making geography visible as an object of study

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Making geography visible as an objectof study in the secondary schoolcurriculumRoger Firth aa Department of Education , University of Oxford , Oxford, UKPublished online: 22 Sep 2011.

To cite this article: Roger Firth (2011) Making geography visible as an object of studyin the secondary school curriculum, The Curriculum Journal, 22:3, 289-316, DOI:10.1080/09585176.2011.601209

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Making geography visible as an object of study in the secondary

school curriculum

Roger Firth*

Department of Education, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

This article considers disciplinary-based knowledge and its recontex-tualisation and acquisition in the secondary school curriculum. Itstarts from the premise that teaching disciplinary knowledge isimportant. The focus is the subject of geography and the increasinglyinfluential realist school of thought in the sociology of education andthe endeavour to ‘bring knowledge back’ into education. Social realisttheorists emphasise the importance of the explanatory power ofspecialist or disciplinary knowledge. Basil Bernstein’s ideas ofhierarchical and horizontal knowledge structures are being developedin order to bring into view the epistemological principles thatunderpin the recontextualisation of such knowledge within the schoolcurriculum that can support meaningful learning. The generativecapacity of Bernstein’s typology is illustrated by the work of Matonwho places knower structures and legitimation codes alongsideBernstein’s knowledge structures. The article outlines this ‘structureof knowledge’ approach before discussing the nature of geographicalknowledge. Consideration is then given to how these ideas about thestructuring of knowledge might influence thinking about thegeography curriculum and pedagogy. In recognising the significanceof the social realist approach to knowledge and the link betweendiscipline and curriculum, the article ends with some thoughts aboutthe limitations of social realism as an overarching theory ofknowledge for educational purposes. These revolve around the natureof epistemic communities and specifically: the extent to which socialrealism recognises the socio-epistemic relation between educationaland disciplinary contexts; the under-theorisation of the field ofknowledge production itself; and the fact that social realist theoriststend to ignore a key aspect of the epistemic relation of knowledge –what knowledge is about. Engagement with such issues is necessary tosupport a model of education centred on the student, the teacher andknowledge and concerned with knowledge orientation as well asknowledge acquisition.

Keywords: curriculum; educational knowledge; geography education;social realism

*Email: [email protected]

The Curriculum Journal

Vol. 22, No. 3, September 2011, 289–316

ISSN 0958-5176 print/ISSN 1469-3704 online

� 2011 British Curriculum Foundation

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09585176.2011.601209

http://www.tandfonline.com

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Introduction

In this article I discuss the nature of subject knowledge and itsrecontextualisation and its acquisition1 in the school curriculum. I startfrom the understanding that: ‘properly conceived, however they areconfigured and inter-related, however they differentiate and coalesce overtime, subjects constitute the available ways we have of exploring andinterpreting the world of subjective experience, of analysing the socialenvironment and of making sense of the natural world’ (Kirk andBroadhead 2007, para. 39). It is through subject study that young people:‘develop the capacity to engage in the distinctive modes of investigationand analysis through which human experience is differentiated andextensions of human understanding are achieved’ (ibid.). It is throughsubject study that learners acquire historical, scientific, mathematical –geographical – and other forms of understanding. I also begin byemphasising recent curriculum policy and revisions to the secondaryschool curriculum in England, which have thrown doubt on theimportance of disciplinary subjects.

Government policy has continued to support the study of subjects,where geography is seen as important in helping young people to makesense of a complex and dynamically changing world through thedevelopment of disciplinary understanding and to become ‘globalcitizens’. At the same time, however, there has been a range ofcountervailing policy initiatives that challenge the role and status ofsubjects (Davies and Hughes 2009). The existing National Curriculum(QCA 2008) presents schools with conflicting policy requirements.Alongside subjects, the National Curriculum strongly asserts an emphasison the development of competencies and skills for life and work in the‘knowledge age’. ‘The focus on the skills and qualities required to be‘‘independent enquirers, creative thinkers, reflective learners, teamworkers, self managers and effective participants’’ prioritises thedevelopment of a range of generic competences rather than the masteryof particular kinds of knowledge’ (Harris and Burn 2011, 246).

As Harris and Burn go on to argue, while competency-basedcurriculum models have:

not proceeded from the assumption that knowledge is unimportant, theirbasic premise is that, since the knowledge needed in the future cannot bepredicted, what young people really need are the skills that will allow themto access and indeed create new knowledge as it is needed. However, theytend to operate on the premise that the knowledge that will be required atany future point will be easy to acquire or produce and to evaluate usinggeneric research and problem-solving skills. (257)

In terms of 14–19 provision the introduction of pathways through thecurriculum often means that pupils are directed into given academic/

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vocational subject trajectories. There seem to be two common assump-tions about the knowledge basis of the curriculum in England and manyother countries. ‘They are that knowledge contents are less important inthe new global economy and that reducing inequalities requires a reducedrole for school subjects as a source of powerful knowledge’ (Yates andYoung 2010, 8).

The 2010 Schools White Paper, The Importance of Teaching, whichoutlines the British government’s policy for education in England, hasinitiated a review of the National Curriculum. It appears to signal arenewed emphasis on ‘traditional’ subjects and the acquisition of essentialknowledge. It states the need for a broad and balanced education that willact as a benchmark for all schools and:

have a greater focus on subject content, outlining the essential knowledgeand understanding that pupils should be expected to have to enable them totake their place as educated members of society. (DfE 2010, 42)

The White Paper implies that geography will have a presence within theschool curriculum as one of the subject disciplines that will enable thecurriculum to be rigorous and stretching and support high participation(DfE 2010, 8), though its future is not confirmed. The White Paper,however, does not make clear what is meant by ‘essential knowledge’ and‘traditional subjects’.

That all this should be happening is the result, as MichaelYoung (2008a) has argued, of a lack of attention to questions ofknowledge. This neglect extends beyond questions about what knowl-edge to teach, to epistemological questions about the very nature ofknowledge itself.

Here, it is important to emphasise the social nature of knowledge andthe distinction between what Young (2008a, 28) describes as ‘external’social interests (relations to knowledge) and ‘internal’ social interests or‘cognitive’ interests (relations within knowledge). Geography educationhas given attention to external interests and the power relationsunderpinning knowledge impacting divisions and inequalities withinsociety. Discussion of ‘cognitive’ interests has tended to be somewhattangential, that is, focused on classroom encounters or student learningrather than the production and acquisition of knowledge itself.

Acknowledgement of these epistemic standards of disciplinary knowl-edge is central to the endeavour of realist educational sociologists to‘bring knowledge back’ into education and to the development of socialrealism as a theory of knowledge. Social realist theorists are highly criticalof the ‘educational dilemma’ posed by the alternatives of traditionalismand instrumentalism in curriculum policy and their ‘progressive’postmodern critics (Moore and Young 2010, 33). Each, in its own way,

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it is argued, ‘precludes a debate about knowledge as a category in its ownright’ (15; original emphasis).

