum was designed as if most of annala & mäkinen. the research-teaching nexus in higher education curriculum design 12 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci them would become researchers, but in reality, very few do. the following quote describes this dilemma: “some are very pleased with getting a scientific profession, and getting a disciplinary position at the university. but the others are very practical and they would like to study by doing, or by developing their practical competences.” (stu17f.) this kind of reflections appeared in vocational as well as in non-vocational degree programmes. however, the academics in this study perceived it contradictory to implement r–t nexus and to become, concurrently, more open and relevant to the needs of the labour market and society at large: “the problem is how to combine our own research interests and teaching content. it is also a problem with the curriculum design to define the needs of labour market.” (sta16m.) this ‘employment-approach’ indicates a current shift in a focus from teaching subject matter to that of students’ learning outcomes and competencies. in extreme cases, the outcome-based curriculum represents the product based view as a technical exercise having the objectives set, plans drawn up and applied, and finally the products (learning outcomes) measured (bobbit, 1918; tyler, 1949). this was depicted in the following quote: “indeed, the curriculum should be designed so that the labour markets would need us, that someone would like to employ us” (stu20f). some academics stressed the risk of this kind of curriculum development to recede from r–t nexus, or to devalue the aims of r–t nexus by serving only external and functional goals (cf. simons & elen, 2007). yorke (2006) suggests an alternative perspective by arguing that it is useful to distinguish the term employment from employability because of the vulnerability of the labour market to factors outside the control of the individual. according to him, employability refers to a person’s capability of gaining employment. in the present study, the students especially called for explicitly articulated academic competencies for demonstrating employability and creating connections with a range of possible employment opportunities available. many interviewees considered that so called transferable or generic attributes of graduates are the most important employability-related factors besides research skills within various disciplines, but according to bennet et al. (2000) they are seldom openly declared in curricula. therefore, the curriculum ought to include explicit expressions on how learning to conduct research, process information analytically, make knowledge-based solutions, and bring challenging processes to a successful conclusion help students to confront with challenges in working life. these attributes are similar to the concept of competency, which refers to the potentials the students have to acquire in order to achieve high levels of performance (cf. rowe, 1995; dubois, 1993). reflecting on these findings, we would argue that overall, it is a question of transparency of the curriculum and articulating what the significance of scientific understanding is inside and outside the academy. this is important especially for students with exclusionary views of professional and scientific/disciplinary goals, like “i think talking about research is boring, with all the graphs and quantitative stuff (stu5f)”. many students believed that reflecting the needs of the changing society and conceptualising the r–t nexus could affect their learning positively. by integrating and clearly articulating the significance of research within subject-specific areas, the competencies that are intended to be transferable and the employability-related capabilities in the curriculum, students could be facilitated to cope in different contexts (cf. barnett & coate, 2005). the need to face the reality of contemporary students was present also in some academics’ views: annala & mäkinen. the research-teaching nexus in higher education curriculum design 13 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci we have to react somehow when discussing with students. we can’t just require them, for instance, to know the poetics of aristotle, and not have them know what to do with it. i’m not abandoning the ideal and holiness of the arts, or that research is fundamental, but at the same time we should investigate what’s going on in the field, because there hasn’t been such a radical change for130 years. (sta25f.) according to another perception, the questions of employability and the tensions between theory and practice should not be taken as a threat when implementing r–t nexus, but as a pedagogical challenge, assisting students in making a leap from learning theories out of books to application in the field: “vocational, professional and scientific aims are contradictory. it should not be denied. we should defend the status of scientific approach and research. but most of all we should think of how we could take advantage of these tensions pedagogically.” (sta1m.) barnett (2011) makes a similar point when he proposes that we cannot escape the presence of prevailing ideologies in society, affecting he, but we can face them as pedagogical challenges and try to reinforce their virtuous aspects instead of pernicious ones. previous could be characterized by the praxis model of curriculum introduced by grundy (1987). here, the curriculum design develops through the continuous dynamic interaction of ongoing research in action and its reflection. thus, the integrative and working life conscious curriculum seeks to respond to r–t nexus through competency needs expected by job markets, but positioning them into the academic r–t practices and curricular ideals. future oriented representations the interviewed academics and students raised only a limited number of thoughts on students’ future and identity building. however, there is evidence from the literature that an individual’s relationship to time is considered to be a basic dimension of human identity forming and functioning (horstmanshof & zimitat, 2006). zimbardo and boyd (1999) have found that it is important to consider this temporal orientation, because it is mostly a nonconscious process that gives order and coherence to one’s expectations for the future. the interviews raised for us as researchers, a question of the relation of r–t nexus to the student’s own meaning making and identity building, supported by thoughts of barnett and coate (2005). with the concept of ‘being’ they emphasise the formation of student’s personality and identity. in this data, the students’ personal experiences, existential issues and dilemmas linked through an awareness and exploration of a career are focal questions for the students and the staff. some students argued that the staff members are not able to reflect the students’ potential needs for their career outside the university. the academics’ notions of the r–t nexus in curriculum development were inclined to refer to a quite one-sided or narrow perspective on students’ partnership in a research community, as mentioned in the following quote: “it is rather a special discipline that requires more like a traditional university student’s mentality” (sta19m). these kinds of notions indicate that for the staff, there may be inflexible views of students’ life course and career development. research by vest (2005) states that universities, particularly the ones with a research focus, has a fundamental role in helping students to see the connections between their degree, disciplinary communities and career. annala & mäkinen. the research-teaching nexus in higher education curriculum design 14 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci in the data, contradictory views appeared when talking about students participating in research and sharing intellectual experiences during their studies. the academics mentioned challenges in encouraging the students to create experiences that would engage them with their own creativity, critical thinking, problem solving and application of the scientific models. one staff member commented: “for instance, the student union has resisted the workshop themes that are in line with staff’s research projects, because they consider that we won‘t do a stroke of unpaid work for you, so do your research yourselves” (sta25f). this kind of cultural ethos puts down efforts to find new ways of integrating academics’ and students’ aims towards the same direction and to learn from each other. instead of the traditional academic ethos of research-intensive and scientific aims, some interviewed students had relatively high expectations of the he curriculum to be designed in a way that courses satisfy their actual needs, like in the following: they will be socialised by studying here in the world of science and research, but then they gradually begin to socialise to their professional life also, and then they develop an attitude that research is ’yuck’ (sta1m). mcinnis and hartley (2002) point to changes in societies as one factor affecting students’ academic engagement and continuation of studies. as horstmanshof and zimitat (2003) have noted, some students are continually evaluating the costs and benefits associated with the demands made on their time and energy by their competing roles, investing in those roles that are perceived to be more rewarding and disinvesting in those that appear relatively more costly. according to our previous analysis, we propose these kinds of curricular views as signs of a commodified curriculum which might encourage students to make use of curricula just for the worth of their own interests (mäkinen & annala, 2010; see also autio, 2003, 2006; molesworth et al., 2011). the risk is that r–t nexus is entirely non-existent in commodified curriculum. besides the commodified approach, there also emerged contributive views. some students emphasized the importance of supporting certain kind of qualities and dispositions; arguing that the attainment of certain knowledge-base or methodological skills are not as important as encouragement to do things: to teach us that kind of attitude that we begin to follow our passions and interests. i’d like to see that the curriculum design, it should make it possible for students to follow their own hearts or [laughs] listen some disciplinary voice and to go this way, to investigate this problem, this is interesting (stu6m). this student’s quote reflects boyer’s (1990) definition of scholarship as a discovery which, for him, comes closest to the idea of holistic approach to research as an internal process, where the intention is to gain understanding (cf. brew, 2003). a teacher from the same department as the student above admits that contemporary students have a more comprehensive view: “our students come here with a passionate spirit [laughs], year by year they think more of their employment and similar real things, not just that they should save the world but it would be nice if they would make a living out of it, too [laughs]” (sta12f). fostering integration of theory, practice and students’ identity building as well as the r–t nexus indicates the autobiographical view on curriculum as articulated by pinar annala & mäkinen. the research-teaching nexus in higher education curriculum design 15 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci (1994), which animates students’ habits of mind. costa (1991) suggests this is what intelligent people do when they are confronted with problems, and are making decisions to which there are no immediately apparent solutions. this phenomenon could also be characterized by brew’s (2003) notion of the r–t nexus as a journey view. the autobiographical curriculum is reminiscent of the cyclical process of learning in which the student’s experiences of his/her own past and visions of the future dovetail into each other. together they help students to attach themselves to study processes and to position themselves in their post-education life trajectories, and by that he is promoting the active citizenship and well-being. pinar’s (1994) notion of this autobiographical curriculum concurs with what vallance (1986) calls the personal commitment to the curriculum. commitment promotes the idea of lifelong learning and makes a connection to the continuing changes in working life and society. likewise according to barnett & coate (2005), a personal relation to knowledge and knowing plays a pivotal role in he. they speak of curriculum as ‘engagement, in which the cornerstone of study is not the intrinsic value of knowledge, the subject taught, competence or learning outcomes but rather the process of coming to know’(barnett & coate, 2005, 59). in curriculum design these arguments indicate the comprehensive and processual approach (cf. barnett & coate, 2005; pinar, 1994; pinar et al., 1995). in this sense, curriculum design could be seen as a dialogical process between teachers, students and disciplinary knowledge which is grounded in practice, not only by performing but inquiring and examining (cf. pinar 1994; stenhouse, 1975; mckernan, 1993). from the students’ viewpoint this may suggest that curriculum design focuses on engaging students in various forms of inquiry and encouraging them to become analytical and critical thinkers. in all, according to barnett (2005), he in general should edge its practices in the direction of ‘disciplinary wonder’ and away from the technical rationality implicit in the ‘skills agenda’. conclusions this study aimed to extend understanding of the complexity of r–t nexus from the point of view of curriculum studies. the study revealed various interpretations of the aims of curriculum design and the ultimate aims of he, portraying university as a split community. accordingly, there were tensions between research and teaching, theory and practice, university and surrounding society. it seems to be a question of academic communities of practice comprising values and academic cultures, as well as conceptions of scholarship, research and student learning. the results are consistent with neumann’s (1992, 1994) and brew’s (2010) notions of the academic communities of practice playing significant roles in framing the r–t nexus. according to the present results, the curriculum design approached the ‘core point’ of r–t nexus when the academics and students were ready to give up the split nature of academic practices. r–t nexus in the ideal ‘core point’ seemed to include five pivotal criteria featuring the comprehensive curriculum, which are summarised in table 2. table 2. summary of the pivotal criteria promoting r–t nexus in comprehensive curriculum design annala & mäkinen. the research-teaching nexus in higher education curriculum design 16 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci representations r–t nexus in curriculum design disciplinary intangible r–t nexus: curriculum facilitating progress in students’ inclination, attitude and commitment to knowledge and disciplinary wonder. societal intersectional r–t nexus: curriculum interconnecting faculty level research with stakeholders and students concerning contemporary phenomena. scholarship socially constructed r–t nexus: curriculum creating preconditions for acting in the academic community and offering space for the diverse growth of academic expertise. functional r–t nexus implementing competency needs: curriculum encountering the expectations of labour market, but positioning them into the academic r–t practices and curricular ideals. future oriented r–t nexus as contributive journey with students’ autobiographical experiences: curriculum animating students’ temporal orientation and habits of mind. in order to create comprehensive and proactive curricular culture towards the nexus of research, teaching and learning in he, there is an obvious need to give close attention to processual approach in curriculum design. curriculum as a process encourages academics in professional development activities to conduct research, to add new to existing knowledge and to contribute to society through integrating and disseminating the research ideas and knowledge (cf. brew, 2003). it enables academics to facilitate educational incidents in interaction with students and colleagues. thus, the curriculum will be socially constructed and, as such, will reflect the r–t nexus and the engagement of students and academics. compared to the static, syllabus view of curriculum representing the knowledge generated and transmitted by ‘the others’, the dynamic view of curriculum enables the generation of new knowledge and discovery by academics and students alike, following the original humboldtian idea of mutual learning. this, we would argue, has significant effects on students’ ways of being citizens after leaving the academy and developing the communities of practice in the society. that is why it is important to reflect the curriculum design from the point of view of autobiographical curriculum (cf. pinar 1994). although the questions of employability and taking the surrounding society into account may contradict humboldtian ideals of learning for its own sake (schleiermacher, 1808/1959, 276, 281), in contemporary society the majority of graduates do need employment. to be aware of the surrounding society and life outside the university does not devalue the importance of disciplinary research and ways of approaching knowledge generation. yet in order to promote r–t nexus from outside the university, the prerequisites should be revaluated: the strategic priorities and institutional, national and global reward systems for he (cf. brew, 2003, 2010; coate et al., 2001). this study suggests that future research on r–t nexus in curriculum design would benefit from investigating, for example, how students and academics develop r–t nexus on the basis of their personal learning, teaching and researching experiences. in addition, the question of how to give more prominence to the collaborative research-based teaching is of great importance. furthermore, it would be interesting to study the contemporary ideas of annala & mäkinen. the research-teaching nexus in higher education curriculum design 17 transnational curriculum inquiry 8 (1) 2011 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci higher education, also other than humboldtian, and discover the current mixture of values emerging in he curriculum design. acknowledgements this study has been carried out in campus conexus -project funded by finland’s ministry of education and european social fund. this support is gratefully acknowledged. we would like to thank two anonymous reviewers and the editor as well as professor lin norton, norman brady and päivi svärd for their constructive comments. notes 1 johanna.annala@uta.fi 2 marita.makinen@uta.fi the authors contributed equally. 3 education, psychology, literature and arts, translation studies, social work, sociology, history, music anthropology, computer science, mathematics, information sciences and interactive media, medicine, nursing science, health sciences, political science and international relations, regional studies, economics, law, administrative sciences, journalism and mass communication, acting, speech communication and voice research. 4 the interviewed students were studying as follows: 1st year one, 2nd year five, 3rd year five, 4th year five, 5th year five, 8th year one, 9th year one. in finnish research universities, the students are directly admitted for a master's degree (a bachelor's degree is included in the studies for a master's degree). references autio, t. 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(2011). enhancing the research-teaching nexus: building teaching-based research from research-based teaching. international journal of teaching and learning in higher education, 23 (1), 1–10. available online at: http://www.isetl.org/ijtlhe/pdf/ijtlhe827.pdf (accessed 10 september 2011). submitted: june, 13 rd , 2011 approved: august, 01 st , 2011 http://www.utwente.nl/mb/cheps/publications/publications%202009/eu%20innovation%20agenda%20f%20vanvught.pdf http://www.utwente.nl/mb/cheps/publications/publications%202009/eu%20innovation%20agenda%20f%20vanvught.pdf http://www.isetl.org/ijtlhe/pdf/ijtlhe827.pdf to cite this article please include all of the following details: luo, lixin. (2004). letter to my sister about doll’s 4r’s. transnational curriculum inquiry, 1(1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> letter to my sister about doll’s 4 r’s lixin luo university of victoria, canada abstract this article applies william doll’s postmodern perspective on curriculum to the education of the author’s 4-year-old niece. it is written as a letter to the child’s mother (the author’s sister) and thus offers an interpretation of the applicability of doll’s theory to education in the people’s republic of china. the article begins by introducing some key concepts in theorizing a postmodernist curriculum and draws attention to the differences between a modernist curriculum and a postmodernist curriculum. the article then examines doll’s 4r’s (richness, recursion, relations, and rigor), with particular reference to their implications for chinese education, and their patterns (in ambiguity, webbing and play) when understood as a whole. the article concludes with the author’s reflections on how postmodernist curriculum theorizing has influenced her personal worldview. background information dongdong is my niece. she is 4 years old. she is studying in shenzhen lotus kindergarten, where they are using montessori’s education methods and advocating gardner’s multiple intelligences. dongdong’s education is always a major topic of conversation between my sister and myself. letter to my sister dear sister, i have learned about postmodernism with dr william doll for two months. it is a very exciting learning process because my mind is opened wider and wider. now it is time to share some thoughts with you. i hope it can trigger change in your mind, too. in the following letter, i will first explain some of my favorite concepts, and then introduce a postmodernist curriculum to you. difference to talk about difference, i need to start with piaget. according to piaget, cognitive development follows an ‘equilibrium-disequilibrium-reequilibration’ model, which means that for mind to develop, a person who is in one stable status must be stimulated to enter into a status of disturbance, then come through it and arrive at a new stable status. what stimulates this process? difference does. difference can be either a difference between two things or a change between a thing in time 1 and the same thing in time 2 (bateson, 1979/2002). the news of difference or change is information for a living system. our body needs difference to function. in the human mind, ‘the interaction between parts of mind is triggered by difference’ (p.89). our sensory system also can operate only with changes. for example, if you happen to put your finger close to a fire, you’ll draw your hand back from it immediately. it’s the difference between the temperature of your finger and the one of the fire that stimulates your body to respond. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci lixin luo: letter to my sister about doll’s 4 r’s transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 29 not all difference is an important difference. for example, you might not taste sweetness if you add too little sugar in a glass of water. the difference is too slight to perceive. then, there is no difference, for you. everyone has a different threshold of difference. if the difference is too big, the organism might just refuse it. for instance, if you are asked to learn a chemistry course at graduate level now, you might find it is hard for you to understand because you lack the necessary chemistry knowledge. the difference between your prior knowledge and new knowledge is too much for you to accept. this understanding of difference has very important implications in education. in order to make learning possible, we need to make the difference between students’ former knowledge and present information perceivable and acceptable for students. as such, the learning tasks we provide to students should be slightly higher than students’ existing ability and can be finished by students with teachers’ help. in other words, they should be within a student’s zone of proximal development. in chinese, these tasks are ‘the peaches that you can pick by jumping’. as you reflect how you teach dongdong to speak, you will understand how important it is to pay attention to the zone of proximal development. on the other hand, information, the news of difference, ‘consists of differences that make a difference’ (bateson, 1979/2002, p. 92). different people might notice different differences in a piece of information. not all differences in it are effective for an individual. given a piece of cake and a sponge, you might notice that they have different densities whereas dongdong finds that only one of them is edible. so, to teach, educators need to try to perceive difference from students’ perspectives. that’s why some early childhood educators advocate adults lower themselves occasionally and see from children’s height. this will help them to better understand children’s views. next time, if you give something to her and she is not interested in it, try to think about whether the problem is in what you offer. differences bring us depth. without differences, the world would be flat. multiple visions of an object help us to view it more deeply. reading two books by one author lets us understand the author better than reading one. also, differences facilitate understanding. using pictures and words to explain a phenomenon can assist people to understand faster than just using one. so, diversity should be celebrated. as you know, there is multiple intelligences education in dongdong’s kindergarten. but, this way of education is still rare in most elementary schools. hence, it is you, as her mother, who needs to encourage her to learn and present in different ways, not just reading and writing. pattern pattern can be understood as regularity, nature, type and character. it can be personality, the calendar, regular office hours, and so on. pattern is hierarchy: pattern can be a pattern of patterns. for example, i can say pigs are similar to chickens because they have a similar pattern. that is, ‘both of them have patterns.’ from a lower level of pattern to a higher level of pattern, we need abstraction ability, which is exactly what education aims to help us to improve. for instance, first we learn to use number 8 to present 8 concrete items. later, we begin to use x to present concrete numbers. pattern is a key in apprehending the world. if we can see a pattern at a higher level, we can understand the world more and better. paying attention to pattern can liberate our mind from explicit cause-effect relationships and linear thinking. for instance, in china, people always view model classes as teachers’ shows. they often just focus on the concrete ways of instruction. however, copying those methods is not guaranteed to succeed. for example, the concrete ways used in a model class in beijing might not be effective in a classroom in tibet, because school environments are different and students are too. the ways used by beijing’s teachers might be suitable for beijing’s children who feel more comfortable to learn from reading and writing than tibetans since beijing’s children have more chances to be immersed in a literary environment. sticking http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci lixin luo: letter to my sister about doll’s 4 r’s transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 30 to the concrete instructional approaches is linear cause-effect thinking, which can limit our minds. actually, what we need to learn from a model class should be the pattern in it and we need to be more aware of its context. we should make our classes more locally fit. last time, you told me that you were too busy to teach dongdong. i don’t really think so. education is not a thing that you need to spend special time doing in a particular place. what we need to think about is: what is education? what is knowledge? what are their patterns? there are many people who could not learn well in formal education who have succeeded by learning informally. also, many famous people who were born into illiterate families succeeded, even though their parents had not the time or ability to teach them. one of the reasons is that these people, in their daily lives, acquired diligence and persistence, which helped them to achieve success later. there is not one particular way of doing what we call education, or of producing knowledge either. learning can be anytime, anywhere and from anybody and anything. approaches to learning and to forms of knowledge can be numerous. but, they all have a similar pattern – they help people to improve an ability to abstract and they cultivate a habit of thinking. a famous chinese educator, tao xingzhi says: ‘life is education’. education takes place in every day, or every minute of life. education is a habit. levels of learning bateson’s theory of levels of learning is a pattern of humans’ and animals’ mental development. bateson believes that there are three levels of learning in humans and animals. learning i is a kind of learning when you begin to know how to respond to something or to solve a specific problem. for example, you learn that you cannot touch fire. in learning ii, ‘the subject discovers the nature of the context itself, that is he [sic] not only solves the problems that confront him, but becomes more skilled in solving problems in general’ (berman, 1981, p. 216). the person in learning ii begins to understand the pattern inside a class of problems. for instance, if you learn that you cannot touch not only fire, but also all objects with high temperatures, you are in learning ii. learning iii is hard to achieve. at this level, ‘it is not a matter of one paradigm versus another, but an understanding of the nature of paradigm itself. such changes involve a profound reorganization of personality – a change in form, not just content’ (p. 217). here is an example of three levels of learning. you design an experiment to test whether mice can learn the routes of a maze. the hungry mice that can remember the routes to the food in the maze are in learning i. they build connections between different points along the routes. but if they can realize, like you, as the person who designs the maze, that the map of the maze is a star, they will be in learning ii. now, just imagine, the mice have figured out this pattern, and use it as a rule to test other mazes in other experiments. if the new mazes are different, they will fail to get the food. if, as many humans in learning ii do, they refuse to give up this pattern, they will get confused and finally be mad because of anomalies. but, if they can realize that the design of mazes is actually decided by the researcher, and the whole matter is just an experiment, a game to play – that it is impossible for the mazes to have one stable pattern – then they jump into learning iii. they will begin to explore the maze and use the new map they develop to get the food. once they fail, they will just try to explore again without confusion. i think this status of learning iii is, in chinese, hua, which means ‘melt’ and is highly valued in buddhism. in learning iii, all patterns are melted into a whole pattern – all patterns are relatively valid. the truth is that there is no truth. the person at this stage will not persist with each individual pattern any more. as such, this person will not be limited to one pattern, one box. he or she will be more flexible to think outside the box and explore alternative patterns. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci lixin luo: letter to my sister about doll’s 4 r’s transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 31 systems thinking to jump from a lower level of learning to a higher one, we need systems thinking. as a famous chinese poem says: ‘you cannot see the mountain, because you are in the mountain’. in order to see a pattern at higher level, we need to leave the parts and view all parts as a whole. according to systems thinking, the essential properties of a system ‘arise from the interactions and relationships among the parts… they are destroyed when the system is dissected… the nature of the whole is always different from the mere sum of its parts’ (capra, 1996, p. 29). systems thinking focuses on connectedness, relationships and context. while ‘analytical thinking means taking something apart in order to understand it, systems thinking means putting it into the context of a larger whole’ (p.30). the behaviour of the parts is decided by the whole. as such, to understand any object, we need to explore its environment or context at the same time. based on systems thinking, ‘the world is no more a collection of isolated objects, but is a network of phenomena that are fundamentally interconnected and interdependent’ (capra, 1996, p. 7). a network is a basic form of life. as capra says, whenever you see life, you see networks. in a network, the change in one single part might elicit dramatic change in the whole system. also, whenever a part does anything to the web, it so does to itself. the same is said in a chinese proverb: ‘you will get kindness back if you are kind to people’. systems thinking suggests that to understand a system we need to shift our attention from parts to relations and patterns. and humans need to cooperate with different members in one network, otherwise we ourselves will be destroyed. chaos thinking that chaos and order are coexisting in all living systems is an application of systems thinking. as katherine hayles (1990) writes: the fundamental assumption of chaos theory, by contrast [to the newtonian paradigm] is that the individual unit does not matter. what does matter are recursive symmetries between different levels of the system…the regularities of the system emerge not from knowing about individual units but from understanding correspondence across scales (quoted in doll, 1993, p. 91) it is when we view all parts in a system as a whole over time that the order of the system can be seen. in education this implies that ‘it is not the individual as an isolated entity which is important but the person within the communal, experiential, and environmental frame’ (p. 92). there is an unseen pattern lying in students’ operations in a number of different situations. to understand a student, we cannot separate the student from his or her background, history and context. also, we need to observe the student over time. in chaos lies not only invisible order but also the seeds of development. chaos is indispensably needed for a living system to transform: ‘in open systems, a great deal of dissipation must be developed if transformation is to take place’ (doll, 1993, p.104). in other words, equilibrium must be disturbed or shaken profoundly if chaos is to be reached. according to stuart kauffman’s (1995) law of complexity, natural selection favours and sustains living systems ‘at the edge of chaos’. in chaos are diversity and complexity. they make living systems alive. both james lovelock’s daisyworld model and stuart kauffman’s example of minimum programs show us that diversity brings flexibility. the self-regulation of the daisyworld ‘becomes more and more stable as the model’s complexity increases’ (capra, 1996, p. 110). in a minimum program, which is maximally compressed, ‘any change in any symbol would be expected to cause catastrophic variation in the behaviour of the algorithm’ (kauffman, 1995, p. 154). these two examples imply that squeezing out redundancy in living systems can make them vulnerable. living systems must be robust. in http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci lixin luo: letter to my sister about doll’s 4 r’s transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 32 addition, as capra (1996) says: ‘creativity is the generation of diversity’ (p.221). diversity makes creativity possible. how can living systems maintain chaos and order at the same time, and also be capable of transforming themselves towards novelty? self-making and dissipative structures make this possible. according to capra’s (1996) key criteria of living systems, self-making is the pattern of organization in living systems. living systems’ ‘order and behaviour are not imposed by the environment but are established by the system itself’ (p. 167). by the recursive attribute, a living system affects and thereby makes itself. whitehead (1929/1967) states in his philosophy of process: ‘how an actual entity becomes constitute what that actual entity is… its “being” is constituted by its “becoming”’ (quoted in doll, 1993, p.142; emphasis in original). living systems interact with the environment continually through exchanging energy and matter with it. through this interaction, natural selection can play a role in the evolution of living systems. but such interaction can only trigger living systems to change. living systems change by themselves. as you know, you can lead the horse to the river, but you cannot make it drink. kauffman (1995) says that evolution is ‘a marriage of spontaneous order and natural selection’ (p. 304). evolution is affected by natural selection and also self-making. the theory of self-making implies that transformation of students is a spontaneous result of the student’s own self-organizations. school environments and teachers cannot impose change upon students but they can facilitate students’ changes. as such, education should be co-constructed by students and teachers. also, for transformation to happen, students’ autonomy and recursion (the loop back of students’ thoughts on their thoughts) are extremely necessary and important. dissipative structure is the structure of living systems. according to ilya prigogine, by dissipative structure, living systems ‘continually maintain themselves in a state far from equilibrium’ (quoted in capra, 1996, p. 181), in which living systems can keep the same overall structures over long periods of time in spite of ongoing interactions with the environment. because living systems are open to outside environments and have self-making abilities, they will gradually move further from equilibrium. eventually they will reach a bifurcation point: ‘a threshold of stability at which the dissipative structure may either break down or break through to one of several new states of order’ (p. 191). at this point, the dissipative structure shows ‘an extraordinary sensitivity to small fluctuations in its environment. a tiny random fluctuation… can induce the choice of path’ (p. 191). this makes new forms of living systems possible. by the recursion and the openness of a living system, how it will change at a bifurcation point ‘will depend on the system’s history and on various external conditions and can never be predicted’ (p. 183). also, because of repeated feedback loops, minute difference in the dissipative structure will bring amplified difference later. this makes prediction of the pathways impossible, even when there are no bifurcations. in sum, the heart of the theory of dissipative structure is dissipative structures are sources of orderly creation, …[also] they are indeterminate’ (doll, 1993, p. 106). the theory of dissipative structures has very significant implications in changing peoples’ worldviews. first, because small differences at the beginning can make huge differences later, we need to pay attention to the subtle differences in students’ understandings of knowledge and ways of thinking or doing. similarly, to assist students’ development, we need to help them to change just slightly and gradually. second, since living systems are unpredictable in the long-term, ‘we must give up the pretence of long-term prediction’ (kauffman, 1995, p. 29). there is no absolute, guaranteed future out there waiting for us. as capra (1997) suggests, we should change community design from one based on visible or existing structures, to one that incorporates present and emerging structures. in the educational context, educators should help to set a learning environment that honors and calls for http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci lixin luo: letter to my sister about doll’s 4 r’s transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 33 students standard tests academic foundations rules and values learning methods creativity and novelty. in sum, chaos theory indicates that diversity (or complexity) is the true status of life. in this seeming chaos lies invisible order and the seed of development. with the understanding of difference, pattern, chaos, and systems thinking, we can begin to open our minds and change from modernism to postmodernism. postmodernism and modernism formed from descartes’ and newton’s modern science, and developed quickly through industrialism, modernism has already dominated modern peoples’ minds. modernists view the world as a stable one with objective truths. science is truth and it can prove truth. human beings will master all truths of the world one day. modernism is dualistic. everything has a diametrical other, like black and white, good and bad, true and false, and so on. people get used to selecting either-or: you can be either normal or abnormal, you cannot be both; you can choose right or wrong, you cannot choose both. in this framework, modern curriculum is like a box (see chart 1). chart 1: modern curriculum in a modern curriculum, students’ learning goals and contents are pre-set by others outside the box. learning methods are limited. ‘abnormal’ approaches are not allowed. rules and values are fixed by others and imposed on students. students learn objective truth in the classroom, seriously, without heart. students are limited in this box. they bump up and down, back and forth in it and cannot go outside the boundary. thus they cannot grow into alternative forms other than boxes. modern curriculum is a closed system. it is inert. it is time for change. postmodernism emerges from the development of human knowledge, especially after the birth of quantum theory and relativity theory. stable objective truths and dualisms are challenged radically. as a new pattern of understanding of the world, postmodernists believe all truth is relative (to the historical situation). as bateson (1979/2002) asserts, ‘there is no objective experience’ (p. 28). and ‘science probes; it does not prove’ (p. 27). postmodernists view this world as changeable, diverse and connected. postmodernists prefer verb instead of noun – everything is moving and changing. they always ask ‘what [it] can be’ while modernists ask ‘what [it] is’ (doll, 1993, p. 163). postmodernists say ‘both’ and ‘and’. they ask for alternatives and relationships. under such a framework, a postmodern curriculum is like many open circles (see chart 2). chart 2 postmodern curriculum students http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci lixin luo: letter to my sister about doll’s 4 r’s transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 34 in a postmodernist curriculum, students can move inside and outside freely. boundary is flexible and movable. diversity, multiple perspectives and intelligences are celebrated. students dare and are free to explore alternatives, to inquire, to interpret. educational goals are not pre-set and external to students, they emerge from the learning process and are called from within the students. learning is co-constructed by students and teachers. reflection and conversation are always ongoing. local community is valued. to summarize: post-modernist curriculum is a verb, a movement. next, i will introduce you to a (not the) postmodernist curriculum advocated by william doll. doll (1993) suggests the 4r’s of richness, recursion, relations, and rigor to serve as criteria for a curriculum designed to foster a postmodernist view. in order to extend your mind, i will explain its application in general school education. richness doll (1993) writes that richness refers to ‘a curriculum’s depth, to its layers of meaning, to its multiple possibilities or interpretations’ (p. 176). offering to students only differences – multiple materials, selections, possibilities and even means of instructions or learning – is not rich enough. richness focuses on quality instead of quantity. there are at least two patterns in this richness. first, as whitehead (1929/1967) argues: ‘do not teach too many subjects… what you do teach, teach thoroughly… let the main ideas which are introduced to a child’s education be few and important’ (p. 2). richness is served for the aims of education – abstraction and a habit of thinking. as such, not only the richness we introduce to students should have patterns, but also it should be co-constructed by teachers and students, according to students’ emerging abilities of abstraction in dealing with richness. for example, you are teaching dongdong the differences between skirts and pants. instead of telling you more of the differences she perceives between these two kinds of clothing, she tells you that grandpa doesn’t wear skirts. you’d better follow her in this direction instead of presenting more clothes to her, because she is beginning to find a relationship between members of a class. maybe you can ask her a question, such as ‘why doesn’t grandpa wear skirts?’ to guide her to explore the relationship between humans and clothing – a larger class than that of just types of clothing. second, richness needs to have the ‘right amount’ of indeterminacy, anomaly, inefficiency, chaos, disequilibrium, dissipation, lived experience’ (doll, 1993, p. 176). the questions we bring to students need to be ‘real problems’ for them. as such, richness is diversity or complexity, in which ambiguity is emphasized; alternatives and patterns are purposefully sought. to advocate diversity, educators can value multiple intelligences; cherish and celebrate individual differences; assess students by focusing on their personal progress instead of having them compete with others, etc. but all of these are less than enough. to make diversity possible, there are at least two more things we need to do. firstly, we should keep rules simple and flexible. complexity can be generated from simple rules. strict (and often complex) rules are set to make students or teachers follow each step without a subjective ‘misunderstanding’. as such, these rules decrease ambiguity (and understanding). no thinking is required – one needs only to follow others’ orders. students educated in such a system may become dependent on these rules to act. later on, they become unable to think. therefore, creativity is impossible. from another point of view, strict and complex rules are often detailed in order to produce no waste and make education ‘effective’. however, if there is no waste, then there is no redundancy and therefore no flexibility. both rule systems and students relying on these systems are vulnerable. thus we need to think about whether we are speeding up towards disaster or development. two examples may be useful here to extend an understanding of rule. one is that japanese elementary teachers usually let new g1 students live in one classroom without any rules for http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci lixin luo: letter to my sister about doll’s 4 r’s transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 35 the first few months of schooling (lewis, 1995). after a period of chaos, students often spontaneously ask for rules to organize their activities. as such, the classroom rules are local. they are fitted to students’ needs and students have high autonomy. this example implies that self-emerging order is possible if educators have a high tolerance of chaos and give students suitable guides towards order. another example is about a chinese student who got his bachelor’s degree in english and was eager to study computer science at the graduate level. by explaining to the professor he wanted to study with, that he understood the same patterns in english and in computer language, he was admitted into the program and finished it successfully. this example prompts me to think about the admission requirements of graduate programs. i wonder whether we can leave a door open for ‘abnormal’ students without ‘suitable academic’ or ‘professional’ backgrounds. can we have an item such as ‘others’ in the requirements list? for example, in education programs, i believe that as long as people have a passion for teaching or learning – the essential attributes that a good teacher must have – they should be included. (in fact, education is about teaching and learning.) at least, we should have ways to let ‘strange’ people in. otherwise, by excluding people who are enthusiastic learners, we narrow down our possible creativity. secondly, we need to provide supportive environments for students. to be different, to be abnormal, students need to feel safe and supported; thereby they can be adventurous. as such, we need the kind of community advocated by doll (2003), in which there is both care and critique. teachers need to provide positive and constructive feedback to students; allow students to have enough time to reflect; never say ‘no way’ or ‘impossible’; give more suggestions instead of judgements, and keep the dialogues going. teachers also need to pay attention to students’ zones of proximal development. students in school environments, as living systems with dissipative structures, are sensible to teachers’ comments and supports. as such, teachers should trigger students only slightly each time. if teachers show too high expectations of students, it might make them nervous and induce low confidence. the worst thing is that these expectations might act as severe perturbations and can effect a living system breakdown instead of a successful transformation. so, good teachers should be good at play. they need to be changeable and adapt to students according to their differences. on the one hand, they are friendly. they always give you feedback and supports. and when they appear, they are just a little bit better than you in some areas and you can catch up with them. but when you think you have already made it, they will show you that you still can learn from them. on the other hand, they never let you know what their real expectations are in one period. they just guide you to set an appropriate goal within your zone of proximal development. if you succeed, they show you that you have already moved beyond their expectations. if you fail, they show you that they still believe in your ability. as such, they make you always feel confident. unconsciously, you gradually improve your ability. to sum up, richness is chaos, but it is the state of life. it is time for romance and play. richness asks for patterns and diversity. richness aims at helping students succeed in diverse and creative ways instead of in uniform ways. so, instead of pre-setting goals and directions for dongdong, co-construct richness with her, so that her own direction can emerge and she can be unique and strong. recursion recursion refers to the ‘human capacity of having thoughts loop back to themselves’ (doll, 1993, p. 177). the differences between one person’s thoughts in a different time or between one person’s thoughts and another’s trigger the person’s cognitive system to operate and thereby mental development is possible. doll writes that ‘such looping, thoughts on thoughts, distinguishes human consciousness; it is the way we make meaning… also the way one http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci lixin luo: letter to my sister about doll’s 4 r’s transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 36 produces a sense of self, through reflective interaction with the environment, with others, with a culture’ (p. 177). without recursion, living systems’ self-making is impossible and systems will be dead. recursion is not simple repetition; it is reflective and its frame is open. it ‘aims at developing competence – the ability to organize, combine, inquire, use something heuristically’ (p. 178). thus, to reflect is not just for better repetition of what has happened before, it is for creativity – to be able to do what has never been done before, to figure out patterns and to jump to a higher level of learning. through reflection, by ‘distanc[ing] oneself in some way from what one knows’ (bruner, 1986, quoted in doll, p.177), we can understand the outside world and ourselves with depth. ‘recursive reflection’ lies at the heart of a transformative curriculum (p. 178). as dewey (1926/1964) says, education without reflection is ‘really stupid’ (quoted in doll, 1993, p. 138). doll points out that ‘in a curriculum that honors, values, uses recursion, there is no fixed beginning or ending’ (p. 178). in this frame, every assignment or test should be taken as a beginning of new exploration or a new chance to learn. teachers can encourage students to respond to their comments on assignments, and then teachers can give more comments on students’ comments, likewise back and forth, keeping dialogue and reflection going. reflection takes time. otherwise, there is no difference between thoughts or the difference is too slight to be perceived. hence, educators need to rethink the value of silence. reflection needs others. through discussion with others, differences between thoughts of different people are revealed. reflection becomes possible. dewey, bruner and doll suggest that reflection should be private, public and communal. postmodern classrooms are conferences ‘where no one owns the truth and everyone has the right to be understood’ (kundera, 1986/1988, quoted in doll, 1993, p. 151), where everyone can speak out, where conversations are kept on going and where ‘the community of truth [which] advances our knowledge through conflict, not competition’ (palner, 1998, p. 103) can be shared and analyzed. recursion requires us to encourage students’ reflection on history. the theory of dissipative structures tells us that a dissipative structure’s future is related to its history (capra, 1996). the present of human society is formed by its past. without reflection on history, transformation of human culture and knowledge is impossible. on an individual level, history often is not useful immediately but it can have amplified influences in a person’s mind later. thus, we should emphasize history in education not omit it just because history appears outdated. history can be shared as stories. people always enjoy listening to stories as long as they can find relations between stories and their own lives. hence, how to make students see connections between their lives and history stories is one key in teaching history. to do this, we can integrate history with other subjects. for example, when teaching science, we can tell some stories about the scientists and the social contexts, and encourage them to explore the historical influences on the science. also, we can have students present their personal interpretations of history matters in different forms. no matter how we teach, we should emphasize seeking patterns in history instead of only memorizing and reciting isolated data. we should ask them to think ‘why things happened’ instead of ‘what happened’. by doing this, history can illuminate students’ future. you must still remember that i am the child in our family who has written the most letters of apology to our mum. mum always asked me to self-reflect whenever i did anything wrong. now, i have a high reflective ability. similarly, japanese kindergarten and elementary education fosters students’ reflection abilities by having a reflective meeting at the end of every school day (lewis, 1995). in the meeting, teachers invite students to discuss the major attainments and issues that happened in that day. this helps japanese students to form a reflective ability. i believe reflection is also a habit that education can and should cultivate. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci lixin luo: letter to my sister about doll’s 4 r’s transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 37 relations relations refer to ‘those within the curriculum – the matrix or network which gives it richness’, and to those outside school, ‘a large matrix within which the curriculum is embedded’ (doll, 1993, p. 179). paying attention to relations, cross-disciplinary education that integrates different subjects in one program should be advocated. but relations in a postmodernist frame are much more than those between materials, contents, and subjects. according to systems thinking, relations include all those in different system levels within an education context. here are four kinds of relations that educators should consider. firstly, we need to take students as a whole, having mental, emotional and biological properties. instead of thinking of cognition as mental behaviour in the brain, we should take it as ‘a phenomenon that expands throughout the organism, operating through an intricate chemical network of peptides that integrates our mental, emotional, and biological activities’ (capra, 1996, p. 285). this implies that we need to provide students with a rich, multisensory learning environment; also we need to have students engaging emotionally in learning activities. chinese educators used to exclude emotion from schooling because many chinese people believe that learning is always bitter. but all our thoughts, perceptions and bodily functions are colored by emotions. without emotional satisfaction, students’ motivation decreases and teachers’ passion diminishes, too. education should allow emotion to penetrate: teachers can show their personality and passion; students can enjoy learning. to improve students’ enjoyment in classrooms, we need to pay attention to the physical environment of classrooms and the relations between all members in the classroom (including teachers). we can invite students to decorate classrooms, encourage students to bring something they like to share with others, provide rich choices to students or let them have self-selected learning contents or topics, advocate that students communicate with each other and with teachers more often and so on. by doing these, we make learning more flexible to match students’ personal needs and interests. secondly, we need to encourage students to cooperate and learn from others. people need to realize that ‘independence is a political, not a scientific, term’ (margulis & sagan, quoted in capra, 1996, p. 296). human society always is interdependent, especially when the world is becoming a global village. with the development of the internet, more and more knowledge is distributed to people within the world. to survive and develop, all people need to respect and cooperate with others. to cultivate cooperative abilities, we can have students learn both from concord and from discordance. japanese kindergarten teachers usually cut off the number of toys to make discordance occur (lewis, 1995). they provide conditions to make conflicts happen and thereby students can learn how to deal with them. in contrast, some chinese parents offer too many toys to their children. by excluding negative experiences, these children are vulnerable when they face unhappy experiences in reality later. so, to help students build strong adaptation and cooperation abilities, we should not purposefully exclude discordance in schools, families, and societies. the ‘right amount’ of appropriate negative experiences can help people become robust. every quarrel and fight can be a valuable opportunity to teach students how to face and solve problems. also, discussion and debate should be used more often in classrooms. thirdly, we need to connect curriculum with the local community and make curriculum ‘locally fit’. as doll (1993) says, a textbook should be seen as ‘something to revise, not as something to follow. it is the base from which transformation occurs. curriculum in a postmodern frame needs to be created (self-organized) by the classroom community, not by textbook authors’ (p. 180). for example, when we teach english in beijing, we can introduce students to the great wall. but when we teach english in tibet, it might be better to introduce students to the pudala. on the one hand, to combine the key ideas (patterns) in the textbooks with concrete local resources can make teachers, especially those teaching in poor villages, to http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci lixin luo: letter to my sister about doll’s 4 r’s transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 38 ‘have rice to cook’. on the other hand, it makes learning relevant to students’ lives. students should be encouraged to use what they learn to solve local problems. in addition, to make curriculum locally fit, besides textbooks, we need to reconsider our teaching methods and educational goals. one of my classmates, joe, said: ‘we need 100 successful students, not 100 successful engineers’. education is to help students succeed in different ways not in a uniform way. we need to make our educational goals more locally achievable. a chinese teacher, who teaches in a remote village, shares this point. he says: ‘we don’t need universities here. what we need are colleges where students can learn skills useful for our local community.’ in terms of teaching methods, doll even suggests that teachers burn their guidebooks for teaching in order to be creative. by connecting curriculum with the local context, we make learning useful and meaningful to students. fourthly, we need to be aware of the strong interdependent relation between each member in nature. on the one hand, we must realize that nature, with its dissipative structure, ‘is unpredictable, sensitive to the surrounding world, influenced by small fluctuations’ (capra, 1996, p. 193). any change we make to nature may affect the whole system dramatically sooner or later. so, we must watch our steps. on the other hand, nature is much more mysterious than what human beings can imagine. as capra (1995) writes: ‘technologies like genetic engineering and a global communications network, which we consider to be advanced achievements of our modern civilization, have been used by the planetary web of bacteria for billions of years to regulate life on earth’ (p. 229). if we annihilate other species in the world because of our ignorance and arrogance, we not only cut off our chances to learn from nature but also we might annihilate ourselves as well. thus, we must respect and protect nature, and we need to cultivate and support students to do so. we can teach them how to plant, how to recycle; we can set classes in a natural environment and we can have students explore natural pollution problems. no matter how we teach, we need to notice that what we teach should be related to students’ lives, so that they can use the knowledge to change the world little by little. the above relations – with self, with others, with local community, and with nature – are just four examples of many different kinds of relations. the key in doll’s relations is that we not only need to pay attention to visible relations but also invisible ones and indirect ones, in which we need to take time to get feedback and response. rigor rigor in a postmodernist frame is different from precision. it draws on interpretation and indeterminacy. as doll (1993) says, ‘in dealing with indeterminacy, one can never be certain one “has it right”… one must continually be exploring, looking for new combinations, interpretations, patterns’ (p. 182). on the one hand, since the world is always changing, it is impossible for humans to master all the truths of the world. no truth is absolutely stable. so, people need to probe instead of prove the truth. by throwing all ideas into various combinations (whitehead, 1929/1967), by ‘playing with concepts’ (dewey, 1933/1971, quoted in doll, 1993, p. 182), by purposely looking for alternatives and relations, we can approach the truth. on the other hand, as the santiago theory of cognition tells us, ‘cognition… is not a representation of an independently existing world, but rather a continual bringing forth of a world through the process of living’ (capra, 1995, p. 267). as such, no objective reality and absolute truth exists any more. whether inner or outer, there is no pregiven and independent world. whenever we look at the outside world, we see a world, not the world. therefore, multiple interpretations and indeterminacy always exist for one matter. in this case, rigor is very necessary. doll (1993) writes: ‘in dealing with interpretation rigorously, one needs to be aware all valuations depend on (often hidden) assumptions’ (p. 183). without consciously ferreting out http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci lixin luo: letter to my sister about doll’s 4 r’s transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 39 and knowing these assumptions, we cannot understand others appropriately. therefore, we cannot keep the conversations with others going. as nikals luhmann points out, human society is a self-making network that is connected by communication and processes of communication: social systems use communication as their particular mode of autopoietic reproduction. their elements are communications that are … produced and reproduced by a network of communications and that cannot exist outside of such a network (quoted in capra, 1995, p. 212). communication is the energy and matter that is desired to flow continually in the dissipative structures of both the whole society and each individual. without communication, for an individual, cognitive transformation cannot happen; for the whole society, its pattern – a shared system of beliefs, cultures and values – a context of meanings is lost. human society’s knowledge, as a whole, cannot be developed either. in addition, according to humberto maturana, ‘communication is a coordination of behaviour among living organisms through mutual structural coupling’ (in capra, 1995, p.287). without communication, cooperation which asks for coordination of behaviour cannot happen. therefore, we should keep communication going. to do so, we should listen actively with an open heart. we need to talk with not to people. make more suggestions than judgments. we need to give time and freedom to let other people speak and flow so that we can see their patterns. although rigor in a postmodernist frame is different from precision, it doesn’t omit precision. rigor includes precision and romance. it emphasizes discipline and freedom at the same time. on the one hand, because the world is always changing, the exploration of the world will never end. we need to pursue precision – deeper understanding of the world by doing many tests and inquiries. on the other hand, we are free to use different approaches and means of exploration. we are free to play with the contents and combine ideas in different ways. in this way, learning is like cooking. we always can make new dishes by changing the ways of combining the same materials. with this freedom to play, if we make our dishes edible – make success achievable for students – precision and discipline can be fun. as doll (1993) writes, ‘creativity occurs by the interaction of chaos and order, between unfettered imagination and disciplined skill’ (p. 88). rigor makes creativity possible. moreover, since nobody owns the truth, rigor suggests that we respect others (including all creatures in the world), to be in awe of nature and to let others be free. being an adult educated in a modern curriculum, you might have already forgotten how to play and how to listen with an open heart – so try to let dongdong guide you. let her teach you how we can play and listen. up till now, i have explained doll’s 4r’s separately. but, doll’s 4r’s are not separate parts. they integrate as a whole. if we use these 4r’s as four new rules to measure our curriculum, then we totally lose doll’s points. doll’s perspective on curriculum is not a model but only one version of an interpretation. in doll’s classes, he always reminds us that this or that is just only one way, there are many other ways and we need to find them. he never wants to lead us into another model when we leave one model. what we need to learn from these 4r’s is the pattern, which emerges when we look at them as a whole. next, i will present the pattern i see in these 4r’s. i believe any postmodern curriculum should facilitate three fundamental changes in people’s minds. the first one is the perception of ambiguity. people must understand that ambiguity is the natural state of life and precision is artificial. like science, it is just a limited window of the world and it never can be objective. it cannot prove, only probe. also, since nature is unpredictable and is co-evolved with human beings, it is impossible for humans to master all knowledge of nature and control the whole world. science is not almighty. we http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci lixin luo: letter to my sister about doll’s 4 r’s transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 40 need to help students get used to ambiguity and indeterminacy instead of only strict precision and determinacy. in order to do so, we might teach non-linear mathematics and philosophy in students’ younger ages – for example, while they are in high school; while teaching science, we could emphasize the assumptions underlying theories and encourage students to challenge them. we can provide more open questions and have more discussions and debates in classrooms; or to use dr. doll’s way, we can have them challenge each other by using selfdesigned problems. in a word, the ways to introduce ambiguity are infinite; the pattern inside them is to encourage students to look for alternatives. for young children, arts, especially chinese painting, can be a good way to invite them to celebrate ambiguity. the second change is that we need to view this world as a web instead of only layers. a hierarchical scheme is a ‘human projection’ (capra, 1996, p. 35). in nature, there is no hierarchy (capra, 1996). viewing the world as layers, we look for the top one, the fittest. we compete. also, if the layers are not direct neighbours, they cannot communicate with each other. viewing the world as a web, we look at everyone in the world as an equal member. everyone can communicate with each other. this will help students to realize that a human being is only a member of the world instead of a master of it. we need to cooperate with other members in the world with respect instead of oppression and exploitation. to help students to form a web-view, teachers can present contents in the form of webs instead of layers or hierarchical structures and have students sort them out in layers by themselves. we can have students sit in circles instead of in rows more often; always have leadership rotate in groups; student-led discussions and conferences can be held on a regular basis to share community knowledge. the third change is the understanding of play. like the mice in the psychology experiments, we are in a play. all concepts and objects are brought forth through our cognitive play. ‘existential human suffering arises, in the buddhist view, when we cling to fixed forms and categories created by the mind instead of accepting the impermanent and transitory nature of all things’ (capra, 1996, p. 294). by realizing this – by jumping to learning iii – we should play with this play – play with categories, play with concepts. moreover, play is a natural need of life. all lives tend to create novelty. and play is a behaviour that pushes boundaries, an attempt to run away from order. this gives organisms the possibility to transform to a new order, to create novelty. hence, to play is to live. one way to play is to change metaphors. history has shown us that it can induce tremendous changes in humans’ worldviews. for example, by comparing the world with a machine, we think in a modern way – humans are the masters of the world. in contrast, by comparing the world to a living system, we think in postmodern way – humans exist interdependently with the whole world. hence, changing metaphors, playing with concepts, can liberate people’s imaginations from invisible boundaries, thereby we can be creative. as such, we chinese need to rethink our metaphors about teachers and students. we used to compare teachers to candles or gardeners and compare students to sponges or flowers. these metaphors confine people’s imaginations about curriculum in a modernist way. to foster a postmodernist curriculum, we must first change these metaphors. to play, we need to make science funny and friendly. i have attended a chemistry professor’s show at the university of victoria. in the performance, he presented chemistry reactions as magic shows. he even demonstrated the belousov-zhabatinski reaction, one of prigogine’s favorite examples of a far-from-equilibrium situation. the professor also mentioned that it was his teacher who showed him chemistry as magic that made him become interested in chemistry. from this we see that educators can integrate science with arts and make science funny and interesting. also, can our teachers tell students some jokes or stories about the scientists when they are teaching science? i will say, why not? chinese too often make scientists as perfect apotheoses instead of true human beings. as such, they are not http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci lixin luo: letter to my sister about doll’s 4 r’s transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 41 approachable because they are far away from students’ lives and students will lack motivation to learn from them. if my teacher told me that pascal developed the theory of probability because he was interested in gambling, probability would be more interesting for me because the scientific, the serious and boring theory becomes lively and friendly. in sum, if people can have these three changes in their minds – if we can get used to ambiguity, webbing, and play – not only can we have a curriculum that facilitates creativity and wisdom, we can also have dreams and spirits again and we can talk with rocks. now, my dear sister, i really want to tell you how personally meaningful it is to learn from dr. doll’s courses. firstly, in dealing with people, i used to be confused about how i should treat them, because i was very much concerned with how they would treat me in return. now, i understand that whatever i do to others, i do to the web and as such i do to myself. as naess recognizes, ‘care flows naturally if the “self” is widened and deepened so that protection of free nature is felt and conceived as protection of ourselves’ (quoted in capra, 1996, p. 12). similarly, the category of ‘self’ can be extended to the whole human web. as doll says, when he is counseling others, he is counseling himself. so, i no longer need to be concerned too much about people’s feedback to me. by caring for others, i care for myself. secondly, i used to think of myself as a person without strict boundaries and principles. i easily change my opinions and i often change myself in order to cooperate with others. i dislike precision and i talk too much. i used to dislike myself a lot because of these characteristics. thinking of myself as a person without a strong mind and beliefs and being dissatisfied with the fast changing world, i went to tibet to pursue a strong spiritual power, something that could be trusted, believed in and could support me forever, but i could not find it. now, i find that i can be comfortable with change, ambiguity, and indeterminacy and i am comfortable with who i am – i can be good at play. what i need to remember is that i should leave my heart open all the time: to make more suggestions instead of judgments; to keep being aware of people’s assumptions behind their words and behaviour and to keep on inquiring; to believe there are more alternatives existing. thirdly, i used to be very frustrated with social reality because i didn’t think a single person could change this society. now, by understanding dissipative structures and the web of life, i begin to understand that everyone is making the world change, no matter if it is voluntary or not. each person’s words and behaviours will have amplified influence in the world. and also, it is wise that we make change a little bit each time instead of asking for rapid transformation. as doll says, we need to push the boundary slightly and gradually. yes, i can change the world and i am changing the world. my dreams will come true. you have asked me ‘what do people live for?’ this is the question i have asked myself for so many years. now, i think i find a good answer: we don’t live for one life-long commitment; we live for different goals in different periods in our lives. i am not suggesting that we can always linger in the romance stage and that we don’t need concentration and goals. we must have goals and persist in them over time; otherwise we will accomplish nothing. what i am arguing against is the idea that we must select a life-long goal, like a career, a study major and so on, otherwise we cannot set off. this task is so serious that we don’t dare to try. we are scared that we might not survive if we select a wrong direction. but, this task is impossible to finish, because we are asking ourselves to decide the direction rather than to select a direction. looking for one life-long goal is a modernist way of thinking. people are scared of change; they desire a stable and life-long thing to trust, to let them feel safe. however, with the development of science and technology, 10 years in this era can be equal to 50 years in the 1800s. so, contemporary people may live lives many times longer than the people in older times did. the world changes so fast, how can we pre-set a goal for an unpredictable future? http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci lixin luo: letter to my sister about doll’s 4 r’s transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 42 as such, selecting one short-term (like 10 or 20 years) goal and working hard on it is much better than to keep struggling with selection. leaving life open to different possibilities is what postmodernism teaches me. you feel concerned that you will lose your style? fear the chaos that you might need to face? don’t worry. there is a pattern in the chaos of your life. bateson is a ‘mess’. he was a biologist, anthropologist, pathologist, and epistemologist. but, he is great and unique. his style or pattern is invisible until the end of his life: he always seeks a higher abstraction of the whole world. understand and worship chaos, no matter how you change, you will live with your own pattern, i believe. one of my friends said that philosophy is to put nonsense together and make you feel reasonable. i should say the key is who puts it together – who makes the pattern appear? well, i think that’s enough for now. i am looking forward to your reply soon. lixin acknowledgements i wish to thank dr william e. doll, jr. for his enlightening teaching and continual support and encouragement. i also deeply appreciate citing li’s invaluable friendship, for her critiques and help with revising the draft of the paper and translation. thanks also go to sheila rose richardson and abram hindle for their sincere care and valuable suggestions. references bateson, g. (2002). mind and nature: a necessary unity. new jersey: hampton press. (original work published 1979) berman, m. (1981). the reenchantment of the world. london: cornel university press. capra, f. (1996). the web of life: a new scientific understanding of living systems. new york: anchor books. capra, f. (april 18, 1997). creativity and leadership in learning communities. paper presented at mill valley school district, california, usa, http://www.ecoliteracy.org/pdf/creativity.pdf (accessed 18 august 2003) doll, w.e. jr. (1993). a post-modern perspective on curriculum. new york: teachers college press. doll, w.e. jr. (2002). ghosts and the curriculum. in w.e. jr., doll & n., gough (eds.) curriculum visions (pp. 23-74). new york: peter lang. kauffman, s. (1995). at home in the universe: the search for laws of self-organization and complexity. new york: oxford university press. lewis, c.c. (1995). the roots of japanese educational achievement: helping children develop bonds to school. educational policy, 9(2), pp.129-151. palner, p. j. (1998). the courage to teach: exploring the inner landscape of a teacher’s life. san francisco: jossey-bass. whitehead, a. n. (1967). the aim of education and other essays. london: williams & norgate ltd. (original work published 1929) author lixin luo is completing the masters program in curriculum studies at the university of victoria, british columbia, canada. this paper was presented at the first triennial meeting of the international association for the advancement of curriculum studies, shanghai, china, 26-29 october 2003. correspondence to: lixinluo@uvic.ca http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci http://www.ecoliteracy.org/pdf/creativity.pdf microsoft word tochon_tur_dec2010.doc to cite this article please include all of the following details: okten, celile e. and tochon, francois victor, (2010). i̇zlence haritalandırması ve eğitsel sağlarlıklar: öğretmen adayları için dönüşüm kaynakları. transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> i̇zlence haritalandırması ve eğitsel sağlarlıklar: öğretmen adayları için dönüşüm kaynakları celile e. okten yildiz technical university, turkey francois victor tochon university of wisconsin-madison, usa giriş göstergebilim, göstergenin oluşum veya işaretin eylem çalışmasıdır. anlamın üretimini kapsayan herhangi bir süreç olarak da tanımlanabilir. i̇şaretlerin aracılık ettiği ve aynı zamanda bu işaretlerin yorumlandığı bir anlamlandırma sürecidir. öğretmenlerin anlam üretim sürecindeki farkındalıkları, onları yoğun bir yaratıcılığa dahil edip kavramsal çerçeveyi çizmelerini sağlayarak, kendisi tamamıyla göstergesel bir süreç olan üst anlamlandırmayı meydana getirir. sezgiden algılamaya, dile getirmeye kadar açıklık getirilen bütün aşamalar, charles s. peirce’ (1877a) ün gözler önüne serip kuramsallaştırdığı sürecin bilimsel araştırmasına dayanarak ilerler. sezilen, algılanan ve dile getirilen izlence yorumları, aynı şekilde bu makalenin, öğretmen eğitimindeki izlence kavramlarının haritalarının çıkarılmasını ve hiyerarşik düzenlemesini araştırmayı amaçladığı incelikli bir kanının oluşmasına yol açar. kavram haritalarıyla eşleşebilen, peirce’ün kuramsallaştırdığı varoluş haritalarıyla ilgili çalışmasından burada yararlanacağız. diğer bir bölüm de bu kavramların, izlence yapılandırma sürecinde kuramsallaştırılması üzerinde duracaktır. ayrıca, izlence haritasının çıkarılmasının, göstergesel araştırmayı nasıl harekete geçirdiğine ve öğretmen adaylarının bilgisinin nasıl dönüştürdüğüne değinecektir. i̇zlence haritası çıkarılmasının tarihsel süreci i̇zlence haritaları çeşitli şekillerde ortaya çıkmıştır: ekonomik iş çizelgeleri, derecelendirme ölçekleri, yazılı aile kütükleri, coğrafi işaretler, antropolojik kartlar, sistem tanıtımları, dilbilimsel ağaçlandırma, anlambilimsel yapılar, bilişsel çerçevelendirme, zihinsel modellemeler, bilginin sosyolojik şemalandırılması. kısacası bütün bunlar “gerçeği” biçimlendiren varlıkbilimlerini veya kavramsal yapıları gösterir. gerçeğin biçimlendirilmesinde öğrenciler, eğitimsel önceliklerini kavramsallaştıran bilgi kuramını içeren bir sürece dahil olurlar. öğrenme haritaları bazen bilgi kuramsal haritalar olarak da adlandırılır. kavram haritası çıkarılması üzerine çeşitli başarılı araştırmalar yayımlanmıştır (brown, 2002; daley et al., 1999; danesi, 2002; gómez et al., 2000; goodyear et al., 2005; novak, 1995; tochon, 1990ab). bu makalede, üst anlamlandırmayı (urban, 2006) güdüleyen ve süreci dönüştüren izlence haritası çıkarılmasına dayanan eğitimsel araştırmanın özel bir biçimi için göstergebilimsel temeli ele alacağız. üst anlamlandırma kavramı, thomas sebeok (2001), john deely, susan petrilli, augusto ponzio (1998) ve insanı anlam üzerine anlam yapılandırabilen, üst göstergesel bir canlı olarak sayan diğer araştırmacılar tarafından ortaya konuldu. biz de göstergesel bir araç olarak izlence haritası çıkarılmasını, tam anlamlandırma süreci olarak adlandırdığımız anlam üretim sürecinin dönüşümünü başlatabildiğini göstermek istiyoruz. tam anlamlandırmayı, üst anlamlandırma sürecinin yeniden okten & tochon: i̇zlence haritalandırması ve eğitsel sağlarlıklar transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 55 çerçevelendirilmesinden ileri gelen bilginin dönüşümü olarak tanımlarız. tam anlamlandırma süreci, kendi ve diğerinin karşılıklı anlaşılmasıyla yakından ilgili olduğundan ve bilgi de anlam üretme sürecinden ayrı tutulamayacağından bir kimlik tanımlama sürecidir. bir öğrenci izlence haritasını çıkarırken sezgisel varsayımlarını sıra düzeninde neyin önemli olup göstermesi gerektiğine göre belirlemelidir. aynı zamanda izlence haritasının okuyucusu da hipotez ve varsayımlarını görselliğe dayanarak çıkarımda bulunmalıdır. daha sonra göstergelere başvurarak varsayımların yapılandırması yer alır (kankkunnen, 2004). sonunda da göstergeden göstergeye akıl yürüterek bu varsayımların anlamları yorumlanır ve bilgi oldukça canlı bir şekilde tasarlanır. kavram haritası çıkarılması bilindik bir bilişsel çerçeve içinde sıklıkla yorumlanır ki bu çerçeve, tam anlamlandırmayı öğrenmeyi simgeleyen yorumcu akışın uygulanması yerine anlambilimsel amaçları belirler. peirce, zihni gösteren mantıksal ilişkilendirmeyi destekleyen, geliştiren bir yol olacak diyagramsal harita çıkarmanın yararının erken farkına varmıştır (cp 4.582). kendi deyişiyle belki de daha önce, 1897’de geliştirdiği “varoluş grafikleri” 1906’da (cp 4.618) yayımlandı. kavramlar arasındaki mantıksal ilişkiyi araştırmak ve düşünce ile deneye yardım amacıyla diyagramlarla ilişkilendirmek için kurallar oluşturdu. 20 yıldan fazla kavram haritaları sistemini geliştirmeye çalıştı. fakat yaşamının son döneminde geliştirdiği mantıksal “gama grafikleri” ile de tatmin olmadı. bununla beraber “bütün önemli ilişkilendirmeleri bir diyagramlaştırma” (taslak c, 90-92) yani herhangi bir kavramsallaştırmanın da bir harita çıkarma süreci olabileceğine karar verdi. amacı, “düşüncenin genel gidişatını gösterip düşüncenin izlediği yol diyagramlaştırma sistemiyle tamamıyla sergilenebilir” (cp 4.530). her bir düşünce tabakası, “anlaşılır ilişkilerin simgeleri” olarak bir söylem evrenini temsil edebilir (cp 4.531). øhrstrom (1997), henüz hiç bir göstergenin tam ve mükemmel olmamasıyla birlikte, diyagramsal ilişkinin bir bakış açısı sağladığı için göstergebilimsel açıdan çok kuvvetli olduğunu belirtir. uygulamacı ilişkilendirme matematiksel mantığın kurallarını izlemeyebilir ve başka bir matematiksel alanı (menand, 1997) içine alabilir: “düşüncenin hareket eden resimleri” nin mantığı (cp 4.8). peirce’ ün varoluş grafiklerini ileri sürmesinden beri bilgi ve ilişkilendirme yollarının tam gösterilmesini sağlayan mantık haritalarını geliştirmek için bir çok çalışma yapılmıştır. öğrencilerin kendi kavram haritalarını tekrar ele alması, oluşturdukları kavramlar arasındaki başkalıkların farkına varmalarını sağlar. her seferinde kavramlar arasında belli bir bağlantı derecesi elde ederler; bu da onların kavramsal gelişimlerine katkıda bulunur. kavramsal farklılaşma, öğrencilerin çalıştığı bilimsel alanda bütüncül bir görüş kazanmalarını sağlayarak eğitimlerinde bir tamamlama süreci başlatır (novak ve caňas, 2006). bu tip yapılar, öğrencilerin kendi eğitim deneyimleriyle ilgili ne bildikleri konusunda emin olmalarını sağlar. okul sürecinin doğal ve gerekli yapısında öğrenicinin rollerini gösterir. öğrenicinin kavrayışı tam ve açık hale gelir. i̇zlence bilgisinin uygulamada başka bir şeye dönüştürülebilmesi, öğrenciler tarafından tanımlanan süreçlerle ve yine onlar tarafından sunulan düşüncelerin yorumlarıyla ilgili ilginç göstergeler ortaya çıkarır. bu tip haritalar, kavramsal değişiklikleri izledikleri için kullanılabildikleri gibi öğrenici bilgisinin başlangıç aşamalarını da gözlemlemek için elverişlidir. novak ve caňas (2008, s.180), bilgi kuramı ile öğrenme arasındaki bağlantıları gösterirler: bilgi kuramı, yeni bilginin oluşturulması ve bilginin içeriği ile uğraşır. bilginin haritasının çıkarılmasıyla uğraşan öğreticiler, yansıtıcı bir süreç içindedirler. novak, kavramları ve önermeleri maddenin molekül ve atomlarıyla karşılaştırır: herhangi bir alan bilgisinde bilginin yapı taşlarıdırlar. hem nesnelerden hem olaylardan algılanan düzenliliklerle (veya biçimlerle) ilgili kavramlar etiketler tarafından belirlenir. çok küçük benzeşme, sanki kavramlar soyut evrenlermiş gibi eflatuncu bir görüşü savunur. bununla beraber kavramların bilgi kuramıyla ilgili devinimleri, bir yapılanma sürecinde olduklarını gösterir. i̇zlence haritası çıkarılması, öğrencilere “alışkanlığı değiştirme okten & tochon: i̇zlence haritalandırması ve eğitsel sağlarlıklar transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 56 alışkanlığı” kazandıran bir yöntem olabilir (kankkunen, 2004, s.1). hem öğrencilere hem öğretmenlere kendi kavramsal gelişimlerini ve inanç sistemlerini değerlendirme olanağı verir. i̇nanç sistemleri, anlamların dayandığı tabanlardır ve bilgiyi belirginleştirirler. peirce’ ün 1877-1878’de popular science monthly dergisinde basılan makaleleri, inançların göstergesel yorumunu ileri sürer: “i̇nançlarımız arzularımıza ve eylemlerimize öncülük eder” (peirce, 1877a, iii). i̇nançlar, değişkenliklerine rağmen kavramsal kararlılığın yerleşmesine yardımcı olur. peirce, yeni inançların, gerçek şüphe ve yetersizlik durumlarında oluştuğunu belirtir. gerçekten bir şüphe oluştuğunda yeni inanç edinmek için çabalarız ve bu sürece araştırma deriz. aynı şekilde araştırma süreci, olası anlamların çeşitliliği ile karşılıklı yoğun etkileşim için olanaklar sunar ve anlayışın gelişimini daha ileri götürür. peirce, inanç belirlemenin 4 yolu olduğunu ifade eder: azim, otorite, sebep sonuç ilişkisi, deneysellik (a.g.e.1877b). deneysel uygulamada açıklık, işbirliği ve uzlaşmayla alternatiflerin sağlanması tercih ettiği yoldur. peirce’ün çalışması böylece öğretmen inançlarını ve daha genel anlamda eğitimini anlamak için bir çerçeve oluşturur. deneysel uygulamalar, öğretmenlere deneyimlerine dayanan göstergesel ilişkilendirme süreciyle inançlarını değiştirme ve araştırma yolları sağlar. bu süreç, öğretmenlerin inançları üzerinde önemli bir etkiye sahiptir ve onların kararlarını etkiler. ayrıca izlence ilişkilendirmesinde uluslar arası ölçütler ve onların “kalite emperyalizmi” (gough, 2006) kullanıldığında öğretmenlerin iç konuşmaları, işaretlerin kültürler arası düzenlemelerinde (pinar, 2000) karmaşık bir hal alır; özellikle de uluslar arası bir önemi olan i̇ngilizce öğretim izlencesi gibi. bu bölümde kavram haritası çıkarma çalışmasının, uygulamada tam anlam üretme sürecine aktarılabileceğine değindik ki birinin kendi anlamlandırma sürecinin dönüşümünün anlaşılmasıdır. böylece tanımlanan göstergesel izlence araştırması, öğretmen adaylarının kendi izlence bilgileri ve anlam oluşturma süreçleri üzerine geniş kapsamlı düşünebilmelerini teşvik etmek için öğretmen eğitimi açısından tamamlayıcı olabilir. bir sonraki bölüm, bu çözümleyici çerçeveyi daha ayrıntılı ele alacaktır. peirce’ün çözümleyici çerçevesi peirce (1931-1958) için mantık kendi kavramsal güçleri içerisinde yorumlanmalıdır; kullanma şartlarının getirdiği yorum da diyebiliriz. yorumlanabilen herhangi bir hareket veya düşünce bir göstergedir (chandler, 2003). peirce biçim ve kavramın algılanışı ve üretilen anlamlar arasındaki ilişkilerin süregelen yorumlarından gösterge anlamlarının nasıl meydana geldiğini açıklamak için bu çerçeveyi geliştirdi. kuramı kolay, uygulanabilir ve hareketli idi. anlamlar gerçekleri, kültürleri ve iletişimi biçimlendirmek için oluşturulurlar. peirce modeli, yorumlanan nesnelerin ve işaretlerin karşılıklı etkileşimindeki anlam yapılarının temsilcilerini betimler. gösterge, nesneye ve onun yorumlanmasına aracılık eder. yorumlanan, bir nesnenin farklı yönlerine gönderme yapabilen değişik işaretleri gösteren belirli bir göstergenin kazanımıdır. kazanımın veya yorumlananın oluşturulma süreci, deneyimleri anlamlı kılan göstergelerin ilişkilendirilmesidir (osberg, 1997, s.27). yeni bilginin ifadesinde göstergelere başvurma veya göstergeler arası ilişkilendirme yeterli olmadığından deneyime dayalı üçlü gösterge oluşumuna yer verilir. başka bir deyişle eğitici varsayımda bulunmada diyebiliriz. deneyime dayalı göstergeler arası ilişki kurma, sonuçtan duruma, kurala doğru gider (bopry, 2002). deneyime dayalı gösterge oluşturmaktan göstergeler arası ilişkilendirmeye ilerledikçe anlamın basitçe bağdaştırılmasından önceliği olan doğruyu seçmenin önceden belirlenmiş sürecine doğru yol alırız (shank, 1995). bu araştırma, anlamın oluşmasındaki üç hareketi (birincilik, ikincilik, üçüncülük) dikkate alan peirce modelindeki göstergelerin değişkenliğine işaret eder. birincilik (düşünceişaret edilen) nesneleriyle simgesel bir ilişkiye sahip olan niteliklerle birleşir (resim, portre, harita,vs.). i̇kincilik (kaba gerçeklik-nesne) diğerinin tanınmasıyla gündeme gelir. hem okten & tochon: i̇zlence haritalandırması ve eğitsel sağlarlıklar transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 57 kendini tanımadır hem değildir. birbiri ile karşıtlık gösteren durulan yer ile genel alanın ayırımında rol oynar. üçüncülük (işaretin ruhu-yorumlanan) simgelerin kullanımına işaret eder. gösterge, bir nesne ve yorumlananı kanunla veya sebeple birbiriyle bağdaştırır. simge, üçüncülüğün bir biçimidir (el sallama, trafik ışıkları gibi). birincilik, anlamın birdenbire doğrudan ortaya çıkmasıdır ki deneyimi anlamlı kılacak göstergelerin oluşmasını sağlar ve kişinin nitelikli düşünceleri ve inançları ile ilgilidir. i̇kincilik, kişinin önceden bilerek tecrübe ettiği sözlü ve sözsüz işaretlerle göstergelere başvuruyu içerir; etkin öğrenme gerçekleşmez. üçüncülük, ilişkilendirme ve bağlantılar kurma yoluyla birinciliği ve ikinciliği birleştirir; göstergeden göstergeye akıl yürütmedir. algılama, anlam üretme sürecini içerir (allot, 1994). algılama, kavramsal yoruma öncülük ederken algılayıcı tarafından da yönlendirilir. algılayıcı ile birlikte bir yapılanma sağlamak için devamlı değişime uğrar. böylece anlam yapılandırma süreci, algılama sürecinin bir parçası haline gelir. algılama, çevresel güçlere tepki olan eylem biçimlerini içerir (umwelt-deely, 1994). eylemler, algılamanın yapılanmasında birbirlerinin içine geçip birbirlerini tamamlarlar. algıları düzenlemek, öğrenme deneyiminin temelidir ve bunun karşılığında da eğitim, algıları düzenler. cunningham’a göre insanın anlam üretme süreci ve eğitimi tek ve aynıdır. “eğer anlam üretme süreciyle deneyim yapılarının yaşam boyu oluşturulmasını kastediyorsak o zaman eğitim, bu süreçle ilgili insanları geliştirmeye, anlamaya ve onların daha derin düşünmesine uğraşan bir alandır (cunningham, 1987, s.207). böylece eğitici algılama, anlam üretme süreciyle oluşturulur. cunningham (2002), dört unsur açısından bilişsel süreci ayrıntılarıyla gösteren geniş bir model sunar: i̇şaretler, anlam üretme süreci, çıkarım, yansıtıcılık. i̇şaretler bazı görüş, kavram ve nesne veya ilişkilere olan kavramsal duyarlılıklardır. bireyler yeni düşünceleri ve varsayımları deneyimleriyle geliştirirler. i̇zlencenin kavramsallaştırma süreci çıkarımla yapılır. bu süreci sonuçları, bilginin algılanmasına katkıda bulunur. cunningham’ın bakış açısına göre yansıtıcılık, anlam üretme sürecinin farkına varılmasıdır. bu beliren farkındalığın sadece bütün yönleri ortada olmayabilir ve sezgilerden veya anlam üretme süreci açısından ele alırsak deneyimi anlamlı kılacak gösterge oluşumundan yararlanılabilir. göstergesel kuram, algılamanın kendisinin içindeki anlayışın daha belirgin ve belirgin olmayan aşamaları arasındaki kolay ilerleyişlerin inceliklerini gözler önüne sererek bu tip süreçleri anlamak için geniş bir çerçeve önerir. peirce, göstergesel kuramın bir parçası olan işaretleri on bölüme ayırır. merrell (2000) tarafından sunulan adlandırmada bu sınıflandırma şöyledir: a) duyumsamak (peirce’ün nitel göstergesi), b) resmetmek (görüntüsel tekil gösterge), c)hissetmek (terimsel gösteren tekil gösterge), d) farkına varmak (önerme halinde tekil gösterge) e)tasarlamak (görüntüsel kural gösterge), f) i̇zlenimde bulunmak-söylemek (terimsel gösteren kural gösterge) g) bakmak (tanımak)-söylemek (önerme halinde gösteren kural gösterge) h) görmek (tanımlamak)-söylemek (terimsel simge); i) algılamak-söylemek (önerme halinde simge veya önerme) j) anlamak (kanıt) (ms 540, cp 2.233-72). shank ve cunningham (1996), deneyimleri anlamlı kılan gösterge oluşumu için, peirce’ün sınıflandırmasından aşağıda belirtilen altı ayrı tür çıkarttılar: 1) önsezi. çıkarımın önsezi biçimi, olası bir benzerliğin sanal bir şekilde fark edilmesidir. i̇lk gözlemler, olası kanıt için sezgisel önermeler olabilir. okten & tochon: i̇zlence haritalandırması ve eğitsel sağlarlıklar transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 58 2) belirti. belirtiler, daha genel bir olgu için bakıldığında, özellikler karşılaştırıldığında olası benzerlikleri karşılayabilir. bir belirtinin tespit edilmesi önceki deneyime işaret eder. 3) benzetme veya benzerlik. yeni var olabilecek kuralları ve kavramsal çerçeveleri yaratmak için benzerliği yönlendirir. 4) i̇pucu. olası kanıtla ilgili olan çıkarım biçimine yol açar; gözlemler, daha genel olguların ipuçları olsa da olmasa da bir ipucu belirtme biçimidir. i̇şaret, ilişkilerin geçmişlerinin belirlenmesine yardımcı olabilir. gözlemci, bir yargıda bulunmak için bağlantılara bakabilir. 5)tanı veya senaryo. gözlemler arasından teşhis edici yargıları belirlemek için uygun bir kanıta dayanan kural oluşturur. bu tanılar, ipuçları yığınından inandırıcı senaryolar üretebilir. i̇puçlarının biçimleri karakterin birliğini oluşturur. 6) açıklamalar. şaşırtıcı bilgi yığınlarını saymak için resmi kuralları dikkate alır ve senaryoları, anlamlı iç bakış için temel oluşturan bütünleştirici bir açıklamaya doğru toplar. bu model, “bilinçli farkındalık, eleştirel düşüncenin ayrıntılı ele alınması ve eylemin askıya alınması” için öğretmen adaylarının yeterliliklerinin incelenmesinde bize yardımcı olacaktır (petrilli ve ponzio, 2007, s.7). eğitici araştırma sürecindeki yetkinlikler olarak görülen izlencenin anlam üretme sürecinin önemli yönlerine de değinir. yetkinlik kavramı, değişken ve hareketli bir ortam ile birlikte anlamlı “konumların” algılanmasından ileri gelen anlamla ilgilidir. nesneleri algılanan güncel özelliklerini, nesnenin mümkün olduğu kadar nasıl kullanılabileceğini gösteren öncelikli temel özelliklerine gönderme yapar (norman, 1988, s.9). bu gibi göstergesel konumlarla bir araya gelip birleşerek işaret anlamlarını tamamlar (schumann, 2003; logan ve schumann, 2005; burgin ve schumann, 2006). “bir durum, sağlarlıklarını etkin bir biçimde kullanmak ve karşılamak için hazırlanan sadece bu kişiler için uygun bir konum sağlar. uygun bir şekilde hazırlanmayan veya ayarlanmayanlar, belirlenen durumda uygulama yapmakta başarısız olacaklardır” (snow,1998, s.107). bu, bize öğretmen adaylarının dönüşümsel yetkinlikleriyle izlence “konumlarının” uygunluğunu gösterir. bu bölümde üç çeşit ilişkilendirmeyle oluşan üretim süreçlerini, bilginin ortaya çıkışını, üst anlamlandırmayı ve anlamın üretimini ele aldık. i̇lişkilendirmenin, anlamı işaretlere nasıl yönlendirdiğini, yorumlara ve çıkarımlara nasıl imkan verdiğini gördük. anlamın üretime dayalı son aşaması, algılananın, deneyime dayalı eğitimle nasıl yapılandığını gözler önüne serer. bu amaçla izlence haritası çıkarmakla ilgili öğretmen adaylarının isteklerini incelemede bize yardımcı olacak bir sınıflandırma sunduk. araştırma tasarımı bu çalışmada eğitimde göstergesel araştırmayı uygulayan yetkinlik sonucu izlence haritası çıkarmasını açıklamak istiyoruz. bir araştırma süreci olarak izlence. göstergesel inceleme, araştırmanın aşamalarında esneklik ve zenginlik sağlayan yaklaşımların çeşitliliğini kapsar. öğretmen adaylarının alan izlencelerini kavramsallaştırdıkları süreçte dönüşümsel anlam üretme, gerçeğin yapı taşlarını tarihsel ve kültürel geçmişini gözler önüne sererek sökmeye yardım eder. göstergesel bakış açısı tamamlayıcı ve her şeyi kapsayıcıdır. belirli duruşlara ayrıcalık tanımaz: grupların ve bireylerin kendi yorumlayıcı yükümlülük ve eylemlerinin öz eleştirisini yapar. daha önceden okten & tochon: i̇zlence haritalandırması ve eğitsel sağlarlıklar transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 59 belirtildiği gibi eğitimdeki yetkinlikler kuramı, bilgi açısından zengin çevreleri duyumsamada etkin olan algılayıcıyı öne sürer. i̇nsanlar, anlamlılık duyusunu algılamanın biçimlerini göstergesel konumlarla eşleştirerek yapılandırırlar. eğitim, öğretmen, izlence ve öğreniciler grubu veya bir öğrenici arasındaki anlamlı ilişkileri yapılandıran göstergesel bir sürecin sergilenmesi gibi görülebilir. bu anlayış, eğitim sürecine insani bir boyut getirir. düzenleme. bu çalışma, türkiye, i̇stanbul’daki bir devlet üniversitesinin i̇ngilizce öğretmenliği bölümündeki gelişim dosyalarının tamamlanmasına dayanan geniş bir araştırmanın sadece bir yönüdür. öğretmen adaylarına hem amerika’daki yabancı diller öğretimi ölçütleri hem de avrupa birliği dil ölçütleri gösterildi (tochon, 2008). öğretmen eğitiminin geliştirilmesinde elektronik gelişim dosyalarının ne gibi bir rol oynayabileceği üzerinde durduk. öğretmen eğitiminin amacı, sınıf içi katılımcı eylem araştırmasını (kemmis ve mctaggart, 2005) temel alan öğretmen yeterliliklerini ve alanlarını derin bilgisine sahip kültürlü öğretmenler yetiştirmektir. i̇zlence haritası çıkarmak, sonuca bağlı değerlendirmeler ve çoklu geribildirim döngüleriyle gelişim dosyasında tamamlanır. katılımcılar. bu çalışma, i̇ngilizce öğretmenliği bölümünden gönüllü 23 öğrenci ile yapılmıştır. 4 yıllık öğretmen eğitimi programının üçüncü sınıf öğrencileridir. 2008 baharında 12 öğrenci izlence haritalarını bitirirken diğerleri de yaz boyunca tamamlamaya çalışmışlardır. dönemin sonunda 23 öğrenci kavram haritalarını tamamlamıştır. öğrenciler, kökten dincilik, i̇ngilizcenin küreselleşmedeki ve türk laikliğindeki rolü, dil politikaları gibi konularda çeşitli görüşleri karşı karşıya getirdiler. 3 öğrenci aşağıdaki ölçütlere göre bu makalenin amacı doğrultusunda seçilmiştir: • i̇zlence haritaları, gelişmelerinin göstergesel bir incelemesi için yeteri derecede karşılaştırılır. • bu haritaların çıkarılmasına yol açan anlam oluşturma süreciyle ilgili görüşmeler ve gözlemlerle bilgi edindik. • çevrede geçerli olan alan bilgisiyle kavram haritalarındaki parçaların algılanan önemi veya “sağlarlığı” bu çalışma için kavram haritaları seçilen üç katılımcının (ikisi bayan biri erkek) sözlü görüşmeleri yazıya aktarıldı. ayrıca yazılı görüşmeleri de onların izlence araştırmaları hakkında bir fikir edinmek için kullanıldı. veri. bu çalışma bir çok kaynaktan yararlanmıştır: grup tartışmaları, sınıf arkadaşıyla çalışma, öğretmenin katılımcı gözlemleri, izlence tasarımlarıyla ilgili sözlü geribildirimler, araştırma günlükleri, öğrencilerin yorumları, yazılı ve sözlü görüşmeler. öğretmen adayları gelişim dosyalarına başlamadan önce kavram haritası çıkarmakla ilgili herhangi bir fikre sahip değildiler. katılımcılar, arkadaşlarıyla gruplar halinde çalıştılar ve izlence bilgilerini göstermek için bireysel olarak elektronik ortamda kavram haritaları oluşturmayı öğrendiler. öğretmen adayları hem bireysel çalışmaları hem de grup tartışmaları sırasında notlar alınarak gözlemlendi. öğrencilere yazılı bir görüşme formu verildi ve daha sonra görüşme soruları için olan cevaplarını elektronik posta ile gönderdiler. katılımcılar, kavram haritalarını çıkarırken de gözlemlendiler ve her biri ile yaklaşık 20 dakika boyunca görüşüldü. bilgi notlarının ve yapılan görüşmelerin aktarımları yanı sıra araştırmacılar, ayrıntıları paylaşmak için öğretmen adaylarının kavram haritası çıkarmak üzerine yaptıkları yorumların bir kısmını da aktardılar. her buluşma günü için de başlangıçtan beri araştırma günlükleri tutuldu. yordam. öğretmen adayları, elektronik gelişim dosyaları oluştururken beyerbach (1988), beyerbach ve smith (1990) in biçimlendirdiği gibi alan bilgilerini tartışan, geliştiren, okten & tochon: i̇zlence haritalandırması ve eğitsel sağlarlıklar transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 60 keşfeden kavram haritası çıkarmayı öğrendiler. böylece kavram haritası çıkarmak, gelişim dosyası hazırlamada vazgeçilmez bir adımdır. kavram haritaları, öğretmen adaylarının katkılarıyla ve artan bilgiyle öğrenmede kavramsal destekleri sıralamak için güzel bir yol önerir. katılımcıların yönergeleri, ne bilmediklerinden ziyade ne bildiklerini gösteren kavram haritalarıyla ayrıntılı bir şekilde verilir. katılımcılara açıklamalar verilerek süreçte esnek bırakıldılar. i̇nternetten bilgi araştırabildiler. böyle bir bilgiyi de biçimler ve çalışmalarla karşılaştırarak paylaştılar. kavram haritası çıkarırken yaratıcı akışı kısıtlayabilecek biçimsellikten ve birçok kuraldan uzak durulmasına karar verildi. örneklerin çoğu novak tarzı haritalardandır. katılımcılar, haftada bir kez bilgisayar laboratuarında bir araya geldiler. süreci ve harita içeriklerini tartışmak için her hafta bir sınıfta buluştular. öğretmen eğitiminde öğrencilere kılavuzluk etmek ve eylem için tam belirgin ölçüt sağlamak genellikle yapılır. halbuki burada, öğretmen adayları izlence bilgilerinin haritasını çıkarırken kendi çerçeve ve biçimlerini seçmede özgür bırakıldılar. katılımcılara güncellenen anlamların hiçbir zaman tam veya yetkin olmadığı hatırlatılırken kendilerinin kavram haritalarında izlenceye ait inançlarını ve algılarını göstermeleri teşvik edilir. kendi kavram haritalarını hazırladıktan sonra çalışmalarını sınıf arkadaşlarıyla karşılaştırdılar ve kavram haritalarının değerlendiricisi konumuna geldiler. veri i̇ncelemesi. göstergesel inceleme bir yorum bilimsel süreçtir. araştırmacılara benzerlikleri tanımlama olanağı verir ve aynı zamanda araştırmada esneklik sağlar. sonuç olarak çıkan vurgu, veriyi veya süreci esas almaya çalışmak değil, izlence tasarımından kaynaklanan düzenleme sürecini çalışmaktır. tamamlayıcı, ikilik içermeyen bilgi kuramından söz ettiğimizden beri bu yaklaşımda açıkça bir ikilem vardır. peirce, kavramsal düzenlemeyi birincilikten üçüncülüğe ilerleyen sürecin bir parçası olarak düşünürken aynı zamanda uygulamacıdır. biz, öğretmen adaylarının gelişim dosyası oluşturmadaki ilk adım olan harita çıkarma süreçlerini açıklamak için shank ve cunningham’ın (1996) ilişkilendirme modelini kullandık. türkiye’deki i̇ngilizce öğretmenliği sınıf ortamına uygun özel “göstergesel konumların” algılanmasıyla veya uygun yetkinliklerle öğretmen adaylarının izlencelerini nasıl yapılandırdıklarını göstermeye çalıştık. sorular aşağıdaki noktalara işaret etmektedir: i̇zlence bilgisinin algılanması, alt kavram haritaları ve düzenlemeleri için akıl yürütme, izlence bilgisinin yapılandırma sürecinde olası kavramsal karşıtlıklar ilgili bilgiyi seçerken yöneltilen sorular, tam anlam üretme: harita çıkarma süreciyle uygulamaya konan bilgi dönüşümleri, izlence ilişkisi için ölçüt, yansıtma yolları: düşünce süreçleri ve eylem alanı için neyin önemli olduğunu sınıflandıran yollar, siyasi süreci seçme: seçilen sınıflandırmalarla izlenceyi siyasileştirmenin yolları, izlence ve kimlik gelişimi: harita çıkarma sürecindeki dönüşümsel öğrenme. i̇zlence haritası çıkarma sürecinin göstergesel i̇ncelenmesi üç öğretmen adayının kavram haritası çıkarmasıyla ilgili cevapları üzerine yoğunlaştık. cevaplar, anlam yapılandırma açısından öğretmen adaylarının alan bilgisi üzerine yansıttıkları sınıflandırmalarına ve mesleki kimliği çizen dönüşümsel düşünceleri destekleyen göstergesel süreçlere göre değerlendirildi. öğretmen adaylarını daha derin düşünmeye yönlendiren göstergesel süreçler i̇zlence haritası çıkarmak, gelişim dosyası oluşturmak sürecine özgüdür. gelişim dosyası oluşturmada, her iki durumda da olduğu gibi, savlar bilinen deneyime bağlanarak benzer göstergesel süreçler işleme konuldu. bundan sonra her bir öğretmen adayının kavram haritasındaki kişisel izlence görüşünü belirten göstergesel araştırmayı harekete geçiren okten & tochon: i̇zlence haritalandırması ve eğitsel sağlarlıklar transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 61 anlayışın gittikçe çöktüğünü tespit ettik. öğrencileri, kendi alan bilgileri hakkında daha derin düşüncelere sevk etti: bu süreçte öğrendikleri dilin kullanımına ve anlamına dikkat etmeleri gerekiyordu. çok şaşırarak gördüler ki haritaya bir sözcük yazdıklarında alan bilgisiyle ilgili hemen başka bir şey hatırlayabiliyorlardı. kavramsal alanlar bir şekilde birbirleriyle hep bağlantılı olduğundan alt başlıkları sınıflandırmaya karar verdiler. alan bilgisini hiyerarjik bir düzene sokmalı ve haritaları üzerinde göstermeye değecek şeyi seçmek zorundaydılar. shank ve cunningham’ın modeli (1996), aşağıdaki bölümlerde izlence anlam üretim sürecinin incelemesinde bize yol gösterdi. harun, seval ve esra (takma adlardır) adlı üç öğrencinin kavram haritaları, bu çalışma için seçildi. i̇zlence haritası çıkarmalarını tartışmak, onlarla ilgili yorum yapmak ve birbirleriyle paylaşımda bulunmak üzere çağrıldılar. bu bölüm, süreç sırasında yaptıkları yazılı önerilerle sözlü görüşmeleri ve karşılıklı konuşmaları inceler. kavram haritaları şekil 1, 2 ve 3’te gösterilmektedir. öğretmen adayı 1, harun önsezi: harun’un kavram haritasına dair daha önce hiç tecrübesi yoktu ve kendi izlencesi hakkında hiç düşünmemişti. dolayısıyla geçerli konuların seçimi zordu. harun’un haritası izlencenin hem yapısal hem de sosyal yönlerini kapsamaktadır. sözlü görüşmesinde harun, izlence haritasını tasarlamak için kendisine verilen sürenin kısalığından yakındı. bu aşamada pek net olmayan düşüncelerini toparlamaya çalışır. belirti: harun olası tasarımlar için internette araştırma yaptı. olası harita şekillerini başlık ve alt başlıklar koymaya çalışarak çıkarmıştır. i̇zlencenin çoğunlukla yapısal yönüne sıkışmış hissetse de bu, onun alan eğitimindeki temel izlence bilgisini ve öğretim tekniklerini hatırlamasına yardımcı olmuştur. harun’u gözlemlediğimizde kağıt üzerindeki tasarıma bakmaktaydı. en derli toplu tasarım olarak öngördüğünden her şeyi tek bir sayfaya koymaya çalıştı. konularda hiyerarşik bir düzenlemeyi tercih etti. harun’un kavram haritasının yapısı, ona önceden verilmiş görsel biçimlerle çoğunlukla örtüştüğünden, bu biçimlerin onun alan eğitim bilgisinin çerçevesini çizdiği gayet açıktır. benzetme: gözlemler, harun’un tasarlama sürecinin, düşüncelerinin bir hiyerarşiye göre adlandırılarak sıralandığını gösterir. i̇nterneti hem izlence kavramlarını hem de harita tasarımlarını seçmede bir başvuru kaynağı olarak kullandı. kendi haritasını internetteki örneklere göre tasarladı; sonuçları sınıf arkadaşlarınınkilerle karşılaştırdı ve başlıklarla alt başlıklar arasındaki tutarlılıktan ziyade tasarıma daha çok özen gösterdi. harun izlence bilgisini içerik, öğretim ve öğrenim yönleriyle yapısal bir temele oturttu. bu öğeleri daha sonra dünya dili olarak kabul edilen i̇ngilizce ile ilişkilendirdi. ayrıca alan eğitiminin tarihi ve ekonomik arka planını da ortaya koydu. görüşme sırasında harun, dil öğretimi kaynakçası hakkında derinlemesine düşünmediğinden bu konu, onun kavram haritasında da görülmemektedir. dilbilgisi ya da dil becerileri konularını da tartışmaya gerek duymadı. i̇pucu: harun, kültürü dilin bir yapısal öğesi olarak görmektedir. i̇ngilizcenin güncelliğini, tarihi önemine ve günümüz ekonomisine dayandırmaktadır. i̇ngilizcenin sosyal boyutunu, dünya dili olması açısından değerlendirir. öğretme ve öğrenme arasındaki bağlantıları açıkça dile getirir. tanı: harun bu bağlantıları yaparken önceki izlence bilgisini kullandığını belirtmektedir. i̇zlence haritasını çıkarmak, verdiği emeğe değer bir deneyim olmuştur. kavram haritası çıkarmayı öğretim için faydalı bir yöntem olarak değerlendirir. harun’a göre kapitalizm ve sanayi devrimi i̇ngilizcenin popüler olmasına katkıda bulunan en önemli etkenlerdir. ona okten & tochon: i̇zlence haritalandırması ve eğitsel sağlarlıklar transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 62 göre kapitalizm çoğunlukla anglo-sakson dünyasının kültürel özelliğidir: yayılmayı başlatır; egemenliğini ilan eder ve işi dünyanın geri kalanını kontrol etmeye kadar vardırır. bu tespit, harun’un i̇ngilizce öğretimi için seçtiği alt başlıkları “para, seyahat ve etkileşim” açıklamaktadır. şekil 1. harun’un i̇zlence haritası açıklama: harun izlence haritası çıkarmanın doğurduğu sonuçlara açıklık getirir: i̇ngilizce öğretimi konusunda bir öz değerlendirme yapmıştır ve daha fazla çalışmasına ve bir bütün olarak alan eğitiminde uzmanlaşmaya ihtiyacı olduğunu anlamıştır. üç farklı odak olan i̇ngilizce, dil ve öğretim arasındaki ortak bağlantılar, ona şimdi daha anlamlı gelmektedir. harun gerek sayfa boyutu yüzünden gerekse elektronik web sayfasının boyutu yüzünden izlence haritasına ait bir çok ayrıntıyı ekleyememiştir. seçtiği hiyerarşik tasarım, yerin sınırlı olmasından dolayı bazı konuları atlamasına neden olmuş olabilir. haritasındaki belirgin kavramlar “i̇ngilizce” ve “kültür”dür. göstergeler arası i̇lişkilendirme: harun izlence haritasını tekrar gözden geçirdi; sınıf arkadaşlarıyla karşılaştırdı ve sonra bir öz değerlendirme yaptı. i̇ngilizce bilmek iş imkanları söz konusu olduğunda kazançlı olmak anlamına geliyor. daha kolay para kazanabilir; yaşam seviyenizi yükseltebilirsiniz. böylece daha rahat seyahat edebilir, başka insanlarla ve kültürlerle etkileşimde bulunabilirsiniz. öğrenicileri teşvik etmesi olası bu boyutlar, okten & tochon: i̇zlence haritalandırması ve eğitsel sağlarlıklar transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 63 harun’un izlence öngörüsünde temeldir. kapitalist güç parayı sağlamakta ve i̇ngilizcenin katkısını belirlemektedir. harun, bu görüşü dil politikası ile bağdaştırır. paranın gücü dünyada dil ve eğitim politikalarının şekillenmesinde kullanılmaktadır. haritanın oluşturulmasında tam da bu noktada esra araya girer ve kendi izlence haritasını harun’unki ile karşılaştırır. harun’un haritasını sınıf, dil öğrenimi, okul ortamı ve öğrenciler hakkında daha ayrıntılı yazması gerektiğini iddia ederek yetersiz bulduğunu söyler. bunun üzerine harun, okul, sınıf ve öğrencilerle ilgili daha ayrıntılı ve açık ifadeler kullandığına dair bir ön eleştiri yapar; böyle konuların daha açık ele alınmasında esra ile aynı fikirde olduğunu belirtir. harun kendi haritasını, seval’in haritası ile de karşılaştırır. seval’in, öğretmen özelliklerini ve öğrenci görüşlerini daha ayrıntılı işlediğini görür. seval’in özellikle öğrenici tipleri hakkındaki açıklamalarını önemli bulur. bu tür çıkarımlar, harun’un inanışlarını yeniden gözden geçirmesine yol açacak şekilde kimlik davranışlarını keşfetmesine yararken diğer taraftan da düşünsel anlam üretme sürecini tetikler. tanımlama: sonraki anlam üretme süreci aşamaları (tanımlama, tahmin ve model kurma) harun’un sözlü görüşmesinde açıkça görülmektedir. harun önceki görüşlerini düzeltmektedir: “öğretmenler” başlığını “öğrenciler” başlığının öncesine koymalıdır. bu iki birbirine zıt bakış açısını tesadüfen tanımlamıştır. ancak bu bakış açıları izlence gerçeğine yaklaşımda farklı yolları dikkate alır. sınıf ortamına daha fazla önem vererek bu konuyu genişleteceğini söylemiştir. tahmin: i̇ngilizcede öğrenilmesi gereken diğer yönler, örneğin dört beceri, dilbilgisi, sözcük bilgisi, vs. zaten bilinmektedir ve i̇ngilizce öğretimi için yeni konular değildir. yine de harun, kültürün, i̇ngilizce öğrenmedeki öneminde ısrar etmektedir. kültürel yaklaşımın üzerinde durulması gerektiğini ve sınıf çalışmalarının alan eğitiminin kültürel boyutu dikkate alınarak daha iyi düzenleneceğini düşünmektedir. model kurma: son olarak harun, i̇ngilizce öğretimini üç temel sınıf yoluyla yeniden gözden geçirir: küresel bir şekilde yapılandırılmış izlence bilgisinin ifadeleri olarak i̇ngilizce, dil ve öğretim. bu modelleme süreci, kendi izlence duruşuna dair daha iyi bir tanımlama getirdiğinden harun için dönüşümsel olmuştur. öğretmen adayı 2, seval önsezi: seval haritasını tasarlamaya başladığında çalışmaları boyunca biriken izlence bilgisi ile karşılaştı. kavram haritası çıkarmak, onu zihnindeki haritayı düzenlemeye ve sınıflandırmaya mecbur bıraktı. lisans düzeyindeki çalışmaları üzerine düşündü ve bu programa göre izlence anlayışını modellemeye karar verdi. anlayışının, alan eğitiminin çeşitli yönlerinin tam ve derinlemesine ele alınmasıyla oluşturulduğunu görmekten mutluluk duydu. danışmanı ona aklına gelen herhangi bir izlence öğesi hakkında yazmasını söyledi ve sonuç olarak seval, i̇ngilizce öğretimi hakkında hatırladıklarının hepsini yazdı ve yazdıklarını sınıflandırdı. i̇lk önce haritasının ne olabileceği, bilgiyi nasıl bulacağı ve tasarlayacağı hakkında hiçbir fikri yoktu ki bu da seval’in yaklaşımını içgüdüsel kıldı. belirti: seval, izlence bilgisini gözden geçirerek iki kutup olan öğreniciye ve öğretmene önem vermesi gerektiğini fark etti. farklılıkları göstermek istedi. çünkü bunun dil öğretimine faydası olduğunu hissediyordu. bir ön aşama olan açıklığa kavuşturma ve sınıflandırmadan sonra, seval “öğretmenler” ve “öğreniciler” başlıklı alt haritalara odaklandı. tasarım sürecinde bazı izlence konuları üzerinde hiç durmadığını fark etti. öğretmen tipleri hakkında fazla bilgisi olmadığından, bunları internetten araştırdı ve böylece öğretim biçimleri ile okten & tochon: i̇zlence haritalandırması ve eğitsel sağlarlıklar transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 64 öğretmen tipleri arasındaki ince farklılıklardan haberdar oldu. seval, bir bütün olarak dil hakkında ve eğitici sınıflandırma hakkında düşünmeye başladığında bilgiyi daha ayrıntılı hatırladı ve tasarımını kendi için öğretmesi en önemli olana göre yapmaya karar verdi. dikkati çeken diğer bir nokta da seval’in basitçe “dil” den ziyade “dilbilim”den bahsetmeyi seçmesidir. i̇lk başta dilbilimin, dile göre daha fazla eğitim konusu içerdiğini düşünse de daha sonra önemli ve faydalı onca konunun “dilbilim” başlığı altında derlenemeyeceğini gördü. şekil 2. seval’in i̇zlence haritası benzetme: seval’e göre bilgiyi öğretmen ve öğrenici tiplerini, biçimlerini, yöntemleri ve uygulamaları dikkate alarak uygulamaya sokmak eğitimi hem öğretmen hem de öğrenci için daha eksiksiz ve eğlenceli bir hale getirir. seval, öğretmenlerin bu etkenleri dersleri planlarken düşünmesi gerektiğini, çünkü bu yönlerin uyumlu sınıf ortamına katkı sağladığını düşünmektedir. görüşme sırasında seval, öğretmenlerin eğitim için ihtiyaç duydukları hususlar üzerinde de durur. görüşüne göre bir dil öğretmeni dört dil becerisini uygulamalı ve birbiriyle ilişkilendirmelidir. chomsky, krashen, whorf ve sapir gibi dilbilimcileri tanımasına ve kavram haritasında yer vermek istemesine rağmen seval’in dilbilim bilgisi tam değildir. i̇pucu: seval bilgisini “öğretmenler, öğreniciler, beceriler, dil, edebiyat, dil sınıfı, insanlar ve 5c ölçütleri” açısından sınıflandırır ve alan bilgisi için bunların önemini ve birbirleriyle olan ilgisini göstermeye çalışır. seval alan bilgisinde en çok gerekli olarak gördüğü yöntemleri ve teknikleri vurguladığı gibi “5c ölçütleri yaklaşımını” dil öğretiminde geçerli ve güncel yöntemlerden biri olarak kabul eder. bu başlıklar arasında i̇ngiliz edebiyatına da dikkati okten & tochon: i̇zlence haritalandırması ve eğitsel sağlarlıklar transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 65 çeker. öğrencinin öğrenimini canlı tutmadaki diğer önemli hususlar da dil sınıfı özellikleri, teşvik etme, geribildirime ihtiyaç ve sınıf ortamıdır. tanı: seval her bir sınıflandırmayı tek tek ele alır ve her bir parçanın bütünle olan bağlantısını araştırır. dilbilimin rolü hakkındaki kavrayış sorunlarından kaynaklanan duraksamadan sonra onu, “dil” sınıflandırmasının alt başlığına yerleştirir. dilbilimcileri de dilbilim çalışmalarına yaptıkları katkılardan dolayı “insanlar” başlığı altına koyar. dil öğretiminin bağlam değişkenlerini incelerken sınıf bağlamındaki eğitici araç ve gereçlere değinir. sonra sosyal stratejilerden (bireylerin ve büyük grupların bakış açılarından öğretmen –merkezlilik ve öğrenci-merkezlilik) bahseder. türkiye bağlamında öğretimin önemli meselelerinden biri olduğunu duyumsar. açıklama: ders planlaması için anahtar unsurlar olan sınıflandırmaları seçer. öğretmen ve öğrenici gruplarını ayrıntılandırır ve daha sonra ders planlamasındaki dört becerinin birbirini tamamlamasını vurgular. seval, “dil”i, dilin doğasının/yapısının kavranabilmesi için “cümle bilgisi, anlam bilgisi ve dilbilim” gibi alt gruplara ayırır. seval, i̇ngiliz edebiyatı öğretilirse ilişkilendirmede i̇ngilizcenin mantığının daha iyi anlaşılacağını, öğrencilerin konuşma kalıplarını daha rahat edinebilecekleri kanaatine varır. görüşüne göre öğrenciler şiir, kısa hikaye ve roman okumayı severler ve edebiyatla i̇ngilizceyi daha rahat öğrenebilirler. göstergeler arası i̇lişkilendirme: seval, uygun öğretmen eğitimi için ölçütler belirler. öğretme ve öğrenme ile ilgili özellikler ne olmalıdır, izlenceyi yönlendirici bir yol olarak 5c ölçütleri nasıl uygulanabilir, ab dil çerçevesini karşılayan değerlendirmeler nasıl düzenlenir, hedef dildeki kültürel yaklaşımları sağlamak için edebiyat nasıl tamamlayıcı olabilir. bütün bunlar seval için i̇ngilizce öğretmenliğinin önemli özellikleridir. seval kendi izlence haritasını, esra’nınki ile karşılaştırır ve kendininkini birçok açıdan iyi bulur. başlayanlar için esra, i̇ngilizce öğretmenliğini genel olarak ele alır ve becerileri, dilin temel taşları olarak inceler. seval “öğreniciler” ve “dil sınıfı”nı iki ayrı alt grupta incelediği için, kendini doğru bulur. halbuki esra, onlarla öğretim açısından bağlam değişkenleri olduğu için ilgilenir. esra öğrenici tiplerini ve seviyelerini belirleyerek ayrıntılı ele alır. seval, esra’nın dilbilimcilere değinmediğine ve edebiyatın onun haritasından gözükmediğine dikkati çeker. aynı zamanda seval, esra’yı i̇ngilizce öğretim tarihi, sosyal stratejiler ve eğitici araç ve gereçler gibi konuların belirtilmesinde başarılı bulur. seval, esra’nın izlence haritasında değerlendirmenin yer almasını eleştirir. çünkü esra değerlendirmeye hiç değinmemektedir. sonuç olarak seval, harun’un haritasını inceler ve öğreniciler, öğretim biçimleri teknikleri ve yaklaşımları hakkındaki bilgiden yoksun olduğu için eleştirir. seval’e göre harun sadece iki yöntemi dilbilgisi-çeviri ve iletişimsel yaklaşımı tartışır ve i̇ngilizce öğretiminin birçok önemli hususunu göz ardı eder. seval, bu bilgiyi yetersiz bulmakla birlikte harun’un, öğretim için izlence bilgisinin önemli bir hususu olan “ders programı”na değinmesini beğenir. tanımlama: seval, sınıf planlaması ve eğitimini etkileyen öğretim ve öğrenime özgü özellikleri tanımlar. 