A CONCEPTUAL-PHENOMENOLOGICAL APPROACH TO EXPLORING EDUCATION: RE-CONCEIVING STANDARDIZED CURRICULUM IN TERMS OF A POETIC, TRANSCENDENT, AND COMPLICATED CONVERSATION

IntroductionMy recent scholarship (2014; 2015a; 2015b) opens a dialogue across the disciplines of philosophy, philosophy of education, and curriculum theorizing in order to bridge past and present scholarship, revealing the positive potential of this type of for reconceptualizing and reconfiguring a view to the human being, education/curriculum, and the teacher-pupil relationship in the age of standardization. The carried out in a manner that common in the tradition of Continental philosophy, in terms of conceptual-textual analysis. This form of carried out in and through the philosophical certainly to the philosophy of education or curriculum studies, but has as of recently, especially in terms of phenomenological research, waned dramatically in popularity. However, this form of thinking-writing a valuable and viable practice of educational research, which expressive of the humanistic vision of life, a form of life that should never be heedlessly whipsawed into 'accountability' be a set of 'mind formed manacles,' whether Aristotelian syllogism, Roman formality, factualized hypothesis in scientific terms, or critical visions of someone's utopia (Macdonald, 1995, 181). The speculative essay allows for a form of thought to emerge that transcends the traditional and formal ways that we conceive of knowledge and understanding, which fail to capture the full scope of the human experience, for the essay format, according to Schubert (1991), is a process of that transcends the problem of reducing human experience to an objectified commodity, a snare of all formal systems of inquiry (70) and, in addition, it not just a way of writing or mode of expressing that which already known, rather it a mode of conceptual exploration that invites readers to follow along the often convoluted journey that leads to greater (69).The road to illumination made possible in large part because essay especially forms that emerge from and inspired by the phenomenological tradition, unfold as reflective research, for phenomenological writing closely fused into the activity and reflection itself' (van Manen, 1990, 124-125). Thus, according to van Manen, phenomenologicalhermeneutic research does merely involve writing: the work of writing, with the ultimate aim of fulfilling human nature: to become more fully who we are (12). Dali' Alaba (2009) identifies the positive aspects of phenomenological when stating that it allows researchers to challenge taken-for-granted assumptions while revealing new insights into what it means to live, work, play and learn in our (1). Ultimately, the interest, or revival of such interest in the field of education and curriculum can perhaps be understood in the context of its potential contribution to rethinking our understanding of the complex phenomena we encounter in the world in which we find ourselves in the 21st century (1). Echoing Dall'Alba, I claim that education needs, perhaps more than ever, to return to ways of thinking that inspire only the intellectual aspects of our humanity, but also the spiritual and poetic ways of being that so often relegated to curriculum's scrap heap in the age of standardization and the privileging of a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education within the Common Core States Standards Curriculum (USA).In an era where Obama's 2009 initiative educate to innovate has drastically increased Stem programs in curriculum, and has exploded as of 2014 into a 3.1 billion dollar investment, pushing toward technologizing the curriculum, we must concern ourselves with what this indicates about the view of the student (human), valued knowledge, curriculum/education, and the teacher and teacher education, where everything from teacher motivation to cognitive training for student efficiency being reduced to the purview of quantitative (Skaalvik & Skaalvik, 2015; Schneider & Artelt, 2015; Ellis, Denton, & Bond, 2014). …