Home Linguistics & Semiotics Chapter 4. Toward an understanding of currere as a research method
Chapter
Licensed
Unlicensed Requires Authentication

Chapter 4. Toward an understanding of currere as a research method

  • Wanying Wang
View more publications by John Benjamins Publishing Company
Search
Reflexive and Reflective Research Approaches in Applied Linguistics
This chapter is in the book Reflexive and Reflective Research Approaches in Applied Linguistics

Abstract

This chapter introduces and explicates currere as a research method as well as a key concept in curriculum, which was first invoked by during the 1970s to understand how one’s educational experience can contribute to academic study and vice versa. The method of currere emphasizes the lived experience of curriculum — to run the course — but also includes the social, political, and cultural enactment of experience through conversation. Employing psychoanalytical technique, currere allows one to turn inward. As argued by (2019), the understanding of lived experience involves working from within as one encounters self, others, and world. The method of currere renders self knowledge that is never still, self-identical, making oneself a subject in a recursive process between self and the world, past and future. delineates four steps (regression, progression, analysis, and synthesis) to engage the individual in both temporal and reflective movements, thus enabling one’s understanding of what operatives have been at work in an individual’s educational experience. Eventually, through understanding oneself, the whole world unfolds in front of us ( , 2020).

Abstract

This chapter introduces and explicates currere as a research method as well as a key concept in curriculum, which was first invoked by during the 1970s to understand how one’s educational experience can contribute to academic study and vice versa. The method of currere emphasizes the lived experience of curriculum — to run the course — but also includes the social, political, and cultural enactment of experience through conversation. Employing psychoanalytical technique, currere allows one to turn inward. As argued by (2019), the understanding of lived experience involves working from within as one encounters self, others, and world. The method of currere renders self knowledge that is never still, self-identical, making oneself a subject in a recursive process between self and the world, past and future. delineates four steps (regression, progression, analysis, and synthesis) to engage the individual in both temporal and reflective movements, thus enabling one’s understanding of what operatives have been at work in an individual’s educational experience. Eventually, through understanding oneself, the whole world unfolds in front of us ( , 2020).

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. List of contributors vii
  4. Chapter 1. Reflectivity and reflexivity in qualitative research and scholarship 1
  5. Part I. Reflectivity and reflexivity in research
  6. Chapter 2. Transformative possibilities of autoethnography 22
  7. Chapter 3. Duoethnography 41
  8. Chapter 4. Toward an understanding of currere as a research method 61
  9. Chapter 5. Telling stories matters 80
  10. Part II. Reflectivity and reflexivity and Applied Linguistics Research
  11. Chapter 6. Affordances and limitations of autoethnography as a research method in Applied Linguistics 98
  12. Chapter 7. The role of duoethnography in critical ELT research 120
  13. Chapter 8. Currere 139
  14. Chapter 9. Narrative inquiry in Applied Linguistics Research 152
  15. Part III. Reflective and reflexive studies
  16. Chapter 10. An autoethnography of migration, language, and power dynamics 172
  17. Chapter 11. Duoethnographic inquiry into translingualism and language teacher identity 188
  18. Chapter 12. Past, present, and future 206
  19. Chapter 13. When children don’t learn to read 223
  20. Coda
  21. Chapter 14. Contemporary Applied Linguistics Research 248
  22. Author index 267
  23. Subject index 269
https://doi.org/10.1075/rmal.8.04wan

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. List of contributors vii
  4. Chapter 1. Reflectivity and reflexivity in qualitative research and scholarship 1
  5. Part I. Reflectivity and reflexivity in research
  6. Chapter 2. Transformative possibilities of autoethnography 22
  7. Chapter 3. Duoethnography 41
  8. Chapter 4. Toward an understanding of currere as a research method 61
  9. Chapter 5. Telling stories matters 80
  10. Part II. Reflectivity and reflexivity and Applied Linguistics Research
  11. Chapter 6. Affordances and limitations of autoethnography as a research method in Applied Linguistics 98
  12. Chapter 7. The role of duoethnography in critical ELT research 120
  13. Chapter 8. Currere 139
  14. Chapter 9. Narrative inquiry in Applied Linguistics Research 152
  15. Part III. Reflective and reflexive studies
  16. Chapter 10. An autoethnography of migration, language, and power dynamics 172
  17. Chapter 11. Duoethnographic inquiry into translingualism and language teacher identity 188
  18. Chapter 12. Past, present, and future 206
  19. Chapter 13. When children don’t learn to read 223
  20. Coda
  21. Chapter 14. Contemporary Applied Linguistics Research 248
  22. Author index 267
  23. Subject index 269
Sign up now to receive a 20% welcome discount
Institutional Access
How does access work?
Have an idea on how to improve our website?
Please write us.
© 2025 De Gruyter Brill
Downloaded on 24.9.2025 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1075/rmal.8.04wan/html
Scroll to top button