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I\ - gglfikfilnl‘ l ““1““ HNHIMHMUHMMKIIE nfidunwhmv. “tag .1 $1“. xHIJMJflI’QI II‘ ‘ll‘ktnlqid‘l‘ ‘Q‘l‘ifibk .I‘UI‘I‘I’EUJi..- fin”. 1| filtfi‘tb‘fillkh‘filvplucéi‘ Int” . , n\« I ‘IIIQD‘I ‘i‘h 1|).\{ \Ibi‘I‘l .35 isfl‘llt‘ IliulliI .I‘ 31“.. I? ’t'.?u\l|\ llVII‘I . it I I . . 3 15‘4““. R0!- ‘NH... ‘1‘: ‘1‘ t . I|ll.u‘\l|l‘tu‘\nqlu\<|ll\"|‘ufl.fil I- \fioI-1 I.\ N-.. ‘l‘%‘lflflfl%flflfl .ul‘ .“hutllvbaflww IIWI“! ll \E‘Hfi$“¥§i" t‘l‘XulUr. I Lu. J... \I ‘ vb‘l . .‘l‘o‘ 'xflfi §k%% {118' fishing I Q- ‘I L Oor THESIS LIBRARIES MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY EAST LAix’Sii‘tG, MKJH. 48J24 This is to certify that the dissertation entitled A FRAMEWORK FOR EXAMINING RECONCEPTUALISM AND DERIVING ITS POSSIBLE IMPLICATIONS FOR UNDERGRADUATE LIBERAL ARTS TEACHER EDUCATION presented by Robert Louis Mulder has been accepted towards fulfillment of the requirements for PH. D . degree in EDUCATION MM” 4? géww Major professor Date H/“iSO MSU is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Institution 0-12771 RETURNING Mt’Egl' rMSl. H W . 9m0| ‘1 COpyright by ROBERT LOUIS MULDER 1983 ' /JL//' (0 .) A FRAMEWORK FOR EXAMINING RECONCEPTUALISM AND DERIVING ITS POSSIBLE IMPLICATIONS FOR UNDERGRADUATE LIBERAL ARTS TEACHER EDUCATION BY Robert Louis Mulder A DISSERTATION Submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY College of Education 1983 ABSTRACT A FRAMEVDRK F OR EXAMINING RECONCEPTUALISM AND DERIVIMB ITS POSSIBLE IM’LICATIONS F OR UNDERGRADUATE LIBERAL ARTS TEACHER EDWATION BY Robert Louis Mulder This study develops a framework for presenting and examining the work of two critical curriculum theorists known as reconceptualists. Selected works of William F. Pinar and Michael w. Apple are reviewed as examples of existential and structural emphases within reconcep— tualism. The main concepts and themes of Pinar and Apple are recast in the categories of the framework, as is their common perception of traditional modes of thinking about curriculum and schooling. The completed framework is then used to analyze structural and program- matic characteristics of typical undergraduate liberal arts teacher education programs, and suggestions are made regarding how liberal arts teacher educators might continue to use the framework, and recon- ceptualist insights, to examine their programs and direct them toward the promotion of social equity and justice in schools. The framework is a matrix which diSplays Pinar's and Apple's theories, and their common perceptions of traditional theories of curriculum and schooling, in terms of the questions asked, the pre- ferred location of answers, and the operative conceptions of curri- culum, school in society, and value. Pinar is shown to be seeking Robert Louis Mulder through a blending of neo-Marxist, phenomenological, and existential thought, to understand the nature of an individual's internal experiencing of schooling. Apple is shown to be seeking, through a primary reliance on nee-Marxist thought, to understand the nature of external social structures which act to shape an individual's experience of schooling. Both favor the use of intellectually rigo- rous analysis of curriculum and schooling, using historical, philoso- phical, and hermeneutic methodologies. Both are shown to view tradi- tional curriculum theorizing and practice as embodying and valuing a reductionistic view' of“ science, derived from positivism, which is directed to conserving extant social and cultural conditions and values, and which produces the latent consequences of dehumanizing students and reproducing an ineaual and unjust society. Selected structural and programmatic characteristics of prepro— fessional liberal arts teacher education programs, examined in terms of the categories and content of the framework, are shown to reproduce traditional thought and practice in teachers, and thereby in schools by extension. There appears to be little that is distinctively "liberal arts" in these programs. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to express my reSpect and appreciation to Dr. Samuel S. Corl III, and to Dr. Charles A. Blackman who succeeded him as my chairman and advisor. Both men intuitively understood and consciously promoted visions of curriculum and schooling which affirm human value as both ground and object of educational theory and practice. Sincere appreciation is extended to Dr. Benjamin Bohnhorst, Dr. George Ferree, and Dr. Willard Warrington for their counseling, advice, and support throughout the deveIOpment and execution of this thesis. To my colleagues and others unnamed, who may have understood me better than I do, and yet whose significant support and accommodation in separate and distinct ways is perhaps better known to me than to them, I offer my sincere gratitude. Finally, I humbly say thank you to my wife, Karen J. Mulder, and to my children Mark, Curtis, and Kate Mulder, who in constant loving and supportive' manners provided the motivation and Opportunity to complete this thesis. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page LIST OF TABLES .......................... vi CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY ................ I Introduction . . ............. . . . . . 1 Purpose of the Study ................ l Assumptions on Which the Study is Based . . . . 2 Methodology .................... 2 Delimitations of the Study .......... 3 Limitations of the Study ........... 4 Key Concepts .................... 6 Structure of the Study ............... 8 2. AN OVERVIEW OF (A) TRADITIONAL CURRICULUM THEORIZING, (B) THE HISTORY OF RECONCEPTUALISM, AND (C) Two CONCEPTIONS OF LIBERAL ARTS EDUCATION .......... 10 Introduction .................... 10 Traditional Curriculum Theorizing ......... 11 The History of Reconceptualism . .......... 23 The Movement ................. 23 Definitions and Descriptions ......... 27 ,r. Two Conceptions of Liberal Arts Education ..... 30 Notes 0 O l O O O O O O O O O O O O O O ...... 37 3. METHODOLOGY ....................... 40 Introduction .................... 40 The Framework .................. . 42 Strategy ...................... 49 iii CHAPTER 4. EXISTENTIAL AND STRUCTURAL RECONCEPTUALIZATIONS OF CURRICULUM AND SCHOOLING ................ Introduction .................... Existential Reconceptualization: William Pinar . Definition and Description . . . . . . . . . . The Effects of Schooling ........... Search for a Method ...... . ....... Liberation ....... . .......... Structural Reconceptualization: Michael Apple . . . Definition and Description .......... Valuing, Science, and Schooling ........ Liberation and Reform . . . . . ........ Traditional Conceptions .............. Notes ....................... 5. THE APPLICATION OF A FRAMEWORK FOR EXAMINING TRADITIONAL CONCEPTIONS, AND EXISTENTIAL AND STRUCTURAL RECONCEPTUALIZATIONS, OF EDUCATIONAL THEORY AND PRACTICE ........................ Introduction .................... Traditional Conceptions as Perceived by Reconceptualists .................. Recasting of Concepts into the Categories of the Framework ............... Summary Terms, the Framework, and Comment . . . Reconceptualization: Existential (Pinar) ..... Recasting of Concepts into the Categories of the Framework .......... . . . Summary Terms, the Framework, and Comment . . . Reconceptualization: Structural (Apple) ...... Recasting of Concepts into the Categories of the Framework ............... Summary Terms, the Framework, and Comment . . . Summary ...................... iv Page 109 109 110 110 115 116 116 120 121 121 126 CHAPTER Page 6. POSSIBLE IMPLICATIONS OF RECONCEPTUALISM FOR UNDERGRADUATE PROGRAMS OF TEACHER EDUCATION IN LIBERAL ARTS INSTITUTIONS O O O O O O O O O O O O O O C C O O O O 135 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 Analysis of Situational Characteristics . . . . . . 136 Analysis of Programmatic Characteristics . . . . . . 151 smary O O O O O O O O O O I O O O O O O O O O O O 156 Notes 0 O O O O O I O O O O I O O 0 O O 0 O O I O O 159 7. SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS ............. . . 160 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160 Summary and Recommendations ............ 162 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................... 170 Table 3.1 Table 5.1 Table 5.2 Table 5.3 Table 5.4 LIST OF TABLES Framework for Examining Traditional, Reconceptualized Existential, and Reconceptualized Structural Thinking About Curriculum and Schooling ......... . ........... Traditional Concepts as Viewed by Reconceptualists .................. Reconceptualizations: Existential (Pinar) ..... Reconceptualizations: Structural (Apple) . . . . . Completed Framework for Examining Traditional, Reconceptualized Existential, and Reconceptualized Structural Thinking About Curriculum and Schooling ..................... vi Page 114 119 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY Introduction Over the: past decade a new criticism has become increasingly evident in the professional literature dealing with schooling in general, and curriculum in particular. Although its names have varied, the term "reconceptualism" has evolved as the dominant label. Reconceptualist thinking is significant for two reasons. One reason is that its form, based upon the questions it asks, and therefore its content, consisting of the answers it provides, break dramatically from the mode of educational thinking which began to dominate the literature even before Ralph Tyler gave it expression in 1949. The other reason evolves from the first. Reconceptualism, if substan- tiated, has powerful implications for undergraduate teacher education programs in liberal arts institutions. Reconceptualism cannot yet be called a movement. There exists no commonly endorsed platform or agenda among its proponents, and there is no subscription to a trutary mode of analysis. Theorists to whom the label is applied agree that one of the few things they agree about is their disagreement on significant issues. The use of the term, however, does have a discernable history, and running through the disagreements among reconceptualists are concerns and themes suffi- ciently similar in nature and import to suggest a loose framework of 2 categories through which reconceptualism can be analyzed and under- stood, and through which implications for liberal arts teacher education can be extrapolated. Purpose of the Study The major purposes of this study are (l) to provide a framework through which the major themes of two identifiable groups of re- conceptualists can be accommodated to each other and to their perceptions of the mode of thinking about curriculum and schooling which they believe to be contenporarily dominant, and (2) to enploy the framework in an attempt to provide for liberal arts teacher educators a greater degree of conceptual clarity regarding re- conceptualist criticisms and alternatives. It is hypothesized that the framework may later be employed to facilitate the drawing of inferences regarding the relevance of reconceptualism for teacher education programs in liberal arts institutions. Assumptions on Which the Study is Based The basic assumptions underlying this study are as follows: (1) liberal arts institutions will continue to play a significant role in the undergraduate education of teachers; (2) teacher educators in liberal arts institutions are desirous of providing the best possible programs; (3) teacher educators in liberal arts institutions value insights into the meaningfulness and consequences of their programs; (4) teacher educators in liberal arts institutions will perceive new critical insights to provide Opportunities for inproving their pro- grams; and, (5) this study will inSpire further inquiry into re- 3 conceptualism and its implications for undergraduate teacher education programs in liberal arts institutions. Methodolo Given that the purpose of this study is to develop a framework for synthesizing already deveIOped sets of concepts and themes, the overall approach to this study is conceptual rather then empirical, and is in a discussion format. This means: (1) Much of the substantive content is a report and analysis of themes and sets of concepts already available in the literature. More Specifically, an understanding of reconceptualism is promoted by re- viewing the literature in order to derive a history of the use of the term, to identify its range of meanings and synonyms, and to delineate two central sets of concepts and themes. Inasmuch as reconceptualism is a "reconceiving" of what is believed by the reconceptualists to be the dominant mode of thinking about curriculum and schooling, their descriptions of features of the dominant mode are included in the review. (2) The themes and sets of concepts of the two identified groups of“ reconceptualists are accommodated to each other, and to their sketches of the dominant mode of thinking, through the analytical tools of the phiIOSOpher and literary critic rather than through those of the empiricist. The categories selected for accommodating the views to each other constitute the framework this study set out to develop. The categories, presented in the form of questions, are as follows: 4 (a) What questions are selected as important to ask? (b) What sources are identified as the location Of answers? (c) What conception of "curriculum" is operative? (d) What conception Of "school in society" is Operative? (e) What conception of "value" is explicitly or implicitly Operative? (3) Concluding implications are develOped inferentially from con- ceptual rather than hard-data bases. The use Of the framework for examining the relevance of reconceptualist thinking for liberal arts teacher education programs will be suggested through a discussion Of ideas rather than through exclusive reliance upon empirical verification. Delimitations of the Study The framework develOped in this study may also be relevant to the understanding and analysis Of other areas Of professional training, but the connections are not made because to do so would move this study beyond its intended focus on undergraduate teacher education programs in liberal arts institutions. The related areas are (l) in- service teacher education, (2) graduate level teacher education, (3) teacher education in other-than-liberal arts institutions, and (4) training programs for human service professions other than teaching. Limitations of the Study The limitations of this study are as follows: (1) One intent Of this study is to present an accurate repre- sentation of reconceptualist thinking as it is given expression by its 5 own Spokesman. Competing and contradicting theories, therefore, are not brought to challenge the accuracy or adequacy of reconceptualist insights or the methods Of inquiry by which they were derived. Con- nections with prior traditions or compatible systems Of contemporary intellectual thought are not made beyond those recognized and claimed by the reconceptualists themselves. (2) Although reconceptualists claim that one of the few things they agree about is that they disagree with each other about important issues, this study accepts as valid, confirmed by this writer's own survey Of the literature, that two identifiable orientations do exist among the reconceptualists. This does not necessarily prove that these two orientations exist, nor does it exclude the possibility that more than two orientations exist. (3) Only one author has been selected to exemplify each of the two orientations. These authors have been chosen because, in the Opinion Of this writer, they have develOped their views more thoroughly and extensively than have others, and therefore illustrate best the basic features Of each orientation. It is possible that the selection Of other writers either to substitute for or to augment the two featured may have served to modify in some minor respects the profiles of the two orientations as presented in this study. (4) The two views Of liberal arts education sketched in this study are not the only two which have been argued at one time or another, and it is unlikely that either is actually implemented in real insti- tutions exactly as characterized in this study. They are, however, in 6 the Judgement of this writer, the two dominant views claimed by liberal arts institutions and those who teach in them. (5) The selection of reconceptualism as the focus for this study, and the pointing out Of its relevance for undergraduate teacher educa- tion programs in liberal arts institutions, are indicative Of this writer's positive biases toward both. A concerted attempt is made in this study to present the concepts and issues objectively, but the entire study must be understood as having been conceived and develOped out of this. writer's deep concern that the :role of education in society be meaningfully understood by liberal arts teacher educators, and this writer's judgement that the insights and methods of analysis of the reconceptualists can enhance that understanding. Key Concepts The following five concepts are highlighted to alert the reader to their significance. Because each of them is defined more carefully in terms Of the use to which it is put, and because their meanings differ within the views dealt with in this study, they are not defined here. That is provided at this point is a brief statement signaling the issue or problem involved in the use of the term, and its importance to this study. Curriculum. The ambiguity of this term is generally recognized within the profession of education, yet it continues to be a central concept in educational theory. It is not necessary to this study to 7 select and defend a particular definition, but its selection as an integral component in the analytic framework developed and used in this study is indicative of its importance. Liberal Arts. Like curriculum, this term is also ambiguous, probably because the debate about what prOperly constitutes liberal arts education Often can be understood as a conflict of conceptions regarding what curriculum is. In this study, the designation "liberal arts" serves to separate this concept from the larger generic cate- gories "higher education" and "vocational training." Reconceptualism. This is the name most commonly accepted for recent forms Of criticism which take exception to, and attempt to reconceive, what is alleged to be the dominant contemporary mode Of thinking about schooling and curriculum. The basic reconceptual stance is anti-positivistic, and attempts to provide insight into schooling and curriculum through the use of analytical models such as philOSOphy, history, phenomenology, politics and economics rather than singular reliance on an empirical model. Schooling. In this study, the term has two referents. One accepts that schools are givens, and "schooling" is what is or what should be happening within schools. The other gets outside of the given in an attempt to understand "schooling" in terms Of its role and function in the social order, and the personal and social consequences Of individuals having "experienced" it. 23123. This study recognizes that this term fUnctions sometimes as a noun to designate a characteristic or quality of something, and 8 sometimes as a verb referring to appraising something. Furthermore, one can analyze a conceptual model both in terms Of the statements it makes about things which are valuable, and in terms Of the values which were operative in its construction. Its selection as an inte- gral concept in the analytic framework Of this study is indicative Of its importance. Each of the above terms receives more careful clarification and analysis within the context Of its use in the positions reported later in this study. Other terms more technical and Specific within the views this study reports will be defined as they occur. Structure Of the Study The remaining chapters Of this study are organized as follows. Chapter 2 is designed to provide a conceptual backdrop or "ground" against which this study can stand out as "figure." To that end, overviews Of three areas relevant to this study are presented: (I) an overview of traditional curriculum theorizing, (2) an overview of the history of reconceptualism, and (3) an overview of two contemporarily dominant views of liberal arts education. The purpose Of Chapter 3 is to present the framework to be used for clarifying two reconceptualist orientations and their perceptions of traditional educational thinking, and for generating possible implications Of reconceptualist thinking for undergraduate liberal arts teacher education. The literature Of selected reconceptualists to which the framework will be applied is presented in Chapter 4. In Chapter 5 the literature is recast in terms of the framework. Possible implications Of recon- 9 ceptualism for liberal arts teacher education are explored in Chapter 6. The appropriateness Of the framework as a tool for reconceiving undergraduate liberal arts teacher education, and fUrther suggestions for its use, are discussed in Chapter 7. CHAPTER 2 AN OVERVIEW OF (A) TRADITIONAL CURRICULUM THEORIZING, (B) THE HISTORY OF RECONCEPTUALISM, AND (C) TWO CONCEPTIONS OF LIBERAL ARTS EDUCATION Introduction The purpose of this chapter is to provide a backdrop, or ground, against which this study may stand out as figure. Included are three separate sketches, each Of which prefigures concepts which are dealt with in later chapters. The sketches develOped are as follows: (1) A brief overview Of the central concepts of four major theorists, Ralph Tyler, Hilda Taba, Jerome Bruner, and Joseph Schwab, who have had a significant influence in familiarizing the currently widely-accepted four-step process of curriculum: state objectives, select learning experiences, organize learning experiences, and evaluate outcomes. Also included is a summary of Bruner's later re- visiting Of his earlier work, and a brief synopsis Of selected writings of two recognized contemporary theorists, John Coodlad and Bruce Joyce, who although not labeled as "reconceptualists" show definite signs Of "reconceiving" curriculum thinking. (2) A synopsis Of the studies Of Margaret Ann Huber and Barbara J. Benham, who have each reviewed the history and literature of what has come to be called "reconceptualism." This section sets the context in 10 11 which are placed the works of William F. Pinar and Michael W. Apple as they are reviewed in Chapter 4. (3) A brief overview of two different views Of liberal arts educa- tion. These views set the context for Chapter 6. Traditional Curriculum Theorizing Although there have been many who have thought and written about curriculum in this century, Ralph Tyler's Basic -Principles Of Curriculum and Instructionl, otherwise known as "The Tyler Rationale," appears to be the single most influential work. George Willis calls it "still the best known and most influential book on curriculum."2 Herbert Kliebard believes the book to be "the most persistent theoretical formulation in the field of curriculum."3 John Goodlad concludes that "most curriculum questions from Bobbitt on down can be placed in Tyler's framework or legitimately transferred into his terms . . . he clarified and systematized the central ques- tions running through the practical affairs of curriculum makers."4 The Tyler rationale features f0ur questions which set the agenda for curriculum workers: "What educational purposes should the school seek to attain? What educational experiences can be provided that are likely to attain these purposes? How can these educational exper- iences be effectively organized? How can we determine whether these purposes are being attained?"5 Answering the first question is most important, since the other three proceed from it. Tyler proposes a two-step framework for 12 answering the first question. The first step is to consult three sources for objectives: studies Of learners, studies of contemporary life, and subject matter Specialists. The second step is to filter the data derived from the three sources through psychological and philosophical screens. Those prOpositions mich survive the screens are to serve as the educational objectives toward which and out Of which Specific curricula, instructional practices, and evaluative procedures are to be develOped. Tyler's four questions and the framework for addressing them figure large in the work of another influential curriculum theorist, Hilda Taba. Taba calls the answers to Tyler's questions "curriculum," and states, All curricula, no matter what their design, are com— posed of certain elements. A curriculum usually contains a statement Of aims and Of Specific objectives; it indi- cates some selection and organization of content; it either implies or manifests certain patterns of teaching and learning whether because the objectives demand them or because the content organization requires them. Finally, it includes a program of evaluation Of the outcomes.5 Taba credits Tyler with having develOped "scientific curriculum develOpment," which, She claims, "needs to draw upon analysis of society and culture, study of the learner and the learning process, and analysis Of the nature of knowledge in order to determine the purposes Of the school and the. nature Of its curriculum."7 Taba expands Tyler's four questions into seven steps for "orderly thinking in curriculum develOpment": (l) diagnose needs; (2) formulate objectives; (3) select content; (A) organize content; (5) select 13 learning experiences; (6) organize learning experiences; and (7) determine what to evaluate, and ways and means for doing 50.8 It is interesting and significant to note that Taba takes the time to address what she perceives to be a gap having developed between theorists and practitioners. She believes the problem to exist at both ends of curriculum develOpment. Theoretical designs, she notes, were being develOped with meager experimentation and practice, and im— plementations were being carried out by practitioners with insuffi- cient understanding of the theory behind them. A third highly influential curriculum theorist is Jerome Bruner, 9 whose book The Process of Education can be understood as a modifi- cation of the Tyler framework, but still within the genre of the Tyler rationale. Bruner's statement "one must take into account the issues of prediSposition, structure, sequence, and reinforcement in preparing 10 and his insistence that curriculum should curriculum materials," be prepared jointly by the smject matter expert, the psychologist, and the teacher, with due regard for the inherent structure Of the material, its sequencing, the psychology of reinforcement, and the building and maintaining Of prediSpositions to problem solving both echo the Tyler rationale. mat sets Bruner somewhat apart are his perceptions regarding the source of curriculun objectives. Bruner believes that swject matter experts ought to be the primary source, with studies Of the learner and of society also important but as sources out Of which strategies might be developed rather than as sources for Objectives. Bruner 14 further believes that the role of subject matter study is not "to pro- duce little living libraries . .. . (but rather) to get a student to think mathematically, to consider matters as a historian does, to take 1 This could be accom- part in the process of knowledge-getting."l plished, he believes, by teaching the structure of the disciplines not only as a body of material already obtained and organized, but also as a procedure for knowledge-getting as well. The work of Joseph Schwab, as given expression in "The Practical: A Language for Curriculum,"12 can be understood as picking up Taba's concern about a practice-theory gap, and as taking some exception to Bruner's primacy Of subject matter Specialists, but still very much within the Spirit Of the Tyler rationale. Unlike Bruner, Schwab is convinced that there exists no foreseeable hOpe of a unified or meta- theory telling how to arrange subjects or to order them in a fixed hierarchy, not from subject matter Specialists, nor from Specialists who study learners and learning, nor from those who study society and culture. Schwab believes the theory-practice gap identified by Taba to be the consequence of increased Specialization by theorists working in the three main sources identified by Tyler, and a concurrent reduc- tion Of dialogue bridging all three. The Specialization had taken theory further and further from the pragmatic needs of practitioners, and the lack Of dialogue exascerbated the problem by making any connections among the branches of Specialization obscure, and there- fore even less useful to the practitioner. 