https://journals.symphonypub.com/index.php/cp/issue/feed Currere and Praxis 2024-11-01T18:49:32+03:00 Wiiliam F. Pinar william.pinar@ubc.ca Open Journal Systems <p style="text-align: justify;"><span style="white-space: normal;"><strong>Currere <em>and</em> Praxis</strong> (C&amp;P), a peer-reviewed journal, is sponsored by the <a href="https://aaides.org/">Association for the Advancement of Interdisciplinary Educational Studies</a> (AAIDES) to support original contributions to curriculum theory and practice worldwide.</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;">Why establish a second journal<sup>1</sup> on <em>currere</em>, this one titled <strong>Currere <em>and</em> Praxis</strong>? The Latin infinite form of curriculum <em>is currere</em>, meaning to move, often quickly<sup>2</sup>, but in this journal we want essays composed and to be read in slow time<sup>3</sup>, adagio not allegro. “Praxis,” Cazdyn explains, “denotes the ceaseless movement between thinking, understanding, experimenting, acting, and changing.”<sup>4</sup></p> <p style="text-align: justify;">Pinar’s conception of <em>currere</em><sup>5</sup> – including its method – encourages us linger over what we think and do, contemplating what knowledge is of most worth – the canonical curriculum question – and why, where, when, and for whom? After contemplation, we act, whether walking into a classroom to teach or into a Ministry of Education board room to decide what to tell school children about the reality in which we are all embedded: the curriculum. The concepts of <em>currere</em> and <em>praxis</em> are inextricably intertwined – in theory, in practice. They are also separable, perhaps necessarily so: “Indeed, thinking [and learning], like other solitary and even private activities (distinct from actions), takes place between me and myself or in dialogue with one other.”<sup>6</sup> It doesn’t tend to happen in groups, where “group-think” is infamously a risk to intellectual independence. Nor does it happen when speed reading – driven by looking for take-aways – but by “lingering.”<sup>7</sup></p> <p style="text-align: justify;">Dewey worried that our “zeal for doing, lust for action, leaves many a person, especially in this hurried and impatient human environment in which we live, with experience of an almost incredible paucity, all on the surface. No one experience has a chance to complete itself because something else is entered upon so speedily. What is called experience is so dispersed and miscellaneous as hardly to deserve the name.”<sup>8</sup></p> <p style="text-align: justify;">So, let’s pause, proceed <em>lentement</em> and think – not only about the subject(s) in which we specialize, but also about the curriculum overall, its emplacement in culture, politics, place, time, gender, race, and in our subjective lives. Such a turning inward can change consciousness; a shift in the source of behavior signals a shift in behavior itself: <strong>Currere <em>and</em> Praxis</strong><span style="font-size: 0.875rem;">.</span></p> <p style="text-align: justify;"><sub><strong>References</strong></sub></p> <p style="text-align: justify;"><sup>Aoki, Ted T. 2005 (1992). Layered Voices of Teaching: The Uncannily Correct and the Elusively True. In Curriculum in a New Key (187-197), edited by William F. Pinar and Rita L. Irwin. Lawrence Erlbaum.</sup></p> <p style="text-align: justify;"><sup>Berg, Maggie and Seeber, Barbara K. 2016. The Slow Professor. Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy. University of Toronto Press.</sup></p> <p style="text-align: justify;"><sup>Butler, Judith. 2017. Arendt: Thinking Cohabitation and the Dispersion of Sovereignty. In Sovereignty in Ruins: A Politics of Crisis, edited by George Edmondson and Klaus Mladek (220-238). Duke University Press.</sup></p> <p style="text-align: justify;"><sup>Cazdyn, Eric. 2012. The Already Dead. The New Time of Politics, Culture, and Illness. Duke University Press.</sup></p> <p style="text-align: justify;"><sup>Han, Byung-Chul. 2017. The Scent of Time. A Philosophical Essay on the Art of Lingering. Trans. by Daniel Steiner. Polity.</sup></p> <p style="text-align: justify;"><sup>Jay, Martin. 