ABSTRACT
The teachers placed a high priority on knowledge being meaningful to the child within the child's frame of reference, and thus becoming what might term 'personal knowledge'. In early years' educational thinking it is generally recognized that new understandings can only be based on pupils' prior knowledge. Interest in an activity or task is also closely related to prior knowledge of the phenomena. Prior knowledge often derives from home, or from children's background culture, giving substance to the concept of 'bringing home' knowledge that might otherwise be alienated. Just as teachers in the Education Reform Act of 1988 are regarded as technicians, deliverers of a curriculum, so pupils are regarded as clients, receivers of it. The National Curriculum focuses on ends to be attained, bodies of information, codified facts, theories and generalizations, measured products. This recalls the 'objectives model' of curriculum planning which dominated the 1950s and 1960s–the pre-Plowden era.