15 To bring theory and practice back in touch with each other, Schwab proposes an eclectic rather than theoretic approach, i.e. "the arts by which unsystematic, uneasy, but useable focus on a body Of questions is effected among diverse theories, each relevant to the (curriculum) 13 problem in a different way." Scnwab challenges Specialists to re- nounce "the Specious hegemonies by which we maintain the fiction"14 that the problems Of one curriculum area have no bearing on another area. He calls his method deliberation, and believes that the conse- quences of eclectic deliberation will be the enablement Of practi- tioners to make decisions about action in concrete situations. The action of decision-making would occur in those four areas identified by Tyler. There are two important features to note about Schwab's call to get beyond the differences separating the Specialists. One is his perception that the discussion ought to take place within the real social and psychological contexts of peOple's lives. This represents a significant shift from what appears in Tyler to be an assumption that the experts can decide for others, practitioners and students alike, what their needs are. Schwab seems to agree with the questions and framework of Tyler, but he suggests that the needs of practi- tioners as they themselves perceive them set the context and point of departure for the eclectic work of theorists. The other significant feature, more implicit than explicit, is an apparent challenging of the assummion that curriculum development is the clean, neat, and completely scientific process that Taba believes it can be. There 16 is in Schwab a strong sense that all the answers are not yet in, and not all the right questions have yet been asked, and that the specialists should as aggressively address the ambiguities in theory and practice as they do the certainties. It is precisely these two features, an insistence that the ques- tions of curriculum and schooling to which theorists address them- selves be located within the actual social and psychological contexts of peOple's lives, and dissatisfaction with the scientifically-certain views of curriculum and schooling, that distinguish the reconcep- tualists as reviewed in the second section of this chapter and amplified in Chapter 4. Before turning to reconceptualism, however, three examples of cogent, contemporary theorists who have not been labeled "reconceptualist“ but nevertheless have clearly begun to re- conceptualize curriculum and schooling are provided. The first example, surprisingly, is Jerome Brunet, who revisited his work in 1971.15 Bruner, in retrospect, concludes that in his emphasis (NT building school curricula upon the structures Of the disciplines, he had overestimated the inherent interest of learners, particularly those in lower socio-economic classes, in a curriculum so conceived. In its place he suggests a curriculum designed. to use knowledge in what he believes to be the massive task Of bringing society back to a sense Of values and priorities, to focus on the OISpossession Of the poor, and to guarantee a future to all, not just to those fortunate enough to have inherited a desire for and faith in 17 learning as traditionally defined and practiced in schools. Bruner now believes the issues of curriculum and schooling to be deeply poli- tical, a perception to which he confesses to having been inadequately sensitive at the time Process of Education was conceived and written. The work Of John Goodlad also exemplifies a reconceiving Of curri- culum and schooling theory. Although there is abundant evidence in his work that he still wants to deal with the same four basic curri- culum questions which Tyler identified, Goodlad suggests a signifi- cantly different framework for generating answers. Observing that "values and phiIOSOphical positions inevitably enter into all steps in curriculum planning; many alternatives will have been consciously or unconsciously ruled out by the time of Tyler's prOposed screening."l6 Goodlad prOposes "turning to values as the primary data-source in selecting purposes for the school and as a data-source in making all subsequent curricular decisions."17 In other words, Goodlad is pointing out that a phiIOSOphy (particularly an axiology) is Operative in Tyler at the outset, Operating not only in the deter- mination of which questions curriculum develOperS should ask, but in the determination Of which sources to consult in order to derive the aims and objectives to consider, how to arrange them, and what to evaluate and hOw. Kliebard, in an even more inclusive and critical reappraisal Of the Tyler rationale, takes similar issue with Tyler's perception Of the role of phiIOSOphy in his rationale, pointing out that, in Tyler, 18 We are urged only to make our educational Objectives consistent with our educational philOSOphy, and this makes the choice of objectives precisely as arbitrary as the choice Of philOSOphy. . . . AS long as we derive a set of objectives consistent with this philOSOphy . . . we have develOped our objectives in line with the Tyler rationale. The point is that, given the notion Of educa- tional Objectives and the necessity of stating them expli- citly and consistently with a philOSOphy, it makes all the difference in the world what one's guiding philOSOphy is since that consistency can be as much a sin as a virtue.1 Goodlad's own values and biases in curriculum theorizing and develOpment are evident in the following statements excerpted from Behind the Classroom Door: (1) the best hOpe for a self-renewing society is a self—renewing individual; (2) education is admirably suited and uni0uely reSponsible for develOping rational powers - not merely cognitive acuity, but involving the acquisition Of knowledge, careful weighing and appraising, consideration Of alternatives and the formulation Of convictions and actions based on convictions; and (3) the educated man is fully aware of societal restraints, the reasons for them, and their apprOpriateness or inapprOpriateness for mankind; he needs Opportunities for self-disciplining and assuming reSponsi- bilities for his own actions.19 Important to note here is that Goodlad recognizes his philOSOphy as generative Of all his pro- fessional work, and the primacy of the individual in the generation of his own philOSOphy and action. PhiIOSOphy is certainly more than merely an interposed screen for John Goodlad. Goodlad believes that although there is evidence Of comparable thinking in the literature, there is little evidence Of it actually operating in schools. Instead, he Observes, 19 At present, schooling is equated with a process Of formal schooling in time and place . . . a box run for certain hours Of the day by peOple who have a surBrisingly homogenous conception of what should go on in it.2 The dominant perception, he believes, is a common ends-common means concept of either-ors. In the classroom it is pass-fail; in the institution it is out or in, a decision made early for a child; in society as a whole it is when to begin and when to end, and a sorting process regarding eligibility for subsequent non-compulsory segments. Motivation for going on is maintained by requiring educational creden- tials for entry into the economic system. Goodlad's observations sound very much like those of the recon- ceptualists, as do his conclusions, presented in the following statement: The maintenance of a schooling system with such limited alternatives, many of them punative, seems to require a good deal of accompanying baggage directed to rationalization, justification, legitimation, and the like. Testing systems . . .. and external examinations . . . frequently are used as weapons against innovation. . . . The primitive carrot-and-stick psychology which proved virtually useless in adjusting children to the system is now being applied at great cost to their teachers. When we put together such a concept of accountability with performance-based teacher education, we have a rather elegant piece of bureaucratic folly . . . the interlocking System (implies) a predictive, scien— tific, or theoretical base. No such base exists; in fact, we are not even close to establishing one. . . .. It is a sad commentary that in such a field of uncertainty we seek laws to enforce conformity and create an aura of certainty when, in fact, none exists. This is one fOrm Of censor- ship, a little more subtle than most.21 20 The work of Bruce Joyce represents yet another, and final for this overview, reconceiving of schooling and curriculum. That Joyce is thinking more like Goodlad, and less like Tyler, is evident in his introduction to Models of Teaching, where he writes: Educational procedures are generated from general views about human nature and about the kinds Of goals and environments that enhance human beings. Because of their frames of reference - their views Of man and what he should become - educators are likely to focus on specific kinds of learning outcomes and to favor certain ways Of creating educational environments. Further explaining what he means by educational environments, Joyce states: Content, skills, instructional roles, social rela- tionships, types Of activities, physical features, and their use all add up to an environmental system whose parts interact with each other to constrain the behavior of all participants, teachers as well as students. Different combinations Of these elements create different environments eliciting different educational outcomes.23 Joyce believes that an educational environment produces both "instructional effects, consisting chiefly Of the content and skills which are developed through the activities which characterize the environment, and nurturant effects, consisting chiefly in changes in capacity (thinking, creativity, integrativeness) and values (including depth and flexibility as well as direction Of values) which result from 'living in' the environment."24 In other words, the assertion is being made that a student gradually comes to construct reality in a way that reflects his educational environment. Living a model year after year produces replicas of it in the form Of student personality, skills, knowledge, and attitudes. Joyce postulates that an 21 environment featuring primarily a systems approach to schooling will produce over the years a student oriented to production and utili- tarianism; whereas an environment featuring human awareness training will produce a student more oriented to humanistic and personal concerns. 25 In Flexibility in Teaching, Joyce presents a more carefully focused yet more comprehensive view Of the typical educational envi- ronment as he perceives it. In a brief historical overview Of American schooling, Joyce states that the curricular content, the processes used to teach it, and the social structure of the school were designed to deal with two basic social needs. One was to help accommodate society to the new needs Of an increasingly industrialized society; the other was to help establish a common heritage for new waves of immigrants. The school system became closely tied to the status systems Of society, and education became an indiSpensable means of status maintenance for most persons. Contemporary schools, says Joyce, continue to be dominated by mainstream cultural values, and he Offers what he believes to be evidence that schools today are most commonly based upon an economic conception of humanity and economic values: (1) making lower levels prerequisite for higher has yielded a system Of rewards and punish- ments for production; (2) students who do not behave fall Off an economic as well as academic ladder; (3) expulsion represents a fine throughout a lifetime in the form of earnings not received; (A) the structure of the school is designed to facilitate this conception of 22 education and to permit the easy maintenance of order and regimenta- tion; (5) students move from class to class in departmentalized systems, under the supervision of a particular teacher who is a task— master and disciplinarian; (6) a segmented day helps keep teachers, rather than students, in control; (7) the structure Of secondary education, with students passing from station to station, mimics the assembly line; and, (8) individuals are seen as producers and con- sumers, the purpose of education being to make them better at both. Furthermore, teacher education as presently conceived and practiced is said to perpetuate these economic values. The primary purpose of teacher education, says Joyce, is believed to be the provision of personnel to work in schools as they are, and he high- lights characteristics of typical teacher education programs which reflect and reinforce current normative schooling practices: (1) student teaching is basically an apprenticeship, and the apprentice- ship model Of training is notoriously conserving; (2) methods courses do little more than deal with traditional curriculum areas and intro- duce trends-of-the-time; (3) theory courses are separated from methods, the consequence being that the perSpectives a teacher would need for autonomous decision-making are clearly separated from and differentiated from the pragmatism of methods; (4) curriculum language is efficiency oriented; and (5) the bulk Of research is presented in an economic mode. "Any great deviation," concludes Joyce, ”innue- diately stimulates a negative reaction, frequently a severe one. 23 Thus most schools are minor variations on the basic cultural theme. This (economic) conception forms the ground against which competing alternatives vie for attention."26 The History of Reconceptualism The Movement Margaret Ann Huber, desiring to "show how important it is, when studying change in education, to take into account three factors: the historical context, the social process, and the intellectual substance Of scholarly debate, "27 develOped an historical overview of recon- ceptualism by identifying and interviewing five "ieaderparticipants": Maxine Greene, James B. Macdonald, Dwayne Huebner, William Pinar, and Michael Apple. Barbara J. Benham, addressing the questions "Is there really a movement? If so, what is its history? What is its under- lying philOSOphy? And, most importantly, what impact is it likely to 28 reviewed the have on the institution of schooling in our society?" literature extensively and interviewed eight educators who have been involved in reconceptualist conferences and who have published papers supporting the notion of reconceptualization. The eight educators interviewed were Janet Miller, Donald Bateman, Madeline R. Grumet, William Pinar, Maxine Greene, Michael Apple, James Macdonald, and Ira Wiengarten. Although Benham's primary focus is reconceptualism in the 1970's, she places it as an extension Of a longer tradition in curriculum theorizing. She reports from her interview with Macdonald that in 24 Macdonald's view, he and Dwayne Huebner have been in the business Of reconceptualizing curriculum theory for at least twenty-five years, with much of their work unacknowledged, or even unpublished, because nobody would talk with them for at least the first fifteen years. Michael Apple is reported to have viewed his work as an outgrowth of the efforts Of George Counts, Harold Rugg, and John Dewey; and William Pinar's debt to the existentialism Of Jean Paul Sartre is established. Huber also identifies past writers, conditions, and events which have led to the reconceptualizing of curriculum in its present fOrm, through a decade-by-decade synOpsis, beginning with the l920's. She establishes the curriculum field to have been developed in the 1920's in direct response to the practical needs of practioners in the schools. Principles Of what should be learned in schools were formu- lated, and ways of teaching and evaluating students were prOposed. In the early 1940's, the term "curriculum theory" came into use, but seemed generically interchangeable with "curriculum studies" and "curriculum writing." The Chicago Conference on Curriculum Theory in 1947 is marked as the most significant event in the evolution of curriculum work to that point in time. Huber also highlights the 1940's as the beginning of two post-World War II significant develOp- ments in education. One was the rise Of' behavioral sciences and behaviorist theory; the other was the placement of "theory" as a sub- Specialty in the curriculum field and in other sub-fields of education. 25 Huber believes the origins and develOpment of a critical curri- culum movement as a protest to the rise of the behaviorist approach in education to be discernable in the three decades following World War II. The 1950's are identified as the beginning of a protest in the humanities to what was believed to be excessively exclusive employment of behaviorist models for analyzing and determining schooling. The protest became more aggressive in the 1960's. The writing of James Macdonald, Dwayne Huebner, Herbert Kliebard, Paul Klohr, Ross Mooney, and Eliot Eisner are identified as illustrative of the humanist prO- test. Impetus for the protest was provided by the emergence of a more vigorous humanistic psychology, and the joining Of the humanists by others who were committed to educational reform and who protested vehemently the positivist values that had become acceptable and even pOpular in education. The protest became strong, concludes Huber, but "lacked the force Of an organized group protest movement."29 Beginning in the late 1960's, and continuing through the 1970's, says Huber, a second generation of critics, students of those promi- nent critics of the 1950's and early 1960's, began focusing more intensively on the notion of reconceptualizing curriculum, and they "discovered new bases for theory in curriculum: history, philOSOphy, literary criticism, political science, radical psychology, aesthetics and anthrOpOlogy . "30 Michael Apple, Donald Bateman, Alex Molnar, and William Pinar are identified as the most prolific and well- deveIOped new voices. The key feature Of the new criticism is shown 26 to be the desire to identify and call into question the value assumptions out of which the then dominant behavioralistic/positi- vistic theories of curriculum and schooling arose and were employed. Benham suggests that there are two reasons that the critical stance of the reconceptualists finally found an audience in the 1970's rather than in the more turbulent 1960's or in the 1950's when Macdonald and Huebner were beginning their work. One reason, attributed to Bateman, is that in order for the element Of radical criticism to become an integral part of the reconceptual stance, the 1960's had to be experienced first. "We now see," says Benham, "that the school is embedded in its society and that its problems are not educational problems alone but are unavoidably social, political, and economic problems as well. And we see also that one cannot expect Significant changes in schools unless there are significant changes in society as a whole. "31 The second reason is that the work of Paulo Friere, when it became available in the United States in the 1970's, "had a catalyzing effect on curriculum theorists . . . it was as if he had given words to what everyone had been thinking."32 Huber characterizes the protest as having peaked in 1973, when critical curriculum theorists held their first organized conference at the University of Rochester to share their thinking on the theme "heightened consciousness, cultural revolution, and curriculum theory." Conferences have been held annually Since, and The Journal Of Curriculum Theorizing was first published in 1978 to provide a more centralized and public forum for the expression and debate Of critical 27 curriculun theorizing. The term "reconceptualist” first appeared in 1975, and it is to a more careful treatment Of this term that the study now turns. Definitions-and»DescriptionS Benham reports that although the term "reconceptualism" did not make an appearance prior to or during the first conference in 1973, Pinar began using the term in 1974 in a paper presented at the Xavier University Curriculum Theory Conference in Cincinnati in 1974, and the term appeared in the title of a curriculum theory conference held at the University of Virginia in 1975. Comments Benham, "Whether or not it was the best choice of terms, it stuck; the burgeoning movement had a name."33 In her reference notes on this point, Huber states "evidently James Macdonald coined this term . .. . but Pinar has given it currency through its appearance in the books (edited by Pinar). At any rate, each credits the other with pOpularizing the term."34 Precise definitions Of the term have been difficult because Of the varied referents residing in the diversity of theoretical bases from which individual reconceptualists work. Consequently, definitions have tended to take the form of descriptions Of the uses to which the term is put, or Of the foci and activities of reconceptualists. Macdonald, credited with coining the term, is quoted as saying: 28 I don't see it as a label. I see it as a way Of saying there are a lot of thoughtful peOple who, for many different reasons and from many different persuasions, feel that the field of curriculum is arid, is not ful- filling its human promise. . . . We must search for a new ground for the curriculum field. It's the Spirit, the searching, the sharing Of new ground, that is the Recon- ceptualization.35 Benham, working with the term "reconceptualization," Offers this definition: "the effort to focus curriculum thinking on personal, social, and political realities."36 Huber prefers "critical curriculum theorists" to "recon- ceptualists" as a more useful label to distinguish them from curri- culum Specialists and other curriculum theorists who do not employ critical history or literary analysis as they do, and provides an extensive summative list of descriptors: Critical curriculum theorists . . . see schools as proactive and reactive social institutions . . . use methods derived from historical, literary, and esthetic criticism . . . believe in the rights, freedom, and value Of the person and conceive of themselves as scholars pro- testing the alienation and dehumanization Of life in the school system . . . consistently resist categorization Of their work into any general school of thought . . . are unified by their critique Of unexamined bases Of society, of knowledge, and of existing educational practice and re- search . . . protest dehumanization, technical rational- ity, the submersion Of human consciousness, and fragmen- tation of human life . . . affirm the importance of emotions and intuition . . . defined reality in terms that go beyond economic materialism to include Spirituality, and criticize schools for cooperating in maintaining values which preserve the social structure at the expense of the individual . . . are a movement against scientism in educational theory . . . are anti-institutional . . . 