This paper argues that Young and Muller's 'powerful knowledge' requires a more extensive conceptualization of the relation between knowledge and practice. However, rather than focus on the 'practice turn' in social theory as Carlgren has suggested, it is argued that what Rouse terms a 'normative practice' can help explicate the specialized…

This article arises out of work undertaken within the After Religious Education project. It synthesizes the curriculum expertise of established researchers, with the expertise of current teachers of RE in England. A question drives our shared interests: how should we approach curriculum development in RE and how do we justify the approach taken?…

Teachers are concerned with both student engagement and achievement of learning outcomes. Both are necessary, yet often considered in disconnected ways. We argue that such disconnection is a consequence of competing educational purposes, combined with an organizational framework for schooling that attempts to paste over the differences by…

The work of teachers is regularly quizzed and questioned. The responses called for commonly implicate assessment, as this provides answers about learning, which many believe directly translate into answers about teaching. We question teaching differently, beginning with the basic what, how and who questions, while also posing the why question:…

Despite the rising popularity of scripted curricula in the United States public and charter schools, there has been little to no research that explicitly addresses how this phenomenon influences the democratic aims of our educational system. Using the six democratic values that Meira Levinson employed to evaluate the movement towards standards,…

Using the 'medical' framework (symptoms, diagnosis and prescription) in Schwab's the Practical 1 article, I analyze the current state of contemporary curriculum theorizing as a result of the reconceptualist movement. I argue that curriculum theorizing is in serious crisis due to the loss of the original subject of curriculum studies--practice and…

In this paper, we aim to outline what foundations can offer in terms of understanding education and educational practice, and thus for providing a basis for teachers' professional knowledge. We look critically at the struggle foundation disciplines often experience with coherence and integration in terms of both their relation to each other and to…

Despite a groundswell of evidence for transformative education, manifestos for 'transformative pedagogy for global citizenship' remain under-theorized and pay limited attention to implications for practice. This paper connects theory and practice through analyzing a curriculum development project that sought to produce a framework for 'engaged…

In this retrospective essay reviewing the implications of Joseph Schwab's essay, "The practical: A language for education" (2013 [1970]), 40+?years after its first publication, I identify two "practicals". The first is a comprehensive "Practical 1.1" embracing ends, subject matter, problem source and methods.…

The field of curriculum by inveterate, unexamined, and mistaken reliance on theory has led to incoherence of curriculum and failure and discontinuity in actual schooling because theoretical constructions are ill-fitted and inappropriate to problems of actual teaching and learning. There are three major incompetencies of theory: failure of scope,…

In 1970, Joseph Schwab published the first of four papers that argued for a turn to the idea of the Practical in curriculum research and practice. In this paper, I revisit Schwab's original paper and explore the extent to which his case for the Practical is still relevant today. I first look at the past of the deliberative tradition in which…

This paper explores the relevance and significance of the Practical in Schwab's the "Practical 1" paper in relation to the reconstruction of pedagogics as an educational discipline in China. It begins with employing Schwab's 'medical" framework--in terms of "symptoms," "diagnosis" and "prescription"--to…

The "Practical 1" paper combines Schwab's abiding concern, for the nature and quality of educational experience with another abiding concern, for how we think about what we do. The Practical 1 is the first of a set of four "practical" essays. These in turn are the product of his thinking about college education and his…

This paper draws on the experiences of two graduate level curriculum theory classes taught at different teacher education institutions in the US. Teacher educators and curriculum theorists invest in creating reflexive spaces for teachers to explore the complex terrain of lived curriculum. Narrative inquiry is chronicled as acting as an important…

This paper contends that history of education should be a required part of teacher preparation. The discipline's languishing status in schools of education is widespread, and should be seen in relation to the general decline of humanities and social science subjects as foundations of teacher training. This paper examines the reasons for the…