Curriculum Practices Currere: Inquiry, Reflexivity and Risk Taking

Abstract

This presentation explores our efforts to understand our reactions to tension filled tenure track experiences related to the mandatory first-year review and second-year renewal. Using the analytical and synthetical phases of Currere as reflective practice, including a consideration for art-as-event and our familial-curriculum making, we attended to the tensions and shifted our stories such that we moved from reaction to responses and from despair to hope. We know this as a reconceptualization of ourselves, and our tenure track stories. We envision a future where tenure track hires are engaged and supported in communities that value their curriculum making, past, present, and future; similar to the community we are in the midst of creating. As well, we imagine a future where the tenure track process includes detailed guideposts that support successful navigation of the process. We also call upon tenured professors to “imaginatively stretch past taken-for-granted assumptions, to see the richness of” (Lessard, et al., 2015, p. 212) the diverse experiences and ways of knowing and world views that tenure track hires bring to the academy, often willing and ready to make contributions.