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Kimpston, R., Williams, H., & Stockton, W. (1992). Ways of Knowing and the Curriculum. The Educational Forum, 56(2), 153–172. Doi: 10.1080/00131729209335192
Kimpston, R., Williams, H., & Stockton, W. (1992). Ways of Knowing and the Curriculum. The
Educational Forum, 56(2), 153–172. Doi: 10.1080/00131729209335192
This article was downloaded by: ["Queen's University Libraries, Kingston"]On: 04 December 2014, At: 13:09Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
The Educational ForumPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/utef20
Ways of Knowing and the CurriculumRichard D. Kimpston a , Howard Y. Williams a & William S.Stockton ba College of Education, University of Minnesota , Twin CitiesCampus, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 55455b Productive Designs, Inc. , Minneapolis, Minnesota, 55455Published online: 30 Jan 2008.
To cite this article: Richard D. Kimpston , Howard Y. Williams & William S. Stockton(1992) Ways of Knowing and the Curriculum, The Educational Forum, 56:2, 153-172, DOI:10.1080/00131729209335192
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00131729209335192
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Ways of Knowing and the Curriculum
Richard D. Kimpston Howard Y. Williams WilliamS. Stockton
Historically, discussions about public school curricula appear to shift among emphases on personal development, human resource development for a competitive world economy, and the development of citizens aware of a common cultural heritage. 1 Such conversations typically take the form of debates, formal or informal, which invite us to choose one approach or another. In a larger, collaborative dialogue, there is certainly a role for this competitive, either-or, marketplace-ofideas model; it sharpens other perceptions of the strengths and weaknesses of differing proposals. However, what seems missing is a synthesis that reveals underlying patterns of agreement and complementarity of differing viewpoints hidden by the current debate. For our democratic society to flourish the ongoing conversation about the education of citizens must recognize and acknowledge the possibility of unity beneath the diversity of voices, e pluribus unum.
This article points to the broader possibilities for our schools that become visible when contending viewpoints are viewed as complementary. Just as two eyes provide a perception of depth, so current curriculum proposals, taken together, reveal differences that help us see
Richard D. Kimpston is professor and Howard Y. Williams is professor, College of Education, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities Campus, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455. William S. Stockton is consultant, Productive Designs, Inc., Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455.
The Educational Forum, Vol. 56, No.2, Winter 1992
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patterns in underlying assumptions. Three major assumptions are explored: (1) different curriculum proposals reflect deeper, often unacknowledged differences in viewpoint about how knowledge should be structured for purposes of learning, (2) four basic ways of knowing can be distinguished in thinking about curricula, and (3) a synthesis of these differing points of view is possible.
In exploring the possibilities for a synthesis among contending points of view about the public school curricula, three tasks are undertaken. First, four ways of knowing implicit in curriculum discussion are distinguished. Secondly, these ways of knowing are related to eight approaches to curriculum design currently being advocated. Finally, the patterns revealed by this analysis are highlighted to outline a more coherent, collaborative, developmental approach to our public conversation about curriculum choices and design.
Ways of Knowing
When we claim to have learned something, we make an implicit knowledge claim. But how do we know when we know something? What good is the knowledge gained? Usually we do not worry, or much care, about such questions, yet only brief reflection makes clear that at different times we probably do mean to make each of the four very different claims outlined below. Because we do not take the time to be clear about what we mean, our conversations about curriculum issues become unnecessarily confused and adversarial. Current curricular proposals often claim one way of knowing as more basic, or more important, than others. In this paper each of the four ways of knowing will be distinguished and three aspects of each will be noted: ( 1 ) the criterion for knowing, (2) the source of theory about this way of knowing, and (3) the nature of the knower and the known. The features of each of these ways of knowing is summarized in Table 1.
Association. Associational learning can be seen as the first way of knowing. Knowledge claims are implicit in this paradigm. The criterion for knowing is a reliable correlation between stimulus and responsewhen someone says, 'Thank you, II we respond with "You are welcome. II Through the use of association, parents and teachers seek to teach good habits and shape pleasant dispositions of the young. Association is also the basis for the learning of many important skills and social roles.However, unguided association tends to create a hedonistic world about which Thomas Hobbes wrote in The Leviathan. He assumed that we are all creatures of passion and unbridled selfishness and that the
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Ways of Knowing
Association Correspondence Coherence Recognition
Knowing Reliable response to Assertion supported by Assertion supported by Unmediated apperception, stimulus facts logic built on non- direct knowing
Skill and affect forming Problem solving, conflicting assumptions
hypothesis proving Opportunity finding, Unity seeking vision creating
Assimilated to past Assimilated to socio- Future oriented Past and future are only individual conditioning cultural past alive in the present
Causality seen as luck or Convergent, linear thinking Divergent, global, Apprehending, rather than magic dialectical systems thinking
thinking
Unconscious Conscious Self conscious Super conscious
Source of Theory Stimulus-response Normal science, technology Science, philosophy Perennial philosophy
Skinner, Pavlov, Thorndike Bacon, Locke, Comte Dewey, Hegel, Wm. James Plato, Kant, Dante, ~ z Emerson 0
~ Knower It-the body's physical and Me-visible, externally !-internal, self- Other-identity with all z
C'l emotional response perceived, social attributes experiencing, self-defined
~ Single egocentric reality Single objective reality Many realities Unity of realities 0
g Known Other seen as source of Clear distinction between Relationship between Identity of knower and ~
reward or other knower & known-avoid knower and known is known, both being i::! instrumental value contamination and interactive, being part of interdependent, intertwined g
r-' ~ experimenter bias larger systems parts of the same whole c: U1 s: U1
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THE EDUCATIONAL FORUM
function of the state was to restrain this brutishness. Skinner, on the other hand, proposes the possibility of designing a learning environment that is humane, based on positive reinforcement rather than on the punishment and control suggested by Hobbes. 2
The source of theory about associationist knowing is built upon a stimulus and response model. Classical conditioning offers an explanation for how we come to feel as we do about the stimuli in our environment, and instrumental conditioning informs us about how we come to act and talk as we do.
