Transnational Curriculum Inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci Commentaries and conversations on ‘Laboured breathing’ (Low and Palulis) and ‘Letter to my sister’ (Luo) Editor: Noel Gough Introduction As I have already indicated in this issue’s Editorial, Transnational Curriculum Inquiry (TCI) is both a site for transnational scholarly conversations and a site for inquiry into the ways that electronic publishing procedures facilitate and/or constrain inclusive knowledge work in global virtual spaces. One of the ways in which we hope to produce such conversations is by keeping TCI’s editorial policies and procedures flexible and refraining from imposing arbitrary standards and styles. For example, TCI does not have a fixed publication schedule: articles and book/media reviews will be published as soon as they are accepted for publication. Each issue will normally consist of one article or one book/media review but, as is the case with this first issue, articles that we believe might be complementary will be reviewed together and, if accepted, published as a single issue. We will also be flexible in matters of layout and style. If authors go to the trouble of formatting their articles in a particular way (as Marylin Low and Pat Palulis have done in this issue) we will not change them to fit our templates. Similarly, we do not prescribe one single citation style. Authors are free to use whatever style they see as most appropriate for their work, provided that they use a style consistently and provide all of the bibliographic information we require. TCI’s review policies and procedures will also be flexible. For example, although all articles published in TCI will be peer reviewed, they will not necessarily be ‘blind’ reviews. Authors may choose to anonymise their manuscripts, and the editors will respect their choice, but we will not impose anonymity on authors. Each manuscript will normally be reviewed by at least three referees, two of whom, in most circumstances, will be of different nationalities from the author(s) and from each other. In addition, the Editor may assign a consulting editor to liaise with the referees and the Editor in reaching a decision about publication (in this issue I have taken this role myself). Each referee’s signed review will be circulated to the other referees. My experience, like that of many other journal editors, is that signed reviews are generally of a higher quality than unsigned reviews. However, the names of referees will not be divulged to authors of rejected manuscripts. At the Editor’s discretion, manuscripts accepted for publication may be published together with some or all of the referees’ reports and the author’s response, as is the case in this issue. The story of how the two articles that constitute this first issue of TCI came to be reviewed together – and then published with the following four commentaries and an author’s rejoinder – is complex, even chaotic. Suffice it to say that serendipity, coincidence, and my desire for this first issue to exemplify at least some aspects of my editorial vision for TCI all played a part, but the final result owes more to improvisation than orchestration. I wish to thank Marylin Low, Pat Palulis and Lixin Luo for their patience, and also thank John Chi-kin Lee, Julianne Moss, Warren Sellers, Marg Sellers, and Francisco Sousa for their thoughtful and engaging commentaries and questions. http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci Transnational Curriculum Inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci LABOURED BREATHING: RUNNING WITH AND AGAINST INTERNATIONALISING TEXTS OF CURRERE Marylin Low and Pat Palulis LETTER TO MY SISTER ABOUT DOLL’S 4 R’S Lixin Luo Reviewed by Warren Sellers with Marg Sellers, Deakin University, Australia How can we create possibilities of dialogue between Chinese curriculum wisdom and Western curriculum theories and form a dynamic relationship between the two? (Zhang Hua and Zhong Quiquan, 2003, p. 260). [O]n this bridge we are in no hurry to cross over; in fact, such bridges lure us to linger (Ted Aoki, in Pinar and Irwin, in press). Lixin’s ‘letter’ is awe inspiring –takes my breath away! It exudes ‘postmodernisms’ for understanding curriculum simplexities... transnational transliteration, interdisciplinary indeterminacies, chaotic complexities, sage simplicity. The clarity of conversational voice(s) transliterate oriental pictographic aesthetics towards occidental ideographic constructs in ways showing how emergence matters. Text brimming with words letting me see Chinese paintings... curlying willow trees beside waterfalling amongst crinkling landscaping... myst-erious perspectives unfolding understandings. I prefer to read the ‘web’ metaphor as ‘rhizome’, and I read ‘autopoiesis’ more often than it is written. Otherwise, this exemplifies for me generativity for deconstructing curriculum in ways I want to keep on rehearsing to(o). Low’s & Palulis’s ‘...breathing...currere’ – breathing currere emerges through currere breathing – is other storying and just as stimulating... Marg and I are (re)reading this conjointly and would like to send you our conversational respondings... Now it’s enough to say there are beginnings towards maddening middlings of ‘differancings’... which we (all) and both papers bring to unfolding gatherings... interliterality of language(s)... forking tongues... (Sellers, 2004, personal communication). I’ve attached your first paper to review... normally this will be done online but I want to start getting a couple of papers in the works... in fact, I’ll attach two, both of which I think will be of interest for rather different reasons... I have Letter to my Sister in Chinese too... I won’t tell you anymore about them until you’ve had a chance to read them... (Noel Gough, 2004, personal communication). Commentaries and conversations on Low & Palulis and Luo 65 http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci Transnational Curriculum Inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci Mi Youren (1076-1151) Shitao (1642-1718) Shanghai Museum, P R China. http://flmc.fll.purdue.edu/Chns594/song.html Fantastic Mountains charts the development of mountain landscape painting over 500 years, from the displacement of the Tang dynasty by invading Manchu in the mid-15th century. ‘People come in here and look at the earliest works and the latest and say, ‘Oh yeah, what’s the difference?’ Capon 1 says with a demonstrative shrug. Using a European yardstick, comparing landscape painting from the Renaissance to Impressionism, say, is pointless. ‘All the motifs – the rocks, the trees, the streams – are like letters of a visual alphabet and are transposed into paragraphs which the viewer can read.’ Indeed, Chinese scrolls are not decorative works hung on walls. Instead they are stored, to be taken out, examined, considered and appreciated in a deliberate act of reading, before being rolled again and carefully put away (Miriam Cosic, 2004). CONTEXTS The preceding page is a way of contextualising what follows, which adopts a rhizomatic (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987) approach to the papers being reviewed. Rhizomatics concerns ways of engaging with reading~writing2 that disturb the usual linear, hierarchical, dualistic, polarising method, which Deleuze and Guattari characterise as arboreal. So, the opening pages quote William Pinar’s (2003) epigraph in his paper to the inaugural IAACS conference, then rehearse the emails opening this reviewing process, and reproduce (above) some co-responding images and accompanying text Gough sent separately. Bringing together these items exhibits, for us, a conjoining interrelatedness that characterises rhizomatic inquiry, and distinguishes it from conventional analysis. To make this plainer, our reviewing of these texts reads~writes them poststructurally, as complexly interrelated, or, inextricably intertwining each other. Such ways of reading~writing call for disturbing approaches, which involve disordering conventions. Thus, I (Warren) took the arrival of the two papers as inviting a rhizomatic approach to their review, and prompting the suggestion that Marg contribute her writing~reading to the intertextual recursion. Commentaries and conversations on Low & Palulis and Luo 66 http://flmc.fll.purdue.edu/Chns594/song.html http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci Transnational Curriculum Inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci CONTENTS We commend these papers for experiencing embodied reading~writing concerning transnational conceptualisings of currere. What do we mean by ‘embodied reading~writing? ‘Embodied’ calls attention to bodily mindedness ways in which reading is always already complexly co-emergent with writing, or ‘writing~reading’. This emphasises how a reader’s interpretations and understandings become involutionary with a writer’s in reflexive, recursive conversations. For us, this involves postlogographic conceptions. That is, exploring ways of conceiving and conversing ideas beyond (post) the conventions of structuralist signs; hence the references to Chinese scrolls, and Pinar’s concern for cross-cultural philosophies. In these two papers we recognise qualities that resonate with postlogographic conceptions: the deconstructed texting and layout of ‘Laboured breathing’, and Lixin Lou’s personalising epistolary. Thus our respondings attempt to ‘recurse’ with those qualities. With this in mind, Marg presents her writing~reading: Laboured breathing… soundings a/rhythmically re-cording conversations about im/possibilities of speaking only one language (yes but) never speaking only one language. The ‘inter’ of spaces breathing life into academic text as it grows from a middle constantly re/appearing elsewhere, always already, the parts unfolding from the whole and the whole enfolded in the parts. Not only is this text alive for me, I am also alive in the text, living currere. The texture of its soundings keep me moving, without pause to analyse. An enacting of a synthesising emerging as I read. From above and below, first one then the other, re-turning (to) pages, then the other comes first. There is no stopping, not even at the ‘end’. The soundings disrupt any academic authority; finality becomes illusory. These words are alive and dance on in my mind as I re-live my reading and am anxious to re-choreograph writings of my own to the sound of a tune of word pictures freed by Marylin and Pat…breathing living into the academic word…enacting currere… And Warren presents some of what he calls sketch-notings, made in the margins of Low and Palulis’ texts. Commentaries and conversations on Low & Palulis and Luo 67 http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci Transnational Curriculum Inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci Do you sense our interpreting meanings for reading~writing understandings of Low and Palulis? It’s not so much, as Bruno Latour (2004) writes, a matter of fact it’s more matters for concern. …writing~reading… involves concerning conversations, within which learning is immanent and full of potentialities for Ted Aoki’s ‘bridges’ and open to Zhang Hua and Zhong Quiquan’s, ‘dynamic relationships’. Commentaries and conversations on Low & Palulis and Luo 68 http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci Transnational Curriculum Inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci And, so to Lixin Luo. Why is Lixin writing to her sister about William Doll? Lixin generously shares her synthesis of Dolls 4 R’s – ‘richness, recursion, relations, rigor’ – with us too. However, be aware that Lixin is writing to her sister in their first language, and we are reading an English translation. Again, here are some of Warrens’ sketch-notings of reading~writing Lixin: Commentaries and conversations on Low & Palulis and Luo 69 http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci Transnational Curriculum Inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci Marg participates in the conversations with this letter: Commentaries and conversations on Low & Palulis and Luo 70 http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci Transnational Curriculum Inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci Dear Lixin, I have read your letter to your sister and I want to lay it out in a web, to play with your ideas and let them play with each other, to embrace any ambiguities as they appear. I want to write to my daughter about her (my) 7 month old (grand)son and converse with her about his becoming-being-becoming… and about how she is co-constructing en-Rich-ing environments with him as she follows his play. I want to write to the practicing teachers I work alongside about how Recursive reflection values (personal) silence while using private and public and communal space(s) in which everyone may be understood; and converse with them about how we might rehearse interdependence by reflecting recursively together. I want to write to my students about how apparent (their) learning becomes when we share (our) stories and connect theoretical understandings to (our) living experiences in differing and meaningful ways; and query what these Relations might mean in their work with young children. I want to write to Noel about Rigor, interpretation and indeterminacy and talk about how I might do my researching with more probing and less proving. I may even write to Dr Doll one day about (little and gradual) changes in boundaries I (may yet) happen upon. And perhaps I will also write to the rocks and trees… I look forward to more of these reading~writing conversations. Marg CLOSINGS Noel Gough’s email, which appears on the first page, mentions that the two papers ‘will be of interest for rather different reasons’. What might the reasons be? The two papers differently engage approaches to interpreting and explaining concepts that enact complexity. Marylin Low and Pat Palulis experiment with their intertwining texts (intertextualising) in ways that enact recursive doubling3, to demonstrate inspirational working (laboured breathing) across international texts of currere. And, Lixin Lou rehearses her learning conversations with William Doll, through conversing with her sister, towards her niece, to explicate her hermeneutic reflections on the ‘4 R’s’ and their transnational transl-iter-ation. Both papers present, for both of us, stimulating interactions of currereist complexity, exemplifying William Pinar’s desires for ‘“complicated conversations” [to] create bridges across place and time’ (2003, p. 18). Commentaries and conversations on Low & Palulis and Luo 71 http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci Transnational Curriculum Inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci NOTES 1 Edmund Capon, Director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Australia, which is exhibiting ‘Fantastic Mountains: Chinese Landscape Painting from the Shanghai Museum’ from 12 March - 9 May 2004. 2 We use the expression writing~reading and reading~writing throughout to show that reading and writing are inextricably intertwined, hence the use of the tilde symbol, which indicates complementary alternation. 