Abstract

In the midst of multiple ongoing local and global crises, and persistently polarizing discourses about what should and should not be taught in classrooms and schools, we can draw inspiration and hope from thinking across boundaries to reimagine curriculum in English and literacies education. While curriculum has historically contributed to the gatekeeping and sorting of youth as well as perpetuating the status quo, it has also been transformative, expanding possibilities in how we think and express ourselves. In this essay, I examine how English language arts curricula have been and are currently defined, invoked, or imagined, highlighting how innovative research and practice across multiple sociopolitical and disciplinary boundaries can transform how curriculum is enacted and experienced. Drawing from assemblage theories, I present acurriculum-as-assemblagestance that renders visible the interrelatedness of such social, political, and socioeconomic discourses with the knowledges, identities, and literacies that are constructed and negotiated in the broader context of schooling. To illustrate what such a conceptualization can offer, I describe a practice approach to thinking about curriculum as it is enacted, experienced, and rhizomatically connected to the multiple identities and narratives of students and teachers. I argue that an interdisciplinary and transgressive stance toward English and literacies education can foster creative, inclusive, expansive, humanizing, justice-oriented, and joyful thinking forward about our field.

Journal
Research in the Teaching of English
Published
2023-08-01
DOI
10.58680/rte202332612
CompPile
Search in CompPile ↗
Open Access
Closed
Topics
Export

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (0)

No articles in this index cite this work.

