Procedures of Power and Curriculum Change

The Author: David W. Blades is Associate Professor at the University of Alberta. He received his Ph.D. in Secondary Education from the University of Alberta. His paper on power and curriculum change was awarded a Tetuso Aoki Award in 1993 by JCT: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Curriculum Studies. A Killam Scholar and award-winning teacher, he has published and presented widely on the topics of curriculum change and science education.

«David Blades, in 'Procedures of Power and Curriculum Change', has captured the complexity and ambiguity of curriculum decision making in senior school science in a fascinating and illuminative way.» (Peter Fensham, Monash University, Australia)«David Blades has made a significant contribution to our understanding of the politics of curriculum change. Using Foucault's concept of power, he points out the way power circulated through an abortive effort to change a provincial secondary school science curriculum. Rather than despairing of possibilities for meaningful change, Dr. Blades employs an imaginative text to narrate new possibilities for teachers, students, and policy makers. This is groundbreaking work.» (Terry Carson, University of Alberta, Canada)