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Cheryl J. Craig
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Curriculum Making,
Reciprocal Learning,
and the
Best-Loved Self
Cheryl J. Craig
Intercultural Reciprocal Learning in Chinese
and Western Education
Series Editors
Michael Connelly
University of Toronto
Toronto, ON, Canada
Shijing Xu
Faculty of Education
University of Windsor
Windsor, ON, Canada
This book series grows out of the current global interest and turmoil
over comparative education and its role in international competi-
tion. The specific series grows out of two ongoing educational
programs which are integrated in the partnership, the University of
Windsor-Southwest University Teacher Education Reciprocal Learning
Program and the Shanghai-Toronto-Beijing Sister School Network. These
programs provide a comprehensive educational approach ranging from
preschool to teacher education programs. This framework provides a
structure for a set of ongoing Canada-China research teams in school
curriculum and teacher education areas. The overall aim of the Partner-
ship program, and therefore of the proposed book series, is to draw on
school and university educational programs to create a comprehensive
cross-cultural knowledge base and understanding of school education,
teacher education and the cultural contexts for education in China and
the West.
More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15114
Cheryl J. Craig
Curriculum Making,
Reciprocal Learning,
and the Best-Loved
Self
Cheryl J. Craig
Department of Teaching, Learning & Culture
Texas A&M University
College Station, TX, USA
Intercultural Reciprocal Learning in Chinese and Western Education

ISBN 978-3-030-60100-3 ISBN 978-3-030-60101-0 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60101-0
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For Imogen
Foreword
Curriculum making, reciprocal learning and the best-loved self invites us

to enter into a personal journey, walking along with Cheryl Craig as she
reflects on her three lines of inquiry. This book is at the same time an
individual’s story—the author’s experiences as a scholar of teaching and
as a scholarly teacher—and a call for rethinking teaching and the study
of it. Craig begins her book reflecting on personal challenges that affect
her deeply as she begins writing. She is also publishing this volume at
a timely moment, one that speaks to the heightened need to understand
teaching and to benefit from the fresh insights offered by “looking across”
(Clandinin, 2013, p. 13) not only research studies but cultural contexts.
This book is powerfully a story of stories. Readers are invited to hear
and see Cheryl think out loud as she revisits stories from a range of
teachers—from different school and national contexts and at different
stages of their teaching careers. Using what Schwab (1983) called “serial
interpretation,” Cheryl Craig thinks across these individual stories, as
well as visits the stories of individual teachers over time, to develop new
understandings of curriculum and the powerful, albeit vulnerable, work
of teachers. Along the way, Cheryl chooses Schwab, Dewey, and Confu-
cius, among others, as thinking companions who spark her inquiry as she
tells her own story, naming some of what she discovers about teaching,
learning, and her commitments and insights as a scholar. This book
persuasively helps us see how stories matter.
vii
viii FOREWORD
Metaphors matter too. Here, metaphors offer sparkling windows onto

the intricate lives of teacher and their practices. In the multilayered
approach Cheryl creates, we see the ways she weaves metaphors together,
allowing us to see patterns while never forcing one story to be subsumed
by some larger frame. The result is a chance for readers to recognize the
significance of different images of teachers—for example, as curriculum
maker or curriculum implementer. Through the forceful reminder of
the need for balance between images, the book emphasizes the human
dimension of teaching and its contextual nature.
Metaphors are powerful ways of shaping what we see: they allow us
a vivid and concrete window into complex phenomena. For those of us
who appreciate the power of words, stories and images, watching Cheryl
explore what lies beneath a metaphor, or how she comes to name an
ineffable but compelling experience, this book’s richness will be a great
delight.
The richness of the rethinking about teaching is deepened by Craig’s
openness to her own learning as a scholar. As she examines curriculum,
teaching and teachers, she explores these questions by making full use,
and even seeking out, what she sees as reciprocal learning opportunities.
Readers catch glimpses of classrooms, conference venues, and even restau-
rant tables filled with food and conversation not just in the US, but in
such seemingly “different” contexts such as China, Korea, or Russia. I
am impressed by the humility Cheryl brings to her opportunities to learn
from and with her colleagues—teachers, her own students, her research
peers—in new settings. She does not pretend to be an “expert” but
instead seeks to explore the cultural, social, and historical background to
make sense of any one event; at the same time, through her learning with
these colleagues, she gains understandings she, and we, might not have
reached.
As I write this preface, and the global pandemic rages in the US, I
am acutely aware that so much of our lives is bound up in the well-
being, insights, and experiences of those outside our borders. While it
may not have been the originating impulse for this book, the reflections
woven throughout the pages of this volume provide a compelling argu-
ment for the value of reciprocal learning. Craig’s ability to see the many
braids that make up the tapestry that is teaching is enriched by the puzzles
and surprises as well as recognition (of familiarity) offered by her time in
classrooms outside her native and adopted homes of Canada and the US.
FOREWORD ix
While narrating stories of great variety, Craig also paints a picture that
is clear: teachers matter. Indeed, for some time, there has been heightened
recognition that teachers are key to education and to students’ learning
(Paine, Blömeke, and Aydarova, O., 2016). While international studies
and reports now routinely trumpet this fact, this book gives us a gener-
ously personal account that will be for many far more persuasive. In recog-
nizing the importance of how teachers, and researchers of teaching, seek
to be their “best loved selves,” this book argues for the need to listen
empathetically and reflexively to what, how, and why teachers know and
do, as well as how (and why) we know what we know about teaching.
Cheryl finds resonance in many Confucian aphorisms. As I read, I kept
thinking of one of the most famous ones: “…in a party of three people,
there must be one from whom I can learn.” This book reflects Cheryl’s
journey as she has shared stories with many in many places. Along the
way, she is open to learning, and relearning. As we walk alongside her, we
in turn benefit as learners.
Lynn Paine, Ph.D.

Professor, Teacher Education
Associate Dean, International Studies
College of Education
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI, USA
References
Clandinin, D. J. (2013). Developing qualitative inquiry. Engaging in narrative
inquiry. Left Coast Press.
Paine, L., Blömeke, S., and Aydarova, O. (2016). Teachers and teaching in
the context of globalization. In D. Gitomer, & C. Bell (Eds.), Handbook of
Research on Teaching (5th edition) (pp. 717–786). Washington, DC: AERA.
Schwab, J. (1983). The practical 4: Something for curriculum professors to do.
Curriculum Inquiry, 13(3), 239–265.
Contents
1 Curriculum Making 1 1
2 Curriculum Making 2 57
3 Reciprocal Learning 83
4 The Best-Loved Self 117
Afterword 157
Index 163
xi
List of Figures
Fig. 1.1 Commonplaces of curriculum 7

Fig. 1.2 The Shadow of New York mural (Courtesy of Bernadette
Lohle) 29
Fig. 1.3 The map of activities on the sports field 37
Fig. 2.1 Tribute to John Dewey on a school wall in Beijing, China 60
Fig. 2.2 John Dewey’s Chinese students (From top left to top
right: Hu Shih, Chiang Monlin, Tao, Xingzhi, Zhang
Zuoping; From bottom left to bottom right: Shi Liangcai,
Alice Dewey, John Dewey) 61
Fig. 2.3 The concept of cooperative and symbiotic teaching
research (Bu & Han, 2019) 64
Fig. 2.4 Teacher construction and development model in Chinese
schools (Bu et al., unpublished paper) 65
Fig. 3.1 Comparative models: Comparison and interpretation
(Connelly & Xu, 2019) 107
Fig. 3.2 Knowing and doing (Connelly & Xu, 2019) 107
Fig. 3.3 Visual representation of process of reciprocal learning
over time (Zhu, 2018) 109
xiii
CHAPTER 1
Curriculum Making 1
Abstract Three narrative threads—curriculum making, reciprocal

learning, and the best-loved self—seam this book into a cohesive whole.
This first chapter—Curriculum Making 1—sets the stage for Curriculum
Making 2 and other chapters that follow. I begin by underscoring the
importance of teachers as communicated by well-known international
researchers and supranational organizations. I then define Schwab’s
curriculum commonplaces and introduce two dominant images of
teaching: teacher-as-curriculum-implementer and teacher-as-curriculum-
maker. Next, I spotlight the curriculum making of four teachers who
I studied longitudinally in the US. I end with an overview of what I
learned about curriculum making from my close work with these teachers
and the contexts of their teaching. This prepares me for Curriculum
Making 2 where I shine the spotlight exclusively on Chinese teachers-as-
curriculum-makers and end with a synopsis of curriculum making that
commingles what has been learned in both countries.
Keywords Curriculum making · Teacher-as-curriculum-maker ·

Teacher-as-curriculum-implementer · Teacher growth · Contexts of
teaching · Commonplaces of curriculum
© The Author(s) 2020 1

C. J. Craig, Curriculum Making, Reciprocal Learning,
and the Best-Loved Self, Intercultural Reciprocal Learning
in Chinese and Western Education,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-60101-0_1
2 C. J. CRAIG
Curriculum Making
When I was asked to write this Palgrave Pivot book in the Intercul-
tural Reciprocal Learning in Chinese and Western Education Series, I was
delighted and honored by the invitation. Curriculum making, reciprocal
learning, and the best-loved self is a topic dear to my heart. The Palgrave
Pivot invitation and my research niche complemented one another; they
fit together like hand-in-glove. The opportunity was one I would not
want to miss. However, despite my high interest, best intentions, and past
publishing record, this volume has not been easy to get off the ground.
My mother died shortly after I signed the contract to publish this book.
While I was able to resume the majority of my myriad of activities after
her funeral, I could not bring myself to this writing task. It presented a
formidable challenge. Rather than remaining stuck in a “hardened story”
(Conle, 1996) that determined what I could and could not do, I decided
to plunge the depths and write toward the pain as others have suggested
(i.e., Waldman, 2016; Ward, 2016). I will not burden readers with the
breadth and depth of what I personally uncovered in my reflective anal-
ysis. However, I do want to underscore three critically important points
as to why my mother’s passing and the authoring of this book became
inexorably linked.
The first is this. My mother had two children—my deceased brother,
who was her hometown success—and me. I was a daughter born over a
decade after her son. Massive changes had happened in the interim. My
mother needed a different plotline for me. Her father, a British immi-
grant to Canada, had fought in World War I and two of her brothers,
one who went on to be a leader in the Canadian Armed Forces, served
in World War II. All of this preceded me becoming my mother’s child
for the world. Consequently, I attended university, something my imme-
diate family members had not done. I furthermore left the “breadbasket
of the world” (a prairie province) and lived my adult life near the Rocky
Mountains in Canada and in the Gulf Coast region of the US. I also
have traveled extensively and delivered plenary addresses on all but one
of the world’s continents. Not once did my mother ever suggest that I
preempt an international engagement to spend more time with her. In
short, I was doing—am doing—what she had in mind for me. Engaging
in deep reflection, I discovered a synergy between the international back-
drop of the reciprocal learning book series and the parental story my
mother bestowed on me at birth. A correspondence as “invisible as air”
1 CURRICULUM MAKING 1 3
and as “weightless as dreams” (Stone, 1988, p. 244) became perceptible

after her death.
The second commonplace of experience (Lane, 1988) connecting this
book project to my mother is the fact that she was a proud Canadian.
Among the possessions she left me were a Canadian flag and her treasured
maple leaf pin. Clearly, she did not want me to forget the Canadian part of
my dual citizenship (Canadian + American). Thinking backward into my
life, I recall her asking more questions about the Canada-China Recip-
rocal Learning Project than she did about my other US-based research
initiatives. I always attributed her special interest in the reciprocal learning
project to her being a staunch Canadian. However, my look back revealed
something I probably intuitively knew but had not said out-loud. When
I attended the Canadian conferences biennially, I always went to see
my mother before or after the meetings. This meant that every second
year she was assured of an extra visit from me. Hence, I have a special
connection to the Canada-China project because of my mother’s ongoing
reminders that I am Canadian and because of my own bred-in-the-bone
allegiance to my family, my home country, and my birth identity. I also
visit China twice annually because of a long-term collaboration there,
along with a bevy of former doctoral students and former visiting scholars
who I visit regularly. For these multiple interconnected reasons, I would
not want this endeavor to receive anything less than my fullest attention
in the aftermath of my mother’s death.
The third major point my soul-searching brought to light has to do
with heart. My mother was the lifeblood of my family just as curriculum
is the lifeblood of schools. Without her, neither my brother nor I would
have had breath or life. Without curriculum, teachers, students, and
schools are rudderless and lacking in purpose. For a time following my
mother’s death, I, too, drifted aimlessly. My beacon of support was gone.
No longer did I have her anchoring me. Also, as long as she lived, I
would not be the sole surviving member of my nuclear family. However,
my father died in 2000 and my brother passed away the year before my
mother. Their individual and collective deaths irrevocably changed my
life. A piece of me departed with them. Unavoidably, my identity shifted.
My attempt to un-know what I already knew (Vinz, 1997) about being
the lone family survivor likewise drove a wedge between the writing of
this book and me.
4 C. J. CRAIG
The Curriculum-Teaching Puzzle

When I acknowledged these painful connections, I dislodged my stuck
story. I stripped it of its ruling power. I was free to focus full atten-
tion on Curriculum making, reciprocal learning, and the best-loved self . I
begin now with curriculum making, the first of two curriculum chapters
contributing to my tripartite agenda. Because curriculum making cannot
happen without teachers, let me begin by asserting teachers’ primacy in
the educational enterprise, which is much like my mother’s primacy in my
family and in my life…
The Primacy of Teachers

