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Page 1: Knowledge and the curriculum

This article was downloaded by: [University of Colorado at Boulder Libraries]On: 21 December 2014, At: 12:13Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

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The Curriculum JournalPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcjo20

Knowledge and the curriculumDavid Scotta

a Department of Learning, Curriculum and Communication,Institute of Education, University of London, London, UKPublished online: 21 Jan 2014.

To cite this article: David Scott (2014) Knowledge and the curriculum, The Curriculum Journal,25:1, 14-28, DOI: 10.1080/09585176.2013.876367

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09585176.2013.876367

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Page 2: Knowledge and the curriculum

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Knowledge and the curriculum

David Scott*

Department of Learning, Curriculum and Communication, Institute of Education,University of London, London, UK

The article focuses on knowledge and how it relates to the schoolcurriculum. This means that a reason (or reasons) for designatingknowledge as the central dimension of the curriculum has to beprovided. Two reason-giving arguments can be invoked to supportthis proposition. The first is to conceptualise learning as an epistemicactivity, and the second is to suggest that those curriculum ideologieswhich marginalise knowledge are deficient or inadequate. It is thennecessary to determine what this knowledge-producing activity is, andto distinguish it from those curriculum ideologies which purport toprioritise knowledge but rarely achieve their aim. The issues of howknowledge is transformed at the pedagogic and evaluative sites, andthe relationship between these three sites, are also briefly addressed.

Keywords: knowledge; curriculum; pedagogy; evaluation

Introduction

This article offers a set of reasons for placing knowledge at the centre of acurriculum and it makes the following argument. A curriculum, which isa set of teaching and learning prescriptions, is in essence a knowledge-forming activity. However, this cannot resolve the issue of what should beincluded in that curriculum and what should be excluded from it. Thenext step then is to determine what might constitute a legitimate form ofknowledge and thus by implication an illegitimate form. Three epistemicframeworks: foundationalism, instrumentalism and pragmatism areexamined for their capacity to act as curriculum rationales. Finally, avariety of social epistemologies are identified and investigated: social con-structivism, social realism, epistemic realism, inferentialism and criticalrealism, and though parts of these theories are understood as useful forthe task in hand, it is suggested that on their own they do not amount to acomplete theory of knowledge and therefore of learning. However,elements of each of the epistemic frameworks set out above (i.e. founda-tionalism, instrumentalism and pragmatism), it is suggested, can

*Email: [email protected]

� 2014 British Curriculum Foundation

The Curriculum Journal, 2014

Vol. 25, No. 1, 14–28, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09585176.2013.876367

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contribute to a coherent and comprehensive theory of curriculum andprovide a reason or set of reasons as to why a curriculum should includesome items and reject others, and what shape and form it should take.

Axiomatically then, a school curriculum is always a selection from arange of cognitions, skills or dispositions that are available within a soci-ety; that is, these are being, or have been, manifested in human practicesof a discursive, institutional, agential or embodied kind. Choices alsohave to be made as to how a curriculum is constructed; that is, what rela-tions are considered to be appropriate between the contents of the curric-ulum, its pedagogic forms, its learning strategies, and its evaluativecriteria and apparatus. These choices of cognitions, skills and dispositionsthen, if they are to be considered reasonable, or at least in Sellars’ (1997,p. 89) terms, able to be placed within ‘the logical space of reasons’, requirea justification or rationale for them as curricular contents. This justifica-tion can take an epistemic form: a curriculum is in essence a frameworkfor some type of learning or another; learning whether cognitive, skill-based or dispositional is understood as a knowledge-development activ-ity; and therefore knowledge is central to the construction and realisationof the curriculum. However, it then becomes necessary to determine whatthis knowledge is, and how it is formed and legitimated.