While avoiding a defence of any particular expression of a subject-based or disciplinary curriculum, what is important about this debate isthat it implies that if young people are to gain access to specialist ordisciplinary knowledge – to geographical knowledge – they need todevelop a level of understanding of the kinds of standards applied to itsproduction and development. As Yates and Young argue, ‘the basis ofknowledge acquisition – the curriculum and pedagogy – cannot bedivorced from the basis of knowledge production – research’ (2010, 10).

Social realism

Over the last decade a distinctive social realist2 perspective on knowledgehas emerged within the sociology of education; ‘one that is concernedwith the development of an account of knowledge that is responsive to thenormative uses of the term ‘‘knowledge’’ and to the social conditions inwhich scientific knowledge is produced’ (Longino 2002, 1). Social realismhas developed a formidable critique of the alleged relativism associatedwith social constructivism in its various guises, in particular postmodern-ism, and seeks to dispel its influences in education (Balarin 2008, 507).Social realism is being developed as a meta-language for knowledge andeducational practice, with a view to its practical application. It isconnecting the sociology of knowledge with macro-concepts from thesociology of education, in particular those of Basil Bernstein.

The core argument of social realism is that the acquisition ofknowledge is the key purpose that distinguishes education from all otheractivities (Moore 2004; Young 2008a) and that knowledge acquired inschools is fundamentally more powerful3 than that gained from everydaylife because of its explanatory power. Failure to attend to questions aboutthe nature of knowledge thus leaves young people trapped at the level oftheir own experience, condemned simply to recycle it (Young 2008a).Recent curriculum policy has undermined disciplinary knowledge anddisciplined thinking to the detriment of many young people, particularlythose from disadvantaged backgrounds where alternative curricula havedenied them access to disciplinary knowledge. This is not to suggest,however, that teachers should not use everyday knowledge for pedagogicpurposes. Young (2009, 202) emphasises that while such knowledge cannever be a basis for the curriculum, pedagogy necessarily takes seriouslythe non-school knowledge that students bring to school.

Social realism understands knowledge as emergent from the specia-lised collective practices of knowledge generation within epistemiccommunities. It relies on a regulatory rather than an absolute notion oftruth and an inescapable ontological realism, and recognises the fallibilityof even the most reliable knowledge. It should be seen as a version of

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‘structural objectivity’ (Daston and Galison 2007) where the structures ofexpert/scientific practice owe something to the schemes of intelligibilitythat people use to identify them as such. Knowledge develops on the basisof its conceptual or explanatory power, which allows experts/scientists tomake choices between competing theories. Such specialist knowledgedevelops into non-arbitrary forms that have their own necessaryconstraints which curriculum designers and teachers have to take intoaccount (Yates and Young 2010, 8). In this sense, social constructivism isbrought into a realist framework within the field of knowledgeproduction: social constructivism focused on authoritative epistemicjustification.

The purpose of this article is to engage with the social realist debateabout the possibilities for and constraints on recontextualising disciplin-ary knowledge for educational purposes. I approach this from the contextof practice as a geography teacher educator,4 not an educationalsociologist, and the understanding that an aim of education should beto develop students’ dispositions towards knowledge: where knowledgebecomes meaningful through engagement with the disciplinary practicesthat govern the creation, validation, representation, interpretation andcritique of knowledge within specific domains. This emphasis on theperformance of disciplinary ways of thinking and practising givesimportance to the development of what I term an orientation toknowledge as well as knowledge acquisition; and to query whether suchan aim could be supported by social realism as it stands.

The first part of the article begins by detailing aspects of social realisttheory; specifically, Bernstein’s (1996, 2000, 2001) conceptualisation ofknowledge structures and the development of this conceptual frameworkby Karl Maton (2000, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010a, 2010b, 2010c).Maton emphasises that for every knowledge structure there is also aknower structure. His ideas illustrate well the work of social realisttheorists in their concern with understanding bodies of knowledge – andhow over time they are structured and built, and can be theorised for usein educational settings (Freebody et al. 2008). The nature of geographicalknowledge is then considered. In doing so a question is raised about theutility of an overarching – social realist – epistemological model of thedisciplines. This is followed by a discussion of how knowledge-knowerstructures could aid the thinking of geography educators in planning andteaching the geography curriculum. The second part argues that whilethere is a good deal to commend in social realism in terms of the emphasison the epistemological nature of disciplines and the relationship betweendisciplines and school curriculum, there are limitations. These revolvearound the nature of epistemic communities and specifically:

(1) The neglect of the socio-epistemic relation between educationaland disciplinary contexts: the socio-epistemic perspective is limited


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by social realists to the field of knowledge production and similarscrutiny is not given to the fields of recontextualisation orreproduction; in consequence the different communities andcontexts and forms of knowledge within them are not considered.Here, emphasis is given to teachers’ and students’ ‘ownedknowledge’. Consideration of other communities and contextsdisrupts the unidirectional mode of thinking that is social realism.

(2) The under-theorisation of the field of knowledge production itself:that is, social practices are not fully emphasised.

(3) Social realism tends to ignore a key aspect of the epistemic relation ofknowledge – what knowledge is about or the ‘what’ of knowledge.

Engagement with such issues is necessary to support a model of educationcentred on the student, the teacher and knowledge and concerned withknowledge orientation as well as knowledge acquisition.

The epistemological structure of school subjects: making knowledge visible

As is by now well known, Bernstein’s later work differentiated betweentwo forms of discourse, horizontal and vertical, and within verticaldiscourse between two kinds of knowledge structure, hierarchical andhorizontal. It was a way of conceptualising the underlying principles thatgenerate forms of knowledge and how they develop over time. For socialrealism the concept of knowledge differentiation is a principled way ofdistinguishing between different forms of specialist knowledge andbetween school and everyday knowledge.

Bernstein described everyday knowledge or commonsense as horizon-tal discourse, where there is a direct relation between meanings and aspecific material base (Hoadley and Muller 2010, 75). In everydayknowledge there are no systematic ordering principles and meaningscannot transcend their immediate context.

Hierarchical and horizontal knowledge structures differ in two ways:‘verticality’ and ‘grammaticality’. Verticality has to do with how a theorydevelops internally; ‘the capacity of theory to progressively integrate andsubsumeknowledge at increasing levels of generality and abstraction’ (Mooreet al. 2006, 2), ever more explanatory sophistication. Grammaticality is: ‘thecapacity of a theory, through its concepts, to engage with the world – toproduce an ‘‘external language of description’’ that specifies the manner inwhichwewould recognise in the world the kinds of things the theory posits asexisting there’ (ibid.). The stronger the grammar of a language, the better ableit will be to progress through worldly (empirical) corroboration:

Where this interplay between verticality and grammaticality (between‘internal’ and ‘external’ ‘languages of description’) is most effective, thenknowledge structures assume what Bernstein described as a ‘hierarchical’

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form (natural sciences); but where it is least successful the field assumes a‘horizontal’ or segmented structure (social sciences) with numerouscompeting and supposedly incommensurable approaches. (Moore et al.2006, 2)

Bernstein’s framework suggests that the natural sciences, which havethe capacity to both integrate theories and empirically confirm them,appear, in this sense, stronger than the social sciences and buildcumulatively. The social sciences have limited capacity for cumulativeknowledge-building and tend to build segmentally.

