Chapter 1: The Search for Content in Curriculum Making

Where is the content in curriculum making? That's a question that I have been pursuing for almost 20 years. I enrolled in my first curriculum course during the summer of 1995. My professor was Dr. Alan Garrett, a former president of AATC and someone many of you know quite well. I guess we could say that my “search for content” within curriculum began officially when I enrolled in Alan's course. Throughout the month we spent in “Curriculum: Theory Into Practice,” the title of Alan's course, he combined stories and structure in a way that I found fascinating. I was attracted to the abstract dimension of curriculum, but I also appreciated how curriculum was unavoidably about practice. In addition to curriculum, though, I also became fascinated with the history and philosophy of education, or what is frequently referred to as the field of educational foundations. As a young graduate student, I was searching for something of substance that I could wrap my head around. I wanted a real curriculum that would provide me with a well-rounded education, but I was not quite sure what such a curriculum was or should be. Curriculum interested me, but I guess the theoretic, philosophical nature of educational foundations interested me more than curriculum, at least at that time.