Questioning Knowledge

Procedural knowledge = knowing how

Declarative knowledge = knowing that

Schemata = thinking structures crafted from connected knowledge enabling us to think critically.

Substantive knowledge = facts, concepts, rules - the building blocks of subject e.g. understanding the process of evaporation. This “substance” is central to thinking scientifically (or mathematically, historically etc).

Disciplinary knowledge = knowledge about how the decisions behind what knowledge “makes it” into the accepted corpus of each subject are made, and, just as importantly, how accepted knowledge can be challenged, superseded or rendered obsolete. A curricular term for what pupils learn about how that knowledge was established, its degree of certainty and how it continues to be revised by scholars, artists, or professional practice.

Neil Postman (1970) Teaching as a Conserving Activity
“Biology is not plants and animals.  It is language about plants and animals. It is a way of talking about planets and stars.”

Disciplinary ways of talking have certain features, e.g. diagrams, tables, formulae in science. Disciplinary knowledge in science also involves knowing about how empirical experimentation is used to test if hypotheses about physical reality can be corroborated or disproved. It involves knowing how scientists go about testing, what might count as corroboration or disproof, and the specific ways scientists communicate their ideas, for example by using diagrams.

Learning disciplinary knowledge makes no sense unless accompanied by swathes of substantial knowledge. It would be like trying to understand the complexities of a football match purely through the application of the offside rule.

Primary school teachers, in particular, are prone to thinking th