Bernstein’s typology of knowledges sits within broader historical andphilosophical debates concerning the possibility of progress in knowl-edge.5 It can be criticised for offering dichotomous ideal types whosedifferences are too strongly drawn (Young 2008a, 210) based on hispreference for a realist ontology and an empiricist epistemology as theideal (Luckett 2010). His typology also raises a crucial educational issue:does the character of the way in which knowledge is produced haveimplications for the manner in which it is recontextualised andreproduced – for curriculum and pedagogy (Moore et al. 2006, 2)?

Recently social realist theorists have developed Bernstein’s theory ofknowledge structures to show that knowledge develops from specialisedsocial activities over time in different ways. Maton distinguishes betweenknowledge structures and knower structures and where knowledge andknowers are specialised in terms of what is known or who is knowing it.This distinction is conceptually elaborated in terms of how knowers arepositioned within disciplinary fields in terms of two dimensions: an‘epistemic relation’ to the knowledge structure and a ‘social relation’ tothe knower structure; these two relations can vary independently and eachmay be independently arranged hierarchically or horizontally (Maton2010b, 161). These distinctions enable Maton to generate a ‘set oflegitimation codes’ in terms of the varying ways in which knowledge islegitimated (3). This approach enables fields of knowledge production tobe seen along two dimensions. While these structures are empiricallyinseparable as a social field of practice, they are analyticallydistinguishable.

Bernstein states that hierarchical knowledge structures developthrough the subsumption and integration of knowledge: verticality.Based on Maton, we can now add that fields with horizontal knowledgestructures may develop through the subsumption and integration ofhabituses: sociality. ‘In other words, where one kind of field developsthrough knowledge-building, another kind develops through knower-building’ (Maton 2010b, 164). Knower structures can be distinguished bythe degree to which they integrate and subsume new knowers, high-lighting whether they develop through integration or accumulation ofhabituses.


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And analogous to Bernstein’s grammar of knowledge structures,knower structures can be analysed in terms of the strength of the knowergrammar. Whereas knowledge grammar refers to the strengths ofclassification and framing of objects of study and their specialisedprocedures (the epistemic relation), knower grammar refers to thestrengths of classification and framing of privileged knowers and theiraptitudes, attitudes and dispositions (the social relation). In terms of thestrengths of knower grammar underlying particular fields, Matonconceptualises a continuum of ‘gazes’ (2010b, 165): born, social, cultivatedand trained (from strongest to weakest). A gaze, based on Bernstein(1999), has to be acquired: it is a ‘particular mode of recognising andrealising what counts as an authentic reality’ (165). The continuum istraced in terms of fixity of knower categories towards increasing opennessand from knowers (weakening of the social relation) towards knowledge(strengthening of the epistemic relation). Strengths of knower grammarshelp shape the conditions for entry, position and trajectory within a field’shierarchy. The kind of gaze underlying the knower structure (socialrelation) of fields has implications for its ability to extend its epistemiccommunity across time and space (Maton 2010b, 176). In this way, Matonemphasises that the ‘cosmology’ of the social sciences tends to be lessepistemological and more axiological. A cosmology works by means ofthe, ‘creation of ‘‘constellations’’ of positions through a process ofassociation whereby ideas, practices and beliefs are grouped together andcontrasted to other groups’ (Martin et al. 2010, 17).

‘Knower structures are the key to understanding differences amongfields with horizontal knowledge structures – they are not all the same,nor are they confined to a strictly horizontal form of development’(Maton 2010b, 177). Thus, while Bernstein’s typology allows us to seeknowledges and provides insights into fields such as the sciences, to fullyunderstand other fields, and in particular the social sciences, we also needto see knowers (ibid.). It should be emphasised that Maton is not arguingthat the social sciences ‘must necessarily develop in this way or cannotbuild knowledge’ (ibid., 165). Rather, he suggests, this is ‘a way of seeinghow actually existing progress may be occurring within such fields’ (ibid.).

The particular forms of fields of knowledge production can beanalysed in terms of legitimation codes, which bring these knowledge-knower grammars together. Legitimation code theory provides a methodand a language of description for analysing underlying principles whichconstitute disciplinary fields and educational knowledge. Maton’s work ishelpful in showing that all forms of knowledge have both an epistemicand a social relation. It also helps to move away from Bernstein’s deficitview of the social sciences. For geography educators this structuringapproach to knowledge opens up two key questions, which are consideredin the discussion below:

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(1) What is the knowledge-knower structure of geography?(2) What are the relations between geography’s knowledge-knower

structures and curriculum and pedagogic structure? What kinds oflimits does the disciplinary structure place on how the schoolgeography curriculum and its pedagogy are constituted?

Geographical knowledge

In this brief overview of theoretical developments in geography I startfrom the view that: ‘in a series of ways, geographers have long thought ofthemselves as members of a hybrid discipline. Geography, it has becomecommonplace to say, spans both the natural and social sciences’(Demeritt 2005, 819). It illustrates how the discipline has engaged withthe epistemological consequences of shifts in philosophy and sociology ofscience and how geographical knowledge is differentiated. (A morespecific emphasis on the ‘what’ of geography – what geography is about –is given consideration below.)

As a result of ‘the growing recognition of the social character ofscientific inquiry and the increasing acknowledgement of explanatoryplurality’ (Longino 2002, 1), geography, like other disciplines, has seen aproductive rethinking of the epistemological basis of research andknowledge. This engagement coincided with a period of significantsocial and political unrest and many university geographers began toquestion the relevance and usefulness of the discipline and strove tomake the subject more socially relevant and of influence to those makingpolicy, as well as the general public (Staeheli and Mitchell 2005; K. Ward2005).

Initially, those geographers who took up social constructivism in itsvarious guises tended to focus on the metaphysics of science andtheoretical discussions of representation, and cast their epistemologicalcriticisms of scientific objectivity in such sweeping and yet such opaqueterms that they were easily dismissed by scientists as anti-science and anti-knowledge (Demerritt 1996, 485). Since then there has been a shift offocus from issues of metaphysics and representation per se to the practiceof scientists, by which knowledge is actually produced. Attention to theproduction of knowledge in more specific and empirically substantiatedterms (Rouse 1992), to the details of scientific practice, has made thesocial basis of knowledge much more difficult to dismiss.

