Published Resources Details Thesis

Author
Butler, E.
Title
Curriculum work: post modern positions and problematics: a personal perspective
Type of Work
MEd thesis
Imprint
University of Canberra, Belconnen ACT, 1995
Url
http://webpac.canberra.edu.au/record=b1184563~S4
Subject
Australian Capital Territory
Abstract

This thesis presents an interrogation of curriculum practices and positionings, over time, of a feminist educator and curriculum worker seeking to centre gender and subjugated knowledges in a curriculum framework with the potential for transformative outcomes. The thesis, presented as a critical narrative, interweaves theories and theoretical ideas from four key areas: post modernism and post structuralism; feminism/s; education and curriculum, and critical social sciences, including critical theory. Interpretative feminist praxis is employed as the methodological approach. Central to the investigation is a curriculum project undertaken in Papua New Guinea (the Goroka Curriculum Project). Curriculum models and practices associated with the work of traditional empiricist approaches found to be dominant in Papua New Guinea, reify western intellectual endeavours to the disadvantage of indigenous and women's knowledges and knowledge practices. This naturalisation is framed as an example of a meta narrative in education, whereby the discursive practices associated with traditional/rational curriculum models both colonise the endeavours of curriculum workers, and position learners as colonised subjects. A central outcome of the traditional/rational model is the inherent positioning of such individuals and groups as marginalised, devalued other. Such curriculum work is framed as a technology of governance, privileging attempts to establish order and homogeneity in an increasingly disorderly and fragmented world. The investigation by the curriculum writer of her theory/practice leads to recognition of oppositional work as a site of power, that also has the potential to 'oppress', extending the colonial project. Following this, the thesis investigates transformative curriculum work as problematic potentiality, questioning what the work of a feminist curriculum writer in a post modem world is to do and to be. While acknowledging there are no innocent discourses of liberation, the potential of the 'courage to know', to attend to pedagogical ethics and ethics of self, and acknowledge the messy, contradictory and deeply political work of curriculum design are posited. An emergent notion of curriculum work as textual practice, within a multi-dimensional framework that conceptualises curriculum as representation is advanced.