Critical Curriculum Studies: Education, Consciousness, and the Politics of Knowing

This fully updated second edition of Critical Curriculum Studies offers a conceptual framework that bridges curriculum design with students’ understanding of the world around them.

In this new edition, Wayne Au brings together curriculum theory, critical educational studies, and feminist standpoint theory with practical examples of teaching for social justice to argue for a transformative curriculum that challenges existing inequity in social, educational, and economic relations. Making use of the work of important scholars such as Freire, Vygotsky, Hartsock, Harding, and others, Critical Curriculum Studies argues that we must understand the relationship between the curriculum and the types of consciousness we carry out into the world. The second edition includes fully updated references and examples throughout the text, expanded discussion of dialectics, and improved pedagogical features, including connections to classroom practice and new chapter summaries to aid student understanding.

Combining theory and practice, this book will be core reading for postgraduate and advanced undergraduate students in Curriculum Studies, Curriculum and Instruction, and Foundations of Education courses.

Wayne Au is a Professor in the School of Educational Studies at the University of Washington Bothell, USA. A long-time critical educational activist and scholar, his work examines issues of power and justice in education policy and practice.