curriculum knowledge and justice: content, competency and concept

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Curriculum knowledge and justice:content, competency and conceptChristine Winter aa Department of Educational Studies , University of Sheffield ,Sheffield, UKPublished online: 22 Sep 2011.

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Curriculum knowledge and justice: content, competency and concept

Christine Winter*

Department of Educational Studies, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

This study is interested in understanding the configurations ofknowledge underpinning three examples of curriculum policy textsin the specific case of the school subject of geography. The three policytexts are the 1991 Geography National Curriculum (GNC), the‘Opening minds’ curriculum and the GNC 2007. I start with theproposal that each selected text promotes a particular type ofknowledge, namely: content, competency and concept. I argue thatdeconstructive reading of three policy texts reveals what are assumedto be legitimate knowledge discourses as well as what is overlooked ineach tidy curriculum scheme. I engage the help of the post-structuralist thinker Jacques Derrida in this deconstructive under-taking. The study demonstrates how the 1991 ‘content’ curriculumprivileges a western European view of the world; how the 1999‘competency’ curriculum overlooks the politics and ethics of knowl-edge by focusing on an economistic, outcomes-driven technical viewof knowledge; and how the ‘concept’ curriculum offers opportunitiesfor deconstructive reading while at the same time indicating anunproblematical commitment to conflated and assumedly neutralapproaches to knowledge. Opening up curriculum texts to decon-structive reading shows language as insecure and reveals spaces for theincoming of more just ways of thinking about the world.

Keywords: curriculum; deconstruction; geography; justice; knowledge;policy

Introduction

The first Geography National Curriculum (GNC) for young people aged11–14 in England was published in 1991. Since this date, the history ofschool geography curriculum policy has been remarkable in terms of itscontinuities and changes, the contestation surrounding its form and thediversity of interpretation through practical implementation in schoolclassrooms. The current state of health of the subject in schools iscomplex. While declining in overall popularity among 14- and 16-year-olds (Winter 2009a), the decline demonstrates some noteworthy spatial

*Email: [email protected]

The Curriculum Journal

Vol. 22, No. 3, September 2011, 337–364

ISSN 0958-5176 print/ISSN 1469-3704 online

� 2011 British Curriculum Foundation

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patterns of exclusion, for example, inner city schools are likely to havefewer geography examination entries than those in suburban or ruralareas (Weeden and Lambert 2010). Furthermore, the introduction of the‘Big Picture’ of the curriculum (QCA 2008) (which gives schools thefreedom to choose their preferred curriculum structure) has intensifiedpressure on the teaching of discrete humanities subjects1 in some schools(Harris and Burn 2010). Both studies indicate inequalities in access toschool geography of a spatial kind. The focus of this article is not quitethis. Instead, it is committed to investigating the possibility of justiceassociated with different configurations of geographical knowledge withinthe school curriculum over a period of time.

This study involves the examination of three Key Stage 3 (KS3)2

curriculum texts published between 1991 and 2007 to try to understandtheir underpinning configurations of knowledge. The purpose is toenquire into the possibility or impossibility of a ‘just’ geographycurriculum through the deconstructive reading of curriculum texts thatreveal what and/or who may have been omitted in approaches to writingcurriculum knowledge for policy past and present. I begin the enquirywith the proposal that each text appears to promote a particular type ofknowledge: as content, competency and concept. The framework of the‘three Cs’ derives from an implicit understanding of the differentconstitutions of knowledge in the curricula held among geographyteachers and teacher educators. At the same time as offering theframework as the starting point of this enquiry, I must expose itslimitations. The ‘three C’ categories are not mutually exclusive, as bordersbetween them are permeable. Each category does not map singularly andunproblematically on to each curriculum text. Furthermore, thecategories imply transparency and clarity, while concealing the complex-ity of the texts, particularly with regard to the political strugglessurrounding their formulation. Hence, the ‘three Cs’ framework servesas an organising device, designed as an entree into the enquiry. Iacknowledge that things are more complex than the device suggests andaim to show how the deconstructive reading to follow reveals thesecomplexities. But before doing so, I will introduce the context of thestudy.

The three curriculum policy texts

The first text, the 1991 Geography National Curriculum (GNC) (DES1991) is an example of a content-based model of a utilitarian andinformational kind (Rawling 2001). It formed part of a suite of subjectpolicy texts constituting the National Curriculum in England arising fromthe Education Reform Act of 1988. The introduction, by the Con-servative government of the time, of a mandatory, standardised National

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Curriculum consisting of prescribed knowledge, represented a politicalmove to impose centralised control over the curriculum (Ball 1994). Thereason for selection in this study is that whilst celebrated for having givenGeography its ‘place in the sun’ (Bailey 1989), this policy was, in the eyesof the geography education community, highly problematical in terms ofits faulty structure, overprescription and its overloaded and outdatedknowledge content (see Rawling 2001). As a product of the New Right, itestablished a cultural restorationist ideology as the dominant discourseon geographical knowledge (Ball 1993). The policy emphasised thelearning of factual content (for example, locational knowledge) and well-established skills (like map skills) by means of Attainment Targets(Rawling 1992). Knowledge pertaining to values and attitudes and theirexamination by means of critical political enquiry were noticeable by theirabsence.

The second curriculum policy text is not strictly speaking a‘geography’ text, but I justify its inclusion on the grounds that itrepresents the kind of competency-based curriculum that is currentlyreplacing geography taught as a discrete subject in some schools.3 It is theRSA’s4 ‘Education for the 21st Century’ (Bayliss/RSA 1999), the finalreport of the ‘Opening Minds’ (OM) project. This project encapsulates aresponse from a non-governmental organisation (the RSA) to thecriticisms levelled at the standardised, statutory National Curriculumorganised in discrete subject knowledge compartments. The OMcurriculum is competency-based and promotes integrated forms ofknowledge. This distinctive approach to knowledge forms my mainreason for selecting it as a focus of study. In addition, and unlike the 1991and 2007 policy texts, it represents a response to the perceived call for aneducational system that prepares young people to take their places withinthe global knowledge-based economy of the future.

The third policy text under study is the 2007 concept-based GNC(QCA/DCSF 2007). It was selected because it exhibits a shift in emphasisfrom the prescribed subject knowledge content of the earlier GNC to aminimal framework of concepts, processes, range and content which givesteachers freedom and flexibility to plan and implement the curriculum.The change to a Labour government in 1997 and the influence of ‘ThirdWay’ thinkers and policies in Britain brought about a reform ofcurriculum policies, heralding a shift from the tightly framed subject-based National Curriculum to curriculum deregulation and choice. Theconception of curriculum knowledge informing this policy is differentfrom the other two, since it is pinned to a scheme reminiscent, to someextent, of the modern version of liberal education as proposed by R.S.Peters (1966). Each of the three curriculum texts attempts to convey aparticular perspective about the nature of the subject knowledge ofgeography.

