Chapter 4: Person-Centered Curriculum Leadership

Curriculum is a central feature of educational experience. However, the boundaries of curriculum are ambiguously defined, and many mainstream conceptions of curriculum address personhood in limited and even problematic ways. According to the late curriculum theorist James B. Macdonald (1975), putting the person into a curriculum context “implies that we will do something with, for, or to the person- and any human action is a resolution of thought and feeling into doing by way of a value commitment” (p. 191). Unfortunately, personhood is rarely put into curricular context. From early childhood classrooms to institutions of higher education, the dominance of technological determinism depersonalizes the voices leading curriculum research, policies, and practice.