Knowing and the Known: A Philosophical and Pedagogical Critique on the Concept of ‘Powerful Knowledge’

It is remarkable how the popularity of the concept of ‘powerful knowledge’ has increased during the last decade in academic circles and among politicians, too. This is especially the case when the issue of the place and function of knowledge in the curriculum is addressed. A strong impetus for the increased attention paid to this concept of knowledge came from the writings of Michael Young and Johan Muller. Based on his own critical-hermeneutical-pragmatist-and-(neo-)Vygotskian-inspired philosophy of education and philosophy of science as his ‘Vorverständnis’ (Gadamer), but also based on the recent criticism articulated by the philosophers of education John White and Ingrid Carlgren and educational theorist Gert Biesta, the author shows the philosophical, pedagogical and didactical inadequacy of this concept. The author is criticizing the philosophical and pedagogical presuppositions of Young and Muller’s stance in propagating their core concept of ‘powerful knowledge’ as it is grounded in a social realist view and the way this concept has been used in educational studies by others. It is the author’s conviction that the concept of ‘powerful knowledge’ and the underlying social realist paradigm are incompatible and even incommensurable (in a Kuhnian sense of the terms) with sociocultural and pragmatist paradigms. It is, in his view, theoretically and conceptually confusing when authors who work along the lines of these paradigms are trying to complement these with the concept of ‘powerful knowledge’ along the lines of social realism as outlined by Young and Muller. Let us stick to knowing and the known as a theoretical conceptualization of ‘knowledge’.