University of Alberta Collective of Curriculum Professors

The University of Alberta's College of Education established itself as a center for the expansion of phenomenological, hermeneutic, and narrative inquiry in curriculum studies through the innovative scholarship of Ted Aoki and a cadre of students and colleagues including Max van Manen, Terrence Carson, David Smith, and the work of the Center for Research for Teacher Education and Development directed by D. Jean Clandinin.

Aoki moved from the social studies classroom where he had distinguished himself as an exemplary teacher to the faculty of the University of Alberta in 1964 at the invitation of Lawrence Downey, chair of the Secondary Education Department. When he retired some two decades later, having assumed the chair of the department, Aoki had earned a reputation as a dynamic public speaker and mentor but was not widely published. In his retirement, Aoki expanded his influence through the printed word, exploring the tension created in the life of the teacher between the curriculum plan and the “lived curriculum.” Aoki evoked insights of phenomenology and postmodern philosophy to challenge the limitations of traditional curriculum studies that focus on development and implementation and reversed the curriculum act to see how it lives in the classroom. Aoki sought to understand what it means to be a teacher with a public responsibility to address the planned curriculum and the real relationship with students that constitutes the enacted curriculum. As he worked to more carefully speak and write to this tension, phenomenology informed both the inquiry process and the genre of expression. The works of Martin Heidegger and M. Merleau-Ponty provided a lens for this inquiry; Aoki later used insights from Jacques Lacan and Emmanuel Levinas in exploring the teacherstudent relationship.

When van Manen joined Aoki at Alberta, first as a student from the Netherlands, receiving his doctorate in 1973, and then as a colleague, he brought phenomenological inquiry into schooling as articulated by Martinus J. Langeveld and the Utrecht School. Van Manen envisioned the [Page 911]expansion of phenomenology inquiry into the various dimensions of the adult-child relationship, producing his own studies on the teacher-student relationship and exploring his method in The Tact of Teaching. In this work, van Manen moved with careful, insightful awareness to make the assertion that “tact” is an essential quality in meaningful teaching. Van Manen has been consistent in his promotion of phenomenological inquiry, founding the journal Phenomenology and Pedagogy to create a forum for the promotion of this inquiry into the lived curriculum.

D. Jean Clandinin, expanding on teacher narrative initiated while at the Ontario Institute for the Study of Education, serves as director of the Center for Research on Teacher Education and Development at the University of Alberta. Clandinin directs doctoral students in ongoing inquiry into teacher knowledge and teachers' professional knowledge landscapes, consistent with the inquiry method she and Michael Connelly advanced for two decades, examining practical opportunities to make use of the method in improving the education and craft of teachers. Clandinin also encouraged the application of narrative inquiry for research in different professional fields, particularly in health services with emphasis on awakening the ethical issues that are contextual in professional encounter.

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