Curriculum as Confession: The Promise of Teaching for Selfhood and Truth

This book offers a philosophical inquiry into the idea of curriculum as confession and considers how it can help us answer questions of justice, selfhood, and truth. It connects the field of curriculum studies and continental philosophy in order to arrive at new ways of thinking through the concept and act of confession. Utilising a phenomenological and deconstructive approach to thinking about curriculum, the author draws upon scholars including William Pinar, Jacques Derrida, Madeleine Grumet, and Michel Foucault to act as interlocutors for a re-thinking of Pinar’s statement that ＂we need educational confession.＂ The chapters argue that confession communicates the interplay between thinking, translation, and transformation, showing how confession can be conceived of as educative in both instrumental and existential ways. An innovative study that explores confession in both ＂religious＂ and ＂secular＂ senses, and conceptualises curriculum as a theological and phenomenological text, it uniquely explores what confession can reveal, how we tell the truth without violating the other, and how one does justice to the world they experience. It will appeal to scholarly audiences with interests in curriculum studies, teacher education, philosophy of education, religious studies, religious education, and theology.

Christopher M. Cruz is an English teacher at The Paideia School and an independent scholar in the field of curriculum studies, USA.