A POLANYIAN PERSPECTIVE ON THE PLACE OF KNOWLEDGE WITHIN THE CURRICULUM

A new national school curriculum in Wales that parallels reforms in other countries and regions is in the process of being implemented. Several issues debated in the context of these reforms relate to the effectiveness of a school's curriculum to help young people develop skills and dispositions believed to be necessary for participation in the modern economy. Others are concerned about the loss of core subject related knowledge linked to academic disciplines. Wrestling with these questions motivated me to consider how Polanyi's thought could point the way to addressing these issues, particularly his concept of commitment and argument for a hierarchically structured view of reality. In this paper I explore these issues by drawing from the sociologist Michael F.D. Young's work on 'powerful knowledge' as a way to frame my consideration of the curriculum debates from a Polanyian perspective. Young argues that providing access to knowledge should be seen as the primary goal of school curriculums and argues that the best route to achieving this is through academic subjects. The paper will show how this argument is strengthened by consideration of insights from Polanyi.