Sublime Heterogeneities in Curriculum Frameworks

Abstract

To what extent does the construction of any curriculum framework have to contain axiological assumptions? Educators have been made aware of tacit epistemological assumptions underlying existing curricular frameworks by the continual demands for their revision. Eisner (1979, 2002) suggested that curriculum policy should be centred around imagination; economic rationalists have suggested that it be made more functional and accountable than traditional university disciplines allow for. Is it possible, as Efland (1990) suggests, to combine competing traditional ideologies of education in a complex postmodern pastiche which can nonetheless provide standards of assessment and evaluation without presuming a grand narrative? Brown (2001) suggests not. This paper examines the challenge of maintaining principled standards and recognising postmodern relativities, making particular reference to the notion of the sublime and the arts curriculum.Keywords: sublime heterogeneity, inconsistent aims of education, differend, open curriculum frameworks, living in difference, art curricula Ideological Heterogeneities in CurriculaAn ideology is more loosely constructed than a theory, but it depends upon networks of assumptions, principles, beliefs about what it means to be a good person, that we generally pick up from everyday experience and vernacular language without being aware that we are so doing, An ideology affects not only the way teachers interact with students, but what they consider important enough to include in the curriculum and how they evaluate it. What we include as content in the curriculum will depend on how we think we know the world. The recommended pedagogy will depend on how we believe students learn, the activities we include in the curriculum equally depend on our theory of learning and our ethics, and our assessment or evaluation of success will depend on what we take to be worthwhile education and the power of the teacher.Elliot Eisner (1979, Ch 4) distinguished five basic orientations to the curriculum: academic rationalism, personal relevance, social adaptation, social reconstruction, and curriculum as technology, which were based on differing aims of education but did not distinguish between different epistemologies of the student as learner and knower.770 Felicity Haynes

How to do things with words: Speech acts in education

“…Philosophers of education have long reflected on the frivolous aspects of these agendas (Ecclestone & Hayes, 2008;Edwards, 2012;Goldman, 1999;Griffiths & Tann, 1992;Haynes, 2006;Kristjansson, 2007;Schrag, 2011;Smeyers, Smith, & Standish, 2007;Smith, 2002;Standish, 2012aStandish, , 2012bSuissa, 2008;Zevin, 2010). But even from the perspective of common sense, it is not hard to see that each of the ideas above has some merit; nor that they are all rather vague.…”