Currere: Reconceptualizing Curriculum

Envisioning Currere: Two Sides Becoming One

2005-04-25T09:24:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about how I wanted to present my final currere, my perceptions of curriculum and how I can invite others into the "complicated conversation." In researching articles on curriculum and currere, I ran across a favorite model of mine, the Moebius strip. I thought about how curriculum to me is a dynamic, evolving process, a process that has no beginning and no end, that could be considered a circle. Also, the concept of turning two sides into one sounded like a learning challenge, perfect for thinking about the complexities of curriculum.

So, I cut out a strip of paper and began writing words/phrases about what curriculum should be on both sides. But then I thought more deeply about the sides of the strip and what they might represent. I thought that one side could reflect my personal beliefs. The outside could represent how I feel our schools interpret curriculum. I thought this was pretty clever, so I proceeded to make my third Moebius strip, throwing out the previous two. Now, I thought . . . how should I present this?

I wanted to present this idea in a way that would demonstrate how I thought learning should take place in the schools. So, I planned a learning experience that had no right or wrong answers--one that required each of my classmates to create and interpret their own Moebius strip, to come up with possible explanantions of its meaning(s). The Moebius strip is a loop with no beginning and no end, with one continuous side.

And there's more in this Moebius strip example. Its one-sided format could symbolize the elusiveness of opinions, the journey to discover ourselves. In its simplicity, the Moebius strip challenges us to imagine what lies outside the circle, the complexity of learning, the persistent desire to figure things out. And like our chipping away at the concepts of currere, we find ourselves asking questions we never knew.

Getting Wings

2005-04-20T11:57:00.000-07:00

Why am I a teacher, working at Boise State and getting my doctoral degree? There will always be reasons of which I am unaware, but I believe that the need to achieve has always been a part of who I am. I like the university atmosphere because I enjoy the challenges of learning and being around those who like it too. The reading, writing, and reflecting that have accompanied my doctoral course work have forced me to think deeply about educational issues, especially curriculum and instruction. Through this course, I have embarked on a curricular journey, a currere, purposefully plunging into my memories. I remember dreams, I think about reasons, I read, I write, I listen, I reconstruct memories, I realize that so much of what I have experienced is inexorably linked to my culture, my class, and my relationships. I cannot go back, but I can go forward with more purpose and clarity. And so this written currere comes to an end. But my lived currere is just getting wings.

Uncomplicating the Conversation

2005-04-20T10:03:00.000-07:00

Curriculum theory involves an engaged cultural discourse, one that reaches beyond the boundaries of higher education into our schools, our communities, and our families. And university curriculum scholars need to inform, encourage, and lead the way in this vast endeavor. But we need more than the dissemination of theory.

We need to infuse teacher education with resources that challenge current notions of education, resulting in empowerment, engagement, and reform. We need to help teachers understand that they can become temporal agents of educational history, living “simultaneously in the past, present, and future – aware of the historical conditions that have shaped the current situation, engaged in the present battles being waged over the course and direction of public education, and committed to re-building a democratic public sphere” (Carlson, 2005, par. 3). Through personal examination of the intersection of culture, gender, and class with curriculum, teachers can gain a richer view of their own curriculum worlds, connecting them with their teaching and learning. We can begin with currere, the study of educational experience. We can envision and get closer to our ideal views of education. But it involves taking currere further. It involves a language of curriculum that is less “complicated,” a language that makes sense. It involves a language that policymakers, teachers, and families will understand.

Carlson, D. (2005). The question concerning curriculum theory. Journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies, 1.

Currere: A Transbiographic Trip

2005-04-19T14:58:00.000-07:00

Pinar's (1075) new way of looking at curriculum, through his notion of currere, can provide a starting point for a new discourse. Through analysis of what curriculum means to us in a personal sense, we begin a trip (currere) that extends our understanding of not only ourselves, but of others. Pinar tells us to “bracket” (1975, p. 406) the educational aspects of the world as we know it, what we take for granted. We need to get rid of our cultural conditioning and get beyond the self. By falling into past experiences, Pinar suggests, we can relate lived experiences more fluently and accurately. But he also suggests that we can go even further in this type of free association, revealing “aspects of a collective or transpersonal realm of educational experience” (1975, p. 411). This part of currere is termed transbiographic, explained as going beyond the individual and perhaps even exposing fundamental structures that exist in humanity (Pinar, 1975). Therefore, currere, the “kernel of a reconceived and revitalized curriculum theory field,” might provide the kindling for a new and exciting discourse, one that is based upon lived experiences that naturally coincide with others,' that involves a change of consciousness and a deeper and richer understanding of learning and teaching. This route, this currere, might be the indispensable link that allows our “complicated conversations” to begin and grow.

