Knowledge and the Future School

"Written at a time of uncertainty about the implications of the Coalition government's curriculum policies, Knowledge and the Future School engages directly with the debate between English government and large sections of the educational community. It provides a forward-looking framework for head teachers, their staff and those training teachers to use in their work developing the curriculum of individual schools in the context of a national curriculum. Knowledge and the Future School is the first book that explains recent ideas in the sociology of educational knowledge to a professional audience of school leaders and classroom practitioners. Michael Young draws on his earlier research to distinguish three models of the curriculum in terms of their assumptions about knowledge, referred to in this book as Future 1, Future 2 and Future 3. He links Future 3 to the idea of 'powerful knowledge' for all pupils as a curriculum principle for any school, arguing that the question of knowledge is intimately linked to the issue of social justice and that access to 'powerful knowledge' is a necessary starting point for the education of all pupils. Knowledge and the Future School is not a handbook. But neither is it just another book of educational theory. It offers a new way of thinking about the problems that head teachers, their staff and curriculum designers face. In charting a course for schools that goes beyond current debates, it provides a perspective that policy makers will be unable to avoid"--