“Teachers matter….” That is what OECD, the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development, concluded more than a
decade and a half ago based on a 25-country study reported in the
official policy statement, Teachers Matters: Attracting, developing and
retaining effective teachers (OECD, 2005). “Teachers matter…” OECD
reconfirmed in 2018 in Valuing our teachers and raising their status
(Schleicher, 2018). “Teachers matter…” the Varkey Foundation (2016),
sponsor of the Global Teacher Prize, proclaimed. “Teachers matter”
was a recent feature in the Chronicle of Higher Education (Jenkins,
2016). “Teacher education matters…” asserted leading US researcher,
Linda Darling Hammond (2000), in her article, “How teacher educa-
tion matters.” “Teacher education matters…” stated William Schmidt
and his colleagues (2011) in Teacher education matters: A study of
middle school mathematics teacher preparation in six countries. “Teacher
education matters…,” wrote Frances Rust (2017, p. 383) in a recent
Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice editorial. “Preparing teachers
to teach matters,” stressed Suzanne Wilson (2014, p. 190). “Making
teacher education matter” headlined Jean Clandinin and Jukka Husu
in the Handbook of Research on Teacher Education (Husu & Clan-
dinin, 2017, p. 1169) “Teacher quality matters,” added Christopher
Day (2017) in Teachers’ worlds and work. “Teacher quality matters,”
noted Gregory Ramsey in the Australia Department of Education
document, Quality matters, Revitalising teaching: Critical times, Crit-
ical choices (Ramsey, 2000, p. 1). “Teaching quality matters most,”
declared Dan Goldhaber (2016) in his half-century celebration of
the Coleman Report, the most influential American policy document
following the Brown vs. Board of Education court ruling. The quality
of a nation’s education cannot supersede “the quality of its teachers,”
wrote Barber and Mourshed (2007, p. 13) in the McKinsey Report. Even
actor, Matt Damon, whose mother is a teacher, has widely claimed that
he and presumably others would not be where they are today without
creative teachers. Educational researchers, supranational organizations,
and popular opinion affirm the age-old maxim that “the influence of a
good teacher can never be erased.”
However, despite widespread agreement about the importance of
teachers, research largely focuses on stakeholders, and what they think
preservice and practicing teachers should know and do. What preser-
vice and practicing teachers need to flourish in their teaching careers
has received comparatively little attention. Also, most of what has been
written has been of an abstract bent. A scarcity of research addresses what
is fundamentally important to growing, nurturing, and sustaining quality
teachers in their own terms. If I distilled my 25 years of researching
teaching and teacher education into a handful of topics, one recurrent
theme would certainly be teachers’ desires to be curriculum makers. A
topic not far behind would be teachers’ riling against others casting them
as implementers. This raises the question of how I connect teaching and
curriculum making and how the image of a teacher-as-a-curriculum-maker
compares and contrasts with the image of teacher-as-implementer, among
others. Let me begin by discussing curriculum making generally and then
I will unpack the root images of teaching as I have come to know them.
Curriculum
I start interculturally with the Mandarin word for curriculum, kèchéng (
课程). As my Chinese students, visiting Asian scholars, collaborators, and
the literature (i.e., Zhang & Gao, 2014) have informed me, kèchéng
means people discussing the teaching and learning journey. I imagine
these talks would take place at a table. From a Confucian perspective,
the unfolding conversations would be filled with possibilities. The overall
purpose would be to unite heaven and humanity so that they, along with
earth, can interact harmoniously (Li, 2008). To my way of thinking, the
curriculum making table at which these dialogues would take place would
be similar to the table Native American poet, Byrd Baylor (1994), had in
mind. It would be one “where [experientially] rich people sit.” For me,
as a Western scholar, the Eastern origin of the word, curriculum, not
as a stale, flaccid, archaic document, but as something dynamic, inter-
actional, aspirational, and breathing, organically connects with Schwab’s
6 C. J. CRAIG
curriculum commonplaces and the notion of curriculum as a lived experi-

ence. These near-universal considerations (Goodson, 2007) are the ones
that I picture all international educators would deliberate in their own
contextualized ways. After all, “[curriculum-making rests] not on ideal
or abstract representation, but on the real thing, on the concrete case,
in all its completeness and with all its differences from other concrete
cases…” (Schwab, 1969, p. 11). The real thing—the concrete case—
is what Ted Aoki1 (1989/1990) termed the “full-life of curriculum”
(which stands in stark contrast to the “half-life”) and what Jean Clan-
dinin2 and Michael Connelly3 called the lived curriculum. It would
embed “a story of action within a theory of context” in real-time ways
(Stenhouse, 1976, p. 7). Through this process, “teachers and students
live out a curriculum… An account of teachers’ and students’ lives over
time is the curriculum, although intentionality, objectives [abstractions],
and curriculum materials do play a part…” (Clandinin & Connelly,
1992, p. 365). From this perspective, boundaries separating teaching,
learning, and curriculum would fade as Schwab’s “practical, a language
for curriculum” (Schwab, 1969, 1971, 1973, 1983) would take hold and
“more satisfying lives” (Schwab, 1975), education’s ultimate aim, would
be instantiated. Curriculum known “by the people it produces, as well as
by other signs and standards” would be realized (Schwab, 1983, p. 247).
Curriculum Commonplaces
Schwab (1973) believed that all curriculum making discussions involve
four desiderata or commonplaces, terms Schwab used interchange-
ably (see Fig. 1.1). Where these curriculum making considerations are
concerned, there would never be a “perennially right ordering of the
desiderata or a perennially right curriculum” because the common-
places—the building blocks—are always in flux (Schwab, 1974, p. 315).
1 I had the good fortune of personally knowing Ted Aoki who is now deceased. I
helped facilitate his work with teachers and attended his local conference presentations
when I lived in Alberta, Canada.
2 D. Jean Clandinin was my doctoral supervisor and my post-doctoral co-supervisor. I
am grateful for her rich contributions to my education and life.
3 F. Michael Connelly was my post-doctoral co-supervisor who also greatly influenced
me. He is the Co-Principal Investigator of the Canada-China Reciprocal Learning Project,
along with Shi Jing Xu, who is the Principal Investigator. They are co-editors of this
Intercultural Reciprocal Learning in Chinese and Western Education book series.
Teacher
Curriculum
Milieu Learner
Making
Subject
Matter
Fig. 1.1 Commonplaces of curriculum
At the same time, equal contributions from the teacher commonplace, the
learner commonplace, the subject matter commonplace, and the milieu
commonplace would be needed for balanced (harmonious) classroom
curriculum making.
This is because students as learners are “one skin-full” with
subject matter being another consideration—another “fragment of the
whole” (Schwab, 1953, p. 210). However, when all four common-
places are combined, they...bound ...“statements identified as...curricular”
(Connelly & Clandinin, 1988, p. 84).
Also, if we enter into curriculum deliberations through one curriculum
commonplace, we produce different synergies with the three other
curriculum considerations and arrive at different understandings. The
fact that I typically conduct research from the teacher perspective
means that my curriculum making entry point is through the teacher
commonplace. This makes sense, given that my research program—
whether about school reform (Craig, 2001, 2004), the contexts of
8 C. J. CRAIG
teaching (Ciuffetelli Parker & Craig, 2017; Craig, 2007; Craig &
Huber, 2007), subject matter (Oh, You, Kim, & Craig, 2013; Olson
& Craig, 2009a), teachers (Craig, 2012a; Olson & Craig, 2001), or
students (Craig, 1998; Craig, Li, Rios, Lee, & Verma, under review)—is
approached from a teacher point of view, that is, through the teacher
lens (Craig, 2012b). Hence, my scholarship unfolds at the intersec-
tion where the teaching and curriculum fields meet (Craig & Ross,
2008). At this point of convergence, I typically focus on a teacher or
a group of teachers and specifically refer to students and subject matter.
My scholarship also pays significant attention to milieu. This is because
my ongoing research puzzles have to do with how teaching contexts
influence what it is that preservice and practicing teachers know and
do in addition to who they are and how they share knowledge in
community.
For example, where Ashley Thomas (Craig, 2019), a recent Amer-
ican teacher participant, was concerned, she (teacher) taught students
(learners) (Li Lan, Anna Pedrana, Illich Mauro, Alejandro Rodríguez)
English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) (subject matter) at T. P. Yaeger
Middle School (milieu). But the context Ashley chose to describe was
much more expansive than the campus where she worked. She included
the Panhandle region of Texas where she spent her childhood and spoke
of de facto segregation policies (parental choice that was in effect when
her older brother went to school) which were replaced by racial desegre-
gation laws when she later attended the same campus. She additionally
talked about her private high school experience in Dallas, Texas, her
Wellesley College education in Massachusetts, and her higher educa-
tion experiences at Oxford University in England and l’Université de
Besançon in France. Ashley also spoke of her short-term work in Mexico.
This included her coming out as a lesbian and her subsequent two-year
estrangement from her parents. She additionally painted the ideolog-
ical landscape of Texas and told of how opposing political views created
acrimony in her family unit that has since echoed through the genera-
tions. Ashley further outlined how state and national policies and politics
have shaped ESL instruction and the services made available to immi-
grant youth. Taken together, milieu in my teacher attrition study with
Ashley Thomas extended far past T. P. Yaeger Middle School and way
beyond the primarily underserved students of color she championed on
her Greater Houston campus. Having provided this real-world example
of the commonplaces of curriculum, it makes sense for me to shine the
spotlight on what each commonplace takes into account before pressing

on.
As foreshadowed, Schwab had profound respect for teachers and
the pivotal role they play in the educational enterprise. He knew that
teachers “exhibit powers and deficiencies, likes and dislikes, which must
be considered if a curriculum is to be well-chosen” (Schwab, 1974,
p. 315). Therefore, the teacher is the first commonplace I will elaborate.
For Schwab, teachers are the “fountainhead[s] of the curriculum deci-
sion” (Schwab, 1983, p. 245). They are “agents of education, not [of]
subject matter” (Schwab, 1954/1978, p. 128). They open up worlds and
opportunities for learners instead of chaining them to the government-
authorized knowledge they are required to teach (Schwab, 1969). Also,
because “the public and the private cannot be separated in teaching, the
person who the teacher is surfaces in the act of teaching” (Bullough,
1989, pp. 20–21). Who teachers are as people inevitably becomes inter-
woven with what they teach (Kelchtermans, 2009). Hence, teachers work
deftly with “a lightness of touch” (Hansen, 2011, p. 4) to ensure that the
curriculum they teach is inspired by them but not about them.
The second commonplace requiring explanation is the learner.
Learners are also exceedingly important because teaching and learning
mutually inform one another. Confucius’s students affirmed this point in
the essay, “Of Education,” in the Book of Rites (Li, personal conversa-
tion, 2020). Two Mandarin characters capture teaching and learning: jiào
(教) for teaching and xué (学) for learning. However, when one speaks
about teaching, one automatically includes learning and uses the word,
jiàoxué (教学), which resonates with kèchéng (课程) being a teaching-
learning journey having more to do with life than the mastery of skills
(Wu, 2004). When I visited New Zealand for my first time, I learned
something quite similar. The Maori, New Zealand’s original inhabitants
(like Canada’s First Nations people), have a single word for teaching and
learning: ako. Ako is also steeped in natural reciprocity; it too recognizes
that the teacher and the learner cannot be separated from one another in
the curriculum making act.
For Schwab, learners are always particular learners. They enter
teaching-learning situations with “different personal histories which
confer on [them] widely varying wants and capacities for satisfaction”
(Schwab, 1959/1978, p. 172). Individual students are “more…than the
percentile ranks, social class, and personality type into which [they] fall”
10 C. J. CRAIG
(Schwab, 1973, p. 496). The learners doing the learning are different
from the teacher covering the material (Rodgers, 2020). Learners are
not only learners; they are also “personalities” (Schwab, 1974, p. 314).
Further to this, “what [learners] are, what [learners] know, how [learners]
have been bent, and what [learners] remember, determine what [learners]
experience” (Schwab, 1961/1978, p. 272) in curriculum making situa-
tions. Hence, they focus on “self-realization of one kind or another, devel-
oped capacities whose use s/he enjoys, identity, capacity for economic
self-sufficiency, and so on” (Schwab, 1974, p. 315). This means that chil-
dren—like newborns, adults, and senior citizens—are always in a state of
being and becoming (Van der Wal & Van der Bie, 2015, p. 3). As Maxine
Greene (1995) put it, we are “in the making,” but “never made.” We are
“unending…promise and project” (Gadotti, 1996, p. 7).
According to Schwab (1964), subject matter, the third commonplace,
should never be considered “familiar, fixed and at hand when needed”
(p. 2) as so often is the case. It also is not “ready-made in itself” (Dewey,
1990, p. 189). Thus, we need to approach subject matter “as fluent,
embryonic, vital” (Dewey, 2020, p. 9). One issue has to do with “pigeon-
holed” content coming to the child in ways that “fractionizes the world
for him/[her]” and rips facts away from their “original place in experience
and rearranges them with reference to some principle” (Dewey, 2020,
p. 5). Another problem is that the disciplines themselves have “no fixed
catalogue” of structure (Schwab, 1961/1978, p. 251). Hence, no one
knows the structure of the disciplines (Schwab, 1961/1978, p. 243; italics
in original) because there are no “natural joints” of content that occur
in nature (Schwab, 1980, p. 365). An associated challenge is that subject
areas like science are complex and ever changing. Part of the reason stems
from the “unclosed character of science” (Schwab, 1949, p. 263); the
other part has to do with “nature [being] so rich in matters to be learned
and scientists so apt in finding ways to learn them” (Schwab, 1960/1978,
p. 228). The same is true for history. It also is not a fixed entity because
“history …never stands still” (Wulf, 1619 Project Live Forum, 2020).
Because Schwab was aware of these and other complexities, he rebelled
against certainty—“the rhetoric of conclusions”—that stable inquirers
attribute to science and, by extrapolation, any other content area. He
believed that subject matter “facts” contained in textbooks and other
documents should be presented as “tentative formulations – not facts, but
interpretations of facts” (Schwab, 1961/1978, p. 242; italics in original).
Texts would be filled with “…uncertainties, differences in interpretation,
and issues of principle which characterize the disciplines” in Schwab’s
(1961/1978, p. 242) words. “Likely stories” (Schwab, 1976, pp. 14–15)

