115 entries
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Curriculum Studies (OECS) addresses the central question of Curriculum Studies as: What is worthwhile? The articles show how the public, personal and educational concerns about composing lives are the essence of curriculum. Writ large, Curriculum Studies pertains to what human beings should know, need, experience, do, be, become, overcome, contribute, share, wonder, imagine, invent, and improve. While the OECS treats curriculum as definitely central to schooling, it also shows how curriculum scholars also work on myriad other institutionalized and non-institutionalized dimensions of life that shape the ways humans learn to perceive, conceptualize, and act in the world. Thus, while OECS treats perennial curriculum categories (e.g., curriculum theory, history, purposes, development, design, enactment, evaluation), it does so through a critical eye that provides counter-narratives to neoliberal, colonial, and imperial forces that have too often dominated curriculum thought, policy, and practice. Thus, OECS presents contemporary perspectives on prevailing topics such as science, mathematics, social studies, literacy/reading/literature/language arts, music, art, physical education, testing, special education, liberal arts, many OECS articles also show how curriculum is embedded in ideology, human rights, mythology, museums, media, literature/film, geographical spaces, community organizing, social movements, cultures, race relations, gender, social class, immigration, activist work, popular pedagogy, revolution, diasporic events, and much more. To provide such perspectives, articles draw upon diverse scholarly traditions in addition to (though including) established qualitative and quantitative approaches (e.g., feminist, womanist, oral, critical theory, critical race theory, critical dis/ability studies, Indigenous ways of knowing, documentary, dialogue, postmodern, cooperative, posthuman, and diverse modes of expression). Moreover, such orientations (often drawn from neglected work Asia, the Global South, Aboriginal regions, and other often excluded realms) reveal positions that counter official or dominant neo-liberal impositions by emphasizing hidden, null, outside, material, embodied, lived, and transgressive curricula that foster emancipatory, ecologically interdependent, and continuously growing constructs.
