Educational Autoethnography and Teachers' Critical Action against a Centralized Curriculum: The Praxis of Fidelity to the Truth Event

Izadpanah, Amin

doi:10.22055/edus.2025.48058.3658

Educational Autoethnography and Teachers' Critical Action against a Centralized Curriculum: The Praxis of Fidelity to the Truth Event

10.22055/edus.2025.48058.3658

Volume 32, Issue 2
December 2025

Pages 217-248

Document Type : Research Paper

Author

Amin Izadpanah

Associate professor of philosophy of education, School of education and psychology, Department of foundations of education, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran.

Abstract

This article advances a new theoretical formulation of how teachers can critically confront a centralized curriculum at the classroom level by positioning themselves as educational autoethnographers and constituting themselves as critical subjects. In many educational systems, curricula are treated as fixed, prescriptive frameworks that teachers are expected to implement faithfully, thereby limiting their professional agency and interpretive judgment. In the Iranian context, although the national document of Fundamental Transformation of Formal Education calls for a transition beyond a centralized educational system and curriculum, it does not provide a clear methodological pathway for realizing such a transformation. As a result, the call for decentralization remains largely rhetorical. Using a philosophical–critical inquiry approach, this article critiques the epistemological and political foundations of centralized curricula and proposes an alternative centered on teachers’ critical praxis. In the first step, drawing on the work of Paulo Freire, the necessity of teachers’ critical engagement with centralized curricula is articulated. Freire’s concepts of dialogue, conscientization, and praxis frame education as a transformative, ethically charged practice grounded in reflection and action upon the world. From this perspective, teachers are not neutral transmitters of content but historical subjects capable of questioning and reshaping oppressive structures embedded in curricular mandates. In the second step, the article develops a theoretical account of educational autoethnography and identifies three of its constitutive foundations: (1) a reflective and entangled epistemology that situates knowledge within lived experience, (2) a change-oriented critical consciousness aimed at transformation, and (3) narrative as a mode of both self-examination and collective awareness-raising. Grounded in the concept of educational praxis, autoethnography is thus proposed as a methodological and ethical practice that enables teachers to interrogate centralized curricular norms from within their own classroom realities. Finally, drawing on Alain Badiou’s concept of the “truth event,” the article offers a theoretical articulation of how autoethnographic engagement can generate curricular transformation. A decentralized curriculum is understood as the outcome of a truth procedure emerging from classroom events. Through fidelity to these events and to students’ voices, the teacher becomes a critical, transformative, and emancipatory subject who reconfigures curricular practice from within.

Keywords

Educational Autoethnography

Centralized Curriculum

Paulo Freire

Alain Badiou

Truth Event

Praxis

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