Abstract:
This paper explores issues emerging from recent and ongoing efforts by a number of curriculum scholars (particularly in North America) to ‘internationalise’ curriculum studies. As a participant in (and constructive critic of) these efforts, I am interested in exploring ways in which diverse local knowledge traditions in such fields as curriculum studies can be sustained and amplified transnationally without being absorbed into an imperialist archive. In this paper I argue that resisting the homogenising effects of cultural globalisation and internationalisation may be facilitated by emphasising the performative rather than the representational aspects of curriculum inquiry. The ‘internationalisation’ of curriculum studies might then be understood not so much in terms of translating local representations of curriculum into a universal discourse but, rather, as creating transnational ‘spaces’ in which local knowledge traditions in curriculum inquiry can be performed together.