Centripetal Thinking in Curriculum Studies

Abstract

After years of generating divergent approaches to scholarship, cast mostly as reactions against a historical orthodoxy, the curriculum studies community is now looking at a new dialectic—one marked by a physics that pull ideas inward toward some centripetal center. The tension between looking for unifying ideas as they articulate with a multiplicity of incommensurate ones has, in fact, marked the nature of most scholarly thinking. Isaiah Berlin personified such a tension in his use of the Greek aphorism, “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” In recent years, the curriculum field has been dominated by foxes, who have resisted any attempt to even consider the role of hedgehog. But several projects have recently been launched in the field that might signal a new age for curriculum studies, as a new dialogue has been opened that considers possibilities of finding some semblance of canon or disciplinarity in the field. The search for canon or disciplinarity is less likely to yield a hard‐and‐fast verifiable outcome as much as an inconclusive discussion. But, as Plato reminds us, such a discussion is precisely the point because the knowing of canon is doing the knowing of canon.

Notes

Notes

1 The distinction between these two ideas was originally brought to my attention by my colleague Greg Hamot, who noted the tendency of university policies to be more committed to the goal of divergence (views marked as oppositional to established forms) than to diversity.

2 According to guidelines set down in NCLB, the education of public school children is now best served by compelling school districts and individual schools to use what are known as scientifically based programs and practices. The narrative of the NCLB Act includes repeated references to the term scientifically based research (SBR) and is unabashed in promoting SBR as a key principle for the reform of low‐achieving schools. State and local education agencies are, in fact, required to use SBR to bring improvements to low‐achieving schools targeted for assistance. The law also calls for a general commitment to school reforms that seek to “identify and implement professional development, instructional strategies, and methods of instruction that are based on scientifically‐based research and that have proven effective in addressing the specific instructional issues that caused the school to be identified for school improvement” (NCLB Act, 2002, Title I, Part A, Section 1116). NCLB specifically authorizes funds “to provide assistance to State educational agencies and local educational agencies in establishing reading programs for students in kindergarten through grade 3 that are based on scientifically based reading research, to ensure that every student can read at grade level or above no later than the end of grade 3” (NCLB Act, 2002, 20 U.S.C.§ 6361).