Theories of Knowledge - Essay Example

Theories of knowledge and different purposes of the curriculum An introduction to epistemology Philosophers call the theory of knowledge "epistemology"-from the ancient Greek terms "episteme" (for knowledge) and "logos" (for theory or explanation). Characterized broadly, epistemology is the philosophical study of the nature, sources, and limits of knowledge. The adjective "epistemological" applies to whatever involves such study of knowledge; it means "having to do with the theory of knowledge." A closely related adjective is "epistemic"; it means "having to do with knowledge." Knowledge, of course, is not the same as a theory of knowledge, just as a mind is not the same as a theory of the mind, a psychology. Epistemology, the theory of knowledge, has traditionally competed for the primary role in philosophical inquiry. Sometimes epistemology has won, and sometimes metapysics, depending on the methodological and substantiative presuppositions of the philosopher. The epistemologist asks what we know. Some philosophers have begun with an account of the nature of reality and then appended a theory of knowledge to account for how we know that reality. Plato, for example, reached the metaphysical conclusion that abstract entities, or forms, such as triangularity or justice, are real and all else is mere appearance. He also held that the, real is knowable, and he inquired into how we might know this reality. Aristotle, on the contrary, held that individual substances, such as individual statues or animals, are real, and inquired as to how we might have knowledge, especially general knowledge, concerning these substances. It is hardly surprising that Plato and Aristotle produced vastly different theories of knowledge when they conceived of the objects of knowledge in such different ways. Their common approach, starting with metaphysics, we might refer to as metaphysical epistemology. Other philosophers, most notably Ren Descartes, turned tables on the metaphysical approach by insisting that we must first decide what we can know about what is real and must remain skeptical about what is real until we have discovered what we can know. It is refer as skeptical epistemology. However, there is also a problem with this approach. When one once enters the den of skepticism, an exit may be difficult to find. Seeking to discover what he knew by following the method of doubting all that he could, Descartes imagined a powerful demon bent on deceiving us and thus found demonic doubt. It remains controversial whether such doubt admits of relief by reason. It seems natural to begin with skepticism with the hope of discovering what we know and what we do not, but if we first pretend to total ignorance, we shall find no way to remove it. Moreover, we shall lack even the meager compensation of knowing that we ere ignorant, for that too is knowledge. To indicate the information sense of the word 'know' as being the one in question is quite different from analyzing the kind of knowledge we have picked out. What is an analysis of knowledge An analysis is always relative to some objective. It does not make any sense simply to demand the analysis of goodness, knowledge, beauty, or truth, without some indication of what purpose such an analysis is supposed to achieve. To demand the analysis of knowledge without specifying further what you hope to accomplish with it is like demanding blueprints without saying what you hope to build. Many philosophers have been interested in the task of analyzing the meaning of the word 'know' (A. J. Ayer 1955, 76). Indeed, many would argue that there is no need for philosophical analysis once we have a satisfactory analysis of the meaning of the term 'know'. This restrictive conception of philosophical analysis is sustained by a dilemma: either a theory of knowledge is a theory about the meaning of the word 'know' and semantically related epistemic terms, or it is a theory about how people come to know what they do. The latter is not part of philosophy at all, but rather that part of psychology called learning theory. It follows that if a theory of knowledge is part of philosophy, then it is a theory of knowledge about the meaning of the word 'know'. That is the argument, and it is one that would reduce the theory of knowledge to a theory of semantics. It is not difficult to slip between the horns of the dilemma. A theory of knowledge need not be a theory about the meaning of epistemic words any more than it need be a theory about how people come to know what they do. Instead, it may be one explaining what conditions must be satisfied and how they may be satisfied in order for a person to know something. When we specify those conditions and explain how they are satisfied, then we shall have a theory of knowledge. An analogy should be helpful at this point. The purpose of the curriculum The main purpose of the curriculum is to feature classroom programs for integrated learning. Teachers formulate curriculum decisions about the ways children best learn and their role in supporting and extending this learning. Teachers in more traditional programs make similar decisions, based on their beliefs about students, teaching and the purpose of the curriculum. The curriculum is divided into subject areas, which are taught from textbooks that present information and provide questions designed to measure understanding. Language is seen as a set of separate skills to be taught and learned through drill practice. Traditional teachers see knowledge as a body of curriculum that is the key facts and information that students need to know to be successful as students and later as