5c ölçütleri, dil öğreniminin iç içe geçmiş bütün alanlarını gösteren ayırt edici dil ölçütleridir. edebiyat, dilsel topluluğun kültürel kodlarını kavrayabilmek için gereklidir. “öğretmenler” alt başlığı ile seval, “öğretmen tipleri, öğretme biçimleri, yöntemleri, yaklaşımları, teknikleri” ile ilgilenir ve öğretmenlerin öğrencilerle daha iyi iletişim kurabilmesi ve daha anlamlı öğretmesi için yeni yöntemleri, biçimleri, yaklaşımları bilmesi gerektiğini gösterir. “cümle bilgisi, dilbilim, anlambilim, 5c yöntemi”ni de “dil”in alt grubu olarak tanımlar. kendi deyişiyle dil becerilerini geliştirmek için iyi bir yoldur. seval dil politikaları için ayrı bir başlık yazmaya ihtiyaç duymaz. zira izlence haritası eğitim okten & tochon: i̇zlence haritalandırması ve eğitsel sağlarlıklar transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 66 politikalarının öğretmen ve öğrencilerle ilgili hususları vurgulamaktadır. seval’e göre harun izlence konularını okul, sınıf ortamı, öğrenciler, öğretmen açısından daha ayrıntılı ele almalıdır. bunlar, i̇ngilizce öğretiminin önemli konularıdır. halbuki harun, i̇ngilizceyi, sadece i̇ngilizce öğretmenliğinin para, seyahat, etkileşimle ilgili alt grubu olarak gösterir. seval bu yaklaşımı alanla ilgisiz bulur.seval kendi izlence haritasını, harun öğrenicilere değinmediğinden, onunkinden daha başarılı bulur. bununla birlikte kendi izlence haritasına koymayı unutup harun’un kullanışlı bir izlence aracı olarak koyduğu ders programına da dikkati çeker. fakat “ders programı”nı bir dil sınıfı özelliği olarak yazmayı tercih ettiğini belirtir. tahmin: seval’in izlence başlıklarını seçimi, etkileşim açısından öğretim etkinliği olan ana amacının doğrultusundadır. seval, bu çerçevenin öğrenmek için daha iyi bir destek olacağına inanır. i̇ngilizce öğretim tarihi (haritasında bulunmayan) sadece alışıla gelmiş kabul eden öğretmen ve öğrenicilere yardımcı olabilir, fakat fazla bir önemi de yoktur. böylece kendi izlence haritasını başarılı öğretimin güvenilir bir öngörüsü olarak düşünür. seval, sınıf uygulamasında i̇ngilizce öğretmenliği eğitimindeki edebiyat ve 5c ölçütlerinin etkilerini teyit eder. edebiyattan sağladığı kültürel bakış açılarını, dil kullanımlarını, dile özel deyimleri tekrarlar ve bir sınıfta onları nasıl kullanabileceğini araştırır. seval sonunda öğrenicilerin kendi iletişimsel becerilerini 5c yönlendirmesiyle geliştirebilecekleri kanaatine varır. model kurma: seval, dilin bağlam içerisinde öğretilmesi ve öğrenilmesi gerektiğini söyler. ayrıca bir sınıflandırma kullanmak da bilgiyi daha anlamlı kılar. seval kendi izlence bilgisini, bir başlıklar düzenine göre sınıflandırır. bağlamlar, bilgi sınıflandırmalarıyla eşleşir. ana başlık “i̇ngilizce öğretmenliği eğitimi”dir; alt başlıklar ise “öğretmenler, öğreniciler, beceriler, dil, edebiyat, dil sınıfı, insanlar, 5c”dir. seval haritasının gerçekliğini izlence modellemesi açısından yorumlar ve izlence yapılandırmak, öğretilen alanda seval’in tutarlılığını arttırır. öğretmen adayı 3, esra önsezi: esra ilk önce lisans programı ile ilgili görüşlerini bildirdi ve üniversitedeki derslerinden örnekler verdi. ne zaman neyi, nasıl öğretmek konusuna odaklandı. esra kavram haritasını, derslerinin içeriklerine göre kendinden bir şeyler katarak hazırladı. sözlü görüşmede esra, ilk kavram haritasının düzensiz olduğuna değindi. aklına geleni yazdığını, sistemli bir sıra olmadığını söyledi. daha sonra başka bir harita hazırlamaya başladı. belirti: esra ilk izlence haritasını gelişi güzel şekilde hazırlamaya başladı. i̇lk yapılan beyin fırtınasından sonra fark etti ki kendi izlence bilgisini sınıflandırmak için sistemli bir yola ihtiyacı vardı. “öğretmek” ve “öğrenmek” diye iki grup yaptı. kişisel olarak izleyeceği yöntem için bir düzen seçmeliydi. bir süre iyice düşündükten sonra izlence düzenleyicileri olarak bazı başlıkların iyi uyacağına karar verdi. bir başlık diğerini çağrıştırarak ve birbirini izleyen yaratıcı bir süreç olmalıydı. i̇ngilizce öğretmenliğini daha anlaşılır kılacak ayırt edici başlıkları seçmeliydi. i̇kinci dil edinimi, yabancı dil olarak i̇ngilizce ve dilbilim gibi i̇ngilizce öğretmenliği ile ilgili başlıklar zihninde açık değildi ve alanda daha doğrudan kuramsallaştırmaya ihtiyaç gösteriyordu. esra hemen dikkat çekebilecek, gelişim dosyasında göze çarpabilecek derli toplu izlence başlıklarını araştırıyordu. kavram haritasını çizerkenki ilk tereddütleri, gelişim dosyası için sezilen sonuçtu. i̇çeriklerin seçiminde baştan aşağı üniversite derslerini dikkate almıştı. okten & tochon: i̇zlence haritalandırması ve eğitsel sağlarlıklar transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 67 şekil 3. esra’nın i̇zlence haritası benzetme: alt başlıkları seçerken ve yazarken esra, bilgi yığınlarını ve karmaşasını engellemek için başlıkların sayısını sınırlandırmaya çalıştı. seçimini tam ve öz bir şekilde yapmasını sağlayan kavramların çoğu, birbiri ile bağlantılıdır. daha sonra haritasını daha iyi düzenlemek için bloom’un sınıflandırmasını kullanmaya çalıştı. “dil” ve “öğretmek” belli başlı izlence kavramlarıydı. esra, dili bir bilim olarak görmektedir. fakat dilbilimi ilgili bir grup olarak gerçekte düşünmez. seçtiği gruplar uygulamalı bir alan olarak dil öğrenimi için önemlidir. i̇lk taslağını incelerken daha fazla izlence grupları aklına geldi. i̇pucu: türkiye’deki i̇ngilizce öğretmenliği eğitiminin rolü, insanların dil statüsünü algılaması, i̇ngilizcenin günümüzdeki ve gelecekteki statüsü üzerinde durur. esra, eğer i̇ngilizce dünya genelinde daha az önemli hale gelirse, i̇ngilizce öğretmenliğinin dil ve öğretme yönlerini de ele alarak türk eğitim sisteminin gündeminden düşebileceğini söyler. okten & tochon: i̇zlence haritalandırması ve eğitsel sağlarlıklar transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 68 dilbilim başlıkları üzerinde fazla durmaz. çünkü ona göre dilbilimin kendisi zaten “dil” başlığının içindedir. esra, öğretim biçimlerini önceki eyleme öncülük eden bir grup olarak düşünür: hangi açıdan öğretmen bir model olabilir? başka bir deyişle öğretmenler sınıfta hangi özellikleri sergilemelidir? esra, öğretmeni kolaylaştıran olarak görür. fakat öğretmen sınıfta neyi kolaylaştırmaktadır? esra böylece ipuçları bulmaya çalıştı. göstergeler arası i̇lişkilendirme: haritasını bir daha incelediğinde esra, yöntemlerdeki, sınıf uygulamalarındaki ve kuramlardaki yetkinliği ile birlikte i̇ngilizce edinimindeki gerçek seviyesinin ne olduğunun farkına varır. harita, bilgi düzenlemesini ve yeterliliği çıkarımda bulunarak sistemli bir şekilde sorgulamasına yardımcı olur. i̇zlence haritası çıkarmak, esra’ya kendi alan bilgisini hatırlamada ve derinlemesine ele almada yardım etti. öğretmenlerin anlamlı öğrenme için farklı yöntemleri bir arada kullanmaları gerektiğine karar verdi ve böyle bir seçmecilik sınıfta daha faydalı olabilirdi. ders aracını, gerecini öğrenci için anlamlı kılan deneyimler gibi öğretmenin girdisi olan kişisel deneyimler ve özellikler, başarılı öğretimin önemli bir unsurudur. esra, eğitici bir araç olarak edebiyata değinmediğini fark eder. dil öğretiminde edebiyatın yararına inanır; fakat sınıf uygulamalarında, ödevlerde kullanmayı tercih eder. esra, izlence haritasının bir bölümü olan “değerlendirme” ile ilgili arkadaşlarının getirdikleri eleştirileri de kabul eder ve kendi öğretim kavramına daha iyi uyacağına karar verip “değerlendirme” yerine “geribildirim” yazar. esra, seval’in kavram haritasını inceler ve seval’in haritasının öğretimi daha derinlemesine ele aldığını fark eder. fakat aynı zamanda daha özellikli olabilecekken alan bilgisinin ince ayrıntılarına pek fazla değinilmemiştir. esra, seval’in izlence bakış açısını görsel, işitsel ve devinimsel öğrenici tiplerini dikkate alıp sınıflandırdığı için beğenir. özellikle bu nokta, esra’yı, kavram haritası çıkarmak konusunda kendi yaklaşımını tekrar kavramsallaştırmaya getirir. şimdi “dil öğretimi kuramı” başlığı altında öğretmen ve öğrenici özelliklerini ifade etmeyi tercih etmez. sonuç olarak sınıf arkadaşlarının haritalarını görmek, esra’ya kendi bilgisini çerçevelemede yardımcı olur. i̇lk gösterge oluşumu ve başvurusu aşamalarının yerini şimdi göstergeler arası ilişkilendirme alır ve farklı akıl yürütmelerini inceler. esra, harun’un haritasına genel başlıklar koyduğunu söyler; böyle alışıla gelmiş kavramsal kutucukları açması ve alan eğitimindeki kavramların öğretici göstergelerini araştırmak için ayırt edici özelliklerini belirginleştirmesi gerektiğini savunur. tanı: sonuçta “dilbilim”i, “dil”in alt başlıklarından biri olarak seçti. “dil öğretim tarihi”, “dil öğretimi kuramı” da “”öğretim”in alt başlıkları oldu. esra, i̇ngilizce öğretimi uygulamalarını, tarihsel geçmişlerini tartışır ve alan eğitiminin anlaşılmasında temel olduklarından “uluslar arası dil” statüsü dil eğitimi sırasında gösterilmelidir. öğretmen öğrencilerini sadece bilgi edinimine değil aynı zamanda onu eleştirel yorumlamaya da yönlendirmelidir. beyin fırtınası, rol yapma gibi genel öğretim yöntemleri dışında esra, öğrenici ve öğretmen tiplerini ayrı ayrı ele alır ve zeka tiplerini öğrenici özellikleri olarak geliştirir. açıklama: esra, izlence haritasının siyasi özellik taşıyabileceğini belirtir; fakat çalışması kuramsaldır. ona göre sosyo-kültürel yönleri öğretmek alan eğitiminde en hassas noktadır. diğer taraftan (yürürlükteki uygulamalara başvurulabilir) i̇ngilizcenin tarihsel geçmişini sorgulamaya götüren uygulamalardır. bugün i̇ngilizce uluslar arası dil olarak kabul edilmektedir. dil tarihi, öğrencilere neden i̇ngilizceyi öğrendiklerini açıklayabilir. esra, öğrencilerinden eğer i̇ngilizce öğrenmezlerse neler olabileceğini, i̇ngilizcenin diğer dillere göre neden daha popüler olduğunu düşünmelerini ister. ayrıca esra i̇ngilizcenin statüsünü, 5c ölçüt yaklaşımını, eğitici araç ve gereçlerini, sınıfta sosyal stratejilerini, alıcı okten & tochon: i̇zlence haritalandırması ve eğitsel sağlarlıklar transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 69 (yorumlayıcı) ve üretken (sunucu) becerilerdeki dil yapısını inceler. dil ile bilgiyi ve değerlendirmeyi i̇ngilizce öğretimi için önemli unsurlar olarak ele alır. dilbilim üzerinde pek fazla durmaz çünkü dil öğretimi için önemli olduğuna inanmaz. uygulamada kavramları iletişimsel kuramla eşleşir: yeterliliği kolaylaştırmak ister; dilbilgisi uzmanlarını eğitmek amaç değildir. tanımlama: esra, i̇ngilizce öğretmenliği çalışmalarının neyi işaret ettiği ve izlencesini daha anlamlı yapmakla ilgili biraz daha beyin fırtınasına ihtiyaç duyduğunu kabul eder. sürece dayalı izlence bilgisi örneklerini görmek için konferanslara katılmak ister. geribildirim, esra’yı alan eğitimini kavramları üzerine düşünmeye sevk eder. öğretmenleri yetkin deneyimlerine göre daha iyi sınıflandırabileceğini düşünür. kavram haritasına dil politikalarını dahil etmez. öğrencilerle tartışıldığında her kavram haritasının kişisel bir öğretim felsefesi göstereceği sonucunu çıkarır. her harita alan bilgisini çeşitli şekillerde betimler ve yaklaşımları kendi eğitim politikalarını gösterir. haritasındaki ayırt edici özellik, bilginin yapılandırılmasında tarihin rolüdür. ona göre harun daha fazla alt başlık koymalı ve başlıklara açıklık getirmelidir. çünkü sadece iki yöntemden yani dilbilgisi-çeviri ve iletişimsel yaklaşımdan bahsetmektedir ve öğretimin birçok yönüne değinmesi gerekmektedir. bununla birlikte küresel bakış açısından i̇ngiliz kültürüne değindiğinden harun’un haritasının kültürel yaklaşımını beğenir. tahmin: dersler uzmanlaşmak için yeterli değildir. esra’nın daha çok dil öğretimi uygulamalarına ihtiyacı vardır. alan eğitiminin tarihsel geçmişini dikkate alarak ders planlarını tekrar ele alması ve dünya genelinde var olan değerini gelecek için duyumsaması gerekmektedir. esra, yöntemlerin tartışmasını yaparken richards ve rogers’ın kitabını kullanır. öğretmenlerin kendi deneyimlerini öğretimi geliştirmek için yöntemlere eklemeleri gerektiğine inanır. tutarlı, yetkin bir görünüm yaratmak için kişisel özelliklerinin en iyisini dikkate almalıdırlar. esra kendisinden bir örnek verir: bazen sabırsız olduğunu ve bunun da uzmanlığını etkileyebileceğini söyler. öğrenicileri sınıfa getirdiklerine göre değil öğrenme davranışlarına göre değerlendirir. öğretmen, sınıf ortamında öğrencilerin geçmişine, gelişim özelliklerine, ilgilerine dikkat etmeli ve kabiliyetlerini keşfetmelidir. haritasını yorumlarken dilbilimin, anlambilim ve cümle bilgisini içerdiğini söyler; böylece onları ayrı ayrı göstermesine gerek yoktur. model kurma: esra’nın kavram haritası, uygulamalardan çok kuramlara dayanır. i̇zlencenin şekillenmesinde anahtar bir rol oynayan öğretmen eğitimini alırken alan bilgisinin ve milli eğitim programının sınıfta uygulanabileceğini düşünür. esra i̇ngilizce öğretmenliğini iki ana başlığa ayırır: “öğretmek” ve “dil”. daha sonra “dil”i iki bölüme ayırır: “i̇ngilizce” ve “dilbilim”. dil becerilerinden iki grup yapar: alıcı (okuma, dinleme) ve üretici (konuşma, yazma). “dil öğretimi tarihi” başlığı altında yöntemleri sınıflandırır. harun’un üniversitedeki sınıflardan ayrı olarak daha ayırt edici özellikte olanları eklediğine dikkati çeker: harun’un haritasında alan eğitimi bilgisinin değişik bir yorumu göze çarpar. harun’un özgün bir model kurduğunu söyler; bu da onun kendi konumunu tekrar gözden geçirmesine yardım eder. eğer üç haritayı karşılaştırırsak üçü de üniversitedeki öğretmen eğitiminde önceden yapılandırılmış izlence bilgisini kullanır. ön bilgi, yansıtıcı süreci başlatmak için önseziyi sağlar. fakat alan bilgisi üzerinde dururken öğretmen adayları, izlence üzerine çalışmalarını üst anlam üretme seviyesine taşırlar. seval ve esra kuramdan uygulamaya geçişte anahtar olan öğretmek ve öğrenmek yönlerini vurgularlar. yaklaşımları yeni yapılandırmacılığa dayanır; fakat öğretim için yapısal yöntemleri izlerler. önce ihtiyaca göre geçerli bir yaklaşım seçilir; daha sonra uygulamasının anlamlı olabileceği hedef topluluğa uygulanır. okten & tochon: i̇zlence haritalandırması ve eğitsel sağlarlıklar transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 70 sonunda da beklentiler ve sonuçlar hedeflere göre değerlendirilir. seval ve esra, her ikisi de öğretmenlik eğitimleri sırasında gördükleri önceden biçimlendirilmiş yapıya odaklanırlar. kendilerinin özel, kişisel yorumlarına erişmek için yeteneklerini kullanmazlar. buna karşı olarak harun’un iç konuşması ona “kendi göstergeselliği”nin yanı sıra küreselleşme biçimi anlamında da yardım eder (petrilli, 2003). harun’un haritası, bilinen alan bilgisinden uzak görünse de, harun üst anlam üretmenin en yüksek seviyesini gösteren küresel gösterimler ve bağlantılarla sosyo-kültürel bir yaklaşımı incelikle dile getirir. harun’un ele alışı, üst anlam üretme sürecini diğerlerine göre daha açıklayıcı gösterir. öncelikle hakim olan anlayışın geleneksel kavramlarının dışına çıkar; bir süre düşünürken kendi i̇ngilizce öğretmenliği yaklaşımını askıda tutar; daha sonra başkaları tarafından kabul ettirilmiş i̇ngilizce dil politikaları ve i̇ngilizcenin sömürgeci gücü üzerinde durur. sonuç olarak da devlet yönetimi, ekonomi, eğitim ve iletişim açısından özgün öneriler, kararlar verir. harun’un üst anlam üretimi, bilgi çerçevesini çizmeyi kapsar ve i̇ngiliz dili ve kültürüne karşı konumunu belirler. bu süreç, uzmanlıkla ilgili kendi izlence bilgisinin sorumluluğunu hissettirir. böylece petrilli’nin (2004) adlandırdığı “göstergesel ilkeler”i geliştirir. i̇rdeleme i̇zlence haritalarının değerlendirilmesi i̇zlence haritalarının yapılandırmacı yaklaşımı i̇ngilizce’yi bir yabancı dil olarak öğretecek olan türk öğretmen adayları arasında izlencenin göstergesel süreci araştırılmıştır. bu amaçla izlence haritasını çıkarmak, alanın göstergesel çerçevesini çizmede yardımcı olmuştur ve böylece öğrencilere uzmanlaşmada yol göstermiştir. i̇zlence bilgisinin haritasını çıkarmak, katılımcılara öğretilen alan bilgisini nasıl algıladıklarını, anladıklarını, oluşturduklarını, yorumladıklarını ve zihinlerinde somutlaştırdıklarını (tochon, 2000ab) sorgulama imkanı tanır. bu süreçteki geribildirim, izlence içeriklerinin biçimlenmesindeki öğretmen eğitimi derslerinin önemli rolüne ışık tutar. öğretmen eğitiminin yapılandırmacı bakışı ile de uyumludur. i̇zlence haritaları, harun’da olduğu gibi, öğretmenin yapılandırmacı bakışını desteklerler. göstergesel özellikleri çalışma, işaret sistemlerinin farkındalığını arttırırken ve kodlarını da çözümler. öğretmen adayları, farkında olmadıkları kodlara göre işaretlere anlamlar yüklerler. i̇zlence bilgilerini değerlendirip yorumlayan öğretmen adayları, daha önceden öğrendikleri bilginin ifadeleri ve içeriklerin değeri üzerine düşünürler. böyle bir sorgulama süreci, izlence öğrenimini daha anlamlı kılar. öğretmen adayları, alan bilgisini tarafsız, ayrıştırılmış bir bağlamlar kümesi gibi edinmez; yorumlarla, karşılıklı konuşmalarla, işbirliğiyle, eklemelerle, düzeltmelerle kendi algılamalarını daha çok oluştururlar. ayrıca ortaklaşa katkılarla yapılandırdıkları yeni bilgiye kendilerini uydururlar. kendi izlencelerini yapılandırmak böylelikle bağıntılı bir süreç haline gelir: her defasında bilgi önceki örneklere eklenir; öğrenciler yeni yorumlarla kendilerini uyarlarlar. bu yaklaşım deneyime dayandığı için sonuçlanan bilgi, öğretmen gelişimi için bir çerçeve hazırlayan izlence haritasını çıkarmaya imkan tanıdığı için deneyimsel ve özneler arasıdır. çünkü izlence haritası çıkarmak, düşünceleri görsel olarak birbirine bağlar. çizimi, düşünceler ve durumlar arasındaki ilişkilerin doğasını göstermeye katkıda bulunur. anlamların ve varsayımların bağlantılarını ve yakınsaklıkları gösteren bir yol haritası sunar. i̇zlence haritası çıkarmak, bilginin düzenlemesi üzerinde duran uygulamacılara yardım açısından önerdiğimiz bir yaklaşımdır. kavram haritası çıkarmak, her seviyedeki eğitimin kalitesini yükselttiği için türk milli eğitimi tarafından tavsiye edildiğinden (meb ttkb okten & tochon: i̇zlence haritalandırması ve eğitsel sağlarlıklar transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 71 i̇zlencesi, 2005), bu çalışma hizmet öncesi bağlamda daha düşündürücü, yaratıcı, işbirlikçi ve uygulamacı yaklaşımlara yol açarak bu yaklaşım için destekleyici veri sunar. göstergesel i̇zlence haritası çıkarmanın yararları bu çalışmanın en önemli bulgusu, öğretmen adaylarının uzmanlık becerilerini geliştirmek veya sınıf ortamlarında çıkarımda bulunacakları izlence bakış açılarını geliştirmek için izlence haritalarının yetiştirici araçlar olarak kullanılabilmeleridir. göstergesel harita çıkarmak, öğretmen adayları ile öğretmen eğitmenleri arasındaki ilişkiyi kolaylaştırdığından öğretmen adaylarının alan bilgisinde neyin anlamlı olduğunu hissetmelerini sağlayan teşvik edici bir yaklaşım olduğunu kanıtlamıştır. ayrıca izlence haritası çıkarmak, öğrencilere öğrendikleri ve öğretmek için seçtikleri konular arasındaki bağlantıyı gösterdiğinden belli başlı kavramların edinimini anlam oluşturma süreci için gerekçeler sağlayarak kolaylaştırır. i̇zlence haritaları ayrıca, öğretmen adaylarını kendi kişisel, akademik ve uzmanlık bilgileri üzerinde düşündürterek aralarındaki yansıtıcı uygulamaları açığa çıkarırlar. öğretmen adayları, önceliklerinin bağlantılarını beraberce tartışabilir; uzman olarak daha iyi hazırlanabilir ve deneyimsizliğin tehlikelerini aza indirgeyebilirler. i̇zlence haritasını çıkarmak, bu öğretmen adaylarına yaşam boyu öğreniciler olarak uzmanlıklarını beslemek için de yardım eder. i̇zlence oluşturmanın, yorumlayıcı kavramsallaştırmanın bir biçimi olduğunu anlamaya başlarlar. bir ölçüde üretilmiştir. peirce’ün bakış açısına göre deneme inançları belirlemek için önemlidir. i̇zlence haritası çıkarmak, öğrencilere kişisel düşüncelerini, beklentilerini, geçmişteki amaçlarını ve tenkitlerini gözden geçirme imkanı verir. bireysel izlence haritasını geliştirme süreci, öğrencilerin ne bildiklerinin farkına varmalarını arttırır; onları alan bilgisinin uygunluğu ve işe yararlılığı, alan eğitimindeki eksiklikleri, olası güdüleme eksikliği ve uzmanlaşmanın büyümesindeki öz değerlendirme üzerine düşünmeye sevk eder. başlangıçta öğretmen adayları, kağıt üzerine alan bilgisini yerleştirmede ve sınıflandırmada zorluk çektiler. bununla birlikte bir okul yılı boyunca neyin öğretileceğini belirleyen geleceğin uzmanları olarak kendilerini görmeye başladılar. öğretmen adayları için en belirgin etken, nitelikli öğretmenler gibi davranma isteğiydi. kendileri için “nitelikli öğretmen”in ne olduğunu tanımlamak, onları alanlarının kavramları üzerine düşünmeye teşvik etti. kendi bilgi seviyelerini değerlendirirken stajyerlikleri için esaslı bir hazırlık olan alanın gelişimi üzerine düşüncelerini ifade etmek üzere cesaretlendirildiler. bu çalışma, öğretmen eğitmenlerinin, izlence haritası çıkarmayı öğretmen adaylarına öz değerlendirme sağlayarak ve olası eksiklikleri belirginleştirerek uzmanlaştırmak için bir yansıtıcı araç gibi kullanabileceklerini gösterdi. bilgilerini haritalandıran öğrenciler, gördükleri derslerin içeriklerini ve işlevlerini yeniden çerçevelendirir. i̇zlence haritası çıkarmak etrafında gelişen konuşmaların meydana koyduğu diğer hususlar, kalabalık sınıf etkinlikleri için hazırlanmanın önemi ve hedef dilde öğretmek için gerekli dinleme ve konuşma becerilerini geliştirmektir. i̇zlence haritası çıkarmak, hem öğretmen eğitmenleri hem de öğretmen adayları için uzmanlık becerilerini ilerletmekte mükemmel bir araçtır. i̇zlence bilgisinin yapısı üzerine önemli sorular sorar. öğretmen adayları, alan bilgisini ve yapılanmasının arkasındaki ilişkilendirmeyi birbiri ardınca sıralamak için uygun yollar araştırdılar. sağlarlık kavramı, ulusal izlencenin soyutta kalmadığını vurgulamak açısından yararlıdır; fakat belirli anlamlı konumlara ve öğretildiği göstergesel çevrelere uyarlanmalıdır. ayrıca öğretmen adayları, ulusal programın ayrıntılı parçalarına öncelik tanıyacak olan izlencenin belirli yönleriyle kendi göstergesel konumlara ve sağlarlıklara sahiptirler. i̇zlence haritası çıkarmak, böyle tercihler için gerekçeleri incelemede ilgi çekici bir yol olduğunu kanıtlamıştır. öğretmen adayları, sezgisel araştırmanın (birincilik seviyesi) başlangıç okten & tochon: i̇zlence haritalandırması ve eğitsel sağlarlıklar transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 72 seviyesinden izlencenin belli başlı nesnelerini tutarlılıkla (ikincilik seviyesinde) dile getirmek için yönlendirildiler. düşünce ve eylemdeki uzmanlık sahaları gibi alanı yeniden çerçevelendirmelerine yarım eden kuramsal bir bütünlüğe doğru bu izlence kavramlarını taşımaya başladılar. bütün bu süreç, sadece öğretmeyi ve öğrenmeyi amaçlamayıp ayrıca onlara “derinlemesine eğitim” zevkini de vermiştir (tochon, 2008). i̇zlence bilgisinin yapılanması bu çalışmada biz, izlence haritası çıkarmayı, bir üst göstergesel süreç ve çizim ve uzlaşmanın çoklu aşamalarını içeren göstergeler arası geçiş süreci olarak inceledik. i̇zlenceler, toplum için anlamları yerleştirmeyi amaçlayan otoriteyi göstermeye meyillidir. türkiye’deki kurumlardaki ortak kanı, anlam yapılanması öğrencilerin zihinlerinde gelişebilir; fakat öğretmenin zihninde kararlı ve kurala uygun olmalıdır. öğretmen, eğitimini kavramları ya aktarımlarına ya da yansıtıcı yapılandırmalarına izin verecek şekilde somutlaştırmak için alır. bourdieu (2001) böyle bir benimsemenin sosyo-kültürel mirastaki okul zorunluluğun bir parçası olduğuna dikkati çeker. bu çalışmanın da gösterdiği gibi bilgi, bildirişim sürecinden daha büyüktür. bilginin seçimi ve işlenişi kimlik süreçlerinden ileri gelir. örneğin harun öğretilen alan bilgisinin sosyo-kültürel bir bakış açısına sahiptir. bu da onu, diğer arkadaşlarından kesin bir biçimde ayırır. haritasını diğerleriyle karşılaştırdığında baştaki bakış açısında ilgili olabilecek bazı yöntemsel boyutları gözden kaçırdığının farkına varır. arkadaşlarıyla görüşmesine rağmen siyasi yaklaşımını, izlenen dışsal önermelerdeki değişimleri gösteren başka tutumlarla tamamlamaya karar verir. zamanla modelleme süreci, harun için kendinin izlenceye ait tutumlarını gittikçe belirlediği dönüşüm olur. diğer taraftan seval’in düşüncesi, belirlenmiş bilgiye dayanmaktadır: öğretmenlik eğitimi dersleri sırasında aldığı bilgiyi olduğu gibi kabul etmektedir. bu tutum, onun, harun’un yenilikçi görüşlerini tam okumasını engeller. bu görüşleri, öğretici söylemde gerekli görülen yöntemlerin bakış açısından yetersiz görse de dil politikalarını ve bilginin toplum bilgisini inceler. bu açıdan seval, kavrayışın birkaç aşamasından başka fazla bir tam anlamlandırma süreci göstermez. öğretilen alan bilgisiyle uygunluk açısından esra’nın daha iyi dile getirdiği kanısına varır. esra, dilin konumu ve insanların belirli dil uygulamalarının sosyal değerlendirmesini nasıl algıladıkları ve yarattıkları üzerine düşünür. anglo-sakson dünyasının ekonomik gücüyle yakından ilgili olan i̇ngilizce’nin şimdiki konumunun bir gün gelip değişebileceğini, on veya yirmi yıl içerisinde kısmen kaybolabileceğini fark eder. esra, daha iyi kavrar ve seçtiği alan bilgisi, sosyal gösterim ve bilgi kuramı meselesidir. daha sonra harun haritasını gözden geçirirken esra, onun haritasında gösterdiği i̇ngiliz kültürü üzerine küresel bir bakışa sahip olduğunu görür ve bu da esra’nın kendi haritasını tekrar ele almasına yol açar. harun’un tarihi kavramsallaştırmasıyla bu etkileşim, onun bakışını yöntem derslerindeki yönlendirmeden farklı olarak yeniden çerçevelendirmeye yöneltir. fakat bir i̇ngilizce öğretmeni olarak ne yapacağında neyin önemli olduğuna daha iyi uyacaktır. bu üç öğretmen adayının tam anlamlandırma süreciyle açıklığa kavuşur ki izlence, kavramsallaştırma ve çizimle ilgili olduğu kadar paylaşılan deneyimle, eylemle ve insancıllıkla da ilgilidir. yapı/temsilcilik ikileminin devimsel ortaya çıkışını inceledik. öğretmen adaylarının, alan bilgilerini özgün bir şekilde tekrar kavramsallaştırırken, izlence haritalarının yapısının, anlamlandırma açısından hiçbir şekilde tamamlanmayarak nasıl geliştiğini gözlemledik. okul bağlamında kavramların dönüştürülme tarzı, öğrencilerin öğrendiklerini kişiselleştirmede neden başarısız olduklarını açıklar. öğretmen adayları sıklıkla bu eğilimi sergilerler. bu çalışmanın da gösterdiği gibi öğretmen adayları, bilgiyi kendilerinin uzman yaşantılarında eyleme geçmenin etkin ve işlevsel bir yolu olarak görürler. etkinlik miti, değerlendirmenin okten & tochon: i̇zlence haritalandırması ve eğitsel sağlarlıklar transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 73 altını çizen değerleri gizler. değerlendirme bir değer biçme süreci ve neyin iyi eğitim olduğunu durumsallaştıran önceki bilgiye yol açan göstergesel sürecin düzenlenmesidir. çizim süreci üzerine eğilmek, öğretmen adaylarına yansıtıcı eleştirel düşünerek okullaşma için bilgi üretimini anlamalarına yardım eder. sonuç öğretmen adaylarının izlence algısı, sosyal alt tabaka ve deneyimlerine göre farklılık gösteren değerlere dayanır. değerlendirme sürecinin eğitim için ne kadar merkezi olduğunu anlayabilirsek göstergesel incelemenin de eğitimsel amaçların göstergesel ifadelerle nasıl anlaşılabileceğini gösteren değerli bir araç olduğunu anlarız. örneğin, öğretmen adayları elektronik haritalarında izlencelerini tasarlarken alan bilgisi öğretimi anlayışlarını yeniden yapılandırma ve yeniden kavramsallaştırma eğilimindedirler. bu izlence yapılandırma biçimi, okullarda öğretilebilen bir modeldeki uygulamaları ve değerler sıra düzenini, seçimini, sosyokültürel ve siyasi seçimleri içeren anlamı uzlaştırma çabasıdır. i̇zlence haritası çıkarmak, aday uygulamacılar arasında izlence seçeneklerinin aydınlatılmasına yol açan değerlerin ve önsezilerin gözlenip tartışılabildiği ilgi çekici bir araç olabilir. i̇zlence haritası çıkarmayı bir amaç olarak değil de bir süreç olarak görmek, kişisel bilgiyle alan bilgisinin nasıl olumsuz bir hale getirildiğini açıklamaya yardım eder. i̇zlence haritası çıkarma sürecine eşlik eden görüşmeleri gözlemlediğimizde öğretmen adaylarının, izlenceye kendi öğretim uygulamalarına dayanan göstergesel konumları araştırmada önceki bilgi ve birikimlerinden yararlandıklarını gördük. i̇zlence haritası çıkarmak, öğrencilerin kendilerini rahat hissettikleri alan bilgisi konumlarıyla yapılan sağlarlığa ve seçime dayanmaktadır. öğretmen adayları için izlence alışmak zorunda oldukları kavramsal konumlara sahiptir. öğretmen adayının göstergesel araştırması, izlence haritası çıkarmanın neden yardımcı bir süreç olduğunu gösteren sağlarlıkların keşfi gibi görülebilir. sağlarlıklar algılayıcıdan ayrı olarak düşünülemez, fakat daha çok anlam oluşturma sürecindeki etkileşime işaret eder. i̇zlence, bu sağlarlıkların nasıl kullanılacağını bilen öğretmenler için uygun olan etkileşimsel yapılandırmaları destekler. böylece peirce’ten beri incelenen göstergesel bakış açısı, sağlarlık kuramı, öğrencilerin izlenceye nasıl anlamlar ve işlevler yüklediklerini ve kavramsal konumlarını etkileşimle nasıl yapılandırdıklarını çözmeyi sağlar. özetle, öğretmen adayları kararsızlıklarını çözümlemeye çalışırken senaryolar oluşturup olası açıklamalar öne sürerek önsezilerini izlerler, ipuçlarını araştırırlar. hangi belirtilerin önemli ve güvenilir olduğu, hangilerinin ilgisiz olduğunu bulma yeteneklerini geliştirirler. deneyimleri anlamlı kılan göstergelerin ilişkilendirilmesi, kavramsallaştırma sürecinin başlangıcıdır. düşünceler akıl ile ilişkilendirilip değerlendirilir. öğretmen adayları kavram haritalarını birlikte karşılaştırırken inançlarını sorgularlar, içlerinde şüphe uyanır ve tekrar kavramsal tanımlama yapmak durumunda kalırlar. göstergesel araştırmanın anlatımları olarak sağlarlıkları çözümlemek, izlence tasarlanırken yapılan seçmenin kavramsal süreçlerinin ve anlamlarının açığa çıkmasına yardım eder. öğretmen adayları, inançlarını, seçici olarak karar vermeyi ön gören izlence haritası çıkarma sürecinde belirler. öğretmen adayları, tam anlam üretme diye adlandırdığımız, kendi anlamlarını kendileri oluşturmak zorunda oldukları dönüşümsel bir sürece yönlendirilirken izlence haritalandırma işaretleri, başlangıçta deneyimleri anlamlandıran göstergesel özelliği olan bir ilişkilendirme biçimi sunar. birinin kendi göstergesel ilişkilendirmesini alan bilgisi çerçevesinde anlamak, onun eğitimsel sorgulamasını da belirtir. okten & tochon: i̇zlence haritalandırması ve eğitsel sağlarlıklar transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 74 teşekkürler bu makalede sunulan araştırma, tübitaktürkiye bilimsel ve teknolojik araştırma kurumu ve spencer vakfı tarafından desteklenmiştir. tübitak, makalenin ilk yazarına e-gelişim dosyalarının oluşturulması için bir dönem çalışma olanağı tanımıştır. spencer vakfı, 38723 sayılı ödeneğiyle makalenin ikinci yazarına uw-madison'da küreselleşme, standartlaşma ve örgütsel öğrenme üzerine veri işlenmesini sağlamıştır. araştırma asistanı olarak elif kır'a bazı verileri toplama, çevriyazıdaki yardımları ve nathan black'e makaledeki dilsel düzeltmelerdeki yardımları için teşekkür ederiz. ayrıca çalışmaya katılan öğretmen adaylarına, münire erden'e ve ali i̇lker gümüşeli'ne de gelişim dosyası projesi uygulamasına verdikleri destekten dolayı teşekkürlerimizi sunarız. kaynakça allott, r. 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(1990). heuristic schemata as tools for epistemic analysis of teachers' thinking. teaching and teacher education, 6(2), 183-196. tochon, f. v. (2000a). when authentic experiences are ‘enminded’ into disciplinary genres: crossing biographic and situated knowledge, learning and instruction, 10, 331-359. tochon, f. v. (2000b). a semiotic theory of supervision as friendship: cooperative communication as support in second-language education. in s. simpkins, c. w. spinks, & j. deely (eds.), semiotics 1999 (pp. 283299). new york: peter lang. tochon, f. v. (2008). globalization, standardization and e-portfolios in teacher education: from organizational learning to social opportunity. chicago: spencer foundation, 38723. tochon, f. v. (2009). the deep approach to turkish teaching and learning. title vi grant from the u.s. department of education. madison, wi: university of wisconsinmadison, wisconsin center for educational research. urban, g. (2006). metasemiosis and metapragmatics. encyclopedia of language and linguistics (2nd ed. vol. 8, pp.88-91). london, uk: elsevier. mektuplaşma celile e. okten, yildiz technical university, yıldız teknik üniversitesi eğitim fakültesi, davutpaşa yerleşim birimi, esenler, i̇stanbul, 34210, turkey; e-mail: cargit@yildiz.edu.tr francois victor tochon, professor, world language education, department of curriculum & instruction, school of education, teacher education building, 225 north mills street, madison, wi 53706 usa. emails: ftochon@education.wisc.edu. fax: (608) 263-9992. microsoft word 30-128-1-sm.doc to cite this article please include all of the following details: miller, janet l. (2006) curriculum studies and transnational flows and mobilities: feminist autobiographical perspectives. transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> curriculum studies and transnational flows and mobilities: feminist autobiographical perspectives a keynote address presented to the triennial meeting of the international association for the advancement of curriculum studies, may 22, 2006, tampere, finland. janet l. miller teachers college, columbia university, usa abstract i here consider possible effects of global flows, transnational connections, and transcultural interactions on attempts to construct a worldwide curriculum studies field. these flows and mobilities loosen local populations from geographically constrained communities, connecting people and places around the globe in new and complex ways. thus, they dramatically alter not only processes of curriculum construction and theorizing but also ways in which a worldwide curriculum studies field might be conceptualized and enacted. i argue that these flows and mobilities point to a necessary conceptualization of a worldwide curriculum studies field as always in the making. i briefly review perspectives on global flows and mobilities that currently circulate among a variety of academic disciplines. i then examine various feminists’ transnational, poststructural, postcolonial, and queer theorizing and practices in order to articulate tensions and possibilities for a worldwide curriculum studies field affected by transnational flows and mobilities. particular feminist work especially draws attention to political, social, economic, and environmental biases and injustices that flows and mobilities have shaped and sustained. i argue that these feminists’ interrogations could contribute to curriculum scholars’ negotiations of cultural, geographical, linguistic, and theoretical differences across a worldwide curriculum studies field. in particular, i autobiographically explore feminist examinations of transnational flows and mobilities as one possible means to hold varying perspectives on these phenomena in simultaneous yet often tension-filled relation to one another. conceptions of transnational flows and mobilities become visceral through embodied autobiographical inquiries that take into account shifting and rapidly changing discursive and material effects of globalization. these effects include knowledges and identities produced at everyday educational sites as well as within the potentials of a worldwide curriculum studies field. introduction when we ask another for recognition for ourselves, we are not asking for that other to see us as we are, as we have always been, as we were prior to the encounter. rather, in the asking, we are already becoming something new, since we are avowing a connection with the other, a need and desire for acknowledgment by the other, without which we could not be. this means that recognition does not freeze us in our place, our position, our various locations, but rather compels us to move beyond what we have been and to encounter a new possibility for collective exchange. judith butler, “transformative encounters” janet l. miller: curriculum studies and transnational flows and mobilities transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (2) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 32 i grapple here with what i view as some dilemmas as well as possibilities in working toward a worldwide – but not uniform -field of curriculum studies as well as in “building new transnational and transcultural solidarities in postcolonial curriculum inquiry” (gough, 2004). i do so in light of the heterogeneity and rapid flux that characterize global flows of people, commodities, ideas, technology, culture, and capital through and across constantly changing borders, discourses, and identities. these flows and mobilities loosen local populations from geographically constrained communities, connecting people and places around the globe in new and complex ways. they thus dramatically alter not only the processes of curriculum construction and theorizing but also the ways in which curriculum studies as a field might be conceptualized and enacted. given these transnational flows and mobilities, what kinds of differing knowledges do divergent members of a worldwide curriculum studies field now need to construct in order to contribute to the intellectual advancement of a worldwide field? i here consider possible effects of global flows, transnational connections, and transcultural interactions on attempts to construct a worldwide curriculum studies field. i do so by first briefly reviewing a variety of perspectives on global flows and mobilities that currently circulate among a variety of academic disciplines. i then examine some various transnational, poststructural, queer, and postcolonial feminist perspectives that consider new and promising forms of diasporic, transnational, global and national cultures and identities spawned by flows and mobilities. concurrently, these feminist viewpoints draw attention to political, social, economic, and environmental biases and injustices that those flows and mobilities have shaped and sustained. in particular, i believe that such various feminist interrogations could contribute to ways in which curriculum scholars and workers negotiate cultural, geographical, linguistic, and theoretical differences across the curriculum studies field, writ large. such differences appear to intensify with/in ever increasing and changing circumstances and contexts that have resulted from and through transnational flows and mobilities. given that i support feminist assertions that social and cultural worlds are always expressed through relationships, i believe that such negotiations are crucial in order that a worldwide curriculum studies field might work toward “producing intercultural understanding and actively valuing cultural diversity“ so that it “does not merely assimilate national (local) curriculum discourses-practices into an imperial (global) archive” (gough, 2004). to address these issues, i in part work autobiographically here, greatly influenced by my work with doctoral students labeled “international” as well as “national” at teachers college, columbia university. i autobiographically explore, in particular, feminist interrogations of transnational flows and mobilities as one possible means to hold vary perspectives on these phenomena in simultaneous yet often tension-filled relation to one another. given my own multiple positionings as well as those of my students with/in such flows and mobilities, i in turn am persuaded to argue that such tensions will not necessarily be resolved. rather, our direct encounters with those tensions, including discussions about transnational flows and mobilities, their influences on a potential worldwide field of curriculum studies, and their always changing effects on who and what gets constituted as “different” or “other,” for example, might lead us to generate a worldwide field with new versions of and possibilities for “collective exchange.” indeed, i believe that visions for that worldwide field of curriculum studies must avow “a connection with the other, a need and desire for acknowledgment by the other, without which we could not be.” at the same time, we need to remember that in our asking one another for recognition, “we enter the conversation as one kind of person but emerge as another kind” (butler, 2001. p. 82). working autobiographically enables me to examine how i might be constantly changed by collective exchange among members of a worldwide curriculum janet l. miller: curriculum studies and transnational flows and mobilities transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (2) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 33 studies field, how i might act responsibly within the limits of my self – and other knowing, and how to take seriously my opacity to myself in ethical deliberations (butler, 2005) that should characterize the field’s collective exchange. here, i also engage in working autobiography as both genre and mode of inquiry. by working autobiography, i mean conceptualizing autobiographical practices as spaces of negotiation where i constantly am kneading categories and separations, “engaging with and responding to the fluidity and malleability of identities and difference, … refusing fixed and static categories of sameness or permanent otherness” (ellsworth & miller, 2005, p. 181). in particular, in working autobiography, i am disrupting autobiography’s humanist assumptions of rigid categorizations and binaries, such as insider/outsider, so as to disrupt any notion of a “self” (and by extension, a “worldwide field”) already known and made. working autobiography enables me to engage with versions of feminism that yield a unitary self in favor of a provisional, mobile, and critically (albeit often partially) aware subject in process. working autobiography thus opens possibilities for “syncretic, ‘immigrant,’ cross-cultural, and plural subjectivities, which can enable a politics through positions that are coalitions, intransigent, in process, contradictory” (grewal, 1994, p. 234). already becoming something new i fumble for my metro card. clutching both card and handrail, i join the swirl of people scrambling down the steps at the grand army plaza subway stop in brooklyn. i swipe my card, take note of its dwindling amount. squinting against the updraft of air from the train that i just missed, i sidestep a clump of uniformed elementary school children. i’m stopped for a few seconds by a trio of young men belting out a spanish rendition of frank sinatra’s “i did it my way.” i drop some loose change from my pocket into the troubadours’ guitar case and march to my routine waiting area, at the far front end of the platform. i plant myself -third in line for the first car. most of the front-liners engage in the commuter wave – leaning over the tracks to see if the next train is coming and then swaying back into line, leaning over, swaying back…. never makes it arrive any quicker. a #2 express train lumbers into the station. our momentary order dissolves as we crowd into the subway car, avoiding one another’s eyes while the doors snap open and shut three times, accompanied by that incessant dinging bell. during my sixteen years of living in new york city, i’ve become somewhat attuned to the choreography in which i now have to engage in order to secure a seat for my hour-long subway trek from brooklyn to the 116th street/columbia university stop in manhattan. this journey includes a change to the local at 96th street. today, i need to sit so that i can read a student’s dissertation chapter before our meeting this afternoon. some people can juggle all kinds of paper and jot notes while they stand, lurching to one side and then the other as the subway car screeches around bends – i can’t. this morning, i’m lucky. i slip into a space on the shiny worn train bench, wrestle the bulky chapter from my backpack, try to sink into an academic reading reverie. but in each of the moments that i disengage from the dissertation pages, i hear conversations conducted in languages i can’t identify. i watch the person next to me thumbing his blackberry while earphoned i-pod heads bob up and down all around us. i glance at a kid battling with his game boy, clutch my backpack closer to my body so that a gaggle of tourists can grab the seats next to me. as the subway hurtles beneath the streets of manhattan, i’m streaming with/in a vortex of languages and transnational circulations and flows of people, goods and information. i am riding and working difference every day on that train as well as in the classrooms where i teach and research. unities elude us in these flows and circulations, even as we require acknowledgement from one another in order to become and to encounter possibilities for collective exchange. janet l. miller: curriculum studies and transnational flows and mobilities transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (2) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 34 as the recent immigration rights protests around the united states have made vivid, the u. s. is infused, like many nations world-wide, with new, volatile, dynamic, and mobile transnational forms of citizenship, place, selves, and modes of communication. thus, i believe that the problems of and concurrent hopes for a “worldwide” but not “uniform” field of curriculum studies might be further theorized and enacted by considering differing points of view on transnational flows and mobilities of people, ideas, and communication and their effects on our abilities to engage in collective exchange. i argue that those now-unavoidable flows and mobilities point to a necessary conceptualization of a worldwide curriculum studies field as always in the making. as such, that potential worldwide field must refuse any version of difference as a static category, as undifferentiated. rather, as participants in a field always in the making, those of us working toward and with/in that worldwide field must argue for difference along all relevant and relational axes of engagement, including various orientations to curriculum theorizing, arrays of perspectives toward relations among scholarship, theory and practice, as well as multiplicities and complexities of ethnicity, race, sexual orientation, class, gender, and geographic locations and identities. by focusing on transnational flows and mobilities that raise, interrupt, stall, enable, detour, multiply or reroute difference and the ways that constructions of difference influence curriculum conceptualizations and work, we might in fact be able to consider what it might take to move beyond where we have been so as to encounter a new possibility for collective exchange. at the same time, tensions abound, especially in education, in general, and in curriculum studies, in particular, in trying to address what it might mean to “be global and local at once” (butler, 2001, p. 96). i believe a worldwide curriculum field must attend to transnational “processes” that directly affect education, such as the globalizing of the economy, the rise of new rights, the diminishing power of the nation state and national borders, the emergence and expansion of new communication and media technologies and representations. as well, a concurrent imperative is to understand the intersections, the stasis, and the flows and mobilities of these processes in non-static conceptualizations and enactments of entangled local and global educational cultures -and their embodied persons -who have their own complex histories. here, then, i draw, in particular, from feminists’ transnational as well as poststructural, postcolonial, and queer theorizing and practices in order to articulate tensions as well as possibilities that overspill a notion of curriculum studies inflected by transnational flows and mobilities. i will argue for attempts to conceive of a worldwide field that does not rest on a universal notion of a curriculum studies field within which all national fields much comply, for example. such attempts, i posit, might help us to recognize transnational flows and mobilities as one incentive for imagining new configurations of people, knowledges and potentials for collective exchange. at the same time, engaging with such configurations also marks an active refusal to construct a universal notion of “selves” or of curriculum studies through which one global field and its participants could emerge. thus, i autobiographically utilize feminist poststructural troublings of any essentialized notion of uniform, stable, always coherent “selves” in order to highlight local/global tensions that permeate persons’ diversely embodied realities. as hongyu wang (2006) notes, “working at the intersections between the autobiographical and the global [and local] is an essentially educational task.” disciplinary versions of transnational “flows and mobilities” currently, scholars from a variety of disciplines are grappling with limiting effects as well as potentials for collective exchange with/in the concept and the lived realities of transnational flows and mobilities. janet l. miller: curriculum studies and transnational flows and mobilities transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (2) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 35 for example, manuel castells (1996-1998; 2000), social and communications theorist and leading analyst of the information age, has proposed the idea that there is a new spatial form characteristic of social practices that dominate and shape the network society: the space of flows. castells argues that growing numbers of people increasingly live in a world that is characterized as a space of flows rather than a space of places. people still cluster in specific locales, but these clusterings take their shape from their involvement in global networks and in globalized information flows. according to castells, “place" no longer can be defined as a locale, the form and meaning of which are contained within its boundaries. castells (2004) further asserts that flows of capital, information, technology, organizational interactions, images, sounds and symbols are the expression of processes dominating economic, political, and symbolic life, and that these flows are facilitated by innovative technologies. these technologies reduce the friction of distance, and link people, money and places in ever-expanding patterns of impermanent connections. geographer doreen massey (1994; 2004) describes places as actually constituted by their variegated links to other near and distant locales, and contextualizes spatiality as a product of intersecting social relations. thus, there are no formal spatial rules; it all depends, says massay, on the power relations embedded in the spatial situation. as globalization has proceeded, what massey calls the “power geometry of time-space compression” – the differential positioning of social groups vis-à-vis global flows – has become more transparent. the increasing density of transnational connections gives us a global sense of the local, she claims, and allows for greater flows and mobilities of communication and association across diverse terrains and social locations. in massey’s politics of mobility, place becomes an event, marked by openness and change rather than boundedness and permanence. at the same time, massey draws attention to regional inequities as part of the politics of place. anthropologist thomas eriksen (2003) draws attention to ways in which some current ethnographic studies indicate that a single site in a complex society may be conceptualized as a multiple one. since ‘spaces’ require agency and human interpretation in order to become ‘places’, it is clear that each ‘space’ may exist as various ‘places’ in so far as many agents invest it with different meanings. even further, cultural geographer tim cresswell (2002, p. 25), in challenging the humanistic formulation of place as rooted and “authentic” –a location for identity -argues that place is constituted through reiterative social practice – place is made and remade on a daily basis. place provides a template for practice – an unstable stage for performance. thinking of place as performed and practiced can help us think of place in radically open and non-essentialized ways where place is constantly struggled over and reimagined in practical ways. place is the raw material for the creative production of identity rather than as a-priori label of identity. place provides the conditions of possibility for creative social practice. from another angle, sociologists mimi sheller and john urry (2003) emphasize “global fluids” that enable dynamic, multiple mobilities of people, objects, information and images, especially as these move in powerfully fused or hybridized forms, each constantly shifting and being performed in rapid flashes within less anchored spaces. global fluids, according to sheller and urry, result from people acting upon the basis of local information but where these local actions are, through countless iterations, captured, moved, represented, marketed, and generalized within multiple global waves often impacting upon distant places and peoples. global janet l. miller: curriculum studies and transnational flows and mobilities transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (2) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 36 fluids travel along various route-ways but, where they escape through the ‘wall’ into surrounding matter, they effect unpredictable consequences upon that matter. (p. 117) global fluids, they argue, transform any notion of a “national” public, highlight everyday forms of dwelling in mobility, and point to a proliferation of multiple ‘mobile’ sites for potential democratization. directly examining pedagogical and curricular concerns in relation to transnational flows and mobilities, language theorist karen risager (2006) argues that purist and nationalistic approaches to culture typically reign supreme in the foreign language classroom, and she attempts to counter such limiting perspectives by theorizing how “discourses and languages flow across each other” (p. 140). risager aims to challenge the purism and nationalism that she claims characteristically frames the teaching of language and culture by developing a notion of “language-culture nexus” that theorizes language flows, discourse flows, and culture flows as intersecting in the communicative event. she argues that the target for the teaching of culture “is not ‘the language area’ in a geographic sense but the worldwide network of the target language,” (p. 197). her main argument derives from her conviction that “linguistic and cultural practices