Implications of her proposed approach for teacher education and staff development are provided. Miriam Ben-Peretz has introduced a strikingly new and important perspective into the discussions of curriculum and teaching, especially for those of us concerned with the preparation and professional development of teachers. About fifteen years ago she began to write of 'curriculum potential,'a view that attacks the opposition of curriculum and teaching and points up the ways in which the two ideas are mutually supportive and reinforcing. Ben-Peretz argues that curriculum must be understood as both far too much and far too little, as providing more than any teacher could possibly use, and yet less than any teacher really requires. The essential value of curriculum is how it permits teachers to adapt, invent, and transform as they confront the realities of classroom life.
Teaching is neither opposed to curriculum, nor does teaching alone define curriculum.
I have learned a great deal from Miriam Ben-Peretz during the past fifteen years. It is a privilege and pleasure to write this foreword to a book I am confident will inform the work of a generation of curriculum developers, teachers, and teacher educators. The intellectual contributions embedded in this work are many and profound. They are a needed response to how to transform a linear way of thinking in this field into a dynamic one. This, I predict, will initiate a major shift in both theoretical and practical aspects of the field.