The 'knowledge turn' in curriculum studies has proved highly influential in the past two decades. But what is meant by knowledge remains both unclear and subject to contestation, particularly in relation to English as a school subject. Two recent books address the knowledge question in very different ways.

Tasks which invite students to identify with historical actors and describe their perspectives are a common phenomenon in history education. The aim of this study is to explore the differences in students' answers when completing a writing task in first person ("imagine you are in the past") or in third person ("imagine someone in…

Recent efforts to define qualities of effective teaching practice have done little to capture the role of play, imagination, and creativity in classroom teaching. Drawing on theories of play and data from a two-year case study that included classroom observations, interviews, artifact collection, and surveys, the author examines the ways in which…

The purpose of this study was to explore how high school social studies teachers made sense of curriculum work. The setting was a large, urban area in Texas with high percentages of students who were considered economically disadvantaged. The context of the study was important because these teachers were implementing revised standards and new…

This study argues for the need to collect data on the interaction of imaginative processes and moral and ethical qualities of narrative. It locates the curricular context of experiential narratives and provides a narrative illustration of key terms from a moral theory. It reports on research in which experiential narratives were told to grades…