Pinar, W. F. (1975). Currere: Toward reconceptualization. In W. F. Pinar (Ed.), Curriculum Theorizing: The Reconconceptualists (pp. 396-414). Berkeley: McCutchan Publishing.

Do We Have the Guts?

2005-04-19T14:49:00.001-07:00

When I think of school, conflicting images flood my mind. On one hand, I remember school as time spent sitting, sitting, sitting, looking at the slowly moving hands of the clock until dismissal. I remember the smell of old textbooks, the smoothness of a real slate chalkboard, and the deliberateness with which I sharpened my pencils. I remember not remembering when I began reading and wondering why Dick and Jane books always repeated the same words over and over, without any decent story behind them. I can easily write about these memories, because they don’t hurt.

When I think of curriculum, I think about rigidity, uniformity, assessment. I think about textbooks (did I ever read one completely through?), about reading books (or not) I didn’t like, about memorizing irrelevant facts. Curriculum wasn’t a word I knew in grade school or high school—it was something experienced or felt. It felt great when it was interesting and awful when it wasn’t. Curriculum was something that would fit everyone. It was something to be disseminated, digested, and spit back again. And I would argue that curriculum today is even more focused, more rigid than it was during my school years. Curriculum is “scientific,” it’s doled out and measured, it’s made to fit all, but fits few. And in this process of studying the curricular experience, my questions flow like water:

Do students get to understand themselves, to ask about correspondences between their personal and school lives?
Are they encouraged to follow their instincts, their passions?
Are they given freedom to understand their uniqueness?
Can they make conceptual leaps from what they’re learning to how they will live?
Do we have to guts to ask these questions?

Anzaldúa, G. (1997). La Prieta.

Doll, M. A. (2000). Like letters in running water: A mythopoetics of curriculum. Malwah, NJ: Lawrence Ehrlbaum Associates.

Henderson, J. G., & Kesson, K. R. (2004). Curriculum wisdom: Educational decisions in democratic societies. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.

Howard, J. (2003). Still at risk: The causes and costs of failure to educate poor and minority children for the twenty-first century. In D. T. Gordon (Ed.), A nation reformed? American education 20 years after A Nation at Risk (pp. 81-97). Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.

Kozol, J. (1991). Savage inequalities. New York: Harper Collins.

Pinar, W. F. (1975). Currere: Toward reconceptualization. In W. F. Pinar (Ed.), Curriculum Theorizing: The Reconconceptualists (pp. 396-414). Berkeley: McCutchan Publishing.

An Intense Current Within?

2005-04-19T14:49:00.000-07:00

I cannot remember her name, but I remember the sadness in her face. She was in my high school class, a small, rural school that was filled with mainly middle-class kids. This was a time when children who had disabilities went to other schools, schools I knew nothing about. But economically disadvantaged children, poor children, attended public schools. And this girl was poor, dirt poor. Her clothes were old and threadbare, her hair unkempt, her face streaked with dirt. I knew it wasn’t her fault. She was an outcast because of her poverty. And not surprisingly, she did poorly in school.

Now, as then, there was a widespread culture of disbelief in the learning capabilities of the economically disadvantaged (Howard, 2003). I remember teachers essentially ignoring this young girl, putting her in an even better position to fail. Like Gloria Anzaldúa’s (1997) autobiography, La Prieta, this girl didn’t fit in. School was a culture she couldn’t understand, because she wasn’t a part of it. And I was a participant in this conspiracy, whether I knew it or not, since my thinking reflected cultural conditioning, resulting in “vaguely instrumental and sharply other-directed thinking” (Pinar, 1975, p. 406). This culture was far removed from the democratic society I was learning about in civics class, the place where all could succeed, given equal opportunities.