3 Varela, Thompson and Rosch, (1993) draw on Merleau-Ponty’s discussion of ‘double embodiment’ as a way of introducing their ‘enactive’ approach to cognition (pp. xv-xx). REFERENCES Cosic, Miriam. (2004), ‘Heights of achievement’, The Australian, 11 March, pp. 016 Deleuze, Gilles and Félix Guattari. (1987), A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia, Athlone Press, London. Latour, Bruno. (2004), ‘Why has critique run out of steam? From matters of fact to matters of concern’, Critical Inquiry, 30, pp. 225-247 Pinar, William. (2003), A bridge between Chinese and North American curriculum studies, Paper presented at the First Triennial Meeting of the International Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies, Shanghai, P. R. China, October 26-29, 2003. Pinar, William F. and Rita L. Irwin. (Eds.) (in press), Curriculum in a new key: The collected works of Ted T. Aoki, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ. Varela, Francisco, Evan Thompson and Eleanor Rosch. (1993), The embodied mind: Cognitive science and human experience, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA & London. Zhang, Hua and Qiquan Zhong. (2003), ‘Curriculum Studies in China: Retrospect and Prospect’, in William F. Pinar (Ed.) International handbook of curriculum research, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah, NJ. REVIEWERS Warren and Marg Sellers are partners who reside in Aotearoa-New Zealand. Both are doctoral candidates at Deakin University. Correspondence to w.sellers@paradise.net.nz, m.sellers@paradise.net.nz Commentaries and conversations on Low & Palulis and Luo 72 http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci Transnational Curriculum Inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci LABOURED BREATHING: RUNNING WITH AND AGAINST INTERNATIONALISING TEXTS OF CURRERE Marylin Low and Pat Palulis LETTER TO MY SISTER ABOUT DOLL’S 4 R’S Lixin Luo Reviewed by Julianne Moss, University of Melbourne, Australia Reviewing these two works simultaneously places the past, present and future of curriculum discourses inside and outside of historical truth, representation and interpretations of the field. As a reviewer I have to own up to my slippages between the writers, their assumed identities and their audiences. As Patti Lather (2000) writes: No matter how much we think we are reading voice, we are reading a text. Acts of transcription have taken place. Editorial decisions have been made. The text is never free of the contamination of language. Given this, what is knowledge in the testimony? (p. 155) The two texts enacted in the space of transnational curriculum inquiry should be made available to the scholarly community. In considering Lixin Luo’s paper I would however like to hear more from the writer, the learner, the discursive readings of curriculum experiences and contexts – teacher, postgraduate student, membership of the community of curriculum scholars. Further I would encourage some more reading against the text, to seek what Lather (2000) describes as to ‘focus on what is “becoming” in the data: discontinuities, ruptures the unexpected, the contingent, the stabilized configurations and the beginnings of the possible…’ (p. 158). After all, our work is to seek a reflexive account of the field even if it is a possibility we have come to embrace. Marylin Low and Pat Palulis’s article provides the deconstructive act through textual form. I am very comfortable as a reader in these spaces, but I find narratives that are smoothed over and seamless more troubling, as curriculum texts have an historical weight much like the curriculum imaginings I have appropriated at left. I am immediately taken inside Low and Palulis’s text, however I admit my familiarity and preference for reading the visual and text types. Owning up to my past as a secondary visual art teacher, and now preferring to research in this way, I understand how through the electronic revolution our culture is witnessing a shift where the visual medium, traditionally the ‘illustration of text’, is becoming the dominant medium of thought. But this way of knowing is used less often in education and curriculum thinking and, as Gustavo Commentaries and conversations on Low & Palulis and Luo 73 http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci Transnational Curriculum Inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci Fischman (2001), states: ‘The reliance on words and numbers among educational researchers and the general tendency of dismissing images is generalised across academic traditions, theoretical traditions, and research methods’ (p.28). This leads me to consider whether [chiasm(us)] as the entry point for Low and Palulis’s textwork is sufficient for our readers, even though we aim in this journal to embody readers in the transnational space. I read and run with the text, across, up and (in)between. In short, ‘Laboured breathing’ is textwork that I find very accessible and inspiring, but perhaps others may not. REFERENCES Lather, Patti. (2000). Reading the image of Rigoberta Menchú: undecidability and language lessons. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, Vol. 13, No.2, pp. 153- 162. Fischman, Gustavo E. (2001). Reflections about images, visual culture and educational research, Educational Researcher, Vol. 30, No. 8, pp. 28-33. REVIEWER Julianne Moss is Head, Curriculum Teaching and Learning Unit, Department of Learning and Educational Development, Faculty of Education, University of Melbourne. Correspondence to j.moss@unimelb.edu.au Commentaries and conversations on Low & Palulis and Luo 74 http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci Transnational Curriculum Inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci LETTER TO MY SISTER ABOUT DOLL’S 4 R’S Lixin Luo Reviewed by John Chi-kin Lee Chinese University of Hong Kong, China [EDITOR’S NOTE: John Chi-kin Lee reviewed the Chinese language version of Lixin Luo’s essay and has provided his review in both English and Chinese] The letter written by Lixin Luo to her sister is very readable and interesting. It echoes William Doll’s (1993, p. 169) remarks that ‘a good story, a great story, endures, encourages, challenges the reader to interpret, to enter into dialogue with the text’. I particularly like the last part of her letter, where she emphasizes the important meaning of Doll’s lessons for her. She writes: ‘Choice cannot be realized. It is because we decide on that direction rather than choosing a particular direction’ (my translation). While the letter stimulates me to appreciate further Doll’s theories, I would like Ms Luo to echo some of my concerns. At the beginning of the letter, she mentions that her sister’s daughter, Dongdong, is studying in a kindergarten in Shenzhen, which adopts the Montessori and multiple intelligences programs. It might be better if Luo could explain the context of Dongdong’s learning (and the kindergarten) in connection (or disconnection) with Doll’s postmodern view of curriculum. With regard to the richness criteria, Luo uses an example of discriminating between trousers and a skirt. She suggests asking: ‘Why does grandfather not wear a skirt?’ to facilitate Dongdong’s exploration of the relationship between humans and their clothes. Doll (1993, p. 176) defines richness as ‘multiple possibilities or interpretations’. While Dongdong’s grandfather living in Mainland cities would not wear skirts, I wonder if Luo had considered showing a picture of a man from one of the Chinese minorities and another of a Scotsman wearing a traditional ‘skirt’. Luo further comments that, with regard to the profession of education, even those students with a non-relevant background who have the enthusiasm to teach or to learn (my translations) should be admitted for study. I do not have any strong objections to Luo’s viewpoint. While I do not wish to use Doll’s quotation as the metanarrative, we should consider his view that in a ‘self-organizing, open system framework, teachers need student challenges in order to perform their role in the interactive process… The question of teacher attitudes, then reflecting fundamental world-view assumptions, is crucial’ (Doll, 1993, p. 159). The successful implementation of Doll’s vision of curriculum perhaps needs teachers who not only have an enthusiasm to act as active listeners and facilitators but also have a broad knowledge base and open-mindedness with a postmodern worldview. With regard to recursion, Luo writes about history and inspires students to think ‘why things happen in this way?’ (my translation), which may imply serial causality. In recursion, there is ‘no fixed beginning or ending’ (Doll, 1993, p. 178). I am not sure if we might ask, ‘how and why things happen and have not happened in these ways?’ With respect to the criteria of relations, Luo refers to the Japanese experience and suggests the use of ‘appropriate’ negative experiences such as conflict to make children strong. I do not like the use of the term ‘negative experience’, which may not encourage a reflective relationship between teacher and student. Rather, I would prefer Doll’s (2002, p. 50) use of the concept of community as an ‘emphasis on both care and critique – an emphasis that requires a high degree of trust’. As a Chinese reader who has grown up in Hong Kong, where there is an interaction between Eastern and Western cultures, I am uncertain whether Luo’s experience of writing ‘review letters’ in which she makes mistakes could be transferable, for enhancing reflection, Commentaries and conversations on Low & Palulis and Luo 75 http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci Transnational Curriculum Inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci to other persons. Some examples given by Luo seem to be brief but conclusive, such as the appreciation of Chinese painting for young students to celebrate ambiguity (p. 17) and the remark on building post-secondary colleges instead of universities in backward areas in China (p. 14). With my limited knowledge of Chinese culture, the appreciation of Chinese fine arts needs to be substantiated, possibly with a photo showing a Chinese landscape painting and guidelines on how to facilitate students’ understanding of ambiguity. The notion of localization of the curriculum and relevance to the local context is well respected. The remark by the teacher working in a backward area in China, however, needs to be carefully and contextually interpreted as ‘localization’ of teaching might impart further social/regional and economic inequality. In addition, the use of the Great Wall when teaching English in Beijing appears to be very brief. Referral to the historical and cultural context and the personal meaning of the Great Wall for the students could be considered. Another point I would like to share with Luo relates to the use of metaphors of teacher and student. The former is referred to as a candle and a gardener and the latter as a sponge and a flower. I totally agree with her view that these analogies tend to be modernist. It would have been helpful if she had proposed some metaphors of teachers and students in the letter (Luo refers to learning metaphorically as ‘cooking dishes’). I am looking forward to reading her responses in a revised version of the paper. REFERENCES Doll, W.E., Jr. (1993). A post-modern perspective on curriculum. New York: Teachers College Press. Doll, W.E. Jr. (2002). Ghosts and the curriculum. In W.E. Doll, Jr., & N. Gough (Eds.), Curriculum visions (pp. 23-70). New York: Peter Lang. REVIEWER Professor John Chi-kin Lee is Dean of the Faculty of Education, Chinese University of Hong Kong. Correspondence to jcklee@cuhk.edu.hk Commentaries and conversations on Low & Palulis and Luo 76 http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci Transnational Curriculum Inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 對〈㆒封給姐姐的信――論威廉姆•多爾的㆕ R 理論〉的回應 羅麗新女士寫給姐姐的信，可讀性十分高，內容亦見有趣。信件回應威爾姆•多 爾（王紅宇譯，2001，頁 2401）所言：「㆒個好的故事，㆒個偉大的故事，誘發、 鼓勵、鞭策讀者去闡釋，與文本進行對話。」我尤其喜歡信㆗尾末部分――她強 調㆖威廉姆•多爾教授的課對她來說具有重要的意義。她寫道：「選擇本身本來 就是不可能實現的，因為我們是在決定那個方向，而不是要選擇㆒個方向。」 羅女士的信促使我進㆒步欣賞威廉姆•多爾的理論，我更期望她能回應我的㆒些 關注點。在信件的起始部分，她提及姐姐的女兒東東在深圳㆒所幼稚園㆖學，那 所學校採用了蒙台梭利教學法和多元智力教育方案。如果羅女士能解釋東東的學 習，以至幼稚園的脈絡背景，與多爾的後現代課程觀有關（或沒有關聯）的㆞方 則更為理想。就豐富性的準則而言，羅女士用了區別褲子和裙子的例子。她建議 提出「為甚麼公公不穿裙子？」的問題來引導東東探索㆟類與服飾的關係。多爾 （王紅宇譯，2001，頁 250）界定豐富性為「多種可能性或多重解釋。」雖然東 東的公公住在㆗國大城巿，不會穿著裙子，但是我想羅女士亦可考慮展示㆒幅來 自㆗國少數民族男士的圖畫，以及另㆒幅蘇格蘭穿著傳統蘇格蘭裙的男士的圖 畫。 羅女士進㆒步認為，就教育的專業來說，即使學生沒有相關的背景，只要學生有 教書或者學習的熱情，就應該有資格被取錄。我對羅女士的觀點沒有太強烈的反 對。雖然我不希望引用多爾的說話作為後設敘述，但是他的意見――「自組織的 開放系統的框架，其㆗教師需要學生的挑戰以便在互動過程㆗發揮作用……於是 反映世界觀基本假設的教師態度成為關鍵的問題」（頁 227）仍然值得考慮。多 爾課程觀要成功㆞實施，也許需要教師不只要具備熱誠去扮演主動聆聽者和輔導 者的角色，也要具有寬廣的知識基礎，以及具有後現代世界觀的開放胸襟。 至於回歸性，羅女士觸及歷史和啟發學生去思考「為甚麼事情會這樣發生？」， 然而這種問題方式可能引含系列性因果論的思考。就回歸性來說，它是「沒有固 定的起點和終點」（頁 253）。我不肯定我們能否提問：「事情如何和為甚麼會這 樣發生，以及事情為甚麼沒有這樣發生？」 就關聯性的準則來說，羅女士提及日本㆟的經驗和建議利用「適量」的負面經驗 （例如衡突）去使兒童堅強。我不喜歡「負面經驗」這個用詞，因為它未必能鼓 勵師生之間建立㆒種反思性關係。反而，我較喜歡採用多爾（Poll, 2002, p.50） 利用社區的觀念作為「同時強調關懷和批判――強調需要㆒種高度的信任」。 1 王紅宇譯，小威廉姆•E•多爾著（2000）。《後現代課程觀》。北京：教育科學出版社。 Commentaries and conversations on Low & Palulis and Luo 77 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci Transnational Curriculum Inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci 作為㆒位在東西方文化互動的香港長大的㆗國讀者，我不肯定羅女士所寫「檢討 書」內犯錯的經驗能否轉移，使他㆟藉以反思自己的狀況。另外，羅女士所提及 的部分例子雖然簡短但是具總結性，例如 年幼的學生透過欣賞㆗國畫去慶賀模 糊；對需要在㆗國偏遠落後㆞區建立大專而非大學的意見等。以我對㆗國文化的 有限知識，欣賞㆗國藝術作品有待進㆒步強化，例如通過展示㆗國山水畫和提供 指引以輔助學生去理解模糊概念。課程的「本土化」和與本㆞脈絡相關的觀念是 得到肯定的（受到尊重的）。不過，要解讀那位在㆗國偏遠山區工作的教師所提 出的觀點，必須要很小心並要配合脈絡，這是由於教學的「本土化」可能導致進 ㆒步的社會／區域性和經濟㆖的不平等。再者，在北京教英文時用長城作例子顯 得十分簡單。參考長城的歷史和文化脈絡，以及長城對學生的個㆟意義也許值得 考慮。 我也想與羅女士分享另㆒觀點，那就是有關教師與學生的隱喻運用。前者比作蠟 燭和園㆜，後者則比作海綿和花朵。我完全同意她的觀點，這些類比偏向現代主 義方式，如果羅女士能在信㆗建議㆒些教師和學生的隱喻（她把學習比喻為做 菜），則對讀者更有幫助。我期望能閱讀羅女士的回應。 李子建 香港㆗文大學教育學院 Commentaries and conversations on Low & Palulis and Luo 78 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci Transnational Curriculum Inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci LETTER TO MY SISTER ABOUT DOLL’S 4 R’S Lixin Luo Reviewed by Francisco Sousa University of the Azores, Portugal Assuming that TCI has been designed to facilitate transnational conversations in curriculum inquiry and that peer reviewers should, accordingly, discuss the extent to which the manuscripts contribute to that aim, let me start by looking at Luo’s purpose in writing the submitted text – a letter to her sister. The author begins the letter by saying that she will introduce her postmodernist views of curriculum to her sister and implicitly suggests that her sister functions as a proxy for the Chinese. According to Luo, the Chinese use modern metaphors about teachers and students and should rethink them in the light of postmodernist thought. If the author’s purpose is really to inform a Chinese audience – perhaps an Eastern audience at large - about postmodernist curriculum theory that is constructed in the West, I am not able to judge on the relevance of her paper for transnational conversations in curriculum inquiry, for I do not know enough about Eastern curriculum work. From my geographical position in the Atlantic, I can only state that the manuscript does not add much to what curriculum scholars on the eastern margin of this ocean already know about postmodernist curriculum theory. What I would like to learn from this East-West dialogue is how Eastern thought might contribute to transnational curriculum work. I have counted fifteen references to China, three references to Japan, and two references to Tibet in Luo’s text. Those references consist of sayings, excerpts from poems, and general statements, all of them being very brief. In my ignorance of Eastern culture, I even suspect that some of the statements might also be too simplistic. Do people in China always view model classes as teachers’ shows? Is learning always bitter for the Chinese? I wonder if some of the references to Eastern culture that are made in the text might be expanded, in order to eventually provide the international community of curriculum workers with new sources of inspiration for curriculum theory and practice. It would be interesting, for example, to deepen the discussion of the importance of Chinese painting in curricula that celebrate ambiguity (p. 20) and to further explore the relationships between Buddhism and curricula that go beyond categorical thinking. Given these comments, I suggest that the editor’s decision on whether to accept or reject the manuscript be based on the following positions: 1. From the perspective of a North-America–Europe dialogue, the text is too redundant to be published. 