Powerful knowledge for all students: teachers as agents of recontextualisation

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 9:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: Conflict, Power, and Entanglements with Curriculum

Abstract

This paper explores how teachers support students in acquiring powerful knowledge, which enables them to think beyond everyday experiences and engage critically with the world. Drawing on Bernstein’s pedagogic device and the ecological model of teacher agency, the study positions teachers as key agents in curriculum making. Using empirical vignettes from England, Finland, and Sweden, it illustrates how teachers’ decisions shape students’ access to powerful knowledge. The paper conceptualises teachers’ roles within recontextualisation processes, whereby disciplinary knowledge is transformed into school subjects and classrooms. By integrating anglophone understandings of curriculum and pedagogy with North European Didaktik traditions, the study shows that recontextualisation is shaped by ideological, institutional, and cultural forces that teachers continually navigate.

Authors

• Mark Hardman, Institute of Education - London

• Marie Nilsberth, Karlstad University

• Mikko Puustinen, University of Helsinki