Nailing Jell-O to the Wall: Pinpointing Aspects of State- of-the-Art Curriculum Theorizing

~ should start by acknowledging that my present task, attempting to review and pin down characteristics of the status quo of the expansive and nebulous field of curriculum theorizing, and to do so in the span of a single essay, is, if not presumptuous, then certainly improbable. Given the penchant for employing metaphors and similes in curriculum theorizing, and the fact that in the field of educational research reviews, knowledge production has often been likened to the construction of a wall, I would say my task is rather like undertaking to nail Jell-O to a wall? When it wa~ first proposed that e ~ c l ~ 6 ~ s for AERA Division B's 1999 meeting give a brief presentation on the status quo of their field (based on a review of submissions to their sections), I, as Head of Section 2 (Curriculum Theorizing), greeted this proposal with somewhat mixed feelings. On the one hand, the proposed panel made sense in terms of indicating in one session where the various aspects of the field of curriculum studies currently stood. On the other hand, it seemed to me that in giving such a presentation, there was the very real danger that one would either be so overly general as to be simply superficial, or else so detailed as to go well beyond the allotted 12 minutes for each presentation. The suggested themes ("Curriculum Theorizing on the Threshold of the 21st Century" in my case) only served to underscore in their startling breadth, how difficult it would be to successfully undertake this task. 2 To make the task more manageable, I needed to bring some focus and coherence to it, and at the same time attempt to provide a survey or elements of a survey as well as some in-depth discussion of aspects of the status quo of the field. Also, it only stood to reason that the proposals should not be discussed in isolation but in the context of the contemporary literature on curriculum theorizing. I therefore decided to identify and present, very briefly, six principal interrelated characteristics which can be discerned from the literature and individual papers and sessions accepted for inclusion in the program for AERA's 1999 Division B, Section 2 meeting, and to discuss two of these characteristics in a little more depth. In other words my intention was not to attempt a comprehensive survey of the entire wall of curriculum theorizing but to undertake a more modest task of identifying and affixing six small globules of characteristics representing the essence of the contemporary scene to that wall for perusal. The broader discussion of two of these characteristics, hopefully, helped cement them to the wall. This essay is an extended version of that presentation and maintains the original approach. The stances taken and the variety of positions articulated in various submissions and in the literature provide an indication of the first of the primary characteristics of contemporary curriculum theorizing: Namely, that it is inherently political, contested, and in a state of productive flux. The journal Curriculum Inquiry epitomizes the state of flux i~which curriculum theorizing finds itself through its ongoing practice of juxtaposing a very eclectic collection of papers in each of its issues. In the annual meeting program, this state of flux was reflected in the exciting variety of the sessions, from some dealing specifically with schooling (e.g., Weiss's "A Great Clock of Society: Compulsory Education and the School Calendar") to others dealing with other pedagogical spaces (e.g., Fountain's "Curriculum by Design: Museum Exhibits and Issues of Representation, Audience, Time, and Space"); from sessions dealing with individual racial/cultural groups in specific U.S. contexts (e.g., Craig's "Adding, Subtracting, and Dividing: Latino Students in Urban School Curriculum Contexts") to considerations of various forms of social identity in international contexts (e.g., Maher's "Extending Discourse Communities: Gender, Race, Class, and Sexualities in International School Contexts"); from specific theoretical and discipline areas (e.g., Weaver's session on "Curriculum Theory, French PostStructuralism, and the 'Science Debates'") to combinations of theoretical foundations and quite general discussions of curriculum (e.g., Jetty's "Cultural Studies, Post-Colonialism, and a Multicultural Curriculum"). This variety in the sessions represents more than just a multiplicity of theoretical approaches and subject matter, or numerous static alternative approaches. Rather, it is evidence that curriculum theorizing is not singular but multiple discourses, related to each other, if at all, only very tenuously. Epitomizing the multiple, fractured, and contested nature of contemporary curriculum theorizing was Criag