Everywhere in Education we see curriculum change and renewal, change responding to external policy, responding to our desire to refresh our Education programmes and sometimes responding to internal institutional requirements but as academics working in Education departments we always seek to develop our curricula by being informed by what we know about effective learning. This keynote will look at the implications for curriculum development and teacher development of a number of emerging trends in curriculum, which include: • Authentic learning (e.g. Project Based Learning); • Inter-disciplinary learning; • Collaborative learning; • Local curriculum making and curriculum partnerships; • Divergent learning (as well as convergent learning); • Holistic assessment. As Director for the Research Centre for Learning and Teaching (CfLaT), David Leat has been researching the difficulties in sustaining whole institution curriculum change, which has led to an equal focus on professional learning and organisational/cultural change. Keynote presentation by David Leech given at the HEA 'Curriculum Challenge: Being a curriculum thinker' event on 7 April 2014.

1. Back to the Future – Curriculum
Development in a Digital Age
Professor David Leat
Research Centre for Learning and
Teaching, Newcastle University
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2. Curriculum questions (Dillon 2009)
1. Nature of curriculum – what is it, what is it for? (for citizenship,
for moral development, for delivery of vocational skills, for
preparation for HE, for healthy lives, to pass exams!)
2. Elements of the curriculum – what is it composed of?
• Who teaches it?
• What is taught?
• Where and when?
• Why?
• How?
• What are the outcomes? Who learns what?
• How is it assessed?
• 3. How you think when you teach and assess.
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We have become
very unimaginative
about these
questions

3. Curriculum changes in England in
schools, 1988 to 2013
• In 1988 England introduced its first National
Curriculum with a great deal of content specified to
be taught in the subjects;
• As the content specification has been reduced,
England has gradually moved from ‘input’ regulation
(content) to ‘output’ regulation (exams).
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4. Performativity (Stephen Ball, 2003)
• As a policy, standards ‘works’ through a very
simple but effective and very public
technology of performance – made up of
league tables, national averages, comparative
and progress indicators, Ofsted (Office for
Standards in Education) assessments and
benchmarks. These together are intended to
instill into schools what is called a
‘performance culture’.
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5. Rumblings of discontent (3)
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6. Lack of engagement (1)
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7. A stitch in time: tackling educational disengagement
(Demos 2009, Sonia Sodha & Silvia Guglielmi)
• Almost one in ten 16—18 year-olds were not
engaged in education, employment or training
(NEET) in late 2007 — a status associated with
huge costs both in terms of later life outcomes
for these young people and for society.
• Serious levels of lack of engagement.
• (Strong evidence in Canada – lack of
intellectual engagement in secondary school).
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8. A stitch in time
• England has some of the poorest attitudes
towards learning and enjoyment of learning
internationally, with one of the highest
proportions of children with poor attitudes
towards reading in the developed world, and
four in ten children partly or mostly agreeing
with the statement ‘I hate school/college’.
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9. The world of work (2)
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10. HE & CBI: Making Education Work
• England must … formally adopt … key competences
guided by recent international developments :
• communication in English and in foreign languages,
competence in mathematics;
• science and technology and digital competence;
• learning to learn individually and as part of a team;
• personal, interpersonal and intercultural competence,
including an understanding of codes of conduct and the
importance of business ethics, a sense of initiative and
entrepreneurship, creativity and cultural awareness.
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11. Aka Pearson Independent Advisory
Group
• Project work (Extended Project Qualification) should
become a key requirement for university entrance.
• Non-cognitive skills and attributes such as team working,
emotional maturity, empathy, and other interpersonal skills
are as important as proficiency in English and mathematics
in ensuring young people’s employment prospects.
Assessment should reflect this ..