Learning, or so it can be argued, is an epistemic or knowledge-pro-ducing activity. An accepted, but not uncontested, view of learning is totheorise it as a process, with a range of characteristics. It has a set ofpedagogic relations, in that it incorporates a relationship between alearner and a catalyst, such as a person, a text, an object in nature, aparticular array of resources, an artefact, an allocation of a role or func-tion to a person, or a sensory object. A change process is required,either internal to the learner or external to the community of which thislearner is a member. In any learning episode, there are temporal andspatial arrangements, and these can be understood in two ways: first,that learning is internally structured, and second, that learning episodesare externally located in time and place. Learning is conditioned byarrangements of embodied, discursive, institutional or agential resour-ces, and this has implications for the types of learning that can takeplace. Each learning episode has socio-historical roots. What is learnt inthe first place is formed in society and outside the individual. It isshaped by the life that the person is leading. Learning then has an inter-nalisation element, where what is formally external to the learner isinteriorised by the learner, and a performative element, where what isformally internal to the learner is exteriorised by the learner in theworld. These elements of learning if and as they are realised constitute aknowledge-forming activity.

Knowledge is therefore central to the three types of learning identifiedabove: cognitive, skill-based and dispositional. Cognition comprises the

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manipulation of those symbolic resources (words, numbers, pictures, etc.)which point to (though not necessarily in a mirroring or isomorphic sense)something outside itself, though the referent might also be construed asinternally related (for example, cf. Brandom, 2000). Skill-based knowl-edge is different from cognition because it is procedural and not declara-tive, though the purely skill-based competency curriculum whichunderpins an international comparative system of testing such as theProgramme for International Student Assessment (PISA) (Organisationfor Economic Cooperation and Development [OECD], 2009) would mis-takenly reject this distinction and its designation as an epistemic activity.Distinguishing between knowledge of how to do something and knowl-edge of something is important but both are in essence knowledge-makingactivities. Dispositional knowledge refers to relatively stable habits ofmind and body, sensitivities to occasion and participation repertoires.These three types of knowledge therefore have different forms in theiroriginal states and as a result different pedagogic structures, differentexpressive or performative modes, and can only be assessed functionallyin relation to their different internal relations; that is, there have to be dif-ferent ways of assessing or evaluating them.

Any knowledge-forming activity, whether cognitive, skill-based or dis-positional, needs a reason or set of reasons as to why the production ofthis form of knowledge should be preferred to the production of otherpossible forms. A counter-argument to this is to suggest that knowledge isintrinsically worthwhile and therefore does not require a justification oreven a procedure for selection. And this then provides a way of determin-ing the contents of a curriculum. The argument is that if someone choosesto dispute or deny the claim that the pursuit of knowledge is intrinsicallyworthwhile, then it follows that they are being inconsistent, because inasking this question, they are already committed to its pursuit and thushave already answered the question. As White (1982) suggests, this argu-ment is flawed in so far as asking the particular question about the pursuitof knowledge in a general sense does not commit one to the pursuit of alltypes of knowledge per se; and furthermore, does not provide a justifica-tion for deciding that some types of knowledge are more worthwhile thanother types of knowledge. Thus, even if the first part of the argument isaccepted, there are no grounds within the argument presented here fordetermining what that knowledge should be. And though this in principleis an argument in favour of knowledge it is not an argument which candetermine what should be included in, and consequently excluded from, acurriculum.

In order to provide a rationale or justification for these inclusions andexclusions, it is important to determine what that knowledge is and how itcan be constituted. This activity involves the acceptance of certain typesof knowledge and the subsequent rejection of others. For example,

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knowledge which is understood as being determinate (there is a singulartruth which can be known), rational (there are no contradictory explana-tions), impersonal (the more objective and the less subjective the better),verificationist (the meaning of statements about human behaviours andtheir origins are understood in terms of observational or experimentaldata) and predictive (explanations of human behaviours are knowledgeclaims formulated as generalisations from which predictions can be made,and events and phenomena controlled) is fundamentally different fromknowledge which is retroductively produced and referenced to a socialworld which is stratified, open and has ontological depth (cf. Bhaskar,2010), and thus a belief in both of these is difficult to sustain. Anotherexample refers to the nature of knowledge, and, in particular, whether itis individual or social. Standard epistemology construes the conditionsfor justified belief in individualist terms, rather than placing it withinsocial contexts. This can be contrasted with social epistemologies (cf.Vygotsky, 1987) which prioritise the social over the individual.

