An important contribution that ‘Emerging curriculum’ makes is a reconceptualizing of the curriculum development process. This moves development thinking from the traditional research-development-dissemination model to one that acknowledges: the interrelatedness of many influences on curriculum, the multi-layered nature of curriculum, and the complexity of the educational system in which curriculum exists. Indeed the educational system is envisaged as a ‘complex living system’ The study is autobiographical, it is based on a lifetime spent in education during which the author had a particular interest in curriculum and the associated development processes, and how one’s ideas about these change over time. ‘Emerging curriculum has been successfully submitted as a PhD thesis but was written as a book for a wider audience than the traditional thesis one. It shows by example how reflection on one’s work throughout one’s career can be considered as research and can contribute to knowledge in a similar way to that of more traditional doctoral research projects. It is hoped that teachers reading this will relate to the author’s experiences in schools, and will see themselves significant contributors to curriculum; that curriculum developers will be provoked into considering alternative ways of working; and that academics might move curriculum theorising closer to the reality of schools.