Texas Christian University

Faculty Member, College of Education

Associate Professor, Curriculum Studies & Early Childhood/Elementary Education

College of Education

Thesis Title: Challenging the Hegemony in Education: Specific Parrhesiastic Scholars, Care of the Self, and Relations of Power

About

http://www.coe.tcu.edu/208.asp
http://sites.google.com/site/curriculumstudiesattcu/
   
As a Curriculum Studies teacher-scholar, I attend to (1) formal knowledge, which is informed by educational theory and practice, and (2) tacit knowledge, which is understood through culture, background, and current circumstances. Curriculum Studies as a field re-conceptualizes the study of questions such as: What is knowledge? Who gets to decide? What is the official curriculum? What is taught unintentionally? What is taught explicitly and implicitly? How do we learn from the official and hidden curricula? How are we taught from what is excluded (null curriculum)? The field critically explores education with an ethic that honors diversity, respects all people(s), and encourages democratic community building. Curriculum Studies explores as subject matter TCU’s mission (to educate individuals to think and act as ethical leaders and responsible citizens in the global community), and incorporates as dispositions our core values (academic achievement, personal freedom and integrity, the dignity and respect of the individual, and a heritage of inclusiveness, tolerance and service).

Teaching is a scholarly art. As a scholar, I study the world closely. As an artist, I create experiences that engage students with the world. I introduce them to the depth and breadth of pedagogy, which is the theory, art, and science of teaching and learning. I share with students the established knowledge of our field and tacit ways of knowing informed by experiences. When studied together, formal and tacit knowledges complement and complicate each other. Through the juxtaposition of seemingly contradictory ways of knowing (formal/tacit, critical/generous, individual worldview/other worldviews), I foster paradoxical learning. I help students hold onto ideas and experiences that may initially seem contradictory long enough to understand the complexity. I ask them to use critical and generous thinking to create intellectual tension by not resisting or accepting part of the paradox prematurely. I believe we need to live intellectually and emotionally with paradoxical tensions, because releasing too quickly results in inadequate solutions.

Research is a scholarly privilege that affords me the opportunity to pose questions and share my findings. My interdisciplinary scholarship crosses into educational philosophy, critical theory, cultural studies, feminist studies, and educational studies, but is most consistent with curriculum studies. As a curriculum scholar, I conceptualize education as a project that extends beyond schooling and address questions such as: How do we know tacitly? What are the implications for hidden curricula and implicit learning? How can theory inform such learning and our responses? I employ qualitative inquiry, philosophy, and theory to study implicit knowledge formed by culture, background, and current circumstances. Instead of ignoring diversity, I study the tensioned spaces created by socially-significant differences. I am interested in everyday, taken-for-granted occurrences where divergent worldviews coexist as sites of power relations, which are educational and political. I want my work to encourage forms of conversation characterized by a willingness to act justly towards all people.

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