2. From the perspective of an East–West dialogue, the text should be published under certain conditions (if at least one of the following conditions occurs): • Other reviewers consider the text important for informing audiences outside Europe and North-America – especially Eastern audiences - about postmodernist curriculum theory • The author develops a reflection on how might Eastern thought – or, at least, certain aspects of Eastern thought - contribute to transnational curriculum work. REVIEWER Francisco Sousa is a doctoral student in curriculum studies at the University of the Azores, Portugal. Correspondence to sousafrancisco@hotmail.com Commentaries and conversations on Low & Palulis and Luo 79 http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci Transnational Curriculum Inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci LETTER TO MY SISTER ABOUT DOLL’S 4 R’S: A RESPONSE TO THE REVIEWERS’ COMMENTS Lixin Luo First I wish to thank all of the reviewers for their thoughtful comments and questions (and, in Warren and Marg Sellers case, for their pictures and ‘sketch-notings’ – and yet another letter!). I am especially grateful to John Chi-kin Lee for providing his comments in both Chinese and English, because different languages have different hidden discourses, thus I can understand better Professor Lee’s ideas by reading versions of his comments in both languages; and also, sometimes I find it easier to think in Chinese and write in English (and sometimes the reverse). I will focus my response chiefly on addressing Lee’s review because, as I think Francisco Sousa understands, my letter to my sister may be more interesting to Chinese readers than to Western curriculum scholars. Lee writes: At the beginning of the letter, [Luo] mentions that her sister’s daughter, Dongdong, is studying in a kindergarten in Shenzhen, which adopts the Montessori and multiple intelligences program. It might be better if Luo could explain the context of Dongdong’s learning (and the kindergarten) in connection (or disconnection) with Doll’s postmodern view of curriculum. Lotus Kindergarten is an experimental base for the Montessori and Multiple Intelligences programs of the International and Comparative Education Research Institute at Beijing Normal University. These programs are Chinese national education research projects. In 2001, Lotus Kindergarten also joined the China-Canada Collaborative English Immersion Program (a three year project). The researchers do field research in the kindergarten several times every year. The supervisor of the Lotus Kindergarten, Weili Wang, is very open minded and strives to combine educational theory with teaching practice. Every time the researchers visit, she organizes many workshops and seminars to train the teachers more about theory and discuss their practical problems. She also invited the researchers to give lectures to parents. The kindergarten has a total of 10 classes. In 2001, there were four Montessori classes in the kindergarten. By 2004, the number had increased to six. Dongdong is in one of the Montessori classes. These classes organize their curricula based on the Montessori education method and multiple intelligences theory. In addition, every class has an English teacher who teaches children English using the immersion method – the English teacher only speaks English with the children. Normally children spend a half day in Montessori work and a half day in English activities. Generally, all activities in the Montessori classes are theme activities (zhu ti huo dong) in which teachers select a theme and organize some initial activities related to it. In the course of doing these activities, new theme-related activities emerge from children’s interests, needs or requests. For example, the Montessori B class’s teachers selected a theme – paper – then they organized children to learn the history of paper, watch videotapes about paper production, and to make paper themselves. While doing these activities, some children noticed that some paper is coarse and some is smooth; some children showed interest in the transparency of different papers. The teachers then organized another two activities in which children could explore more attributes of paper. After a theme has already been explored for a while, teachers will change it to another topic. In this way, children’s interests and needs are valued and their creative abilities are encouraged. Teachers in the Montessori classes are required to spend a lot of time observing children and perceiving their development stages and personal Commentaries and conversations on Low & Palulis and Luo 80 http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci Transnational Curriculum Inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci interests or needs, according to which teachers try to give every child individualized learning support. However, although these Montessori classes value students’ diversity and self- organization to some degree, this is still not enough to facilitate children’s creativity. Based on my observations while I was doing volunteer work in the kindergarten during 2001, my sister’s messages about Dongdong’s education and the communication between the kindergarten’s supervisor and I from 2001 to 2003, I conclude that teachers still impose pre- set educational goals on children and that they still aspire to conceptions of ‘universal truth’. Children are led to understand existing ‘truths’ not to construct new ones. Additionally, teachers feel stressed because so many educational programs are going on at the kindergarten at once. If they can understand the same pattern inside different programs, they will be free from the superficial imitation of teaching methods and be more creative. Also, children could be encouraged to reflect more on their behaviours and draw the connections between diverse things. Moreover, many children’s parents are like my sister. My sister always thinks about what she needs to teach Dongdong and how she can teach in the ‘right’ way. She is designing and deciding Dongdong’s education. Without realizing and encouraging Dongdong’s self- making ability, she is nervous about her ability to ‘teach’ well. Within this context (kindergarten and family), I think children like Dongdong are still educated in modernist boxes. Thus I feel a need to share my understandings of postmodernism with my sister and Chinese teachers in order to open their minds to the possibilities of empowering children to co-construct their learning with educators (for further information about the Lotus Kindergarten go to http://www.szlotus.net/) Lee writes: With regard to the richness criteria, Ms Luo uses an example of discriminating between trousers and a skirt. She suggests asking: ‘Why does grandfather not wear a skirt?’ to facilitate Dongdong’s exploration of the relationship between humans and their clothes. Doll (1993, p. 176) defines richness as ‘multiple possibilities or interpretations’. While Dongdong’s grandfather living in Mainland cities would not wear skirts, I wonder if Ms Luo had considered showing a picture of a man from one of the Chinese minorities and another of a Scotsman wearing a traditional ‘skirt’. I had thought about Scotsmen’s kilts, and I agree that it is necessary to introduce ‘multiple possibilities or interpretations’ to students. But, I wanted to draw my audience’s attention to the relationships between different items. I thought that it might not be wise to expect my audiences to attend to (and perhaps confuse) two points in one paragraph, namely, that we should guide students to find the relationships in richness and we should explore the multiple interpretations within richness. I thought that might blur my point – but perhaps I was guilty of underestimating my audience. Lee writes: With respect to the criteria of relations, Luo refers to the Japanese experience and suggests the use of ‘appropriate’ negative experiences such as conflict to make children strong. I do not like the use of the term ‘negative experience’, which may not encourage a reflective relationship between teacher and student. Rather, I would prefer Doll’s (2002, p. 50) use of the concept of community as an ‘emphasis on both care and critique – an emphasis that requires a high degree of trust’. I agree with a number of Lee’s implicit and explicit suggestions for rewording, and here I should perhaps have written ‘so called “negative” experience’, because any experience might be viewed as positive or negative or both. I perhaps took for granted that using negative Commentaries and conversations on Low & Palulis and Luo 81 http://www.szlotus.net/ http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci Transnational Curriculum Inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci experiences would only be appropriate in the context of a caring community, as Doll advocates (and to which I referred in discussing how to make diversity possible). Lee writes: With my limited knowledge of Chinese culture, the appreciation of Chinese fine arts needs to be substantiated, possibly with a photo showing a Chinese landscape painting and guidelines on how to facilitate students’ understanding of ambiguity. The notion of localization of the curriculum and relevance to the local context is well respected. The remark by the teacher working in a backward area in China, however, needs to be carefully and contextually interpreted as ‘localization’ of teaching might impart further social/regional and economic inequality. In addition, the use of the Great Wall when teaching English in Beijing appears to be very brief. Referral to the historical and cultural context and the personal meaning of the Great Wall for the students could be considered. All these suggestions are very reasonable. But my paper was not intended to teach teachers detailed ways to teach but, rather, to trigger teachers’ thinking, to open their minds to alternative possibilities. Actually, in Doll’s classes, he seldom told us any detailed ways to teach, but I gradually understood that he was purposefully guiding us to free ourselves from thinking about concrete teaching methods and instead to consider patterns within different ways of teaching. I want to emphasize that my prime purpose in writing my paper is to present a postmodern view about education, life and the world to a Chinese audience. My experience in China tells me that Chinese people privilege modernist western science and thought. They too readily (in my view) take foreign theories as new strict rules to obey, to measure with and to judge against. I feel that we need to remind people that any theory or perspective is merely useful within limited contexts. Doll’s view of a postmodern curriculum is also just a perspective and it is not the only one. Many other views of curriculum exist or are emerging. Chinese educators are presently enthusiastic about learning ‘how the West is done’ but I fear that many of them may be vulnerable to taking up the worst that the West has to offer rather than the best if they don’t try to ferret out the hidden contexts of what they learn. Turning to Francisco Sousa’s comments, I think that the feedback I got from the First World Curriculum Studies Conference and my talks in Shenzhen, China, demonstrate that my paper might have some positive value in informing my Chinese colleagues about the possibilities of postmodern curriculum theorizing. After my presentation at the conference, a Chinese professor who is using Doll’s (1993) book as a textbook told me that I had helped her to clarify some of her understandings of Doll’s theory. Another Chinese professor told me that he would distribute my paper in his class. After the conference, I gave two talks in my hometown (Shenzhen). One talk was to an architecture design company (about postmodern worldviews) and the other was for teachers and parents at the Lotus kindergarten. One parent commented on my talk as follows: Tonight I attended a lecture titled ‘An introduction of a new curriculum – a postmodern perspective’ by a guest speaker, Lixin Luo. I learned a lot. [Luo argued] that we should help children to achieve success in different ways rather than to cultivate one hundred uniform engineers; and that what is true? – What the child thinks is true. [She argued that] people succeed through play; [that we should] teach children to treat all creatures in the world as equal members; [and that we should] learn about children through their behaviours at different times. It’s really a great talk. Different educators can have such different views about early childhood education. She presented a new world to me. (A parent of Bentai Huang, Montessori Class-E, Nov 6, 2003) Commentaries and conversations on Low & Palulis and Luo 82 http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci Transnational Curriculum Inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci I am aware that my paper might not facilitate transnational conversations in curriculum inquiry because my paper is purposefully written for a Chinese audience. I agree with Sousa that more clarification of Eastern educational thought is needed if it is to contribute to transnational curriculum work. But I think that is beyond the scope of my paper. However, I hope that Western readers might be able to get some ideas about how Chinese education can change from modernist to postmodernist, and indeed how Chinese thinking might already embody some immanent postmodern thought. Many Chinese intellectuals value ambiguity, webbing, and play – attributes that should facilitate a more postmodern curriculum. Finally, Julianne Moss writes that she would like to hear more from me as writer, learner, teacher, postgraduate student, etc. I agree that if I was (re)writing this paper for a Western audience of curriculum scholars I would be likely to include a little more currere. But I did not think that this was needed in a letter to my sister. Presenting this letter as a conference paper was an experiment for me – an experiment that I thought was consistent with what I have learned with William Doll. Moss, like Sousa, also suggests that much of what I wrote in my letter is well-known in the West, but I also interpret her as suggesting that Western readers should read my paper with curiosity rather than complacence, and for that I thank her very sincerely. Commentaries and conversations on Low & Palulis and Luo 83 http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 一封给姐姐的信 – 论威廉姆.多尔的四 R 理论: 对有关此文章评论的回应 罗丽新 首先，我想感谢所有的评论者给予我的极富思想性的评论和提 出的问题（同时，对 Warren 和 Marg Sellers，我要谢谢他们的图 片和草图注释 - 还有 Marg 给我的信）。我尤其感谢李子建教授给 我提供了他的评论的中英文两个版本，因为不同的语言有不同的隐 含话语 — 阅读同一评论的不同语言版本帮助我更好地理解李教授 的意见；同时我发现有的时候用中文思考和用英文写作比较容易， 有时候则相反。以下我将主要就李教授的评论做出回复，因为我 想，正如 Francisco Sousa 所理解的那样，我给姐姐的信对中国读 者来说，兴许要比对西方课程界学者来得有趣些。 李教授写道： 在信件的起始部分，她提及姐姐的女兒東東在深圳一所幼稚園上學， 那所學校採用了蒙台梭利教學法和多元智力教育方案。如果羅女士能解釋 東東的學習，以至幼稚園的脈絡背景，與多爾的後現代課程觀有關（或沒 有關聯）的地方則更為理想。 深圳莲花二村幼儿园是北京师范大学国际比较教育研究所的蒙台 梭利和多元智力课题的实验基地，而这些课题都是中国国家教育部 的研究项目。在 2001 年，莲花二村幼儿园还加入了一个中国-加拿 大教育合作项目-英语浸入式教学研究。这个项目是一个为期三年 的研究课题。上述这些课题的研究者每年都到幼儿园做若干次的实 地研究。莲花二村幼儿园园长王薇丽有着极为开放的思想，她致力 于将教育理论与教学实际相结合。每次园内有研究者到访，她都组 织许多研讨会，让教师学习更多理论知识以及能够和研究者讨论他 们实际教学中遇到的问题。同时，她也邀请研究者给园内的家长们 讲课。 莲花二村幼儿园总共有 10 个班级。在 2001 年，园内有 4 个蒙 班。到了 2004 年，蒙班数量增加到 6 个。东东就读于其中的一个 蒙班。这些蒙班根据蒙台梭利教学法和多元智力理论来组织教学。 同时，每个蒙班都配有一个英语教师实行浸入式英语教学 - 此英 语老师只对孩子们说英语。通常，孩子们半天时间做蒙式工作，半 天时间做英语活动。 一般来说，蒙班的活动都是主题活动 – 教师们先选择一个主题 并组织一些初始的与主题相关的活动，然后，新的与主题相关的活 动会从孩子们在这些初始活动中表现出的兴趣、需要和提出的请求 中产生。举例来说，蒙Ｂ班的老师选择了一个主题 – 纸，然后他们 组织孩子们学习纸的历史，看有关造纸的录像，以及自己动手造 纸。在进行这些活动的过程中，有些孩子注意到有的纸粗糙，有的 纸光滑，而另外一些孩子则对不同纸的透光性产生了兴趣。于是老 师们就组织了另外两个活动让孩子们探究纸的特性。