Itinerant Curriculum Theory Revisited on a non-Theoricide Towards the Canonicide: Addressing the 'Curriculum Involution'

Abstract

This paper, as the title suggests, attempts to revisit what has been known and debated as Itinerant Curriculum Theory (ICT), a theoretical path I shared and discussed in several annual meetings of our field both nationally and internationally, and in works such as Conflicts in Curriculum Theory in 2011, and its revised paperback edition in 2014; Curriculum Epistemicides, 2016; and Curriculum: Whose Internationalization, 2016. In so doing, I will also address some of issues examined by the contributors of this volume, among other issues, the nexus of ICT, teacher education, and life within classrooms, curriculum epistemicide, the battles between and within dominant and counter-dominant movements, Modern Western Eurocentric thinking as abyssal thinking, and the ecology of knowledges. Through this, I will reiterate ICT’s major arguments and why it constitutes the better approach to address current problems. I will also argue how ICT is also a response to what I called curriculum involution. 

João M. Paraskeva was born in Maputo, Mozambique where he completed his elementary and secondary education. He was an honorary fellow (2000 – 2004) at the University of Wisconsin Madison, a Professor at the University of Minho, as well as visiting Professor at the University of Coruna, Spain, University of Florence, Italy, Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, Federal University of Pelotas, Brasil, and University Agostinho Neto, Angola. He was the chair of the “Marxian Analysis of Society, Schools and Education”, and his the Vice President of the American Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies (2016 – 2018). He his currently Full Professor at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, founder and Chair of the Department of Educational leadership, Program Director of the Doctoral Program in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies (2010 – 2016). He is a very prolific scholar with countless articles, book reviews, keynote addresses and papers presented both nationally and internationally. He is the founder (2010) and senior editor of the “Revista Curriculo Sem Fronteiras” (www.curriculosemfronteiras.org). In his latest volumes “Conflicts in Curriculum Theory. Challenging Hegemonic Epistemicides” (New York: Palgrave), Globalisms and Power: Iberian Educational and Curriculum Policies”  (New York: Peter Lang); “Curriculum; Decanonizing the Field. New York: Peter Lang;  “Curriculum: Whose Internationalziation?”; New York: Routledge, Professor Paraskeva, influenced by decolonial and southern intellectuals, open up the veins and the canon of the Western Eurocentric power matrix to denounce how education and curriculum are part of the Western Eurocentric epistemicide. His volume “Curriculum Epistemologies”. New York: Routledge won the 2017 AERA Divison B outstanding book award.