Educational Psychology—Limitations and Possibilities

CHAPTER 60
Knowledge in a Reconceptualized
Educational Environment
RAYMOND A. HORN JR.
In the current climate of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), public knowledge of the educational
process has been limited by the sound byte simplicity of the political rhetoric concerning education.
Specifically, substantial discussion about issues concerning knowledge, such as what
constitutes valid knowledge and how knowledge is produced or acquired, is left to the experts
and the others who the experts invite into the conversations. The result of these expert-driven
discussions is the determination of educational policy about knowledge, and the subsequent
mandated curriculum that is based on this sanctioned knowledge. Seldom are administrators,
teachers, students, and parents brought into this formative conversation. The proposition that
conversation about knowledge is best left to experts who have little contact with the schools, but
are closely aligned to economic, political, and cultural special interests, has created a situation
where public participation by all educational stakeholders is limited to discussions about how the
teaching and assessment of externally mandated knowledge can be facilitated through the actions
of administrators, teachers, students, and parents. The result of this lack of public participation
in the conversation that forms epistemological policy is the tacit assumption by the public that
there simply are no issues concerning knowledge that need to be discussed, except high-profile
and politically charged value issues such as evolution, intelligent design, and creationism. This
conversational situation facilitates public acceptance of the positivist assertion that there is empirically
objective and valid knowledge that simply needs to be transmitted to or discovered by
teachers and students. Another outcome is that the public is not aware of the constructivist nature
of knowledge, and of the very different values and consequences that are attached to the different
ways that knowledge is produced.
The lack of public conversation about knowledge is indicative of the positivist and conservative
control of education. This strategy of control is significant for a number of reasons. First, this
colonization of knowledge allows curriculum to be viewed only from a technical rational aspect
of education that masks the politically significant values and outcomes attached to different views
of curriculum. In this context, standardized curriculum, which is inherently value-laden and has
significant consequences for those who must learn this curriculum, is posed as representing a
consensus about which meanings and interpretations of reality are true and valid. Second, this
imposed and misleading consensus about curriculum aligns with specific instruction, assessment,