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      Why is ‘powerful knowledge’ failing to forge a path to the future of history education?

      research-article
        1 , *
      History Education Research Journal
      UCL Press
      powerful knowledge, power, knowledge, history, history education, curriculum theory, curriculum

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          Abstract

          The concept of ‘powerful knowledge’ has become extremely influential in discussions about curriculum in England over the last ten years. However, the concept seems to have done little to revolutionise curriculum design, and in some cases it has led to curricular narrowing and a focus on an increasingly nationalistic narrative in history. Michael Young ( 2019, 2021) has argued that the failure of the concept of ‘powerful knowledge’ to underpin meaningful curriculum reforms has been mainly due to its misinterpretation and loose definition. This paper explores these claims and finds that key voices in education in England, and history education specifically, have misunderstood and misapplied the concept of powerful knowledge. However, it also makes the case that powerful knowledge cannot be meaningfully defined in terms of history education, and that attempts to make curricular decisions based on the concept are therefore a distraction from more meaningful curricular work.

          Most cited references82

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          Three Educational Scenarios for the Future: lessons from the sociology of knowledge

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            Pedagogy, Simbolic Control, and Identity: theory, research, critique

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              An Indigenous People’s History of the United States

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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Hist_Educ_Res_J
                History Education Research Journal
                Hist_Educ_Res_J
                UCL Press
                2631-9713
                31 March 2022
                : 19
                : 1
                : 3
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Schools History Project Fellow and Senior Lecturer, Leeds Trinity University, UK
                Author notes
                Author information
                https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4829-2068
                Article
                Hist_Educ_Res_J-19-3
                10.14324/HERJ.19.1.03
                8197a989-1717-461e-aa38-e004e0fa4fe6
                2022, Alex Ford.

                This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC BY) 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited • DOI: https://doi.org/10.14324/HERJ.19.1.03.

                History
                : 27 September 2021
                : 03 March 2022
                Page count
                Pages: 17
                Categories
                Research article
                Custom metadata
                Ford, A. (2022) ‘Why is “powerful knowledge” failing to forge a path to the future of history education?’ History Education Research Journal, 19 (1), 3. DOI: https://doi.org/10.14324/HERJ.19.1.03.

                Educational research & Statistics,General education,History
                power,history education,history,knowledge,powerful knowledge,curriculum,curriculum theory

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