Journal of Curriculum Studies

The Journal of Curriculum Studies (JCS) is an international, peer-reviewed journal with editorial offices in the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States, and Australia. JCS focuses on promoting a global examination of curriculum issues and an interdisciplinary understanding of curriculum practice that emphasizes a cross-cultural dialogue. It maintains an interdisciplinary approach to curriculum studies by featuring articles that focus on the intersections of theory, research, and practice.

The journal was established in November 1968, and the founding editor was P. H. Taylor from the School of Education at the University of Birmingham, in Edgbaston, United Kingdom. Its first issue included pieces by Lawrence Stenhouse and John Goodlad. JCS widened its scope by calling for papers that deal with the history of the field, teacher education, and the planning, policy making, and evaluating of curriculum. The journal features reports on the status of curriculum from various parts of the world, op-ed pieces, speculations, and book and essay reviews. JCS also collected articles into themed issues on topics such as ways of seeing, knowing, and teaching; written curriculum guides; and changes in curriculum. JCS is published six times a year.

In 2007, Ian Westbury and Geoffrey Milburn published an edited collection of seminal JCS articles written in the past 25 years, including William A. Reid's “Strange Curricula: Origins and Development of the Institutional Categories of Schooling,” David Hamilton's “Adam Smith and the Moral Economy of the Classroom System,” Agneta Linne's “The Lesson as a Pedagogic Text: A Case Study of Lesson Designs,” Max Van Manen's “Reflectivity and the Pedagogical Moment: The Practical-Ethical Nature of Pedagogical Thinking and Acting,” Wolfgang Klafki's “Didaktik Analysis as the Core of the Preparation of Instruction,” J. T. Dillon's “Effect of Questions in Education and Other Enterprises,” Jeremy N. Price and Deborah Loewenberg Ball's “ ‘There's Always Another Agenda’: Marshalling Resources for Mathematics Reform,” James P. Spillane, Richard Halverson, and John B. Diamond's “Towards a Theory of Leadership Practice: A Distributed Perspective,” Joan Solomon's [Page 508]“Meta-Scientific Criticisms, Curriculum Innovation, and the Propagation of Scientific Culture,” John Elliott's “A Curriculum for the Study of Human Affairs: The Contribution of Lawrence Stenhouse,” James Andrew Laspina's “Designing Diversity: Globalization, Textbooks, and the Story of Nations,” Brent Davis and Dennis J. Sumara's “Curriculum Forms: On the Assumed Shapes of Knowing and Knowledge,” and Shirley Brice Heath and Milbrey Wallin McLaughlin's “Learning for Anything Everyday.”