2005. Songs of Experience. Modern American and European Variations on a Universal Theme. University of California Press.</sup></p> <p style="text-align: justify;"><sub><strong>Endnotes</strong></sub></p> <p style="text-align: justify;"><sup><sub>1</sub> </sup><sub>The first is: <a href="https://www.currereexchange.com/currere-exchange-journal.html">https://www.currereexchange.com/currere-exchange-journal.html </a></sub></p> <p style="text-align: justify;"><sup><sub>2</sub> </sup><a href="https://ancientlanguages.org/latin/dictionary/curro-currere-cucusrri-cursum"><sub>https://ancientlanguages.org/latin/dictionary/curro-currere-cucusrri-cursum </sub></a></p> <p style="text-align: justify;"><sup><sub>3</sub> </sup><sub>Berg and Seeber (2016) call on the university professoriate to challenge the culture of speed, in part so we – and our students - may think more carefully about what we think.</sub></p> <p style="text-align: justify;"><sub><sup>4</sup> 2012, 31.</sub></p> <p style="text-align: justify;"><sup><sub>5</sub> </sup><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currere"><sub>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currere </sub></a></p> <p style="text-align: justify;"><sub><sup>6</sup> Butler 2017, 227.</sub></p> <p style="text-align: justify;"><sup><sub>7</sub> </sup><sub>Aoki 2005 (1992), 197. “Whoever tries to live faster,” Han (2017, 34) cautions, “will ultimately also die faster. It is not the total number of events, but the experience of duration which makes life more fulfilling. Where one event follows close on the heels of another, nothing enduring comes about. Fulfilment and meaning cannot be explained on quantitative grounds. A life that is lived quickly, without anything lasting long and without anything slow, a life that is characterized by quick, short-term and short-lived experiences is itself a short life.”</sub></p> <p style="text-align: justify;"><sup><sub>8</sub> </sup><sub>Quoted in Jay 2005, 166.</sub></p> https://journals.symphonypub.com/index.php/cp/article/view/35 Read and resonate: Welcome to this, the inaugural issue of Currere and Praxis 2024-09-27T11:51:37+03:00 William F. Pinar william.pinar@ubc.ca <p>My thanks to Professors Sümer Aktan and Ünal Deniz for inviting me to serve as Editor-in-Chief of <em>Currere and Praxis</em>. My thanks, too, to Teresa Strong-Wilson and Wanying Wang for consenting to serve as Associate Editor and Managing Editor, respectively. My thanks also to those who agreed to serve on the Editorial Board. Thanks as well to those who submitted their manuscripts and, especially, to those whose scholarship and art appear in this inaugural issue. Thanks, finally, to those anonymous reviewers whose invaluable critiques of submitted manuscripts ensure the academic quality of the essays we publish. Thanks all around.</p> 2024-09-30T00:00:00+03:00 Copyright (c) 2024 Symphony https://journals.symphonypub.com/index.php/cp/article/view/36 Becoming ethically preoccupied through Currere: W.G. Sebald, Franz Kafka and narrative self-representation 2024-11-01T18:49:32+03:00 Teresa Strong-Wilson teresa.strong-wilson@mcgill.ca <p>Within education, we can learn a great deal from others’ uses of narrative as a site of praxis from which to work through difficult psychic processes. The narratives published by W.G. Sebald and Franz Kafka—as well as what we know about these authors’ narrative processes—hold important insights for the kind of narrative writing that can happen in <em>currere</em>. Born in Germany near the end of WWII and inheriting the heavy burden of the Holocaust, Sebald was concerned with the social implications of writing as a form of witness, even as he was persuaded that a narrative approach was more powerful than discursive prose. Sebald saw in the writing of narrative an attempt at restitution. For Franz Kafka, the writing of literary texts offered the only space in which he experienced some redemption from (as he called it) “murderers’ row.” Despite their stature, both considered themselves as periphereal writers; writing came from a felt sense of precarity and vulnerability. Both relied on unreliable narrators. By exploring the relations between Sebald’s and Kafka’s writing lives and their melancholy, I inquire into how both were driven by a sense of urgency in writing narratively (one form of which is literature) and look at how such writing embodied an ethical probing of unsettling preoccupations, in ways of compelling interest to projects of subjective/social reconstruction.