Physical geographers who have, at times, seemed much more reluctantto take on the arcane debates of their colleagues in human geography(Inkpen 2005) have also set in motion a reassessment of theirmethodological imperatives or instinctive empiricism and are engagingin a critical dialogue with each other and with human geographers aboutthe epistemological foundations of scientific objectivity (Rhoads 1999;


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Gregory 2000; Clifford 2002; Gregory et al. 2002; Trudgill and Roy 2003;Brown 2004; Phillips 2004; Inkpen 2005). As Clifford highlights:

One of the major advances in the last decade is that physical geographershave become aware of, and engaged with, wider explorations of thecontingency of explanation, the nature of experimentation and the role ofsocial practice and culture in disciplinary advance. Take, for example, theongoing discussions of the various forms of ‘realism’. (2002, 433)

As a result of geographers’ sustained engagement with these philosophicalissues, ‘a broad range of more or less distinct competing traditions onhow best to think geographically and how most effectively to researchgeographical questions’ (Hubbard et al. 2005, 6) are now current in thediscipline. They emphasise the social character of knowledge. Somegeographers, however, retain a commitment to positivism’s philosophicalassumptions (Demeritt 2002; Kitchin 2006).

In recognising the specialist domains and traditions of the disciplineGolledge is hopeful that interaction between these domains mightgenerate a new interest in an integrated science (2002, 1). He goes on tosay:

A significant part of the quest for geographical knowledge has beendetoured by attempts to understand the latest ‘ism’ rather than advancinggeographic knowledge – i.e. geographers have focused on perspective ratherthan substance and in doing so have wasted much effort in internecineconflict and criticism. (2002, 2)

Lack of interaction and engagement have been characteristics of thediscipline, as Sheppard and Plummer (2007) argue. In emphasising theplurality within the discipline and its ready acceptance by manygeographers, notwithstanding occasional calls to monism, their concernis not its elimination or integration, but rather moving geography from aplurality of approaches to engaged pluralism. The diversity of thediscipline is its strength, they emphasise, but to advance knowledge, thisdiversity must be the foundation for intellectual interaction. As Longino(2002) argues, knowledge about the world is more reliable when all thevarious approaches are placed in rigorous engagement with one another.‘A satisfactory epistemology for science should not foreclose the choice ofpluralism versus monism’ (175). And as Bassett (1999) emphasises,engaged pluralism requires communal reflexivity to uncover backgroundassumptions and biases through a transformative criticism of thecontextual values within which science always takes place. This continualexposure of unthought biases and assumptions is a way of producing a‘strong objectivity’ which strengthens science/knowledge production as aprogressive project. Such reflexivity requires commitment to certainprinciples of organisation and debate.

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Becoming an academic geographer, Johnston (1997) argues, involvesbeing socialised/acculturated into one of the disciplinary traditions orsegments that co-exist within the discipline. He identifies a coarse four-dimensional matrix to identify how this differentiation manifests itselfwithin the discipline:

(1) Substantive differentiation, involving sub-disciplinary divisionsaccording to what is studied;

(2) Epistemological differentiation, involving divisions according todiffering beliefs in the nature of knowledge – what can be known,and how;

(3) Differentiation in rationale, involving divisions among geographersin the raison d’etre for their discipline or segment thereof;

(4) Community differentiation, involving divisions which are them-selves geographical: the macro-scale (largely language based); themeso-scale (separate countries); and the micro-scale divisions(based on one or more academic institutions). (Johnston 1997,30–1)

While some geographers may work in two or more segments and othersshift among them, many will remain within one segment for very longperiods (ibid., 31). Many geographers may well categorise themselves oneach of the first three of these dimensions, for example, as human orphysical geographers, and then define their interests more precisely, suchas climatologists, or geomorphologists, or cultural geographers, etc.Many, too, and certainly many human geographers, adopt a particularepistemological position. The first three categories can be presented as‘universals’, as divisions which largely transcend national boundaries,although different divisions will vary in their importance between places.The fourth involves ‘particulars’, however, defining cleavages within thegeographical enterprise whose main axis of differentiation is itselfgeographical.

What is evident here is that geography and geographers aredifferentiated from the inside out and the difference between physicalgeography and human geography is a distinctive characteristic. Geo-graphy is a multi-paradigmatic discipline and geographers work withdifferent concepts of scientific knowledge and its development. Havingsaid this, I am aware that not all geographers would agree with thisrepresentation of the discipline.

My account might seem to suggest that geography has evolved as ablend of hierarchical and horizontal knowledge-knower structures wherewith increased specialisation there may be a tendency towards horizon-tality – but delineating exactly what the knowledge-knower structures arein relation to geography may not be straightforward. There is an


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important difference between discussion in the abstract compared with anexploration of the actual discipline. Is the nature of this structure thesame for all geographers? And, significantly for education, how areteachers, teacher educators and students aware of it? There are two pointshere.

First, in structural accounts that describe the development andpresence of sub-disciplinary specialities and knower gazes – and possiblythe changing constellation of concepts – the contested aspects of thishistoriography of a field seem to remain, if not hidden, under-theorised. Aspecific focus, also, on social practices that would reveal the differentontological, epistemological, methodological, axiological and representa-tional assumptions within the discipline would bring this dimension ofknowledge production into clear view. This, I argue, does not underminethe objectivity of forms of knowledge, of geographical knowledge, or thenormative enterprise around knowledge. Rather, it requires its expansionto include within its scope consideration of the social practices withinepistemic communities by which knowledge becomes increasinglydisciplined, impersonal and critical. This is to emphasise the importanceof any theory of knowledge for use in educational settings; also, being afoundation for the development of students’ dispositions towardsknowledge. It is only when students engage with the social practiceswithin disciplines that they can appreciate its objectivity and develop anorientation to knowledge. Without this, knowledge acquisition ismeaningless.

Second, engagement in a discipline is also a various and specificexperience: geographers, historians, biologists may have non-comparableacademic experience and structure, non-comparable motives and accesspoints (Parker 2002). Are disciplines more various than the social realistemphasis on structures presumes? This does raise a question about theintricate connection between the form and content of knowledge and thusthe usefulness of an overarching – social realist – epistemological modelof the disciplines, especially when emphasis is placed on students’engagement with the disciplinary practices of knowledge production andthe development of an orientation to knowledge. The educational value ofdisciplines may lie in their differences beyond the concern only withstructural characteristics.

The recontextualisation and acquisition of geographical knowledge in

schools

The idea that all educational knowledge comprises two co-existing butanalytically distinct sets of relations – epistemic relations and socialrelations – is, however, a critical one. It makes more explicit the nature ofthe discipline and the different type of knowledge claims found within it.

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The epistemological principles that underpin the recontextualisation ofdisciplinary knowledge within the curriculum and how these principlesmight influence opportunities for the development of students’ ‘disposi-tions towards knowledge’ begin to come into view. It raises questionsabout the coherence of the curriculum in terms of knowledge-knowerstructures. Here the concepts of verticality and grammaticality assumesignificance.

