Abstract
This chapter explores the recent debates about knowledge among sociologists in education, subsequently narrowing its focus to consider the response to such debates from within the geography education community. It starts by reflecting on the development of ideas about both the place and function of knowledge in schools towards the end of the last century, drawing in turn on the social constructivist and social realist positions adopted by Michael Young, and others. After considering Young and Muller’s concepts of Future 1, 2 and 3 curricula the chapter concludes by pursuing the connection between the theoretical conceptions of powerful knowledge, different models of curricular futures and geography education. It is apparent that for many geography educationists the importance of the connection between powerful knowledge and ‘everyday’ knowledge in the school curriculum is not yet successfully articulated in the geography curriculum.
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Notes
- 1.
It is possible that this representation of social realism underplays ontological realism and promotes epistemological realism. The former recognises that knowledge is about something other than itself; or, put another way, that reality exists independently, beyond the discourses that help us to shape our understanding of the world.
- 2.
Margaret Roberts and Michael Young were keynote speakers at a research seminar which considered the connections between powerful knowledge and geography education, organised by the Geography Education Research Collective (GEReCo) http://gereco.org/, at the Institute of Education, University of London in July 2013.
- 3.
Arguably, the debate about the place of knowledge in the school curriculum is one that has already been partially won. In 2010 the UK Coalition government’s White Paper ‘The Importance of Teaching’ (DfE 2010) stressed the intention to move towards curricula based on ‘essential knowledge’. Mitchell and Lambert (2015) refer to the recent educational policy reforms as providing an opportunity ‘to engage a ‘knowledge turn’ with renewed focus on the role of knowledge in subject teachers’ work’, while the Experts’ Panel (DfE 2011) for the revision of the National Curriculum expressed its support for ‘giving all pupils access to powerful knowledge’ (p. 11). However there is little, if any, evidence that schools have paid serious attention to these directives.
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Butt, G. (2017). Debating the Place of Knowledge Within Geography Education: Reinstatement, Reclamation or Recovery?. In: Brooks, C., Butt, G., Fargher, M. (eds) The Power of Geographical Thinking. International Perspectives on Geographical Education. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-49986-4_2
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