In associative knowing, the knower is seen as an organism shaped by the environment. The knower or self is an "It," a stimulus object among other stimulus objects, and the known (other persons or things) are also seen as physical objects important for their stimulus and reinforcement value. Distinctions among stimuli are made on the basis of what is reinforced.
It may seem anomalous to assert that association involves a knowledge claim by the knower, but the associative knower implicitly "justifies" an action on the grounds that it "works," that is, it feels right or the association produces the desired result. For example, teachers may become angry when students are seen to be misbehaving. When the anger is expressed, the students conform to the teacher's expectations and the teacher feels relieved. Thus, teachers' anger is reinforced, and, in their view, justified.
The contributions of associationist knowing are the insights given to unconscious learning and the technology it has developed for creating, managing, and reshaping such learning. The limitations of this way of knowing are that it is shaper dependent, labor intensive, denying of the possibility of insight and divergent problem solving as ways of knowing, and limited to extrinsic motivation and goal-setting.
Correspondence. Correspondence is the second way of knowing and gives us a conscious way of knowing about things external to ourselvessociety and the physical environment. The criterion for knowing is the correspondence between a belief or assertion and what ~mpirical data warrant. Knowledge seen as correspondence is the point of view about reality presented by John Locke, the father of modern empiricism, whose purpose is to predict and control the external world. One version of this point of view has been rigorously developed in this century by logical positivists.
In correspondence knowing, there is a clear distinction between the knower and the known, and great care is taken to avoid contamination of the object of knowing by the knower. The knower is an "outsider"
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to both self and the physical world; objects are taken to be visible and externally perceived. Knowers know even themselves as they know other selves, as social identities. The knower is a constellation of traits or sociopsychological attributes that can be objectively measured. There is only an outside view of knower and known.
Correspondence theory's contributions are attention to the social context of education, role functions, group skills, and subject matter achievement. Its limitations are an inattention to the inside view, subjective values and goals, personal development, and the learner's existing internal frames of reference.
Coherence. Coherence theory attends to the systematic mesh and interrelationships among ideas. Knowing involves coherent conceptual models that are consistent with personally warranted (in addition to socially warranted) evidence-a source which some empiricists (correspondence theorists) would likely reject. The criterion for knowing is consistency with and among assumptions, or with root metaphors.
The source of theory about this kind of self-conscious knowing derives from more recent meta-thinking about the nature of science and philosophy as developed in the works of, among others, PolanyP and Kuhn. 4 The assumption is that the facts of correspondence criteria have meaning only in the larger context of models, theories, and other logical frameworks. In addition to the controlled experiments of empiricism, the coherence criteria include such methodologies as phenomenology and hermeneutics.
Coherence theory assures that there is an inside (personal) view of things, as well as an outside (social) one. Self-knowledge is what the theory adds and, in this self-conscious form of knowing, knowers escape the social definitions in which they are caught by correspondence knowing. The knower becomes an "1," internal, self-experiencing, and self-defined. The distinction between knower and known begins to change, since the knower is attempting to understand, rather than control and predict, the known. Normative distinctions seem arbitrary, contrived, and culturally defined. The constructs used in this effort are those created by the knower, hence they emphasize the interaction (as in Hegel5 and Dewey6 ) of knower and known. Coherence theory holds that the knower influences the known by the act of knowing.
The contributions of coherence theory to education are an insistence on openness to learners' points-of-view, unique paths of learning, knowledge as an evolving conversation, and knowledge as constructed rather than discovered. Limitations include the enormous demands for intellectual flexibility placed on teachers, inattention to sequence since process is more important than content, and the temptations of ideology.
