Bringing Powerful Knowledge into Classrooms: Subject teachers as agents of recontextualisation (Knowledge and the Curriculum)

By Puustinen, Mikko

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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1806551144
• ISBN13: 9781806551149
• Release Date: February 2027
• Publisher: UCL Press
• Length: 234 Pages
• Weight: 0.79 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.8" x 9.1"