Itinerant Curriculum Theory

ICT and Alternative Histories, La Educación Popular

As I understand it presently, ICT developed from important changes in thinking and doing intellectual and curriculum history, for which the notion of la educación popular (e.g., Alternativas Pedagógicas y Prospectiva Educativa en (América Latina, 2022; Gómez & Puiggrós, 1986; Puiggrós, 1980/2015, 1983/2016, 2004/2023, 2010) became emblematic in my thinking. Recalling the emergence of ICT, it is important to recognize that the work presented in this volume has undergone many iterations over the years. The first symposium on ICT (Price et al., 2016) was an all- conference session at the 2016 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies (AAACS). This meeting took place at George Washington University in Washington, DC organized by Peter Appelbaum, Brian Casemore, and myself in my final year on AAACS’s conference leadership team. The symposium was transnational, including presenters Maria Luiza Süssekind, Inês Barbosa de Oliveira, Maria Alfredo Moreira, Todd Price, and respondent João Paraskeva.

The symposium was attended by several senior and established scholars of curriculum and pedagogy including Janet Miller, Tero Autio, James Henderson, Antonio Carlos Amorim, Michael Uljens, Elizabeth Macedo, Robert Helfenbein, Peter Appelbaum, Rose Ylimaki, and Susan Mayer, among others. I think what pulled these established scholars to the first symposium, sparked interest in a second one (Jupp et al., 2017), advanced the subsequent special section in JAAACS (Jupp, 2017), and cultiminates here in this edited compendium on ICT were newly theorized potential praxes of intellectual, curricular, transnational, and bioregional histories. These newly theorized historical praxes developed into what I refer to as ICT in the definition above and throughout this compendium.

Influenced by AAACS’ commitment to intellectual and curriculum history, this compendium includes a section on histories, but fuses these histories with decolonial narratives and alternative pedagogical praxes. Departing from humanist disciplinary history (e.g., Cremin, 1964; Kaestle, 1983) or the narrower humanistic study of curriculum history proper (e.g., Davis, 1976; Kliebard, 1995; Pinar et al., 1995; Schubert 2010; Schubert et al., 2002; Seguel, 1966), decolonial and alternative histories (Fúnez Flores, 2021, 2022, 2023; Garza et al., 2021/2023; Guajardo, 1997; Guajardo & Guajardo, 2004; Guajardo et al., 2006, 2012; Jupp et al., 2020/2023; Paraskeva, 2011, Pinheiro Barbosa, 2013, 2016; Puiggrós, 2004/2023; Recio, 2023) are unarguably foundational for ICT. Demonstrated here, these histories seek to organize transnational and bioregional historical understandings and change how we think and do history in ways that inform local-yet-transnational critical curricular-pedagogical praxes.

This change in approaching history works through a critical dynamic of deterritorializing-reterritorializing (Paraskeva, 2015, 2016a, 2016b, 2017/2023a, 2021; Vega et al., 2023) curriculum and pedagogy as organized by institutions, communities, and bioregions per specific critical project (Garza et al., 2021/2023; Jupp et al., 2018, 2020/2023; Vega et al., 2023). The dynamic seeks to engage and conscientize educands (Freire, 1970/1998, 1992/2002) within specific historical-transnational struggles and resistances tied to alternative left readings of the word and world (Amin, 2008; Anzaldúa, 1987, 2009; Fúnez Flores, 2020, 2022, 2023; Jupp, 2013b; Jupp et al., 2018, 2020/2023; Paraskeva, 2015, 2016a, 2016b, 2017/2023, 2018; Recio, 2023; Vega et al., 2023).

Though forever incomplete and in-process (Paraskeva, 2015, 2016a, 2016b, 2017/2023, 2018, 2021; Vega et al., 2023), the deterritorializing- reterritorializing dynamic drives not only at differently historicizing critical understandings toward curricular-pedagogical praxes (Garza et al., 2021/2023; Garza & Jupp, Under review; Guajardo, 1997; Guajardo & Guajardo, 2004; Guajardo et al., 2006, 2012; Jupp et al., 2018; Risri Altetheiani, 2023) but also tying decolonial historical work with social- historical movements (e.g., Fúnez-Flores, 2020, 2021, 2023; González, 1967, 1969; Guevara, 2006; Marcos, 2001; Paredes, 1958; Pinheiro Barbosa, 2013, 2016; Valdez & Steiner, 1972; Walsh, 2008). Importantly, providing a response to Schwab’s (e.g., 1969, 1983) invective against reconceptualist curriculum theory in general (e.g., Pinar, 1975, 1988, Pinar et al., 1995) and US-located critical pedagogy in specific (e.g., Apple, 1979/1990, 1982/1995; Giroux, 1981, 1983/2001; McLaren, 1989/2016), ICT provides “something for curriculum professors to do” (1983, p. 239). Specifically, it asks curriculum professors to conjuncturally engage specific communities, institutional contexts, and social movements.

In relation to ICT, transnational and bioregional histories are fundamental to critical pedagogical and curricular praxes. Being-an-historian, it follows, is not to quaintly retell nationalist-humanist or disciplinary narratives as part official knowledge apparatuses, nor is it to flip-the-script of traditional humanist narratives with simplistic revisionist approaches often mistaken for critical counternarratives, nor is it to weirdly shine a perspective-bending poststructuralist “magic lantern” on the past in the present. Rather, as drawing on many, many Latin American scholars preceding ICT who narrativized critical historical alternatives in order to inform specific historical-social movements (e.g., Acuña, 1972; Anaya, 1972/1995; Galeano, 1971/2008; García Márquez, 1967/1992; Las Casas, 1552/2011; Macros, 2001; Neruda, 1950/1997; Walsh, 2008), we draw on the notion of la educación popular (e.g., APPeAL 2022, Gómez & Puiggrós, 1986; Pinheiro Barbosa, 2013, 2016; Puiggrós, 1980/2015, 1983/2016, 2004/2023, 2010) in thinking and doing ICT. From these exemplars, ICT emphasizes that the purpose of historical work is to inform what Fúnez Flores (2020, 2021) calls in this volume (2023) the longue durée of relevant critical curricular-pedagogical praxes situated within social movements or, as work being done at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley articulates, specific and located institutional resistances (Carvajal et al., 2022; Garza et al., 2021/2023; Garza & Jupp, Under review; Guajardo, 1997; Guajardo et al., 2006, 2012; Guajardo & Guajardo, 2004; Luna et al., 2022). As a note, in this volume Raúl Olmo Fregoso Bailón and I translated and published a selection of Adriana Puiggrós’ (2004/2023) essay “From Simón Rodríguez to Paulo Freire” to document our intellectual debt owed to the anti-imperialist body of work on la educación popular in Latin America, a taproot of our work and an inspiration to us here. I thank Adriana Puiggrós for her transnational participation in this volume.