This paper discusses the relationship between knowledge and society in social studies by analysing how society is presented in four Finnish social studies textbooks currently in use in comprehensive education. Besides its empirical contribution, the paper examines the possibilities of applying Michael Young's understanding of powerful knowledge in…

The idea of "powerful knowledge" as a curriculum principle has led to extensive discussion. It has been framed as a way of bringing knowledge back into curriculum thinking in the light if its absence in curriculum theory. However, questions have been raised regarding powerful knowledge as a knowledge-based curriculum principle; questions…

Despite the rising popularity of scripted curricula in the United States public and charter schools, there has been little to no research that explicitly addresses how this phenomenon influences the democratic aims of our educational system. Using the six democratic values that Meira Levinson employed to evaluate the movement towards standards,…

Current landscapes of curriculum discourse and educational practice are examined by focusing on co-evolutions of metaphors for knowledge, learning and teaching across four prominent 'frames'--namely, Standardized Education, Authentic Education, Democratic Citizenship Education and Systemic Sustainability Education. It is argued that these frames…

The purpose of this review was to organize the results of studies conducted during the last 18 years into a body of knowledge concerning the link between physical education (PE) and academic achievement (AA). Such knowledge may help in clarifying the role of PE in the schools, whose main focus is on improving the AA of the children. The term PE is…

Michael Young's recent paper in this journal is correct; there is a profound crisis in curriculum theory, and to be intellectually viable into the future the field must strive to "bring back" in empirical study of curriculum. Also by ignoring the empirical content of knowledge and access to it in mass education systems throughout the…

Over the past three decades, educators have faced an increasing variety of reform proposals that can best be contextualized as efforts to commodify and privatize public education. While supporters of market-based reforms attempt to place these proposals within education theory, they are in reality firmly entrenched in neoliberal economic theory.…

The curriculum literature has much to say about the ecological fallacy embodied in the "best practices" movement. The work of Schwab anticipated much of it by reminding us of the dangers of trying to control classroom practices from afar, with the use of theoretical representations of classrooms that were, by definition, never fully like their…

The "elemental" refers to the essentials of the contents that make them accessible to a child. The effects on a child of contents that are mastered are the "fundamental". In a fruitful didactic unlocking (presentation) it is possible for a child to achieve considerably more insight than merely an understanding of the learning…