The Politics of Knowledge in Education

Self Cite

The paper addresses a major fissure in the sociology of knowledge with respect to the theories of knowledge which inform teaching and learning. Instructional teaching, or ‘teaching knowledge to the child’, is compared to facilitation teaching, the ‘teaching the child’ approach to show the extent to which their differences are the result of very different understandings of how knowledge is constituted. In turn, these understandings about knowledge are implicated in major differences about the purpose that education serves in modern society. It is argued that the link between the way knowledge is structured and the way it is organised for teaching justifies instructional teaching as the more effective way to develop students’ learning. This learning is demonstrated in the subject mastery acquired as students connect propositional knowledge to practice knowledge. The facilitation approach is considered to be weak because it is primarily a pedagogical approach concerned with motivating students and fails to account for the type of knowledge that constitutes academic subjects. The paper makes a further claim for the importance of instructional teaching in modern society to argue that the identity of the modern, rational individual depends upon the direct teaching of abstract epistemically structured knowledge to successive generations. These collective representations which constitute the symbolic sphere, support the moral cohesion of democratic pluralistic societies.

Section: Facilitation Pedagogymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Knowledge and teaching

Rata

2017

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“…'Academic identity' is placed at the centre of the CDC model ( Figure 2) to show that the integration of the forms of knowledge according to the model's design creates students' dispositions towards this type of knowledge; that it is disciplinary-based and not socio-cultural (Rata, 2012(Rata, , 2018. Subject mastery is the way this identification grows as increasing amounts of knowledge-that and knowledge-how become familiar, to form the possession of 'intelligent powers' (Ryle, 1949, p. 15).…”

Section: Academic Identitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Knowledge‐rich teaching: A model of curriculum design coherence

Rata

2019

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A theoretical model called ‘Curriculum Design Coherence’ (CDC) is described and justified. The model's purpose is to assist teachers in the compulsory and higher education sectors to design courses that can accommodate the complex and interdependent relationship between concepts and content and between knowledge and skills. Its intended usefulness as a curriculum design tool may also contribute to teachers’ pedagogical decision‐making. The model was initially developed in a New Zealand university Engineering study and is now being trialled in a study in the compulsory schooling sector with the ‘Knowledge‐Rich School Project’. The CDC model integrates concepts, content and competencies in a coherent way, thereby avoiding several tendencies which have affected curriculum studies in recent decades. These are: a ‘skills’ versus ‘concepts’ bifurcation; an over‐emphasis on fragmented content without conceptual integration; and a similar over‐emphasis on pedagogy (the ‘how’) at the expense of what is taught. The first sections of the article discuss the theories used to justify the model's connections between the elements of concepts, content and competencies. The theories concern (1) knowledge types (disciplinary and socio‐cultural) and (2) knowledge forms (propositional/conceptual and procedural/competencies). The justification is followed by a description of the CDC model itself.

“…Moreover, Young () argues that there is a deeper moral concern to be addressed; the current orthodoxy is to ask ‘Is this curriculum meaningful to my students?’ rather than ‘What are the meanings that this curriculum gives my students access to?’ (p. 106). This is the underlying social justice issue of epistemological access (Rata, ).…”

Section: The 3 Futures Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Crossing boundaries: Exploring the theory, practice and possibility of a ‘Future 3’ curriculum

Pountney

McPhail

2019

In this article, we examine a case of innovation in curriculum and pedagogy at a new school in the UK. We begin by outlining the 3 Futures model, which we use as a methodological heuristic in the case study of the school that appears to be both knowledge‐led and learner‐engaged; characteristics of the Future 3 scenario. In considering the school's curriculum, we also draw on a number of concepts from the work of Basil Bernstein: classification, framing and the idea of open schools, and a curriculum integration model developed by us to consider the degree of epistemic emphasis in the school's predominantly interdisciplinary curriculum. Together, these concepts provide the means to examine the organising principles of practice operating in the school, as links are drawn between the 3 Futures model, Bernstein's concepts and the data. We theorise this as a form of ‘opening up’, suggesting that even within the context of an interdisciplinary curriculum, access to powerful knowledge may be maintained in a whole‐school approach where the demands of both knowledge and knowers are brought into balance. The school's approach and the theorisation we offer may provide insights for other schools embarking on a futures model for education and for twenty‐first‐century educational discourses more generally.