Curriculum Windows

The Curriculum Windows Series is an effort by students of curriculum studies, along with their professor, to interpret and understand curriculum texts and theorists from the decades of the 1950s through the 2010s. The authors explore how key books/authors from the curriculum field illuminate new possibilities forward for us as scholar educators today.

Thomas S. Poetter began working with doctoral students at Miami University in 2012 to create a series of student-generated book chapters and books based on “curriculum books” from previous decades. The focus of the work by students was on how the book authors’ “great ideas” may have shaped curriculum studies, teaching, schooling, and the study and practice of education (if at all).  In addition, the students were coached to include their own perceptions of their work and its relevance today. Tom has been purposefully developing aspects of his teaching and scholarship in the curriculum field around student work for more than two decades, having been inspired by Elliot Eisner’s work with doctoral students, most prominently chronicled in his widely read book The Educational Imagination: On the Design and Evaluation of School Programs (in three editions).  The Curriculum Windows Series has resulted in the publication of 8 books to date, treating books and curriculum theorists from the decades of the 1950s through the 2010s including a series entry entitled Curriculum Books Redux, featuring still relevant curriculum books that were passed over in the previous studies of past decades. The “curriculum windows” metaphor suggests that the books and the authors studied might open us up to something missed, not seen at all, or underappreciated, or lurking in places we typically don’t look, or that simply, finally, need a light shone upon them, at least a window. Certainly, there may be ideas from the past worth revisiting, reworking, and/or reopening today.