Managing the Curriculum

David Middlewood, Neil Burton, David Middlewood, Neil Burton

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2001
• Print ISBN: 9780761970323, 9780761970316
• eBook ISBN: 9781446232194
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Curricula

`Each chapter in the book is firmly rooted in research and is well referenced as one would expect of such a book. It will be of particular use to people with an academic interest in this aspect of school management but will also be thought-provoking for those who are involved in the development of the curriculum within their institution? - escalate

This book explores many of the new aspects of the core business of schools and colleges, that is, the curriculum. Keeping the focus clearly on learning and teaching, the contributors explore the practical issues for managers at institutional level, within the context of their need to understand and analyze key educational values and principles. Part One presents overviews of theories and models of curriculum, while Part Two examines how these are applied through planning, monitoring and evaluating. Part Three explores in detail the various managerial roles within schools and colleges from leaders to those responsible for cross-curriculum work and special educational needs. The fourth part discusses the importance of effectively managing resources for the curriculum - the environment, support staff and finance.

Contributors use empirical research evidence to analyze current curriculum trends whilst proposing various new models which are likely to emerge in the 21st century.

Section C: Roles and responsibilities in curriculum management

The focus of this section is to examine the management structures and roles that may exist within an educational institution for the smooth operation of the curriculum. David Middlewood, in Chapter 7, focuses on the responsibility of senior management to establish and communicate the curriculum vision within the role of leading the institution. Chapters 8, 9 and 10 each take a different view of curriculum management from the perspective of the ‘middle manager’ based upon different models of curriculum organisation which may coexist in many institutions. The role of the subject leader has been thoroughly researched by Hugh Busher and Christine Wise, who discuss their findings here. Les Bell examines the role of the curriculum managers who are responsible for co-ordinating the input of various teachers to ensure that students receive a coherent learning package. Daniela Sommefeldt explores issues surrounding the management of individual learning from the perspective of special educational needs.

7

LEADERSHIP OF THE CURRICULUM: SETTING THE VISION

David Middlewood

INTRODUCTION

This chapter considers the curriculum management and leadership of the most senior professionals in a school or college. For the purposes of the chapter these are seen as principals/headteachers and vice-principals/ deputy headteachers although in some establishments they will include those with titles such as ‘assistant principal’/‘assistant headteacher’. Although such people have many specific responsibilities, the assumption is made that the ‘core business’ of a school or college being effective learning then the overriding responsibility of the senior staff is the curriculum. The chapter considers the importance of their roles and suggests there are four main aspects to the effective fulfilling of these roles:

• Having a view of the whole curriculum.
• Ensuring accountability for high standards in learning and teaching.
• Developing an appropriate culture and environment.
• Being a role model for both learners and teachers.

Each of these could merit a chapter of its own but it is hoped that they will serve as a framework for conceptualising the role of the people ‘at the top’ of the school or college in terms of their curriculum role, at a time when the business orientation of education may encourage them to focus on external relations, financial management etc.

THE IMPORTANCE OF THE ROLE OF SENIOR CURRICULUM STAFF AT SCHOOL/COLLEGE LEVEL

In most countries, no matter how uniform, prescriptive or centrally dictated the formal curriculum is, it remains an inescapable fact that individual institutions differ. These differences may be because of factors such as:

• differences in location (for example, urban, rural, suburban)
• consequent differences in local community and nature of student intake (including different attitudes to learning, achievement and formal education itself)
• differences in physical resources, such as buildings
• differences in human resources, especially staff (including different attitudes to the school and job itself).

These factors need to be acknowledged in considering the role of those leading the curriculum at institutional level because, although a prescriptive curriculum (which may be perceived as being equivalent to a syllabus – Jansen and Middlewood (2001) – or timetable) appears to demand that teachers and students will do the same for example in each classroom in each school, in fact of course some schools do it very much better than others. Even if physical and financial resources were identical in each school, the competence and motivation of the individual teachers would still vary and this is one area where the influence of senior curriculum managers can be most evident.

