We must learn to work with complex ideas that use vocabulary that often contradicts traditional meanings if we are not prepared to abandon the central concept of the curriculum. This includes engaging with questions of epistemicide, or with what João M. Paraskeva has called Itinerant Curriculum Theory, or, to add to the complexity in this volume, Non-Derivative Itinerant Curriculum Theory
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Words carry histories, assumptions, and entire worlds of meaning. The term curriculum is no exception. Rooted in a Calvinist tradition that linked learning with moral purpose, social responsibility, and human equality, the concept contrasts with the German Lehrplan and its counterpart Didaktik, products of a Lutheran framework of Bildung emphasizing the administration and pedagogy of school subjects (e.g., Horlacher, 2017). When “curriculum” first appeared at the Calvinist University of Leiden in 1582—and later at Glasgow—it already carried a dual charge of religious and civic significance. From the outset, curriculum denoted far more than a schedule or practice of instruction; it expressed a distinctly Protestant understanding of education as a moral calling and a form of responsible life within a political community under God (Tröhler, 2023).
This fundamental moral-social dimension was never lost, even when the term was transplanted to new territorial soils. When curriculum entered the modern educational lexicon of the early twentieth century, particularly in the United States, it did so in the context of industrial expansion, mass immigration, and the perceived dangers of large cities. The question of American national identity, and the challenge of making immigrants loyal American citizens who supported the dominant value system were at the forefront.
Upon his return to the United States, Bobbitt codified these reflections in The Curriculum (1918), a landmark in the history of curriculum thought. In it, he presented the curriculum as an instrument for cultivating the competent citizen of a democratic-industrial society. Curriculum, in his view, should serve the needs of social efficiency. Next came Werrett Wallace Charters, who developed these ideas further in Curriculum Construction (1923). For Charters, educational objectives had to derive logically from the needs of society and the characteristics of learners. The curriculum was to be designed scientifically: based on systematic observation of society and its needs rather than intuition. Bobbitt, reviewing Charters’ work the same year (Bobbit, 1923), celebrated Charters’ move from “prescientific” to “scientific” thinking about education—a sign of the new age of rational control over learning. One year later, Bobbitt articulated a systematic framework for applying Charters’ theory in his book How to Make a Curriculum (1924). Shortly thereafter, Charters and Bobbitt became colleagues at the University of Chicago, where a young scholar named Ralph W. Tyler studied under them and, a generation later, emerged as the central U.S.-American figure in shaping this conception of curriculum.
Tyler—who initially had a plan of becoming a Presbyterian missionary in Rhodesia—synthesized these ideas in his widely influential Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction (1949). Tyler’s four guiding questions—What educational purposes should the school seek to attain? What learning experiences can be provided to attain these purposes? How can these experiences be organized effectively? How can we determine whether the purposes are being attained?—became the sciento-technological blueprint for curriculum design for decades. His model, deeply rooted in behavioral psychology and social efficiency, epitomized the belief that education could be planned, managed, and evaluated with the same precision as industrial processes.
Tyler’s later involvement in the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) demonstrated how his model could be scaled to national policy, linking classroom learning to measurable social outcomes. The NAEP had originally been conceived as an agency to test the efficiency of school reforms in the wake of the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) of 1958—a response
Yet the apparent stability of this rationalized system was soon unsettled. The social and political upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s—Civil Rights, feminism, the anti-war movement, decolonization—exposed the limits of an ostensibly neutral, scientific curriculum. Critics such as the Catholic priest of Jewish heritage Ivan Illich (1971) and openly bisexual Jewish public intellectual Paul Goodman (1964) condemned schools and curricula as institutions that stifled creativity and reinforced conformity, and the devout Catholic and Marxist Paulo Freire (1968/1970) reimagined education as a collaborative process of liberation, not of conformation. This criticism of the conservative Calvinist-nationalist bulwark helped spark the “reconceptualist movement,” which was so named for good reason: the (same) term was to be semantically redefined. This movement, led by William F. Pinar (2022) and colleagues, pushed educationists to rethink curriculum: not as a seemingly neutral technical or administrative tool but as a complex cultural, political, and autobiographical text that needed less to be applied than understood. Pinar (1975) and Pinar, Reynolds, Slattery, and Taubman (1995) reframed curriculum as a site where questions of history, race, gender, theology, and identity converge. In this context emerged the concept of currere—the notion that curriculum research should shift its focus from sciento-technical rationality toward the (auto)biographical reconstruction of the self (Pinar, 1975).
