About
The Journal
JCT: Journal of Curriculum Theorizing is an interdisciplinary journal of curriculum studies. It offers an academic forum for scholarly discussions of curriculum. Historically aligned with the “reconceptualist” movement in curriculum theorizing, and oriented toward informing and affecting classroom practice, JCT presents compelling pieces within forms that challenge disciplinary, genre, and textual boundaries.
The journal is associated with the “Bergamo Conference on Curriculum Theory and Classroom Practice,” held in the autumn of each year. JCT is indexed in The Education Index.
Guidelines for Submitting Manuscripts
Allowing some latitude for experimental forms, to the extent possible, manuscripts submitted to JCT should conform to the guidelines specified in the most recent edition of the Chicago Manual of Style or the most recent edition of The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association.
Manuscripts should be double spaced with 1-inch margins and numbered pages. Footnotes should be gathered together at the end of the paper. A 100-150 word abstract must be included as the first page of the manuscript. Please exclude all references to authorship. Do include a title page as a separate file which includes the name(s) and institutional affiliation(s) of the author(s), and the address, telephone number, and e-mail address of the first author. Manuscripts (including notes and references) should not exceed 25 pages. Artwork may also be submitted for review.
Manuscripts submitted for publication consideration to JCT should not be under review elsewhere.
Manuscripts submitted to JCT will undergo an initial internal review. Those judged suitable for publication will be externally reviewed. The editors rely heavily on the judgments of the reviewers. Manuscripts that do not follow these specifications—or that are not accompanied by an explanatory note detailing why they do not follow these guidelines—will not be considered for publication.
Manuscripts accepted for publication are subject to non-substantive editing.
Please send manuscripts you wish to be considered as possible feature articles to:
Adam Howard and Hongyu Wang, JCT Co-Editors
E-mail: editors (at) jctonline.org
Please send manuscripts you wish to be considered for inclusion in a sections described below to the section editors identified in the descriptions.
Biblio-Revenance
Biblio-Revenance celebrates the “act of returning to a book” and embraces the bibliographic belief that Nothing Remains the Same (Lesser, 2002). The Biblio-Revenance section invites authors to return to previously published works and to reexamine ideas in relation to the passing of time and the “differing sense of self.” As Wendy Lesser has noted, “you cannot reread a book from your youth without perceiving it as, among other things, a mirror. Wherever you look in that novel or poem or essay, you will find a little reflected face peering out at you—the face of your own youthful self, the original reader, the person you were when you first read the book” (2002, 4). During its introductory period, Biblio-Revenance will invite submissions. JCT readers are encouraged to suggest specific authors and publications for biblio-revenance features. Send suggestions to Craig Kridel, Wardlaw Hall, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208.
Lesser, W. (2002). Nothing remains the same: Rereading and remembering. New York: Houghton Mifflin Co.
Cultural Studies and Curriculum
This section of JCT is committed to thoughtful commentary on cultural studies and popular culture. Manuscripts should bring youth cultures, generational cultures, gothic cultures, cultures of information technology, technoscience, academic cultures, music, television, film, and other media into the discourse of curriculum theorizing; likewise manuscripts should brig curriculum theorizing and educational practice to cultural studies movements, webcultures, hypermedia analysis, alternative representations, and alternative mass media. Advertising and other mind shaping experiences, school practices as commodities and cultural resources, digital entertainment and technology industries, (extreme) sports, and their implications for postmodern identities and curriculum work are particularly encouraged. Interdisciplinary manuscripts covering the history of cultural studies are also encouraged. The primary perspective of this section asks authors to challenge the presumptions that telescope culture into “popular” or “consumer culture”—and to challenge the boundaries of traditional curriculum studies and academic cultures that fear the relevance of cultural studies movements in educational practice—by declaring that popular culture and cultural studies do matter. Send manuscripts to John Weaver, Department of Curriculum, Foundations, and Rading, Georgia Southern University, Post Office Box 8144, Stateboro, GA 30460-8144,
International Curriculum Discourses
The International Curriculum Discourses section is committed to developing international dialogue on curriculum issues. Topics including the following are encouraged: 1) studies and commentaries that draw upon postcolonial theories that deconstruct colonizing discourses in curriculum and educational issues writ large; 2) discussions of space and place from a geographic perspective and issues of borders as fluid and shifting ; 3) comparative education, international education, and global education discussions that interrupt deficit theories of the Other or analyze the tendency toward victory narratives and the standardizing/globalization of curriculoum; and, 4) discussions that highlight issues, such as global poverty, eco-feminism, and neo-colonial market forces in curriculum with an international perspective. This section is a place for discussions that complicates the issues of difference from an international perspective and aims to move the discussion beyond realist tales of practice. Mail manuscripts to Lisa J. Cary, Department of Curriculum and Instruction, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712.
