Time and the Curriculum: Alternative Visions

Time as a central curricular element is explored through studying a variety of thinkers about time itself. This exploration begins with a brief exegesis of the assertion that every classroom moment is a curricular moment consisting of multiple intersecting curricula (explicit, implicit, experienced, hidden and null curricula) which affects the meaning making and lives of both the learners and teachers. Time is conceptualized not as a set of equal packets (seconds, minutes, hours, days, etc.) but as elastic, slow, fast, discordant, boring, exciting, and more. Time is, in short, messy, variable and a powerful substrate of all experience. Subsequent to this discussion, ideas about what time “is” and how it might function is presented through a variety of thinkers: Gaston Bachelard, Pierre Janet, Henri Bergson (through the work of Kaustuv Roy and Suzanne Guerlac), Tyson Lewis, Andrew Metcalf and Ann Game, Karen Barad, and Julia Kristeva. In discussing each of these thinkers (and the way they intersect with each other), curricular possibilities are suggested for considering how time might be encountered, used, and experienced within curricular thinking and action.