Curriculum Reconceptualists

Over the past century, the field of curriculum studies has been shaped by a variety of practices and perspectives regarding the purposes of education and the kinds of studies and experiences that would best support those purposes. Influenced by political and cultural change, as well as by emerging philosophical and psychological theories of knowledge and learning, the American curriculum has been in a state of change and ferment. What resulted were a number of approaches to curriculum reform—each advanced by its own distinct group of curricularists—as well as a field of study characterized by vigorous debate about the aims, functions, practices, theories, and understandings of curriculum. Among the most controversial efforts to reform curriculum studies, beginning in the late 1960s and early 1970s, were those of a group of scholars and theorists (William Pinar, Dwayne Huebner, James Macdonald, Janet Miller, Michael Apple, Herbert Kliebard, and others) who became known as the curriculum reconceptualists.

Although the term reconceptualists was considered by Pinar to be a misnomer, it did define the [Page 253]work of a group of curriculum professors and scholars whose efforts were less directed toward the actual work of doing curriculum development and more directed at inquiring into a theoretical understanding of curriculum—in essence a reconceptualization of the field of curriculum studies. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, with roots dating back to the 1950s, some leading curriculum theorists proclaimed that the field was suffering from a lack of clear purpose, unclear focus, and no sense of unity or cohesiveness. Some accounts went so far as to say it was a field “arrested,” claiming that curriculum experts and scholars had been excluded from many of the current national reform efforts. Pounded by a number of federal curriculum-reform initiatives, declining school populations, and mounting concerns about student performance and threats to our national competitiveness, those educators in the curriculum area came under attack; this attack left the field vulnerable to what became known as a “reconceptualization of curriculum studies.”

The reconceptualists have been described as scholarly curricularists who were committed to illuminating a deeper understanding of curriculum and to engaging in theoretical inquiry into the full nature of the educational experience. Widely seen as a movement defined by criticism and dissent, the reconceptualists include a number of scholars who were discontented with traditional curriculum practice and theory. Following an initial conference held in 1973 at the University of Rochester, which later became an annual event known as the Bergamo Conference on Curriculum Theory and Classroom Practice, and with the inauguration of the Journal of Curriculum Theorizing (JCT) in 1976, the work of the curriculum reconceptualists was under way. Since then, the reconceptualists have produced a number of edited volumes and other works. Pinar, one of the most influential writers, was an organizer of educational conferences and edited several publications in which scholars who identified themselves as reconceptualists could engage their ideas and work. Some critics have claimed that this group of curricularists never succeeded in forming a coherent perspective or unified ideology, but amassed a concentrated effort of inquiry around several general broad conceptions that tended to share a common theme.

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