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Two additional GNC policy texts were published between 1991 and2007 (DfEE 1995; DfEE/QCA 1999) which were not selected for studybecause, while the former can be described as a revision and the latter adistinct reworking, they both remain legacies of the 1991 text. As Rawlingstates, these interim versions of the GNC are ‘still held within thetraditional and now outdated shell of subject content’ (2001, 83).

Derrida, deconstruction and education

In his ‘Letter to a Japanese friend’, Derrida stated: ‘Deconstruction is nota method and cannot be transformed into one. . . . Deconstruction is noteven an act or an operation’ (1988, 3). Derrida was concerned thatdeconstruction would be ‘appropriated’ and ‘domesticated’ by academicinstitutions and applied through instrumental and rule-bound proceduresthat sharply contravene the thinking behind it. He argues that‘Deconstruction takes place. . . . It deconstructs itself. It can be decon-structed ’ (1988, 4). To define and systematise deconstruction refutes thevery arguments underpinning its existence that I introduce later:differance and deferral.

Derrida’s project opens up new avenues of thought for educationalpolicy and practice research in the sense that it questions the existence of:‘a fundamental ground, a fixed permanent center, as an Archimedeanpoint which serves as both an absolute beginning and as a center fromwhich everything originating from it can be mastered and controlled’(Biesta 2001, 38). In other words, Derrida invites us to lay bare the hiddenassumptions underpinning western metaphysical thinking about educa-tion by scrutinising its constituting and regulating structures in order toopen up a space for the incoming of the other (Garrison 2003, 352). Petersand Burbules acclaim the opportunities afforded by a Derrideanperspective to question conceptualisations of reading and writing asaccorded by western traditions of education through the deconstructivereading of educational texts of all kinds, whether of policy, curriculum,classrooms, performance, traditions, or subjects (2004, 71). Standish(2004), Ulmer (1985) and Leitch (1996) offer suggestions as to howeducational practice might be reconsidered following Derridean thought.

Deconstruction is, however, not without its critics. Bernstein (1992)describes the ‘double bind’ of deconstructing western metaphysics in sucha way that avoids nihilistic relativism. He poses the question ‘What do wedo after deconstruction?’ Other critics, like Constas (1998), argue thatpost-structuralism fails to offer conclusions or to provide guidelines toimprove educational practice (see Peters and Burbules 2004), while Leiter(2004) describes Derrida’s legacy to the humanities as ‘one of shame’ (seeWilliams 2005, 48). In contrast, scholars like Biesta (2009a) and Caputo(1997) propose that deconstruction is affirmative in the sense that it opens

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up sites for ‘inventionalism’ where deconstruction’s role as a thoroughlypolitico-ethical project can be realised through the incoming of the other.Biesta understands Derrida’s project as an opportunity to move towardsa responsive, ethically responsible, participatory, action-centred andpluralistic educational experience (Biesta 2006).

Curriculum policy research and geography education

The field of school geography curriculum policy research was stronglyenhanced through Rawling’s seminal 2001 contribution. Rawling adopteda critical policy sociology approach to the political history of the impactof policy on the definition, character and status of the school subject ofgeography in England between 1980 and 2000. Her work includes apowerful critique of the 1991 GNC – the first curriculum policy text to bediscussed in this article. More recent research contributions to debatesabout geography curriculum policy include Butt (2008), Lambert (2008),Morgan (2009), Lambert and Morgan (2010), and Winter (2009a, 2011),who chart the fluctuating health and status of the school subject under theinfluence of changing policy priorities and concerns. These studiesprovide the backdrop for the discussion to follow. Few researchers haveengaged Derrida’s ideas in researching curriculum policy in England.Pykett drew on both Foucault and Derrida in her 2007 analysis of thecitizenship curriculum policy in England and Winter deployed adeconstructive reading of the 2007 National Curriculum inclusiveeducation policy (in press). Studies of Derrida’s thinking with a specificfocus on school geography curriculum policy include Winter (2006,2007a, 2007b, 2009a, 2009b).

Derrida and geography research

Barnett dates the arrival of ‘the cultural turn’ in geography research intouniversities and the corresponding rise in interest in post-structuralepistemologies to the late 1980s and early 1990s (1998, 277–8). Herecounts the appearance through the 1990s of deconstruction in a varietyof forms in geography research studies. Although first published in 1989in Cartographica, Brian Harley’s ‘Deconstructing the map’ is a keycontribution to the field, as editors Agnew, Livingstone, and Rogersremark: ‘As part of a political ‘‘sign system’’ maps provide one of themost intellectually powerful ways into which the world is divided up intothe geographical units that then pass into common use as ‘‘natural’’features of the world’ (Harley 1996, 422). A selection of recentgeographical research studies which use a Derridean deconstructiveapproach include Barnett (2004), Dixon and Jones III (1998, 2005); Doel(2005, 2010a, 2010b), Popke (2009) and Wainwright and Barnes (2009).


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Deconstruction

Deconstruction involves the close reading of texts of any kind in an open,questioning way so as to demonstrate three key dimensions of Derrida’swork: first, that words are insecure and never fully under our control;second, that totalising discourses which imply the unity of knowledgeneed to be prodded and troubled to expose their ironies and internalillogicalities; and third, in doing so, that deconstruction opens up a spacefor justice – a space in which the other – something new, productive andunforeseeable – emerges.

Words are insecure and never fully under our control

Deconstruction arises from the idea that language represents thought.According to western tradition, since the conscious self forms the centreof all mental activity and is linked to words, words are thereforeassumed to be fundamental expressions of reality and truth (Egea-Kuehne 1995, 295). Derrida refers to this phenomenon as ‘themetaphysics of presence’ or ‘the transcendental signified’ (1978, 354)because it assumes a direct and accurate correspondence between theword (signifier) and its meaning (signified). Deconstruction denies thismirror image relationship, arguing instead that word meaning isascribed through a system of differences whereby we come to under-stand the meaning of words via indications of things that are notidentical to them, but different from them.

Also, the meanings of words are always on the move. The termdeferral refers to the movement, or play of traces of meanings of words,past, present and future, as they unfold, leaving tracks or marks in thetext which prevent us from pinning down meaning in an accurate,definitive or exhaustive way. Thus the meaning of a word is bothdifferential (according to its differences to other words) and deferred (itcan never be a stable representation). This leads to the notion that insteadof words conveying meaning with clarity, accuracy and authority, wordsmean more than they appear to mean: ‘Every single time something isdone with a purpose in view, something fundamentally different and otheroccurs’ (Spivak 1976, xxiii). It is as if something else is going on behindthe authors’ backs.

