Postmodern Curriculum Research
and Alternative Forms of Data Presentation

Public Seminar/Occasional Paper presented to
The Curriculum and Pedagogy Institute of the University of Alberta
29 September 1997

by Patrick Slattery
Associate Professor, Ashland University, Ohio

Introduction

As many universities explore alternative forms of data representation in both undergraduate and graduate education programs, a number of important questions are raised about the nature of educational research and postmodern inquiry. Carolyn Ellis (1997) contends that the "crisis of representation provoked by postmodernism challenges some of our most venerable notions about scientific knowledge and truth" (115) which in turn results in a loss of faith in the theory of language on which scientific inquiry has been based. Ellis continues by explaining that the postmodern critique of research undermines social science research devoid of intuition and emotions and questions the usefulness of rigid disciplinary boundaries that separate the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and the arts. Elliot Eisner (1997) presents the "promise and perils" of alternative forms of research representation, particularly arts-based experiences such as fiction, art installations, dance, and readers theater:

One of the basic questions scholars are now raising is how we perform the magical feat of transforming the contents of our consciousness into a public form that others can understand. The assumption that the language of the social sciences -propositional language and number-are the exclusive agents of meaning is becoming increasingly problematic, and as a result, we are exploring the potential of other forms of representation for illuminating the educational worlds we wish to understand.... The concept of alternative forms of data representation presents an image that acknowledges the variety of ways through which our experience is coded. (4)

I agree with Eisner that propositional language and number are only two forms of representation and that multiple approaches in the realm of the visual, musical, and theatrical must be encouraged and legitimated. Traditional social science research in either quantitative or qualitative form is no more rigorous or insightful than informed eclectic postmodern alternatives. Painting, musical compositions, film documentaries, readers theater, art installations, or multimedia projects are valid forms of data representation. Their validity arises from what Eisner calls "referential adequacy" and "structural corroboration" (1994). Patti Lather (1986) contends that validity refers to how we are able to improve the lives of those we study. William Tierney and Yvonna Lincoln (1997) contend that "how we present our work, and to whom, is more up for grabs today than at any other time in this century" (vii).

Laurel Richardson (1994) argues that the debate about multiple forms of data representations emerge from postmodern theory:

The core of postmodernism is the doubt that any method or theory, discourse or genre, tradition or novelty, has a universal and general claim as the "right" or privileged form of authoritative knowledge. Postmodernism suspects all truth claims of masking and serving particular interests in local, cultural and political struggles...No method has a privileged status. The superiority of [social] science over literature-or from another vantage point literature over [social] science [research]-is challenged. (517)

Tierney and Lincoln explore the postmodern discourses about representation and conclude that we must provide multiple forms of data representation for multiple audiences because "multiple texts, directed toward research, policy, social change efforts, or public intellectual needs...may better represent both the complexity of the lives we study, and the lives we lead as academics and private persons" (1997, p. xi)

Postmodern Connections

Contemporary approaches to educational research and the reconceptualized curriculum field that utilize postmodern theories and foreground multiple forms of representation, arts-based inquiry, complexity, ambiguity, radical democracy, anti-racism, feminism, poststructural analyses, cultural studies, hermeneutics, autobiography, and ecology have been critiqued by Wraga (1996) for "[failing] to distinguish between approved practice among 'traditionalists' curricularists and conventional practice in the schools" and for "[obscuring] substantive differences between progressive and essentialist educational practices" (472). Wraga (1996) concludes that "the result is what appears to be a massive co-option of progressive educational practices in the name of postmodernism" (472). Wraga is not alone in the challenge to distinguish postmodern theories from progressive education, social reconstruction, and even traditional research methodologies that incorporate practices that appear to Wraga and others to be consistent with postmodern research. This critique deserves further analysis and will provide the impetus for investigating postmodern curriculum research in this article.

The analysis of the complexity of postmodern theories requires multiple voices, contextual reflection, and expanded illustrations in order to move toward new modes of research beyond the traditionalist, progressive, or reconstructionist philosophies. Many scholars conclude that a paradigm shift in curriculum research is underway guided by a new cosmology (Doll, 1993). Postmodern curriculum research must be evaluated in this context; a new set of questions must emerge. A reevaluation of the assumptions about the nature of curriculum research is underway. The well attended AERA sessions with Maxine Greene, Eliot Eisner, and Howard Gardner addressing the nature of arts-based research testifies to the lively interest in exploring these assumptions.

