Undergoing a self-study using the method of currere (Pinar, 1976), I examine my own learning as holistic, embodied, and relational in the context of my mother’s garden. Specifically, I explore my mother’s garden as a site of relational learning that intersects with various classrooms that feature in my educational experiences. The garden and the classroom intersect with/in one curricular landscape, where self and other engage in an embodied process fostering connections and knowledges about each other and place. In bringing forth my narrative through currere, I engage in reflective and reflexive praxis through journal writing, poetry, meditation, and photographic collage. Using these forms of expression, I reflect upon my experiential learning process, analyze issues and concepts related to the body-in-movement, as well as focus on community connections and ecology-based learning as pedagogical praxis.

Undergoing a self-study using the method of currere (Pinar, 1976), I examine my own learning as holistic, embodied, and relational in the context of my mother’s garden. Specifically, I explore my mother’s garden as a site of relational learning that intersects with various classrooms that feature in my educational experiences. The garden and the classroom intersect with/in one curricular landscape, where self and other engage in an embodied process fostering connections and knowledges about each other and place. In bringing forth my narrative through currere, I engage in reflective and reflexive praxis through journal writing, poetry, meditation, and photographic collage. Using these forms of expression, I reflect upon my experiential learning process, analyze issues and concepts related to the body-in-movement, as well as focus on community connections and ecology-based learning as pedagogical praxis.

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This is an unprecedented study integrating of Second Life (SL) and the currere approach to develop a virtual curriculum demonstration. The overarching purposes of this study were to understand the perceptions, self-reflection, self-understanding, educational growth of graduate students in education toward teaching and learning in a virtual interdisciplinary curriculum. The three-dimensional virtual world of Second Life is a distance learning platform and multimedia combination of animations, dynamic images, embedded videos, websites, simulative worlds, slide shows and media players. The theoretical framework is based on the currere approach?a curriculum technique used to reconstruct social, intellectual, and physical systems. Data was collected in two education graduate courses in 2011 at a public university located in central Texas. After participating with SL skill trainings, the participants engaged in two virtual SL exhibitions?war and ecology?which were designed in the framework of the four currere steps?regression, progression, analysis, and synthesis. Data was collected via observations, SL reflective writings, individual currere writings, and voluntary interviews. The results revealed how SL exhibitions, based on the four-step currere approach, benefit the participants. In the regressive step, the virtual installations stimulated participants' emotions and vivid memories toward the presented topics. In the progressive step, the SL exhibitions awakened participants' awareness to educate the public on the global issues and integrate them into school subjects. In the analytic step, the exhibitions allowed participants to ruminate and re-exam the past, present and future, as well as to reflect on their own consciousness. In the synthetical stage, participants reflected and inflected their own perspectives toward the learning materials. Using the exhibitions' target knowledge, individuals were able to develop a self-understanding, which propelled them toward self-mobilization and educational reconstruction. Regarding SL curriculum development, the participants indicated SL innovative installation assisted them in extrapolating ideas for subject integration and interdisciplinary curriculum. In terms of technological utilization, SL changed the participants' perception about how integrating virtual technology into a classroom makes teaching and learning accommodating for distant students. In addition, this further motivates students to understand content more concretely and effectively. With regard to autobiographic emotional involvement, SL delivered the powerful images and videos to participants, which allowed them to understand why they possessed certain kinds of emotions toward specific events.

This thesis examines the influence of life experiences and personally significant texts on the formation of an individual’s personal and professional identity. Through autoethnographic exploration, the author explores the experiences and texts that have constituted his personal curriculum, shaped the way he views the world around him, and informed the role he hopes to embody as an educator. The author argues that by sharing our stories and analyzing the cultural artifacts we have connected with over a lifetime, we become more cognizant about and better equipped to take responsibility for the people we are in the process of becoming. The sharing and exploration of our lived curricular experiences, he suggests, may cause students to invest more heavily in their education and potentially foster more widely representative and meaningful school cultures. / Graduate / 0727 / 0399 / 0401 / travisrichey@hotmail.com

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