As I continue to try to bracket my educational experiences, I question whether schools ever understood the implications of education, the implications of curriculum as an energizing, galvanizing force (Henderson & Kesson, 2004). As Doll (2000) writes, “Curriculum is . . . a coursing, as in an electric current. The curriculum should tap this intense current within, that which courses through the inner person, that which electrifies or gives life to a person’s energy source” (p. xii). I seriously doubt whether this girl ever felt an “intense current within,” nor knew that there was one, as did Anzaldúa. Her fate was already determined, outlined in an educational system which failed to recognize differences, which perpetuated the status quo according to who and what was privileged.

Taking the Risk

2005-04-19T13:32:00.000-07:00

In our current educational environment, certain subjects are privileged, due to the importance society places upon them. Math and language arts are now at the top of the list, since they are the focus of high-stakes tests. These subjects are chosen for emphasis and could be argued to be essential within the dominant culture. In the course of this selectivity, other subjects are given less value, are neglected, and even excluded. The questions naturally arise: “Whose knowledge is it? Who selected it? Why is it organized and taught in this way?” (Apple, 1979, p. 16).

Marshall, Sears, and Schubert (2000) want us to think and talk about curriculum in new ways. They want us to “rethink, review, renegotiate, and redefine that which we thought we knew or saw of felt or understood across the cross-cultural landscape” (p. 214). They talk about the disappearance of curriculum studies from major institutions, such as Teachers College, Ohio State, and the University of Chicago, as further proof of the fragmentation of the field. The need to create a “discernable curriculum identity in higher education” (p. 215) becomes more apparent, which brings me back around to a huge problem with curriculum—it’s tough to define because it’s essentially derived from our experiences and beliefs. As exemplified by the variety of authors who’ve attempted to explain it, curriculum can be many things to many people. It can be the essentialist philosophy extolled by E. D. Hirsch’s Cultural Literacy, or an exposé of a null curriculum. It can be an educational framework by Maria Montessori or educational theories of Paolo Freire, bell hooks, or Henri Giroux. Or it can be the work of instructional theorists, such as Howard Gardner, the creator of multiple intelligences. But what is curriculum to each one of us?

When I think of curriculum, many questions arise: Will we ever come to terms with the fact that curriculum cannot be fully explained, that learning is an individual, personal process? Do we really know what a child must know in order to progress? What is relevant for any given child? Why can’t we accept that one child’s path may be totally different from another’s? I was reminded of these complexities when talking with a principal at a public junior high school. Her face beamed like a lighthouse when she spoke of end of course exams (EOC) as the solution to the perceived problem of students having to deal with different sets of skills when coming from different schools in the same district. In her opinion, students should be exposed to and learn the same curriculum, the same objectives, so their learning can transfer if they move to another school. First of all, is this possible? And second, is it good?

Also, one could argue that parents, teachers, and administrators are often too focused on pure utility. After all, they all have so many requirements and so little time. If it’s not important, skip it. If it’s not going to be on the test, then skip that, too. Driving this thinking, I would argue, is the cultural hegemony of education, or our current fascination with production and reproduction; efficiency and performance. Schools help create people with the same meanings and values “who see no other serious possibility to the economic and cultural assemblage now extant” (Apple, 1979, p. 16). It’s this insidious cycle that prevents people from asking questions about education in the first place. Any meaningful discourse is close to impossible.

Therefore, to address this inability to see possibilities, a new discourse for changing the course of our children’s education is needed. This discourse would stem from the recognition of hegemonic influences and the realization that curriculum work is an ongoing, evolutionary process. This discourse would naturally include the questions of: “Whose knowledge is it? Who selected it? Why is it organized and taught in this way? To this particular group?” (Apple, 1979, p. 16). This discourse, this “complicated conversation,” is going on now in this blog, helping me and my readers examine various backgrounds, beliefs, and understandings about the educational experience and the notion of curriculum. This conversation can open floodgates of envisionments and realities, helping to reconceptualize curriculum. But it will only happen if we're all willing to take the risk.

Remembering

2005-04-18T12:15:00.000-07:00

In reflecting back on my public school experiences in the 60s and 70s, I realize how much of it hasn’t changed. Kids today still get up in the darkness of early morning and return home before most adults’ work day is over. Textbooks remain the driving force behind the curriculum, with students sitting in desks facing the teacher, aligned like toy soldiers prepared for battle. Phonics is taught with just as much fervor as in the 60s, and high school students’ reading material emanates from the literary canon, replete with relevant texts such as Moby Dick and The Red Badge of Courage. Property taxes are still the backbone of public school funding, with upper-class neighborhoods commanding a fiscal superiority. The old adage, “The more things change, the more they stay the same,” seems aptly appropriate to describe education then and education now. But not all things stay the same.

