Curriculum Shorts (Some short musings about curriculum) We all know what we mean by a knowledge-rich curriculum but, as with all pithy phrases, we don’t. And if that isn’t a great contradiction, I don’t know what is. Knowledge-rich can mean, within certain, wide-ranging, parameters, anything you want it to mean. Lots of people can use … More Why Not A Knowledge-Rich Curriculum?
Curriculum Shorts (Some short musings about curriculum) With all the talk of curriculum coherence and sequencing and people furiously creating logical progression models and maps there is another way to go. In the United States in particular there is a liberal arts tradition of great books curricula. These programmes run alongside the main curriculum or, … More Great Books Curriculum
Curriculum Shorts (Some short musings about curriculum) A broad and balanced curriculum for every pupil is a necessary part of a rich education, what should it mean in practice? The most obvious places where the aims of ‘broad and balanced’ take second place to ‘pragmatic narrowing’ are during the stress times of education provision – … More A Broad and Balanced Curriculum
Curriculum Shorts (Some short musings about curriculum) Pedagogy, ‘the method and practice of teaching’ (OED) was all the rage a few years ago. The all-singing-all-dancing ‘outstanding’ lesson as defined by lesson observation tick-lists was the elusive elixir that could be sprinkled throughout a school to ensure great outcomes for all. Thankfully this mirage has been … More How to Teach Your Curriculum
Curriculum Shorts (Some short musings about curriculum) One of the best things about being an independent-minded teacher is that you can sit in meetings, smile and nod away at all the latest initiatives, work out how to pay lip-service to them and, then, when the classroom door closes go about your merry business in the … More Collaborative Curriculum Design
Curriculum Shorts (Some short musings about curriculum) A curriculum should make sense. At first this might seem to be an obvious statement, who, after all, would pursue a curriculum that did not? And yet it is possible to end up with an incoherent curriculum if various factors are not in place. Firstly the planned curriculum … More Curriculum Coherence
Curriculum Shorts (Some short musings about curriculum) Interleaving two or more pieces of curriculum content that are deliberately chosen as they juxtapose well and/or offer interesting viewpoints and perspectives, and arguments can work really well. When I teach drama I interleave the three practitioners Brecht, Stanislavsky and Artaud. I start by looking at how each … More Interleaving and Curriculum Design
Curriculum Shorts (Some short musings about curriculum) ‘Spacing’ is a really useful way to improve learning and retention. Basically it means delaying before you re-study something. The opposite would be ‘blocking’, where a topic is learned over a period of a few weeks. This is a curriculum design issue as, often, teachers and departments design … More Curriculum Design and Spacing
Curriculum Shorts (Some short musings about curriculum) In his book, The Process of Education, Jerome Bruner wrote that: ‘A curriculum as it develops should revisit… basic ideas repeatedly, building upon them until the student has grasped the full formal apparatus that goes with them’ This idea was central to the spiral curriculum. It should also … More Spiral Curriculum
Curriculum Shorts (Some short musings about curriculum) The T-Shaped curriculum idea can be thought of, quite simply, in this way: the horizontal line of the T represents breadth and the vertical, depth. The concept is prevalent in design education and also in other ‘progressive’ scenarios with breadth sometimes representing employability and/or multiple intelligences and the … More T-Shaped Curriculum
Trivium 21c 