Democratic Curriculum Theory & Practice

Retrieving Public Spaces

edited by

Kris Sloan

&

James T. Sears

papers from the

1^st Annual Curriculum & Pedagogy Conference

Austin TX, October 2000

"I am pleased to be one voice among many colleagues (professors, researchers, curators, teachers, artists, graduate students, and school administrators) who initiated this exciting new venue for curriculum studies…voices for justice, compassion, aesthetic sensibilities, and democratic community."

—Foreword by Patrick Slattery, Texas A & M University

"In the spirit of generous, visionary minds such as John Dewey, Maxine Greene, George Counts, Alice Miel, and Horace Mann Bond, the curriculum field needs to begin a conversation on the public moral dimensions of curriculum work." With this first sentence the Conference on Curriculum and Pedagogy was inaugurated in the autumn of 2000. A diverse group of 200 curriculum workers, teachers, and graduate students participated in democratic community building, scholarly discourse, and examination of school-based issues within a collegial setting. Like other curriculum conferences such as the Chicago conference of 1947 and the Rochester conference of 1973, this event was an effort to effect a turning point in the field. Since the reconceptualization of the field nearly a generation ago, "curriculum scholars and practitioners have not, as yet, collegially established the public ethics for our field." The Preamble for the now annual Curriculum and Pedagogy Conference continues: "Nor have we done a particularly good job in connecting our activities into the public life and have too often become ensnared in narrow, exclusive projects and ideologies." In this volume, we offer critical insights into the historical, political, personal, aesthetic, spiritual, and institutional subtexts of curriculum and their impact on daily educational practices.

2001/246 pp./paper $28.95/ISBN: 1-891928-14-7