ISBN: 979-8-9915482-8-1

Title: Chicken Salad and the Curriculum of Life: Curriculum Fragments on Hopeful(less)ness, Relationality, and Agency

Authors: Thomas S. Poetter, Aimee Applegate, Sara Jing Chen, Edmund Chirambo, Tamise Ironstrack, Ryan Kwapniowski, Beth Rimer, & Bethany Shropshire

About the Book:

Chicken Salad and the Curriculum of Life is the work of a doctoral cohort of students studying in the area of curriculum studies with their professor over the course of a full semester at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio. In what they call a “flash book” (from final draft to print in 100 days or less), the authors use the currere method of inquiry – based on deep reflection and the surfacing of life experiences — in hopes of illuminating the curricular natures of their own educational journeys, both collectively and individually, as well as the implications of those experiences for their emerging assumptions, concepts, and practices in educational settings.

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I hope that you will engage the core of the work of “becoming” in a curricular sense while you read this book – that is, by operating under the impression that all of our educational endeavors and experiences, our life journeys, are in and of themselves filled with deep learning and are curricular in nature. I hope that you will take the reading and thinking time and space necessary to reflect on your own educational experience, to interrogate it, and convert it somehow through a deeply ethical, reflective alchemy that involves thinking, writing, expressing, and sharing it with others. So, as you read, consider writing your own story of your curriculum journey, reflecting as you will in a currere fashion about your educational past, present, and future, especially in terms of the things that you remember that have influenced you and that you can’t shake off: Your own curriculum fragments.

The authors of this volume have taken that challenge and present their work here, exploring the world they inhabit as educators, learners, and curricularists through the thematic lenses of Hopeful(less)ness, Relationality, and Agency. Their story may be incomplete, but so is yours. 

What has the story been?

What story is possible?

What is the story now?

What does any of it mean?

(From the Introduction by Thomas S. Poetter)

About Thomas S. Poetter: 

Thomas S. Poetter, PhD, is Professor of Curriculum Studies at Miami University’s Department of Educational Leadership (EDL) in Oxford, Ohio. Tom is an award-winning teacher and a productive scholar — having published 27 books as author, editor, and/or co-editor (with 15 books co-authored/edited with students) and over 70 articles and book chapters in the fields of education and curriculum studies. From 2001–2011, Tom directed school/university partnerships for Miami in the Southwest Ohio region, and opened the university’s Partnership Office as its founding director in 2005. In 2014, Tom ran for the 8th district congressional seat in the U.S. House of Representatives and published a campaign memoir about the race, Losing to Boehner, Winning America. In 2016, he co-created a new curriculum conference with Miami colleague Denise Taliaferro Baszile called “The Currere Exchange” and is co-editor of the Currere Exchange Journal with Baszile and Kelly Waldrop, now in its 10th volume. In 2018, Tom was named President of the Foundation for Curriculum Theory and Editor of the Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, as well as host of JCT’s annual conference at Bergamo through 2024.