The Curriculum - Razna Choudhury

A good curriculum in a secondary school is an inclusive learning journey on which the student acquires knowledge and skills that prepare them for a successful life after school. It also involves developing or enhancing key attributes to ensure students lead a successful, happy, healthy life and they are actively engaged with the world around them. It sounds simple, yet to achieve this is a complex task... so how should we plan our curriculum? In this blog I'll attempt to provide you with some ideas.

Curriculum Coherency

In Mary Myatt’s book, ‘Huh’ she argues for coherence within curriculum planning through proper identification and teaching of concepts. She points out that these are the golden threads that run through subject's ‘baskets’ which hold meaning and signpost underlying structures. Myatt goes on to say that a well-planned, coherent curriculum, where concepts are revisited in different contexts, helps students to make sense of learning. This also enables them to build on prior learning and understand how it is related to the new knowledge they are acquiring.

Marry Myatt argues that curriculum coherency is crucial to help students develop deep understanding.

Mary Myatt also talks about the 'curse of content coverage' - there is a temptation to think that covering more must mean that students learn more. But I believe that we cannot teach the next lesson or part of the scheme if students have not grasped what we are currently teaching.The idea that we should move on because that is what the schemes of learning says sends the message that the curriculum plan is more important than the students. 

Identifying the key concepts

Identifying the key concepts within the curriculum is crucial for learning. The concepts are important because they contain the big ideas and when students grasp these big ideas, learning becomes more efficient. We need to be mindful that if too much curriculum planning is focused on task completion, which is a bad proxy for learning, this may not lead to deep understanding.  When students grasp the concepts, their learning is more secure than if they have just completed a few worksheets or exercises from a textbook. Covering a lot of content may give the impression that students have learned a great deal when, in fact, all that may have happened is that students have completed some exercises, the learning is then superficial and will not stay in the long term memory. Students need to be able to say in their own words what they have learnt and how it relates to the bigger picture. If we ensure that the curriculum plans support conceptual development, we make planning easier and learning deeper.

When students understand concepts, this makes new knowledge secure. If students have access to, understand and are able to use the conceptual, technical vocabulary expertly and confidently, they are entering the territory of long term memory. So when we are planning, we have to identify the key concepts we want students to learn. When we identify these and do work around their original meanings, we take students into a deeper understanding of the subject.

Covering content does not guranteed understanding. It is crucial curriculum design provides the flexibility to promote deeper understanding of core concepts.

Thoughtful Sequencing

When the curriculum lacks coherence, it is harder to teach and harder for students to learn. It is tempting to think that because students have been taught something, they have got it. Careful consideration must be paid to the organisation and sequencing of the material to be taught. Topics must be rethought in order to avoid confusion. This needs to be held in mind when long and medium term plans are constructed and also during the daily delivery of lessons. We need to remind ourselves and our students of how what we are learning today fits into a bigger picture. 

Knowledge Transfer

I believe that it is important to show students that the learning process is not as isolated as it seems during the school day rather, in reality, it consists of many interconnected pieces. Learning does not end after one timetabled lesson but there are strong links within topics in a subject and across the wider curriculum. Learning is a continuous process not an event.

One way to show students the relevance and interconnectedness of learning is through cross-curricular teaching. Heidi Hayes Jacobs defines cross-curricular teaching as “a conscious effort to apply knowledge, principles, and/or values to more than one academic discipline simultaneously.” The goal of cross-curricular teaching is to bring together seemingly isolated subject areas by incorporating the knowledge and skills of one area into the work done in the others.

One of the benefits of cross-curricular teaching is that the more connections the mind makes, the better it is able to learn and retain information. Cross-curricular teaching helps students make more connections and gives more meaning and relevance to the subjects and skills they are learning. You can at least begin to show students that the things they are learning do have practical applications beyond an isolated classroom.

The more connections students can make between different subjects they learn the more developed there schemas become -this helps to promote deeper understanding and longer term memory and recall.

If we want our students to see and understand the connections between various subject areas, then teachers themselves need to look at each other subject's schemes of learning and identify common topics leading to a discussion on knowledge, skills, pedagogy, similarities and differences and making this explicitly clear to students. Sharing and using the same resources in different subjects allows students to see key concepts in different contexts and having discussions about the different meanings of keywords will lead to less confusion. Doing prior knowledge checks before starting a new unit of work or brainstorming curriculum connections to a new topic with students could lead to an opportunity for teachers from different disciplines to work collaboratively. Leaders need to ensure lesson planning time is used effectively and encourage working collaboratively across the curriculum which will reduce workload in time and forge better working relationships with teachers from different departments.

Further reading:

• Mary Myatt - Blogs on the Curriculum
• Tom Sherrington - Blogs on the Curriculum
• Jacobs, H. (1989) Interdisciplinary Curriculum: Design and Implementation. ASCD
• Myatt, M. (2021) Huh. John Catt Educational LTD
• Turner, S. (2016) Secondary Curriculum and Assessment Design. Bloomsbury.

