Enacting Praxis

2024 AESA Critics' Choice Book Award

In this collection of writing and reflection, readers are invited to reclaim the connection between curriculum studies and the work of educators in schools and society. As the curriculum field has grown more complex and theoretical, our schools have become more corporatized, standardized, and dehumanized. This volume focuses on curriculum theory’s power to assist practitioners in creating positive change. Chapters highlight the work of seven influential curriculum studies scholars: Maxine Greene, Gloria Ladson-Billings, Janet Miller, William Pinar, William Schubert, William Watkins, and Carter G. Woodson. After introducing and contextualizing the work of each featured theorist, the text includes chapters by scholar–practitioners working as K–12 teachers, teacher educators, and community educators who have been influenced by the theorist’s ideas. These essays illustrate how curriculum studies scholarship influences practice in a variety of places; explore the ways that curriculum studies theorizing can be an intervention against technical pedagogical or curricular approaches; and focus on the importance of “conversations” between theory and practice.

Book Features:

• Presents a historical overview of curriculum studies by recounting a brief history of the field from the 1800s through the present.
• Provides a beginner-friendly introduction to seven highly influential theorists in the field of curriculum studies.
• Pairs the ideas of key curriculum scholars with practitioners who illustrate how curriculum studies theories influence their practice.
• Concludes with a chapter that highlights key themes and calls for increased focus on curriculum work in schools.
• Includes an appendix of curriculum studies resources, including key journals, conferences, organizations, and suggestions for future reading.

Kelly P. Vaughan is an associate professor of English education at Purdue University Northwest. Isabel Nuñez is professor of educational studies and dean of the School of Education at Purdue University Fort Wayne. Her books include Hope and Joy in Education: Engaging Daisaku Ikeda Across Curriculum and Context (coedited with Jason Goulah).

“Kelly P. Vaughan and Isabel Nuñez have assembled a smart and committed group of educators to dive into the living legacies of seven of the most dazzling educational thinkers of our time. Enacting Praxis is part inspiration and celebration, part meditation and provocation, and it is always and on every page a call to action. Students, teachers, parents, and activists will find here an invitation to get busy in projects of repair, joining a growing community in the critical work of resisting, reimagining, and rebuilding this broken world.”
—William Ayers, education activist, Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar, University of Illinois at Chicago (retired)

“This pivotal text centers curriculum studies with praxis in the context of the scholarship of the field's most notable scholars from the voices of today's scholar–practitioners. A must-read for scholars who care about knowledge and the power of knowledge.”
—Theodorea Regina Berry, vice provost and dean, College of Undergraduate Studies, University of Central Florida

“Kelly P. Vaughan and Isabel Nuñez have imaginatively created a unique book that illustrates the influence of seven curriculum theorists on scholar–practitioners who work in diverse realms of education: teacher education, teaching, and leadership at school or university levels. They do this by inviting exemplary scholar–practitioners to write autobiographically about the selected scholar’s influence on them. While it might seem strange to ask one of the theorists presented in the book to write a blurb, it might seem equally strange to omit that perspective; with that caveat, I acknowledge deriving valuable insight and inspiration from the perspectives advanced by the three writers who portrayed the influence of my work on them. We can never fully grasp the impact of our work on the evolving perspectives of others; however, this book brings us much closer to perceiving it. Enacting Praxis admirably illustrates the value of intergenerational and mutual influence in educational work.”
—William H. Schubert, professor emeritus, University of Illinois Chicago

Contents (Final)

PART I: Introduction and Context

1.  Introduction  3
Kelly P. Vaughan and Isabel Nuñez

2.  Understanding the Field  13
Kelly P. Vaughan and Isabel Nuñez

Part II: The Curriculum of William Schubert

3.  The Recurring Roles of the Guest Speakers: Bill Schubert’s Influence on My Work in Curriculum  27
Isabel Nuñez

4.  Questions of Worth as a Guide for Curriculum Development  35
Nozomi Inukai

5.  Essential Questions Asked of Curriculum: Enduring Understandings of Bill Schubert’s Influence on My Roles  45
Elizabeth Álvarez

Part III: The Curriculum of William Watkins

6.  How Shall We Live Together? Theorizing the Past, Willing the Future with William H. Watkins  57
M. Francyne Huckaby

7.  Centering Justice: What Watkins Taught Me About Teaching, Learning, and Building a More Just World  67
Asif Wilson

8.  Educating Tomorrow’s Educational Architects and Builders: Lessons from William H. Watkins  75
Kelly P. Vaughan and Guadalupe Ramirez

Part IV: The Curriculum of Maxine Greene

9.  Counter-Imagining: Wide-Awakeness, Problem-Posing Education, Counter-Storying, and Critical Asset–Based Community Mapping  87
Arlo Kempf

10.  Encounters, Landscapes, and Possibility  99
Kathleen Tieri Ton

11.  Maxine Greene’s Invitation to Never Know Who You Are (Yet)  107
Avi Desai Lessing

Part V: The Curriculum of William Pinar

12.  In Search of My/Our Selves: Tracing a Past, Present, and Future of Currere  119
Nichole Guillory

13.  William Pinar’s Currere Process: Supporting Purposeful Pedagogy and Meaningful Educational Outcomes  127
Leslie L. Palmer

14.  In Search of Generative Experience  137
Clyde Gaw

Part VI: The Curriculum of Gloria Ladson-Billings

15.  Lens Repair by Dr. Ladson-Billings: Teacher Educator and Optometrist  149
Michael Thomas and Aisha El-Amin

16.  Knowing Oneself and Others: Gloria Ladson-Billings and the Continued Relevance of Critical Race Theory in Education  157
Asilia Franklin-Phipps

17.  Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings’s Mission to Move Theory Into Practice  163
Kawanya Benjamin

PART VII: The Curriculum of Janet Miller

18.  The Flows of Transnationalism, Shifting Identities, and Relationships-in-the-Making  177
Seungho Moon

19.  Teaching Through the Physical and Ideological Imposition of a Cordon Sanitaire: A Conversational Memory with Janet Miller  187
Joyce Maxwell

20.  Script for Curricular Chit-Chat from a Mothered Road: Exploring Janet Miller’s Influence on Practice  195
Maya Pindyck

Part VIII: The Curriculum of Carter G. Woodson

21.  Me and Carter G. Woodson: A Personal Journey  209
Anthony L. Brown

22.  Mission and Vision in Curriculum Studies: Activating and Leveraging Woodsonian Philopraxis  217
Lasana D. Kazembe

23.  Using the Essays of Carter G. Woodson to Work With My Students to Right Their Miseducation  225
Mary E. Negley

Part IX: Concluding Thoughts

24.  Conclusion  237
Isabel Nuñez and Kelly P. Vaughan

Afterword  241
Isabel Nuñez and Kelly P. Vaughan

Notes  247

Index  249

About the Authors  255

2024 AESA Critics’ Choice Book Award