29 believing in moral choice and freedom for the individual ix; a pluralistic world, (they) Oppose determinism and behaviorism in the schools and in learning theory . . . while critical of the existing social structure, the theorists nevertheless believe that the conversion of the individual to a new consciousness is possible if educators make an effort to renew the language Of education, to value the individual, and to demystify common conceptions of reality.37 Perhaps the most precise descriptions are William Pinar's picture of the reconceptualist at work, Huber's statement Of the purpose Of research, and Benham's statement of the aim of reconceptualism, as follows: The Reconceptualists tend to study not 'change in behavior' or 'decision-making in the classroom' but matters of temporality, transcendence, consciousness and politics. In brief, the reconceptualist attempts to understand the nature of educational experience. For the critical theorist, the purpose of research is to examine critically the existing curricular systems to make explicit their implications for the students and teacher as well as the probable effects on society.3 Reconceptualization, then, aims at altering one's conceptions, quite literally, one's *ways. of’ looking at things in life: at oneself, which involves consciousness and leads to the existentialist position; or at the forms of social organization, which involves political action and leads to the structuralist position. Conceptual change must, then, be the result Of either develOped con- sciousness or Of structural changes in society, or a combination Of both.40 The structuralist position and the existentialist position tO which Huber makes reference are thoroughly delineated in Chapter 4 of this study. 30 Two Conceptions Of Liberal Arts Education Richard Stanley Peters Observes "I suppose the conviction that an educator must have aims is generated by the concept of education it- self; for it is a concept that has a standard or norm, as it were, built into it. To Speak Of 'education,' even in contexts quite remote from that Of the classroom, is to commit oneself, by implication, to a judgement of value . "41 One can conclude, then, in the spirit of Peters' general observation, that the concept Of liberal arts educa- tion has a standard or norm built into it, and that the question Of aims is as much the question of liberal arts education in institutions of higher learning as it is that of elementary and secondary schooling. Indeed, all of the theories regarding curriculum and schooling reviewed in this chapter to this point have direct relevance for liberal arts education. Tyler's first question "What educational pur- poses should the school seek to attain?" is the first question for liberal arts institutions as well. Bruner's views regarding study in the disciplines, as originally conceived and as reconstructed, Speak directly to an ongoing debate among liberal arts educators, as does Schwab's call for Specialists in the disciplines to engage in eclectic deliberation Of the problems Of education within the actual social and psychological context of peOple's lives. Goodlad's challenge to view values as the primary data-source from which all curriculum questions are addressed comes with equal relevance to liberal arts education, and Joyce's spotlighting Of the linkage between cultural values and 31 educational programs, and of the instructional and nurturant effect of different forms Of schooling, shines with equal intensity upon liberal arts institutions. And, as is pointed out in Chapter 6, the recon- ceptualist's challenge to rethink the assumptions upon which education is based, and to face up to the latent but nevertheless real conse- quences Of curriculum and schooling practices, has powerful implica- tions for liberal arts education. Liberal arts institutions are not unique in this regard. Peters' conception Of "education" as having norms and aims built into it is broad enough to encompass education in other institutions of higher learning as well. This recognition undergirds Boyer and Levine's recent essay, A Quest for Cannon Learning”. Addressing themselves to what they call the general education component of undergraduate higher education, the authors lament what they judge to be a lack of a uniform conception of the aims and purposes of general education among colleges and universities, but their affirmation 939$ programs of general education must have clearly understood aims is persistent and clear. Following extensive interviewing of colleagues and reformers regarding their perceptions of and plans for general education, Boyer and Levine liken programs Of general education to the Spare room Of a house, which, like most Spare rooms, "is chronically in a state ranging from casual neglect to serious disrepair."43 Believing general education to be of critical importance to both colleges and society, they challenge all institutions Of higher learning to accept what they offer as a normative agenda for general education, namely, 32 "those experiences, relationships, and ethical concerns that are common to all Of us simply by virtue of our membership in the human family at a particular moment in history." In other words, "General education is an institutional affirmation of society's claim on its members."44 Whether or not it seems sensible for Boyer and Levine to conclude that a diversity Of stated institutional or individual aims for general education is equivalent to chaos, and that clarity can come only with uniformity, may be a fruitful question to pursue at some other time. Of similar interest is the question Of the compatibility and equivalence Of the aims and purposes Of general education with those of liberal arts education. There are, however, elements avail- able in Boyer and Levine's essay to which parallels can be drawn to begin to describe liberal arts education. As is the case with general education, the concept "liberal arts" presently and historically admits of a plethora Of definitions. R.S. Peters states that a fundamental difficulty about the term is its endemic ambiguity.45 Similarly, in 1970 one liberal arts college concluded a decade of faculty research and discussion intended to review the historical antecedents Of the concept, and to clarify their institutional position with respect to it.“ That few liberal arts institutions have ever considered this a possible task testifies to the difficulty of giving any precise and intersubjective definition. In their report to the faculty, the Curriculum Study Committee Of this institution provided this synOptic overview: "In the minds Of some 33 peOple the term is associated with political or ideological liberalism; for others it is synonymous with 'classical humanistic studies'; for others it connotes an educational program dissociated from the reality of life; yet for others it calls up the image Of an education designed for the aristocracy.”7 Also, as is the case with Boyer and Levine's treatment Of general education, there is an apparent readiness amongst "liberal" or "liberal arts" educators to affirm the importance Of liberal arts education to society, and to suggest a normative agenda. Peters, recognizing that liberal functions lie "free" in that it suggests removal of constraints, and there are different forms of constraints, still concludes that common to all perceptions is the value placed upon knowledge and understanding, and the removal of constraints which impede the mind in its quest for knowledge and understanding.48 The Curriculum Study Committee arrives at the same conclusion, as is evident in the following rather lengthy quote reported here for its illustrative power: Amid all the variations . . . one factor is con- stant. What everyone who uses the term agrees upon - and perhaps this is the only thing everyone agrees on - is that a liberal arts education is one which is not aimed at equipping the student to hold down some Specific occupa- tion. A liberal arts education . . . can be Of great utility to men in their vocations and professions. Throughout history, various forms Of liberal arts educa- tion have in fact been regarded as prerequisite to en- gaging in the learned professions; and nowadays it is widely held that a liberal arts education is equally in- diapensable to success in various business professions. But the concern of a liberal arts education is not with communicating the skills and knowledge necessary for engaging in some Specific vocation or profession. Rather, though its focus S on none, its relevance is to all. It 34 does not point toward the scholar's life, nor the diplomat's, nor the clelrgyman's, nor the banker's. It points toward human life. Given the diversity Of conceptions regarding liberal arts educa- tion, there nevertheless appear to be two dominant rubrics which serve to catalogue them. One will be called the "Classicist" view, the other the "Pragmatist" view. It is unlikely that either is actually implemented in pure form in very many institutions, or that one will find total assent among the faculty of most liberal arts institutions to one view or the other. What are presented briefly here are the central features which one tends to find in each view. The Classicist view has the longest history and the largest following. Central to this view is the belief that study should be organized around the disciplines, which, loosely, means bodies of accumulated knowledge. Faculty are organized into departments accordingly, and students are expected to select one or another in which to major after having sampled, mandatorily, a range of courses introducing the various disciplines. The purpose of’ liberal arts education so conceived is to liberate learners from the too narrow confines Of having to direct their study to the performance of any specific occupation or vocation. This liberation is to be accomp- lished by imbuing learners with the best of the accumulated knowledge Of the ages, putting them in touch with the broad patterns and main features of humanity, rendering them sufficiently knowledgeable and wise to encounter and master any contemporary Situation whatsoever. One Often finds in this view an affirmation that knowledge is its own 35 reward. Although one frequently finds statements Of rationale attesting that learning the methodology for getting and extending knowledge in a particular discipline is as much a feature of study in the disciplines as is learning the content already accumulated, many students graduate with little awareness of having encountered anything other than the content. Within this general pattern Of institutional thinking, the status and place of professional education programs, particularly teacher education, tends to be suSpect, for two dominant reasons. One is that the content Of teacher education programs is not believed to consti- tute a discipline, but rather derivative from the disciplines, which presumably might be better studied in their own right. The other is that the professional training is suspected of being too narrowly occupational and too pragmatic in its emphases to be legitimately within a liberal arts institution. The Pragmatist view, by contrast, emphasizes the very utility of a liberal arts education which the Classicists try to avoid. Pragma- tists believe the Classicist view to err too much in promoting the cataloguing and transfer of already acquired knowledge, and instead search for uses to which knowledge might be put. Knowledge, and the methods for getting it, are accorded high value, but not for their own sake. For the Pragmatist, the worth of what is known must be put to the test of its relevance to and utility for solving contemporary real-life problems as they occur in real-life work or citizen situa- tions. To study in-depth means to begin to see the connectedness of 36 the disciplines to each other and their relevance to real-life situations. The purpose of liberal arts education so conceived is to liberate learners from the too narrow and abstract confines of disinterested study, and the purpose can be accomplished by organizing study around problems or interdisciplinary themes, using the disciplines as a means to an end rather than treating them as ends in themselves. This. view seldom finds institutionally organized expression, but it is not unusual to find it expressed by or Operative in the work of individual faculty members. Within this conceptualization of liberal arts education, teacher education programs, to the extent that they in fact draw upon the disciplines in significant ways to address the pragmatic issue of curriculum and schooling, are considered to be legitimately and necessarily at home. 37 yo_te_s. lRalph Tyler, Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1949). 2George Willis, "Curriculum Theory and the Context Of Curriculum," in Curriculum Theorizigg: The Reconceptualists, ed. William F. Pinar (Berkeley: 'McCOtchan, 1975), p. 428. 3Herbert M. Kliebard, "Reappraisal: The Tyler Rationale," in Curriculum Theorizing: The Reconceptualists, ed. William F. Pinar (Berkeley: *Mccutchan, 1975), p. 7O 4John I. Goodlad, The DeveIOpment of a Conceptual S stem for Dealin with Problems of Curriculum and Instruction, Tfie COOperative Researgfi Program Of”fhe Office of Educatibn, United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Contract No. SAE-8024, Project NO. 454, 1966, p. 5. 5Tyler, p. l. 5Hilda Taba, Curriculum DeveIOpment: Theory and Practice (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1962), p. 10. 7Taba, p. 10. 8Taba, p. 12. 9Jerome S. Bruner, The Process Of Education (New York: Random House, 1970). 10Bruner, Process Of Education, p. 70. llBruner, Process Of Education, p. 72. 12Joseph J. Schwab, "The Practical: A Language for Curriculum," School Review, 78 (November 1969). ”Schwab, p. 1. 14Schwab, p. 21. 15Jerome S. Bruner, "The Process Of Education Revisited," EDI Delta Kappan, (September 1971). l5Goodlad, p. 28. 17GOodlad, p. 27. 38 18Kliebard, "Reappraisal: Tyler Rationale," pp. 77-78. 19John I. Goodlad and Frances Klein, Behind the Classroom Door (Worthington, Ohio: Charles A. Jones, 1§7D). 2QGoodlad and Klein, p. 114. 21John I. Goodlad, et al., The Convention and the Alternative in Education (Berkeley: McCutchan, 1975), p. 16.17. 22Bruce R. Joyce and Marsha Weil, Models of Teaching (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1972), p. 5. 23Joyce and Weil, p. 25. 24Joyce and Weil, p. 25. 25Bruce R. Joyce, Clark C. Brown, and Lucy Peck, eds., Flexibility in Teaching (New York: Longman, 1981). 26Joyce, Brown, and Peck, p. 3. 27Margaret Ann Huber, "The Renewal of Curriculum Theorizing in the 1970's: An Historical Study," Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 3 (Winter 1981), p. 14. 28Barbara J. Benham, "Curriculum Theory in the 1970's: The Reconceptualist Movement," Journal Of Curriculum Theorizing, 3 (Winter 1981), p. 162. 29Huber, p. 19. 30Huber, p. 14. 3laenham, p. 163. 328enham, p. 163. 33Benham, p . 164. 34Benham, note 3, p. 169. 35Benham, p. 163. 35Benham, p. 162. 37Huber, pp. 16-17. 38William F. Pinar, ed., Curriculum Theorizin : The Reconceptualists (Berkeley: TMOCUtChan, 1975), p. xIII. 39 39Huber, p. 16. 40Benham, p. 164 41Richard S. Peters, Authority, Responsibility, and Education (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1959), p. 84. 42Ernest L. Boyer and Arthur Levine, A Quest for Common Learnin (Washington, D.C.: The Carnegie FoundatIon for the AdVancement 0 Teaching, n.d.). 43Boyer and Levine, p. 3. 44Boyer and Levine, p. 19. 45Richard S. Peters, Education and the Education Of Teachers (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1977). 45Christian‘LiberalAlrtsEducation (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Calvin‘COllege andTW.B. Eerdmans, 1970). 47CLAE, introduction, n.p. 48Peters, Education of Teachers. 49CLAE, introduction, n.p. CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY Introduction The purposes of this study are two-fold. One is to develop a framework through which the existential and structural emphases in reconceptualism can be accommodated to each other and to their common perceptions of the modes of educational thinking they believe to be dominant and to which they take exception. The other is to employ the framework in order to provide for teacher educators a greater degree of’ conceptual clarity regarding .reconceptual criticisms and alter- natives. The motivation for this effort is to provide a partial response to Huber's question "What would it take, in the preparation of teachers, to help them learn how to translate (reconceptualist) theory into practice?"1 Huber's Observation that the reconceptual theorists seldom address this problem is corroborated by the relative Silence Of Pinar and Apple regarding this issue in their writing. The silence need not be construed as a weakness or unwarranted omission in the theories. The avowed purpose Of both theorists is to understand the nature of the educational experience, from theoretical perSpectiveS they believe to be important but which have not typically been employed. Their work should be analyzed and understood in those terms. 40 41 It appears, however, to be the case that the reconceptualizations have powerful implications for the training of teachers, in undergraduate liberal arts institutions and elsewhere. It is for professional educators who train teachers in liberal arts institutions that this study is specifically undertaken. It is the belief Of this writer that essential to a more complete answer tO the problem of helping teachers to translate recon- ceptualized theory into practice is a high level of conceptual clarity regarding reconceptualism on the part of teach educators. However well-intentioned they might be, teacher educators cannot act upon what they do not know or understand; and the critical theories contain complicated and SOphisticated concepts calling for a great deal Of effort and thought in order to understand them. The difficulty accompanying understanding may in part be explained as a consequence of teachers and teacher educators having had very little Opportunity to think about curriculum and schooling in any terms other than those growing out of the Tyler rationale and a positivist philOSOphy of science undergirding the behavioral and social sciences from which the majority Of contemporary educational theory is said to borrow or imitate. If this is the case, then the solution begins with consciousness raising and the Opportunity to come to grips intellec- tually with the reconceptualized concepts. The difficulty may also be explained as a consequence of teachers being typically not trained as theorists, but rather as practitioners, and the apparently frequent expectation that undergraduate teacher educators be "master practi- 42 tioners" whose primary job is to pass on the technical tools of the trade in the "curriculum and methods" and "methods and materials" courses which proliferate and dominate teacher education programs. If this is the case, then the solution begins with calling to attention with reconceptualized concepts the actual consequences and limitations of“ teacher' education programs so conceived. In either case, the process must begin with a clear and accurate understanding of the sets of concepts and themes which are central to the new theories and rele- vant to teacher education. To provide this understanding is the pur- pose and function of the framework develOped and employed in this study. The Framework The framework for enhancing conceptual clarity and for suggesting possible implications for liberal arts undergraduate teacher education consists Of a two-dimensional matrix in which the concepts selected as important to understanding reconceptualist theorists and their common perception Of traditional thinking may be diSplayed, and compared and contrasted. Along the abscissa are three categories: (1) Traditional Conceptions as Perceived by Reconceptualists, (2) Existential Recon- ceptualizations (Pinar), and (3) Structural Reconceptualizations (Apple). Along the ordinate are listed five categories: (1) Ques- tions Asked, (2) Location Of Answers, (3) Conception of Curriculum, (4) Conception of School in Society, and (5) Conception Of Value. The figure is diSplayed in Table 3.1, "Framework for Examining Tradi- 43 tional, Reconceptualized Existential, and Reconceptualized Structural Thinking About Curriculum and Schooling." The rationale for the three categories along the abscissa is obvious. These categories represent the three viewpoints selected for focus in this study and reviewed in the literature. Regarding the five categories along the ordinant, however, several comments need expression before a rationale is provided for each Of the five. What should be understood at the outset is that the frame- work is Offered as an analytic tOOl for the reader Of reconceptualist literature. Inasmuch as it has been develOped Specifically for this study, it is reasonable to assume that it has not been used by recon- ceptualist writers as a scaffold or outline for focusing their thinking or organizing their writing. What this means is that the framework is not employed in this study as a standard by which the adequacy (in the sense of completeness) of the writings Of a recon- ceptualist, or any other educational theorist, might be judged. Three additional comments are corrolary to this: (1) When writers addressed one of the five categories explicitly, their views were merely synop- sized and reported in the apprOpriate cell Of the matrix. (2) When a category was not specifically or explicitly addressed, reasonable inferences relevant to the category were drawn and recorded to the extent it was possible to do so without twisting or stretching unduly the original emphasis of the writer. (3) The statements recorded in the cells are synOptic, distillations and reductions of views more thoroughly develOped in the literature. A concerted effort has been 44 TABLE 3.1 Framework for Clarifying Traditional, Reconceptualized Existential, and Reconceptualized Structural Thinking About Curriculum and Schooling. TRADITIONAL RECONCEPTUALIZATIONS CONCEPTIONS AS PERCEIVEO BY RECONCEPTUALISTS EXISTENTIAL STRUCTURAL (PINAR) (APPLE) * QUESTIONS ASKED LOCATION OF ANSWERS CONCEPTION OF CURRICULUM CONCEPTION OF SCHOOL IN SOCIETY CONCEPTION OF VALUE 45 made to insure that the statements are accurate, but their limitations as denotations Of the larger treatment of the concept are acknow- ledged. The statements certainly ought not be encountered and under- stood merely as Slogans. The intent is that the statements provide not only an accurate, but more importantly, an adequate representation of the views reported; they represent the whole, and not just pieces of it. It is acknowledged, however, that the selection of categories for organizing the statements is as much a fUnction of this writer's judgement about what features Of a theory are important to look for as it is a judgement about the definitive dimensions of the theory as originally presented in the literature. The rationale for each category along the ordinant is as follows: 1. Questions Asked. The questions a theorist asks can provide insight into the nature of the assumptions and values from which the theorist works. Implicit in this assertion is a recognition that theory cannot be value neutral. Theory begins with a set Of ques- tions, selected from a much larger universe of questions which could be asked. Selection involves choice, and choice is predicated on the application Of some criteria or rules for determining which questions E99219 be asked. The realm Of "should" is the realm of judgement and valuation. 