Totalising discourses

Deconstruction sets out to question certitudes, such as: Enlightenmentideas about the world’s fundamental natural scientific order; the deeplyhistorical, social and cultural construction of religious belief systems; orthe concepts, models and patterns and processes embedded within

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academic disciplines like geography. These kinds of totalising dis-courses, inevitably linguistically constituted, cut off and limit the play oftraces, stifling and/or steering thinking along well-worn, establishedpaths. Confronting universal and totalising truths with the idea thatwords are unstable, and cannot be defined accurately, inevitably causessome consternation as it challenges the fundamental bases of westernmetaphysics. While Derrida has always questioned metaphysics, heargues that this cannot be done from the outside of metaphysicalthinking (Biesta 2009b, 21). Deconstruction argues for the right toquestion, but argues that questioning does not involve the destructionor the rejection of metaphysics – instead, it requires full induction intometaphysical thinking, accompanied by what Captuo describes as its‘picking over’, like a rag picker gathering those ‘bits and pieces thattend to drop from sight in the prevailing view of things’ (Caputo 1997,52). The rag picker notices the bits and pieces that have beenoverlooked and uses them to create something new. In the same way,deconstruction alerts us to the other that is overlooked within theassumptions of fixed and stable definitions, universal certitudes and thepresuppositions of science, to allow the incoming of the other (l’avenirde l’autre).

A space for justice

Deconstruction argues against the presumptions of totalising discoursesby challenging the existence of presence as a self-sufficient centre fromwhich everything is governed. Deconstruction attempts to trouble anddisrupt totalising discourses, to transgress them, and, in so doing, toaffirm those ways of thinking, people or places that are excluded, missedout, concealed by the all-embracing scheme. Derrida argues, however,that we can never state that deconstruction results in justice, because thisact in itself closes down the opportunity for the other to decide whetherjustice has been achieved or not (Biesta 2009b, 31). The possibility ofjustice must always be kept open. Any declaration of justice involves thatvery totalisation Derrida rejects. In order to retain an openness to theincoming of the other, the achievement of justice remains ‘an experienceof the impossible’ (Derrida 1992a, 16). The concept of justice does notdeconstruct, it can never be present, it is always ‘a justice to come’ (1992a,27). In other words, any enquiry which seeks a just curriculum is, fromthe start, an impossible task. None the less, under a Derrideanperspective, there exists a political and ethical responsibility to questioncurriculum knowledge, to think outside its totalising structures in order tolook out for the incoming of the other: ‘deconstructive inventiveness canconsist only in opening, in uncloseting, destabilising foreclosionarystructures so as to allow for the passage toward the other’ (Derrida 1989,


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59–60), in a way which will project us towards something better to come,a more exacting objectivity. How might passage towards the other beengaged in school geography?

School geography curriculum policy knowledge deconstructs

The engagement by policy-makers with school curriculum policyconstruction is understood to involve some consideration of what aschool subject is assumed to be and the perceived nature and scope of itsconstituent knowledge. Any discussion about the kind of knowledgeunderpinning school geography curricula cannot be detached from broadtheoretical debates about geographical knowledge undertaken, forexample, by university researchers such as Harvey, Smith, Masseyand Jackson who challenged the spatial science paradigm dominatingthe 1960s and 1970s. Cloke et al. (1991) provide a comprehensiveaccount of this movement, together with further discussion of succeedingepistemological epochs marked by structuration, realism andpostmodernism.

Likewise, it is important to recognise the variety of approaches togeographical knowledge currently adopted within the geographyeducation community. Standish, for example, rejects what he under-stands to be politicisation of the geography curriculum achievedthrough the indoctrination of pupils as moral and political subjects atthe expense of ‘hard and factual’ geographical knowledge (2006, 1),while Lambert invokes the recent version of the liberal education viewof knowledge that applauds ‘disciplined ways of seeing and knowing’(2008, 211). Firth supports a social realist approach which acknowledgesthe social basis of knowledge generation at the same time as recognisingthe need for ‘truth’ not as an absolute but as an indeterminate butregulatory phenomenon (2010, 147). Winter adopts a post-structuralistperspective (2006, 2007a, 2007b, 2009b). It is important not to overlookthe view of school knowledge upheld by government ministers, but itremains to be seen whether Michael Gove’s support for a curriculumbased on ‘core knowledge’ (DfE 2010; see Lambert 2011) replicates the‘back-to-basics’ restorationist perspective held by his predecessorKenneth Clarke (1992). Close reading of the texts under examinationhere reveals three very different understandings of what geographymight be and how certain totalising frameworks of thinking haveinstituted particular kinds of knowledge production at different politicaltimes. The 1991 policy text constructs geographical knowledge as lists offactual content (knowledge-what) arranged under five objectives called‘Attainment Targets’, whereas the 1999 OM curriculum framework doesnot identify geography as a discrete subject, but instead interprets themore broadly based field of humanities knowledge through five

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‘Competences’, where competency is defined as ‘the ability to under-stand and to do’ (or knowledge-how) (Bayliss/RSA 1999, 27). The 2007GNC (QCA/DCSF 2007) constitution of geographical knowledge occursthrough seven key concepts, four key processes and range and content(see Table 1).

Each text appears to present a straightforward, coherent, authoritativeaccount of what geography is or should be for 11–14-year-olds. Thecategorical language of each conveys the assumption that at eachhistorical juncture geography exists as a stable entity, when the changesevident in the diversity of its conceptualisations between 1991 and 2007demonstrate the very different understandings of its constituent knowl-edge. Each interpretation of school knowledge in Table 1 gives asupposedly all-inclusive, comprehensive coverage of the subject in anassumedly neutral, naturalising light. The inscription of categories ofknowledge in each curriculum text pins down, captures and institutiona-lises meanings of words and the world, denying the dynamism oflanguage and blocking questions about the provenance of ways ofthinking that have created and institutionalised the text. Heidegger’s ideaof ‘Enframing’ (1977, 19) is useful here because it describes and explainsthe assembling and ordering of things in calculative ways whichappropriate meaning of the world through technical rationality.Inevitably, enframing proposes and legitimises certain ways of thinkingat the same time as concealing others, and as such may be accused ofcreating a less than objective form of knowledge. Questions which cannotbe investigated without a more detailed reading of the texts are: who orwhat may be missed out or overlooked in each tidy conceptual scheme

Table 1. The different categories of school knowledge constituting interpretations ofgeography/humanities in Key Stage 3 curriculum texts between 1991 and 2007.