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Recognition. Recognitional knowing moves beyond logic, models, and systems into direct knowing. The first characteristics of this way of knowing is the conviction that something is undeniably true or utterly obvious even when there is no immediate empirical or logical evidence that speaks to the point. The second criterion is that the knowing or insight comes from a relatively egoless state, thus bringing us closer to an identity or oneness with the known. Examples might be the existence of God, identity with the living planet, or the oneness with our children.
Recognitional knowing is concerned with consciousness, the experience of wholeness, or immediate reality. It is the superconscious, esoteric vision sought by Plato's intuitive intellect or the attempt by Emerson, Dante, or Kant to know the inexpressible. It is the perceptual transformation sought by mystics and sages. It is the language of Brother Lawrence, Emily Dickinson, Theresa of Avila, Buddist koans, the Sufis, and Meister Eckhart. Some of the more contemporary students of this kind of knowing are Wilber,7 Omstein,8 and Underhill.9 Recognitional knowing is not confined to the "enlightened," and is often evoked by music, art, meditation, or nature.
Outside and inside views fall away, and there is a recognition of the unity between the knower and the known. The knower becomes the known; "other" is recognized as another form (trans-form-ation) of self. There is a recognition that all definitions of "self" are predicated on ego. Without ego, knower and known are indistinguishable. There is an underlying identity with all otherness that unfolds in growth and learning.
The contributions of recognitional knowing are an expanded sense of self, the focusing of past and future in present, an understanding that what is seen by ego is a self-created illusion and that illusion is the source of distortions and suffering in our lives. The limitations of this type of knowing are finding qualified teachers and balancing the search for wholeness with daily survival in the world of ego.
In summary, each way of knowing has its own contribution, hence we must be familiar with each. Association holds the key to unconscious behavior and feelings. Correspondence makes it possible to know the external world. Coherence contributes to knowledge of self-in-the-world, and recognition provides a vision of wholeness.
Curricular Points of View
The four ways of knowing provide a basis for a comprehensive framework from which to recognize and integrate widely differing
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approaches to curriculum design and development. Contemporary approaches to curriculum planning are often presented as opposing points of view in public and educational debates about education. Like blind men describing an elephant, advocates of differing approaches point to a part of a whole, but the whole is bigger than the part of the truth to which each tenaciously clings. What is missing is a large enough perspective from which to recognize that these apparently opposing viewpoints complement each other. Such a synthesis would enable educators and curriculum planners to recognize new possibilities for drawing on the vision and resources of each seemingly contending point of view.
The matrix outlined in Table 2 is offered as a first step toward a synthesis of differing contemporary approaches to curriculum planning. Questions central to curriculum planning, listed in the leftmost column, were considered from the standpoint of each of the four ways of knowing. Answers to each question reveal assumptions about the educational process, including the role of curriculum. Eight points of view were identified that fit well with viewpoints being expressed in current debates about education and curriculum design and development. Paired points of view within each of the four ways of knowing emphasize either the individual or society. The first of each pair focuses on the individual (social identity, role), and the second on context (e.g., environment, society). The rest of this article looks briefly at seven of the eight approaches to curriculum planning, and one element of curriculum perspective, "What is a teacher?" One approach, academic rationalism, will be discussed in greater detail. Individuals identified with each of the eight approaches are illustrative.
Despite the obvious significance of the teacher to the learning process, the relationship of curriculum and instruction has been a point of puzzlement and debate among educators. The confusion becomes more meaningful when the debate is considered from the perspective offered from the different knowledge (epistemological) assumptions outlined in Table 2. The role of the teacher differs in understandable ways when different assumptions are made about what it means to know. Whatever else the term curriculum has been defined to mean, it clearly implies guidance in selecting and organizing knowledge for purposes of teaching and learning. As the matrix makes clear, the role of the teacher, and what the teacher should know, as well as the definition of curriculum, differ according to one's assumptions about what it means to know.
