Brad Gobby - Powers of Curriculum

Powers of Curriculum

Sociological Perspectives on Education

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Brad Gobby and Rebecca Walker 2017

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First published 2017

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National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data

Creator: Gobby, Brad, author.

Title: Powers of curriculum: sociological perspectives on
education / Brad Gobby, Rebecca Walker.

ISBN: 9780190303709 (paperback)

Notes: Includes index.

Subjects: Curriculum planning--Australia.
Education--Aims and objectives--Australia.
Education--Curricula--Social aspects--Australia.

Other Creators/Contributors:
Walker, Rebecca, author.

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Contents

Preface

We felt compelled to create this book because, more than ever, the teaching profession requires educators who think critically about the world. With education being profoundly shaped by social, cultural and political forces, educators need to be equipped with concepts and perspectives that enable them to not only understand the history of education and its effects on what educators think and do, but also to reflect critically on those forces shaping education and the lives of educators, children and young people.

We explore the state of education in Australia today through the notion and practices of curriculum. Curriculum is powerful because it is what children and young people experience in educational settings. Educators are central to this, as more often than not they have the most direct influence on learners curriculum experiences. By exploring the many issues surrounding curriculum, we hope to equip educators with ideas, concepts and perspectives that can make a positive difference to the lives of children and young people in the early childhood, primary and secondary phases of education.

We do this not by offering models of what to think and what to do, as if models and checklists of strategies could be adequate to understand the complex and dynamic circumstances of formal education and learning. In fact, we are skeptical of those disciplines, reports, textbooks and blogs that offer simple answers and quick fixes to problems in education, especially when the problems themselves are not adequately understood or criticised. Our approach in this book is to treat educators and pre-service educators as thinkers, theorists and philosophers, rather than unthinking technicians implementing somebody elses plans and ideas. Consequently, we offer you concepts and perspectives to help you to observe, decipher and interpret the world and education. The authors of the chapters use concepts and ideas that encourage you to think against the grain of established practices and norms which continue to orient education towards meeting the needs of the system, instead of meeting the diverse needs of individual learners and groups of learners. Once understood, these concepts and perspectives can be put to work in your university studies and professional settings.

The book explores a diverse range of topics related to curriculum, the experiences of learners, and how these experiences are shaped by powers within and beyond the field of education. The text is organised into three parts: Understanding Curriculum; Unpacking Curriculum Contexts; and Enacting Curriculum Experiences. The first part introduces you to the notion of curriculum and its conceptualisation. The second part introduces you to a range of social, cultural and political issues from a sociological perspective. The final part explores the practical dimension to your learning about curriculum. The authors of the chapters encourage you to reflect on your opinions and experiences, and to explore the concepts and ideas used in this book to open education up to new thoughts and practices.

Throughout the book, you will find definitions of key terms in the margins, which are collated into a glossary at the end. In each chapter, Ask yourself questions are intended to use your personal thoughts, beliefs and experiences to reflect on what you are reading; while the Theory in action feature encourages you to think about how the ideas you are reading about surface in peoples experiences, and can be applied to educational contexts. Questions, activities, suggested internet search terms and resources are provided at the end of each chapter for further exploring the topics and information covered.

Overall, we aim to unleash the powers of curriculum to positively shape the lives of learners and to reshape education as we know it. We hope you find this book engaging, thought-provoking and useful.