Disciplinary knowledge practices and powerful knowledge: a study on knowledge and curriculum structures in regions

Abstract

Powerful knowledge facilitates students’ access to profound understanding and abstract thinking. In this study, disciplinary knowledge practices and their curricular capacity are examined in regions, i.e. interdisciplinary and professionally oriented degree programmes. Interview data on curriculum knowledge were analysed drawing on Basil Bernstein's conceptual framework, and the disciplinary knowledge and curriculum structures’ potential to provide access to powerful knowledge were analysed. Interviews were carried out with 26 teachers from two region cases, one representing humanities, arts, and social sciences and the other representing science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The results show how the disciplinary knowledge practices create different bases for the curricular capacity available. To enable access to powerful knowledge in regions, assertion of the value of traditional disciplines, or vocationally relevant cumulative knowledge is not enough; attention is needed to the simultaneous growth of conceptual and contextual complexity, and the cumulative coherence of curriculum, also in curriculum implementation.