This article draws on social realist approaches in the sociology of knowledge and in light of them constructs three scenarios for the future of education in the next decades. The primary focus of the article is on one of the most crucial questions facing educational policy makers — the relationship between school and everyday or common sense knowledge. The different possibilities for how the school/non‐school knowledge boundaries might be approached are expressed in three scenarios —‘boundaries treated as given’, ‘a boundary‐less world’ and the idea of ‘boundary maintenance as a condition for boundary crossing’. The curriculum implications of each are explored and the article makes the case for the third scenario. The factors likely to make one or other scenario dominate educational policy in the next 20–30 years are also considered.
This paper examines what is entailed by taking a socio-epistemic or 'knowledgebased' approach to considerations of curriculum and qualifications. The paper begins by examining the roots of diciplinary difference in the medieval universities and their treatment in contemporary scholarly work; discusses implications for curriculum and qualification differentiation; and shows how social, disciplinary and qualification organisation are aligned in the specialisation of consciousness. IntroductionThe approach taken in this paper 1 is what can be called a socio-epistemic one. I take it that the forms of the disciplines and the curriculum we have today have their roots in historical struggles and innovations, as well as the diversifying division of labour, and that these shed light on much that seems to us perplexing and intractable today. I also depart from the view that the primary task is to get the big picture clear, by which I mean first trying to delineate as clearly as I can the range of possible knowledge forms, then the range of possible curricular and qualification forms that are logically entailed. It is within this purview that I will also discuss the issues of 'vocational' knowledge and education.My conclusions will have an affinity with those reached by Michael Young and Leesa Wheelahan on the subject of vocational knowledge. They however start at the other end -with the problem of vocational knowledge -and then locate it in the bigger picture, so naturally there will be some differences of emphasis. For the purposes of this paper, I will confine myself to the higher education sector. I will start off by enquiring into the roots of disciplinary difference; move on to how disciplinary differences are commonly discussed in the literature, mainly, but not only, that of higher education teaching and learning; consider the relation between knowledge form and curricular form; develop in the penultimate section of the paper, an account that attempts to relate occupational field, knowledge and qualification routes; and I will conclude with some questions which, with special reference to contextually relevant qualifications, consider the possibilities and limits to academic advancement, and to transferability of forms of specialised knowledge. 2
The aim of this paper is to explore and clarify the idea of 'powerful knowledge' as a sociological concept and as a curriculum principle. The paper seeks to clarify its conceptual basis and to make its meaning and the arguments it implies, less ambiguous and less open to misunderstanding. This will enable us to suggest some of the research and policy options that it opens up. The paper begins with a brief discussion of the origins of the contemporary usage of the concept in the sociology of education and its explains its roots in the often neglected sociology of knowledge of Emile Durkheim. We draw from Durkheim the idea that 'powerful knowledge' is differentiated and specialised knowledge and trace this argument through the work of Vygotsky and, in more detail, of Basil Bernstein. Following Bernstein's analysis of the different forms that specialised knowledge can take, we consider the curriculum implications of the view that some forms, the STEM(Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) subjects, are 'intrinsically more powerful than others'. We indicate the limits of this argument and in the final section suggest how the idea of powerful knowledge can be more broadly conceived to include the arts and humanities.
This article extends the authors' earlier work (Young and Muller 2013) exploring the concept of 'powerful knowledge'. It first examines some of the origins of the concept and goes on to a brief consideration of how sociology, political theory and economics have traditionally represented 'power' and 'knowledge'. Two key senses of power are identified and two difficulties are next identified: how to retain both senses of power in a satisfactory account of 'powerful knowledge; and how to provide a satisfactory account of the 'power' of knowledge in the Humanities. By identifying three meanings of 'powerful knowledge', and making an argument for their interrelationship, the article aims to put the concept on a firmer footing and point to its potential implications for curriculum theory
ab s t rac tThe aim of this article is to reflect on and explore questions of truth and objectivity in the sociology of educational knowledge. It begins by reviewing the problems raised by the social constructivist approaches to knowledge associated with the 'new sociology of education' of the 1970s. It suggests that they have significant parallels with the pragmatist ideas of James and Dewey that Durkheim analysed so perceptively in his lectures on pragmatism. The article then considers Basil Bernstein's development of Durkheim's ideas.We argue that despite his highly original conceptual advances Bernstein seems to accept, at least implicitly, that the natural sciences remain the only model for objective knowledge. This leads us to a discussion of Ernest Cassirer's idea of symbolic forms as a more adequate basis for the sociology of knowledge. In the conclusion, the article suggests how an approach to knowledge in educational studies that draws on Cassirer's idea of 'symbolic objectivity' can come to terms with the tension between the concept of truth and a commitment to 'being truthful' that was left unresolved, even unaddressed, by the 'new' sociology of education of the 1970s. k e ywo r d s educational knowledge, objectivity, sociology, truth '… endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful'From the last sentence of the Origin of Species by Charles DarwinThere is only knowledge, period. It is recognizable not by its air of holiness or its emotional appeal but by its capacity to pass the most demanding scrutiny of well-informed people who have no prior investment in confirming it.And a politics of sorts, neither leftist nor rightist, follows from this understanding. If knowledge can be certified only by a process of peer review, we ought to do what we can to foster communities of uncompromised [ 1 7 3 ]
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