Abstract

The paper identifies the power oriented learning structures of much contemporary schooling in Australia and proposes that learning structures of schooling and the processes which mediate school learning should focus more on empowering the individual child than the institutions within which they learn. To achieve this objective we propose a reconceptualisation of each of three ideas central to education in schools: the power of the individual child, the purposes of school education, and ‘the dominant educational epistemology of power’ operating in Australian or Western societies. In the view we advance here, this pedagogy of power epistemology has defined, shaped and limited the dominant theory and praxis of education in schools as we know it. We advocate a model of empathetic epistemology and participatory pedagogic consciousness affording a ‘reformed’ educational context within which a holistic pedagogic conception of, and emphasis on, individual child development from early childhood to schooling completion can thrive.