The assumptions of the emerging postmodern curriculum discourses include the following: a Whiteheadian cosmology that views educational research and practice as an emerging process of understanding the complexity of the interrelationship between parts and whole with an emphasis on the contribution of the individual within a holistic framework rather than an emphasis on the transmission of isolated elements of inert information (Whitehead, 1929; Oliver and Gershman, 1989); an etymological understanding of curriculum as currere-an active verb-as proposed by Pinar and Grumet (1976); a critique of traditional curriculum models that foreground goals, objectives, scope and sequence charts, and prescriptive evaluation instruments with an emphasis on curriculum as an object or a noun; a respect for the vital significance of the null and hidden dimensions of the curriculum as proposed by diverse critical and aesthetic scholars (Eisner, 1994; Giroux, 1992); a commitment to spiritual and moral dimensions of curriculum research (Noddings, 1992; Purpel, 1989; Slattery, 1995); a phenomenological approach to research as the investigation of the lived world experience of teachers and students (Aoki, 1992; Greene, 1995); an incredulity toward metanarratives, rational enlightenment thinking, and other efforts to create unified explanations of reality (Lyotard, 1989); support for poststructural philosophies that deconstruct sedimented perceptors and linear bifurcations, both of which have contributed to the absurd dream of a complete, unique, and closed explanatory system fueled by binary oppositions (Usher and Edwards, 1994); a belief that the creation of a holistic, just, and ecologically sustainable educational culture is not only possible but essential to the survival of human life (Griffin, 1988; Kesson, 1993); a fundamental option for the poor and marginalized in schools and society as part of a larger movement toward radical democracy in an anti-racist and post-colonial world (Freire, 1985; Kincheloe, 1993; Lather, 1991; McCarthy, 1990; McLaren, 1989); a strong sense of the central role of imagination and aesthetics that leads to the conclusion that ultimately we must see ourselves and our students as works of art (Greene, 1995; Nietzsche, 1968); a sense of urgency about environmental, economic, and social issues that necessitates the inclusion of ecological sustainability, multiculturalism, and cooperative practices in the construction of research methodologies and curricular practices (Daly and Cobb, 1989); a strong belief in the prophetic dimension of teaching and learning that requires bold initiatives to address social, political, economic, spiritual, racial, and gender issues in the schooling process (Kozol, 1991, Books and Slattery, 1997); and, finally, in concert with William Pinar (Pinar, et al., 1995), the centrality of autobiography and psychoanalysis in the educational and research process where curriculum development does not make sense outside of a reflective context of curriculum understanding. I believe that postmodern philosophies-especially when interfacing with complexity theory, critical theory, poststructural psychology, phenomenological aesthetics, and proleptic eschatology-are emerging as a viable and exciting alternative form of representation in educational research that move well beyond progressive education and social reconstruction. These new forms, as I will demonstrate below, are dramatically impacting not only doctoral level research but also teacher training programs, masters level courses, and elementary and secondary classroom practices. The postmodern discourse is complex and contentious. However, as it continues to capture the imagination of a larger segment of the educational research community, postmodern theories must be investigated by all serious scholars.

As we explore and debate postmodern paradigms an opportunity exists to offer hope for a global community that has endured the tragedies of the modern pathos--the holocaust, slavery, genocide, environmental degradation, racism, Apartheid, homophobia, nuclear destruction, religious persecution, colonialization, economic class warfare, and the other absurdities of the modern era. The scholars cited above contend that postmodern visions not only deconstruct the logic and philosophies that have led to the tragedies of modernity, but also provide an alternative to such destruction. Many believe that the postmodern vision of curriculum research and classroom practices can lead to a just, caring, and ecologically sustainable global culture. As we explore postmodern alternatives, we must constantly be reminded of Derrida's caution, "I was quite explicit about the fact that nothing of what I have said had a destructive meaning. [Deconstruction] has nothing to do with destruction. [I]t is simply a question of...being alert to the implications, to the historical sedimentation in the language we use-and that is not destruction" (1972, p. 271).

Why Postmodernism?