Verticality directs attention to a discipline’s explanatory sophistica-tion. Social realist theorists propose that verticality within the curriculumis useful since it aligns structure to student learning and allows teachers toconsider how students learn in either a cumulative or segmented fashion.Even though curriculum configurations may be arbitrary, in that thegovernment/curriculum authority may impose one form of coherence oranother, Muller (2009) argues that a particular curricular form may bemore compatible with specific disciplinary structures. He emphasises thatalthough a once-and-for-all path through a curriculum cannot bestipulated, the explicit mapping of the necessary minimum set of stepsthat must be pedagogically traversed would be important for all learners(Muller 2007, 82), ‘thus providing an expanding sense of a coherentknowledge base as students move through their schooling’ (Christie andMacken-Horarik 2007, 157). In this way, Muller emphasises theimportance of hierarchy and progression in the curriculum. Clearly, themore vertical the knowledge is, the more important its conceptualcoherence and the more the sequence matters. He also notes theimportance of such an explicit mapping of the path through a curriculumfor socially equitable outcomes.

Muller suggests two possible modes of curriculum coherence basedon their internal coherence: conceptual and contextual coherence.Conceptually coherent curricula are organised into abstract, internallylogical, hierarchical structures which contain clear knowledgesignposts. Contextually coherent curricula, conversely, ‘are segmentallyconnected, where each segment is adequate to a context, sufficient to apurpose’ (Muller 2009, 216). Here, Maton’s notion of knower structuresand the characteristics of knowers would offer internal contextualcoherence.

Such arguments aim to develop the idea that students need to accessknowledge in a way which is context-independent and enables studentaccess to the underlying principles of knowledge rather than anchoringmeaning within its context of acquisition. It is important that the verticalnature of the knowledge-knower structures within the curriculum is madevisible and equally accessible to all students. Having said all of this, Iwould emphasise that the consideration of a curriculum structure forschool geography should be seen as an emergent whole rather than as apath of discrete knowledge components.


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Grammaticality is how a theory deals with the world, with howknowledge claims are made and validated. The stronger the grammar of alanguage, the better able it will be to progress through worldly (empirical)corroboration. Hierarchical knowledge structures exhibit strong gram-mars while horizontal knowledge structures vary, with some havingrelatively stronger grammars and others relatively weaker grammars.What are the features of the ‘grammars’ of a multi-paradigmaticdiscipline? How exactly do the knowledge claims made within thediscipline differ?

Grammaticality points to the need to unpack how the material andsocial worlds are represented and the objects of study; the rulings forapprehending and analysing data; and the process of coming to know andwhat counts as evidence and how this is constructed. How knowledgeclaims are judged to be better than others and the rules or criteria fordoing this will need to be considered, as will the impacts of suchknowledge on the world. Here, Maton’s work is helpful; knowerstructures, codes and gazes attribute importance to the legitimation ofknowledge. They are a starting point. They offer some explanatory powerin establishing the ‘grammar’ of particular academic discourses withingeography, but they do not elaborate the social practices by whichknowledge is warranted.

Grammaticality is a potentially fertile concept. If more fully extendedto encompass the social practices that warrant knowledge, it will bringinto view the fundamentally different approaches/traditions found in thediscipline of geography and the way that knowledge claims are madeand legitimated. It also registers the ways in which the discipline putslanguage and literacy resources to work in distinctive ways (Freebodyet al. 2008), which is to emphasise the importance of disciplinary-basedlanguage and literacy (which has not been considered here) within thecurriculum and pedagogy. Its consideration will ensure that students arenot denied access to the underlying principles of knowledge or thenature of the language of the discipline. An understanding of howknowledge claims come to be made in particular traditions/approacheswithin geography would be a vital resource for informing curriculumand pedagogic strategies. How the potential of these properties andpowers is realised in a specific curriculum and pedagogy is, however, amatter of contingency, context and agency – of the teacher and thestudent (Luckett 2010, 20).

In the concern with curriculum and learning this discussion suggeststhat it is crucial not to lose sight of the importance of the social andepistemic conditions required for producing and acquiring disciplinaryknowledge. School students need access to knowledge and its generativemechanisms. It is through these generative mechanisms that the genericmetaphors of ‘deep understanding’, ‘higher order thinking’ and ‘personal

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constructions of knowledge’ can be translated into specific, actionableways of working with disciplinary knowledge.

At a practical level, consideration of the discipline in terms ofverticality and grammaticality could enable the development of someform of overarching epistemic framework for the working out of a morecoherent curriculum, which could help students to navigate their waythrough it, as well as the establishment of subject-specific pedagogies.This is probably a long way from the manner in which geography isrecontextualised in English secondary schools, where it seems that there isa fairly standard asocial and monistic approach.

These are important ideas. The challenge will be to articulate and takeforward knowledge-knower structures that reflect the complexity anddiversity of the discipline of geography and which can engage with thekinds of contexts and enquiries that geography/geographers confront. Asstated above, this does raise a question about the usefulness of anoverarching epistemological model of the disciplines. It should also beemphasised that transferring ideas about knowledge-knower structuresfrom the field of knowledge production into the field of recontextualisa-tion and acquisition will inevitably tend to ‘flatten out’ aspects of thedifferent social and epistemic relations to knowledge in the different fields(see the discussion about teachers’ and students’ owned knowledgebelow). The point being made is that social realism helps start the processof engagement with the question of knowledge – it is not the final say inthe concern with disciplinarity and disciplined thinking.

Much of what has been said here is to emphasise the curriculum ratherthan also being concerned with pedagogy. The importance of thedistinction between curriculum and pedagogy for social realism wasemphasised above. Young (2008a) does argue, however: ‘the sociology ofeducation must also develop a theory of pedagogy that directs ourattention to the activities of teachers and students that provide thenecessary conditions for students to acquire powerful theoreticalconcepts – and in the broadest sense, to be educated’ (80). As yet,however, subject-specific pedagogy has not been a focus for social realism(Firth 2011).

The nature of the different epistemic communities

My discussion so far has been exploratory and has been concerned with(beginning) to elaborate a set of ideas to answer a question that originatedfrom my professional context. The rest of the article seeks to engage moredirectly with the theoretical commitments of social realism and to discusssome of its possible limitations.

The social realist account of knowledge structures refers specificallyto the field of knowledge production – to the specialist epistemic


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communities and the structure of academic disciplines themselves. Butthere are other communities and contexts that are important to a modelof education centred on the student, the teacher and knowledge. These arethe communities and contexts within the fields of recontextualisation andreproduction. These also have their forms of knowledge. Important hereis formal school knowledge, or the subject-matter knowledge of theteacher that relates to the school community, and the ‘everydayknowledge’ of the student, based in the ‘general community’ – withinthe horizontal discourses identified by Bernstein. Each in this sense is itsown epistemic community. Social realist theory, however, tends to neglectthe distinction between knowledge and epistemic communities anddistinctions between these epistemic communities.

