The Crisis of Curriculum Change

A whole new genre of methodologies has been generated to define the teacher as a practical deliverer of other peoples’ intentions. For example, the movement to define teachers’ knowledge as ‘personal practical knowledge’ marks a substantial move in the emasculation of the previous democratic incarnation of the teacher’s role.

At the moment, there is a sense of change, crisis and anxiety in many workplaces, which is associated with economic restructuring or what Harvey (1989) calls the move to ‘flexible accumulation’ (p.1). Given this sense of job crisis, one of the battles which is under way is over what kinds of ‘knowledge’ workers are encouraged to acquire in their on-the-job situation.

Kari Dehli (1991) has argued that, increasingly, local and provincial groups are making claims about knowledge, skills and policies which are explicitly addressed to global capital - as a way of drawing capital into the region in question. In Canada, for instance, the Ontario Premier’s Council stated in its first report in 1988: ‘We are now firmly ensconced in a new global economy in which our ability to compete will be increasingly called into question’. In 1990, the Council continued in the same vein, although the sense of urgency and crisis was heightened:

When the Premier’s Council issued its first report in 1988, Ontario had been enjoying a period of sustained economic prosperity. Now, two years after the release of Competing in the New Global Economy, there are signs that growth is faltering... the inexorable movement towards global trading markets have accelerated (Dehli, 1991, pp. 9-10).

Their perception of competitive pressures of global markets lead these writers to urge a shift from resource-based economic activity towards ‘high value-added’ manufacturing and services. Likewise, they argue that investment in low-wage sectors will be wasted because an international division of labour will intensify the tendency to locate ‘low-wage production’ in ‘the less developed world’, and ‘complex production (will be) anchored in high-wage countries’. This is how they put together their case:

We cannot cling to low-wage, low value-added activities where we have no competitive advantages, but must move into the high value-added, high-wage goods and services wherein lies our best hopes for prosperity over the long-term. This shift will require continuing improvements in the productivity of both capital and labour (ibid, pp. 9-10).

From here, the connections are made to what they call ‘the human resources issues’. They write:

A critical determinant of whether we can make the transition to a higher value-added economy will be the education, skills, ingenuity and adaptability of our workers. They must be prepared for work which will demand the sophisticated knowledge and talents that are the trademarks of a truly developed nation. Our raw materials, our infrastructure and our capital will not be utilised to their fullest without the enhancements that a competent, innovative and adaptable work force can bring to such advantages (ibid, pp. 9-10).

Recent commentaries have been fairly explicit about the nature of the desired shift in forms of knowledge:

While many shareholders and management experts have been training their critical spotlight on executive compensation in recent months, a number of companies are engaged in a quiet but momentous revolution that is redrawing paychecks - and careers - much lower on the organizational chart. At the heart of the new pay scheme is the notion that people should be paid not for how many people they supervise or how much power they have, but for how much knowledge they bring to their work. The concept is variously knows as ‘pay for skills’, ‘skill-based pay’ or ‘knowledge based compensation’ (Gabor, 1992, p. 5).