Reimagining Curriculum Studies

This book addresses the crucial issue of how we value and deploy the idea of &quote;freedom&quote; that underlies contemporary curriculum studies. Whether we are conventional curriculum thinkers who value knowledge development or favor a Deweyan, individualist orientation toward curriculum or are a critical social justice curriculum thinker, at the heart of all these orientations and theorizing is the value of &quote;freedom.&quote; The book addresses &quote;freedom&quote; through novel sources: the work of Martin Buber on education, Julia Kristeva on the uses of imagination and the female/male dialectic, Emmanuel Levinas' unique approach to ethics, and more. Readers will find new ways to understand freedom and the world of ethical life as informing curriculum thinking. It provides a more ecumenical vision that can draw our differences together. It helps readers to reconsider ourselves in fruitful ways that can bring more relevance and substance to the field.