This publication offers a vision of curriculum that redresses the balance between teaching traditions of the past and entering and participating in those of the present and future. It stresses knowledge-in-action rather than the more traditional approach of knowledge-out-of-context, encouraging ongoing conversation embedded within the larger traditions of discourse in science, the arts, history, literature, and mathematics. The development of curriculum becomes the development of culturally significant domains for conversation, and instruction becomes a matter of helping students learn to participate within those domains. Examples are drawn from a series of studies of how teachers make decisions about their own curricula. The book contains nine chapters: (1) "Introduction: The Role of Tradition"; (2) "The Individual and Tradition"; (3) "Deadly Tradition"; (4) "Curriculum as Conversation"; (5) "Characteristics of Effective Curricula"; (6) "Structuring Curricular Conversations"; (7) "Recent Curriculum Proposals as Domains for Conversation"; (8) "Toward a Pedagogy of Knowledge-in-Action"; and (9) "Researching Conflicting Traditions." (Contains 20 references.) (ND)