What If Curriculum (of a Certain Kind) Doesn’t Matter?

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Notes

Notes

1 In speaking for the necessity of self-directing, I do not mean to support interpretations of agency as solely residing in the individual or to deny the complex ways people’s agency is embedded in social networks. Indeed, most of my scholarship is concerned with challenging historical, sociological, and educational work that assumes such an American middle-class and gender-specific model of agency in explanations for social action (see den Heyer, 2003; and den Heyer & Fidyk, 2007). However, in the context of research reviewed in these essays, I feel compelled to speak up for children’s capacities in this regard.

2 See, for example, studies into the differences between students’ “preferable” future in contrast to what they expect as the “probable” future in Eckersley (1999), Hicks (2004), and Hutchinson (1996).