The postmodern movement in art, architecture, philosophy, and literary theory in recent decades has emphasized eclecticism, deconstruction, and multiple forms of representation. Postmodern philosophies have articulated concepts such as the following: the death of the subject, the repudiation of depth models of reality, the rejection of grand narratives or universal explanations of history, the illusion of the transparency of language, the impossibility of any final meaning, the effects of power on the objects it represents, the failure of pure reason to understand the world, the de-centering of the Western logos and with it the de-throning of the "first world," the end of a belief in progress as a natural and neutral panacea, and a celebration of difference and multiplicity. Following from the work of Thomas Kuhn, postmodernism espouses a belief that modern society and contemporary culture are in the midst of a profound paradigm shift. As an historical epoch, postmodernism parallels the shift from premodern society to modernity in the 15th to 17th centuries. The cosmology of the premodern world gave way to reason, positivism, bifurcation, linear logic, enlightenment, and scientism. Humanity developed a new view of itself in relation to the universe. John M. Barry (1997) describes the modern era of the nineteenth century as a time of "iron and steel, certainty and progress, and the belief in physical laws as solid and rigid as iron and steel governed nature, possibly every man's [sic] nature, and that man had only to discover these laws to truly rule the world" (21). In recent decades humanity has begun the process-albeit with resistance and struggle-of developing a new cosmology that recognizes the limitations of the modern world view and celebrates postmodern multiplicity and deconstruction as an avenue to overcome injustice.

Just as Copernicus and Galileo provided a new perspective on the position of the Earth in the universe, twentieth century space exploration and photographs of the Earth from space have provided a stunning perspective of the relation of human life to the cosmos. Silencing and excommunicating Galileo did not eliminate the emergence of the modern cosmology. Refusing to engage in the postmodern debate or insisting on a return to the narrow tenants of a modern world view are futile attempts to silence a cosmology that has already emerged. Likewise, attempts to repress multiple forms of representation in postmodern curriculum research are narrow minded and irresponsible.

Multiple Understandings

Postmodernism is itself understood in multiple ways. Poststructuralism and deconstruction, as associated with Foucault, Derrida, and Kristiva (among others), open the possibility of criticizing the theories, institutions, and practices that are culpable in the brutalization of contemporary life. Critical theorists utilize postmodern theory to promote anti-racist, feminist, anti-homophobic, and liberatory social practices. Constructive postmodernism, as associated with Griffin, Kung, Doll, and Jencks, interfaces with emerging ecumenical and liberation theologies to construct a just, caring, and ecologically sustainable global culture in the emerging historical epoch. In the postmodern spirit, some researchers utilize an eclectic mixture of these and other theories to propose a radically new vision of art, music, literature, philosophy, and educational research. Critics who attempt to universalize all postmodern theories are operating within the modern obsession with linear bifurcation. Postmodernism is a complex set of reactions to modern philosophy and its presuppositions rather than any agreement on substantive doctrines. Postmodernism typically challenges foundationalism, essentialism, and realism. For Richard Rorty (1989) the presuppositions to be set aside are foundationalist assumptions shared by 16th to 18th century philosophers. For Nietzche, Heidegger, Foucault, and Derrida, the presuppositions to be set aside are as old as metaphysics and Plato. Some, such as Lyotard and Griffin, have even suggested that postmodern philosophy preceded modern philosophy in the sense that the presuppositions of philosophical modernism emerged out of a disposition whose antecedent beliefs are postmodern. For Lyotard this might include a sense of the interconnectedness of the universe rather than the fragmentation of information into fields of study. Lyotard (1989) explains:

Didactics does not simply consist in the transmission of information; and competence, even when defined as a performance skill, does not simply reduce to having a good memory for data or having easy access to a computer. It is a commonplace that what is of utmost importance is the capacity to actualize the relaxant data for solving a problem "here and now," and to organize the data into an efficient strategy. As long as the game is not a game of perfect information, the advantage will be with the player who has knowledge and can obtain information. By definition, this is the case of a student in a leaning situation. But in games of perfect information, the best performativity cannot exist in obtaining perfect information in this way. It comes rather from arranging the data in a new way in what constitutes a "move" properly speaking. This new arrangement is usually achieved by connecting together series of data that were previously held to be independent. This capacity to articulate what used to be separate can be called imagination. (51-52)

Here Lyotard affirms Maxine Greene's (1995) conclusion that "the principles and the contexts have to be chosen by living human beings against their own life-worlds and in the light of their lives with others, by persons able to call, to say, to sing, and-using their imaginations, tapping their courage-to transform" (p. 198). Postmodern research seeks such transformation.

