Deweyan Tools for Inquiry and the Epistemological Context of Critical Pedagogy

This article develops the notion of resistance as articulated in the literature of critical pedagogy as being both culturally sponsored and cognitively manifested. To do so, the authors draw upon John Dewey's conception of tools for inquiry. Dewey provides a way to conceptualize student resistance not as a form of willful disputation, but instead as a function of socialization into cultural models of thought that actively truncate inquiry. In other words, resistance can be construed as the cognitive and emotive dimensions of the ongoing failure of institutions to provide ideas that help individuals both recognize social problems and imagine possible solutions. Focusing on Dewey's epistemological framework, specifically tools for inquiry, provides a way to grasp this problem. It also affords some innovative solutions; for instance, it helps conceive of possible links between the regular curriculum and the study of specific social justice issues, a relationship that is often under-examined. The aims of critical pedagogy depend upon students developing dexterity with the conceptual tools they use to make meaning of the evidence they confront; these are background skills that the regular curriculum can be made to serve even outside social justice-focused curricula. Furthermore, the article concludes that because such inquiry involves the exploration and potential revision of students' world-ordering beliefs, developing flexibility in how one thinks may be better achieved within academic subjects and topics that are not so intimately connected to students' current social lives, especially where students may be directly implicated.     

Advocating for a Social Roles Curriculum Framework at the Secondary School Level

A rationale is presented for using social roles as the basis for developing a social roles curriculum framework at the secondary level. The construct social role is defined as a pattern of behaviours and attitudes related to a specific function or position as expected by society. Havighurst's social role concept provides background information for the current research project. This study attempts to revitalise Havighurst's social role theory within a contemporary context. Data were collected from 300 adults on a community survey that was distributed within the Tampa Bay Area, USA. The survey controlled for an equal number of respondents grouped by age, gender, and SES level. Particular social roles emerged from the analysis as salient for certain adult groups. It was found that students need to be prepared for the various new social roles they will fill as adults, and that secondary school curricula should be rethought along these lines. The importance of such under-valued social roles as friendship is contemplated for formal school learning. Finally, perspectives are advanced for integrating the research findings into the secondary school curriculum.     

Early Childhood Educare: Seeking a theoretical framework in Vygotsky's work

This paper argues that there is no meaningful distinction between care and education for young children so that the early childhood field should be renamed early childhood educare. The predominant theoretical framework for early childhood philosophy and curriculum has been Piaget's theory. Piaget's theory describes development as determining current cognitive competence and influencing what children are capable of learning. Children are seen as natural scientists who investigate the world and thereby broaden their understanding. Teachers are expected to stand back and provide resources for children's autonomous learning but not to interfere with it. The paper argues that Vygotsky's theory as applied to the responsive social contexts provided in early childhood educare should be given more consideration because it gives more attention to the importance of the social and cultural context on children's thinking than Piaget. Vygotsky saw learning as driving development and the development of thinking as a shared process rather than an individual one. Children are capable of far more competent performance when they have assistance from adults in their zone of proximal development so adults take a reactive and participatory role. The paper discusses the role of language, the internalisation of interpersonal processes, the importance of intersubjectivity, the need for scaffolding in the zone of proximal development, and the role of both adult and peer tutors according to the author's interpretation of Vygotsky's theory.     

What remains of history? Historical epistemology and historical understanding in Scotland's Curriculum for Excellence

This paper critically examines the framing of historical knowledge in the primary and ‘broad general education’ phases (ages 4–14) of Scotland's Curriculum for Excellence. The paper focuses on curriculum documentation, particularly the curriculum's aims and ‘Experiences and Outcomes’ and evaluates these in light of recent research on children's historical understanding. It is argued that the decision to frame historical understanding as ‘People, Past Events and Societies’ within the context of a ‘social studies’ curriculum area has been motivated by a misunderstanding of history's unique disciplinary identity. It is argued that history curricula must take account of the unique ontological and epistemological challenges posed by investigating the past and that by failing to do this, ‘Curriculum for Excellence’ offers children in Scotland a problematic representation of what it means to study the past. The paper challenges the curriculum in both epistemic and pedagogical terms, before suggesting that a rigorous study of history as a discipline can make a valuable contribution to children's personal and social development.     

