Conference on Curriculum Theory and Classroom Practice
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"Working from Within: Crisis, Compassion, and Curriculum of Global Imagination"
October 12, 2011 – October 15, 2011Location
Bergamo Conference Center
Dayton, Ohio
View Map and/Get DirectionsDates
Pre-Conference: October 12-13, 2011
Conference: October 13-15, 2011Call for Proposals
In today's educational crisis provoked by business people's and politicians' desire to maintain the US's position as the international superpower, under the government-sponsored, publically supported demand for accountability and standardization, many educators feel trapped, enraged, or depressed. Releasing from arrest, releasing into movement, what can we do? We have to "work from within" again to find inner sources and cultivate clear visions for paving out pathways that lead us out of the only "best" way imposed from the outside. Is it possible for us to transform fear, anger, and sadness into life-affirmative, life-sustaining energy to renew the meanings of education in a difficult time?
At the 10th anniversary year of the September 11 tragedy, we are still in a global time of uncertainty, conflict, and hostility, but it is also a time of possibility and interconnectedness. In the context of the recent uprisings of people against dictatorship in the Middle East one nation after another nation, the global landscape has been shifting. At the home ground, protests against compromising labor union's rights broke out in Wisconsin and other states. What do all these events speak to us as educators? What has happened to the American identity and the American psyche for the past 10 years? Is there any link between the intensified nationalism and increased push for teachers to raise students' test scores? How has the turning point in the history of this nation 10 years ago impacted the educational landscape? Will the current revolution of the Middle East make us re-imagine global relationships beyond the past conventional paths? Is it possible to deconstruct the mentality of "win or lose" competition in the global setting? How are we implicated in such a mentality as educators? How do we make sense of the ever-changing world in our educational project for next generations?
Responding to the demand of crisis, we must have the courage to teach critically in a security-stringent climate, the compassion to connect across differences even when the other is depicted as evil, and the capacity to move beyond the seemingly dead-ends. To educate with courage, compassion, and capacity, we must cultivate them in ourselves to integrate different psychic energies. In this historical moment, let's look inward and look outward to enact a curriculum of global imagination, which transforms the nature of relational dynamics into the direction of embracing international connectedness and nonviolent relationships within, between, and among the local, the national, and the global.
We invite teachers, students, scholars, theorists, administrators, and cultural workers to join us in this endeavor at the 2011 Bergamo Conference on Curriculum Theory and Classroom Practice. Reflecting our commitment to advance understandings of curriculum by "working from within" this year's conference features three keynote speakers and respondents whose work challenges us to imagine new possibilities for curriculum and education. We are offering the opportunity for scholars to participate in one of three pre-conference institutes hosted by accomplished scholars that focus on cutting edge educational issues. The "Provoking Dialogue(s)" sessions return for a second year allowing for us to engage in communal discussion of new and classic curriculum texts. The conference also will feature four diverse and dynamic all-conference sessions, nightly social and cultural events, and professional development opportunities targeted at current graduate students.
Keynotes, Respondents, Pro-Conference Institutes, Entertainment, and more! -
"(Re)Negotiating Nostalgia: Building Curriculum Communities Without Consensus"
October 14, 2010 – October 16, 2010We have been called upon by Professor Janet L. Miller, the founding organizer (with William F. Pinar) of Bergamo Conference and JCT, to complicate our relationships with the histories of the North American Curriculum Field. In her keynote address titled, "Nostalgia for the Future: Imagining Histories of JCT and Bergamo," delivered at last year's 30th Anniversary Bergamo Conference, Professor Miller theorized nostalgia in a more nuanced way that has the potential to allow us to carry our pasts forward in transformative rather than restrictive ways. Traditional understandings of nostalgia (romanticized longings for the way we believe things were) may bind our scholarly communities to repeating stagnant discourses bound by the limitations of these perceived histories. She cautions curriculum scholars to avoid making imperialist nostalgic claims such as declaring the Reconceptualization a victory over the Tyler Rationale. Instead it is nostalgia for the future, what she describes as a "most modest form of nostalgia", that we must collectively undertake. This year's Bergamo Conference asks that we engage with our possible futures by pulling apart the slices of these histories and understanding these shifting memories as constantly in-the-making.
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"Curriculum in Motion: A Moment of Celebration, Critique and Contemplation"
October 15, 2009 – October 17, 2009Anniversary is a moment of blending the lived past, the anticipated future, and the present-in-the-making, a moment of celebration, critique, and contemplation. Embedded in the richness, complexity, and vitality of its 30 years of history, the Bergamo Conference is also situated in the transitions of today's world to create the world anew. Avoiding nostalgia or utopian naivety, this anniversary conference is committed to transforming the educational present, enriched by the past, energized by the future.
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"Complications, Connections, and Crossings: Curriculum in Motion"
October 16, 2008 – October 18, 2008Check out Photos from the 2008 Conference!
Presenters at the Conference on Curriculum Theory and Classroom practice retain copyright to their work.
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