Critiquing ‘powerful knowledge’ in school geography through a decolonial lens

ABSTRACT

The concept of ‘powerful knowledge’ has risen to prominence in the school curriculum in England, taking on a life both in educational policy and in the work of schools, teachers, teacher educators and students. This article conducts a decolonial critique of ‘powerful knowledge’ in school geography. We begin by reviewing research about ‘powerful knowledge’ in geography education before turning to its interpretation in education policy and curriculum framings. We then offer our decolonial critique. We argue that the concept adopts reductive binary frames and neglects the racialising politics of geographical knowledge production. In doing so, ‘powerful knowledge’ marginalises the everyday knowledge of people globally and glosses over their ‘hidden’ geographies and histories in ways that sustain racialised global inequalities. We conclude by explaining the reasons for the emergence of ‘powerful knowledge’ and arguing for its demise on account of lack of analytical rigour and inattentiveness to social justice.

Keywords:

• powerful knowledge
• school geography
• justice
• curriculum
• decoloniality

Acknowledgements

We would like to extend our sincere thanks to Tariq Jazeel, Iram Sammar, Margaret Roberts, the two anonymous reviewers and the editor for their critical and constructive comments on earlier drafts and their unfailing encouragement to complete and submit. Our deep gratitude to our Decolonising Geography Collective friends, who have given us insights, inspiration and determination to disrupt geography's racialising narratives.

Notes

1 We adopt a Derridean approach to language and meaning in the sense that knowledge comes into being through language and language is insecure in its meaning. Language is unstable and open to deconstruction that reveals its enframing values and ethics. For example, the language of a tightly prescribed, formulaic curriculum framework deconstructs to expose its underlying values and politics. In other words, deconstruction exposes the other, or what is missing from the neat calculative scheme (Winter, 2006; 2011; 2012).

2 Biocentrism refers to biological determinism, or scientific racism. McKittrick writes: ‘As science studies of race have shown, race is socially produced, yet our belief system perpetuates biological differences by nesting these socially produced differences in infrastructures and discourses that are already embedded with the racial differences they seek to make plain’ (2021, p. 134).