1st Edition
Curriculum Fragments A Currere Journey through Life Processes
This book builds upon Louise Berman’s late 20th century framing of life processes to inform school curriculum, by proposing a new curriculum project that extends and reframes Berman in and beyond schooling.
Using the well-established curriculum theorizing method, currere, the author focuses on seven life processes, including knowing, loving, losing, growing, forgiving, relating, and hoping. Each of these is approached using currere-oriented, autobiographical fragments – stories from the author’s own lived experiences in education and life – that illuminate the educational, curricular, and pedagogical possibilities of each of the seven processes using past, present, and future perspectives, which the author calls curriculum fragments. These curriculum fragments are tied to historical and contemporary curriculum theorizing and educational theory and practice, in order to suggest considerations for movement for the reader, scholar, educator, and leader. It ultimately asks whether humanity can create a joyful, beautiful, and just curriculum of life for each and every person through schooling and beyond, and consequently, a better world built on love.
Focusing on real life experiences in school and life that have educational implications and that can inform the curriculum, the field of curriculum studies, and the act of curriculum theorizing, this book will appeal to curriculum scholars interested in using currere, understanding patterns of use, participating in the production of curriculum and educational knowledge in the field, and perceiving and using curriculum theorizing as an integral part of their daily work.
1. My Educational Journey in Curriculum Fragments 2. On Writing a Currere Journey through 7 Life Processes 3. Losing 4. Knowing 5. Forgiving 6. Relating 7. Hoping 8. Growing 9. Loving 10. My Synthetical Epilogue
Biography
Thomas S. Poetter is Professor of Curriculum Studies in the Department of Educational Leadership at Miami University, USA.
"Curriculum Fragments is a porous, powerful and candid narrative that illustrates how self-reflection is a vital component of our curricular and pedagogical journeys. Poetter does not shy away from the pain and challenges required to do curriculum work with what Maxine Greene called a "wide-awakeness." The book is less of a manual and more of a meander.... a (necessary) meander where the self walks alongside the shared collective web of relationships without claiming assumptions of universality. Curriculum Fragments belongs on the shelves of every curriculum library."
-- Morna McDermott McNulty, Professor, Towson University
"From beginning to end, Tom engages us with the curriculum fragments of his own life, drawing us into thinking more deeply about curriculum as it is embedded in lived experience. His commitment to remembering, exploring, and contemplating from the inside out, allows us to see currere at work as it surfaces an ever-evolving curriculum – lived and emergent – that supports deep learning and transformative possibilities for the self and its co-constitutive relations with others and the world."
– Denise Taliaferro Baszile, Dean, College of Education, Wayne State University
"Poetter’s “idea from the beginning has been to work my way through aspects of life experience that have informed my educational journey,” and then “to theorize and speculate about their meaning and worth through the lens of seven different, though overlapping life processes,” that term a concept borrowed from Louise Berman’s 1968 New Priorities in the Curriculum. His chapters are titled after seven processes, processes that those curriculum fragments render concrete, even catalytic. Feet firmly on the ground, Poetter invites us to walk alongside him as he reactivates the past, and that sense of motion – biographic movement – pervades the “feel of the book,” a phrase he invokes in his discussion of Berman’s book."
– from the Foreword by William F. Pinar, Tetsuo Aoki Professor in Curriculum Studies, The University of British Columbia
"Leaning into more than a half-century of curriculum reconceptualization scholarship, Tom Poetter’s refreshing book, Curriculum Fragments, is a proposal for practicing curriculum inquiry through and participating in life processes. The power of Poetter’s invitation rests on his brilliant, provocative weaving of personal stories—what he calls curriculum fragments—that point to and point out the transformative bits that make up his life, and in turn, his educational journey. Those interested in engaging in self-study to improve not only their own meaning making but also the educational experiences of others, need to read this book."
-- Brian D. Schultz, Professor, Miami University
