Knowledge Framework
The Knowledge Framework is Bernard Mohan's system for planning content-based and language-across-the-curriculum instruction. First set out in Language and Content (1986) and developed through decades of collaborative research with teachers, it treats an educational activity as a social practice — action in a frame of meaning — and maps how language, content, thinking, and visuals interlock inside that practice.
The Six Knowledge Structures
The framework organises knowledge into two strands of three. The specific-practical strand describes particulars; the general-theoretical strand describes patterns.
| Specific-practical | General-theoretical | |
|---|---|---|
| Description | Classification of entities by attribute | Principles (cause-effect, generalisation) |
| Sequence | Temporal sequence of events | Evaluation (judgement against criteria) |
| Choice | Description of situations | — |
Each knowledge structure corresponds to characteristic language resources (tense-aspect choices, cohesion types, text structure) and to characteristic visual organisers (tables, timelines, flowcharts, Venn diagrams, criterion grids). The framework's pedagogic move is to make those correspondences explicit so teachers can plan language development inside content instruction rather than hope it happens.
Language-Content Integration
Mohan's central target was the mainstream assumption that language is taught first and deployed in content classes later. His alternative: learners meet a social practice (growing a plant, running an experiment, analysing a historical event), and the language they need to participate in that practice is taught inside the practice, supported by key visuals that make the underlying knowledge structure available to learners with limited English.
Practical Use
Teachers use the Knowledge Framework to:
- Identify which knowledge structures a given content unit actually involves
- Choose key visuals that scaffold each structure
- Anticipate the language demands each structure makes on learners
- Sequence tasks so specific-practical work precedes, supports, and is eventually connected to general-theoretical work
- Design assessments that check both content understanding and the language that carries it
Influence
The framework is a direct ancestor of contemporary content-based instruction and CLIL planning, and it continues to underpin social-practice analysis in higher-education language pedagogy. It anchors Mohan's approach to systemic functional linguistics in a concrete classroom-planning tool, which explains why teachers use the Knowledge Framework where they often find SFL too abstract.
References
- Mohan, B. (1986). Language and Content. Addison-Wesley.
- Mohan, B., Leung, C., & Davison, C. (Eds.). (2001). English as a Second Language in the Mainstream: Teaching, Learning and Identity. Longman.
- Slater, T. & Mohan, B. (2010). Cooperative writing and academic knowledge: Scaffolding students into the knowledge framework. Social Practices in Higher Education chapter, University of Toronto Press.