Knowledge Production, Policy and Practice in Education: Social Realist Explorations of Curriculum, Teaching and Research brings together theoretical and empirical enquiries into curricula, pedagogy and assessment, informed by the influential traditions of social realism and Basil Bernstein’s sociology of education. The edited volume provides tools for understanding persistent educational inequalities and approaches to inclusive educational systems.
The book is an edited collection of chapters by scholars of the sociology of education who focus on knowledge, curriculum, and pedagogy working in Africa, Oceania, Europe, North America, and South America. Each chapter extends scholarly debate around knowledge production and exchange, knowledge and the curriculum, and knowledge and professional practice. Collectively, the chapters offer an insight into the dynamic relationships among educational systems, policies, teacher education, and teaching practice.
Ultimately enabling readers to see how social realist ideas around knowledge can be employed across different scales and contexts of educational practice, this book will be of interest to scholars, researchers, and postgraduate students in the fields of the sociology of education, social realism, and curriculum studies. Education professionals, including teacher educators, and those working in policy will also benefit from this book.
Table of Contents:
1 Introduction: Mapping the explorations
Grace Healy, Di Swift and Brian Barrett
Part I: Knowledge production and practice
2 Against the closing of educational thought: Open concepts and educational research
Brian Barrett and Jim Hordern
3 Exploring Bernstein’s conception of ‘framing’ for researching students’ epistemological access in digitally-mediated learning environments
Lara Karassellos
4 Developing recognition for teachers’ intellectual work: A view on recontextualisation that starts from the teacher
Grace Healy
Part II: Knowledge and the curriculum
5 Can history textbooks be a source of 'powerful knowledge'?: The case of Jerzy Popiełuszko in Poland
Dobrochna Hildebrandt-Wypych and Daria Hejwosz-Gromkowska
6 Re-imagining the curriculum: A case study of the knowledge turn in New Zealand and Flanders
Jasper Nijlunsing, Elizabeth Rata, Astrid Geudens, Tim Surma, Daniel Muijs and Claudio Vanhees
7 An analysis of the pedagogic discourse in a Brazilian curriculum proposal for Portuguese language teaching
Cláudia Valentina Assumpção Galian and Émerson de Pietri
Part III: Knowledge in professional contexts
8 Challenging genericism: What is at stake for curriculum and teacher development?
Christine Counsell and Grace Healy
9 Finnish primary teachers amidst the power struggles of the pedagogic device
Amna Khawaja
10 Roles of vocational teachers and teacher educators in knowledge production and exchange
Gavin Moodie and Leesa Wheelahan
11 Pedagogy, pedagogic relations and professionalisation in teacher education
Di Swift
Part IV: Conclusion
12 Furthering our explorations of knowledge production policies and practices
Grace Healy, Di Swift and Brian Barrett
About the Author :
Grace Healy is Honorary Associate Professor, UCL Institute of Education, UK, Honorary Research Fellow, University of Oxford, UK, and Education Director (Secondary), David Ross Education Trust, UK.
Di Swift is Associate Lecturer, Primary Education, The Open University, UK & Honorary Fellow, Institute for Social Inclusion, Keele University, UK.
Brian Barrett is Professor in the Foundations and Social Advocacy Department, State University of New York at Cortland, USA.
Review :
‘This book is a significant contribution to contemporary debates about knowledge production, policy and practice in Education. It is structured around three themes: epistemic justice, the challenges presented by the rise of genericism and the role of Basil Bernstein’s ‘discursive gap’ for analysing these issues. The chapters comprise a set of rich accounts from scholars in social realism working in a range of contexts and from a diverse range of geographical regions. Regarding the first theme, the studies contained within this book aim toward an expanded understanding of epistemic injustice and the consideration of possibilities for enabling access to powerful knowledge. In relation to the rise of genericism, the editors draw on Bernstein’s term “trainability” which he described as an ‘ability’ to receive an instruction or direction that is then replicated or reproduced as a competency. As such they argue that it is empty of the educative means of powerful knowledge. With further reference to Bernstein, genericism is seen to result in untethered practices that are neither contextually nor conceptually coherent, producing professional identities described as “socially empty”. The impact of such practices on teacher and vocational education and on curriculum development are explored in detail through these chapters.’
- Professor Brian Hudson, Emeritus Professor of Education, University of Sussex and Guest Professor, Karlstad University, Sweden
‘I believe that the rise of populism and the resurgence of totalitarianism across the globe, based on the politics of denial, conspiracy theories, anti-science and the re-writing of history, requires a deeply informed educational response. The backdrop to these threats to open and democratic societies are the epochal challenges to human existence itself, including nuclear conflict and climate change. And this is before we imagine the world of ubiquitous and unregulated artificial intelligence. Bernstein provided some of the conceptual resources we need to grasp and embrace active and responsible citizenship in these times. The chapters of this book use Bernsteinian insight to explore the depth and ambition required to re-imagine teachers and teaching appropriately. The chapters of this book are wide ranging, but all take seriously notions of epistemic access and epistemic justice. Teachers are the key, the editors argue, and with that an elaborated concept of what it means to teach.’
- Professor David Lambert, Emeritus Professor of Geography Education, IOE UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society, London
‘Insightfully bringing together theory and practice, the book offers readers possibilities for how to enable epistemic justice and make knowledge structures visible to learners. Drawing on, and adding to, Bernsteinian and social realist theories, concepts such as the ‘pedagogic device’, ‘recontextualisation’ and ‘open concepts’ are clearly defined and then applied to different disciplines within a range of global educational settings. The book advances our understandings of knowledge in education through documenting innovative research into teaching practices, teacher agency, pedagogy and curriculum design. The drive towards ‘genericism’ with reduced specification of knowledge in curriculum, and the alternative impetus for ‘knowledge-rich’ curricula are explored which has ensured that a wide lens on possible approaches to curricula has been engaged with. The range and depth of the discussion makes the book a ‘must read’ for scholars, teachers, initial teacher educators and policy developers.’
- Dr Barbara Ormond, Director of Secondary Programmes, University of Auckland, New Zealand
