For Knowledge: Tradition, progressivism and progress in education—reconstructing the curriculum debate

Abstract

This paper draws upon realist theories of knowledge and naturalised epistemologies in the philosophy of science in order to argue that databases around the school curriculum could benefit from such approaches. It is suggested that the traditional/progressive distinction that has structured much of the curriculum debate for a long time is both of little value in describing how schools actually work and outmoded in terms of understandings of knowledge. Realist approaches make a reappraisal possible because they begin from the understanding that knowledge is socially and historically constructed but do so in a way that avoids the relativism and reductionism that results when epistmology and the sociology of knowledge are seen as opposed rather than complementary. The paper reviews a number of ways in which knowledge has been conceived of as social in educational thinking and, from a realist perspective, criticises their reductive and relativist tendencies whilst outlining a realist epistemological alternative.