ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses some questions of knowledge. Knowledge and knowing is a messy and complicated business. It is multifaceted, changing and located in different places and systems. Epistemology is the study of knowledge and ideas framing enduring debates over the value of different kinds of knowledge. Traditionally, central issues in epistemology are the nature and derivation of knowledge, the scope of knowledge, and the reliability of claims to knowledge. Empiricism refers to the gaining of knowledge through direct observation or sensory experience. Theories of knowledge usually break down 'the knowns' into conceptual knowledge and procedural knowledge. Conceptual knowledge refers to things like mental frameworks for thinking about the world. The relationship between knowledge and curriculum is at the heart of the chapter, with pedagogy as the social practice realising and recontextualising both with learners. The student's knowledge of poetry, for instance, allows the teacher to 'own' that knowledge as a normative ethical and intellectual compliance.
