11^th Annual Meeting of the Curriculum and Pedagogy Conference

October 20-24, 2010

Akron, Ohio

www.curriculumandpedagogy.org

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Complicating Borders, Dialogues and Understandings of Curriculum and Pedagogy

Proposal Submissions Deadline: JULY 7, 2010

Until the great mass of the people shall be filled with the sense of responsibility for each other’s welfare, social justice can never be attained. – Helen Keller

It isn’t enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn’t enough to believe in it. One must work at it. – Eleanor Roosevelt

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Be the change that you want to see in the world. – Mahatma Gandhi

The Curriculum and Pedagogy Conference is an annual gathering of diverse individuals seeking academic enrichment and professional engagement who are committed to educational reform and social change. The conference opens spaces to advance the ideals of progressive curriculum and democratic leadership in education through dialogue and action. The conference organizers seek to bring together individuals from diverse settings, including academics, graduate students, school district administrators, PreK-12 teachers, and all other cultural and educational workers from community groups and organizations who hope to integrate, interrogate, and develop theories and practices for educational change and social justice.

The conference fosters an open and affirming environment for democratic community building, collective scholarship, and social action. In the spirit of visionaries such as Maxine Greene, John Dewey, George Counts, Alice Miel, Horace Mann Bond, and others, we gather together to deepen our critical insights into the historical, political, personal, aesthetic, spiritual contexts of our work within a perspective that regards curriculum studies as integral to the fabric of everyday public life and wholly connected to the daily pedagogical practices of/within/about schools.

The 11^th Annual meeting of the Annual Curriculum and Pedagogy Conference will take place on October 20-23, 2010 in Akron, OH at the Akron City Centre Hotel. In consideration of conference participant feedback from the 2009 conference and C&P Council’s further reflections on transparency in curriculum and pedagogy policies, structures, and voices, this year’s conference theme—Complicating Borders, Dialogues and Understandings of Curriculum and Pedagogy—opens up spaces for us, as researchers, as teachers, as pedagogues, to trouble and wonder about the intersections of curriculum and pedagogy.

The 2010 conference in Akron, Ohio seeks participants who are willing to draw upon their educational and lived experiences as well as their intellectual thought and reflections in an effort to complicate understandings of curriculum and pedagogy. Moreover, we seek participants who are comfortable with the journey, the reflection through deliberation and scrutiny, and the consideration of multiple understandings of ideas and experiences concerning curriculum and pedagogy (Lummis, 1996).

We, however, resist the enacting of this reflection as “confessional” – as a way to move us toward some kind of “cathar-sis of self-awareness” that provides a “cure” (Pillow, 2003, p. 181) and helps us feel as if we have dealt with issues of representation and definition and thus can move on in peace. Instead, we hope to encourage a kind of “reflexivity of discomfort” (p. 181), where issues are not neatly resolved, but, rather, where we acknowledge and inhabit unease, tentativeness, and uncertainty. Following Ellsworth (2005), we believe these in-between, uncomfortable spaces are where transformative learning can take place.

Some representative questions that reflect the conference theme are:

• Where are the “borders” – physical, emotional, and/or intellectual – for participation in pedagogy, in curriculum?
• How do we as theorists, citizens, scholars, practitioners and activists (re)present and/or (de)construct borders in curriculum?
• What is the field of curriculum and pedagogy about at present, in a historical moment, and/or in its future moments?
• In a field that is often considered a-historical and national, what are the past, present, and future orientations for understanding curriculum and pedagogy? What should curriculum and pedagogy mean from an historicized and internationalized standpoint?
• What are trajectories, historical and contemporary, in curriculum and pedagogy, and where are they going?
• How is theory, practice, and conceptualization of curriculum and pedagogy bounded by schooling and the educational imaginary, and how can curriculum workers and pedagogues blur or transcend these boundaries?
• How do our modes of inquiry, as both scholars and practitioners, work to maintain or transcend reified representations of curriculum, pedagogy, and the notion of education itself?

Ellsworth, E. (2005). Places of learning: Media, architecture, and pedagogy. New York: Routledge.

Lummis, C. D. (1996). Radical democracy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Pillow, W. S. (2003). Confession, catharsis, or cure? Rethinking the uses of reflexivity as methodological power in qualitative research. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 16, 175-196.

