Curriculum: Theory, Culture and the Subject Specialisms

Ruth Ashbee

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000390261
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Didattica
• Subtopic: Istruzione secondaria

Curriculum, or the substance of what is taught, is the core business of schools, and yet little exists in the way of a theory of curriculum for educators. This book sets out the principles of curriculum theory and provides a common framework and practical strategies for the successful implementation and effective management of powerful knowledge-based curriculum for all.

Offering powerful insights across the subject divides, the book explores the key elements of curriculum design including progression, sequencing, substantive and disciplinary knowledge, and the relationships of subjects to their sister disciplines. Providing a crucial foundation for school leadership, it covers:

• curriculum in the contexts of learning, organisational culture and key philosophical and moral ideas
• an explanation of thirteen specialist subjects, with outline mapping of the knowledge
• an emphasis on the cultural elements needed for sustained excellence in curriculum work within schools
• the codification of curriculum and the multiple values of documents for curriculum thinking and execution.

Enabling leaders to analyse and discuss subjects beyond their specialisms, this essential text will equip readers to implement real change by leading intelligently and effectively on curriculum.

1 Introduction

1.1 The making of meaning

The quest for meaning is as old as humanity itself, and it is our defining feature as humans. Education is both the institution and the process of the sustenance and development of that meaning over the generations. Michael Oakeshott describes this relationship thus:

As civilized human beings, we are the inheritors […] of a conversation, begun in the primeval forests and extended and made more articulate in the course of centuries. It is a conversation which goes on both in public and within each of ourselves […] Education, properly speaking, is an initiation into the skill and partnership of this conversation […] And it is this conversation which, in the end, gives place and character to every human activity and utterance.¹

In language, art, religion, music, and mathematics, for thousands of years, we have represented and lived in ideas beyond the everyday, the obvious, and the merely adaptive. In science, geography, and history, we seek to understand the world before and beyond us. In sport, we challenge ourselves at the intersection between self, world, and time, and we delight in the moment. In music and art we create beauty and elicit emotion, and when joined with others in our appreciation of these things we find connection. Wherever artefacts from early humans exist, we find evidence of ideas beyond the tangible: images, music, maps, and gods. In sharing this meaning, we are communities. In making meaning, we are conscious.

Over time, our searches for meaning have developed, accumulating more knowledge, becoming increasingly sophisticated, and differentiating, so that today we have a myriad of lenses on the world, each making meaning from different things in different ways. The subject disciplines are the social, cultural, and epistemological structures we have developed over time – to house, treasure, renew, and build this meaning. Through the disciplines we pursue truth, beauty, and ingenuity; we ask and answer questions about the worlds around us and within us; we make new things to express ideas, to be beautiful, and to change the world. It is not just Newton who stood on the shoulders of giants: in studying the subject disciplines we join the towering conversations of humanity, and from these we can all see far.

1.2 The role of schools

School curriculum plays three roles in this story: as a component of democracy, as a renewer of specialists to sustain the disciplines, and as a provider of knowledge for its own sake, for all.

1.2.1 Schools as a component of democracy

Much of the knowledge taught in a school curriculum is directly relevant to participation in democracy, to informed voting, responsible citizenship, critical consumption of media, and accountability of institutions. Beyond this, schools, and in particular departments within schools, must be part of the discourse and policy-making that structure the stewardship of the knowledge in the disciplines. The recontextualisation of knowledge for the school setting – the creation of curriculum in relation to the broader discipline in universities and elsewhere – is core to the ongoing history of human endeavour, and the conversation around this recontextualisation should be ongoing. In this discourse, questions of truth, interpretations, and values are democratised, and a defence against deceit and totalitarianism is offered.²

1.2.2 Schools as trainers of future specialists

In teaching students, one of our aims is always that some will pursue the subject or a related specialism, and in this way the disciplines are sustained; they live as practices, their protagonists prepared again and again, throughout the generations. Thus we renew the societal good that comes from the specialised disciplines: from the prosaic, the inventive and the useful, to the beautiful and the cultural, to the meaning that everyone can make from a world in which specialist disciplines exist, and the belonging that develops from that shared yet personal meaning.

1.2.3 Schools as stewards of knowledge for its own sake, for all

Continued study can, of course, only ever be one of our aims, since by definition no student can specialise in everything. We teach the knowledge in the subjects because it is good, because we believe it is worth having. “Knowledge for knowledge’s sake”, and all the wonder and being-in-the-world that comes with it; this is what schools are for. Whatever paths our students take on leaving school, taking with them the knowledge of the subjects – and the ability to make meaning from the world in the ways crafted in the specialist disciplines – is a wonderful thing, and is the business of schools.

Curriculum, then, is a matter of social and cultural justice. Children spend a limited number of years in school, and a large part of what they leave with is the direct result of the curriculum, of the substance of what has been taught. Our students can leave us with a rich and detailed understanding of the world and our placings in it. They can leave with a sense of ownership and belonging, and the knowledge that knowledge itself is in flux, that it is created in time, and that they themselves may join this story if they wish. They can leave able to join “the great conversations”³ of humanity, able to participate in the discourse that underpins current affairs, cultural life, and functioning democracy. They can leave with all this, or they can leave with very little. The work of ensuring the former is the work of curriculum leadership.

1.3 The essential tension

As educators become more reflective about the status and role of curriculum, schools and their leaders are increasingly beginning to place curriculum at the heart of what they do, seeking to provide children with ambitious, meaningful, and scholarly knowledge that opens up the worlds of understanding in the disciplines. Any meaningful work on curriculum must necessarily have subject specialism at its heart. Therein lies a paradox: a school needs centralised leadership in order to function, but that leadership must be able to discuss knowledge with the many subject specialisms, many of which will necessarily be outside of subject expertise of school leaders.

How can school leaders effectively lead for curriculum in subjects they know little or nothing about? How can they support the development of their subject leaders and their teams? How can they judge the quality of curriculum work taking place, and identify priorities for development? What questions should they ask subject leaders, both for their own understanding and for the valuable reflection that such conversation can prompt in their interlocutors? This book seeks to answer these questions and provide some structure to the work of curriculum leadership.

1.4 Structure and approach

This book draws together and builds on work from curriculum thinkers, philosophers, and subject specialists, with two key aims. First, it is hoped that the ideas presented here will be useful both to senior leaders (and anyone else interested in curriculum) in leading and developing curriculum work in schools and beyond. The knowledge needed for effective curriculum leadership is diverse and often challe...