Ways of Knowing

Curriculum studies focuses on identifying knowledge that is worthwhile. Ways of knowing are a prerequisite concern that deals with how we can know what is worthwhile. How knowledge is obtained, attained, or acquired has long been the concern of a branch of philosophy called episte-mology. Edmund Short shows how forms of curriculum inquiry are derived from and contingent on such ways of knowing in Forms of Curriculum Inquiry. Some of the most widely debated episte-mological bases or ways of knowing include experience, authority, revelation, reason, empiricism, intuition, dialectic, dialogue and deliberation, critical inquiry, meditation, artistic engagement, embodiment, and indigenous forms of perceiving insight.

Experience creates a repertoire of cases, often informally, to be drawn on in future situations with similar attributes. John Dewey insisted that experience could be used to enhance the reconstruction of subsequent experience if it were subjected to careful reflection. Dewey differentiated between mere experience and an experience, conceiving the latter as providing increased meaning in the present by invoking connections between past endeavors and future possibilities.

Authority is placing faith in leaders, icons, traditions, literatures, oratory, mass media, propaganda, or other sources based on credentials, official licensure, or other aspects of reputation. Authoritative knowing can be influenced greatly by exercise of power, wherein persons accept authority because of fear of reprisal or oppression. This is a conflation of power with knowledge; yet it is all too prevalent.

Revelation is a form of authority that has played such a dramatic role in human history that it should receive separate treatment. The assumption is that we come to know the most important matters of life through communication, such as prayer or watchfulness, with a deity or deities.

Reason is adherence to accepted rules of intellectual discourseways of marshalling evidence and argument. In courts one is often admonished to consider what a reasonable person would do under specified conditions. Sometimes reason is defined as varied forms of accepted induction or deduction.

Empiricism combines reason, deduction, induction, and authority, sometimes called the hypothetical-deductive method or positivist science. It begins with a felt need in a dilemma, formulating [Page 939]it as a question or problem, searching for evidence, formulating and studying hypotheses, analyzing intended and unintended consequences, and arriving at tentative conclusions that serve as pieces of a larger puzzle that enhances knowledge and induces additional research.

Intuition is a rapid or immediate apprehension of insight or understanding. With origins shrouded in mystery, some consider it fast, but others consider it derived from a connection with deeper dimensions of the universe that reveals truth. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has characterized a related form of apprehension as flow, whereas Donald Schön refers to reflection-in-action. Nel Noddings and Paul Shore have researched historical literatures of intuition as educational inquiry.

Dialectical reasoning traces at least to Plato's Socratic dialogues, wherein a thesis is argued and an antithesis counters it; through dialogue, a synthesis of the best of both is reached. The synthesis becomes a new thesis for which an antithesis is given, and a new synthesis emerges. Repeating the process creates and refines ideas. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel elaborated dialectic for historical phenomena, and Karl Marx developed it to characterize class struggle and revolution.

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