Program Strands

All proposals should be submitted according to one of the following conference strands intended to encourage (but not limit) deliberate lines of inquiry:

“Colouring Curriculum and Pedagogy”

This year, the “Browning Caucus” of the Curriculum & Pedagogy group is making a special call for papers that specifically address and invite an awareness of the critical importance of scholarship that focuses on race, nation, and their intersections with multiple forms of oppression such as gender, sexuality, and class, to curriculum studies. We invite proposals that focus on strategies and priorities for fomenting the proliferation of multiple approaches to critical race/anti-racist, postcolonial/anti-colonial, decolonizing, and indigenous scholarship in curriculum studies and to recognize and challenge the pervading hetero-patriarchal white supremacy of the field and how it manifests in the field of curriculum studies. Scholars who identify or work with communities of colour and/or who draw on the activist and intellectual traditions of peoples of colour, third world feminism, indigenous liberation/sovereignty, civil rights, and anti-colonial movements are particularly encouraged to submit papers. For additional information please contact the strand chairs, Cole Reilly at CReilly@towson.edu or Zahra Murad at zahra_murad@yahoo.ca. Proposals for this Colouring Curriculum and Pedagogy should be submitted by JULY 7, 2010 to: candpccp@gmail.com

Arts and Alternative Inquiry for Social Change

Proposals for this strand should include visual art, performing arts, performances, fiction, personal essays, other forms of creative writing (both completed and in progress) that promote social change and address this year’s theme. Submissions of works in progress are welcomed and will be shared and discussed in a workshop format. The vision for this strand is to emphasize inquiry that engages artists, educators, scholars, and community activists who practice various art media to examine social issues of democracy, equity, and community change. Alternative presentation locations can include visual art gallery format, dramatic/movement spaces, and indoor and outdoor public spaces within and around the conference location. Additionally, this strand includes a writing workshop format that serves as an experimental space to explore works in progress. This space serves for anyone, beginners and seasoned writers alike, who would like collaborative, small group input on their writing process and discussion of their work. For additional information please contact the strand chairs, Chris Higgins at chrishiggins25@hotmail.com or Morna McDermott at mmcdermott@towson.edu. Proposals for this strand should be submitted by JULY 7, 2010 to: candpaber@gmail.com

Mentoring

New or inexperienced conference presenters submitting single-authored proposals/papers (e.g., graduate students, recent graduates, PreK-12 teachers and administrators new to scholarly conference presentation, and any others who may just be joining us) are warmly invited to submit their proposals to the Mentoring Strand. Presentations will be made in small groups of graduate students, recent graduates, and first-time conference attendees with similar research interests or questions. Participants, joined by one or two faculty mentors and other interested conference participants, will take part in focused, small-group discussions of their work. Presenters will exchange drafts of their work prior to the conference to facilitate active discussion at the conference. Proposals for the mentoring strand ought to reflect a line of inquiry compatible with one of the other strands listed here. For additional information, please contact the strand chair, Kris Sloan at kriss@stedwards.edu. Proposals for this strand should be submitted by JULY 7, 2010 to: candpmentoring@gmail.com

Public Moral Leadership

Proposals for this strand should be grounded in the notions of moral knowledge, actions, dispositions, and beliefs in leadership. Particular attention should be paid to moral leadership as situated in schools, programs, and society for the advancement of democracy.  For additional information, please contact the strand chair, Jake Burdick at steven.burdick@asu.edu. Proposals for this strand should be submitted by JULY 7, 2010 to: candppml@gmail.com

Social Action, Then and Now

Proposals for this strand should address historical and contemporary ideas and actions that can inform deliberations about democratic struggles and social change within schools and within the broader civil society. For additional information, please contact the strand chair, Jenn Snow at jennifersnow@boisestate.edu. Proposals for this strand should be submitted by JULY 7, 2010  to: candpsatn@gmail.com.