当一个主题被 Transnational Curriculum Inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci Commentaries and conversations on Low & Palulis and Luo 84 http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 探究了一段时间之后，老师们会改变主题。在这种教学方式下，孩 子们的兴趣和需要受到重视，并且他们的创造力受到鼓励。蒙班的 老师需要花大量的时间观察孩子们，感知他们的发展阶段以及个人 的兴趣或者需要，然后据此给予每个孩子个别帮助。 然而，虽然在一定程度上这些蒙班重视孩子们的多样性和自我 组织的能力，可是这些对促进孩子们的创造力还是不够的。根据我 2001 年在园内做志愿者时的观察，和在 2001 年到 2003 年期间我姐 姐有关东东教育的信息以及我与园长的交流，我认为园内的老师还 是在强加预设的教学目标给孩子，还是在追求“普遍真理”。孩子 们被引导着去理解既存的“真理”而不是建构新的。除外，由于园 内进行着多种教学项目，老师感到压力非常大。如果他们能够明白 不同项目中的相同模式，他们就可以从表面地模仿中解脱出来，从 而更具有创造性。同时，孩子们可以更多地被鼓励对自己行为进行 反思以及在不同的事物中寻找联系。此外，许多孩子的家长和我姐 姐一样 - 我姐总是在想她需要教东东什么，怎样教才“对”。她在 设计和决定东东的未来。在没有意识到，也没有鼓励东东的自我生 成的能力的情况下，她很担心自己能否教好东东。我认为，像东东 一样生活在这种环境（包括幼儿园和家庭）里的孩子还是被关在现 代主义的盒子里教育着。因此，我感到非常有必要把我对后现代主 义的理解和我的姐姐以及中国教师们分享，借以打开他们的思路， 从而让孩子们有可能和教育者一起建构他们自己的教育。（关于莲 花二村幼儿园的详细资料请看：http://www.szlotus.net/） 李教授写道： 就豐富性的準則而言，羅女士用了區別褲子和裙子的例子。她建議提 出「為甚麼公公不穿裙子？」的問題來引導東東探索人類與服飾的關係。 多爾（王紅宇譯，2001，頁250）界定豐富性為「多種可能性或多重解 釋。」雖然東東的公公住在中國大城巿，不會穿著裙子，但是我想羅女士 亦可考慮展示一幅來自中國少數民族男士的圖畫，以及另一幅蘇格蘭穿著 傳統蘇格蘭裙的男士的圖畫。 我想到过苏格兰男人的裙子，我也同意有必要介绍“多种可能性 和多重解释”给学生，但是，当时我写关于裙子的段落意在提醒读 者注意不同事物间的关系。我认为，让读者在一个段落里同时关注 （或者困惑于）两个论点是不明智的（这两个论点是，“我们需要 引导学生在丰富中寻找关系”，和“我们需要在丰富中探寻多种解 释”）。我想这样做可能会令我的观点模糊 – 不过现在看来，很抱 歉，我可能小看了我读者的领悟力。 李教授又写道： 就關聯性的準則來說，羅女士提及日本人的經驗和建議利用適量」的 負面經驗（例如衡突）去使兒童堅強。我不喜歡「負面經驗」這個用詞， 因為它未必能鼓勵師生之間建立一種反思性關係。反而，我較喜歡採用多 爾（Poll, 2002, p.50）利用社區的觀念作為「同時強調關懷和批判――強 調需要一種高度的信任」。 Transnational Curriculum Inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci Commentaries and conversations on Low & Palulis and Luo 85 http://www.szlotus.net/ http://www.szlotus.net/ http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 我同意许多李教授关于修改用词的直接或间接的建议。在这个 段落里，我也许需要写成“所谓‘负面的’经验”，因为任何经验 都可以被看成是正面的，也可以是负面的，还可以两者都是。也许 我当时想当然地认为，负面经验只适于在一个多尔倡导的（我在关 于如何使多样性成为可能的章节中也提到的）- 有关怀的社区里使 用。 李教授还写道： 以我對中國文化的有限知識，欣賞中國藝術作品有待進一步強化，例 如通過展示中國山水畫和提供指引以輔助學生去理解模糊概念。課程的 「本土化」和與本地脈絡相關的觀念是得到肯定的（受到尊重的）。不 過，要解讀那位在中國偏遠山區工作的教師所提出的觀點，必須要很小心 並要配合脈絡，這是由於教學的「本土化」可能導致進一步的社會／區域 性和經濟上的不平等。再者，在北京教英文時用長城作例子顯得十分簡 單。參考長城的歷史和文化脈絡，以及長城對學生的個人意義也許值得考 慮。 以上李教授所有的建议都很有道理，但是我文章的目的不是为 了教老师具体怎么教，而是为了激发老师的思想，让他们打开思 路，对多种可能性开放。事实上，在多尔教授的课上，他极少告诉 我们具体的教学方式。我逐渐地领悟到他是在有目的地引导我们从 对具体教学方式的思考中释放出来，而开始考虑不同教学方式中的 模式。 这里我想强调我写这篇文章的主要目的是为了向中国读者呈现 一种对教育，对人生，以及对世界的后现代主义观。我个人在中国 的经验告诉我，中国人很崇拜西方现代科学和思想，他们很容易 （在我看来）将外国的理论当成一个新的准则来遵从、来测量和评 估事物。我觉得有必要提醒人们，任何理论或者见解都只是在有限 的情况下有效的。多尔的后现代课程观也只是一种见解，而不是唯 一的一种，还有许多其它的课程观存在或正在形成。目前中国教育 者正在满怀热情地学习“西方如何做”，但是我担心如果没有努力探 寻所学内容的潜在背景，他们中的许多人可能会很容易吸收到西方 的糟粕而不是精华。 至于 Francisco Sousa 的评论，我想，我在第一届世界课程大会以 及我在深圳的讲话后得到的反响，已经证明了我的文章对告知我的 中国同行- 后现代课程观系统理论化的可能性- 有着积极的意义。在 世界课程大会上，一个使用多尔（1993）的书作为教材的中国教授 听完我的发言之后告诉我，我帮助她澄清了一些对多尔理论的认 识。另外一个中国教授则说他将把我的文章分发给他班上的学生。 课程大会之后，我在我的家乡（深圳）做了两次讲话。一次是给一 个建筑设计公司的成员（关于后现代世界观）, 另一次是给莲花二 村幼儿园的老师和家长。以下是一位家长给我的评论： 今晚听了学校邀请嘉宾罗丽新老师讲的《新课程观介绍—— “后现代主义》，收获很大。 希望孩子以不同的方式成功，而不是造就一 ” “ ” “ ”百个工程师 、 何为真实？孩子的心里就是真实 、 人类在游戏中成功 “ ” “、 让孩子平等看待世界万物 、 以不同时间段的表现了解孩子情况。可 Transnational Curriculum Inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci Commentaries and conversations on Low & Palulis and Luo 86 http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci ” “ ”以疑问，不必忧虑 、 多玩文字游戏 。真是妙语连珠！同为教育者，幼 E 20儿教育却是一个新的世界。（蒙 班黄本泰家长， 03 11 6年 月 日） 我意识到我的文章可能不能促进课程探究的跨国对话，因为我 的文章是专门为中国读者写的。我同意 Sousa 的观点 - 如果我的文 章是要对跨国课程工作有所贡献的话，我需要更多地解释东方的教 育思想。但是我想这就超越了我文章的范围了。 然而，我希望西方读者能够从我的文章中了解到中国教育如何 能够从现代主义转向后现代主义，以及中国思想如何已经蕴含了一 些内在的后现代思想。许多中国的学者重视模糊，网络和游戏 – 这 些都是能推动一个更后现代的课程观的品质。 最后，Julianne Moss 写到，她希望能够从我这里听到更多的，我 从一个作者、学生、老师和研究生的角度出发的想法，我同意如果 我是为了一个西方课程界的读者而写（或重写）这篇文章的话，我 很可能会包括更多一点的存在体验课程（注：currere 是课程的拉丁 词根，派纳将之引发建立了课程的自传理论。关于 currere 与课程 的自传理论的中文解释，请参看张华等翻译的派纳的《理解课程》 一书） 。但是我不认为这是我给我姐姐的信中所需要的。以信件方 式来写会议文章对我是一次实验 – 一个我认为和我从多尔教授所学 一致的实验。和 Sousa 一样，Moss 也认为我所写的大部分都是西方 世界众所周知的内容。但是，我同时也诠释她的评论为，她在建议 西方读者带着好奇而不是自满来阅读我的文章。在此，我对她表示 诚挚的谢意。 参考文献： 张华 等译：《理解课程：历史与当代课程话语研究导论》 （美） 派纳等著，教育科学出版社，2003 年。 Transnational Curriculum Inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci Commentaries and conversations on Low & Palulis and Luo 87 http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci Commentaries and conversations on Low & Palulis and Luo 88 Transnational Curriculum Inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci LABOURED BREATHING: RUNNING WITH AND AGAINST INTERNATIONALISING TEXTS OF CURRERE A RESPONSE TO THE REVIEWERS’ COMMENTS Marylin Low The work of the mountain does not lie just with the mountain, but with its quiescence…the work of the water does not lie just with the water, but with its movement. Moreover, the work of antiquity does not lie just with antiquity, but with its freedom from error. The work of the present does not lie with just the present, but with its freedom. (Shih-T’ao in Trinh, 1991, p.166). Since receiving Noel Gough’s message and assembling the two TCI texts with and against commentaries and conversations of this first issue, I have traveled transnationally from Vancouver, Canada to Honolulu, Hawai’i to Majuro in the Republic of the Marshall Islands. I sit in a thatched roof bungalow overlooking the lagoon as I contemplate the responses to Laboured breathing, including my own. I am here to assist the Ministry of Education in curriculum and professional development as they boldly risk introducing Kindergarten into a public ‘colonial’ school system under repair. Nowhere more powerfully and obviously is there laboured breathing in internationalizing texts of currere. The opening citation comments on the labour involved in setting the work of the present free. Perhaps this is what Lixin Luo was in the middle of in ‘Letter to my sister.’ I am reminded of the labour Pat Palulis and I worked through in the writing of this manuscript. Both therapeutic and alarming, our stories were not smoothed over as Julianne Moss suggests, but written from the gut – raw, troubled and troubling, always uncertain, never resolved. I wonder how we could have written these stories differently to bring more radically to life, the difficulty of those lived experiences. Visceral images were written in a textual form with aesthetic framings, evoking for earlier viewers of this text formidable hospitable powerful mysterious ambiguous readings. An arche-text visually displayed, worked to stay open to interpretation and impression, calling for a response. The comments iterate openings for Warren and Marg Sellers, and Julianne, as they say, up and down and in-between. Writing pedagogic life as it is understood in its flow and in its temporary pauses is difficult. We read the commentaries, wondering where readers had lingered, where they had nestled in (dis)comfort with a word here and there, where they had freed themselves from the constraints of the text, where they had traveled with the word. Conversations emphasized the form and its multiple openings for readers. We wonder if our stories evoked difficult stories of their own that their commentaries did not share. As I re-read the commentaries, I am reminded of a citation from Althusser found in Wolfreys (2000, p. 3): there is no such thing as an innocent reading, we must say what reading we are guilty of. http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci Commentaries and conversations on Low & Palulis and Luo Transnational Curriculum Inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 89 I am grateful to Noel Gough and for the design of TCI, creating spaces for transnational exchanges of ‘guilty’ readings. REFERENCES Trinh, Minh-ha, T. (1991). When the moon waxes red. New York: Routledge. Wolfreys, J. (2000). Readings: Acts of close reading in literary theory. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci Commentaries and conversations on Low & Palulis and Luo Transnational Curriculum Inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 90 LABOURED BREATHING: RUNNING WITH AND AGAINST INTERNATIONALISING TEXTS OF CURRERE A RESPONSE TO THE REVIEWERS’ COMMENTS Pat Palulis Response to Julianne Moss: Further to the subject of images, imaginings … the text runs on … bringing China home. Chinese graduate students here at-home draw me into the high-tech splendor that dazzled us in Shanghai. The Shanghai conference1 proceedings are seldom sedentary in our readings. As our discourse leaked beyond the deadlines of a graduate course, we worked with digital images of our conversations juxtaposed with citational gems and storied fragments for a conference presentation at the University of Ottawa. We invited our audience to engage in marginalia around and about our textual citations. So I do appreciate your comments (and Warren Sellers’ marginalia) and I did follow your trackings to Fischman. I read images as text, reading with Patricia Ticineto Clough who draws from Donna Haraway on her notion of a ‘diffracted’ gaze – diffraction as a ‘rhizomatic writing, a composing and recomposing that cuts into and cuts away from genres, technologies, images, and scenes so that the movement is never simply narrative or life story’ (2000, p. 184-5). Julianne, your image of the children’s book was uncanny. How could you have known that this time last year I was a primary teacher in a red brick schoolhouse in Vancouver on the Pacific coast … messing with letters and numbers and colours and cultures with parents peeking furtively through the classroom doorway … wondering what we were up to. The work of reconceptualizing was alive and almost always in trouble in our messy classroom. When I read about the early work of the reconceptualists, introduced to us by Ted Aoki, it was painful not to have been there with them. Where was I? Spinning around the globe with curriculum in/as my baggage. And now it’s time to do some internationalizing work at-home … and the work is difficult. Transnational conversations with Marylin become increasingly complicated as we work the text at home/not-home. Response to Marg and Warren Sellers: It was rather exciting to have two at-work in a text that was written by two – a doubling of doublings. I have often wondered what readers do in our hybrid texts. Ted Aoki at Baton Rouge2 told us that the text required at least three readings; he read the two texts separately and then a third time as a doubling. I think he said that he liked what we were trying to do. I liked that someone thought we were trying to do something. I recently acquired Jackson’s (2001) Marginalia and was ecstatic to read Warren’s marginalia and then realized that there was no marginalia for the bottom dwelling text … at which point my author ‘ego’ relocated itself in a Derridean equation ‘Ego=ghost’ (1994, p. 133). I am spooked. But I do appreciate Marg’s live(d) experiences à pied in the corridors of the text and I like Warren’s ‘road’work and would hope now that a reader might need a ‘road’ stop at a bracketed bottom-dwelling word … in a pied à terre … that a reader might take a 1 The First Triennial Meeting of the International Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies, Shanghai, P. R. China, October 26–29, 2003. 2 Editor’s note: Selected proceedings from this conference have been published as Trueit, Donna, Doll, William E., Wang, Hongyu, & Pinar, William F. (Eds.). (2003). The Internationalization of Curriculum Studies: Selected Proceedings from the LSU [Louisiana State University] Conference 2000. New York: Peter Lang. http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci Commentaries and conversations on Low & Palulis and Luo Transnational Curriculum Inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 91 deconstructive bite into a word to release it and give it another chance to make some trouble up-and-down and in-between. Gregory Ulmer reading Derrida contends that a deconstructive reading starts with entamer – a biting into: ‘The first step of decomposition is the bite … the effect is that of releasing the grasp or hold of a controlling context’ (1985, p. 57). Response to Noel Gough: Delighted to be in the first edition of TCI as a paper ghost from the conference in Baton Rouge. Ghosts do get around. I see this new journal as an invocation for doing ‘home’work as well as ‘road’work … in-flight and at-sea in the labo(u)ring of internationalizing texts. I read Marylin in a line-of-flight reading under repair in Majuro while I have been on the road to Wawa doing ‘home’work. I have just returned from a high school reunion in a small town in northern Ontario. During the course of the visit, I took a detour in disrepair to a log cabin on Hawk Lake … a habitat now overgrown with the surrounding wilderness … ownership changing hands from my family to an American teaching couple who spent summers there and, recently, purchased by a European who comes to visit once a year. The global village coming home as I arrive at no-home to call home. The windows of a cabin boarded up denying the nostalgic longing of my voyeuristic gaze. The international arrival in fear of the other-at-home. A warning notice against intruders posted by the provincial police and tagged to the door. The global in fear of the local. Why are we so afraid of each other? Where does fear locate itself in discourse? I linger in the text in fear of releasing a response. The bracketed words in the bottom of our hybrid text represent just a few of the words labouring in the currere of everyday life. Studying with Ted Aoki means learning to crack-the-words so that another textual event might happen. And I am back at-home in Ottawa now to re-articulate a future for a few words at-work in a text. Polyvocal conversations … reading Julianne … reading Marg and Warren … reading Noel … reading Lixin nearby … readers at- work in the text … readings working the text … the text guilty of Derridean hospitality and/as hostility as it writes its readers. And the remains of a text not-read wanting to be consumed. And so I offer another morsel … a further enticement for the reader to labour in the text … a text hungering for conversation … ‘labour’ denotes not merely one of the more fertile concepts within the Marxist tradition, but it is also the lietmotiv of the cultural social sciences. Cultura or cultivare always imply an element of labour for a future to be constructed. (Ulf Strohmayer 1997, p. 390) Noel Gough has opened conversation as a virtual polyglossia … I cannot stop writing … but for the pressure of a deadline … Noel wanting to remove the under construction sign on TCI’s homepage … and ‘I’ hungering for a conversation to carry on …and when you read with Aoki, the conversations are never easy … and always unfinished … and reading with Marylin, I confess to guilty readings of Wolfreys’ glossalalia as words arrive … in alphabetical (dis)order … wanting to be released … waiting for another event to happen … REFERENCES Clough, P.T. (2000). Autoaffection: Unconscious thought in the age of teletechnology. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci Commentaries and conversations on Low & Palulis and Luo Transnational Curriculum Inquiry 1 (1) 2004 http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci 92 Derrida, J. (1994). Specters of Marx. (P. Kamuf, Trans.). New York and London: Routledge. Jackson, H.J. (2001). Marginalia: Readers writing in books. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Strohmayer, U. (1997). Forget the delivery, or, what post are we talking about? In G. Benko and U. Strohmayer (Eds.), Space and social theory: Interpreting modernity and Postmodernity (pp. 383-392). Cambridge, MA, and Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Ulmer, G. (1985). Applied grammatology: Post(e)-pedagogy from Jacques Derrida to Joseph Beuys. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press. Wolfreys, J. (2004). Event. In J. Wolfreys (Ed.), Glossalalia: an alphabet of critical keywords (pp. 77-88). New York: Routledge. http://www.deakin.edu.au/tci http://www.nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs.index.php/tci Luo_response_chinese.pdf Ò»·â¸ø½ã½ãµÄÐÅ ¨C ÂÛÍþÁ®Ä·.¶à¶ûµ