The New Right and the national curriculum: State control or market forces? 1

This paper takes as its starting point an apparent tension within the Education Reform Act between its imposition of a national curriculum and its stress elsewhere on parental choice and market forces in determining the shape of the school system. The paper then explores differences within the New Right over the issue of the school curriculum, but also points to ways in which neo‐liberal and neo‐conservative positions may ultimately be reconcilable. However, it also suggests that neither position may prove entirely attractive to the government's industrial sponsors who wish the curriculum to be more responsive to the needs of industry. The paper then draws on the findings of a recent research project on school choice to consider some possible consequences of allowing market forces to determine the nature of the curriculum. In conclusion, it stresses the importance of seeing the national curriculum within its broader structural context and notes that there are important lessons to be drawn from the approaches taken by both the tendencies identified within New Right thinking about the curriculum.

     

Teaching writing: A situated dynamic

The paper is theoretically grounded in Cultural Historical Activity Theory, which holds that human development is founded within participation in social and cultural practices. In particular, the teaching of literacy is shaped not only by the curriculum as designated by policy makers and the institution in which it is located, but also by the individuals' understanding of what literacy and learning involves and how they act to achieve their goals. The paper explores data from a project that investigated the relationship between classroom talk and the teaching of writing in six early‐years classrooms. Participants' own understandings of teaching and learning need to be taken into account by researchers and policy makers. Cultural Historical Activity Theory has been used to explore the dynamic relationship between activity at societal, institutional and individual levels. It is argued that researchers and policy makers need to take account of the wider socio‐cultural context in planning and evaluating curriculum development initiatives.     

Engaging the ‘maximal’ intentions of the citizenship curriculum: one teacher's story

Exploring how the transformative intentions within the mandated citizenship curriculum framework for English schools demand a particular kind of citizenship teacher – one who ‘acts against the grain’ of the inequities and injustices of the social world – this paper presents Mr C's story. Mr C is a secondary teacher at an Upper School located north of London. The paper considers the significance of his philosophies and knowledge in enabling practice aimed at developing students' socially inclusive but critical understandings of diversity and difference. Mr C's well‐defined personal philosophies about justice and the ‘common good’ and his capacity to translate these philosophies into practice are presented as central to mobilising the transformative or ‘maximal’ intentions of the citizenship curriculum. In highlighting the complexities and sophistication in Mr C's approach, however, the issues presented in this paper further strengthen the critique regarding the curriculum's depoliticised approach. While Mr C draws on the curriculum as a political device to support equity goals, it cannot be assumed that citizenship teachers more generally will have the requisite philosophies and knowledge necessary to do so.     

School subjects,subject communities and curriculum change: the social construction of economics in the school curriculum

The place of economics in the curriculum in England and Wales provides a lens through which we may view the ways in which the curriculum as a whole is fought over and remains shifting terrain. Conceived of as social movements, school subject communities are made up of competing factions giving rise to contest and conflict both within themselves and with other subjects. A social constructionist perspective, such as Goodson's, would suggest that the form and content of the curriculum are outcomes of such ongoing struggle, involving the interplay of power and control that reflect deep‐rooted traditions. Bernstein's notions of school subjects imply complex interplay of official and pedagogic agents in determining their fates as singulars, regions or generic entities. The rise and fall of economics lay substantially outside the control of its subject community and the social movements within it. At post‐16, a search for new content and pedagogies seemed to take little heed of its curricular market position. During the compulsory phase, the emergence of sub‐factions interested in vocational rather than economics education ensured its consignment to cross‐curricular theme status and relative oblivion in the post‐1988 National Curriculum.     

Beyond Economic and Industrial Understanding: An economic perspective in the primary curriculum

Abstract

In the fashioning of the National Curriculum on a subject basis, Economic and Industrial Understanding (EIU) emerged as one of the ‘cross‐curricular themes’ intended to impart some coherence and social purpose to the whole curriculum. In this way, attention was focused on Economics, which is not one of the National Curriculum foundation subjects. However, Economics is not only linked in the primary curriculum with Industry, but should also constitute one of a series of necessary perspectives on the children's world, all of which, together with moral and social understanding, they should learn to apply as they learn to live in that world. Before institutional education developed, this economic perspective was central to life, and is still indispensable and should be progressively fostered within a flexible curriculum as children grow. It necessarily involves problems and controversies, but the recognition of, and engagement with, such matters is itself an important part of social education. Due, but not unthinking or excessive, attention should be paid to ah economic perspective in its own right, in any simplification and revision of the National Curriculum in the primary phase.     

Liberalism,Pluralism, and Political Education: Paradox or paradigm?