Content (1991)Competences

(1999)

Concepts (processes,range and content)

(2007)

Categories ofschoolcurriculumknowledge

1. Geographicalskills

2. Knowledge andunderstanding ofplaces

3. Physicalgeography

4. Humangeography

5. Environmentalgeography

1. Citizenship2. Learning3. Managing

information4. Relating to

people5. Managing

situations

1. Place2. Space3. Scale4. Interdependence5. Physical and

human processes6. Environmental

interaction andsustainabledevelopment

7. Culturalunderstandingand diversity


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and what spaces might be opened for the incoming of the other? I beginby looking at the 1991 GNC.

The ‘content’ curriculum

The 1988 National Curriculum in England consisted of three core subjectsand seven foundation subjects, including geography. Described by Carrand Hartnett as representing ‘a selective pillaging of the past’, the list ofNational Curriculum subjects resembles that of the 1904 Board ofEducation Regulations and the detailed subject specifications resemblethose of the old grammar school curriculum (Carr and Hartnett 1996,172). This re-valorisation of the traditional curriculum is a strategytypical of the ‘cultural restorationists’ of the New Right (Ball 1993, 195),who intended to strengthen the rigour and integrity of the disciplines andbring ‘real’ knowledge back into schools by reinstating what Ball calls ‘thecurriculum of the dead’ (1993, 210). Ownership and control of thecurriculum by one political group in this way involves the legitimisationand reproduction of certain configurations of knowledge, skills andsubjectivities for future generations, by embodying views about whatknowledge is worthy of being passed on. Symptomatic of the ‘back tobasics’ movement, the 1991 GNC programme of study for Key Stage 3prescribed a utilitarian, ‘informational’ geography through content-basedobjectives emphasising locational knowledge of prescribed places (Rawl-ing 1992, 305). This is illustrated nicely in the example of AttainmentTarget 2: Knowledge and Understanding of Places, where the objectivesconsist of: naming, describing and giving accounts of features, changinglandscapes and lives in places (DES 1991, 8).

Knowledge about maps

In the case of the 1991 GNC, the traditional education movementreceived timely support regarding an acceptable conceptualisation ofgeographical knowledge in the form of a National Geographical Society(US) International Gallup Survey in 1988. The survey pointed out thedisturbing lack of geographical knowledge about place location amongBritish adults (The Independent 1988). Politicians laid the blame firmlywith teachers and the school geography curriculum5 for not teachingBritish children where places are and what they are like (Rawling 1992,299), and this ‘failing’ was ‘corrected’ in the 1991 GNC, as KennethClarke, the then Secretary of State for Education, stated:

As a starting point to acquiring knowledge it is essential that pupils knowwhere the places which they are studying are located, where that city, orfarming area or volcanic region is within a particular country, and where

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that country is in relation to the United Kingdom and other parts of theworld. (Clarke 1992, 28)

Echoing the Black Paper6 appeal to the popular vote, Clarke describesthe emphasis on place knowledge in the GNC as ‘a return to theroots of the subject’ and ‘what parents and the public believe thatgeography is mainly about’ (ibid.). Thus, the 1991 policy containsseemingly clear targets concerning knowledge about place names andlocations on maps. While maps and map skills have an important rolein the school geography curriculum, the kind of map knowledge aspresented in the 1991 GNC inaugurates and institutionalises certainways of knowing and naming places on maps that limit and concealother ways of knowing which may be more rich, more objective andmore just.

The 1991 GNC deals with locational knowledge as if it were neutraland scientific fact; as if, first, no politics are involved in naming places,and second, there exists a direct and unproblematical relationshipbetween the place name and the place itself. The first case is contestedby critical place-name scholars who call attention to the ‘politicaleconomy of place name toponymic practices’ (Rose-Redwood 2011, 38).In the second case, where the name is assumed to mirror the meaning, topin it down, to capture it and to control it, a Derridean perspective arguesthat meaning depends on systems of differences and the sign can never besecured and stabilised literally – there is always some metaphorical workgoing on. Conventions, signs and place names on maps are unstable –they have histories, their meanings twist and change through the play ofthe trace, and something else is always and already in progress in thebackground:

Thus the name, especially the so-called proper name, is always caught in achain or a system of differences. It becomes an appellation only to theextent that it may inscribe itself within a figuration. Whether it be linked byits origin to the representations of things in space or whether it remainscaught in a system of phonic differences or social classifications apparentlyreleased from ordinary space, the proper-ness of the name does not escapespacing. Metaphor shapes and undermines the proper name. The literal(propre) meaning does not exist, its ‘appearance’ is a necessary function –and must be analysed as such – in the system of differences and metaphors.(Derrida 1974, 89)

Deconstruction allows the instability and partiality of the map to come tolight, illustrating how attempts to define the meanings of places throughsymbols and words impose a kind of monumentalisation and dominationin a way that confers partial blindness, hiding certain other aspects ofknowing about that place and other ways in which humans might engagewith and in it. Europe serves as an example.


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Europe in the GNC (1991)

The concept of ‘development’ underpinning the GNC 1991 is founded ontwo powerful and well-established totalising discourses in geography – ofenvironmental determinism and development as a temporal process. Theformer indicates that differences in characteristics of countries are a resultof their differing physical conditions, while the latter suggests thatdevelopment is a linear historical process whereby the different levels ofdevelopment of countries represent different stages along a historical line(see Rostow’s 1960 model of stages in economic growth). Under thecritical gaze of geography researchers (for example, Crush 1995; Power2003) and school geography educators (Lambert and Morgan 2010) theconcept of ‘development’ has undergone radical review. Massey critiquesthe perception that ‘Western Europe is ‘‘advanced’’, other parts of theworld ‘‘some way behind’’, yet others are ‘‘backward’’’ (2005, 68).Chakrabarty (2000) shows, through his postcolonial project of ‘provin-cializing Europe’, the need for serious ‘decentring’ of Europe byhighlighting how the European intellectual tradition should be seen asonly one example among many.

An unproblematised privileging of Europe, and particularly westernEurope, is detectable through further deconstructive reading of the GNC(1991). Of the six maps comprising the compulsory element of thecurriculum at KS3, two are maps of Europe (of the remaining, two are ofthe British Isles and two the world). As such, Europe is the only ‘supra-national’ entity in the world that is selected for study in the 1991 text, asthe others are countries (the USA, USSR and Japan). Within the EC,four specific countries are available for study, namely France, Germany,Italy and Spain, which are all ‘western European’. Europe is assumed tobe a stable, fixed concept, its definition commonly agreed. It is assumed toexist, unproblematically, in the form in which it is represented on themaps – delimited and inscribed through borders and names of countries,cities, rivers, mountain ranges and expanses of water, with an unques-tioned acceptance of the selection made.