While the postmodern movement in educational research and philosophy certainly has affinities with opposition to the spectator theory of knowledge that emerged in Europe long before the term "postmodern" became commonplace-such as Dewey's early opposition to positivism, Wittgenstein's insistence on the language-game character of representation, and Sellars critique of "the myth of the given"--current postmodern thought moves beyond such opposition. Griffin's (1988) The Reenchantment of Science and Green's (1995) Releasing the Imagination both provide examples of a new transformation in the postmodern epoch. I would argue with Lyotard (1989) that modern movements-in society and in curriculum-are efforts to return to terror. "It must be clear that it is our business not to supply reality but to invent allusions to the conceivable which cannot be presented....We have paid a high enough price for the nostalgia of the whole and the one, for the reconciliation of the sensible, of the transparent and the communicable experience. We can hear the mutterings for a desire for a return of terror....let us wage war on totality" (81-82). Postmodern curriculum, in Lyotard's spirit, wages war on totality of representation that reduces learning to information transmission, disciplinary structures, grand narratives, and concepts of "reason" that continue to foster the bifurcations that ignite racism, patriarchy, homophobia, colonialism, and classism. Postmodern curriculum research refuses to be bound by rigid modern bifurcations and the divisive linear logic that follows.

Postmodern Implications for Curriculum Research

The cohesive, unified identity of an individual that is fully capable of self-presence is an illusion of modern rational thinking and the scientism of psychology. This is reflected in the poststructural concept of "the death of the subject." Descarte's Cogito is undermined by Lacan as postmodern psychology investigates the nature of language and human existence. Robin Usher and Richard Edwards (1994) present the postmodern case when they contend that the idea of self-presence as perfect representation is replaced by the "decentered subject, where the subject of consciousness, the reasoning, thinking, transparent subject, is displaced by the opaque subject of the unconscious" (57). I find it helpful to address Usher and Edwards' concern on the biological level first and then move to the psychological level.

A recent article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer entitled "Is the child yours?: DNA testing uncovers surprising number of dads who aren't the father" (Torassa, 1997) is illustrative. Genetic research at University Hospitals of Cleveland, the article reports, requires up to ten percent additional volunteer subjects in order to account for "misidentified paternity." Unreported adoptions, children switched at birth, sperm donors, secret affairs, and the like all contribute to the growing awareness that biological heritage is more opaque than certain. Literally, we are not who we think we are. I write in my book Curriculum Development in the Postmodern Era (Slattery, 1995) about my own experiences with identity construction in the south. Like Madelein Albright, as an adult I discovered Jewish great-grandparents whose identities were erased by a fearful grandmother in the 1930s. Gregory Howard Williams (1995) in Life on the Color Line reminds us of the uncertainty of racial identity. James McBride (1996), author of The Color of Water, writes about his light skinned mother who hid the fact that she was a Polish, Jewish immigrant to the United States. His mother had always told the family that she was a light skinned black woman in order to hide her rejection by her Jewish family when she married a black man.

We are reminded here of Gadamer's critique of consciousness where he undermined the notion of a self-transparent consciousness that believes it is fully itself, the center of being, completely in control, and immune to influences outside or inside of itself. Gadamer teachers us that subjects are prejudiced. The horizon, and thus identity, is always shifting. In the same light, meaning is shifting, ambiguous, and uncertain. If the self is transparent, why should we expect literature, math, science, or art to be fixed? Yet, in modern curriculum research we emphasize-often exclusively-linear logic, propositional language, universal truth, and fixed meaning. The postmodern curriculum forces us to take a posture of incredulity toward such metanarratives in our research. Postmodern curriculum research begins with this assumption rather than the modern assumption that linear progress and sequential development can lead to certainty and completion.

