The 'Translation Tool' for Critical Pedagogic Practice in the Classroom: Reimagining the Potential of Curriculum Theory in Teaching

This paper employs the notion of curriculum potential as a heuristic to rethink an in-service Curriculum theory undergraduate course offered at Great Zimbabwe University in Masvingo, Zimbabwe. The course foregrounds reconceptualist notions of curriculum theorizing to empower students to rethink the dominant technicist pedagogical practices that are associated with the Tylerian rationale of curriculum development. The argument developed is that reconceptualist curriculum theorizing can serve as the translation tool for empowering teachers to engage in critical pedagogical practice. The medium of secondary school History is employed as a subject through which to illustrate the pedagogical opportunities for reframing subject content in ways that are affirming of the students lived realities. The paper concludes that engaging prospective and practicing teachers in the study of Curriculum has potential to empower them to question the historical present and their relation to it, and in so doing, to construct their own understandings of what it means to teach, to study, to become educated