This is a Europe frozen in time and space – pinned down by aconceptualisation of knowledge that denies the play of traces, theunfurling of difference. It is caught within a totalising discourse whichunderstands it to be the source and centre of global economic, intellectual,cultural and spiritual civilisation. Echoing Chakrabarty’s call for adecentring of Europe, in The Other Heading (1992b), Derrida readsdeconstructively Paul Valery’s historical and political works (see Valery1962) in a way which interrupts their assumptions of a globally hegemonicEuropean cultural identity. He questions the assumed stability of bothEurope’s borders and its name, describing the latter as ‘only a paleonymicappellation’ (1992b, 30–1), illuminating the insecurity of words. He takes

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the title ‘The other heading’ and allows meaning to unfurl. The idea ofEurope, the intellectual ‘head’ of the world (French ‘cap’) that wears the‘crown’ and is the privileged place (at the top), at the same time as beingthe ‘head-land’ of the Asian continent: ‘the elect portion of the terrestrialglobe, the pearl of the sphere, the brain of a vast body’ (ibid., Note 2). Theidea of ‘The Other’ of the book title alludes to the prospect of an-‘other’direction of thought, an-‘other’ heading, the heading of the other, theother of the heading (ibid., 15), the opportunity for the opening of spacesfor thinking otherwise about European hegemony.

This reading illustrates the ways in which deconstruction opens upspaces for the incoming of the other – in other words, for appreciatingsome of the previously overlooked responsibilities falling to Europeans:of toppling Europe from its presumed elite global status; of welcomingforeigners and other groups of people; of criticising totalitariandogmatism; of cultivating the critical tradition at the same time assubjecting it to deconstructive reading; of being open minded; and ofembracing the idea of democracy while simultaneously appreciating thatit is a democracy to come (Derrida 1992b, 78). After considering textsfocusing on Europe through a deconstructive perspective, the next task isto encourage the curriculum text of the 1999 RSA ‘Opening Minds’ (OM)project to self-deconstruct to see what has been overlooked in itsconstitution.

The ‘competency’ curriculum

In 2000, when the RSA began implementing the OM curriculum, theGNC had been in place for nine years and had undergone two revisions inattempts to slim it down and improve its structure. The very criticismsthat stimulated the RSA to provide an alternative to the NationalCurriculum echoed those criticisms voiced across a range of educationalinterests,7 including the overprescription of factual knowledge, knowl-edge fragmentation across the separate subjects, an inflexible one-size-fits-all format and the transmission of outdated knowledge that is irrelevantto the needs of twenty-first-century citizens (see Winter 2011). In 2008, thepublication by the Labour government of the ‘Big Picture’ (QCA 2008) ofthe curriculum signalled curriculum deregulation, whereby schools weregiven freedom to organise school knowledge in different ways, either byretaining the separate subject curriculum or changing to a brand-newstructure (Lambert 2008). This policy reform aimed to meet the demandsfor more curriculum flexibility, choice and opportunities for schools toprovide the kinds of competences thought to be needed for the nation’ssuccess in the global marketplace (OECD 2000). Although published wellbefore curriculum deregulation, the ‘Opening Minds’ (OM) project aimedto meet those demands.


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The OM materials promote student competence developmentmediated through subject content (Bayliss/RSA 1999, 17). The projectphilosophy rests on the assumption that the aim of schooling is thedevelopment of competences by the individual. Teachers work together ineach OM school to choose an overarching theme which links differentsubjects together (RSA 2006, 1) and subject knowledge is selected on thebasis of the prime goal of competency achievement. Deconstructivereading of the key OM curriculum text (Bayliss/RSA 1999) provides anopportunity to probe the curriculum language and to disrupt twounderpinning totalising OM discourses – individualisation (and self-responsibilisation) and the notion of the ‘well-educated person’. Butbefore doing so, some contextualisation of individualisation and self-responsibilisation in the academic and policy research community isneeded.

Individualisation (and self-responsibilisation)

The language of the OM text configures the student as individual self-manager. In the task of preparing young people to handle ‘an increasinglycomplex world’ (Bayliss/RSA 1999, 1), the OM curriculum aims ‘todevelop in each individual the range of competences they will need tomanage their lives and their work’ (ibid., 8) while looking towards a formof schooling:

which not only values and develops the unique abilities of everystudent . . . but which can do so in practice because the curriculum valuesall those abilities and education resources and practice are much better ableto foster them on an individual basis. (ibid., 13)

The language of self-responsibilisation takes two forms. First is theemphasis on the word ‘manage’. This word occurs in the statements 12times, as students are encouraged to manage their own learning, theirfinancial affairs, other people, stress and conflict, their own time anddisappointment – to give just a few examples. The word ‘manage’ derivesfrom the Italian word maneggiare meaning ‘to handle or control’ (as witha horse) and traces back to the Latin word manus, meaning ‘hand’.Second, the call for self-management is evidenced within the shift in thelanguage introducing each competence category. Comparison withlanguage used in previous National Curriculum documents reveals thatin the OM curriculum responsibility for achieving learning outcomes liesnot with the teacher but with the student.

My first question is: what intellectual and political discourses relate tocurrent understandings of individualisation and self-responsibilisation asappropriated within the OM curriculum text? My response is to looktowards Ulrich Beck’s major academic opus of reflexive modernity

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(Beck 1992, 1999; Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2002; see also Giddens 1990,1991; Lash 1994) that examines the idea of the reflexive individual withina society characterised by uncertainty, and disembedded social roles andinstitutions. Survival within the risk society requires increased levels ofindividual self-responsibilisation (Beck 1992). Translating these ideas intoa political context in his role of both academic and political adviser toTony Blair’s ‘Third Way’ government, Anthony Giddens engaged theidea of individualisation, dampening its socially divisive force through the‘soft’ condition of increased individual social responsibilities andobligations (Giddens 1998).

The concepts of individualisation and self-responsibilisation in theOM curriculum link to curriculum personalisation agendas. The policyliterature of personalised learning is abundant and variously nuanced(see, for example, Leadbeater 2004; Miliband 2004; Pollard and James2004; Hargreaves 2005; Cutler et al. 2007; Ferguson 2007; Gilbert 2007).Rejecting the National Curriculum on the grounds that one size fits alldoes not allow for the development of individual and independentlearning styles, the OM curriculum promotes, ‘skills that enable them [i.e.students] to take responsibility for their own learning and becomeindependent thinkers’ (James 2005, np).

