From curriculum to pedagogy and back again: knowledge, the person and the changing world

Abstract

This paper reflects on some changing contexts of the discussion of curriculum and pedagogy since the late 1960s, and it draws on three research projects in which the author has been involved to illustrate why pedagogy and curriculum have again become issues of evident public and political concern and to show some particular points of tension in moving forward today. Issues of curriculum and pedagogy came under challenge in association with new social movements of the 1960s and beyond, and the new emphasis on whose knowledge was being privileged in schooling, and what identities and social patterns were being perpetuated through schooling. Today, in the context of global auditing and benchmarking, and of competitive economic policies and anxieties about migration and citizenship, education is seen by governments as a prominent part of their economic and social policy. But keeping strong attention to both curriculum (or ‘the what’) and the pedagogical relationships (or the process) is rarely attained simultaneously.

Keywords:

• curriculum
• social movements
• pedagogy
• politics
• knowledge
• inequalities

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this paper was first prepared for the Pedagogy, Culture & Society seminar held at the University of Manchester in February 2007 entitled ‘What Does Pedagogy Mean to You?’. The author wishes to acknowledge Australian Research Council funding support for the two research projects drawn on in this article, ‘Changing Work, Changing Workers, Changing Selves: A Study of Pedagogies in the New Vocationalism’ (2002–4), and ‘School Knowledge, Working Knowledge and the Knowing Subject: A Review of State Curriculum Policies 1975–2005’ (2007–8). In both projects she has benefited from many stimulating discussions with her fellow researchers: for the pedagogies project these were Clive Chappell, Nicky Solomon and Mark Tennant (University of Technology, Sydney) and Carolyn Williams (University of Western Sydney); for the current curriculum project, and for some specific discussion about the current paper, this was in particular Cherry Collins (University of Melbourne), along with Katie Wright, May Leckey and Brenda Holt (all University of Melbourne).

Notes

1. See http://www.ncb.org.au.

2. This was one of the reasons I embarked (with Julie McLeod) on my own longitudinal study of young people going through their entire secondary school years (McLeod and Yates 2006). But even in that we found it impossible to maintain a close view of the actual curriculum and learning experiences alongside the perspectives of the development of identity in the context of particular schools.