This book is about William Pinar: one of the best-known authors in the field of curriculum studies. The main contribution of William Pinar is not to determine the curriculum. He is involved in a continuous struggle to help students and teachers reflect about their personal experiences, educational and curricular options.
The book has been organized in five chapters. The first chapter—discursive construct—includes the identification of William Pinar from his own roots (as a student and as a teacher), and the schools of thought that influenced his work. The second chapter is concerned with Curriculum Studies as an academic field, answering the questions: What is Curriculum Theory? What does the reconceptualization movement mean? What is post- Reconceptualization? The following chapter is about Pinar’s curriculum theorizing, including a particular “mode de penser”, schooling, school and teacher education, as well as curriculum as comparative language and currere as method. The fourth chapter is about his life experiences, particularly the sense of South, and includes Pinar’s transdiscursivity, searching for the author-function features through the foundational Journal and the Internationalization of Curriculum Studies. The last chapter includes some contributions of the studies of William Pinar and Ivor Goodson concerning research in the field of curriculum by António Flávio Moreira, a well-known scholar in Brazil and Portugal.