Formation of school subjects as curriculum content : patterns and structures
To show that curriculum content is always socially constructed and might be a result of struggling social forces giving way for different interpretations, interpretations that lean on different pol ...
Towards a dynamic analysis of the content of schooling: Narrow and broad didactics in Sweden
Educational research in Sweden has long neglected the problematical nature of the meaning-creating content of institutionalized socialization. This neglect is linked to the fact that the philosophical aspect of education and socialization has been forgotten. In this respect, the content of education has not been problematized but has been taken for granted by educational research, which at the same time has been a victim of psychological or sociological reductionism. By concentrating educational analysis on the meaning-creating content of socialization, and looking at that content as historically and socially dependent and subject to permanent pressure to change, we can create a dynamic educational research. A concrete manifestation of an emergent protest against the neglect of the content of schooling is the didactic wave' that has washed over Sweden during the last two decades. However, this protest has generally not yet reached the philosophical aspect of socialization other than as a legitimization of...
Knowing the subject matter of a secondary‐school science subject
This paper examines the fundamental yet largely neglected distinction between school subjects and academic disciplines in the discourse on teachers’ specialized subject‐matter knowledge. It analyses and critiques the curricular positions embedded in that discourse in the light of five possible relationships between school subjects and academic disciplines. Invoking Dewey’s logical‐psychological distinction and research findings, the paper argues that the subject matter of a secondary‐school science subject instead of the subject matter of its parent academic discipline lies at the heart of secondary‐school science teachers’ specialized subject‐matter knowledge. Knowing such subject matter entails knowing five intersecting dimensions: the logical, the psychological, the pedagogical, the epistemological, and the sociocultural. Implications are drawn concerning theorizing about what secondary‐school science teachers need to know about the subject matter they are expected to teach, subject‐matter preparation for teaching, and the development of secondary‐school science curriculum materials.