Curriculum work and hermeneutics

Abstract

The curriculum work of teachers is understood and conceptualised in different ways. A prevalent view is that teachers are an integral part of a system of transmission and their work with curriculum essentially a technical exercise. Some form of this view seems to be assumed by policymakers, parents and at least some teachers. However, when this same work is considered from the perspective of interpretation theory or ‘hermeneutics’, a contrasting picture emerges. Rather than positioning teachers as relays of explicit information, interpretation theory alerts us to the complexities and uncertainties inherent in the reading, appreciation and application of texts. On this view, meaning is not stable but transformed through interpretation, and the process itself has no definite end point. Interpretation theory thus undermines major assumptions of the technical-transmission understanding of curriculum work. In this paper, the potential contribution of this body of theory to illuminating curriculum work is explored. Noting that hermeneutics is a vast area of study, a selection of concepts will be made that demonstrates some of these insights. The exploration will yield both critical and generative contributions to curriculum theory. The way hermeneutics undermines the transmission view of teachers' curriculum work will become clear, and at the same time, the inherent creativity of curriculum interpretation becomes an inescapable feature of teacher expertise that could be celebrated rather than neglected, denied or repressed. A hermeneutic analysis of curriculum work thus has implications for what teachers know and do and for their role in contemporary society.