Collectives of Curriculum Professors, Institutional

Influential professors in the area of curriculum studies have congregated at certain key universities over the years. Professors at a particular place over a period of years are referred to as a collective. Collectives at several major universities in the United States and Canada have had a major influence in shaping curriculum studies. The Encyclopedia of Curriculum Studies features several historical curriculum studies collectives among its listings.

A variety of studies (including citation analyses and genealogical research of mentor–student relationships and studies of preferences of books, articles, and other influences on curriculum studies) reveals the prevalence of certain professors in key decision-making roles in the curriculum field. For instance, these professors tend to be more widely published, cited, and called upon to serve on editorial boards and in leadership positions in scholarly and professional associations.

Private and public universities have housed these collectives over the years. Two of the most highly recognized collectives are Teachers College of Columbia University and the University of Chicago. The first department of curriculum was the Department of Curriculum and Teaching at Teachers College, started in the mid-1930s by Hollis Caswell, later president of Teachers College. This department derived from the influence of John Dewey in the philosophy department at Columbia University and many who followed him to create the field of social foundations of education and others who emerged as curriculum leaders. Influenced, too, by the measurement revolution in psychology and educational psychology led by Edward L. Thorndike, James M. Cattell, and others, the curriculum field harbored both social foundations and measurement origins. Similarly, curriculum scholars emerged at the University of Chicago from the influence of Dewey and his Laboratory School prior to his move to Columbia in 1905. After Dewey moved, Charles Judd brought to Chicago new views of experimental psychology derived from study with Wilhelm Wundt (as Cattell had brought to Columbia and was advanced there through his student, Thorndike).

Collectives are seldom like-minded; rather, they can be diverse individuals who stimulate ideas by dissent with one another as much or more than collaboration. Moreover, they produce doctoral students who advance the field. The emphasis in this encyclopedia is on historical collectives that go back at least three generations from the present. Some universities were highly influential, such as Harvard; however, their key faculty were in fields adjacent to curriculum studies, such as William James in psychology, Alfred North Whitehead in philosophy and mathematics, Robert Ulich in history of education, Walter Dearborn in educational psychology, Alexander Inglis in education more generally, Isreal Scheffler in philosophy of education, Jerome Bruner in psychology, Noam Chomsky in linguistics, and Howard Gardner in psychology, who represent four or five generations of highly influential scholars, though there have been few in curriculum studies. Similarly, there are several U.S. and Canadian universities that have first-rate coteries of curriculum scholars; however, their influence spans only one or two generations. Although the contributions of both long generations of scholars who have influenced curriculum studies and contemporary collectives who have shaped the field for the past 20 or 30 years are indeed substantial, they do not fit the criteria to be included in the historical collectives presented in this encyclopedia. This lack of attention should not be seen to diminish the importance of their work.

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