Inspired by concern about promoting civic participation and preserving the liberal democratic state, political theorists have recently reignited a debate about the nature of political education in a liberal society. These theorists' arguments in favor of teaching toleration are significant for the progress of education reforms currently being debated and implemented in current liberal democracies and some emerging nations. Despite the increasing attention paid to the value of liberal civic education, however, its specific content is typically left virtually blank. This article aims to redress this gap in the literature by developing a coherent and comprehensive (albeit still very general) curriculum for liberal political education. To this end, Section I analyses the nature of the ideal liberal democratic state and develops a general curriculum for liberal political education based on the type of citizens needed to preserve and take advantage of such a state. It concludes by introducing two potentially illiberal outcomes of this curriculum: children's forced development of the capacity for autonomy, and the reduction of diversity in the state. Section II argues that the development of autonomy is actually central to liberal theory and liberal education more broadly conceived, while Section III suggests that civic and social diversity will persist, but rightly play a secondary role to the goals of liberal political education. The article concludes, therefore, with a reassertion of the content and importance of liberal political education.     

‘Knowledge’, curriculum and social justice

This article considers the place of knowledge in developing a socially just curriculum. It pursues the unusual route of a critique of Social Realism, a small but influential tendency in curriculum studies which claims that knowledge has been squeezed out by recent curriculum reforms and that there has been a descent into relativism. This paper shares the Social Realist view that ‘powerful knowledge’ is needed, and particularly by disadvantaged or marginalised young people. However, it critiques Social Realism's limited definition of ‘powerful knowledge’, arguing that for knowledge to be truly powerful, it must open up issues of power and inequality. It contests the Social Realist argument that critical pedagogy which begins from a subaltern stance is intrinsically relativist, arguing instead that alternative perspectives can help uncover concealed truths and break through hegemonic paradigms and ideologies. It argues that this is entirely compatible with a Critical Realist epistemology. Furthermore, the paper presents reasons why a socially just curriculum needs to draw upon the vernacular knowledge of marginalised groups as well as the canonical knowledge of academic disciplines to produce truly powerful knowledge and a social justice curriculum.     

Rethinking the relationship between learner,learning contexts,and technology: a critique and exploration of Archer's morphogenetic approach

The contextualized nature of learning with technology is widely acknowledged in research, but there remains a lack of sound social theorization to conceptualize and understand this contextualization. Giddens' structuration theory has been proposed as an appropriate tool for analysing and understanding human interactions with technologies. Drawing on Archer's critique of structuration theory, this paper critically analyses some of its recent uses in relation to e-learning and discusses their explanatory limitations. As an alternative, the paper proposes the use of Archer's morphogenetic approach and illustrates how it overcomes some of the major analytical weaknesses of structuration theory by enabling engagement with the powers of both structure and human agency without conflating them in a process of ‘mutual constitution’. It suggests that Archer's approach provides central analytical and explanatory significance to the multiple specific social contexts within which any e-learning course exists and the specific social interactions that take place amongst those engaged in it. Although based in e-learning for illustrative purposes, the conclusions drawn from comparison between structuration and morphogenetic approaches have application in the enhanced understanding and theorization of learning situations more generally.     

Exploring the position of curriculum studies across the continuum of teacher education in Ireland

Curriculum, while often narrowly defined, is a contested space that stimulates continuing international debate, yet the importance of curriculum studies is frequently overlooked across the continuum of teacher education. Within the Irish context a technicist interpretation of curriculum studies, focusing primarily of subject knowledge and development, has historically been adopted. More recent Teaching Council of Ireland policy documents have espoused a broader macro understanding of curriculum studies as a foundation discipline within initial teacher education. However, concerns have been raised regarding student teachers’ ability to fully engage with such material so early in their professional development. With the recently embraced continuum of teacher education in Ireland, this paper examines how curriculum studies is currently defined by Irish policy and problematises how it is addressed in practice. The paper proceeds to explore emerging opportunities to expand this area of study across the continuum. A case for the place of curriculum studies as central to the advancement of the profession through the promotion of teachers as change agents is presented.     

Boya education in China: Lessons from liberal arts education in the U.S. and Hong Kong

In this paper, taking as our point of departure the importance of China’s “boya” education (BYE) and the West’s liberal arts education (LAE) in an era that will be increasingly dominated by information technology (IT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), we examine the importance of BYE in Mainland China and LAE in the U.S. and Hong Kong. We argue that (a) the recent resurgence and growing significance of LAE in the world has been due to the right skill sets it provides in the information technology era in which many new jobs will be created and existing jobs destroyed ; (b) professional or technical training is not only compatible with the fundamental values of boya or liberal arts but also important in showcasing the strengths of BYE and LAE; (c) the combined benefits of BYE or LAE and professional or technical training may be achieved by adopting the main features of LAE such as its broad-based curriculum and whole-person development approach to undergraduate education or by combining a student's undergraduate and postgraduate studies over time; and (d) for BYE to achieve its goals in China it should occupy a central rather than tangential role in the undergraduate curriculum.     

