Abstract
When the history of curriculum studies in Australia is written, it is likely that the work done at Deakin University from the latter part of the 1970s to the early 1990s will figure significantly in it, as indeed it should. Under Stephen Kemmis’ leadership and example, a group of researchers and educators produced at least two major bodies of scholarship: one addressed to action research and practitioner inquiry, and the other to rethinking curriculum ‘beyond reproduction theory’. While the work on Participatory Action Research is perhaps more well known, and internationally so, this chapter focuses on Deakin’s contribution to curriculum studies, as a distinctive field of inquiry and praxis. Although it appears now to be little acknowledged in Australia, the Deakin project surely represents an important and distinctive contribution to curriculum studies, as well as constituting an object of interest for curriculum history more generally. The chapter documents, and is therefore an acknowledgement of, Stephen Kemmis’ role and significance in curriculum history, in Australia and beyond.
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Notes
- 1.
Among the points noted at that discussion was programming, i.e. teachers’ planning of units of work and study—a particular focus of the Kewdale project , as it happens. In a paper published in 1990, I described this in terms of ‘professional writing’: ‘programming conceived in this expanded way is usefully considered as a form of on-going action research ’ (Green, 1990, p. 54). Looking back, the opportunities for productive work between curriculum studies and (in this instance) English teaching are clear. This point is picked up later in this section.
- 2.
A third keyword, perhaps rather more problematic, was facilitation.
- 3.
Mention should be made of Rob Walker ’s work at Deakin at this time. Similarly arriving with a background at CARE, his focus was more on classroom research and qualitative inquiry. He was also more oriented to the ‘practical ’ orientation, perhaps akin to John Elliott and the UK tradition. Nonetheless, it should be noted here that he served with SK as General Editors of the Deakin Studies in Education series for the Falmer Press. Among the notable books published in the series were Shirley Grundy ’s Curriculum: Product or Praxis? (1987) and David Hamilton’s Towards a Theory of Schooling (1989), as well as Carr and Kemmis (1986).
- 4.
They did work together on various occasions, as it happens. For instance, they were both invited raconteurs at the 1985 Australian Curriculum Studies Association annual conference, held in Melbourne (ACSA 1985 Conference Newsletter)—just the second such conference, in fact.
- 5.
My added note: The notion of the ‘separate school’, as deployed in the monograph, might now be better termed the ‘stand-alone school’.
- 6.
I note, in particular, the extensive reference made here to Boomer’s ‘negotiating the curriculum’ work (Kemmis et al., 1983, p. 16)—a further indication, it seems to me, that the curriculum research focus might have been enriched by working more closely with progressive work in the subject areas and more grounded form of critical pedagogy, as certainly emerging in Australia at that time. See McTaggart (1991, p. 69) as an (at least implicit) acknowledgement that the Deakin work in action research /curriculum inquiry at that time was more social-theoretical than it might have been, and less pedagogical.
- 7.
See also Stoop (1992). The Deakin influence is clear. As well as acknowledging Lindsay Fitzclarence ’s assistance with an earlier draft, the paper references Kemmis and Fitzclarence (1986) along with Giroux (1990) and Lundgren (1983), although Carr and Kemmis were edited out of the main text of the published version.
- 8.
I work here with the original monograph, published in 1983. It was subsequently published, somewhat revised and extended, as a book in the Deakin series for The Falmer Press (Carr & Kemmi, 1986).
- 9.
For example, Giroux’s Theory and Resistance in Education was published in 1983, although pre-publications chapters were read at seminars at Deakin (and also Murdoch) earlier. Apple was particularly influential at this time too, both with his own books (e.g. Apple, 1982a, b) and his edited works (e.g. Apple, 1982a, b).
- 10.
Courses such as this, and the teaching and research group associated with them, need to be acknowledged here. The Lundgren monographs were published in this context, as were those by Kemmis and Fitzclarence (1986) and others which became well known and were circulated widely [e.g. Hamilton (1990) and Giroux (1990)]. The team comprises at different times Lindsay Fitzclarence , John Henry and Colin Henry, as well as SK and others. Outside that group, others at Deakin identifying with curriculum research at that time included David Kirk, working in physical education and curriculum history , and Richard Tinning in physical education and critical pedagogy. Mention should be made too of the MEd research papers and doctoral dissertations emerging from the program.
- 11.
I note rather wryly that my own (revisionist) paper on ‘reproduction theory ’ (Green, 1986), perhaps my first major publication and drawing on Derrida, came out in 1986—itself largely unnoticed, I must say.
- 12.
Indeed one of the figures as the ‘hero’ in Grundy ’s (1987) account of action research and curriculum inquiry .
- 13.
It is worth noting that this line of inquiry, asking questions about the field’s vitality and continued relevance in Australia, as well as about whether or not there is a distinctively Australian form of curriculum inquiry , has bubbled away ever since. Its latest iteration is to be found in a recently published Point & Counterpoint set of papers in Curriculum Perspectives (Vol. 38, No. 1, 2018).
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Green, B. (2018). Curriculum Studies in Australia: Stephen Kemmis and the Deakin Legacy. In: Edwards-Groves, C., Grootenboer, P., Wilkinson, J. (eds) Education in an Era of Schooling. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2053-8_3
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