Knowledges Sacred and Profane: Basil Bernstein and the Recontextualization of Critical Thinking

• In Event: Myths, Knowledge, and Conceptualizations of Curriculum

Abstract

This study examines how the teaching of critical thinking is regulated in one country through the process of pedagogic recontextualisation. For many Western societies, critical thinking conveys ideals of liberal democracy and emancipation. While not all these ideals find resonance in the socio-political climate in anti-liberal societies like Singapore, the vague focus of the subject as it centres on “knowledge skills” is appreciated by the city-state anxious to advance in the “knowledge economy”.

Two case studies are presented documenting how critical thinking is recontextualised into distinct curricula in two Singapore schools – one for elites, the other for “knowledge workers” – each specifying separate competencies/consciousnesses. Tensions, contradictions, and the evacuation of the emancipatory thesis following the subject’s recontextualisation are discussed.

Author

• Leonel Tze-Wei Lim, University of Wisconsin - Madison