Discourse, Rationality, and Educational Research: A Historical Perspective of RER¹

Abstract

In this essay I explore the relationship between research reviews and the fields of study to which they pertain. Using the curriculum field as an example, I argue that such reviews are venues where fields of inquiry are constituted, reproduced, and over time changed. This construction occurs, I suggest, as the discursive practices or rules of reasoning embedded in the language in which these reviews are framed are transformed into curriculum policies or programs through a process that I liken to state building. Both these discursive practices and the policies which they allow constitute the regulative mechanisms of the curriculum. I use the issues of the Review of Educational Research devoted to curriculum from 1931 through 1969 to explore this topic. Undertaking a genealogical examination, I explore the lineage of these discursive practices, paying particular attention to their patterns of discontinuity over time. I use this genealogy to suggest how the curriculum field was constructed and to identify its regulative impact. In doing so, I look at how curriculum discourse works as an instrument of power. I conclude the essay by considering what this exploration tells us in general about the relationship between reviews and fields of inquiry.

What the Schools Teach: A Social History of the American Curriculum Since 1950

“…A finales de los años treinta, parecía que se llegaría a un consenso en cuanto a la cuestión de la selección y organización del currículum. Desde que se fundó en 1931 y a través de los años cincuenta, la Review of Educational Research, un importante vehículo para la información acerca de las investigaciones relacionadas con el currículum, estaba repleta de artículos que describían diferentes alternativas sobre las disciplinas académicas como elemento organizativo para el currículum (Franklin, 1999). Por ejemplo, Samuel Everett y William Wattenberg en un ensayo de la Review de 1937 identificaron un número de las más comunes de estas alternativas organizativas, que incluía la unión de diferentes asignaturas en un grupo de grandes campos como los estudios sociales y las ciencias, el agrupamiento de los contenidos alrededor de una variedad de problemas funcionales de la vida, y la organización del currículum en relación con los intereses y las necesidades de los niños (1937).…”