change and spread through social networks along partially different routes, principally on the basis of transnational patterns of migration and markets” (p. 2). as a final abbreviated example, i note that a number of scholars, including james clifford (1997), have conceptualized “travel” as metaphor working through transnational flows and mobilities as means of making connections and transgressing disciplinary boundaries, where “a location … is an itinerary rather than a bounded site – a series of encounters and translations” (clifford, 1997, p. 11). thus, “identities based on place are transformed through real and virtual travel and migration into hybridized, nomadic versions of traveling subjects” (mcdowell, 2003, p. 11). further, feminist literary theorist susan stanford friedman (1999), using the terms “mapping,” “position,” “location,” and “axis” to create a spatial discourse to complement temporal models of narrative, conceptualizes “mappings” in particular as a gerund, a verbal noun that is plural, in process, and continually open. she thus argues for conceptualizing identity as hybrid, or syncretic rather than as stable; she also argues for understanding cultural “roots” in terms of their routes or points on a travel itinerary. what implications for a worldwide curriculum studies field might these varying disciplinary conceptions of transnational flows and mobilities pose? how might the resultant reconceiving of such concepts as “space” and “place” affect the ways in which a worldwide curriculum studies field might be envisioned? how might we consider implications of differing trajectories and global flows of ideas, people, and knowledge constructions? and how might those differing trajectories and flows enable or not enable us to create and to occupy – for and in the moment – spaces together, where we might “ask for recognition”? in other words, what might it take to engage in “collective exchange,” knowing that engagement with one another will require us to acknowledge that “recognition does not freeze us in our place, our position, our various locations, but rather compels us to move beyond what we have been.” that collective exchange also will require us, amidst rapidly changing circumstances effected by transnational flows and mobilities, to stay “…open to the tensions that beset the most fundamental categories we require, to know unknowingness at the core of what we know…” (butler, 2001, p. 27). in considering possibilities of transnational and transcultural collective exchange within the contexts of a worldwide curriculum studies field inflected by flows and mobilities, such “unknowingness” might enable those of us attempting to create a worldwide field to avoid a scenario wherein the non-western “other” is positioned to desire recognition only through assimilation or nativism, for example. janet l. miller: curriculum studies and transnational flows and mobilities transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (2) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 37 to examine these issues further, i now turn to some cautions as well as incentives raised by various feminists as they consider, from differing perspectives, both deleterious and beneficial possibilities generated by transnational flows and mobilities. varying feminist perspectives on transnational flows and mobilities a number of feminists who are committed to analyzing current effects of globalization, writ large, are considering issues of nation, globalization, postmodernity and postcoloniality while simultaneously rearticulating feminist theories in new forms. in so doing, those who identify as committed to transnational feminisms actively refuse to involve feminist discourse in the construction of a universal notion of patriarchy against which a global sisterhood could emerge. these transnational feminists also refuse to speak for or to offer solutions for women, especially “third world,” subaltern women. i posit that those feminists who are struggling with effects of transnational flows and mobilities on current forms of feminist thought and action, while at the same time refusing essentialized or universalized categories of identity, thought and action, might further inform the work of all who are attempting to conceive and enact a worldwide curriculum studies field. feminists take up the concept of “transnational” from differing philosophical and political commitments. in attempting to imagine and practice an ethics of feminist transnational encounter that is neither simply assimilationist nor conflictual, shu-mei shih (2002) points to the fluidity and complexity of the transnational moment, where migration, diaspora, and travel can no longer be clearly distinguished by duration or intention, nor by national citizenship and belonging. for m. jacqui alexander and chandra mohanty, transnational feminism crucially involves “a way of thinking about women in similar contexts across the world, in different geographical spaces, rather than as all women across the world” (alexander & mohanty, 1997, p. xix). alena heitlinger (1999) argues that transnational feminism builds on insights of postmodernism and postcoloniality as well as acknowledges ways in which “global economic restructuring and transnational cultural influences shape and link the material and cultural lives of women around the world” (p. 7). and caren kaplan (1992) argues that the term “transnational” expresses “possibilities for links and affiliations, as well as differences, among women who inhabit different locations” (p. 116). building on these conceptualizations, caren kaplan and inderpal grewal (1999) have conceptualized a transnational cultural studies perspective, which recognizes that “practices are always negotiated in both a connected and specific field of conflict and contradiction and that feminist agendas must be viewed as a formulation and reformulation that is contingent on historically specific conditions” (p. 358). within that conceptualization, kaplan and grewal have analyzed how inequalities of class, gender, nationality, sexuality and ethnicity are created through movement over time and space in particular ways. they use the term transnational instead of international in order to destabilize rather than maintain boundaries of nation, race and gender, for example. kaplan and grewal note how race, gender, and class, among other categories, must now be conceived of as concepts that “travel” – that is, circulate and work in different and fluid ways in different places and times. thus, “transnational” is a term that signals, for kaplan and grewal, attention to uneven and dissimilar circuits and flows of culture and capital, where mobility, for example, may at times signal reluctant or mandatory participation. by critically analyzing such circuits, flows, and mobilities, they argue, links between patriarchies, colonialisms, racisms and other forms of domination may become more apparent and available for critique. also choosing the term transnational, postcolonial cultural theorist and philosopher gayatri spivak has developed the idea of “transnational literacy” (1992; 1999; 2003), which in its broadest sense refers to a reshaping of colonial systems of education and institutional janet l. miller: curriculum studies and transnational flows and mobilities transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (2) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 38 knowledge away from (european) nation-based formations. spivak (1993) warns against universalizing postcoloniality by noting “others are many.” she argues that “transnational literacy” thus would involve a study of the multiplicity of languages and cultures in the world, and describes how reading can serve as one way of thinking with and through concepts of the nation that currently are being troubled by the cultural and economic effects of globalization. here, reading refers not just to reading-based literacy, but literacy more generally, as an interpretive act. by paying attention to intersections of knowledge and power in pedagogical practices and curriculum constructions, for example, transnational literacy can be instrumental in linking literature and culture to global capital and other forces and flows that impinge on personal and collective autonomies. spivak (1996; 2000) also has challenged the idea that the new speed and flexibility of technology, in particular, enables the effective transnational circulation of people, money, and information. she claims that this dominant idea ignores the fact that the circulation of money and information is profitably regulated by rich, industrial “first world” nations, while the vast majority of the world’s population is living in a state of poverty and oppression. by highlighting monetary and political interests that are served by the economic text of globalization, spivak exposes how the world is represented from the dominant perspective and geopolitical location of the “first world” to the exclusion of other disenfranchised groups. in particular, spivak’s criticism of economic development policies that target women has highlighted the urgent need for a transnational perspective in feminist thought. spivak’s critical endeavor is to situate women’s social locations in a transnational framework of political, economic and social relationships. feminist theorist cindi katz (2001) argues that such political, economic and social relationships might best be investigated by defining the local as a “critical topography,” thus making it possible to excavate the layers of process that produce particular places and to see their intersections with material social practices. katz conceptualizes the local not as a wellbordered space defined either by exclusion from or inclusion in global practices, but rather as a “cross-roads” where the post-national, the post-colonial and the emergence of a need for a new kind of community often meet under or even against the pressures of global flows and imperatives. even as some of these various notions of transnational gesture toward generative possibilities, grewal and kaplan (2000) also point out that it is impossible to advocate a transnational feminism as an improved or better or cleaned up kind of international or global feminism – transnational feminism is not to be celebrated as free of oppressive conditions. rather, they argue, transnational feminist practices refer to the interdisciplinary study of the relationships among diverse women in diverse parts of the world. these relationships are uneven, often unequal, and complex. they emerge from women’s varied needs and agendas in many cultures and societies, and involve forms of alliance, subversion, and complicity within which asymmetries and inequalities can be critiqued. given these varying feminist perspectives on transnational flows and mobilities and their worldwide effects, possibilities, and complexities, how would a worldwide field of curriculum studies grapple with the implications and complications of such views? given a very heterogeneous, multi-faceted, nation-based and yet mobile educational world, how might we understand curriculum studies as a worldwide field? how might perspectives offered by feminists who identify their work and goals as “transnational” in one way or another inform the “…emergence of a worldwide – transnational – curriculum studies field with a vocabulary and intellectual agenda that expresses and addresses both national and international curriculum questions” (pinar, 2006)? for example, how might kaplan and grewel’s (1999) focus on the travels of feminist discourses, as they are produced and disseminated through cultural divides that mark global janet l. miller: curriculum studies and transnational flows and mobilities transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (2) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 39 inequities, inform our studies of curriculum discourses and their production and dissemination? how might we attend to their simultaneous caution that a notion of travel oftentimes marks asymmetries of power rather than a global cosmopolitanism (p. 358)? for, the metaphoric spaces of movement, linkages, crossings, explorations, travel, “so important in [many feminists’] construction[s] of different concepts of the self, of community, of [becoming], [are] set against the material reality that pleasurable mobility is only for the affluent; the poor are immobile or subject to enforced movement and migration” (eagleton, 2003, pp. 2-3). it’s the contradiction to which the politics of mobility points, to which rosi braidotti (1994) refers to when she questions the “paradox of proximity, indifference, and cultural differences between the nomadic intellectual and the migrant women” (p. 255). further, linzi manicom (1999), following spivak, notes that “blind travel that does not check its baggage – or have its baggage checked -can only serve to reproduce those transnational relations of feminist hierarchy in which third world women and national feminisms are subsumed to western interpretive schema” (p. 56). grewal and kaplan (1994), for example, consider the tracings and mappings of debates around production and reception of feminist cultural and intellectual production to be crucial aspects of transnational feminist practices. manicom argues that such tracings and mappings should help to “translate concepts across cultural venues, to mediate between discordant discourses, and usefully recast issues and debates that have become conventionalized, both locally and globally” (p. 56). in addition, m. jacqui alexander (2005) argues that the metaphors of travel, links, maps, charts, journeys, bridges and borders are neither idle nor incidental … as we come to terms with the different cartographies of feminist struggle in different parts of world; our different histories; where they change course and how they diverge. it seems crucial that we come to terms with, and engage, that confluence of the local and the global in order not to view the transnational as merely a theoretical option. (p. 264) in fact, many curriculum scholars already have begun to study effects of various iterations of transnational flows and mobilities, knowing at the same time that “the local now transacts directly with the global – the global installs itself in locals, and the global itself is constituted through a multiplicity of locals” (sassen, 2000, p.259). at the same time, a worldwide curriculum studies field needs to wrestle with the dilemma that “local can connote the supposed particularism, provincialism, and primordialism of the third world while global may connote the breadth and universality that is often associated with western feminism” (basu, 2003, pp. 68-69). thus, i think one reason for grappling with tensions involved in conceiving of a worldwide field of curriculum studies in relation to transnational flows and mobilities is that we might address what judith butler (2001, p. 96) describes as …the concrete dilemmas of what it is to be local and global at once, to be caught in the necessity of constant translation . . . . such an inquiry neither moves us too quickly to assert our commonality, thus effacing our difference, nor seeks to return us to our parochial locations, our ethnic singularities, without showing how the most local struggles are implicated in the processes of globalization. what this also means is that the usual binary oppositions do not hold, and that we must learn to work with one another in our irreducible complexity, bound to one another in many ways, implicated in a process of globalization which works differentially and relentlessly, at the same time that we are irreducible to a collective condition. janet l. miller: curriculum studies and transnational flows and mobilities transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (2) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 40 how then might we work together, in our irreducible complexity, with and in a worldwide curriculum field? i agree with butler that those of us who work toward a worldwide field would be unable to be simplified to a collective condition. and yet, i believe that many of us are hoping to move beyond what we have been, both as separate nationally based fields and as a fledging world-wide field, in order to encounter new possibilities for collective exchange. those exchanges, however, will always be predicated on acknowledging one another as in the making, always caught up differently in flows and mobilities of becoming in the instantaneous mutualities of the local and the global. recognition does not freeze us in our place i join in the clump of students, teachers, child-care workers hoisting strollers as we all jostle for position in order to ascend the steps of the 116th street station. we spill out onto broadway, identifiable to walkers nearby as the most recent group disgorged from the #1 local uptown line. but our momentary unity as subway riders headed in the same direction immediately splays and disperses. i hurry down broadway, cross 120th street and turn right. i flash my faculty id card to the teachers college security person posted inside a kiosk at the intersection of thompson and main halls – this one knows me, waves me on. and as i settle into my office chair and click on my mac, possibilities for constructions of curriculum and its field as well as potentials for teaching and research implied by current everyday forms of dwelling in mobility, in the temporaries and flows of plurality -in difference –begin to get codified and regulated into static, circumscribed, u.s.-centric versions of academic identities and knowledges. sitting at my office desk in front of my computer, i enter my password, wince at the emails that stream down the screen. immediately, i am connected to multiple worlds of students, colleagues, family, friends, and yes, to the world of curriculum studies, to the flows and mobilities that hold out possibilities for new kinds of identities and collective exchanges. those possibilities posit that i can ask for recognition from the other without being frozen in my place, my subject positions. for, in the asking, butler argues, i already am becoming something new. but at the same time, sitting at that desk -responding in various email lengths and modes of address to students, faculty members, administrators -possibilities for my multiply and always newly becoming selves drain from my consciousness, and i most often get reified and reify myself as a white, u. s.-born, middle class female professor. i do so through my particularly and habitually positioned participation in local/global academic events of teaching, researching and writing. although i live and work with and in sexual orientation difference, and with and in what some especially would still gesture toward as the oxymoronic gendered status of “woman academic” in the u. s., i worry that most often i still am seen, and most often habitually view my “professional selves,” as situated within normalized versions of what it “means” to be a “woman” working in a gendered u. s. institution of higher learning, a u. s. field of curriculum studies, and in and with u. s.-centric versions of curricular and pedagogical theories, policies and practices. a number of the doctoral students with whom i work at teachers college, columbia university, are classified as “international” – students from nigeria, taiwan, the caribbean, japan, south korea, italy, colombia, lebanon -who have come to the u.s. to study – some, to stay, others to leave when they complete their doctoral work. some of my international students “become variously decentered from their cultural bearings and, in the united states, seek different forms of identity as a politics rather than as an inheritance” (ong, 1995, p. 351) of familial and cultural connections or of particular ethnic, class, or gender groups or geographic locations. a clip of writing from one of my doctoral students illustrates this decentering shift: janet l. miller: curriculum studies and transnational flows and mobilities transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (2) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 41 my autobiographical inquiry is being done without resting on a fixed identity. but a shifting identity is not really a place where i want to repose. i want to do and write research with differences that have so many names, but at the same time, no names. i am a woman, but i am not that name. i am a japanese but i am not that name. i am a daughter but i am not that name. and so on. i am a nomadic inquirer. i want to ride and work differences and move in the thought that, unsure of where i am going, i am moving somewhere different from where i am now. naoko akai (2006) but by the very classification of “international student” on her official records at teachers college, my student’s desire to destabilize any fixed versions of her identities get caught up in “the discourses of ‘international’ or ‘global’ [that] rely on political and economic as well as cultural concepts of discrete nations who can be placed into comparative or relational status, always maintaining the west [in our case here, the u. s.] as the center” (alarcon, kaplan, & moallem, 1999, p. 12). one part of my discussion about potentials and difficulties of conceiving of a worldwide field of curriculum studies in relation to transnational flows and mobilities thus calls into question curricular and institutional discourses that result in a naturalization, essentialization, or compartmentalization of identities. as well, i question any version of a worldwide field of curriculum studies that renders ordinary, natural, and even compulsory the relationship between reified conceptions of national and international. further, my particular and situated work with those students classified as “international” in the u. s. has compelled me to challenge any discourse that “recuperates the originary narrative of diversity without questioning the ‘very processes by which ‘othering’ is fabricated in american society” (alarcon, kaplan, & moallem, 1999, p. 14). some of my “international” students talk about feeling “international” when they return to their home countries after extended stays of study in the u.s. “you don’t speak real taiwanese anymore – you speak it with an american accent,” en-shu’s grandmother tells her. in relaying her grandmother’s remarks to me, en-shu throws up her hands: “so now i speak my mother tongue with an american accent and english with a taiwanese accent. where and who am i in all this?” i have no answer, nor do i think that there is one answer to be had here. but i worry about my obligations to my students in light of the stances that i take – those of a faculty person who teaches, researches, writes, and promotes study about and with/in “difference,” and who argues for a politics that is responsive to rather than repressive of difference. should i have an answer? en-shu confides in me that she is worried about her visa situation that may force her to return to taiwan; she would rather stay in the u. s. to pursue an academic career. but even if she doesn’t go “home” to work following the completion of her doctoral degree, she says that she feels she is still considered “other” in the u.s., although she has lived and worked in the u. s. for over ten years now. and now, based on her grandmother’s reactions to her during her recent visit “home,” she thinks that she would be considered “other” in taiwan as well. such paradoxical and embodied global/local tensions convince me that examination of multiple sites and configurations of “othering” processes could be yet another focus of any version of a worldwide curriculum studies field. given that any “other” is a particularity as well as situated within broader social/cultural/historical contexts (ahmed, 1998), what varying investigative practices might we differently need to employ in order to address issues and relations of power related to constructions of “other,” both in our individual educational contexts as well as in relation to a worldwide curriculum studies field? of course, i have learned from poststructural, transnational, and postcolonial feminist projects, in particular, that there is no “pure” space from which to speak and challenge janet l. miller: curriculum studies and transnational flows and mobilities transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (2) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 42 originary narratives of diversity, no spaces outside of language and configurations of power. according to kaplan & grewal, there are only links, flows, and mobilities among thoroughly unequal social forces (1999, p. 356). those very flows and mobilities certainly can point to transnationally inflected versions of identities and knowledge in the making, capable of new possibilities for collective exchange – an exchange not based on sameness. but those flows and mobilities, moving through unequal social forces, also can contribute, simultaneously, to “the very processes by which othering is fabricated.” for example, although my descriptions of my doctoral students’ administratively categorized “international identities” are intended as critique, in fact my very interpretations may maintain static configurations of those students’ subject positions as other, still subject to my interpretation and implementation of university regulations that reinforce imperialistic u.s. inscription of who and what counts – and how -in u. s. educational contexts and knowledge production. and, of course, the often “othering” binary of professor/student potentially is working in tandem with other “othering” processes here. these are troubling scenarios for me. for example, in my poststructural feminist work over the years, i’ve attempted to trouble the category of “woman” and especially of “woman academic” in order to examine ways in which those very identity categories have been historically, socially and culturally constituted as “other,” especially in the u. s. academy and particularly in the field of u.s. curriculum studies (miller, 1981; 1983; 1992; 1993). as one born and educated in the united states, and as one who has participated for nearly thirty years in the field of curriculum studies, during and postreconceptualization (miller, 1978; 1996a; 1996b; 1999), i am interested in how current social, cultural, and economic global flows and mobilities might influence not only constructions of the category “woman” but also any other assigned identity category, including those attached to my international doctoral students or to any one working toward a world-wide field of curriculum studies. i support butler’s claim that any identity category need be viewed as “an undesignatable field of differences” and as “site[s] of permanent openness and resignifiability” (butler, 1992, p. 160). thus, to unintentionally reinscribe my students’ “international” identities as fixed and static versions of “other” would be the antithesis of what i believe in and have worked for as a major emphasis of curriculum theorizing in the u. s. field. i agree that difference cannot be conceived as a static concept in and of itself, cannot be detached from its embeddedness in social, epistemological, and power relations. but there is always the danger that i have positioned myself, in relation to my international students, as normative and unmarked and as such, have concealed the mark of privilege (ahmed, 1998). thus, as part of a network of relationality, a notion of difference to which i am committed requires me to acknowledge that i am living in simultaneous and contradictory subject positions/locations that are always in flux, always becoming. such acknowledgement thus implies framing difference as the continuous potential for the world’s and people’s movements and connections to be made otherwise. . . . when difference is thought through [flows and mobilities] and emergence and becoming otherwise, negative social situations are seen to arise not out of difference itself, but rather when the potential for difference to emerge and come into play is captured and narrowly directed. social change and cultural variation becomes the problem of how to imagine else, move else, experience else, and experiment with how else we might associate with each other and enter into exchanges with each other. here, political action entails practices that multiply and augment the variety of thinkable and doable responses we might perform to what is already and always emerging as the potential to become else. (ellsworth, 2006) janet l. miller: curriculum studies and transnational flows and mobilities transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (2) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 43 i argue, then, that we all are living in and through contradictory subject positions and locations, intensified by volatile worldly events, technological change and structural and material inequities that often are based on fixed notions of ethnicity, race, gender, national and religious identities in an age of globalization. clearly, we are in the midst of a momentous shift in how we might think about social and cultural difference in relation to transnational flows and mobilities that influence constructions of identities, subjectivities, and conceptions of a worldwide field of curriculum studies. i am arguing here that such a shift moves us from speaking about fixed binaries or even multiple social/cultural positions to notions of trans – flows of bodies, cultures, and identities as assemblages of relationalities, including economic, institutional, governmental, immigration forces -that may create new choices, new possibilities for becoming else through impermanent convergences and irreducible differences among families, coalitions, subjectivities, and histories across uneven playing fields. i watch and i feel too the embodied tensions, the struggles with displacement, with translation of both identities and languages, with assigned homogeneous identity constructions and knowledge productions that some of my international students encounter as they attempt to re-work their “selves” across the flows and mobilities of new relationalities in their graduate student lives: my research develops from my personal and professional experiences, both as a high school english teacher and student in los angeles and as an immigrant woman from colombia. as a teacher, my literature anthologies and set curricula, designed by the state, the district and the school, established and maintained the literature canon. u. s. latino authors seemed to be sprinkled in the literature selections to represent the latino experience. . . . this created a limited and often erroneous account of what it means to be latino not only for non-latino students but also for those who identified as latino themselves. mary alexandra rojas (2006) my doctoral student’s challenging of homogeneous labels that in turn constitute a portion of the literary canon in the u. s. makes me think that engaging in the constant translation of irreducible differences could be another point of our work as a world-wide but not unitary field of curriculum studies. it’s certainly the labor that i see mary and others – some who consider themselves immigrants to the u.s., others who call themselves “temporary” exiles or emigrants who intend to return to their countries of origin at the completion of their doctoral studies, and still others of us who were born in the u.s but who battle the reified versions of “otherness” of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, disability -engaged in every day. for, clearly, it is no longer possible to claim any static notion of either knowledge or identity – everyone and everything in a certain sense now is unlocatable, in flux. if the circumstances of knowledge and identity constructions and exchanges are flows and mobilities – then what can and will we make of a world-wide field of curriculum studies, in the moment and in-the-making and especially across dualistic boundaries of “national” and “international?” or within persistent unitary constructions of national and ethnic identities? what potentials might we tap into when people’s movements and actions, including their constructions of identities and curriculum, take place in spaces between categories and boundaries and knowledges and identities already made (ellsworth, 2006)? i obviously believe that “transnational flows and mobilities” more readily describes the relational and dynamic character of a worldwide field rather than a notion of individual fields participating in a world-wide field as “representatives” of various regions of the world. at the same time, tensions arise if we contemplate the effects of the denationalization of curriculum studies and the formation of new claims for the field centered in transnational janet l. miller: curriculum studies and transnational flows and mobilities transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (2) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 44 actors, for this in turn might raise the question, “whose field is it and where is it?” or perhaps i assume the raising of such questions, given my experiences with current circumstances within the u. s. curriculum field, where assorted contingencies appear to stake claim to “the state of the field” in ways that ignore a variety of perspectives on the field’s work. or perhaps i am anticipating conflict, given the variety of curricularists’ responses to governmental mandates contained with no child left behind, with its press for curriculum standardization, high-stakes testing and student and teacher accountability. or perhaps i am reacting defensively to these and other current factors and conditions, including a re-emphasis on faculty being lodged in specific and often traditional disciplinary fields of study, that are threatening u.s. curriculum studies from standing alone as a primary field of vital scholarly study and inquiry. the u.s. drive to “identify and own” in fact, one of the current responses of the u. s. curriculum studies field to mounting pressures to substantiate its existence in schools and colleges of education around the country appears to be a drive to constantly assess and to ironically “fix” the “state” -the identity, the ownership, and the condition, if you will -of that field. although echoing earlier concerns about the field in terms of its “moribund “ condition (huebner, 1976; schwab, 1969), current questions about the state of u. s. curriculum studies also are impelled by conditions of intellectual peril for u. s. schools of education, public school teachers, and curriculum scholars (pinar, 2004) as well as by material conditions of peril, both in and outside the united states. but that drive to sum up and to stabilize what the field “is” often reduces and reifies such assessments to static and isolated versions, separated not only from other educational fields of study but also from issues and concerns of global/ local versions of curriculum studies and projects. i have participated in at least three of the now five or six recent “state of the u. s. field” sessions at the american educational research association (aera) and the association for the advancement of curriculum studies (aaacs)1 i have argued that, especially in the wake of current national and international world-altering events, those of us in the u. s. can no longer afford to maintain that our curriculum work should focus on our various narrow and sometimes even separatist stances about the purposes, forms or states of our field. nor can we ignore the ways that such stances often posit ourselves as well as our curriculum studies field as existing apart from the regulatory norms that much of the field’s work supposedly opposes. for, to “move beyond what we have been and to encounter a new possibility for collective exchange” requires that we acknowledge our “… fundamental dependency on the other, the fact that we cannot exist without addressing the other, without in some ways being addressed by the other, and that there is no wishing away our fundamental sociality” (butler, 2001, p. 93). at the same time, “no matter how much we each desire recognition and require it, we are not therefore precisely the same as the other – there is an irreducibility to our being, one which becomes clear in the distinct stories we have to tell, which means that we are never fully identified with any collective ‘we.’ (butler, 2001, p. 93) trust me, there is no collective “we” in the u. s. field of curriculum studies. in fact, i’ve been asking for a while now if still recurring static and divisive debates about purposes and forms of the u. s. academic curriculum field might shift in productive ways, were we to consider our field as always in-the-making, as always needing to respond in the moment to multiple and differing local/global events and contexts (miller, 1999; 2000; 2005a; 2005b). to be always in the making requires that what some call the bifurcated, balkanized, and insulated american curriculum field create fresh ways to engage in collective exchange. janet l. miller: curriculum studies and transnational flows and mobilities transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (2) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 45 those of us in the u. s. certainly need to re-make the field every day, in relation to particular transnational as well as situated local events, issues, people and in tension with our desires for recognition and our simultaneous irreducibility to a collective local and/or global “we.” and yet, some in the us field do not appear to “accept the array of sometimes incommensurable epistemological and political beliefs and modes and means of agency that bring us into activism” (butler, 2004, p. 48). and so some members of the us field continue to stake out their versions of the field – versions that often emphasize the field as situated only in relation to static and pre-determined versions of curriculum design, development, and evaluation in k12 educational settings in the united states, for example, or accounts that totally reject all aspects and implications of the u. s. field reconceptualized, or forms that resist any recognition of transnational flows and mobilities that now unavoidably influence constructions, not only of a u. s., but also of a worldwide field. to move beyond what we have been i here briefly have utilized feminist poststructural and postcolonial perspectives on autobiographical work in order to interrogate various notions and effects of transnational flows and mobilities as well as to theorize and to situate a notion of a worldwide curriculum studies field as always in the making. i obviously do so in response to my particular shifting and partial understandings and experiences of the u. s. field and of my “selves” working within that field. by extension, i am compelled to envision not only a u. s. but also a worldwide field as response-able to the multiple influences of and transmutations that can result from transnational flows and mobilities. the autobiographical work to which i am committed theorizes memory, identity, embodiment, experience and agency as the constitutive processes of autobiographical subjectivity, and that attempts to attend to the fluidity of identities “in movement through time and across political and geographic spaces” (smith & watson, 2001, p. 37). in particular, poststructural feminist versions of autobiographical inquiry claim no coherent “self” that predates stories about identities, about “who” one is; nor do they claim any possibility of a unified, stable immutable self who can remember everything that has happened in the past. thus, feminist poststructural autobiographical curriculum theorizing wrestles with any version of autobiography that simply attempts to include or re-include unitary versions of subjects or “voices” in local/global social/cultural curriculum narratives or constructs from which they previously have been excluded. i thus attempt to work tensions of feminist poststructural autobiographical practices in u. s. education, which as a field, writ large, is still caught up in humanist discourses, by conceiving of “selves” as mobile and negotiable spaces where complexities can be explored in and through confrontations with memory and social/culturally inflected identity constructions, constructions already made and fixed in place and time. in such spaces, autobiographical inquiry involves acts “of interpretation by subjects inescapably in historical time, and in their relation to their own ever-moving pasts” (smith & watson, 2001, p. 24). what is remembered and what is forgotten, and why, change over time and across contexts and flows of time, geography, generation. from these perspectives, autobiographical inquiry thus can be used to activate, situate, and/or interrogate conceptions, memories, fantasies, idealizations, or normalizations, for example, of how subjects know themselves as subjects of particular kinds of experiences attached to and interpreted through their social/cultural statuses, locations and identities, constructed in and through the discourses available to them. it can draw attention to butler’s (1999) notion of how gendered identities, for example, get produced as we repeat regulatory regimes and how our repetitions also make categories vulnerable to change. janet l. miller: curriculum studies and transnational flows and mobilities transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (2) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 46 autobiographical inquiry can highlight what butler conceptualizes as the iterative processes of taking up, repeating, or subverting certain subject positions. thus, i believe that feminist poststructural autobiographical work especially can contribute to processes of coming to grips with conceptions of curriculum studies in relation to transnational flows and mobilities. for such work suggests, in constructing narratives of self and of curriculum fields, both the mobility and the potential agency of the subject as always in the making. conceptions of transnational flows and mobilities become visceral through embodied autobiographical inquiries that take into account shifting and rapidly changing discourses and material effects of globalization, including knowledges and identities produced at everyday educational sites as well as within a worldwide field of curriculum studies. such autobiographical inquiries might highlight how participants in that world-wide field now must move across, between, and with/in spatial and temporal as well as historical, social and cultural difference so as to “encounter a new possibility for collective exchange” – but exchange not contingent on sameness. instead, such a collective transnational exchange, sprung amidst a stream of flows and mobilities, dislocates all of us from our positions, denies any version of an essentialized “self” or place, rejects possibilities of identifying with any collective “we.” yet, there can be exchange, where asymmetries and inequalities in constructions of knowledge and identities might be acknowledged, or simply sustained, or called into question, or even subverted. and therein lies hope for a worldwide field constructed in and through difference – a field and its participants always in the making. i slip into the stream of staff and colleagues leaving my building. i don’t teach tonight, so i’m headed home during the height of new york city’s rush hours. i trudge up broadway, jostle for position on the subway stairs. i merge with a commuter cluster, and together we shuffle onto the #1 local. i don’t join the rush for seats. i have to change in three stops to the #2 express, where i’ll be more assertive in claiming sitting space. i grab onto the metal pole stabbing the center of the subway car as the train rides a curve in the tracks. in that southbound train, i am re-tracing the lines of my early morning journey, but i am not the same as i was during that commute. as the subway lurches toward brooklyn, i am transporting new versions of my self as well as of those with whom i’ve engaged in collective exchange. tomorrow will bring different fluxes and encounters and identities and provisional spaces that most likely will get claimed and coded almost in the moment that they are imagined. i will have to begin again. acknowledgements i offer thanks to professors tero autio and eero ropo, co-directors of the second world curriculum conference, held in tampere, finland, may 21-24, 2006, for their kind invitation to present the initial version of this manuscript as a conference keynote address. i am grateful to naoko akai, en-shu robin liao, and mary alexandra rojas for granting permission to use their writing and spoken words in this manuscript. i also thank members of the string group at teachers college, columbia university, including tan-ching chen, martha witt, chinelo ejueyitchie, jungah kim, en-shu robin liao, mary alexandra rojas, naoko akai, sophia sarigianides, joseph lewis, mary sefranek, margaret barrow, antoinette quarshie, pam murphy, and leigh jonaitis for their insightful commentaries and collective commitments to our work together that daily inspire my thinking, researching, teaching, and writing. in particular, i thank naoko akai, elizabeth ellsworth, and joe lewis for detailed and significant readings and responses to this piece. janet l. miller: curriculum studies and transnational flows and mobilities transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (2) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 47 notes 1 the three aera “state of the field” sessions, all sponsored by division b (curriculum studies), in which i participated include: • the 2006 annual meeting, april 7-11, san francisco, where i was a participant in an invited plenary colloquium entitled “projects of influence, architects of the arena: the status of curriculum studies”; • the 2005 annual meeting, april 11-15, montreal, where i was a participant in a symposium entitled “whatever happened to the curriculum field?”; • and the 2003 annual meeting, april 21-25, chicago, where i was a participant in a symposium entitled “whither curriculum: thinking through the present of curriculum studies.” references akai, n. (2006). generative possibilities of performative exchange in qualitative research. performance/presentation at the ways of knowing conference, teachers college, columbia university, march 3. ahmed, s. (1998). differences that matter: feminist theory and postmodernism. cambridge: cambridge university press. alarcon, n., kaplan, c., & moallem, m. (eds.) (1999). between woman and nation: nationalisms, transnational feminisms, and the state. durham, nc: duke university press. alexander, m. j. (2005). pedagogies of crossing: meditations on feminism, sexual politics, memory, and the sacred. durham, nc: duke university press. alexander, m. j., & mohanty, c. (1997). feminist genealogies, colonial legacies, democratic futures. new york: routledge. basu, a. (2003). globalization of the local/localization of the global: mapping transnational women’s movements. in c. mccann & s-s. kim (eds.), feminist theory reader: local and global perspectives (pp. 68-77). new york: routledge. braidotti, r. (1994). nomadic subjects: embodiment and sexual difference in contemporary feminist theory. new york: columbia university press. butler, j. (1992). contingent foundations: feminism and the question of “post-modernism.” in j. butler & j. w. scott (eds.), feminists theorize the political (pp. 3-21). new york: routledge. butler, j. (1999). gender trouble (2nd ed.). new york: routledge. butler, j. (2001). transformative encounters. in e. beck-gernsheim, j. butler, & l. puigvert (eds.), women and social transformation (pp. 81-98). new york: peter lang. butler, j. (2004). precarious life: the powers of mourning and violence. new york: verso. butler, j. (2005). giving an account of oneself. new york: fordham university press. castells, m. (1996-1998). the information age: economy, society and culture. oxford: blackwell. castells, m. (2000). the rise of the network society (the information age, vol. 1, 2nd edition). oxford: blackwell publishing. castells, m. (2004). the network society: a cross-cultural perspective. london: edward elgar. clifford, j. (1997). routes: travel and translation in the later twentieth century. cambridge: harvard university press. cresswell, t. (2002). theorizing place. thamyris/intersecting, 9, 11-32. janet l. miller: curriculum studies and transnational flows and mobilities transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (2) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 48 eagleton, m. (ed.). (2003). a concise companion to feminist theory. malden, ma: blackwell publishing ltd. ellsworth, e. (2006). difference becoming else. www.smudgestudio.com ellsworth, e., & miller, j. l. (2005). working difference in education. in j. miller, sounds of silence breaking: women, autobiography, curriculum (pp. 179-196). new york: peter lang. eriksen, t. h. (ed.). (2003). globalisation: studies in anthropology. london: pluto. friedman, s. s. (1999). feminism and the cultural geographies of encounter. princeton: princeton university press. gough, n. (2004). editorial: a vision for transnational curriculum inquiry. transnational curriculum inquiry, 1 (1). http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci grewal, i. (1994). autobiographic subjects and diaspora locations: meatless days and borderlands. in i. grewal & c. kaplan (eds.), scattered hegemonies: postmodernity and transnational feminist practice (pp. 231-254). minneapolis: university of minnesota press. grewal, i., & kaplan, c. (eds.). (1994). scattered hegemonies: postmodernity and transnational feminist practices. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. grewal, i., & kaplan, c. (2000). postcolonial studies and transnational feminist practices. jouvert: a journal of postcolonial studies, 5 (1). heitlinger, a. (ed.) (1999). émigré feminism: transnational perspectives. toronto, ca: university of toronto press. huebner, d. (1976). the moribund curriculum field: its wake and our work. curriculum inquiry, 6 (2), 153-166. kaplan, c. (1992). resisting autobiography: out-law genres and transnational feminist subjects. in s. smith & j. watson (eds.), de-colonizing the subject: the politics of gender in women’s autobiography (pp. 115-138). minneapolis: university of minnesota press. kaplan, c., & grewal, i. (1999). transnational feminist cultural studies: beyond the marxism/poststructuralism/feminism divides. in c. kaplan, n. alarcon, & m. moallem (eds.), between woman and nation: nationalisms, transnational feminisms, and the state (pp. 349-363). durham, nc: duke university press. katz, c. (2001). on the grounds of globalization: a topography for feminist political engagement. signs, 26, 1213-1228. liao, e-s. r. (2006). personal communication, may. manicom, l. (1999). afastada apprehensions: the politics of post-exile location and south africa’s gendered transition. in a. heitlinger (ed.), émigré feminism: transnational perspectives (pp. 30-66). toronto: university of toronto press. massey, d. (1994). space, place, and gender. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. massey, d. (2004). for space. london: sage. mcdowell, l. (2003). place and space. in m. eagleton (ed.), a concise companion to feminist theory (pp. 11-31). malden, ma: blackwell publishing ltd. miller, j. l. (1978). curriculum theory: a recent history. jct: journal of curriculum theorizing, 1 (1), 28-43. miller, j. l. (1981). the sound of silence breaking: feminist pedagogy and curriculum theory. jct: journal of curriculum theorizing, 4 (1), 5-11. miller, j. l. (1983). the resistance of women academics: an autobiographical account. the journal of educational equity and leadership, 3 (2), 101-109. miller, j. l. (1992). teachers, autobiography, and curriculum: critical and feminist perspectives. in s. kessler & b. b. swadner (eds.), reconceptualizing early childhood education (pp. 103-122). new york: teachers college press. janet l. miller: curriculum studies and transnational flows and mobilities transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (2) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 49 miller, j. l. (1993). constructions of gender and curriculum. in s. k. biklen & d. pollard (eds.), gender and education (pp. 43-63). chicago: national society for the study of education, university of chicago press. miller, j. l. (1996a). curriculum and the reconceptualization: another brief history. jct: an interdisciplinary journal of curriculum studies, 12 (1), 6-8. miller, j. l. (1996b). hermeneutic portraits: the human histories… jct: journal of curriculum theorizing, 12 (4), 42-43. miller, j. l. (1999). curriculum reconceptualized: a personal and partial history. in w. f. pinar (ed.), contemporary curriculum discourses: twenty years of jct (pp. 498-508). new york: peter lang. miller, j. l. (2000). what’s left in the field…. a curriculum memoir. journal of curriculum studies, 31 (1), 107-110. miller, j. l. (2005a). sounds of silence breaking: women, autobiography, curriculum. new york: peter lang. miller, j. l. (2005b). the american curriculum field and its worldly encounters. jct: journal of curriculum theorizing, 21(2), 9-24. ong, a. (1995). women out of china: traveling tales and traveling theories in postcolonial feminism. in r. behar & d. a. gordon (eds.), women writing culture (pp. 350-372). berkeley: university of california press. pinar, w. f. (2004). what is curriculum theory? mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum associates, inc. pinar, w. f. (2006). exile and estrangement in the internationalization of curriculum studies. journal of the american association for the advancement of curriculum studies, volume 2. http://www.stout.edu/soe/jaaacs/vol2 risager, k. (2006). language and culture: global flows and local complexity. clevedon, uk: multilingual matters, ltd. rojas, m. a. (2006). generative possibilities of performative exchange in qualitative research. performance/presentation at the ways of knowing conference, teachers college, columbia university, march 3. sassen, s. (2000). the global city: the denationalizing of time and space. in j. ockman (ed.), the pragmatist imagination: thinking about things in the making (pp. 254-263). new york: princeton architectural press. schwab, j. j. (1969). the practical: a language for curriculum. school review, 78 (1), 1-23. sheller, m., & urry, j. (2003). mobile transformations of ‘public’ and ‘private’ life. theory, culture & society, 20 (3), 107-125. shih, s-m. (2002). towards an ethics of transnational encounter, or “when” does a “chinese” woman become a “feminist”? differences: a journal of feminist cultural studies, 13 (2), 90-123. smith, s., & watson, j. (2001). reading autobiography: a guide for interpreting life narratives. