Curriculum and Representation (original) (raw)

With the publication of this issue of Transnational Curriculum Inquiry, we bring the public three items that, in different ways, bring contributions to curriculum theory in connection with issues related to representation. In the first article, The Impossibility of Representation: Semiotic Museological Reading of the Aboriginal Cultural Diversity, the authors, Annette Furo and Ibrahim Awad, present a semiotic analysis of the Canadian Museum of Civilization and its celebration of Aboriginal cultural diversity. They question the representations of Aboriginal Cultural Diversity and how these representations are explored as reflections of reality. In this case, they argue that museums are important sites of critical curriculum studies. Through what they call 'semiotic pedagogy', they also argue that educators and learners should do critical reading about the exhibitions. The authors are thus questioning any and all pretense of an 'authentic' or 'full' representation of Aboriginal peoples, histories, and traditions. In the article, The Research-teaching Nexus in Higher Education Curriculum Design, Joanna Annala and Marita Makinen pore over the question of representation from another perspective. With a focus in higher education, the authors bring the results of a survey on representations of the research-teaching nexus in curriculum design. The paper presents findings that indicate the split nature of representations. The view, in this case, is directed towards the tensions within the internally and externally driven curricular goals of higher education, and in the ways of understanding the role of research and teaching. Around the question regarding what the representations of teachers and students are about research in curriculum design, the authors explore other dimensions of representation. But they also look to be placed within the context of interpretation and raise questions about how curriculum becomes more complex if we consider the representations of teachers and students on research and knowledge, theory and practice, discipline, society, among others. The article by Ana Maria Saul and Antonio Fernando Gouvêa da Silva, The Legacy of Paulo Freire for Curriculum Policies and Teaching in Brazil, discusses a distinct theme: the thinking of Paulo Freire and his power to analyze curriculum politics and Brazilian education, and why not in other parts of the world? With a focus on categories such as totality, emancipatory rationality, social and political emptiness, and democracy, the paper analyzes the current work of Paulo Freire to think about the field of curriculum policy. In this sense, even if not specifically analyzing the question of representation, the text contributes to the knowledge of discussions that pervade this theme. After all, politics is now one of the fields in which one seeks to overcome the approaches that comprehend representation as the possibility of transparency between representative and represented. Papers that address the question of rationalism in politics and incorporate a discursive Lopes & Macedo. Curriculum and Representation