Knowledge (whether we are referring here to its essence, its legiti-macy or its genealogy) is contested and thus requires choices to be madebetween these different formulations, conceptions and arrangements.This in turn has implications for the types of pedagogy that can beemployed and the types of evaluative procedures that should beadopted. This is predicated on an assumption that learning per se isalways about learning something which we might want to call knowl-edge; binding knowledge and learning closely together then is anacknowledgement that knowledge can be declarative, procedural orembodied and that in its production it can be construed as a learningactivity.

Foundationalism

A common argument which purportedly allows one to distinguishbetween legitimate and illegitimate items in a curriculum is foundation-alist in orientation. Foundationalist views of epistemology were devel-oped in response to radical sceptical beliefs about the possibility ofhaving secure knowledge of the world; indeed the argument the scepticmade was that such knowledge is fundamentally impossible. If wechoose to subscribe to a relativist epistemology and thus accept that ourdescriptions of reality are relative to particular and specific time- andspace-bound sets of ideas in the world, and if we further accept that it isnot possible to make theory- or schema-free observational statements,then reality itself cannot influence how we acquire knowledge of it.What this means is that there may be a number of different waysof knowing the world and no means of distinguishing between them.Foundationalists think otherwise.

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Classical or demonstrative conceptions of foundationalism maintainthat any justification for the truth of an educational proposition rests onidentifying those basic principles which underpin subsequent statementsabout the issue and, more importantly, those inferences that allow theresearcher to move from premise to conclusion. These basic principles orbeliefs have to be self-evident, which means that they do not require anyfurther justification. Williams (2001) suggests that epistemic foundation-alism has two forms. The first of these is structural and he argues that thisis where beliefs are said to be basic when there is no need for further evi-dence to justify them, or those beliefs are inferentially connected to basicor self-evident beliefs which do not require any further justification. Thesecond form of epistemic foundationalism developed by Williams (2001)is what he calls substantive foundationalism. This has all the characteris-tics of structural foundationalism, and in addition, is epistemically basic,because such beliefs are ‘intrinsically credible or self-evidencing’(Williams, 2001, p. 201). What this means is that it plays the end role inany chain of justification, and there is nowhere else to go if such a justifi-cation is sought. These beliefs then, if they can be identified, are sufficientfor framing the contents and processes that constitute a curriculum.

A number of foundationalist justifications for the inclusion of itemsand processes in a curriculum have been developed. The first of these wemight want to designate as broadly philosophical, and this is where logi-cal delineations between domains of knowledge can be identified. Eachof these domains has distinctive kinds of concepts, and distinctive waysof determining truth from falsehood (cf. Hirst, 1972). A second justifica-tion for inclusion of items in a curriculum and the exclusion of others isbroadly psychological: individual learners have cognitive or mentalcapacities which are separate and act separately from other mentalcapacities. Furthermore, individuals have been shown to differ in theircapacity to perform these different types of operations (cf. Gardner,1983). A third set of justifications moves us out of the mind and focuseson the culture we inhabit. All functioning societies have similar sets ofknowledge delineations, where these delineations refer to activities insocieties, and therefore because they are universal, the argument is thatthey should be represented in the curriculum (cf. Lawton, 1989). Afourth type of curriculum justification locates the curriculum in naturalprocesses of progression. A child, unless they are restricted in some way,will inherently grow as a conscious being, and this is not dependent onthe way society is structured or arranged. The epistemological claimsmade for each type of justification are not accepted by post-positivistphilosophers (cf., for example, Bhaskar, 2010; Brandom, 2000; Haack,2008) in that they imply an essentialist view of knowledge and its divi-sions and a neglect of the transitivity inherent in the development ofknowledge within the disciplines.