citizens. It is the responsibility of teachers to create meaning for students through their presentations of subject matter and follow-up assignments. (Marcia S. Popp; 1996) Teachers in both the traditional and more integrated kinds of classrooms want their students to learn the skills that will help them become lifelong learners. Both believe that the way their classrooms are organized will help students most effectively develop the abilities necessary to be well-educated adults. Differences in classroom activities result from different perspectives about the role of the teacher, ideas about how children learn, the purpose of the curriculum and beliefs about who creates meaning in the learning process. (Marcia S. Popp; 1996) Theories of knowledge (rational & empiricist) To ask whether some people really know what they report, we need to know what in general is required to know something rather than merely to believe that we know it. Philosophers typically look at the nature of knowledge generally, asking what is required for a person genuinely to know that something is true rather than false. A theory of knowledge aims to illuminate such general issues about knowledge. It is possible to give a more precise characterization of foundation theories in general by specifying the conditions that must be met for a belief to be basic. The first is that a basic belief must be self-justified rather than being justified entirely by relation to other beliefs. The second is that the justification of all justified beliefs depends on the self-justification of basic beliefs. A theory of justification with these features is one in which there basic beliefs which are self justified are and which justify all nonbasic beliefs. Traditionally, the doctrine of empiricism has been associated with the foundation theory. According to empiricist theories of knowledge and justification, there are some empirical statements which constitute the content of basic beliefs. The belief that such statements are true is a self-justified belief. All beliefs that are justified are so because of the justification provided by accepting the empirical statements in question. Thus, the acceptance of such empirical statements is basic. Exactly how the empirical statements are construed depends on the empiricist in question. However, the empirical statements which constitute the content of basic beliefs have always been statements to the effect that some item in sense experience has or lacks some quality or relationship discernible by means of the senses. Thus, the empirical statements are statements of observation. Empiricists have disagreed about the objects of sense experience. The item sensed may be conceived of as a physical thing, like a chair or a meter, or it may be construed as some more subjective entity, like an appearance or a sense datum. Moreover, they have disagreed about what makes such statements self-justified and about how basic beliefs justify other statements. They do agree that there are observation statements constituting the content of basic beliefs whose acceptance justifies all that is justified and, moreover, refutes all that is refuted. Though empiricist epistemology is most commonly associated with a foundation theory, there is no logical restriction, or, for that matter, historical limitation, of foundation theories to empiricism. Rationalistic philosophies of knowledge, for example, that of Descartes have been foundation theories. Such a rationalist maintains that a belief may be certified by reason as having characteristics that make it basic--unsuitability, for example. A strict rationalism would hold that basic beliefs, and the justification they provide for other beliefs, are certified by reason alone (Arthur C. Danto, 1968, 74). Similarly, a strict empiricism would hold that basic beliefs and the justification they provide for other beliefs are certified by experience alone. Few philosophers would contend that all justification is derived solely from reason or solely from experience. That a conclusion follows from premises is ascertained by reason, and what the objects of sense experience are like is ascertained by experience. Of course, reason may play a role in the latter, and experience in the former, but it would generally be conceded that if all people were deprived of reason, then no one would be justified in believing any conclusion to be a logical consequence of a premise. Similarly, if we were all deprived of our senses, then no one would be justified in believing there to be any objects of sense experience. These are obvious truths, mentioned only to illustrate how misguided it is to conceive of epistemology as the battleground between rationalism and empiricism. Rationalists and empiricists often share a common conception which leads to a foundation theory. They conceive of justification as being a guarantee of truth. Empiricists think that experience can guarantee the truth of basic beliefs and rationalists think that reason is the guarantee of truth. Basic beliefs are basic because they cannot be false; their truth is guaranteed. With this initial guarantee of truth in basic beliefs, the next problem is how to extend this guarantee to other beliefs. Earlier analysis of knowledge offers a simple explanation of why this doctrine should be held. Since one condition of knowledge is truth, it follows that no belief constitutes knowledge unless it is true. Thus, if our justification fails to guarantee the truth of what we accept, then it may leave us with a false belief. In that case, we lack knowledge, so justification sufficient to ensure us knowledge must, some foundation theorists have argued, guarantee