2007/08/13 by Leesa Wheelahan · 4 citations
Social Sciences · #Educational Theory and Curriculum Studies #Global Educational Policies and Reforms #Critical Realism in Sociology
paper · doi:10.1080/01425690701505540
This paper argues that competency‐based training in vocational education and training in Australia is one mechanism through which the working class is denied access to powerful knowledge represented by the academic disciplines. The paper presents a modified Bernsteinian analysis to argue that vocational education and training students need access to disciplinary knowledge using Bernstein’s argument that abstract, conceptual knowledge is the means societies use to think ‘the unthinkable’ and ‘the not‐yet‐thought’. I supplement Bernstein’s social argument for democratic access to the disciplines with an epistemic argument that draws on the philosophy of critical realism.