Here, Paechter’s (1998) idea of ‘owned knowledge’ takes on relevance.The concept was used in consideration of the relationship between‘school’ and ‘non-school’ knowledge, that is, the knowledge that studentsbring to school. The concept can be extended: teachers’ owned knowledgecan also be identified. Such knowledge is based on the communitiesrelating to their own backgrounds and histories, social networks,commitments and interests. Owned knowledge, Paechter writes, is learnedin a context and for a purpose (1998, 172) and, ‘is that which containswithin it the potential for effective individual and group action. Itpositions its possessor as an acting subject, able to use her or hisknowledge in a dynamic way’ (174). It is characterised by individual andcollective agency.

Teachers’ owned knowledge

In terms of the recontextualisation of knowledge, teachers’ owned know-ledge becomes significant. Recontextualisation involves the complexinterplay of official and pedagogic (teacher) agents, which emphasises thatalthough formal school knowledge is based upon a specific schoolcurriculum, it is also made in that context; it is acted upon by teachers(and students). It raises questions about how formal school knowledgebecomes owned knowledge. Furthermore, how does formal schoolknowledge – the school geography that teachers teach – relate todisciplinary knowledge? Social realist theory points to the importance notonly of adequate subject knowledge, but that this subject knowledge islocated within the ‘cosmology’ of the discipline.

The work of Brooks (2006a, 2006b, 2010) points to the fact thatteachers develop a personalised view of the subject and their geographicalexpertise is seen as a guiding principle which influences their practice andtheir decision-making, but that disciplinary knowledge plays only a minorpart in this owned knowledge. In other words, the school subject astaught and learned is not simply seen as a transformation of pre-existent

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disciplinary knowledge. It is likely that the interface between therequirements of the official curriculum and geography teachers’ ownedknowledge will mean that teachers have differing curriculum emphases,but that they all work with broader principles of recontextualisation thanthose concerned with knowledge-knower structures.

There are a number of issues. Of particular importance is the fact thatthere are a range of possible understandings of the relationship betweenthe academic discipline and the school subject (Stengel 1997). We cannotmake sense out of either ‘academic discipline’ or ‘school subject’ within aparticular curricular configuration, Stengel argues, without examininghow the two concepts are used together. ‘Interpreting them togetherreveals the particular political and moral interests that bind the twoconcepts in relation’ (1997, 586). How teachers understand the discipline–school subject relation thus becomes significant. What needs emphasishere is that over the last two decades there has been little connectionbetween the academic discipline and the school subject (Butt 2008; Firth2011). Due to curriculum centralisation, schoolteachers have not beenencouraged to take forward curriculum thinking by working at depthwith the academic discipline. Social realist theory seems to imply that thetwo are different but directly related in that the discipline inevitablyprecedes and delimits the school subject. This has not been the case inEngland.

It also suggests that teachers need a more detailed understanding oftheir discipline’s knowledge than that which relates to particular lessons,individual units of study and learning outcomes. To what extent, then, doteachers have the kind of sophisticated and coherent subject knowledgeneeded to transform disciplinary content into school subject material indefensible ways? This is not to undermine the knowledge base of teachers,rather to ask what is possible. And how might university-based subjectspecialists and their school-based counterparts relate to each other? Inthis sense, in the concern with knowledge in education it may be moreuseful to think about how different epistemic communities relate to eachother rather than to focus on how one form of knowledge relates withanother.

Students’ owned knowledge

Paechter’s (1998) distinction between owned knowledge and non-schoolknowledge or everyday knowledge is also a significant one when thinkingabout the kind of knowledge students bring to school. The concept ofowned knowledge overlaps to some extent with the notion of ‘funds ofknowledge’ (Moll and Greenberg 1990; Moll et al. 2001; Gonzales et al.2005). ‘Funds of knowledge’ is broadly interpreted as referring toknowledge that children and young people construct outside school.


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Work in this area examines points of conversion and conflict betweensuch knowledge and school knowledge. Both draw attention to howdifferent epistemic communities might relate to each other.

Connecting Paechter’s notion of owned knowledge and funds ofknowledge with the growing trend in the geography discipline toconceptualise young people as social and epistemic actors in their ownright also opens up possibilities. Over the last two decades academicgeographers have begun to redress the absence of young people from theacademic discipline (Valentine et al. 1998). Today, the geographies ofchildren and youth constitute a distinct research agenda within theacademic discipline both in the UK and more widely. It reflects anincreasing interest in the diverse socio-spatial contexts and issues ofyoung people’s lives through which young people’s identities andknowledge are made and remade.

These developments in the academic discipline call attention to the richrepositories of accumulated geographical knowledge embedded in youngpeople’s everyday lives through the:

excavation of human experience, first in terms of particular persons andgroups in particular places, situations and historical moments; and second,as this excavation engenders a self-conscious effort to make intellectual andemotional sense of what that experience reveals in terms of broader livedstructures and ways of being, willing and acting. (Seamon 2008, 15)

In this way, geography is already part of their lived experience andincreasingly takes on ordered meaning and significance across contexts.While there may be a difference between the sophistication of thisknowledge and the structured formal nature of disciplinary knowledge,such knowledge can readily come together and integrate in-school andout-of-school knowledge and epistemic and literacy practices.

A particularly important area of development around geographies ofchildren and youth has been the increasing interest in the methodologiesof participatory research through which children and young people co-construct geographical knowledge. These geographies can be locatedwithin a wider dominion within the academic discipline, namelyparticipatory and public geographies. These geographies are concernedwith producing popular knowledge relevant to ‘academics’ and ‘non-academics’ alike through the co-construction of knowledge. The ‘publicsphere’ (Habermas 1991) has emerged as a theme in numerous disciplineswhere the link between the concept of a public sphere and that of civilsociety has taken on significance.

These arguments draw attention to the changing nature of geogra-phical knowledge in the academy and the need to pay attention to suchdevelopments. They not only highlight the interrelatedness betweengeographical concepts, ideas and research and young people’s

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geographical lives; they call attention to the fact that people’s lives arealready geographical. The growing trend in the academic discipline toconceptualise ‘geographical life’ as a sphere of knowledge and toconceptualise (socially construct) young people as social and epistemicactors in their own right, as well as co-constructors of disciplinaryknowledge, has implications for how we conceptualise disciplinaryknowledge, the disciplinary knowledge/everyday knowledge distinctionas well as curriculum and pedagogy.

Social realism emphasises the importance of context-independentknowledge – which is powerful knowledge. It ‘provides a reliable basis formoving beyond particulars and therefore beyond one’s own experience’(Young 2008b, 15). Young suggests that:

For children from disadvantaged homes, active participation in school maybe the only opportunity that they have to acquire powerful knowledge andto be able to move, intellectually at least, beyond their local and particularcircumstances . . . if schools do no more than validate the experience ofpupils, they can only leave them there. (2008b, 15)

In criticising constructivist and progressive approaches to the curriculum,which emphasise the use of everyday knowledge in order to promotestudent inclusion, Muller (2000) similarly argues that there is no shortcut to competence in the subject disciplines of schools: ‘Acurriculum premised on such a short cut can only turn out to be a newimpediment’ (71).

