‘Powerful knowledge’ curriculum theories and the case of physics

ABSTRACT

A stream of debate (including a previous special issue of this journal (25(1) 2014)) has made claims not just for ‘bringing knowledge back in’ as the framing underpinning of the school curriculum, but that subjects associated with disciplinary and disciplined knowledge forms have a particular power and that these characteristics are important to preserve in curriculum frameworks. This paper draws on a major Australian research project studying school and university physics in the context of these arguments to revisit the issue of the ‘discipline’ of physics and the curriculum logics for physics. Given that disciplines are social in origin and changing and expanding over time, can school curriculum be logically derived from the discipline to which they relate? Are questions about student engagement only questions about pedagogy and not curriculum? Does a focus on disciplinary knowledge mean that the role of school in forming identities and values is avoidable as a significant feature of what the curriculum does? The findings from the project are used both to illustrate and test these questions, and to challenge some over-simple assumptions about the verticality of this form of knowledge for education purposes.

KEYWORDS:

• Curriculum theory
• knowledge
• sociology of education
• physics
• science curriculum

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank our co-researchers on the project, Dr Peter Woelert and Kate O'Connor who conducted some of the interviews and contributed to the broader conceptualization of this project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Other writings from this project are in process. For more on the comparison with history, see Yates, L., Woelert, P., Millar, V. & O'Connor, K., Knowledge at the crossroads? History and physics in the changing world of schools and universities (Springer, forthcoming late 2016); and Yates, L., Schools, universities and the study of history in the world of ‘21^st century skills’, (forthcoming in History of Education Review).

2. See end acknowledgements.

3. http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/science/curriculum/f-10?layout=1 accessed 15.1.15.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council under Grant DP110102466: Knowledge building across school and university: policy strategies and effects.

Notes on contributors

Lyn Yates

Lyn Yates is Foundation Professor of Curriculum in the Melbourne Graduate School of Education and lead author of the forthcoming book, Knowledge at the Crossroads? History and Physics in the changing world of schools and universities. She is now working on a new research project on ‘Literary Knowledge and the Making of English Teachers’.

Victoria Millar

Victoria Millar is a lecturer in science education in the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne. Her interests lie in curriculum, disciplinary and interdisciplinary knowledge and science education. She previously worked as a physics teacher and is a co-author, with Professor Lyn Yates and others, on the forthcoming book Knowledge at the Crossroads? History and Physics in the changing world of schools and universities (Springer).