In spite of considerable investment in curriculum research, policy reform and implementation, educational inequalities worsen around the world.  Policies informed by the knowledge economy are mediated within international and national policy arenas in complex ways, but the dominant underpinning discourses of economism, technical rationality and accountability by testing and quantification appear to persist. At the same time, debates continue about what configuration of curriculum knowledge provides equitable educational experiences and outcomes for all students. Is the ‘powerful knowledge’ of traditional school subjects the key to educational success for all? Do 21^st century students need to learn to be creative, innovative, flexible and skilful for global citizenship in the risk-ridden knowledge economy? 

In this symposium, we aim to prise open the subject/skill binary of the school knowledge debate with specific attention to humanities subjects, and to enquire into the implications of national policy conceptualisations of these for educational equity. We wish to know how student differences in cultural capital and identities can be best addressed in curriculum policy frameworks. Our research questions ask: (1) what current curriculum reconfigurations imply in relation to the conceptualization of knowledge, creativity, innovation and (2) the implications of this for equity.

We are interested in school humanities because they are traditionally thought to play a special role in the formation of sensibility and values and in inducting students into critical intellectual work. Second, in so far as ‘instrumental’ justifications for the humanities via innovation and entrepreneurship are evident, do these reshape and commodify the substance of these subjects, undermining their value as a creative or critical tool? Third, how do such curriculum changes in these humanities subjects impact on equity?

Papers in this symposium draw on a number of different theoretical perspectives that make claims about curriculum and its relationship to post-school inequalities and difference: the capability approach (Unterhalter and Brighouse, 2007); Fraser’s concepts of recognition and distribution (1997) and representation (2005) and finally, Derrida’s différance (Caputo, 1997). Each paper engages with a national context and school humanities subjects –Sweden in relation to the Swedish language, using CDA to analyse policy text; Australia first with regard to the subject of History, drawing on analyses of interviews with teachers and second, using critical policy analysis to compare contemporary treatments of humanities subjects over thirty years.  Geography curriculum policies are read deconstructively in the final English example.

Caputo, J. D. (1997). (Ed.) Deconstruction in a Nutshell: a conversation with Jacques Derrida. New York: Fordham University Press.

Fraser, N. (1997). Justice Interruptus: critical reflections on the ‘postsocialist’ condition. New York: Routledge.

Fraser, N. (2005). Mapping the Feminist Imagination: From Redistribution to Recognition to Representation. Constellations, 12: 295–307.

Unterhalter, E. & Brighouse, H. (2007). Distribution of what for social justice in education? The case of Education for All by 2015. In M. Walker & E. Unterhalter Amartya Sen’s Capability Approach and Social Justice in Education, pp. 67-86. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.