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Instrumentalism

A different type of justification for the inclusion of items in a curriculumrejects foundationalist justifications, and suggests that any justificationfor the contents of a curriculum has to rest with some conception of whatone is trying to achieve in the delivery of that curriculum. As a result chil-dren in formal education, having been through a process of successfulexposure to this curriculum, are acquainted with certain designated typesof knowledge, have developed certain designated skills, and have acquiredcertain designated dispositions, which, it is argued, allow them to lead afulfilled life, and which also allow everyone else within that society to leada fulfilled life. This justification is clearly normative and instrumental.What this implies is that a set of experiences can be identified which achild is exposed to and that these lead inexorably to the development ofknowledge constructs, skills and dispositions which can be utilised by theindividual outside of (in time and place) the learning environment. Thereare two principal problems with this approach: it is difficult to identifyand reach agreement about what the good life for all is, or at least a lifefor all which allows everyone to be fulfilled; and there is an equal difficultywith identifying experiences for children in school which will lead to thedevelopment of knowledge constructs, skills and dispositions so as toallow the individual to lead a fulfilled life when they leave school (cf. Reiss& White, 2012).

A variety of instrumentalist curriculum rationales have been devel-oped, such as autonomous instrumentalism, critical instrumentalism andeconomic instrumentalism. Instrumentalism denotes a view of the curricu-lum that makes reference to a future state of affairs for the learner whichis external to the setting in which the learning is taking place. Autono-mous instrumentalism refers to a view of the curriculum in which peda-gogic arrangements, knowledge or skill orientations, knowledge framing,relations between knowledge domains, progression and pacing in thelearning environment, relations between the teacher and learner, relationsbetween types of learners, spatial and temporal arrangements and criteriafor evaluation are determined by the principle that the end-product is anautonomous individual, or at least an individual who is able to exercisetheir autonomy, even if they choose not to or are prevented from doingso. Critical instrumentalism, in contrast, as a rationale for a curriculumand its internal relations, seeks to eliminate from society sources ofinequality and unfairness. The purpose is therefore indubitably norma-tive. Economic forms of instrumentalism prioritise the economic overother functions in society (see, for example, California Career TechnicalEducation Model Curriculum Standards, 2006).

These different versions of instrumentalism, though rooted in differentvalue-systems and educational rationales, have a similar form. There are

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three stages in their formation. A preferred vision of society and the con-ditions for the existence of such a society are identified. The role and pur-poses of the education system, and the contents and form that acurriculum should take to realise these ends, are clarified, and finally, afterthe most effective means for the delivery of those ends have been identi-fied, they are enacted, resulting in changes to existing curricular formsand subsequently to changes in society. Young (2005) suggests that instru-mentalist forms of knowledge suffer from the external fallacy, whereknowledge is treated as provisional, contingent and arbitrary, and curric-ular knowledge is identified exclusively in terms of specific social goals.

Pragmatic arguments

A further rationale for the curriculum is provided by those who subscribeto pragmatist philosophies, an epistemic version of which has come to beknown as inferentialism. Derry (2013, p. 232) suggests that:

the gist of the argument is that in order to make a claim of knowing we arenot, as commonly thought, giving a description of an event but placing ourclaims about it in a space of reasons – that is to say, making claims on thebasis of knowing what follows from them and what it is necessary to assumein order to make them in the first place. Where a word is used without theuser being aware of its conceptual connections to other concepts, these con-nections are still present.

This places knowledge within networks of meaning that are social in char-acter and historical in origin.

