This work responds to a number of contemporary critiques calling into question the very aim of or interest in social justice in relation to teacher preparation and teaching, along with related recent suspicions raised about the possibilities of education as a project of emancipation. Following Pinar's description of curriculum theory as "the interdisciplinary study of educational experience", and of curriculum as central in defining such experience--particularly now in the US and in other nations impacted by standardization and high-stakes testing--the inquiry is grounded in the assertion that addressing issues of justice in education and schooling requires attention to curriculum, to understanding curriculum, and the educational and pedagogical experience co-constitutive of it.