'These concepts do not represent ideal typical models of educational knowledge, but highlight an analytical distinction between two modes of legitimation that are always and everywhere coexisting and articulating within educational knowlwedge, i.e. they are ever-present and competing principles of legitimation. As such, they represent a repertoire. The lack of empirical examples given in thise definitions is thus intentional, for their realisations as languages of legitimation are a function of the context. (Maton, 1999; p. 157)

The knower mode also leaves intellectual fields vulnerable to criticism from outside higher education; after all, if it is only the specific knower who can know, then professional academics are dispensable (unless they research only themselves). Such an argument may seem facile, but is a realistic possibility. For example, telephone callers to a recent British radio programme on the issue of a referendum on European monetary union repeatedly asked: 'Why should we bother voting for and paying the salaries of politicians if they are only going to ask us to make decisions, that is their job, not ours'. (ibid.; p 162)