The following is an update from the AAACS Curriculum Cannon Project Committee who are interested in receiving community feedback on the proposal. After you have had time to review the document, either via the pdf file or in reading the document below, your thoughts and comments would be appreciated.

Should you choose to respond, please use the “comments” section below. This looks like a dialogue bubble from a comic strip. If you are the first person to post, the prompt will read “no comments” until you post your thoughts. Although there is space for you to fill out your name and email address, that information can be left blank should you so choose and your comments will still post.

Download the AAACS Proposed Canon Here

The AAACS Curriculum Canon Project February, 2010

The AAACS Proposed Canon is offered by the members of the Curriculum Canon Project Committee: Patrick Roberts (chair), Nina Asher, Erik Malewski, and Janet Miller. The committee was constituted following the 2009 annual meeting and charged with formulating a specific list of “key texts in the intellectual history of curriculum studies” (AAACS Canon Project) that, in the professional judgment of the committee, would constitute “a base-line of curriculum studies expertise” (Pinar, 2008). The committee has fulfilled this charge and hereby submits its work to the AAACS general membership for review and discussion. It is now up to the general membership to: 1) decide whether the proposed list should be endorsed, adopted, revised, and/or amended, and 2) clarify how the curriculum studies canon will be “put into action” in order to help advance the curriculum studies field.

From September 2009 through January 2010, the committee communicated by email and met multiple times by phone. The committee first developed criteria for judging whether or not a particular text merited inclusion on the list:

I. Eligibility Criteria:

a. Published prior to 1970
b. Major contribution that by all reasonable standards falls within the scope of curriculum studies.

II. Evaluative Criteria:

a. Key text that made “a distinctive and necessary contribution” to the field of curriculum studies;
b. Key text that represented a “turning point” in the field of curriculum studies;
c. Key text that “helped change the direction and scope of curriculum studies;”
d. Key text that was generative of new lines of inquiry in the curriculum studies field.

Each member of the committee was tasked with formulating a broad list of curriculum studies texts that in their individual judgment met the Eligibility Criteria and one or more of the Evaluative Criteria. In formulating their lists, committee members consulted Bill Schubert’s 2009 report as well as a number of other sources dealing with the history of the field. These sources are noted in the reference list below. Over the course of a number of meetings the committee members discussed, synthesized, and refined their respective lists into the master list that is presented here.

The committee discussed at length the challenge of being inclusive while avoiding tokenism or broadening the list beyond what was felt to be a useful core. Thus, the committee ran into an inherent conflict: by attempting to name texts that met the criteria for the project it necessarily did not include many important works that might have brought more diversity to the list. While we, the committee, dislike the fact that the intellectual history of the curriculum studies field lacks, among other forms of difference, intellectual, racial, gender, and class diversity, a comparison of that history to the present day field illustrates both how far we have come and how far we have to go. If nothing else, it is the committee’s hope that the curriculum studies canon will encourage, through concrete understanding of the field’s historicity, curriculum scholars to see their own work in complicated conversations with this history, and to imagine and work toward a curriculum canon of the future that will represent a plurality of diverse voices, experiences, and ideas.

Finally, it should be noted that inclusion of a particular work on the list does not equal committee endorsement of the ideas or perspectives expressed in that work.

Resources

Kliebard, H. M. (1995). The struggle for the American curriculum, 1893-1958. 2nd Ed. New York: Routledge.

Kridel, C. (2000). Books of the century catalog: The curriculum collection. Columbia, SC: Museum of Education, University of South Carolina.

Marshall, J.D., Schubert, W.H. and Sears, J.T. (1994). Turning points survey. A compilation of different areas of professional preference of and influences on curriculum scholars. Columbia, S.C.: College of Education, University of South Carolina, Funded by the Curriculum Teachers Network of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 45 pps.

Marshal, J. D., Sears, J. T., Allen, L. A., Roberts, P. A., & Schubert, W. H. (2007). Turning points in curriculum: A contemporary American memoir, 2nd Edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Pinar, W. F., Reynolds, W. M., Slattery, P., Taubman, P. M. (1995). Understanding curriculum: An introduction to the study of historical and contemporary curriculum discourses. New York: Peter Lang.