Around the same time, Philip W. Jackson introduced the notion of the “hidden curriculum” (1968), revealing how schools transmit unspoken norms—obedience, punctuality, competition—alongside formal knowledge. This opened a new line of critique, taken up by scholars such as Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis (1976) and Michael W. Apple (1979). They urged that curriculum could never be neutral as it reflected and reproduced dominant cultural values, social hierarchies, and economic relations even as it creates spaces for contestation. These critiques, rooted in distinct moral and political commitments that were neither Calvinist nor nationalist, converged easily with Foucauldian-inspired analyses, particularly those of Thomas S. Popkewitz (1991, 1998). He reframed curriculum as a technology of power, normalization,
Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves. But, while joined by many bonds, which one precedes and brings forth the other is not easy to discern. (p. 81)
Here, the self is “divinized” to the extent that it recognizes God, rendering societal practices that impede, constrain, or distort the self as unacceptable. In this way, Calvin’s subjective theology stood in tension with the conservative nationalistic ethos of curriculum that had grown from it. This tension transcended national boundaries and paved the way for post- and decolonial perspectives, which radicalized the unsettling questions: Whose knowledge is legitimized? Whose histories are told? How does curriculum reproduce or challenge global asymmetries of power?
The struggle over the meaning of curriculum went far beyond its traditional usage. Many committed scholars deliberately departed from actual curricula and the everyday realities of schooling and aimed instead more and more to rethink, at an epistemological level, the underlying (or hidden) values embedded in the term curriculum itself. In doing so, they developed a specialized academic language—creative, complex, and sometimes exclusive—that increasingly diverged from the vocabulary used by teachers and practitioners. Crossing national boundaries in the context of post- and decolonial scholarship did little to simplify this task; on the contrary, it intensified it. The Protestant and nationalist legacies historically embedded in the term curriculum were now criticized not only against the backdrop of nationally focused Catholic,
One might call this abstracted language “unworldly,” accuse it of retreating into the ivory tower, or dismiss it as the noise of academic self-reference. Perhaps it was indeed naïve to imagine that a deconstructed or reconstituted understanding of curriculum would automatically yield a new curriculum in practice. Schools, as many have observed, possess a kind of grammar—a set of historically grown institutional logics—that is remarkably resistant to change (Tyack & Tobin, 1994).
It may be time, therefore, to release this newer kind of epistemological research from the illusion of direct or immediate applicability. Its value lies elsewhere: not in producing instant reform, but in expanding the horizons of thought. This is a different kind of freedom than the one imagined for students whose curricula are designed to cultivate individual potential in all its diversity. It is the freedom to think differently—to recognize the invisible discourses, theological and national, that have shaped the language of education itself while not forgetting that we are all, including researchers, products of history; a realization that should remind us to curb our tendency to feel morally superior to others.
We must learn, then, to work with complex ideas that use vocabulary that often contradicts traditional meanings if we are not prepared to abandon the central concept of the curriculum. This includes engaging with questions of epistemicide, or with what João M. Paraskeva has called Itinerant Curriculum Theory (2011, 2016), or, to add to the complexity in this volume, Non-Derivative Itinerant Curriculum Theory. Coming from a context that is anything but Calvinist, unambiguously national, or North-American, Paraskeva insists that thinking about curriculum involves unearthing the unseen discourses—be they, as it is argued here in this foreword, Calvinism, imperial nationalism, or their global afterlives—that continue to structure the epistemological and foremost the practical fields, even when unacknowledged. Such work does not offer neat resolutions for practical use, nor can it predict its outcomes. But it invites a humbler, more reflexive practice: one that understands that to speak of curriculum is already to speak from within history, ideology, and power.
The questions that arise in this context are manifold, complex, and, to use a word that has almost fallen into oblivion, archaeological. The trans-academic project of an “epistemic liberation” (e.g., Leivas Vargas et al., 2020, p. 94)
To invoke a methodological term that is often cited but less often implemented, this is a matter of discourse analysis—that is, the study of “thought styles” (Fleck, 1935/1979), “styles of reasoning” (Hacking, 1992), or langues (de Saussure, 1916/1995) that underlie educational ideologies, theories, institutions, and practices (Tröhler, 2011). Such an analysis appears to be the only way to prevent the emergence of a new cult of guilt following the mentioned cult of the self—both rooted in Calvinist anthropology, which located salvation solely in divine grace untouched by human deeds. Yet it is precisely with this that education ultimately concerns itself: human action that, in whatever form, seeks to bring about the good.
Against this background, it is perhaps no coincidence that Dwayne Huebner, “one of the most important minds in the field of curriculum” (Pinar, 1999, p. XXIV; Paraskeva, forthcoming), eventually left the field of curriculum studies to pursue theology (Tröhler, forthcoming). His intellectual trajectory points to a deeper tension within the field itself: the tension between the pursuit of epistemological emancipation from hidden theological discourse on the one hand, and these theological foundations on the other, which still seem to impose powerful limits on these attempts at emancipation, albeit unconsciously and covertly. What else can we do but engage in a conversation that seeks to identify the (admittedly not very numerous) discourses or languages—not in order to eliminate any of them, but to reach what Shaftesbury once called “virtuosity” (Shaftesbury, 1711/2000, pp. 333, 338): the ability to express oneself across multiple discourses while fully remaining aware of their diversity?
The chapters gathered in this anthology take up this complex challenge from a variety of angles, intellectual traditions, and geopolitical contexts. Each contribution can be read as an act of deconstruction, excavation, or reconstruction. Together, they invite a reflection on how curriculum, as both a concept and a practice, might be reimagined once its inherited epistemologies are laid bare. Rather than offering closure, the volume opens a space for dialogue—between past and present, Global North and Global South, theory and praxis—in pursuit of an education grounded not in dogma or guilt, but in the ever-renewed possibility of human action toward the good. They show how difficult it is to speak differently about curriculum, and they demonstrate how such a transformation can, indeed, be achieved.