The roots of the personalisation movement have been traced byHartley (2007) to the Harvard Business School writers of the 1990s,marketing theory and the concept of ‘customisation’. In its modern-dayversion, customisation involves not only the continuous remaking of theproduct to meet changing market demand, but also the continuousremaking of the demand itself, through the construction and reconstruc-tion of individuals through consumerism: ‘There is now a re-creation ofthe self, a continual makeover enabled by the consumption of goods andservices’ (Hartley 2007, 631). Hartley argues that the celebration ofdifference and the project of the self are surfacing in schools through thepersonalisation agenda (2009). Under conditions of ‘strong personalisa-tion’, and under the seductive appeal of the ‘democratic’ language of the‘personal’, ‘choice’ and ‘voice’, personalisation appears to offer hope toschools through a promised reculturing that provides answers to allproblems of underachieving, poorly motivated and unsuccessful learners,while instituting, by a sleight of semantics, no more or less than a marketeconomy and consumer society.

A number of researchers have identified a contemporary trend of neo-liberalisation of education policy (see Pykett 2009, 377), and in severalcases discourses of neo-liberalism, individualisation (and self-responsibi-lisation) and personalisation have been closely associated (see Campbellet al. 2007; Hartley 2007, 2009; Beach and Dovemark 2009). It should benoted that neo-liberalism, as a philosophy pertaining to the market andlaissez-faire economics, is, however, not a monolithic project that can be


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defined precisely. Neo-liberalism’s multiple, complex and contradictoryforms and the ways in which it plays out differently in different places atdifferent times are recognised by many, including Ong (2006), Mitchell(2006) and Clarke (2010). Individualisation, self-responsibilisation andpersonalisation are totalising concepts that attempt to pin downmeaning in individual and social ways that reflect the perceiveddemands of a competitive global knowledge economy oriented towardssuccess: ‘the countries with the strongest educational base and thehighest levels of skill will win the economic prizes’ (Bayliss/RSA 1999,2) and overlook alternative political discourses. Likewise, embeddedwithin the outcomes-oriented OM curriculum is a particular predeter-mined vision of ‘the well-educated person’. A deconstructive readingalerts one to the undergirding exclusionary presuppositions of theseconcepts to allow some consideration of who or what might be omittedthrough a reproductive reading.

The well-educated person

In stating that ‘Defining the necessary competence framework wouldeffectively redefine what we mean by a well-educated person’ (Bayliss/RSA 1999, 8), the OM curriculum serves as a blueprint for a particularkind of person destined to fit the knowledge economy of the future. If astudent successfully achieves all the OM competences, s/he will become agood learner, a good citizen, and a good manager of relationships,situations and information, thereby ticking off the competences in theframework one by one. No one can dispute the significance and value ofthese capacities in relation to human life and work, but what exactly ishappening here? What kind of ‘well-educated person’ does each studentbecome? A person programmed like a computer by an outcomes-driventechnical-rational framework of competences?

The framework raises a number of questions about the provenanceand purposes of the competence outcomes as well as what they omit. Theconstruction of ‘the entrepreneur’ is readily visible in the scheme, throughcompetences relating to ‘managers’ and ‘techniques’; understanding ‘whatis meant by being entrepreneurial and initiative-taking’; ‘managing their[i.e. students] financial affairs’; and understanding ‘how business works’ –all within a ‘can-do’ culture where ‘students would understand how to getthings done’ (Bayliss/RSA 1999, 19). The social and emotional self-manager is clearly evident too, for example in competences for under-standing oneself; managing personal and emotional relationships as wellas stress and conflict; celebrating and managing success and disappoint-ment; and managing risk and uncertainty. Success in all thesecompetences produces, presumably, the perfectly competent managerwith everything – life, work, relationships and self – all under tight

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control. While in moments of stress we all might strive for such a well-ordered life, surely in saner moments we recognise the sterility of this kindof existence? Besides, preoccupation with personal competence manage-ment would appear to deflect attention from inequalities which affectwell-being in a collective sense.

The OM competency curriculum pays scant attention to developingstudents’ critical capacities and the word ‘political’ is absent. Competencyknowledge of ‘critical judgement’ appears only once, under the heading‘managing information’ (Bayliss/RSA 1999, 19), conferring a particularorientation towards evaluative judgements of a technical kind, instead oftowards those founded on ethico-political concerns. Similarly, the term‘ethics and values’ occurs only once in the competences, under thecategory of citizenship.

What spaces does this deconstructive reading open for the incoming ofthe other? Where are the spaces for collective movements articulatingpolitical and ethical concerns; for the unexpected, unforeseen ways ofknowing; for inventionalism and for the generation of the possibility ofthe incoming of the other through curriculum openness? Where are thespaces in which learners can respond as unique political and ethical beingswho show concern for others who are not like them through the learningopportunities afforded by the curriculum?

The ‘concept’ curriculum

The third text under examination is the KS3 GNC programme of study2007, which introduced a knowledge structure based not on factualcontent or competences, but on concepts. Laverty coins the truism that ‘itis difficult to say what concepts are, and yet everyone recognizes theircentrality for human communication and life’ (2010, 27). Concepts areimportant in the sense that they allow us to organise the messy andconfusing knowledge of the world on the basis of principles or rules, in away that seemingly makes it more manageable and comprehensible.Analytic philosophers pride themselves on clarifying concepts byanalysing them to reveal their underlying structure or rules in order, ‘toanswer questions about the relative truth of competing world views byuncovering their conceptual assumptions’ (ibid., 30). It is clear how aconceptual approach to curriculum knowledge might avoid the dangers ofone preoccupied with knowledge understood as prescribed facts ortechnical competences.

A concept-based curriculum should also allow for the reinstatement ofteacher professionalism by giving the opportunity for teachers to selectcurriculum subject knowledge on the basis of particular concepts and/orto structure the curriculum through their application. Besides this, theunique way of understanding the world through a particular discipline


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can surface through a concept-based curriculum structure – in the case ofgeography it can show what Jackson describes as ‘the power of thinkinggeographically’ in place of a litany of Trivial Pursuit-type facts (2006,199). Other arguments promoting conceptual thinking in schoolgeography curriculum making include the opportunity to increase studentautonomy via student-centred, concept-based enquiry; the idea thatabstract conceptual knowledge is more amenable to transfer acrossdifferent topics and subjects (Leat 2000); and the suggestion that aconceptual framework gives space to accommodate rapid changes insubject matter and interpretative stances over time (Gardner and Lambert2006, 166). In all these respects, then, the introduction of concept-basedknowledge in the 2007 National Curriculum promised release from manyof the constraining features of previous versions.

There exist, however, problems associated with curriculum knowledgeconfigured around concepts. Concepts are everywhere, and in the case ofthe school curriculum in general, as well as in the subject of geography,the question arises as to which concepts should be included and whichexcluded. Bennetts (2010) draws attention to the absence of a rationalewith respect to, on one hand, the selection of concepts for each subject inthe 2007 curriculum policy and, on the other, the recurrence of a smallnumber of concepts across the different subject lists. He goes on to arguethat geography’s key concepts ‘are too broad and too abstract to offer asuitable framework for structuring courses’ (40) and advises againstteachers becoming preoccupied with them at the expense of thedevelopment of geographical understanding.

