Conflicts in Curriculum Theory

This book challenges educators to be agents of change, to take history into their own hands, and to make social justice central to the educational endeavor. Paraskeva embraces a pedagogy of hope championed by Paulo Freire where people become conscious of their capacity to intervene in the world to make it less discriminatory and more humane.

"In Conflicts in Curriculum Theory, João M. Paraskeva has written an extraordinarily important and timely book. The principal arguments of this volume are rigorously formulated and thoughtfully presented. It is a necessary and trenchant intervention in an age full of sound and fury in the curriculum field and elsewhere in contemporary society. Using the spatial referent of the river as a central organizing metaphor, Paraskeva expertly navigates the boisterous tributaries of the curriculum field cautioning us against neoliberal self-satisfaction, disciplinary tribalism, and dogmatism that he notes undermine meaningful communicative action and purposive orientation towards truly transformative change. This is a tour de force of a book filled with glittering forays and powerful, expansive, pragmatic, and prescriptive insight. Paraskeva's is a sharp, incisive, and distinctive voice. Conflicts in Curriculum Theory is rich, provocative and eminently readable." Cameron McCarthy, Professor of Education Policy, Organization, and Leadership, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA

"A powerful challenge to the underlying epistemological forces of schooling, which have well-sustained a hidden curriculum of cultural invasion and made a mockery of indigenous knowledge. In light of this travesty, Paraskeva's timely volume calls for an uncompromising reassertion of history, culture, and politics into our understanding, formation, and practice of what constitutes adecolonizing curriculum - one boldly committed to social justice and the unlimited democratic possibilities inherent in our humanity." Antonia Darder, Leavey Endowed Chair in Ethics and Moral Leadership, Loyola Marymount University, USA

"Paraskeva provides us with a map of the river that is Western curriculum history with as many cross-currents, eddies, flows, and branching streams as the Mississippi; but, more importantly, he provides us a corrected vision drawn from the work of African and other non-Western scholars to provide the direction and hope necessary for a justly democratic deterritorialized curriculum theory." - Richard Quantz, Professor, Department of Educational Leadership, Miami University, Ohio, USA

"Conflicts in Curriculum Theory: Challenging Hegemonic Epistemologies, makes an important and timely contribution to the internationalization of curriculum studies." - Alberta Journal of Educational Research

João M. Paraskeva is Professor and Chair of the Department of Educational Leadership at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, USA.