This article recounts my experience serving as an expert witness at a Human Rights Tribunal. In 2018-2019, a grade six trans girl, known only as AB, sued the Ontario provincial government in Canada for revoking a progressive sex education curriculum that addressed gender and sexual identity. While working as an advocate for AB, I wrestled with my…

Curriculum change involves struggles among political actors and interest groups, and those efforts related to sex education have been noted for their particularly vexatious character. When Doug Ford was elected Premier of Ontario, Canada in 2018, he immediately repealed the comprehensive health curriculum of 2015 and attempted to muzzle teachers…

Dominant stories, as upheld through K-12 curricula, are influential in reproducing systems of power and privilege in schools and society. In this article, we suggest that stories of people with disabilities are either missing in K-12 curricula, or told in ways that are highly ableist. We use discourse theory as a frame for considering the role of…

Advanced high-school courses, such as Advanced Placement (AP) courses in the United States, present a content selection conundrum of major proportions. Judicious content selection is necessary if students are to learn subject matter meaningfully, but the sheer breadth of tested material in these courses promotes nearly the opposite:…

Explores the concept of "null curriculum"--what schools do not teach. Attempts to define the term, focusing on possible uses in theory, research, and practice. While hard to define and limited as a research concept, "null curriculum" can inform cosiderations of curriculum goals, content, and selection criteria. Lists eight…

Describes the decision-making processes in an Australian multicultural curriculum development project that portrayed the life styles of ethnic groups from the Indian Ocean region. Describes four issues that emerged during the project and the complex process through which these issues were resolved. Includes references. (MD)

Social studies curricula are flawed by wrong assumptions about learning, by forcing history and geography (the two original components of social studies programs) to socialize students rather than allowing them to stand as autonomous disciplines, and by a confused concept of course content. The social studies approach to history should be allowed…

The rationale, description, and evaluation of a course about adolescence taught to university students. This interdisciplinary approach includes materials from literature, philosophy, history, and the arts. Primary source material is extensively used. (Author/MLF)

In response to Jean Anyon ("Social Class and School Knowledge," Curriculum Inquiry 11:3-41), the author doubts four of Anyon's findings about social justification in the presentation of curricula in working-class schools. He finds greater diversity among schools than did Anyon and greater influence of ethnicity than of class. (JW)

Explores the meaning of pedagogy as something that lets an encounter, relationship, or a doing be pedagogic. Concludes with how phenomenology helps bring to light that which presents itself as pedagogy in adult relationships with children. (Author/JM)