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This chapter explores the issues of knowledge and curriculum in the theory and practice of recognition of prior learning (RPL), beginning with a review of the ways in which these issues are handled within the RPL literature. The key argument is that 'the experiential learning discourses that are so dominant in RPL embody a stance that is anti-formal knowledge and that this leads to silences, paradoxes and contradictions around knowledge and curriculum in theory and practice'. The chapter then presents and evaluates aspects of Bernstein's curriculum theory, in terms of their usefulness for enhancing understandings of knowledge in and around RPL. The chapter concludes that while there are provisos in using Bernstein's concepts, they do provide a powerful language for theorising knowledge and curricula in RPL, making RPL practices more 'epistemologically accountable'. Finally, the metaphor 'knowing the borders and crossing the lines' is used to argue for a more theoretical approach to RPL that involves understanding knowledge and curricula theoretically at three interrelated levels: within mainstream curricula; in terms of the nature of the knowledge that candidates bring to RPL; and within RPL curricula.

This chapter uses a case study of learning in an informal context within a South African trade union to explore the role of culture in the process of knowledge transmission and learning in informal social contexts. Its aim is to contribute to the understanding of culturally diverse forms of knowledge and learning. The chapter is based primarily on the author's research into processes of learning and forms of pedagogy and knowledge within the non-formal, collective organisational context of a trade union, but also draws on the author's experience of educational work with trade unions and the training of community educators and development workers. It argues that knowledge and learning are shaped by history, local context and culture and that identifying the 'totemic' logic of this particular knowledge system is needed to fully appreciate its meaning and significance. Finally, the importance of these arguments in the implementation of recognition of prior learning (RPL) is examined.

This chapter highlights some of the problematic conceptions that underpin recognition of prior learning (RPL) practices. It argues 'that a view of knowledge inspired by complexity science challenges the conventional notions of 'prior learning', and opens possibilities for rethinking ways to 'recognise' it', critiquing RPL practices from a postmodernist, feminist philosophical perspective. Viewing learning through the lens of complexity science raises questions about the process of its recognition. Addressing these questions may be difficult within an institutional context where a commitment to champion adult students' experiential knowledge is what motivates those championing RPL, and the following suggestions are provided: emphasising learning as a process involving complex systems that unfold continuously; treating the representation of the co-emergent learning process as a fixed artefact that excludes much of the complex system being considered; and making explicit the problem of who and what is doing the 'recognising' and the politics of this recognition.

The recognition of prior learning (RPL) is an educational response to the need to widen participation in education and training for economic advancement and social inclusion. The social meanings of RPL have different configurations depending on historical, cultural, economic and political forces in different places. One constant is the reliance on the widely pervasive educational philosophies of experiential learning: constructivism and progressivism. This book challenges the orthodoxy of experiential learning and the particular readings of knowledge, pedagogy, learning, identity and power which it privileges. It does this by introducing different theoretical resources to RPL and drawing on experiences of RPL in the UK, South Africa, Australia, Sweden, Canada and the USA. The book provides a range of re-conceptualisations of the relational terrain between adult experience and learning on the one hand, and specialist or academic knowledge on the other. The contents are: Introduction and overview of chapters / Judy Harris; Different faces and functions of RPL: an assessment perspective / Per Andersson; Questions of knowledge and curriculum in the recognition of prior learning / Judy Harris; A disciplinary-specific approach to the recognition of prior informal experience in adult pedagogy: 'rpl as opposed to 'RPL' / Mignonne Breier; Portfolio-based assessment of prior learning: a cat and mouse chase after invisible criteria / Yael Shalem and Carola Steinberg; RPL and the disengaged learner: the need for new starting points / Roslyn Cameron; Beyond Galileo's telescope: situated knowledge and the recognition of prior learning / Elana Michelson; Using critical discourse analysis to illuminate power and knowledge in RPL / Helen Peters; The politics of difference: non-recognition of the foreign credentials and prior work experience of immigrant professionals in Canada and Sweden / Shibao Guo and Per Andersson; RPL: an emerging and contested practice in South Africa / Ruksana Osman; 'Tools of mediation': an historical-cultural approach to RPL / Linda Cooper; Vocations, 'graduateness' and the recognition of prior learning / Leesa Wheelahan; Recognising prior learning: what do we know? / Helen Pokorny; Reconfiguring RPL and its assumptions: a complexified view / Tara Fenwick; Understanding the transformative dimension of RPL / Susan Whittaker, Ruth Whittaker and Paula Cleary; Endword / Michael Young.

Recognition of prior learning (RPL), known in the US as prior learning assessment, arose out of the student-centred educational movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s. It has, more recently, been introduced in many other countries, emerging at different historical moments and taking on the political and philosophical marks of its disparate new settings. However, the undertheorisation of RPL practice remains the norm and 'RPL remains trapped within a model of transcendental rationality and individual cognition that is shared by white academic cultures across the globe'. This chapter revisits the epistemological foundations of RPL practice, focusing on the specific attention paid to portfolio-assisted evaluation.