Implications of Postmodern Curriculum Theory for the Education of the Talented

Jane Piirto

Article comments

Reprinted with permission of Prufrock Press Inc. (http://www.prufrock.com)

Abstract

Postmodern curriculum theory can assist educators of the gifted and talented in critiquing the field's assumptions from within the field. Going beyond the development and elaboration of curriculum models, postmodern curriculum theorists ask educators to engage in understanding what they are doing, why they are doing it, and whether they should continue to do it. Postmodern curriculum theory encompasses a number of themes and issues that may be pertinent to the field of the education of the gifted and talented. These are the five overarching themes of presence, origin, unity, denial of transcendence, and constitutive otherness and the five issues of discourse, the body, the canon, gender, and power and class that are subsumed beneath the five themes.