Steve Rollett, Deputy CEO, Confederation of School Trusts
The focus on cognitive science within the knowledge-rich discourse has been largely welcome, giving teachers a way of talking about learning that derives from evidence rather than whim or fantasy. But I wonder if it has been unintentionally problematic in some ways too. If we understand knowledge as only being the cognitive processes going on in our minds, how do we resolve important questions about schooling such as 'what should I teach'? Or 'why should I teach this'?
This is not the fault of cognitive science. It’s not a deficit of the work of Willingham, Sweller or Kirschner and so on. If we’ve dug to the bottom of the cognitive science post hole (which, by the way, I’m fairly sure we haven’t yet) and not found the answer to whether and how to decolonise the curriculum, for example, it’s not because cognitive science tells us nothing useful. It’s because it may not tell us all we need to know about this particular thing. This doesn’t mean we need to eject cognitive science from our understanding of the curriculum landscape; it doesn’t mean we need to decry the importance of knowledge; it means we need to dig elsewhere as well and draw these insights together. We need more knowledge about knowledge, not less. We have to keep digging.
We should see knowledge as an object of study. We should think about who has it, how it is used, how it is changed, how it is moved, how it is built, how it is deconstructed, how it is structured. Then we can start to understand curious things like why a team of science teachers might agree on the content and sequence of their curriculum more readily than a team of history teachers. Or why particular approaches to making the curriculum more diverse or representative might work in Maths but be insufficient in English. Or what the difference is between knowledge of the powerful and powerful knowledge, and how this might inform social justice.
Reading works about knowledge by Bernstein, Young, Maton, Muller, Counsell and so on hasn’t reduced or limited my understanding of education – it has enhanced it. I can still wonder about the possibilities that technology might provide or recognise the importance of pupil wellbeing – these things are not in tension with knowing. Indeed, knowing about knowledge is not some impediment or affliction from which to be set free. Maton argues that by seeing knowledge more clearly, we reveal the ‘rules of the game’, which too frequently are tacit and don’t work in favour of our disadvantaged pupils. Maton digs knowledge (pun intended).
I sometimes wonder if we could do with losing the phrase ‘knowledge-rich’; for some people its brand is seemingly tainted and not universally welcomed. But I think any relief would only be temporary because any new label would also become lost within the cavernous dichotomy which frames too much in education already. So, what do we do? Stop digging? Agree to know less about knowledge? Of course not. The main thing is not what we call it, it’s that we keep digging.
How else do we navigate key education questions if not by being knowledge-rich? While I’m sure there are some who, rightly or wrongly, equate ‘knowledge-rich’ with ideology, this need not be so – not if we understand ‘knowledge-rich’ as being the pursuit of knowledge about knowledge.
And if you’re queasy about the frequency with which ‘knowledge’ is used in professional discourse, let’s turn it on its head and ask how else you would address key educational issues without foregrounding knowledge?
For example:
- What progress can be made towards a more representative/diverse/decolonised curriculum without examining knowledge and knowers?
- How does do we make meaningful improvements to the skills agenda without placing knowledge and knowers at the centre?
- How can we talk meaningfully about social justice without exposing how knowledge is structured by, and structures, society?
These big questions illustrate why knowledge itself should be a priority area for excavation – by which I mean the development of professional understanding about knowledge. By knowing more about knowledge, we have something else that we can bring into relation with cognitive science and other things that influence how we think about curriculum.
This goes hand in hand with a commitment to knowledge-building as an act of professional reciprocity. That includes the development of subject communities but might also be seen temporally through the study of significant contributions over time – critical engagement with the evolving canon of teaching. In this way we can see developing our knowledge of knowledge as an ongoing endeavour of our professional community of diggers.
This doesn’t require all teachers to become involved in deeply academic debate, although by the same token we should not be disdainful of those who do. However, as a collective professional act we could do worse than embrace the pursuit of knowledge about knowledge. How else will we meaningfully situate our teachers, and therefore our pupils, in the big debates of subjects and society?
So, let the history teacher, the art teacher, the maths teacher, the RE teacher, and so on, deepen their well of knowledge about the subjects they teach. Let school leaders know more about knowledge and knowing too. Let them discuss and debate it.
If you want to call that knowledge-rich, or something else entirely, I don’t mind too much. The key thing is that we keep digging.
There is little to fear of teachers knowing more about knowledge, of reading about it, and talking about it with other teachers, right?
Of course, that’s not true. If we know about knowledge (perhaps because we’ve read Bernstein or Bourdieu), we know that the creation and distribution of knowledge is one way through which society is structured and power is asserted. So, I’m much more worried by arguments which assert that we should put down our trowels.
We’ve got to keep digging.
