Poststructuralist Research

Curriculum poststructuralist researchers assume that varied conceptions of what and who shapes and constitutes curriculum are embedded in and [Page 677]enacted through historically, socially, and culturally situated discursive practices and constructions. Poststructuralist research focuses on the local, the fragmented, the ambivalent in knowledge creations as well as research processes and interpretations. Poststructuralist researchers acknowledge contradictions and instabilities in all assemblages of human knowledge, most especially their own. They especially consider under what historical, social, and cultural conditions particular discoursesand those who have most direct access and power in relation to those discoursescome to shape what gets conceived, built, and enacted as curriculum. This entry discusses the general foundations of poststructuralist investigation, examines the poststructuralist theories that inform curriculum studies, and provides examples of poststructuralist research ...