In the 15 years that I have been teaching, curriculum creation has never been so prominent. I think that represents real progress as a profession. Quick shout out to my PGCE tutors who were prioritising curriculum before I was professionally mature enough to understand.
I’ve been lucky enough to to work with four departments in three subjects and two phases recently on their curriculum maps and I’ve got a few observations that I think might be useful to people embarking on their own design processes.
Curriculum map documents are complex artefacts, mirroring the complexity of the school ecosystem they aim to enrich. They shouldn’t be reduced down to a series of ‘pick up and teach’ powerpoints, despite what some senior leaders say. In a significant number of schools, a good curriculum is despite, not because of senior leaders. I’d love to call on colleagues to co-construct rather than micro-manage their highly trained, skilled and experienced staff. I just hope they listen.
As a quick aside, I’d also like to urge leaders to take note of some of the best head teachers who consistently say to sort behaviour first, then the learning environment and then the curriculum.
Here’s my best advice, in 2 parts. Let me know if it helps.
1. Start with ‘why’
Forget about your curriculum being a vehicle to control consistency. Instead, think about what a profound opportunity it is to stimulate your team into designing something that will benefit thousands of students. To do this we need to create a clear vision and purpose. As Nietzsche wrote, “he who has a why can bear any how”. This has a simultaneously bolstering effect as humans both “by their nature seek purpose” (Daniel Pink, Drive) and are motivated more by emotional than financial reward (the Hawthorne effect). If there’s anyone left who hasn’t seen Simon Sinek talk about starting with ‘why’ then give this a go.
As a team, construct a vision statement that drives forward your curriculum. An example I co-constructed with a geography department is: To have a genuinely world class geography curriculum, remarkable in its coherence, clarity and pedagogic planning, that prepares students to be global citizens and be the change they want to see in the world.
2. Define role, responsibilities and rewards
Curriculums should be democratic, complex, coherent, consistent, dynamic, organic and just the right amount of chaos. So we have to get the starting conditions right: we don’t a Victorian formal garden but we don’t want a tangle of weeds either - the right plant in the right place.
In most departments and schools, the capacity exists to work towards a compelling vision of the future. Where this is the case, role and responsibility should be devolved as much as possible. The more clearly this is defined, the better the outcomes will be, even if they are different from the intended endpoints.. Just the right amount of chaos.
We’re not aiming for a flat hierarchy - our curriculum still needs a driver, someone who will find the sweet spot between getting it started and delegating.
Explicitly defining and then carefully reminding team members of the rewards associated with making and finishing a great curriculum is really important to maintain motivation and momentum.
3. Construct Endpoints
where you want students to end up when they leave the school. These can reflect the GCSE and A Level AOs but you will probably want to go a bit deeper and make your passion for the subject shine.
4. Decide and define over-arching themes and meta-concepts
The best curriculums have very clear narratives. Organising the topics to be studied into themes and concepts is a good starting point for this. This will create a stronger narrative identity and thus more cohesion. It will also allow the themes to be even spread over the 5 year course to allow logical spacing and interleaving. Defining the overarching narratives is an important steps towards consistent learning across departments.
A geography example of this might look something like this:
Next, decide and define the overarching ‘meta-concepts’ of the 5-7 year course. Again, this will aid spacing, sequencing and interleaving. It will also improve consistency of teaching as many concepts are notoriously complex and difficult to define. Again, here is a geography example:
When this is done, you can now plan carefully which concepts are going to be in which themes so that they are nicely spaced and re-visited over time.
I really hope that helps. If it does please share and comment. I will write part 2 soon.
If you’d like to work together on curriculum, please get in touch 🙏
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