School curriculum policies are undergoing reform globally. In this project, those periennial questions about curriculum – what and/or whose knowledge is of most worth - are superseded by our further questions that ask about the role of language in articulating the sorts of knowledge appropriate to prepare youngsters for responsible democratic citizenship in the global society of the 21st Century. The focus of the research will be language and meaning in curriculum policies and policy guidelines using a Derridean deconstructive perspective. Some of the pressing concerns surrounding contemporary school curriculum policy relate to an enframement of knowledge in policy texts that demonstrates the inability of curriculum-makers to draw on language and meaning to engage, excite and enrage both teachers and learners. For example, the pervasive use of instrumental, technical-rational language; the focus on economistic aims and goals; the underlying agenda of performativity and the overt agenda of functional skills; the unacknowledged internal tensions around subjectivity and the sense that we can and do exhaustively possess and control curriculum knowledge (Winter, 2007) – all these features deny the rich moral and mysterious experience of education and replace it with a reductive, anaesthetised checklist (Winter, 2006). Framing question: Contemporary secondary school curriculum policies and guidelines in European countries: can deconstruction deepen understanding of educational change and lead to ethical renewal? The aims of the study are to: - explore the language and meaning of school curriculum policy knowledge during the contemporary reform period in different European countries - engage with a Derridean philosophical approach to question the institutionalisation of certain ways of thinking about curriculum knowledge - transgress conservative and reproductive ways of thinking about curriculum knowledge to release and generate new, ethically responsible knowledge and ways of knowing This Round Table follows on from the first RT at ECER 2007 (Language and the Curriculum: Derrida, deconstruction and secondary school policy) by inviting discussion between colleagues within the Philosophy of Education Network (13) and within other Networks. The intention is to establish a collaborative and comparative research discussion group interested in thinking deconstructively about contemporary secondary school curriculum policies and policy guidelines across European countries. The idea is to investigate critically the language and meaning of policy texts in national and supra-national spaces and places by drawing on deconstructive perspectives to lead to more complex and ethically responsible ways of thinking about curriculum knowledge for the future.

Derridean deconstruction is not a methodology, method or instrument. Meaning is caught up in networks of interpretation that go beyond the author and are never closed – they continually unravel. The French word différance describes how meaning is both differential and deferred. Derrida questions the metaphysical underwriting of knowledge. He calls this ‘scientistic objectivism’ (Derrida, 1974, p 61) that is naturalised through totalising definitions and definitive explanations. He argues for a greater responsibility towards the other by opening up more transgressive ways of knowing and by attending to other objects of knowledge that are currently constrained or tied up in a programmatic, prescribed and reproductive history.

It is difficult to predict what outcomes may arise from the Roundtable. At this stage, these will probably consist of preliminary and emerging discussions around substantive and practical areas: 1) substantive: a) deeper knowledge about language and how it operates in secondary school curriculum policy texts b) a critical engagment with the ethics and politics of school curriculum policy knowledge d) recommendations for challenging restrictive and constraining ways of thinking embedded within school curriculum policy texts and for opening up other ways of thinking e) suggestions for ethical curriculum renewal 2) practical: a) establishment of a group of colleagues interested in discussing poststructural ways of thinking about and revitalising school curriculum policy b) cross-fertilisation of ideas across the Philosophy of Education network and beyond c) plans for a school curriculum policy comparative research symposium at ECER, 2009