The arguments here conceptualise the lived geographies that studentsbring to school differently. They emphasise the different epistemiccommunities, practices and relationships by which geographical knowl-edge can be produced as well as the agency of young people indisciplinary knowledge production. The arguments also highlight theimportance of the ways in which it is possible to think about knowledgeas being socially constructing – the significance here of constructingyoung people as epistemic and social agents.

The above discussion has sought to emphasise the importance of thedifferences between the contexts involved in the recontextualisation andacquisition of knowledge, and the differences between the communitiesand the forms of knowledge within these contexts. While social realismdoes acknowledge the differences between the forms of knowledge,attention needs to be given to the nature of the different communities – asepistemic communities. Indeed, it may be useful to consider the transferof knowledge as being concerned with different epistemic communitiesand how they relate with each other, rather than to focus on how oneform of knowledge relates with another.

This would enable the possibility of seeing the curriculum as a space ofinteraction between the different epistemic communities (discipline,


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teacher and student). This is a curriculum space where learning is as muchabout learning to navigate and negotiate knowledge, its communities,practices, relationships and its ways of constructing objects/subjects as itis about learning particular subject concepts and processes. Theaccentuation of epistemic communities, and in this sense the performanceof disciplinary ways of thinking and practising in relation to disciplinaryknowledge – a view of domain knowledge in use – clearly gives a moreactive, interpretive role to both teachers and students – and where thecurriculum is more than a relay for knowledge as seems to be implied bythe emphasis on knowledge acquisition. It is in such curriculum spacesthat the different epistemic communities and the forms of knowledge willinteract most effectively with each other – and the educational aim ofdeveloping students’ orientation to knowledge will be most fullyaccomplished.

Socio-epistemic perspective in the field of production

In the application of a socio-epistemic perspective to the field ofknowledge production, social relations, i.e. social practices, are under-theorised by social realist theorists. The reason for this is tied up with theindeterminacy and fallibility of knowledge and the concern of socialrealism with the demarcation of knowledge and the establishment of thegrounds for the selection of knowledge in the school curriculum.Accepting the indeterminacy and fallibility of knowledge, as socialrealism does, can lead in different theoretical directions; realism comes inmany forms, with different implications for the curriculum and learning.Young and Muller (2008) argue that when indeterminacy and fallibilityare ‘pressed too hard . . . [we] end up with a relativist position onknowledge’ (521), which has implications for decisions about thecurriculum. From their viewpoint, ‘the issue of indeterminacy fadesinto insignificance in the context of the weak and fragmented assumptionsabout knowledge that dominate educational studies and much curriculumpolicy’ (ibid.). They thus defend their view of knowledge for an importantstrategic reason: ‘Our argument is that a social realist theory ofknowledge provides the best challenge to reductionist and instrumentalstances towards the curriculum that can only lead to the increase ofeducational inequalities and injustice’ (2008, 522). Pushing fallibility andindeterminacy hard draws attention to the social practices by whichknowledge is produced – and to the problem of knowledge definition –but does not necessarily amount to assuming an anti-representationalstance, or an anti-realist one.

Longino (2002) argues that, ‘one of the questions a theory ofknowledge should address is that of how knowledge, or what comes tobe treated as knowledge, is produced or generated’ (78). In this respect

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social realism’s emphasis on the structural objectivity of knowledge isinevitably a partial answer. Longino emphasises that, ‘the question of theproduction of knowledge can be understood as a question about thetransformation of initial inputs into representational outputs’ (ibid.).Social realist theory places emphasis on how such internal representationsare transformed into representational outputs – the structuring ofknowledge. What are not given much emphasis are the means oftransformation – the social practices themselves. Yet, as Longino argues,the question of the production of knowledge ‘is a causal question, oneanswered in different ways, with different methodologies’ (ibid.) byepistemic communities. In other words, within epistemic communities arelocated the practices by which scientists deal with indeterminacy andfallibilism – the cognitive authority or the status of legitimacy that isclaimed and constructed (2002, 79). In spite of placing strong emphasis onlegitimation, social realism only attributes its importance through thedemarcation of knower structures; it does not consider the actualpractices by which it is acquired or earned. In the consideration of thesocial and epistemic relations that underpin the production of knowledgewithin the discipline, there is a need to identify those practices that canwarrant that attribution (ibid.). This does not reduce knowledge to theinterests or practices of groups of knowers and as a result makeknowledge arbitrary, as Young argues (2008a, 146); rather, it is to expandthe conception of epistemic communities – how they actually work andhow knowledge is legitimised. This is to emphasise that disciplines are notjust structural demarcations, they are practising communities.

So, while I agree with the starting point of social realism’s critique, mymain concern is that having accepted indeterminacy and fallibilism itseems to suggest ‘that we can somehow avoid confronting its implica-tions’ (Balarin 2008, 524). As Balarin goes on to argue, social realism‘thus finds in the community of experts the limit to fallibilism and to thefoundational relativism that the latter openly gives rise to’ (525). In thissense, the recourse to epistemic communities as the main warrant to theestablishment of objective knowledge could too easily become a new formof foundationalism. The under-theorisation of social relations in the fieldof knowledge production and the lack of emphasis on the social practiceswithin such communities by social realist theory yield a rather narrowconception of disciplines. We need to bring into clear focus thedisciplinary practices that govern the production of knowledge withinepistemic communities. This is not to undermine geographical knowledgeor the grounds upon which decisions can be made about the selection ofknowledge for the curriculum. It is to draw attention to the conditions ofpossibility of representation (rather than demarcation) and the need for amore nuanced discussion about the limits of knowledge as a form ofrepresentation, especially in relation to the social world. This is


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particularly important when considering the educational use of knowl-edge in the school curriculum. Knowledge always contains the possibilityof critical engagement. It is this emphasis that I am concerned not to closeoff. It is here that, having accepted the indeterminacy and fallibilism ofknowledge, as educators we can confront the implications – and so canstudents. There is more to the issue of knowledge than its demarcationand selection.

Concluding remarks

Social realism provides a theoretical basis for the place of disciplinaryknowledge in the school curriculum. It is bringing into view aspects of therelation between the social and the epistemic in knowledge production;that is, internal or cognitive interests. It is a starting point for thinkingabout how the curriculum might be structured and the nature ofgeographical knowledge made accessible. It is providing a language ofdescription that educators can use to engage with the structural natureof their own disciplinary field and the relationship between knowledgeproduction and curriculum and learning. In this sense social realism hasmuch to offer.