For instance, when I went to school, students weren’t faced with a stream of seemingly endless standardized tests. Federal interference in our education was minimal. A Nation at Risk wasn’t published until 1983, well beyond my school-age years. Teachers didn’t have a list of achievement standards to teach to, and students didn’t worry about being able to graduate from high school. Federal mandates, such as No Child Left Behind (NCLB), were not in existence. “Inclusion,” a term coined in the 90s to define how children with special needs should be included in a regular classroom, was not part of our educational lexicon. In fact, acronyms such as LD (learning disabled), ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder), IEP (Individual Educational Plan), ELL (English Language Learners), were unheard of. And even though the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) was born in 1969, the first NAEP wasn’t conducted until 1989. To a layperson, education might seem as though it is changing, maybe even getting better. But to a student of education, one who has studied the history, evolution, and persistent failures of educational reform, the “savage inequalities” are persistent reminders of what we still need to do. Economically disadvantaged students are left behind, as they were when I was in school. It’s this shame of our educational system that I need to remember.

Making Trouble

2005-04-02T16:45:00.000-08:00

Freire has argued that pedagogy should be about "making trouble" (Davis & Sumara, 2004). I think if you suggested this idea to parents or teachers, they would confirm their suspicions that you were in fact nuts. After all, aren’t students supposed to be receptors of information, sitting politely in their seats while the facts are being shoveled in their heads? It’s a huge pedagogical shift to suggest that teaching should be concerned with questions and curiosity. It is an idea that hasn’t changed much, as can be seen from the opening lines of Charles Dickens’ Hard Times:

NOW, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!

If education is supposed to be about "making trouble," then we have a long way to go. I would argue that we're living in Dickens' era, with learning being viewed as something done in isolation, a set of facts that children need to put in their heads. Although we know more now about how learning happens, we still find teachers standing at the front of the classroom, lecturing . . . FACTS! What our students really need to learn is how to think.

Davis, B. & Sumara, D. (2004). Becoming more curious about learning. Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, 1(1), pp. 26-30.

Envisioning Curriculum

2005-04-02T14:36:00.000-08:00

Henderson and Kesson coin the phrase "curriculum wisdom," which they describe as a way to convey the “subtle and complex challenges of approaching curriculum work as envisioning and enacting a good educational journey” (2004, p. 4). Thus, curriculum wisdom is the intersection of practical inquiries, critical inquiries, and visionary inquiries, all working together to find that portion that will drive curricular reconstruction and reconceptualization.

Gough (2002) tells us we need to envision curriculum while also embodying it, turning our visions into actions:

Without the particularities and specificities of location and embodiment, prospective vision in curriculum inquiry is wishful thinking. . . . If curriculum visions are to be generative--that is, if we are to be in a position to negotiate visions of curriculum futures worth working for--we must accept that we stand at the center of our own histories and fields of visualization as responsible, engaged, embodied actors. . . . (p. 5)

The continual need to examine curriculum from all viewpoints, especially from our personal histories, validates the nature of curriculum as being dynamic and essential. As Grumet writes, "Curriculum is our attempt to claim and realize self-determination by constructing worlds for our children that repudiate the constraints that we understand to have limited us" (Grumet, cited in Pinar, Reynolds, Slattery, & Taubman, 1996, p. 379).

What is curriculum? Is it what we pass on to our children? Is it our reason for living?

Apple, M. (1979). On analyzing hegemony. Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 1(1), pp. 10-27.

Gough, N. (2002). Voicing curriculum visions. In W. E. Doll, Jr. & N. Gough (Eds.), Curriculum visions (pp. 1-22). New York: Peter Lang.

Henderson, J. G. & Kesson, K. R. (2004). Curriculum wisdom: Educational decisions in democratic societies. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education, Inc.

Pinar, W. F., Reynolds, W. M., Slattery, P., Taubman, P. M. (1996). Understanding curriculum as a gender text. In W. F. Pinar, W. M. Reynolds, P. Slattery, P. M. Taubman, (Eds.), Understanding curriculum, (pp. 438-493). New York: Peter Lang.