2. Location of Answers. The Questions one asks suggest where one might look for answers. What is important to notice about the source out of which answers are develOped are the limitations Of the source 46 with reSpect to what kinds Of answers it can provide. Sources are reSponses to a prior set of questions, which themselves reflect value choices and deliberately imposed rules. An understanding Of the answers a source can and cannot provide can give insight into a theory which draws upon the source. For example, if the question "What is the nature of the student with whom I work?" has been selected as an important question to ask, the sources one chooses for answers can vary the nature and Shape of the answer significantly. The answers one gets to this question varies dramatically if the source consulted is biology, anthropology, chemistry, Freudian psychology, or Calvinistic theology. 3. Conception of Curriculum. Although the concept "curriculum" is highly ambiguous in the sense that there exists among those who use it a broad range Of definitions and understandings, a Specific conception of curriculum is an integral feature and distinguishing component of all serious thinking about education, and is tightly bound to the questions a theory asks and the places in which it looks for answers. In a very real sense, an understanding Of the conception of curriculum in a theory is the key to unlocking, Often by inference, the value and assumptive bases out Of which the theory arises. 4. Conception Of School in Society. Important to notice about this category is that "schooling" delimits the concept from the larger category "education." Although schooling and education are in some reSpectS coterminous, this study recognizes that the questions Of the aims, purposes, and roles Of schools in our society is an important 47 question for each of the views presented. The answers a theory gives to this question help shape a conception of curriculum; and both are functions of prior assumptions and values. Of further help tO the analyst is to distinguish between a treatment of schooling which calls into question the role schooling plays in the larger social and cultural context, and treatment which assumes a particular role for schools and locates its research questions and theory develOpment within that given role. 5. Conception of Value. Some notion Of value, i.e. some dis- tinguishing Of "value" as a noun (referring to a quality residing in a particular object, act, or idea) and as a verb (referring to a set of rules and a process for applying them to appraise a particular object, act, or idea), is important in any theory of curriculum and schooling. In the first case, the noun designates g yglgg. In the second case, the verb designates valuation. As pointed out in the rationale given for the prior four categories, a conception Of value resides in choosing questions, selecting sources for answers, concep- tualizing curriculum, and determining the nature and role of schooling in society. Of further importance is to note that both "value" and "valuation" must ultimately be grounded somewhere, in something. Neither are whimsically or arbitrarily determined in any serious theory of schooling. Whether value is finally grounded in ration- ality, or intuition, or revelation, or in something else, is an important and distinguishing feature of a theory, and therefore an important analytic category in the framework. 48 It should be evident at this point that the five categories selected for the framework are integrally interwoven and interdepen- dent rather than discrete. Although it is beyond the purpose Of this study to do so, a testing of the adequacy Of a particular theory might be available via this framework, the criteria being the sufficiency of address of each category and the coherence Of the fit of each to the other. Three other categories. were considered for the framework, but rejected. Because "instruction" is freQuently viewed as an important category separable from curriculum, its inclusion was considered. It was drOpped, however, for two reasons. One reason is that what many educators mean by instruction is for the reconceptualists a process intimately bound with and residing within the conception of curri— culum. The second follows from the first: to the extent that instruction is separately identifiable, it exists as a subset of or derivative from the more important conception of curriculum. "Evalua- tion" was also considered, not only because it features dominantly in "traditional" thinking, but also because some reconceptualist writers have addressed it explicitly. It was dropped, however, because it can be derived from the more generic categories already present in the matrix. Traditional thinking would likely link it first with "curri- culum." Reconceptualists would more likely link it first with "Questions Asked" or "Conception of Value." A third category, "Antecedent Theorists," that is, theorists whose work has influenced the views reported in this study, was considered as relevant to a more 49 thorough historical understanding Of the views presented, but drOpped as incidental to the desire to report the views as they are given expression in recent writings of the reconceptualists. Those significant antecedent theorists who are recognized as important by the writers presented in this study are named in the review Of the literature. m In Chapter 2, overviews of traditional curriculum theorizing, the history of reconceptualism, and two dominant views of liberal arts education have introduced the conceptual context in which this study takes place. In Chapter 3, the framework which is to be used for exa- mining reconceptualism and for deriving its possible implications for undergraduate teacher education programs in liberal arts institutions has been presented and explained. The remainder Of this study proceeds as follows. In Chapter 4, selected literature is reported and explicated to represent two major orientations within reconceptualism. Selected works of William F. Pinar are featured as the most adequate representation of Existential Reconceptualization, and selected works of Michael W. Apple are featured to represent Structural Reconceptualization. Also in Chapter 4, a sketch Of traditional thinking about curriculum and schooling as perceived by Pinar and Apple is extracted from their writings. 50 In Chapter 5, the literature reviewed in Chapter 4 is analyzed and recast in terms of the categories of the framework presented in Chapter 3. The analyses are then further distilled to brief synOptic statements which are placed in the cells Of the matrix. The contents of the ordinal columns of the matrix are then accommodated to each other by comparing and contrasting their salient features. In Chapter 6, Situational and programmatic characteristics which most undergraduate liberal arts teacher education programs are likely to have in common are identified. These characteristics are then ana- lyzed, or "reconceived," by suggesting their relative congruence with reconceptualist thinking as recast via the framework in Chapter 5. The primary purpose of reconceiving the typical characteristics of liberal arts teacher education programs is to call into question and to prompt discussion about the Operative assumptions, and the explicit and latent outcomes, of the professional component Of undergraduate liberal arts teacher education. Chapter 7 concludes the study. In this chapter, the purposes and limitations of this study are reviewed, and suggestions are provided regarding how individual liberal arts institutions might employ recon- ceptualist themes and the framework presented in this study in pro- ductive re-thinking Of their professional teacher education programs. CHAPTER 4 EXISTENTIAL AND STRUCTURAL RECONCEPTUALIZATIONS OF CURRICULUM AND SCHOOLING Introduction The review Of the history Of reconceptualism in Chapter 2 con- cludes with the calling to attention of two distinguishably different orientations in reconceptualism, the "Existentialist" position and the 1 "Structuralist" position. Benham reports the two orientations to have surfaced at a conference of reconceptualists at the University Of Virginia in 1975. At issue was the organization of Pinar's then re- cently published book Curriculum Theorizing: The Reconceptualists.2 The debate centered on the way the book was organized. Critics apparently felt that the long history of the work done in curriculum theorizing, existential philOSOphy, and phenomenology, upon which, in their view, all the more recent work rests and to which current work owed its conceptual existence, was minimized. Benham views the two orientations as fundamentally different, and credits James Macdonald with having identified and labeled them as existential and structural. The orientations are Similar, however, in that they both take as their point of departure traditional theorizing about curriculum and schooling, which they perceive as wrongfully sacrificing the individual to the needs Of a materialistic and tech- 51 52 nocratic society. Both want to liberate the individual from this Oppression, and take it as their first task better to understand what really goes on in schooling and the theoretic formulations upon which schooling is based. Benham characterizes the Existentialists as recognizing that there are forces outside the individual which act to Shape his life, but they center their interests on the individual's own experiencing, his awareness of it, his feelings about it, and his interpretations of its meanings for him. The Structuralists are characterized as recognizing the need for the individual thoroughly and honestly to know himself and the fact of his being-in-the-world, but they center their interests on the political acts necessary to transform those forces outside the individual which act to shape his life. It may be the case that although the orientations are different, they are not necessarily Opposed. Benham credits Donald Bateman with clarifying the distinction, and James Macdonald with bringing the two together. Bateman, in an interview with Benham, Observed "You can look inward, and see the whole business of education from the point of view of self-knowledge. Or, you can look outward, to think Of what education means in a world where there is not a whole lot of freedom. And that becomes more political."3 Macdonald, also in an interview, suggests that "In a sense, they really aren't Opposed. In the long run one is a cultural phenomenon, and the other is a social pheno- menon, and they interact. One starts with consciousness; the other starts with structures. They're never really separated."4 53 Benham summarizes her synopsis of the EXistential and Structural orientations by focusing on the positive aSpects Of the lack Of agree- ment within the movement. She quotes Bateman to draw attention to her positive focusing: "the more inportant thing to ask is: are they raising questions that are critical, that have the possibility of Opening up new ways Of thinking?"5 As her final thought on the issue, Benham states, "The existence of the two different orientations - existential and structural - can be viewed not only as healthy, but as essential to the movement. Far from Splitting it, these two sets of viewpoints may be seen as interacting in a classic, dynamic dia- lectic relationship . . . (it is) the conceptual distance between the two camps that may keep the movement alive."6 The major purpose of this chapter is to develop and clarify a more complete characterization of the Existential and Structural orienta- tions in reconceptualism. This is accomplished by reporting and ex- plicating selected writing of William Pinar and NOchael Apple, whose work, as established by this writer's own survey of reconceptualist literature, stands out as the most thoroughly and extensively deve- loped representation of the two orientations respectively. Only primary sources will be reviewed, and the writings of other reconcep- tualists will be included only to the extent that they are used by Pinar and Apple and will contribute clarification. Following the review of the literature, a sketch of the traditional thinking about schooling and curriculum, as Pinar and Apple perceive that tradition, will be extrapolated from their writings. 54 This chapter, accordingly, is presented in three sections: 1) Existential Reconceptualization: William Pinar; 2) Structural Reconceptualization: Michael Apple; and 3) Traditional Conceptions. The content of these three sections is recast in Chapter 5 into the categories of the framework for analysis develOped for this study. Existential Reconceptualization: William Pinar Definition and Description Curriculum' Theorizing: The; Reconceptualists, the book which served as catalyst in 1975 to the debate out Of which emerged a clearer' awareness of the two orientations in reconceptualism, was edited by Pinar, and four of the twenty-six chapters were written by him. In the preface, he calls the volume a collection of major con- temporary theorists, an avant-garde not yet well known, a movement just under way, the theme and function Of which is first to challenge, then to supplant, traditional curriculum writing. Pinar helps locate reconceptualism within the larger field Of curriculum work by con- trasting it with what he identifies as "traditional writing" and the 7 Traditional curriculum writing of "conceptual-eupiricists." writing, says Pinar, "includes the work Of Ralph Tyler, and all else falling under its considerable shadow," a genre constituting the heritage of the contemporary field, a field characterized by the prag- matic, by concrete ever-changing tasks of curriculum develOpment, design, implementation, and evaluation. Traditional curriculum work is said to be largely atheoretical, its one essential purpose being to 55 guide those who work in schools by providing practical suggestions for those who want to know "how to." Pinar estimates that 60-80 percent of the professors Of curriculum belong to this group, and he identi- fies the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) as the traditionalists' professional organization. Amplifying his picture of traditionalists in "The Reconceptualiza- 8 observes that most of the curri- tion of Curricular Studies," Pinar cularists and professors in this group tend to be "former schoolpeople whose intellectual and subcultural ties tend to be with school prac- titioners. They tend to be less interested in basic research, in theory development, and in related develOpment in allied fields than in a set of perceived realities of classrooms and school settings generally."9 Furthermore, they carry forth a tradition born in the 1920's and shaped by the intellectual character Of that period, which, "above all was a time of emerging scientism when so-called scientific techniques from business and industry were finding their way into educational theory and practice."10 Pinar credits Herbert Kliebard with having termed this perSpective the "bureaucratic model". Since Kliebard's exigesis of this model is exceptionally succinct, two Of his writings are synopsized here. In "Persistent Curriculum Issues in Historical Perspective," Kliebard11 summarizes the state of the curriculum field, and identifies three persistent issues. The field Of curriculum is characterized as having: (1) An Ahistorical PerSpective - even the most articulate Spokesmen have little knowledge about the basic facts in curriculum history, the 56 consequences being that certain myths are perpetuated to support selected ideological convictions, and that the field is characterized by "an uncritical propensity for novelty and change rather than funded knowledge or' a dialogue across generations." (2) An Ameliorative Orientation - "the urge to do good is SO immediate, so direct, and so overwhelming that there has virtually been no toleration of the kind of’ long—range :research ‘that has little immediate value to practi- tioners in the field, but which may in the long run contribute Signi- ficantly to our basic knowledge and understanding." This ameliorative approach may be rooted in the origins of the curriculum field as a reform movement, and may be contemporarily sustained by "the huge constituency of teachers, school administrators, and supervisors who exert continual pressure on those who conduct research for answers to practical questions." (3) A Lack Of Definition - "a paucity Of ordered conceptions of what the curriculum field is and its relation- ship tO cognate fields." Not only has curriculum terminology been in a chaotic state historically, but currently "a typically rigid and pervasive 'party line' has developed with reSpect to the Specification Of curricular objectives which brooks very little Opposition."12 Out. of' this. ahistorical posture, ameliorative orientation, and lack Of definition arise two persistent issues. One is the role Of curricular Objectives, and the other is curriculum differentiation. The role of curricular objectives as traditionally viewed is "enshrined" in the Tyler rationale, the essence Of which "is not . . . the curriculum planning steps that are frequently associated with it, 57 but the embodiment of a production model Of“ how the process of teaching and learning proceeds. In applying the model, we are asked in effect to state certain design specifications for how we want the learner to behave, and then we attempt to arrive at the most efficient methods for producing that product quickly and . .. . cheaply."13 In juxtaposition, Kliebard quotes R.S. Peters: "Education . . . can have no ends beyond itself. Its values derive from principles and stan- dards implicit in it. To be educated is not to have arrived at a destination; it is to travel with a different view. What is required is not feverish preparation for something that lies ahead, but to work with precision, passion, and taste at worthwhile things that lie to hand."14 The issue Of curriculum differentiation centers on the apprOpriateness of applying a utilitarian criterion for legitimating school subjects. Once the utilitarian framework is accepted, "it becomes possible to refer to both a school student and a school sub- ject such as physics as being 'college-entrance,' and schooling becomes a vast bureaucratic machinery for labeling, stamping, and tracking students into different curriculum patterns."15 The constitutive features of the bureaucratic model, the SO-called scientific techniques, which have found their way into curriculum and schooling theory are identified by Kliebard in "Bureaucracy and Curri- 16 and their consequences are identified. Three culum Theory," Specific features are cited: (1) Scientific Management - a view that within organizations, productivity is central, and the individual is simply an element in the productive system. The individual is not 58 ignored; he is made the subject Of intense investigation, but only within the context Of increasing product output. School administra- tors shift from educators to business managers, and curriculum theory makes the child the "raw material" from which the school-factory must fashion a product drawn to the specifications Of social convention. "Educate the individual according to his capabilities . . . meant in practice that dubious judgements about the innate capacities Of children became the basis for differentiating the curriculum along the lines of probable destinations for the child. Dominated by the criterion Of social utility, these judgements became self-fulfilling prophecies in the sense that they predetermined which slots in the social order would be filled by which 'class Of individuals'."17 (2) Standardization and the Worker - uncertainty being the great bane of bureaucracy, the bureaucratization Of curriculum moved it in the direction Of predictability. "In the curriculum field, vague concep- tions of the purposes Of schooling became intolerable, and 'particularization' of educational objectives became a byword."18 Furthermore, the SCOpe Of curriculum was broadened beyond subject matter to embrace all of human experience, the total range of knowledges, skills, and attitudes for the total range Of life roles and activities. (3) Standardization Of Product Diversification - all persons would receive training to perform some activities in common, but each would be individually programmed for differentiated social roles as well, in programs "advertised under the Slogans of curriculum 19 flexibility and individualized instruction." This calls for even 59 greater standardization of units Of work, and arranging those standard units into the most efficient sequence for manufacturing the parti- cular products. Kliebard believes the bureaucratic, production model to still be strongly and dangerously Operative in contemporary modes Of thinking, as is indicated in his concluding remarks: Modern curriculun theory, currently being influenced by systems analysis, tends to regard the child simply as input inserted into one end of a great machine from which he eventually emerges at the other end as output replete with all the behaviors, the 'conpetencies, ' and the skills for which he has been programmed. Even when the output is differentiated, such a mechanistic conception Of education contributes only to man's regimentation and dehumaniza- tion, rather than to his autonomy. The mechanistic con- ception of man, the technology-systems analysis approach to human affairs, the production metaphor for curriculum design all share a common perSpective. They represent a deterministic outlook on human behavior. The behavior of human beings is controlled in an effort to make peOple do the particular things someone wants them to do.20 The second, and smaller, group of curriculum theorists Pinar calls the "conceptual empiricists." Although Pinar does not Specifically identify them as such, they might be viewed as the specialists who are most influential in providing conceptual and programmatic rigor for what Kliebard has called the bureaucratic model Of Schooling. This group is said to be steeped in the theory and practice of present-day social sciences, using the methods Of the social sciences to investi- gate curriculum phenomena with an eye to the goal of the prediction and control Of behavior.21 They tend to be researchers who view education not as a discipline in itself, but as an area to be studied by the disciplines; researchers whose primary identity is with the 6O cognate fields of sociology and psychology, and who have research 22 These interests in schools and education—related matters. researchers claim to be value neutral, but Pinar believes that main— stream social science research, while on the surface seemingly apoli- tical in nature and consequence, if examined more carefully "can be seen as contributing to the maintenance Of the contemporary socio- political order . "23 Pinar estimates that 15-20 percent Of contem- porary curricularists belong to this group, and he identifies the American Educational Research Association (AERA) as the conceptual- empiricists' professional organization. By contrast, the third group, the reconceptualists, are said by Pinar not to take as their purpose the practical guiding of practi- tioners, nor the investigation Of educational phenomena with the methods of behavioral and social science, but to understand, working much in the way Of those who work in the humanities, using modes of inquiry that are historical, philOSOphical, and literary. As reported in Chapter 2, reconceptualists tend to study "not 'change in behavior' or 'decision-making in the classroom,' but matters of temporality, transcendence, consciousness, and politics. In brief, the reconcep- tualist attempts to understand the nature Of educational experience."24 Pinar reiterates these points with even greater force in "A Reply to My Critics,"25 Specifically, in this instance, Daniel and Laurel Tanner. ReSponding to the allegation that reconceptualism is not research, and errs in calling for emancipation from research, Pinar 61 expresses his view that research takes several forms, one Of the most historically recent and epistemologically questionable being that of the mainstream social scientists. To charge that reconceptualism is not research underscores the "intellectual parochialism" of those who have evidently forgotten that the term is not their invention. There are research traditions centuries Older, such as the hermeneutics Of the humanities and arts, literary criticism, art history and criti- cism, philOSOphical inquiry, and historical analysis, all of which contribute to reconceptualist research methodologies. Responding to the allegation that there cannot be something called reconceptualist theory if it has no identifiable leaders, and no identified adherents, Pinar states that the reconceptual scholars are individualists, and that it is demeaning to suggest that there could be "adherents." Re- conceptualization "is not a movement comprised of 'leaders' and 'adherents' but a tern: used to describe a fundamental Shift - a paradigm shift — in the orders of research conducted by diverse curri- cularists, the common bond Of which is Opposition to the traditional field."26 In further contrast to the two larger groups, Pinar states that "in contrast to the canon Of traditional social science, which prescribes data collection, and hypothesis substantiation or discon- firmation in the disinterested service Of building a body of know- ledge, a .reconceptualist tends tO see research as an inescapably 27 political as well as intellectual act." And, finally, 62 Because the difficulties these reconceptualists identify are related to difficulties in the culture at large, they are not 'problems' that can be 'solved.' That concept, created by technical rationality, is itself prob- lematic. Thus, what is necessary in part is fundamental structural change in the culture. Such an aspiration can- not be realized by 'plugging into' the extant order. . . . What is necessary is a fundamental reconceptualization Of what curriculum is, how it functions, and how it might function in emancipatory ways. It is this commitment to a comprehensive critique and theory develogoment that dis- tinguishes the reconceptualist phenomenom. 