Behaviorism. Associational curriculum planning attends to the identification of the behavior to be conditioned, the sequencing of curriculum
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""' Table 2 o-l Q\ :t 0
Knowing and Curriculum !'T1 !'T1 0
Elements of Association Correspondence Coherence Recognition c: (")
Curriculum > Perspectives Behaviorism Technology Social Adapt'n Acad. Ratl'ism Humanist Social Recon. Liberation Transpersonal o-l -0 What is Process for shap- Process of shaping Socialization of ENCULTURA- Process of SHARlNG OF Process of Process for
z >
EDUCATION? ing behaviors for behaviors that individuals to TION of individ- experimentally PARADIGMS to RECOGNIZING TRANSFORMING r"' SURVIVAL CONTROL adult roles uals into their discovering OUR realize new OUR CULTURAL BOUNDARIES OF .,.,
environment cultural heritage COMMON and possibilities of and EGO SELF/OTHER 0 UNIQUE human TRANCE to free us :;a POTENTIALS as relationships from limited c: human beings identities ~
What is Sequence of Sequence of Sequence of role Sequence of Coorratively Cooperatively MOMENTS OF Self created CURRICUWM7 BEHAVIORS TOOL USING appropriate discipline or deve oped set of developed set of TRUTH ILLUSIONS to
to be shaped BEHAVIORS learning TASKS subject related LEARNING learning TRANSFORM to be shaped to be mastered CONTENT and OPPORTUNITIES opportunities to
skills to be learned to free individual learn by and human COMMITIED potential ACTION
What is a ORGANISM ORGANISM able APPRENTICE SCHOLAR ADVENTUROUS COLLEAGUE in TRUTH SEEKER CELEBRANT LEARNER? shaped by to shape its INQUIRER COMMITMENT
environment environment
What is a SHAPER of PRESCRlBER of TRAINER EXPERT MENTOR COLLEAGUE YOKE FELLOW CELEBRANT TEACHER? behavior learning
environments
What is a Others as STIM- Others as Others as SOCIAL Others as FELLOW COMMUNITY OF TRADITIONAL ILLUSIONS of SOCIETY? ULI in environ- (potential) TOOLS ROLE PLAY6RS CARRIERS of ADVENTURERS VENTURERS with WAYS/ PATHS for otherness
ment or resource in CULTURAL on different paths a shared evolving transcending ego-environment TRADITION of discovery set of commitments based identities
What is the Observable, Observable, Master of role Master of a Growth and in- Increased Recognition or Recognition of CRITERION for reliable reliable tool using appropriate certified body of creased coherence coherence in IDENTITY WITH IDENTITY WITH EVALUATING discrimination RESPONSE to a ABILITIES, skills, EXPERTISE- in PERSONALLY socially SHARED ALL OTHER ALL sentient beings learning and among STIMULI stimulus rules, and knowledge and APPROPR!AliD PARADIGMS for human beings knowing? technology mefhodologies PARADIGMS for understanding and
understanding action
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KNOWING AND CURRICULUM
elements from simple to complex, and the identification of reinforcers required to strengthen and maintain the desired behaviors. Students learn by doing, and emphasis is on the practical. Complex behavior is to be taught through a series of approximations. A training program for the development of a particular vocational skill might be illustrated by the Vogler10 curriculum development model. To cite a very different context, the development of "life skills" by disabled learners would be a second example.
For the Behaviorist who defines learning as changes in behavior, conditioning associations between environmental stimuli and the learners' responses, the teacher is a Shaper of behaviors. Using the technology of conditioning, teachers' responsibility is to shape the behavior of their malleable human organisms to the standards specified in the curriculum.
Educational technology. The Technologist orientation is also an associationist way of knowing that, from a curriculum perspective, places priority on the specification of objectives, from a subject discipline or applied field, and the development of units of performance that can be evaluated after relatively short time intervals. Rather than less complex behaviors to be shaped, technologically-oriented programs seek performance of complex learning tasks through preciseness in the design, implementation, and evaluation of curriculum. Technical application includes the use of various devices and media or a prescribed sequence of instruction. Curriculum planning involves formulating objectives, arranging objectives in a fixed continuum or hierarchy of skills, specifying precisely controlled learning activities for instructional sequences to achieve objectives, indicating criteria for performance and evaluation, and specifying feedback to modify performance and adapt instruction. Tyler11 and Bloom12 can be identified as representing this view of curriculum.
To the Technologist the teacher is a Designer and Prescriber of learning environment. Teachers would still have an important role as shaper of learners in that environment, but much of the learning could be more precisely shaped by nonhuman means. The teacher, then, becomes a Prescriber of Learning Environments, and the behaviors to be shaped would largely focus on the mastery of the technologies of modern life.
Social adaptation. The curricular orientation of Social Adaptation is a correspondence-based approach that looks to society to determine what the individual learner needs to succeed in that society. Bobbitt, 13 as a leading advocate, argued that the purpose of education was to prepare the child for adult life. A traditional view of vocational education, still
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held in many secondary schools, is to emphasize job entry skills as well as preparation for entry into postsecondary education vocational programs, rather than general education. The focus of education may be to develop manpower, to foster existing values, and/ or to further an understanding of pressing concerns such as knowing about and acting upon political, economic, and social problems. Curriculum planning must acknowledge that the schools exist for the purpose of meeting critical needs of society. Examples of these critical needs might include increasing emphasis on the teaching of mathematics and science, as well as language and social studies, with an intent to enhance the position of the United States in world trade.
The teacher with Social Adaptation orientation (in common with the Academic Rationalist one) would agree that there is a body of knowledge that is to be transmitted by the teacher. The difference emerges in the ends to which this knowledge is transmitted. There is obviously too much knowledge to be mastered by any individual, therefore the selection and organization of knowledge must be based on other than total mastery of all that is known. Social Adaptation selects knowledge on the basis of the functional requirements of success as an adult in contemporary society. The selection is also geared to the survival of the society itself in a competitive world. The teacher as Trainer prepares the learner to master the selected body of theory, methods, and skills necessary for successful adult functioning.
