Concept of Currere
Pinar started it all -- looking at curriculum, not as a noun, but as a verb. He reconceptualizes the word so that teachers and other educators might look at what and how we teach our students as a journey of which we are a part, rather than just a bunch of facts about people, places, dates, and events to be memorized.
He does this by translating the word "curriculum" back into the Latin verb "currere," meaning to run the course, and sheds a whole new light on what curriculum could be. He sees it as an autobiographical method that "asks us to slow down, to remember even re-enter the past, and to meditatively imagine the future. Then slowly and in one's own terms, one analyzes one's experience of the past and fantasies of the future in order to understand more fully, with more complexity and subtlety, one's submergence in the present."
His method involves returning to the past (regressive), imagining the future (progressive), understanding the connection between the two (analytic), and then putting it all together so that it helps us see ourselves in relation to history, as a part of history, and as creators of history by having an effect on the future (synthetic).
Slattery clarifies this concept further in his book, explaining it as an "inward journey." He points out that educators are accustomed to seeing curriculum as a "tangible object" rather than a "process," and quotes Schubert to explain what happens when curriculum is understood in this different way: "The individual seeks meaning amid the swirl of present events, moves historically into his or her own past to recover and reconstitute origins, and imagines and creates possible directions of his or her own future."
Edgerton brings up the rear with the weakest of the texts. She talks about the "currere of marginality," and discusses the "ways in which marginalized groups, individuals, and ideas come to be marginalized in a given culture, society, and/or place." She says this has much to do with what is "considered to be knowledge and who is considered to possess it." The margin, she continues, "must 'know' the center in order to survive, but the reverse is not true to the same extent. Yet neither the margin nor center exists as such without the other."
I say Edgerton's is the weakest because of her exclusive language, opaque explanations, and made up words (e.g., problematics) which inhibit understanding and marginalize the reader!
He does this by translating the word "curriculum" back into the Latin verb "currere," meaning to run the course, and sheds a whole new light on what curriculum could be. He sees it as an autobiographical method that "asks us to slow down, to remember even re-enter the past, and to meditatively imagine the future. Then slowly and in one's own terms, one analyzes one's experience of the past and fantasies of the future in order to understand more fully, with more complexity and subtlety, one's submergence in the present."
His method involves returning to the past (regressive), imagining the future (progressive), understanding the connection between the two (analytic), and then putting it all together so that it helps us see ourselves in relation to history, as a part of history, and as creators of history by having an effect on the future (synthetic).
Slattery clarifies this concept further in his book, explaining it as an "inward journey." He points out that educators are accustomed to seeing curriculum as a "tangible object" rather than a "process," and quotes Schubert to explain what happens when curriculum is understood in this different way: "The individual seeks meaning amid the swirl of present events, moves historically into his or her own past to recover and reconstitute origins, and imagines and creates possible directions of his or her own future."
Edgerton brings up the rear with the weakest of the texts. She talks about the "currere of marginality," and discusses the "ways in which marginalized groups, individuals, and ideas come to be marginalized in a given culture, society, and/or place." She says this has much to do with what is "considered to be knowledge and who is considered to possess it." The margin, she continues, "must 'know' the center in order to survive, but the reverse is not true to the same extent. Yet neither the margin nor center exists as such without the other."
I say Edgerton's is the weakest because of her exclusive language, opaque explanations, and made up words (e.g., problematics) which inhibit understanding and marginalize the reader!
posted by book1 | 4:42 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home