• Access to high quality teaching and learning is currently
unequal – technology offers a way to resolve this – at least
in part. Government should investigate virtual learning as a
way to improve the quality of provision
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12. Technology (3)
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13. • Students self organise – groups of 3-4 with one
computer;
• Learning occurs through much collaboration &
discussion;
• Teachers transfer the power to learn to students;
• Students are free to observe what other groups
are doing and share information with each other
• Students present their research to the class at the
end of the session
The five principles of a SOLE session
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14. Skype Seniors
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15. Armathwaite School - Cumbria
• http://www.armathwaite.cumbria.sch.uk/index.p
hp?category_id=18
• School used a grant to appoint a part time
community development officer;
• She found and developed ‘enquiry’ partners in
the community for curriculum making;
• The pupils researched, designed and made new
sandwiches at the village bakery, weekend
packages at the local dog hotel, and a wedding
and reception at the local church. Pupils
reported and reviewed their weekly progress.
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16. BUT … Michael Young & Johann Muller
2010
• Future 1 — Subject boundaries are given and
fixed (powerful knowledge) — there are elites,
streaming and a lack of innovation;
• Future 2 — The end of boundaries – integration
of subjects, skills focus, ‘concept light’ and
facilitative teaching;
• Future 3 – A hybrid with boundary maintenance
as prior to boundary crossing and the dynamic
relation between the two is the fountain of new
knowledge.
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17. James & Brown ‘Grasping the TLRP
nettle’
‘Learning’ in the Teaching and Learning Research
Programme projects included:
• Attainments;
• Understanding;
• Cognitive and creative;
• Using;
• Higher Order Learning;
• Dispositions;
• Membership, inclusion & self-worth.
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18. Convergent and divergent approaches
Torrance & Prior 1999
• a. precise planning by the
teacher and an intention to
stick to it;
• c. closed or pseudo-open
teacher questioning and tasks;
• e. authoritative, judgmental
or quantitative feedback;
• f. feedback focussed on
performance and the
successful completion of the
task in hand;
• a. flexible planning or complex
planning which incorporates
alternatives;
• c. mainly open tasks with
mediating questions aimed at
finding connections & making
sense;
• e. exploratory, provisional or
provocative descriptive feedback
aimed at prompting further
engagement from the learners;
• f. discussion prompting reflection
on the task with a view to wider
application;
18
Convergent pedagogy Divergent pedagogy
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19. Basil Bernstein’s concept of framing
Framing refers to the strength of the social rules in place
in the educational settings such as classrooms and
involves a ‘pedagogic discourse’ which helps define how
students see themselves as a result of the classroom
experiences. Instructional discourses reflect the
selection of knowledge for teaching, such as its
sequencing and criteria for assessment, while regulative
discourses concern the social relations in the classroom,
with regard to expectations of conduct and manner.
Moving from convergent to divergent approaches
disrupts the pedagogic discourse (big time).
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20. Partial reframing
• When my Year 8 did that enquiry project –
they asked their peers who were taking the
lesson when they needed help and not me,
that’s when I started to think yes this could
work really well.
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21. The tension for teachers
• One astute teacher recognised that there are
clear limits to the spread of a new ‘discourse’ as
the beliefs and pedagogical knowledge of some
teachers currently preclude such communication:
• When you include the ‘habits of mind’ it becomes
easier for the students and teachers to have a
learning dialogue. When that culture is set up it
changes the atmosphere in the school … But a lot
of teachers can’t talk to students as equals, or as
learning partners …
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22. HE Curriculum: Barnett & Coate 2005.
• The domain of ‘knowing’ refers to the core
knowledge of the discipline (threshold
concepts). ‘Acting’ emphasizes skills and
actions that students are expected to acquire
and refers to how a student’s expertise grows
and develops through activity. The domain of
‘being’ denotes the formation of student’s
personality and identity.
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23. Makinen and Annala 2010
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24. REMAKING CURRICULUM
SUBJECTS
ENQUIRY
COMMUNITY
Dialogue - where
different voices are
heard and listened to.
Meaning is not given
but contested and
explored.
