ABSTRACT
The social realist approach to education “suggests that some knowledge has more power than other knowledge and that access to ‘powerful knowledge’ should be an entitlement for all children.” The question of how “best knowledge” is identified and narrowed down to fit the constraints of the school curriculum is an important one. As Young himself points out, knowledge is not fixed – it is constructed and built by people, and the same is true of curriculum. The continued discourse and the shaping of curriculum over time, and the presence of teachers in this conversation, are vital. Cognitively, the aim of curriculum work is to plan actions that will allow students to develop their schemata for the subject in question. “Means-end analysis” is something of an assumed truth in the school improvement lexicon, but it can be responsible for a culture averse to the continued discourse needed for excellence in curriculum work.
