This paper explores the affordances of critical disability studies (CDS) for curricular theorizing in teacher education for inclusion and socially just pedagogy. Specifically attending to the posthumanist thread within this field, I offer provocations to three tenets that undergird a disability studies informed teacher education curriculum for…

This essay builds on the notion of 'racialized affects' in conjunction with recent educational theorizing of Sylvia Wynter's work on 'the human' to consider how these insights might extend conceptualizations on the 'coloniality of the affects' in curriculum and pedagogy. Specifically, the analysis shows how bringing into conversation Wynter's…

The crisis of education frequently is framed in terms of methods, where quantitative research is accused of making the subject invisible through quantification, whereas qualitative research is credited for the emphasis on subjectivity and the discursive construction of reality. Such formulations fail to take into account a long-standing critique…

Using the 'medical' framework (symptoms, diagnosis and prescription) in Schwab's the Practical 1 article, I analyze the current state of contemporary curriculum theorizing as a result of the reconceptualist movement. I argue that curriculum theorizing is in serious crisis due to the loss of the original subject of curriculum studies--practice and…

Building on and going beyond Young and Muller's theory of powerful knowledge, this article seeks to articulate a model of a future-oriented, knowledge-rich curriculum by invoking David Lambert's "capabilities" approach and "Bildung"-centred "Didaktik." The curriculum is "knowledge rich" in three respects.…

In this intellectual history, the author traces the refashioning, fall, and re-emergence of the reception of Dewey's work between 1960 and 1988 by student-centred radicals, de-schooling advocates, neo-Marxists, critical educators, and feminist pedagogues--scholars collectively known as the New Left. New Left scholars rejected the assimilationist,…

This conceptual article critiques a popular account of education grounded in Bourdieu's social theories. Specifically, the article shows how Bourdieu overplays competition and underplays ethics, or people's diverse ways of imagining, debating, and living out the good. On a Bourdieusian view of education, it is difficult to see how educators and…

Curriculum decisions are increasingly seen as technocratic or bureaucratic problems, rather than democratic issues that must be deliberated over. As such, curriculum decisions are placed in the hands of a small minority of bureaucrats and business elites who assume the only purpose of education is to prepare children for college and/or the labour…

Human Science Pedagogy is 'a strange case,' as Jürgen Oelkers has recently noted: In the Anglophone world, where Gert Biesta has compellingly encouraged scholars to 'reconsider education as a Geisteswissenschaft' (a human science) its main themes and the contributions of its central figures remain unknown. For Germans, particularly in more…

Following the continental tradition of phenomenological pedagogy, this paper focuses on the lived time and space of school -- and on contexts in which school is understood as a democratic community. It does so by comparing and contrasting related works of G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831), Martinus Langeveld (1905-1989) and Eugen Fink (1905-1975). It shows…

The purpose of this study is to describe an alternative understanding of "Bildung-centred Didaktik" through an examination of Wilhelm von Humboldt's conception and practice of educational reform--"Bildungsreform," 1809-1810--in which the concept of science ("Wissenschaft") was regarded as the fundamental goal and…

The idea of "powerful knowledge" as a curriculum principle has led to extensive discussion. It has been framed as a way of bringing knowledge back into curriculum thinking in the light if its absence in curriculum theory. However, questions have been raised regarding powerful knowledge as a knowledge-based curriculum principle; questions…

This paper discusses the relationship between knowledge and society in social studies by analysing how society is presented in four Finnish social studies textbooks currently in use in comprehensive education. Besides its empirical contribution, the paper examines the possibilities of applying Michael Young's understanding of powerful knowledge in…

What can educators working to develop critical thinking (CT) in their classrooms gain from engaging with the German/Scandinavian tradition of Bildung-centred Didaktik? This article takes up the challenge of how to develop an epistemology of CT that is relational and contextual and gives students the possibility of engaging in ethical debates about…

The argumentation in this paper is grounded in a critical and conceptual analysis of Ted Aoki's phenomenology, wherein curriculum is read as "phenomenological text." The problem explored emerges from Aoki's critique of the Tyler rationale for curriculum design, implementation and evaluation as it is conceived and practised in…