교육과정 연구의 동향과 대안적 접근의 필요성 = Towards an Alternative Approach to Curriculum Inquiry

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The whole field of curriculum inquiry falls short of maintaining its desciplinary identity and autonomy. As evidenced by a plethora of self-criticisms, the field is encompassed with irrelevant and elusive methodologies and ill-defined concepts. There are no clear conceptual frameworks in terms of which we can distinguish what curriculum study is from what is not. We have generated much knowledge about a diversity of curriculum phenomena, while abandoning any serious attempt to discriminate whaht proper curricular knowledge claims are. The field is in the state of arrest, confusion, and disarray. This is my diagnostic observation underlying this study. Perhaps we, as curricular specialists, have been too busy in providing practical and conceptual principles, answers, and guidelines regarding the particular phenmoenon called school curriculum. Thus, we have not been able to afford eneough time to reflect on the nature and structure of disciplined curriculum inquiry. Of course, the mainstream approach called the practice-oriented curriculum inquiry, which entails the whole of the field, has played a significant role in providing solutions to the urgent problems related to school curriclum, and it will continue to serve as an important interllectual enterprise. However, if we want the field to be more epistemologically disciplined one, we have to suspend our adherence to the notion of direct application of practical as well as conceptual knowledge generated by our expertise and professionalism. Instead, what is required is an alternative approach that seeks abstract theorizing in searching for a unique and autonomous epistemology independent of the traditional mother-disciplines and the mundane common senses. What is also required is a thorough examination of the conceptual relationship between the notion of education and that of curriculum. A radical and provocative approach to the reconceptualization of the particular phenomenon of education, not of schooling, rejects the dominant but unwarranted assumption that the process of education or teaching functions as a means to enhance the delivery of school curriculum. On the contrary, we need to be interested in theorizing how the curriculum, as subject matter of education, functions to facilitate the process of education. In doing so, the sturcture and nature of the discipline of education defines the conceptual, substantive, and methodological characteristics of curriculum inquiry. Finally, this paper suggests that further healthy arguments over the methodological and conceptual nature of curriculum study flourish for the development of authentic and autonomous theories in our field.