Curriculum Development in the Postmodern Era

Teaching and Learning in an Age of Accountability

Patrick Slattery

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781136494185
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This landmark text was one of the first to introduce and analyze contemporary concepts of curriculum that emerged from the Reconceptualization of curriculum studies in the 1970s and 1980s. This new edition brings readers up to date on the major research themes (postmodernism, ecological, hermeneutics, aesthetics and arts-based research, race, class, gender, sexuality, and classroom practices) within the historical development of the field from the 1950s to the present. Like the previous editions, it is unique in providing a comprehensive overview in a relatively short and highly accessible text. Provocative and powerful narratives (both biography and autoethnography) throughout invite readers to engage the complex theories in a personal conversation. School-based examples allow readers to make connections to schools and society, teacher education, and professional development of teachers.

Changes in the Third Edition

• New Glossary - brief summaries in the text direct readers to the Companion Website to read the entire entries
• New analysis of the current accountability movement in schools including the charter school movement.
• More international references clearly connected to international contexts
• More narratives invite readers to engage the complex theories in a personal conversation
• Companion Website–new for this edition

Part I
Curriculum Development as a Field of Study

one
Introduction to Curriculum Development, Reconceptualization, and Postmodernity

There has been a virtual explosion of the use of the word postmodern for several decades: deconstructive postmodernism, constructive postmodernism, eliminative postmodernism, cultural postmodernism, postmodern art, postmodern society, post-modern theology, postmodern architecture, and so on. Some scholars, for example Zygmunt Bauman (2000, 2003), have even created hybrid phrases such as liquid modernity to express a more fluid understanding. Postmodernism can be understood from at least eleven different perspectives, all of which will be explored further throughout this book:

1. an emerging historical period that transcends the modern industrial and technological age;
2. a contemporary aesthetic style in art and architecture that is eclectic, kaleidoscopic, ironic, and allegorical;
3. a social criticism of unified systems of economic and political organization such as liberalism and communism;
4. a philosophical movement that seeks to expose the internal contradictions of metanarratives by deconstructing modern notions of truth, language, knowledge, and power;
5. a cultural analysis that critiques the negative impact of modern technology on the human psyche and the environment while promoting the construction of a holistic and ecologically sustainable global community;
6. a radical eclecticism (not compromise or consensus) and double-voiced discourse that accepts and criticizes at the same time because the past and the future are both honored and subverted, embraced and limited, constructed and deconstructed;
7. a movement that attempts to go beyond the materialist philosophy of modernity;
8. an acknowledgment and celebration of otherness, particularly from racial, gendered, queer, linguistic, and ethnic perspectives;
9. a momentous historical period marked by a revolutionary paradigm change that transcends the basic assumptions, patterns of operation, and cosmology of the previous modern age;
10. an ecological and ecumenical worldview beyond the modern obsession with dominance and control; or, finally,
11. a post-structural movement toward de-centering where there is an absence of anything at the center or any overriding embedded truth at the core, thus necessitating a concentration on the margins and a shift in emphasis to the borders.

Critics often maintain that the term “postmodern” is irrelevant because its meaning is elusive and contradictory, and thus it can be defined in multiple ways to suit the needs of any author. While this is certainly a legitimate critique, the philosophy of modernity espoused by such critics often remains mired in Cartesian binary and dualistic thinking, scientific positivism, and structural explanations of reality. Thus, postmodern eclecticism, inclusiveness, and irony frustrate critics and leads them to conclude that postmodernism is relativism that leads to nihilism. However, one thing is abundantly clear: there is a burgeoning belief in scientific, philosophical, political, artistic, literary, and educational circles that, no matter what name we assign to the current social and cultural condition, a radically new global conception of life on the planet and existence in the cosmos is underway. Charles Jencks (1992) describes this worldview:

Post-modernism has become more than a social condition and cultural movement, it has become a world view. But its exact nature is strongly contested and this has helped widen the debate to a world audience. The argument has crystallised into two philosophies—what I and many others call Neo- and Post-Modernism—both of which share the notion that the modern world is coming to an end, and that something new must replace it. They differ over whether the previous world view should be taken to an extreme and made radical, or synthesised with other approaches at a higher level …. Not a few people are now suspicious of [this] attendant confusion, or bored with the fashion of the term. Yet I cannot think of an adequate substitute for summarising the possibilities of our condition. (p. 10)

