Reclaiming Knowledge

The issue of curriculum knowledge constitutes a fundamental issue in the field of school education.In answer to the question “Does it matter if knowledge is strong or not?” Michael Young has clearly called for “bringing knowledge back in”.This study starts with this claim,sorts out the challenges and defences it has faced,and summarises the relevant arguments,addressing the “power” in “powerful knowledge”,the fact that subject knowledge may not really be powerful,the neglect of dynamic transformation in the educational process,the priority of educational purposes.The study also identifies arguments about the “power” in “powerful knowledge”,the fact that subject knowledge may not really be powerful,the neglect of dynamic transformation in the educational process,the disagreement over the priority of educational aims and knowledge,and the neglect of student agency.Initially,the study found that curriculum knowledge is intrinsically related to knowing,knower and known.These dimensions provide a theoretical framework for subsequent research.As a corrective to receptive learning,inquiry-based learning has its own unique significance.However,there is a bias in educational practice — all knowledge needs to be explored,and all knowledge can be explored.However,the possibility of all inquiry is constrained by the limits of human cognition and the accessibility of mechanisms,and the necessity of all inquiry is affected by classroom timelines and the efficiency of inquiry.The first part of the study begins with the relationship between knowledge and knowing,suggesting that curriculum knowledge should go beyond everyday experience and inquiry.Moving from knowledge to knowing has become an important concept in Western progressivist education and in curriculum reform.Primary and secondary classrooms emphasize perception,inquiry and practice.However,the triple division of the real(experience-real-real)and the ontological priority over epistemology indicate the limits of knowledge inquiry,and “experienced”is not the same as “acquired” in the teaching process.Moreover,subject knowledge helps students to break through the limits of everyday experience,and experience does not imply the closure of knowledge.In this way,we can correct our paranoia about cognition and rethink the appropriate return from cognition to knowledge.The second part of this study is grounded in the category of knowledge-knower relations,where knowledge does not exist in a vacuum,but in society,and thus has a social attribute of its own.It is found that this social property both influences the organization of curriculum knowledge and reconstructs the perception of its objectivity — the objectivity of knowledge can also be justified from a social perspective.This is followed by two case studies,The ‘“gender” of mathematics’ and‘A “de-mathematised” mathematics curriculum program in California’.The results of these two case studies show that the attributes of the knower have influenced the construction of the curriculum and have tended to be over-socialized.The excessive focus on the knower has,to some extent,dismantled the necessary knowledge base for primary and secondary school students,and there has been a tendency to replace attributes of knowing with social attributes.The third part of the study looks at the category of the relationship between knowledge and known,and the study calls for a return to the normative properties of the discipline.The teaching and learning aspects of basic education are characterized by a lack of disciplinary normative attributes.This is evident in the overemphasis on authentic learning,which is not conducive to the cultivation of abstract rationality,and in the tendency of contextual design to be schematic and not responsive to the specificity of subject content.Based on this,the study suggests that emphasis should be placed on the simple expression of disciplinary normative attributes in the field of practice;attention should be paid to the role of “disciplinary core literacy” in guiding curriculum and teaching;normativity and systematization should be emphasized as the basis for concept formation;the disciplinary standpoint of interdisciplinary integration should be emphasized.As a complement to the above principles,curriculum construction should not ignore the limits of disciplinary normativity,i.e.some primary and secondary school subjects can exist beyond academic subjects.If the analysis above is a response to the current context,the study is an examination of the historical logic of the topic of knowledge by placing the three pairs of categories in a spatio-temporal framework.It turns out that knowledge cannot be transcended.Specifically: firstly,the turn towards knowledge is simply a reorientation of the tenet of guardianship of knowledge at a particular point in time.There is a need for the academy to recognize the richness of the shape of the reorientation of knowledge programmes and to acknowledge the complexity of the issues about curriculum knowledge.Secondly,the construction of knowledge in the curriculum is subject to multiple constraints,requiring academics to deal appropriately with cognitive,social and educational constraints.Curriculum knowledge structures do not follow directly and unproblematically from knowledge and social structures;in turn,powerful knowledge that prepares academic research is different from that of lay people.Finally,even when the elements are taken into account,we must avoid analysing the success or failure of knowledge construction with different explanatory variables.Such asymmetrical analysis prevents the researcher from escaping preconceptions.Therefore,a balance needs to be sought between the natural and the social,the educational and the non-educational.On the basis of the defence of knowledge in the present and a logical and historical examination of knowledge over a long period of time,the study proposes that powerful knowledge is not limited to the level of knowledge,but also involves the associated — powerful cognitive activities,powerful social connections and powerful knowledge-curriculum transformation.Firstly,the value of knowledge is reaffirmed;secondly,the prioritisation of ends and knowledge in education is viewed beyond the ends-means framework;thirdly,the criteria for knowledge production are distinct from the teaching/learning of knowledge,and the continuum and discontinuity between everyday and academic knowledge is properly addressed.Finally,breaking the path dependency of solving the knowledge problems and finding the wisdom of educational science as a plural.