Academic rationalism. Academic Rationalism, the second correspondence way of knowing, represents perhaps the most widely held curriculum perspective in the United States. Academic rationalists see education as a process of enculturation in which uncultured individuals become progressively encultured into a living tradition. The school is a critical institution in this process. It serves the society by transmitting a common cultural heritage to the young, and it serves the young by enabling them to participate in the living tradition that defines and sustains them as human beings. In recent years, Hirsch14 and Bennett15
have spoken for this point of view in their critiques of American schooling. Hirsch thus criticizes the schools for failing to produce culturally literate individuals who are able to draw on the riches of their heritage. This is viewed not only as a loss to the individual but as a danger to society, since the continuity of the cultural tradition is threatened. To the academic rationalist, the curriculum must reinterpret the cultural heritage in a way that makes the most valuable elements of the tradition available to the next generation. Since, obviously, not every historic experience and every past discovery can be passed on to each new
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member of the society, some selection is necessary. Accordingly, subjectbased approach to curriculum planning is central to the academic rationalist. Knowledge must be organized to reflect our best knowledge, and knowledge is traditionally organized around academic disciplinessciences, humanities, or social sciences. The best from the past must be offered in the form of subjects to be mastered.
It goes without saying that memory is critical to the continuity of a cultural tradition. Remembering the fact is a central task of students in this approach. It is also important to master the methods and skills of each discipline. The ideal would be for each learner to become an expert in each subject but, because that is impossible, salient facts and methods in each discipline must be mastered in the hope that they offer a key for the individual to unlock the door to further treasures in the future. Collectively, different individuals specializing in different subjects will keep the tradition alive. However, survival of the social order does set priorities in the curriculum. It becomes necessary in times of international threat to produce individuals who can play critical roles in defending the tradition.
Clearly the model for the student and the teacher, in the Academic Rationalist perspective, is the Scholar or Expert. Though each individual will fall short in the end, it is the standard of expert knowledge against which classroom performance must be measured. The teacher's knowledge becomes obsolete as new knowledge is created, and constant updating of teachers by experts is critical to the success of the educational enterprise. Teacher education should, from this viewpoint, stress mastery of the subject over teaching methods. The criteria for the success of schooling is the degree by which students master the expertise necessary to maintain the vitality and good order of the socio-cultural tradition that nurtured them.
Humanism. The Humanist perspective on curriculum, featuring coherence as a way of knowing, is to foster emotional and physical wellbeing, as well as the development of intellectual skills. The curriculum is to provide personally satisfying experiences by demonstrating their relevance to daily living and to the psychological development of the learner. The ideal of self-actualization is central to the humanistic curriculum. Among many others, Rogers16 and Combs17 have represented the humanistic view in their writings.
The teacher is a critical factor in bringing interpretation to the humanist curriculum by providing emotional support, encouraging positive student-teacher relationships, emphasizing mutual trust, and serving as a resource person. The teacher's role is that of developer of the potential
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THE EDUCATIONAL FORUM
of individual students. The happiest image would be for each student to have a mentor, like Socrates, to draw out and develop their unique potentials.
Social reconstruction. The Social Reconstructionist curriculum views schooling as a means by which society can change itself. Education seeks to remedy the injustices in society and educate learners to become involved in recreating the broader social order. Education demands that learners be prepared to deal with change and that learners be educated to intervene actively to share these changes-views shared by such advocates as AppleiB and Giroux19 . The social problems to be investigated are not the exclusive concern of any one subject area but of all disciplines and subject areas. Universal objectives and content are not a curricular concern. The goals for political and economic reconstruction may evolve from any discipline or subject area.
In Social Reconstructionism, the teacher shifts the focus of learning to the students' social context in order to expand and develop their current awareness. The teacher is engaged as a Colleague with the students in an inquiry aimed not only to understand but to shape the larger social "reality," which in turn shapes the possibilities of their lives.
Liberation. Liberation, based on Recognition as a way of knowing, points to the importance of emancipation through dialogue between teachers and students. The student and teacher must together develop curriculum through a process of critically questioning themselves and their interpretation of the world. Together they are expected to follow their intuitive insight into questions about the meaning and goodness they create. Through this questioning and learning together it is believed a better society develops and results in promoting equity, liberation, and social justice. Those who advocate the liberationist view include Freire, 20 Illich,2I and Neill.22
The Liberational approach calls forth a complex and demanding role for the teacher, that of Yoke Fellow. Truth can only be recognized in the experience of individuals, but the moments of truth in which students and teachers recognize most deeply who they are reveal a connectedness with all others. The role of the teacher in the liberationist view is to seek to create and to share these moments of recognizing common identity by sharing from his or her own experience and inviting students to recognize themselves in the experience of others.
