Curriculum For Wales - Obstacles And Opportunities

  This is a GUEST POST by Glyn Rogers

To my mind, the current landscape in education provides some obstacles to realising the vision of Curriculum for Wales. Identifying them is the next step towards meaningful change.

 

“When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.”

Godhart’s Law

 

During the last decade, we have fallen foul of Godhart’s law (see also Campbell’s Law and the Cobra effect) thanks to an obsession with measuring performance. Godhart’s law states that when a specific target is set, people change their behaviours to meet that target, regardless of the overall intention.

Credit: Sketchplanations.com

This decade has been one when appearance has trumped substance, one when the book scrutiny became king. The strange assumption that learning is a linear process led to ‘flightpaths’ becoming accepted practice. It was the decade when teaching to the test was encouraged, no matter that the subject being taught might lose its meaning. It is a time when conscientious pupils learned how to ‘work the mark scheme.’ Mary Beard explores this in her podcast ‘You may now turn over your papers.’

The first obstacle to realising meaningful change then is that the dominant drivers of behaviour for schools are the nature of external assessments and the ways in which school performance is evaluated. Given more freedom, it is entirely likely that schools will adapt their interpretation of Curriculum for Wales over time to optimise for assessment performance. If we are to avoid the unintended consequences associated with this, the nature of external assessment needs careful consideration. The same is true of the yardsticks used to make judgements about schools and what it is that challenge advisors are promoting in what they are challenging.

“Everyone needs habits of mind that allow them to dance across disciplines… modern life requires range, making connections across far-flung domains and ideas.”

 David Epstein- Range: How generalists thrive in a specialised world

An obsession with the performance of the core subjects in external assessments has seen some subjects, particularly the Arts, wither on the vine. This well intentioned focus has led to a degradation in the school experience for young people that hits the least privileged the most. I hope we can move beyond this in the next decade by recognising and celebrating the importance of the creative and other subjects as part of a rounded education. Curriculum for Wales should allow young people to develop a view through the lens of a range of subject specialisms and explore the connections between and beyond them. A well-considered, integrated approach would reduce duplication and free us to transcend the limitations of subject boundaries in the study of the issues of our time. The rub here though is that a meaningful exploration of this takes time, co-operation, and expertise. A Post It note exercise as part of an INSET day at the end of term won’t cut it. A thoughtful investment in training that includes different perspectives on curriculum before such an undertaking would be invaluable for the task at hand and beyond.

“…Increasingly, we become so secure in our bubbles that we accept only information, whether true or not, that fits our opinions, instead of basing our opinions on the evidence that’s out there.”

Barack Obama’s farewell address, January 2017

I have little time for the idea of de-emphasising knowledge because we can just ‘Google it.’ I do however believe that we have a responsibility as educators to teach young people how to navigate and access this fingertip knowledge; to provide them with frameworks for thinking that helps them make rational sense of it, to recognise the limitations of their own biases and those projected upon them by online profiling. For the new curriculum to have real impact, we need to acknowledge that the lens through which most of society now forms its world view is via unregulated content on a six inch LCD display. Of course, we must continue to play our role as teachers by equipping young people with knowledge in the classroom to help them discern this maelstrom. However, the perfect storm of fake news and misleading use of statistics throughout the unprecedented events of 2020/ 21 also underscores the need for a toolkit of approaches to thinking from across domains that goes beyond the current interpretation of the Digital Competence Framework; to help make sense of novel situations and the reframing of old ones as our knowledge changes. This is essential for developing responsible citizenship in the Twenty-first Century. Some of these frameworks and associated skills are domain specific, others can be applied within and across domains. All are fundamentally important for realising the four purposes.

“…Navigating the contradictions and tensions…is not about choosing sides; it is about finding the most effective sequence and relative emphasis in a student’s learning at any given point of their educational journey.”

Tom Sherrington- The Learning Rainforest

I have been party to lesson observations in a school where there is a tension between the pragmatic teacher needing to deliver a content heavy examination syllabus in the most efficient manner possible and the expectations of the non-specialist observer who is looking for a checklist of skills. To my mind, direct instruction should not be instinctively frowned upon here; it is a valid instructional technique in the modern classroom as part of a teacher’s toolkit. This needs to be acknowledged so that we can work on improving the quality of this type of instruction; it is possible to overdo it though and to do it badly, as Tom Sherrington points out in his blog. It is also easy to become over reliant on this strategy as it gives a sense of control. To acknowledge the teacher as the subject expert is important but an expert teacher hopes to engender awe and wonder of the subject, not the teacher. If we focus solely on instructing knowledge in ever more convenient, direct, and easily digestible ways in the name of reducing cognitive load, then we are limiting their opportunities for meaningful schema building, for applying this knowledge and we are fostering a culture of dependence. As always, context is key.

An exciting facet of teaching during the last decade has been the enriching experience of conversation and debate on Twitter. It has allowed teachers direct access to a wide professional learning network that often extends beyond the profession. However, it can be a polarising medium and I’ve seen valid classroom activities derided along with those that deserve it. I welcome the conscious move towards engaging with research and ensuring an evidence-based approach advocated by many on Twitter but I am concerned with reductive and de-contextualised interpretations that then become mainstream. Thoughtful investment in teacher professional development once again is the key to making the most of this wonderful, sometimes infuriating but always thought provoking informal social network of education professionals.

“The obstacle in the path becomes the path. Never forget, within every obstacle is an opportunity to improve our condition.”

Ryan Holiday, The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Adversity to Advantage

So, the success of Curriculum for Wales means nudging a change in the prevailing drivers of school culture. It points to a well thought out approach to assessment and inspection arrangements that considers unintended consequences, investment in a well-informed, discerning, and well-prepared profession, ongoing support, and adequate time to explore the best provision for each context. It also means acknowledging and embracing the cultural and social changes brought about by the new ways both learners and teachers acquire information and engage in informal learning. As the stoics might say, each obstacle in our path is also an opportunity to get things right- the impediment to action can advance action.