From: Critical ontology: Visions of selfhood and curriculum (2003). JCT: Journal of Curriculum Theorizing. 19, 1, pp. 47-64.

CRITICAL ONTOLOGY: VISIONS OF SELFHOOD AND CURRICULUM Joe L. Kincheloe

There is nothing profound about asserting that the ways one teaches and the curricular purposes one pursues are tied to the ways teachers see themselves. Yet the ways teachers come to see themselves as professionals and learners--in particular the ways they conceptualize what they need to learn, where they need to learn it, and how the process should take place--shape their teacher persona (CPRE, 1995). Such a persona cannot be separated from the various forms of knowledge produced in the culture at large, in academic curricula and in the larger notion of “professional awareness.” Too infrequently are teachers in university, student teaching, or in-service professional education encouraged to confront why they think as they do about themselves as teachers—especially in relationship to the social, cultural, political, economic, and historical world around them. Mainstream teacher education provides little insight into the forces that shape identity and consciousness. Becoming educated, becoming a critical teacher as researcher/teacher as scholar necessitates personal transformation based on an understanding and critique of these forces. This article explores these dynamics and in the process develops a notion of critical ontology for teachers. Such a concept explores self-production for the purpose of conceptualizing new, more just, and more complex ways of being human.


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Philosophy/Critical%20Ontology.doc