Engaged Pedagogy

2005-04-02T12:57:00.000-08:00

Most of us can remember special teachers. I had those teachers throughout my life—teachers in grade school, middle school, high school, and college. If I had to identify one common characteristic of special teachers, it would most likely be their caring for me. Caring is a broad term, but in this aspect I’m talking about a generous human concern for others, a concern that takes in the whole person. These special teachers must have believed that the learning process “comes easiest to those of us who believe that there is an aspect of our vocation that is sacred; who believe that our work is not merely to share information but to share in the intellectual and spiritual growth of our students” (hooks, 1994, p. 13). This “engaged pedagogy” (hooks, 1994) is what makes teaching and learning work. And the most amazing part of this type of learning is that it is always available. “To teach in a manner that respects and cares for the souls of our students is essential if we are to provide the necessary conditions where learning can most deeply and intimately occur” (hooks, 1994, p. 13).

Unlike hooks, I found higher education to be inspirational. I found teachers, for the most part, to be supportive and challenging. I discovered intellectual guidance in this setting, what hooks regards as a “rare treasure.” My paths crossed many professors who were compelling and interesting. But does this go back to my statement that our choices dictate our experiences? Was it hooks’ choice to view her professors as “benevolent dictators” instead as people trying to do their best in a less than adequate system? Her argument that teachers are not required to be self-actualized can also be turned around to her own intentions and beliefs as a student. By striving to reach the pinnacle of self-actualization, are we implicitly helping others reach this goal?

hooks, b. (1994). Teaching to transgress. New York: Routledge.

Excavations

2005-04-02T11:40:00.000-08:00

I started the journey of returning to college with a lot of insecurities and uncertainties. After all, I hadn’t taken a test in years, my writing was rusty, and I needed to adjust to the culture of schooling. I was becoming a student again, a role I had not played for many years. I realized I had to start over—I had to reconstruct myself. As I think back upon this experience, I believe it was this ability to determine my possibilities that gave me the strength I had always needed. I was beginning to feel the euphoria of knowing who I was, what I wanted to become. I was beginning to gain confidence and power. I was living.

William Schubert tells us that currere, the active verb of curriculum, is a “continuous reinterpretation . . . of one’s experience in light of excavations of one’s past, multiple narratives of one’s present, and anticipations of one’s possibilities, emphasizing: ‘I choose . . . who it is I aspire to be, how I wish my life history to read. I determine my social commitments; I devise my strategies: whom to work with, for what, how’” (Schubert, 2004, p 19). Does the concept of currere then, also relate to one’s learning outside of school? I would argue that it does, since currere, or running the course, involves learning of all kinds, inside and outside of school. And I would argue that most of our learning really occurs outside of the school.

It was the experience of returning to school, of having to reach goals, of wanting to achieve that gave me the confidence to do what I wanted. After just one semester, I began to see myself in a different light. I was able to imagine myself as a teacher. I was able to anticipate my possibilities. This is just one small part of my currere, my educational experience that was sustaining and driving me. Now, as a college instructor and doctoral student, I am still being fed by my currere, my desire to write my life history in multiple and meaningful ways. While I am not always driven in the same ways or intensities, I am constantly going somewhere. And not knowing why is okay. That’s the thing about currere—it’s evolving and remaking itself over and over again. It’s never static or dormant. It’s inexorably alive.

Schubert, W. (2004). Curriculum and pedagogy for reconstruction and reconceptualization. Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, 1(1), p. 19-21.

Something To Get Through

2005-04-02T10:52:00.000-08:00

We spend most of our time and energy in a kind of horizontal thinking. We move along the surface of things going from one quick base to another, often with a frenzy that wears us out. We collect data, things, people, ideas, "profound experiences," never penetrating any of them. . . . But there are times when we stop. We sit still. We lose ourselves in a pile of leaves or its memory. We listen and breezes from a whole other world begin to whisper.
Then we begin our "going down."
-James Carroll

I think about what Carroll wrote, what he wanted us to think about, and I can't help but relate it to education, the educational experience. Our system never seems to want to let students stop and "lose themselves." Our curriculum is based upon goals and objectives, expectations of what students are to be able to do at the end of a unit of instruction, at the end of a lesson. Teachers are on a timetable to keep students working through the curriculum, to "cover" everything, regardless of interest, detours, or any other obstacles. The mission is clear and straightforward, "Students will be able to . . ."

