This thesis presents an interrogation of curriculum practices and positionings, over
time, of a feminist educator and curriculum worker seeking to centre gender and
subjugated knowledges in a curriculum framework with the potential for
transformative outcomes. The interrogation offers an opportunity to consider
discourses in operation, to frame curriculum and pedagogy as sites of discursive
struggle around knowledges, gender and power.
The thesis, presented as a critical narrative, interweaves theories and theoretical ideas
from four key areas: post modernism and post structuralism; feminism/s; education
and curriculum, and critical social sciences, including critical theory. Interpretative
feminist praxis is employed as the methodological approach.
Central to the investigation is a curriculum project undertaken in Papua New Guinea
(the Goroka Curriculum Project). This Project which is positioned as a case study,
provides text for conceptual and contextual interrogation of a specific site of
curriculum work, and a corrective moment in which the limitations of the writer's
endeavours and position/s of advantage are acknowledged.
Curriculum positionings described as oppositional are challenged as a result of the
lack of attention to gender by radical and critical theorists. Further, the disjuncture
between such theorising, and the development of curriculum models to inform
oppositional work is made overt and problematic.
Curriculum models and practices associated with the work of traditional empiricist
approaches found to be dominant in Papua New Guinea, reify western intellectual
endeavours to the disadvantage of indigenous and women's knowledges and
knowledge practices. This naturalisation is framed as an example of a meta narrative
in education, whereby the discursive practices associated with traditional / rational
curriculum models both colonise the endeavours of curriculum workers, and position
learners as colonised subjects. A central outcome of the traditional/rational model is
the inherent positioning of such individuals and groups as marginalised, devalued
Other. Such curriculum work is framed as a technology of governance, privileging
attempts to establish order and homogeneity in an increasingly disorderly and
fragmented world.
The investigation by the curriculum writer of her theory/practice leads to recognition
of oppositional work as a site of power, that also has the potential to 'oppress',
extending the colonial project. Following this, the thesis investigates transformative
curriculum work as problematic potentiality, questioning what the work of a feminist
curriculum writer in a post modern world is to do and to be.
While acknowledging there are no innocent discourses of liberation, the potential of
the 'courage to know', to attend to pedagogical ethics and ethics of self, and
acknowledge the messy, contradictory and deeply political work of curriculum design
are posited. An emergent notion of curriculum work as textual practice, within a
multi-dimensional framework that conceptualises curriculum as representation is
advanced.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/218813 |
| Date | January 1995 |
| Creators | Butler, Elaine, n/a |
| Publisher | University of Canberra. Education |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | ), Copyright Elaine Butler |
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