A Sociocultural Approach to Knowledge: Rethinking the "Problems" of Curriculum Knowledge in a "Post-Truth" Era

• In Event: 61.070 - Sheraton Roundtable 10 - Osgoode Ballroom
  In Roundtable Session: 61.070-5 - Reclamation and Refusal: Reimagining Curriculum for Healing and Hope

Abstract

This paper aims to explore how knowledge is understood in sociocultural theory, and bring a sociocultural perspective into recent debates on knowledge in education. A social realist critique of the critical approach to knowledge has become influential in curriculum studies since the late 1990s, arguing that power- and identity-related understandings of knowledge neglect knowledge itself. A solution proposed by social realism to this issue in the curriculum is to privilege school knowledge over everyday knowledge. Drawing on sociocultural theory, especially Vygotsky’s theory of knowledge, situated learning, funds of knowledge, and critical sociocultural theory, this paper attempts to rethink the binary of school knowledge and everyday knowledge, calling for the need to incorporate a sociocultural lens in the sociology of knowledge.

Authors

• Weijian Wang, University of Minnesota - Twin Cities

• Vichet Chhuon, University of Minnesota