My critique of the use of concepts in curriculum policy (Winter 2009b)rests on their role in pinning down meaning in a totalising scheme thatobstructs the emergence of critical, creative and ethical thinking.Concepts can become all-embracing – they take on a life of their ownthrough their systematisation. They can constrain, harden and deadenmeaning and block the emergence of other ways of thinking. Anotherproblem is how the identification of ‘key’ concepts engenders a ‘deceptiveillusion’ by making us feel like we have the subject (and hence the earth)neatly ‘taped’ – in other words, comprehensively covered and ordered andunder our control (Heidegger 1977, 23). Such an attitude indicates acertain hubris as well as restricting the emergence of fresh and alternativeideas. Iris Murdoch believed that conceptual thinking forces us into usinglanguage that is ‘dry’, impoverished and reductive (1961). She argued thatthis kind of thinking is associated with the dominance of society byeconomics and the empirical achievement of ends which marginalisemoral and political thought and constrain our writing the earth in waysthat reveal its complexity, mysteries and artistry. The self-deconstructionof concepts brings forth traces of other ways of knowing; in other words,matters of ethics, politics, emotions and imagination.

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Deconstruction, then, frees conceptual thought by creating a spacefor the unfolding of knowledge about other groups of people, otherways of knowing, the unknown and the unknowable. Deconstruction isinterested in the contingent – arguing that through its generalisationsand principles, conceptual thinking conceals the rich and mysteriousparticularities of the world, by seeking to capture everything into theconceptual scheme and to steer our thoughts in certain directions.Derrida’s deconstructive project has a contribution to make here,through the questioning of conceptual schemes, the exposure of theirinternal illogicalities and omissions, and their transgression to allow forthe incoming of something more just. Scale is an example of a well-established geographical concept appropriate for closer investigation ofa deconstructive kind.

Scale

Scale is adopted in the 2007 GNC policy text as one of seven key conceptsconsidered to underpin the subject. It appears to serve a usefulgeographical purpose in articulating spatial differentiation through aneasy-to-understand, taken-for-granted division of the world. Some chinksin the view of the concept of scale as a trustworthy totalising discourseemerge, however, during deconstructive reading of the text. At firstglance, it appears that the dominant and recurring conceptualisation ofscale in the programme of study sections follows the metaphor of ahierarchy – as a ladder, concentric circles or nested Russian dolls: ‘frompersonal and local to national, international and global’ (AQA/DCSF2007, 102) and ‘from personal, local, regional, national and continental toglobal’ (106). Such a conceptualisation of scale as a straightforwardmethodological approach in geographical enquiry is long established.Nevertheless, this conceptualisation does not remain unchallenged withinthe document; for example, where the explanatory notes on page 102announce that ‘scale influences the way we think about what we see orexperience’, and through the reference to ‘pupils’ mental images ofplaces – the world, the country . . . their neighbourhood – which formtheir ‘‘geographical imaginations’’’, a more nuanced, socially orientatedview of scale is introduced. At the same time, the curriculum text fallsshort of engaging directly with the new politics of scale discourse withingeography research (Taylor 1982; Smith 1993; Marston 2000). Herod andWright characterise the discourse thus:

the very terms by which we define and categorize reality are themselvespolitical tools that contribute to the consolidations and/or subversions ofthe various power regimes that constitute our material and social worlds.(2002, 147)


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According to politics of scale researchers, rhetorical constructions oflevels of spatial resolution contribute towards the definition and legitima-tion of consciousness, behaviour, spatial processes and materialities(Smith 1993, 97–101). If we begin a geographical enquiry from anunproblematised scalar position, we risk overlooking those very processesby which that spatial scale has been constituted, and since the processesinvolved consist of social relations of power, in turn, we overlook the‘geometry of power’ (Massey 2004) at work through discourses ofregulation and governance. Examples of research in this vein include Coxand Mair (1991), Brenner (2001), and Swyngedouw (2004).

The 2007 GNC text, while alluding to a social constructivist con-ceptualisation of scale, retains its alliance to the predeterminedhierarchical model, as exemplified through the references in theexplanatory notes on page 106 to ‘studies that connect scales together’and, ‘making links between people and their environments at differentscales helps pupils understand interdependence’. In this sense, the textconflates hierarchical with social constructivist conceptualisations with-out making this evident or encouraging its readers to question the impactthat such epistemological issues might have on the configurations andoutcomes of geographical studies.

The challenge is how to induct young people into the metaphysics ofscale and at the same time rethink geography outside the attachment to atotalising scalar view in order to open up a space for the other. Instead ofunproblematically deploying the hierarchical conceptual framework and/or proposing the analysis of the politics of power relations involved in thesocial construction of scale, a Derridean view treats the term ‘scale’ as asignifier understood through unstable and differential meanings. A firstencounter with the word itself presents a rich array of meanings, given itsassociation with musical notes, weighing machines, salaries, maps, fish,kettles, teeth and justice. We can scale a hill, assess the scale of an event,scale down our budget and, in the company of geographers, talk aboutMercalli, Richter, Celsius and Beaufort! On a more serious note, the openand flexible structure of the GNC 2007 does not preclude teachers fromintroducing deconstructive ways of thinking into geography classrooms,but unless attention is drawn to these approaches or induction intodeconstructive approaches to teaching is made available, such opportu-nities are likely to be overlooked.

Conclusion

The purpose of the article is to investigate the possibility of justice incurriculum knowledge through a deconstructive reading of the languagein three texts over a period of 16 years. The study shows how, when anopportunity to see curriculum knowledge in a different light is made

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available, different things emerge. In other words, the language ofcurriculum texts should never be taken as given; it needs to be proddedand probed to see what is going on in the background, to see what the textconceals. Indeed, the word curriculum itself, deriving from the Latinword currere (to run), meaning ‘a running, course, career’ with bothtemporal and spatial connotations, assumes a pathway, defined trackand direction and may actually impede the kind of thinking going onin this article. The infinite act of deconstruction is a ‘summons toreconsider the foundations of what has been considered to be responsibleor ethical and how it was determined as such’ (Derrida, MCF 408/11 citedin Egea-Kuehne 1995, 301). It is only when geography is willing toproblematise rigorously the foundations of its own language and conceptsthat it can move towards what Derrida describes as ‘a democracy tocome’.

