A Digital Experience

A Primer on Curriculum Studies

Friction, Currere, and Subversive Praxis

Curriculum studies goes beyond the technical design of instructional units or the alignment of standards; it is the critical investigation of educational experience. It asks what it means to live a life, how we come to understand ourselves in relation to others, and what kind of world we are building.

Explore the Tension ↓

The Vital Tension

At the heart of contemporary curriculum theory is a vital tension: the conflict between efficiency (the drive toward frictionless, standardized transmission of data) and existential friction (the generative, often difficult struggle required for genuine intellectual and personal transformation).

Pedagogical friction is already a curriculum studies question because curriculum studies asks more than how content should be organized. It is one of the conditions through which curriculum becomes lived, interpreted, and consequential.

Visual 1: The Basic Move

From Development to Studies

Curriculum Development
Curriculum Studies

The Technical Plan

  • Sequence & Alignment
  • Objectives & Activities
  • Assessment & Measurement

Narrows curriculum to a fixed course of study.

The Lived Experience

  • Knowledge & Selfhood
  • History & Power
  • Language & the World

A broader concern for the educational encounter.

Pedagogical Friction as a Curriculum Studies Question

How four core pathways intersect to defend the conditions of learning.

Pedagogical Friction

Supported Resistance & Active Presence
William Pinar Autobiography & Currere
Dwayne Huebner Languages & Rationality
Michael Apple The Hidden Curriculum
Moten, Harney & Givens Fugitivity & Praxis
Pathway 1

Currere, Existential Friction, and the "Complicated Conversation"

William Pinar and the Autobiographical Study of Educational Experience

Historically, "curriculum" was understood simply as a noun—a fixed course of study. Pinar revived the Latin root of the word—currere (to run the course)—turning it into an active verb and an autobiographical method.

For Pinar, education is not a passive reception of information, but a highly subjective process of self-formation. This autobiographical labor transforms curriculum into a "complicated conversation."

Existential Friction as Safeguard

Existential friction refers to the cognitive dissonance, emotional labor, and interpretive difficulty that occurs when a learner is confronted with ideas that challenge their existing self-conception. This friction protects the learner's presence in the act of study.

Regressive

Looking backward to examine past experiences.

Progressive

Looking forward to imagine future possibilities.

Analytical

Analyzing the complex relationships in the current moment.

Synthetical

Bringing dimensions together to act in the present.

Pathway 2

The Languages of Curriculum and Technical Rationality

Dwayne Huebner’s Critique of Technical Rationality

To understand how contemporary educational spaces erase necessary friction, we must look to the language we use to describe them. Huebner argued that the language of education dictates what we can imagine and build. He warned against the totalizing dominance of technical rationality.

The Technical

Focused on control, predictability, efficiency, and behavioral objectives.

"Does AI make learning efficient?"

The Political

Focused on power, resource allocation, and institutional control.

"Who gains? Who is shaped by this tech?"

The Ethical

Focused on the moral responsibility of the educator to the student as a person.

"What kind of world is being made here?"

The Aesthetic

Focused on the beauty, meaning-making, and intrinsic qualities of the educational encounter.

"What is valued when we outsource thinking?"
Pathway 3

The Hidden Curriculum of Frictionlessness

Michael Apple and the Politics of Educational Arrangements

01 Knowledge is Instantly Available

The platform teaches that knowledge is a commodity to be acquired, rather than a slow, relational practice.

02 Language is Interchangeable

Automated generation teaches that language is strictly transactional, not a deeply personal medium.

03 Polished Performance = Understanding

Platform metrics teach that a flawless performance is equivalent to the deep, messy process of actual understanding.

Visual 3: The Friction Matrix

Friction as a Curriculum Design Choice

Exclusionary Difficulty

Withholds support, reproduces inequity, or mistakes confusion for rigor.

Unsupported

Productive Friction

Gives access, scaffolding, and purpose while preserving intellectual labor.

Supported Resistance

Pedagogical friction is not nostalgia for difficulty; it is supported resistance.

Pathway 4

Fugitivity and Subversive Praxis

Moten & Harney, Givens, and Subversive Pedagogies

If the dominant educational apparatus is captured by technical rationality, platform capitalism, and the erasure of existential friction, how do educators and learners resist? The answer lies in fugitivity and subversive praxis.

The Enclosure

  • Platform Metrics
  • Efficiency
  • Standardisation
  • Compliance
Refusal
→

The Undercommons / Fugitivity

  • Dialogic: Relational study
  • Unfinished: Unfolding inquiry
  • Accountable: To communities
  • Preserving: Generative friction
"To defend pedagogical friction is to defend the very possibility of education. It is an act of subversion that insists that we are not simply users processing content, but historical subjects engaged in the slow, difficult, and beautiful work of transforming ourselves and our worlds."

Summary: Reclaiming the Friction of Study

Thinker-by-Question Guide

Thinker(s) Curriculum Studies Question Contribution to Pedagogical Friction
Pinar How does the learner interpret educational experience across past, present, and future? Friction is autobiographical and temporal. It asks students to confront memory, identity, possibility, and present action.
Huebner What language dominates educational judgment? Friction resists reducing learning to efficiency, control, prediction, and measurable completion.
Apple What hidden lessons do educational arrangements teach? Frictionlessness becomes a hidden curriculum about knowledge, effort, language, and performance.
Givens; Harney & Moten How do educators and learners study under constraint? Friction-preserving practice can be fugitive, relational, unfinished, and accountable to communities.