The influence of teachers on curriculum effectiveness is considerable, even when a national curriculum appears to leave school and college teachers with a role limited to the implementation of national directives. In England and Wales, the introduction of a schools’ national curriculum, described by Lawton (1996) as a ‘top-down plan imposed on teachers by civil servants’, meant that its implementation began with teachers ‘treated as hirelings to be instructed rather than as professionals to be involved at all stages and at all levels’ (Lawton, 1996, p. 41).

One of the risks in a tightly prescribed curriculum is that professionals may resort to covert adaptation of the intended curriculum, a process leading to what Becher (1989) describes as an ‘implementation gap’ between government plans and classroom practice. This could lead to wide discrepancies in practice, probably widening the gap between best and worst provision, exactly the opposite of a government’s intentions. If, as writers such as Duffy (1990), and Fullan (1992) claim, teacher ownership of curriculum change is essential for it to succeed, then teacher participation in curriculum management at school level may be essential for any curriculum to be effective. ‘There is a substantial body of evidence to indicate that the most effective schools – the schools that are high-achieving, highly regarded and adaptable – are those that have found ways of involving teachers in decisions and hence in the ownership of them’ (Duffy, 1990, p. 95).

In all this, the role of the most senior staff in a school is critical and the remainder of this chapter suggests that, even in implementing a centrally prescribed curriculum, their actions will have the major influence on whether that curriculum is effective at institutional level. The success of these senior teams obviously depends partly upon their effectiveness as a team, but that aspect of management performance is dealt with elsewhere (for example, in Bush and Middlewood 1997). However, this chapter is concerned with the senior staff’s roles in curriculum management and suggests that there are four main aspects of these roles to consider.

1) HAVING A VIEW OF THE WHOLE CURRICULUM

With the main task of classroom teachers being their effective work in learning and teaching, and with subject teachers focusing on their subject specialisms, it is essential ‘for somebody to look at the curriculum as a whole’ (Ribbins and Marland, 1994, pp. 57–8). The importance of this can be envisaged if the curriculum is seen as operating through four levels:

1) The rhetorical curriculum (what is stated in policies and statements of aims).

2) The planned curriculum (found in schemes of work, syllabuses).

3) The delivered curriculum (how it is taught in the classrooms or through other media).

4) The received curriculum (what is ultimately in the minds and some would say hearts of the students).

Since the fourth level, the curriculum as received by the individual learner, is one that he or she takes away (for example, takes home), and eventually leaves formal ‘schooling’ with as an individual person, it is critical that the curriculum experience is envisaged as a whole, not just as a number of separate unconnected strands. The individual learner’s experience, postformal education provision, will be as a whole, the whole being the identity of that individual.

Duffy (1988, pp. 116–17) describes this whole curriculum view as one that sees what the institution provides:

in two distinct dimensions. It is a lateral view in the sense that it looks across the curriculum, to identify the totality of the learning that the curriculum offers a particular student at a particular stage. But it is also a longitudinal view in the sense that it adds continuity and progression in the student’s learning experience, and searches out the gaps and repetition that the subject-centred approach inevitably produces.

The received curriculum of each individual student is the responsibility of the principal and other senior staff and in this sense it is their task to ensure that ‘the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.’ They may approach this through two ways, for example:

1) If the curriculum as envisaged by the institution’s leaders is the sum of all learning experiences encountered there, and the sum of the parts of this curriculum still leaves gaps in the overall received curriculum experience as envisaged by the leaders, they may wish to fill such gaps by the provision of voluntary or ‘extracurricular’ activities, outside of formal provision or statutory hours. Since this will be dependent upon the motivation and commitment of staff, it emphasises the earlier point that the involvement of teachers in school processes and decisions is crucial.

2) The two-dimensional view is also essential because it helps to ensure that senior staff view such processes as record-keeping and assessment as a whole, so that the grades for each student are not just a collection of separate pieces of information but give a total picture of each individual’s progress and achievement.

While middle managers are increasingly involved in strategic thinking, their operational roles, especially as leaders of specialist teams, will understandably mean they are excited and challenged by new developments and opportunities in their own field. It is critical that those with a view of the whole curriculum experience offered at the school or college help to ensure that those specialist or sectional developments cohere with this whole.