the truth of what we accept. (J. Ayer 1955: 74-84) Another motive for the doctrine of infallible foundationalism is a consequence of our account of acceptance. If the goal of acceptance is to accept something just in case it is true, then acceptance, which guarantees its own truth, provides us with a prophylactic against accepting something false. Thus, though a fallible foundation theorist may deny that we need a guarantee for the truth of basic beliefs (J. L. Pollock, 1974), a central thesis of the traditional foundation theory was that basic beliefs are immune from error and refutation. If basic beliefs were erroneous and refutable, then all that was justified by basic beliefs, all that was built upon them in the edifice of justification, might be undone by error. The very foundation of all justification might prove unsound. If there is nothing to ensure that such basic beliefs are true, then, ipso facto, there is nothing to ensure the truth of those beliefs they justify. All justification might rest on a false foundation. Problematic nature of knowledge and the curriculum in an educational context The Problematic nature of knowledge have been at the heart of educational debate for over 2000 years as models, theories and counter-theories have contested the nature of knowledge. its main features remain problematic in contemporary curriculum planning, teaching and learning. The first problem, an epistemological problem that draws attention to concerns the origins of knowledge. The seventeenth-century philosopher, John Locke, claimed that all knowledge exists in some objective form, independent of the knower. Learning, therefore, was to be viewed straightforwardly as the acquisition of such knowledge. In the eighteenth century, however, Immanuel Kant contested this claim, arguing that human knowledge was not an objective 'human proof' knowledge belonging to some real external world as in the Lockean sense but was, instead, an approximation to reality governed by the perceptual framework of the knower. For Kant, human knowledge was subjective and learning entailed the creation of that knowledge through the knower's interpretation of experience. Under such a view, learning entails the continued adaptation and re-adaptation of both the learner's interpretations of experiences and the interpretive system of the mind of which they are, in part, a product. However, despite their competing claims concerning the origins of knowledge, Locke and Kant both stressed absolute rationality and individualism. The second problematic feature centers on distinctions between theoretical and practical knowledge, and conceptual and procedural knowledge. The natures of such distinctions and the relationships between them have occupied the minds of philosophers since classical times. Plato's view was that theoretical knowledge was the basis of most effective practice. A variant of this was advanced by Francis Bacon who, in the seventeenth century, went so far as to claim that metaphysical (theoretical) knowledge was all that was required for the generation of effective practice: 'whosoever knoweth any form, knoweth the utmost possibility of super inducing that nature upon any variety of matter. The ways of sapience are not much liable either to particularity or chance' (Bacon, 1876:118). Aristotle, on the other hand, stressed the limitations of theoretical knowledge necessarily formulated in terms of an abstracted, typical or general case when it is applied to a particular case. For Aristotle, the unique qualities of the particular case (which constitutes the practical problem) must be taken into account if sound judgment of the problem is to be made. This requires the exercise of 'practical wisdom', entailing the selection, modification and generation of theory on the basis of practical experience. More recently, others, such as Ryle (1949), Scheffler (1965) and Pring (1976) have articulated their views on basic curriculum organisation through pointing up distinctions between theoretical or prepositional knowledge ('knowing that') and practical or procedural knowledge ('knowing how') and by arguing the relationships between them. However, one of the most common ways in which the theory-practice relationship is understood in modern times is as one of mutual exclusion or even opposition. 'On this view, "practice" is everything that "theory" is not' (Carr, 1987:164). Little wonder, then, that contemporary primary, secondary and tertiary education have been caught up in the contests between knowledge-centered, child-centered, problem-centered and task-centered or utilitarian curricula! Third, there has never been strong agreement on the classification of knowledge 'areas' or 'domains'. Relatively recent distinctions for pedagogical purposes have emphasized subject anthologies and disciplines and some have claimed logical generic 'realms of meaning' or 'ways of knowing' grounded in distinct cognitive functions. The same is implied in Gardner's (1984) claim in respect of 'multiple intelligences'. Alternative views have stressed the essential unity of reality and, hence, knowledge and have argued for problem-based and integrated curricula and against the arbitrariness of subject-based classifications. Indeed, Esland, working within the sociology of knowledge, has been moved to describe subjects as 'mystifications which arbitrarily differentiate and objectify the physical and symbolic universes. They thereby constrain the subjective identities of the individuals in a society, and obscure their realization that they are humanly produced' (Esland, 1971:99). Others have even laid claim to evidence of new forms of knowledge