The article demonstrates what might be left out from seemingly neatcurriculum schemes. In the 1991 ‘content’ curriculum, the privileging ofthe European view of the world left out those subaltern groups whosecultures, traditions of thinking and voices have been silenced throughthe dominant European version of the history of modern intellectualthought. The 1999 OM curriculum text overlooks the politics and ethicsof knowledge through the dominance of a technical, economistic,outcomes-driven competency framework. The third, concept-basedcurriculum of 2007, while presenting an open and flexible approachwhich appears to give scope to deconstructive thinking, conflatesconceptualisations of scale and by not encouraging questioning of adeconstructive kind thereby allows scale to be engaged in an assumedlyneutral manner.

What are the implications of this study for curriculum and inparticular for the geography curriculum? First, curriculum texts can beregarded as doorways leading to the opening of the field to infinitepossibilities of geographical knowledge, rather than as the source ofdefinitive meanings and comprehensive coverage of subject knowledgeas implied through prescribed programmes of study, competences,objectives and assessment criteria. The difficulties involved in achievinga view of knowledge as radical, intractable, fascinating, difficult,political and ethical and, at the same time, engaging and absorbing forstudents and teachers are not underestimated, given the dominance oftechnical notions of objectivity, performativity8 and accountability ineducational discourses.

Second, the article illustrates some problems associated with a view ofgeographical knowledge as static, fixed and immutable. An alternativeperspective is to see knowledge as unstable, open to rival readings andunderpinned by divergent totalising discourses – all of which can bedeconstructively engaged to open up to other, more just kinds of thinking.


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Hence caution should be shown around the idea that students shouldunproblematically memorise and regurgitate knowledge as if it were afixed material thing that can be inscribed, saved and later retrieved in themind in the same way one handles information in a computer.Furthermore, and even though aspects of curriculum such as ICT skillscan be taught in an instrumental way, geographical knowledge is neithermere content nor the medium for the acquisition of technicalcompetences. According to the argument presented here, knowledgecomes into being through language and as language is insecure anddeconstructible it releases ways of thinking that the metaphysics ofpresence obscure from view.

Politics and ethics are not the responsibility of citizenship or PSHEteachers alone. This third point involves the inevitability of ethical andpolitical responsibilities inherent within all knowledge. Teaching geo-graphy carries political and ethical responsibilities, and the role of theteacher is a significant one since the geography curriculum can be seen asa mode of engagement with the other of the world. Biesta describes theresponsibility of education as, ‘the coming into presence of unique,singular beings [which] entails a responsibility for the world – or to bemore precise, a responsibility for the worldliness of the world’ (2006, 148).What responsibilities does the geography curriculum bear for thetransgression of well-established totalising discourses relating to theworld: for other, unforeseen ways of knowing the world and otherunexpected people and places to come into being?

The question relates to the organisation of the school curriculumknowledge through subjects. Although the ‘discipline’ of geographyappears to have been understood in the article thus far as a coherentdomain, any deconstructive reading must surely be directed towards theidea of a set of pre-formed ideas we call ‘geography’. According to theargument presented here, uncritical adoption of disciplinary thinkingrepresented through certain texts, traditions of thought and attitude isopen to disruption. Geography, as with all disciplines, should notpresume its existence and undisputed continuation. It represents anensemble of knowledge that can be subjected to continuous scrutiny. Butthe alternative position – to say that disciplinary knowledge is incidental,subservient to technical competences – denies the very existence, value,energy and responsibilities of the tradition. Deconstruction does notdebunk and reject the disciplinary traditions. Instead, it recognises them,requires careful and engaged induction into them, seeks to disrupt theirlimiting features and lead them towards a more just knowledge:‘interrogation of the origin, grounds and limits of our conceptual,theoretical or normative apparatus surrounding justice is on deconstruc-tion’s part anything but a neutralisation of interest in justice, aninsensitivity to justice’ (Derrida 1992a, 20).

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Notes

1. ‘Humanities’ subjects are commonly understood to comprise history, geography andreligious education (RE) in secondary schools in England.

2. Key Stage 3 (KS3) refers to the curriculum usually earmarked for students aged 11–14 years in English state or government schools.

3. The ‘Opening minds’ curriculum is currently being used in over 200 schools. http://www.rsaopeningminds.org.uk/about-rsa-openingminds/.

4. The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce(RSA) is a registered charity, founded in London in 1745.

5. The argument that some schools were not teaching enough locational knowledge wasconfirmed to some extent (see Storm 1987 and Rawling 1992, 299) but, as with manyissues, the problem was more complex than it first appeared. In other words, it is notjust a question of how much locational knowledge, but prior questions about whatkind of locational knowledge.

6. Between 1969 and 1977 the Black Paper writers published a series of colloquial andpolemic pamphlets appealing to popular common sense about education rather thandeploying rigorous debate and analysis of evidence (CCCS 1981, 201). They arguedfor traditional academic standards (through testing and examination), respect forauthority, discipline, ‘civilised values’ and conservative social morals (Salter andTapper 1985, 176).

7. Including the teacher unions (ATL 2006), the House of Commons Select Committee(2008), National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA 2007),Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA 2005), National Foundation forEducational Research (NFER 2006).

8. The notion of performativity used here refers to the maximisation of output from atechnical system as a mark of efficiency, in this case as applied to the transmission ofknowledge by Lyotard in The Postmodern Condition (1984). Ball sees educationalperformativity as, ‘a regime of accountability that employs judgements, comparisonsand displays as means of control, attrition and change’ (2008, 49).

Notes on contributor

Christine Winter is senior lecturer at the Department of Educational Studies, University ofSheffield where she directs the EdD Programme and the Centre for the Study of EducationalDevelopment and Professional Lives. Her research focuses on the secondary schoolcurriculum and includes school curriculum policy analysis, conceptualisations of curriculumknowledge, the relationship between curriculum policies and practices and the interplay ofdiscourses of globalisation and national curriculum policies. She has a particular interest inGeography, Humanities and Education for Sustainable Development curricula in schools.Recent articles include: ‘School Curriculum, Globalisation and the Constitution of PolicyProblems and Solutions’ (Journal of Education Policy) and ‘Policy Reform, Humanities andthe Future of School Geography in England’ (Progress in Human Geography).

References

Bailey, P. 1989. A place in the sun: The role of the GA in establishing geography in theNational Curriculum in England and Wales 1975–89. Journal of Geography in HigherEducation 13, no. 2: 149–57.

Ball, S.J. 1993. Education, Majorism and ‘the curriculum of the dead’. Curriculum Studies1, no. 2: 195–214.

Ball, S.J. 1994. Education reform: A critical and post-structural approach. Buckingham:Open University Press.

Ball, S.J. 2008. The education debate. Bristol: Polity Press.


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http://www.rsaopeningminds.org.uk/about-rsa-openingminds/

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curriculum knowledge and justice: content, competency and concept

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