would result, each of which would communicate contingent “truths”—
not “gospel truth” (Jackson, 1990, p. xii)—until new discoveries are
made and “ideas that were once thought to be true…discarded” (Schwab,
1956, p. 133). This is how he envisioned content keeping up with the
times. “What is true today may not be true tomorrow” (Alexander,
2015, p. 72) clearly underpinned Schwab’s understanding of curriculum
making.
Schwab’s (1956/1978) linking of subject matter with the process of
inquiry sheds light on the fourth curriculum commonplace, milieu. In
Schwab’s view, “knowledge of a context of discourses [note: multiple
discourses; not one discourse] gives … a fuller knowledge of the scope
and meaning of the conclusions…” He declared that “if there [was]
a time when problems special to teaching science [for example] justi-
fied the omission of social studies and humanities, that time is past”
(Schwab, 1974, p. 316). Additionally, the sources of what Schwab (1973)
termed “the eclectic” are available in the milieu. Teachers draw on a wide
range of theories, standards, and traditions at their disposal. They subse-
quently employ “arts of the eclectic” to create “amalgam [s]” that aid
them in understanding educational phenomena. These “eclectic integra-
tion[s]” arise from diverse discourses (Alexander, 2015, p. 63) that range
from the historical, the political, and the meta-physical to the theoret-
ical, the conceptual, the practical, and the technical. Successfully merging
“knowing that” (understanding) with “knowing how” (making a differ-
ence) presents teachers and teaching with perpetual challenges (Ryles,
1949). Multiple, across-the-board complexities led Schwab to declare that
“To the question, how big a context? There is no clear answer. There is
yet more to know or more to know about…” (p. 153). The phrases, to
know and to know about, imply that there would be infinitely more to do
and of which to make sense. Schwab concluded, “The problems of educa-
tion arise from exceedingly complex actions, reactions, and transactions…
these doings constitute a skein of myriad threads which know no bound-
aries…” (Schwab, 1971, p. 329). They are located one within another,
he explained, like “a nest of ‘Chinese boxes’” ranging from the small
community of home and classroom, through the larger neighborhood
and school, the town and region, to the nation and the world” (Schwab,
1974, p. 314). Clearly, Schwab’s notion of milieu was like that of Dewey
who also saw the “bigger world” as a major shaping force (Schwab, 1953,
p. 113). For both, milieu was a very big tent.
12 C. J. CRAIG
Being a narrative inquirer, I would like to slip in my own reading

of the curriculum commonplaces, which further reflects the influence
that Jean Clandinin and Michael Connelly have had on me as advisors.
I believe the commonplaces are inherently storied places. The teacher
and the learner do not come to curriculum making situations empty-
headed; they unavoidably bring their autobiographical narratives—their
narratives of experience (Connelly & Clandinin, 1990)—with them as
I demonstrated in my introduction to this book. Also, subject matter,
when reduced to its essence, is the most plausible narratives binding a
discipline together, particularistic stories that distinguish it from other
disciplines sitting on its boundaries. The same goes for milieu. All of
our schools, communities, regions, countries, and so forth are storied
places. Any person in a community can share their lived narrative of
a particular campus they have attended. The same goes for communi-
ties, states, countries, and belief systems. Rich social narrative histories
abound in society and necessarily inform our personal readings of how
countries and international relationships work. This brief summary of the
curriculum commonplaces readies us for a discussion of the images of
teaching, specifically the image of teacher-as-curriculum-implementer and
the image of teacher-as-curriculum-maker, which follow.
Teacher Images
Jean Clandinin and Michael Connelly introduced the images of
teacher-as-curriculum-implementer and teacher-as-curriculum-maker to
the educational enterprise in 1992 (Clandinin & Connelly, 1992). The
seeds for the images, though, appeared earlier in their Teachers as
curriculum planners book (Connelly & Clandinin, 1988), which targeted
a teacher audience. The roots of both images pull on (1) educational
history—work involving stability and change and educational philosophy,
(2) Dewey’s theory about the ends and means of education, and (3)
educational leadership, which, like other facets of the literature, posi-
tions teachers as mediators between curriculum documents and student
outcomes. Additionally, the agency Tyler afforded teachers played a role,
as did Schwab’s “practical” (most especially his curriculum common-
places), which upheld the centrality of the teacher in curriculum delib-
erations and provided the underpinning for the teacher-as-curriculum-
maker image. Connelly and Clandinin’s programmatic research, which
has comprehensively aimed to understand teachers’ knowledge in their
own terms and in context, further informed the image’s creation. Both
images will now be unpacked.
Teacher-as-Curriculum-Implementer &
Teacher-as-Curriculum-Maker
The dominant image of teacher-as-curriculum-implementer (Clandinin &
Connelly, 1992) characterizes teachers as a “construct of public inter-
est” (Grunder, 2016)—“agents of the state, paid to do its bidding”
(Lent & Pipkin, 2003). In this widespread view, shifts in teachers’ prac-
tices occur because policymakers or even academicians at various levels
of educational organizations mandate changes that teachers—due to
legal requirements, subordinated positions, and/or lack of power—duti-
fully must follow. Situated near the bottom of education’s food chain,
the teacher is a “technician…receiver, transmitter, and implementer of
other people’s knowledge” (Cochran-Smith & Lytle, 1999, p. 276) and
“instructions” (Goodson, 2017, p. 5). She/he is “excluded from active
participation in development of new solutions to fundamental problems”
(McPherson, 2004, p. 8) due to the short-circuiting of their voices and
agency (Rodgers, 2020). This makes teachers the consumer in a top-
down producer-consumer framework (Aoki, 1974). Following curriculum
like a “manual” (Westbury, 2000, p. 17) or a “cookbook” (Oyoo,
2013, p. 458), teachers-as-curriculum-implementers are more “business
manager[s]” than “paradigm[s] of moral life” (Alexander, 2015, p. 27)
and “moral stewards” of schooling (Goodlad, 1999, p. 237). Instead,
they are “public functionaries” (Alexander, 2015, p. 134) bent to the
will of bureaucrats, efficiently carrying out their demands. They seem “to
know how to teach, but they are not students of teaching” (Dewey, 1904,
p. 215).
By way of contrast, teachers-as-curriculum-makers “not only…act on
their own initiative, [but they are] expected to do so.” “Tak[ing] on situ-
ation[s] for themselves” is more important to judging their quality “than
their following any particular set method or scheme” (Dewey, 1904,
pp. 27–28). Hence, the image of teacher-as-curriculum-maker (Clan-
dinin & Connelly, 1992) acknowledges the teacher as a holder, user, and
producer of knowledge who, as a moral agent and personal self, adeptly
negotiates government-authorized curriculum in active relationship with
the students in his/her care. Thus, when a teacher-as-curriculum-maker
teaches youth, the teacher brings forward for deliberation his/her knowl-
edge about himself/herself as a teacher, the course content, the reach
of the milieu, and his/her knowing of students, their relationships with
one another and their individual uniqueness. According to DeBoer,
“teachers inspire…students through accounts of personal experience or
allow students to share their own insights and opinions” (DeBoer, 2014,
14 C. J. CRAIG
p. 2444). In short, teachers with “larger experience and riper wisdom”

than the students they teach actively conceive of how “life should come
to child[ren]” (Dewey, 1897, p. 79) while engaging in active relationship
with them. Here, echoes of Clandinin and Connelly’s Schwab-inspired
teacher-as-curriculum-maker image as well as Dewey’s (1916) education
as reconstruction without end once again interconnect.
However, the near-universal image of teachers being located in an
educational conduit (Clandinin & Connelly, 1995; Craig, 2002) prevails.
In their bottom of the pipeline position, they deliver curriculum to
students like “passing on a bag of goods” (Hansen, 2011, p. 1). Further
to this, the theory of action underlying the conduit goes unchallenged
in the policy arena. Sadly, it also reigns supreme in academia due to
theory’s long-standing estrangement from practice. Professors also tell
teachers what they should be doing in the research articles they dissem-
inate, often with no contact or prior communication with teachers.
Clandinin and Connelly (2004) called these top-down approaches to
reform, “change by injection,” with each inoculation resulting in new
knowledge prescriptions for teachers to impress on students. Unfortu-
nately, externally imposed measures tend to be disconnected from what
teachers have come to know and do in the throes of their own practices.
This is highly problematic because teachers’ practices reveal their personal
practical knowledge in action, not simply what others expect of them,
although others’ expectations certainly inform the mix. Reduced to the
essence, what teachers know and do is “neither fixed, nor finished.” It has
“no changeless cent[er] to which understanding can anchor itself.” Also,
there is no “model to be copied or… idea to be realized…” (Oakshott,
1962, pp. 154–156). Teachers’ practices, reflecting their personal practical
knowledge, will always be fluid and shape-shifting. Necessarily contoured
by their own changing selves, teachers’ practices are contingent on
the learners they teach, knowledge advances in the disciplines, innova-
tions in the teaching field, unfurling social issues and crises (i.e., global
pandemic), and the educational policies influencing the context in which
their practices unfold.
The teacher-as-curriculum-maker conceptualization offers a viable
alternative to the dominant plotline of teacher-as-curriculum-
implementer. In the former conceptualization, the teacher uses other
people’s knowledge and, in a technical rationalist way, installs a
curriculum/curriculum package designed and required by others. In
short, the image of teacher-as-curriculum-implementer positions teachers
as “hand-servants” (Hansen, 2011) whose continuing employment rests

on fidelity to others’ (i.e., policymakers, academics, testing companies,
etc.) edicts. For example, in France’s normal school tradition, directives
dictated by others with more knowledge and/or authority than teachers
are explicitly labelled state knowledge and researcher knowledge (Malet,
2017).
Contrastingly, the teacher-as-curriculum-maker image requires teach-
ers’ active engagement and takes into account the critical reflectiveness
Dewey afforded them. As Schwab (1983) put it, teachers engaged in
curriculum making “must be involved in debate, deliberation, and deci-
sion about what and how to teach” (Schwab, 1983, p. 245). The image of
teacher-as-curriculum-maker fully captures the importance of the teacher
in organizing, planning, and orchestrating classroom interactions. The
teachers’ “productive impulse” (Grunder, 2016) is vital because it engages
students in the search for knowledge and cultivates their zeal to discover it
(DeBoer, 2014). The teacher-as-curriculum-maker recognizes that the
teacher is the only one at the nexus of the curricular exchange and
the only person interacting face-to-face with flesh-and-blood students.
Thus, curriculum is what ultimately happens—what becomes animated
(lived!) (Ian Westbury’s term [personal communication, 2006])—in the
moments when teaching and learning merge. In that fusion, teachers use
what is in their students (learner commonplace), their teaching situa-
tions (milieu commonplace), and themselves (teacher commonplace) to
make curriculum mostly organized around mandated content (subject
matter commonplace). Teachers’ productive impulses cannot be captured
in a codified knowledge base without ignoring the continuity of expe-
rience (Dewey, 1938) underlying the knowing teachers bring to the
curriculum making table. Herein lies the perennial rub of curriculum
and teaching/teacher education research: the confounding question of
“how to integrate theoretically based knowledge that has traditionally
been taught in university classrooms with the experience-based knowl-
edge that has traditionally been located in the practice of teachers and the
realities of classrooms and schools” (Darling Hammond, 2006, p. 307).
The teacher-as-curriculum-maker image assumes that a classroom space
exists that is not constantly surveilled by those privileging the measure-
ment and the interpretation of “behavioural data” (Zuboff, 2019, p. 53)
over what is important in education and what matters to teachers.
In this classroom space, “moments of choice” happen (Schwab, 1983,
16 C. J. CRAIG
p. 245) where teachers and students can negotiate curriculum unhin-

