| This conceptual study sought to raise and investigate questions concerning the problem of critical agency as encountered in and through curriculum practice. In the context of curriculum studies, the problem of critical agency relates to how the interactive, communicative, and interpretive character of curriculum practice constrains and empowers political and social agency.;As the primary medium for teacher and student interaction in the classroom, the curriculum can be studied as a practice apart from specific course or grade-level content. This study drew on a number of key concepts from work in cultural studies and critical theory, including interest in signifying practices, discursive analysis, and articulation as a theory of ideological struggle. This study also reviewed and provided close readings of deliberative, hermeneutic, postmodern, and poststructural approaches to curriculum theory.;Finally, three examples of political poetry were outlined and developed as exemplars for theorizing about curriculum as a poetic social practice. The first example took as its model poetry of engagement. The second example was based on poetry that politicizes the imagination. The third example took as its model experimental, avant-garde poetry. Coupled with a theory of articulation, these three examples provide a framework for understanding how curriculum practice is a site of ideological struggle. |
