Welcome

This site, curriculumhistory.ca is an open educational site devoted to curriculum, history education, social studies, and the study of educational ideas. It primarily publishes work emerging from teacher candidates’ research, teaching, and learning at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, and the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, New Brunswick. The site is intended for teachers, teacher candidates, graduate students, researchers, and members of the public interested in how curriculum has been imagined, organized, taught, and contested over time.

The work gathered here attends especially to subjects and methods that often sit at the margins of educational discourse. These include the history and philosophy of education, the history of school subjects, Byzantium and education, social studies, citizenship, historical inquiry, and worldviews. The site treats curriculum as more than a list of courses or expectations. Curriculum is approached as a historical, intellectual, civic, and pedagogical field through which societies ask what is worth knowing, how knowledge should be taught, and what kinds of persons and communities education might help to form.

The site presently features six areas of work developed in association with teacher candidates and graduate students.

First, “Select Subjects in the History of Ontario Education,” “A History of Science Education in New Brunswick,” and “A History of Social Studies Education in New Brunswick” feature peer reviewed research projects on the history of education over the past century. These projects contribute to our understanding of school subjects as historical formations. They situate science and social studies instruction within broader educational, provincial, national, and international contexts. Using primary and secondary sources, these resources examine how school subjects have been framed, justified, organized, and taught across different decades.

Second, “Byzantium and Education” features peer reviewed social studies research projects on Byzantium. Byzantine history remains largely absent from Faculties of Education, even though it offers rich possibilities for thinking about empire, religion, culture, pedagogy, authority, continuity, and historical interpretation. These projects bring Byzantium into conversation with contemporary education by illuminating aspects of Byzantine history and relating that historical work to questions teachers and students continue to face.

Third, “The Historical Mindedness Mentorship Project” supports history teachers, teacher candidates, and students in understanding history education as a movement from knowledge to inquiry to judgment. The project is organized around the relationship among historical literacy, historical thinking, and historical mindedness. Historical literacy concerns knowledge of the past. Historical thinking concerns the disciplined investigation of evidence and interpretation. Historical mindedness concerns the capacity to live thoughtfully with history in public and civic life. The project offers classroom facing resources that connect historical knowledge, curriculum expectations, historical inquiry, and the larger responsibilities of citizenship.

Fourth, “Take Action: Citizenship and Social Studies Projects” features reports of students’ efforts to address social, political, economic, and ethical injustices or concerns. These projects were funded by a Teaching and Learning Priorities Fund grant awarded by the University of New Brunswick’s Centre for Enhanced Teaching and Learning. They sought to reconnect social studies learning to its historical roots in the study of contemporary society and responsible citizenship. The projects ask how social studies education can move from understanding public issues toward informed, ethical, and participatory action.

Fifth, “A Curriculum Compendium” is an open project devoted to defining concepts, contexts, protagonists, and movements in the sometimes-dizzying world of curriculum studies. The Compendium is intended as a resource for students, teachers, and researchers who are entering the field or seeking clearer points of orientation within it. It gathers terms and figures that have shaped curriculum theory, curriculum history, and educational thought. Submissions to the Compendium are welcome.

Sixth, “Inquiry Resources in Ontario’s History Curriculum” provides links to instructional resource packages relating specifically to Ontario’s revised history curricula at the intermediate and secondary levels, Grades 7 to 12. The resource packages use primary sources to support historical inquiry. They are designed to help teachers connect curriculum expectations to evidence, interpretation, historical thinking, and classroom practice. Together, these materials contribute to ongoing work in history education in Ontario and beyond.

This site will continue to grow as my teaching evolves across the foundations of education, the history and philosophy of education, curriculum history, social studies, and historical methods. The site reflects a continuing effort to bring these areas into conversation with one another while giving students opportunities to participate in public scholarship. Publication is part of that educational work. It asks students to draft, revise, collaborate, respond to review, and return to their ideas with greater care, clarity, and responsibility.

The projects gathered here therefore belong to a larger pedagogical commitment. They make student research available beyond the classroom, where it can serve teachers, learners, researchers, and members of the public. Education remains a public good, not merely an academic exercise.

Knowledge helps us make meaning amid change and inconstancy. We write to understand, and we publish so that understanding can be shared, questioned, extended, and useful.

Enjoy,

Theodore Michael Christou, PhD

theodore.christou@queensu.ca