Curriculum Work as a Public Moral Enterprise

Reflecting the current turn in curriculum work that underscores the relationship between theory and practice, this volume brings together the voices of curriculum theorists working within academic setting and practitioners working in schools and other educational settings. The book traces their collaborative work, challenging the assumption that practitioners should be only consumers of the theory produced by academics. Thus, this collection engages readers in the complicated conversation about the relationship between theory and practice, between theoreticians and practitioners. Although every author is, to some degree, a practitioner as well as a theorist, their collaboration emerges from the particular positions and identification that each assumes in the practice of their craft. From working with homeless youth to deepening one's personal commitment to antiracist pedagogy in schools, each author's experience implodes the false binary of the theory/practice dichotomy, illuminating a different dimension of the challenges therein.

Curriculum Work as a Public Moral Enterprise draws readers into a 'complicated conversation' about curriculum theory. Nine of the book's eleven chapters offer powerful examples of the learning that takes place when university-based professors and K-12 practitioners cross borders between university and school settings, blur distinctions between theory and practice, and then come together to write about learning.

Rubén A. Gaztambide-Fernández is an advanced doctoral student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where he is a Spencer Research Training Grantee and an instructor in education. James T. Sears is professor of curriculum studies at the University of South Carolina.