8 Pinar estimates that only 3-5 percent Of contemporary curricularists are active as reconceptualists. Many are members of ASCD or AERA, but only recently have reconceptualist Spokesmen been granted audience in the publications or at the conventions of these groups. Pinar believes that the reconceptualists, at their most ambitious extreme, may approach a synthesis of contemporary social science and the humanities, attempting a marriage of the scientific, and artistic and humanistic, cultures. He believes such a synthesis to be the next step in the intellectual evolution of the West, and dares dream that the field Of curriculum may be one Of the first places where it occurs.” This cannot occur, however, if the traditional wisdom of the field, conceptual-empiricism, or reconceptualizations are approached as calling for either-or choices. "Each is vital to the other. For the field to become vital and Significant to American education, it must nurture each 'movement' . . . and it must strive for synthesis, for a series Of perspectives on curriculum that are at once empirical, interpretative, critical and emancipatory."30 Of further interest in the "Introduction" to Curriculum Theorizing: The Reconceptualists is Pinar's identification Of what he 63 believes to be three stages in the emerging transfiguration Of one who moves from thinking in the traditional mode to a reconceptual mode. In the beginning, says Pinar, tradition accumulates, and many who are initiated into it accept its values uncritically. Their work is the application Of its theoretical formulations, and perhaps an occa- sional theoretic extension thereof. Essentially, though, the work is technical/practical, and over time one may sense personal atrOphy, which is usually a necessary precondition for the second stage. In the second stage, one painfully realizes difficulties in the tradi- tion. He begins a process of self-education, and becomes increasingly critical, but in hOpes of rectifying the tradition. He aims his new work at his colleagues, but the real target lies within, placed there by his early accultration. One begins to move into the third stage when he beings to look at the present and future, and not just at his past, and introduces existentialism and phenomenology to the field in order tO provide conceptual tools, unavailable or unrecognized in the tradition, for understanding the human experience Of education. Whether one can generalize that this process explains all who are or are becoming reconceptualists cannot be said, but within Pinar's description one can certainly see evidence of his personal existential beliefs. The Effects of Schooling The writing Of Pinar presented in the prior section has been pri- 31 marily about theory. "Sanity, Madness, and the School" presents a striking example of Pinar gt work as an existential, reconceptualizing 64 critic. Explicitly acknowledging his criticism to be grounded in the theoretical work Of Brazilian Marxist educator Paulo Friere, radical psychologists Laing and Comer, and existential philosopher Jean Paul Sartre, Pinar Opens his critique of what he believes to be some Of the actual consequences of schooling with the claim that "The schooling process is a dehumanizing one. Whatever native intelligence, re- sourcefulness, indeed whatever goodness is inherent in man deterior- ates under the impact of the school. The result is the one- dimensional man, the anomic man, dehumanized, and, for some critics, maddened."32 Schools do this, he says, because the image of children implicit in American schooling is that they are basically wild and unpredictable beasts who must be tamed, who cannot be trusted until they have internalized the values Of socially controlled and emotionless adults. "To Speak about American schooling," he asserts, "is to Speak about the 'banking' or 'digestive' concept of education, the latter being the one Sartre employed to discuss the process in which information is 'fed' to students by teachers in order to 'fill them out'."33 Twelve effects of schooling reconceived, "which flow into each other and manifest themselves in the ideosyncratic manner Of each individual,"34 are identified and explicated. The twelve are listed here, with a brief precis of Pinar's develOpment of each: (1) Hyper- trOphy or AtrOphy of Fantasy Life - the rigidity of schools, and their indifference to the person of the learner, tends to force students either to escape its reality through private fantasizing while in 65 school, or to deny fantasy in order to concentrate on conforming to the school. (2) Diversion or LOSS of Self to Other via Modeling - more important than whom children model is that they model. To desire to be like someone else, children must first learn to be dissatisfied with themselves. This dissatisfaction is almost always introjected by a teacher. Its internalization represents a violation of self, and leaves one constantly questioning his identity. (3) Dependency and Arrested DevelOpment Of Autonomy - students are taught that one is not enough to exist in the world on one's own. Schools make the student desire, and then need, to be instructed. Eventually students come to consider the necessity Of instruction 'natural, ' and look askance at anyone who suggests otherwise. (4) Criticism by Others and LOSS of Self-Love - an outgrowth Of the banking concept and modeling. If one does not come up with the teacher's answers (i.e. to "master" the "fundamentals") one is made to feel, and defined as, deficient. One's sense Of worth and self-love become contingent upon one's performance and the resulting attitudes of significant others. (5) Thwarting of Affiliative Needs - affiliative needs are not merely unmet, but are actively thwarted by dependency relationships with teachers, a compe- titive methodology of teaching, and teacher strategies emphasizing intervention, instruction, and criticism rather than loving. Students may need to strike back, but because the teacher is politically in- accessible, anger is diSplaced horizontally in aggression against peers. The general ill-will one finds in schools is a direct function Of teacher-initiated violence. (6) Estrangement from Self and Its 66 Effect Upon the Process of Individualization - day-in, day-out physical and psychic discomfort numbs one's tactile sensations and produces continual, usually subliminal, anxiety. Stress on cognition makes students more cerebral at the expense Of feeling, numbing them to internal messages. Students who cannot get in touch with them- selves cannot get in touch with others. (7) Self-Direction Becomes Other-Direction - intrinsic motivation is replaced with extrinsic. Rather than ask "Who am I?" kids learn to ask "Whose am I?" The poli- tical and psychic implications Of this are frightening. An accom- panying phenomenon is the muddling of motives — e.g. doing schoolwork to please a teacher, and writing essays for high marks rather than communication, leads to such things as marriage for financial or social reasons, and getting PhD.'s for status rather than for inquiry or learning. (8) LOSS of Self and Internalization of Externalized Self - self becomes a thing, a role rather than a subjective being, an image such as "good student," "intellectual," "hard worker." An objectified self is stable, but dead. As things, peOple have no pur- poses except those prescribed for them by others. (9) Internalization of the Oppressor: Development Of a False-Self System - a student either learns to identify with others as Objects, or is forced to develOp a facade to prevent friction and protect himself. In the latter case, schooling becomes a game, with a myriad of rules to follow in order to win, with the student as player. Playing the game year after year leads to viewing all of life as a game, with self Split into observer-player, and, as such, incapable Of full authentic 67 participation in anything, isolated from genuine and intense contact with others. (10) Alienation from Personal Reality Due to Imperson- ality Of Schooling Groups - the cumulative effect Of living in groups whose reality is established by teachers is a forgetting Of one's per- sonal realities. The sheer impossibility Of seclusion, solitude, and quiet in schools forces students to ignore themselves. Unable to reflect on oneself, one becomes incapable Of develOping loving and caring relationships with others. (11) Desiccation via Disconfirma— tion - confirmation of self by others is essential to self-knowledge and self-love. In schools, however, all one seems to get are ques- tions, instructions, and ignorance. Some may reSpond with strategies for getting attention, but recognition for behaviors is not a genuine reSponse to self, and finally is disconfirming. (l2) AtrOphy of Capacity to Perceive Esthetically and Sensually - dreary, efficiency- oriented school architecture, and relentless inspection and explica- tion Of subject matter preclude the develOpment of esthetic and sensuous sensibilities. Ours is an age petrified by objectification which renders the Object lifeless, and the intellectual's gaze turns all to stone. Search for a Method The writing addressed in this section can be understood as Pinar's attempt to come to some sort of better understanding of how and why schools promote "madness," and his search for a way out of it. "The Analysis Of Educational Experience," 35 36 "Currere: Toward Reconcep- 37 tualism," and "Search for a Method" collectively indicate that 68 Pinar believes that the way out begins by turning inward, first to understand and liberate oneself, then to help others do the same. "The Analysis of Educational Experience" appears to be addressed to curriculum theorists. The Operative word in the title is "analysis," and the goal of the work is not to provide 39 analysis of educational experience, but rather to make problematic the activity Of analysis. Pinar begins by making explicit a basic assumption with which he works, namely, that "the development Of a SOphisticated understanding Of one's psychic state will probably result in more accurate and eventually more comprehensive social or educational Observations."38 The problem first is to find the answer to Who am I? and How do I bring out what is already there? A corrolary question is How do I begin to focus my attention on myself, in a non-critical, non-evaluative way, so that I can illuminate my inner world? This, for Pinar, is an exceedingly difficult problem given what he believes to be our general psychic condition in the West, which is said to be "disintegrated," (i.e. self has been lost to others, fragmented into multiple selves, and trapped), and "unaware" (i.e. unaware Of the dis- integration, and unaware of what self is really there). This disintegration and unawareness is said to be a consequence of the "domain assumptions" behind the theoretical formulations of main- line social theorists. These domain assumptions are typically un- examined, and global, such as "man is rational" and "progress is in- evitable," and they influence research hypotheses in subtle but deci- sive ways. Domain assumptions are part Of a large inner world, a 69 labenswelt, which is "the world Of lived experience, the preconceptual realm that, given our current condition, is usually beyond our percep- tual field."39 In our culture, says Pinar, the 1ebenswelt becomes severed from and inaccessible to the conscious self rather early in our lives. The first problem for curriculum theorists, then, is to reestablish contact with their own lebenswelt, to reexamine one's domain assumptions as part Of the larger task Of finding the real self. Only then will one approach the prOper position from which to begin to try to understand the nature of the educational experience. Pinar suggests three tasks to perform as the medium for movement inward to one's self. The first is to render one's own educational experience into words. The second is to use one's critical faculties to understand what principles and practices have been Operative in one's own life. The third is to analyze the experiences Of others to reveal whatever basic educational structures or processes cross auto- biographical 1ines. This three-task process is primarily cognitive and intellectual; emotional and other dimensions Should be rendered verbally, edited through the intellect. TO perform the tasks would yield information regarding the nature Of educational experiences and their fundamental existential structures, and would yield biographic information that would enhance insight, and cultivate the inner— centeredness and focus that are essential to psychic integration. Stated summarily, "The analyst Of educational experience or the educa— tional experiencialist attempts to discover what factors are Operative in educational experience, what relations among what factors under 70 what circumstances, and finally what fundamental structures describe or explain the educative process. In a sense, these structures would represent the 'last stOp' in the realm of the conceptual, the most fundamental level of analysis possible before entering the preconcep- tual, the lebenswelt, the ineffable."40 Using the three-task framework as a medium for getting in touch with one's lebenswelt would benefit the curriculum field in three ways, says Pinar. Observing that much theoretical work in education is divorced from the actual experience of teachers and students, Pinar suggests that to conceptualize "theory as the articulation of existen- tial experience"4‘1 would help effect the synthesis. Furthermore, observing that the field of curriculum currently lacks its own re- search method, relying instead on the techniques of social theorists and psychologists, Pinar suggests that this method, once better deve- lOped, outlines a research methodology which clearly and originally is employable for the elucidation and analysis of educational experience. Finally, a process fostering an emergent sense of who one is, a bringing out of what is there but unobserved if not buried by conditioning, recalls another term, "education," and is tantamount to what is called "humanization." "Currere: Toward Reconceptualization" extends the work begun in "The Analysis of Educational Experience." Pinar claims that "the curriculum field has forgotten what existence is,"42 as evidenced by the use of the term "curriculum" to focus on what is external and public, on observable learning outcomes and the material and artifacts 71 used in courses of study. Pinar traces this concept to the Latin root currare, which in its noun form functions to identify "a course to be run." AS a better alternative, Pinar suggests the Latin currere, which functions in its noun form to connote "the running Of a course," focusing on the experiencing of running a course rather than a description of the physical characteristics of the course. Currere "involves the nature of the individual experience of the public: of artifacts, actors, and operations of the educational journey or pil- grimage."43 Curriculum understood in the sense of currere is not about design, develOpment, instruction and evaluation, but rather a knowledge producing discipline, with its own method of inquiry and investigation, explicating the nature of the educational experience. One important context of currere is identified as political, in that often the trip, experiences, and reasons are not self-chosen but imposed. Furthermore, one's cultivation and awareness of one's existential freedom occurs within a broader sociological context, and is necessarily and importantly colored by one's practical and politi- cal freedom. Nevertheless, says Pinar, even though the facts of poll- tical and economic injustice call for necessary political work, the work of self-knowledge, the investigation of the realm of currere, remains of the first order. Reformulating the three tasks given in "The Analysis of Educational Experience," Pinar suggests that we must do three things: 1) Bracket the educational aSpects of our taken- for-granted world, attending to the contents of consciousness as they appear. 2) Allow the mind to freely associate, making note of the 72 intellections and emotions, in a manner more pointed and focused than is the case in psychoanalysis. And, 3) Analyze what one finds. Pinar calls these three steps the method of currere, and summarizes that "While self-analysis and introspection can be unfruitful and even self-destructive, with prOper guidance and strict adherence to the rules of analysis, one can reverse one's outer directedness, one's enslavement to the stimulus-reSponse reality Of the present public world. . . . In other terms, one is able to think vertically as well 44 as horizontally." Vertical thinking will take one to the base of consciousness, then into the lebenswelt. Pinar concludes with some observations regarding the "utility" of the method of currere. "We Americans," he says, "have been and are impulsive instrumentalists. We use ourselves, our families, our work; in a word we gag, rather than appreciate, contemplate, Speculate, and so on . . . so understandably one would ask, what good is a method, or less badly, what is its utility? More narrowly, we can observe that those of us in the curriculum field have been instrumental in a Specific way that I think Kliebard rightly characterized as amelio- rative."45 Pinar's answer is that the method of currere makes one more accurately able to read signs and to interpret events more fruit- fully, to study and to achieve a measure of wisdom. Having accom- plished this with oneself, one can then better assist and accompany novice travelers. "We teachers . . . must become students, students of currere, which is to say students of ourselves, before we can 46 truthfully say we understand teaching in this sense." The method 73 of currere involves a shift in perspective, not merely cognitive in. sight but affective insight as well. This turning inward, the process of individualization, is change of consciousness. "Search for a Method" once again reiterates Pinar's criticism of current curriculum theorizing, and further refines the method of currere. He notes that "positivistic, so—called empirical research methodologies now unmistakeably occupy center stage"47 and that even though they represent an advancement over earlier research methods, many writers are still dissatisfied. The dilenma is that "for the sake of precision, clarity, and utility, we have taken to studying that which is observable and, at times it seems, quantifiable. Not surprisingly this approach necessarily omits something. . . . What is noteworthy is that most of us agree that quantitative research answers many questions well, other questions not as well, and some questions not at all . "48 What is missing involves the concept of experience, not in the sense of thought, feeling and sensation, but in the sense of lebenswelt. Pinar believes our dilemma to be metaphysical, not just technical and logical. "Rather than constantly asking 'how many,' .'what' and 'how' questions, we must force ourselves to ask 49 'why' and not be satisfied until we get to the source." The source and lebenswelt are related, perhaps equivalent; "it lives in- side of us, and to search for it . . . involves heightened awareness of our immediate experience."50 Following an example of using his method of currere to understand the educational experiencing of literature, Pinar reformulates his 74 statements of the method once again, stating that the educational meaning Of present educational situations can be decifered by; 1) re- calling and describing phenomenologically the past, then analyzing its psychic relation to the present; 2) describing one's imagined future and analyzing its relation to the present; and, 3) placing this pheno- menological-psychoanalytic understanding of one's educational present in its cultural and political present. The characteristics of this methodology are pointed out as these four: it is l) regressive - in- volves a description of one's educational past; 2) progressive - in— volves a description of one's imagined future; 3) analytic - calls for a psychoanalysis of one's phenomenologically described present, past, and future; and, 4) synthetic - it totalizes the reSponse and context of the person, and places this integrated understanding of individual experience into the larger political and economic web, explaining the dialectical relationship between the two. Liberation l is "The Abstract of the Concrete in Curriculum Theorizing"5 perhaps the most tightly reasoned of Pinar's works reviewed in this chapter, and the most illustrative of the values and assumptions with which Pinar works. Pinar states that the underlying purpose of all of his work is to seek "liberation," which is "a process Of freeing oneself and others - from political, economic, and psychological inquities."52 He be- lieves the process to be multidimensional, and inherently temporal, not suggesting something finished or static in a final or absolute 75 sense. Liberative work "can and must occur along several dimensions, and the success of work in any given dimension - say the economic - is dialectically related in important ways to work in other - political, psychological, sexual - dimensions. This is an ecological view of the human and natural world, a view in which action in one domain affects the character of others. Work in isolation cannot occur except in a superficial sense. Work focused on the individual has inescapable social consequences."53 More specifically, Pinar seeks liberation from abstraction. He wants to recover the immediate, individual experiences of a lived, in contrast to exclusively conceptual, sense of self and world. He sees in the curriculum field, in traditional, conceptual-empirical, and structural-reconceptual curriculum work, a tendency to reduce the con- crete individual to an idea of individual. This abstraction is be- lieved to distort human life; "the idea becomes more real than the concrete; it becomes a source for explanation, and worse, action. As ideas become more real than concrete human beings, the capacity to sacrifice the latter for the sake of the former is more possible and more likely."54 Traditionalists, says Pinar, tend to focus on "principles" of "curriculum and instruction," phenomena which pre- sumably can be studied and formulated independent of the specific in— dividuals whose use Of them gives them life. Even those who have attempted to function "humanistically" exhibit this same tendency. Politically oriented reconceptualists also are seen to reduce the con- crete to the abstract, using forms of analysis that omit individual 76 experiences as they focus upon the structural relations existing in society. Contemporary work in curriculum theory, summarizes Pinar, "begins with the concrete and moves to the abstract, and as Piaget's theory of cognitive develOpment correSpondingly suggests, the greater the degree of abstraction, the greater the degree of profundity and accuracy. Such assumptions - we may term them pre-theoretical - often lead to a distortion of human experience. mat is central to human experience is its particularity, in a sense even its eccentricity. Scientific laws and abstractions cannot capture the singularity of individual experience."55 Liberative activity very quickly becomes something to do to and with others, especially when expressed by educators caught in a scien- tific understanding of the relation of theory to practice. When it is only that, reduced to a mode of social interaction, an important order of liberative work is lost. The liberation from abstraction can occur by refocusing on the individual. By doing so, "it is possible to re- claim the abstractions and to extricate oneself from capture by ideology. One's voice becomes discernable . . . one begins to reclaim himself from intellectual and cultural conditioning."56 Structural Reconceptualization: Michael Apple Definition and Description As does Pinar, Apple provides an autobiographical account of his movement from traditional to non-traditional modes of thinking about curriculum and schooling. He recounts in Education and waer57 that 77 as someone who had taught for years at both elementary and secondary levels, and had worked continuously with teachers and administrators as a professor, he was searching for ways of understanding his and their actions. Both he and teachers, for example, blamed themselves as individuals, or their pupils, for the failures of students. More and more it seemed, however, that it was not a question of the amount of effort teachers and curriculum workers put into it. What became clearer was that the dominant rules and practices of educators' lives were generated by the institution itself and the connections it had to other powerful social agencies. Blaming teachers and castigating in_ dividuals was not helpful. What seemed more ethical was to figure out how and eSpecially why the institution did what it did in ways that went beyond and constrained these actions in ideological and material ways. An understanding of this control would be perhaps a small, but essential step in challenging that control and seeing it for what it was and realizing the differential economic and cultural benefits that resulted from it. A significant difference between existential and structural recon- ceptualism can be noted at this point. Pinar situated this awareness of self with respect to things outside of self as a keystone in his framework for unpacking the meaning and nature of the educational experience. Apple, however, does not make his own awareness problem- atic. Instead, he takes note of the content of his awareness, and focuses his attention on why and how things outside of self have pro- duced that particular content. 