In summary, leaders in schools and colleges will have a vision of the curriculum based probably upon some kind of postmodernist paradigm. Usher and Edwards (1994, p. 7) suggest this is ‘a condition, a set of practices, a cultural discourse, an attitude and a mode of analysis’ and not any kind of systematic theory or comprehensive philosophy. Primarily this is because they are preparing learners for a world which is characterised by complexity, multiplicity and ongoing change, where they will need to construct new knowledge and understandings throughout their lives. This therefore assumes that a curriculum of the future might well be very different than the one in operation at present. The sharing of this view with others is a key role for leaders so that the developments in specific areas of the offered curriculum led by others are in the context of this whole, which keeps the needs of learners at its centre.

2) ENSURING ACCOUNTABILITY FOR CONSISTENTLY HIGH STANDARDS IN LEARNING AND TEACHING

The principal/headteacher ultimately is accountable for the standards of education in the school or college, and a key aspect of the role therefore is ensuring that these standards are of consistently high quality. The word ‘consistently’ is critically important since the task is to ensure that each individual student’s received curriculum experience is of similar quality. ‘Consistency’ therefore is less important over all periods of time (since ‘ups’ and ‘downs’ of human performance may be unavoidable), than across the different teachers and subjects experienced by the student. The key to how effectively this is carried out is likely to lie partly in the way in which monitoring, evaluation and feedback is managed in the school. This aspect of curriculum management is examined in detail in chapters in Section B of this book.

The effectiveness of procedures for accountability will depend to a large extent upon the structures which senior managers establish and develop. These structures, if effective, will facilitate:

• co-ordination
• monitoring
• flexibility to respond to future developments
• accountability (based on Mullins, 1989).

However, structures themselves are bureaucratic expressions of the above and the reality may be very different. Hargreaves (1997) argues that teachers’ practices are grounded not only in expertise and altruism but in structures and routines in which considerable self-interest may be invested. Such structures may have evolved historically to meet certain political and moral purposes (for example, of ‘control’) and to achieve very different purposes now, changes in structures may be necessary.

Effective teacher development for collective school improvement may depend upon controlling vested interests. Developing a collaborative culture, for example, may require the modification of isolated, subject-specific departmental structures in the secondary school.

The school or college principal and senior colleagues may wish to consider what the specific purposes of structure should be, as far as the curriculum is concerned, before modifying existing ones. These purposes may include:

• ensuring that the needs of the ‘whole’ students are addressed
• supporting the implementation of whole school/college policies
• ensuring internal and external accountability for curriculum standards
• responding to externally imposed curriculum changes appropriately
• ensuring that the development of the whole curriculum is coherent.

There are a number of processes essential to effective management of the curriculum which can be hindered unless the structures facilitate the achievement of the above purposes. A few of these to be considered are:

1) A consideration of the emotional and behavioural needs of the learner as well as academic ones is crucial, since effective learning is affected by these. They need to be regularly identified and monitored. Clearly this is least effectively done if the academic and pastoral/welfare structures of a school are managed separately, instead of being integrated. Consideration of the progress of the learner as a ‘whole person’ needs therefore to be built into the way structures are developed. Martinez (2000) comments on how more schools and colleges are moving away from a pastoral-based tutoring system to an emphasis on monitoring, reviewing and supporting student progress.

2) A whole-institution policy on assessment is essential for consistency in maintaining learner progress. This will involve bringing together assessment data and the structures needed to facilitate this, not making the process a cumbersome one through, for example, it having to be collected in different ways.

3) Certain structures which keep key areas of the curriculum separately managed make it difficult to identify duplication in the curriculum. More critically, they can hinder the adoption of a new curriculum initiative which a school or college is required to implement. In institutions with rigid structures, such initiatives may well be ‘bolted on’ rather than integrated, adding to administrative workload and to communications problems...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Series Editor’s foreword
• Preface
• Notes on contributors
• Section A: Strategic management of the curriculum
• Section B: Operational management of the curriculum
• Section C: Roles and responsibilities in curriculum management
• Section D: Resourcing the curriculum
• Glossary of terms
• Index