Reimagining Curriculum Studies

Donald S. Blumenfeld-Jones's area of work is curriculum studies, specializing in curriculum theory. He has been a curriculum studies scholar since 1985 and has focused, in the last two decades, on the intersection of ethics and aesthetics in education. He has published numerous books, articles, and chapters in this area as well as many national and international presentations. He is also an arts-based research scholar with numerous articles, chapters, and international presentations. He has also applied his approach to teacher preparation, having founded and directed a teacher preparation program named ARTs (Arts-Based Reflective Teaching) and has received the James B. Macdonald Award in Curriculum Theorizing.

This book addresses the crucial issue of how we value and deploy the idea of "freedom" that underlies contemporary curriculum studies. Whether we are conventional curriculum thinkers who value knowledge development or favor a Deweyan, individualist orientation toward curriculum or are a critical social justice curriculum thinker, at the heart of all these orientations and theorizing is the value of "freedom." The book addresses "freedom" through novel sources: the work of Martin Buber on education, Julia Kristeva on the uses of imagination and the female/male dialectic, Emmanuel Levinas' unique approach to ethics, and more. Readers will find new ways to understand freedom and the world of ethical life as informing curriculum thinking. It provides a more ecumenical vision that can draw our differences together. It helps readers to reconsider ourselves in fruitful ways that can bring more relevance and substance to the field.

Chapter 1. The Illness of Our World: A Critique of Curriculum Studies.- Chapter 2. Mosaical Thinking and Curriculum Theory.- Chapter 3. Dialectical Processes Toward Freedom.- Chapter 4. Wild Imagination and the Critical Project.- Chapter 5. Freedom All Too Human.- Chapter 6. Pure Imagination and Freedom.- Chapter 7. Creativity and Aesthetic Consciousness in Teacher Education.- Chapter 8. Identity, Self and Liberation.- Chapter 9. Reimagining Time.- Chapter 10. Epilogue: Living a Mosaical Life, Living Ironically.