ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors engage three Ted Tetsuo Aoki inspirited themes to contemplate the complicated relation between theory and practice: Disrupting binary thinking, curriculum-as-lived, and the unplanned curriculum. They offer their situated voices, suggesting Aoki positioned himself concurrently in both scholarly and pedagogical practices, subscribing to a non-linear relationship between theory and practice. Aoki remained a strong critic of the binary between East and West as well as the division between theory and practice. In education, he reminded us time and again about the danger of pushing theory aside to our periphery vision or trying to understand and define “theory” by looking at “theory” itself. Aoki pointed out a continuing practice in Canada of curriculum implementation: A group of experts in a field develop curriculum in a particular subject. Aoki continuously tried to refocus attention from the entrenched meaning of curriculum-as-plan and to distort the one-track view of understanding curriculum.