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. spivak, g. c. (1992). teaching for the times. the journal of the midwest modern language association, 25 (1), 3-22. spivak, g. c. (1993). outside in the teaching machine. new york: routledge. spivak, g. c. (1996). diasporas old and new: women in a transnational world. textual practice x (ii), 245-269. spivak, g. c. (1999). a critique of postcolonial reason: towards a history of the vanishing present. cambridge: harvard university press. spivak, g. c. (2000). claiming transformations: travel notes with pictures. in s. ahmed, j. kilby, c. lury, m. mcneil, & b. skeggs (eds.), transformation: thinking through feminism (pp. 119-130). london: routledge. janet l. miller: curriculum studies and transnational flows and mobilities transnational curriculum inquiry 3 (2) 2006 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 50 spivak, g. c. (2003). death of a discipline. new york: columbia university press. wang, h. (2006). globalization and curriculum studies: tensions, challenges, and possibilities. journal of the american association for the advancement of curriculum studies, volume 2. http://www.stout.edu/soe/jaaacs/vol2/wang.htm author janet l. miller is professor and coordinator of programs in english education/the teaching of english at teachers college, columbia university, usa, and co-chair of the teacher education policy committee. correspondence to: jm1397@columbia.edu to cite this article please include all of the following details: gough, noel. (2004). a vision for transnational curriculum inquiry. transnational curriculum inquiry, 1(1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> editorial a vision for transnational curriculum inquiry noel gough abstract this essay presents the foundation editor’s vision for transnational curriculum inquiry (tci), the journal of the international association for the advancement of curriculum studies (iaacs). it explores some theoretical and practical possibilities for building new transnational and transcultural solidarities in postcolonial curriculum inquiry and argues that building such solidarities requires a rethinking of the ways in which we perform and represent curriculum inquiry, so that curriculum work within a global knowledge economy does not merely assimilate national (local) curriculum discourses-practices into an imperial (global) archive. welcome welcome to the inaugural issue of transnational curriculum inquiry (tci). editorials will not be a regular feature of tci but i thought that it might be useful to share my personal vision for the journal in this first issue. as an electronic open-access journal, tci is both a site for transnational scholarly conversations and a site for inquiry into the ways that electronic publishing procedures facilitate and/or constrain inclusive knowledge work in global virtual spaces. internationalising curriculum inquiry in my contribution to william pinar’s (2003) international handbook of curriculum research, i critically appraise attempts to ‘think globally’ in environmental education over the past thirty years or more, and consider some implications of this critique for internationalising curriculum inquiry. i will not attempt to summarise this critique here but quote briefly from my concluding comments: internationalizing curriculum inquiry might best be understood as a process of creating transnational ‘spaces’ in which scholars from different localities collaborate in reframing and decentering their own knowledge traditions and negotiate trust in each other’s contributions to their collective work. for those of us who work in western knowledge traditions, a first step must be to represent and perform our distinctive approaches to curriculum inquiry in ways that authentically demonstrate their localness. this may include drawing attention to the characteristic ways in which western genres of academic textual production invite readers to interpret local knowledge as universal discourse (gough, 2003, p. 68). i thus begin this editorial by outlining my location as an australian curriculum scholar and explaining how that position disposes me towards doing curriculum inquiry transnationally. i agree with allan luke’s (2002) diagnosis of the dilemmas presently facing academic curriculum scholars in australia: http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci noel gough: a vision for transnational curriculum inquiry transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 2 we have reached an impasse in theory, policy formation and classroom work that is leading to passivity, paralysis and acquiescence to a neo-tylerian curriculum agenda… the now dominant approach to curriculum-making in australia is typified by lists of attributes and skills and outcomes of the new human subject. to offer a normative alternative requires an ethical and political metanarrative, however self-skeptical this must be. it requires a species of critical educational theory, hybrid and polyvocal itself, that both articulates visions of social and cultural utopias and heterotopias, while blending this with a continued skepticism towards totalisation and towards the kinds of essentialism that always seem to land grand narratives in deep trouble (p. 49). i characterise my own self-skeptical normative alternative to the now dominant approaches to curriculum making (and curriculum work writ large) in australia and elsewhere as reworking the languages of curriculum for new publics. i will deal with these two key referents – languages of curriculum and new publics – in reverse order (and the first very briefly), beginning with the conditions under which we now perform curriculum work in australian schools and universities. a recent rereading of dean ashenden et al’s (1984) ‘manifesto for a democratic curriculum’ reminded me that these conditions are very different from the circumstances in which i began my professional and academic career. although the manifesto’s key principles of equality, commonality, and making the curriculum public remain durable, the terms in which the authors couch their curricular imperatives reflect the values and visions of the democracy they then inhabited. twenty years ago, conceptions of a socially just self-managing school, and references to ‘progress’, ‘co-operation’, ‘success’, ‘enduring relevance’, ‘student growth and autonomy’, and ‘community’, could be read relatively unsuspiciously. such concepts and terms now seem less innocent and more problematic, especially if we agree with luke (2002) that ‘the unfinished business of nationbuilding sits undone, with misrecognition of identity and hybridity, ongoing struggles around reconciliation and entitlement, confusion about place and situatedness, and… a very slow coming to grips with our own new blended, cosmopolitan affinities and networks’ (p. 50). like luke, i want to explore possibilities for teaching and learning and research beyond the australian nation, and argue that new transnational publics might produce more defensible metanarratives for curriculum work than nationalism. public education in ‘a democracy tempered by the rate of exchange’ during the past 20 years australia has clearly fulfilled a prophecy made more than 120 years ago by marcus clarke: it has become ‘a democracy tempered by the rate of exchange’1. many aspects of australian social (and educational) policy now are functions of the nation’s position in a global marketplace understood as ‘a grand democracy of consumption’ (edwards, 2002). lenore cooper (2002) warns of the possible effects of this policy environment on the higher education sector in an article headlined ‘globalised out of existence? a new world trade agreement could mean the end of public education, but no 1 clarke used this expression in a satirical pamphlet (c. 1878), ‘the future australian race’ (see mackinnon, 1884, p. 251), in which he also predicted that by 1977 queensland and other northern areas of australia would be ‘authoritarian potentates like those found in latin america and the orient’, while the south would be a greek democracy: ‘the intellectual capital of this republic will be melbourne, the fashionable and luxurious capital on the shores of sydney harbour’. clarke (1846-1881) is now most often remembered as the author of for the term of his natural life, a nineteenth century convict melodrama first published as a newspaper serial and recycled posthumously as a novel, a silent movie classic, and a tv mini-series in the 1970s. but in 1870s melbourne, clarke was widely known as a satirist, playwright, editor and crusading journalist who was sympathetic to victoria’s underprivileged and contemptuous of the pompous colonial ruling class. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci noel gough: a vision for transnational curriculum inquiry transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 3 one’s paying much attention’ (p. 40). cooper notes that australia is one of only four nations among the 144 members of the world trade organisation (wto) to advance proposals for the education services sector as part of the wto’s general agreement on trade in services (gats). the vast majority of wto members have made no commitments to opening their education services sectors to global competition, and their caution may reflect widespread concerns about education becoming a commodity to be traded for profit under international law rather than being a not-for-profit public good.2 evidence that such concerns are justified can be found in other sectors of public administration where trade liberalisation threatens socially equitable access to utilities and amenities. for example, environmental organisations are prominent in the backlash against economic globalisation in the us because many federal laws on emissions, recycling, waste reduction, and toxic substances in packaging – for which us environmentalists lobbied long and hard – can now be challenged as barriers to free trade by nations without comparable environmental legislation, thanks to the clinton/gore administration’s enthusiastic support for the terms of the uruguay round of the general agreement on tariffs and trade (gatt) in the early 1990s. although education in australia might be in no immediate danger of being ‘globalised out of existence’, the potential longterm implications of the gats for higher education is one among many early warning signs of policy trends that australian curriculum scholars might have reason to resist and subvert. by allowing their authority in some public policy arenas to be subordinated to global economic forces, governments of nation-states such as australia are in effect making their own national boundaries increasingly permeable (despite preaching and prosecuting some aspects of border protection much more vigorously). the point that i wish to emphasise here is that this undermining of national authority destabilises the grounding and legitimation of public education systems in national democracies. as carlos alberto torres (2002) points out, the purposes of public education typically include preparing future labour for the nation’s economy and preparing citizens for the nation’s polity, but globalisation ‘shifts solidarities both within and outside the national state’ (p. 364). he thus argues that alternative futures for democratic education under globalisation must address questions raised by the globalisation of the two traditional bases of formal education systems, namely, governance and economies: these questions are very straightforward: will globalization make human rights and democratic participation more universal, or will globalization redefine human enterprise as market exchanges invulnerable to traditional civic forms of governance? whether education as a publicly shared invention, contributing to civic life and human rights, can thrive depends on the future of globalization – a future that may offer the internationalization of the ideals of a democratic education or may reduce education, and civic participation, to narrow instruments of remote and seemingly ungovernable market forces (p. 364). torres thus calls for a reexamination of democratic education in the light of the transformations of individual and collective identities into both more privatised and more globalised forms and concludes that ‘to ask how educational policies could contribute to a 2 for example, cooper (2002) reports that a coalition of four peak bodies (the american council on education, the [us] council for higher education accreditation, the [canadian] association of universities and colleges, and the european higher education association) has issued a joint declaration recommending that their respective national constituencies make no commitments to trade liberalisation in higher education services, because too little is understood about the consequences for domestic regulatory frameworks, public subsidies, quality, access and equity (p. 40). the administrative board of the international association of universities subsequently endorsed this declaration; see http://www.unesco.org/iau/globalization/wtogats.html <13 january 2003> http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci http://www.unesco.org/iau/globalization/wto-gats noel gough: a vision for transnational curriculum inquiry transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 4 democratic multicultural citizenship poses a formidable challenge to the theoretical imagination’ (p. 376). shifting solidarities within and outside the nation-state create both new threats to public education and new opportunities for its reconceptualisation. threats include various largescale and long-term homogenising projects that use seemingly innocuous acronyms – timss, pirls, pisa3, etc. – to disguise the powerful normalising agendas of the international league tables they produce. this is not the place to engage in an extended critique of these projects, but i certainly reject their rhetoric of ‘effectiveness’, ‘improvement’ and pursuit of ‘world class’ status. they are manifestations of ‘audit cultures’ (strathern, 2000) that reduce education to a remote instrument of competitive market exchanges. my focus here is on opportunities for reconceptualising curriculum work that can be generated by considering how we should respond to, and progressively consolidate, the formation of new publics – democratic, multicultural, and transnational citizenries. i suggest that one plausible defence against the crude thinking of culturally homogenising international projects is to work towards building transnational coalitions for public education that critically and creatively translate, adapt and expand national democratic ideals into international educational purposes. how can national democracies with diverse histories and different social contexts collaborate to prepare future labour for a global economy and prepare citizens for an international polity? new publics 1: multinational curriculum development cherry collins (2002) identifies and criticises a number of current trajectories in australian school systems, including a trend ‘towards an international rather than towards a national curriculum’ – a curriculum that ‘has a distinctly capitalist flavour. it has to do with a world in which influential capitalist firms have a global reach and in which people are primarily seen as human resources (p. 48). i suggest that people can help each other to resist their own commodification as instruments of market forces by taking advantage of the shifts in solidarities within and between nation states that globalisation affords. nancy fraser (1993) distinguishes between two senses of solidarity: —solidarity premised on shared identity: this sense of solidarity encompasses the circle of those whom we feel to be like ourselves, while excluding those whom we feel to be different from us. —solidarity premised on shared responsibility: this sense of solidarity encompasses the circle of those upon whom we feel entitled to make claims for help and those whom we feel obligated to help in turn (p. 22). fraser notes that these senses of solidarity are not neatly separable, but that solidarity as shared identity often sets the limits of solidarity as shared responsibility – that is, we tend to limit our sense of shared responsibility to people like us. but these different senses need not coincide, and fraser suggests that solidarity as shared responsibility is potentially more encompassing than solidarity as shared identity. she expands this potential by outlining four ways of formulating an ‘inclusive, universalist, global view of solidarity as shared responsibility which does not require shared identity’. in brief, these are: 3 the trends in international mathematics and science study (timss 2003) succeeds two rounds of the third international mathematics and science study (timss 1999 and timss 1995). the progress in international reading literacy study (pirls) commenced in 2001 and the oecd programme for international student assessment (pisa) is a three-yearly assessment of reading, mathematical and scientific literacies of 15-year-olds in industrialised countries that commenced in 2000. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci noel gough: a vision for transnational curriculum inquiry transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 5 a. a socialist view of global solidarity based on… our interdependence in a common global political economy… where wealth is the common creation of all people’s labor, both waged and unwaged… b. an environmentalist view of global solidarity based on our… interdependence as inhabitants of a common biosphere… c. a feminist view of global solidarity rooted in a concrete sense of human interdependence in everyday life, a vivid sense of the forms of emotional and practical support people require from one another in daily life, not only when they are very young, very old, or sick but also when they are healthy adults… d. a radical-democratic view of global solidarity rooted in the fact that we inhabit an increasingly global public space of discourse and representation… that might be redefined as a space in which all people deliberate together to decide our common fate (p. 22). none of these views of global solidarity requires sameness of cultural identity, and they suggest a plausible response to torres’s (2002) ‘challenge to the theoretical imagination’ by inviting us to rehearse alternative ways to rehabilitate democratic ideals in the wake of their destabilisation by global corporatism. the challenge to the curricular imagination is to envisage how we might build transnational networks of curriculum workers who share these senses of solidarity and are willing to enact them in curriculum inquiry. walter parker, akira ninomiya and john cogan (1999) describe a multinational curriculum development project that goes some way towards enacting some of these global solidarities. a multinational team of 26 researchers from nine nations in four regions4 worked over a four-year period to plan and conduct a study that would result in a set of curriculum recommendations focused on education for citizenship. the team adapted the delphi futures research methodology to interview and then survey iteratively a panel of 182 scholars, practitioners and policy leaders in various fields (science and technology; health and education; politics and government; business, industry and labour; the arts) in these nations. the researchers sought the panel’s agreement on major global trends over the next 25 years, the desirable citizen characteristics needed to deal with these changes, and the educational strategies likely to develop these characteristics. delphi techniques aim to produce deep rather than superficial consensus and the strongest joint recommendation on educational strategies produced by this multinational panel of scholars and practitioners, a minority of whom were educators, was for ‘critical thinking with different others’ on ‘ethical questions’ arising from the global trends (parker, ninomiya & cogan, 1999). they recommended ‘a question-driven (not answer-driven) curriculum with deliberation (not transmission) the pedagogy of choice’ and with an ‘emphasis on multinational contacts and cooperation’ (p. 125). the subject matter of the curriculum devised by this multinational approach is a set of six ethical questions derived from the consensus trends, characteristics and strategies: 1. what should be done in order to promote equity and fairness within and among societies? 2. what should be the balance between the right to privacy and free and open access to information in information-based societies? 3. what should be the balance between protecting the environment and meeting human needs? 4. what should be done to cope with population growth, genetic engineering, and children in poverty? 4 the regions and nations were: east asia (japan), southeast asia (thailand), europe (uk, the netherlands, hungary, germany, greece) and north america (canada, usa). http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci noel gough: a vision for transnational curriculum inquiry transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 6 5. what should be done to develop shared (universal, global) values while respecting local values? 6. what should be done to secure an ethically based distribution of power for deciding policy and action on the above issues? (parker, ninomiya & cogan, 1999, p. 129) these questions are augmented by a set of more familiar curriculum components – concepts, skills and attitudes related to the questions – but these are seen as ancillary to the curriculum’s key attributes: ethical questions and deliberation: the research team understands that goals are transformed right within the process of public discourse. for this reason, deliberation is not only an instructional means but a curriculum outcome itself, for it creates a particular kind of democratic public culture among the deliberators: listening as well as talking, sharing resources, forging decisions together rather than only advocating positions taken earlier, and coming to disagreement. because the issues being deliberated in the curriculum are multinational issues, and because students are conjoining in some way (e.g., face-to-face, electronic) on these common problems. this curriculum has the potential to contribute to the development of what elise boulding (1988) called a ‘global civic culture’ or what today might be called a transnational civil society (parker, ninomiya & cogan, 1999, p. 130). there is much more to parker, ninomiya and cogan’s (1999) study than i can recount here, and the details of their research make it clear that they are not starry-eyed internationalists. rather, they represent a team of curriculum makers that is working purposively towards a multinational perspective on citizenship and citizenship education that loosens the grip of shared national identity on the meaning of ‘citizen’ and raises the more cosmopolitan concept of a ‘world citizen… for whom the commonwealth is not only a local or national political community’ (p. 130). i do not believe that i am reading too much into their study by locating it in the political imaginaries of shared responsibility that fraser outlines. although their conceptions of deliberation are informed by deweyan scholars like joseph schwab (1969), they also cite fraser (1995), and others who critique the boundaries of identity politics (e.g. benhabib, 1996), in recognising that deliberation ‘is hugely problematic in actually existing societies where power and status control participation in deliberation as well as the topics considered appropriate for deliberation’ (p. 133).5 these researchers recognise that expanding the array of forums for deliberation, and expanding access to them, is central to their project. they thus tacitly anticipate the formation of the ‘new publics’ that i envisage being constituted by the transnational social and economic processes that now structure the world – divisions of labour, movements of capital, and transnational movements of people (immigrants, guest workers, refugees and asylum seekers). new publics 2: transnational curriculum inquiry the iaacs is constituted to support a worldwide – but not uniform – field of curriculum studies. iaacs recognises that much curriculum work continues to take place within national borders (often informed by governmental policies and priorities), but also recognises that processes of economic globalisation are (as i argue above) blurring nation-state boundaries and destabilising national authority in curriculum decision-making. thus, tci will encourage contributions that examine the impact of globalisation on curriculum work in relation to 5 i also appreciate parker, ninomiya and cogan’s (1999) reflexive awareness of the difficulties created by referencing mainly north american literature in deference to the presumed readership of the american educational research journal: ‘this creates the confounding problem of casting the project further in north american terms and viewpoints (further than is already the case with two of the three authors being steeped in this milieu). for present purposes, we accept this trade-off’ (p. 142). http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci noel gough: a vision for transnational curriculum inquiry transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 7 national and international debates on such matters as human rights, social justice, democratisation, national, ethnic and religious identities, issues of gender and racial justice, the concerns of indigenous peoples, and poverty and social exclusion. a specific aim of tci is to examine the interrelationships between local, national, regional and global spheres of curriculum work. tci assumes an international readership and an international authorship and will be a ‘quality controlled’ site for scholarly conversations within and across national, regional and cultural borders and boundaries. it is published electronically using open journal systems (ojs), an online journal management and publishing system produced by the public knowledge project (pkp), university of british columbia, canada.6 establishing tci forms part of the work of a deakin university research group that is developing a program of research activities and projects focused on the interlinked themes of internationalisation, inclusivity, and innovative knowledge work, with a particular emphasis on reconceptualising their generative interrelationships. we understand the idea of transnational curriculum inquiry as involving more than producing a journal – it is also a site for research and for producing intercultural understanding and actively valuing cultural diversity. the deakin group is committed to working from within our own cultural locations and dispositions to displace the west (and western academics) as the unmarked centre(s) of global knowledge production and we hope that tci will materialise what fraser (1993) calls a ‘global public space of discourse and representation’ (p. 22) in which her ‘radical-democratic’ form of global solidarity based on shared responsibility will be fostered. we thus see tci as a constructive contribution to reconceptualising curriculum inquiry as a postcolonialist project. as helen verran (2001) writes: postcolonialism is not a break with colonialism, a history begun when a particular ‘us,’ who are not ‘them,’ suddenly coalesces as opposition to colonizer… postcolonialism is the ambiguous struggling through and with colonial pasts in making different futures. all times and places nurture postcolonial moments. they emerge not only in those places invaded by european (and non-european) traders, soldiers, and administrators. postcolonial moments grow too in those places from whence the invading hordes set off and to where the sometimes dangerous fruits of colonial enterprise return to roost (p. 38). among the postcolonial moments we hope to nurture are disruptions of what james scheurich and michelle young (1997) refer to as the ‘epistemological racism’ that results from the vast majority of epistemologies and methodologies currently legitimated in education having arisen almost exclusively from the social histories of the dominant white races. borrowing patti lather’s words (quoted by pinar & reynolds, 1992), we want ‘to decolonize the space of academic discourse that is accessed by our privilege, to open that space up in a way that contributes to the production of a politics of difference’ (p. 254). annette gough and i (in press) found ourselves reflecting on the difficulties of decolonising academic discourse recently when we were invited to contribute a quasi-editorial overview essay to a special issue of the journal environmental education research on environmental education research in southern africa. although the production of this special issue seems – at least potentially – to be a ‘postcolonial moment’ for environmental education research internationally, the journal itself, like the vast majority of scholarly journals published in western nations, is also complicit in modes of textual production that consolidate neocolonialist hegemony, historically rooted in the ways in which western disciplinary knowledges of colonised sites and peoples were produced and represented in the west, and then projected back through western lenses onto those who have been colonised. as linda tuhiwai smith (1999) observes: 6 http://www.pkp.ubc.ca/ http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci http://www.pkp.ubc.ca/ noel gough: a vision for transnational curriculum inquiry transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 8 research is one of the ways in which the underlying code of imperialism and colonialism is both regulated and realized. it is regulated through the formal rules of individual scholarly disciplines and scientific paradigms, and the institutions that support them (including the state) (pp. 7-8). research is also regulated through the informal rules, tacit conventions, professional networks, and taken-for-granted organisational practices through which scholarly journals are produced. in discussing the politics of academic writing, edward said (1982) asks: ‘who writes? for whom is the writing being done? in what circumstances? these it seems to me are the questions whose answers provide us with the ingredients making a politics of interpretation’ (p. 1). the question of for whom the writing in the special issue of environmental education research was done does not have a single or simple answer, but the composition of the journal’s international editorial board (as listed in the august 2003 issue) provides some clues. there are 2 editors and 23 editorial board members of whom 21 are male and 4 female, with the following national/regional distribution of institutional affiliations: uk (7), western europe (6), usa (5), canada (3), australia (3) and south africa (1). in composing our contribution, we did not think that it was unreasonable to read the geographic and gender composition of the editorial board as an historical trace of the underlying codes of imperialism, colonialism and patriarchy that regulate what (and to some extent who) gets published in environmental education research. understanding how such codes function historically helps us to read the neocolonialist and androcentric assumptions that linger in contemporary discourses and texts, including the discourses and texts produced in the former colonies. we thus argue that the purpose of a postcolonialist reading of environmental education research in southern africa is not necessarily (or only) to oppose the contemporary institutional descendants of colonising cultures but, rather, to ‘expose the latent colonial assumptions of normalcy sedimented into the cultural unconscious that (re)cites, appropriates, translates and (re)presents the other, and that have been perpetuated through discourse/text long after the commencement of formal processes of decolonisation’ (lyn carter, in press). in this instance, there seems at least a prima facie case for interpreting the absence of asian and south american members from an ‘international’ editorial board as an example of such ‘latent colonial assumptions of normalcy’. to nurture postcolonial moments we intend tci to be polylingual, and we are currently exploring review procedures that will assure the quality of articles in languages other than english. we are developing manuscript review procedures that enact and facilitate transnational conversations in curriculum inquiry and subject the process of peer review to transparent peer review. we also are exploring alternatives to conventional peer review, such as peer commentary in open e-archives and the possibilities of adapting john smith’s (1999) notion of a ‘deconstructed journal’ to tci’s purposes (see also rowland, n.d). reworking the languages of curriculum with new publics come new languages, and a need to rethink the metaphorical languages of curriculum work. for example, the ‘acquiescence to a neo-tylerian curriculum agenda’ that luke (2002) claims still persists in australian curriculum work is reinforced by a metaphorical language that represents curriculum as a closed system of discrete components (objectives, content, process, products, outcomes etc.) interacting in linear cause-and-effect relationships. many of these components, and the ‘spaces’ they occupy, are conceptualised as material objects. thus the term ‘content’ suggests that a curriculum is like a container (an object with bounded spatial dimensions), while references to ‘frameworks’, ‘standards’ and the flow charts used to depict planning sequences invoke the technical languages of manufacturing industries. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci noel gough: a vision for transnational curriculum inquiry transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 9 during the last two decades, many curriculum scholars have used less mechanistic terms, epitomised by madeleine grumet’s (1981) characterisation of curriculum as ‘the collective story we tell our children about our past, our present, and our future’ (p. 115). in some respects, this ‘narrative turn’ can be understood as a deliberate dematerialisation of curriculum-as-object into curriculum-as-text. twenty years ago, the idea of curriculum as a ‘collective story’ could be resisted by bureaucratic curriculum administrators as being too theoretical, too nebulous, too abstract – and, of course, too threatening: how does one ‘manage’ or ‘control’ storytelling? today, the concept of curriculum as story seems much less esoteric, since our growing familiarity with virtual reality technologies has changed our sense of the relationships between material and informational worlds. the idea of a virtual world of information that coexists with the material world of objects is no longer an abstraction or fanciful speculation. william reid (1979) once observed that ‘the well argued essay’ was the preferred genre of curriculum writing as published up to that time in the journal of curriculum studies (of which he was then european editor). but he warned that a preference for just one genre of curriculum journalism was inherently conservative if other possible forms were excluded without question: ‘thoughts on curriculum can be pointed, substantive and coherent even if they are only a few lines long; they don’t have to run to 5,000 words… nor need they be in prose, or even in words’ (p. 17). wordless thoughts on curriculum are rather thin on the ground in australian and international curriculum debates and even when alternatives to conventional genres are considered they rarely stray very far from the discourses of the academy. for example, luke (2002), following the late garth boomer (who in turn followed jean-françoise lyotard), refers on several occasions to the desirability of producing ‘a new australian epic poem’ (p. 54). although luke (like lyotard) uses ‘epic poem’ to mean much the same thing as ‘metanarrative’, i question the appropriateness of this metaphor for transnational, multicultural, postcolonial curriculum inquiry. strategies and perspectives drawn from the world’s contemporary arts and popular media might provide new languages for curriculum work. following thomas fox and judith geichman (2001) i suggest that we should attempt to ‘apply more rigorously the capacity of art to stop us in our tracks, to break the momentum of current themes’ (p. 34). an important function of art is estrangement, defamiliarisation or ‘making strange’ (ostranenie), that is, reviewing and renewing our understandings of everyday things and events which are so familiar that our perception of them has become routinised. defamiliarisation is based on the assumption that the tactic of surprise may serve to diminish distortions and help us to recognize our own preconceptions. maurice holt (1996) compares the ‘making of curriculum’ in educational systems with the production of motion pictures in the hollywood studio system, using the history of the making of casablanca to demonstrate that analogous organisational processes shape both curricula and popular movies. although some films are distinguished by the work of individual artists (we are unlikely to confuse john woo’s direction with jane campion’s, or to expect a movie featuring jackie chan to resemble one that stars gerard depardieu), all are in some sense produced by organisations. the assemblages of people, resources and technologies that make up systems also change over time, although elements of them may persist in similar or modified forms. thus, the studio system that produced films such as the matrix and its sequels (larry and andy wachowski, directors) in 1999 and 2003 is in many ways different from that which produced casablanca in 1942, especially in terms of the skills, materials and technologies that were available in each case and the anticipated audience’s expectations that influenced their selection and mobilisation. but there are also continuities between these different eras of movie-making: both the matrix and casablanca http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci noel gough: a vision for transnational curriculum inquiry transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 10 had scripts and shooting schedules, employed costume designers and film editors, and accommodated and incorporated improvisations and adjustments as filming progressed. i do not want to push this analogy too far, but it might be useful to think about curriculum inquiry in terms of continuities and changes in both the sociotechnical systems that produce understandings of curriculum work and in the publics for which such knowledge is produced. we still need the curricular equivalents of scripts and shooting schedules but we should no longer assume that curriculum ideas and understandings can only be expressed in print media and words any more than screenwriters today assume that their scripts will be materialised as reels of 35mm black and white film. neither print media nor black and white movies are extinct – in some circumstances they might be the most defensible choices in their respective realms of curriculum inquiry and cinematic production – but they are no longer the norm and cannot be regarded as such. perhaps more importantly, the studios that produce today’s hollywood blockbusters clearly work with different assumptions about their audience’s desires and expectations than those that guided earlier generations of filmmakers. for example, i suspect that the makers of the matrix movies would have wanted them to attract a younger, more culturally diverse and cosmopolitan audience than the middle-american patrons of us cinemas in the era of casablanca. the global culture of contemporary science fiction cinema interreferences european and asian traditions as well as hollywood’s conventions, as the matrix’s techno-orientalism and the dominance of animé (japanese animation) in children’s television and games clearly demonstrate. what all this means for transnational curriculum inquiry in general (and for tci in particular) is a very open question, but i suspect that the most generative transnational curriculum conversations will not necessarily be conducted in academic english, in print journals, or aspire to epic poetry. references ashenden, dean, blackburn, jean, hannan, bill, & white, doug. (1984). manifesto for a democratic curriculum. australian teacher(7), 13-20. benhabib, seyla (ed.). (1996). democracy and difference: contesting the boundaries of the political. princeton nj: princeton university press. boulding, elise. (1988). building a global civic culture: education for an interdependent world. new york: teachers college press. collins, cherry. (2002). the content of the curriculum: what will young australians be learning? curriculum perspectives, 22(1), 44-49. cooper, lenore. (2002, october 16). globalised out of existence. the australian, p. 40. edwards, lindy. (2002). how to argue with an economist: reopening political debate in australia. cambridge: cambridge university press. fox, g. thomas, & geichman, judith. (2001). creating research questions from strategies and perspectives of contemporary art. curriculum inquiry, 31(1), 33-49. fraser, nancy. (1993). clintonism, welfare, and the antisocial wage: the emergence of a neoliberal political imaginary. rethinking marxism, 6(1), 9-23. fraser, nancy. (1995). politics, culture, and the public space: toward a post-modern conception. in linda nicholson & steven seidman (eds.), social postmodernism: beyond identity politics (pp. 287-312). cambridge: cambridge university press. gough, annette, & gough, noel. (in press). environmental education research in southern africa: dilemmas of interpretation. environmental education research. gough, noel. (2003). thinking globally in environmental education: implications for internationalizing curriculum inquiry. in william f. pinar (ed.), international handbook of curriculum research (pp. 53-72). mahwah nj: lawrence erlbaum associates. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci noel gough: a vision for transnational curriculum inquiry transnational curriculum inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 11 grumet, madeleine r. (1981). restitution and reconstruction of educational experience: an autobiographical method for curriculum theory. in martin lawn & len barton (eds.), rethinking curriculum studies: a radical approach (pp. 115-130). london: croom helm. holt, maurice. (1996). the making of casablanca and the making of curriculum. journal of curriculum studies, 28(3), 241-251. luke, allan. (2002). curriculum, ethics, metanarrative: teaching and learning beyond the nation. curriculum perspectives, 22(1), 49-55. mackinnon, hamilton (ed.). (1884). the marcus clarke memorial volume: containing selections from his writings and a biography. melbourne: n.p. parker, walter c., ninomiya, akira, & cogan, john. (1999). educating world citizens: toward multinational curriculum development. american educational research journal, 36(2), 117-145. pinar, william f. (ed.). (2003). international handbook of curriculum research. mahwah nj: lawrence erlbaum associates. pinar, william f., & reynolds, william m. (1992). appendix: genealogical notes – the history of phenomenology and post-structuralism in curriculum studies. in william f. pinar & william m. reynolds (eds.), understanding curriculum as phenomenological and deconstructed text (pp. 237-261). new york: teachers college press. reid, william a. (1979). a curriculum journal and its field: a question of ‘genre’. journal of curriculum theorizing, 1(1), 12-19. rowland, fytton. (n.d). the peer review process: a report to the jisc scholarly communications group. retrieved 1 may 2003 from http://www.jisc.ac.uk/uploaded_documents/rowland.pdf said, edward w. (1982). opponents, audiences, constituencies, and community. critical inquiry, 9(1), 1-26. scheurich, james joseph, & young, michelle d. (1997). coloring epistemologies: are our research epistemologies racially biased? educational researcher, 26(4), 4-16. schwab, joseph j. (1969). the practical: a language for curriculum. school review, 78(1), 123. smith, john w. t. (1999). the deconstructed journal: a new model for academic publishing. learned publishing, 12(2), 79-92. smith, linda tuhiwai. (1999). decolonizing methodologies: research and indigenous peoples. london and new york: zed books and dunedin: university of otago press. strathern, marilyn (ed.). (2000). audit cultures: anthropological studies in accountability, ethics and the academy. london: routledge. torres, carlos alberto. (2002). globalization, education, and citizenship: solidarity versus markets? american educational research journal, 39(2), 363-378. verran, helen. (2001). science and an african logic. chicago and london: university of chicago press. author noel gough is professor of education at the university of canberra, australia. his research interests include narratives and fictions in educational inquiry, and poststructuralist and postcolonialist analyses of curriculum change, with particular reference to environmental education, science education, internationalisation and inclusivity. he is coeditor (with william doll) of curriculum visions (peter lang 2002) and is the founding editor of transnational curriculum inquiry. correspondence to: noel.gough@canberra.edu.au http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci http://www.jisc.ac.uk/uploaded_documents/rowland.pdf microsoft word yu_6-2.doc to cite this article please include all of the following details: yu, jie (2009). a zen journey in the living map of curriculum. transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> a zen journey in the living map of curriculum j i e y u louisiana state university the prestructured curriculum resembles such a map: the learner, the stranger just arrived in town. for the cartographer, the town is an ‘object of his science,’ a science which has developed standards of operation and rules for the correct drawing of maps. in the case of the curriculum maker, the public tradition or the natural order of things is ‘the object’ of his design activities (maxine greene, 1975). my father likes travel very much and his biggest dream in life is to have his footprint on each province throughout china. when i was a little girl, one of my favorite things was to listen attentively to his exciting travel stories: as his fingers moved on different local maps of those places of interest he had visited, he often circled out new points that originally weren’t marked on the maps in order to show off his own discoveries to me. now all of these maps have become among my father’s most valuable and unique collections. this is one of the major reasons why maxine greene’s metaphor of curriculum as map strikes me. my father has always divided maps into two kinds, dead and living: if one follows every marker on the map, this is a dead map for the traveler; if one can find exciting unmarked and empty places besides those marked ones on the map, that is living map. of course my father always boasts that he only uses living maps. i wonder, are there also dead and living maps in the area of curriculum? compared with the notion of curriculum as a static running track, william pinar understands curriculum in its latin root of ‘currere’1 – ‘the infinitive, verb, active form of curriculum’ (doll, 2005). in madeline grumet’s words, currere ‘seeks to know the experience of the running of one particular runner, on one particular track, on one particular day, in one particular wind’ (quoted in doll, 2005, p. 67). this shift from the curriculum’s fixed what to its flowing dynamics in its different or unique ways to be leads me to ponder upon a zen journey as one of the possible paths on the living map of curriculum. the history of zen can be tracked from the first centuries a.d. when indian buddhism was transferred to china – the fusion of indian buddhism and chinese taoism led to the product of chinese zen which then spread to japan and some other asian countries (dumoulin, 1979; durckheim, 1987; watts, 1957). the journey of zen on the living map of curriculum is a journey of enlightenment without any preset aim or end. the story of siddhartha told by hermann hesse (1951) is such an awakening journey. as siddhartha says ‘i am not going anywhere. i am only on the way.’ (p. 93), he is not aware of what may happen in his future life while calmly 1 at the end of his presentation paper in the annual meeting of the american educational research association, william pinar (1975) states that the method of currere in education lets us try to ‘generalize on the basis of the stories we tell and the ones we hear others tell, taking them as evidence of a sort, and attempt to formulate in general terms the broad outlines of past, present and future, the nature of our experience, and specially our educational experience, that is the way we can understand our present in the way that allows us to move on, more learned, more evolved than before.’ yu: a zen journey transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 22 welcoming and experiencing the following unknown journey – he is always on the way. siddhartha has no slightest idea of the so-called end or objective of his journey because he knows ‘when someone is seeking, it happens quite easily that he only sees the thing that he is seeking; that he is unable to find anything, unable to absorb anything, because he has a goal, because he is obsessed with his goal. seeking means: to have a goal; but finding means: to be free, to be receptive, to have no goal’ (p, 140). what will we lose when we are too occupied with the predetermined goals from the very beginning of our journey? is our curriculum a fixed secure running track on which everything during the process is merely an obstacle for us to pass through as quickly as possible for the final end, or rather a dynamic currere in which we can take our time to enjoy the beauty of scenery alongside our way? what do we want to have in our today’s education, an efficient seeker in a constantly accelerating automobile on the highway, or a free finder by foot in the journey for awakening? can the seeker really learn? i ask siddhartha this question, but he smiles and turns back to me and then goes on his journey. i close my eyes and listen attentively to the silence: ‘no one can be spared of one’s own journey. you too. take your journey and then you would know.’ thanks for his prayer and bliss, and now i am on my way. in my wandering and sometimes even dangerous journey, the first stranger i encounter is the haunting ghost in the dead map of curriculum. the haunting ghost of control in the dead map of curriculum for my father as explorer not cartographer, if each step of the traveler is entirely dependant on the prescribed map, this is a dead map. for me, a graduate student in education, if the map of curriculum becomes the only tool for both teachers and student for directions, then this belongs to dead map. with its exclusive emphases on preset educational aims and objectives as markers, a dead map of curriculum is compelled by a strong need for closure and certainty in the institutionalized schooling. in the very dead map, the predetermined objective is not only the starting line but the finish line of the prepackaged race track of curriculum: while both teachers and students are motivated by the set objective at the beginning, the ultimate aim is to produce uniform-qualified-students-as-products to reach this same line in the end. in the whole process, all elements irrelevant to the marked items in the map are disregarded as disrupting ‘noises’. in the linear order of tyler’s rationale, predetermined objective is the ultimate end for curriculum and instruction to achieve – people concern much more of the result or evaluation if the preset aim is achieved than critical reflections upon the aim itself. according to fleener (2002), in such a closed system, we only ‘operate from the givens, follow acceptable procedures, and derive objective and certain truths that are already stated within the conditions of inquiry’ (p. 191). then this question emerges: where do those preset objectives come from? i remember my father often complains that one of the worst things of touring groups is that the guide only uses dead maps. although the guide usually explains since the map is scientifically designed it is best to just follow the marked routes, my father wonders the real reason in most cases is that the guide and the travel agency can get money from the well-designed business itinerary on the dead map. sometimes he even doubts that most cartographers make those dead touring maps for the sake of making profit rather than pure scientific aims. then, how about the dead yu: a zen journey transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 23 map of preplanned curriculum? is it politically neutral? as a leading figure in the cliché of the reproduction theory of education, michael w. apple (2004) points out that the mask of ‘science’ covers the inherent political nature of prestructured curriculum to serve the interests of particular social groups. he claims that the neutrality of curriculum in schooling is only a myth for curriculum that can never be completely interest-free. let us go back to that dead map of curriculum and a number of questions emerge: who designs this map? is there a particular individual or group behind the cartographer, or who hires the cartographer? what places of interest are excluded from this map and why? what particular places of interest are marked on the map and others not, and why? what will travelers thus miss or lose in this dead map? …… actually in the clear-cut dead map of curriculum, the learner as stranger only needs to follow the pre-marked directions on the map without ‘the leap of faith, an aesthetic sensitivity, a personal commitment, and of great importance, an ability to accept ambiguity and uncertainty’ (apple, p. 103). thus, the machine aesthetics of modernism (jencks, 1996) dominates – a typical thinking mode of computers, of machines, in which there is no middle space between one and zero, and thus no magic, no myths in a disenchanted machinery world. when apple tries to denaturalize this seemingly natural dead map, what he finds in this ‘black box’ of the dead map of curriculum also includes the selective tradition of education, the tacit teaching and learning under institutionalized schooling, the hidden curriculum…… all of these shocking findings can subvert our impression of the cloaked ‘neutrality’ of education and thus direct us to the deep embedded control in schools – a haunting ghost has hovered over curriculum from the past. william e. doll (2002) has demonstrated this ‘ghostly perspective of curriculum’ in ghosts and the curriculum, ghosts have an ethereal presence; they can be seen, often felt, but have no material substance. they exist on the fringes of our consciousness, neither physically real nor psychically unreal. they appear and disappear. they may be the appropriate metaphor to use when talking of curriculum visions. a ghost incarnated loses not only its ghostliness but also its suggestive power–of what was, is, might be (p. 24). for doll, the invisible ghosts have been persistently flying over the field of curriculum since its birth. we can’t see them but we can feel their existence everywhere. doll (2002) tracks the ghost of control from frederick taylor’s ‘scientific’ management theories adopted by curriculists to ralph tyler’s rationale. not coincidently, both noel gough and doll (2002) choose the metaphor of clock to represent this external control embedded in curriculum for ‘control is not only the mechanical ghost in the curriculum clock – to use a modern, mechanistic metaphor – but is also the force which actually runs the clock as its pendulum swings from one ideology or fad to another’ (p. 34). this huge mechanical clock over our heads on the dead map of curriculum reminds me of my own experience in teaching practice: ‘what does curriculum mean for you?’ ‘timetable.’ this is one conversation that happened between my mentor teacher and me during my intern teaching in a middle school in shanghai which is famous for its extremely high percentage of graduates into universities. she showed me this timetable of her 8th grade class of that semester in this boarding school: yu: a zen journey transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 24 teacher students 7:35~7:55 dictation dictation 8:00~8:40 grade the dictation first class 8:50~9:30 teach a class second class 9:30~10:00 physical exercises physical exercises 10:00~10:40 grade the exercises of the second class third class 10:50~11:30 grade students’ compositions fourth class 11:40~12:00 lunch lunch 12:00~13:00 examine students’ recitations grade students’ morning dictation 13:00~13:40 teach a class fifth class 13:50~14:30 teach a class sixth class 14:30~14:50 snacks snacks 14:50~15:30 prepare next class and write s teaching plan seventh class 15:40~16:20 read official curriculum syllabus play 17:00~17:30 supper supper 17:30~18:00 supervise student on homework homework 18:00~19:20 help student review the first 7 classes eighth class (for tutorial) 19:20~19:30 snacks dessert 19:30~20:30 help student review the first 7 classes ninth class (for tutorial) 20:30~20:50 send students to the dorm go to dorm at that time i was completely shocked by this tight timetable and the teacher finally concluded our conversation with the description of her and her students’ lives in school as ‘breathing under deep ice,’ a heavy sense of suffocation and control. when i read doll’s argument of ‘the authoritarian, unilateral control which has permeated the concept of curriculum’ (doll & gough, 2002, p. 53) and gough’s remark that ‘i saw the best minds of my generation preset and programmed by bells and buzzers and buzzwords…’ (p. 3, original emphasis) that teacher’s timetable and her phrase of ‘breathing under deep ice’ immediately stuck into my mind. this dead map of curriculum design and implementation is so ‘successful’ that both teachers and students are deeply immersed in that technological clock with little or even no space left for those insiders to consider the deep complex assumptions under the heavy pressure of control. for michel foucault (1975), dividing time into ‘series of series’ of planned tasks and final examinations in schools can best serve ‘the sake of efficiency and effective control’ (p. 157). time is only the technology of control, to help the ghost implement its power in daily classroom. then the question of why emerges: why is the ghost of control summoned in curriculum? in explaining the term discipline, foucault finds napoleon had great interest in making his whole nation a big machine, for he desired to yu: a zen journey transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 25 ‘embrace the whole of this vast machine without the slightest detail escaping his attention’ (p. 141). so many critics complain the producer-consumer mode in the dead map of education between curriculum developers and teachers in curriculum planning, between teachers and students in daily teaching practice. however, the whole education itself has been also deeply stuck in the instrumental mode of means-ends. no matter how reluctant we are to admit, it is a matter of fact that institutionalized education is viewed and operated as a rigid machine to maintain or reproduce the existing order of our society, an instrumental means to achieve the final end of control. as foucault observes, from the 18th century, ‘the organization of a serial space’ became one characteristic of educational administration, and furthermore by assigning different ranks to teachers and students according to their performances in school, it ‘made the educational space function like a learning machine, but also as a machine for supervising, hierarchizing, rewarding’ (pp. 146-147). this is echoed by apple (2004) when he tracks the first curriculists such as bobbitt and charters who had begun to bring ‘social control into the very heart of the field whose task it was to develop criteria for selecting those meanings with which students would come into contact in our schools’ so it is not surprising that the whole field of curriculum ‘has its roots in the soil of social control’ for ideological aims (pp. 44-45). actually it is the very focal eye in foucault’s discipline and punish (1975) that hides itself behind those so-called scientifically cartographers of dead maps of curriculum, the perfect disciplinary apparatus would make it possible for a single gaze to see everything constantly. a central point would be both the source of light illuminating everything, and a locus of convergence for everything that must be known: a perfect eye that nothing would escape and a centre towards which all gazes would be turned (p. 173). this focal manipulative eye resides in the center of social structure to guarantee dominant interests and status of particular groups and the institution of schooling is only one of its subsystems around itself. it is the site of the very central eye where the real decision-makers hide behind those scientific curriculum designers and experts of final prepackaged curriculum. as foucault writes, the main function of this central eye/i is to illuminate all its constituting parts so as to penetrate its power of control into each component, or in apple’s words, to implement the reproduction of existing social structure and orders. in this sense, the dead map of curriculum is only a mirror image of the dead map of larger social systems. the focal eye, its cold gaze from the center, the mirror of existing social order – all of these intertwine in my mind and drive me to write the following lines: i am i is i am an eye perfect and invisible in an empty mirror i is yu: a zen journey transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 26 gazed by i/eye no flesh, no blood, no body before an empty mirror i am i is this is a nightmare about a mirror, an empty mirror in which an invisible i/eye dominates. this is a nightmare for i, which has the same shape of i but is only the objectification of i on the dead map of curriculum. for paulo freire (2005), this is the very dehumanization process of i, the oppressor, imposed on i, the oppressed: after i completes the internalization of i and then is reduced to ‘a thing’ instead of a ‘subject,’ i indeed becomes a lifeless replica of i. therefore, the banking mode of education, which, for freire, takes teaching as the mechanical transfer of knowledge as deposit from teacher to student, appears in the dead map of curriculum. a journey of zen in the living map of curriculum as the ghost of control lingers in the dead map of curriculum without the least inclination to go, we have to search for alternatives to it and a living map of curriculum appears. in the dead map of curriculum around the centers of teacher or textbooks, the objective is to transfer the ‘neutral’ content knowledge from teachers to students to have uniformed ‘educated people’ as the ultimate product of education. the exclusive emphasis on the final product as the result of purely technical transfer tends to shift people’s attention from the aesthetic, ethical and political dimensions of this problematic process: who chooses the knowledge that students are to learn? whose point of view does that knowledge represent? whose knowledge is intentionally or unintentionally neglected in this process? why should students need to acquire that knowledge? what is the moral and political result of this acquisition? who will benefit from this result? who will suffer? are there any other choices that we can make beside the current one? where is the possibility of deconstructing and reconstructing present education situations? …… if we bypass these important questions in curriculum, we are blind to critical problems which are important for human beings and thus ignoring the possibility of making significant turnings on the never ended race track of education in the sense of currere. on the contrary, the living map of curriculum tolerates and even encourages any traveler’s runaway from the makers on the map for new meanings. therefore, the focus of curriculum is moved from the final product to the ongoing process, the preset race track to my running in my day on my track. when ted aoki (pinar & irwin, 2005) probes the question of ‘what is it?’ he shifts our attention from the ‘whatness’ of curriculum to the ‘isness’ of currere. this takes us from the pure concern of achievement of predetermined aim, the understanding of curriculum as a given noun of markers on the dead map, to that of the lively world of becoming, of process, the understanding of curriculum as a changing verb of journey on the living map. in the unfolding of this living map of curriculum, why not take a journey of zen? yu: a zen journey transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 27 although the zen tradition originated from china, it is here a very broad notion which is not only merely chinese zen, but incorporates into it the japanese zen. and the famous contemporary japanese zen master, shunryu suzuki, is one of the major players i rely on in this paper. meditation and imagination in zen then, what is the main practice and spirit of zen? no matter which book of zen you open, these two key words always appear: meditation and enlightenment – to meditate for enlightenment is one major practice of zen. shunryu suzuki established a zen center in san francisco after world war ii and wrote quite a few books of zen in which he gives much good advice on how to meditate. he suggests that our meditation focus on our own daily lives: ‘zen is not some kind of excitement, but concentration on our usual everyday routine’ (1970, p. 57). in this meditation, he advises us to ‘walk slowly, like a cow or an elephant’ instead of ‘galloping around’ in order to get enlightenment from our most common daily lives. therefore, meditation is not an escape from the society, but to prepare to reenter it – ‘this is not a retreat, it is treat’ (hanh, 1987/2005, p. 15). this is echoed by maxine greene’s (2001) idea of imagination, which involves ‘a capacity to see new possibilities in things, to perceive alternative realities, to open windows in the actual and discover what might be’ (p. 30). greene calls us to uncouple from the ordinary life – to break with the taken-for-granted to see what might be, what is not yet. she also points out this is not to be alien from one’s life background, but instead only when ‘speaking with their own voices, perceiving from their locations, people can release their imaginative thought freely for ‘a range of meanings’ (p. 184). for both suzuki and greene, enlightenment or new meaning does not come from nothing but from refreshed sharp eyes on the daily routines. this is also where creativity and significant changes come from. by this uncoupling, one can defamiliarize the familiar to see things otherwise as if it is first time one sees them. the new vision into alternatives and possibilities from the usual itself may not be sufficient to lead to transformations, but it is a good and necessary beginning to trigger the possible awakened consciousness and praxis. in the daily classroom of schools, greene (1995) advises that teachers should know the multiple power of imagination and concludes that ‘imagining things being otherwise may be a first step toward acting on the belief that they can be changed’ (p. 22). then, why not imagine possible new marker and try different routes on the map in the journey of curriculum? in this constantly restructured living map of curriculum, both teachers and students do not haste to reach the predetermined destination along the marked path on the dead map but take their time walking ‘like an elephant’ to enjoy the scenery on the journey with their whole bodies, especially in non-marked strange places of interest. in this journey, each discovery of new places that can’t be found on the dead map is not merely runaway from the originally designed course, but a good possibility to find cracks for alternatives. as trinh minh-ha (1989) describes, these ‘cracks and interstices are like gaps of fresh air that keep on being suppressed because they tend to render more visible the failures operating in every system’ (p. 41). in the beginning, the cracks or fissures may be only the slightest flapping of butterfly’s wings, but after we insert patient praxis into them, they can trigger the most significant changes on the whole map. for greene (1975), as the learner is yu: a zen journey transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 28 required to apply ‘his own subjectivity and break with the common sense world s/he normally takes for granted’ (p. 302) by uncoupling from daily routines, [s/he] will moved to pore over maps, to disclose or generate structures of knowledge which may provide him [her] unifying perspectives and thus enable him [her] to restore order once again. his [her] learning, i am saying, is a mode of orientation – or reorientation – in a place suddenly become unfamiliar. … [curriculum] requires a subject if it is to be disclosed; it can only be disclosed if the learner, himself [herself] engaged in generating the structures, lends the curriculum his [her] life (pp. 307-308). thus, curriculum is no longer only a dead prescribed map with fixed chartings of locations, a final product, but a process of incessant creations and recreations into what is not yet. in this sense, curriculum has actually turned into a living map full of possibilities of not yet as the learner’s subject plays a quite active role in it. indeed, not only the field of curriculum and education, but our whole lives are themselves continuing processes of tapping into various possibilities of what might be. here i cannot help thinking of jacques derrida’s (1982) conceptualization of ‘différance’2 – an open ended play not only within the structure but with the fixed or internal structure itself – as meaning plays you, you have to cut the chain of the signifier to play with what plays you. in this play, one has to undo all those social constructs in critically analyzing how meanings or themes are construed and beliefs or faiths are projected as facts rather than in a natural order. this is also a dangerous play/journey for one has to give up the desire of mastery or control to become homeless on the bottomless chessboard of play. in some sense, such play is always an ongoing process of (re)opening new possibilities in certain systems and at the same time meanings become unstable in the system – a real and unpredictable adventure on the living map of curriculum. detachment in the empty world of zen as a mixture originated from indian buddhism and chinese taoism, it is not difficult to find the strong flavor of taoism in chinese zen, including in its practice of meditation. karlfried dumoulin (1979) has quoted a story from chuang-tzu, a taoist master, to describe the essence of meditation in zen as ‘sitting down and forgetting everything’ – discard intelligence, ‘detach from both body and mind, and become one with great universal [tao]’ (chuang-tzu, quoted by dumoulin, p. 32). by ‘forgetting [attachment to] everything’ in the meditation of zen, people want to achieve a state of ‘emptiness’ which is emphasized by both buddhism and taoism so that they are not cling to any ephemeral external objects, fixed rules or ambitious desires any longer. when suzuki (2002) talks about ‘emptiness’ in zen, he writes: all descriptions of reality are limited expressions of the world of emptiness. yet we attach to the descriptions and think they are reality. this is a mistake 2 in his ‘margins of philosophy,’ jacques derrida (1982) intentionally misspells or deconstructs the word ‘difference’ to ‘différance’ because the word difference cannot refer ‘either to différer as temporization or to différends as polemos’ as différance can refer to both simultaneously (p. 8). in other words, derrida argues differences are ‘produced’ and deferred by différance. he says the a of différance cannot be heard or comprehended because it is what différance is not makes possible the presentation of the being-present. in other words, différance can never be presented as such – it does not have any existence or essence. this is why derrida thinks différance is ‘neither a word nor a concept’ (p. 7). for more understanding of derrida’s conceptualizations of difference, différance, trace and language, see nicholas ng-a-fook in this volume. yu: a zen journey transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 29 because what is described is not the actual reality, when you think it is reality, your own idea is involved (p. 36). suzuki (2002) argues that people often add different scales to ‘analyze one reality into entities’ (pp. 36-37) and thus put the world into dead conceptualized boxes. this echoes alan watts’3 statement of zen (1960/1935), ‘zen is to move with life without trying to arrest and interrupt its flow; it is an immediate awareness of things as they live and move, as distinct from the mere grasp of ideas and feelings about things which are the dead symbols of a living reality’ (p. 52, original italics, quoted in wang, in this volume). so, to become empty in zen does not mean to rely on any external concept or the thinking mind to add something to spoil the world but ‘just receive the letter from the world of emptiness’ to ‘see the thing itself as it is with a wider mind’ (suzuki, 2002, pp. 37-38). this ‘letter’ is the call that the world of beings, which are not just scientific objectives standing against to us, sends to us. nor is it a purely product of human beings. we receive this letter only insofar as we listen carefully and patiently to the calling of the world – only when we are addressed by and thus opened to this claim can we hear and get the letter to let beings be themselves. therefore, this listening requires a detachment from persisting on our own opinions as we have to let things go in the empty world of zen while what we have always taken for granted falls apart. what if you feel groundless in the detachment to the firm ground of local system you previously reside in? the voice of pema chodron (1997) is so soft: when things fall apart and we’re on the verge of we know not what, the test of each of us is to stay on that brink and not concretize. the spiritual journey is not about heaven and finally getting to a place that’s really swell (p. 7). in this detachment, one has to take off one’s armor in this vulnerable place, because this is not only a testing, but a healing – ‘only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found in us’ (chodron, p. 9). we can see unavoidable dangers and hurts outside our small but secure nut, but, as suggested by chodron, that is part of our journey: ‘to be continually thrown out of the nest,’ ‘to be always in no-man’s-land,’ ‘to experience each moment as completely new and fresh,’ and ‘to be willing to die over and over again’ (pp. 88-89). in order to kiss the other in my journey, i am vulnerable without any shield. my responsibility is to respond to every calling from the other, and never stop to try to occupy his land as mine although sometimes we have difficult struggles. but even in our struggle, we converse, listen, and negotiate – we just let things go in their own ways. is this letting go a cold rational detachment? chodron would say no, for ‘this nonattachment has more kindness and more intimacy’ than this (p. 62). each time after i kiss the other i can feel that some part of the other becomes mine as part of mine flows into the other’s blood and bone. if i cannot let things go but stick to my own right opinions, i have to attack the other to make me win in the war. here the warning of chodron sounds: ‘when we hold on to our opinions with aggression, no matter how valid our cause, we are simply adding more aggression to the planet and violence and pain increases. cultivating 3 alan watts was an influential teacher of zen spirituality in america of the 1960’s. hongyu wang has a deep exploration of watts’ life history, especially his struggling with both eastern and western cultures, in this volume. yu: a zen journey transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 30 nonaggression is cultivating peace’ (p. 133). go back to our current world, can we pause for a while in the inaction rather than aggressively act under the great flag of peace or justice? compared with the ambitious claim of ‘if i changed the world, it would be better for other people,’ can we not ‘set out to save the world’ but ‘set out to wonder how other people are doing and to reflect on how our actions affect other people’s hearts’ (chodron, pp. 122-123). chodron thinks we have to learn that ‘what truly heals is gratitude and tenderness’ (p. 122). this is also the secret of inteaching4 in our classroom. instead of concerning what we can teach to our students, we have to reflect on how our teaching affects our students in their learning. can we as teachers pause a while in our teaching to listen to our students for their ‘joy and sorrow,’ ‘laughing and crying’ ‘hoping and fearing’ (chodron, p. 122). could we use inteaching to simply undo what is brutally hurt or damaged in aggressive teaching as a healing? actually it is always wondering between ‘go[ing] with the movements’ in the strange place and ‘getting a grip’ on the dead map of curriculum (suzuki, 2002, p. xi). do not let all marked items on that dead map actually become obstacles on our way of new discoveries under the umbrella of so-called security as indeed there is no such a thing called guarantee. suzuki (2002) tells us that ‘this is secret of teaching. it may be so, but it is not always so’ (p. 93). since ‘it is not always so’ as the dead map of curriculum shows, why not try the living map of curriculum in our own exploration of mistakes, perturbations and disruption on the journey? ‘playing the stringless lute’ in zen suzuki (2002) maintains that in order to get the intuitive feeling and understanding of the world of emptiness, we have to remain silent and remember ‘not to talk does not mean to be deaf and dumb, but to listen to intuition’ (p. 69). as a special way of achieving emptiness through meditation, this unique silence of talking intuitively by not talking verbally can also be found in chinese traditional art. watts (1957) mentions that ma-yuan (1190-1279), one outstanding zen painter in song dynasty, was famous for ‘filling in just one corner’ to make the whole picture alive. he remarks that, [this technique] amounts almost to ‘painting by not painting,’ or what zen sometimes calls ‘playing the stringless lute.’ the secret lies in knowing how to balance form with emptiness and, above all, in knowing when one has ‘said’ enough. for zen spoils neither the aesthetic shock nor the satiric shock by filling in, by explanation, second thoughts, and intellectual commentary. furthermore, the figure so integrally related to its empty space gives the feeling of the ‘marvelous void’ from which the event suddenly appears. (p. 179) 4 yu: a zen journey transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 31 plum tree, rock, stream and mallard by ma-yuan5 as one of the four most famous painters of his dynasty, ma-yuan gets his nickname of ‘margin ma’ because his zenist drawing usually only occupies a corner of the whole picture to leave enough space both on the paper and in people’s mind. it is interesting that it is this ‘marvelous void’ space in his pictures catches people’s eyes and attention and thus triggers their creative and imaginative intuition toward that blank space. in this sense, ma-yuan can never be the only painter of his drawings: after he finishes his magic corner, the rest of the work of art is left for viewers or readers to accomplish by their personal spiritual commitment and exploration into their own various aesthetic worlds of emptiness from that corner for a-new meanings. it is from the empty space on the map that extreme possibilities emerge in the process of becoming and happening. this is also the myth of the margin in ma-yuan’s drawings – the margin and the rest blank space do not ‘mean but evokes’ (pinar, 2002, p. 467). then, can we play that stringless lute on the living map of curriculum? can we play curriculum ‘in a new key’6? while the dead map of curriculum only concerns measuring every inch of routes and filling the map with numerous markers for travelers to follow step by step, the living map of curriculum leaves enough space for self-created markers by travelers themselves and encourages them to take explorations and risks on those large unmarked areas on the map. this is also the genuine relationship between teaching and learning suggested by martin heidegger – teaching should let learning happen. heidegger (1978) argues that the reason teaching is more difficult than learning is ‘not because the teacher must have a larger store of information, and have it always ready,’ but because ‘what teaching calls for is this: to 5 this drawing (梅石溪凫图) is downloaded from http://www.shw.cn/97ldmt/ldhh/004.htm. 6 this is a phrase ted aoki (2005) uses in his book title, ‘curriculum in a new key.’ yu: a zen journey transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 32 let learn’ and ‘there is never a place in it [the relation between the teacher and the learner] for the authority of the know-it-all or the authoritative sway of the official’ (pp. 379-380). in other words, teaching is not the determination of learning but let learning be itself – teacher is not the dictator but helper or facilitator. in our living map of curriculum, the teacher cannot guide students everywhere while their journey is not predetermined but a happening, a becoming. this reminds me of another story of maps, which is told by gregory bateson on his personal website7. there ran a pretty girl who likes to sleep on disused railroad tracks and a brutal surveyor who runs the trains up and down the tracks in a country. the surveyor was so interested in exploring each branch of the railroad system in order that he could mark them on maps that the girl was often disturbed in her sleep and compelled to retreat hastily while a powerful and smelly engine dashed over the very place she had been happily resting. he asserted that it was his right – and even duty – to map the railroad system and that the whole system was entirely his, even including the unexplored parts of it. he argued the system was a single, entirely logical-causal network of tracks. she averred the tracks were designed for the rest and peace of the human soul and she cared nothing for his dreams of causality and logic. when he mapped every detail of the tracks along which he ran his engines, she continually found other parts of the system not yet mapped. from this story, i am afraid that while there are more and more people who are entirely dependant on the dead map of curriculum like that rude surveyor, will there be any empty place left for the girl’s sweet sleep? if one day the girl can find nowhere to escape from the logical-causal network of the surveyor, that is the tragedy for all people, not only for that guy or the girl. let us not talk verbally by talking spiritually, not mark on the dead map of curriculum aggressively but unmark the blank space on the living map of curriculum silently, not teach and learn always so but open ourselves and find when ‘it is not always so’ in classroom! then, it might be possible for us to play the stringless lute in the living map of curriculum to get a new key beyond. this is also the travel of the troubadour of knowledge in michel serres (1997): [t]he philosopher who seeks does not employ method, the exodus without a path remains his only sojourn and his blank book. he does not plod along or travel by following a map that would retrace an already explored space; he has chosen to wander. wandering includes the risks of error and distraction. where are you going? i don’t know. where are you coming from? i try not to remember. through where do you pass? everywhere and through as many places as possible, encyclopedically, but i try to forget (p. 98). without following any predetermined route or path, the troubadour travels everywhere without any dead map. he has not any reference point where he should come or go, but tries to visit any place of interest. if he is lost in the wild forest or desert, he would not care; on the contrary, this could only inspire him to begin his new adventures. as he enjoys the luxury of wandering from any preplanned itinerary, the traveler takes his time in his lone but happy journey. in this sense, the troubadour is a master zenist in his awakening journey for 7 bateson says this story is quoted from stewart brand on the coevolution quarterly, spring 1978, pp. 44-46, http://www.oikos.org/batallegory.htm. yu: a zen journey transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 33 enlightenment. challenges of the living map of curriculum in a postmodern age although linda hutcheon (1989) remarks that ‘few words are more used and abused in discussions of contemporary culture than the word ‘postmodernism’ (p. 1), we are definitely living or/and facing the challenges of a postmodern age. and jean baudrillard (1998) directly expresses his concern of the ‘ecstasy of communication’ – ‘all secrets, spaces and scenes abolished in a single dimension of information’ (p. 151) in a postmodern age. he describes this terror as, too great a proximity of everything, the unclean promiscuity of everything which touches, invests and penetrates without resistance, with no halo of private protection, not even his own body, to protect him anymore (p. 153). then, the object is no longer the ‘mirror’ of the subject and there is no ‘scene’ of interiority; instead, the subject now becomes ‘only a pure screen, a switching center for all the networks of influence’ (p. 153). in other words, the information from the other (other travelers and changing local situations) is so countless for any traveler in the tour. is that still possible for us to bow to each call from the other on the journey? how can we develop a critical consciousness to discriminate among different directions in specific situations without drifting in free flows in the living map of curriculum where there are no preset ‘safe routes’ for us to follow? however, as grown up and thus framed in particular systems of culture, history and language, each person has her/his own contextual bias which can become a big blind spot in this critical consciousness and thus confine the furthest area we could reach. how can one find his/her own blind spot and then not only see from his/her local places but deconstruct and see through this local myth to reach beyond for new routes and experience in this living map? this is a difficult challenge for all of us. even after we know where our blind spots are (if we could know) that obstruct our vision to find new ways into new places and are clear of the need to go beyond them, we still can’t travel freely in the living map of curriculum as we wish – we are always seeing and enjoying landscapes through particular lens as observers. as we have such a deep inclination of making coherent patterns from ‘incoherent fragments’ (greene, 2001, p. 13) and are constantly producing, updating and depending dead maps with more and more markers on them, we are still immersed deeply in the wholeness of modernism, lacking a new appreciation of holes in postmodernism. while we are too concerned with transforming holes into the whole, we are, at the same time, struck into a crazy desire of overcoming the hole of emptiness rather than closely examine and look into it for a-new visions. shoshana felman (1992) has presented the testimony of fyodor dostoevsky, in which this famous russian novelist confesses his illness but refuses healing and does not seek cure because he wants to ‘let it hurt even more’ (quoted in felman, p. 10). this strange enjoyment of the hurt of illness, the hatred of cure and healing, in some sense, is a desperate gesture of resistance against the preset and predicted order/wholeness in modernism. can we just run away from the marked paths on the dead map of curriculum and stray around in the living one? can we become nomads in the flows? do we still need clear directions for guidance? what if yu: a zen journey transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 34 we turn to be homeless in the continuing pursuit of looking for homes? can we tolerate and enjoy this discomfort of displacement on the journey? or is this journey one that necessarily involves ‘enjoyment’? in the living map of curriculum, when confronted with so much information as a receiving screen, faced with so many choices that have to be made for directions, we are challenged by different ways of understanding in the journey of curriculum where the ground is so ‘narrow and slippery’ that ‘none of us can pride ourselves on being sure-footed there’ (minh-ha, 1989, p. 28). not a conclusion as the ghost of control hovers over the dead map of curriculum, particularly in the area of formal schooling, predetermined objectives, teaching and learning task on time, standardized tests, scientific systems management, and etc. trivialize education and reduce real educational problems into pure technological ones. behind those professional curriculum theorists and designers in this so-called scientific and neutral dead map of curriculum, there stand particular groups of people in the shadow whose interests this dead map mainly serves. it is the black box of this dead map that michael apple tries to open and thus take off its cover of neutrality. then, why don’t we try to experience a journey of zen in the living map of curriculum. as the practice of zen meditation focuses on the reflection of daily routines to see alternatives and possibilities, it echoes greene’s view of imagination by uncoupling from the ordinary: a power element in provoking the not yet openings in the living map of curriculum. besides, the spiritual power of zen calls us to play the stringless lute of curriculum to get a new key beyond in the living map of curriculum. then, the challenge or danger of this living map under the ‘ecstasy of communication’ in a postmodern era emerges: how can we discriminate among different directions in specific situations without drifting through free flows of information and choices in the living map of curriculum as nomads? how can we develop a different understanding, a new appreciation between holes and wholes, noises and orders, fragments and patterns, displacement and homes on this map? do we just ‘let it hurt even more’ or seek for cures to heal this hurt in postmodernism? …… so, i’d like to end this paper with a number of question marks so as to explore more alternatives and commas to tap into various possibilities of what might be, what is not yet on the living map of curriculum, instead of a definitive stop with a conclusion here. references apple, michael w. (2004). ideology and curriculum (third edition). new york: routledgefalmer. baudrillard, jean. (1998). the ecstasy of communication, in the anti-aesthetic: essays on postmodern culture, by foster, hal (ed.). new york: the new press. chodron, pema. (1997). when things fall apart: heart advice for difficult times. boston: shambhala. derrida, jacques. (1982). margins of philosophy, translated by alan bass. chicago: the university of chicago press. doll, jr., william e. and gough, noel (eds.) (2002). curriculum visions. new york: peter yu: a zen journey transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 35 lang. doll, jr., william e. (2005). the culture of method, in chaos, complexity, curriculum and culture: a conversation, edited by william doll, m. fleener, d. trueit, and j. julien. new york: peter lang. dumoulin, heinrich. (1979). zen enlightenment: origins and meaning, translated by john c. maraldo. new york: weatherhill. durckheim, karlfried graf. (1987). zen and us, translated by vincent nasb. new york: e. p. dutton. felman, shoshana and dor laub, m.d. (1992). testimony: crises of witnessing in literature, psychoanalysis, and history. new york: routledge. fleener, m. jayne. (2002). curriculum dynamics: recreating heart. new york: peter lang. foucault, michel. (1975). discipline and punish: the birth of the prison. new york: pantheon books. freire, paulo. (2005). pedagogy of the oppressed (30th anniversary edition). new york: continuum. greene, maxine. (1975). curriculum and consciousness, in curriculum theorizing: the reconceptualists by william pinar (ed.). berkeley: mccutchan pub corp. greene, maxine. (1995). releasing the imagination: essays on education, the arts, and social change. san francisco: jossey-bass. greene, maxine. (2001). variations on a blue guitar: the lincoln center institute lectures on aesthetic education. new york: teachers college, columbia university. hanh, thich nhat. (1987/2005). being peace. berkeley: parallax press. heidegger, martin. (1978). what calls for thinking?, in martin heidegger: basic writings, edited by d. krell. london: routledge. hesse, hermann. (1951). siddhartha, translated by hilda rosner. new york: bantam books. hutcheon, linda. (1989). the politics of postmodernism. london and new york: routledge. jencks, charles. (1996). what is post-modernism? (4th edition) new york: wiley-academy. minh-ha, trinh t. (1989). woman, native, other: writing postcoloniality and feminine. bloomington: indiana university press. pinar, william f. (1975). the method of ‘currere.’ paper presented at the annual meeting of the american educational research association (washington, d.c., april 1975). pinar, william f. (ed.) (2002). understanding curriculum. new york: peter lang. pinar, willam f. and irwin, rita l. (eds.) (2005). curriculum in a new key: the collected work of ted t. aoki. mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum. serres, michel. (1997). the troubadour of knowledge, translated by sheila faria glaser with william paulson. ann arbor: the university of michigan press. suzuki, shunryu. (1970). zen mind, beginner’s mind. new york: weatherhill. suzuki, shunryu. (2002). not always so: practicing the true spirit of zen. san francesco: harpercollinspublishers. watts, alan w. (1957). the way of zen. new york: pantheon books. watts, alan w. (1958/1935). the spirit of zen. new york: grove press. yu: a zen journey transnational curriculum inquiry 6 (2) 2009 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 36 author jie yu is a ph.d. student in the department of educational theory, policy and practice at louisiana state university, baton rouge, la. she received her masters degree from the department of curriculum & instruction in east china normal university and her major research interest is in curriculum theory. email jyu5@tigers.lsu.edu microsoft word goughformatted040109_ag.doc to cite this article please include all of the following details: gough, annette (2008). towards more effective learning for sustainability: reconceptualising science education. transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> towards more effective learning for sustainability: reconceptualising science education annette gough school of education, rmit university introduction in mid 2007, on the west coast of australia, the world conference on science and technology education released its perth declaration on science and technology education (see appendix). a week after the conference, on the east coast of australia, the ford motor company announced that it would close its six-cylinder engine plant in geelong in 2010, after 81 years of continuous operation (gordon, 2007; shanahan & holroyd, 2007). why am i linking these events in starting this paper? the reasons for the closure of the ford plant are several – they relate to environmental controls, technological advances, economic realities and social pressures, in particular: • the six cylinder engine currently being produced at the plant had “been left behind by changes in fuel efficiency and emissions technology” (gordon, 2007, p.1) and will not meet the emission control standards that come into force in three years time. • consumer demand for six cylinder cars has slumped in favour of smaller cars because of high petrol prices. the fact that society – through both government controls and consumer demand – is exerting such influence on the motor vehicle industry is a reflection of how far we have come in society’s levels of environmental awareness since rachel carson published silent spring in 1962 and garrett hardin (1968) wrote “the tragedy of the commons”, galvanising a worldwide environmental movement. it is thus disappointing to see environment and sustainable development being treated in such a relatively tokenistic way in the perth declaration. although the declaration ended with the pledge that “we, the participants, are committed to ensuring that students are scientifically and technologically literate and able to contribute to sustainable, responsible, global development in their respective nations”, there was no acknowledgement that science education’s lack of incorporation of environmental or sustainability education might be linked to the “global decline in the level of interest in science” (australian science teachers association [asta], 2007). about the closest acknowledgement of something that might hint at this deficiency is in the last key reason for the global decline noted by the australian science teachers association in its media release on the declaration, that is, “perceived lack of relevancy of modern science curricula resulting in student disengagement” (asta, 2007). in the declaration itself this is phrased differently, as “a widespread lack of student interest in current school science and technology education and of its relevance to them” (world conference on science and technology education [wcste], 2007). what we do know from numerous surveys and research studies, is that students are interested in the environment, yet this is generally not reflected in science curricula in schools. i will return to this point later in this paper. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci gough: towards more effective learning for sustainability transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 33 none of the actions for governments around the world included in the perth declaration addressed the bringing together of science education and environmental or sustainability education beyond: • promoting “critical awareness of the contribution of science and technology to personal, social, economic and environmental wellbeing through building partnerships with national stakeholders and the media”; • calling on unesco “to integrate its science and technology education endeavour as fundamental to achieving educational, environmental, cultural, social and sustainable development goals”. (wcste, 2007) the only curriculum action was “to initiate revisions of the curriculum for school science and technology that will increase student interest in and recognition of the roles of science and technology in society” (wcste, 2007). i was not a participant at this conference so i can only ponder from a distance as to why the relationship between science and environmental education continues to be so estranged, particularly given that we are already in the fourth year of the united nations decade of education for sustainable development and there is some scant acknowledgement of the decade’s existence in some of the wording of the declaration. however, even the call on unesco seems to be ill-informed as the connection between education for sustainable development (esd) and science and technology education (ste) is already being made there. according to the unesco sustainable development and ste website (2007a): ste is thus a major vector in the search for sustainable development. consequently, the section for science and technology education maintains sustainable human development as its ultimate objective while promoting an integrated approach to ste focusing on concrete socio-cultural issues related to the environment, health, consumption, etc. its [sic] operates in formal and non formal education at the primary and secondary levels and collaborates with other divisions and sectors of unesco operating at other levels of education. if the perth conference participants were not aware of this, it could be evidence that unesco’s decade implementation scheme is not reaching this audience, even though “the goal of the united nations decade of education for sustainable development (2005-2014, desd), for which unesco is the lead agency, is to integrate the principles, values, and practices of sustainable development into all aspects of education and learning” (unesco, 2007b). in this paper i am arguing that, with the growth of education for sustainable development in the past decade or so, the potential relationship between environmental education and science education has strengthened, with a growing recognition that an understanding of ecological sustainability is essential if we are to achieve sustainable development. when this potential relationship is combined with the global decline of the level of students’ interest in science in schools there would seem to be an argument for reconceptualising science education for their mutual benefit. this needs to be beyond just “re-imagining science education” (tytler, 2007) – it will require a major reconstruction. that the environment (and thereby environmental education) is the elephant in the science classroom needs to be acknowledged and taken advantage of. firstly, however, for those who are unfamiliar with the common ground between these two areas i will provide a short history that extends an earlier paper (gough, 2002) to include more recent developments in education for sustainable development and science education. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci gough: towards more effective learning for sustainability transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 34 where have we come from? the field that has become environmental education arose out of the growing awareness of the threat of environmental degradation in the 1960s. increasingly throughout the decade scientists such as carson and hardin drew attention to the growing scientific and ecological problems of the environment and the need for greater public awareness of these problems, such as the increasing contamination of land, air and water, the growth in world population and the continuing depletion of natural resources. these problems were formally recognised in the 1972 united nations declaration on the human environment (in greenall & womersley, 1977, p.15): we see around us growing evidence of man-made harm in many regions of the earth; dangerous levels of pollution in water, air, earth and living things; major and undesirable disturbances to the ecological balance of the biosphere; destruction and depletion of irreplaceable resources; and gross deficiencies in the man-made environment of human settlement. the scientists’ calls were for more information about the environment for the public, and for education. for example, rachel carson (1965, p.30) argued that “the public must decide whether it wishes to continue on the present road, and it can do so only when in full possession of the facts”. similarly, paul and anne ehrlich (1972, p.357) criticised the “almost total failure” of countries throughout the world to prepare the general public to understand and make responsible decisions on environmental issues. at the 1972 united nations conference on the human environment the importance of education was asserted. in the prelude to recommendations for international action it stated (in greenall & womersley, 1977, p.16) that “education and training on environmental problems are vital to the long-term success of environmental policies because they are the only means of mobilising an enlightened and responsible population, and of securing the manpower needed for practical action programmes”. in the wake of publicity and political actions attending these concerns, environmental education initially entered school curricula in the early 1970s through science education (gough, 1997). indeed, at that time there was a broad acceptance in society that threats to human wellbeing and the environment could be countered through further scientific research and the application of technology. such a belief is exemplified in the tbilisi declaration (unesco, 1978, p.24), which states, “education utilising the findings of science and technology should play a leading role in creating awareness and a better understanding of environmental problems”. in the past decade, unesco has emphasised the link between environmental education and science education by changing the subtitle of its publication connect, from “unesco-unep environmental education newsletter” (as it was from 19761996) to “unesco international science, technology & environmental education newsletter” (since 1997). in its early formulations, the explicit aims of environmental education were often concerned with stimulating a sense of individual responsibility for the physical and aesthetic quality of the total environment based on a knowledge of general ecological principles, an understanding of the impact of human society on the biosphere, and an awareness of the problems inherent in the environmental change. the underlying belief seemed to be that “if you provide people with accurate information about a situation, their values, attitudes, and behaviour change for the better” (mcinnis, 1975, p.54), and this belief was enacted in the curriculum development strategies used by environmental educators. for the most part, they simply translated scholarly scientific material into subject matter to be taught and learned, http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci gough: towards more effective learning for sustainability transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 35 generally through science education, because the construction of school environmental knowledge in the science curriculum was seen to be a direct outcome of scientific production. however, as a result of forums such as the unesco-unep belgrade workshop (1975) and the tbilisi conference (unesco, 1978), the goals and objectives for environmental education changed during the 1970s to emphasise more explicitly values and attitudes clarification, decision-making skills and an action component. the reports from these forums also recognised that the traditional formulations of the academic disciplines are individually inadequate for achieving the aims of environmental education, and instead proposed an interdisciplinary approach rather than a new or separate subject. for example, in one of the papers from the belgrade workshop, buzzati-traverso (1977, p.13) argued that: the field under discussion is vast and multifaceted; it should be approached with a holistic attitude in that man [sic] and the innumerable components of his [sic] physical and cultural environment should be examined together in order to identify the complex and often hidden interactions which determine the pattern of human concerns. these aspects of environmental education did not sit comfortably with conventional representations of science in science education as an objective, rational and value free search for “one true story” (harding 1986, p.193), and some science educators began to question the relationship between science education and environmental education. for example, hall (1977, p.76) claimed that “science teachers will do environmental education a grave disservice if they try to take it over”. others, including greenall (1979) and fensham and may (1979), argued for a closer relationship between environmental education and a reformed science education that they envisaged as being distinctly different from the version practiced in classrooms of the period. lucas (1980, p.1) adopted a different stance, expressing concern that “too many science educators seem to believe that their discipline is the vehicle for environmental education”. he saw an “omnipotent disciplinary chauvinism” (1980, p.6) in assertions that science teachers could teach topics on society (beyond the social issues that arise from the application of science) – “will their worldviews as empirical experimenters seriously distort the nature of historical understanding and aesthetic judgement?” – and yet concluded that “science educators must not ignore the other forces acting to promote environmental wisdom, and must begin to look beyond the confines of their own and other educational literature for inspiration for research and practice” (1980, p.21). at that time, as now, many environmental educators were concerned with the political character of environmental problems and the implications of this for the type of education they were advocating. their argument was that science and environmental education were incompatible and that environmental education could more appropriately be implemented in curriculum areas other than science, because the science curriculum of the time was inhospitable to engaging with social issues. concerns about the relationship between science education and environmental education continued into the 1990s. for example, webster (1996, p.82) argues that: science, like economics, has been reformed through the promotion of investigative science and the contextualisation of science. the contexts are often social, utilitarian concerns: health, science in everyday life, a nod to environment, and industry. content still dominates, as does experimentation. as in economics, the hidden values and assumptions about the way the world works remain largely unexplored. ashley (2000, p.275) similarly discusses the limitations of current science education practices and argues that, “a scientific education for all that is more likely to result in [a more http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci gough: towards more effective learning for sustainability transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 36 responsible attitude to science] therefore has to be a key objective for environmental education”. in the 21st century, from an environmental education perspective, discussions about the relationship between science education and environmental education have almost been subsumed by the shift in discourse from environmental education to education for sustainable development, where one pillar is environment – the others being society and economy (united nations, 2002; unesco, 2004). however, the importance of understanding the scientific concepts that underpin sustainable development continues to be re-affirmed. for example, the “environment” pillar is described as “an awareness of the resources and fragility of the physical environment and the effects on it of human activity and decisions, with a commitment to factoring environmental concerns into social and economic policy development” (unesco, 2004, p.4). from a science education perspective, environmental education continues to be the elephant in the room. in a recent review of science education in australia, entitled reimagining science education, my colleague russell tytler (2007), whether intentional or not, neatly explicated the tensions in the relationship. in developing his argument for emphasising the ‘working scientifically’ or ‘investigating’ strands of australian school science curricula he refers to the importance of citizens being able to engage with evidence in science in their personal lives and community issues – a central concern of environmental education: by engaging in investigations that involve a consideration of what constitutes reliable and valid evidence and how this evidence is used to establish knowledge, students will gain important skills in a variety of ways of reasoning, and develop a capacity to make judgments about evidence in scientific argument. there are many social issues that involve appeals to scientific evidence, such as the effects of waste disposal policies on the environment, of tourism on the great barrier reef, or of personal lifestyle factors on cancer risk. an understanding of how such knowledge is generated and evaluated is therefore a powerful aim for science education (p.45). a couple of pages later, he provides an example from his own research (tytler, duggan and gott, 2001) which describes the complexity of socio-scientific issues that makes them difficult to engage with in the classroom or by the “lay public”: • it deals with data that is difficult to treat statistically and is subject to experimental cost and uncontrolled initial conditions. • it involves complex models that themselves introduce uncertainties into the interpretation of data. • the outcome is intended to be an action, rather than the production of generalisable knowledge, and, as such, is subject to a range of dimensions that are value-laden. • the science is highly contextual and subject to variation over which the scientists had no control. • it involves measuring trace elements at the limit of detection, with resulting uncertainty. • it involves the generation and comparison of two numbers (pollution indices), representing two conditions which themselves involved the problematic weighting of data based on previous epidemiological research (pp. 48-49). fortunately, from an environmental education perspective, he concludes that, “if students are to be taught how evidence is developed and used in science in authentic settings, they need to grapple with features of scientific methods such as these. ways need to be found to represent http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci gough: towards more effective learning for sustainability transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 37 them in the curriculum” (p.49). herein lies some hope for reconstructing science and environmental education for mutual benefit. it should be noted that tytler is not alone in recognizing the importance of engaging with the environment in science classes. for example, august 18-26, 2007 was national science week in australia, and melbourne’s broadsheet newspaper, the age, had a special education supplement to mark the event. the topics covered in the 16-page supplement were predominantly environment related. the cover was a king emperor penguin in antarctica. “a year of scientific discovery” had subheadings of palaeontology, astronomy, genetics, animal behaviour and climate change. other articles looked at “the last huskies”, “researching earth’s frozen end” (2 pages), “australia’s great antarctic explorers” (2 pages), “the wave watchers” (2 pages), food science and a colossal squid. there were only 5 pages where the environment did not dominate – one of these focused on the imax movie roving mars, another was about a (female) melbourne student who is attending the european space camp in norway, another showed where scientific research facilities were in melbourne, another was on “quirkology” and the last was on children’s science books. less than one-eighth of a page was devoted to the australian synchrotron. at a more academic level, recent articles in the journal of biological education have included topics such as “the future of science lies outdoors” (slingsby, 2006) and “students’ interest in biology and their out-of-school experiences” (uitto et al., 2006). slingsby, in particular, makes some pertinent observations: “outdoor science at its best is interdisciplinary. we need to explore the contribution each traditional discipline has to offer to the whole if we are to ensure that outdoor science is truly balanced and truly credible” and “fieldwork should be an essential part of any campaign to reverse the decline in young people wanting to study sciences beyond gcse” (2006, p.52). this brings me to an important reason for reconstructing science and environmental education today’s students have different priorities and interests from those of the past. traditional science education is becoming a threatened species while students become more concerned about the environment within a context of a marginalised environmental education. a different relationship between the two educations could enhance their mutual survival. student interest in science education and environmental education one reason for developing a different relationship between science education and environmental education arises from the need to respond to students’ declining interest in science despite their high levels of environmental concern and desire to know more about the environment. as coffey (2008) reports from his recent investigation into young australians’ level of understanding and excitement about careers with a sustainability focus: “high school students are very aware of environmental issues and concerns … they are hungry for credible, big picture, action oriented information/resources on long term environmental issues, especially on whether and how to respond” (p.3). however, he also found that “school is a significant potential site for awareness and activism, though underdeveloped” (p.4), and that, “students want practical, hands-on experience, ‘getting out’ into the environment … [they] need to see how their own local, personal actions will contribute to the local picture” (p.5). in australia and elsewhere in the western world there is widespread concern about decreasing student participation in upper secondary science courses. an even greater concern is that although there has been a national increase in participation in upper secondary school education in recent decades, there has not been a proportional increase in participation in science education at the same level (dekkers & de laeter, 1997). indeed, dekkers and de http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci gough: towards more effective learning for sustainability transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 38 laeter (1997) report that although enrolments in senior secondary school level biology, chemistry and physics increased from 1976 to 1992 they declined quite dramatically (approximately 20%) between 1992 and 1995. in my home state of victoria, after continuing to decline for a few years, enrolments in biology and chemistry have now increased to above 1995 levels (but not 1992), however physics enrolments continue to decline (see table 1). table 1: enrolments in relevant victorian certificate of education (vce) subjects in selected years subject 1992# 1995# 1997# 2000# 2001* 2002* 2003* 2004* 2005* 2006* biology 15183 10918 10823 10546 10668 11123 11579 11499 11648 11465 chemistry 10737 8503 9051 8090 8166 8348 8712 8770 9083 9125 physics 10176 7234 8005 7534 7697 7632 7871 6970 6978 6812 psychology 7831 9428 11352 12272 13418 14014 14781 14727 14439 14924 science 668 253 127 59 environmental studies 980 826 893 662 environmental science 530 408 360 376 319 301 outdoor education n/a 1531 1925 2148 outdoor & environmental studies 2263 2287 2492 2112 2390 2176 # unit 4 enrolment figures * unit 3 enrolment figures a number of explanations can be offered for students’ declining interest in studying science subjects, many of which are beyond the scope of this paper. however, from recent research conducted in victorian primary and secondary schools (gough, 2007), it would seem that while students come to secondary school from primary school interested in studying science, the content of the science curriculum is a strong negative influence and students rapidly lose interest in pursuing further studies in science beyond the compulsory years (i.e. beyond year 10 or over 15 year olds). science education curriculum at lower secondary levels is in urgent need of change if we are to retain student interest in science studies in and beyond the compulsory years (jenkins, 1992, 2007). environmental education might be an appropriate emphasis for rekindling students’ interest in the relevance of science, because young people are concerned about the state of the environment. other international research supports the view that science education needs to change and that students are concerned about the environment. on the first point, the findings from the relevance of science education (rose) project (sjøberg & schreiner 2005), which surveyed 15 years olds across approximately 40 countries include: • students in most countries see more benefits than harmful effects in science, but in many industrialised countries the feelings are more ambivalent, in particular among girls; • students in most countries indicate sound scepticism to what scientists have to say (and girls have less trust than boys); • students in most countries indicate doubt that scientists are neutral and objective (and girls have more doubt than boys); http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci gough: towards more effective learning for sustainability transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 39 • students in all countries strongly agree that science and technology are important for society; • students differ in their views about science and technology as problem solvers for the environment, and girls are much more sceptical than boys, but in the industrialised countries the level of confidence is less than the mean; • in many industrialised countries science is less popular than other subjects, especially among girls; • in many industrialised countries students do not think that science has opened their eyes to exciting jobs, especially girls; • in industrialised countries few students aspire to becoming scientists, in particular girls. jenkins and pell (2006) reported on some of the results from the rose project questionnaire with respect to the students’ attitudes towards a series of environmental challenges. they found that their sample of students was clearly concerned about the environment, even though they were also “overwhelmingly optimistic about the future” (p.777). as with the findings of the total rose project noted above, jenkins and pell similarly found significant gender differences in the students’ responses. however, they were also not greatly interested in learning about some of environmental topics presented in the questionnaire (see table 2), which has implications for science curriculum content. table 2: students’ views on what i want to learn about (by gender) adapted from jenkins and pell (2006, p.775) topic boys’ mean (n = 517) girls’ mean (n = 571) the ozone layer and how it might be affected by humans the greenhouse effect and how it might be changed by humans what can be done to ensure clean air and safe drinking water how technology helps us handle waste, garbage and sewage the possible radiation dangers of mobile phones and computers how loud sound and noise may damage my hearing how to protect endangered species of animals how to improve harvest in gardens and farms 2.55 2.25 2.37 2.04 2.61 2.32 2.55 2.00 2.30 2.14 2.50 1.85 2.58 2.27 2.78 1.87 note: 1 = not interested, 4 = very interested. results ≥2.5 in bold. in a similar vein to tytler (2007), as discussed in the previous section, jenkins and pell (2006, p.777) conclude that: given that many environmental problems (and their solutions) are science related, there is clearly a role for school science education in such an engagement. however, environmental education is not simply a matter for science educators. to the extent that such education requires the accommodation of the personal, social, and economic with the http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci gough: towards more effective learning for sustainability transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 40 scientific as an integral whole, it constitutes a challenge to a conventional subject-based curriculum and pedagogy. other studies have documented students’ interest in the environment and how science education programs that respond to students’ lives and interests and seek to develop meaningful understandings (see for example, gough & sharpley, 2005; gough, 2005). science has a very minor part in the australian primary school curriculum. according to the most recent national research study (goodrum, hackling & rennie, 2001, p.93), primary teachers estimated that the average time spent teaching science each week was 59 minutes. primary school teachers often struggle to teach science because they lack confidence and competence in science content, and they have difficulty finding a place for science in what they perceive as an already overcrowded curriculum. in contrast with this observation, gough and sharpley (2005) provide several stories of primary school teachers’ and students’ experiences of implementing new science teaching and learning strategies that have also led to more environmental education occurring in the schools’ curriculum. another success story for science in primary schools comes from the australian sustainable schools initiative (gough, 2005) – although this again was not necessarily the intended outcome. sustainable schools are the equivalent of green schools or eco-schools in other parts of the world. sustainable schools take a whole school approach: whole-school approaches are advocated as best supporting the implementation of environmental education in a way that reflects the goals, aims, and purposes of this area… whole school approaches also appear to be most successful when they build on the existing culture, priorities, and values of schools and their communities (bolstad et al., 2004, p.95). sustainable schools integrate changes to the practical operations of the school, with sustainability issues in the curriculum, and help to build links to local communities. the four theme areas that are implemented are: • “waste” (waste and litter minimisation, green purchasing, recycling and composting); • “energy” (energy efficiency, renewable energy and reduction in greenhouse gas emissions); • “water” (water conservation, stormwater control and freshwater ecology); and • “school grounds / biodiversity” (developing a whole school master plan which may include indigenous gardens that attract native butterflies and birds and special theme gardens and habitats). participating schools are able to choose all or some of the four optional themes. each of these themes is science related and so the science content of the curriculum in sustainable schools – which are predominantly primary schools – is greatly increased as a result of an environmental education intervention. reconstructing science and environmental education despite all the research and literature related to making science education more relevant to society’s needs for a scientifically literate citizenry (and the significance of environmental education for achieving this), as well as meeting students’ interests, most science education practices continue much as they were before environmental education came into being. there are several explanations for this. