{"id":29,"date":"2020-06-24T07:42:32","date_gmt":"2020-06-24T07:42:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/kierg\/?p=29"},"modified":"2020-10-21T09:00:16","modified_gmt":"2020-10-21T09:00:16","slug":"who-owns-the-curriculum-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/kierg\/2020\/06\/24\/who-owns-the-curriculum-now\/","title":{"rendered":"Who owns the curriculum now?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Author: <\/span><\/strong>Richard Pountney, SIG Lead<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

[This post was prepared as a podcast (https:\/\/www.bera.ac.uk\/the-bera-podcast-who-owns-the-curriculum-now<\/a>) for the BERA Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment Special Interest Group<\/a>]\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Having recently been asked to say what had I thought\"\"<\/a> has been the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the curriculum and the work of this special interest group, I am going to address this under three headings: the effects<\/strong> of the pandemic; the structures<\/strong> involved; and the responses<\/strong> being made. My overriding question is \u2018Who owns the curriculum now?<\/strong>\u2019<\/p>\n

The first of these is effects, and it is clear that there has been an interruption. But we are yet to fully understand the level of disruption.\u00a0 Let\u2019s consider the main factors of this interruption – [the impression that…] schools, colleges, and universities closed since March; examinations cancelled; pupils and students sent home and asked to learn at home; and teachers and lecturers being asked to work and teach remotely. Clearly, this is not \u2018business as usual\u2019, but I have seen incredible levels of adaptation by schools and teachers to the challenge. My own university and the school trusts we work with, have worked extremely hard to respond. On a personal level, I have seen this in the schools that the children in my family attend. The hard work of teachers in this period is often not reflected, unfortunately, in media reporting of what schools have been doing \u2013 schools have not been closed and teachers have not stopped working! The effects have been on the whole community and it has required a whole school response. The role of parents, and schools\u2019 partnerships with parents, has been crucial. Parents have had, arguably, more influence over their children\u2019s curriculum than ever before. I would say this is more a case of parents as proxy for teachers, rather than as replacement for them \u2013 but it is a noticeable shift, perhaps, from \u2018in loco parentis\u2019 to \u2018in loco magister\u2019.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>One factor of the interruption has been teachers\u2019 uncertainty about how long it will last and what will happen next \u2013 I know my own response started as \u2018survive till Easter\u2019 \u2013 and then became \u2018manage till May\u2019 and more lately, \u2018hold on to the holidays\u2019. I get a sense that that if we are locked down again, I will be better prepared! How about you?<\/p>\n

I want to pause there, to think about structures. Schools are more than buildings \u2013 they represent a complex set of interconnected structures including, timetables, routines, and people, including parents \u2013 this is what Karl Maton<\/a> calls a \u2018constellation of practice\u2019. This cosmology includes the reservoirs of physical things but also the intangibles – feelings, hopes and investments; also, our ways of doing and being are often tacit. These are our repertoires – including relationships between people, and between people and ideas. Schools are a fragile ecosystem, held together by habits of work and learning that persist because of and for the community. The curriculum is one structure that provides the \u2018what\u2019, aligned with the pedagogy of \u2018how\u2019, underpinned importantly by how we assess the \u2018how well\u2019.<\/p>\n

In terms of pedagogy, teachers have shifted the emphasis towards remote learning, both synchronous and asynchronous. This is a shift in the dynamic \u2013 the polarity of learning and teaching. It raises the visibility of teachers own subject knowledge, and, in many cases, along with their pedagogic content knowledge \u2013 that is, the expertise to understand the sequencing and pacing of learning, as well as how learners\u2019 misconceptions are recognised and addressed. There is no doubt in my mind that schools have provided these forms of learning and this has been impressive. Interestingly, the lockdown has become a kind of \u2018opening up\u2019 \u2013 of the curriculum and pedagogy.\u00a0 The open letter to ministers from the Research Libraries UK calling for a loosening of copyright laws suggests the need to rethink how we share and re-use curriculum resources, as well as strategies and techniques for teaching and learning. The difficulty, I feel, is ensuring teachers\u2019 autonomy in curriculum making, while helping them manage the workload. This shouldn\u2019t be too prescriptive.<\/p>\n

The respon\"\"<\/a>ses we continue to make, however, must take account of inequality heightened by the interruption. Recent studies indicate that those children most in need of school are those most likely to miss out on remote provision. Black, Asian and minority ethnic students are among those that are affected, increasing calls for an accessible and fair curriculum as a matter of social justice. In experiencing home learning, young people will want to make sense of Black Lives Matter and the calls to decolonise the curriculum and to understand the responses we, as educators, make to this. I know my own university is making huge efforts to offer extra resources and additional support to students and to pupils in our partner schools.<\/p>\n

The announcement of the governments\u2019 \u2018catch-up premium\u2019<\/a> and its emphasis on academic aspects of children\u2019s return to school is important, but this needs to take account of the emotional aspects of the pandemic. Experiencing the world again as a safe space, and reaffirming connection and belonging is equally important, and sadly we may need to help pupils to acknowledge loss. Personally, I prefer the term recovery to catch-up \u2013 and it may be that we need to uncover as well as recover. Our curriculum research might throw light on what can be revealed by the drawing back of the established structures of our schools and the curriculum?<\/p>\n

This is where we might need to hold on to our curriculum principles when they are stress-tested. Our response may be pragmatic, but it must also be informed. The pandemic will favour some ideologies over others, including those that further either a traditional or progressive idea of schooling. This is where the interruption becomes a \u2018discursive gap\u2019 – a space of possibilities. The special interest group for Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment can contribute to this space and to the debate. I look forward to being involved in this.<\/p>\n

As to the question \u2018who owns the curriculum now?\u2019 \u2013 my answer for what its worth is \u2018we all do!<\/strong>\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Author: Richard Pountney, SIG Lead [This post was prepared as a podcast (https:\/\/www.bera.ac.uk\/the-bera-podcast-who-owns-the-curriculum-now) for the BERA Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment Special Interest Group] Having recently been asked to say what had I thought has been the impact of the Covid-19 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":73,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/kierg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/kierg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/kierg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/kierg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/kierg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":112,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/kierg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29\/revisions\/112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/kierg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/kierg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.shu.ac.uk\/kierg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}