Provoking the very “Idea” of Canadian Curriculum Studies as a Counterpointed Composition

Abstract

I would like to hold off on writing abstract until requested revisions are made and if article is accepted. But here is an overview for reviewer and editors:In what follows, I provide narrative snapshots of some historical and contemporary works produced by curriculum scholars working at Canadian universities over the last decade. To readers and fellow colleagues who are associated (or not) with our larger Canadian Association of Curriculum Studies community, I apologize in advance for the many oversights, misinterpretations, and/or exclusions of your works. Like Chambers (2003), regionalism informs my understanding of the vast and rich intellectual and topographic characteristics of our field. Part of my methodological strategy for the initial research that informs this essay is to limit my references to articles published in curriculum studies journals between 2000 and 2013 by scholars who worked and/or are working at Canadian universities. From there, I selected key texts others or myself have used to teach an introductory course to Canadian curriculum studies either at the University of Ottawa and/or elsewhere. Therefore the narratives I selected are situated, and thus, partial—as if they could ever be otherwise. At the very least, this bibliography of Canadian curriculum studies might provide a future passageway for readers to revisit, add to, challenge, deconstruct, and play with the composition of our intellectual history anew as another documentary synoptic experimentation. I have attempted to structure this essay into three sections. The first section provides an overview of the key texts I engage with graduate students to support them toward becoming more familiar with the historical contexts of our field of study. The second section examines different institutional structures through which curriculum scholars are mobilizing and sharing their research. The last section discusses the differing contemporary “curricular schools of thought” I take up within graduate courses to develop and support what I continue to call A Canadian Curriculum Theory Project.