Showing papers in "Transnational Curriculum Inquiry in 2009"

Rendering dimensions of a liminal currere

Abstract: This article attempts to explore, articulate, and provide examples for understanding the non-linear relationship between processes of the arts and the processes of research in relation to representational forms of artful scholarly inquiry. For an a/r/tographer (an artist/researcher/teacher interested in merging the arts with research writing—graphe), the relationship between the creation of artful representational forms and the crafting of artful scholarly research are not dualist, nor dichotomous, but rather non-linear, rhizomatic, and dynamically interwoven. This paper offers a description of our individual art-making processes as living inquiries of pedagogical practice grounded in the work of curriculum theorist, Jacques Daignault. We provide a perspective of conceptualizing curriculum as the liminal space itself.

Bildung and the Internationalization of Curriculum Studies

Abstract: I explore resonances between Didaktik and North American curriculum studies, focusing on Bildung, linking it to the autobiographical tradition in North America. Posing historical and gendered questions regarding the concept (of Bildung), I also explore differences between the two traditions. During our time together in Tampere, I suggest, we can focus our own, and not only our students’, self-formation. Perhaps we use conference encounters not only to report our own work, faithful to our own national cultures and theoretical programs, but also to allow ourselves to go into temporary exile, undergo estrangement from what is familiar and everyday and enter a third space, neither home nor abroad, but in-between, a space that, in von Humboldt’s words, “that makes possible the interplay between his receptivity and his self-activity.” In this interplay, I suggest, can occur the internationalization of curriculum studies.

Toward Understanding a Curriculum of Being Inhabited by the Language of the Other

Abstract: This paper traces, often drawing on autobiographical examples, the temporal migrations of educational experiences in the language of the other. As a documented Canadian and British citizen, an immigrant with an ex-appropriated proper name traced to Guyana’s indentured Chinese cane reapers, and thus, an imperial and postcolonial subject with certain identity disorders here in America, Canada, and elsewhere, how is a migratory subject subjected to the language of the other? More specifically, how might one learn, via currere, from a migrant subject’s educational experiences of appropriation and alienation in the language of the other?

Nüshu: a curriculum of women’s identity

Abstract: This paper looks at the curricular functions of nushu, a phonetic script invented by women in Jiangyong County, Hunan Province, China, and a set of social practices that went with it. Largely barred from learning to read and write Chinese script, the women of Jiangyong County taught nushu to each other, passing the knowledge from generation to generation. Scholars have examined nushu from the perspectives of anthropology, linguistics, literature, literacy, and women’s studies. This paper examines nushu from the perspective of curriculum theory. Nushu, after all, was an educational practice: a group of women who made themselves literate and transmitted this literacy across generations. This paper focuses on autobiographical ballads, one genre of writings within the nushu corpus. These autobiographical narratives present, in what they say and do not say, certain portraits of women’s lives. Using narrative analysis, this paper reveals how nushu texts and practices together form a curriculum shaping the way in which these women could present their identities.

Responding to Pauline Sameshima and Rita Irwin’s ‘Rendering dimensions of liminal currere’

Abstract: The picturings and texts that follow are Warren Sellers’ and Marg Sellers’ responses to reading Rendering dimensions of liminal currere. In our own currereing work we use a rhizomatic approach to reading, seeing, writing, picturing, thinking and re-reading to move towards ways of understanding, conceptualising and expressing our interpretations of complex notions, such as Sameshima and Irwin’s liminality. In this instance, we envision our approach as responding to an invitation to make opportunistic interconnections with the reinforcing rods that extend liminally from the plateau edges in Pauline Sameshima’s photograph ‘Edges 5’. Or, plainly put, a chance for us to join with Pauline and Rita in elaborating their ideas.

A Zen Journey in the Living Map of Curriculum

Abstract: This paper will first analyze the rhetoric of the dead map of curriculum and its relation to the ideology of control in education, then explore the alternative of a Zen journey in the living map of curriculum. As the practice of Zen meditation focuses on the reflection of daily routines to see alternatives and possibilities, it echoes Maxine Greene’s view of imagination by uncoupling from the ordinary: a power element in provoking the not yet openings in the living map of curriculum. Furthermore, the spiritual power of Zen calls us to play the stringless lute of curriculum to get a new key beyond in the living map of curriculum. Finally this paper touches on the challenge or danger of this living map under the “ecstasy of communication” in a postmodern age.

Journeys in/with ‘sustainability literacy’: Pedagogical possibilities in higher education contexts.

Abstract: Recent reports from the higher education sectors of the UK and Australia suggest that graduates from higher education institutions should be sustainability literate. Conceptualisation of sustainability literacy is emerging, complex and contested, providing significant curriculum and pedagogical challenges for higher education institutions. Research in sustainability pedagogy emphasizes the need for interdisciplinary or other innovative approaches to sustainability education and sets a cultural, structural and curricular challenge for the higher education sector. This paper focuses on pedagogical possibilities from the standpoint of research findings that demonstrate the importance of holistic, ‘real world’ learning for understanding the complex and problematic nature of sustainability and sustainable development in theory and practice. Through the paper I explore potentials and problems for outdoor environmental education pedagogy, in higher education contexts, to contribute to sustainability literacy. While the focus of the paper is an exploration of processes and outcomes of a post-graduate expedition conducted for an outdoor environmental education programme in Scotland, it is also, in a sense an expression of my own, ongoing journey of engagement with the concepts and issues relating to sustainability education and, in particular, the notion of sustainability literacy.