ABSTRACT
Introduction In this chapter1 I want to outline and comment on the implications of what I see as a tension in current curriculum policies of both national governments and international organizations. My argument will be that current policies are in danger of neglecting and even undermining the most basic education issue facing policy makers, teachers and researchers – how do we enable a higher proportion of each cohort of young people to gain access to ‘powerful knowledge’ (Young 2009), that it is the specic role of schooling to ‘transmit’? Later in this chapter I will return to several issues that my question raises – what is powerful knowledge and why is it important? And what is meant by schools ‘transmitting knowledge’, if we recognize that transmission cannot be a one-way process as the metaphor implies but will always involve the active engagement of learners and the mobilization of their interests and experiences.
