Two Axes for the Analysis of 'Commonsense' and 'Formal' Geographical Knowledge in Classroom Talk.

Teaching and learning the various aspects of a school discipline's contents (its 'subject knowledge') are obviously part of the main agenda for high schools. While a vast body of material exists on curriculum contents, on pedagogic techniques for their dissemination and on the psychology of learning, very little attention has been paid to actual sites of learning in relation to the production of knowledge and its acquisition. This is especially so regarding the discursive practices which are the main means of teaching and learning in those places. This paper sets out to discover something of those practices and takes particular interest in the means by which 'commonsense' knowledge, i.e. knowledge which any member of a community might have, is relied upon as a resonance-both explicitly and implicitly-by teachers and students for the production and acquisition of 'formal' (or 'subject') knowledge. Our overall problematic is: assuming that learning cannot be done ab novo but must rely on whatever already existing resources can be mustered, how is the 'raw material', as it were, of quite ordinary knowledge utilized in the co-production of relatively more esoteric 'subject' knowledge? Such an approach could be taken to mean that ordinary information (knowledge that) is transformed in classrooms into 'subject' information. Doubtless this does occur. However, we should like to demonstrate some instances of the way in which teachers and students rely on procedural knowledge (knowledge how; knowledge of ways and means or methods) in order to work up knowledge of a school subject. In the present instance, it happens to be geographic knowledge that interest us, particularly as applied to ekistics, but no doubt the general problematic could be addressed to other areas of the curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]