I think back on my own educational experience and certainly the times were very different. We didn't have federal mandates, we didn't have state standards, and I don't remember taking many standardized tests. And when I think about it, the classes I remember enjoying were probably related to this "going down," this experience of losing oneself in an area of interest, of taking time to discover something within oneself and doing it well. I enjoyed choir and singing groups--these were ways that I could lose myself, experiences that required different kinds of assessment. It's no wonder that students are bored with school. They have limited opportunities in our current educational experience to go deeper into a subject area, they cannot stop and lose themselves. School simply becomes something to get through.

Where Do We Belong?

2005-03-05T14:59:00.000-08:00

In Marge Piercy's poem below, "I Awake Feathered," the narrator takes flight, soars upward and is full of hope. Piercy doesn't worry about where she is, because "right now I belong up here." The idea of past, present, and future become insignificant, surreal. She has no sense of where she is, only where she belongs. She is situated in a time and place that is right.

Can we also situate ourselves to belonging in a place "right now?" Can we make a difference through our work and teach within the cultural and historic situation while also aiming to change it? Pinar invites us to become temporal subjects of history, living simultaneously in the past, present, and future. Through this, we can increase our awareness of the historical and cultural conditions that have shaped our educational system, with the ultimate goal of improving them.

I Awake Feathered, by Marge Piercy

2005-03-05T14:57:00.000-08:00

I awake covered in feathers.
I am iridescent. I gleam
in the milky dawn.

I shimmer like a rainbow
hanging in the air.
I raise my arm over my head

and the wing extends.
This morning I will take
flight, take it and use it.

Later perhaps I will moult,
dwindle into human
again, but my power

fills me now like music
loud and surging. I rise
over the house, the gardens.

I beat high into the crisp
limpid air, then float,
a kite no string controls.

It can’t last, but it shouldn’t
Pinnacles are of the moment.
Right now I belong up here.

Questions

2005-03-05T13:48:00.000-08:00

As I reread Pinar, I think about how he defines currere, as involving the "investigation of the nature of the individual experience of the public: of artifacts, actors, operations, of the educational journey or pilgrimage" (1975, p. 400). We are always experiencing the public, since learning is never really done in isolation. Even when we're reading a book by ourselves, we are interacting with another person, the author. Yet each of us experiences the public in different, multifaceted ways. How I have experienced school-- its artifacts, actors, operations--is very different than how another person has experienced it.

My questions are ones like these: Why do I want to get my doctoral degree? Am I taking on too many responsibilities? Why do I like computers? Why do I want my children to make their beds in the morning? Did I teach myself to read? What were my motives in becoming a teacher? Why am I drawn to poetry? Why do some memories of school stay with me and others don't? How can I make sense of my own purpose in life? If I participate in this conversation, this currere, then do I automatically make it relevant? Is history an interpretation of the present as much as it is a reconstruction of the past?

Does Pinar's currere emanate from Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962/1970), since it asks us to interpret old observations in new ways, to reconfigure what is considered relevant, interesting, or anomolous? I think this reconceptualization of curriculum is dependent upon a new discourse, driven by the act of currere, resulting in new ideas for the study of curriculum.

Starting the Process

2005-03-05T11:22:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking and thinking about this thing called currere, intrigued by Pinar's (1975) style of writing in "Currere: Toward Reconceptualization." It immediately reminded me of multgenre writing, a way of writing, a way of thinking that Tom Romano says challenges the academic, the way "writing should be done." It reminded me of my previous life as an English major, my love/hate relationship with writing and my insatiable appetite for stories. Since those days, I've also developed new loves, such as working with technology, which inspires and challenges my creative side. I can spend the better part of a day experimenting with technology, working out a problem, learning a new program, or just playing with it. And in the process, I'm reminded that this is what real learning is or should be all about--the need or desire to experience, to explore what we want, how we want it.

Pinar, W. F. (1975). Currere: Toward reconceptualization. In W. F. Pinar (Ed.), Curriculum theorizing: The reconceptualists. Berkeley: McCutchan Publishing Corporation, pp. 396-414.