dered by, though not ignorant of, others’ directives and desires. That
place, however, is discretionary (Craig, 2009), which means teachers and
students need to intentionally take action to seize its possibilities. Also,
opportunities to maneuver within the classroom space are affected by
others—fellow teachers, administrators, school district personnel, staff
developers, parents, peers, and policymakers—who also have a shaping
effect on what is going on in classrooms. In the discretionary space
teachers and students jointly carve out, distinctions between the knower
and the known (Craig & Curtis, 2020; Dewey & Bentley, 1949; Fenster-
macher, 1994) dissipate when the means and ends of education intersect.
As active agents, teachers work mindfully, professionally guided by their
sensibilities and practical ways of knowing within their given policy
environments. Similarly, students participate as knowers of their own
experiences and producers of their own knowledge, not simply end users
of codified knowledge meted out to them by their teachers.
Boiled to the essence, knowledge arising from teachers’ lived experi-
ences cannot be “tested, packaged, imparted and sent like bricks across
countr[ies] to build knowledge structures that are said to accumulate”
(Eisner, 1997, p. 7) because the teacher, like the student, is integral to the
body of knowledge that exists and indispensable to the curriculum making
act. Paradoxically, teachers’ embodied knowledge scaffolds students’
embodiments of like knowledge developments (Craig et al., 2018). This
shaping and being shaped process takes place through back-and-forth
interactions, laying the groundwork for reciprocity whose root word,
reciprocus , means give-and-take actions for mutual benefit—with mutual
(reciprocal) benefit being the pearl of great price.
In the end, the teacher is “the most responsive creator of curriculum”
because he/she “negotiates the formal planned curriculum of government
and publishers within his/her practice, alongside the lives of learners”
(Murphy & Pushor, 2010, p. 658). In short, teachers “take it [prescribed
curriculum] and develop it within the range and scope of the child’s life”
(Dewey, 2020, p. 24). This is because curriculum documents are not
brought to bear in some archetypal classroom, as proponents of standards

and accountability lead us to believe, but in a particular locus in time and
space with smells, shadows, seats and conditions outside its walls which
may have much to do with what is achieved inside. (Schwab, 1970, p. 35)
Thus, in the teacher-as-curriculum-maker image, attention necessarily

reverts from written plans, authorized textbooks, and politicized govern-
ment mandates that typically privilege the subject matter commonplace
and assign teachers to purveyor of knowledge roles, to curriculum as
it is lived in the context and specificities of people’s lives (Downey &
Clandinin, 2010). This automatically returns us to the confluence of the
curriculum commonplaces mediated by the teacher. And, in sharp contrast
to lists of codified knowledge—abstracted from context, extracted from
persons, and devoid of relationship—what emerges are vital aspects of
teacher knowledge, matters that are “ephemeral, passionate, shadowy and
significant…for the most part…reflect[ing] teachers’ lives” (Connelly &
Clandinin, 2004, p. 42).
Curriculum Making in Action

To capture teachers’ live curriculum making experiences, I now spot-
light the images of teachers-as-curriculum-makers and teachers-as-
implementers brushing up against one another in the context of
four American teachers’ pedagogical practices. Daryl Wilson (literacy
department head—20-year research participant), Bernadette Lohle (art
teacher—13-year research participant), Helen Macalla (physical education
teacher/mentor—3-year research participant), and 4) Anna Dean (begin-
ning literacy teacher—6-year research participant) are the teachers whose
curriculum making experiences I feature. After that, I synthesize what
these four teachers’ experiences convey about curriculum making and the
tensions between the root images of teacher-as-curriculum-implementer
and teacher-as-curriculum-maker before I move on to sharing observa-
tions in Chinese classrooms along with an overarching commentary about
curriculum making in Chapter 2.
Daryl Wilson (1997–2017)

My longitudinal research with Daryl Wilson has been marked by six
different reforms that took place at T. P. Yaeger Middle School between
1997 and 2017. Each of these change efforts enhanced or detracted
from Daryl’s curriculum making, which in turn, added or subtracted
from his possible growth as a teacher. This is because learning has the
capacity to “diminish the mind as well as expand it” (Eisner, 1982, p. 13).
18 C. J. CRAIG
Also, none of the change efforts was discrete. Each had other develop-
ments that concurrently happened. The reforms in question were: (1)
standardized teaching methods (models of teaching) (1997–2000), (2)
standardized teacher communities (professional learning communities)
(2002–2006), (3) standardized teaching practices (readers and writers
workshop) (2007–2009), (4) standardized teacher evaluation (school
district digitized format) (2009–2012), (5) standardized workbooks
(testing company-produced) (2013–2015), and (6) standardized pay-
for-performance (value-added measures) (2015–2017). As foreshadowed,
each presents struggles between teachers’ assigned roles as implementers
and their personal and professional desires to be curriculum makers.
When I first began working with Daryl Wilson and other teachers in
his department, the models of teaching change effort was underway. This
meant that Daryl could not draw on his personal repository of teacher
knowledge nor on his teaching sensibilities to instruct his students in
a manner pleasing to him as a middle school literacy teacher. On the
contrary, he was required to demonstrate one of six teaching models that
a state staff developer required him to use when she entered his classroom.
As might be expected, Daryl and his colleagues found this approach
insulting because it directly affronted their abilities to be curriculum
makers. Below is a discussion that took place between Charles, a sixth-
grade literacy teacher, and Daryl, who was an eighth-grade literacy teacher
as well as the literacy department chair. This passage is one of several that
are illustrative of the teachers’ dissatisfaction with the models they were
required to use as curriculum implementers:
Charles: The lesson models are moving in the opposite direction to teacher
empowerment. They are so prescribed that they take away our empow-
erment. This year is such a mixed bag – imaging coming in the middle
of two class periods and making judgments [about teachers’ practices].
Later …
Charles: There is this mirroring thing here that is not collaborative. It

means doing what they expect us to do. It does not give individuals
credit for their own smarts.
Daryl: I resent having to play the game. People cannot be worked with like
they, and their knowledge and experiences, are interchangeable parts
(Craig, 2001, p. 321)
Because the models of teaching were expected to be implemented

“cleanly, not creatively” (staff developer’s words), they eventually were
“shelved” (teachers’ expression) but not before several teachers, including
the principal, exited the school, with some leaving the profession alto-
gether. Upon her departure, the principal declared that the models of
teaching reform revealed the extent to which those working in schools
(teachers and administrators alike) are “on the short end of the stick.”
Daryl and other teachers in his department were then required to
participate in another change initiative: professional learning communi-
ties (PLCs). On this occasion, the school district formally announced that
it would “implement professional learning communities [PLCs]…and
give administrators the tools needed to create PLCs throughout the
district” (School District, 2007). The district specifically spoke of imple-
mentation and, by definition, privileged principals’ versions of teacher
community not the natural versions of teacher knowledge communities
that existed prior to the administrative imposition of PLCs on them.
However, this was not initially a problem because Yaeger’s principal
was brand-new. He allowed the literacy teachers to organize themselves
into small study groups, which were essentially their versions of a PLC.
In these self-selected, self-styled knowledge communities (Craig, 1995a,
1995b, 2007), they responded as curriculum makers to two books in their
subject area: The art of teaching reading (Calkins, 2001) and Mosaic of
thought: Teaching comprehension in a readers workshop (Keene & Zimmer-
mann, 1997). This was part-and-parcel of what other teachers termed
“the halcyon days” of school change in Greater Houston (Craig et al.,
2020). Below is how one group of teachers captured what they learned
as curriculum makers from their group-directed professional development
experiences:
Once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading,
It had no pictures or conversations in it,
‘and what is the use of the book’ thought Alice, ‘without pictures or
conversations.’
(From Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll)
And we ask ourselves,
with the art of reading teaching
before our eyes and beyond our reach,
how?
How to teach questioning,
how to teach visualizing,
how to teach wondering,
20 C. J. CRAIG
how to teach connecting,

to the child with no questions,
no wonders,
no connections,
and no pictures or conversations
peeping and whispering
from the pages of the book
Alice had not a moment to think about stopping herself before she found
herself falling
down what seemed to be
a very deep well. Either the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly,
for she had plenty of time as she went down to look at her,
And to wonder what was going to happen next.
So far, we see that the more deeply Yaeger’s literacy teachers reflected on
their situations, the more their questions emerged and the more memo-
ries they called forth for the purposes of interpretation. Their writing
continued:
Flipping back to remembered pages

Gliding our fingers across the lines
We reread
To ourselves
To each other,
Connecting Calkins to classroom,
Keene to colleagues,
and text to students,
we wonder
is the data accurate,
or does it become curiousor and curiousor
the closer you look?
Are we teaching a test, a text,
Or a student?
And we question
What does Calkins mean by
‘a curriculum of talk’
and Keene by
‘a mosaic of thought’
and with these questions stirring the air…
As foreshadowed, questions continued to “stir in the air” for the Yaeger

teachers. This time around, though, they directly addressed the theses of
Calkins’ and Keene’s books and moved toward resolution of what up to

now has been lived and named tensions:
She puzzled over this for some time, but at last a bright thought struck her.
‘Why, it’s a Looking-Glass book, of course!
And if I hold it up to a glass, the words will all go the right way again.’
The teachers’ ah-hah movement presaged the literacy teachers’ own

conclusions:
And then we laugh,

And breathe,
And realize
We will teach them to do
What we do as readers
To touch the text with our fingers,
To question the text with our curiosity,
To visualize the text with our pictures,
To connect the text with our lives,
And to enter that Wonderland that is
Reading.
And Alice knelt down and looked along the passage into the loveliest garden
you ever
saw. (Craig, 2010, pp. 428–429)
However, despite the teachers’ powerful poetry writing, a major problem

persisted. The Yaeger literacy teachers collectively presented challenges as
learners in addition to their considerable strengths. They, like the students
whom they taught, were not learning how to teach using readers and
writers workshop (subject matter) at a uniform rate. Further to this, the
learning of neither the teachers nor the students could be blueprinted.
This deeply concerned their new principal who had awakened to the fact
of what a revolving one-year contract from his school district (milieu)
meant where his career advancement was concerned. He knew he could
potentially lose his job if the Yaeger teachers did not perform in ways that
statistically increased students’ accountability test scores. Hence, he stan-
dardized and accelerated the literacy teachers’ use of readers and writers
workshop, which was the next reform he instituted, also through funding
Yaeger received from a philanthropy. To expedite his efforts, he hired a
literacy staff developer (a teacher of teachers) from an east-coast state.
Soon, all the teachers at each grade level were teaching the same content
22 C. J. CRAIG
in the same way and commonly assessing their students’ progress. Conse-
quently, Daryl Wilson, who had previously created and taught a highly
meaningful Holocaust literacy unit4 in which his students and he were
deeply invested, had to ditch it in favor of a unit of study that the literacy
staff developer prescribed. Further to this, the staff developer and others
visited each classroom 20–50 times per year with the others being school
administrators, teachers in the department and school guests. On one
such visit, the staff developer told Daryl Wilson in front of his peers, his
administrators, and a handful of school guests that his students were the
“worst GT (gifted & talented) class” she had ever observed. This judg-
mental comment, which cut deeply into the heart of his practice, was
highly problematic to Daryl as a teaching professional. It also irritated
his colleagues who likewise faced public condemnations in front of their
students and peers. Daryl’s colleague, Laura Curtis, explained:
…the way it was done with all of these people with clipboards and the
microscopic way they came in and zeroed in on [a teacher] and one
child. And the children [particularly those who were English-as-a-second-
language learners and possibly offspring of undocumented workers] were
very nervous.
Laura went on to say:
The staff developer had a way of putting you on the spot saying, “Why
do you do this?” “Why do your kids need that?” And everything was an
instant demand…All of a sudden you are thinking I have got to answer
this person. I’ve got to answer this individual because the individual wants
an answer now—and if I do not give the right answer, then the person will
get mad at me in front of my principal, peers, and children and say ugly
things to me.
The change effort that followed freed the teachers from “the hand-
cuffs” (Daryl’s expression) the staff developer placed on the teachers’
workshop teaching, but even more greatly threatened their overall abilities
to be curriculum makers. The incoming reform had to do with standard-
ized teacher assessments. These assessments came after the school had
experienced an almost complete leadership change. Only one assistant
4 Daryl Wilson personally traveled to Israel and the death camps in Europe to learn
about the Holocaust and victims’ experiences.
principal with one year of experience remained. Unfortunately, a begin-

ning assistant principal with elementary school experience was assigned
responsibility for Yaeger’s middle school literacy department. His content
area was not reading or writing. To make matters worse, the school
district had concurrently adopted a value-added approach to teacher
assessment. This meant that teachers’ evaluations would be linked statis-
tically to students’ high stakes accountability test scores. Further to this,
the school appeared to have a limited number of points available for distri-
bution among its high-performing faculty. This resulted in the teachers
receiving less points and poorer evaluations than previously had been the
case. Hence, Daryl dropped 20 points, another teacher reported a loss of
27 points, and Anna Dean, the beginning teacher I discuss later, received
a score significantly lower than her previous years as well. As with the
previous reforms, more specially prepared teachers left Yaeger. Also, two
new back-to-back principals joined the campus leadership team and left
shortly thereafter. With multiple school districts operating in the densely
populated area, employment was easy to obtain elsewhere, particularly if
you were a strong teacher as faculty at Yaeger historically had been.
The fifth reform that Daryl Wilson experienced in my twenty-year
continuum at the campus pertained to standardized workbooks. The
rationale for this change was unknown. It may have occurred because
the district was hiring mostly alternately certified teachers lacking in field
experience and knowledge of curriculum mandates. Viewed another way,
the problem could have been parents threatening lawsuits for their chil-
dren’s failures to enter universities of their dreams. Package deals with
book publishers may also have been a contributing factor. I do not know.
Whatever the reason/s, Daryl and his colleagues were required to choose
one of two expendable workbooks published by testing companies, each
of which cost $50 per student annually (1500 x $50 = $7500 per annum
for the campus). The Yaeger teachers agreed on one workbook; the
district superintendent dictated that the school purchase the other one.
While Daryl as department chair found the assigned workbooks reason-
ably “okay” (his word), he did not personally use them as part of his
classroom instruction. Instead, he, like other members of his department,
continued to embed the mechanics of writing and spelling in the writers
workshop shell that the campus had adopted and perfected. Hence, Daryl,
like the other teachers in his department, hid the workbooks because
students and parents had complained they were too clumsy for home-
work use. Consequently, the workbooks could be found behind novel
24 C. J. CRAIG
sets in classroom libraries, stacked behind pillows or curtains, or stored in