Schubert, W. H. (2009). “Possibilities, recommendations, and suggestions for the AAACS project to advance curriculum studies through disciplinarity.”

Schubert, W. H., Lopez Schubert, A. L., Thomas, T. P., & Carroll, W. M. (2002). Curriculum books: The first hundred years, 2nd Ed. New York: Peter Lang.

AAACS Proposed Canon

1. Aikin, W. M. (1942). The story of the eight year study, with conclusions and recommendations. New York: Harper & Brothers.
2. Alberty, H. B. & Alberty, E. J. (1962). Reorganizing the high school curriculum. New York: Macmillan.
3. Beauchamp, G. A. (1961). Curriculum theory. Wilmette, IL: Kagg Press.
4. Berman, L. M. (1968). New priorities in the curriculum. Columbus, OH: C. E. Merrill.
5. Bobbitt, F. (1918). The curriculum. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company.
6. Bode, B. H. (1938). Progressive education at the crossroads. New York: Newson & Co.
7. Bond, H. M. (1934). The education of the Negro in the American social order. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prenctice-Hall.
8. Bruner, J. S. (1960). The process of education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
9. Counts, G. S. (1932). Dare the schools build a new social order? New York: John Day Company.
10. Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education. New York: The Macmillan Company.
11. Dubois, W. E. B. (1935). Does the Negro need separate schools? The Journal of Negro Education, 4: 3 (July), 328-335.
12. Freire, P. (1968). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Seabury.
13. Goodlad, J. (1964). School curriculum reform in the United States. New York: Fund for the Advancement of Education.
14. Greene, M. (1965). The public school and the private vision: A search for America in education and literature. New York: Random House, Inc.
15. Herrick, V. E., & Tyler, R. W. (Eds.). (1950). Toward improved curriculum theory: Papers presented at the Conference on Curriculum Theory, 1947, University of Chicago. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
16. Huebner, D. (1967). Curriculum as concern for man’s temporality. Theory into practice 6 (4), 172-179.
17. Kilpatrick, W. (1918). The project method: The use of the purposeful act in the educative process. New York: Teachers College Press.
18. Macdonald, J. (1967). An example of disciplined curriculum thinking. Theory Into Practice, 6(4), 166-171.
19. Miel, A. (1946). Changing the curriculum: A social process. New York: Appleton-Century.
20. National Education Association (1894). Report of the Committee of Ten on Secondary School Studies. New York: The American Book Company.
21. National Education Association (1895). Report of the Committee of Fifteen on Elementary Education. New York: The American Book Company.
22. National Education Association (1918). Cardinal principles of secondary education: A report of the commission on the reorganization of secondary education. Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office.
23. National Society for the Study of Education Committee on Curriculum-Making (1927). The foundations of curriculum-making. In G. M. Whipple (Ed.), The Twenty-Sixth Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education: The foundations and technique of curriculum-construction (pp. 11-28). Bloomington, IL, Public School Publishing Company.
24. Phenix, P. (1964). Realms of meaning: A philosophy of the curriculum for general education. New York: McGraw-Hill.
25. Schwab, J. J. (1970). The practical: A language for curriculum. Washington D.C.: National Education Association.
26. Seguel, M. (1966). The curriculum field: Its formative years. New York: Teachers College Press.
27. Smith, B. O., Stanley, W. O., & Shores, J. H. (1957). Fundamentals of curriculum development. New York: Harcourt, Brace, & World.
28. Spencer, H. (1966). What knowledge is of most worth. In A. M. Kazamias, (Ed.), Herbert Spencer on education (pp. 121-159). New York: Teachers College Press. (Original work published in 1860)
29. Taba, H. (1962). Curriculum development: Theory and practice. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, Inc.
30. Tyler, R. W. (1949). Basic principles of curriculum and instruction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
31. Washington, B. T. (1901/2010). The Atlanta Exposition Address [1895]. In Up from Slavery: An Autobiography. New York: Signet Classics.
32. Woodson, C. G. (1933/1990). The mis-education of the Negro. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press.