Knowledge and the curriculum

The article focuses on knowledge and how it relates to the school curriculum. This means that a reason (or reasons) for designating knowledge as the central dimension of the curriculum has to be provided. Two reason‐giving arguments can be invoked to support this proposition. The first is to conceptualise learning as an epistemic activity, and the second is to suggest that those curriculum ideologies which marginalise knowledge are deficient or inadequate. It is then necessary to determine what this knowledge‐producing activity is, and to distinguish it from those curriculum ideologies which purport to prioritise knowledge but rarely achieve their aim. The issues of how knowledge is transformed at the pedagogic and evaluative sites, and the relationship between these three sites, are also briefly addressed.