Reconceptualizing Curriculum Development: Inspiring and Informing Action

Reconceptualizing Curriculum Development provides accessible, clear guidance on curriculum problem solving and educational leadership through the practice of a synoptic curriculum study. This practice integrates three influential interpretations of curriculum - curriculum as deliberative artistry, curriculum as complicated conversation, and curriculum as currere - with John Dewey's lifetime work on reflective inquiry. At its heart, the book advances a way of studying as a way of living with reference to the question: How might I live as a democratic educator?

The study guidance is organized as an open-ended scaffolding of three embedded reflective inquiries informed by four deliberative conversations. Study recommendations are provided by a carefully selected team. The field-tested study-based approach is illustrated through a multi-layered, multi-voiced narrative collage of four experienced teachers' personal journeys of understanding in a collegial study context.

Applying William Pinar's argument that a"conceptual montage" enabling teachers to lead complicated conversations should be the focus for curriculum development in the field's current - post-reconceptualist moment, the book moves forward the educational aim of facilitating a holistic subject/self/social understanding through the practice of a balanced hermeneutics of suspicion and trust.

It closes with a discussion of cross-cultural collaboration and advocacy, reflecting the interest of curriculum scholars in a wide range of countries in this study-based, lead-learning approach to curriculum development.

Book Details

• Author: James G. Henderson
• Publisher: Routledge
• eBook ISBN: 9781317648758, 1317648757
• Print ISBN: 9780415704274, 0415704278
• Other ISBNs: 9781315762593, 9781317648741, 9781138287075, 9781138809444, 9781317648765, 9781322435268