78 His basic methodology for generating understanding is made expli- cit in "Rationality as Ideology," where he writes "to gain insight, to understand the activity of men and women of a Specific historical period, one must start out by questioning what to them is unquestion- able. . . . The investigator must situate those activities in a larger arena of economic, ideological, and social conflict." Apple believes that one of the most neglected areas of educational scholarship is such Situating, which he defines as "the critical study of the rela- tionship between ideologies and educational thought and practice, the study and the range of seemingly commonsense assumptions that guide our overly technically-minded field."58 Apple himself believes that study such as he calls for would not really constitute a reconceptualizing of the curriculum field, but a return to an issue which the field had forgotten, testifying to its basically ahistorical posture. Specifically, Apple recalls intense argumentation in the Progressive Education Association which featured as its main point of contention the problem of whether or not schools guided by a sense of a more just society should teach a particular set of social meanings to their students. Clear in the debate is a recog- nition that the culture preserved and distributed by schools is not neutral, and that the actions Of educators stem from that recognition.59 Whether or not Apple is willing to claim the label of reconcep— tualist for this mode of thinking, it indeed illustrates what Benham and others had in mind as the "Structural" orientation within recon— ceptualism. 79 In this section of this chapter, selected works of Apple which illustrate in a substantial way the nature of structural critical curriculum theory are reviewed in the chronological order of their publication. Sometimes only portions of a particular work are in— cluded. The reason for this selectivity is that much of what Apple has written has had as one of its purposes the continuation of dia- logue among neo-Marxist scholars at a highly SOphisticated level of abstraction and theory, replete with the technical language and concepts of that particular tradition of inquiry. Those occasions in which Apple turns his constructs to the direct analysis of curriculun and schooling theory and practice are of interest in this study, and are reported here. Furthermore, although Apple has written two books, each tends to include reproductions or summaries of work already pub- lished in journals or anthologies. This review, therefore, features Apple's "shorter" works. As was the case with the review of Pinar, only primary sources are used. Valuing,Science, and Schooling In "The Process and Ideology of Valuing in Educational Settings," Apple60 begins by asserting that in order to be more than a pre- tender to rationality, any field seeking to make conceptual headway must stand Open to criticism. His comment is addressed directly to contemporary curriculum theorists who, in his view, seem more con- cerned with conceptual and social stability and a search for prior consensus than with a critical give-and-take which support genuine advances . 80 Apple grounds this article in the work of revisionist educational historian Michael Katz, who argued that schooling had reflected not the great democratic engines for identifying talent and matching it with Opportunity, but rather a treatment of students as units to be processed into particular shapes and drOpped into slots roughly con- gruent with the status of their parents. In other words, "schools had been instrumental in confirming the existing distribution of knowledge and power in the United States."61 Apple proceeds from this to pre- sent a case for reconceiving the testing and evaluation movement as an example of this interpretation of schooling, saying that the "quest for efficiency and quantitative 'output measures' that the movement embodies has mirrored social interests in stability, human predictabi- lity, and ultimately social control."62 Recognizing that this may be disconcerting to evaluation and other school people, Apple cautions them not to dismiss it casually, the reason being that "Education is through and through a valuative enterprise. The prOposals educators make for organizing and evaluating school activities are usually de- rived from Slogan systems (such as 'structure of the disciplines,' 'life adjustment,' and 'social efficiency') with identifiable ideo- logical and philOSOphical presuppositions. Given this fact, educators cannot afford to be less than fully aware of the latent tendencies in 63 their work." Indeed, "there are very few things as conceptually, ethically, and politically complex as education, and educational scholarship has hardly scratched the surface of its intricacies."64 81 Apple begins his actual reconceptualization of the evaluation movement by identifying Six of its characteristics in which ideo- logical perSpectives can be seen: (1) Process-Product Reasoning - evaluation is a process of social valuing in which a person or group assigns value to the activities, goals, and procedures done by others. This placing of value implies a choice from a range of value systems, and "it is not naturally predetermined that education should be valued only for its ability to reach our goals adequately and effi- ciently."65 Process-product rationality is actually a factory meta- phor, usually fit into a systems management approach, which usually defuses any debate over which goals to strive for. The tools of this approach embody an ideology of control, overvalue certainty, trivi- alize inquiry, and are psychologically and philOSOphically naive. (2) Evaluation as a Social Construct - "the guiding principles of evalua- tion are not inherent in individuals. . . . Rather, they are instances of the application of identifiable social rules about what is to be considered good or bad performance."66 As well as evaluating reci- pients, evaluation should also focus on evaluating the school as an institution that embodies those social rules and assumptions. "Educa- tors must examine the ideological and political % of evaluation and the place of the school in the larger social setting if they are to uncover what evaluation is actually about. And they must engage in the prior examination of what is considered valuable knowledge both 67 overtly and covertly in school settings." (3) The Process of Political Quiescence - evaluation is often used for political 82 purposes, sometimes to get a group the tangible "results" it wants, at the expense of others. Furthermore, evaluation, and its results, are often intentionally used to arouse or placate the public at large. (4) The Role of the Expert - an evaluator's perspectives are strongly influenced by the collectivity to which he belongs. The linguistic, programnatic, methodological, and conceptual tools, and expectations of how they are to be used, are built into his job. In general, a logic of reconstructed rather than science-in-use scientific investi- gation is used, featuring an outdated positivistic model which defines out of existence forms of meaning illuminated only through ethical and aesthetic perspectives. Usually the evaluator's job is perceived to be to furnish administrators Specific information they think they need in order to decide a particular matter; the type of knowledge the expert is to provide is determined for him in advance. (5) Clinical Assunptions and Bureaucratic Support - "evaluation" generally accepts a basic institutional definition of underachiever, places "blame" on the person rather than the institution, and takes action to change the individual rather than the structure of the institutional setting. Such activity does not help solve the problem of how to design envi- ronments that strike a balance between a student's desire for a setting that is personally reSponsive and the educator's need to school and control large masses of students. "This is as much a moral problem as it is an engineering one."68 (6) The Logic of Research and the Ideology of Control - consciousness in modern advanced societies centers on forms of logic that tend to make peOple treat 83 major problems as technical problems that can be solved with the application of engineering rationality. Ethical Questions are defined out of existence, and redefined in terms of instrumental logic into technical concerns solvable by standardized means to get previously chosen ends. Such interest in control and certainty may be warranted in the physical sciences, but in human sciences this orientation eli- minates the ambiguity and uncertainty that makes human action a per— sonal statement, leads to alienation, and prevents ethical and politi- cal dialogue from evolving. In such a context, "educational thought becomes an ideology of manipulation rather than a means for providing varied structures that can be made responsive to the needs of in- tellectual traditions, social benefits, and student sentiments."69 Apple concludes with a call for a new question for evaluation, and new questions for evaluators. Noting that the "goodness" of an educa- tional environment is an ethical question, embodying disparate views of how a group of individuals may treat a younger group, Apple suggests that the questions for educational evaluation should be whether the basic style of interaction in an institution reflects a commitment to treat individuals justly. The answering of this ques- tion would not call for more rigorous empirical methodology, but rather a legal and philOSOphical SOphistication sorely lacking in the educational community. In the same vein, evaluators should ask new questions, such as "Why is it important for students to learn parti- cular what's, how's and to's? Is the reason we continually find 84 little significant difference in our comparative evaluations due to epistemological and analytic as well as methodological problems? What social group does this research support? And, finally, IS my work truly contributing to the reconstruction of educational institutions so that they are more just and reSponSive?"70 In "Scientific Interests and the Nature of Educational Institu- tions," Apple71 continues to develOp his themes that peOple in education should be aware of the value and ethical assumptions which ground their theoretic and practical activity. The thesis of this article is that the basis of many of the Oppressive qualities of schooling lies in the set of assumptions that educators bring to their work. These assumptions reside in the models and language systems that are applied in designing educational environments, and are Opera- tive in a large portion of educational research. Behind them is a fundamental ethic that all important modes of human action can be known in advance by educators and social scientists, that certainty in interaction among peOple is of primary import, and that the primary aSpects of the thought and sentiments of students must be brought under institutional control. The habits of thought generated by such assumptions and ethics mirror the lack of self-reflectiveness among members of the curriculum field, whose "reality," so "comonsensical" it is never questioned, sets boundaries for curricular imagination and provides the framework for a large portion of the problematic activi- ties of schooling. 85 Apple believes that educators have taken on an outmoded positi- vistic stance, a stance which avows empirical certainty and disavows critical self-reflection, and have given it the name and prestige of .912 scientific method. Consequent to the lack Of reflectivity, this dominating style of scientific rationality is perceived as being interest free, a perception that contributes to a strong manipulative ethos of schooling. Most educators seem to be primarily interested in efficiency and smoothness of operation rather than intellectual and valuative conflict, and seek out paradigms to serve this interest. One paradigm frequently chosen is systems management, in which one identifies in advance what the learner must be able to do, know, and feel as outcomes of his learning experience; in effect, thought, action, and feeling are separated, and the environment is controlled so that an individual's behavior and thought will not deviate from the prescribed goals. Educators have become so enamoured with this fbrm of what they believe to be science that science is no longer viewed as merely a way of gaining some forms of knowledge, but has become so engrained in consciousness as to have become a value. This appropriating of positivistic science has two rather frightening implications. One is that educators have become so en— amoured Of "scientific procedures" that they expect arguments against what happens in schools to be couched in scientific language. Criti- cisms which are not so couched are ignored as "merely Speculative." Those criticisms which nevertheless do slip through generally 86 encounter extreme reactions, usually because they not only challenge the concrete activities of schooling, but also the valuative under- pinnings upon which the whole edifice rests. The other implication is that while a technology of science is borrowed, the constitutive aSpects of scientific rationality which keep it human are not. Symbolic experimentation, embiguity and subtlety, play and esthetic awareness, all of which characterize the work Of the true scientist and parallel the arts and humanities, are ruled out of the continuing quest for absolute surety and gross Operationalism. What survives parallels a factory model of production, with the child treated both metaphorically and literally as a product. To help open up some conceptual "breathing Space" with reSpect to science, and to introduce his own view, Apple presents a taxonomy of science develOped by Jiirgens Halbermas.72 The taxonomy identifies three forms of science: (1) Strict Science - yields information that is based on and presupposes the interests of certainty and technical control. (2) Hermeneutic Science - is historical-interpretive. It yields understanding of the cultural life-world, and presupposes an underlying interest in intersubjective understanding. (3) Critical Science - an emerging form, the fundamental interest of which is the emancipation of individuals from lawlike rules and patterns of action in "nature" and history so that they can reflect and act in a dialec- tical process of creating and recreating themselves and their institu- tions. Apple sees himself as working in this third form of science. He likens the rules of science to the rules of a game, which are of 87 two sorts. There are constitutive rules, which provide basic ways of defining situations, and preference rules, which denote choices which can be made within the constitutive framework. Most controversies occur with reSpect to the preference rules; the constitutive rules are usually assumed and unquestioned. The most salient feature of "Criti- cal Science" is that it refuses to limit its discourse within the realm of the preference rules, preferring instead to call the consti- tutive rules into question. In conclusion, Apple observes that "Beneath our usual pattern of decision making about educational institutions there are perspectives that may commit us to certain ways of confronting other human beings . . . that tend to ignore basic ethical issues about the prOper modes by which one individual may seek to influence another or do not enable us to grapple significantly with the political and economic reasons that our educational institutions are often repressive."73 A concept of science plays a different, and secondary but still important, role in "The Hidden Curriculum and the Nature of Conflict."74 A concept of conflict is primary in this work, which has two theses. The first thesis is that the way conflict is treated in school curricula can lead to political quiescence and the accep- tance by students of a perSpective on social and intellectual conflict that acts to maintain the existing distribution of power and rationality in a society. The second thesis is that a greater emphasis on organized skepticism and the uses of conflict, as they 88 exist in the ideal norms of science, could counterbalance the tacit assumptions being tauglt. Apple observes that schools are generally insulated from overt forms of political and ideological argumentation and exploitation, but political socialization nevertheless tacitly and powerfully occurs via a hidden curriculun in schools which teaches constitutive rules of conflict, that is, the boundaries of activities to engage or not engage in, the types of questions which may and may not be asked, and the types of activities of maple which should be accepted or re— jected. The basic assumption of this hidden curriculum is that con- flict among groups of maple is inherently and fundamentally bad, and that we should strive to eliminate it within the established framework of existing institutions. Controversy occurs within these parameters, but not about them. Apple uses the Science and Social Science programs typical of most schools to illustrate his point. The science which is taugwt, he says, is organized around regularities in the discipline, and scien- tific work is tacitly linked with accepted standards of validity and taught as subject to empirical verification. What is not taught is that "science" is also a group of maple, a conmunity of individual scholars, governed by norms, principles and values which are regularly contested in significant intellectual and interpersonal struggles. This political dimension of the process of science is hidden; students never learn a view of conflict as functional and necessary to pro- gress, and never see scientific work to be linked with political 89 commitment. In other words, "scientific knowledge as it is taught in schools has, in effect, been divorced from the structure of the commu- nity from which it evolved and which acts to criticize it. Students are 'forced,' because of the absence of a realistic picture of how communities in science apportion power and economic resources, to internalize a view that has little potency for questioning the legiti- macy of the tacit assumptions about interpersonal conflict that govern their lives and their own educational, economic, and political Situa- tions. Not only are they presented with a view of science that is patently unrealistic, but, what is more important for our own posi- tion, they are not shown how critical interpersonal and intergroup argumentation and conflict have been for the progress of science."75 The social science which is taught to students is, in Apple's view, similarly distorted, in that it presents a social reality that tacitly accepts "happy COOperation" as the normal if not best way of life. Noting this to be a value orientation, incapable of empirical proof, Apple points to its power in determining the questions educa- tors ask and the educational experiences they design for students. Typical social science curricula teach that "elements of society . . . (are) linked to each other in a functional relationship, each contri- buting to the ongoing maintenance of society. Internal dissention and conflict in a society are viewed as inherently antithetical to the smooth functioning Of the social order. Consensus is a pronounced 76 feature." Implicit in this is an emphasis on man as value- receiving and value-transmitting rather than value-creating. Further- 90 more, these meanings are made obligatory in that they come repeatedly to children from significant others, and are consistently reinforced in textbooks and other curriculum artifacts. Apple concludes that "the curriculum field has limited its own forms of consciousness so that political and ideological assumptions that undergird a good deal of its normal patterns of activity are as hidden as those that students encounter in schools."77 Liberation and Reform Out of his reflection upon what he sees as the inadequacies and even injustices of traditional modes of thinking about curriculum and schooling, Apple concludes in "Ideology, Reproduction, and Educational Reform"78 that. reforni is absolutely necessary, and that a serious appraisal of educational reform needs to be grounded in an analysis Of the complex relationships among knowledge, ideology, economics, and power. The questions to be asked are about the dialectical relation- ship of cultural control and social and economic structure, questions such as How do they affect each other? What role does an educational system play in defining particular forms of knowledge? and Who is most likely to benefit from typically prOposed educational reforms? Questions like these are not typically asked in curriculum, in part because of the ahistorical nature of curriculum theory, and in larger part because large portions of educational and curriculum theories derive their programmatic impetus and logical warrant from psychologies of learning almost exclusively. Apple points out that 91 The language of learning tends to be apolitical and ahistorical, thus hiding the complex nexus of political and economic power and resources that lies behind a con- siderable amount of curriculum organization and selec- tion. In brief, it is not an adequate linguistic tool for dealing with what must be a prior set of curriculum ques- tions about some of the ideological roots of school know— ledge. In their Simplest aSpects, these questions can be reduced to the following issues: What is actually taught in the schools? What are the manifest and latest func- tions of the knowledge that is taught in schools? How do the principles of selection and organization that we use to plan, order, and evaluate that knowledge function in the cultural and economic reproduction of class relations in an advanced industrial society like our own? . . . These questions are not usually part of the language game of psychology.79 Apple characterizes school knowledge to have been typically investigated in two ways, one called the "Academic Achievement 80 81 In the Aca- Model," the other the "Socialization Approach." demic Achievement Model, curricular knowledge itself is not made prob- lematic; rather, the knowledge that finds its way into schools is usually accepted as a given so that comparisons can be made among the knowledge achievements among groups of students. It focuses upon determining the variables having major impact on success or failure in school, its social goal is the maximizing of academic achievement and activity, and it is influenced more and more by the managerial con- cerns of technical control and efficiency. A stunning account of how technical control is increasingly entering schooling is presented in the article reviewed immediately