The Organization, Distribution and Transmission of Educational Knowledge : From the Viewpoint of Sociology of Curriculum

Abstract

Curriculum is defined as a whole system of structures and processes concerned with the selection, distribution, transmission, acquisition and evaluation of educational knowledge. In this sociological context, one major focus of the sociology of curriculum becomes an inquiry into the social organization of knowledge in educational institutions. In this paper, I shall first attempt to suggest the role of power in terms of selection and organization of school knowledge. According to the historic changes of curriculum administration in Japan, authoritarian characteristics of "power" had emerged in 1950 under the change of political and economic background. The governmental and administrative power in our modern Mass society has, however, different characteristics from the coercive power of 1950's, because of having been based on the national consensus, for instance, "Rin-kyo-shin". We must be convinced that the pedagogic discourse, as a principle of re-contextualizing the socio-political processes, is constituted by the role of "hegemonic power", and converted into the standard of what knowledge is valid in terms of transmission of school knowledge. The "contents" of knowledge are also classified, and the problems of stratification of knowledge are to be the important focus of pedagogical analysis. Alongside of taking the standpoint of Sociology of knowledge, the interpretative approach of analysing the reality-construction between teachers and pupils in terms of the "form" of transmission of School knowledge. Thus, this has effective implications for the study of Curriculum Process, sociology of curriculum is no longer conceived as the area of enquiry distinct from the pedagogy of curriculum.