Research School Network: How do we roll out (rather than rush out!) an evidence-informed curriculum in our schools? Part 1: Defining and developing coherence around your curriculum

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How do we roll out (rather than rush out!) an evidence-informed curriculum in our schools?

Part 1: Defining and developing coherence around your curriculum

This is the start of a five-part curriculum series about evidence-informed curriculum design with contributions from all the team at Huntington Research School.

What do we mean by the curriculum? I really like Mary Myatt’s definition The curriculum – taught and untaught – represents the totality of the experience of the child within schooling’. She goes on to say that a proper curriculum, grounded in the knowledge, concepts and overarching ideas of individual subjects is an entitlement for every child.’ Christine Counsell suggests that we should think of the curriculum as continuous, not just a sequence or chronology, it is much more like a narrative… content structured as narrative over time with multiple strands all spinning at once but constantly unifying and pulling things together’.

It is interesting to note the etymology of the word curriculum: it comes from the Latin word currere’, meaning to run the course”. Now this might be something that chimes with many busy teachers and school leaders, as all too often I hear teachers despairing about how they are going to get through the curriculum content’. This also might be all too familiar to our students too as they are rushed through the curriculum at a rapid rate by pressured teachers.

So how can we start to get to curriculum coherence? My attempt to summarise this is illustrated by the diagram below. I suggest we start with the curriculum vision and purpose – the what’ and the why’ of the content. Why am I teaching this? Where does it fit into the bigger picture of the curriculum plans? Why is it important to know or master this? What difference would it make to the learning if we didn’t do this? I really like Zoe Elder’s work as documented by her book Full on Learning for phrases to use in the classroom like we are learning this….. so that…’ ensuring the purpose is not just clear to staff but also to students.

RS Evidence

Knowledge

We need to consider subject knowledge (teacher and student knowledge), vocabulary, cultural capital and pedagogical content knowledge. Claire Sealy in her blog discusses the need for both

Declarative knowledge –the concepts, facts and rules: knowledge that sits and waits to be of service; and Procedural knowledge – produces action or is goal directed: to know how’.

Michael Young, Professor of Education at UCL Institute of Education, has argued for the right of all children to be taught what he terms powerful knowledge’ – The knowledge that comes from specialist communities and centuries of learning, and it does change, but more slowly than people believe. It is context-independent. It can lift children and young people out of their lived experience. It is the job of a teacher to engage with the prior experience of the pupils and give them access to powerful knowledge

Pedagogical content knowledge was originally suggested as a third major component of teaching expertise, by Lee Shulman (1986). Pedagogical content knowledge is a type of knowledge that is unique to teachers, and is based on the manner in which teachers relate their pedagogical knowledge (what they know about teaching) to their subject matter knowledge (what they know about what they teach). Pedagogical content knowledge is a form of knowledge that makes science teachers teachers, rather than scientists (Gudmundsdottir, 1987).

Pedagogy

Does your curriculum consider the following key aspects of pedagogy? Does it keep memory in mind throughout by supporting accurate encoding and rehearsal and retrieval? Do you explicitly teach metacognitive knowledge and regulation? Is there appropriate challenge and differentiation so that all learners have access to a broad curriculum? Is questioning carefully planned? How do you build on and develop literacy and numeracy? For support with evidence-informed strategies to investigate and develop see the EEF Teaching and Learning Toolkit and the excellent Guidance Reports.

Assessment


Assessment is the bridge between teaching and learning’. Dylan Wiliam

This is the process of gaining insight into what students know, understand and can do. The word assessment comes from the Latin to sit alongside’ – does your assessment model sit alongside’ your curriculum, is it an integral part or do the assessment structures in your organisation lead the curriculum? For all things assessment related you might want to search out or re-visit Daisy Christodoulou’s fantastic book Making Good Progress?’, in particular for the use of formative assessment to support schema building and long-term learning. The EEF’s Teaching and Learning Toolkit and A Marked Improvement’ report for evidence-informed feedback practices.

Getting coherence and cohesion

These are questions you might want to ask at a school level:

Do you have thoughtful conversations with colleagues about the curriculum map for pupils? Is it horizontally and vertically mapped through the school?
What are the key ideas and concepts and are they shared and developed with everyone?
What about the underlying and background knowledge pupils need in order to access that subject in later years?
How are we sequencing our curriculum for long-term learning?

I’ll leave you with a final thought from Mary Myatt: There are three important things to keep in mind about the curriculum. The first is that it is more complex and simpler than we have come to think. The second is that its status and content now have higher profile than in recent years. And the third is that it is never going to be possible to do it all. And we need to live with that.’

RS Evidence 2

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