covered chests. Other than consuming precious space in Yaeger’s smaller-
than-usual classrooms, the workbooks wasted public taxpayers’ dollars.
The workbooks thrust teachers into teacher-as-curriculum-implementer
roles because the workbooks could be both curriculum and resource.
However, the Yaeger literacy faculty found creative ways to maneuver
around them so the expendable books neither became the curriculum nor
served the purposes of curriculum implementation. In short, they capital-
ized on their moments of choice because they knew that “no command
or instruction can be so formulated as to control…artistic judgment or
behavior…” (Schwab, 1983, p. 245)
Next came the final literacy reform I studied, the decisive factor
that ended Daryl’s career. Daryl Wilson, like the other Yaeger teachers,
received monetary bonuses as a matter of course because literacy was a
tested school subject and his students, contrary to the staff developer’s
searing criticism, were mostly performing well on the state’s standard-
ized reading and writing tests. Unfortunately, however, another new
principal—Daryl’s seventh since I had known him (9th overall)—was
appointed to the campus in the interim. Before the new school year
began, she decided to remove Daryl from his department chair position.
Her stated reason (cover story?) was that Daryl had received less of a
value-added bonus in the previous year than he did in the years before.
She apparently did not take into account that Daryl worked with different
groups of students in different years and accordingly received different
bonuses. Alternately, the principal’s concern about Daryl’s changes in
bonuses/student test scores could have been a thinly guised ruse for
age discrimination. Whatever the case may have been, Daryl came to the
realization that:
This is what we have come to…

There is no other way to explain it…
Data is [G]od…. (Craig, 2020, p. 1)
Knowing there was “nowhere to go from here” (Craig, 2020, p. 10),

Daryl Wilson resigned from his department chair and teaching posi-
tions, bringing his years of teaching and teacher leadership at one of
the most venerable middle schools in the southern US to a close. Once
again, a clash between curriculum implementation and curriculum making
happened, this time with the tyranny of metrics being used in “dysfunc-
tional and oppressive way[s]” (Mueller, 2018, p. xvii) that left Daryl “on
the short end of the stick” without title, and continuing employment and
entering a new phase of life where his identity was concerned.
Bernadette Lohle (1998–2011)

Like Daryl Wilson, Bernadette Lohle was an experienced teacher who
worked in a school district adjacent to his city center one. While both
districts were issued federal court orders to desegregate their students
and teachers, Daryl’s district integrated its minority Black and majority
white populations more expeditiously and settled its case, which remains a
sealed, historical document to this day. Bernadette’s district, on the other
hand, failed to comply and the case was re-opened about two decades
later. The unsettled decree had to do with a particular neighborhood,
the neighborhood where Bernadette’s campus, Cochrane Academy, was
located. Settled by African Americans, it was part of the most populous
Black communities outside of Harlem. The large concentration of chil-
dren of color coupled with the district’s ongoing federal lawsuit meant
that Cochrane easily qualified as a school reform site and was able to
acquire a large sum of funding over a five-year period (1997–2002). The
school was also the recipient of a $1 million federal arts grant due to its
high priority needs. I played leading roles in both endeavors. The second
five-year award (2000–2005) is the one mainly discussed here.
As Cochrane’s senior arts teacher and program chair, Bernadette Lohle
taught and led the school’s nationally recognized arts program, which,
according to its request for funding proposal, was to be spread within its
district, the larger community and across the country. From the outset,
Bernadette was dismayed that the funding agency termed her Grounds for
Learning project a “dissemination” effort:
There is something about the word, dissemination—like the word,

seminal —that is totally and utterly wrong… We need new ways to describe
how ideas become shared. Perhaps then we could more ably understand
what happens and what needs to happen in order for teachers to share
knowledge in ways that are helpful. (Craig, 2006, p. 257)
While it was a grant program expectation that Bernadette would func-

tion as a curriculum implementer in the arts program dissemination, she
26 C. J. CRAIG
personally considered herself a curriculum maker modeling a story of how

others could make curriculum alongside elementary school children as she
had done throughout her career. Most specifically,
…Grounds for Learning moves the child from the confines of the
traditional classroom of four walls of learning to the outside…school envi-
ronment. It was developed to heighten children’s awareness of the diversity
of cultures and their history, while exploring topics that invite the integra-
tion of the disciplines. Through these experiences, [Cochrane’s faculty]
would assist children in understanding the uniqueness of individuals, as
well as nurturing respect for the very foundation on which history is built.
(Craig, 2006, p. 277)
However, the word, dissemination, and the focus of the project were
not the only challenges that Bernadette faced. Her principal, who fully
supported the arts and arts-based teaching at Cochrane, also resigned to
take up a prestigious leadership position in the city. This was about the
time the Grounds for Learning grant was launched. Further to this, the
high stakes testing agenda, which began in Texas, had become federal law
(U.S. Department of Education, 2002). Hence, accountability demands
were increasing. Given the significant changes in the broader educational
policy milieu, the school district opted for a different leadership focus
at Cochrane Academy. Unlike Bernadette’s past principal who uncon-
ditionally championed the arts, her new principal called the arts “fluff”
(her word) to offset hard-nosed instruction in “tested subject areas.”
Needless to say, Bernadette’s (and the other teachers’) desires to make
curriculum alongside children collided with the prevailing administra-
tive imperative that instrumentally focused on test score improvement.
This shift in orientation effectively made the standardized state exams the
Cochrane children’s curriculum. In the passage that follows, Bernadette
and I discussed what transpired as this change unfolded:
Bernadette: It (the arts/arts-based learning philosophy) was slowly chipped

away by people who did not understand the relevance of the program
from the beginning….
Researcher: Mm-hmm…
Bernadette: …who did not know what the vision was, and thought that it
was arbitrary.
Researcher: And then some strong themes like testing and accountability
came into play?
Bernadette: Exactly. And then a kind of power struggle ensued—the

arts…we knew what our role was supposed to be and we were not
going to change that. We were not going to be dessert. And we were
not going to be “fluff.”…There is a big difference between quality and
fluff, and you have to know the difference. (Craig, 2006, pp. 274–275)
Bernadette continued:
And some people think that when you put on a production and you just
see the end results that it only took a week’s time. But what they do not
realize in the arts is that we have planned for that performance for the
entire year… It is knowing what quality is…and it is a sequential learning
process. And you teach more than the arts. Every lesson you teach history.
Every lesson you work on involves forms of proportional measurement.
And with color, you are constantly working with the science of the world,
how color affects the human eye and human emotions. In short, you are
learning about life. (Craig, 2006, p. 275)
As a curriculum maker, Bernadette focused her attention on her

oeuvre: quality teaching and learning. Her principal, on the other
hand, was instrumentalist in her outlook: she simply wanted the federal
grant deliverables out of the way so full attention could be placed
on Cochrane’s students passing their state accountability tests. Hence,
Bernadette’s principal insisted that she “get the lesson plans done.” It
was clear that “coverage...[drove her] train” (Rodgers, 2020, p. 14).
She placated Bernadette by saying that the units “did not need to be
perfect,” which further irritated Bernadette (Craig, 2006, p. 19) who
had self-acknowledged perfectionist tendencies. This further heightened
the conflict between the two women because the writing of lesson plans
would not accomplish what Bernadette had set out to do. What she
wanted was to find a creative way to share her knowledge of the arts and
the way she went about arts-based teaching. Also, Bernadette had figured
out that disseminated products, if they were to be impactful, needed to be
arts-based. She knew they had to “create experiences” rather than “com-
municate messages” (Dewey, 1934, p. 104) as her principal was requiring
her to do. A teacher new to Cochrane captured the school’s ethos when
experience drove the curriculum and teachers’ curriculum making rested
on their sensibilities not on the edicts raining down on them from the
administrative conduit above:
28 C. J. CRAIG
When I first saw [Cochrane’s] students [in action]—it was a little noisier
than usual, but what I saw was not so much the noise of goofing off and
not being on task, but the noise of learning. I saw a lot of hands-on, a
lot of collaborative group learning. A lot of fine arts and visual arts and a
great deal of [subject] integration. (Olson & Craig, 2009b, p. 563)
However, the mother of all Black swan events5 —September 11,

2001—happened not long after that and interrupted everything at
Cochrane Academy; indeed, everyday life as Americans had known it. In
response, the world paused to pay tribute to the many Americans whose
lives were lost or torn apart. Bernadette Lohle, who had been born and
raised in Brooklyn, took the catastrophe especially hard. In the midst of
the all-consuming national crisis, Bernadette and her students directed
their artistic attention and energies toward the creation of a mural befit-
tingly called The Shadows of New York. The mural began as a simple
shading lesson. However, the mundane activity became a profound curric-
ular experience for the Cochrane Academy youth. The mural illustrated
how “dumb matter… [takes on] meaning” (Dewey, 1972, p. 292).
While this powerful learning experience was taking place, Bernadette’s
administrators repeatedly inquired whether her students were sufficiently
prepared to write their standardized examinations in the main content
areas. She was further questioned whether her students’ instructional
time outdoors and in the art studio could have been better spent in
their desks “bubbling in answers on practice tests.” To add salt to the
wound, Bernadette was grilled with questions about the mural’s value
and meaning—as if this was not self-evident.
Once completed, The Shadows of New York, which covered the exterior
wall of Cochrane Academy’s front entrance, was shipped to New York as
originally planned (see Fig. 1.2 for a photo given to me by Bernadette
Lohle and used with permission).
Children’s heartfelt messages accompanied the package:
The Shadows of New York is about putting New Yorkers’ hearts together
again. I hope our mural works. (Jessica)
We are sending this mural as a memorial to those of you who lost
someone. (Jeronimo)
5 This was how I heard the events of September 11, 2001 described by a British citizen
when I attended a conference in the UK.
Fig. 1.2 The Shadow of New York mural (Courtesy of Bernadette Lohle)
We hope The Shadows of New York lifts your spirits and helps you to
move on. (Alex)
We hope our drawing makes your hearts sing. (Alberto) (Craig, 2006,
p. 280)
In a special ceremony, New York City’s then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani

accepted the children’s curriculum making product on behalf of the citi-
zens of New York. After that, The Shadows of New York was featured on
local, state, and national newscasts and blazed the cover of an impor-
tant Wall Street magazine. New Yorkers also personally corresponded with
Cochrane’s students. Some even created scholarships for the children in
their school’s name as the generative nature of the profound curriculum
making experience spilled over to other facets of life and imagined futures
for America and America’s underserved children of color.
In the background, the questions posed by Cochrane’s administrator
took a different tact. This time Bernadette was asked why she had not
insisted that the mural be returned to Texas. Apparently, the principal
now wanted it displayed in the school district’s front foyer. While this was
going on, Bernadette unpacked what the mural experience had taught her
about curriculum making:
• [it] was not a lesson, nor even a unit…it did not fit a lesson plan
template….it involved months of building and layering
• it was not clear cut…it went in all directions…
30 C. J. CRAIG
• it was a happening…and a great deal more was happening than what

happened (Craig, 2006, p. 282)
Bernadette also reflected on the lesson plans she was supposed to

write. She recognized that the lessons would have made curriculum
implementers of other teachers if she had shown fidelity to the funder’s
implementation agenda. She reiterated:
The writing of the lessons [was] not the essence. It was the work that
came out of it… The “bones” of the lessons simply cannot be dupli-
cated… Teachers need to have the passion to enter into the work; they
need to experience the emotions themselves to be able to engage the
students…They need to be attentive to what transpires…just a flat lesson
plan is not helpful…What was happening was much more powerful than a
template could ever be. (Craig, 2006, p. 285)
Infuriated by the “pressure-cooker…situation,” Bernadette did not hold

back on her synopsis of what she had learned from The Shadows of New
York experience:
There was something cold about what [was] done…the way children
[were] being manipulated, the way art [was] being controlled, the use
of art for testing purposes. Life is more than a mere numbers game. We
need to remember that World War II was a number; September 11 will
go down in history as [a number] too… Life does not come down to a
score on a standardized test. Through focusing on numbers, we are totally
missing the picture. (Craig, 2006, p. 285)
Here, Bernadette echoed Milli (2014) who likewise spoke of “…[people]

in jail being given a number; people in concentration campus having
numbers; systems reducing people to numbers…” (p. 48).
When Bernadette arrived at her disturbing realization, she resigned
from her teaching position at Cochrane Academy. Her Grounds for
Learning experience had amply informed her that “[the school’s commit-
ment to the arts] was just not there” (her words). At the core of her
being, she knew that children’s artwork is not a “diversion or side issue.”
Rather, it is “the most educational of all human activities” because it holds
the power to “pierce the veil and give sense to…reality beyond appear-
ances…” (Murdoch, 1970, pp. 87–88). This most certainly was the case
with Bernadette Lohle’s arts dissemination grant experience and her 09-
11-2001-induced Shadows of New York mural that traveled to the heart
of a national wound in a valiant effort to heal it.
Helen Macalla (2008–2011)