Theory in Motion

Theory often informs practice as well as practice may inform theory. Proposals for this strand should be grounded within the everyday lives of PreK-12 and university education in which praxis, the intersection of theory and practice, is made real. For additional information, please contact the strand chair, Jenny Sandlin at jennifer.sandlin@asu.edu. Proposals for this strand should be submitted by JULY 7, 2010 to: candptheory@gmail.com

Transformative Curriculum Development

Pedagogical notions and theories are represented and enacted within classrooms in material ways. Proposals for this strand should address issues related to curricular materials or instructional models either currently in use or in design for PreK-12 and university settings. Historical analyses are also welcomed. For additional information, please contact the strand chair, Jenn Milam at jenn.milam@uakron.edu. Proposals for this strand should be submitted by JULY 7, 2010 to: candptcd@gmail.com

Making Meaning of Research, Measurement and Assessment

Mainstream practices of research, measurement and assessment dominate current policies and practices in education. A curriculum wisdom paradigm challenges such narrowly constructed theories and practices by strongly regarding participants’ understanding of the world. This strand welcomes proposals that challenge mainstream or narrowly-focused assessment and inquiry in the planning, evaluation and interpretation of curriculum and other processes in education. For additional information, please contact the strand chair, Patti Bullock at pbulloc2@kennesaw.edu. Proposals for this strand should be submitted by JULY 7, 2010 to: candpmmrma@gmail.com

Proposal Format

Submission Process and Deadline

Curriculum and Pedagogy scholarship is characterized by commitments to advancing the complicated conversations of curriculum studies, theory, and practice with intellectual rigor.  Proposals should be submitted electronically to the email address provided within each strand description no later than midnight, JULY 7, 2010. Please direct any questions about the proposal process, strand description, or conference theme to a Strand Chair (email address noted within each strand description) or Program Chairs, Patti Bullock at pbulloc2@kennesaw.edu, or Jennifer Snow at jennifersnow@boisestate.edu.

All proposals will undergo a blind review.

Proposal Guidelines and Format

To ensure the integrity of review and follow up, please use the format below in the order indicated here:

1. Title of proposal

2. Indicate presentation venue

a. Roundtable Paper

Please note that technology is not provided; presenters are welcome to bring their own laptops; wireless internet access is available on site.

b. Performance-Based/Art Exhibition

Please describe the performance or exhibition, type of space needed (large room, outdoors, etc.), and technology requests (audio-visual, projectors, etc.). We will have a very limited number of laptops and projectors available for use.

c. Multiple Paper Session/Panel

Proposal of a group of 3 or more scholarly papers addressing a related topic/idea. Technology requests will be honored if possible but cannot be guaranteed. We will have a very limited number of laptops and projectors available for use.

d. Public Presentation

In keeping with the mission of the Curriculum and Pedagogy conference we invite sessions in “public venues” (outside of the conference hotel). Such venues may include: local independent book stores or in local schools and community centers. Typical conference papers, round tables, poster sessions and symposiums can take place in these venues but we also invite sessions that would foster a more critical and public dialogue.

IMPORTANT: Please be very clear about your audio/visual/technology needs. We will do our best to accommodate requests as they are received.

3.  Strand Name

Please indicate the Conference Strand (see descriptions above) which your proposed paper/presentation most reflects in theme and purpose.

4.  Abstract

Please limit your abstract to 30 words maximum – we will include this brief statement in the conference program.

5.  Description

In no more than 500 words, provide a scholarly description of proposed work (including content such as purpose, methodology, discussion, and conclusion, when applicable) and how the proposed presentation is related to/supportive of the conference theme.  In addition, include references/works cited.

To ensure that all proposals are organized appropriately for blind review, please include the following information in your proposal, but beginning on a separate page following the content of your proposal outlined above.

6. Name and Contact Information

Please include full name, e-mail(s), phone number(s), and address(es) of participant(s)

7. Affiliation(s)

Please indicate positions/appointments for each presenter (K-12 teacher, K-12 administrator, graduate student, university faculty, community agency representative, etc.) as well as the name of school, university or organization. (For example: K-12 teacher, Phillips High School & doctoral student, University of Central Florida.)

Note:  Roundtable sessions will be the primary venue for paper presentations. We will try our best to honor all venue requests, but scheduling limitations may require that some papers be rescheduled as roundtable paper sessions. Should this become necessary, first authors will be contacted during scheduling. While we cannot consider individual requests for scheduling presentations, we will do our best to respond to extenuating circumstances. Please indicate particular circumstances (in your proposal) you may have regarding the scheduling of your presentation. While we will try, we cannot, however, guarantee that we will be able to accommodate all such requests. Please honor the JULY 7, 2010 deadline in order to help facilitate our planning and scheduling for the conference.