Transpersonal. Several human dispositions provide a set of criteria for a Recognition-based Transpersonal orientation to curriculum. This orientation lends special emphasis to the dispositions of hope, creativity, awareness, constructive doubt, faith, and attitudes of wonder, awe, and
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reverence. In acknowledging this orientation, one adopts an accepting attitude toward all other persons, other cultures, other social groups, and nature. The curriculum requires a context of freedom based on openness and wholeness that fosters comprehensiveness of experience. Teaching-learning is a dialogue to transcend our differences by recognizing ourselves in the thoughts and feelings of other persons. Those who have spoken for this curriculum orientation include Wilber,23 Phenix, 24 and Greene.25
From a Transpersonal perspective, the teacher is a Celebrant, one who knows that recognizing identity with all "otherness" cannot be done alone. Learning is an ongoing dance with all others until they are seen as self. This is not to suggest that the trans personal perspective would lead to a con tentless, spiritual quest. On the contrary, all ways of knowing would have to be recognized and "owned," but the process of education would always be open to moments in which the illusion of difference would be transcended to reveal the common identity of all.
Underlying patterns. The curriculum matrix of Table 2 offers a larger context for viewing many long-standing educational issues. One such issue is whether the curriculum should focus on content or on process. Academic Rationalism, and all curriculum perspectives to its left on the matrix, are consistent with a content focus for the curriculum. For example, Social Adaptation is a position that differs from Academic Rationalism only in arguing that the basis of selecting content should ensure that what is taught will serve the individual students to become responsible citizens. Both of the Correspondence-based points of view about curriculum stress the mastery of content drawn from tradition.
The two Associationist approaches assume a content perspective on curriculum but offer little guidance in its selection. Both Behaviorist and Technologist points of view focus on the way in which the content is to be organized and taught. Their focus is more on instructional design than on curricular design, but they have been included as curricular perspectives because they select certain curricular content without being explicit about it. Coherence and Recognition ways of knowing cannot be taught using Associationist technology. Associationist assumptions do not allow for the existence of the self-conscious knowing which the Coherence criterion presupposes.
Curriculum perspectives in columns to the right of Academic Rationalism stress "process" over content as a principle of curriculum design. The positions labeled Humanist, Social Reconstruction, Liberationist, and Transpersonal view content as an ongoing developmental process on the part of the learner. It is the developmental process that education must
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foster, and it follows that the content must be relevant to the experience of the learner. This is not to say that the content selected is not important. It is to say that larger, process-related considerations should govern the selection of content.
The teacher role, as an element of a curriculum perspective, differs when different assumptions are made about what it means to know. Each of these roles for teachers- shaper, prescriber, trainer, expert, mentor, colleague, yoke fellow, and celebrant- can powerfully impact the lives of students. Clearly they are different but it is less clear that they are incompatible. Teachers who see their role from a transpersonal perspective could also, and at the same time, be providing expert knowledge to students in the context of a commitment to promote a social change in the community. They could also be acting as a trainer and shaper of student behavior. It is less likely that teachers who see themselves as shapers of organisms would be open to the other roles outlined here. The roles of teacher are organized in the matrix to suggest that those listed to the left of the particular role are compatible with that role, but those to the right would not necessarily be viewed as consistent with the teacher's underlying assumptions.
In summary, the eight approaches to curriculum planning, and the way of knowing to which they relate, were discussed in the context of a single element of curriculum perspective. The one element, "What is a teacher?" differs fundamentally when different assumptions are made about what it means to know. It should suffice to say that an interpretation of any of the remaining six elements (e.g., "What is a learner?") also differs according to assumptions one makes about what it means to know.
Implications for Curriculum Planning
The possibility that the eight differing approaches to curriculum planning can be seen as complementary and can all be taken into account in the design of curricula may seem at once bland and outrageous. It would indeed be a bland compromise to stir a bit of each point of view, each way of knowing, into every course and every lesson plan. A thoughtful pattern of complementary presentations within a curriculum design, extending over many years, would be required to ensure that students recognize the power of each way of knowing. It may be outrageous to expect every teacher to be a master of each way of knowing. But it would be truly outrageous to deny that valuable exemplars of each way of knowing are now present in our educational system. Most of the key elements of a creative synthesis for curriculum
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design are present in the differing perspectives already examined. What is missing is a creative conversation among educators about how these differences can be integrated.
What are the implications of such a holistic, integrated approach to curriculum planning? Certain approaches, academic rationalism for example, are widely shared within the educational community while others have barely begun to be examined. In discussions of "cultural literacy" and "content vs. process," one familiar with debates about public education over the past several decades can recognize echoes of past controversies. The perspectives identified here as "recognition" approaches to knowing and education have a long history as esoteric teachings within most major cultural-religious traditions. These powerful educational traditions can be recognized in a contemporary, popular, very limited expression in the "new age" subculture in the United States, but the sophisticated contributions of these historic traditions are little acknowledged in contemporary educational thinking and planning. Can any useful contributions emerge from a concerted effort to transcend our differences? Several levels of implications, both for curriculum design and teacher education, seem clear.