Jencks continues by reminding us that the modem period—from about the 1450s to the 1950s, and from the Renaissance when the West became ascendant to the point where it was incorporated within a larger global culture—is on the wane and must be replaced. Whether the postmodern shift is attached to the date 1875, 1914, 1945, or 1960 (each of these dates has its defenders), Jencks insists that a period “out of the Modern” needs to be defined. He continues: “The forces of the modern movement— modernisation, the condition of modernity, and cultural Modernism—have not ended. Indeed, they are often the goals of the Second and Third Worlds …. But the uncontested dominance of the modern world view has definitely ended” (1992, p. 11). We are witnessing this most dramatically in China and India today. Revolutions in the Middle East in 2011 inspire the awakening of an “Arab Spring.” Movements like “Occupy Wall Street” and other international “occupy” groups, as well as the “Tea Party” on the right in the US, indicate frustrations with status quo government and the economic arrangements of the modern era. Whether critics like it or not, society has become a global plurality of competing subcultures and movements where no one ideology and episteme (understanding of knowledge) dominates. There is no cultural consensus, and—cultural literacy programs notwithstanding—there is no curriculum development consensus either. Even if the fragmentation of culture and education into many subcultures has been exaggerated, the shift to a postmodern worldview is evident.

This postmodern shift involves rethinking some very sacred beliefs and structures that have been firmly entrenched in human consciousness for at least the past 500 years. This is not unlike the trauma that was caused in the 16th century by the discoveries of Copernicus and Galileo. Many astronomers were silenced, imprisoned, or excommunicated because their theories challenged the premodern worldview of the religious and political leaders of European society. (Interestingly, it was not until October 31, 1992—350 years after Galileo’s death—that Pope John Paul II gave an address on behalf of the Catholic Church in which he admitted that errors had been made by the theological advisors in the case of Galileo. He declared the case closed, but he did not admit that the Church was wrong to convict Galileo on a charge of heresy because of his belief that the Earth revolves round the sun!) Postmodern social, aesthetic, religious, and scientific visionaries have sometimes met the same fate. For this reason, postmodern thinkers will turn to Thomas Kuhn (1970), in his text The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, to support the belief that the global community is entering into a radically new understanding of politics, art, science, theology, economics, psychology, culture, and education. Along with Kuhn, postmodern writers call this change a paradigm shift, because humanity is moving towards a new zone of cognition with an expanded concept of the self-in-relation.

There have been at least two previous paradigm shifts in human history: first, the move from isolated nomadic communities of hunters and gatherers to feudal societies with city-states and agrarian support systems and, second, the move from tribal and feudal societies to a capitalist industrial-based economy relying on scientific technology, unlimited resource consumption, social progress, unrestrained economic growth, and rational thought. The first is called the premodern period or the Neolithic revolution, and is dated from about 1000 BCE (before the common era) to 1450 CE (common era). The second is called the modern period or the Industrial Revolution, and is dated from about 1450 CE to 1960 CE. The Neolithic period is characterized by a slow-changing and reversible concept of time rooted in mythology and an aristocratic culture with integrated artistic styles. The industrial period is characterized by a linear concept of time, called the arrow of time, with a bourgeois mass culture of dominant styles. The postmodern paradigm shift is characterized by fast-changing and cyclical concepts of time, with sundry cultures and many genres of expression, and is sometimes called the global information revolution.

Of course, there have been many movements in the past 500 years that have sought to challenge the dominance of the modern concept of culture, time, and economics. The Romantics and the Luddites of the 19th century are perhaps typical. However, these movements sought to return to a previous premodern existence. The contemporary postmodern worldview is different because it is more than an anti-modern movement; postmodernism seeks to transcend the ravages of modernity with a radically new concept of society, culture, language, and power. Economic disparities and lack of access to health care, jobs, and basic services figure prominently in discussions of the ravages of modernity and the logic of economic policies. Likewise, postmodern educators are committed to a new concept of curriculum development that will complement the social and cultural milieu of this new era in human history.

