Re-negotiating the curriculum?

Garth Boomer can rightly be described as one of Australia’s foremost curriculum thinkers. His heyday was the 1970s and 1980s, however, and little is known now about the actual nature or the details of his work. Indeed, I suspect that he functions for many, and especially for more recent curriculum workers, as something of a mythic figure. In this presentation I revisit what is perhaps his most iconic idea: curriculum (as) negotiation, or as it was originally known, ‘negotiating the curriculum’. What does this involve? How is it to be understood? Why is it important? Taking due account of the context of its formulation and asking about its relevance and value now, in what are clearly very different circumstances, I argue that curriculum (as) negotiation is best seen as a distinctive curriculum orientation, with continuing relevance, and possibilities and opportunities not only for the present moment but also for the future, as a key resource for curriculum inquiry and praxis.