Apple, M. W. (1979). Ideology and curriculum. Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Bobbitt, J. F. (1918). The curriculum. Houghton Mifflin.
Bobbitt, J. F. (1923). The technique of curriculum-making [review of Charters, 1923]. Elementary School Journal, 2(10), 787–788.
Bobbitt, J. F. (1924). How to make a curriculum? Houghton Mifflin.
Bowles, S., & Gintis, H. (1976). Schooling in capitalist America: Educational reform and the contradictions of economic life. Basic Books.
Bruner, J. S. (1960). The process of education. Harvard University Press.
Calvin, J. (1998). Institutes of the Christian religion (Vol. 1, F. L. Battles, Trans.). Books for the Ages. (Original work published 1536)
Charters, W. W. (1923). Curriculum construction. Macmillan.
de Saussure, F. (1995). Cours de linguistique générale. Édition critique préparée par Tullio de Mauro. Postface de Louis-Jean Calvet. Charles Bailly et Albert Séchehaye. (Original work published 1916).
Fleck, L. (1979). Genesis and development of a scientific fact (F. Bradley & T. J. Trenn, Trans.; T. J. Trenn & R. K. Merton, Eds.). University of Chicago Press. (Original work published 1935)
Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed (M. B. Ramos, Trans.). Continuum. (Original work published 1968)
Goodman, P. (1964). Compulsory miseducation. Horizon Press.
Hacking, I. (1992). “Style” for historians and philosophers. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 23(1), 1–20.
Horlacher, R. (2017). The same but different: The German Lehrplan and curriculum Journal of Curriculum Studies, 50(1), 1–16.
Illich, I. (1971). Deschooling society. Harper & Row.
Jackson, P. W. (1968). Life in classrooms. Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
Leivas Vargas, M., Fernández-Baldor, Á., Maicas-Pérez, M., & Calabuig-Tormo, C. (2020). A Freirean approach to epistemic justice: Contributions of action learning to capabilities for epistemic liberation. In M. Walker & A. Boni (Eds.), Participatory research, capabilities and epistemic justice: A transformative agenda for higher education (pp. 89–114). Palgrave Macmillan.
Paraskeva, J. M. (forthcoming). Education as a political act: The unpublished papers of Dwayne E. Huebner [Provisional Title]. De Gruyter Brill.
Paraskeva, J. M. (2011). Conflicts in curriculum theory: Challenging hegemonic epistemologies. Palgrave Macmillan.
Paraskeva, J. M. (2016). Curriculum epistemicide: Towards an itinerant curriculum theory. Routledge.
Pinar, W. F. (Ed.). (1975). Curriculum theorizing: The reconceptualists. McCutchan.
Pinar, W. F. (1999). Introduction. In V. Hillis & W. F. Pinar (Eds.), The lure of the transcendent. Collected essays by Dwayne E. Huebner (pp. XV–XXVIII). Routledge.
Pinar, W. F. (2022). The Reconceptualization: An autobiographical-bibliographical synopsis. International Journal for the Historiography of Education, 12(1), 43−50.
Pinar, W. F., Reynolds, W. M., Slattery, P., & Taubman, P. M. (1995). Understanding curriculum: An introduction to the study of historical and contemporary curriculum discourses. Peter Lang.
Popkewitz, T. S. (1991). A political sociology of educational reform: Power/knowledge in teaching, teacher education, and research. Teachers College Press.
Popkewitz, T. S. (1998). Struggling for the soul: The politics of schooling and the construction of the teacher. Teachers College Press.
Shaftesbury, A. A. C., 3rd Earl of. (2000). Characteristics of men, manners, opinions, times (L. E. Klein, Ed.). Cambridge University Press. (Original work published 1711).
Tröhler, D. (2011). Languages of education. Protestant legacies, national identities, and global aspirations. Routledge.
Tröhler, D. (2013). The OECD and Cold War culture: Thinking historically about PISA. In H.-D. Meyer & A. Benavot (Eds.), PISA, power, and policy. The emergence of global educational governance (pp. 141–161). Symposium.
Tröhler, D. (2023). Curriculum theory and education history. In R. J. Tierney, F. Rizvi, & K. Erkican (Eds.), International encyclopedia of education (Vol. 7, pp. 117−125). Elsevier.
Tröhler, D. (forthcoming). Dwayne Huebner’s vision of education policy or the religious justification of political curriculum change. In J. M. Paraskeva (Ed.), Education as a political act: The unpublished papers of Dwayne E. Huebner [Provisional Title]. De Gruyter Brill
Tyack, D., & Tobin, W. (1994). The “grammar of schooling.” Why has it been so hard to change? American Educational Research Journal, 31(3), 453–479.
Tyler, R. W. (1949). Basic principles of curriculum and instruction. University of Chicago Press.