</p> 2024-09-30T00:00:00+03:00 Copyright (c) 2024 Symphony https://journals.symphonypub.com/index.php/cp/article/view/37 Displacing curriculum normativity through teachers’ autobiographical processes: A case study from Brazil 2024-11-01T18:49:30+03:00 Clarissa Craveiro clarissacraveiro@id.uff.br William Goes Ribeiro wgribeiro@id.uff.br <p>This text engages with discussions on curricular normativity and autobiographical processes, challenging prescriptive discourses and subject-centered perspectives. The objective is to underscore both the fallibility of normative processes and the dynamics at play when curricular practices intersect with life stories, thereby displacing essentialist and efficiency-driven propositions. It presents a brief experiential analysis of <em>currere</em> with undergraduate Pedagogy students in the context of Educational Management and Supervised Internship in Brazil. The contributions of autobiography are viewed not as a panacea but as a potent proposal to disrupt rigid, expected, and quantifiable outcomes. The focus on autobiography stems from a preference for theoretical production within the field, representing a commitment to understanding the interactions that bridge universities and schools. Curricular thinking, through an autobiographical and post-structural approach, can broaden studies, contributing to a more profound understanding of the school environment and the support of teachers and their experiences.</p> 2024-09-30T00:00:00+03:00 Copyright (c) 2024 Symphony https://journals.symphonypub.com/index.php/cp/article/view/39 Currere as Punctuated Manifestions 2024-11-01T18:49:28+03:00 Wanying Wang wangw2@stjohns.edu <p><em>Currere</em> emphasizes individual experience and how one can learn from these experiences (Pinar, 2011). This paper explores how one’s individual experience (<em>currere </em>writing) affords “punctuated manifestations” in which one who is spatially and temporally embodied and entangled engages in a recursive helictical motion of transformation while wandering through various thresholds of understanding toward infinity and traversing between/across the imagined and unimaginable and beyond. In associating with ancient Chinese novels and certain ideas in Chinese Taoism, this paper illuminates the construction and reconstruction of layers of experience, which may contribute to an alternative way of understanding <em>currere </em>by highlighting <em>currere</em> as a method that embraces the endless fluidity of one’s experiences creating an infinite, yet subliminal myriad of intersectionalities, crossings, and synthesis. Such a <em>currere</em> of punctuated manifestations describes emanating intersectionalities of particularity and universality, lived crossings of subjectivity and contingency, entangled convergences of past, present, and future, orienting us toward our “interiority” (Doll, 2017, p. 96). Then, <em>currere</em> becomes a thriving centerpiece from which to extend, to punctuate, to attune. Unfolding through contingency, the punctuated manifestations of <em>currere</em> stress endlessly approaching one’s “interiority” while embedding oneself within expanding encounters with self and others.</p> 2024-09-30T00:00:00+03:00 Copyright (c) 2024 Symphony https://journals.symphonypub.com/index.php/cp/article/view/40 The method of currere in M. R. Carey’s The Girl With All the Gifts 2024-11-01T18:49:26+03:00 Patrick Chi Kai Lam chikai@ualberta.ca <p><em>The Girl With All the Gifts</em> depicts the struggle of a group of humans who embark on a journey of survival with a gifted girl named Melanie. Although the narrative is not set in the context of education, the military and scientists in the story set up a carceral classroom to investigate the infected children’s abilities, including Melanie. In the classroom, the learning initiates Melanie’s self-realization as the <em>next</em> person during the outbreak of the hungries plague, demonstrating Pinar’s method of currere. This paper examines how Melanie’s self-realization embodies the four steps in the method of currere and discusses the educational experience within two confrontational views on education presented in this narrative.