production, 'characterized by a constant flow back and forth between the fundamental and the applied, between the theoretical and the practical' (Gibbons et al., 1994:19), all within a Tran disciplinary context. Final problematic feature of the curriculum is that of the social organisation of knowledge. A distinguishing feature of the sociology of knowledge has been its treatment of taken for granted assumptions about the selection and organisation of knowledge- 'what counts as educational knowledge' -as problematic. In such an approach, knowledge is treated 'as neither absolute, nor arbitrary, but as "available sets of meanings" which in any context do not merely "emerge", but are collectively "given"'. A key purpose of such sociology has been to expose the processes through which meanings are socially constructed and become 'given'. This work has taken the form of a critical questioning of the cultural, institutional, class and gendered selection, distribution and legitimating of knowledge. Ways of organizing the curriculum The basic idea to organize the curriculum should be seen as a social invention, reflecting conscious or unconscious cultural choices that accorded with the values and beliefs of dominant groups. Institutional aspects of curriculum have been theoretic of knowledge. Although illustrative examples have been given, the main concern has been to construct an account of institutional behavior in terms of abstract categories. Deliberation on the curriculum assumes that both perceptions of dissatisfaction, and proposals for how dissatisfactions might be mitigated, arise within an historical context, and that understanding of historical contexts must inform deliberative processes (Goodson I., 1983). In this instance, understand curriculum simply in terms of the subjects of which it is comprised, or of the contents of those subjects. Of more fundamental importance are questions of the aims associated with the teaching of particular subjects or content, and of the overall form and structure of the curriculum. In terms of texts read and constructions mastered, the classical curriculum of the 19th-century sixth form appeared to enjoy a long period of stability. But the aims of teaching shifted, with the appearance of a new middle-class clientele, from the finishing of the aristocrat to the induction of salaried administrators into careers. And the structure and ambiance of the students' curriculum experience underwent a radical change with the introduction of standard grammars, the growth of public examining, and the move from schoolroom to classroom. Stability of subject content tends to mask important shifts in the curricular meanings and significances that the transaction of that content has for teachers, students, and wider publics. Curriculum history is more than the tracking of new elements or techniques, and keeping a record of the loss of old ones: it is the recovery and explanation of how the curriculum comes to have new meaning, or the production of accounts of why, in some circumstances, meanings can remain stable for long periods. Such accounts may or may not center on changes in curriculum content as listed in lesson plans, syllabuses, and prospectuses. The theories commonly invoked to explain curriculum change differ according to the emphasis they place on the role of external or internal forces. They also differ in the extent to which they represent change as resulting from purposive action, or from the effects of forces over which there can be little or no control. Externally driven change can be described within a frame of reference that stresses functionalist or determinist interpretations of social forces, or, alternatively, it can be seen as resulting from the mobilization of political and administrative resources targeted on policy goals. Equally, internally driven change can be represented as stemming from the actions of individuals who are actuated by societally determined self-interest, or as emanating from espousal on the part of key organizational figures of programs of educational reform. The most commonly encountered explanations of curriculum change are, on the one hand, those that emphasize external, determinist influences, and, on the other, those that give pride of place to the directive actions of policymakers internal to the educational system. Thus, to borrow their own language, revisionist historians of education in the United States explain change in the high school curriculum in terms of super structural responses to dialectical evolution in the political economic infrastructure of American capitalism (Katz M. B.,1971), while historians of science education on both sides of the Atlantic have offered accounts of the reform movements of the 1960s that stress change as the result of conscious, goal-directed activity on the part of educators, for whom external events provided merely a rhetorical focus for action.