Performing curriculum : exploring the role of teachers and teacher educators

The three chapters that frame Section D “Teaching Curriculum” of The SAGE Handbook of Curriculum and Instruction provide deeper insight into the work of teachers and indeed teacher educators as curriculum makers. These chapters provide a detailed history of how teaching curriculum has been theorised through practice and the contemporary contexts and controversies framing curriculum work. In this essay review I discuss each chapter highlighting key issues and themes, drawing links across chapters, and identifying both areas of particular interest and areas for further exploration.

Specifically I wish to further examine two emergent areas of interest: (1) the relationship between knowledge and practice and the ways in which power is constituted by these relations and how this variously positions teachers and teacher educators as curriculum makers; and (2) the emancipatory possibilities for curriculum and for teachers and teacher educators as libertory curriculum activists. The authors imply that the issues of control and agency are central to both areas. To further conceptualise control and agency as they relate to these broader areas of interest I draw on Actor Network Theory (ANT). ANT is “an example of how practice-based theorising provides a rich array of concepts towards thinking curriculum differently” (Perillo & Mulcahy, in press). I will argue that ANT allows a deeper understanding of the ways in which teachers and teacher educators perform curriculum and the ways in which control and agency are constituted.