GUEST ISSUE

Curriculum Making with Diverse Children, Families, and Teachers

Guest Editors: Janice Huber, D. Jean Clandinin, M. Shaun Murphy

              When we offered to guest edit this issue of the Journal of Family Diversity in Education, we did so with the hope that we could draw attention to curriculum making (Clandinin & Connelly, 1992) as not only something undertaken with children in schools but as something also undertaken in families and places outside of school. This issue is framed within understandings of curriculum making as a life making process that is nested at the intersection of the lives of children, families, and teachers within the place of school as well as in family/community places (Clandinin & Connelly, 1992; Clandinin et al., 2006). We highlight a shift in the focus of curriculum making from attending only to the meeting of the lives of children and teachers around subject matters in the place called school to include other places of curriculum making. As we have shown elsewhere (Huber, Murphy, & Clandinin, 2011; Murphy, Huber & Clandinin, 2012), curriculum is also being made in the meeting of children’s lives with families and in homes and communities. The subject matters under consideration in what we call familial curriculum making allow the diversity of families and communities to shape the experiences of children. While researchers have often attended to children’s lives outside of school in order to show how these experiences shape their experiences in school, the concept of familial curriculum making allows researchers and curriculum theorists to more intentionally see curriculum making as including processes occurring outside of school.

            The issue has at its heart the central puzzle of what counts as familial curriculum making with, and for, diverse children, teachers, and families. This issue includes four articles and an introduction to and a series of book reviews on the work of curriculum maker Vivian Paley. Adopting a curriculum-making framework that attends to multiple places and people as central to curriculum making offers new possibilities for understanding the complexities of curriculum making and for respecting the multiplicity of curriculum makers in children’s lives. 

References

Clandinin, D. J., & Connelly, F. M. (1992). Teacher as curriculum maker. In P. W. Jackson (Ed.), Handbook of research on curriculum, (pp. 363-401). New York: Macmillan.

Clandinin, D. J., Huber, J., Huber, M., Murphy, M. S., Murray Orr, A., Pearce, M., & Steeves, P. (2006). Composing diverse identities: Narrative inquiries into the interwoven lives of children and teachers. New York: Routledge.

Huber, J., Murphy, M. S., & Clandinin, D. J. (2011). Places of curriculum making:Narrative inquiries into children’s lives in motion. Bingley: Emerald Publishing.

Murphy, M. S., Huber, J., & Clandinin, D. J. (2012). Narrative inquiry into two worlds of curriculum making. LEARNing Landscapes, 5(2), 219-235.