This Panel Discussion builds on earlier symposia at ECER conferences (Hudson, 2018; 2019) and also at the NOFA7 conference (Olin-Scheller, 2019). These symposia addressed questions related to powerful knowledge, epistemic quality and transformations across school subjects and teacher education from perspectives rooted in the traditions of continental European didactics. The associated papers that were presented arose from the research activities of the KOSS Network: "Knowledge and Quality across School Subjects and Teacher Education " which has been funded by the Swedish Research Council (2019-22). The network brings together cross-disciplinary educational research groups from Sweden, England and Finland specialising in different school subjects. The aim of the research programme is to study how content knowledge in different school subjects is defined and transformed, taking a comparative perspective across education systems in three national contexts: Sweden, England and Finland. By using the theoretical concepts of “powerful knowledge” (Young, 2015; Young and Muller, 2010), “epistemic quality” (Hudson, 2018) and “transformation” (Gericke et al., 2018) we study how these concepts form knowledge of importance for subject didactics and how this can be developed within teacher education. A central issue for this research programme is to explore how transformation processes can enable knowledge of high epistemic quality to be taught in school classrooms. The term ‘epistemic’ is concerned with the knowledge involved in a didactical or teaching-studying-learning situation. In turn the term ‘epistemic quality’ describes the quality of what students come to know, make sense of and be able to do in school. These issues form the point of departure for what can be regarded as teachers’ powerful professional knowledge. The specific research questions around which the KOSS research programme has been framed are as follows: 

1. How can the nature of powerful knowledge and epistemic quality in different school subjects be characterized?

2. How can the transformation processes related to powerful knowledge and epistemic quality be described?

3. How can the nature of teachers’ powerful professional knowledge be characterized and what are the implications for teacher education policy and practice?

Outputs from these symposia have formed the core contributions to two forthcoming books (Hudson et al., 2022a; 2022b). The first of these publications addresses questions of epistemic quality and powerful knowledge across school subjects with a particular focus on the implications for curriculum innovation. The second addresses the implications for innovation in teacher education policy and practice arising from the consideration of questions related to the development of powerful professional knowledge in particular. 

We will present an evaluation framework, drawing on both Winch (2013) and Young (2013, 2015), based on trajectories of epistemic quality and powerful knowledge in the development of expertise from the restricted ‘knowledge by acquaintance’ of the novice towards the sophisticated higher order ‘knowledge that’ and ‘knowledge how’ of a subject expert or ‘practical connoisseur’ in the cultural practice. In doing so we will draw on outcomes from a range of studies across school subjects and teacher education related to physical education, language learning, mathematics, literature education, social science education, history education, geography education, religious education and science education and also related to cross-curricular themes such as digitalisation, sustainable development and migration.

Finally we will give consideration to integrative themes arising from the analysis of associated key issues. These will focus on the implications of questions related to epistemic quality and powerful knowledge for curriculum innovation at the policy, programmatic and classroom levels and also on the implications of teachers’ powerful professional knowledge for innovation in teacher education policy and practice.

Brooks, C. and Tani, S., (2018) Epistemic Quality, Powerful Professional Knowledge and Teacher Education, Paper to Symposium at the European Conference on Educational Research (ECER 2018), University of Bolzano, Copenhagen, 4-7 September 2018. Hudson, B., Gericke, N., Olin-Scheller, C. and Stolare, M. (2022a) International Perspectives on Knowledge and Curriculum: Epistemic Quality across School Subjects, Bloomsbury Publishing plc, London. (Work in progress). Hudson, B., Gericke, N., Olin-Scheller, C. and Stolare, M. (2022b) International Perspectives on Powerful Knowledge and Epistemic Quality: Implications for Innovation in Teacher Education Policy and Practice, Bloomsbury Publishing plc, London. (Work in progress). Hudson, B. (2018) Powerful Knowledge across School Subjects, Symposium at the European Conference on Educational Research (ECER 2018), University of Bolzano, Copenhagen, 4-7 September 2018. Hudson, B. (2019) Powerful Knowledge and Epistemic Quality across School Subjects and Teacher Education, Symposium at European Conference on Educational Research (ECER 2019), University of Hamburg, 3-6 September 2019. Gericke, N., Hudson, B., Olin-Scheller, C. and Stolare, M. (2018) Powerful Knowledge, Transformations and the Need for Empirical Studies across School Subjects, London Review of Education: Special Issue on Knowledge and Subject Specialist Teaching, Vol. 16, Issue 3, 428-444. UCL IOE Press. https://doi.org/10.18546/LRE.16.3.06 Hudson, B. (2018) Powerful Knowledge and Epistemic Quality in School Mathematics, London Review of Education: Special Issue on Knowledge and Subject Specialist Teaching, Vol. 16, Issue 3, 384-397. UCL IOE Press. https://doi.org/10.18546/LRE.16.3.03 Olin-Scheller, C. (2019) Powerful Knowledge, Epistemic Quality and Transformations, Symposium at NOFA7, Nordic Conference on Teaching and Learning in Curriculum Subjects, Stockholm University, 13-15 May 2019. Winch, C. (2013). Curriculum Design and Epistemic Ascent, Journal of Philosophy of Education, 47, 1, 128-46. Young, M. (2015) Powerful knowledge as curriculum principle. In M. Young, D. Lambert, C.R. Roberts, and M.D. Roberts, Knowledge and the future school: Curriculum and social justice, 65–88, 2nd edition. Bloomsbury Academic, London. Young, M. (2013) Overcoming the crisis in curriculum theory: a knowledge-based approach, Journal of Curriculum Studies 45(2), 101–118. Young, M., & Muller, J. (2010). Three educational scenarios for the future: Lessons from the sociology of knowledge, European Journal of Education, 45, 11–27.