Do We Want Something New Or Just Repetition of 1492?: Engaging with the “Next” Moment in Curriculum Studies

This paper unpacks an unsettling encounter the author has (as doctoral student) with curriculum studies and its colonial, heteropatriarchical and white supremacist logics. In trying to settle, the unsettling encounter, the paper attempts to examine key questions in curriculum studies, ‘what is worthwhile knowing, what knowledge is of most worth’ and what work does curriculum studies do? This paper seeks to think through, within and against these questions in relation to the curriculum studies canon project proposed by the American Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies. The article is an invitation that calls scholars to think about forging new pathways towards the ‘next moment’ in curriculum studies through decolonization, solidarity and rupturing the descriptive statement of the human in looking towards the future of the field. Though this piece may be read as provocation, if curriculum scholars truly want to (re)conceptualize something “new”, a shift needs to take place