following this one. In the Socialization Approach, a restriction to study only what might be called "moral knowledge" has been self-inposed. The approach typically establishes as given 212 set of social rules, and investi- 92 gates how the school as an agent of society socializes students into its shared set of normative rules and diSpositions. It focuses on social consensus and the parallels between society and educational institutions, and ignores the political and economic context in which social values function and by which certain sets of social values become, by whose definition, the dominant values. A third, more critical tradition of analysis is said to be emerging, one which makes as problematic "how a system of unequal power in society is maintained, and partly recreated, by a trans- mission of culture. "82 The school is seen as one important agent in this. Schools are seen as processing both knowledge and maple, and, although perhaps unintentionally, using formal and informal knowledge as a complex filter to process peOple, often by class, and at the same time teaching different values “and diSpositions to different school pOpulations: again often by class (and sex and race). In other ,words, schools are seen as latently recreating cultural and economic dis- parities in our society. One of the ways that unequal power is maintained in our society, explains Apple in "Curriculum Form and the Logic of Technical Con- trol,"83 is through the increasingly pervasive use in schools of processes of production found useful in industry for reducing costs and increasing profit. In neo-Marxist thought, the institutions of a society are seen to be connected in a complex web of influence and counter—influence. The needs of one, and the actions of one, have direct implications for each of the others, which, in turn, react 93 back. In this sense the needs of one "determine" what happens in another, but not in a simple cause-effect way, and usually not in such a way that "intentionality" can be ascribed to it, as though there is some sort of conSpiracy going on. In a heavily industrialized and technical society such as ours, the "needs" Of industry are the greatest and therefore are exerting the greater force in the web of interrelationships; they are "determining" what is happening in schools. Apple notes that overt attempts by industry, with reinforcement from the "state," which is another institution within the web, to bring schools more closely into line with their "needs" are obvious and increasing. For example, Chairs of Free Enterprise devoted to economic education are showing up with accelerating regularity in universities, prepackaged programs of economic education are being produced by industry and made available to teachers, and teachers are invited to industry-Sponsored workshOps to learn industry's views regarding their economic practices and needs. However, Apple cau- tions, keeping our focus on overt attempts to bring school policy and curriculum into closer correspondence with industrial needs may make us overlook what is happening at the day-to-day level of school prac- tice, which may be just as powerful. Apple surmises that at the level of social practice within the routine activities in schools, covert and powerful forces are at work to bring schools more in line with industrial needs. These forces are at work not only in curriculum 94 content, but more powerfully in curriculum form, in the manner in which curriculum is organized. Borrowing from the research of neo-Marxist scholars investigating the social reality of industry, Apple postulates that technical con- trol, the hallmark of efficient industrial production, is being exerted via curricular form in two ways. One is through a process of deskilling and reskilling; the other is the separation of conception from execution. As background to his hypothesis, Apple summarizes that in cor- porate production, firms purchase labor power - they buy the capacity one has to do work, and often seek to expand the use of that labor to make it more productive. With the purchase of labor power comes the "right" to stipulate, within certain limits, how it is to be used, without too much interference or participation by workers in the con- ception and planning of the work. Three kinds of control can be employed to extract more work: Simple Control, which involves telling someone you have decided what should go on, and they should follow or else; Technical Control, which is embedded in the structure of the job - for example, a machine may be programmed, or "controlled," to do the actual work, with the "worker" being merely an attendant to the machine itself; and Bureau- cratic Control, which is less visible, is embedded in the hierarchical social relations of the workplace, and consists of the bureaucratic rules concerning the direction of one's work and a system of rewards and sanctions dictated by officially approved policy. Industry has 95 learned that control can be made more powerful by making it less visible, built into the very structure of the work itself. As such, it is unlikely to be resisted or subverted. The "theory" of built-in control has three prOpositions: control should come from what appears to be a legitimate overall structure; control must be concerned with the actual work, not features extra- neous to it; and, the job, the process, and the product must be de- fined as precisely as possible on the basis of management's, not the worker's, control over the Specialized knowledge needed to carry it out, which often means technical control. Deskilling and the separation of conception from execution are seen as complimentary processes. Deskilling involves a long process in which labor is divided and redivided to increase productivity, reduce inefficiency, and control both the cost and inpact of labor. What 'this usually means is taking relatively complex jobs, which require quite a bit of skill and decision-making by the worker, and breaking them down into Specified actions with specified results so that less skilled and less costly personnel can be used, or so that the pace and outcome of work can be better controlled. One of the more effective strategies is to incorporate control into the actual productive process itself, so that the worker need do little more than load and unload the machine, a strategy which often reduces labor cost and thereby increases profits. When jobs are deskilled, the knowledge once controlled by the worker goes somewhere, usually to management. Knowledge is now 96 separated from execution. The control of knowledge enables management to do the planning, away from the point of production; the role of the worker is simply to execute the plan to the Specifications, and at the pace, set by management. Since new techniques may be needed to do the new work and to run the new machines, workers may need to be reskilled. Apple believes the school to provide "an excellent microcosm for 84 and seeing these kinds of mechanisms of control in Operation," that through the processes of control, subtle ideological transforma- tions are taking place. One example is the increasingly pervasive reliance in schools on prepackaged sets of standardized curriculum materials, complete with given objectives, all the content and mate- rials needed, preSpecified teacher actions and appropriate student reSponses, and diagnostic and achievement tests which are coordinated with the system. The whole process is defined as precisely as possible by peOple external to the classroom situation. Concurrent with the use of packaged curricula is the deskilling of the teacher. It is no longer necessary for teachers to use the skills once deemed essential to the craft of working with children, such as curriculum deliberation, curriculum planning, and the designing of teaching and curricular strategies for specific groups and individuals based upon an intimate knowledge of those peOple. Because these skills are less often required, they atrOphy. In order for teachers to implement the new curricula, they need to be reskilled, and there is evidence across the country of this re- skilling going on in teacher training institutions, inservice work- 97 ShOpS, professional journals, and the funding patterns of state and private philanthrOpic organizations. Specifically, increased skills in the use of behavior management techniques and in systems management strategies are being incorporated into curriculum material and built into teacher repertoires. These can be seen as promoting the ideo- logical visions of management in which predictability, accountability, and efficiency are central features. Says Apple, "As teachers lose control of curricular and pedagogic Skills to large publishing houses, these skills are replaced by techniques for better controlling students."85 Two of the more notable consequences of the deskilling-reskilling process, and the separation of conception from execution, are that teachers become more isolated from students, and from their colleagues. In the classroom, teachers become managers. Students need little overt interaction with teachers or peers since procedures are easily learned, and standardized. In this context, "individuali- zation" refers merely to the pace at which a student proceeds through the material. In the faculty room, little interaction is necessary among teachers at the level of classroom practice. This severs one of the formerly strong bonds between teachers, and as they move apart from one another it becomes more difficult for them jointly to main- tain control over curricular decisions. Teachers become unattached individuals, divorced from their colleagues and the actual stuff of their work. 98 All of this gets into Schools, says Apple, not necessarily because of any conspiracy to change schools, on the part of industrialists or anyone else, but through the cumulative effect of several features characteristic of our larger social, economic, and political context. One explanation is that schools are lucrative markets, actively sought by publishers who, like any other business, would like to increase profit by higher volume, the standardization of product elements, and the stimulation of product purchase and repurchase. Standardized curricula, with consunable units, are a step in this direction. The National Defense Education Act, which provided the equivalent of cash credits to school districts who purchased this new material created by the private sector, helped it along, as did a view in the cold war climate of the 1950's and 1960's that teachers were unSOphisticated enough by themselves to produce the scientists, technicians, and stable workforce which was needed, thereby encouraging the development of "teacher-proof" materials. Furthermore, the whole process looked so "scientific," based as it was on the principles of behavior and learning psychology, that it raised the prestige of schooling in a society in which science had become a value, and served to deflect criticism and secure funding. Until serious theoretical alternatives are developed and become part of the public consciousness, Apple sees little chance of changing things in any significant way. The logic of technical control is solidly entrenched, in no small way due to the unique fact that it can, when uncritically examined, integrate into one discourse 99 seemingly contradictory ideological positions, and thereby generate support from each of them. Administrators and managers need account- ability and control; teachers need something "practical" to use with their students; the state needs efficient production and cost savings; parents want "quality education" that "works;" and industrial capital needs efficient producers. The utility of this discourse is not lost upon state bureaucrats, who are well aware that they need to be per- ceived as having rational and accountable procedures in order to legi- timate their own activities as "the state." Before moving to suggest a possible way out of all this, Apple pauses to reflect on the kind of individual "produced" in the current system. Student behaviors, after all, are as preSpecified as those of their teachers. Because the notion of curriculum has been reduced to the mastery of sets of competencies and Skills, the mark of a "good" student is his possession and accumulation of those skills. These can be thought of as his "cultural capital" which he can identify himself as an individual. The emerging concept of "individualism" is not cast in the terms of autonomy and control over one's destiny, but "careerist individualism." The individual "earns" a particular job through his attainment of skills learned in school, and then keeps and enhances his career by following rules he also learned in school. The "career individualist" is geared toward organizational mobility and advancement by following technical rules. He has a rules orientation - he is aware of them and in the habit of following them; he is more dependable - he will perform according to the rules, at a relatively lOO consistent level, and will get the job done; and, he will internalize the goals and values of the enterprise for which he works. In his concluding remarks about how individuals might liberate themselves from the Oppression engendered in the bureaucratic struc- tures typical of our society, Apple speculates about the possible impact of neo-Marxist social research presently being developed but which has not yet been focused very much on schools. Specifically under investigation is a "principle of contradiction," which appears to have two meanings. One meaning is that within the interlocking web of institutions there are always contradictory forces at work which appear to Operate in powerful but as yet dimly understood ways to modify each other, singly and in concert. Another meaning seems to be that individuals do not always react to forces in ways that one might expect if a simple cause-effect mechanical relationship of force to object is assumed. Sometimes peOple react in ways that are intended to subvert the power of the force. Apple points to evidences of both forms Of contradiction in schools. At the institutional level there are examples of strong school staffs or districts which have resisted successfully the encroachment of' standardized curricula into their domain, and stood firm in opposition to the demands of an industrial community for an education which was more likely to produce workers with the Specific skills and attitudes which industry said it needed. These schools were not as aware of, though, or as successful in resisting more covert and subtle practices consistent with the logic of technical control. At the level of the individual, Apple points to 101 teachers who close the classroom door and do what they decide is best, or hurry to get the required curricula out of the way in order to get on with other things. Furthermore, there are teachers who chose deli- berately certain contents which will first illuminate, then contra- dict, the messages of form. These resistances, however, as significant as they might be as exemplars, tend to be too localized to have any general impact on schools, and frequently those who practice them are not very much more aware of what they are doing than are their colleagues who are trying in good conscience to do what they believe to be expected of them. It may be the case, suggests Apple, that when the principle of contradiction is better understood, and when the general corpus of neo-Marxist research and insight is more publically known and accepted, the work of emanicipation may begin in earnest. Traditional Conceptions The purpose of this brief section is to present a sketch of tradi- tional thinking about schooling and curriculum as Pinar and Apple per- ceive it. This sketch is a compilation of concepts extracted and paraphrased from the primary sources reviewed in this chapter. "Traditional" is loosely interpreted to include contemporary as well as historical modes of thinking which Pinar and Apple identify as being dominant. What is remarkably obvious is that Pinar and Apple share very similar perceptions. They may ground their reconceptualizations in different theoretical systems, but their analyses of that which they 102 are against are coincident. What seems almost to astonish both men is that mainline educational thinking has ignored, or even been blind to, the basic valuative nature of its theories and practices. In their view, the underlying assumptions of traditional thinking have too long remained unexamined, and the ethical character of traditional activi- ties has been insufficiently challenged. Traditional thinking about schooling and curriculum is seen as having borrowed extensively from bureaucratic models originally de- signed to enhance industrial production, and from an outmoded brand of positivistic thinking about empirical science. From these two bases has emerged a predominant Systems approach to schooling, featuring essentially an input-process-output agenda for curriculum theorizing and schooling practice. This approach has been reinforced by an in- creasing reliance On behavioral psychology and learning theory, both of which in turn have been themselves strongly influenced by a positi- vistic view of science. Both theorists view the tradition as guilty of insufficiently pro- moting the individual. Schools and curricula have been fashioned pri- marily to meet the needs of the institution or of some other group which not only had the power, but also believed it had the need and the right to decide for the recipients of schooling what it was that they would learn to think, to feel, and to do. In the process, the person has become objectified, a thing to be, as the factory metaphor expresses, produced by the school. Efficient, mass production has become a controlling ethic, and the goal has become successive 103 generations of graduates who have been socialized to the status quo; who, having become lost to themselves, will accept an identity con— ferred upon them by society or at least play the game of following the rules well enough not to cause much trouble. The ultimate consequence of this processing, programming, and standardization of students is the production of a generation of graduates even less aware of the social, political, and economic webs of influence which have shaped them, the injustice of their treatment, or any sense of what they can or should do about it. 104 Notes 1Barbara J. Benham, "Curriculum Theory in the 1970's: The Reconceptualist Movement," Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 3 (Winter 1981), 162-170. 2William F. Pinar, ed., Curriculum Theorizing: ~The Reconceptualists (Berkeley: McCutchan, 1975). 3Benham, p. 164. 4Benham, p. 167. 5Benham, p. 168. 5Benham, p. 168. 7Pinar, The Reconceptualists, p. xi. 8William F. Pinar, "The Reconceptualization of Curriculum Studies," in Curriculum and Instruction, eds. Henry A. Giroux, Anthony N. Penna, and William F. Pinar (Berkeley: McCutchan, 1981). 9Pinar, "Reconceptualization of Curriculum Studies," p. 88. 10Pinar, "Reconceptualization of Curriculum Studies," p. 89. llHerbert M. Kliebard, "Persistent Curriculum Issues in Historical PerSpective," in Curriculum Theorizin : The Reconceptualists, ed. William F. Pinar (Berkeley: MECutchan, 1975). 12Kliebard, "Persistent Issues," pp. 41-43. l3Kliebard, "Persistent Issues," p. 45. 14Kliebard, "Persistent Issues," p. 46, quoted from Richard S. Peters, Education as Initiation (London: George S. Harp, 1964), p. 47. 15Kliebard, "Persistent Issues, p. 47. 16Herbert M. Kliebard, "Bureaucracy and Curriculum Theory," in Curriculum Theorizing: The Reconceptualists, ed. William F. Pinar TBerkeIey: ’MCCutchan, 1975). 17Kliebard, "Bureaucracy," p. 56. 18Kliebard, "Bureaucracy," p. 58. 105 l9Kliebard, "Bureaucracy," p. 61. 20Kliebard, "Bureaucracy," p. 67. 21Pinar, The Reconceptualists, p. xii. 22Pinar, "Reconceptualization of Curriculum Studies," p. 92. 23Pinar, "Reconceptualization of Curriculum Studies," p. 93. 24Pinar, The Reconceptualists, p. xiii. 25William F. Pinar, "A Reply to My Critics," in Curriculum and Instruction, eds. Henry A. Giroux, Anthony N. Penna, and William F. Pinar (Berkeley: McCutchan, 1981). 26Pinar, "Reply to Critics," p. 394. 27Pinar, "Reconceptualization of Curriculum Studies," p. 93. 28Pinar, "Reconceptualization of Curriculum Studies," p. 94. 29Pinar, The Reconceptualists, p. xiv. 30Pinar, "Reconceptualization of Curriculum Studies," p. 95. 3lwilliam F. Pinar, "Sanity, Madness, and the School," in his Curriculum Theorizing3gThe Reconceptualists (Berkeley: McCutchan, 1975). 32Pinar, "Sanity," p. 359. 33Pinar, "Sanity," p. 360, cited as "Sartre as quoted by Friere in 1970." 34Pinar, "Sanity," p. 361. 35William F. Pinar, "The Analysis of Educational Experience," in his Curriculum Theorizing: The Reconceptualists (Berkeley: McCutchan, 1975). 36William F. Pinar, "Currere: Toward Reconceptualization," in his Curriculum Theorizing: The Reconceptualists (Berkeley: McCutchan, 1975). 37William F. Pinar, "Search for a Method," in his Curriculum Theorizing: The Reconceptualists (Berkeley: McCutchan, I975). 38Pinar, "Analysis of Experience," p. 385. 106 39Pinar, "Analysis of Experience," p. 388. 40Pinar, "Analysis of Experience," p. 392. 41Pinar, "Analysis of Experience," p. 391. Pinar credits this conceptualization to R.D. Laing. 42Pinar, "Currere," p. 396. 43Pinar, "Currere," p. 400. 44Pinar, "Currere," p. 409. 45Pinar, "Currere," p. 412. 45Pinar, "Currere," p. 412. 47Pinar, "Search for Method," p. 416. 48Pinar, "Search for Method," pp. 416-417. 49Pinar, "Search for Method," p. 418. 50Pinar, "Search for Method," p. 418. 51William F. Pinar, "The Abstract and Concrete in Curriculum Theorizing," in Curriculum ang_Instruction, eds. Henry A. Giroux, Anthony N. Penna, and William F. Pinar (Berkeley: McCutchan, 1981). 52Pinar, "Abstract and Concrete," p. 432. 53Pinar, "Abstract and Concrete," p. 433. 54Pinar, "Abstract and Concrete," p. 434. 55Pinar, "Abstract and Concrete," p. 434. 56Pinar, "Abstract and Concrete," p. 437. 57Michael W. Apple, Education and Power (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982). 58Michael W. Apple, "Rationality as Ideology," rev. of Review of Reason and Rhetoric: The Intellectual Foundgtions of TwenEIetfi Century Liberal EdUcation Policy, by Walter Feinberg, EducatIonal Theory, 26 (WinterTl979), p. 121. 59Michael W. Apple, "Ideology, Reproduction, and Educational Reform," Comparative Education Review, October 1978, p. 370. 107 50Michael W. Apple, "The Process and Ideology of Valuing in Educational Settings," in Educational Evaluation: Analysis and ReSponsibility, eds. Michael W. Apple, Michael SUbkoviak, and Henry Lufler Jr. (Berkeley: McCutchan, 1974). 61Apple, "Process and Ideology, p. 6. 62Apple, "Process and Ideology, p. 6. 53Apple, "Process and Ideology, . 6. 64Apple, "Process and Ideology, . l7. . 12. p p 55Apple, "Process and Ideology, p. 8. 66Apple, "Process and Ideology, p p 57Apple, "Process and Ideology, . 13. 58Apple, "Process and Ideology, p. 19. 69Apple, "Process and Ideology, p. 22. 70Apple, "Process and Ideology, p. 29. 71Michael W. Apple, "Scientific Interests and the Nature of Educational Institutions," in Curriculum Theorizin : The Reconceptualists, ed. William F. PInar (BerReIey: MECutEhan, 1975). 72Apple, "Scientific Interests," p. 130, note 18 states the main thrusts of Halbermas' position to be put forth in Trent Schroyer, "Toward a Critical Theory for Advanced Industrial Society," ed. Recent Sociolo , no. 2, ed. Hans Peter Dreitzel (New York: Macmillan, I970), gIO—34. 73Apple, "Scientific Interests," p. 129. 74Michael W. Apple, "The Hidden Curriculum and the Nature of Conflict," in Curriculum Theorizing: The Reconceptualists, ed. William F. Pinar (Berkeley: MCCUtchan, I975). 75Apple, "Hidden Curriculum," p. 104. 75Apple, "Hidden Curriculum," p. 105. 77Apple, "Hidden Curriculum," p. 114. 78Apple, Comparative Education Review, 1978. 79Apple, "Ideology, Reproduction, and Reform," p. 372. 108 80Apple, "Ideology, Reproduction, and Reform," p. 372. 81Apple, "Ideology, Reproduction, and Reform," p. 373. 82Apple, "Ideology, Reproduction, and Reform," p. 374. Credit for the statement of the problem in this form given to Pierre Bourdieu and Jean Claude Passeron, Reproduction in Education, Society and Culture (London: Sage Publications, 1977). 83Michael W. Apple, "Curriculum Form and the Logic of Technical Control: Building the Possessive Individual," in his Cultural and Economic Reproduction in Education (Boston: Routledge andiKegan Paul, 1982) 0 84Apple, "Curriculum and Control," p. 253. 