From Understanding to Creating Curriculum: The Case for the Co-Evolution of Re-Conceptualized Design With Re-Conceptualized Curriculum An essay review of Understanding Curriculum: An Introduction to the Study of Historical and Contemporary Curriculum Discourses (Pinar, W. F., Reynolds, W. M., Slattery, P., & Taubman, P. M. New York: Peter Lang, 1995/2003) by PETER P. GRIMMETT & MARK HALVORSON 1 Simon Fraser University Surrey, BC, Canada INTRODUCTION If there is one book in the field of curriculum that represents a landmark contribution—one that consolidated the work of re-conceptualist scholars, stamped its direction on curriculum studies, and to this day constitutes “an unparalleled and indispensable reference for all serious curriculum schol- ars’ (Thomas & Schubert, 1997, p. 263)—it is Pinar, Reynolds, Slattery, and Taubman’s (1995/2003) non-synoptic text, Understanding Curriculum: An Introduction to the Study of Historical and Contemporary Curriculum Discourses. This essay reviews this important work. We offer a perspective on this text that points to a lacuna in the field of curriculum, namely, that in the process of correctly moving the field of curriculum away from technical rationality to re-conceptualize it as histori- cal and contemporary discourses, Pinar et al. omitted to re-conceptualize the process by which curriculum is created. 2 We see Understanding Curricu- lum as having moved the focus of curriculum back to its life-world away © 2010 by The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto Curriculum Inquiry 40:2 (2010) Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc., 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA, and 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK doi: 10.1111/j.1467-873X.2010.00480.x