</p> 2024-09-30T00:00:00+03:00 Copyright (c) 2024 Symphony https://journals.symphonypub.com/index.php/cp/article/view/41 Continuous curriculum updating: An alternative approach to periodical reformulation in university 2024-11-01T18:49:25+03:00 Rita Guadalupe Angulo Villanueva rita.angulo@uaslp.mx Nehemías Moreno Martínez nehemias.moreno@uaslp.mx Isnardo Ruiz Reducindo isnardo.reducindo@uaslp.mx <p>Research on curriculum continuous updating is reported (CCU); the objective was to test a methodology and its technological database device. The hypothesis considers that CCU allows the professor’s creativity and brings closer the prescribed curriculum with the curriculum-in-use. A CCU methodology and its database (BDW 2.0) were designed. They were tested with 22 professors from three universities (2 Mexican and 1 Chilean), and they produced 85 records. The prescribed curriculum is a power and exclusion dispositive that provokes an anti-democratic education and diminishes the professors’ pedagogical freedom. The results show the types of modifications used in daily classroom work. These modifications are not usually recorded, and the valuable experience of professors is lost. The proposed methodology allows the systematic recording of this as it provides an informative and historical archive for the CCU. The conclusions account for the relevance of teachers’ curriculum practices in the curriculum in use and imply bringing teachers’ voices into the prescribed curriculum. That is, the currere occupies the hegemonic place instead of the mandated curriculum.</p> 2024-09-30T00:00:00+03:00 Copyright (c) 2024 Symphony https://journals.symphonypub.com/index.php/cp/article/view/46 Navigating the complexities of academic pathways in Turkey: A currere-based exploration 2024-11-01T18:49:21+03:00 Ünal Deniz unaldeniz23@gmail.com <p>This autobiographical study explores the author’s academic journey in Turkey, highlighting the dynamic and complex nature of this path within a challenging socio-economic context. Using Pinar’s concept of <em>currere</em>, the study employs a multidimensional autobiographical approach—encompassing regressive, progressive, analytical, and synthetical moments—to explore the author’s academic journey and preparation for a career in academia within Turkey’s unique educational landscape. By analyzing the author’s experiences through these phases, the study uncovers key factors influencing his academic development in Turkey, including the challenges of navigating the academic system and the strategies I used to overcome them. The research highlights the critical role of self-reflection and personal narratives in understanding and navigating the complexities of academic life in Turkey, particularly for graduate students and emerging researchers. From employing the method of <em>currere</em>, I learned much about my journey through Turkey’s academic career processes, emphasizing the interaction between personal experiences and systemic factors in shaping academic success and career progression. This study contributes to the broader <em>currere </em>literature by offering a detailed personal examination of academic career preparation and development in Turkey, providing perspectives that may resonate with or inform experiences in very different settings.</p> 2024-09-30T00:00:00+03:00 Copyright (c) 2024 Symphony https://journals.symphonypub.com/index.php/cp/article/view/45 Currere as contemporary art: Weaving creative research, purposeful vulnerability, and poetic expression to nurture teacher self-knowledge 2024-11-01T18:49:23+03:00 Kimberley D’Adamo kdadamo2@unl.edu <p><em><img src="https://journals.symphonypub.com/public/site/images/deniz/v1n1e1-dadamo.jpg" alt="" width="659" height="652"></em></p> <p><em>We Teach as We Are Taught</em>, 2024</p> <p>Currere Stage 4, Synthetic:</p> <p>Connections between past, practice, and who I am now</p> <p>Speculative design for life-sized installation, draft 3</p> <p>Digital collage print &amp; shredded dissertation</p> 2024-09-30T00:00:00+03:00 Copyright (c) 2024 Symphony