Cognitive Pluralism Curriculum Ideology

Cognitive pluralism is a theory of knowledge acquisition that argues that there are multiple ways of receiving and perceiving information and that each individual's learning experiences are unique in the values, beliefs, assumptions, and ideas that accrete to his or her personal knowledge. As a consequence, these multiple-perspective inputs are incorporated into the learner's accumulated knowledge through mediating processes that reflect the influences and biases developed in prior learning. These internal and external influences have an impact on the process of representation, creating the individual's unique perspective and a personal base of accumulated knowledge.

Although many people in the education field acknowledge the existence of these multiple streams of data, there is some debate over the impact and influence cognitive pluralism exerts over learning. Cognitive pluralism ...