From powerful knowledge to learners’ knowledge: Dewey’s theory of knowing and known and the problem of knowledge transformation

The debate on powerful knowledge has restored the question of knowledge to the centre of curriculum theory by providing epistemic criteria for curriculum content. Yet the inclusion of powerful knowledge in the curriculum does not explain how such knowledge becomes learners’ knowledge. This article addresses the problem of knowledge transformation by asking how publicly warranted knowledge can become learners’ knowledge without being reduced either to transmitted content or to subjective construction. It critically articulates Michael Young’s theory of powerful knowledge with Dewey and Bentley’s theory of knowing and known. This articulation is presented not as a full synthesis of social realism and pragmatism, but as a focused conceptual reconstruction of the sequence through which publicly warranted knowledge is recontextualised as curriculum knowledge, curriculum knowledge becomes operative through an educational knowing–known transaction, and learners’ knowledge is achieved as personally reconstructed yet publicly answerable knowledge. The article argues that Dewey and Bentley’s transactional account clarifies how curriculum knowledge becomes learners’ knowledge without losing its public and epistemic character. It concludes that powerful knowledge becomes learners’ knowledge through transactional reconstruction, not through transmission or unrestricted construction.