Like Daryl Wilson and Bernadette Lohle, Helen Macalla was also an expe-
rienced teacher. She, like Daryl and Bernadette, migrated to Texas from a
different region of the US. While Daryl moved from the Deep South and
Bernadette came from the East Coast, Helen arrived from the Mid-West.
She became a Physical Education (PE) teacher in the Mid-South when
employment in her specialty area was no longer available to her in the
mid-western US.
In Greater Houston, Helen Macalla’s career mostly blossomed despite
her being in a male-dominated profession that caused her to feel like “a
lone wolf.” Eventually, she became a co-department chair of an experi-
mental PE program with Randy, her male counterpart, who shared beliefs
similar to her about their chosen subject area. Their freshly minted, inte-
grated PE program was far removed from street-corner PE that focuses
on some iteration of throwing balls, developing competitive sports teams,
and preparing professional athletes. What Randy and Helen created was
“Hiding the Physical of Education.” What their program boiled down
to was PE experienced through everyday life activities; that is, PE with
the usual sweat and grind disguised. This is how Helen described the
underlying rationale of “Hiding the Physical of Education”:
Helen: I call it camouflaging the activity. They do not realize that they are
actively working at something [a stated unit objective]…
Researcher: But they are enjoying it…
Helen: They have a good time doing it. And, all of a sudden, we give them
a traditional test and they find out, “I know something….” (Craig, You,
& Oh, 2017, p. 764)
Unfortunately, the innovative program came to a screeching halt when

Randy accepted employment at a private high school so that his daughter
could receive free tuition there. About this time, the school district
rethought the experimental school concept and decided to return it
to status quo teaching and learning. Heartbroken over the “death” of
Randy’s and her PE program, Helen quit teaching to take up a second
32 C. J. CRAIG
passion: fish. While her intention had always been to own an exotic fish
store, her plan did not materialize because an economic downturn hit
the energy-dependent economy of the city. Consequently, Helen began
work at Pet Smart. One day, one of the most difficult youths she had ever
taught showed up at the store to purchase a pet. When he saw Helen
working there, he inquired as to why she had left teaching, a question she
found utterly preposterous for him to ask. The student then proceeded to
tell her about his deep regrets about her leaving the teaching profession,
regrets apparent in the field note below:
Without [Helen], he confessed, he might not have made it to [a Tier 1]

university… He told [her]: I think of you every day because something
happened to me when you taught me.” He went on to say, “Will you do
me a favor and return to teaching?” (Craig et al., 2017, p. 763)
As a person of faith, Helen equated this young man’s re-appearance in

her life as a sign from God. This is how our conversation continued to
unfold:
Researcher: So you came back to teaching a second time and knew where
you needed to be….
Helen: Yes, I am listening now. I was sent the worst person in my entire
life to visit me and to give me direction….Thank you, Lord (glancing
upward)
Researcher: That is phenomenal, is it not?
Helen: Well, He [God] had to get my attention somehow… I am now in
a very good place… It [PE teaching] is my gift… (Craig et al., 2017,
p. 766)
Hence, when Helen returned to teaching, she adjusted her perspective

considerably:
Helen: I have already built a PE program, so I have met that goal… I do

not care if I ever build another program. I do not care if I am ever
named Teacher of the Year. These things do not motivate me. Neither
do I want to be a PE Chair again. (Craig et al., 2017, p. 766)
Helen joined a six-member PE Department with both female and

male teachers representing each grade level. She found herself unoffi-
cially paired with JD, an African American beginning teacher who had
previously played football on a university varsity team. While it was
not mandatory that the two of them team teach, teaching pairs typi-
cally collaborated with one another from time-to-time. Additionally, it
is important to note that a male department member was JD’s official
mentor, but that relationship possibly did not work out because of back-
ground rivalries concerning who would coach the football team (i.e., the
returning coach/coaches or the football player).
Researcher: So how did you start, you know, to mentor JD?

Helen: He originally had a different mentor at the beginning of the year.
And then another [male teacher] become his official mentor. And JD
and I began to spend a lot of time planning things together or talking
together, and he and I got along really well. So, the unwritten rules
that no one really talks about, I’ll share with him. So that’s how he and
I got closer; because people were expecting things from him, but he
didn’t have any experience…Because we are all brought up differently
in PE, you know…
Researcher: Being a mentor takes up so much time…
Helen: I think I see it more as us just talking about things… I do not see
it as a [burden] ….
Researcher: Is there benefit?
Helen: Yes, I get things from him. I mean he is young…He is fresh… I get
to see him as a young person dealing with the students because students
react to younger people better than they do to older people…I’m
watching him to see what he’s doing that really excites the students—
things I can imitate and put into my life to make my students have the
same thrills that his students do… (Craig et al., 2017, p. 777)
Helen’s mentoring of JD was tethered to her personal image of

teaching as a strand of pearls, which she introduced in a conversation:
Helen: You know…I have been here for four years. I think most people are
aware that what I do is rigorous. You know, I am happy with the baby
steps. Like I told JD, you know it is all about the pearls. You make a
pearl necklace. You add a few pearls each year.
Researcher: Hmm…
34 C. J. CRAIG
Helen: And he goes: “Man, you have a long string…” And I go: “Well,
the strand keeps growing… Teaching is a strand of pearls…”
Researcher: Right, wonderful… So, you are thinking your teaching is ‘a
strand of pearls’?
Helen: Right. A strand of pearls… (Craig et al., 2017, p. 767)
The conversation continued to unfurl his way:
Researcher: JD’s not into pearls?

Helen: No, he has no problem with that… You know some guys would
go, “What would I want to do with pearls?” But JD sees what I am
[figuratively] talking about…He knows: “She’s not into pearls either,
but it is a way to talk about her pedagogy….”
Researcher: There is this whole sense of doing and inquiring and….
continuous flow and development….
Helen: Nobody wants to talk about [inexpensive] keys on a chain….The
want to talk about something valuable…Pearls are valuable… (Craig
et al., 2017, p. 767)
The topic of teaching as a strand of pearls came up on other occasions

as well such as in the following two instances:
Interaction 1
Helen: JD said to me one time: “But I don’t do everything you do…”

And I said:
JD… and like I told Cheryl Craig, “it’s about the pearl.” You can
buy—can only afford one or two pearls a year. I said; “By the time
you have as many years of experiences as I have, “you will have many
pearls.” But you need to worry about a few this year… I said to him,
“Your football unit, that’s your pearl.” (Craig et al., 2017, p. 767)
Interaction 2
Helen: [JD’s] doing a whole lot more. He’s doing a really good job… I
said to him, ‘Right now, you are creating…. I call it ‘making a strand
of pearls.’ Every year, you add something great to what you teach. I
said, “Well, you know, you made two pearls this year?” JD said: “I did?
What did I do?” I said, “Well, you know your football thing was a big
pearl…”
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upon which they all agree. There is some approach to agreement
upon another point: that there will be no revolution. … Nearly
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succeed here. 'It couldn't, you know. Broadly speaking, all
the nations in the empire hate the government—but they all
hate each other too, and with devoted and enthusiastic
bitterness; no two of them can combine; the nation that rises
must rise alone; then the others would joyfully join the
government against her, and she would have just a fly's chance
against a combination of spiders. This government is entirely
independent. It can go its own road, and do as it pleases; it
has nothing to fear. In countries like England and America,
where there is one tongue and the public interests are common,
the government must take account of public opinion; but in
Austria-Hungary there are nineteen public opinions—one for
each state. No—two or three for each state, since there are
two or three nationalities in each. A government cannot
satisfy all these public opinions; it can only go through the
motions of trying. This government does that. It goes through
the motions, and they do not succeed; but that does not worry
the government much.' …
"The recent troubles have grown out of Count Badeni's

necessities. He could not carry on his government without a
majority vote in the House at his back, and in order to secure
it he had to make a trade of some sort. He made it with the
Czechs—the Bohemians. The terms were not easy for him: he must
pass a bill making the Czech tongue the official language in
Bohemia in place of the German. This created a storm. All the
Germans in Austria' were incensed. In numbers they form but a
fourth part of the empire's population, but they urge that the
country's public business should be conducted in one common
tongue, and that tongue a world language—which German is.
However, Badeni secured his majority. The German element was
apparently become helpless. The Czech deputies were exultant.
Then the music began. Badeni's voyage, instead of being
smooth, was disappointingly rough from the start. The
government must get the 'Ausgleich' through. It must not fail.
Badeni's majority was ready to carry it through; but the
minority was determined to obstruct it and delay it until the
obnoxious Czech-language measure should be shelved.
"The 'Ausgleich' is an Adjustment, Arrangement, Settlement,

which holds Austria and Hungary together [see above; also, in
volume 1, AUSTRIA: A. D. 1866-1867]. It dates from 1867, and
has to be renewed every ten years. It establishes the share
which Hungary must pay toward the expenses of the imperial
government. Hungary is a kingdom (the Emperor of Austria is
its King), and has its own parliament and governmental
machinery. But it has no foreign office, and it has no army—at
least its army is a part of the imperial army, is paid out of
the imperial treasury, and is under the control of the
imperial war office. The ten-year rearrangement was due a year
ago, but failed to connect. At least completely. A year's
compromise was arranged. A new arrangement must be effected
before the last day of this year. Otherwise the two countries
become separate entities. The Emperor would still be King of
Hungary—that is, King of an independent foreign country. There
would be Hungarian custom-houses on the Austrian frontier, and
there would be a Hungarian army and a Hungarian foreign
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suffer damage. The Opposition in the House, although in the
minority, had a good weapon to fight with in the pending
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the government would doubtless have to withdraw the hated
language bill or lose Hungary.
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the House. It was soon manifest that by applying these Rules
ingeniously, it could make the majority helpless, and keep it
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that way.
{40}
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within their rights in using them. They used them to such dire
purpose that all parliamentary business was paralyzed. The
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the President and the Vice-Presidents of the parliament
trample the Rules under foot upon occasion! …
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since the world began. At 8.45, on the evening of the 28th of
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of ten hours, Dr. Lecher was granted the floor. … Then burst
out such another wild and frantic and deafening clamor as has
not been heard on this planet since the last time the
Comanches surprised a white settlement at midnight. Yells from
the Left, counter-yells from the Right, explosions of yells
from all sides at once, and all the air sawed and pawed and
clawed and cloven by a writhing confusion of gesturing arms
and hands. Out of the midst of this thunder and turmoil and
tempest rose Dr. Lecher, serene and collected, and the
providential length of him enabled his head to show out above
it. He began his twelve-hour speech. At any rate, his lips
could be seen to move, and that was evidence. On high sat the
President imploring order, with his long hands put together as
in prayer, and his lips visibly but not hearably speaking. At
intervals he grasped his bell and swung it up and down with
vigor, adding its keen clamor to the storm weltering there
below. Dr. Lecher went on with his pantomime speech,
contented, untroubled. … One of the interrupters who made
himself heard was a young fellow of slight build and neat
dress, who stood a little apart from the solid crowd and
leaned negligently, with folded arms and feet crossed, against
a desk. Trim and handsome; strong face and thin features;
black hair roughed up; parsimonious mustache; resonant great
voice, of good tone and pitch. It is Wolf, capable and
hospitable with sword and pistol. … Out of him came early this
thundering peal, audible above the storm:
"'I demand the floor. I wish to offer a motion.'
"In the sudden lull which followed, the President answered,

'Dr. Lecher has the floor.'
"Wolf. 'I move the close of the sitting!'
"President. 'Representative Lecher has the floor.'

[Stormy outburst from the Left—that is, the Opposition.]
"Wolf. 'I demand the floor for the introduction of a

formal motion. [Pause.] Mr. President, are you going to grant
it, or not? [Crash of approval from the Left.] I will keep on
demanding the floor till I get it.'
"President. 'I call Representative Wolf to order. Dr.