While there are many concepts of postmodernism, and thus much confusion about its meaning, there are some common characteristics. David Ray Griffin explains:

The rapidity with which the term postmodern has become widespread in our time suggests that the antimodern sentiment is more extensive and intense than before, and also that it includes the sense that modernity can be successfully overcome only by going beyond it, not by attempting to return to a premodern form of existence. Insofar as a common element is found in the various ways in which the term is used, postmodernism refers to a diffuse sentiment rather than to any set of common doctrines—the sentiment that humanity can and must go beyond the modern. (Griffin et al., 1993, pp. vii–viii)

Humanity must transcend modernity, according to the Center for a Postmodern World (1990), in ways that include the following features: a post-anthropocentric view of living in harmony with nature rather than a separateness from nature that leads to control and exploitation; a post-competitive sense of relationships as cooperative rather than as coercive and individualistic; a post-militaristic belief that conflict can be resolved by the development of the art of peaceful negotiation; a post-patriarchal vision of society in which the age-old religious, social, political, and economic subordination of women will be replaced by a social order based equally on the “feminine” and the “masculine”; a post-Eurocentric view that the values and practices of the European tradition will no longer be assumed to be superior to those of other traditions, or forcibly imposed upon others, combined with a respect for the wisdom embedded in all cultures; a post-scientistic belief that, while the natural sciences possess one important method of scientific investigation, there are also moral, religious, and aesthetic intuitions that contain important truths that must be given a central role in the development of worldviews and public policy; a post-disciplinary concept of research and scholarship with an ecologically interdependent view of the cosmos rather than the mechanistic perspective of a modern engineer controlling the universe; and, finally, a post-nationalistic view in which the individualism of nationalism is transcended and replaced by a planetary consciousness that is concerned first and foremost about the welfare of the earth. In short, the world is an organism rather than a machine, the earth is a home rather than a resource to exploit or a possession to horde, and persons are interdependent and not isolated and independent. This introduction to some of the concepts of postmodernism reveals not only the scope of the issues involved in this movement but also the dramatic paradigmatic shift in thinking that must accompany postmodern consciousness. Therefore, the intensity of resistance to postmodernism should not be surprising.

This description of postmodernism has immense implications for education, particularly the way that curriculum is understood in the new millennium. For this reason, I have selected postmodernism as the theoretical construct from which to explore contemporary curriculum development in this book. Curriculum scholars and teachers have much to gain from engaging in the postmodern dialogue, and they also have much to lose by ignoring postmodern philosophy. This does not mean that we should uncritically accept all projects associated with this philosophy. In fact, postmodernism itself must be deconstructed and problematized. Even an early enthusiast of postmodernism, Richard Rorty, has become a skeptic of the term in an editorial titled “Lofty Ideas That May Be Losing Altitude” (Rorty, 1997). Engaging the conversation does not mean embracing all proposals or all practices. The goal is deeper understanding and fresh new possibilities. This first chapter begins with an exploration of postmodernism in order to frame the discussion of the various approaches to contemporary curriculum development in part II.

The postmodern worldview allows educators to envision an alternative way out of the turmoil of contemporary schooling that too often is characterized by excessive testing and accountability models, violence, bureaucratic gridlock, curricular stagnation, depersonalized evaluation, political conflict, economic crisis, decaying infrastructure, emotional fatigue, and demoralization. This is not to imply that every teacher and every school is paralyzed by such problems. There are many outstanding teachers, programs, and curricular innovations. There are even some exciting and innovative postmodern practices in schools, albeit with resistance from those entrenched in modernity or resistant to change. However, the evidence of crisis is discussed on both the political left and right. The solutions proposed may be dramatically different, but the recognition of the problems faced by educators and schools is well documented. Of course, the struggles are sometimes embellished and distorted for political power or economic gain. Some seek to eliminate public education in favor of vouchers, charter schools, and private education. Thus, their embellishment of school crisis must be understood in the context of efforts to dismantle public education. The positive impact of public and private education cannot be overlooked. The historical contributions to both US and global society by well-educated citizens is impressive. The number of Pulitzer Prize winners, Nobel Laureates, inventors, and scholars produced by US schools and universities is the envy of the world. Quality education has lifted the fortunes of many countries internationally. Emerging democracies and economies globally understand the importance of education as an engine not only for prosperity but, more important, for stability and equality. Thus, the notion of crisis in education needs to be taken seriously but also investigated critically for its political manipulation.