What might this mean for educational research and classroom practices in the university and in K-12 schooling? Usher and Edwards (1994) offer this insight:

[I]t is impossible to be a teacher without also being a learner, that in order to be a teacher it is first necessary to abandon the position of the "one who knows", recognizing both one's own lack of knowledge and of self-transparency and mastery and that ones own learning is never, and never will be, complete. (80)

It follows here that the distinction between teachers and students is never so clear-cut as it is conventionally assumed, particularly in schooling. Postmodern theorists such as Usher and Edwards contend that psychoanalysis provides the means to deconstruct this aspect of authority in the teacher-student relationship. However, this deconstruction does not imply an advocacy of chaos in the classroom without any structure or a move to destruction. On the contrary, it means the discovery of limits, contrasts, multiplicity, layers of interpretations, and shades of differences. Teachers and students must therefore be lifelong learners. Usher and Edwards (1994) conclude:

However, it is important to stress that what we are talking about here is not the humanistic conception of "lifelong learning" as the continual adaptation to the needs of the existing socio-economic order. Nor is it merely a restatement of the notion of learner centeredness.... rather it is an argument for teachers to continually question the ground upon which they stand, to question their own ready implication in the discourse of master. For this, teachers need to be trained to analyse what is repressed in order to foreground the affects, release the emotions [and imagination], and broaden the sense of fulfillment. The pupils would then be allowed to extend their analysis to their environment. To create the space they live in rather than just fit in with the set rules. Literally. To paint. To build. To co-operate. To participate. The limit then would be the analysis of the transference. (80)

Here Usher and Edwards address Wraga's critique directly. They admit that postmodern theories resonate with certain strands of progressive education but without its teleology of emancipated free expression and its containment within the overall framework of modernist educational theory and practice. They write that psychoanalysis in the Lacanian mode, then, is itself radically self-subversive and a process which did not simply examine its own ground but systematically cut the ground away from itself.

What I propose is that the very concept of expertise, like Lyotard's grand narratives and Usher and Edwards' all-knowing teacher, must be challenged. In order for this to occur, autobiographical, psychoanalytic, phenomenological, aesthetic, and multicultural perspectives must be foregrounded. Thus, those researchers committed to the postmodern shift continue to explore new lines of research in this vein. These are uncharted territories. Postmodern curriculum research is therefore often dismissed as nonconformist, unverifiable, unreliable, or simply incomprehensible. The following example offers a challenge to such criticism and a demonstration that postmodern research is infiltrating teacher training programs and the schooling process.

Multiple Forms of Representation

One of the important contributions of postmodern curriculum discourses is the move to expand research methodologies. Some would like to limit curriculum research to traditional quantitative and a few qualitative methodologies such as ethnography or case studies. However, many others are exploring alternative and multiple forms of representation such as arts-based experiences, phenomenological narratives, and autobiographical excavations. Recent sessions at the AERA convention where the question of whether or not a novel could count as a research methodology for a PhD dissertation in education-and whether or not an author's explanation of the educational relevance of the novel is necessary or appropriate-were debated exemplify the complexity of the issues involved. Eisner (1996) reported that the novel has been approved as a research methodology for the dissertation in education in some universities.

In my own university the debate has centered around the acceptable form of research to be used by graduate students completing the masters degree program. Since the inception of the graduate program in 1977, all masters level students have been required to complete a five chapter dissertation-style research practicum on a topic related to school improvement, all under the direction of an assigned faculty advisor. The practicum must include an extensive literature review followed by a description of the implementation of the project utilizing one of the traditional research methodologies taught in the quantitative or qualitative research courses: statistical analysis, school-based case study, ethnography, test and measurement, etc. All practicums are bound and catalogued in a special collection in the library, forming an impressive and imposing visual display.

With the urging of several professors who are committed to alternative forms of representation and postmodern research, the faculty in 1996 approved an experimental alternative to the practicum called an inquiry seminar. This seminar replaces the practicum as the culminating requirement for the masters degree in curriculum for those graduate students who register for the seminar. A maximum of 15 students are allowed to register in each section. A full-time faculty member serves as mentor and selects the research topics, readings, and forms of representations in consultation with the students. Students are required to read relevant educational literature, complete a written project, and conduct a public presentation at the end of the process. The seminar may last either one or two semesters depending on the professor's preference. Acceptable forms of representation in the writing and speaking components of the seminar are determined in each seminar.