References (118) · 9 in this index

  1. Research in the Teaching of English
  2. Social class and the hidden curriculum of work
    Journal of Education  
  3. Ideology and curriculum
  4. Tradition and reform in the teaching of English: A history
  5. Curriculum as conversation: Transforming traditions of teaching and learning
Show all 118 →
  1. Equity and literacy in the next millennium
    Reading Research Quarterly  
  2. Linguistic justice: Black language, literacy, identity, and pedagogy
  3. The price of the ticket: Collected nonfiction, 1948–1985)
  4. Theorizing the space of literacy practices
    Ways of Knowing Journal
  5. Research in the Teaching of English
  6. Hard times and cosmetics: Changes in literacy instruction
    Peabody Journal of Education  
  7. 10.2307/1179406
  8. Transforming literacy education for long-term English learners: Recognizing brilliance in…
  9. Handbook of adolescent literacy research
  10. Research in the Teaching of English
  11. 10.1080/15505170.2011.624939
  12. The student as assemblage of success: Constructing multiple identities amidst classed, ge…
    Curriculum and Teaching Dialogue
  13. Policy, professionalization, privatization, and performance assessment
  14. 10.1177/0042085915623344
  15. An authentic English language arts curriculum: Finding your way in a standards-driven context
  16. Being “loud”: Identities-in-practice in a figured world of achievement
    American Educational Research Journal  
  17. Building futures: Youth researchers and critical college-going literacies
    Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies  
  18. In the name of (pedagogical) love: A conceptual framework for transformative teaching gro…
    The Urban Review  
  19. 10.1177/0022487120987966
  20. Relationships of knowledge and practice: Teacher learning in communities
    Review of Research in Education
  21. Written Communication
  22. Assemblage theory
  23. A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia
  24. Encyclopedia of English language arts education: A critical perspective
  25. 10.1080/10665684.2020.1863881
  26. The educational imagination
  27. The SAGE handbook of curriculum and instruction
  28. Handbook of research on curriculum: A project of the American Educational Research Association
  29. Discourse and social change
  30. 10.1177/1468794119830641
  31. 10.1525/aeq.1999.30.3.272
  32. Discipline and punish: The birth of the prison
  33. Literacy: Reading the word and the world
  34. Pop culture and curriculum, assemble! Exploring the limits of curricular humanism
  35. Writing toward justice: Youth speculative civic literacies in online policy discourse
    Urban Education  
  36. Selections from the prison notebooks
  37. The passions of pluralism: Multiculturalism and the expanding community
    Educational Researcher
  38. Performance assessment, policy, privatization, and professionalization: Affordances and c…
  39. Cultural ways of learning: Individual traits or repertoires of practice
    Educational Researcher  
  40. Questions of cultural identity
  41. Uncommonly engaging? A review of the En-gageNY English language arts Common Core curriculum
  42. Ways with words: Language, life and work in communities
  43. 10.1177/002221948902200702
  44. Cultural literacy: What every American needs to know
  45. Identity and agency in cultural worlds
  46. Teaching to transgress: Education as the practice of freedom
  47. The limits and possibilities of schooling: An introduction to the sociology of education
  48. A Delicate Dance: Autoethnography, Curriculum, and the Semblance of Intimacy
  49. Research in the Teaching of English
  50. Fifty years of English education: Former editors speak
    English Education
  51. A curriculum of repression: A pedagogy of racial history in the United States
  52. Research in the Teaching of English
  53. Struggles that should never be normalized: Politics, policy, and the prohibition of thought
    Language Arts  
  54. The struggle for the American curriculum: 1893-1958
  55. 10.1177/0895904803256786
  56. We Teach English
  57. Handbook of qualitative research
  58. 10.17763/haer.84.1.p2rj131485484751
  59. I’m here for the hard re-set: Post pandemic pedagogy to preserve our culture
    Equity & Excellence in Education  
  60. Culture, literacy, and learning: Taking bloom in the midst of the whirlwind
  61. A new generation of fugitive scholarship
    English Education  
  62. To kill a mockingbird
  63. High stakes education
  64. Text and discourse in education: An introduction to critical discourse analysis
    Review of Research in Education
  65. Research in the Teaching of English
  66. Cyphers for justice: Learning from the wisdom of intergenerational inquiry with youth
    Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies  
  67. 10.1598/RRQ.37.2.6
  68. Encyclopedia of English language arts education: A critical perspective
  69. In search of the meaning and purpose of 21st-century literacy learning: A critical review…
    Reading Research Quarterly  
  70. Critical English education
    English Education  
  71. Cultivating genius: An equity framework for culturally and historically responsive literacy
  72. Common Core State Standards for English language arts and literacy in history/social studies, science, and technical subjects
  73. Celebration and conversation, consensus and dissent: What NCTE means to me
    English Journal  
  74. A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Designing social futures
    Harvard Educational Review  
  75. The creative aspect woke me up”: Awakening to multimodal essay composition as a fugitive …
    English Education  
  76. In other words: Translating or “para-phrasing” as a family literacy practice in immigrant…
    Reading Research Quarterly  
  77. 10.3102/0013189X12441244
  78. What are we seeking to sustain through culturally sustaining pedagogy? A loving critique …
    Harvard Educational Review  
  79. What is curriculum theory?
  80. Understanding curriculum: An introduction to the study of historical and contemporary cur…
  81. A poetry pedagogy for teachers: Reorienting classroom literacy practices
  82. Colormute: Race talk dilemmas in an American school
  83. Advancing racial literacies in teacher education: Activism for equity in digital spaces
  84. Curriculum visions
  85. Status and trends in the education of racial and ethnic minorities
  86. 10.1177/1538192706299009
  87. Literacy (dis)orientations in a secondary classroom: Possibilities and limits of an inter…
    Reading Research Quarterly  
  88. Research in the Teaching of English
  89. 10.1080/00131720508984870
  90. An archaeology of self for our times: Another talk to teachers
    English Journal  
  91. Deleuze, education, and becoming
  92. Research in the Teaching of English
  93. 10.2307/821812
  94. Transformational sanctuaries in the middle level ELA classroom: Creating truth spaces for…
  95. Handbook of research on curriculum
  96. The pandemic as a portal: On transformative ruptures and possible futures for education
    Bank Street Occasional Paper Series
  97. 10.1002/rrq.464
  98. Literacy in theory and practice
  99. Teaching by numbers: Deconstructing the discourse of standards and accountability in education
  100. The dark fantastic: Race and the imagination from Harry Potter to the Hunger Games
  101. Speaking Truth to Power: Revisiting Lou LaBrant’s “We Teach English” (1951): Debating Who…
    The English Journal  
  102. 10.1080/09518398.2010.500633
  103. Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes
  104. Children, gender, video games: Towards a relational approach to multimedia
  105. Handbook of research on multicultural education
  106. From good student to outcast: The emergence of a classroom identity
    Ethos  
  107. 10.1080/10714413.2021.1874850
  108. Liberal humanism, social science, and the discursive legacy of the “human” in English education
    Theory, Research, and Action in Urban Education
  109. 10.1080/02607476.2014.956544
  110. Best practice: Today’s standards for teaching and learning in America’s schools
  111. Learning to teach in an age of accountability
  112. A life in classrooms: Philip W. Jackson and the practice of education
  113. Studying teacher education: The report of the AERA Panel on Research and Teacher Education