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Abstract
The article discusses the link between a curriculum based on academic subjects derived from disciplinary knowledge and a progressive pedagogy that endeavours to engage students from all backgrounds with it. Section 1 describes the realist theory of knowledge which justifies the argument for this accommodation between curriculum and pedagogy. Section 2 explains how conceptual progression serves as an effective curriculum design strategy for supporting pedagogy. The final section discusses how concepts and studies from within the social realist tradition can be used to theorise an accommodation between curriculum and pedagogy that promotes cumulative knowledge building among students and teachers by being responsive to both the students and to the knowledge being taught in motivating ways.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Elizabeth Rata
Elizabeth Rata is a professor in the School of Critical Studies in Education, Faculty of Education and Social Work, at the University of Auckland. She is the Director of the Knowledge in Education Research Unit (KERU) and leads the project, ‘the Knowledge-Rich School: Researching the Curriculum Design Coherence Model’ along with KERU colleagues. Her research interests include the politics of ethnicity, knowledge and democracy, and knowledge in the curriculum. She is the author of The Politics of Knowledge in Education, Routledge, 2012.
Graham McPhail
Dr Graham McPhail is a senior lecturer in the School of Curriculum and Pedagogy, Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Auckland. His research work is centred on the role of knowledge in the curriculum, in particular within 21st C schooling and music education contexts. He has is lead editor for NZ’s first volume on secondary school music education Educational Change and the Secondary School Music Curriculum in Aotearoa New Zealand, published by Routledge in 2018.
Brian Barrett
Brian Barrett is a professor and chair in the Foundations and Social Advocacy Department, School of Education, at the State University of New York College at Cortland (USA) and also serves as Graduate Research Coordinator for Cortland’s Urban Recruitment of Educators (C.U.R.E.) program. He edited (with Elizabeth Rata) Knowledge and the Future of the Curriculum: International Studies in Social Realism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) and (with Ursula Hoadley and John Morgan) Knowledge, Curriculum and Equity: Social Realist Perspectives (Routledge, 2018).