There are a number of other curriculum ideologies which broadly canbe thought of as pragmatic (in a philosophical sense). Peirce’s (1982) prag-matic maxim was that any theory of meaning takes as axiomatic that thecontent of a proposition is the experienced difference between it beingtrue or false. Truth is therefore understood in terms of the practical effectsof what is believed, and particularly, how useful it is. The concept of use-fulness is and can be used in a number of different ways, that is, making aset of propositions more coherent or consistent, or alleviating some needin the world, or fulfilling a personal desire, or moving from one state toanother.

A further version of pragmatism is that something is true if it enablesthat person to say that this mechanism or sequence of activities will hap-pen or can be sustained in other situations than those in which it is beingapplied. It therefore has an external validity dimension. This points to theidea that something is true if it works, and this immediately presents itselfas problematic because a further justification needs to be provided as towhether what works is ethically sound or has consequences that can bejudged to be ethically sound. Furthermore, any theory which incorporates

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an external validity element is realist in principle, even if this begs thequestion as to what type of realism is being advocated.

A final pragmatic justification then is that a rationale for includingan item in a curriculum and excluding another rests on the consequencesof it becoming a part of that curriculum and on how that curriculumplays out in practice; so a judgement is made between two differentitems on the grounds that one is more likely to be useful than the other.We should note the way that an epistemic judgement (in the traditionalsense, and where this refers to a true or false proposition) is beingreplaced by a pragmatic judgement about efficacy, though in this case adifferent type of truth theory is being invoked. As a result, it is possibleto argue that an item should be included in the curriculum because it ismore practically adequate, that is, human practices within which it issubsumed work in a better way as a result of its inclusion. The issue stillremains as to what might constitute successful work, or, to put itanother way, what criteria can be used to judge whether the practicaladequacy of one practice is superior to another. This can only beresolved by arguing that one theory contributes to a better way of lifethan the other, and that this better way of life is determined by preferen-ces of people in society and instantiated through current networks ofpower. The problem with this is that those sets of indicators whichdetermine whether a theory is practically adequate may not be acceptedby those who hold a different and rival theory, and thus this cannotform a basis for distinguishing between different theories except in sofar as this is decided on the basis of asymmetrical power arrangementswithin society. Even here it is not possible to say with any certainty thatone is more practically adequate than another as a result of currentarrangements in society, because what those arrangements signify mightbe disputed, and, in addition, they are likely to change over time.Pragmatists foreground the social in knowledge-production and it istherefore important to examine social theories of knowledge, whilst alsoavoiding some of the problems inherent in these epistemologies.

Social epistemologies

A number of social epistemologies have been developed: social construc-tivism, social realism, epistemic realism, inferentialism and critical real-ism. The first of these is social constructivism. In opposition to a belief ina mind-independent reality, strong social constructivists avoid epistemiccommitments, and locate justificationary rationales, and apparatus in spe-cific discursive formations, which cannot be externally referenced. Theargument being made then is that all truth claims emanate from agree-ments or disagreements between human beings in the present and stretch-ing back in time, which can be and have been only resolved by the

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exercise of power in society. Thus, gradations of knowledge, where oneform is considered to be more true, more adequate or more reliable thananother, are not accepted, nor are knowledge constructs which are legiti-mised by reference to metaphysics, rationality, logic, essentialism or evenintuition. Knowledge is the result of struggles in the past about the meansfor distinguishing true from false statements, and in the sense that thecontingencies of history resulted in one such mechanism enduring at theexpense of its rivals, knowledge comes into being. This social epistemol-ogy is generally challenged on the grounds that the issues surrounding epi-stemic relativism are not resolved in a satisfactory way (see, for example,Cromby & Nightingale, 1999).