In contrast, the practicum has specific chapter requirements and prescribed formats. Prior to starting the practicum, students must take a non-credit training session on style and format, and upon completion of the practicum a technical reviewer and the faculty advisor must both approve the document. Since there is no prescribed format or style for the inquiry seminar, only the faculty advisor must approve the final seminar project.

Having served as an advisor for both the practicum and the inquiry seminar, it is my experience that the quality of the final products can vary greatly for both forms of representation. However, the flash point of the debate about the inquiry seminar centers on the question of the format and style of the student projects. Some would like for inquiry seminar students to produce a written document comparable to the practicum. Others, like myself, prefer to approve multiple forms of representation. An example will be illustrative.

I conducted an inquiry seminar entitled "arts-based postmodern curriculum research" in the spring of 1996. Following extensive readings in postmodern theory, qualitative inquiry, aesthetics, and contemporary curriculum discourses, each student designed and executed an arts-based research project. In the past year, these students have been invited to display their work on several university campuses, and they also conducted an art installation at the 1996 Journal of Curriculum Theorizing conference.

Typical of that work is a 6' x 4' assemblage on canvas (figure 1) depicting three young women reaching for a Barbie doll encased in a glass box on a column in the sky. The young women of color with various ethnic characteristics are standing on the heads of smiling and manicured teenagers; the blue eyed white Barbie is surrounded by faces of the elderly in the sky. Rows of textbooks and novels that reflect both contemporary and traditional literature form a wall between the young women and the blond hair, blue-eyed Barbie doll. The artist, Ashland University graduate student Lura Hershey Magi, discussed this piece with the audience attending the public presentation of the inquiry seminar project. Magi reflected on the influence of Toni Morrison's novel The Bluest Eye on her work and discussed the continuing tragedy of sexist and racist image construction in modern society. In her artist statement Magi (1996) writes the following:

An icon can be reflected negative image of oneself with its roots buried deeply within. The icon produces walls that protect us from our tormentors and shields us from the words and actions of the perpetrators. Icons also provide hope when we learn to unlock the secrets. A little girl's dreams and expectations should not be dictated by the media, movies, or Mattel. We live in a culture of imposition and degradation. It is only after reaching a conscious level of maturity that women begin to realize their dignity. This mixed media icon challenges the viewer to recognize that distorted images destroy the lives of our children. (1)

Magi continues by explaining that her work can be interpreted on many levels. In the postmodern spirit, we can view the children as reaching for an idealized Mattel vision of womanhood in order to conform to social constructions. We can also consider the young women as possessing a maturity that allows them to understand the complexity of the Barbie doll image a they reach to pull Barbie from her pedestal. Are the young women striving to become like Barbie? Are they reaching to pull her down? Are they reaching out to console the doll who is trapped in the glass box? As educators, this image dramatically confronts our potentially racist and sexist practices and their destructive consequences for all students. The assemblage impels us to consider the impact of social constructions of reality, particularly for women of color. It also invites us to join Toni Morrison in the search to expose the devastating impact of "blue eye" images on young women. Magi's icon cries out for justice, compassion, and understanding.

I believe that Magi's icon addresses issues of race, gender, and culture in ways that a traditional practicum research project is incapable of doing. It serves a different purpose -- not better, only different. Arts-based projects can elicit insights and reactions that cannot be found in statistical studies or written practicums. Both forms of research make a contribution to our understanding of curriculum.

When some of my colleagues suggest that in order to have a well-rounded education my graduate students should complete a traditional research practicum in addition to their arts-based postmodern project, I respond by challenging them to require their students to work with me to complete an arts-based component to their statistical studies. I am being facetious, of course. However, this confounds critics who cannot accept the value of alternative forms of representation as acceptable forms of research in their own right. Critics assume that a written artifact in the prescribed style and format of the traditional practicum methodologies is the only acceptable culminating requirement for graduate students. I prefer to be at the forefront of postmodern curriculum research that promotes projects like Lura Hershey Magi's icon. Such projects provide new levels of understanding that can make a significant contribution to justice, compassion, and understanding in our society. I propose that it is time to expand research methodologies in the university to include multiple forms of representation and postmodern alternatives like those introduced in this article. Postmodern curriculum research proceeds in this vein.

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