Bernsteinian social realist theory, however, also has limitations. Thereis a neglect of the socio-epistemic relations between educational anddisciplinary contexts. Attention needs to be given to the nature of thedifferent communities and forms of knowledge located within thesecontexts, and to the idea that it may be useful to view the recontextualisa-tion and acquisition of knowledge as being concerned with the way inwhich different epistemic communities relate with each other, rather thanto focus upon how one form of knowledge relates with another. Theemphasis on knowledge demarcation also brings its own problems; inparticular the lack of attention to the social practices by which knowledgeis warranted in epistemic communities, which is inhibiting when concernedwith educational aims beyond knowledge acquisition.

Other questions were also raised. One related to the ‘what’ ofgeography – the intricate connection between the form and content ofknowledge – and how this may have a bearing on the relationshipbetween the discipline and the curriculum. The second was concernedwith the usefulness of an overarching theory of knowledge. Here, therewere two concerns. One was to do with the specific characteristics ofdisciplines and whether a non-generic epistemological model distinctive toeach discipline would be more appropriate when emphasis is placed onstudents’ engagement with the distinctive disciplinary practices ofknowledge production. The second, whether emphasis would be betterplaced on epistemic communities rather than knowledge when consider-ing the recontextualisation and acquisition of such knowledge.

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It seems fundamental to me that we, ‘put an end to the ‘‘anythinggoes’’ approach to knowledge, which makes any kind of educational orcurricular proposal as good as any other’ (Balarin 2008, 517). The need toaddress the right to knowledge emphasised by social realism is a crucialissue for education. At the same time, however, students also need theright to address the authority of that knowledge through the developmentof dispositions that question its definition and stability and thus acquirean appropriate orientation to knowledge. In emphasising the importanceof the outcomes of knowledge building through the structures ofknowledge and knowers, it can, at times, seem as though social realismpre-empts its own task by implicitly taking as unproblematic that which isthe very issue to be engaged with in education: the production ofknowledge. Social realism conceptualises knowledge more as an edificethan as a form of social action; in this way it limits the potential of subjectdisciplines as educational resources. We need to expand the normativeenterprise around knowledge.

Notes

1. Such wording is not common in geography education. Recontextualisation refers tothe transfer of knowledge and in particular to the work of Basil Bernstein. Histheoretical ideas have seldom been used in geography education. Bernstein wasinterested in how a society circulates its various forms of knowledge. His accountrecognised a set of distributive rules, each of which is associated with a specific fieldof activity: a field of production where ‘new’ knowledge is produced and positioned; afield of recontextualisation where discourses from the field of production are selected,appropriated and repositioned to become ‘educational’ knowledge; and a field ofreproduction where pedagogic transmission and acquisition take place (withdifferential results). For Bernstein, recontextualisation involves the interplay betweentwo sub-fields: the official recontextualising field (ORF) and the pedagogicrecontextualising field (PRF). The ORF consists of specialised departments andsub-agencies of the state and local educational authorities. The PRF consists ofuniversity departments of education and their research as well as specialisededucational media and teachers. Acquisition is commonly associated with the idea ofeducation as the transmission of knowledge and a passive model of learning, whichhas rightly been heavily criticised by educationalists. The use of the word by socialrealist scholars and in this article has a different meaning; it explicitly presupposes theactive involvement of the learner in the process of acquiring knowledge.

2. Social realism is building on developments in related academic fields, especially thesociology and philosophy of science. Realist theories of knowledge have largely takenshape through the debates that developed in response to Kuhn’s (1970) account ofthe development of science, Popper’s (1972) earlier critique of positivism and thework of Bhaskar (1975, 1978) and the development of critical realism. More recentlysocial realist theorists have used the work of Alexander (1995), Cassirer (1996, 2000),Collins (1998), Shapin (1994), Ward (1996, 1997) and Williams (2002). The work isextensive now. See, for example, Maton (2000, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010a, 2010b,2010c); Maton and Moore (2010); Maton and Muller (2007); Moore (2000, 2004,2007a, 2007b); Moore and Maton (2001); Moore and Young (2001, 2010); Muller(2000, 2009); Young (2007, 2008a, 2008b, 2009, 2010); Young and Muller (2007,2008, 2010). Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) is a development in the study ofknowledge and education that is being used to analyse a growing range of social and


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cultural practices across increasingly different institutional and national contexts.The Legitimation Code Theory website is a selection of journal articles, bookchapters, conference proceedings and presentations using Legitimation Code Theoryas a central framework for research since 2007. See: http://www.karlmaton.com/

3. Young (2008b, 2009) distinguishes between ‘knowledge of the powerful’ and ‘powerfulknowledge’. ‘Knowledge of the powerful’ refers to what Young once termed ‘high-status’ knowledge and Bourdieu (1986) would describe as the ‘cultural capital’ of thedominant or ruling classes. Many sociological critiques of school knowledge havefocused on the dominant relations between knowledge and power and the inequalitiesthat have been embodied historically in the disciplinary and subject basis of schoolcurricula. The concern has been with the legitimation of knowledge (who legitimiseswhat counts as knowledge) and who has access to it. However, the fact that someknowledge is ‘knowledge of the powerful’, Young argues, tells us nothing about theknowledge itself. The term ‘powerful knowledge’ refers to what the knowledge cando: move young people, intellectually at least, beyond their local and particularcircumstances. Sociological critiques of school knowledge have neglected the extentto which the knowledge from which the disadvantaged are disproportionatelyexcluded – disciplinary knowledge – is not just the knowledge of the powerful, whichit has been for too long, but it is also, in an important sense, ‘knowledge itself’, that is‘powerful knowledge’ that is valued in particular ways within society. It should beemphasised that this is an argument for a return to a conservative view of educationand the purposes of schools. The traditional elite curriculum was grounded inabsolutist views of disciplinary knowledge and the idea of the intrinsic value ofcertain bodies of knowledge that denied the historicity and sociality of knowledge, bywhich we are left with a false objectivity based on the givenness of knowledge.

4. Over the last decade, in post-observation discussion with trainee teachers and theirmore experienced teacher mentors about teaching and learning in geography, myexperience has been that geographical knowledge has rarely, if ever, figured in suchdiscussion. It has been marginalised by the exigencies of everyday practice and theimperatives of policy. It raises the question: how can engagement with disciplinaryknowledge be enabled in schools and teacher education?

5. The issue of how different types of knowledge structures develop cumulativeknowledge takes us back to what has been seen as a recurrent problem of the socialsciences/humanities: an appropriate conceptual framework for establishing theobjectivity of knowledge and knowledge growth in order to ‘close the gap’ betweenthe empiricist paradigm of science and the humanistic-hermeneutical paradigm of thesocial sciences.

Notes on contributor

Roger Firth is a Fellow of St. Anne’s College and a university lecturer in the Department ofEducation, University of Oxford. He teaches on the PGCE and MSc in Learning andTeaching, as well as the supervision of doctoral students. His research interests includeknowledge and its impact on curriculum and pedagogy, and curriculum and pedagogicdevelopment in geography and environmental education/education for sustainabledevelopment.

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making geography visible as an object of study

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