85Apple, "Curriculum and Control," p. 255. CHAPTER 5 THE APPLICATION OF A FRAMEWORK FOR EXAMINING TRADITIONAL CONCEPTIONS, AND EXISTENTIAL AND STRUCTURAL RECONCEPTUALIZATIONS, OF EDUCATIONAL THEORY AND PRACTICE Introduction As stated in Chapter 1, the major purposes of this study are to provide a framework through which the major themes of two identifiable groups of reconceptualists can be accommodated to each other and to their perceptions of the mode Of thinking which they believe to be dominant, and to employ the framework in an attempt to provide for teacher educators a greater degree of conceptual clarity regarding reconceptualist criticisms and alternatives. As explained in Chapter 3, the framework consists of a two dimen- sional matrix which will facilitate the diSplay, analysis, and cross- referencing of five selected characteristics of traditional and recon- ceptualized views of curriculum and schooling. The characteristics of the view to which the framework calls attention are the questions that are asked, the sources which are explored for answers, the conception it has of curriculum, the conception it has of school in society, and its conception of value. 109 110 In this chapter, the content of the works of William Pinar and Michael Apple which were reviewed in Chapter 4 are recast in terms of the categories of the framework, and then distilled to a few synoptic terms which are placed in the cells of the matrix. This chapter is organized into three main sections, reflecting the three categories along the abscissa of the framework: Traditional Conceptions as Per- ceived by Reconceptualists; Reconceptualization: Existential (Pinar); and Reconceptualization: Structural (Apple). Within each section, the five categories identified along the ordinant of the framework are considered in the sequence in which they appear. Each section further includes a diSplay of the apprOpriate column of the framework with the synOptic terms placed in the cells. Each section concludes with comments about the view as a whole. Traditional Conceptions as Perceived by Reconceptualists Recasting Of Concepts into the Categories of the Framework Questions Asked. The questions that traditional thinkers are per- ceived as asking are basically the same four identified by Ralph Tyler: What educational purposes should the school seek to attain?; What educational experiences can be provided that are likely to attain these purposes?; How can these educational experiences be effectively organized?; and, How can we determine whether these purposes are being attained? This perception is consistent with those of other theorists presented in the review of "Traditional Curriculum Thinking" in Chapter 2. Traditional curriculum and schooling peOple are seen as 111 having made few, if any, serious collective efforts to make Tyler's questions themselves problematic in an attempt to understand the values residing in the assumptions out of which the questions were originally framed. Neither have there been very many serious, collec- tive attempts to understand the explicit or latent ethical dimensions of practices which these questions have generated. This lack of re- flectivity, both by Tyler and those whose work continues under his influence, is considered by the reconceptualists to have rendered the curriculum field philOSOphically naive, at best. The terms which summarize this section for the framework are "Tyler Rationale," and "philosophical naivete." Location of Answers. The answers which have characteristically evolved from the questions posed by Tyler are seen to have been grounded in three theoretic sources. These sources, in turn, are seen as having been influenced by a reductionistic view of science inherent in the philOSOphy of positivism, which tries to pose all questions as technical problems to be solved by engineering rationality, and re- jects as "merely metaphysical" all questions it cannot handle. One of the sources is psychology and learning theory, particularly a psycho- logy featuring a behavior-conseQuence, stimulus-reSponse approach. A second source is an industrial model of bureaucratic organization which values predictability, standardization, and efficiency in the service of controlled production. A third source is a form of social theory which promotes socialization and consensus as its conceptual values and goals. 112 The terms "which summarize this section for the framework are "behavioral psychology," "industrial bureaucracy," "consensus socio- logy," and "enpirical analysis." Conception of Curriculum. Given the influence of sources such as those identified, curriculum has come to be seen as having character- istics metaphorically expressed as "the factory model." More Specifi- cally, curriculum has become a controlled production process system- atically employed to obtain preconceived ends. The ends are specific and uniform student knowledge, skills, and attitudes which will socialize the student into the extant society and equip him to play a maintenance role within it. Specific treatments are designed and seQuenced to increase the probability of students achieving those ends. This orientation toward curriculum is seen as consistent with the Latin currare, "a course to be run." Pinar and Apple agree with Kliebard's assessment that most curriculum work is ahistorical and ameliorative, dedicated as it is to work within the conceptual limita- tions of the dominant model and sources to fine-tune educational thought and practice. The terms which summarize this section for the framework are "currere," "system," "pragmatism," and "uniform." Conception of School in Society. The conception of the function of how the school is to perform in society serves to legitimate both the conception of curriculum and the theoretical bases from which it is nurtured. In the traditional view, the extant culture is given to 113 be transmitted to and endorsed by students. The role of the school is not to produce negotiators or reformers of culture; but, rather, per- sons who will either accept society as it is or work within set para- meters of acceptable activity to improve it. In other words, the role of the school is to minimize conflict and promote a consensus view that society is basically acceptable the way it is, and to produce graduates equipped to do what is necessary to maintain the extant political, social, and economic order. The school is expected to per- form this function efficiently, and effectively. The terms which summarize this section for the framework are "pro- duction," maintenance," and "consensus." Conception of Value. Several conceptions of value and valuing are evident in the characterization of traditional thinking presented in the first four categories. One thing that is obvious is that a parti- cular conception of "science" has become a constitutive value, assumed without challenge and setting limits within which all subsequent theorizing, practice, and debate is expected to occur. Tradition— alists are seen as believing this view of science to be value-neutral, but employable in securing and maintaining those things which society values. What society appears to value above all is itself, which leads it to define the value of the individual in terms of his rela- tionship to society, and to view the student as one who should be filled with society's values rather than create his own. Pinar and Apple believe traditionalists to be unaware of many Of the value 114 TABLE 5.1 Traditional Conceptions as Perceived by Reconceptualists TRADITIONAL CONCEPTIONS AS PERCEIVEO BY RECONCEPTUALISTS QUESTIONS - Tyler Rationale ASKED - PhiIOSOphical Naivete LOCATION - Empirical Analysis OF - Behavioral Psychology ANSWERS - Industrial Bureaucracy - Consensus Sociology CONCEPTION - Currare OF - System CURRICULUM - Pragmatism - Uniform CONCEPTION - Production OF SCHOOL - Maintenance IN SOCIETY - Consensus CONCEPTION - Science OF - Transmission VALUE Status Quo All Terms in Prior Categories 115 assumptions undergirding or the ethical implications accompanying their theories and practices. The terms which summarize this section for the framework are "science," "transmission," "status quo," and "all terms in prior cate- gories." A rationale for the final term is provided in the comments regarding traditional thinking viewed as a whole. Summarnyerms, the Framework, and Comment Table 5.1, "Traditional Conceptions as Perceived by Reconcep- tualists," presents that portion of the framework diSplayed in Table 3.1 which catalogues the characteristics of traditional thinking as analyzed in this chapter. The terms used to summarize each category have been placed into the cells of the matrix. What should be noted is that the three terms listed in the "Con- ception of Value" cell are implicit in the preceding categories, and in some instances are synonyms for terms in those categories. There is, for example, an obvious similarity between "status quo" in "Con- ception of Value," "consensus" in "Conception of School in Society," and "consensus sociology" in "Location of Answers," all of which are perceived to be "philosophically naive," as stated in "Questions Asked." Similar congruences exist among other terms. These correla- tions exemplify the points originally made in Chapter 3 that the cate- gories of the framework are not discrete, and that value positions reside in all categories. For this reason, the phrase "all terms in prior categories" has been added to "Conception of Value." 116 Furthermore, considering the traditional conception as a whole warrants the conclusion that there is a remarkable degree of internal consistency and coherence in traditional thinking, at least as per- ceived by Pinar and Apple, if not indeed in reality. Reconceptualization: Existential (Pinar) Recastigg of Concepts into the Categories of the Framework Questions Asked. Clearly and consistently, the question which holds all of Pinar's work together is "mat is the nature of the educational experience?" His focus is the individual's awareness of his actual experiencing of education, and his goal is finally to arrive at insights that help answer the existential questions "Who am I?" and "How can I find myself?" Pinar is convinced that in contem- porary society, of which traditional education is but one agent, the individual becomes easily lost to himself and in some sense owned. Pinar suggests that the existential questioning can begin only after one becomes aware of being owned, and begins to ask "Whose am I?" and "How can I liberate myself " The questions which summarize this section for the framework are "What is the nature of educational experience?", "Who am 1?", and "How can I find and free myself " Location of Answers. For Pinar there is ultimately one single source of answers, but it is accessible through several intermediate and interconnected routes. The Single source is what Pinar calls the 117 lebenswelt, the preconceptual and usually unconscious world of domain assumptions and lived experiences which define the self. The lebenswelt is not recognized by "science," and is unapproachable via empirical investigation. Rather, the historical, philOSOphical, and literary methodologies and insights characteristic of existential philOSOphy, Marxist sociology, and phenomenological psychology will more likely take one through the Whose am I? question to the door of the lebenswelt. Given the perverse strength and complex nature of the forces which have shaped and imprisoned one's consciousness, fighting through it calls for persistent, hard, and, for Pinar, necessarily intellectual work. The terms which summarize this section for the framework are "lebenswelt," "intellection," "existential philOSOphy," "Marxist sociology," "phenomenology," and "historical, philOSOphical, and literary analysis." Conception Of Curriculum. Consistent with the emphasis placed on the importance of the self in existential philOSOphy, the conception of curriculum Pinar works with features the education of the self, by and for the self. He develops a methodology for this called Currere, the same as the Latin currere, which denotes the experiencing Of running a course. Currere calls for a regressive intellectual description of one's past experiencing, a progressive intellectual description of one's imagined future, an analytic psycho-analysis of one's phenomenologically described present, and a synthetic assessment of the dialectical relationship between the self and the larger 118 political and social context and web in which the self resides. Currere is seen as ongoing, never complete in any final sense, but its continued use will help liberate the concrete individual from abstrac- tion by granting him access to his lebenswelt. The terms which summarize this category for the framework are "currere," "the self," and "liberation." Conception of School in Society. Although Pinar does not Speak directly to this point except to lay bare and criticize what he per- ceives to be the repressiveness of traditional thought and practice, one can by implication derive a view of what schools should be doing. It seems reasonable to infer that Pinar believes it to be the reSpon- sibility of society, and hence for schools as powerful institutions within society, to serve and promote the individual by helping him become more self-aware and self-loving. Furthermore, schools should equip students to deal in an aware and transforming way with the restrictive forces and inequities in the social, political, and econo- mic contexts in which they find themselves. In order to promote this, schools should induct students into the methodology of currere, and, since intellectual activity is essential to the method, the intellect presumably Should be developed. One dimension of this is explicitly clear: teachers themselves must engage in currere in order for them to be able to lead students into it. The terms which summarize this category for the framework are "promote individual," "practice currere," and "alieviate injustice." 119 TABLE 5.2 Reconceptualization: Existential (Pinar) RECONCEPTUALIZATIONS EXISTENTIAL (PINAR) QUESTIONS - What is the Nature of the Educational ASKED Experience? - Who am I? - How can I Find and Free Myself? LOCATION - Lebenswelt OF - Intellection ANSWERS - Existential Philosophy - Marxist Sociology - Historical, PhiIOSOphical and Literary Analysis CONCEPTION - Currere OF - The Self CURRICULUM - Liberation CONCEPTION - Promote Individual OF SCHOOL - Practice Currere IN SOCIETY - Alleviate Injustice CONCEPTION - Self as Valuable OF - Self as Originator of Value VALUE - Justice All Terms in Prior Categories 120 Conception of Value. It is clear in Pinar's work that the indivi- dual is perceived to be inherently valuable, and furthermore, that the individual is the source and creator of the values he holds. Pinar makes no attempt to "prove" human value; he assumes it, and the rest of his theorizing proceeds from this assumption. Also evident in Pinar's work is that some concept of justice is valued, as is indi- cated by a sense that not only is it necessary for a person to become self-aware, but also that he be actively at work in creating social conditions which will promote the possibility of similar self—aware- ness for others, thereby alleviating the injustice of Oppression. The terms which summarize this section for the framework are "self as valuable," "self as originator of value," "justice," and "all terms in prior categories." Summarnyerm y the Framework, and Comment Table 5.2, "Reconceptualization: Existential (Pinar)," presents that portion of the framework presented in Table 3.1 which catalogues the characteristics of Pinar-as-exemplar of the Existential orienta- tion in reconceptualism as analyzed in this chapter. The terms used to summarize each category have been placed in the cells of the matrix. As was the case in the analysis of the traditional conception, the terms used to summarize each category identified in the framework are frequently synonymous. or congruent with the terms in other cate- gories. Similar overlap occurs in the analytical narrative. For 121 example, the "Questions Asked" narrative concludes with the suggestion that the "mose am I?" question needs to be explored as part of the movement through consciousness to the lebenswelt. This statement would be equally at home in the "Location of Answers" or the "Concep- tion of Curriculum" sections. Also, the "Conception Of School in Society" section concludes with "should" statements that might equally be subsumable in the "Conception of’ Curriculum" section. In the judgement of this writer, this phenomenon is not due to imprecision in language or in the categories of the framework, but is once again indicative of the degree to which the categories interpenetrate one another, not just in the framework, but in the reality of theoretic discourse as well. Reconceptualization:;'structural-(Apple) Recasting of Concepts into the Categories of the Framework Questions Asked. The question which serves to organize and pro- vide continuity for Apple's work relating to education is the same as Pinar's, "What is the nature of the educational experience?" However, whereas Pinar moves in the direction of analyzing the felt dimensions of experiencing, Apple turns to develOp a clearer understanding of the way the external world works to create those educational experiences. More Specifically, Apple asks questions such as What are the social, political, and economic relations which have produced educational ex- periences characteristic of our time?, What is the role of the school in the social order?, and How can we make schools more just institu- 122 tions? Apple's basic strategy is to question the unquestioned, to make problematic the unchallenged, assunptive basis upon which tradi- tional thinking is constructed, and to investigate the latent and usually hidden consequences of traditional educational practice. The terms which summarize this section for the framework are "What is the nature of educational experience?", "What are the structures which influence schooling?", and "How can schools promote social justice?" Location "of Answers. Clues regarding the source of answers are obvious in the form of Apple's questions. He obviously sees politics and economics to be structurally related, and in some sense "deter- mining" forces in society; he sees schools to be related to those forces and playing some role with reSpect to them; and, he sees schools to be guilty of being unjust. The address of issues such as these is characteristic of social, political, and economic theory, and it is to the Marxist scholars to whom he Specifically turns. AS does Pinar, Apple identifies the methodologies of historical, philOSOphi- cal, and language analysis to peel back the layers of theoretical interpretations of the subject he wishes better to understand. He investigates both the actual practices of schools and the theoretical explanations for these practices as part of his search for under- standing. 123 although proportional power may shift from time to time within the web, the institution with the greater power at a particular time exerts the greater force. Given these dynamics, it is at least logi- cally possible that schools could, in ways not yet adequately under- stood, become a force for social reform in the direction of a more equal and just distribution of cultural resources. The terms which summarize this section for the framework are "web of interaction," "power," and "distributive justice." Concqgtionof Value. A notion of social justice figures large in Apple's work. The important thing to notice in Apple about justice as a value is that it functions not only as an end to be pursued in its own right, but as a means to promoting something of greater value, the individual human being, whose worth prOperly resides not in his mate- rial or cultural accumulations, or in his power, or in his social class, race, gender, or anything else, but in his basic humanity. Apple does not develOp a theory of justice, and he devotes little of his writing to providing a rationale for it. Frequently only a sen- tence or two makes explicit reference to it. Unmistakeably and un- deniably, however, a valuing of justice is the energizing center of his work. The terms which summarize this category for the framework are "human value," "social justice," and "all terms in prior categories." 124 although prOportional power may shift from time to time within the web, the institution with the greater power at a particular time exerts the greater force. Given these dynamics, it is at least logi- cally possible that schools could, in ways not yet adequately under- stood, become a force for social reform in the direction of a more equal and just distribution of cultural resources. The terms which summarize this section for the framework are "web of interaction," "power," and "distributive justice." Conception of Value. A notion of social justice figures large in Apple's work. The important thing to notice in Apple about justice as a value is that it functions not only as an end to be pursued in its own right, but as a means to promoting something of greater value, the individual human being, whose worth prOperly resides not in his mate— rial or cultural accumulations, or in his power, or in his social class, race, gender, or anything else, but in his basic humanity. Apple does not develop a theory Of justice, and he devotes little of his writing to providing a rationale for it. Frequently only a sen- tence or two makes explicit reference to it. Unmistakeably and un- deniably, however, a valuing of justice is the energizing center of his work. The terms which summarize this category for the framework are "human value," "social justice," and "all terms in prior categories." TABLE 5.3 125 Reconceptualization: Structural (Apple) RECONCEPTUALIZATIONS STRUCTURAL (APPLE) QUESTIONS - What is the Nature of the Educational ASKED Experience? - What are the Structures Which Influence Schooling? - How can Schools Promote Social Justice? LOCATION - Marxist Social Theory OF - Historical, PhIIOSOphical, and Language ANSWERS Analysis CONCEPTION - Creation of Meanings OF - The Power of Form CURRICULUM - Participatory Control - Active Justice CONCEPTION - Web of Interaction OF SCHOOL - Power IN SOCIETY - Distributive Justice CONCEPTION - Human Value OF - Social Justice VALUE - All Terms in Prior Categories 126 Summary Terms, the Framework, and Comment Table 5.3, "Reconceptualization: Structural (Apple)," presents that portion of the framework in Table 3.1 which catalogues the characteristics of Apple-as-exemplar of the Structural orientation in reconceptualism as analyzed in this chapter. The terms used to sum— marize each category have been placed into the cells of the matrix. Once again the permeable boundaries of the categories are visible, indicating that the categories of the framework themselves exist in an interlocking web of mutual influence in much the same way that Apple sees the institutions of society being related. Summary Table 5.4, "Completed Framework for Examining Traditional, Recon- ceptualized Existential, and Reconceptualized Structural Thinking about Curriculum and Schooling," places Tables 5.1, 5.2, and 5.3 back into the context of the total framework. That Pinar and Apple share a common set of perceptions regarding the traditional mode of thinking about curriculum and instruction has already been noted. The single column in the framework for clarifying traditional thought as perceived by Pinar and Apple visually rein- forces that point. Furthermore, the framework serves, as noted earlier, to make more readily visible the way, and the extent to which, each theory con- sidered as a whole is a unified system of compatible and interrelated concepts. Such coherence is one of the distinguishing features of a good theoretical system, good not necessarily in the sense of 127 accurate or true, although that may also be the case, but good in the sense of having internal logical coherence. The framework makes clear that each of the three theories presented are good theories, at least to the extent that they are cohesive in terms of the categories of this Specific framework. What the framework also serves to do, and this is more in line with the purposes behind develOping the framework in the first place, is to bring into sharp focus the similarities and differences that exist between the Existential and Structural orientations in reconcep- tualism. This clarity has two benefits. One benefit is that each viewed in contrast to the other stands out more clearly in its own right. The other is that the increased degree of clarity enhances the deriving of possible and clear implications of reconceptual thinking for undergraduate programs of teacher education in liberal arts insti- tutions, which is addressed in Chapter 6. An analysis of the Existential and Structural columns of the framework reveals several notable similarities and differences between the theories of Pinar and Apple. In the category "Questions Asked," both theories indicate a desire better to understand the educational experience. However, whereas Pinar develOps a line of questioning which turns the focus into oneself, Apple develOps a line of ques- tioning directed outward to the social structures which act externally to shape the individual. 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