Innovación educativa y reformas curriculares en México TO CITE THIS ARTICLE PLEASE INCLUDE ALL OF THE FOLLOWING DETAILS: Macedo, Elizabeth & Lopes, Alice Casimiro. (2012). Rio Curriculum Conference. Transnational Curriculum Inquiry 9 (2) http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci Rio Curriculum Conference Elizabeth Macedo 1 & Alice Casimiro Lopes 2 State University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil In July 2012, the IV Conference of the International Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies took place in the city of Rio de Janeiro. It was supported by the main Brazilian research funding agencies (CNPq, FINEP, CAPES, and FAPERJ) and by State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ), a budget amounting to nearly 60 thousand US dollars. On July 02-05, 257 curriculum field researchers, coming from 20 countries and 60 different universities, have created an environment proper to conversation and discussions on (but not only) curriculum. Two conferences, 4 invited panels and 34 panels for members’ presentations were held, but also relevant conversation was carried at breakfast tables, coffee breaks, lunches and dinners, not to mention in the halls. Concerning the organized spaces for conversation about curriculum, in the Opening Ceremony, the President of ABdC (Brazilian Curriculum Association), Nilda Alves, representing the curriculum researchers in Brazil, has presented the field in the country. The President of IAACS (International Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies), Dr. Zhang Hua, was in charge of the Opening Conference, dealing with Curriculum Studies in China and its dialogue with Paulo Freire’s thought. The invited panels were formed by researchers from various countries and dealt with different themes: Curriculum, Autobiography and Difference, by William Pinar (University of British Columbia) and Nicholas Ng-A-Fook (University of Ottawa); Curriculum Policy, by Alicia de Alba (Universidad Nacional de Misiones) and Myriam Southwell (Universidad Nacional de la Plata/Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales); Radical Pedagogy in Post-Structural Time, by Peter Appelbaum (Arcadia University) and Wayne Hugo (University of Kwazulu-Natal); and Curriculum Field in Brazil, organized by AbdC, composed of Antonio Flavio Moreira (Petrópolis Catholic University), Ana Maria Saul (São Paulo Pontifical Catholic University) and Carlos Eduardo Ferraço (Federal University of Espírito Santo). The panels for members’ presentations were composed of 73 approved papers whose authors have confirmed their presence at the event. In total, there were 103 expanded summaries sent, of which 21 were refused, 70 immediately approved and 12 approved after summary reformulation. Contrary to what normally happens, the Scientific Committee arrived at the decision of asking for such reformulation when it judged that the research quality was good, but the summary presentation was inadequate. The 34 sessions were organized with 2 or 3 papers each, carried out in 6 simultaneous sessions, arranged according to the languages of presentation of papers — Portuguese, English, Spanish, and French —, and mingling researchers from different countries. Discussions after sessions were heated and, in some cases, held in different languages. William Doll (University of British Columbia) was in charge of the Closure Conference, dealing with complexity theories and curriculum, and more specifically Macedo & Lopes. Rio Curriculum Conference 2 Transnational Curriculum Inquiry 9 (2) 2012 http://nitinat.library.ubc.ca/ojs/index.php/tci with the relations between moral and ethics in contemporary curriculum. The presentation of the relevant work by William Doll was made by William Pinar (University of British Columbia) talking about Pragmatism, Post-Modernism and Complexity Theory. We took advantage of the opportunity to praise William Doll’s work in IAACS consolidation. As for the chats in less formal spaces, there is not a lot we could say by now. Each one of the people who took part in them knows how important they were for their professional and personal life. From some of them, we will certainly hear the echoes in collective research projects, jointly written texts and other activities that are starting to appear, related to the participation of each one of us in IAACS. As the space of conversation gathering curriculum field researchers from different countries, there are lots of translations being made in our conferences. We know that we are translating traditions, that thoughts developed for the educational reality of certain places migrate to other cultures. Impossible, but necessary translations, in order to constitute our field and advance its future. In an international association as ours, such translations become visible because we need to negotiate in the language used to have our conversation. In general, we have decided to use a kind of global English, in its various accents, mixed with lots of gestures. The mixture of languages in the halls between the rooms where the Conferences took place remembered us of the international character of the Association, in case we could forget it in certain moments. In this conference edition, we have tried to make such translation more explicit, arranging sessions in different languages and having some with various languages spoken. We have made a special request for the summaries to be sent in more than one language, even for those who have English as their mother tongue. As for we have heard in the halls, we have not lost intelligibility and have emphasized more clearly the horizontality of the relations that our Association would wish to establish in curriculum studies internationalization. Our next conference will be held in 2015, in the University of Ottawa, Canada. Until then, we shall intensify our conversations in other spaces, some of them made available in previous conferences. TCI (Transnational Curriculum Inquiry) is one of the most privileged for this. A lot of what has been published in this journal was presented and debated in IAACS conferences and other forum for curriculum discussions. Therefore, TCI is one of the arenas where the conversations may be held between events and amplified to members who could not be present in the conferences, as well as for the public in general. In the two 2013 numbers, to be launched in June and December, we expect to publish, among other things, numerous papers debated in the IV IAACS Conference. Besides the call for papers for the works debated in Rio Conference, 2013 numbers are open for receiving other papers contributing to complicate and internationalize even more the conversation about curriculum. Notes 1 bethmacedo@pobox.com 2 alicecasimirolopes@gmail.com