The Crisis of Curriculum Change

Whilst ‘sophisticated knowledge’ and ‘knowledge-based compensation’ sound encouraging, the reality is that, more and more, the workplace is focusing on narrow, often low-grade technical skills. So that in fact the ‘knowledge-based’ and ‘skills-based’ rhetoric is being used alongside a move towards more practical, decontextualised workplace knowledge.

These new global patterns have to be linked to the question of how the battle over ‘knowledges’, specifically in this case, ‘what counts as teacher knowledge, is linked to the power of external ‘constituencies’’ (Meyer, 1980). The contest over teachers’ knowledge takes place on terrain which is already occupied by a strong ideology of redefinition as related to forms of knowledge. Traditionally, it has been argued that teachers are ‘professionals’ with degrees of professional autonomy, and that the ‘constituencies’ which influence discourse, debate and policy are both ‘internal’ professional constituencies and more external constituencies, such as business and commerce. The balance is now tilting further and further towards external constituency power and, in particular, the demands of business and commerce are developing analogies between industrial workplace skills and teachers technical and practical skills. In this move towards new forms of knowledge, there is a developing global tendency for more teacher education to become field-based. This is normally presented as part of a much-needed process of ‘getting closer to practice’ in our teacher training and in-service education.

In fact, this process is closely allied to the more general movement to focus workplace knowledge solely on technical skills. If teacher knowledge can be promoted which is practical and individual (one school of thought argues for ‘personal practical knowledge’), it sharply reduces the access which teachers will have to the wider understandings of school systems and school organisations. These understandings are the central ingredient of courses for those who will manage or, should I say, ‘lead’ the schools.

Interestingly, it is often progressive thinkers who have been attracted to the idea of ‘practical knowledge’, seeing it as a reaction against the ivory tower of foundational theory. But once the pattern is viewed holistically, what appears to be a progressive position can be seen to be closely in line with a conservative coalition of interest. This is a classic example of the crisis of positionality and the paradox of progressivism that I am referring to.