Intern Teachers Using Currere" : Discovering Education as a River

Intern Teachers Using Currere: Discovering Education as a River is about a new way of grounding students in teacher preparation programs that allows them to access their previous experiences and concepts of education as the basis for developing their individual understandings of curriculum in the fullness of its meaning. Currere is shown as a remarkable process that can have a tremendously positive influence on a teacher’s developing identity, her understanding of lived curriculum, and her emerging recognition of pedagogy.

The metaphor of a river is used to open up the phenomenon of using Currere to understand curriculum through various sources that reveal relationships with language, dwelling, identity, and hermeneutic phenomenology. The initial themes that arise include moments, in-between spaces, abundance, resilience, and the flow of lived experience. Further conversation and interpretation reveal deeper pedagogical themes, including navigating unexpected experiences; the difficulties of finding authenticity in a mentor’s classroom; the constant state of being watched, observed, and evaluated; exploring the teacher-self; and discovering the curriculum and pedagogy of lived experience.

Based on these emergent themes, this book explores ways in which the lived experience of using Currere to understand curriculum has pedagogical implications for teacher practice and teacher preparation. It suggests that opportunities for intern teachers to use the Currere process can help them discover for themselves what it is to be a teacher; develop orientations of stewardship toward professional practice; deepen their understandings of curriculum in its abundance; and create a lived curriculum of pedagogical care in their classrooms for the children whom they have committed to serve.