The network Knowledge and Quality across School Subjects and Teacher Education (KOSS) brings together three cross-disciplinary educational research groups, rooted in several academic disciplines from Sweden, Finland and England:
Together we seek to understand how educators and education systems can ensure that school-based knowledge building reaches its transformative potential.
In our work we draw upon the concepts ‘powerful knowledge’ and ‘epistemic quality’ to help us understand the qualities that knowledge building has when it is effective and empowering, and to help us understand how educational processes can build and develop these properties.
Our research focuses on the ways in which knowledge itself is transformed as it is recontextualized at individual, institutional and societal levels. Our long-term goal is to contribute to meeting the needs of future citizens by producing new knowledge about educational processes. This will have the potential to improve education by supporting the development of powerful subject disciplinary knowledge in schools.
KOSS is lead and administered by Karlstad University and is financed 2019–2024 by the Swedish Research Council.
October 16–19, 2023 in Karlstad, Sweden
The concluding meeting of KOSS Network consisted of three days of discussing powerful knowledge and didactics. The participants visited classrooms and worked on several shared research projects.
Keynote:
Gérard Sensevy (University of Western Brittany): Cooperative Engineering in Joint Action Theory in Didactics (JATD): Epistemological, Theoretical, and Empirical Questions
May 9–11, 2023 in Vaasa, Finland
Symposium: Aiming towards powerful knowledge: recontextualisation across curriculum subjects
21–23 March 2023, UCL Institute of Education; London and Online
Professor Stefan Hopmann (University of Vienna): How subjects matter in schools: The powers of school knowledge
Emeritus Professor Michael Young (UCL Institute of Education): Reflections on the problem of conceptualising knowledge in educational research
25–27 October 2022, University of Helsinki and Online
Professor Johan Muller (University of Cape Town): The palimpsests of knowledge: Negotiating differences in curriculum studies and didactics traditions
15–17 March 2022, Karlstad University and Online
Professor Nikolaj Elf (University of Southern Denmark): From writing to green transition: Research in the qualities of comparative subject-specific didactics
Professor Anke Wegner (Trier University): Comparative research into didactics in Germany
18–20 October 2021, UCL Institute of Education and Online
Brian Barrett (SUNY – College at Cortland) & Jim Hordern (University of Bath): Towards Powerful Professional Knowledge in teacher education in the USA and England: Reframing the foundations
Johan Muller & Ursula Hoadley (University of Cape Town): A pedagogic compact: Retrieving ‘powerful’ educational knowledge from Didaktik and curriculum studies
Zongyi Deng (UCL Institute of Education): Constructing ‘Powerful’ Curriculum Theory
Helmut Johannes Vollmer (University of Hamburg): Education as Bildung: An essential frame for developing powerful professional knowledge for subject specialist teachers
Michael Young (UCL Institute of Education): Bridging divides in educational theory?
8–9 March 2021, online
Professor Clare Brooks (Institute of Education, UCL): Knowledge as a quality conundrum in initial teacher education programmes around the world
Professor Lise Iversen Kulbrandstad (Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences): Reinventing subject teaching in Norwegian teacher education: A move towards developing powerful professional knowledge?
6–7 Oct 2020, online
Associate Professor Larissa McLean Davies (University of Melbourne): Investigating Powerful Literary Knowledge
Professor Ellen Krogh (University of Southern Denmark): Researching Comparative Disciplinary Didactics
4-6 March 2020, Institute of Education, University College London
Professor Chris Winch (Kings’s College London): Curriculum Design - Understanding Epistemic Ascent
Professor Zongyi Deng (Institute of Education, UCL): Powerful Knowledge, Transformation, Curriculum and Didaktik
Dr. Jim Hordern (Bath University): Recontextualisation and Subject Specialist Teaching
16–18 October 2019, University of Helsinki
Professor Monique Loquet (Rennes 2 University): Characterising the Epistemic Quality of Knowledge Living in the Classroom as the Basis of Authentic Cultural Practices? The Case of Basketball in Physical Education
Emeritus Professor of Education Brian Hudson (University of Sussex): Epistemic Quality for Equitable Access to Quality Education in School
2–6 September 2019, Hamburg
17 January 2019, UCL Institute of Education, University College London
15–16 May 2019, Stockholm
13–15 May 2019, Stockholm
15–17 October 2018, Tvärminne
3–4 September 2018, Bolzano
8-10 March 2018, Oslo
21–22 February 2018, Apertin
18–19 January 2018, University of Helsinki
23–24 October 2017, University of Helsinki
29–31 May 2017, Odense
Swedish Research Council, network grant: Knowledge and Quality across School Subjects and Teacher Education (2019–2023)
Hanaholmen (Kulturfonden för Sverige och Finland): Research collaboration between researchers of subject-specific teacher education of the University of Helsinki and Karlstad University, 2018