Curriculum as a certainty in uncertain times

Abstract

In our most recent editorial, we noted how ‘old certainties about education’ are being swept away amidst changes pertaining to the pandemic and its ongoing political, social and economic aftermath, amplified by climate change and institutional racism. This observation reflected two concerns: complacency about what has been sedimented or routinised as ‘certainty’ in education; and what we saw as a series of knee‐jerk actions in education without space nor time for dialogue between multiple voices and perspectives. The certainty, which we saw as a ‘loss’, was about curriculum as a concept that could be maintaining discussions in education (despite, or perhaps, because of broader social crises) around educational purposes and, moreover, a concept which would enable such discussions to adopt a broad, ‘systemic’ view, since curriculum is made and remade across multiple sites of activity (Priestley et al., in press).