Email: carylj@mail.utexas.edu
Literacies
“Literacies” is to be understood broadly to include reading, writing, and interpreting texts in various forms—not only books, arts, and film, but also reading and writing the world and reading and writing oneself into the world. The following areas are of interest: Literacies of the self—the relationship between reading texts and the context of lived experience, including psychic life: In what ways does reading poetry, fiction, and drama provide a theoretical base for my work? For what purpose do I read? What reading/textual engagement has changed my life? Literacies of teaching and learning—the construction of literacy in the classroom: How can we help students understand their own literacy practices? What texts have changed the lives of students? How has shared reading provided new understandings of classroom dynamics? What readings don’t work? Multiple literacies—literacy practices that have multiple roles, purposes, contexts, modes of representation: What defines a multiliterate person? What are some different types of texts students encounter? How does culture affect literacy? How might literacy be considered a political act? Please send manuscripts to Reta Ugena Whitlock, ruwhitlock@yahoo.com.
Practice, Policy, and Politics
This section of the journal focuses on curriculum theorizing of educational practice and work in the politics of education, and fosters increased interconnections among reconceptualizations of such work. For example, submissions might use specific instances of curriculum work in practice or political action as the basis for a new conceptual discourse; or an article might employ a series of examples of curriculum theory in action to disrupt the logic of a theorization of practice or politics. Yet another possibility is to interpret an event or project in curriculum practice or educational politics through the insights of several previously published JCT articles, thus challenging curriculum scholarship to speak directly to other work within curriculum theory. Articles in this section may report on theorizations that grow out of self-study of politics and practice, or may reframe action research through curriculum theorizing. Submissions get sent to Peter Appelbaum, Department of Education, Arcadia University, Glenside, PA 19038, appelbaum@arcadia.edu.
Studies in Philosophy, Ethics, and Education
How does the engagement of philosophy and education within the field of social and cultural practices redefine the ethical bounds of pedagogy? How does this foregrounding of the relationship between philosophy, ethics, and education affect our responsibility to re-think and revoluntionize what it means to teach, to learn, to know? Studies in Philosophy, Ethics, and Education converges upon specific interpretations of the obligation we have to respond responsibly to the alterity of those we teach, research, and write for beyond ourselves. It seeks to present texts that challenge us to reflect upon and to re-examine the ethics and logic of the boundaries of “thought” and “action,” “theory” and “practice,” and what comprises and displaces the opposition of these two entities in the name of pedagogy. The point of this section is to highlight work that complicates and radicalizes the normative limits of academic responsibility and its ethics in the hopes of making the relation between the philosophical and the pedagogical more responsive to the difference of another. Philosophy, Ethics, and Education solicits texts from theorists and educators whose practice has and is struggling to re-think the ethics and politics of dominant modes of knowledge and the pedagogical forms of expression that have operated within the institutional purview of a traditional system of education. One of its aims is to relocate the epistemic and performative parameters of the scene of teaching beyond a normative axis of response and responsibility. Philosophy, Ethics, and Education challenges the form and content of seemingly benign dimensions of what has been protected under the aegis of an existing codification of social infrastructures and their prevailing cultural conditions as the “knowledge worth knowing.” Mail Manuscripts to Peter Pericles Trifonas, Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education/University of Toronto, 252 Bloor Street West, Toronto, Ontario M5S 1V6, Canada. (416)978-0263, ptrifonas@oise.utoronto.ca
Reviews
Reviews Section invites submissions that engage with books for the purpose of introducing readers to new scholarship in curriculum theory, offering fresh perspectives on older scholarship, or suggesting ways of using texts from outside the field (such as works of fiction or non-curriculum centered philosophy) to advance curriculum theorizing. Through publishing reviews that respectfully, actively, and creatively engage with texts, we hope that the section will serve as a forum for close examination and challenging discussion of emergent trajectories of thought in curriculum theorizing. Book reviews should be written for a broad readership of educators and educational scholars working and reading in the areas of curriculum theory and classroom practice. They should fairly summarize authors’ arguments, identify new perspectives offered, and situate texts in the context of current related scholarship and media, being sure to identify also the points at which the author’s theory or methodology departs from existing traditions of thought and the possibilities that such departures offer for the field as a whole. While we ask that all reviews place their central texts into dialog with other scholarly work, we also welcome additional consideration of examples of unconventional media such as poetry, film, and performance that relate to the topics and intellectual trajectories under discussion.
Please note that we invite both short book reviews (800 words) and longer book review essays (2,500-3,000 words for single books and 3,000-5,000 words for multiple books). For short-format reviews, we ask that authors confine their evaluation to a single book. For essay-format reviews, we invite authors to evaluate single books or place into dialog two or three related books. Please send manuscripts to Aliya Rahman, arahman@jctonline.org, and Bruce Parker, bpark11@lsu.edu.
See the Journal of Curriculum Theorizing website at: www.jctonline.org
The Conference
The Bergamo Conference on Curriculum Theory and Classroom Practice has served as a gathering place for theorists/practitioners and practitioners/theorists, including teachers, students, scholars, administrators, cultural workers, from various perspectives and all walks of life, to join in dialogical and collaborative encounters for 29 years. Committed to bringing different and diverse discourses into public conversations, the conference welcomes all viewpoints in forming a shared community of dissensus. The conference encourages innovative styles of presenting intellectual work in the field of curriculum theory.
Questions should be emailed to conference (at) jctonline.org
The Leadership Group
For information about the leadership of the journal and the conference please visit our leadership group page.