Philosophical implications. Much curriculum planning in public education is developed from assumptions about knowing that are unexamined and unacknowledged. One result is that different-looking curricula emerge from differences in underlying assumptions, and the approaches appear to be opposed to each other. Yet a clear implication of the view offered by the matrix is the possibility of accepting the validity of each of the curriculum perspectives without contradiction. Each points to possibilities in the different ways of knowing that can contribute to curriculum design and development. The approaches are mutually exclusive only when viewed from a narrow, reductionist point of view. By exploring the epistemological assumptions underlying their differing curriculum designs and plans, educators may recognize the possibility of contributions from other ways of knowing.
The "logic" of the matrix suggests how the different ways of knowing complement each other. Columns to the left of a given perspective can be seen as limited expressions of that perspective and can be fully recognized and acknowledged. For example, the criterion of correspondence can be respected when the criterion of coherence is added as a basis for justifying a knowledge claim. Similarly, the criteria of correspondence and coherence do not invalidate the stimulus-response associations that have conditioned a fear of crossing bridges, but they do provide an additional context for evaluating the implicit claim about
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the danger of bridges. Each successive criterion can be viewed as a means of recognizing the limitations of knowledge claims based on less stringent criteria: perspectives represented in columns to the right of any point of view are, in turn, more encompassing . The contributions of perspectives represented in columns to the right cannot be fully appreciated from the perspective offered by the more limited assumptions. A clear implication of this logic is that educators only limit their contributions to students by designing curricula which do not draw on the full range of human ways of knowing.
Psychological implications. A developmental pattern can be recognized in the sequence proposed for the four ways of knowing. Certain ways of knowing are more accessible later than earlier in an individual's development. However, it may be useful to consider whether, at any age, each of these ways of knowing is understandable to a learner in some form. The limitations may lie in the inability of learners to operate from more complex ways of knowing. We all may be able to understand far more than we can explain to others; we can see when we are shown. The assignment to dissect a frog may elicit from many young learners a certain deep resistance, even revulsion, that has powerful educational value. The resistance to destroying life may underlie what might be passed off as squeamishness to handle something "slimy." It may be that a kinship, or identity, with another life form is present behind the squeamishness, and the resistance to doing harm may be a much more powerful phenomenon to explore than the biological facts of life in the lesson. This is not to say that the biological facts are less important, but the knowledge of the biology, even for the biologist, must have its context in a larger sense of identity if it is to serve us as individuals and as inhabitants of a planetary ecosystem .
Curriculum implications. A further clear implication of the holistic approach to curriculum thinking represented here is the possibility of a curriculum much richer and more powerful than curricula grounded in a single way of knowing. All ways of knowing can be made available to all learners even when they are not yet able to sustain a performance at a developmentally higher "level" than the curriculum objectives require for mastery. In short, we can design curriculum from the assumption that, as educators, we are relating to individuals who are not only more or less plastic organisms which can be shaped through reinforcement but who are also capable of recognizing their identity with all living things and with the planet itself. To do so would honor the nature of the learner in a way that curricula designed from any single point of view will not. It is clear as well, if this implication is valid, that we are not honoring
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the possibilities of the learner in our current approaches to curriculum design.
There is little doubt that, as there has been a move to state mandates regarding local district's curriculum requirements, the greater involvement by state government in education is resulting in an explicit curriculum that is to be carefully and deliberately planned and taught. Less attention is being paid to the personal or social implications of the defined content or other curriculum alternatives needed for functioning in a multicultural, democratic society. Those ends or goals, amenable to testing and readily measurable, and factual knowledge are currently receiving a disproportionate amount of attention at the elementary and secondary school levels.
The content of what students are studying has become the new focus of curriculum reform by educational professionals and professional associations and foundations. Common themes include curriculum integration, emphasis on thinking skills, more rigorous content for all students and reform in the manner in which student learning is being assessed. For example, the English Coalition Report, Democracy through Language, 26 emphasizes that teachers should not be dispensers of information and judges of right answers. Instead, students should be actively engaged in learning through constant use of language in meaningful ways. Two reports from the field of mathematics will impact the schools curriculum. Everybody Counts: A Report to the Nation on the Future of Mathematics Education, 27 recommends that at the elementary level, emphasis be given to developing students' "number sense," including the use of common sense about how to find answers and to choose a method for doing so. The report advises a shift away from striving solely for accuracy in calculation. At the secondary level, the report recommends that all students be expected to study a common core of "broadly useful mathematics." Meanwhile, the widely endorsed report, Curriculum and Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics, zs presents the view that the value of informational knowledge lies in its usefulness in the course of some purposeful activity. The report also notes that because some quantitative techniques are needed in almost every field, all students be given opportunities to develop an understanding of mathematical models, structures, and simulations applicable to many disciplines.