Lecher has the floor.' …
"'Which was true; and he was speaking, too, calmly, earnestly,

and argumentatively; and the official stenographers had left
their places and were at his elbows taking down his words, he
leaning and orating into their ears—a most curious and
interesting scene. … At this point a new and most effective
noisemaker was pressed into service. Each desk has an
extension, consisting of a removable board eighteen inches
long, six wide, and a half-inch thick. A member pulled one of
these out and began to belabor the top of his desk with it.
Instantly other members followed suit, and perhaps you can
imagine the result. Of all conceivable rackets it is the most
ear-splitting, intolerable, and altogether fiendish. … Wolf
went on with his noise and with his demands that he be granted
the floor, resting his board at intervals to discharge
criticisms and epithets at the Chair. … By-and-by he struck
the idea of beating out a tune with his board. Later he
decided to stop asking for the floor, and to confer it upon
himself. And so he and Dr. Lecher now spoke at the same time,
and mingled their speeches with the other noises, and nobody
heard either of them. Wolf rested himself now and then from
speech-making by reading, in his clarion voice, from a
pamphlet.
"I will explain that Dr. Lecher was not making a twelve-hour
speech for pastime, but for an important purpose. It was the
government's intention to push the 'Ausgleich' through its
preliminary stages in this one sitting (for which it was the
Order of the Day), and then by vote refer it to a select
committee. It was the Majority's scheme—as charged by the
Opposition—to drown debate upon the bill by pure noise—drown
it out and stop it. The debate being thus ended, the vote upon
the reference would follow—with victory for the government.
But into the government's calculations had not entered the
possibility of a single-barrelled speech which should occupy
the entire time-limit of the sitting, and also get itself
delivered in spite of all the noise. … In the English House an
obstructionist has held the floor with Bible-readings and
other outside matters; but Dr. Lecher could not have that
restful and recuperative privilege—he must confine himself
strictly to the subject before the House. More than once, when
the President could not hear him because of the general
tumult, he sent persons to listen and report as to whether the
orator was speaking to the subject or not.
"The subject was a peculiarly difficult one, and it would have

troubled any other deputy to stick to it three hours without
exhausting his ammunition, because it required a vast and
intimate knowledge—detailed and particularized knowledge—of
the commercial, railroading, financial, and international
banking relations existing between two great sovereignties,
Hungary and the Empire. But Dr. Lecher is President of the
Board of Trade of his city of Brünn, and was master of the
situation. … He went steadily on with his speech; and always
it was strong, virile, felicitous, and to the point. He was
earning applause, and this enabled his party to turn that fact
to account. Now and then they applauded him a couple of
minutes on a stretch, and during that time he could stop
speaking and rest his voice without having the floor taken
from him. …
{41}
"The Minority staid loyally by their champion. Some

distinguished deputies of the Majority staid by him too,
compelled thereto by admiration of his great performance. When
a man has been speaking eight hours, is it conceivable that he
can still be interesting, still fascinating? When Dr. Lecher had
been speaking eight hours he was still compactly surrounded by
friends who would not leave him and by foes (of all parties)
who could not; and all hung enchanted and wondering upon his
words, and all testified their admiration with constant and
cordial outbursts of applause. Surely this was a triumph
without precedent in history. …
"In consequence of Dr. Lecher's twelve-hour speech and the

other obstructions furnished by the Minority, the famous
thirty-three-hour sitting of the House accomplished nothing. …
Parliament was adjourned for a week—to let the members cool
off, perhaps—a sacrifice of precious time, for but two months
remained in which to carry the all-important 'Ausgleich' to a
consummation. …
"During the whole of November things went from bad to worse.

The all-important 'Ausgleich' remained hard aground, and could
not be sparred off. Badeni's government could not withdraw the
Language Ordinance and keep its majority, and the Opposition
could not be placated on easier terms. One night, while the
customary pandemonium was crashing and thundering along at its
best, a fight broke out. … On Thanksgiving day the sitting was
a history-making one. On that day the harried, bedeviled and
despairing government went insane. In order to free itself
from the thraldom of the Opposition it committed this
curiously juvenile crime: it moved an important change of the
Rules of the House, forbade debate upon the motion, put it to
a stand-up vote instead of ayes and noes, and then gravely
claimed that it had been adopted. … The House was already
standing up; had been standing for an hour; and before a third
of it had found out what the President had been saying, he had
proclaimed the adoption of the motion! And only a few heard
that. In fact, when that House is legislating you can't tell
it from artillery-practice. You will realize what a happy idea
it was to sidetrack the lawful ayes and noes and substitute a
stand-up vote by this fact: that a little later, when a
deputation of deputies waited upon the President and asked him
if he was actually willing to claim that that measure had been
passed, he answered, 'Yes—and unanimously.' …
"The 'Lex Falkenhayn,' thus strangely born, gave the President

power to suspend for three days any deputy who should continue
to be disorderly after being called to order twice, and it
also placed at his disposal such force as might be necessary
to make the suspension effective. So the House had a
sergeant-at-arms at last, and a more formidable one, as to
power, than any other legislature in Christendom had ever
possessed. The Lex Falkenhayn also gave the House itself
authority to suspend members for thirty days. On these terms
the 'Ausgleich' could be put through in an hour—apparently.
The Opposition would have to sit meek and quiet, and stop
obstructing, or be turned into the street, deputy after
deputy, leaving the Majority an unvexed field for its work.
"Certainly the thing looked well. … [But next day, when the
President attempted to open the session, a band of the
Socialist members made a sudden charge upon him, drove him and
the Vice President from the House, took possession of the
tribune, and brought even the semblance of legislative
proceedings to an end. Then a body of sixty policemen was
brought in to clear the House.] Some of the results of this
wild freak followed instantly. The Badeni government came down
with a crash; there was a popular outbreak or two in Vienna;
there were three or four days of furious rioting in Prague,
followed by the establishing there of martial law; the Jews
and Germans were harried and plundered, and their houses
destroyed; in other Bohemian towns there was rioting—in some
cases the Germans being the rioters, in others the Czechs—and
in all cases the Jew had to roast, no matter which side he was
on. We are well along in December now; the new
Minister-President has not been able to patch up a peace among
the warring factions of the parliament, therefore there is no
use in calling it together again for the present; public
opinion believes that parliamentary government and the
Constitution are actually threatened with extinction, and that
the permanency of the monarchy itself is a not absolutely
certain thing!
"Yes, the Lex Falkenhayn was a great invention, and did what
was claimed for it—it got the government out of the
frying-pan."
S. L. Clemens (Mark Twain),

Stirring Times in Austria
(Harper's Magazine, March, 1898).
AUSTRIA-HUNGARY: A. D. 1897 (December).
Imperial action.
On the last day of the year the Emperor closed the sittings of
the Austrian Reichsrath by proclamation and issued a rescript
continuing the "Ausgleich" provisionally for six months.
AUSTRIA-HUNGARY: A. D. 1898.
Prolongation of factious disorders.
Paralysis of constitutional government.
Though scenes in the Austrian Chamber were not quite so

violent, perhaps, as they had become near the close of 1897,
the state of factious disorder continued much the same
throughout the year, and legislation was completely stopped.
The work of government could be carried on only by imperial
decrees. The ministry of Baron von Gautsch, which had
succeeded that of Count Badeni, attempted a compromise on the
language question in Bohemia by dividing the country into
three districts, according to the distribution of the several
races, in one of which German was to be the official tongue,
in another Czech, while both languages were to be used in the
third. But the Germans of the empire would accept no such
compromise. In March, Baron von Gautsch retired, and Count
Thun Hohenstein formed a Ministry made up to represent the
principal factions in the Reichsrath; but, the scheme brought
no peace. Nor did appeals by Count Thun, "in the name of
Austria," to the patriotism and the reason of all parties, to
suspend their warfare long enough for a little of the
necessary work of the state to be done, have any effect. The
turbulence in the legislature infected the whole community,
and especially, it would seem, the students in the schools,
whose disorder caused many lectures to be stopped. In Hungary,
too, there was an increase of violence in political agitation.
A party, led by the son of Louis Kossuth, struggled to improve
what seemed to be an opportunity for breaking the political
union of Hungary with Austria, and realizing the old ambition
for an independent Hungarian state.
{42}
The ministry of Baron Banffy had this party against him, as
well as that of the clericals, who resented the civil marriage
laws, and legislation came to a deadlock nearly as complete in
the Hungarian as in the Austrian Parliament. There, as well as
in Austria, the extension of the Ausgleich, provisionally for
another year, had to be imposed by imperial decree.
AUSTRIA-HUNGARY: A. D. 1898 (April).

Withdrawal from the blockade of Crete and
the "Concert of Europe."
See (in this volume)

TURKEY: A. D. 1897-1899.
AUSTRIA-HUNGARY: A. D. 1898 (June).

The Sugar Conference at Brussels.

SUGAR BOUNTIES.
AUSTRIA-HUNGARY: A. D. 1898 (September).

Assassination of the Empress.
Jubilee of the Emperor's reign.
On the 10th of September, Elizabeth, Empress of Austria and

Queen of Hungary, was assassinated at Geneva by an Italian
anarchist, named Luigi Luccheni, who stabbed her with a small
stiletto, exceedingly thin and narrow in the blade. The
murderer rushed upon her and struck her, as she was walking,
with a single attendant, on the quay, towards a lake steamer
on which she intended to travel to Montreux. She fell, but
arose, with some assistance, and walked forward to the
steamer, evidently unaware that she had suffered worse than a
blow. On the steamer, however, she lost consciousness, and
then, for the first time, the wound was discovered. It had
been made by so fine a weapon that it showed little external
sign, and it is probable that the Empress felt little pain.
She lived nearly half an hour after the blow was struck. The
assassin attempted to escape, but was caught. As Swiss law
forbids capital punishment, he could be only condemned to
solitary confinement for life. This terrible tragedy came soon
after the festivities in Austria which had celebrated the
jubilee year of the Emperor Francis Joseph's reign. The
Emperor's marriage had been one of love: he had suffered many
afflictions in his later life; the state of his realm was such
as could hardly be contemplated without despair; men wondered
if he could bear this crowning sorrow and live. But he had the
undoubted affection of his subjects, much as they troubled him
with their miserably factious quarrels, and that consciousness
seems to have been his one support.
AUSTRIA-HUNGARY: A. D. 1899 (May-July).

Representation in the Peace Conference at The Hague.

PEACE CONFERENCE.
AUSTRIA-HUNGARY: A. D. 1899-1900.
Continued obstruction by the German parties in Austria.
Extensive secession of German Catholics from their
Church, and its significance.
Withdrawal of the Bohemian language decrees.
Obstruction taken up by the Czechs.
During most of the year the German parties in the Austrian

Reichsrath continued to make legislation impossible by
disorderly obstruction, with the avowed purpose of compelling
the government to withdraw the language decrees in Bohemia. A
still more significant demonstration of German feeling and
policy appeared, in a wide-spread and organized movement to
detach German Roman Catholics from their church, partly, it
would seem, as a proceeding of hostility to the Clerical
party, and partly as a means of recommending the Germans of
the Austrian states to the sympathy of the German Empire, and
smoothing the approach to an ultimate union of some of those
states with the Germanic federation. The agitation against the
Catholic Church is called "Los von Rom," and is said to have
had remarkable results. "Those acquainted with the situation
in Austria," says a writer in the "Quarterly Review," "do not
wonder that in various parts of the Empire there is a marked
tendency among the German Catholics to join Christian
communions separated from Rome. Many thousand Roman Catholics
have recently renounced their allegiance to the Holy See.
Further secessions are announced as about to take place. The
movement is especially strong in great centres like Eger,
Asch, and Saatz, but has made itself felt also in Carinthia,
and even in coast districts. This is a grave political fact,
for it is a marked indication of serious discontent, and a
sure sign that some arrangement under which certain districts
of Austria might be joined to Germany would not be unwelcome
to a section of the people."
Quarterly Review,
January, 1899.
In September the Austrian Ministry of Count Thun resigned, and

was succeeded by one formed under Count Clary-Aldingen. The
new premier withdrew the language decrees, which quieted the
German obstructionists, but provoked the Czechs to take up the
same rôle. Count Clary-Aldingen resigned in December, and a
provisional Ministry was formed under Dr. Wettek, which lasted
only until the 10th of January, 1900, when a new Cabinet was
formed by Dr. von Körber. In Hungary, Baron Banffy was driven
from power in February, 1899, by a state of things in the
Hungarian Parliament much like that in the Austrian. M.
Koloman Szell, who succeeded him, effected a compromise with
the opposition which enabled him to carry a measure extending
the Ausgleich to 1907. This brought one serious difficulty of
the situation to an end.
AUSTRIA-HUNGARY: A. D. 1899-1901.
Attitude towards impending revolt in Macedonia.

TURKEY: A. D. 1899-1901;
and BALKAN AND DANUBIAN STATES.
AUSTRIA-HUNGARY: A. D. 1900.
Military and naval expenditure.

WAR BUDGETS.
AUSTRIA-HUNGARY: A. D. 1900 (February).

Attempted pacification of German and Czech parties by a
Conciliation Board.
"On Monday last [February 5] the German and Czech Conciliation

Board met for the first time in Vienna, under the presidency of
the Austrian Premier, Dr. von Körber, and conferred for two
hours. … Dr. von Körber is at the head of what may be called a
'business' Ministry, composed largely of those who had filled
subordinate offices in previous Ministries. It was hoped,
perhaps, that, since the leading politicians with a political
'past' could apparently do nothing to bring about a
settlement, men with no past, but with a capacity for
business, and in no way committed on the racial question,
might do better in effecting a working arrangement. The
appointment of this Conciliation Board seemed a promising way
of attempting such a settlement. Dr. von Körber opened
Monday's proceedings with a strong appeal to both sides,
saying: 'Gentlemen, the Empire looks to you to restore its
happiness and tranquillity.' It cannot be said that the Empire
is likely to find its wishes fulfilled, for when the Board came
down to hard business, the old troubles instantly revealed
themselves.
{43}
The Premier recommended a committee for Bohemia of twenty-two
members, and one for Moravia of fifteen members, the two
sitting in joint session in certain cases. Dr. Engel then set
forth the historical claims of the Czechs, which immediately
called forth a demand from Dr. Funke, of the German party,
that German should be declared the official language
throughout Austria. Each speaker seems to have been supported
by his own party, and so no progress was made, and matters
remain in 'statu quo ante.' The singularly deficient
constitution of this Board makes against success, for it seems
that the German Nationalists and Anti-Semites have only one
delegate apiece, the Social Democrats were not invited at all,
while the extreme Germans and extreme Czechs, apparently
regarding the Board as a farce, declined to nominate delegates
to its sittings. … There is unhappily little reason for
believing that the Board of Conciliation will effect what the
Emperor himself has failed to accomplish."
Spectator (London),
February 10, 1900.
AUSTRIA-HUNGARY: A. D. 1900 (June-December).