A second framework is social realism. This is a philosophy developedin reaction to the excesses of social constructivism, and in particular, itsirrealist assumptions. It parts company with social constructivism by itsinsistence that it is the social nature of knowledge (and this includes theway it is constructed, developed, given the status of theoretical knowl-edge, etc.) which allows theorists to make the claim that knowledge islegitimate (cf. Young, 2005). As a result, though knowledge has a socialbasis, this does not mean that it is being reduced to vested interests, theactivities of specific issue groups, or even relations of power. Even if oneaccepts that knowledge production is not tied inexorably to the further-ance of particular vested interests, including the furtherance of cognitiveinterests, this does not mean that there is no room for cognitive valueswhich are independent of local power struggles, or that there are no cogni-tive values relative to particular places and times or specific discoursecommunities, or that there are no means for determining that a particularcurriculum is better than another, or even that there is no infrastructurefor the production of knowledge which transcends time and place. Thesociality of knowledge therefore does not undermine its objectivity, but isa necessary condition for that objectivity to be realised. Furthermore, ifthis view is correct, then knowledge processes such as differentiation, frag-mentation, subsumption, progression and the like are key moments in itsdevelopment, and thus key framing devices for understanding it and itslegitimation.

However, what is central to this as a curriculum rationale is a beliefthat some knowledge is objective (and therefore should be included in thecurriculum) in ways that transcend the historical conditions of its produc-tion. And this in turns means that it has to be possible to distinguishbetween those elements of knowledge which have been formed as a resultof struggles within disciplines about legitimacy and form and those whichhave not emerged in this way. This would seem to be impossible toachieve for practical reasons, and even then other curriculum rationaleswould need to be invoked, such as instrumentalist, epistemic or pragmaticjustifications.

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A version of this argument can be developed from a particular readingof the Russian psychologist, Lev Vygotsky. He distinguishes betweenthinking and sensation, or science and common sense. What is being sug-gested here is that higher levels of thinking or of how we can respond tothe environment have been developed within the disciplines, and thesehave been characterised as science. This form of knowledge can be con-trasted with common sense forms of knowledge. It is:

not only a transition from matter that is incapable of sensation to matterthat is capable of sensation, but a transition of sensation to thought. Thisimplies that reality is reflected in consciousness in a qualitatively differentway in thinking than it is in immediate sensation. (Vygotsky, 1987, p. 47)

We should note here that this viewpoint privileges thought over sensationwithout saying why it is more important, even though the suggestion isthat without thought an aspect of consciousness is neglected. What thisargument is suggesting is that it is possible to identify a transcendentalcondition for the production of knowledge and the form that it shouldtake. However, this transcendental condition necessarily has pragmaticand normative elements in the way it is constituted, and therefore therewould need to be an acknowledgement of these in providing a rationalefor a curriculum.

A third position, epistemic realism, is qualitatively different. As Put-nam (2004) has suggested, our conceptual frameworks, perspectives onthe world and descriptive languages interpenetrate what we are callingreality to such an extent that it is impossible to conceive of a pre-schema-tised world. However, this has a number of consequences and difficultiesfor an exclusively representational view of knowledge; so for example,the curriculum cannot be a simple representation (expressed as a series offacts) of what is out there in the world because the world is not entirelyseparate from those mediating devices that human beings have developedto make sense of it, and this therefore means that in order to develop acurriculum rationale we have to take account of those activities which wemight want to call epistemic-to-ontic (i.e. knowledge of the world tobeing in the world) and ontic-to-epistemic (i.e. being in the world toknowledge of it) transactions. This has certain implications. The first ofthese is that a correspondence between a static intransitive world and anunchanging epistemic world misrepresents the nature of both and therelationship between them. Second, any attempt at describing the worldalways has the potentiality to change it, though not in every circum-stance. Third, regardless of the accuracy or authenticity of the originalset of descriptors, and as a result of this epistemic-to-ontic activity, thosedescriptors may become more accurate or more authentic. Though thissuggests a one-way relationship, this is misleading. Those conceptual

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framings and sets of descriptors are informed, constrained and enabled ina non-trivial way by the world or reality at the particular moment in timein which they are being used, and in turn the shape and form of the onto-logical realm is influenced by the types of knowledge that are developed.

