The notion of relation to knowledge: convergences and theoretical debates

Abstract

During the last 20 years, the notion of relation to knowledge has become disseminated, and it has been widely employed in the fields of education research, education of teachers and other professionals in the education system, and in the social debate about school. This theoretical and institutional - and even mediatic - success of the relation to knowledge syntagm signals, in my view, to real convergences that, however, should not diminish the importance of the theoretical or social questions and debates this notion elicits. Reflecting on the debates raised by the use by various researchers and research groups of similar notions (of relation to knowledge, but also of school experience, for instance) under different perspectives and theoretical frameworks, the objective of this paper is to clarify the theoretical, empirical and social challenges entailed by these debates, and extract from them new resources to think and act.