Co-operation with the Powers in China.

CHINA.
AUSTRIA-HUNGARY: A. D. 1900 (September-December).

Warnings by the Emperor.
Clerical interference in politics.
The attitude of Hungary.
Economic decline of Austria.
Pessimistic views in Vienna.
The pending elections.
The Vienna correspondence of the "London Times" seems to be

the best source of information concerning the critical
conditions that are prevailing in the composite Empire, as the
Nineteenth Century closes, and the events by which those
conditions are from time to time revealed. The writer, whose
reports we shall quote, is evidently well placed for
observation, and well prepared for understanding what he sees.
In a dispatch of September 14, he notes the significance of a

reprimand which the Emperor had caused to be administered to
the Archbishop of Sarajevo, for interference in political
affairs:
"The chief of the Emperor's Cabinet called the Archbishop's

attention to newspaper reports of a speech made by him at the
close of the Catholic Congress recently held at Agram, in
which he was represented to have expressed the hope that
Bosnia would be incorporated with Croatia at the earliest
possible date. As that question was a purely political one and
foreign to the sacred vocation of the Archbishop, and as its
solution fell exclusively within the jurisdiction of certain
lay factors, and more especially within the Sovereign
prerogatives of his Majesty, the chief of the Cabinet was
instructed, in case the reports were correct, to communicate
to his Grace the serious warning and firm expectation of the
Emperor that his Grace would abstain in future, both in word
and deed, from interference in political questions. As was to
be expected, this sharp reprimand to an ecclesiastic of such
high position and repute has made a great sensation. It meets
with warm approval from the entire Hungarian Press. … There
is, on the other hand, bitter mortification in Clerical
circles. It is evidently felt that the warning to abstain from
politics may be of more than mere local and individual
significance."
In another dispatch on the same day the correspondent reported

a still more significant imperial utterance, this time from
the Emperor's own lips: "Yesterday the Emperor, who is
attending the manœuvres in Galicia, received the Polish
Parliamentary Deputation and, addressing their president,
informed him that the dissolution of the Reichsrath and the
coming elections were the last constitutional means which
would be employed by his Government. That implies that, if the
new Parliament will not work, the Constitution will be
suspended. … The dissolution of the Reichsrath takes place in
opposition to the wish of the moderate element of all parties,
who did their utmost to dissuade the Prime Minister from
taking such a drastic measure. The opinion of those who did
not approve of dissolution is that in the absence of a new
suffrage the next Parliament will prove more unruly than the
last. … Yesterday's Imperial warning requires no comment.
It means no more than it says—namely, an eventual suspension
of the Constitution. It does not point to any alternative
regime in case the Parliamentary system should break down.
Indeed, there is nothing to show that any such alternative has
been under the consideration of the Emperor and his Ministers. No
less an authority than Dr. Lueger, the Anti-Semitic
burgomaster of Vienna, has just expressed his opinion on the
subject to a local journalist in the following words:
'I am firmly convinced that nobody, not a single man in

Austria, including all statesmen and Parliamentary
politicians, has the faintest idea of how the situation will
develop.'"
A few days later (September 25) the "Times" correspondence

summarized an important speech by the Hungarian statesman,
Count Apponyi, to his constituents, in which the same forecast
of a political catastrophe in Austria was intimated. Count
Apponyi,—"after dwelling upon the importance of maintaining
the Ausgleich, remarked that affairs in Austria might take a
turn which would render its revision indispensable owing
either to a complete suspension of the constitutional system
in Austria, the maintenance of which was one of the conditions
of the arrangement of 1867, or such modifications thereof as
would make the existing form of union between the two
countries technically untenable or politically questionable.
In either case the revision could only confirm the
independence of Hungary. But even then Count Apponyi believed
that by fallowing the traditions of Francis Deák it would be
possible to harmonize the necessary revision with the
fundamental principles of the Dual Monarchy. It would,
however, be a great mistake to raise that question unless
forced to do so by circumstances. Count Apponyi went on to say
that the importance of Hungary, not only in the Monarchy but
throughout the civilized world, was enormously increased by
the fact that it secured the maintenance of Austria-Hungary,
threatened by the destructive influence of the Austrian chaos,
and thus constituted one of the principal guarantees of
European tranquillity. The peace-abiding nations recognized
that this service to the dynasty, the Monarchy, and the
European State system was only possible while the
constitutional independence and national unity of Hungary was
maintained. It was clear to every unprejudiced mind that
Hungarian national independence and unity was the backbone of
the Dual Monarchy and one of the most important guarantees of
European peace. But the imposing position attained by Hungary
through the European sanction of her national ideal would be
imperilled if they were of their own initiative to raise the
question of the union of the two countries and thus convert
the Austrian crisis into one affecting the whole Monarchy."
{44}
An article in the "Neue Freie Presse," of Vienna, on the

hostility of the Vatican to Austria and Hungary was partially
communicated in a despatch of October 11. The Vienna journal
ascribes this hostility in part to resentment engendered by
the alliance of Catholic Austria with Italy, and in part to
the Hungarian ecclesiastical laws.
See above: A. D. 1894-1895.

It remarked: "Never has clericalism been so influential in the
legislation and administration of this Empire. The most
powerful party is the one that takes its 'mot d'ordre' from
the Papal Nunciature. It guides the feudal nobility, it is the
thorn in the flesh of the German population, it has provoked a
20 years' reaction in Austria, and, unhindered and protected,
it scatters in Hungary that seed which has thriven so well in
this half of the Monarchy that nothing is done in Austria
without first considering what will be said about it in Rome."
A day or two later some evidence of a growing resentment in
Austria at the interference of the clergy in politics was
adduced: "Thus the Czech organ, inspired by the well-known
leader of the party, Dr. Stransky, states that a deputation of
tradespeople called on the editor and expressed great
indignation at the unprecedented manner in which the priests
were joining in electoral agitation. They added that they
'could no longer remain members of a Church whose clergy took
advantage of religious sentiment for political purposes.' The
Peasants' Electoral Association for Upper Austria has just
issued a manifesto in which the following occurs:—'We have for
more than 20 years invariably elected the candidates proposed by
the Clerical party. What has been done during that long period
for us peasants and small tradespeople? What have the Clerical
party and the Clerical members of Parliament done for us? How
have they rewarded our long fidelity? By treason. … We have
been imposed upon long enough. It is due to our self-respect
and honour to emancipate ourselves thoroughly from the
mamelukes put forward by the Clerical wirepullers. We must
show that we can get on without Clerical leadingstrings.'"
On the 26th of October the writer summarized a report that day

published by the Vienna Stock Exchange Committee, as
furnishing "fresh evidence of the disastrous effects of the
prolonged internal political crisis." "The report begins by
stating that the Vienna Stock Exchange, formerly the leading
and most important one in Europe, and which, in consequence of
the geographical situation of the town, was called upon to be
the centre of financial operations with the Near East, has for
years past been steadily declining. Every year the number of
those frequenting the Bourse diminishes, and there has been an
annual decrease in the amount of capital that has changed
hands. Of late years, and particularly within the last few
months, this has assumed such dimensions that it has become an
imperative duty for the competent authorities to investigate the
causes of the evil and to seek a remedy. It is recognized that
the deplorable domestic situation has largely contributed to
the decline of the Bourse. The deadlock in the Legislative
Assembly has occasioned stagnation in industry and commerce,
whereas outside the Monarchy there has been an unprecedented
development of trade. Further prejudice has been caused by
what is called in the report the anti-capitalist tendencies,
which represent all gains and profits to be ill-gotten. The
profession of merchant has been held up by unprincipled
demagogues as disreputable. The authorities are reproached
with having encouraged those tendencies by undue tolerance."
Early in November, the Vienna letters began accounts of the

electioneering campaign then opening, though elections for the
new House were not to take place until the following January:
"Every day," wrote the correspondent, "brings its contingent
of electoral manifestos, and all parties have already had
their say. Unfortunately, nothing could be less edifying. It
may be said of them all that they have profited little by
experience, and it is vain to search for any indication of a
conciliatory disposition among Czechs or Germans, Liberals or
Clericals. One and all are as uncompromising as ever, and
neither the leaders nor the rank and file are prepared to
reckon with the real exigencies of the situation, even to save
their own Parliamentary existence. The feudal nobility, who
stand aloof from Parliamentary strife, have alone lost nothing
of their position and influence. They disdainfully refuse to
take either the requirements of the State or the legitimate
wishes of the Crown into account. They are preparing in
alliance with Ultramontanism to hold their own against the
coming storm. Their action in the pending electrical campaign
is of an occult nature; their proceedings are seldom reported
by the newspapers, and when they meet it is by groups and
privately.
"The political speeches which have hitherto been delivered in

various parts of the country are bewildering. The Germans are
split up into several fractions, and even on the other side
there have been separate manifestos from the Young Czechs and
also from the Old Czechs, who have long ceased to play a part
in the Reichsrath. It is confusion worse confounded, in fact
complete chaos. The prospect of a rallying of the
heterogeneous and mutually antagonistic groups on the basis of
resistance to Hungarian exigencies, though possible, is not
yet at hand, whatever the future may reserve. … The words of
warning that came from the Crown as to this being the last
attempt that would be made to rule by constitutional methods
has clearly failed to produce that impression among
Parliamentary politicians which might justly have been
anticipated. Not even the most experienced and best informed
among the former members of the Reichsrath are disposed to
make any prophecy as to what will follow the dissolution of
the next Chamber."
{45}
In the following month, a significant speech in the Reichsrath

at Buda-Pesth, by the very able Hungarian Prime Minister, M.
Szell, WIIS reported. "He foreshadowed the possibility of a
situation in which Austria would not be able to fulfil the
conditions prescribed in the Ausgleich Act of 1867 with regard
to the manner of dealing with the affairs common to both halves
of the Monarchy. He himself had, however, made up his mind on
the subject, and was convinced that even in those
circumstances the Hungarians would by means of provisional
measures regulate the common affairs and interests of the two

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Curriculum Making Reciprocal Learning and The Best Loved Self Cheryl J Craig Full Chapter

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Curriculum Making, Reciprocal

Learning, and the Best-Loved Self

More information about this series at

Intercultural Reciprocal Learning in Chinese and Western Education

Cover illustration: © Melisa Hasan

Curriculum making, reciprocal learning and the best-loved self invites us

Metaphors matter too. Here, metaphors offer sparkling windows onto

Lynn Paine, Ph.D.

4 The Best-Loved Self 117

Fig. 1.1 Commonplaces of curriculum 7

Abstract Three narrative threads—curriculum making, reciprocal

Keywords Curriculum making · Teacher-as-curriculum-maker ·

© The Author(s) 2020 1

and as “weightless as dreams” (Stone, 1988, p. 244) became perceptible

The Curriculum-Teaching Puzzle

The Primacy of Teachers

curriculum commonplaces and the notion of curriculum as a lived experi-

Fig. 1.1 Commonplaces of curriculum

spotlight on what each commonplace takes into account before pressing

(1961/1978, p. 242) words. “Likely stories” (Schwab, 1976, pp. 14–15)

Being a narrative inquirer, I would like to slip in my own reading

p. 2444). In short, teachers with “larger experience and riper wisdom”

as “hand-servants” (Hansen, 2011) whose continuing employment rests

p. 245) where teachers and students can negotiate curriculum unhin-

brought to bear in some archetypal classroom, as proponents of standards

Thus, in the teacher-as-curriculum-maker image, attention necessarily

Curriculum Making in Action

Daryl Wilson (1997–2017)

Charles: There is this mirroring thing here that is not collaborative. It

Because the models of teaching were expected to be implemented

how to teach connecting,

Flipping back to remembered pages

As foreshadowed, questions continued to “stir in the air” for the Yaeger

Calkins’ and Keene’s books and moved toward resolution of what up to

The teachers’ ah-hah movement presaged the literacy teachers’ own

And then we laugh,

However, despite the teachers’ powerful poetry writing, a major problem

Laura went on to say:

principal with one year of experience remained. Unfortunately, a begin-

sets in classroom libraries, stacked behind pillows or curtains, or stored in

This is what we have come to…

Knowing there was “nowhere to go from here” (Craig, 2020, p. 10),

Bernadette Lohle (1998–2011)

There is something about the word, dissemination—like the word,

While it was a grant program expectation that Bernadette would func-

personally considered herself a curriculum maker modeling a story of how

Bernadette: It (the arts/arts-based learning philosophy) was slowly chipped

Bernadette: Exactly. And then a kind of power struggle ensued—the

As a curriculum maker, Bernadette focused her attention on her

However, the mother of all Black swan events5 —September 11,

In a special ceremony, New York City’s then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani

• it was a happening…and a great deal more was happening than what

Bernadette also reflected on the lesson plans she was supposed to

Infuriated by the “pressure-cooker…situation,” Bernadette did not hold

Here, Bernadette echoed Milli (2014) who likewise spoke of “…[people]

Helen Macalla (2008–2011)

Unfortunately, the innovative program came to a screeching halt when

Without [Helen], he confessed, he might not have made it to [a Tier 1]

As a person of faith, Helen equated this young man’s re-appearance in

Hence, when Helen returned to teaching, she adjusted her perspective

Helen: I have already built a PE program, so I have met that goal… I do

Helen joined a six-member PE Department with both female and

Researcher: So how did you start, you know, to mentor JD?