Representational epistemologies in some of their manifestations con-strue knowledge as a collection of social facts. Some social facts are factsby virtue of an agreement by people to act as though they exist, for exam-ple, fixed and differential intelligences (see Dweck, 2007, for a refutation),or dyslexia (see Hacking, 2000, again for a refutation); in this case, thatagreement is forged in the present and deliberately so. Social facts arefacts by virtue of an agreement which has evolved over time, are likely tohave been created within disciplines or practices of knowledge-making,and users may have forgotten that they were constructed, created orinvented in the past, so deeply embedded into the collective psyche havethey become. (For an example of a curriculum that has adopted this cur-ricular form, see the new History Programme of Study for England,2013.)

Brandom (2000) has argued against a representational mode of knowl-edge, so that knowledge which is considered to be legitimate can be saidto be discourse-specific, and prioritising of parts of that discourse: a par-ticular speech act and an associated language game. The speech act is thatof asserting and the language game which he privileges is the giving andasking for reasons. As Derry (2013, p. 231) suggests, this has significantimplications for pedagogy:

However, though word meaning may be tightly connected with its referent,how this connection arises is a matter of significant pedagogical impor-tance. For, in the light of Brandom’s inferentialism, we can understand theforging of the connection between word and object as one that involvesreversing the conceptual framework in which so much conventional peda-gogical practice operates. Instead the emphasis needs to be on bringing thelearner into the inferential relations that constitute a concept prior to itsacquisition.

An inferentialist approach to knowledge development and to understand-ing what knowledge is also has implications for those processes of evalua-tion, assessment, attribution and normalisation which are central to anyconstructions of a curriculum.

A final theory of knowledge and therefore of learning and one whichunderstands it as the principal activity of consciousness is provided by thephilosophy of critical realism. Critical realists make three claims: thereare significant differences between the transitive realm of knowing andthe intransitive realm of being; the social world is an open system, andreality has ontological depth. The first of these is that a distinction ismade between the intransitive world of being and the transitive world of

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knowing, with the consequence that if they are conflated, either upwards,resulting in the epistemic fallacy, or downwards, resulting in the ontic fal-lacy, some meaning is lost (cf. Bhaskar, 2010). This suggests that the tran-sitive and intransitive realms may become disconnected. The second claimmade by critical realists is that the social world is an open system, in whichobjects have emergent properties. Closed systems are characterised by twoconditions: objects operate in consistent ways, and they do not changetheir essential nature. Neither of these conditions operates in opensystems.

The third claim is that social reality has ontological depth. Socialobjects are the real manifestations of the idealised types used in dis-courses. They are structured in different ways, and because of this, theypossess powers. The powers that these structures exert can be manifestedin three ways: they can be possessed, exercised or actualised (cf. Brown,Fleetwood & Roberts, 2002). Powers that are possessed are powers thatobjects have whether they are triggered by the circumstances or not, andthey may not be directly observable. Powers that are exercised have beentriggered and are having an effect in an open system, and as a result theyare interacting with other powers of other structures. These powers maystill not be directly observable as other powers of other structures may beacting against them. Powers that have been actualised are generating theireffects; so that within the open system they are working together withother powers, but in this case they have not been suppressed or counter-acted. Embodied, institutional or discursive structures can be possessedand not exercised or actualised, possessed and exercised, or possessed andactualised. As a result, a causal model based on constant conjunctions isrejected and replaced by a generative-productive one, and objects andrelations between objects have emergent properties.

Knowledge-development is not understood in essentialist or metaphys-ical terms, whether this refers to subjectivity, agency, mind, structures oreven the social, nor is the theory of mind which underpins it. However,critical realism is an indirect realist theory and therefore employs pro-cesses of modelling and retroduction to provide accounts of knowledge-development practices and the relations between them over time.

