Abstract
This article starts with a comment on John White’s article published in 2019 in the London Review of Education, 17 (3), entitled ‘The end of powerful knowledge?’, and particularly on the point made about specialized knowledge and its relation to powerful knowledge. It is argued here that it is important to clarify the distinction between specialized knowledge, systematic knowledge, and what Young and Muller mean by powerful knowledge, as, while these are related, they are not equivalent. Not all specialized knowledge is codified and systematized, and not all systematic specialized knowledge is necessarily powerful. It is suggested that some of the characteristics attributed to powerful knowledge by Young and Muller, in particular ‘systematic revisability’ and its enactment in specialized communities, are crucial for understanding what they mean by powerful knowledge.
Highlights
In an article published in the London Review of Education, 17 (3), John White (2019) advocates an end to powerful knowledge and recommends that academic debate about knowledge in education could focus instead on specialized knowledge, acknowledging a suggestion made in my earlier article that ‘related ideas such as specialized knowledge’ (Hordern, 2019a: 34) could be further discussed
He notes that powerful knowledge is emotive, implying that it has the capacity to distort academic debate, whereas specialized knowledge ‘more accurately describes the kind of knowledge that mathematicians and historians have and that the person in the street may lack’ (White, 2019: 436) and ‘opens the way to more rigorous discussion of curriculum content’ (White, 2019: 437)
Some specialized knowledge that may be thought of as powerful may be considerably less powerful than is currently thought, and this may often be because the processes of systematic revision are not sufficiently open to innovation and alternative perspectives that can offer rigorous challenge
Summary
In an article published in the London Review of Education, 17 (3), John White (2019) advocates an end to powerful knowledge and recommends that academic debate about knowledge in education could focus instead on specialized knowledge, acknowledging a suggestion made in my earlier article that ‘related ideas such as specialized knowledge’ (Hordern, 2019a: 34) could be further discussed. To follow the Young and Muller (2013) definition of powerful knowledge, what is required is specialization of knowledge, and its codification, systematization and its systematic revisability in specialized
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