Roland Mitchell – författare

This book situates the Curriculum Theory Project at Louisiana State University within a larger historical framework of curriculum work, examining the practices which have sustained this type of curricular vitality over the lifetime of the field’s existence. Divided into seven parts, the authors illuminate seven practices which have sustained the scholarship, graduate programs, mentorship, and networking that have been critical to maintaining a web of international relationships. This exploration and coming together of intergenerational stories reveals a more complete and nuanced narrative of the development of curriculum theory over the last 60 years. Crucially, the project exemplifies the continuing resilience of curriculum theory despite ongoing neo-liberal aspirations to reframe education as a business. Reflecting upon the lived experiences and articulated memories of those who have participated in the project and analysis of documents collected over its 25-year history, it considers curriculum history(ies) writ large through and from this lens of practice. As such, it opens up fresh insights for cultivating the vitality and vigor of curriculum theory more broadly on an international scale and with a view to future directions for the field. It will appeal to both new and experienced scholars working across education foundations, urban education, philosophy of education, and higher education, and researchers from across history, sociology, anthropology, ethnic studies, and gender studies.

This book situates the Curriculum Theory Project at Louisiana State University within a larger historical framework of curriculum work, examining the practices which have sustained this type of curricular vitality over the lifetime of the field’s existence. Divided into seven parts, the authors illuminate seven practices which have sustained the scholarship, graduate programs, mentorship, and networking that have been critical to maintaining a web of international relationships. This exploration and coming together of intergenerational stories reveals a more complete and nuanced narrative of the development of curriculum theory over the last 60 years. Crucially, the project exemplifies the continuing resilience of curriculum theory despite ongoing neo-liberal aspirations to reframe education as a business. Reflecting upon the lived experiences and articulated memories of those who have participated in the project and analysis of documents collected over its 25-year history, it considers curriculum history(ies) writ large through and from this lens of practice. As such, it opens up fresh insights for cultivating the vitality and vigor of curriculum theory more broadly on an international scale and with a view to future directions for the field. It will appeal to both new and experienced scholars working across education foundations, urban education, philosophy of education, and higher education, and researchers from across history, sociology, anthropology, ethnic studies, and gender studies.

Troubling Method seeks to extract narrative inquiry from method. The shift to a post-humanist, post-qualitative moment is not just another stage in modernism that seeks to "improve" knowledge production, but is a shift to understanding research as an ontology, a way of being in the world, rather than a mode of production. Fundamental assumptions of research: method, data, analysis, and findings are deconstructed and reconfigured as a mode of relational intra-action.Troubling Method is constructed as a dialogue between the three authors, focusing on their work as qualitative, narrative researchers. The authors revisit six previously published works in which they grapple with the contradictions and ironies of engaging in pragmatist, critical, and feminist qualitative research. After a lengthy introduction which problematizes "method," the book is divided into three sections, each with two chapters that are bracketed by an introduction to the issues discussed in the chapters and then a "dialogue interlude" in which the authors deliberate what makes possible the questions they are raising about method and narrative research. The three sections attend to the central premises of "narrative research as being": 1) relationships, 2) listening, and 3) unknowing.Troubling Method is ideal for introductory or advanced courses in qualitative research, narrative inquiry, educational research, and those aimed at employing critical theories in qualitative and narrative inquiry.