Concluding thoughts

The argument being made here has sought to provide a justification forknowledge as the central dimension of the curriculum. Two types of justi-fication were invoked to support this. The first was to conceptualise learn-ing as an epistemic activity, and the second was to suggest that thosecurriculum ideologies which marginalise knowledge are deficient in someway or another. It then became necessary to determine what this knowl-edge is, and again there was a need to distinguish it from those curriculum

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ideologies which purport to prioritise knowledge but which produce in theend distorted versions of it. Three overarching epistemic frameworks wereexamined: foundationalism, instrumentalism and pragmatism, and eachin turn was criticised for an excessive focus in the first case on an essential-ist view of knowledge and its divisions and a neglect of the transitivityinherent in the development of knowledge within the disciplines; in thesecond case on knowledge being treated as provisional, contingent andarbitrary, and curricular knowledge being identified exclusively in termsof specific social goals; and in the third case, on the social basis of knowl-edge-development and learning, without at the same time providing anytranscendental grounding of knowledge in reality.

These viewpoints point to the need to foreground the social in anycurriculum rationale and in understanding this fundamental element,five social epistemologies were examined: social constructivism, socialrealism, epistemic realism, inferentialism and critical realism. Elementstaken from each allow one to develop a way of determining what shouldbe included in and what should be excluded from a curriculum. Thusthe principles from which a curriculum rationale can be developed areas follows:

� There is a social dimension to knowledge-construction, but this doesnot categorically preclude reference to a world which is separatefrom the way it is being described.

� Conceptual framings and sets of descriptors are informed, con-strained and enabled in a non-trivial way by the world or reality atthe particular moment in time in which they are being used, and inturn the shape and form of the ontological realm is influenced by thetypes of knowledge that are being developed.

� Our conceptual frameworks, perspectives on the world and descrip-tive languages interpenetrate what we are calling reality to such anextent that it is impossible to conceive of a pre-schematised world.However, this does not preclude indirectly conceived references tothe structures of the world.

� A curriculum cannot be a simple representation (expressed as aseries of facts) of what is out there in the world because the world isnot entirely separate from those mediating devices that humanbeings have developed to make sense of it.

� It is important to avoid essentialising knowledge and its divisionsand neglecting the transitivity inherent in the development of knowl-edge within the disciplines.

� Any knowledge claim has to be placed within the space of reasons,which means that this claim is discourse-specific and positionedwithin conceptual frameworks that precede it in time and place andhave implications for future use.

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� There are significant differences between the transitive realm ofknowing and the intransitive realm of being; the social world is anopen system; and reality has ontological depth.

� It is possible to identify a transcendental condition for the produc-tion of knowledge and the form that it should take. However, thistranscendental condition necessarily has pragmatic and normativeelements in the way it is constituted, and therefore there would needto be an acknowledgement of these in providing a rationale for acurriculum.

Translating these knowledge constructs into practical forms of curriculumdevelopment is the next step. The issues then of how knowledge is trans-formed at the pedagogic and evaluative sites, and the relationship betweenthese three sites, are important, even though the arguments for them areundeveloped here. However, what it is possible to suggest is that thoserelations between curriculum contents, pedagogic forms, evaluative pro-cesses and criteria are a function of how knowledge is conceived and usedwithin a curriculum, rather than they being independently derived.

Notes on contributor

David Scott is Professor of Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment at the Institute of Educa-tion, University of London. Previously, he served as the Acting Dean of Teaching andLearning; the Director of the International Institute for Education Leadership; and Professorof Educational Leadership and Learning, University of Lincoln. His recent research projectsinclude Teacher Cadre Management in Indian Schools; Teaching and Learning in Higher Edu-cation; Assessment for Learning in Hong Kong Schools; Curriculum Structures 14–18 inNayarit State, Mexico; and National Curriculum Standards and Structures in Mexico. Hismost recently published books are Researching Education; Education, Epistemology and Criti-cal Realism; and Critical Essays on Major Curriculum Theorists.

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