GSEHD was well represented by our students, alumni, and faculty at the Journal of Curriculum Theorizing (JCT) Conference on Curriculum Theory and Classroom Practice – colloquially known as the JCT/Bergamo Conference – in Dayton, Ohio, October 12-14, 2023.
Dr. Brian Casemore, Associate Professor of Curriculum and Pedagogy, provided a keynote address titled, “On the Raveling of Deep Aspect: Curriculum as Subjective Place,” In the talk, he conceptualized curriculum as a process of encoding “psychical locality” in its social implication, analyzed the emplacement of the hegemonic white male subject in conditions of social violence, and characterized ethical movement beyond such subjective enclosure.
Alumna Dr. Shauna Knox (EdD, Curriculum & Instruction) also gave a keynote address, “Black Subalternity and its Witness.” She shared frameworks and autobiographical vignettes from her recent book, The Black Subaltern: An Intimate Witnessing (Routledge, 2022). Working in the tradition of autobiographical curriculum studies, Dr. Knox elaborated on her own journey as a Jamaican migrant to the United States, as she conceptualized Black humanity in terms of “perpetual in-betweenness” and “subjective transmigration.”
Dr. Sandra Vanderbilt, Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership, led an invited, all-conference “Provoking Dialogue” panel. The panel, “dis/Ability Justice, Curriculum, and the Classroom: Imagining More than Integration and Inclusion,” pursued questions from Dr. Vanderbilt’s soon-to-be published chapter on the history of the dis/Ability Justice movement. For this dialogue, the three panelists conducted autobiographical research to explore their experiences with dis/Ability and possibilities for K-12 and higher education educators and classrooms.
Doctoral student Leslie Smith Duss (EdD, Curriculum & Instruction) presented a paper, “A Correspondence with ChatGPT on Non-Discursive Student Expression in History Education.” In the talk, she elaborated imaginary provocations to ChatGPT, explored the idea of authenticity in the face of the tempting yet worrisome lure of AI, and examined its potential effects on nascent academic research and writing as well as students' effort to make sense of unspeakable histories.
Doctoral student DJ Ralston (EdD, Human and Organizational Learning), a Sr. Technical Assistance and Research Analyst with GSEHD's Center for Rehabilitation Counseling, Research and Education (CRCRE), co-presented a paper with Dr. Sandra Vanderbilt. In the paper, “Oh! My teacher’s hip!: Memetic Curricula in Young People’s Multiple Physical and Virtual Worlds,” they presented research design and emerging findings from an ongoing qualitative project with middle- and high-school-age adolescents about how they learn, communicate, and build ideological perspectives in online spaces.
Alumnus Dr. Jim Burns (EdD, Curriculum & Instruction) presented a paper, "Surveillance and Punishment: A Reappraisal of the Tyler Rationale." In the paper, Dr. Burns explores Ralph Tyler’s “basic principles,” via Foucault, in relation to the anti-political context of the present historical moment, characterized by resurgent authoritarianism and virulent attacks on K-12 and university education. The paper concludes that Tyler's rationale has contributed to the logics of punitive accountability and disciplinary education.
Alumna Dr. Rachel Talbert (EdD, Curriculum & Instruction) presented a paper, “‘No matter where you’re at and what you’re doing, you can think about these things’: Teaching to Unsettle with Survivance.” Dr. Talbert’s paper represents insights and analyses from an ongoing project building curriculum with the Lenape Center in NYC. Dr. Talbert also presented papers with two of her graduate students from Teachers College Columbia University: “Wrong Rocks: Counterstorying a Curriculum Erasure in Manhaata/n” and “Engaging Text for Authenticity: Understanding and Mistaking Native American Portrayals in Children’s Nonfiction Literature.”
Alumna Dr. Dowan McNair-Lee (EdD, Curriculum & Instruction) presented a paper, “Songs in the Key of Currere.” Dr. McNair-Lee’s paper, developed from her dissertation research, explores how Black women teachers theorize remaining in urban classrooms – how they stay – in the face of multiple factors that historically and presently threaten to displace them. Dr. McNair-Lee also participated on a panel, “Education Festschrift for bell hooks,” with Dr. Sandra Vanderbilt and other co-panelists.