CHAPTER 5

SOME CONTRIBUTIONS OF THE STUDIES OF WILLIAM PINAR AND IVOR GOODSON CONCERNING RESEARCH IN THE FIELD OF

António Flávio Moreira*

INTRODUCTION At the start of the 1980s, I was a lecturer in Curriculum Studies at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. When Ideology and Curriculum was published in Brazil in 1982, its author, Michael Apple, became one of my favorite interlocutors by opening the doors of the of the curriculum for me and by highlighting the importance of Michael Young and of the English New Sociology of Education in relation to curriculum analyses, as well as calling my attention to such authors as Raymond Williams, Basil Bernstein, John Ahier, Rachel Sharp, Geoff Whitty, Philip Wexler and Barry Franklin with whom I would familiarise myself on the occasion of my doctorate. In 1984, I started my doctorate studies at the University of London Institute of Education under the supervision of Michael Young (chosen mainly due to the reading of Apple) and Bob Cowen. In the research developed I searched for an understanding of the paths followed by the curriculum field in Brazil from its emergence in the 1920s and 1930s until the moment when I carried out my study, in the second half of the 1980s. In my research I attempted to spell out the North- American influence in the Brazilian field by re-evaluating the relevance of the category educational transfer for the apprehension of the focused object. I analyzed the emergence and evolution of the field in the United States of America, while at the same time that I abstracted the benefits of the contributions of the New Sociology of Education, particularly from the texts of Michael Young and the other authors that supported the new sociological tendency. During this process, I established contact with the reconceptualization of the North-American curriculum field and with historical studies of the curriculum and the disciplines, particularly those developed by Barry Franklin, Ivor Goodson and Stephen Ball. I tried to understand the meaning of and to identify the characteristics of the reconceptualization movement that emerged in the Rochester Conference that took place in 1973 and proposed radical changes in curriculum studies and practices. I also pursued an understanding of the repercussions of the movement in subsequent

85 CHAPTER 5 trends in the field. Even if united by a reaction against the limitations of the theoretical character and the supposed neutrality of the curriculum analyses that were made at that moment, from the very start the group participating in the conference showed evidence of internal divisions. Expressing outstanding ideological differences, the sub-group made up of Marxists of various tendencies moved away from the sub-group less interested in structural questions and more pre-occupied with the individual. Institutional rivalries also contributed to incite distinct positionings. William Pinar1 – one of the main leaders of the movement – distinguished those that he called critical theorists (the Marxists) from the post-critical theorists, who at that time were more psychologically and philosophically oriented and more receptive to autobiography, phenomenology, psycho-analysis and literary theory. I dedicated myself to an examination of the texts written by Michael Apple (also an important leader of reconceptualization) and . Why was the sub-group of critical theorists (to which the two were associated) an option to me? I think that earlier readings of authors like Marx, Gramsci and Althusser favoured this option. Even when in Brazil, the desire to stimulate my students to position themselves against the military dictatorship in the country was better nourished by the theorisations of these two authors. During my doctoral studies, the role of their strong influences on Brazilian authors became evident and was made possible because of the process of re-democratising the country. Besides the study of the two critical authors, during my doctoral studies I examined the classical book edited by William Pinar2. I was more interested in the articles of Pinar himself and authors such as James Macdonald, Maxine Greene and Dwayne Huebner. Little by little, other publications by Pinar also became objects of my attention. I admired the validity and discourse of these experts, even if I hastily considered them as romantics and little pre-occupied with more radical changes in the capitalist order. The years went by and important political, economic and cultural changes made them-selves felt throughout the world. The process of globalization intensified and provoked complex and contradictory effects in different countries. In a world with various redefined frontiers, forthcoming problems (accruing from campaigns fighting on behalf of groups of discriminated minorities, from the acute transformations through which we passed, from the undue renascence of conservative and xenophobic postures) came to attract the attention of those who were available to reflect about and about education. New theoretical influences were noted and other authors came to justify their analyses and researches. Marxist and neo-Marxist positions started to exhibit signs of impoverishment and to show themselves incapable of responding to the requests and needs that were then demonstrated. Different ways of focusing questions (possibly classified before as naive) showed themselves to be more fertile and enlightening. In this perturbing scenario, the curriculum field changed, diversified, expanded itself and became – in Pinar’s words – a “complicated conversation.” The intention to understand curriculum process – already suggested in reconceptualization – accentuated and accepted, at times impatiently, the contributions of post-modernist and post-structuralist theories, gender and racial studies, environmental studies,

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