The Study Of Critical Curriculum Theory Of Thomas S.Popkewitz

Thomas S.Popkewitz is a professor from the faculty of Curriculum and Instruction of the university of Wisconsin-Madison,and also one of famous critical curriculum theorists and educational sociologists in contemporary America. The study field he engages in is very wild including history,art,literature,psychology and sociology,and the main themes he focus on are teacher education, curriculum and Instruction, educational policy,educational reform and comparative education through the histories of present, ethnographic and comparative studies of educational reforms. Through the dialogue with the theories of critical pedagogy, sociology of knowledge, feminism, post-structuralism, Popkewitz’s studies are concerned with the knowledge or systems of reason that governs schooling, creating his unique "social epistemology".The publication of his book<A political sociology of educational reform:power/knowledge in teaching, teacher education and research> ensured his position and influence as a critical scholar of post-structuralism in education research. His Foucaultian curriculum research reexamines the concepts of power,knowledge,subjective and history,with the transformation of the way of questioning from "whose knowledge is the most valuable" to "how to make the valuable knowledge possible",and the unique perspective of curriculum research challenges traditional views of curriculum and mainstream on critical educational research,opening new space for alternative possibilities in curriculum research.Professor Popkewitz’s curriculum theory has critical and political features,who uses the notion of power as analytic tool to analyze the historical and social context of knowledge and its impact on school subjectivities,revealing the mechanism of power hidden in curriculum. Based on "power deploys knowledge, knowledge constructs subjectivities", Popkewitz criticizes modern schooling and establishes a critical curriculum theory different from the social-critical curriculum theory by reexamining the process from the historical point of view. The purpose of this dissertation is to introduce the background and basic viewpoints of Popkewitz’s critical curriculum theory,and thinking about its enlightenment to our curriculum reform of basic education.There are five parts of the essay:The introduction introduces the background,objectives,significance,research methods of the study.Part Ⅰ is about the form of Popkewitz’s critical curriculum theory, introducing the biography of Thomas.S.Popkewitz,social background and theoretical base in detail in order to better understanding the critical curriculum theory of Popkewitz.Part Ⅱ introduces the main viewpoints of Thomas S.Popkewitz’s critical curriculum theory,mainly containing the essence of curriculum, the objective of curriculum,curriculum content, the implementation of curriculum and curriculum research method.First, based on Foucault’s concepts of deployment of power,Popkewitz points out that curriculum is a kind of "political praxis"; Second,Popkewitz criticizes the constraints modern schooling imposed on children,and advocates that the purpose of curriculum is individual’s liberation by developing the critical attitude of children; Third,Popkewitz thinks that curriculum content should be viewed as "scientific event", so that the thought of "alchemy" can be reexamined;The fourth is that curriculum implementation should be taken as a social system,and self-realization and social improvement can be achieved by establishing the "self-critical community";The fifth one is about curriculum evaluation which is a mechanism of creating opportunities and conditions for children’s experience.At last,Popkewitz views the "social epistemology" as the methodology of curriculum research instead of empirical-analytic which seeks for the practical knowledge.Part Ⅲ makes some comments on the critical curriculum theory of Popkewitz. This part is about the value and some inadequacies of the critical curriculum theory of Popkewitz.The last Part points out that the critical curriculum theory of Popkewitz offers a unique vision and methodology for our curriculum research,and explores the enlightenment his theory brings to the curriculum reform in the field of basic education in our country at least four aspects,such as cultivating children’s self-critical consciousness;emphasizing the construction of interdisciplinary curriculum;establishing reciprocal relationship between teacher and student;applying’social epistemology" to the field of curriculum study.