Jaka koncepcja wiedzy jest „potrzebna” pedagogice?
What concept of knowledge does pedagogy need?

Summary/Abstract: The concepts of knowledge, such as truth or justification, without any doubt belong to primary epistemic values, and as such, are subjects to epistemological investigations. My aim is not to examine conceptions in that field. Knowledge is one of elementary values which underlies the theory of education too. Therefore the concept of knowledge is not only a problem of epistemology but also of pedagogy. In this article I present an outline of two approaches to the notion of knowledge – the traditional and pragmatic ones. Conservative school models promote the traditional approach to knowledge, in which the knowledge gains the status of an objectively existing value. In the pragmatic approach, knowledge is defined as a society’s product of “handling reality”. The traditional concept of knowledge implicates a radically objective understanding of this value. I try to show that objective knowledge cannot be attained and therefore is useless for the theory of education (irrespective of the adopted paradigm). I affirm that the perspective the lacking of ability to obtain knowledge – as an objective value created and based on the relations to an autonomic world (the world by itself) – seems to be unacceptable for pedagogy. Therefore I finally postulate that we should accept the solution given by pragmatism and constructivism, for which knowledge is not an autotelic value, but usefulness (theory, information etc.) has to be the only criterion of actions.

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