Pinar’s 7 Contributions: “By my count, I have made seven contributions to curriculum studies” (p.143).

The Past in the Present:› 1966 Ohio State University (Bachelor of Arts Honours Program, English) › 1969 (Master of Arts)› 1969 Worked with Frère› 1969-1971 Junior High Social Studies Teacher and High School English Teacher

(Part-time Ph.D.)› 1971-Ph.D. (Tavistock Group-psychopathology)› Dissertation Focus: Self-formation through academic study, solitude and

encounter group experiences.› 1972- University of Rochester, Associate Professor (Madeline Grumet is his Ph.D.

Student)› 1973-1974-Rochester Conference-Reconceptualization› 1985- Louisiana State University

Present › 1989-2005- Visiting scholar across North America› 2006- University of British Columbia, Research Chair of Canada› Director of the Centre for the Study of Internationalization and Advancement of

Curriculum Studies; 2009 SSHRC Study (China and India);South Africa› Founding Editor, Journal of Curriculum Theorizing› Editorial Board Member- 5 other peer reviewed journals› Conference Chair Commitments: Bergamo Conference, AERA, Founding

Chairperson for the American Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies, and

Meet William Pinar

2004

2010

2006

1995

2003

2001

1998

1999

2007

2002

2009

Reconceptualization: Experience

Past----Present----Future

Autobiographical Method(Grumet, Huebner, Tavistok

Project)

Autobiographical Method &

Interdisciplinary Discourse Studies

as Curriculum Studies

Looking Across Pinar’s Book Shelf

Milieu: 1960s-2004

Sputnik, space race, Vietnam War

No Curriculum Departments

Practitioners were curriculum writers, developers, implementers

A business model of education shaped by scientific discourse

TeachingBehaviour

s+

Content

Student Behaviou

rs+Good Test

Results

Pinar’s Context

Purpose: ”As a teacher, my commitment is the complication of students’ understanding of the subject they are studying—in this case—curriculum theory while working to advance the world theoretically” (p.2).

Audience: Education graduate students, teachers and scholars of curriculum theory.

Teacher Education Focus

Thesis: Americans have lost control of teaching and learning done in schools because they have been “graciously submissive” to politicians who use the school, teachers and teacher educators as scapegoats for social problems.

Teachers and Teacher Education: Curriculum Theory Development

“...is a form of autobiographical truth-telling that articulates the educational experience of teachers and students as lived...” (p.25)

CultureStudents

Teacher Subjects

Milieu

Key Assumption

Experience

Narrative InquiryConnelly & ClandininWorking with teachers

throughAction research---

experience

Currere: Self StudyPinar

Working with teachers through teacher education experiences

will positively influence classroom experiences.

Purpose of Book

Experience Currere› “Curriculum ceases to be a thing, and it is

more than a process. It becomes a verb, an action, a social practice, a private meaning , a public hope.

› “Toward that end I will disrobe bodies of knowledge that might function like a psychanalytic remembrance, to reconfigure the pattern of the present in which teachers find themselves” (p.61)

Currere: Complicated Conversations

4 Phase Method Regressive Phase

Progressive Phase

Race

Feminist

Hetero and Homosexual

Analytical Phase

Synthetical Phase

Explore themes

Themes

Great Debaters

Great Debaters

Currere: Complicated Conversations

4 Phase Method Regressive Phase

Progressive Phase

Race

Feminist

Hetero and Homosexual

Analytical Phase

Synthetical Phase

Explore themes

Themes

Teachers •“Of course, teachers must meet contractual obligations regarding curriculum and instruction. However, we need not necessarily believe them or uncritically accept them. Curriculum theorists might assist teachers to avoid the disappearance of their ideals into the maelstrom of classroom demands” (p.30).

•“Teachers should probably be enrolled in universities each term, and not only in education departments or in the subject they teach, although study in these fields is obviously important...” (p.252).

•“Teachers ought not only be subject-area specialists; I suggest that they become private-and-public intellectuals...” (p.10)

Implications

Teachers have the right to “talk back” or speak out against undemocratic mandates and expectations.

Teachers require time and financial support for in-service education at the graduate level.

Teachers ought to become scholars in multiple subjects and/or disciplines.

Subject Matter

•“It’s about discovering and articulating, for oneself and with others, the educational significance of the school subjects for self and society in the ever-changing historical moment” (p.16).

•“Curriculum theory aspires to understand the overall educational significance of curriculum, focusing especially upon interdisciplinary themes—such as gender or multiculturalism or the ecological crisis—as well as relations among the curriculum, the individual, society, and history” (p.21).

•“The educational point of the public school curriculum is understanding the relations among academic knowledge, the state of society, the processes of self-formation, and the character of the historical moment in which we live, in which others have lived, and in which our descendents may some day live” (p.187).

Subject matter ought to reflect what students need according to the cultural, social, historical moment in which they live.

Interdisciplinary themes or enduring understandings ought to be the basis of curricula.

Broader aims about what it means to shape a democratic society ought to drive how we imagine curricular aims.

Implications

Student

•Adults’ roles in children’s lives is to help them to understand that they “have an ethical obligation to care for [them]selves and our fellow human beings” (p.187).

• “The public school curriculum [should] enable us [all people in society]to think and act with intelligence, sensitivity, and courage in both the public sphere—as citizens aspiring to establish a democratic society—and in the private sphere, as individuals committed to other individuals” (p.187).

MilieuPolitics and Business:“The rhetoric of business be restricted to business organizations, not forced onto the profession of education where it has no business” (p.253).

Religion:“Spirituality [ought to] remain a private matter, not politicized and recoded as educational policy” (p.253).

Universities:“When we curriculum theorists explicate the relations among curriculum, culture, the individual, and society, we are not engaged in some socially disinterested analytic exercise. We are employing academic knowledge, as did Jane Addams, to address the problems of society and culture” (p.253).

ImplicationsStudents ought to learn what it means to live democratically by living in a school, classroom and home community that shapes such values and practices together.

All stakeholders ought to be actively involved in all stages of subject area curriculum development. They should shape broad as opposed to narrow aims.

Pinar through the Eisner’s Ideological Eyes

“Curriculum ideologies are...beliefs about what schools should teach, for what ends, and for what reasons”

(Eisner, 1992,p.47).

Curriculum = Ideology

“Given the fact that in the United States there are over a 100,000 schools and more than 2 1/2 million teachers, is it likely that a nonprescriptive, nonstandardized approach will gain saliency ? Probably not, unless there is an unforseeable social change in the culture at large...”

(Eisner, 1992, p.79).

“It isn’t until teachers refuse to graciously submit to being instruments of government aims that we will see a change in schooling. Free the teachers and you free the children.”

Pinar, 2009, Research Chair public address

“ Of course, teachers must meet contractual obligations regarding curriculum and instruction. However, we need not necessarily believe them or uncritically accept them ( Pinar, 2004, p.30)”.

Do you agree with William Pinar?