ABSTRACT
The issue is representation, the practices by which people name and rename the world, negotiate the substance of social reality, and contest prior namings in favour of new or different ones.
(Knoblauch and Brannon 1993: 3) In educational textbooks, teacher training courses and narratives about teaching, curriculum planning has been presented as a science, governed by rationality in planning and outcomes, or as an art which depends on a teacher’s creativity, flair and intuition. It may rather be practised as something less noble: the craftwork of stitching together a pragmatic patchwork of scraps lying to hand (texts, worksheets, classroom activities, assignments) re-purposed for the immediate occasion. But in these acts too the teacher-worker’s skill may entail both art and the logic of a reasoned purpose.
