Curriculum Theorizing

Curriculum Theorizing: The Reconceptualists, a collection of essays edited by William F. Pinar, is the initial work in reconceptualization's break with the traditional field of curriculum development. The field had been dominated up to that point by the Tylerian paradigm (1950–1970). This traditional Tylerian paradigm consisted of work in curriculum development, design, implementation, [Page 266]and evaluation. The work of the scholars included in the collection was an attempt to raise issues, problems, and questions about the dominant paradigm in curriculum. Major scholars in the curriculum field of that period were included in the text. James B. Macdonald, Lawrence Cremin, Herbert M. Kliebard, Michael Apple, John Steven Mann, Alex Molnar, Ross Mooney, Dwayne Huebner, Maxine Greene, Philip Penix, William F. Pilder, William J. Murphy, William F. Pinar, George Willis, and Francine Shuchat Shaw all had one or more essays in the collection.

Pinar, in his preface to the text, outlines the curriculum field of the mid-1970s and elaborates on the reconceptualization. His cartography divided the field into three different tropes, themes, or areas. The first area was the traditional field characterized by curriculum development whose purpose was to prescribe and assist those at work in the schools. Pinar described the work as atheoretical. It served the purposes of answering how-to questions and providing guidelines for practitioners.

The second division in the field was the conceptual empiricists. This group, according to Pinar, comprised approximately 15% to 20% of the curriculum field at the time. This faction of the field was concerned with the theoretical, methodological, and practical orientations of the social sciences. The orientation was to apply the work of the social sciences to the questions of curriculum. The goal of this work was connected with issues of prediction and control, particularly of behavior.

The book is primarily committed to the work of the group that represented approximately 3% to 5% of the curriculum field at that time of the book's publication. The major concern of this group was to understand curriculum (which has become the major orientation in the field and generated much debate). The purpose of this work (i.e., reconceptualization) was not to be a guide to practitioners nor to apply the works of social science to curriculum, but to bring the conceptualizations of the humanities to the work of curriculum. At the historical moment of the 1970s, the work of history, continental philosophy, and literary criticism was being applied to the study of curriculum. The focus of study by these scholars changed the orientation of curriculum from the exclusively scientific and behavioral to existential experience, politics, and consciousness. Pinar emphasized that this group's primary focus was on the understanding of educational experience.

Pinar also discussed in this text that reconceptu-alization went through three stages—that is, a field of study goes through stages. The first stage of a field is the development of a tradition. In the case of the curriculum field of the 1970s, it was the Tylerian tradition. The second stage is the stage of critique. This stage is made up of the critique of the tradition. According to Pinar, this stage could be as painful for the critic as it is for the critiqued. The third stage is the introduction of a new focus for a field (i.e., curriculum), which meant the reconceiving of the issues and areas the field covers. Curriculum Theorizing: The Reconceptualists was part of that process of reconceiving. The works of the scholars that were included were examples of that very attempt to reconceptualize the field.

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