Bringing Powerful Knowledge into Classrooms
Subject teachers as agents of recontextualisation
Distributed for UCL Press
Bringing Powerful Knowledge into Classrooms
Subject teachers as agents of recontextualisation
An empirically grounded, yet theoretically sound, study of how teachers bring powerful knowledge into classrooms and develop effective thinking among their students.
Powerful knowledge equips students with the capacity to engage with systematic, disciplinary thinking, to imagine futures that are not yet conceived, and to think what is yet to be thought. Bringing Powerful Knowledge into Classrooms explores how teachers develop such knowledge in classrooms by transforming disciplinary understandings through subject teaching that responds to the educational needs of society.
Drawing on sociologist Basil Bernstein’s concept of recontextualization and theories of teacher agency, this book examines how teachers navigate the boundaries between academic disciplines, school subjects, and everyday knowledge. Through empirical case studies from the UK, Finland, and Sweden, it illustrates how teachers’ decisions are shaped by national expectations, institutional frameworks, and classroom dynamics. Combining Anglophone and Nordic traditions in subject teaching with curriculum theory and classroom research, the book offers a theoretically grounded yet practical account of how teachers recontextualize knowledge. It develops new insights into teacher agency and recontextualization that are highly relevant to teacher education, curriculum design, and educational policy. By focusing on real-life teaching across a range of subjects, the book deepens our understanding of how powerful knowledge is brought into classrooms and how teachers can be supported in this vital work.
Table of Contents
Notes on contributors
Introduction
Mark Hardman, Marie Nilsberth and Mikko Puustinen
Part I: Key concepts and theories
1 Powerful knowledge as a point of departure
Amna Khawaja, Marie Nilsberth and Mikko Puustinen
2 Disciplines and school subjects
Alison Kitson, Jenni Marjokorpi and Martin Stolare
3 Teacher agency and teacher knowledge
Mark Hardman, Alison Kitson and Mikko Puustinen
4 Multinational contexts for recontextualisation
Martin Stolare, Mikko Puustinen, Amna Khawaja and Mark Hardman
Part II: Empirical examples: powerful knowledge in teaching
5 Reaching vertical discourses through classroom interaction
Jenni Marjokorpi and Liisa Tainio
6 Digitally mediated transformations and teacher beliefs in teaching literary reading
Marie Nilsberth and Christina Olin-Scheller
7 The materiality of classrooms
John-Paul Riordan and Mark Hardman
8 Understanding and unpacking societal pressure that influences recontextualisation: the case of history
Mikko Puustinen and Amna Khawaja
9 Agency and recontextualisation in the physics classroom
Alison Kitson
10 Recontextualising geography for the classroom
Alex Standish
Part III: Insights and developments
11 Aiming for powerful knowledge: curriculum futures across empirical cases
Amna Khawaja and Mikko Puustinen
12 Theorising the recontextualisation processes: the teacher’s role revisited
Mikko Puustinen, Jenni Marjokorpi and Amna Khawaja
13 Teacher agency within recontextualisation events
Mark Hardman, Alison Kitson and Mikko Puustinen
14 Bringing powerful knowledge into classrooms: subject teachers as agents of recontextualisation
Marie Nilsberth, Mark Hardman and Mikko Puustinen
Index