The current moment in US education has been described as a “nightmare” (Pinar, 2004a). Characteristics of this nightmare include the lack of public and democratic conversation about education, education’s standardization, and the deprofessionalization of teachers. In the US this is reflected in the report A Nation at Risk (1983) and the Goals 2000: Educate America Act (1994) and continuing with the No Child Left Behind Act (2002) and Race to the Top (2009). The deprofessionalization of educators is, of course, a complex phenomenon. Some use teacher turnover rates, attrition rates, stagnant wages, and assaults on teachers to bolster the claim that the profession is in crisis. While the demoralization of teachers may be used as one indicator of the problems we face, the notion of crisis in education is more complex. Perhaps the best book to read on this topic is The Manufactured Crisis, by David C. Berliner and Bruce J. Biddle (1995). These authors believe, as do many scholars and researchers, that the characteristic that most impedes school reform and educational equity is the huge and growing rate of poverty. Like Jonathan Kozol (1991, 2005) before them, Berliner and Biddle call for equalization of funding across school districts. Perhaps for the first time on a nationwide basis, US citizens recognized the cruel impact of economic disparity and racism in US society as they were horrified by the images on television of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Schools, of course, mirror social inequities even though the rhetoric of education as the great leveling force attempts to persuade us otherwise.

The same phenomenon is evident internationally. In Chile, for example, there were major nationwide student protests and boycotts in 2006 and 2011. High school students were to some degree successful in calling attention to funding inequities and in their demands to change curriculum policies. An excellent film, titled Machuca, about the Chilean educational context during the time of President Salvador Allende’s socialist government, just before the 1973 coup d’état by General Augusto Pinochet, dramatically investigates the connections between education, poverty, power, and privilege. This 2004 film tells the story of two friends, one of whom, Pedro Machuca, lives in poverty and is integrated into the elite school of his friend Gonzalo Infante. The social integration project is headed by the director of the school, Father McEnroe. The film is dedicated to Father Gerardo Whelan, who from 1969 to 1973 was the director of Colegio Saint George, the private English-language school in Santiago that the film’s director attended as a boy. It shows the perspective of Gonzalo Infante, a privileged boy who catches a glimpse of the world of the lower class through Machuca, at a moment when the lower classes are politically mobilized, demanding more rights, and forcing fundamental change. The priest in the film is motivated by the liberation theology movement in South America, a topic that I will discuss in more detail in chapter 4. The educational protests in Chile in 2006 and 2011 can be seen as a continuing struggle for equality and social change. Protests for economic and educational equity are fermenting globally today (O’Malley, 2009).

Postmodern philosophy provides an option for understanding the current protests and debates in education and society. While it is certainly not the only theoretical framework being explored by contemporary social scientists and educational researchers, it is one that is pervasive in the scholarly literature and the one that makes the most sense to me. Additionally, I am convinced that postmodernism offers the best theoretical paradigm for exploring curriculum development. This is especially true when time is viewed as a cyclical process where the past and future inform and enrich the present rather than as a linear arrow where events can be isolated, analyzed, and objectified. I will explore this topic further in chapter 4 when I discuss eschatology. From this perspective, we cannot simply rely on the improvement of past curricular methods in order to solve the complex schooling problems of the new millennium. We must have a more integrated view of time and history. In chapters 2 and 3 an historical analysis of curriculum development will be explored as a prelude to the postmodern reflections in part II. But we are ahead of our discussion. Let us return to our investigation of the relationship between postmodernism and curriculum.

Novelist Walker Percy’s classic essay titled “The Delta Factor,” from his book The Message in the Bottle, is an excellent place to continue our exploration of curriculum and postmodernism. Percy (1954) writes the following:

What does a man [sic] do when he finds himself living after an age has ended and he can no longer understand himself because the theories of man of the former age no longer work and the theories of the new age are not yet known, for not even the name of the new age is known, and so everything is upside down, people feeling bad when they should feel good, good when they should feel bad? What a...