Study On Concepts Of Curriculum Knowledge

Curriculum crisis has caused a deep concern on the concepts of curriculum knowledge. Concepts of representationalism knowledge are the instigator and culprit for this curriculum crisis. This kind of epistemology had regarded knowledge as precise and truthful external reflection and representation of independent object, which meant knowledge as representationalism. Charles Taylor, Canadian philosopher, has named it as modern epistemology which originated from western philosophy epistemology initiated by Descartes, including the core purport of the Enlightenment. The fundamental purports of this modern epistemology lied in:the "dualism theory" about the relationship between the subject and the object, the "picture theory" about the relationship between the knowledge and the world, and the "reflection theory" about the relationship between the individual and the knowledge. Therefore, the cores of the knowledge concepts of the representationalism have consisted in essentialism, objectivism, universalism and scientism. There is no denying that some educationalist in the history of curriculum theory field such as Peter Ramus, John Amos Comenius, Johann Friedrich Herbart, Herbert Spencer and so on had presented their curriculum understanding basing on the knowledge concepts of representationalism, and had undergone the crisis of representationalism epistemology. The concepts of the representationalism knowledge in our practical curriculum field were embodied as that:the concept of curriculum knowledge as "edifice" metaphor, as "liquid" metaphor and as "object" metaphor. The problem of representationalism concepts of curriculum knowledge represented as the separation and deviation between the curriculum knowledge and the knowledge situation which developed or created knowledge, and the knowledge-inquiry process, and the children’s experience, and the teacher’s experience, and the complexity of the subject matter.It is necessary to transcend and reconstruct the concepts of representationalism knowledge basing on epistemology and the knowledge concepts of enactivism. Epistemology and knowledge concepts of enactivisim mean the comprehensive supplement and amendment of the representationalism since last century and also refer to the thought-concentrated and common-directional theories results which were represented and generalized the time spirits growing in that background so as to consider knowledge as the created process and product of individual participation in the world and the society. In a word, knowledge means to create and generate and it has contained the "relationship theory" between the subject and the object, the "emergent theory" about the relationship between the knowledge and the world, and the "participatory and transactional theory" about the relationship between the individual and the knowledge. According to the three dimensions between the knowledge and the nature, the knowledge and the society, the knowledge and the individual, the enactivism epistemology represented in the following aspects: knowledge as the problem-solving and inquiry tools, knowledge as the interactive-and-social conversation, and knowledge as the embodied and tacit understanding. It is undoubted that in the field of curriculum theory, the curriculum knowledge as experience basing on the reconstruction of the concept of experience by John Dewey’s empirical naturalism and the curriculum knowledge as situation based on the second generation of cognitive theory revealed the core connotation of epistemology and knowledge concept of enactivism. The practical principles to fulfill the knowledge concepts of enactivism included some dimensions as follows:the combination of the curriculum knowledge and the living world, the unification of the curriculum knowledge and the inquiring process, the intergrowth of the curriculum knowledge and the meaning domain, and integration of the rational and the irrational. The practical pursuit of the enactivism concepts of curriculum knowledge contained the aspects as follows:the teachers and students being the enactor of knowledge as the subject dimension of the enactivism curriculum knowledge, the integration of living world and subject matters as content dimension of the enactivism curriculum knowledge, and the combination of inquiry and conversation as method dimension of the enactivism curriculum knowledge.