Can an Itinerant Curriculum Theory Travel?

Abstract

It has been a decade since the Louisiana State University Conference on the internationalization of curriculum studies. In this decade, scholars such as Pinar (2003) and Gough (2004) have taken up the idea of a worldwide field of curriculum studies. Organizations, e.g. IAACS, have been established, and journals such as Transnational Curriculum Inquiry have been launched. In spite of all these initiatives, the field is still dominated by the scholars located in the English-speaking West. Drawing on the works of Santos (2008), João Paraskeva (2011) proposes an itinerant curriculum theory which, he believes, will help to deterritorialize the field. However, I argue in this article that the itinerant curriculum theory—or any other similar proposal for internationalizing the field—needs to challenge and overcome three major obstacles, namely, linguistic imperialism, geopolitics of academic writing, and academic capitalism. Otherwise, the vision of a worldwide field of curriculum studies may remain unfulfilled.