What Knowledge is Worth Knowing?
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What Knowledge is Worth Knowing? A Bernsteinian Analysis of Higher Primary Science Curricula in Contrasting Socioeconomic Contexts Edith R. Dempster 1 # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract
The paper reports a study that used a Bernsteinian analysis in order to investigate the association between higher primary science curriculum and social equity in four contrasting socioeconomic contexts: British Columbia (Canada), Singapore, South Africa and Kenya. The official science curriculum of each jurisdiction was analysed in terms of strength of knowledge boundaries, selection and progression of content and the use of vertical and horizontal discourses. All four curricula included life science and physical science topics, with a variable attention given to earth and space science and technology. South Africa and British Columbia had strong boundaries between content domains, while Singapore and Kenya had weak knowledge boundaries. The depth, an indicator of increasing specialization, increased over the higher primary years in each curriculum. British Columbia and Singapore addressed fewer topics in each year of study than Kenya and South Africa. Kenya included many applied science topics, including technology, health education and agriculture. South Africa separated physical science into chemistry and physics and integrated technology and health education into science. The two wealthier countries, British Columbia and Singapore, prioritized vertical discourse, while the two developing countries, South Africa and Kenya, referenced horizontal discourse more frequently. The results only partially support the claims made by Bernstein (Br. J. Sociol. Educ. 20:157–173, 1999) and Young and Muller (2016) for an association between the curriculum and social equity. Keywords Primary science curriculum . Content selection . Knowledge boundaries . Progression . Vertical /horizontal discourse . Social equity
* Edith R. Dempster [email protected]
1
School of Education, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Private Bag X01, Scottsville 3209, South Africa
E. R. Dempster
1 Introduction 1.1 Background and Purpose of the Study Sociology of education emerged during a time of expansion of provision of education from an elite few to the broad population. Its concern was that education privileged the middle class or ruling elite, excluding other sections of the population, notably the working class (Morgan et al. 2018). The goal of sociology of education was to promote equality of educational opportunity to all sectors of society which was seen as the gateway to social mobility, enabling previously disadvantaged communities to attain the economic benefits associated with education (Morgan et al. 2018). Along with factors such as teacher quality, school leadership, characteristics of the schooling system and educational reform (Deng and Gopinathan 2016), the curriculum is an important contributor to widening access to education (Young and Muller 2016). The organization of the school curriculum may serve to reproduce social and economic inequali
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