Changing School Subjects : Power, Gender and Curriculum

/pas0/What happens in the school curriculum is fundamental to people's lives. Schools are meant to educate the next generation and to do so through school subjects. But subjects and the teachers who teach them are not equal: some are given more importance both inside and outside schools. Curriculum change (such as the introduction of a national curriculum) highlights which subjects are regarded as central and which are perceived as marginal./par0/par0/Changing School Subjects examines the effects of curriculum change on teachers and students. It focuses upon the gendered nature of the curriculum, and how curricular forms include or exclude certain subjects and certain groups. It analyses how power, gender and knowledge intersect to determine how school knowledge is constructed, what knowledge is made available to which students, who supplies the knowledge, and how./par0/par0/Carrie Paechter provides a much-needed reconceptualization of the field of curriculum that will be of practical and theoretical relevance to teachers, students and academics reflecting upon curriculum processes in schools.

Carrie Paechter is a Lecturer in Education at the Open University. Her research interests, which developed from her experience as a mathematics teacher in London secondary schools, include the intersection of gender, power and knowledge, and the processes of curriculum negotiation in schools and higher education institutions.