Reconceptualization

The concept of “reconceptualization” refers to a paradigm shift during the 1970s in the academic field of U.S. curriculum studies. This cataclysmic event occurred after the field's crisis at the end of the 1960s when, it became clear, curriculum development was no longer its primary province. The field was reconceptualized from a largely bureaucratic and procedural field to a theoretically sophisticated field devoted to understanding curriculum. This paradigm shift reflected both changed circumstances external to the field and intellectual developments internal to the field. As a consequence, not only the professional identity of curriculum studies scholars changed, but the research they conducted, the character of the courses they taught, and the very concepts scholars employed to speak about curriculum changed dramatically and in a relatively ...