Rethinking (curriculum) history: a conceptual framework

The role and significance of history in curriculum scholarship is a matter of increasing interest and debate. From a position where curriculum history seemed sometimes to be set in opposition to curriculum theory, it now seems to be increasingly accommodated within, in dialogue with, and even welcomed by, the contemporary field. This is partly to be understood as an ongoing project of reconceptualising curriculum history itself. This paper seeks to contribute to these various lines of inquiry by extending work done to date on the relationship between history and discourse, and relatedly curriculum-historical inquiry and discourse analysis. The paper outlines and elaborates what is described as a conceptual framework, offered as a heuristic resource for re-thinking curriculum history. It might be seen first and foremost as a ‘teaching’ text, a text for pedagogy, in that it is aimed in the first instance towards postgraduate students and early-career researchers, seeking a way into curriculum history as a distinct field of study—although hopefully it is also of wider interest.