Questioning Curriculum Theory in Teacher Education: Nourishing and Invisibly Repairing the Minds of Researchers and Teachers

Abstract

I begin by posing the following question: Whatever happened to curriculum theory in teacher education? My answer is short—it is missing in action, both in the action of research and practice! To address the consequences of this for teacher education research and practice, I use a Wordsworth poem “Spots of Time” to illustrate my premise that we need curriculum theory in teacher education to nourish and invisibly repair both our researching and pedagogical minds. Curriculum theory informs, evokes, provokes, and disrupts our mental frames about teaching. Hence, theoretically informed conceptualizations can enable teacher educators to revisit their practice in a manner that escapes dour and lifeless pedagogy. Such an approach arises when we focus too directly on learning and its measurement to the neglect of understanding how study is the central site of education. This misplaced emphasis leads us into intellectual traps around teaching that educators need to divest themselves in curriculum if we are to become creative and engage students in assiduous study. My argument is that, without this turn, teacher education will remain moribund; and, if teacher education as a viable practice dies, then so too will Faculties of Education. We need curriculum theory to find spots in time whence our minds as teacher education researchers and pedagogues are nourished and invisibly repaired.