This volume assembles essays addressing the recurring question of the "subject," understood both as human person and school subject, thereby elaborating the subjective and disciplinary character of curriculum studies. After examining scholarship on the "subject," Pinar critiques its absence in the new sociology of curriculum,…

The author examines recent trends in curriculum study through a discussion of three schools of thought in the field--traditionalism, conceptual-empiricism, and reconceptualism. (IRT)

This paper was one of two presentations made at a session designed to provide for the field of curriculum and assessment of its methodological and substantive status, as well as an assessment of the implications of that status for practice. The recent history of the field is sketched briefly. The ideas "curricular possibilities" and "improvement"…

Relates how historical developments initiated the curriculum reform movement, which caused curriculum studies to become vulnerable to reconceptualization. Traces the movement from Sputnik in 1957 through reconceptualists' opposition to the mainstream field in the 1970s. The opposition has now become the field itself, which is characterized by…

Reviews reasons educational practice is less influenced by curriculum theories than in the past and responds to the criticism by William Wraga that theory and practice have split. Notes the gendered nature of the relationship between theory and practice in curriculum, in that more theorists are male and more practitioners are female. (SLD)

The article examines problems in the U.S. public school system. It describes the factory and corporate models of education and suggests that, despite the conservative origins of the current wave of school reform, progress is possible. The article also discusses sociocultural factors and the importance of theory in school reform. (SM)

This text provides a comprehensive treatment of curriculum theory and is organized around the concept of Reconceptualization from the institutionalized aim of improving practice incrementally to the goal of understanding curriculum practice and experience from a variety of perspectives. After an introductory chapter, Chapter 2 reviews the history…