Powerful knowledge, school subjects and the curriculum: an international and comparative perspective

This introductory essay presents a special issue that foregrounds school subjects as purpose-built educational enterprises and reconsiders the role of powerful knowledge in national curricula. Framed against the marginalization of knowledge in both global policy reforms and contemporary curriculum theory, it argues for renewed attention to the educational purpose, content, and construction of school subjects by engaging with questions such as: What are the purposes of school subjects? How should powerful knowledge be conceived in the curriculum? How are school subjects conceptualized and constructed? The issue includes four articles examining the purposes and content of school subjects—geography, history, religious education, and biology—in national curricula across Sweden, Finland, and England. It also features two articles exploring changes in business and management education in Poland and the ‘life and death’ of Liberal Studies as a school subject in Hong Kong. This special issue advances two key propositions: first, that school subjects are structured to fulfil multiple academic, civic, social, and personal aims; and second, that powerful knowledge should be understood not only in terms of its epistemic structure but also in relation to the intellectual and ethical capabilities it enables.