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci gough: towards more effective learning for sustainability transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 41 firstly, the global trend in the past decade or so for standardised curriculum documents with specified content and reportable learning outcomes has meant that teachers no longer have the discretion to plan their own curriculum to the extent they once could. with the introduction of the standardized curriculum and its requirements to report to parents on the achievement of the specified learning outcomes teachers believe that they have lost the option of planning a local curriculum and have retreated to teaching science from textbooks that covered the science learning outcomes and little else. secondly, the content of the science curriculum specified in the new curriculum statements has been very much influenced by scientists and their priorities for university studies rather than by student interests or educational issues (such as recognition that schools “can only teach a sample of all the knowledge, skills and experiences related to science” (malcolm, 1987, p.35)). thirdly, many science teachers see environmental education as yet another pressure for inclusion in an already overcrowded curriculum, and as an area in which they may have little interest (lucas, 1980). fourthly, many science teachers are, in lucas’ (1980) terms, ‘disciplinary chauvinists’ who place a higher priority on teaching content from their own disciplinary specialisation rather than engage the interdisciplinary or cross-disciplinary demands of environmental science. as a final and most significant point, the question remains as to whether science teachers understand environmental education as environmental educators understand it. those who control the science curriculum appear to have only a very superficial understanding of environmental education and their representations of environmental education for science educators reinforce the view that science is a limited vehicle for environmental education within the curriculum. by bringing science education and environmental education together in the school curriculum, science content is appropriate to a wider range of students and more culturally and socially relevant. the convergence is also important for environmental education, because it needs science education to underpin the achievement of its objectives and to provide it with a legitimate space in the curriculum to meet its goals, which are very unlikely to be achieved from the margins. an examination of educational politics over recent years indicates that environmental education continues to be a priority for environment ministries but not education ministries whereas science education is a perennial priority in education ministries (gough 1997; department of education, 2007a). even where there is an environmental education policy from an education ministry (department of education, 1998) it is advisory rather than mandatory – although the discussion paper for the new corporate plan of the victorian department of education (2007b, p.1) does locate itself within an education for sustainable development agenda: • education has a fundamental role to play in bridging disparities in wealth and opportunity, and in building social cohesion. young people must be literate, numerate, curious, articulate and passionate. • many of the critical challenges we face, for example environmental degradation, wealth concentration, religious extremism, climate change, assimilation of refugees, are global in nature. • education can play a major role in building the foundations of global citizenship in a global context and build innovative and creative capacity to ensure environmental sustainability. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci gough: towards more effective learning for sustainability transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 42 thus, from both a science education and an environmental education perspective it would seem politically astute to forge a new, mutually beneficial relationship between the two areas. a science education that is mutually respectful of environmental education, accepts lucas’ (1980) challenge to look elsewhere for inspiration for research and practice. as a starting point, this different agenda for environmental science education will involve some integration of the sciences, will be problem orientated, will consider the scientific aspects of real systems (not abstracted ones), and will (finally) recognise the need for contributions from other disciplines (fensham 1978; lucas 1980), rather than remaining separate from them. however, developing a new relationship will also involve more than this – as the lack of success of past attempts to develop environmental education within the p-10 science curriculum and to create a popular senior secondary environmental science curriculum in victoria, testify (gough, 2002). a new environmental science education will need to take account of: • critiques of traditional science education from feminist, postcolonialist and anti-racist perspectives (see, for example, brickhouse, 1994, carter, 2003, harding, 1993); • critiques of traditional science education from cultural and constructivist perspectives (see, for example, aikenhead & jegede, 1998 and bencze, 2000, respectively); • declining interest of students in studying science at school (dekkers & de laeter, 1997; sjøberg & schreiner, 2005); • calls for increasing the scientific literacy of the general public (hodson, 2002; jenkins 1992); • discussions of the role of science in environmental discourse (hajer, 1995); and • research that explores differences between the youth of today and previous generations (gough, 1999). it will also need to consider significant documents such as our common future (world commission on environment and development [wced], 1987) and the implementation scheme for the united nations decade of education for sustainable development (unesco, 2004), both of which envisage a positive role for science and technology and a relationship between scientific knowledge and environmental education for sustainable development. for example, our common future includes statements such as “our technology and science gives us at least the potential to look deeper into and better understand natural systems” (p.1), “the promotion of sustainable development will require an organized effort to develop and diffuse new technologies” (p.87) and “unless action is taken to accumulate biological knowledge, valuable information... will be lost forever” (p.88). education is given the task of providing “comprehensive knowledge, encompassing and cutting across the social and natural sciences and the humanities, thus providing insights on the interaction between natural and human resources, between environment and development” (p.113). similarly, the decade implementation scheme (unesco, 2004, p.16) states that the role of science and technology deserves highlighting as science provides people with ways to understand the world and their role in it. esd needs to provide a scientific understanding of sustainability together with an understanding of the values, principles, and lifestyles that will lead to the transition to sustainable development. science should be regarded broadly to include social sciences as well as natural sciences and traditional approaches to learning and understanding as well as formal science. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci gough: towards more effective learning for sustainability transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 43 the science education that can have a relationship with environmental education (and sustainable development) is not necessarily that currently practiced, but a reconstructed form which incorporates a more mutualistic relationship. some science educators have recognised the possibilities of forging a different relationship between science and environmental education. for example, jenkins voices the challenge that “perhaps most difficult of all, however, is constructing science courses which will help empower young people as future citizens in ways that existing science courses are widely seen as having failed to do so” (1992, p.243). he notes that “environmental education exposes with particular clarity the complex interactions among social, economic, personal and other value positions associated with almost any environmental issue” (1994, p.606). he believes that it is fundamental for students to be engaged with genuine practical reasoning in order to experience a science education for action, so there is a need for a local context or community of practice, to make the experiences genuine, and without this the activity is reduced to its technical dimension. the local context also provides the opportunity for generation of local knowledge informing and empowering action. privileging local knowledge also helps to destabilise notions of the universal status of scientific knowledge. in jenkins’ proposal there is a vital connection between science education and environmental education. environmental education should have an in the environment component, an about the environment component and a for the environment component (lucas 1979). through jenkins’ science education for action there is the potential to realise all of these dimensions. such a proposal might be threatening to those who practice traditional science education, but as the proportion of disinterested students in science classes increases and the total numbers of students studying science decline, the alarm bells should be triggered that change is needed in science education practices. adopting an environmental education approach might be just what science education needs. however, the task is to convince those who control the school curriculum and those who teach science in classrooms that science education needs to change. yet there are positive signs – such as those mentioned earlier in this paper with slingsby’s (2006) argument for “outdoor science” and tytler’s (2007) argument for science education in authentic settings. two approaches from the sustainable development literature might also help this convergence and reconstruction. one is “the natural step”, developed by swedish scientist karl-henrik robert, and the other is the five capitals approach. “the natural step” is a model for sustainable development which, through four system conditions (or concepts) derived from the laws of thermodynamics, encapsulates the dictates of science that are non-negotiable conditions for sustainable development. the purpose of the natural step is to develop and share a common framework comprised of easily understood, scientifically based principles that can serve as a compass to guide society towards a just and sustainable future. the four system conditions (ecosteps, 2007) are: 1. in a sustainable society nature's functions and diversity are not systematically subject to increasing concentrations of substances extracted from the earth's crust. 2. in a sustainable society nature's functions and diversity are not systematically subject to increasing concentrations of substances produced by society. 3. in a sustainable society nature's functions and diversity are not systematically impoverished by physical displacement, over-harvesting, or other forms of ecosystem manipulation. 4. in a sustainable society resources are used fairly and efficiently in order to meet basic human needs globally. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci gough: towards more effective learning for sustainability transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 44 the five capitals approach identifies essentially the same principles for a sustainable society but addresses sustainability from an economic rather than a bio-physical framework. an extension of the triple bottom line of financial, environmental and social accountability, the five capitals approach is based upon the five types of capital an organisation needs to function properly (fien et al., 1999): • natural capital: the life support systems that provide air, water, materials and energy that support all life both bio-physically and socio-economically. natural capital provides the renewable (timber, grain, fish and water) and non-renewable (fossil fuels) resources used to satisfy human wants and needs, as well as the physical processes, such as wind and climate regulation, we depend upon, as well as the sinks that absorb, neutralize or recycle wastes. • human capital: the systems and processes developed by a society for advancing the health, knowledge, skills and motivation of individuals, and which give them the personal resources with which to engage with the world. • social capital: the structures or institutions such as families, communities, businesses, trade unions, schools and voluntary organizations that enable individuals to maintain and develop their dignity and skills in partnership with others, thus, enhancing the vitality and resilience not only of individual human capital but also of a community. • manufactured capital: the tools, machines, buildings and other forms of infrastructure produced by humans, which enable us to more efficiently utilize natural capital in the extraction, production, distribution and consumption of goods and services. • financial capital: the system of exchange value established by society, that allows types of capital to be owned, compared and traded. maintaining a dynamic and balanced integration of the five forms of capital is essential for sustainable development, and science education can take a significant role in developing students’ and community understandings of this. conclusion for nearly three decades i have been working to promote environmental education in schools and to change the science education that is taught in schools. rather than accepting that science education is something static and in its traditional form incompatible with – or at least a limited vehicle for – environmental education, i believe these two areas of the school curriculum can mutually benefit from a reconstructed science education. this new form of science education would be more appealing to senior secondary students, more consistent with calls for scientific literacy (or science for action) and would address the critiques of traditional science education by feminists, postcolonialists and others. environmental education has changed over the past three decades too. in its current association with education for sustainable development through the united nations decade agenda, it is also linked to the education for all dakar framework for action and the millennium development goals (unesco, 2004). this provides a great opportunity for reconstructing science education and linking it to the future. as the introduction to the decade implementation scheme states (unesco, 2004, p.7): there can be few more pressing and critical goals for the future of humankind than to ensure steady improvement in the quality of life for this and future generations, in a way that respects our common heritage – the planet we live on. as people we seek positive change for ourselves, our children and grandchildren; we must do it in ways that respect http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci gough: towards more effective learning for sustainability transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 45 the right of all to do so. to do this we must learn constantly – about ourselves, our potential, our limitations, our relationships, our society, our environment, our world. education for sustainable development is a life-wide and lifelong endeavour which challenges individuals, institutions and societies to view tomorrow as a day that belongs to all of us, or it will not belong to anyone. the challenge for us as science educators is to reconstruct our curricula so that our students as citizens of the world understand and respect the planet we live on. this is a win-win situation for science education, environmental education and the planet. it is a very different science education from that envisaged in the perth declaration – but i believe it is one that will better address the needs of society and the interests of our students. references aikenhead, glen & jegede, olugbemiro (1998) cross-cultural science education: a cognitive explanation of a cultural phenomenon. journal of research in science teaching, 36(3): 268-288. ashley, martin (2000) science: an unreliable friend to environmental education? environmental education research, 6(3): 269-280. australian science teachers association (asta) (2007) media release: perth declaration on science and technology education. canberra: australian science teachers association. accessed at http://www.asta.edu.au/media/press on 1 august 2007. bencze, john l. 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(1979) servant not master—a new role for science in a core of environmental education. australian science teachers journal, 25(2), 15–24. fien, john, goldney, david & murphy, tom (2009) rethinking development as if the planet really mattered. in john fien, rupert maclean & man-gon park (eds) tvet for sustainable development: opportunities and challenges. utrecht: springer, pp.19-33. goodrum, dennis, hackling, mark & rennie, leonie (2001) the status and quality of teaching and learning of science in australian schools. canberra: department of education, training and youth affairs. gordon, josh (2007) engine that drove suburban dream machine eclipsed by green reality. the age, thursday july 19, p.1. gough, annette (1997) education and the environment: policy, trends and the problems of marginalisation. australian education review no.39. camberwell, victoria: australian council for educational research. gough, annette (1999) kids don’t like wearing the same jeans as their mums and dads: so whose ‘life’ should be in significant life experiences research? environmental education research, 5(4): 383-394. gough, annette (2002) mutualism: a different agenda for science and environmental education. international journal of science education, 24(11): 1201-1215. gough, annette (2005) sustainable schools: renovating educational processes. applied environmental education and communication, 4(4): 339-351. gough, annette (2007) student attitudes and perceptions and the change process. paper to be presented at the european association for research in learning and instruction (earli) conference, budapest, hungary, 28 august-1 september. gough, annette & sharpley, brian (2005) toward effective teaching and learning stories of primary schools’ environmental science interest and action. educational action research, 13(2): 191-211. greenall, annette (1979) innovations in science education cdc’s environmental education project. australian science teachers journal, 25(1), 41-46. greenall, annette & womersley, jon (eds.) (1977) development of environmental education in australia key issues. canberra: curriculum development centre. hajer, maarten a. (1995) the politics of environmental discourse. oxford: oxford university press. hall, william (1977) where next for environmental education? in russell d. linke (ed.), education and the human environment. canberra, act: curriculum development centre, pp.65-76. hardin, garrett (1968) the tragedy of the commons. science, 162: 1243-1248. harding, sandra (1986) the science question in feminism. ithaca: cornell university press. harding, sandra (1993) introduction: eurocentric scientific illiteracy a challenge for the world community. in sandra harding (ed.), the “racial” economy of science: toward a democratic future. bloomington: indiana university press, pp.1-29. hodson, derek (2002) some thoughts on scientific literacy: motives, meanings and curriculum implications. asia-pacific forum on science learning and teaching, volume http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci http://www.thenaturalstep.com/the-system-conditions gough: towards more effective learning for sustainability transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 47 3, issue 1. accessed at www.ied.edu.hk/apfslt/v3_issue1/foreword/index.htm on 1 august 2007. jenkins, edgar (1992) school science education: towards a reconstruction. journal of curriculum studies, 24(3): 229-246. jenkins, edgar (1994) public understanding of science and science education for action. journal of curriculum studies, 26(6): 601-611. jenkins, edgar (2007) school science: a questionable construct? journal of curriculum studies, 39(3): 265-282. jenkins, edgar & pell, r. g(odfrey) (2006) “me and the environmental challenges”: a survey of english secondary students’ attitudes towards the environment. international journal of science education, 28(7): 765-780. lucas, arthur m. (1979) environment and environmental education: conceptual issues and curriculum implications. melbourne: australian international press and publications. lucas, arthur m. (1980) science and environmental education: pious hopes, self praise and disciplinary chauvinism. studies in science education, 7: 1-26. malcolm, cliff (1987) the science framework p-10. melbourne, victoria: ministry of education (schools division). mcinnis, noel (1975) the dilemma. in rudolph j.h. schafer & john f. disinger (eds.), environmental education: perspectives and prospectives. columbus, oh: eric. shanahan leo & holroyd, jane (2007) ford plan to axe 600 car workers. the age, friday 13 july, p.1. sjøberg, svein & schreiner, camilla (2005) young people and science: attitudes, values and priorities. evidence form the rose project. presentation at the eu science and society forum, brussels, 8-11 march. slingsby, david (2006) the future of school science lies outdoors. journal of biological education, 40(2): 51-52. tytler, russell (2007) re-imagining science education: engaging students in science or australia’s future. australian education review no 51. camberwell, victoria: acer press. tytler, r., duggan, sandra, & gott, richard (2001) dimensions of evidence, the public understanding of science and science education. international journal of science education, 23(8), 815–832. uitto, anna; juuit, kalle; lavonen, jari & meisalo, veijo (2006) students’ interest in biology and their out-of-school experiences. journal of biological education, 40(3): 124-129. united nations (2002) johannesburg declaration on sustainable development. accessed at www.un.org/esa/sustdev/documents/johannesburg%20declaration.doc on 1 august 2007. unesco (1978) intergovernmental conference on environmental education: tbilisi (ussr), 14-26 october 1977. final report. paris: unesco. unesco (2004) united nations decade of education for sustainable development 20052014. draft implementation scheme. october 2004. accessed at http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/file_download.php/03f375b07798a2a55dcdc39db7a a8211final+iis.pdf on 1 august 2005. unesco (2007a) sustainable development and ste. accessed at http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.phpurl_id=41631&url_do=do_topic&u rl_section=201.html on 8 august 2007. unesco (2007b) united nations decade of education for sustainable development. accessed at http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.phpurl_id=27234&url_do=do_topic&url_section=201.html on 8 august 2007. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci http://www.ied.edu.hk/apfslt/v3_issue1/foreword/index.htm http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/documents/johannesburg%20declaration.doc http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/file_download.php/03f375b07798a2a55dcdc39db7a http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.phpurl_id=41631&url_do=do_topic&u http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.php-url_id=27234&url_do=do_topic&url_section=201.html http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.php-url_id=27234&url_do=do_topic&url_section=201.html gough: towards more effective learning for sustainability transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 48 webster, ken (1996) the secondary years. in john huckle & stephen sterling (eds.), education for sustainability. london: earthscan, pp.72-85. world commission on environment and development (wced) (1987) our common future. oxford: oxford university press. world conference on science and technology education (wcste) (2007) perth declaration on science and technology education. accessed at www.worldste2007.asn.au/icase2007_2ndlayer/assets/text%20files/perth%20declaration %20final.pdf on 5 august 2007. author annette gough is professor of environmental and science education, and head of the school of education, rmit university, victoria, australia. email: annette.gough@rmit.edu.au . http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci http://www.worldste2007.asn.au/icase2007_2ndlayer/assets/text%20files/perth%20declaration mailto:gough@rmit.edu.au gough: towards more effective learning for sustainability transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 49 appendix conasta 56 • icase20070 7 the perth declaration on science and technology education we, the participants at the 2007 world conference on science and technology education, held in perth, western australia, 9 12 july 2007, and comprising more than 1000 science and technology educators from 50 nations worldwide; believing in the importance of science and technology for sustainable, responsible, global development, and in the need to bridge the gap between science and technology and the public. express concern at the lack of recognition of science education as a vehicle for meeting national educational goals, and social and economic needs; observe a widespread lack of student interest in current school science and technology education and of its relevance to them; note the shortage in many countries of specialist teachers of science and technology; and consider that the rapid changes taking place in science and technology and their applications must be reflected in the planning, teaching and learning of science and technology. resolved to recommend to governments: • to promote critical awareness of the contribution of science and technology to personal, social, economic and environmental wellbeing through building partnerships with national stakeholders and the media; • to initiate revisions of the curriculum for school science and technology that will increase student interest in and recognition of the roles of science and technology in society; • to promote from the primary years onwards the career opportunities that stem from the study of science and technology; • to recruit graduates into science and technology teaching and to value, support and retain them with appropriate rewards; • to resource and promote continuous, effective professional development for science and technology teachers in order to meet changing student needs and societal aspirations; • to recognise and support the significant role of teacher associations in building a quality professional learning community for science and technology; • to resource the development of relevant and effective assessment processes so that learners achieve essential life skills, meet academic and vocational standards and personal aspirations; • to engage in greater international cooperation to ensure the provision of well-trained science and technology teachers to meet current and future challenges; http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci gough: towards more effective learning for sustainability transnational curriculum inquiry 5 (1) 2008 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 50 • to call on unesco to integrate its science and technology education endeavour as fundamental to achieving educational, environmental, cultural, social and sustainable development goals. we, the participants, are committed to ensuring that students are scientifically and technologically literate and able to contribute to sustainable, responsible, global development in their respective nations. http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci microsoft word quinn_tci.doc to cite this article please include all of the following details: quinn, molly (2010). ‘ex and the city’: on cosmopolitanism, community and the ‘curriculum of refuge’. transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci <access date> ‘ex and the city’: on cosmopolitanism, community and the ‘curriculum of refuge’ molly quinn teachers college, columbia university broadway-lafayette on a saturday night – the warm breeze of trains bounding in, snapshots right before eyes’ mind arranged as if by artistic design. bound by moment of connection, trains running like wine flows. a small girl in braids sits upon her mother’s lap complaining, sweetly says ‘good bye’ to me with full-on eyes in departing. through subway glass now this woman’s baby bouncing, full black head of hair bobbing, on bench leaning over from behind ‘bum’ with cheap tees for sale. the palette of humanity passing before me prenatal in pregnant moments of waiting, seemingly without sense, yet telling all, oh so much – we, none of us are strangers; strangers, all are we… the inarticulable, unspeakable fullness enveloping me…. (quinn, 2006, june, excerpts from on city waiting) quinn: cosmopolitanism and a curriculum of refuge transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 78 i had forgotten how rich in sights and delights of stories this city is. uncannily warm for february’s way, i’ve walked the streets sans gloves in open coat, leisurely making my unmarked way to kelly ann’s art opening. and later with cam to a chelsea haunt of hers, sueños, ‘dreams’ in homemade fresh guacamole, key lime pie with caramel, erroneously rendered multiple rounds of almond rounds frosted with powdered sugar, ‘til we can eat no more – much more mouth-watering memories of flavors to savor but i wander from these streets… night lights there as ever they were, not just for me, but then and there, yes!... to see a sea of souls in harold square. hooves clapping the pavement, heels tapping, hearkening former times…. happening upon has-been haunts in that there had been better times there, times that have passed, friends i know now not where, cares come somehow to take their places. crowding out, too, the wandering, city jaunts and haunts and stories of the streets. quinn: cosmopolitanism and a curriculum of refuge transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 79 cam still wanders. of late, she says, sapon bestowed citrus almond hand cream divine, quotidien, the perfect peaceful café moment with the perfect egg salad and baguette. cam still wanders, cam still dreams – sueños! sueños! come again to me, or me to thee. this night, despite late-night, slow, subway-fatigue journey home, thy dreamy visitation upon me has indeed been sweet. (quinn, 2008, february 10, excerpts from on city wandering) cosmopolitanism, curriculum and the city: a prelude of the particular and personal in approaching the subject of my address, i find myself compelled to begin with this medley of ‘subway soliloquies’ selections to foreground the living textures of city life, as well as the context for my own engagement with cosmopolitanism, and as in relation to community and curriculum as and of refuge. this engagement is also neither as a ‘cosmopolitan’ woman in the familiar sense – although i live and have lived in new york city for some time, i am essentially and quintessentially a southern ‘hick from the sticks’ – nor as a scholar of cosmopolitanism per se. rather, this work represents a recent interest and relatively new inquiry of mine, the arrival to which – counter to those who have critiqued cosmopolitanism for its epistemic everywhereness, no-whereness (gaudelli, 2007, february) – has not been rationalistic or universalistic or abstract in any real or primary sense, but instead has issued from my own lived experiences. more particularly, i have come to cosmopolitanism through my experience of the inhospit-abilities, inhospitableness, inhospitality, of academia, my own attempts to reckon with the testimonies of the even greater experience of such for teachers in schools with whom i have worked: the inhospitable dwellings – if they are and can be that, dwellings, that is – we have made of education, curriculum, schools, for children. the theologian arthur sutherland (2006) documents our moment of want, our times as particularly inhospitable, and that with myriad statistics, as have many educational thinkers with respect to the ways in which quinn: cosmopolitanism and a curriculum of refuge transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 80 education fails to include much less welcome many (i.e., delpit, 1995; kozol, 1991, 2007; and polakow, 1993). seeking to understand, and respond to, this scene has taken me first to jacques derrida’s work (1997/2000, 2002) on hospitality – and the question of ethics constituting it: hospitality as radical openness to the other, ‘to the other than oneself, the other than “its other,” to an other beyond any “its other”’(2002, p. 364). in well-known curriculum thought, these explorations have met up with dwayne huebner’s (1999) notion of curriculum itself as otherness, and teaching as the art of lending out our minds each to the other – involving care for ideas, in nel noddings’ formulations (1992), openness to imagining things ‘other-wise’, encountering other voices and views, as in city waiting and wandering. as such, derrida (2002) suggests that hospitality raises questions for us, then, about the very concept of ‘concept’ itself, sheltering and letting itself be haunted, visited by, another concept. how open are we, in education, to encountering new and ‘other’ understandings? how present are we to differences, to stories of the streets? so we might ask ourselves, would that we were truly cosmopolitan perhaps, in this way. maxine greene’s work (1973) on the teacher as stranger has beckoned here, as well – bringing the otherness of herself as well as curriculum into contact with that of her students; as well as on the educational potential of a pedagogical aesthetics of ‘making strange the familiar’. this inquiry and interest have also strongly resonated, then, with hongyu wang’s (2004) sense that at the heart of education is this relationship of self to other, and as stranger, and also to the stranger within. awad ibrahim (2005) and barbara kameniar (2007) each, albeit from different self and social locations, explore this kind of relationship, explicitly taking up the question of hospitality in the work of teaching, and its complications – teacher as host, or agent of another cultural ‘host’, pedagogically acting, too, to make familiar the strange, and perhaps centrally via the curriculum. i have noticed that while education is full of welcoming discourses and convocations, and entertaining such relations, questions remain with respect to welcoming courses of curriculum for scholars, teachers, students, and beyond, particularly in a cosmopolitan age and context of globalization. my sense has been that inquiring into hospitality might open me to hospitable possibilities in my – and our – work and world: in thinking and dwelling in curriculum in the now, in ways that might truly support the aspiration to ‘cultivate our humanity’ (nussbaum, 1997) via education, as classically conceived, to attend to the ‘vocation of humanization’ to which paulo freire (1970/1995) calls us. for me, this intention means learning to become present to our selves, each other, our manner of dwelling together, in wide-awakeness (greene, 1978) and respect. this ideal embraces dale snauwaert’s emphasis (2002) on what he calls ‘the principle of humanity’, moral equality, authentic selfawareness, and ethical agency, in his articulation of a cosmopolitan education. it also takes up david hansen’s affirmation (2007, february) of ‘open-hearted and open-minded exchanges’, those that welcome encounters with the foreign – stories of the streets, by which we might give and grow and find mutual delight. thus, my hope here includes a concern also for learning to be present to and in joy and love together educationally, as well. via what simon critchley and richard kearney (1997/2006) call derrida’s form of ‘conceptual genealogy’, historical analysis of concepts, i have undertaken such in order to understand and also hopefully respond in some affirmative, ethically-sensitive manner to my situation in the world, which clearly has also finally taken me into the study of cosmopolitanism, to which hospitality is a central concept. i have wandered into this ‘citizenship of the world’ particularly via the work of derrida (1997/2000, 2002, 1997/2006) then as well, among others, and also as inspired by lectures at teachers college made by hansen (2007, february) and snauwaert (2006, october) i was fortunate to be able to attend. quinn: cosmopolitanism and a curriculum of refuge transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 81 from my own situatedness, thus, i have felt compelled first to reckon with the painfulness of situations (local, national, global) of profound inhospitableness (many such examples here of which we all could give)1, which is also a coming face-to-face (levinas, 1961/1994) with human vulnerability, frailty, unanswerability, unfathomability, in which we must respond beyond the limits of the politics of identity, even the ethics of identity, attending to human ‘subjectivity that saturates’ in social-‘situatednesses’ that can be neither foretold nor foreclosed in their futurity (pinar, 2008, march). reckoning with this experience and context of inhospitality means responding in view, too, of the ‘bloody traumas of history’ (critchley and kearney, 2006) that live on into the present, which marianna papastephanou (2002) on cosmopolitanism, with paul ricoeur, highlights – that we are constituted by histories we can’t reach, of inherited cultural debts or injuries we are often neither conscious of nor can truly repay or fully heal when recognized, and that ever only as in a glass darkly. given such, via derrida’s cosmopolitan address and call for the city of refuge (1997/2006), i have been taken with this sense of an ontical if not ontological need for refuge; inciting also emmanuel levinas’ insights into cities of refuge – which perhaps multicultural curriculum efforts fail to fully consider – that we are, each and all, ever in relation, and as both victims and victimizers, guilty and innocent, hospitable and inhospitable, etc. (eisenstadt, 2003, winter): both of which require asylum and amnesty – sanctuary, haven for hiding, healing, forgiveness….and unendingly, before the unforgivable, seeking ever to make possible the impossible. moreover, this brokenness is also part and parcel of our ‘exquisite humanness’ (forsthoefel, 2006) – hearth of humanity’s hearthing too together, a brokenness all too-often denied in educational thought, curriculum inquiry and pedagogical practice, and to much suffering as well. in this way, i am affirming william pinar’s (2008, march) emphasis on the ‘worldliness’ of curriculum (via janet miller, and edward said) in his turn to cosmopolitanism2, that the ‘perpetual peace’ for which the cosmopolitan philosopher kant hopes is ‘predicated upon passion’ – the heart of reason perhaps, or the heart whose reasons reason knows not of. i have begun, thus, from the place of my own passions, the heart of my own reasons, my own way of waiting and wandering in the world – and herein, perhaps, in some lightness, and admittedly much privileged peace, albeit not without relation to the brokenness, darkness and violence to which i have hearkened. in preview of our ‘city tour’ together, then, i offer a glimpse here into some of my own genealogies of, and journeys into, cosmopolitanism as a curriculum theorist, and into where it is taking me – embryonic and tentative to be sure as yet as such is – in terms of conceptualizing via cosmopolitanism this idea of the curriculum of refuge. in a sense, i have presented, in advance of the paper, something of my own ‘curriculum of refuge’, and thus also transgressed the borders and boundaries of the academic address – which is, of course, also an intentional experiment, an attempt here to an act of hospitality as host(ess) of difference, toast to alterity. such, in affirmation of the face-toface, constitutes an invitation to conversation3 between/among the ‘us’ brought together via 1 derrida (1997/2006), in a context ripe with state and non-state sponsored violence and the legacies thereof (whether via terrorism, enslavement, persecution, censorship or other) in which the victims are innumerable, hesitates here to set forth a particular example as to “risk sending the anonymous others back into the darkness…, a darkness which is truly the worst and the condition of all others” (p. 6). 2 for a more thorough and most excellent address, see pinar (2009), the worldliness of a cosmopolitan education: passionate lives in public service. 3 while my choice of the word ‘conversation’ here is deliberate, a rich word with a rich history, and favored here over ‘deliberation’ or ‘dialogue’, albeit not excluding such, i cannot explicate such richness at present or its relation to a cosmopolitan ethics. its use does reflect a direction in which i expect i am moving, to consider the possibilities of pedagogies of nonviolence, a direction strongly influenced by certain world visionaries quinn: cosmopolitanism and a curriculum of refuge transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 82 this address by which we may entertain some of the questions such an inquiry raises, as well as the possibilities for curriculum it might open us up to, open up to us, visit upon us: with thanks to those who choose to take to the streets, as it were, with me in this way, and entreaties to those whom such transgression offends to – yes! please forgive – and persevere with me still. introduction in a 1996 strasbourg address to the international parliament of writers on the call of cosmopolitanism in contemporary times – the way of asylum and work of amnesty less and less respected amid ‘the violence which rages on a worldwide scale’ (derrida, 1997/2006, p. 5), derrida comes to the question in this wise: …as for this citizen of the world, we do not know what the future holds…. we look to the city, rather than to the state…because we have given up hope that the state might create a new image…; our plea is for what we…call the ‘city of refuge’. (pp. 3, 6, 7, 8) it might be said that similar questions might be posed and pleas made concerning the curriculum in contemporary times; it might be posited that the call of cosmopolitanism be heard – the way of asylum and work of amnesty attended – as well, with respect to our educational listening and labor, if even only as brought into conversation with central multicultural courses and discourses of the day. in a time when the ‘state’ – particularly perhaps in the us – has created a problematic image for the curriculum and crafted mechanisms of control for the school (i.e., via no child left behind & ncate regulation, see pinar, 2004; kozol, 2007; leonardo, 2007), my plea is for what i call the ‘curriculum of refuge’, and i draw upon cosmopolitanism in my address, re-searching its promising vision of community, responsibility, and its potential relation to the public space of what we call ‘education’. in response to current intellectual inquiries in the field oriented ‘toward civic responsibility’ (i.e., see tate & anderson, 2008), as well as my lived context in new york – city of the world, and cosmopolitan experiment in democratic asylum, i have entitled this work, ‘ex and the city’: on cosmopolitanism, community and the ‘curriculum of refuge’. i play, too, on the former hbo series (and subsequent films) sex and the city not only as a popular cultural icon for new york and life in the city; but more specifically in reference to its exploration of the search for community and connection amid a world of strangers, and attention to the politics of identity in the making, breaking, and re-imagining of relationships – and thus also the perpetual need for personal asylum and amnesty – in pursuit of the good life (i.e., the american dream). moreover, in striving toward civic responsibility and citizenship, and seeking to re-search and cultivate such educationally, we must remind ourselves that implicitly here we are acknowledging a faith or hope for the ‘city’, the very meanings of these ideas/ideals etymologically rooted therein (i.e., see the random house unabridged dictionary, 2006; the oxford english dictionary, 1989). the interests in and efforts toward the internationalization of curriculum studies in recent years perhaps reflects as well this faith in the city, and hope for world citizenship via education beyond ‘state’ borders (i.e., see http://www.iaacs.org; pinar, 2003, 2006, may; gough, 2002, 2004). in highlighting ‘ex’ (rather than ‘sex’), i aim (archetypal teachers of peace and justice like gandhi, king, jr., mother teresa and the dalai lama) whose refuge-curricula – certainly constituted by resistance, deliberation, sacrifice and suffering – have achieved much in transformatively bringing people together, and together in envisioning the possibilities and praxes of justice and peace anew, in cultures of violence and those which teach violence. quinn: cosmopolitanism and a curriculum of refuge transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 83 also to allude, for my thesis, to its important myriad significations, i.e., ‘ex’-without, not including, or without the right, to deprive of; to bring to a certain state; free from; free of charges; exodus; to delete or cross out; outmoded, of antique appearance (i.e., see the random house unabridged dictionary, 2006; the oxford english dictionary, 1989). in stirring up these many meanings, and these many relations to and for the city, i mean to affirm the call of cosmopolitanism – an ethics of universal hospitality rooted in antiquity (and, alas perhaps, out of fashion4, or a new ‘gen ex’ ethics); as well as inclusion of, even sanctuary for, the exiled (ex-iled), whether rooted in nationality, language, race, religion, class, gender, sexuality, ability, or other – in the curriculum. the ‘gateway of opportunity’ which while new york city has symbolized to many in the us – particularly for the foreigner given its history of immigration – education represents to even more across the world is perhaps closed altogether for subsequent generations, the future of humanity, without such affirmation. for, indeed, ‘the geography of opportunity has become a local, state and global challenge’ where ‘cities and metropolitan regions are experiencing intensified… disparities’ and this ‘trend toward increased classand race-based geospatial polarization has implications for schools, neighborhoods…’ and beyond (tate & anderson, 2008). i feel that cosmopolitan criticism – with a heart for the ‘open’ and ‘free’ city, brought to bear upon multicultural debates in education, and undertaken toward the call for and conceptualization of the ‘curriculum of refuge’ can assist us in opening up new geospatial possibilities for social justice in and through education, and can speak in powerful ways to the cultivation of ‘civic capacity’ that recognizes our global interdependence and embraces a responsibility of world citizenship, even as locally lived and rooted. thus, we set out for the city, as it were – wandering, welcoming city jaunts and haunts and stories of the streets. in section one, city sidewalks, we seek first to get our ‘lay of the land’, as it were, attending to the ground upon which we walk in our explorations of cosmopolitanism, articulating something of the historical context for its introduction into, and the path leading to, our thinking of curriculum anew in this way. to do so, while we take our way largely through the postructuralist readings of jacques derrida (1997/2006), we also welcome kwame anthony appiah (2006), among others, as he is a particularly well-known contemporary advocate of cosmopolitanism, in and out of academic circles, whose view and vista can assist us in our walk. then, in city of lights, section two, we seek guidance in our journey and jaunt together via illuminating thought in ‘cosmopolitan’ education – i.e., audrey osler and hugh starkey (2003), nick stevenson (2003), dale snauwaert (2002), david hansen (2007, february; 2008), and marianna papastephanou (2002) – highlighting through this work that which in our view we deem to be important to considering this notion of a curriculum of refuge built upon cosmopolitan insights. finally, borrowing from derrida’s plea (1997/2006) for the ‘city of refuge’, a plea which also incites a rich history of hospitable practice and thought, in section three, hot child in the city?, we consider a frame, or structure for dwelling of some kind, for entertaining the possibilities visited upon us in conceptualizing the ‘curriculum of refuge’ for our children via education in a cosmopolitan way. city sidewalks: walking into a cosmopolitan way in the world ‘where have we received the image of cosmopolitanism from? and what is happening to it?’ derrida (1997/2006, p. 3) first asks us concerning this tradition we have summoned to our 4 as formerly noted, this ethics of hospitality, it has been evidenced, has been weakened, undermined, in present times (sutherland, 2006). we might add here, as well, that our times are particularly inhospitable for children – in and out of school settings – too (i.e., kozol, 1991, 2007; polakow, 1993; delpit, 1995; steinberg & kincheloe, 1997; kliewer, 1998; lareau, 2003; quinn, 2003; leonardo, 2007). quinn: cosmopolitanism and a curriculum of refuge transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 84 curriculum ‘conversations’ (pinar et al, 1995). seeking inspiration in it anew, he calls it ‘more than twenty centuries’ old, situating it in the abrahamic laws of hospitality, tracing the cosmopolitan ‘tradition’ particularly through greek stoicism, pauline christianity, and enlightenment thought – of which kant’s formulation of the ‘law of universal hospitality’5 in his ‘definitive article in view of perpetual peace’ is most famous (see kant, 1795/1972). others, such as the political philosopher appiah (2006), ground cosmopolitanism more definitively in the expression coined by the cynics of the 4th century b.c. (i.e., the story of diogenes) – one subsequently, however, taken up in the third century b.c. by the stoics (i.e. cicero, seneca, and roman emperor marcus aurelius), and also through them later influencing christian thought. from cosmos, meaning ‘world’, and politēs, referring to a ‘citizen’ of a particular city or polis, these critics paradoxically called themselves ‘citizens of the world’, calling into question the customary idea that every civilized person solely belonged to a particular community among communities, and affirming a shared universal humanity to which we are also all bound. from such, appiah highlights twin threads woven together in the notion of cosmopolitanism: 1) ‘that we have obligations to others... beyond…ties of kith and kind, or even the more formal ties of shared citizenship’; 2) ‘that we take seriously the value not just of human life but of particular human lives, which means [also] …the practices and beliefs that lend them significance’ (p. xv). particularly in the global age of worldwide communications, through which we can learn about and affect lives anywhere and everywhere, we have responsibilities as such to all persons. thus, appiah also places at the heart of the cosmopolitan concern an affirmation of ‘the very idea of morality’ (xiii), ‘the idea that in the human community, as in national communities, we need to develop habits of coexistence: conversation in its older meaning, of living together, association. and conversation in its modern sense, too’ (p. xix). it is, here, as well, that appiah and derrida, perhaps, agree – returning to cosmopolitanism as a conversation of and on ethics – the ethics of identity and citizenship – in the face of particular and universal human suffering, and over issues of human difference and solidarity. thus also, derrida (1997/2006), in embracing cosmopolitanism in his address, as that which historically commands respect – affirming its present promise, despite its tensions and possible as well as historical perversions, does so particularly in the way of respecting an ethics of hospitality. he explains: hospitality is culture itself and not simply one ethics amongst others. insofar as it has to do with the ethos, that is,…the familiar place of dwelling,…the manner in which we relate to ourselves and to others, to others as our own or as foreigners, ethics is hospitality. (pp. 16-17) this respect lies for such figures, too, not in an unproblematic or uncritical image or history of cosmopolitanism, and as such, the symbols and moments taken up as central to its endorsement are distinguished from others, within and from a context that begs the question derrida raises around what is, in fact, happening to cosmopolitanism. we have walked our way, we might submit, if only sideways, into it. this question is inclusive, then, of a larger 5 within this law is the conceptualization of the individual in the context of world citizenship, a condition kant postulates that peace requires. the stranger, also a fellow-citizen in one sense, has the right in traveling beyond the borders of home not to be treated as an enemy, but rather to associate, to sojourn, if only temporarily. as inhabitants all of the earth’s surface, of which once none had more claim to than any other, we are responsible for engaging the presence of each other. in recent times, there has been a renewed interest in kant’s work on peace, particularly in a context of increased world migrations as well as issues around immigrant rights and rights to asylum. quinn: cosmopolitanism and a curriculum of refuge transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 85 one concerning what is happening in the present historical moment, a moment that particularly calls for something of the restoration of this tradition’s dignity, revival of its heritage of meaning. derrida insists that it at once constitutes a new cosmopolitanism, ethics, ‘cosmopolitics’ – a true transformation in the history of the right to asylum, a bold innovation in the duty of hospitality – to which we have yet to arrive. indeed, political philosopher seyla benhabib (2006) identifies ‘cosmopolitanism’ as a keyword of our times – highlighting that certain cosmopolitan norms of human right and international law are now well at work as life has moved to a global scale, yet also reminds of cosmopolitanism’s many and conflicted significations. succinctly summarizing some of these differences, scholar of law jeremy waldron (2006) speaks of interests in world order and polity – norms of justice, celebrations of the fluidity of culture and dissolution of cultural boundaries – conceptions of identity as hybrid and fragmented, and concerns regarding the universal love of humankind and a shared humanity – responsibilities all persons owe to one another. despite his express ambivalence in ‘settling’ on cosmopolitanism, especially in any affiliation with that ‘unpleasant posture of superiority’ over the provincial, appiah (2006) embraces it from a place of critique: 1) in repudiation of ‘globalization’, signifying nothing and everything under macroeconomic terms; and 2) in dismissal of ‘multiculturalism’, which he describes as a ‘shape shifter … so often designat[ing] the disease it purports to cure’ (p. xiii). in this, he feels scholars have magnified the ‘strangeness of strangers’ out of all proportion, and aspires through a return to cosmopolitanism to make it a little more difficult for us to see the world so easily divided, particularly between an ‘us’ and a ‘them’. derrida’s inspiration to this call emerges from the highly contested and politically charged enforcement of the debret laws in france, inhospitable to immigrants and those without rights of residence. he also references a world context pregnant with violence, soaked in ‘the bloody traumas of history’ (critchley & kearney, 2006, p. vii), where, too, the inviolable rule of state sovereignty has become increasingly precarious. he will, of course, interrogate the secularization of what hannah arendt (1967) calls a ‘sacred history’ – i.e., the language of forgiveness is incited even by countries in the east (of non-abrahamic religious origins) with respect to human rights in international relations – as well as the ‘conditions’ kant sets upon the claims of ‘unconditional’ hospitality, subjecting it to the state ultimately as defined by the law, in cosmopolitanism. yet, this philosopher so known for his poststructural, deconstructive ‘rage against reason’ (bernstein, 1991), turns nonetheless to a new idea of cosmopolitanism, historically founded upon a faith in human reason, within reason, or perhaps within a reason reconceived, as well.6 my inspiration to cosmopolitanism issues similarly from a national context here in the us – and some might argue, an international and global context as well – wherein immigrant rights are seriously at issue, and questions of hospitality loom large with respect to our openness to the ‘other’ – and to who is the ‘other’ – in an ethos affected by contested responses to terrorism and war, natural disasters and declining economies, and the possibilities of global warming and universal healthcare, among others. of course, particularly perhaps in new york city as a historical and contemporary site of immigration, our schools (and universities) also reflect these issues and uncertainties, and sadly – as some would argue, via the dominant influences of nclb legislation and high-stakes standardized testing, among others – an inhospitable educational scene as well, especially for other people’s children, to borrow from the language of lisa delpit (1995; see also footnote 1.). unsurprisingly, then, we are also responding to a renewed interest in cosmopolitanism in 6 for more on this notion of the faith of reason, and reason reconceived, in concert with adorno and horkheimer’s affirmation of certain enlightenment tenets despite persisting issues with reason and other central foundational ideas therein, see quinn, 2001. quinn: cosmopolitanism and a curriculum of refuge transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 86 education, particularly in the realm of ethics and around the question of citizenship, that has arisen in recent years (i.e., papastephanou, 2002; snauwaert, 2002, 2006, october; osler & starkey, 2003; stevenson, 2003;, 2007, february, 2008). admittedly, too – in concert with the etymology of ‘curriculum’ as a course for running, then of study – not only has the world scene brought us to this path, but also my present educational journey has given me reason to engage this course to and discourse of cosmopolitanism in confronting questions within my own work i could not side-step, specifically with respect to multiculturalism and teaching for ‘social justice’.7 in this way, taking a cosmopolitan way, in walking beside such questions, has also cast them in a new light, opening up new possibilities for response and responsiveness in conceptualizing education and curriculum in present times. city of lights: illuminating the call of cosmopolitanism in education by cosmopolitanism i mean a way of viewing the world that among other things dispenses with national exclusivity, dichotomous forms of gendered and racial thinking, and rigid separations between culture and nature, and popular and high culture. (stevenson, 2003, p. 332) cosmopolitan citizenship does not mean asking individuals to reject their national citizenship…. education for cosmopolitan citizenship is about enabling learners to make connections between their immediate contexts and the national and global contexts…. it implies a broader understanding of national identity….that…may be experienced differently by different people. (osler and starkey, 2003, p. 252) perhaps because of the history of cosmopolitanism in its claims of and to world citizenship, much of the literature in education that seeks to take up this philosophical tradition does so through the aim of teaching or learning for citizenship. from osler and starkey, whose work involves research undertaken in the uk with some 600 students on their views of community and civic engagement, we find first an important point of illumination via their attention to the sense of belonging that is required for any understanding or experience of citizenship – a sense constituted through many personal and cultural aspects of identity that are not always primarily or essentially or solely ‘national’ in construction. while endorsing citizenship as a contested concept and education as a site for such conceptual debate, they are critical of the ‘national’ limitations set upon the term as educationally-engaged, not only because legally these limits have already been called into question, but also because such conceptions reflect deficit-oriented views of youth that largely ignore their lived experiences and complex identities as well as ‘participatory’ views of citizenship. children are not, in fact, ‘citizensin-waiting’, but performing citizenship in manifold ways in the various communities in which they daily live and move. this criticism calls to mind the contention of dewey – whom hansen (2007, february), incidentally, identifies with a cosmopolitan legacy in education – that education be not only a preparation for life, but an engagement in and with life itself, and hope for the school community as ‘an embryonic democracy’ in which students participate, as well. 7 in the ‘mystical foundation’ of multiculturalism? cultivating cosmopolitan consciousness & democratic dialogue in curriculum and pedagogy (quinn & shah, 2008), we articulate in some detail the professional context that led us to take up cosmopolitanism in our work, particularly as counter-narrative and counter-praxis to multicultural conceptions in education, which we also herein critique. quinn: cosmopolitanism and a curriculum of refuge transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 87 recognizing the fragility of democracy and import of the sustainability and solidarity of communities – an understanding evidenced both in their review of research on education for democratic citizenship (2006) as well as their own inquiries with students (2003), osler and starkey posit that we must re-imagine the nation – the state – as a truly diverse and inclusive community, as a necessary precondition for democracy’s renewal, which also involves education for what they term ‘cosmopolitan citizenship.’ citizenship, and citizenship education, is ever, in fact, referential of an imagined community that is all too often envisioned homogeneously with the expectation that minorities, immigrants, those constituting ‘difference’, assimilate; and that also fails to acknowledge the many communities of which students are simultaneously members. we foreground, via this wandering and wondering, the import of attending to imagining and re-imagining8. stevenson (2003) grounds much of his work here, as well: his focus, a cultural model of citizenship for a cosmopolitan age, critiquing present conceptions of culture and related forms of education for modern citizenship, he posits, present conditions exceed. the cultivation of a ‘cosmopolitan imagination’ is called for, amid the rise of what has been called the ‘cultural’ society wherein citizenship is oriented more around norms, meanings, identities and practices than legal rules, procedures and sanctions. here, much as herbart kliebard (2004) claims in exploring the ‘struggle for the american curriculum’, the sites of power are to be found in the minds of people, in the symbolic forms ever in societal creation, embodied as such also in codes, discourses, and narratives that are in circulation. the struggle over the ground of this imagined community also, in this way, returns us to the want of belonging, and for inclusion. thus, stevenson (2003) asserts: ‘definitions of citizenship need to link the struggle for rights and social justice with the quest for recognition and cultural respect’ (p. 331). such definitions must attend to the inherent complexities of citizenship and cultural identity, as well. from their studies of student conceptions of citizenship, osler and starkey (2003) conclude that, perceiving themselves as active participants of ‘overlapping communities of fate’ – a term borrowed from political theorist david held (1995, 1996) – that are at once local, virtual, regional, national, and global, students are not likely to find education that is oriented around strictly national – or for that matter, narrow and insular cultural – conceptions of citizenship able to embrace their own experiences and identities or contribute to their meaningful integration. nor does such a view, i would suggest, critically challenge postures of hostility toward those deemed ‘other’, much less cultivate those of genuine recognition and respect. thus, stevenson (2003), quite importantly, emphasizes the quest for a communicative society, labor that attends to the sustained import and influence of the media, globalization, identity politics, democratic ideology and the struggle for cultural inclusion. this reckoning with the import of belonging and identity as concerning community, culture and the imagination, within global as well as local contexts, appears to be essential to any cosmopolitan conception of curriculum. the citizen of the world does not relinquish the home of – that is – the citizen heror himself, and in context. the context of globalization – not only economic, but also ethical in development – reflected in the international human rights movement, snauwaert (2002) claims, ‘expands the scope of the egalitarian logic of democracy transnationally,’ necessitating the articulation of ‘a cosmopolitan theory of democratic education’ (p. 5).9 in a sensitive philosophical 8 such is foundational to conceptualizing the curriculum of refuge, as well, in order to resist our propensity for essentializing or exoticizing otherness and/or our relational aspirations to peace and justice. 9 political theorist david held (1995, 1996), in outlining a model of cosmopolitan democracy, also asserts that the locus of democracy is not only to be found within the nation-state. audrey osler and hugh starkey (2003) draw upon his work, as well, in their argument for a cosmopolitan conception of citizenship in education. quinn: cosmopolitanism and a curriculum of refuge transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 88 exploration of the shared principles of democracy and cosmopolitanism – documenting historically, via such ‘events’ as the nuremberg tribunal and u.n. declaration of human rights, what he suggests constitutes moral progress and a positive development in human history – he works to establish a shared humanity that ‘carries with it a moral imperative to respect the dignity of every human life’ (p. 8). snauwaert goes on to assert that such an imperative is not merely an ideal, but one grounded in the customs of democratic societies and principles of the international community, and also ties it to the kantian possibility for peace in the world. in sketching out the contours of a cosmopolitan democratic education, he foregrounds the cultivation of citizens who can respond in ways consistent with this ethical imperative – the principle of moral equality, or what he calls ‘the principle of humanity.’ here, he highlights the positive value of sympathy, which actively engages a response of care toward the other, and what he identifies as a negative value – respect, constituted in its requirement that one refrain from violating the rights of the other. such dispositions additionally cohere in ‘a moral identity and sensibility that is grounded in an authentic sense of self…. the basis of self-determination and thus moral agency’ (p. 11). addressing, as well, central dispositions – principally rooted in fear of a loss of self constituted by external possessions (including beliefs and ideologies) and socially-constructed identifications – that inhibit such authenticity, snauwaert advocates what he calls ‘a more authentic’ mode of living and being than one based on ‘having’: authentic self-awareness. here, he affirms maxine greene’s work (1978) on the import of ‘wide-awakeness’ as at the heart of moral agency. from our perspective, snauwaert’s work points to an important problem, one as yet perhaps remains to be more fully and formally theorized in education and curriculum, or thought in pedagogical practice: the problem of fear and desire. joseph knippenberg (1989, november) actually critiques the work of contemporary peace educators in this regard in their chief reliance on what he calls ‘enlightened fear’ for the cause of peace. in a comparative analysis of rousseau and kant on cosmopolitan education, he also sides with kant in his focus on the moral love of honor, the attachment to human dignity, as the better path to peace – perhaps not willing to entertain as does snauwaert (2002) possibilities beyond the possessive mode of being. in addition, while snauwaert does not speak of hospitality, per se, his affirmation of an authentic self-awareness resonates strongly with derrida’s notion of ethics as hospitality with respect to ‘a manner of being there’ in the ways we relate to ourselves as well as to others as ‘other’ or not. it remains, of course, as well, to conceptualize the meaning of hospitality and means of its cultivation in educational and/or curricular terms.10 while to take up this course directly here might take us too far a wandering, considering and articulating the ‘curriculum of refuge’ seems to call for an ethics of hospitality. hansen (2007, february; 2008) – who also grounds his interest in cosmopolitanism in re-imagining education in terms of an ethical vision for, and in response to, present times – seeks as well to move us toward such curricular terms. these are times, he says, characterized by ‘accelerating acceleration’ in which the intensified experience of the unfathomability and impermanence of human life flies in the face of our deep need and desire for stability; in which new forms of indifference and violence are generated – and thus also fear, along with enhanced communications and modes of connectivity. he looks forward to curriculum anew through this view, not only in terms of 10 for an initial attempt here, regarding the theorizing of hospitality in relation to curriculum, in an educational context, see quinn (in press), “‘no room in the inn’? the question of hospitality in the post(partum) labors of curriculum studies”, in e. malewski (ed.), articulating the present (next) moment in curriculum studies: the post-reconceptualization generation(s). new york: routledge. concerning the pedagogical address of hospitality, see also ibrahim (2005) and kameniar (2007). quinn: cosmopolitanism and a curriculum of refuge transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 89 content conceived as cosmopolitan inheritance through which we can better understand our time and this, our truly multiand inter-cultural legacy, albeit particularly others in an appreciative light, but also cosmopolitanism itself as ‘an engine of ideas’ for curriculum, teaching and learning. issuing from dewey’s claim that we can learn from all the contexts of life, he emphasizes a quest for meaning, the perennial human project, that does not deny this unfathomability and impermanence, or need for stability, but rather reckons with such as a question of ethics concerning what it means to be human, and how we are to live – and that, together within a world compass, via the cosmopolitan call to engage with and learn from innumerable contexts and encounters with others. thus, no blueprint as such is embraced in education nor can it ever be, but rather care is taken concerning how we: ‘hold our educational values, cultivate open-hearted and open-minded exchanges, and welcome such encounters with the foreign’ in order to learn and grow. i submit that this conception of the ‘curriculum of refuge’ i am hoping to develop, and to which we shortly turn, takes up such care and cultivation, implicitly reflecting an ethics of hospitality – an exhortation of radical openness to the other (derrida, 1997/2000, 2002). the sense of risk and necessity for refuge11, as it were, that perhaps attends this call entails, however, also addressing what critchley & kearney (2006) have called ‘the traumas of history’ – the historical-relational context of cross-cultural encounter that papastephanou (2002) emphasizes in her illumination of ‘arrows not yet fired’ in articulating education in a cosmopolitan way. ‘cosmopolitanism envisions peace and reconciliation…’ (p. 69), she says and continues: ‘it paves paths for encounters. encounters undo identities, reshuffle their interpretative material and their self-understanding, and unleash new creative energies’ (p. 69). such exchanges are bound to be discomfiting, particularly in the presence of unresolved conflicts that thwart the call of openness to genuine encounter. because such is the case, papastephanou undertakes a critical reading of cosmopolitanism through ricoeur’s attention to historical memory and human temporality, which she suggests is not yet adequately taken into account. while cosmopolitanism is future-oriented – engaging the imagination with respect to yet-to-come possibilities that might encourage the advent of society in a new image grounded in equality, compassion and care – it must embrace this futurity in the now, in which the past is also present, and reverberates. in our midst, then, are also others who are ghosts of a vampire past, which requires of us not only a sensitivity to our future codwellings but also a reckoning with disputes and differences that are rooted in history, unequal power relations, in which we presently live nonetheless. ‘it is history that nourishes many of our misconceptions, expectations, feelings and opinions about others…. [we cannot] overlook the fact that i and the other have never really been disengaged’ (p. 78). thus, papastephanou emphasizes a conception of cosmopolitan education that acknowledges the demands the cultural dimensions of teachers’ and students’ identities make upon them, in terms of the historical – in its ‘diachonic aspect’: an understanding of the other as other is presupposed, including the recognition of each community’s own past relations and its interactions with many others, those that live out contemporarily in complex ways. ibrahim (2005) – via his experience of being both teacher and ‘foreigner’ – and kameniar (2007) – in her study of a convert to and teacher of a ‘foreign’ religion – actually explore these complex cultural demands and dimensions, and the pedagogical difficulties and possibilities they present, as they are played out in the work of 11 these two necessities relate to hansen’s (2008) educational call for the cultivation of a cosmopolitan sensibility in a dynamic space of interaction that honors local, global, universal and individual simultaneously. this curricular permeability mirrors the cultural porosity of contemporary times – open to deepened, expanded, transformed understanding and experience through encounters with others – as it acknowledges and supports efforts to recognize and reaffirm the integrity of persons and cultures as they are, have been and are becoming. quinn: cosmopolitanism and a curriculum of refuge transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 90 teaching. both also engage the notion of hospitality, by which we might understand classroom and curricular contexts as places of cultural encounter, characterized too by hybridity, plurality and ‘multi-chronicity.’ another point of elucidation here, then, is the importance of attention to intercultural study, the relations between and among difference, of which cameron mccarthy’s discussion of ‘nonsynchrony’ (1990) is particularly also generative – i.e., our own cultural identities are intercultural, as it were, themselves plural, paradoxical, complex, conflicted and shifting, ‘in relation’. bringing the light of history to this ideal is not meant to continue into the present the pain and suffering of the past, but rather to acknowledge that which does live into the present, and to do justice to the ‘entanglement of cultures’: the reality of cross-cultural contacts and conflicts – conflicts that have created cultural debts, and that call us to responsibility, beyond simply understanding (papastephanou, 2002). herein is not only a recourse to an other-oriented curriculum that explores past and present relations with such otherness, but also to a course of actual engagement that reckons with this indebtedness – a model of forgiveness, in turning to ricoeur (1996), ‘teaching of the kind of forgiveness and the request for forgiveness that emerge only out of a genuine engagement with the other’ (papastephanou, 2002, p. 81).12 as papastephanou takes up his work thus, she embraces the work of forgiveness as central to the aspirations of cosmopolitanism, and to education in its service, ‘a specific form of that mutual revision, the most precious result of which is the liberation of promises of the past which have not been kept’ (citing ricoeur, p. 83). as i see it, by attending to the dangers of memory – the aftermath of which often includes repression, guilt, shame, condemnation, internalized oppression or self-deception, she posits that forgiveness opens up possibilities for encounters that are truly synchronistic, such that genuine repentance and meaningful and dignified expiation, in the language of religion – healing, reconciliation, and peace – also become genuine possibilities, new and more humane ways of dwelling together. moreover, it is this reading of cosmopolitanism by the light of forgiveness, this illumination of the work of forgiveness as essential to its educational address, that most profoundly brings us to derrida’s recovery of the idea of the ‘city of refuge’ – questions of amnesty and asylum at the heart of it, and to this formulation/transformation of curriculum via the notion of the ‘curriculum of refuge.’ let us, perhaps in pause on our walk through this city, come together finally now to – and to explore – the potential sanctuary of such a vision. hot child in the city? imploring the ‘curriculum of refuge’ each human being suffers in a way no other human being suffers. henry nouwen injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. martin luther king, jr. 12 ricoeur does acknowledge the virtues of other models that seek to integrate identity and alterity, or at least authentically engage difference in the way of shared understanding: in efforts of translation, though symbolically important as ‘linguistic hospitality’, as a passage to cultural hospitality and acknowledgment of the spiritual relationships among languages and cultures, certain meanings can be lost or altered, or alterity subsumed. while an exchange of memories is vital too, in listening to and really hearing another, he maintains that exaggerated memory or the loss thereof has contributed much to the tragedy of human oppression and violence (papastephanou, 2002). quinn: cosmopolitanism and a curriculum of refuge transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 91 all of us suffer. suffering is tragically universal and profoundly particular. we are all, too, subjects both of justice and injustice. there is no escaping – via our past and present and even future actions and encounters – the unrelenting need to forgive, and for forgiveness, personally, and collectively, as a result of the communities in which we dwell and participate, and collective histories into which we have been born, as well. as the characters in sex & the city, already in community and ever-seeking the experience of community, we are ever in relationship – making, breaking or re-thinking/recreating it, yet also existentially every alone, ex-iled in the city too, condemned to face or perhaps flee from our impact on and how we are impacted by the other – our radical responsibility and radical inter-course and interconstitution. in this way, the need for asylum and amnesty is a need we all share too – the acknowledgment of which is, we must add, by no means an abnegation that this suffering is particular, and particularly and profoundly plays out via unequal power relations, not just interpersonally but also between and among cultures of difference. the need for asylum and amnesty may be indeed more urgent for, even more acknowledged by, some more than others, and for diverse reasons requiring different responses, yet not wholly foreign or unrelated each to the others’, in the need itself. still, whether we conceptualize our manner of ‘being [here-] there’ with heidegger (1927/1962) as our ontological condition of ‘being-guilty’ in the forgetfulness of being, or with derrida (1985/1988) via ‘otoor autre-biography,’13 in recognition that it is ‘the ear of the other who signs’ our name, or through some less philosophical formulation, we find that we are all, each, implicated in the ‘bloody traumas of history’, the present world scene and curriculum situation, the suffering of others, the pain of the world, and many would argue, even our own plight (i.e., serres, 1986/1989; asher, 2006, september), and plight of our own. every decision we make, action we take, even if in the pursuit of justice, ever cuts, and divides, undertaken – derrida (1990) continues through kierkegaard – in ‘the night of nonknowledge’ in which the impact can never be certain or ever fully known. if we introduce levinas on ‘cities of refuge’ (i.e., as discussed in eisenstadt, 2003, winter) into our conversation, he puts it in this wise: we attend through them, and this human history, so consciously to the manslaughterer because we are all manslaughterers14 – perhaps ‘killing’ without intention, participating unwittingly in oppression, but guilty, as such, nonetheless, even in our innocence; and, perhaps, suffering from such as well. if democracy is fragile, it is because we are. the idea of the city of refuge, and thus the curriculum of refuge, while issuing from historical circumstances defined by a heightened experience of exile and exchange in a cosmopolitan age, is built then first upon an acceptance of human vulnerability – fallibility, imperfection, incompletion, and collective unprecedented constitution – and thus also does not deny these fears, desires, and needs for belonging and restitution (even revenge?) that making our way through the wisdom of those advocating a cosmopolitan education have already highlighted for us; and from which emerges our capacities for imagining community anew. this is, of course, in itself no easy task – and radically understated as well. for, not only does it require of each of us a reckoning with our own mysterious, terrifying, ambiguous and exposed unanswerabilty even to ourselves (butler 2005; greene, 2008a, march, 2008b, march) as well as before the other – and as educators, shepherding others in addressing the same; but also, as stevenson (2003) points out: ‘the subject is now constituted as an active, choice-driven, and risk-reducing individual’ (p. 337), 13 here, derrida (1985/1988) highlights the voice – and word, and sound – of the other in the construction of one’s subjectivity, referencing in french the ear with oto, and the other with autre in discussing autobiography (otoand autre-biography). 14 for those interested in exploring further this aspect of our being, and its impact – educationally and beyond, see quinn (2001), especially chapter 2. quinn: cosmopolitanism and a curriculum of refuge transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 92 competitive, entrepreneurial, infinitely flexible in movement. ‘its [sic] is these virtues that are ‘threatened’ or at least partially disrupted by the presence of the urban poor, refugees, immigrants and beggars’ (p. 338), who are not only seen as social failures and excluded but also deemed needing ‘discipline’, especially in our cultural institutions, like schools.15 we might consider, though, that it is not just or even principally the difference the presence of these others in our midst introduce to us that we fear so much, but rather their reflection of our own vulnerability (i.e., in heidegger’s formulation, our being-guilty, thrownness, being-toward-death, etc.) with which we have not reckoned – and the shame, blame or other associated with it. most of our wisdom traditions go so far as to suggest that at and by the very site and ‘stench’, if you will, of our brokenness is brought forth the fragrant offerings that heal and bless and bring us together. in this respect, perhaps in concert with william pinar and madeline grumet’s ‘poor curriculum’ (1976), we might recommend a ‘broken curriculum’16 as foundational to any conception of the curriculum of refuge. we have worked overly much to establish here the place for curriculum from this fractured scene of human existence, what the dalai lama (2007, october) in a recent new york city public lecture on ‘peace and prosperity’ called the ‘fundamental human condition’ we share, or what thich nhat hanh (1999) refers to as ‘inter-being’, our ontological interconnectedness. the other is always and irreducibly wholly other, but also i and the other are indeed – paradoxically, aporetically perhaps – one, as well. we are one, for one, in the need for asylum, no matter where we choose to take refuge – if even as our ‘sex & the city girls’ in their signature cocktail of choice, ironically perhaps, named ‘the cosmopolitan’, though its harmonious sweetness is found ‘in the mix.’ but part of the plea here is exactly not to lose ourselves in or to the, or any, ‘drug of representation,’ as michel serres (1986/1989) calls it. the ‘cosmopolitan’ of our imbibing via the curriculum of refuge rather calls us to the ‘toast of relation’ – sueños! sueños! to realize the sweet dream: more aptly, to break bread together – challah, pita, wheat-free or wonder – in an ethics of hospitality, and all the delights such an ethics entails, as well as demands of us. derrida (1997/2006), of course, turns to this historical provision of the city of refuge also in response to particular, present historical conditions, as do we here concerning curriculum. we do live in a heightened sense of the need for sanctuary, in the acceleration of and unavoidability of encounters with otherness, as well as of, alas, the experience of inhospitableness. and this intensified experience is evident, as well, in our schools. the rise, in the us, of campus and school shootings by and of students across the country in recent years quickly at first comes to mind. in new york city, as in other locales, the state also threatens the city schools with takeover if their students are not performing and conforming to prescribed standards and purposes as determined via pre-scripted assessments. five year-olds fill classrooms where play is diminished, barely permissible, because 15 for powerfully illustrative examples here, see arendt’s analysis (1967) of ‘border police’ as related to immigrant history, as well as derrida’s discussion (1997/2006) of her work in relation to cosmopolitanism; and in an educational context, david nasaw’s social history of american public education (1979) as a response to growing immigrant populations. our posture, via the curriculum or refuge, we suggest, flies in the face of an educational and curriculum history and legacy grounded in human perfect-ability, the denial of human vulnerability and efforts at its eradication. 16 i borrow this term from william doll (2008, january), coined in a graduate seminar entitled bending time, in which he was entertaining where the new might come from, particularly, in time, how the new might emerge in curriculum. undoubtedly influenced by chaos, complexity and systems theories, in affirming a ‘broken curriculum’, he highlights the value of ‘symmetry-breaking’, the breaking down of systems, disequilibrium – the nonlinear, unpredictable, unaccountable, unforeseen. there can be no transformation without perturbation, some degree of instability. herein, the vulnerable, questionable, even inequitable, might also be seen in a new and potentially uplifting light. quinn: cosmopolitanism and a curriculum of refuge transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 93 kindergarteners must become, as expeditiously as possible, competent for an adult culture that seems to lend more importance to ‘concept mapping’ than ‘sharing’ and ‘napping.’ if one takes seriously ‘post’-critiques of knowledge (i.e., serres, 1986/1989, 1991/1997; lather 1996, 2007), at least as conceived and advanced in the west, this ‘small thing’ with our ‘little ones’ in itself is not unrelated to the ‘the violence which rages on a worldwide scale’ (derrida, 1997/2006, p. 5); rather, we must consider that we are, in fact, educating our young in artless inhospitality, into a culture of violence. jonathan kozol (1991), for example, further documents in great detail the ‘savage inequalities’’ particularly evident in american schools serving poor children and children of color. the term r.d. laing (1967) picks up from jules henry’s critique of the work of schooling, from the 60s, is fitting here: ‘the pathetic surrender of babies’ (p. 72).17 in the name of citizenship defined by our highest ideals, the political-powers-that-be, generally via the state, initiate these dogged pursuits of academics and educators, creating conditions of duress for many, and especially for many children (i.e., see pinar’s, 2004, analysis with respect to governmental regulation of education in the us). we are all, and our children, in manifold ways, each the ‘hot child in the city’, as it were, in search of a place of refuge, for difference, for the face-to-face, for forgiving and forgiveness. stevenson (2003), taking up foucault, pushes us further through cosmopolitanism to a ‘queer’ ethics that affirms not only the right to be different, but also the freedom to invent difference, to create a space for the possibilities of experimentation, for the creation of new identities. these are problems and potentialities that conjure up visions of the city of refuge – the call for free and open cities, of the curriculum of refuge that might support such views and ‘vagrancies’ of thought and practice. what the city of refuge, for derrida (1997/2006), means is that we must ‘make an audacious call for a genuine innovation in the history of the right to asylum or the duty to hospitality’ (p. 4) – for difference, our share in it, and for its living, inventive, collective embrace. what such suggests is an innovation along the order in education echoed by the inclusion movement, perhaps, the curriculum of refuge that is multicultural in terms of inclusive curriculum – anti-racist, anti-oppressive, et al – a sanctuary for the unsanctioned: different epistemologies, subaltern discourses, other courses; initiated in audacity for interrogating the apparatuses of welcoming (2002), practices of legitimation, in academia and education themselves, including the rights and responsibilities curriculum takes up (or doesn’t), and has (or hasn’t) historically, too. so conceived, this call may also involve offering protection, as well, to children, from a culture of consumerism, for instance, what has been called our ‘audit society’, and the machinations of adulthood; and even hiding from curriculum inquiry itself as well – in calling for a protective haven from the grasp of research – observations and experiences of the most compelling encounters and beautiful engagements happening among teachers, students, and others in classrooms and schools (tocci et al, 2008); i.e., resisting the scholastic urge to turn all of life experience into ‘data’. this certainly must entail addressing what noel gough (2002) terms ‘the long arm of globalization’, in its metaphorical meanings and multiple manifestations, here referential of the omnipresent educational embrace via the state, and the totalizing scripted and tested 17 laing’s (1967) politics of experience engages a psychological analysis of the age of alienation. to sustain our own image of ourselves in conditions marked by oppression and colonization, and to rationalize the industrial-military complex in which we participate, we must interiorize our own violence upon ourselves and our children, and hinder our capacity to see clearly. this work begins in the home, and via schooling, with children – where we teach them to hate one another without appearing to do so, where violence is disguised as love. jules henry’s work (1963) is central to laing’s analysis of “the mystification of experience” as related to educating the young, this work of schooling. quinn: cosmopolitanism and a curriculum of refuge transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 94 curriculum it authorizes – as well as the omniscient grasp of ‘mono-cultural’ accountability18 through assessment of student, teacher, school, school of education – from which we must flee and find refuge. this curriculum of the city, as it were, counters that of the state, coming against the propensity to absorb every person and experience and effect in education as data, against the reification of human understanding and ‘rubrification’ of human life, and coopting of culture. in this way, perhaps, curriculum may be conceived as a refuge for culture itself – including a commitment to preserving the culture of childhood, which is also a haven for childhood, and – in accord with derrida’s (2002) conception of culture – a haven for hospitality itself, an affirmation of humanity19 itself, as well. by such rights and duties, this educational course so re-visioned is not only multicultural, but also intercultural, and perhaps trans-cultural or post-cultural too: it seeks to invent, reinvent, community and culture, making room for their imaginative transformation and experimentation by and with and among the new life that is in our midst, for the not-yet and yet-to-come [i.e., the child/children as curriculum, all that we hope for and cultivate with(in) the child/children via education; see jardine, 1992; huebner, 1999]. acknowledging and addressing the histories and hybridities, complexities and contradictions, of such, this curriculum of refuge is, too, a curriculum of ‘interculturality’ (egéa-kuehne, 2008, march) – engaging encounters with and across difference, and exploring their effects, entertaining the ethics of our dwellings together. herein, reckoning with the past that is present now and in the future, this curriculum meets with contexts of desire, othering, guilt, shame, blame, loss and fear, too, in the way of world citizenship – the critical and creative call of hospitality: opening to otherness, conversing with difference; and engaging the possibilities of difference beyond difference, of engaging difference differently, other-wise. this work means, also, undertaking experiments in forgiveness, and healing, in inventing differences in our relations to each other, in relating differently. as such, the curriculum of refuge, inciting a ‘sacred’ history via the city of refuge, is perhaps also a kind of attempt at a redemption of or reconciliation with, and transformation of, history.20 it may be, for example, that israeli and palestinian children educationally working through their own wounds, the traumas of their histories, together, might invent a different history, possibilities for peace, that the negotiations of international governments and ‘peace’ talks of states cannot.21 the curriculum of refuge means imagining and creating spaces where forgiveness, healing, communion, and fellowship might actually be made possible. 18 for a convincing and compelling critical analysis of the discourse of ‘accountability’ in american education, see pinar (2004). relatedly, leonardo’s (2007) analysis of nclb discourse and documentation, which lucidly unveils a constitutive albeit concealed whiteness throughout, is also of interest with respect to my argument here. 19 derrida (2002) claims that there is no culture that is not one of hospitality, and continues to posit culture as hospitality itself, as well as linking such to that which confirms the essentially human. the womanist, theological scholar, n. lynne westfield (2001) concurs, saying: “…to describe hospitality is to describe the delightfulness of being human…” (p. 46). 20 derrida (1997/2006) picks up from arendt (1967) this identification of the right to asylum with a sacred history – grounded in an enduring medieval tenet that he who is in a territory is of the territory, albeit a right which, in her analysis, has been increasingly eradicated, and this in the face of great numbers of refugees and situations of great need. historically, as identified with a divine command to moses for the affordance of cities of refuge, principally for those guilty of manslaughter, these sites made possible human acts of atonement as well as protection. a response to the problem of vengeance, too, the right to sanctuary denied or violated was deemed of great criminal offense. by the judaic codes, clean roads of double-width were to be constructed to such cities, and signposts created, to support fugitives in flight to them. those in charge of these towns were also charged with finding accommodations for those who arrived in such conditions, as well (i.e., the holy bible, 1985; douglas, 1962). 21 derrida (1997/2006) also affirms arendt’s recognition (1967) that the relations between states, treaties between governments, limit international law, also in ways a world government would be hard-pressed to quinn: cosmopolitanism and a curriculum of refuge transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 95 the theoretical or critical reflection involved here, is also then, as derrida (1997/2006) claims, ‘indissociable from … practical initiatives’ (p. 4). for instance, derrida’s insistence that these open cities of refuge so conceived across the world be autonomous – each as independent from the other as from the state as is possible, though allied to each other according to ‘forms of solidarity yet to be invented’ (p. 4) – incites ideas of initiatives making for free sites for curriculum experimentation, with global (and cross-, inter-, multi-cultural) affiliations, collaborations, communications, exchanges – akin to the freedom schools, perhaps, into which pinar (2004) inquires anew from the scene of the present historical moment – and governance by the state, as such, suspended, re-constituted. hiro saito (2008, march), in ‘re-envisioning cosmopolitan education,’ seeks to explore the possibilities to be found in some of our already existing non-governmental, transnational resources: for example, problem-solving programs that get students cross-culturally involved in tackling local and global world issues together. with him, we might also highlight the necessary educational tasks of cultivating emotional affiliations with concrete foreign others among ourselves as well as our students via shared interests and exchanges of stories, photographs, and even important statistics; and of cultivating transnational understanding, elucidating the global connections that are already present inside our own environments, how the local materials we use, even to which we are attached, are made available to us through the labor of others in other parts of the world. such considerations may involve such simple curriculum – even classroom-specific – initiatives as pedagogical investigations into the production and distribution of familiar items of treasured use (i.e., like my daily cup of dark-roast coffee; see also asher, 2005, for additional examples critically engaged in a college course in a teacher education program) or communications cross-culturally via e-pal exchanges, or larger curricular experimentations – ‘curriculum of refuge summits’, as it were, organized around particular inquiries or addresses, like the problem-solving programs saito finds potentially supportive in cultivating a cosmopolitan consciousness and ethics of world citizenship. ‘how can the hosts…and guests of cities of refuge [ – teachers and students, ‘ex’s and texts, of the curriculum of refuge – ] be helped to recreate, through work and creative activity, a living and durable network in new places and occasionally in a new language?’ derrida (1997/2006, p. 12) might have us ask. here, in doing justice to the ‘entanglement of cultures’ (papastephanou, 2002), the marginalization of ‘others’, the ‘othering’ is acknowledged and challenged; educators are called to create ‘free’ spaces that allow for the unheard stories to be heard (boler, 2004), for conversations to thrive in a context of shared and mutual responsibility to and for each and every ‘other’; schools – as places of asylum and amnesty – are charged to welcome all in as citizens (kliewer, 1998); and in, albeit beyond, the progressive tradition, education might also be reconstituted – and perhaps that principally through the curriculum, to bring forth what derrida (1997/2006) imagines: ‘the experience of cities [curricula] of refuge’, and also as that which gives ‘rise to a place…for reflection – for reflection on the questions of asylum and hospitality – and for a new order…and a democracy to come to be put to the test’(p. 23). akin to the school as ‘an embryonic democracy’ in dewey’s conceptualization, herein the curriculum of refuge – site for subjective and social reconstruction (pinar, 2004) – may, in fact, contribute to that for which derrida hopes in reconstituting the cities of refuge, that they re-orient the politics of the state as well. moreover, we must concur with him that such work demands a prudent distinction between categories (i.e. immigrant, foreigner, exiled, displaced, etc.), highlighting the import of difference and vigilance against its exclusion, as resolve, and as such, looks to the legacy of cities of refuge, offering a kind of sovereignty to and of the city, as a site of possibility for addressing the concerns of amnesty and asylum, international human rights. quinn: cosmopolitanism and a curriculum of refuge transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 96 well as a re-formation, trans-formation, of our very modalities of membership, constructions of citizenship, engagements with difference. addressing this call for the curriculum of refuge, in reconceptualizing and recontextualizing the landscape of contemporary curriculum studies through the understandings of cosmopolitanism, is, to me, a first step toward realizing such possibilities, toward taking hospitality to the streets, so to speak – wherein, too, school smarts and street smarts may freely also meet. cosmopolitanism, curriculum and refuge from conclusion: a post-script to the scripted there’s a sense in which cosmopolitanism is the name not of the solution but of the challenge…. cosmopolitanism is an adventure and an ideal. (appiah, 2006, p. xv, xx) …the voyage of children, that is the naked meaning of the greek word pedagogy. learning launches wandering. (serres, 1991/1997, p. 8) my ‘subway soliloquies’ selections with which i began this address – initiated as they were by walking city sidewalks into a new way, wondering anew before illuminations of bright city lights, wandering into unexpected moments of refuge as well as memories of refuge’s want – are, in truth, no soliloquies at all, as such, albeit underground, indeed, perhaps. their records and recollections come only by encounters with others, brought into being by my relationship to strangers, the call of others and otherness, in my midst. relationships are present; encounters are shared, even as constituted by alterity or experienced as solitary. i have given them visual form in my imagination as subterranean trains of thought, moving trains for thought, upon refuge, the experience of refuge – that are at once also places for reflection, sanctuaries for difference, haven-dwellings for openness to otherness; all of which are ever also inconclusive, incomplete, their ‘not yet’, more than they already are, moving – and moving, changing, me too, and this as challenge, and adventure, and ideal. yet, really, i make the poetic, as much as the politic, by walking it;22 take up the cosmopoetic, as well as the cosmo-politic/-politan, by wondering and wandering into it too – and perhaps welcoming, at least entertaining, its call to me, that which it illuminates for me. and this, from the text-ures of living, con-texts of life. thus, though this personal track, tracking the trail of humanity’s footprints from cosmopolitan terrain, is laid down here in advance, meaning to foreshadow, mirror, abstract, prefigure, the trains of thought i go on to present in the more professional address that follows, temporally, i brought such personal poetic musings to this work after the re-search story was writ and recorded – although they were penned actually in an earlier chronological time.23 and, as embracing adventure, ideal, the challenge of responsive encounter with another, curriculum in a cosmopolitan way, with community and culture, is indeed, and especially with respect to the experience of refuge, all and much a matter of time. 22 with this turn of phrase, i am alluding to the published conversation between two champions for human and civil rights, miles horton and paulo freire (1990), on education and social change, which they frame through a line translated from the poetry of antonio machado (1982), affirming that: “we make the road by walking.” 23 though to engage the central and constitutive concept and experience of time – not only with respect to a cosmopolitan ethics but also to curriculum studies – here is to take us too far a field from our present inquiry, i foreground temporality here intentionally (i.e., the past and future as ever in the present), particularly playing on papestephanou’s (2002) consideration of forgiveness as related to cosmopolitanism, via ricoeur, as the possibility of synchronistic, in additional to diachronistic, encounters with each other. quinn: cosmopolitanism and a curriculum of refuge transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 97 here, for instance, in response to a lecture of maxine greene (2008b, march), ‘the poet, the city and curriculum’, of which i was also in attendance, wendy kohli (march, 2008) borrows from other poets to claim that the only reason to read a poem – to which i might also add, and/or write a poem – is to open to another life, to see the world as it could be otherwise, other-wise. she goes on to suggest that herein one does not really merely read the poetic, but actually participates in it, lends one’s life to it, by which the new opens up: via the metaphorical constitution of the poetic, new things are brought together, opening out and expanding horizons, enabling us to move back and forth between actual and possible. i hope a sense of this movement has been made possible for the reader here in my initiation via, experiment with, the poetic, perhaps expanding notions of cosmopolitanism, postulating new openings for curriculum by it as well, inviting new encounters with otherness – for encountering difference, the world, the world of curriculum, citizenship, otherwise; for reflections on the experience of refuge in education that embrace both actual and possible, asylum and amnesty. for, this event, with another lecture by greene (2008a, march) delivered on the occasion of her 90th birthday, in which she emphasized the dire need in education to cultivate a ‘passion for the possible’ (in the words of ricoeur), distinguishing such from the predictable – which now dominates in schools, moved me, and opened up new and expanded ways for me of seeing in and being with my work on cosmopolitanism – encouraging me to lend my life to it, as it were, which is also to embrace a posture of hospitality. greene (2008b, march) introduces her thoughts here through the poet of and on the city, too, elucidating from such this essential work of education in ‘opening doors’ ‘with no keys’. she critiques teacher education, and curriculum development, for its locked rooms and closed doors, for, in a hunger for final solutions, failing to truly attend not only to the stories of teachers and students and their existential engagements in and with the world and each other, but also in ignoring the temporality by which all narratives are marked, that these stories are ever unfolding and in their very telling also give to life its meanings (citing sartre). she affirms, too, drawing upon merleau-ponty, that the self appears, then, not as or by interiority, but rather via dialogic meanings, discovered and recovered in the midst of others. these encounters, with and in the midst of others and otherness, have thus compelled me to bring myself, my own stories, and something of the temporality of their unfolding, to this inquiry into cosmopolitanism: the setting and scene of its address, its sights and insights, and sources of possibility for conceiving curriculum anew via its vision in the ‘city of refuge’. such in and of itself has also experientially been something, for me, of a curriculum of refuge. it has reminded me that the beauty of the world may be embraced, without denying or abnegating its brokenness too – and that part of the beauty is indeed found in our human response to both, but perhaps most profoundly, to and in its and our brokenness. as greene interrogates the educational discourse of the day, asking ‘accountable for what? to whom?’ – foregrounding too the question of responsibility, and ethics, she also acknowledges the inhospitable conditions that have brought me, through and with derrida as well as via the work of others, to the study of cosmopolitanism: that the world into which educators initiate children is, in fact, one subjected to far too much indifference and violence. she envisions teachers, then, in their strangeness in classrooms amid strangers and reckoning with such, at work as healers of this ‘plague of indifference.’ awake to the ambiguities and unanswerabilities of their life and practice, they challenge in the national context the ‘american idols’ that via celebrity and materialism capture the imagination of youth in a prescribed vision within a questionable moral fabric, and work to create a space in this world for children wherein trust is possible, and help them not only to trust, but also to be capable of outrage. for if even a labor of loss, our humanity requires both empathy and the impetus quinn: cosmopolitanism and a curriculum of refuge transnational curriculum inquiry 7 (1) 2010 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 98 to fight the cruelty of our forgetfulness and disinterest, as well as the violence issued by manifold modes of inhospitality. and such, too, ever extends beyond the national context. in this, conceiving a curriculum of refuge, in concert with derrida’s call for the revival of cities of refuge, is the work of hospitality, of care, even love – to take up this ‘passion for the possible’ in education and curriculum studies via the heart of cosmopolitanism, as much as its mind. for every, each, moment, ‘love calls us to the things of the world’ (wilbur, 1988), and simultaneously to, in fact, in the words of ghandi, be the change we wish to see in the world – i.e., world citi-zenship, and particular responsiveness concerning the ex-iled. let us, here too, never conclude, but rather commence, ever again and again, in invitation, bringing our stories, taking ourselves, to the streets, to the places where there are no streets, praying, playing and laboring to come together in, across, through, by our shared otherness, brokenness, vulnerability, as refuge to and for one an-other. references appiah, k. 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(2008). 2008 aera program theme: research on schools, neighborhoods, and communities: toward civic responsibility, (http://www.aera.net/meetings/default.aspx?menu_id=342&id=2898). washington, dc: american educational research association. tocci, c., johnson, e., kontovourki, s., oppenheim, r., and quinn, m. (2008). how does this impact students and teachers? exploring the ‘significance’ of educational research in relation to curriculum. unpublished manuscript. waldron, j. (2006). cosmopolitan norms. in r. post (ed.), another cosmopolitanism (pp. 83101). oxford, england: oxford university press. wang, h. (2004). the call from the stranger on a journey home: curriculum in a third space. new york: peter lang. westfield, n.l. (2001). dear sisters: a womanist practice of hospitality. cleveland, oh: the pilgrim press. wilbur, r. (1988). “love calls us the to things of this world,” in new and collected poems (p. 233-234). new york: harcourt. author molly quinn is associate professor of education in the department of curriculum & teaching, teachers college, columbia university, box 31, 525 west 120th street, new york, ny 10027, usa; e-mail: quinn@tc.columbia.edu. the author of going out, not knowing whither: education, the upward journey and the faith of reason (ny: lang, 2001), much of her work as a curriculum theorist engages ‘spiritual’ and philosophical criticism toward embracing a vision of education that cultivates wholeness, beauty, compassion and social action.