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About, for and by a place

25. Manchester Area-Based Curriculum
http://www.thersa.org/projects/area-based-curriculum/manchester-
curriculum
• A shift towards an area-based
curriculum implies a re-introduction
of local contexts into curriculum
making and therefore implies a re-
organisation of the relationships
between knowledge within the
curriculum.
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26. Six key themes in curriculum for C21st
research reviews
• 1. The effectiveness of learning that is ‘context
based’ (dealing with ideas and phenomena in real or
simulated practical situations) most notably in
reviews of science and maths;
• 2. The importance of connecting the curriculum with
young people’s experiences of home and community
and the related, but also distinctive theme of
parental involvement in children’s learning in the
home.
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27. Six key themes in curriculum for C21st
research reviews
• 3. The impact on pupil motivation and learning
of structured dialogue in group work and of
collaborative learning;
• 4. The need to create opportunities to identify
and build on pupils’ existing conceptual
understandings – again notably in science and
maths. Several reviewers also found evidence of
unexplored poor misunderstandings arising from
‘teaching to the test’;
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28. Six key themes in curriculum for C21st
research reviews
• 5. The need to remove rigidity in the approach to
the curriculum - to allow time and space for
conceptual development, to encourage
integration of cross-curricular learning; and
• 6. The need for excellence and professional
development in subject knowledge – without
which teachers would be unable to seize
opportunities for curriculum innovation,
particularly in relation to context-based learning.
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29. H. Timperley, A. Wilson, H. Barrar & I. Fung (2007). Teacher professional Learning
and Development: Best evidence Synthesis Iteration. Wellington, New Zealand:
Ministry of Education
Teacher inquiry and knowledge-building cycle to promote
valued student outcomes.
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30. Teachers and curriculum making
• Teachers, at all levels, need more experience
of designing curriculum from scratch for a
wider variety of learning outcomes;
• They need more experience of involving
others in curriculum making and of inquiring
into the outcomes of their efforts (Stenhouse);
• They need more experience and support for
operating a more contingent curriculum, still
strongly rooted in subjects.
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31. References
• Anderson, R. (2014) Careers 2020, Making Education Work, A report
from an Independent Advisory Group chaired by Professor Roy
Anderson, London: Pearson.
• Ball, S., (2003) The teachers’ soul and the terrors of performativity.
Journal of Educational Policy, Vol. 18, 215-228.
• Barnett, R. and Coate, K. (2005) Engaging the curriculum in higher
education, Berkshire, GBR: McGraw-Hill Education.
• Dillon, J. T. (2009) 'The questions of curriculum‘ , Journal of
Curriculum Studies, Vol. 41 (3), pp. 343-359.
• James, M. & Brown, S. (2005) Grasping the TLRP nettle: preliminary
analysis and some enduring issues surrounding the improvement of
learning outcomes, Curriculum Journal, Vol. 16 (1), pp. 7-30.
• Mäkinen, M. & Annala, J. (2010) Meanings behind curriculum
development in higher education, Prime, Vol. 4 (2).
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32. References
• Sodha, S. & Guglielmi, S. (2009) A Stitch in Time: Tackling
Disengagement, London: Demos.
• Stenhouse, L. (1976) An introduction to curriculum research and
development, London: Heinemann.
• Timperley, H., Wilson, A., Barrar, H., & Fung, I., 2007. Teacher
professional learning and development: Best evidence synthesis
iteration. Wellington, New Zealand: Ministry of Education. Available
from http://www.minedu.govt.nz/goto/bestevidencesynthesis.
• Torrance, H. & Pryor, J. (1998) Investigating Formative Assessment.
Teaching, Learning and Assessment in the Classroom (Buckingham,
Open University Press).
• Young, M. & Muller, J. (2010) Three Educational Scenarios for the
Future: lessons from the sociology of knowledge, European Journal
of Education, Vol. 45 (1) Part I, pp. 11-27.
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