Razna Choudhury - Assistant Headteacher

You can follow Razna on Twitter @RC_Denbigh

CPD in the time of Covid-19 - Subject Knowledge - Ian Stonnell

Subject knowledge has for many years been a neglected aspect of teacher development. Thinking back to when I was an NQT, the main focus of CPD was on pedagogy, classroom practice and the pastoral aspects of the job - subject knowledge sessions were sporadic and came occasionally through an external CPD course.

I suppose the logic behind this is based upon a presumption that a teacher already possesses the subject knowledge they require to teach, after all they should have a degree and a passion in that subject (why else would you want to teach it?) There is also a presumption that any gaps in teacher knowledge would be easily filled on the job. So long as we stayed a page ahead in the textbook, after a few years a teacher's knowledge would be secured.

However, this approach is increasingly up for debate. To understand the debate it is useful to understand the three types of knowledge teachers require to be effective.

1. Subject knowledge: Knowledge of a domain. e.g. Maths or Art etc.
2. Pedagogical knowledge: Knowledge of how to teach e.g. adaptive learning, cognitive science, metacognition, SEND, behaviour management etc.
3. Pedagogical content knowledge: Knowledge of how to teach a given subject. e.g. how to run a tennis skills session in PE or a short skit in drama.

The best teachers are competent in all three areas. However, currently subject knowledge is neglected in our CPD models. The current trend says this needs to change.

Currently CPD in most schools does not take into account subject knowledge development.

How important is subject knowledge?
With the changes in GCSE specification to be 'knowledge rich' there has been a scramble for teachers to fill the gaps. However, although many may have complained about this upscaling in knowledge, it is important to understand why this change has happened.

Think about money. There is a well known principle that if we start off our lives with a large amount of capital then it is easier to create more capital, regardless of how 'talented' we may be. Also if we have very little capital it is incredibly difficult to make any. Thus a gap between rich and poor develops. This is known as the Matthew effect.

Donald Trump may not be the most talented person around but with a small starting loan of a million dollars from his Dad he managed to do okay!

The Matthew effect also applies to knowledge. The more we know about a specific area of knowledge the easier it is to acquire more knowledge in that area. For our pupils, who are novices, acquiring knowledge is crucial in enabling them to accelerate and acquire more knowledge. As such, the knowledge rich curriculum is an attempt to narrow the gap between disadvantaged students and the rest. 

Research has shown that there is 'Matthew effect' in reading which has led to a word gap between advantaged and disadvantaged students.

This means that teachers need to be secure in the subject knowledge themselves in order to be able to deliver it effectively using sound pedagogical practices. This knowledge also needs to be deep enough to engage students. This is evident in many student surveys that have taken place at Denbigh in which students rate the best teaching in line with the teachers who they perceive to have the best subject knowledge. Furthermore, the students who won scholarships to Berkhamsted Sixth Form College reported that one of the major differences they noted was the subject expertise that their teachers possessed (this could be accounted for due to the transition to sixth form). 

It is evident that some of the most appreciated teachers are the ones who have deep subject knowledge. 

As an RE teacher, I can confess that my ability as a teacher only improved with the development of my own subject knowledge. Take for example my own knowledge of Islam. In my NQT year, a decade ago, my knowledge was no deeper than the five pillars. I could make a fun lesson or two and design lots of activities around them but the deeper knowledge behind those five pillars, the links to Islamic beliefs, history and culture and how they relate to personal and spiritual development did not exist. 

The best piece of CPD I did was to develop my knowledge of Islam. I sought out books on Islamic history and the Sunni/Shiah split, biographies of the Prophet (pbuh), as well as watching every documentary I could find. It took many years and is still ongoing.

Two of the books that helped me to become a better teacher of Islam.

Now, I would not claim to be anywhere near an expert (as the more we know, the more we realise we don't know) but I can be confident in answering further questions and contextualising beliefs and practices with a few more interesting anecdotes that promote engagement. That makes me a better teacher of RE regardless of what students I teach. 

How do we develop subject knowledge? 
Pedagogy matters - CPD in schools aims to help develop it and it should continue to do so. However subject knowledge needs more time. As a CPD lead at Denbigh we are planning to give more time to departments to help develop it in the upcoming 2021-22 academic year. Nevertheless, the best way to do it is to be passionate about our own subjects and seek out books, websites, subject associations and documentaries to develop our knowledge of our subjects (whether it be knowledge of the content we teach, or wider knowledge of that subject). 

"The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go" Dr Seuss. You can also add to the end of this quote - "and the more you can teach".

Enjoy your reading!

Ian @Denbigh CPD

Further Reading

• Why does Knowledge Matter? John Blake
• Are teachers cursed with knowledge? David Didau A good read about the 'optimum' level of subject knowledge a teacher may require.
• Maintaining your Subject Knowledge. Mark Enser
• How important is subject knowledge for a teacher? Keith Heggart
• The best teachers love their subject and have excellent subject knowledge. Barnaby Lenon
• Does good subject knowledge make you a good teacher? Adam Riches - A counter argument that subject knowledge is not a crucial component of effective teaching.