Although the social realist position is grounded in the fundamentally important observation that schools must engage students with knowledge that deepens and extends their understanding, rather than simply reproduce what they learn in everyday life, this approach commits a fatal flaw by equating such 'powerful knowledge' with the work of academic…

"Dialectic Materialism as a Method of Doing Education" - was written over 30 years ago by one of us -- Huebner. Following an interesting dialogue we had over the last years, Dwayne suggested co-re-writing a revised piece to be published under both names. It explores at greater length the ideas that structured the initial piece and offers…

This paper examines the extent to which there has been a shift towards disciplinary knowledge in recently developed curriculum documents in New Zealand and evaluates whether a new "Understand, Know, Do" structure for the curriculum has the potential to facilitate coherent design of teaching programmes and "deep learning." Using…

This article seeks to contribute to recent theorizing around the concept of powerful knowledge. I begin with a discussion of the current use of the term in both academia and the wider institutional environment of schools. I then give a detailed account of its origins in social realism before exploring different iterations of the concept in recent…

Many empirical studies about STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) curriculum present problems for students to solve. This paper draws upon the data collected from the enactment of an integrated STEM curriculum to discuss problems as constitutive of problem spaces where four Grade 5 Singapore students engage with the…

The primary objective of this paper is to present a curriculum design model that extends the 'Powerful Knowledge' ideas of social realist theory. The Model called 'Curriculum Design Coherence' (CDC) hypothesizes an approach in which subject concepts and the subject's epistemic structure are central to the design process to enable deep learning.…

This paper outlines the development of a comparative research framework in subject didactics and applies this in the process of analysing the transformations from academic disciplines across different school subjects. The theoretical framework builds on the concepts of 'powerful knowledge' and 'transformation' and 'epistemic quality' within which…

To make historical consciousness beneficial for history education research we need to disentangle its multidisciplinary backgrounds so that contradictory approaches and outcomes can be avoided. The aim of this article therefore is to clarify the enigma of its different paradigms. We will discuss two interrelated paradigms: one interpreting…

In England, two concurrent but largely disconnected discourses have emerged whose representatives have promulgated initiatives relevant to students' extended historical writing: genre theorists and the history teachers' 'extended writing movement'. Despite certain goals held in common, the two discourses have tended to talk past one another…

China's 2017 'classroom revolution' call intends to "transform" current teacher-centered pedagogies with brand-new philosophies and technologies. As a new entry point for classroom research, I problematize a naturalized (mis)belief--" teacher-centered (Confucian) didactic pedagogies are not conducive to critical thinking…

What can educators working to develop critical thinking (CT) in their classrooms gain from engaging with the German/Scandinavian tradition of Bildung-centred Didaktik? This article takes up the challenge of how to develop an epistemology of CT that is relational and contextual and gives students the possibility of engaging in ethical debates about…

Historical thinking is a construct approached by different disciplines with a recent proliferation in research interest compared to thinking in other domains. Leading exponents do not agree on its definition and include the two main traditions: Anglo-American and German, and various groups or research centres throughout the Western world.…

This paper reports a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) exploring the nature, causes and epistemic effects of knowledge recontextualization in the 'official' Key Stage Five History curriculum in England. "Recontextualization" refers to inevitable changes that occur to knowledge as it is 'pedagogized', due to the value-laden practices and…

This article explores an East~West epistemological convergence of embodied democracy in education through cultural humanism illuminated in five main themes in the works of John Dewey (1859-1952), Confucius (551-479 B.C.), and Tsunesaburo Makiguchi (1871-1944): "human-nature interconnection," "self-cultivation," "value…

How history is learnt and taught must to some extent be shaped by conceptions of what history is. Historians tend to conceptualize what something is by investigating what it has been and what it has meant in different contexts. This article explains how a debate in the philosophy of history between positivism and intentionalism provided the…