As in language arts and mathematics, the traditional boundaries among subject matters are being erased in science instruction. Salient points of Project 2061 from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Council on Science and Technology Education29 include giving
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emphasis to the interrelationship of the sciences; stressing ideas and thinking, in place of rote learning and memorization; and defining scientific literacy that should be required by all students. The report, Charting a Course: Social Studies for the 21st Century, 30 while recognizing that history and geography are central, also retains the term social studies to emphasize the multidisciplinary nature of the content. Curricular recommendations for the social studies include focusing on fewer topics in greater depth, instilling a clear understanding of the roles of citizens in a democracy and proving opportunities to practice citizenship. In addition, it is suggested that the social studies be taught in a consistent and cumulative manner from kindergarten through grade 12, emphasizing critical thinking and the use of knowledge to shape individual actions and help students evaluate sources.
The reports from the core subject areas mentioned above, with impetus for curriculum change coming from professional education groups and the academic community, offer reason for optimism that curriculum restructuring will move beyond Association and Correspondence ways of knowing. A curriculum that is restricted to those ends is not likely to serve the needs of graduates entering either postsecondary education or the work force. Learning how to learn, understanding and respecting people of other cultures, appreciating the arts and their contributions to our daily lives, learning to resolve conflicts, and valuing learning for learning's sake must also be considered.
The patterns that have been identified, which underly the formulation of curriculum perspectives in the matrix, are based on distinctions among different ways of knowing. Each perspective has its own integrity and logic, and each successive perspective respects that integrity within a broader formulation of what it means to know. This is not to argue that proponents of curriculum perspectives illustrated here as philosophically more encompassing have always granted the validity of other perspectives. What is clear is that much of the controversy about curriculum issues has hidden more creative possibilities than it has revealed. Curriculum design can challenge us to draw on our deepest levels of creativity in facing philosophical, psychological, and educational assumptions we have not yet fully recognized. Until we do so, we will not be able to transform our differences into gifts to our children and to ourselves.
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References
1. Elizabeth Vallance, "A Second Look at Conflicting Conceptions of Curriculum," Theory Into Practice 25 (No.1, 1987):24-30.
2. B. F. Skinner, Walden Two (New York: Macmillan, 1976). 3. Michael Polanyi, Personal Knowledge (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958). 4. Thomas S. Kuhn , The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, 2nd ed. (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1970). 5. Georg W. F. Hegal, Hegel Selections (New York: Charles Scribners, 1929). 6. John Dewey, Experience and Education (New York: Macmillan, 1939) . 7. Kenneth Wilber, The Spectrum of Consciousness (Wheaton, Illinois: Theosophical
Publishing House, 1977) . 8. Robert E. Ornstein, ed ., The Nature of Human Consciousness (San Francisco: W.
H. Freeman, 1973) . 9. Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism (New York: New American Library, 1974).
10. Daniel E. Vogler, Performance Instruction: Planning, Delivering, Evaluating (Blacksburg, Virginia : Virginia Polytechnical Institute and State University, 1988).
11. Ralph W. Tyler, Basic Principles of Curriculum and Instruction (Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1950).
12. Benjamin S. Bloom, All Our Children Learning (New York: McGraw-HilL 1982). 13. Franklin Bobbitt, The Curriculum (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1918). 14. E. D. Hirsch, Jr ., Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know (Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1987) . 15. William J. Bennett, American Education: Making It Work (Washington, D.C. : U.S.
Department of Education, 1988) . 16 . Carl R. Rogers, "Researching Person-Centered Issues in Education, " Freedom to
Learn for the 80s (Columbus, Ohio : Charles E. Merrill, 1983). 17. Arthur W. Combs, ed ., Humanistic Education: Objectives and Assessment (Wash
ington, D.C. : Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 1978). 18. Michael W. Apple, Education and Power (Boston : Routledge and Kegan PauL 1982). 19 . Henry Giroux, Ideology , Culture and the Process of Schooling (Philadelphia:
Temple University Press, 1981) . 20 . Paulo Freire, The Politics of Education (Amherst, Massachusetts : Bergin and
Garvey, 1985). 21. Ivan Illich , Deschooling Society (New York : Harper and Row, 1971). 22 . A. S . NeilL Summerhill (New York: Hart Publishing Company, 1960) . 23 . Wilber, The Specrum of Consciousness. 24 . Philip H. Phenix, "Transcendence and the Curriculum, Teachers College Record
73 (December 1971): 271-283. 25. Maxine Greene, "Curriculum and Consciousness," Teacher College Record 73
(December 1971) : 253-269. 26 . Richard Lloyd-Jones and Adrea Lunsford, eds., The English Coaltion Conference:
Oemocarcy through Language (Urbana, Illinois : National Council of Teachers English, March, 1989) .
27. Everybody Counts: A Report to the Nation of the Future of Mathematics Education (Washington, D .C.: National Academy Press, 1989).
28. Commission on Standards for School Mathematics Curriculum, Curriculum and
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Evaluation Standards for School Mathematics (Reston, Virginia : National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, 1989).
29. American Association for the Advancement of Science, Science for All Americans: Summary (Washington, D.C.: American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1989).
30. National Commission on Social Studies in the Schools, Charting a Course: Social Studies for the 21st Century (Washington, D.C, : National Commission on Social Studies in the Schools, 1989).
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