Can Powerful Knowledge Save Us? Critical Reflections through the Lens of Political Education

Reviewer comments

Authors’ response

 1. I was disappointed not to see a bit more engagement with those who have argued explicitly with Young's thesis. In particular the work of John White is worth including, and John Beck has explicitly addressed the relevance of this idea to citizenship education. Lee Jerome has used these ideas to discuss citizenship education in the UK.

Beck, J. (2013). Powerful knowledge, esoteric knowledge, curriculum knowledge. Cambridge Journal of Education, 43(2): 177-193.

Jerome, L. (2017). What do citizens need to know? An analysis of knowledge
in citizenship curricula in the UK and Ireland. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, DOI: 10.1080/03057925.2017.1295808

White, J. (2018). The weakness of “powerful knowledge”. London Review of Education, 16(2): 325–335. DOI https://doi.org/10.18546/LRE.16.2.11

The authors would like to say thank you for the recommendations in further reading. Some arguments from Beck, Jerome and White (as well as Carlgren) have been added. However, some parts of this conversation are a little bit on the side in regard to the errand of the article, such as the discussion about forms of knowledge. The authors completely agree with the critique that for something to become “powerful” it has to be decided what is to be understood in teaching (cause and consequence is not powerful per se). This is just one of the problems with using PK as a theory when shaping a curriculum. Please consider our changes in the text in regard to this.

2. I would recommend you rewrite the abstract so you summarise your position, rather than merely introduce the topic. Why not tell the reader up front that you are going to argue Young's PK is a useful starting point for Civic Education but not sufficient on its own?

The abstract has been rewritten.

3. Section 3.1 needs to be proofread, there seemed to be a few grammatical errors.

The section has been somewhat changed. As we are not native English speakers the manuscript will be proof-read if/when it is accepted.

4. Section 5 should be labelled section 4 (and vice versa).

The mislabelling of the sections has been altered.

5 (a). Section 5 (current) really does slip between social science, social studies and history and I think somewhere this needs to be addressed as a potential problem. Whilst there is a range of titles for related subjects, it is stretching a point to assume that they are always interchangeable, for example, in England these subjects are all separate and historians write about second order concepts which are quite similar (but more specific) to the second order concepts discussed here, but citizenship education does not share these and is generally discussed in rather different ways.

The titles of the subjects have been changed in the section (and the overall text). The notion of social studies, social science education and national variations of such school subjects is a challenge in writing about a specific subject designed for political, social and economic issues. We have added a footnote on this. Citizenship education is particularly challenging as it is the English translation of “Politische bildung” but sometimes a school subject per se. We hope our changes have made this clearer.

5 (b). It seemed to me that towards the end of section 5 it might be useful to discuss the final point in relation to your sixth second order concept. It at least seemed possible that assessing the normative dimension would potentially be quite similar to the process you describe as guiding students towards independent citizenship. If that were the case then it strengthens the argument in favour of PK.

We appreciate the point and have added a short segment on this (p. 8). Our argument is that the normative assessment is about understanding normative stances, but not necessarily invoking one’s own.

6. (Comments on the Quality of English Language)

Generally very good - I have noted one sub-section that needs a bit of attention

The section has been somewhat changed. As we are not native English speakers the manuscript will be proof-read if when it is accepted.

Reviewer comments

Authors’ response

1.      The manuscript presents discipline-based and progressive (deliberative & agonistic) approaches to democratic education as alternatives to each other. I have a minor issue with this presentation: namely, the way the discipline-based approach is portrayed in the paper – especially with its emphasis on procedural second-order thinking concepts – involves various similarities with the deliberative approach. The latter focuses on reason-giving practices and typically requires some knowledge of the subject matter prior to deliberation. Especially such features as use of evidence, assessment of normative features, and perspective-taking characterize deliberative democratic education as a practice. I would therefore like to see the authors expand a little on why exactly educators should opt for the discipline-based rather than the deliberative approach, especially considering that the deliberative approach might be better equipped to take into account the reality, personal perspectives and life-world of students, which the authors fear might be neglected in the discipline-based approach. Also, deliberative education has been argued to be especially beneficial for addressing controversial issues (Hess etc.), which is also something that the authors fear that the discipline-based approach might not be able to do. Furthermore, agonism and deliberation are typically treated as contrasting rather than mutually compatible approaches, which is why I suggest the authors to say a couple of sentences about why these approaches can both be situated under the umbrella-term “progressive”, and what might be important to consider as their central differences. It has been argued in the literature that the agonistic approach might even feed into polarization, for instance.

We have tried to downplay the opposition between the two approaches as this is not our view or that we find them incompatible. Rather, it is a depiction of two research traditions that favors one or the other. At the same time, we discuss the two approaches related to both teaching and learning. As this article addresses why PK (or disciplinary knowledge) is not enough we focus on what it can and cannot give in regard to political education. In the conclusion, we have added some additional sentences and clarifications.

2.      Teaching controversial issues is a theme that the authors touch upon various times in the manuscript and also suggest a pedagogical approach on how controversial issues ought to be taught. There is a broad discussion in philosophy of education concerning the teaching of controversial issues and the criteria of controversiality (Hand, Yacek, Warnick & Smith etc.) in the context of education, which is entirely neglected by the authors. While I do not expect them to dwell much on this discussion, I would like to see the manuscript indicate that the authors are aware of this discussion and situate their position within the discussion. For instance, how do they define controversial issues, what criteria they use etc.

A footnote has been added to indicate an awareness. Also, the term controversial has been changed to “controversial and sensitive issues” to indicate that we are talking about issues that might invoke controversy or be sensitive for students.

3.      While it is implied various times that discipline-based democratic education can be beneficial for supporting democracy in the context of polarized political societies, it would be great if the authors could – maybe in the conclusions – expand a little on the idea of how exactly can discipline-based democratic education help to address problems that are specific to polarized societies. For instance, it is characteristic of affective polarization that citizens support the political ideas valued within their political in-group, and their reasoning is much affected by their political affiliations. Affective polarization might thus jeopardize the exact procedures that are being taught in the discipline-based approach. How to tackle this problem?

The authors understand the problem you are addressing and does not have a straight answer. In a growing number of cases, it is obvious that education offers few tools to bridge political polarization when it has gone too far. We have tried to add some comments in the concluding discussion.