Session Information
23 SES 06 B, Concepts of Knowledge in Curriculum Reform
Paper Session
Contribution
The National Curriculum policy for students aged 11-14 in English secondary schools has been revised three times between 1988 and 2007. The most recent revision has achieved two goals. The first is a break from a content or fact-based configuration of knowledge to one based on concepts. The second goal is evident in a document published shortly after the policy reform. It is called “The Big Picture of the Curriculum” (QCA, 2008) and it signals the de-regulation of the school curriculum from central control, to some extent. This is to be achieved by allowing schools to choose between retaining a separate subject curriculum framework or changing to an integrated and/or competency-based curriculum.
This study is interested, initially, in understanding the configurations of knowledge underpinning three examples of curriculum policy texts published between 1991 and 2007 in the specific case of the subject of Geography. Each selected text appears to promote a particular type of knowledge, namely: content, competency and concept. It is argued that deconstructive reading of the language of curriculum knowledge appearing in three different policy texts relating to one specific subject will reveal what are assumed to be legitimate knowledge discourses as well as what is overlooked in each tidy curriculum scheme.
The theoretical framework for the first two configurations of knowledge rests in debates about propositional knowledge (“knowledge that”) and practical knowledge (“knowledge how”) (Ryle, 1945; Stanley and Williamson, 2001). The third knowledge category, conceptual knowledge can be traced to the modern liberal education movement in 1960s and 70s England (Peters, 1960; Peters and Hirst, 1970; Hirst, 1974).
I set out to engage the help of the post-structuralist thinker Jacques Derrida in this deconstructive undertaking. In so doing, I hope to investigate the appropriateness of post structural approaches to curriculum policy text analysis and show how these might lead to other, more just approaches to curriculum policy-making through examples focusing on the concept of Europe.
Research Questions
1) What configurations of knowledge can be identified within three English secondary school curriculum policy texts 1991-2007?
2) Does a deconstructive approach to reading these texts open up spaces for other, more just ways of thinking about Europe in school curriculum policy?
Objectives are to:
a) read deconstructively three curriculum policy texts (1991, 1999 and 2007) for students aged 11-14 in English secondary schools in one school subject
b) contextualise each text in its historico-political situation
c) engage the thinking of Jacques Derrida to deconstruct the configurations of knowledge under-girding the language of the curriculum policy texts
d) problematise the language and totalising discourses of the texts in order to reveal what or who has been omitted in relation to the knowledge about Europe
e) introduce other, possibly more just ways of thinking about Europe through school curriculum policy
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Derrida, J. (1988). Letter to a Japanese Friend. In D.Wood and R. Bernasconi.(Eds.) Derrida and Différance. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. Hirst, P.H. (1974). Liberal Education and the nature of knowledge. In P.H. Hirst Knowledge and the Curriculum. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Peters, R. S. (1966). Ethics and Education. London: Allen and Unwin. Peters, R.S. and Hirst, P.H. (1970). The Logic of Education. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. QCA (2008). The Big Picture of the Curriculum. Accessed 21-01-11 http://curriculum.qcda.gov.uk/uploads/BigPicture_sec_05_tcm8-15743.pdf Ryle, G. (1945). Knowing How and Knowing. That Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society. 56 212-225. Stanley and Williamson (2001). Knowing How. Journal of Philosophy 98 (8) 411-444. Winter, C. (2006). Doing Justice to Geography in the Secondary School: deconstruction, invention and the National Curriculum, British Journal of Educational Studies, 54 (2) 212-229.
Search the ECER Programme
- Search for keywords and phrases in "Text Search"
- Restrict in which part of the abstracts to search in "Where to search"
- Search for authors and in the respective field.
- For planning your conference attendance you may want to use the conference app, which will be issued some weeks before the conference
- If you are a session chair, best look up your chairing duties in the conference system (Conftool) or the app.