Cultural capital,curriculum policy and teaching Latin

Latin is currently being trialled as a subject in 40 state secondary schools in England. This paper focuses on one of the justifications of this trial: that teaching Latin in state secondary schools provides students with cultural capital which in turn counters social injustice. By taking the example of Latin as a starting point, I reach two conclusions about cultural capital. The first is that providing students with cultural capital can be good for some individuals, and so justified on a case-by-case basis depending on context. However, this justification does not hold for curriculum policy making. My second conclusion is that in the long term, pursuing cultural capital as part of curriculum policy exacerbates the social injustices it purports to address. Wherever an activity is introduced for the sake of cultural capital rather than its educational value, educationally valuable activities risk being pushed off the curriculum, potentially degrading the educational value of the curriculum. In the case of teaching Latin, it may provide benefits to particular students, but as part of curriculum policy it risks exacerbating social injustices and undermining the educational value of school curricula. Going beyond the place of Latin on the curriculum, I argue that all appeals to cultural capital provide a poor basis for curriculum policy making.     

Imitation,Indwelling and the Embodied Self

In this paper I argue that recent developments in higher education presuppose a conceptual framework that fails plausibly to account for indispensable aspects of educational experience—in particular that a university education is fundamentally a project of personal transformation within a particular social order. It fails, I suggest, primarily because it consists of mutually supporting but erroneous conceptualisations of knowledge and the human subject. In pursuit of transparency and codification we have seemingly forgotten education's existential dimension: that education is closely tied to questions of personal identity and the formation of character and that this is an embodied project.     

Art in Primary Education: Aspects of Generalist Art Teaching

This paper considers the practice of generalist teaching in primary schools, but with specific regard to the teaching of art. It argues that, despite recent criticism of such methods, there is very little reason to suppose that primary schools will move to a pattern of wholesale specialist delivery of the curriculum within the foreseeable future. As a result, it suggests that the phenomenon of generalist art teaching is likely to remain a widespread aspect of primary education, and that art educators would therefore do well to consider whether the approach might not have something positive to offer the teaching of the subject. Accordingly, the paper provides an account of three significant advantages which it believes this method of teaching can offer to the teaching of art within the primary school. These are set against a range of evidence which both identifies the problematical nature of much past practice, but which also demonstrates the possibility of achieving quality in generalist art teaching. Finally, the relationship between previous problems in this area and the structure of teacher education is explored, and it is suggested that recent new requirements for such courses may offer the prospect of liberating the potential that has been identified.     

Teachers' perspectives on curriculum making in Primary Geography in England

The phrase ‘curriculum making’ has recently been used to describe medium-term planning and teachers’ enactment of such planning in the classroom. This narrows the term's initial use from that in the first half of the twentieth century when it was employed inclusively from national programmes to lesson planning. While considering related studies about curriculum making, this paper focuses on the interpretation described and used by the Geographical Association (GA) to encourage more open approaches to medium-term curriculum planning in England by teachers. It reports the outcomes of a small-scale study of primary teachers’ perspectives on their experiences of curriculum making during one GA project, ‘The Young Geographers Project’. It identifies a number of ‘curriculum dynamics’, including teachers’ feelings of liberation, children's agency in curriculum making, the importance of subject knowledge, engaging with children's everyday experiences and interests, and purposefulness for curriculum topics while retaining flexibility and openness. Reflecting on these findings, 10 features pertinent to curriculum making are noted.     

Powerful knowledge: insights from music's case

This paper examines Young and Muller's elaboration of Michael Young's concept of powerful knowledge and considers music's alignment with the characteristics theorised as distinguishing this type of knowledge. Consideration of the concept in relation to music may be timely as music teachers continue to grapple with the problem of knowing what knowledge to include within the parameters of a school curriculum. The concept of powerful knowledge may provide us with a fresh way of considering what school music may have to offer in such a noisy and musically heterogeneous world. This curricular challenge, however, is by no means unique to music, even though it may be exacerbated in music which is so open to the forces of cultural change. I argue that access to this knowledge occurs by placing abstract concepts at the centre of curriculum conception as the means to mediate the space between everyday knowledge and the more vertical discourse of school knowledge. It is in this ‘academic’ space that students can come to understand and utilise music as a form of powerful knowledge, when epistemic understanding illuminates the experiential and aesthetic dimensions of musical experiences.