(Waring M.1979). Clearly, both perspectives have something to be said for them. Links between economic and political trends and the forms and structures of curriculum are too well documented for there to be much dispute about their importance. On the other hand, it is equally evident that some kinds of change, and some aspects of change are traceable to initiatives on the part of educators. The question is not whether one kind of account is right and the other wrong, but how these partial accounts, which grow from differing presuppositions, can be brought together within a common framework of understanding. One such attempt has been made by Westbury, who conceptualizes the potential for curriculum change in terms of internal invention and external climates (Westbury I. 1982). Educators are productive of social and technical inventions (classrooms, for example), which have a potential for institutionalizing curriculum change. They also take over inventions supplied by the outside world (books, microcomputers). But the question of whether the potential of an invention is realized depends on the cultural climate external to the schools. Thus, in his study with McKinney of the Gary schools, Westbury points to the fact that the inventive resources for reforming the science curriculum were available there long before change in the external climate in the 1960s released the needed financial and ideological support for the introduction of a new curriculum. This formalization provides a useful basic ground for bringing together internal and external forces in a common perspective. (McKinney W. L., & Westbury I. 1975). School systems, schools, and classrooms are sociocultural inventions (to borrow Westbury's terminology) that assume different meaning and significance according to the state of the community or society within which they operate We would not expect that a fully elaborated change theory would propose that the same change mechanisms are salient in all times and in all places. This observation has practical as well as theoretical importance. Periods of sociopolitical stability alternate with periods of rapid evolution. If one reason for pondering on change theory is a wish to understand and manage curriculum change today, we should take account of the possibility that education systems in societies may be on the brink of a major adjustment in role and status. Does the curriculum need to be knowledge based The curriculum need to be knowledge based as importance of the school curriculum as an area of sociological study came to be widely recognized. The sociology of knowledge occupies a central place within interpretive sociology in contrast to its place as a fringe specialism within the normative paradigm. Knowledge at all levels, common sense, theoretical and scientific thereby becomes thoroughly relativized and the possibility of absolute knowledge is denied. Whereas Marx and Mannheim, key figures in the sociology of knowledge, asserted that some knowledge can be free from social bias, thus, all knowledge is socially constructed and ideological. Truth and objectivity are human products. Gorbutt suggested that this approach had particularly significant implications for the study of three related areas; educational knowledge, the categories of educators and classroom interaction. In the following extract he spelt out some of the implications for the study of educational knowledge: The relativization of educational knowledge is implicit and explicit in several of the contributions to Michael F.D. Young's book Knowledge and Control. As Young points out Treating "what we know" as problematic, in order that it becomes the object of enquiry, rather than as a given, is difficult and perhaps nowhere more so than in education. The out-thereness of the content of what is taught, whether it be as subjects, forms of enquiry, topics or ways of knowing, is very much part of the educator's taken for granted world.' (70-115). It is not surprising that treating knowledge in this way has excited more than a ripple of interest, particularly amongst philosophers of education, for the worthwhileness of particular educational activities can no longer be justified in absolute terms once the social basis of such justification is recognized. The apparent self-evident justification for education into particular forms of knowledge is laid bare as an ideological statement. The process through which particular curricula are institutionalized and justified becomes open to sociological examination. Thus for example, the social assumptions underlying compensatory education, meaningful curricula for non-academic school leavers and mathematics for all can become the object of enquiry. We are forced into an often uncomfortable re-examination of the content and underlying assumptions of the curriculum at all levels. (Gorbutt 1972:7-8) As Gorbutt implied, these ideas generated a lively debate between sociologists and philosophers. Philosophers were often critical of what they saw as a lack of clarity in the arguments of the sociologists and, in so far as their position did seem clear, of the theory of knowledge (or epistemological stance) implicit in work in this field. In particular, some philosophers (Pring 1976) were critical of those approaches to the sociology of knowledge that seemed to suggest that reality is 'nothing but a social construction' or that 'all knowledge is relative' and 'criteria of validity and truthareopen to socio-historical relativization'. Certainly there are aspects of the way in which school knowledge is constructed, selected, organized, represented and distributed that are by no means absolute or beyond the realm of social action for change. To a certain extent, relativization may therefore be viewed not as a statement of an epistemological position, but as a useful procedural device for subverting our taken-for-granted assumptions about the seemingly absolute status of the knowledge which has come to be institutionalized in the school curriculum. that a commitment to calling into question what might be taken as education indicates not a move to relativism, but an engagement in, and an invitation to the reader to engage in, the ongoing construction and exploration of what is to be questioned, or what is to be taken as problematic' (Beck et al. 1976). The issue of the ultimate status of knowledge was thus, by implication, left in abeyance. It is therefore not of overwhelming significance whether Young was making a fundamental epistemological point about the validity of different types of knowledge, when he told us that the new sociology of education began by: Rejecting the assumption of any superiority of educational or 'academic' knowledge over the everyday commonsense knowledge available to people as being in the world. There are no doubt those teachers' practices-lecturing, syllabus construction, examining, writing textbooks, etc.