Traveling stories: Converging milieus and educative conundrums

Schwab (Schwab, J. J. (1970). The practical: A language for curriculum. Washington, DC: National Education Association, Center for the Study of Instruction) named the teacher, learner, subject matter, and milieu as the desiderata essential for curriculum making. In our research, the teacher commonplace has formed the entry point of inquiry. Increasingly, the milieu commonplace has perplexed us. In this article, we examine what we have termed “traveling stories” through different field texts focusing on what happens when individuals from different milieus are brought together in one school context. We explore how learning may be shut down in a miseducative way or opened up to educative possibilities through understanding the influence of diverse milieus—those we vicariously carry with us and those we currently share with others—and how they converge to shape the meanings individuals create in seemingly shared situations.