-are predicated on just the assumption of the superiority of academic knowledge that is being called into question. (Young 1973b:214) Whatever the thinking behind this statement, a rejection or suspension of prevailing assumptions is an important prerequisite for the asking of sociological questions about the school curriculum. It was, however, clear that most of the proponents of such an approach to the sociology of education were, in a much fuller sense, critical of the assumptions embedded in prevailing conceptions of the curriculum and of their social consequences; the analytic procedures they chose to adopt were, of course, related to that stance. Thus, for some of the new sociologists of education, it was not just that the newer sociological perspectives seemed more theoretically adequate than the earlier ones, they also seemed to offer up an enticingly simple route to social change. If the prevailing definitions of education were class-biased, they were also (along with the rest of social reality) socially constructed and hence could be reconstructed. If, as was argued, reality was the product of consciousness, then teachers could be brought to an awareness of the significance of their assumptions and everyday activities and thus to change them in ways that would benefit working-class pupils (Gorbutt 1972). There was therefore a practical, as well as an analytic; purpose in the new sociology of education, just as there had been a policy orientation in its earlier manifestations. Conclusion In conclusion I must say that Theory of knowledge plays very important role in setting up Curriculum. Theory of knowledge described the process of transmission of implicit norms, values and beliefs through the underlying structure of the curriculum and, more particularly, the social relations of school and classroom. The form and content of the curriculum and the social relations of the classroom cannot be resolved at a purely theoretical level. Thus the theoretical exploration of the broader dynamics of capitalist societies and the historical and situational analysis of curricular practice need to be brought together. The possibilities of analyzing the curriculum at several different levels and identifying the contradictions, within and between them as possible sites of transformative interventions. Particularly interesting is her attempt to explore which aspects of school knowledge in the different school contexts may be seen as reproductive in their effects and which as 'reproductive' and potentially transformative. Work Cited A. J. Ayer The Foundations of Empirical Knowledge, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1955 Marcia S. Popp; Teaching Language and Literature in Elementary Classrooms: A Resource Book for Professional Development, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1996 Keith Lehrer; Theory of Knowledge, West view Press, 1990 Arthur C. Danto in Analytical Philosophy of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968) J. L. Pollock, Knowledge and justification (Princeton: Princeton. University Press, 1974) Bacon, F. (1876) Advancement of Learning, W.A. Wright (ed.) (second edn), Oxford: Clarendon Press, The Second Book, VII, 6. Bruner, J.S. (1962) On Knowing, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Carr, W. (1987) 'What is an Educational Practice' Journal of Philosophy of Education, 21, 2: 163-175. Ryle, G. (1949) The Concept of Mind, London: Hutchinson. Scheffler, I. (1965) Conditions of Knowledge: An Introduction to Epistemology and Education, Glenview, I1l. Scott, Foresman. Pring, R.A. (1976) Knowledge and Schooling, London: Open Books. Esland, G. (1971) 'Teaching and Learning as the Organization of Knowledge', in M. F.D. Young (ed.) Knowledge and Control: New Directions for the Sociology of Education, London: Collier-Macmillan, 70-115. Gardner, H. (1984) Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences, London: Heinemann. Martin Bloomer; Curriculum Making in Post-16 Education: The Social Conditions of Studentship, Rutledge, 1997 Katz M. B. (1971). Class, bureaucracy and schools: The illusion of educational change in America. New York: Praeger; Waring M. (1979). Social pressures and curriculum innovation. London: Methuen. McKinney W. L., & Westbury I. (1975). "Stability and change: The public schools of Gary, Indiana, 1940-1970". Westbury I. (1982). "Invention" of curricula: Subjects, St. Hilda's College, Oxford. Goodson I. (1983). School subjects and curriculum change. London: Croom Helm. William A. Reid; Curriculum as Institution and Practice: Essays in the Deliberative Tradition, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1999 Gorbutt, D. (1972) 'The new sociology of education', Education for Teaching, 89. Beck, J., Jenks, C., Keddie, N. and Young, M.F.D. (eds) (1976) Worlds Apart, London, Collier-Macmillan. Young, M.F.D. (1973a) 'Curricula and the social organisation of knowledge' in R. Brown (ed.), Knowledge, Education and Cultural Change, London, Tavistock. Young, M.F.D. (1973b) 'Taking sides against the probable', Educational Review, 25(3). Geoff Whitty; Sociology and School Knowledge: Curriculum Theory, Research, and Politics Methuen, 1985 Read More